Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXI, No. 3, September 1842

  Chispa. Abernuncio Satanas! and a plague on all lovers who ramble about at night, drinking the elements instead of sleeping quietly in their beds. Every dead man to his cemetery, say I; and every friar to his monastery. Now, here’s my master, Victorian, yesterday a cow-keeper and to-day a gentleman; yesterday a student and to-day a lover; and I must be up later than the nightingale, for as the abbot sings so must the sacristan respond. God grant he may soon be married, for then shall all this serenading cease. Man is fire, and woman is tow, and the devil comes and blows; and, therefore, I have heard my grandmother say, that if your neighbor has a son, wipe his nose and marry him to your daughter. Aye! marry! marry! marry! Mother, what does marry mean? It means to spin, to bear children, and to weep, my daughter! And of a truth there is something more in matrimony than cake and kid gloves. (To the musicians.) And now, gentlemen, Pax vobiscum! as the ass said to the cabbages. Pray walk this way; and don’t hang down your heads. It is no disgrace to have an old father and a ragged shirt. Now, look you, you are gentlemen who lead the life of crickets; you enjoy hunger by day and noise by night. Yet, I beseech you, for this once be not loud, but pathetic; for it is a serenade to a damsel in bed, and not to the man in the moon. Your object is not to arouse and terrify, but to soothe and bring lulling dreams. Therefore, each shall not play upon his instrument as if it were the only one in the universe, but gently, and with a certain modesty, according with the others. Pray, how may I call thy name, friend?

  First Musician. Geronimo Gil, at your service.

  Chispa. Every tub smells of the wine that is in it. Pray, Geronimo, is not Saturday an unpleasant day with thee?

  First M. Why so?

  Chispa. Because I have heard it said that Saturday is an unpleasant day for those who have but one shirt. Moreover, I have seen thee at the tavern, and if thou canst run as fast as thou canst drink, I should like to hunt hares with thee. What instrument is that?

  First M. An Aragonese bag-pipe.

  Chispa. Pray, art thou related to the bag-piper of Bujalance, who asked a maravedi for playing and ten for leaving off?

  First M. No, your honor.

  Chispa. I am glad of it. What other instruments have we?

  Second and Third M. We play the bandurria.

  Chispa. A pleasing instrument. And thou?

  Fourth M. The fife.

  Chispa. I like it; it has a cheerful, soul-stirring sound, that soars up to my lady’s window like the song of a swallow. And you others?

  Other Musicians. We are the singers, please your honor.

  Chispa. You are too many. Do you think we are going to sing mass in the Cathedral of Cordova? Four men can make but little use of one shoe, and I see not how you can all sing in one song. But follow me along the garden wall. That is the way my master climbs to the lady’s window. It is by the vicar’s skirts that the devil climbs into the belfry. Come, follow me and make no noise.       [Exeunt.

Drawn by E. Corbould.       Engraved by Alfred Jones.

The Proposal

Engraved expressly for Graham’s Magazine.

———

BY J. H. DANA.

———

In one of those stately old gardens which were attached to every lordly mansion of the reign of Charles the First, sat a cavalier and lady. The seat they occupied was a rude garden sofa, overshadowed by trees, and in close proximity to a colossal urn on which was represented in bold relief, according to the classic predilection of the age, Diana and her nymphs engaged in the chase. The lady was one of rare beauty. Indeed few creatures more lovely than Isabel Mordaunt ever graced a festive hall, or brushed the dew from the morning grass. She was gay, witty, eighteen, and an heiress. Her mother died when Isabel was an infant, and thus left chiefly to her own control she had grown up as wilful as a mountain chamois. Exulting in the consciousness of talent, there were few who had not experienced her wit. Yet she had a kind heart, and, if she was at times too apt to give offence, no one was more ready to atone for a fault. Her beauty and expectations had already drawn around her crowds of suitors; but though she laughed and chatted with all, she suffered none to aspire to an interest in her heart. Indeed she professed to be a skeptic to the reality of love. But, as is ever the case, her gay raillery and careless indifference seemed only to increase the number of her suitors.

The cavalier by her side was in the first flush of manhood, and one whose personal appearance rendered him a prize which any fair girl might be proud to win. Grahame Vaux had been the ward of Isabel’s father, and was but four years her senior. In childhood they had played together, and though subsequently separated by the departure of Vaux to the university, they had been again thrown into each other’s society at that critical period of life when the heart is most keenly alive to the influences of love. To Grahame this daily companionship was peculiarly dangerous. Isabel was just the being to dazzle a romantic character like his; for he regarded the sex with all the high, chivalrous feelings which actuated the Paladins of old, whom indeed he resembled in other respects. A second Sir Philip Sidney, he excelled in every graceful accomplishment. At Oxford he had won the first prize. In every manly sport he was pre-eminent. We will not trace the progress of his passion—how it sprung from a single word, fed on smiles, and finally devoured, as it were, his very being. Suffice it to say, he soon came to love Isabel with all the ardor of a first affection, worshiping her as an idolator adores his divinity, and evincing his passion in every look, word and gesture.

Perhaps this was not the surest road to the affections of a wilful creature like Isabel—perhaps the alternation of doubt and fear, of admiration and indifference, would more effectually have enlisted her feelings; but be this as it may, her new lover met at her hands the same capricious treatment which her other suitors received. In Grahame’s case this wilfulness was more than usually apparent, though there were not wanting those who said that this demeanor was only a veil worn to hide a growing preference for her noble-hearted lover. At any rate her conduct toward him was caprice itself. Now she would smile on him so sweetly that he could not help but hope, and now a word or gesture would plunge him into the deepest despair.

“I can endure it no longer,” at length he said, “I love Isabel!—Oh! how deeply and fervently God only knows. I will terminate my suspense. I will learn my fate. Better know the worst than live on in this agony.”

He rose and sought out the lady. She was at her favorite seat in the garden; and as she perceived him approaching, her color deepened, as if she divined, in Grahame’s excited air, the purpose of his visit. With that instinctive desire, so natural to the sex, to avoid the subject, she herself opened the conversation in a gay and trifling tone. Grahame, who could have stood the shock of battle undaunted, felt his heart fail him when he saw her sportive mood, but, firm in his resolve, he said, at length, at a suitable pause,

“Do you believe in love, Isabel?”

“Love! I believe in love!” laughingly replied the capricious girl. “What! give up my maiden liberty for a pretty gallant,—oh! no, Sir Romance, madcap as I am, it has not come to that. Believe in love, forsooth! why I should sooner believe that men were wise or women fickle. Love may sound very well in a play, but I’ll have none of it. Pale cheeks, sighs, and the gilded fetters of a wife are not for a free maiden who, like the untamed hawk, would soar whither she lists. Love, indeed!” and she laughed merrily.

Poor Grahame! how his sensitive heart throbbed at these words. He would have given worlds to be miles away. But the light, half-mocking laugh, all silvery though it was, with which she concluded, wrung even from him a reproach.

“Oh! Isabel,” he said, and his low voice trembled with emotion, “can you believe all this? Ah! little indeed then do you know of love.”

“And who would presume to think that I did know ought of it?” said Isabel, with a heightened color, and a flashing eye,—“I have no taste for jealous lovers or domineering lords; and I never saw one of your sex—I pray your pardon, fair sir—” and there was a slight scorn in her words, “who could tempt maiden to think twice of matrimony. Love indeed, forsooth! I pray Heaven to open men’s eyes to their vanity.”

The moment she had ceased speaking, Isabel would have given any thing to recall her words. Hurried away by her love of raillery, and a little piqued at the tone of reproach in which Grahame ventured, she had given free license to her speech, and said things which she well knew she did not believe. Her lover turned deadly pale at her words. Believing now that she had all along been trifling with his feelings, he started to his feet, and looking at her a moment sadly, exclaimed bitterly, “Isabel! Isabel! May God forgive you for this; I leave you and forever;” and ere she could reply, or Grahame see the tears that gushed into her eye, he darted through the neighboring shrubbery and was lost to sight. Isabel looked after, and called faintly to him to return, but if he heard her, which was scarcely possible, he heeded it not. Pride prevented her from repeating the summons; she saw him no more.

——

More than an hour elapsed before Isabel returned to the mansion, and when she did the traces of tears were on her cheeks. She instantly sought her chamber.

“He said we parted forever—oh! surely he cannot have meant it,” she exclaimed, “he will be here to-morrow. And then—” and she paused, while a blush mantled over her cheeks, and invaded even her pearly bosom.

But to-morrow came without Grahame. All through the long day Isabel watched for his arrival, and even ventured half way to the park-gates, but when she heard footsteps in the avenue ahead, she hurried trembling behind the shrubbery until she saw that the stranger was not her lover. And when night came, and still he did not appear, her heart was agitated by contending emotions; and while one moment pride would obtain the mastery, love would in turn subdue her bosom. Until this hour Isabel had never known how deeply she loved Grahame; for her passion, growing with her growth and increasing with her years, had obtained the mastery of her heart with such subtle and gradual power, that the rude shock of Grahame’s departure first woke her to a consciousness of her affection. And now she felt that she had wronged a true and noble heart. Had her lover then returned he would have won a ready confession of her passion; but day after day passed without his arrival, and finally intelligence was received that he had joined the army of King Charles, then first rallying around that ill-fated monarch, preparatory to the fatal civil war in which so many gallant cavaliers lost life and fortune. The news filled Isabel’s heart with the keenest anguish. “Alas! Grahame,” she said, as if in adjuration, “I love only you, and your noble heart deems I despise the offering. Could you but know the truth! But surely,” she continued, “he might have sought some explanation. Oh! if he had returned only for a moment, and given me the opportunity to ask forgiveness, he would not have had to complain of a cold and ungrateful heart in Isabel Mordaunt. He is unjust,” and thus resolving, she determined to demean herself with becoming pride.

However much, therefore, Isabel might suffer in secret, no curious eye was allowed to penetrate the recesses of her heart. To the world she appeared gay and witty as ever, and if sometimes the name of Grahame was mentioned, or his gallant deeds commended, she heard the announcement without betraying aught more than would have been natural in a common friend. She was often put to this trial, for, from the moment when Grahame joined the royal standard, his career had witnessed a succession of the most brilliant exploits. Seeming to be utterly regardless of life, he ventured deeds from which even the bravest had shrunk back. Wherever the storm of battle was thickest, wherever a post of extreme peril was to be maintained, there was Grahame, pressing forward in the front rank, like another Rinaldo. He did not shun the companionship of the gayer gallants of the camp, but he ever wore, amid their mirth, an expression of settled sadness. But this peculiarity was forgotten in the brilliancy of his exploits, and his name came at length to be so famous that when any new and daring deed was done, men asked at once whether Sir Grahame Vaux had not been there.

Isabel heard all this with a beating heart, but an unmoved cheek. She had schooled herself to disguise her heart, and she succeeded so that no one suspected the truth. Only her father, when he saw her refuse one after another of her many suitors, divined that some unrevealed secret lay hidden in her bosom, and remembering the sudden departure of Grahame, was at no loss to refer her conduct to the right cause. Meantime a change had gradually come over Isabel. She was less light-hearted than of old—her laugh, though musical, was scarcely as gay as it once had been—and her sportive wit no longer flashed incessantly like the lightning in the summer cloud.

The tide of war had long rolled steadfastly against the cavaliers, and finally the battle of Marston Moor closed the tragedy. The day after the news of the defeat arrived, a travel-soiled retainer of Grahame reached Mordaunt Hall and recounted in detail the events of that bloody field, from which he was a fugitive. He said that his master, when the day was lost, flung a discharged pistol into the thickest ranks of the enemy and died, like a knight of old, fighting to regain it. At these words her father turned to Isabel, in whose presence the retainer had related his story, and saw a deathly paleness overspread her cheek. The next instant she sank to the floor in a swoon.

“My child, my darling Isabel, speak,” said the aged father, raising her in his trembling arms. “Oh! I have long suspected this, and the blow has killed her! Why did I suffer her to hear this tale!”

With difficulty they revived her; but she only woke to a spell of sickness; and for weeks her fate hung in a balance between life and death.

——

But Grahame had not fallen. True, as his retainer asserted, he had maintained the unequal combat long after every one else had left the field, and true also he had finally been overwhelmed by numbers and left for dead, covered with wounds, upon the battle plain; but when the pursuing squadrons had swept by, leaving the field comparatively deserted, and the chill night wind breathed with reviving coolness over his brow, he awoke to consciousness, and was enabled, by the assistance of one of his followers who yet prowled about the scene of carnage in the hope of finding his master, to gain a secure retreat where he might be cured of his wounds. Here, on the rude couch of a humble cottage, he lay for weeks, and the third month had set in after the battle, before he was enabled to leave his lowly shelter. During all this time his faithful retainer watched over him, tending him one while with the assiduity of a nurse, and another while, on any alarm, preparing to defend him to the last extremity.

“I am now a houseless, persecuted outlaw,” said Grahame when he mounted his steed to leave the humble cottage where he had found shelter. “The crop-eared puritanic knaves have shed the best blood in the country and they will not spare mine. The land is overrun with their troops, and there is no safety, in this portion of it at least. I will go once more to the halls of my fathers, take a last farewell of them, and then carry my life and sword to some foreign market, for, God help me, there is nothing else left to do.”

It was a bright sunny afternoon when Grahame reached his ancestral halls, now deserted and melancholy. Already had the minions of the parliament sequestrated and shut up the mansion, and it was only through the fidelity of an old servant, who yet lingered around the place, that its former master was enabled to enter its portals. The aged retainer wept with joy on his lord’s hand, and said,

“Oh! dark was the day when news came of your honor’s death.”

“And was it then reported that I was no more? Yet how can I wonder at it, considering my long seclusion.”

“Oh! yes—and sad times too they had of it over at Mordaunt Hall. The young mistress fainted away, and was near dying, though since she has heard that you yet lived—as we all did, you know, by your messenger,—she has wonderfully revived. But what ails you, my dear master?—are you sick?”

“No—no—but I must to horse at once,” said Grahame, whose face had turned deadly pale at his servant’s joyful intelligence. “I may be back to sleep here—think you I can have safe hiding for one night in my father’s house?”

“That may you, God bless your honor,” said the old man as Grahame rode away.

“She loves me, then! Life is no more all a blank,” said the young knight almost gaily, as he dashed through the arcades of his park, his steed seeming to partake in his master’s exhilaration.

Isabel sat in the great parlor of Mordaunt Hall, looking down the broad avenue that led to the park gates. A partial bloom had been restored to her cheek, for hope whispered to her that Grahame might yet be hers. Suddenly a figure emerged to sight far down the avenue, and though years had elapsed since she had seen that form, and though she imagined her lover to be far away, and perhaps in exile, her heart told her at once that the approaching figure was Grahame’s. For a moment her agitation was so excessive that she thought she would have fainted, but though there were many painful recollections, her sensations on the whole were of a happy kind. Quick as lightning, the thought flashed across her mind that Grahame had heard of her agitation when the false report of his death had reached Mordaunt Hall, and, for the moment, maidenly shame overcame every other feeling in her bosom. Conscious that she dare not meet her lover without preparation, she took to instant flight, and sought, as if instinctively, her favorite seat in the garden. Here, resting her head on her hands, she strove to collect her thoughts. It was not long before she heard a tread on the graveled walk, and her whole frame trembled with the consciousness that the intruder was Grahame. Nervous, abashed, unable to look up, her heart fluttered wildly against her boddice. How different was she from the gay, capricious creature who had occupied that same seat, two short years before. She heard the footstep at hand, and her agitation increased. She knew that her lover had taken his seat beside her, and yet she dared not let her eye meet his, but blushing and confused she offered no resistance when he took her trembling hand in his.

“Isabel—dear Isabel!” said a manly voice, and though the tones were full of emotion, the accents were clear and firm, for it was not Grahame now who trembled, “let us forget the past,” and he stole his arm around her waist. “We love each other—do we not, dear Isabel?”

Isabel raised her eyes, now beaming with subdued tenderness, to her lover’s face, and then bursting into tears was drawn to his bosom, as tenderly as a mother may press her new-born infant to her heart.

The interest of Isabel’s father, who had taken no part in the civil war, procured for Grahame an immunity from proscription; and when his estates were brought to the hammer, under the order of the parliament, they were purchased by Mr. Mordaunt, and restored to their rightful owner. Long and happily together lived Sir Grahame Vaux and his beautiful wife, and when Charles the Second was restored to his kingdom, none welcomed him back with more joy than the now blooming matron, and her still noble looking lord.

———

BY THE AUTHOR OF “CRUISING IN THE LAST WAR,” THE “REEFER OF ’76,” ETC.

———

The ten minutes that elapsed before I reached the door of the Hall seemed to be protracted to an age, and were spent in an agony of mind no pen can describe. Oh! to be thus deceived—to part from Annette as we had parted—to think of her by day and dream of her by night—to look forward to our meeting with a thrill of hope, and strive to win renown that I might shed a lustre around my bride—and then, after all my toils, and hopes, and struggles, to come back and find her wedded—God of heaven! it was too much. But, notwithstanding my agony, my pride revolted at the display of any outward emotion. I would not for worlds that Annette should know the torture her faithlessness had inflicted on my bosom. No! I would smooth my brow, subdue my tongue, and control my every look. I would jest, smile, and be the gayest of the gay. I would wish Annette and her husband a long and happy life, and no one should suspect that, under my assumed composure, I wore a heart rankling with a wound that no time nor circumstance could cure. I resolved to see Annette, to play my part to the end, and then, returning to my post, to find an honorable death on the first deck we should surmount. My reflections, however, were cut short by the stoppage of the vehicle before the door of the mansion. A servant hastened to undo the coach steps, and, nerving myself for the interview that was at hand, I stepped out. The man’s face was strange to me, and I saw that it displayed some embarrassment.

“Will you announce me to Mr. St. Clair,” I said, “as Lieutenant Cavendish?”

“Mr. St. Clair, I regret to say,” replied the man politely, “is not at the Hall. The carriages have just driven off, and if they had not taken the back road through the park, would have met you in the avenue. Mr. St. Clair accompanies the bride and groom on a two weeks’ tour.”

