Part 2

I continued walking with my excellent long-tailed patron, expecting every moment to see an elegant, agreeable residence, smiling in all the beauties of nature and art; when, at last, in a dirty miserable lane, at the door of a tall dingy-looking house, my Mæcenas stopped, indicated that we had reached our journey’s end, and, marshalling me the way that I should go, began to mount three flights of sickening stairs, at the top of which I found his cassino: it was a little Cas, and a deuce of a place to boot; in plain English, it was a garret. The door was opened by a wretched old miscreant, who acted as cook, and whose drapery, to use a gastronomic simile, was “done to rags.”

Upon a ricketty apology for a table were placed a tattered cloth, which once had been white, and two plates; and presently in came a large bowl of boiled rice.

“Where’s the capon?” said my patron to his man.

“Capon!” echoed the ghost of a servant; “the----”

“Has not the rascal sent it?” cried the master.

“Rascal!” repeated the man, apparently terrified.

“I knew he would not,” exclaimed my patron, with an air of exultation, for which I saw no cause. “Well, well, never mind, put down the ham and the wine; with those and the rice, I dare say, young gentleman, you will be able to make it out. I ought to apologise, but in fact it is all your own fault that there is not more; if I had fallen in with you earlier, we should have had a better dinner.”

I confess I was surprised, disappointed, and amused; but as matters stood, there was no use in complaining, and accordingly we fell to, neither of us wanting the best of all sauces--appetite.

I soon perceived that my promised patron had baited his trap with a fowl to catch a fool; but as we ate and drank, all care vanished, and, rogue as I suspected him to be, my long-tailed friend was a clever witty fellow, and, besides telling me a number of anecdotes, gave me some very good advice; amongst other things to be avoided, he cautioned me against numbers of people who in Venice lived only by duping the unwary. I thought this counsel came very ill _from him_. “Above all,” said he, “keep up your spirits, and recollect the Venetian proverb, ‘A hundred years of melancholy will not pay one farthing of debt.’”--_Reminiscences of Michael Kelly._

* * * * *

Poets often compare life to the sea; and the truth is, that, however bright the surface may be, they are both of them, whenever analysis is used, _salt water_.

APOLOGUES AND FABLES, IN PROSE AND VERSE, FROM THE GERMAN AND OTHER LANGUAGES.

(_Translated for the Irish Penny Journal._)

No. III.--THE STORY OF THE OLD WOLF.

I.

Sir Isegrim, the Wolf, was grown old. The years that had passed over his head, too, had brought with them changes hardly to be expected in a wolf at any season of life. All his fierceness and ferocity were gone; he was no longer the slayer of sheep and terror of shepherds: no; he had lost his teeth, and was now a philosopher. To superficial observers, perhaps, the alteration in his character might not have been very obvious; but he himself knew that he was no more what he had been--that his lupuline prowess had departed from him. He resolved accordingly on showing mankind what a reformation had overtaken him. “One of my brethren,” said he, “once assumed the garb of a lamb, but he was still a wolf at heart. I reverse the fable; I seem outwardly a wolf, but at heart I am a lamb. Appearances are deceptive; whatever prejudices may be excited against me by my exterior, with which I was born, and for which I am not accountable, I have that within which passeth show. I trust that I feel an exemplary horror for the blood-thirstiness of my juvenile instincts, and the savage revellings of my maturer years. I am determined, therefore, to accommodate my way of life in future to the usages of society--to march with the spirit of the age--to cut no more throats--to become in short quite civilized--and set an example which may have the effect of eventually bringing all the wolves of the forest into the same reputable position as my own.”

Full of these thoughts, and possibly some others, which he kept to himself, he set out upon a journey to the hut of the nearest shepherd, which he soon reached.

