CHAPTER XLVII.

"THE VILLAGE OF SCHWARTZ-ACH."

I was destitute enough when I quitted the "Temple," a few days back; but my condition now was sadder still, for in addition to my poverty and friendlessness, I had imbibed a degree of distrust and suspicion that made me shun my fellow-men, and actually shrink from the contact of a stranger. The commonest show of courtesy, the most ordinary exercise of politeness, struck me as the secret wiles of that police, whose machinations, I fancied, were still spread around me. I had conceived a most intense hatred of civilization, or, at least, of what I rashly supposed to be the inherent vices of civilized life. I longed for what I deemed must be the glorious independence of a savage. If I could but discover this Paradise beyond seas, of which the marquise raved so much; if I only could find out that glorious land which neither knew secret intrigues nor conspiracies, I should leave France forever, taking any condition, or braving any mischances fate might have in store for me.

There was something peculiarly offensive in the treatment I had met with. Imprisoned on suspicion, I was liberated without any "amende;" neither punished like a guilty man, nor absolved as an innocent one. I was sent out upon the world as though the state would not own nor acknowledge me; a dangerous practice, as I often thought, if only adopted on a large scale. It was some days before I could summon resolution to ascertain exactly my position: at last I did muster up courage, and under pretense of wishing to address a letter to myself, I applied at the Ministry of War for the address of Lieutenant Tiernay, of the 9th Hussars. I was one of a large crowd similarly engaged, some inquiring for sons that had fallen in battle, or husbands or fathers in far away countries. The office was only open each morning for two hours, and consequently, as the expiration of the time drew nigh, the eagerness of the inquirers became far greater, and the contrast with the cold apathy of the clerks the more strongly marked. I had given way to many, who were weaker than myself, and less able to buffet with the crowd about them; and at last, when, wearied by waiting, I was drawing nigh the table, my attention was struck by an old, a very old man, who, with a beard white as snow, and long mustaches of the same color, was making great efforts to gain the front rank. I stretched out my hand, and caught his, and by considerable exertion, at last succeeded in placing him in front of me.

He thanked me fervently, in a strange kind of German, a _patois_ I had never heard before, and kissed my hand three or four times over in his gratitude; indeed, so absorbed was he for the time in his desire to thank me, that I had to recall him to the more pressing reason of his presence, and warn him that but a few minutes more of the hour remained free.

"Speak up," cried the clerk, as the old man muttered something in a low and very indistinct voice; "speak up; and remember, my friend, that we do not profess to give information further back than the times of 'Louis Quatorze.'"

This allusion to the years of the old man was loudly applauded by his colleagues, who drew nigh to stare at the cause of it.

"Sacre bleu! he is talking Hebrew," said another, "and asking for a friend who fell at Ramoth Gilead."

"He is speaking German," said I, peremptorily, "and asking for a relative whom he believes to have embarked with the expedition to Egypt."

"Are you a sworn interpreter, young man?" asked an older and more consequential-looking personage.

I was about to return a hasty reply to this impertinence, but I thought of the old man, and the few seconds that still remained for his inquiry, and I smothered my anger, and was silent.

"What rank did he hold?" inquired one of the clerks, who had listened with rather more patience to the old man. I translated the question for the peasant, who, in reply, confessed that he could not tell. The youth was his only son, and had left home many years before, and never written. A neighbor, however, who had traveled in foreign parts, had brought tidings that he had gone with the expedition to Egypt, and was already high in the French army.

"You are not quite certain that he did not command the army of Egypt?" said one of the clerks in mockery of the old man's story.

"It is not unlikely," said the peasant gravely, "he was a brave and bold youth, and could have lifted two such as you with one hand and hurled you out of that window."

"Let us hear his name once more," said the elder clerk; "it is worth remembering."

"I have told you already. It was Karl Kleber."

"The General--General Kleber!" cried three or four in a breath.

"Mayhap," was all the reply.

"And are you the father of the great general of Egypt?" asked the elder, with an air of deep respect.

"Kleber is my son; and so that he is alive and well, I care little if a general or simple soldier."

Not a word was said in answer to this speech, and each seemed to feel reluctant to tell the sad tidings. At last the elder clerk said, "You have lost a good son, and France one of her greatest captains. The General Kleber is dead."

"Dead!" said the old man, slowly.

"In the very moment of his greatest glory, too, when he had won the country of the Pyramids, and made Egypt a colony of France."

"When did he die? said the peasant.

"The last accounts from the East brought the news; and this very day the Council of State has accorded a pension to his family of ten thousand livres."

"They may keep their money. I am all that remains, and have no want of it; and I should be poorer still before I'd take it."

These words he uttered in a low, harsh tone, and pushed his way back though the crowd.

One moment more was enough for _my_ inquiry.

"Maurice Tiernay, of the 9th--_destitué_," was the short and stunning answer I received.

"Is there any reason alleged--is there any charge imputed to him?" asked I, timidly.

"Ma foi! you must go to the Minister of War with that question. Perhaps he was pay-master, and embezzled the funds of the regiment; perhaps he liked royalist gold better than republican silver; or perhaps he preferred the company of the baggage-train and the 'ambulances,' when he should have been at the head of his squadron."

I did not care to listen longer to this impertinence, and making my way out I gained the street. The old peasant was still standing there, like one stunned and overwhelmed by some great shock, and neither heeding the crowd that passed, nor the groups that halted occasionally to stare at him.

"Come along with _me_," said I, taking his hand in mine. "_Your_ calamity is a heavy one, but _mine_ is harder to bear up against."

He suffered himself to be led away like a child, and never spoke a word as we walked along toward the "barriere," beyond which, at a short distance, was a little ordinary, where I used to dine. There we had our dinner together, and as the evening wore on the old man rallied enough to tell me of his son's early life, and his departure for the army. Of his great career _I_ could speak freely, for Kleber's name was, in soldier esteem, scarcely second to that of Bonaparte himself. Not all the praises I could bestow, however, were sufficient to turn the old man from his stern conviction, that a peasant in the "Lech Thal" was a more noble and independent man than the greatest general that ever marched to victory.

"We have been some centuries there," said he, "and none of our name has incurred a shadow of disgrace. Why should not Karl have lived like his ancestors?"

It was useless to appeal to the glory his son had gained--the noble reputation he had left behind him. The peasant saw in the soldier but one who hired out his courage and his blood, and deemed the calling a low and unworthy one. I suppose I was not the first who, in the effort to convince another, found himself shaken in his own convictions; for I own before I lay down that night many of the old man's arguments assumed a force and power that I could not resist, and held possession of my mind even after I fell asleep. In my dreams I was once more beside the American lake, and that little colony of simple people, where I had seen all that was best of my life, and learned the few lessons I had ever received of charity and good-nature.

From what the peasant said, the primitive habits of the Lech Thal must be almost like those of that little colony, and I willingly assented to his offer to accompany him in his journey homeward. He seemed to feel a kind of satisfaction in turning my thoughts away from a career that he held so cheaply, and talked enthusiastically of the tranquil life of the Bregenzer-wald.

We left Paris the following morning, and, partly by diligence, partly on foot, reached Strassburg in a few days; thence we proceeded by Kehel to Freyburg, and, crossing the Lake of Constance at Rorsbach, we entered the Bregenzer-wald on the twelfth morning of our journey. I suppose that most men preserve fresher memory of the stirring and turbulent scenes of their lives than of the more peaceful and tranquil ones, and I shall not be deemed singular when I say, that some years passed over me in this quiet spot and seemed as but a few weeks. The old peasant was the "Vorsteher," or ruler of the village, by whom all disputes were settled, and all litigation of an humble kind decided--a species of voluntary jurisdiction maintained to this very day in that primitive region. My occupation there was as a species of secretary to the court, an office quite new to the villagers, but which served to impress them more reverentially than ever in favor of this rude justice. My legal duties over, I became a vine-dresser, a wood-cutter, or a deer-stalker, as season and weather dictated. My evenings being always devoted to the task of a schoolmaster. A curious seminary was it, too, embracing every class from childhood to advanced age, all eager for knowledge, and all submitting to the most patient discipline to attain it. There was much to make me happy in that humble lot. I had the love and esteem of all around me; there was neither a harassing doubt for the future, nor the rich man's contumely to oppress me; my life was made up of occupations which alternately engaged mind and body, and, above all and worth all besides, I had a sense of duty, a feeling that I was doing that which was useful to my fellow-men; and however great may be a man's station in life, if it want this element, the humblest peasant that rises to his daily toil has a nobler and a better part.

As I trace these lines how many memories of the spot are rising before me! Scenes I had long forgotten--faces I had ceased to remember! And now I see the little wooden bridge--a giant tree, guarded by a single rail, that crossed the torrent in front of our cottage; and I behold once more the little waxen image of the Virgin over the door, in whose glass shrine at nightfall a candle ever burned! and I hear the low hum of the villagers' prayer as the Angelus is singing, and see on every crag or cliff the homebound hunter kneeling in his deep devotion!

Happy people, and not less good than happy! Your bold and barren mountains have been the safeguard of your virtue and your innocence! Long may they prove so, and long may the waves of the world's ambition be staid at their rocky feet!

I was beginning to forget all that I had seen of life, or, if not forget, at least to regard it as a wild and troubled dream, when an accident, one of those things we always regard as the merest chances, once more opened the flood-gates of memory, and sent the whole past in a strong current through my brain.

In this mountain region the transition from winter to summer is effected in a few days. Some hours of a scorching sun and south wind swell the torrents with melted snow; the icebergs fall thundering from cliff and crag, and the sporting waterfall once more dashes over the precipice. The trees burst into leaf, and the grass springs up green and fresh from its wintry covering; and from the dreary aspect of snow-capped hills and leaden clouds, nature changes to fertile plains and hills, and a sky of almost unbroken blue.

It was on a glorious evening in April, when all these changes were passing, that I was descending the mountain above our village after a hard day's chamois hunting. Anxious to reach the plain before nightfall, I could not, however, help stopping from time to time to watch the golden and ruby tints of the sun upon the snow, or see the turquoise blue which occasionally marked the course of a rivulet through the glaciers. The Alp-horn was sounding from every cliff and height, and the lowing of the cattle swelled into a rich and mellow chorus. It was a beautiful picture, realizing in every tint and hue, in every sound and cadence, all that one can fancy of romantic simplicity, and I surveyed it with a swelling and a grateful heart.

As I turned to resume my way, I was struck by the sound of voices speaking, as I fancied, in French, and before I could settle the doubt with myself, I saw in front of me a party of some six or seven soldiers, who, with their muskets slung behind them, were descending the steep path by the aid of sticks.

Weary-looking and foot-sore as they were, their dress, their bearing, and their soldier-like air, struck me forcibly, and sent into my heart a thrill I had not known for many a day before. I came up quickly behind them, and could overhear their complaints at having mistaken the road, and their maledictions, muttered in no gentle spirit, on the stupid mountaineers who could not understand French.

"Here comes another fellow, let us try _him_," said one, as he turned and saw me near. "Schwartz-Ach, Schwartz-Ach," added he, addressing me, and reading the name from a slip of paper in his hand.

"I am going to the village," said I, in French, "and will show the way with pleasure."

"How! what! are you a Frenchman, then?" cried the corporal, in amazement.

"Even so," said I.

"Then by what chance are you living in this wild spot? How, in the name of wonder, can you exist here?"

"With venison like this," said I, pointing to a chamois buck on my shoulder, "and the red wine of the Lech Thal, a man may manage to forget Veray's and the "Dragon Vert," particularly as they are not associated with a bill and a waiter!"

"And perhaps you are a royalist," cried another, "and don't like how matters are going on at home?"

"I have not that excuse for my exile," said I, coldly.

"Have you served, then?"

I nodded.

"Ah, I see," said the corporal, "you grew weary of parade and guard mounting."

"If you mean that I deserted," said I, "you are wrong there also; and now let it be my turn to ask a few questions. What is France about? Is the Republic still as great and victorious as ever?"

"Sacre bleu, man, what are you thinking of? We are an Empire some years back, and Napoleon has made as many kings as he has got brothers and cousins to crown."

"And the army, where is it?"

"Ask for some half dozen armies, and you'll still be short of the mark. We have one in Hamburg, and another in the far North, holding the Russians in check; we have garrisons in every fortress of Prussia and the Rhine Land; we have some eighty thousand fellows in Poland and Gallicia; double as many more in Spain; Italy is our own, and so will be Austria ere many days go over."

Boastfully as all this was spoken, I found it to be not far from truth, and learned, as we walked along, that the emperor was, at that very moment, on the march to meet the Archduke Charles, who, with a numerous army, was advancing on Ratisbon, the little party of soldiers being portion of a force dispatched to explore the passes of the "Voralberg," and report on how far they might be practicable for the transmission of troops to act on the left flank and rear of the Austrian army. Their success had up to this time been very slight, and the corporal was making for Schwartz-Ach, as a spot where he hoped to rendezvous with some of his comrades. They were much disappointed on my telling them that I had quitted the village that morning, and that not a soldier had been seen there. There was, however, no other spot to pass the night in, and they willingly accepted the offer I made them of a shelter and a supper in our cottage.

(TO BE CONTINUED.)

VAGARIES OF THE IMAGINATION.

"Fancy it burgundy," said Boniface of his ale, "only fancy it, and it is worth a guinea a quart!" Boniface was a philosopher: fancy can do much more than that. Those who fancy themselves laboring under an affection of the heart are not slow in verifying the apprehension: the uneasy and constant watching of its pulsations soon disturbs the circulation, and malady may ensue beyond the power of medicine. Some physicians believe that inflammation can be induced in any part of the body by a fearful attention being continually directed toward it; indeed it has been a question with some whether the stigmata (the marks of the wounds of our Saviour) may not have been produced on the devotee by the influences of an excited imagination. The hypochondriac has been known to expire when forced to pass through a door which he fancied too narrow to admit his person. The story of the criminal who, unconscious of the arrival of the reprieve, died under the stroke of a wet handkerchief, believing it to be the ax, is well known. Paracelsus held, "that there is in man an imagination which really effects and brings to pass the things that did not before exist; for a man by imagination willing to move his body moves it in fact, and by his imagination and the commerce of invisible powers he may also move another body." Paracelsus would not have been surprised at the feats of electro-biology. He exhorts his patients to have "a good faith, a strong imagination, and they shall find the effects. All doubt," he says, "destroys work, and leaves it imperfect in the wise designs of nature; it is from faith that imagination draws its strength, it is by faith it becomes complete and realized; he who believeth in nature will obtain from nature to the extent of his faith, and let the object of this faith be real or imaginary, he nevertheless reaps similar results--and hence the cause of superstition."

So early as 1462, Pomponatus of Mantua came to the conclusion, in his work on incantation, that all the arts of sorcery and witchcraft were the result of natural operations. He conceived that it was not improbable that external means, called into action by the soul, might relieve our sufferings, and that there did, moreover, exist individuals endowed with salutary properties; so it might, therefore, be easily conceived that marvelous effects should be produced by the imagination and by confidence, more especially when these are reciprocal between the patient and the person who assists his recovery. Two years after, the same opinion was advanced by Agrippa in Cologne. "The soul," he said, "if inflamed by a fervent imagination, could dispense health and disease, not only in the individual himself, but in other bodies." However absurd these opinions may have been considered, or looked on as enthusiastic, the time has come when they will be gravely examined.

That medical professors have at all times believed the imagination to possess a strange and powerful influence over mind and body is proved by their writings, by some of their prescriptions, and by their oft-repeated direction in the sick-chamber to divert the patient's mind from dwelling on his own state and from attending to the symptoms of his complaint. They consider the reading of medical books which accurately describe the symptoms of various complaints as likely to have an injurious effect, not only on the delicate but on persons in full health; and they are conscious how many died during the time of the plague and cholera, not only of these diseases but from the dread of them, which brought on all the fatal symptoms. So evident was the effect produced by the detailed accounts of the cholera in the public papers in the year 1849, that it was found absolutely necessary to restrain the publications on the subject. The illusions under which vast numbers acted and suffered have gone, indeed, to the most extravagant extent: individuals, not merely singly but in communities, have actually believed in their own transformation. A nobleman of the court of Louis XIV. fancied himself a dog, and would pop his head out of the window to bark at the passengers; while the barking disease at the camp-meetings of the Methodists of North America has been described as "extravagant beyond belief." Rollin and Hecquet have recorded a malady by which the inmates of an extensive convent near Paris were attacked simultaneously every day at the same hour, when they believed themselves transformed into cats, and a universal mewing was kept up throughout the convent for some hours. But of all dreadful forms which this strange hallucination took, none was so terrible as that of the lycanthropy, which at one period spread through Europe; in which the unhappy sufferers, believing themselves wolves, went prowling about the forests, uttering the most terrific howlings, carrying off lambs from the flocks, and gnawing dead bodies in their graves.

While every day's experience adds some new proof of the influence possessed by the imagination over the body, the supposed effect of contagion has become a question of doubt. Lately, at a meeting in Edinburgh, Professor Dick gave it as his opinion that there was no such thing as hydrophobia in the lower animals: "what went properly by that name was simply an inflammation of the brain; and the disease, in the case of human beings, was caused by an over-excited imagination, worked upon by the popular delusion on the effects of a bite by rabid animals." The following paragraph from the "Curiosities of Medicine" appears to justify this now common enough opinion:--"Several persons had been bitten by a rabid dog in the Faubourg St. Antoine, and three of them had died in our hospital. A report, however, was prevalent that we kept a mixture which would effectually prevent the fatal termination; and no less than six applicants who had been bitten were served with a draught of colored water, and in no one instance did hydrophobia ensue."

A remarkable cure through a similar aid of the imagination took place in a patient of Dr. Beddoes, who was at the time very sanguine about the effect of nitrous acid gas in paralytic cases. Anxious that it should be imbibed by one of his patients, he sent an invalid to Sir Humphry Davy, with a request that he would administer the gas. Sir Humphry put the bulb of the thermometer under the tongue of the paralytic, to ascertain the temperature of the body, that he might be sure whether it would be affected at all by the inhalation of the gas. The patient, full of faith from what the enthusiastic physician had assured him would be the result, and believing that the thermometer was what was to effect the cure, exclaimed at once that he felt better. Sir Humphry, anxious to see what imagination would do in such a case, did not attempt to undeceive the man, but saying that he had done enough for him that day, desired him to be with him the next morning. The thermometer was then applied as it had been the day before, and for every day during a fortnight--at the end of which time the patient was perfectly cured.

Perhaps there is nothing on record more curious of this kind than the cures unwittingly performed by Chief-justice Holt. It seems that for a youthful frolic he and his companions had put up at a country inn; they, however, found themselves without the means of defraying their expenses, and were at a loss to know what they should do in such an emergency. Holt, however, perceived that the innkeeper's daughter looked very ill, and on inquiring what was the matter, learned that she had the ague; when, passing himself off for a medical student, he said that he had an infallible cure for the complaint. He then collected a number of plants, mixed them up with various ceremonies, and inclosed them in parchment, on which he scrawled divers cabalistic characters. When all was completed, he suspended the amulet round the neck of the young woman, and, strange to say, the ague left her and never returned. The landlord, grateful for the restoration of his daughter, not only declined receiving any payment from the youths, but pressed them to remain as long as they pleased. Many years after, when Holt was on the bench, a woman was brought before him, charged with witchcraft: she was accused of curing the ague by charms. All she said in defense was, that she did possess a ball which was a sovereign remedy in the complaint. The charm was produced and handed to the judge, who recognized the very ball which he had himself compounded in his boyish days, when out of mere fun he had assumed the character of a medical practitioner.

Many distinguished physicians have candidly confessed that they preferred confidence to art. Faith in the remedy is often not only half the cure, but the whole cure. Madame de Genlis tells of a girl who had lost the use of her leg for five years, and could only move with the help of crutches, while her back had to be supported: she was in such a pitiable state of weakness, the physicians had pronounced her case incurable. She, however, took it into her head that if she was taken to Notre Dame de Liesse she would certainly recover. It was fifteen leagues from Carlepont where she lived. She was placed in a cart which her father drove, while her sister sat by her supporting her back. The moment the steeple of Notre Dame de Liesse was in sight she uttered an exclamation, and said that her leg was getting well. She alighted from the car without assistance, and no longer requiring the help of her crutches, she ran into the church. When she returned home the villagers gathered about her, scarcely believing that it was indeed the girl who had left them in such a wretched state, now they saw her running and bounding along, no longer a cripple, but as active as any among them.

Not less extraordinary are the cures which are effected by some sudden agitation. An alarm of fire has been known to restore a patient entirely or for a time, from a tedious illness: it is no uncommon thing to hear of the victim of a severe fit of the gout, whose feet have been utterly powerless, running nimbly away from some approaching danger. Poor Grimaldi in his declining years had almost quite lost the use of his limbs owing to the most hopeless debility. As he sat one day by the bed side of his wife, who was ill, word was brought to him that a friend waited below to see him. He got down to the parlor with extreme difficulty. His friend was the bearer of heavy news which he dreaded to communicate: it was the death of Grimaldi's son, who, though reckless and worthless, was fondly loved by the poor father. The intelligence was broken as gently as such a sad event could be: but in an instant Grimaldi sprung from his chair--his lassitude and debility were gone, his breathing, which had for a long time been difficult, became perfectly easy--he was hardly a moment in bounding up the stairs which but a quarter of an hour before he had passed with extreme difficulty in ten minutes; he reached the bed-side, and told his wife that their son was dead; and as she burst into an agony of grief he flung himself into a chair, and became again instantaneously, as it has been touchingly described, "an enfeebled and crippled old man."

The imagination, which is remarkable for its ungovernable influence, comes into action on some occasions periodically with the most precise regularity. A friend once told us of a young relation who was subject to nervous attacks: she was spending some time at the sea-side for change of air, but the evening-gun, fired from the vessel in the bay at eight o'clock, was always the signal for a nervous attack: the instant the report was heard she fell back insensible, as if she had been shot. Those about her endeavored if possible to withdraw her thoughts from the expected moment: at length one evening they succeeded, and while she was engaged in an interesting conversation the evening-gun was unnoticed. By-and-by she asked the hour, and appeared uneasy when she found the time had passed. The next evening it was evident that she would not let her attention be withdrawn: the gun fired, and she swooned away: and when revived, another fainting fit succeeded, as if it were to make up for the omission of the preceding evening! It is told of the great tragic actress Clairon, who had been the innocent cause of the suicide of a man who destroyed himself by a pistol-shot, that ever after, at the exact moment when the fatal deed had been perpetrated--one o'clock in the morning--she heard the shot. If asleep, it awakened her; if engaged in conversation, it interrupted her; in solitude or in company, at home or traveling, in the midst of revelry or at her devotions, she was sure to hear it to the very moment.

The same indelible impression has been made in hundreds of cases, and on persons of every variety of temperament and every pursuit, whether engaged in business, science, or art, or rapt in holy contemplation. On one occasion Pascal had been thrown down on a bridge which had no parapet, and his imagination was so haunted forever after by the danger, that he always fancied himself on the brink of a steep precipice overhanging an abyss ready to engulf him. This illusion had taken such possession of his mind that the friends who came to converse with him were obliged to place the chairs on which they seated themselves between him and the fancied danger. But the effects of terror are the best known of all the vagaries of imagination.

A very remarkable case of the influence of imagination occurred between sixty and seventy years since in Dublin, connected with the celebrated frolics of Dalkey Island. It is said Curran and his gay companions delighted to spend a day there, and that with them originated the frolic of electing "a king of Dalkey and the adjacent islands," and appointing his chancellor and all the officers of state. A man in the middle rank of life, universally respected, and remarkable alike for kindly and generous feelings and a convivial spirit, was unanimously elected to fill the throne. He entered with his whole heart into all the humors of the pastime, in which the citizens of Dublin so long delighted. A journal was kept, called the "Dalkey Gazette," in which all public proceedings were inserted, and it afforded great amusement to its conductors. But the mock pageantry, the affected loyalty, and the pretended homage of his subjects, at length began to excite the imagination of "King John," as he was called. Fiction at length became with him reality, and he fancied himself "every inch a king." His family and friends perceived with dismay and deep sorrow the strange delusion which nothing could shake: he would speak on no subject save the kingdom of Dalkey and its government, and he loved to dwell on the various projects he had in contemplation for the benefit of his people, and boasted of his high prerogative: he never could conceive himself divested for one moment of his royal powers, and exacted the most profound deference to his kingly authority. The last year and a half of his life were spent in Swift's hospital for lunatics. He felt his last hours approaching, but no gleam of returning reason marked the parting scene: to the very last instant he believed himself a king, and all his cares and anxieties were for his people. He spoke in high terms of his chancellor, his attorney-general, and all his officers of state, and of the dignitaries of the church: he recommended them to his kingdom, and trusted they might all retain the high offices which they now held. He spoke on the subject with a dignified calmness well becoming the solemn leave-taking of a monarch; but when he came to speak of the crown he was about to relinquish forever his feelings were quite overcome, and the tears rolled down his cheeks: "I leave it," said he, "to my people, and to him whom they may elect as my successor!" This remarkable scene is recorded in some of the notices of deaths for the year 1788. The delusion, though most painful to his friends, was far from an unhappy one to its victim: his feelings were gratified to the last while thinking he was occupied with the good of his fellow-creatures--an occupation best suited to his benevolent disposition.