My course was at once taken; and, as the criminal feels a lightening of the heart when reprieved, so I experienced a relief in escaping the trying experiment of mingling with the bridal party. Hastily re-ascending the carriage steps, I left my name with the servant, and ordering the coachman to drive off, left Pomfret Hall, with the resolution never again to return. At the village I paused a few minutes to indite a letter to Mr. St. Clair, in which I regretted my inopportune arrival, and wished a long life of happiness to him and to Annette. Then, re-entering the coach, I threw myself back on the seat, and, while I was being whirled away from Pomfret Hall, gave myself up to the most bitter reflections. As I now and then looked out of the window and recognized familiar objects along the road, I contrasted my present despondency with the hope that had thrilled my heart when I passed them a few hours before. Then, every pulse beat faster with delicious anticipations: now, I scarcely wished for more than an honorable death. At length my thoughts took a turn, and I reviewed the past, calling to mind every little word and act of Annette, from which I could draw either hope or despair.

“Fool that I was,” I exclaimed, “to think that the wealthy heiress could stoop to love a penniless officer. And yet,” I continued, “my fathers were as noble as hers, aye! and enjoyed wealth and honors to which the St. Clairs never aspired.” But again a revulsion came across my feelings, and I said, “Oh! Annette, Annette, could you but know my misery, you might have paused. But God grant you may find a heart as true to you as mine.” Thus harassed by contending emotions, now giving way to my love, and now yielding to indignation and pride, I spent the day, and when at night, preparatory to retiring, I happened to cast a look into the mirror, I started back at my haggard appearance. But there are moments of agony which do the work of years.

My messmates, one and all, were astonished at my speedy return, but luckily it had been determined to put to sea at once, so that if I had remained at Pomfret Hall until the expiration of my leave of absence I should have lost the cruise. One or two of my companions, who prided themselves on their superior intelligence, gave me the credit of having, by some unknown means, heard of the change in our day of sailing, and so hastened my return to my post. They little dreamed of the true cause, for to them, as to all others, I wore the same mask of assumed gaiety.

We sailed in company with The Arrow, but, ere we had been out a week, were separated from our consort. Our orders were, in such an emergency, to make the best of our way southward, and rendezvous at St. Domingo.

I had turned in one night, after having kept watch on deck until midnight, when, in the midst of a refreshing sleep, I was suddenly awoke by a hand laid on my shoulder, at the same time that a voice said⁠—

“Hist! Cavendish; don’t talk in your sleep.”

I started to my feet, but, for a moment, my faculties were in such a whirl that the dream in which I had been reveling, mingling with the scene before my waking senses, confused and bewildered me so that I knew not what I uttered.

“St. Clair! Pomfret Hall! why your wits are wool gathering, my dear fellow,” said the doctor—for I now recognised my old friend—“of what have you been dreaming? You look as if you thought me a spectre sent to call you from Paradise.”

I had indeed been dreaming. I fancied I was far away, wandering amid the leafy shades of Pomfret Hall with Annette leaning on my arm, and ever and anon gazing up into my face with looks of unutterable love. I heard the rustle of the leaves, the jocund song of the birds, and the soothing sound of the woodland waterfall, but sweeter, aye! a thousand times sweeter than all these, came to my ears the low whisper of my affianced bride. Was I not happy? And we sat down on a verdant bank, and, with her hand clasped in mine, and her fair head resting on my bosom, we talked of the happiness which was in store for us, and projected a thousand plans for the future. From visions like this I awoke to the consciousness that Annette was lost to me forever, and that even now the smiles and caresses of which I had dreamed were being bestowed upon another. A pang of keenest agony, a sharp, sudden pang, as if an icebolt had shot through my heart, almost deprived me for a moment of utterance, and I was fain to lean against a timber for support. But this weakness was only momentary, for, rallying every energy, I conquered my feelings, though not so soon but that the doctor saw my emotion.

“Are you sick, my dear fellow?” he said anxiously. “No! well, you do look better now. But I came to inform you that as rake-helly a looking craft as ever you saw is dogging us to windward, and the Lord only knows whether we wont all be prisoners, and mayhap dead men, before night.”

I hurried on my clothes, and, following him to the deck, saw, at the first glance, that the good doctor’s fears respecting the strange sail were not without foundation. She was a sharp, low brig, with masts raking far aft, and a spread of canvass towering from her decks sufficient to have driven a sloop of war. The haze of the morning had concealed her from sight until within the last five minutes; but now the broad disc of the sun, rising majestically behind her, brought out her masts, tracery and hull in bold and distinct relief. When first discovered, she was within long cannon shot, but standing off to windward. She altered her course immediately, however, on perceiving us, and was already closing. She carried no ensign, but there was that in her crowded decks and jaunty air which did not permit me to doubt a moment as to her character.

“A rover, by ——,” said the skipper, who had been scrutinizing the strange sail through a glass; “and she is treble our force,” he continued, in a whisper to me. “We have no choice, either, but to fight.”

I shook my head, for it was evident that escape was impossible.

“She sails like a witch, too,” I replied, in the same low tone, “and would overhaul us, no matter what her position might be.”

“I wish we were a dozen leagues away,” said the captain, shrugging his shoulders, “there is little honor and no profit in fighting these cut-throats, and if we are whipt, as we shall be, they will slit our windpipes as if we were so many sheep in a slaughter-house. Bah!”

“Not so,” I exclaimed enthusiastically, “we will die sword in hand. Since these murderers have crossed our path we must, if every thing else fail, suffer them to board us, and then blow the schooner out of water. I myself will fire the train.”

“Now, by the God above us, you speak as a brave man should, and shame my momentary disgust, for fear I will not call it. No, Jack Merrivale never wanted courage, however prudence might have been lacking. But little did I think that you, Cavendish, would ever show less prudence than myself, as you have to-day. You seem a changed man.”

“I am one,” I exclaimed; “but that is neither here nor there. When once yon freebooter gets alongside, Harry Cavendish will not be behindhand in doing his duty.”

My superior, at any other time, could not have failed to notice the excitement under which I spoke, but now his mind was too fully occupied to give my demeanor a second thought, and our conversation was cut short by a ball from the pirate, which, whistling over our heads, plumped into the sea some fathoms distant. At the same instant a mass of dark bunting shot up to the gaff of the brig, and, slowly unrolling, blew out steadily in the breeze, disclosing a black flag, unrelieved by a single emblem. But we well knew the meaning of that ominous ensign.

“He taunts us with his accursed flag,” said the skipper energetically; “by the Lord that liveth, he shall feel that freemen know how to defend their lives and honor. Call aft the men, and then to quarters. We will blow yon scoundrels out of water, or die on the last plank.”

Never did I listen to more vehement, more soul-stirring eloquence than that which rolled, like a tide of fire, from the captain’s lips when the men had gathered aft. Every eye flashed with indignation, every bosom heaved with high and noble daring, as he pointed impetuously to the foe and asked if there was one who heard him that wished to shrink from the contest. To his impassioned appeal they answered with a loud huzza, brandishing their cutlasses above their heads and swearing to stand by him to the last.

“I know it, my brave boys—I remember how you fought the privateer’s men,” for most of his old crew had re-entered, “but yonder cut-throats are still more deceitful and blood-thirsty. We have nothing to hope for from them but a short shrift and the yard-arm. We fight, not for our country and property alone, but for our lives also. The little Falcon has struck down too many prizes already, to show the coward’s feather now. Let us make these decks slippery with our best blood rather than surrender. Stand by me, if they board us, and—my word on it—the survivors will long talk of this glorious day. And now, my brave lads, splice the main-brace, and then to quarters.”

Another cheer followed the close of this harangue, when the men gathered at their quarters, each one as he passed to his station receiving a glass of grog. As I ran my eye along the decks, and saw the stalwart frames and flashing eyes of the crew, I felt assured that the day was destined to be desperately contested; and when I thought of the vast odds against which we had to contend, and the glorious deeds which this superiority would make room for, I experienced an exultation which I cannot describe. The time for which, in the bitterness of my heart, I had prayed, was come; and I resolved to dare things this day which, if they ever reached the ears of Annette, should prove to her that I died the death of a gallant soldier. The thought that, perhaps, she might regret me when I was gone, was sweeter to me than the song of many waters.

Little time, however, was left for such emotions, for scarcely had the men taken their stations when the pirate, who had hitherto been manœuvering for a favorable position and only occasionally firing a shot, opened his batteries on us, discharging his guns in such quick succession that his sides seemed one continuous blaze, and his tall masts were to be seen reeling backwards from the shock of his broadside. Instantaneously the iron tempest came hurtling across us, and for a space I was bewildered by the rending of timbers, the falling of spars, and the agonizing shrieks of the wounded. The main-top-mast came rattling to the deck with all its hamper at the very moment that a messmate fell dead beside me. For a few minutes all was consternation and confusion. So rapid had been the discharges, and so well aimed had been each shot, that, in the twinkling of an eye, we saw ourselves almost a wreck on the water, and comparatively at the mercy of our foe.

“Clear away this hamper,” shouted the skipper, “stand to your guns forward there, and give it to the pirate.”

With the word the two light pieces and the gun amidships opened on the now rapidly closing foe; but the metal of all except the swivel was so light that it did no perceptible damage on the thick-ribbed hull of our antagonist. The ball from the long eighteen, however, swept the decks of the foe, and appeared to have carried no little havoc in its course. But the broadside did not check the approach of the rover. His object was manifestly to run us afoul and board us. Steadily, therefore, he maintained his course, swerving scarcely a hair’s breadth at our discharge, but keeping right on as if scorning our futile efforts to check his progress. We did not, however, intermit our exertions. Although crippled we were not disheartened—despairing, we entertained no thought of submission, but rallying around our guns, we fought them like lions at bay, firing with such rapidity that our decks, and the ocean around, soon came to be almost obscured in the thick fleecy veil of smoke that settled slowly on the water. Every few minutes a ball from the pirate whizzed by in our immediate vicinity, or crashed among our spars; but the increasing clouds of vapor, clinging about the pathway of our foe as well as of ourselves, made his fire naturally less deadly than at first. For a short space we even lost sight of our antagonist, and the gunners paused, uncertain where to fire; but suddenly the lofty spars of the pirate were seen riding above the white fog, scarcely a pistol shot from us, and in another minute, with a deafening crash, the rover ran us aboard, his bowsprit jamming in our fore-rigging as he approached us head on. Almost before we could recover from our surprise we heard a stern voice crying out in the Spanish tongue for boarders, and immediately a dark mass of ruffians gathered, like a cluster of bees, on the bowsprit of the foe, with cutlasses brandished aloft, preparatory to a descent on our decks.

“Rally to repel boarders!” thundered the skipper, springing forward, “ho! beat back the bloodhounds from your decks,” and with the word, he made a blow at a desperado who, at that moment, sprang into the fore-rigging; when my superior drew back his sword it was red with the heart’s blood of the assailant, who, falling heavily backwards with a dull plash, squatted a second on the water, like a wounded water-fowl, and then sank forever. For a single breath his companions stood appalled, and then, with a savage yell, leaping on our decks, fiercely attacked our little band. In vain our gallant tars disputed every inch of ground—in vain one after another of the assailants dyed the deck with his blood—in vain by word and deed the skipper incited the crew to almost gigantic exertions; nothing could resist the overpowering tide of assailants which poured on in an unremitting stream from the brig, bearing down every thing before it as an avalanche from the hills. Step by step our brave lads were steadily forced backwards, until at length the whole forecastle was in possession of the foe, and a solid mass of freebooters was advancing on the starboard side of the open main-hatch, in eager pursuit of the retreating crew. I had foreseen this result to the conflict, and instead, therefore, of aiding to repel the boarders, had been engaged in loading one of the lighter guns with grape, and dragging it around, so as to command this very path;—a duty which I had been enabled to perform unnoticed by either party in the fierce excitement of the mêlée. I had hardly masked my little battery, and not three minutes had elapsed from the first onset of the boarders, when my messmates came driving towards me, as I have described, beaten in by the solid masses of the enemy. Already the fugitives had passed the hatchway, and the foremost desperados of the assailing column were even now within three feet of the muzzle of my gun, when I signed to my confederate to jerk off the tarpaulin which had masked our piece. The pirates started back in horror when they saw their peril, but I gave them no time to escape. Quick as lightning I applied the match, and the whole fiery cataract was belched upon them. Language cannot depict the fearful havoc of that discharge. The hurricane of fire and shot mowed its way lengthwise, through the narrow and crowded column, scattering the dying and the dead beneath its track, as a whirlwind uproots the forest trees; while groans, and imprecations, and shrieks of anguish rent the air, drowning the sounds of the explosion, and the crashing of the grape, amongst its victims.

“Now charge!” I shouted, as if seized with a sudden frenzy, springing into the very midst of the foe, “charge them, my gallant braves, and sweep the murderers from the deck. No quarter to the knaves! Hew them to the brisket,” and following every word with a blow, and seconded by our men who seemed to catch my fury, we made such havoc among those of the pirates whom the grape had spared, that, astonished, paralized, disconcerted, and finally struck with mortal fear, they fled wildly from the schooner, some regaining their craft by the bowsprit, some plunging overboard and swimming to her, and some leaping headlong into the deep never to rise again. Seizing an axe, and springing forward, I hastily cut our hamper loose from the foe, and with the next swell the two vessels slowly parted.

“Now to your guns, my men,” shouted the skipper, unconscious of a dangerous wound, in the excitement of the moment, “give it to them before they can rally to their quarters. Fire!”

We poured in our broadsides like hail, riddling even the solid sides of our foe, and making his decks slippery with blood, and all this before the discomfited freebooters could rally to their guns and return our shots. Our men, fired with an enthusiasm which approached to madness, loaded with a speed that seems to me now incredible, and the third broadside was shaking every timber of our little craft, before a solitary gun was discharged in reply from the pirate.

“Ah! he has woke up at last,” said my old friend, the captain of our long Tom, “and she may yet regain the day if we don’t fight like devils. Bring me that shot from the galley.”

“In God’s name, what do you mean?” said I, as he coolly sat down by his piece. “In with the ball and let the rover have it—not a moment is to be lost.”

“Aye! I knows that, leftenant; and here comes the settler for which I waited,” he exclaimed, as the cook brought a red-hot shot from the galley, “I thought I’d venture on a little experiment of my own, and I’ve seen ’em do wonders with these fiery comets afore now. There—there she has it,” he exclaimed, as the shot was sent home, “now God have mercy on them varmint’s souls.”

From some strange, unaccountable presentiment, I stepped mechanically backward and cast an eye at the brig, which had now floated to some distance. As I did so, a trail of fire glanced before my sight, and I saw the simmering shot enter her side. Thought was not quicker than the explosion which followed, shaking the sea beneath and the sky above, and almost deafening the ear with its unearthly concussion, while instantaneously a gush of flame shot far up into the sky; the masts of the vessel were lifted perpendicularly upwards, and the whole air was filled with shattered timbers and mangled human bodies that fell the next minute pattering around us into the deep. Oh God! the fearful sight! The shrieks of the wounded and drowning—the awful struggles of the poor wretches in the water—the sullen cloud that settled over the scene of death, will they ever pass away from my memory? But I drop a veil over a sight too horrible to recount. Suffice it to say, of all the rover’s crew, not one survived to see that sun go down. A few we picked up with our boats, but they died ere night. The cause of the explosion is soon told. The brig’s magazine had been struck and fired by our LAST SHOT.

———

BY G. FORRESTER BARSTOW.

———

TO AMERICAN AUTHORS AND THE AMERICAN PRESS

IN BEHALF OF AN INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT.

Gentlemen:—You have the credit, at this moment, of ruling the world—at least your part of it; and cannot yet enact a single statute by which your share of worldly right and profit shall be secured to you. Walking, in the world’s eye, as strong and beautiful as angels, you cannot perform the day’s work, counted either in money or in bill-making influence, of a rude Missourian or a lean Atlantic citizen.

Aiding, as you do, by your inventive genius in all the great enterprises of the day—pushing forward every great and good undertaking to an issue of success—you lack the will or the skill to create a simple mill-contrivance by which your grain may be ground and bread furnished to your board.

You project, but do not realize. You sow, but do not reap. You sail to and fro—merchantmen and carriers to all the world of thought—the whole ocean over, but find no harbor and acquire no return. How much longer you will consent to keep the wheels of opinion in motion: to do the better part of the thinking and writing of these twenty-six States, without hire or fee, it rests with you to say. I merely put the case to you to see how it strikes you.

I address you in the mass, writers of books and framers of paragraphs together, because, at bottom, all who wield the pen have interests in common; and because I am anxious (I confess it) to have the whole force of the Press, whatever shape it takes, combined and consolidated against an injustice which could not live an hour if the Press knew its rights and its strength. The rights and the respectability of the one are, in the end, the rights and the respectability of the other; based in both cases on the worth and dignity of literary property.

No community is secure, it seems to me, where any law or fundamental right is systematically violated.

Either by instant vindication, through blood, and pillage, and massacre; or by the more silent and deadlier agency of the opposite wrong and a whole brood of fierce allies sprung from its loins, is this truth, at all times, asserted and made good. From the original wrong, lying in many cases close to the heart of society, there spreads a secret and invisible atmosphere of pestilence, in which all kindred rights moulder and decay, until their life at last goes out at a moment when no man had guessed at such a result. Neither statesmen nor people are, therefore, wise in tampering with a single principle: or in yielding a jot of the immutable truth to plausible emergency or the fair-seeming visage of an immediate good.

The law of property, in all its relations and aspects, is one of these primary anchors and fastenings of the social frame. And what evils, I am asked, have grown from the alleged neglect of literary property? I will mention one by way of illustration.

You are all of you aware, by this time, that the extensive printing and publishing establishment of Harper & Brothers, Cliff street, New York, was burned in the early part of June; and that a heavy loss accrued to them from the burning.

The fire was attributed, immediately after it occured, by the public prints to the hand of design. “It is supposed that one object of the incendiaries was to obtain copies of a new novel, by James, of which the Messrs. Harper had the exclusive possession.” Another paper enlarges this statement—“we see suspicions expressed that the object was to get possession of a new novel, ‘Morley Ernstein,’ which was in sheets, for cheap publication.” Here is a natural, logical sequence, and just such a one as might have been expected. If the conjecture should not prove a fact, it ought to be one, because this is just the period and the very order in which we might expect an incident of this kind to occur; perhaps not on quite so large a scale, nor with the necessary melo-dramatic admixture of fire. It might have been a plain burglary, prying a ware-house door open with a bar, for a copy; or, knocking a man over, at the edge of evening, and plucking the sheets from under his arm.

