PART I.

At this present moment of time I am what the doctors call an interesting case, and am to be found in bed No. 10, Ward II. Massachusetts General Hospital. I am told that I have what is called Addison's Disease,--and that it is this pleasing malady which causes me to be covered with large blotches of a dark mulatto tint, such as I suppose would make me peculiarly acceptable to a Massachusetts constituency, if my legs were only strong enough to enable me to run for Congress. However, it is a rather grim subject to joke about, because, if I believe the doctor who comes around every day and thumps me, and listens to my chest with as much pleasure as if I was music all through,--I say, if I believed him, I should suppose I was going to die. The fact is, I don't believe him at all. Some of these days I shall take a turn and get about again, but meanwhile it is rather dull for a stirring, active person to have to lie still and watch myself getting big brown and yellow spots all over me, like a map that has taken to growing.

The man on my right has consumption, smells of cod-liver oil, and coughs all night. The man on my left is a Down-Easter, with a liver which has struck work; looks like a human pumpkin; and how he contrives to whittle jack-straws all day, and eat as he does, I can't understand. I have tried reading and tried whittling, but they don't either of them satisfy me, so that yesterday I concluded to ask the doctor if he could n't suggest some other amusement.

I waited until he had gone through the ward, and then I seized my chance, and asked him to stop a moment.

"Well," said he, "what do you want?"

"Something to do, Doctor."

He thought a little, and then replied: "I'll tell you what to do; I think if you were to write out a plain account of your life, it would be pretty well worth reading, and perhaps would serve to occupy you for a few days at least. If half of what you told me last week be true, you must be about as clever a scamp as there is to be met with, and I suppose you would just as lief put it on paper as talk it."

"Pretty nearly," said I; "I think I will try it, Doctor."

After he left I lay awhile thinking over the matter. I knew well enough that I was what the world calls a scamp, and I knew also that I had got little good out of the fact. If a man is what people call virtuous, and fails in life, he gets credit at least for the virtue; but when a man is a rascal, and breaks down at the trade, somehow or other people don't credit him with the intelligence he has put into the business,--and this I call hard. I never had much experience of virtue being its own reward; but I do know that, when rascality is left with nothing but the contemplation of itself for comfort, it is by no means refreshing. Now this is just my present position; and if I did not recall with satisfaction the energy and skill with which I did my work, I should be nothing but disgusted at the melancholy spectacle of my failure. I suppose that I shall at least find occupation in reviewing all this, and I think, therefore, that I shall try to give a plain and straightforward account of the life I have led, and the various devices by which I have sought to get my share of the money of my countrymen.

I want it to be clearly understood, at the beginning, that in what I may have to say, I shall stick severely to the truth, without any overstrained regard for my neighbors' feelings. In fact, I shall have some little satisfaction when I do come a little heavy on corn or bunyon, because for the past two years the whole world appears to have been engaged in trotting over mine with as much certainty as if there were no other standing-room left in creation.

I shall be rather brief about my early life, which possesses little or no interest.

I was born in Newark, New Jersey, and am therefore what those dreary Pennsylvanians call a Jersey Yankee, and sometimes a Spaniard, as pleases them best. My father was a respectable physician in large practice, too busy to look after me. My mother died too early for me to remember her at all. An old aunt who took her place as our housekeeper indulged me to the utmost, and I thus acquired a taste for having my own way and the best of everything, which has stuck to me through life. I do not remember when it was that I first began to pilfer, but it must have been rather early in life. Indeed, I believe I may say that, charitably speaking, which is the only way to speak of one's self, I was what the doctors call a kleptomaniac,--which means that, when I could not get a thing in any other way, I took it. As to education, I took very little of that, but I had, notwithstanding, a liking for reading, and especially for light literature. At the age of sixteen I was sent to Nassau Hall, best known as Princeton College; but, for reasons which I need not state very fully, I did not remain beyond the close of the Junior year. The causes which led to my removal were not the usual foolish scrapes in which college lads indulge. Indeed, I never have been guilty of any of those wanton pieces of wickedness which injure the feelings of others while they lead to no useful result. When I left to return home, I set myself seriously to reflect upon the necessity of greater caution in following out my inclinations, and from that time forward I have steadily avoided the vulgar vice of directly possessing myself of objects to which I could show no legal title. My father was justly indignant at the results of my college career; and, according to my aunt, his sorrow had some effect in shortening his life, which ended rather suddenly within the year.

I was now about nineteen years old, and, as I remember, a middle-sized, well-built young fellow, with large, dark eyes, a slight mustache, and, I have been told, with very good manners, and a somewhat humorous turn. Besides these advantages, my guardian held in trust for me about three thousand dollars. After some consultation between us, it was resolved that I should study medicine.

Accordingly I set out for Philadelphia, with many good counsels from my aunt and guardian. I look back upon this period as a turning-point in my life. I had seen enough of the world already to know that, if you can succeed honestly, it is by far the pleasantest way; and I really believe that, if I had not been endowed with such a fatal liking for all the good things of life, I might have lived along as reputably as most men. This, however, is, and always has been, my difficulty, and I suppose that I am not therefore altogether responsible for the incidents to which it gave rise. Most men also have some ties in life. I had only one, a little sister, now about ten years of age, for whom I have always had more or less affection, but who was of course too much my junior to exert over me that beneficial control which has saved so many men from evil courses. She cried a good deal when we parted, and this, I think, had a very good effect in strengthening my resolution to do nothing which could get me into trouble.

The janitor of the College to which I went directed me to a boarding-house, where I engaged a small, third-story room, which I afterwards shared with Mr. Chaucer of Jawjaw, as he called the State which he had the honor to represent.

In this very remarkable abode I spent the next two winters; and finally graduated, along with two hundred more, at the close of my two years of study. I should also have been one year in a physician's office as a student, but this regulation is very easily evaded. As to my studies, the less said the better. I attended the quizzes, as they call them, pretty closely, and, being of quick and retentive memory, was thus enabled to dispense, for the most part, with the six or seven lectures a day which duller men found it necessary to follow.

Dissecting struck me as a rather nasty business for a gentleman, and on this account I did just as little as was absolutely essential. In fact, if a man takes his teckers, and pays the dissection fees, nobody troubles himself as to whether or not he does any more than this. A like evil exists as to graduation; whether you merely squeeze through, or pass with credit, is a thing which is not made public, so that I had absolutely nothing to stimulate my ambition.

The astonishment with which I learned of my success was shared by the numerous Southern gentlemen who darkened the floors, and perfumed with tobacco the rooms of our boarding-house. In my companions, during the time of my studies so called, as in other matters in life, I was somewhat unfortunate. All of them were Southern gentlemen, with more money than I. They all carried great sticks, usually sword-canes, and most of them bowie-knives; also they delighted in dress-coats, long hair, felt hats, and very tight boots, swore hideously, and glared at every woman they met as they strolled along with their arms affectionately over the shoulders of their companion. They hated the "Nawth," and cursed the Yankees, and honestly believed that the leanest of them was a match for any half-dozen of the bulkiest of Northerners. I must also do them the justice to say that they were quite as ready to fight as to brag, which, by the way, is no meagre statement. With these gentry, for whom I retain a respect which has filled me with regret at the recent course of events, I spent a good deal of my large leisure. We were what the more respectable students of both sections called a hard crowd; but what we did, or how we did it, little concerns us here, except that, owing to my esteem for chivalric blood and breeding, I was led into many practices and excesses which cost my guardian much distress and myself a good deal of money.

At the close of my career as a student, I found myself aged twenty-one years, and owner of twelve hundred dollars,--the rest of my small estate having disappeared variously within the last two years. After my friends had gone to their homes in the South, I began to look about me for an office, and finally settled upon a very good room in one of the down-town localities of the Quaker City. I am not specific as to number and street, for reasons which may hereafter appear. I liked the situation on various accounts. It had been occupied by a doctor; the terms were reasonable; and it lay on the skirts of a good neighborhood; while below it lived a motley population, amongst whom I expected to get my first patients and such fees as were to be had. Into this new home I moved my medical text-books, a few bones, and myself. Also I displayed in the window a fresh sign, upon which was distinctly to be read:--

"DR. ELIAS SANDCRAFT. Office hours, 7 to 9 A. M., 3 to 6 P. M., 7 to 9 P. M."

I felt now that I had done my fair share towards attaining a virtuous subsistence, and so I waited tranquilly, and without undue enthusiasm, to see the rest of the world do its part in the matter. Meanwhile I read up on all sorts of imaginable cases, stayed at home all through my office hours, and at intervals explored the strange section of the town which lay to the south of my office. I do not suppose there is anything like it elsewhere. It was then, and still is, a nest of endless grog-shops, brothels, slop-shops, and low lodging-houses. You may dine here for a penny off of soup made from the refuse meats of the rich, gathered at back gates by a horde of half-naked children, who all tell varieties of one woful tale. Here, too, you may be drunk at five cents, and lodge for three, with men, women, and children of all colors lying about you. It is this hideous mixture of black and white and yellow wretchedness which makes the place so peculiar. The blacks predominate, and have mostly that swollen, reddish, dark skin, the sign in this race of habitual drunkenness. Of course only the lowest whites are here,--rag-pickers, pawnbrokers, old-clothes-men, thieves, and the like. All of this, as it came before me, I viewed with mingled disgust and philosophy. I hated filth, but I understood that society has to stand on somebody, and I was only glad that I was not one of the undermost and worst-squeezed bricks.

You will hardly believe me, but I had waited a month without having been called upon by a single patient. At last the policeman on the beat brought me a fancy man, with a dog bite. This patient recommended me to his brother, the keeper of a small pawnbroking shop, and by very slow degrees I began to get stray patients who were too poor to indulge in uptown doctors. I found the police very useful acquaintances; and, by a drink or a cigar now and then, I got most of the cases of cut heads and the like at the next station-house. These, however, were the aristocrats of my practice; the bulk of my patients were soap-fat-men, rag-pickers, oystermen, hose-house bummers, and worse, with other and nameless trades, men and women, white, black, or mulatto. How they got the levies and quarters with which I was reluctantly paid, I do not know; that indeed was none of my business. They expected to pay, and they came to me in preference to the dispensary doctor two or three squares away, who seemed to me to live in the lanes and alleys about us. Of course he received no pay except experience, since the dispensaries in the Quaker City, as a rule, do not give salaries to their doctors; and the vilest of the poor will prefer a pay doctor, if he can get one, to one of these disinterested gentlemen who are at everybody's call and beck. I am told that most young doctors do a large amount of poor practice, as it is called; but, for my own part, I think it better for both parties when the doctor insists upon some compensation being made to him. This has been usually my own custom, and I have not found reason to regret it.

Notwithstanding my strict attention to my own interests, I have been rather sorely dealt with by fate, upon several occasions, where, so far as I could see, I was vigilantly doing everything in my power to keep myself out of trouble or danger. I may as well relate one of them, merely as an illustration of how little value a man's intellect may be, when fate and the prejudices of the mass of men are against him.

One evening late, I myself answered a ring at the bell, and found a small black boy on the steps, a shoeless, hatless little wretch, with curled darkness for hair, and teeth like new tombstones. It was pretty cold, and he was relieving his feet by standing first on one and then on the other. He did not wait for me to speak.

"Hi, sah, Missy Barker she say to come quick away, sah, to Numbah 709 Bedford Street."

The locality did not look like pay, but it was hard to say in this quarter, because sometimes you found a well-to-do "brandy-snifter,"--local for gin-shop,--or a hard-working "leather-jeweller,"--ditto for shoemaker,--with next door, in a house no better or worse, dozens of human rats for whom every police trap in the city was constantly set.

With a doubt, then, in my mind as to whether I should find a good patient or some mean nigger, I sought out the place to which I had been directed. I did not like its looks; but I blundered up an alley, and into a back room, where I fell over somebody, and was cursed and told to lie down and keep easy, or somebody, meaning the man stumbled over, would make me. At last I lit on a staircase which led into the alley, and, after some inquiry, got as high as the garret. People hereabouts did not know one another, or did not want to know, so that it was of little avail to ask questions. At length I saw a light through the cracks in the attic door, and walked in. To my amazement, the first person I saw was a woman of about thirty-five, in pearl-gray Quaker dress,--one of your calm, good-looking people. She was seated on a stool beside a straw mattress, upon which lay a black woman. There were three others crowded close around a small stove, which was red-hot,--an unusual spectacle in this street. Altogether a most nasty den.

As I came in, the little Quaker woman got up, and said, "I took the liberty of sending for thee to look at this poor woman. I am afraid she has the small-pox. Will thee be so kind as to look at her?" And with this she held down the candle towards the bed.

"Good gracious!" said I hastily, seeing how the creature was speckled, "I did n't understand this, or I would not have come. Best let her alone, miss," I added, "there 's nothing to be done for these cases."

Upon my word, I was astonished at the little woman's indignation. She said just those things which make you feel as if somebody had been calling you names or kicking you. Was I a doctor? Was I a man? and so on. However, I never did fancy the small-pox, and what could a fellow get by doctoring wretches like these? So I held my tongue and went away. About a week afterwards, I met Evans, the Dispensary man.

"Halloa!" says he. "Doctor, you made a nice mistake about that darky at No. 709 Bedford Street the other night. She had nothing but measles after all."

"Of course I knew," said I, laughing; "but you don't think I was going into dispensary trash, do you?"

"I should think not," says Evans.

I learned afterwards that this Miss Barker had taken an absurd fancy to the man because he had doctored the darky, and would not let the Quakeress pay him. The end was, that when I wanted to get a vacancy in the Southwark Dispensary, where they do pay the doctors, Miss Barker was malignant enough to take advantage of my oversight by telling the whole story to the board; so that Evans got in, and I was beaten.

You may be pretty sure that I found rather slow the kind of practice I have described, and began to look about for chances of bettering myself. In this sort of location these came up now and then; and as soon as I got to be known as a reliable man, I began to get the peculiar sort of practice I wanted. Notwithstanding all my efforts, however, I found myself at the close of three years with all my means spent, and just able to live meagrely from hand to mouth, which by no means suited a person of my luxurious turn. Six months went by, and I was worse off than ever,--two months in arrears of rent, and numerous other debts to cigar-shops and liquor-dealers. Now and then, some good job, such as a burglar with a cut head, helped me up for a while; but on the whole, I was like Slider Downeyhylle in poor Neal's Charcoal Sketches, and "kept going downer and downer the more I tried not to." Something must be done.

One night, as I was debating with myself as to how I was to improve my position, I heard a knock on my shutter, and, going to the door, let in a broad-shouldered man with a white face and a great hooked nose. He wore a heavy black beard and mustache, and looked like the wolf in the pictures of Red Riding-Hood which I had seen as a child.

"Your name 's Sandcraft?" said the man, shaking the snow over everything. "Set down, want to talk to you."

"That's my name. What can I do for you?" said I.

The man looked around the room rather scornfully, at the same time throwing back his coat, and displaying a red neckerchief and a huge garnet pin. "Guess you 're not overly rich," he said.

"Not especially," said I.

"Know--Simon Stagers?"

"Can't say I do," said I. Simon was a burglar who had blown off two fingers when mining a safe, and whom I had attended while he was hiding.

"Can't say you do," says the wolf.

"Well, you can lie, and no mistake. Come now, Doctor, Simon says you 're safe, and I want to do a leetle plain talk with you." With this he laid ten eagles on the table; I put out my hand instinctively.

"Let 'em alone," cried the man sharply. "They 're easy earned, and ten more like 'em."

"For doing what?" said I.

The man paused a moment, looked around him, eyed me furtively, and finally loosened his cravat with a hasty pull. "You 're the coroner," said he.

"I! What do you mean?"

"Yes, you,--the coroner, don't you understand?" and so saying he shoved the gold pieces towards me.

"Very good," said I, "we will suppose I 'm the coroner."

"And being the coroner," said he, "you get this note, which requests you to call at No. 9 Blank Street to examine the body of a young man which is supposed--only supposed, you see--to have--well, to have died under suspicious circumstances."

"Go on," said I.

"No," he returned, "not till I know how you like it. Stagers and another knows it; and it would n't be very safe for you to split, besides not making nothing out of it; but what I say is this. Do you like the business of coroner?"

Now I did not like it, but two hundred in gold was life to me just then; so I said, "Let me hear the whole of it first."

"That 's square enough," said the man; "my wife 's got"--correcting himself with a little shiver--"my wife had a brother that 's been cuttin' up rough, because, when I 'd been up too late, I handled her a leetle hard now and again. About three weeks ago, he threatened to fetch the police on me for one or two little things Stagers and I done together. Luckily, he fell sick with a typhoid just then; but he made such a thunderin' noise about opening safes, and what he done, and I done, and so on, that I did n't dare to have any one about him. When he began to mend, I gave him a little plain talk about this business of threatening to bring the police on us, and next day I caught him a saying something to my wife about it. The end of it was, he was took worse next morning, and--well he died yesterday. Now what does his sister do, but writes a note, and gives it to a boy in the alley to put in the post. Luckily, Stagers happened to be round; and after the boy got away a bit, Bill bribes him with a quarter to give him the note, which was n't no less than a request to the coroner to come to our house to-morrow and make an examination, as foul play was suspected."

Here he paused. As for myself, I was cold all over. I was afraid to go on, and afraid to go back, besides which I did not doubt that there was a good deal of money in the case. "Of course," said I, "it's all nonsense; only I suppose you don't want the officers about, and a fuss, and that sort of thing."

"Exactly," said my friend, "you 're the coroner; you take this note and come to my house. Says you, 'Mrs. File, are you the woman that wrote this note? because in that case I must examine the body.'"

"I see," said I; "she need n't know who I am, or anything else. But if I tell her it's all right, do you think she won't want to know why there ain't a jury, and so on?"

"Bless you," said the man, "the girl is n't over seventeen, and does n't know no more than her baby."

"I 'll do it," said I, suddenly, for, as I saw, it involved no sort of risk; "but I must have three hundred dollars."

"And fifty," added the wolf, "if you do it well."

With this the man buttoned about him a shaggy gray overcoat, and took his leave without a single word in addition.

