BLACKWOOD’S
Edinburgh
MAGAZINE.
VOL. LXII.
JULY-DECEMBER, 1847.

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, EDINBURGH;
AND
37, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.
1847.

BLACKWOOD’S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
No. CCCLXXXI. JULY, 1847. Vol. LXII.

CONTENTS.

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BLACKWOOD’S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
No. CCCLXXXI. JULY, 1847. Vol. LXII.

PRESCOTT’S PERU.[1]

The world’s history contains no chapter more striking and attractive than that comprising the narrative of Spanish conquest in the Americas. Teeming with interest to the historian and philosopher, to the lover of daring enterprise and marvellous adventure it is full of fascination. On the vast importance of the discovery of a western hemisphere, vying in size, as it one day, perhaps, may compete in civilisation and power, with its eastern rival, it were idle to expatiate. But the manner of its conquest commands unceasing admiration. It needs the concurring testimony of a host of chroniclers and eye-witnesses to convince succeeding generations that the hardships endured, the perils surmounted, the victories obtained, by the old Conquistadores of Mexico and Peru, were as real as their record is astounding. The subjugation of vast and populous empires by petty detachments of adventurers, often scantily provided and ignorantly led—the extraordinary daring with which they risked themselves, a few score strong, into the heart of unknown countries, and in the midst of hostile millions, require strong confirmation to obtain credence. Exploits so romantic go near to realise the feats of those fabulous paladins who, cased in impervious steel and wielding enchanted lance, overthrew armies as easily as a Quixote scattered merinos. Hardly, when the tale is put before us in the quaint and garrulous chronicle of an Oviedo or a Zarate, can we bring ourselves to accept it as history, not as the wild invention of imaginative monks, beguiling conventual leisure by the composition of fantastical romance. And the man who undertakes, at the present day, to narrate in all their details the exploits and triumphs of a Cortés or a Pizarro, allots himself no slight task. A clear head and a sound judgment, great industry and a skilful pen, are needed to do justice to the subject; to extract and combine the scraps of truth buried under mountains of fiction and misrepresentation, to sift facts from the partial accounts of Spanish jurists and officials, and to correct the boastful misrepresentations of insolent conquerors. The necessary qualities have been found united in the person of an accomplished American author. Already favourably known by his histories of the eventful and chivalrous reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, and of the exploits of the Great Marquis and his iron followers, Mr Prescott has added to his well-merited reputation by his narrative of the Conquest of Peru. In its compilation he has spared no pains. Private collections and public libraries, the archives of Madrid and the manuscripts of the Escurial, he has ransacked and collated. And he has been so scrupulously conscientious as to send to Lima for a copy of the portrait whose engraving faces his title-page. But although his materials had to be procured from many and distant countries, their collection appears to have occasioned him less trouble than their abundance. The comrades and contemporaries of Pizarro were afflicted with a scribbling mania. They have left masses of correspondence, of memoranda and personal diaries, contradictory of each other, often absurd in their exaggerations and childish in their triviality. From this farrago has Mr Prescott had to cull,—a labour of no trifling magnitude, whose result is most creditable to him. And to our admiration of his talents are added feelings of strong sympathy, when we read his manly and affecting account of the painful circumstances under which the work was done. Deprived by an accident of the sight of one eye, the other has for years been so weak as at times to be useless to him for all purposes of reading and writing. At intervals he was able to read print several hours a-day, but manuscript was far more trying to his impaired vision, and writing was only possible through those aids by which even the stone-blind may accomplish it. But when he could read, although only by daylight, he felt, he says, satisfied with being raised so nearly to a level with the rest of his species. Unfortunately the evil increases. “The sight of my eye has become gradually dimmed, whilst the sensibility of the nerve has been so far increased, that for several weeks of the last year I have not opened a volume, and through the whole time I have not had the use of it, on an average, for more than an hour a-day.” Sustained by love of letters, and assisted by readers and amanuenses, the student and scholar has triumphed over these cruel disadvantages, surmounted all obstacles, and produced three long and important historical works, conspicuous by their impartiality, research, and elegance; entitling him to an exceedingly honourable position amongst writers in the English tongue, and to one of the very loftiest places in the as yet scantily filled gallery of American men of letters. The last of these works, of which Pizarro is the hero and Peru the scene, yields nothing in merit or interest to its predecessors.

The discovery of America infected Europe with a fever of exploration. Scarce a country was there, possessing a sea-frontier, whence expeditions did not proceed with a view to appropriate a share of the spoils and territory of the new-found El-Dorado. In these ventures Spain, fresh from her long and bloody struggle with the Moor, and abounding in fierce unsettled spirits, eager for action and adventure, took a prominent part. The conquests of Cortes followed hard upon the discoveries of Columbus: Dutch, English, and Portuguese pushed their investigations in all directions; and, in less than thirty years from its first discovery, the whole eastern coast of both Americas was explored from north to south. The vast empire of Mexico was added to the Spanish crown, and the mother country was glutted and intoxicated by the Pactolus that flowed from this new possession. But enterprise was not yet exhausted, or thirst of gold satiated, and Balboa’s discovery of the Pacific gave fresh stimulus to both. Rumour had long spoken of lands, as yet untrodden by European foot, where the precious metals were abundant and worthless as the sand upon the sea-beach. Years elapsed before any well-directed attempt was made to reach these golden shores. With a view to discovery and traffic in the Pacific, a settlement was made on the southern side of the Isthmus of Darien, and the town of Panama was built. But the armaments that were fitted out took a westerly direction, in hopes to realise a fixed idea of the Spanish government relative to an imaginary strait intersecting the Isthmus. At last an expedition sailed southwards, but soon returned, owing to the bad health of its commander. This was in 1522. The moment and the man had not yet arrived. They came, two years later; Pizarro appeared, and Peru was discovered.

But the discovery was comparatively a trifling matter. There lay the long line of coast, stretching south-eastwards from Panama; the navigator disposed to explore it, had but to spread his sails, keep the land in sight, and take the risk of the hidden shoals and reefs that might lie in his course. The seas to be crossed were often tempestuous; the country intervening between St Michael’s Gulf and the southern empire, whose rumoured wealth and civilisation wrought so potently upon Spanish imagination, was peopled by fierce and warlike tribes. Shipwreck was to be dreaded, and a landing might for weeks or months be unsafe, if not impracticable. But what were such secondary dangers contrasted with the perils, doubly terrible from their unknown and mysterious nature, incurred by the sanguine Genoese and his bold companions, when they turned their brigantine’s prow westward from Europe, and sailed—they knew not whither? Here the path was comparatively plain, and the goal ascertained; and although risks must be dared, reward was tolerably certain: for further tidings of the Peruvian empire had reached the ears of the Spaniards, less shadowy and incomplete than the vague hints received by Balboa from an Indian chief. Andagoya, the officer whom illness had compelled to abandon an expedition when it was scarcely commenced, had brought back intelligence far more explicit, obtained from Indian traders who had penetrated by land into the empire of the Incas, as far (so he says in his own manuscript, comprised in Navarrete’s collection) as its capital city of Cuzco. They spoke of a pagan but civilised land, opulent and flourishing; they described the divisions of its provinces, the wealth of its cities, the manners and usages of its inhabitants. But had their description been far more minute and glowing, the imagination of those who received the accounts would still have outstripped reality and possibility. Those were the days of golden visions and chimerical day-dreams. In the fancy of the greedy and credulous Spaniards, each corner of the New World contained treasures, compared to which the golden trees and jewelled fruits of Aladdin’s garden were paste and tinsel. The exaggerated reports of those adventurers who returned wealth-laden to Spain, were swoln by repetition to dimensions which enchantment only could have realised. No marvels were too monstrous and unwieldy for the craving gullet of popular credulity. “They listened with attentive ears to tales of Amazons, which seemed to revive the classic legends of antiquity, to stories of Patagonian giants, to flaming pictures of an El-Dorado, where the sands sparkled with gems, and golden pebbles as large as birds’ eggs were dragged in nets out of the rivers.” And expeditions were actually undertaken in search of a magical Fountain of Health, of golden sepulchres and temples. The Amazons and the water of life are still to be discovered; but as to golden temples and jewelled sands, their equivalents, at least, were forthcoming,—not for the many, but for a chosen and lucky few. Of the fortunes of these the record is preserved; of the misfortunes of those comparatively little is told us. We hear of the thousands of golden castellanos that fell to the lot of men, who a moment previously, were without a maravedi in their tattered pouches; we find no catalogue of the fever-stricken victims who left their bones in the noxious districts of Panama and Castillo de Oro. And those who achieved riches, earned them hardly by peril and privation, although, in the magnificence of the plunder, past sufferings were quickly forgotten. Thrice did Pizarro and his daring companions sail southward; countless were their hardships, bitter their disappointments, before the sunshine of success rewarded their toils, revealing to them treasures that must in some degree have appeased even their appetite for lucre. They came suddenly upon a town whose inhabitants, taken by surprise, fled in consternation, abandoning their property to the invaders. It was the emerald region, and great store of the gems fell into the hands of the Spaniards. Pizarro had one as large as a pigeon’s egg. A quantity of crowns and other ornaments, clumsily fashioned, but of pure gold and silver, were more to the taste of the ignorant conquerors, who were sceptical as to the value of the jewels. “Many of them,” says Pedro Pizarro, whose rough, straightforward account of the discovery and conquest of Peru is frequently quoted by Mr Prescott, “had emeralds of great value; some tried them upon anvils, striking them with hammers, saying that if they were genuine, they would not break; others despised them, and affirmed that they were glass.” A cunning monk, one of the missionaries whom Pizarro had been ordered by the Spanish government to take out in his ships, encouraged this opinion, in order to buy up the emeralds as their market value declined. The specie, however, was of immense amount, if the authority just quoted may be depended upon. He talks of two hundred thousand castellanos, the commercial value of which was equivalent to more than half a million sterling. This from one village, of no great size or importance. It was a handsome earnest of future spoils, and of the mountain of gold which, as an Inca’s ransom, awaited the Spaniards at Cuzco.

In these days, when the rumoured existence of a land previously unknown provokes expeditions authorised and fitted out by half the maritime powers of Europe, and when great nations risk the peace of the world for the possession of a paltry Pacific islet, the small degree of vigour shown by the Spanish crown in pushing its American discoveries fills us with surprise. Take Peru as an instance. The isthmus of Darien was colonised by Spaniards; Mexico was theirs, and the armaments sent by Pedrarias from Panama to explore in a north-westerly direction, had met at Honduras the conquerors of the Aztecs, the brave and fortunate companions of Hernan Cortés. One empire had received the Spanish yoke; at Panama the foot of the European was on the threshold of another; but there it paused, desirous, yet fearing, to proceed. No aid or encouragement to enterprise was afforded from Spain; it was left to private capital and individual daring further to extend colonies already so vast. A priest found the money; two veteran soldiers, of low extraction, desperate fortunes, and brave spirit, undertook the risk. The most remarkable of the three men who thus formed a partnership for the conquest of kingdoms, could neither read nor write, was illegitimate, and a foundling. “He was born in Truxillo,” says Gomara, in his Historia de las Indias; “was left at the door of a church, and for a certain number of days he sucked a sow, none being willing to give him milk.” Young Pizarro subsequently requited this porcine nourishment by taking care of his foster-mother’s relatives. The chief occupation of his youth was that of a swineherd. Gomara’s account of his birth, however, is only one of many, various and contradictory in their details. The fact is that very little is known of the early years of Francisco Pizarro. His valour and soldierly qualities he doubtless inherited from his father, a Spanish colonel of infantry, who served with distinction in Italy and Navarre. Neither from him nor from his mother, a person of low condition, did he receive much parental attention. Even the date of his birth is a matter of doubt, and has been differently stated by different chroniclers. He cannot, however, have been far from fifty when he started on his Peruvian expedition. During the fourteen previous years he had followed the fortunes of Ojeda, Balboa, and other Spanish-American adventurers, until at last the opportunity offered for himself to assume a command to which he proved in every way competent. His rank was that of captain, and the number of men under his orders made but a slender company, when, in the month of November 1524, he left the port of Panama, on board a small vessel, indifferently provided, and of no great seaworthiness. About a hundred adventurers, (some accounts say eighty, others a hundred and twenty,) stalwart, stout-hearted fellows, for the most part of no very reputable description, composed the powerful army destined to invade a populous empire. They started under many disadvantages. Almagro, Pizarro’s partner in the undertaking, who was to follow in another ship, as soon as it could be got ready, had had the victualling of that on which his colleague embarked, and he had performed the duty in a slovenly manner, reckoning that, upon a coasting voyage, supplies might be obtained from shore. Landing for this purpose, a few leagues south of the river Biru, Pizarro could procure nothing besides wood and water. A tremendous storm came on; for ten days the ship was in imminent danger, tossed by the furious waves; rations ran short, and two ears of Indian corn were each man’s daily allowance. Thus poorly nourished, and in a crazy ship, they struggled with desperate energy against the fury of the tropical tempest. Only a miracle, as it seemed, could save them, and yet they escaped. The vessel bore Pizarro and his fortunes.

This first expedition, however, resulted in nothing, except much suffering and discontent. On landing, after the storm, the voyagers found themselves in a desolate and unproductive country, covered with tangled forests, untenanted even by beasts or birds. No living creatures were visible, except noxious insects—no food was obtainable, save herbs and berries, unpalatable, and often poisonous. The men desponded, and would fain have returned to Panama; but Pizarro, with much difficulty, appeased their murmurs, and sending back the ship to the Isle of Pearls for provisions, attempted to explore the country. On all sides stretched a gloomy forest, matted with creepers, and penetrable only with axe in hand; habitations there were none; the bitter buds of the palm, and an occasional stranded shell-fish, were the best entertainment offered by that inhospitable region to the weary and disheartened wanderers, some of whom actually perished by famine. At last, after many weeks’ misery, an Indian village was discovered. The Spaniards rushed upon it like starving wolves upon a sheep-fold, and got a small supply of food, chiefly maize and cocoa-nuts. Here, also, they received further tidings of the golden southern realm that had lured them on this luckless voyage. “Ten days’ journey across the mountains,” the Indians told Pizarro, “there dwelt a mighty monarch, whose dominions had been invaded by one still more powerful—the Child of the Sun.” They referred to the kingdom of Quito, which the warlike Inca, Huayna Capac, had added, some thirty years previously, to the empire of Peru.

Six long weeks of hunger and misery had elapsed, when the ship returned with good store of provisions. Revived by the seasonable supply, the adventurers were now as eager to prosecute their voyage as they shortly before had been to abandon it; and leaving Famine Port, the name given by Pizarro to the scene of their sufferings, they again sailed southwards. When next they landed, it was to plunder an Indian village of its provisions and gold. Here they found traces of cannibalism. “In the pots for the dinner, which stood upon the fire,” says Herrera, in his Historia General de las Indias, “amongst the flesh which they took out, were feet and hands of men, whence they knew that those Indians were Caribs,”—the Caribs being the only cannibals as yet known in that part of the New World. This discovery drove the horrified Spaniards to their ships, from which they again landed at Punto Quemado, the limit of this first expedition. The sturdy resistance they there met from some warlike savages, in a skirmish with whom they had two men killed and many wounded, (Pizarro himself receiving seven wounds,) made them reflect on the temerity of proceeding further with such a scanty force. Their ship, too, was in a crippled state, and in a council of war it was decided to return to Panama, and seek the countenance and assistance of the governor for the further prosecution of the enterprise.

Without attempting to follow Mr Prescott through his detailed and interesting account of Pizarro’s difficulties, struggles, and adventures, during the six years that intervened between his first departure from Panama, and his commencement of the conquest of Peru, we will glance at the character and deeds of a few of his comrades. The principal of these was Diego de Almagro, a brave and honourable soldier, who placed a confidence in his leader which the sequel shows was scarcely merited. A foundling like Pizarro, like him he was uneducated, and unable to sign his name to the singular covenant by which the two, in concert with Father Luque, (the Spanish ecclesiastic, who found the funds for the expedition,) agreed, upon oath, and in the name of God and the Holy Evangelists, to divide amongst them in equal shares, all the lands, treasures, gold, silver, precious stones, and other property, that might accrue as the result of their enterprise. For in such terms “three obscure individuals coolly carved out, and partitioned amongst themselves, an empire of whose extent, power, and resources, of whose situation, of whose existence even, they had no sure and precise knowledge.” Contented at first with the post of second in command, it does not appear whether it was on his own solicitation that Almagro was named by the governor of Panama Pizarro’s equal in the second expedition. This domination greatly mortified Pizarro, who suspected Almagro of having sought it, and did not neglect, when the opportunity offered, on his visit to the court of Charles the Fifth, to repay him in kind. As far as can be gathered from the mass of conflicting evidence, Almagro was frank in disposition and straightforward in his dealings, but hasty in temper, and of ungovernable passions. When he had despatched Pizarro on the first voyage, he lost the least possible time in following him, tracing his progress by the concerted signal of notches on the trees. In this manner he descended the coast to Punto Quemado, and in his turn had a fight with the natives, whose village he burned, and drove them into the woods. In this affair he lost an eye by a javelin wound. Passing Pizarro’s vessel without observing it, he pushed on to the mouth of the river San Juan, whence he returned to Panama, having gone farther, suffered less, and collected more gold than his friend. At this time, however, great amity and mutual reliance existed between them; although not long afterwards we find them quarrelling fiercely, and only prevented by the interposition of their subordinates from settling their differences sabre in hand.

Bartholomew Ruiz, an Andalusian pilot, a native of that village of Moguer which supplied Columbus with many seamen for his first voyages, also played an important part in the earlier researches of the discoverers of Peru. Upon the second voyage, when the two ships had reached the river of San Juan, he was detached in one of them to explore the coast, and soon made the little island of Gallo, in two degrees of north latitude. The hostile demonstrations of the natives prevented his landing, and he continued his course southwards, along a coast crowded with spectators. “They stood gazing on the vessel of the white man, as it glided smoothly into the crystal waters of the bay, fancying it, says an old writer, some mysterious being descended from the skies.” The account of Ruiz’s voyage, although it occupied but a few weeks, and was comparatively devoid of adventure, has a romantic and peculiar charm. The first European who, sailing in that direction on the Pacific, crossed the equinoctial line, he was also the first who obtained ocular proof of Peruvian civilisation. He fell in with a balsa or native raft, consisting of beams lashed together, floored with reeds, guided by a rude rudder and rigged with a cotton square-sail. On board this primitive craft—still in use on the rivers and coasts of South America—were several Indians, whose dresses and ornaments, showing great ingenuity and progress in manufacturing art, excited his surprise and admiration. “Mirrors mounted in silver,” says a Spanish narrator of Ruiz’s cruise, “and cups, and other drinking vessels, blankets of cotton and wool, and shirts, and vests, and many other garments, embroidered for the most part with very rich embroideries of scarlet, and crimson, and blue, and yellow, and all other colours, in various designs and figures of birds and animals, and fishes and trees; and they had small scales, in the fashion of a steelyard, for weighing gold; and many other things.” Right musical to the ears of the Spaniards were the tales these Indians told of the abundance of the precious metals in the palaces of their king. Wood, according to their report, was scarcely more plentiful than silver and gold. And they enlarged upon the subject, until their auditors hardly dared credit the flattering accounts which, as they were soon to find, little exceeded the truth. Detaining a few of the Indians, that they might repeat their tale to Pizarro and serve as interpreters after they should have acquired the Spanish tongue, Ruiz prosecuted his voyage to about half a degree south of the line, and then returned to the place where his commander and comrades anxiously awaited him.

As pilot and navigator, old Ruiz rendered eminent services, and his courage and fidelity were equal to his nautical skill. In the former qualities another of Pizarro’s little band, Pedro de Candia, a Greek cavalier, was no way his inferior, although his talents were rather of a military than a maritime cast. Soon after the return of Ruiz to the river San Juan, Almagro, who had been to Panama for a reinforcement, made his appearance with recruits and stores. The pilot’s report inspired all with enthusiasm, and “Southward, ho!” was again the cry. They reached the shores of Quito, and anchored off the port of Tacamez. Before them lay a large and rich town, whose population glittered with gold and jewels. Instead of the dark swamps and impervious forests where they had left the bones of so many of their companions, the adventurers beheld groves of sandal and ebony extending to the very margin of the ocean; maize and potato fields, and cocoa plantations, gave promise of plenty; the streams washed down gold-dust, and on the banks of one were quarries of emeralds. This charming scene brought water into the mouths of the Spaniards; but their wishes were not yet to be fulfilled; with the cup at their lips, they were forbidden to taste. A numerous array of armed and resolute natives set them at defiance. And that they did so, speaks highly for their courage, when we consider the notion they entertained of the party of horsemen who, with Pizarro at their head, effected a landing. Like the Mexicans and other races to whom the horse was unknown until introduced from Europe, they imagined man and beast to form one strange and unaccountable monster, and had, therefore, the same excuse for a panic that a European army would have if suddenly assailed by a regiment of flying dragons. Nevertheless they boldly charged the intruders. These, feeling their own inability to cope with the army of warriors that lined the shore, and which numbered, according to some accounts, fully ten thousand men, had landed with the sole purpose of seeking an amicable conference. Instead of a peaceful parley, they found themselves forced into a very unequal fight. “It might have gone hard with the Spaniards, hotly pressed by their resolute enemy, but for a ludicrous incident reported by the historians as happening to one of the cavaliers. This was a fall from his horse, which so astonished the barbarians, who were not prepared for the division of what seemed one and the same being into two, that, filled with consternation, they fell back, and left a way open for the Christians to regain their vessels.”

Doubting not that the account they could now give of the riches of Peru, would bring crowds of volunteers to their standard, Almagro and some of his companions again sailed for Panama, to seek the succours so greatly needed; Pizarro consenting, after some angry discussion, to await their return upon the island of Gallo. The men who were to remain with him were highly discontented at their commander’s decision, and one of them secreted a letter in a ball of cotton, sent, as a sample of Peruvian produce, to the wife of the governor of Panama. In this letter were complaints of privations and misery, and bitter attacks upon Pizarro and Almagro, whom the disaffected soldiers represented as sacrificing their comrades’ lives to their own ambition. The paper reached its destination; the governor was indignant and sent ships to fetch away the whole party. But Pizarro, encouraged by letters from his two partners, who promised him the means of continuing his voyage, steadily refused to budge. With his sword he drew a line upon the sand from east to west, exposed, with a soldier’s frugality of words, the glory and prosperity that awaited them in Peru, and the disgrace of abandoning the enterprise, and then, stepping across the line, bade brave men stay by him and recreants retreat. Thirteen were stanch to their courageous leader. The first to range himself by his side was the pilot Ruiz; the second was Pedro de Candia. The names of the eleven others have also been preserved by the chroniclers.

“A handful of men, without food, without clothing, almost without arms, without knowledge of the land to which they were bound, without vessels to transport them, were here left upon a lonely rock in the ocean, with the avowed purpose of carrying on a crusade against a powerful empire, staking their lives on its success. What is there in the legends of chivalry that surpasses it? This was the crisis of Pizarro’s fate.... Had Pizarro faltered from his strong purpose, and yielded to the occasion now so temptingly presented for extricating himself and his broken band from their desperate position, his name would have been buried with his fortunes, and the conquest of Peru would have been left for other and more successful adventurers.”