Piracy and burning are, perhaps, so nearly akin that, after all, they have wrought out the sequence more naturally than if it had been left to the friends of copyright to suggest to them in what order they should occur. In Elia’s legend, a building is burned that a famishing Chinaman may have roast pig; in the reality of the present fire a publisher’s warehouse was put in flames, not only to prevent a famishing author from having roast pig in presenti, but also, by a decisive blow, to further the good principle, that there should be no roast pig (nor even salt and a radish) for famishing authors in all future time. Let it not be said I press this point, a mere surmise, too far. Surmise as it is, it receives countenance and consistency from a previous fact, namely, that one of the large republishing newspapers was charged, not long since, by the other—and this was made a matter for the Sessions—with the felony of abstracting the sheets of an English work from the office of its rival. This—an invasion of property—is only one of the external evils growing out of a false and lawless state of things. Of others which strike deeper; which create confusion and error of opinion; which tend to unsettle the lines that divide nation from nation; to obliterate the traits and features which give us a characteristic individuality as a nation—there will be another and more becoming opportunity to speak.

As it is, by fair means or foul, the weekly newspaper press, with its broad sheet spread to the breeze, is making great head against the slow-sailing progress of such as trust to the more regular trade-winds for their speed. And this, fortunately (as error cannot long abide in itself,) is creating changes of opinion of infinite advantage to the great cause of international copyright.

A little while ago, we had the publishers petitioning and declaiming against an international copyright, (I forget what arguments they employed;) and, lo! their breath is scarcely spent when the ground slides from under them, and the whole publishing business—at least a considerable section of it—which they meant to uphold by false and hollow props, has tumbled into chaos, and an organic change has passed through the world of publication. Now they begin—and we are glad to have so powerful and so respectable a body convert to our side, on whatever terms—to see the matter in a new light; the affection for the people, and the cheap enlightenment of the people, and the people’s wives and children, which they made bold (out of an exceeding philanthropy) to proclaim in market-places and the lobbies of Congress, is wonderfully dwindled.

It isn’t a pleasant thing, after all, to have one’s printing-house and bindery burned to the ground, even for so laudable an object. Suppose we have the law: a little civilized recognition of the rights of authors (merely by way of clincher, however, to the absolute, primary and indefeasible rights of publishers) might be an agreeable change from this barbarous system of non-protection. The old plan, it must be admitted, has its disadvantages. Let’s have the law! And here you may suppose the hats of certain old, respected and enterprising publishers to rise into the air, in a sort of fervor or ecstasy, which it is entirely out of their power to control.

Is there or is there not a property in a book: a primitive, real, fundamental right in its ownership as in any estate or property? Often and clearly as this question has been determined, the opponents of a law, by stress of argument, are driven upon denying it over and over again, and making use of every sort of ridiculous and irrelevant illustration to crowd the right out of the way. They fly into all corners of creation in pursuit of an analogy, and come back without as much as a sparrow in their bag.

One of them, for example, says, “We buy a new foreign book; it is ours; we multiply copies and diffuse its advantages. We also buy a bushel of foreign wheat, before unknown to us; we cultivate, increase it, and spread its use over the country. Where is the difference? If one is stealing, the other is so. Nonsense! neither is stealing. They are both praiseworthy acts, beneficial to mankind, injurious to nobody, right and just in themselves, and commendable in the sight of God.” This reasoner, of a pious inclination and most excellent moral tendencies, has made but a single error—he thinks the type, stitching and paper are THE BOOK! He forgets that when you buy a book you do not buy the whole body of its thoughts in their entire breadth and construction, to be yours in fee simple for all uses, (if you did, the vender would be guilty of a fraud in selling more than a single copy of any one work;) but simply the usufruct of the book as a reader. Any processes of your own mind exerted upon that work, or parts of it, make the result, so far, your legitimate property, and is one of the incidents of your purchase. To reprint the work in any shape, as a complete, symmetrical composition, is a violation of the original contract between the vender and yourself; whether it be in folio or duodecimo, in the form of newspaper or pamphlet—there lies THE BOOK, unchanged by any action of your own mind. The wheat, of which you have purchased the bushel, in the mean time has been sown in your field, (there’s a difference to begin;) which has been prepared by your plough and plough-horse for its reception; the kindly dews and rains of heaven—which would answer to the genial inspirations and movements of the mind, in the other case—descend upon it; it is guarded by walls and hedges from inroad; the weeds and tares which would fain choke it are plucked out by a careful hand; at last it is reaped and gathered in by the harvestman to his garners. The one bushel has become a thousand; but it has passed through a thousand appropriating and fructifying processes to swell it to that extent. It has not been merely poured out of one bushel measure into another bushel measure. Though the one plough the earth, and the other plough the sea, the world will recognize a distinction, a delicate line of demarcation between farmer (man’s first occupation) and pirate (his last.) The republishers—the proprietors of the mammoth press—groan under the aspersion of piracy and pillage laid at their door: they complain of the harshness of epithet which denounces them as Kyds and MacGregors. They must bear in mind that authors and republishers are likely to regard this question from very different points of view: that the poor writer, regarding himself as plundered, defrauded of a positive right, and of a property as real and substantial as guineas, or dollars, or doubloons, may feel a soreness of which the other party, living as he does on the denial of that right, and the seizure of that property, without charge or cost, may not be quite as susceptible. Let us make an effort to bring this point home to these gentlemen in an obvious and intelligible illustration.

How would the worthy proprietors of “The Brother Jonathan” like it, if, when their editions of Barnaby Rudge or Zanoni had been carefully worked off, at some expense of composition, paper and press-work, and lay ready folded in their office for delivery: How would they be pleased if, just at that moment, when the newsboys were gathered at the office door, pitching their throats for the new cry, a gang of stout-handed fellows should descend upon their premises, and without as much as “by your leave,” or, “gentlemen an you will!” sweep the entire edition off, bear it into the next street, and there proceed to issue and vend it with the utmost imaginable steadiness of aspect, with an equanimity of demeanor quite edifying and perfect? Why, gentlemen, to speak the truth plainly, you would have a hue-and-cry around the corner in an instant! Your ejaculations of thief, robber and burglar would know no pause till you were compelled to give over for very lack of breath; and the whole community would be startled, at its breakfast the next morning, by an appeal to its moral sensibilities so loud and lightning-like, that the coffee would be unpalatable, and the very toast turn to a cinder in the mouth.

Now, it should be borne in mind that the large weekly press, whose influence we are anxious to counteract, and whose interest is rapidly becoming the leading one in opposition to the proposed law, has arisen since the agitation of this question; has embarked its capital, and has grown to its present power and influence in the very teeth of a solemn protest of the authors whose labors they appropriate. It should also, in fairness, be added that some members of this huge fraternity only avail themselves of this law as it now stands, as they think they have a right, and hold themselves ready to abandon the field or adapt themselves to the change whenever a new law requires it; in the mean time, meeting the question fairly, and reasoning it through in good temper. The very paper which I have employed in illustration is chargeable with no offence against literature, society, or good morals, save the single taint of appropriating the labors of authors without pay, and defending the appropriation as matter of strict right and propriety. Only in a community where a contempt for literary rights has been engendered by long mal-practice, could such sentiments have obtained lodgment in minds of general fairness and honesty.

If the hostility to a law of reciprocal copyright be as deep rooted as is alleged, why has there not been some able argument (raised above sordid considerations, and looking wide and far upon the question in all its vast bearings) expounding to us the grounds on which this professed antagonism is based? When we ask them for a syllogism they give us an assertion. “My dear sir, how can you waste time, perplexing yourself and the public with this barren question! We supply readers with a novel, a good three-volume novel, for a shilling; and as long as we do that they will remain deaf to all your appeals. The argumentum ad crumenam, the syllogism of the pocket has, in all ages, carried the sway!” This is the head and front of their declamation, of their invective and their facts. This is the Fact! This boulder (offered in lieu of bread) they beg us of the author-tribe to digest: this is their bulwark, their fortress—no, their burrow rather—into which they skulk at the approach of a poor author, quill in hand, prepared to drive off the game—feræ naturæ—that lay waste his preserves and make free in his clover-field.

Now of all arguments this of cheapness is most questionable and unsafe. It has a comely and alluring visage, is smooth-spoken and full of promise, but we must have a caution where it may lead us, for it is as full of trick and foul play as a canting quaker; as precarious a foothold as the trap of the scaffold the minute before the check is slipped. Cheap and good are a pleasant partnership: but it does not happen that they always do business together. Taking cheapness as our guide and conductor, we can readily make our way, in imagination, to a publishing shop where the principle is expanded into a pleasing practical illustration. The shop is of course in a cellar, (rent twelve shillings a quarter;) the attendant is a second-hand man cast off from the current population of the upper world into this depository (wages seven shillings a week;) his hat, being still on the cheap tendency, has followed him out of Chatham street in company with a coat rejected of seven owners, the last of whom was a dustman, trowsers to match and boots borrowed of a pauper (cost of the entire outfit five shillings and a penny;) behind a counter that totters to the earth at an expense of five pence or more for repairs, he dispenses the frugal Literature of which he is the genius—the paper being of such an exquisite delicacy and cheapness that a good eye, by glancing through, can read both sides at once; the purchaser plunges down with a sixpence (most economical of small coin) in his pocket, and bears off, in a triumphant apotheosis, four and twenty columns to be read by the light of a tallow twopenny that sputters cheapness as it burns. This is the glory of the age; the crowning honor and triumph of America. Who would have the heart or the hardihood to blur that fair picture of popular knowledge and cheap enjoyment? Why, sirs—to speak a serious word or two in your ear—this plea of cheapness—a miserable escape at best, where a question of right and wrong is concerned—pushed to its extreme (and as cheapness is urged as the sole criterion and measure of advantage, we are warranted in so doing,) would drive literature to the almanac, which can be afforded at a penny; and the age of the brown ballad would return upon us with all its primitive graces of an unclean sheet, a cloudy typography, and a style of thought and expression quite as pure and lucid.

Pass a copyright bill and we are told, “we should soon learn the difference between £1 10, the London price of Bulwer’s Zanoni, and the American price of twenty-five cents.” How long—it is triumphantly asked—would our “reading public, almost commensurate with the entire population, continue at such a rate?”—what if it did not last a minute? Truth and honesty are of a little more worth than a reading public even as wide as the borders of the land. Of the elevation of the people—the instruction of the people, I hold myself a friend—no man more: but I do not propose to begin their enlightenment with a new version of the decalogue; so amended as to admit all the opposites against which it is directed, as virtues which we are enjoined to cultivate.

Suppose these gentlemen do furnish your literature at a low price by dint of paying the author nothing, they should bear in mind that there is a place where it is paid for, or it would most assuredly prove as miserable as it is cheap. The literature is valuable, not because they spread it before the world in large sheets, every Saturday morning, at sixpence a copy; but because there happened to be in another country certain enterprising publishers, of a somewhat different stamp, who thought it worth their while to cheer the writer in his labors by paying him a good round sum for his copyright. I repeat it, an unpaid literature cannot contend with a paid one; nor can it—while money is a representative of value and a motive of exertion—be as good. Do I imagine then that an international law will create great writers? Not at all. Under any law—oppressed by whatever bondage or tyranny custom chooses to lay upon them—men of great genius will struggle into light and cast before the world the thoughts with which their own souls have been moved. They will speak though mountains pressed upon them. But there is a wide class—comprising the body of a national literature—who can claim no such power; essayists, philosophers, whose impulses are not great, periodical writers—all are silent when the law and the trade fail to befriend them. It is these that need the constant stimulus—the genial inspiration (denied to them in any great measure by Nature) of pay. It is the shining gold—decry it as we may—that breeds the shining thought.

It may be asked, how does this question affect the Press? The Press, forming a part of the great body of writers, is affected by whatever affects the writers of books; for the bond by which the entire brotherhood is held together, is so close that it cannot be struck in any part without feeling the shock in its whole length. The same injustice by which the author falls in station and place, drags down the journalist. The rights of all who use the pen are rights in common; varying only in degree, and, as they may be affected from time to time, by circumstances of the hour or day. Beyond this the actual and immediate pressure of a vast amount of reading from abroad, poured upon us without limit or regulation, begins to be felt by the daily and weekly Press. They find attention drawn off from the article or political speculation in their own columns, prepared with care and judgment, to the cheap reprint; and are driven upon abandoning the field or joining in a pernicious system of unpaid appropriation against which their better judgment revolts.

I now close this Appeal, and in doing so I would venture to urge upon you the importance of concert and a steady action in behalf of this law, at all times and in all places where you are called on to employ that sacred instrument of thought, whose immunities are so grossly outraged.

The popular mind has, in this country, made wonderful advances in the appreciation of political truths and principles. There is no reason why it should not make an equal—though perhaps a later—progress in truths that relate to literature and art. The popular mind, as all our institutions require, is essentially just and true; and, once enlightened by a sufficient array of facts, and with time to arrange and digest them, will act with energy and wisdom—on this as on all other questions of which it is the arbiter. Depend upon it this bill, although adversely regarded by your Senate and Representatives at this time, will ultimately triumph. It will go up to the Senate-chamber, year after year, with new facts, pleading for it with an urgency which considerate legislators cannot resist. In the mean time it is your duty, as I trust it is your desire, to enlighten the general mind as to the truths on which I have ventured to insist. Seize the instant. In town, in homestead and city, let these principles be spread as wide as the writings they would protect; and search, with a fearless eye, the national heart to find whether there be not some kindly corner where it is willing the seeds of a national literature should be lodged. Speaking in the accents of persuasion with which God and Nature have endowed you; and through the organs of opinion which every one of you may, more or less, command—you cannot be long resisted. Together, in a phalanx, before which kings and princes grow pale, enter upon the mighty task. Hand in hand, voice answering to voice, in tones of mutual trust and cheerful hope press forward in the noble labor to which you are summoned. That Union which, in politics and war, is Strength, will prove in Literature, as well, your champion and deliverer.

CORNELIUS MATHEWS.

New York, June, 1842.

A TALE OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

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BY H. W. HERBERT, AUTHOR OF “RINGWOOD THE ROVER,” “THE BROTHERS,” “CROMWELL,” ETC. ETC.

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(Concluded from page 78.)

When next she opened her eyes, she lay on her own bed, in her own well known chamber, and her old nurse, with the good vicar’s wife, was watching over her—as her lids rose and she looked about her, all her intelligence returned upon the moment, and she was perfectly aware of all that had already passed, of all that she had still to undergo. “Well—” she replied to the eager and repeated inquiries after her state of body and sensations which were poured out from the lips of her assiduous watchers—“Oh! I feel quite well, I do assure you—I was not hurt at all—not in the least—only I was so foolish as to faint from terror—but Marian, how is Marian?”

“Not injured in the least, but very anxious about you, sweet Annabel,” replied good mistress Summers—“so much so that I was obliged to force her from the chamber, so terrible was her grief, so violent her terror and excitement—Lord De Vaux snatched her from the horse and saved her, before he even saw your danger—he too is in a fearful state of mind, he has been at the door twenty times, I believe, within the hour—hark, that is his foot now—will you see him, dearest?”

A quick and chilly shudder ran through the whole frame of the lovely girl, and a faint hue glowed once again in her pale cheek, but mastering her feelings, she made answer in her own notes of sweet calm music—“Not yet, dear mistress Summers—not yet—but tell him, I beseech you, that I am better—well indeed! and will receive his visit by and by—and in the mean time, my good friend, I must see Marian—must see her directly and alone—No! no!” she added, seeing that the old lady was about to remonstrate—“No! no! you must not hinder me of my desire—you know—” she went on, with a faint, very melancholy smile—“you know, of old, I am a wilful stubborn girl when I make up my mind—and it is quite made up now, my good friend—so, pray you, let me see her—I am quite strong enough I do assure you—so do you, I beseech you, go and console my lord; and let nurse bring me Marian!—” So firmly did she speak, and so resolved was the expression of her soft gentle features, that they no longer hesitated to comply with her request, and both retired with soft steps from the chamber. Then Annabel half uprose from the pillows which had propped her, and clasped her hands in attitude of prayer, and turned her beautiful eyes upward—her lips moved visibly, not in irregular impulsive starts, but with a smooth and ordered motion, as she prayed fervently indeed but tranquilly, for strength to do, and patience to endure, and grace to do and to endure alike with Christian love and Christian fortitude. While she was thus engaged, a quick uncertain footstep, now light and almost tripping, now heavy and half faltering, approached the threshold—a gentle hand raised the latch once, and again let it fall, as if the comer was fluctuating between the wish to enter and some vague apprehension which for the moment conquered the desire. “Is it you, Marian?—” asked the lovely sufferer—“oh! come in, come in, sister!—” and she did come in, that bright lovely creature, her naturally high complexion almost unnaturally brilliant now from the intensity of her hot blushes, her eyes were downcast, and she could not so much as look up into the sad sweet face of Annabel; her whole frame trembled visibly as she approached the bed, and her foot faltered very much, yet she drew near, and sitting down beside the pillow, took Annabel’s hand tenderly between her own, and raised it to her warm lips and kissed it eagerly and often. Never for a moment’s space did the eyes of Annabel swerve from her sister’s features, from the moment she entered the door until she sat down by her side, but rested on them steadily as if through them they would peruse the secret soul with a soft gentle scrutiny, that savored not at all of sternness or reproach—at last, as if she was now fully satisfied, she dropped her eyelids and for a little space kept them close shut, while again her lips moved silently—and then pressing her sister’s hand fondly, she said in a quiet soothing voice, as if she were alluding to an admitted fact rather than asking a question, “So you have met him before, Marian?—” a violent convulsion shook every limb of her whom she addressed, and the blood rushed in torrents to her brow—she bowed her head upon her sister’s hand, and burst into a paroxysm of hysterical tears and sobbing, but answered not a word. “Nay! nay! dear sister,” exclaimed Annabel, bending down over her and kissing her neck which like her brow and cheeks was absolutely crimson—“Nay! nay! sweet Marian, weep not thus, I beseech you, there is no wrong done—none at all—there was no wrong in your seeing him, when you did so—it was at York, I must believe—nor in your loving him either, when you did so—for I had not then seen him, and of course could not love him. But it was not right, sweetest Marian, to let me be in ignorance—only think, dearest; only think, what would have been my agony, when I had come to know after I was a wife, that in myself becoming happy I had brought misery on my second self—my own sweet sister!—nay!—do not answer me yet, Marian, for I can understand it all—almost all, that is—and I quite appreciate your motives—I am sure that you did not know that he loved you—for he does love you, Marian—but fancied that he loved me only, and so resolved to control yourself, and crush your young affections, and sacrifice yourself for me—thank God! oh! thank God, dearest, that your strength was not equal to the task—for had it been so we had been most wretched—oh! most wretched. But you must tell me all about it, for there is much I cannot comprehend—when did you see him first, and where?—why did he never so much as hint to me that he had known you?—why, when I wrote you word that he was here, and after that I liked—loved—was about to marry him—why did you never write back that you knew him?—and why, above all, when you came and found him here—here in your mother’s house—why did you meet him as a stranger?—I know it will be painful to you, dear one; but you must bear the pain, for it is necessary now that there shall be no more mistakes—be sure of one thing, dearest Marian, that I will never wed him—oh! not for worlds!—I could not sleep one night!—no not one hour in the thought that my bliss was your bane—but if he love you, as he ought, and as you love him, sister, for I can read your soul, he shall be yours at once, and I shall be more happy so—more happy tenfold—than pillowing my head upon a heart which beats for any other—but he must explain—he must explain all this—for I much fear me he has dealt very basely by us both—I fear me much, he is a bold false man⁠—”

