Part 3

The delighted Turk very politely answered this remarkable _billet doux_, assuring the fair writer that he was at her service, and that he would implicitly follow her directions as to the taking of Abydos. As soon as he had dismissed Annis, he flew with Sophronia's letter to the general, who, upon reading it, expressed great astonishment; he determined to raise the siege the next morning, and resolved to rely fully on the beautiful traitress for the future success of his enterprise. The next day came, and the general raised the siege and departed. The Christians were rejoiced to see it, and in the evening made merry and drunk wine. The governor's daughter took advantage of the garrison at this unguarded moment; and fearing to trust again to the sincerity of her maid, resolved to proceed herself to Abdurachman's tent. Annis led the way. The night was serene, and the light of the moon showed the stately castle of Abydos, dark and majestic. No noise was heard, save the heavy and uniform step of the sentinels, whose bright arms, as they caught the moon's rays, sparkled against the gloomy looking building. Little did the inmates, now as tranquil as the night, dream of being surprised by an enemy; and little did the brave governor imagine that his own beloved daughter, at this moment, was treacherously hastening to a merciless foe, with the intent to conduct him to Abydos! Sophronia reached her lover's tent weary and faint, for she had walked with great haste. She sank into the captain's arms, and then, almost inaudibly, informed him that not a moment was to be lost, and that he must follow her immediately to the castle.

He obeyed, and having formed a litter for the lady, she was borne on the shoulders of four stout Turks. When they arrived at the postern gate, Sophronia told the captain that he, with his men, must first enter the castle, and then kill the sentinels and wardens, after which he would be enabled to give admittance to all his friends. The Turks strictly obeyed the lady, who before the affair began hastened with Annis to her apartment in order to await the issue of her plot. The Turks entered the castle by hundreds, killing all they met, and were soon masters of the place. Meanwhile, Sophronia and Annis, both dreadfully agitated, heard from their chamber the dying groans of the poor Christians. Sometimes the clashing of swords was distinguished, as if a number of persons were engaged in combat; sometimes the loud lamentations of women intervened; and sometimes the voices of the conquerors were alone heard in exultation. At length the door of Sophronia's room burst open, and Abdurachman rushed in to seize her, while Annis, nearly dead with terror, calmly submitted to the grasp of a common soldier who accompanied the captain.

The dreadful scene was acted and over; the Turks were possessors of the famed castle of Abydos, and Sophronia's father, the governor, was hanged. Alas! deluded Sophronia! The faithless Abdurachman, whom she supposed to have seen in a dream, regarded her not; even lots were cast for her, and she fell to the share of one whom she did not know. The beautiful Sophronia took poison and expired.

G.W.N.

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SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

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THE LIBERTINE'S CONFESSION.

_In Imitation of the Writers of the Sixteenth Century._

I'm sad and sore afraid, That fickle, and forsworn, I've sported life away, And now am left forlorn.

Poor fool! I dreamt the years Of youth would never fly, And pleasure's brimming bowl Methought could ne'er run dry.

That woman's bounteous love Should e'er wax cold for me! It seem'd that she must first A woman cease to be.

Her fondest smiles I thought My rights by charter were; Her sighs, her tears, forsooth,-- Whilst I--was free as air.

I've knelt at many a shrine, Of wit and beauty too; I've lisp'd light vows to all, And sworn that all were true.

My pastime was to gain Their young and grateful love, Then break the heart I won, And straight to others rove.

Ah! wild wit, now at last Thy vagrancies are o'er; The ear and gazing eye That you enthrall'd before.

No longer hear or see; Whilst those you now would woo, The time-worn truant slight, Nor dream of love with you.

_New Monthly Magazine._

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Dublin is a great city. Dublin, as the late Lord L----th used to say, is "one of the tay-drinkenest, say-bathinest, car-drivinest places in the world; it flogs for _divarsion._"

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THE TOYMAN IS ABROAD.

(_Concluded from page 46._)

