chapter I have written in relation to that country, you

would see that many perfections are needed to wound hearts that are so cosmopolitan as ours.'

"The Count was about to reply, when the doors were opened and the Duchess of Palma was announced. I looked at Monte-Leone just then, and he changed countenance at once. I saw him immediately go to the darkest part of the room. This was the first time I had ever received the Duchess of Palma. There seemed no motive for her visit. I had paid mine after the ball, and there was no obligation between us. The Duchess is a beautiful, elegant, and dignified woman. It is said she is of a noble family; and her manners evidently betoken high cultivation. The Duchess told me kindly that she had not seen enough of me at the ball, and that I must take the visit as an evidence of her devotion and admiration. The Prince of Maulear approached. 'We are especially flattered, Duchess,' said he, and he emphasized the word, looking at the same time at some ladies I received; 'we are especially flattered by the honor you confer on us. We know how careful you are in the bestowal of such favors. It is a favor, as pleasant as it is honorable.'

"'I have been suffering, Prince,' replied the Duchess, 'with deep distress, and I will not reflect on any one the burden of my sorrows.'

"'You are,' said the Prince, 'like those beautiful tropical flowers, the source of the life of which is the sun, and which grow pale on their stems in our land. Neapolitans need Naples, the pure sky, the balmy air, the perfume of orange groves, and the reflection of the azure gulf. I am distressed, Duchess, at what you say, and hope you will content yourself with our country. We will not permit you to leave it.'

"'But I am dying,' said the Duchess, in a strange tone.

"'You are now alive, though,' said the Prince.

"The uneasy eyes of the Duchess passed around the room, and when she saw the Count, became strangely animated. 'Ah!' she remarked, 'here is Count Monte-Leone.' The Count advanced.

"'The Count,' said the Prince, 'is your compatriot, and one of your most fervent admirers.'

"'Do you think so?' said the Duchess, almost ironically.

"'One,' said the Prince, 'to be any thing else, must neither have seen nor heard your grace.'

"'Once, perhaps,' said she, 'I had some means of attraction, but now all is forgotten; for I am a Duchess like all others--less even, because I am indebted to chance for my rank and title.'

"'You owe thanks to yourself alone,' said the Prince, 'and the Duke was a lucky man to have it in his power to lay them at your feet.'

"'Madame,' said I to the Duchess, 'since you deign to remind us of your deathless talent, may I venture to ask you to sing once more?'

"'Never!' said the Duchess, 'I left my voice on the banks of the _Lago di Como_, and have not forgotten my last song.'

"''Twas indeed a sad epoch,' said the Prince, 'If it was the funeral of your talent.'

"'I will never sing again!' said the Duchess, 'I remember that day as I do all the unhappy ones of my life. Ah! they are far more numerous than our happy days. It was evening, and in a gay room of my villa, whither I had come still trembling at having seen a traveller nearly drowned in the lake. I know not what sad yet pleasant memory was nursed in my heart, but I went to my piano and sung an air I had sung for the last time at San Carlo. Tell me, Count Monte-Leone--you were there--what was it?'

"'_La Griselda._'

"'It was. On that evening all my enthusiasm returned to me. While singing, however, a strange fancy took possession of me. I thought I saw in the mirror in front of me, the features of one who had long been dead--dead at least to me. My emotion was so instinct with terror and happiness, that since then I have not sung.'

"'That is a perfect romance,' said the Prince, 'like those of the dreamy Hoffman I met at Vienna.'

"'No, sir, it is a fact, or rather the commencement of a series of facts, which, however, will interest no one here. For that reason I do not tell it.'

"The Duchess of Palma rose to leave. The Prince offered her his hand.

"'No, Prince,' said she, 'I will not trouble you, for I am about to ask the Count to accompany me. Excuse me,' said she, 'excuse me for taking him away, but I need not use ceremony with a countryman.'

"Without giving him time to reply, she passed her arm through his, went out, or rather dragged him out with her.

"I do not know why, dear mother, I have told you all this long story, which has led me to write far differently from what I had intended. I like, though, to talk so much with you; and then the visit of the Count and that Duchess agitated me, I know not why. Some instinct tells me those mysterious beings exert an influence over my life. You think me foolish and strange--but what can I do? I am now so sad that I seem to look at life through a dark veil. I am wrong, am I not? Reassure yourself and tell me what you think of my husband's conduct. That, most of all, interests

"Your own AMINTA.

"P.S.--The Prince, the Countess and myself in vain waited all day for the Marquis. It is now midnight and he has not yet come."

X.--JEALOUSY.

A month had passed since the Marquise had written to her mother, during which time the Marquis, more sedulous in his attentions to Aminta, had begun to make her forget her fears and suspicions. A new event, though, aroused them again.

A magnificent ball had been given by Madame de L----, in her splendid hotel in the _rue_ d'Antin. M. de L---- aspired to the ministry; and the fact of his having received the Duke de Bevry at his magnificent entertainments, the favor he enjoyed at the _chateau_, and his frequent entertainments to the _corps diplomatique_, seemed to make his final success certain. M. de L---- aspired to popularity by attracting around him all who seemed likely to advance his views. He delighted to receive and mingle together in his drawing-room all the political enemies of the tribune and the press, who, meeting as on a central ground, thought themselves obliged to boast of the wit of their Amphitryron, beneath whose roof they exchanged all the phrases of diplomatic politeness to the accompaniment of Collinet's flageolet, sat together at the card-tables, and courteously bowed at the door of every room. On this account they did not cease to detest each other, though their apparent reconciliation being believed at court, contributed in no little degree to the advancement of M. L----'s views.

The Marquis and Aminta were at the ball--and Henri left his wife for several hours in charge of his father, who was proud of her, and exhibited her with pride in all the rooms. The Prince heaped attention on her, as all well-bred persons love to on those who are dear to them. He carefully waited on her during every waltz and contra-dance; and with paternal care replaced the spotless ermine on her whiter shoulders. Then resuming his task of cicerone, he explained to her the peculiarities of French society, which seemed so brilliant and singular to a young Italian. The Marquis rejoined his wife about one o'clock. He was very gay, and Aminta had not for a long time seen him so amiable and lively. The Prince expressed a desire to return home, and the young people gladly consented. As they were about to leave the last room, an Englishman of distinguished air, but pale and agitated, passed close to the Marquis, and as he did so, said in his native tongue, "all is agreed." The Marquis replied in the same words, and the Englishman left. Aminta asked what the stranger had said, "Nothing of importance," said Henri, "a mere commonplace."

A quarter of an hour after, the carriage of the young people entered _rue_ Saint Dominique. The Prince embraced the Marquise and retired to his room, which was in the left wing of the hotel, and exactly opposite the apartments of the young couple. About two all the hotel was quiet. Aminta, though, from some peculiar presentiment, could not sleep, yet, with her eyes half closed, she fell into that dreamy torpor in which every passion is exaggerated. In this half-real, half-fantastic state, Aminta saw pass before her all the important events of her life, the horrible episode of the _casa di Tasso_, the coming of Maulear, and the heroic devotion of _Scorpione_. Another shadow, that of Monte-Leone, glided before her. The looks of this man were fixed on hers, as if to read the depths of her soul. There came also a thousand chimeras and countless mad and terrible fictions. La Felina, pale and white as a spectre, sang, or sought to sing, for though her lips moved no sound was heard. With her hand raised towards Aminta, the ducal singer seemed to heap reproaches on her. Alarmed at these sombre visions, the young woman sought to return to real life, and arose from her bed; just then she thought she heard a door open. Terrified, she reached toward a bell near her, but paused. The door which was opened could be no other than that of the Marquis, for their apartments, though separate, were side by side. She thought, too, that the _valet de chambre_ had been detained later than usual with the Marquis, and unwilling to make an alarm, she repressed her agitation.

No noise disturbed the profound silence. The clock above struck the several hours with that slow and monotonous regularity, which is so painful to those who cannot sleep; she did not, however, win the rest she was so anxious for. All the fancies which had occupied her just before had disappeared, but were replaced by a newer fancy, occasioned by the remark of the Englishman, which she had not understood. The features of the stranger, so deathly pale, constantly returned to her. She fancied some danger menaced the man to whom she had devoted her life; that a strange danger menaced him, and, yielding to a feverish agitation, which she could not repress, wrapping herself in a shawl, and afraid almost to breathe, she went to the Marquis's room, when at the door she paused and thought.

"What would Henri say, and how could she excuse this strange visit?" She hesitated and was about to return, when she saw that the door was not closed, and that she could thus enter his room and satisfy herself without disturbing him. She decided--the door turned on its hinges, and Aminta entered. Crossing the antechamber, she had reached the bedroom, which was separated from it by a curtained door. She advanced to the bed, which she found had not been slept in. With a faint cry of terror she sank on an arm-chair. The clock struck four, and when she had heard the noises which had disturbed her it was nearly two; since then, therefore, the Marquis had been away. Yet this had occurred when he was within a few feet of her, and the care and secrecy with which it was accomplished showed that it had been premeditated. Not a sound except the opening of the door had reached Aminta's ears. The Marquise felt the most agonizing distress--no thought of perfidy, however, annoyed her; the idea of danger only occupying her mind. Just then her eyes fell on an open note which had doubtless been dropped by Maulear amid his hurry and trouble. She took it up, saying to herself, this note doubtless contains a challenge--a rendezvous--she approached the night lamp, and with difficulty suppressing her agitation, read as follows--"Dear Marquis, do not fail to come to-night. You know how anxiously you are expected,

"FANNY DE BRUNEVAL."

The letter was indeed a rendezvous, but not of the kind she had expected. The terms of the note were clear and precise; and the woman's name dissipated the mist from before her eyes, Maulear had deserted her and his home in the silence of night for such a person. She it was whom he deceived--she who had been so loyal and true, she who sought, even when Maulear asked her hand, to protect him--who begged him to distrust his impressions and not to act in haste. "I was right," said she, "to fear the bonds he wished to impose on me--I was right to object to a marriage which could not make him happy--only two years," said she, with a voice of half stifled emotion, "and he is already cold and indifferent to me. He has already abandoned me--and worse still, he has done so with treachery. Mother! mother! why did you not keep me with you? This then, is the reward of my generous devotion. Alas! when I accepted him--when I wrested him from the death which menaced him--when I gave myself to him, I did not love him, I did not hesitate when perhaps----" Aminta blushed amid her tears. "Above all," said she, "I do not wish him to find me here--I do not wish him to reproach me as he has done with seeking to penetrate his secrets." She returned to her room, and from exhaustion and tears sank on her bed.

Day came at last, and Aminta dressed herself. She wished to conceal from her servants all that she suffered. Above all, she did not wish the conduct and disorder of the Marquis to be made a subject of discussion. When her _femme de chambre_ entered her room, she found her mistress on her knees at her morning devotions before a crucifix. Had any persons, however, approached the Marquise, they must have seen the tears falling on the delicate fingers which covered her face, and heard her sobs. The bell rang for breakfast. Aminta started as if from a dream; being thus recalled to real life, she saw that while the evening before she had been happy and gay, one night had converted all to sorrow and suffering. Aminta, though ordinarily of strong nerve, sank beneath the blow. She felt herself wounded in her heart, her dignity, and in her confidence, by one for whom alone she had lived. Henceforth her life would be uncertain, and circumstances might lead her she knew not whither.

When the Marquise entered, the Prince and Countess were about to go to the table. The former said, "It is evident, my child, from your face, that you are fatigued; and that balls are to you what the sun is to roses. It does not detract from their beauty, but it makes them pale." And finally, the Countess added, "it withers them completely. That is the fate of all young women who turn night into day, and who, like my beautiful niece, only really live between evening and morning."

"Come," said the Prince, "that will not do. My sister is like the fox in the fable, she finds the ball too gay to suit herself, or rather herself too sombre for the ball."

"A witticism," said the Countess, "is not a reason, but often exactly the reverse. The one, my brother is familiar with; to the other, I am sorry to say, he is more a stranger."

"You see, my child," said the Prince, with an air of submission and resignation, "it is not well to have any trouble with the Countess, for she returns shot for shot; though she fires a pistol in reply to a cannon. Luckily for us, she is not a good shot. But my son does not come down. Can it be that, though he did not dance, he is more fatigued than his wife?"

"A letter for Madame la Marquise, from the Marquis," said a servant.

Aminta took the letter from the plateau, and looked at the Prince, as if to ask whether she should read it.

"Read, my child, read," said her father-in-law, affectionately. "The letter of a husband loved and loving, for thank God both are true, should be read without any delay."

Aminta unsealed the letter, and glanced rapidly over it. Then succumbing to emotion, deprived of strength and courage, and especially revolting at what she had read, felt her sight grow dim, and finally fainted. The Countess, whose mind alone was embittered for the reasons Aminta had explained to her mother, but whose soul and heart were generous as possible, ran to the Marquise, took her in her arms, and was as kind as possible. The Prince, paler than Aminta, rushed towards the window, which he threw open, and pulled away at the bell-ropes to call the servants, and send them for the physicians. The old nobleman exhibited the greatest alarm. The young Marquise was taken to the drawing-room, and a few moments after she opened her eyes. Her heart, however, was crushed; and she wept bitter tears. The Prince was struck with terror and distress. He was alarmed for his son's sake, and a father's anxiety was apparent.

"What has happened to my son?" said he, rushing to find the letter, which Aminta had let fall. He read it anxiously, and when he had concluded, laughed loud and long. "Indeed," said he, "we have come back to the days of the Astraea. All reminds us of the _Calprenede_, of _Urfe_, or _Scuderi_ herself. We are on the _Tendros_. This kind of love would make that of Cyrus and Mandane trifling. Cyrus writes to Mandane, that he went out to ride in the Bois de Cologne, and therefore has to deprive himself of the pleasure of breakfasting with her. Mandane therefore is suddenly taken ill. This is magnificent and touching; but my precious child, it is a little exaggerated."

"What, then, is the matter?" said the Countess, as she handed her niece the salts. "What a singular man you are! One never knows what the facts of any thing are from you. You are either in the seventh heaven or in despair. Your very gayety is enough to destroy our niece's nerves."

"Ah!" said the Prince, "how sorry I am for the nerves. Read, however, the letter yourself, Countess," and he gave it to Mademoiselle Grandmesuil. "You will see the Marquise is too fond of her husband. Her love has really become a dangerous passion. She is really _love-mad_, and if it continues, we shall have a rehearsal of Milon's ballet, with the exception of _Bigotini_."

The Countess read as follows:

"MY DEAR WIFE: I am unwilling to disturb your slumbers, and have therefore left for the wood at five o'clock, having a rendezvous with some sportsmen. We will probably breakfast together, and I will not return until dinner-time. Remember me affectionately.

"HENRI."

The habitual coldness of the Countess returned while she read the letter. "I will say that I think my nephew very likely to inspire deep love. I cannot however conceive how there can be cause for such despair. We Frenchwomen have not such an exaggerated devotion as our niece has. I beg her not to use it up now, for in the career of life she will find it difficult to do without it." As if regretting that she had soothed sorrows in which she had no sympathy, the Countess sent for her prayer-book, and went to mass. As soon as the young Marquise was alone with the Prince, she arose, threw herself in the old man's arms, and said: "My father, I am very unhappy." The face of the Prince at once became serious, and taking Aminta to a sofa, bade her sit down, and said, kindly as possible, "Excuse my gayety and irony, my child. _Non est hic locus_, as the sublime Horace, the favorite of our good king Louis XVIII., once wrote. I repent of my volatility and trifling, for I should have remembered, when I think of the elevation of your mind, that something more important than the absence of your husband for a few hours annoyed you. Speak to me--open your heart to me--for I love you too well not to have a right to your confidence and your secrets."

"He does not love me," said Aminta, leaning her head on the Prince's shoulder.

"Alas! my daughter," said M. de Maulear, "I am about to make a strange confession to you. I am not acquainted with my son. His soul, sentiments, inclination, and moral nature, are unknown to me. When, four years ago, I saw the child now twenty-six, whom I had left an infant, and found his air, manners, and appearance distingue as possible, and was pleased with him, I was assured that his soul was exalted, his character true, and his sentiments honorable. I was therefore satisfied. Two years after, he went to Naples, where I procured a diplomatic post for him; and consequently I have neither studied nor fathomed his instincts and habits. What I apprehend in relation to you, my child, is a capital fault. I have discovered in my son an extreme weakness of character, which may lead him into error. For that reason, I wrote to him, that I would have preferred that he had tasted of the pleasures of life before marriage. I would thus have had an assurance of his subsequent prudence. Believe me, though, my child, I will watch over him and you, and if I was able to forgive his marrying without my consent, when I knew whom he married, I never will pardon him if he make her unhappy. The deuce! we did not bring you hither from Italy to break your heart."

Fearful lest his father should become angry with Maulear, Aminta restrained the secret which seemed ready to burst from her lips. She spoke of vague suspicions and anxiety at the Marquis's uneasiness, but said nothing particular. The Prince, who never in his life had known what jealousy was, had some difficulty in understanding how it could create such despair. His attention, however, was not the less vigilant in relation to the affairs of the young couple. A circumstance which occurred soon after enabled him to ascertain much. A number of persons assembled one night at the rooms of the Marquise de Maulear. Count Monte-Leone had become one of Aminta's most assiduous visitors. The tacit permission he had received from Aminta, the formal authority of the Marquis, the sympathy of the old Prince, to whom the pleasant, energetic character of the Count, and his noble bearing, made him every day more attractive--all taken in connection with the intimacy of Taddeo and Monte-Leone, authorized him to visit the Marquise freely. The devotion of Monte-Leone to Aminta had never been diminished. He had felt only an inclination towards La Felina, an error of the senses and imagination, excited by mortified love, and favored by the isolation of the Lago di Como. His heart had little share in it. When, therefore, he saw the Marquise de Maulear more attractive than ever, he discovered that in his whole life he had loved her alone. The Marquis de Maulear appeared but rarely at the hotel, coming home at a late hour and going out early.

Monte-Leone and Taddeo were talking together, and this fragment of their conversation struck the ear of the old Prince, who seemed entirely absorbed by a game of whist.

"Will not the Marquis be here to-night?" said the Count to Taddeo.

"I doubt it: sometimes the master of the hotel is here less frequently than any one else."

"Perhaps he is now," said the Count, "where he goes almost every night, they say."

"You jest," said Taddeo; "I think he is here every night."

"He should, but he is not. All I can say is, that on the night of M.L.'s ball, he was ... where I saw him."

"Where was he?" asked Taddeo, impatiently.

"I will tell you--but come away from the whist-table."

* * * * *

"But you do not return my lead," said the Prince's partner, "you should play hearts."

"True," said the Prince, musing; and he led hearts. His eyes, though, followed Taddeo and Monte-Leone.

The Prince lost five points, much to his partner's discontent. He played very badly that night, breaking up his suits, mistaking the cards, and violating every rule, much to the surprise of the lookers-on, who knew how well he played the game, which the emigres had imported from England. At last they stopped, and the Prince sought for Monte-Leone through all the rooms. The Count and Taddeo, however, had both left. The Marquis, though, had returned, and the company soon dispersed. The Prince went to his room, but soon left, well wrapped up, and with his hat over his face. "Pardieu!" said he, "I will settle things, and find out where my son passes the nights. Can any place be more pleasant than the bedchamber of a pretty woman?" Standing at a little distance from door, he waited about half an hour. His patience was nearly exhausted, when the Marquis came out. Henri went to the Rue de Bac, took the quai, crossed the pont Royale, the Carousel, and entered la Rue de Richelieu. The poor Prince panted after him, and kept him in sight all the time, cursing his curiosity. Sustained by a deep interest for his daughter's happiness, he kept on.

When the Marquis came to the Rue de Menors, he paused, and turned to see that no one followed him. The Prince had barely time to get behind a coach which stood at the corner. The Marquis went some distance down the Rue de Menors, and stopped at No. 7. The door was opened, and Henri entered. "On my honor," said the Prince, "I would not have come so far before bed, unless I could also have found out _why_ the Marquis visits No. 7." The Prince then stopped at the door, and knocked. The door was opened.

"What do you want?" said the porter, rather surlily.

"I wish," said the Prince, and he put a louis d'or in the porter's hand, "to know why that man has come hither."

"Indeed," said he, pocketing the louis, "it is a great deal to pay for so little. The gentleman has gone, as many others go, to see Mlle. Fanny de Bruneval."

FOOTNOTES:

[4] Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by Stringer & Townsend, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New-York.

A FESTIVAL UPON THE NEVA.

TRANSLATED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE FROM THE FRENCH OF KAUFMANN.

On the banks of a majestic river, where, in later times, has arisen a city of eight thousand houses, of granite causeways, monuments, obelisks, and palaces, nothing was to be seen at the commencement of the eighteenth century but a few huts scattered over a marshy waste.

On one of those days, when the intense cold had transformed the river into a plain of ice, a numerous crowd were hastening through the streets of the young St. Petersburg. Some directed their steps towards a little cottage; and others, over the frozen waters, towards a fortified island. Every one looked with a curious eye at the cottage, and the numerous sledges that were gathering for the escort at hand. Presently, a sledge drawn by three horses covered with bear-skins, dashed up to the cottage-gate. It was quickly opened, and an old man of a high stature and proud bearing came forth, wearing a blue sable. He slowly advanced and took his place.

"Pardon me, sir," said one of middle age, who hastened to take a seat by the side of the former, "the gracious Czar had--"

"It is sufficient," prince Menzikoff, interrupted the first, in a quick and stern tone; "I am not much accustomed to wait, but I know, however, that it is the Czar only who can be the cause of this delay."

"You see the boyard, Alexis Nicolajewitz Tscherkaski," said one of those present, in a whisper to his companion.

"You are not the first to tell me that," replied Nikita. "It is not sixty years since his grandfather traversed the Caucasus with his savage Tschetschences. He would be a little surprised if he saw his son to-day decorated with the golden key of chamberlain, and enjoying himself at festivals in sacred Russia. But they give the signal of departure, for they are tying a tame bear to the sledge. Indeed, it is a strange animal!"

"I must see him nearer," said the first. "Come, Andyuschka, let us survey the whole train."

* * * * *

They came at last to an edifice such as was never seen before or since. It was built upon the Neva--but not of stones. The walls, roof, and partitions, were of solid ice; and the steps leading to the entrance cut out of one enormous block. Two large cannons made of ice, pierced with the greatest care, and which they were foolish enough to charge with powder, were placed in front of this singular palace. The interior presented an appearance not less novel. A long table, formed of a single piece of ice, and covered with a hundred exquisite dishes, was the principal object--oysters, in silver plates, excited the appetite--sea-fish, of every species, from the gulf of Finland and Pont-Euxin to the Caspian and frozen seas, disputed the supremacy with shell-fish from the Istar and Volga. By the side of the hams of Bayonne were roasts of bear surrounded with citron; and the sturgeon was placed in the middle of delicious preserves. Many sledges were filled with bottles.

But all these cold dishes composed but half the feast. Four kitchens, built of wood, at some distance from the palace, threw up constantly clouds of smoke. There boiled stags and elks, pullets of Archangel, and boars of Podolie. But that which particularly attracted the attention of the spectators were the large fires where whole oxen turned round upon spits, for the benefit of the people, to whom were to be also given tuns of brandy.

The sun shone yet above the horizon when the great hall of the palace of crystal was lighted with wax candles in chandeliers of sparkling ice. A thousand lights were thus reflected and broken upon the transparent walls and windows. It seemed a fairy scene in the approaching night.

While a legion of cooks, with their assistants, worked without cessation, the two personages, the boyard Tscherkaski and the prince Menzikoff, were not less busy in the interior of the palace. It was readily seen that they had the charge of directing the festival about to commence. The last-mentioned, spreading a bear-skin upon each of the seats of ice, was addressed by his companion.

"Truly, Alexandre Michailowitz, the Czar could not have selected a better manager of the feast than yourself. If I had any thing to do but to take exclusive charge of the bottles, I am afraid I should oblige every one to sit upon the naked blocks. What grimaces those hungry foreign guests would make, such as the Frenchman Lefort, and those like him, whom the west is ever sending to fatten upon the blood of Russia. I should like to see them shivering to death, and at the same time politely struggling to appear pleased in the presence of the Czar."

"But do you know how the Czar would regard such pleasantry? You remember Dimitri Arsenieff?"

"Arsenieff! I hope you do not compound me with that herd whom a single glance of the Czar made tremble in their shoes. There was a time, it is true, but all is changed now--there was a time when those submissive slaves who filled the courts of the Kremlin, disappeared when they heard the steps of the old Alexis Nicolajewitz. His services were once required. He was not idle during the massacre of the Strelitz; they had need of Tscherkaski then. But all this has passed away. I have but one wish; it is, that in the hour of trial the swords of those Frenchmen, or of other foreigners, may leap as slowly from the scabbard as mine on that day when men of a nobler spirit were assassinated."

"The Czar has not forgotten that you have--"

"O, truly," replied the boyard, with a bitter smile, "the gracious Czar has made me the first chamberlain. He must have been in a good humor at that time; for Poliwoi--you know him--he is skilful in sealing bottles--he was a _valet de chambre_ in his youth--and that English Melton or Milton, who has imported some good dogs--both of them, at the same time with myself, received the key of the chamberlaincy."

"But you cannot deny, Alexis, that in general the choice of our sovereign--"

"Is the best. But what is strange about it is, that he finds so many excellent men, and that he selects from so large a circle, when others who, in times of calamity, are no longer considered unworthy, never obtain their turn for preferment."

"You appear to be not in a very good humor, to-day, boyard.... Would you fall into disfavor with the Czar?"

"Why," exclaimed the boyard, "should I not tell a friend what probably he will learn to-day, if indeed he is ignorant of it now? You know," he continued with an affected calmness, "the domain of the crown adjacent to my lands in Tula?"

"I do not," said the embarrassed Prince.

"Indeed you do, Alexandre Michailowitz; or at least you ought to. It separates my property from yours."

"Ah! the manor."

"The same. It is not very extensive, containing only three villages and a thousand serfs. But its situation suits me and I desire its possession."

"Well, you ought to propose to the Czar to sell it. He will not refuse you."

"He has already refused. 'I am sorry,' he coldly said, 'that I cannot grant you the lands you ask; I have disposed of them to another.' I was about to reply, but turning to speak to some one, he closed our conversation."

"And do you know to whom he granted the domain?"