“No! no!” cried Marian eagerly, raising her clear eyes to her sister’s, full of ingenuous truth and zealous fire—“No! no! he is all good, and true, and noble!—I—it is I only who have, for once, been false and wicked—not altogether wicked, Annabel—perhaps more foolish than to blame, at least in my intentions—but you shall hear all—you shall hear all, Annabel, and then judge for yourself—” and then still looking her sister quite steadily and truthfully in the face, she told her how, at a ball in York, she had met the young nobleman, who had seemed pleased with her, danced with her many times, and visited her, but never once named love, nor led her in the least to fancy he esteemed her beyond a chance acquaintance—“But I loved him—oh! how I loved him, Annabel—almost from the first time I saw him—and I feared ever—ever and only—that by my bold frank rashness, he might discover his power, and believe me forward and unmaidenly—weeks passed, and our intimacy ripened, and I became each hour more fondly, more devotedly, more madly,—for it was madness all!—enamored of him. He met me ever as a friend; no more! The time came when he was to leave York, and as he took leave of me he told me that he had just received despatches from his father directing him to visit mine; and I, shocked by the coolness of his parting tone, and seeing that indeed he had no love for me, scarcely noting what he said, told him not that I had no father—but I did tell him that I had one sweet sister, and suddenly extorted from him, unawares, a promise that he would never tell you he had known me—my manner, I am sure, was strange and wild, and I have no doubt that my words were so likewise—for his demeanor altered on the instant—his air, which had been that of quiet friendship, became cool, chilling, and almost disdainful, and within a few minutes he took his leave, and we never met again till yester even. You will, I doubt not, ask me wherefore I did all this—I cannot tell you—I was mad, mad with love and disappointment, and the very instant he said that he was coming hither, I knew as certainly that he would love you, and you him, Annabel, as though it had been palpably revealed to me. I could not write of him to you—I could not!—and when your letters came and we learned that he was here, I confessed all this to our aunt, and though she blamed me much for wild and thoughtless folly, she thought it best to keep the matter secret. This is the whole truth, Annabel—the whole truth! I fancied that the absence, the knowledge that I should see him next my sister’s husband, the stern resolve with which I bound my soul, had made me strong to bear his presence—I tried it, and I found myself, how weak—this is all, Annabel; can you forgive me, sister?”

“Sweet, innocent Marian,” exclaimed the elder sister through her tears, for she had wept constantly through the whole sad narration, “there is not any thing for me to forgive—you have wronged yourself only, my poor sister!—But yet—but yet!—I cannot understand it—he must have seen—no man could fail to see that one so frank and artless, as you are, Marian, was in love with him—he must, if not before, have known it certainly when you extorted from him, as you call it, that strange promise—besides he loves you, Marian; he loves you—then wherefore—wherefore, in God’s name, did he woo me—for woo he did, and fervently and long before he won me to confession?—oh! he is base!—base, base, and bad at heart, my sister!—answer me nothing, dear one, for I will prove him very shortly—send Margaret hither to array me, I will go speak with him forthwith—if he be honest, Marian, he is yours—and think not that I sacrifice myself, when I say this; for all the love I ever felt for him has vanished utterly away—if he is honest, he is yours—but be not over confident, dear child, for I believe he is not—and if not—why then, sweet Marian, can we not comfort one another, and live together as we used, dear, innocent, united happy sisters? Do not reply now, Marian—your heart is too full—haste and do as I tell you; before supper time to-night all shall be ended, whether for good or evil, HE only knows to whom the secrets of the heart are visible, e’en as the features of the face. Farewell—be of good cheer, and yet not over cheerful!”

Within an hour after that most momentous conversation Annabel sat beside the window in that fair summer parlor, looking out on the fair prospect of mead and dale and river, with its back ground of purple mountains—the very window from which she had first looked upon De Vaux. Perhaps a secret instinct had taught her to select that spot now that she was about to renounce him forever—but if it were so, it was one of those indefinable impulsive instincts of which we are unconscious, even while they prompt our actions. De Vaux was summoned to her presence, and Annabel awaited him—arbiter of her own, her sister’s destinies! “Ernest—” she said, as he entered, cutting across his eager and impetuous inquiries, “Ernest De Vaux, I have learned to-day a secret—” she spoke with perfect ease, and without a symptom of irritation, or anxiety, or sorrow, either in her voice, or in her manner—nor was she cold or dignified, or haughty. Her demeanor was not indeed that of a fond maid to her accepted suitor; nor had it the flutter which marks the consciousness of unacknowledged love—a sister’s to a dear brother’s would have resembled it more nearly than perhaps anything to which it could be compared, yet was not this altogether similar. He looked up in her face with a smile, and asked at once,

“What secret, dearest Annabel?”

“A secret, Ernest,” she replied, “which I cannot but fancy you must have learned before, but which you certainly have learned, as well as I, to-day. My sister loves you, Ernest!” The young man’s face was crimson on the instant, and he would have made some reply, but his voice failed him, and after a moment of confused stuttering, he stood before her in embarrassed silence, but she went on at once, not noticing apparently his consternation. “If you did know this, as I fear must be the case, long long ago! most basely have you acted, and most cruelly, to both of us—for never! never! even if it had been a rash and unsought, and unjustifiable passion on her part, would I have wedded, knowingly, the man who held my sister’s heart strings!”

“It was,” he answered instantly, “it was a rash and unsought, and unjustifiable passion on her part—believe me, oh! believe me, Annabel! that is—that is—” he continued, reddening again, at feeling himself self-convicted—“that is—if she felt any passion!”

“Then you did know it—then you did know it—” she interrupted him, without paying any regard to his attempt at self-correction, “then you did know it from the very first—oh! man! man! oh! false heart of man—oh! falser tongue that can speak thus of a woman whom he loves! yes! loves!” she added in a clear high voice, thrilling as the alarm blast of a silver trumpet—“yes! loves—Ernest De Vaux—with his whole heart and spirit—never think to deny it—did I not see you, when you rushed to save her from a lesser peril, when you left me, as you must have thought, to perish—did I not see love, written as clearly as words in a book, on every feature of your face—even as I heard love crying out aloud in every accent of her voice?”

“What! jealous, Annabel? the calm and self-controlling Annabel! can she be jealous—of her own sister, too?”

“Not jealous! sir—” she answered, now most contemptuously, “not jealous in the least, I do assure you—for though most surely love can exist without one touch of jealousy, as surely cannot jealousy exist where there is neither love, nor admiration, nor esteem, nor so much as respect existing.”

“How—do I hear you—” he asked somewhat sharply—“do I understand you aright? what have become, then, of your vows and protestations—your promises of yester even?”

“You do hear me—you do understand me—” she replied, “entirely aright—entirely! In my heart, for I have searched it very deeply—in my heart there is not now one feeling of love, or admiration, or esteem—much less respect for you, alas! that I should say so—alas! for me and you—alas! for one, more to be pitied twenty-fold than either!”

“Annabel Hawkwood, you have never loved me!”

“Ernest De Vaux, you never have known—never will know—because you are incapable of knowing the depth, the singleness, the honesty of a true woman’s love. So deeply did I love you, that I have come down hither, seeing that long before you knew me, you had won Marian’s heart—seeing that you loved her, as she loves you, most ardently—and hoping that you had not discovered her affections, nor suspected your own feelings until to-day—I came down hither with that knowledge, in that hope—and had I found that you had erred no further than in trivial fickleness, loving you all the while beyond all things on earth, I purposed to resign your hand to her, thus making both of you happy, and trusting for my own contentment to consciousness of rights and to the love of THEM, who, all praise be to Him therefore, has constituted so the spirit of Annabel Hawkwood, that when she cannot honor, she cannot, afterward forever, feel either love or friendship—you are weighed, Ernest De Vaux, weighed in the balance and found wanting—I leave you now, sir, to prepare my sister to bear the blow your baseness has inflicted—our marriage is broken off at once, now and forever—lay all the blame on me!—on me!—if it so please you—but not one word against my own or Marian’s honor—my aunt I shall inform instantly, that for sufficient reasons our promised union will not take place at all—the reasons I shall lock in my own bosom. You will remain here—you must do so—this one night, to-morrow morning we will bid you adieu forever!”

“Be it so”—he replied—“Be it so, lady—the fickleness I can forgive—but not the scorn! I will go now and order that the regiment march hence forthwith, what more recruits there be can follow at their leisure—and I will overtake the troops before noon, on the march, to-morrow,” and with the words he left the room apparently as unconcerned as if he had gone thence but for a walk of pleasure, as if he had not left a breaking heart behind him.

And was it true, that Annabel no longer loved him? True!—oh believe it not—where woman once has fixed her soul’s affections there they will dwell forever—principle may compel her to suppress it—prudence may force her to conceal it—the fiery sense of instantaneous wrongs may seem to quench it for a moment—the bitterness of jealousy may turn it into gall, but like that Turkish perfume, where love has once existed it must exist forever, so long as one fragment of the earthly vessel which contained it survives the wreck of time and ruin. She believed that she loved him not—but she knew not herself—what woman ever did?—what man?—when the spring-tide of passion was upon them. And she too left the parlor, and within a few minutes Marian had heard her fate, and after many a tear, and many a passionate exclamation, she too apparently was satisfied of Ernest’s worthlessness—oh! misapplied and heartless term! She satisfied?—satisfied by the knowledge that her heart’s idol was an unclean thing—an evil spirit—a false God!—she satisfied?—oh Heaven!

Around the hospitable board once more—once more they were assembled—but oh! how sadly altered—the fiat had been distinctly, audibly pronounced—and all assembled there had heard—though none except the sisters and De Vaux knew it—none probably, but they suspected—well was it that there were no young men—no brothers with high hearts and strong hands to maintain, or question—well was it that the only relatives of those much injured maidens, the only friends, were superannuated men of peace; the ministers of pardon, not of vengeance—and weak old helpless women—there had been bloodshed else—and as it was, among the serving men there were dark brows and writhing lips, and hands alert to grasp the hilt at a word spoken—had they been of rank one grade higher—had they dared even as they were——there had been bloodshed! Cold, cold and cheerless was the conversation, forward and dignified civilities in place of gay familiar mirth, forced smiles for hearty laughter, pale looks and dim eyes for the glad blushes of the promised bride—for the bright sparkles of her eye! The evening passed—the hour of parting came, and it was colder yet and sadder—Ernest De Vaux, calm and inscrutable, and seemingly unmoved, kissed the hands of his lovely hostesses, and uttered his adieu, and thanks for all their kindness, and hopes for their prosperity and welfare, while the old clergyman looked on with dark and angry brows, and the help-mate with difficulty could refrain from loud and passionate invective. His lip had a curl upon it, a painful curl, half smile, half sneer, as he bowed to the rest and left the parlor, but none observed that as he did so he spoke three or four words in a low whisper, so low that it reached Marian’s ear alone of all that stood around him, yet of such import that her color came and went ten times within the minute, and that she shook from head to foot, and quivered like an aspen. For two hours longer the sisters sat together in Annabel’s bedchamber, and wept in one another’s arms, and comforted each other’s sorrows, and little dreamed that they should meet no more for years—perchance forever! The morning broke like that which had preceded it, serene and bright, and lovely—the great sun rushed up the blue vault in triumphant splendor, all nature laughed out his glory—but at a later hour, far later than usual, no smoke was seen curling from the chimneys of the hall, no sign of man or beast was visible about its precincts. The passionate scenes—the wild excitement of the preceding day, had brought about, as usual, a dull reaction; and sleep sat heavy on the eyelids, on the souls of the inmates. The first who woke up was Annabel—Annabel, the bereaved, the almost widowed bride. Dressing herself in haste, she sought, as usual, her mother’s chamber, found her—oh happy! how happy in her benighted state, since she knew not, nor understood at all, the sorrows of those whom she once had loved so tenderly—found her in deep calm slumber—kissed her brow silently, and breathed a fond prayer over her, then hurried thence to Marian’s chamber—the door stood open; it was vacant! Down the stairs to the garden—the door that led to that sweet spot was barred and bolted—the front door stood upon the latch, and by that Annabel passed out into the fresh young morning—how fair, how peaceable, how calm was all around her—how utterly unlike the strife, the toils, the cares, the sorrows, the hot hatreds of the animated world—how utterly unlike the anxious pains which were then gnawing at that fair creature’s heartstrings! She stood awhile, and gazed around and listened; but no sound met her ears, except the oft-heard music of the wind and water—except the well-known points of that familiar scene—she walked—she ran—a fresh fear struck her, a fear of she knew not what—she flew to the garden—“Marian! Marian!”—but no Marian came! no voice made answer to her shrill outcries—back! back! she hurried to the house, but in her way she crossed the road conducting to the stables—there were fresh horse tracks—several fresh horse tracks—one which looked like the print of Marian’s palfrey—without a moment’s hesitation she rushed into the stable court, no groom was there, nor stable boy, nor helper—and yet the door stood open, and a loud tremulous neighing, Annabel knew it instantly to be the call of her own jennet, was wakening unanswered echoes. She stood a moment like a statue before she could command herself to cross the threshold—she crossed, and the stall where Marian’s palfrey should have stood next her own, was vacant. The chargers of De Vaux were gone; the horses of his followers—she shrieked aloud—she shrieked till every pinnacle and turret of the old hall, till every dell and headland of the hills, sent back a yelling echo. It scarcely seemed a moment before the court yard, which, a moment since so silent and deserted, was full of hurrying men and frightened women—the news was instantly abroad that mistress Marian had been spirited away by the false lord. Horses were saddled instantly, and broadswords girded on, and men were mounting in hot haste ere Annabel had in so much recovered from the shock, as to know what to order, or advise—evil and hasty counsels had been taken, but the good vicar and the prebendary came down in time to hinder them. A hurried consultation was held in the house, and it was speedily determined that the two clergymen should set forth on the instant, with a sufficient escort, to pursue, and, if it should be possible, bring back the fugitive—and although Annabel at the first was in despair, fancying that there could be no hope of her being overtaken, yet was she somewhat reassured on learning that De Vaux could not quit his regiment, and that the slow route of a regiment on a long march could easily be caught up with, even by aged travellers. The sun was scarce three hours high, when the pursuers started—all that day long it lagged across the sky—it set, and was succeeded by night, longer still, and still more dreary—another day! and yet another! Oh the slow agony of waiting! the torture of enumerating minutes—each minute seemingly an age—the dull, heart-sickening suspense of awaiting tidings—tidings which the heart tells us—the heart, too faithful prophet of the future—cannot by possibility be good; while reason interposes her vain veto to the heart’s decision, and hope uplifts her false and siren song. The third night came, and Annabel was sitting at the same window—how often it occurs that one spot witnesses the dozen scenes most interesting, most eventful to the same individual. Is it that consciousness of what has passed leads man to the spot marked by one event when he expects another? or can it be indeed a destiny? The third night came, and Annabel was sitting at that same window, when, on the distant highway, she beheld her friends returning, but they rode heavily and sadly onwards, nor was there any flutter of female garbs among them—Marian was not among them! They came—the story was soon told—they had succeeded in overtaking the regiment, they had seen Ernest, and Marian was his wife! The register of her marriage, duly attested, had been shown to her uncle in the church at Rippon, and though she had refused to see them, she had sent word that she was well and happy, with many messages of love and cordiality to Annabel, and promises that she would write at short and frequent intervals. No more was to be done—nothing was said at all. Men marvelled at De Vaux, and envied him! Women blamed Marian Hawkwood, and they too envied! But Annabel said nothing, but went about her daily duties, tending her helpless mother and answering her endless queries concerning Marian’s absence, and visiting her pensioners among the village poor, seemingly cheerful and contented. But her cheek constantly grew paler, and her form thinner and less round. The sword was hourly wearing out the scabbard! The spirit was too mighty for the vessel that contained it.