For the first time in my life I failed that night to sleep. I thought to myself at last that I would get up early, pack a few clothes, and escape, leaving my books to pay, as they might, my arrears of rent. Looking out of the window, however, in the morning, I saw Stagers prowling about the opposite pavement, and, as the only exit except the street door was an alleyway, which opened alongside of the front of the house, I gave myself up for lost. About ten o'clock I took my case of instruments, and started for File's house, followed, as I too well understood, by Stagers.

I knew the house, which was in a small street, by its closed windows and the craped bell, which I shuddered as I touched. However, it was too late to draw back, and I therefore inquired for Mrs. File. A young and haggard-looking woman came down, and led me into a small parlor, for whose darkened light I was thankful enough.

"Did you write me this note?" said I.

"I did," said the woman, "if you 're the coroner. Joe, he 's my husband, he 's gone out to see about the funeral. I wish it was his, I do."

"What do you suspect?" said I.

"I 'll tell you," she returned, in a whisper. "I think he was made away with. I think there was foul play. I think he was poisoned. That 's what I think."

"I hope you may be mistaken," said I. "Suppose you let me see the body."

"You shall see it," she replied; and, following her, I went up stairs to a front chamber, where I found the corpse.

"Get it over soon," said the woman, with a strange firmness. "If there ain't no murder been done, I shall have to run for it. If there is," and her face set hard, "I guess I 'll stay." With this she closed the door, and left me with the dead.

If I had known what was before me, I never should have gone into the thing at all. It looked a little better when I had opened a window, and let in plenty of light; for, although I was, on the whole, far less afraid of dead than living men, I had an absurd feeling that I was doing this dead man a distinct wrong, as if it mattered to the dead, after all. When the affair was over, I thought more of the possible consequences than of its relation to the dead man himself; but do as I would at the time, I was in a ridiculous tremor, and especially when, in going through the forms of a _post-mortem_ dissection, I had to make the first cut through the skin. Of course, I made no examination of the internal organs. I wanted to know as little as possible about them, and to get done as soon as I could. Unluckily, however, the walls of the stomach had softened and given way, so that I could not help seeing, among the escaped contents of the stomach, numerous grains of a white powder, which I hastened to conceal from my sight by rapidly sewing up the incisions which I had made.

I am free to confess now that I was careful not to uncover the man's face, and that when it was over I backed to the door, and hastily escaped from the room. On the stairs opposite to me Mrs. File was seated, with her bonnet on, and a small bundle in her hand.

"Well," said she, rising as she spoke, and with a certain eagerness in her tones, "what killed him? Was it arsenic?"

"Arsenic, my good woman!" said I; "when a man has typhoid fever, he don't need poison to kill him."

"And you mean to say he was n't poisoned," said she, with more than a trace of disappointment in her voice,--"not poisoned at all?"

"No more than you are," said I. "If I had found any signs of foul play, I should have had a regular inquest. As it is, the less said about it the better; and the fact is, it would have been much wiser to have kept quiet at the beginning. I can't understand why you should have troubled me about it at all."

"Neither I would," said she, "if I had n't been pretty sure. I guess now the sooner I leave, the better for me."

"As to that," I returned, "it is none of my business; but you may rest certain that you are mistaken about the cause of your brother's death."

As I left the house, whom should I meet but Dr. Evans. "Why, halloa!" said he; "called you in, have they? Who 's sick?"

You may believe I was scared. "Mrs. File," said I, remembering with horror that I had forgotten to ask whether at any time the man had had a doctor.

"Bad lot," returned Evans; "I was sent for to see the brother when he was as good as dead."

"As bad as dead," I retorted, with a sickly effort at a joke. "What killed him?"

"I suppose one of the ulcers gave way, and that he died of the consequences. Perforation, you know, and that sort of thing. I thought of asking File for a _post_, but I did n't."

"Wish you luck of them. Good-by."

I was greatly alarmed at this new incident, but my fears were somewhat quieted that evening when Stagers and the wolf appeared with the remainder of the money, and I learned that Mrs. File had fled from her home, and, as File thought likely, from the city also. A few months later, File himself disappeared, and Stagers found his way into the Penitentiary.

I felt, for my own part, that I had been guilty of more than one mistake, and that I had displayed throughout a want of intelligence for which I came near being punished very severely. I should have made proper inquiries before venturing on a matter so dangerous, and I ought also to have got a good fee from Mrs. File on account of my services as coroner. It served me, however, as a good lesson, but it was several months before I felt quite easy in mind. Meanwhile, money became scarce once more, and I was driven to my wit's end to devise how I should continue to live as I had done. I tried, among other plans, that of keeping certain pills and other medicines, which I sold to my patients; but on the whole I found it better to send all my prescriptions to one druggist, who charged the patient ten or twenty per cent over the correct price, and handed this amount to me.

In some cases I am told the percentage is supposed to be a donation on the part of the apothecary; but I rather fancy the patient pays for it in the end. It is one of the absurd vagaries of the profession to discountenance the practice I have described, but I wish, for my part, I had never done anything worse or more dangerous. Of course it inclines a doctor to change his medicines a good deal, and to order them in large quantities, which is occasionally annoying to the poor; yet, as I have always observed, there is no poverty so painful as your own, so that in a case of doubt I prefer equally to distribute pecuniary suffering among many, rather than to concentrate it on myself.

About six months after the date of my rather annoying adventure, an incident occurred which altered somewhat, and for a time improved, my professional position. During my morning office-hour an old woman came in, and, putting down a large basket, wiped her face with a yellow cotton handkerchief first, and afterwards with the corner of her apron. Then she looked around uneasily, got up, settled her basket on her arm with a jerk, which decided the future of an egg or two, and remarked briskly, "Don't see no little bottles about; got to the wrong stall I guess. You ain't no homoeopath doctor, are you?"

With great presence of mind, I replied, "Well, ma'am, that depends upon what you want. Some of my patients like one, and some like the other." I was about to add, "You pays your money and you takes your choice," but thought better of it, and held my peace, refraining from classical quotation.

"Being as that 's the case," said the old lady, "I 'll just tell you my symptoms. You said you give either kind of medicine, did n't you?"

"Just so," I replied.

"Clams or oysters, whichever opens most lively, as my Joe says. Perhaps you know Joe,--tends the oyster-stand at stall No. 9."

No, I did not know Joe; but what were the symptoms?

They proved to be numerous, and included a stunnin' in the head, and a misery in the side, and a goin' on with bokin' after victuals.

I proceeded of course to apply a stethoscope over her ample bosom, though what I heard on this or similar occasions I should find it rather difficult to state. I remember well my astonishment in one instance, where, having unconsciously applied my instrument over a large chronometer in the watch-fob of a sea-captain, I concluded for a brief space that he was suffering from a rather remarkable displacement of the heart. As to the old lady, whose name was Checkers, and who kept an apple-stall near by, I told her that I was out of pills just then, but would have plenty next day. Accordingly I proceeded to invest a small amount at a place called a Homoeopathic Pharmacy, which I remember amused me immensely.

A stout little German, with great silver spectacles, sat behind a counter containing numerous jars of white powders labelled concisely, Lach., Led., Onis., Op., Puls., etc., while behind him were shelves filled with bottles of what looked like minute white shot.

"I want some homoeopathic medicine," said I.

"Vat kindst?" said my friend. "Vat you vants to cure?"

I explained at random that I wished to treat diseases in general.

"Vell, ve gifs you a case, mit a pooks";--and thereupon produced a large box containing bottles of small pills and powders, labelled variously with the names of diseases, so that all you required was to use the headache or colic bottle in order to meet the needs of those particular maladies.

I was struck at first with the exquisite simplicity of this arrangement; but before purchasing, I happened luckily to turn over the leaves of a book, in two volumes, which lay on the counter, and was labelled, "Jahr--Manual." Opening at page 310, Vol. I., I lit upon Lachesis, which, on inquiry, proved to be snake-venom. This Mr. Jahr stated to be indicated in upwards of a hundred maladies. At once it occurred to me that Lach. was the medicine for my money, and that it was quite needless to waste cash on the box. I therefore bought a small jar of Lach. and a lot of little pills, and started for home.

My old woman proved a fast friend; and as she sent me numerous patients, I by and by altered my sign to "Homoeopathic Physician and Surgeon," whatever that may mean, and was regarded by my medical brethren as a lost sheep, and by the little-pill doctors as one who had seen the error of his ways.

In point of fact, my new practice had decided advantages. All the pills looked and tasted alike, and the same might be said of the powders, so that I was never troubled by those absurd investigations into the nature of the remedies which some patients are prone to make. Of course I desired to get business, and it was therefore obviously unwise to give little pills of Lach. or Puls. or Sep., when a man distinctly needed full doses of iron, or the like. I soon discovered, however, that it was only necessary to describe cod-liver oil, for instance, as a diet, in order to make use of it where required. When a man got impatient over an ancient ague, I usually found, too, that I could persuade him to let me try a good dose of quinine; while, on the other hand, there was a distinct pecuniary advantage in those cases of the shakes which could be made to believe that it was "best not to interfere with nature." I ought to add, that this kind of faith is uncommon among folks who carry hods or build walls.

For women who are hysterical, and go heart and soul into the business of being sick, I have found the little pills a most charming resort, because you cannot carry the refinement of symptoms beyond what my friend Jahr has done in the way of fitting medicines to them, so that, if I had been disposed honestly to practise this droll style of therapeutics, it had, as I saw, certain conveniences.

Another year went by, and I was beginning to prosper in my new mode of life. The medicines (being chiefly milk-sugar, with variations as to the labels) cost next to nothing; and, as I charged pretty well for both these and my advice, I was now able to start a gig, and also to bring my sister, a very pretty girl of fourteen years old, to live with me in a small house which I rented, a square from my old office.

This business of my sister's is one of the things I like the least to look back upon. When she came to me she was a pale-faced child, with large, mournful gray eyes, soft, yellow hair, and the promise of remarkable good looks. As to her attachment to me, it was something quite ridiculous. She followed me to the door when I went out, waited for me to come in, lay awake until she heard my step at night, and, in a word, hung around my neck like a kind of affectionate mill-stone.

WRITINGS OF T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE.

"I Am indebted to you for a knowledge of life in the old cathedral towns of England,--of the ecclesiastical side of society, so minute and authentic that it is like a personal experience." Thus I replied to Anthony Trollope's declaration that he lacked an essential quality of the novelist,--imagination. "Ah," he replied, "when you speak of careful observation and the honest and thorough report thereof, I am conscious of fidelity to the facts of life and character; but," he added, with that bluff heartiness so characteristic of the man, "my brother is more than an accurate observer: he is a scholar, a philosopher as well, with historical tastes and cosmopolitan sympathies,--a patient student. You should read his books";--and he snatched a pencil, and wrote out the list for me.[13] Only two of Thomas Adolphus Trollope's volumes have been republished in this country,--one a novel of English life, in tenor and traits very like his brother's, the other a brief memoir of a famous and fair Italian.[14] This curious neglect on the part of American publishers induces us to briefly record this industrious and interesting author's claims to grateful recognition, especially on the part of those who cherish fond recollections of Italian travel, and enjoy the sympathetic and intelligent illustration of Italian life and history.

In a literary point of view "An Englishman in Italy," in the last century, would be suggestive of a classical tour like that of Addison and Eustace,--a field of study and speculation quite apart from the people of the country, who, except for purposes of deprecatory contrast, would probably be ignored; and, in our own times, the idea is rather identified with caricature than sympathy,--we associate these insular travellers with exclusiveness and prejudice. As a general rule, they know little and care less for the fellow-creatures among whom they sojourn, holding themselves aloof, incapable of genial relations, and owning no guide to foreign knowledge but Murray and the Times. Farce and romance have long made capital out of this obtuse and impervious nationality; and it is the more refreshing, because of the general rule, to note a noble exception,--to see an Englishman, highly educated, studious, domestic, and patriotic, yet dwelling in Italy, not to despise and ignore, but to interpret and endear the country and people,--making his hospitable dwelling, with all its Italian trophies and traits, the favorite rendezvous for the best of his countrymen and the native society,--there discussing the principles and prospects of civic reform, doing honor to men of genius and aspiration, irrespective of race,--blending in his _salon_ the scholarly talk of Landor with the fervid pleas of "Young Italy," giving equal welcome to English radical, Piedmontese patriot, American humanitarian, and Tuscan _dilettante_,--and thus, as it were, recognizing the free and faithful spirit of modern progress and brotherhood amid the old armor, bridal chests, parchment tomes, quaintly carved chairs, and other mediæval relics of a Florentine _palazzo_.

But this cosmopolitan candor, so rare as a social phenomenon among the English in Italy, is no less characteristic of Adolphus Trollope as a writer. As he entertained, in his pleasant, antique reception-room or garden-terrace, disciples of Cavour, of Mazzini, and of Gioberti, with men and women of varied genius and opposite convictions from England and the United States, extending kindly tolerance or catholic sympathy to all, so he sought, in the history of the past and the facts of the present in the land of his love and adoption, evidences of her vital worth and auspicious destiny. Long residence abroad liberalized, and long study enriched, a mind singularly just in its appreciation, and a heart naturally kind and expansive. All his friends recognize in Adolphus Trollope that rare union of rectitude and reflection which constitutes the genuine philosopher. Mrs. Browning aptly called him Aristides. Thus living in the atmosphere of broad social instincts, and sharing the literary faculty and facility of his family, this Englishman in Italy set himself deliberately to study the country of his sojourn, in her records, local memorials, and social life, and, having so studied, to reproduce and illustrate the knowledge thus gleaned, with the fidelity of an annalist and the tact of a _raconteur_. It was a noble and pleasant task, and has been nobly and pleasantly fulfilled. Let us note its chief results, and honor the industry, truth, and humane wisdom manifest therein.

The range of Mr. Trollope's investigations may be appreciated by the fact that, while he is the author of "A History of Florence from the Earliest Independence of the Commune to the Fall of the Republic in 1531," he has also given to the press the most clear and reliable account of the revolution of our own day, under the title of "Tuscany in 1849"; thus supplying the two chronicles of the past and the present which together reveal the origin, development, and character of the state and its people. In the Preface to the former work he suggests this vital connection between the ancient republic and the modern city. "It contains," he observes, "such an exposition of the old Guelph community as sufficiently demonstrates the fitness of this culmination of the grand old city's fortunes." It is this liberal and comprehensive tone, this "looking before and after," which, united to careful research and patient narration, renders the author so well equipped and inspired for his task. He has brought together the essential social and political facts of the past, and, associating them with local traits and transitions, enabled us to realize the rise, progress, and alternations of the Italian state, as it is next to impossible for the Anglo-Saxon reader to do while exploring the partial, prejudiced, and complicated annals of the native historians. This is a needful, a timely, and a gracious service, for which every intelligent and sympathetic traveller who has learned to love the Tuscan capital, and grown bewildered over the complex story of her civil strifes, will feel grateful, while his obligations are renewed by the moderate but candid statement of those later movements, which, culminating in a childlike triumph, were followed by a reaction whose hopelessness was more apparent than real, and has subsequently proved an auspicious trial and training for the discipline and privileges of constitutional liberty.

The "History of Florence" is remarkable for the skilful method whereby the author has arranged, in luminous sequence, a long and confused series of political events. He has confined his narrative to the essential points of an intricate subject, omitting what is of mere casual or local interest, and aiming to elucidate the civic growth of the little city on the banks of the Arno. It is an admirable illustration of the conservative principles of free municipal institutions in the Middle Ages, notwithstanding their limited sway and frequent perversion. There is no attempt at rhetorical display, but great precision and authenticity of statement, and a conscientious citation of authorities; the style often lapses into colloquial freedom, not inappropriate to the familiar discussion of some of the curious details involved in the theme; and there are episodes of judicious and philosophical comment, with apt historical parallels, not a few of which come home to our recent national experience. The author's previous studies in Italian history, and intimate familiarity with the scene of his chronicle, give him a grasp and an insight which render his treatment at once thorough, sensible, and facile. But it is upon the more special subjects of Italian history that Mr. Trollope has expended his time and talents to the best advantage,--subjects chosen with singular judgment and imbued with fresh local and personal interest.

The scope and method of these historical studies are such as at once to embody and illustrate what is normally characteristic in time, place, and individual, while completeness of treatment is secured, and a person and period made suggestive of a comprehensive historical subject. Thus in "The Girlhood of Catharine de' Medici" we have the key to her mature and relentless bigotry, the logical origin of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, while, at the same time, the discipline of a convent and the intrigues of a ruling family in the Middle Ages are elaborately unfolded. Grouped around and associated with so remarkable an historical woman, they have a definite significance to the modern reader, otherwise unattainable; the Palazzo Medici, the Convents of St. Mark, Santa Lucia, and Murate, become scenes of personal interest; the Cardinal Clement and Alessandro, in their relation to the young Catharine, grow more real in their subtlety, family ambitions, and unscrupulous tyranny; and the surroundings, superstition, fanaticism, and domestic despotism which attended the forlorn girl until she became the wife of Henry of France, explain her subsequent career and execrated memory. Incidentally the life of mediæval Tuscany is also revealed with authentic emphasis. In "Paul the Pope and Paul the Friar," all the singular circumstances whereby a priest of Rome became the instrument of striking the first effectual blow at her absolute spiritual dominion are narrated with precision and tact. The prolonged quarrel between the Vatican and the Republic of Venice, the ecclesiastical and civic power, then opened the way to human freedom, and Sarpi is truly exhibited as the pioneer reformer. His liberal studies, foreign friends, and independent and intrepid mind rendered him admirably fitted for the task he undertook, and the Papal government only added infamy to despotism by the baffled attempt to assassinate him. It is difficult to imagine a better introduction to the subsequent history of free thought and spiritual emancipation, which culminated in the Reformation, than this biographical sketch, where a great historical development is made clear and dramatic by the carefully told story of the lives of the two chief actors and agents therein.