"Who? Perhaps a vicious flatterer--an intrusive coward--some fellow from abroad who comes among us to appease his hunger; or, what is worse, an upstart, whose only pleasure is to overturn my dearest hopes to fulfil his own. Who is he? One of those who daily make fortunes by hundreds in our Russia, in place of meeting with the rope which they merit--one of those who drive out honest men to occupy their places--a rustic bore, a cobbler, a pastry-cook!"

The features of the boyard took an expression of the most violent anger; the muscles of his mouth contracted by a convulsive movement, and his fiery eye gave sign that he was remembering the sanguinary vengeance of his brethren, the sons of the Caucasus.

The countenance of Menzikoff grew dark. The word "pastry-cook," in bringing to his recollection his former condition, awoke sentiments whose expression it was difficult for him to restrain. "I had intended," he said, "to ask the Czar to give me those very lands; but I am glad that I have not done so. I would have been unhappy in interfering with your projects, if it were even for the sake of your amiable daughter, who, in your old days, will reward you largely for all the grievances you experience at the Court."

"You think so, eh, Michailowitz? But you are a Russian. You belong not to those foreign plebeians. Alexis Tscherkaski is a man who never hides what he thinks, and I confess frankly that I do not love you; I have never loved you. Yet I do not confound you with those vile favorites of whom I have spoken. You are the first who has ever said to my face that I was not born to walk in the slippery paths of a court. You will have the honor also of offering the first counsel that I have ever followed. Yes, Prince Menzikoff, I am firmly resolved to leave the capital in a few days. In my solitude, accompanied only by my Mary, I hope to forget the Czars, their favors, and all that I have done to obtain them. Since the death of my Fedor--but let us stop here--with him all my hopes are buried. My daughter only remains--"

"Who will be a glory to you in the evening of your life. She will bloom as the rose, she will be a mother of sons who--"

"Yes, I desire to see her happy. She will freely choose her husband; and if she wishes to unite her destiny with none, she shall live with me, and one day close my eyes in death. It is among the descendants of the boyards that she will find her beloved. He shall be a noble son of old and sacred Russia. And I swear by all the saints interred in the convent of Kiew, that no will, not even that of the Czar, but her own, shall influence the choice of my daughter."

The Prince was about to reply, when loud voices were heard in front of the house. "They come! they come!"

A long train of sledges took the direction of the Isle of the Neva, and presented as strange a spectacle as one could well imagine. Instead of couriers who, according to the usages of the time, took the lead in this description of festivals, there was a sledge drawn by four horses of different colors. In it were four men dressed in white with a red girdle, having in their hands a staff ornamented with ribbons, and upon their heads a bonnet decorated with plumes. The oddest thing in this group was, that the youngest was not less than seventy; two of them wanted a leg; the third was without an arm; and the fourth, blind.

Then came two sledges filled with musicians who joyously sounded their instruments. They were divided into two sections; the first would have pleased the ear by their performances, if it were not for the second section, every one of whom was deaf. They could not follow the movements of the director, and he himself, also deaf, was constantly behind the time, so that the two companies, although playing the same air, produced one which we might imagine proceeded from mischievous demons in a concert prepared in Pandemonium for the benefit of condemned musicians.

In a third sledge came a patriarch of eighty years. His long white beard and hair carefully dressed, the precious ornaments with which he was covered, and the priests seated at his side, all announced that the old man was going to celebrate some solemn ceremony. As he was an intolerable stammerer, who had been released from the public services of the church during the greater part of his life, he was fitly chosen to deliver a discourse upon the present occasion.

The sledge following that of the patriarch's, gave to the cortege the unmistakeable character of a nuptial festivity; for, of the four individuals who occupied it, two wore crowns, such as those prescribed by the Greek church to the newly married. The couple who sat in the place of honor, and for whom this fete had been prepared were indeed very curious looking persons. The bridegroom was an old and wrinkled dwarf, hardly four feet high. His enormous head seemed to weigh down his slender body, and to bend his legs into the form of sabres. His toilette was according to the French mode of that period. A frock coat of silver cloth, a sky blue vest and crimson velvet pantaloons, and immense ruffles covered his long, sepulchral hands. A perruque with a long tail, the nuptial crown, and a silver sword, which completed his dress, confirmed the remark of one of our friends, who compared the unfortunate bridegroom to a monkey on the rack.

The dwarf and his affianced resembled each other as two drops of water. Upon the head of the hump-backed bride also shone the marriage crown. Her dress was of gold cloth of the most recent Parisian mode. Their exterior, however, presented a single contrast which rendered them still more ridiculous; for upon the wide face of the future wife was a presumptuous smile, while the husband, suffering under some recent sorrow, made the most frightful grimaces.

In order better to distinguish the ugliness of this deformed couple, there were placed upon the second seat of the sledge two children of angelic beauty--one a girl of five years; the other, a boy of six to eight. They both wore the ancient Russian costume, which in its simplicity so well became the celestial sweetness of the countenance of the rosy-cheeked girl, and the spiritual gayety which beamed from the large black eyes of the boy. These children appeared destined to serve as bridesboy and bridesmaid; and certainly Hymen could not have made a better choice.

"It is the daughter of the boyard Tscherkaski! It is the little Fedor Menzikoff!" cried the crowd.

A large number of sledges passed on. All those who occupied them were disguised in the strangest manner. By the side of a coarse Kirghese was a fashionable Parisien. Behind them a Chinese mandarin waited upon a maiden Tyrolese. In the cortege could be seen not only the costumes of all the tribes under the sceptre of Peter the Great, but of almost every nation of Europe and Asia. The masquerade extended even to the trappings of the horses and sledges. Some of the horses' heads wore gilded horns of the stag and the elk, and others great wings, which made them resemble the poet's idea of Pegasus. The last sledge in the train worthily closed this fantastic procession. It was drawn by three horses, and contained a single personage. Two horsemen, habited as Turks, galloped by his side, and announced his high rank. His thick-set figure was of the ordinary height, his face was full of a spirit of gayety and frolic, and in the smile with which he responded to the acclamations of the people could be perceived his satisfaction in the preparations for the fete of the day. His dress was that of a northern countryman, and he who had ever seen one would be at a loss to say whether Peter the Great was an original or a copy.

The countryman held in his hand a large gold-headed cane, and tormented a tame bear, which, standing erect upon its hind feet, and fulfilling the functions of lackey, was from time to time punished for his unskilfulness, to the amusement of the people.

The train arrived at the crystal palace; and although all had descended from the sledges, none had crossed the threshold. Every one appeared desirous to yield the first entrance to the bridegroom and his partner, or to him who gave the feast. Prince Menzikoff and the boyard at last advanced, bare-headed, into the presence of the Czar, who was still occupied in teasing his bear to divert the multitude.

"What are you waiting for?" he said, at the same time taking the cap of the Prince, and replacing it upon his head. "Why these marks of respect? Have you quite forgotten all the duties of gallantry in thus permitting the happy couple to wait at the door of the marriage-house? But I see--and if I did not see, the odors of the dishes and of the brandy would be evidence of it--that you have well performed your duties. With this conviction, Alexandre, that you have done well for the palates of the guests by delicious dishes, and that my old Tscherkaski does not permit me to have a doubt as to his performances concerning the cellar--it is, I say, from these considerations that I pardon you both for forgetting that I am and wish to be nothing more to-day than Peter, the countryman, who has come to celebrate with his friends the nuptials of a couple who love each other tenderly. Come, let us hasten, lest the temperature of the marriage-palace cool our dinner."

"As your Majesty wishes," responded the Prince, respectfully.

"Not Majesty," replied the Emperor, and in the same moment he ran to excuse himself to the affianced for unintentionally causing them to wait so long.

They entered, and very soon the sound of music announced that they were being seated at table. The Prince, at a sign from the Czar, conducted the bride and bridegroom to the place of honor, and beside them the two children. The rest took their places without distinction of rank. The Holland ambassador sat next the Emperor, and in front of him the boyard Tscherkaski, and Menzikoff sat next to Tscherkaski.

II.

The conversation, at first grave and little animated, gradually became more lively. The Czar was in a good humor, a thing which often occurred at the dinner-table, if nowhere else. Peter the Countryman was not slow to assail the embarrassed couple with pleasantries, some more or less good, and others rather equivocal. He at last requested the old patriarch, who was perspiring with fear at the anticipation of the request, to repeat the discourse which he had pronounced to the great pleasure of his Majesty. A noisy gayety filled the hall, and outside it was at its height. At the moment in which the Emperor offered a toast to the married couple, the cannon of ice was discharged. It flew in pieces in every direction, and instead of producing any serious sensation lest some accident might have occurred, it only increased the tumultuous hilarity. The wines of Champagne and Bourgogne ran in streams. The servants were hardly sufficient to supply the thirst of the guests. The Czar ordered to their assistance soldiers, who, taking half a dozen bottles under each arm, rolled them as nine-pins upon the table--a circumstance which the ambassador of the powerful states thought so remarkable that he mentioned it in his report a la Haye.

This intemperate drinking soon showed its effects upon the greater part of the guests. Peter gave himself up completely to the infatuation of the vine, and Menzikoff, who preserved his accustomed sobriety, saw with inquietude the Czar swallow one after another numerous glasses of Bourgogne. The face of the monarch became foolish--the perspiration stood upon his forehead in large drops, and in order to cool himself he took off his perruque, and placed it upon the head of his neighbor the ambassador, who received the insult respectfully, but without power to repress a deep sigh. However pleasant all this might have been, Menzikoff took no part in the enjoyments of the society, troubled as he was through fears founded upon an intimate knowledge of the character of his master. Experience had too often taught him how easily the Czar passed from humor and hilarity to anger and violence. He knew that such changes took place almost invariably after indulgences of the bottle, and that a single word--a single gesture--threw him into a passion that made him detestable, while by nature he was generous and noble. The event proved how reasonable were the presentiments of Menzikoff.

The festival was coming to an end. The Czar arose and commanded silence.

"Hitherto," he said, in smiling, "we have only drank to the health of the happy pair. It is time to give them a substantial token of our friendship. Since I am myself the originator of this joyful marriage, I must give the first example--so take that, Alexandre; put in it what I told you, and pass it round." At these words the Emperor pointed to a little silver basket that lay on the table.

Menzikoff took the basket, and drawing from his bosom a draft for 8000 roubles, and emptying his own purse, passed the basket to his neighbor the boyard. The latter seemed to reflect a moment, took from his pocket a handful of gold and silver, and with an air of contempt, cast an old rouble into the basket, and passed it from him.

This circumstance did not escape the notice of the Emperor. His brow darkened, but soon his gayety returned, and he said, smiling, to Menzikoff:

"You see, Alexandre, the prudence of our Prince de Tscherkaski. He gives only a rouble. He means to say by this that he has no very particular interest in the married parties. It is only a ruse on his part in order to remove any jealousy that a greater gift might awaken. I will wager you that to-morrow he will send a present to the young woman more becoming her rank and position."

"Your Majesty would lose the wager," responded Tscherkaski, in a haughty tone. "The farces of fools and jugglers have never amused me, and I have always pitied those who know not better how to employ their time than to lose it with such creatures. Thus my contribution is at the same time conformed to the circumstances and to my rank, since I do not appreciate beyond measure the office of chamberlain, with which you have gratified me."

The Emperor at first smiled at these words, but his countenance became more stern.

"Our chamberlain," said he, after a pause, "gets angry to get calm again. He must be in a bad humor to-day. I hope he will change his language by the time that another affair occurs, which will interest him more nearly."

Tscherkaski did or wished not to understand the words of the Czar. His wandering and disdainful eyes glanced at the basket offered to the bride and bridegroom. It was filled with gold, rings, bracelets, jewels, and other precious gifts. The universal happiness of the evening had removed from the mind of the Czar the remembrance of the murmurings of the boyard, and Menzikoff had hardly taken his place when the Emperor whispered to him:

"The dispositions you have made to-day in regard to this festivity do you honor. You have perfectly agreed with my own taste in such matters. You have surpassed my expectations."

"It is not I alone," humbly replied the Prince. "The boyard as well as myself----"

"Without doubt, you and he have perfectly fulfilled my intentions. I take not into the account the silver rouble, however," added the Czar, "let that be as it may, ten years hence this place shall be the scene of a similar festivity; and to let you see how I can surpass you, I will myself take charge of the preparations. You may smile, Alexandre, but you will be forced to admit, that without your aid I can arrange a nuptial feast. It is besides the less difficult, since the essentials are already decided upon--the persons to be married."

These words were overheard by those present, and a profound silence ensued.

"Would I be guilty of too much curiosity," said Menzikoff, "if...."

"Ah! you wish to know the young couple," exclaimed the Emperor. "I ought, perhaps, to leave you in ten years' uncertainty; but thanks to this brilliant society whom I invite from to-day, you will know now. Alexis Nicolajewitz," continued he, in addressing the boyard, "you asked me the other day for certain lands near Tula, situated between the boundaries of your property and those of Prince Menzikoff."

"I did, and your Majesty has thought fit to refuse them."

"I refused them, because I had reserved them for another. I wish to give them as a dowry to your daughter."

The astonishment of the boyard was great He attempted to speak.

"Silence! I have attached to the grant one condition," said the Czar.

"Your Majesty will order nothing contrary to my conscience and the honor of my house. I humbly ask, then...."

"The condition is, that your daughter shall receive her husband at my hands."

"I have sworn upon the tomb of my wife," responded the boyard, after a pause, "that my daughter shall espouse him only whom she herself freely chooses. But, she is still a child,... and in ten years...."

"Indeed," interrupted the Emperor, whose countenance was sorrowful, "if your daughter should not accept him whom I would propose, the lands will yet belong to her; are you content now?"

"And the rank, the condition of the parties?"

"They are to be the same."

"A single word from our gracious sovereign, is at any time sufficient to destroy all inequalities of rank," said one of the guests.

"You are right, Kurakin," returned the boyard; "as to myself, I rely upon the word of our monarch, who has just said that there is nothing to equalize. Every one to his opinion upon that which concerns him."

"There is a tone of very high pride in your discourse, Alexis Nicolajewitz," responded Peter, who repressed his anger with difficulty. "I have a great mind not to name to you to-day the husband which I, your sovereign, have chosen for the daughter of one of my subjects. But let your insolent vanity subside. Your future son-in-law is of birth equal with your's and your daughter's; he is the only son of a man whom I dearly esteem and honor with distinguished favors. I say it in his presence, and it is my desire he should be honored by others. In a word, your future son-in-law is the companion of your daughter at the feast to-day; he is the little Fedor Menzikoff."

This name came to the ears of the boyard as a thunder-clap, so great was his astonishment. The assembly waited in vain his response, but he was silent.

"Ah well, Alexis," continued the Czar, "if these two manors are hardly worth thanks, why should I wait for you to consent to the proposed union?"

All eyes were directed to the boyard. No one spoke, and the Czar's impatience yielded to a furious anger.

"And what motive," he at last said, "induces you to reject this gift?"

"The very condition that you have yourself made, gracious sovereign."

"The condition?"

"Yes, that condition which requires my daughter to give her hand to the son of Prince Menzikoff. It can never be fulfilled. It is impossible to accept the gift of your Majesty."

"And why?" fiercely demanded Peter.

"The Czar orders--his servant must obey. Prince Menzikoff is the son of a serf, but the daughter of Tscherkaski shall never marry a man of so mean extraction," and the blood mounted to the brow of the boyard.

"Insolent dog!" exclaimed Peter, striking his hand upon the table. "Do you not know that a single word from me can make ten serfs ten Princes, and the least among them superior to you in rank and dignity. Oh! by my patron, the prince of the Apostles, why should I patiently listen to this haughty descendant of the brigands of the Caucasus. I can do more than this, proud boyard; by a breath I can degrade thee and all thy tribe."

Hitherto Tscherkaski held his eyes downward, but now he lifted them and looked steadily at his monarch.

"Your look braves and menaces me," thundered the Czar, beside himself, and shaking his fist towards the boyard. "Reply if you dare, and it is not impossible that your rebellious head rolls from your body this very night, this hour, this minute."

"Certainly, I do not doubt your power. How could I doubt the power of one who, on the same day, without pity and without humanity, cut off the heads of thousands. Surely, the man who tramples under his feet those who were once the support of his crown and authority; who has not only stained his own hands in their blood, but that of his own son--surely he would not hesitate to destroy an old servant, the necessary but guilty instrument of his past vengeance. Come! the arm that was steeped in the massacre of the Kremlin, can hardly take a redder hue from the blood of an unimportant slave."

Peter looked with burning eyes upon his adversary. He arose, as by an impulse, and inclining his head forward, seemed to be engaged in discovering the meaning of those vehement words. But he was endeavoring to stay the tempest that was sweeping over his heart. Some minutes elapsed before he recovered himself from those bitter recollections; and looking with an affected air of calmness and dignity upon the astonished assembly, he said--

"Faithful Russians! you have heard the serious accusation brought by a subject against his monarch. Whatever may be the number of the Strelitz fallen in an unhappy day, I am not at all concerned about it; they died for the safety and well-being of sacred Russia. If innocent blood flowed at the Kremlin--if, among so many guilty, the sword severed the head of one innocent, I am ready to defend the act. It was from me that the whole transaction originated; it is mine only, and I take the responsibility of it. I had no other means of saving our country from the barbarism that encumbered it, and impeded its elevation to the rank which it should occupy among the nations of Europe. As the bold boyard has truly said, it is I who have brandished the sword, and I ask who is the Russian who dares cite me to his tribunal?"

The anger of the Czar was rekindled, and he began anew.

"It is to the tutelary patron of the empire that I am indebted for the power of having executed a resolution which I judged necessary. A disease was undermining the constitution of the empire--the evil was terrible and appeared incurable: like a skilful physician I at once employed the medicine which could alone be successful in arresting the progress of the disease. Could I, in the moment of execution, place the instrument in the trembling hands of a charlatan? No; it was my own hand that held the knife. I felt the wounds which I made; and I say to-day, before God and man, it is I to whom the action belongs, and for which I am ready to answer on earth and on high. Now, as to you, Tscherkaski, you have audaciously rejected the favor I was willing to grant. You have not even feared to accuse your sovereign in the midst of his subjects. If my ancestors were alive your white head would fall from the block, but far from me the thought of shedding the blood of an old brother in arms. Retract, and you may pass your days tranquilly on your own lands. If not," and the voice of the Czar grew more stern, "I send you this night into eternal exile."

"Is it permitted me to take with me my daughter?" cooly asked the old man.

"The child belongs to its parent," replied the Emperor, surprised and hesitating.

"Then, Alexander Michailowitz," said the boyard to Menzikoff, "give me two of those bear-skins you placed upon the ice-chairs; it is all that is necessary."

"Take him away at once; we have had enough of his arrogance and audacity!" exclaimed the furious Peter, and he repelled Menzikoff, who was endeavoring to intercede for the boyard.

"And whither?" asked the prince with a trembling voice.

"To Bareson upon the Ob----No; to Woksarski upon the Frozen sea," added Peter, as he beheld the smiling and triumphing air of the boyard.

A few moments after the old man and his daughter entered a sledge. A party of horsemen accompanied them, and away they went with the swiftness of an eagle towards the dreary regions of the north-west.

Ten years later, Prince Menzikoff, despoiled of his goods, his honors, and his rank, came to share the exile of the boyard. Similar misfortune reconciled two enemies, and the union of their children accomplished the prediction of the Czar.

POLITENESS: IN PARIS AND LONDON.

BY SIR HENRY LYTTON BULWER.

"Je me recommande a vous," was said to me the other day by an old gentleman dressed in very tattered garments, who was thus soliciting a "sou." The old man was a picture: his long gray hairs fell gracefully over his shoulders. Tall--he was so bent forward as to take with a becoming air the position in which he had placed himself. One hand was pressed to his heart, the other held his hat. His voice, soft and plaintive, did not want a certain dignity. In that very attitude, and in that very voice, a nobleman of the ancient "regime" might have solicited a pension from the Duc de Choiseul in the time of Louis XV. I confess that I was the more struck by the manner of the venerable suppliant, from the strong contrast which it formed with the demeanor of his countrymen in general: for it is rare, now-a-days, I acknowledge, to meet a Frenchman with the air which Lawrence Sterne was so enchanted with during the first month, and so wearied with at the expiration of the first year, which he spent in France. That look and gesture of the "petit marquis," that sort of studied elegance, which, at first affected by the court, became at last natural to the nation, exist no longer, except among two or three "grands seigneurs" in the Faubourg St. Germain, and as many beggars usually to be found on the Boulevards. To ask with grace, to beg with as little self-humility as possible, here perchance is the fundamental idea which led, in the two extremes of society, to the same results: but things vicious in their origin are sometimes agreeable in their practice.

"Hail, ye small sweet courtesies of life, far smoother do ye make the road of it--like grace and beauty, which beget inclination at first sight, 'tis ye who open the door and let the stranger in." I had the Sentimental Journey in my hand--it was open just at this passage, when I landed not very long ago on the quay of that town which Horace Walpole tells us caused him more astonishment than any other he had met with in his travels. I mean Calais. "Hail, ye small sweet courtesies of life," was I still muttering to myself, as gently pushing by a spruce little man, who had already scratched my nose and nearly poked out my eyes with cards of "Hotel ...," I attempted to pass on towards the inn of Mons. Dessin. "Nom de D...," said the Commissionaire, as I touched his elbow, "Nom de D..., Monsieur, _Je suis Francais_! il ne faut pas me pousser, moi ... _je suis Francais_!"--and this he said, contracting his brow, and touching a moustache that only wanted years and black wax to make it truly formidable. I thought that he was going to offer me his own card instead of Mr. Meurice's. This indeed would have been little more than what happened to a friend of mine not long ago. He was going last year from Dieppe to Paris. He slept at Rouen, and on quitting the house the following morning found fault with some articles in the bill presented to him. "Surely there is some mistake here," said he, pointing to the account. "Mistake, sir," said the _aubergiste_, adjusting his shoulders with the important air of a man who was going to burthen them with a quarrel--"mistake, sir, what do you mean?--a mistake--do you think I charge a sou more than is just? Do you mean to say that? _Je suis officier, Monsieur, officier Francais, et j'insiste sur ce que vous me rendiez raison!!_" Now, it is undoubtedly very pleasant to an Englishman, who has the same idea of a duel that a certain French marquise had of a lover, when, on her death-bed, she said to her grand-daughter, "Je ne vous dis pas, ma chere, de ne point avoir d'amans; je me rappelle ma jeunesse. Il faut seulement n'en prendre jamais qui soient au-dessous de votre etat"--it is doubtless very unpleasant to an Englishman, who cares much less about fighting than about the person he fights with, to have his host present him a bill in one hand and a pistol in the other. In one of the islands which we ought to discover, whenever the king sneezes all his courtiers are expected to sneeze also. The country of course imitates the court, and the empire is at once affected with a general cold. Sneezing here then becomes an art and an accomplishment. One person prizes himself on sneezing more gracefully than another, and, by a matter of general consent, all nations who have not an harmonious manner of vibrating their nostrils are justly condemned as savages and barbarians. There is no doubt that the people of this island are right; and there is no doubt that we are right in considering every people with different usages from ourselves of very uncivilized and uncomfortable behavior. We then, decidedly, are the people who ought justly to be deemed the most polite.

For instance--you arrive at Paris: how striking the difference between the reception you receive at your hotel, and that you would find in London! In London, arrive in your carriage! (_that_ I grant is necessary)--the landlord meets you at the door, surrounded by his anxious attendants; he bows profoundly when you alight--calls loudly for every thing you want, and seems shocked at the idea of your waiting an instant for the merest trifle you can possibly _imagine_ that you desire. Now try your Paris hotel--you enter the courtyard--the proprietor, if he happen to be there, receives you with careless indifference, and either accompanies you saunteringly himself, or orders some one to accompany you to the apartments which, on first seeing you, he determined you should have. It is useless to expect another. If you find any fault with this apartment, if you express any wish that it had this little thing, that it had not that, do not for one moment imagine that your host is likely to say, with an eager air, that he "will see what can be done"--that he "would do a great deal to please so respectable a gentleman." In short, do not suppose him for one moment likely to pour forth any of those little civilities with which the lips of your English innkeeper would overflow. On the contrary, be prepared for his lifting up his eyes, and shrugging up his shoulders, (the shrug is not the courtier-like shrug of antique days,) and telling you that the apartment is as you see it, that it is for Monsieur to make up his mind whether he take it or not. The whole is the affair of the guest, and remains a matter of perfect indifference to the host. Your landlady, it is true, is not quite so haughty on these occasions. But you are indebted for her smile rather to the coquetry of the beauty, than to the civility of the hostess. She will tell you, adjusting her head-dress in the mirror standing upon the chimney-piece in the little "salon" she recommends--"que Monsieur s'y trouvera fort bien, qu'un milord Anglais, qu'un prince Russe, ou qu'un colonel du ----ieme de dragons, a occupe cette meme chambre"--and that there is just by an excellent restaurateur and a "cabinet de lecture"--and then--her head-dress being quite in order--the lady expanding her arms with a gentle smile, says, "Mais apres tout, c'est a Monsieur a se decider." It is this which makes your French gentleman so loud in praise of English politeness. One was expatiating to me the other day on the admirable manners of the English.

"I went," said he, "to the Duke of Devonshire's, '_dans mon pauvre fiacre_:' never shall I forget the respect with which a stately gentleman, gorgeously apparelled, opened the creaking door, let down the steps, and--courtesy of very courtesies--picked, actually picked, the dirty straws of the ignominious vehicle that I descended from, off my shoes and stockings." This occurred to the French gentleman at the Duke of Devonshire's. But let your English gentleman visit a French "grand seigneur!" He enters the antechamber from the grand escalier. The servants are at a game of dominos, from which his entrance hardly disturbs them, and fortunate is he if any one conduct him with a careless lazy air to the "salon." So, if you go to Boivin's, or if you go to Howel's and James's, with what politeness, with what celerity, with what respect your orders are received at the great man's of Waterloo Place--with what an easy nonchalance you are treated in the Rue de la Paix! All this is quite true; but there are things more shocking than all this. I know a gentleman, who called the other day on a French lady of his acquaintance, who was under the hands of her "coiffeur." The artiste of the hair was there, armed cap-a-pie, in all the glories of national-guardism, brandishing his comb with the grace and dexterity with which he would have wielded a sword, and recounting, during the operation of the toilette--now a story of "_Monsieur son Capitaine_"--now an anecdote, equally interesting, of "_Monsieur son Colonel_"--now a tale of "_Monsieur son Roi_, that excellent man, on whom he was going to mount guard that very evening." My unhappy friend's face still bore the most awful aspect of dismay, as he told his story. "By G--d, there's a country for you," said he; "can property be safe for a moment in such a country? There can be no religion, no morality, with such manners--I shall order post-horses immediately."

