VISITS AND SKETCHES
AT HOME AND ABROAD.

VOL. III.

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VISITS AND SKETCHES
AT HOME AND ABROAD
WITH
TALES AND MISCELLANIES NOW FIRST COLLECTED.

BY MRS. JAMESON,
AUTHOR OF THE "CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMEN," "LIVES OF CELEBRATED FEMALE SOVEREIGNS," &c.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. III.

SECOND EDITION.

LONDON
SAUNDERS AND OTLEY, CONDUIT STREET.
1835.

LONDON:
IBOTSON AND PALMER, PRINTERS, SAVOY STREET, STRAND.

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CONTENTS OF VOL. III.

VOL. III.

Page 42, line 5, for the full stop read a comma, and for she had read having.

Page 59,—4, for cannot read could not.

MRS. SIDDONS.

[The following little sketch was written a few days after the death of Mrs. Siddons, and was called forth by certain paragraphs which appeared in the daily papers. A misapprehension of the real character of this remarkable woman, which I know to exist in the minds of many who admired and venerated her talents, has induced me to enlarge the first very slight sketch, into a more finished but still inadequate portrait. I have spared no pains to verify the truth of my own conception by testimony of every kind that was attainable. I have penned every word as if I had been in that great final court where the thoughts of all hearts are manifested; and those who best knew the individual I have attempted to delineate bear witness to the fidelity of the portrait, as far as it goes. I must be permitted to add, that in this and the succeeding sketch I have not only been inspired by the wish to do justice to individual virtue and talent,—I wished to impress and illustrate that important truth, that a gifted woman may pursue a public vocation, yet preserve the purity and maintain the dignity of her sex—that there is no prejudice which will not shrink away before moral energy, and no profession which may not be made compatible with the respect due to us as women, the cultivation of every feminine virtue, and the practice of every private duty. I might here multiply examples and exceptions, and discuss causes and results; but it is a consideration I reserve for another opportunity.]

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MRS. SIDDONS

"Implora pace!"—She, who upon earth ruled the souls and senses of men, as the moon rules the surge of waters; the acknowledged and liege empress of all the realms of illusion; the crowned queen; the throned muse; the sceptred shadow of departed genius, majesty, and beauty,—supplicates—Peace!

What unhallowed work has been going forward in some of the daily papers since this illustrious creature has been laid in her quiet unostentatious grave! ay, even before her poor remains were cold! What pains have been taken to cater trifling scandal for the blind, heartless, gossip-loving vulgar! and to throw round the memory of a woman, whose private life was as irreproachable as her public career was glorious, some ridiculous or unamiable association which should tend to unsphere her from her throne in our imagination, and degrade from her towering pride of place, the heroine of Shakspeare, and the Muse of Tragedy!

That stupid malignity which revels in the martyrdom of fame—which rejoices when, by some approximation of the mean and ludicrous with the beautiful and sublime, it can for a moment bring down the rainbow-like glory in which the fancy invests genius, to the drab-coloured level of mediocrity—is always hateful and contemptible; but in the present case it is something worse; it has a peculiar degree of cowardly injustice. If some elegant biographer inform us that the same hand which painted the infant Hercules, or Ugolino, or Mrs. Sheridan, half seraph and half saint—could clutch a guinea with satisfaction, or drive a bargain with a footman; if some discreet friend, from the mere love of truth, no doubt, reveal to us the puerile, lamentable frailties of that bright spirit which poured itself forth in torrents of song and passion: what then? 'tis pitiful, certainly, wondrous pitiful; but there is no great harm done,—no irremediable injury inflicted; for there stand their works: the poet's immortal page, the painter's breathing canvass witness for them. "Death hath had no power yet upon their beauty"—over them scandal cannot draw her cold slimy finger;—on them calumny cannot breathe her mildew; nor envy wither them with a blast from hell. There they stand for ever to confute injustice, to rectify error, to defy malice; to silence, and long outlive the sneer, the lie, the jest, the reproach. But she—who was of painters the model, the wonder, the despair;—she, who realised in her own presence and person the poet's divinest dreams and noblest creations;—she, who has enriched our language with a new epithet, and made the word Siddonian synonymous with all we can imagine of feminine grace and grandeur: she has left nothing behind her, but the memory of a great name: she has bequeathed it to our reverence, our gratitude, our charity, and our sympathy; and if it is not to be sacred, I know not what is—or ever will be.

Mrs. Siddons, as an artist, presented a singular example of the union of all the faculties, mental and physical, which constitute excellence in her art, directed to the end for which they seemed created. In any other situation or profession, some one or other of her splendid gifts would have been misplaced or dormant. It was her especial good fortune, and not less that of the time in which she lived, that this wonderful combination of mental powers and external graces, was fully and completely developed by the circumstances in which she was placed.[ 1] "With the most commanding beauty of face and form, and varied grace of action; with the most noble combination of features, and extensive capability of expression in each of them; with an unequalled genius for her art, the utmost patience in study, and the strongest ardour of feeling; there was not a passion which she could not delineate; not the nicest shade, not the most delicate modification of passion, which she could not seize with philosophical accuracy, and render with such immediate force of nature and truth, as well as precision, that what was the result of profound study and unwearied practice, appeared like sudden inspiration. There was not a height of grandeur to which she could not soar, nor a darkness of misery to which she could not descend; not a chord of feeling, from the sternest to the most delicate, which she could not cause to vibrate at her will. She had reached that point of perfection in art, where it ceases to be art, and becomes a second nature. She had studied most profoundly the powers and capabilities of language; so that the most critical sagacity could not have suggested a delicacy of emphasis, by which the meaning of the author might be more distinctly conveyed, or a shade of intonation by which the sentiment could be more fully, or more faithfully expressed. While other performers of the past or present time, have made approaches to excellence, or attained it now and then, Mrs. Siddons alone was pronounced faultless; and, in her, the last generation witnessed what we shall not see in ours;—no, nor our children after us;—that amazing union of splendid intellectual powers, with unequalled charms of person, which, in the tragic department of her art, realized the idea of perfection."

Such was the magnificent portrait drawn of Mrs. Siddons twenty years ago; and it will be admitted by those who remember her, and must be believed by those who do not, that in this case, eulogy could not wander into exaggeration, nor enthusiasm be exalted beyond the bounds of truth.

I have heard people most unreasonably surprised or displeased, because this exceeding dignity of demeanour was not confined to the stage, but was carried into private life. Had it been merely conventional,—a thing put on and put off,—it might have been so; but the grandeur of her mind, and the light of her glorious beauty, were not as a diadem and robe for state occasions only; her's was not only dignity of manner and person, it was moral and innate, and, I may add, hereditary. Mrs. Siddons, with all her graces of form and feature, her magnificence of deportment, her deep-toned, measured voice, and impressive enunciation, was in reality a softened reflection of her more stern, stately, majestic mother, whose genuine loftiness of spirit and of bearing, whose rare beauty, and imperious despotism of character, have often been described to me as absolutely awful,—even her children trembled in her presence.

"All the Kembles," said Sir Thomas Lawrence, "have historical faces;" and for several generations their minds seem to have been cast in a poetical mould. It has, however, been disputed, whether Mrs. Siddons possessed genius. Whether genius be exclusively defined as the creative and inventive faculty of the soul, or taken, in its usual acceptation, as "a mind of large general faculties, accidentally determined to some particular direction," I think she did possess it in both senses. The grand characteristic of her mind was power, but it was power of a very peculiar kind: it was slowly roused—slowly developed—not easily moved; her perceptions were not rapid, nor her sensations quick; she required time for every thing,—time to think, time to comprehend, time to speak. There was nothing superficial about her; no vivacity of manner; to petty gossip she would not descend, and evil-speaking she abhorred; she cared not to shine in general conversation. Like some majestic "Argosie," bearing freight of precious metal, she was a-ground and cumbrous and motionless among the shallows of common life; but set her upon the deep waters of poetry and passion—there was her element—there was her reign. Ask her an opinion, she could not give it you till she had looked on the subject, and considered it on every side,—then you might trust to it without appeal. Her powers, though not easily put in motion, were directed by an incredible energy; her mind, when called to action, seemed to rear itself up like a great wave of the sea, and roll forwards with an irresistible force. This prodigious intellectual power was one of her chief characteristics. Another was truth, which in the human mind is generally allied with power. It is, I think, a mistaken idea, that habits of impersonation on the stage tend to impair the sincerity or the individuality of a character. If any injury is done in this way, it is by the continual and strong excitement of the vanity, the dependence on applause, which in time may certainly corrode away the integrity of the manner, if not of the mind. It is difficult for an admired actress not to be vain, and difficult for a very vain person to be quite unaffected, on or off the stage; it is, however, certain that some of the truest, most natural persons I ever met with in my life, were actresses. In the character of Mrs. Siddons, truth, and a reverence for truth, were commensurate with her vast power: Heaven is not farther removed from earth than she was from falsehood. Allied to this conscientious turn was her love of order. She was extremely punctual in all her arrangements; methodical and exact in every thing she did; circumstantial and accurate in all she said. In little and in great things, in the very texture and constitution of her mind, she was integrity itself: "It was," (said one of her most intimate friends,) "a mind far above the average standard, not only in ability, but in moral and religious qualities; that these should have exhausted themselves in the world of fiction, may be regretted in reference to her individual happiness, but she certainly exercised, during her reign, a most powerful moral influence:—she excited the nobler feelings and higher faculties of every mind which came in contact with her own. I speak with the deepest sense of personal obligation: it was at a very early age that she repeated to me, in a manner and tone which left an indelible impression,

'Sincerity,

Thou first of virtues! let no mortal leave

Thy onward path,' &c.

and I never knew her to omit an opportunity of making her fine genius minister to piety and virtue." Now what are the bravos of a whole theatre,

"When all the thunder of the pit ascends,"

compared to such praise as this?

"Her mind" (again I am enabled to give the very words of one who knew her well) "was a perfect mirror of the sublime and beautiful; like a lake that reflected only the heavens above, or the summits of the mountains around, nothing below a certain level could appear in it. The ideal was her vital air. She breathed with difficulty in the atmosphere of this 'working-day world,' and withdrew from it as much as possible. Hence her moral principles were seldom brought to bear upon the actual and ordinary concerns of life. She was rather the associate of 'the mighty dead,' than the fellow-creature of the living. To the latter she was known chiefly through others, and often through those who were incapable of reflecting her qualities faithfully, though impressed with the utmost veneration for her genius. In their very anxiety for what they considered her interests, (and of her worldly interests she took no charge,) they would in her name authorize prudential arrangements, which gave rise to the suspicion of covetousness, whilst she was sitting rapt in heavenly contemplation. Had she given her mind to the consideration and investigation of relative claims, she might on some occasions have acted differently—or, rather, she would have acted where in fact others only acted: for never, as I have reason to believe, was a case of distress presented to her without her being ready to give even till her 'hand lacked means.' Many of the poor in her neighbourhood were pensioned by her.

"She was credulous—simple—to an extraordinary degree. Profession had, therefore, too much weight with her. She was accustomed to manifestations of the sentiments she excited, and in seeking the demonstration sometimes overlooked the silent reality;—this was a consequence of her profession.

"She was not only exact in the performance of her religious duties; her religion was a pervading sentiment, influencing her to the strictest observance of truth and charity—I mean charity in judging others: the very active and excursive benevolence which

'Seeks the duty, nay, prevents the need,'

would have been incompatible with her toilsome engrossing avocations and with the visionary tendencies of her character. But the visionary has his own sphere of action, and can often touch the master-springs of other minds, so as to give the first impulse to the good deeds flowing from them. There are some who can trace back to the sympathies which Mrs. Siddons awakened, their devotedness to the cause of the suffering and oppressed. Faithfully did she perform the part in life which she believed allotted to her; and who may presume to judge that she did not choose the better part?"

The idea that she was a cold woman is eminently false. Her affections, like her intellectual powers, were slow, but tenacious; they enveloped in folds, strong as flesh and blood, those whom she had found worthy and taken to her heart; and her happiness was more entwined with them than those who knew her only in her professional character could have supposed; she would return home from the theatre, every nerve thrilling with the excitement of sympathy, and applause, and admiration, and a cold look or word from her husband has sent her to bed in tears. She had that sure indication of a good heart and a fine mind, an exceeding love for children, and a power to attract and amuse them. It was remarked that her voice always softened in addressing a child. I remember a letter of her's relative to a young mother and her infant, in which, among other tender and playful things, she says, "I wonder whether Lady N—— is as good a talker of baby-nonsense as I flatter myself I am!" A lady who was intimate with her, happening to enter her bedroom early one morning, found her with two of her little grand-children romping on her bed, and playing with the tresses of her long dark hair, which she had let down for their amusement. Her own children adored her; her surviving friends refer to her with tenderness, with gratitude, even with tears. I speak here of what I know. I have seldom been more touched to the heart than by the perusal of some of her most private letters and notes, which for tenderness of sentiment, genuine feeling, and simple yet forcible expression, could not be surpassed.[ 2] Actress though she was, she had no idea of doing any thing for the sake of appearances, or of courting popularity by any means but excellence in her art. She loved the elegances and refinements of life—enjoyed, and freely shared what she had toiled to obtain—and in the earlier part of her career was the frequent victim of her own kind and careless nature. She has been known to give generously, nobly,—to sympathize warmly; but did she deny to greedy selfishness or spendthrift vanity the twentieth demand on her purse or her benevolence? Was she, while absorbed in her poetical, ideal existence, the dupe of exterior shows in judging of character? Or did she, from total ignorance of, or indifference to, the common-place prejudices, or customary forms of society, unconsciously wound the amour-propre of some shallow flatterer or critic,—or by bringing the gravity and glory of her histrionic impersonations into the frivolities and hard realities of this our world, render herself obnoxious to vulgar ridicule?—then was she made to feel what it is to live in the public eye: then flew round the malignant slander, the vengeful lie, the base sneer, the impertinent misinterpretation of what few could understand and fewer feel! Reach her these libels could not—but sometimes they reached those whose affectionate reverence fenced her round from the rude contact of real life. In some things Mrs. Siddons was like a child. I have heard anecdotes of her extreme simplicity, which by the force of contrast made me smile—at them, not at her: who could have laughed at Mrs. Siddons? I should as soon have thought of laughing at the Delphic Sybil.