Five years had passed—five wearisome, long years—years of domestic strife and civil war, of bloodshed, conflagration and despair throughout all England. The party of the king, superior at the first, was waxing daily weaker, and all was almost lost. For the first years Marian did write, and that, too, frequently and fondly to her sister; never alluding to the past, and seldom to De Vaux, except to say that he was all she wished him, and she herself more happy than she hoped or deserved to be. But gradually did the letters become less frequent and more formal; communications were obstructed, and posts were intercepted, and scarce, at last, did Annabel hear twice in twelve months of her sister’s welfare. And when she did hear, the correspondence had become cold and lifeless; the tone of Marian, too, was altered, the buoyancy was gone—the mirth—the soul—and though she complained not, nor hinted that she was unhappy, yet Annabel saw plainly that it was so. Saw it, and sorrowed, and said nothing! Thus time passed on, with all its tides and chances, and the old paralytic invalid was gathered to her fathers, and slept beside her husband in the yard of the same humble church which had beheld their union, and Annabel was more alone than ever. Thus things went on until some months after the deadly fight and desperate defeat at Marston. Autumn had come again—brown autumn—and Annabel was in her garden tending her flowers, and listening to her birds, and thinking of the past, not with the anguish of a present sorrow, but with the mellowed recollection of regret. She stood beside the stream—the stream that, all unchanged itself, had witnessed such sad changes in all that was around it—close to the spot where she had talked so long to Marian on that eventful morning, when a quick, soft step came behind her—she turned and Marian clasped her! Forced, after years of sufferance, to fly from the outrageous cruelty of him for whom she had thrown up all but honor, she had come home—home, like the hunted hare to her form, like the wounded bird to her own nest—she had come home to die. What boots it to repeat the old and oft-told tale, how eager passion made way for uncertain and oft interrupted gleams of fondness—how a love, based on no esteem or real principle, melted like wax before the fire—how inattention paved the way for neglect—and infidelity came close behind—and open profligacy and insult, and cool, maddening outrage followed. How the ardent lover became the careless husband, the cold master, the unfeeling tyrant, and, at last, the brutal despot. Marian came home to die—the seeds of that invincible disease were sown deep in her bosom—her exquisitely rounded shape was angular and thin, emaciated by disease, and suffering, and sorrow. A burning hectic spot on either cheek were now the only remnants of that once all-radiant complexion; her step so slow and faltering, her breath drawn sob by sob with actual agony, her quick, short cough, all told too certainly the truth! Her faults were punished bitterly on earth, and happily that punishment had worked its fitting end—these faults were all repented, were all amended now. Perhaps at no time of her youthful bloom had Marian been so sweet, so truly lovely, as now when her young days were numbered. All the asperity and harshnesses, the angles as it were of her character, mellowed down into a calm and unrepining cheerfulness. And oh! with what delicious tenderness did Annabel console, and pray with, and caress—oh! they were indeed happy! indeed happy for those last months, those lovely sisters. For Annabel’s delight at seeing the dear Marian of happier and better days once more beside her in their old chamber, beside her in the quiet garden, beside her in the pew of the old village church, had, for the time, completely overpowered her fears for her sister’s health, and, as is almost invariably the case in that most fatal, most insidious of disorders, she constantly was flattered with vain hopes that her Marian was amending, that the next spring would see her again well and happy. Vain hopes! indeed vain hopes—but which of mortal hopes is other?

The cold mists of November were on the hills and in the glens of Wharfdale, the trees were stripped of their last leaves, the grass was sere and withered, the earth cheerless, the skies comfortless, when, at the same predestined window, the sisters sat watching the last gleam of the wintry sun fade on the distant hill tops. What was that flash far up the road? That sound and ringing report? Another! and another! the evident reports of musketry. And lo! a horseman flying—a wild, fierce troop pursuing—the foremost rides bareheaded, but the blue scarf that flutters in the air shows him a loyal cavalier; the steel caps and jack boots of the pursuers point them out evidently puritans; there are but twenty of them; and lo! the fugitive gains on them—heaven! he turns from the highroad, crosses the steep bridge at a gallop, he takes the park-gate at a leap, he cuts across the turf, and lo! the dalesmen and the tenants have mustered to resist; a short, fierce struggle—the roundheads are beat back—the fugitive, now at the very hall doors, is preserved. The door flew open, he staggered into the well-known vestibule, opened the parlor door with an accustomed hand, and reeled into the presence of the sisters, exhausted with fatigue, pale from the loss of blood, faint with his mortal wounds; yet he spoke out in a clear voice—“In time, in time, thank God, in time to make some reparation, to ask for pardon ere I die!” and with these words De Vaux, for he it was, staggered up to his injured wife, and, dropping on his knees, cast his arms round her waist, and burying his head in her lap, exclaimed in faltering tones—“Pardon me, Marian, pardon before I die—pardon me as you loved me once!”

“Oh! as I love you now, dear Ernest, fully, completely, gladly, do I pardon you, and take you to my heart, never again to part, my own dear husband.”

Annabel saw her head fall on his neck, and, fancying that she had fainted, ran to relieve her, but ere she did so both were far away beyond the reach of any mortal sorrow—nor did the survivor long survive them—she faded like a fair flower, and lies beside them in the still bosom of one common tomb. The Hall was tenanted no more, and soon fell into ruin, but the wild hills of Wharfdale must themselves pass away before the children of the dalesmen shall forget the sad tale of The Sisters.

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BY ALFRED B. STREET.

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BY MRS. SEBA SMITH.

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OR HOW TO RELISH A JULEP.

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BY C. F. HOFFMAN.

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“Are you sure that’s The Flame over by the shore?”

“Certing, manny! I could tell her pipes acrost the Mazoura.”^[1]

“And you will overhaul her?”

“Won’t we though! I tell ye, Stranger, so sure as my name’s Ben Blower, that that last tar bar’l I hove in the furnace has put jist the smart chance of go-ahead into us to cut off The Flame from yonder pint, or send our boat to kingdom come.”

“The devil!” exclaimed a bystander who, intensely interested in the race, was leaning the while against the partitions of the boiler-room, “I’ve chosen a nice place to see the fun near this infernal powder barrel!”

“Not so bad as if you were in it!” coolly observed Ben, as the other walked rapidly away.

“As if he were in it! in what? in the boiler?”

“Certing! Don’t folks sometimes go into bilers, manny?”

“I should think there’d be other parts of the boat more comfortable.”

“That’s right; poking fun at me at once’t; but wait till we get through this brush with the old Flame and I’ll tell ye of a regular fixin scrape that a man may get into. It’s true, too, every word of it—as sure as my name’s Ben Blower.”

•    •    •    •    •    •

“You have seen the Flame then afore, Stranger? Six year ago, when new upon the river, she was a real out and outer, I tell ye. I was at that time a hand aboard of her. Yes, I belonged to her at the time of her great race with the ‘Go-liar.’ You’ve heern, mayhap, of the blow-up by which we lost it? They made a great fuss about it; but it was nothing but a mere fiz of hot water after all. Only the springing of a few rivets, which loosened a biler plate or two, and let out a thin spirting upon some niggers that hadn’t sense enough to get out of the way. Well, the ‘Go-liar’ took off our passengers, and we ran into Smasher’s Landing to repair damages, and bury the poor fools that were killed. Here we laid for a matter of thirty hours or so, and got things to rights on board for a bran new start. There was some carpenter’s work yet to be done, but the captain said that that might be fixed off jist as well when we were under way—we had worked hard—the weather was sour, and we needn’t do any thing more jist now—we might take that afternoon to ourselves, but the next morning he’d get up steam bright and airly, and we’d all come out new. There was no temperance society at Smasher’s Landing, and I went ashore upon a lark with some of the hands.”

I omit the worthy Benjamin’s adventures upon land, and, despairing of fully conveying his language in its original Doric force, will not hesitate to give the rest of his singular narrative in my own words, save where, in a few instances, I can recall his precise phraseology, which the reader will easily recognize.

“The night was raw and sleety when I regained the deck of our boat. The officers, instead of leaving a watch above, had closed up every thing, and shut themselves in the cabin. The fire-room only was open. The boards dashed from the outside by the explosion had not yet been replaced. The floor of the room was wet and there was scarcely a corner which afforded a shelter from the driving storm. I was about leaving the room, resigned to sleep in the open air, and now bent only upon getting under the lee of some bulkhead that would protect me against the wind. In passing out I kept my arms stretched forward to feel my way in the dark, but my feet came in contact with a heavy iron lid; I stumbled, and, as I fell, struck one of my hands into the ‘manhole,’ (I think this was the name he gave to the oval-shaped opening in the head of the boiler,) through which the smith had entered to make his repairs. I fell with my arm thrust so far into the aperture that I received a pretty smart blow in the face as it came in contact with the head of the boiler, and I did not hesitate to drag my body after it, the moment I recovered from this stunning effect and ascertained my whereabouts. In a word, I crept into the boiler resolved to pass the rest of the night there. The place was dry and sheltered. Had my bed been softer, I would have had all that man could desire; as it was, I slept and slept soundly.

“I should mention though, that, before closing my eyes, I several times shifted my position. I had gone first to the farther end of the boiler, then again I had crawled back to the manhole, to put my hand out and feel that it was really still open. The warmest place was at the farther end, where I finally established myself, and that I knew from the first. It was foolish in me to think that the opening through which I had just entered could be closed without my hearing it, and that, too, when no one was astir but myself; but the blow on the side of my face made me a little nervous perhaps; besides, I never could bear to be shut up in any place—it always gives a wild-like feeling about the head. You may laugh, Stranger, but I believe I should suffocate in an empty church, if I once felt that I was so shut up in it that I could not get out. I have met men afore now just like me, or worse rather—much worse. Men that it made sort of furious to be tied down to anything, yet so soft-like and contradictory in their natures that you might lead them anywhere so long as they didn’t feel the string. Stranger, it takes all sorts of people to make a world! and we may have a good many of the worst kind of white-men here out west. But I have seen folks upon this river—quiet looking chaps, too, as ever you see—who were so teetotally carankterakterous that they’d shoot the doctor who’d tell them they couldn’t live when ailing, and make a die of it, just out of spite, when told they must get well. Yes, fellows as fond of the good things of earth as you or I, yet who’d rush like mad right over the gang-plank of life, if once brought to believe that they had to stay in this world whether they wanted to leave it or not. Thunder and bees! if such a fellow as that had heard the cocks crow as I did—awakened to find darkness about him—darkness so thick you might cut it with a knife—heard other sounds, too, to tell that it was morning, and scrambling to fumble for that manhole, found it, too, black—closed—black and even as the rest of the iron coffin around him, closed, with not a rivet-hole to let God’s light and air in—why—why—he’d ’a swounded right down on the spot, as I did, and I ain’t ashamed to own it to no white-man.”

The big drops actually stood upon the poor fellow’s brow, as he now paused for a moment in the recital of his terrible story. He passed his hand over his rough features, and resumed it with less agitation of manner.

“How long I may have remained there senseless I don’t know. The doctors have since told me it must have been a sort of fit—more like an apoplexy than a swoon, for the attack finally passed off in sleep—Yes I slept, I know that, for I dreamed—dreamed a heap o’ things afore I awoke—there is but one dream, however, that I have ever been able to recall distinctly, and that must have come on shortly before I recovered my consciousness. My resting place through the night had been, as I have told you, at the far end of the boiler. Well, I now dreamed that the manhole was still open—and, what seems curious, rather than laughable, if you take it in connection with other things, I fancied that my legs had been so stretched in the long walk I had taken the evening before, that they now reached the whole length of the boiler and extended through the opening.

“At first, (in my dreaming reflections) it was a comfortable thought that no one could now shut up the manhole without awakening me. But soon it seemed as if my feet, which were on the outside, were becoming drenched in the storm which had originally driven me to seek this shelter. I felt the chilling rain upon my extremities. They grew colder and colder, and their numbness gradually extended upward to other parts of my body. It seemed, however, that it was only the under side of my person that was thus strangely visited. I laid upon my back, and it must have been a species of nightmare that afflicted me, for I knew at last that I was dreaming, yet felt it impossible to rouse myself. A violent fit of coughing restored, at last, my powers of volition. The water, which had been slowly rising around me, had rushed into my mouth; I awoke to hear the rapid strokes of the pump which was driving it into the boiler!

“My whole condition—no—not all of it—not yet—my present condition flashed with new horror upon me. But I did not again swoon. The choking sensation which had made me faint, when I first discovered how I was entombed, gave way to a livelier, though less overpowering, emotion. I shrieked even as I started from my slumber. The previous discovery of the closed aperture, with the instant oblivion that followed, seemed only a part of my dream, and I threw my arms about and looked eagerly for the opening by which I had entered the horrid place—yes, looked for it, and felt for it, though it was the terrible conviction that it was closed—a second time brought home to me—which prompted my frenzied cry. Every sense seemed to have tenfold acuteness, yet not one to act in unison with another. I shrieked again and again—imploringly—desperately—savagely. I filled the hollow chamber with my cries till its iron walls seemed to tingle around me. The dull strokes of the accursed pump seemed only to mock at while they deadened my screams.

“At last I gave myself up. It is the struggle against our fate which frenzies the mind. We cease to fear when we cease to hope. I gave myself up and then I grew calm!

“I was resigned to die—resigned even to my mode of death. It was not, I thought, so very new after all as to awaken unwonted horror in a man. Thousands have been sunk to the bottom of the ocean shut up in the holds of vessels—beating themselves against the battened hatches—dragged down from the upper world shrieking, not for life but for death only beneath the eye and amid the breath of heaven. Thousands have endured that appalling kind of suffocation. I would die only as many a better man had died before me. I could meet such a death. I said so—I thought so—I felt so—felt so, I mean, for a minute—or more; ten minutes it may have been—or but an instant of time. I know not—nor does it matter if I could compute it. There was a time then when I was resigned to my fate. But, good God! was I resigned to it in the shape in which next it came to appal? Stranger, I felt that water growing hot about my limbs, though it was yet mid-leg deep. I felt it, and, in the same moment, heard the roar of the furnace that was to turn it into steam before it could get deep enough to drown one!

“You shudder—It was hideous. But did I shrink and shrivel, and crumble down upon that iron floor, and lose my senses in that horrid agony of fear?—No!—though my brain swam and the life-blood that curdled at my heart seemed about to stagnate there forever, still I knew! I was too hoarse—too hopeless, from my previous efforts, to cry out more. But I struck—feebly at first, and then strongly—frantically with my clenched fist against the sides of the boiler. There were people moving near who must hear my blows! Could not I hear the grating of chains, the shuffling of feet, the very rustle of a rope, hear them all, within a few inches of me? I did—but the gurgling water that was growing hotter and hotter around my extremities, made more noise within the steaming caldron than did my frenzied blows against its sides.

“Latterly I had hardly changed my position, but now the growing heat of the water made me plash to and fro; lifting myself wholly out of it was impossible, but I could not remain quiet. I stumbled upon something—it was a mallet!—a chance tool the smith had led there by accident. With what wild joy did I seize it—with what eager confidence did I now deal my first blows with it against the walls of my prison! But scarce had I intermitted them for a moment when I heard the clang of the iron door as the fireman flung it wide to feed the flames that were to torture me. My knocking was unheard, though I could hear him toss the sticks into the furnace beneath me, and drive to the door when his infernal oven was fully crammed.

“Had I yet a hope? I had, but it rose in my mind side by side with the fear that I might now become the agent of preparing myself a more frightful death—Yes! when I thought of that furnace with its fresh-fed flames curling beneath the iron upon which I stood—a more frightful death even than that of being boiled alive! Had I discovered that mallet but a short time sooner—but no matter, I would by its aid resort to the only expedient now left.

“It was this—I remembered having a marline-spike in my pocket, and in less time than I have taken in hinting at the consequences of thus using it, I had made an impression upon the sides of the boiler, and soon succeeded in driving it through. The water gushed through the aperture—would they see it?—No, the jet could only play against a wooden partition which must hide the stream from view—it must trickle down upon the decks before the leakage would be discovered. Should I drive another hole to make that leakage greater? Why, the water within seemed already to be sensibly diminished—so hot had become that which remained—should more escape, would I not hear it bubble and hiss upon the fiery plates of iron that were already scorching the soles of my feet?

•    •    •    •    •    •

“Ah! there is a movement—voices—I hear them calling for a crowbar—The bulkhead cracks as they pry off the planking. They have seen the leak—they are trying to get at it!—Good God! why do they not first dampen the fire?—Why do they call for the—the⁠—

“Stranger, look at that finger! it can never regain its natural size—but it has already done all the service that man could expect from so humble a member—Sir, that hole would have been plugged up on the instant, unless I had jammed my finger through!

“I heard the cry of horror as they saw it without—the shout to drown the fire—the first stroke of the cold water pump. They say, too, that I was conscious when they took me out—but I—I remember nothing more till they brought a julep to my bed-side arterwards, And that julep!⁠—”

“Cooling! was it?”

“Strannger!!!”

Ben turned away his head and wept—He could no more.

———

BY H. T. TUCKERMAN.

———

A TALE OF RICHELIEU.

———

BY THE AUTHOR OF “HENRI QUATRE; OR THE DAYS OF THE LEAGUE.”

———

(Continued from page 68.)

De Pontis was now despairing—it was evident Richelieu was in the highest displeasure at the disposal of the droit d’aubaine without his knowledge—the cardinal’s seal was affixed to the ware-rooms, from which there had been removed only the royal present, and a few articles of minor value; and the king had at best but a negative power in protecting his old servant.

The minister returned to Paris, and the veteran made two ineffectual attempts to gain another audience. “Ah! my old friend the Sieur De Pontis!” or the ominous “serviteur très-humble!” was all he gained by placing himself in the path of a man before whom the bravest quailed.

An old campaigner, he would not abandon the contest; the royal word had been pledged that it would stand by the royal act; so Monsieur merely changed his tactics, acting on the defensive, and awaiting the issue with calmness; whilst Marguerite trembled and wept the day long, expecting each hour to see her father dragged to the Bastille.

By chance rather than prudential dictates, he had removed several of the account-books of the deceased Spaniard, ere the cardinal’s seal was affixed. This trifling act—at least so deemed by the soldier—was, in the sequel, of much import.

After a delay of several days, in which De Pontis could learn no tidings of the minister’s intentions—and a visit to the Tuileries, he was well aware, would compromise his majesty without forwarding the object in view—he received a citation from the Cour Royale to accompany its officers in an inspection of the ware-rooms. Obeying the summons, an inventory of the goods was taken, and which was found to tally with the stock-book, with the exception of the rich bed and hangings sent to the Tuileries, and the articles taken to his own use.

Next day came a legal document from another of the parliamentary courts of justice, by which it appeared that a suit had been commenced against De Pontis, by one Pedro Olivera, claiming to be the creditor of the deceased to a very large amount—indeed, to such an extent that, by appraisement of the inventory, including the debts owing the deceased at the time of his death, and deducting what amounts were due to creditors of the estate, so far from being a wealthy man he died insolvent.

In consternation, De Pontis carried his papers as well as the Spaniard’s books to an advocate, a distant kinsman. The advocate shook his head ominously at the recital.

“Having possessed himself of the effects,” said the lawyer, “Monsieur has made himself responsible for the debts of the deceased. And that portion of the estate which has travelled to the Palais cannot of course be recovered—so that he cannot even put affairs in the posture in which they stood at the time of the Spaniard’s death.”