I did not wonder at my friend--at his horror for so fearful a familiarity. What are our parents always, and no doubt wisely repeating to us? "You should learn, my dear, to keep _a certain kind of persons_ at their proper distance."

In no circumstances are we to forget this important lesson. If the clouds hurled their thunders upon our heads, if the world tumbled topsy-turvy about our ears,

"Si fractus illabatur orbis,"

it is to find the well-bred Englishman as it would have found the just Roman--and, above all things, it is not to derange the imperturbable disdain with which he is enfeoffed to his inferiors. Lady D. was going to Scotland: a violent storm arose. Her ladyship was calmly dressing her hair, when the steward knocked at the cabin-door. "My lady," said the man, "I think it right to tell you there is every chance of our being drowned." "Do not talk to me, you impertinent fellow, about drowning," said her aristocratical ladyship, perfectly unmoved--"that's the captain's business, and not mine."

Our great idea of civility is, that the person who is poor should be exceedingly civil to the person who is wealthy: and this is the difference between the neighboring nations. Your Frenchman admits no one to be quite his equal--your Englishman worships every one richer than himself as undeniably his superior. Judge us from our servants and our shopkeepers, it is true we are the politest people in the world. The servants, who are paid well, and the shopkeepers, who sell high--scrape, and cringe, and smile. There is no country where those who have wealth are treated so politely by those to whom it goes; but at the same time there is no country where those who are well off live on such cold, and suspicious, and ill-natured, and uncivil terms among themselves.

The rich man who travels in France murmurs at every inn and at every shop; not only is he treated no better for being a rich man--he is treated worse in many places, from the idea that because he is rich he is likely to give himself airs. But if the lower classes are more rude to the higher classes than with us, the higher classes in France are far less rude to one another. The dandy who did not look at an old acquaintance, or who looked impertinently at a stranger, would have his nose pulled and his body run through with a small-sword--or damaged by a pistol-bullet--before the evening was well over. Where every man wishes to be higher than he is, there you find people insolent to their fellows, and exacting obsequiousness from their inferiors--where men will allow no one to be superior to themselves, there you see them neither civil to those above them, nor impertinent to those beneath them, nor yet very courteous to those in the same station. The manners, checkered in one country by softness and insolence, are not sufficiently courteous and gentle in the other. Time was in France, (it existed in England to a late date,) when politeness was thought to consist in placing every one at his ease. A quiet sense of their own dignity rendered persons insensible to the fear of its being momentarily forgotten. Upon these days rested the shadow of a bygone chivalry, which accounted courtesy as one of the virtues. The civility of that epoch, as contrasted with the civility of ours, was not the civility of the domestic or the tradesman, meant to pamper the pride of their employer, but the civility of the noble and the gentleman, meant to elevate the modesty of those who considered themselves in an inferior state. Corrupted by the largesses of an expensive and intriguing court, the "grand seigneur," after the reign of Louis XIV., became over-civil and servile to those above him. Beneath the star of the French minister beat the present heart of the British mercer--and softly did the great man smile on those from whom he had any thing to gain. As whatever was taught at Versailles was learnt in the Rue St. Denis, when the courtier had the air of a solicitor, every one aped the air of the courtier; and the whole nation with one hand expressing a request, and the other an obligation, might have been taken in the attitude of the graceful old beggar, whose accost made such an impression upon me.

But a new nobility grew up in rivalry to the elder one; and as the positions of society became more complicated and uncertain, a supreme civility to some was seen side by side with a sneering insolence to others--a revolution in manners, which embittered as it hastened the revolution of opinions. Thus the manners of the French in the time of Louis XVI. had one feature of similarity with ours at present. A moneyed aristocracy was then rising into power in France, as a moneyed aristocracy is now rising into power in England. This is the aristocracy which demands obsequious servility--which is jealous and fearful of being treated with disrespect; this is the aristocracy which is haughty, insolent, and susceptible; which dreams of affronts and gives them: this is the aristocracy which measures with an uncertain eye the height of an acquaintance; this is the aristocracy which cuts and sneers--this aristocracy, though the aristocracy of the revolution of July, is now too powerless in France to be more than vulgar in its pretensions. French manners, then, if they are not gracious, are at all events not insolent; while ours, unhappily, testify on one hand the insolence, while they do not on the other represent the talent and the grace of that society which presided over the later suppers of the old regime. We have no Monsieur de Fitz-James, who might be rolled in a gutter all his life, as was said by a beautiful woman of his time, "without ever contracting a spot of dirt." We have no Monsieur de Narbonne, who stops in the fiercest of a duel to pick up the ruffled rose that had slipped in a careless moment from his lips during the graceful conflict! You see no longer in France that noble air, that "_great manner_," as it was called, by which the old nobility strove to keep up the distinction between themselves and their worse-born associates to the last, and which of course those associates _assiduously imitated_.

That manner is gone: the French, so far from being a polite nation at the present day, want that easiness of behavior which is the first essential to politeness. Every man you meet is occupied with maintaining his dignity, and talks to you of _his_ position. There is an evident effort and struggle, I will not say to appear better than you are, but to appear _all_ that _you are_, and to allow no person to think that you consider him better than you. Persons, no longer ranked by classes, take each by themselves an individual place in society. They are so many atoms, not forming a congruous or harmonious whole. They are too apt to strut forward singly, and to say with a great deal of action, and a great deal of emphasis, "I am--_nobody_." The French are no longer polite, but in the French nation, as in every nation, there is an involuntary and traditionary respect which hallows what is gone-by; and among the marvels of modern France is a religion which ranks an agreeable smile and a graceful bow as essential virtues of its creed.

Nor does the Pere Enfantin stand alone. There is something touching in the language of the old "seigneur," who, placed as it were between two epochs, looking backwards and forwards to the graces of past times and the virtues of new, thus expresses himself:

"Les progres de la lumiere et de la liberte ont certainment fait faire de grands pas a la raison humaine; mais aussi dans sa route, n'a-t-elle rien perdu? Moi qui ne suis pas un de ces opiniatres proneurs de ce bon vieux temp qui n'est plus, je ne puis m'empecher de regretter ce bon gout, cette grace, cette fleur d'enjouement et d'urbanite qui chassait de la societe tout ennui en permettant au bon sens de sourire et a la sagesse de se parer. Aujourd 'hui beaucoup de gens ressemblent a un proprietaire morose, qui, ne songeant qu'a l'utile, bannirait de son jardin les fleurs, et ne voudrait y voir que du ble, des foins et des fruits."

From Fraser's Magazine.

THE LION IN THE TOILS.

BY C. ASTOR BRISTED.

What followed the events related in our last number gave Ashburner a lesson against making up his mind too hastily on any points of character, national or individual. A fortnight after his arrival at Oldport he would have said that the Americans were the most communicative people he had ever fallen in with, and particularly, that the men of "our set" were utterly incapable of keeping secret any act or purpose of their lives, any thing that had happened, or was going to happen. _Now_ he was surprised at the discretion shown by the men cognizant of the late row (and they comprised all the fashionables left in the place, and some of the outsiders, like Simpson); their dexterity and careful management, first, to prevent the affair from coming to a fight, and then, if that were impossible, to keep it from publicity until the parties were safe over the border into Canada, where they might "shoot each other like gentlemen," as a young gentleman from Alabama expressed it. Sedley himself, whose officiousness had precipitated the quarrel, did all in his power to prevent any further mischief, and was as sedulous for the promotion of _silencio_ and _misterio_, as if he had been leader of a chorus of Venetian Senators. _The Sewer_ reporters, who, in their eagerness to collect every bit of gossip and scandal, would have given the ears which an outraged community had permitted them to retain for a knowledge of the fracas and its probable consequences, never had the least inkling of it. Indeed, so quietly was the whole managed, that Ashburner never made out the cause of the old feud, nor was able to form any opinion on the probability of its final issue. On the former point he could only come to the conclusion from what he heard, that Hunter had been mythologizing, as his wont was, something to Benson's discredit several years before, and had been trying to make mischief between him and some of his friends or relations; but what the exact offence was, whether Sumner was involved in the quarrel from the first, and if so, to what extent; and whether the legend about the horse was a part of, or only an addition to the original grievance;--on these particulars he remained in the dark. As to the latter, he knew that Hunter had not challenged Benson, and that he had left the place, but whether to look up a friend or not, no one seemed to know, or if they did, no one cared to tell. At any rate, he did not return for a week and more, during which time Ashburner had full opportunity of studying the behavior and feelings of a man with a duel in prospect.

Those who defend and advocate the practice of duelling, if asked to explain the motives leading a gentleman to fight, would generally answer somewhat to this effect: in the first place, personal courage which induces a man to despise danger and death, in comparison with any question affecting his own honor, or that of those connected with him; secondly, a respect for the opinion of the society in which he moves, which opinion, to a certain extent, supplies and fixes the definition of honor. Hence it would follow that, given a man who is neither physically brave, nor bound by any particular respect for the opinion of his daily associates, and the world he moves in, such a man would not be likely to give or accept a challenge. The case under Ashburner's observation afforded a palpable contradiction to this conclusion.

Henry Benson was not personally valorous; what courage he possessed was rather of a moral than a physical kind. Where he appeared to be daring and heedless, it proved on examination to be the result of previous knowledge and practice, which gave him confidence and armed him with impunity. Thus he would drive his trotters at any thing, and shave through "tight places" on rough and crowded roads, his whiffle-trees tipping and his hubs grazing the surrounding wheels in a way that at first made Ashburner shudder in spite of himself; but it was because his experience in wagon-driving enabled him to measure distances within half-an-inch, and to catch an available opening immediately. On the other hand, in their pedestrian trips across country in Westchester, he was very chary of jumping fences or ditches till he had ascertained by careful practice his exact capacity for that sort of exercise. He would ride his black horse, Daredevil, who was the terror of all the servants and women in his neighborhood, because he had made himself perfectly acquainted with all the animal's stock of tricks, and was fully prepared for them as they came; but he never went the first trip in a new steamboat or railroad line. He ate and drank many things considered unhealthy, because he understood exactly from experience what and how much he could take without injury; but you could not have bribed him to sit fifteen minutes in wet boots. In short, he was a man who took excellent care of himself, _canny_ as a Scot or a New-Englander, loving the good things of life, and not disposed to hazard them on slight grounds. Then as to the approbation or disapprobation of those about him, he was almost entirely careless of it. On any point beyond the cut of a coat, the decoration of a room, the concoction of a dish, or the merits of a horse, there were not ten people in his own set whose opinion he heeded. To the remarks of foreigners he was a little more sensitive, but even these he was more apt to retort upon by a _tu quoque_ than to be influenced by. Add to all this, that he had the convenient excuse of being a communicant at church, which, in America, implies something like a formal profession of religion. Yet at this time he was not only willing, but most eager to fight. The secret lay in his state of recklessness. A moment of passion had overturned all his instincts, principles, and common-sense, and inspired him with the feverish desire to pay off his old debts to Storey Hunter, at whatever cost. And as neither the possession of extraordinary personal courage, nor a high sense of conventional honor, nor a respect for the opinion of society, necessarily induces a feeling of recklessness, so neither does the absence of these qualities prevent the presence of this feeling, exactly the most favorable one to make a man engage in a duel. Moralists have called such a condition one of temporary madness, and it has probably as good grounds to be classed with insanity as many of the pleas known to medical and criminal jurisprudence.

Be this as it may, Ashburner had a good opportunity of observing--and the example, it is to be hoped, was of service to him--the demoralization induced upon a man by the mere impending possibility of a duel. Benson seemed careless what he did. He danced frantically, and drank so much at all hours, that the Englishman, though pretty strong-headed himself, wondered how he could keep sober. He was openly seen reading _The Blackguard's Own_, a weekly of _The Sewer_ species. He made up trotting-matches with every man in the place who owned a "fast crab," and with some acquaintances at a distance, by correspondence. He kept studiously out of the way of his wife and child, lest their influence might shake his determination. All this time he practised pistol-shooting most religiously. Neither of the belligerents had ever given a public proof of skill in this line. Hunter's ability was not known, and Benson's shooting so uncertain and variable when any one looked on, that those in the secret suspected him of playing dark and disguising his hand. All which added to the interest of the affair.

But when eleven days had passed without signs or tidings of Hunter, and it seemed pretty clear that he had gone away "for good," Benson started up one morning, and went off himself to New-York, at the same time with Harrison, whose brief and not very joyous holidays had come to a conclusion. He accompanied the banker, in accordance with the true American principle, always to have a lion for your companion when you can; and as Harrison was still a man of note in Wall-street, however small might be his influence in his own household, Benson liked to be seen with him, and to talk any thing--even stocks--to him, though he had no particular interest in the market at that time. But whether an American is in business himself or not, the subject of business is generally an interesting one to him, and he is always ready to gossip about dollars. The unexampled material development of the United States is only maintained by a condition of society which requires every man to take a share in assisting that development, and the most frivolous and apparently idle men are found sharp enough in pecuniary matters. This trait of national character lies on the surface, and foreigners have not been slow to notice it, and to draw from it unfavorable conclusions. The supplementary and counterbalancing features of character to be observed in these very people,--that it is rather the fun of making the money than the money itself which they care for; that when it is made, they spend it freely, and part with it more readily than they earned it; that they are more liberal both in their public and private charities (considering the amount of their wealth, and of the claims upon it) than any nation in the world,--all these traits strangers have been less ready to dwell upon and do justice to.

Benson was gone, and Ashburner stayed. Why? He had been at Oldport nearly a month; the place was not particularly beautiful, and the routine of amusements not at all to his taste. Why did he stay? He had his secret, too.

It is a melancholy but indisputable fact, that even in the most religious and moral country in the world, the bulwark of evangelical faith, and the home of the domestic virtues (meaning, of course, England), a great many mothers who have daughters to marry, are not so anxious about the real welfare, temporal and eternal, of their young ladies, as solicitous that they should acquire riches, titles, and other vanities of the world,--nay, that many of the daughters themselves act as if their everlasting happiness depended on their securing in matrimony a proper combination of the aforesaid vanities, and put out of account altogether the greatest prize a woman can gain--the possession of a true and loving heart, joined to a wise head. Now, Ashburner being a very good _parti_ at home, and having run the gauntlet of one or two London seasons, had become very skittish of mammas, and still more so of daughters. He regarded the unmarried female as a most dangerous and altogether to be avoided animal, and when you offered to introduce him to a young lady, looked about as grateful as if you had invited him to go up in a balloon. He expected to be rather more persecuted, if any thing, in America than he had been at home; and when he met Miss Vanderlyn at Ravenswood, if his first thought had found articulate expression, it would probably have been something like this:--"Now that young woman is going to set her cap at me; what a bore it will be!"

Never was a man more mistaken in his anticipations. He encountered many pretty girls, not at all timid, ready enough to talk, and flirty enough among their own set, but not one of them threw herself at him, and least of all did Miss Vanderlyn. Not that the young lady was the victim of a romantic attachment, for she was perfectly fancy free and heart whole; nor, on the other hand, that she was at all insensible to the advantages of matrimony, for she kept a very fair lookout in that direction, and had, if not absolutely down on her books, at least engraved on the recording tablets of her mind, four distinct young gentlemen, combining the proper requisites, any of whom would suit her pretty well, and one of whom--she didn't much care which--she was pretty well resolved to marry within the next two years. And as she was stylish and rather handsome, clever enough, and tolerably provided with the root of all evil, besides having that fortunate good humor and accommodating disposition which go so far towards making a woman a belle and a favorite, there was a sufficient probability that before the expiration of that time, one of the four would offer himself. But all her calculations were founded on shrewd common sense; her imagination took no flights, and her aspirations only extended to the ordinary and possible. That this young and strange Englishman, travelling as a part of education, the son of a great man, and probably betrothed by proxy to some great man's daughter, or going into parliament to be a great man himself, and remain a bachelor for the best part of his life,--that between him and herself there should by any thing in common, any point of union which could make even a flirtation feasible, never entered into her head. She would as soon have expected the King of Dahomey to send an embassy with ostrich feathers in their caps, and rings in their noses, formally to ask her hand in marriage. Nay, even if the incredible event had come to pass, and the young stranger had taken the initiative, even then she would not by any means have jumped at the bait. For in the first place, she was fully imbued with the idea that the Vanderlyns were quite as good as any other people in the world, and that (the ordinary conceit of an American belle) to whatever man she might give her hand, all the honor would come from her side, and all the gain be his; therefore she would not have cared to come into a family who might suspect her of having inveigled their heir, and look down upon her as something beneath them, because she came from a country where there were no noblemen. Secondly, there is a very general feeling among the best classes in America, that no European worth any thing at home comes to America to get married. The idea is evidently an imperfect generalization, and liable to exceptions; but the prevalence of it shows more modesty in the "Upper Ten's" appreciation of themselves than they usually have credit for. As soon, therefore, as a foreigner begins to pay attention to a young lady in good society, it is _prima facie_ ground of suspicion against him. The reader will see from all this how little chance there was of Ashburner's running any danger from the unmarried women about him. With the married ones the case was somewhat different. It may be remembered, that at his first introduction to Mrs. Henry Benson, the startling contrast she exhibited to the adulation he had been accustomed to receive, totally put him down; and that afterwards she softened off the rough edge of her satire, and became very _piquante_ and pleasing to him. And as she greatly amused him, so he began to suspect that she was rather proud of having such a lion in her train, as no doubt she was, notwithstanding the somewhat rough and cub-like stage of his existence. So he began to hang about her, and follow her around in his green awkward way, and look large notes of admiration at her; and she was greatly diverted, and not at all displeased at his attentions. I don't know how far it might have gone; Ashburner was a very correct and moral young man, as the world goes, but rather because he had generally business enough on hand to keep him out of mischief, than from any high religious principle; and I am afraid that in spite of the claims of propriety, and honor, and friendship, and the avenging Zeus of hospitality, and every other restraining motive, he would have fallen very much in love with Mrs. Benson but for one thing.

He was hopelessly in love with Mrs. Harrison. How or when it began he couldn't tell; but he found himself under the influence imperceptibly, as a man feels himself intoxicated. Sometimes he fancied that there had been a kind of love at first sight--that with the first glimpse he had of her, something in his heart told him that that woman was destined to exert a mastery over him; yet his feelings must have undergone a change and growth, for he would not now have listened to any one speaking of her as Benson had done at that time. _Why_ it was, he could still less divine. His was certainly not the blind admiration which sees no fault in its idol; he saw her faults plainly enough, and yet could not help himself. He often asked himself how it happened that if he _was_ doomed to endure an illicit and unfortunate passion, it was not for Mrs. Benson rather than Mrs. Harrison; for the former was at least as clever, certainly handsomer, palpably younger, indubitably more lady-like, and altogether a higher style of woman. Yet with this just appreciation of them, there was no comparison as to his feelings towards the two. The one amused and delighted him when present; the other, in her absence, was ever rising up before his mind's eye, and drawing him after her; and when they met, his heart beat quicker, and he was more than usually awkward and confused.--Perhaps there had been, in the very origin of his entanglement and passion, some guiding impulse of honor, some sense that Benson had been his friend and entertainer, and that to Harrison he was under no personal obligations. For there are many shades of honor and dishonor in dishonorable thoughts, and a little principle goes a great way with some people, like the wind commemorated by Joe Miller's Irishman, of which there was not much, _but what there was, was very high_.

Be this as it may, he was loving to perdition--or thought so, at least; and it is hard to discriminate in a very young man's case between the conceit and the reality of love. His whole heart and mind were taken up with one great, all-pervading idea of Mrs. Harrison, and he was equally unable to smother and to express his flame. He was dying to make her a present of something, but he could send nothing without a fear of exciting suspicion, except bouquets; and of these floral luxuries, though they were only to be procured at Oldport with much trouble and expense, she had always a supply from other quarters. He did not like to be one of a number in his offerings; he wanted to pay her some peculiar tribute. He would have liked to fight some man for her, to pick a quarrel with some one who had said something against her. Proud and sensitive to ridicule as he was, he would have laid himself down in her way, and let her walk over him, could he have persuaded himself that she would be gratified by such a proof of devotion, and that it would help his cause with her.

Had Benson been in Oldport now, there might have been trouble, inasmuch as he was not particular about what he said, and not too well disposed towards Mrs. Harrison, while Ashburner was just in a state of mind to have fought with his own father on that theme. But Benson was away, and his absence at this time was not a source of regret to Ashburner, who felt a little afraid of him, and with some reason, for our friend Harry was as observant as if he had a fly's allowance of eyes, and had a knack of finding out things without looking for them, and of knowing things without asking about them; and he would assuredly have noticed that Ashburner began to be less closely attached to his party, and to follow in the train of Mrs. Harrison. As for Clara Benson, she never troubled herself about the Englishman's falling off in his attentions to her; if any thing, she was rather glad of it; her capricious disposition made her tire of a friend in a short time; she could not endure any one's uninterrupted company--not even her husband's, who therefore wisely took care to absent himself from her several times every year.

Moreover, though Ashburner was seen in attendance on the lioness, it was not constantly or in a pointed manner. He was still fighting with himself, and, like a man run away with, who has power to guide his horse though not to stop him, he was so far able to manage his passion as to keep it from an open display. So absolutely no one suspected what was the matter with him, or that there was any thing the matter with him, except the lady herself. Catch a woman not finding out when a man is in love with her! Sometimes she may delude herself with imagining a passion where none exists, but she never makes the converse mistake of failing to perceive it where it does. And how did the gay Mrs. Harrison, knowing and perceiving herself to be thus loved, make use of her knowledge? What alteration did it produce in her conduct and bearing towards her admirer? Absolutely none at all. Precisely as she had treated him at their first introduction did she continue to treat him--as if he were one of her everyday acquaintances, and nothing more. And it is precisely this line of action that utterly breaks down a man's defences, and makes him more hopelessly than ever the slave of his fair conqueror. If a woman declares open hostilities against him, runs him down behind his back, snubs him to his face, shuns his society,--this at least shows that she considers his attachment of some consequence--consequence enough to take notice of, though the notice be unfavorable. His self-respect may come to the rescue, or his piqued vanity may save him by converting love into enmity. But a perseverance in never noticing his love, and feigning to be ignorant of its existence, completely establishes her supremacy over him.

A Frenchman, who has conceived designs against a married lady, only seeks to throw dust in the husband's eyes, and then if he cannot succeed in his final object, at least to establish sufficient intimacy to give him a plausible pretext for saying that he has succeeded; for in such a matter he is not scrupulous about lying a little--or a great deal. An American, bad enough for a similar intention (which usually presupposes a considerable amount of _Parisianization_), acts as much like a Frenchman--if anything, rather worse. An Englishman is not usually moved to the desire of an intrigue by vanity, but driven into it by sheer passion, and his first impulse is to run bodily off with the object of his misplaced affection; to take her and himself out of the country, as if he could thereby travel out of his moral responsibilities. Reader, did you ever notice, or having noticed, did you ever ponder upon the geographical distribution of morals and propriety which is so marked and almost peculiar a feature of the Anglo-Saxon mind? In certain outward looks and habits, the English may be unchangeable and unmistakeable all over the globe; but their ethical code is certainly not the same at home and abroad. It is pretty much so with an American, too, before he has become irreparably Parisianized. When he puts on his travelling habits, he takes off his puritan habits, and makes light of doing things abroad which he would be the first to anathematize at home. Observe, we are not speaking of the deeply religious, nor yet of the openly profligate class in either country, but of the general run of respectable men who travel; they regard a great part of their morality and their manners as intended solely for home consumption; while a Frenchman or a German, if his home standard is not so high, lives better up to it abroad. And yet many Englishmen, and some Americans, wonder why their countrymen are so unpopular as foreign travellers!

Ashburner, then, wanted to run away with Mrs. Harrison. How he could have supported her never entered into his thoughts, nor did he consider what the effect would be on his own prospects. He did not reflect, either, how miserably selfish it was in him, after all, to expect that this woman would give up her fortune and position, her children, her unbounded legitimate domination over her husband, for his boyish passion, and how infinitesimally small the probability that she would do so crazy a thing. Nor did Harrison ever arise before his mind as a present obstacle or future danger; and this was less frantic than most of his overlookings. The broker was a strong and courageous man, and probably had been once very much in love with his wife; but at that time, so far from putting a straw in the way of any man who wanted to relieve him of her, he would probably have been willing to pay his expenses into the bargain.

But how to declare his passion--that was the question. He saw that the initiatory steps, and very decided ones, must be taken on his part; and it was not easy to find the lady alone ten minutes together. People lived at Newport as if they were in the open air, and the volunteer police of ordinary gossip made private interviews between well-known people a matter of extreme difficulty. A Frenchman similarly placed would have brought the affair to a crisis much sooner: he would have found a thousand ways of disclosing his feelings, and at the same time dexterously leaving himself a loop-hole of escape. Very clever at these things are the Gauls; they will make an avowal in full ball-room, under cover of the music, if there is no other chance to be had. But tact in love affairs is not a characteristic of the Englishman, especially at Ashburner's age. He had none of this mischievous dexterity; perhaps it is just as well when a man has not, both for himself and for society. He thought of writing, and actually began many letters or notes, or billet-doux, or whatever they might be called; but they always seemed so absurd (as truly they were), that he invariably tore them up when half-finished. He thought of serving up his flame in verse (for about this time the unhappy youth wrote many verses, which on his return to sanity he very wisely made away with); but his emotion lay too deep for verse, and his performances seemed even to himself too ridiculous for him to dream of presenting them. Still he must make a beginning somehow; he could not ask her to run away with him apropos of nothing.