There is a point at which the inconvenience of superfluities so far exceeds their utility, that luxury becomes converted into a perfect bore. What, for instance, but an annoyance, would be the most splendid feast, to a man whose stomach is already overladen with food? Human ingenuity may effect much; and the Romans, by means of emetics, met this emergency with considerable skill; but on a more enlarged experience of general history, it must be conceded, that it is quite impossible to add one more superfluous meal to those already established by general usage. So also in matters of dress, ladies' hats must not be larger than the actual doorways of the country will admit--not at least until time is allowed for a corresponding increase in our architectural proportions. With respect to personal ornaments also, ear-rings must not be so weighty as to tear the lobes of the ears; nor should a bracelet prevent, by its size, the motions of the arm. "Barbaric pomp and gold" is a fine thing; but a medallion, as heavy and as cumbrous as a shield, appended to a lady's bosom, would be any thing but a luxury. So, in the other extreme, a watch should not be so small as to render the dial-plate illegible; nor should a shoe be so tight as to lame its wearer for life. Beauty, it has been said, should learn to suffer; and there are, I am aware, resources in vanity, that will reconcile man, and woman too, to martyrdom; but these resources should not be exhausted wantonly; and in pleasure, as in economy, there is no benefit in lighting the candle at both ends. The true philosopher extracts the greatest good out of every thing; and fools only, as Horace has it, run into one vice in trying to avoid another. Let not the reader, from these remarks, suppose that their author is a morose censurer of the times; or that the least sneer is intended against that idol of all orthodoxy "things as they are." As a general proposition, nothing can be more true, than that whatever is established, even in the world of fashion, is, for the time being, wisest, discreetest, best; and, woe betide the man that flies too directly in its face.

There is, however, one point upon which I own myself a little sore; and in which, I do think, superfluities are carried to a somewhat vicious excess. The point to which I allude, and I beg the patience of the reader, is the vast increase of superfluities, which of late years have become primary necessaries in the appointment of a well-furnished house. Here, indeed, is a revolution; a revolution more formidable than the French and the American emancipation put together. We all remember the time when one tea-table, two or three card-tables, a pier glass, a small detachment of chairs, with two armed corporals to command them, on either side the fire-place, with a square piece of carpet in the centre of the floor, made a very decent display in the drawing, or (as it was then preposterously called) the dining-room. As yet, rugs for the hearth were not; and twice a day did Betty go upon her knees to scour the marble and uncovered slab. In the bedrooms of those days, a narrow slip of carpet round the bed was the maximum of woollen integument allowed for protecting the feet of the midnight wanderer from his couch; and, in the staircases of the fairest mansions, a like slip meandered down the centre of the flight of steps. At that time, curtains rose and fell in a line parallel to the horizon, after the simple plan of the green siparium of our theatres; and, being strictly confined to the windows, they never dreamed of displaying themselves in front of a door. No golden serpents then twisted their voluminous folds across the entire breadth of the room; nor did richly-carved cods' heads and shoulders, under the denomination of dolphins, or glittering spread eagles, with a brass ring in their mouths, support fenestral draperies, which rival the display of a Waterloo-house calico-vender. Thus far, I admit, the change is an improvement. Nay, I could away with ladders to go to bed withal, though many a time and oft they have broken my shins. I would not either object to sofas and ottomans, in any reasonable proportion; but protest I must, and in the strongest terms too, against such a multiplication and variety of easy chairs, as effectually exclude the possibility of easy sitting; and against the overweening increase of spider-tables, that interferes with rectilinear progression. An harp mounted on a sounding-board, which is a stumbling-block to the feet of the short-sighted, is, I concede, an absolute necessity; and a piano-forte, like a coffin, should occupy the centre even of the smallest given drawing-room--"the court awards it, and the law doth give it,"--but why multiply footstools, till there is no taking a single step in safety? An Indian cabinet also, or a buhl armoire, are, either, or both of them, very fit and becoming; but it cannot be right to make a broker's shop of your best apartment. An ink-stand, as large as a show twelfth-cake, is just and lawful; ditto, an ornamental escrutoire; and a _nécessaire_ for the work-table is, if there be meaning in language, perfectly necessary. These, with an adequate contingent of musical snuff-boxes, _or molu_ clocks, China figures, alabaster vases and flower-pots, together with a discreet superfluity of cut-paper nondescripts, albums, screens, toys, prints, caricatures, duodecimo classics, new novels and souvenirs, to cut a dash, and litter the tables, must be allowed to the taste and refinement of the times. But surely some space should be left for depositing a coffee-cup, or laying down a useful volume, when the hand may require to be relieved from its weight, or when it is proper to take a pinch of snuff, or agreeable to wipe one's forehead. Josses, beakers, and Sevres' vases have unquestionably the _entrée_ into a genteel apartment; but they are not entitled to a monopoly of the _locale_; nor are Roman antiquities, or statues even by Canova, justifiable in usurping the elbow-room of living men and women. Most unfortunately for myself, I have a very small house, and a wife of the most enlarged taste; and the disproportion between these blessings is so great, that I cannot move without the risk of a heavy pecuniary loss by breakage, and a heavier personal affliction in perpetual imputations of awkwardness. Then, again, it is no easy matter to put on a smiling and indifferent countenance, whenever a friend, accustomed to some latitude of motion, runs, as is often the case, his devastating chair against a high-priced work of art, or overturns a table laden with an "infinite thing" in costly _bijouterie_. I have long made it a rule to exclude from my visiting-list, or at least not to let up stairs, ladies who pay their morning calls with a retinue of children: but the thing is not always possible; and one urchin with his whip will destroy more in half an hour, than the worth of a month's average domestic expenditure. Oh! how I hate the little fidgeting, fingering, dislocating imps! A bull in a china-shop is innocuous to the most orderly and amenable of them. Why did Providence make children? and why does not some wise Draconic law banish them for ever to the nursery?

