GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

Vol. XL. February, 1852. No. 2.

Contents

[Transcriber’s Notes] can be found at the end of this eBook.

J. Hayter W.H. Mote

LIFE AT THE SEA-SIDE.

GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

Vol. XL. PHILADELPHIA, FEBRUARY, 1852. No. 2.

PHILADELPHIA NAVY-YARD.

Our engraving presents a view of the Navy-Yard, taken from a point of view below the city of Philadelphia. From this yard have come some of the best sailing and steam-vessels that have ever been built for Uncle Sam. The largest vessel that ever floated upon our waters, “The Pennsylvania,” was built here. She is useless, and is most scandalously given over—we believe, as a sort of “receiving ship,” and is rotting ingloriously. She should have been sent to the “World’s Fair” by Congress, filled with American products, and the Arts of Peace. But Congress was busy—talking about the “dissolution of the Union”—Pshaw!—and had no time for national business.

We have no inclination to talk much about Navy-yards since we read the following. We give you the picture, reader—but give us a cheaper postage upon Newspapers and Books, and fewer Soldiers and Naval Commanders.

“Victor Hugo estimates the annual cost of maintaining the standing armies of Europe at five hundred millions of dollars. This outlay would, in a very few years, pay off every national debt of Europe. In a few years more it would, if wisely expended, so equalize the population of the globe, by a great system of emigration, that every man might have a fair opportunity to earn a competence by his labor. Mr. Upham, in his ‘Manual of Peace,’ thus classifies the causes of the wars of Europe since the age of Constantine the Great—that is, since the Christian religion became the prevailing one: wars of ambition, forty-four; of plunder, twenty-two; of retaliation, twenty-four; of honor, eight; of disputed territory, six; of disputed titles to crowns, forty-one; of alliances, thirty; of jealousy, twenty-three; of commerce, five; civil wars, fifty-five; of religion, twenty-eight: total, two hundred and eighty-six. The national debt of England, caused by wars alone, is equal to about one-ninth of the whole property of the United Kingdom. The cost of maintaining the war establishments of Europe and the United States is fifty-four per cent. of the whole revenue of the nations. Of the revenue of the Austrian government, thirty-three per cent. is expended in maintaining the army and navy; France, thirty-eight per cent.; Russia, forty-four per cent.; Great Britain, seventy-four per cent.; the United States, eighty per cent.” Uncle Sam should take a fresh look at his figures.

GRANNY AND I.

———

BY ELIZA SPROAT.

———

Days agone, days agone!

When my life was all at dawn,

Ye are sweet to muse upon

’Mid the world’s sad dinning.

I an aproned urchin trim,

And, within the cottage dim,

Crooning quaint an ancient hymn,

Granny at her spinning.

Spinning at her cottage-door,

Where upon the sanded floor,

Through the leaves, the light ran o’er,

All the summer weather.

Granny’s cheek was old and lean;

Mine was round and hard, I ween;

Very quaint it must have been

To see them close together.

Very old was granny’s hair,

Short and white, and none to spare;

Very old the lips so dear

That dropped my nightly blessing;

Very old the shrunken eyes,

Through her specs of goggle size,

Looking down their kind replies

On my rude caressing.

I could spell my primer o’er;

Granny knew but little more—

Bible readings all her lore,

Spinning all her glory.

Yet—how was it? now and then,

Something past the thoughts of men

Opened heaven to my ken

Through her teachings hoary.

Tones that age could ne’er destroy,

Struck her little wondering boy

With a majesty of joy;

And at times has striven

Something grand within her eyes,

As from out the cloud-heaped skies

Some strong angel vainly tries

To call to us from heaven.

Days agone! days agone!

When the world was all at dawn,

And the heaven round it drawn,

Smiled so near above us;

Then the sun shone real gold,

Then the flowers true stories told,

Then the stars were angels bold

Reaching down to love us.

Then a marvel, now a flower,

Seen in any common bower,

Fed with common earth and shower,

Common sunlight under.

Then an angel, now a star,

Small and bleak and very far;

Nothing left for folly’s mar,

Naught for happy wonder.

I have learned to smile at youth;

I have learned to question truth;

I can hear my brother’s truth

With a sage misgiving.

I have grown too wise to see

False delights in things that be;

Far too wise for childhood’s glee—

Nay—is learning living?

Days agone, days agone!

Bitter-sweet to muse upon,

Counting up the lost and won

In the coals at even.

Never more—never more!

Comes the witless bliss of yore;

Baby faith and baby lore—

God! is knowledge heaven?

SONNET. TO JULIA,

ON HER OWN EYES, AND HER SISTER LESBIA’S.

———

BY G. McC. M.

———

Night’s star-gemmed coronal is not more bright

Than are those flashing, joy-lit eyes of thine;

Me thinks I should not need the day-orb’s light,

When on my path such lovely planets shine.

Like veins of gold that sparkle in the mine,

Their glittering radiance dazzles the beholder;

And yet to me thy brilliant eyes seem colder

Than Arctic ice or snows. Far more benign

And beauteous are the windows of her soul

Whom I have loved—the long desired goal

Of my most cherished hopes. The paly moon

Sheds not a softer light on copse and stream

Than on my heart her lucid orbs. The moon

Of Summer is not warmer than her blue eye’s beam.

FLOWERS AND LIFE.

———

BY MARY HOWITT.

———

The autumn sun is shining,

Gray mists are on the hill;

A russet tint is on the leaves,

But flowers are blowing still!

Still bright, in wood and meadow;

On moorlands dry and brown;

By little streams; by rivers broad;

On every breezy down.

The little flowers are smiling,

With chilly dew-drops wet,

Are saying with a spirit-voice—

“We have not vanished yet!

“No, though the spring be over;

Though summer’s strength be gone;

Though autumn’s wealth be garnered,

And winter cometh on;

“Still we have not departed.

We linger to the last.

And even on early winter’s brow

A cheerful ray will cast!”

Go forth, then, youths and maidens,

Be joyful whilst ye may;

Go forth, then, child and mother,

And toiling men grown gray.

Go forth, though ye be humble,

And wan with toil and care;

There are no fields so barren

But some sweet flower is there!

Flowers spring up by the highway

Which busy feet have trod;

They rise up in the dreariest wood;

They gem the dullest sod.

They need no learned gardeners

To nurture them with care;

They only need the dews of earth,

The sunshine and the air.

And for earth’s lowly children;

For loving hearts and good,

They spring up all around us,

They will not be subdued.

Thank God! when forth from Eden

The weeping pair was driven,

That unto earth, though cursed with thorns,

The little flowers were given!

That Eve, when looking downward,

To face her God afraid,

Beheld the scented violet,

The primrose in the shade!

Thank God, that with the thistle

That sprang up in his toil,

The weary worker, Adam,

Saw roses gem the soil!

And still for anxious workers;

For hearts with anguish full,

Life, even on its dreariest paths,

Has flowers for them to cull!

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF DANDYISM.

———

BY THOMPSON WESTCOTT.

———

Like auriferous deposits in common quartz, the readers of Graham, the precious ore amidst duller literary encompassment, brighten the continent from Canada even to California. A few rich veins are to be found in large cities, but the valuable aggregate is scattered through the more rural portion of the country, where the free air whistles by, uncontaminated by the smoke of thousands of chimneys, and where night reigns in sable supremacy, and is not turned into decrepit day by blazing gas and brilliant illuminations. The great mass of Grahamites are, therefore, but slightly versed in the etiquette of towns, and know little of city follies and city pride.

In farm-houses midst pleasant valleys, in log-cabins which dot clearings midst western prairies, even in the unsubstantial tents of seekers in El Dorado, they turn to its pages for amusement, moral cultivation and instruction. These demands have been often attended to, though perhaps a trifle too gravely. The time has at length come, when the growing public taste bids us prepare to have a little fun. Human folly is the best and most natural subject for human ridicule. To laugh with the manes of the Jolly old Grecian philosopher, is more agreeable than to snivel with the lugubrious ghost of his weeping rival. We therefore must needs have a hearty guffaw together, and as the most appropriate subject for mirth, suppose we select that incarnation of vapid creation, but that idol of self-esteem—a City Dandy.

The assertion made by the ancient sage Socrates, that “a dandy is like a jackass, because he wears his Sunday-coat every day,” would scarcely fit a modern exquisite, whose diurnal attire varies with each revolution of the sun. The apothegm of Plato, that “a monkey owes his distinction to his tail and a fop to his tailor,” is not thoroughly apt, because the human ape owes something (generally a considerable sum) to his hatter and boot-maker. The well-known assertion of Virgil, “in squirtibus nihil sed aquæ lactissimus”—in squirts you will find nothing but milk and water—has about it the usual license taken by poets, inasmuch as if we examine our squirts, they will be pronounced empty. Bacon’s celebrated maxim in his Novum Organum, that “what are considered petty matters are often of importance, but there is no importance in a petit maître,” will probably be acquiesced in by common people, though those implicated by the serious pun may think it uncommonly impudent. Newton’s position taken in the Principia, that “in apples and men there is much specific gravity, but mushrooms and dandies are of trifling lightness,” may be disputed by the latter, who with some show might liken their weight to that of “some pumpkins.” Euclid’s celebrated rule, “a plane superficies is every where flat, e.g. a dandy who is plainly superficial is a flat every where,” has long been a fixture in geometrical lore, which may be doubted, though dangerous to dissent from. We, therefore, seek in vain in the lessons of ancient science and wisdom for competent authority to settle the question—“What is a dandy?” Hamlet, who being the “glass of fashion and the mould of form,” was of course a fop, did on one occasion confess that himself and some other leaders of the ton at that time, yclept Horatio and Marcellus, were “fools of nature,” and horribly shook their dispositions “with thoughts beyond the reaches of their souls.” His candid admission that exquisites are natural fools—“rather weak in the upper story,” and unable to stand the overpowering weight of grave thought—has long been admired as a fine picture of the mental condition of the dandies when something was “rotten in the state of Denmark.” But even this idea of the immortal bard will scarcely assimilate to a proper notion of our modern bucks, because the foppery natural to a Hamlet would not be similar to that of a large City.

We therefore rummage the books with little success in search for authorities upon this subject. We are constrained to a belief that Linnæus has not classified the genera or Buffon discriminated the species. If exquisites, by reason of their sappiness, are vegetable, the Swedish naturalist has passed over the variety—if they are animals, the Frenchman has not given them a proper place among the mammalia. The history, habits and peculiarities of these mandrakes, these “forked radishes,” these nondescripts, who afflict the south side of Chestnut street, Philadelphia, or the west side of Broadway, New York, has not yet been written, but the subject has latterly assumed an importance which can be no longer disregarded. If the comic dissector, with scalpel in hand, were to desire the fop for a subject, he would have to wait until he was defunct, but the dandy never dies; he is a living example of the verity of the adage, true whenever made—“the fools are not all dead yet”—and it is therefore impossible to imagine the time when there will not be a dandy. We cannot consequently dissect. We may apply the stethoscope to the chest of the exquisite; we may feel his weak pulse, or examine his silly tongue. So may we make our diagnosis, and though we cannot “minister to a mind diseased,” we may, at least, “hold the mirror up to nature,” for the benefit of all gazers. Therefore, in pursuance of the task, come we to our first great inquiry:

HOW ARE DANDIES MADE?

This is a grave question, for fops are like veal pies—in the opinion of the waggish Weller—the crust may be rather respectable, but the making up of the interior is “werry duberous.” Exquisites at this present writing, are a conglomeration of lanky legs, hairy heads and creamy countenances. Such are their natural peculiarities. But it is evident that in considering this subject, the great topic of inquiry is, What is a dandy sartorially? Here description will proclaim him to be a being stuck into tight trowsers, ditto coat and vest, ditto boots, not so much ditto overcoat, and crowned with a cylindrical structure of felt, which is called a hat. Mentally the subject of dandyism offers little field for remark, because the weakness which distinguishes the unfortunate class of our fellow citizens now under consideration, is caused by natural imbecility and want of common sense.

It is a topic of inquiry worthy of the most acute philosophical research whether buckishness is a natural or acquired folly. Some who have argued upon the matter have taken the ground, that all such vanities are the consequence of the great fall, and that as the expulsion from Eden was followed by the assumption of apparel, good Mother Eve was tempted and overcome by the fascinations of dress. For support of this view of the subject it may be urged, that with the fall came dress, with dress came fashion, and with fashion came the Dandy. Others suggest that such an argument as this, going back beyond the flood, is far-fetched, and they profess to be able to assign a much better cause for dandyism. According to these philosophers every fop has “a soft place in his head,” which has been very beautifully described by the poet as

“The greenest spot

In Memory’s waste.”

They affirm that this weak portion of a skull otherwise thick, is the chosen place of the “organ of dandyism,” and controls the habits of its possessors. If this were so, we might pardon a failing which cannot be remedied, but, with Combe in our hands, we in vain run over the head to find this organ, which is certainly not a hand-organ. None of the phrenological authorities—it is a striking fact—give the locality of this bump.

No; “the milk of human kindness” which was “poured into Gall,” forbade him from making known the situation of the protuberance, and Fowler unfairly dodges the question.

Nothing is to be made out of this inquiry, and after considering the matter with great gravity, we are driven to the conclusion that Dandyism is like a bad cold, caught nobody knows how, or when, or where, or why. Some may be afflicted because they have the pores of vanity open—others who sit in the draught of affectation, may suddenly be seized by a fashionable influenza—going suddenly from the warm room of common sense into the cold air of ostentation, may give the “grippe” to some—but with many it is chronic, having been acquired in childhood when their dear mammas tricked them out in fantastic velvets and fine caps, with feathers, making them juvenile dandies among the little boys of their neighborhood.

But all this may be tiresome to the reader who desires to plunge at once in the middle of the subject. We must really get on with this important theme, and responding categorically to the inquiry, “how dandies are made?” respond: by eight honest mechanics, to wit, the tailor, hatter, boot-maker, linen-draper, haberdasher, glover, hosier and jeweler. Take away the articles fabricated by these men, what is he but a helpless mortal, a mere man and terribly unfashionable? We might once have added to the list of dandy manufacturers the barber—but our modern exquisites have so little to do with that artist that the claims of Figaro to the distinction would be strongly controverted.

An inspection of a buck in this month of February, anno domini eighteen hundred and fifty-two, will convey to the mind of the spectator ideas of a pair of very thin legs, surmounted by a very short specimen of an overcoat, with monstrous buttons and wide sleeves—a cravat with a bow about six inches wide and three inches broad, with fringes at the ends—a standing shirt collar, running up to a very sharp point—something like a face, covered with hair over what, in Christians, are the chin, cheek and upper-lip—and a hat thereon. Simile fails in ability to convey any adequate notion of this figure. Two pipes, bowl downward and stems upward, might give an idea of the lower extremity of the dandy. We will carry out the nicotian metaphor by placing on the upper portions of the stems a paper of “Mrs. Miller’s best”—the short-cut, oozing from the top of the torn paper, will do very well for the hair on the face—a tobacco-box placed on the whole, will give some idea of a figure, which, if greatly magnified, would in the outline much resemble a modern fop.

The clothing of an exquisite is a work of time and science. We can imagine how much of the labor is done. But there are two subjects, in the making of a fop, that have long been considered puzzles. One of these questions is—how does he manage to tie those huge bows in his cravat, which stand out just below his chin, giving him thereabout the appearance of a cherubim, all head and wings? What a work of fixing must there be before he gets the knot exactly right! What gazing into the mirror—what pulling of ends—what twisting of folds—what tying and untying! Every thing must be just so. There must be no wrinkles—all must be smooth and “ship-shape,” or the dandy so remiss upon this subject would be avoided forever by his associates. It has been asserted that a smart exquisite is able to tie his cravat in half an hour, but the general average of time is believed to be an hour and a half. There is a melancholy instance on record, of a fop who once took three hours to fix the bow of his cravat. The sad occurrence took place on what should have been his wedding-day. He commenced the work at seven o’clock in the morning and had “a nice knot” at ten. Unfortunately, the hour of the wedding was fixed at nine. The anxious intended wailed impatiently at the altar for her expected lord, for half an hour, and then concluding that he meant to insult her, went away in a huff, so that the unfortunate dandy, by being too particular as to tying a nice knot, lost the opportunity of fastening a nicer knot, and worse still, a bride “worth a hundred thousand.”

This inquiry into the time occupied at the cravat, though very interesting, must yield in importance to another, to wit:—How do dandies get into their boots?

In former years this puzzling topic could not have arisen. Loose trowsers gave plenty of room to boots which were wide in the legs. There was no difficulty in getting heels into them, and though there might have been some screwing and stamping, it was certain that eventually the articles would be drawn on the feet. Then, too, the tightness was only in the foot part of the boot. It required considerable muscular exertion to coax the five toes into the close prison designed for them, but by pulling one moment, working the foot the next, and then screwing the face into ugly contortions, considerable progress was usually effected. The power of the human countenance over upper leather is one of those extraordinary psychological facts which dabblers in animal magnetism have failed in accounting for satisfactorily. Yet that it does exist, is vouched for by all experience. Tight boots have always been susceptible to this influence. History herself cannot point to an instance where a new leathern foot-envelope was drawn on the walker with a countenance “calm as a summer’s morning.” It is notorious that no boot of character ever yielded until it saw, from the knitting of the eyebrows, the puckering of lips, and the distortion of muscles, that the putter-on was in absolute earnest. And how stubbornly the leather yields when it comes under the influence—how it relaxes with stiff dissatisfaction, and at last creeps over the part assigned, with an air of unwrinkled disgust. The philosophy of this subject is strange, and should be investigated by some modern Mesmer of sole and upper leather.

But really this is a digression, which the importance of the correlative subject has drawn us into. “Let us return to our—mutton.” (We might have said our veal, were it not that the idea of dandies’ legs and calves are incongruous and unnatural.) It is an inflexible rule in the making up of an exquisite, that there shall be no calves to his legs. The mere osteological peculiarities of that part of the frame are to be preserved, and the epidermis must clasp the attenuated limb, without embracing a superfluity of muscle similar to that which we see in the lower limbs of the statues of Hercules. Hence it follows that the heel of a true dandy is expected to protrude an inch at least beyond what, under happier circumstances, would be the calf of his leg. There is really no difference between the formation of the lower pedalities of a pure dandy, and those of a pure Ethiopian. In this anatomical fact lies the great difficulty in the way of modern “squirts.” The heel unfortunately requires a greater opening at the top of the boot than can be filled up by the upper part of the leg when the article is upon the foot. This is a very distressing difficulty. The pantaloons are expected to hug the leg as tightly as possible, so that the thinness of the “trotters” may be revealed in all their natural beauty. But an obstacle exists in the shape of an inch or two of superfluous leather at the top of the boot, which will have a tendency to give the limb an appearance of greater circumference than nature or fashion permits. This trouble is really of disgusting importance. How do the dandies manage, then, to produce those thin legs, the slightness of which is so strikingly graceful? The world has long wondered over this subject, and it was not until lately that a true philosopher revealed the mystery. He asserts that after fops get into boots and unmentionables, they turn up the latter until they get a fair purchase on the leather inconveniencies. Then, with broad bandages they swathe their legs and the upper part of their boots quite carefully, until the superfluous leather is bound tightly down, and there is a comparatively smooth surface all the way down the limb. After having got his trowsers pulled down, the fop is ready for a promenade upon Chestnut street, or a conquest in a drawing-room. In the former exercise he gets along as well as can be expected, being very careful in his mincing steps lest an unlucky rip should damage the integrity of his apparel. In the latter situation he is often put to great inconvenience. When sitting down, the unwhisperables are, by the disposition of his body, drawn a considerable distance above the ankle. To get them down again is a matter which no thorough dandy can accomplish. If he were to bend to do it, the consequence would be disastrous. He therefore takes his leave of the ladies with pantaloons half-way up to the knee, and, stopping in the entry, exclaims—“Wait-ah! wait-ah! hea-ah, fell-ah, assist me! Come hea-ah and pull down my pants! Really, ah, they-ah have risen until they are quite uncomfortable.”

Thus much for the present division of our task, from which we draw the deduction that every exquisite has his troubles like plainer people. One day he may be in agonies because his cravat is not decently tied. On another he may be in torture because, notwithstanding all his efforts, his legs seem thick. These and other ills are occasional misfortunes. It is not considered by him that although these griefs come once in a while, he is at all times in manners a puppy, and in mental strength only a ninny.

A FILIAL TRIBUTE.

———

BY CORNELIA B. BROWNE.

———

We thank thee, Father, for thy kindly teaching;

It makes our “desert blossom as the rose,”

When a fond parent, exile over-reaching,

His arm of counsel round as gently throws.

Daily we’ll ponder, as a sacred pleasure,

These calm outpourings of a tender love:

Nightly our prayer shall be, this precious treasure

So to receive, as to be thine above.

Thou heedest, then, that three swift lustres, wending

O’er Time’s winged course, have made me soberer now;

That maidenhood with infancy is blending,

To cast a shade of thought upon my brow?

As the meek virgin merges in the woman,

Aid me to drink of waters more divine;

To purify the needful, earnest, human,

And lay soul-offerings on a holy shrine.

Upon this day, that sealed her blissful union,

Our mother bids us offer thanks to thee:

Permitted foretaste of that high communion,

Where all earth’s exiles are supremely free.

THE DEATH OF THE STAG.

THE DEATH OF THE STAG;

OR THE TALBOTS IN TEVIOTDALE.

———

BY FRANK FORESTER.

———

[SEE ENGRAVING.]

The stag at eve had drunk his fill,

Where danced the moon on Monan’s rill,

And deep his midnight lair had made

In lone Glenartney’s hazel shade;

But when the sun his beacon red

Had kindled on Benvoirlich’s head,

The blood-hound’s deep resounding bay

Came swelling up the rocky way.

Lady of the Lake.

“Tayho! Tayho!”[^[1]]

And straightway to the cry responded the long-drawn, mellow notes of the huge French-horns which were in those days used by every yeoman pricker, as the peculiar and time-honored instrument of the stag-hunt, the mots of which were as familiar to every hunter’s ear, as so many spoken words of his vernacular.

It was the gray dawn of a lovely summer morning in the latter part of July, and although the moor-cocks were crowing sharp and shrill from every rocky knoll or purple eminence of the wild moors, now waving far and wide with the redolent luxuriance of their amethyst garniture, for the heather was in its full flush of bloom, although the thrush and black-bird were caroling in emulous joy, at the very top of their voices, from every brake and thicket which feathered the wild banks of the hill-burns, the sun had not lifted a portion of his disc above the huge, round-topped fells which formed the horizon to the north and westward of my scene. That scene was the slope of a long hill—

“A gentle hill,

Green and of mild declivity—the last,

As ’twere the cape of a long ridge of such,

Save that there was no sea to lave its base

But a most living landscape and the wave

Of woods and corn-fields, and the abodes of men

Scattered at intervals, and wreathing smoke

Arising from such rustic roofs.”

The hills above and somewhat farther off to the southward and eastward, are clothed and crowned with oak woods of magnificence and size so unusual, and kept with such marked evidences of care and culture that no one could doubt, even if it were not proved by the gray turrets of an old baronial manor and the spire of a tall clock-house shooting up high over the tops of the forest giants, that they were the appendages and ornaments of some one of those ancient homes of England, which, full of the elegancies and graces of the present, remind us so pleasantly of the ruder, though not less homely, hospitalities of the past.

The immediate summit of the slope I have mentioned is bare, yet conspicuous for a single tree, the only one of its kind existing for many miles in that district—a single white pine, tall enough for the mast of some huge admiral, and as such visible, it is said, from points in the four northern provinces of England, and the two southernmost of Scotland—whence it is known far and wide, in many a border lay and legend, as the one-tree hill on Reedswood.[^[2]] Below the bare brow of this inland promontory, for such indeed it is, which is covered with beautiful, short, mossy grass, as firm and soft as the greensward of a modern race-course, and used as one vast pasture of two hundred acres, lies a vast tract of coppice, principally of oak and birch, but interspersed with expanses of waving heather, where the soil is too shallow to support a larger growth, and dotted here and there with bold, gray crags which have cropped out above the surface, and amongst these, few and far between, some glorious old, gnarled hawthorns, which may well have furnished May-wreaths to the yellow-haired daughters of the Saxon before the mailed-foot of the imperious Norman had dinted the green turf of England. This coppice overspread the whole declivity and base of the hill, until it melted into the broad, rich meadows, which, with a few scattered woods of small size, and here and there a patch of yellow wheat, or a fragrant bean-field, filled all the bottom of the great strath or valley, down to the banks of a large stream, beyond which the land rose steeply, first in rough moorland pastures, divided by dry stone walls, then in round heathery swells, then in great, broad-backed purple fells, and beyond all, faintly traceable in the blue haze of distance, in the vast ridges of the Cheviots and the hills of Tevydale. Along the base of the hill-side, parting it from the meadows, ran a tall, oak park-paling, made of rudely split planks, not any where less than five feet in height, through which access was given to the valley by heavy gates of the same material, from two or three winding wood-roads into the shadowy lanes of the lovely lower country.

Such was the scene, o’er which there arose before the sun, startling the hill echoes far and near, and silencing the grouse-cocks on the moors, and the song-birds in the brake and thicket by their tumultuous din, the shouts and fanfares that told the hunt was up.

“Tayho! Tayho!”

Tarà-tarà-tara-tantara-râ-taratantara-tantara-rà-rà-râh. Which being interpreted into verbal dog-talk is conceived to say—“Gone-away! gone-away! gone-away! away! away! away!” and is immediately understood as such not by the well-mounted sportsmen only, but by what Scott calls, himself no unskilled woodsman, “the dauntless trackers of the deer,” who rush full-mouthed to the cheery clangor, filling all earth and ether with the musical discords of their sweet chidings.