One of his great anxieties, you may be sure, was to find out if any other man stood in his way, and who that man might be. His first impulses were to be indiscriminately jealous of every man he saw talking or walking with her; but on studying out alone the result of his observations, he could not discover that she affected any one man more than another. For this was one of her happy arts, that she made herself attractive to all without showing a marked preference for any one. White, who among his other accomplishments had a knack of quoting the standard poets, compared her to Pope's Belinda--saying, that her lively looks disclosed a sprightly mind, and that she extended smiles to all, and favors to none. So that Ashburner's jealousy could find no fixed object to light on. At one time he had been terribly afraid of Le Roi, chiefly from having heard the lady praise him for his accomplishments and agreeable manners. But once he heard Sedley say, that Mrs. Harrison had been worrying Le Roi half out of his wits, and quite out of his temper.

"How so?"

"Oh, she was praising you, and saying how much she liked the English character, and how true and honest your countrymen were--so much more to be depended on than the French--and more manly, too; and altogether she worked him up into such a rage against _ces insulaires_, that he went off ready to swear."

And then Ashburner suspected what he afterwards became certain of--that this was only one of the pleasant little ways the woman had of amusing herself. Whenever she found two men who were enemies, or rivals, or antagonists in any way, she would praise each to the other, on purpose to aggravate them: and very successful she was in her purpose; for she had the greatest appearance of sincerity, and whatever she said seemed to come right out of her heart. But if any lingering fears of Le Roi still haunted the Englishman's mind, they were dispelled by his departure along with the main body of the exclusives. Though always proud to be seen in the company of a conspicuous character like Mrs. Harrison, the Vicomte more particularly cultivated the fashionables proper, and gladly embraced the opportunity of following, in the train of the Robinsons.

Perhaps, after all, Ashburner would have preferred being able to concentrate his suspicions upon one definite person, to feeling a vague distrust of somebody he knew not whom, especially as the presence of a rival might have brought the affair to a crisis sooner. To a crisis it was approaching, nevertheless, for his passion now began to tell on him. He looked pale, and grew nervous and weak--lay awake at nights, which he had never done before, except when going in for the Tripos at Cambridge--and was positively off his feed, which he had never been at any previous period of his life. He thought of tearing himself away from the place--the wisest course, doubtless; but, just as he had made up his mind to go by the next stage, Mrs. Harrison, as if she divined what he was about, would upset all his plans by a few words, or a look or smile--some little expression which meant nothing, and could never be used against her; but which, by a man in his state, might be interpreted to mean a great deal.

One morning the crisis came--not that there was any particular reason for it then more than at any other time, only he could hold out no longer. It was a beautiful day, and they had been strolling in one of the few endurable walks the place afforded--a winding alley near the hotel, but shrouded in trees, and it was just at the time when most of the inhabitants were at ten-pins, so that they were tolerably alone. Now, if ever, was the time; but the more he tried to introduce the subject, the less possible he found it to make a beginning, and all the while he could not avoid a dim suspicion that Mrs. Harrison knew perfectly well what he was trying to drive at, and took a mischievous pleasure in saying nothing to help him along. So they talked about his travels and hers, and great people in England and France, and all sorts of people then at Oldport, and the weather even--all manner of ordinary topics; and then they walked some time without saying anything, and then they went back to the hotel. There he felt as if his last chance was slipping away from him, and in a sudden fit of desperate courage he followed her up to her parlor without waiting for an invitation. Hardly was the door closed--he would have given the world to have locked it--when he begged her to listen to him a few minutes on a subject of the greatest importance. The lady opened her large round eyes a little wider; it was the only sign she gave of any thing approaching to surprise. Then the young man unbosomed himself just as he stood there--not upon his knees; people used to do that--in books, at least--but nobody does now. He told her how long he had been in love with her--how he thought of her all day and all night, and how wretched he was--how he had tried to subdue his passion, knowing it was very wrong, and so forth; but really he couldn't help it, and--and--there he stuck fast; for all the time he had been making this incoherent avowal, like one in a dream, hardly knowing what he was about, but conscious only of taking a decisive step, and doing a very serious thing in a very wild way--all this time, nevertheless, he had most closely watched Mrs. Harrison, to anticipate his sentence in some look or gesture of hers. And he saw that there did not move a line in her face, or a muscle in her whole figure--not a fibre of her dress even stirred. If she had been a great block of white marble, she could not have shown less feeling, as she stood up there right opposite him. If he had asked her to choose a waistcoat pattern for him, she could not have heard him more quietly. As soon as he had fairly paused, so that she could speak without immediate interruption, she took up the reply. It was better that he should go no further, as she had already understood quite enough. She was very sorry to give him pain--it was always unpleasant to give pain to any one. She was also very sorry that he had so deceived himself, and so misapprehended her character, or misunderstood her conversation. He was very young yet, and had sense enough to get over this very soon. Of course, she would never hear any repetition of such language from him; and, on her part, she would never mention what had occurred to any one--especially not to Mr. Harrison (it was the first time he had ever heard her allude to the existence of that gentleman); and then she wound up with a look which said as plainly as the words could have done, "Now, you may go."

Ashburner moved off in a more than usual state of confusion. As he approached the door it opened suddenly, and he nearly walked over one of the little Bleeckers, a flourishing specimen of Young New-York, with about three yards of green satin round his throat, and both his hands full of French novels, which he had been commissioned to bring from the circulating library. Ashburner felt like choking him, and it was only by a great effort that he contrived to pass him with a barely civil species of nod. But as he went out, he could not refrain from casting one glance back at Mrs. Harrison. She had taken off her bonnet (which in America is denominated a hat), and was tranquilly arranging her hair at the glass.

Somehow or other he found his way down stairs, and rushed off into the country on a tearing walk, enraged and disgusted with every thing, and with himself most of all. When a man has made up his mind to commit a sin, and then has been disappointed in the fruition of it--when he has sold the birthright of his integrity, without getting the miserable mess of pottage for it which he expected, his feelings are not the most enviable. Ashburner was angry enough to marry the first heiress he met with. First, he half resolved to get up a desperate flirtation with Mrs. Benson; but the success of his first attempt was not encouraging to the prosecution of a second. To kill himself was not in his line; but he felt very like killing some one else. He still feared he might have been made a screen for some other man. But if the other man existed, he could only be reached by fighting successively all the single men of "our set," and a fair sprinkling of those in the second set. Then he thought he must at least leave the place, but his pride still revolted at the idea of running away before a woman. Finally, after walking about ten miles, and losing his dinner, he sobered down gradually, and thought what a fool he had been; and the issue of his cogitations was a very wise double conclusion. He formed a higher opinion of the virtue of American women, and he never attempted any experiments on another.

From Sharpe's London Magazine.

THE MAN OF TACT.

There is no distinctive term more frequently employed, and less generally understood, than the word "Tact." It is in every one's mouth, and many have a vague notion of its meaning, who yet, if required, would find no slight difficulty in giving its definition. It is the application of perceptive common-sense to life's practical details; the correct adaptation of means to ends, from an intuitive knowledge of character, blended with a careful concealment, a discreet evasion of our own, except when amiable faults are avowed, to enhance the impression of our candor. Cameleon-like, "tact" assumes the color of contingent circumstances,--is the vague, yet potent spirit, with its shadowless finger arresting the impulses; an unseen ruler of the thoughts, winding its gossamer yet adamantine meshes like a spell; the uncaught "hic et ubique" arbiter of mortal destinies embodied in a fellow-mortal.

When we speak of the "man of tact," as of one in whom this quality predominates,--as hereafter we shall speak of the man of honor, of genius, and of sense, we must confess that above most other characteristics, this is especially absorbent in its influence, and generally usurps the government of the whole man. It collects into its own stream the channels of other motives, which it renders tributary, until it pervades the whole moral surface with one obliterating deluge. If not watched, it will hence induce a general deceptiveness, for the other impulses will partake of its color, shrewdness will become cunning, discretion will change into artful dexterity. Its very progress is sinuous and oblique, never more so than when assuming the guise of straightforwardness and truth; but if divested of its baser elements, it will soar into the higher intellectuals, and will claim affinity to practical observation, or, to speak phrenologically, to causality. In this view it combines with prudence, also with self-discipline, in the regulation of the temper; in fact, is the child of judgment, inheriting with its parent's calmness somewhat of her coldness too.

Observe that man sitting in the private room of one of our largest mercantile establishments. Risen from a low grade to the direction of a vast concern, at one time intrusted with a mission abroad of a most important yet delicate character, he owes the eminence he has attained entirely to tact. The features are now in repose, take your opportunity to watch them (for they are seldom so, and if he were aware of observation, would assume a different expression); how the wear upon nerves, even of such flexibility, imparts to the fatigued countenance an air of study, ceaseless even in comparative inaction. The open and bald forehead, clear, expansive, impending over deep-set, small, yet fathomless eyes, restless and anxious in their motion; the lips fullish, wearing at the corner a half-contemptuous yet good-humored self-contentment, which tells of the owner's disdain for the game of life, and yet of triumphant complacency at his own successful skill in it. He smiles! Ah! he is thinking of how he deluded that shallow fop, Lord F----, whom fortune raised kindly to conceal his puerilites by a coronet; or perhaps (as his eye dilates with haughtier gaze) he dreams of having struck a nobler quarry, when he outwitted the subtle Count de P----; for neither thought they were following aught but the suggestion of their own will. This is the mystery and mastery of tact. Had his victims seen that smile, the game would have been lost; but he was different to each, the man was changed. The lordling saw before him a free hearty abettor of youthful folly, an Apicius, not a Mentor, one versed in life's vanities, yet still ready to quaff the draught he satirized; sagacious in criticising pleasure, yet reckless as the youngest in its pursuit; but to the Count, the deferential air, the silent evidence of every action, so sedulously courteous, yet so artless, attesting the listener's (for he spoke but to inquire as if of an oracle, and demurred but to render conviction more gracefully attractive) reverence for the old diplomatist's sagacity; the rejoinder dexterously introduced to confirm confidence in his visitor that he was not wasting his instruction,--these and the thousand nameless points of tact, dipped in the fountain of his own deep counsel, instilled the wary practiser's motives into the mind of one, apparently his confessed master in the art of diplomacy, convinced the Count that he was regarded as the condensation of profound thought, of astute sagacity; and it so happened, that if there was one qualification in which the foreigner especially exulted more than any other, it was upon his dexterity in deciphering disposition--in his thorough knowledge of human nature!

We have said he was an adept in listening: indeed it was averred that he obtained a large estate by the quiet attention with which he listened to the toothless twaddle of a senile Dowager--age's garrulity--the echo of an empty hall which thought has quitted. He rarely, however, in any case interrupts the driest drawler, for he has tutored attendants who understand not only whom to admit, but also a hint as to the proper duration of a conference, and these with ready message cut short the intruder's dull delay. If, also, in public or private he be himself interrupted, he never loses his temper or the point; resumes the thread just where it was broken, and with polite, yet unswerving pertinacity, directs the minds of all to the wished-for end, in spite of every purposed or involuntary attempt to distract them into devious channels. Some men, like jackdaws, proclaim with noisy loquaciousness their most private matters, alarming the public horizon with egotistical chatter about their own nests: "tact," as the master of it, Cromwell, knew, acknowledges the "safety of silence," and like the rat,--a subtle politician!--saps vast fabrics by an insidious, unheard gnawing underground!

Briefly, this man listens much, speaks little--mostly the latter when he would conceal his thoughts--keeps his eyes and ears open, his mouth and his heart closed. With numerous admirers, he has many enemies--the latter's hostility is however repressed by fear, and the regard of the other, somehow, never ripens into love; it may be that selfishness, the concomitant of tact, forbids affection. We have shown the fair side of the portrait hitherto drawn from the respectable sphere (as it is called) of life; but it has its evil counterpart or reverse to be seen in a notorious receiver of stolen property, ever watched by, yet ever baffling the police,--one, who, having helped many to the hulks, has by sheer cunning (tact in motley!) himself escaped. The consciences of both are similarly guided by the law of public not private morality--interest is the ruling principle of both; even the drudgery of each assimilates, for a life of dissimulation is a very hard one. What actor would be _always_ on the stage? Both are commercial men in a sense, though one lives at the west-end, the other near Seven-dials; sometimes they meet,--the rich, upon--the poor, before, the bench--"the Justice" in silk "frowns" on the speciously "simple thief" in rags; yet nature has cut the countenances of both from the same piece, and true it is that her "one touch," the prevalence of tact, successful here,--in hard confronting there--renders both "akin."

Yet not always does "tact" array itself in silken softness, or "stoop to conquer:" some ply the trade with no less success under the guise of rough and candid honesty: these men declare loudly that they always speak their minds: come upon us with a bluff sincerity, disarming prudence by an appearance of incautious trust and open-heartedness. They "cannot cog," they cannot sue, they profess noisily to abhor "humbug," as they term it, in every shape:--a strange ingratitude _to what they chiefly thrive by_; for certain it is, that though doubtlessly "all honorable men," these are the most insidious tacticians, and generally of the worst kind.

Hitherto we have spoken of "tact" in its deteriorated shape, and indeed the word seems to have got so bad a name that its bare mention breathes distrust. Yet there is a medium class of men who, like William of Orange, reduce violent feelings even to frigidity, and allowing discretion her widest scope, do not entirely obliterate the affections. Machiavelli says that "seldom men of mean fortunes attain to high degrees without force or fraud, and generally rather by the latter than the former," and hence he recommends guile to be adopted--but these, to whom we now allude, practise prudence, yet preserve their guileless sincerity. Here, though the term is rather univocal, and seems to apply only to our concerns with others, its healthy action is forcibly evinced on the individual's mind, for it disciplines the impulses and reviews for ready co-action reason's powers. So high did the ancients in their sense regard it, that they elevated it to a divinity--"Nullum numen adest si sit Prudentia," though, as Addison observes, "this sort of discretion has no place in private conversation between intimate friends. It occupies a neutral ground between caution and art, uses expediency instead of integrity, and hence deceives us by the first, when we look for the consistency of the latter." Almost ever combined with conceit (the pride of questionable success), it never possesses the magnanimity to confess an error; for this detracting from its arrogated infallibility might deteriorate its influence: it will acknowledge vices (if polite), but will never plead guilty to mistakes, since the grossest charge against the "man of tact" at the bar of self, much more of public judgment, is not the perpetration of a sin--but the commission of a blunder!

From the "Revue des Deux Mondes."

A WRECK OF THE OLD FRENCH ARISTOCRACY.

AN INCIDENT OF TRAVEL IN THE LIMOUSIN.

It is truly a great mistake to measure the interest of a journey by its duration, and that of a country by its remoteness; and one is deceived in supposing that it is necessary to go afar in quest of adventures, and make a voyage two years long in order to see curious sights. There is a certain author who has made "a journey around his room" more fruitful in incidents of all descriptions than the numberless voyages of an infinity of sailors that I know; and one may make, thank heaven! many an interesting trip without passing beyond the "neighboring shores" from which La Fontaine forbids us to wander. The only thing is, that it is less easy to travel after this fashion than the other, and that it requires a lengthened preparation.

In order to observe skilfully, one must be accustomed to look around one. We scarcely become curious except after long habit, and, strange to say, our curiosity seems to increase in proportion as we satisfy it. When we know a great deal we desire to know still more, and it is remarkable that those alone desire to see no sights who have never had any sights to see. Moreover, it is necessary to have contemplated the grandest spectacles of nature in order to understand and love her least conspicuous wonders; for nature does not surrender herself to the first comer. She is a chaste and severe divinity, who admits to her intimacy those alone who have deserved it by long contemplations and a constant worship: and I firmly believe that it is necessary to have travelled round the world in order profitably and agreeably to make the tour of one's garden. If many years of youth spent in wandering by land and sea, can render me an authority in regard to travels, then am I justified in declaring, that in none of my more distant courses have I found more interest and pleasure than in the little trip I am now about to narrate.

There were, then, four of us, all alike young, gay, active, clad in shooting costume, going straight ahead, without fixed plan or preconcerted itinerary, marching at hap-hazard in these desert _landes_, respiring freely the pungent odor of the broom, roaming from hill to hill without other rallying point than the top of a mountain which pointed out the direction of the low lands. After four hours' walk we discovered that this mountain was still very far distant, and that the sun was sinking below the horizon. We had already left behind us the wildest part of the department of the _Correze_. To woods of pine and birch succeeded enormous chestnut-trees; the sterile heath gave place to cultivated fields. Here and there some houses displayed their straw-colored roofs, and some scattered laborers beheld us pass by with gaping suspicion. To tell the truth, we had all of us a tolerably gallows look. In this wretched country, where every one lives on from day to day without quitting his little inclosure, without even hearing an echo from afar, four bearded marauders like ourselves, avoiding the beaten road, and marching rapidly across stubble and thicket, presented no ordinary rencontre. All on a sudden the clouds began to gather, and, by way of varying our sensations, a terrific tempest burst over our heads. It was the first incident of our journey. Drenched through in a moment by this diluvian rain, we rushed, with the ardor of soldiers mounting a breach, towards a village perched like a magpie's nest on the summit of the hill we were ascending. A house of capacious size, but of dismal and ruinous appearance, arose before us. We rushed in at a charging pace, and found that it was deserted, except that near the hearth, where smouldered the embers of the most miserable fire in the world, an infant was deposited in, or rather tied to, his cradle, according to the fashion of the country. By the aid of a stout bandage they had swaddled him up like a mummy, and duly sealed him to the planks of the little box, which served him for a bed. In addition, his head was carefully turned toward the fire, so that his cranium was in a state of continual ebullition, such being the appointed regimen of the neighborhood. At the sight of our strange visages, the little one, after staring at us for a moment or two, proceeded to utter the most lamentable outcries. I rocked his cradle with the most paternal solicitude, but could not succeed in quieting him. On the contrary, his screams became positively heart-rending, and we were almost ready to smother him outright in order to put a stop to his roaring. At this summons a woman entered abruptly into the house, and stared at us with an expression of alarm. It was incumbent on us to explain that we were no pilferers, and this was no easy matter. The young mother evidently looked on us with suspicion. She was not altogether a mere peasant,--at least she wore, instead of the little straw hat trimmed with black velvet, which is the ordinary head-dress of the countrywomen, a bonnet, which in the Limousin is a certain indication of pretensions to the rank of the _bourgeoise_. Her robe, besides, however inelegant it might be, was nevertheless town-made.

These matters I noticed at a glance, whilst one of my companions gave the needful explanations as to our pacific intentions. Our hostess pretended to be satisfied. She removed the cradle, threw some shavings into the fire to revive it, and sat herself down with a cold, constrained manner, in which I could discover at once considerable embarrassment, accompanied by a certain air of dignity. Never had I seen a Limousin peasant take a seat in the presence of _gentlemen_, and I speedily made another discovery which not a little perplexed me. The fire as it revived had thrown a glow upon the hearthstone, which was of cast-iron, and presented a large armorial escutcheon. This display astonished me. I looked round again at the smoke-dried kitchen in which we sat; it was a miserable place. The ceiling was falling piecemeal; in the pavement, disjointed and worn, were three or four muddy holes but rarely cleared out, the dampness of which was kept up by the continual dripping of a dozen cream cheeses, suspended in a long basket of osiers. Two beds, a large table, and a few dilapidated chairs, composed the furniture of the apartment, which was pervaded by a sour and offensive smell, apparently very attractive to a huge sow whose grunting snout was ever and anon thrust into the entrance of the doorway. Whence, then, this curious hearthstone? I looked more attentively at the young woman, and discovered in her countenance a certain air of distinction. I then inquired of her at what place we were.

"Monsieur is jesting at me, doubtless," she pretty sharply replied.

I assured her I had no such intention, and was really ignorant of the name of the village.

"It is not a village, sir," she resumed, "it is a town. You are at the Puy d'Arnac, in the Canton of Beaulieu."

A native of Marseilles would hardly have named the _Canebiere_ with greater satisfaction. I knew that the Puy d'Arnac gave its name to a celebrated growth of the _Correze_, and I thought I understood the lofty tone of the reply. All on a sudden, one of my companions, whom we nicknamed the "Broker," because he groped into all sorts of places, and, with amusing perseverance, hunted out objects of art and curiosity even in hovels, touched my elbow, and asked me if I had noticed the picture which was half-hidden under the serge curtains of one of the beds. I had not yet observed it, and got up to look at it. It was the portrait of a general officer of the time of Louis XV. The frame, sculptured and gilt, struck me still more, being really beautiful. "This is a discovery indeed," said my friend to me, while I inquired of the young woman where such a portrait could have come from.

"Where could it have come from, Monsieur?" she haughtily replied; "it is the portrait of my grandfather."

"Aha!" we exclaimed, all four of us, turning ourselves round with surprise. With one hand our hostess stirred the fire, with an indifference evidently affected, while with the other she rocked the little box in which her infant was asleep.

"Might I presume to inquire the name of Monsieur your grandfather?" said I, drawing near to her.

"He was the Count of Anteroches," was her reply.

"What, the Count of Anteroches, who commanded the French guards at the battle of Fontenoy?"[5]

"You have heard him spoken of, then?" resumed the peasant girl, with a smile.

My friend the Broker stood as if stupefied before the picture. All of a sudden he wheeled round, and, gravely removing his cap, repeated with a theatrical air the celebrated saying of M. d'Anteroches,--"Fire first, _Messieurs les Anglais_; we are Frenchmen, and must do you the honors!"

This anecdote is, to my thinking, the most charming and most thoroughly stamped with the image of the age of any recorded in history. With regard to these celebrated sayings uttered in battles, I must indeed confess that I am very skeptical. Little as I may be of a soldier, I have a notion that it is not in an engagement as at the Olympic Circus, and that in the midst of fire, smoke, and musketry, generals must have other work on their hands than to utter these pretty epigrams, which there is moreover no shorthand writer at hand to take down. I know that Cambronne was annoyed when they recalled to him his splendid exclamation at Waterloo, "_La garde meurt et ne se rend pas!_" (The guard dies, and does not surrender!) "an invention the more clumsy," said he, "that I am not yet dead, and that I really did surrender." I have even discovered that this saying was invented by a member of the Institute, for the greater satisfaction of the readers of the "Yellow Dwarf," in which he wrote, in 1815, together with Benjamin Constant and many other celebrated malcontents.[6] The speeches of Leonidas find me equally incredulous. But, wheresoever they may come from, I delight in these anecdotes, which personify an entire epoch, and engrave it upon the memory with a single stroke. We may defy the historian who seeks to characterize the end of the last century and the beginning of the present, to find two epigrams more striking than the words attributed to Anteroches and Cambronne--to two French officers--one commanding the French guards, the other the old guard; both fighting for their country, at an interval of seventy years, with the same enemy, and on the same ground: for it is a singular coincidence that Fontenoy and Waterloo are but little distant from each other, and Heaven saw fit to ordain that the game of success and reverse should be played out almost upon the same fields. "Fire first, _Messieurs les Anglais_!" Is it not the type of that easy and adorable, that ironical and _blase_ nobility, who pushed the contempt of life even to insanity, and the worship of courtesy and honor even to the sublime?--who endowed their country with such a renown for elegance, high-breeding, and gallantry, that all its demagogic saturnalia never have effaced it, and never will?--a nobility reckless, if you please, but assuredly charming, and perfectly French withal, who gayly passed through life without ever doing the morrow the honor of thinking about it, and who, beholding one day the earth give way beneath their feet, looked into the abyss without a wink, without alarming themselves, without belying themselves, and went down alive and whole into the gulf, disdaining all defence, "without fear," if not "without reproach."

Between the saying of Anteroches and that of Cambronne there is a great gap; we find that the revolution has passed through it. The gentleman, refined even to exaggeration, has disappeared, and we have instead the rude language of democracy--"_La garde meurt et ne se rend pas_"--this is heroism, no doubt, but heroism of another sort. Never did the _chauvinism_ of this present time light upon a more cornelian device, but do you not see in it the theatrical affectation, the melo-dramatic emphasis of another race? That he had no fear of death, and no idea of surrendering--this is what the gentleman of Fontenoy had no intention of declaring; it ought to have been well known--his followers had already given proof of it for ages past. To be brave alone to him was nothing--he must be as elegant in battle as he was at the ball. What signified death to that incomparable race who afterwards composed madrigals in prison, and ascended the scaffold with a smile, their step elastic, and their hand in the waistcoat pocket, a cocked hat under their arm, and a rose-bud between their lips? This epoch was personified in my eyes by the handsome and gentle countenance of the Count of Anteroches. After more than a hundred years I had discovered by chance, myself, an obscure wayfarer, in an unknown and miserable cabin, where his grand-daughter was living in the midst of her poultry, the portrait of this brilliant officer, to whose name will ever attach an elegant and charming renown; for if, like Cambronne, Anteroches did not really utter the words attributed to him, they have still been lent to him, and if thus lent, assuredly because there were grounds for it.

After these over-lengthy reflections, I turned toward the peasant woman, who now inspired me with profound commiseration. She continued to rock to and fro her bandaged infant, who was in very right and deed the Count of Anteroches. I inquired what was the occupation of her husband.

"He is dead," she replied; "I was better off during his lifetime. He was a _gendarme_, Monsieur."

"A _gendarme_!" I repeated with surprise.

"Yes," replied Madame d'Anteroches, who understood not the cause of my astonishment, "he had even passed as a brigadier during his latter years: we managed our little affairs very comfortably."

He was a brigadier of gendarmerie--content to be so--he managed his little affairs very comfortably--and his grandfather, as I find it in the "Military Records of France," had been named Marshal on the 25th of July, 1762; at the same time as the Marquis of Boufflers and the Duke of Mazarine! Would not the rabble of Paris do well to inquire a little before exclaiming so loudly against the privileges of the aristocracy? Moreover, it seems to me that the government of France should not allow the grandchildren of the Count of Anteroches to be sunk--as they are--into deplorable indigence. Apocryphal or otherwise the epigram of Fontenoy should at least be worth subsistence to all who bear this name. Many enjoy pensions and are maintained by France, who would find it very difficult to produce a similar claim, and the new republic would act wisely by repairing, when occasion turns up, the injustices of her eldest sister.

