THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE

Of Literature, Art, and Science.

Vol. IV. NEW-YORK, OCTOBER 1, 1851. No. III.

Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes moved to the end of the article. Table of contents has been created for the HTML version.

Contents

[JOHN GODFREY SAXE.]
[GLASS OF BOHEMIA.]
[THE SANDWICH ISLANDS TO-DAY.]
[PHILIP PENDLETON COOKE.]
[DR. HUNTINGTON ON COPYRIGHT.]
["THE SCIENCE OF DECEPTION."]
[ARTS AMONG THE AZTECS AND INDIANS.]
[ORIGINAL POEMS BY BARRY CORNWALL AND W. C. BENNETT.]
[A STORY WITHOUT A NAME.]
[MUSIC.]
[THE COUNT MONTE-LEONE.]
[CHAMOIS HUNTING.]
[VISIT TO THE ABERDEEN COMBWORKS.]
[A REMINISCENCE.]
[THE SHADOW OF MARGERY PASTON.]
[CLEOPATRA'S NEEDLE.]
[HISTORY AND CONDITION OF THE CHEAP POSTAGE SYSTEM.]
[OCTOBER.]
[MY NOVEL.]
[INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT.]
[A COUNTRY GENTLEMAN AT HOME.]
[THE FLYING ARTIST.]
[ART EXPRESSION.]
[THE MEETING OF THE VEGETARIANS.]
[AUTHORS AND BOOKS.]
[THE FINE ARTS.]
[HISTORICAL REVIEW OF THE MONTH.]
[SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES AND PROCEEDINGS OF LEARNED SOCIETIES.]
[RECENT DEATHS.]
[LADIES' LATE SUMMER FASHIONS.]

JOHN GODFREY SAXE.

Every catalogue of English poets embraces the name of Butler, though he was but the most unpoetical of satirists. If Hudibras is poetry there can be no difficulty in admitting to this distinction Trumbull's Progress of Dulness and McFingal, Snelling's Truth, a Gift for Scribblers, Halleck's Fanny, Osborn's Vision of Rubeta, Lowell's Fable for Critics, and some dozen other attempts in in this line, by Americans. The disease of the satiric muse in this country has been the spleen, and the reason why we have had so little of the healthful humorous rage, ideal and lyrical, of which the old masters gave us immortal examples, is, that those among us who have attempted this kind of composition have generally had far more to do with persons than with manners, have been influenced more by envy and malice than by a generous scorn of what is ludicrous and mean and criminal. The author of "Progress" has fallen into none of the prevailing sins; he is of the school of Horace, and has as little as he may to do with fools, while he holds up, unfolds, and whips, the follies of the day.

John G. Saxe was born in Highgate, Franklin county, Vermont, on the second day of June, 1816, His youth was passed in rural occupations until he was seventeen years of age, when he determined to study one of the liberal professions, and with this view entered the grammar school at St. Albans, and, after the usual preliminary course, the college at Middlebury, where he graduated bachelor of arts in the summer of 1839. He subsequently read law at Lockport in New-York and at St. Albans, and was admitted to the bar at the latter place in September, 1843, since which time he has been practising in the courts with more than the average success of young attorneys, and he is now a leading politician of the democratic party, the conductor of its local organ, the Burlington Sentinel, and District Attorney, by the grace of personal popularity—all other candidates on the same ticket having been defeated.

Mr. Saxe became known as an occasional contributor to the Knickerbocker Magazine, some eight or ten years ago. Among his pieces in that miscellany is one characteristically remarkable for a sympathetic fitness of phrase, entitled the Rhyme of the Rail, and beginning:

Singing through the forests,
Rattling over ridges,
Shooting under arches,
Rumbling over bridges,
Whizzing through the mountains,
Buzzing o'er the vale,—
Bless me! this is pleasant,
Riding on the Rail!

In this period he has thrown off scores of epigrams, &c., anonymously, besides the more ambitious performances acknowledged in the collection of his Poems, of which we have before us a third edition—showing that their quality is well appreciated—from the press of Ticknor & Co. The longest of these is Progress, first published in 1846. In skilful felicities of language and rhythm, general clear and sharp expression, and alternating touches of playful wit and vigorous sense, there is nothing so long that is so well sustained in the hundred and one books of American satire. In the beginning of it he says finely of our "glorious tongue:"

Let thoughts, too idle to be fitly dressed
In sturdy Saxon, be in French expressed;
Let lovers breathe Italian,—like, in sooth,
Its singers soft, emasculate, and smooth;
But for a tongue, whose ample powers embrace
Beauty and force, sublimity and grace,
Ornate or plain, harmonious, yet strong,
And formed alike for eloquence and song,
Give me the English,—aptest tongue to paint
A sage or dunce, a villain or a saint,
To spur the slothful, counsel the distressed,
To lash the oppressor, and to soothe the oppressed,
To lend fantastic Humor freest scope,
To marshal all his laughter-moving troop,
Give Pathos power, and Fancy lightest wings,
And Wit his merriest whims and keenest stings!

And then proceeds with a display of popular follies, and especially of those most grotesque and offensive, the sham philosophies by which it is attempted to regenerate society:

Hail, Social Progress! each new moon is rife
With some new theory of social life,
Some matchless scheme ingeniously designed
From half their miseries to free mankind;
On human wrongs triumphant war to wage,
And bring anew the glorious golden age.
"Association" is the magic word
From many a social "priest and prophet" heard;
"Attractive Labor" is the angel given,
To render earth a sublunary Heaven!
"Attractive Labor!" ring the changes round,
And labor grows attractive in the sound;
And many a youthful mind, where haply lurk
Unwelcome fancies at the name of "work,"
See pleasant pastime in its longing view
Of "toil made easy" and "attractive" too,
And, fancy-rapt, with joyful ardor, turns
Delightful grindstones, and seductive churns!

In the same vein we are treated with "novelties which disturb our peace," in literature, fashion, politics, religion, and morals; and every line is faultless in finish and in wit. The Proud Miss McBride, and The New Rape of the Lock, are in different veins, but abound in the same exquisite turns, agreeable images, and comic displays of wisdom. In the New Rape of the Lock:

The gossips whispered it through the town,
That "Captain Jones loved Susan Brown;"
But, speaking with due precision,
The gossips' tattle was out of joint,
For the lady's "blunt" was the only point
That dazzled the lover's vision!

And the Captain begged, in his smoothest tones,
Miss Susan Brown to be Mistress Jones,—
Flesh of his flesh and bone of his bones,
Till death the union should sever;
For these are the words employed, of course,
Though Death is cheated, sometimes by Divorce;
A fact which gives an equivocal force
To that beautiful phrase, "for ever!"

And Susan sighed the conventional "Nay"
In such a bewitching, affirmative way,
The Captain perceived 'twas the feminine "Ay,"
And sealed it in such commotion,
That no "lip-service" that ever was paid
To the ear of a god, or the cheek of a maid,
Looked more like real devotion!

At the wedding party all the aristocracy of the circle in which the Browns and Joneses were acquainted came together, and Miss Susan—

To pique a group of laughing girls
Who stood admiring the Captain's curls,
She formed the resolution
To get a lock of her lover's hair,
In the gaze of the guests assembled there,
By some expedient, foul or fair,
Before the party's conclusion.

"Only a lock, dear Captain!—no more,
'A lock for Memory,' I implore!"
But Jones, the gayest of quizzers,
Replied, as he gave his eye a cock,
"'Tis a treacherous memory needs a lock,"
And dodg'd the envious scissors.

Alas! that Susan couldn't refrain,
In her zeal the precious lock to gain,
From laying her hand on the lion's mane!
To see the cruel mocking,
And hear the short, affected cough,
The general titter, and chuckle, and scoff,
When the Captain's Patent Wig came off,
Was really dreadfully shocking!

The Times, a poem read before the Boston Mercantile Library Association, in 1849, Carmen Lætum, recited last year at a meeting of the Alumni of Middlebury College, and New England Men, delivered before the literary societies of the New-York University a few weeks ago, are his other most elaborate productions, and they are all carefully finished and alike in their chief characteristics. His shorter pieces in a few instances have touches of sentiment, but this is not his forte; by the definition which limits poetry to rhythmical creations of beauty, Mr. Saxe can scarcely be called a poet of great excellence; his distinction is, that he is a wit, and that he has been eminently successful in giving to his wit a poetical expression.

As a judicious critic has said of him, "he unquestionably an artist, of a high order, in the narrow range which he has taken. His comical productions are beautifully finished. As they stand, they are terse, smooth, and fluent, and any one who has ever tried his hand at this species of composition, will readily appreciate the time, labor, and taste, which must have been expended, to jest so easily, in rhyme."

GLASS OF BOHEMIA.

This beautiful article is manufactured in various places throughout Germany—most largely amid the very mountainous districts of Bohemia; some of the best, however, is made in Bavaria and sent to Bohemia, and thence exported. The materials from which the glass is formed consist chiefly of the same as those used in England; the manufacturers themselves seem to believe that there is no difference except in the proportions of the materials, and in the fuel, which is exclusively wood, and produces, by a little attention, a more constant and intense heat than can be produced by any coal; the feeding of the furnace with the latter material, they say, always creates a change in the temperature detrimental to the fluid above, and never sufficiently intense. The wooded mountains of Bohemia are entirely inhabited by a population whose industry, morals, hospitality, and kindliness of manners, do honor, not only to this rich and beautiful kingdom, but to the whole human race. They are pure Germans, not of Sclavish origin, and the German dialect alone is spoken. Unlike every other manufacturing district I have ever visited, they retain unimpaired all their rural and primitive virtues. Clean to a proverb, in their houses and persons, hospitable and amiable in their manners, simple in their habits, cheerful and devoted in their religion, they form perhaps, the happiest community in the world. In passing through the country, a stranger would never find out that he was in a manufacturing district, but might fancy himself in the green valleys of a partly pastoral, partly agricultural people. Thickly inhabited, the beautiful little cottages, clustered into villages, or scattered along the glens, or sides of the hills, are embowered with fruit trees, and encircled with shrubs and flowers, which each cottager cultivates with a zeal peculiar to his race; on every side rich fields of grain or pasture stretch out like a vast enamelled carpet between the hills, which are clothed in dense forest of spruce, fir, pine, and beech, filled with deer, roe, and capercalzie; they extend in every direction, far beyond the reach of the eye, one vast cloud of verdure. The fabriques or factories, are placed generally in the middle of one of these villages, the extent of which can only be known by going from house to house; so closely is each hid in its own fruit-bower, and so surrounded by shrubs and flowers, that the eye can only pick up the buildings by their blue smoke, or get a glimpse of them here and there as you advance; thus some of the villages are elongated to three miles, forming the most delicious walk along its grassy road, generally accompanied by a stream, always overhung by a profusion of wild flowers, the mountain-ash, and weeping birch; many of the former only to be found in our gardens. It has a very picturesque effect to see the inhabitants of these villages with their simple costume; and if it rains, their umbrellas, often of rich colors like their glass, scarlet, green, and deep crimson, with beautiful ruby, emerald, or turquoise handles; not such as a stranger might suppose a gaudy glass bauble, but rich and massive, and having all the appearance of the solid, gold, and gem-studded handles of the oriental weapons.

The fabrique is built like the rest of the cottages, and only differs from them in size, and the shape and height of its chimney, which emitting only wood smoke, has none of the dense sulphuric cloud which blackens and poisons the neighborhood of coal-fed factories: it is never that ostentatious building for whose magnitude and embellishments the public are obliged to pay, in the increased charges on its productions. The glass fabriques of Bohemia are all small, in fact only one large apartment, in the centre of which is the furnace, a circular structure divided into eight compartments containing the melted metal for as many colors; one man and a boy are stationed at the door of each compartment, the former to extract the fluid with his pipe, the latter to hold the wooden mould[1] in which the article is blown and shaped. The number of hands employed in an ordinary fabrique, are:—Eight men who work in the metal, take it from the fire, and blow it in the moulds; eight helps to hold the moulds, &c.; four to stir the metal, &c.; two breakers; four day laborers.

The best men are sometimes paid from eighteen to twenty shillings a week, and provide their own food, which is good; and as they require much nourishment from the exhausting effects of the heat, it consists of meat, vegetables, and a vast quantity of beer; those who are employed about the furnace especially, drink from twelve to fifteen quarts a day; it is a clear, bitter beverage, which they, in common with all the German race, like beyond every thing else, but it is of little strength; intoxication is almost unknown, and as a proof of their careful and excellent character, in one of the above-mentioned villages, three miles in length, a fire had not been known in the memory of the oldest inhabitants I questioned, though the houses from the ground to the roof are made entirely of wood.

The materials of which the glass is composed, as far as can be ascertained, and they seem to make no secret of it, appear to be the same as those in use in England; they say, they derive their perfection from their mode of mixing and burning the material. Thus the principal component parts are:—Sand; chalk; potash; brimstone; arsenic, mixed with various colors, regulated by the principal:—Uran oxide; cobalt oxide; coppré oxide; nickel oxide; chrom oxide; minium; tin oxide.

The gold used in ornamenting the glass is from the purest ducats, dissolved in strong acid (artz wasser), the oil with which the colors are mixed is of turpentine (harz öhl).

BOHEMIAN GLASS PAINTER.