MYSTERIES!

"I believe nothing that I do not understand," is the favorite saying of Mr. Pettipo Dapperling, a gentleman who very much prides himself on his intellectual perspicacity. Yet ask Mr. Pettipo if he understands how it is that he wags his little finger, and he can give you no reasonable account of it. He will tell you (for he has read books and "studied" anatomy), that the little finger consists of so many jointed bones, that there are tendons attached to them before and behind, which belong to certain muscles, and that when these muscles are made to contract, the finger wags. And this is nearly all that Mr. Pettipo knows about it! How it is that the volition acts on the muscles, what volition is, what the will is--Mr. Pettipo knows not. He knows quite as little about the Sensation which resides in the skin of that little finger--how it is that it feels and appreciates forms and surfaces--why it detects heat and cold--in what way its papillæ erect themselves, and its pores open and close--about all this he is entirely in the dark. And yet Mr. Pettipo is under the necessity of believing that his little finger wags, and that it is endowed with the gift of sensation, though he in fact knows nothing whatever of the why or the wherefore.

We must believe a thousand things that we can not understand. Matter and its combinations are a grand mystery--how much more so, Life and its manifestations. Look at those far-off worlds majestically wheeling in their appointed orbits, millions of miles off: or, look at this earth on which we live, performing its diurnal motion upon its own axis, and its annual circle round the sun! What do we understand of the causes of such motions? what can we ever know about them, beyond the facts that such things are so? To discover and apprehend facts is much, and it is nearly our limit. To ultimate causes we can never ascend. But to have an eye open to receive facts and apprehend their relative value--that is a great deal--that is our duty; and not to reject, suspect, or refuse to accept them, because they happen to clash with our preconceived notions, or, like Mr. Pettipo Dapperling, because we "can not understand" them.

"O, my dear Kepler!" writes Galileo to his friend, "how I wish that we could have one hearty laugh together! Here at Padua is the principal Professor of Philosophy, whom I have repeatedly and urgently requested to look at the moon and planets through my glass, which he pertinaciously refuses to do. Why are you not here? What shouts of laughter we should have at this glorious folly! And to hear the Professor of Philosophy at Pisa lecturing before the Grand Duke with logical arguments, as if with magical incantations to charm the new planets out of the sky!"

Rub a stick of wax against your coat-sleeve, and it emits sparks: hold it near to light, fleecy particles of wool or cotton, and it first attracts, then it repels them. What do you understand about that, Mr. Pettipo, except merely that it is so? Stroke the cat's back before the fire, and you will observe the same phenomena. Your own body will, in like manner, emit sparks in certain states, but you know nothing about why it is so.

Pour a solution of muriate of lime into one of sulphate of potash--both clear fluids; but no sooner are they mixed together than they become nearly solid. How is that? You tell me that an ingredient of the one solution combines with an ingredient of the other, and an insoluble sulphate of lime is produced. Well! you tell me a fact; but you do not account for it by saying that the lime has a greater attraction for the sulphuric acid than the potash has: you do not _understand_ how it is--you merely see that it is so. You must believe it.

But when you come to Life, and its wonderful manifestations, you are more in the dark than ever. You understand less about this than you do even of dead matter. Take an ordinary every-day fact: you drop two seeds, whose component parts are the same, into the same soil. They grow up so close together that their roots mingle and their stalks intertwine. The one plant produces a long slender leaf, the other a short flat leaf--the one brings forth a beautiful flower, the other an ugly scruff--the one sheds abroad a delicious fragrance, the other is entirely inodorous. The hemlock, the wheatstalk, and the rose-tree, out of the same chemical ingredients contained in the soil, educe, the one deadly poison, the other wholesome food, the third a bright consummate flower. Can you tell me, Mr. Pettipo, how is this? Do you understand the secret by which the roots of these plants accomplish so much more than all your science can do, and so infinitely excel the most skillful combinations of the philosopher? You can only recognize the fact--but you can not unravel the mystery. Your saying that it is the "nature" of the plants, does not in the slightest degree clear up the difficulty. You can not get at the ultimate fact--only the proximate one is seen by you.

But lo! here is a wonderful little plant--touch it, and the leaves shrink on the instant: one leaf seeming to be in intimate sympathy with the rest, and the whole leaves in its neighborhood shrinking up at the touch of a foreign object. Or, take the simple pimpernel, which closes its eye as the sun goes down, and opens as he rises again--shrinks at the approach of rain, and expands in fair weather. The hop twines round the pole in the direction of the sun, and--

"The sunflower turns on her god when he sets, The same look that she turned when he rose."

Do we know any thing about these things, further than they are so?

A partridge chick breaks its shell and steps forth into its new world. Instantly it runs about and picks up the seeds lying about on the ground. It had never learned to run, or to see, or to select its food; but it does all these on the instant. The lamb of a few hours' old frisks about full of life, and sucks its dam's teat with as much accuracy as if it had studied the principle of the air-pump. Instinct comes full-grown into the world at once, and we know nothing about it, neither does the Mr. Dapperling above named.

When we ascend to the higher orders of animated being--to man himself--we are as much in the dark as before--perhaps more so. Here we have matter arranged in its most highly-organized forms--moving, feeling, and thinking. In man the animal powers are concentrated; and the thinking powers are brought to their highest point. How, by the various arrangements of matter in man's body, one portion of the nervous system should convey volitions from the brain to the limbs and the outer organs--how another part should convey sensations with the suddenness of lightning--and how, finally, a third portion should collect these sensations, react upon them, store them up by a process called Memory, reproduce them in thought, compare them, philosophize upon them, embody them in books--is a great and unfathomable mystery!

Life itself! how wonderful it is! Who can understand it, or unravel its secret! From a tiny vesicle, at first almost imperceptible to the eye, but gradually growing and accumulating about it fresh materials, which are in turns organized and laid down, each in their set places, at length a body is formed, becomes developed--passing through various inferior stages of being--those of polype, fish, frog, and animal--until, at length, the human being rises above all these forms, and the law of the human animal life is fulfilled. First, he is merely instinctive, then sensitive, then reflective--the last the greatest, the crowning work of man's development. But what do we _know_ of it all? Do we not merely see that it is so, and turn aside from the great mystery in despair of ever unraveling it?

The body sleeps? Volition, sensation, and thought, become suspended for a time, while the animal powers live on; capillary arteries working, heart beating, lungs playing, all without an effort--voluntarily and spontaneously. The shadow of some recent thought agitates the brain, and the sleeper dreams. Or, his volition may awake, while sensation is still profoundly asleep, and then we have the somnambule, walking in his sleep. Or, volition may be profoundly asleep, while the senses are preternaturally excited, as in the abnormal mesmeric state. Here we have a new class of phenomena, more wonderful because less usual, but not a whit more mysterious than the most ordinary manifestations of life.

We are astonished to hear men refusing to credit the evidence of their senses as to mesmeric phenomena, on the ground that they can not "understand" them. When they can not understand the commonest manifestations of life--the causation of volition, sensation, or thought--why should they refuse belief on such a ground? Are the facts real? Are these things so? This should be the chief consideration with us. Mysteries they may be; but all life, all matter, all that is, are mysteries too. Do we refuse to believe in the electric telegraph, because the instantaneous transmission of intelligence between points a thousand miles apart seems at first sight fabulous, and, to the uninitiated, profoundly mysterious? Why should not thought--the most wonderful and subtle of known agencies--manifest itself in equally extraordinary ways?

We do not know that what the mesmerists call _clairvoyance_ is yet to be held as established by sufficient evidence. Numerous strongly authenticated cases have certainly been adduced by persons whose evidence is above suspicion--as, for instance, by Swedenborg (attested by many impartial witnesses), by Goethe, by Zschokke, by Townshend, by Martineau, and others; but the evidence seems still to want confirmation. Only, we say, let us not prejudge the case--let us wait patiently for all sorts of evidence. We can not argue _à priori_ that _clairvoyance_ is not true, any more than the Professor at Padua could argue, with justice, that the worlds which Galileo's telescope revealed in the depths of space, were all a sham. That truth was established by extended observation. Let us wait and see whether this may not yet be established, too, by similar means.

Some of the things which the mesmerists, who go the length of _clairvoyance_, tell us, certainly have a very mysterious look; and were not sensation, thought, and all the manifestations of Life (not yet half investigated) all alike mysterious, we might be disposed to shut our eyes with the rest, and say we refused to believe, because we "did not understand."

But equally extraordinary relations to the same effect have been made by men who were neither mesmerists nor clairvoyantes. For instance, Kant, the German writer, relates that Swedenborg once, when living at Gottenburg, some three hundred miles from Stockholm, suddenly rose up and went out, when at the house of one Kostel, in the company of fifteen persons. After a few minutes he returned, pale and alarmed, and informed the party that a dangerous fire had just broken out in Stockholm, in Sudermalm, and that the fire was spreading fast. He was restless, and went out often; he said that the house of one of his friends, whom he named, was already in ashes, and that his own was in danger. At eight o'clock, after he had been out again, he joyfully exclaimed, "Thank God, the fire is extinguished the third door from my house." This statement of Swedenborg's spread through the town, and occasioned consternation and wonder. The governor heard of it, and sent for Swedenborg, who described the particulars of the fire--where and how it had begun, in what manner it had ceased, and how long it had continued. On the Monday evening, two days after the fire, a messenger arrived from Gottenburg, who had been dispatched during the time of the fire, and the intelligence he brought confirmed all that Swedenborg had said as to its commencement: and on the following morning the royal courier arrived at the governor's with full intelligence of the calamity, which did not differ in the least from the relation which Swedenborg had given immediately after the fire had ceased on the Saturday evening.

A circumstance has occurred while the writer was engaged in the preparation of this paper, which is of an equally curious character, to say the least of it. The lady who is the subject of it is a relation of the writer, and is no believer in the "Mysteries of Mesmerism." It may be remarked, however, that she is of a very sensitive and excitable nervous temperament. It happened, that on the night of the 30th of April, a frightful accident occurred on the Birkenhead, Lancashire, and Cheshire Railway, in consequence of first one train, and then another, running into the trains preceding. A frightful scene of tumult, mutilation, and death ensued. It happened that the husband of the lady in question was a passenger in the first train; though she did not know that he intended to go to the Chester races, having been in Liverpool that day on other business. But she had scarcely fallen asleep, ere, half-dozing, half-awake, she _saw_ the accident occur--the terror, the alarm, and the death. She walked up and down her chamber in terror and alarm the whole night, and imparted her fears to others in the morning. Her husband was not injured, though greatly shaken by the collision, and much alarmed; and when he returned home in the course of the following day, he could scarcely believe his wife when she informed him of the circumstances which had been so mysteriously revealed to her in connection with his journey of the preceding day!

Zschokke, an estimable man, well known as a philosopher, statesman, and author, possessed, according to his own and contemporary accounts, the most extraordinary power of divination of the characters and lives of other men with whom he came in contact. He called it his "inward sight," and at first he was himself quite as much astonished at it as others were. Writing of this feature himself, he says: "It has happened to me, sometimes, on my first meeting with strangers, as I listened silently to their discourse, that their former life, with many trifling circumstances therewith connected, or frequently some particular scene in that life, has passed quite involuntarily, and, as it were, dream-like, yet perfectly distinct, before me. During this time, I usually feel so entirely absorbed in the contemplation of the stranger life, that at last I no longer see clearly the face of the unknown, wherein I undesignedly read, nor distinctly hear the voices of the speakers, which before served in some measure as a commentary to the text of their features. For a long time I held such visions as delusions of the fancy, and the more so as they showed me even the dress and motions of the actors, rooms, furniture, and other accessories. By way of jest, I once, in a family circle at Kirchberg, related the secret history of a seamstress who had just left the room and the house. I had never seen her before in my life; people were astonished and laughed, but were not to be persuaded that I did not previously know the relations of which I spoke, for what I had uttered was the _literal_ truth; I, on my part, was no less astonished that my dream-pictures were confirmed by the reality. I became more attentive to the subject, and when propriety admitted it, I would relate to those whose life thus passed before me, the subject of my vision, that I might thereby obtain confirmation or refutation of it. It was invariably ratified, not without consideration on their part. I myself had less confidence than any one in this mental jugglery. So often as I revealed my visionary gifts to any new person, I regularly expected to hear the answer: 'It was not so.' I felt a secret shudder when my auditors replied that it was _true_, or when their astonishment betrayed my accuracy before they spoke."[12] Zschokke gives numerous instances of this extraordinary power of divination or waking clairvoyance, and mentions other persons whom he met, who possessed the same marvelous power.

The "Posthumous Memoirs of La Harpe" contain equally extraordinary revelations, looking _forward_, instead of backward, as in Zschokke's case, into the frightful events of the great French Revolution, the sightseer being Cazove, a well-known novel writer, who lived previous to the frightful outbreak. Mary Howitt, in her account of the extraordinary "Preaching Epidemic of Sweden," recites circumstances of the same kind, equally wonderful; and the Rev. Mr. Sandy and Mr. Townshend's books on mesmerism are full of similar marvels. Among the various statements, the grand point is, how much of them is true? What are the _facts_ of mesmerism? To quote the great Bacon: "He who hath not first, and before all, intimately explained the movements of the human mind, and therein most accurately distinguished the course of knowledge and the seats of error, shall find all things masked, and, as it were, enchanted; and, until he undo the charm, shall be unable to interpret." How few of us have yet arrived at this enviable position.

CLARA CORSINI.--A TALE OF NAPLES.

A young French traveler, named Ernest Leroy, on arriving at Naples, found himself during the first few days quite confused by the multitude of his impressions. Now as it was in search of impressions that he had left his beloved Paris, there was nothing, it should seem, very grievous in this; and yet in the midst of his excitement there occurred intervals of intolerable weariness of spirit--moments when he looked upon the Strada Toledo with disgust, wished himself any where but in San Carlos, sneered at Posilippo, pooh-poohed Vesuvius, and was generally skeptical as to the superiority of _the Bay_ over the Bosphorus, which he had not seen. All this came to pass because he had set out on the principle of traveling in a hurry, or, as he expressed it, making the most of his time. Every night before going to bed he made out and wrote down a programme of next day's duties--assigning so many hours to each sight, and so many minutes to each meal, but forgetting altogether to allow himself any opportunity for repose or digestion.

Thus he had come from Paris _viâ_ Milan, Florence, and Rome, to Naples--the whole in the space of three weeks, during which, as will be easily imagined, he had visited an incredible number of churches, galleries, temples, and ruins of every description. In order to profit as much as possible by his travels he had arranged beforehand five or six series of ideas, or meditations as he called them: one on the assistance afforded by the fine arts to the progress of civilization, another consisting of a string of sublime commonplaces on the fall of empires and the moral value of monumental history; and so on. Each of these meditations he endeavored to recall on appropriate occasions; and he never had leisure to reflect, that for any instruction he was deriving from what he saw he might as well have stopped at home. However, having some imagination and talent, he frequently found himself carried away by thoughts born of the occasion, and so irresistibly, that once or twice he went through a whole gallery or church before he had done with the train of ideas suggested by some previous sight, and was only made aware that he had seen some unique painting or celebrated windows of stained-glass by the guide claiming payment for his trouble, and asking him to sign a testimonial doing justice to his civility and great store of valuable information. It is only just to state that M. Ernest never failed to comply with either of these demands.

When, however, as we have said, he had been two or three days in Naples, and had rushed over the ground generally traversed by tourists, our young traveler began to feel weary and disgusted. For some time he did not understand what was the matter, and upbraided himself with the lack of industry and decline of enthusiasm, which made him look forward with horror to the summons of Giacomo, his guide, to be up and doing. At length, however, during one sleepless night the truth flashed upon him, and in the morning, to his own surprise and delight, he mustered up courage to dismiss Giacomo with a handsome present, and to declare that that day at least he was resolved to see nothing.

What a delightful stroll he took along the seashore that morning with his eyes half-closed lest he might be tempted to look around for information! He went toward Portici, but he saw nothing except the sand and pebbles at his feet, and the white-headed surf that broke near at hand. For the first time since his departure from Paris he felt light-minded and at ease; and the only incident that occurred to disturb his equanimity was, when his eyes rested for half a second on a broken pillar in a vine-garden, and he was obliged to make an effort to pass by without ascertaining whether it was of Roman date. But this feat once accomplished, he threw up his cap for joy, shouted "_Victoire!_" and really felt independent.

He was much mistaken, however, if he supposed it to be possible to remain long in the enjoyment of that _dolce far niente_, the first savor of which so captivated him. One day, two days passed, at the end of which he found that while he had supposed himself to be doing nothing, he had in reality made the great and only discovery of his travels--namely, that the new country in which he found himself was inhabited, and that, too, by people who, though not quite so different from his countrymen as the savages of the South Sea Islands, possessed yet a very marked character of their own, worthy of study and observation. Thenceforward his journal began to be filled with notes on costume, manners, &c.; and in three weeks, with wonderful modesty, after combining the results of all his researches, he came to the conclusion that he understood nothing at all of the character of the Italians.

In this humble state of mind he wandered forth one morning in the direction of the Castle of St. Elmo, to enjoy the cool breeze that came wafting from the sea, and mingled with and tempered the early sunbeams as they streamed over the eastern hills. Having reached a broad, silent street, bordered only by a few houses and gardens, he resolved not to extend his walk further, but sat down on an old wooden bench under the shade of a platane-tree that drooped over a lofty wall. Here he remained some time watching the few passengers that occasionally turned a distant corner and advanced toward him. He noticed that they all stopped at some one of the houses further down the street, and that none reached as far as where he sat; which led him first to observe that beyond his position were only two large houses, both apparently uninhabited. One, indeed, was quite ruined--many of the windows were built up or covered with old boards; but the other showed fewer symptoms of decay, and might be imagined to belong to some family at that time absent in the country.

He had just come to this very important conclusion when his attention was diverted by the near approach of two ladies elegantly dressed, followed by an elderly serving-man in plain livery, carrying a couple of mass-books. They passed him rather hurriedly, but not before he had time to set them down as mother and daughter, and to be struck with the great beauty and grace of the latter. Indeed, so susceptible in that idle mood was he of new impressions, that before the young lady had gone on more than twenty paces he determined that he was in love with her, and by an instinctive impulse rose to follow. At this moment the serving-man turned round, and threw a calm but inquisitive glance toward him. He checked himself, and affected to look the other way for a while, then prepared to carry out his original intention. To his great surprise, however, both ladies and follower had disappeared.

An ordinary man would have guessed at once that they had gone into one of the houses previously supposed to be uninhabited, but M. Ernest Leroy must needs fancy, first, that he had seen a vision, and then that the objects of his interest had been snatched away by some evil spirit. Mechanically, however, he hurried to the end of the street, which he found terminated in an open piece of ground, which there had not been time for any one to traverse. At length the rational explanation of the matter occurred to him, and he felt for a moment inclined to knock at the door of the house that was in best preservation, and complain of what he persisted in considering a mysterious disappearance. However, not being quite mad, he checked himself, and returning to his wooden bench, sat down, and endeavored to be very miserable.

But this would have been out of character. Instead thereof he began to feel a new interest in life, and to look back with some contempt on the two previous phases of his travels. With youthful romance and French confidence he resolved to follow up this adventure, never doubting for a moment of the possibility of ultimate success, nor of the excellence of the object of his hopes. What means to adopt did not, it is true, immediately suggest themselves; and he remained sitting for more than an hour gazing at the great silent house opposite, until the unpleasant consciousness that he had not breakfasted forced him to beat a retreat.

We have not space to develop--luckily it is not necessary--all the wild imaginings that fluttered through the brain of our susceptible traveler on his return to his lodgings, and especially after a nourishing breakfast had imparted to him new strength and vivacity. Under their influence he repaired again to his post on the old wooden bench under the platane-tree, and even had the perseverance to make a third visit in the evening; for--probably, because he expected the adventure to draw out to a considerable length--he did not imitate the foolish fantasy of some lovers, and deprive himself of his regular meals. He saw nothing that day; but next morning he had the inexpressible satisfaction of again beholding the two ladies approach, followed by their respectable-looking servant. They passed without casting a glance toward him; but their attendant this time not only turned round, but stopped, and gazed at him in a manner he would have thought impertinent on another occasion. For the moment, however, this was precisely what he wanted, and without thinking much of the consequences that might ensue, he hastily made a sign requesting an interview. The man only stared the more, and then turning on his heel, gravely followed the two ladies, who had just arrived at the gateway of their house.

"I do not know what to make of that rascally valet," thought Ernest. "He seems at once respectable and hypocritical. Probably my appearance does not strike him as representing sufficient wealth, otherwise the hopes of a fair bribe would have induced him at any rate to come out and ask me what I meant."

He was, of course, once more at his post in the afternoon; and this time he had the satisfaction of seeing the door open, and the elderly serving-man saunter slowly out, as if disposed to enjoy the air. First he stopped on the steps, cracking pistachio-nuts, and jerking the shells into the road with his thumb; then took two or three steps gently toward the other end of the street; and at last, just as Ernest was about to follow him, veered round and began to stroll quietly across the road, still cracking his nuts, in the direction of the old wooden bench.

"The villain has at length made up his mind," soliloquized our lover. "He pretends to come out quite by accident, and will express great surprise when I accost him in the way I intend."

The elderly serving-man still came on, seemingly not at all in a hurry to arrive, and gave ample time for an examination of his person. His face was handsome, though lined by age and care, and was adorned by a short grizzled beard. There was something very remarkable in the keenness of his large gray eyes, as there was indeed about his whole demeanor. His dress was a plain suit of black, that might have suited a gentleman; and if Ernest had been less occupied with one idea he would not have failed to see in this respectable domestic a prince reduced by misfortune to live on wages, or a hero who had never had an opportunity of exhibiting his worth.

When this interesting person had reached the corner of the bench he set himself down with a slight nod of apology or recognition--it was difficult to say which--and went on eating his nuts quite unconcernedly. As often happens in such cases, Ernest felt rather puzzled how to enter upon business, and was trying to muster up an appearance of condescending familiarity--suitable, he thought, to the occasion--when the old man, very affably holding out his paper-bag that he might take some nuts, saved him the trouble by observing: "You are a stranger, sir, I believe?"

"Yes, my good fellow," was the reply of Ernest, in academical Italian; "and I have come to this county--"

"I thought so," interrupted the serving-man, persisting in his offer of nuts, but showing very little interest about Ernest's views in visiting Italy--"by your behavior."

"My behavior!" exclaimed the young man, a little nettled.

"Precisely. But your quality of stranger has hitherto protected you from any disagreeable consequences."

This was said so quietly, so amiably, that the warning or menace wrapped up in the words lost much of its bitter savor; yet our traveler could not refrain from a haughty glance toward this audacious domestic, on whom, however, it was lost, for he was deeply intent on his pistachios. After a moment Ernest recovered his self-possession, remembered his schemes, and drawing a little nearer the serving-man, laid his hand confidentially on the sleeve of his coat, and said: "My good man, I have a word or two for your private ear."

Not expressing the least surprise or interest, the other replied: "I am ready to hear what you have to say, provided you will not call me any more your good man. I am not a good man, nor am I your man, without offense be it spoken. My name is Alfonso."

"Well, Alfonso, you are an original person, and I will not call you a good man, though honesty and candor be written on your countenance. (Alfonso smiled, but said nothing). But listen to me attentively, remembering that though neither am I a good man, yet am I a generous one. I passionately love your mistress."

"Ah!" said Alfonso, with any thing but a benevolent expression of countenance. Ernest, who was no physiognomist, noticed nothing; and being mounted on his new hobby-horse, proceeded at once to give a history of his impressions since the previous morning. When he had concluded, the old man, who seemed all benevolence again, simply observed: "Then it is the younger of the two ladies that captivated your affections in this unaccountable manner!"

"Of course," cried Ernest; "and I beseech you, my amiable Alfonso, to put me in the way of declaring what I experience."

"You are an extraordinary young man," was the grave reply; "an extraordinary, an imprudent, and, I will add, a reckless person. You fall in love with a person of whom you know nothing--not even the name. This, however, is, I believe, according to rule among a certain class of minds. Not satisfied with this, you can find no better way of introducing yourself to her notice than endeavoring to corrupt one whom you must have divined to be a confidential servant. Others would have sought an introduction to the family; you dream at once of a clandestine intercourse--"

"I assure you--" interrupted Ernest, feeling both ashamed and indignant at these remarks proceeding from one so inferior in station.

"Assure me nothing, sir, as to your intentions, for you do not know them yourself. I understand you perfectly, because I was once young and thoughtless like you. Now listen to me: in that house dwells the Contessa Corsini, with her daughter Clara; and if these two persons had no one to protect them but themselves and a foolish old servitor, whom the first comer judges capable of corruption, they would ere this have been much molested; but it happens that the Count Corsini is not dead, and inhabiteth with them, although seldom coming forth into the public streets. What say you, young man, does not this a little disturb your plans?"

"In the first place," replied Ernest, "I am offended that you will persist in implying--more, it is true, by your manner than your words--that my views are not perfectly avowable."

"Then why, in the name of Heaven, do you not make yourself known to the count, stating your object, and asking formally for his daughter's hand?"