The spot whence the first loud, manly shout “Tayho” resounded, was almost within the shadow of the one tree, where, as from a station commanding the whole view of the covert, which a powerful pack of the famous Talbot blood-hounds, numbering not less than forty couple, were in the act of drawing, a gay group was collected, gallantly appareled, gallantly mounted, and all intent, like the noble steeds they bestrode, eyes, ears and souls erect on the gallant sport of the day.

Those were the days of broad-leaved hats and floating plumes, of velvet justaucorps, rich on the seams with embroideries of gold and silver, of the martial jack-boot and the knightly spur on the heel, and the knightly sword on the thigh, and thus were our bold foresters accoutred for such a chase as is never heard tell of in these times of racing hounds and flying thoroughbreds, when the life of a fox is counted by the minutes he can live with a breast-high scent before the flyers, and the value of a hunter by the seconds he can go in the first flight with a dozen horseman’s stone upon its back.

Things then were otherwise, the fox was unkenneled, or the stag unharbored at daybreak, and killed if the scent lay well, sooner or later, before sunset—runs were reckoned by hours, hounds picked for their staunchness not their fleetness, horses bought not for their speed but for their stoutness, and the longest, steadiest last rider, not the most daring or the foremost won the palm of the chase, were it brush or antler, when the game fox was run into, or the gallant stag turned to bay.

The gentlemen, who were gathered on the broad, bare brow of the one-tree hill, were in all, twelve or thirteen in number, all at first sight men of gentle blood and generous education, although as there ever is, ever must be in every company, whether of men or of inferior animals, there was one to whom every eye, even of the unknown stranger or the ignorant peasant, would have naturally turned as evidently and undoubtedly the superior of the party, both in birth and breeding; he mingled nevertheless with the rest on the most perfect terms not of equality only, but of intimate familiar intercourse and friendship. No terms of ceremonial, no titles of rank or territorial influence, but simple Christian names passed between those gay and joyous youths; nor was there any thing in the habit of the wearers, or the mounting of the riders, to indicate the slightest difference in their positions of social well-being and well-doing. One youth, however, who answered to the name of Gerald, and sometimes to the patrimonial Howard, was so far the handsomer both in form and feature, the statelier in stature, the gracefuller in gesture, the manlier in bearing, the firmer and easier of seat and hand on his hunter, that any one would have been prompt to say almost at a glance, there is the man of all this gentle and generous group, whom, if war wakes its clangor in the land, if external perils threaten its coasts, or internal troubles shake its state, foreign war or domestic strife will alike find the foremost, whether in his seat with the senate, or in his saddle on the field, wielding with equal force and skill the stateman’s, scholar’s, soldier’s eye, tongue, sword—all honored him, indeed, and he deserved that all should honor him.

I have omitted, not forgotten or neglected, to mention as first and fairest of that fair company, a bevy of half a dozen fair and graceful girls—not like the gentlemen, all of one caste, but as was evident, not so much from the difference of their grace and beauty—though in these also there was a difference—as from the relative difference of position which they maintained, four remaining somewhat in the rear of the other two, and not mingling unless first addressed in the conversation, and from some distinction in the costliness and material of their attire.

A mounted chamberlain, with four or five grooms, who stood still farther aloof, in the rear of the ladies in waiting, and two or three glittering pages standing a-foot among the latter, in full tide of gallantry and flirtation, their coursers held by the grooms in attendance, made up the party. From which must always be excepted the huntsman, the verdurer, and eight or ten yeomen prickers, in laced green jerkins, with round velvet caps, like those worn by the whippers-in of the present day, and huge French-horns over their left shoulders, who were seen from time to time appearing, disappearing, and reappearing in the glades and dingles of the hill-side covert, and heard now rating the untimely and fallacious challenge of some wayward and willful puppy, now cheering the earnest and trusty whimper of some redoubted veteran of the pack, as he half-opened on a scent of yester-even.

The hounds had been in the coppice above an hour, and two-thirds of its length had already been drawn blank—the gentlemen were beginning to exchange anxious and wistful glances, and two or three had already consulted more than once or twice their ponderous, old-fashioned repeaters—and now the elder, shorter and fairer of the two damsels, giving the whip lightly to her chestnut palfry, cantered up to the side of Gerald Howard, followed by her companion, whose dark redundance of half-disheveled nut-brown tresses fell down from beneath a velvet cap, with a long drooping plume, on each side of a face of the most exquisite oval, with a high brow, long, jet-black eyelashes, showing in cold relief against her pure, colorless cheeks, for her eyes were downcast, and an expression of the highest intellect, which is ever found in woman mingled with all a woman’s tenderness and softness. She was something above the middle height, with a figure of rare slenderness and symmetry, exquisitely rounded, and sat her horse at once most femininely and most firmly, without the least indication of manliness in her seat or demeanor, yet with a certain of-at-homeness in her position and posture, that showed she could ride as well, perhaps as boldly, as the best man among them.

“Ah! Gerald, Gerald,” said the elder girl, laughingly, as she tapped him on the arm with the silver-butt of her riding-whip, “is this your faith to fair ladies, and especially to this fairest Kate, that you deluded us from our soft beds at this untimely hour, with promise to unharbor us a stag of ten within so many minutes, all for the pleasure of our eyes, and the delectation of our hearts, and here have we been sitting on this lone hill-side two hours and upward, to the great craving of our appetites and the faintness of our hearts, yearning—as the queen’s good Puritans would have it—after creature comforts—out on you! out on you, for a false knight, as I believe not, for my part, that there is one horn or hoof from the east to the west on the hill-side—no, not from the ‘throstle’s nest’ to the ‘thorny brae.’ ”

“Ah! sister mine, art so incredulous—but I will wager you or ere the Talbots reach that great gray stone, with the birch boughs waving over it like the plumes, as our bright Kate would say, of a dead warrior’s helmet over his cold brow, we will have a stag a-foot—ay, and a stag of ten.” And instantly raising his voice to a quicker and clearer note—“See now!” he cried, “see now!” as a superb, dark-colored animal, not lower than a yearling colt at the forehand, leaped with a bound as agile as if he was aided by wings, on the cope-stone of the dry stone wall which bounded the hither side of the hill coppice, with vast, branching antlers tossed as if in defiance, and a swan-like neck swollen with pride and anger. He stood there an instant, self-poised, self-balanced, “like the herald Mercury new lighted on a heaven-kissing hill”—uttered a hoarse, belling cry, peculiar to the animal in his season, and then sailing forth in a long, easy curve, alighted on the springy turf, whose enameled surface he scarce dinted, and then swept up the gentle slope almost toward the admiring group on the brow, but in a diagonally curved line that would carry him in the long run to the south-west of them, at the distance of perhaps a hundred yards.

“Tayho! Tayho!” burst in a clear and cheery shout from the excited lips of Gerald Howard.

And instantly from every part of the hill-side from east to west, from the throstle’s nest to the “thorny brae,” from ten well-blown French-horns burst the wild call Tarà-tarà—tara-tantara-ra—tara-tantara-tantara—ra—ra—rah—“Gone away—gone away—gone away—away—away!” and the fierce rally of the mighty Talbots broke into tongue at once through the whole breadth and length of the oak coppice, as they came pouring up the hills, making the heather bend and the coppice crash before them like those famed Spartan hounds of Hercules and Cadmus,

“When in the woods of Crete they bayed the bear—

So flewed, so randed, and their heads were hung

With ears that sweep away the morning dew;

Crook-kneed and dew-lapped like Thessalian bulls;

Slow in pursuit, but matched in mouth like bells

Each under each”

As fifty separate spots they leaped the wall nearly abreast, but four were it may be a spear’s length the leaders, and they laying their head right at the noble quarry, which was still full in view, came straining up the hill, making all ring around them with their deep-mouthed thunder. The rest topped the wall one by one, in view too, and on a breast-high scent at once came streaming up the rich grass slope on converging lines, so that as they passed the attentive group to the westward within a hundred yards, the pack had got all together within, perhaps, another hundred yards of his haunches, running so that a large carpet might have covered the whole forty couple, and raving with such a din of harmonious discords, such shrill and savage trebles of the fierce fleet bitch hounds, such a deep diapason of the old veteran dogs, such sweet and attuned chidings of the whole, that not an ear but must have listened with delight, not a heart but must have bounded with rapture at the exulting sounds.

And ever and anon there rang up from the wildwood, the deep, mellow blasts of the French-horns, blent with the jangled cries of the Talbots into a strange and indescribable clangor and crepitation, at once most peculiar and most entrancing.

At the same moment the sun burst into full view above the eastern hills, and pouring down a great flood of golden lustre over the whole glowing scene, kindled up every thing into light and life—tinging with ruddy light the dappled sides of the noble beast as he swept by them now within fifty yards—for he had circled round them wantoning and bounding to and fro, perfectly unconcerned by the nearer presence of his pursuers, and seemingly desirous to display the miracles of his speed and beauty to the fair eyes that admired him—enlivening the dappled hides of the many-colored glossy pack—burnishing the sleek and satin coats of the noble coursers, till they glowed with almost metallic splendor—flashing upon the rich laces, the bright buckles, and the polished sword-hilts of the hunters, and gilding the bridle-bits and brazen horns of the verdurers and yeomen prickers, until the whole hill-side was glittering with a thousand gay hues and salient lights, filling the mind with memories of faëry land and magic marvels.

Hitherto the little group on the brow of the one-tree hill had stood motionless, while the gay, animated scene revolved around them, a glittering circle wheeling around the stationary centre; but now, when the servants of the chase, huntsman and verdurer, prickers, all streamed up the long hill at their best pace, all wheeled around the tree and its gay company, swelling the din with the flare and braying of their horns, the gallant stag appeared to comprehend that a fresh band of enemies were added to his first pursuers—for he half turned his head to gaze on them, half paused for a moment to snuff the air, with nostrils pridefully dilated, and flanks heaving, not with weariness as yet, but with contempt and scorn, then with a toss of his antlers, and a loud snort of indignation, set his head fair to the north-west, full for the hills of Scotland, and went away at long sweeping bounds that seemed to divide the green slope by leaps of eight yards each, soared back again over the rough stone wall, and went crashing through the thickets straight for the tall oak palings and the river, as if he were bound for some distant well-known point, on a right line as the crow flies it.

And now for the gentlemen the chase was begun, and Gerald Howard led it, like their leader as he was in all things, and the rest followed him like men as they were, and brave ones—but to the ladies it was ended so soon as they had breathed their palfries down the slope to the stone wall and the wood-side at an easy canter; and they returned to the hill-top, where they found viands and refreshments spread on the grass; and long they lingered there watching the hunt recede, and the sounds of the chase die away in the far distance. But it was long ere the sights and sounds were lost all and wholly to their eyes and ears—for the quarry still drove on, as straight as the crow flies, due northward—due northward the chase followed.

They saw the gallant stag swoop over the oak-pales as if they were no obstacle—they saw the yelping pack crash and climb after him; then they saw Gerald Howard on his tall coal-black barb soar over it unhindered—but all the rest turned right and left to gate or gap, or ere they might follow him. The valley was crossed as by a whirlwind—the river swam by hart, hound, and hunters, unhesitating and unheeding—and far beyond up the green moorland pastures, over the stone walls, now disappearing over the hill-tops into the misty hollows, now glinting up again into light over some yet more distant stretch of purple heath, and still the chiding of the hounds, and still the wild bursts of the French-horns fell faintly on the ears, as the wind freshened from the westward—but at length sound and sight failed them, and when silence had sunk still and solitude reigned almost perfect over the late peopled slope of thorny brae and the one-tree hill, the gay bevy of dames and damsels returned homeward, something the more serious if not the sadder for the parting, to await the gathering of their partners to the gay evening meal.

Long they awaited—late it grew—the evening meal was over—the close of night had come—the lights in bower and hall were kindled—the gates were locked and barred—long ere the first of the belated foresters, returned soiled and splashed, way-worn and weary, with the jaded and harassed hounds, and horses almost dead from the exertion and exhaustion of the day. At midnight, of the field all the men save one were collected, though two or three came in on foot, and yet more on borrowed horses—their own good steeds left in the morass or on the moorland, to feed the kites and the hill-foxes—of the pack all save two mustered at the kennel-gates in such plight as the toil they had borne permitted.

The man missing was Sir Gerald Howard, the master of the pack, the two hounds were its two leaders, Hercules and Hard-heart, of whom no rider had ever yet seen the speed slacken or the heart fail.

The old verdurer, who gave out the last, reported Gerald Howard going well, when he saw him last, with the stag and two Talbots of all in full view—and this many miles into Scotland within the pleasant vale of Teviotdale, with the great Scottish hills grim and gray, towering up before him, and the night closing fast on those dim solitudes.

It was late on the next day when Sir Gerald Howard was seen riding up the road on the same steed he had backed so gallantly, still weary and worn, though recruited—with the huge antlers at his saddle-bow, but no brave Talbots at his heel.

He had ridden far into the darkness, still guided by the baying of the staunch hounds; and when he could see to ride no longer, had obtained timely succor and refreshment from a stout borderer of Teviot-side. At daylight remounted a fresh horse, a garron of the country, to renew the chase; but it was now soon ended. Scarce had he gone a mile on the straight line they had run throughout ere he found Hard-heart stiff and cold on the mountain heather, and not a hundred yards yet onward, ere the great stag lay before him, not a hair of his hide injured, and Hercules beside him, with his head upon his haunches, where he had breathed his last, powerless to blood the brave quarry he had so nobly conquered.

Sixty miles had they run on that summer’s day from point, they had died together, and in their graves they were not confounded, for a double tomb was scooped in the corrie or hollow of the mountain-side, wherein they were found, and above it was piled a rough, gray column, whereon may be seen rudely sculptured this true epitaph,

Hercules killed Hart O’Grease,

And Hart O’Grease killed Hercules.

For, reader mine, this is a real and true tale, and I, who tell it you, have sat upon the stone, and tempered my cup of Ferintosh from the little rill beside it, with the wild peak of the Maiden’s Pass before me, the dark Cheviots at my right, the blue heights of the Great Moor looming away almost immeasurably to the westward, and no companions near me save the red grouse of the heather, and the curlew of the morass, nothing to while away the time that my weary setters slept in the noonday sun, save this old-time tradition.

“GRAHAM” TO JEREMY SHORT.

WINTER.

“When icicles hang by the wall,

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,

And Tom bears logs into the hall,

And milk comes frozen home in pail;

When blood is nipt—”

Winter is here—Jeremy! Desolate winter! and the white fields are shivering in the sunlight—the old woods are solemn and sad—the voices of the air are hushed, and a quiet, save the moan of the wind, tells us that nature is passing through the dark valley, typical of death. We know that she will burst the stern fetters, and rising from her sleep, shall laugh again with infant glee in all her brooks; and spreading her motherly arms over the earth, will shower with parental liberality her treasures into our laps once more. Yet still we feel her silence—we are sad because of her desolation.

Winter is here—Jeremy! The long nights have come—the long, dark winter nights; and we draw the heavy curtains, and sit down in our warm parlors, carelessly to ponder and to dream. The light has gone out of the starry skies which bended over us in youth, and the dun clouds surge up from the horizon, and grow heavier and blacker as we muse—the Present is dreary! We turn back with memory, and over all the Past we wander. We remember the snug cottage nestled in the hills—the crackling faggots on the old hearth-stone—they have their young vivacity now, and the whole picture of our youthful home in this beautiful cloud-land rises gradually and expands before us. Faces all rosy with the light of the Immortals appear and vanish—bright wings of angels flash and fade to the view—and as the scene swells to our mental vision, the old familiar tones of the old familiar lips ring out their silver syllables again. We listen to the joyous laugh, as to the gushing of music, and almost feel the presence of soft hands in ours. The glad, beaming face of the young creature we first worshiped, with all the innocence of love’s first delusion, sparkles with the radiant beauty of those happy hours. The mother in that quiet chamber, with the dim lamp and the snowy curtains gleaming out from the corner, where we knelt at her side and uttered the evening prayer, lifts her white hands to our brow again, and says, “God bless and keep thee, my boy!” God help us now—how have we wandered since our souls felt that earnest benediction!

Winter is here! and the long, stormy nights have come, Jeremy—the nights of dread and desolation to the poor. The roar of the tempest has the voice of a demon out there! Do the moan and the howl, which sound so fearfully now, stir in the heart a thought of the perishing ones, who, in the midst of this splendid city, sit shivering, ragged, and starved? The pale brow and the hollow eye of the consumptive mother, sitting desolate amid her famishing ones, grow paler and sadder as the storm rolls on! Does her low wail of agony reach the ears of angels to-night? If not—God help her!

Scores of Christian churches stand grandly out in the storm, and bravely defy the tempest. They are tenantless, now, of the rosy lips and bright eyes which have looked appealingly to Heaven, and muttered prayers for the poor. Are willing hands employed to-night in confirmation of the Sunday’s sincerity? Or do cards, the piano, or the dance, lend a sorry confirmation of the utter hollowness of words? Is all the wealth and splendor of Gothic steeples and stained-glass—the majestic column—the lordly porch, and the sweeping aisle, but the magnificence of delusion?—mere monuments of the wickedness of man endeavoring to cheat the Creator with tinsel—with show, not worth—with words, not deeds! God help the homeless, Jeremy, where this is true! And help the disciple, too, who prays, but never thinks! God bless the humble Christian, who labors and cares for THE POOR!

“Poor naked wretches, whereso’er you are,

That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,

How shall your houseless heads, and unfed sides,

Your looped and windowed raggedness, defend you

From seasons such as these?”

G. R. G.

A LIFE OF VICISSITUDES.

———

BY G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ.

———

(Continued from page 11.)

FIRST LOVE.

The poor little girl by my side made no struggle to quit me, no effort to return to her mother, but ran along holding my hand, with perfect docility and confidence, weeping bitterly, it is true, and never uttering a word. It was a strange situation for a boy of twelve years of age, and yet I felt a certain sort of pride in it—in the trust which was reposed in me—in the right, and, as I fancied, the power of protecting. I would have fought for that little girl to the death, if any one had attempted to molest her; and although I had never at that time heard of paladins and knights-errant, I was quite as valiant in my own opinion as any one of them ever was. I was not very hard-hearted at that time—youth seldom is—and I felt greatly moved by the poor child’s grief.

After we had gone about a mile, at a very quick pace, I began to slacken my speed, and to try and comfort my little companion. At first she appeared inconsolable, but by trying hard, I at length made some impression—won her mind away from the terrors and sorrows of her situation, and got her to speak a word or two in reply to my question. She told me that her name was Mariette, and that she had walked some way that day—that her mother had rushed into the room where she was playing, all covered with blood, as I had seen her just before—had caught her up in her arms, and rushed out of a château where they lived, by a back way, plunging at once into the wood. They had then walked a long distance, she said, her mother sometimes carrying her, sometimes letting her run by her side; and I could perceive that, delicately nurtured and unaccustomed to hard exercise, the poor little thing was already considerably tired. I was a strong, big boy, and so without more ado, I took her up in my arms and carried her. After some way, I put her down again, and she walked on refreshed, and then I carried her again, and then we sat down upon a bank and rested; and I got her water from the stream in the hollow of my hand, and tried to amuse her by telling her stories. But I never was a good story-teller in all my life, and I did not succeed very well. All this occupied time, however, and when we arrived within half a mile of the town, light was fading fast. This alarmed me; not that I had any fear of darkness, but it was good Jeanette’s custom, in the gray of the evening to walk out through our little garden in the tower, down the stair-case, the door of which lay on the left-hand side, and lock the door below. I did not like to go in by the great gates of the town, both because the distance was greater, and because I thought some questions might be asked about Mariette; and I resolved, at all events, to attempt our private entrance before I yielded to necessity. I encouraged my little companion to hurry her steps, by pointing out the town rising before us, and telling her that if she made haste, she would in a few minutes be with Father Bonneville, and he would be so good and kind to her she could not think. I told her, also, of good Jeanette, and what a nice creature she was, and I succeeded in engaging her attention and leading her on much faster than before. We soon reached the foot of the hill, climbed the steep little path which led to the door at the foot of the tower, and with great joy and some surprise I found it open.

“Now come in, Mariette,” I said, “and don’t be afraid of the dark; for this stair-case leads to our garden, and the garden to the house.”

She said she was not at all afraid of the dark; that her papa often made her walk with him in the dark; and she followed me quite readily, holding tight by my hand, however.

In the garden above we found good old Jeanette, with her snow-white cap, and her mittens. I found that she had become anxious at my long absence, and had abstained from locking the door lest I should determine to come in that way. Her surprise to see my little companion, and the state of grotesque agitation and bustle into which the sight threw her, I shall never forget. My explanations soon banished surprise by other emotions. I told all I knew of poor Mariette’s story as simply as I could, and the good creature’s heart was instantly touched; the tears gathered in her eyes, and taking the poor little girl in her arms, she said, “Come with me, my child—come with me. Here we will make you a home where you will be as happy as the day is long.”

“I can’t be happy without papa and mamma,” replied Mariette, bursting into tears again, and Jeanette, weeping for company, carried her off into the house, while I ran down the stairs to lock the door of the tower. When I entered the house again, I found that Father Bonneville was out visiting some sick people, and had been absent for several hours. Mariette wanted no kind of tendence, however, that was not given to her by good Jeanette. She put her pretty little feet in warm water; she gave her a cup of the thin chocolate which usually formed the good priest’s supper, and she endeavored, with far greater skill than mine, to wile away her thoughts from all that was painful in memory, or her new situation. Mariette soon began to prattle to her, and leaning her head upon her shoulder, said she loved her very much; but then, after a few minutes, the bright young eyes closed, the little head leaned heavier, and Jeanette, moving her gently, carried her away to my small room, and placed her gently in my bed, “to sleep it out,” as she said.

About half an hour after, good Father Bonneville returned, and his face showed evident traces of sorrow and perplexity. But still my story was to be told, and it seemed to perplex him still more.

“Do you know her name?” he asked.

“Mariette, Father,” I replied.

“But what more, besides Mariette?” he asked; and as I could give him no information, he made me describe, as accurately as I could, the appearance of the lady I had seen. I spoke of her bright and beautiful eyes, and I described her as very pale; but the good priest inquired whether she was tall.

“Oh yes,” I replied; “a good deal taller than Jeanette.”

The good priest smiled; for Jeanette was a good deal below the height of the Medicean Venus, and she is no giantess.

“It must be Madame de Salins,” he murmured, after a moment’s consideration. “Holy father, have mercy upon us! Killed Monsieur de Salins, have they, before his poor wife’s eyes? A better young man did not exist, nor one who has done more good, both by his acts and his example.”

“Wouldn’t you know Mariette, if you saw her, Father?” I asked; and Jeanette coming in from the room where the child was at the moment, led the good Father away to see her. When he came back, he said no more for some time, but sat thinking, with his head bent forward, and his eyes half closed. Then he called Jeanette, and somewhat to my surprise, gave very strict orders for concealing the fact of the little girl’s residence in our house. My little room was to be assigned to her; a large, wide, rather cheerful, long uninhabited room, up stairs, was to receive a table, and a few chairs from somewhere else, and to be made a sort of play-room for her, and I and Jeanette were to do the very best we could to make the little prisoner happy, while her existence was to be kept secret from every one but our three selves. At the same time he laid the strongest injunctions upon me to abstain from even hinting to any one the adventure I had met with in the wood, and never to call the child Mariette de Salins, but merely Mariette, or Mariette Brun.

And now began a new sort of existence for me. Mariette became, as it were, my property—at least I looked upon her almost as such. I had carried her in the forest. I had led her along by the hand. I had brought her there. She was my little foundling, and my feelings toward her were as strange as ever came into the breast of a boy of thirteen. There was something parental about them. I could almost have brought myself to believe that I was her father; and yet I looked upon her very much in the light of a toy, as grown-up parents will sometimes do in regard to their children. I was with Mariette the greater part of every day, playing with her, amusing her, devising all sorts of games to entertain her. She soon became very fond of me, and quite familiar; would sit by the hour with her arms round my neck, and would tell me little anecdotes of her own home. A pleasant home it seemed to have been till the last fearful events occurred, full of harmony, and peace, and domestic joy. Continually she seemed to forget the present, in pictures of brighter hours gone by, but from time to time—especially at first—a torrent of painful memories would seem to burst upon her, and the end of the little tale would be drowned in tears.

Two months passed over in this manner, and little Mariette seemed quite reconciled to her situation. With the elasticity of childish hope, she had recovered all her spirits, and no two young, happy, innocent things were ever gayer than we were. Her state of imprisonment, too, was somewhat relaxed; for, in our own town at least, a lull had come upon the political storm, which, as every one knows, came up sobbing, as it were, in fits and starts, like a south-westerly gale, till the full hurricane blew and swept every thing before it. After some hesitation, Father Bonneville permitted her to go out with me into the garden, and there to play amongst the shrubs, now, alas! destitute of flowers, for an hour or two before she went to bed. In the town she was never seen, and with a sort of prescience, which was, perhaps, not extraordinary, the good Father explained to me that it would be wiser to use, as little as possible, the way out of the town by the garden and the tower. He treated me with a degree of confidence and reliance on my intelligence and discretion, which made me very proud. The agitated and terrible state of the country, he said, and the anarchical tendencies which were visible throughout society in France, had induced a number of the most wealthy and influential people to seek a refuge in other lands. Those who had got possession of power, he continued, were naturally anxious to put a stop to this emigration, and a system of espionage, which was well-nigh intolerable, had been established to check it. The advantage we possessed of being able to go in and out of the town when we pleaded, without passing the gales, might be lost to us by the imprudent use of it; and although two or three other citizens, whose houses abutted upon towers of the old wall, had the same facilities, he knew them to be prudent and well-disposed men, who were not likely to call attention to themselves by any incautious act.