Courage and constancy had their reward. True to their word, Luque and Almagro sent a small vessel to take off Pizarro and his little band. They embarked, set sail, and after twenty days were in the gulf of Guayaquil, abreast of Chimborazo, and in full view of the fertile vale of Tumbez. There an Inca noble came on board, and was received by Pizarro with all honour and distinction. In reply to his inquiries concerning the whence and wherefore of the white men’s coming, the Spanish leader replied, “that he was the vassal of a great prince, the greatest and most powerful in the world, and that he had come to this country to assert his master’s lawful supremacy over it.” He further announced his intention of rescuing them from the darkness of unbelief, and converting them to Christianity. In reply to these communications the Inca chief said nothing—all, perhaps, that he understood. He was much more favourably impressed by a good dinner, Spanish wine, and the present of an iron hatchet. The next day one of Pizarro’s followers, Alonzo de Molina by name, was sent on shore with a propitiatory offering of pigs and poultry for the curaca or governor of the district. He brought back such marvellous accounts that he was set down as a liar; and Pedro de Candia was selected to bring a true report of things on shore, whither he was sent, “dressed in complete mail as became a good knight, with his sword by his side, and his arquebuse on his shoulder.” His brilliant equipment greatly dazzled the Indians, and at the report of his arquebuse they fell to the ground in dismay. A wondrous story is gravely told by several chroniclers, how the Indians, taking him for a supernatural being, and desirous to ascertain the fact beyond a doubt, let loose a tiger upon him. Candia took a cross from his neck and laid it upon the back of the animal, which instantly fawned upon and gambolled round him. On returning to his ship the report of the Greek cavalier confirmed that of Molina. Both, as it subsequently appeared, were guilty of some exaggeration. But their flaming accounts of temples tapestried with plates of gold, and of convent gardens where fruits and vegetables were all in pure gold and silver, gave heart to the adventurers, and sent them on their way rejoicing. To the port of Santa, nine degrees farther south than any previous expedition had reached, they continued their voyage; and then, having fully convinced themselves of the richness of the country, and the importance of their discoveries, but, being too few and feeble to profit by them, they retraced their course to, Panama, and arrived there, after an, absence of eighteen months, early in the year 1528.

It was now that Pizarro, finding the governor of Panama unwilling to assist him either with men or money, set out for Europe, to lay the report of his discoveries before the Emperor, and implore his support and patronage. He had little taste for the mission. The unlettered soldier, the war-worn and weather-beaten adventurer, was at home on the deck of a tempest-tost caravel, or, in the depths of a howling wilderness, where courage, coolness, and fortitude were the qualities needed; and there he would rather risk himself than in the perfumed atmosphere of a court. His associates, however, urged him to depart. Father Luque’s clerical duties prevented him from undertaking the journey; neither by manners nor appearance was Almagro eligible as an envoy; Pizarro, although wholly uneducated, was of commanding presence, and ready, even eloquent, in speech. With honourable frankness and confidence in his friend’s integrity, Almagro urged him to set out. It was agreed that Pizarro should solicit for himself the offices of governor and captain-general of the newly discovered country, for Almagro that of adelantado; that the pilot Ruiz, should be Alguaçil Mayor, and Father Luque Bishop of Tumbez. Promising to act in conformity with this agreement, and in all respects to consult his friends’ interests equally with his own, Pizarro, accompanied by Pedro de Candia, and taking with him some Peruvians and llamas, specimens of cloth and ornaments of gold and silver, traversed the Isthmus, and embarked for Spain.

The discoverer and future conqueror of Peru had scarcely set foot upon his native soil, when he was thrown into prison for a debt of twenty years’ standing, incurred by him as one of the early colonists of Darien. Released from durance, so soon as intelligence of his detention reached the court, he hurried to Toledo, where Charles the Fifth then was. The records of courts afford no scene more pregnant with interest than the arrival of Pizarro in the presence of his sovereign. It is the very romance of history,—a noble subject for either poet or painter. The great monarch was then in the zenith of his glory and full flush of his fame. Pavia had been won; the chivalrous king of France made prisoner. Charles, the hero of his day, was about to enter Italy and receive an imperial crown from a pontiff’s hand. Engrossed by his own triumphs and by the spread of his European power and dominions, the fortunate monarch had scarcely given a thought to the rich conquests made in his name by obscure adventurers in the golden regions of the West. The arrival of Hernan Cortés, come to lay an empire at his feet, had scarcely roused him from his indifference, when, in that brilliant and martial court, crowded with nobles and grandees, there appeared an unknown soldier, penniless, almost friendless, the child of shame, but whose daring deeds and great achievements were soon to give his name a lustre far above any that gentle birth and lengthy pedigree can bestow. Wholly unknown, however, Pizarro was not. The tale of researches, prosecuted, during a period of four years and in the teeth of innumerable difficulties and dangers, with a perseverance which rumour said had been rewarded by great discoveries, had reached the ears of Charles. Pizarro met a gracious reception and patient hearing. Unabashed before royalty, he spoke with the gravity of a Castilian, and the dignity of a man conscious of his own worth. And he spoke well—“so well,” says Montesinos in his annals, “that he secured attention and applause at Toledo, where the Emperor was, who gave him audience with much pleasure, treated him lovingly, and heard him tenderly, especially when he related his constancy and that of his thirteen companions upon the island, in the midst of so many troubles and hardships.” It is said that Charles shed tears at the recital of such great sufferings so nobly supported. Compelled to leave Spain, he recommended Pizarro to the Council of the Indies; and after some delay, the famous Capitulacion or agreement was drawn up and signed by the queen. By this document Pizarro received right of conquest and discovery in Peru as far as two hundred leagues south of Santiago, was made governor, captain-general, Adelantado and Alguaçil Mayor for life, with a salary of seven hundred and twenty-five thousand maravedis, and various immunities and privileges. Almagro was appointed commander of the fortress of Tumbez; Father Luque got his bishopric; Ruiz was named grand pilot of the Southern Ocean; Candia received command of the artillery; and on the eleven others who had remained on the island with Pizarro, the rank of hidalgo was bestowed, besides the promise of municipal dignities in Peru, when it should be under the Spanish rule. From this statement, it is apparent that Pizarro either did not attempt, or failed in his endeavours, to procure for Almagro and Ruiz the offices he had promised to solicit for them, and which, on the contrary, were all heaped upon himself. This treachery, or want of success, was the cause of bad blood between him and Almagro. Pizarro’s conduct in the affair has been variously represented by different writers. His kinsman, Pedro Pizarro, vindicates him from the charge of unfair dealing. “And Don Francisco Pizarro petitioned in accordance with what had been agreed with his companions; and in the council he was answered that the government could not possibly be divided between two persons, for that had been done in Santa Marta, and one of the two had killed the other.” And Pedro, who is a bit of partisan, and has a natural leaning to his cousin and commander, further states, that Pizarro, in honourable fulfilment of his promise, pleaded urgently for Almagro, till he received a rebuff, and was told, that if he did not ask the adelantamiento for himself, it should be given to a stranger. Whereupon he applied for it, and it was granted him in addition to his other dignities. He was also made a knight of St Jago; and in the armorial bearings which he inherited by the father’s side, were introduced the black eagle and the two pillars emblazoned on the royal arms. A ship, a llama, and an Indian city were further added; “while the legend announced that under the auspices of Charles, and by the industry, the genius, and the resources of Pizarro, Peru had been discovered and reduced to tranquillity.” A premature announcement, which many subsequent scenes of bloodshed and violence sadly belied. As regards the good faith kept by Pizarro with Almagro and his other companions, and the degree of sincerity and perseverance with which he pressed their claims at the court of Spain, Mr Prescott is justly sceptical; and much of the conqueror’s after-conduct compels us to believe that in such solicitations it was one word for his friend and two for himself. It is less interesting, however, to trace his dissimulation and double-dealing, and the dissensions resulting from them, than to accompany him upon his final expedition to the empire of the Incas.

Although, by the articles of the capitulacion, Pizarro was bound to raise, within six months of its date, a well-equipped force of two hundred and fifty men, it was with less than three-fourths of that number that he sailed from Panama in January 1531. Careful to secure an ample share of the profits of the enterprise, the Spanish government did nothing to assist it, beyond providing some artillery and a few military stores. Pizarro must find the funds and the men, and this was no easy matter. To obtain the latter, he repaired to his native town of Truxillo in Estremadura, where he recruited a few followers. Amongst them were four of his brothers—three illegitimate like himself, and one legitimate, Hernando Pizarro, a man of talent and energy, but of turbulent and overbearing disposition, who cut an important figure in the Peruvian campaigns. “They were all poor, and proud as they were poor,” says Oviedo, who had seen them, “and their eagerness for gain was in proportion to their poverty.” Consequently the New World was the very place for them. Many, however, who listened eagerly to Pizarro’s account of the wealth to be obtained there, hesitated to seek it through the avenue of perils by which it was to be reached. As to money, those who had it were loath to invest on such frail security as Peruvian mines; thus proving themselves wiser in their generation than many in more recent times. Cortés, it is said, assisted Pizarro to the necessary funds, which he would hardly have raised without the aid of the Mexican conqueror; and the stipulated six months having expired, the newly-made governor of Peru cut his cables, and in all haste left the shores of Spain, fearing that if the incompleteness of his preparations got wind, the Spanish crown might recede from its share of the contract. At Panama, recruits were as reluctant and scarce as in Spain; and at last, impatient of delay, he started on his expedition with only one hundred and eighty men and twenty-seven horses. Their equipment, however, was good; they were well supplied with arms and ammunition, and, above all, sanguine of success. Before their departure, their banners and the royal standard were blessed by a Dominican monk, and the soldiers took the sacrament.

Anchoring after thirteen days’ sail in the Bay of St Matthew, Pizarro landed his men and marched along the coast. He at first intended not to disembark till he reached Tumbez, of whose riches and fertility he entertained a pleasant recollection; but, baffled by winds, he altered his determination. He had, perhaps, better have adhered to it. True, that the emeralds and gold found at Coaque encouraged his followers, and enabled the politic adventurer to make a large remittance to Panama, to dazzle the colonists and induce volunteers. But the sufferings of the Spaniards on their march through those sultry and unhealthy regions, were very great. Encumbered with heavy armour and thick cotton doublets, they toiled wearily along beneath a burning sun and over sands scarce less scorching. Fortunately, they were unmolested by the natives, who fled on their approach. They had enough to do to combat disease and the climate. “A strange epidemic broke out in the little army; it took the form of ulcers, or rather of hideous warts of great size, which covered the body, and when lanced, as was the case with some, discharged such a quantity of blood as proved fatal to the sufferer.” Mr Prescott recognises in this horrible malady—which he says made its appearance during the invasion, and did not long survive it—“one of those plagues from the vial of wrath, which the destroying angel who follows in the path of the conqueror pours out on the devoted nations.” Conquerors and conquered, however, suffered from it alike; and as to its having speedily become extinct, we suspect that it is still well known in Peru. The verrugas, described by Dr Tschudi in his valuable and delightful narrative of Peruvian travel, and which the natives attribute to the noxious qualities of certain streams, is coincident in its symptoms with the disease that afflicted Pizarro’s followers, diminishing their numbers and impeding their progress. The arrival of one or two small reinforcements filled up the vacancies thus made in their ranks, and the march was continued until the adventurers found themselves opposite the island of Puná, upon which Pizarro resolved to pitch his camp, and there plan his attack upon the neighbouring city of Tumbez. Between the Tumbese and the men of Puná there was a long-standing feud, and the former lost no opportunity of exciting Pizarro’s suspicions of the islanders. Having been informed that ten or twelve chiefs were plotting against him, he seized and delivered them to their rivals, who forthwith cut off their heads. A battle was the immediate consequence; and the handful of Spaniards defeated several thousand Puná warriors, mowing them down with musketry and sabre. As was by no means unusual in those days, the Christians received encouragement from heaven. “In the battle,” says Montesinos with laudable gravity, “many, both of our people and of the Indians, saw that in the air there were two other camps—one led on by the archangel St Michael with sword and buckler, the other by Lucifer and his myrmidons; but no sooner did the Castilians cry victory, than the demons fled, and from out of a mighty whirlwind terrible voices were heard to exclaim—‘Thou hast conquered! Michael, thou hast conquered!’ Hence Don Francisco Pizarro was inspired with so great a devotion to the holy archangel that he vowed to call by his name the first city he should found, fulfilling the same, as we shall presently see.” These angelic interventions were common enough both in the Moorish and American wars of Spain, and have been commemorated by many artists, whose paintings, for the most part more curious in design than skilful in execution, are still to be occasionally met with in the Peninsula. Pizarro was twice favoured with such celestial succours; the second time at the fight, or rather massacre, of Caxamalca, when certainly he required little aid against the panic-stricken hordes, who fell, like grass before the mower’s scythe, under the fierce sabre-cuts of the martial Spaniards. Nevertheless, “a terrible apparition appeared in the air during the onslaught. It consisted of a woman and a child, and at their side a horseman, all clothed in white, on a milk-white charger,—doubtless the valiant St James,—who, with his sword glancing lightning, smote down the infidel host, and rendered them incapable of resistance.” Thus gravely and reverently deposeth the worthy Fray Naharro, who had his information from three monks of his order present in the fight.

The arrival of Pizarro and his band upon the coast of Peru, occurred at a moment most favourable to their projects of appropriation. The country had just emerged from a sanguinary civil war, in which many of its best warriors had perished; the throne of the Incas was occupied by a usurper, who, to cement his power, had shed the blood of hundreds of the royal family, his own brethren and relatives. These events had been thus brought about:—The warlike Inca and conqueror of Quito, Huayna Capac, forgot, on his death-bed, the sagacity that had marked his reign; and, in direct contravention of the fundamental laws of the empire, divided his dominions between Huascar, his legitimate heir, and Atahuallpa, a pet son whom he had had by one of his numerous concubines. The old Inca died, and, for five years, his two successors reigned, without quarrel, over their respective territories. Then dissensions arose between them; war broke out; and in two great fights, one at the foot of Chimborazo, the other on the plains of Cuzco, Atahuallpa’s troops, veterans grown gray under his father’s banner, were completely victorious. Huascar was taken prisoner and shut up in the fortress of Xauxa; his rival assumed the borla or scarlet diadem of the Incas, and, using his victory with little moderation, if Garcilasso de la Vega and subsequent Spanish writers are to be believed, butchered, with circumstances of great cruelty, all of the Inca blood upon whom he could lay hands. Mr Prescott, however, doubts the veracity of Garcilasso, the son of a niece of Huayna Capac and of a Spanish cavalier, who arrived in Peru, soon after its conquest, in the suite of Pedro de Alvarado. His origin, and familiarity with the Peruvian tongue, should ensure the correctness of his statements; whilst his relationship, by the father’s side, with a family illustrious in letters as in arms, seems to guarantee his literary capacity. But Garcilasso was sadly given to romancing; and his pages exhibit, amidst much that is really valuable, great exaggeration and credulity. If we could implicitly credit his statements of Atahuallpa’s atrocities, our sympathy with the Inca, betrayed, dethroned, and finally murdered, by the Spaniards, would be materially lessened. The triumph of the usurper occurred only a few months previous to the invasion of Peru by Pizarro, in the spring of 1532.

After the battle of Puná the Spaniards were greatly annoyed by the enemy, who kept up a desultory and harassing warfare, and they welcomed with joy the arrival of a strong reinforcement under Hernando de Soto, the future discoverer of the Mississippi. With a hundred fresh men and a supply of horses for the cavalry, Pizarro did not hesitate to cross to the mainland. The inhabitants, although previously on the most friendly terms with the Spaniards, opposed their landing, but with no great energy; and a charge of horse drove them to the woods. At Tumbez, however, a grievous disappointment awaited the invaders. With the exception of half-a-dozen of the principal buildings, the city was razed to the ground; and of the rich spoils the Spaniards had reckoned upon, not a trace was left. The adventurers were greatly discouraged by this discovery. “The gold of Peru seemed only like a deceitful phantom, which, after beckoning them on through toil and danger, vanished the moment they attempted to grasp it.” They lost heart in this search after an intangible treasure; and Pizarro, fearing disaffection as a consequence of inaction, hurried them into the interior of the country. At thirty leagues from Tumbez, he founded, in conformity with his vow, the city of San Miguel; and, after waiting several weeks for further reinforcements and receiving none, he left fifty men for the protection of the new settlement, and marched with the remainder in search of the Inca, proclaiming every where, as he proceeded, the religion of Christ, the supremacy of the Pope, and the sovereignty of Charles the Fifth.

And here, as much, perhaps, as at any period of his career, we are struck by the genius and activity of Pizarro, and by his wonderful ascendency over a band of restless desperadoes. Within five months after landing at Tumbez, he had made an extensive tour of observation, established a friendly understanding with the Indians, parcelled out lands, cut timber, and quarried stone; founded a city, and organised a municipal government. A church and a fortress—always the two first edifices in a Spanish-American town,—a storehouse and a court of justice, strongly, if not elegantly built, had already arisen. Strict discipline was maintained amongst the Spaniards, who were forbidden, under heavy penalties, to molest or ill-treat the natives; and, most astonishing of all, Pizarro succeeded in persuading his rapacious followers to relinquish their shares in the gold and silver already collected, which was sent, after a fifth had been deducted for the crown, to pay off the ship-owners and those who had supplied stores for the expedition. After the settlement of these preliminaries, he struck boldly into the heart of the land. His army (the name is a mockery, applied to such a force) consisted of sixty-seven cavalry and one hundred and ten infantry, amongst whom were only three arquebusiers and twenty crossbowmen. With this paltry troop he dared to advance against the powerful army which he had ascertained was encamped under command of Atahuallpa, within twelve days’ journey of San Miguel. We read of subsequent events and scarcely wonder at a mob of timid Peruvians being dispersed by a handful of resolute men, mail-clad, well disciplined, and inured to war, but in numbers as one to a hundred of those opposed to them. Pizarro, however, had no assurance of the slight resistance he should meet; he could know but imperfectly the resources of the Inca; he was wholly ignorant of the natural obstacles the country might oppose to his progress, and of the ambuscades that might beset his path. His dauntless spirit paused not for such considerations. And, scanty as his numbers were, he did not fear to risk their diminution, by a proposal resembling that of Harry the Fifth to his troops. Those who had no heart for the expedition, he announced to his little band, on the fifth day after their departure from San Miguel, were at full liberty to return to the city. The garrison was weak, he would gladly see it reinforced, and any who chose to rejoin it should have allotted to them the same share of land and number of Indian vassals as those Spaniards who had remained in the settlement.

—“He which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart: his passport shall be made,
And crowns, for convoy, put into his purse.”

Precisely similar to the proclamation of the hero of Agincourt was that of the conqueror of Peru. He preferred weakening his force, already far too feeble, to retaining the discontented and pusillanimous. The contagion of bad example had more terrors for him than the hosts of Atahuallpa. And he “would not die in that man’s company who feared his fellowship to die with him.” Only nine of his one hundred and seventy-seven followers availed themselves of the permission, thus boldly accorded them, to retrace their steps. With the residue Pizarro resumed his march.

As the Spaniards advanced, their difficulties and uncertainties increased. Rivers impeded their progress, and they had to construct bridges and rafts. They passed through well-built towns, where they saw large magazines of military stores and rations, and along handsome paved roads, shaded by avenues of trees, and watered by artificial streamlets. The farther they penetrated into the country, the more convinced they were of its resources and civilisation, far beyond any thing they had anticipated, and the more sensible they became of the great temerity of their enterprise. When they strove to learn the Inca’s intentions and whereabouts, the contradictory information they obtained added to their perplexity. The Inca, it was said, was at the head of fifty thousand men, tranquilly awaiting the appearance of the eight-score intruders who thus madly ran into the lion’s jaws. This was discouraging enough. And when the Spaniards reached the foot of the stupendous Andes, which intervened between them and Caxamalca, and were to be crossed by means of paths and passes of the most dangerous description, easily defensible by tens against thousands, their hearts failed them, and many were of opinion to abandon the original plan and take the road to Cuzco, which wound along the foot of the mountains, broad, shady, and pleasant. Pizarro was deaf to this proposal. His eloquence and firmness prevailed, and the Andes were crossed, with much toil, but without molestation from the Peruvians.

It is difficult to understand the Inca’s motives in thus neglecting the many opportunities afforded him of annihilating the Spaniards. His whole conduct at this time is mysterious and unaccountable, greatly at variance with the energy and sagacity of which he had given proof in his administration of the empire, and wars against Huascar. Nothing was easier than to crush the encroaching foreigners in the defiles of the Cordilleras, instead of allowing them to descend safely into the plain, where their cavalry and discipline gave them great advantages. Perhaps it never occurred to Atahuallpa that so trifling a force could contend under any circumstances, with a chance of success, against his numerous army. In their intestine wars, the Peruvians fought with much resolution. In the battle of Quipayan, which placed the crown of Peru on Atahuallpa’s head, the fight raged from dawn till sunset, and the slaughter was prodigious, both parties exhibiting great courage and obstinacy. And subsequently, in engagements with the Spaniards, proofs of Peruvian valour were not wanting. After the death of Atahuallpa, on the march to Cuzco, more than one fierce fight occurred between Spanish cavalry and Peruvian warriors, in which the former had not always the advantage. When Cuzco was burned, and siege laid to its fortresses, one of these was valiantly defended by an Inca noble, whose single arm struck the assailants from the ramparts as fast as they attained their summit. And when, several ladders having been planted at once, the Spaniards swarmed up on all points, and overpowered the last of his followers, the heroic savage still would not yield. “Finding further resistance ineffectual, he sprang to the edge of the battlements, and, casting away his war-club, wrapped his mantle around him and threw himself headlong from the summit.” Relying on the bravery of his troops, and considering that the Spaniards, although compact in array, and formidable by their horses and weapons, were in numbers most insignificant, it is probable the Inca felt sure of catching and caging them whenever he chose, and was therefore in no hurry to do it, but, like a cat with a mouse, chose to play with before devouring them. This agrees, too, with the account given in an imperfect manuscript, the work of one of the old conquerors, quoted by Mr Prescott. “Holding us for very little, and not reckoning that a hundred and ninety men could offend him, he allowed us to pass through that defile, and through many others equally bad, because really, as we afterwards knew and ascertained, his intention was to see us, and question us as to whence we came, and who had sent us, and what we wanted ... and afterwards to take our horses and the things that most pleased him, and to sacrifice the remainder.” These calculations were more than neutralised by the decision and craft of the white man. Established in Caxamalca, whose ten thousand inhabitants had deserted the town on his approach, Pizarro beheld before him “a white cloud of pavilions, covering the ground as thick as snow-flakes, for the space apparently of several miles.” In front of the tents were fixed the warriors’ lances; and at night innumerable watch-fires, making the mountain-slope resemble, says an eyewitness, “a very starry heaven,” struck doubt and dismay into the hearts of that little Christian band. “All,” says one of the Conquistadores, “remaining with much fear, because we were so few, and had entered so far into the land, where we could not receive succours.” All, save one, the presiding genius of the venture, who showed himself equal to the emergency, and nobly justified his followers’ confidence. Pizarro saw that retreat was impossible, inaction ruinous, and he resolved to set all upon a cast by executing a project of unparalleled boldness. The Inca, who, very soon assumed a dictatorial tone, had ordered the Spaniards to occupy the buildings on the chief square at Caxamalca, and no others, and had also signified his intention of visiting the strangers so soon as a fast he was keeping should be at an end. The, square, or rather triangle, was of great extent, and consisted of a stone fortress, and of large, low, wide-doored halls, that seemed intended for barracks. Upon this square Pizarro prepared to receive his royal visitor.