"Not so fast, Alfonso. It was necessary for me to learn, as a beginning, that there was a count in the case."

"And what do you know now? Perhaps those women are two adventurers, and I a rascal playing a virtuous part, in order the better to deceive you."

"You do not look like a rascal," said Ernest, quite innocently. At which observation the old man condescended to laugh heartily, and seemed from that moment to take quite a liking to his new acquaintance. After a little while, indeed, he began to give some information about the young Clara, who, he said, was only sixteen years of age, though quite a woman in appearance, and not unaccomplished. As to her dowry--Ernest interrupted him by saying, that he wished for no information on that point, being himself rich. The old man smiled amiably, and ended the conversation by requesting another interview next day at the same hour, by which time, he said, he might have some news to tell.

Ernest returned home in high spirits, which sank by degrees, however, when he reflected that as Alfonso declined favoring any clandestine correspondence, there was little in reality to be expected from him. True, he had given him some information, and he might now, by means of his letters of introduction, contrive to make acquaintance with the count. But though he spent the whole evening and next morning in making inquiries, he could not meet with any one who had ever even heard of such a person. "Possibly," he thought, "the old sinner may have been laughing at me all the time, and entered into conversation simply with the object of getting up a story to divert the other domestics of the house. If such be the case, he may be sure I shall wreak vengeance upon him."

In spite of these reflections, he was at his post at the hour appointed, and felt quite overjoyed when Alfonso made his appearance. The old man said that a plan had suggested itself by which he might be introduced into the house--namely, that he should pretend to be a professor of drawing, and offer his services. Ernest did not inquire how Alfonso came to know that he was an amateur artist, but eagerly complied with the plan, and was instructed to call on the following morning, and to say that he had heard that a drawing-master was wanted.

He went accordingly, not very boldly, it is true, and looking very much in reality like a poor professor anxious to obtain employment. The contessa, who was yet young and beautiful, received him politely, listened to his proposals, and made no difficulty in accepting them. The preliminaries arranged, Clara was called, and, to Ernest's astonishment, came bouncing into the room like a great school-girl, looked him very hard in the face, and among the first things she said, asked him if he was not the man she had seen two mornings following sitting opposite the house on the bench under the platane tree.

Now Ernest had imagined to himself something so refined, so delicate, so fairy-like, instead of this plain reality, that he all at once began to feel disgusted, and to wish he had acted more prudently. And yet there was Clara, exactly as he had seen her, except that she had exchanged the demure, conventional step adopted by ladies in the street for the free motions of youth; and except that, instead of casting her eyes to the earth, or glancing at him sideways, she now looked toward him with a frank and free gaze, and spoke what came uppermost in her mind. Certes, most men would have chosen that moment to fall in love with so charming a creature; for charming she was beyond all doubt, with large, rich, black eyes, pouting ruby lips, fine oval cheeks, and a mass of ebony hair; but Ernest's first impression was disappointment, and he began to criticise both her and every thing by which she was surrounded.

He saw at once that there was poverty in the house. The furniture was neat, but scanty; and the door had been opened by a female servant, who had evidently been disturbed from some domestic avocations. The contessa and her daughter were dressed very plainly--far differently from what they had been in the street; and it was an easy matter to see that this plainness was not adopted from choice but from necessity. Had Clara come into the room with a slow, creeping step, keeping her eyes modestly fixed on the chipped marble floor, not one of these observations would have been made: the large, dreary house would have been a palace in Ernest's eyes; but his taste was a morbid one, and in five minutes after he had begun to give his lesson, he began to fear that the conquest he had so ardently desired would be only too easy.

There was something, however, so cheerful and fascinating in Clara's manner that he could not but soon learn to feel pleasure in her society: and when he went away he determined, instead of starting off for Sicily, as he had at first thought of doing, to pay at least one more visit to the house in the character of drawing master. Alfonso joined him as he walked slowly homeward, and asked him how things had passed. He related frankly his first impressions, to which the old man listened very attentively without making any remark. At parting, however, he shook his head, saying that young men were of all animals the most difficult to content.

Next day, when Ernest went to give his lesson, he was told by Alfonso that the contessa, being indisposed, had remained in bed, but that he should find Clara in the garden. There was something romantic in the sound of this, so he hurried to the spot indicated, impatient to have the commonplace impressions of the previous day effaced. This time his disgust was complete. He found Clara engaged in assisting the servant maid to wring and hang out some clothes they had just finished washing. She seemed not at all put out by being caught thus humbly employed; but begging him to wait a little, finished her work, ran away, dressed somewhat carefully, and returning begged he would return to the house. He followed with cheeks burning with shame: he felt the utmost contempt for himself because he had fallen in love with this little housewife, and the greatest indignation against her for having presumed, very innocently, to excite so poetical a sentiment; and, in the stupidity of his offended self-love, resolved to avenge himself by making some spiteful remark ere he escaped from a house into which he considered that he had been regularly entrapped. Accordingly, when she took the pencil in hand, he observed that probably she imagined that contact with soap-suds would improve the delicacy of her touch. Clara did not reply, but began to sketch in a manner that proved she had listened to the pedantic rules he had laid down on occasion of the previous lesson more from modesty than because she was in want of them. Then suddenly rising without attending to some cavil he thought it his duty to make, she went to the piano, and beginning to play, drew forth such ravishing notes, that Ernest, who was himself no contemptible musician, could not refrain from applauding enthusiastically. She received his compliments with a slight shrug of the shoulders, and commenced a song that enabled her to display with full effect the capabilities of her magnificent voice. The soap-suds were forgotten; and Ernest's romance was coming back upon him: he began to chide himself for his foolish prejudices; and thought that, after all, with a little training, Clara might be made quite a lady. Suddenly, however, she broke off her song, and turning toward him with an ironical smile, said: "Not bad for a housemaid, Mr. Professor--is it?"

He attempted to excuse himself, but he was evidently judged; and, what was more--not as an obscure drawing-master, but as M. Ernest Leroy. His identity was evidently no secret; and she even called him by his name. He endeavored in vain to make a fine speech to apologize for his ill-behavior; but she interrupted him keenly, though good-humoredly, and the entrance of Alfonso was fatal to a fine scene of despair he was about to enact. Clara upon this retired with a profound salute; and Alfonso spoke with more of dignity than usual in his manner, and said: "My young friend, you must excuse a little deception which has been practiced on you, or rather which you have practiced upon yourself. I am going to be very free and frank with you to-day. I am not what you take me for. I am the Count Corsini, a Roman; and because I have not the means of keeping a man-servant, when the women of my family go to church I follow them, as you saw. This is not unusual among my countrymen. It is a foolish pride I know; but so it is. However, the matter interests you not. You saw my daughter Clara, and thought you loved her. I was willing, as on inquiry I found you to be a respectable person, to see how you could agree together; but your pride--I managed and overheard all--has destroyed your chance. My daughter will seek another husband."

There was a cold friendliness in Alfonso's tone which roused the pride of Ernest. He affected to laugh, called himself a foolish madcap, but hinted that a splendid marriage awaited him, if he chose, on his return to Paris; and went away endeavoring to look unconcerned. The following morning he was on board a vessel bound for Palermo, very sea-sick it is true, but thinking at the same time a great deal more of Clara than he could have thought possible had it been predicted.

Some few years afterward Ernest Leroy was in one of the _salons_ of the Fauxbourg St. Germain. Still a bachelor, he no longer felt those sudden emotions to which he had been subject in his earlier youth. He was beginning to talk less of sentiments present and more of sentiments passed. In confidential moods he would lay his hand upon his waistcoat--curved out at its lower extremity, by the by, by a notable increase of substance--and allude to a certain divine Clara who had illuminated a moment of his existence. But he was too discreet to enter into details.

Well, being in that _salon_, as we have said, pretending to amuse himself, his attention was suddenly drawn by the announcement of Lady D----. He turned round, probably to quiz _la belle Anglaise_ he expected to behold. What was his astonishment on recognizing in the superb woman who leaned on the arm of a tall, military-looking Englishman, the identical Clara Corsini of his youthful memories. He felt at first sick at heart; but, taking courage, soon went up and spoke to her. She remembered him with some little difficulty, smiled, and holding out her alabaster hand, said gently: "Do you see any trace of the soap-suds?" She never imagined he had any feeling in him, and only knew the truth when a large, round tear fell on the diamond of her ring. "Charles," said Ernest awhile afterward to a friend, "it is stifling hot and dreadfully stupid here. Let us go and have a game of billiards."

OUR SCHOOL.

BY CHARLES DICKENS.

We went to look at it, only this last Midsummer, and found that the Railway had cut it up root and branch. A great trunk-line had swallowed the play-ground, sliced away the school-room, and pared off the corner of the house: which, thus curtailed of its proportions, presented itself, in a green stage of stucco, profile-wise toward the road, like a forlorn flat-iron without a handle, standing on end.

It seems as if our schools were doomed to be the sport of change. We have faint recollections of a Preparatory Day-School, which we have sought in vain, and which must have been pulled down to make a new street, ages ago. We have dim impressions, scarcely amounting to a belief, that it was over a dyer's shop. We know that you went up steps to it; that you frequently grazed your knees in doing so; that you generally got your leg over the scraper, in trying to scrape the mud off a very unsteady little shoe. The mistress of the Establishment holds no place in our memory; but, rampant on one eternal door-mat, in an eternal entry, long and narrow, is a puffy pug-dog, with a personal animosity toward us, who triumphs over Time. The bark of that baleful Pug, a certain radiating way he had of snapping at our undefended legs, the ghastly grinning of his moist black muzzle and white teeth, and the insolence of his crisp tail curled like a pastoral crook, all live and flourish. From an otherwise unaccountable association of him with a fiddle, we conclude that he was of French extraction, and his name _Fidèle_. He belonged to some female, chiefly inhabiting a back-parlor, whose life appears to us to have been consumed in sniffing, and in wearing a brown beaver bonnet. For her, he would sit up and balance cake upon his nose, and not eat it until twenty had been counted. To the best of our belief, we were once called in to witness this performance; when, unable, even in his milder moments, to endure our presence, he instantly made at us, cake and all.

Why a something in mourning, called "Miss Frost," should still connect itself with our preparatory school, we are unable to say. We retain no impression of the beauty of Miss Frost--if she were beautiful; or of the mental fascinations of Miss Frost--if she were accomplished; yet her name and her black dress hold an enduring place in our remembrance. An equally impersonal boy, whose name has long since shaped itself unalterably into "Master Mawls," is not to be dislodged from our brain. Retaining no vindictive feeling toward Mawls--no feeling whatever, indeed--we infer that neither he nor we can have loved Miss Frost. Our first impression of Death and Burial is associated with this formless pair. We all three nestled awfully in a corner one wintry day, when the wind was blowing shrill, with Miss Frost's pinafore over our heads; and Miss Frost told us in a whisper about somebody being "screwed down." It is the only distinct recollection we preserve of these impalpable creatures, except a suspicion that the manners of Master Mawls were susceptible of much improvement. Generally speaking, we may observe that whenever we see a child intently occupied with its nose, to the exclusion of all other subjects of interest, our mind reverts in a flash to Master Mawls.

But, the School that was Our School before the Railroad came and overthrew it, was quite another sort of place. We were old enough to be put into Virgil when we went there, and to get Prizes for a variety of polishing on which the rust has long accumulated. It was a School of some celebrity in its neighborhood--nobody could have said why--and we had the honor to attain and hold the eminent position of first boy. The master was supposed among us to know nothing, and one of the ushers was supposed to know every thing. We are still inclined to think the first-named supposition perfectly correct.

We have a general idea that its subject had been in the leather trade, and had bought us--meaning our School--of another proprietor, who was immensely learned. Whether this belief had any real foundation, we are not likely ever to know now. The only branches of education with which he showed the least acquaintance, were, ruling, and corporally punishing. He was always ruling ciphering-books with a bloated mahogany ruler, or smiting the palms of offenders with the same diabolical instrument, or viciously drawing a pair of pantaloons tight with one of his large hands, and caning the wearer with the other. We have no doubt whatever that this occupation was the principal solace of his existence.

A profound respect for money pervaded Our School, which was, of course, derived from its Chief. We remember an idiotic, goggle-eyed boy, with a big head and half-crowns without end, who suddenly appeared as a parlor-boarder, and was rumored to have come by sea from some mysterious part of the earth where his parents rolled in gold. He was usually called "Mr." by the Chief, and was said to feed in the parlor on steaks and gravy; likewise to drink currant wine. And he openly stated that if rolls and coffee were ever denied him at breakfast, he would write home to that unknown part of the globe from which he had come, and cause himself to be recalled to the regions of gold. He was put into no form or class, but learnt alone, as little as he liked--and he liked very little--and there was a belief among us that this was because he was too wealthy to be "taken down." His special treatment, and our vague association of him with the sea, and with storms, and sharks, and coral reefs, occasioned the wildest legends to be circulated as his history. A tragedy in blank verse was written on the subject--if our memory does not deceive us, by the hand that now chronicles these recollections--in which his father figured as a Pirate, and was shot for a voluminous catalogue of atrocities: first imparting to his wife the secret of the cave in which his wealth was stored, and from which his only son's half-crowns now issued. Dumbledon (the boy's name) was represented as "yet unborn," when his brave father met his fate; and the despair and grief of Mrs. Dumbledon at that calamity was movingly shadowed forth as having weakened the parlor-boarder's mind. This production was received with great favor, and was twice performed with closed doors in the dining-room. But, it got wind, and was seized as libelous, and brought the unlucky poet into severe affliction. Some two years afterward, all of a sudden one day, Dumbledon vanished. It was whispered that the Chief himself had taken him down to the Docks, and reshipped him for the Spanish Main; but nothing certain was ever known about his disappearance. At this hour, we can not thoroughly disconnect him from California.

Our School was rather famous for mysterious pupils. There was another--a heavy young man, with a large double-cased silver watch, and a fat knife, the handle of which was a perfect tool-box--who unaccountably appeared one day at a special desk of his own, erected close to that of the Chief, with whom he held familiar converse. He lived in the parlor, and went out for walks, and never took the least notice of us--even of us, the first boy--unless to give us a depreciatory kick, or grimly to take our hat off and throw it away, when he encountered us out of doors: which unpleasant ceremony he always performed as he passed--not even condescending to stop for the purpose. Some of us believed that the classical attainments of this phenomenon were terrific, but that his penmanship and arithmetic were defective, and he had come there to mend them; others, that he was going to set up a school, and had paid the Chief "twenty-five pound down," for leave to see Our School at work. The gloomier spirits even said that he was going to buy _us_; against which contingency conspiracies were set on foot for a general defection and running away. However, he never did that. After staying for a quarter, during which period, though closely observed, he was never seen to do any thing but make pens out of quills, write small-hand in a secret portfolio, and punch the point of the sharpest blade in his knife into his desk, all over it, he, too, disappeared, and his place knew him no more.

There was another boy, a fair, meek boy, with a delicate complexion and rich curling hair, who, we found out, or thought we found out (we have no idea now, and probably had none then, on what grounds, but it was confidentially revealed from mouth to mouth), was the son of a Viscount who had deserted his lovely mother. It was understood that if he had his rights, he would be worth twenty thousand a year. And that if his mother ever met his father, she would shoot him with a silver pistol which she carried, always loaded to the muzzle, for that purpose. He was a very suggestive topic. So was a young Mulatto, who was always believed (though very amiable) to have a dagger about him somewhere. But, we think they were both outshone, upon the whole, by another boy who claimed to have been born on the twenty-ninth of February, and to have only one birthday in five years. We suspect this to have been a fiction--but he lived upon it all the time he was at Our School.

The principal currency of Our School was slate-pencil. It had some inexplicable value, that was never ascertained, never reduced to a standard. To have a great hoard of it, was somehow to be rich. We used to bestow it in charity, and confer it as a precious boon upon our chosen friends. When the holidays were coming, contributions were solicited for certain boys whose relatives were in India, and who were appealed for under the generic name of "Holiday-stoppers"--appropriate marks of remembrance that should enliven and cheer them in their homeless state. Personally, we always contributed these tokens of sympathy in the form of slate-pencil, and always felt that it would be a comfort and a treasure to them.

Our School was remarkable for white mice. Red-polls, linnets, and even canaries, were kept in desks, drawers, hat-boxes, and other strange refuges for birds; but white mice were the favorite stock. The boys trained the mice, much better than the masters trained the boys. We recall one white mouse, who lived in the cover of a Latin dictionary, who ran up ladders, drew Roman chariots, shouldered muskets, turned wheels, and even made a very creditable appearance on the stage as the Dog of Montargis. He might have achieved greater things, but for having the misfortune to mistake his way in a triumphal procession to the Capitol, when he fell into a deep inkstand, and was dyed black, and drowned. The mice were the occasion of some most ingenious engineering, in the construction of their houses and instruments of performance. The famous one belonged to a Company of proprietors, some of whom have since made Railroads, Engines, and Telegraphs; the chairman has erected mills and bridges in New Zealand.

The usher at our school, who was considered to know every thing as opposed to the Chief who was considered to know nothing, was a bony, gentle-faced, clerical-looking young man in rusty black. It was whispered that he was sweet upon one of Maxby's sisters (Maxby lived close by, and was a day pupil), and further that he "favored Maxby." As we remember, he taught Italian to Maxby's sisters on half-holidays. He once went to the play with them, and wore a white waistcoat and a rose: which was considered among us equivalent to a declaration. We were of opinion on that occasion that to the last moment he expected Maxby's father to ask him to dinner at five o'clock, and therefore neglected his own dinner at half-past one, and finally got none. We exaggerated in our imaginations the extent to which he punished Maxby's father's cold meat at supper; and we agreed to believe that he was elevated with wine and water when he came home. But, we all liked him; for he had a good knowledge of boys, and would have made it a much better school if he had had more power. He was writing-master, mathematical-master, English master, made out the bills, mended the pens, and did all sorts of things. He divided the little boys with the Latin master (they were smuggled through their rudimentary books, at odd times when there was nothing else to do), and he always called at parents' houses to inquire after sick boys, because he had gentlemanly manners. He was rather musical, and on some remote quarter-day had bought an old trombone; but a bit of it was lost, and it made the most extraordinary sounds when he sometimes tried to play it of an evening. His holidays never began (on account of the bills) until long after ours; but in the summer-vacations he used to take pedestrian excursions with a knapsack; and at Christmas-time he went to see his father at Chipping Norton, who we all said (on no authority) was a dairy-fed-pork-butcher. Poor fellow! He was very low all day on Maxby's sister's wedding-day, and afterward was thought to favor Maxby more than ever, though he had been expected to spite him. He has been dead these twenty years. Poor fellow!

Our remembrance of Our School, presents the Latin master as a colorless, doubled-up, near-sighted man with a crutch, who was always cold, and always putting onions into his ears for deafness, and always disclosing ends of flannel under all his garments, and almost always applying a ball of pocket-handkerchief to some part of his face with a screwing action round and round. He was a very good scholar, and took great pains where he saw intelligence and a desire to learn; otherwise, perhaps not. Our memory presents him (unless teased into a passion) with as little energy as color--as having been worried and tormented into monotonous feebleness--as having had the best part of his life ground out of him in a mill of boys. We remember with terror how he fell asleep one sultry afternoon with the little smuggled class before him, and awoke not when the footstep of the Chief fell heavy on the floor; how the Chief aroused him, in the midst of a dread silence, and said, "Mr. Blinkins, are you ill, sir?" how he blushingly replied, "Sir, rather so;" how the Chief retorted with severity, "Mr. Blinkins, this is no place to be ill in" (which was very, very true), and walked back, solemn as the ghost in Hamlet, until, catching a wandering eye, he caned that boy for inattention, and happily expressed his feelings toward the Latin master through the medium of a substitute.

There was a fat little dancing-master who used to come in a gig, and taught the more advanced among us hornpipes (as an accomplishment in great social demand in after-life); and there was a brisk little French master who used to come in the sunniest weather with a handleless umbrella, and to whom the Chief was always polite, because (as we believed), if the Chief offended him, he would instantly address the Chief in French, and forever confound him before the boys with his inability to understand or reply.

There was, besides, a serving man, whose name was Phil. Our retrospective glance presents Phil as a shipwrecked carpenter, cast away upon the desert island of a school, and carrying into practice an ingenious inkling of many trades. He mended whatever was broken, and made whatever was wanted. He was general glazier, among other things, and mended all the broken windows--at the prime cost (as was darkly rumored among us) of ninepence for every square charged three-and-six to parents. We had a high opinion of his mechanical genius, and generally held that the Chief "knew something bad of him," and on pain of divulgence enforced Phil to be his bondsman. We particularly remember that Phil had a sovereign contempt for learning; which engenders in us a respect for his sagacity, as it implies his accurate observation of the relative positions of the Chief and the ushers. He was an impenetrable man, who waited at table between whiles, and, throughout "the half" kept the boxes in severe custody. He was morose, even to the Chief, and never smiled, except at breaking-up, when, in acknowledgment of the toast, "Success to Phil! Hooray!" he would slowly carve a grin out of his wooden face, where it would remain until we were all gone. Nevertheless, one time when we had the scarlet fever in the school, Phil nursed all the sick boys of his own accord, and was like a mother to them.

There was another school not far off, and of course our school could have nothing to say to that school. It is mostly the way with schools, whether of boys or men. Well! the railway has swallowed up ours, and the locomotives now run smoothly over its ashes.

So fades and languishes, grows dim and dies, All that this world is proud of,

and is not proud of, too. It had little reason to be proud of Our School, and has done much better since in that way, and will do far better yet.

A STORY OF ORIENTAL LOVE.

Poets have complained in all countries and in all ages, that true love ever meets with obstacles and hindrances, and the highest efforts of their art have been exhausted in commemorating the sufferings or the triumphs of affection. Will the theme ever cease to interest? Will the hopes, the fears, the joys, the vows of lovers, ever be deemed matters of light moment, unworthy to be embalmed and preserved in those immortal caskets which genius knows how to frame out of words? If that dreary time be destined to come--if victory decide in favor of those mechanical philosophers who would drive sentiment out of the world--sad will be the lot of mortals; for it is better to die with a heart full of love, than live for an age without feeling one vibration of that divine passion.

I am almost ashamed to translate into this level English, the sublime rhapsody with which the worthy Sheikh Ibrahim introduced the simple story about to be repeated. The truth is, I do not remember much of what he said, and at times he left me far behind, as he soared up through the cloudy heaven of his enthusiasm. I could only occasionally discern his meaning as it flashed along; but a solemn, rapturous murmur of inarticulate sounds swept over my soul, and prepared it to receive with devout faith and respect, what else might have appeared to me a silly tale of truth and constancy and passionate devotion. I forgot the thousand musquitoes that were whirling with threatening buzz around; the bubbling of the water-pipe grew gradually less frequent, and at length died away; and the sides of the kiosque overlooking the river, with its flitting sails and palm-fringed shores dimming in the twilight, seemed to open and throw back a long vista into the past. I listened, and the Sheikh continued to speak:

I will relate the story of Gadallah, the son of the sword-maker, and of Hosneh, the daughter of the merchant. It is handed down to us by tradition, and the fathers of some yet living, remember to have heard it told by eye-witnesses. Not that any great weight of testimony is required to exact belief. No extraordinary incident befell the lovers; and the pure-hearted, when they hear these things, will say within themselves, "This must be so; we would have done likewise."

Gadallah was a youth of wonderful beauty; his like is only to be seen once in a long summer's day, by the favor of God. All Cairo spoke of him, and mothers envied his mother, and fathers his father; and maidens who beheld him grew faint with admiration, and loved as hopelessly as if he had been the brightest star of heaven. For he did not incline to such thoughts, and had been taught to despise women, and to believe that they were all wicked and designing--full of craft and falsehood. Such instructions had his mother given him, for she knew the snares that would beset so beautiful a youth, and feared for him, lest he might be led into danger and misfortune.

Gadallah worked with his father in the shop, and being a cunning artificer, assisted to support the family. He had many brothers and sisters, all younger than he; but there were times when money was scarce with them, and they were compelled to borrow for their daily expenses of their neighbors, and to trust to Providence for the means of repayment. Thus time passed, and they became neither richer nor poorer, as is the common lot of men who labor for their bread; but neither Gadallah nor his father repined. When Allah gave good fortune they blessed him, and when no good fortune was bestowed, they blessed him for not taking away that which they had. They who spend their lives in industry and in praise of God, can not be unhappy.

It came to pass one day, that a man richly dressed, riding on a mule, and followed by servants, stopped opposite the shop, and calling to the father of Gadallah, said to him: "O Sheikh, I have a sword, the hilt of which is broken, and I desire thee to come to my house and mend it; for it is of much value, and there is a word of power written on it, and I can not allow it to leave the shelter of my roof." The sword-maker answered: "O master, it will be better that my son should accompany thee; for he is young, and his eyes are sharp, and his hand is clever, while I am growing old, and not fit for the finer work." The customer replied that it was well, and having given Gadallah time to take his tools, rode slowly away, the youth following him at a modest distance.