But it was now high time for us to leave. It was evident that we embarrassed our hostess, and since we had discovered her name we were no less embarrassed ourselves. I could not get over her coarse stuff gown, her filthy kitchen, and her familiar sow. It would have been cruel to ask for her hospitality, and how could we offer to pay our score? Besides, we knew that a rich proprietor of our acquaintance resided not far from Puy d'Arnac; we, therefore, took our leave of the high-born peasant with many excuses and thanks. At the moment I passed the threshold, I cast a parting glance upon the portrait. The fire lighted it up at that instant with so singular a brilliancy that it almost appeared animated. It seemed as if the countenance of M. d'Anteroches was alive, and that the handsome officer looked sadly down from the height of his gilded frame upon the utter misery of his descendants. "Oh! decadence! decadence of France!" I exclaimed to myself, and rushed bravely forth with my companions into the pelting rain.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] Fontenoy, we should here observe, is, we believe, the _only_ battle in which the English were defeated by the French, and it is, of course, a subject of no little glorification with our neighbors.

[6] The well-known burst of the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo, "Up, guards, and at them!" has been declared, upon the best authority, namely, his own, to be no less apocryphal than those above-mentioned.

From Fraser's Magazine

THE CLOISTER-LIFE OF THE EMPEROR CHARLES V.

The 28th of September, 1556, was a great day in the annals of Laredo, in Biscay. Once a commercial station of the Romans, and, in later times, the naval arsenal whence St. Ferdinand sailed to the Guadalquivir and the conquest of Seville, its haven is now so decayed and sand-choked, that it can scarcely afford shelter to a fishing-craft. Here, however, on the day in question, three centuries ago, a fleet of seventy Flemish and Spanish sail cast anchor. From a frigate bearing the imperial standard of the house of Austria came a group of gentlemen and ladies, of whom the principal personage was a spare and sallow man, past the middle age, and plainly attired in mourning. He was received at the landing-place by the bishop of Salamanca and some attendants, and being worn with suffering and fatigue, he was carried up from the boat in a chair. By his side walked two ladies, in widows' weeds, who appeared to be about the same age as himself, and whose pale features, both in cast and expression, strongly resembled his own. Since Columbus stepped ashore at Palos, with his red men from the New World, Spain had seen no debarkation so remarkable; for the voyagers were, the emperor Charles V. and his sisters, Mary queen of Hungary, and Eleanor, queen of Portugal and France, now on their way from Brussels, where they had made their last appearance on the stage of the world, to those Spanish cloisters, wherein they had resolved to await the hour when the curtain should drop on life itself.

Charles himself appears to have been powerfully affected by the scene and circumstances around him. Kneeling upon the long-desired soil of Spain, he is said to have kissed the earth, ejaculating, "I salute thee, O common mother! Naked came I forth of the womb to receive the treasures of the earth, and naked am I about to return to the bosom of the universal mother." He then drew from his bosom the crucifix which he always wore, and kissing it devoutly, returned thanks to the Saviour for having thus brought him in safety to the wished-for haven. The ocean itself furnished its comment upon the irretraceable step which he had taken. From Flushing to Laredo, the weather had been calm, and the voyage prosperous: but the evening of the day of landing closed with a storm, which shattered and dispersed the fleet, and sunk the frigate which the emperor had quitted a few hours before. This accident must have recalled to his recollection a similar escape which he had made many years before on his coronation-day at Bologna. There he had just passed through a wooden gallery which connected his palace with the church where the pope and the crown awaited him, when the props upon which the structure rested gave way, and it fell with a sudden crash, killing several persons in the street below.

The emperor's first care, after landing, was to send a message to the general of the order of St. Jerome, requiring his attendance at Valladolid, and desiring that no time might be lost in preparing the convent of Yuste for his reception. He himself set forward, as soon as he was able, and was carried sometimes in a horse-litter, sometimes in a chair on men's shoulders, by slow and painful stages to Burgos. Near that ancient city he was met by the constable of Castille, Pedro Fernandez de Velasco, who lodged him for some days in the noble palace of his family, known as the Casa del Cordon, from a massive cord of St. Francis, wrought in stone, with which the architect has adorned and protected the great portal. The little town of Duenas was the next resting-place, and there its lord, the count of Buendia, did the honors of his feudal castle on the adjacent height rising abruptly from the bare plains of the Arlanzon. At Torquemada, the royal party was received by the bishop of the diocese, Pedro de Gasca, a divine, whose skilful diplomacy, in repressing a formidable rebellion, had saved Peru to Castille, and who had lately been rewarded by the emperor with the mitre of Palencia. But in spite of these demonstrations of respect and gratitude, Charles was made painfully sensible of the change which his own act had wrought in his condition. The barons and the great churchmen, who, a few months before, would have flocked from all parts to do him honor, now appeared in very scanty numbers, or they permitted him to pass unnoticed through the lands and by the homes which they perhaps owed to his bounty. He and his sister Eleanor must have remembered with a sigh the time when he first set foot in Spain, thirty-eight years before, and found the shores of Asturias, and the highways of Castille, thronged with loyal crowds, hastening to tender their homage. In the forgetfulness of the new generation, he may also have been reminded how he himself had treated, with coldness and slighting, the great cardinal Ximenes, who had worn out his declining years in defending and maintaining the prerogatives of the catholic crown. His long and varied experience of men made him incapable of deriving any pleasure from their applause, but not altogether incapable of being pained by their neglect. His pride was hurt at finding himself so quickly forgotten; and he is said to have evinced a bitter sense of the surprise, by the remark, "I might well say that I was naked!" It is probable, therefore, that he declined the honors of a public entry into Valladolid, not merely from a desire to shun the pomps and vanities of state, but also from a secret apprehension that it might prove but a pitiful shadow of former pageants. That the citizens might not be balked of their show, while the emperor entered privately on the 23rd of October, it was agreed that the two queens, his sisters, should make their appearance there in a public manner the next day.

Valladolid was at that time the opulent and flourishing capital of Spain, and the seat of government, carried on under the regency of the emperor's daughter, Juanna. This young princess was the widow of the prince of Brazil, heir-apparent of the crown of Portugal, and mother of the unfortunate king Sebastian. She performed the duties of her high place with great prudence, firmness, and moderation; but with this peculiarity, that she appeared at her public receptions closely veiled, allowing her face to be seen only for a moment, that the foreign ambassadors might be satisfied of her personal identity. With her nephew, Don Carlos, then a boy of ten years old, by her side, the Infanta met her father on the staircase of the palace of the Count of Melito, which he had chosen for his place of sojourn. The day following, the arrival of the two queens was celebrated by a grand procession, and by an evening banquet and ball in the royal palace, at which the emperor appears to have been present. Some few of the grandees, the Admiral and the Constable of Castille, Benavente, Astorga, Sesa, and others, were there to do honor to their ancient lord, whose hand was also kissed in due form by the members of the council of Castille. At this ball, or perhaps at some later festivity, Charles caused the wives of all his personal attendants to be assembled around him, and bade each, in particular, farewell. Perico de Sant Erbas, a famous jester of the court, passing by at the moment, the emperor good-humoredly saluted him by taking off his hat. "What! do you uncover to me?" said the bitter fool; "does it mean that you are no longer emperor?" "No, Pedro," replied the object of the jest; "it means that I have nothing to give you beyond this courtesy."

During his stay of ten days, Charles bestowed but a passing glance on the machine of government over which he had so long presided, and which was now directed by his demure daughter. The secretary of the council, Juan Vazquez de Molina, an old and trusted servant of his own, was the only public man with whom he held any confidential converse. The new rooms which he had caused to be erected at Yuste, and the ordering of his life there, were now of more moment to him than the movements of the leaguers in Flanders, or the state of opinion in Germany. He therefore gave frequent audiences to Francisco de Tofino, the general of the Jeromites, and to Fray Martin de Angulo, prior of Yuste. Having resolved that his solitude should be shared by his natural son, Don Juan of Austria, a nameless lad of ten, then living in the family of his mayordomo, Luis de Quixada, he despatched that trusty follower to remove his household from Castille to Estremadura.

It was at Valladolid that Charles saw for the first and last time the ill-fated child who bore his name, and had the prospect one day of wearing some of his crowns. Although only ten years old, Don Carlos had already shown symptoms of the mental malady which darkened the long life of queen Juana, his great-grandmother by the side both of his father, Philip of Spain, and of his mother, Mary of Portugal. Of a sullen and passionate temper, he lived in a state of perpetual rebellion against his aunt, and displayed in the nursery the weakly mischievous spirit which marked his short career at his father's court. His grandfather appears not to have suspected that his mind was diseased, but to have regarded him as a forward and untractable child, whose future interests would be best served by an unsparing use of the rod. He therefore recommended increased severity of discipline, and remarked to his sisters, that he had observed with concern the boy's unpromising conduct and manners, and that it was very doubtful how the man would turn out. This opinion was conveyed by queen Eleanor to Philip II., who had requested his aunt to note carefully the impression left by his son on the emperor's mind; and it is said to have laid the foundation for the aversion which the king entertained towards Carlos. Following the advice of her father, the Infanta soon after ordered the removal of the prince to Burgos; but the plague breaking out in that city, he was sent, by an ominous chance, to Tordesillas, to the palace from whose windows the unhappy Juana, dead to the living world, had gazed for forty-seven years at the sepulchre of her fair and faithless lord.

A sojourn of about ten days at Valladolid sufficed the emperor for rest, and for the preparations for his journey. His daughter was occupied with the duties of administration; and of his sisters he appears to have seen enough on the way from Flanders. Whether it was that he was weary of these royal matrons, or that he regarded their society as a worldly enjoyment which he ought to forego, he declined their proposal to come and reside near his retreat, at Plasencia. After much debate, they finally chose Guadalaxara as their residence, where they quarelled with the duke of Infantado for refusing them his palace, and went to open war with the alcalde for imprisoning one of their serving-men.

Early in November,[7] their brother set out on his last earthly journey. The distance from Valladolid to Yuste was between forty and fifty leagues, or somewhere between 130 and 150 English miles. The route taken has not been specified by the emperor's biographers. The best and the easiest road lay through Salamanca and Plasencia. But as he does not appear to have passed through the latter city, he probably likewise avoided the former, and the pageants and orations with which the doctors of the great university would have delighted to celebrate his visit. In that case, he must have taken the road by Medina del Campo and Penaranda. At Medina he doubtless was lodged in the fine old palace of the crown, called the Torre de Mota, where, fifty years before, his grandmother, Isabella the Catholic, ended her noble life and glorious reign; and at Penaranda he was probably entertained in the mansion of the Bracamontes. These two towns rise like islands in their naked undulating plains, covered partly with corn, partly with marshy heath. Southward, the country is clothed with straggling woods of evergreen oak, becoming denser at the base and on the lower slopes of the wild Sierra of Bejar, the centre of that mountain chain which forms the backbone of the Peninsula, extending from Moncayo in Aragon, to the Rock of Lisbon on the Atlantic. At the alpine town of Bejar, cresting a bold height, and overhanging a tumbling stream, the great family of the Zunigas, created dukes of the place by Isabella, and known to fame in arts and arms and the dedication of Don Quixote, possess a noble castle, ruined by the French, which there can be little doubt served as a halting-place for the imperial pilgrim. He advanced by very short stages, travelling in a litter, and often suffering great pain. But his spirits rose as he neared the desired haven. In the craggy gorge of Puertonuevo, as he was being carried over some unusually difficult ground in a chair, his attendants were deploring the extreme ruggedness of the pass. "I shall never have to go through another," said he, "and truly it is worth enduring some pain to reach so sweet and healthy a resting place as Yuste." Having crossed the mountains without mischance, he arrived on the eleventh of November, St. Martin's day, at Xarandilla, a little village at the foot of the steep Penanegra, and then, as now, chiefly peopled with swineherds, whose pigs, feeding in the surrounding forests, maintain the fame of porciferous Estremadura. Here he took up his abode in the castle of the count of Oropesa, head of a powerful branch of the great house of Toledo, and feudal lord of Xarandilla.

This visit, which was intended to be brief, was prolonged for nearly three months. Before entering the cloister of Yuste, the emperor wished to pay off the greater part of his retinue. But for this purpose money was needful, and money was the one thing always wanting in the affairs of Spain. The delay which took place in providing it on this occasion has often been cited as an instance of the ingratitude of Philip II.; but it is probable that a bare exchequer and a clumsy system of finance, which crippled his actions as a king, have also blackened his character as a son.

The emperor endured the annoyance with his usual coolness. On his arrival at the castle, he was waited on by the prior of Yuste, with whom he had already become acquainted at Valladolid. He afterwards repaid the attention by making a forenoon excursion to Yuste, and inspecting more carefully the spot which his memory and his hope had so long pictured as the sweetest nook in a world of disappointment. This visit took place on the 23d of November, St. Catharine's day. On alighting at the convent, Charles immediately repaired to the church, and prayed there awhile; after which, he was conducted over the monastic buildings, and then over the new apartments which had been erected for his reception. The plan of this addition had been made by the architect, Gaspar de Vega, from a sketch, it is said, drawn by the emperor's own hand. He now expressed himself as quite satisfied with the accuracy with which his ideas had been wrought out, and returned through the wintry woods in high good humor.

The arrival at Xarandilla of Luis Quixada, with Don Juan of Austria, was another of those little incidents which had become great events in the life of Charles. As he did not choose during his life to acknowledge the youth as his son, the future hero of Lepanto passed for the page of Quixada, and was presented to his father as bearer of an offering from Dona Magdalena de Ulloa. He was then in his twelfth year, and was remarkable for his personal beauty and his engaging manners. These so captivated Charles, that he ever afterwards liked to have the boy about him; and it was one of the few solaces of his solitude to note the princely promise of this unknown son of his old age.

At length, the tardy treasury messenger arrived, bearing a bag of thirty thousand ducats for the former possessor of Mexico and Peru. The emperor was now enabled to pay their wages to the servants whom he was about to discharge. Some of these he recommended to the notice of the king or the princess-regent; to others he dispensed sparing gratuities in money; and so he closed his accounts with the world.

On the afternoon of the third of February, 1557, being the feast of St. Blas, he was lifted into his litter for the last time, and was borne westward along the rough mountain track, beneath the leafless oaks, to the monastery of Yuste. He was accompanied by the count of Oropesa, Don Fernando de Toledo, and his own personal suite, including the followers whom he had just discharged, but who evinced their respect by attending him to his journey's close. The cavalcade reached Yuste about five in the evening. Prior Angulo was waiting to receive his imperial guest at the gate. On alighting, the emperor, being unable to walk, was placed in a chair, and carried to the door of the church. At the threshold he was met by the whole brotherhood in procession, chanting the _Te Deum_ to the music of the organ. The altars and the aisle were brilliantly lighted up with tapers, and decked with their richest frontals, hangings, and plate. Borne through the pomp to the steps of the high altar, Charles knelt down and returned thanks to God for the happy termination of his journey, and joined in the vesper service of the brotherhood. When that was ended, the friars came to be presented to him one by one, each kissing his hand and receiving his fraternal embrace. During this ceremony, his departing servants stood round, expressing their emotion by tears and lamentations, which were still heard late in the evening, around the gate of the convent. Attended by the count of Oropesa and the gentlemen of his suite, Charles then retired to take possession of his new home, and to enter upon that life of prayer and repose for which he had so long sighed.

The monastery of Yuste stands on the lower slopes of the lofty mountain chain which walls towards the north the beautiful Vera, or valley of Plasencia. The city of Plasencia is seated seven leagues to the westward in the plains below; the village of Quacos lies about an English mile to the south, towards the foot of the mountain. The monastery owes its name to a streamlet which descends from the sierra, and its origin to the piety of one Sancho Martin of Quacos, who granted in 1402 a piece of land to two hermits from Plasencia. Here these holy men built their cells and planted an orchard, and obtained, in 1408, by the favor of the Infanta Don Fernando, a bull for the foundation of a Jeromite house in the rule of St. Augustine. In spite, however, of this authority, while the works were still in progress, the friars of a neighboring convent, armed with an order from the bishop of Plasencia, set upon them and dispossessed them of their land and unfinished walls, an act of violence against which they appealed to the archbishop of Santiago. The judgment of the primate being given in their favor, they next applied for aid to their neighbor, Garci Alvarez de Toledo, lord of Oropesa, who accordingly came forth from his castle of Xarandilla, and drove out the intruders. Nor was it only with the strong hand that this noble protected the young community; for at the chapter of St. Jerome held at Guadalupe in 1415, their house would not have been received into the order but for his generosity in guaranteeing a revenue sufficient for the maintenance of a prior and twelve brethren under a rule in which mendicancy was forbidden. The buildings were also erected at his cost, and his subsequent benefactions were large and frequent. He was therefore constituted by the grateful monks protector of the convent, and the distinction became hereditary in his descendants, the counts of Oropesa.

Their early struggles past, the Jeromites of Yuste grew and prospered. Gifts and bequests were the chief events in their peaceful annals. They became patrons of the chapelries and hermitages; they made them orchards and olive-groves, and their corn and wine increased. Their hostel, dispensary, and other offices, were patterns of monastic comfort and order; and in due time, they built a new church, a simple, solid, and spacious structure, in the pointed style. A few years before the emperor came to live amongst them, they had added to their small antique cloister a new quadrangle of stately proportions and elegant classical design.

Though more remarkable for the natural beauty around its walls than for the vigor of the spiritual life within, Yuste did not fail to boast of its worthies. The prior Jerome, a son of the great house of Zuniga, was cited as a model of austere and active holiness. The lay brother, Melchor de Yepes, crippled in felling a huge chesnut-tree in the forest, was a pattern of bed-ridden patience and piety. Fray Hernando de Corral was the scholar and book collector of the house; although he was also, for that reason, perhaps, considered as scarcely of a sound mind. He left many copious notes in the fly-leaves of his black-letter folios. Fray Juan de Xeres, an old soldier of the great Captain, was distinguished by the gift of second-sight, and was nursed on his death-bed by the eleven thousand virgins. Still more favored was Fray Rodrigo de Caceres, for the Blessed Mary herself, in answer to his repeated prayers, came down in visible shape, and received his spirit on the eve of the feast of her Assumption. And prior Diego de San Geronimo was so popular in the Vera as a preacher, that when he grew old and infirm, the people of Garganta la Olla endeavored to lure him to their pulpit by making a road, which was called that of Fray Diego.

In works of charity--that redeeming virtue of the monastic system--the fathers of Yuste were diligent and bounteous. Six hundred fanegas, or about one hundred and twenty quarters of wheat, in ordinary years, and in years of scarcity, as much as fifteen hundred fanegas, were distributed at the convent-gate; large donations of bread, meat, and oil, and some money, were made, either publicly or in private, by the prior, at Easter and other festivals; and the sick poor in the village of Quacos were freely supplied with food, medicine, and advice.

The lodging, or palace, as the friars loved to call it, of the emperor, was constructed under the eye of Fray Antonio de Villacastin, a brother of the house, and afterwards well known to fame as the master of the works at the Escorial. The site of it had been inspected in May, 1554, by Philip II., then on his way to England to marry queen Mary Tudor. Backed by the massive south wall of the church, the building presented its simple front of two stories to the garden and the noontide sun. Each story contained four chambers, two on either side of a corridor, which traverses the structure from east to west, and leads at either end into a broad porch, or covered gallery, supported on pillars, and open to the air. All the rooms were furnished with ample fire-places, in accordance with the Flemish wants and ways of the inhabitants. The chambers which look on the garden are bright and pleasant, but those on the north side are gloomy, and even dark, the light being admitted only by windows opening on the corridor, or on the external and deeply-shadowed porches. Charles inhabited the upper rooms, and slept in that at the north-east corner, from which a door or window had been cut through the church wall, within the chancel, and close to the high altar. From the eastern porch, or gallery, an inclined path led down into the garden, to save him the fatigue of going up and down stairs. His attendants were, for the most part, lodged in apartments built for them near the new cloister; and the hostel of the convent was given up to the physician, the bakers, and the brewers. His private rooms being surrounded on three sides by the garden, he took exclusive possession of that, and put it under the care of gardeners of his own. The friars established their potherbs in a piece of ground to the eastward, behind some tall elm trees, and adjoining the emperor's domain, but separated from it by a high wall, which they caused to be built when they found that he wished for complete seclusion.

Time, with its chances and changes, has dealt rudely with this fair home of the monarch and the monk. Yuste was sacked in 1809 by the French invader; and in later years, the Spanish reformer has annihilated the race of picturesque drones, who, for a while, re-occupied, and might have repaired the ruins of their pleasant hive. Of the two cloisters, the greater is choked with the rubbish of its fallen upper story, its richly-carved capitals peeping here and there from the soil and wild shrubs. Two sides of the smaller and older cloister still stands, with tottering blackened walls, and rotting floors and ceilings. The strong, granite-vaulted church is a hollow shell; the fine wood-work of its stalls has been partly used for fuel, partly carried off to the parish church of Quacos; and the beautiful blue and yellow tiles which lined the chancel are fast dropping from the walls. In the emperor's dwelling, the lower chambers are turned into a magazine of firewood, and in the rooms above, where he lived and died, maize and olives are garnered, and the silkworm winds its cocoon in dust and darkness. But the lovely face of nature, the hill, the forest, and the field, the generous soil and the genial sky, remain with charms unchanged, to testify how well the imperial eagle chose the nest wherein to fold his wearied wings. From the balcony of Charles's cabinet the eye ranges over a foreground of rounded knolls, clad in walnut and chestnut, in which the mountain dies gently away into the broad bosom of the Vera. Not a building is in sight, but a summer-house, peering above mulberry tops, at the lower side of the garden, and a hermitage of Our Lady of Solitude, about a mile distant, hung upon a rocky height, that swells like an isle out of the sea of forest. Immediately below the windows the garden slopes gently to the sun, shaded here and there with the massive foliage of the fig, or feathery almond boughs, and breathing perfume from tall orange-trees, cuttings of which some monks, themselves transplanted, vainly strove to keep alive at the bleak Escorial. And beyond the west wall, filling all the wide space in front of the gates of the convent and the palace, rises the noble shade of the great walnut-tree, _el nogal grande_, of Yuste--a forest king, which has seen the hermit's cell rise into a royal convent, and sink into a ruin; which has seen the beginning and the end of the Spanish order of Jerome, and the Spanish dynasty of Austria.

At Xarandilla, Charles had cast aside the last shreds of the purple. The annual revenue which he had reserved to himself out of the wealth of half the world, was twelve thousand ducats, or about fifteen hundred pounds sterling. His confidential attendants were eleven in number: Luis Quixada, chamberlain and chief of the household; Martin Gatzelu, secretary; William Van Male, gentleman of the chamber; Moron, gentleman of the chamber and almoner; Juan Gaytan, steward; Henrique Matisio Charles Pubest, usher; and two valets. Juanelo Turiano, an Italian engineer, who had acquired a considerable reputation by his hydraulic works to supply water to the Alcazar of Toledo, was engaged to assist in the philosophical experiments and mechanical labors which formed the emperor's principal amusement. Last, but not least, a Jeromite father from Sta. Engracia, at Zaragoza, Fray Juan de Regla, filled the important post of confessor. The lower rank of servants, cooks, brewers, bakers, grooms, and scullions, and a couple of laundresses, swelled the total number of his household to about sixty persons, an establishment not greater than was then maintained by many a private hidalgo.

The mayordomo, Luis Quixada, or, to give him his entire appellation, Luis Mendez Quixada Manuel de Figueredo y Mendoza, is worthy of notice, not only as first minister of this tiny court, but as being closely associated with one of the greatest names in the military history of Europe. A courtier and soldier from his early youth, he was heir of an elder brother, slain before Tunis, who had been one of the most distinguished captains of the famous infantry of Castille; and he had been himself for many years the tried companion-in-arms and the trusted personal friend of the emperor. In 1549, he married Dona Magdalena de Ulloa, a lady of ancient race and gentlest nature, with whom he retired for a while to his patrimonial lordship of Villagarcia, near Valladolid.

On his quitting the court at Brussels, Charles confided to his care his illegitimate son, Don Juan of Austria, then a boy of four years old, exacting a promise of strict secrecy as to his parentage. The boy was accordingly brought up with the tenderest care by the childless Magdalena: and the secret of his birth so well kept, that she, for many years, suspected him to be the fruit of some early attachment of her lord. When the emperor retired to Yuste, Quixada followed him thither, removing his household from Villagarcia, and establishing it in the neighborhood of the convent, probably in the village of Quacos.

He was thus enabled to enjoy somewhat of the society of his wife, and the emperor had the gratification of seeing his son when he chose. Don Juan was now a fine lad, in his eleventh year. He passed amongst the neighbors for Quixada's page, and remained under the guardianship of Dona Magdalena, whose efforts to imbue him with devotion towards the Blessed Virgin are supposed by his historians to have borne good fruit in the banners, embroidered with Our Lady's image, which floated from his galleys at Lepanto. He likewise exercised in the Yuste forest the cross-bow, which had dealt destruction amongst the sparrows of Leganes, his early home in Castille.

If the number of servants in the train of Charles should savor, in this age, somewhat of unnecessary parade, the ascetic character of the recluse will be redeemed by a glance at the interior of his dwelling. "The palace of Yuste, when prepared for his reception, seemed," says the historian Sandoval, "rather to have been newly pillaged by the enemy, than furnished for a great prince." Accustomed from his infancy to the finest tapestry designed by Italian pencils for the looms of Flanders, he now lived within walls entirety bare, except in his bedchamber, which was hung with coarse brown or black cloth. The sole appliances for rest to be found in his apartments were a bed and an old arm-chair, not worth four reals. Four silver trenchers of the plainest kind, for the use of his table, were the only things amongst his goods and chattels which could tempt a thief to break through and steal. A few choice pictures alone remained with him, as memorials of the magnificence which he had foregone, and of the arts which he had so loved. Over the high altar of the convent church, and within sight of his bed, he is said to have placed that celebrated composition known as The Glory of Titian, a picture of the Last Judgment, in which Charles, his beautiful empress, and their royal children, were represented, in the great painter's noblest style, as entering the heavenly mansions of life eternal. He had also brought with him a portrait of the empress, and a picture of Our Lord's Agony in the Garden, likewise from the easel of Titian; and there is now at the Escorial a masterpiece by the same hand--St. Jerome praying in his garden, which is traditionally reputed to have hung in his oratory at Yuste.

From the garden beneath the palace windows the emperor's table was supplied with fruit and vegetables: and a couple of cows, grazing in the forest, furnished him with milk. A pony and an old mule composed the entire stud of the prince, who formerly took peculiar pleasure in possessing the stoutest chargers of Guelderland, and the fleetest genets of Cordova.