On the appointed day, Atahuallpa made his appearance, at the head of his numerous army, variously estimated by Pizarro’s secretary and others there present, at from thirty to fifty thousand men. These halted at a short distance from the town; the Inca began to pitch his tents, and sent word to Pizarro that he had postponed his visit to the following morning. The Spanish leader deprecated this change of plan, and said that he fully expected Atahuallpa to sup with him; whereupon the Inca, either from good nature, or lured by the prospect of a feast, entered the town with a comparatively small retinue. “He brought with him,” says Hernando Pizarro, in a manuscript letter, “five or six thousand Indians, unarmed, save with small clubs, and slings, and bags of stones.” In fact, it appears from all accounts that very few of them had any arms at all. Upon a throne of gold, borne on an open litter, by Peruvian nobles in a rich azure livery, the Inca came, and paused in the square. Not a Spaniard was to be seen, save Fray Vicente de Valverde, Pizarro’s chaplain, who, by means of an interpreter, addressed the royal visitor in a homily which, to judge from the multiplicity of subjects it embraced, can have been of no trifling length. Beginning with the creation of the world, he expounded the doctrines of Christianity, talked of St Peter and the Pope, and finally, with singular coolness, requested his astonished hearer to change his religion, and become a tributary of the Emperor. Naturally offended at such presumptuous propositions, Atahuallpa answered with some heat, and threw down a Bible or breviary which he had taken from the friar’s hand. The friar hurried to Pizarro. “Do you not see,” he said, “that whilst we waste our breath talking to this dog, the fields are filling with Indians? Set on at once! I absolve you.” Slay! Slay! mass or massacre. The old cry of the Romish priest, covetous of converts. The sword in one hand, the crucifix in the other; abjuration of heresy, or the blood of heretics. In Smithfield and the Cevennes, on the dread eve of St Bartholomew, and amidst the gentle sun-worshippers of Peru,—such has ever been the maxim of the ministers of a religion of mercy. In this instance the appeal to violence was not unheard. Pizarro waved a scarf, a signal gun was fired from the fort, the barrack doors flew open, and, armed to the teeth, the Spaniards sprang into the plaza, shouting the fierce slogan before which, in Granada’s sunny vega, the Moslem had so often quailed. “Santiago y à ellos!” St James and at them! was the cry, as the steel-clad cavalry spurred into the crowd, carving, with trenchant blade, paths through the confused and terrified Indians; whilst musketry flashed, and two falconets, placed in the fort, vomited death upon the mob. The exit from the plaza was soon choked with corpses, and the living, debarred escape by the bodies of the dead, could but stand and be slaughtered. The square was soon converted into a shambles. “Even as they fell, in files they lay,”
slain in cold blood, and innocent of offence. At last “such was the agony of the survivors under the terrible pressure of their assailants, that a large body of Indians, by their convulsive struggles, burst through the wall of stone and dried clay which formed part of the boundary of the plaza!” And the country was covered with fugitives, flying before the terrible sweep of the Spanish sabre.

“The Marquis,” says Pedro Pizarro, “called out, saying, ‘Let none wound the Inca, under pain of his life!’” Atahuallpa was to be made prisoner, not killed. Around him a faithful few, his nobles and court, fought desperately to protect their sovereign. Unarmed, they grappled with the Spaniards, clung to their horses, and tried to drag them from their saddles. The struggle was of some duration, and night approached when, several of the palanquin-bearers having been slain, the litter was overturned, and the Inca fell into the arms of Pizarro and his comrades. He was carefully secured in an adjacent building, the news of his capture quickly spread, and the whole Indian army disbanded and fled, panic-struck at the loss of their sovereign. The number that fell that day is very variously stated. “They killed them all,” says one authority, a nephew of Atahuallpa, on whose testimony Mr Prescott inclines to place reliance, “with horses, with swords, with arquebuses, as though they were sheep. None made resistance, and out of ten thousand not two hundred escaped.” This is probably an exaggeration. Other accounts state the number of dead as far smaller, but there appears ground to believe that four or five thousand fell. The example was terrible, and well suited to strike the Peruvians with terror. But the extermination of the whole Indian army would have been of less importance than the single captive Pizarro had made, and whom, agreeably to his promise, he had to sup with him when the fight was done. Deprived of their sovereign, and viewing with a superstitious awe the audacious stranger who had dared to lay hands upon his sacred person, the Indians lost heart, and were no longer to be feared.

The capture of the Inca, although so important and beneficial in its results, occasioned Pizarro some embarrassment. He was anxious to march upon the capital, but feared to risk himself on the roads and mountains with the Inca in his keeping; and as he could not spare a sufficient guard to leave behind with him, he was compelled to wait patiently for reinforcements. Atahuallpa, who did not want for penetration, but in the words of an old manuscript, “was very wise and discreet, a friend of knowledge, and subtle of understanding,” soon found out that the Spaniards were at least as eager to accumulate gold as to disseminate their religion. He offered to buy his liberty, and a room full of gold was the prodigious ransom he proposed. The length of the apartment he engaged to fill is variously stated. The most moderate account makes it twenty-two feet. Hernando Pizarro says it was thirty-five. The width was seventeen feet, and the gold was to be piled up as high as the Inca could reach, which was about nine feet from the ground. A smaller room was to be filled twice with silver. Pizarro having accepted, or allowed his prisoner to infer that he accepted, this very handsome price for his liberty, the captive sovereign took measures to collect the stipulated treasure. Palaces and temples were stripped of their ornaments, and from distant parts of Peru gold was sent to complete the Inca’s ransom. The agreement was that it should not be melted, but piled up in the room in whatever form it arrived, which gave Atahuallpa some advantage. Goblets, salvers, vases, and curious imitations of plants and animals, were amongst the heterogeneous contributions that soon began to rise high upon the floor of the Inca’s prison. “Among the plants, the most beautiful was the Indian corn, in which the golden ear was sheathed in its broad leaves of silver, from which hung a rich tassel of threads of the same precious metal. A fountain was also much admired, which sent up a sparkling jet of gold, while birds and animals of the same metal played in the waters at the base.” But the greedy conquerors grew impatient, and thought the gold came too slowly, although on some days a value of fifty or sixty thousand castellanos was added to the store. Rumours of a rising of the Peruvians were spread abroad, and Atahuallpa was accused of conspiring against the Spaniards. These, and especially a strong reinforcement that had arrived under Almagro’s orders, became clamorous for the Inca’s death. They had already divided all that had arrived of his ransom, equivalent to the enormous sum of three millions and a half sterling, besides fifty thousand marks of silver. At last the Inca was brought to trial on the most absurd charges, “having reference to national usages, or to his personal relations, over which the Spanish conquerors had no jurisdiction.” Thus, he was accused of idolatry and adultery, and of squandering the public revenues, since the conquest of the country by the Spaniards! His death, in short, was decreed, and his butchers were not very nice about the pretext. It was found expedient to get rid of him; and under such circumstances a reason to condemn is as easily found as a rope to hang. Some few honest and humane men there were in the court, who rejected the false evidence brought before them, and denied the authority of the tribunal. But their objections were overruled, and they had to content themselves with entering a protest against proceedings which they justly held to be arbitrary and illegal. Father Valverde was not one of those who leaned to mercy’s side. A copy of the sentence, condemning Atahuallpa to be burned alive, was submitted to him for his signature, which he gave with alacrity, convinced, he said, that the Inca deserved death. Why, it is hard to say, at least at the hands of the Spaniards. But the whole of the circumstances connected with his mock trial and subsequent execution are a disgrace to the conquerors of Peru, an eternal blot upon the memory of Francisco Pizarro. To avoid the flames, Atahuallpa embraced Christianity, and was executed by strangulation, after being duly baptised and shriven by the clerical scoundrel Valverde. Previously he had begged hard for his life, offering twice the ransom he had already paid, and guarantees for the safety of the Spaniards. “What have I done, or my children,” said the unfortunate monarch, “that I should meet such a fate? And from your hands, too,” added he to Pizarro—“you, who have met friendship and kindness from my people, with whom I have shared my treasures, who have received nothing but benefits from my hands.” Adding hypocrisy to cruelty, Pizarro affected emotion. In its sincerity we cannot believe, or that he could not, had he chosen, have saved Atahuallpa. “I myself,” says Pedro Pizarro, ever his cousin’s eulogist and advocate, “saw the Marquis weep.” We believe Pedro lies, or was mistaken, or that the tears were of the sort called crocodile’s. We have no faith in the tenderness of the stern and iron-hearted conqueror of Peru.

Although the Inca’s ransom had not been made up to the full amount promised, Pizarro had acquitted his prisoner, some time previously to his death, of any further obligation on that score. With respect to this ransom, Dr Tschudi gives some interesting particulars, doubtless true in the main, although exaggerated in the details. “The gold which the Inca got together in Caxamarca and the neighbourhood, was hardly sufficient to fill half the room. He therefore sent messengers to Cuzco, to complete the amount out of the royal treasury; and it is said that eleven thousand llamas, each bearing a hundredweight of gold, really started thence for Caxamarca. But before they arrived, Atahuallpa was hung. The terrible news ran like a lighted train through the whole country, and reached the Indians who were driving the heavily laden llamas over the uplands of Central Peru. Panic-stricken, they buried their treasures upon the very spot where the mournful message was delivered to them, and dispersed in all directions.” Eleven thousand hundredweight of gold! If this were true, the cruelty of the Spaniards to their prisoner brought its own punishment. The buried treasure, whatever its amount, has never been recovered, although numerous researches have been made. Either the secret has perished with its possessors, or those Peruvians to whom it has been handed down, persist, with the sullen and impenetrable reserve that forms a distinguishing trait in their character, in preventing their white oppressors from reaping the benefit of it.

With the death of Atahuallpa, the principal danger incurred by the Spaniards in Peru—that, namely, of a combined and simultaneous uprising of the nation—may be said to have terminated. Subsequently, it is true, under the Inca Manco, a terrible insurrection occurred: an Indian army, the boldest, best equipped, and in all respects the most formidable that the Spaniards had seen, boldly assailed them, burned Cuzco, and beleaguered them in the citadel. At one time Pizarro felt the greatest uneasiness as to the possible result of this last effort for Peruvian independence. Seven hundred Christians fell in the course of the struggle. But there were still sufficient left to reduce the insurgents, and inflict a terrible chastisement. Lima had been built, and fortified posts established. And serious as this uprising was, there hardly seems to have been a probability of the extermination of the Spaniards in Peru, or of their expulsion from the country, at any period subsequent to Atahuallpa’s execution. The throne vacant, the rights of succession uncertain, the ancient institutions of the country fell to pieces, and anarchy ensued. Peruvian generals gathered their armies around them, seized upon provinces, declared themselves independent, and were beaten in detail. Difficulties and hardships were still in store for the conquerors; privations, and painful marches, and sharp encounters; but they were strengthened by reinforcements, cheered by success, and urged on by their thirst of gold, which was irritated rather than assuaged by the rich booty they had made. After crowning with his own hands a brother of Atahuallpa, selected in preference to Manco, the legitimate heir to the throne, as more likely to be a docile instrument in his hands, Pizarro marched upon Cuzco, the much-talked-of metropolis of Peru, with a force that now amounted to nearly five hundred men, one-third of them cavalry. After a sharp skirmish or two, in which the Peruvians displayed much spirit and bravery, the conquerors entered the capital. They were disappointed in the amount of booty found there. Their expectations must have been outrageous, for the spoil was very large. The great temple was studded with gold plates; its gardens glittered with ornaments of the same precious metal. In a cavern near the city they found a number of pure gold vases, and ten or twelve statues of women, as large as life, some of gold, others of silver. The stores of food, and of manufactures for clothing and ornament, were very numerous and considerable. And there were women’s dresses composed entirely of gold beads; and “in one place they met with ten planks or bars of solid silver, each piece being twenty feet in length, one foot in breadth, and two or three inches thick.” But the rapacious Europeans were not content, and some of the inhabitants were barbarously tortured to compel them to reveal their hidden stores of wealth. Gold lost its value, and the commonest necessaries of life rose to exorbitant prices. A quire of paper was worth ten golden dollars, a bottle of wine fetched sixty. And the inherent Spanish vice of gambling was carried to a prodigious extent. Many of the conquerors thus lost the whole of their booty. One man had received in his share of spoil a golden image of the sun. “This rich prize the spendthrift lost in a single night; whence it came to be a proverb in Spain, Juega el Sol antes que amanezca, ‘Play away the sun before sunrise.’”

With the capture of Cuzco, or very soon afterwards, the unity of Spanish conquest in Peru may be said to have ceased. Previously to that event, all were subordinate to Pizarro; none claimed independence of him; he kept his men together, and with his whole force—excepting the small garrison at St Miguel—pushed forward into the heart of the land. It was by far the most romantic and adventurous period of Spanish operations in the empire of the Incas. But now other cavaliers of fortune, good soldiers, and men of experience in American warfare, turned their attention to Peru, eager to share its treasures and territory. Amongst these, the governor of Guatimala, Pedro de Alvarado, one of Cortés’ officers, was conspicuous. Early in 1534, he landed in the Bay of Caraques, at the head of five hundred men, “the best equipped and most formidable array that had yet appeared in the southern seas.” They marched towards the rich province of Quito, which they believed to be still unexplored; but suffered frightfully on the road; and on emerging, with greatly diminished numbers, from the Puertos Nevados, a terrible mountain passage where many of the troopers were frozen in their saddles, they had the mortification to discover the hoof prints of Spanish chargers, proving that they had been forestalled. Benalcazar, governor of San Miguel, had entered the province with one hundred and forty men and some native auxiliaries. He had been met by the Indian general Ruminavi; but the son of the Moor was more than a match for the Peruvian, and after some well-contested fights, the standard of Castile waved over Quito’s capital. Almagro, who had heard of Alvarado’s landing, soon joined Benalcazar, and together they marched to oppose their intruding countrymen. At one time a battle seemed imminent, but matters were finally compromised, Alvarado receiving one hundred thousand pesos de oro, and re-embarking his men.

Amongst the conquerors themselves, dissensions soon broke out. Charles the Fifth, to whom Hernando Pizarro had been sent to give an account of events in Peru, and to submit specimens of its riches and manufactures, had received the envoy most favourably. He confirmed his previous grants of land to Francisco Pizarro, extending them seventy leagues further south, and empowered Almagro to discover and occupy the country for two hundred leagues south of that. Disputes about boundaries, imbittered by the rankling recollection of former feuds, soon occurred between Pizarro and Almagro; and though a temporary reconciliation was effected, a civil war at last broke out, where both parties fought nominally for the honour and profit of the Spanish king, and in reality for their own peculiar behoof and ambition. “El Rey y Almagro!” “El Rey y Pizarro!” were the battle-cries on the bloody field of Las Salinas, in the neighbourhood of Cuzco, where, on the 26th April 1538, Almagro fell into the hands of Hernando Pizarro, who, from their very first meeting, had bitterly disliked him. “Before the battle of Salinas, it had been told to Hernando Pizarro that Almagro was like to die. ‘Heaven forbid,’ he exclaimed, ‘that this should come to pass before he falls into my hands!’” After such a speech, Almagro’s fate scarce admitted of a doubt. He was brought to trial, on charges that covered two thousand folio pages. Found guilty, he was condemned to death, and perished by the garrote. He was to have been executed on the public square of Cuzco; but public sympathy was so strongly enlisted on his side, that it was thought more prudent to make an end of him in his dungeon. The chief apparent movers of his death, Hernando and Gonzalo Pizarro, were amongst the principal mourners at his funeral—thus aping the hypocrisy of their brother Francisco, who had paid similar honours to his victim Atahuallpa. The Marquis himself was on his way to Cuzco during Almagro’s trial, of which he was cognizant. He lingered on the road, and upon reaching the river Abancay he learned his rival’s death. The old farce was played over again. He shed tears, for whose sincerity none gave him credit. Speedily forgetting this mockery of wo, he entered Cuzco in triumph, richly dressed, and with clang of martial music. There can be little doubt of his having secretly instigated and entirely approved the execution of Almagro. The testimony of all the impartial historians of the time concurs in fixing its odium upon him.

But the crimes of this great conqueror and bad man were destined to meet punishment. By the sword he had risen—by the sword he was to perish; not on some well-fought battle field, with shouts of victory ringing in his ear, but in his palace hall, by the assassin’s blade. In his own fair capital of Lima, the City of the Kings, the gem of the Pacific, which had sprung up under his auspices with incredible rapidity—for Pizarro seemed to impart his vast energy to all about him—a score of conspirators, assembled at the house of Almagro’s son, plotted his death. It was on a Sunday in June 1541, at the hour of dinner, that they burst into his apartments, with cries of “Death to the tyrant!” A number of visitors were with him, but they were imperfectly armed, and deserted him, escaping by the windows. His half-brother, Martinez de Alcantara, two pages and as many cavaliers, were all who stood forward in defence of their chief. They soon fell, overpowered by numbers, and covered with wounds. But Pizarro was not the man meekly to meet his death. Alone, without armour, his cloak around one arm, his good sword in his right hand, the old hero kept his cowardly assailants at bay, with a vigour and intrepidity surprising at his advanced age. “What ho!” he cried, “traitors! have you come to kill me in my own house?” And as he spoke, two of his enemies fell beneath his blows. “Rada, (the chief of the conspirators) impatient of the delay, called out ‘Why are we so long about it? Down with the tyrant!’ and taking one of his companions, Narvaez, in his arms, he thrust him against the Marquis. Pizarro, instantly grappling with his opponent, ran him through with his sword. But at that moment he received a wound in the throat, and reeling, he sank on the floor, while the swords of Rada and several of the conspirators were plunged into his body. ‘Jesu!’ exclaimed the dying man; and, tracing a cross with his finger on the bloody floor, he bent down his head to kiss it, when a stroke, more friendly than the rest, put an end to his existence.”

Great indeed have been the changes wrought by three centuries in the world beyond the Atlantic. The difference in the manner of foundation of the English and Spanish empires in America is not more striking than the contrast offered by their progress and present condition. The English, Dutch, and other northern nations, were content to obtain a footing in the new-found lands, without attempting their conquest. Settled upon the coast, defending themselves, often with extreme difficulty, against the assaults of warlike and crafty tribes, they aimed not at the subjugation of empires, or, if visions of future dominion occasionally crossed the imagination of the more far-sighted, the means proposed were not those of armed aggression and sanguinary spoliation, but the comparatively slow and bloodless victories of civilisation. Far otherwise was it with the warlike and ambitious Spaniard of the sixteenth century, when, with a mixture of crusading zeal and freebooting greed, he shaped his caravel’s course for distant El-Dorado. Not with a log-house, in the wilderness was he content; it suited not his lofty and chivalrous notions to clear land and plough it, and water the stubborn furrow with his forehead’s sweat. For him the bright cuirass, the charging steed, the wild encounter with tawny hosts, reminding him of the day when, after eight hundred years’ struggle, he chased the last Saracen from Iberia’s shores. For him the glittering gold mine, the rich plantation, the cringing throng of Indian serfs. One day a cavalier of fortune, with horse and arms for sole possessions, the next he sat upon the throne whence he had hurled some far-descended prince, some Inca demi-god, or feather-crowned cacique. And at the period that a few scanty bands of expatriated malefactors, and of refugees for opinion’s sake, flying from persecution to the wilderness, toiled out a scanty and laborious existence in the forests and prairies of North America, and alone represented the Anglo-Saxon race in the New World, Spain was in secure and undisturbed enjoyment of two vast and productive empires. To-day, how great the contrast! The unwieldy Spanish colonies have crumbled and fallen to pieces, the petty English settlements have grown into a flourishing and powerful nation. And we behold the descendants of the handful of exiles who first colonised “the wild New England shore,” penetrating, almost unopposed, to the heart of the country that Montezuma ruled, and Cortés was the first to conquer.

CROSSING THE DESERT.

Several years ago, just before the Palmerstonian policy had involved all Asia, from Scinde to Syria, in war and anarchy, a young Englishman of family and fortune, named Sidney, remained at Cairo in spring after all his countrymen had departed for Alexandria in order to avoid the Khamseen winds. The month of April was well advanced in all its heat; and it disputes with May the opprobrium of being the most detestable month of the year from Rosetta to Dongola. The society of Misr the Kaherah (victorious) offered no resources beyond the shabby coffee-houses and the apparitions of Indian travellers. But at that time only a few Griffins and Nabobs were occasionally seen. There was nothing to resemble the hordes which now pass through Cairo in their bi-monthly emigrations, like flights of locusts devouring every thing that comes in their way, from the bread on the table-d’hôte at the Hotel d’Orient to the oranges and melons piled up like ammunition at the sides of the streets. Now, indeed, it may truly be said of these locusts, as it was of the plague of old. “Very grievous are they. Before them there were no such locusts as they; neither after them shall be such.”

Mr Sidney, in order to escape from the habitual desolation of the Esbekieh, and avoid witnessing the fearful voracity of his countrymen, passed a good deal of his time in a coffee-house in the Mouski. His apology to himself for this idle and unprofitable life was his wish to improve his knowledge of colloquial Arabic. His studies in Arabic literature had been pursued with some industry and profit during the winter, under the guidance of Sheikh Ismael el Feel or the Elephant, so called from his rotundity of carcass and protuberance of proboscis. The love of French brandy displayed by this learned Theban had induced the European consuls to regard him as an oracle of Mohammedan law, and a striking proof of the progress of civilisation in the East. The Elephant repaid their esteem by unbounded affection for their purses and an immeasurable contempt for their persons. Sidney, however, had lost the friendship of the literary Elephant; for the learned Sheik, supposing that he was about to quit Cairo with the rest of his countrymen, had thought fit to absent himself, taking away as a keepsake a splendid new oriental dress just sent home from the tailor.

One day as Sidney was musing on the feasibility of crossing the desert at this unfavourable season, in order to spend his Easter at Jerusalem, two strangers entered the coffee-house in which he was seated. As no Indian mail was expected, he could not help examining them with some attention. One was a little man, not of a very prepossessing appearance, with a pale face and a squeaking voice; the other was a stout Scotsman, at least six feet two inches in height of body, and who, before he had swallowed a cup of coffee and smoked a single sheesheh, indicated that he was of a corresponding height of mind, by reminding his companion that he was a literary man. The strangers, after throwing a scrutinising glance at the inmates of the room, continued their conversation in English. The pale-faced man spoke as a foreigner, though almost as correctly as a native, and with a fluency perfectly marvellous. The tall Scotsman seemed not quite satisfied with the degree of familiarity he assumed even in a Caireen coffee-house.

“Well, Mr Lascelles Hamilton, it is very true I am going to Jerusalem, and so is Mr Ringlady; but I thought you said you intended to go to Mecca, when you joined us at Alexandria in hiring a boat to Cairo.”

“My dear Campbell,” (here Mr Campbell gave a wince, which showed that he was very ungrateful for the endearment,) “I can’t go to Mecca for three months yet; my Arabic won’t have the pure accent of the Hedjas in a shorter space of time. I mean, therefore, to go round by Jerusalem, join the tribes beyond the Dead Sea, and work my way by land.”

This was enough for Sidney. He determined to join the party; and was moving out of the coffee-house to take his measures for that purpose, when Aali Bey—a young Osmanlee dandy, who had passed a few months at Leghorn to study European diplomacy—made him a sign that he wished to speak in private. Aali’s story had so long a preface, and was so crammed with flattery and oriental compliments, that Sidney became soon satisfied it would terminate in an attempt to borrow money, if not in robbery and murder. He was nevertheless mistaken; for Aali, after many vain endeavours to shorten his preface, at last stated his real business. It proved deserving of a long-winded introduction, and amounted to a proposition to Sidney to assist in affording Aali an opportunity of carrying off his bride, the daughter of the celebrated Sheikh Salem Abou Rasheed, from Cairo to Syria. Sheikh Salem was a man of great influence at Nablous; and he had been detained by Mohammed Ali as a kind of hostage with all his family, as he was returning from the pilgrimage to Mecca by the easy route of Cosseir and the Nile.

The affair seemed too serious even for the thoughtless Sidney to engage in without some consideration; and he attempted to persuade Aali that his escape was impossible, and that he had better live contentedly with his bride at Cairo, more particularly as it was a very bad season for a lady to think of crossing the desert. Aali, however, informed him, that he was not married, nor indeed likely to be, unless the marriage took place at Gaza; for Sheikh Salem had offered him his daughter Fatmeh, on the condition of escorting her and her mother to Gaza, where the marriage would take place in presence of the Sheikh of Hebron, and other relations of the family. Aali conjured Sidney by every saint, Mussulman and Christian, to aid him in his enterprise, which would raise him to the rank of a chief in Syria. As it appeared that Sheikh Salem had really put some supply of cash at the disposal of the young spendthrift, and Sidney knew well with what difficulty an Oriental parts with the smallest conceivable fraction of coin even to men more prudent than Aali, he now deemed it necessary to let the young Osmanlee know what he had just heard concerning the movements of an English party. It was arranged that Sidney should learn all he could about the new travellers, and inform Aali in an evening walk in the Esbekieh.