Nothing is done in most of the blowing fabriques but mixing the material, and coloring; and for cutting, polishing, &c., from three to six wheels are used—all the finishing goes on in the little cottages by which the furnace is surrounded, and with which the valleys and sides of the hills are studded; here you find, within the contracted chambers of these small block-houses, if on the ground-flat, standing on an earthen[2] floor like our Highland cottages, an artist of the first ability, tracing the exquisite scrolls and flowers which we see in these beautiful works of art; and which are performed by men bearing all the appearance of simple cotters; but whose hand sweeps free and careless over the glass with the confidence and ease of an experienced artist; seldom being provided with more than two very ordinary looking brushes, a small one and another a size larger, and working frequently without any pattern, or indicating lines upon the glass they are painting; but perfect from habitude, the scrolls, and wreaths, and flowers, come out with the same facility as one traces a name upon the dewy pane of a window. Often the whole family are brought up from childhood in painting and in drawing on glass, and thus producing a race of hereditary artists; boys from thirteen and upwards are employed in the most delicate works in this genre of art. Each cottage where the painting and gilding go on, is provided with a small oven, into which the glass is put to bake in the colors, where it is kept for a day and allowed to cool down; the white figures and flowers, when they go into the oven, are of a dark chrome color, but come out pure white, as will be observed on examining any glass on which flowers of this color are painted; the gold, also, when laid on, is of a dead brown, and when burnt in, is polished, generally by women of the family. The gold in many instances is left unpolished, and only the stalks and fibres are burnished, which give an excellent effect. It is most interesting to go from one cottage to another; in one you are amazed by the exquisite paintings in gold, silver, and colors; in another, the cutting out all those beautiful leaf-work, lily, bell-flower, octagon, and star-shaped vases, which is done, not only by men, but by their children, girls and boys. In one cottage, I was particularly struck by a man, his two daughters, and son, sitting at as many wheels, cutting the most elaborate, but delicate, figures; shaping from the merely turned over bell vases, those beautiful varieties of lily and flower-indented lamps for suspension, and vessels for holding bouquets, tracing the scrolls, stalks, and fibres, with the same ease as the bare-footed wife and mother prepared their supper in the wooden bowl on the earth-floor behind them; for there was but one apartment for the fine arts, the nursery, and the kitchen, yet all was neatness, perfect cleanliness, and order; while on the long beam which formed the sill of the three mullion windows, was arranged a number of glass objects in the glorious colors of Bohemian art—ruby, emerald, topaz, chrysopras, turquoise; with pure crystals, which, richly cut, reflected, like a rainbow, the gems by which they are surrounded. In another cottage, in Steinchönau, I was much pleased with the designs which two young men were painting, both in gold, and colors; of which the former were scrolls of a very superior character, and the latter, flowers, butterflies, and insects. I questioned one of the men respecting the forms and characteristics of those he was painting, and which were beautiful illustrations of Natural History; when he brought me in, from a little bed-room, or rather closet, two boxes full of exquisitely preserved specimens of a great variety of native insects, which he had collected in his leisure hours, and arranged himself, to assist him in his painting. The copies were facsimiles of the originals, both as to colors and character. Among these insects I observed a beautiful miniature crawfish, not so large as a shrimp, a native, also, of the streams in his neighborhood. So identified had these productions of nature become with his imagination, that he was, at the moment I came in, painting some most correctly, without any specimen before him. It is impossible to express the feelings produced by these people, so simple, so industrious, and, above all, so modest. They could not refrain from surprise at the admiration their every-day productions created in us; and these simple artisans would with difficulty believe that their works were sought for, and thus valued, in all powerful and wealthy England, where they believe nothing is unknown, nothing imperfect, nothing impossible! One man whom I visited is an extraordinary genius, rarely to be met with; he has been driven by the force of that same genius, to seek abroad, in France and Bavaria (Munich), food for his mind, and has brought back with him several folio works of engravings from the best masters, from which he designs. Placing before him one of these works, a Raphael or a Rubens, he either copies the group, or composes from them to suit the form of his vase, which he thus embellishes with the most exquisite figures; his name is Charles Antoin Günther. He lives in a little block-house, as humble as the commonest of those above described, on the declivity of a brae, by a small stream, on which stand the little scattered village of Steinschönau. It is composed of only two apartments below, of which his work-room is one, and which is not above ten feet square, with just space enough to hold four little lathes for engraving glass, at one of which he works himself, while the others are occupied by three boys, the youngest twelve and a-half years old, the eldest fifteen! They all engrave beautifully, pieces laid before them by Günther, and which they follow with a faithfulness and spirit only to be believed on personal inspection. He was at work himself on a vase goblet, of the shape of the usual green hock-glass, but which might contain a bottle; it was lapis lazuli blue, enriched by a group of Bacchanalian Cupids and vine-leaves of his own composition, and worked with a spirit and freedom worthy of some of the masters by whose works he was surrounded. What struck me most, was one of those exquisite little figures of Raphael's, in his great picture of the "Madona del Sixto," in the Royal Gallery at Dresden. The cherub leaning on the parapet, with his chin resting on one hand, as he gazes on the Virgin; it is exquisitely drawn in pencil, a fac-simile, and pinned on the wooden wall of the engraver's cottage, immediately opposite his seat. I asked him how he first traced on the glass the subjects which he was to cut; he replied by taking up a plain glass without any figure or indication on its surface, and asking me what subject I should like engraved. On my replying that, being an old deer-stalker, I should be very well pleased with a stag; he immediately applied the wheel to the glass, and in five minutes by my watch, produced one of the most splendid, spirited animals I ever saw in the forest, and really worthy of Landseer; the stag is making a spring over some broken palings and rough foreground, and his action and parts can only be appreciated by those who have lived with the deer on the hill and watched them with the feelings of a hill-man, like Günther, who has had opportunities of seeing the deer in his own native woods, where they abound. I brought this glass away with me, though in itself but an inferior article; merely as a specimen of what I had seen done by this man in the space of five minutes, without a copy or any thing to guide him on the smooth surface of the goblet.

I send you sketches of the artist and his dwelling; and as the portrait exhibits, at the same time, his native costume, it will be the more interesting, and cannot fail to give a correct idea of the character of this Bohemian mountaineer.

The sketch of Günther's House will also afford an idea of these Bohemian artisans' dwellings, more so than any written description could do. I send you with it a drawing of another of these picturesque houses.

There are two classes of persons engaged, on a large scale, in the exportation of Bohemian glass—the fabricant and the collector; generally speaking, however, the latter is the direct exporter, and he also superintends the cutting, painting, and packing. The fabricant is more frequently engaged in furnishing the collector, and to a great extent, with the glass in its original and more simple forms as it comes from the furnace, and it is then cut and painted by the cottagers who surround the dwelling of the collector; so that many of these villages are entirely formed by the collector and his people. Others however, employed in the same way, cluster round the fabrique; but even their productions for the most part go to the collectors, who have their correspondents in America, Spain, Turkey, Greece, England, &c.

HOME OF CHARLES ANTOINE GUNTHER.

As might be expected, there is a considerable difference in the designs of different houses; some are much superior to others, both as to color and design. Those of Egermann, in Hyda, who has added many new and valuable discoveries in the art of making and coloring the glass, and Hoffman, in Prague, are the best I have visited, to which may be added Zahn, in Steinschönau, for whom Günter engraves. Egerman's establishment in Hyda, for cutting, painting, and engraving, is very considerable, and exhibits first-rate talent, which can only be appreciated by a personal inspection of his works; and the taste and judgment of Hoffman, in Prague, in his selections, the designs he gives, and the artists he employs, cannot be surpassed, if equalled, in Germany. He has entirely abandoned the modern school, and returned to the first principles of art,[3] and produces, both in form and decorations, subjects worthy of the ancient masters.

RESIDENCE OF A BOHEMIAN ARTISAN.

The glass villages are scattered all through the mountainous districts, whose ridges, and summits, and upper ranges are covered with a forest, which extends forty or fifty miles in length, by thirty broad; the fabriquants maintain that the finer glass cannot be brought to perfection but by wood heat, and hence, the glass fabriques are only to be found in these vast forests. One of the most interesting natural formations within this circle is the volcanic rock, called "Spirlingstein," which shoots up out of a little valley on the right bank of the Elbe crowned with a shattered mass of natural towers and turrets which it is difficult to believe, till closely examined, are not the ruins of one of those feudal holds crowning the summits of so many of the hills in Bohemia. Every village has its school, in which are to be found all the children too old for the nursery, and too young to be employed. Several I visited contained as many as three hundred; the specimens of their writing are beautiful, some quite like engraving; the eldest child, whose specimen I saw, was only thirteen; they sing most sweetly, and many accompanying themselves on the guitar, the schoolmaster being almost always a musician, and capable of playing two or three instruments. There is a church and good organ in each village, and a very good choir entirely composed of these villagers, all of whom play some instrument, and form the choir by turns, generally directed by the schoolmaster. Some of these amateur bands play exquisitely, as an idea may be formed by the families or communities who occasionally visit England, and who are often from a district such as I have described, and whose sole instruction has been that which they could pick up from each other in their hours of recreation. At the fabrique of A. Kittls-Erben of Kreibitz, while at dinner in the garden, and which was provided by the hospitality of the fabriquant, and in great profusion, with a variety of Hungarian and Bohemian wines, I observed a little girl of twelve years of age, who came into the bower with a guitar, and while I was looking round for the performer, the master of the fabrique lifted the little girl on a chair, and laid a music book before her, from which she played and sang a number of Bohemian songs with much taste and execution. All the instruction she ever had was from the schoolmaster, who taught her during the leisure hours of the scholars. She was an orphan, and brought up by the fabriquant. After dinner we walked up the valley to visit a fabrique of Chichorie; in the way I remarked a little cottage, like the rest, with its fruit-trees and garden, but which had, in addition to its projecting roof and windows filled with flowers, both in pots and Bohemian glass vases, verandahs in carved oak, the scroll-work of which was quite classic, and the execution admirable. While I stopped to examine this, the fabriquant who accompanied me remarked that the owners were makers of musical instruments. On inquiring of what kind, he replied a variety,—violins, accordions, and others. I was met at the door by a man whose appearance was that of a simple cottager, and his manners indicated all the simplicity of rural life. He was told that I wished to see some of his instruments, upon which he bowed, slightly elevated his shoulders, and replied, that he had nothing worth seeing, but would be happy to receive us, and showed us the way, with that natural kindness and politeness, which distinguish the peasants of this country. We followed him up a little carved-wood staircase, and he ushered us into a small, yet clean apartment, where, to my surprise, I found two rather large organs, sufficiently large for a moderate church; one was a peculiar instrument, a pan-harmomicon, invented by himself, with improvements and great facility and simplicity in tuning; it formed a concert of the single organ, brass horns, and kettle drums, having a double row of keys behind, so that the performer was masked by the instrument, which had a handsome front; the face of it could be removed to show the whole interior of the mechanical arrangement. A variety of other instruments were packed in different parts of the room, some of which were large and highly improved accordions, which, as well as the organ, are beautifully played by the brothers,[4] of whom there are three; their talent for music is extraordinary.

SPIRLINGSTEIN.

The church in this country is still the great patron of the arts. In every little chapel, however remote or small, (and in some of the minute villages in the mountains, they are not larger than an ordinary room,[5] though of a vast height in proportion to the length and breadth,) is found a good organ, and always well played. There is also an amateur choir attached to each. These chapels are decorated by paintings and frescoes, some of which are of considerable merit. In the house of a priest, who officiates in one of them, I observed a "Crucifixion," without a frame, apparently quite newly painted, and, on inquiring, I found it was the work of an artist in Antwerp; that it had been bought by the glass-makers of the district, or rather obtained in exchange for some part of a cargo sent to that city, from which they had brought and presented it to their little chapel; it was valued at Antwerp, against the glass, at seven hundred florins ($150).

The little chapels in the glass districts are also beautifully decorated with colored glass, the rich ruby lamps suspended before the altars, with their ever-burning lamps, the clusters of prisms in the great centre chandelier, reflecting the ruby lights, and gold, and flowers, from the altar, are always—independent of any other feeling—subjects worthy the contemplation of the artist. All the vases for flowers which richly decorate the country churches are of native manufacture—ruby, emerald, topaz, chrysophras, turquoise, and crystal chalices, full of the rarest of those flowers which form so much the delight and pastime of the inhabitants to cultivate, shed their delicious perfume through their chapels, mingled with the incense which, renewed daily, at morning and evening service, fills the buildings with perpetual fragrance. Another great resource for the arts in this country, which is offered by the Church, is the sculpture of wood. I have often been surprised and confounded by seeing an exquisite Virgin, or Crucifixion, or figure of a patron or local saint, in some far out of the way chapel in the hills, or in some lonely shrine, and even in the niches on the exterior of these buildings: but on inquiry I found that these were often the works of the first artists! the foreman of some native Canova, or Max, whose health, impaired by inhaling the fine dust of the marble, was not obliged to work on till death put an end to his talent; but, before the disease had become incurable, forsook marble for oak, and reproduced in that material all the beauties of the original; and under the fostering wing of the Church recovered his health, and filled his native village church with works of the highest order. It is the same with artists, natives of larger towns; I do not speak of such works as are to be seen in Antwerp, and other cities of note—wonderful productions of rare art in carving, such as the figures which stand on each side of the numerous confessionals in the north transept of the glorious cathedral of the former, nearly as large as life, all emblematical of repentance and forgiveness, and other attributes of contrition and mercy; with many others of nearly, if not quite, the same merit, in the various churches with which this town abounds. These are the works of great masters whose celebrity is European; but to find in the wild and unknown districts of these mountains such works of art—to know there is a sure and safe means for the suffering artist to continue his work and regain his health, while he fills his country with fine objects of art, carved in wood, and which could never be obtained in any other way, is a blessed encouragement to talent, and a field for the arts which can only be appreciated by those who are relieved by it, or those who are dying for want of its protecting hand. Mr. Steel, in Edinburgh, the last time I had the happiness of visiting him in his studio, when he was engaged on that exquisite work the Scott statue, and which has since been placed within the monument erected to that illustrious man, told me he had, then, lately lost one or two of his best men from pulmonary complaint, brought on by inhaling the marble dust; that he had tried every means to counteract its effects, by providing the men with veils and masks, but to no purpose. His best man then at work upon this national masterpiece, was fast failing beneath the effects of the same cause, and is now probably laid with all his talent in the dust, lost to his country in the prime of life, when here such a man would soon be restored to health, while he reproduced his works in wood, and maintained himself and family in a comfortable and illustrious independence, enriching his country, and carrying the arts into the remote valleys of his native home.

Thus far we make use of a letter to the Art Journal. In the Great Exhibition we perceive that the glass of Bohemia has attracted much attention, not more for the grace and beauty of its forms than for the recent improvements which have been made in its colors. The principal agent for the sale of Bohemian Glass in the United States is Mr. Collamore, of 447 Broadway, in whose extensive establishment may be seen in particular all the varieties of those vases, and other mantel ornaments, of Bohemian Glass, which, to a great extent, are taking the place of porcelain fabrics, of the same description, in the more fashionably furnished houses. One of these vases we copy here from the Art Journal Catalogue of the Hyde Park Exhibition; others are of different forms, and of colors equalled in richness only in other manufactures of the same country.

Of other industrial pursuits in this class we shall give accounts hereafter.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The moulds are made of beech-wood.

[2] These earthen floors are not, as might be supposed from their name, dirty and untidy; they are made with wet clay, which, when dry, becomes quite hard, and can be kept as clean as brick or stone.

[3] This excellence in the decoration of glass is, probably, only a branch of the high proficiency of the art of engraving and carving, in Germany, on all materials—the metal work of guns, seals engraved on steel and stone, wood, ivory, up to the copper plates of landscape and history; with regard to the second, seal engraving on steel, it cannot be surpassed, and scarcely, if at all, equalled in any other part of Europe. It is wrought with a delicacy unrivalled, and the impressions are equal to the best cutting on stone; it is done, too, at a cost wholly unknown in England, even among the lowest order of seal engravers, for initials on brass for sealing wine or sauce bottles! It is not only in the depth and sharpness of the cutting, that they excel, but in the beauty of the drawing of the various subjects—figures of men, animals, birds, and the lambrequins and mantlings with which the German heraldry abounds. The cheapness arises, no doubt, from the great patronage enjoyed by the seal engravers. Every nobleman has a large office-seal for each of his properties, and some have a vast number, as, for instance, the Prince Schwartzenberg, who has upwards of forty; the full coat of arms is engraved on the office-seal of each lordship. Such, of old, was the case with us; and I remember, among others, a beautiful gold seal, in the possession of the late Gordon of Fyvie, which had a thin topaz, with the arms of Sealton (the ancient lords of Fyvie) engraved upon it, with the colors enamelled on the gold beneath.

A comparison, however, between the prices of these works of art, here and in England, will be more satisfactory and interesting; for an office-seal, which would cost in the latter country, if cut on brass, from 5l. to 7l., costs here from 30s. to 2l. on steel! including a beautifully ornamented base, and polished Bohemian granite, porphyry or agate handle, three inches in length; and such coats of arms as would cost in England, on stone, from 10l. to 20l., can be had here for a third of that sum, and executed in the best style of the art.

Carving in ivory is equally good, and equally moderate. Pipes, also, of that beautiful material erroneously called Meerschaum, and of large dimensions, are carved either with a superb coat of arms or historical subjects, the prices of which vary according to the size of the pipe and number of figures, from 30s. to 2l.!

[4] Their name is Lehmann; residence—Schonfeld, near Kreibitz.

[5] The ruins of similar little chapels are found all over the highlands and isles of Scotland, however remote, with other sacred edifices, in some of which may still be traced the remains of frescoes. In the ruins of larger buildings the frescoes are more apparent: thus, in the abbey church of Pluscardine, near Elgin, the four Evangelists were distinctly visible in 1826, after more than 500 years of ruin and decay.

THE SANDWICH ISLANDS TO-DAY.

VALLEYS AND MOUNTAINS OF WAILUKU, MAUI.

Whatever may be said of the influence of European and American profligacy in the Islands, they may be pointed to with perfect satisfaction for illustrations of the benefits of Christian civilization, and the people of this country are greatly indebted to the Rev. Henry T. Cheever, whose works on the subject we have had frequent occasion to praise, for the eminently judicious and interesting accounts he has given us of society, manners, and religion, and of industrial resources, and every kind of natural phenomena, throughout the "island world," especially in the Sandwich Islands, to which his last work[6] is altogether devoted. Of the important question of the political destiny of this group Mr. Cheever says:

"Perhaps it is in the providential plan of the world's great Ruler, that the Sandwich Islands should yet be adopted into the Great American Confederacy. Won as they have been from the lowest barbarism by American missionaries,—having had expended upon them in the process nearly a million and a half of dollars from America, and the services of fifty families now possessing there valuable homesteads,—harboring a permanent American population, foremost in energy and influence, now little short of one thousand, besides a floating American population that touch and recruit annually to the number of fifteen thousand, in whaleships and merchantmen, and consuming yearly a million of dollars' worth of American merchandise; on all these grounds there would seem to be a propriety in their enjoying an American Protectorate, if not an admission under the flag of the American Republic.