Looking cautiously round the office, opening the door, to make certain there were no eaves-droppers, he shut it again, and approaching the ear of his kinsman, said in a low tone—

“I know not how to trust even the very walls with my voice! Without doubt, Monsieur De Pontis, the claim is a fabrication—at least I cannot believe the deceased could owe such an amount, nor that this Olivera was in a condition to trust him. I will examine these books carefully, and, meantime, respond to the suit in the usual course. I will not desert a kinsman, even though he be in the toils of the tyrant. Farewell!”

The same day, De Pontis was arrested on the plea of having fraudulently appropriated the property before ascertaining the amount of the deceased’s debts, and providing for the same. There had, of course, been no time for the court to grant any decree in Olivera’s suit. The arrest was dated from the Cour Royale, a distinct court from that in which Pedro’s suit originated—he being charged by the procureur-général—the attorney-general of France—with having made away with effects which of right belonged to the estate. He was thus, at the same time, charged by an officer of the crown in the Cour Royale with a penal offence, and sued in a civil court for restitution by a private creditor.

Lodged in the Conciergerie du Palais, it was intimated that the only chance of release was by finding surety to the amount of property abstracted. And how could he do that? The bed and hangings alone were estimated at the value of two hundred thousand livres, and had been made for the kinswoman of Louis, now the wife of Charles the First of England, who was obliged to countermand the luxurious article, on account of the troubles which had broken out in that kingdom.

And thus our poor veteran was indeed, as the advocate Giraud truly affirmed, in the toils of Richelieu, who held all the strings of government and justice in his own hands, and could guide them as he wished. Deprived of the opportunity of self-exertion, restricted in intercourse with the advocate, his affairs might have fallen into irretrievable ruin but for the courage and energy of the fair Marguerite. In the first paroxysm of despair, she had solicited the boon of sharing the confinement of De Pontis—this was refused. Her next application was made to the king, throwing herself at his feet as he was about proceeding to mass, and asking permission to attend her father daily, as she was not permitted to make the Conciergerie her home. Louis said aloud, that the request ought to be made through the proper channel, at the bureau of the Cardinal Richelieu, and recommended her to make the appeal—and that it would be time enough for the royal clemency to interfere when ordinary means had failed. Such was the sole answer it was supposed she departed with—but under pretence of raising the maiden, for she had thrown herself on her knees, he whispered a few words of comfort—that he would not abandon her father.

The terror in which the cardinal was held was so great, his power exercised so arbitrarily, that in this extremity Marguerite was almost friendless. They looked on the father as a doomed man, and condemned his rashness—the daughter they pitied, but shrank from offering her aid. There was one exception.

Returning to the lodging in the Rue St. Denis, she found Monsieur Giraud waiting her arrival. He had heard from the lips of their old domestic, of the maiden’s intention to throw herself at the king’s feet, and anxiously awaited the issue. Gently chiding Mademoiselle for not putting confidence in her father’s friend, he offered to accompany her on the morrow to the abode of his eminence.

The application was successful, and as they returned from the Palais Cardinal, the magnificent abode of the prelate, with an order permitting Mademoiselle ingress and egress, from morn till eve, to and from the Conciergerie, the advocate expressed a conviction that the king had kept his word, for it was an unusual privilege.

Little of importance transpired in the affairs of De Pontis till the day previous to that in which we introduced to the reader our heroine, waiting admission at the portal of the Conciergerie.

In the morn there was a consultation in the prisoner’s chamber, between the advocate, who had obtained an order from the bureau for that purpose, and father and daughter. The worthy Giraud was desponding—the civil suit, he said, thanks to the dilatoriness of the courts! was creeping slowly enough, though much faster than the ordinary routine of practice; but the procureur-général had hastened the penal suit, driving it through the court at such a race-horse speed, that there was great danger of his obtaining a decree of sequestration—utterly ruinous to De Pontis—unless an appeal to cardinal or king, praying for sufficient delay to prepare a defence, were resorted to. It was useless applying to the presidents of the court—they were too much under the lash of Richelieu to do justice to the respondent in the suit.

So far as the Spaniard’s books and accounts, which De Pontis had preserved, testified, there was no appearance of such a debt, nothing tending to confirm directly or indirectly Pedro Olivera’s assumption, but much negative evidence to prove the falsity of his claim.

It was certain, continued the advocate, that a favorite of the cardinal was laying strong claim to the droit d’aubaine, and urging his patron to recover it. He had himself been informed that the party now applying such a pressure on his eminence to effect this unjustifiable, unworthy purpose, had long had an eye on the alien, and marked the property as his own. But the name of the individual intimated in this whisper of scandal, which floated about the precincts of the courts, was unknown to Giraud, nor had he the necessary influence to procure it.

“What matters the name of the minion if they are bent on ruining me?” exclaimed De Pontis.

“Much!” replied his friend, “but listen.”

The advocate then proceeded to relate that among the papers of the deceased he found much correspondence of a peculiar character, some portion of which might even implicate individuals in a charge of treason—other portions related to financial matters, and showing that the Spaniard had been a lender rather than a borrower, and had supplied parties connected with the court with money. Much curious matter there was, even relating to this Pedro Olivera, who, however, figured in a subordinate capacity, certainly very different from what might be expected of one who could lend such a vast sum of money.

“I have my suspicions,” answered Monsieur Giraud, “and if we could but discover the party whom the droit is intended for, I think I could find a shaft in the Spaniard’s budget which would pierce him.”

“And if I could find the party whom the droit is intended for,” exclaimed the veteran, “and had him before me at rapier’s length in the pré aux clercs, he would soon have to enter his cause in another court.”

“I have no doubt if steel would do the business my agency would be useless,” rejoined the lawyer, “but the Sieur De Pontis must remember he is now on the brink of total ruin, perhaps even of personal disgrace—that the net is spread on every side—if he retain the droit d’aubaine, this Pedro may recover a decree against him for more than the droit is worth—if Pedro by any chance is defeated, the procureur catches my friend on the penal suit, and sequesters droit, land and everything he has—and adds to it, most likely, imprisonment. All this may be effected without causing our generous king to violate his word.”

“Mort de ma vie!” exclaimed De Pontis, starting up in a rage, “and is not all this done, Monsieur Giraud, to make an old soldier surrender the king’s bounty? If I thrust this morsel of paper,” displaying the sovereign’s sign-manual, “in the fire to boil our coffee, would not the gates open at once—aye! and Pedro’s debt vanish like smoke?”

“They would be glad to make such terms, undoubtedly,” replied the advocate.

“Then, by St. Louis and all the saints!” exclaimed the militaire, raising his arm and letting the clenched fist drop on the board with a bound which did much damage to the breakfast service, “so long as his gracious majesty promises not to abandon his old servant, so long will I resist all the priests and cardinals in France.”

“And will end your days in the Bastille,” uttered Giraud.

“No! no!” cried Marguerite, bursting into tears, “Father! Monsieur Giraud! I will go to the cardinal this morning, and implore him to stay the procureur’s proceedings till we can prepare our defence.”

The idea pleased the advocate much. There was but little refinement or delicacy of feeling in his nature—but he possessed warmth and generosity, and overlooking the trials, and perhaps insults, which a female may undergo in seeking such an audience, he thought good might accrue to the family from the attempt. It was of pressing moment that the procureur should not yet obtain the decree, and no scheme be abandoned which promised to obtain such a result.

“And if Mademoiselle could but obtain an audience of the king, his majesty might know the party whom the cardinal is fighting so hard for,” added the lawyer, “and then I may perhaps spring a mine which will make some people tremble.”

“Why, what do you take my daughter for?” cried the old soldier; “Can she change her sex? You will next wish her to plead in court!”

“She may drag you from ruin, which you would never have saved yourself from,” replied the advocate.

“Well, Monsieur Giraud,” said Marguerite, in a livelier tone than she had for a length of time assumed, “as you have spoken so flatteringly of me, allow me to compliment you on your sagacity. I think there is much truth in what you hint about the unfortunate Spaniard’s papers. Since my father has been in prison, our lodging has been searched and every thing in the shape of written paper examined. It strikes me that the documents which you possess have been missed.”

“And this is the first word I have heard of it!” cried De Pontis, darting an angry glance at Marguerite. “What, another search? They ransacked our lodging when they took me—and I could not have believed they would trouble my house again.”

“I did not wish to distress you, father,” said the maiden, deprecating the resentment expressed in his looks.

“Mademoiselle was quite right,” said the advocate, “but she ought to have acquainted me with the fact.”

“I thought it an ordinary proceeding, and was prepared for such visits,” remarked the damsel.

“You alarm me,” said Giraud, “they will visit me next. I must go home and make all secure. I will then escort Mademoiselle to the Palais Cardinal.”

After some further remarks, the advocate, accompanied by Marguerite, left the apartment of the prisoner, who muttered to himself as they closed the door—

“Well, Giraud is a stanch, bold man and a true friend, but he has not as much delicacy and regard for a lady’s feelings as my hack Millefleurs could boast of. I taught the brute to kneel when my poor wife touched his bridle, and he was quiet as a lamb when he carried her. Hang all scoundrels, and may purgatory have the scarlet ones! They fastened on me when I was young, and they are now sucking the blood of my old age. Not so old, though—not so old, but I could pin that scarlet-robed priest to a tree!”

We have now brought the history of De Pontis to that period when Marguerite, having left the prison with the intention of seeking an interview with Richelieu, to stay the proceedings of the procureur, so indecently hurried through the courts, did not repair till the following morn to the Conciergerie to report her want of success.

There was, indeed, no hope yet, as she had remarked so despondingly to her father. Nearly the whole day had she spent in a waiting-room of the Palais Cardinal, flattered with the expectation held out by the secretaries, that the cardinal would be visible when the important affairs of state were despatched; but, to her infinite grief, there came at length an official to say there would be no audience that day, for his eminence was sent for in a hurry to repair to the Tuileries. Giraud was distracted with the intelligence—he plainly foresaw the predetermined ruin of the veteran, and advised the damsel to throw herself once more at the feet of Louis—it was her only resource.

Marguerite, in her lone chamber that night, prayed to the Holy Virgin for help—for strength to undergo the trials which awaited her—for fortitude to bear up against the contumely and rebuffs to which she was exposed. She prayed not to be relieved of the task, but for energy to meet it. From whatever source came the confidence, there was a secret prompting of the heart, urging her to persevere. Her father had been ever unlucky so long as his affairs were under his own management. Why should there not be a change when he was bereft of the power either to mend or mar his fortunes? His destiny in other hands, perhaps that would be vouchsafed to the daughter which was denied the parent. These might be fancies, but they lulled her to a quiet repose.

“And what must be done,” said De Pontis, “with the procureur? It is hard that a king’s servant, in the name of his master, should be employed to oppress a king’s servant, against the royal inclination. What does Giraud mean to do now?”

“Leave all to me,” replied Marguerite, with a smile. “I am making great proficiency in my new profession—and though I am very wretched and heart-broken at times—yet I feel a strange courage. But you must not expect to see me before to-morrow morning, for there is much to be done to-day.”

Affairs were in that state, that the veteran himself was a cipher—he felt it, and made no reply. His daughter soon after left the prison, and De Pontis had to struggle with the terrible ennui of the solitary chamber, and the deprivation of the usual means of passing the hours.

——

The advocate’s opinion was in favor of Marguerite once more approaching the monarch; further application to Richelieu he deemed useless—not so the maiden. She resolved to make another appeal to the cardinal—it might be as was affirmed, that he had intended to hear her suit, and been summoned unexpectedly to the Tuileries; and if so, would it not be an exhibition of contempt to the minister, to fly to the king, before she could possibly know whether her prayer would be refused or granted at the Palais Cardinal? Thus reasoned Marguerite De Pontis, and we think not unwisely. The zealous advocate looked only at conclusions; he judged unfavorably of the minister’s clemency, and his hopes instantly pointed to another quarter.

Behold her once more on the way to the cardinal’s palace, in the Rue St. Honoré! It was the earliest hour at which his eminence gave audience, yet were the ante-chambers of the minister filling rapidly. Ascending the grand staircase, herself, “the observed of many observers,” yet shrinking from the gaze her beauty attracted, the door above was opened by an usher, and she entered a chamber, the first of a long suite which terminated with the cardinal’s reception-room and closet of audience.

The modes of approaching the minister were various, according to the rank and mission of the visiter. Strangers of humble quality, and others who, either through timidity or other cause, judged that they would not be permitted the entrée of the reception-room, or who dare not venture so far, loitered in the more distant saloons till the illustrious man, issuing forth to pay respects to majesty, gave opportunity for a moment’s audience or parley, or presentation of petition. The individuals of the privileged class who rejoiced in free access to the reception-chamber, watched narrowly each opening of the closet-door, that they might catch the eye of the prelate on his entry; whilst deeper anxiety was visible in the countenances of those who had requested audience through the agency of the gentleman-usher stationed at the door. The private interviews terminated, Monseigneur stepped forth, and tarried awhile in the reception-room, bestowing a bow on one, a nod to another, and making a third happy—and the envied of the chamber—by six or more significant words.

As all the executive power centred in Richelieu, it could not happen otherwise, but that suppliants and petitioners were numerous, and from all parts of the kingdom, and that among the number should be many of the fair sex. The politesse of the court permitted not such guests to be kept waiting exposed to the observation of the frequenters of the levee. The ladies were ushered into the secretary’s apartment, and that functionary having taken note of their object or petition, carried the same to Monseigneur to receive his commands thereon. If, as too often happened with one whose shoulders bore the burthen of the state, and who was appealed to at the same time by an envoy from Turkey claiming alliance, and by some poor widow or orphan from the Pyrenees with a tale of wrong—there was any delay in granting an interview, or giving a decision on the merits of the case, the fair suppliant was delegated to a waiting-room to attend the minister’s leisure.

Here sat, for many tedious hours on the former occasion, our heroine Marguerite—and as she now stated her name and object to the usher whose duty it was to conduct her to the secretary, she vainly endeavored to decipher a chance of better fortune in the impassive countenance of the official, as though it were possible his face would reflect a ray or emanation of the master’s will.

The waiting-room was again her sad lot—the cardinal was busily engaged with a German plenipotentiary—but the audience, as the secretary assured her, with a smile, could not last forever. It was but to ask for delay in the prosecution of the penal suit in the Cour Royale, that her father might prepare his defence, and prove the innocence of his intentions. It was not even necessary that she should see his eminence—one word to the procureur would oblige him to this act of justice—he was the servant of the king, and must obey the commands of the kingly authority in the person of Monseigneur.

So spoke the maiden hesitatingly, but with precision and clearness, yet the secretary—it was De Lionne, not the most heartless man of that age—could only do, as secretaries are wont on such occasions, smile, bow, and, as marking his sense of the justness of her claims to attention, conduct her himself to the door of the drear chamber.

Marguerite at length began to despair, and regret she had not taken the advice of Giraud. The sensation of utter weariness, of which De Pontis so often complained to his daughter in the narrow prison-abode, was now experienced by herself. Solitude was only broken by the occasional sound of footsteps—delusive hope!—they paused not at her door.

The shout of merry voices was heard from the court-yard in the interior of the palace. The gay, richly dressed pages of his eminence, whose turn of duty had terminated or not arrived, were amusing themselves in the youthful sports practised in the household of princes. Personal rencontres and duelling were such frequent occurrences, that proficiency in the use of the rapier was an indispensable accomplishment. Marguerite, venturing to the window, became sensibly amused and interested by the adroitness of a youth, who, challenging all his compeers successively with the foil, remained victor. Cap and mantle thrown aside, his attitude of defence displayed to advantage a tall symmetrical form—the long curling hair falling on the shoulders bespoke a very youthful age, but the compressed lip, and stern, fiery eye bent on the adversary, belonged to manhood.

Without an equal, he retired from the arena to become a spectator of the skill of companions more equally matched. Marguerite continued at the window, till of a sudden, being aware that she was herself the object of the youth’s regard, she withdrew in confusion.

There was not much to interest within the chamber. A map of France, and several battle-pieces, sadly out of perspective, helped to while away the time. Looking closely over Limousin, endeavoring to find the barren waste denominated De Pontis—without hearing footstep, or other notice of a stranger’s approach, an arm encircled her waist, and the dark eye of the page was close to her own.

“Is there nothing”—said the intruder—“more amusing to a lady in the Palais-Cardinal than poring over a mouldy map? Well! if such be the taste of Mademoiselle, may I not be her preceptor? I am accounted an excellent mathematician!”

Marguerite had been surprised so suddenly as to be for the moment bereft of speech. Springing from his grasp, her eyes flashing indignation, she flew to the door.

The page perceiving the intention, had barely time to place his hand on the latch, and the foiled maiden dreading close contact with the insolent intruder, retreated a few paces, threatening an appeal to the Cardinal Richelieu.

“Mademoiselle has more power over me than his eminence,” said the page, half smiling.

“Then prove it by allowing me to quit the apartment without suffering further insolence,” exclaimed the damsel firmly.

“It is a hard command—and insolence is a harsh term,” said the youth, thoughtfully, “but I deserve it! Believe me, Mademoiselle, when I say how much I was deceived in the quality of her whom I approached so foolishly—we are apt to abuse the license of—”

“License!” exclaimed Marguerite, still trembling with vexation and anger, “meet behavior for a cardinal’s palace—but make way, sir, and you shall hear no further of it.”

The page, who evidently by his manner as well as declaration, had committed the very grave error of acting towards a lady of quality, with a freedom which the gay youth of Paris affected in their chance meeting with females of humbler rank, had, since his first address, appeared deeply struck with the beauty and grace of Marguerite. Even sense of the offence seemed lost and absorbed in his admiration.

Leaving her free to depart, he again expressed sorrow for the rudeness—and in a tone, and with language, courteous yet grave and sustained, more than could have been expected from one of his years, and of the thoughtless class to which he belonged—reminded her that he was one of the pages of the Cardinal De Richelieu; that if her visit to the palace had reference to any of the household, he would go immediately in quest of the party, or if she sought higher audience, his services were at command, though they would not, perhaps, avail much.

The frankness of this declaration rather won upon the maiden, and tended much to subdue her anger. Might she not be carrying indignation too far against one who expressed such contrition for his offence? Thoughts of her father, of the Conciergerie, of Giraud and the implacable procureur général, rushed through the mind. Perhaps the youth was thrown in her path even providentially? Ruin hung suspended by a slight thread over the family, and could only be averted by extraordinary and unusual aid.

It was with these feelings, that she declared herself Marguerite De Pontis, waiting audience of the cardinal—if he could pleasure her so far as to ascertain what chance there remained of seeing the prelate that day, she would accept his services as atonement for his rudeness.