They proceeded to a distant quarter, where the streets were silent and the houses large and lofty, surrounded by gardens with tall trees that trembled overhead in the sun-light. At length they stopped before a mansion fit for a prince, and Gadallah entered along with the owner. A spacious court, with fountains playing in the shade of two large sycamores, and surrounded by light colonnades, so struck the young sword-maker with astonishment, that he exclaimed: "Blessed be God, whose creatures are permitted to rear palaces so beautiful!" These words caused the master to smile with benignity, for who is insensible to the praise of his own house? And he said: "Young man, thou seest only a portion of that which has been bestowed upon me--extolled be the Lord and his Prophet; follow me." So they passed through halls of surprising magnificence, until they came to a lofty door, over which swept long crimson curtains, and which was guarded by a black slave with a sword in his hand. He looked at Gadallah with surprise when the master said "open," but obeying, admitted them to a spacious saloon--more splendid than any that had preceded.

Now Gadallah having never seen the interior of any house better than that of his neighbor the barber, who was a relation by the mother's side, and highly respected as a man of wealth and condition, was lost in amazement and wonder at all he beheld, not knowing that he was the most beautiful thing in that saloon, and scarcely ventured to walk, lest he might stain the polished marble or the costly carpets. His conductor, who was evidently a good man, from the delight he honestly showed at this artless tribute to his magnificence, took him to a small cabinet containing a chest inlaid with mother-of-pearl. This he opened, and producing a sword, the like of which never came from Damascus, bade him observe where the hilt was broken, and ordered him to mend it carefully. Then he left him, saying he would return in an hour.

Gadallah began his work with the intention of being very industrious; but he soon paused to admire at leisure the splendor of the saloon; when he had fed his eyes with this, he turned to a window that looked upon a garden, and saw that it was adorned with lovely trees, bright flowers, elegant kiosques, and running fountains. An aviary hard by was filled with singing-birds, which warbled the praises of the Creator. His mind soon became a wilderness of delight, in which leaf-laden branches waved, and roses, and anemones, and pinks, and fifty more of the bright daughters of spring, blushed and glittered; and melody wandered with hesitating steps, like a spirit seeking the coolest and sweetest place of rest. This was like an exquisite dream; but presently, straying in a path nigh at hand, he beheld an unvailed maiden and her attendant. It was but for a moment she appeared, yet her image was so brightly thrown in upon his heart, that he loved her ever afterward with a love as unchangeable as the purity of the heavens. When she was gone, he sat himself down beside the broken sword and wept.

The master of the house came back, and gently chid him for his idleness. "Go," said he, "and return to-morrow at the same hour. Thou hast now sufficiently fed thine eyes--go; but remember, envy me not the wealth which God hath bestowed." Gadallah went his way, having first ascertained from the servants, that his employer was the Arabian merchant Zen-ed-din, whose daughter Hosneh was said to surpass in beauty all the maidens of the land of Egypt. On reaching the house, he repaired to his mother's side, and sitting down, told her of all he had seen and all he felt, beseeching her to advise him and predict good fortune to him.

Fatoumeh, the mother of Gadallah, was a wise woman, and understood that his case was hopeless, unless his desires received accomplishment. But it seemed to her impossible that the son of the poor sword-maker should ever be acceptable to the daughter of the wealthy merchant. She wept plentifully at the prospect of misery that unfolded itself, and when her husband came in, he also wept; and all three mingled their tears together until a late hour of the night.

Next day Gadallah went at the appointed hour to the merchant's house, and being kindly received, finished the work set to him; but saw no more of the maiden who had disturbed his mind. Zen-ed-din paid him handsomely for his trouble, and added some words of good advice. This done, he gently dismissed him, promising he would recall him shortly for other work; and the youth returned home despairing of all future happiness. The strength of his love was so great, that it shook him like a mighty fever, and he remained ill upon his couch that day, and the next, and the next, until he approached the margin of the grave; but his hour was not yet come, and he recovered.

In the mean time, the Angel of Death received permission from the Almighty to smite thirty thousand of the inhabitants of Cairo; and he sent a great plague, that introduced sorrow into every house. It flew rapidly from quarter to quarter, and from street to street, smiting the chosen of the tomb--the young, the old, the bad, the good, the rich, the poor--here, there, every where; in the palace, the hovel, the shop, the market-place, the deewan. All day and all night the shriek of sorrow resounded in the air; and the thoroughfares were filled with people following corpses to the cemetery. Many fled into other cities and other lands; but the plague followed those who were doomed, and struck them down by the wayside, or in the midst of their new friends.

It happened that the merchant Zen-ed-din had gone upon a journey, and had left his house, and his harem, and his lovely daughter, under the care of Providence, so that when Gadallah recovered, before the pestilence reached its height, he waited in vain in the shop, expecting that the merchant would pass, and invite him again to his house. At length the affliction of the city reached so great a degree of intensity, that all business was put a stop to, the bazaars were deserted, and men waited beneath their own roofs the inevitable decrees of fate.

Gadallah, who had confidence in God, spent part of his time walking in the streets; but every day went and sat on a stone bench opposite to Zen-ed-din's house, expecting to see some one come forth who might tell him that all were well within. But the doors remained closed, and not a sound ever proceeded from the interior of the vast mansion. At length, however, when he came at the usual hour, he perceived that the great entrance-gate was left half-open, and he mustered up courage to enter. He found the Bawab dead on his bench, and two black slaves by the side of the fountain. His heart smote him with a presentiment of evil. He advanced into the inner halls without seeing a sign of life. Behind the great crimson curtains that swept over the doorway of the saloon where he had worked, lay the guardian with his sword still in his hand. He pressed forward, finding every place deserted. Raising his voice at length, he called aloud, and asked if any living thing remained within those walls. No reply came but the echo that sounded dismally along the roof; with a heart oppressed by fear, he entered what he knew to be the ladies' private apartments; and here he found the attendant of Hosneh dying. She looked amazed at beholding a stranger, and, at first, refused to reply to his questions. But, at length, in a faint voice, she said that the plague had entered the house the day before like a raging lion, that many fell victims almost instantly, and that the women of the harem in a state of wild alarm had fled. "And Hosneh?" inquired Gadallah. "She is laid out in the kiosque, in the garden," replied the girl, who almost immediately afterward breathed her last.

Gadallah remained for some time gazing at her, and still listening, as if to ascertain that he had heard correctly. Then he made his way to the garden, and searched the kiosques, without finding what he sought, until he came to one raised on a light terrace, amid a grove of waving trees. Here beneath a canopy of white silk, on pillows of white silk, and all clothed in white silk, lay the form that had so long dwelt in his heart. Without fear of the infection, having first asked pardon of God, he stooped over her, and kissed those lips that had never even spoken to a man except her father; and he wished that death might come to him likewise; and he ventured to lie down by her side, that the two whom life could never have brought together, might be found united at least under one shroud.

A rustling close by attracted his attention. It was a dove fluttering down to her accustomed place on a bough, which once gained, she rolled forth from her swelling throat a cooing challenge to her partner in a distant tree. On reverting his look to the face of Hosneh, Gadallah thought he saw a faint red tint upon the lips he had pressed, like the first blush of the dawn in a cold sky. He gazed with wonder and delight, and became convinced he was not mistaken. He ran to a fountain and brought water in a large hollow leaf, partly poured it between the pearly teeth, which he parted timidly with his little finger, and partly sprinkled it over the maiden's face and bosom. At length a sigh shook her frame--so soft, so gentle that a lover's senses alone could have discerned it; and then, after an interval of perfect tranquillity, her eyes opened, gazed for a moment at the youth, and closed not in weakness, but as if dazzled by his beauty. Gadallah bent over her, watching for the least motion, the least indication of returning consciousness; listening for the first word, the first murmur that might break from those lips which he had tasted without warrant. He waited long, but not in vain; for at last there came a sweet smile, and a small, low voice cried, "Sabrea! where is Sabrea?" Gadallah now cast more water, and succeeded in restoring Hosneh to perfect consciousness, and to modest fear.

He sat at her feet and told her what had happened, omitting no one thing--not even the love which he had conceived for her; and he promised, in the absence of her friends, to attend upon her with respect and devotion, until her strength and health should return. She was but a child in years, and innocent as are the angels; and hearing the frankness of his speech, consented to what he proposed. And he attended her that day and the next, until she was able to rise upon her couch, and sit and talk in a low voice with him of love. He found every thing that was required in the way of food amply stored in the house, the gates of which he closed, lest robbers might enter; but he did not often go into it, for fear of the infection, and this was his excuse for not returning once to his parents' house, lest he might carry death with him.

On the fourth day Hosneh was well enough to walk a little in the garden, supported by the arms of Gadallah, who now wished that he might spend his life in this manner. But the decrees of fate were not yet accomplished. On the fifth day the young man became ill; he had sucked the disease from the lips of Hosneh in that only kiss which he had ventured; and before the sun went down, Hosneh was attending on him in despair, as he had attended on her in hope. She, too, brought water to bathe his forehead and his lips; she, too, watched for the signs of returning life, and as she passed the night by his side, gazing on his face, often mistook the sickly play of the moonbeams, as they fell between the trees, for the smile which she would have given her life to purchase.

Praise be to God, it was not written that either of them should die; and not many days afterward, toward the hour of evening, they were sitting in another kiosque beside a fountain, pale and wan it is true, looking more like pensive angels than mortal beings, but still with hearts full of happiness that broke out from time to time in bright smiles, which were reflected from one to the other as surely as were their forms in the clear water by which they reclined. Gadallah held the hand of Hosneh in his, and listened as she told how her mother had long ago been dead, how her father loved her, and how he would surely have died had any harm befallen her. She praised the courage, and the modesty, and the gentleness of Gadallah--for he had spoken despondingly about the chances of their future union, and said that when Zen-ed-din returned, she would relate all that had happened, and fall at his knees and say, "Father, give me to Gadallah."

The sun had just set, the golden streams that had been pouring into the garden seemed now sporting with the clouds overhead; solid shadows were thickening around; the flowers and the blossoms breathed forth their most fragrant perfumes; the last cooing of the drowsy doves was trembling on all sides; the nightingale was trying her voice in a few short, melancholy snatches: it was an hour for delight and joy; and the two lovers bent their heads closer together; closer, until their ringlets mingled, and their sighs, and the glances of their eyes. Then Gadallah suddenly arose, and said, "Daughter of my master, let there be a sword placed betwixt me and thee." And as he spoke, a bright blade gleamed betwixt him and the abashed maiden; and they were both seized with strong hands and hurried away.

Zen-ed-din had returned from his journey, and finding the great gate closed, had come round with his followers to the garden entrance, which he easily opened. Struck by the silence of the whole place, he advanced cautiously until he heard voices talking in the kiosque. Then he drew near, and overheard the whole of what had passed, and admired the modesty and virtue of Gadallah. He caused him to be seized and thrown that night into a dark room, that he might show his power; and he spoke harshly to his daughter, because of her too great trustfulness, and her unpermitted love. But when he understood all that had happened, and had sufficiently admired the wonderful workings of God's Providence, he said to himself, "Surely this youth and this maiden were created one for the other, and the decrees of fate must be accomplished." So he took Gadallah forth from his prison, and embraced him, calling him his son, and sent for his parents, and told them what had happened, and they all rejoiced; and in due time the marriage took place, and it was blessed, and the children's children of Hosneh and Gadallah still live among us.

While the excellent sheikh was rapidly running over the concluding statements of his narrative, I remember having read the chief incident in some European tradition--possibly borrowed, as so many of our traditions are, from the East--and then a single line of one of our poets, who has versified the story, came unbidden to my memory; but I could not recollect the poet's name, nor understand how the train of association could be so abruptly broken. The line doubtless describes the first interview of the lover with the plague-stricken maiden--it is as follows:

"And folds the bright infection to his breast."

A BIRD-HUNTING SPIDER.

When the veracity of any person has been impugned, it is a duty which we owe to society, if it lies in our power, to endeavor to establish it; and when that person is a lady gallantry redoubles the obligation. Our chivalry is, on the present occasion, excited in favor of Madame Merian, who, toward the latter end of the seventeenth century, and during a two years' residence in Surinam, employed her leisure in studying the many interesting forms of winged and vegetable life indigenous to that prolific country. After her return to Holland, her native land, she published the results of her researches. Her writings, although abounding in many inaccuracies and seeming fables, contained much curious and new information; all the more valuable from the objects of her study having been, at that period, either entirely unknown to the naturalists of Europe, or vaguely reported by stray seafaring visitants; who, with the usual license of travelers, were more anxious to strike their hearers with astonishment than to extend their knowledge.

These works were rendered still more attractive by numerous plates--the result of Madame Merian's artistic skill--with which they were profusely embellished. It is one of these which, with the description accompanying it, has caused her truth to be called into question by subsequent writers; who, we must conclude, had either not the good fortune or the good eyesight to verify her statements by their own experience. The illustration to which I allude represents a large spider carrying off in its jaws a humming-bird, whose nest appears close at hand, and who had apparently been seized while sitting on its eggs.

Linnæus, however, did not doubt the lady, and called the spider (which belongs to the genus _Mygale_), "avicularia" (bird-eating). Whether this ferocious-looking hunter does occasionally capture small birds; or whether he subsists entirely on the wasps, bees, ants, and beetles which every where abound, what I chanced myself to see in the forest will help to determine.

Shortly after daybreak, one morning in 1848, while staying at a wood-cutting establishment on the Essequibo, a short distance above the confluence of that river and the Magaruni, we--a tall Yorkshireman and myself--started in our "wood-skin" to examine some spring hooks which we had set during the previous evening, in the embouchure of a neighboring creek. Our breakfast that morning depended on our success. Our chagrin may be imagined on finding all the baits untouched save one; and from that, some lurking cayman had snapped the body of the captured fish, leaving nothing but the useless head dangling in the air. After mentally dispatching our spoiler--who had not tricked us for the first time--to a place very far distant, we paddled further up the creek in search of a maam, or maroudi; or, indeed, of any thing eatable--bird, beast, or reptile. We had not proceeded far, when my companion, Blottle, who was sitting, gun in hand, prepared to deal destruction on the first living creature we might chance to encounter--suddenly fired at some object moving rapidly along the topmost branch of a tree which overhung the sluggish stream a short way in advance. For a moment or two the success of his aim seemed doubtful; then something came tumbling through the intervening foliage, and I guided the canoe beneath, lest the prey should be lost in the water. Our surprise was not unmingled, I must confess, with vexation at first, on finding that the strange character of our game removed our morning's repast as far off as ever. A huge spider and a half-fledged bird lay in the bottom of our canoe--the one with disjointed limbs and mutilated carcass; the other uninjured by the shot, but nearly dead, though still faintly palpitating. The remains of the spider showed him larger than any I had previously seen--smaller, however, than one from Brazil, before me while I write--and may have measured some two-and-half inches in the body, with limbs about twice that length. He was rough and shaggy, with a thick covering of hair or bristles; which, besides giving him an additional appearance of strength, considerably increased the fierceness of his aspect. The hairs were in some parts fully an inch long, of a dark brown color, inclining to black. His powerful jaws and sturdy arms seemed never adapted for the death-struggle of prey less noble than this small member of the feathered race, for whom our succor had unhappily arrived too late. The victim had been snatched from the nest while the mother was probably assisting to collect a morning's meal for her offspring. It had been clutched by the neck immediately above the shoulders: the marks of the murderer's talons still remained; and, although no blood had escaped from the wounds, they were much inflamed and swollen.

The few greenish-brown feathers sparingly scattered among the down in the wings, were insufficient to furnish me with a clew toward a knowledge of its species. That it was a humming-bird, however, or one of an allied genus, seemed apparent from the length of its bill. The king of the humming-birds, as the Creoles call the topaz-throat (_Trochilus pella_ of naturalists), is the almost exclusive frequenter of Marabella Creek, where the overspreading foliage--here and there admitting stray gleams of sunshine--forms a cool and shady, though sombre retreat, peculiarly adapted to his disposition; and I strongly suspect that it was the nest of this species which the spider had favored with a visit. After making a minute inspection of the two bodies, we consigned them to a watery grave; both of us convinced that, whatever the detractors of Madame Merian may urge, that lady was correct in assigning to the bush-spider an ambition which often soars above the insect, and occasionally tempts him to make a meal of some stray feathered denizen of the forest. This conclusion, I may add, was fully confirmed some few weeks after, by my witnessing a still more interesting rencontre between members of the several races. "Eat the eater," is one of Nature's laws; and, after preventing its accomplishment by depriving the spider of his food, strict justice would probably have balked us of ours. Fortunately not--one of the heartiest breakfasts I ever made, and one of the tenderest and most succulent of meat, was that very morning. Well I remember exclaiming, at that time, "_Hæc olim meminisse juvabit!_"--it was my first dish of stewed monkey and yams.

PROMISE UNFULFILLED.--A TALE OF THE COAST-GUARD.

The _Rose_ had been becalmed for several days in Cowes Harbor, and utterly at a loss how else to cheat the time, I employed myself one afternoon in sauntering up and down the quay, whistling for a breeze, and listlessly watching the slow approach of a row-boat, bringing the mail and a few passengers from Southampton, the packet-cutter to which the boat belonged being as hopelessly immovable, except for such drift as the tide gave her, as the _Rose_. The slowness of its approach--for I expected a messenger with letters--added to my impatient weariness; and as, according to my reckoning, it would be at least an hour before the boat reached the landing-steps, I returned to the Fountain Inn in the High-street, called for a glass of negus, and as I lazily sipped it, once more turned over the newspapers lying on the table, though with scarcely a hope of coming athwart a line that I had not read half a dozen times before. I was mistaken. There was a "Cornwall Gazette" among them which I had not before seen, and in one corner of it I lit upon this, to me in all respects new and extremely interesting paragraph: "We copy the following statement from a contemporary, solely for the purpose of contradicting it: 'It is said that the leader of the smugglers in the late desperate affray with the coast guard in St. Michael's Bay, was no other than Mr. George Polwhele Hendrick, of Lostwithiel, formerly, as our readers are aware, a lieutenant in the royal navy, and dismissed the king's service by sentence of court-martial at the close of the war.' There is no foundation for this imputation. Mrs. Hendrick, of Lostwithiel, requests us to state that her son, from whom she heard but about ten days since, commands a first-class ship in the merchant navy of the United States."

I was exceedingly astonished. The court-martial I had not heard of, and having never overhauled the Navy List for such a purpose, the absence of the name of G. P. Hendrick had escaped my notice. What could have been his offense? Some hasty, passionate act, no doubt; for of misbehavior before the enemy, or of the commission of deliberate wrong, it was impossible to suspect him. He was, I personally knew, as eager as flame in combat; and his frank, perhaps heedless generosity of temperament, was abundantly apparent to every one acquainted with him. I had known him for a short time only; but the few days of our acquaintance were passed under circumstances which bring out the true nature of a man more prominently and unmistakably than might twenty years of humdrum, every-day life. The varnish of pretension falls quickly off in presence of sudden and extreme peril--peril especially requiring presence of mind and energy to beat it back. It was in such a position that I recognized some of the high qualities of Lieutenant Hendrick. The two sloops of war in which we respectively served, were consorts for awhile on the South African coast, during which time we fell in with a Franco-Italian privateer or pirate--for the distinction between the two is much more technical than real. She was to leeward when we sighted her, and not very distant from the shore, and so quickly did she shoal her water, that pursuit by either of the sloops was out of the question. Being a stout vessel of her class, and full of men, four boats--three of the _Scorpion's_ and one of her consort's--were detached in pursuit. The breeze gradually failed, and we were fast coming up with our friend when he vanished behind a head-land, on rounding which we found he had disappeared up a narrow, winding river, of no great depth of water. We of course followed, and, after about a quarter of an hour's hard pull, found, on suddenly turning a sharp elbow of the stream, that we had caught a Tartar. We had, in fact, come upon a complete nest of privateers--a rendezvous or dépôt they termed it. The vessel was already anchored across the channel, and we were flanked on each shore by a crowd of desperadoes, well provided with small arms, and with two or three pieces of light ordnance among them. The shouts of defiance with which they greeted us as we swept into the deadly trap were instantly followed by a general and murderous discharge of both musketry and artillery; and as the smoke cleared away I saw that the leading pinnace, commanded by Hendrick, had been literally knocked to pieces, and that the little living portion of the crew were splashing about in the river.

There was time but for one look, for if we allowed the rascals time to reload their guns our own fate would inevitably be a similar one. The men understood this, and with a loud cheer swept eagerly on toward the privateer, while the two remaining boats engaged the flanking shore forces, and I was soon involved in about the fiercest _mêlée_ I ever had the honor to assist at. The furious struggle on the deck of the privateer lasted but about five minutes only, at the end of which all that remained of us were thrust over the side. Some tumbled into the boat, others, like myself, were pitched into the river. As soon as I came to the surface, and had time to shake my ears and look about me, I saw Lieutenant Hendrick, who, the instant the pinnace he commanded was destroyed, had, with equal daring and presence of mind, swam toward a boat at the privateer's stern, cut the rope that held her, with the sword he carried between his teeth, and forthwith began picking up his half-drowned boat's crew. This was already accomplished, and he now performed the same service for me and mine. This done, we again sprang at our ugly customer, he at the bow, and I about midships. Hendrick was the first to leap on the enemy's deck; and so fierce and well-sustained was the assault this time, that in less than ten minutes we were undisputed victors so far as the vessel was concerned. The fight on the shore continued obstinate and bloody, and it was not till we had twice discharged the privateer's guns among the desperate rascals that they broke and fled. The dashing, yet cool and skillful bravery evinced by Lieutenant Hendrick in this brief but tumultuous and sanguinary affair was admiringly remarked upon by all who witnessed it, few of whom while gazing at the sinewy, active form, the fine, pale, flashing countenance, and the dark, thunderous eyes of the young officer--if I may use such a term, for in their calmest aspect a latent volcano appeared to slumber in their gleaming depths--could refuse to subscribe to the opinion of a distinguished admiral, who more than once observed that there was no more promising officer in the British naval service than Lieutenant Hendrick.

Well, all this, which has taken me so many words to relate, flashed before me like a scene in a theatre, as I read the paragraph in the Cornish paper. The _Scorpion_ and her consort parted company a few days after this fight, and I had not since then seen or heard of Hendrick till now. I was losing myself in conjecture as to the probable or possible cause of so disgraceful a termination to a career that promised so brilliantly, when the striking of the bar-clock warned me that the mail-boat was by this time arrived. I sallied forth and reached the pier-steps just a minute or so before the boat arrived there. The messenger I expected was in her, and I was turning away with the parcel he handed me, when my attention was arrested by a stout, unwieldy fellow, who stumbled awkwardly out of the boat, and hurriedly came up the steps. The face of the man was pale, thin, hatchet-shaped, and anxious, and the gray, ferrety eyes were restless and perturbed; while the stout round body was that of a yeoman of the bulkiest class, but so awkwardly made up that it did not require any very lengthened scrutiny to perceive that the shrunken carcass appropriate to such a lanky and dismal visage occupied but a small space within the thick casing of padding and extra garments in which it was swathed. His light-brown wig, too, surmounted by a broad-brimmer, had got a little awry, dangerously revealing the scanty locks of iron-gray beneath. It was not difficult to run up these little items to a pretty accurate sum total, and I had little doubt that the hasting and nervous traveler was fleeing either from a constable or a sheriff's officer. It was, however, no affair of mine, and I was soon busy with the letters just brought me.

The most important tidings they contained was that Captain Pickard--the master of a smuggling craft of some celebrity, called _Les Trois Frères_, in which for the last twelve months or more he had been carrying on a daring and successful trade throughout the whole line of the southern and western coasts--was likely to be found at this particular time near a particular spot in the back of the Wight. This information was from a sure source in the enemy's camp, and it was consequently with great satisfaction that I observed indications of the coming on of a breeze, and in all probability a stiff one. I was not disappointed; and in less than an hour the _Rose_ was stretching her white wings beneath a brisk northwester over to Portsmouth, where I had some slight official business to transact previous to looking after friend Pickard. This was speedily dispatched, and I was stepping into the boat on my return to the cutter, when a panting messenger informed me that the port-admiral desired to see me instantly.

"The telegraph has just announced," said the admiral, "that Sparkes, the defaulter, who has for some time successfully avoided capture, will attempt to leave the kingdom from the Wight, as he is known to have been in communication with some of the smuggling gentry there. He is supposed to have a large amount of government moneys in his possession; you will therefore, Lieutenant Warneford, exert yourself vigilantly to secure him."

"What is his description?"

"Mr. James," replied the admiral, addressing one of the telegraph clerks, "give Lieutenant Warneford the description transmitted." Mr. James did so, and I read: "Is said to have disguised himself as a stout countryman; wears a blue coat with bright buttons, buff waistcoat, a brown wig, and a Quaker's hat. He is of a slight, lanky figure, five feet nine inches in height. He has two pock-marks on his forehead, and lisps in his speech."

"By Jove, sir," I exclaimed, "I saw this fellow only about two hours ago!" I then briefly related what had occurred, and was directed not to lose a moment in hastening to secure the fugitive.