"'American enterprise,' says a writer[7] who has been for many years familiar with the history and progress of the Hawaiian Islands, 'both commercial and philanthropic, has invested the group with its present political importance—bestowing upon the inhabitants laws, religion, and civilization—and will soon add to these gifts language; for the English tongue is rapidly superseding the Hawaiian. The Islanders have thus a moral claim upon the American nation for protection. In no way can this be more efficiently bestowed than by receiving them into the family of this great republic. The native population are as well prepared to be American citizens as the multitude of European emigrants. Unlike the generality of them, they can read and write, and have already acquired democratic ideas under the operation of their own liberal constitution of government, which will readily enable them to incorporate themselves under our institutions. They are destined to be supplanted in numbers and power by a foreign race. They desire us to be their successors and protectors. The present revenues of the Islands are more than adequate to the expenses of their government—time, opportunity, the interests of the inhabitants and ourselves point to this result.' Events will soon determine whether they are to retain their independency, or to be merged in the nation that has civilized them."

The work abounds in interesting details of Island Life, and we regret that our limits will not permit us to enrich the International with more liberal extracts. We can at present add but the following paragraphs on a sport for which the islanders have been celebrated ever since the days of Cook:

"It is highly amusing to a stranger to go out into the south part of this town, some day when the sea is rolling in heavily over the reef, and to observe there the evolutions and rapid career of a company of surf-players. The sport is so attractive and full of wild excitement to Hawaiians, and withal so healthful, that I cannot but hope it will be many years before civilization shall look it out of countenance, or make it disreputable to indulge in this manly though dangerous exercise. Many a man from abroad who has witnessed this exhilarating play, has no doubt only wished that he was free and able to share in it himself. For my part, I should like nothing better, if I could do it, than to get balanced on a board just before a great rushing wave, and so be hurried in half or a quarter of a mile landward with the speed of a race-horse, all the time enveloped in foam and spray, but without letting the roller break and tumble over my head.

"In this consists the strength of muscle and sleight of hand, to keep the head and shoulders just ahead and clear of the great crested wall that is every moment impending over one, and threatening to bury the bold surf-rider in its watery ruin. The natives do this with admirable intrepidity and skill, riding in, as it were, upon the neck and mane of their furious charger; and when you look to see them, their swift race run, dashed upon the rocks or sand, behold, they have slipped under the belly of the wave they rode, and are away outside, waiting for a cruise upon another. Both men and women, girls and boys, have their times for this diversion. Even the huge Premier (Auhea) has been known to commit her bulky person to a surf-board; and the chiefs generally, when they visit Lahaina, take a turn or two at this invigorating sport with billows and board. For a more accurate idea of it than can be conveyed by any description, the reader is referred to the engraving.

"I have no doubt it would run away with dyspepsia from many a bather at Rockaway or Easthampton, if they would learn, and dare to use a surf-board on those great Atlantic rollers, as the Hawaiians do on the waves of the Pacific. But there is wanting on the Atlantic sea-board that delicious, bland temperature of the water, which within the tropics, while it makes sea-bathing equally a tonic, renders it always safe.

"The missionaries at these islands, and foreigners generally, are greatly at fault in that they do not avail themselves more of this easy and unequalled means of retaining health, or of restoring it when enfeebled. Bathing in fresh water, in a close bath-house, is not to be compared to it as an invigorating and remedial agent; and it is unwise, not to say criminal, in such a climate, to neglect so natural a way of preserving health, as washing and swimming in the sea. In those who live close to the water, and on the leeward side of the Islands, it is the more inexcusable, for it could be enjoyed without exposure in the dewless evenings; or in some places a small house might be built on stone abutments over the water, and facilities so contrived that both sexes could enjoy this great luxury of a life within the tropics."

The volume has several spirited engravings, and is excellently printed.

HAWAIIAN SPORT OF SURF PLAYING

FOOTNOTES:

[6] Life In the Sandwich Islands, or the Heart of the Pacific, as it was and as it is. By Rev. Henry T. Cheever, author of "The Island World of the Pacific," "The Whale and his Captors," &c. 1 vol. 12 mo. New-York. A. S. Barnes & Co., 51 John-street.

[7] J. J. Jarves.

PHILIP PENDLETON COOKE.

Among our pleasantest friends in many years was the author of the Froissart Ballads. We think of him as a friend, but we never saw him; his features are familiar to us only by this poor counterfeit, and all we know of his voice is that it has been described to us as musically joyous, sometimes varying to a sad sweetness, sometimes wild. For half a dozen years visits to him were written of, and hoped for, and it was settled, we thought, that we were to share with him a turkey-hunt in the Old Dominion, in a few weeks, when suddenly the intelligence came that he was dead.

Philip Pendleton Cooke was born in Martinsburg, Berkeley county, Virginia, on the twenty-sixth of October, 1816. His father, Mr. John R. Cooke, was then and is now honorably distinguished at the bar, and his mother was of that family of Pendletons which has furnished so many eminent names to that part of the Union.

At fifteen he entered Princeton college, where he had a reputation for parts, though he did not distinguish himself, or take an honor, and could never tell how it happened that he obtained a degree, as he was not examined with his class. He liked fishing and hunting better than the books, and Chaucer and Spenser much more than the dull volumes in the "course of study." He had already made rhymes before he became a freshman, and the appearance of the early numbers of the Knickerbocker Magazine prompted him to new efforts in this way; he wrote for the Knickerbocker, in his seventeenth year, The Song of the Sioux Lover, and The Consumptive, and in a village paper, about the same time, humorous and sentimental verses.

When he left college his father was living at Winchester, and there he himself pursued the study of the law. He wrote pieces in verse and prose for the Virginian, and The Southern Literary Messenger (then just started), and projected novels and an extensive work in literary criticism. Before he was twenty-one he was married, admitted to the bar, and had a fair prospect of practice, in Frederick, Jefferson, and Berkeley counties. "I am blessed by my fireside," he wrote, "here on the banks of the Shenandoah in view and within a mile of the Blue Ridge; I go to county towns, at the sessions of the courts, and hunt, and fish, and make myself as happy with my companions as I can."

"So," he wrote to us in 1846, "have passed five, six, seven, eight years, and now I am striving, after long disease of my literary veins, to get the rubbish of idle habits away and work them again. My fruit-trees, rose-bushes, poultry, guns, fishing-tackle, good, hard-riding friends, a long-necked bottle on my sideboard, an occasional client, &c., &c., &c., make it a little difficult to get from the real into the clouds again. It requires a resolute habit of self-concentration to enable a man to shut out these and all such real concerns, and give himself warmly to the nobler or more tender sort of writing—and I am slowly acquiring it."

The atmosphere in which he lived was not, it seems, altogether congenial—so far as literature was concerned—and he wrote:

"What do you think of a good friend of mine, a most valuable and worthy and hard-riding one, saying gravely to me a short time ago, 'I would'nt waste time on a damned thing like poetry; you might make yourself, with all your sense and judgment, a useful man in settling neighborhood disputes and difficulties.' You have as much chance with such people, as a dolphin would have if in one of his darts he pitched in amongst the machinery of a mill. "Philosophy would clip an angel's wings," Keats says, and pompous dulness would do the same. But these very persons I have been talking about, are always ready, when the world generally has awarded the honors of successful authorship to any of our mad tribe, to come in and confirm the award, and buy, if not read, the popular book. And so they are not wholly without their uses in this world. But woe to him who seeks to climb amongst them. An author must avoid them until he is already mounted on the platform, and can look down on them, and make them ashamed to show their dulness by keeping their hands in their breeches pockets, whilst the rest of the world are taking theirs out to give money or to applaud with. I am wasting my letter with these people, but for fear you may think I am chagrined or cut by what I abuse them for, I must say that they suit one half of my character, moods, and pursuits, in being good kindly men, rare table companions, many of them great in field sports, and most of them rather deficient in letters than mind; and that, in an every-day sense of the words, I love and am beloved by them."

Soon afterward he wrote:

"Mr. Kennedy's assurance that you would find a publisher for my poems leaves me without any further excuse for not collecting them. If not the most devoted, truly you are the most serviceable, of my friends, but it is because Mr. Kennedy has overpraised me to you. Your letter makes me feel as if I had always known you intimately, and I have a presentiment that you will counteract my idleness and good-for-nothingness, and that, hoisted on your shoulders I shall not be lost under the feet of the crowd, nor left behind in a fence corner. I am profoundly grateful for the kindness which dictated what you have done, and to show you that I will avail myself of it, I inclose a proem to the pieces of which I wrote you in my last."

The poem referred to was so beautiful that we asked and obtained permission to put it in Graham's Magazine, of which we were at that time editor. The author's name was not given, and it excited much curiosity, as but two or three of our poets were thought capable of such a performance, and there was no reason why one of them should print any thing anonymously. It was most commonly, however, attributed to Mr. Willis, at which Mr. Cooke was highly gratified. The piece, which was entitled "Emily," contained about three hundred lines, and was a feigned history of the composition of tales designed to follow it, exquisitely told, and sprinkled all along with gems that could have come from only a mine of surpassing richness. For examples:

Young Emily has temples fair
Caress'd by locks of dark brown hair.
A thousand sweet humanities
Speak wisely from her hazel eyes.
Her speech is ignorant of command,
And yet can lead you like a hand.
Her white teeth sparkle, when the eclipse
Is laughter-moved, of her red lips.
She moves, all grace, with gliding limbs
As a white-breasted cygnet swims.

I know some wilds, where tulip trees,
Full of the singing toil of bees,
Depend their loving branches over
Great rocks, which honeysuckles cover
In rich and liberal overflow.
In the dear time of long ago
When I had woo'd young Emily,
And she had told her love to me,
I often found her in these bowers,
Quite rapt away in meditation,
Or giving earnest contemplation
To leaf, or bird, or wild-wood flowers;
And once I heard the maiden singing,
Until the very woods were ringing——
Singing an old song to the hours!

One jocund morn:

I found her where a flowering tree
Gave odors and cool shade. Her cheek
A little rested on her hand;
Her rustic skill had made a band
Of rare device which garlanded
The beauty of her bending head;
Some maiden thoughts most kind and wise
Were dimly burning in her eyes.
When I beheld her—form and face
So lithe, so fair—the spirit race,
Of whom the better poets dream'd,
Came to my thought, and I half deem'd
My earth-born mistress, pure and good,
Was some such lady of the wood,
As she who work'd at spell, and snare,
With Huon of the dusky hair,
And fled, in likeness of a doe,
Before the fleet youth Angelo.
But these infirm imaginings
Flew quite away on instant wings.
I call'd her name. A swift surprise
Came whitely to her face, but soon
It fled before some daintier dyes,
And, laughing like a brook in June,
With sweet accost she welcomed me.
It was a golden day to me,
And its great bliss is with me yet,
Warming like wine my inmost heart——
For memories of happy hours
Are like the cordials press'd from flowers,
And madden sweetly.

Then the poet recited ancient lays which tell some natural tales; and then:

Pity look'd lovely in the maiden;
Her eyes were softer, when so laden
With the bright dew of tears unshed.
But I was somewhat envious
That other bards should move her thus,
And oft within myself had said,
"Yea—I will strive to touch her heart
With some fair songs of mine own art"——
And many days before the day
Whereof I speak, I made essay
At this bold labor. In the wells
Of Froissart's life-like chronicles
I dipp'd for moving truths of old.
A thousand stories, soft and bold,
Of stately dames, and gentlemen,
Which good Lord Berners, with a pen
Pompous in its simplicity,
Yet tipt with charming courtesy,
Had put in English words, I learn'd;
And some of these I deftly turn'd
Into the forms of minstrel verse.
I know the good tales are the worse—
But, sooth to say, it seems to me
My verse has sense and melody——
Even that its measure sometimes flows
With the brave pomp of that old prose.

It was a good while before the promised contents of the book were sent to us, and Cooke wrote of the delay to a friend:

"Procrastination is a poison of my very marrow. Moreover, since 'the first wisping of the leaf,' my whole heart has been in the woods and the waters—every rising sun that could be seen, I have seen, and I never came in from my sport until too much used up to do more than adopt this epitaph of Sardanapalus: 'Eat, drink,' &c. Moreover (2d), Mr. Kennedy and others were poking me in the ribs eternally about my poems; and I was driven to the labor of finishing them. I groaned and did it, and sent them to Griswold, and have left the task of carrying them through the press to him; and only lie passive, saying with Don Juan (in the slave-market of Adrianople, or some other place), 'would to God somebody would buy me.'"

At length through his cousin and friend, John P. Kennedy—(a name that makes one in charity with all mankind)—the MS. of all the poems was sent to us. It makes a book about the size of the printed volume, written with a regular elegance to match that of the old copyists. In an accompanying letter he says:

... "They are certainly not in the high key of a man warm with his subject, and doing the thing finely; I wrote them with the reluctance of a turkey-hunter kept from his sport—only Mr. Kennedy's urgent entreaty and remonstrance whipped me up to the labor. You will hardly perceive how they should be called "Ballads." You are somewhat responsible for the name. I designed (originally) to make them short poems of the old understood ballad cast. I sent you the proem, which you published as a preface to the "Froissart Ballads." Words in print bore a look of perpetuity (or rather of fixedness) about them, and what I would have changed if only my pen and portfolio had been concerned, your type deterred me from changing. The term "Froissart Ballads," however, is after all correct, even with the poems as they are. The Master of Bolton is as much a song as the Lay of the Last Minstrel, although I have no prologue, interludes, &c., to show how it was sung; and as for Orthone, &c. Sir John Froissart may as easily be imagined chanting them as talking them."

Again he wrote:

"You will find them beneath your sanguine prognostic. They are mere narrative poems, designed for the crowd. Poetic speculation, bold inroads upon the debatable land—"the wild weird clime, out of space out of time"—I have not here attempted. I will hereafter merge myself in the nobler atmosphere; in the mean time I have stuck to the ordinary level, and endeavored to write interesting stories in verse, with grace and spirit. I repeat my fear that in writing for the cold, I have failed to touch the quick and warm—in writing for a dozen hunting comrades, who have been in the habit of making my verse a post prandium entertainment, and never endured an audacity of thought or word, I have tamed myself out of your approbation."

The book was at length published, but though reviewed very favorably by the late Judge Beverly Tucker, in the Southern Literary Messenger, and by Mr. Poe, in the American Review, and much quoted and praised elsewhere, it was, on the whole, not received according to its merits or our expectations. Yet the result aroused the author's ambition, and after a few weeks he remarked in a letter:

"My literary life opens now. If the world manifest any disposition to hear my 'utterances,' it will be abundantly gratified. I am thirty: until forty literature shall be my calling—avoiding however to rely upon it pecuniarily—then (after forty) politics will be a sequitur.

"It has occurred to me to turn my passion for hunting, and 'my crowding experiences' (gathered in fifteen or sixteen years of life in the merriest Virginia country society) of hunting, fishing, country races, character and want of character, woods, mountains, fields, waters, and the devil knows what, into a rambling book. Years ago I used to devour the 'Spirit of the Times.' Indeed, much of my passion for sports of all kinds grew out of reading the 'Spirit.' Like Albert Pike's poet, in 'Fantasms,' I

'Had not known the bent of my own mind,
Until the mighty spell of 'Porter' woke
Its hidden passions.'

Only Albert Pike, says 'Coleridge' and 'Powers' for 'Porter' and 'passions.' Then, I have a half-written novel in my MS. piles, with poems, tales, sketches, histories, commenced, or arranged in my mind ready to be put in writing, to order. In a word, I am cocked and primed for authorship. My life here invites me urgently to literary employments. My house, servants, &c. &c.,—all that a country gentleman, really wants of the goods of life,—are in sure possession to me and mine. I want honors, and some little more money. Be good enough, my dear sir, to let me know how I am to go about acquiring them."