“Shepherd,” said he, “I have come to talk over a little matter with you, personal to myself. You have been long the object of my esteem; I entertain a special regard for you; but you requite my esteem and regard with suspicion and hatred. You think me a lawless and sanguinary robber. My friend, you labour under a deplorable prejudice. What have I done, at least for many years back, worse than others? The head and front of my offending is that I eat sheep. Suppose so: must not every animal eat some other animal? I have the misfortune to be subject, like all quadrupeds (as well as bipeds), to hunger. Only guarantee me from the attacks of hunger; and upon my honour, Shepherd, I will never even dream of pillaging your fold. Give me enough to eat, and you may turn your dogs loose, and sleep in security. Ah! Shepherd, believe me, you do not know what a gentle, meek, sleek-tempered animal I can become when I have got what I think enough.”

“When you have got what you think enough!” retorted the Shepherd, who had listened to this harangue with visible impatience; “ay, but when did you ever get what you thought enough? Did Avarice ever think it had got enough? No: you would cram your maw as the miser would his chest, and when both were gorged to repletion, the cry would still be, More! More! Go your way; you are getting into years; but I am even older than you; and your cajolery is wasted. Try somebody else, old Isegrim!”

II.

I see that I must, thought the Wolf; and prosecuting his journey farther, he came to the habitation of a second shepherd.

“Come, Shepherd!” he began stoutly, “I have a proposal to make to you. You know me, who I am, and how I live. You know that if I choose to exert my energies, I can dine and sup upon the heart’s blood of every sheep and lamb under your care. Very well: now mark me; if you bestow on me half a dozen sheep every twelvemonth, I pledge you my word that I will look for no more. And only think what a fine thing it will be for you to purchase the safety of your entire flock at the beggarly price of half a dozen sheep!”

“Half a dozen sheep!” cried the Shepherd, bursting into a derisive laugh; “why, that’s equal to a whole flock!”

“Well, well, I am reasonable,” said the Wolf; “give me five.”

“Surely you are joking,” said the Shepherd. “Why, if I were in the habit of sacrificing to Pan, I don’t think I should offer him more than five sheep the whole year round.”

“Four, then, my dear friend,” urged the Wolf, coaxingly; “you won’t think four too many?”

“Ah,” returned the Shepherd, with a sly glance from the corner of his eye, “don’t you wish you may get them?”

The selfish scoundrel, how he mocks me! thought the Wolf. “Will you promise me three, or even two?”

“Not even one--not the ghost of one!” replied the Shepherd, emphatically. “A pretty protector of my flock I should prove myself, truly, to surrender it piecemeal into the claws of my inveterate enemy! Take yourself off, my fine fellow, before you chance to vex me!”

III.

The third attempt generally creates or dissipates the charm, cogitated Isegrim. May it be so in this present instance! As he mentally uttered this ejaculation, he found himself in the presence of a third shepherd.

“Ah! my worthy, my excellent friend,” cried he, “I have been looking for you the whole day. I want to communicate a piece of news to you. You must know that I have been struggling desperately of late to regenerate my character. The enormity of my past career, haunted as it is with phantoms of blood and massacre, is for ever before my eyes, and humbles me--oh, dear! how much nobody can guess. I have grown very penitent, and very, very soft-hearted altogether, Shepherd.” Here Isegrim hung his head, overcome for a moment by his emotions. “Still, Shepherd, still--and this is what I want you to understand--I find I can make after all but slight progress by myself. I go on smack smooth enough for a while, and then my zeal flags. I require encouragement and sympathy, and the companionship of the good and the gentle, who could give me advice, and point out to me the path of rectitude continually. In short, you see, if--if you would be but generous enough to allow a sheep or two of enlightened principles to take a walk out with me occasionally, in the cool of the evening, along some sequestered valley, sacred to philosophic musings, I feel that it would prove of the greatest advantage to me, in a moral and intellectual point of view. But ah! I perceive you are laughing at me: may I ask whether there is any thing in my request that strikes you as ridiculous?”

“Permit me to answer your question by another,” said the Shepherd, with a sneer. “Pray, Master Wolf, how old are you?”

“Old enough to be fierce enough,” exclaimed Isegrim, with something of the ferocity of old days in his tone and eye; “let me tell you that, Master Shepherd.”