To atone, perhaps, for such deficiency of creature comforts, the general of the Jeromites and the prior of Yuste had been at some pains to provide their guest with spiritual luxuries. Knowing his passionate love of music, they had recruited the force of their choir with fourteen or fifteen brethren, distinguished for their fine voices and musical skill. And for his sole benefit and delectation, they had provided no less than three preachers, the most eloquent in the Spanish fold of Jerome. The first of these, Fray Juan de Acaloras, harangued his way to the bishopric of the Canaries; the second, Fray Francisco de Villalva, also obtained by his sermons great fame, and the post of chaplain to Philip II.; while the third, Fray Juan de Santandres, though less noted as an orator, was had in reverence as a prophet, having foretold the exact day and hour of his own death.

A short time sufficed for the emperor to accustom himself to the simple and changeless tenor of monastic life. Every morning his confessor appeared at his bed-side, to inquire how he had passed the night, and to assist him in his private devotions. At ten he rose, and was dressed by his valets; after which he heard mass in the convent church. According to his invariable habit, which in Italy was said to have given rise to the saying, _dalla messa, alla mensa_ (from mass to mess), he went from church to dinner, about noon. Eating had ever been one of his favorite pleasures, and it was now the only physical gratification which he could still enjoy, or was unable to resist. He continued, therefore, to dine upon the rich dishes against which his ancient and trusty confessor, Cardinal Loaysa, had vainly protested a quarter of a century before. Eel-pasties, anchovies, and frogs were the savory food which he loved, unwisely and too well, as Frederick afterwards loved his polenta. The meal was long, for his teeth were few and far between; and his hands, also, were much disabled by gout, in spite of which he always chose to carve for himself. His physician attended him at table, and at least learned the cause of the mischiefs which his art was to counteract. While he dined, he conversed with the doctor on matters of science, generally of natural history, and if any difference of opinion arose between them, the confessor was sent for to settle the point out of Pliny. When the cloth was drawn, Fray Juan de Regla came to read to him, generally from one of his favorite divines,--Augustine, Jerome, or Bernard; an exercise which was followed by conversation and an hour of slumber. At three o'clock, the monks were assembled in the convent to hear a sermon delivered by one of the imperial preachers, or a passage read from the Bible, usually from the epistle to the Romans, the emperor's favorite book. To these discourses or readings Charles always listened with profound attention; and if sickness or letter-writing prevented his attendance, he never failed to send a formal excuse to the prior, and to require from his confessor an account of what had been preached or read. The rest of the afternoon he sometimes whiled away in the workshop of Turriano, and in the construction of pieces of mechanism, especially clocks, of which more than a hundred were said, in one rather improbable account, to tick in the emperor's apartments, and reckon to a fraction the hours of his retired leisure. Sometimes he fed his pet birds, which appear to have taken the place of the stately wolf-hounds that followed at his heel in the days when he sat to Titian; or a stroll amongst his fruit-trees and flowers filled up the time to vespers and supper. At the lower end of the garden, approached by a closely shaded path, there may still be seen the ruins of a little summer-house, closely enbowered, and looking out upon the woodlands of the Vera. Beyond this limit the emperor rarely extended his excursions, which were always made, slowly and painfully, on foot; for the first time that he mounted his pony he was seized with a violent giddiness, and almost fell into the arms of his attendants. Such was the last appearance, in the saddle, of the accomplished cavalier, of whom his troopers used to say, that had he not been born a king, he would have been the prince of light-horsemen, and whose seat and hand excited at Calais gate the admiration of the English knights fresh from the tournays--

"Where England vied with France in pride On the famous field of gold."

Music, which had been one of the chief pleasures of his secular life, continued to solace and cheer him to the last. In the conduct of the organ and the choir he took the greatest interest, and through the window which opened from his bedchamber upon the high altar, his voice might often be heard accompanying the chant of the friars. His ear never failed to detect a wrong note, and the mouth whence it came; and he would frequently mutter the name of the offender, with the addition of "_hideputa bermejo_," or some other epithet which savored rather of the soldier than the saint. Guerrero, a chapel-master of Seville, having presented him with his book of masses and motets, he caused one of the former to be performed before him. When it was ended, he remarked to his confessor that Guerrero was a cunning thief; and going over the piece, he pointed out the plagiarisms with which it abounded, and named the composers whose works had suffered pillage.

In laying down the sceptre, Charles had resolved to have no farther personal concern with temporal affairs. The petitioners, who at first besieged his retreat, soon ceased from troubling when they found themselves referred to the princess-regent at Valladolid, or to the king in Flanders. He declined giving any attention to matters beyond the walls of the convent, unless they concerned the interests of his children or the church. His advice was, however, frequently asked by his son and daughter, and couriers often went and came between Yuste and the courts. But with the patronage of the state he never interfered, except on two occasions, when he recommended the case of a Catalonian lady to the favorable consideration of the Infanta, and asked for an order of knighthood for a veteran brother in arms.

The rites of religion now formed the business of his life, and he transacted that business with his usual method and regularity. No enthusiast novice was ever more solicitous to fulfil to the letter every law of his rubric. On the first Sunday of his residence at the convent, as he went to high mass, he observed the friar who was sprinkling the holy water, hesitate when his turn came to be aspersed. Taking the hyssop, therefore, from his hand, he bestowed a plentiful shower upon his own face and clothes, saying as he returned the instrument, "This, father, is the way you must do it, next time." Another friar, offering the pyx to his lips in a similar diffident manner, he took it between his hands, and not only kissed it fervently, but applied it to his forehead and eyes with true oriental reverence. Although provided with an indulgence for eating before communion, he never availed himself of it but when he was suffering from extreme debility; and he always heard two masses on the days when he received the eucharist. On Ash Wednesday, he required his entire household, down to the meanest scullion, to communicate, and on these occasions he stood on the top step of the altar, to observe that the muster was complete. For the benefit of his Flemings, he had a chaplain of their country, who lived at Xarandilla, and came over at stated times, when his flock were assembled for confession. The emperor himself usually heard mass from the window of his bedchamber, which looked into the church; but at complines he went up into the choir with the fathers, and prayed in a devout and audible tone, in his tribune. During the season of Lent, which came round twice during his residence at Yuste, he regularly appeared in his place in the choir, on Fridays, when it was the custom of the fraternity to perform their discipline in public; and at the end of the appointed prayers, extinguishing the taper which he, like the rest, held in his hand, he flogged himself with such sincerity of purpose, that the scourge was stained with blood, and the beholders singularly edified. On Good Friday, he went forth at the head of his household, to adore the holy cross; and although he was so infirm that he was obliged to be almost carried by the men on whom he leaned, he insisted upon prostrating himself three times upon the ground, in the manner of the friars, before he approached the blessed symbol with his lips. The feast of St. Matthew, his birthday--a day of great things in his life,--he always celebrated with peculiar devotion. He appeared at mass, in a dress of ceremony, and wearing the collar of the Fleece; and at the time of the offertory, he went forward, and expressed his gratitude to God by a large donation. The church was thronged with strangers; and the crowd who could not gain admittance was so great, that one sermon was preached outside, whilst another was being pronounced before the emperor and his household within.

With the friars, his hosts, Charles lived on the most familiar and friendly footing. When the visitors of the order paid their triennial visit of inspection to Yuste, they represented to him, with all respect, that his majesty himself was the only inmate of the convent with whom they had any fault to find; and they entreated him to discontinue those benefactions which he was in the habit of bestowing on the fraternity, and which the rule of St. Jerome did not allow his children to receive. He knew all the fathers by name and by sight, and frequently conversed with them, as well as with the prior. One of his favorites was a lay-brother, called Alonso Mudarra, once a man of rank and family in the world, and now working out his own salvation in the humble post of cook to the convent. This worthy had an only daughter, who did not share her father's contempt for mundane things. When she came with her husband to visit him at Yuste, Fray Alonso, arrayed in his dirtiest apron, thus addressed her: "Daughter, behold my gala apparel; obedience is now my treasure and my pride; for you, in your silks and vanities, I entertain profound pity." So saying, he returned to his kitchen, and would never see her more: an effort of holiness to which he appears to owe his place in the chronicles of the order.

The emperor was conversing one day with his confessor, Regla, when that priest chose to speak, in the mitre-shunning cant of his cloth, of the great reluctance which he had felt in accepting a post of such weighty responsibility. "Never fear," said Charles, somewhat maliciously, and as if conscious that he was dealing with a hypocrite; "before I left Flanders, four doctors were engaged for a whole year in easing my conscience; so you have nothing to answer for but what happens here."

When he had completed a year of residence at the convent, some good-humored bantering passed between him and the master of the novices about its being now time for him to make profession; and he afterwards said that he was prevented from taking the vows of the order, and becoming a monk in earnest, only by the state of his health. St. Blas's day, 1558, the anniversary of his arrival, was held as a festival, and celebrated by masses, the _Te Deum_, a precession by the fathers, and a sermon by Villalva. In the afternoon, the emperor gave a sumptuous repast to the whole convent, out in the fields, it being the custom of the fraternity to celebrate any accession to their number by a pic-nic. The country people about Plasencia sent a quantity of partridges and kids to aid the feast, which was likewise enlivened by the presence of the Flemish servants, male and female, and his other retainers, from the village of Quacos. The prior provided a more permanent memorial of the day by opening a new book for the names of brethren admitted into the convent, on the first leaf of which the emperor inscribed his name--an autograph which remained the pride of the archives till their destruction by the dragoons of Buonaparte.

The retired emperor had not many visitors in his solitude; and of these few, Juan de Vega, president of the council of Castille, was the only personage in high office. He was sent down by the princess-regent, apparently to see that her father was treated with due attention by the provincial authorities. But with his neighbors, great and small, Charles lived in a state of amity which it would have been well for the world had he been able to maintain with his fellow-potentates of Christendom. The few nobles and gentry of the Vera were graciously received when they came to pay their respects at Yuste. Oropesa and his brothers frequently rode forth from Xarandilla, to inquire after the health of their former guest. From Plasencia came a still more distinguished and no less welcome guest, Luis de Avila, comendador-mayor of Alcantara. Long the _fidus Achates_ of the emperor, this soldier-courtier had obtained considerable fame by becoming his Quintus Curtius. His Commentaries on the Wars against the Protestants of Germany, first published in 1546, had been several times reprinted, and had already been translated into Latin, French, Flemish, English, and Italian. Having married the wealthy heiress of the Zunigas, he was now living in laurelled ease at Plasencia, in that fine palace of Mirabel, which is still one of the chief ornaments of the beautiful city. The memoirs of the campaigns in Africa, which he is said to have left in manuscript, were perhaps the occupation of his leisure. Charles always received his historian with kindness, and it is characteristic of the times, that it was noted as a mark of singular favor, that he ordered a capon to be reserved for him from his own well-supplied board. It may seem strange that a retired prince, who had never been a lover of parade, should not have broken through the ceremonial law which condemned a monarch to eat alone. But we must remember that he was a Spaniard living amongst Spaniards; and that, near a century later, the force of forms was still so strong, that the great minister of France, when most wanting in ships, preferred that the Spanish fleet should retire from the blockade of Rochelle rather than that the admiral should wear his grandee hat in the Most Christian presence.

The emperor was fond of talking over his feats of arms with the veteran who had shared and recorded them. One day, in the course of such conversation, Don Luis said he had caused a ceiling of his house to be painted in fresco, with a view of the battle of Renti, and the Frenchmen flying before the soldiers of Castille. "Not so," said Charles; "let the painter modify this if he can; for it was no headlong flight, but an honorable retreat." This was not the less candid, that French historians claim the victory for their own side. Considering that the action had been fought only three or four years before it was said to have been painted, it is possible that Renti has been substituted for the name of some other less doubtful field. But Luis de Avila was of easy faith when the honor of Castille was concerned, and may well be supposed capable of setting down a success to the wrong account, when he did not hesitate to record it in his book, that the miracle of Ajalon had been repeated at Muhlberg. Some years afterwards, the duke of Alva, who had been in that battle, was asked by the French king whether he had observed that the sun stood still. "I was so busy that day," said the old soldier, "with what was passing on earth, that I had no time to notice what took place in heaven."

An anecdote of Avila and his master, though not falling within the period of their retirement to Estremadura, may be related here, as serving to show the characters of the two men. Some years before his abdication, Charles had amused the leisure of his sick-room by making a prose translation of Olivier de la Marches' forgotten allegorical poem, _Le Chevalier delibere_. He then employed Fernando de Acunha, a man of letters attached to the Saxon court, to turn his labors into Castillian verse, and he finally handed it over to William Van Male, one of the gentlemen of the chamber, telling him that he might publish it for his own benefit. Avila and the other Spaniards, hearing of the concession, wickedly affected the greatest envy at the good fortune of the Fleming; the historian, in particular, in his quality of author, assuring the emperor that the publication could not fail to realize a profit of five hundred crowns. That desire to print, which, more or less developed, exists in every man who writes, being thus stimulated by the suggestion, that to gratify that desire, would be to confer a favor which should cost him nothing, Charles became impatient to see his lucubrations in type. Insisting that his bounty should be accepted at once, he turned a deaf ear to the timid hints of Van Male, as to the risk and expense of the speculation; and the end was, that the poor man had to pay Jean Steels for printing and publishing two thousand copies of a book which is now scarce, probably because the greater part of the impression passed at once from the publisher to the pastry-cook. The waggery on the part of Avila was the more wicked, because the victim had translated his Commentaries into Latin for him. It forms, however, the subject of an agreeable letter, wherein Van Male complains of the undue expectations raised in the emperor's mind by his "windy Spaniards," and ruefully looks forward to reaping a harvest of mere straw and chaff.

It was not only by calling at Yuste that the noble lieges of the emperor testified their homage. Mules were driven to his gate laden with more substantial tokens of loyalty and affection. The Count of Oropesa kept his table supplied with game from the forest and the hill; and the prelates of Toledo, Mondonedo, Segovia, and Salamanca, offered similar proofs that they had not forgotten the giver of their mitres. The Jeromites of Guadalupe, rich in sheep and beeves, sent calves, lambs fattened on bread, and delicate fruits; and from his sister Catharine, queen of Portugal, there came every fortnight a supply of conserves and linen.

The villagers of Quacos alone furnished some exceptions to the respect in which their imperial neighbor was held. Although they received the greater part of the hundred ducats which he dispensed every month for charitable purposes, they poached the trout in the fish-ponds which had been formed for his service in Garganta la Olla; and they drove his cows to the parish pound whenever they strayed beyond their legitimate pastures. One fellow having sold the crop on his cherry-tree, at double its value, to the emperor's purveyor, when he found that it was left ungathered for a few days, took the opportunity of disposing of it a second time to another purchaser, who, of course, left nothing but bare boughs to the rightful owner of the fruit. Wearied with these annoyances, the emperor complained to the president of Castille, who administered to the district judge, one Licentiate Murga, a severe rebuke, which that functionary, in his turn, visited upon the unruly rustics. Several culprits were apprehended; but while Castillian justice was taking its deliberate course, some of them who were related to friars of Yuste, by the influence of their friends at court, got the emperor himself to petition that the sentence might be light.

To his servants Charles was a kind and lenient master. He bore patiently with Adrian the cook, though he left the cinnamon that he loved out of the dishes; and he contented himself with mildly admonishing Pelayo, the baker, who got drunk and neglected his oven, of which the result was burnt bread that sorely tried the toothless gums of his master. His old military habits, however, still adhered to him, and though gentle in his manner of enforcing it, he was something of a martinet in maintaining the discipline of his household and the convent. Nor had he lost that love of petty economies which made him sit bare-headed in the rain without the walls of Naumburg, saving a new velvet cap under his arm, while they fetched him an old one from the town. Observing in his walks, or from his window, that a certain basket daily came and went between his garden and the garden of the friars, he caused Moron to institute an examination, which led to the harmless discovery that his Flemings were in the habit of bartering egg-plants with the Jeromites for onions. He had also been disturbed by suspicious gatherings of young women at the convent-gate, who stood there gossiping under pretence of receiving alms. When the visitors came their rounds, he therefore brought the matter under their notice. The result of the complaint was that the conventional dole was ordered to be sent round in certain portions to the alcaldes of the various villages, for distribution on the spot; and, moreover, the crier went down the straggling, uneven street of Quacos, making the ungallant proclamation, that any woman who should be found nearer to Yuste than a certain oratory, about two gunshots from the gate, should be punished with a hundred stripes.

In the month of September, 1557, the emperor received a visit from his sisters, the queens Eleanor and Mary. These royal widows, weary of Guadalaxara, its unyielding duke, and its troublesome alcalde, were once more in search of a residence. They had cast their eyes on the banks of the Guadiana, and they were now on their way to that frontier of Portugal. Neither the convent nor the palace of Yuste being sufficiently commodious to receive them, they lived at Xarandilla, as guests of Oropesa. The shattered health of the queen of France rendered the journey from the castle to the convent, although performed in a litter, so fatiguing to her, that she accomplished it only twice. Nor was her brother's strength sufficient to enable him to return the visits of his favorite sister. But queen Mary was seven years younger, and still possessed much of the vigor which amazed Roger Ascham, when he met her galloping into Tongres, far ahead of her suit, although it was the tenth day she had passed in the saddle. She therefore mounted her horse almost every day, and rode through the fading forest to converse with the recluse at Yuste. At the end of a fortnight, the queens took a sorrowful leave of their brother, and proceeded on their way to Badajoz, whither the Infanta Mary of Portugal, daughter of queen Eleanor, had come from Lisbon to receive them. After this meeting, which was destined to be the last, the queens returned to the little town of Talaverilla, on the bare plains of Merida, where they had determined to fix their abode. But they found there no continuing city. In a few weeks, Eleanor was seized with a fever, which carried her off on the 25th of February, 1558, the sixtieth year of her age. When the emperor heard of her illness, he dispatched Luis Quixada to attend upon her; but she was already at rest ere the mayordomo reached Talaverilla. Queen Mary went back with Quixada to Yuste. Her health being much shaken, and the emperor being unable to move from the convent, she was lodged, on this occasion, in his apartments. At the end of eight days she bade him a last farewell, and retired to Cigales, a hamlet two leagues north of Valladolid, and crowning a vine-clad hill on the western side of the valley of the Pisuerga.

FOOTNOTES:

[7] Sandoval says he left on the 4th November; Cabrera, that he left on the 1st; and Siguenca gives the end of October as the time of his departure.

From Household Words.

OUR PHANTOM SHIP AMONG THE ICE.

Yonder is the coast of Norway; we shall soon be at Spitzbergen. The "Phantom" is fitted out for Arctic exploration, with instructions to find her way, by the north-west, to Behring Straits, and take the South Pole on her passage home. Just now, we steer due north, and yonder is the coast of Norway. From that coast parted Hugh Willoughby, three hundred years ago; the first of our countrymen who wrought an ice-bound highway to Cathay. Two years afterwards his ships were found, in the haven of Arzina, in Lapland, by some Russian fishermen; near and about them Willoughby and his companions--seventy dead men. The ships were freighted with their frozen crews, and sailed for England; but, "being unstaunch, as it is supposed by their two years' wintering in Lapland, sunk, by the way, with their dead, and them also that brought them."

Ice floats about us now, and here is a whale blowing; a whale, too, very near Spitzbergen. When first Spitzbergen was discovered, in the good old times, there were whales here in abundance; then a hundred Dutch ships in a crowd, might go to work, and boats might jostle with each other, and the only thing deficient would be stowage room for all the produce of the fishery. Now one ship may have the whole field to itself, and travel home with an imperfect cargo. It was fine fun in the good old times; there was no need to cruise. Coppers and boilers were fitted on the island, and little colonies about them, in the fishing season, had nothing to do but tow the whales in, with a boat, as fast as they were wanted by the copper. No wonder that so enviable a Tom Tidler's ground was claimed by all who had a love for gold and silver. The English called it theirs, for they first fished; the Dutch said, nay, but the island was of their discovery; Danes, Hamburghers, Biscayans, Spaniards, and French put in their claims; and at length, it was agreed to make partitions. The numerous bays and harbors which indent the coast were divided among the rival nations; and to this day, many of them bear, accordingly, such names as English Bay, Danes Bay, and so forth. One bay there is, with graves in it, named Sorrow. For it seemed to the fishers most desirable, if possible, to plant upon this island permanent establishments, and condemned convicts were offered, by the Russians, life and pardon, if they would winter in Spitzbergen. They agreed; but, when they saw the icy mountains and the stormy sea, repented, and went back, to meet a death exempt from torture. The Dutch tempted free men, by high rewards, to try the dangerous experiment. One of their victims left a journal, which describes his sufferings and that of his companions. Their mouths, he says, became so sore that, if they had food, they could not eat; their limbs were swollen and disabled with excruciating pain; they died of scurvy. Those who died first were coffined by their dying friends; a row of coffins was found, in the spring, each with a man in it; two men uncoffined, side by side, were dead upon the floor. The journal told, how once the traces of a bear excited their hope of fresh meat and amended health; how, with a lantern, two or three had limped upon the track, until the light became extinguished, and they came back in despair to die. We might speak, also, of eight English sailors, left, by accident, upon Spitzbergen, who lived to return and tell their winter's tale; but a long journey is before us, and we must not linger on the way. As for our whalers, it need scarcely be related that the multitude of whales diminished as the slaughtering went on, until it was no longer possible to keep the coppers full. The whales had to be searched for by the vessels, and thereafter it was not worth while to take the blubber to Spitzbergen to be boiled; and the different nations, having carried home their coppers, left the apparatus of those fishing stations to decay.

Take heed. There is a noise like thunder, and a mountain snaps in two. The upper half comes, crashing, grinding, down into the sea, and loosened streams of water follow it. The sea is displaced before the mighty heap; it boils and scatters up a cloud of spray; it rushes back, and violently beats upon the shore. The mountain rises from its bath, sways to and fro, while water pours along its mighty sides; now it is tolerably quiet, letting crackers off as air escapes out of its cavities. That is an iceberg, and in that way are all icebergs formed. Mountains of ice formed by rain and snow--grand Arctic glaciers, undermined by the sea or by accumulation overbalanced--topple down upon the slightest provocation (moved by a shout, perhaps) and where they float, as this black looking fellow does, they need deep water. This berg in height is about ninety feet, and a due balance requires that a mass nine times as large as the part visible should be submerged. Icebergs are seen about us now which rise two hundred feet above the water's level.

There are above head plenty of aquatic birds; ashore, or on the ice, are bears, foxes, reindeer; and in the sea there are innumerable animals. We shall not see so much life near the North Pole, that is certain. It would be worth while to go ashore upon an islet there, near Vogel Sang, to pay a visit to the eider-ducks. Their nests are so abundant that one cannot avoid treading on them. When the duck is driven by a hungry fox to leave her eggs, she covers them with down, in order that they may not cool during her absence, and, moreover, glues the down into a case with a secretion supplied to her by Nature for that purpose. The deserted eggs are safe, for that secretion has an odor very disagreeable to the intruder's nose.

We still sail northward, among sheets of ice, whose boundaries are not beyond our vision from the mast-head--these are "floes;" between them we find easy way, it is fair "sailing ice." In the clear sky to the north, a streak of lucid white light is the reflection from an icy surface; that is "ice-blink," in the language of these seas. The glare from snow is yellow, while open water gives a dark reflection.

Northward still; but now we are in fog the ice is troublesome; a gale is rising. Now, if our ship had timbers, they would crack, and if she had a bell it would be tolling; if we were shouting to each other we should not hear, the sea is in a fury. With wild force its breakers dash against a heaped-up wall of broken ice, that grinds and strains and battles fiercely with the water. This is "the pack," the edge of a great ice-field broken by the swell. It is a perilous and exciting thing to push through pack ice in a gale.

Now there is ice as far as eye can see, that is "an ice-field." Masses are forced up like colossal tombstones on all sides; our sailors call them "hummocks;" here and there the broken ice displays large "holes of water." Shall we go on? Upon this field, in 1827, Parry adventured with his men, to reach the North Pole, if that should be possible. With sledges and portable boats they labored on, through snow, and over hummocks; launching their boats over the larger holes of water. With stout hearts, undaunted by toil or danger, they went boldly on, though by degrees it became clear to the leaders of the expedition, that they were almost like mice upon a treadmill cage, making a great expenditure of leg for little gain. The ice was floating to the south with them, as they were walking to the north; still they went on. Sleeping by day to avoid the glare, and to get greater warmth during the time of rest, and travelling by night,--watch-makers' days and nights, for it was all one polar day,--the men soon were unable to distinguish noon from midnight. The great event of one day on this dreary waste was the discovery of two flies upon an ice hummock; these, says Parry, became at once a topic of ridiculous importance. Presently, after twenty-three miles walking, they only had gone one mile forward, the ice having industriously floated twenty-two miles in an opposite direction; and then, after walking forward eleven miles, they found themselves to be three miles behind the place from which they started. The party accordingly returned, not having reached the Pole, not having reached the eighty-third parallel, for the attainment of which there was a reward of a thousand pounds held out by government. They reached the parallel of eighty-two degrees, forty-five minutes, which was, and still is, the most northerly point trodden by the foot of man. From that point they returned. In those high latitudes they met with a phenomenon, common in alpine regions, as well as at the Pole, red snow. The red color being caused by the abundance of a minute plant, of low development, the last dweller on the borders of the vegetable kingdom. More interesting to the sailors was a fat she bear which they killed and devoured with a zeal to be repented of; for on reaching navigable sea, and pushing in their boats to Table Island, where some stones were left, they found that the bears had eaten all their bread, whereon the men agreed that "Bruin was now square with them." An islet next to Table Island--they are both mere rocks--is the most northern land discovered. Therefore, Parry applied to it the name of lieutenant--now Sir James--Ross. This compliment Sir James Ross has acknowledged in the most emphatic manner, by discovering on his part, at the other Pole, the most southern land yet seen, and giving to it the name of Parry: "Parry Mountains."

It very probably would not be difficult under such circumstances as Sir W. Parry has since recommended, to reach the North Pole along this route. Then (especially if it be true, as many believe, that there is a region of open sea about the Pole itself) we might find it as easy to reach Behring Straits, by travelling in a straight line over the North Pole, as by threading the straits and bays north of America.