Although the door below was unlocked and locked every morning and evening, it may well be supposed that I adhered strictly to the good Father’s directions, and always when I wanted to get out of the city took the way round by the gates. This was not very often, indeed, for I had now an object of interest and entertainment at home, which I had never had before, and Mariette was all the world to me for the time. Good Father Bonneville in speaking of her to me used to call her with a quiet smile “Tu fille”—thy daughter—and pleasant was it for me to hear him so name her. Certain it is, what between one thing and another—the little vanity I had in her—the selfish feeling of property, so strong in all children—the pleasant occupation which she gave to my thoughts, and her own winning and endearing ways, (for she was full of every sort of wild, engaging grace,) together with her real sweetness of disposition, which had something more beautiful and charming in it than I can describe—certain it is, I say—I learned before a month was over to love nothing on all the earth like her. Nay more, amongst all the passions and objects and pursuits of life I can recall nothing so strong, so fervent, so deep, as that pure, calm, boyish love for little Mariette de Salins. I could dwell upon it, even now, for ever, and from my heart and soul I believed she returned that affection as warmly. Two months and a fortnight had passed by: heavier clouds than ever were beginning to gather on the political horizon: menaces of foreign invasion to put down the disorderly spirit which had manifested itself in the land, roused the indignation both of those whose passions refused correction, and those who loved the independence of their country. The very threat swept away one of the few safeguards of society which remained in France. There was a great body of the people who disliked the thought of anarchy; but a short period of anarchy seemed to them preferable to the indefinite domination of foreign soldiers in the land, and multitudes of these better men were now driven to act with or submit to the anarchists.

I could see that Father Bonneville was very much alarmed, and in much agitation and distress of mind. I twice saw him count over the money which I had brought him from Madame de Salins, and looking up in my face, he said, with a thoughtful air:

“I suppose I ought to send her away—the time is past—but I know not really what to do—where could I put her in England?—who could I send with her?—how could I let her mother know where she is to be found? This is a small sum, too, to support her for any time in England. A hundred and forty-seven louis! England is a dear country—a very dear country, as I know. Every thing is thrice the price that it is here.”

Youth always argues from its wishes. They form the goal to which, whatever turns the course may take, the race is always directed in the end. Father Bonneville’s words were very painful to me, and I ventured to strive to persuade him that it would be better to wait a little: that Mariette was well where she was: that something might have occurred to delay Madame de Salins.

The good Father shook his head, with a sigh, and he then took a little drawer out of a cabinet, and counted some forty or fifty gold pieces that were within. I could see, however, that there were, at least, three little rolls of thin white paper diapered by the milling of the coin within, and I knew by their similarity and size with the one which I had myself received, that each must contain somewhere about a hundred louis. To me this was Peru; but Father Bonneville, who knew better, sighed over it, and put it back again.

One very stormy night the wind blew in sharp, fierce gusts against the front windows, and the rain pattered hard. The streets were almost deserted, and utterly unlighted, as they were in those times, they offered no pleasant promenade on such a night as that. Suddenly the bell rang, as I was sitting by Father Bonneville reading, when Mariette was sound asleep up stairs, and Jeanette was working away in her kitchen.

“Who can that be?” said Father Bonneville, turning a little pale. “Stay, Jeanette, stay for a moment;” and he put away one or two things that were lying about, and locked the door of the little cabinet.

Now, it might seem a cruelty to keep any one waiting at the door even for a minute or two in the pitiless pelting of the shower; but I forgot to mention in describing the house, that it, and a neighboring house, which bent away from the main into a side street, formed a very obtuse angle, and that between the two there was a little arched entrance overshadowing a flight of steps which led to the good Father’s door. Thus, any visitor was as much sheltered from the rain on the outside, as if he had been in the house itself.

Jeanette had, at length, permission to go to the door, and to tell the truth, both Father Bonneville and I peeped out to see who was the applicant who made so late a call.

“I wish to see Father Bonneville,” said a woman’s voice, marvelously sweet and pleasant.

“Is your business very pressing, madam?” asked Jeanette, adding, “it is late, and just the good Father’s time for going to bed.”

“Life and death!” said the visitor. “I must see him, and see him alone.”

“Well, madam, come in,” was the reply, and at the same moment Father Bonneville said in a low tone, but it seemed to me with a happy air, “Leave me, François. Go to bed, my son.”

I obeyed at once, and in moving across the passage to the kitchen for a light, I crossed the visitor, nearly touching her. All I could see, however, was that she was tall, dignified in carriage, dressed in deep black, and wrapped up in a large mantle with a veil over her head.

I felt sure that it was Mariette’s mother, and hurrying away to my new room, which was over the little archway sheltering the entrance, I shut the door and gave myself up to a fit of despair. I fancied that she had come to take my little pet away, to separate her from me forever, to deprive me of my property, and I cannot describe in any degree what I felt. The anguish of that moment was as great almost as I ever experienced in life. All I did within the next ten minutes I cannot tell, but one thing I know I did, which was to sit down and cry like a great baby. I would have given worlds to have known what was passing; but I did not listen though I might have done so easily from the top of my little stairs. But good Father Bonneville had so early, so well, and so strongly impressed upon my mind the duty of avoiding any meanness, that eaves-dropping seemed to me in those days almost as great a crime as murder. Indeed it was in somewhat of that shape that the good Father placed it before my eyes. “What right,” he said, “has one man to rob another of his secrets any more than of his money? They are both his property, and if they are not given they are stolen.”

I was not very long kept in suspense, however, for by the time I had got my little coat off, and was still sitting on the edge of the bed crying, I heard the lady quit the good Father’s little study, and his voice speaking as he escorted her toward the door. I knew that Mariette could not have been awakened, dressed, and carried off in a quarter of an hour, and I went to bed and slept with a heart relieved. It was only a respite, however. Four days after that good Father Bonneville took an opportunity when Mariette and I were at play of telling her that she was that night to go away with her mamma, and take a long journey. He advised her therefore not to tire herself, but to keep as quiet as possible till the evening came, even if she could not lie down and take a little rest during the day.

The poor child’s agitation was extreme. The idea of seeing her mother evidently gave her great delight, but the thought of going away from a house where she had been made so happy, and from a companion who loved her so much, seemed not exactly to qualify her joy, but to tear her between two emotions. Her face was, for an instant, all smiles and radiant with satisfaction. The next instant, however, she burst into tears, and snatching Father Bonneville’s hand she kissed it once or twice. Then pointing to me, she said, “Cannot I take him with me?”

The good priest shook his head, and soon after left us to pass the time till the hour of separation came as best we might. I do not think he knew, and indeed it would be difficult to make any one comprehend, who has left the period of early youth far behind him, what were the feelings of Mariette and myself. I am very much inclined to believe from my own remembrances, that the pangs of childhood are much more severe than most grown persons will admit.

Day wore away; night came. Little Mariette was dressed and prepared, and about nine o’clock the bell rang. In a moment after the poor child was in her mother’s arms, and weeping with joy and agitation. Madame de Salins hardly sat down, however, and there was a look of hurry and anxiety as well as of grief in her face which told how much she had suffered, and how much she expected still to encounter.

“I am somewhat late,” she said, speaking to Father Bonneville; “for there were two men walking up and down before the house in which I have been concealed, and I dared hardly venture out. Let us lose no time, good Father. Who will show us the way?”

“Louis, my son, get the lantern,” said the good Father; and turning to Madame de Salins he added, “He will show you the way.”

These words first seemed to call the attention of the lady to myself, and advancing toward me she embraced me tenderly and with many thanks for the charge I had taken of her little girl in a moment of danger and of horror. I felt gratified, but I do not know that I altogether forgave her for coming to carry off my little companion, and I was also struggling with all my might not to show myself so unmanly as to shed tears; so that I replied somewhat ungracefully I am afraid. I went away for the lantern, however and by the direction of good Father Bonneville, lighted Madame de Salins and Mariette through the garden, and down the stair-case in the tower. I then proceeded to open the door for them, almost hoping that the key might be rusted in the lock so as to prevent their going. It turned easily enough, however, and when I opened the door I was startled at seeing the figure of a man standing at the top of the little path which led down to the foot of the hill. Madame de Salins, however, accosted him at once by his name, and he told her that Peter and Jerome were waiting down below. The parting moment was now evidently come, and it seemed as bitter to poor little Mariette as myself. She threw her arms around me. She held me tight. She kissed me again and again, and her tears wetted my cheek. At length, however, she was drawn away from me, and her mother holding her hand led her down the hill while the man followed. I looked after them for a moment or two, till they were nearly lost in the darkness. Then locked the door, and turned sadly toward the house.

——

THE FLIGHT.

Oh, how dull and tedious was the passing of the next month to me. There was a vacancy in all my thoughts which I cannot describe, a want of object and of interest, which nothing seemed to supply. But the dullness of the calm was soon to be succeeded by the agitation of the storm. The populace, particularly of the suburb, was becoming more fierce and unruly every hour. If at any previous period there had been such a thing as tyranny in France—of which I knew, and had felt nothing—it must have been the tyranny of one, far removed from the humble or even the middle stations of life, and much less terrible than the tyranny of many, which now came to the door of every house in the land. There was a butcher living in the lower part of the town, the terror of his neighbors, and an object of abhorrence to all good men. Fierce, licentious, and unprincipled, his courage—the only good quality he possessed—was the courage of a tiger. On more than one occasion in former years good Father Bonneville had had to reprove him, and it would seem he had not forgotten it.

One day, about a month after Mariette had left us, I had walked out into the town during Father Bonneville’s absence from home, and was crossing the square in front of the great church. On one side of the square was the best inn in the place, and upon the steps of that inn were standing several officers of a dragoon regiment which had lately been quartered in the town. In the midst of the square, I saw a great crowd of people moving to and fro, and apparently busy and agitated. There were muskets amongst the crowd; for in those days the more ragged and poverty-stricken a man was, the more certain was he of having some weapon of offense in his hand; and amongst the rest, with a red night-cap on his head, and his shirt sleeves tucked up to the elbow, I could perceive the great stalwort figure of the butcher I have mentioned. I saw also, however, other garments than those of the mere populace. There was the black gown of a priest in the middle of the crowd, and as I approached with a faint and fearful heart, I not only saw that the mob were dragging along a priest by the arms, but also that he was good Father Bonneville. I heard shouts too of “up with him! Hang him up, hang him up! To the spout with him, to the spout!”

The officers I have mentioned were standing quietly looking on, laughing and talking with two or three of the more respectable citizens. But at the first impulse I ran toward them, caught the hand of one of the young soldiers, who seemed to bear a high rank amongst the others, and whose face was a kindly one, and with eager and terrified tones exclaimed—

“Oh, save him, sir, save him. They are going to kill the best man in all the town.”

“Who are they going to hang, boy?” asked one of the citizens in a tone of assumed indifference; for few persons ventured in those days to show any sympathy with the victims of popular fury.

“Father Bonneville,” I answered, “Oh it is Father Bonneville—Save him, save him—pray make haste!”

“He is, indeed, one of the best men in the world,” said the gentleman, with a look of deep distress.

The young officer, however, without more ado, ran down the steps and plunged into the crowd. One or two of his companions followed, I saw a sudden pause in the mob, and heard a great outcry of voices; some apparently in persuasion, others in mere brute clamor. A moment after, however, while the parties seemed still disputing, a squadron of dragoons came into the square, and their appearance, though they took no part in what was going on, seemed to have a great effect upon the mob. A number of the ragged ruffians dropped off every moment, some walking away down the street, singing ribald songs, some coming up to the soldiers, and speaking a word or two to them as if to show that they were not afraid, but walking away in the end. At length, however, I had the satisfaction to see the young officer emerge from the little crowd that remained, holding Father Bonneville by the arm, while another of the dragoon officers walked on the good priest’s other side. The only one who followed them was the butcher, and he continued pursuing them with execration and abuse till they reached the steps of the inn, in which they lodged the good Father for the time. The young officer made no reply to all the ribald language with which he was assailed, except on the inn steps, where he turned, and said in a calm tone—

“It may be all very true, but proceed according to law. If he has refused to take the oath required, he can and will be punished for it, but you are not to be the judge, and shall not break the law while I am in command of this town.”

Thus saying, without waiting for any answer, he walked into the inn, and I ran after Father Bonneville. The good old man was somewhat out of breath with the rough handling he had received, but I could not perceive any traces of fear or great agitation either in his face or manner. As soon as the young officer and I entered the back-room in which he had taken refuge, he held out his hand kindly to me, but addressed his first words to the other.

“I have to thank you much, my son,” he said. “I do believe if you had been two minutes later those poor misguided people would have hanged me.”

“I do believe they would,” replied the officer, with a smile; “but you have to thank this good lad for my coming as soon as I did. I did not perceive what they were about till he told me.”

“Thank you, Louis, thank you,” said Father Bonneville. “I have had a narrow escape, my son. Although, God knows, I have never done these people any harm, and have tried to do them good, yet they seemed resolved to have my blood. Do you think it will be safe for me to go now, sir? I have some sick people to attend upon.”

The young officer besought him however to stay till the town was more completely quieted, and advised him even then to betake himself to his own house, and remain concealed and quiet for a day or two.

I knew quite well that Father Bonneville would not follow this counsel implicitly, and he did not. He got safely home two or three hours after, and remained within till nightfall; but then he went out to visit the sick persons he had named, and on the following morning was pursuing his usual avocations as if nothing had happened. It was not long, however, before he became convinced that such conduct could only lead to martyrdom, without being of the slightest benefit to his flock. Death would have been nothing in his eyes, if by it he could purchase good to others, but that was not a period at which such sacrifices would be at all available.

One day while he was out, a Sister of Charity came to the house, and talked long and earnestly with good Jeanette in the kitchen. I was not present at their conference, but when the Sister went away again I saw that the old housekeeper was in a state of the utmost consternation and grief. The expression of these passions took a curious form with her. It seemed as if she could not be still for one moment. She bustled about the kitchen, as if it were too small for her energies, took down and put up again every pot, kettle, saucepan, and spit, at least a dozen times, gazed into the frying-pan with an objectless look, and seemed only anxious to spend the superfluous activity of her body upon something, while her mind was equally busy with something else. When Father Bonneville returned, however, she had a long conference with him, and he seemed very thoughtful and anxious. At night the Sister of Charity again returned, and this time she bore a letter with her. I only know what took place between her and the good Father by the result; for as soon as she was gone, he called me into his study, where Jeanette had been all the time, and I at once saw that my good old friend and instructor had made up his mind to some great and important step.

“My dear Louis,” he said, with a calm but very grave face, “we have heard very evil news. A persecution is raging against the ministers of religion, which must soon reach me if I remain here. They have already commenced in a town not very far distant, a practice of tying priests and nuns together, and drowning them in the river, adding, by the term they apply to these massacres, impiety to murder. This good creature and Sister Clara, who has just been here, both urge me strongly to fly. I should have hesitated to take such a step, but I find that it is necessary that you should be removed to another country as soon as possible. I have no one to send with you, and I trust I am not biased from my duty by any mere fears for my own life when I determine to accompany you myself. I shall still be fulfilling at least one of the tasks which I have undertaken to perform, and I sincerely believe it is the one in which the remains of my life can be most serviceable.”

He then went on to explain to me that he had determined to pass the next day in the town, and to make his escape at night. Disguise, he added with a sigh, would be necessary. But good Jeanette undertook to procure what was fitting for the occasion, and good Father Bonneville retired to rest that night grave and sad, but, apparently, in no degree agitated. On the following day, a few minutes before noon, a great mob passed up the street, carrying a bloody human head upon a pole. They stopped opposite to the good priest’s house, shouting for him to show himself, and with a quiet and undismayed air he walked to an upper window, and looked out. He was instantly assailed with a torrent of abuse, and I do not feel at all sure that the mob would not have sacked the house and put him to death, if it had not been so near the tiger’s feeding-time. All the lower classes dined at twelve, and Father Bonneville retiring from the window as soon as he had shown himself, the crowd marched on again down the street with their bloody ensign at their head.

Nothing that I remember worthy of notice occurred during the rest of the day, though Jeanette was in a good deal of bustle, and went in and out more than once. Several persons came to see Father Bonneville, and talked with him for some time; but the day passed heavily with me, although I will acknowledge that I felt a good deal of that eager and pleasant expectation with which youth always looks forward to change.

At length night fell; the outer door of the house was carefully locked; Father Bonneville retired to his own sleeping-room; I assisted Jeanette to bring down a pair of somewhat heavy saddle-bags, the one marked with black paint L. L., the other J. C. Shortly after I heard a step upon the stairs, and a gentleman entered the room, whom I did not at first recognize—and could hardly, for some time, persuade myself that it was Father Bonneville. Soutane and bands, and small black cap, and cocked-hat were all gone, and he appeared in a straight-cut black coat, with a small sword by his side. His thin, white hair, powdered and tied behind, and a round hat, with a broad band and buckle, on his head. The effect of this change in costume was to make him look very much smaller than before. He had seemed a somewhat portly man in his robes, but now he looked exceedingly lank and spare, and even his height seemed diminished. He looked strange and ill at ease, but showed no indecision, now that his mind was made up.

“I thought of burning my papers,” he said, speaking to Jeanette, “but I don’t know, ma bonne, that they contain any thing unworthy of a good Christian or a good citizen. I shall therefore leave them as they are, to be examined by those who may take the trouble. You understand all, Jeanette, that I have said, and what you are to do, and where I am to hear from you.”

Jeanette comprehended every thing; but the feelings of the good creature’s heart were at this time surging up against her understanding with greater and greater force every minute. At length, when all was ready for our departure, she fell upon her knees at good Father Bonneville’s feet, weeping and kissing his hand, and begging his blessing. The old man put his hand upon her head, and with an air of solemn affection, called down the blessing of God upon her. Then embracing her kindly, he said, “You have striven, I know, Jeanette, to be as good a servant to God as to a mere mortal master. He deserves more and better service than any of us can give, but he is contented with less than any of us require, if it be rendered with a whole heart. Farewell, my Jeanette—farewell for the present! We shall meet again soon—I trust—I believe.”

The good Father took one of the saddle-bags, and I took the other; Jeanette loading me, moreover, with a large paper parcel of which she bade me take great care, hinting at the same time that it contained sustenance for the good Father and myself which might be very needful to us on our first night’s journey. She followed us in tears through the garden in the tower, and down the stairs to the foot. There she hugged and kissed me heartily, but she had no power to speak, and by this time, all the pleasant fancies in regard to setting out to see new scenes, and to find new enjoyments, which I had entertained for a moment or two, had passed away, and nothing remained but sorrow and regret. We made our way, not without difficulty, down the little path to the valley; for the night was as black as crime, and then walked on along the road by the stream, which, however, we were obliged to quit soon, in order to avoid a party of men who had a sort of guard-house where the two roads met. This was easily done, however. The river was not very full; for the air was frosty, but dry, and neither snow nor rain had fallen for two or three days. Some large stones served us as well as a bridge, and crossing the meadows on the other side, we reached the high road from the town toward Paris without going through the suburbs. About a quarter of a mile farther upon this road, we found an elderly man standing with two horses; and although I could hardly see his face, I recognized in him an uncle of good Jeanette, who was accustomed every fortnight to bring poultry to the house, and who, to say the truth, looked a good deal younger than his niece. Few words passed between him and us; the saddle-bags were arranged on the horses’ backs nearly in silence. Father Bonneville mounted one, and the good farmer helped me to mount the other. I had never been upon a horse’s back in my life before, and the animal upon which I was perched, though somewhat less than that which carried Father Bonneville, seemed to me a perfect elephant. I was awkward enough, and uncomfortable enough, no doubt, at first, but I soon got accustomed to my position, and took rather a pleasure in the ride than not, till we had gone some eight or nine miles, when I began to feel the usual inconveniences to which young horsemen are subject.

A good deal of apprehension was entertained both by my reverend companion and myself, lest our flight should be discovered, and immediate pursuit take place. But we found afterward that such fears were quite vain, the minds of the people of the town, especially of the anarchists, were turned by various events in a direction quite different from Father Bonneville. They had their mayor to guillotine, and two or three of the principal inhabitants to throw into prison, which occupied them satisfactorily for several days. Father Bonneville’s absence was never noticed by any but his own immediate parishioners, who wisely forbore to talk about it till Jeanette, with a bold policy which did her credit, judging that our escape had been safely effected, went up to the municipality, and begged to know what she was to do, as her master had gone away several days before, and had not returned.

In the meanwhile we rode on through that live-long night, neither directing our course straight toward Paris, nor to the sea-side. When morning dawned I was terribly tired and sleepy, and saw all sorts of unreal things in the twilight—the mere effect, I suppose, of exhaustion. Father Bonneville had talked to me from time to time, giving me directions for my general conduct and demeanor toward himself. I found that it was his intention to assume the name of Charlier, and that I was to pass for his nephew, still retaining the name of Lacy, deprived of its aristocratic prefix of dé. The name, however, soon got corrupted by the people of the inns as we went along, and I passed as young citoyen Lassi throughout the whole of the rest of our long journey.

At daylight, after the first night’s march, we halted on a piece of uncultivated ground at the side of a wood, and suffering our horses to crop the grass, of which they stood in some need, we seated ourselves on a dry bank under the trees, and made free with the food which good Jeanette had provided for us. After I had satisfied my keen appetite, and drunk some wine out of a flask, I fell into a sound sleep before I was at all aware what was coming upon me, nor did I wake till Father Bonneville shook me gently by the arm, at about one o’clock in the day.

We then resumed our journey, having to take the first very dangerous step after quitting the town, in entering the busy haunts of men, and exposing ourselves to the eyes and inquiries of strangers.

A tall church-tower was soon seen rising before us, at a considerable distance, and Father Bonneville took the opportunity of a peasant woman, passing us on the road, to ascertain the name of the town to which the church belonged. This gave him the key to his topography, which he had lost during the night, and as the town was still full fifteen miles distant, he determined to stop at any village he found a few miles ere we reached it, in order to avoid the stricter examination which was likely to be enforced in a city. Upon calculating as nearly as our knowledge of the country enabled us to do, we found that we had made five-and-thirty miles during the night, and ten or twelve miles more would put what might be considered a sufficient distance for the time between ourselves and our enemies. We jogged on quietly then, encountering a good number of the peasantry who were returning from market or fair. For a part of the way we rode by the side of an old man who was journeying in the same direction with ourselves. He had a shrewd, thoughtful, but quiet eye, and a bland, easy smile, which perhaps might have made a man well versed in the world doubt his perfect sincerity, notwithstanding his tall, broad forehead, and a certain dignity of air that did not bespeak low cunning. He addressed good Father Bonneville at once as “Monsieur L’abbé,” but looked at him several times before he said more.

At first my old companion did not seem to notice the epithet he bestowed upon him, but after a few more words had passed, he inquired somewhat abruptly, “What made you call me ‘Abbé,’ citizen?”

“Your dress,” replied the countryman, “your manner, and your look. The aristocrat is proud, because he has always commanded, and thinks he has a right to command. The peasant is vain, because God has implanted in every French breast the notion that each man is equal to his neighbor, whether he be a fool or a wise man, a scholar or a dunce, a brave man or a poltroon, a good man or a knave. But the teacher of religion has a different look. He has been accustomed to guide and to exhort, and he knows that it is not only his right but his duty so to do. There is, therefore, in him a look of confidence and authority, very different from the haughtiness of the one or the vanity of the other I have mentioned.”

“You must have thought and studied more than might have been expected,” said Father Bonneville, examining him closely.

“There is no reason why any man should not study, and still less why he should not think,” replied the other. “I have done both, I acknowledge. There are more sins committed in France every day than that.”

“And pray where do you live?” asked Father Bonneville.

“Come and see,” replied the stranger. “Your horses seem tired, and I have still some nine miles to go, but we can ride slowly, and at this next turn we shall quit the high road, which will be a convenience.”

Father Bonneville agreed to the proposal, and we rode on by the side of our inviter in desultory conversation, pointed occasionally by references to passing political events, but generally referring to subjects altogether indifferent. I was dreadfully tired, I confess, before we got to the end of our long, slow journey. At length after two hours’ quiet ride, the stranger said, “We are coming to my home, where you will be very welcome, and it is as well for you to stay there to-night; for there is a grand fête of Liberty going on in most of the villages round, and that lady, like most other pagan deities, is very fond of human sacrifices. Now it does not much matter whether one is crushed under the wheels of Juggernaut, or burned by Druids in a basket of wicker-work, or made to pass through the fire like the children of those obedient and docile Israelites of old, or have one’s head chopped off on a little platform in a public square, before the image of a monstrous woman, in a red night-cap, and with a spear in her hand. It does not much matter, I say; but all are disagreeable, and all are to be avoided by every reasonable means. You will therefore be better in my home there, than in any inn in the neighborhood.”

“Where?” asked Father Bonneville, gazing on before him, in expectation of seeing a farmer’s house.