There is a power in the state, unofficial, but essential, and therefore more intimately blended with its welfare and identified with its fortunes than pope, emperor, or prince,--and that is the Banker. Even in modern times the life of such a financier as Lafitte is part of the social and political history of France; but in mediæval times, when "the sinews of war" and the wages of corruption so often turned the scale of ambition and success, the rich bankers of the Italian cities were among the most efficient of their social forces and fame. In writing the memoirs of Filippo Strozzi, Mr. Trollope struck the key-note of local associations in the Tuscan capital. The least observant or retrospective stranger is impressed with the sight of the massive walls and grated windows of the Strozzi Palace, and is attracted by such a monument of the past to the story of its founder. A standard drama and novel were long since made to illustrate those annals,[15] but it was reserved for an Englishman in Italy to record, in a well-digested and authentic narrative, the career of Filippo, whose immense wealth, marriage to a Medici, family ambition, scholarship, political and social distinction, enterprise, and luxury, and especially his financial relations with both rulers and ruled, make him one of those central figures of an historic group that serve as expositors of the time. He was indeed, by his accomplishments and his profligacy, his intrigues and associations, his alliances and enmities, his domestic and his political life, a representative man, whose character and career aptly embody and illustrate a most stirring era of European and Italian history. He escorted Catharine de' Medici on her bridal journey from Florence, talked philosophy at Medicean banquets, was closeted with popes and kings, was the boon companion of reigning dukes, a courtier to princes and people, a magnificent entertainer, a fugitive, exile, prisoner, sceptic, scholar, and suicide,--typifying in his life the luxury and lawlessness, the culture and the crime, the splendor and the degradation, the manners and morals, of his country and his age,--and hence a most instructive biographical study, which Mr. Trollope has treated with equal fulness, insight, and authenticity.

But the most felicitous of the series is the "Decade of Italian Women." The idea of this work is worthy of a philosopher, and its execution, of a humane scholar. It has long been an accepted theory, that, to understand the talent and pervasive spirit of an age or country, we must look to the influence and character of the women. A subtile social atmosphere exhales from their presence and power in the state and the family; and the dominant elements of faith, as well as the tone of manners and the tendencies of character, find in the best endowed and most auspiciously situated of the sex, an embodiment and inspiration which are the most authentic, because the most instinctive, test and trait of the life of the time. Shakespeare has, with exquisite insight and memorable skill, illustrated this representative function of woman by creating types of female character which, while they modify and mould persons and events, preserve intact their essential quality of sex, and yet represent none the less the spirit and manners of their respective epochs. Scott has done the same thing in an historical direction, that Shakespeare realized in a psychological way. We regard it, therefore, as a most judicious experiment to indicate the characteristics of mediæval Italy by delineating her representative women. They inevitably lead us to the heart of things,--to the palace, the convent, the court, the vigil of battle, and the triumph of art,--to the loves of warrior, statesman, and priest,--to the inmost domestic shrine,--to the festival and the funeral; and all this we behold, not objectively, but through our vivid interest in a noble, persecuted, saintly, impassioned, or gifted woman, and thus partake, as it were, of the life of the age, realize its inspiration, recognize its meaning, in a manner and to a degree impossible to be derived from the formal narrative of events, without a central figure or a consecutive life which serves as a nucleus and a link, giving vital unity and personal significance to the whole.

The period of time embraced in these female biographies extends from the birth of St. Catherine of Siena, in 1347, to the death of the celebrated _improvvisatrice_ Corilla, in 1800. With the career of each is identified a salient phase of Italian history, manners, or character; incident to the experience of all are special localities, political and social conditions, relations of art, of faith, of culture, of rule, and of morals, whereby we obtain the most desirable glimpses of the actual life and latent tendencies of Italy, considered as the focus of European civilization. We gaze upon a woman's portrait, but beyond, beside, and around her are the warriors, statesmen, prelates, poets, and people of her time. Through her triumphs and trials, her renown or degradation, her love, ambition, sorrows, virtues, or sins, we feel, as well as see, the vital facts of her age and country. Nor is this all: each character is not only full of interest in itself, but is essentially typical and representative. Thus we have the fair saint of the Middle Ages, the energetic and sagacious ruler, the gracious reformer, the artist, the near kinswoman of prince or ecclesiastic, the poetess, the _châtelaine_, the nun, the profligate, the powerful, the beautiful, and the base,--all the forms and forces of womanly influence as modified by the life of the time and country. They move before us a grand procession, now awakening admiration and now pity, here ravishing in beauty or genius and there forlorn in disaster or disgrace, yet always bearing with them the strong individuality and attractive expression which, to the imagination, so easily transforms the heroines of history into the ideals of the drama, or the characters of romance. And yet in these delineations the author has indulged in no rhetorical embellishments: he has arrived simply, and sometimes sternly, at the clear statement of facts, and left them to convey their legitimate impression to the reader's mind. The lives of many of these women have been written before, some of them elaborately; but they are here grouped and contrasted as illustrative of national life, and hence gain a fresh charm and suggestiveness, especially as the fruits of research and the method of a disciplined _raconteur_ are blent with the light and life of personal observation as to scenes and memorials,--the land where they once dwelt, its natural aspect and ancient trophies, being fondly familiar to the biographer. Eloquent memoirs of female sovereigns have become popular through the genial labors of Agnes Strickland and Mrs. Jameson, while Shakespeare's women furnish a perpetual challenge to psychological critics; but the "Decade of Italian Women" has a certain unity of aim and relative interest which makes it, as a literary record, analogous to a complete, though limited, gallery of family portraits, inasmuch as, however diverse the characters, they own a common bond of race and nationality, and are memorable exemplars thereof. First in the list is Catherine of Siena, the Saint,--an accurate mediæval religious delineation which all who have visited the old city where her relics are preserved and her name reverenced will value. Then we have Catherine Sforza,--the fair representative of one of those powerful and princely families whose history is that of the state they rule. Next comes the noblest and most gifted woman of the Middle Ages, the friend of Michel Angelo, the ideal of a wife, and a lady of culture, genius, and patriotism,--Vittoria Colonna. The Bishop of Palermo's illegitimate daughter--a famous poetess, Tullia d' Arragona--precedes the learned, pure, intrepid Protestant, Olimpia Morata, who takes us to the court of Ferrara in its palmy days, to show how "like a star that dwells apart" is a woman of rectitude and wisdom and faith amid the shallow, the sensual, and the bigoted. The renowned Paduan actress, Isabella Adrieni, gives us a striking illustration of the influence, traits, and triumphs of histrionic genius in Italy of old; while among the prone towers and gloomy arcades of Bologna we become intimate with the chaste and charming aspirations and skill of Elisabetta Sirani, whose pencil was the pride of the city, and whose character hallows her genius. Of La Corilla it is enough to say, that she was the original of Madame de Staël's "Corinne"; and no woman could have been more wisely selected to represent the fascination, subtlety, force of purpose, ambition, resources, passion, and external success of an unprincipled patrician Italian beauty of the Middle Ages than Bianca Capello.

With such a basis of research it is easy to infer how authentic, as a picture of life, would be the superstructure of romantic fiction by an author adequately equipped. Accordingly, the Italian novels of Thomas Adolphus Trollope are most accurate and detailed reflections of local characteristics; they are full of special information; and, while they enlighten the novice as to the domestic economy, habits, ways of thinking, costume, and social traditions of the people, they revive, with singular freshness, to the mind of one who has sojourned in Italy, every particular of his experience,--not only the _corso_, the opera, and the carnival, but the meals, the phraseology, the household arrangements,--all that is most individual in a district, with all that is most general as nationally representative. Indeed, not a fact or trait of modern Tuscan life seems to have escaped the author's vigilant observation and patient record; the life of the effete noble, the frugal citizen, the shrewd broker, the pampered, ecclesiastic, the peasant, and the artist is revealed with the most precise and graphic detail. We are taken to the promenade and the _caffè_, to the _piazza_ and the church, to the farm-house and the _palazzo_; and there we see and hear the actual everyday intercourse of the people. The Tuscan character is drawn to the life, without exaggeration, and even in its more evanescent, as well as normal traits; its urbanity, gossip, thrift, geniality, self-indulgence, and latent courage are admirably delineated; its superior refinement, sobriety, love of show, and class peculiarities are truly given; the old feudal manners that linger in modern civilization are accounted for and illustrated, especially in the relation of dependants "occupying every shade of gradation between a common servant and a bosom friend." The author's ecclesiastic portraits are as exact, according to our observation, as his brother's. Each class of Italian priests is portrayed with discrimination, and no writer has better exemplified the paralyzing and perverting influence of Romanism upon the integrity of domestic life, and the purity and power of political aspirations. The women, too, are typical,--remarkably free from fanciful embellishment, eloquent of race, instinct with nature. Their limited culture, social prejudices, artless charms, frugal lives, naïve or reticent characters, as modified by town and country, patrician or popular influences, we recognize at once as identical with what we have known in the households or social circles of Florence. Mr. Trollope, in all this, is a Flemish artist, and, as much of the interest of his pictures depends on their truthfulness, perhaps they are really appreciated only by those who have enjoyed adequate opportunities of becoming intimate with the original scenes, situations, and personages depicted. In the fidelity of his art he abstains from all attempts at brilliancy, and ignores the intense and highly dramatic, finding enough of wholesome interest in the real life around him, and well satisfied to reproduce it with candor and sympathy; now and then indulging in a philosophical suggestion or a judicious comment, and thus gradually, but securely, winning the grateful recognition of his reader.

"La Beata" as completely takes those familiar with its scene into the life and moral atmosphere of Florence, as does "The Vicar of Wakefield" into the rural life of England before the days of railways and cheap journalism. The streets, the dwellings, the people and incidents are so truly described, the perspective is so correct, and the foreground so elaborate, that, with the faithful local coloring and naïve truth of the characters, we seem, as we read, to be lost in a retrospective dream,--the more so as there is an utter absence of the sensational and rhetorical in the style, which is that of direct and unpretending narrative. The heroine is a saintly model, though at the same time a thoroughly human girl,--such a one as the artistic, superstitious, frugal, and simple experience of her class and of the place could alone have fostered; the artist-hero is no less characteristic,--a selfish, clever, amiable, ambitious, and superficial Italian; while the old wax-candle manufacturer, with his domicile, daughter, and church relations, is a genuine Florentine of his kind. The life of the studio, then and there, is drawn from reality. The peculiar and traditional customs, social experience, church ceremonials, popular fêtes, home and heart life, have a minute fidelity which renders the picture vivid and winsome to one who well knows and wisely loves the Tuscan capital. An English family delineated without the least exaggeration, and with the striking contrasts such visitors always present to the native scene and people of Italy, adds to and emphasizes the salient traits of the story. Among the subjects described and illustrated with remarkable tact and truth is that most interesting charitable fraternity, the _Misericordia_, of which every stranger in Florence has caught impressive glimpses, but of whose social influence and real significance few are aware. Add to this the description of Camaldoli, with its famous pines, its Dantesque associations, and its remorseful convent, and we have a scope and detail in the scene and spirit of this little local romance which concentrate the points of interest in Florentine life and bring into view all that is most familiar and characteristic in the place and people. We see the gay boats on St. John's eve from the bridges of the Arno, the procession of the black Madonna, the interior of the studios, the ceremonies, the saintly traffic and social subterfuge and naïve manners,--the tradesman, painter, devotee, priest,--pride, piety, and passion,--whereof even the casual observation of a traveller's sojourn had given us so curious or attractive an idea, that, thus expanded and defined, they seem like a personal experience. There is singular pathos in the character and career of La Beata, as there is in the expression of Santa Filomena for which she was the recognized and inspired model. The integrity of her sentiment is as Southern-European as is her lover's falsehood and voluntary expiation. That absolute ignorance of the world and childlike trust, which we rarely meet except in Shakespeare's women, is a moral fact of which the stranger in Italy, who has grown intimate with families of the middle class, is cognizant, and which he is apt to recall as one of those elemental and primitive phases of human nature which justify the most pure and plaintive creations of the poet. Herein the author has shown an insight as honest and suggestive as his keen and patient observation and candid record thereof.

"Marietta" is the genuine embodiment of that local attachment and ancestral pride so remarkable in the mediæval Florentines, and still manifest in an exceptional class of their descendants. The modern life of a decayed branch of the Tuscan nobility in the nineteenth century, the process and method of its decadence, the charm of "a local habitation and a name," once identified with the vital power of the old republic, and the sad, effeminate, yet not unromantic sentiment incident to its passing away, through the prosperous encroachments of new men, with whom money is the power once only attached to birth, are most aptly described. The thrifty farmer of the Apennine, and his slow and handsome son, are capital types of the frugal and shrewd _fattore_ and rustic proprietor of Tuscany; and his more astute and polished brother is equally typical of the old money-lender and goldsmith of the Ponte Vecchio. Simon Boccanera well represents the tasteful artificer of Florence, and the Gobbo the feudal devotee, whose political faith has been expanded by French ideas. In the _bon vivant_, the amateur musician, the amiable and easy Canonico Lunardi, what a true portrait of the priestly epicure, the self-indulgent but kindly churchman of the most urbane of Italian communities, and in the Canon of San Lorenzo, how faithful a picture of the elegant and unscrupulous aspirant and intriguer! The two girls of the story are veritable specimens, in looks, dress, talk, domestic aspect and aptitudes, not only of Italian maidenhood, but of that of the state and city of their birth,--such maidens as are only encountered on the banks of the Arno. This pleasant story takes us into one of those massive old Florentine palaces, with its lofty _loggia_ overlooking mountain, river, olive orchard and vineyard, dome and tower,--its adjacent church with the family chapel and ancestral effigies,--its several floors let out as lodgings,--its heavy portal, stone staircase, faded frescos, barred windows, paved court-yard, moss-grown statues, and damp green garden. We recognize the familiar elements of the local life,--the frugal dinner, the wine flask, the coal-brazier, the antique lamp, the violin, the snuff-box, the ample coarse cloak, the frugality, _bonhommie_, shrewdness, proverbs, greetings, grace, cheerfulness, chat, rural and city traits, prejudices, pride, and pleasantness of Tuscan life and character. These all appear in suggestive contrast, and with accurate detail, woven into a tale which breathes the very atmosphere of the place.

"Giulio Malatesta," on the other hand, opens with distinctive glimpses of an old Italian university town; initiates us into the prolonged and patient political conspiracies of Romagna and the ideal hopes of Gioberti's disciples. Its hero is a student at Pisa, and one of the brave champions of Italy who led the Tuscan volunteers to patriotic martyrdom, in 1848, at Curtone. Nowhere have we read so graceful and graphic a picture of that noble episode in the history of Tuscany, which redeemed her character and proved the latent manliness of her children. There is a touching similarity between the description of the march of the Corpo Universitario from Pisa to the Mincio,--the fight at the mill, and the death of the generous and lovely boy, Enrico Palmieri,--and recent scenes in our own civil war, wherein appeared the same youthful enthusiasm and utter inexperience, the same hardships and fortitude, valor and faith. In striking contrast with, these scenes of battle and self-sacrifice, including the tragic incidents attending the third anniversary of the Tuscan martyrs in the church of Santa Croce at Florence, three years later, are the episodes of fashionable and carnival life in that delightful capital. The Cascine and the Pergola are reproduced with all their gay life and license; the Contessa Zenobia and her _cavalier servente_, so comical, yet true, are but slight exaggerations of what many of us have witnessed and wondered at. Provincial and conventual life in Italy is photographed in this story; fresh forms and phases of the ecclesiastical element are incarnated from careful observation; and the political feeling, faith, and transitions of the period are vividly illustrated. Carlo, the young noble, is a true portrait of the kindly, genial, but shallow and pleasure-seeking Florentine youth of the day, such as we have loitered with on the promenade and chatted beside at the Caffè Doney,--without convictions, playful, always half in love, with a little stock of philosophy and a lesser one of religion, yet alert to do a kindness,--full of tact, charming in manner, tasteful and tolerant, with no higher aim than being agreeable and ignoring care,--impatient of duty, fond of pastime, utterly incapable of giving pain or attempting hard work. His friend Giulio Malatesta, on the other hand, adequately personifies the earnest, thoughtful, and patriotic Italian, to whom _Viva l' Italia!_ means something,--who is ready to suffer for his country, and who knows her poets by heart, believes in her unity, and has boundless faith in her future. Francesca Varini is described with an exactitude which defines her peculiar charms and traits to any reader who has fondly noted the modifications of female beauty and character incident to race and locality in Italy; and old Marta Varini is such a stoical, acute, and persistent woman as signalized the days of the Carbonari; while Stella and Madalina are local heroines with characteristic national traits.

In "Beppo the Conscript" we are transported to "the narrow strip of territory shut in between the Apennines and the Adriatic, to the south of Bologna and the north of Ancona," where European civilization once centred, Tasso sung and raved, and the Dukes of Urbino flourished. But not to revive their past glories are we beguiled to the decayed old city of Fano, and the umbrageous valleys that nestle amid the surrounding hills; it is the normal, primitive, agricultural life and economy of the region, and the late political and social condition of the inhabitants, which this story illustrates. The means and methods of rural toil,--the "wine, corn, and oil" of Scriptural and Virgilian times; the avarice, the pride, the love, the industry, and the superstition of the _Contadini_ of the Romagna; a household of prosperous rustics, their ways and traits; and the subtle and prevailing agency of priest-craft in its secret opposition to the new and liberal Italian government,--are all exhibited with a quiet zest and a graphic fidelity which take us into the heart of the people, and the arcana, as well as the spectacle, of daily life as there latent and manifest. The domestic, peasant, and provincial scenes and characters are drawn with fresh and natural colors and faithful outlines.