We turn our course until we have in sight a portion of the ice-barred eastern coast of Greenland, Shannon Island. Somewhere about this spot in the seventy-fifth parallel is the most northern part of that coast known to us. Colonel--then Captain--Sabine in the "Griper," was landed there to make magnetic and other observations; for the same purpose he had previously visited Sierra Leone. That is where we differ from our forefathers. They commissioned hardy seamen to encounter peril for the search of gold ore, or for a near road to Cathay, but our peril is encountered for the gain of knowledge, for the highest kind of service that can now be rendered to the human race.

Before we leave the northern sea, we must not omit to mention the voyage by Spitzbergen northward, in 1818, of Captain Buchan in the "Dorothea," accompanied by Lieutenant Franklin, in the "Trent." It was Sir John Franklin's first voyage to the Arctic regions. This trip forms the subject of a delightful book by Captain Beechey.

On our way to the south point of Greenland we pass near Cape North, a point of Iceland. Iceland, we know, is the centre of a volcanic region, whereof Norway and Greenland are at opposite points of the circumference. In connection with this district there is a remarkable fact; that by the agency of subterranean forces a large portion of Norway and Sweden is being slowly upheaved. While Greenland, on the west coast, as gradually sinks into the sea, Norway rises at the rate of about four feet in a century. In Greenland the sinking is so well known that the natives never build close to the water's edge, and the Moravian missionaries more than once have had to move farther inland the poles on which their boats are rested.

Our Phantom Ship stands fairly now along the western coast of Greenland into Davis Straits. We observe that upon this western coast there is, by a great deal, less ice than on the eastern. That is a rule generally. Not only the configuration of the straits and bays, but also the earth's rotation from west to east, causes the currents here to set towards the west, and wash the western coasts, while they act very little on the eastern. We steer across Davis Strait, among "an infinite number of great countreys and islands of yee;" there, near the entrance, we find Hudson Strait, which does not now concern us. Islands probably separate this well-known channel from Frobisher Strait to the north of it, yet unexplored. Here let us recall to mind the fleet of fifteen sail, under Sir Martin Frobisher, in 1578, tossing about and parting company among the ice. Let us remember how the crew of the "Anne Frances," in that expedition, built a pinnace when their vessel struck upon a rock, although they wanted main timber and nails. How they made a mimic forge, and "for the easier making of nails, were forced to break their tongs, gridiron, and fire-shovel, in pieces." How Master Captain Best, in this frail bark, with its imperfect timbers held together by the metamorphosed gridiron and fire-shovel, continued in his duty, and did "depart up the straights as before was pretended." How a terrific storm arose, and the fleet parted, and the intrepid captain was towed "in his small pinnace, at the stern of the 'Michael,' thorow the raging seas; for the bark was not able to receive or relieve half its company." The "tongs, gridyron, and fire-shovell," performed their work only for as many minutes as were absolutely necessary, for "the pinesse came no sooner aboord the ship, and the men entred, but she presently shivered and fell in pieces, and sunke at the ship's stern with all the poor men's furniture."

Now, too, as we sail up the strait, explored a few years after these events by Master John Davis, how proudly we remember him as a right worthy forerunner of those countrymen of his and ours who since have sailed over his track. Nor ought we to pass without calling to mind the melancholy fate, in 1606, of Master John Knight, driven, in the "Hopwell," among huge masses of ice, with a tremendous surf, his rudder knocked away, his ship half full of water, at the entrance to these straits. Hoping to find a harbor, he set forth to explore a large island, and landed, leaving two men to watch the boat, while he, with three men and the mate, set forth and disappeared over a hill. For thirteen hours the watchers kept their post; one had his trumpet with him, for he was a trumpeter, the other had a gun. They trumpeted often and loudly, they fired, but no answer came. They watched ashore all night for the return of their captain and his party, "but they came not at all."

The season is advanced. As we sail on, the sea steams like a lime-kiln, "frost-smoke" covers it. The water, cooled less rapidly, is warmer now than the surrounding air, and yields this vapor in consequence. By the time our vessel has reached Baffin's Bay, still coasting along Greenland, in addition to old floes and bergs, the water is beset with "pancake ice." That is the young ice when it first begins to cake upon the surface. Innocent enough it seems, but it is sadly clogging to the ships. It sticks about their sides like treacle on a fly's wing; collecting unequally, it destroys all equilibrium, and impedes the efforts of the steersman. Rocks split on the Greenland coast with loud explosions, and more icebergs fall. Icebergs we soon shall take our leave of; they are only found where there is a coast on which glaciers can form; they are good for nothing but to yield fresh water to the vessels; it will be all field, pack, and salt-water ice presently.

Now we are in Baffin's Bay, explored in the voyages of Bylot and Baffin, 1615-16. When, in 1817, a great movement in the Greenland ice caused many to believe that the northern passages would be found comparatively clear; and when, in consequence of this impression, Sir John Barrow succeeded in setting a-foot that course of modern Arctic exploration, which has been continued to the present day, Sir John Ross was the first man sent to find the north-west passage. Buchan and Parry were commissioned at the same time to attempt the North Sea route. Sir John Ross did little more on that occasion than effect a survey of Baffin's Bay, and prove the accuracy of the ancient pilot. In the extreme north of the bay there is an inlet or a channel, called by Baffin Smith's Sound; this Sir John saw, but did not enter. It never has been explored. It may be an inlet only; but it is also very possible that by this channel ships might get into the Polar Sea, and sail by the north shore of Greenland to Spitzbergen. Turning that corner, and descending along the western coast of Baffin's Bay, there is another inlet called Jones's Sound by Baffin, also unexplored. These two inlets, with their very British titles, Smith and Jones, are of exceeding interest. Jones's Sound may lead by a back way to Melville Island. South of Jones's Sound there is a wide break in the shore, a great sound, named by Baffin, Lancaster's, which Sir John Ross, in that first expedition, failed also to explore. Like our transatlantic friends at the South Pole, he laid down a range of clouds as mountains, and considered the way impervious; so he came home.

Parry went out next year, as a lieutenant, in command of his first and most successful expedition. He sailed up Lancaster Sound, which was in that year (1819) unusually clear of ice: and he is the discoverer whose track we now follow in our Phantom Ship. The whole ground being new, he had to name the points of country right and left of him. The way was broad and open, due west, a most prosperous beginning for a north-west passage. If this continued, he would soon reach Behring Strait. A broad channel to the right, directed, that is to say, southward, he entered on the Prince of Wales's birthday, and so called it the "Prince Regent's Inlet." After exploring this for some miles, he turned back to resume his western course, for still there was a broad strait leading westward. This second part of Lancaster Sound, he called after the Secretary of the Admiralty who had so indefatigably labored to promote the expeditions, Barrow's Strait. Then he came to a channel, turning to the right or northward, and he named that Wellington Channel. Then he had on his right hand ice, islands large and small, and intervening channels; on the left, ice, and a cape visible, Cape Walker. At an island, named after the First Lord of the Admiralty Melville Island, the great frozen wilderness barred further progress. There he wintered. On the coast of Melville Island they had passed the latitude of one hundred and ten degrees, and the men had become entitled to a royal bounty of five thousand pounds. This group of islands Parry called North Georgian, but they are usually called by his own name, Parry Islands. This was the first European winter party in the Arctic circle. Its details are familiar enough. How the men cut in three days through ice seven inches thick, a canal two miles and a half long, and so brought the ships into safe harbor. How the genius of Parry equalled the occasion; how there was established a theatre and a _North Georgian Gazette_, to cheer the tediousness of a night which continued for two thousand hours. The dreary dazzling waste in which there was that little patch of life, the stars, the fog, the moonlight, the glittering wonder of the northern lights, in which, as Greenlanders believe, souls of the wicked dance tormented, are familiar to us. The she-bear stays at home; but the he-bear hungers, and looks in vain for a stray seal or walrus--woe to the unarmed man who meets him in his hungry mood! Wolves are abroad, and pretty white arctic foxes. The reindeer have sought other pasture-ground. The thermometer runs down to more than sixty degrees below freezing, a temperature tolerable in calm weather, but distressing in a wind. The eye-piece of the telescope must be protected now with leather, for the skin is destroyed that comes in contact with cold metal. The voice at a mile's distance can be heard distinctly. Happy the day when first the sun is seen to graze the edge of the horizon; but summer must come, and the heat of a constant day must accumulate, and summer wane, before the ice is melted. Then the ice cracks, like cannons over-charged, and moves with a loud grinding noise. But not yet is escape to be made with safety. After a detention of ten months, Parry got free; but, in escaping, narrowly missed the destruction of both ships, by their being "nipped" between the mighty mass and the unyielding shore. What animals are found on Melville Island, we may judge from the results of sport during ten months' detention. The Island exceeds five thousand miles square, and yielded to the gun, three musk oxen, twenty-four deer, sixty-eight bears, fifty-three geese, fifty-nine ducks, and one hundred and forty-four patarmigans, weighing together three thousand seven hundred and sixty-six pounds--not quite two ounces of meat per day to every man. Lichens, stunted grass, saxifrage, and a feeble willow, are the plants of Melville Island, but in sheltered nooks there are found sorrel, poppy, and a yellow butter-cup. Halos and double suns are very common consequences of refraction in this quarter of the world. Franklin returned from his first and most famous voyage with his men all safe and sound, except the loss of a few fingers, frost-bitten. We sail back only as far as Regent's Inlet, being bound for Behring Strait. The reputation of Sir John Ross being clouded by the discontent expressed against his first expedition, Mr. Felix Booth, a rich distiller, provided seventeen thousand pounds to enable his friend to redeem his credit. Sir John accordingly, in 1829, went out in the "Victory," provided with steam-machinery that did not answer well. He was accompanied by Sir James Ross, his nephew. He it was who, on this occasion, first surveyed Regent's Inlet, down which we are now sailing with our Phantom Ship. The coast on our right hand, westward, which Parry saw, is called North Somerset, but farther south, where the inlet widens, the land is named Boothia Felix. Five years before this, Parry, in his third voyage, had attempted to pass down Regent's Inlet, where among ice and storm, one of his ships, the "Hecla," had been driven violently ashore, and of necessity, abandoned. The stores had been removed, and Sir John was able now to replenish his own vessel from them. Rounding a point at the bottom of Prince Regent's Inlet, we find Felix Harbor, where Sir John Ross wintered. His nephew made from this point scientific explorations; discovered a strait, called after him the Strait of James Ross, and on the northern shore of this strait, on the main land of Boothia, planted the British flag on the Northern Magnetic Pole. The ice broke up, so did the "Victory;" after a hairbreadth escape, the party found a searching vessel, and arrived home after an absence of four years and five months, Sir John Ross having lost his ship, and won his reputation. The friend in need was made a baronet for his munificence; Sir John was reimbursed for all his losses, and the crew liberally taken care of. Sir James Ross had a rod and flag signifying "Magnetic Pole," given to him for a new crest, by the Heralds' College, for which he was no doubt greatly the better.

We have sailed northward to get into Hudson Strait, the high road into Hudson Bay. Along the shore are Exquimaux in boats, extremely active, but these filthy creatures we pass by; the Exquimaux in Hudson Strait are like the negroes of the coast, demoralized by intercourse with European traders. These are not true pictures of the loving children of the north. Our "Phantom" floats on the wide waters of Hudson Bay--the grave of its discoverer. Familiar as the story is of Henry Hudson's fate, for John King's sake how gladly we repeat it. While sailing on the waters he discovered, in 1611, his men mutinied; the mutiny was aided by Henry Green, a prodigal, whom Hudson had generously shielded from ruin. Hudson, the master, and his son, with six sick or disabled members of the crew, were driven from their cabins, forced into a little shallop, and committed helpless to the water and the ice. But there was one stout man, John King, the carpenter, who stepped into the boat, abjuring his companions, and chose rather to die than even passively be partaker in so foul a crime. John King, we who live after, will remember you.

Here on an island, Charlton Island, near our entrance to the bay, in 1631, wintered poor Captain James with his wrecked crew. This is a point outside the Arctic circle, but quite cold enough. Of nights, with a good fire in the house they built, hoar frost covered their beds, and the cook's water in a metal pan before the fire, was warm on one side, and froze on the other. Here "it snowed and froze extremely, at which time we, looking from the shore towards the ship, she appeared a piece of ice in the fashion of a ship, or a ship resembling a piece of ice." Here the gunner, who had lost his leg, besought that, "for the little time he had to live, he might drink sack altogether." He died and was buried in the ice far from the vessel, but when afterwards two more were dead of scurvy, and the others, in a miserable state, were working with faint hope about their shattered vessel, the gunner was found to have returned home to the old vessel; his leg had penetrated through a porthole. They "digged him clear out, and he was as free from noisomness," the record says, "as when we first committed him to the sea. This alteration had the ice, and water, and time, only wrought on him, that his flesh would slip up and down upon his bones, like a glove on a man's hand. In the evening we buried him by the others." These worthy souls, laid up with the agonies of scurvy, knew that in action was their only hope; they forced their limbs to labor, among ice and water, every day. They set about the building of a boat, but the hard frozen wood had broken all their axes, so they made shift with the pieces. To fell a tree, it was first requisite to light a fire around it, and the carpenter could only labor with his wood over a fire, or else it was like stone under his tools. Before the boat was made they buried the carpenter. The captain exhorted them to put their trust in God; "His will be done. If it be our fortune to end our days here, we are as near Heaven as in England. They all protested to work to the utmost of their strength, and that they would refuse nothing that I should order them to do to the utmost hazard of their lives. I thanked them all." Truly the North Pole has its triumphs. If we took no account of the fields of trade opened by our Arctic explorers, if we thought nothing of the wants of science in comparison with the lives lost in supplying them, is not the loss of life a gain, which proves and tests the fortitude of noble hearts, and teaches us respect for human nature? All the lives that have been lost among these Polar regions, are less in number than the dead upon a battle-field. The battle-field inflicted shame upon our race--is it with shame that our hearts throb in following these Arctic heroes? March 31st, says Captain James, "was very cold, with snow and hail, which pinched our sick men more than any time this year. This evening, being May eve, we returned late from our work to our house, and made a good fire, and chose ladies, and ceremoniously wore their names in our caps, endeavoring to revive ourselves by any means. On the 15th, I manured a little patch of ground that was bare of snow, and sowed it with pease, hoping to have some shortly to eat, for as yet we could see no green thing to comfort us." Those pease saved the party; as they came up the young shoots were boiled and eaten, so their health began to mend, and they recovered from their scurvy. Eventually, after other perils, they succeeded making their escape.

A strait, called Sir Thomas Rowe's Welcome, leads due north out of Hudson Bay, being parted by Southampton Island from the strait through which we entered. Its name is quaint, for so was its discoverer, Luke Fox, a worthy man, addicted much to euphuism. Fox sailed from London in the same year in which James sailed from Bristol. They were rivals. Meeting in Davis Straits, Fox dined on board his friendly rival's vessel, which was very unfit for the service upon which it went. The sea washed over them and came into the cabin, so says Fox, "sauce would not have been wanted if there had been roast mutton." Luke Fox being ice-bound and in peril, writes, "God thinks upon our imprisonment with a _supersedeas_;" but he was a good and honorable man as well as euphuist. His "Sir Thomas Rowe's Welcome," leads into Fox Channel; our "Phantom Ship" is pushing through the welcome passes on the left-hand Repulse Bay. This portion of the Arctic regions, with Fox Channel, is extremely perilous. Here Captain Lyon, in the "Griper," was thrown anchorless upon the mercy of a stormy sea, ice crashing around him. One island in Fox Channel is called Mill Island, from the incessant grinding of great masses of ice collected there. In the northern part of Fox Channel, on the western shore, is Melville Peninsula, where Parry wintered on his second voyage. Here let us go ashore and see a little colony of Esquimaux.

Their huts are built of blocks of snow, and arched, having an ice pane for a window. They construct their arched entrance and their hemispherical roof, on the true principles of architecture. Those wise men, the Egyptians, made their arch by hewing the stones out of shape, the Esquimaux have the true secret. Here they are, with little food in winter and great appetites; devouring a whole walrus when they get it, and taking the chance of hunger for the next eight days--hungry or full, for ever happy in their lot--here are the Esquimaux. They are warmly clothed, each in a double suit of skins sewn neatly together. Some are singing, with good voices, too. Please them, and they straightway dance; activity is good in a cold climate. Play to them on the flute, or if you can sing well, sing, or turn a barrel-organ, they are mute, eager with wonder and delight; their love of music is intense. Give them a pencil, and, like children, they will draw. Teach them, and they will learn, oblige them, and they will be grateful. "Gentle and loving savages," one of our old worthies called them, and the Portuguese were so much impressed with their teachable and gentle conduct, that a Venetian ambassador writes, "His serene majesty contemplates deriving great advantage from the country, not only on account of the timber, of which he has occasion, but of the inhabitants, who are admirably calculated for labor, and are the best I have ever seen." The Esquimaux, of course, will learn vice, and in the region visited by whale ships, vice enough has certainly been taught him. Here are the dogs, who will eat old coats, or any thing; and, near the dwellings, here is a snow-bunting,--robin redbreast of the Arctic lands. A party of our sailors once, on landing, took some sticks from a large heap, and uncovered the nest of a snow-bunting with young, the bird flew to a little distance, but seeing that the men sat down and harmed her not, continued to seek food and supply her little ones, with full faith in the good intentions of the party. Captain Lyon found a child's grave partly uncovered, and a snow-bunting had built its nest upon the infant's bosom.

Sailing round Melville Peninsula, we come into the gulf of Akkolee, through Fury and Hecla Straits, discovered by Parry. So we get back to the bottom of Regent's Inlet, which we quitted a short time ago, and sailing in the neighborhood of the magnetic pole, we reach the estuary of Black's River, on the north-east coast of America. We pass then through a straight, discovered in 1839, by Dean and Simpson, still coasting along the northern shore of America, on the Great Stinking Lake, as Indians call this ocean. Boats, ice permitting, and our "Phantom Ship," of course, can coast all the way to Behring Strait. The whole coast has been explored by Sir John Franklin, Sir John Richardson, and Sir George Back, who have earned their knighthoods through great peril. As we pass Coronation Gulf--the scene of Franklin, Richardson, and Back's first exploration from the Coppermine River--we revert to the romantic story of their journey back, over a land of snow and frost, subsisting upon lichens, with companions starved to death; where they plucked wild leaves for tea, and ate their shoes for supper; the tragedy by the river; the murder of poor Hood, with a book of prayers in his hand; Franklin at Fort Enterprise, with two companions at the point of death, himself gaunt, hollow-eyed, feeding on pounded bones, raked from the dunghill; the arrival of Dr. Richardson and the brave sailor; their awful story of the cannibal Michel;--we revert to these things with a shudder. But we must continue on our route. The current still flows westward, bearing now large quantities of drift-wood, out of the Mackenzie River. At the name of Sir Alexander Mackenzie, also, we might pause, and talk over the bold achievements of another arctic hero; but we pass on, by a rugged and inhospitable coast, unfit for vessels of large draught,--pass the broad mouth of the Youcon, pass Point Barrow, Icy Cape, and are in Behring Strait. Had we passed on, we should have found the Russian Arctic coast line, traced out by a series of Russian explorers; of whom the most illustrious--Baron Von Wrangell--states, that beyond a certain distance to the northward, there is always found what he calls the _Polynja_ (open water.) This is the fact adduced by those who adhere to the old fancy that there is a sea about the pole itself quite free from ice.

We pass through Behring Straits. Behring, a Dane by birth, but in the Russian service, died here in 1741, upon the scene of his discovery. He and his crew, victims of scurvy, were unable to manage their vessel in a storm; and it was at length wrecked on a barren island, there, where "want, nakedness, cold, sickness, impatience, and despair were their daily guests." Behring, his lieutenant, and the master died.

Now we must put a girdle round the world, and do it with the speed of Ariel. Here we are already in the heats of the equator. We can do no more than remark, that if air and water are heated at the equator, and frozen at the poles, there will be equilibrium destroyed, and constant currents caused. And so it happens, so we get the prevailing winds, and all the currents of the ocean. Of these, some of the uses, but by no means all, are obvious. We urge our "Phantom" fleetly to the southern pole. Here, over the other hemisphere of the earth, there shines another hemisphere of heaven. The stars are changed; the southern cross, the Magellanic clouds, the "coal-sack" in the milky way, attract our notice. Now we are in the southern latitude that corresponds to England in the north; nay, at a greater distance, from the pole, we find Kerguelen's Land, emphatically called "The Isle of Desolation." Icebergs float much further into the warm sea on this side of the equator, before they dissolve. The South Pole is evidently a more thorough refrigerator than the North. Why is this? We shall soon see. We push through pack-ice, and through floes and fields, by lofty bergs, by an island or two covered with penguins, until there lies before us a long range of mountains, nine or ten thousand feet in height, and all clad in eternal snow. That is a portion of the Southern Continent. Lieutenant Wilkes, in the American exploring expedition, first discovered this, and mapped out some part of the coast, putting a few clouds in likewise,--a mistake easily made by those who omit to verify every foot of land. Sir James Ross, in his most successful South Pole Expedition, during the years 1839-43, sailed over some of this land, and confirmed the rest. The Antarctic, as well as the Arctic honors he secured for England, by turning a corner of the land, and sailing far southward, along an impenetrable icy barrier, to the latitude of seventy-eight degrees, nine minutes. It is an elevated continent, with many lofty ranges. In the extreme southern point reached by the ships, a magnificent volcano was seen spouting fire and smoke out of the everlasting snow. This volcano, twelve thousand four hundred feet high, was named Mount Erebus; for the "Erebus" and "Terror," now sought anxiously among the bays, and sounds, and creeks of the North Pole, then coasted by the solid ice-walls of the south. Only as "Phantoms" can we cross this land and live. These lofty mountain-ranges, cold to the marrow, these vast glaciers, and elevated plains of ice, no wonder that they cast a chill about their neighborhood. Our very ghosts are cold, and the volcanoes only make the frost colder by contrast. We descend upon the other side, take ship again, and float up the Atlantic, through the tropics. We have been round the world now, and among the ice, and have not grown much older since we started.

* * * * *

Other "Phantoms" are to be added to those thus described. Besides the expeditions now in the ice regions, from England and America, one, and perhaps two more, have in the last two months started in the search for Franklin.

MADAME DE GENLIS AND MADAME DE STAEL.

This curious piece has recently appeared in the _Gazette de France_, and has excited much remark. It is given out to be the production of Charles X., when Monsieur, and was communicated to M. Neychens by the Marquis de la Roche Jacqueleine.

"Before the Revolution, I was but very slightly acquainted with Mme. de Genlis, her conduct during that disastrous period having not a little contributed to sink her in my estimation; and the publication of her novel, 'The Knights of the Swan' (the _first_ edition), completed my dislike to a person who had so cruelly aspersed the character of the queen, my sister-in-law.

"On my return to France, I received a letter full of the most passionate expressions of loyalty from beginning to end; the missive being signed Comtesse de Genlis; but imagining this could be but a _plaisanterie_ of some intimate friend of my own, I paid no attention whatever to it. However, in two or three days it was followed by a second epistle, complaining of my silence, and appealing to the great sacrifices the writer had made in the interest of my cause, as giving her a _right_ to my favorable attention. Talleyrand being present, I asked him if he could explain this enigma.

"'Nothing is easier,' replied he; 'Mme. de Genlis is unique. She has lost her own memory, and fancies others have experienced a similar bereavement.'

"'She speaks,' pursued I, 'of her virtues, her misfortunes, and Napoleon's persecutions.'

"'Hem! In 1789 her husband was quite ruined, so the events of that period took nothing from _him_; and as to the tyranny of Bonaparte, it consisted, in the first place, of giving her a magnificent suite of apartments in the Arsenal; and in the second place, granting her a pension of six thousand francs a year, upon the sole condition of her keeping him every month _au courant_ of the literature of the day.'

"'What shocking ferocity!' replied I, laughing; 'a case of infamous despotism indeed. And this martyr to our cause asks to see me.'

"'Yes; and pray let your royal highness grant her an audience, were it only for once: I assure you she is most amusing.'

"I followed the advice of M. de Talleyrand, and accorded to the lady the permission she so pathetically demanded. The evening before she was to present herself, however, came a third missive, recommending a certain Casimir, the _phenix_ of the _epoque_, and several other persons besides; all, according to Mme. de Genlis, particularly celebrated people; and the postscript to this effusion prepared me also beforehand for the request she intended to make, of being appointed governess to the children of my son, the Duc de Berry, who was at that time not even married.

"Just at this period it so happened that I was besieged by more than a dozen persons of every rank in regard to Mme. de Stael, formerly exiled by Bonaparte, and who had rushed to Paris without taking breath, fully persuaded every one there, and throughout all France, was impatient to see her again. Mme. de Stael had a double view in thus introducing herself to me; namely, to direct my proceedings entirely, and to obtain payment of the two million francs deposited in the treasury by her father during his ministry. I confess I was not prepossessed in favor of Mme. de Stael, for she also, in 1789, had manifested so much hatred towards the Bourbons, that I thought all she could possibly look to from us, was the liberty of living in Paris unmolested: but I little knew her. She, on her side, imagined we ought to be grateful to her for having quarrelled with Bonaparte--her own pride being, in fact, the sole cause of the rupture.

"M. de Fontanes and M. de Chateaubriand were the first who mentioned her to me; and to the importance with which they treated the matter, I answered, laughing, 'So, Mme. la Baronne de Stael is then a supreme power?'

"'Indeed she is, and it might have very unfavorable effects did your royal highness overlook her: for what she asserts, every one believes, and then--she has suffered _so_ much!'

"'Very likely; but what did she make my poor sister-in-law, the queen, suffer? Do you think I can forget the abominable things she said, the falsehoods she told? and was it not in consequence of them, and the public's belief of them, that she owed the possibility of the ambassadress of Sweden's being able to dare insult that unfortunate princess in her very palace?'

"Mme. de Stael's envoys, who manifested some confusion at the fidelity of my memory, implored me to forget the past, think only of the future, and remember that the genius of Mme. de Stael, whose reputation was European, might be of the utmost advantage, or the reverse. Tired of disputing I yielded; consented to receive this _femme celebre_, as they all called her, and fixed for her reception the same day I had notified to Mme. de Genlis.