The wind had considerably increased by this time, and the _Rose_ was soon again off Cowes, where Mr. Roberts, the first mate, and six men, were sent on shore with orders to make the best of his way to Bonchurch--about which spot I knew, if any where, the brown-wigged gentleman would endeavor to embark--while the _Rose_ went round to intercept him seaward; which she did at a spanking rate, for it was now blowing half a gale of wind. Evening had fallen before we reached our destination, but so clear and bright with moon and stars that distant objects were as visible as by day. I had rightly guessed how it would be, for we had no sooner opened up Bonchurch shore or beach than Roberts signaled us that our man was on board the cutter running off at about a league from us in the direction of Cape La Hogue. I knew, too, from the cutter's build, and the cut and set of her sails, that she was no other than Captain Pickard's boasted craft, so that there was a chance of killing two birds with one stone. We evidently gained, though slowly, upon _Les Trois Frères_; and this, after about a quarter of an hour's run, appeared to be her captain's own opinion, for he suddenly changed his course, and stood toward the Channel Islands, in the hope, I doubted not, that I should not follow him in such weather as was likely to come on through the dangerous intricacies of the iron-bound coast about Guernsey and the adjacent islets. Master Pickard was mistaken; for knowing the extreme probability of being led such a dance, I had brought a pilot with me from Cowes, as well acquainted with Channel navigation as the smuggler himself could be. _Les Trois Frères_, it was soon evident, was now upon her best point of sailing, and it was all that we could do to hold our own with her. This was vexatious; but the aspect of the heavens forbade me showing more canvas, greatly as I was tempted to do so.

It was lucky I did not. The stars were still shining over our heads from an expanse of blue without a cloud, and the full moon also as yet held her course unobscured, but there had gathered round her a glittering halo-like ring, and away to windward huge masses of black cloud, piled confusedly on each other, were fast spreading over the heavens. The thick darkness had spread over about half the visible sky, presenting a singular contrast to the silver brightness of the other portion, when suddenly a sheet of vivid flame broke out of the blackness, instantly followed by deafening explosions, as if a thousand cannons were bursting immediately over our heads. At the same moment the tempest came leaping and hissing along the white-crested waves, and struck the _Rose_ abeam with such terrible force, that for one startling moment I doubted if she would right again. It was a vain fear; and in a second or two she was tearing through the water at a tremendous rate. _Les Trois Frères_ had not been so lucky: she had carried away her topmast, and sustained other damage; but so well and boldly was she handled, and so perfectly under command appeared her crew, that these accidents were, so far as it was possible to do so, promptly repaired; and so little was she crippled in comparative speed, that, although it was clear enough after a time, that the _Rose_ gained something on her, it was so slowly that the issue of the chase continued extremely doubtful. The race was an exciting one: the Caskets, Alderney, were swiftly past, and at about two o'clock in the morning we made the Guernsey lights. We were, by this time, within a mile of _Les Trois Frères_; and she, determined at all risks to get rid of her pursuer, ventured upon passing through a narrow opening between the small islets of Herm and Jethon, abreast of Guernsey--the same passage, I believe, by which Captain, afterward Admiral Lord Saumarez, escaped with his frigate from a French squadron in the early days of the last war.

Fine and light as the night had again become, the attempt, blowing as it did, was a perilous, and proved to be a fatal one. _Les Trois Frères_ struck upon a reef on the side of Jethon--a rock with then but one poor habitation upon it, which one might throw a biscuit over; and by the time the _Rose_ had brought up in the Guernsey Roads, the smuggler, as far as could be ascertained by our night-glasses, had entirely disappeared. What had become of the crew and the important passenger was the next point to be ascertained; but although the wind had by this time somewhat abated, it was not, under the pilot's advice, till near eight o'clock that the _Rose's_ boat, with myself and a stout crew, pulled off for the scene of the catastrophe. We needed not to have hurried ourselves. The half-drowned smugglers, all but three of whom had escaped with life, were in a truly sorry plight, every one of them being more or less maimed, bruised, and bleeding. _Les Trois Frères_ had gone entirely to pieces, and as there was no possible means of escape from the desolate place, our arrival, with the supplies we brought, was looked upon rather as a deliverance than otherwise. To my inquiries respecting their passenger, the men answered by saying he was in the house with the captain. I immediately proceeded thither, and found one of the two rooms on the ground-floor occupied by four or five of the worst injured of the contrabandists, and the gentleman I was chiefly in pursuit of, Mr. Samuel Sparkes. There was no mistaking Mr. Sparkes, notwithstanding he had substituted the disguise of a sailor for that of a jolly agriculturist.

"You are, I believe, sir, the Mr. Samuel Sparkes for whose presence certain personages in London are just now rather anxious?"

His deathy face grew more corpse-like as I spoke, but he nevertheless managed to stammer out, "No; Jamth Edward, thir."

"At all events, that pretty lisp, and those two marks on the forehead, belong to Samuel Sparkes, Esquire, and you must be detained till you satisfactorily explain how you came by them. Stevens, take this person into close custody, and have him searched at once. And now, gentlemen smugglers," I continued, "pray, inform me where I may see your renowned captain?"

"He is in the next room," replied a decent-tongued chap sitting near the fire; "and he desired me to give his compliments to Lieutenant Warneford, and say he wished to see him _alone_."

"Very civil and considerate, upon my word! In this room, do you say?"

"Yes, sir; in that room." I pushed open a rickety door, and found myself in a dingy hole of a room, little more than about a couple of yards square, at the further side of which stood a lithe, sinewy man in a blue pea-jacket, and with a fur-cap on his head. His back was toward me; and as my entrance did not cause him to change his position, I said, "You are Captain Pickard, I am informed?"

He swung sharply round as I spoke, threw off his cap, and said, briefly and sternly, "Yes, Warneford, I _am_ Captain Pickard."

The sudden unmasking of a loaded battery immediately in my front could not have so confounded and startled me as these words did, as they issued from the lips of the man before me. The curling black hair, the dark flashing eyes, the marble features, were those of Lieutenant Hendrick--of the gallant seaman whose vigorous arm I had seen turn the tide of battle against desperate odds on the deck of a privateer!

"Hendrick!" I at length exclaimed, for the sudden inrush of painful emotion choked my speech for a time--"can it indeed be you?"

"Ay, truly, Warneford. The Hendrick of whom Collingwood prophesied high things is fallen thus low; and worse remains behind. There is a price set upon my capture, as you know; and escape is, I take it, out of the question." I comprehended the slow, meaning tone in which the last sentence was spoken, and the keen glance that accompanied it. Hendrick, too, instantly read the decisive though unspoken reply.

"Of course it is out of the question," he went on. "I was but a fool to even seem to doubt that it was. You must do your duty, Warneford, I know; and since this fatal mishap was to occur, I am glad for many reasons that I have fallen into your hands."

"So am not I; and I wish with all my soul you had successfully threaded the passage you essayed."

"The fellow who undertook to pilot us failed in nerve at the critical moment. Had he not done so, _Les Trois Frères_ would have been long since beyond your reach. But the past is past, and the future of dark and bitter time will be swift and brief."

"What have you especially to dread? I know a reward has been offered for your apprehension, but not for what precise offense."

"The unfortunate business in St. Michael's Bay."

"Good God! The newspaper was right, then! But neither of the wounded men have died, I hear, so that--that--"

"The _mercy_ of transportation may, you think, be substituted for the capital penalty." He laughed bitterly.

"Or--or," I hesitatingly suggested, "you may not be identified--that is, legally so."

"Easily, easily, Warneford. I must not trust to that rotten cable. Neither the coast-guard nor the fellows with me know me indeed as Hendrick, ex-lieutenant of the royal navy; and that is a secret you will, I know, religiously respect."

I promised to do so: the painful interview terminated; and in about two hours the captain and surviving crew of _Les Trois Frères_, and Mr. Samuel Sparkes, were safely on board the _Rose_. Hendrick had papers to arrange; and as the security of his person was all I was responsible for, he was accommodated in my cabin, where I left him to confer with the Guernsey authorities, in whose bailiwick Jethon is situated. The matter of jurisdiction--the offenses with which the prisoners were charged having been committed in England--was soon arranged; and by five o'clock in the evening the _Rose_ was on her way to England, under an eight-knot breeze from the southwest.

As soon as we were fairly underweigh, I went below to have a last conference with unfortunate Hendrick. There was a parcel on the table directed to "Mrs. Hendrick, Lostwithiel, Cornwall, care of Lieutenant Warneford." Placing it in my hands, he entreated me to see it securely conveyed to its address unexamined and unopened. I assured him that I would do so; and tears, roughly dashed away, sprang to his eyes as he grasped and shook my hand. I felt half-choked; and when he again solemnly adjured me, under no circumstances, to disclose the identity of Captain Pickard and Lieutenant Hendrick, I could only reply by a seaman's hand-grip, requiring no additional pledge of words.

We sat silently down, and I ordered some wine to be brought in. "You promised to tell me," I said, "how all this unhappy business came about."

"I am about to do so," he answered. "It is an old tale, of which the last black chapter owes its color, let me frankly own, to my own hot and impatient temper as much as to a complication of adverse circumstances." He poured out a glass of wine, and proceeded at first slowly and calmly, but gradually, as passion gathered strength and way upon him, with flushed and impetuous eagerness to the close:

"I was born near Lostwithiel, Cornwall. My father, a younger and needy son of no profession, died when I was eight years of age. My mother has about eighty pounds a year in her own right, and with that pittance, helped by self-privation, unfelt because endured for her darling boy, she gave me a sufficient education, and fitted me out respectably; when, thanks to Pellew, I obtained a midshipman's warrant in the British service. This occurred in my sixteenth year. Dr. Redstone, at whose 'High School' I acquired what slight classical learning, long since forgotten, I once possessed, was married in second nuptials to a virago of a wife, who brought him, besides her precious self, a red-headed cub by a former marriage. His, the son's, name was Kershaw. The doctor had one child about my own age, a daughter, Ellen Redstone. I am not about to prate to you of the bread-and-butter sentiment of mere children, nor of Ellen's wonderful graces of mind and person: I doubt, indeed, if I thought her very pretty at the time; but she was meekness itself, and my boy's heart used, I well remember, to leap as if it would burst my bosom at witnessing her patient submission to the tyranny of her mother-in-law; and one of the greatest pleasures I ever experienced was giving young Kershaw, a much bigger fellow than myself, a good thrashing for some brutality toward her--an exploit that of course rendered me a remarkable favorite with the great bumpkin's mother.

"Well, I went to sea, and did not again see Ellen till seven years afterward, when, during absence on sick leave, I met her at Penzance, in the neighborhood of which place the doctor had for some time resided. She was vastly improved in person, but was still meek, dove-eyed, gentle Ellen, and pretty nearly as much dominated by her mother-in-law as formerly. Our child-acquaintance was renewed; and, suffice it to say, that I soon came to love her with a fervency surprising even to myself. My affection was reciprocated: we pledged faith with each other; and it was agreed that at the close of the war, whenever that should be, we were to marry, and dwell together like turtle-doves in the pretty hermitage that Ellen's fancy loved to conjure up, and with her voice of music untiringly dilate upon. I was again at sea, and the answer to my first letter brought the surprising intelligence that Mrs. Redstone had become quite reconciled to our future union, and that I might consequently send my letters direct to the High School. Ellen's letter was prettily expressed enough, but somehow I did not like its tone. It did not read like her spoken language, at all events. This, however, must, I concluded, be mere fancy; and our correspondence continued for a couple of years--till the peace, in fact--when the frigate, of which I was now second-lieutenant, arrived at Plymouth to be paid off. We were awaiting the admiral's inspection, which for some reason or other was unusually delayed, when a bag of letters was brought on board, with one for me bearing the Penzance postmark. I tore it open, and found that it was subscribed by an old and intimate friend. He had accidentally met with Ellen Redstone for the first time since I left. She looked thin and ill, and in answer to his persistent questioning, had told him she had only heard once from me since I went to sea, and that was to renounce our engagement; and she added that she was going to be married in a day or two to the Rev. Mr. Williams, a dissenting minister of fair means and respectable character. My friend assured her there must be some mistake, but she shook her head incredulously; and with eyes brimful of tears, and shaking voice, bade him, when he saw me, say that she freely forgave me, but that her heart was broken. This was the substance, and as I read, a hurricane of dismay and rage possessed me. There was not, I felt, a moment to be lost. Unfortunately the captain was absent, and the frigate temporarily under the command of the first-lieutenant. You knew Lieutenant ----?"

"I did, for one of the most cold-blooded martinets that ever trod a quarter-deck."

"Well, him I sought, and asked temporary leave of absence. He refused. I explained, hurriedly, imploringly explained the circumstances in which I was placed. He sneeringly replied, that sentimental nonsense of that kind could not be permitted to interfere with the king's service. You know, Warneford, how naturally hot and impetuous is my temper, and at that moment my brain seemed literally aflame: high words followed, and in a transport of rage I struck the taunting coward a violent blow in the face--following up the outrage by drawing my sword, and challenging him to instant combat. You may guess the sequel. I was immediately arrested by the guard, and tried a few days afterward by court-martial. Exmouth stood my friend, or I know not what sentence might have been passed, and I was dismissed the service."

"I was laid up for several weeks by fever about that time," I remarked; "and it thus happened, doubtless, that I did not see any report of the trial."

"The moment I was liberated I hastened, literally almost in a state of madness, to Penzance. It was all true, and I was too late! Ellen had been married something more than a week. It was Kershaw and his mother's doings. Him I half-killed; but it is needless to go into details of the frantic violence with which I conducted myself. I broke madly into the presence of the newly-married couple: Ellen swooned with terror, and her husband, white with consternation, and trembling in every limb, had barely, I remember, sufficient power to stammer out, 'that he would pray for me.' The next six months is a blank. I went to London; fell into evil courses, drank, gambled; heard after a while that Ellen was dead--the shock of which partially checked my downward progress--partially only. I left off drinking, but not gambling, and ultimately I became connected with a number of disreputable persons, among whom was your prisoner Sparkes. He found part of the capital with which I have been carrying on the contraband trade for the last two years. I had, however, fully determined to withdraw myself from the dangerous though exciting pursuit. This was to have been my last trip; but you know," he added, bitterly, "it is always upon the last turn of the dice that the devil wins his victim."

He ceased speaking, and we both remained silent for several minutes. What on my part _could_ be said or suggested?

"You hinted just now," I remarked, after a while, "that all your remaining property was in this parcel. You have, however, of course, reserved sufficient for your defense?"

A strange smile curled his lip, and a wild, brief flash of light broke from his dark eyes, as he answered, "O yes; more than enough--more, much more than will be required."

"I am glad of that." We were again silent, and I presently exclaimed, "Suppose we take a turn on deck--the heat here stifles one."

"With all my heart," he answered; and we both left the cabin.

We continued to pace the deck side by side for some time without interchanging a syllable. The night was beautifully clear and fine, and the cool breeze that swept over the star and moon-lit waters gradually allayed the feverish nervousness which the unfortunate lieutenant's narrative had excited.

"A beautiful, however illusive world," he by-and-by sadly resumed; "this Death--now so close at my heels--wrenches us from. And yet you and I, Warneford, have seen men rush to encounter the King of Terrors, as he is called, as readily as if summoned to a bridal."

"A sense of duty and a habit of discipline will always overpower, in men of our race and profession, the vulgar fear of death."

"Is it not also, think you, the greater fear of disgrace, dishonor in the eyes of the world, which outweighs the lesser dread?"

"No doubt that has an immense influence. What would our sweethearts, sisters, mothers, say if they heard we had turned craven? What would they say in England? Nelson well understood this feeling, and appealed to it in his last great signal."

"Ay, to be sure," he musingly replied; "what would our mothers say--feel rather--at witnessing their sons' dishonor? That is the master-chord." We once more relapsed into silence; and after another dozen or so turns on the deck, Hendrick seated himself on the combings of the main hatchway. His countenance, I observed, was still pale as marble, but a livelier, more resolute expression had gradually kindled in his brilliant eyes. He was, I concluded, nerving himself to meet the chances of his position with constancy and fortitude.

"I shall go below again," I said. "Come; it may be some weeks before we have another glass of wine together."

"I will be with you directly," he answered, and I went down. He did not, however, follow, and I was about calling him, when I heard his step on the stairs. He stopped at the threshold of the cabin, and there was a flushing intensity of expression about his face which quite startled me. As if moved by second thoughts, he stepped in. "One last glass with you, Warneford: God bless you!" He drained and set the glass on the table. "The lights at the corner of the Wight are just made," he hurriedly went on. "It is not likely I shall have an opportunity of again speaking with you; and let me again hear you say that you will under any circumstances keep secret from all the world--my mother especially--that Captain Pickard and Lieutenant Hendrick were one person."

"I will; but why--"

"God bless you!" he broke in. "I must go on deck again."

He vanished as he spoke, and a dim suspicion of his purpose arose in my mind; but before I could act upon it, a loud, confused outcry arose on the deck, and as I rushed up the cabin stairs, I heard amid the hurrying to and fro of feet, the cries of "Man overboard!"--"Bout ship!"--"Down with the helm!" The cause of the commotion was soon explained: Hendrick had sprung overboard; and looking in the direction pointed out by the man at the wheel, I plainly discerned him already considerably astern of the cutter. His face was turned toward us, and the instant I appeared he waved one arm wildly in the air: I could hear the words, "Your promise!" distinctly, and the next instant the moonlight played upon the spot where he had vanished. Boats were lowered, and we passed and repassed over and near the place for nearly half an hour. Vainly: he did not reappear.

I have only further to add, that the parcel intrusted to me was safely delivered, and that I have reason to believe Mrs. Hendrick remained to her last hour ignorant of the sad fate of her son. It was her impression, induced by his last letter, that he was about to enter the South-American service under Cochrane, and she ultimately resigned herself to a belief that he had there met a brave man's death. My promise was scrupulously kept, nor is it by this publication in the slightest degree broken; for both the names of Hendrick and Pickard are fictitious, and so is the place assigned as that of the lieutenant's birth. That rascal Sparkes, I am glad to be able to say--chasing whom made me an actor in the melancholy affair--was sent over the herring pond for life.

THE TUB SCHOOL.

Speaking without passion, we are bound to state, in broad terms, that the founder of the Diogenic philosophy was emphatically a humbug. Some people might call him by a harsher name; we content ourselves with the popular vernacular. Formidable as he was--this unwashed dog-baptized--with a kind of savage grandeur, too, about his independence and his fearlessness--still was he a humbug; setting forth fancies for facts, and judging all men by the measure of one. Manifestly afflicted with a liver complaint, his physical disorders wore the mask of mental power, and a state of body that required a course of calomel or a dose of purifying powders, passed current in the world for intellectual superiority; not a rare case in times when madness was accounted potent inspiration, and when the exhibition of mesmeric phenomena formed the title of the Pythoness to her mystic tripod.

Diogenes is not the only man whose disturbed digestion has led multitudes, like an _ignis fatuus_, into the bogs and marshes of falsehood. Abundance of sects are about, which their respective followers class under one generic head of inspiration, but which have sprung from the same hepatic inaction, or epigrastic inflammation, as that which made the cynic believe in the divinity of dirt, and see in a tub the fittest temple to virtue. All that narrows the sympathies--all that makes a man think better of himself than of his "neighbors"--all that compresses the illimitable mercy of God into a small talisman which you and your followers alone possess--all that creates condemnation--is of the Diogenic Tub School; corrupt in the core, and rotten in the root--fruit, leaves, and flowers, the heritage of death.

A superstitious reverence for a bilious condition of body, and an abhorrence of soap and water, as savoring of idolatry or of luxury--according to the dress and nation of the Cynic--made up the fundamental ideas of his school; and to this day they are the cabala of one division of the sect. We confess not to be able to see much beauty in either of these conditions, and are rather proud than otherwise of our state of disbelief; holding health and cleanliness in high honor, and hoping much of moral improvement from their better preservation. But to the Tub School, good digestive powers, and their consequence, good temper, were evidences of lax principles, and cleanliness was ungodliness or effeminacy; as the unpurified denouncer prayed to St. Giles, or sacrificed to Venus Cloacina. Take the old monks as an example. Not that we are about to condemn the whole Catholic Church under a cowled mask. She has valuable men among her sons; but, in such a large body, there must of necessity be some members weaker than the rest; and the mendicant friars, and do-nothing monks, were about the weakest and the worst that ever appeared by the Catholic altar. They were essentially of the Tub School, as false to the best purposes of mankind as the famous old savage of Alexander's time. Dirt and vanity, bile and condemnation, were the paternosters of their litany; and what else lay in the tub which the king over-shadowed from the sun? All the accounts of which we read, of pious horror of baths and washhouses--all the frantic renunciation of laundresses, and the belief in hair shirts, to the prejudice of honest linen--all the religious zeal against small-tooth combs, and the sin which lay in razors and nail-brushes--all the holy preference given to coarse cobbling of skins of beasts, over civilized tailoring of seemly garments--all the superiority of bare feet, which never knew the meaning of a pediluvium, over those which shoes and hose kept warm, and foot-baths rendered clean--all the hatred of madness against the refinements of life, and the cultivation of the beautiful: these were the evidences of the Diogenic philosophy; and of Monachism too; and of other forms of faith, which we could name in the same breath. And how much good was in them? What natural divinity lies in fur, which the cotton plant does not possess? Wherein consists the holiness of mud, and the ungodliness of alkali? wherein the purity of a matted beard, and the impiety of Metcalfe's brushes, and Mechi's magic strop? It may be so; and we all the while may be mentally blind; and yet, if we lived in a charnel-house, whose horrors the stony core of a cataract concealed, we could not wish to be couched, that seeing, we might understand the frightful conditions of which blindness kept us ignorant.

But bating the baths and wash-houses, hempen girdles, and hairy garments, we quarrel still with the _animus_ of Diogenes and his train. Its social savageness was bad enough--its spiritual insolence was worse. The separatism--the "stand off, for I am holier than thou"--the condemnation of a whole world, if walking apart from _his_ way--the substitution of solitary exaltation for the activity of charity--the proud judgment of GOD'S world, and the presumptuous division into good and evil of the Eternal; all this was and is of the Cynic's philosophy; and all this is what we abjure with heart and soul, as the main link of the chain which binds men to cruelty, to ignorance, and to sin; for the unloosing of which we must wait before we see them fairly in the way of progress.

How false the religion of condemnation!--how hardening to the heart!--how narrowing to the sympathies! We take a section for the whole, and swear that the illimitable All must be according to the form of the unit I; we make ourselves gods, and judge of the infinite universe by the teaching of our finite senses. They who do this most are they whom men call "zealous for God's glory," "stern sticklers for the truth," and "haters of latitudinarianism." And if all the social charities are swept down in their course, they are mourned over gently; but only so much as if they were sparrows lying dead beneath the blast that slew the enemy. "'Tis a pity," say they, "that men must be firm to the truth, yet cruel to their fellows; but if it must be so, why, let them fall fast as snow-flakes. What is human life, compared to the preservation of the truth?" Ah! friends and brothers--is not the necessity of cruelty the warrantry of falsehood? The truth of life is LOVE, and all which negatives love is false; and every drop of blood that ever flowed in the preservation of any dogma, bore in its necessity the condemnation of that dogma.

Turn where we will, and as far backward as we will, we ever find the spirit of the Diogenic philosophy; and clothed, too, in much the same garb and unseemly disorder as that in vogue among the dog-baptized. Ancient East gives us many parallels; and to this day, dirty, lazy fakirs of Hindostan assault the olfactories, and call for curses on the effeminacy of the cleanly and the sane. Sometimes, though, the Diogenites assume the scrupulosity of the Pharisee, and then they retain only the crimes of the Inquisition, not the habits and apparel of the Bosjesmen. Take the sincere Pharisee, for instance; regard his holy horror of the Samaritan (the Independent of his day) for failing in the strict letter of the law; hear his stern denunciations against all sinners, be they moral or be they doctrinal, mark the unpitying "Crucify him! crucify him!" against Him who taught novel doctrines of equality and brotherhood, and the nullity of form; see the purity of his own Pharisaic life, and grant him his proud curse on all that are not like unto him. He is a Cynic in his heart, one who judges of universal humanity by the individualism of one. Then, the hoary, hairy, dog-baptized, who scoffed at all the decencies of life, not to speak of its amenities, and had no gentle Plato's pride of refinement, with all the brutal pride of coarseness--did Diogenes worthily represent the best functions of manhood? Again, the monks and friars of the dark ages, and the hermits of old, they who left the world of man "made in the image of God," because they were holier than their brethren, and might have naught in common with the likeness of the Elohim; they who gave up the deeds of charity for the endless repetition of masses and vespers, and who thought to do God better service by mumbling masses in a cowl, than by living among their fellows, loving, aiding, and improving--were not all these followers in the train of Diogenes?--if not in the dirt, then in the bile; if not in the garb, then in the heart. Denouncers, condemners; narrowing, not enlarging; hating, not loving; they were traitors to the virtue of life, while dreaming that they alone held it sacred.

And now, have we no snarling Cynics, no Pharisee, no Inquisitor? Have we taken to good heart the divine record of love, of faith, which an æsthetic age has sublimated into credos, and left actions as a _caput mortuum_? Have we looked into the meaning of the practical lesson which the Master taught when he forgave the adulteress, and sat at meat with the sinners? or have we not rather cherished the spiritual pride which shapes out bitter words of censure for our fellows, and lays such stress on likeness that it overlooks unity? The question is worthy of an answer.