Sidney, on finding the travellers resided at the Hotel d’Orient, joined the table-d’hôte that day. The party consisted of four persons: Sidney; the pale-faced, squeaking-voiced Mr Lascelles Hamilton; the tall Caledonian, Mr Campbell; and a gentleman with a mellifluous voice, and an air which said, Look at me and listen. This gentleman was Mr Ringlady—the celebrated Mr Ringlady, a middle-aged lawyer, innocent of briefs, who had written some works on jurisprudence.

For a short time the Britons of the party looked at Sidney’s Egyptian dress with the supercilious disdain which enables Americans to recognise the inhabitants of the old country, while they are engaged in advertising their own nationality in earnest endeavours to keep their bodies in equilibrium on a single leg of their chairs. The voluble Mr Lascelles Hamilton, however, soon placed every body on a familiar footing. He lost no time in ascertaining Sidney’s name and country from the waiter, and then launched forth.

“I hear, Mr Sidney, you have been five months at Cairo; I am sure you have found it a delightful place. For my part, I have not been five hours; but I could-stay five years, for I have seen five wonders.”

“As I have not been so fortunate in my five months’ residence,” said Sidney, “you must tell me the wonders you have seen, before I give you my opinion of its delights.”

“First, then, the donkey on which I made my entry into the city of Saladin, ran away with me. No horse could ever do that, so think I entered Cairo riding on Old Nick! Second, I did knock down two ladies, each one as large as three donkeys and myself, and they did not scream. Third, my donkey did pitch me into the middle of the street, and nobody did laugh. Fourth, I did see Ibrahim Pasha pay his whole household in loaves of sugar—a year’s wages, all in loaves of sugar. And fifth, I do see four Englishmen sit down to a good dinner in Cairo in the month of April, without one of them being on his way to India.”

Mr Ringlady, who had been watching impatiently during this long speech for an opportunity of displaying the mellifluous voice of which he was so proud, in contrast to the harsh squeak and discordant accent of Mr Lascelles Hamilton, now gave a specimen of his professional turn of mind by remarking in his silvery tone, that he believed the fifth wonder was not quite a perfect miracle, for one of the party was a native of Scotland; and then added, glancing his eye obliquely from Mr Lascelles Hamilton to Sidney, “and perhaps all of us may not have been born in Great Britain.”

The little man saw the innuendo was directed against him and his accent; so, with the ease of a man of the world, he turned the tables on his assailant by replying in a very innocent tone—

“Yes, indeed, I did suppose you were an American. But it is no matter: we all count as Englishmen at Cairo. I was myself born in India, at Lahore, where my father was a general of cavalry.”

The lawyer had also hurt the feelings of the literary Scotsman, who fancied his accent was a pure stream of English undefiled. So that he had a wish for revenge, which Mr Ringlady afforded him an opportunity of gratifying by saying with great dignity,—

“My name is Ringlady; it is an old English name well known in our country. Mr Campbell, who is so profoundly acquainted with the history of Britain during the Norman period, must be well acquainted with it.”

To this appeal Campbell replied very drily: “I assure you I never heard it before I had the honour of meeting you on board the Oriental.” Thus dispersing the county reputation in Norman times and the fame of the works on jurisprudence at one blow.

It was evident that it would be a rich treat to cross the desert with this party; so Sidney led the conversation to that subject. In a short time it was arranged that they should come to a final decision on their plans next morning at breakfast.

Sidney communicated this resolution to Aali in their evening walk, and ventured to predict that the decision would be for immediate departure.

At breakfast next morning, it was accordingly determined to quit Cairo in three days. The literary man considered that it was his duty to employ that time in writing a description of Cairo and the Pyramids on the spot. The party, however, did not succeed in completing their arrangements in less than a week. Mr Ringlady procured the most celebrated Dragoman remaining at Cairo, by paying him enormous wages, and giving him full power to lay in what provisions and take what measures he considered necessary for crossing the desert with comfort. The Dragoman hired was named Mohammed; and he commenced by purchasing double the quantity of stores required and sending half to his own house, as he said his new master looked like a man who would change his mind, and it would be satisfactory, should he return suddenly to Cairo, to find every thing ready for proceeding up the Nile. Mr Campbell and Mr Lascelles Hamilton arranged to hire a servant together, as far as Jerusalem. Sidney was attended by an Arab from Guzzerat, who had been with him for some time, and who, from being a subject of the East India Company, or an Englishman, was in less danger of suffering any inconvenience than a native from the part he was going to take in Aali’s enterprise. He was as black as a coal, but he spoke of Abyssinians, Nubians, and others, a shade lighter than himself, as “them d—n black fellows.”

It was necessary to make a written contract with the sheikh of the camels for a journey from Cairo to Gaza, and this document required to be prepared at the English consulate. The scene at signing the document was a singular one. After much wrangling, during which the officials of the consulate stoutly defended the cause of the camel-drivers, who brought forward, one after another, nearly a dozen new pretensions, as pretexts for additional extortion, though the terms had been already arranged, the patience of Sidney and the exertions of Achmet el Khindee brought the negotiation to an end, and the treaty was signed. Then the chancellor of the English consulate stepped forward, and, rubbing his hands with great glee, exclaimed, “Now, gentlemen, you have concluded your bargain; let us hear what backshish you are going to give the sheikh?” As this question appeared to imply too close a sympathy between the feelings of the chancellory and the amount of the backshish, Mr Sidney quietly observed, that as he supposed the amount did not require to be registered in the archives of the British consulate, it could be settled at Gaza. Scenes of this kind are constantly repeated at all the trading consulates of the Levant; yet it is prudent for travellers not to enter into the desert, nor even to ascend the Nile, without a written contract at the consular office. Even should they pay something more than they might otherwise do, the surplus serves as an insurance against native fraud and open robbery, as the people recommended by the consulate are at least well known and of Arab respectability.

At the latter end of April, long before daybreak, the party quitted the Hotel d’Orient, mounted on donkeys, to join the camels at El Khanka. At the hour of departure, Mr Lascelles Hamilton was no where to be found; but a waiter, roused from sleep, at last informed the travellers that he had left word that he would join them on the road. This event rather discomposed Sidney, who feared that the son of the Indian general of cavalry, in spite of his agreeable manners, universal knowledge, and incessant volubility, might have opened communications with Mohammed Ali to cut off the retreat of Aali. It was certain that all Mr Lascelles Hamilton said could not be received according to the letter, or it would be difficult to understand why he was not governor-general of India, or at least ambassador at St Petersburg.

The camels were found at El Khanka, kneeling on the verge of the desert, near the mosque, at the entrance of the place. The donkeys and the donkey-boys were here dismissed, and the party soon moved onward with the slow monotonous and silent motion of a fleet of desert ships. The baggage, the dragomans, and the singular Mr Lascelles Hamilton, had proceeded to Belbeis to prepare the tents and refreshments; but Aali was found at Khanka, waiting to join Sidney, as the report had been left at Cairo that he was going to Jerusalem as his travelling companion.

The difficulties and dangers of the flight of the fair Fatmeh were now to commence, and Sidney felt that he might be embarked in a perilous enterprise. The plan concerted with Aali was this. Sheikh Salem had sent forward his wife and daughter in a takterwan, or camel-sedan, to Belbeis. Fresh dromedaries were to be found there for the whole party, with which it was proposed to reach Saba Biar in a single day, where horses were to be in waiting. In the mean time it had been announced at Cairo that the whole party was to take the route by Salahieh, and the camels had been hired for that road.

The shades of evening were falling over the renowned city of Belbeis as our travellers approached. High mounds, crowned by dusky walls, set in a frame of waving palm-trees, gave the landscape a splendid colouring; but even the obscurity could not veil the fact that the once renowned city had shrunk into a collection of filthy huts, huddled together on mountains of rubbish.

The tents were found pitched to the north-east of the city, and the camp presented a most orderly appearance. The three tents of the travellers were ranged in a line—the magnificent tent of Mr Ringlady in the centre; behind, stood the cooking tents, and in a semicircle in the rear, the kneeling camels were disposed in groups, side by side. The whole arrangement testified the spirit of order Achmet had imbibed with his Indian education at Bombay. At a short distance to the north, the takterwan of the ladies was seen with a large caravan of dromedaries.

“Weel, Mr Lascelles Hamilton,” exclaimed Campbell, on scrambling off the back of his kneeling conveyance—the fatigue of a ten hours’ ride, in a dreadfully hot sun, having brought all the beauties of his accent to the tip of his tongue—“Weel, Mr Lascelles Hamilton, I say, ye have played us a pretty trick, mon.”

“My dear friend, I forgot to tell you yesterday, that I was forced to ride round by Tel el Yahoudi, the last great city of the Jews—a race I honour for their obstinacy and their wealth. They are destined to return to Palestine, when it shall be their lot to recover it, from this place. I promised my friend Benjamin the Banker to bring him a relic from the place, and report if it be a suitable purchase to prepare for the conquest of Syria. I have bought him a bronze goose and a serpent of clay, undoubted antiques; and I shall send him an original report.”

There was not much society among the travellers that evening. Mr Ringlady had his dinner served in his magnificent tent in solitary dignity. Lascelles Hamilton and Campbell were soon heard snoring from fatigue. Sidney and Aali, however, were too anxious about the success of their project to think of sleep until they had held a long consultation with Sheikh Hassan, the Kehaya of Sheikh Salem Abou Rasheed, and the guide of the takterwan and its escort. Poor Aali had absolutely so little control over the movements of his bride that he hardly dared to turn his eyes in the direction of the cumbrous sedan, which concealed the sacred treasures of the harem.

Sidney, Aali, and Hassan walked to a solitary palm-tree of unusual bulk, standing far from the grove which now marks the utmost limit of cultivation: a proof, among many others around Belbeis, that in the days of its renown, the waters of the Nile were conducted far into the desert, and fertilised whole districts now baked into solid clay. When they were seated under the tree, safe from intruders, who could not approach unseen, Aali commenced the conversation.

“Hassan, we are now safe out of Misr, with one day’s start of any pursuers, for your departure cannot be known. Are you sure all is right at Saba Biar, and that we can reach it to-morrow? The takterwan is not fatigued?” This seemed to be the nearest approach Aali could make, according to Moslem etiquette, to an inquiry after his bride’s health; so Sidney listened to the answer of Hassan with considerable curiosity. But, alas! for romance even in the deserts of Arabia. Hassan replied in the most matter-of-fact tone:—

“We have fresh dromedaries here, and they are excellent. We shall proceed like Beddauwee to-morrow. But can the Ferenks keep up us?”

“Never mind the Ferenks,” said Sidney: “persuade the Tergiman Mohammed to get the dromedaries along, and their masters must follow.”

“Is the Ferenk who came on before, thy friend?” said Hassan to Sidney. “He is a wondrous man, and doubtless a learned.”

“He is a wise man,” quoth Sidney, “though he seemeth somewhat mad; but he will not be the first to lag behind.”

“But,” interrupted Aali, “how have you arranged, Hassan, with the camel-drivers to change their loads and let us proceed with the dromedaries without exciting suspicion?”

“It was hard work,” said Hassan, “and it has occupied all day. I began by increasing their loads with the assistance of the Tergiman Mohammed, who stands our friend in this business. I had bundles of straw and sand ready, which I pretend are smuggled goods.”

“Thou art very prudent, O Hassan!” exclaimed Aali.

“We had a long dispute,” continued Hassan, lighting a fresh pipe. “The sheikh of my dromedaries made a private offer to take the baggage of the Ferenks for half the price they pay to Abdallah, and to share in an adventure of beans—and then the matter only required time.”

“Thou art very active,” again exclaimed Aali.

“I should have found that no prudence and no activity could have brought matters to a conclusion this evening,” said the straightforward Hassan, “had the Ferenk Sheitan, with a voice like a Kisslar Agassi, and a tongue like a wind-mill, not helped me through. He quarrelled first with one sheikh then with another; drew a pocket-pistol with seven barrels, and killed seven crows, swore he would go back to Alexandria and bring El Kebir[2] himself to hang the sheikhs and ride with him to El Arish; and in short, frightened them into an agreement;—for Mohammed Tergiman says he is a Ferenk Elchi in disguise, and as we all know that Ferenk Elchees are always mad, I believe he is right.”

This last axiom of the prudent Hassan, concerning the unequivocal symptoms of madness displayed by all Ministers Plenipotentiary and Ambassadors Extraordinary, rather astonished Sidney, who was aware that Hassan could not have read the printed certificates of the fact presented to the Houses of Parliament from time to time in the form of blue books. It was announced as a fact generally known in Africa and Asia, from the sands of Sahara to the deserts of Kobi. As there was no time for investigating the organs of public opinion by which European statesmanship had been so unhappily condemned, Sidney deferred the inquiry until he should reach Gaza, where he proposed, if not forestalled by his literary companion, to extract from Hassan valuable materials for a work on public opinion in the deserts of Arabia, with a view of its influence on the ultimate settlement of the Eastern question. He only asked Hassan, for the present, if the Ferenk Kisslar Agassi, as he called him, spoke Arabic. Hassan replied without hesitation—

“Better than I do; he speaks like a learned Moolah.”

This statement shook Sidney’s faith both in the judgment and the veracity of Hassan. At the same time it decided him on keeping a closer watch over the proceedings of Mr Lascelles Hamilton. He had seen enough of diplomatic society to know that he might have been, or be, a minister plenipotentiary; but still he could hardly give him credit for speaking Arabic as well as Hassan, having heard him pronounce a few common words. Whether he was the son of the general of cavalry of the king of Lahore, as he himself asserted, or a German Jew, as Mr Campbell declared with equal confidence, Sidney pretended not to decide.

The party at the palm-tree at length retired to rest. Sidney, wearing the Egyptian dress, had adopted the native habits in travelling, and attempted to sleep on a single carpet spread on the sand. The attempt was vain. The excitement caused equally by fatigue of body and mind, and the unusual restraint of his clothes, drove sleep from his eyelids; while one train of thought followed another with all the vividness and incoherence of a morning dream. He fancied he saw Mr Lascelles Hamilton rush into the tent of Mr Ringlady and cut off his head, and then, suddenly transformed into a minister of the Prince of Darkness, in full uniform, with a proboscis like an elephant, and a green tail like a boa-constrictor, deliver up the whole party, Fatmeh included, to Mohammed Ali in person.

Jumping up in alarm at this strange vision, he saw to his amazement his companion, Aali, sitting very composedly; while Achmet was engaged in staining his face of a bronze colour, so dark as almost to emulate the ebon hue of El Khindi’s own skin.

“What the d—l are you about, Achmet?” shouted Sidney in emphatic phrase. “Why are you going to make Aali’s face as black as your own?”

Achmet grinned and replied,—“Very good against the sun, Mr Sidney; me make Aali look a true Beddauwee,—neither white like a boiled golgas, (he meant a yellow turnip) nor sooty like them d——n black fellow. You like, me paint you too.” Sidney, who was quite content to look in the desert like a boiled turnip, turned his back on the painter; and the incident having dispersed his dreams, he fell into a profound sleep.

Long before daylight, the whole party was roused by the indefatigable Hassan. After the usual squabbling, yelling, singing, and bellowing of camels, the caravan was put in motion. They left Belbeïs without the literary Mr Campbell putting his foot within the circuit of the renowned city. Daylight found the party moving forward at what is a very rapid rate of travelling in the desert, whenever half-a-dozen dromedaries are together. They were actually proceeding at the rate of four miles an hour; now the average log of a fleet of camels rarely exceeds two and a half under the most favourable circumstances.

The ground over which they advanced was a flat surface of hard clay, covered with round rough brown pebbles, apparently polished by torrents, and flattened into the soil by some superhuman roller. Far to the right, a range of mountains bounded the horizon; in front, the view was terminated by a gradual elevation of the plain marked by drifts of sand; while some miles to the left, the green valley of the Nile, far as the eye could reach, was skirted by a forest of palm-trees, whose feathered leaves were waving in the breeze. The scene offered no great variety, but it was singularly impressive. Few persons find that the deserts, even of Arabia Deserta, are precisely what they figure to be the quintessence of desert scenery. Where there is sand, a few scraggy shrubs are very often to be found; or else a constant succession of high mounds or hills, disposed in various directions and forms, take away from the monotony of the view. Where the plain is flat and extensive, it is generally covered with strange and beautiful pebbles; and when it rises into mountains, they are grand and rugged in form, and coloured with tints which render the memory of Mount Albano, and of Hymettus, like the timid painting of a northern artist, trembling at the critics, who have rarely seen a sunbeam.

The caravan proceeded for a long time in silence. Now and then a camel-driver essayed to commence one of the interminable Arab songs; but after some flourishes of “Ya Beddouwee! Ya Beddouwee!” which seemed to indicate the fear of some passing elfish spirit, they all abandoned the vain attempt.

Mr Lascelles Hamilton at last took the field, shouting in a voice that brought an expression of comic amaze into the features of the attending camel-drivers.

“Campbell! what do you say? You saw old father Nile was a humbug as we were coming up to Cairo. You must now acknowledge that the desert is a humbug as we are going down to Syria. Multiply some acres of gravel walk by two hundred yards of sea beach in Argyleshire, and you have one half of Arabia Deserta; take a rabbit warren and you have the rest. And as to the Nile, it is only the Thames lengthened and the ships extracted.”

Campbell was too much distressed by the motion of his dromedary, the form of his saddle, and the difficulty of keeping his position, to feel inclined to contest any opinion maintained by his voluble companion. So he contented himself with growling to Sidney, who was nearest him—

“That fellow is only a speaking machine; he can’t think.”

Mr Ringlady, however, could not let such opinions pass without notice; so he opened his reply—

“I am not prepared, Mr Lascelles Hamilton, to admit either of your propositions without restrictions.”

“I knew you would be forced to admit them generally, you are so candid,” was the rejoinder of the voluble gentleman; “you can make as many restrictions as you like at leisure—it will be both amusing and instructive.”

“But, sir,” interrupted the lawyer—for Mr Lascelles Hamilton having commenced, might have spoken for half an hour without a pause—“you are aware the Arabs call the Nile El Bahr, or the sea.”

“Perfectly aware of the fact—though they don’t pronounce the word exactly as you do,” exclaimed the speaking machine, “and consider it another proof what a humbug that said Nile is. Why, you may see him at the Vatican with thirty children about him; while after all he has only seven here in Egypt, where you can count their mouths as they kiss the sea.”

“But, sir, you must take into consideration the fertilising effects of the waters of the river, which made Homer say that they descended from heaven.”

“Why, so they do: old Homer laid aside his humbug for once; he knew the effects of a monsoon, and meant to say heavy rain makes rivers swell—so the Nile’s a river and nothing like the sea. Let me ask you now, Mr Ringlady—can you tell me why the Arabs call the Nile the sea, before we proceed?”

The learned Mr Ringlady was not quite prepared to answer this sudden query; so he replied at random—

“The Arabs think it looks like the sea.”

“Not a bit of it. They call it the sea because it is not the least like the sea. Just as you call Britain Great because it is not enormously big, and France la belle, because it’s ugly par excellence.”

The travellers at last reached the valley called the Wadi Tomlat, which is an oasis running into the desert to the eastward at right angles to the course of the Nile. In ancient times, the waters of the river, overflowing into this valley, and filtering through the sand into the low lands which extend over a considerable part of the Isthmus of Suez, formed the rich pastures called in Scripture the land of Goshen. In this district, the Jewish people multiplied from a family to a nation. Our travellers skirted this singular valley on its southern side, in order to avoid passing through the town in its centre, called Tel el Wadi. And after leaving behind them the utmost boundary of the cultivated fields, they crossed a stream of fresh water even at that season of the year, which, however, soon disappears in a small stagnant lake.

Here the travellers rested to breakfast. But after a short halt, they pursued their way until they reached the ruins of an ancient city. The spot was called Abou Kesheed: here the intolerable heat compelled them again to stop for a couple of hours. Sidney and Campbell, sheltered from the sun by an old carpet hung on three lances, reclined beside an immense block of granite, which had been transported from its native quarry at Syene, a distance of five hundred miles, to be sculptured into three strange figures, and covered with signs and symbols of strange import. Sidney, who had paid some attention to the researches of Champollion and Sir Gardner Wilkinson, considered their authority decisive that the figures were those of Rameses the Great, the Sesostris of the Greeks, placed between the two deities Re and Atmoo. He pointed out the hieroglyphic signet of the mighty monarch, and maintained that the ruins around were the relics of one of the treasure cities, built by Pharaoh to secure the tribute paid by the children of Israel when they dwelt in the land of Goshen.

The banks of the great canal which once joined the Nile and the Red Sea, were visible near the ruins in two long ranges of sandy mounds. This mighty work was said by the Greeks to have been constructed by Sesostris, or Rameses—the very monarch who now sat before them turned into granite with his immortal name wrought into an enigma beside him. Sidney argued that this spot was the Raamses of Exodus; and Campbell declared that as it was only two days’ march from Suez, it was a military point which he thought himself bound to occupy, in a dissertation on the invasion of Egypt by an Indian army from the Red Sea. Mr Lascelles Hamilton, who was very impatient during these discussions, could not lay claim to the poetic lines that may now be seen issuing from the mouth of a magnificent ram-headed god, in Belzoni’s tomb at Thebes—for neither the lines, nor the guide-book which suggested them, were then in existence— “I am, and always have been, Ammon,
In spite of all Sir Gardner’s gammon;”
but the speaking machine expressed a similar sentiment a dozen times, clothed in language partaking less of what he himself called humbug.

All these learned cogitations were interrupted by Aali, who came to inform them that Hassan had found that the horses were waiting for them at a neighbouring well. This well, though said to be in the neighbourhood, it took them more than two long hours to reach. The party grew excessively impatient. Mr Ringlady entered into a violent altercation with his accomplished dragoman Mohammed, accusing him of ignorance of the route, and of deception concerning the distance. Campbell declared he could go no farther, saying, “that he did not see why they should mak a tile o’ a pleesure.” His pronunciation certified his fatigue; nature got the better of art at this crisis, as happened with Dante’s cat, which, though taught to sit on the table with a candle in its paw, dropped the light on Dante’s fingers when it saw a mouse. The loquacious Mr Lascelles Hamilton was silent, and apparently asleep. Sidney endeavoured to keep up the courage of Campbell, and keep down the wrath of Ringlady, by complaining of his own sufferings.

The well of Saba Biar was not reached until it was dark. Indeed Sidney had all along suspected that Hassan would not approach it by daylight, in order to conceal their movements as much as possible. He had kept the party for two long hours moving in the hollow of the ancient canal, without a breath of air, and suffering the intolerable heat of a bright sun reflected from two parallel lines of sand-hills.

At Saba Biar, it became necessary to hold a council of war; in order to admit all the party into the secret of the flight of Aali and his bride, and propose that they should join in taking horses, and flying all together into Syria. It was therefore announced to Mr Ringlady, that his advice was required concerning the movements of the caravan next day. Pleased with the deference thus shown to his mellifluous voice and large tent, he invited the whole party to discuss the matter over tchibooks and Mocha. The party assembled. Ringlady, Campbell, and Lascelles Hamilton seated on stools, Sidney, Aali, and Hassan squatting on the ground, formed a circle.