“There,” replied the stranger, pointing to a magnificent château upon a rising ground near. “You marvel, I see, and I can guess your inquiry—how I have contrived to keep possession of my own, when the universal war-cry through all France is, ‘War to the Castle, Peace to the Cottage.’ I have not time for long explanation; but sufficient may be told briefly. You see this coat of coarse gray cloth. It is the sign, the key, of my whole life. I too was bred an ecclesiastic. The death of three elder brothers put me in possession of that thing upon the hill. I have unfrocked myself, but I retain my early habits, and respect my voluntary vows. I remain in two or three little chambers, while very often boors revel in the halls of my ancestors. But they have a shrewd notion that if I were gone they would not have the means of revelry to as great an extent as at present—that if my property was confiscated, it would fall into the hands of worse men than myself; and so long as I, the master of it, act but as the steward of it, they are well contented to leave me alone in my office without bringing my head to the guillotine, which would be of no use at all to any one, and without seizing upon my lands, it would be a great embarrassment to themselves. Moreover, I have once or twice threatened to resign all my possessions into the hands of the Commune, and the very lowest of the people have been those to beseech me the most earnestly to refrain, knowing very well that they get a better part of the spoil now than they otherwise would. Thus I have got a certain command over them, and I do what I like without fear of any buzzing rumors, or public denunciations. The man who denounced me would very soon find his way to the lantern, and as it is unpleasant to occupy in darkness the place of a light, with a rope round one’s neck, people abstain. There are a hundred people in yonder town who could hang me to-morrow; but my death would be sure to hang a hundred of themselves, and therefore I have the majority on my side. But come, let us go in through the gates.”

We entered the château, leaving our horses in the care of a laboring man in the court, who seemed not a bit less respectful to the master of the house than the servant of any old noble in the ancient days. This was in itself an anomaly in those times; for the vain desire of equality had completely perverted men’s judgments, and they sought not alone to sweep away the differences created by a long established social system, but even those fundamental differences produced by the will of God. I believe, in those days—amongst a great mass of the people at least—as much jealous hatred was felt toward superior intellect as toward superior wealth or superior station.

On passing the doors of the building we found some ten or twelve men seated in the eating-room drinking and talking. The master of the house passed through, nodded to them, called them citizens, and said, “Make good cheer of it. There is more where that comes from.”

A cheerful, good-humored laugh was the reply, and he walked on up the stairs, leading us to a little suite of apartments which he reserved for himself, and where his privacy was respected even by the rude men who surrounded him. There he left us, and went out to procure some refreshment for us, part of which he brought in himself. The rest, with a considerable quantity of plate, which he seemed to think in perfect security, notwithstanding open doors and strange visitors, was brought in by a servant of the old school, but not in livery. When the man was gone we ate and drank and refreshed ourselves, and a conversation, not only of interest but of importance, occurred between our entertainer and Father Bonneville. The former seemed to comprehend our situation, or at least as much of it as was necessary, without any explanation; and he gave a great deal of very good and minute advice as to our conduct while traveling through France. He advised the good Father, strongly, to put on a brown coat, saying that the reputation of an abbé was worse than that of a priest. He advised him also to give up the plan of traveling on horseback, and betake himself to a chaise de poste.

“I don’t ask where you are going, or what you intend to do, but by coming with post-horses, and lodging at the post-house, wherever they entertain there, you gain favor with one class of the community whose assistance is of great importance to travelers.”

Father Bonneville ventured to tell him that there were difficulties in the way of posting, as we were not furnished with those papers which were sometimes inquired for at post-houses.

“Oh, I will manage that very soon for you,” said our host. “The mayor shall furnish you with the necessary passports.”

“But he knows nothing of us,” replied Father Bonneville.

“He knows me,” replied the other, with a significant nod of his head, “he wont refuse me. It is rather a painful state of things when each man’s life is in another man’s power. There are plenty to misuse the advantage, and I have never seen why I should not employ it to better purposes. The mayor will probably be guillotined in six months. He calculates it will be longer, but I think he makes a mistake. However, he knows I could have him guillotined in six days, and is therefore very compliable.”

“And pray,” said Father Bonneville, with a somewhat rueful smile, “how long do you contemplate keeping your own head where it is?”

“It is hardly worth consideration,” replied the other; “for I say of my head, as a friend of mine said of his house which was likely to fall about his ears, ‘It will last my time.’ In truth it is of very little use to any but myself, or I dare say they would have taken it long ago. The same worthlessness may or may not protect it for a month, a year, or even till these evil times pass away; for you are not to suppose, my good friend, that this state will last for ever. It is a mere irruption of human vanity. We Frenchmen are the vainest people upon earth, the whole nation is vain, and every individual is vain. This vanity makes each man unwilling to see any other a bit higher, richer, or in any respect better off than himself; but there are certain fundamental laws of order which man may overturn for a time, but which always resume their power. The wise rule in the end. Industry and talent raise themselves in spite of resistance, forethought and care produce wealth, and if you were to take every acre of land throughout France, and every louis d’or, and divide them equally amongst the whole people, so that there should not be the difference of a sous, before fifty years had passed you would find the differences all restored, some men rich, other men poor, some men ruling, other men obeying, some enjoying, others laboring. Nay more, my belief is, that within the same time, you would find rank, titles and distinctions restored also.”

Father Bonneville shook his head.

“I am very sure of it,” replied the other, in answer to the doubtful shake. “There are many countries in which a pure democracy might exist—perhaps in England—but certainly not in France. Our very blood is feudal and chivalrous. History, which is the memory of nations, is filled with nothing but feudal and chivalrous facts. We are too light, too vain, too volatile to do without distinction for any length of time, and we have not a sufficient spirit of organization in our character to do without a king in some shape or other. I think it must be an absolute shape; but take my word for it, France will never be forty years at any one time without counts, barons and marquises, dukes, peers, stars and ribbons. You might as well attempt to make us Quakers as real republicans. A lion may perhaps be taught to dance like a monkey for an hour or two, but take my word for it, in the end he will eat his dancing-master; and you might as well attempt to change a lion’s nature as a Frenchman’s. However, you shall have the passports to-morrow, or I do not know the mayor. He is a very excellent person, but has an over-strong regard for the integrity of his neck.”

“I wish I possessed your secret of living so much at ease amidst such scenes, and exercising so much influence over such men,” said Father Bonneville.

“Mystery, mystery!” said our host with a smile. “That is the whole secret. No one knows what I am going to do next. No one knows why I am going to do it. Whenever there is any great question agitated in regard to which I am forced to take a part, I give a full and complete explanation of my views, in terms which not a man who hears me can comprehend. I use the language of the times, the cant words and pet phrases of the multitude, and generally I go one little step before any of the movements I see coming; for where millions of people are running a race, as we are in France, the man who stops even to buckle his shoe is certain to be knocked down and trampled to death. But now I will show you your sleeping place. You will find the beds good. May you never have worse.”

Our host was as good as his word in all respects. Before we woke in the morning the passports had been procured, containing a very tolerable description of Father Bonneville under the name of Citoyen Jerome Charlier, and of myself under that of Louis Lassi. Our horses were sold to no great disadvantage by the intervention of our entertainer, a little post-chaise bought from the post-master himself, at about five louis more than it was worth, and at about eleven o’clock in the day we set out on the direct road for Paris, in a manner which suited me much better, I confess, than that which we had previously pursued. I have little doubt that the good Father, too, who had not ridden for twenty years, was in the same predicament. I will only dwell upon our farther journey toward the capital so far as to state that it passed easily, and without interruption, which we attributed to the fact of having cut across the country, in such a direction as to be now traveling upon a line of high road totally different from that which led from Paris to the place of our previous residence.

——

THE CAPITAL.

My remembrance of the journey to Paris, and the conversations which took place upon the road, is more perfect than of any other of the events which took place at that time. But it is, perhaps, in some degree a factitious memory; for I have talked about it so frequently since, that I hardly know which are the facts supplied by my own mind, which those related to me by others. I recollect clearly and distinctly, however, our entrance into Paris on a dark and stormy night, our detention at the gates, and the examination of the carriage by lantern-light. I shall not, I think, ever forget the impression produced upon my mind by the long, tortuous streets of that great capital, with the dim lanterns swinging on chains stretched across from house to house, the enormously tall buildings on every side, and the multitude of people who thronged the streets even at that hour, and in that weather. I thought the journey through Paris would never have come to an end, but at length the chaise de poste drove into the court of a second-rate inn, in the Rue des Victoires, not far from the hospital of the Quinze-vingts. Our arrival created no sensation. No active porters, no ready waiters were there to welcome or assist. The house rose dark and gloomy, on the four sides of the court-yard, up to an amazing height in the sky, leaving us, like Truth, in the bottom of a well, and as good Father Bonneville knew not much more of the ways of Paris than I did myself, I do not know what would have become of us if it had not been necessary to pay the postillion. It was too dark in the court to see the money, and as he did not choose to take it upon trust, he said he would go and fetch the concierge and his lantern. Accordingly, he dug out of a den, at the side of the port-cochere, a very curious, antiquated specimen of humanity, with a broad belt over his shoulder, very much like one of those in which the beadles of old French churches used to stick their useless swords. He held the lantern while the money was counted out, and then was kind enough, though somewhat slowly, to lead us up a very dark and narrow stair-case to the first floor of the house, where the hotel in reality began. I never discovered what was done with the ground floor; for there were no shops in it, and it seemed to be left entirely to take care of itself. The mistress of the house—she had a husband, but poor little thing, he never presumed to interfere in any thing—was an enormously tall, and tolerably portly woman, apparently of five or six and thirty years of age, very fresh, good-looking and good-humored. She was a Fleming by birth, and bore evident traces of her origin in her fair hair, blue eyes, and brilliant complexion. She was enchanted to see us, she assured us, would provide for our accommodation as no other people had ever been provided for before, ordered some supper for us immediately, and in the meanwhile, took us to see our rooms, which were a story higher. There was a great, large, gloomy chamber, tesselated with brick well waxed, a bed in an alcove, two small closets on each side of the alcove, and a fire-place big enough to burn a forest. This was for Father Bonneville. My own room was about the size of the alcove and its two closets, and close by the side of the good Father’s chamber. To my young eyes it looked more snug and comfortable than his. But we were each contented it would seem. The bags were brought up, the post-chaise put in the remise, and my little store of clothing being placed in my room, I washed away the dust of travel, brushed the young, unfrosted hair which then curled so thickly over my head, and feeling somewhat solitary in the great world around me, found my way to the chamber of my good preceptor, who was sitting with his feet, one upon each andiron, contemplating with deep interest, as it seemed to me, the blazing logs as they fizzed and crackled on the hearth. Poor man, his thoughts, I fancy, were very far away, and he took no notice of me for a minute or two, while I meditated on the intense smell of roasting coffee and veal ragout which seemed to form the atmosphere of the house.

Father Bonneville had just wakened from his reverie, and was speaking a word or two as the commencement of a conversation, when a waiter came in to announce that our supper was ready, with as discreet and deferential an air as if we had been two aristocrats living under the ancien regime.

“Go down with him, Louis,” said Father Bonneville, “and I will join you directly.”

I followed the waiter down the stairs which I was now happy to find lighted by a single lamp, and entered the salle à manger. How can I describe the dinginess of that strange room? It was long and not very large, with a good-sized table down the middle, and a fire-place with a broad mantlepiece in one corner. Three windows, which were supposed to give it light in the day time, but which, as they looked into the narrow court, never caught one genuine, unadulterated ray of the sun, now looked as black as ink upon the wall, although, sooth to say, that wall itself was of a hue little less sombre. Who was the inventor of painting panneling in oil, I really do not know, but I cannot imagine that any hand but his own could have so decorated that wall, or that a brush of any kind could ever have touched it afterward. I believe that there were nymphs dancing, represented on the spaces between the windows, but they certainly looked like Hottentots dancing in the dark. The furniture of the room was very scanty, consisting of nothing but the long dining-table, and chairs enough to fit it, but over the end of the table nearest the fire-place, was spread a beautifully white damask cloth, on which appeared two candlesticks, two napkins, a number of knives and forks and plates, and no less than eight dishes, from which exhaled a very savory odor, I mechanically walked up toward the fire, when suddenly, to my horror and consternation, a voice addressed me from the mantlepiece, exclaiming, “Petit coquin, petit coquin!” and the next instant there was a whirr, and I felt something brush my cheek and fall upon my shoulder. On examination, it proved to be a bird of a kind which I had never seen before, and which, in this individual instance, I probably should not have recognized, if I had seen a thousand of its species. It was a cockatoo, which had thought fit to moult in the midst of the winter, and had done it so completely, that though warmly enough robed in a covering of fine down, not a feather was to be seen upon its body, except the pen feathers of the wings, those of the tail, and a long yellow crest on the head. I call it yellow, because that is the color it ought to have been, but, to say sooth, its fondness for the chimney-corner had so completely smoked my new friend, that the general hue of its whole body was a dull but most decided gray.

It seemed an amiable and affectionate bird, however, although with its yellowish crest, and unfeathered form, it looked very much like one of those meagre dowagers whom we see at parties with dresses a great deal too much cut down for the satisfaction of the beholders. It continued repeating in a playful and endearing tone, “petit coquin, petit coquin!” as if it imagined the epithet to imply the greatest tenderness. While the words were yet in its beak, however, and before any regular conversation had begun between us, the party was augmented by another gentleman carrying in his hand a round hat with three broad bands, which was generally one of the signs or symbols of a man well provided in official situations.

He was a stout and self-important, but evidently a very keen personage. He was one of those for whom trifles have much importance, not from any peculiar capacity for dealing in details, but because a natural tendency of the mind of man to attach a certain degree of magnitude to all he observes himself had not been properly corrected in his youth. The bird was still rhyming, “petit coquin, petit coquin,” and advancing at once toward me with an air of jovial frankness, he caught me by the arm, saying, “Ah, little rogue, the bird knows you, it seems. Now, you are some young aristocrat, I will warrant.”

Now it so happened, that I made the exact answer which was required under the circumstances. Let it be understood that I had received no instructions whatever; that Father Bonneville had never even touched upon the subject of politics in his own house; that while deploring excesses, and excited and alarmed by the crimes, which he saw going on every day around him, he had never even hinted an opinion upon any of the great questions which agitated the public mind at the time. But in my walks through the town and the country, I had been so much accustomed, for the last twelve months or more, to hear the name of aristocrat applied to any one who wore a better coat than his neighbor, that I gradually learned to look upon that term as implying the basest, meanest, and most pitiful of all things. My cheek flushed, my brow contracted with an expression of anger which could not be assumed, and I replied, sharply, “No, citizen, no! Neither I, or any one I know, are aristocrats. You insult us by calling us so.”

My passion was ridiculous enough; for I had not the slightest idea in the world what the word aristocrat meant. Nevertheless, it had its effect, although that might have been lost for want of witnesses, had not Madame Michaud entered the room at the moment, to see that everything was properly provided for her honored guests.

“There, Monsieur Le Commissaire,” she said, “I think you have got your answer. You do not expect to find aristocrats in my house, I suppose.”

“I have found one,” answered the commissary, nodding his head; “and he will find soon that he is discovered. Shake hands, citizen, if you are really and truly a lover of your country and the rights of man. But mind, you don’t presume to touch my hand if you are only shamming a love of freedom.”

I placed my hand in his boldly, and shook it warmly; for I had as little idea of that in which true freedom consists as most of his patient followers in the political career, who, with very rare exceptions, were devout worshipers of words, with a very indefinite notion, indeed, of things.

He was satisfied, it seemed, and sat down to take a cup of coffee and drink a glass of liqueur with Madame Michaud—without paying for them. Indeed, he seemed upon very amicable terms with the lady, and I strongly suspect that it was good policy in all hostesses of Paris, not to refuse any thing that commissaries of police might think fit to demand.

Shortly after, Father Bonneville made his appearance, and although he answered all civil interrogatories, he played his part so discreetly, that no suspicion seemed to be aroused.

The commissary quitted the room in jovial good-humor, and the rest of the evening passed without any thing remarkable.

About this time, the images which memory presents in her long looking-glass, are somewhat vague, and ill-defined—perhaps I have not had the opportunity of refreshing my remembrance as to the minute details, and many a scene stands out in strong relief from a picture generally dark and obscure. Only one of those scenes will I notice here, before I go on to matters more immediately affecting myself.

There was what is called a table d’hôte at the inn where we stayed—a great accommodation to travelers—which is now very common, though in the time I speak of, it was more customary to lodge in what is called an hôtel garni, and to obtain one’s food from without. One day, I know not whether it was the second or third after our arrival, we were seated at the dinner-table in the hall, when the same commissary of police I have mentioned, entered the room, and slowly looked round the guests. I could see many a changing countenance at the table—some rosy faces which became white, and warm, glowing lips, which partook of on ashy paleness. The commissioner, however, fixed his eyes upon one particular gentleman, a man, perhaps, of fifty-seven or fifty-eight years of age, who had been one of the lightest and gayest of the guests. He saw the peculiar look of the officer, and probably understood its meaning completely; but he staid to finish quietly the joke which hung upon his lips, and then asked with the laugh still ringing around him—

“Mister commissary, is your business with me?”

The commissary slowly nodded his head, and our friend who was sitting next to Father Bonneville on the right, instantly rose, saying with a jocund smile—“I anticipated great things from the second course, but I must resign it, and do so with the self denial of a hermit. Ladies and gentlemen, there are three things greatly to be desired in life: a pleasant hopeful youth; a warm and genial middle life; and a short, unclouded, old age. The two first I have obtained, by the mercy of God—or of the Gods—or of any God that you like, Monsieur Commissaire—the third is very likely to be granted to me likewise. I will therefore only drink one more glass to the good health of all here present, before I drink another draught little less acceptable, and infinitely more tranquilizing.”

Thus saying, he raised a glass of wine already filled, toward his lips, bowed gracefully round the table, drank the wine, and walked out of the room with the commissary of police.

The next day, at noon, we heard he had just been guillotined.

——

OLD ACQUAINTANCES RENEWED.

Why we lingered in Paris I never knew, or have forgotten. It is very probable, there were difficulties in the way to the frontier, which good Father Bonneville feared to encounter—or, perhaps, he was sensible of the approach of severe illness, and feared to undertake the journey in such a state of health. The fatigues of our flight had been too much for the old man, and although he never appeared upon the way half as tired as I was, yet, after our labors were over, while I rallied and became as brisk and active as ever in four-and-twenty hours, he remained languid and feeble, and unwilling to stir out of his room. He would not confine me, however, to the hotel, but suffered me to visit various parts of Paris, where objects worthy of attention were to be seen. I thus acquired a tolerable knowledge of the principal leading thoroughfares of the town, and could find my way from one part of the city to another, with perfect ease.

For some time, I shut my eyes to the fact that my old friend and protector was really ill; but when we had been in Paris about a fortnight, the change which had taken place in his appearance, his pale and haggard face, and the thinness of his always delicate and beautiful hands, awoke me to a sense of his real state.

“I fear you are not well, my Father,” I said, as I sat by his side, while he leaned back in his great chair, with his feet to the fire.

Father Bonneville shook his head mournfully, and I urged him to let me go for a physician.

“I believe you must, Louis,” he answered; “for I do feel very ill, and I would fain recover strength enough at all events, to place you, my son, in safety before I die.”

“There is a physician lives close by,” I said, “I can run for him in a minute.”

“No, no,” cried the good priest, “that will not do. There was a physician here in Paris, whom I knew in days of old—a good and a sincere man, who would not betray us, but on the contrary, would give us aid and advice in other matters, besides those of mere health. Do you know the Place Du Petit Chatelet, Louis?”

I replied, that I knew it well, and Father Bonneville wrote down the name of a physician, and the number of his house, saying in the desponding tone of sickness—

“Very likely he may be dead, and then I know not what we shall do.”

Without any loss of time, I sallied out into the streets of Paris, in search of Dr. L——. It was a fine, clear, cold afternoon, with the snow lying piled up at the sides of the streets, the fountains all frozen, and the chains of the street-lamps covered with glittering frost. The wind was keen and cutting, and few people, especially of the lower orders, were in the street; for though sans culottism may be a very good thing, it is by no means warm, and the worthy rulers of the destinies of France at that moment, had not great-coats enough amongst them to render them indifferent to a north-east wind. I could thus pursue my way rapidly, uninterrupted by the crowds which usually thronged the streets of the French capital, and though doubtless I did not take all the shortest ways, I soon reached the place I was seeking. The houses were tall, dirty, well-smoked, and ever open doors round the whole place, gave entrance to innumerable stair-cases which led up to the dwellings of low advocates, notaries public, physicians, artists, poor men of letters, and all that class who scrape a precarious existence from the faults, the follies, the misfortunes, the miseries of others. But now I had a very puzzling calculation to make. Father Bonneville had written down, after the name of Dr. L——, number five, Place du Petit Chatelet, but not a house was to be seen which had a number on it, and I was obliged to guess at which corner the numeration commenced. I was evidently wrong in my first essay, for no Doctor L—— could I find in the house which I fixed upon; and short and snappish were the answers I got at the various doors where I applied.

That could not be number five, and so I turned to the other side of the square, and began in the opposite direction. As I was counting the houses from the corner, I saw a little girl coming from a street nearly in face of me, with a basket in her hand, and poorly dressed. She turned suddenly into one of the door-ways, and I sprang after her, running as fast as possible and nearly overturning an old woman, who was roasting chestnuts in a tin kettle—for which I had my benediction. Little cared I, however; for my heart beat wildly, and the only thing I feared at that moment, was, that I should lose sight of that little girl with the basket; for I had taken it into my head at once that she was Mariette de Salins. She had gone up the stairs, however, when I reached the door, and without pausing for an instant I ran up after her, just in time to see her enter an apartment on the second floor, the door of which was closing as I approached. I knocked sharply, without a moment’s consideration, when an elderly man, with thin and powdered white hair, and a pleasant, though grave expression of countenance, presented himself, asking who I wanted.

A moment’s consideration had shown me that it might be dangerous to mention the name of Mariette; nor must it be supposed that such discretion was at all marvelous in a boy of my age at that time; for those were days of constant peril, when every act was to be thought of, every word weighed, and the habit of caution and reserve was inculcated as a duty upon even mere children. On the spur of the occasion, then, I replied that I was seeking Dr. L——, still keeping my eyes fixed upon a door which stood ajar heading into a room beyond.

“My name is Doctor L——,” replied the old man. “What is it you want with me, my son? And why are you looking so earnestly in there?”

“I want you to come and see a gentleman who is sick,” I replied, “in the Hotel de Clermont, close by the Quinze-vingts.”

“Is he very ill?” asked the doctor. “What is his name?”

But before I could answer either of his questions the inner door I have mentioned was drawn back, the beautiful little face peeped out, and in a moment after Mariette was in my arms.

“I thought it was you, dear Mariette,” I cried, kissing her tenderly, while she seemed never tired of hugging me. “Where is your mother? How is she?”

“Hush, hush!” said the old doctor, closing the outer door; “no questions or answers of any kind here, except medical ones. Mariette knows well that she must be silent, and answer no inquiries—and so,” he continued, after having thus stopped all explanations between us, “I suppose I am to conclude, my son, that this story of the sick man is a fiction, and that your object was to catch your little playfellow here.”

“No indeed,” I replied, with some indignation, “I have not been taught to speak falsehoods, sir. The gentleman I mentioned, does wish to see you, and is very ill. His name you will know when you see him; for you have met before—not that I mean to say I did not want to see Mariette, and indeed you must let her tell me where I can find her; for it is a long, long time since I have seen her.”

“That cannot be,” said the doctor, gravely; “she must learn to keep counsel—are you of the same town, then?”

“Oh, she lived with me for a long time,” I replied; “and the gentleman whom I want you to come and see is the same who was so kind to her there.”

“I should like to see him very much,” said Mariette, looking down.

“Well, well, I will go to him,” said the doctor, gravely, “and if it be proper that you two children should meet again, I will bring it about. Now you, Mariette, go in and empty your basket as usual. You, my son, go back to your friend, and say I will be with him in an hour.”

Thus saying, he led me gently by the arm to the door and put me out, and I hastened back with all my intelligence to Father Bonneville, asking him if it were not strange that I should find Mariette just at the house of Doctor L——.

“Perhaps not,” replied the good priest, with a faint smile. “The doctor is a native of our own province, and known to many of the good and the wise there.”

He said no more upon the subject, and made no inquiries, but remained somewhat listlessly in his chair gazing into the fire, till at length came a gentle knock at the door, and the physician entered, dressed with somewhat more care than he had been an hour before, with a three-cornered hat on his head, and a gold-headed cane in his hand. He approached Father Bonneville with an unconscious air, and without the slightest sign of recognition, till the old priest held out his hand to him, saying—“Ah, my friend, do you not remember me? You have not changed so much as I have, it would seem.”

Doctor L—— started back; for the sweet, silvery tones of the voice seemed to wake up memory, and he exclaimed—“Is it possible? my good friend, Bonneville!—Nay, nay. You are too much changed for time to have done it all. You must be really ill. Leave us, my young friend, I doubt not we shall soon set all this to rights.”

I retreated into my little room where it was cold enough, for there was no fire-place, and waited there shivering very tolerably for nearly an hour, while Dr. L—— and the good priest remained in consultation. At the end of that time Dr. L—— came and called me back, and when I re-entered Father Bonneville’s room, held me by the arm at a little distance from him, gazing very earnestly in my face, and seeming to scrutinize every line.

“Yes,” he said at length, turning to my old friend; “yes, he is very like him—Poor boy, what a fate!—Well, my young friend,” he said, suddenly changing the subject. “We must get good Citizen Charlier here, to his bed as soon as possible. He will be well soon, and would have been well by this time if he had sent for me before. But we must try and make up for lost time. I will not send him to the apothecary’s,” he said, “for drugs, for we are never sure of them at those places—one man acknowledged the other day that during twenty years he had never sold one genuine ounce of rhubarb. I have two other visits to pay; but let him come to my house in an hour and a half, and I will send what will do you good. Perhaps I may see you again to-night.”

“Shall I find Mariette with you?” I asked, looking up in the doctor’s face.

The good man shook his head, and then turning to Father Bonneville, said with a smile—“I think these two children are in love with each other; but little Mariette is so discreet that she would not even tell me who he was or who you were. She has had bitter lessons of caution for one so young—perhaps you may sometimes see her at my house, my son; but you must imitate her discretion, and neither ask any questions, nor answer them if put to you by strangers.”