The world is wide. Beasts and fishes, birds and reptiles, weeds and flowers--which _here_ are weeds, and _there_ are flowers, according to local fancy--the dwarfed shrub of the Alpine steeps, and the monster palm of the tropical plains; the world is wide enough to contain them all, and man is wise enough to love them all, each in its sphere, and its degree. But what we do for Nature, we refuse to Humanity. To her we allow diversity; to him we prescribe sameness; in her we see the loveliness of unlikeness, the symmetry of variation; in him we must have multitudes shaped by one universal rule; and what we do not look for in the senseless tree, we attempt on the immortal soul. Religion, philosophy, and social politics, must be of the same form with all men, else woe to the wight who thinks out of the straight line! Diagonal minds are never popular, and the hand which draws one radius smites him who lines another equal to it in all its parts, and from the same centre-point. The Catholic denies the Protestant; the Episcopalian contemns the Presbyterian; the Free Kirk is shed like a branching horn; the Independent denounces the Swedenborgian; the Mormonite is persecuted by the Unitarian. It is one unvarying round; the same thing called by different names. Now all this is the very soul of Diogenism. Cowl, mitre, or band--distinctive signs to each party--all are lost in the shadow of the tub, and jumbled up into a strange form, which hath the name of Him of Sinope engraved on its forehead. Separatism and denunciation against him who is not with thee in all matters of faith, make thee, my friend, a Cynic in thy heart; and, though thou mayst wear Nicoll's paletots and Medwin's boots, and mayst prank thyself in all imaginable coxcombries, thou art still but a Diogenite, a Cynic, and a Pharisee; washing the outside of the platter, but leaving the inside encrusted still, believing falsely, that thou hast naught to do with a cause, because thou hast not worn its cockade.

Yet, are we going past the Tub School, though it lingers still in high places. We see it in party squabbles, not so much of politics to-day, as of the most esoteric doctrines of faith. We hear great men discussing the question of "prevenient grace," as they would discuss the composition of milk punch, and we hear them mutually anathematize each other on this plain and demonstrable proposition. We call this Diogenism, and of a virulent sort, too. We know that certain men are tabooed by certain other men; that a churchman refuses communion with him who is of no church, or of a different church; and that one Arian thinks dreadful things of another Arian. We call these men Pharisees, who deny kindred with the Samaritans--but we remember who it was that befriended the Samaritans. We know that monks still exist, whose duty to man consists in endless prayers to GOD (in using vain repetitions as the Heathens do); who open their mouths wide, and expect that Heaven will fill them; who hold the active duties of life in no esteem; and separate themselves from their fellows in all the grandeur of religious superiority. We can not see much difference between these men, the Hindoo fakirs, and the unsavory gentlemen of the Grecian tub. They are all of the same genus; but, Heaven be praised! they are dying out from the world of man, as leprosy, and the black plague, and other evils are dying out. True enlightenment will extirpate them, as well as other malaria. If Sanitary Commissions sweep out the cholera, acknowledged Love will sweep out all this idleness and solitary hatred, and make men at last confess that Love and Recognition are grander things than contempt and intolerance; in a word, that real Christianity is better than any form whatsoever of the Diogenic philosophy of hatred.

GOLD--WHAT IT IS AND WHERE IT COMES FROM.

Road-mending is pretty general at this time of the year, and upon roads now being newly macadamized we may pick up a good many differing specimens of granite. On the newly-broken surface of one of them, four substances of which it is composed can be perceived with great distinctness. The more earthy-looking rock, in which the others seem to be embedded, is called felspar; the little hard white stones are bits of quartz; the dark specks are specks of hornblende, and the shining scales are mica. Felspar, quartz, hornblende, and mica are the four constituents of granite. These are among the rocks of the most ancient times, which form a complete barrier to the power of the geologist in turning back the pages which relate the story of our globe. Layer under layer--leaf behind leaf--we find printed the characters of life in all past ages, till at last we come to rocks--greenstone, porphyry, quartz, granite, and others--which contain no trace of life; which do not show, as rocks above them do, that they have been deposited by water; but which have a crystalline form, and set our minds to think of heat and pressure. These lowest rocks are frequently called "igneous," in contradistinction to the stratified rocks nearer the surface, which have been obviously deposited under water. Between the two there is not an abrupt transition; for above the igneous, and below the aqueous, are rocks which belong to the set above them, insomuch as they are stratified; while they belong to the set below them--insomuch as they are crystalline, contain no traces of life, and lead us by their characters to think of heat and pressure. These rocks, on account of their equivocal position, are called metamorphic.

Under the influence of air, combined with that of water--water potent in streams, lakes, and seas, but not less potent as a vapor in our atmosphere, when aided by alternations in the temperature--granite decomposes. We noticed that one of the constituents of granite--felspar--was a comparatively earthy-looking mass, in which the other matters seemed to be embedded. In the decomposition of granite, this felspar is the first thing to give way; it becomes friable, and rains or rivers wash it down. Capital soil it makes. When the constituents of granite part in this way, quartz is the heaviest, and settles. Felspar and the others may run with the stream, more or less; quartz is not moved so easily. Now, as our neighbors in America would put it, "that's a fact;" and it concerns our gossip about gold.

Below the oldest rocks there lie hidden the sources of that volcanic action which is not yet very correctly understood. Fortunately, we are not now called upon for any explanation of it: it is enough for us that such a force exists; and thrusting below, forces granite and such rocks (which ought to lie quite at the bottom), through a rent made in the upper layers, and still up into the air, until, in some places, they form the summit of considerable mountains. Such changes are not often, if ever, the results of a single, mighty heave, which generates a great catastrophe upon the surface of the earth; they are the products of a force constantly applied through ages in a given manner. In all geologic reasoning we are apt to err grossly when we leave out of our calculation the important element of time. These lower rocks, then--these greenstones, porphyries and granites, sienites and serpentines--thrust themselves in many places through the upper strata of the earth's crust, in such a way as to form mountain ranges. Now, it is a fact, that wherever the oldest of the aqueous deposits--such as those called clay-slates, limestones, and greywacke sandstones--happen to be superficial, so as to be broken through by pressure from below, and intruded upon by the igneous rocks (especially if the said igneous rocks form ranges tending at all from north to south), there gold may be looked for. Gold, it is true, may be found combined with much newer formations; but it is under the peculiar circumstances just now mentioned that gold may be expected to be found in any great and valuable store.

In Australia, the gold discoveries, so new and surprising to the public, are not new to the scientific world. More than two years ago, in an "Essay on the Distribution of Gold Ore," read before the British Association, to which our readers will be indebted for some of the facts contained in the present gossip, Sir Roderick Murchison "reminded his geological auditors that, in considering the composition of the chief, or eastern ridge of Australia, and its direction from north to south, he had foretold (as well as Colonel Helmersen, of the Russian Imperial Mines) that gold would be found in it; and he stated that, in the last year, one gentleman resident in Sydney, who had read what he had written and spoken on this point, had sent him specimens of gold ore found in the Blue Mountains; while, from another source, he had learnt that the parallel north and south ridge in the Adelaide region, which had yielded so much copper, had also given undoubted signs of gold ore. The operation of English laws, by which noble metals lapse to the crown, had induced Sir Roderick Murchison to represent to Her Majesty's Secretary of State that no colonists would bestir themselves in gold-mining, if some clear declaration on the subject were not made; but, as no measures on this head seemed to be in contemplation, he inferred that the government may be of opinion, that the discovery of any notable quantity of gold might derange the stability and regular industry of a great colony, which eventually must depend upon its agricultural products." That was the language used by Sir Roderick Murchison in September, 1849; and in September, 1851, we are all startled by the fact which brings emphatic confirmation of his prophecy.

But it is not only about the Blue Mountains, and in other districts, where the gold is now sought, that the geologic conditions under which gold may be sought reasonably are fulfilled. Take, for example, the Ural Mountains. In very ancient times the Scythian natives supplied gold from thence; and gold was supplied also by European tribes in Germany and elsewhere. Most of those sources were worked out, or forgotten. Russia for centuries possessed the Ural, and forgot its gold. Many of us were boys when that was rediscovered. The mountains had been worked for their iron and copper by German miners, who accidentally hit upon a vein of gold. The solid vein was worked near Ekatrinburg--a process expensive and, comparatively, unproductive, as we shall presently explain. Then gold being discovered accidentally in the superficial drift, the more profitable work commenced. It is only within the last very few years that Russia has discovered gold in another portion of her soil, among the spurs of the Altai Mountains, between the Jena and the Lenisei, and along the shores of Lake Baikal. This district has been enormously productive, and, for about four years before the discovery of gold in California, had been adding largely to the gross amount of that metal annually supplied for the uses of society. The extent of this new district now worked is equal to the whole area of France; but all the gold-bearing land in Russia is not yet by any means discovered. The whole area of country in Russia which fulfills the conditions of a gold-bearing district is immense. Eastward of the Ural Chain it includes a large part of Siberia; and also in Russian America there is nearly equal reason for believing that hereafter gold will be discovered.

Before we quit Asia, we may observe, that the Chinese produce gold out of their soil; and although many of the mountain ranges in that country tend from east to west, yet the conditions of the surface, and the meridional directions of the mountains too, would indicate in China some extensive districts over which gold would probably be found in tolerable abundance. Gold exists also in Lydia and Hindostan.

Now to pass over to America, where, as we have already said, the Russians have a district in which gold may some day be discovered. In many districts along the line of the Rocky Mountains, especially in that part of them which is included in the British territory, gold may be looked for. The gold region of California has been recently discovered. Gold in Mexico, where the conditions are again fulfilled, is not a new discovery. Gold in Central America lies neglected, on account of the sad political condition of the little states there. There is gold to be found, perhaps, in the United States, some distance eastward of the Rocky Mountains. Certainly gold districts will be found about the Alleghanies. Gold has been found in Georgia, North and South Carolina, and Virginia; it exists also in Canada, and may, probably, be found not very far north, on the British side of the St. Lawrence. In the frozen regions, which shut in those straits and bays of the North Pole, to which early adventurers were sent from England on the search for gold, gold districts most probably exist, although the shining matter was not gold which first excited the cupidity of our forefathers. Passing now to South America, New Granada, Peru, Brazil, La Plata, Chili, even Patagonia, contain districts which say, "Look for gold." There are one or two districts in Africa where gold exists; certainly in more districts than that which is called the Gold Coast, between the Niger and Cape Verd; also between Darfur and Abyssinia; and on the Mozambique Coast, opposite Madagascar. In Australia, the full extent of our gold treasure is not yet discovered. In Europe, out of Russia, Hungary supplies yearly one or two hundred thousand pounds worth; there is gold in Transylvania and Bohemia; the Rhine washes gold down into its sands from the crystalline rocks of the high Alps. The Danube, Rhone, and Tagus, yield gold also in small quantities. There are neglected mines of gold in Spain.

To come nearer home. In the mining fields of Leadhills, in Scotland, gold was washed for busily in the time of Queen Elizabeth. It is found also in Glen Turret, in Perthshire, and at Cumberhead, in Lanarkshire. Attempts have been made to turn to account the gold existing in North Wales and Cornwall. About sixty years ago, gold was found accidentally in the bed of streams which run from a mountain on the confines of Wicklow and Wexford, by name, Croghan Kinshela. A good deal of gold was collected by the people, who, having the first pick, had soon earned about ten thousand pounds among them by their findings. Government then established works, and having realized in two years three thousand six hundred and seventy-five pounds by the sale of gold, which it cost them more than that amount to get, they let the matter drop, judiciously.

Let nobody be dazzled, however, by this enumeration of gold districts, which is not by any means complete. It is quite true that there is no metal diffused so widely over the world's surface as gold is, with a single exception, that of iron. But with regard to gold, there is this important fact to be taken into account, that it is not often to be obtained from veins, but is found sprinkled--in many cases sprinkled very sparingly; it is found mixed with quartz and broken rock, or sand and alluvial deposit, often in quantities extremely small, so that the time lost in its separation--even though it be the time of slaves--is of more value than the gold; and so the gold does not repay the labor of extraction. It is only where a gold district does not fall below a certain limit in its richness, that it yields a profit to the laborer. Pure gold in lumps, or grains, or flakes, is to be found only at the surface. Where, as is here and there the case, a vein of it is found deep in connection with the quartz, it is combined with other minerals, from which it can be separated only by an expensive process; so that a gold vein, when found, generally yields less profit than a field. As for gold-hunting in general, the history of every gold district unites to prove that the trade is bad. It is a lottery in which, to be sure, there are some prizes, but there is quite the usual preponderance of blanks.

The villages of gold-seekers about Accra and elsewhere, on the Gold Coast, are the villages of negroes more squalid and wretched than free negroes usually are. The wretchedness of gold-hunters in the rich field of California is by this time a hackneyed theme. Take, now, the picture of a tolerably prosperous gold-seeker in Brazil. He goes into the river with a leathern jacket on, having a leathern bag fastened before him. In his hand he carries a round bowl, of fig-tree wood, about four or five feet in circumference, and one foot deep. He goes into the river at a part where it is not rapid, where it makes a bend, and where it has deep holes. Be pleased to remember that, and do not yet lose sight of what was before said about the heaviness of quartz. The gold-seeker, then, standing in the water, scrapes away with his feet the large stones and the upper layers of sand, and fishes up a bowlful of the older gravel. This he shakes and washes, and removes the upper layer; the gold being the heaviest thing in the bowl, sinks, and when he has got rid of all the other matter, which is after a quarter of an hour's work, or more, he puts into his pouch the residual treasure, which is worth twopence farthing, on an average. He may earn in this way about sevenpence an hour--not bad wages, but, taken in connection with the nature of the work, they do not look exceedingly attractive. Here is a safe income, at any rate--no lottery. A lump of gold, combined with quartz, like that which has been dragged from California by its lucky finder--a lump worth more than three thousand pounds--is not a prize attainable in river washing. That lump, its owner says, he got out of a vein, which vein he comes to Europe to seek aid in working. Veins of quartz containing gold, when they occur, directly they cease to be superficial, cease generally to be very profitable to their owners. But of that we shall have to say more presently.

By this time we have had occasion to observe more than once that gold and quartz are very friendly neighbors. Now, we will make use of the fact which we have been saving up so long, that when granite decomposes, quartz, the heaviest material is least easily carried away, and when carried away is first to be deposited by currents. Gold also, is very heavy; in its lightest compound, it is twelve times heavier than water, and pure gold is nineteen times heavier; gold, therefore, when stirred out of its place by water, will soon settle to the bottom. Very often gold will not be moved at all, nor even quartz; so gold and quartz remain, while substances which formerly existed in their neighborhood are washed away. Or when the whole is swept away together, after the gold has begun sinking, quartz will soon be sinking too; and so, even in shingle or alluvial deposits, gold and quartz are apt to occur as exceedingly close neighbors to each other.

How the gold forms in those old rocks, we have no right to say. Be it remembered, that in newer formations it occurs, although more sparingly. How the gold forms, we do not know. In fact, we have no right to say of gold that it is formed at all. In the present state of chemistry, gold is considered as an element, a simple substance, of which other things are formed, not being itself compounded out of others. In the present state of our knowledge, therefore--and the metals _may_ really be elements--we have nothing to trouble ourselves about. Gold being one of the elements (there are somewhere about forty in all) of which the earth is built, of course existed from the beginning, and will be found in the oldest rocks. It exists, like other elements, in combination. It is combined with iron, antimony, manganese, copper, arsenic, and other things. But it is one great peculiarity of gold that it is not easily oxydized or rusted; rust being caused in metals by the action of oxygen contained in our air. When, therefore, gold, in a compound state, comes to be superficial, the air acting on the mass will generally oxydize the other metals, and so act upon them, more especially where water helps, that in the lapse of time this superficial gold will have been purified in the laboratory of nature, and may be finally picked up in the pure, or nearly pure, state; or else it may be washed, equally pure, from the superficial earth, as is now done in the majority of gold districts. But deep below the surface, in quartz veins contained within the bowels of a mountain--though, to be sure, it is not often found in such positions--gold exists generally in a condition far from pure; the chemistry of the artisan must do what the chemistry of nature had effected in the other case; and this involves rather an expensive process.

Surface gold is found, comparatively pure, in lumps of very various sizes, or in rounded grains, or in small scales. In this state it is found in the Ural district, contained in a mass of coarse gravel, like that found in the neighborhood of London; elsewhere, it is contained in a rough shingle, with much quartz; and elsewhere, in a more mud-like alluvial deposit. The water that has washed it out of its first bed has not been always a mere mountain torrent, or a river, or a succession of rains. Gold shingle and sand have been accumulated in many districts, by the same causes which produced our local drifts, in which the bones of the mammoth, the rhinoceros, and other extinct quadrupeds occur.

The nearly pure gold thus deposited in very superficial layers, may be readily distinguished from all other things that have external resemblance to it. Gold in this state has always, more or less, its well-known color, and the little action of the air upon it causes its particles to glitter, though they be distributed only in minute scales through a bed of sand. But there are other things that glitter. Scales of mica, to the eye only, very much resemble gold. But gold is extremely heavy; twelve or nineteen times heavier than that same bulk of water; mica is very light: sand itself being but three times heavier than water. Let, therefore, sand, with glittering scales in it, be shaken with water, and let us watch the order of the settling. If the scales be gold they will sink first, and quickly, to the bottom; if they be mica, they will take their time, and be among the last to sink. It is this property of gold--its weight--which enables us to obtain it by the process called gold-washing. Earth containing gold, being agitated in water, the gold falls to the bottom. Turbid water containing gold, being poured over a skin, the gold falls and becomes entangled in the hairs; or such water being poured over a board with transverse grooves, the gold is caught in the depressions. This is the reason why the Brazilian searcher looks for a depression in the bottom of the river, and this is also the origin of those peculiar rich bits occasionally found in the alluvium of a large gold-field. Where there has been a hollow, as the water passed it, gold continually was arrested there, forming those valuable deposits which the Brazilians call Caldeiraos. Sometimes, where the waters have been arrested in the hollow of a mountain, they have, in the same way, dropped an excessive store of gold. This quality of weight, therefore, is of prime importance in the history of gold; it determined the character of its deposits in the first instance; it enables us now to extract it easily from its surrounding matter, and enables us to detect it in a piece of rock, where it may not be distinctly visible. There are two substances which look exceedingly like gold;--copper and iron pyrites, substances familiar to most of us. We need never be puzzled to distinguish them. Gold is a soft metal, softer than iron, copper, and silver, although harder than tin or lead. It will scratch tin or lead; but it will be scratched with the other metals. That is to say, you can scratch gold with a common knife. Now, iron pyrites is harder than steel, and therefore a knife will fail to scratch it. Gold and iron pyrites, therefore, need never be mistaken for each other by any man who has a piece of steel about him. Copper pyrites can be scratched with steel. But then there is another very familiar property of gold, by which, in this case, it can be distinguished. Gold is very malleable; beat on it with a stone, and it will flatten, but not break; and when it breaks, it shows that it is torn asunder, by the thready, fibrous nature of its fracture. Beat with a stone on copper pyrites, and it immediately begins to crumble. No acid, by itself, can affect gold; but a mixture of one part nitric, and four parts muriatic acid, is called Aqua Regia, because in this mixture gold does dissolve. A common test for gold, in commerce, is to put nitric acid over it, which has no action if the gold be true. There is, also, a hard smooth stone, called Lydian stone, or flinty jasper, by the mineralogists, and _touchstone_ by the jewelers, on which gold makes a certain mark; and the character of the streak made on such a stone will indicate pretty well the purity or value of the gold that makes it.

We have said that when the gold occurs in a deep-seated vein, combined with other minerals, its extraction becomes no longer a simple process. Let us now point out generally what the nature of this process is, and then we shall conclude our brief discussion; for what else we might say, either lies beyond our present purpose, or has been made, by the talking and writing of the last two years, sufficiently familiar to all listeners or readers. Mr. Gardner, superintendent of the Royal Botanic Garden of Ceylon, thus describes the process of extracting gold out of the mine of Morro Velho. This mine, when St. Hilaire visited it, was considered as exhausted; it is now one of the richest in Brazil. Thus Mr. Gardner writes of it:

"The ore is first removed from its bed by blasting, and it is afterward broken, by female slaves, into small pieces; after which it is conveyed to the stamping-machine, to be reduced to powder. A small stream of water, constantly made to run through them, carries away the pulverized matter to what is called the Strakes--a wooden platform, slightly inclined, and divided into a number of very shallow compartments, of fourteen inches in width, the length being about twenty-six feet. The floor of each of these compartments is covered with pieces of tanned hide, about three feet long, and sixteen inches wide, which have the hair on. The particles of gold are deposited among the hairs, while the earthy matter, being lighter, is washed away. The greater part of the gold dust is collected on the three upper, or head skins, which are changed every four hours, while the lower skins are changed every six or eight hours, according to the richness of the ore. The sand which is washed from the head skins is collected together, and amalgamated with quicksilver, in barrels; while that from the lower skins is conveyed to the washing-house, and concentrated over strakes of similar construction to those of the stamping-mill, till it be rich enough to be amalgamated with that from the head-skins. The barrels into which this rich sand is put, together with the quicksilver, are turned by water; and the process of amalgamation is generally completed in the course of forty-eight hours. When taken out, the amalgam is separated from the sand by washing. It is then pressed on chamois skins, and the quicksilver is separated from the gold by sublimation."

Let us explain those latter processes in more detail. If you dip a gold ring or a sovereign into quicksilver, it will be silvered by it, and the silvering will not come off. This union of theirs is called an amalgam. On a ring or sovereign it is mere silvering; but when the gold is in a state of powder, and the amalgamation takes place on a complete scale, it forms a white, doughy mass, in which there is included much loose quicksilver. This doughy mass is presently washed clear of all impurities, and is then squeezed in skins or cloths, through the pores of which loose quicksilver is forced, and saved for future operations. The rest of the quicksilver is burnt out. Under a moderately strong heat, quicksilver evaporates, or--to speak more scientifically--sublimes; and gold does not. The amalgam, therefore, being subjected to heat, the quicksilver escapes by sublimation, leaving the gold pure. The quicksilver escapes by sublimation; but its owner does not wish it quite to escape out of his premises, because it is an expensive article. Chambers are therefore made over the ovens, in which the mercury may once again condense, and whence it may be collected again afterward. But, with all precaution, a considerable waste always takes place. Other processes are also in use for the separation of gold from its various alloys. We have described that which is of most universal application. Let us not omit noting the significance of the fact, that a quicksilver mine exists in California.

EYES MADE TO ORDER.

Contradictory opinions prevail as to the limits that should be assigned to the privilege of calling Art to the aid of Nature. To some persons a wig is the type of a false and hollow age; an emblem of deceit; a device of ingenious vanity, covering the wearer with gross and unpardonable deceit. In like manner, a crusade has been waged against the skill of the dentist--against certain artificial "extents in aid" of symmetry effected by the milliner.

The other side argues, in favor of the wig, that, in the social intercourse of men, it is a laudable object for any individual to propose to himself, by making an agreeable appearance, to please, rather than repel his associates. On the simple ground that he would rather please than offend, an individual, not having the proper complement of hair and countenance, places a cunningly-fashioned wig upon his head, artificial teeth in his mouth, and an artificial nose upon his face. A certain money-lender, it is urged, acknowledged the elevating power of beauty when he drew a vail before the portrait of his favorite picture, that he might not see the semblance of a noble countenance, while he extorted his crushing interest from desperate customers. It is late in the age, say the pro-wig party, to be called upon to urge the refining power that dwells in the beautiful; and, on the other hand, the depression and the coarseness which often attend the constant contemplation of things unsightly. The consciousness of giving unpleasant sensations to spectators, haunts all people who are visibly disfigured. The bald man of five-and-twenty is an unpleasant object; because premature baldness is unnatural and ugly. Argue the question according to the strictest rules of formal logic, and you will arrive at nothing more than that the thing is undoubtedly unpleasant to behold, and that therefore some reason exists that should urge men to remove it, or hide it. Undoubtedly, a wig is a counterfeit of natural hair; but is it not a counterfeit worn in deference to the sense of the world, and with the view of presenting an agreeable, instead of a disagreeable object? Certainly. A pinch of philosophy is therefore sprinkled about a wig, and the wearer is not necessarily a coxcomb. As regards artificial teeth, stronger pleas--even than those which support wigs--may be entered. Digestion demands that food should be masticated. Shall, then, a toothless person be forced to live upon spoon-meat, because artificial ivories are denounced as sinful? These questions are fast coming to issue, for Science has so far come to the aid of human nature, that according to an enthusiastic professor, it will be difficult, in the course of another century, to tell how or where any man or woman is deficient. A millennium for Deformity is, it seems, not far distant. M. Boissonneau of Paris, constructs eyes with such extraordinary precision, that the artificial eye, we are told, is not distinguishable from the natural eye. The report of his pretensions will, it is to be feared, spread consternation among those who hold in abhorrence, and consider artificial teeth incompatible with Christianity; yet the fact must be honestly declared, that it is no longer safe for poets to write sonnets about the eyes of their mistresses, since those eyes may be M. Boissonneau's.