The general merit of nick-nacks is unquestioned. Ornaments, I admit, are ornamental; and works of art afford intellectual amusement of the highest order. But then perfection is their only merit; and a crack or a flaw destroys all the pleasure of a sensible beholder. Yet I have not a statue that is not a torso, nor a Chelsea china shepherdess with her full complement of fingers. I have not a vase with both its handles, a snuff-box that performs its waltz correctly, nor a volume of prints that is not dogs-eared, stained, and ink-spotted. These are serious evils; but they are the least that flow from a neglect of the maxim which stands at the head of my paper. Perpend it well, reader; and bear ever in mind that, in our desires, as in our corporeal structure, it is not given to man to add a cubit to his stature. I am very tired; so "dismiss me--enough." _New Monthly Magazine._

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NOTES OF A READER.

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THE QUARTERLY REVIEW.

No. 81, of this truly excellent work had not reached us in time for the close reading which it demands, and our "Notes" from it at present are consequently few. The first in the number is a powerful paper on Dr. Southey's _Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society_--"a beautiful book," says the reviewer, "full of wisdom and devotion--of poetry and feeling; conceived altogether in the spirit of other times, such as the wise men of our own day may scoff at, but such as Evelyn, or Isaak Walton, or Herbert would have delighted to honour." The work is in general too polemical and political for our pages; but we may hereafter be tempted to carve out a few pastoral pictures of the delightful country round Keswick, where Dr. Southey resides. The present Review contains but few extracts to our purpose, and is rather a paper on the spirit of the _Colloquies_, than analytical of their merits. We take, for example, the following admirable passage on the progress of religious indifference; in which we break off somewhat hastily, premising that the reader will be induced to turn to the Review itself for the remainder of the article:--

There was a time, since the worship of images, (and happy would it have been if the religious habits of the country had thenceforth stood fixed,) when appropriate texts adorned the walls of the dwelling-rooms, and children received at night a father's blessing;--and "let us worship God" was said with solemn air, by the head of the household; and churches were resorted to daily; and "the parson in journey" gave notice for prayers in the hall of the inn--"for prayers and provender," quoth he, "hinder no man;" and the cheerful angler, as he sat under the willow-tree, watching his quill, trolled out a Christian catch. "Here we may sit and pray, before death stops our breath;" and the merchant (like the excellent Sutton, of the Charter House) thought how he could make his merchandize subservient to the good of his fellow-citizens and the glory of his God, and accordingly endowed some charitable, and learned, and religious foundation, worthy of the munificence of a crowned head; and the grave historian (Lord Clarendon himself does so) chose a text in his Bible as a motto for his chapter on politics; and religion, in short, reached unto every place, and, like Elisha stretched on the dead child, (to use one of Jeremy Taylor's characteristic illustrations), gave life and animation to every part of the body politic. But years rolled on; and the original impulse given at the Reformation, and augmented at the Rebellion, to undervalue all outward forms, has silently continued to prevail, till, with the form of godliness, (much of it, up doubt, objectionable, but much of it wholesome), the power in a considerable degree expired too.

Accordingly, our churches are now closed in the week-days, for we are too busy to repair to them; our politicians crying out, with Pharaoh, "Ye are idle, ye are idle; therefore would ye go and do sacrifice to the Lord." Our cathedrals, it is true, are still open; but where are the worshippers? Instead of entering in, the citizen avails himself of the excellent clock which is usually attached to them, sets his watch, and hastens upon 'Change, where the congregation is numerous and punctual, and where the theological speculations are apt to run in Shylock's vein pretty exclusively. If a church will answer, then, indeed, a joint-stock company springs up; and a church is raised with as much alacrity, and upon the same principles, as a play-house. The day when the people brought their gifts is gone by. The "_solid temples_," that heretofore were built as if not to be dissolved till doomsday, have been succeeded by thin emaciated structures, bloated out by coats of flatulent plaster, and supported upon cast-metal pegs, which the courtesy of the times calls pillars of the church. The painted windows, that admitted a dim religious light, have given place to the cheap house-pane and dapper green curtain. The front, with its florid reliefs and capacious crater, has dwindled into a miserable basin.

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AN ARTIST'S FAME.