“De Pontis!” exclaimed the youth, with an abstracted air.

“The same,” exclaimed the maiden, rather impatiently, seeing that he made no effort to depart, “have I imposed a task too heavy?”

“De Pontis!—he is in the Conciergerie du Palais,” said the page.

“Alas! I know it too well,” cried the maiden, “but why remind me of it? I fear that I have been wrong myself, in putting trust in a stranger.”

“No! no! Mademoiselle,” said the page, “not in putting trust in me, though perhaps I am too humble to be of service. You appear impatient because I do not fly, like knight of old, on fair lady’s service—but truly, I have been weighing between duty and inclination, and duty, after a hard battle, has been vanquished. I know the cardinal will hold himself invisible to Mademoiselle till the decree of sequestration is obtained. There! it is out now!—and I have earned my passport to the Bastille!”

“I trust not,” replied Marguerite, mournfully, “it is enough our family is obnoxious to misery in their own persons, without bringing it on others.”

These words seemed lost on the page—he paced the chamber like one irresolute of action—his dark eye flashing brightly, and then sunk in gloom. Suddenly approaching the lady with a vehemence and hastiness which startled her, he exclaimed abruptly, though in a low tone—

“Chance, and the employment which falls to my lot, have made me acquainted with the proceedings against Monsieur De Pontis, even more than is suspected by the cardinal. I owe you atonement, and you must confess that I risk life, or liberty, or both, in making the reparation I offer—but I deem no task too heavy or too perilous, which will assist the hopes of Mademoiselle De Pontis.”

There was a warmth in this declaration, an earnestness of gaze and speech which caused Marguerite’s eyes to seek the ground.

“I cannot accept services bestowed at such risk,” said the maiden faltering.

“Then my safety has interest in your eyes—or do I flatter myself too much?” asked the page.

The roses blushed deeply in the cheek of Marguerite—there was a flutter at the heart—a confusion which took away the power of reply. With much to offend delicacy, could she take offence at an offer which bore the impress of sincerity? Could she sacrifice the proffered aid to her parent? Might he not be in possession of the information so coveted by Monsieur Giraud, information so much more valuable since she had learned the intention of the cardinal to avoid granting an audience? But was she justified in receiving intelligence conveyed at such peril by the rash youth?

These thoughts chasing each other, produced a state of mind favorable to the ardent wishes of the page. He saw her irresolution, and in the recklessness of the sudden passion he had conceived for the damsel, was resolved to risk fortune, character and liberty in her service. Higher aims and loftier destinies than a page’s state, have been flung away for the favoring smile of woman’s eye! He had the art to avoid all allusion to his passion, and dilating only on the pity felt for the unfortunate veteran, and the distress his imprisonment must have caused the daughter—his own indignation at the artifices used and still in store to deprive the warrior of the well-earned bounty of royalty—he thus removed the obstacles which the maidenly delicacy of Marguerite would have interposed in the acceptation of a stranger’s services—and whose first introduction afforded little promise of gentle feelings and regard for her own sex.

François De Romainville, in devoting himself to the service of Marguerite with such total disregard of the dreaded Richelieu, gave one more proof of a headlong career. He had been twice imprisoned in the Palais for disobedience of the cardinal’s orders, and retained his post only through superior activity and intelligence, qualities of which the potential minister had much need. The indignity he suffered, or believed that he suffered, by the confinement, had created a bitter animosity against his master.

The scandalous injustice exercised towards De Pontis, to which he was privy, tended to paint the tyrant—as he secretly called him—in blacker colors. Could he serve the veteran, he revenged his own wrong on the oppressor—and might win the love of a maiden for whom he had conceived a passion whose intensity resembled what he had never experienced, but oft read of in the pages of romance.

There was much danger in every step—even in the present interview, he ran the risk of being either surprised by his companions from whom he had unperceived stolen away, on beholding a pretty face at the window above; or incurring the suspicion of De Lionne, should he send for or seek Mademoiselle, and find who was in her company. As it was, he had already rendered himself obnoxious to a severe reprimand, by intruding into a chamber to which he had not the privilege of access, unless under command of his eminence, and though this prohibition would probably prevent search in such a quarter by his more prudent compeers, yet the momentary peril of a visit from usher or functionary attached to the secretary’s bureau, was great. The best chance of escape arose from the fact—so distressing to Marguerite—that the cardinal had no intention of seeing the maiden, till the intercession she craved would be of no avail.

With this consolation, and the last resource in store of flight unperceived by the back staircase which had led him so quietly to the chamber, he gradually induced Marguerite to make him a confidant in the affairs of her father.

“It is the Count De Fontrailles,” remarked the page, “for whom the droit d’aubaine is intended, and he lays close siege to it. The count has made himself necessary to his eminence—he has, what is called in the language of the bureau, a talent for affairs. He must have money, is his constant cry—he spends so much—he had often borrowed of the Spaniard, and had an eye to the estate on his death—perhaps he poisoned him—”

“Merciful Heaven! I hope not!” exclaimed the maiden in great terror, shocked at the idea of the crime, and more so at the careless manner in which it was surmised.

“What more likely? He might have had to wait many years otherwise,” replied the page smiling at her fears, “but I beg pardon of Mademoiselle—she must teach me to speak in a way better suited to a lady’s ears. I am the most rude and abrupt of men.”

It was now the maiden’s turn to smile.

“Mademoiselle will find that I have a man’s heart though not his beard,” cried François, with a slight curl of the upper lip; “there are few, calling themselves men, would dare oppose the cardinal as I have done. M. De Pontis and myself are well matched, and I sympathize with his spirit.”

He then proceeded to relate that the cardinal and Fontrailles were much annoyed at the obstinacy of the old soldier; the necessities of the latter were outraged by the droit being jeoparded and withheld from his clutch; the former, displeased at what he called the impertinence of an old moustache, in taking such sudden advantage of the king’s good-nature. It had been the occupation of François to carry messages and commands to the creature named Pedro Olivera, a Spaniard by birth, long resident in France, and a tool or subordinate emissary of the courtly Fontrailles.

There was much inquiry about certain papers, as the page affirmed to Marguerite. Pedro had been also a borrower from the deceased Spaniard, and had placed with him, as security for repayment, a statement of claims on his master, Fontrailles, for obscure and perhaps disreputable services. This was missing, also a portion of the books and accounts, and it occasioned, as François happened to know, a domiciliary search in the lodging of Monsieur De Pontis.

“If these papers and documents were in existence—and I suspect by her looks,” said the page, concluding his narrative, “that she knows something about them—they could be brought to bear against Fontrailles and Olivera by a skilful advocate. But let Mademoiselle De Pontis remember, that I have placed my life in her hands—a life of value to the owner if he be permitted to continue in her service.”

The color flew to the face of Marguerite—she looked confused, but not displeased—he took her hand and pressed it to his lips.

“But the decree, Monsieur François,” said the damsel timidly, “the advocate fears the procureur will obtain it to-morrow if he is not restrained.”

“True! too true!” exclaimed the page.

He considered a few moments, and then told her that the only remedy was to gain audience of Richelieu by stratagem. It was useless her waiting in the chamber, he was aware, nor would the cardinal be met with on his departure from the Palais, in the public suite of saloons. He knew the hour of his going abroad, and it would be necessary that Mademoiselle should repair to the palace garden, wait in a particular avenue which he indicated, and lie in ambush for his eminence.

“He will not, he cannot resist your appeal for delay,” exclaimed François, in a passionate tone, “Monseigneur proves his want of courage by flying the field! I wish his eminence had my heart, for Mademoiselle I find irresistible.”

Again pressing the fair hand to his lips, he escaped by the entrance which conducted to the back-stairs, but presently returning, said⁠—

“If François, the houblieur, travels the Rue St. Denis this evening, he will not fail to ring his bell for customers to attend!” and so saying, again disappeared.

The houblieurs, or dealers in wafers, a sort of cake, were accustomed to ring a hand-bell to give notice of approach in their passage through the streets; and Marguerite could only construe the page’s enigma, that he intended visiting her abode so disguised.

Obeying the directions, she resorted without delay to the palace gardens, and with fear and trembling took up the station pointed out. A few minutes after the hour mentioned, chimed by the clock, two ushers passed the bench where the maiden was seated—she arose instantly, and the cardinal duke was close at hand, almost surrounded by a group of gaily dressed gentlemen.

Her courage forsook her—but it was too late to retreat—she stood conspicuous in the avenue, and the great man’s train, accustomed perhaps to similar rencontres, falling back a few paces, though within hearing, she confronted the lion in his path. A slight, almost imperceptible shade crossed his features, but he stopped, and with princely serenity listened to the faltering pleading.

“And if the wheels of justice of a mighty kingdom are arrested for one week, will it content such a faithful servant of the king?” asked the cardinal.

“I hope it will afford time to prove my father’s innocence, Monseigneur,” replied the maiden.

“Then Mademoiselle’s wishes shall be the law of France,” rejoined the minister. Bowing with dignity to the maiden, he passed onward with his suite, and she was again alone in the avenue.

[To be continued.

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BY MISS MARY L. LAWSON.

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BY THEODORE S. FAY, AUTHOR OF “NORMAN LESLIE,” “THE COUNTESS IDA,” ETC.

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A few more words on Macbeth as a work of art. There is a scene so trifling that, to such as are not prepared to look for meaning in our poet’s lightest word, it might seem almost superfluous. The “noble Macbeth” has returned from the battle where his victorious arm has saved his king and country. His heart is opened by the dangerous influence of prosperity, amid the high-beating joys of which the enemy of mankind has insinuated hopes of a deeper, more audacious, and guilty nature; but as yet they are but as hidden serpents beneath the flowers. The two scenes of the witches have been thrown in—like sublime strains of music from which an opera is to take its character, chilling the mind with vague and startling apprehensions. All this is done with a few strokes from the terrible master-hand.

A part of the effect produced by the commencement of this immense tragedy is owing to the contrast of the two mighty antagonist principles of human life—earthly good, on the one side, smiling in the sunshine, and allowing all who trust it to a full and fatal confidence, and, on the other, evil which an omnipotent and inscrutable Deity has placed in a mysterious juxtaposition, like a huge Maelstrom, and from which arises the necessity of ceaseless watchfulness and the energetic exercise of the moral faculties. We have all that, to an earthly mind, is noble, great, exciting and beautiful. Military glory is the idol which mankind has the most blindly worshiped. It has no good effect on the moral nature, but, on the contrary, has a tendency to inflate the soul with vain confidence and to give the man that most paltry and foolish of all weaknesses—a pompous idea of his own greatness. Military glory, then, at its height, appears to us at the outset of Macbeth. The brave, patriotic warrior has crushed the rebel and hurled back the invader from his country’s shore. The acclamations of the multitude hail the victor as he returns. He is for the moment invested with the moral glory of a Washington or a Cincinnatus. Not only does the nation he has saved regard him with delight and affection, but the king himself has no words to express his gratitude, and heaps him at once with thanks, honors and promises.

What a noble picture! The storm of war broken and passed away, leaving the political sky clearer than before—the good and venerable old king, whose great age does not permit him to share the dangers and glory of the actual combat, protected by the generous and brave hand of a faithful subject! The people’s apprehensions subside—the soldier returning to his field, the father embracing once more his wife and children—the hills and plains about to wave again with a plentiful harvest—the king left in safety and peace to form new benevolent plans for the security and happiness of his affectionate people—and Macbeth himself—at the pinnacle of a subject’s happiness—accompanied to his beautiful castle by his royal and grateful master—promoted in rank—improved in fortune—the favorite of his king—the savior of his country—what could Providence bestow more to make the world an Eden?

At this moment (Oh Earth! how true a shadowing forth it is of thy delusive and fatal snares!) the audience hear the tones of another world—the finger of another destiny, as unlike that which has charmed the minds of the multitudes whom we may suppose to have welcomed the conquering Macbeth, as was the hand which traced the writing on the wall at the feast of Belshazzar. At this moment, hovering in the air, the shadow gathers, and the destructive, the corrupting principle, inherent in human things—and which man was sent on earth to watch for and to cope with—falls across the path of the hero; dark and obvious enough to have betrayed to him his danger, had he been a pure and a pious man, but, through its withered and hideous disguise, appealing to his weakness—to his worst passions—with a fascinating power and a bewildering and intoxicating promise.

The colossal dimensions of this tragedy are one of its awful features. In it, Inverness is the world, the witches are sin, and Macbeth is the proud, aspiring representative of weak mortality, when unsupported by religion. The scene to which I have alluded above, and to which I call the reader’s attention, comes in amidst massive interests with such a minuteness of finish, and playfulness and sweetness of fancy, that one is struck with it as with some of those accidents accompanying great events in real life, and from their very insignificance contrasting with a tremendous power—a bird warbling—a violet blowing—or a limpid brook singing on its happy journey where a great battle is about to be fought; or an infant unconsciously smiling on the bosom of a dying father.

Macbeth has seen the weird sisters, has listened to their prophecy, has found one of their predictions verified. He is Thane of Cawdor! He has caught the dazzling dream of royalty with an eager and a determined hand. He has begun to weave in his ambitious brain the web of his vast designs. He has not only conceived—he has yielded to the dire suggestion whose horrid image unfixed his hair and made his “seated heart knock at his ribs,” against the use of nature. He has invoked the stars to hide their fires, that “light” may not see his “black and deep desires.” He has met his sinful and earthly wife, and in the interchange of a few portentous words, understood even before spoken, (for there is a freemasonry of guilt as well as of innocence and honor) he has resolved upon deep hypocrisy, prompt action, and the most tremendous guilt. That very night is to become memorable in the history of their lives and of the world, by a deed of eternal wo. The sun, now rolling calmly and brightly to his golden rest, is never to behold again the forth-going of the silver-haired old monarch, who, with his happy and triumphant suite, approaches the sweet castle of Inverness; and the raven has been, (by the deep conjuration of the blackest of human hearts,) supposed hoarse with ominous croakings at the sight of the happy and confiding king entering beneath those battlements.

With what consummate skill these innumerable ideas are presented to our imagination, and then (and here is the passage) what a transition from the gloomy and horrid depths of the corrupt human heart, to the perfume, radiance, tranquility, picturesqueness, and ever-soothing routine of external nature.

When I read the sleep-walking scene of Lady Macbeth, I think that the most perfect piece of writing ever seen in profane literature. When I fall upon the above, it appears to me that is the most delicate and exquisite in the whole range of our author’s works. Is it possible that the same tremendous hand which painted the royal tigress, at length cowed by the aspect of another world, has drawn, with a pencil of air, this lovely and inexpressibly soft scene, where the perfume of a balmy atmosphere is fresh and soothing on your forehead, and in your nostril, and where the eye as well as the smell and ear (for I can hear the breeze murmur among the green branches, and the screams of joy uttered by those temple-haunting birds as they chase each other down the air,) is filled with delight. What a warm and living picture it is, with the fewest possible words! An old castle pleasantly situated—its massive turrets look down over a peaceful, rural scene, the pure-scented air recommending itself sweetly and nimbly to our gentle senses! Who that has spent six or eight hours of the early morning at a sedentary occupation, in a room, till the senses were wearied and the limbs ached with sitting—and the lungs played languishingly and the blood moved sluggishly—and the pulse beat feebly with exhaustion—who has not, on going forth, felt this soothing sensation, as some pleasant landscape spread its tranquil and soft-colored beauties before his eye, some picturesque building broke the sameness of the picture by its bold outlines in the foreground, the ever happy birds darting about the house eaves—and the life-breathing, cool, odorous air filling his veins with sweet impulses, stirring all that is agreeable in his heart, cooling the fever of the heated brain, and sending off, with its benign blessing, a world of sad feelings or melancholy forebodings.

In three lines we have this effect; and further, who expresses this pleasing, living thought—Duncan! the doomed victim of the assassin’s dagger. Yes, he feels the sweetness of nature, and he feels it for the last time. Look around thee, old man; those swells of verdant ground, those murmuring and soft waving trees, those shadows thickening and blackening as the eye pierces into the wood, this blue and bending sky with a few sleeping, fleecy clouds, thou shalt never see them more. Nature, always so tender and exquisite, has new and unutterable charms when we are never to behold it again.

Then Banquo acknowledges the softening influence of the scene.

Here is a picture which the reader sees as if by mere accident, and the imagination follows out each hint and goes from one salient point to another till the life-like scene rises before it. The luxuriancy and blandness of summer, the beautiful martlets filling the air as we have watched them with boyish delight a thousand times, with their noisy joy. They never appear so pretty as when coming in and out of their nests under the eaves of a house or barn, and still more in the buttresses and angles of an old castle. “Their loved mansionry” gives an additional impression of the beauty their “pendent beds and procreant cradles” add to the rough old castle which itself is brought finely out from the canvass by the light reflecting from each jutty frieze, buttress and coigne of vantage.

Banquo continues the remark with a thought expressive of an observing, nature-loving mind returning, with new pleasure, to the repose of peace and the thoughts and the occupations which there have room to unfold themselves, after the bloody tumult of brutal war.

I do not know, but I suppose it must be a truth in natural history, that the birds spoken of generally build their nests where the air is purest. See, also, the superior charm which the little observation possesses, from the lips of this noble soldier, dropped in a peaceful, sunshiny moment, skilfully thrown in after the furious storms of war, and before the yet more frightful tempest of guilt which is speedily to fall like a thunderbolt upon this group of human beings, apparently so far removed from danger, and about to commence a new era of contentment.

Remark here the people collected in a circle beneath the dark frowning battlements of the war-like castle now bathed in summer light, and in the natural ease and gentle satisfaction of their hearts discussing such beautiful trifles as, however graceful and soothing, the busy warriors of those rude times had but small time to occupy themselves with. Who are they? what are their fates? Alas they are but too striking types of their fellow creatures who in the midst of life are in death. Duncan’s hours are numbered. Beneath the walls of the castle which his aged eyes survey with such admiration—whose strong turrets and picturesque buttresses are now painted with the golden light of a calm summer afternoon—which he expects to enter to a banquet, and from which he intends to go forth in the morning with renewed hope and happiness—beneath those dire walls in a few hours is to take place a scene, the farthest possible removed from his suspicions, and he is to be called, like Hamlet, without any reckoning, into the presence of his God. Thus under the crushing and unpausing hand of Destiny the good and the bad go down alike in a world through which he will pass most easily who builds his hopes elsewhere.