We wrote with frankness what we thought as true, of possible pecuniary advantages from the course he proposed, and were answered:

"What you say about the returns in money for an author's labors is dispiriting enough,—and I at once give over an earnest purpose, which I had formed, of writing books. Thank God, I am not dependent on the booksellers, but have a moderate and sure support for my family, apart from the crowding hopes and fears which dependence on them, would no doubt generate. But I must add (or forego some gratifications) two or three hundred dollars per annum to my ordinary means. I might easily make this by my profession, which I have deserted and neglected, but it would be as bad as the tread-mill to me; I detest the law. On the other hand, I love the fever-fits of composition. The music of rhythm, coming from God knows where, like the airy melody in the Tempest, tingles pleasantly in my veins and fingers; I like to build the verse cautiously, but with the excitement of a rapid writer, which I rein in and check; and then, we both know how glorious it is to make the gallant dash, and round off the stanza with the sonorous couplet, or with some rhyme as natural to its place as a leaf on a tree, but separated from its mate that peeps down to it over the inky ends of many intervening lines.... That unepistolary sentence has considerably fatigued me. I was saying, or about to say, that I would be obliged to you for information as to the profitableness of writing for periodicals."

From this time Mr. Cooke wrote much, but in a desultory way, and seemed, in a growing devotion to a few friends, and in the happiness that was in his home, to forget almost the dreams of ambition. He had commenced an historical novel to be called "Lutzen," in which that great battle was to end the adventures of his hero; this he threw aside, and his love for that age appeared in "The Chevalier Merlin," suggested by the beautiful story of Charles the Twelfth, as given by Voltaire, several chapters of which appeared in the Southern Literary Messenger. In the same magazine he printed "John Carpe," "The Two Country Houses," and other tales, parts of a series in which he intended to dramatize the whole life and manners of Virginia. As for any applause that these might win for him, he wrote to his friend John R. Thompson:

"I look upon these matters serenely, and will treat renown as Sir Thomas More advises concerning guests; welcome its coming when it cometh, hinder not with oppressive eagerness its going, when it goeth. Furthermore, I am of the temper to look placidly upon the profile of this same renown, if, instead of stopping, it went by to take up with another; therefore it would not ruffle me to see you win the honors of southern letters away from me."

The chivalric poetry had filled his mind early and long, and he was only banishing it for the more independent and beautiful growth of his nature, when his untimely death destroyed hopes of fruits which the productions of his youth seemed to precede as blossoms. He died suddenly, at his home, on Sunday, the 20th of January, 1850, at the age of thirty-three.

At the time of his death he was writing "The Women of Shakspeare," "The Chariot Race," and a political and literary satire.

Undoubtedly Philip Pendleton Cooke was one of the truest poets of our day, and what he has left us was full of promise that he would become one of the most famous. Of his love poems, this little song, written when he was scarcely more than twenty, is perhaps the finest:

FLORENCE VANE.

I loved thee long and dearly,
Florence Vane;
My life's bright dream, and early
Hath come again;
I renew, in my fond vision,
My heart's dear pain,
My hopes, and thy derision,
Florence Vane.

The ruin lone and hoary,
The ruin old,
Where thou didst hark my story,
At even told,——
That spot—the hues Elysian
Of sky and plain——
I treasure in my vision,
Florence Vane.

Thou wast lovelier than the roses,
In their prime;
Thy voice excelled the closes
Of sweetest rhyme;
Thy heart was as a river
Without a main;
Would I had loved thee never,
Florence Vane.

But fairest, coldest wonder!
Thy glorious clay
Lieth the green sod under——
Alas the day!
And it boots not to remember
Thy disdain——
To quicken love's pale ember,
Florence Vane.

The lilies of the valley
By young graves weep,
The pansies love to dally
Where maidens sleep;
May their bloom, in beauty vying,
Never wane
Where thine earthly part is lying,
Florence Vane!

We cannot quote others; in the lines "To my Daughter Lilly," may be discovered the tenderness and warmth of his affections; in his Ballads, the fiery and chivalrous phase of his intelligence; in "Ugolino," his pathos; in "Life in the Autumn Woods," his love of nature; and in all his writings, the thoroughly healthy character of his mind.

As a boy and as a young man, we understand, his life was always poetical—apart, original, and commanding affectionate respect. As he grew older, and married, he became practical in his views, reaching that point in the life of genius in which its beautiful ideals take the forms of duty or become the strength of wise resolves. Toward his family, including his father, mother, brothers, and sisters, he cherished a deep and unfaltering devotion. A short time before his last illness he introduced into his household morning and evening prayers. He died, as he had lived, a pure-minded gentleman and humble Christian.

Of his personal appearance a just impression is given by the portrait at the beginning of this article. His carriage was graceful and upright; his frame vigorous and elastic, trained as he was by constant hunting in the Blue Ridge; his hair was black and curling; his eye dark and bright; his expression calm and thoughtful; his manner impressed with dignity.

——"Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer."

DR. HUNTINGTON ON COPYRIGHT.

The author of Alice and Alban has written the following piquant letter on the important subject of International Copyright.

To the Editor of the Morning Chronicle.

As an American deeply interested in the subject of international copyright, and much struck by the fallacies of some of the speakers at a meeting of authors and publishers, recently reported in the London journals, may I, as the subject is fresh so long as it is undecided, beg of your courtesy a little space to point them out.

Let me begin by admitting the force of most that was said by the distinguished chairman on that occasion, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton. No man living, perhaps, has a better right than he to complain of my countrymen, to whose intellectual pleasures and moral instruction he has contributed ever since I was a boy, out of the hard labor of his brains—helping to enrich our publishers and booksellers, and to stimulate all the trade connected with bookmaking, and vivifying the circulation of magazines and newspapers—for all which he has never received a penny. The same may be said of Dickens, whose works are of course as familiar to us as to you, and whose characters have become a part of our stock of ideas, more precious than the gold from our new-discovered mines. It is true that neither of these great men has benefited us so much as he might have done if we had paid for our pleasure honorably, for the influence of genius is like that of grace—the fertilizing shower falls in vain on the arid, stony places of selfish and unjust enjoyment. Charles Dickens has never received a penny from us, although we insulted our unpaid creditor when he came among us by asking him to Boz balls and dinners, given on a scale of splendor which showed how well we could have afforded to pay our debt if we had been honest enough to have admitted it. How degrading—how incongruous—for a great nation, such as we boast of being, to be thus the literary pensioners, the intellectual beggars of England, meanly enjoying what we won't pay for? An American would scorn to be fed or clothed gratis; he would "stand treat" with the world; yet he lets an Englishman (of all men!) gratuitously amuse his leisure, satisfy his thirst for knowledge, and clothe the nakedness of his mind. If Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, or Mr. Dickens, were to offer to pay for a pair of trousers for Brother Jonathan, he would knock him down; or if Miss Bell, or whatever is the name of the lady who wrote "Jane Eyre," and her sisters, pretended to make him up a dozen fine shirts as a charity, I think he would go out of his senses. He would rather go bare to the end of his days than owe such an obligation to any he or she Briton in existence; but what are such favors to those which he unblushingly accepts, year after year, from Sir Edward Bulwer and Miss Bell?

But I think, sir, with submission, that an injury has been done to the cause of copyright by resting it on false abstract grounds, which cannot be, and never have been, carried out. If a man has a rightful monopoly in his book, merely because he has produced it, your law is unjust and piratical in fixing a term to copyright—for why should you take away a man's property after he has enjoyed it a certain number of years? On the contrary, one would suppose that the longer he has enjoyed it the more perfect his right, and the greater the wrong to deprive him of it. Time converts even what is unjustly acquired into a legitimate possession—how much more that which the owner has actually created? I would put the matter on simple, concrete grounds, which all men can appreciate. The production of books is an element of civilization, by the common consent of nations. Books cannot be produced unless in some way they procure the authors a subsistence. And whoever produces by his labor a beneficial thing, is entitled to a reasonable compensation from those who are thereby benefited. In former times, when readers were scarce, as copies were costly, the rich, or sovereigns, supported authors directly, by pensions or otherwise. It is now conceded that the best mode of rewarding them is by allowing them an exclusive copyright in their works, and all civilized nations do so. But this mode of remuneration being once established, a foreign author, coming personally, or in his work, into a country, "has as much moral right to his book as he has to his baggage," and it is as barbarous to plunder him of the one as of the other. Why, when was there a time in Europe, or even in Asia or the antique world, that princes and states did not receive and cherish, and nobly reward, foreign men of letters? Are they to be more ignobly treated now that the people have become patrons? But, if deaf to the voice of honor, hear that of justice. Those who enjoy their works are bound to remunerate them for what they have produced at a great expenditure of time, money, and soul-wearing labor. That "the laborer is worthy of his hire," is a divine sentence which sooner or later will judge all those by whom that hire is by fraud "kept back." A country which refuses a fair copyright to authors, whether native or foreign, condemns itself to barbarism. It cultivates in itself a spirit of violence, aggravated by ingratitude to benefactors. There is, too, a sort of indelicacy in this injury, which even the law of reprisal cannot excuse. The benefit which the author of genius confers is something personal. You might as well, if some savage tribe ravished your women, condemn its females, when captured, to insult and dishonor.

Moreover, to refuse copyright to any class of authors (and here, again, I agree with Sir Bulwer), is to refuse it, in part, to all. The native author is robbed of his just hire by such a law, as much as the foreigner. I am compelled by the existing law of American copyright to part with my books for a sum which is under their natural price, and which is not a remunerating price, because I am undersold by reprints for which the authors are paid nothing. Look the fact in the face, ye readers of cheap reprints, who are unwilling to abandon an unjust privilege, which affords you so much pleasure at so low a rate. I have written a book. I have spent years in writing or learning to write it. Perhaps I could do nothing else. The influence of the literary atmosphere in which all who read the English language are forced to live, acting on my special organization, has made literary production a necessary resource. It is the same as if I were a poor shirt-maker, over whose sorrows a Hood has taught you to weep and be indignant. At all events, you approve of my writing, or you would not have read my book so extensively. And yet, because you can refuse to pay foreign authors for books of the same kind, you oblige me to take a nominal price for mine—a price for which it could not be produced by any man living, and less than it would command if you honestly paid for such labor in other instances. You have beaten me down most unfairly. I consider it so; and if every one of the 10 or 12,000 buyers of the cheap edition of "Lady Alice" were to send me a "quarter" (1s.) by mail, I should regard it as a simple restitution; nor would the sum total cover my expenses while writing it.

So far, then, Sir Edward Lytton and myself (if it is not too great presumption in me to join myself with him) cordially agree. And further, it is a most nonsensical and absurd policy for a country thus to swamp its native literature, and to depress and degrade the whole class of native writers. No nation can afford to let foreigners write for it; it would be as unwise as to let them fight its battles. I may add that no nation can afford to embitter its own writers against itself by producing in their minds a sense of injustice. Strong as our feeling of nationality undoubtedly is, it will not stand this for ever. It has seemed strange to some that an American should have written such a book as "Lady Alice," the author of which appears, at first sight, to have expatriated his mind, if not his heart. His being an episcopal clergyman accounts for it in part—for the Church is essentially of Old England, and its clergy and more devoted members are morally domiciled in England, with whose institutions and social system they have a stronger sympathy than with those of their own country. Moreover, for years, he lived only among Englishmen of that class which is most intensely attached to things as they are—a part of the time in England itself. These circumstances made the thing possible. But despair of obtaining any thing like a fair copyright for an American book made it actual—led him to lay aside a projected American story, and try his hand at an English novel, with a bent less serious: at first, indeed, not without some idea of caricature, in a gay, lawless, audacious spirit, in defiance of cant of every kind: but the calm, methodical, somewhat mechanical ηθος of actual English life, when he saw it and felt its restraints, tamed down these peculiarities somewhat. The result was a book which truly excited more surprise than sympathy in England—but which, in America, proved its real nationality by bursting in a trice all the bonds of clique, and, in spite of its acknowledged faults, securing near a hundred thousand readers in a few months. If copyright had been protected as it ought, I should have been reimbursed by so large a sale; but, as it was, even this successful book paid me less than a day laborer could have earned in the time I was writing it, in any part of the States.

But now I want Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton and Mr. Colburn to tell me what good it will do English authors and publishers for you to imitate in this respect the injustice and folly of your transatlantic cousins. Because "literature is in a depressed state," which Sir Edward asserts to be a fact—and because Mr. Colburn cannot afford to give one hundred pounds for a book for which once he would have given £1000—they propose, if I understand them, to have recourse to an unlimited pirating of American literature. I should think (if your British pride will tolerate the expression of my opinion) that the true remedy would be to give a stringent copyright to American authors. Pray which injured the English book-market most—Mr. Colburn's issue of a few hundreds of "Lady Alice" at a guinea and a half, or Mr. Bohn's issue of as many thousands of Mayo's "Kaloolah" at a shilling? Or do they think, as Sir E. Bulwer Lytton seems to imply, that, except Cooper and Irving, we have no authors whose works are readable in Britain? "Typee," and "The Scarlet Letter," and "The Reveries of a Bachelor," and the two works above mentioned, tell a different story. Who can deny the genius and artistic power of Hawthorne, or the clear English simplicity of his style? And if Ik Marvel falls much behind Geoffrey Crayon, we, their countrymen, are no judges—although it is true that the former has fallen upon an affected age. I admit our deterioration. Or is it supposed that we shall cease producing if the possibility of English copyright is taken away? That would be a great mistake. Men who have a vocation for it will write, well or ill, even if they starve, as London garrets can testify. And there is no danger of our starving absolutely. Successful books pay their authors, not adequately, but enough to keep soul and body together. In light literature (so-called, perhaps, because it demands entire devotion and unceasing toil to arrive at excellence in it)—in light literature, which pays best here as well as elsewhere, there is a distinct demand for native works, which all the competition of the cheap pamphlet novels of the Harpers cannot wholly extinguish, and it is by the feeble, but real aid of this national taste that we exist. For my part, I feel a sort of Coriolanus pride in having got nothing, as I may say, for a book which had an unprecedented run; and if my countrymen object, as some of them do, to its principles, I tell them fairly that beggars cannot be choosers. I can live, thank Heaven, in many ways. I could not, indeed, keep school—as my countrymen, I believe, think every literary man should, the better to amuse them at his own expense. Two such drains on the cerebro-nervous system would soon lay me beneath the sod. But I can invest what remains of my patrimony in wild land, till it for my bread, and write a tale every winter, in defiance of the buccaneers.

But suppose that we continue to write (as we shall, depend on it), and that our impracticable Congress—from the difficulty of getting it to look at any question not bearing upon "Who is to be the next President?" or from the general apathy in regard to the injuries of authors, and want of perception as to the important interests of the heart—will not or does not pass an international copyright law, what sense or what honesty will there be in your strangling yourselves meanwhile by permitting Mr. Bohn his black-flag reprisals? Whom do you injure by this species of retaliation? First, and chiefly, your own authors and publishers, and your own literature (and, therefore, you must abandon such a policy sooner or later); and next, your friends on this side the water. For what does our government care if our native authors, even of the highest ability, earn less than common stevedores? Not a rush. Do the people enjoy our works with a less magnanimous gusto, because we have coined our brains and hearts in composing them for bread and patched elbows? Will they be less, in their own estimation, the greatest, the freest, the wisest, and the most enlightened nation upon earth? You retaliate, gentlemen, by injuring those whose sufferings (greater than yours) are already disregarded by the power you would influence; and if you ruined them, you would not ruffle one self-complacent feather of the American eagle. You but do what you can to depress and extinguish the only class of Americans who have a direct interest in getting you what you want, and who are already as eager to obtain it as men usually are to protect themselves from ruinous competition. I do not know what you expect from such a method, unless you think that our government, which has no pity on its native men of letters, will be touched by the distresses of yours.

Believe me, further, that it is the most unlikely way to succeed with the American people, to offer them an international copyright as a matter of bargain. They immediately suspect a design of obtaining an advantage for you, without any real equivalent to themselves. Show them, by granting a free and perfect copyright to all the world, on the same terms as your own subjects, that you regard such a course as the true policy of every state (which it is), and you will be much more likely to gain a hearing. I see nothing in this movement against foreigners getting a copyright, but selfishness overreaching itself.