“Oh, Louis is growing very discreet,” said Father Bonneville; “for we have had warnings enough since we have been in this house to prevent us from taking the bridle off our tongues for a moment—fare you well, my good friend, I shall be glad to see you again to-night if you can contrive to come; but yet I do not think it is needful for my health that you should take such trouble.”

“We will see, we will see,” replied the doctor, and shaking him by the hand he left the room.

The good Father, then, with my assistance, undressed and went to bed, where, to say sooth, he would have been much better three or four days before; and at the appointed hour I went for the medicines which had been promised, but saw no one except an old female servant, who gave me two bottles addressed to Citizen Charlier.

As I returned, I met a furious mob coming up the streets with a bloody head upon a pike, and perhaps I was in some peril, though I was not aware of it at the time. My dress, though very plain, was neat and whole, and I was seized as I attempted to pass through the mob, by a gaunt, fierce-looking man, with hardly one untattered piece of clothing on his back. He called me a cursed little aristocrat, and made the man who bore the head upon the pike, lower the bloody witness of their inhuman deeds to make me kiss it. They brought it to the level of my head, and thrust its dark, contorted features into my face. But I stoutly refused to kiss it, saying I was not an aristocrat; and why should I kiss a head that they told me had belonged to one.

“If you can make me out an aristocrat,” I exclaimed, “I will kiss it.”

“What have you got here in your hand?” cried the sans-culotte, snatching the bottles from me.

“Only medicines for a sick man,” I replied.

He tore off the paper, however, opened one of the bottles and put it to his mouth, then spat upon the ground with a blasphemous oath, exclaiming—“He is only a garçon apothecaire. Let him pass, let him pass! He will kill as many sacre aristocrats with his cursed drugs as we can with the guillotine. Let the imp pass. His is a trade that should be encouraged.”

Thus saying, he marched on, and his fierce and malignant companions followed. I cannot say that I was in reality at all frightened. Every thing had passed so quickly that I had not had time to become alarmed; but I felt bewildered, and paused for a moment to gather my senses together after the mob had passed into the Place du Petit Chatelet which was close at hand. I was still standing there when I heard a voice saying, “Louis, Louis.”

I looked round, but could see nobody, and the only place from which the sound could proceed, appeared to be one of those open doors so common in Paris at the time, with a dark passage beyond it.

“Louis, Louis,” said the voice again; “come in here, I want to speak to you.”

It was not the tongue of Mariette certainly; for her sweet, child-like tones I should have known any where; and I hesitated whether I should go in or not. I resolved not to seem cowardly, however, and walked into the passage. I could then see faintly, a tall, and as it appeared to me, graceful figure move on before me, and I followed into a little room quite at the back of the house, to which the light was admitted from a little court behind. There the figure turned as I entered, and I beheld Madame de Salins.

The room itself presented a painful picture of poverty. It could not have been above ten feet square, and in one corner, without curtains, or any shelter from the wind, was the bed of Madame de Salins herself, and close by it a little bed for her daughter. The latter, indeed, was fenced round with a shawl hung upon two chairs, which only left one in the room vacant. A table, a broken looking-glass, a few cups and glasses, with a coffee-pot standing by the fire, seemed to form all the other furniture of the chamber. I had very little time to look round me; for Madame de Salins at once began to inquire after the health of Father Bonneville.

“I saw you from a front window,” she said, as soon as I had answered her first questions, “and feared that those men would maltreat you; for they have the hearts of tigers, and spare no one.”

A sudden fear seized me, lest Mariette should be even then coming from the house of good Doctor L——, and encounter the ruffians whom I had just escaped.

“Is Mariette at the Place du Chatelet?” I asked, eagerly. “Let me go and see that no harm happens to her.”

“No, no,” replied Madame de Salins. “She is here with the old lady in the front room, who lets us sometimes sit with her, as a relief from this dark, dismal hole. You are a good, brave boy, however, Louis, and for every kind and generous act you do, depend upon it you will have your reward. Mariette, thank God, is quite safe, and she has learnt whenever she sees a crowd to avoid it. But tell me more about Father Bonneville. Does Doctor L—— think he is in danger?”

I was not able to give her any satisfactory answer, for I really did not know what was the physician’s opinion of my good preceptor’s case.

“Tell him,” said Madame de Salins, “that I will come to see him if I can do so secretly; but I am under surveillance, and all my movements, I fear, will be watched till some new change takes place in this ever-shifting government. I have several things to say to him, and could wish to see him much.”

She spoke in an anxious and thoughtful tone, and doubtless had many matters of deep and painful importance pressing upon her mind at the moment. Boy-like, however, my attention was directed principally to the more obvious inconveniencies which she suffered, and I said, “I am afraid you must be very badly off here, madame.”

The lady smiled. “Badly enough, my dear boy,” she replied. “But yet we might be very much worse—nay, we have been much worse in mind, if not in body. But I will not keep you now. Tell Monsieur de Bonneville what I have said, and add that if he has any thing to reply, he can communicate it to me through Doctor L——.”

When I reached the inn, my first task was to give good Father Bonneville the medicine prescribed for him, and then to tell him of my interview with Madame de Salins. He seemed greatly interested, and repeated once or twice, “Poor thing! poor thing! I hope she will be successful; but I can’t help her—I can do nothing to help her. I know too little to give her advice, and have no power to give her assistance.”

I did not press the subject upon him, nor make any inquiries, but sat for a long time by his bed-side reading to him both in Latin and in French. English was by this time quite forbidden between us, and we had no English books.

In the evening, toward nine o’clock, Doctor L—— came again, and felt his patient’s pulse with a cheerful air.

“The good woman of the house,” he said, “waylaid me on the stairs, to ask if you were likely to die, my good friend, and to suggest that in that case it would be as well to send you to the hospital. I have spared you that journey, however, by assuring her that in a week or ten days you will be well enough to go to the opera, if by that time they have left any singers with their heads on. They guillotined poor Benoit this morning. I ventured to suggest that they would not get such another tenor in a hurry; and so they made him sing before they put him into the cart, to try, I suppose, how they liked it. Whether he sang too well or too ill to please them, I don’t know, but they drove him off to the guillotine, while I was seeing another prisoner.”

Father Bonneville gave a shudder; but sickness is always more or less selfish, and though naturally one of the most unselfish men in the world, his thoughts speedily reverted to himself. “I trust,” he said, “that there will be no necessity for sending me to the hospital. Did you quite satisfy the good woman?”

“Quite,” replied Doctor L——. “I told her that I would be answerable for your not giving occasion to a funeral from her house, which is what all these good aubergiste fear. I told her, moreover, that when your daughter and your granddaughter arrived from the country, you would very speedily rally.”

“My daughter,” said Father Bonneville, with a faint smile. “I have no daughter but spiritual daughters, my friend.”

“Perhaps we may find you one for the occasion,” said Doctor L——, laughing. “But I will tell you more about it to-morrow; for although you must be, of course, consulted whether you will have a child or not, yet in this case, out of the ordinary course of nature, the child must first be asked whether she likes to be born. In short, I have a scheme in my head, my good friend; but it requires maturing, and the pivot upon which it all turns is your rapid recovery. So take care of yourself; cast care from your mind for the present, and you will speedily be both well and strong again.”

Thus saying, he left him, and for two or three days no event of any importance occurred, except the gradual improvement of Father Bonneville, under the kind and zealous treatment of the good physician.

——

A PERIOD OF CHANGES.

At the period I speak of there were changes in Paris every day. True, one horror was only succeeded by another, and one fierce tyranny but made place for a tyranny more fierce and barbarous. The condemnation of the king, and his death, which followed shortly after, occupied for a time all thoughts, and filled many a bosom which had previously felt the strongest, nay, even the wildest aspirations for liberty, with gloom, and doubt, and dread. The moment, however, the head of the good king fell upon the scaffold the death-struggle began between the Mountain and the Gironde, and in the many heaves and throes of the contending factions, many persons found opportunity to escape from perils which had previously surrounded them. Although a mere boy at the time, I was quite familiar with the daily history of these events; for they were in every body’s mouth, and I might even greatly swell this little memoir, by narrating minutely the various scenes, some terrible, some ludicrous, which I myself beheld. The most terrible was the death of the king, of which, jammed in by the multitude, without a possibility of escape, I was myself present, and within a few yards of the instrument of death. But it is my object to pass as lightly as possible over these young recollections, though many of them were too deeply graven on memory ever to be effaced. I shall never forget, as long as I live, the face of a tall, gaunt man, who was close to me at the moment when the king attempted to speak to the people, and the drums were ordered to beat, to drown the voice of the royal martyr. Rage and indignation and shame were written in every line, and I heard him mutter between his teeth, “Oh, were there but an hundred men in Paris true to France and to themselves!”

My own belief is, that a very few acting at that moment in concert, and fearless of their own safety, might not only have saved the effusion of the king’s blood, but might have given a different direction to the revolution, and saved the lives of thousands. However that might be, I went away from the scene with horror, and shut myself up for the rest of the day with good Father Bonneville, who was now able to rise. The physician saw him twice during the day, and once I was sent out of the room for a short time. Doctor L—— spoke jokingly more than once in my presence, of the good priest’s daughter and granddaughter, and though I did not see the point of the jest, I imagined it was one way he had of amusing himself.

Father Bonneville, however, seemed to me to humor him strangely, answering him in the same strain, and inquiring when he thought his daughter would arrive.

“I really cannot tell,” replied the physician. “But, of course, you will have a letter from her before she comes.”

Three days afterward a letter was brought from the post-office, and Father Bonneville examined the seal with a smile. It had not been considered inviolable, that was clear; for either at the post-office or in the hotel, they had thought fit to open the letter without even taking the decent precaution of resealing it again. The contents of the epistle I saw, and they certainly puzzled me a good deal when first Father Bonneville gave the paper into my hand.

The letter began, “My dear Father,” and went on in the usual strain of a child writing to a parent, telling him how much grieved she was to hear that he had been sick in Paris, expressing fears that he had over-fatigued himself in seeking for news of her dear husband, and informing him that she would soon be in Paris herself, with her little girl, to pursue the inquiry. The letter throughout was filled with a great number of the cant expressions of republicanism, then common, and it ended with declaring that if the writer’s dear husband was dead, she could console herself with the thought that he had died in defense of his country, though she could not bear the idea that he might be lingering ill of his wounds without any affectionate hands to tend him. The letter was addressed to “Citizen Jerome Charlier,” was dated from a provincial town in Poitou, and was signed “Clarisse Bonfin.”

Father Bonneville smiled as he marked the expression of my face in reading the letter; and when I had done, he asked me if I knew who these relations of his were. I replied in the negative, and he answered, nodding his head, “Some whom you know very well; but you must remember, Louis, you are only to know them as my daughter and granddaughter, and as your own aunt and cousin. Call the lady ‘Aunt Clarisse,’ or ‘Aunt Bonfin,’ and the little girl, ‘Mariette Bonfin.’ ”

The last words threw a ray of light upon the whole affair—and I was delighted. There is nothing, I believe, that children love so much as a little mystery, especially boys of thirteen or fourteen; but I had the additional satisfaction of having to play a part in the drama—a task always charming to a child brought up in France. I acted my character rather well, I flatter myself; and when Father Bonneville, well knowing that the letter had been read before it reached him, sent me to talk to our good hostess about rooms for our expected relations, I gave the buxom dame quite enough of Aunt Bonfin and Cousin Mariette, and described them both so accurately, that she could have no doubt of my personal acquaintance with these supposed connections. She thought it best, however, to deal with Citizen Charlier himself in regard to the apartments to be engaged, and visited him in his room for that purpose.

The old gentleman was very taciturn, and seemed to think it a part of his character to drive a hard bargain.

“His daughter,” he said, “was not rich: she had a great deal of hard-work and traveling before her to find out what had become of her husband, who had been wounded if not killed at Jenappes, and she could not afford to throw her money away in inns.” There was a good deal of skirmishing on these points, and a good deal of laughter and jest upon the part of our hostess, who seemed as well contented, and as comfortable as if there were no such thing as a guillotine in the world, though her table d’hôte rather suffered from time to time, in consequence of her guests being deprived of the organs of mastication amongst others. The whole, however, was settled at length, and two days afterward, I was informed that Madame Bonfin had arrived with her daughter in a little post-chaise.

The good priest was not yet well enough to quit his room, but I ran down the dingy stair-case into the court-yard, and as I expected, found Madame de Salins and Mariette just getting out of a dirty little vehicle, with a wooden apron, which bore the name of a cabriolet. Madame de Salins embraced me kindly, and I did not forget to call her Aunt Clarisse, while Mariette literally sprang into my arms, and I thought would have smothered me with caresses. If there had been any doubts previously in the minds of the people of the inn, they were all dissipated by the tenderness of this meeting, and Madame de Salins and her daughter followed me up stairs to the room of good Father Bonneville. One of the waiters accompanied us, but there the meeting was conducted as naturally as it had been below, and the words, “my daughter” and “my father,” passed habitually between the good priest and the high-born lady without any pause or hesitation.

Her own apartments were next shown to Madame de Salins, and her baggage was brought up from below, when I remarked that every thing had been carefully marked with the initials C. B., to signify Clarisse Bonfin.

Oh what actors every body in Paris became at that period! Some were so by nature; for very nearly one half of the world is always acting a part. Others did it because it was the tone of the day; and these formed the heroic or tragic band, who did every thing with Roman dignity and firmness, and carried the farce of representation into the very last act of the tragedy. Others were driven to act parts which did not belong to them, by the perils or necessities of their situation; and amongst these, was Madame de Salins, who, dressed somewhat in the mode paysanne, was out frequently, went boldly to police offices, and to military authorities, inquiring diligently after her husband, John Bonfin, and demanded intelligence regarding the state and condition of a man who had never existed. A change in the direction of civic affairs, and the decapitation of two or three gentlemen, who had watched her diligently while in her lodging near the Place du Petit Chatelet, had now set her comparatively free, and she used her powers of persuasion, and her liberty, so well, that she obtained letters of recommendation to the medical officers of the armies of Dumouriez and Kellerman, with a satisfactory pass for herself, and her father, with two children. Upon what pretence she made her traveling party so large, I do not know; but she certainly carried her point. She was out more than once at night, too, and I remarked that Mariette was now sent daily to the house of Doctor L——, to bring the bottles of medicine which were still required by Father Bonneville—a task, which I always previously fulfilled.

As the distance was considerable, and the way somewhat intricate, I was permitted to accompany and guide my little companion, as far as the street leading into the Place du Chatelet, but was directed to go no farther, and wait there for her return. I had learned by this time to ask no questions, but I could not help thinking that Mariette often stayed a long time.

I do not know that I was of a very observing disposition, or inclined to be particularly censorious, but one thing I remarked which surprised me a good deal, and I recollect, quite well, that it gave me uncomfortable feelings. In my first interview with Madame de Salins, she had appeared overwhelmed with grief and terror, her clothes stained with her husband’s blood, and a look of wild, almost frantic horror in her face, which was never to be forgotten. Now, however, she had not only completely recovered her composure, but was generally cheerful, and sometimes even gay. Clouds of anxiety, indeed, would occasionally float over her beautiful brow, and she would fall into deep fits of thought; but it often seemed to me very strange that she should have so soon and so completely forgotten the husband, for whom she had seemed to mourn so sincerely. Indeed, there is nothing which so shocks—I might say, so terrifies, the earnest heart of youth, as to perceive how transient are those feelings of which to them life is made up, in the bosoms of persons older, of more experience, and more world-hardened than themselves. I loved Mariette, however, and Mariette loved me, and that was a feeling which I then fondly fancied could never decay or alter.

At length, one day, Father Bonneville declared himself strong enough to go out, and as there was a slight lull at the time in the political storm, we went to see—that is he and I—some places of public interest. I recollect an elderly gentleman coming up and joining in conversation with us, in a very mild and placable tone. The good Father was very much upon his guard, however, and in answer to some questions, said he had been very ill since he had come to Paris, and had enjoyed no opportunity of seeing the sights of the capital till the time of his stay was nearly expired. Whether the old gentleman considered us as very stupid or not I do not know, but he soon left us, and we found afterward that he was one of those worthy public denunciators, who at that time brought so many heads under the axe of the guillotine. He lived to a good old age, and I saw him afterward in London, playing at cards with great devotion, and furnished with a handsome diamond snuff-box.

This little incident, which I have only mentioned as characteristic of the times, had no result that I know of upon our fate. Three days afterward, the two post-chaises were got in order, horses were brought from the post-house, and to my infinite satisfaction we all rolled away together out of that grim city of Paris, which will ever remain associated in my mind with memories of blood and crime. It was a fine day—one of those days in February which come as if to bid us prepare for summer, long ere summer is near, and which I think are more beautiful and striking in France, than in any other country I know. The sunshine lay softly upon the face of the country, and on the top of a tall, bare tree, near the post-house, where we first stopped to change horses, a thrush was pouring forth its evening song, and making the air thrill with melody. I got out of our own little post-chaise to call Mariette’s attention to the bird, but when I looked into their cabriolet, to my surprise I saw that Madame de Salins was weeping bitterly. The post-master approached and looked in likewise; but she had great presence of mind, and instantly beckoning the man up, she asked him some questions regarding the movements of the armies, and whether he could give her any news of Citizen Bonfin, who commanded a company in Davoust’s volunteers. The man, who seemed to compassionate her greatly, replied that he could not, and asked if she had any apprehensions regarding him. She answered that the last she had heard of her husband, was, that he had been very severely wounded, but that careful nursing might yet save his life. The good post-master was not a Parisian, nor a litterateur, and so without affecting atheism, he prayed God to bless her endeavors, and we rolled on upon our way.

We went on for two or three hours after dark, and lodged as we found it expedient, at a post-house some little distance from Clermont. There, however, our landlord, the post-master, proposed a change in our arrangements, which was a very agreeable one to me. He laughed at four persons of one family traveling in two post-chaises, assured us that it would be much more convenient for us to go in a larger vehicle, having one to dispose of which would exactly suit us, and that we should save a good deal of money by the number of post-horses. His arguments seemed quite conclusive both to Father Bonneville and Madame de Salins, although he demanded two hundred livres, and our two carriages, for the one he intended to supply, which was not worth two hundred livres in itself. I was surprised at their acquiescence; for I did not believe they had much money to spare; but I rather imagine that they were afraid to oppose any thing he thought fit to suggest, and that if he had known their exact situation, he might have taxed them still more largely. By one contrivance or another, however, the papers of the family had been put into such good order, that no suspicion seems to have been excited any where. Perhaps, indeed, we were too insignificant to attract much attention, and at the end of a four days’ journey, we found ourselves rapidly approaching the frontiers of France, somewhat to the right of our then victorious army. This was, perhaps, the most dangerous point of our whole expedition, and at a spot where two hours more would have placed us in security beyond the limits of France, we paused for the night, in order to consider carefully the next step, lest we should lose the fruit of all our exertions at the very moment that it seemed within our grasp.

——

A BOY’S MANŒUVRE.

It was decided to drive right toward the frontier, beyond which the advance of the French army has already been considerable. All the country, almost to the banks of the Rhine was virtually in the hands of France; but no general system of administration had been thought of. The people were foreign, monarchical and anti-Gallican, and were ready enough to give every assistance to fugitives from a system which they hated and condemned.

This decision was taken, like all desperate ones, upon the calculation, right or wrong, of the chances. I was in the room when all points were discussed between Father Bonneville and Madame de Salins. Mariette lay sleeping in a corner of her mother’s bed, looking like a cherub; but I, more anxious perhaps, and more alive to the real perils of our situation than any one of my age could have been, not disciplined by the scenes which I had gone through during the last two months, was still up, and listening eagerly for every word. The order was given for the post-horses to be put to, the next morning, and as was necessary, the route was stated.

The post-master showed some little hesitation, saying that the road we proposed to go was directly that to the head-quarters of the army, and that we were none of us military people.

“But I am the wife of a soldier,” replied Madame de Salins, at once, and with a tone of dignity, “and these letters are for the surgeons-general of that army, to whom I must deliver them.”

She laid her hand upon the packet of letters which she possessed, as she spoke, and the post-master replied in a more deferential tone—“Very well, citoyenne, I dare say it is all right, and I can send you to the frontier; but whether you can get horses beyond or not, I can’t tell. Mind, I am not responsible beyond the frontier.”

The next morning at the hour appointed the horses were put to the carriage. They were three in number—we had previously had four—and they were harnessed, as was very common then in France, and is now, abreast. The postillion, instead of getting into his great jack-boots, as I had always previously seen, got upon the front seat of the carriage, gathered up the reins, and with the crack of a long whip set out toward the frontier. He was a sullen-looking, dull, uncommunicative person of that peculiar race found in the neighborhood of Liege, and called Walloons; and I, who was sitting with my shoulder close to his, though with my back toward him, and with nothing to intercept our communication—for the carriage was open in front—endeavored in vain to make him speak a word or two, addressing him frequently but obtaining no reply.

At first I supposed that he could speak no French, and at last gave up the undertaking. But I soon found that he could speak French enough when it suited his purpose.

We drove along for about seven miles without meeting a single human being, and seeing very few cultivated fields; for as frontier districts generally are, the land was left nearly untended, nobody caring much to plant harvests that they were never sure of reaping.

We at length came to a rude stone pillar, upon as bleak and desolate a spot as I ever remember to have seen. The ground was elevated, but sloped gently down to the neighboring country both before and behind us. At least three miles of desolate marsh, which retained its moisture, heaven knows how, swept around us on every side, and the only object which denoted human habitation was the outline of a village, with some trees, seen at the distance of some four or five miles on the plain which lay a little below us in advance. When we reached the rude sort of obelisk I have mentioned, the driver drew in his reins, and the horses stopped to breathe, as I supposed, after climbing the hill: but the next moment the man got down from the front seat, and approaching the side at which Father Bonneville sat, demanded his drink-money.

“I will give it you when we reach the next post-house,” said Father Bonneville.

“This is the only post-house I shall take you to,” replied the man sullenly, but in very good French, “I am not bound to go an inch beyond the line.”

The good priest remonstrated mildly, but the postillion answered with great insolence, threatening to take out the horses and leave us there.

Father Bonneville answered without the slightest heat, that he must do so if he pleased; that we were at his mercy; but that he was bound, if possible to take us to the next post-house.

Seeing that this menace had produced no effect upon the quiet and gentle spirit of the good old man, the postillion now determined to try another manœuvre, and grumbled forth that he knew very well we were aristocrats, seeking to fly from the country, and that therefore, like a good citizen, he should turn his horses round, drive us back, and denounce us at the municipality.

I had listened anxiously to the conversation, with a heart beating with the fear of being stopped, and indignation at the man’s conduct. At length a sudden thought struck me—what suggested it I do not know—nor how it arose, nor whether indeed thought had any thing to do with it, though I have called it a thought. It was more an impulse—an instinct—a sudden determination taken without reason, which made me clamber with the activity of a monkey over the back of the seat on which I was sitting, and snatch up the reins and the whip which the postillion had laid down upon the foot-board. I was determined to be out of France at all events, whoever staid behind; and I cut the horses on either flank without waiting to give notice or ask permission. I had once or twice driven a cart, loaded with flour, from the mill by the banks of the stream, up to Father Bonneville’s house and back again. I had not the slightest fear in the world; Father Bonneville cried, “Stop, stop!” but I drove on.

Madame de Salins gave a timid cry of surprise and fear, but I drove on. The postillion ran shouting and blaspheming after the carriage and tried to catch the reins; but I gave him a tremendous cut over the face with the whip, and drove on.

I know not what possessed me; but I seemed as if I was suddenly set free—free from the oppressive shackles of everlasting fear, and forethought and anxiety. The frontier of France was behind me. I was in a land where there were no guillotines—no spies, as I thought—no denouncers—no sans-culottes with bloody heads upon their pikes. I was free—to act, and to think, and to speak, and to come, and to go, as I liked. The cold, leaden, heavy spell of terror which had hung upon me was broke the moment I passed that frontier line, and the first use I made of my disenchantment was to drive the horses down that hill like a madman. Father Bonneville held tight on by the side of the carriage. Madame de Salins caught up Mariette, and clasped her tightly in her arms; but still I drove on without trepidation or pause; not that I disregarded the commands of my good preceptor: not that I was insensible to the alarm of Madame de Salins; but a spirit was upon me that I could not resist. I had no fear, and therefore I saw not why they should have any. The course I was pursuing seemed to my young notions to offer the only chance of safety, and therefore I thought they ought to rejoice as well as myself; and on I went, making the dry dust of a March day fly up into clouds along our course, and leaving the unhappy postillion, cursing and swearing, far, far behind us.

Happily for me, the horses were docile, and had been long accustomed to run between the two post-houses. If they had had a will of their own, and that will had been contrary to mine, I am very much afraid the majority of heads and legs would have carried the question; but they comprehended the object of which I aimed, and though unaccustomed to the hand that drove them, yielded readily to its direction—which was lucky—for about half-way down the hill there was an enormous stone in the middle of the road, which would have inevitably sent us rolling down into the middle of the valley if either of the off wheels had come in contact with it. The third horse puzzled me a little; but it did not matter. They had but one way to go, and we got to the bottom of the hill without accident.

“Stop them, stop them, Louis,” cried Father Bonneville, when all danger was in reality passed.

“I cannot just yet, Father,” I replied, tugging a little at the reins, “but they will go slower in a moment themselves;” and for nearly a mile we went on at a full gallop. Then the good beasts fell easily into a canter, with the exception of one, who shook his head and tugged at the rein when I attempted to bring him in, but soon yielded to the influence of example, and was reduced to a trot as speedily as the other two.

When our pace was brought to a speed of about eight miles an hour, I looked round joyously into the carriage, saying—“We have left that rogue far behind.”