Hassan began by a very long speech, which it was needless for Sidney to translate, as it gave them no idea of what he intended to communicate. Aali followed in one quite as long, in what appeared, from the words of which it was composed, to be Italian; but the interminable length of the sentences, and the flowery nature of the diction, rendered it as unintelligible to every one present, as if it had really been in the Farsee of the Ottoman chancery, of which it was a copy. Sidney then stated shortly in English, that the consent of the travellers was wanted to aid in the escape of Aali and his bride from the power of Mohammed Ali, and that it was proposed that they should have horses ready waiting for them and ride all together to Gaza. He treated it as the simplest thing in the world, just as if their pursuit, capture, and murder, in the midst of the desert, by some party of wild Bedoweens despatched from Cairo was not an event to excite a moment’s hesitation.

Mr Ringlady began now to perceive that he was not on the route he had bargained to take, and of which he had, with the assistance of his faithful dragoman Mohammed, compiled a very minute itinerary and description before leaving Cairo. Instead of being at El Gran, he was in the centre of the Isthmus of Suez. He called the faithful Mohammed into the tent, and inquired with desperate calmness the name of the place where they were.

Mohammed replied with the same calm—“El Gran.”

“Is it El Gran?” repeated Mr Ringlady.

Aali, who thought the inquiry was dictated by the eagerness Mr Ringlady usually displayed in the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties, innocently said the place was called Saba Biar.

Ringlady sprang from his chair in a paroxysm of rage, and shouted to Mohammed—“How dare you tell a lie, sir? How dare you tell a lie, sir? to me who can dismiss you without a certificate. You have been in my service, sir, and without my certificate no Englishman of rank or fortune would ever employ you.” To all this, the faithful Mohammed listened with perfect nonchalance: his expression seemed to say—My dear sir, when a demand for certificates manifests itself, there are numerous manufactories from which I can obtain an ample supply of the quality required. Mr Ringlady’s rage was very much augmented by the seeming indifference of his dragoman, who evidently considered a master only as a convenience for filling the pockets of his servant.

Mr Campbell, however, gave the discussion another turn, by informing them that he was too much fatigued to attempt mounting on horseback. Besides, he had an invincible aversion to that mode of conveyance, not being more expert at it than King Louis of Bavaria. The fact of Campbell’s incapacity to keep his saddle having been established, and Mr Ringlady’s rage having been mitigated, it was determined that Hassan, Aali, Sidney, and Lascelles Hamilton, should ride forward and escort the harem; while Ringlady and Campbell proceeded with the empty takterwan and the baggage on dromedaries to Gaza, where Sidney and Lascelles Hamilton were to wait for them.

Before daybreak the horsemen were in motion. As it grew light, three figures in the group excited the attention of Sidney. Two of these figures were composed, to all appearance, of huge bundles of clothing without any definite form. One of the bundles was of prodigious breadth, and was mounted on a beautiful and powerful bay horse. The third figure was close to Sidney’s elbow, clad in a black bornoos, with a head enveloped in an enormous yellow silk shawl. As the figure looked like any thing rather than an Arab of the desert, Sidney recognised his companion. It was evident that the other two bundles concealed the bride of Aali and her mother; and Sidney fancied that Aali was conjecturing in fear and trembling which was the bride and which the mother. If the enormous breadth of cloth on the bay horse concealed the bride, there could be no doubt she was a young lady of great and powerful charms.

Mr Lascelles Hamilton soon addressed Sidney. “You took me for an Arab, I see; this is the way we move in Moultan.”

“I thought it was some Indian fashion—for it is neither the Arab of the Desert, nor of Algiers, nor of Paris,” replied Sidney. “The turban came from Khan Khaleel of Misr, but the bornoos is from the Boulevard des Italiens. However, it may be a good enough disguise for some Europeans.”

For once the voluble Mr Lascelles Hamilton became dumb; and Sidney wondered what charm there could have been in his criticism to arrest the movements of a speaking machine.

The rate at which the travellers moved was rapid, generally consisting of a quick amble. A short halt was called at the well of Aboulronkh; and another at a second well, under a mountain of sand, at Haras. Here, as the well had been freshly cleared out, the water, though brackish, was potable. After a halt of a few hours, during the heat of the day, the party again mounted, and some hours after dark reached the palm grove at Ghatieh. The distance they had accomplished was not fifty miles.

Next day they proceeded at the same rate, leaving Bir el Abt and Djanadoul to the left: they watered their horses at a miserable well, and stopped for the night considerably to the south-east of El Massar. Here it was necessary to refresh the horses in order to be prepared for pursuit from El Arish, where Mohammed Ali had a body of Bedoween cavalry.

The journey was resumed two hours after midnight, and El Arish was left behind before the morning dawned. In the forenoon a Khamseen wind set in with a degree of fury that rendered it impossible for the horses to proceed. After repeated attempts to renew the march, both men and horses at last gave it up in despair, and sought shelter from the clouds of dust and parching heat under a low ridge of sand-hills. The hope of the fugitives was, that no pursuers could brave the hurricane they were unable to face. Still there was no saying what a Beddouwee, mounted on a dromedary, could accomplish under the excitement of the promise of a large bakshish from Mohammed Ali. Aali was evidently alarmed, Hassan showed symptoms of anxiety, and even the two bundles appeared to be restless. The larger one took great interest in the feelings of the powerful bay horse, which remained close beside its mistress, and gave the lady evident signs of recognition and of gratitude for her attention. The mouths of the horses were washed with vinegar and water, and they then champed a few shrubs growing in the sand, which, though in appearance very like dry sticks, afforded a considerable supply of moisture.

In this painful position the party remained all day; and it was not till sunset that a lull in the storm enabled them to proceed to the well at Sheikh Zuaideh to water their horses. Here they did not venture to sleep, and at dawn next morning the Khamseen again blew with redoubled violence. The horses staggered along; and the ladies diminished the mass of the envelopes about their bodies to augment the volume about their heads. It was fortunate the whole party was well mounted; for had any one been compelled to lag behind he might have perished in the desert, for it is impossible to see one hundred yards in advance: the sand pervaded the air with the orange-coloured mist of a London fog in an illumination.

With the greatest exertions they reached Hannunis; but before they could seek shelter in the village, both Sidney and Aali fell from their horses utterly exhausted. Next day, however, the violence of the Khamseen rendering it utterly impossible to proceed, Sidney and Aali had time to recruit their strength.

On the sixth day after quitting Saba Biar, not long after midnight, the fugitives rode out of Hannunis towards Gaza. The air was still like a furnace, but it was gradually cooling; and as the dawn approached it became delightfully refreshing. A light breath of air from the north-west brought with it the freshness of a sea-breeze. When the sun arose, every one was in high spirits. Hassan displayed his activity by getting constantly at some distance before the party as if in search of the road. Aali, expecting soon to be welcomed by the relations of his bride as a hero, began to exhibit his skill in horsemanship, in order to attract the admiration of the bundles of cotton cloth. His horsemanship was not of a quality to make the display a very choice exhibition in the desert, and both he and his horse were hardly recovered from the exhaustion of the Khamseen.

Either for the purpose of rebuking the vanity of Aali, or for that of indulging his own, Sidney commenced a game of djereed with the Osmanlee dandy. It was rather an awkward exhibition. While it was proceeding with very little effect, the larger bundle of raiment, rendered nervous by the djereeds flying about in its neighbourhood, had allowed the bay horse to approach the tumult. Sidney and Aali had just launched their weapons, and were turning their horses to escape the blows mutually aimed, when the bay horse, making a sudden bound between the rival cavaliers, the lady caught the two djereeds, one in each hand, and rode quietly back to her female companion. Hassan and the attendants set up a most unbecoming laugh, and the smaller bundle joined in a suppressed but very unfeminine giggle. Lascelles Hamilton, to escape the powerful bay horse, had ran up against Aali, and increased his misfortune by laming his steed.

Poor Aali was utterly confounded; Sidney looked mortally foolish; and Lascelles Hamilton muttered apologies for his awkwardness and random, reflections on the lady’s movements, in a half audible tone. This embarrassment of the party was suddenly relieved by the appearance of a considerable body of Arabs of the desert at some distance to the right. If they had any hostile intent, their position enabled them to bar the road to Gaza. There seemed to be some prospect of a fight.

Hassan drew the party together, and recommended them to look to their arms. Aali, forgetting his lame horse, whispered to Sidney that he would let the harem see the difference between an old woman and an Osmanlee in a real fight; for in this irreverent strain did he now begin to speak of his future mamma.

After some cautious manœuvring on both sides, each party contrived to occupy the crest of an eminence with a hollow before it; and from these positions they sent forward single horsemen to reconnoitre the adverse bands. After a considerable interval, a shout was heard from the horsemen in advance, and immediately both parties rushed forward to meet at full gallop. Aali, Sidney, Lascelles Hamilton, and Achmet were soon left far behind, both by the suddenness of the start, and the inferiority of their steeds. The two bundles of raiment were seen in advance, followed pretty closely by Hassan, and at some distance by the attendants.

Aali’s horse soon stumbled from lameness, and Achmet, who placed very little trust in the Arabs of the desert, seeing they had given their friends the worst horses, called out to Sidney and Lascelles Hamilton to stay by Aali and keep their horses as fresh as possible. They pulled up accordingly, at a spot from which they could see the meeting of their companions with the Arabs. The larger bundle arrived first, and jumping from the powerful bay horse with the greatest agility, commenced a kissing scene with the principal figure of the new group: this operation was repeated with every one present. The lesser bundle, on arriving, went through the same formality. Sidney and Achmet turned their eyes on Aali, who raised his up to heaven and exclaimed with great agitation, “Mashallah! Mashallah!”

After Hassan had gone through the kissing operation, a short confabulation was held by a few of the principal figures, who smoked a pipe with the ladies, seated on the ground. The whole party then mounted, and came forward to join Aali and his friends. As they approached, it became evident that the two bundles had undergone a marvellous transformation. They were now converted into two Syrian Sheikhs. The larger made a gallant appearance on his bay horse, and the smaller bundle was now a young man bearing still a certain degree of resemblance to the other. A sigh proceeded from the bottom of Aali’s heart, and his exclamation revealed the whole mystery. “Mashallah! it is Sheikh Salem himself. By the head of the Prophet! and his son Sheikh Abdallah.”

The affair was very simple. Coming events in the East were beginning to cast their shadows before, and Sheikh Salem, anxious to escape into Syria with his son, in order to be in the midst of his tribe at the crisis, had thrown out the bait of the marriage to the vanity of Aali; and thus, with his assistance, and that of his friend Hassan, had contrived to deceive all the spies placed to watch his movements at Cairo, and now found himself safe with his ally, the Sheikh of Hebron. His harem he left under the protection of the old Pasha; for he knew Mohammed Ali was a generous enemy.

The meeting of Salem and Aali was extremely amusing; but Aali was soon consoled for the loss of his bride, by the thanks and promises of both father and son, and the praises of the Sheikh of Hebron. Sidney was pressed to accompany the party immediately to Hebron, for it was not deemed prudent for Salem to trust himself in the power of the Osmanlee governor of Gaza. This invitation he declined, as his own arrangements, and his promise to meet Ringlady and Campbell, compelled him to remain at Gaza. Besides, he could not help recollecting, that in spite of all these warm professions of friendship now uttered by Salem, he had been mounted at Saba Biar in a manner that proved the intention of the Arabs to take care of themselves by abandoning their companions in case of pursuit.

It was arranged, before separating, that the party should ride to a grove of olive-trees, at no great distance from Gaza, where roast lambs stuffed with rice, raisins, and pistachio nuts, large bowls of leban and thin cakes of bread, were prepared for their refreshment. Salem and Sidney had some interesting conversation concerning the state of Syria, and the position of Mohammed Ali; and they parted with mutual expressions of esteem—Salem warning Sidney rather mysteriously against making any stay at Gaza. After Oriental greetings, and long salutations, Salem, Aali, Abdallah, Hassan and the Sheikh of Hebron rode off with their train of followers to the east; while Sidney, Lascelles Hamilton, and Achmet slowly proceeded towards Gaza, to repose after their fatigues in crossing the desert.

LIFE OF JEAN PAUL FREDERICK RICHTER.[3]

If there be a regular German of the Germans beyond the Rhine and be-north the Alps, whom, notwithstanding (perhaps partly by reason of) his faults and eccentricities, we love, and honour, and reverence, and clasp to our true British breast with a genuine feeling of brotherhood,—this man is Jean Paul Frederick Richter. True, his name to the uninitiated is a sort of offence, and a stumbling-block, almost as much as if you were to introduce the gray, leafless image of transcendental logic in the shape of philosopher Hegel, or the super-potentiated energy of transcendental volition in the shape of philosopher Fichte;—but, my dear friends and readers, consider this only,—what thing pre-eminently great and good is there in the world that has not been in its day an offence and a stumbling-block to the uninitiated? “Wo unto you, when all men speak well of you:” this is a text no less applicable to literature than to religion; and howsoever a certain school of critics—unfortunately not yet altogether extinct—may turn up their snub noses, and apply with orthodox deliberation their cool thermometer which never boils, there are occasions when this text may be quoted most appropriately against them. Even Göethe, “many-sided” Göethe, is not free from blame here—he never understood Richter; he judged according to the appearance—not a righteous judgment; his thermometer was too cold. But the great Olympian of Weimar, when with his dark brows he nodded, and from his immortal head the ambrosian locks rolled down in anger against the uprising muse of Frederick Richter, failed of his Homeric parallel in one point—“μεγαν δ' ελελιξεν Ολυμπον”—he did not shake Olympus. He did not cause the eccentric comet-genius of Richter to tame the brilliant lashings of its world-wandering tail—he did not cause Germany, he cannot cause Europe to cease admiring these brilliant coruscations, and that pure lambent play of heaven-licking light. To institute a comparison between Richter and Göethe were merely to repeat again for the millionth time that old folly of critics, by which they will allow nothing to be understood according to its own nature, but must always drag it into a forced and unnatural contrast with things most unlike itself; were merely to reverse the poles of injustice, and apply to Göethe as unequal a measure as he and men of his compact and complete external neatness, apply to Richter. We make no foolish and unprofitable comparisons; a wild wood is a wild wood, and a flower-bed is a flower-bed; which of them is best we know not, but we know that they are both good. We know that Göethe is great, and that Richter is great; which of them is the greater some god, as the Greeks said, may know; but for us mortals it is sufficient to endeavour to sympathise perfectly with the peculiar greatness of each, and appropriate what part of it we may.

We should wish to make this a very long article, and to run a little wild, like Richter himself, if the inspiration would only sustain us; but it may not be. Biographies, even the best, of literary men possess a complete and satisfactory interest only to those who are acquainted in some degree with the works of the author; and Madame de Stael has told us with an authoritative voice that, however great the powers of Richter were, “nothing that he has published can ever extend beyond the limits of Germany.”[4] Now, though this has more the air of a narrow last-century judgment than one of the present day, and is, perhaps, more French than English; yet the fact is, that Richter has not hitherto extended his literary influence, except in the case of a few stray individuals, beyond his native country; and his biography can, of course, not expect to meet with the same extensive welcome from a British public that was given to that of Schiller, and Mrs Austin’s Characteristics of Göethe. Nevertheless, the work from which we shall presently make a few extracts is a most valuable addition to those links that are daily uniting us with more endearing bonds to the Saxon brotherhood beyond the Rhine; it is a step, and a bold one, in advance. We have now almost to satiety made a survey of the neat classical Weimar, and we are plunging at once, with bold fearless swoop, into the very centre of the Fatherland, into the midst of the untrodden fir forests of the Fichtelgebirge, where many great hearts billow out sublime thoughts—hearts that never saw that which is most kindred to them in nature—the sea. So it was with Richter literally. Born at the little mountain town of Wunsiedel, between Bayreuth and Bohemia, and shifting about with a migratory elasticity from Bayreuth to Berlin, from Berlin to Coburg, from Coburg to Heidelberg, he died without having ever feasted his eyes (what a feast to a man like him!) on the glowing blue of the Mediterranean, or drunk in with his ears the “ανηριθμον γελασμα” the multitudinous laughter of the Baltic wave. A genuine German!—in this respect certainly, and in how many others! A German in imagination—Oh, Heaven! he literally strikes you blind with skyrockets and sunbeams (almost as madly at times as our own Shelley), and circumnavigates your brain with a dance of nebulous Brocken phantoms, till you seriously doubt whether you are not a phantom yourself: a German for kindliness and simplicity and true-heartedness—a man having his heart always in his hand, and his arms ready to be thrown round every body’s neck; greeting every man with a blessing, and cursing only the devil, and—like Robert Burns—scarcely him heartily: a German for devoutness of heart, and purity of unadulterated evangelic feeling, without the least notion, at the same time, of what in Scotland we call orthodoxy, much less of what in England they call church; a rare Christian; a man whom you cannot read and relish thoroughly unless you are a Christian yourself, any more than you can the gospel of John. For Richter also is a preacher in his own way—a smiling, sporting, nay a jesting preacher at time, but with a deep background of earnestness: his jests being the jests not of rude men, but of innocent children; his earnestness the earnestness not of a sour Presbyterian theologian, but of a strong-sighted seraph that looks the sun in the face, and becomes intensely bright. A German further is Richter, and better than a German, in the profoundness of his philosophy and the subtlety of his speculation: a speculation profound, but not dark; a subtlety nice without being finical, and delicate without being meagre. A German further, and specially, is this man, in his vast and various erudition, and in that quality without which learning was never achieved, hard laboriousness and indefatigable perseverance. It is incredible what books he read: not merely literary books, but also and principally scientific books; natural history especially in all its branches from the star to the star-fish; quarto upon quarto of piously gathered extracts were the well-quarried materials, out of which his most light and fantastic, as well as his most solid and architectural fabrics were raised: a merit of the highest order in our estimation; an offence and a scandal to many; for nothing offends conceited and shallow readers so much as to find in an imaginative work allusions to grave scientific facts, of which their butterfly-spirits are incapable. Then, over and above all this, Richter possesses a virtue which only a few Germans possess: he is a man of infinite humour: humour, too, of the best kind; sportive, sunny, and genial, rather than cutting and sarcastic; broad without being gross, refined without being affected. Then his faults, also—and their name is legion—how German are they! His want of taste, his mingled homeliness and sublimity, his unpruned luxuriance, his sentimental wantonness! But let these pass; he who notices them seriously is not fit to read Richter. It requires a certain delicate tact of finger to pluck the rose on this rich bush without being pricked by the thorn; John Bull especially, with his stone and lime church, his statutable religion, and his direct railroad understanding, is very apt to be exasperated by the capricious jerking electric points of such a genuine German genius as Richter. On the pediment of this strange temple we would place in large letters the cry of the Cumæan Sibyl in Virgil— “Procul, O procul este, profani!”
Let no mere mathematician, no mere Benthamite, no mere mechanist, no mere “botanist,” no mere man of taste, and trim man of measured syllables, enter here. Procul, O procul este, profani! It is enchanted ground. We have no quarrel with you; we quarrel with nobody: only keep your own ground, in God’s name, and don’t quarrel with us and our German friend Paul.

Richter was born, as we have mentioned, in the little county town of Wunsiedel, in Franconia, and that in the year 1763—about the same time, to use his own words, as the peace of Hubertsburg, which put an end to the famous Seven Years’ War. He was thus four years the junior of Schiller, (born 1759,) and fourteen of Göethe, (born 1749.) He was, like many other famous literary characters, the son of a clergyman, and blesses God frequently both for this, and that he was not born a cockney, (in Berlin or Vienna,) or in a coach-box, like the children of aristocratic parents, driven about over Europe in their early years, and never knowing the pleasure of having a home. A country vicarage amid mountains, forests, village schools and brawling brooks, gave to Richter’s infancy, and through that to his genius, a calm and peaceful background, over which a multiplicity of whimsical figures might, without painful dissipation, be made to play. In early youth the future prose-poet (for he never wrote a line of metre) displayed great eagerness to learn, and great aptitude for speculation; he was accordingly, by the fond ambition of a pious mother, dedicated, like so many a bookish youth, to the church. But theology, with its prickly fence of stiff dogmas, had no charms for a youth of his extreme sensibility, mercurial versatility, and sparkling freakishness; besides, speculation and questioning were already abroad in the German church, and amid the loud voices of contending doctors, it was a difficult thing for an active and honest thinker to cut the matter short by help of the devil’s recipe in Faust;

“If you will have a certain clue
To thread the theologic maze,
Hear only one, and swear to every word he says.”

Richter, therefore, finding himself without rudder or compass on the wide sea of German theology, much to the grief of his honest mother, was obliged to forswear theology and become author, his genius being stimulated quite as much by poverty as by Apollo, like old Horace.

“Philippi then dismiss’d me with my wings
Sorrily clipt, without or house or home;
And Need, that ventures all, forced me to try
The pen, and become poet.”
The Philippi which dismissed Richter was the University of Leipsic. He came back to Hof penniless, but not hopeless, to his good mother,—striving with a mind in some respects as narrow as her fortune; and here he studied, and brooded, and dreamed, and began to shoot strange coruscations: let us see how:—

“The darkest period of our hero’s life was when he fled from Leipsic and went down in disguise to Hof. The lawsuit had stripped his mother of the little property she inherited from the cloth-weaver, [her father,] and she had been obliged to part with the respectable homestead where the honest man had carried on his labours. She was now living with one or more of Paul’s brothers, in a small tenement, containing but one apartment, where cooking, washing, cleaning, spinning, and all the bee-hive labours of domestic life must go on together.

“To this small and over-crowded apartment, which henceforth must be Paul’s only study, he brought his twelve volumes of extracts, a head that in itself contained a library, a tender and sympathising heart—a true, high-minded, self-sustaining spirit. His exact situation was this: The success of the first and second volumes of his ‘Greenland Lawsuits’ had encouraged him to write a third—a volume of satires, under the singular name of ‘Selections from the Papers of the Devil;’ but for this we have seen he had strained every nerve in vain to find a publisher. This manuscript, therefore, formed part of the little luggage which his friend Oerthel had smuggled out of Leipsic. It was winter, and from his window he looked out upon the cold, empty, frozen street of the little city of Hof, or he was obliged to be a prisoner, without, as he says, ‘the prisoner’s fare of bread and water, for he had only the latter; and if a gulden found its way into the house, the jubilee was such, that the windows were nearly broken with joy.’ At the same time he was under the ban of his costume martyrdom: this he could have laughed at and reformed; but hunger and thirst were actual evils, and when of prisoner’s food he had only the thinner part, he could well exclaim, as Carlyle has said— ‘Night it must be e’er Friedland’s star will beam’
“Without was no help, no counsel, but there lay a giant force within; and so, from the depths of that sorrow and abasement, his better soul rose purified and invincible, like Hercules from his long labours.

“‘What is poverty,’ he said, at this time, ‘that a man should whine under it? It is but like the pain of piercing the ears of a maiden, and you hang precious jewels in the wound.’”

The “costume martyrdom” here mentioned, is a most characteristic affair; and as a great man’s character is often revealed most strikingly in small matters, we shall give it at length.

Partly from fancy, partly from necessity, Paul had adopted a peculiar style of dress, entirely at variance with the fashion of the day. He writes to his mother:—

“As I can make my vests (from extreme poverty) last no longer, I have determined to do without them; and if you send me some over-shirts, I can dispense with these vests. They must be made with open collars à la Hamlet; but this nobody will understand; in short, the breast must be open, so that the bare throat may be seen. My hair, also, I have had cut. [It was the day of queues and powder.] It is pronounced by my friends more becoming, and it spares one the expense of the hair-dresser. I have, still some locks a little curled.”