The scene of the last-published domestic novel[16] of the series is laid at Siena; and, although the story is based upon one of those impassioned tragedies of love and jealousy which can only be found in the family chronicles of Italy, the still-life, social phases, and local traits of the romance are delineated with the same quiet simplicity and graphic truth which constitute the authenticity of the author's previous delineations of modern Italian life. The grave, conservative, and old-fashioned Tuscan city reappears, with its mediæval aspect and traditional customs. Convent education, the homes of the patrician and the citizen, the little gig of the _fattore_, with the small, wiry ponies of the region, the local antiquarian and doctor, the letter-carrier, family servant, lady-superior, pharmacist, the noble and plebeian, the costumes, phrases, and natural language characteristic of that non-commercial and isolated Tuscan city before the days of railroads and annexation, are drawn with emphasis and significant detail. Shades and causes of character are finely discriminated; the old mediæval _festa_ peculiar to Siena, with all its original features and social phenomena, is vividly enacted in the elaborate description of the "Palio" on the 15th of August; while the insalubrious and picturesque Maremma is portrayed, from the Etruscan crypts of the ravines to the desolate streets of Savona, by an artistic and philosophic hand. Incidentally the solidarity of families and the antagonism of _contrade_, dating from the Middle Ages, are defined in explanation of modern traits. We pace the bastions of the fortress built by Cosmo de' Medici for "the subjection of his newly conquered subjects"; we haunt the cabinet of a numismatic enthusiast, and the forlorn palace-chamber of a baffled and beautiful scion of the old, fierce Orsini race; we overhear the peasants talk, and watch the exquisite gradations of color at sunset on the adjacent mountains, across the lonely plains, or gaze down upon St. Catherine's house in the dyers' quarter, and muse in deserted church, urban garden, and precipitous street, consciously alive the while to the aspect and atmosphere, not only of the Siena we have visited or imagined, but of mediæval Tuscany, and its language and life of to-day, as they are incidentally reflected in the experience of a few distinctly individualized and harmoniously developed characters,--true to race, period, and locality, and far more complete and authentic, as a record and revelation, than dry annals on the one hand, or superficial travel-sketches on the other.

The _justice_ which these writings display, in revealing the latent goodness in things evil, the instinctive and spiritual graces as well as the social perversions of the Italian character, is quite as refreshing as the correct observation of external traits and the true record of historical causes. A generous and intelligent sympathy imparts "a precious seeing to the eye" of the agreeable story-teller, who has thus patiently and fondly explored the past, delineated the present, and hailed the future of Italy, in a spirit of liberal wisdom and true humanity.

FOOTNOTES:

[13] _A History of Florence_, in four volumes; _Paul the Pope and Paul the Friar_; _Filippo Strozzi_; _The Girlhood of Catharine de' Medici_; _A Decade of Italian Women_; _Tuscany in 1849_; _La Beata_; _Marietta_; _Giulio Malatesta_; _Beppo the Conscript_. London: Chapman and Hall. 1856-1865.

[14] _Lindisfarn Chase._ Harper and Brothers, 1863. _Life of Vittoria Colonna._ Sheldon & Co., 1859.

[15] _Filippo Strozzi_, Tragedia par G. B. Niccolini. _Luisa Strozzi_, Romanzo par G. Rossini.

[16] _Gemma._ A Novel in three volumes. London: Chapman and Hall. 1866.

A NATIVE OF BORNOO.

Nicholas Said, at the time of his enlistment in the army of the Union, during the third year of the great Rebellion, was about twenty-eight years of age, of medium height, somewhat slenderly built, with pleasing features, not of the extreme negro type, complexion perfectly black, and quiet and unassuming address.

He became known to the writer while serving in one of our colored regiments; and attention was first directed to his case by the tattooing on his face, and by the entry in the company descriptive book, which gave "Africa" as his birthplace.

Inquiry showed that he was more or less acquainted with seven different languages, in addition to his native tongue; that he had travelled extensively in Africa and Europe, and that his life had been one of such varied experience as to render it interesting both on that account and also on account of the mystery which surrounds, notwithstanding recent explorations, the country of his birth.

At the request of those who had been from time to time entertained by the recital of portions of his history, he was induced to put it in writing. The narrative which follows is condensed from his manuscript, and his own language has been retained as far as possible.

* * * * *

Reader, you must excuse me for the mistakes which this article will contain, as you will bear in mind that this language in which I am now trying to write is not my mother tongue; on the other hand, I never had a teacher, nor ever was at school for the purpose of acquiring the English. The only way I learned what little of the language I know was through French books.

I was born in the kingdom of Bornoo, in Soodan, in the problematic central part of Africa, so imperfectly known to the civilized nations of Europe and America.

Soodan has several kingdoms, the country of the Fellatahs and Bornoo being the most powerful,--the territorial extent of the latter being some 810,000 square miles.

These nations are strict Mohammedans, having been converted some two or three centuries ago by the Bedouin Arabs and those from Morocco, who, pushed by want of riches, came to Soodan to acquire them. Different languages are found in each nation, some written and some not; but the Arabic is very much in use among the higher class of people, as the Latin is used by the Catholic priests. Especially the Koran is written in Arabic, and in my country no one is allowed to handle the Sacred Book unless he can read it and explain its contents.

Bornoo, my native country, is the most civilized part of Soodan, on account of the great commerce carried on between it and the Barbary States of Fezzan, Tunis, and Tripoli. They export all kinds of European articles to Central Africa, and take gold-dust, ivory, &c., in return.

Bornoo has had a romantic history for the last one hundred years. The whole of Soodan, more than two thousand miles in extent, was once under the Maïs of Bornoo; but by dissensions and civil wars nearly all the tributaries north of Lake Tchad were lost. In 1809 a shepherd arose from the country of the Fellatahs and assumed the title of Prophet. He said to the ignorant portion of his countrymen, that Allah had given him orders to make war with the whole of Soodan, and had promised him victory. They believed his story, and the legitimate king was dethroned and the false prophet, Otman Danfodio, was proclaimed Emperor of the Fellatahs. The impostor went at once to work, and in less than two years conquered almost the whole of Soodan, excepting Kanem, a tributary to my country. Bornoo, after a manly effort, was compelled by force of arms to submit to the yoke of the Fellatahs.

In 1815 Bornoo arose from its humiliating position, to shake off the yoke of Danfodio. Mohammed el Anim el Kanemy, the Washington of Bornoo, was the man who undertook to liberate his country and restore her former prestige. This immortal hero could collect from the villages of Bornoo but a few hundreds of horsemen; but in Kanem he got eight hundred men, and accepted an engagement with the enemy. He gained the first victory, and took such good advantage of his success, that in the space of two months he won forty battles, drove the enemy entirely out of Bornoo, and captured a great many places belonging to the Fellatahs.

At the close of the war, El Kanemy found himself at the head of twenty-eight thousand horsemen, and the real ruler of Bornoo. Like all great men, he refused the sceptre, and, going to the legitimate heir of the throne, Maïs Barnoma, told him he was at his disposal. Barnoma, notwithstanding the noble actions of El Kanemy, was jealous of his fame, and tried a plan to dispose of him, which he thought would be best, and of which the public would not suspect him. Accordingly he wrote to the king of Begharmi, promising to pay the expenses of his troops, and some extra compensation beside, if he would make as though he were really at war with Bornoo. He agreed to the proposal, and crossed with his army the great river Shary, the natural frontier of the two kingdoms. El Kanemy was then in the city of Kooka, which he had built for himself. He heard finally of the war between Bornoo and Begharmi, and, hastily calling out his ancient veterans, he reported to Engornoo, where the king resided. The combined forces numbered some forty thousand men. El Kanemy knew nothing of the infamous act of the king; but Allah, who protects the innocent and punishes the guilty, was smiling over him. The armies pitched their camps opposite to each other; and the king of Begharmi sent a messenger with a letter to Maïs Barnoma, informing him that the heaviest assault would be made upon the left, and that, if he would give El Kanemy command there, the bravest of the assailants would surround and kill him at once. This letter the messenger carried to El Kanemy instead of the king, who, at once seeing the plot, immediately answered the important document, signing the name of Barnoma, and loading the messenger with presents of all descriptions for his master. The next morning El Kanemy went to the king and told him that the heaviest assault would be made on the right, and that he should not expose his precious life there. As Barnoma got no letter from the king of Begharmi, he thought El Kanemy was right, and acted accordingly.

The battle finally began, and the Sycaries of Begharmi, attacking the left where they thought El Kanemy was, surrounded Maïs Barnoma and killed him, supposing him El Kanemy. The battle, however, went on, and the king of Begharmi found out before long that he had killed the wrong lion. His army, in spite of their usual courage, were beaten, and obliged to recross the river Shary, at that place more than two miles wide, with a loss of half their number. The victorious army of El Kanemy also crossed the river, and, pursuing the retreating forces, captured Mesna, the capital of Begharmi, and drove the king into the country of Waday.

El Kanemy now found himself the absolute ruler of Bornoo, nor had that kingdom ever any greater ruler. Under his reign the nation prospered finely. He encouraged commerce with Northern and Eastern Africa, and, building a fleet of small vessels, sailed with a strong force against a tribe who inhabited the main islands of Lake Tchad, and who used to commit depredations upon the neighboring sections of Bornoo, and chastised them severely. These islanders are the finest type of the African race, possessing regular features, and large, expressive eyes, though they are the darkest of all Africans. El Kanemy also subdued many of the surrounding tribes and nations, until the population of Bornoo and its provinces amounted to nearly fifteen millions.

My father was the descendant of a very illustrious family. He was the first man who had a commission under El Kanemy when he went to Kanem to recruit his forces. He was made a Bagafuby, or captain of one hundred cavalry, and was in every engagement which El Kanemy went through. The name by which my father was known was Barca Gana.[17] My great-grandfather was from Molgoi. He established himself in Bornoo many years ago, and was greatly favored by the monarchs of that country. My mother was a Mandara woman, the daughter of a chief. I was born in Kooka, a few years after the Waday war of 1831. We were in all nineteen children, twelve boys and seven girls. I was the ninth child of my mother. All my brothers were well educated in Arabic and Turkish. Two of them, Mustapha and Abderahman, were very rich, having acquired their wealth by trading in ivory and gold-dust. Both had been to Mecca as pilgrims. My father himself was rich, but when he was killed, our elder brother seized the greater part, and those who were not eighteen years of age had to leave their share in their mother's hands. Five cleared farms and a considerable amount of gold fell to my share. I do not know how much the gold amounted to, but my mother used to tell me, that, when I got to be twenty years of age, I would have as much as either of my elder brothers.

After my father's death I was given to a teacher to be instructed in my native tongue, and also in Arabic. In the space of three years I could read and write both languages. I was tried in my native tongue, and passed; but I could not pass in Arabic, and my mother and uncle returned me to the teacher for eighteen months. I stayed the required time, and then was tried and passed.

I was then old enough to be circumcised. Three hundred boys went through the ceremony at once, and were then dressed in white clothes, and received according to custom a great many presents. Fifteen days we ate the best that Kooka had, the king himself giving us the best he had in his palace. This generally happens only to the sons of those who have distinguished themselves in the army, or, to explain myself better, to those of the military aristocracy. At the end of this time all of us went home. For my part, this was the first time I had slept in my father's house for four years and seven months. I was very much welcomed by my mother, sisters, and brothers, and was a pet for some time.

After returning from school to my father's house, I judge about four or five years afterwards, I was invited, in company with three of my brothers, by the eldest son of the governor of the province of Yaoori and Laree, who lived in the town of the latter name, to visit him. This part of the province is very charming. The forests are full of delicious game, and the lake of fish and beautiful aquatic birds; while in the dry seasons the woods and uncultivated plains are worthy to be called the garden of Eden. In my childhood I had quite a passion for hunting, one of my father's great passions also. In spite of the efforts of my elder brothers to check me in it, I would persuade the other boys to follow me into the thick woods, to the danger of their lives and mine. My worthy mother declared several times that I would be captured by the Kindils, a wandering tribe of the desert. Her prophecy was fulfilled after all, unhappily for myself, and perhaps more so for those I had persuaded with me. While on the visit just spoken of, one day,--it was a Ramadan day, anniversary of the Prophet's day,--I persuaded a great number of boys, and we went into the woods a great way from any village. We came across nests of Guinea fowl, and gathered plenty of eggs, and killed several of the fowl. We made fire by rubbing two pieces of dry stick together, and broiled the chickens and eggs. Then we proceeded farther, and came across a tree called Agoua, bearing a delicious kind of fruit. We all went up the tree, eating fruit and making a great deal of noise. We frolicked on that tree for many hours. Presently several of the boys told me they heard the neighing of horses. We then all agreed not to make so much noise, but we were just too late. In about a quarter of an hour we were startled by the cry, "Kindil! Kindil!" The boys who were nearest to the ground contrived to hide themselves in the thicket. It happened that I was higher than any one, and while coming down with haste, I missed my hold and fell, and lay senseless. When I opened my eyes, I found myself on horseback behind a man, and tied to him with a rope. Out of forty boys, eighteen of us were taken captive. I wished then that it was a dream rather than a reality, and the warnings of my mother passed through my mind. Tears began to flow down my cheeks; I not only lamented for myself, but for those also whom I persuaded into those wild woods. Meanwhile, our inhuman captors were laughing and talking merrily, but I could not understand them. About six hours' ride, as I suppose, brought us to their camp. The tents were then immediately taken down, the camels loaded, and we started again, travelling night, and day for three long days, until we came to a temporary village where their chief was. After we got there we were all chained together, except four, who were taken pity upon, on account of their age and birth. It was then night, and nearly all the camp was under the influence of hashish, an intoxicating mixture made of hemp-seed and other ingredients, which when too much is eaten will intoxicate worse than whiskey, or even spirits of wine. While the robbers were drunk, we boys were consulting and plotting to run away. We succeeded in breaking the chains, and four of the oldest boys took their captors' arms, cut their throats, jumped on their horses, and succeeded in making their escape. When it was found out, they gave each of us fifteen strokes in the hollows of our feet, because we did not inform them.

A little while after our comrades' escape we started on again. This time we had to go on foot for five days, until we reached a town called Kashna, belonging to the Emperor of the Fellatahs, but situated in the country of Houssa, where we were all dispersed to see each other no more. Fortunately, none of my brothers were with me in the woods.

My lot was that of an Arab slave, for I was bought by a man named Abd-el-Kader, a merchant of Tripoli and Fezzan. He was not an Arabian, however, but a brown-skinned man, and undoubtedly had African blood in his veins. He had at this time a large load of ivory and other goods waiting for the caravan from Kano and Sacca-too. This caravan soon came, and with it we started for Moorzook, capital of the pachalic of Fezzan. Although we numbered about five hundred, all armed except slaves who could not be trusted, a lion whom we met after starting, lying in our path, would not derange himself on our account, and we had to attack him. Twelve men fired into him. Four men he killed, and wounded five or six, and then escaped. He was hit somewhere, as they found blood where he lay, but it was not known where. When he roared, he scared all the horses and camels composing the caravan. Abd-el-Kader was one of those who attacked the lion, but he was not hurt.

Five days after we left Kashna, we came to the first oasis. Here the plains were all barren and sandy, but full of gazelles, antelopes, and ostriches. The principal tree growing here was the date-palm, and the water was very bad, tasting salty.

As the caravan travelled toward the east, the ground rose by degrees. If I am not mistaken, we passed five oases before we came into the country of Tibboo, a mountainous region between Bornoo and Fezzan, the inhabitants of which suffer considerably from the Kindils, though they are also robbers themselves. The capital of Tibboo is Boolma, built on a high mountain. I was disappointed when I saw the city, for I had heard that it was quite a large place. Laree, the smallest town in Bornoo, is a place of more importance. The people of Tibboo are of dark-brown complexion, and are noted in Soodan for their shrewdness. The day that the caravan happened to be at Boolma, two parties were in a warlike attitude about a fair maid whom each wished their chief to have for a wife. We did not stay long enough to see the issue of the fight, and two days' journey took us out of the kingdom of Tibboo.

As soon as the oasis of Tibboo was left, the country became very rocky,--the rock being a kind of black granite; and the Arabs had to make shoes for both their camels and slaves, for the rocks were very sharp, and if this precaution had not been taken, in a few hours their feet would have been so cut that they could not have proceeded farther. Some Arabs would rather lose four or five slaves than a single camel. They rode very seldom. In a journey of ten or twelve weeks I saw Abd-el-Kader ride but once, and the majority never rode at all.

In these rocky regions of the desert a great amount of salt is found also,--what is called in our language Kalboo, and I believe, in English, carbonate of soda. Soodan is supplied by the Moors and Kindils with salt from the desert. Sea-shells are also occasionally found in this region. After we left Tibboo fire was never allowed, even in the oases, but I do not know for what reason.

The mountainous regions of the desert passed, we came to a more level country, but it was not long before we saw other mountains ahead. As we passed over the last of them, we found them very dangerous from their steepness, and a few camels were lost by falling into the ravines. After passing this dangerous place, a sign of vegetation was seen, oases were more frequent, and at last forests of date-palm, the fruit of which forms the principal food of both the inhabitants of Fezzan and their camels, became abundant.

El Kaheni is the first town or human habitation seen after leaving Tibboo. It is a small walled town, like all other places in Fezzan. Here I first saw the curious way in which the Fezzaneers cultivate their land by irrigation. Each farm has a large well, wide at the top and sloping toward the bottom, out of which water is drawn by donkeys, and poured into a trough, from which it runs into small ditches. This process is renewed every few days until the crop no longer needs watering.

The people of El Kaheni were very courteous. I had a long talk with a young man, who gave me a description of the capital, Moorzook, but his story did not agree with that which Abd-el-Kader told me. I afterwards found that the young man's story was correct. We left El Kaheni the next day, taking a large load of dates, superior to those of Soodan in size and sweetness. After three days' journey we could see in the distance a large flag on a long pole, on the top of the English Consulate, the largest house in the metropolis of Fezzan. We passed several villages of trifling importance, and at about noon arrived within the walls of Moorzook. There the caravan dissolved, and each man went to his own house.

I found Moorzook to be not larger than a quarter of my native town of Kooka; but the buildings were in general better, every house being of stone, though of course very poorly built in comparison with European dwellings. The city has four gates, one toward each cardinal point of the compass. The northern is the one by which the caravan entered; the eastern is a ruin; the southern, which is behind the Pacha's palace, has mounted by it two guns of large calibre; while the western, and the best of all, is situated near the barracks, which are fine buildings, larger even than the Pacha's palace. The pachalic of Fezzan is a tributary of the Ottoman Porte, and the Pacha, a Turk, is very much hated by the Bedouins.