“Louis, Louis, you should not have done this!” exclaimed Father Bonneville, shaking his head.

But Madame do Salins put her hand on his arm, saying, “He has saved us, Father. Do not—do not check such decision and presence of mind. Remember he is to be a man, and such qualities will be needful to him.”

I was very proud of her praise: got the horses easily into a quiet, ordinary pace, and drove directly into the village which we had seen from above, and where, as I had expected, the post-house was to be found.

The horses stopped of their own accord at the door, and we soon had two or three people round us. Thanks to Father Bonneville’s peculiar skill in acquiring languages, the people who seemed good and kindly disposed, were soon made acquainted with as much of our story as was necessary to tell. They entered into our cause warmly; but the post-master—or rather the post-mistress’s son—a little in awe of the French army, some thirty or forty miles distant, strongly advised that we should proceed without delay, lest our French postillion should come up, and embarrass the authorities by demanding our apprehension.

The advice was very palatable to us all; the French horses were unharnessed in a few minutes; four fresh ones—somewhat fat and slow, indeed—were attached to the carriage; and Father Bonneville conscientiously deposited with the post-master the “pour boire,” or drink-money, for our abandoned postillion, with a couple of livres additional for the long walk he had to take.

It mattered little now whether we went fast or slow; for we were in a hospitable country, and amongst friendly people, and ere nightfall we were many miles beyond pursuit.

[To be continued.

MADELINE.

A LEGEND OF THE MOHAWK.[^[3]]

———

BY MRS. MARY O. HORSFORD.

———

Where the waters of the Mohawk

Through a quiet valley glide,

From the brown church to her dwelling

She that morning passed a bride;

In the mild light of October

Beautiful the forest stood,

As the Temple on Mount Zion

When God filled its solitude.

Very quietly the red leaves

On the languid zephyr’s breath,

Fluttered to the mossy hillocks

Where their sisters slept in death:

And the white mist of the autumn

Hung o’er mountain-top and dale,

Soft and filmy as the foldings

Of the passing bridal veil.

From the field of Saratoga,

At the last night’s eventide,

Rode the groom—a gallant soldier

Flushed with victory and pride;

Seeking as a priceless guerdon

From the dark-eyed Madeline

Leave to lead her to the altar

When the morrow’s sun should shine.

All the children of the village,

Decked with garlands white and red,

All the young men and the maidens

Had been up to see her wed;

And the aged people, seated

In the doorways, ’neath the vine,

Thought of their own youth, and blessed her

As she left the house divine.

Pale she was, but very lovely,

With a brow so calm and fair,

When she passed the benediction

Seemed still falling on the air.

Strangers whispered they had never

Seen who could with her compare,

And the maidens looked with envy

On her wealth of raven hair.

In the glen beside the river,

In the shadow of the wood,

With wide open doors for welcome,

Gambrel-roofed the cottage stood,

Where the festal board was waiting,

For the bridal guests prepared,

Laden with a feast, the humblest

In the little village shared.

Every hour was winged with gladness,

Whilst the sun went down the west,

Till the chiming of the church bell

Told to all the hour for rest:

Then the merry guests departed—

Some a camp’s rude couch to bide;

Some to bright homes—each invoking

Blessings on the gentle bride.

Tranquilly the morning sunbeam

Over field and hamlet stole,

Wove a glory round each red leaf,

And effaced the frost-king’s scroll.

Eyes responded to its greeting

As a lake’s still waters shine,

Young hearts bounded—and a gay group

Sought the home of Madeline.

Bird-like voices ’neath the casement

Chanted through the fragrant air

A sweet orison for wakening—

Half thanksgiving and half prayer.

But no white hand raised the curtain

From the vine-clad panes before;

No light form with buoyant footstep

Hastened to fling wide the door.

All was silent in the dwelling—

All so silent a chill fear

Of some unseen ill crept slowly

Through the gay group waiting near.

Moments seemed as hours in passing,

Till the mild-eyed man drew nigh,

Who had blessed the blushing orphan

Ere the yester sun was high.

He, with glance of dark foreboding,

Passed the threshold of the door;

Paused not where a crimson torrent

Curdled on the oaken floor:

But sought out the bridal-chamber—

God in Heaven! could it be

Madeline who knelt before him

In that trance of agony?

Cold, inanimate beside her,

By the ruthless Cow-boys slain

In the night-time whilst defenseless,

He—the brave—she loved was lain.

O’er her snowy dress were scattered

Stains of deep and fearful dye,

And the soul’s glance beamed no longer

From her tearless, vacant eye.

Round her slight form hung the tresses

Braided oft with pride and care,

Silvered by that night of madness

With its anguish and despair.

She lived on to see the roses

Of another summer wane,

But the light of reason never

Shone in her sweet eyes again.

Once, where blue and sparkling waters

Through a verdant forest run,

And the green boughs kiss the current,

Wandered I at set of sun.

Twilight, as a silver shadow,

O’er the softened landscape lay,

When amid a rambling village

Paused I in my wandering way:

Plain and gray the church before me

In the quiet grave-yard stood,

And the woodman’s axe resounded

Faintly from the neighboring wood.

Through the low, half-open wicket,

Slightly worn, a pathway led—

Silently I paced its windings,

Till I stood among the dead.

Passing by the grave memorials

Of departed worth and fame,

Long I paused before a record

That no pomp of words could claim.

Simple was the slab, and lowly,

Shaded by a jessamine,

And the single name recorded,

Plainly writ, was “Madeline.”

But beneath it, through the clusters

Of the jessamine, I read

“Spes,” engraved in bolder letters—

This was all the marble said.

MOORISH MEMORIES.

(SUGGESTED BY A TILE FROM THE ALHAMBRA—THE GIFT OF THOMAS H. HYATT, ESQ., LATE CONSUL-GENERAL TO THE BARBARY STATES.)

———

BY WILLIAM H. C. HOSMER.

———

An hour of precious romance I owe, my friend, to thee,

And on the wings of Fancy my spirit crossed the sea;

The same transporting magic did to thy gift belong

That sparkled in Aladdin’s Lamp, old theme of Eastern song!

An Andalusian summer clad earth in brightest guise—

Gave dark green to the foliage, deep azure to the skies,

And sternly mountain-barriers up reared their crests of snow,

While palace-spire and minaret flashed at their feet below.

Approached by winding avenues, Grenada lay in sight—

Gay pleasure-grounds and gardens basked in the dazzling light;

To groves of palm and cypress flocked birds of plumage rare,

And happy genii were afloat upon enchanted air.

Throned on a height, commanding the Darro’s vale of flowers,

I saw the red Alhambra’s tall battlements and towers;

Oh! would that mine were language to paint its pictured walls,

Its colonnades and court-yards, its galleries and halls.

Methought the dreams of childhood were realized at last,

And magic hands uplifted a pall that hid the past,

While looking on its panels with colored stones inlaid,

And alabaster vases on which the sunbeam played.

In gem-embroidered kaftan, and grave with cares of state,

Dispensing equal justice, a king was at the gate—

The hajib[^[4]] was in waiting to hear his high command,

And in the foreground gathered proud nobles of the land.

Luxurious rooms I entered through quaintly carven doors,

And trod on fretted pavements and tessellated floors;

And in secluded chambers, for beauty’s use designed,

On gorgeous silken cushions voluptuous forms reclined.

To win their smiles full often had gallant cavaliers

Met with a shock, like thunder, at the Tournament of Spears,

And all had won the homage by Love and Valor paid,

When, under moon-lit balconies awoke the serenade.

Xarifa, rose of sunset—Zoroyda, star of dawn!

Ye never can be numbered with things of beauty gone:

Poetical embalmment bestows a glorious light,

That frights away the minions of darkness, dust and blight.

Umbrageous courts I traversed, where lime and orange grew,

And fig and date their shadows on beds of roses threw,

Then bathed in perfumed waters, and listened to the sound

Of singing founts diffusing a grateful coolness round.

While silvery Xenil wandered through blooming bower and plain,

Back came once more the splendor of Moorish rule in Spain;

I heard the stormy clarion, the atabal’s deep roll,

And felt the joy of battle awake within my soul.

Elvira’s gates unfolded, and, grim with many a scar,

A host of Moorish horsemen rode fiercely forth to war;

The standard of the Prophet above them was unrolled,

And dallied with the lifting wind its green and golden fold.

Gemmed saddle-cloth and armor were blinding to the gaze,

And burnished lance and scimetar flashed back the sunbeam’s blaze,

While prancing in the van, as if their nostrils scented gore,

The milk-white steeds of Yemen, king, sheick and emir bore.

When fled that martial pageant, like vapor on the gale,

Woke on the banks of Darro a startling voice of wail,

And tones so full of sweetness and wild, despairing wo,

Were never heard by listening ear from mortal lips to flow.

LAMENT FOR GRENADA.

LAMENT FOR GRENADA.

Alas for thee, Grenada!

Thy Crescent waned away

When traitors leagued to shatter

Thy mace of royal sway.

Unworthy of the mother

That warmed them into life,

They heard the Gothic trumpet,

And armed not for the strife.

Look round! an earthly paradise

Is changed into a tomb,

A blight is on thy loveliness,

And mildew on thy bloom;

Where streamed the Moorish pennon

Triumphantly of old,

Decay and mournful silence

Divided empire hold.

Alas for thee, Grenada!

Thy chiefs are shadows now,

And ashes have been sprinkled

Upon thy crownless brow:

Thy glory is departed,

Thy day of pomp is o’er,

And “Allah illah Allah!”

Is a battle-cry no more.

Castilian valor vainly

To cloud thy glory strove

Ere Treachery within thy walls

His cunning web-work wove;

By bloody parricidal hands

Inflicted was the blow

That brought thee, gem of cities!

In all thy grandeur low.

MOZART’S DON GIOVANNI.

———

BY JOHN S. DWIGHT.

———

This masterpiece of Mozart must always stand as the highest type of musical drama. Yet most persons who go to this famous opera for the first time, and look over the libretto, are disappointed in a worse sense than the travelers who complain of the first unimposing view of Niagara. It seems to them a waste of so much fine music, to couple it with the mere story of a desperate rake, (a young cavalier estremamente licenzioso, as he is set down in the list of characters,) who, after running a most extravagant career, is brought to judgment in a marvelous way; namely, by his inviting in jest the statue of an old man whom he had murdered, the father of the noble lady he had sought to ruin, to sup with him; and by being surprised in the midst of his feast by the statue in good earnest, with the whole posse comitatûs of the nether world rising to claim him! We are at a loss at first to account for the charm of so vulgar and grotesque a tissue of absurdities. Yet there is a meaning in it that concerns us all.

Don Juan is one of the permanent, traditional types of character; and Mozart’s music sympathetically, instinctively, rather than with any conscious philosophical purpose, brings out the essence of it. The gay gallant, magnetic disturber of every woman’s peace that comes within his sphere, is not intended for that vulgar sensualist, that swaggering street-rake, which caricatures the part in most performances we may have seen. The true conception of Mozart’s Don Juan is that of a gentleman, to say the least, and more than that, a man of genius; a being, naturally full of glorious passion, large sympathies, and irrepressible energies; noble in mind, in person, and in fortune; a large, imposing, generous, fascinating creature. Dramatically he is made a little more than human, yet in a purely human direction. He is such as we all are, “only more so,” to borrow an expressive vulgarism. Remarkably is he such as Mozart himself was. He is a sort of ideal impersonation of two qualities, or springs of character, raised as it were to the highest power, projected into supernatural dimensions—which is only the poet’s and musician’s way of truly recognizing the element of infinity in every passion of the human soul, since not one ever finds its perfect satisfaction. Mozart in his own life knew them too well, these two springs or sources of excitement! They are: (1.) the genial temperament, the exquisite zest of pleasure, the sensibility to every charm and harmony of sense, amounting to enthusiasm, and content with nothing short of ecstasy; that appetite for outward beauty, which lends such a voluptuous, Titian coloring to his music. And (2.) as the crowning enthusiasm of the young, fresh soul, as the highest mortal foretaste of celestial bliss, the sentiment of sexual love—that sentiment which is the key-note of every opera. In Mozart, music appears as the peculiar native language of these passions, these experiences. His music is all fond sensibility, pure tranquillity of rapture, and most luxurious harmony of soul and sense; and therefore in him we have the finest development of the dramatic element in music. The two together make the genuine Giovanni creed—the creed of Mozart and of Music—the natural creed and religion of joy. This free and perfect luxury of passion and fruition, Mozart imagines raised (as we have said) to the highest power, in the hero of the old tradition. His Don Juan is a grand believer in the passions and in pleasure; he is the splendid champion and Titan of that side of the problem of life, a superb vindicator of the senses. He stands before us in the glorious recklessness of self-assertion and protests against the soul-and-passion-starving conventionality, the one-sided, frigid spiritualism of an artificial, priest-ridden, Mammon-worshiping society; opposing to those meshes of restraint his own intense consciousness of being, (with a blind instinct that it is good, divine at bottom, and only needing to appear in its own natural language of a Mozart’s music to prove this;) strong in the faith, against the world, that Joy, Joy is the true condition and true sign of life; but blindly seeking to realize this in the ecstatic lawlessness of love, which necessarily involves sooner or later a proportional reaction of the outraged Law and Wisdom of the Universe.

Excessive love of pleasure, helped by a rare magnetism of character, and provoked by the suppressive moralism of the times, have engendered in him a reckless, roving, insatiable appetite, which each intrigue excites and disappoints, until the very passion in which so many souls are first taught the feeling of the Infinite, becomes a fiend in his breast and drives him to a devilish love of power that exults over woman’s ruin, or rather, that does not mind how many hearts and homes fall victims to his unqualified assertion of the everywhere rejected and snubbed faith in Passion. The buoyant impulse, generous and good in the first instance, goes on thus undoubtingly, defying bounds, till it becomes pure willfulness, and the first flush of youth and nobleness is hardening to Satanic features. The beauty and the loveliness of woman have lost to him now all their sacredness; they are mere fuel to the boundless ambition of a passion which knows no delight beyond the brief excitement of intrigue and sensual indulgence. He becomes the impersonation and supernatural genius of one of the holiest springs of human sentiment perverted, because denied; and he roams the earth a beautiful, terrible, resistless, fallen angel, and victim after victim are quaffed up by his hot breath of all-devouring passion. And so he perseveres until Hell claims its own in the awful consummation of the supper scene. Art could not choose a theme more fraught with meaning and with interest. It is still the old theme and under-current of Opera: the Body and the Soul;[^[5]] the Liberty of passion, unmeet for its own guidance, in conflict with the Law, intensely narrowed down by social custom from God’s great law of universal harmony.

The character of Don Juan, thus conceived, this splendid embodiment of the free, perfect, unmisgiving luxury of sense and passion, would be no character at all, but only an absurdity, an impossibility in the spoken drama. There is no prose about it; nothing literal and sober; take away the exaltation, the rhythmical nature of it, and it falls entirely to the ground. Only Music could conceive and treat it; Music, which is the language of the ideal, innermost, potential life, and not of the actual life. But music equally does justice to both sides of the fact. In this triumphant career of passion, inasmuch as it is among men and laws and sympathies and social customs, a fearful retribution is foreshadowed. But not in him, not in this Titan of the senses, this projected imagination of unlimited enjoyment and communion. It is through the music that the shuddering presentiment continually creeps. Through music, which in acknowledging the error, in laying bare the fatal discord, at the same time symbolizes its resolution. Through music, in whose vocabulary sin and suffering and punishment are never final; in whose vivid coloring the great doom itself is but a vista into endless depths of harmony and peace and unexclusive bliss beyond.

The splendid sinner’s end is rather melodramatic in the opera; and yet there is a poetic and a moral truth in it; and the spectre of the Commendatore is a creation fully up to Shakspeare. No man ever literally came to that; but many have come to dread it. Beings, as we are, so full of energies and of exhaustless passional promptings to all sorts of union and acquaintance with the rest of being; urged, just in proportion to the quantity of life in us, to seek most intimate relationship all round, materially and spiritually, we dread the mad excess of our own pent up forces. Surrounded by set formulas; denied free channels corresponding to our innate tendencies and callings; plagued by traditions, and chafed by some social discipline, in which the soul sees nothing it can understand, except it be the holy principle of Order in the abstract, do we not often start to see what radicalism lurks in every genuine spring of life or passion, in everything spontaneous and lovable? Who, more than the pleasure-loving, sympathy-seeking, generous, child-like, glorious, imaginative, sensitive, ecstatic, sad Mozart, would be apt to shudder in dreams, in the night solitudes of his over-worked, and feverish and wakeful brain, before the colossal shadow of what possibly he might become through excess of the very qualities that made him diviner than common mortals? This allegory can certainly be traced through “Don Giovanni.” The old governor or commander, whom he kills, personates the Law. The cold, relentless marble statue, that stalks with thundering foot-fall into the middle of his solitary orgies alter him, is the stern embodiment of custom and convention, which he defies to the end, and boldly grasps the proffered stony hand, from an impulse stronger than his terrors.

It is an old Middle-Age Catholic story. Under many forms it had been dramatized and poetized as a warning to sinners, before Da Ponte[^[6]] found it so much to the purpose of Mozart, when he wanted to do his best in an opera composed expressly for his dear and own peculiar public at Prague. Coarse as the story seems, perhaps the conflict between good and evil in the human soul was never represented in a better type. It was for Mozart’s music to show that. That in adopting it for music he had any metaphysical idea at all about it, there is no need of supposing. His instinct found in it fine sphere for all his many moods of passion and of music. Here he could display all his universality of musical culture, and his Shaksperian universality of mind. Genius does its work first; the theory of it is what an appreciating, philosophical observer must detect in it when done. “They builded better than they knew.” Love, if it was the ruling sentiment of Mozart’s nature, was for that very reason his chief danger. If it was almost his religion and taught his soul its own infinite capacity, so also seemed the danger therefrom infinite, raising presentiments and visions of some supernatural abyss of ruin, yawning to receive the gay superstructure of man’s volatile enjoyments here in time. Life, power, love, pleasure, crime, futurity and judgment—and a faith left beyond that!—what dream more natural, what circle of keys more obvious to modulation, to a soul, whose strings are all attuned to love and melody, whose genius is a powerful demon waiting on its will, and whose present destiny is cast here in a world so false and out of tune that, to so strong a nature, there seems no alternative besides wild excess upon the one hand, or a barren sublimity of self-denial on the other.

In this old legend the worldly and the supernatural pass most naturally into one another. Don Juan, gifted with all the physical and intellectual attributes of power, urged by aspirations blind but uncontainable, full of the feeling of life, and resolved to LIVE, if possible, so fully as to fill all with himself and never own a limit, (and this is only a perversion of the true desire to live in harmony with all,) finds the tempting shadow of this satisfaction in the love of woman, and the poor bird flutters charmed and trembling toward his fascinating glance. Imagine now the elegant, full-blooded, rich, accomplished and seductive gallant on his restless rout of pleasures and intrigues. At his side his faithful knave, droll Leporello, expostulating with his master very piously sometimes, yet bound to him by potent magnetism, both of metal and of character (for passion like Giovanni’s will be served.) Leporello is the foil and shadow to his master, and adds to the zest of his life-long intoxication by the blending of the comic with this exquisite wild fever of the blood. Throughout the whole he plays the part of contrast and brings all back to reality and earth again, lest the history should take too serious possession of us. He is the make-weight of common sense tossed into the lighter scale. He justifies its original title of “Don Giovanni, un drama giocoso;” for this opera is tragedy and comedy and what you please, the same heterogeneous yet harmonious compound that life itself is. He on the one side gives a dash of charlatanry to Don Juan, just as on the other side he borders on the supernatural. Mark the poetic balance and completeness here: this passion-life of Don Juan has its outward and its inward comment: on the one side Leporello, on the other the supernatural statue and the bodily influx of hell. On the one side it is comic, grotesque and absurd; on the other, it is fearful. Seen in one light he is a charlatan, a splendid joke; seen in the other, he is an unfolding demon and a type of doom; while in his life he is but the free development of human passion in human circumstances. Man always walks between these two mirrors! One shows his shadow, as of destiny, projected, ever-widening, into the Infinite, where it grows vague and fearful. The other takes him in the act, and literally pins down all his high strivings and pretensions to such mere matter of fact, that he becomes ridiculous.

We come now to the Opera itself, which we can only examine very briefly and unequally, touching here and there. Were we to set about it thoroughly, our article would soon overflow all magazine bounds, since there is not a scene, an air, a bit of recitative, from the beginning to the end, that would not challenge our most critical appreciation.

And first the Overture, composed, they say, in the single night before the first public performance of the opera in Prague; his wife keeping him awake to his work by punch and anecdotes and fairy tales, that made him laugh till the tears ran down his cheeks; and only ready for the orchestra (which had not its equal in all Europe) to play at sight without rehearsal. He may have written it that night, that is to say, have copied it out of his head. It was his habit of composition; his musical conceptions shaped themselves whole in his brain, and were carried about there for days until the convenient time to put them upon paper; and it is not possible that his brain that time could have been without an overture, since there the opera existed as a perfect whole, and in that glowing and creative mood, the instrumental theme and preface to the same must have floated before him as naturally as the anticipation of his audience. Moreover, the first movement of it, the Andante, is essentially the same music with the grand and awful finale of the opera, and is properly put first in the overture (whose office it is to prepare the hearer’s mind) as the grand end and moral of the piece. Accordingly it opens with three stern, startling crashes on the chord of D minor, the sub-bass dividing the measure into equal halves, but the upper parts syncopated; then a pause, and then the same repeated in the Dommant—like the announcement of a power not to be trifled with. Then a series of wild modulations, full of terror, enhanced by the unearthly brass and low reed tones, surging through chromatic intervals, which make the blood creep, and presently overtopped by a pleading melody of the first violins, while a low, feeble whimper of the second violins is heard all the time like the moaning of the wind about an old house. Then alternate sharp calls and low, tremulous pauses; the ground quakes; the din becomes more fearful; the melody begins to traverse up and down all kinds of scales, through intervals continually shifting, and expressive of all manner of uncertainty, like the quick and fruitless runs in all directions of a beast surrounded by the hunters. It is like the breaking up of the familiar foundations of things, that unsettling of the musical Scale!—All this is brief, for it is but a synopsis and foreshadowing of the last scene in the opera. The string instruments then dash off, in the major of the key, into a wild, reckless kind of Allegro, than which there could not be a better musical correspondence of the general subject, that is, of the restless, mischievous career of one outraging all the social instincts and defying all pursuit. This spends itself at leisure, softening at the close toward the genial F natural, the key of nature and the senses, where the overture is merged into the dramatic introduction.

The curtain rises. Scene, a garden in Spain. Time, just before daybreak. Leporello, cloaked, with a lantern, paces watchfully to and fro before a noble villa, and sings with heavy bass of his drudgeries and dangers in the service of his graceless master; kindling half seriously at the thought how fine a thing it would be to play the gallant and the gentleman himself. The light and exquisite accompaniment of the instruments meanwhile is like the softness of a summer night, and seems to count the moments of pleasure. The dreams of the valet are soon disturbed. Don Juan, his face hid by his mantle, rushes from the house, struggling from the grasp of Donna Anna, who, pale and disheveled, clings to him convulsively, and seeks to detain and to discover the bold, mysterious man, who has dared thus to invade her privacy and her honor. Her hurried and accusing melody, in these snatches of recitative, is full of a dignity and a pure and lofty fire that characterize alike her person and the whole music of her port. With drawn sword in one hand, and a torch in the other, her old father, the Commendatore (commander of a religious order) rushes out and challenges the bravo, who deals him a death-thrust. The startlingly vivid orchestral picture, which accompanies and as it were guides these sword thrusts, is followed by a slow, mournful trio of bass voices, in which are gloomily contrasted the scornful triumph of Don Juan, the dying wail and warning of the old man, and the comic terror of Leporello. Nothing could be more thrillingly impressive; that music could mean nothing else but death stalking suddenly into the very midst of life! Then comes the passionate outpouring of the daughter’s grief, and that inimitable scene of the most musical as well as most dramatic dialogue in the whole range of the lyric drama. It is the perfection of recitative. What exquisite tenderness and sincerity of sorrow in that violin figure which accompanies her inquiry for her father, (padre mio,) when she first recovers from her swoon! How sweet and comforting that fall of the seventh, where Ottavio tells her: Hai sposo e padre in me (Thou hast husband and father in me!) And how fiery and grand the passage where she inspires the tame lover with that sublimely solemn oath of revenge, and the hot, scouring blast of their swift and wonderful duett which follows it. In all this there is no delicate touch of feeling, no spiritual token of great passion and great purpose, possible to voice or instruments, omitted; no note omissible or of slight significance. Here is an opening of most pregnant import. One scene of moderate length has impressed us, as by the power of fate, to the seeing through of the profoundest drama of life. Here we have witnessed, as it were, the first reaction of the eternal Law, the first hint of destiny in this splendid libertine’s thus far irresistible career. Already is this almost superhuman pleasure-hunt of genius past its climax, and the dread note of retribution is already sounded.