The Americans are sometimes obtuse to appeals to their sense of justice, when they have an immediate interest in repudiating the claim. I admit it with regret, but it cannot be denied. They do not know how to relinquish the present advantages of a cheap pirated literature—forgetting that the endless reading of cheap books is a vice, and that this deluge of foreign under-priced novels and magazines, good, bad, and indifferent, is washing away every manly national taste. But on the other hand you are too grasping. It is undignified and unbecoming. Why should you so eagerly clutch at a foreign sale for your works, as to sacrifice what you can secure—freedom from injurious competition at home? For my own part (and I am sure I speak the sentiments of every American writer of respectability), give me on this side of the Atlantic, what you may have on yours at pleasure—a fair chance, without being under-bid by pirates—and I ask no more. I will cheerfully relinquish all the advantage to be drawn from an English sale. Without vanity, justly as we are charged with it, or boasting (our national infirmity—heaven knows we came honestly by it), all we want is "a fair field" at home, "and no favor," and we will write books, if not intrinsically so good as those of English authors, yet more congenial to the tastes, and better adapted to supply the intellectual wants, of our countrymen.

To conclude: although the American people appear at times obtuse, as I have said, on the question of justice, and take, as in this instance, a "mighty narrow" view of expediency, they are very open to an appeal to their generosity. Present a bill—above all, an unusual bill—to Brother Jonathan, and he may dispute it, or turn his back on you with all the coolness imaginable; but offer to contribute your sovereign for those poor devils of authors, and he is up to the gentlemanly thing—he will cover your subscription with an eagle. I should be glad to persuade him to do justice under the idea that it was a sort of charity, convinced as I am that, as soon as he had done it, he would see the true nature of the transaction, and blush to have ever stood out about so plain a thing. You Englishmen pretend, even in your national capacity, to believe the Bible (I wish it were true of either us or you). There is one passage which I commend to your consideration, as bearing directly on the practical solution of this question, and sustaining my view of it by a sentence which cannot fail: "Give and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal shall it be measured to you again." And there is another maxim more universal still, which among us is thus familiarly expressed: "Do as you would be done by." By reversing Lord Campbell's decision, you will act ungenerously, that's certain, and I think, unjustly, you will injure your own writers more than ours, and rob us of one of our strongest arguments.

I remain, sir, very respectfully yours,
THE AUTHOR OF "LADY ALICE."
New-York, July 26.

"THE SCIENCE OF DECEPTION."

This is the title of a chapter in "The Age of Veneer," a series of papers appearing from month to month in Fraser's Magazine. At the beginning of it a certain preeminence is claimed for England which some have thought belonged to our own country, but we are not unwilling to yield the distinction:

"The science of deception has of late years attained an immense importance in this good realm of Britain. In other lands,—as, for example, in France or in America,—it is practiced with more or less of success and perfection; but the inherent superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race has asserted itself even in this sinister and questionable pursuit, so that we may fairly claim as decided a preeminence in the arts by which fools are gulled and ruled, as in those more honorable and useful ones by which we have attained a moral dominion over the opinions and tastes of mankind. There may be more finesse in the system of the French deceivers, or the American 'humbug' may, like the other indigenous productions of that remarkable land, be a very monster in the grandeur of his conceptions, and the enormous force brought to bear on their development; but for real, sound, profitable, business-like work in this peculiar line, we back the Britishers against all the world. Like every thing done in the country, their operations in the art of deception are steady, systematic and sure.

"We conceive that we have a right to speak of the 'science' of deception, for it has all the dignity, symmetry, and order of the nobler sciences. It has its mysteries, which are utterly unknown to the uninitiated; it has also its professors, who are men very often raised by the admiration of their own dupes to positions of high honor and great profit. The organization and regulation of its minor ministrants are also complete, and ere a man can hope to reach the high places and carry off the rich prizes, he must go through many grades, and master many secrets, both in theory and practice. Once initiated, he is able to effect results, by comparison with which the glory and the honors reaped by successful soldiers or great discoverers sink into insignificance.

"In a former number an attempt was made to explain some of the means resorted to for the manufacture of public opinion in England, through the journals and other agents, by which the public ear is monopolized. We showed that almost any desired 'public opinion' might be made to order; that there were great contractors, who would not only undertake the duty, but who would also fulfil their undertakings. That similar processes exist in other countries cannot admit of a doubt, but it is questionable whether the corresponding effects in France or America are not produced upon a much lower and more ignorant class of the community, and whether there are in those countries such masses of wealthy, intelligent, and educated persons willing to be cajoled, fleeced, and laughed at, as those we find in our own dearly beloved country. It might, perhaps, be proved that the arts of which we speak succeed with the superior classes of our countrymen in a much larger proportion than with similar classes elsewhere. This science of deception has, of course, for its basis, the production of particular 'opinions,' and the creation of peculiar preferences in the public mind; but although the great contractors for political opinion are, of all the practitioners, the most perfect adepts, their modus operandi is far more difficult, and the secret of their power far more occult than in the case of the general professors or the charlatans.

"Except for the lower class of Frenchmen or Americans such tactics as these are unavailing; all the rest have enough penetration to see through the whole scheme; but in England it is possible to lead by the nose persons who not only ought to know better, but who in all other transactions of life evince the utmost shrewdness and aptitude."

In this series of papers on the Age of Veneer, a general confession of national sins and weaknesses is made by John Bull, and he is shown to have as discerning an apprehension for his own character as he ever had for that of any of his neighbors. The "Age of Veneer" is a happy title, and it gives alone a better idea of English society and manners than can be derived from some hundreds of volumes on the subject that have been printed within our recollection.

ARTS AMONG THE AZTECS AND INDIANS.

WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE

BY THOMAS EWBANK

United States Commissioner of Patents, author of "Treatise on Hydraulics", &c.

To the antiquary and student of ethnology on this continent there are few subjects more interesting than those early industrial arts, which, better than any thing else, illustrate the civilization of the Aztecs, and their rude neighbors, the aborigines of the more northern parts of the country. An attempt is made in the following pages to define, in certain respects, the extent, and justly to represent the character, of those efforts, made before the Discovery, and repeated, with more or less uniformity, by portions of the American races until the present time. I have copied from the great work of Lord Kingsborough on Mexican Antiquities, four uncouth figures, of which the originals are native drawings sent to Spain by Antonio de Mendoza, the successor of Cortes, and first viceroy of New Spain. It will be confessed that few things could give us a more correct impression of the condition and character of the peoples subdued by Cortes and Pizarro than we may derive from these pictures.

Aztec Goldsmith at work. From Mendoza's Collection.

In this drawing the artist has represented a workman in the act of soldering or annealing a piece of plate. Except the rude style in which the native limners portrayed the human figure, the cut is a fac-simile of Pharaonic profiles of the same class of workmen, and of modern goldsmiths of Africa, Hindustan, Java, Sumatra, Ceylon, and Asia generally. The small portable furnace, the blowpipe, the position of the operator, the scantiness of his apparel, and the absence of any bench, are common to all; the only observable difference is in the apron (suspended by long shoulder-straps) of the American, who, in this respect, seems to have advanced beyond his brethren of the other hemisphere. Had the draughtsman possessed the skill of a modern artist, and painted the tools and processes used, in fusing the metal, in spreading it out into plates, working it into shape, and chasing in the ornaments, in drawing wire, and fabricating the famous old Panama chains, &c., many other problems of Aztec economy and art would have been solved. The smiths of Mexico, Central America, and Peru, were expert in the use of the blowpipe; and this is not to be wondered at, if, as early Spanish writers report, the bellows was unknown among them. In specimens of their industry which are extant the soldering rivals any thing executed in modern workshops, and seams often challenge and sometimes defy the keenest scrutiny to detect them. Native smiths still use the pipe.

Every enlightened worker in metals must feel interested in thus beholding an ancient red man in the actual use of the blowpipe, to say nothing of the illustration the figure affords of the state of the arts in ante-Columbian epochs, and of ancient life in this part of the world. The use of the blowpipe has been inferred from metalline remains discovered in sepulchral tumuli of the Mississippi valley. In Caleb Atwater's Antiquities of the West, (Columbus, 1833, pages 92-3,) mention is made of sixty copper beads, found in one of the mounds at Grave Creek, near Wheeling. "They were made of a coarse wire, which appeared to have been hammered out, not drawn, and were cut off at unequal lengths; they were soldered together in an awkward manner, the centres of some of them uniting with the edges of others; they were incrusted with verdigris, but the inside of them was pure copper; which fact shows that the ancient inhabitants were not wholly unacquainted with the use of metals." As it is admitted that brass was not known to the mound-builders, an analysis of the alloy that constituted the brazen solder here alluded to would be a positive addition to the little knowledge we have gleaned of these early native workers and of their arts.

No matter how far man is separated from his fellows, either on the earth's surface or by time, the general uniformity of his nature is stamped on all his normal devices. Primitive inventions are universally similar. Under agreeing circumstances and conditions, the same means are hit upon to produce the same ends. Kindred trains of thought, of resources and results, characterize the origin and early progress of the arts every where. They begin in the same wants, and suggest the same ideas, which are carried out in substantially the same ways. Still, when a primitive people is found shut from communion with others—isolated from the rest of the world and deriving no suggestions from it—some shades of difference, more or less strongly defined, often mark means they discover, in common with others, and this whether occupiers of small islands or of widespread continents. But after all, this is only what may be called a variety of expression, the same general idea being differently brought out, just as in speech the same thoughts are displayed in various idioms. All arts and all machines are but dialects of one language—reasonings and conclusions in tangible forms and figures—a universal speech, understood by all men.

Of the diverse exhibitions of a primitive and common suggestion, a more interesting example cannot well be adduced than the processes for the fabrication of thread, which have been disclosed on this half of the globe. They appear so different from others, and so remarkable, if not unique, that it may safely be said, if the first spinsters were foreigners, their mode of spinning was indigenous, however difficult, if not impossible, it may be to reconcile one suggestion with the other.

Spinning lies at the threshold of human culture. It was the first or among the first born of the arts, and was doubtless the offspring of woman's ingenuity. Through all the past ages it was within the peculiar province of the sex. In it queens and even goddesses sought to excel; one of the earliest of useful efforts, it was one of the best; till it was introduced, man was a houseless wanderer, and where it is unknown, he is still a vagabond, roaming the forest. Home and its softening and soothing influences had no existence, till woman began to twirl the spindle. Till then the fount of the arts was unopened, unthought of, undreamt of. A universal acquirement, it is one in which little variation in details could be looked for among uncultivated tribes. It is, however, singular, that the thread-making idea has been less skilfully developed by the red race than perhaps any other of their mechanical conceptions. This is a striking fact, in peoples so far advanced as were the Mexicans, Peruvians, and others.

The distaff has been identified with spinning in the eastern world from the earliest times. It dates far behind historic and was a common thing in heroic epochs. It pervades the most ancient legends, and plays a part in the remotest myths. No other instrument of domestic economy is seen through the semi-historic clouds that are about the infancy of human progress; few others could be named as belonging to lower strata of time. Common in the other hemisphere through unknown periods, it was utterly a stranger in this.

Of the offices assigned to the fates, that of Clotho was to hold the distaff, while Lachesis twirled the spindle, and Atropos determined the length of the thread. Then there was Hercules, who was playfully rapped over the head by Omphale, for his awkwardness in this service. Sardanapalus, too, endeavored to rival the son of Jupiter, by spinning among his maids. Ancient Egyptian spindles and distaffs have been recovered from the tombs; and how common they both were among the Hebrews appears in Solomon's portrait of a virtuous woman: "She seeketh wool and flax—she layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff." Both spindle and distaff were frequently dedicated to Minerva, the patroness of spinning and of the arts connected with it. The goddess was herself rudely sculptured with them in the Trojan Palladium.

A glance at these classic implements, before introducing the primitive American apparatus, will better enable us to perceive the differences existing between them, more correctly to appreciate both, and to judge how far one is allied to or could have been derived from the other.

Distaff and Spindle—Ancient Greek and Roman.

This figure is from a series of bas-reliefs representing the arts of Minerva, upon a frieze of the Forum Palladium at Rome. It exhibits the process of spinning, at the moment when the spinner has drawn out a sufficient length of thread from the distaff, and just previous to the act of taking it out of the slit on the top of the spindle, to wind it on that instrument. It is said by classic writers that the spindle was always, when in use, accompanied by the distaff, as "an indispensable part of the apparatus." The following particulars are gathered from Homer, Herodotus, Ovid, Horace, Catullus, Pliny, and others: The spindle was a stick, ten or twelve inches long, having at the top a slit or notch, by which to fix the thread at the commencement; the lower end was passed through and attached to a small but heavy disc or whirl, made of wood, stone, or metal. The weight of this and of the spindle, kept the thread at a proper tension, and the momentum while turning round kept the yarn or thread twisting in the interval of repeating the operation with the fingers. When, from the length of the thread, the spindle approached the ground, or descended below the reach of the fingers, the thread was wound on the spindle, except a short piece left for insertion in the slit, preparatory to the formation of another length. The distaff was about three times as long as the spindle, and commonly made of a reed, with an expansion near the top, over which the prepared flax or wool was placed, and secured by a ribbon or tape; the fibres being left sufficiently loose to be easily drawn out by the fingers and thumb of the spinner. Distaffs as well as spindles of gold and of ivory were ascribed to goddesses, and were presented to distinguished women.

It was quite common for ancient females to keep their spindles whirling while on their way to the fountain for water, or in making short visits, &c. Some striking examples have been recorded by historians, and among them the following, by Herodotus: "As Darius, king of Persia, was sitting publicly in one of the streets of Sardis, he observed a young woman of great elegance and beauty, bearing a vessel on her head, leading a horse by a bridle fastened round her arm, and at the same time spinning some thread. Darius viewed her as she passed, with intense curiosity, observing that her employments were not those of a Persian, Lydian, nor indeed of any Asiatic female. Prompted by what he had seen, he sent some of his attendants to observe what she did with the horse. They accordingly followed her. When she came to the river, she gave the horse some water, and then filled her pitcher, and having done this, she returned by the way she came, with the pitcher of water on her head, the horse fastened by a bridle to her arm, and, as before, employed in spinning."

Distaff and Spindle—Modern Asiatic and European.

In the rural districts of old Rome, women were forbidden to spin while travelling on foot. The prohibition arose from superstitious feelings; but the practice has come down to our times, being found more or less common in Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Italy, Greece, and other parts of Europe, as also over the greater part of Asia. The shank of the distaff on such occasions was secured by a sheath or strap to the person; or, as in the preceding figure of a modern spinner, was held under the left arm.

How differently the idea has been worked out by the ancient inhabitants of this hemisphere, will appear in the two next illustrations. They are coarse and uncouth, yet of unusual interest and value in an historical survey of a people who at the Conquest stood at the head of the aborigines, but whose nationality and power have been broken, and whose arts have all but vanished before those introduced by the whites.

Aztec Girl Spinning. From Mendoza's Collection.

The figure represents a girl, six years old, learning to spin, in the presence of her mother, whose portrait is omitted. She is in the act of winding on the spindle the length of thread just spun. The spindle differs but little from those of the eastern races, its lower end being furnished with a conical weight or fly, to promote rotation, and, as it would seem, for its pointed extremity to rest like a pivot in some small cavity while revolving; for the spindle, when in use, was not raised from the ground: the reverse of the eastern practice, in which the motion ceased the moment the ground was touched by the spindle. The basket-like base on which the fly rests, is the Mexican symbol of the ground, though possibly it may here represent an implement or utensil also. The bunch of cotton to be spun, after being suitably prepared, was held in the left hand, and the length of thread formed at one operation was determined by the distance the bunch could be drawn away from the spindle, this being also the converse of the Asiatic and European practices, in which the distaff, and cotton on it, are at rest—the length of thread depending on the descent of the spindle from them. We know that domestic industry was strictly enforced by the Mexicans, particularly on girls; and of this, these cuts are remarkable illustrations.