As an artist, her genius appears to have been slowly developed. She did not, as it has been said of her niece, "spring at once into the chair of the tragic muse;" but toiled her way up to glory and excellence in her profession, through length of time, difficulties, and obstacles innumerable. She was exclusively professional; and all her attainments, and all her powers, seem to have been directed to one end and aim. Yet I suppose no one would have said of Mrs. Siddons, that she was a "mere actress," as it was usually said of Garrick, that he was a "mere player;"—the most admirable and versatile actor that ever existed; but still the mere player;—nothing more—nothing better. He does not appear to have had a tincture of that high gentlemanly feeling, that native elevation of character, and general literary taste which strike us in John Kemble and his brother Charles; nor any thing of the splendid imagination, the enthusiasm of art, the personal grace and grandeur, which threw such a glory around Mrs. Siddons. Of John Kemble it might be said,[ 3] as Dryden said of Harte in his time, that "kings and princes might have come to him, and taken lessons how to comport themselves with dignity." And with the noble presence of Mrs. Siddons, we associated in public and in private, something absolutely awful. We were accustomed to bring her before our fancy as one habitually elevated above the sphere of familiar life,—

"Attired in all the majesty of art—

Crown'd with the rich traditions of a soul

That hates to have her dignity profan'd

By any relish of an earthly thought."[ 4]

Who was it?—(I think Northcote the painter,) who said he had seen a group of young ladies of rank, Lady Fannys and Lady Marys, peeping through the half-open door of a room where Mrs. Siddons was sitting, with the same timidity and curiosity as if it had been some preternatural being,—much more than if it had been the queen: which I can easily believe. I remember that the first time I found myself in the same room with Mrs. Siddons, (I was then about twenty,) I gazed on her as I should have gazed at one of the Egyptian pyramids—nay, with a deeper awe, for what is material and physical immensity, compared with moral and poetical grandeur? I was struck with a sensation which made my heart pause, and rendered me dumb for some minutes; and when I was led into conversation with her, my first words came faltering and thick,—which never certainly would have been the case in presence of the autocratrix of all the Russias. The greatest, the noblest in the land approached her with a deference not unmingled with a shade of embarrassment, while she stood in regal guise majestic, with the air of one who bestowed and never received honour.[ 5] Nor was this feeling of her power, which was derived, partly from her own peculiar dignity of deportment, partly from her association with all that was grand, poetical, terrible, confined to those who could appreciate the full measure of her endowments. Every member of that public, whose idol she was, from the greatest down to the meanest, felt it more or less. I knew a poor woman who once went to the house of Mrs. Siddons to be paid by her daughter for some embroidery. Mrs. Siddons happened to be in the room, and the woman perceiving who it was, was so overpowered, that she could not count her money, and scarcely dared to draw her breath. "And when I went away, ma'am," added she, in describing her own sensations, "I walked all the way down the street, feeling myself a great deal taller." This was the same unconscious feeling of the sublime, which made Bouchardon say that, after reading the Iliad, he fancied himself seven feet high.

She modelled very beautifully, and in this talent, which was in a manner intuitive, she displayed a creative as well as an imitative power. Might we not say that in the peculiar character of her genius—in the combination of the very real with the very ideal, of the demonstrative and the visionary, of vastness and symmetry, of the massive material and the grand unearthly forms into which it shaped itself—there was something analogous to sculpture? At all events, it is the opinion of many who knew her, that if she had not been a great actress she would have devoted herself to sculpture. She was never so happy as when occupied with her modelling tools; she would stand at her work eight hours together, scarcely turning her head. Music she passionately loved: in her younger days her voice in singing was exquisitely sweet and flexible. She would sometimes compose verses, and sing them to an extemporaneous air; but I believe she did not perform on any instrument.

To complete this sketch I shall add an outline of her professional life.

Mrs. Siddons was born in 1755. She might be said, almost without metaphor, to have been "born on the stage." All the family, I believe, for two or three generations, had been players. In her early life she endured many vicissitudes, and was acquainted with misery and hardship in many repulsive forms. On this subject she had none of the pride of a little mind; but alluded to her former situation with perfect simplicity. The description in Mrs. Inchbald's Memoirs of "Mrs. Siddons singing and mending her children's clothes," is from the life, and charming as well as touching, when we consider her peculiar character and her subsequent destinies. She was in her twenty-first year when she made her first attempt in London, (for it was but an attempt,) in the character of Portia. She also appeared as Lady Anne in Richard III. and in comedy as Mrs. Strickland to Garrick's Ranger. She was not successful: Garrick is said to have been jealous of her rising powers: the public did not discover in her the future tragic muse, and for herself—"She felt that she was greater than she knew." She returned to her provincial career; she spent seven years in patient study, in reflection, in contemplation, and in mastering the practical part of her profession; and then she returned at the age of twenty-eight, and burst upon the world in the prime of her beauty and transcendent powers, with all the attributes of confirmed and acknowledged excellence.

It appears that, in her first season, she did not play one of Shakspeare's characters: she performed Isabella, Euphrasia, Jane Shore, Calista, and Zara. In a visit she paid to Dr. Johnson, at the conclusion of the season, she informed him that it was her intention, the following year, to bring out some of Shakspeare's heroines, particularly Katherine of Arragon, to which she then gave the preference as a character. Dr. Johnson agreed with her, and added that, when she played Katherine, he would hobble to the theatre himself to see her; but he did not live to pay her this tribute of admiration. He, however, paid her another not less valuable: describing his visitor after her departure, he said, "she left nothing behind her to be censured or despised; neither praise nor money, those two powerful corrupters of mankind, seem to have depraved her."[ 6] In this interview she seems to have pleased the old critic and moralist, who was also a severe and acute judge of human nature, and not inclined to judge favourably of actresses, by the union of modesty with native dignity which at all times distinguished her;—a rare union! and most delightful in those who are the objects of the public gaze, and when the popular enthusiasm is still in all its first intoxicating effervescence.

The first of Shakspeare's characters which Mrs. Siddons performed was Isabella, in Measure for Measure, (1784,) and the next Constance. In the same year Sir Joshua painted her as the tragic Muse.[ 7] With what a deep interest shall we now visit this her true apotheosis,—now that it has received its last consecration! The rest of Shakspeare's characters followed in this order: Lady Macbeth in 1785, and, soon afterwards, as if by way of contrast, Desdemona, Ophelia, Rosalind. In 1786 she played Imogen; in 1788 Katherine of Arragon; and, in 1789, Volumnia; and in the same season she played Juliet, being then in her thirty-fifth year,—too old for Juliet; nor did this ever become one of her popular parts; she left it to her niece to identify herself for ever with the poetry and sensibility, the youthful grace and fervid passion of Shakspeare's Juliet; and we have as little chance of ever seeing such another Juliet as Fanny Kemble, as of ever seeing such another Lady Macbeth as her magnificent aunt.

A good critic, who was also a great admirer of Mrs. Siddons, asserts that there must be something in acting which levels all poetical distinctions, since people talked in the same breath of her Lady Macbeth and Mrs. Beverley as being equally "fine pieces of acting." I think he is mistaken. No one—no one at least but the most vulgar part of her audience—ever equalized these two characters, even as pieces of acting; or imagined for a moment that the same degree of talent which sufficed to represent Mrs. Beverley could have grasped the towering grandeur of such a character as Lady Macbeth;—dived into its profound and gloomy depths—seized and reflected its wonderful gradations—displayed its magnificence—developed its beauties, and revealed its terrors: no such thing. She might have drawn more tears in Isabella than in Constance—thrown more young ladies into hysterics in Belvidera than in Katherine of Arragon; but all with whom I have conversed on the subject of Mrs. Siddons, are agreed in this;—that her finest characters, as pieces of art, were those which afforded the fullest scope for her powers, and contained in themselves the largest materials in poetry, grandeur, and passion: consequently, that her Constance, Katherine of Arragon, Volumnia, Hermione, and Lady Macbeth stood pre-eminent. In playing Jane de Montfort, in Joanna Baillie's tragedy, her audience almost lost the sense of impersonation in the feeling of identity. She was Jane de Montfort—the actress, the woman, the character, blended into each other. It is a mistaken idea that she herself preferred the part of Aspasia (in Rowe's Bajazet) to any of these grand impersonations. She spoke of it as one in which she had produced the most extraordinary effect on the nerves of her audience; and this is true. "I recollect," said a gentleman to me, "being present at one of the last representations of Bajazet: and at the moment when the order is given to strangle Moneses, while Aspasia stands immoveable in front of the stage, I turned my head, unable to endure more, and to my amazement I beheld the whole pit staring ghastly, with upward faces, dilated eyes, and mouths wide open—gasping—fascinated. Nor shall I ever forget the strange effect produced by that sea of human faces, all fixed in one simultaneous expression of stony horror. It realized for a moment the fabled power of the Medusa—it was terrible!"

Of all her great characters, Lord Byron, I believe, preferred Constance, to which she gave the preference herself, and esteemed it the most difficult and the most finished of all her impersonations; but the general opinion stamps her Lady Macbeth as the grandest effort of her art; and therefore, as she was the first in her art, as the ne plus ultra of acting. This at least was the opinion of one who admired her with all the fervour of a kindred genius, and could lavish on her praise of such "rich words composed as made the gift more sweet." Of her Lady Macbeth, he says, "nothing could have been imagined grander,—it was something above nature; it seemed almost as if a being of a superior order had dropped from a higher sphere to awe the world with the majesty of her appearance. Power was seated on her brow, passion emanated from her breast as from a shrine. In coming on in the sleeping scene, her eyes were open, but their sense was shut; she was like a person bewildered: her lips moved involuntarily; all her gestures seemed mechanical—she glided on and off the stage like an apparition. To have seen her in that character was an event in every one's life never to be forgotten."

By profound and incessant study she had brought her conception and representation of this character to such a pitch of perfection that the imagination could conceive of nothing more magnificent or more finished; and yet she has been heard to say, after playing it for thirty years, that she never read over the part without discovering in it something new; nor ever went on the stage to perform it, without spending the whole morning in studying and meditating it, line by line, as intently as if she were about to act it for the first time. In this character she bid farewell to her profession and the public, (June 29th, 1812.) The audience, on this occasion, paid her a singular and touching tribute of respect. On her going off in the sleeping scene, they commanded the curtain to fall, and would not suffer the play to proceed.[ 8]

The idea that Mrs. Siddons was quite unmoved by the emotions she portrayed—the sorrows and the passions she embodied with such inimitable skill and truth, is altogether false. Fine acting may accidentally be mere impulse; it never can be wholly mechanical. To a late period of her life she continued to be strongly, sometimes painfully, excited by her own acting; the part of Constance always affected her powerfully—she invariably left the stage, her face streaming with tears; and after playing Lady Macbeth, she could not sleep: even after reading the play of Macbeth a feverish, wakeful night was generally the consequence.

I am not old enough to remember Mrs. Siddons in her best days; but, judging from my own recollections, I should say that, to hear her read one of Shakspeare's plays, was a higher, a more complete gratification, and a more astonishing display of her powers than her performance of any single character. On the stage she was the perfect actress; when she was reading Shakspeare, her profound enthusiastic admiration of the poet, and deep insight into his most hidden beauties, made her almost a poetess, or at least, like a priestess, full of the god of her idolatry. Her whole soul looked out from her regal brow and effulgent eyes; and then her countenance!—the inconceivable flexibility and musical intonations of her voice! there was no got-up illusion here: no scenes—no trickery of the stage; there needed no sceptred pall—no sweeping train, nor any of the gorgeous accompaniments of tragedy:—She was Tragedy! When in reading Macbeth she said, "give me the daggers!" they gleamed before our eyes. The witch scenes in the same play she rendered awfully terrific by the magic of looks and tones; she invested the weird sisters with all their own infernal fascinations; they were the serious, poetical, tragical personages which the poet intended them to be, and the wild grotesque horror of their enchantments made the blood curdle. When, in King John, she came to the passage beginning—

"If the midnight bell,

Did with his iron tongue and brazen note," &c.