The old, rude, artificial eyes are simply oval shells, all made from one pattern, and differing only in size and in color. No pretension to artistic or scientific skill has been claimed by the artificial-eye manufacturer--he has made a certain number of deep blues, light blues, hazels, and others, according to the state of the eye-market. These rude shells were constructed mainly with the view of giving the wearer an almond-shaped eye, and with little regard to its matching the eye in sound and active service. Artificial eyes were not made to order: but the patient was left to pick out the eye he would prefer to wear, as he would pick out a glove. The manufacture was kept a profound mystery, and few medical men had access to its secrets. The manufacturers sold eyes by the gross, to retail-dealers, at a low price; and these supplied patients. Under this system, artificial eyes were only applicable in the very rare cases of atrophy of the globe; and the effect produced was even more repulsive than that of the diseased eye. The disease was hidden by an unnatural and repulsive expression, which it is difficult to describe. While one eye was gazing intently in your face, the other was fixed in another direction--immovable, the more hideous because at first you mistook it for a natural eye. A smile may over spread the face, animate the lip, and lighten up the natural eye; but there was the glass eye--fixed, lustreless, and dead. It had other disadvantages: it interfered with the lachrymal functions, and sometimes caused a tear to drop in the happiest moments.

The new artificial eye is nothing more than a plastic skullcap, set accurately upon the bulb of the diseased eye, so that it moves with the bulb as freely as the sound eye. The lids play freely over it; the lachrymal functions continue their healthy action; and the bulb is effectually protected from currents of cold air and particles of dust. But these effects can be gained only by modeling each artificial eye upon the particular bulb it is destined to cover; thus removing the manufacture of artificial eyes from the hands of clumsy mechanics, to the superintendence of the scientific artist. Every individual case, according to the condition of the bulb, requires an artificial eye of a different model from all previously made. In no two cases are the bulbs found in precisely the same condition; and, therefore, only the scientific workman, proceeding on well-grounded principles, can pretend to practice ocular prothesis with success. The newly-invented shell is of metallic enamel, which may be fitted like an outer cuticle to the bulb--the cornea of which is destroyed--and restores to the patient his natural appearance. The invention, however, will, we fear, increase our skepticism. We shall begin to look in people's eyes, as we have been accustomed to examine a luxuriant head of hair, when it suddenly shoots upon a surface hitherto remarkable only for a very straggling crop. Yet, it would be well to abate the spirit of sarcasm with which wigs and artificial teeth have been treated. Undoubtedly, it is more pleasant to owe one's hair to nature than to Truefit; to be indebted to natural causes for pearly teeth; and to have sparkling eyes with light in them. Every man and woman would rather have an aquiline nose than the most playful pug; no one would exchange eyes agreeing to turn in one direction, for the pertest squint; or legs observing something approaching to a straight line, for undecided legs, with contradictory bends. Hence dumb-bells, shoulder-boards, gymnastic exercises, the consumption of sugar steeped in Eau-de-Cologne (a French recipe for imparting brightness to the eyes), ingenious padding, kalydors, odontos, Columbian balms, bandolines, and a thousand other ingenious devices. Devices with an object, surely--that object, the production of a pleasing _personnel_. It is a wise policy to remove from sight the calamities which horrify or sadden; and, as far as possible, to cultivate all that pleases from its beauty or its grace. Therefore, let us shake our friend with the cork-leg by the hand, and, acknowledging that the imitation is worn in deference to our senses, receive it as a veritable flesh-and-blood limb; let us accept the wig of our unfortunate young companion, as the hair which he has lost; let us shut our eyes to the gold work that fastens the brilliantly white teeth of a young lady, whose natural dentition has been replaced; and, above all, let us never show, by sign or word, that the appearance of our friend (who has suffered tortures, and lost the sight of one eye) is changed after the treatment invented by M. Boissonneau.

THE EXPECTANT.--A TALE OF LIFE.

When a boy I was sent to school in a country village in one of the midland counties. Midvale lay on a gentle slope at the foot of a lofty hill, round which the turnpike-road wound scientifically to diminish the steepness of the declivity; and the London coach, as it smoked along the white road regularly at half-past four o'clock, with one wheel dragged, might be tracked for two good miles before it crossed the bridge over the brook below and disappeared from sight. We generally rushed out of the afternoon school as the twanging horn of the guard woke up our quiet one street; and a fortunate fellow I always thought was Griffith Maclean, our only day-boarder, who on such occasions would often chase the flying mail, and seizing the hand of the guard, an old servant of his uncle's, mount on the roof, and ride as far as he chose for the mere trouble of walking back again. Our school consisted of between twenty and thirty boys, under the care of a master who knew little and taught still less; for having three sermons to preach every Sunday, besides two on week-days, he had but little leisure to spare for the duties of the school; and the only usher he could afford to keep was a needy, hard-working lad, whose poverty and time-worn habiliments deprived him of any moral control over the boys. This state of things, coupled with the nervous and irascible temper of the pedagogue, naturally produced a good deal of delinquency, which was duly scored off on the backs of the offenders every morning before breakfast. Thus what we wanted in tuition was made up in flogging; and if the master was rarely in the school, he made amends for his absence by a vigorous use of his prerogative while he was there. Griffith Maclean, who was never present on these occasions, coming only at nine o'clock, was yet our common benefactor. One by one he had taken all our jackets to a cobbling tailor in the village, and got them for a trifling cost so well lined with old remnants of a kind of felt or serge, for the manufacture of which the place was famous, that we could afford to stand up without wincing, and even to laugh through our wry faces under the matutinal ceremony of caning. Further, Griffith was the sole means of communication with the shopkeepers, and bought our cakes, fruit, and playthings, when we had money to spend, and would generally contrive to convey a hunch of bread and cheese from home, to any starving victim who was condemned to fasting for his transgressions. In return for all this sympathy we could do no less than relieve Griffith, as far as possible, from the trouble and 'bother,' as he called it, of study. We worked his sums regularly for days beforehand, translated his Latin, and read over his lessons with our fingers as he stood up to repeat them before the master.

Griffith's mother was the daughter of a gentleman residing in the neighborhood of Midvale. Fifteen years ago she had eloped with a young Irish officer--an unprincipled fortune-hunter--who, finding himself mistaken in his venture, the offended father having refused any portion, had at first neglected and finally deserted his wife, who had returned home with Griffith, her only child, to seek a reconciliation with her parents. This had never been cordially granted. The old man had other children who had not disobeyed him, and to them, at his death, he bequeathed the bulk of his property, allotting to Griffith's mother only a life-interest in a small estate which brought her something less than a hundred pounds a year. But the family were wealthy, and the fond mother hoped, indeed fully expected, that they would make a gentlemanly provision for her only child. In this expectation Griffith was nurtured and bred; and being reminded every day that he was born a gentleman, grew up with the notion that application and labor of any sort were unbecoming the character he would have to sustain. He was a boy of average natural abilities, and with industry might have cultivated them to advantage: but industry was a plebeian virtue, which his silly mother altogether discountenanced, and withstood the attempts, not very vigorous, of the schoolmaster to enforce. Thus he was never punished, seldom reproved; and the fact that he was the sole individual so privileged in a school where both reproof and punishment were so plentiful, could not fail of impressing him with a great idea of his own importance. Schoolboys are fond of speculating on their future prospects, and of dilating on the fancied pleasures of manhood and independence, and the delights of some particular trade or profession upon which they have set their hearts; the farm, the forge, the loom, the counter, the press, the desk, have as eager partisans among the knucklers at _taw_ as among older children; and while crouching round the dim spark of fire on a wet winter day, we were wont to chalk out for ourselves a future course of life when released from the drudgery, as we thought it, of school. Some declared for building, carpentering, farming, milling, or cattle-breeding; some were panting for life in the great city; some longed for the sea and travel to foreign countries; and some for a quiet life at home amid rural sports and the old family faces. Above all, Griffith Maclean towered in unapproachable greatness. "I shall be a gentleman," said he; "if I don't have a commission in the army--which I am not sure I should like, because it's a bore to be ordered off where you don't want to go--I shall have an official situation under government, with next to nothing to do but to see life and enjoy myself." Poor Griffith!

Time wore on. One fine morning I was packed, along with a couple of boxes, on the top of the London coach; and before forty-eight hours had elapsed, found myself bound apprentice to a hard-working master and a laborious profession in the heart of London. Seven years I served and wrought in acquiring the art and mystery, as my indentures termed it, of my trade. Seven times in the course of this period it was my pleasant privilege to visit Midvale, where some of my relations dwelt, and at each visit I renewed the intimacy with my old school-fellow, Griffith. He was qualifying himself for the life of a gentleman by leading one of idleness; and I envied him not a little his proficiency in the use of the angle and the gun, and the opportunity he occasionally enjoyed of following the hounds upon a borrowed horse. At my last visit, at the end of my term of apprenticeship, I felt rather hurt at the cold reception his mother gave me, and at the very haughty, off-hand bearing of Griffith himself; and I resolved to be as independent as he by giving him an opportunity of dropping the acquaintance if he chose. I understood, however, that both he and his mother were still feeding upon expectation, and that they hoped every thing from General ----, to whom application had been made on Griffith's behalf, as the son of an officer, and that they confidently expected a cadetship that would open up the road to promotion and fortune. The wished-for appointment did not arrive. Poor Griffith's father had died without leaving that reputation behind him which might have paved the way for his son's advancement, and the application was not complied with. This was a mortifying blow to the mother, whose pride it painfully crushed. Griffith, now of age, proposed that they should remove to London, where, living in the very source and centre of official appointments, they might bring their influence to bear upon any suitable berth that might be vacant. They accordingly left Midvale and came to town, where they lived in complete retirement upon a very limited income. I met Griffith accidentally after he had been in London about a year. He shook me heartily by the hand, was in high spirits, and informed me that he had at length secured the promise of an appointment to a situation in S----House, in case T----, the sitting member, should be again returned for the county. His mother had three tenants, each with a vote, at her command; and he was going down to Midvale, as the election was shortly coming off, and would bag a hundred votes, at least, he felt sure, before polling-day. I could not help thinking as he rattled away, that this was just the one thing he was fit for. With much of the air, gait, and manners of a gentleman, he combined a perfection in the details of fiddle-faddle and small talk rarely to be met with; and from having no independent opinion of his own upon any subject whatever, was so much the better qualified to secure the voices of those who had. He went down to Midvale, canvassed the whole district with astonishing success, and had the honor of dining with his patron, the triumphant candidate, at the conclusion of the poll. On his return to town, in the overflowings of his joy, he wrote a note to me expressive of his improved prospects, and glorying in the certainty of at length obtaining an official appointment. I was very glad to hear the good news, but still more surprised at the terms in which it was conveyed; the little that Griffith had learned at school he had almost contrived to lose altogether in the eight or nine years that had elapsed since he had left it. He seemed to ignore the very existence of such contrivances as syntax and orthography; and I really had grave doubts as to whether he was competent to undertake even an official situation in S---- House.

These doubts were not immediately resolved. Members of parliament, secure in their seats, are not precisely so anxious to perform as they sometimes are ready to promise when their seats seem sliding from under them. It was very nearly two years before Griffith received any fruit from his electioneering labors, during which time he had been leading a life of lounging, do-nothing, dreamy semi-consciousness, occasionally varied by a suddenly-conceived and indignant remonstrance, hurled in foolscap at the head of the defalcating member for the county. During all this time fortune used him but scurvily: his mother's tenants at Midvale clamored for a reduction of rent; one decamped without payment of arrears; repairs were necessary, and had to be done and paid for. These drawbacks reduced the small income upon which they lived, and sensibly affected the outward man of the gentlemanly Griffith: he began to look seedy, and occasionally borrowed a few shillings of me when we casually met, which he forgot to pay. I must do him the credit to say that he never avoided me on account of these trifling debts, but with an innate frankness characteristic of his boyhood, continued his friendship and his confidences. At length the happy day arrived. He received his appointment, bearing the remuneration of £200 a year, which he devoutly believed was to lead to something infinitely greater, and called on me on his way to the office where he was to be installed and indoctrinated into his function.

The grand object of her life--the settlement of her son--thus accomplished, the mother returned to Midvale, where she shortly after died, in the full conviction that Griffith was on the road to preferment and fortune. The little estate--upon the proceeds of which she had frugally maintained herself and son--passed, at her death, into the hands of one of her brothers, none of whom took any further notice of Griffith, who had mortally offended them by his instrumentality in returning the old member for the county, whom it was their endeavor to unseat. There is a mystery connected with Griffith's tenure of office which I could never succeed in fathoming. He held it but for six months, when, probably not being competent to keep it, he sold it to an advertising applicant, who offered a douceur of £300 for such a berth. How the transfer was arranged I can not tell, not knowing the recondite formula in use upon these occasions. Suffice it to say that Griffith had his £300, paid his little debts, renewed his wardrobe and his expectations, and began to cast about for a new patron. He was now a gentleman about town, and exceedingly well he both looked and acted the character: he had prudence enough to do it upon an economical scale, and though living upon his capital, doled it out with a sparing hand. As long as his money lasted he did very well; but before the end of the third year the bloom of his gentility had worn off, and it was plain that he was painfully economizing the remnant of his funds.

About this time I happened to remove to a different quarter of the metropolis, and lost sight of him for more than a year. One morning, expecting a letter of some importance, I waited for the postman before walking to business. What was my astonishment on responding personally to his convulsive "b'bang," to recognize under the gold-banded hat and red-collared coat of that peripatetic official the gentlemanly figure and features of my old schoolfellow Griffith Maclean!

"What! Griff?" I exclaimed: "is it possible?--can this be you?"

"Well," said he, "I am inclined to think it is. You see, old fellow, a man must do something or starve. This is all I could get out of that shabby fellow T---- and I should not have got this had I not well worried him. He knows I have no longer a vote for the county. However, I shan't wear this livery long: there are good berths enough in the post-office. If they don't pretty soon give me something fit for a gentleman to do, I shall take myself off as soon as any thing better offers. But, by George? there is not much time allowed for talking: I must be off--farewell!"

Soon after this meeting the fourpenny deliveries commenced; and these were before long followed by the establishment of the universal Penny-post. This was too much for Griffith. He swore he was walked off his legs; that people did nothing upon earth but write letters; that he was jaded to death by lugging them about; that he had no intention of walking into his coffin for the charge of one penny; and, finally, that he would have no more of it. Accordingly he made application for promotion on the strength of his recommendation, was refused as a matter of course, and vacated his post for the pleasure of a week's rest, which he declared was more than it was honestly worth.

By this time destiny had made me a housekeeper in "merry Islington;" and poor Griff, now reduced to his shifts, waited on me one morning with a document to which he wanted my signature, the object of which was to get him into the police force. Though doubting his perseverance in any thing, I could not but comply with his desire, especially as many of my neighbors had done the same. The paper testified only as to character; and as Griff was sobriety itself, and as it would have required considerable ingenuity to fasten any vice upon him, I might have been hardly justified in refusing. I represented to him as I wrote my name, that should he be successful, he would really have an opportunity of rising by perseverance in good conduct to an upper grade. "Of course," said he, "that is my object; it would never do for a gentleman to sit down contented as a policeman. I intend to rise from the ranks, and I trust you will live to see me one day at the head of the force."

He succeeded in his application; and not long after signing his paper I saw him indued with the long coat, oil-cape, and glazed hat of the brotherhood, marching off in Indian file for night-duty to his beat in the H---- Road. Whether the night air disagreed with his stomach, or whether his previous duty as a postman had made him doubly drowsy, I can not say, but he was found by the inspector on going his rounds in a position too near the horizontal for the regulations of the force, and suspended, after repeated trangression, for sleeping upon a bench under a covered doorway while a robbery was going on in the neighborhood. He soon found that the profession was not at all adapted to his habits, and had not power enough over them to subdue them to his vocation. He lingered on for a few weeks under the suspicious eye of authority, and at length took the advice of the inspector, and withdrew from the force.

He did not make his appearance before me as I expected, and I lost sight of him for a long while. What new shifts and contrivances he had recourse to--what various phases of poverty and deprivation he became acquainted with during the two years that he was absent from my sight, are secrets which no man can fathom. I was standing at the foot of Blackfriar's Bridge one morning waiting for a clear passage to cross the road, and began mechanically reading a printed board, offering to all the sons of Adam--whom, for the especial profit of the slopsellers, Heaven sends naked into the world--garments of the choicest broadcloth for next to nothing, and had just mastered the whole of the large-printed lie, when my eye fell full upon the bearer of the board, whose haggard but still gentlemanly face revealed to me the lineaments of my old friend Griff. He laughed in spite of his rags as our eyes met, and seized my proffered hand.

"And what," said I, not daring to be silent, "do they pay you for this?"

"Six shillings a week," said Griff, "and that's better than nothing."

"Six shillings and your board of course?"

"Yes, this board" (tapping the placarded timber); "and a confounded heavy board it is. Sometimes when the wind takes it, though, I'm thinking it will fly away with me into the river, heavy as it is."

"And do you stand here all day?"

"No, not when it rains: the wet spoils the print, and we have orders to run under cover. After one o'clock I walk about with it wherever I like, and stretch my legs a bit. There's no great hardship in it if the pay was better."

I left my old playmate better resigned to his lowly lot than I thought to have found him. It was clear that he had at length found a function for which he was at least qualified; that he knew the fact; and that the knowledge imparted some small spice of satisfaction to his mind. I am happy to have to state that this was the deepest depth to which he has fallen. He has never been a _sandwich_--I am sure indeed he would never have borne it. With his heavy board mounted on a stout staff, he could imagine himself, as no doubt he often did, a standard-bearer on the battle-field, determined to defend his colors with his last breath; and his tall, gentlemanly, and somewhat officer-like figure, might well suggest the comparison to a casual spectator. But to encase his genteel proportions in a surtout of papered planks, or hang a huge wooden extinguisher over his shoulders labeled with colored stripes--it would never have done: it would have blotted out the gentleman, and therefore have worn away the heart of one whose shapely gentility was all that was left to him.

One might have thought, after all the vicissitudes he had passed through, that the soul of Griffith Maclean was dead to the voice of ambition. Not so, however. On the first establishment of the street-orderlies, that chord in his nature spontaneously vibrated once again. If he could only get an appointment it would be a rise in the social scale--leading by degrees--who can tell?--to the resumption of his original status, or even something beyond.... I hear a gentle knock, a modest, low-toned single dab, at the street-door as I am sitting down to supper on my return home after the fatigues of business. Betty is in no hurry to go to the door, as she is poaching a couple of eggs, and prides herself upon performing that delicate operation in irreproachable style. "Squilsh!" they go one after another into the saucepan--I hear it as plainly as though I were in the kitchen. Now the plates clatter; the tray is loading; and now the eggs are walking up stairs, steaming under Betty's face, when "dab" again--a thought, only a thought louder than before--at the street-door. The spirit of patience is outside; and now Betty runs with an apology for keeping him waiting. "Here's a man wants to speak to master; says he'll wait if you are engaged, sir; he ain't in no hurry." "Show him in;" and in walks Griff, again armed with a document--a petition for employment as a street-orderly, with testimonials of good character, honesty, and all that. Of course I again append my signature, without any allusion to the police force. I wish him all success, and have a long talk over past fun and follies, and present hopes and future prospects, and the philosophy of poverty and the deceitfulness of wealth. We part at midnight, and Griff next day gets the desiderated appointment.

It is raining hard while I write, and by the same token I know that at this precise moment Griffith in his glazed hat, and short blouse, and ponderous mud-shoes, is clearing a channel for the diluted muck of C---- street, city, and directing the black, oozy current by the shortest cut to the open grating connected with the common sewer. I am as sure as though I were superintending the operation, that he handles his peculiar instrument--a sort of hybrid between a hoe and a rake--with the grace and air of a gentleman--a grace and an air proclaiming to the world that though _in_ the profession, whatever it may be called, which he has assumed, he is not _of_ it, and vindicating the workmanship of nature, who, whatever circumstances may have compelled him to become, cast him in the mould of a gentleman. It is said that in London every man finds his level. Whether Griffith Maclean, after all his vicissitudes, has found his, I do not pretend to say. Happily for him, he thinks that fortune has done her worst, and that he is bound to rise on her revolving wheel as high at least as he has fallen low. May the hope stick by him, and give birth to energies productive of its realization!

THE PLEASURES AND PERILS OF BALLOONING.

It would appear that, in almost every age, from time immemorial, there has been a strong feeling in certain ambitious mortals to ascend among the clouds. They have felt with Hecate--

"Oh what a dainty pleasure 'tis To sail in the air!"

So many, besides those who have actually indulged in it, have felt desirous of tasting the "dainty pleasure" of a perilous flight, that we are compelled to believe that the attraction is not only much greater than the inducement held out would leave one to expect, but that it is far more extensive than generally supposed. Eccentric ambition, daring, vanity, and the love of excitement and novelty, have been quite as strong impulses as the love of science, and of making new discoveries in man's mastery over physical nature. Nevertheless, the latter feeling has, no doubt, been the main-stay, if not the forerunner and father of these attempts, and has held it in public respect, notwithstanding the many follies that have been committed.

To master the physical elements, has always been the great aim of man. He commenced with earth, his own natural, obvious, and immediate element, and he has succeeded to a prodigious extent, being able to do (so far as he knows) almost whatever he wills with the surface; and, though reminded every now and then by some terrible disaster that he is getting "out of bounds" has effected great conquests amidst the dark depths beneath the surface. Water and fire came next in requisition; and by the process of ages, man may fairly congratulate himself on the extraordinary extent, both in kind and degree, to which he has subjected them to his designs--designs which have become complicated and stupendous in the means by which they are carried out, and having commensurate results both of abstract knowledge and practical utility. But the element of air has hitherto been too subtle for all his projects, and defied his attempts at conquest. That element which permeates all earthly bodies, and without breathing which the animal machine can not continue its vital functions--into that grand natural reservoir of breath, there is every physical indication that it is not intended man should ascend as its lord. Traveling and voyaging man must be content with earth and ocean;--the sublime highways of air, are, to all appearance, denied to his wanderings.

Wild and daring as was the act, it is no less true that men's first attempts at a flight through the air were literally with wings. They conjectured that by elongating their arms with a broad mechanical covering, they could convert them into wings; and forgetting that birds possess air-cells, which they can inflate, that their bones are full of air instead of marrow, and, also, that they possess enormous strength of sinews expressly for this purpose, these desperate half-theorists have launched themselves from towers and other high places, and floundered down to the demolition of their necks, or limbs, according to the obvious laws and penalties of nature. We do not allude to the Icarus of old, or any fabulous or remote aspirants, but to modern times. Wonderful as it may seem, there are some instances in which they escaped with only a few broken bones. Milton tells a story of this kind in his "History of Britain;" the flying man being a monk of Malmsbury, "in his youth." He lived to be impudent and jocose on the subject, and attributed his failure entirely to his having forgotten to wear a broad tail of feathers. In 1742 the Marquis de Bacqueville announced that he would fly with wings from the top of his own house on the _Quai des Theatins_ to the garden of the _Tuileries_. He actually accomplished half the distance, when, being exhausted with his efforts, the wings no longer beat the air, and he came down into the Seine, and would have escaped unhurt, but that he fell against one of the floating machines of the Parisian laundresses, and thereby fractured his leg. But the most successful of all these instances of the extraordinary, however misapplied, force of human energies and daring, was that of a certain citizen of Bologna, in the thirteenth century, who actually managed, with some kind of wing contrivance, to fly from the mountain of Bologna to the River Reno, without injury. "Wonderful! admirable!" cried all the citizens of Bologna. "Stop a little!" said the officers of the Holy Inquisition; "this must be looked into." They sat in sacred conclave. If the man had been killed, said they, or even mutilated shockingly, our religious scruples would have been satisfied; but, as he has escaped unhurt, it is clear that he must be in league with the devil. The poor "successful" man was therefore condemned to be burnt alive; and the sentence of the Holy Catholic Church was carried into Christian execution.

That flying, however, could be effected by the assistance of some more elaborate sort of machinery, or with the aid of chemistry, was believed at an early period. Friar Bacon suggested it; so did Bishop Wilkins, and the Marquis of Worcester; it was likewise projected by Fleyder, by the Jesuit Lana, and many other speculative men of ability. So far, however, as we can see, the first real discoverer of the balloon was Dr. Black, who, in 1767, proposed to inflate a large skin with hydrogen gas; and the first who brought theory into practice were the brothers Montgolfier. But their theory was that of the "fire-balloon," or the formation of an artificial cloud, of smoke, by means of heat from a lighted brazier placed beneath an enormous bag, or balloon, and fed with fuel while up in the air. The Academy of Sciences immediately gave the invention every encouragement, and two gentlemen volunteered to risk an ascent in this alarming machine.

The first of these was Pilâtre de Rosier, a gentleman of scientific attainments, who was to conduct the machine, and he was accompanied by the Marquis d'Arlandes, an officer in the Guards. They ascended in the presence of the Court of France, and all the scientific men in Paris. They had several narrow escapes of the whole machine taking fire, but eventually returned to the ground in safety. Both these courageous men came to untimely ends subsequently. Pilâtre de Rosier, admiring the success of the balloon afterward made by Professor Charles, and others, (_viz._, a balloon filled with hydrogen gas), conceived the idea of uniting the two systems, and accordingly ascended with a large balloon of that kind, having a small fire-balloon beneath it--the upper one to sustain the greater portion of the weight, the lower one to enable him to alter his specific gravity as occasion might require, and thus to avoid the usual expenditure of gas and ballast. Right in theory--but he had forgotten one thing. Ascending too high, confident in his theory, the upper balloon became distended too much, and poured down a stream of hydrogen gas, in self-relief, which reached the little furnace of the fire-balloon, and the whole machine became presently one mass of flame. It was consumed in the air, as it descended, and with it of course, the unfortunate Pilâtre de Rosier. The untimely fate of the Marquis d'Arlandes, his companion in the first ascent ever made in a balloon, was hastened by one of those circumstances which display the curious anomalies in human nature;--he was broken for cowardice in the execution of his military duties, and is supposed to have committed suicide.