The next scene introduces us to one of the personified reproaches of Don Juan’s better nature. As the Don and his man are plotting new adventures, a lady passes, in hat and feathers, with excited air, and, as they retreat into the shade to note her, she pours out her most musical complaint against the traitor who has played falsely with her heart. The introductory symphony or ritornel, in E flat major, by its bold and animated strain indicates the high-spirited and passionate nature now before us, whose song of ever constant though wronged love, to words that would fain threaten terrible revenge, commences the Terzetto, mainly solo, to which the mocking by-play of the Don and Leporello, accompanied by a mocking figure of the instruments, supplies the other two parts. As he steps up to offer consolation to the lady, he recognizes his own simple, loving, poor deserted mistress, Donna Elvira, and while the same mocking instrumental figure leaves the song hanging in the air, as it were, without any cadence or any close, he slips away and leaves the task of explanation to the disconcerted servant. There is an ardent, passionate yearning in this as in all of Elvira’s melodies, which climb high and are perhaps the most difficult in the opera. The character is seldom conceived truly by the actress. Interpreted by its music, its intention is distinct enough. Elvira is no half-crazed, foolish thing; but one of the highest moral elements in the personnel of the opera; next in dignity, at least, to Donna Anna. However she may appear in the libretto and in the common usage of the stage, Mozart in his music makes her the soul of ardent and devoted love and constancy, still fondly hoping in the deeper, better self of the man who has trifled with her; like a sweet, genuine ray of sun shine, always indicating to Don Juan a chance of escape from the dark labyrinthine fatality of crime in which he goes on involving himself; always offering him true love for false.

Let her not listen then (like the silly girl we commonly see upon the stage, half-magnetized out of a weak sorrow into a weaker involuntary yielding to the ludicrous) to the exquisitely comic appeal of Leporello, when the vain-glorious fellow unrolls his tremendous list of his master’s conquests among the fair sex, enumerating the countries, ranks, styles of beauty, etc. The melody of this “Catalogue Song” is altogether surpassing. It is the perfection of buffo, as we have before had the perfection of serious recitative. After naming the numbers for Italy, Germany, etc., when it comes to the climax (Elvira’s own land): Ma in Espagna mille e trè, [But in Spain one thousand and three,] it is ludicrously grave; the orchestra meanwhile has chopped the measure into short units, alternate instruments just touching different points of height and depth, till they seem at last to count it all up on the fingers, first downward in the tripping pizzicato scale of the violins, then upward in gruff confirmation in the basses. In the slow time, where it comes to the specification of the different qualities of beauty, the grande maëstosa, the piccina, etc., the melody is one of the most beautiful and pathetic that could be imagined. One wonders how Mozart could have expended such a wealth of melody upon so light a theme; it seems as lavish a disproportion of means to end, as when we read of travelers roasting their eggs in the cinders of Vesuvius. But such was the musical fullness and integrity of Mozart; the genial vein, once opened, would run only pure gold; and his melodies and harmonies are not merely proportioned to the specialities of the subject, but are at every moment moulded in the style and spirit of the whole work. Besides, the comedy consists here in the contrast of a pathetic melody with a grotesque thought. Moreover the whole thing is truer in the fact, that not only Leporello’s, but Don Juan’s own melodies, as indeed the very nature of music, seem mournfully to rebuke the desperado. In the most comic and most bacchanalian strains, the music saddens with a certain vague presentiment of the fearful dénouement of the drama.

The Don’s next adventure is the meeting of a gay group of peasants at a wedding festival, where he attempts to seduce away the pretty bride, Zerlina, whose naïve and delicious songs, right out of a simple, good, loving heart, a little coquettish withal, are among the purest gems of the piece, and have mingled their melody with the civilized world’s conceptions of truth and nature and the charm of innocence. Those of our readers who have enjoyed with us the privilege of hearing and seeing a worthy, indeed a perfect personation of Zerlina, by that refined and charming artist, Signora Bosio, will need no words to give them a just conception of the character, and of its music, which is as individual as that of Anna or Elvira. Suffice it to say, that the simplicity, the tenderness and the coquetry of this pretty peasant, have the natural refinement of a superior nature. Mozart must have been in love with the part. The rustic chorus opening this scene, in which the bridal pair lead off, is one of perfect simplicity, (Allegro, 6—8 time,) and yet inimitable beauty. The Duett, La ci darem la mano, in which Don Juan overcomes the hesitation of the dazzled, spell-bound girl, breathes the undoubted warmth of passion; few simple souls could be proof against such an eloquent confession. Indeed the sincerity of all this music is a great part of its charm; it has never the slightest symptom of any striving for effect, and yet it is consummate art; it flows directly out of the characters and situations and the dramatic tendency of the whole. The poor girl is rescued this time by the entrance of an experienced guardian angel, who sees through the case at once. It is Donna Elvira, who, just as she is tripping away with the fascinator to the gay, consenting tune of Andiam, (let us go,) snatches the bird from his hands. Her song of warning to the simple one, Ah! fuggi ’l traditor, is a strangely elaborate Handelian aria, so different in style from the rest of the opera that it is never performed. As if all things conspired to confound the traitor, Donna Anna and her lover also enter, (Zerlina having withdrawn,) and here ensues that wonderful Quartette, Non ti fidar, in which each voice-part is a character, a melody of a distinct genius, and all wrought into a perfect unity. Elvira warns Anna and Ottavio against confiding in this generous-looking Don, whose aid they have unwittingly bespoken in their search for the murderer of the first scene (namely himself;) Don Juan declares that she is crazy, and not to be minded; the others are divided between pity for her and respect for such a gentleman; and all these strands are twisted into one of the finest concerted pieces in all opera. It is one of those peculiar triumphs of opera which make it so much more dramatic than the spoken drama; for here you have four characters expressing themselves at once, with entire unity of effect, yet with the distinctest individuality. The music makes you instantly clairvoyant to the whole of them; you do not have to wait for one after the other to speak; there is a sort of song-transparency of all at once; the common chord of all their individualities is struck. Especially is this achieved in the concerted pieces, the quartettes, trios, and so forth, of Mozart, which are beyond comparison with most of those in the Italian opera of the day, since the harmony in them is not the mere coloring of one thought, but the interweaving of so many distinct individualities.

Zerlina is saved, but by arrangement with her protectors agrees to go up to the Don’s palace, whither Leporello has conducted the whole wedding party, and even coaxed along the jealous bridegroom. A scene ensues between Donna Anna and her lover. The orchestra, in a few startling and almost discordant shrieks, indicates the intense excitement of her mind, for, as Don Juan took his leave, she recognized the look and voice of one whom she had too much cause to remember; and in impassioned bursts of hurried recitative, alternating with the said spasmodic bits of instrumentation, she exclaims, Quegli è il carnefice del mio padre, (this man is my father’s murderer,) and in the same grandly lyric style, rising higher and higher, she tells Ottavio the story of her outrage. Having reached the climax, this magnificent recitative becomes melody, and completes itself in the sublime Aria, Or tu sai, “Now thou knowest who attempted my honor,” etc. There can be nothing greater, more Minerva-like in dignity and high expression of the soul of justice outraged, and at the same time full of all feminine tenderness and beauty, in the whole range of opera or drama. And it is Music, it is Mozart that has done it all. We have here the character of Donna Anna in its most sublime expression; a character that transcends mere personal relations, that bears a certain mystical relationship with the higher power beginning to be felt in the development of this human history. In this song she rises, as it were, to the dignity of an impersonation of the moral principle in the play, and this high sentiment of hers is like a foretaste of the coming fate and supernatural grandeur, which are to form the never to be forgotten finale of the piece. Elvira is entirely in the sphere of the personal; she loves Don Juan to the last, and like the simple good humanity that still appeals to him though still rejected. But Anna is superhuman and divine; she reveals the interworking of the Infinite in all these finite human affairs; to Heaven, rather than to Ottavio, is her appeal; and from beyond this life she looks to see the vindicator of her cause appear. The loftiness of the music just considered, and the stately trumpet-tones of the orchestra, which always herald the entrance of Donna Anna and her party, connect her unmistakably with the marvelous elements of the drama; she is Feeling prophesying Justice; she is Faith in the form of woman; and the singer who could perfectly present Donna Anna would be worthy to sing Handel’s song, “I know that my Redeemer liveth.”

From one extreme we pass to its opposite. In strongest possible contrast with the high moral passion of this last, is what now follows. We have a song embodying the very frenzied acme of Don Juan’s zest of sensual pleasure. He directs Leporello about the feast, and trolls off, like one possessed, his famous champagne song, Finch’an del vino, whose rapidity and glorious abandon are too much for almost all the baritones; those, in whose dragging utterance it does not become commonplace, are apt to give it with a swaggering glibness, and a coarseness that has nothing of the fine champagne enthusiasm about it. In this song and that last of Donna Anna’s the two electric poles, as it were, of the whole play, have met. And now for the pretty episode of peasant life again; the inimitably sweet, insinuating, loving song in which repentant little Zerlina seems to invite chastisement from her offended, jealous lover, Batti, batti, O bell’ Masetto, (beat me, beat me, dear Masetto!). With what soft tendrils of melody, enhanced by the delicious instrumentation, she steals around his senses and his heart! And to what unaffected rapture (to say nothing of a little coquettish triumph) the strain changes when he forgives her, as she knew he would! This seems a very simple song, but it is the perfection of art. O that Mozart could go into ecstasies with his own pet Zerlina, hearing Bosio sing this!

We have now reached the musical Finale of the first act, though there is much shifting of scenes and characters before the last grand ensemble, which is the ball in the Don’s palace. But these only suspend, to wonderfully enhance, the final stroke. We can only enumerate the delicious series of ever new and characteristic musical ideas preliminary to the feast: (1.) Masetto urging Zerlina to hide herself—how full of the bustle of approaching splendors is the music during this little hurried duett! (2.) The Don’s voice stimulating the peasants to the coming mirth, with their responsive chorus. (3.) Then his discovery of the shy bird and half reclaimal of her love, with his blank surprise (so perfectly depicted in the sudden modulation of the music) as he leads her off only to meet the watchful bridegroom: Masetto si, Masetto! (during all which the light twittering phrases of the accompaniment make the whole atmosphere instinct with joys expected.) (4.) Then, as the instruments suddenly change to a cautious, half-hushed, tip-toe melody, unflagging in its speed, yet in the minor mood, (for these have no festivity in their hearts that now come) the entrance of Donna Elvira, Donna Anna, and Don Ottavio, in black dominos, and masked to the outward eye, though each betrayed by a distinctive style of melody. (5.) Then the sounding (from within the house) of that stately minuett, a strain which everybody knows and loves, and still as fresh as when first written, here introduced as a mere foretaste of itself, and of the ball, and made the musical ground-work of lordly courtesy and hospitality to the salutations of Don Juan and Leporello, who appear above at the window, and invite the maskers in. (6.) The surpassing Trio, in which the three, lingering on the threshold, invoke Heaven’s protection to innocence ensnared. Can any other opera show such an exuberance of musical ideas in the same space? And it is all en passant, all incidental to what follows, to what now bursts instantly upon the view as the back scene is withdrawn, and you see all the crowd and splendor of the ball-room, and are transported by the indescribably rich Finale, that ever climbing, widening crescendo and accumulation of all musical effects, till the climax is reached in a general storm and inundation of harmony. The simple, gay, continuous six-eight melody, to which the whole brilliant spectacle moves at first, is the very soul of festivity. Suddenly there is a full chord in C from the whole orchestra, with trumpets, and a stately, march-like strain, preluding the entrance of the three in masks, with the lordly welcome of the Amphytrion. He will have no time lost, however, for into this one high hour he has concentrated all the delights and harmonies of sense—short, bright and strong be the blood-quickening chorus, Viva la liberta! and now let the dance go on. And now are crowded into a brief but most capacious moment, the reintroduction of the Minuett in a bolder key than before, to whose grave, deliberate measure the more elegant company begins to move in antique, solemn steps; then presently, commingling with the Minuett, but not disturbing it, two other tunes, to other rhythms, namely, a rustic contra-dance, and a most rapid waltz, inspiring the heels of the peasants; the droll attempts of Leporello to make Masetto dance, while his master has bespoken the arm and ear of the pretty bride, to win whom he has planned this whole array; the indignant observation of this game by Donna Anna, with difficulty moderated until due time by her companions; the piercing shriek of the music as Don Juan whirls Zerlina away out of the dance; the cry for aid; the general rush to the door whence the sounds proceed, and when it is broken in, the grotesque brief diversion of the Don dragging Leporello by the ear, and trying to fasten his own crime on him; the incredulous and accusing phrase, in which the voices of the trio, now unmasked, confront him successively in Canon style; and the out-bursting of the general tempest of wrath upon the exposed deceiver, heightened, too, by the sweeping wind and hissing lightnings of an actual physical storm that is supposed to be passing without. The strength of the accusing chorus is splendidly terrific, and like the rush of a whirlwind, where all the voices in unison swiftly traverse up and down several times the first five notes of the scale. But he of the dauntless will and the magnetic eye, with one sword awes back and penetrates the maddened mob, escaping with a loud laugh of defiance.

Our very slight and hasty sketch has already grown to considerable length, and yet we have examined only one act of the three, into which “Don Giovani” is usually divided in the performance. One act was enough to show (if that were all our object) how this opera wells up as from an exhaustless fountain of musical ideas, all of which are of the inspired, enduring quality; we have listened to materials enough already for some twenty of the fashionable operas of our day. We must glance more hastily at the remainder.

Act II. opens with one of those half humorous, half serious conversations between the Don and Leporello, which ever and anon relieve the story. The servant, stung by the ungrateful and outrageous conduct of his master in the ball-room explosion, announces his determination to quit him; but they are too essential to each other, and the Don soon coaxes, laughs, and bribes him out of that notion. This duett is in real Italian parlando style, a syllable to every note, quick and brief as it is comically expressive; for this enemy of woman’s peace has new business on hand; the unlucky night is not too far gone to try one more adventure. So here follows the summer warmth and beauty of the serenade scene under Donna Elvira’s window, who sits above there, pouring out her nightingale complainings under the stars, in a melody of ravishing sweetness and tenderness, forming the upper part of a Terzetto, in which the sotto voce dialogue of the Don and his man below grotesquely blends. He changes garments with Leporello, and lending his own voice, while Leporello gesticulates, in strains of feigned repentance and returning love, entices the too easily persuaded lady down into the arms of his counterfeit, while he takes up his guitar to serenade, not Elvira, but Elvira’s maid, now that the field is clear, in that most graceful little serenading air, which seems so easy and so off-hand, with its light arpeggio accompaniment by violins alone: Deh vieni alla finestra. But the fortunate stars of our all-seducing hero seem this night to have forsaken him; again his business is balked. Mirth and melody, fun and sentiment are strangely mingled in this scene, and, indeed, in this whole act. The serenade gets finished; the tree, as it were, is climbed; but before the fruit can be gathered, the game is interrupted by Masetto and the peasants armed, hot from the ball-room scene, in search of the splendid scoundrel. Masetto gets the worst of it; and here we have one of the world’s three or four very choicest and purest gems of melody, Zerlina’s exquisitely tender and comforting song to her poor, bruised, and beaten bridegroom, Vedrai carino; so beautifully simple, in the homely key of C natural; so innocently voluptuous; so full of blissful love; so like the balsam (un certo balsamo) of which she hints with fond and arch significance! And as she makes him place his hand upon her heart at the words, sentilo battere, (feel it beat,) you seem to hear its glad and honest beating in the music. We cannot forbear inserting here the following interpretation of this song, which we have read since our analysis of the opera was made. It is from the pen of an intelligent Russian gentleman, who has written in French and German an admirable Life of Mozart, with a critical examination of his works. We translate from the German copy:

“Vedrai Carino is, like so many pieces of our opera, super-dramatic music. When we hear it, we forget the text, we forget the person. There is no longer any Zerlina or Masetto. Something infinite, absolute, and verily divine announces itself to the soul. Is it perhaps nothing but love, represented under one of the countless modifications by which it is distinguished in each individual, according to the laws of his nature, and the peculiar vicissitudes of his fortune? No; the soul feels rather a direct effluence of the principle itself, from which all youth, all love, all joy, and every vital reproduction flows. The genius of the Spring’s metamorphoses, he namely, whom the old theosophists called Eros, who disembroiled chaos, who fructified germs and married hearts; this genius speaks to us in this music, as he has so often spoken in the murmurings of the brook that has escaped its icy prison, in the rustling of the young leaves, in the melodious songs of the nightingale, in the balmy odors which pervade the eloquent and inspiring stillness of a May night. Mozart had listened to and firmly held this ground-accord of this universal harmony; he arranged it for a soprano voice with orchestral accompaniment, and made of it the nuptial air of a young bride. Zerlina sings, surrounded by the shadows of the marriage night, while just about to cross the threshold, at which virginity pauses with prayer and trembling, expecting the confirmation of the holy title of wife. In this place the Aria becomes a genuine scena of love, the source of life and of eternal rejuvenescence for all nature—of love, the spring-time of souls, and the most unstinted revelation of the all-goodness of the Creator. It is a marriage-song for all that loves, conceived in the same spirit with the ‘Ode to Joy’ by Schiller, allowing for the difference of tone and style between a Dithyrambic and an Eclogue. The theme, the image of the purest bliss, betrays none the less that inexplicable and seldom justified exaltation, which, in the fairest poetic hours of our existence, leads us to that unknown good whereof all other goods of earth are only shadows and foretastes. A rhythm without marked accent; a harmony without dissonances; a modulation which rests in the Tonic, and forgets itself, as if held fast there by a magic spell; a melody which cannot separate itself from its ineffaceable motiv; this tranquil rapture, this soft ecstasy, fill out the first half of the air. After the pause, hosts of nightingales begin to sing in chorus in the orchestra, while the voice, with exquisite monotony, murmurs, Sentilo battere, toccami quà. Then the same words are again uttered with the expression of passion; the heart of the young woman beats stronger and stronger; the sighs of the orchestra are redoubled, and the last vocal phrase, which bears the impress of chaste devotion, shows us the wife as she sinks softly upon the bosom of her husband. Mozart seems to have anticipated the desire of the ear, in that he lets the orchestra repeat the whole motiv and the enchanting final phrases once again. He knew that the piece would be found too short, as it actually is the case.”

Good-night, then, to this happy couple, whom we leave, to trace the sequel of the comic vein just opened in that ‘Sartor’-ian exchange of personality between the master and the servant; but also at the same to receive still more distinct and solemn intimations (all the more significant for this very contrast of the comic) of the supernatural reaction that is preparing soon to burst upon the head of the magnificent libertine and outlaw. The Sextette which now follows is altogether unique and unrivaled among concerted pieces in opera. The music of this Sextette covers such an ever-shifting variety of action, and so much of a scene, that one may hear it once without thinking of its wealth and admirable structure as music. Yet for every point in all this action, and for all shades of relation between the persons, as well as for each separate personality, there is a correspondence in the music. The scene has changed to a bujo loco, or dark place, (the libretto says, a porch to Donna Anna’s palace.) First appear the counterfeit Giovanni and Elvira, who is too happy to walk with him to the end of the world, if need be; while he, (Leporello,) tired of imitating his master’s voice, is groping about to find an exit. In an Andante melody, in the same key, and of a kindred character with that by which we first knew her (Ah! chi mi dice mai,) she utters her fear of being left alone in this bujo loco. Just as her companion finds the door, the groping, cautious music brightens into the bold key and trumpet-style which always heralds Anna and Ottavio, who enter amid blaze of torches. Sweet is the consoling appeal of the tenore to his grief-stricken Anna, whose response, less fiery and commanding, but not less sublimely spiritual than her last great solo, even hints of death as the only solution of life’s riddle for her. Meanwhile the first two, who have lurked unnoticed, are just making good their exit, when Zerlina and Masetto appear, who thinks that now he has the briccone at his mercy; the bluster of Masetto, the surprise of Anna and Ottavio at the sight of the supposed Giovanni, the grotesque, crouching plea of the valet, the intercession of still deceived Elvira for “her husband,” then their recognition of her, then a new brandishing of Masetto’s club, and then the ass throwing off the lion’s skin, and begging mercy, all are made thrice expressive by the music, which varies instinctively each moment, and yet ceases not to weave the unitary complex whole. At last all the six voices join in a swift and wind-like Allegro, in which Anna’s voice takes the highest and most florid part, Zerlina’s the second, Elvira’s the third, and so on, and in which there is now and then a wild Æolian-harp-like passage of harmony, which seems the fore-feeling of the higher powers which henceforth are to take part in the drama.

But first we have the masterpiece and model of all tenor solos. In it Ottavio commends his Il mio tesoro to the care of these friends, and in it he proves himself the truest, tenderest, most devoted and most religious of lovers, if Heaven has reserved it to a stronger force than his to crush the mighty sinner against whom he has taken such an oath of vengeance. But the opera could not rob itself of the statue, and its last scene, and its whole sublimity, to make him a hero, when it was enough that he should know how to love a Donna Anna.

Passing over a duett between Leporello and Zerlina, rarely sung, in fact an after-thought of the composer, which he is said to have added to conciliate the lower taste of a Viennese manager or audience; and passing over (for we must be brief) a truly transcendent solo for Elvira: Mi tradi quell’ alma ingrata, in whose fluid, ever-modulating melody her musing, sad soul seems dissolved in reverie, we come to the marvelous church-yard scene. Here glimmers the white equestrian statue of the murdered commander in the back-ground; and here the Don and Leporello seek a rendezvous after their new discomfiture, to re-exchange hats and mantles, and so forth. Their loud levity is suddenly hushed by a voice of warning from the statue, accompanied in strange chords by the unearthly tones of the trombones (which instruments, instead of being lavished in Verdi fashion, upon all the strong passages, have been entirely kept back till now for this supernatural “beginning of the end,”) mingled with the low reed tones. Di rider finirai, etc. (“Thou shalt cease to laugh before dawn!”) A short old choral strain, in which the voice ends, spectral-like, upon the Dominant of the key (A minor), struck with the major Third. This is a church cadence; it belongs to eternity, which knows no Minor, no such type of “earthly un-rest.” It freezes to the heart of Don Giovanni, who starts dismayed, but only for a moment; and soon the marble lips break silence once more to rebuke his mockery. So far it has been introductory recitative; but now the orchestra is all life and melody again, for the luscious music of the duett in which Giovanni compels the trembling servant at the sword’s point to salute the statue and invite him to sup with him. There is no more exquisite fairy-work in the whole opera than the instrumentation of this scene. It were hard to tell whether the impression left by it partakes most of the comic, of the supernaturally terrible, or of the beautiful. All these elements are grotesquely blended in it, yet without seeming incongruity. The beauty of the music harmonizes and idealizes the action; it lends its singular fascination to the marvelous; it makes the terror doubly real, by expressing the vague charm which every terror has after all to the soul, glad (even in its terror) of the excitement of something altogether strange and infinite. Mozart knew better than to freeze the blood up here entirely, with unearthly tones of horror, except during those brief utterances of the marble rider; that he reserved for the end, of which this is but the beginning. He has lavished all the luxury of melodic invention upon the instrumentation of this duett; the music in the main still gushes warm and genial and human, and hence you feel the supernatural all the more inwardly and powerfully, when shudders of strange awe cross occasionally its placid, sparkling flow. O statua gentillissima—cheerily and bravely the beautiful strain sets out, in the rich key of E major; but as the knave shrinks back in terror, crying padron! mirate! etc., the deprecating expression of his voice dropping through the interval of a Seventh, with the instruments accompanying in unison, is alike droll and marvelous. Still the cheerful melody goes on, in spite of ghosts, until the statue nods acceptance, when the unearthly modulation and tremolo of the music, falling with sudden emphasis upon Leporello’s Ah! — —h! che scena! (Ah! what a sight!), gives the whole scene for the time the superstitious coloring of his soul. But when he comes to tell his master how the spectre nodded, and when his master repeats the strain and gesture with him, the fear has become subordinate to the charm of adventure, and the music takes the gay and reckless tone of Giovanni. Life shall be all a feast, is his creed, ghosts and miracles to the contrary; and festally the bright strain dies away, softer and softer, as they depart, to the tune of Andiamo via di qua (let us quit this place), to which the servant’s voice chimes in as second very heartily.

Here the curtain usually falls, closing a second Act, although the composer covers the homeward flight of the pair, fatigued and hungry with that night’s adventures and discomfitures, and the preparation of the supper, by a beautiful and elaborate recitative and aria of Donna Anna, addressed to her devoted Ottavio, whose urgent plea for the consummation of their union she tenderly puts off, as with a presentiment that her love is to know no earthly consummation, and that her life is already too much of the other world. This song: Non mi dir, bloomed one of the heavenliest and purest in the wreath of Jenny Lind.

Act Third is the grand Finale, with its tremendous music, its apparition, its supernatural vindication of the Law, and the splendid sinner’s doom. Remember, day has not dawned yet since that other Finale, to the First Act; their supper that time was stormily broken off, and they have had little rest in the mean time. But they have got home at last, and Gia la mensa è preparata: now the supper is prepared; a smart and animated strain of full orchestra in the bold key of D. The Don has shut himself in by himself with all the harmonies of sense and appetite; it is the pure feast of egoism; there are no guests, but his own appetites and riotous imaginations, for whom all things are provided; and little thinks he of the guest whom he has invited! Droll Leporello, now all appetite, is in attendance, devouring furtive morsels of the rich dishes, and uncorking the champagne, (a situation commonly too tempting to our buffo, who makes the fun excessively and disgustingly broad,) and making broad allusions to the barbaro appetito of his master. There is a band of wind instruments, too, from whom all the while proceed the most enlivening appeals to composite enjoyment, in a succession of rare morsels of melody from well-known operas of the time, for which both master and man show an appreciating ear. The last of these is the famous Non piu andrai, from Mozart’s own “Nozze di Figaro,” to which Leporello may well exclaim: “That I know too well.” Through all this the Titian-like, voluptuous quality of Mozart comes out afresh. It is the music of pure, unalloyed sensuous enjoyment; not a shadow of aught serious or sentimental comes over its harmony, until once more his better nature makes one final appeal, entreating him to repentance, in the person of poor, constant Donna Elvira, who suddenly rushes in and kneels at his feet. But the Don laughs at her simple lecture, and preaches up to her his bacchanalian gospel.