I remember I felt every drop of blood pause, and then run backwards through my veins with an overpowering awe and horror. No scenic representation I ever witnessed produced the hundredth part of the effect of her reading Hamlet. This tragedy was the triumph of her art. Hamlet and his mother, Polonius, Ophelia, were all there before us. Those who ever heard her give Ophelia's reply to Hamlet,

Hamlet. I loved you not.

Ophelia. I was the more deceived!

and the lines—

And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,

That suck'd the honey of his music vows, &c.

will never forget their exquisite pathos. What a revelation of love and woe was there!—the very heart seemed to break upon the utterance.

Lear was another of her grandest efforts; but her rare talent was not confined to tragedy; none could exceed her in the power to conceive and render witty and humorous character. I thought I had never understood or felt the comic force of such parts as Polonius, Lucio, Gratiano, and Shakspeare's clowns, till I heard the dialogue from her lips: and to hear her read the Merchant of Venice and As You Like It, was hardly a less perfect treat than to hear her read Macbeth.

The following short extract from a letter of Mrs. Joanna Baillie, dated about a year before the death of Mrs. Siddons will, I am persuaded, be read with a double interest, for her sake who penned it, not less than hers who is the subject of it.

"The most agreeable thing I have to begin with, is a visit we paid last week to Mrs. Siddons. We had met her at dinner at Mr. Rogers's a few days before, and she kindly asked us, our host and his sister, the Thursday following; an invitation which we gladly accepted, though we expected to see much decay in her powers of expression, and consequently to have our pleasure mingled with pain. Judge then of our delight when we heard her read the best scenes of Hamlet, with expression of countenance, voice, and action, that would have done honour to her best days! She was before us as an unconquerable creature, over whose astonishing gifts of nature time had no power.[ 9] She complained of her voice, which she said was not obedient to her will; but it appeared to my ear to be peculiarly true to nature, and the more so, because it had lost that deep solemnity of tone which she, perhaps, had considered as an excellence. I thought I could trace in the pity and tenderness, mixed with her awe of the ghost, the natural feelings of one who had lost dear friends, and expected to go to them soon; and her reading of that scene, (the noblest which dramatic art ever achieved,) went to my heart as it had never done before. At the end, Mr. Rogers very justly said, 'Oh, that we could have assembled a company of young people to witness this, that they might have conveyed the memory of it down to another generation!' In short, we left her full of admiration, as well as of gratitude, that she had made such an exertion to gratify so small an audience; for, exclusive of her own family, we were but five."

She continued to exercise her power of reading and reciting long after the date of this letter, even till within a few days of her death, although her health had long been in a declining state.[ 10] She died at length on the 8th of June, 1831, after a few hours of acute suffering, having lived nearly seventy-six years, of which forty-six were spent in the constant presence and service of the public. She was an honour to her profession, which was more honoured and honourable in her person and family than it ever was before, or will be hereafter, till the stage becomes something very different from what it now is.

And, since it has pleased some writers, (who apparently knew as little of her real situation as of her real character,) to lament over the misfortune of this celebrated woman, in having survived all her children, &c. &c. it may be interesting to add that, a short time before her death, she was seated in a room in her own house, when about thirty of her young relatives, children, grand-children, nephews and nieces, were assembled, and looked on while they were dancing, with great and evident pleasure: and that her surviving daughter, Cecilia Siddons,[ 11] who had been, for many years, the inseparable friend and companion of her mother, attended upon her with truly filial devotion and reverence to the last moment of existence. Her admirers may, therefore, console themselves with the idea that in "love, obedience, troops of friends," as well as affluence and fame, she had "all that should accompany old age." She died full of years and honours; having enjoyed, in her long life, as much glory and prosperity as any mortal could expect: having imparted more intense and general pleasure than ever mortal did; and having paid the tribute of mortality in such suffering and sorrow as wait on the widowed wife and the bereaved mother. If with such rare natural gifts were blended some human infirmities;—if the cultivation of the imaginative far above the perceptive faculties, hazarded her individual happiness;—if in the course of a professional career of unexampled continuance and splendour, the love of praise ever degenerated into the appetite for applause;—if the worshipped actress languished out of her atmosphere of incense,—is this to be made matter of wonder or of ill-natured comment? Did ever any human being escape more intacte in person and mind from the fiery furnace of popular admiration? Let us remember the severity of the ordeal to which she was exposed; the hard lot of those who pass their lives in the full-noon glare of public observation, where every speck is noted! What a difference too, between the aspiration after immortality and the pursuit of celebrity!—The noise of distant and future fame is like the sound of the far-off sea, and the mingled roll of its multitudinous waves, which, as it swells on the ear, elevates the soul with a sublime emotion; but present and loud applause, flung continually in one's face, is like the noisy dash of the surf upon the rock,—and it requires the firmness of the rock to bear it.

[!-- H2 anchor --]

SKETCHES OF
FANNY KEMBLE
IN JULIET.

INTRODUCTION AND NOTES
TO
MR. JOHN HAYTER'S SKETCHES OF FANNY KEMBLE,
IN THE CHARACTER OF JULIET.[ 12]

"Non piace a lei che innumerabil turba

Viva in atto di fuor, morta di dentro,

Le applauda a caso, e mano a man percuota;

Ne si rallegra se le rozzi voci

Volgano a lei quelle induiti lodi—

—Ma la possanza del divino iugegno

Vita di dentro."

Gasparo Gozzi—Sermone xiv.

It would be doing an injustice to the author of these sketches, and something worse than injustice to her who is the subject of them, should more be expected than the pencil could possibly convey, and more required than the artist ever intended to execute. Their merit consists in their fidelity, as far as they go; their interest in conveying a lively and distinct idea of some immediate and transient effects of grace and expression. They do not assume to be portraits of Miss Kemble; they are merely a series of rapid outlines, caught from her action, and exhibiting, at the first glance, just so much of the individual and peculiar character she has thrown into her impersonation of Juliet, as at once to be recognised by those who have seen her. To them alone these isolated passages—linked together in the imagination by all the intervening graces of attitude and sentiment, by the recollection of a countenance where the kindled soul looks out through every feature, and of a voice whose tones tremble into one's very heart—will give some faint reflection of the effect produced by the whole of this beautiful piece of acting,—or rather of nature, for here "each seems either." It will be allowed, even by the most enthusiastic lover of painting, that the merely imitative arts can do but feeble justice to the powers of a fine actress; for what graphic skill can fix the evanescent shades of feeling as they melt one into another?—

"What fine chisel could ever yet cut breath?"

—and yet even those who have not witnessed and may never witness Miss Kemble's performance, to whom her name alone can be borne through long intervals of space and time, will not regard these little sketches without curiosity and interest. If any one had thought of transferring to paper a connected series of some of the awe-commanding gestures of Mrs. Siddons in one of her great parts; or caught (flying) some of the inimitable graces of movement and attitude, and sparkling effects of manner, with which Mrs. Charles Kemble once enchanted the world, with what avidity would they now be sought!—they would have served as studies for their successors in art to the end of time.

All the fine arts, poetry excepted, possess a limited range of power. Painting and sculpture can convey none of the graces that belong to movement and sound: music can suggest vague sentiments and feelings, but it cannot express incident, or situation, or form, or colour. Poetry alone grasps an unlimited sceptre, rules over the whole visible and intellectual universe, and knows no bounds but those of human genius. And it is here that tragic acting, considered in its perfection, and in its relation to the fine arts, is allied to poetry, or rather is itself living, breathing poetry; made sensible in a degree to the hardest and dullest minds, seizing on the dormant sympathies of our nature, and dismissing us again to the cares of this "working-day world," if not very much wiser, or better, or happier, at least enabled to digest with less bitterness the mixture of our good and evil days.

But in the midst of the just enthusiasm which a great actor or actress excites, so long as they exist to minister to our delight;—in the midst of that atmosphere of light and life they shed around them, it is a common subject of repining that such glory should be so transient; that an art requiring in its perfection such a rare combination of mental and external qualities, can leave behind no permanent monument of its own excellence, but must depend on the other fine arts for all it can claim of immortality: that Garrick, for instance, has become a name—no more—his fame the echo of an echo! that Mrs. Siddons herself has bequeathed to posterity only a pictured semblance;—that when the voice of Pasta is heard no longer upon earth, the utmost pomp of words can only attest her powers! The painter and the poet, struggling through obscurity to the heights of fame, and consuming a life in the pursuit of (perhaps) posthumous celebrity, may say to the sublime actress,—"Thou in thy generation hast had thy meed; we have waited patiently for ours: thou art vanished like a lost star from the firmament, into the 'uncomfortable night of nothing'; we have left the light of our souls behind us, and survive to 'blessings and eternal praise!'" And why should it not be so? Were it otherwise, the even-handed distribution of the best gifts of Heaven among favoured mortals might with reason be impugned. Shall the young spirit "dampt by the necessity of oblivion" disdain what is attainable because it cannot grasp all? Conceive for a moment the situation of a woman, in the prime and bloom of existence, with all her youthful enthusiasm, her unworn feelings fresh about her, privileged to step forth for a short space out of the bounds of common life, without o'erstepping the modesty of her feminine nature, permitted to cast off for a while, unreproved and unrestrained, the conventional trammels of form and manner; and called upon to realise in her own presence and person the divinest dreams of poetry and romance; to send forth in a word—a glance,—the electric flash which is felt through a thousand bosoms at once, till every heart beats the same measure with her own! Is there nothing in all this to countervail the dangers, the evils, and the vicissitudes attendant on this splendid and public exercise of talent? It may possibly become, in time, a thing of habitude; it may be degraded into a mere besoin de l'amour propre—a necessary, yet palling excitement: but in its outset it is surely a triumph far beyond the mere intoxication of personal vanity; and to the very last, it must be deemed a magnificent and an enviable power.

It was difficult to select for graphic delineation any particular points from Miss Kemble's representation of Juliet. These drawings may not, perhaps, justify the enthusiasm she excited: but it ought to add to their value rather than detract from it, that the causes of their imperfection comprehend the very foundation on which the present and future celebrity of this young actress may be said to rest. In the first place, the power by which she seized at once on public admiration and sympathy, was not derived from any thing external. It was not founded in the splendour of her hereditary pretensions, though in them there was much to fascinate: nor in the departed or fading glories of her race: nor in the remembrance of her mother—once the young Euphrosyne of our stage: nor in the name and high talent of her father, with whom, it was once feared the poetical and classical school of acting was destined to perish from the scene: nor in any mere personal advantages, for in these she has been excelled,—

"Though on her eyelids many graces sit

Under the shadow of those even brows:"

nor in her extreme youth, and delicacy of figure, which tell so beautifully in the character of Juliet: nor in the acclaim of public favour—

"To have all eyes

Dazzled with admiration, and all tongues

Shouting loud praises; to rob every heart

Of love—

This glory round about her hath thrown beams."

But such glory has circled other brows ere now, and left them again "shorn of their beams." No! her success was founded on a power superior to all these—in the power of genius superadded to that moral interest which claimed irresistibly the best sympathies of her audience. The peculiar circumstances and feelings which brought Miss Kemble before the public, contrary (as it is understood) to all the previous wishes and intentions of her parents, were such as would have justified less decided talent,—honourable to herself and to her family. The feeling entertained towards her on this score was really delightful; it was a species of homage, which, like the quality of mercy, was "twice blessed;" blessing those who gave and her who received. It produced a feeling between herself and the public, which mere admiration on the one hand, and gratified vanity on the other, could not have excited. She strongly felt this, and no change, no reverse, diminished her feeling of the kindness with which she had once been received; but her own fervid genius and sensibility did as much for her. She was herself a poetess; her mind claimed a natural affinity with all that is feeling, passionate, and imaginative; not her voice only, but her soul and ear were attuned to the harmony of verse; and hence she gave forth the poetry of such parts as Juliet and Portia with an intense and familiar power, as though every line and sentiment in Shakspeare had been early transplanted into her heart,—had long been brooded over in silence,—watered with her tears,—to burst forth at last, like the spontaneous and native growth of her own soul. An excellent critic of our own day has said, that "poetical enthusiasm is the rarest faculty among players:" if so, it cannot be too highly valued. Fanny Kemble possessed this rare faculty; and in it, a power that could not be taught, or analysed, or feigned, or put on and off with her tragic drapery;—it pervaded all she was called upon to do. It was this which in the Grecian Daughter made her look and step so like a young Muse; which enabled her, by a single glance—a tone—a gesture—to elevate the character far above the language—and exalt the most common-place declamation into power and passion. The indisputable fact, that she appeared on the stage without any previous study or tuition, ought in justice to her to be generally known; it is most certain that she was not nineteen when she made her first appearance, and that six weeks before her debût there was no more thought of her becoming an actress, than of her becoming an empress. The assertion must appear superfluous to those who have seen her; for what teaching, or what artificial aids, could endue her with the advantages just described?—"unless Philosophy could make a Juliet!" or what power of pencil, though it were dipped in the rainbow and tempered in the sunbeams, could convey this bright intelligence, or justify the enthusiasm with which it is hailed by her audience? There is a second difficulty which the artist has had to contend with, not less honourable to the actress: the charm of her impersonation of Juliet consisted not so much in any particular points, as in the general conception of the whole part, and in the sustained preservation and gradual development of the individual character, from the first scene to the last. Where the merit lies in the beautiful gradations of feeling, succeeding each other like waves of the sea, till the flood of passion swells and towers and sweeps away all perceptible distinctions, the pencil must necessarily be at fault; for as Madame de Staël says truly, "l'inexprimable est précisement ce qu'un grand acteur nous fait connaître."