In the next, a female adult (as the headdress shows) is portrayed at the moment when a full length of thread has been twisted, or she is in the act of finishing it. To this spindle two conical weights were attached, unless the under one was fixed and had a cavity on the top to admit the point of the upper one to play in it. The process differs but little from that of the present Pimos and Maricopas tribes, as mentioned hereafter, except in the hollow in which the spindle turns. It is obvious that this practice is incompatible with walking; locomotion can only be associated with a spindle suspended by the thread, and whirling free above the ground. In this absence of the distaff, and especially in twirling the spindle like a top on the floor, the process can never be viewed as one derived from abroad; but rather as a result solely of primitive ingenuity. No people, civilized or savage, of the eastern hemisphere, are known to have thus embarrassed the movements of the spindle. The idea and the practice appear to be purely American. No ancient American spinner is represented at work either when seated or standing—much less when walking.

Aztec Woman Spinning. From Mendoza's Collection.

For the following illustration and description the patent office is indebted to Mr. Squier, late United States Chargé to Nicaragua. It is interesting as showing how little the old native process has been changed.

The common foot-wheel is extensively used in spinning cotton in Nicaragua; but the simple contrivance in use before the Conquest is not yet entirely supplanted. It consists of a spindle of hard wood, sixteen or eighteen inches in length, which passes through and is fixed to a disc of heavy wood that serves as a fly, by adding momentum to the whirling spindle. The lower end of the spindle is rounded or rudely pointed, and when in use the instrument is placed in a calabash or clean iron kettle.

The mode of operation is as follows: The spinster is seated on a stool, with a bunch of loose cotton already prepared, in her lap. From this she twists a thread with her finger, and attaches the end to the spindle at the top, giving it an energetic twirl that keeps it going for some time. Meanwhile she disengages and draws out the cotton, from her lap, with both hands. The length of thread spun (from two to three feet) is then wound around the spindle, which is again set in motion, and another length added in the same manner.

In the accompanying sketch, b is the spindle, c the thread already twisted, d the disc or fly, and f the calabash. When the spindle is not in motion, the calabash prevents it from falling over, the fly resting against the sides.

Modern Spinning Apparatus of the Central American Indians.

In the regions of the Gila and Colorado the natives have been little disturbed by Europeans. The Spaniards never extended their iron sway over them, and, like the Araucanians of Peru, they have been supposed to retain many of the customs and arts of their ancestors. This is to some extent true. The country soon after the Conquest was reported to be occupied by a civilized people, who followed agriculture and dwelt in stone houses. Colonel Emory, in his Notes of a Military Reconnaissance, from Fort Leavenworth in Missouri to San Diego in California, including part of the Arkansas, Del Norte, and Gila Rivers, (Washington, 1848,) met with remains of stone and adobe houses, scattered over extensive tracts of country—sometimes continued over ten, fifteen, and even twenty miles. The Pecos tribe, he remarks, have preserved alive, till within a few years, the sacred fire that glowed on the ancient altars; nor is it certain that it is not yet preserved, for a few Indians took it with them to the Pueblos of Zuni. The name of Montezuma is said to be as familiar to those Indians, to the Apaches, Navajos, and others, as that of Washington is to us.

"Turning from some old ruins towards the Pimos village," says Colonel Emory, "we urged our guide to go fast, as we wished to see as much of his people as the day would permit. We were at once impressed with the beauty and order of the arrangements for irrigating and draining the land. Corn, wheat, and cotton are the crops of this peaceful and intelligent people. All the crops have been gathered in, and the stubbles show that they have been luxuriant. The cotton has been picked and stacked for drying on the tops of the sheds. The fields are subdivided by ridges of earth into rectangles of about 200 x 100 feet for the convenience of irrigating. The fences are stakes wattled with willow and mezquite, and in this particular set an example of economy in agriculture worthy to be followed by the Mexicans, who never use fences at all." The thatched houses of the Pimos are dome-shaped, and of wicker work, about six feet high, and from twenty to fifty feet in diameter. In front is usually a large arbor, on the top of which cotton in the pod is piled for drying.

A Pimos spinster was observed at work. Her apparatus was more simple than that in the preceding figures, but closely allied to them; in fact the same, with the exception of the calabash or basket, for which a more ready substitute, one always ready, was adopted. "A woman was seated on the ground under the shade of one of the cotton-sheds; her left leg was tucked under her, and her foot was turned sole upwards; between her big toe and the next was a spindle about eighteen inches long, with a single fly of four or six inches; now and then she gave it a twist in a dexterous manner, and at its end was drawn a coarse cotton thread. Such was their spinning jenny." This application of the toes is like that practised by the wives and daughters of the Hindoo weavers: the axles of their light cane reels are thus held when winding off the thread. The foot however is in front of its owner, and in a natural position, nor does the stick grasped by the toes revolve.

The Pimos and Maricopas are in their habits, agriculture, religion, and manufactures, the same.

Indians Spinning Coarse Thread.

A process of undoubted antiquity, and occasionally followed by modern Indians, is shown in the above engraving. The spinner holds in the left hand, horizontally, a short piece of hollow reed or cane, within which the spindle is twirled by the fingers and thumb of the right hand. Sometimes a cross stick or handle is attached, as represented in the figure. A second person performs the part of a distaff, which, as the thread lengthens, recedes from the spinner, or the spinner from it. A section of this primitive apparatus is separately portrayed.

Mr. Van—a delegate now in Washington from the Cherokee nation, to obtain a settlement of claims on the United States for their lands in Georgia, Alabama, &c.—states that the large old spinning-wheel has, to his knowledge, been in the possession of the Cherokees nearly fifty years. His mother, a Creek, and over a hundred years of age, he believes, used to spin with it in her youth. Mr. Van has seen Indians twist coarse thread with apparatus like that here represented, and which in all probability formed one of the contrivances that slowly led to the whirling spindle, in both hemispheres.

A Comanche Spinning.

For the next two illustrations of spinning, by the Navajoes, Camanches, and other tribes of New Mexico, the Patent Office is indebted to Judge Peters, of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

We have here another instance in which the thread-making idea has manifested itself among the red race, and a very interesting one. The spinner has a small stick, which she holds horizontally in one hand, and on it winds the thread, as on a spindle, as fast as it is spun. The bunch of cotton is itself twirled round by means of a short and small rod, passed through the lower part, with its ends projecting. A pebble is commonly fastened to the middle of this stick (d), and serves as a fly to keep up the motion, and assist, by its weight, in drawing out the thread. To keep the stone and stick in their places, a piece of yarn is wound loosely round the bunch. The length of thread is seldom over six or eight inches, before it is wound on the stick. In this singular process, the classical mode is completely reversed—the spindle, or that which corresponds to it, is held at rest, and the distaff put in motion, in which respect the operation is unique. The idea of increasing the momentum of the whirling mass by the introduction of a weight into its centre is here realized.

Navajoes Spinning.

In the case illustrated below, two pieces of board or shingle are pinned to opposite sides of the fork of a small tree or stump. A spindle (a smooth rod ten or twelve inches in length) is passed through, and made to turn in them, as in two journals. See the section S, where a, a is the spindle and b, b, the boards, and c a pin to keep the spindle in its place. To whirl the spindle, a cross stick, d, is tied to the large end. Sometimes a stone is folded in a piece of cloth, and fastened to each end of the cross stick, which answers the purpose of a rude flywheel. When a suitable stick, having a branch at right angles, can be procured, the cross stick and spindle are of one piece, as at S. A notch is made at the small end of the spindle, where the thread unites to it, and thus, while one girl turns the spindle, another, with a bunch of loose cotton, supplies it, and, as the thread lengthens, gradually recedes from it. As soon as a full length is twisted, it is wound round the spindle, another length is added, and so on, till the spindle is fully charged. The thread is then wound off into a hank, and the spindle set again for working.

These illustrations of primitive art possess a deeper and a more extensive interest than that of their relation to a few Indian tribes; they are types of thought, more or less common to the species, to barbarous and semi-civilized people of all times; such as we ourselves would adopt, were we thrown on our own resources, without any knowledge or recollection on the subject.

Aztec Girl Weaving. From Mendoza's Collection.

It is difficult to determine from this figure whether the shuttle was developed in ancient Mexico. It is not represented, and appears not to have existed any more than the distaff. The loom is like those now used by American Indians. Colonel Emory, after speaking of the Pimos spinning, says, "Led on by this primitive display, I asked for their loom, by pointing to the thread and then to the blanket girded about the woman's loins. A fellow stretched in the dust, sunning himself, rose up leisurely, and untied a bundle, which I had supposed to be a bow and arrow. This little package with four stakes in the ground, was his loom, and he stretched his cloth and commenced the process of weaving. He had no shuttle, the warp being passed across the woof, a thread at a time, by a long wooden needle. One of the rods in the preceding figure is doubtless designed to represent a needle, and was used in the same way." If the figures here introduced truly indicate the progress made by the Aztecs in spinning and weaving, their advance was very moderate; and though very creditable work might be made with this weaving apparatus, by individual skill and patience, it would seem that few or no attempts had been made to render it more facile and efficient. The same remark is, however, applicable to the looms of Asia and Africa. It is worth noting, that the dress of females, pictured above, indicates a decided improvement on that of less civilized tribes. Aztec women and girls wore pantalettes, and a species of tunic, with short sleeves and ornamental borders, not unlike the Chinese female costume, except in the shortness of the sleeves. Amulets or keepsakes, suspended over the neck and resting on the bosom, seem also to have been common.

Modern Peruvian Indians spin without the distaff, and their loom is precisely like the ancient one just represented—the shuttle, or what answers the purpose of one, being a long thorn needle, which is passed through the woof, thread by thread. Every piece is woven of the precise width wanted, whether for garments, cocoa-bags, or any thing else, with no waste by cutting. Ancient specimens of cloth, of excellent execution, have been found in their tombs. The length of the needles varies with the width of the piece to be woven.

That very fine fabrics were produced in Old Mexico, and by implements little if at all better than those here figured, is doubtless true. The highly colored accounts by the conquerors are believed to have been fully warranted by the fineness of the goods which they saw. Indeed, some of the richest of modern shawls and dresses, turned out of the looms of Persia, Egypt, and Hindostan, are but a degree superior to those of the Aztecs. Personal tact and skill are every thing with semi-civilized artisans. The ancient spindle and loom of the East, singularly enough, are still preserved and used for special purposes in modern Rome, just as they were thirty or forty centuries ago. A recent writer on the Pallium (an ecclesiastical robe of lamb's wool) says, there stands about a mile outside the Porta Pia, on the road to Tivoli, an old convent of nuns, attached to the still more ancient church of St. Agnes; that these nuns are poor, and rarely receive any of Rome's high-born damsels to their lonely and neglected cloister; but that they have a small paddock appendant to the monastery, and therein keep a couple of sacred lambs, (not necessarily of the Merino breed,) and are proud and happy ministrants of their wool for the texture of this noble decoration, spinning it, not by any new-fangled jennies, but on the old patriarchal spindle, and weaving it in a loom of which the pattern might date from the days of Penelope.

In conclusion, we may remark, of this subject, that to the substitution of circular for straight motions, and of continuous for alternating ones, may be attributed nearly all the conveniences and elegances of civilized life. It is not too much to assert that the present advanced state of science and the arts is due to revolving mechanism. We may speak of the wonders effected by steam and other motive agents, but of what value would they have been without this means of their employment? The applications of rotary in place of other movements are conspicuous in modern history, from those which propel steamships through the water and locomotives over land, to those which are employed in the manufacture of pins and the pointing of needles. It is by this principle that the irregular motion of the ancient flail and the primeval sieve, has become uniform, in threshing, bolting, and winnowing machines; and hence our circular saws, shears, and slitting mills; the abolition of the mode of spreading out metal into sheets with the hammer, for the more expeditious one of passing it through rollers or flatting mills; and the revolving oars, or paddle wheels, for the propulsion of vessels—the process of inking type with rollers in place of balls, the rotary printing presses, and revolving machines for planing iron and other metals, instead of the ancient process of chipping off superfluous portions with chisels, and that still more tedious of smoothing the surfaces with files. But in few things is the effect of this change of motion more conspicuous than in the modern apparatus for preparing, spinning, and weaving vegetable and other fibres into fabrics for clothing. The simple application of rotary motion to these processes has changed the domestic economy of the world, and increased the general comforts of our race a hundred fold.

The birth of the arts here, and not least among them that of the humble one of spinning, has relation to a problem in American ethnology of great and increasing interest—the early occupancy or first peopling of this hemisphere. Were there through countless ages no eyes or hearts here to respond to the smiling heaven, none to taste the teeming fruits or inhale the aroma of flowers? Was the placid atmosphere never moved by the prattle and laughter of children, the songs of birds, or the sudden start of quadrupeds arrested by the presence of the race ordained to rule over them, until a few straggling members of that race arrived (perhaps driven hither by tempests) from abroad, to claim the splendid heritage? If the red man was not indigenous to the soil, if the first settlers were aliens, how natural the desire to know who they were, whence they came, and how, and when, and over what regions extended the first rights of preëmption! to ask whether they left no memorials in the languages that have come down to us, in legends, manners, customs, traditions, religious observances and rites, no signs in arts, utensils, arms, or other relics extant? whether they left no marks in earth-works—those most lasting of records—in quarries and entrenchments, in mines, tumuli, and mounds?

It is reasonable to suppose—and difficult to suppose otherwise—that if no human form was ever reflected from the surfaces of these lakes and rivers, no human voice heard in these forests, the imprint of no human foot left on these sands, until colonized from another continent, the arts of that continent must have been considerably advanced before the means of transport, or inducements to emigrate, were evolved; and under any circumstances, a knowledge of the most essential, would be brought over. Of these, such as related to domestic habits and the occupations of women, would be prominent, and among these spinning most of all. When once introduced, this art could not have been lost, indispensable as it is to the savage and demi-savage condition, and the original process or processes, whencesoever derived, unless superseded by better, would have been continued by every generation.

Now, if the mothers of the American race came from any of the early advanced sections or outskirts of Eastern civilization, they brought the distaff and spindle with them, yet nothing of the kind was found at the conquest. It cannot of course be imagined that they, or their descendants, could have been induced to throw the former away, and to embarrass the movements of the latter in a calabash or basket. Efficient previous practice, and acquired habits and expertness, could never have been laid aside for such rude, and laborious, and unproductive substitutes. We know that the distaff and spindle have never been lost where once known, in the old world. Neither civil commotions or revolutions, nor duration of time, affected them, in Egypt, Assyria, Greece, Italy, Carthage, Persia, Scythia, Asia-Minor, or any of the great or small theatres of past history. The laws, learning, science, arts, and races, which once flourished in those countries, have mostly vanished, but women still spin there as they did thirty or forty centuries ago; and so it is here also. The principal mechanical devices of the old Mexicans, Nicaraguans, Peruvians, Chilians, &c., are no longer known; the means by which the stone architecture, the basaltic and porphyritic sculptures of Cusco, Uxmal, Copan, Palenque, and other Aztec remains scattered over the continent, were achieved, are a puzzle; yet the household labors of Indian women in those lands remain unchanged, they spin and weave with the same apparatus, and embroider, as did their kindred in and before the times of Atahualpa and Montezuma.

Admitting that repeated emigrations took place at periods remote as that of the Iliad, and up to the twelfth century of our era, that arrivals, designed or fortuitous, thus occurred, on either the Atlantic or the Pacific, or both coasts—we might still more confidently expect to find the distaff and spindle of the other hemisphere domiciled in this. If they were brought at all, it was in hands practiced in their use, and tenacious of their worth. But from the Cape of Storms in the south, to the limits of human abodes in the north, instead of these the most awkward contrivances prevailed when the whites came, and such still are found to prevail. The inference therefore seems inevitable that the first colonists, and their successors for many ages, came before spinning was known in their native places, or at least before the distaff had been added to the spindle; and that the art, as practised by the Aztecs and their successors in Central America at the present day, is purely of aboriginal development, and of remote antiquity, and had not before the Conquest come in contact with the better processes of the other hemisphere.