“And, like all the rest you have been telling me, it is a lie,” was the Shepherd’s response. “You would be fierce if you could; but, to your mortification, you are grown imbecile--you have the will, but want the power. Your mouth betrays you, if your tongue don’t, old deceiver! Yet, though you can bite no longer, you are still, I dare say, able to mumble; and on the whole, I shouldn’t fancy being a sheep’s head and shoulders in your way just now. What’s bred in the bone will never come out of the flesh, says the proverb; and I believe you are one of the last animals one could expect to falsify it. I’ll take right good care to keep you at crook’s length, my crafty neighbour; make yourself certain of that!”

IV.

The wrath of the Wolf was excessive, but after some time it began to subside. Mankind, it was evident, at least the pastoral portion of them, did not appreciate as they ought the dawn of intelligence among the lupuline race--the first faint efforts of the brute intellect to attain emancipation from ignorance and savageism. However, he would try again. Perseverance might conquer destiny. The Great, thought he, are not always thus unfortunate. Certainly it should not be so in my case. Ha! here we are at the door of another shepherd, and methinks a man of a thoughtful and benevolent aspect. Let us see how we shall get along with his new crookship.

So he began: “How is this, my dear friend?” he asked; “you seem rather depressed in spirits. Nothing unpleasant, I hope?--no domestic fracas, or thing of that sort--eh?”

“No,” returned the Shepherd, sighing, “but I have lost my faithful dog--an animal I have had for years--and I shall never be able to supply his place. I have been just thinking what a noble creature he was.”

“Gadso! that’s good news!” cried the Wolf--“I mean for myself--ay, and on second thoughts, let me add for you too, Shepherd. You have me exactly in the nick of time. It’s just the nicest thing that could have happened!”

“What do you mean?” cried the shepherd. “Nicest thing that could have happened! I don’t understand you.”

“I’ll enlighten you, my worthy,” cried Isegrim in high spirits. “What would you think? I have just had the bloodiest battle you can imagine with my brethren in the forest; they and I quarrelled upon a point of etiquette; so I tore a dozen and a half of them to pieces, and made awful examples of all the rest. The consequence is, that the whole of the brute world is up in arms against me; I can no longer herd with my kind; for safety sake I must make my dwelling among the children of men. Now, as you have lost your dog, what can you do better than hire me to fill his place? Depend upon it, I shall have such a constant eye to your sheep! And, as to expense, I shall cost you nothing; for as employment, and not emolument, is my object, I shall manage to live on a mere idea--in fact, I don’t care whether I eat or drink; I’ll feed upon air, if you only take me into your service!”

“Do you mean to say,” demanded the Shepherd, “that you would protect my flock against the invasions of your own brethren, the wolves?”

“Mean to say it! I’ll swear it,” cried Isegrim. “I’ll keep them at such a distance that no eye in the village shall see them; that their very existence shall become at length matter of tradition only; so that people shall think there is only one Wolf--that’s myself--in the world!”

“And pray,” asked the Shepherd, “while you protect my sheep against other wolves, who will protect them against you? Am I to suppose that though you hold the place of a dog, you can ever forget that you inherit the nature of a wolf? And if I cannot suppose so, should I not be a madman to employ you? What! introduce a thief into my house that he may forestall by his own individual industry the assaults of other thieves on my property? Upon my word, that’s not so bad! I wonder in what school you learned such precious logic, Master Isegrim?”

“You be hanged!” cried the Wolf in a rage, as he took his departure; “a pretty fellow you are to talk to me of schools, you who were never even at a hedge-school!”

V.

“What a bore it is to be superannuated!” soliloquized the Wolf. “I should get on famously, but for these unfurnished jaws of mine;” and he gnashed his gums together with as much apparent fervour as if he had got a mouthful of collops between them. “However, I must cut my coat according to my cloth. ‘’Tis not in mortals to command success.’” With which quotation from an English poet, Sir Isegrim made a halt before the cottage of a fifth shepherd.

“Good morrow, Corydon,” was his courteous greeting.

The accosted party cast his eyes upon Isegrim, but made no reply.

“Do you know me, Shepherd?” asked the Wolf.

“Perhaps not you, as an individual,” said the Shepherd, “but at least I know the like of you.”

“I should think not, though,” suggested Isegrim. “I should think you cannot. I should think you never saw the like of _me_, Corydon.”