The first drawing is taken from the scene in which Juliet first appears. The actress has little to do, but to look the character;—that is, to convey the impression of a gentle, graceful girl, whose passions and energies lie folded up within her, like gathered lightning in the summer cloud; all her affections "soft as dews on roses," which must ere long turn to the fire-shower, and blast her to the earth. The moment chosen is immediately after Juliet's expostulation to her garrulous old nurse—"I pr'ythee, peace!"

The second, third, and fourth sketches are all from the masquerade scene. The manner in which Juliet receives the parting salutations of the guests has been justly admired;—nothing is denied to genius and taste, aided by natural grace, else it might have been thought impossible to throw so much meaning and sentiment into so common an action. The first curtsey is to Benvolio. The second, to Mercutio, is distinctly marked, as though in him she recognised the chosen friend of Romeo. In the third, to Romeo himself, the bashful sinking of the whole figure, the conscious drooping of the eyelids, and the hurried, yet graceful recovery of herself as she exclaims—

"Who's he that follows there that would not dance?

Go ask his name!"

which is the subject of the third sketch; and lastly, the tone in which she gave the succeeding lines—

"If he be married,

My grave is like to be my wedding-bed!"

which seems, in its deep quiet pathos, to anticipate "some consequence yet hanging in the stars,"—form one unbroken series of the most beautiful and heart-felt touches of nature. The fourth sketch is from the conclusion of the same scene, where Juliet, with reluctant steps and many a lingering look back on the portal through which her lover has departed, follows her nurse out of the banquet-room.

The two next drawings are from the balcony scene, which has usually been considered the criterion of the talent of an actress in this part. The first represents the action which accompanied the line—

"By whose direction found'st thou out this place?"

The second is the first "Good night!"

"Sweet, good night!

This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath,

May prove a beauteous flower, when next we meet."

Fanny Kemble's conception of character and sentiment in this scene was peculiarly and entirely her own. Juliet, as she properly felt, is a young impassioned Italian girl, who has flung her heart, and soul, and existence upon one cast.

"She was not made

Thro' years or moons the inner weight to bear,

Which colder hearts endure till they are laid

By age in earth."

In this view, the pretty coyness, the playful coquetterie, which has sometimes been thrown into the balcony scene, by way of making an effect, is out of place, and false to the poetry and feeling of the part: but in Fanny Kemble's delineation, the earnest, yet bashful tenderness; the timid, yet growing confidence; the gradual swelling of emotion from the depths of the heart, up to that fine burst of enthusiastic passion—

"Swear by thy gracious self,

That art the god of my idolatry,

And I'll believe thee!"

were all as true to the situation and sentiment, as they were beautifully and delicately conveyed. The whole of the speech, "Thou know'st the mask of night is on my face," was in truth "like softest music to attending ears," from the exquisite and various modulation of voice with which it was uttered. Perhaps one of the most beautiful and entirely original points in the whole scene, was the accent and gesture with which she gave the lines—

"Romeo, doff thy name;

And for that name, which is no part of thee,

Take—all myself!"

The grace and abandon in the manner, and the softness of accent, which imparted a new and charming effect to this passage, cannot be expressed in words; and it was so delicately touched, and so transitory,—so dependent, like a beautiful chord in music, on that which prepared and followed it, that it was found impossible to seize and fix it in a drawing.

From the first scene with the nurse, two drawings have been made. The idea of Juliet discovered as the curtain rises, gazing from the window, and watching for the return of her confidante, is perfectly new. The attitude (or more properly, one of her attitudes, for they are various as they are graceful and appropriate) is given in the seventh sketch, and the artist has conveyed it with peculiar grace and truth. The action chosen for the eighth drawing occurs immediately after Juliet's little moment of petulance, (so justly provoked,) and before she utters in a caressing tone, "Come, what says Romeo?" The first speech in this scene,

"O, she is lame! love's heralds should be thoughts,

Which ten times faster glide than the sun's beams,

Driving back shadows over low'ring hills:

Therefore do nimble-pinion'd doves draw love,

And therefore hath the wind-swift Cupid—wings."

—and the soliloquy in the second scene of the third act, "Gallop apace, ye fiery-footed steeds!" in which there is no particular point of dramatic effect to be made, are instances of that innate sense of poetical harmony, which enabled her to impart the most exquisite pleasure, merely by her feeling, graceful, animated delivery of these beautiful lines. The most musical intonation of voice, the happiest emphasis, and the utmost refinement, as well as the most expressive grace of action, were here combined to carry passion and poetry at once and vividly to the heart: but this perfect triumph of illusion is more than painting could convey.

The ninth and tenth sketches are from the second scene with the nurse, called in theatrical phrase "the Banishment Scene." One of the grandest and most impressive passages in the whole performance was Juliet's reply to her nurse.

"Nurse. Shame come to Romeo!

Juliet. Blister'd be thy tongue,

For such a wish! he was not born to shame:

Upon his brow shame is asham'd to sit;

For 'tis a throne where honour may be crown'd

Sole monarch of the universal earth."

The loftiness of look and gesture with which she pronounced the last line, cannot be forgotten: but the effect consisted so much in the action of the arm, as she stepped across the stage, and in the kindling eye and brow, rather than in the attitude only, that it could not well be conveyed in a drawing. The first point selected is from the passage, "O break, my heart!—poor bankrupt, break at once!" in which the gesture is full of expressive and pathetic grace. The tenth drawing represents the action which accompanied her exclamation, "Tybalt is dead—and Romeo—banished!" The tone of piercing anguish in which she pronounced the last word, banished, and then threw herself into the arms of her nurse, in all the helplessness of utter desolation, formed one of the finest passages in her performance.

The scene in which the lovers part, called the Garden Scene, follows; and the passage selected is—

"Art thou gone so? my love, my lord, my friend?

I must hear from thee every day i' the hour!"

The subdued and tremulous intonation with which all the speeches in this scene were given, as though the voice were broken and exhausted with excessive weeping; and the manner in which she still, though half insensible in her nurse's arms, signed a last farewell to her husband, were among the most delicate and original beauties of the character.

The two next drawings are from the fifth scene of the third act. The latter part of this scene contained many new and beautiful touches of feeling which originated with Miss Kemble herself. It is here that the real character of Juliet is first developed;—it is here that, abandoned by the whole world, and left to struggle alone with her fearful destiny, the high-souled and devoted woman takes place of the tender, trembling girl. The confiding, helpless anguish with which she at first throws herself upon her nurse—("Some comfort, nurse!")—the gradual relaxing of her embrace, as the old woman counsels her to forget Romeo and marry Paris—the tone in which she utters the question—

"Speakest thou from thy heart?

Nurse. From my soul too,

Or else beshrew them both!"

And then the gathering up of herself with all the majesty of offended virtue, as she pronounces that grand "Amen!"—the effect of which was felt in every bosom——these were revelations of beauty and feeling which we owed to Fanny Kemble alone. They were points which had never before been felt or conveyed in the same manner. The shrinking up wholly into herself, and the concentrated scorn with which she uttered the lines—

"Go, counsellor!

Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain!"

are very spiritedly given in the fourteenth drawing.

From the scene with the friar, in the fourth act, the action selected is where she grasps her poniard with the resolution of despair—

"Give me some present counsel; or, behold,

'Twixt my extremes and me this bloody knife

Shall play the umpire!"

One of the most original effects of feeling and genius in the whole play occurred in the course of this scene; but, unfortunately, it was not found susceptible of graphic delineation. It was the peculiar manner with which she uttered the words—

"Are you at leisure, holy father, now?

Or shall I come to you at evening mass?"

The question in itself is nothing; but what a volume of misery and dread suspense was in that look with which she turned from Paris to the friar, and the tone with which she uttered those simple words! This was beyond the pencil's art to convey, and could but be felt and remembered. The next drawing is therefore from the scene in which she drinks the sleeping potion. The idea of speaking the first part of the soliloquy seated, and with the calmness of one settled and bent up "to act a dismal scene alone," until her fixed meditation on the fearful issue, and the horrible images crowding on her mind, work her up to gradual frenzy, was new, and originated with Miss Kemble. The attitude expressed in the drawing—"O look, methinks I see my cousin's ghost,"—was always hailed with an excess of enthusiasm of which I thought many parts of her performance far more deserving.

The eighteenth sketch is from the sleeping scene; and the last two drawings are from the tomb scene. The merits of this last scene were chiefly those of attitude, look, and manner; and the whole were at once so graceful and beautiful, as well as terribly impressive, that they afforded some relief from the horrors of the situation, and the ravings of Romeo. The alteration of Shakspeare, in the last act, is certainly founded on the historical tale of the Giulietta: but though the circumstances are borrowed, yet the spirit in which they are related by the ancient novelist, has not been taken into consideration by those who manufactured this additional scene of superfluous horror.[ 13] In Juliet's death, Miss Kemble seized an original idea, and worked it up with the most powerful and beautiful effect; but this effect consisted not so much in one attitude or look, as in a progressive series of action and expression, so true—so painfully true, that as one of the chief beauties was the rapidity with which the whole passed from the fascinated yet aching sight—the artist has relinquished any attempt to fix it on paper.

Fanny Kemble made her first appearance in the character of Juliet, October 6th, 1829, and bid a last farewell to her London audience in May, 1832: during these three years she played through a very diversified range of parts, both in tragedy and high comedy.[ 14] Sustained by her native genius and good taste, and by the kindly feeling of her audience, she could not be said to have failed in any, not even in those which her inexperience and extreme youth rendered premature, to say the least. She never—except in one or two instances[ 15]—had a voice in the selection of her parts, which, I think, was in some cases exceedingly injudicious, as far as her individual powers were concerned. I know that she played in several contrary to her own opinion, taste, and judgment, and from a principle of duty. Not duty only, but a feeling of delicacy, natural to a generous mind, which disdained the appearance of presuming on her real power, rendered her docile, in some instances, to a degree which I regretted while I loved her for it. She had a perception of some of the traditional absurdities of dress, and ridiculous technical anomalies of theatrical arrangements, which she had not power to alter, and which I have seen her endure with wondrous good temper. Had she remained on the stage, her fine taste and original and powerful mind would have carried the public with her in some things which she contemplated: for instance, she had an idea of restoring King Lear, as originally written by Shakspeare, and playing the real Cordelia to her father's Lear. When left to her own judgment, she ever thought more of what was worthy and beautiful in itself, than she calculated on the amount of vulgar applause it might attract, or the sums it might bring to the treasury. Thus, for her first benefit she played Portia, a character which no vain, self-confident actress would have selected for such an occasion, because, as the play is now performed, the part is comparatively short, is always considered of secondary importance, and affords but few effective points: this was represented to her; but she persisted in her choice: and how she played it out of her own heart and soul! how she revelled in the poetry of the part, with a conscious sense and enjoyment of its beauty, which was communicated to her audience! Self, after the first tremor, was forgotten, and vanity lost in her glowing perception of the charm of the character. She lamented over every beautiful line and passage which had been "cut out" by profane hands.[ 16] To those which remained, the rich and mellow tones of her voice gave added power, blending with the music of the verse. It was by her own earnest wish that she played Camiola, in Massinger's Maid of Honour, and this was certainly one of her most exquisite and most finished parts; but the quiet elegance, the perfect delicacy of the delineation were never appreciated. She was aware of this: she said, "The first rows of the pit, and the first few boxes will understand me; for the rest of that great theatre, I ought to play as they paint the scenes—in great splashes of black and white." Bianca, in Millman's Fazio, was another of her finest parts, and as it contained more stage effect, it told more with the public. In this character she certainly took even her greatest admirers by surprise. The expression of slumbering passion, and its gradual developement, were so fervently portrayed, and yet so nicely shaded; the frenzy of jealousy, and the alienation of intellect, so admirably discriminated, and so powerfully given, that when the first emotions had subsided, not admiration only, but wonder seized upon her audience: nor shall I easily forget the pale composure with which she bore this—one of her most intoxicating triumphs.