The young poet was right in suspecting, that “nobody would understand” the right of private judgment in important matters of this kind; but he did not at that time understand himself the extent of torture and martyrdom to which this Hamlet garb was to expose him. Among the good Burgers in Hof the scandal of an unpowdered pate and a bare throat was intolerable; the young author’s firmest friends remonstrated with him, most earnestly and seriously on the subject; but to no purpose: Paul was determined to vindicate his poetical liberty in this matter; however small in itself, there was a principle involved in it of the utmost consequence in social life. See how philosophically the parties argue the point. Pastor Vogel, the earliest prophet of Richter’s future fame, wrote and reasoned as follows:—

“‘You value only the inward, not the outward—the kernel, not the husk. But, with your permission, is not the whole composed of the form and the matter? Is one disfigured? so is the other. You condemn probably the philosophy of Diogenes, that separated its hero so much from other men, that it placed him in a tub. How can you justify yourself, if your philosophy serves you in the same way? No, my friend, you must open your eyes and see that you are not the only son of earth, but, like the ants in their ant-hills, you live in the tumult of life.

“‘Would you not hold that painter unwise, who should offend in costume—paint his Romans in sleeves and curled hair; the person of a man with petticoat and open bosom? Oh! that is not to be endured! Yet, a couple of proverbs—‘Swim not against the tide.’ ‘Among wolves, learn to howl.’ ‘Vulgar proverbs!’ you will say. Yes, but elevated wisdom. The true philosophy is, not for others to adapt themselves to us, but for us to adapt ourselves to others. Whoever forgets this great axiom, advances few steps without stumbling. But what do you seek? In the midst of Germany to become a Briton? Do you not in this way say, ‘Put on your spectacles, ye little people, and behold! see that you cannot be what I am.’ Ah, to speak thus, your modesty forbids! Avoid every thing that in the smallest degree lessens your value among your contemporaries.’

“To this gentle remonstrance, Paul replied:—‘I answer your letter willingly, for the sake of its argument, which your good heart rather than your good head has dictated. Your proverbs are not reasons, or if they are, they prove too much: for if I would swim with the stream, this stream would often make shipwreck of my virtue—the kingdom of vice is as great and extensive as the kingdom of fashion; and if I must howl with the wolves, why should I not rob with them? If the shell is injured the kernel suffers also,’ you say. But wherefore? Let us decide what does injure the shell. You consider that an evil to Diogenes which others hold an advantage. Did the so-called injury rob this great man of his philosophy, his good heart, his wit, his virtue? It robbed him not—but it gave him peace, independence of outward judgments, freedom from tormenting wants, and the incapacity of being wounded; and with this consciousness he could venture upon the punishment of every vice. Great man! Thank God that thou wert born in a country where they wondered at thy wisdom, instead of, as at present, punishing it. Fools would commit the only wise man to a madhouse; but, like Socrates, he would ennoble his prison.

“‘The painter would be ridiculous in offending against costume.’ This is true, but more witty than applicable to me. I need only say, that the painter of costume is not the greatest in his art; he is great whose pencil creates, not after the tailor, but after God; paints bodies, not dresses. The painter’s creations can only please through form, which is the shell; and am I designed for that? Is it my destination, with my organised ugliness, to please? Scarcely—if I would.

“‘But enough. I hold the constant regard that we pay in all our actions to the judgments of others as the poison of our peace, our reason, and our virtue. Upon this slave’s chain have I long filed, but I scarcely hope ever to break it.’

“This humorous controversy was kept up for some months on paper, as games of chess are played in Holland, without either party saying check to the king. At last Paul consented, as he called it, to inhull his person, and put an end to this tragicomical affair, by the following circular addressed to his friends:—

‘ADVERTISEMENT.

“‘The undersigned begs to give notice, that whereas cropped hair has as many enemies as red hair, and said enemies of the hair are likewise enemies of the person it grows upon; whereas, further, such a fashion is in no respect Christian, since, otherwise, Christian persons would adopt it; and whereas especially, the undersigned has suffered no less from his hair than Absalom did from his, though on contrary grounds; and whereas it has been notified to him, that the public proposed to send him into his grave, since the hair grows there without scissors: he hereby gives notice, that he will not willingly consent to such extremities. He would, therefore, inform the noble, learned, and discerning public in general, that the undersigned proposes on Sunday next to appear in the various important streets of Hof, with a false, short queue; and with this queue, as with a magnet, and cord of love, and magic rod, to possess himself forcibly of the affection of all and sundry, be they who they may.

“J. P. F. R.’”

Points of this kind have been often argued seriously enough between loving aunts solicitous of propriety, and brisk nephews solicitous of independence, perhaps also affecting singularity; but let it stand here discussed more profoundly and systematically by a sensible German pastor and a profound German poet-philosopher, in perpetuam rei memoriam. Right or wrong, nothing could mark the man more decidedly; always independent and original in his principles of action, and ever willing to yield to innocent prejudice when he had once openly vindicated his principle.

To pass from trifles to the serious business of authorship, the following extract is most instructive and full of character:—

“As these years, spent with his mother in Hof, were the most uninterruptedly studious of Richter’s life, it seems the place to give some account of the manner in which he pursued his studies. That plan must be a good one, and of use to others, of which he could say, ‘Of one thing I am certain; I have made as much out of myself, as could be made of the stuff, and no man should require more.’

“First in importance, he aimed, in the rules he formed for himself, at a just division of time and power, and he never permitted himself, from the first, to spend his strength upon any thing useless. He so managed his capital, that the future should pay him all ever-increasing interest on the present. The nourishment of his mind was drawn from three great sources—living Nature, in connexion with human life; the world of books, and the inner world of thought; these he considered the raw material given him to work up.

“We have already mentioned his manuscript library. In his fifteenth year, before he entered the Hof gymnasium, he had made many quarto volumes, containing hundreds of pages of closely-written extracts from all the celebrated works he could borrow, and from the periodicals of the day. In this way he had formed a repertory of all the sciences. For if, in the beginning, when he thought himself destined to the study of theology, his extracts were from philosophical theology, the second volume contained natural history, poetry, and, in succession, medicine, jurisprudence, and universal science. He had also anticipated one of the results of modern book-making. He wrote a collection of what are now called hand-books, of geography, natural history, follies, good and bad names, interesting facts, comical occurrences, touching incidents, &c.

“He observed Nature as a great book, from which he was to make extracts, and carefully collected all the facts that bore the stamp of a contriving mind, whose adaptation he could see, or only anticipate, and formed a book which bore the simple title ‘Nature.’

“When he meditated a new work, the first thing was to stitch together a blank book, in which he sketched the outlines of his characters, the principal scenes, thoughts to be worked in, &c., and called it ‘Quarry for Hesperus,’ ‘Quarry for Titan,’ &c. One of his biographers has given us such a book, containing his studies for Titan, which occupies seventy closely-printed duodecimo pages.

“Richter began also in his earliest youth to form a dictionary, and continued it through the whole of his literary life. In this he wrote down synonymes, and all the shades of meaning of which a word was susceptible. For one word he had found more than two hundred. Add to this mass of writing, that he copied all his letters, and it is surprising how any time remained. He made it a rule to give but one half of the day to writing, the other remained for the invention of his various works, which he accomplished while walking in the open air.

“These long walks, through valley and over mountain, steeled his body to bear all vicissitudes of weather, and added to his science in atmospheric changes, so that he was called by his townsmen the weather prophet. He is described by one who met him on the hills, with open breast and flying hair, singing as he went, while he held a book in his hand. Richter at this time was slender, with a thin pale face, a high nobly-formed brow, around which curled fine blonde hair. His eyes were a clear soft blue, but capable of an intense fire, like sudden lightning. He had a well-formed nose, and, as his biographer expresses it, ‘a lovely lip-kissing mouth.’ He wore a loose green coat and straw hat, and was always accompanied by his dog.

“As Richter from every walk returned to the little household apartment where his mother carried on her never-ceasing female labours, where half of every day he sat at his desk, he became acquainted with all the thoughts, all the conversation, the whole circle of the relations of the humble society in Hof. He saw the value and significance of the smallest things. The joys, the sorrows, the loves and aversions, the whole of life, in this Teniers’ picture passed before him. He himself was a principal figure in this limited circle. He sat with Plato in his hand, while his mother scattered fresh sand on the floor for Sunday, or added some small luxury to the table on days of festival. His hardly-earned groschen went to purchase the goose for Martinmas, while he dreamed of his future glory among distinguished men. Long years he was one of this humble society. He did not approach it as other poets have done, from time to time, to study for purposes of art the humbler classes; he felt himself one of them, and in this school he learned that sympathy with humanity which has made him emphatically in Germany the ‘poet of the poor.’”

One of the most instructive traits of Richter’s character is, his great attention to personal purity of heart and self-control. It was a main point with him, as with Quintilian, the sound old rhetorician, that to write or speak well, one must first of all be a good man. In imitation of many excellent and pious persons, Paul kept a diary of the sins that most easily beset him, and a register of moral victories by God’s grace to be won. From this “Andachts buchlein,” or “little book of devotion,” the following admirable extracts are given:—

“OF PAIN.

“Every evil is an occasion and a teacher of resolution. Every disagreeable emotion is a proof that I have been faithless to my resolutions.

“An evil vanishes, if I do not ask after it. Think of a worse situation than that in which thou art.

“Not to the evil, but to myself, do I owe my pain. Epictetus was not unhappy!

“Vanity, insensibility, and custom, make one steadfast. Wherefore not virtue still more?

“Never say, if you had not these sorrows, that you would bear others better.

“What is sixty years’ pain to eternity?

“Necessity, if it cannot be altered, becomes resignation.

“OF GLORY.

“Most men judge so miserably; why would you be praised by a child?

“No one would praise you in a beggar’s frock; be not proud of the esteem that is given to your coat.

“Do not expect more esteem from others because you deserve more, but reflect that they will expect still more merit in yourself.

“Do not seek to justify all thy actions. Value nothing merely because it is thy own, and look not always upon thyself.

“Do not wait for extraordinary opportunities for good actions, but make use of common situations. A long continued walk is better than a short flight.

“Never act in the heat of emotion: let reason answer first.

“Look upon every day as the whole of life, not merely as a section; and enjoy the present without wishing to spring on to another section that lies before thee.

“Seek to acquire that virtue in a month, to which thou feelest the least inclined.

“It betrays a greater soul to answer a satire with patience, than with wit.

“If thou wouldst be free, joyful, and calm, take the only means that cannot be affected by accident—virtue.”

A man who could act on these principles was morally a great man, and worthy of admiration even without genius. To know and feel habitually, as Richter seems to have done, that “EVIL is like the nightmare; the instant you bestir yourself it has already ended,” is to be a moral hero, and a triumphant Christian. See how every thing turns into gold at the touch of such a man!—the way of pædagogy (for he practised the “dominie” too for four years to eke out his scanty earnings,) to him is spread not with thorns, but with violets and primroses. The following account of his pædagogic practice cannot fail to interest many:—

“The deep and marked peculiarities of a poetic nature were never brought into fuller exercise than by Richter, in the formation and government of his little school. That which is usually to men of rich endowments a vexing and wearisome employment, the daily routine of instruction for little children in the elements of knowledge, became to him a source of elevated and ennobling thought. His mode of instruction was the opposite of that from which he thought he had himself suffered. In this little school there was no learning by heart, no committing to memory the thoughts of others, but every child was expected to use its own powers. His exertions seemed mainly directed to awaken in the children a reproducing and self-creating power; all knowledge was therefore the material, out of which they were to form new combinations. In a word, the whole of his instruction was directed to create a desire for self-study, and thus lead his pupils to self-knowledge. He aimed to bring out, as much as possible, the talents that God had given his pupils; and, after exciting a love of knowledge, he left them to a free choice as to what they would study; but their zeal and emulation were kept alive by a (so-called) ‘red book,’ in which an exact account of the work of each individual was recorded; this was shown to parents and friends at the end of the quarter, and so great was their zeal, that they needed a rein rather than a spur. While he accustomed the children to the spontaneous activity of all their faculties, he gave them five hours a-day of direct instruction, in which he led them through the various departments of human knowledge, and taught them to connect ideas and facts by comparison and association. From the kingdom of plants and animals he ascended to the starred firmament, made them acquainted with the course of the planets, and led their imaginations to these worlds and their inhabitants. Then he conducted them through the picture-gallery of the past history of nations, and placed the heroes, and saints, and martyrs of antiquity before them, or he turned their attention to the mystery of their own souls and the destiny of man. Above all, and with all, he directed their tender, childish hearts, to a Father in heaven. He said, ‘There can be no such companion to the heart of children, for the whole life, as the ever-present thought of God and immortality.’”

But these humble avocations were soon to cease. Richter was destined to emerge from the obscurity of a village schoolmaster, and appear on the public stage of Germany as the compeer of Herder and Schiller, of Wieland and Göethe—second to none of these now European names in originality, brilliancy, and vigour of literary talent; superior to all of them in the purity and intensity with which there glowed in him many of those highest moral qualities which distinguish the man and the Christian. The following extract, relating to the publication of his first very successful work, and the commencement of his German celebrity, in the year 1790, is steeped in the purest essence of poetry, and most characteristic of that flow of pure, cheerful, and exalted emotion which freshens one’s moral nature like milk and honey, in all the mature writings of this extraordinary man.

“The weeks that followed the successful reception of the Invisible Lodge were the ‘Sabbath weeks’ of Paul’s life. He had had the courage to speak out in the fulness of his nature, and had found a response in many hearts. In the paradise that opened before him, he determined to give full course to the flood of his genius; but he well knew, that the richest fulness of poetic thought could only exist in connexion with peace of soul, cheerfulness of disposition, and firmness of purpose, and that the truth of his representations must arise from corresponding inward truth and integrity; in short, if he would be a poet in his works, he must be a poet in his life.

“He carefully continued his book of devotion, his rules and purposes of life. He never awoke without reviewing the past day; and where he had been assaulted by the force of any passion, there he placed a double bulwark, and with quiet satisfaction celebrated the victory gained. His quick and warm fancy led him often to outbreaking anger, and his ready wit to satire that was sometimes wounding, especially when his good-nature was misused; but the gentlest call led him back to tenderness—the accidental sight of a boy’s face with tears in his eyes was sufficient to disarm him; he thought of his future life, of the sorrows that would draw from him still bitterer tears, and he said, ‘I will not pour into the cup of humanity a single drop of gall;’ and he kept his word. Where he was obliged to assert his rights, he did it so calmly and gently, that the holy treasures of his life—love and truth—remained for ever undisturbed.

“Every thing living touched his heart—from the humblest flower that opened its leaves in the grass, up to the shining worlds on high; children and old men, the beggar and the rich, he would have embraced them all in the sacred glow of his emotions, or given all he possessed to make them happy. No one went from him unconsoled; and when he could give nothing but good counsel, he gave that. Were it only a poor mountaineer or a travelling apprentice to whom he could impart the smallest present, he would dwell the whole day with delight on the circumstance. Often he would say to himself, ‘Now he will draw the dollar from his pocket, and reckon which of his long-cherished wishes he can first satisfy. How often will he think of this day, and of the unexpected gift, and perhaps once more than usual upon the Giver of all good.’ Love was the ever-living principle of his character and of his writings, and before the thought of the Infinite, all differences in rank vanished away; all were equally great, or equally little.

“He gained nourishment for this principle from every circumstance in life. Where others would have been untouched and cold, there he heard whispered to his spirit the voice of humanity. Let him speak for himself. He says in his journal:-

“‘I picked up in the choir a faded rose-leaf, that lay under the feet of the boys. Great God! what had I in my hand but a small leaf, with a little dust upon it; and upon this small fugitive thing my fancy built a whole paradise of joy—a whole summer dwelt upon this leaf. I thought of the beautiful day when the boy held this flower in his hand, and when through the church window he saw the blue heaven and the clouds wandering over it; when every place in the cool vault was full of sunlight, and reminded him of the shadows on the grass from the over-flying clouds. Good God! thou scatterest satisfaction every where, and givest to every one joys to impart again. Not merely dost thou invite us to great and exciting pleasures, but thou givest to the smallest a lingering perfume.’

“Above all things, his eye hung upon Nature. He lived and wrote whole days in the open air, on the mountain, or in the woods; and in the midst of winter he sought from the window the evening rose-colour, his beloved stars, and that magic enchanter, the moon. Every walk in the open air was to him the entrance into a church. He said in his journal—‘Dost thou enter pure into this vast, guiltless temple? Dost thou bring no poisonous passion into this place, where flowers bloom and birds sing? Dost thou bear no hatred where Nature loves! Art thou calm as the stream where Nature reflects herself as in a mirror? Ah, would that my heart were as true and as unruffled as Nature when she came from the hands of her great Creator!’ Every new excursion in this great temple gave him new strength, and he returned laden with spiritual treasures. He loved to make short journeys on foot; where the motion of the body kept the mind in a state of activity, and the insignificant gained value by its unexpectedness. A sunny day made him happy, and the perfumes of a spring morning, or dewy evening, seemed almost to intoxicate him with their incense; but the hours of night were those of his highest elevation, when he would lie long hours on the dewy grass, looking into the opening clouds. He says in his journal—‘I take my ink-flask in the morning, and write as I walk in the fragrant air. Then comes my joy, that I have conquered two of my faults—my disposition to be angry in conversation, and to lose my cheerfulness through a long day of dust and musquitoes. Nothing makes one so indifferent to the pin and musquito thrusts of life, as the consciousness of growing better.’”

Richter belonged now to Germany, and should have been transferred immediately, you will think, like Göethe, Schiller, Wieland, Herder, and the other Dii majorum gentium, to Weimar, the one literary capital of Deutschland; for political capital it neither had then nor has now, nor in the common course of things, notwithstanding the songs of 1813 and the Zoll-Verein, is ever like to have. And in Weimar, no doubt, there were some men who looked upon the apparition of the Richter comet with a more favourable eye than senatorian Göethe. Old Father Wieland, in particular, “who had read Tristram Shandy eighty times over,” called him “our Yorick, our Rabelais, the purest spirit!”—and the earnest Herder, with his capacious sympathy, was able to appreciate the religious and Christian element in Paul’s character, which naturally was a mystery to the author of Agathon. Taken as a whole, however, Weimar, with Göethe as its real king and god, was by no means the proper element for Richter. There was too much mere literature in it for one with whom goodness was the one thing needful, and greatness only an accident, agreeable or disagreeable, as the case might be. There was too much head in Weimar, and too little heart. Freedom, indeed, there was, in grand style, from all those civic formalities, and minute observation of small points, which had vexed him so much in Hof. But what one might complain of there, to use his own words, was “PAINTED EGOTISM AND UNPAINTED SCEPTICISM;”—the French Voltaire in a German Avatar! For the true Teut, Richter, that would never do. We are not, therefore, to be surprised if the visit which Paul made to Weimar in 1796, though full of joy and exhilaration, was not followed up by any permanent change in his quiet and retired mode of life. His native secluded region of the Fichtelgebirge was still to be his home. Hof and Bayreuth, in the centre of central Germany, and therefore out of every body’s way, were to boast the possession of this the most German of great German men. How little attraction there was between the calm, cold, artistical contemplativeness of Göethe, and the bickering sportiveness of sunny joy in the essentially moral nature of Richter, the following extract will declare:—

“‘On the second day I threw away my foolish prejudices in favour of great authors. They are like other people. Here, every one knows that they are like the earth, that looks from a distance, from heaven, like a shining moon, but when the foot is upon it, it is found to be made of boue de Paris (Paris mud.) An opinion concerning Herder, Wieland, or Göethe, is as much contested as any other. Who would believe that the three watch-towers of our literature avoid and dislike each other! I will never again bend myself anxiously before any great man, only before the virtuous. Under this impression, I went timidly to meet Göethe. Every one had described him as cold to every thing upon the earth. Madam von Kalb said, he no longer admires any thing, not even himself. Every word is ice! Curiosities, merely, warm the fibres of his heart. Therefore I asked Knebel to petrify or incrust me by some mineral spring, that I might present myself to him like a statue or a fossil. Madam von Kalb advised me, above all things, to be cold and self-possessed, and I went without warmth, merely from curiosity. His house, palace rather, pleased me; it is the only one in Weimar in the Italian style—with such steps! A Pantheon full of pictures and statues. Fresh anxiety oppressed my breast! At last the god entered, cold, one-syllabled, without accent. ‘The French are drawing towards Paris,’ said Knebel. ‘Hm!’ said the god. His face is massive and animated, his eye a ball of light. But at last, the conversation led from the campaign to art, publications, &c., and Göethe was himself. His conversation is not so rich and flowing as Herder’s, but sharp-toned, penetrating, and calm. At last, he read, that is, he played for us, an unpublished poem, in which his heart impelled the flame through the outer crust of ice, so that he pressed the hand of the enthusiastic Jean Paul. (It was my face, not my voice, for I said not a word.) He did it again when we took leave, and pressed me to call again. By Heaven! we will love each other! He considers his poetic course as closed. His reading is like deep-toned thunder, blended with soft whispering rain-drops. There is nothing like it.’”

To which add the following passage, where we are sorry to find rather an unfavourable mention of our great favourite Schiller. Authors, however, especially poets, are a strange race: he who expects to find them always like their books, knows little. How unlike is Vesuvius, being calm and mantled with green grass, to the same Vesuvius when it spouts molten rock and spits lightning!

“‘I went yesterday to see the stony Schiller, from whom, as from a precipice, all strangers spring back. His form is worn, severely powerful, but angular. He is full of sharp-cutting power, but without love. His conversation is nearly as excellent as his writings. As I brought a letter from Göethe, he was unusually pleasant; he would make me a fellow-contributor to the Horen (a periodical,) and would give me a naturalization act in Jena.’

“Notwithstanding this courtesy, Richter did not repeat his visit to Schiller, and his intimate union with Herder excluded all hope of his being drawn to the party of Göethe. The latter wrote to Schiller, ‘I am glad you have seen Richter. His love of truth and his wish for self-improvement have prepossessed me in his favour; but the social man is a sort of theoretical man, and I doubt if Richter will ever approach us in a practical way, although in theory he seems to have some pretensions to belong to us.’ They were never friends. Richter could not conceal his disappointment at the character of Göethe’s latter poetical works; and soon after his return to Hof he wrote to Knebel in relation to one of them, ‘that in such stormy times we needed a Tyrtæus rather than a Propertius.’ The remark reached Göethe’s ears; and Göethe, usually so indifferent to censure or criticism, showed himself deeply susceptible and offended at this so-called ‘manifestation of arrogance in Herr Richter.’”

But if the “many-sided Göethe”—wanting, as he certainly did, one important side of humanity, namely, the moral side—could not appreciate the genius of Richter fully, there was one who did—that, as we have already intimated, was Herder. This great man, as his intelligent wife has left on record, “valued Richter’s genius—his rich, overflowing, poetic Spirit—far above the soulless productions of the times, that contended for the poetic form only. He named them brooks without water; and often said that Richter stood, as opposed to them, on a high elevation; and that he would exchange all artistical forms for his living virtue, his feeling heart, his perennial creative genius. He brings new fresh life, truth, virtue, reality, into the declining and misunderstood vocation of the poet.” Such was Herder’s estimate of Paul; and herein precisely lies his true grandeur. A perfect Titan as an author, in the common relations of social and domestic life he is a god. Aiming at the highest things, he lives happy among the smallest. Soaring habitually among the loftiest ideas, he is “sympathising and attentive to the smallest little things, and to all the actual of life.” This is the testimony of his wife—not every wife of a literary man, great or small, in these times, can give such a testimony. It has been a fashion with men of a certain fashion of genius to fall in love furiously, and to be ecstatically moved in the licentious roving of the eyes; but to shrink from the joining of hands, to hate marriage, and to damn the fireside. But Richter was of a different—of a more healthy, and a more happy humour. Did St Paul ever bear a nobler testimony to the “honourable” condition of marriage than the following?—

“That the brightest and purest fountain of love to mankind takes nothing from love to the individual, I learn from my Caroline. Every day it becomes more expansive. Rare as beautiful is her adoration of the spiritual of poetry and nature; wonderful her disinterestedness and complete abnegation of self. There is nothing that she would not do for me, or others. World-long cares are to her nothing, as her industry and love of duty are infinite. As she loves me, she loves all my clothes, and would make them all herself.