After reaching Abd-el-Kader's house, I found that he was a poor man. The reader can form some idea from his living in the capital, and having but one wife, all his property consisting of a piece of land about two and a half miles from the city, a few donkeys, ten camels, old and young, an Arab slave, and myself. While I was yet with him he bought also a young Fellatah girl. As soon as we arrived, he sent me with Hassan, his slave, to the farm, where I worked some fifteen days. I told him then that I was not used to such work, and prayed him to sell me to some Turk or Egyptian. He asked me what my father used to do, and I told him that he was a warrior and also traded in gold-dust and ivory. On hearing my father's name he opened his eyes wide, and asked me why I did not tell him that in Soodan. He had known my father well, but had not seen him for fifteen rainy seasons. From that day Abd-el-Kader was very kind to me, and said he had a great notion to take me back. He, however, sold me after all to a young Turkish officer named Abdy Agra, an excellent young man, full of life and fun. This officer was always with the Pacha, and I believe was one of his aides. His wife was a Kanowry woman. He used to bring home money every night and often gave me some. After he had dressed me up, I accompanied him to the Pacha's every day. He spoke my language very correctly, only with an accent, like all strangers trying to speak Kanowry, and he began to teach me Turkish. Strange to say, in Fezzan the Bornoo tongue is in great vogue, rich and poor speaking Kanowry. I stayed with Abdy Agra more than three months; but one day he told me that he had to send me to his father in Tripoli. So long as I had to be a slave, I hated to leave so excellent a man, but I had to go. Accordingly, when the caravan was to start, he sent me in charge of Abd-el-Kader, the man from whom he had bought me. Before leaving the city we went to a house that I had never seen before, and had our names registered in a book by a very benevolent-looking man, who wore spectacles on his eyes, something I had never seen before, and which made me afraid of him. As we passed out of the city gate we were counted one by one by an officer.

On our arrival at Tripoli, Abd-el-Kader took me to an old house in a street narrow and dirty beyond description, where we passed the night. The next morning he went with me to my new master, Hadji Daoud, the father of Abdy Agra. When we found him he was sitting on a divan of velvet, smoking his narghile. He looked at that time to be about forty-five years old, and was of very fine appearance, having a long beard, white as snow. Abd-el-Kader seemed well acquainted with him, for they shook hands and drank coffee together. After this we proceeded to the Turkish Bazaar, where I found that he was a merchant of tobacco, and had an extensive shop, his own property. Hadji Daoud had three wives; the principal one was an Arabian, one was a native of my country, and one, and, to do her justice, the best looking of them all, was a Houssa girl. He believed in keeping a comfortable table, and we had mutton almost daily, and sometimes fowls. He had but one son, and he was far away. He told me that he intended to treat me as a son, and every day I went to the shop with him. He treated me always kindly, but madam was a cross and overbearing woman.

About this time my master started on his third pilgrimage to Mecca, leaving a friend in charge of his store, and taking me with him. We went by sail from Tripoli to Alexandria, touching at Bengazi. From Alexandria we went by cars to Ben Hadad, thence to Saida and Cairo, the capital of Egypt. From Cairo we travelled to Kartoom, at the forks of the Nile, and thence to Gondar, the capital of Abyssinia, where we stayed only twenty-four hours, my master being in continual fear of his life from the natives, who differed from him in belief, and then started for Zela, a port on the Red Sea. From Zela we sailed to Muscat, and thence proceeded to Mecca. I had not come of my own free will and for the express purpose of a pilgrimage, and therefore I was not permitted to go with Daoud to the grave of the Prophet, and was obliged to content myself without the title of Hadji, which is one much respected among the Mohammedans. We had returned as far as Alexandria on our way home, when my master was informed that his store and a great deal of property, in fact, all his goods and money, had been destroyed by fire. This made the good man almost crazy. He did not hesitate to tell me that he should have to sell me; but said that he would take care that I should have a rich and good master, a promise which he kept. The next day, with the present of a good suit of clothes, I was put on board a vessel bound for Smyrna and Constantinople. I was to be landed at the former city. On this vessel was a young man of eighteen, one of the crew, who spoke my own language. I have heard it only twice, I think, since that time.

At Smyrna I was sold to a Turkish officer, Yousouf Effendi, a very wealthy man, and brother-in-law to the celebrated Reschid Pacha, the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He had a great many houses in Smyrna, as well as Constantinople. We sailed the next day for the latter city in a man-of-war steamer, the Abdul Medjid. My duty was that of a Tchidboudji, which consists in filling and cleaning the pipes and narghiles. This was all that I had to do, while I was well dressed in cloths and silks, and had plenty of leisure time. After a service of eighteen months with Yousouf Effendi, he gave me to his younger brother, Yousouf Kavass, less wealthy than himself. This brother was, however, a very kind-hearted man, and treated his slaves, a Nubian, a native of Sennar, and myself, very kindly. While in this service I became known to Prince Mentchikoff, the Envoy Extraordinary of Russia at Constantinople, and was finally sold to him by my master. At the declaration of the Crimean war, after sending his things on board the Russian steamer Vladimir, the Prince started with despatches for his august master, via Corfu, Athens, Zara, Trieste, Vienna, Cracow, and Warsaw, to St. Petersburg. I accompanied him on the journey, and, as the despatches were of the utmost importance, we travelled with the greatest speed.

The house of my master, to which we went, in St. Petersburg, was situated on the Nevskoi Prospekt, the Broadway of the city, and was built of granite, in the Doric style, and very spacious. His family consisted of his wife, one son, and three daughters, while his servants numbered about thirty. The Prince, however, was not so immensely rich as some Russian aristocrats of his standing. Shortly after his arrival at St. Petersburg, Prince Mentchikoff was assigned to command in the army of the Crimea, and he hastened there, leaving me in St. Petersburg. After his departure, not being satisfied with the way in which the head servant treated me, I engaged service with Prince Nicholas Troubetzkoy.

This family, better known as Le Grand Troubetzkoy, are descendants of the Grand Duke of Lithuania. The Prince's father was noted for skill and bravery in the war of 1828. The Troubetzkoys claim relationship with the Emperor of France, the Duc de Morny, the half-brother of the Emperor, having married the daughter of Prince Serges Troubetzkoy.

Prince Nicholas was the youngest of five sons, and lived with his brother André, not far from the Italian theatre, both of them being single.

While in this service, I was baptized in St. Petersburg, November 12, 1855, into the Greek Church, my name being changed from Mohammed-Ali-Ben-Said to Nicholas Said. Prince Nicholas was my godfather. I shall always feel grateful, so long as I live, for Prince Nicholas's kindness to me; but I cannot help thinking that the way I was baptized was not right, for I think that I ought to have known perfectly well the nature of the thing beforehand. Still, it was a good intention the Prince had toward my moral welfare. After I was baptized he was very kind to me, and he bought me a solid gold cross to wear on my breast, after the Russian fashion. I was the Prince's personal servant, going always in the carriage with him.

As the Czar Nicholas was godfather to the Prince, he had free access to the palace. Though he had several chances to become minister at some European court, he always refused, preferring to live a life of inaction. His health, however, was not very good, and he was very nervous. I have seen him faint scores of time in Russia; but when he left Russia, his health began to improve very much.

Everybody acquainted with Russia knows that Czar Nicholas used to make all the aristocracy tremble at his feet. No nobleman, to whatever rank he might belong, could leave the country without his consent, and paying a certain sum of money for the privilege. This measure of the Czar was not very well liked by the nobility, but his will was law, and had to be executed without grumbling.

Prince Troubetzkoy had several times made application for permission to travel, but without success, so long as Czar Nicholas lived; for he hated liberal ideas, and feared some of his subjects might, in the course of time, introduce those ideas from foreign countries into Russia.

The Prince passed the summer season outside of the city, a distance of about twenty-five versts, at a splendid residence of his own, a marble house about the size of the Fifth Avenue Hotel of New York City. Adjoining it was a small theatre, or glass house, containing tropical fruits, and a menagerie, where I first saw a llama, and the interior of the palace was lined with pictures and statues. It was a magnificent building, but was getting to be quite old, and the Prince used to talk of repairing it, though he remarked it would cost many thousand roubles. This estate contained many thousand acres, and four good-sized villages, and was about eight miles square. I had here some of the happiest days of my life.

About this time I went with the Prince to Georgia,--his brother-in-law, a general in that department, having been wounded by the Circassians under Schamyl. We reached Tiflis, the capital of Georgia, in January, and remained there until after the capture of Kars by the English and Turks. While in the Caucasus, the Prince visited some of the neighboring parts of Persia, including Teheran and some smaller towns, and he returned to Russia by way of Novgorod.

After the death of Czar Nicholas, Alexander, his successor, gave the Prince permission to travel where he chose, without limit of time, and on the 24th of February he started, going first to Warsaw, and thence, via Cracow, to Vienna. Here I remained for two months, in charge of his effects, while he visited a sister in Pesth, in Hungary. On his return we went to Prague, and thence to Dresden. At this place, I was greatly bothered by the children. They said that they had never seen a black man before. But the thing which most attracted them was my Turkish dress, which I wore all the time in Europe. Every day, for the three weeks we remained in Dresden, whenever I went to take my walk I was surrounded by them to the number of several hundred. To keep myself from them, I used to ride in a carriage or on horseback, but this was too expensive. I thought the way I could do best was to be friendly with them. So I used to sit in the garden and speak with them,--that is, those who could understand French. They took a great liking to me, for I used sometimes to buy them fruits, candies, and other things, spending in this way a large amount. Prince Troubetzkoy had a brother, Prince Vladimir, living in Dresden, a very handsome and a very excellent man, but suffering from consumption. He treated me very kindly, and when we left gave me several very interesting books, both religious and secular.

From Dresden we went to Munich, thence to Baden-Baden, Wiesbaden, Coblenz, Cologne, Aix-la-Chapelle, Brussels, and Ostende; then, returning to Brussels, visited the field of Waterloo, and proceeded to Switzerland, passing through Berne, Interlachen, over the Jura and St. Gothard's, to Zurich. From Zurich we went to Como in Lombardy, where the Prince's eldest brother, Alexander, had a villa on the borders of the lake. After a short stay here, we went on to Verona, and then to Milan, where I was left while the Prince made a short visit to Venice. Here, while left alone, I did not behave as well as I might have done, sometimes drinking too much, and spending my money foolishly. Here also I saw, for the first time since leaving Africa, a countryman. He was named Mirza, and was born about thirty-five miles from Kooka, my native place. He was considerably older than I, and had been away from Africa some fifteen years. He was waiting on a Venetian Marquis whose name I have forgotten.

After a stay of four weeks in Milan, we started, via Genoa, Leghorn, and Pisa, for Florence. Here I attended my master at two levees,--one at the palace of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, where I believe I had a better time than the Prince, and the other at Prince Demidoff's. This latter gentleman is a very wealthy Russian, and is very widely known. He is not a nobleman in Russia, however, but has his title from the Grand Duke. He is well known for the disagreeable propensity he has for beating his servants. While he was in Vienna he was worsted in an attempt to chastise a Hungarian footman, but he would not quit the practice, and has paid several fines imposed by law in consequence.

Our next stopping-place was Rome, where the Prince remained for the winter, making meanwhile a short visit to Naples, and leaving in the spring for Paris. We were in Paris when the Prince Imperial was born, and stayed until his christening, which was a very important day there. I remember well the wonder of a young Russian servant-girl, that France should have still so many soldiers as appeared in the procession,--a fraction only, of course, of her army,--after losing so many in the Crimea. The Prince always took a great pride in dress, both for himself and his servants, and particularly here. I was always dressed in Turkish costume, embroidered with gold, and never costing less than two or three hundred dollars.

After a three months' stay in Paris we went to London, where the Prince took rooms at a first-class boarding-house; but he was invited almost all the time to different country seats, where I had very gay times, for the English servants live better than any in Europe.

At the conclusion of his English visit, the Prince returned to Baden-Baden, this time renting a house. While there Napoleon III. passed through the place on his way to meet the Czar Alexander; and Prince Troubetzkoy was summoned to Frankfort-on-the-Main to attend on the latter. Here I was one day told by the Prince to dress myself in my best, and go to the Russian Ambassador's to wait on the Emperor at dinner. There were present beside the two Emperors, the King of Wurtemberg, the Grand Dukes of Baden, Hesse Darmstadt, and Nassau, the Ministers of France and Belgium, the Burgomaster of Frankfort, Messrs. Rothschild, and many others. A splendid dinner was served at six o'clock, the usual Russian dinner-hour, and was followed by a ball, which continued until two in the morning. A day previous to the monarch's departure Prince Gortchakoff handed my master thirty thalers as a present for me.

About this time I began to think of the condition of Africa, my native country, how European encroachments might be stopped, and her nationalities united. I thought how powerful the United States had become since 1776, and I wondered if I were capable of persuading the kings of Soodan to send several hundred boys to learn the arts and sciences existing in civilized countries. I thought that I would willingly sacrifice my life, if need be, in realizing my dreams. I cried many times at the ignorance of my people, exposed to foreign ambition, who, however good warriors they might be, could not contend against superior weapons and tactics in the field. I prayed earnestly to be enabled to do some good to my race. The Prince could not but see that I was very sober, but I never told him my thoughts.

We stayed at Baden-Baden all summer and part of the fall, and then left for Paris. The Prince made this journey to visit his niece, who had just been married to the Duc de Morny, formerly the French Ambassador to Russia. She was a most beautiful person, only seventeen years of age. I was taken to see her, and kiss her hand, according to custom. She at first hesitated to give me her hand, undoubtedly being afraid. I had never seen her in Russia, as she was at the Imperial University, studying. After two weeks we again left Paris for Rome, via Switzerland, again passed the summer at Baden-Baden, again visited Paris, and various other points, until the year 1859 found the Prince again in London.

My desire to return to my native country had now become so strong, that I here told the Prince I must go home to my people. He tried to persuade me to the contrary, but I was inflexible in my determination. After he found that I was not to be persuaded, he got up with tears in his eyes, and said: "Said, I wish you good luck; you have served me honestly and faithfully, and if ever misfortune happens to you, remember I shall always be, as I always have been, interested in you." I, with many tears, replied that I was exceedingly thankful for all he had bestowed on me and done in my behalf, and that I should pray for him while I lived. I felt truly sorry to leave this most excellent Prince. As I was leaving, he gave me as a present two fifty-pound bills. It was many days before I overcame my regret. Often I could hardly eat for grief.

I now went to board at the Strangers' Home, at the West India Dock, five miles from where the Prince stopped. Here I waited for a steamer for Africa. Hardly had I been there two weeks, when a gentleman from Holland proposed to me a situation to travel with him in the United States and West India Islands. I had read much about these countries, and my desire to see them caused me to consent, and we left Liverpool soon after New Year's, 1860.

With this gentleman I went via Boston and New York to New Providence, Long Keys, Inagua, Kingston, Les Gonaives, St. Marc, Demerara, Martinique, Guadeloupe, and then back to New Providence, and from there by steamer to New York. We remained in New York two months, and then visited Niagara, Hamilton, Toronto, Kingston, Montreal, Quebec, and Ottawa, until, finally, at a small village called Elmer, my employer's funds gave out, and I lent him five hundred dollars of my own money. Of this five hundred I received back only three hundred and eighty, and this failure compelled me to remain in this country and earn my living by work to which I was unaccustomed.

* * * * *

At this point the written narrative of Nicholas ends, at some date during the year 1861. He afterward went to Detroit, and taught a school for those of his own color, meeting there, I believe, a clergyman whom he had seen years before in Constantinople, while a servant to Prince Mentchikoff. At Detroit he enlisted in a colored regiment in the summer of 1863. He served faithfully and bravely with his regiment as corporal and sergeant in the Department of the South, and near the close of the war was attached, at his own request, to the hospital department, to acquire some knowledge of medicine. He was mustered out with the company in which he served, in the fall of 1865. But, alas for his plans of service to his countrymen in his native land! like many a warrior before him, he fell captive to woman, married at the South, and for some time past the writer, amidst the changes of business, has entirely lost sight of him.

FOOTNOTES:

[17] Barca Gana is alluded to in the Encyclopædia Britannica (Vol. V. p. 54) as the general of the Scheik of Bornoo.--EDS.

BY-WAYS OF EUROPE.

FROM PERPIGNAN TO MONTSERRAT.

"Out of France and into Spain," says the old nursery rhyme; but at the eastern base of the Pyrenees one seems to have entered Spain before leaving France. The rich vine-plains of Roussillon once belonged to the former country; they retain quite as distinct traces of the earlier Moorish occupancy, and their people speak a dialect almost identical with that of Catalonia. I do not remember the old boundaries of the province, but I noticed the change immediately after leaving Narbonne. Vine-green, with the grays of olive and rock, were the only colors of the landscape. The tower, massive and perched upon elevations, spoke of assault and defence; the laborers in the fields were brown, dark-haired, and grave, and the semi-African silence of Spain seemed already to brood over the land.

I entered Perpignan under a heavy Moorish gateway, and made my way to a hostel through narrow, tortuous streets, between houses with projecting balconies, and windows few and small, as in the Orient. The hostel, though ambitiously calling itself an hotel, was filled with that Mediterranean atmosphere and odor which you breathe everywhere in Italy and the Levant,--a single characteristic flavor, in which, nevertheless, you fancy you detect the exhalations of garlic, oranges, horses, cheese, and oil. A mild whiff of it stimulates the imagination, and is no detriment to physical comfort. When, at breakfast, red mullet came upon the table, and oranges fresh from the tree, I straightway took off my Northern nature as a garment, folded it and packed it neatly away in my knapsack, and took out, in its stead, the light beribboned and bespangled Southern nature, which I had not worn for some eight or nine years. It was like a dressing-gown after a dress-coat, and I went about with a delightfully free play of the mental and moral joints.