In Constance, in Queen Katherine, in Lady Macbeth, the want of amplitude and maturity of person, of physical weight and power, and a deficiency both of experience and self-confidence, were against her; but her conception of character was so true, and her personal resemblance to her aunt so striking, in spite of her comparatively diminutive features and figure, that one of the best and severest of our dramatic critics said, "it was like looking at Mrs. Siddons through the wrong end of an opera-glass."[ 17] She had conceived the idea of giving quite a new reading, which undoubtedly would have been the true reading, of the character of Katherine of Arragon, and instead of playing it with the splendid poetical colouring in which Mrs. Siddons had arrayed it, bring it down to the prosaic delineation which Shakspeare really gave, and history and Holbein have transmitted to us; but the experiment was deemed too hazardous; and it was so. The public at large would never have understood it. The character of the queen mother, in her own tragedy of Francis I., was another part of which the weight seemed to overwhelm her youthful powers, and after the first few nights she ceased to play it.

While on the English stage, she never became so far the finished artist as to be independent of her own emotions, her own individual sentiments. It was not only necessary that she should understand a character, it was necessary that she should feel it. She invariably excelled in those characters in which her sympathies were awakened. In Juliet, in Portia, in Camiola, in Julia,[ 18] (perhaps the most popular of all her parts,) and I believe I may add, in Bianca, she will not soon or easily be surpassed. For the same reason, if she could be said to have failed in any part, it was in that of Calista, which she abhorred, and never, I believe, could comprehend. Isabella[ 19] was another part which I think she never really felt; she never could throw her powers into it. The bald style and the prosaic monotonous misery of the first acts, in which her aunt called forth such torrents of tears, wearied her; though the tragic of the situations in the last act roused her, and was given most effectively. She had not, at the time she took leave of us, conquered the mechanical part of her profession—the last, but not the least necessary department of her art, which it had taken her aunt Siddons seven years, and Pasta almost as long, to achieve; she was too much under the influence of her own nerves and moods of feeling; the warm blushes, the hot tears, the sob, the tremor, were at times too real. After playing in Mrs. Beverly, Bianca, and Julia, the physical suffering and excitement were sometimes most painful; and the performance of Constance actually deprived her of her hearing for several hours, and rendered her own voice inaudible to her; this, it will be allowed, was paying somewhat dear for her laurels, even though she had valued them more than in truth she ever did.

Fanny Kemble, as one of a gifted race, "the latest born of all Olympus' faded hierarchy," had really a just pride in the professional distinction of her family. She was proud of being a Kemble, and not insensible to the idea of treading in the steps of her aunt. But she had seen the stage desecrated, and never for a moment indulged the thought that she was destined to regenerate it. She felt truly her own position. Her ambition was not professional. She had always the consciousness of a power—of which she has already given evidence—to ensure to herself a higher, a more real immortality than that which the stage can bestow. She had a very high idea, abstractedly, of the capabilities of her art; but the native elegance of her mind, her poetical temperament, her profound sense of the serious ideal, rendered her extremely, and at times painfully sensitive, to the prosaic drawbacks which attended its exercise in public, and her strong understanding showed her its possible evils. She feared for the effect that incessant praise, incessant excitement, might at length produce on her temper. "I am in dismay," said she, (I give her own words,) "when I think that all this may become necessary to me. Could I be sure of retaining my love for higher and better occupations, and my desire for a nobler, though more distant fame, I should not have these apprehensions; but I am cut off by constant labour from those pursuits which I love and honour, and neither they, nor any of our capabilities, can outlive long neglect and disuse." Thus she felt, and thus she expressed herself at the age of twenty, and even while enjoying her success with a true girlish buoyancy of spirit, the more delightful, the more interesting, inasmuch as it seemed to tremble at itself. I have actually heard her reproached for not being sufficiently elated and excited by the public homage; but, the truth is, she was grateful for praise, rather than intoxicated by it—more pleased with her success than proud of it.[ 20] "I dare not," said she, "feel all I could feel: I must watch myself." And by a more exact attention to her religious duties, and by giving as much time as possible to the cultivation of many resources and accomplishments, she endeavoured to preserve the command over her own faculties, and the even balance of her mind. I am persuaded that this lofty tone of feeling, this mixture of self-subjection and self-respect, gave to her general deportment on the stage that indescribable charm, quite apart from any grace of person or action, which all who have seen her must have felt, and none can have forgotten.

And now, what shall I say more? If I dared to violate the sacredness of private intercourse, I could indeed say much—much more. That she came forward and devoted herself for her family in times of trial and trouble—that twice she saved them from ruin—that she has achieved two fortunes, besides a brilliant fame, and by her talents won independence for herself and those she loved,—and that she has done all this before the age of five-and-twenty, is known to many; but few are aware how much more admirable, more respectable, than any of her mental gifts and her well-earned distinction, were the moral strength with which she sustained the severest ordeal to which a youthful character could be exposed; the simplicity with which she endured—half recoiling—the incessant adulation which beset her from morn to night;[ 21] her self-command in success; her gentle dignity in reverse; her straightforward integrity, which knew no turning nor shadow of turning; her noble spirit, which disdained all petty rivalry; her earnest sense of religion, "to which alone she trusted to keep her right."[ 22] Suddenly she became the idol of the public; suddenly she was transplanted into a sphere of society, where, as long as she could administer excitement to fashionable inanity, she was worshipped. She carried into those circles all the freshness of her vigorous and poetical mind—all the unworn feelings of her young heart. So much genuine simplicity, such perfect innocence and modesty, allied to such rare powers, and to an habitual familiarity with the language of poetry and the delineation of passion, was not there understood, or rather, was mis-understood—and no wonder! To the blasé men, the vapid girls, and artificial women, who then surrounded her, her generous feelings, "when the bright soul broke forth on every side," appeared mere acting; they were indeed constrained to believe it such; for if for a moment they had deemed it all real, it must have forced on them comparisons by no means favourable to themselves. If, under these circumstances, her quick sensibility to pleasurable emotion of all kinds, and her ready sympathy with all the external refinement, splendour, and luxury of aristocratic life, conspired for a moment to dazzle her imagination, she recovered herself immediately, and from first to last, her warm and strong affections, the moral texture of her character; the refinement, which was as native to her mind, "as fragrance to the rose," remained unimpaired. These—a rich dower—she is about to carry into the shades of domestic life. Another land will be her future home. By another name shall fame speak of her, who was endeared to us as Fanny Kemble: and she, who with no steady hand pens this slight tribute to the virtues she loved, bids to that name—farewell!

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THE FALSE ONE.

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THE FALSE ONE.[ 23]

And give you, mix'd with western sentimentalism,

Some samples of the finest orientalism.

Lord Byron.

Akbar, the most enlightened and renowned among the sovereigns of the East, reigned over all those vast territories, which extend from the Indus to the Ganges, and from the snowy mountains of the north to the kingdoms of Guzerat and Candeish on the south. After having subdued the factious omrahs, and the hereditary enemies of his family, and made tributary to his power most of the neighbouring kingdoms, there occurred a short period of profound peace. Assisted by able ministers, Akbar employed this interval in alleviating the miseries, which half a century of war and ravage had called down upon this beautiful but ever wretched country. Commerce was relieved from the heavy imposts, which had hitherto clogged its progress; the revenues of the empire were improved and regulated; by a particular decree, the cultivators of the earth were exempted from serving in the imperial armies; and justice was every where impartially administered; tempered, however, with that extreme clemency, which in the early part of his reign, Akbar carried to an excess almost injurious to his interests. India, so long exposed to the desolating inroads of invaders, and torn by internal factions, began, at length, to "wear her plumed and jewelled turban with a smile of peace;" and all the various nations united under his sway—the warlike Afghans, the proud Moguls, the gentle-spirited Hindoos, with one voice blessed the wise and humane government of the son of Baber, and unanimously bestowed upon him the titles of Akbar, or the Great, and Juggut Grow, or Guardian of Mankind.

Meantime the happiness, which he had diffused among millions, seemed to have fled from the bosom of the sovereign. Cares far different from those of war, deeper than those of love, (for the love of eastern monarchs is seldom shadowed by anxiety,) possessed his thoughtful soul. He had been brought up in the strictest forms of the Mohammedan religion, and he meditated upon the text, which enjoins the extermination of all who rejected his prophet, till his conscience became like a troubled lake. He reflected that in his vast dominions there were at least fifteen different religions, which were subdivided into about three hundred and fifty sects: to extirpate thousands and tens of thousands of his unoffending subjects, and pile up pyramids of human heads in honour of God and his prophet, as his predecessors had done before him, was, to his mild nature, not only abhorrent, but impossible. Yet as his power had never met with any obstacle, which force or address had not subdued before him, the idea of bringing this vast multitude to agree in one system of belief and worship appeared to him not utterly hopeless.

He consulted, after long reflection, his favourite and secretary, Abul Fazil, the celebrated historian, of whom it was proverbially said, that "the monarchs of the East feared more the pen of Abul Fazil than the sword of Akbar." The acute mind of that great man saw instantly the wild impracticability of such a scheme; but willing to prove it to his master without absolutely contradicting his favourite scheme, he proposed, as a preparatory step, that the names of the various sects of religion known to exist in the sultan's dominions should be registered, and the tenets of their belief contained in their books of law, or promulgated by their priests, should be reviewed and compared; thence it would appear how far it was possible to reconcile them one with another.

This suggestion pleased the great king: and there went forth a decree from the imperial throne, commanding that all the religions and sects of religion to be found within the boundaries of the empire should send deputies, on a certain day, to the sultan, to deliver up their books of law, to declare openly the doctrines of their faith, and be registered by name in a volume kept for this purpose—whether they were followers of Jesus, of Moses, or of Mohammed; whether they worshipped God in the sun, in the fire, in the image, or in the stream; by written law or traditional practice: true believer or pagan infidel, none were excepted. The imperial mandate was couched in such absolute, as well as alluring terms, that it became as impossible as impolitic to evade it; it was therefore the interest of every particular sect, to represent in the most favourable light the mode of faith professed by each. Some thought to gain favour by the magnificence of their gifts; others, by the splendour of their processions. Some rested their hopes on the wisdom and venerable appearance of the deputies they selected to represent them; and others, (they were but few,) strong in their faith and spiritual pride, deemed all such aids unnecessary, and trusted in the truth of the doctrines they professed, which they only waited an opportunity to assert, secure that they needed only to be heard, to convert all who had ears to hear.

On the appointed day, an immense multitude had assembled from all the quarters of the empire, and pressed through the gates and streets of Agra, then the capital and residence of the monarch. The principal durbar, or largest audience-court of the palace, was thrown open on this occasion. At the upper end was placed the throne of Akbar. It was a raised platform, from which sprung twelve twisted pillars of massy gold, all radiant with innumerable gems, supporting the golden canopy, over which waved the white umbrella, the insignia of power; the cushions upon which the emperor reclined, were of cloth of gold, incrusted with rubies and emeralds; six pages, of exquisite beauty, bearing fans of peacocks' feathers, were alone permitted to approach within the silver balustrade, which surrounded the seat of power. On one side stood the vizir Chan Azim, bold and erect of look, as became a warrior, and Abul Fazil, with his tablets in his hand, and his eyes modestly cast down: next to him stood Dominico Cuença, the Portuguese missionary, and two friars of his order, who had come from Goa by the express command of the sultan; on the other side, the muftis and doctors of the law. Around were the great omrahs, the generals, governors, tributary princes, and ambassadors. The ground was spread with Persian carpets of a thousand tints, sprinkled with rose-water, and softer beneath the feet than the velvety durva grass; and clouds of incense, ambergris, and myrrh, filled the air. The gorgeous trappings of eastern splendour, the waving of standards, the glittering of warlike weapons, the sparkling of jewelled robes, formed a scene, almost sublime in its prodigal and lavish magnificence, such as only an oriental court could show.

Seven days did the royal Akbar receive and entertain the religious deputies: every day a hundred thousand strangers feasted at his expense; and every night the gifts he had received during the day, or the value of them, were distributed in alms to the vast multitude, without any regard to difference of belief. Seven days did the royal Akbar sit on his musnud, and listen graciously to all who appeared before him. Many were the words spoken, and marvellous was the wisdom uttered; sublime were the doctrines professed, and pure the morality they enjoined: but the more the royal Akbar heard, the more was his great mind perplexed; the last who spoke seemed ever in the right, till the next who appeared turned all to doubt again. He was amazed, and said within himself, like the judge of old, "What is truth?"

It was observed, that the many dissenting or heterodox sects of the Mohammedan religion excited infinitely more indignation among the orthodox muftis, than the worst among the pagan idolaters. Their hearts burned within them through impatience and wrath, and they would almost have died on the spot for the privilege of confuting those blasphemers, who rejected Abu Becker; who maintained, with Abu Zail, that blue was holier than green; or with Mozar, that a sinner was worse than an infidel; or believed with the Morgians, that in paradise God is beheld only with the eyes of our understanding; or with the Kharejites, that a prince who abuses his power may be deposed without sin. But the sultan had forbidden all argument in his presence, and they were constrained to keep silence, though it was pain and grief to them.