“As yet we have had nothing, or only very little, to irritate. I cannot say that I am satisfied, but I am certainly blest. Ah, see her! What are words! Marriage has made me love her more romantically, deeper, infinitely more than before!”

Richter, therefore, was a domestic man in the highest sense of the word. Would you know what domestic happiness means? Take the following—’tis from a daughter:—

“I love to represent the dear friendly man, with brown study-coat and socks hanging down, as he entered our mother’s chamber the first thing in the morning to greet her. The hound springs on before him, and the children hang about him, and seek, when he leaves the room, to thrust their little feet into the slippers behind, when he raises his feet a little, so as to hang on him more securely. One springs before, (at that time my blessed brother lived,) the other two hang on his coat-skirts until he reaches his own chamber-door; where all leave him, for only the dog must enter there.

“When we were very small, we lived in a two-story house; my father worked above, in the attic. We crept on our hands and feet over the stairs, and hammered on the door till the father himself arose and opened it, and after our noisy ingress, closed it again—then he took from an old chest a trumpet and a fife, with which we made noisy music while he continued writing. We ventured in again many times in the day to play with a squirrel that he had at that time, and that in the evening he took out with him in his pocket, and always made one of the family circle.

“He had, usually, animals that he tamed, about him. Sometimes a mouse; then a great, white, cross spider, that he kept in a paper box, with a glass top. There was a little door beneath, by which he could feed his prisoner with dead flies. In the autumn he collected the winter food for his little tree frog and his tame spider.

“The father was good to every thing: he could not bear to witness the least pain, not even in the lowest animals. Thus, he never went out without opening the cage of his canary birds, to indemnify the poor animals, who would be melancholy in his absence. He took at one time the most sedulous care of a dog, who came in one evening after the loss of the poor dead Alert, as he knew in the morning he should exchange him for another, and he would have no opportunity to feed him again. You will smile at the connexion, but he did the same for a departing servant maid: providing every thing for her convenience the day before, and delighting the poor girl in the most unusual degree.

“The children were permitted all sorts of practical jokes towards him. ‘Father, dance once;’ then he would make some leaps; or he must speak French, in which he placed wonderful value on the nasal sound, which no one made as well as he. It sounded, indeed, curiously and made my mother laugh.

“In the twilight he told us stories; or spake of God and other worlds; or he would tell us of our grandfather, and other splendid things. We ran to gain the wager, which of us should get nearest to him on the sofa. The old money-box, hooped with iron, with a hole in the cover, that two mice might conveniently pass through, was the stepping-stone by which we jumped over the back of the sofa, for in front it was difficult to press between the table and the repertory for papers. We all three crowded between the back of the sofa and the father’s out-stretched legs; above, at his head, lay the sleeping dog. At last, when we had pressed our limbs into the most inconvenient postures, the story began.

“The father knew how to create for himself many little pleasures. Thus, he made all the boxes for his tame animals, after his half-hour’s nap in the afternoon. It was a special satisfaction to him to prepare ink, which he did much oftener than was necessary, for Otto wrote long years after with the rejected part. He could never wait to perfect it, but tried it an hour after it was made. If it was already black, he would come joyfully to us, and say,—‘Now, if it be black already, what will it be to-morrow, or after fourteen days?’

“The mere thought of destruction was painful to him, especially the loss of the work of man’s mind. He never burned a letter; yes, he treasured even the most insignificant. ‘All loss of life,’ he said, ‘may be restored again, but the creations of these heads, these hearts, never! The name should be erased, but the soul that speaks its most intimate sentiments in letters, should live.’ He had also thick books written full of the remarks and the habits and peculiarities of his children.

“At meals he was very cheerful, and listened to every thing we told him with the greatest sympathy, and always made something out of the smallest relation; so that the narrator was always wiser for what he had said.

“In eating and drinking he was extremely moderate. He never gave us direct instruction, and yet he taught us always. Our evening table he called a French table-d’hote, that he furnished with twelve dishes taken from the arts and sciences. We tasted of all without being satiated with any, and we all ventured to utter any joke to the father about himself or his entertainment.

“His punishments for us girls were rather passive than active; they consisted in refusing some request, or in a severe word; but my brother sometimes received corporal punishment. My father would say—‘Max, this afternoon, at three o’clock, come to me to receive your whipping.’ He went punctually, and suffered it without a sound.”

But we become diffuse. There are many scenes in the quiet life of Richter, that, like the above, are perfect domestic idyls—but we must hasten to the last; ’tis like those which preceded it, surpassing lovely. Never have we encountered, in the wide world of biographic books, a death-bed scene, so full of love, and joy, and peace, as the death-bed of Jean Paul Frederick Richter. Nothing more, however, than one might have expected; for men generally—so experienced clergymen observe—die as they live. One thing only we must remark, before giving our last extracts; towards the close of his career, the bright, sun-gazing genius of Richter was struck, like Milton’s, not with celestial, but with terrestrial blindness. For some space before he died, his favourite world of flowers and green fields was already a blank to him. In the month of October 1823, his nephew, Otto Spazier, to whom we are indebted for the principal part of these biographical details, shortly before his death, being called to visit the blind old poet, writes as follows:—

“‘Such a call from the immortal old man, as it entered my solitary apartment,’ says his nephew, ‘filled me with delight. The reverend image of his beautiful old age, a just reward for a holy life, rose before me, and with joyful haste I travelled through the wet days of October, and entered his study on the evening of the twenty-fourth of that month. The same joyful tremor affected me as formerly, when, at the twilight hour, I had listened here with his family to the voice of wisdom. The windows of his room looked towards the rising sun, and far over the garden and over scattered trees and houses, towards the Flichtelgebirge, that bounded the horizon. A mingled perfume of flowers and grapes led the fancy to southern climes, to beautiful blue June days, or to the vintage on the Rhine. His sofa, where he usually read in a reclining posture, was opposite this window, and before it his writing table, upon which appeared a regular confusion of pens, paper of all colours, glasses, flowers, books, among which last were the small English editions of Swift and Sterne. At the other window stood a small piano, and near this a smaller table. Depending from the cage of his birds was a little ladder, that led to his own work-table, where the birds were permitted to roam among the confusion, sprinkling with water from the flower glass the sheet upon which the poet was writing. Often was Paul seen to stop in his most excited passages, to let his little canary, with her young, travel, undisturbed, over the page, where the water she scattered from her feathers mingled with the ink from his pen. In the corner of the room was a door by which, unobserved, Richter could descend the steps into the garden, and on a cushion near it rested his white, silky-haired poodle. A hunting pocket and rosewood staff hung near. All three had often been the companions of his wandering, when, on beautiful days, he went through the chestnut avenue to the little Rolwenzell cottage.

“‘All in the room retained its usual position, but the ruling hand appeared to have been absent. The light was shaded, and the windows hung with green curtains; the robust form that in former years, even before the snowdrop had loosened the icy crust of winter, had worked long hours with uncovered breast in the open air, lay supported with cushions, and shrouded in furs upon the sofa; his body drawn together, and eyes for ever closed. ‘Heaven,’ said he, ‘chastens me with a double rod, and one is a heavy cudgel! (meaning his blindness); but I shall be well again now. Ah! we have so much to say and to do. But we shall have a thousand hours—at least, minutes.’ His voice was weaker, his words slower, and it cut me to the heart to hear him speak of himself. It was late—and soon his wife, ever watchful, called me away, to return to him again in the morning.’

“Early next morning he began a complete revision of his works. The nephew read aloud, and Paul inserted his alterations. When Spazier thought one necessary, he indicated it by pausing, to draw his attention. With great mildness and patience Paul listened to every objection; and himself related, explained, praised, and blamed. He reconsidered and over-lived thus his whole spiritual life in his works. In the comparisons scattered through his sixty-four volumes, of which indeed every page is filled, he found only two or three were repeated.”

On the 14th November of the same year the curtain was drawn. How calmly—how beautifully!—Read:—

“Noon had by this time arrived. Richter, thinking it was night, said—‘It was time to go to rest!’ and wished to retire. He was wheeled into his sleeping apartment, and all was arranged as if for repose; a small table near his bed, with glass of water, and his two watches; common one and a repeater. His wife now brought him a wreath of flowers that a lady had sent him, for every one wished to add some charm to his last days. As he touched them carefully, for he could neither see nor smell them, he seemed to rejoice in the images of the flowers in his mind, for he said repeatedly to Caroline—‘My beautiful flowers, my lovely flowers!’

“Although his friends sat around the bed, as he imagined it was night, they conversed no longer; he arranged his arms as if preparing for repose, which was to be to him the repose of death, and soon sank into a tranquil sleep.

“Deep silence pervaded the apartment. Caroline sat at the head of the bed, with her eyes immovably fixed on the face of her beloved husband. Otto had retired, and the nephew sat with Plato’s Phaedon in his hand, open at the death of Socrates. At that moment a tall and beautiful form entered the chamber; and, at the foot of the bed, with his hands raised to heaven, and deeply moved, he repeated aloud the prayer of his Mosaic faith. It was Emanuel, and next to Otto, the most beloved of Richter’s friends.

“About six o’clock the physician entered. Richter yet appeared to sleep; his features became every moment holier, his brow more heavenly, but it was cold as marble to the touch; and as the tears of his wife fell upon it, he remained immovable. At length his respiration became less regular, but his features always calmer, more heavenly. A slight convulsion passed over the face; the physician cried out—‘That is death!’ and all was quiet. The spirit had departed!

“All sank, praying, upon their knees. This moment, that raised them above the earth with the departing spirit, admitted of no tears!

“‘Thus Richter went from earth, great and holy as a poet, greater and holier as a man!’

“Involuntarily we recall the deathbed of another great poet, on that delicious summer’s day when the windows were all open, and the only sound the ripple of the Tweed upon its stony bed. Here, in the midst of winter, a deeper repose must have consecrated the deathbed of Richter, as if Nature herself stood reverently still, when her worshipper and interpreter laid down the garment in which he had ministered in her temple.

“Richter was buried by torch light: the unfinished manuscript of Selina[5] borne upon his coffin, and the noble ode of Klopstock— ‘Thou shalt arise, my soul!’
was sung by the students of the Gymnasium at the burial vault.”

Thus have we, by favour of your attention, kind reader, endeavoured to open up to the British eye, a few sunny glimpses of one of the choicest spirits whom “the Fatherland” delighteth to honour. Jean Paul, der einzige—the unique, is the received designation of Richter in Germany; a title in his case as deservedly earned by literary labour, as military and political services have earned it likewise, in his proper sphere, for the great Frederick. Pity only that it is by no means such an easy matter to render the works of the author’s genius as appreciable to general admiration, as the actions of the soldier and the policy of the king. Guns and trumpets make a noise over the wide world, from the Arctic circle to the Antarctic, pretty much the same; and, provided the stages of their explosion be large and open enough, the actors will not fail to be noted of all men, and admired. But the voices of wise and good men in books, are of a more curious and delicate melody; and sometimes even the rarest of them cannot be made to vibrate in their full harmonious chords, otherwise than to the nicely-fitted structure of the national ear. This is the case with the French Beranger, and in an eminent degree with our own Burns. The translators, we know, have tried their hands with these men—as what will they not try?—but let them carve and polish as they will, the Frenchman will still limp awkwardly in his Wellington boots, and the Scotsman, though he may retain his warmth, will lose the finest tints of his colour in Deutschland. So even more strikingly is the stamp of indelible nationality imprinted on all the writings of Jean Paul; and it will require peculiarly skilful handling indeed, to take away the point from the French lady’s criticism above quoted, and make all or any one of Richter’s works, like Schiller’s “Wallenstein,” or Göethe’s “Faust,” a familiar occupant of a cultivated Englishman’s shelves. These works consist almost exclusively of novels or fictitious tales, and these of two kinds: the philosophical or ideal novel—for which, even in its most perfect character, John Bull has no peculiar faculty; and the novel of common life, in which department the same most unphilosophical Bull has attained such an admirable mastership, that to his practical eye the most manful feats of a purely German genius like Richter, are apt to appear puerile and even apish. Nevertheless, we do by no means despair of a selection being made from this great man’s works, such as will not, indeed, popularise him on British ground—for popular in the widest sense he is not even in Germany—but such as may command the ear of all educated men for whom the higher departments of imaginative literature have a charm. Such a collection to our knowledge has not yet been made in this country. When it shall be made, every thing depends on the workman. Richter cannot be translated at random: nor can he be simply transposed, as many a decent sentence-monger may, line after line, and paragraph after paragraph; he is freakish, and will confound a methodical wit lamentably. One decided advantage, however, by way of an introduction to the English Richter, has been gained by the appearance of the present biography. We have learnt to know the man; and the man in this case is as good, perhaps better, than his works. No well-conditioned person, we are convinced, will lay down the biography of Richter without an earnest desire to know something more of such a man. He will be convinced also that the novels of such a writer will not be made up of mere playful arabesques to amuse, of mere pepper and spices to stimulate; he will have felt the breath of a moral regeneration in these pages, and that a novel of Jean Paul is in fact a sermon; an evangelic address, where the gospel is preached, as wit is vented in the old drama, oftentimes by a clown. Next to a mind of extensive culture, and a heart of wide sympathies, a moral preparation of this kind is the grand key to the writings of Frederick Richter.

A TALE OF THE MASORCHA CLUB.
AT BUENOS AYRES.

CHAPTER I.

Tom Thorne was a bachelor, who lived in one of the best houses, had the best horses, and gave the best dinners and suppers, of any merchant in Buenos Ayres. The head of the “house,” or firm, he was his own master; and this privilege he used to the utmost. Wherever a ball was to be held in that dancing city, there be sure you find Tom; and few dinner parties, pic-nics, or country excursions, were complete without him. Little mattered it to him, whether he were invited or not—he knew every body, and everybody knew him; and his jovial good humour, his hearty laugh and frank address, won him the good graces of any party upon which the whim of the moment induced him to intrude. Tom was a restless, rattling blade, and delighted in excitement of every kind. He could no more have sat still on a chair for half an hour than he could have passed over an entire day without drinking champagne, where it was to be had, or brandy and water where it was not.

Courteous and gallant to the ladies, he was noisy and jovial with the men; and although he was well known to boast of his liberty as a bachelor, yet this probably only made him more of a favourite with the fair. There could be no harm in flirting and coquetting with one who openly defied their attractions. The shy and timid could be pert and playful with Tom Thorne the bachelor, without any feelings of indelicacy; while those who were less reserved, considered it fair play to entangle him in the nets of their raillery—probably not without a distant hope that the gay flutterer might yet singe his wings in making his circuit round the flame of their attractions.

It will be thought surprising how our hero, with such roving and unsteady habits, could transact business as the head of a mercantile house. But in South America, business is not conducted in the same systematic way that it is in London or Liverpool; and probably more hides or bullocks, gin or ginghams, are bought and sold at the dinner or billiard table than at the desk or exchange.

For such irregular kind of trade, Tom was peculiarly adapted. His was not the character to plod at a desk over intricate speculations, nor was it necessary in a trade confined within narrow compass and certain seasons. Trade would sometimes be brisk, vessels would require to be loaded and discharged; then Tom would write night and day, with desperate energy, and then, as if he had earned a holiday, he would idle away for weeks. What was the use of clerks if not to write? or, according to an old proverb, what is the use of keeping a dog, and barking yourself?

Tom Thorne, when sent out to South America, in the first instance, came under great advantages. He was the son of the head of one of the richest firms in Europe, and with an ill-judged liberality was allowed lots of pocket-money; and more consideration was paid to him than to other clerks by the managers of the house in Buenos Ayres. Thus he had both more time and money to spend than other “young men” with more limited prospects. Tom was not one to throw away these advantages; and so his horse was the swiftest, his coat the tippiest, his cigar the longest, his gloves were ever the whitest, and his bouquet the richest of all the riding, smoking, flower-giving youths of Buenos Ayres; and it may be conceived, that with all “these appliances, and means to boot,” he was more an adept in the ways of gallantry than scriveny. In the course of time Mr Thorne, in spite of all his failings, arrived at the dignity of representative in Buenos Ayres of the rich firm of Thorne, Flower, & Co.

Once established as his own master, Tom’s natural levity of character was not long of displaying itself, pleasure was his business, and business his pastime. The lute or the piano (he was a splendid musician) occupied him more than the pen; he was more in the camp or in the streets, than in his house—and more in other people’s houses than his own. And yet with all this, his business went on most swimmingly—he was an indulgent master, paid his clerks well, and fed them like princes: this they requited by paying more attention to his business than he did himself, and thus Tom, almost in spite of himself, was, as we have formerly said, one of the richest merchants in the city.

Some of our fair readers may say—This is all very well, but why does he not marry? and then he might rest happy at home, instead of being so dependent on others for enjoyment. But it was this very dependence on others for excitement and the means of enjoyment, that made Tom shirk marriage. It would have been a thraldom to him. Was it, could it be possible for him to stop all night at home, reading a book, and looking at his wife? Oh no! Could you drink brandy and water, and smoke cigars in a parlour? Oh no! Tea and toast at seven, was tame work in comparison with toddy and devilled kidneys at eleven. It was very agreeable, certainly, to see ladies dressed out in smiles and silks; but he had heard or read that husbands might sometimes see them in sulks and slippers. It was more pleasant for Tom to be knight-errant to the fair in general. There could be little romance about a husband, little poetry about a wife, and very little Jollity about a nursery. So thought Tom; but as we shall see, The best laid schemes of mice and men
Gang aft a-gley.

CHAPTER II.

In Buenos Ayres, though a town of fully sixty thousand inhabitants, nearly every body of any pretensions knows every other body, either by sight, by report, or nodding acquaintanceship. Society may be divided into English, French, and native, or Spanish. Among the English we comprise the British, Americans, Germans, Danes, and Swedes—in fact, all the Anglo-Saxon family, (without excluding therefrom the Irish,) as they can all speak English, and are somewhat allied in character, pursuits, and political relationship. The French and Italians, again, resemble each other more than they do the above.

The visiting and visitable part of the native community, form a most interesting and agreeable feature in Buenos-Ayrean society. Thanks to civil wars, and to Rosas, the females vastly preponderate in numbers over the males. You may visit five or six families, and meet five or six ladies in each, and not a single gentleman; partly from the reasons we have given above, and partly because to ladies appear exclusively to be allotted the duties of ceremonial reception—husbands and brothers, if there be any, remaining in their studies, or back rooms, even when the sala, or reception room, is crowded with visitors or a small evening party. Oh, how pleasant and agreeable are these Senoras, and Senoritas! how sweetly they help you out with a sentence when you are at a loss! how freely they suggest subjects of conversation! how good-humouredly they smile at your awkward mistakes, and make you fancy that you will soon be a perfect proficient in Spanish—as indeed you soon would be under their tuition; how soon you forget that you have never seen them before! how soon you learn to suck matte, and to pay compliments! and when you are about to leave, and a flower is agreeably presented to you by a smiling Senorita, with an assurance that the house and every thing in it is entirely at your disposal, you bow your way out with a profusion of promises to return, with a rose at your button-hole, a smile on the face, and an elasticity of step that will last half the day. Oh, Tom Thorne! Tom Thorne! how could you resist so many dimpling smiles and sweet compliments? How could you flirt away the forenoons in the circles of beauty, look the language, breathe the gay atmosphere, reflect the glad glances, enjoy the warm enlivening glow of youthful feelings, bask in the sunshine of favour streaming upon you from the eyes of youth, innocence, and beauty, and then cool down your feelings with cigars and brandy?

But we are forgetting our subject. Among each of the great national families we have classed together, there were particular sets and circles, out of which many would seldom or never move, while some would be nearly equally familiar with all: and this mixture of different nations, tinctured with a dash of republicanism, gives a tone of metropolitan urbanity and courtesy to Buenos-Ayrean society, which is very agreeable. All being dependent on their own exertions, there can be little affectation of superiority; and all being occupied through the day, they are the more inclined to relax into the agreeable in the evening: and perhaps there are few places under the sun where there are more or merrier evening reunions than there were in the city of Buenos Ayres before the blasting tyranny of Rosas decimated the natives, made fathers suspicious of sons, brothers spies upon brothers, Frenchmen arm themselves for mutual protection, Englishmen almost afraid of the name, and banished wealth and security from the province.

The sala of Senora Tertulia was brilliantly lighted up and brilliantly filled with youth and beauty; the atmosphere was loaded with rich perfumes from the gay and gaudy festoons that adorned the massy chandeliers, and from the sweet little bouquets that heaved on the bosoms of the fair dancers. Knights of every order of chivalry were strutting through the room. Priests were listening to innocent confessions. Don Juans were whispering sweet compliments into willing ears. Dominoes were playing at cards with Italian Counts. Turks were drinking the firewaters of the Franks at side-tables. Gauchos were there rigged out in all the finery of the Pampas; and every masquerade-shop in the town had been ransacked by those whose wit could not supply, or whose means could not afford new or appropriate costumes. And so there was a fair proportion of clowns, harlequins, starved apothecaries, and Highlanders with cotton drawers. Many old gentlemen with the long ruffles, the broad skirts, powdered wigs, and jockey looking waistcoats of the sixteenth century, were seen bowing, scraping, and taking snuff: in fine, every one either was or ought to have been enjoying himself. The music struck up, and off they went.

A quadrille had just finished. Lords wore handing dames and ladies fair to their seats, which the polite old gentlemen of the sixteenth century vacated for them; that short interregnum was commencing in which young ladies study attitudes and young gentlemen compliments, when a scream of surprise and a loud roar of laughter at one of the doors of entrance attracted the attention of all. There appeared to be a struggle for admission on one part and a dubious attempt at exclusion on the other. The lady of the house hurried to the spot; a card was secretly shown to her; and the cloud of doubt that hung over her brow at the first sight of the strange spectacle before her was exchanged in a moment for the warm sunshine of a kindly welcome. “Walk in, pray—walk in, Mr Bruin,” and a tall slim figure in a strange dress, the front of which was buttoned behind, with a mask on the back of his head, and long hair streaming all over his face so as completely to conceal his features, led into the room a great white bear. The conductor carried a huge high baton, surmounted by a garland of flowers; and the neck of Bruin was attached to the baton by a chain of the same materials. The Bear and his conductor soon became the centre of attraction.

“Now, Mr Brain, show the ladies how you can dance, sir;” and the shaggy hero stumped on his huge hind paws, shook his head and his tail, and dangled his fore flippers, to the admiration of all.

“Now for a waltz, Mr Bruin.”

“Bur wur hough,” growled the bear in guttural accents, very like German.

“Mr Bruin says he must have a partner,” drawled the conductor from the back of his head; and Bruin, clutching the garland of flowers from the top of the pole, stumped round the circle of fair by-standers, with the view apparently of suiting his fancy.

“I presume, Mr Bruin, you are dazzled with such a galaxy of bright star-like eyes,” said a wag.

“Bur wur hur ough,” growled Bruin.

“They remind him of the Aurora Borealis, in the North Seas,” was the interpretation given out from the back of the head.

“I suppose you are a great traveller, Bruin,” demanded another querist.

“Wur bur ough hur.”

“He accompanied Sir John Ross in his polar expeditions,” was the response.

By this time every one enjoyed the humour of the conceit; and when Bruin placed the garland of flowers on the brow of Anita Mendoza, the belle of the ball-room, it was not ungraciously received by the blushing beauty, and raptures of applause approved the selection.

“You show a very fair taste, Mr Bruin,” said the smiling landlady.

“We represent Beauty and the Beast of the nursery tale,” was the meaning of the bur wur of the response.

“Can I offer you any thing to eat or drink?” demanded the landlady.

“Mr Bruin will trouble you for an ice and a young sea unicorn,” replied the transposed conductor.

“I hope you won’t eat any of us, Mr Bruin,” said one of the ring.

“He would rather hug his partner than worry puppies,” was the ready rejoinder.