_Painter._ Let none call happy one whose art's deep source They know not--or what thorny paths he trode To reach its dazzling goal! _Marquis._ What dost thou mean? _Painter._ I'll seek a simile--Some gorgeous cloud Oft towers in wondrous majesty before ye-- It bathes its bosom in pure ether's flood, Evening twines crowns of roses for its head, And for its mantle weaves a fringe of gold; Ye gaze on it admiring and enchanted-- Yet know not whence its airy structure rose! If it breathe incense from some holy altar, Or earth-born vapours from the teeming soil, When rain from Heav'n descends--if fiery breath Of battle, or the darkly rolling smoke Of conflagration, thus its giant towers Pile on the sky--ye care not, but enjoy Its form and glory,--Thus it is with art! Whether 'twere born amid the sunny depths Of a glad heart entranced in mutual love-- Or, likelier far, alas! the sorrowing child Of restless anguish, and baptized in tears-- Or wrung from Genius even amid the throes Of worse than death--Ye gaze and ye admire, Nor pause to ask what it hath cost the heart That gave it being!

_Blackwood's Magazine._

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Romance is ever readier To make unbidden sacrifice, than rear The sober edifice of mutual bliss! Ibid.

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TRUE PATRIOTISM.

Promote religion--protect public morals--repress vice and infidelity--keep the different classes of the community in strict subordination to each other--and cherish the principles, feelings, and habits, which give stability, beauty, and happiness to society.

Descend from the clouds of political economy, and travel in safety on your mother earth; cast away the blinding spectacles of the philosophers, and use the eyes you have received from nature. Practise the vulgar principles, that it is erroneous to ruin immense good markets, to gain petty bad ones--that you cannot carry on losing trade--that you cannot live without profit--and that you cannot eat without income. And pule no more about individual economy, but eat, and drink, and enjoy yourselves, like your fathers. What! in these days of free trade, to tell the hypochondriacal Englishman that the foaming tankard, the honest bottle of port, and the savoury sirloin, must be prohibited articles! You surely wish us to hang and drown ourselves by wholesale.--Ibid.

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THE FORGET-ME-NOT.

The following account of the origin of the name "Forget-me-not," is extracted from Mill's _History of Chivalry_, and was communicated to that work by Dr. A.T. Thomson:--"Two lovers were loitering on the margin of a lake on a fine summer's evening, when the maiden espied some of the flowers of Myosòtis growing on the water, close to the bank of an island, at some distance from the shore. She expressed a desire to possess them, when the knight, in the true spirit of chivalry, plunged into the water, and swimming to the spot, cropped the wished for plant, but his strength was unable to fulfill the object of his achievement, and feeling that he could not regain the shore, although very near it, he threw the flowers upon the bank, and casting a last affectionate look upon his lady-love, he cried 'Forget me not!' and was buried in the waters."--_Gardener's Magazine._

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HOME.

_Leonhard._ See here what spacious halls: how all around Us breathes magnificence!

_Spinarosa._ A princely pile! But ah! how nobler far its daring site! It rears its tow'rs amid these rocks and glaciers, As if proud man were in his might resolved To add _his_ rock to those that spurn the vale.

_Leon._ All here is beautiful! but 'tis not home! 'Tis true I was a child scarce eight years old When led by Pietro into Italy-- Yet are my home's green lineaments as fresh As when first painted on my infant soul; This castle bears them not.--My home lay hid In the deep bosom of gigantic oaks, That o'er its roof their guardian shadows flung. Nor towers, nor gates, nor pinnacles, were there; With lowly thatch and humble wicket graced, Smiling, yet solitary, did it stand.

_Blackwood's Magazine_.

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IRISH SONGS.

It is impossible to conceive any trash more despicable than the slang songs which are current amongst the common people in Ireland; and this is the more to be lamented, as the extreme susceptibility of the people makes them liable to be easily moved to either good or evil by their songs. Even the native Irish songs, as we are informed in Miss Brooke's _Reliques of Irish Poetry_, are sadly interpolated with nonsensical passages, which have been introduced to supply the place of lost or forgotten lines; and of humorous lyrical poetry, she says there was none in the language worth translating. Moore has given to the beautiful airs of Ireland beautiful words; but Moore is a poet for ladies and gentlemen, not for mankind. It may be, that there are not materials in Ireland, for a kindred spirit to that of Burns to work upon; but the fact is but too true, that the _poor_ Irishman has no song of even decent ability, to cheer his hours of merriment, or soothe the period of his sadness. Honour and undying praise be upon the memory of Burns, who has left to us those songs which, like the breath of nature, from whose fresh inspiration they were caught, are alike refreshing to the monarch and the clown!--Ibid.

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A REAL MIRACLE.

The _fable_ of Dr. Southey's _Pilgrim of Compostella_, is as follows:--