The Seiks from Lahore, then a new sect, and since a powerful nation, with their light olive complexions, their rich robes and turbans all of blue, their noble features and free undaunted deportment, struck the whole assembly with respect, and were received with peculiar favour by the sultan. So also were the Ala-ilahiyahs, whose doctrines are a strange compound of the Christian, the Mohammedan, and the Pagan creeds; but the Sactas, or Epicureans of India, met with a far different reception. This sect, which in secret professed the most profane and detestable opinions, endeavoured to obtain favour by the splendid offerings they laid at the foot of the throne, and the graceful and seducing eloquence of their principal speaker. It was, however, in vain, that he threw over the tenets of his religion, as publicly acknowledged, the flimsy disguise of rhetoric and poetry; that he endeavoured to prove, that all happiness consisted in enjoying the world's goods, and all virtue in mere abstaining from evil; that death is an eternal sleep; and therefore to reject the pleasures of this life, in any shape, the extreme of folly; while at every pause of his oration, voices of the sweetest melody chorussed the famous burden:

"May the hand never shake which gather'd the grapes!

May the foot never slip which press'd them!"

Akbar commanded the Sactas from his presence, amid the murmurs and execrations of all parties: and though they were protected for the present by the royal passport, they were subsequently banished beyond the frontiers of Cashmere.

The fire-worshippers, from Guzerat, presented the books of their famous teacher, Zoroaster; to them succeeded the Jainas, the Buddhists, and many more, innumerable as the leaves upon the banyan tree—countless as the stars at midnight.

Last of all came the deputies of the Brahmans. On their approach there was a hushed silence, and then arose a suppressed murmur of amazement, curiosity, and admiration. It is well known with what impenetrable secrecy the Brahmans guard the peculiar mysteries of their religion. In the reigns of Akbar's predecessors, and during the first invasions of the Moguls, many had suffered martyrdom in the most horrid forms, rather than suffer their sanctuaries to be violated, or disclose the contents of their Vedas or sacred books. Loss of caste, excommunication in this world, and eternal perdition in the next, were the punishments awarded to those, who should break this fundamental law of the Brahminical faith. The mystery was at length to be unveiled; the doubts and conjectures, to which this pertinacious concealment gave rise, were now to be ended for ever. The learned doctors and muftis bent forward with an attentive and eager look—Abul Fazil raised his small, bright, piercing eyes, while a smile of dubious import passed over his countenance—the Portuguese monk threw back his cowl, and the calm and scornful expression of his fine features changed to one of awakened curiosity and interest: even Akbar raised himself from his jewelled couch as the deputies of the Brahmans approached. A single delegate had been chosen from the twelve principal temples and seats of learning, and they were attended by forty aged men, selected from the three inferior castes, to represent the mass of the Indian population—warriors, merchants, and husbandmen. At the head of this majestic procession was the Brahman Sarma, the high priest, and principal Gooroo or teacher of theology at Benares. This singular and venerable man had passed several years of his life in the court of the sultan Baber; and the dignity and austerity, that became his age and high functions, were blended with a certain grace and ease in his deportment, which distinguished him above the rest.

When the sage Sarma had pronounced the usual benediction, "May the king be victorious!" Akbar inclined his head with reverence. "Wise and virtuous Brahmans!" he said, "our court derives honour from your illustrious presence. Next to the true faith taught by our holy Prophet, the doctrines of Brahma must exceed all others in wisdom and purity, even as the priests of Brahma excel in virtue and knowledge the wisest of the earth: disclose, therefore, your sacred Sastras, that we may inhale from them, as from the roses of paradise, the precious fragrance of truth and of knowledge!"

The Brahman replied, in the soft and musical tones of his people, "O king of the world! we are not come before the throne of power to betray the faith of our fathers, but to die for it, if such be the will of the sultan!" Saying these words, he and his companions prostrated themselves upon the earth, and, taking off their turbans, flung them down before them: then, while the rest continued with their foreheads bowed to the ground, Sarma arose, and stood upright before the throne. No words can describe the amazement of Akbar. He shrunk back and struck his hands together; then he frowned, and twisted his small and beautifully curled mustachios:—"The sons of Brahma mock us!" said he at length; "is it thus our imperial decrees are obeyed?"

"The laws of our faith are immutable," replied the old man, calmly, "and the contents of the Vedas were pre-ordained from the beginning of time to be revealed to the TWICE-BORN alone. It is sufficient, that therein are to be found the essence of all wisdom, the principles of all virtue, and the means of acquiring immortality."

"Doubtless, the sons of Brahma are pre-eminently wise," said Akbar, sarcastically; "but are the followers of the Prophet accounted as fools in their eyes? The sons of Brahma are excellently virtuous, but are all the rest of mankind vicious? Has the most high God confined the knowledge of his attributes to the Brahmans alone, and hidden his face from the rest of his creatures? Where, then, is his justice? where his all-embracing mercy?"

The Brahman, folding his arms, replied: "It is written, Heaven is a palace with many doors, and every man shall enter by his own way. It is not given to mortals to examine or arraign the decrees of the Deity, but to hear and to obey. Let the will of the sultan be accomplished in all things else. In this let the God of all the earth judge between the king and his servants."

"Now, by the head of our Prophet! shall we be braved on our throne by these insolent and contumacious priests? Tortures shall force the seal from those lips!"

"Not so!" said the old Brahman, drawing himself up with a look of inexpressible dignity. "It is in the power of the Great King to deal with his slaves as seemeth good to him; but fortitude is the courage of the weak; and the twice-born sons of Brahma can suffer more in the cause of truth, than even the wrath of Akbar can inflict."

At these words, which expressed at once submission and defiance, a general murmur arose in the assembly. The dense crowd became agitated as the waves of the Ganges just before the rising of the hurricane. Some opened their eyes wide with amazement at such audacity, some frowned with indignation, some looked on with contempt, others with pity. All awaited in fearful expectation, till the fury of the sultan should burst forth and consume these presumptuous offenders. But Akbar remained silent, and for some time played with the hilt of his poniard, half unsheathing it, and then forcing it back with an angry gesture. At length he motioned to his secretary to approach; and Abul Fazil, kneeling upon the silver steps of the throne, received the sultan's commands. After a conference of some length, inaudible to the attendants around, Abul Fazil came forward, and announced the will of the sultan, that the durbar should be presently broken up. The deputies were severally dismissed with rich presents; all, except the Brahmans, who were commanded to remain in the quarter assigned to them during the royal pleasure; and a strong guard was placed over them.

Meantime Akbar withdrew to the private apartments of his palace, where he remained for three days inaccessible to all, except his secretary Abul Fazil, and the Christian monk. On the fourth day he sent for the high priest of Benares, and successively for the rest of the Brahmans, his companions; but it was in vain he tried threats and temptations, and all his arts of argument and persuasion. They remained calmly and passively immoveable. The sultan at length pardoned and dismissed them with many expressions of courtesy and admiration. The Brahman Sarma was distinguished among the rest by gifts of peculiar value and magnificence, and to him Akbar made a voluntary promise, that, during his reign, the cruel tax, called the Kerea, which had hitherto been levied upon the poor Indians whenever they met to celebrate any of their religious festivals, should be abolished.

But all these professions were hollow and insidious. Akbar was not a character to be thus baffled; and assisted by the wily wit of Abul Fazil, and the bold intriguing monk, he had devised a secret and subtle expedient, which should at once gratify his curiosity, and avenge his insulted power.

Abul Fazil had an only brother, many years younger than himself, whom he had adopted as his son, and loved with extreme tenderness. He had intended him to tread, like himself, the intricate path of state policy; and with this view he had been carefully educated in all the learning of the East, and had made the most astonishing progress in every branch of science. Though scarcely past his boyhood, he had already been initiated into the intrigues of the court; above all, he had been brought up in sentiments of the most profound veneration and submission for the monarch he was destined to serve. In some respects Faizi resembled his brother: he possessed the same versatility of talents, the same acuteness of mind, the same predilection for literary and sedentary pursuits, the same insinuating melody of voice and fluent grace of speech; but his ambition was of a nobler cast, and though his moral perceptions had been somewhat blunted by a too early acquaintance with court diplomacy, and an effeminate, though learned education, his mind and talents were decidedly of a higher order. He also excelled Abul Fazil in the graces of his person, having inherited from his mother (a Hindoo slave of surpassing loveliness) a figure of exquisite grace and symmetry, and features of most faultless and noble beauty.

Thus fitted by nature and prepared by art for the part he was to perform, this youth was secretly sent to Allahabad, where the deputies of the Brahmans rested for some days on their return to the Sacred City. Here Abul Fazil, with great appearance of mystery and circumspection, introduced himself to the chief priest, Sarma, and presented to him his youthful brother as the orphan son of the Brahman Mitra, a celebrated teacher of astronomy in the court of the late sultan. Abul Fazil had artfully prepared such documents, as left no doubt of the truth of his story. His pupil in treachery played his part to admiration, and the deception was complete and successful.

"It was the will of the Great King," said the wily Abul Fazil, "that this fair youth should be brought up in his palace, and converted to the Moslem faith; but, bound by my vows to a dying friend, I have for fourteen years eluded the command of the sultan, and in placing him under thy protection, O most venerable Sarma! I have at length discharged my conscience, and fulfilled the last wishes of the Brahman Mitra. Peace be with him! If it seem good in thy sight, let this remain for ever a secret between me and thee. I have successfully thrown dust in the eyes of the sultan, and caused it to be reported, that the youth is dead of a sudden and grievous disease. Should he discover, that he has been deceived by his slave; should the truth reach his mighty ears, the head of Abul Fazil would assuredly pay the forfeit of his disobedience."

The old Brahman replied with many expressions of gratitude and inviolable discretion; and, wholly unsuspicious of the cruel artifice, received the youth with joy. He carried him to Benares, where some months afterwards he publicly adopted him as his son, and gave him the name of Govinda, "the Beloved," one of the titles under which the Indian women adore their beautiful and favourite idol, the god Crishna.

Govinda, so we must now call him, was set to study the sacred language, and the theology of the Brahmans as it is revealed in their Vedas and Sastras. In both he made quick and extraordinary progress; and his singular talents did not more endear him to his preceptor, than his docility, and the pensive, and even melancholy sweetness of his temper and manner. His new duties were not unpleasing or unsuited to one of his indolent and contemplative temper. He possibly felt, at first, a holy horror at the pagan sacrifices, in which he was obliged to assist, and some reluctance to feeding consecrated cows, gathering flowers, cooking rice, and drawing water for offerings and libations: but by degrees he reconciled his conscience to these occupations, and became attached to his Gooroo, and interested in his philosophical studies. He would have been happy, in short, but for certain uneasy sensations of fear and self-reproach, which he vainly endeavoured to forget or to reason down.

Abul Fazil, who dreaded not his indiscretion or his treachery, but his natural sense of rectitude, which had yielded reluctantly, even to the command of Akbar, maintained a constant intercourse with him by means of an intelligent mute, who, hovering in the vicinity of Benares, sometimes in the disguise of a fisherman, sometimes as a coolie, was a continual spy upon all his movements; and once in every month, when the moon was in her dark quarter, Govinda met him secretly, and exchanged communications with his brother.

The Brahman Sarma was rich; he was proud of his high caste, his spiritual office, and his learning; he was of the tribe of Narayna, which for a thousand years had filled the offices of priesthood, without descending to any meaner occupation, or mingling blood with any inferior caste. He maintained habitually a cold, austere, and dignified calmness of demeanour; and flattered himself, that he had attained that state of perfect indifference to all worldly things, which, according to the Brahminical philosophy, is the highest point of human virtue; but, though simple, grave, and austere in his personal habits, he lived with a splendour becoming his reputation, his high rank, and vast possessions. He exercised an almost princely hospitality; a hundred mendicants were fed morning and evening at his gates. He founded and supported colleges of learning for the poorer Brahmans, and had numerous pupils, who had come from all parts of India to study under his direction. These were lodged in separate buildings. Only Govinda, as the adopted son of Sarma, dwelt under the same roof with his Gooroo, a privilege which had unconsciously become most precious to his heart: it removed him from the constrained companionship of those he secretly despised, and it placed him in delicious and familiar intercourse with one, who had become too dearly and fatally beloved.

The Brahman had an only child, the daughter of his old age. She had been named, at her birth, Priyamvada; (or softly speaking;) but her companions called her Amrà, the name of a graceful tree bearing blossoms of peculiar beauty and fragrance, with which the Camdeo (Indian Cupid) is said to tip his arrows. Amrà was but a child when Govinda first entered the dwelling of his preceptor; but as time passed on, she expanded beneath his eye into beauty and maturity, like the lovely and odoriferous flower, the name of which she bore.

The Hindoo women of superior rank and unmixed caste are in general of diminutive size; and accordingly the lovely and high-born Amrà was formed upon the least possible scale of female beauty: but her figure, though so exquisitely delicate, had all the flowing outline and rounded proportions of complete womanhood. Her features were perfectly regular, and of almost infantine minuteness, except her eyes: those soft oriental eyes, not sparkling, or often animated, but large, dark, and lustrous; as if in their calm depth of expression slept unawakened passions, like the bright deity Heri reposing upon the coiled serpent. Her eyebrows were finely arched, and most delicately pencilled; her complexion, of a pale and transparent olive, was on the slightest emotion suffused with a tint, which resembled that of the crimson water-lily as seen through the tremulous wave; her lips were like the buds of the Camàlata, and unclosed to display a row of teeth like seed-pearl of Manar. But one of her principal charms, because peculiar and unequalled, was the beauty and redundance of her hair, which in colour and texture resembled black floss silk, and, when released from confinement, flowed downwards over her whole person like a veil, and swept the ground.