Here mark a fine point in the action, a fine touch of poetic truth, worthy of Mozart’s genius. It is she, his better nature, as we have said, his own rejected truer self, who loves him better than he loves himself; it is she, Elvira, who, as she leaves the stage, is the first to meet the fearful apparition and by her shriek give warning. That shriek, thrown into the music, has suddenly changed its smooth, sparkling surface into fierce boiling eddies, and stirred up the whole sea of harmony from its profoundest depths. The musicians on the stage have vanished. No time now for their toy melodies! Every chord now cleaves the dark veil of the supernatural, like lightnings in the blackest night; the syncopated rhythm tells of vague and wonderful forebodings. Che grido è questo? (What noise is this?) And Leporello is sent out to see. Wilder and heavier grows the music, as he returns white and speechless, and only able in his half-wittedness of terror to imitate with his feet the heavy ta, ta, the approaching foot-fall of the man of marble, who has descended from his charger in the grave-yard. It requires the master’s hardihood to open the door for him, and amid those solemn and terrific crashes of the orchestra, with which the overture commenced, the strange guest stalks into the middle of the scene.

With hard, ponderous, marble tones, like blows, falling whole octaves, the statue announces himself as good as his word in accepting Giovanni’s invitation. The amazed unbeliever, trembling and yet summoning up his whole pride of will, which never yet forsook him, would fain prove as good as his word, too, and orders Leporello, who has crawled away under the table, to get ready another supper. But “not on mortal food feeds” this guest from the other world; “graver concerns” have led him here; and the instruments are again traversing those unsettled scales, whose wonderful effect we noticed in the overture. Parla, parla: rings out the rich, fresh baritone of the dauntless Amphytrion, as much as to say: “talk on, old fellow! I listen; you are a ghost, but I am a substance; I believe in myself, say what you will.” All very brave! but listen to the orchestra (as you cannot help listening) if you would know how nevertheless it goes with him in the inner workings of his soul, in those mysterious depths of consciousness which hitherto he has so wilfully refrained from sounding. That heavy, muffled tread of the sub-bass in triplets, making the ground quake, means more than the “tertian ague” of poor Leporello there, with head thrust out cautiously from under the table, and voice, automaton-like, moving in unison with the basso profondo of the orchestra. A pause is filled with a monotonous beat of the basses, when the crashing diminished-seventh chords begin anew, and louder than before, while the spectre again opens its marble jaws to tender the Don an invitation in its turn, which he, stout-hearted to the last, in spite of Leporello’s trembling, grotesque warnings, accepts. The statue asks his hand in pledge; he boldly gives it, starts as if an infinite pang and sense of death shot from the cold, stony hand through all the marrow of his bones; with an infinite audacity of will he refuses to repent; the spectre sinks through the ground; he is a doomed one; the flames of hell burst in on every side, with visions of the damned; a chorus of spectres: vieni! (come!) is heard amid the infernal whirl and tempest of the music; he wrestles with the demons and drops dead, the whole phantasmagoria vanishing, just as the other characters of the piece come in search of the reprobate, who listen to Leporello’a chattering story, dispose of their several destinies after the approved fashion of dramatic conclusions, and wind up with chanting a solemn canon over the Dissoluto punito, to the words: “Such is the end of the evil-doer!”

It is usual, however, to terminate the performance with the fall of Giovanni. The parts which follow, although admirable as music, are plainly superfluous to the action, as a poetic and artistic whole, and must have been added by Mozart out of mere conformity to old dramatic usage, which assembles and disposes of all the surviving characters of a piece in the last scene.

There is great room for melodramatic nonsense and diablerie in this judgement scene, in which the theatres have used full license. But if the orchestra be complete and efficient, there is no possibility of travestying or perverting the sublime and terrible intention of the music, which from the moment that the statue enters is enough to freeze one’s blood, and preoccupies all avenues of sense or consciousness with supernatural and infinite suggestions. And yet does Music’s sweet and faithful prophecy of reconciliation, like the “still, small voice” out of the inmost heart of things, still reach us somehow through it all!

The reader, who has followed us through this review of “Don Giovanni,” clinging always to the musical thread of interpretation, will find himself as little able as ourselves to sympathize with the regret, so frequently expressed, that Mozart should have prostituted his genius in this composition, by the false marriage of so much divine music with an unworthy subject. We believe the marriage was a true one. He did not merely cater to a low, licentious taste, in the selection of this story. Never was a choice made more heartily. Or, if he did not himself choose the plot, yet he fell in most heartily, and as it were, by a providential correspondence with the invention of Da Ponte—as heartily as he afterward fell in with the terrific images of the old Latin hymn, when he composed his own “Requiem,” in writing a Requiem to order for another. In these two works the life and genius of Mozart found their highest expression. “Don Juan” and the “Requiem,” in all their contrast, are alike true to the very texture and temper of the man. “Don Juan,” written in the hey-day of his genial faculties, in his hour and scene of greatest outward success, in the city of Prague, where he was understood and loved as nowhere else, surrounded by devoted friends, and with an orchestra and troup of singers worthy to be his interpreters, represents his sunny side, his keen sensibility to all refined delights of sense and soul, and his great faith in joy, in ecstasy, in all material and sensual harmonies. The “Requiem” bears to “Don Juan,” as a whole, the same relation that the last scene of that opera bears to the preceding parts; it expresses the religious awe and mystery of his soul, his singular presentiment of death, his constant feeling of the Infinite. The opera, in its last scene, rises to a sphere of music kindred with the “Requiem;” there vibrated the same deep chords of his nature. It was the very subject of all others for him to pour the whole warm life-tide of his soul and music into, and thus lift up and animate a poor old literal fiction, that somehow strangely kept its hold upon the popular mind, with all its weight of grotesqueness, extravagance, vulgarity and tom-foolery, into a vivid drama of the whole impetuous, bewildered, punished, yet far-hoping and indomitable experiment of human life.

Here are the two elements which seem in contradiction. Here, on the one side, is this bold, generous passion-life, with its innate gospel of joy, and transport, and glorious liberty; how well could Mozart understand it, and how eloquently preach it in that safe, universal dialect of Music, which utters only the heart-truth, and not the vulgar perversion of any sentiment! Here, on the other hand, is the stern Morality of being, frowning in conflict with the blind indulgence of the first. The first is false by its excess, by losing Order out of sight; while Order, sacred principle, in its common administration between men, in its turn is false, through its blind method of suppression and restraint, blaspheming and ignoring the divine springs of passion, which it should accept and regulate. The music is the heavenly and prophetic mediator that resolves the strife.

Hence the music of “Don Giovanni” presents two sides, two parts in strongest contrast. Love, joy, excitement, freedom, the complete life of the senses, are the theme of the first part, represented in the keen and restless alternation of the Don’s intrigues and pleasures—a downright, unmistrusting, beautiful assertion of the natural man—and you have it all summed up to one text and climax, in the first Finale, in the brief champagne sparkle and stormy transport of the little chorus, Viva la Liberta! As the burden of that part is Liberty, so the burden of the last part, the counter-text and focus, is Order, the violated Law; and as the central figure here stalks in the supernatural statue, stony and implacable. It is the whole story of life, the one ever-repeated, although ever-varied drama of dramas; and it is set forth here, both sides of it, most earnestly in this sincere and hearty music, which in its own exhaustless beauty hints the reconciliation of the two principles, and to the last is true to the divine good of the senses and the passions, and to the presentiment of a pure and perfect state, when these shall be, not dreaded, not suppressed, but regulated, harmonized, made rhythmical and safe, and more than ever lifesome, and spontaneous by Law as broad and deep and divine us themselves.

Do we defy the moral of the matter, when we feel a certain thrill of admiration as Don Juan boldly takes the statue’s hand, still strong in his life-creed, however he may have missed the heavenly method in its carrying out, and somehow inspired with the conviction that this judicial consummation is not, after all, the end of it; but that the soul’s capacity for joy and harmony is of that god-like and asbestos quality that no hells can consume it?

AUTUMN RAIN.

———

BY MRS. E. C. KINNEY.

———

How I love the Autumn rain!

Pattering at my window-pane,

With a liquid, lulling tone,

As I sit all day alone—

Thinking o’er and o’er again

Only how I love the rain!

How I love the Autumn rain!

When it brings a thoughtful train—

When in meditative mood

I enjoy my solitude,

While the full and active brain

Works as busy as the rain.

How I love the Autumn rain

When, without a care or pain,

I can dream, and dream all day,

Or with loitering Fancy stray—

Weaving some capacious strain

Musical as Autumn rain.

How I love the Autumn rain!

When gray twilight comes again:

When the flickering hearth-flumes dance,

While the shadows dart askance—

Seeming goblins to the brain,

In the dreamy Autumn rain.

How I love the Autumn rain!

Pattering at my window-pane,

When upon my bed reposing—

Half in waking, half in dozing,

Then a dulcet music-strain

Seems the pleasant Autumn rain.

How I love the Autumn rain!

Though it come, and come again,

Never does it weary me

With its dull monotony;

Never on my ear in vain

Falls the pattering Autumn rain.

TO MARY ON EARTH.

———

BY A. J. REQUIER.

———

I’m thinking of thee, Mary,

And twilight shadows fall

With mournful stillness o’er the scene

And deepen on the wall;

But with the dim, departing light,

Breaks faintly, from afar,

Upon the bosom of the night,

A solitary star!

I’m thinking of thee, Mary,

For like that twilight scene,

The dusk and dew were on my heart,

To darken what was green;

The dusk and dew were falling fast

Upon its faded dreams,

When, through the gloom, thy young love cast

The fervor of its beams.

I’m thinking of thee, Mary,

For in this lonely hour

A thought of other times will come,

Of parted friends will lower;

And early images arise,

With freshness flushed in pain,

Of tender forms and tearful eyes

I may not see again.

I’m thinking of thee, Mary,

For when such moments dwell

Upon my spirits with the weight

Of a departing knell,

A thought of thee breaks through the night

Of memories that mar,

With the lone glory of that bright,

That solitary star!

Oh, Mary, Mary, Mary dear!

If in my bosom shine

One hope, one dream, one single wish,

That single wish is thine;

And if to see and feel and hear

But thee, in heart and brain,

Be love, I love thee, Mary dear,

And cannot love again!

TO ADHEMAR.

———

BY E. ANNA LEWIS.

———

’Tis just one year ago, beloved, to-day,

Since, my pale hand between thy hands compressed,

I laid my burning brow upon thy breast,

And bade the flood-gate of my heart give way—

Then shut it down upon its streams for aye.

We sought to speak, yet neither said farewell;

Fate rung her larum through my spirit’s cell

Until the chill of death upon me lay.

I never could relive that hour again:

Through every artery shot an icy pang,

As if an adder pierced me with its fang,

And dashed the roseate fount of life with bane.

My eyes were open, yet I could not see—

I breathed, yet I was dead. All things were dead to me.

ANNA TEMPLE.

A TALE OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

———

BY JANE GAY.

———

CHAPTER I.

Death makes no conquest of this conqueror,

For now he lives in fame, though not in life.

King Richard III.

The Lord Protector was seated beneath a royal canopy in the lofty parliament-chamber of England. At his left stood Thurloe, his secretary, on his right was seated a part of the bold Puritan band who had dared affix their signatures to the death-warrant of Charles Stuart. There was Bradshaw, the intrepid judge who wrote his name first on that fatal paper; there was Ireton—the fiery-hearted Ireton—who had come up in defense of Protestantism fierce and raging “as a lion from the swelling of Jordan;” Goffe, and Whalley, and Dixwell, too, were there, whose ashes repose in our own quiet “City of Elms,” and many others of that fearless band of regicides that three years after were fleeing from home and country, to escape the block or gibbet. Ambassadors from every nation were there—princes and courtiers, officers of the army, judges, petitioners, all helped to make up the illustrious Protectorate Assembly of 1655.

Seated side by side, and discoursing in low tones of the projected treaty, were Sir Matthew Hale and Milton, the world-renowned bard; and in a listening posture near them, was the accomplished Lambert. No purple robe or kingly crown distinguished the chief of this august body, but nature had stamped a seal on him that could not be mistaken, for Oliver Cromwell bore in the parliament-hall the look and bearing of a man born to command, while at the same time the most unconquerable determination and the highest-wrought enthusiasm were traced on every lineament of his face. But to our story.

A gentleman, in the splendid dress that distinguished the court of Louis Fourteenth, approached the Lord Protector, and bending low, presented a paper to his highness. It was Bordeaux, the French ambassador, and the treaty so long in contemplation between the two nations, was this day to receive the seal of the Protectorate. The hand of Cromwell was already on the paper, when some confusion near the door arrested his attention, and a frown was gathering on his brow, when his piercing eye detected a youth with foreign air and aspect boldly striving to make his way through the guards that were stationed near the entrance of the hall.

“Silence, guards!” shouted the deep, nasal voice of the Protectorate, “stay not the boy; let him approach our presence if he have petition to offer.”

The guards gave way, and a slender but graceful-looking youth of some fourteen years came forward, and, knelt at the feet of the sovereign. Every eye was fastened upon him, and a deep silence came over the throng as he knelt there with clasped hands, his dark, earnest eyes fixed on the stern-looking, shaggy-browed Puritan in mute supplication—for no word fell from the boy’s lips. A heavy mass of raven curls were gathered back from the snowy forehead of the strange youth, and fell in singular beauty over his shoulders, and his simple peasant garb, had forced the idea of some wandering minstrel-boy, but for the deep and earnest pleading of the eyes, which told of excitement and anguish too deep for the utterance of the lips.

The silent but impassioned pleading of the poor youth touched the susceptible heart of Cromwell, and he laid his hand kindly and caressingly on the locks of the fair stranger, and said, in his gentlest accents,

“Whence come you, my son, and how can the Protectorate aid you? Be calm,” added he, noticing a nervous tremor on his countenance, “you have nothing to fear here—speak your errand plainly.”

“I am come from the valley of Piedmont, my noble lord,” replied the youth, “and the snow was red with the blood of the poor Vaudois;” and a cold shudder passed over his pale face.

“Hell and furies!” shouted Cromwell, in momentary wrath; “Are the cursed heretics on their track again?” Then bursting into tears, he added, in a subdued tone, “Poor martyred saints of the Most High, ye shall wear a glorious crown, in spite of your persecutors, and your blood shall not redden the Alpine snows in vain! If there is might in human arm, your enemies shall be humbled, and know that the Lord of Hosts will avenge his elect.”

Then taking up the paper on which the sovereign seal was not yet fixed, he delivered it to the French ambassador, saying somewhat haughtily, “Take it back to your monarch, and tell him that Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England, rejects the treaty, until the King of France, and his prime minister, shall pledge their assistance in succoring the persecuted Protestants of Piedmont! Until such pledge shall be given, our negotiations are ended.”

Bordeaux reddened with resentment as he folded the rejected paper. “The war is then inevitable,” he muttered. “Shall I say, sire, that you refuse the treaty?”

“Say I will wage war with all Europe but this persecution of Christians shall cease!”

“But the King of France can do nothing, my lord,” persisted Bordeaux. “The Duke of Savoy may make laws for his subjects as independently as your highness; and no foreign force can be brought to bear upon them in those mountain wilds.”

Cromwell stamped his foot with impatience. “My word has gone forth, and ‘the ships of England shall sail over the Alps,’ sooner than another hair of their heads shall perish! Tell both your masters that this is my decree.”

The Frenchman was indignant at this speech of the Lord Protector, for although every Frenchman understood that Mazarin, the prime minister, was the real monarch, they could not endure to have it thus thrown in their teeth, and he angrily asked permission to retire, which was readily granted; and the parliament was soon after adjourned.

That same evening young Francois Waldo—for that was the name of the Vaudois youth—sat in the palace of Whitehall, with the Protector and his family; and though but a simple peasant-boy, he looked with a calm indifference upon the courtly splendor that surrounded him; for he had been bred amid the wild magnificence of the snow-capped Alps, and they pictured to his youthful imagination the “everlasting hills,” of which he had early been taught to sing, as he sat with the pious shepherds tending their flocks in the evening starlight.

It was a sad story he told of his poor, persecuted people, how, in the very heart of winter, six stout Catholic regiments had broken in upon their quiet homes, to overpower and destroy; how the innocent children had been dashed from the icy pinnacles—the fathers and mothers beheaded—their villages burned to the ground—and those who fled for safely to the mountain-caverns, were hunted like wild beasts by the Pope’s minions; and Cromwell—the lion warrior and the dauntless regicide—the unflinching patriot, and the powerful sovereign, clasped the poor fugitive to his heart, and loudly bewailed the fate of these martyred Christians.

“Had you parents, and were they victims of this terrible slaughter?” weepingly inquired Mary Cromwell, one of the Protector’s daughters.

“Yes, lady—parents; and a sweet little blue-eyed sister, like the little girl by your side;” and he pointed to a beautiful child that had been listening with a sorrowful face, and eyes brimfull, to his sad recital. “We called her our mountain violet; but in one night I was left alone—for they burned our cottage, and slew both parents and child. I was away, but came next morning and sat awhile by the mouldering embers of my home, and then rose up determined to seek the shores of Christian England, and plead for succor. I hid myself among the rocks and cliffs by day, and at night wandered, hungry and alone, until I reached the sea-coast, lest I should fall into the hands of the soldiers, and none escape to carry aid to my suffering nation.”

“You are a brave, blessed boy, and you shall not go hungry any more,” said little Anna Temple, forgetting her childish timidity; and going up close to him, she gazed earnestly and lovingly in his face. “Stay here, and we will all love you, because you have no sister—wont we, Mary?” said the child, in the warmth and innocency of her heart.

“Yes, darling,” replied she, “and he shall go to school, if he wishes, with you and Robert, and Eugene.”

The heart of Francois Waldo was nigh to bursting, as the gentle accents of the child fell on his ear—so like the tones of his own Christine, which had so often gladdened him in their happy home—and he bowed his head and wept for the first time since his bereavement; and every member of that lordly household wept in sympathy.

Months went by, and the Vaudois youth was still an inmate of the Protector’s family—a calm, intellectual, devoted student, destined as a preacher of that faith for which his kindred had suffered martyrdom. He went not back to his native valley, for here he might better fit himself for the work of the glorious mission he felt desirous of fulfilling; and Cromwell had been true to his word—the arm of oppression had been unnerved, and peace and plenty secured to the faithful survivors.

Anna Temple was the only earthly being that withdrew his thoughts for a moment from the prosecution of his great and holy purpose; but when her soft blue eyes pleaded, as they often did, with her lips, for an hour’s relaxation and amusement in the park or garden, he would sometimes unbind the mental chain for a little space, and go forth with spirit unfettered and free. Then he would talk to the fair child of his lost home—of the icy palaces of the Alps, pure as spirit-haunts—of the wild-flowers springing from their rocky beds, and of the holy starlight of the mountains, until the enthusiastic creature would regard Francois as a being of purer mould, more spiritual and good, than any other person with whom she held companionship.

And thus years passed; Francois still saw in the beautiful Anna Temple, or fancied he saw, the image of his lost Christine; and the young girl read in the large, soul-earnest eyes of the Vaudois student, the first mysterious leaf of womanhood—and they were both happy.

Meantime a shadow was darkening the sky of England—a storm-cloud, destined to shake from its foundation her political fabric, and place another Stuart on the throne. Cromwell, the Protector—the hero of the seventeenth century, was summoned to repose! Bravely had he borne his armor on the great battle-ground of life, and his valiant heart had not fainted in the heat of the conflict. The humble plebian had dared boldly to take up arms against his country’s foes in defiance of his king; and subsequently, at the same country’s call, and in defense of her liberties, with the Book of God in his hand, and a psalm on his lips, to affix his signature to the death-warrant of the sovereign traitor. Ever, where duty called, was he found foremost in the ranks of the faithful, battling for the right; and when in the maturity of manhood the sun of glory brightened his gray hairs with the splendor of royalty, he turned coldly away from the crown of a king, preferring the simple title of Protector of the Commonwealth. His sword was still girded against the Lord’s enemies, when a voice from above summoned him from earthly glory to heavenly rest; and on the third of September, one thousand six hundred and fifty-eight, Oliver Cromwell stood girded for his last conflict.

Historians have recorded that as a fearful night when the Lord Protector lay struggling with the final enemy. Wildly wailed the wind around that earthly palace; but the eye of the dying was on the eternal mansion, and so amid the fury of the elements, the great spirit of Cromwell achieved its final victory.

A loud wail burst from the whole army of Puritans, for well they knew there was none powerful like him to cope with their adversaries. The master-spirits among their opponents would not reverence his son, because the father had held them in check; and the inefficient Richard Cromwell had nothing to claim for himself. He beheld the country rent by faction, and having no power to quell insubordination, and, moreover, fearing the result to himself, he quietly resigned his Protectorate, and all that had been gained to England by Cromwell’s life, was lost in his death. Whither would now flee the fifty-nine judges who had decreed Charles Stuart to the scaffold, or where the friends of the Protector find safety?

——

CHAPTER II.

When clouds are seen, wise men put on their cloaks;

When great leaves fall, then winter is at hand.

Ibid.

Not far from the shores of a sunny lake in the depths of the American forest stood the rude log-hut of an emigrant. The site was one of surpassing loveliness—for nature here, in her unbounded domain, had done the work of ages, and the majestic oak towered in silent grandeur beside the graceful elm and the drooping willow, making mockery of art. Birds of glittering plumage sang all day in this wildwood retreat—for, save this one log-cottage, for miles and miles around was no human habitation. The slight clearing, scarcely sufficient for a garden-patch, sloping down to the water-side, told of no hardy adventurer hunting fortune in the wilderness of the new world; and it would have puzzled even a Yankee of this present age to have guessed at the pursuit or object of the tenants of that forest home, so contradictory seemed they in outward aspect.

The family consisted of but four members—a tall, noble-looking man, a little past the meridian of life, with piercing eyes, and dark locks sprinkled with white, falling rather thinly over his broad forehead. His dress was of the plainest, coarsest drab cloth; indeed, there was nothing to distinguish it from that of the negro servant who attended him, except the natural grace and dignity imparted by the manly form of the wearer. The other two occupants of this secluded abode were a young girl, who might have numbered seventeen summers, and an elderly female, who had once been her nurse, but who was now a sort of housekeeper in general, inasmuch as there was none other to superintend the domestic arrangements; but had you taken a peep into the interior of the cottage, you would have seen no lack of comfort, and even some faint show of taste, considering the dearth of material. A coarse carpet was thrown over the rough log-door, and ranged around the sides of the apartment were rustic seats composed of branches of trees, covered, sofa-like, with skins of animals, forming comfortable couches for sitting or reclining. Indian blankets, tastefully embroidered, served as a partition between this and a small room adjoining, which was fitted up for the young lady’s boudoir, and which was occupied in common by both females. Here, on a table of oak, covered with kid-skin, lay a few books, and a guitar, evidently the relics of other days. A large sea-shell served for a vase, and stood on the rude table, filled with wood-flowers, the first gift of summer. Perhaps, too, you might have noticed some large, massive chests in either apartment, and wondered how such ponderous articles had found place in so small a habitation; but we have a key to the mystery, reader, and will give it thee, together with the secret of this secluded family.

Some eighteen months prior to the time our chapter commences, a gentlemanly-looking resident of the new Quaker city, calling himself, John Brown, saw every where posted up, by order of the new king, directions for the seizure and arrest of all persons known or supposed to be implicated in the fate of Charles Stuart—with large rewards held out as an incentive, to those who should successfully aid the king’s officers in their search.

It was an hour of darkness to many a poor fugitive, for disguises were no longer to be trusted, and life’s last hope lay in strict concealment in rocks or forests, or amid the haunts of the savages. Every tie of kindred was now to be sundered—every communication with the world of mankind to be cut off, and the wanderer was henceforward to live with all the golden threads of being rudely snapped by a tyrant. There was no time to be lost, for “blood for blood” was the royal watchword, and his legions were on the track.

Brown was fully alive to his danger, but with the cool, undaunted heart of a man accustomed to war with obstacles, he sat down calmly to meditate the best course of procedure. To remain a day longer in the city he knew full well was madness, and every hour was fraught with danger. Could he leave here in a land of strangers, alone and unprotected save by one frail woman, the delicate blossom he had cherished as “Love’s lost token,” and borne over the waters to cheer his declining age? How could he talk of a separation of years, perhaps forever, from the gentle creature, whose life was all centered in his—how could she bear this last stroke also? True, he had wealth—treasures of gold and silver; wealth would purchase friends, but dangerous friends, too, he thought, for a lonely orphan girl.

He sat deep in thought for a moment longer, then reached his hand and touched a silver bell, exclaiming—“It shall be as she wishes. I will abide her choice at all events!”

The ring was speedily answered by a good-looking man-servant.

“I here, Massa Brown,” said the ebony, making a full display of ivory.

“Is Miss Anna in, Carle?” inquired the master.

“Do no! rudder tink she be, Massa.”

“Go then, and tell her I would see her. Be quick, Carle, and do you wait until I call, for I shall want you again soon.”

A moment after, a fairy-like creature bounded into the presence of her father, and winding her arms caressingly around his neck, waited his pleasure.

“You are ill, dear father,” said she at length, observing his pale forehead. “I have wasted all the morning on my pet birds, thinking you were out as usual.”

He kissed her cheek fondly, and replied—

“I did go out, my child, but quickly returned, for there is danger abroad, and there is no more rest for thy father. ’Tis a mournful summons for thee, darling, but there is no time to be lost in revealing the true cause of it. I must flee speedily, or the new king’s officers will soon bear me back to drop my head at Whitehall. Bear it bravely, Anna, you are my own daughter, and know well the happy days of the Protectorate are ended. There is gold, more than sufficient for all thy wants!”

“But, father, you are my wealth; all the treasure of this world to me! Whither would you flee, and wherefore leave me behind?”