There were four hours before the departure of the diligence for Spain, and I presume I might have seen various historical or architectural sights of Perpignan; but I was really too comfortable for anything else than a lazy meandering about the city, feeding my eyes on quaint houses, groups of people full of noise and gesture, the scarlet blossoms of the pomegranate, and the glitter of citron-leaves in the gardens. A one-legged fellow, seven feet high, who called himself a _commissionnaire_, insisted on accompanying me, and I finally accepted him, for two reasons;--first, he knew nothing whatever about the city; and secondly, tourists are so rare that he must have been very poor. His wooden leg, moreover, easily kept pace with my loitering steps, and though, as a matter of conscience, he sometimes volunteered a little information, he took my silence meekly and without offence. In this wise, I gained some pleasant pictures of the place; and the pictures which come with least effort are those which remain freshest in memory.

There was one point, however, where my limping giant made a stand, and set his will against expostulation or entreaty. I _must_ see the avenue of sycamores, he said; there was plenty of time; France, the world, had no such avenue; it was near at hand; every stranger went to see it and was amazed;--and therewith he set off, without waiting for my answer. I followed, for I saw that otherwise he would not have considered his fee earned. The avenue of sycamores was indeed all that he had promised. I had seen larger trees in Syria and Negropont, but here was a triple avenue, nearly half a mile in length, so trained and sculptured that they rivalled the regularity of masonry. Each trunk, at the height of ten or twelve feet, divided into two arms, which then leaned outwards at the same angle, and mingled their smaller boughs, fifty feet overhead. The aisles between them thus took the form of very slender pyramids, truncated near the top. If the elm gives the Gothic, this was assuredly the Cyclopean arch. In the beginning, the effect must have been artificially produced, but the trees were now so old, and had so accustomed themselves to the forms imposed, that no impression of force or restraint remained. Through the roof of this superb green minster not a beam of sunshine found its way. On the hard gravel floor groups of peasants, soldiers, nurses, and children strolled up and down, all with the careless and leisurely air of a region where time has no particular value.

We passed a dark-haired and rather handsome gentleman and lady. "They are opera-singers, Italians," said my companion, "and they are going with you in the diligence." I looked at my watch and found that the hour of departure had nearly arrived, and I should have barely time to procure a little Spanish money. When I reached the office, the gentleman and lady were already installed in the two corners of the _coupé_. My place, apparently, was between them. The agent was politely handing me up the steps, when the gentleman began to remonstrate; but in France the regulations are rigid, and he presently saw that the intrusion could not be prevented. With a sigh and a groan he gave up his comfortable corner to me, and took the middle seat, for which I was booked! "Will you have your place?" whispered the agent. I shook my head. "You get the best seat, don't you see?" he resumed, "because--" But the rest of the sentence was a wink and a laugh. I am sure there is the least possible of the Don Juan in my appearance; yet this agent never lost an opportunity to wink at me whenever he came near the diligence, and I fancied I heard him humming to himself, as we drove away,--

"Ma--nella Spagna--mille e tre!"

I endeavored to be reasonably courteous, without familiarity, towards the opera-singers, but the effect of the malicious winks and smiles made the lady appear to me timid and oppressed, and the gentleman an unexploded mine of jealousy. My remarks were civilly if briefly answered, and then they turned towards each other and began conversing in a language which was not Italian, although melodious, nor French, although nasal. I pricked up my ears and listened more sharply than good manners allowed,--but only until I had recognized the Portuguese tongue. Whomsoever I may meet, in wandering over the world, it rarely happens that I cannot discover some common or "mutual" friend, and in this instance I determined to try the experiment. After preliminaries, which gently led the conversation to Portugal, I asked:--

"Do you happen to know Count M----?"

"Only by name."

"Or Senhor O----, a young man and an astronomer?"

"Very well!" was the reply. "He is one of the most distinguished young men of science in Portugal."

The ice was thereupon broken, and the gentleman became communicative and agreeable. I saw, very soon, that the pair were no more opera-singers than they were Italians; that the lady was not timid, nor her husband jealous; but he had simply preferred, as any respectable husband would, to give up his comfortable seat rather than have a stranger thrust between himself and his wife.

Once out of Perpignan, the Pyrenees lay clear before us. Over bare red hills, near at hand, rose a gray mountain rampart, neither lofty nor formidable; but westward, between the valleys of the Tech and the Tet, towered the solitary pyramid of the Canigou, streaked with snow-filled ravines. The landscapes would have appeared bleak and melancholy, but for the riotous growth of vines which cover the plain and climb the hillsides wherever there is room for a terrace of earth. These vines produce the dark, rich wine of Roussillon, the best vintage of Southern France. Hedges of aloes, clumps of Southern cypress, poplars by the dry beds of winter streams, with brown tints in the houses and red in the soil, increased the resemblance to Spain. Rough fellows, in rusty velvet, who now and then dug their dangling heels into the sides of the mules or asses they rode, were enough like _arrieros_ or _contrabandistas_ to be the real article. Our stout and friendly coachman, even, was hailed by the name of Moreno, and spoke French with a foreign accent.

At the post-station of Le Boulou, we left the plain of Roussillon behind us. At this end of the Pyrenean chain there are no such trumpet-names as Roncesvalles, Fontarabia, and the Bidassoa. Hannibal, Cæsar, Charlemagne, and the Saracens have marched through these defiles, and left no grand historic footprint, but they will always keep the interest which belongs to those natural barriers and division walls whereby races and histories were once separated. It was enough for me that here were the Pyrenees, and I looked forward, perhaps, with a keener curiosity, to the character and forms of their scenery, than to the sentiment which any historic association could produce. A broad and perfect highway led us through shallow valleys, whose rocky sides were hung with rows of olive-trees, into wilder and more abrupt dells, where vegetation engaged in a struggle with stone, and without man's help would have been driven from the field. Over us the mountains lifted themselves in bold bastions and parapets, disforested now, if those gray upper plateaus ever bore forests, and of a uniform slaty-gray in tone, except where reddish patches of oxidation showed like the rust of age.

But, like "all waste and solitary places," the scenery had its own peculiar charm. Poussin and Salvator Rosa would have seated themselves afresh at every twist of the glen, and sketched the new picture which it unfolded. The huge rocks, fallen from above, or shattered in the original upheaval of the chain, presented a thousand sharp, forcible outlines and ragged facets of shadow, and the two native growths of the Pyrenees--box and cork-oak--fringed them as thickets or overhung them as trees, in the wildest and most picturesque combinations. Indeed, during this portion of the journey, I saw scores of sketches waiting for the selected artist who has not yet come for them,--sketches full of strength and beauty, and with a harmony of color as simple as the chord of triple tones in music. When to their dark grays and greens came the scarlet Phrygian cap of the Catalonian, it was brighter than sunshine.

The French fortress of Bellegarde, crowning a drum-shaped mass of rock, which blocked up the narrow valley in front, announced our approach to the Spanish frontier. The road wound back and forth as it climbed through a stony wilderness to the mouth of a gorge under the fortress, and I saw, before we entered this last gateway into Spain, the peak of the Canigou touched with sunset, and the sweep of plain beyond it black under the shadow of storm-clouds. On either side were some heaps of stone, left from forts and chapels of the Middle Ages, indicating that we had already reached the summit of the pass, which is less than a thousand feet above the sea-level. In ten minutes the gorge opened, and we found ourselves suddenly rattling along the one street of the gay French village of Perthus. Officers from Bellegarde sat at the table in front of the smart _café_, and drank absinthe; soldiers in red trousers chatted with the lively women who sold tobacco and groceries; there were trees, little gardens, arbors of vine, and the valley opened southwards, descending and broadening towards a cloudless evening sky.

At the end of the village I saw a granite pyramid, with the single word "Gallia" engraved upon it; a few paces farther two marble posts bore the half-obliterated arms of Spain. Here the diligence paused a moment, and an officer of customs took his seat beside the coachman. The telegraph-pole behind us was of barked pine, the next one in front was painted gray; the _vente de tabac_ became _estanco nacional_, and the only overlapping of the two nationalities which I observed--all things else being suddenly and sharply divided--was that some awkward and dusty Spanish soldiers were walking up the street of Perthus, and some trim, jaunty French soldiers were walking down the road, towards the first Spanish wine-shop. We also went down, and swiftly, in the falling twilight, through which, erelong, gardens and fields began to glimmer, and in half an hour drew up in the little Spanish town of La Junquera, the ancient "place of rushes." Here there was a rapid and courteous examination of baggage, a call for passports, which were opened and then handed back to us without _visé_ or fee being demanded, and we were declared free to journey in Spain. Verily, the world is becoming civilized, when Spain, the moral satrapy of Rome, begins to pull down her barriers and let the stranger in!

I inspected our "insides," as they issued forth, and found, in addition to a priest and three or four commercial individuals with a contraband air, a young French naval officer, and an old German who was too practical for a professor and too stubborn in his views to be anything else. He had made fifteen journeys to Switzerland, he informed me, knew Scotland from the Cheviots to John o' Groat's, and now proposed the conquest of Spain. Here Moreno summoned us to our places, and the diligence rolled onward. Past groups of Catalans, in sandals and scarlet bonnets, returning from the harvest fields; past stacks of dusky grain and shadowy olive-orchards; past open houses, where a single lamp sometimes flashed upon a woman's head; past a bonfire, turning the cork-trees into transparent bronze, and past the sound of water, plunging under the idle mill-wheel, in the cool, delicious summer air,--we journeyed on. The stars were beginning to gather in the sky, when square towers and masses of cubic houses rose against them, and the steady roll of our wheels on the smooth highway became a dreadful clatter on the rough cobble-stones of Figueras.

The Pyrenees were already behind us; the town overlooks a wide, marshy plain. But the mountains make their vicinity felt in a peculiar manner. The north-wind, gathered into the low pass of Bellegarde and drawn to a focus of strength, blows down the opening valley with a force which sometimes lays an embargo on travel. Diligences are overturned, postilions blown out of their saddles, and pedestrians carried off their feet. The people then pray to their saints that the _tramontana_ may cease; but, on the other hand, as it is a very healthy wind, sweeping away the feverish exhalations from the marshy soil, they get up a grand annual procession to some mountain-shrine of the Virgin, and pray that it may blow. So, when the Virgin takes them at their word, the saints are invoked on the other side, and the wonder is that both parties don't get out of patience with the people of Figueras.

The diligence drew up at the door of a _fonda_, and Moreno announced that we were to take supper and wait until midnight. This was welcome news to all; but the old German drew me aside as we entered the house, and whispered, "Now our stomachs are going to be tried." "Not at all," I answered, "we shall find very good provender." "But the guide-book says it is very bad," he persisted. And he looked despondent, even with a clean table-cloth and a crisp roll of bread before him, until the soup steamed under his nose. His face brightened at the odor, grew radiant at the flavor, and long before we reached the roast pullet and salad he expressed his satisfaction with Spanish cookery. With the dessert came a _vino rancio_, full of summer fire, and the tongues of the company were loosened. From the weather and the Paris Exposition we leaped boldly into politics, and, being on Spanish soil, discussed France and the Mexican business. The French officer was silent and annoyed: he was a pleasant fellow, and I, for one, had a little sympathy with his annoyance, but I could not help saying that all Americans (except the Rev. ----) considered the action of France as an outrage and an impertinence, and were satisfied with her miserable failure. The Spanish passengers nodded and smiled.

I should not have spoken, had I foreseen one consequence of my words. The German snatched the reins of conversation out of our hands, and dashed off at full speed, trampling France and her ruler under his feet. At the first pause, I said to him, in German: "Pray don't be so violent in your expressions,--the gentleman beside me is a naval officer." But he answered: "I don't care,--I must speak my mind, which I could not do in Paris. France has been the curse of Spain, as well as of all Europe, and there will be no peace until we put a stop to her pretensions!" Thereupon he said the same thing to the company; but the Spaniards were too politic to acquiesce openly. The officer replied, "France has not injured Spain, but, on the contrary, has protected her!" and he evidently had not the slightest suspicion that there was anything offensive in his words. The Spaniards still remained silent, but another expression came into their eyes. It was time to change the subject; so the principle of non-intervention, in its fullest, most literal sense, was proposed and accepted. A grave Majorcan gentleman distributed cigars; his daughter, with her soft, melodious voice, was oil to the troubled waters, and before midnight we were all equally courteous and cosmopolitan.

Of the four ensuing hours I can give no account. Neither asleep nor awake, hearing with closed eyes, or seeing with half-closed senses, one can never afterwards distinguish between what is seen and what is dreamed. This is a state in which the body may possibly obtain some rest, but the mind becomes inexpressibly fatigued. One's memory of it is a blurred sketch, a faded daguerreotype. I welcomed that hour when

"The wind blows cold While the morning doth unfold,"

for it blew away this film, which usurped the place of the blessed mantle of sleep. Chill, even here in African Spain, where the pale pearl of the dawn foretold a burning noon, and where, in May, the harvests were already reaped, the morning brightened; but we were near the end of the journey. At sunrise, the towers of Giron stood fast and firm over the misty level of the shimmering olive-groves; then the huge dull mass of the cathedral, the walls and bastions of the hill-forts, which resisted a siege of seven months during the Peninsular war, and finally the monotonous streets of the lower town, through which we drove.

The industrious Catalans were already awake and stirring. Smokes from domestic hearths warmed the cool morning air; cheerful noises of men, animals, and fowls broke the silence; doors were open as we entered the town, and the women were combing and twisting their black hair in the shadows within. At the post some brown grooms lounged about the door. A priest passed,--a genuine Don Basilio, in inky gown and shovel-hat; and these graceless grooms looked after him, thrust their tongues into their cheeks, and made an irreverent grimace. The agent at Perpignan came into my mind; I winked at the fellows, without any clear idea wherefore, but it must have expressed something, for they burst into a laugh and repeated the grimace.

The lower town seemed to be of immense length. Once out of it, a superb avenue of plane-trees received us, at the end of which was the railway-station. In another hour the train would leave for Barcelona. Our trunks must be again examined. When I asked the reason why this annoying regulation, obsolete elsewhere in Europe, is here retained, the Spaniards gravely informed me that, if it were abolished, a great many people would be thrown out of employment. Not that they get much pay for the examination,--but they are constantly bribed not to examine! There was a _café_ attached to the station, and I advised my fellow-passengers to take a cup of the delicious ropy chocolate of Spain, after which one accepts the inevitable more patiently.

I found the landscapes from Giron to Barcelona very bright and beautiful. Our locomotive had fallen into the national habit: it was stately and deliberate, it could not be hurried, its very whistle was subdued and dignified. We went forward at an easy pace, making about fifteen miles an hour, which enabled me to notice the patient industry of the people, as manifested on every plain and hillside. The Catalans are called rough and ungraceful; beside the sprightly Andalusians they seem cold and repellent; they have less of that blue blood which makes the beggar as proud as the grandee, but they possess the virtue of labor, which, however our artistic tastes may undervalue it, is the basis from which all good must spring. When I saw how the red and rocky hills were turned into garden-terraces, how the olive-trees were pruned into health and productiveness, how the wheat stood so thick that it rolled but stiffly under the breeze, I forgot the jaunty _majos_ of Seville, and gave my hearty admiration to the strong-backed reapers in the fields of Catalonia.

The passengers we took up on the way, though belonging to the better class, and speaking Spanish whenever it was necessary, all seemed to prefer the popular dialect. Proprietors of estates and elegant young ladies conversed together in the rough patois of the peasants, which to me was especially tantalizing, because it sounded so familiar, and yet was so unintelligible. It is in reality the old _langue limousine_ of France, kindred to the Provençal, and differs very slightly from the dialect spoken on the other side of the Pyrenees. It is terse, forcible, and expressive, and I must confess that the lisping Spanish, beside it, seems to gain in melody at the expense of strength.

We approached Barcelona across the wide plain of the Llobregat, where orange-gardens and factory chimneys, fountains "i' the midst of roses" and machine-shops full of grimy workmen, succeed each other in a curious tangle of poetry and greasy fact. The Mediterranean gleams in a blue line on the left, the citadel of Montjoi crowns a bluff in front; but the level city hides itself behind the foliage of the plain, and is not seen. At the station you wait half an hour, until the baggage is again deposited on the dissecting-tables of the customs officers; and here, if, instead of joining the crowd of unhappy murmurers in the anteroom, you take your station in the doorway, looking down upon porters, pedlers, idlers, and policemen, you are sure to be diverted by a little comedy acted in pantomime. An outside porter has in some way interfered with the rights of a station-porter; a policeman steps between the two, the latter of whom, lifting both hands to heaven in a wild appeal, brings them down swiftly and thrusts them out before him, as if descending to earthly justice. The outsider goes through the same gestures, and then both, with flashing eyes and open mouths, teeth glittering under the drawn lips, await the decision. The policeman first makes a sabre-cut with his right arm, then with his left; then also lifts his hands to heaven, shakes them there a moment, and, turning as he brings them down, faces the outside porter. The latter utters a passionate cry, and his arms begin to rise; but he is seized by the shoulder and turned aside; the crowd closes in, and the comedy is over.

We have a faint interest in Barcelona for the sake of Columbus; but, apart from this one association, we set it down beside Manchester, Lowell, and other manufacturing cities. It was so crowded within its former walls, that little space was left for architectural display. In many of the streets I doubt whether four persons could walk abreast. Only in the Rambla, a broad central boulevard, is there any chance for air and sunshine, and all the leisure and pleasure of the city is poured into this one avenue. Since the useless walls have been removed, an ambitious modern suburb is springing up on the west, and there will in time be a new city better than the old.

This region appears to be the head-quarters of political discontent in Spain,--probably because the people get to be more sensible of the misrule under which they languish, in proportion as they become more active and industrious. Nothing could have been more peaceable upon the surface than the aspect of things; the local newspapers never reported any disturbance, yet intelligence of trouble in Catalonia was circulating through the rest of Europe, and _something_--I could not ascertain precisely what it was--took place during my brief visit. The telegraph-wires were cut, and some hundreds of soldiers were sent into the country; but the matter was never mentioned, unless two persons whom I saw whispering together in the darkest corner of a _café_ were discussing it. I believe, if a battle had been fought within hearing of the cannon, the Barcelonese would have gone about the streets with the same placid, unconcerned faces. Whether this was cunning, phlegm, or the ascendency of solid material interests over the fiery, impulsive nature of the Spaniard, was not clear to a passing observer. In either case it was a prudent course.