Such was Amrà: nor let it be supposed, that so perfect a form was allied to a merely passive and childish mind. It is on record, that, until the invasion of Hindostan by the barbarous Moguls, the Indian women enjoyed comparative freedom: it is only since the occupation of the country by the Europeans, that they have been kept in entire seclusion. A plurality of wives was discouraged by their laws; and, among some of the tribes of Brahmans, it was even forbidden. At the period of our story, that is, in the reign of Akbar, the Indian women, and more particularly the Brahminees, enjoyed much liberty. They were well educated, and some of them, extraordinary as it may seem, distinguished themselves in war and government. The Indian queen Durgetti, whose history forms a conspicuous and interesting episode in the life of Akbar, defended her kingdom for ten years against one of his most valiant generals. Mounted upon an elephant of war, she led her armies in person; fought several pitched battles; and being at length defeated in a decisive engagement, she stabbed herself on the field, rather than submit to her barbarous conqueror. Nor was this a solitary instance of female heroism and mental energy: and the effect of this freedom, and the respect with which they were treated, appeared in the morals and manners of the women.

The gentle daughter of Sarma was not indeed fitted by nature either to lead or to govern, and certainly had never dreamed of doing either. Her figure, gestures, and movements, had that softness at once alluring and retiring, that indolent grace, that languid repose, common to the women of tropical regions.

"All her affections like the dews on roses,

Fair as the flowers themselves; as soft, as gentle."

Her spirit, in its "mildness, sweetness, blessedness," seemed as flexible and unresisting as the tender Vasanta creeper. She had indeed been educated in all the exclusive pride of her caste, and taught to regard all who were not of the privileged race of Brahma as frangi (or impure;) but this principle, though so early instilled into her mind as to have become a part of her nature, was rather passive than active; it had never been called forth. She had never been brought into contact with those, whose very look she would have considered as pollution; for she had no intercourse but with those of her own nation, and watchful and sustaining love were all around her. Her learned accomplishments extended no farther than to read and write the Hindostanee tongue. To tend and water her flowers, to feed her birds, which inhabited a gaily gilded aviary in her garden, to string pearls, to embroider muslin, were her employments; to pay visits and receive them, to lie upon cushions, and be fanned asleep by her maids, or listen to the endless tales of her old nurse, Gautami, whose memory was a vast treasure of traditional wonders—these were her amusements. That there were graver occupations, and dearer pleasures, proper to her sex, she knew; but thought not of them, till the young Govinda came to disturb the peace of her innocent bosom. She had been told to regard him as a brother; and, as she had never known a brother, she believed, that, in lavishing upon him all the glowing tenderness of her young heart, she was but obeying her father's commands. If her bosom fluttered when she heard his footsteps; if she trembled upon the tones of his voice; if, while he was occupied in the services of the temple, she sat in her veranda awaiting his return, and, the moment he appeared through the embowering acacias, a secret and unaccountable feeling made her breathe quick, and rise in haste and retire to her inner apartments, till he approached to pay the salutations due to the daughter of his preceptor; what was it, what could it be, but the tender solicitude of a sister for a new-found brother? But Govinda himself was not so entirely deceived. His boyhood had been passed in a luxurious court, and among the women and slaves of his brother's harem; and though so young, he was not wholly inexperienced in a passion, which is the too early growth of an eastern heart. He knew why he languished in the presence of his beautiful sister; he could tell why the dark splendour of Amrà's eyes pierced his soul like the winged flames shot into a besieged city. He could guess, too, why those eyes kindled with a softer fire beneath his glance: but the love he felt was so chastened by the awe which her serene purity, and the dignity of her sweet and feminine bearing shed around her; so hallowed by the nominal relationship in which they stood; so different, in short, from any thing he had ever felt, or seen, or heard of, that, abandoned to all the sweet and dream-like enchantment of a boyish passion, Govinda was scarcely conscious of the wishes of his own heart, until accident in the same moment disclosed his secret aspirations to himself, and bade him for ever despair of their accomplishment.

On the last day of the dark half of the moon, it was the custom of the wise and venerable Sarma to bathe at sunset in the Ganges, and afterwards retire to private meditation upon the thousand names of God, by the repetition of which, as it is written, a man insures to himself everlasting felicity. But while Sarma was thus absorbed in holy abstraction, where were Govinda and Amrà?

In a spot fairer than the poet's creative pencil ever wrought into a picture for fancy to dwell on—where, at the extremity of the Brahman's garden, the broad and beautiful stream that bounded it ran swiftly to mingle its waves with those of the thrice-holy Ganges; where mangoes raised their huge twisted roots in a thousand fantastic forms, while from their boughs hung suspended the nests of the little Baya birds, which waved to and fro in the evening breeze—there had Amrà and Govinda met together, it might be, without design. The sun had set, the Cistus flowers began to fall, and the rich blossoms of the night-loving Nilica diffused their rich odour. The Peyoo awoke to warble forth his song, and the fire-flies were just visible, as they flitted under the shade of the Champac trees. Upon a bank, covered with that soft and beautiful grass, which, whenever it is pressed or trodden on, yields a delicious perfume, were Amrà and Govinda seated side by side. Two of her attendants, at some little distance, were occupied in twining wreaths of flowers. Amrà had a basket at her feet, in which were two small vessels of porcelain. One contained cakes of rice, honey, and clarified butter, kneaded by her own hand; in the other were mangoes, rose-apples, and musk-melons; and garlands of the holy palàsa blossoms, sacred to the dead, were flung around the whole. This was the votive offering, which Amrà had prepared for the tomb of her mother, who was buried in the garden. And now, with her elbow resting on her knee, and her soft cheek leaning on her hand, she sat gazing up at the sky, where the stars came flashing forth one by one; and she watched the auspicious moment for offering her pious oblation. But Govinda looked neither on the earth, nor on the sky. What to him were the stars, or the flowers, or the moon rising in dewy splendour? His eyes were fixed upon one, who was brighter to him than the stars, lovelier than the moon when she drives her antelopes through the heavens, sweeter than the night-flower which opens in her beam.

"O Amrà!" he said, at length, and while he spoke his voice trembled even at its own tenderness, "Amrà! beautiful and beloved sister! thine eyes are filled with the glory of that sparkling firmament! the breath of the evening, which agitates the silky filaments of the Seris, is as pleasant to thee as to me: but the beauty, which I see, thou canst not see; the power of deep joy, which thrills over my heart like the breeze over those floating lotuses—oh! this thou canst not feel!—Let me take away those pearls and gems scattered among thy radiant tresses, and replace them with these fragrant and golden clusters of Champac flowers! If ever there were beauty, which could disdain the aid of ornament, is it not that of Amrà? If ever there were purity, truth, and goodness, which could defy the powers of evil, are they not thine? O, then, let others braid their hair with pearls, and bind round their arms the demon-scaring amulet, my sister needs no spells to guard her innocence, and cannot wear a gem that does not hide a charm!"

The blush, which the beginning of this passionate speech had called up to her cheek, was changed to a smile, as she looked down upon the mystic circle of gold, which bound her arm.

"It is not a talisman," said she, softly; "it is the Tali, the nuptial bracelet, which was bound upon my arm when I was married."

"Married!" the word rent away from the heart of Govinda that veil, with which he had hitherto shrouded his secret hopes, fears, wishes, and affections. His mute agitation sent a trouble into her heart, she knew not why. She blushed quick-kindling blushes, and drooped her head.

"Married!" he said, after a breathless pause; "when? to whom? who is the possessor of a gem of such exceeding price, and yet forbears to claim it?"

She replied, "To Adhar, priest of Indore, and the friend of Sarma. I was married to him while yet an infant, after the manner of our tribe." Then perceiving his increasing disturbance, she continued, hurriedly, and with downcast eyes:—"I have never seen him; he has long dwelt in the countries of the south, whither he was called on an important mission; but he will soon return to reside here in the sacred city of his fathers, and will leave it no more. Why then should Govinda be sad?" She laid her hand timidly upon his arm, and looked up in his face.

Govinda would fain have taken that beautiful little hand, and covered it with kisses and with tears; but he was restrained by a feeling of respect, which he could not himself comprehend. He feared to alarm her; he contented himself with fixing his eyes on the hand which rested on his arm; and he said, in a soft melancholy voice, "When Adhar returns, Govinda will be forgotten."

"O never! never!" she exclaimed with sudden emotion, and lifting towards him eyes, that floated in tears. Govinda bent down his head, and pressed his lips upon her hand. She withdrew it hastily, and rose from the ground.

At that moment her nurse, Gautami, approached them. "My child," said she, in a tone of reproof, "dost thou yet linger here, and the auspicious moment almost past? If thou delayest longer, evil demons will disturb and consume the pious oblation, and the dead will frown upon the abandoned altar. Hasten, my daughter; take up the basket of offerings, and walk before us."

Amrà, trembling, leaned upon her maids, and prepared to obey; but when she had made a few steps, she turned back, as if to salute her brother, and repeated in a low emphatic tone the word "Never!"—then turned away. Govinda stood looking after the group, till the last wave of their white veils disappeared; and listened till the tinkling of their silver anklets could no longer be distinguished. Then he started as from a dream: he tossed his arms above his head; he flung himself upon the earth in an agony of jealous fury; he gave way to all the pent-up passions, which had been for years accumulating in his heart. All at once he rose: he walked to and fro; he stopped. A hope had darted into his mind, even through the gloom of despair. "For what," thought he, "have I sold myself? For riches! for honour! for power! Ah! what are they in such a moment? Dust of the earth, toys, empty breath! For what is the word of the Great King pledged to me? Has he not sworn to refuse me nothing? All that is most precious between earth and heaven, from the mountain to the sea, lies at my choice! One word, and she is mine! and I hesitate? Fool! she shall be mine!"

He looked up towards heaven, and marked the places of the stars. "It is the appointed hour," he muttered, and cautiously his eye glanced around, and he listened; but all was solitary and silent. He then stole along the path, which led through a thick grove of Cadam trees, intermingled with the tall points of the Cusa grass, that shielded him from all observation. He came at last to a little promontory, where the river we have mentioned threw itself into the Ganges. He had not been there above a minute, when a low whistle, like the note of the Chacora, was heard. A small boat rowed to the shore, and Sahib stood before him. Quick of eye and apprehension, the mute perceived instantly that something unusual had occurred. He pointed to the skiff; but Govinda shook his head, and made signs for a light and the writing implements. They were quickly brought; and while Sahib held the lamp, so that its light was invisible to the opposite shore, Govinda wrote, in the peculiar cipher they had framed for that purpose, a few words to his brother, sufficiently intelligible in their import, though dictated by the impassioned and tumultuous feelings of the moment. When he had finished, he gave the letter to Sahib, who concealed it carefully in the folds of his turban, and then, holding up the fingers of both hands thrice over, to intimate, that in thirty days he would bring the answer, he sprung into the boat, and was soon lost under the mighty shadow of the trees, which stretched their huge boughs over the stream.

Govinda slowly returned; but he saw Amrà no more that night. They met the next day, and the next; but Amrà was no longer the same: she was silent, pensive; and when pressed or rebuked, she became tearful and even sullen. She was always seen with her faithful Gautami, upon whose arm she leaned droopingly, and hung her head like her own neglected flowers. Govinda was almost distracted: in vain he watched for a moment to speak to Amrà alone; the vigilant Gautami seemed resolved, that they should never meet out of her sight. Sometimes he would raise his eyes to her as she passed, with such a look of tender and sorrowful reproach, that Amrà would turn away her face and weep: but still she spoke not: and never returned his respectful salutation farther than by inclining her head.

The old Brahman perceived this change in his beloved daughter; but not for some time: and it is probable, that, being absorbed in his spiritual office and sublime speculations, he would have had neither leisure nor penetration to discover the cause, if the suspicions of the careful Gautami had not awakened his attention. She ventured to suggest the propriety of hastening the return of his daughter's betrothed husband; and the Brahman, having taken her advice in this particular, rested satisfied; persuading himself, that the arrival of Adhar would be a certain and all-sufficient remedy for the dreaded evil, which in his simplicity he had never contemplated, and could scarcely be made to comprehend.

A month had thus passed away, and again that appointed day came round, on which Govinda was wont to meet his brother's emissary: even on ordinary occasions he could never anticipate it without a thrill of anxiety,—now every feeling was wrought up to agony; yet it was necessary to control the slightest sign of impatience, and wear the same external guise of calm, subdued self-possession, though every vein was burning with the fever of suspense.

It was the hour when Sarma, having risen from his mid-day sleep, was accustomed to listen to Govinda while he read some appointed text. Accordingly Govinda opened his book, and standing before his preceptor in an attitude of profound humility, he read thus:

"Garuna asked of the Crow Bushanda, 'What is the most excellent of natural forms? the highest good? the chief pain? the dearest pleasure? the greatest wickedness? the severest punishment?