Of the three epochs of human condition indicated by the materials of which economical implements and weapons have been made—stone, bronze, and iron—it is uncertain whether the distaff was ever developed under the first. The probabilities are that it was not. In the remote periods in which it is mentioned, some of those who possessed it had advanced far into the second, and some had entered on the third. The great mass of the occupants of this hemisphere at the time of the Conquest were toiling in the cycle of stone; while the Mexicans and Peruvians, the most advanced of the red nations, had discovered and applied the properties of copper and some of its alloys: had entered on the second, but had not progressed far into it. Had they possessed bronze weapons equal to those of the heroic ages, they might yet have preserved, in a measure, their independence and nationality.

Clothing is second only to food, and the clothing of nations in any degree civilized is of woven thread. The all but paramount importance of the manufacture of thread materials—including that made of flax, silk, cotton, worsted, and other fibrous materials—affords matter for great surprise. Compare the products of the distaff and spindle of old with that of our mills, and how difficult to realize the change which modern mechanism has wrought! The yearly amount, the lineal extent, of thread now made—who can measure it? It would reach from our planet to the planets in the farthest regions of space, and almost suffice for a net-work to include the whole system. Turn from the wood-cut illustrations here given of ancient and not yet obsolete processes, to modern manufactures, and it would seem that while in the space of time which it took Grecian Helens, Syrian Naahmahs, or Mexican Penelopes, to prepare an annual supply of clews for their families, the myriads of spindles now twirling, by steam and water, produce enough to use the Asteroids as balls on which to wind it and as bobbins from which to reel it. Even a century ago, a single mill, driven by water, is said to have spun or reeled 73,726 yards of silk—i.e., between forty and fifty miles—at each revolution of the motive axle.

Patent Office, Washington, September, 1851.

ORIGINAL POEMS BY BARRY CORNWALL AND W. C. BENNETT.[8]

TO THE AUTHOR OF EOTHEN.

If I may choose (out of our travelled bands)
Friend or companion to make bright, the way;
Or draw the grandeur out from Orient lands,
Where Libanus mounts up and meets the day;
Or face, midst trackless, boundless, burning sands,
The Desert Silence—as it pants for prey;
Be thou (oh Author of Eothen), mine;
Who show'st whate'er the region, stern or gay,
Whate'er the scene—life, death, sublime decay,
For all fine things, and apprehension fine.
'Tis well to ride abroad on the untamed waves;
To shoot the desert with the camel's speed;
To muse o'er discrowned Egypt's wondrous graves,
And trace her story downwards, deed by deed;
Yet, half the lustre of our life were hid,
Our travel idle, meditation nought,
Without such friend in give back thought for thought,
From waste and sea, mountain and pyramid.

Barry Cornwall.

ARIADNE.

Morn rose on Naxos,—golden dewy morn,
Climbing its eastern cliffs with gleaming light,
Purpling each inland peak and dusky gorge
Of the gray distance,—morn, on lowland slopes,
Of olive-ground and vines and yellowing corn,
Orchard and flowery pasture, white with kine,
On forest, hillside cot, and rounding sea,
And the still tent of Theseus by the shore.
Morn rose on Naxos—chill and freshening morn,
Nor yet the unbreathing air a twitter heard
From eave or bough,—nor yet a blue smoke rose
From glade or misty vale, or far-off town;
One only sign of life, a dusky sail,
Stole afar across the distant sea,
Flying; all else unmoved in stillness lay
Beneath the silence of the brightening heavens,
Nor sound was heard to break the slumbrous calm,
Save the soft lapse of waves along the strand.
A white form from the tent,—a glance,—a cry.
Where art thou, Theseus?—Theseus! Theseus! where?
Why hast thou stolen thus with earliest dawn,
Forth from thy couch—forth from these faithless arms,
That even in slumber should have clasped thee still!
Truant! ah me! and hast thou learnt to fly
So early from thy Ariadne's love!
Where art thou? Is it well to fright me thus,——
To scare me for a moment with the dread
Of one abandoned! Art thou in the woods
With all that could have told me where thou art!
Cruel! and couldst thou not have left me one,
Ere this to have laughed away my idle fears!
He could have told thee all—the start—the shriek——
The pallid face, with which I found thee gone,
And furnished laughter for thy glad return;
But thus! to leave me, cruel! thus alone!
There is no sound of horns among the hills,
No shouts that tell they track or bay the boar.
O fearful stillness! O that one would speak!
O would that I were fronting wolf or pard
But by thy side this moment! so strange fear
Possesses me, O love! apart from thee;
The galley? gone? Ye Gods! is it not gone?
Here, by this rock it lay but yesternight.
Gone! through this track its keel slid down by the shore;
And I slept calmly as it cleft the sea.
Gone? gone? where gone?—that sail! 'tis his! 'tis his!
Return, O Theseus! Theseus! love! return!
Thou wilt return. Thou dost but try my love?
Thou wilt return to make my foolish fears
Thy jest. Return, and I will laugh with thee!
Return! return! and canst thou hear my shrieks,
Nor heed my cry! And wouldst thou have me weep,
Weep! I that wept—white with wild fear—the while
Thou slew'st the abhorred monster! If it be
Thou takest pleasure in these bitter tears,
Come back, and I will weep myself away——
A streaming Niobe—to win thy smiles!
O stony heart! why wilt thou wring me thus!
O heart more cold unto my shrilling cries
Than these wild hills that wail to thee, return,
Than all these island rocks that shriek, return.
Come back! Thou seest me rend this blinding hair;
Hast thou not sworn each tress thou didst so prize,
That sight of home, and thy gray father's face,
Were less a joy to thee, and lightlier held!
Thy sail! thy sail! O do my watery eyes
Take part with thee, so loved! to crush me down!

Gone! Gone! and wilt thou—wilt thou not return?
Heartless, unfearing the just Gods, wilt thou,
Theseus! my lord! my love! desert me thus!
Thus leave me, stranger in this strange wild land,
Friendless, afar from all I left for thee,
Crete, my old home, and my ancestral halls,
My father's love, and the remembered haunts
Of childhood,—all that knew me—all I knew——
All—all—woe! woe! that I shall know no more.
Why didst thou lure me, craftiest, from my home?
There if, thy love grown cold, thou thus hadst fled,
I had found comfort in fond word and smiles
Familiar, and the pity of my kin,
Tears wept with mine—tears wept by loving eyes,
That had washed out thy traces from my heart,
Perchance, in years, had given me back to joy.
O that thy steps had never trodden Crete!
O that these eyes had never on thee fed!
O that, weak heart! I ne'er had looked my love.
Or looking, thou hadst thrust it back with hate!
Did I not save thee? I? was it for this,
Despite Crete's hate—despite my father's wrath,
Perchance to slay me, that I ventured all
For thee—for thee—forgetting all for thee!
Thou know'st it all,—who knows it if not thou,
Save the just Gods—the Gods who hear my cry,
And mutter vengeance o'er thy flying head,
Forsworn! And, lo! on thy accused track
Rush the dread furies; lo! afar I see
The hoary Ægeus, watching for his son,
His son that nears him still with hastening oars,
Unknown, that nears him but to dash him down,
Moaning, to darkness and the dreadful shades
The while, thy grief wails after him in vain:
And, lo, again the good Gods glad my sight
With vengeance; blood again, thy blood, I see
Streaming;—who bids Hippolytus depart
But thou—thou, sword of lustful Phædra's hate
Against thy boy—thy son—thy fair-haired boy;
I see the ivory chariot whirl him on——
The maddened horses down the rocky way
Dashing—the roaring monster in their path;
And plates and ivory splinters of the car,
And blood and limbs, sprung from thee, crushed and torn,
Poseidon scatters down the shrieking shores;
And thou too late—too late, bewail'st in vain.
Thy blindness and thy hapless darling's fate.
And think'st of me, abandoned, and my woe;
Thou who didst show no pity, to the Gods
Shrieking for pity, that my vengeful cries
Drag thee not down unto the nether gloom,
To endless tortures and undying woe.
Dread Gods! I know these things shall surely be!
But other, wilder whispers throng my ears,
And in my thought a fountain of sweet hope
Mingles its gladness with my lorn despair.
Lo! wild flushed faces reel before mine eyes.
And furious revels, dances, and fierce glee,
Are round me,—tossing arms and leaping forms.
Skin-clad and horny-hoofed, and hands that clash
Shrill cymbals, and the stormy joy of flutes
And horns, and blare of trumpets, and all hues
Of Iris' watery bow, on bounding nymphs,
Vine-crowned and thyrsus-sceptred, and one form,
God of the roaring triumph, on a car
Golden and jewel-lustred, carved and bossed,
As by Hephæstus, shouting, rolls, along,
Jocund and panther-drawn, and through the sun,
Down, through the glaring splendor, with wild bound,
Leaps, as he nears me, and a mighty cup,
Dripping, with odorous nectar, to my lips
Is raised, and mad sweet mirth—frenzy divine
Is in my veins—hot love burns through mine eyes,
And o'er the roar and rout I roll along,
Throned by the God, and lifted by his love
Unto forgetfulness of mortal pains,
Up to the prayers and praise and awe of earth.

W. C. B.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] By the kindness of a friend these fine poems are printed for the first time in The International Magazine.

A STORY WITHOUT A NAME.[9]

WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE

BY G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ.

CHAPTER XLII.

Mrs. Hazleton was an observer of all small particulars. On the present occasion she had been kept alone fully ten minutes in the drawing-room, and she was not at all pleased with this want of alacrity. Though her face was as smooth as ever when she entered the sick room, she saw that a change of feeling, or at least a change of purpose, had taken place, and that Lady Hastings felt embarrassed by a consciousness which she might not choose to communicate. But success had made her bold, and she loved to steer her course through agitated waters.

"Well, my dear friend," she said, with the sweet tones of her voice falling from her lips like drops of liquid honey, "you do not seem quite so well to-day. I hope this business which you were to undertake has not agitated you. Or perhaps you have not executed your intention. It could be very well put off until you are better."

This was intended to lead to confession; she suspected some shame at a want of resolution. But Lady Hastings remained silent, playing with her rings, and Mrs. Hazleton, a little angry—but very little—gave her one of those delightful little scratches which she was practised in administering, saying, "No one knew any thing about your intentions but myself; so no one can accuse you of weakness or vacillation."

"I care very little," said Lady Hastings, most untruly, "of what people accuse me. I shall of course form my own resolutions from what I know, and execute them or not, dear Mrs. Hazleton, according to circumstances—which are ever changing. What is inexpedient one day may be quite expedient the next."

Now, no one was more fully aware than Mrs. Hazleton that expediency is always the argument of weak minds, and that changing circumstances afford every day fair excuses to men and to multitudes for every kind of weakness under the sun. Her belief was strengthened that Lady Hastings had not acted as she had promised her to act, and she replied, with an easy, quiet, half-pitying smile, "Well, it is not of the slightest consequence whether you do it now, or a week hence, or not at all. The worst that could come would be Emily's marriage with Marlow, and if you do not care about it, who should? I take it for granted, of course, that you have not acted in the matter so boldly and decidedly as we proposed."

There was an implied superiority in Mrs. Hazleton's words and manner which Lady Hastings did not like. It roused and elevated her, and she replied, somewhat sharply, "You are quite mistaken, my dear friend; I did all that was ever intended. I sent for Emily and my husband, told them that I believed I should not live long, and made it my last request that the engagement with Marlow should be broken off."

"Indeed!" exclaimed Mrs. Hazleton, with even too much eagerness. "What did they say? Did they consent?"

"Far from it," answered Lady Hastings. "My husband said he had made a promise which he could not violate on any account or consideration whatever, and Emily was much in the same story."

"That shows that your decision was not strongly enough expressed," replied her visitor. "I do not believe that any man or woman could be heartless enough to refuse a wife or mother's last request, if made in so solemn a manner."

"They did refuse, point-blank, however," said Lady Hastings. "But do you know, Mrs. Hazleton," she continued, seeing a provokingly bitter smile on Mrs. Hazleton's face, "do you know, strange to say, I am very glad they did refuse. Upon after consideration, when all anger and irritation was gone, I began to think it was hardly right or fair, or Christian either, to oppose this marriage so strongly, without some better reason than I have to assign. Marlow is a gentleman in all respects, of very good family too, I believe. He is a good and excellent young man. His fortune, too, is not inconsiderable, his prospects good, and his conduct under the deprivations which we have lately suffered, and the loss of at least two-thirds of the fortune he had a right to expect with Emily, has been all that is kind, and amiable, and generous."

Mrs. Hazleton sat by the bedside, fixing her eyes full upon the countenance of the invalid, and betraying not in the least the rage and disappointment that were at her heart. They were not a whit the less bitter, however, or fierce, or malignant; but rather the more so from the effort to smother them. No one for a moment could have imagined that she was angry, even in the least degree; and yet no disappointed demon ever felt greater fury at being frustrated by the weakness or vacillation of a tool.

After staying for a moment to take breath, Lady Hastings proceeded, saying, "All these considerations, dear Mrs. Hazleton, have made me resolve to make amends for what I have said—to withdraw the opposition I have hitherto shown—and consent to the marriage."

Mrs. Hazleton retired for a moment into herself. For a minute or two she was as silent as death—her cheek grew a little paler—her eyes lost their lustre, and became dead and cold—they seemed looking at nothing, seeing nothing—there was no speculation in them. The only thing that indicated life and emotion was a slight quivering of the beautifully-chiselled lip. There was a word echoing in the dark chambers of her heart in replying to Lady Hastings. It was "Never!" but it was not spoken; and after a short and thoughtful pause she recovered herself fully, and set about her work again.

"My dear friend," she said, in a sweet tone, "you have doubtless good reasons for what you do. Far be it from me to say one word against your doing what you think fit; only I should like to know what has made such a change in your views, because I think perhaps you may be deceived."

"Oh, no, I am not deceived," replied Lady Hastings, "but really I cannot enter into explanations. I have heard a great deal lately about many things—especially this morning; but I—I—in fact, I promised not to tell you."

Lady Hastings thought that in making this distinct declaration she was performing a very magnanimous feat; but her little speech, short as it was, contained three separate clauses or propositions, with each of which Mrs. Hazleton proposed to deal separately. First, she asserted that she was not deceived, and to this her companion replied, with a slight incredulous smile, "Are you quite sure, my friend? Here you are lying on a bed of sickness, with no power of obtaining accurate information; while those who are combined to win you to their wishes have every opportunity of conveying hints to you, both directly and indirectly, which may not be altogether false, but yet bear with them a false impression."

"Oh, but there can be no possible doubt," said Lady Hastings, "that Marlow is the heir of the Earl of Launceston."

Mrs. Hazleton's brow contracted, and a quick flush passed over her cheek. She had never before given attention to the fact—she had never thought of it at all—but the moment it was mentioned, her knowledge of the families of the nobility, and Mr. Marlow's connections, showed her that the assertion was probably true. "It may be so," she said, "but I am very doubtful. However, I will inquire, and let you know the truth, to-morrow. And now, my dear friend, let us turn to something else. You say you have heard a great deal to-day, and that you have promised not to tell me—me—for you marked that word particularly. Now here I have a right to demand some explanation; for your very words show that some person or persons endeavor to prejudice your mind against me. What you have heard must be some false charge. Otherwise the one who has been your friend for years, who has been faithful, constant, attentive, kind, to the utmost limit of her poor abilities, would not be selected for exclusion from your confidence. They seek, in fact, by some false rumor, or ridiculous tale, which you have not the means of investigating yourself, to deprive you of advice and support. I charge no one in particular; but some one has done this—if they had nothing to fear from frankness, they would not inculcate a want of candor towards one who loves you, as they well know."

"Why the fact is Emily said," replied Lady Hastings, "that could only be for a short time, and——"

"Emily!" cried Mrs. Hazleton with a laugh, "Emily indeed! Oh, then the matter is easily understood—but pray what did Emily say? Dear Emily, she is a charming girl—rather wayward—rather wilful—not always quite so candid to her friends as I could wish; but these are all thoughts which, will pass away with more knowledge of the world. She will learn to discriminate between true friends and false ones—to trust and confide entirely and without hesitation in those who really love her, and not to repose her confidence in the dark and mysterious. Now I will undertake to say that Emily has thrown out hints and inuendoes, without giving you very clear and explicit information. She has asked you to wait patiently for a time. It is always the dear child's way; but I did not think she would practice it upon her own mother."