“Indeed!” cried Corydon, opening his eyes; “and why not, pray?”

“Because, Corydon,” answered Isegrim, “I am a singular sort of wolf altogether--marvellous, unique, like to myself alone. I am one of those rare specimens of brute intellectuality that visit the earth once perhaps in three thousand years. My sensibilities, physical and moral, are of a most exquisite order. To give you an illustration--I never could bear to kill a sheep; the sight of the blood would be too much for my nerves; and hence, if I ever partake of animal food, it can only be where life has been for some time extinct in the natural way. I wait until a sheep expires at a venerable old age, and then I cook him in a civilized manner. But why do I mention all this to you? I’ll tell you frankly, my admirable friend. My refined susceptibilities have totally disqualified me for living in the forest, and I want a home under your hospitable roof. I know that after what I have said you cannot refuse me one, for even you yourself eat dead sheep; and I protest most solemnly that I will dine at your table.”

“And I protest most solemnly that you shall do no such thing,” returned the Shepherd. “You eat dead sheep, do you? Let me tell you that a wolf whose appetite is partial to dead sheep, may be now and then persuaded by hunger to mistake sick sheep for dead, and healthy sheep for sick. Trot off with your susceptibilities elsewhere, if you please. There’s a hatchet in the next room.”

VI.

Have I left a single stone unturned to carry my point? demanded the Wolf of himself. Yes, there is a chance for me yet. I have it! And full of hope he came to the cottage of the sixth shepherd.

“Look at me, Shepherd!” he cried. “Am I not a splendid quadruped for my years? What’s your opinion of my skin?”

“Very handsome and glossy indeed,” said the Shepherd. “You don’t seem to have been much worried by the dogs.”

“No, Shepherd, no,” replied Isegrim, “I have not been much worried by dogs, but I have been and am worried, awfully worried, Shepherd, by hunger. Now, the case being so, as you admire my skin, you and I shall strike a bargain. I am grown old, and cannot live many days longer: feed me then to death, cram me to the gullet, Shepherd, and I’ll bequeath you my beautiful skin!”

“Upon my word!” exclaimed the Shepherd. “You come to the person of all on earth most interested in compassing your death, and you demand of him the means to enable you to live. How modest of you! No, no, my good fellow, your skin would cost me in the end seven times its worth. If you really wish to make me a present of it, give it to me now. Here’s a knife, and I’ll warrant you I’ll disembarrass you of it before you can say Trapstick.”

But the Wolf had already scampered off.

VII.

“Oh, the bloody-minded wretches!” he exclaimed, “give them fair words or foul, their sole retort to you is still, the hatchet! the cleaver! the tomahawk! Shall I endure this treatment? Never! I’ll return on my trail this moment, and be revenged on the whole of the iniquitous generation.”

So saying, he furiously dashed back the way he had come, rushed into the shepherds’ huts, sprang upon and tore the eyes out of several of their children, and was only finally subdued and killed after a hard struggle, during which he managed to inflict a number of rather ugly wounds upon his captors.

It was then that a venerable shepherd of five score years and ten, the patriarch of the village, spoke to them as follows:--“How much better, my friends, would it have been for us if we had acceded at first to the terms proposed by this reckless destroyer! Whether he was sincere or not, we could have easily established so vigilant a system of discipline with respect to him that he should not have had it in his power to injure us. Now, too late, we may deplore the evil that we cannot remedy. Ah, believe me, my friends, it is an unwise policy to drive the vicious to desperation: the hand of the outcast from society becomes at last armed against all mankind; he ceases after a season to distinguish between friends and enemies. Few, perhaps none, are so bad as to be utterly irreclaimable; and he who discourages the first voluntary efforts of the guilty towards reforming themselves, on the pretence that they are hypocritical, arrogates to himself that discrimination into motives which belongs alone to the Supreme Judge of all hearts, and becomes in a degree responsible for the ruinous consequences that are almost certain to result from his conduct.”

M.

TO KATHARINE.

BY J. U. U.