"And the Crow Bushanda answered him: 'In the three worlds, empyreal, terrestrial, and infernal, no form excels the human form.

"'Supreme felicity, on earth, is found in the conversation of a virtuous friend.

"'The keenest pain is inflicted by extreme poverty.

"'The worst of sins is uncharitableness; and to the uncharitable is awarded the severest punishment: for while the despisers of their spiritual guides shall live for a thousand centuries as frogs, and those who contemn the Brahmans as ravens, and those who scorn other men as blinking bats, the uncharitable alone shall be condemned to the profoundest hell, and their punishment shall last for ever.'"[ 24]

Govinda closed his book; and the old Brahman was proceeding to make an elaborate comment on this venerable text, when, looking up in the face of his pupil, he perceived that he was pale, abstracted, and apparently unconscious that he was speaking. He stopped: he was about to rebuke him, but he restrained himself; and after reflecting for a few moments, he commanded the youth to prepare for the evening sacrifice: but first he desired him to summon Amrà to her father's presence.

At this unusual command Govinda almost started. He deposited the sacred leaves in his bosom, and, with a beating heart and trembling steps, prepared to obey. When he reached the door of the zenana, he gently lifted the silken curtain which divided the apartments, and stood for a few moments contemplating, with silent and sad delight, the group that met his view.

Amrà was reclining upon cushions, and looking wan as a star that fades away before the dawn. Her head drooped upon her bosom, her hair hung neglected upon her shoulders: yet was she lovely still; and Govinda, while he gazed, remembered the words of the poet Calidas: "The water-lily, though dark moss may settle on its head, is nevertheless beautiful; and the moon, with dewy beams, is rendered yet brighter by its dark spots." She was clasping round her delicate wrist a bracelet of gems; and when she observed, that ever as she placed it on her attenuated arm it fell again upon her hand, she shook her head and smiled mournfully. Two of her maids sat at her feet, occupied in their embroidery; and old Gautami, at her side, was relating, in a slow, monotonous recitative, one of her thousand tales of wonder, to divert the melancholy of her young mistress. She told how the demi-god Rama was forced to flee from the demons who had usurped his throne, and how his beautiful and faithful Seita wandered over the whole earth in search of her consort; and, being at length overcome with grief and fatigue, she sat down in the pathless wilderness and wept; and how there arose from the spot, where her tears sank warm into the earth, a fountain of boiling water of exquisite clearness and wondrous virtues; and how maidens, who make a pilgrimage to this sacred well and dip their veils into its wave with pure devotion, ensure themselves the utmost felicity in marriage: thus the story ran. Amrà, who appeared at first abstracted and inattentive, began to be affected by the misfortunes and the love of the beautiful Seita; and at the mention of the fountain and its virtues, she lifted her eyes with an expression of eager interest, and met those of Govinda fixed upon her. She uttered a faint cry, and threw herself into the arms of Gautami. He hastened to deliver the commands of his preceptor, and then Amrà, recovering her self-possession, threw her veil round her, arose, and followed him to her father's presence.

As they drew near together, the old man looked from one to the other. Perhaps his heart, though dead to all human passions, felt at that moment a touch of pity for the youthful, lovely, and loving pair who stood before him; but his look was calm, cold, and serene, as usual.

"Draw near, my son," he said; "and thou, my beloved daughter, approach, and listen to the will of your father. The time is come, when we must make ready all things for the arrival of the wise and honoured Adhar. My daughter, let those pious ceremonies, with which virtuous women prepare themselves ere they enter the dwelling of their husband, be duly performed: and do thou, Govinda, son of my choice, set my household in order, that all may be in readiness to receive with honour the bridegroom, who comes to claim his betrothed. To-morrow we will sacrifice to Ganesa, who is the guardian of travellers: this night must be given to penance and holy meditation. Amrà, retire: and thou, Govinda, take up that fagot of Tulsi-wood, with the rice and the flowers for the evening oblation, and follow me to the temple." So saying, the old man turned away hastily; and without looking back, pursued his path through the sacred grove.

Alas for those he had left behind! Govinda remained silent and motionless. Amrà would have obeyed her father, but her limbs refused their office. She trembled—she was sinking: she timidly looked up to Govinda as if for support; his arms were extended to receive her: she fell upon his neck, and wept unrestrained tears. He held her to his bosom as though he would have folded her into his inmost heart, and hidden her there for ever. He murmured passionate words of transport and fondness in her ear. He drew aside her veil from her pale brow, and ventured to print a kiss upon her closed eyelids. "To-night," he whispered, "in the grove of mangoes by the river's bank!" She answered only by a mute caress; and then supporting her steps to her own apartments, he resigned her to the arms of her attendants, and hastened after his preceptor. He forgot, however, the materials for the evening sacrifice, and in consequence not only had to suffer a severe rebuke from the old priest, but the infliction of a penance extraordinary, which detained him in the presence of his preceptor till the night was far advanced. At length, however, Sarma retired to holy meditation and mental abstraction, and Govinda was dismissed.

He had hitherto maintained, with habitual and determined self-command, that calm, subdued exterior, which becomes a pupil in the presence of his religious teacher; but no sooner had he crossed the threshold, and found himself alone breathing the free night-air of heaven, than the smothered passions burst forth. He paused for one instant, to anathematise in his soul the Sastras and their contents, the gods and their temples, the priests and the sacrifices; the futile ceremonies and profitless suffering to which his life was abandoned, and the cruel policy to which he had been made an unwilling victim. Then he thought of Amrà, and all things connected with her changed their aspect.

In another moment he was beneath the shadow of the mangoes on the river's brink. He looked round, Amrà was not there: he listened, there was no sound. The grass bore marks of having been recently pressed, and still its perfume floated on the air. A few flowers were scattered round, fresh gathered, and glittering with dew. Govinda wrung his hands in despair, and flung himself upon the bank, where a month before they had sat together. On the very spot where Amrà had reclined, he perceived a lotos-leaf and a palàsa flower laid together. Upon the lotos-leaf he could perceive written, with a thorn or some sharp point, the word Amrà; and the crimson palasa-buds were sacred to the dead. It was sufficient: he thrust the leaf and the flowers into his bosom; and, "swift as the sparkle of a glancing star," he flew along the path which led to the garden sepulchre.

The mother of Amrà had died in giving birth to her only child. She was young, beautiful, and virtuous; and had lived happily with her husband notwithstanding the disparity of age. The pride and stoicism of his caste would not allow him to betray any violence of grief, or show his affection for the dead, otherwise than by raising to her memory a beautiful tomb. It consisted of four light pillars, richly and grotesquely carved, supporting a pointed cupola, beneath which was an altar for oblations: the whole was overlaid with brilliant white stucco, and glittered through the gloom. A flight of steps led up to this edifice: upon the highest step, and at the foot of the altar, Amrà was seated alone and weeping.

Love—O love! what have I to do with thee? How sinks the heart, how trembles the hand as it approaches the forbidden theme! Of all the gifts the gods have sent upon the earth thou most precious—yet ever most fatal! As serpents dwell among the odorous boughs of the sandal-tree, and alligators in the thrice sacred waters of the Ganges, so all that is sweetest, holiest, dearest upon earth, is mixed up with sin, and pain, and misery, and evil! Thus hath it been ordained from the beginning; and the love that hath never mourned, is not love.

How sweet, yet how terrible, were the moments that succeeded! While Govinda, with fervid eloquence, poured out his whole soul at her feet, Amrà alternately melted with tenderness, or shrunk with sensitive alarm. When he darkly intimated the irresistible power he possessed to overcome all obstacles to their union—when he spoke with certainty of the time when she should be his, spite of the world and men—when he described the glorious height to which his love would elevate her—the delights and the treasures he would lavish around her, she, indeed, understood not his words; yet, with all a woman's trusting faith in him she loves, she hung upon his accents—listened and believed. The high and passionate energy, with which his spirit, so long pent up and crushed within him, now revealed itself; the consciousness of his own power, the knowledge that he was beloved, lent such a new and strange expression to his whole aspect, and touched his fine form and features with such a proud and sparkling beauty, that Amrà looked up at him with a mixture of astonishment, admiration, and deep love, not wholly unmingled with fear; almost believing, that she gazed upon some more than mortal lover, upon one of those bright genii, who inhabit the lower heaven, and have been known in the old time to leave their celestial haunts for love of the earth-born daughters of beauty.

Amrà did not speak, but Govinda felt his power. He saw his advantage, and, with the instinctive subtlety of his sex, he pursued it. He sighed, he wept, he implored, he upbraided. Amrà, overpowered by his emotion and her own, had turned away her head, and embraced one of the pillars of her mother's tomb, as if for protection. In accents of the most plaintive tenderness she entreated him to leave her—to spare her—and even while she spoke her arm relaxed its hold, and she was yielding to the gentle force with which he endeavoured to draw her away; when at this moment, so dangerous to both, a startling sound was heard—a rustling among the bushes, and then a soft, low whistle. Govinda started up at that well-known signal, and saw the head of the mute appearing just above the altar. His turban being green, was undistinguishable against the leafy back-ground; and his small black eyes glanced and glittered like those of a snake. Govinda would willingly have annihilated him at that moment. He made a gesture of angry impatience, and motioned him to retire; but Sahib stood still, shook his hand with a threatening expression, and made signs, that he must instantly follow him.

Amrà, meantime, who had neither seen nor heard any thing, began to suspect, that Govinda was communing with some invisible spirit; she clung to him in terror, and endeavoured to recall his attention to herself by the most tender and soothing words and caresses. After some time he succeeded in calming her fears; and with a thousand promises of quick return, he at length tore himself away, and followed through the thicket the form of Sahib, who glided like a shadow before him.

When they reached the accustomed spot, the mute leapt into the canoe, which he had made fast to the root of a mango-tree, and motioning Govinda to follow him, he pushed from the shore, and rowed rapidly till they reached a tall, bare rock near the centre of the stream, beneath the dark shadow of which Sahib moored his little boat, out of the possible reach of human eye or ear.

All had passed so quickly, that Govinda felt like one in a dream; but now, awakening to a sense of his situation, he held out his hand for the expected letter from his brother, trembling to learn its import, upon which he felt that more than his life depended. Sahib, meanwhile, did not appear in haste to obey. At length, after a pause of breathless suspense, Govinda heard a low and well-remembered voice repeat an almost-forgotten name: "Faizi!" it said.

"O Prophet of God! my brother!" and he was clasped in the arms of Abul Fazil.

After the first transports of recognition had subsided, Faizi (it is time to use his real name) sank from his brother's arms to his feet: he clasped his knees. "My brother!" he exclaimed, "what is now to be my fate? You have not lightly assumed this disguise, and braved the danger of discovery! You know all, and have come to save me—to bless me? Is it not so?"

Abul Fazil could not see his brother's uplifted countenance, flushed with the hectic of feverish impatience, or his imploring eyes, that floated in tears; but his tones were sufficiently expressive.

"Poor boy!" he said, compassionately, "I should have foreseen this. But calm these transports, my brother! nothing is denied to the sultan's power, and nothing will he deny thee."

"He knows all, then?"

"All—and by his command am I come. I had feared, that my brother had sold his vowed obedience for the smile of a dark-eyed girl—what shall I say?—I feared for his safety!"

"O my brother! there is no cause!"

"I know it—enough!—I have seen and heard!"

Faizi covered his face with his hands.

"If the sultan——"

"Have no doubts," said Abul Fazil: "nothing is denied to the sultan's power, nothing will be denied to thee."

"And the Brahman Adhar?"

"It has been looked to—he will not trouble thee."

"Dead? O merciful Allah! crime upon crime!"

"His life is cared for," said Abul Fazil, calmly: "ask no more."

"It is sufficient. O my brother! O Amrà!"—

"She is thine!—Now hear the will of Akbar." Faizi bowed his head with submission. "Speak!" he said; "the slave of Akbar listens."

"In three months from this time," continued Abul Fazil, "and on this appointed night, it will be dark, and the pagodas deserted. Then, and not till then, will Sahib be found at the accustomed spot. He will bring in the skiff a dress, which is the sultan's gift, and will be a sufficient disguise. On the left bank of the stream there shall be stationed an ample guard, with a close litter and a swift Arabian. Thou shalt mount the one, and in the other shall be placed this fair girl. Then fly: having first flung her veil upon the river to beguile pursuit; the rest I leave to thine own quick wit. But let all be done with secrecy and subtlety; for the sultan, though he can refuse thee nothing, would not willingly commit an open wrong against a people he has lately conciliated; and the violation of a Brahminee woman were enough to raise a province."

"It shall not need," exclaimed the youth, clasping his hands: "she loves me! She shall live for me—only for me—while others weep her dead!"

"It is well: now return we in silence, the night wears fast away." He took one of the oars, Faizi seized the other, and with some difficulty they rowed up the stream, keeping close under the overshadowing banks. Having reached the little promontory, they parted with a strict and mute embrace.

Faizi looked for a moment after his brother, then sprung forward to the spot where he had left Amrà; but she was no longer there: apparently she had been recalled by her nurse to her own apartments, and did not again make her appearance.