If, in the darkened streets--or rather lanes--of Barcelona, I saw some suggestive pictures; if the court-yard of the cathedral, with its fountains and orange-trees, seemed a thousand miles removed from the trade and manufacture of the city; if the issuing into sunshine on the mole was like a blow in the eyes, to which the sapphire bloom of the Mediterranean became a healing balm; and if the Rambla, towards evening, changed into a shifting diorama of color and cheerful life,--none of these things inclined me to remain longer than the preparation for my further journey required. Before reaching the city, I had caught a glimpse, far up the valley of the Llobregat, of a high, curiously serrated mountain, and that old book of the "Wonders of the World," (now, alas! driven from the library of childhood,) opened its pages and showed its rough woodcuts, in memory, to tell me what the mountain was. How many times has that wonderful book been the chief charm of my travels, causing me to forget Sulpicius on the Ægean Sea, Byron in Italy, and Humboldt in Mexico!

To those who live in Barcelona, Montserrat has become a common-place, the resort of Sunday excursions and picnics, one fourth devotional, and three fourths epicurean. Wild, mysterious, almost inaccessible as it stands in one's fancy, it sinks at this distance into the very material atmosphere of railroad and omnibus; but, for all that, we are not going to give it up, though another "Wonder of the World" should go by the board. Take the Tarragona train then with me, on a cloudless afternoon. In a few minutes the scattered suburban blocks are left behind, and we enter the belt of villas, with their fountained terraces and tropical gardens. More and more the dark red earth shows through the thin foliage of the olives, as the hills draw nearer, and it finally gives color to the landscapes. The vines covering the levels and lower slopes are wonderfully luxuriant; but we can see how carefully they are cultivated. Hedges of aloe and cactus divide them; here and there some underground cavern has tumbled in, letting down irregular tracts of soil, and the vines still flourish at the bottom of the pits thus made. As the plain shrinks to a valley, the hills on either side ascend into rounded summits, which begin to be dark with pine forests; villages with square, brown church-towers perch on the lower heights; cotton-mills draw into their service the scanty waters of the river, and the appearance of cheerful, thrifty labor increases as the country becomes rougher.

All this time the serrated mountain is drawing nearer, and breaking into a wilder confusion of pinnacles. It stands alone, planted across the base of a triangular tract of open country,--a strange, solitary, exiled peak, drifted away in the beginning of things from its brethren of the Pyrenees, and stranded in a different geological period. This circumstance must have long ago impressed the inhabitants of the region,--even in the ante-historic ages. When Christianity rendered a new set of traditions necessary, the story arose that the mountain was so split and shattered at the moment when Christ breathed his last on the cross of Calvary. This is still the popular belief; but the singular formation of Montserrat, independent of it, was sufficient to fix the anchoretic tastes of the early Christians. It is set apart by Nature, not only towering above all the surrounding heights, but drawing itself haughtily away from contact with them, as if conscious of its earlier origin.

At the station of Martorel I left the train, and took a coach which was in waiting for the village of Collbató, at the southern base of the mountain. My companion in the _coupé_ was a young cotton-manufacturer, who assured me that in Spain the sky and soil were good, but the _entresol_ (namely, the human race) was bad. The interior was crowded with country women, each of whom seemed to have four large baskets. I watched the driver for half an hour attempting to light a broken cigar, and then rewarded his astonishing patience with a fresh one, whereby we became good friends. Such a peaceful light lay upon the landscape, the people were so cheerful, the laborers worked so quietly in the vineyards, that the thought of a political disturbance the day before seemed very absurd. The olive-trees, which clothed the hills wherever their bony roots could find the least lodgement of soil, were of remarkably healthy and vigorous growth, and the regular cubic form into which they were pruned marked the climbing terraces with long lines of gray light, as the sun slanted across them.

"You see," said the Spaniard, as I noticed this peculiarity, "the _entresol_ is a little better in this neighborhood than elsewhere in Spain. The people cut the trees into this shape in order that they may become more compact and produce better; besides which, the fruit is more easily gathered. In all those orchards you will not find a decayed or an unhealthy tree; they are dug up and burned, and young ones planted in their place."

At the village of Esparaguerra the other passengers left, and I went on towards Collbató alone. But I had Montserrat for company, towering more grandly, more brokenly, from minute to minute. Every change in the foreground gave me a new picture. Now it was a clump of olives with twisted trunks; now an aloe, lifting its giant candelabrum of blossoms from the edge of a rock; now a bank of dull vermilion earth, upon which goats were hanging. The upper spires of the mountain disappeared behind its basal buttresses of gray rock, a thousand feet in perpendicular height, and the sinking sun, as it crept westward, edged these with sharp lines of light. Up, under the tremendous cliffs, and already in shadow, lay Collbató, and I was presently set down at the gate of the _posada_.

Don Pedro, the host, came forward to meet and welcome me, and his pretty daughter, sitting on the steps, rose up and dropped a salute. In the entrance hall I read, painted in large letters on the wall, the words of St. Augustine: "_In necessariis unitas; in dubiis libertas; in omnibus, caritas._" (If these sayings are _not_ St. Augustine's, somebody will be sure to correct me.) Verily, thought I, Don Pedro must be a character. I had no sooner comfortably seated myself in the doorway to contemplate the exquisite evening landscape, which the Mediterranean bounded in the distance, and await my supper, than Don Pedro ordered his daughter to bring the guests' book, and then betook himself to the task of running down a lean chicken. In the record of ten years I found that Germans were the most frequent visitors; Americans appeared but thrice. One party of the latter registered themselves as "gentlemen," and stated that they had seen the "prom_a_nent points,"--which gave occasion to a later Englishman to comment upon the intelligence of American gentlemen. The host's daughter, Pepita, was the theme of praise in prose and raptures in poetry.

"Are you Pepita?" I asked, turning to the girl, who sat on the steps before me, gazing into the evening sky with an expression of the most indolent happiness. I noticed for the first time, and admired, her firm, regular, almost Roman profile, and the dark masses of _real_ hair on her head. Her attitude, also, was very graceful, and she would have been, to impressible eyes, a phantom of delight, but for the ungraceful fact that she inveterately scratched herself whenever and wherever a flea happened to bite.

"No, señor," she answered; "I am Carmen. Pepita was married first, and then Mariquita. Angelita and myself are the only ones at home."

"I see there is also a poem to Angelita," I remarked, turning over the last leaves.

"O, that was a poet!" said she,--"a funny man! Everybody knows him: he writes for the theatre, and all that is about some eggs which Angelita fried for him. We can't understand it all, but we think it's good-natured."

Here the mother came, not as duenna, but as companion, with her distaff and spindle, and talked and span until I could no longer distinguish the thread against her gray dress. When the lean chicken was set before me, Don Pedro announced that a mule and guide would be in readiness at sunrise, and I could, if I chose, mount to the topmost peak of San Geronimo. In the base of the mountain, near Collbató, there are spacious caverns, which most travellers feel bound to visit; but I think that six or seven caves, one coal mine, and one gold mine are enough for a lifetime, and have renounced any further subterranean researches. Why delve into those dark, moist, oppressive crypts, when the blessed sunshine of years shows one so little of the earth and of human life? Let any one that chooses come and explore the caverns of Montserrat, and then tell me (as people have a passion for doing), "You missed the best!" The best is that with which one is satisfied.

Instead of five o'clock, when I should have been called, I awoke naturally at six, and found that Don Pedro had set out for San Geronimo four hours before, while neither guide nor mule was forthcoming. The old woman pointed to some specks far up in the shadow of the cliffs, which she assured me were travellers, and would arrive with mules in fifteen minutes. But I applied the words _in dubiis libertas_, and insisted on an immediate animal and guide, both of which, somewhat to my surprise, were produced. The black mule was strong, and the lank old Catalan shouldered my heavy valise and walked off without a murmur. The sun was already hot; but once risen above the last painfully constructed terrace of olives, and climbing the stony steep, we dipped into the cool shadow of the mountain. The path was difficult but not dangerous, winding upward through rocks fringed with dwarf ilex, box, and mastic, which made the air fragrant. Thyme, wild flax, and aconite blossomed in the crevices. The botany of the mountain is as exceptional as its geology; it includes five hundred different species.

The box-tree, which my Catalan guide called _bosch_ in his dialect, is a reminiscence, wherever one sees it, of Italy and Greece,--of ancient culture and art. Its odor, as Holmes admirably says, suggests eternity. If it was not the first plant that sprang up on the cooling planet, it ought to have been. Its glossy mounds, and rude, statuesque clumps, which often seem struggling to mould themselves into human shape, cover with beauty the terrible rocks of Montserrat. M. Delavigne had warned me of the dangers of the path I was pursuing,--walls on one side, and chasms a thousand feet deep on the other,--but the box everywhere shaped itself into protecting figures, and whispered as I went by, "Never fear; if you slip, I will hold you!"

The mountain is an irregular cone, about thirty-five hundred feet in height, and cleft down the middle by a torrent which breaks through its walls on the northeastern side. It presents a perpendicular face, which seems inaccessible, for the shelves between the successive elevations, when seen from below, appear as narrow fringes of vegetation, growing out of one unbroken wall. They furnish, indeed, but scanty room for the bridle-path, which at various points is both excavated and supported by arches of masonry. After nearly an hour, I found myself over Collbató, upon the roofs of which, it seemed, I might fling a stone. At the next angle of the mountain, the crest was attained, and I stood between the torn and scarred upper wilderness of Montserrat on the one hand, and the broad, airy sweep of landscape, bounded by the sea, on the other. To the northward, a similar cape thrust out its sheer walls against the dim, dissolving distances, and it was necessary to climb along the sides of the intervening gulf, which sank under me into depths of shadow. Every step of the way was inspiring, for there was the constant threat, without the reality, of danger. My mule paced securely along the giddy brinks; and though the path seemed to terminate fifty paces ahead, I was always sure to find a loop-hole or coigne of vantage which the box and mastic had hidden from sight. So in another hour the opposite foreland was attained, and from its crest I saw, all along the northern horizon, the snowy wall of the Pyrenees.

Here a path branched off to the peak of San Geronimo,--a two hours' clamber through an absolute desert of rock. My guide, although panting and sweating with his load, proposed the ascent; but in the film of heat which overspread the land I should have only had a wider panorama in which all distinct forms were lost,--vast, no doubt, but as blurred and intangible as a metaphysical treatise. I judged it better to follow the example of a pious peasant and his wife whom we had overtaken, and who, setting their faces toward the renowned monastery, murmured an _Ave_ from time to time. Erelong, on emerging from the thickets, we burst suddenly upon one of the wildest and most wonderful pictures I ever beheld. A tremendous wall of rock arose in front, crowned by colossal turrets, pyramids, clubs, pillars, and ten-pin shaped masses, which were drawn singly, or in groups of incredible distortion, against the deep blue of the sky. At the foot of the rock, the buildings of the monastery, huge and massive, the church, the houses for pilgrims, and the narrow gardens completely filled and almost overhung a horizontal shelf of the mountain, under which it again fell sheer away, down, down into misty depths, the bottom of which was hidden from sight. I dropped from the mule, sat down upon the grass, and, under pretence of sketching, studied this picture for an hour. In all the galleries of memory I could find nothing resembling it.

The descriptions of Montserrat must have made a powerful impression upon Goethe's mind, since he deliberately appropriated the scenery for the fifth act of the Second Part of Faust. Goethe was in the steadfast habit of choosing a local and actual habitation for the creations of his imagination; his landscapes were always either painted from nature, or copied from the sketch-books of others. The marvellous choruses of the fifth act floated through my mind as I drew; the "Pater Ecstaticus" hovered in the sunny air, the anchorites chanted from their caves, and the mystic voices of the undeveloped child-spirits came between, like the breathing of an Æolian harp. I suspect that the sanctity of the mountain really depends as much upon its extraordinary forms, as upon the traditions which have been gradually attached to it. These latter, however, are so strange and grotesque, that they could only be accepted here.

The monastery owes its foundation to a miraculous statue of the Virgin, sculptured by St. Luke, and brought to Spain by no less a personage than St. Peter. In the year 880, some shepherds who had climbed the mountain in search of stray goats heard celestial harmonies among the rocks. This phenomenon coming to the ears of Bishop Gondemar, he climbed to the spot, and was led by the music to the mouth of a cave, which exhaled a delicious perfume. There, enshrined in light, lay the sacred statue. Gondemar and his priests, chanting as they went, set out for Manresa, the seat of the diocese, carrying it with them; but on reaching a certain spot, they found it impossible to move farther. The statue obstinately refused to accompany them,--which was taken as a sign that there, and nowhere else, the shrine should be built. Just below the monastery there still stands a cross, with the inscription, "Here the Holy Image declared itself immovable, 880."

The chapel when built was intrusted to the pious care of Fray Juan Garin, whose hermitage is pointed out to you, on a peak which seems accessible only to the eagle. The Devil, however, interfered, as he always does in such cases. He first entered into Riquilda, the daughter of the Count of Barcelona, and then declared through her mouth that he would not quit her body except by the order of Juan Garin, the hermit of Montserrat. Riquilda was therefore sent to the mountain and given into the hermit's charge. A temptation similar to that of St. Anthony followed, but with exactly the opposite result. In order to conceal his sin, Juan Garin cut off Riquilda's head, buried her, and fled. Overtaken by remorse, he made his way to Rome, confessed himself to the Pope, and prayed for a punishment proportioned to his crime. He was ordered to become a beast, never lifting his face towards heaven, until the hour when God himself should signify his pardon.

Juan Garin went forth from the Papal presence on his hands and knees, crawled back to Montserrat, and there lived seven years as a wild animal, eating grass and bark, and never lifting his face towards heaven. At the end of this time his body was entirely covered with hair, and it so happened that the hunters of the Count snared him as a strange beast, put a chain around his neck, and took him to Barcelona. In the mansion of the Count there was an infant only five months old, in its nurse's arms. No sooner had the child beheld the supposed animal, than it gave a loud cry and exclaimed: "Rise up, Juan Garin; God has pardoned thee!" Then, to the astonishment of all, the beast arose and spoke in a human tongue. He told his story, and the Count set out at once with him to the spot where Riquilda was buried. They opened the grave and the maiden rose up alive, with only a rosy mark, like a thread, around her neck. In commemoration of so many miracles, the Count founded the monastery.

At present, the monks retain but a fragment of their former wealth and power. Their number is reduced to nineteen, which is barely enough to guard the shrine, perform the offices, and prepare and bless the rosaries and other articles of devotional traffic. I visited the church, courts, and corridors, but took no pains to get sight of the miraculous statue. I have already seen both the painting and the sculpture of St. Luke, and think him one of the worst artists that ever existed. Moreover, the place is fast assuming a secular, not to say profane air. There is a modern restaurant, with bill of fare and wine list, inside the gate, ticket-office for travellers, and a daily omnibus to the nearest railway station. Ladies in black mantillas lounge about the court-yards, gentlemen smoke on the balconies, and only the brown-faced peasant pilgrims, arriving with weary feet, enter the church with an expression of awe and of unquestioning faith. The enormous wealth which the monastery once possessed--the offering of kings--has disappeared in the vicissitudes of Spanish history, the French, in 1811, being the last pillagers. Since then, the treasures of gold and jewels have not returned; for the crowns offered to the Virgin by the city of Barcelona and by a rich American are of gilded silver, set with diamonds of paste!

I loitered for hours on the narrow terraces around the monastery, constantly finding some new and strange combination of forms in the architecture of the mountain. The bright silver-gray of the rock contrasted finely with the dark masses of eternal box, and there was an endless play of light and shade as the sun burst suddenly through some unsuspected gap, or hid himself behind one of the giant ten-pins of the summit. The world below swam in dim red undulations, for the color of the soil showed everywhere through its thin clothing of olive-trees. In hue as in form, Montserrat had no fellowship with the surrounding region.

The descent on the northern side is far less picturesque, inasmuch as you are perched upon the front seat of an omnibus, and have an excellent road--a work of great cost and labor--the whole way. But, on the other hand, you skirt the base of a number of the detached pillars and pyramids into which the mountain separates, and gain fresh pictures of its remarkable structure. There is one isolated shaft, visible at a great distance, which I should judge to be three hundred feet in height by forty or fifty in diameter. At the western end, the outline is less precipitous, and here the fields of vine and olive climb much higher than elsewhere. In an hour from the time of leaving the monastery, we were below the last rampart, rolling through dust in the hot valley of the Llobregat, and tracing the course of the invisible road across the walls of Montserrat, with a feeling of incredulity that we had really descended from such a point.

At the village of Montrisol, on the river, there is a large cotton factory. The doors opened as we approached, and the workmen came forth, their day's labor done. Men and women, boys and girls, in red caps and sandals, or bareheaded and barefooted, they streamed merrily along the road, teeth and eyes flashing as they chatted and sang. They were no pale, melancholy factory slaves, but joyous and light-hearted children of labor, and, it seemed to me, the proper successors of the useless idlers in the monastery of Montserrat. Up there, on the mountain, a system, all-powerful in the past, was swiftly dying; here, in the valley, was the first life of the only system that can give a future to Spain.

DINNER SPEAKING.

A LETTER TO MY NEPHEW.

So you did not enjoy your first Phi Beta dinner, dear Tom, because you were afraid all the time that the new members would be toasted, and then "the fellows" had said you must reply for them. That is a pity. As, after all, the fellows were not toasted, it is a great pity. I am glad you write to me about it, however, and now it is for me to take care that this never happens to you again.

I will tell you how to be always ready. I will tell you how I do.