Now most people would have imagined, as Lady Hastings did imagine, that Mrs. Hazleton's words proceeded from spite—mere spite; but such was not the case: it was all art. She sought to pique Lady Hastings, knowing very well that when once heated or angry, she lost all caution; and her great object at that moment was to ascertain what Emily knew, and what Emily had said. She was successful to a certain degree. She did pique Lady Hastings, who replied at once, and somewhat sharply, though with the ordinary forms of courtesy. "I do not think you altogether do Emily justice, dear Mrs. Hazleton, although you have in some degree divined the course she has pursued. She did not exactly throw out inuendoes; but she made bold and distinct charges, and though she did not proceed to the proofs, because there was no time to do so, and also because there were particular reasons for not doing so, yet she promised within a very few hours to establish every assertion that she made beyond the possibility of doubt.

"I thought so," said Mrs. Hazleton, in a somewhat abstracted tone, casting her eyes round the room and taking up, apparently unconcerned, the vial of medicine which stood by Lady Hastings' bedside. "Pray, my dear friend, when the revelation is made—if it ever be made—inform me of the particulars."

"If it ever be made," exclaimed Lady Hastings. "No revelation needs to be made, Mrs. Hazleton—nothing is wanting but the proofs. Emily was explicit enough as to the facts. She said that you had aided and assisted in depriving my husband of his property, that in that and many other particulars you had acted any thing but a friendly part, that you were moved by a spirit of hatred against us all, and that very seldom had there been any communications between our house and yours without some evil following it—which is true enough."

She spoke with a good deal of vehemence, and raised herself somewhat on her elbow, as if to utter her words more freely. In the mean while Mrs. Hazleton sat silent and calm—as far as the exterior went at least—with her eyes fixed upon a particular spot in the quilt from which they never moved till Lady Hastings had done.

"Grave charges," she said at length, "very grave charges to bring against one whom she has known from her infancy, and for whom she has professed some regard—but no less false than grave, my dear friend. Now either one of two things has happened: the first, which I mention merely as a possibility, but without at all believing that such is the case—the first is, I say, that Emily, judging your opposition to her proposed unequal marriage to be abetted by myself, has devised these charges out of her own head, in order to withdraw your confidence from me and gain her own objects: the second is—and this is much more likely—that she has been informed by some one, either maliciously or mistakenly, of some suspicions and doubts such as are always more or less current in a country place, and has perhaps embellished them a little in their transmission to you.—The latter is certainly the most probable.—I suppose she did not tell you from whom she received the information."

"Not exactly," answered Lady Hastings, "but one thing I know, which is, that Mr. Dixwell the rector has all the same information, and if I understood her rightly, has got it down in writing."

Mrs. Hazleton's cheek grew a shade paler; but she answered at once "I am glad to hear that; for now we come to something definite. All these charges must be substantiated, dear friend—that is, if they can be substantiated—" she added with a smile.

"You can easily understand that, attached to you by the bonds of a long friendship, I cannot suffer my name to be traduced, or my conduct impeached, even by your own daughter, without insisting upon a full explanation, and clear, satisfactory proofs, or a recantation of the charges. Emily must establish what she has said, if she can.—I am in no haste about it; it maybe to-morrow, or the next day, or the day after—whenever it suits you and her in short; but it must be done. Conscious that I am innocent of such great offences, I can wait patiently; and I do not think, my dear friend, that although I see you have been a little startled by these strange tales, you will give any credence to them in your heart till they are proved. Dear Emily is evidently very much in love with Mr. Marlow, and is anxious to remove all opposition to her marriage with him. But I think she must take some other means; for these will certainly break down beneath her."

She spoke so calmly, and in so quiet and gentle a tone—her whole look and manner as so tranquilly confident—that lady Hastings could hardly believe that she was in any degree guilty.

"Well, I cannot tell," she said, "how this may turn out, but I do not think her marriage with Mr. Marlow can have any thing to do with it. I have fully and entirely resolved to cease all opposition to her union; on which I see my daughter's happiness is staked, and I shall certainly immediately signify my consent both to Emily and to my husband."

"Wait a little—wait a little" said Mrs. Hazleton with a significant nod of the head. "I have no mysteries, my dear friend. I have nothing to conceal or to hold back. You are going, however, to act upon information which is very doubtful. I believe that you have been deceived, whoever has told you that Mr. Marlow is the heir to the Earl of Launceston, and it is but an act of friendship on my part to procure you more certain intelligence. You shall have it I promise you, before four and twenty hours are over, and all I ask is that you will not commit yourself by giving your consent till that intelligence has been obtained. You cannot say that you consent if Mr. Marlow proves to be the heir of that nobleman, but will not consent if such be not the case.—That would never do, and therefore your consent would be irrevocable. But on the other hand there can be no great harm in waiting four and twenty hours at the utmost. I have plenty of books of heraldry and genealogy, which will soon let me into the facts, and you shall know them plainly and straightforwardly at once. You can then decide and state your decision firmly and calmly, with just reason and upon good grounds."

Lady Hastings was silent. She saw that Mrs. Hazleton had detected the motives of her sudden change of views, and she did not much like being detected. She had fully made up her mind, too, that Marlow was to become Earl and her daughter Countess of Launceston, and the very thought of such not being the result was a sort of half disappointment to her. Now Lady Hastings did not like being disappointed at all, and moreover she had made up her mind to have a scene of reconciliation, and tenderness, and gratitude with her husband and her daughter, from which—being of a truly affectionate disposition—she thought she should derive great pleasure. Thus she hesitated for a moment as to what she should answer, and Mrs. Hazleton, determined not to let the effect of what she had said subside before she had bound her more firmly, added, after waiting a short time for a reply, "you will promise me, will you not, that you will not distinctly recall your injunction, and give your consent to the marriage till you have seen me again; provided I do not keep you in suspense more than four and twenty hours? It is but reasonable too, and just, and you would, I am sure, repent bitterly if you were to find afterwards that your consent to this very unequal marriage had been obtained by deceit, and that you had been made a mere fool of—Really at the very first sight, even if I had not good reason to believe that this story of the heirship is either a mistake or a misrepresentation, it seems so like a stage trick—the cunning plot of some knavish servant or convenient friend in a drama—that I should be very doubtful. Will you not promise me then?"

"Well, there can be no great harm in waiting that length of time," said Lady Hastings. "I do not mind promising that; but of course you will let me know within four and twenty hours."

"I will," replied Mrs. Hazleton firmly; "earlier if it be possible; but the fact is, I have some business to settle to-morrow of great importance. My lawyer, Mr. Shanks—whom I believe to be a great rogue—persuaded me to lend some money upon security which he pronounced himself to be good. I knew not what it was for; as we women of course can be no judges of such things; but I have just discovered that it was to pay off some debts of this young man who calls himself Sir John Hastings. Now I don't know whether the papers have been signed, or any thing about it; and I hear that the young man himself is absent, no one knows where. It makes me very uneasy; and I have sent for Shanks to come to me to-morrow morning. It may therefore be the middle of the day before I can get here; but I will not delay a moment, you may be perfectly sure."

She had risen as she spoke, and after pressing the hand of Lady Hastings tenderly in her own, she glided calmly out of the room with her usual graceful movement, and entering her carriage with a face as serene as a summer sky, ordered the coachman to drive home in a voice that wavered not in its lightest tone.

CHAPTER XLIII.

Mrs. Hazelton entered the carriage, I have said, at the end of the last chapter, without the slightest appearance of agitation or excitement. Although now and then a flush, and now and then a paleness, had spread over her face during the conversation with Lady Hastings, though her eye had emitted an occasional flash, and at other times had seemed fixed and meaningless, such indications of internal warfare were all banished when she left the room, the fair smooth cheek had its natural color, the eye was as tranquil as that of indifferent old age.

The coachman cracked his long whip, before four magnificent large horses heaved the ponderous vehicle from its resting place, and Mrs. Hazleton sank back in the carriage and gave herself up to thought—but not to thought only. Then all the smothered agitation; then all the strong contending passions broke forth in fierce and fiery warfare. It is impossible to disentangle them and lay them out, as on a map, before the reader's mind. It is impossible to say which at first predominated, rage, or fear, or disappointment, or the thirst of vengeance. One passion it is true—the one which might be called the master passion of her nature—soon soared towering above the rest, like one of those mighty spirits which rise to the dizzy and dangerous pinnacle of power in the midst of the turbulence and tempest which accompany great social earthquakes. But at first all was confusion.

"Never," she repeated to herself—"never!—it shall never be. If I slay her with my own hand it shall never be—foiled—frustrated in every thing; and by this mere empty, moody child, who has been my stumbling block, my enemy, my obstruction, in all my paths. No, no, it shall never be!"

A new strain of thought seemed to strike her; her head leaned forward; her eyes closed, and her lips quivered.

There are many kinds of conscience, and every one has some sort, such as it is. What I mean is, that there is almost in every heart a voice of warning and reproof which counsels us to regret certain actions, and which speaks in different tones to different men. To the worldly—those who are habitually of the earth earthly—it holds out the menace of earthly shame and misfortune and sorrow. It recapitulates the mistakes we have committed, points to the evil consequences of evil deeds, shows how the insincerities and falsehoods of our former course have proved fruitless, and how the cunning devices, and skilful contrivances, and artful stratagems, have ended in mortification and reproach and contempt; while still the gloomy prospects of detection and exposure and public contumely and personal punishment, are held up before our eyes as the grim portrait of the future.

I need not pause here to show how conscience affects those who, however guilty, have a higher sense—those who have a cloudy belief in a future state—who acknowledge in their own hearts a God of justice—who look to judgment, and feel that there must be an immortality of weal or woe. Mrs. Hazleton was of the former class. The grave was a barrier to her sight, beyond which there was no seeing. She had been brought up for this world, lived in this world, thought, devised, schemed, plotted for this world. She never thought of another world at all. She went to church regularly every Sunday, read the prayers with every appearance of devotion, even listened to the sermon if the preacher preached well, and went home more practically atheist than many who have professed themselves so.

What were her thoughts, then, now? They were all earthly still. Even conscience spoke to her in earthly language, as if there were no other means of reaching her heart but that. Its very menaces were all earthly. She reviewed her conduct for the last two or three years, and bitterly reproached herself for several faults she discovered therein—faults of contrivance, of design, of execution. She had made mistakes; and for a time she gave herself up to bitter repentance for that great crime.

"Caught in my own trap," she said; "frustrated by a girl—a child!—ay! and with exposure, perhaps punishment, before me. How she triumphs, doubtless, in that little malignant heart. How she will triumph when she brings forward her proofs, and overwhelms me with them—if she has them. Oh, yes, she has them! She is mighty careful never to say any thing of which she is not certain. I have remarked that in her from a child. She has them beyond doubt, and now she is sitting anticipating the pleasure of crushing me—enjoying the retrospect of my frustrated endeavors—thinking how she and Marlow will laugh together over a whole list of attempts that have failed, and purposes that I have not been able to execute. Yes, yes, they will laugh loud and gaily, and at the very altar, perhaps, will think with triumph that they are filling for me the last drop of scorn and disappointment. Never, never, never! It shall never be. That is the only way, methinks;" and she fell into dark and silent thought again.

The fit lasted some time, and then she spoke again, muttering the words between her teeth as she had previously done. "They will never marry with a mother's curse upon their union! Oh, no, no, I know her too well. She will not do that. That weak poppet may die before she recalls her opposition—must die—and then they will live on loving and wretched. But it must be made as bitter as possible. It must not stop there."

Again she paused and thought, and then said to herself, "That drug which the Italian monk sold me would do well enough if I did but fully know its effects. There are things which leave terrible signs behind them—besides it is old, and may have lost its virtue. I must run no risk of that—and it must be speedy as well as sure. I have but four and twenty hours—the time is very short;" and relapsing into silence again, she continued in deep and silent meditation till the carriage stopped at her own gates.

Mrs. Hazleton sat in the library that night for two or three hours, and studied diligently a large folio volume which she had taken down herself. She read, and she seemed puzzled. A servant entered to ask some unimportant question, and she waved him away impatiently. Then leaning her head upon her hand she thought profoundly. She calculated in her own mind what Emily knew—how much—how intimately, and how she had learned it. Such a thing as remorse she know not; but she had some fear, though very little—a sort of shrinking from the commission of acts more daring and terrible than any she had yet performed. There was something appalling—there is always something appalling—in the commission of a great new crime, and the turning back, as it were, of the mind of Mrs. Hazleton from the search for means to accomplish a deed determined, in order to calculate the necessity of that deed, proceeded from this sort of awe at the next highest step of evil to those which she had already committed.

"She must know all," said Mrs. Hazleton to herself, after having considered the matter for some moments deeply. "And she must have learned it accurately. I know her caution well. From whom can she have learned it?"

"From that young villain Ayliffe," was the prompt reply. "I was too harsh with him, and in his fit of rage he has gone away at once to tell this girl—or perhaps that old fool Dixwell. Most likely he has furnished her with evidence too, before he fled the country. Without that I could have set Marlow's discoveries at naught. Yet I doubt his having gone to Dixwell; he always despised him. Mean as he was himself, he looked upon him as a meaner. He would not go to him to whine and cant over him. He would go to the girl herself. Her he always loved, even in the midst of his violence and his rage. He would go to her or write to her beyond all doubt. She must be silenced. But I must deal with another first. Come what will, this marriage shall not take place. Besides, she is the most dangerous of the two. The girl might be frightened or awed into secresy, and it will take longer time to reach her, but nothing will keep that weak woman's tongue from babbling, and in four and twenty hours her consent will be given to this marriage. If I can but contrive it rightly, that at least may be stopped, and a part of my revenge obtained at all events. It must be so—it must be so."

She turned to the leaves of the book again, but nothing in the contents seemed to give her satisfaction. "That will be too long," she said, after having read about a third of a page. "Three or four days to operate! Who could wait three or four days when the object is security, tranquility, or revenge? Besides the case admits of no delay. Before three or four days all will be over."

She read again, and was discontented with what she read. "That will leave traces," she said. "It must be the Italian's dose, I believe, after all. Those monks are very skilful men, and perhaps it may not have lost its efficiency. It is easily tried," she exclaimed suddenly, and ascending quietly to her own dressing-room, she sought out from the drawer of an old cabinet a small packet of white powder, which she concealed in the palm of her hand. Then descending to the library again, she sat for a few minutes in dull, heavy thought, and then rang a hand-bell which stood upon her table.

"Bring me a small quantity of meat cut fine for the dog," she said, as soon as her servant appeared. "He seems ill; what has been the matter with him?"

"Nothing, madam," said the man, looking under the table where lay a beautiful small spaniel sound asleep. "He has been quite well all day."

"He has had something like a fit," said Mrs. Hazleton.

"Dear me, perhaps he is going mad," replied the man. "Had I not better kill him?"

"Kill him!" exclaimed Mrs. Hazleton; "on no account whatever. Bring me a small plate of meat."

The man did as he was ordered, and on his return found the dog sitting at his mistress's feet, looking up in her face.

"Ah, Dorset," she said, speaking to the animal in a kindly tone, "you are better now, are you?"

The man seemed inclined to linger to see whether the dog would eat: but Mrs. Hazleton took the plate from him, and threw the poor beast a small piece, which he devoured eagerly.

"There that will do," said Mrs. Hazleton. "You may leave the room."

When she was alone again, she paused for a moment or two, then deliberately unfolded the packet, and put a very small quantity of the powder it contained upon a piece of the meat. This morsel she threw to the poor animal, who swallowed it at once, and then she set down the plate upon the ground, which he cleared in a moment. After that Mrs. Hazleton turned to her reading again, and looked round once at the end of about two minutes. The dog had resumed his sleeping attitude, and she read on. Hardly a minute more had passed ere the poor brute started up, ran round once or twice, as if seized with violent convulsions, staggered for an instant to and fro, and fell over on its side. Mrs. Hazleton rang the bell violently, and two servants ran in at once. "He is dying," she cried; "he is dying."

"Keep out of his way, madam," exclaimed one of the men, evidently in great fear himself, "there is no knowing what he may do."

The next instant the poor dog started once more upon his feet, uttered a loud and terrific yell, and fell dead upon the floor.