“When did you meet your great father-in-law, Dr Johnson, ursa major?” asked a would-be wit.

“Mr Bruin desires me to give you a pot of his grease to make your whiskers grow,” said the conductor, handing an elegant little bear’s grease pot out of the pouch that hung by Bruin’s side.

“Give me one! give me one!” shouted a number of ladies at the same time.

“For a hug a-piece,” shouted the bear in propria persona, forgetting his disguise.

“It is Tom Thorne! ’tis Mr Thorne!” shouted out a number of voices; and the bear was soon patted, caressed, and rifled of all the contents of his pouch by the fair triflers, no longer afraid of a hug from bear like Tom Thorne. Amid the fun and merriment created by this incident, a smart explosion was heard, followed by wreaths of aromatic smoke from pastiles ignited by the explosion caused by opening the elegant little grease pot given to the beardless youth. The proprietress of every one of Bruin’s little presents now became a heroine.

Great was the curiosity displayed to know the contents, and great was the glee and satisfaction as curious little devices or bonbons, wrapped up in love-verses, were extracted from the elegant little receptacles; and not till the music struck up, and Bruin led Anita Mendoza as his partner to the head of the country-dance, was the usual routine of the ball room resumed. All pretensions to etiquette had vanished; and good-humour, mirth, and jollity reigned triumphant throughout the evening. Many thought Bruin’s lot not only bearable but even enviable, judging from the easy and smiling reception with which his attentions were welcomed by courtly lady and stately dame. The supper that followed was as merry as the dance; and our hero, divesting himself of his bearish accoutrements, was as much the source of amusement in the supper-room by his jokes as in the ball-room by his tricks. Refreshing himself with copious draughts of champagne, he appeared to find no difficulty whatever in allaying hunger in the absence of young unicorns.

But the merriest night must have a close, and the clearest head will get dizzy under the influence of champagne; and Tom, finding himself unusually excited, and unwilling to detract from the éclat of his previous debout, slid unperceived out of the room.

CHAPTER III.

About the time our story commences, 1841, Rosas was beginning that system of terrorism, espionage, confiscation, and secret assassination, which has since made his government so notorious abroad and so dreaded at home. The Monte Videans were in his province of Santa Fé, in the north; and his political opponents, the Unitarians,[6] were supposed to be plotting in the capital: but Rosas not a man to stick to the common modes of war. If he could not inspire confidence among friends, he could at least inspire terror among his foes. A club, calling themselves the friends of public security, the sons of liberty, or some such name, but called by others “Masorcheros,” was established, and many enrolled themselves in this murderous body to save themselves. Rosas betook himself to the encampment he called the “sacros Ingares,” holy places; and thence issued secret orders to his myrmidons, to whose fury the town was completely abandoned.

There are few darker pages in the modern annals of South America than the record of the months of October 1841, and April 1842, in the devoted town of Buenos Ayres. Rosas, himself secure amid his savage soldiery, issued his secret death-roll. The chiefs of the Masorcheros, anxious to secure their own safety, rivalled each other in their zeal to capture; and the work of death itself was intrusted to hands whose trade was blood. Without trial[7] for offences, without warrants for apprehension, without even a knowledge of danger, houses were openly entered, men massacred, women flogged, and property destroyed; victims were decoyed out, by friends, from theatres and ball-rooms; men were followed in the streets, and stabbed at their own doors; and concerted signals were arranged to tell the police carts, that wandered about the streets at night, where to find out the victims. We shall not give any more harassing details here. There is no doubt that there were more massacres committed than ever were ordered by authority: the machinery of murder, once set agoing, revolved of itself, and knives were sometimes made to settle old quarrels and long accounts; Rosas, when he found things going on too far, easily put a stop to them by disposing of some of the Masorcheros themselves, among others, the chief, who was thus for ever prevented from telling any tales against his master.

Such unheard-of and unexpected scenes suddenly occurring in the midst of a happy, prosperous, and orderly city, were accompanied by strange anomalies. Foreigners could scarcely conceive the existence of a regular organised body of assassins. Natives, not yet schooled into distrust of their best friends, and perhaps not even conscious of guilt, could not, all at once, throw aside their habits of social conviviality. The churches were open for their usual services, the markets still crowded; there was no rioting in the streets, which the police paraded as usual. Ministers and consuls still displayed their flags, and balls and dinners were as numerously attended as ever; and those who had not seen or suffered were unwilling to believe the horrid reports that circulated in secret whispers; and many who knew, or had seen some of the fearful goings-on around them, probably deemed an affectation of ignorance or indifference their best policy. Such was the state of the city until the frequency of outrages forced the natives to keep their houses, take refuge under the roofs of foreigners, smuggle themselves on board merchant vessels or men-of-war, or sneak through the deserted streets like doomed men, shunning the contact of their fellows as if it had been a city of the plague.

It was at the beginning of this reign of terrorism, and the morning after the ball at Señora Tertulia’s, that our friend Tom Thorne awoke in a room by no means so snug, airy, or odorous as his own well-appointed bed-chamber in the Calle Derecho. Close beside, him, busily engaged in brushing his clothes with his hands, and alternately muttering maledictions against sanguinary Spaniards, and mumbling over odds and ends of old songs, was a strong-built ruddy-looking gentleman of about twenty-eight or thirty.

“Holla, Griffin!” cried Tom, “where the deuce is this, and how came you here?”

“Faith, Mr Thorne. I came here for much the same reason as you did; and, though not in a very creditable place, I can thank my stars I’m in good company any how.”

“But how came we here, Griffin?”

“Faith, Thorne, except your nerves are very steady—and in virtue of Señora Tertulia’s champagne, mine are not—I think it might be as well to defer that same story until you have shaved, or you may run the risk of having some of the cuts in your face which were intended for your throat last night. You see, sir, I left La Señora’s about the same time you did. They say the cool air is refreshing, but I never found it so after drinking champagne. Well, as I was stumbling along, I fell over a body, stretched across the pavement. ‘You have taken mighty convenient quarters for a cold night,’ thought I, ‘bad luck to you;’ and, intending to do him a good turn, as I might require it myself soon, I was trying to raise him up, when two men, who were standing in the shadow of a door-way, within a few feet of me, cried, ‘Hist, hist, passa adelante, amigo.’ ‘Come and help me with this poor devil here,’ said I. ‘Pass a-head, friend, if you do not wish the same accommodation,’ said they, throwing the light of a dark lantern suddenly, and only for a moment, on the object of my attention. I required no second bidding, Thorne. The pavement was soft and warm enough for a corpse! My first thought was for a pistol or a stick, but I had neither. I looked at the men,—there they stood as cool and careless as the door-posts, and me fixed and staring at them as if they had been Gog and Magog. ‘Passa adelante,’ growled out one of them, drawing a knife, at the same time. This brought me to my senses, and I passed on—and, mark me, Thorne, as sober as a judge.

“Well, sir, off I started, leaving Gog and Magog to keep their watch at the door-post, when who should I overtake but yourself, walking as proud as a prince and as bold as a lion. We did not walk far, till three men met us, one of whom threw the light of his dark-lantern full into your face, scanning it for a few seconds with more freedom than manners. Although dazzled and stupefied by the light, I saw you grasping your stick, and beginning to break out, when I interposed. ‘Gentlemen,’ said I, in my best Spanish—for it’s always best to be civil—‘Gentlemen,’ said I, ‘we are gentlemen who have lost our way. I’ll give you fifty dollars,[8] and thanks to boot, if you please to take us to the police office.’ You appeared inclined to show fight at the mention of the police office, but I passed it off as if you had more money than sense, and promised them fifty from you too; so after a slight struggle we secured you, and here we are, without any solutions of continuity, as surgeons say, except in our raiment.”

“But why did you not tell them to take us to my house?” said Thorne.

“Why, in the first place,” said Griffin, “I have not the honour of knowing where you live; and, by Castor and Pollux! I would not have left you with these ruffians for a world of coppers.”

“But then the disgrace of being lodged in the prison all night!”

“As for that,” said the imperturbable Griffin, “in my opinion the prisons will soon be fuller than the hotels in this city; and wherever you and I condescend to take up our quarters becomes de ipso facto respectable.”

“Well, well, Griffin, it’s no use telling you to keep it quiet, but don’t tell the ladies of it at any rate.”

“Don’t trouble yourself, Thorne,—I won’t be such a bear as that. But by the way, Gog and Magog, as I’m a sinner, were standing either at or close by Mendoza’s door: they could not be watching for any of them, could they?”

“Never fear,” said Thorne; “Mendoza is very thick with the Government; at all events he was not at the party, and the ladies are sure to be well convoyed.”

Just as they were talking, a messenger came from the Commissary of Police, to summon them to the presence of the Functionary, into whose dread presence they were immediately ushered.

The Commissary—a stout, healthy-looking man about middle age—sat smoking a cigarito, dressed in a red waistcoat, a braided jacket, and a slouching cap with a broad gilt band; from the button-hole of his jacket was the usual red ribbon with the head of Rosas upon it, and the favourite motto which he has caused to be inscribed on the national colours, and over every proclamation, “Vivan los Federales—mucran los salvages imundos ascherosas Unitarios.”[9] He was listening attentively to the information given by a very precise, trim, well-dressed looking youth, if we might call him so, for his dress betokened youth more than his face, which at that moment appeared particularly pale. The conversation, whatever was its nature, appeared to be taken notes of by a clerk, who was sitting near them, and it dropped the moment they entered; whether it was that Thorne, who was the first to enter, had still the sound of Mendoza buzzing in his ears, or that, in the excited state of his nervous system, he was thinking of the frightful scene committed at his doors, certain it is, that on his appearance, Don Felipe Le Brun started and appeared agitated for a moment, and our friend thought he heard the name of Mendoza.

“Sorry to meet you here,” exclaimed Don Felipe, suddenly recovering from his start. “Can I be of any service, sir? If so, command me.”

“I am sorry to meet you here, sir,” said Thorne in German, so as not to be understood by the Commissary, and viewing Le Brun with a keen and inquisitive look—“I am sorry to find that you have such private business in these quarters. Pray, señor,” he continued to the magistrate, who appeared on the point of interrupting him, “do not allow me or my friend to disturb your correspondence with Don Felipe Le Brun.”

“My business with you, Señor Thorne,” said the magistrate, “is confined to giving you the advice, which you may find of use, to keep more orderly hours, and thus you will save the police the trouble of providing you with night-quarters. I have no complaint against you—you may go.”

Most men living in a community where a magistrate is not only the instrument but the interpreter of the law, and where there is no free press or public opinion to expose the injustice or temper the insolence of power, would have gladly and immediately availed themselves of the magisterial permission to withdraw, with thanks for the leniency extended to them. But Mr Thorne was neither a selfish man nor a timid; and his was not the disposition humbly to accept that as a favour which he did not conceive could be withheld from him as a right. He knew that the most arrogant and imperative of the natives were only so to those who cringed to them as they themselves cringed to their superiors. As a proud and independent man, and a good citizen, he resolved to let the proud official know of the scene witnessed by his friend the preceding night; and he had hopes, by so doing, either to confirm or allay his suspicions of the nature of Bruin’s communication with the Juez de Paz. He therefore answered with a bold front—

“I thank the Senor Juez de Paz for his counsel, and I beg to inform him, that the officers of the police could scarcely be better, and have been much worse employed than in affording protection to those who demanded it on a night like the last.”

The official started up—his eye sparkling, his face suffused with passion. Before he could speak, Mr Thorne pursued—

“Sir, as a respectable citizen of this city, as an accredited consular agent to this government, I think it my duty to report to you, as one of its chief magistrates, that last night a man was found murdered on the pavement in front of Luis Mendoza’s house, and two men standing close beside him; and these men, Signor Juez de Paz, were dressed the same as those who brought us here last night. Probably, Signor Le Brun, this may be the same information you were conveying to his honour.”

Signor Le Brun with great energy protested that it was the first he had heard of the affair.

By this time the juez de paz had recovered his command of temper. He was, in fact, somewhat cowed by the bold and manly bearing of Thorne, who, as an Englishman, and in a kind of official capacity, was, in some respects, beyond his jurisdiction. Moreover, he was aware that Thorne had, in one instance, for some petty grievance, demanded and obtained redress from the “Illustrious Restorer of Laws” in person; and thus, though he felt indignant at being bearded in his own hall—I had almost said hell; he rather considered Thorne as a person whose officious information was to be got rid of than as a culprit to be bullied. He therefore contented himself by saying, “Don Thomas, this is not an affair that comes under my cognisance, or yours; and let me assure you, the less you trouble yourself with the affairs of others the better.”

“But, sir, with respect to the man on the pavement,” commenced Griffin.

“Officers, take the fool away!” roared the magistrate, with his hand on the bell.

But the worthy Radamanthus and his myrmidons were saved the trouble; for Tom Thorne, with a bow to the exasperated official, and a kind of dubious glance at Le Brun, hurried Griffin out of the Sala of Justice without any extraneous assistance.

“By the powers of Moll Kelly and the bean-stalk of Jack the Giant-Killer!” said Griffin, when once they were out of sight and hearing, “but that justice cares no more about the finding of dead men in the street than I would care when I am hungry for a chop from the Brother of the Sun and Moon interdicting pork.”

“Why, of course, he knew all about it before,” said Thorne.

“Then, I should think, you might as well have kept the information to yourself.”

“No,” said Tom; “I thought there could be no harm in letting them see that there might be some suspicions of who did it, if any thing out of the way did happen to old Mendoza.”

“If you have a twinkling of suspicion that that square-shaved sinner in the corner is in your way at all, I’ll let day-light shine through him in the presence of his friends before you call say hair-trigger.”

“Griffin, dine with me to-day, will you, and we will have a scamper into the Camp after.”

“I shall be delighted,” said Griffin.

“Hasta luego, then—at three precisely,” and each took a different route.

“He is a jolly, frank fellow that,” said Thorne to himself. “I wonder what he is!”

“That’s the very man I wanted,” said Griffin. “Faith, I may know every body I care about now, and dine every day of the week for nothing.”

Griffin was one of those genteel adventurers that you find in every large community hanging on to the outskirts of society, who come from nobody knows where, and live nobody knows how; who have no profession except that of an idler, and no occupation except paying off their debts with promises; they never lose a bet; they often, very often, lose one game of billiards or ecarte, but never a rub; they never can remember to carry small change in their pockets; and they never do forget an invitation to dinner. They probably answer some good purpose in society—perhaps, that of teaching flats the sweet lessons of experience, and preparing them for the wiles and stratagems of the world: be this as it may, they fulfil, at least, one maxim of the word of Wisdom, for they neither toil nor spin; and they steadfastly practise the principle, that sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.

CHAPTER IV.

A scamper into the Camp of Buenos Ayres is one of the greatest treats that the citizens of that town can enjoy. True, there is nothing to interest you in the scenery, nothing to admire in the goodness of the roads, and nothing to guide you in your journey but trees; still there is an indefinable charm in galloping with a good horse and a lively companion over the boundless green plain. With “the blue above” and “the green below” you rove free and unconfined—the fresh balmy air revivifying the blood which the rapid and easy motion sends thrilling through the whole frame. You feel etherialized. Without bounds to your progress or your prospects, away you go. No trace of art here to mar the simplicity of nature. The Arabs never were and never will be slaves, and now you are the Arabs of the plains—hurrah! hurrah!

Tom Thorne and Richard Griffin appeared to consider themselves as Arabs of the plain, calculating from the rapidity with which they were scampering over the ground, clearing their way through herds of oxen, sheep, and horses, with long whips and loud huzzas.

“Where, in the name of Nimrod, are we tearing to, Thorne?” said Griffin after a pause. “Sure we are out-stripping the wind; for a moment ago it was in our face, and now it is on our back.”

“We are going to Mendoza’s country-house,” said Thorne, “to have some bantering with the ladies after our canter, and to let that awkward scrape of last night blow over, and be laughed at before I go back.—You have never been in the Camp before?” inquired Thorne.

“Never.”

“Then you have a great pleasure before you. A few days in the Camp refreshes one like a month’s sea-bathing. The air is so fresh, and every thing wears such a simple holiday aspect that it almost makes you forget that you are a sinner, and throw off bad habits, rise with the lark, drink milk, marry a wife, and become a patriarch.”

“Well done, Thorne! and so it may yet.”

“Then, you can ride and dance without getting weary, drink without getting seedy, and eat innumerable beef-steaks for breakfast without mustard; nay, you can even relish water without brandy, and sleep without cigars.”

“Love and beef, Thorne, versus cigars and brandy. You alternate between town and country till you resemble a rich rowley-powley pudding, solids and sweets, revolving round and round each other, making a most delicious tout-en-semble.”

While our friends thus talk and canter to the place of their destination, let us take the liberty of introducing ourselves.

The house of Louis Mendoza was situated on a rising ground on the banks of the “River,” of which it commanded a beautiful prospect. There was a large garden attached to it, adorned with all the flowers which the country produced, most of them at that season in the full bloom and vigour of spring. Fruit-trees, both of the northern and southern hemisphere, from the tropic and temperate zones, diffused sweet perfumes from their blossoms; and vines, peaches, and orange trees were already decked with the budding promises of a rich harvest. Summer-houses were there, woven into shape with creepers and ever-greens. Birds of the tropics, in large aviaries, nearly invisible from being formed of green-painted wire, lent the splendour of their plumage to enrich a scene which the songsters of the air delighted to enliven with their music.

Beware of that garden, Tom Thorne, in the evenings when your heart is soft. Ride not with the ladies over that velvet lawn when the flush of the morning’s sun is reflected from their lovely faces, Tom Thorne. You are lost to the bachelor world for ever, Tom, if you be seduced to wander through these lovely woods with the ringlets of Anita Mendoza playing round your manly shoulder; and as for the summer-houses, if ever you enter them let it be with a book or a cigar only; mind that, Tom, mind that. Anita Mendoza might be sixteen or seventeen, Mariquita eighteen or nineteen; both were beautiful, and possessed of all the graces and accomplishments of the country. The contour of the features, of Mariquita might be more regularly beautiful than that of Anita. She was more of a blonde, too; her eye was beautiful and bright, her figure graceful and elegant, but still it would strike you that you had seen others as fair and graceful. She was a beauty; of that there was no doubt, but a beauty too much resembling the style of her sister, to bear a favourable contrast with her, and yet not sufficiently distinct to establish a separate and independent claim. But how shall we describe Anita Mendoza? She was the mistress of grace and elegance, for they followed her every step and attended her every movement; you were a slave at her mercy the moment you saw that dark black liquid eye, whether it beamed in kindness, flashed in raillery, melted in sympathy, or sparkled with delight from under its long dark dangerous eyelashes. To be in the presence of Anita Mendoza was to be in an enchanted circle. When that eye was upon you, your own identity was lost; your soul was lit up by the beams that flashed from that magic eye, and rays of love or envy, mirth or folly, were reflected back to the source from which they sprang. Let none despise the theory of animal magnetism; beside Anita Mendoza, your heart throbbed, your pulse played, and your soul thought in unison with hers. Such were your feelings when under the influence of the syren, but only then; for well you knew that that eye flashed or melted, and that smile played and that lip pouted, as brightly and pertly, for others, one and all, as for your own dear envious self. Beside her, she was your queen and empress; away, she was a little minx, a sweet little flirt. To sum up, in dancing she was a fairy, in singing a cherub, and far or near an enchanting, bewitching creature.

Luis Mendoza, the father of these ladies, was a rare old Spaniard. He had travelled a good deal in Europe, especially in England, where he had acquired not only some knowledge of the language but also a predilection for its convivial habits; and brandy and water had more charms for him in a cool evening, than matte or eau sucrée. He had early lost his helpmate, and, freed from this check on his convivial habits, it required little encouragement on his part to keep his house constantly full of bon vivants to assist him at the duties of the table, and gallants to amuse his daughters in the sala; and more of his gallants and bon vivants were to be found among the Anglo-Saxons than among the natives. Thus were Mariquita and Anita Mendoza accustomed from their earliest years to the language of adulation; and from having the duties of a household thus early thrust upon each, there was less of maidenly reserve, a little more of maidenly coquetry, with a dash more of masculine character, than in other circumstances would have been becoming at such tender years.

These ladies were seated alone in an elegantly fitted up sala, the elder busy with her needle at some fancy work, and the other idly and listlessly hurrying her soft white little dimpled fingers over the keys of a rich-toned piano—to a well-known air in South America, the words of which imply that the singer never, never, never will get married—

“No no no no quiero,
No quiero casarme
Es mejor, es mejor,
Ser soltéra
Siempre paseandera
Del mundo
Del mundo gozar.
Amantes amantes
Constantes se encuentran
Muy pocos al dia
Con cara tan fresca
Como una violéta
Y con ojos tan
Brillantes a mi gusto.

“Well, Mariquita,” said the young lady, throwing aside the music, “I admire the patience you can bestow upon that endless sampler, when you must feel as tired and exhausted as I am.”

“Of course, Anita, after that ball, sampler work is rather tame and tedious; but what shall we do?”

“I am afraid we shall have nobody out here to-day,” said Anita, with a kind of suppressed yawn.

“I see how it is, Anita; you are wearying already for even a languid compliment to those flashing eyes of yours.”

“Depend upon it, Mariquita, that my eyes could stand no comparison to your lips with any man of taste.”

“How did you relish Bruin’s hugs last night?” retorted the elder.

“Oh, the dear Bruin! I could not forbear hugging him now in return, were he here to enliven us. And gracias a Dios, here he is!”

Scarcely were the words uttered, when the portly person and beaming face of Tom Thorne stood before them.

“Welcome, welcome! Mr Thorne,” said Mariquita. “Anita has just been stating that Mr Bruin’s attentions last night were so very pressing that she considers herself indebted to him a hug in return.”

“Miss Anita shall find Mr Bruin a very pressing creditor for the liquidation of that debt,” said our hero, advancing towards her; and in the full playfulness of their character, both girls seized the gratified bachelor by the hands as if he had been an overgrown playmate. At this moment Mr Griffin presented himself, and the ladies hastily, but without agitation, assumed the attitude of polite and attentive hostesses.

“Permit me, ladies,” said Thorne, “to introduce my friend Mr Griffin, who I have no doubt regrets not being yet entitled to the warm and frank reception extended to old friends in the Camp of Buenos Ayres.”

“We are happy to see you in the Camp, Mr Griffin,” replied the elder sister with great courtesy. “We have been longing for some company all day, and consider ourselves very fortunate in being favoured with a visit from Mr Thorne, and any friend of his.”

“I consider myself fortunate in being introduced to you by Mr Thorne at a time when our company promises to be agreeable to you.”

“I hope you are accustomed to our long, and rather fatiguing rides in the Camp.”

“I assure you, I am amply repaid already, miss, for the fatigue we have undergone, by the beauty and richness of every thing I see near and around me,” said Griffin giving a kind of circuitous bow.

“As you are accustomed to the beauty and freshness of the scenery,” said Mariquita with an arch smile, “may I offer you a glass of your favourite champagne, Mr Thorne?”

“You are very kind, Señorita, to be so attentive to my favourite tastes. A glass of champagne will be very refreshing after the ride.”

“Or shall it be your favourite brandy and water?” edged in the little wicked Anita, with a twinkle in the eye which took away every vestige of satire that the question might otherwise have implied when addressed to our hero.

“The brandy and water will be fully as good, Miss Anita,” replied Tom, “if you would brisk it up with a few sparkles from these eyes of yours.”

“A truce to such bubbles of fancy,” said Mariquita. “Which shall it be, gentlemen?”

“Mr Thorne or I could be happy with either,” said Griffin; “but pray let it be champagne, and then we may hope that you will partake.”

“Bravo, bravo, Griffin! champagne be it.”

“Pray, ladies, is not the ‘Patron’ here?”

“Oh yes!” replied Anita, “but he is not likely to be back till late; he is taking a ride over the chacra with Señor Le Brun.”