Believe not I forget thee: not for one Dark moment, have I been thus self-divided From that deep consciousness which is for ever The light of all my thoughts; it were to lose My own existence--a chill blank in life: For all is colourless when love deserts The heart--sole centre of all joy and woe; Whose light or gloom all nature wears. Believe My breast still weary till it turns to thee, The load-star of its constant faith--unchanged By distance or by time. For thee it cares: For thee its joys are treasured up untasted, As scattered sweets which the home-loving bee Hoards for its mossy dwelling far away.

THE JERUSALEM ARTICHOKE.

The Jerusalem artichoke affords a plentiful supply of winter food for sheep and cattle, and is highly serviceable in situations where, owing to the unfitness of the soil, or a deficiency of manure, turnips, carrots, mangold wortzel, or potatoes, can be cultivated only to a small extent. Mr Morewood, in the “History of Inebriating Liquors,” p. 399, thus treats of the advantages attending its cultivation:--“In some parts of the north of France the root of the Jerusalem artichoke (_Helianthus tuberosus_) has been introduced for the purpose of distillation. The wash from this vegetable is found to yield a very pure strong spirit, which resembles that obtained from the grape more than any substitute that has hitherto been tried. As the root grows readily in Great Britain, and might be cultivated abundantly, it would be well to try the experiment here, as we have no medium spirit between genuine French brandy and the fiery produce of grain sold under the denominations of gin and whisky. In Ireland the cultivation of this plant would be attended with great advantage, since it thrives well in a boggy soil; and in a country like it, where there are so many unreclaimed and waste lands, its culture would be a profitable speculation, for while the roots would afford a fine material for distillation, the tops would yield more fodder than the same space of ground, if sown with ordinary grain.”

In Scotland this plant is only to be found in the gardens, the agriculturists of that country being, it would seem, as yet unacquainted with its value as a fodder. According to Mr Tighe, in the “Survey of Kilkenny,” p. 342, it has been partially introduced into that county. He says, “The Jerusalem artichoke has been tried as a food for sheep by the Rev. Dr Butler; he found them very fond of the roots, which agreed well with them; the quantity produced in ground without manure was calculated to be at the rate of one hundred barrels per acre (a barrel is five bushels or twenty stones). Being very hardy plants, they will thrive in a poor soil without any manure, and are extremely productive: pigs may be fed with them as well as sheep; and as horses are said to be fond of the tops, it is surprising that their use in agriculture has not been more general. One advantage attends their cultivation--they are not liable to be stolen like turnips, cabbage, young rape, and similar plants; they are not with more difficulty extirpated from ground than potatoes, though this had been objected to them, and will perish soon when the field is laid down with grass.”

EARLY STRUGGLES OF MEN OF GENIUS.

ANECDOTE OF ROOKE, THE COMPOSER.

We do not know if it be stated in the Life of Sir Walter Scott that several years previous to his death he had proposed to write a work on the early difficulties to which the most illustrious men of genius in the British islands had been subjected, but it is within our own knowledge that during his visit to Ireland he avowed this intention, and for this purpose collected facts relative to our own most distinguished countrymen, some of which were obtained from ourselves. Such a work, as that great man would have written it, would be of inestimable value; and it is deeply to be lamented that the difficulties in which his own latter years were involved should have prevented him from undertaking it. We have been reminded of this interesting fact by the following anecdote, which has been communicated to us by a friend, illustrative of the early difficulties with which one of our most eminent countrymen had to contend, and from which he succeeded in extricating himself, no less by persevering energy of mind, independence of spirit, and propriety of conduct, than by the possession and cultivation of talents of the highest order--we allude to the author of the opera of “Amilie, or the Love Token.” We give the anecdote in our friend’s own words:--

“William M. Rooke, the composer of the delightful music of ‘Amilie,’ an opera which has spread his musical fame far and wide, had in early life to contend for years, in his native city, Dublin, against difficulties which would have broken the spirit of any one, save a man endowed with the strongest mental powers: indeed, many men of great talents have sunk under trials which the genius and perseverance of Rooke have at length overcome, placing him at his present height of celebrity as a British composer. None can so truly estimate his merits as those who are aware of the hard fortune of his early days, and what he had to struggle against previous to his visiting London in 1821.