My first Phi Beta dinner was, like yours, my first public dinner. It was on the day, which this year everybody remembered who was old enough, when Mr. Emerson delivered his first Phi Beta oration at Cambridge. How proudly he has the right to look back on the generation between, all of which he has seen, so much of which he has been! Well, he is no older this day, to all appearance, than he was then,--and your uncle, my dear boy, though older to appearance, is not older in reality. What is it dear G---- Q---- sings,--who sat behind me that early day at Phi Beta?

"When we 've been there ten million years, Bright shining as the sun, We 'll _have more days_ To sing God's praise, Than when we first begun!"

Remember that, my dear oldest nephew, as the ten million years go by,--and, remembering it, keep young or grow young.

Mr. Emerson was young, I say,--and I. We were all young.

Mr. Edward Everett was young. He was then Governor,--and, I think, presided, certainly spoke, at that Phi Beta dinner. By the almanac he must have been that year forty-five years old,--just as old, dear Tom, as some other people are this year by the almanac. He had been pretty much everything, had gone most everywhere, had seen almost all the people that were worth seeing, and remembered more than all the rest of us had forgotten. And he was very young. To those who knew him he always was. The day he died he was about the youngest man in most things that I knew.

And so it happened that he made the first dinner speech that I remember. We were all in the South Commons Hall of University, now used as somebody's lecture-room, say, at a guess, Professor Lovering's. And he gave some charming reminiscences of Charles Emerson, brother of the philosopher, too early lost, and everywhere loved,--and then, speaking of the oration of the day, and of the new philosophy to which it belonged, and of which the orator was, is, and will be the prophet, he said, in his gracious, funny, courtly, and hearty way, that he always thought of its thunders as he did of the bolts of Jupiter himself! Could one have complimented an orator more than to compare him to Jupiter? And then he went on to verify the comparison, by quoting the description,--

"Tres imbris torti radios, tres nubis aquosæ Addiderant, tres rutili ignis, tres alitis Austri,"--

and translated the words for his purpose,--

"Three ports were raging fire, and three the whelming waves! But three were _thirsty cloud_, and three were _empty wind_!"

Ah well, my boy! You do not remember what all the world, except a few of the elect, then said of "Transcendentalism." So you cannot imagine the scream of fun and applause which saluted this good-natured analysis of its thunder.

And I,--I was delighted at this aptness of quotation. Should I ever bring my capping lines to such a market? Here was a hit as good as the famous parliamentary retorts, which were so precious to us in the I. O. H. and in the Harvard Union. Should I ever live to see the happy day when I should find that it was wise, witty, and just the thing to say,

"Tu quoque litoribus nostris Æneia nutrix"?

or,

"Tityre dum redeo, brevis est via, pasce capellas,"

or any other of the T's? Or,

"Æsopus auctor quam materiam reperit,"

or,

"Æacus ingemuit, tristique ita voce locutus,"

or any other of the Æ diphthongs? It did not seem possible, but we would see.

Now it happened that, in the vacation following, a French steamer, I think the Geryon, came to Boston. And there was, perhaps a civic dinner, certainly an excursion down the harbor, to persuade her officers, and through them Louis Philippe, for this was in the early age of stone, that Boston Harbor was the best point for the projected line of French packets to stop at,--and somebody invited me to go. And it turned out that few of the Frenchmen spoke English, and few of the Common Councilmen spoke French, so that poor little I came to some miserable use as a half-interpreter. I remember telling a Lieutenant de Vaisseau that the "Centurion" rock was called so because the 74 Centurion was lost there; and that an indignant civic authority, guessing out my speech, told me they did not want the Frenchmen to know anything was ever lost in Boston Harbor! Perhaps that was the reason the French packets never came. Well, by and by there was the inevitable collation in the cabin. (A collation, dear boy, is a dinner where you have nothing to eat.) And we went down stairs to collate. I began to think of the speeches. Suppose they should call on the youngest of the interpreters, what could he say? What Latin quotation that would answer? Not Tityrus certainly! No. Nor Æneas's nurse certainly, for she went overboard,--bad luck to her!--or was she buried decently? Bad omen that! But--yes! certainly--what better than the thunderbolts of Jove? Steam-navigation forever,--Robert Fulton, Marquis of Worcester, madman in the French bedlam,--bolts of heaven secured for service of earth,--Franklin,--the great alliance,--steam-navigation uniting the world! Was not the whole prefigured, _messieurs, quand le grand poète_ forged the very thunderbolts of the _Dieu des Cieux_?

"Tres imbris torti radios, tres nubis aquosæ Addiderant, tres rutili ignis, tres alitis Austri."

What better description of the power which at that moment was driving us along,--

"Three rays of writhen rain, of fire three more, Of winged southern winds, and cloudy store, As many parts the dreadful mixture frame"?

Could anything have been more happy? And fortunately no member of Phi Beta was present but myself. But, unfortunately, there was no speaking, and for the moment I lost my opportunity.

But not my preparation, dear Tom. And for this purpose have I written this long story, to show you how, in thirty happy years since, when I have had nothing else to say, "Tres imbris torti radios" has always stood me in stead. One good quotation makes an after-dinner speaker the match of the whole world. And if you have it in Latin, the people who understand that language enjoy it especially, and those who do not always appear to enjoy it more especially. Perhaps they do. There is also the advantage of slight variations in the translation. Note the difference between Mr. Everett's above, and John Dryden's.

Imagine yourself, for instance, an invited guest at a Cincinnati dinner in Wisconsin. Unfortunately, my dear boy, none of your ancestors rose even to the rank of drummer in the army of the Revolution. Your great-grandfather's brother had Chastellux to dinner one day. If you can, make your speech out of that. But I do not think you can. Still, you are called up to speak: "Our friend from New England,"--"Connecticut,--Israel Putnam,--Bunker Hill,--Groton,--Wooster," &c., &c. What will you do, my boy? You must do something, and you must not disgrace old Wooster. Do! You have your thunderbolts.

"This army,"--"gathered from North and South and East and West,"--"like another army,"--"whose brave officers still linger among us,--cheer us," &c., &c.,--"this army,"--"combining such various elements of power, endurance, and wisdom,--this army, always when I think of it,--more than ever to-day, sir, when I see these who represent it in another generation,--when I think of Manly coming from the yeasty waves of the outstretched Cape,--of Ethan Allen descending from the cloudy tops of the Green Mountains,--of Knox, sweaty and black from the hot furnace work of Salisbury, where

'He created all the stores of war,'--

all meeting at the same moment with the Morgans, and Marions, and the one Washington from the distant South,--this army always seems to me to be the prefigured thunderbolt which the Cyclops forged for Jupiter.

'Tres imbris torti radios, tres nubis aquosæ Addiderant, tres rutili ignis, tres alitis Austri.'

'Three from the sultry South, three from the storm-beat shore, Three parts from distant mountains' cloudy store, While raging heat fused all with three parts more!'"

You see, dear Tom, these audiences are always good-natured, and by no means critical of your version.

Why, at the only time I was ever at a regimental dinner on the Plains, long before the war, you know, when to the untaught mind it did seem as if there was no reason why we were there, and no pretence for mutual congratulation, I remember when poor Pendergrast called me up to represent science, (I was at that time in the telegraph business,) the dear old quotation came to my relief like an inspiration. I got round to the Flag. Do you remember how safe General Halleck always found it to allude to the Flag?

"The Flag, gentlemen,"--"colors,"--"rainbow of our liberties,"--"Liberty everywhere." "Blue, white, and red of Low Countries,"--"Red, white, and blue of France,"--"English Constitution,"--"Puritan fathers, Cavaliers," &c., &c.

"Does it seem too much to say, gentlemen, that, with the divine instinct of poetry, the unequalled bard of the court of Augustus, looking down the ages beyond the sickly purple of the palace, to the days when armies should be the armies of freemen, and not the Prætorian guards of a tyrant,--that he veiled the glad prophecy of the future in the words in which he describes even the thunderbolt itself? The white crest of the foam, the blue of the sky, the red of the fiery furnace, are all tossed together, and play together, and rejoice together, there in the smiles or in the rage of the very breeze of Heaven.

'Tres imbris torti radios, tres nubis aquosæ Addiderant, tres rutili ignis, tres alitis Austri.'

'Three parts of white the crested billows lent, Three parts of blue the heavens themselves had sent, Three parts of fiery red with these were blent, And on the free-born wind across the world they went.'"

You are not old enough, my dear nephew, to remember the great consistory which the Pope held at Somerville, when for a moment he thought that the churches of the world had recognized that Union which in fact does make them one, and were willing to offer one front to the Devil, instead of fighting, as they always had done, on ten thousand hooks of their own. You understand, it was not this pope, Pius IX. It was the pope who came after Gregory XVII. and before Pius IX. Well, at that immense dinner-table, which had been built on the plan of John O'Groat's, so that each of the eleven thousand six hundred and thirty popes present might sit at the head,--I was fortunate enough to be appointed to represent the Sandemanian clergy,--the only body, as I will venture to say to you, which really preserves the simplicity of Gospel institutions, or in the least carries into our own time the spirit and life of fundamental Christianity. Now you may imagine the difficulty of speaking on such an occasion. I had thought it proper to speak in Latin. The difficulty was not so much in the language as in what to say, that one might be at once brave as a Sandemanian, and at the same time tolerant, and catholic as a Christian. Now it is not for me to say how well I acquitted myself. If you want to see my speech, you had better look in the _Annales de Foi_; and, if it is there, you will certainly find it. I did not think it amiss, certainly, that I was able to close by comparing the great agencies which the United Church would be able to employ to the thunderbolt itself. We had there present bishops from England of perpetual rain, from Sitka of perpetual cloud, from the eternal fires of the torrid zone, and from the farthest south of Patagonia. When we selected our sacred twelve, it was easy for us to take them, as if we were forging thunders.

"Tres imbris torti radios, tres nubis aquosæ Addiderant, tres rutili ignis, tres alitis Austri."

Now, my dear Tom, I am sure my lesson needs no moral. Of course I do not think you had better start in life with my quotation. To tell you the truth, I am still young. I am a life-member of many societies, and, as they outlive other usefulness, the more frequently do they dine together. I may therefore have some other occasion when I may be reminded of the Cyclops. But if, at your dinner, I had happened to be called upon, I think,--I do not know, but I think that, seeing such men as you describe, I should have been irresistibly led to consider the varied gifts which the University every year scatters over the land, and the exquisite harmony by which, from such different callings, different homes, and different destinies, they unite in the merriment or in the wisdom of her festivities. The men of practice who have been taming the waterfall, and made it subservient; the men of the gentle ministries of peace, whose blessings distil upon us like the very dews of heaven; and the men of the spoken word,--of the spirit of truth, of which, like the wind itself, no man knoweth whence it cometh or whither it goeth,--these, and the men of war who have passed through its fires to give us the free America of to-day, all were around you. Surely in such a union I should have been reminded of the divine harmony by which elements the most diverse were welded into the bolts of Jove.

"Tres imbris torti radios, tres nubis aquosæ Addiderant, tres rutili ignis, tres alitis Austri."

"Three parts like dews from heaven, three from the wave-beat shore, Three from the soft-winged breeze, and three from blood-red war."

Always, dear Tom, your affectionate uncle,

FREDERIC INGHAM.

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_The Champagne Country._ By ROBERT TOMES. New York: Hurd and Houghton.

The fear, or hope, that photography will supersede tourists, and at last take travel out of literature, scarcely concerns this admirable book and the books of its kind. The class is as yet small, but it increases; and it is probable that in travel, which is a sort of contemporary history, there will be more and more works devoted to a single phase of European life, as studied in a particular city or province; just as, in the history of the past, the tendency is toward the illustration of certain periods, or even episodes, in the lives of nations.

The chief topic Mr. Tomes discusses is the manufacture of champagne wines; but his book is also descriptive of life in Rheims and the adjacent country, as he knew it during two years' residence in that ancient city. Indeed, it is only when the reader remembers his former ignorance of everything concerning champagne, excepting its pop and sparkle and flavor, that he realizes how thoroughly instructive Mr. Tomes's agreeable pages are. In them an intelligent sympathy follows the grape through all the processes of its change to wine;--through the vintage, when it is gathered by the yeomen of La Champagne, from their own land, and sold to the great champagne lords of Rheims; through the expression of its juice in presses obedient to the trained and sensitive touch of hands which give neither more nor less strength than is adequate to the extraction of the most delicate flavor; through the season of its first fermentation in casks, and its second in bottles; through its "marriage" with the kindred juices, whose united offspring is champagne; through the crisis when it is doctored with the cordial that bestows a life-long sweetness; through its final corking and sale in every civilized country. As Mr. Tomes's style is light and easy, and as he has a quick, unforced sense of humor, his information is as delightful as it is honest. He counts nothing alien to him that concerns champagne, and he sketches with a pleasant and graphic touch the champagne lords and their history, beginning with the great Clicquot (whose widow, after inheriting him so many years, died only the other day), and bringing down the list with the Heidsiecks, the Roederers, Moët and Chandon, the Mumms, and De St. Marceaux, last but not least of the great champagne houses. As appears from their names, most of these are Germans, and, according to Mr. Tomes, most of the business of Rheims is conducted by Germans, who far excel the French in capacity for commerce. They are the agents and chief clerks even in French houses; it is some German of enormous physique and iron constitution who is selected as _commis-voyageur_ to sell the wines and attract custom, by pouring them out and convivially drinking them wherever he goes. Mr. Tomes's conviction is, that this commercial traveller leads a difficult and precarious life, for he cannot eject the wine when once taken into the mouth, as is the custom of the more fortunate dealers in selling to buyers at the manufactories.

It is around the wine-trade, the great central feature of life in Rheims, that Mr. Tomes groups notices of the city's minor traits, and gossips of its cathedral and ecclesiastical history, its picturesqueness, its antiquities, its dulness, its contented and prosperous ignorance, its luxury and depravity. His pictures are always artistic, and have an air of fidelity, and we may believe that they reflect with sufficient truth provincial society under the second French Empire. Society it is not, of course, in our sense, and perhaps civilization is the better word. Many of its characteristics are those common to all Latin Europe,--a religion and an atheism alike immoral, an essential rudeness under a polished show of good-breeding, an inviolable conventionality, and an unbounded license. But to these the Empire has added some traits of its own,--an intellectual apathy to be matched nowhere else, a content and pride in mere material success, an enjoyment of none but sensual delights. The government seems to have besotted the provinces in the same degree that it has corrupted Paris.

Mr. Tomes treats an unworn topic with freshness and authentic skill, and we welcome his bright and candid book as a more valuable contribution to literature than most contemporary novels and poems.

_Deus Homo: God-Man._ By THEOPHILUS PARSONS. Chicago: E. B. Myers and Chandler.

The author of this book assures us that it is in no sense a criticism of either of the two remarkable works which have lately agitated the religious and philosophical world; that it is a reply neither to "Ecce Deus" nor to "Ecce Homo," but that its title is rather descriptive of the belief which inspired it, than indicative of a controversial purpose. Indeed, it is a notably calm and uncontroversial statement of the Swedenborgian idea of Christ's life and character, and presents with great clearness and simplicity the doctrines of the very earnest sect to which its author belongs. The author fully accepts the fact of Swedenborg's illumination, but the reader is only asked to consider the reasonableness of his philosophy, as applied to the elucidation of all Scriptural truth, and more particularly the acts and essence of Christ. The people of the New Church (as the followers of Swedenborg call themselves) affirm the divinity of Christ with an emphasis which excludes from the Godhead any other personality than his; and it is in the light of this creed that Mr. Parsons regards his character, and discusses the facts of his birth, his sojourn in Egypt, his temptations, his death, the miracles, the parables, the supper, the Apostles. Naturally, the author has frequent recourse to that science of correspondences by which Swedenborg interprets Scripture, and so far there is an air of mysticism in his work; but it is on the whole a most intelligible declaration of the main Swedenborgian ideas. As such, it must have an interest for all candid thinkers; and it appears fortunately at this time, when the life of Swedenborg has been made the subject of fresh inquiry, as well as the Life which Swedenborg's philosophy is here employed to illustrate.

_The Sayings of Doctor Bushwhacker and other Learned Men._ By FREDERICK S. COZZENS. New York: A. Simpson & Co.

The best thing in this book is that brief sketch of travel, called "Up the Rhine," in which the British tourist is presented with a delightful fidelity. Eyes that have once beheld him never forget him, and it is good to gaze upon him here in his extraordinary travelling-costume, with all his sightseer's panoply upon him. It affects one like a personal recollection, when he addresses the American and says:--

"'Going to Switz'land?'

"'Yes.'

"'Y' got Moy for Switz'land?'

"'Moy? I beg pardon.'

"'Yes, Moy,--Moy; got Moy for Switz'land?'

"'Moy! Do you mean money? I hope so!'

"'Ged gad, sir, no! I say Moy.'

"'Upon my word, I _do not_ comprehend you.'

"'Moy, sir, Moy!' rapping vehemently on the red cover of my guide-book that lay on the table, 'I say Moy for Switz'land.'

"'O, you mean Murray?'

"'Certainly, sir; did n't I say Moy?'"

This is a touch of nature; and nothing else in the book is done with a hand so free and artistic. Doctor Bushwhacker is passably entertaining in his talk of tea and coffee and chocolate and wine and salad; but when he comes to speak of literature, he makes us suspect that the latest thing in criticism which his professional duties have left him leisure to read is E. A. Poe's "American Literati." He discourses of "Accidental Resemblances" between Mr. Longfellow and other poets, defends the venerable Halleck from the charge of copying "Don Juan" in his "Fanny," and pronounces Joseph Rodman Drake the only original American poet.

Among the contributions to these "Sayings" by other learned men than Dr. Bushwhacker, the most admirable are the two imitations of Macaulay by the late Colonel Porter; of their kind they are nowhere surpassed. But the editor of the book has left the retiring muse of criticism little to say of these productions of his _collaborateurs_. In his Preface he efficiently praises them all, specifying one as "sparkling," and another as "excellent," and others as coming from persons who have exquisite taste for true humor, and assemble in themselves great moral, religious, and literary merits; and finally offers his thanks to the gentleman who indefatigably urged him to publish the collection.