If we consider the shape, structure, appurtenances, and capabilities of a ship of early ages, and one of the present time, we must be struck with admiration at the great improvement that has been made, and the advantages that have been obtained; but balloons are very nearly what they were from the first, and are as much at the mercy of the wind for the direction they will take. Neither is there at present any certain prospect of an alteration in this condition. Their so-called "voyage" is little more than "drifting," and can be no more, except by certain manoeuvres which obtain precarious exceptions, such as rising to take the chance of different currents, or lowering a long and weighty rope upon the earth (an ingenious invention of Mr. Green's, called the "guide rope"), to be trailed along the ground. If, however, man is ever to be a flying animal, and to travel in the air whither he listeth, it must be by other means than wings, balloons, paddle-machines, and aerial ships--several of which are now building in America, in Paris, and in London. We do not doubt the mechanical genius of inventors--but the motive power. We will offer a few remarks on these projects before we conclude.

But let us, at all events, ascend into the sky! Taking balloons as they are, "for better, for worse," as Mr. Green would say--let us for once have a flight in the air.

The first thing you naturally expect is some extraordinary sensation in springing high up into the air, which takes away your breath for a time. But no such matter occurs. The extraordinary thing is, that you experience no sensation at all, so far as motion is concerned. So true is this, that on one occasion, when Mr. Green wished to rise a little above a dense crowd, in order to get out of the extreme heat and pressure that surrounded his balloon, those who held the ropes, misunderstanding his direction, let go entirely, and the balloon instantly rose, while the aeronaut remained calmly seated, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief, after the exertions he had undergone in preparing for the flight, and totally unconscious of what had happened. He declares that he only became aware of the circumstance, when, on reaching a considerable elevation (a few seconds are often quite enough for that), he heard the shouts of the multitude becoming fainter and fainter, which caused him to start up, and look over the edge of the car.

A similar unconsciousness of the time of their departure from earth has often happened to "passengers." A very amusing illustration of this is given in a letter published by Mr. Poole, the well-known author, shortly after his ascent. "I do not despise you," says he, "for talking about a balloon going up, for it is an error which you share in common with some millions of our fellow-creatures; and I, in the days of my ignorance, thought with the rest of you. I know better now. The fact is, we do not _go up_ at all; but at about five minutes past six on the evening of Friday, the 14th of September, 1838--at about that time, Vauxhall Gardens, with all the people in them, _went down_!" What follows is excellent. "I can not have been deceived," says he; "I speak from the evidence of my senses, founded upon repetition of the fact. Upon each of the three or four experimental trials of the powers of the balloon to enable the people to glide away from us with safety to themselves--down they all went about thirty feet?--then, up they came again, and so on. There we sat quietly all the while, in our wicker buck-basket, utterly unconscious of motion; till, at length, Mr. Green snapping a little iron, and thus letting loose the rope by which _the earth was suspended to us_--like Atropos, cutting the connection between us with a pair of shears--down it went, with every thing on it; and your poor, paltry, little Dutch toy of a town, (your Great Metropolis, as you insolently call it), having been placed on casters for the occasion--I am satisfied of _that_--was gently rolled away from under us."[13]

Feeling nothing of the ascending motion, the first impression that takes possession of you in "going up" in a balloon, is the quietude--the silence, that grows more and more entire. The restless heaving to and fro of the huge inflated sphere above your head (to say nothing of the noise of the crowd), the flapping of ropes, the rustling of silk, and the creaking of the basketwork of the car--all has ceased. There is a total cessation of all atmospheric resistance. You sit in a silence which becomes more perfect every second. After the bustle of many moving objects, you stare before you into blank air. We make no observations on other sensations--to wit, the very natural one of a certain increased pulse, at being so high up, with a chance of coming down so suddenly, if any little matter went wrong. As all this will differ with different individuals, according to their nervous systems and imaginations, we will leave each person to his own impressions.

So much for what you first feel; and now what is the first thing you do? In this case every body is alike. We all do the same thing. We look over the side of the car. We do this very cautiously--keeping a firm seat, as though we clung to our seat by a certain attraction of cohesion--and then, holding on by the edge, we carefully protrude the peak of our traveling-cap, and then the tip of the nose, over the edge of the car, upon which we rest our mouth. Every thing below is seen in so new a form, so flat, compressed and simultaneously--so much too-much-at-a-time--that the first look is hardly so satisfactory as could be desired. But soon we thrust the chin fairly over the edge, and take a good stare downward; and this repays us much better. Objects appear under very novel circumstances from this vertical position, and ascending retreat from them (though it is _they_ that appear to sink and retreat from us). They are stunted and foreshortened, and rapidly flattened to a map-like appearance; they get smaller and smaller, and clearer and clearer. "An idea," says Monck Mason, "involuntarily seizes upon the mind, that the earth with all its inhabitants had, by some unaccountable effort of nature, been suddenly precipitated from its hold, and was in the act of slipping away from beneath the aeronaut's feet into the murky recesses of some unfathomable abyss below. Every thing, in fact, but himself, seems to have been suddenly endowed with motion." Away goes the earth, with all its objects--sinking lower and lower, and every thing becoming less and less, but getting more and more distinct and defined as they diminish in size. But, besides the retreat toward minuteness, the phantasmagoria flattens as it lessens--men and women are of five inches high, then of four, three, two, one inch--and now a speck; the Great Western is a narrow strip of parchment, and upon it you see a number of little trunks "running away with each other," while the Great Metropolis itself is a board set out with toys; its public edifices turned into "baby-houses, and pepper-casters, and extinguishers, and chess-men, with here and there a dish-cover--things which are called domes, and spires, and steeples!" As for the Father of Rivers, he becomes a dusky-gray, winding streamlet, and his largest ships are no more than flat pale decks, all the masts and rigging being foreshortened to nothing. We soon come now to the shadowy, the indistinct--and then all is lost in air. Floating clouds fill up all the space beneath. Lovely colors outspread themselves, ever-varying in tone, and in their forms or outlines--now sweeping in broad lines--now rolling and heaving in huge, richly, yet softly-tinted billows--while sometimes, through a great opening, rift, or break, you see a level expanse of gray or blue fields at an indefinite depth below. And all this time there is a noiseless cataract of snowy cloud-rocks falling around you--falling swiftly on all sides of the car, in great fleecy masses--in small snow-white and glistening fragments--and immense compound masses--all white, and soft, and swiftly rushing past you, giddily, and incessantly down, down, and all with the silence of a dream--strange, lustrous, majestic, incomprehensible.

Aeronauts, of late years, have become, in many instances, respectable and business-like, and not given to extravagant fictions about their voyages, which now, more generally, take the form of a not very lively log. But it used to be very different when the art was in its infancy, some thirty or forty years ago, and young balloonists indulged in romantic fancies. We do not believe that there was a direct intention to tell falsehoods, but that they often deceived themselves very amusingly. Thus, it has been asserted, that when you attained a great elevation, the air became so rarefied that you could not breathe, and that small objects, being thrown out of the balloon, could not fall, and stuck against the side of the car. Also, that wild birds, being taken up and suddenly let loose, could not fly properly, but returned immediately to the car for an explanation. One aeronaut declared that his head became so contracted by his great elevation, that his hat tumbled over his eyes, and persisted in resting on the bridge of his nose. This assertion was indignantly rebutted by another aeronaut of the same period, who declared that, on the contrary, the head expanded in proportion to the elevation; in proof of which he stated, that on his last ascent he went so high that his hat burst. Another of these romantic personages described a wonderful feat of skill and daring which he had performed up in the air. At an elevation of two miles, his balloon burst several degrees above "the equator" (meaning, above the middle region of the balloon), whereupon he crept up the lines that attached the car, until he reached the netting that inclosed the balloon; and up this netting he clambered, until he reached the aperture, into which he thrust--not his head--but his pocket handkerchief! Mr. Monck Mason, to whose "Aeronautica" we are indebted for the anecdote, gives eight different reasons to show the impossibility of any such feat having ever been performed in the air. One of these is highly graphic. The "performer" would change the line of gravitation by such an attempt: he would never be able to mount the sides, and would only be like the squirrel in its revolving cage. He would, however, pull the netting round--the spot where he clung to, ever remaining the lowest--until having reversed the machine, the balloon would probably make its _escape_, in an elongated shape, through the large interstices of that portion of the net-work which is just above the car, when the balloon is in its proper position! But the richest of all these romances is the following brief statement:--A scientific gentleman, well advanced in years (who had "probably witnessed the experiment of the restoration of a withered pear beneath the exhausted receiver of a pneumatic machine") was impressed with a conviction, on ascending to a considerable height in a balloon, that every line and wrinkle of his face had totally disappeared, owing, as he said, to the preternatural distension of his skin; and that, to the astonishment of his companion, he rapidly began to assume the delicate aspect and blooming appearance of his early youth!

These things are all self-delusions. A bit of paper or a handkerchief might cling to the outside of the car, but a penny-piece would, undoubtedly, fall direct to the earth. Wild birds do not return to the car, but descend in circles, till, passing through the clouds, they see whereabouts to go, and then they fly downward as usual. We have no difficulty in breathing; on the contrary, being "called upon," we sing a song. Our head does not contract, so as to cause our hat to extinguish our eyes and nose; neither does it expand to the size of a prize pumpkin. We see that it is impossible to climb up the netting of the balloon over-head, and so do not think of attempting it; neither do we find all the lines in our face getting filled up, and the loveliness of our "blushing morning" taking the place of a marked maturity. These fancies are not less ingenious and comical than that of the sailor who hit upon the means of using a balloon to make a rapid voyage to any part of the earth. "The earth spins round," said he, "at a great rate, don't it? Well, I'd go up two or three miles high in my balloon, and then 'lay to,' and when any place on the globe I wished to touch at, passed underneath me, down I'd drop upon it."

But we are still floating high in air. How do we feel all this time? "Calm, sir--calm and resigned." Yes, and more than this. After a little while, when you find nothing happens, and see nothing likely to happen (and you will more especially feel this under the careful conduct of the veteran Green), a delightful serenity takes the place of all other sensations--to which the extraordinary silence, as well as the pale beauty and floating hues that surround you, is chiefly attributable. The silence is perfect--a wonder and a rapture. We hear the ticking of our watches. Tick! tick!--or is it the beat of our own hearts? We are sure of the watch; and now we think we can hear both.

Two other sensations must, by no means, be forgotten. You become very cold, and desperately hungry. But you have got a warm outer coat, and traveling boots, and other valuable things, and you have not left behind you the pigeon-pie, the ham, cold beef, bottled ale and brandy.

Of the increased coldness which you feel on passing from a bright cloud into a dark one, the balloon is quite as sensitive as you can be; and, probably, much more so, for it produces an immediate change of altitude. The expansion and contraction which romantic gentlemen fancied took place in the size of their heads, does really take place in the balloon, according as it passes from a cloud of one temperature into that of another.

We are now nearly three miles high. Nothing is to be seen but pale air above--around--on all sides, with floating clouds beneath. How should you like to descend in a parachute?--to be dangled by a long line from the bottom of the car, and suddenly to be "let go," and to dip at once clean down through those gray-blue and softly rose-tinted clouds, skimming so gently beneath us? Not at all: oh, by no manner of means--thank you! Ah, you are thinking of the fate of poor Cocking, the enthusiast in parachutes, concerning whom, and his fatal "improvement," the public is satisfied that it knows every thing, from the one final fact--that he was killed. But there is something more than that in it, as we fancy.

Two words against parachutes. In the first place, there is no use to which, at present, they can be applied; and, in the second, they are so unsafe as to be likely, in all cases, to cost a life for each descent. In the concise words of Mr. Green, we should say--"the best parachute is a balloon; the others are bad things to have to deal with."

Mr. Cocking, as we have said, was an enthusiast in parachutes. He felt sure he had discovered a new, and the true, principle. All parachutes, before his day, had been constructed to descend in a concave form, like that of an open umbrella; the consequence of which was, that the parachute descended with a violent swinging from side to side, which sometimes threw the man in the basket in almost a horizontal position. Mr. Cocking conceived that the converse form; viz., an inverted cone (of large dimensions), would remedy this evil; and becoming convinced, we suppose, by some private experiments with models, he agreed to descend on a certain day. The time was barely adequate to his construction of the parachute, and did not admit of such actual experiments with a sheep, or pig, or other animal, as prudence would naturally have suggested. Besides the want of time, however, Cocking equally wanted prudence; he felt sure of his new principle; this new form of parachute was the hobby of his life, and up he went on the appointed day (for what aeronaut shall dare to "disappoint the Public?")--dangling by a rope, fifty feet long, from the bottom of the car of Mr. Green's great Nassau Balloon.

The large upper rim of the parachute, in imitation, we suppose, of the hollow bones of a bird, was made of hollow tin--a most inapplicable and brittle material; and besides this, it had two fractures. But Mr. Cocking was not to be deterred; convinced of the truth of his discovery, up he would go. Mr. Green was not equally at ease, and positively refused to touch the latch of the "liberating iron," which was to detach the parachute from the balloon. Mr. Cocking arranged to do this himself, for which means he procured a piece of new cord of upward of fifty feet in length, which was fastened to the latch above in the car, and led down to his hand in the basket of the parachute. Up they went to a great height, and disappeared among the clouds.

Mr. Green had taken up one friend with him in the car; and, knowing well what would happen the instant so great a weight as the parachute and man were detached, he had provided a small balloon inside the car, filled with atmospheric air, with two mouth-pieces. They were now upward of a mile high.

"How do you feel, Mr. Cocking?" called out Green. "Never better, or more delighted in my life," answered Cocking. Though hanging at fifty feet distance, in the utter silence of that region, every accent was easily heard. "But, perhaps you will alter your mind?" suggested Green. "By no means," cried Cocking; "but, how high are we?"--"Upward of a mile."--"I must go higher, Mr. Green--I must be taken up two miles before I liberate the parachute." Now, Mr. Green, having some regard for himself and his friend, as well as for poor Cocking, was determined not to do any such thing. After some further colloquy, therefore, during which Mr. Green threw out a little more ballast, and gained a little more elevation, he finally announced that he could go no higher, as he now needed all the ballast he had for their own safety in the balloon. "Very well," said Cocking, "if you really will not take me any higher, I shall say good-by."

At this juncture Green called out, "Now, Mr. Cocking, if your mind at all misgives you about your parachute, I have provided a tackle up here, which I can lower down to you, and then wind you up into the car by my little grapnel-iron windlass, and nobody need be the wiser."--"Certainly not," cried Cocking; "thank you all the same. I shall now make ready to pull the latch-cord." Finding he was determined, Green and his friend both crouched down in the car, and took hold of the mouth-pieces of their little air-balloon. "All ready?" called out Cocking. "All ready!" answered the veteran aeronaut above. "Good-night, Mr. Green!"--"Good-night, Mr. Cocking!"--"A pleasant voyage to you, Mr. Green--good-night!"

There was a perfect silence--a few seconds of intense suspense--and then the aeronauts in the car felt a jerk upon the latch. It had not been forcible enough to open the liberating iron. Cocking had failed to detach the parachute. Another pause of horrid silence ensued.

Then came a strong jerk upon the latch, and in an instant, the great balloon shot upward with a side-long swirl, like a wounded serpent. They saw their flag clinging flat down against the flag-staff, while a torrent of gas rushed down upon them through the aperture in the balloon above their heads, and continued to pour down into the car for a length of time that would have suffocated them but for the judgmatic provision of the little balloon of atmospheric air, to the mouth-pieces of which their own mouths were fixed, as they crouched down at the bottom of the car. Of Mr. Cocking's fate, or the result of his experiment, they had not the remotest knowledge. They only knew the parachute was gone!

The termination of Mr. Cocking's experiment is well known. For a few seconds he descended quickly, but steadily, and without swinging--as he had designed, and insisted would be the result--when, suddenly, those who were watching with glasses below, saw the parachute lean on one side--then give a lurch to the other--then the large upper circle collapsed (the disastrous hollow tin-tubing having evidently broken up), and the machine entered the upper part of a cloud: in a few more seconds it was seen to emerge from the lower part of the cloud--the whole thing turned over--and then, like a closed-up broken umbrella, it shot straight down to the earth. The unfortunate, and, as most people regard him, the foolish enthusiast, was found still in the basket in which he reached the earth. He was quite insensible, but uttered a moan; and in ten minutes he was dead.

Half a word in favor of parachutes. True, they are of no use "at present;" but who knows of what use such things may one day be? As to Mr. Cocking's invention, the disaster seems to be attributable to errors of detail, rather than of principle. Mr. Green is of opinion, from an examination of the _broken_ latch-cord, combined with other circumstances, which would require diagrams to describe satisfactorily, that after Mr. Cocking had failed to liberate himself the first time, he twisted the cord round his hand to give a good jerk, forgetting that in doing so, he united himself to the balloon above, as it would be impossible to disengage his hand in time. By this means he was violently jerked into his parachute, which broke the latch-cord; but the tin tube was not able to bear such a shock, and this caused so serious a fracture, in addition to its previous unsound condition, that it soon afterward collapsed. This leads one to conjecture that had the outer rim been made of strong wicker-work, or whale-bone, so as to be somewhat pliable, and that Mr. Green had liberated the parachute, instead of Mr. Cocking, it would have descended to the earth with perfect safety--skimming the air, instead of the violent oscillations of the old form of this machine. We conclude, however, with Mr. Green's laconic--that the safest parachute is a balloon.

But here we are--still above the clouds! We may assume that you would not like to be "let off" in a parachute, even on the improved principle; we will therefore prepare for descending with the balloon. This is a work requiring great skill and care to effect safely, so as to alight on a suitable piece of ground, and without any detriment to the voyagers, the balloon, gardens, crops, &c.

The valve-line is pulled!--out rushes the gas from the top of the balloon--you see the flag fly upward--down through the clouds you sink faster and faster--lower and lower. Now you begin to see dark masses below--there's the Old Earth again!--the dark masses now discover themselves to be little forests, little towns, tree-tops, house-tops--out goes a shower of sand from the ballast-bags, and our descent becomes slower--another shower, and up we mount again, in search of a better spot to alight upon. Our guardian aeronaut gives each of us a bag of ballast, and directs us to throw out its contents when he calls each of us by name, and in such quantities only as he specifies. Moreover, no one is suddenly to leap out of the balloon, when it touches the earth; partly because it may cost him his own life or limbs, and partly because it would cause the balloon to shoot up again with those who remained, and so make them lose the advantage of the good descent already gained, if nothing worse happened. Meantime, the grapnel-iron has been lowered, and dangling down at the end of a strong rope of a hundred and fifty feet long. It is now trailing over the ground. Three bricklayers' laborers are in chase of it. It catches upon a bank--it tears its way through. Now the three bricklayers are joined by a couple of fellows in smock-frocks, a policeman, five boys, followed by three little girls, and, last of all, a woman with a child in her arms, all running, shouting, screaming, and yelling, as the grapnel-iron and rope go trailing and bobbing over the ground before them. At last the iron catches upon a hedge--grapples with its roots; the balloon is arrested, but struggles hard; three or four men seize the rope, and down we are hauled, and held fast till the aerial Monster, with many a gigantic heave and pant, surrenders at discretion, and begins to resign its inflated robust proportions. It subsides in irregular waves--sinks, puffs, flattens--dies to a mere shriveled skin; and being folded up, like Peter Schlemil's shadow, is put into a bag, and stowed away at the bottom of the little car it so recently overshadowed with its buoyant enormity.

We are glad it is all over; delighted, and edified as we have been, we are very glad to take our supper at the solid, firmly-fixed oak table of a country inn, with a brick wall and a barn-door for our only prospect, as the evening closes in. Of etherial currents, and the scenery of infinite space, we have had enough for the present.

Touching the accidents which occur to balloons, we feel persuaded that in the great majority of cases they are caused by inexperience, ignorance, rashness, folly, or--more commonly than all--the necessities attending a "show." Once "announced" for a certain day, or _night_ (an abominable practice, which ought to be prevented)--and, whatever the state of the wind and weather, and whatever science and the good sense of an experienced aeronaut may know and suggest of imprudence--up the poor man must go, simply because the public have paid their money to see him do it. He must go, or he will be ruined.

But nothing can more strikingly display the comparative safety which is attained by great knowledge, foresight, and care, than the fact of the veteran, Charles Green, being now in the four hundred and eighty-ninth year of his balloonical age; having made that number of ascents, and taken up one thousand four hundred and thirteen persons, with no fatal accident to himself, or to them, and seldom with any damage to his balloons.

Nevertheless, from causes over which he had no control, our veteran has had two or three "close shaves." On one occasion he was blown out to sea with the Great Nassau balloon. Observing some vessels, from which he knew he should obtain assistance, he commenced a rapid descent in the direction of the Nore. The valve was opened, and the car first struck the water some two miles north of Sheerness. But the wind was blowing fresh, and, by reason of the buoyancy of the balloon, added to the enormous surface it presented to the wind, they were drawn through the water at a speed which set defiance to all the vessels and boats that were now out on the chase. It should be mentioned, that the speed was so vehement, and the car so un-boat-like, that the aeronauts (Mr. Green and Mr. Rush, of Elsenham Hall, Essex) were dragged through, that is _under_, every wave they encountered, and had a good prospect of being drowned upon the surface. Seeing that the balloon could not be overtaken, Mr. Green managed to let go his large grapnel-iron, which shortly afterward took effect at the bottom, where, by a fortunate circumstance (for them) there was a sunken wreck, in which the iron took hold. The progress of the balloon being thus arrested, a boat soon came up, and relieved the aeronauts; but no boat could venture to approach the monster balloon, which still continued to struggle, and toss, and bound from side to side. It would have capsized any boat that came near it, in an instant. It was impossible to do any thing with it till Mr. Green obtained assistance from a revenue cutter, from which he solicited the services of an armed boat, and the crew fired muskets with ball-cartridge into the rolling Monster, until she gradually sank down flat upon the waves, but not until she had been riddled with sixty-two bullet holes.

So much for perils by sea; but the greatest of all the veteran's dangers was caused by a diabolical trick, the perpetrator of which was never discovered. It was as follows:

In the year 1832, on ascending from Cheltenham, one of those malicious wretches who may be regarded as half fool and half devil, contrived partially to sever the ropes of the car, in such a manner as not to be perceived before the balloon had quited the ground; when receiving, for the first time, the whole weight of the contents, they suddenly gave way. Every thing fell out of the car, the aeronauts just having time to secure a painful and precarious attachment to the hoop. Lightened of its load, the balloon, with frightful velocity, immediately commenced its upward course, and ere Mr. Green could obtain possession of the valve-string, which the first violence of the accident had placed beyond his reach, attained an altitude of upward of ten thousand feet. Their situation was terrific. Clinging to the hoop with desperate retention, not daring to trust any portion of their weight upon the margin of the car, that still remained suspended by a single cord beneath their feet, lest that also might give way, and they should be deprived of their only remaining counterpoise, all they could do was to resign themselves to chance, and endeavor to retain their hold until the exhaustion of the gas should have determined the career of the balloon. To complete the horrors of their situation, the net-work, drawn awry by the awkward and unequal disposition of the weight, began to break about the upper part of the machine--mesh after mesh giving way, with a succession of reports like those of a pistol; while, through the opening thus created, the balloon began rapidly to ooze out, and swelling as it escaped beyond the fissure, presented the singular appearance of a huge hour-glass floating in the upper regions of the sky. After having continued for a considerable length of time in this condition, every moment expecting to be precipitated to the earth by the final detachment of the balloon, at length they began slowly to descend. When they had arrived within about a hundred feet from the ground, the event they had anticipated at length occurred; the balloon, rushing through the opening in the net-work with a tremendous explosion, suddenly made its escape, and they fell to the earth in a state of insensibility, from which with great difficulty, they were eventually recovered.

Apart from the question of dangers, which science, as we have seen, can reduce to a minimum--and apart also from the question of practical utility, of which we do not see much at present, yet of which we know not what may be derived in future--what are the probabilities of improvement in the art of ballooning, aerostation, or the means of traveling through the air in a given direction?

The conditions seem to be these. In order to fly in the air, and steer in a given direction during a given period, it is requisite to take up a buoyancy and a power which shall be greater (and continuously so during the voyage) than needful to sustain its own mechanical weight, together with that of the aeronauts and their various appurtenances; and as much also in excess of these requisitions as shall overcome the adverse action of the wind upon the resisting surface presented by the machine. At present no such power is known which can be used in combination with a balloon, or other gas machine. If we could condense electricity, then the thing might be done; other subtle powers may also be discovered with the progress of science, but we must wait for them before we can fairly make definite voyages in the air, and reduce human flying to a practical utility, or a safe and rational pleasure.

MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.[14]