"My brother has said, 'Punctuality is the politeness of kings'--words as true and just as they are happily expressed; and the princes of my family have never been found wanting in good manners; so I was in my study waiting when Mme. de Genlis was announced. I was astonished at the sight of a long, dry woman, with a swarthy complexion, dressed in a printed cotton gown, any thing but clean, and a shawl covered with dust, her habit-shirt, her hair even bearing marks of great negligence. I had read her works, and remembering all she said about neatness, and cleanliness, and proper attention to one's dress, I thought she added another to the many who fail to add example to their precepts. While making these reflections, Mme. de Genlis was firing off a volley of curtsies; and upon finishing what she deemed the requisite number, she pulled out of a great huge bag four manuscripts of enormous dimensions.

"'I bring,' commenced the lady, 'to your royal highness what will amply repay any kindness you may show to me--No. 1 is a plan of conduct, and the project of a constitution; No. 2 contains a collection of speeches in answer to those likely to be addressed to Monsieur; No. 3, addresses and letters proper to send to foreign powers, the provinces, &c., and in No. 4, Monsieur will find a plan of education, the only one proper to be persued by royalty, in reading which, your royal highness will feel as convinced of the extent of my acquirements as of the purity of my loyalty.'

"Many in my place might have been angry; but, on the contrary, I thanked her with an air of polite sincerity for the treasures she was so obliging as to confide to me, and then condoled with her upon the misfortunes she had endured under the tyranny of Bonaparte.

"'Alas! Monsieur, this abominable despot dared to make a mere plaything of _me_! and yet I strove, by wise advice, to guide him right, and teach him to regulate his conduct properly: but he would not be led. I even offered to mediate between him and the pope, but he did not even so much as answer me upon this subject; although (being a most profound theologian) I could have smoothed almost all difficulties when the Concordat was in question.'

"This last piece of pretension was almost too much for my gravity. However, I applauded the zeal of this new mother of the church, and was going to put an end to the interview, when it came into my head to ask her if she was well acquainted with Mme. de Stael.

"'God forbid!' cried she, making a sign of the cross: 'I have no acquaintance with _such people_; and I but do my duty in warning those who have not perused the works of that lady, to bear in mind that they are written in the worst possible taste, and are also extremely immoral. Let your royal highness turn your thoughts from such books; you will find in _mine_ all that is necessary to know. I suppose Monsieur has not yet seen _Little Necker_?'

"'Mme. la Baronne de Stael Holstein has asked for an audience, and I even suspect she may be already arrived at the Tuileries.'

"'Let your royal highness beware of this woman! See in her the implacable enemy of the Bourbons, and in me their most devoted slave.'

"This new proof of the want of memory in Madame de Genlis amused me as much as the other absurdities she had favored me with; and I was in the act of making her the ordinary salutations of adieu, when I observed her blush purple, and her proud rival entered.

"The two ladies exchanged a haughty bow, and the comedy, which had just finished with the departure of Mme. de Genlis, recommenced under a different form when Mme. de Stael appeared on the stage. The baroness was dressed, not certainly dirty, like the countess, but quite as absurdly. She wore a red satin gown, embroidered with flowers of gold and silk; a profusion of diamonds; rings enough to stock a pawnbroker's shop; and, I must add, that I never before saw so low a cut corsage display less inviting charms. Upon her head was a huge turban, constructed on the pattern of that worn by the Cumean sybil, which put a finishing stroke to a costume so little in harmony with her style of face. I scarcely understand how a woman of genius _can_ have such a false, vulgar taste. Mme. de Stael began by apologizing for occupying a few moments which she doubted not I should have preferred giving to Mme. de Genlis. 'She is one of the illustrations of the day,' observed she, with a sneering smile--'a colossus of religious faith, and represents in her person, she fancies, all the literature of the age. Ah! ah! Monsieur, in the hands of _such people_ the world would soon retrograde; while it should, on the contrary, be impelled forward, and your royal highness be the first to put yourself at the head of this great movement. To you should belong the glory of giving the impulse, guided by _my experience_.'

"'Come,' thought I, 'here is another going to plague me with plans of conduct, and constitutions, and reforms, which I am to persuade the king my brother to adopt. It seems to be an insanity in France this composing of new constitutions.' While I was making these reflections, madame had time to give utterance to a thousand fine phrases, every one more sublime than the preceding. However, to put an end to them, I asked her if there was any thing she wished to demand.

"'Ah, dear!--oh yes, prince!' replied the lady in an indifferent tone. 'A mere trifle--less than nothing--two millions, without counting the interest at five per cent. But these are matters I leave entirely to my men of business, being for my own part much more absorbed in politics and the science of government.'

"'Alas! madame, the king has arrived in France with his mind made up upon most subjects, the fruit of twenty-five years' meditation; and I fear he is not likely to profit by your good intentions.'

"'Then so much the worse for him and for France! All the world knows what it cost Bonaparte his refusing to follow my advice, and pay me my two millions. I have studied the Revolution profoundly, followed it through all its phases, and I flatter myself I am the only pilot who can hold with one hand the rudder of the state, if at least I have Benjamin for steersman.'

"'Benjamin! Benjamin--who?' asked I in surprise.

"'It would give me the deepest distress,' replied she, 'to think that the name of M. le Baron de Rebecque Benjamin de Constant has never reached the ears of your royal highness. One of his ancestors saved the life of Henry Quatre. Devoted to the descendants of this good king, he is ready to serve them; and among several _constitutions_ he has in his portfolio, you will probably find one with annotations and reflections by myself, which will suit you. Adopt it, and choose Benjamin Constant to carry the idea out.'

"It seemed like a thing resolved--an event decided upon--this proposal of inventing a constitution for us. I kept as long as I could upon the defensive, but Mme. de Stael, carried away by her zeal and her enthusiasm, instead of speaking of what personally concerned herself, knocked me about with arguments, and crushed me under threats and menaces; so, tired to death of entertaining, instead of a clever, humble woman, a roaring politician in petticoats, I finished the audience, leaving her as little satisfied as myself with the interview. Mme. de Genlis was ten times less disagreeable, and twenty times more amusing.

"That same evening I had M. le Prince de Talleyrand with me, and I was confounded by hearing him say, 'So, your royal highness has made Mme. de Stael completely quarrel with me now?'

"'Me! I never so much as pronounced your name.'

"'Notwithstanding that, she is convinced that I am the person who prevents your royal highness from employing her in your political relations, and that I am jealous of Benjamin Constant. She is resolved on revenge.'

"'Ha, ha!--and what can she do?'

"'A very great deal of mischief, Monseigneur. She has numerous partisans; and if she declares herself Bonapartiste, we must look to ourselves.'

"'That _would_ be curious.'

"'Oh, I shall take upon myself to prevent her going so far; but she will be Royalist no longer, and we shall suffer from that.'

"At this time I had not the remotest idea of what a mere man, still less a mere woman, could do in France: but now I understand it perfectly, and if Mme. de Stael was living--Heaven pardon me!--I would strike up a flirtation with her."

From Chambers's Edinburgh Journal.

THE SMUGGLER MALGRE LUI.

There is perhaps no more singular anomaly in the history of the human mind than the very different light in which a fraud is viewed according to the circumstances in which it is practised. The singular revelations made to the Chancellor of the Exchequer by a late deputation will probably be fresh in the remembrance of most of our readers. Even the learned gentleman himself could hardly maintain his professional gravity when informed of the ingenious contrivances adopted for defrauding the revenue. Advertisements floating through the air attached to balloons, French gloves making their way into the kingdom in separate detachments of right and left hands, mutilated clocks travelling without their wheels--such were some of the divers modes by which the law was declared to be evaded, and the custom-house officers baffled. We are by no means disposed either to think or speak with levity of this system of things. However much a man may succeed in reconciling any fraud to his own conscience, or however leniently it may be viewed by his fellow-men, it will yet assuredly help to degrade his moral nature, and its repetition will slowly, but surely, deaden the silent monitor within his breast. All we affirm is the well-known fact, that laws are in most cases ineffective, except in so far as they harmonize with the innate moral convictions of mankind; and that many a man who would not for worlds cheat his next door neighbor of a penny, will own without a blush, and perhaps even with a smile of triumph, that he has cheated the government of thousands! It is not often, however, that so daring and successful a stroke of this nature is effected as that which we find related of a celebrated Swiss jeweller, who actually succeeded in making the French director-general of the customs act the part of a smuggler!

Geneva, as must be well known to all our readers, supplies half Europe with her watches and her jewelry. Three thousand workmen are kept in continual employment by her master goldsmiths; while seventy-five thousand ounces of gold, and fifty thousand marks of silver, annually change their form, and multiply their value beneath their skilful hands! The most fashionable jeweller's shop in Geneva is unquestionably that of Beautte; his trinkets are those which beyond all others excite the longing of the Parisian ladies. A high duty is charged upon these in crossing the French frontier; but, in consideration of a brokerage of five per cent., M. Beautte undertakes to forward them safely to their destination through contraband channels; and the bargain between the buyer and seller is concluded with this condition as openly appended and avowed as if there were no such personages as custom-house officers in the world.

All this went on smoothly for some years with M. Beautte; but at length it so happened that M. le Comte de Saint-Cricq, a gentleman of much ability and vigilance was appointed director-general of the customs. He heard so much of the skill evinced by M. Beautte in eluding the vigilance of his agents, that he resolved personally to investigate the matter, and prove for himself the truth of the reports. He consequently repaired to Geneva, presented himself at M. Beautte's shop, and purchased thirty thousand francs' worth of jewelry, on the express condition that they should be transmitted to him free of duty on his return to Paris. M. Beautte accepted the proposed condition with the air of a man who was perfectly accustomed to arrangements of this description. He, however, presented for signature to M. de Saint-Cricq a private deed, by which the purchaser pledged himself to pay the customary five per cent. _smuggling dues_, in addition to the thirty thousand francs' purchase-money.

M. de Saint-Cricq smiled, and taking the pen from the jeweller's hand, affixed to the deed the following signature--"L. de Saint-Cricq, Director-General of the Customs in France." He then handed the document back to M. Beautte, who merely glanced at the signature, and replied with a courteous bow--

"_Monsieur le Directeur des Douanes_, I shall take care that the articles which you have done me the honor of purchasing shall be handed to you in Paris directly after your arrival." M. de Saint-Cricq, piqued by the man's cool daring and apparent defiance of his authority and professional skill, immediately ordered post-horses, and without the delay of a single hour set out with all speed on the road to Paris.

On reaching the frontier, the Director-General made himself known to the _employes_ who came forward to examine his carriage--informed the chief officer of the incident which had just occurred, and begged of him to keep up the strictest surveillance along the whole of the frontier line, as he felt it to be a matter of the utmost importance to place some check upon the wholesale system of fraud which had for some years past been practised upon the revenue by the Geneva jewellers. He also promised a gratuity of fifty louis-d'ors to whichever of the _employes_ should be so fortunate as to seize the prohibited jewels--a promise which had the effect of keeping every officer on the line wide awake, and in a state of full activity, during the three succeeding days.

In the meanwhile M. de Saint-Cricq reached Paris, alighted at his own residence, and after having embraced his wife and children, and passed a few moments in their society, retired to his dressing-room, for the purpose of laying aside his travelling costume. The first thing which arrested his attention when he entered the apartment was a very elegant looking casket, which stood upon the mantelpiece, and which he did not remember to have ever before seen. He approached to examine it; his name was on the lid; it was addressed in full to "M. le Comte de Saint-Cricq, Director-General of Customs." He accordingly opened it without hesitation, and his surprise and dismay may be conceived when, on examining the contents, he recognized at once the beautiful trinkets he had so recently purchased in Geneva!

The count rung for his valet, and inquired from him whether he could throw any light upon this mysterious occurrence. The valet looked surprised, and replied, that on opening his master's portmanteau, the casket in question was one of the first articles which presented itself to his sight, and its elegant form and elaborate workmanship having led him to suppose it contained articles of value, he had carefully laid it aside upon the mantelpiece. The count, who had full confidence in his valet, and felt assured that he was in no way concerned in the matter, derived but little satisfaction from this account, which only served to throw a fresh veil of mystery over the transaction; and it was only some time afterwards, and after long investigation, that he succeeded in discovering the real facts of the case.

Beautte, the jeweller, had a secret understanding with one of the servants of the hotel at which the Comte de Saint-Cricq lodged in Geneva. This man, taking advantage of the hurried preparations for the count's departure, contrived to slip the casket unperceived into one of his portmanteaus, and the ingenious jeweller had thus succeeded in making the Director-General of Customs one of the most successful _smugglers_ in the kingdom!

THE TRUE HISTORY OF AGNES SOREL.

BY R. H. HORNE, AUTHOR OF "ORION," ETC.

Agnes Sorel was born in 1409, at the village of Fromenteau, in Touraine. Her father was the Seigneur de St. Gerand, a gentleman attached to the house of the Count de Clermont. At the age of fifteen, she was placed as maid of honor to Isabel of Lorraine, duchess of Anjou, and accompanied this princess when she went to Paris, in 1431.

At this period, Agnes Sorel was considered to be the most beautiful woman of her day. Her conversation and wit were equal to her beauty. In the "Histoire des Favorites" she is said to have been noble-minded, full of generosity, with sweetness of manners, and sincerity of heart. The same writer adds that every body fell in love with her, from the king to the humblest officers. Charles VII. became passionately attached to her; and in order to insure her constant presence at court, he placed her as maid of honor to the queen. The amour was conducted with secrecy; but the fact became manifest by the favors which the king lavished upon the relations of Agnes, while she herself lived in great magnificence amidst a very poor court. She was fond of splendor, and has been quaintly described by Monstrelet as "having enjoyed all the pleasures of life, in wearing rich clothes, furred robes, and golden chains of precious stones, and whatever else she desired." When she visited Paris, in attendance upon the queen, the splendor and expense of Agnes were so excessive that the people murmured greatly; whereupon the proud beauty exclaimed against the Parisians as churls.

During the time that the English were actually in possession of a great part of France, it was in vain that the queen (Mary of Anjou) endeavored to rouse her husband from his lethargy. That the king was not deficient in energy and physical courage, is evident from the manner in which he signalized himself on various occasions. At the siege of Montereau in 1437, (according to the Chronicle de Charles VII. par M. Alain Chartier, Nevers, 1594,) he rushed to the assault, now thrusting with the lance, now assisting the artillery, now superintending the various military engines for heaving masses of stone or wood; but during the period above-mentioned he was lost to all sense of royal glory, and had given himself up entirely to hunting and all sorts of pleasures.

He was recalled by Agnes to a sense of what was due to his kingdom. She told him, one day, says Brantoine, that when she was a girl, an astrologer had predicted that she would be loved by one of the most valiant kings of Christendom; that when His Majesty Charles VII. had done her this honor, she thought, of course, he was the valiant king who had been predicted; but now, finding he was so weak, and had so little care as to what became of himself and his affairs, she saw that she had made a mistake, and that this valiant prince could not be Charles, but the King of England. Saying these words, Agnes rose, and bowing reverentially to the king, asked leave to retire to the court of the English king, since the prophecy pointed at him. "Charles," she said, "was about to lose his crown, and Henry to unite it to his." By this rebuke the king was much affected. He gave up his hunting, left his gardens for the field of battle, and succeeded in driving the English out of France. This circumstance occasioned Francis I. to make the following verses, which, it is said, he wrote under a portrait of Agnes:--

"Plus de louange et d'honneur tu merite, La cause etant de France recouvrer, Que ce que peut dedans un cloitre ouvrer, Close nonnain, ou bien devol hermite."

The king lavished gifts and honors upon Agnes. He built a chateau for her at Loches; he gave her, besides the comte de Penthievre, in Bretagne, the lordships of Roche Serviere, of Issoudun, in Berri, and the Chateau de Beaute, at the extremity of the wood of Vincennes, that she might be, as he said, "in deed and in name the Queen of Beauty." It is believed that she never made a bad use of her influence with the king for any political purposes or unkind private feelings; nevertheless, the Dauphin (afterwards Louis XI.) conceived an implacable jealousy against her, and carried his resentment so far, on one occasion, as to give her a blow.

She retired, in 1445, to Loches, and for nearly five years declined appearing at court; but the king's love for her still continued, and he took many journeys into Touraine to visit her. But eventually the queen, who had never forgotten her noble counsels to the king, which had roused him from his lethargy, persuaded her to return to court.

The queen appears to have felt no jealousy, but to have had a regard for her. It seems, also, that Agnes had become very popular, partly from her beauty and wit, partly because she was considered in a great measure, to have saved France, and partly because she distributed large sums in alms to the poor, and to repair decayed churches.

After the taking of Rouen, and the entire expulsion of the English from France, the king took up his winter-quarters in the Abbey of Jumiege. Agnes hastened to the Chateau de Masnal la Belle, a league distant from this abbey, for the purpose of warning the king of a conspiracy. The king only laughed at the intelligence; but the death of Agnes Sorel, which immediately followed, gives some grounds for crediting the truth of the information which she communicated. At this place Agnes, still beautiful, and in perfect health, was suddenly attacked by a dysentery which carried her off. It is believed that she was poisoned. Some affirm that it was effected by direction of the Dauphin; others accuse Jacques Coeur, the king's goldsmith (as the master of the treasury was then called), and others attribute it to female jealousy.

The account given of her death by Monstrelet is to the following effect: Agnes was suddenly attacked by a dysentery which could not be cured. She lingered long, and employed the time in prayer and repentance; she often, as he relates, called upon Mary Magdalen, who had also been a sinner, and upon God and the blessed Virgin for aid. After receiving the sacrament, she desired the book of prayers to be brought her, in which she had written with her own hand the verses of St. Barnard, and these she repeated. She then made many gifts, which were put down in writing: and these, including alms and the payment of her servants, amounted to 60,000 crowns. The fair Agnes, the once proud beauty, perceiving her end approaching, and now feeling a disgust to life proportioned to the fulness of her past enjoyment of all its gayeties, vanities, and pleasures, said to the Lord de la Tremouille and others, and in the presence of all her damsels, that our insecure and worldly life was but a foul ordure. She then requested her confessor to give her absolution, according to a form she herself dictated, with which he complied. After this, she uttered a loud shriek, and gave up the ghost. She died on Monday, the 9th day of February, 1449, about six o'clock in the afternoon, in the fortieth year of her age.

This account, though bearing every appearance of probability, is yet open to some doubts, from the manifestation of a tendency, on the part of Monstrelet, to give a coloring to the event, and to the character of Agnes Sorel. He even attempts to throw a doubt upon her having been the king's mistress, treating the fact as a mere scandal. He says that the affection of the king was attributable to her good sense, her wit, her agreeable manners, and gayety, quite as much as to her beauty. This was, no doubt, the case; but it hardly helps the argument of the historian. Monstrelet finds it difficult, however, to dispose of the children that she had by the king: he admits that Agnes had a daughter which she said was the king's, but that he denied it. The compilation by Denys Codefroy takes the same view, but nearly the whole account is copied verbatim from Monstrelet, without acknowledgment.

The heart and intestines of Agnes were buried at Jumiege. Her body was placed in the centre of the choir of the collegiate church of the Chateau de Loches, which she had greatly enriched.

Her tomb was in existence at Loches, in 1792. It was of black marble. The figure of Agnes was in white marble; her head resting upon a lozenge, supported by angels, and two lambs were at her feet.

The writer of the life of Agnes Sorel in the "Biographie Universelle," having access to printed books and MSS. of French history which are not in the public libraries of this country, the following statements are taken from that work: the writer does not give his authorities.

The canons of the church pretended to be scandalized at having the tomb of Agnes placed in their choir, and begged permission of Louis XI. to have it removed. "I consent," replied the king, "provided you give up all you have received from her bounty."

The poets of the day were profuse in their praises of the memory of Agnes. One of the most memorable of these is a poem by Baif, printed at Paris in 1573. In 1789 the library of the chapter of Loches possessed a manuscript containing nearly a thousand Latin sonnets in praise of Agnes, all acrostics, and made by a canon of that city.

A marble bust of her was long preserved at the Chateau de Chinon, and is now placed in the Museum des Augustins.

Agnes Sorel had three daughters by Charles VII., who all received dowries, and were married at the expense of the crown. They received the title of daughters of France, the name given at that time to the natural daughters of the kings. An account of the noble families into which they married, together with the honors bestowed upon the brother of Agnes, will be found in Moreri's "Dictionnaire Historique."

From the London Examiner.

PROSPECTS OF AFRICAN COLONIZATION.

Africa has never been propitious to European settlement or colonization, but quite the contrary. The last founded state of the Anglo-American Union, of about two years' growth, is alone, at this moment, worth more than all that has been effected by the European race in Africa in two-and-twenty centuries. The most respectable product of African colonization is a Cape boor, and this is certainly not a finished specimen of humanity. Assuredly, for the last three hundred years, Africa has done nothing for the nations of Europe but seduce them into crime, folly, and extravagance.

The Romans were the first European settlers in Africa; it was at their very door, and they held it for eight centuries. Now, there is not left in it hardly a trace of Roman civilization; certainly fewer, at all events, than the Arabs have left in Spain. The Vandal occupation of Mediterranean Africa lasted only half a century. We should not have known that Vandals had ever set their feet on the Continent but for the written records of civilized men. There is nothing Vandal there, unless Vandalism in the abstract. The Dutch came next, in order of time, in another portion of Africa, and we have already alluded to the indistinct "spoor" which they have left behind them after an occupation of a hundred and fifty years.

The English have settled in two different quarters of the African continent, one of them within eight degrees of the equatorial line, and the other some thirty-four south of it. The first costs us civil establishments, forts, garrisons, and squadrons included (for out of Africa and its people comes the supposed necessity for the squadron), a good million a year. The most valuable article we get from tropical Africa is the oil of a certain palm, which contributes largely towards an excise duty of about a million and a half a year, levied on what has been justly called a second necessary of life--to wit, soap.

We have been in possession of the southern promontory of Africa for above fifty years. In this time, besides its conquest twice over from a European power, and in addition to fleets and armies, it has cost us, in mere self-defence against savages, three million pounds, while at this moment we are engaged in the same kind of defence, with the tolerable certainty of incurring another million. No one will venture to say that this sum alone does not far exceed the value of the fee simple and sovereignty of the southern promontory of Africa. What we get from it consists chiefly in some purgative aloes, a little indifferent wool, and a good deal of execrable wine, on the importation of which we pay a virtual bounty! As for _our subjects_ in this part of the African continent, they amount to about two hundred thousand, and are composed of Anglo-Saxons, Dutch, Malays, Hottentots, Bushmen, Gaikas, Tambookies, Amagarkas, Zulas, and Amazulas, speaking a very Babel of African, Asiatic, and European tongues, perilous to delicate organic structures even to listen to.

Now for French African colonization. If we have not been very wise ourselves, our neighbors, who have never been eminently happy in their attempts at colonization, have been much less so. They have been in possession of an immense territory in Algeria for twenty years, and have now about fifty thousand colonists there, with an army which has generally not been less than one hundred thousand, so that every colonist requires two soldiers to keep his throat from being cut, and his property from being robbed or stolen. This is about ten times the regular army that protects twenty-eight millions of Anglo-Americans from nearly all the savages of North America. The local revenue of Algeria is half a million sterling; but the annual cost of the experiment to France amounts to eight times as much as the revenue; and it has been computed that the whole charge to the French nation, from first to last (it goes on at the same rate), has been sixty million pounds. This is without exception the most monstrous attempt at colonization that has ever been made by man. If war should unfortunately arise with any maritime power, the matter will be still worse. At least one hundred thousand of the flower of the French army will then be worse than lost to France. For, pent up as it will be in a narrow strip of eighty miles broad along the shore of the Mediterranean, it may be blockaded from the sea by any superior naval power; and assuredly will be so, from the side of the desert, by a native one. To hold Algeria is to cripple France.

What, then, is the cause of the fatality which has thus ever attended African colonization by Europeans? In tropical Africa, the heat and insalubrity, and consequently the total unfitness for European life, are causes quite sufficient to account for the failure; and the failure has been eminent with French, Dutch, English, and Danes. But this will not account for want of success in temperate Africa, whether beyond the northern or southern tropic. The climate of this last, especially, is very good; and that of the first being nearly the same as their own, ought not to be hurtful to the constitutions of southern Europeans.

Drought, and the intermixture of deserts and wastes of sand with fertile lands, after the manner of a chess-board, without the regularity, is, of course, unpropitious to colonization, but cannot prevent its advancement, as we see by the progress of our Australian colonies. These causes, however, combined with the character of the native or congenial inhabitants of the country, have been quite sufficient to prove insuperable obstacles to a prosperous colonization. A nomad and wandering population has in fact been generated, incapable either of advancement or amalgamation, having just a sufficient knowledge of the arts to be dangerous neighbors, not capable of being driven to a distance from the settlers, nor likely to be destroyed by gunpowder or brandy. The lion and shepherd recede before the white man in southern Africa, but not the Caffir.

The inhabitant of northern Africa, whether Arabian or Numidian, is, in relation to an European colony, only a more formidable Caffir, from greater numbers and superior skill. Heretofore, a garrison of five thousand men at the most has been sufficient to protect the Cape colony, although six thousand miles distant from England. The territory of Algeria, of about the same extent, requires about twenty times that number, although within a day's sail of France. Arab and Numidian seem to be alike untamable both by position and by race. The Arabs (and it shows they were capable of better things) were a civilized and industrious people while in the fair regions of Spain; driven from it, they have degenerated into little more than predatory shepherds, or freebooters; but they are only the more formidable to civilized men on this very account.

What, then, will be the fate of the French and English colonies in temperate Africa? We confess we can hardly venture to predict. Assuredly, neither north nor south Africa will ever give birth to a great or flourishing community, such as North America has done, and as Australia and New Zealand will certainly do. The Caffirs may possibly be driven to a distance, after a long course of trouble and expense; but the Arabs and Kabyles are as inexpungable as the wandering tribes of Arabia Petraea or Tartary. With them, neither expulsion, nor extermination, nor amalgamation is practicable. Very likely France and England will get heartily tired of paying yearly millions for their unavailable deserts, and there is no knowing what they may be driven to do in such an extremity. At all events, we may safely assert that France would have saved sixty millions of pounds, and the interminable prospect of a proportional annual expenditure, had she confined herself to the town and fortress of Algiers; and England would have been richer and wiser, had she kept within the bounds of the original Dutch colony. The best thing we ourselves can do with our extra-tropical Africa, is to leave the colonists to govern, and also to defend themselves from all but enemies by sea: that the French, unfortunately, cannot do.

MY NOVEL:

OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.

BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON.

_Continued from page 269._