Banquo too is a good man. You even perceive, in those few words, that he has a delicacy of nature which has perhaps preserved him pure from contaminating influences and illusive temptations. He too is marked, without demerit of his own, to go down beneath the wheels of the dreadful impending event.

He too, in a few brief days, is doomed to be cut off—thrust headlong into eternity, while guilt remains unhurt and triumphs in the successful execution of all its plans.

For Macduff—the pious—lion-hearted—affectionate Macduff, is prepared a fate, if possible, yet more awful. His castle—the scene of many a happy hour, many a fond and merry family sport, is about to be surprised. His wife, his babes “savagely slaughtered,”

all that could be found, fiercely drawn down into the general ruin which the sinful heart of one man spreads around him. How truly is mortality painted in these events! How plainly we see what stuff life is made of! and how sternly are we taught the folly of supposing the end of man to be “here, on this bank and shoal of time.”

Malcolm, Donalbain, Rosse, and Angus, driven from their country by terror of the bloody tyrant—(now the beloved and trusted of all)—and lastly Lenox, whom we find at a later period in attendance on Macbeth, and the witness of his bursts of guilty and ferocious desperation, but at length joined with the advancing enemy.

Into the midst of this circle, on the brink of ruin when they think themselves most secure, enters Lady Macbeth. Her mere appearance touches a chord of terror in the soul of the reader, although they whom she addresses view her with very different feelings. The unsuspecting king greets in her his “honored hostess,” and pours out upon her a heart full of gratitude and love. The cruel hypocrite—so firm in the anticipation of guilt, so haughtily superior to all the prejudices of superstition—all the idle dreams of religion and a Providence—yet so ignorant of their real nature and destined to be so thoroughly wrecked in the tempest her rash hand is so eager to raise—replies with shameful effrontery and mature wickedness:

In the concluding part of the scene remark how admirably are drawn the profound hypocrisy of Lady Macbeth and the entire confidence and deeply deceived friendship of the unsuspecting king.

Thus it is with man. All around us is deceit. We know not how to distinguish the false from the true. Duncan must have had more than human sagacity to suspect wile in the chivalric soldier who had just risked his life in his defence, or in the “fair and noble hostess” who received him beneath her roof with such apparent love, gratitude and veneration.

J. J. Jenkins.       A. L. Dick.

The Lady Alice

Engraved expressly for Graham’s Magazine.

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BY PARK BENJAMIN.

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BY RUFUS W. GRISWOLD.

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OR “TRIFLES LIGHT AS AIR.”

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BY FRANCES S. OSGOOD.

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“Good bye, Vivian, don’t fall in love till you see Miss Walton. God bless you, my dear boy!” And Vivian Russell shook his kind uncle warmly by the hand and sprung into the stage coach, which was waiting for him at the gate. “All right!” said the guard—the bluff coachman smacked his whip, and away they sped along the road to London.

They will not fly so fast, but that you and I, sweet reader, can overtake them when we list, though the swift steeds of Fancy must be harnessed for the purpose. To please you, then, we will follow them anon. In the mean time, sit you down by my side on this sunny bank, opposite the gate, where Vivian’s uncle still stands and gazes after the fast receding vehicle, and I will tell you all I know about him. You had time to see, ere he took his seat in the coach, that he was a tall, nobly formed youth, possessing, in an eminent degree, what the French call, “Un air distingué.” You could not but notice the thin silky intellectual looking curls, which waved on his classical head, (don’t laugh at the word “intellectual!”) Think a moment! Is there not expression even in hair? Does not thick, bushy, stubby hair, especially if it curl, give you an idea of dullness, sensuality and want of refinement? If it doesn’t, my precious reader, take my word for it, you don’t see with your “mind’s eye,” or at any rate, with my mind’s eye. Did you observe his eyes? They are black, brilliant and expressive, full of that great rarity, in this whig and tory world, soul. His complexion is glowing and slightly brown by exposure. There is a dimple in his chin, his nose is just like that of the Apollo Belvidere, and his forehead, how shall I describe its beauty? broad, white, spiritual, beaming with thought, I cannot do it justice. There is the least perceptible curl on his beautiful lip; but you cannot see it when he smiles; for his smile is tenderness itself. In his manly bearing too, there is, perhaps, a dash of aristocratic haughtiness, at first, but it soon wears away upon acquaintance. The difficulty is to become acquainted with him; I defy a dull or a vulgar person to do it.

The cheerful, healthy looking old gentleman, who is just turning from the gate towards that white house among the trees, is, as I told you, his uncle. Vivian’s parents died during his childhood, and left him to this uncle’s care. He has just returned from abroad, come of age,—taken possession of his paternal estates,—left the old gentleman to look after it, in his absence, and gone for the first time to pass a month or two amid the gaieties of the metropolis. And now let us after him with what speed we may.

See! there is my friend, Fancy; just in time! descending in her opal chariot, drawn by a score of peacocks, which fly or creep, as the wayward goddess wills. Her rainbow scarf flutters in the air, her wild blue eyes sparkle with excitement, as she beckons us towards her. Give me your hand, sweet reader! so, one bound, and we are safe by her side; and now we too are on our road to London, and our vehicle glances like a meteor through the air. Since then we are so comfortably en route, let me just explain my motive for having been, as some will think, unnecessarily minute in my description of our hero. It was because I wished my young lady readers,—for whom this story is especially intended, to be interested in him, and I thought the surest way of making them so, was to let them trace, in his person as well as mind, a remarkable resemblance to some favored acquaintance of their own. Have I succeeded? Mary, Caroline, Julia, Isabel! Is he not the “perfect image” of—you know who? There—don’t blush, dear! I won’t tell. “Revenons à nos moutons.” Hey day! what have we here? A traveling chariot broken down in the road! Our friend Vivian bearing a lady in his arms towards the neighboring inn, which the stage coach has already reached! An old gentleman, probably her father, staring and hurrying after them as fast as the gout will let him, and the servants, postilions &c., busy in untackling the horses and righting the injured vehicle. We won’t stop to inquire the cause of the accident. Fancy will tell us that at her leisure. Let us enter the inn.

——

“My dear Margaret, are you well enough to proceed?” said the old gentleman to his daughter.

“Oh! yes—papa!—quite well—” and she rose to tie on her bonnet. “But, papa!”—Margaret hesitated and blushed⁠—

“Well, child! what now?”

“Don’t you think before we go, we should thank the young man, who so politely assisted me?”

“Fudge! we shall have time enough to thank him,—we must go in the same coach. I can’t stay here all night to have the chariot repaired. Come, child!”

They took their seats in the coach; Vivian entered after them and found himself opposite the dark-eyed girl, who had been thrown from the chariot, fortunately without injury, and whom he had carried half fainting to the inn. By her side was her father, and by Vivian’s side, a spruce and fidgetty youth, a would-be exquisite, daintily arrayed as that peculiar race are wont to be.

The refreshed horses galloped steadily forward; the first mile-stone was passed; and poor Margaret’s graceful neck really began to ache,—she had looked so long out of the opposite window, to avoid Vivian’s earnest, though half furtive gaze. So she calmly drew from her pocket a suspicious looking twist of a billet, and, drooping her dark lashes, began gravely and assiduously to tear it into small bits, placing them carefully in a bag which hung upon her arm.

And now Vivian could indulge his passionate fondness for the beautiful to his heart’s content; for the old gentleman was fast asleep, and Margaret only once raised her eyes, and, meeting his, dropped them again to her work, while a swift, bright blush stole up for a moment to her cheek, and left it pale as before. Her countenance was singularly beautiful. It was not dark, but there was a soft, mellow, sunny tone all over it, which, with her glossy, raven braids, rosy mouth, and long black lashes, produced a strangely rich effect. She wore a dark and very elegant traveling habit fitting closely to her beautiful bust; while a bonnet of ruby velvet formed a striking contrast with her deep, bright eyes and almost colorless cheek.

As she continued her employment, drawing from her pocket and disposing of note after note, Vivian could not but watch and admire the wonderful play of expression on the lip, brow and cheek before him.

It seemed to him, that he could trace, on that ever changing and ever eloquent countenance, the shadow of each succeeding thought, as it passed from her mind. Its prevailing expression was that of endearing tenderness and sweetness; but ever and anon,—a sudden arching of the lovely lip, a starry gleam of dimples on the cheek, and a momentary flash of irrepressible merriment through the fringing lashes of the half raised hazel eyes, betrayed that mirth was making holiday in her heart. But why? And to whom was that sportive glance directed? Not to Vivian, alas! but to the stranger at his side; and though he had never seen the lady before—had not been introduced, and was ignorant even of her name, a pang of jealousy shot like an icicle through his heart, at the thought. But when he turned to look upon the object of the fair girl’s evident enjoyment—he too smiled involuntarily. Nearly all the scraps of paper, that escaped from the slight fingers of Margaret, had alighted on the precious habiliments of the beau, who, when Vivian turned, was busily employed in brushing them off, with a look of solemn distress, that was irresistibly ludicrous. Alas for the dandy! His was an endless task. He had no sooner succeeded in disengaging the intruders from one part of his dress, than they flew to another, and at last dared to settle even in those shining and scented locks, which he had taken off his hat to display. This was too much. He put up both his hands. He shook himself. He tried to look up to his own hair! As a last resource, he contrived to raise his enormous mouth and blow upwards into his curls! Imagine, reader, that long and stupid face, in the awkward position I have described! The head bent, the almost white eyebrows elevated, the chin depressed, the under lip protruded and the lugubrious looking youth pulling with all his might! It was all in vain, and growing desperate, the hapless dandy meekly leaned towards Vivian, and said—“May I trouble you, sir?”

Our hero returned his imploring look with one of petrifying hauteur.——“Did you address yourself to me, sir?”

“Yes, sir!—I—I—would you be so good, sir, as to—to⁠—”

“Well, sir?”

“In short, sir, will you have the goodness to release my hair from the white favors, with which the young lady opposite has been so kind as to honor me?” Vivian bowed low and replied with equal solemnity, “Sir, I beg to inform you, that I have never been so thoroughly initiated into the mysteries of a barber’s vocation, as to do justice to your hyacinthine ringlets.” So saying, the haughty youth turned once more to gaze at his lovely vis-à-vis.

She was looking very demure, pursing her pretty mouth, and quietly bending her dark eyes upon the paper, which, she took care, should no longer annoy her fellow traveler. Vivian gazed at her with mingled surprise and admiration. What could be the meaning of her strange occupation? He would not condescend to feel inquisitive; yet he could not help fancying it was some clandestine correspondence, which she was ashamed to have known, but with which she could not bear to part altogether. When once this idea had taken possession of his mind, he could not dismiss it, and he was just working himself up into a most unreasonable fit of anger with his unconscious and unoffending companion, when, to his dismay, the coach stopped at the Saracen’s Head in London, and he was obliged to bid the lady a reluctant good-morning, without a hope of ever seeing her again.

The truth is, he was desperately in love for the first time in his life, and a thousand times did he lament his carelessness, in not having endeavored to discover her name and residence in town. All the information he could gather from her conversation with her father was, that they were hurrying home from the country in expectation of a visit from a friend.

The first fortnight after his arrival was spent in vain inquiries among his friends about the fair engrosser of his thoughts. As he was ignorant of her name, he could of course obtain no information with regard to her.

One morning, at breakfast, he received a letter from his uncle; but before I apprise my reader of its contents, I must state a fact which has hitherto been forgotten, namely, that one object of our hero’s journey had been to fulfill an engagement, which his uncle had made for him, to pass a few weeks in the neighborhood of London, at Walton Hall, the residence of an old friend of his father’s, whom he had never seen. He had half promised his uncle that he would give but three days to the novelties of the metropolis, previous to the promised visit. The following is an extract from the old gentleman’s letter.

“My dear boy, I have just received a letter from my old friend Walton, in which he expresses his surprise that you have not yet made your appearance at Walton Hall. I am anxious and disappointed at this, for I have been fancying you already deeply in love with my pet Maggie, and indeed I dreamed last night that I saw you together,” etc., etc.

One of Vivian’s virtues was decision, and another was energy. Without the latter, the first would be almost valueless. Ere two hours had elapsed, he was seated in the drawing-room at Walton Hall, awaiting the appearance of its owner. He recalled, with some misgivings, the contents of his uncle’s letter. “He has set his heart upon my marriage with Miss Walton, and I have set mine upon this bewitching unknown. My poor, kind uncle! I regret his disappointment. I dare say Miss Margaret is a very nice, well-behaved young person, but my affections are irrevocably devoted to another, and it can never be!” Just as he came to this sublime conclusion, he heard a far off voice, the very first tone of which he could not help loving, it was so sweet, so rich, and seemed so fresh from the heart. It was warbling snatches of a simple ballad, one only sentence of which he could distinctly hear; but that sentence he never forgot⁠—

And as the voice sang, it came nearer and nearer, and did not cease till the singer, a beautiful girl, tripping gaily into the room, beheld and, blushing deeply, curtsied to our hero. Could he believe his eyes? “It is—it is⁠—”

“Miss Walton,” said the lady, finishing the sentence for him, and recovering instantly her self-possession. “You wish to see my father? I will send him to you immediately;” and she glided from the room, leaving poor Vivian in doubt whether he were dreaming or awake. If awake, then were the half-dreaded Miss Walton and the lovely unknown of the stage-coach one and the same person! And he had wasted a whole precious fortnight, that he might have passed in her society! Well, he would make the most of his present visit at any rate; and so thinking, he made his best bow to Mr. Walton, who now entered, and who, most cordially shaking hands with him, welcomed him to Walton Hall, as the son of his oldest and dearest friend.

“When you sent up your card,” continued he, “I little thought that I should find in Vivian Russell the youth who so kindly assisted my daughter when our chariot was overturned. I regret that we did not know you then; but we must make up for lost time. Your uncle promised me a long visit from you, and I trust you have come to fulfill the promise.” After a short conversation, Vivian agreed to return in time for breakfast the next day, and remain for several weeks.

——

“Down, Vivian, down!” exclaimed Margaret Walton, as she entered the breakfast room, from the lawn, and gracefully welcomed Mr. Vivian Russell to the Hall. The dog had been named and presented to her father, by our hero’s uncle, a short time before; and Vivian thought he had never known the mimic of his own name, till now, when pronounced by that sweet and playful voice. Margaret seemed to him lovelier than ever, in her plain white robe, her color heightened by exercise, and a few wild flowers, carelessly wound into the soft braids of her hair.

“Papa is a late riser, Mr. Russell, and we must wait breakfast for him; but he will soon be down now—” as she spoke, she seated herself, and began, with an arch, sidelong glance at Vivian, who could not repress a smile—yes! actually began, to tear in pieces another of those tormenting little notes!

“Hum!” said Vivian to himself, “the clandestine correspondence goes swimmingly on, it seems. I will think of her no more.”

“Think of her no more!” He thought of nothing else all that day and the next and the next; and each day with a more fervent and impassioned devotion! She was so mild, yet so noble!—so tenderly beautiful! he half worshiped her already. And yet those papers. He detested deceit from his soul. Falsehood, equivocation, deception of any kind, from a child he had been too proud to stoop to them; and here he was, irretrievably in love with one who had evidently something wrong to conceal.

One day, the servant brought her a note—“From Sir George Elwyn, Miss.” A smile dimpled her cheek as she read, and then it shared the fate of many that had gone before it, and the bits were preserved as usual in the little basket by her side.

“This then,” thought Vivian, “is the secret! This Sir George, confound him! is the lover—the beloved!” And for three whole days after this wise conclusion did our hero sulk in silent misery; and for three whole days did the wondering Margaret weep, when alone, for his waywardness, and, when in his presence, laugh more gaily than ever, or curl her sweet lip, in maiden pride, at his moody replies to her attempts at conversation.

The third day was the sabbath, and as they walked home from church, a fine-looking young man passed on horseback, and bowed, with an air of “empressement,” to Miss Walton and her father. “He’s a confounded handsome fellow! don’t you think so, Vivian?” said Mr. Walton.

“Who, sir?” said Vivian with an abstracted air.

“The young man, who just passed, Sir George Elwyn. He is to dine with us, to-day.” Vivian started at the name and gazed earnestly at Margaret, who, of course, blushed as was her wont. That blush decided him. “I was right!” he exclaimed internally, and making a hurried excuse to leave them, he hastened by a shorter path to the house—wrote a note, in which, disclaiming dissimulation, he only begged his kind host to forgive his abrupt departure from the Hall, left it on his dressing-table, mounted his horse, and galloped back to town, thinking himself the most miserable fellow in existence.

——

“What the deuse!” exclaimed Mr. Walton, as he read the farewell billet of our hero—“Margaret,”—and he suddenly looked enlightened on the subject—“I hope you are not the cause of this!”

“I, sir! I the cause?” replied the conscious girl, with a very demure look of surprise—“What have I done?”

Her father could not well say what she had done, so he said nothing; but he looked annoyed and sorry, and he found fault with the dinner.

That night Vivian Russell had a strange, and, as he thought, a very provoking dream. He thought he was toiling over brake and brier, in pursuit of Margaret’s paper basket, which hovered like a “will o’ the wisp” before him, and enticed him into all sorts of dangers, up hill and down, through bog and stream, till at last, when, on the top of a high mountain, he thought it just within his grasp, an angel-face gleamed for a moment from a low cloud close by, and a white arm, reaching out, snatched the treasure from his outstretched hand, and vanished with it from his sight!

For a week afterwards, our hero, wretched and restless, tried hard to forget the maiden and her folly, as he chose to term it; but her image would not leave him. Sleeping or waking, he saw her destroying, to conceal yet preserve, the billet-doux of the happy and handsome Sir George Elwyn.

“What a shameful waste of time!” he exclaimed one day in a sudden fit of virtuous indignation. “To be sure, she does a great deal else: She writes, reads, draws, sews for the poor, &c., &c.; but then many a moment, which might be more profitably employed, is squandered in this preposterous occupation, which she really seems to make a business of.”

“What a shameful waste of time!” whispered conscience in return. “To be sure you ride, lounge, sleep, eat, &c. &c., but then many a moment, which might be more profitably employed, is squandered in these preposterous reveries, which you really seem to make a business of.”

In one of his daily rides, Vivian felt himself irresistibly impelled towards the Hall, and after wandering for some time within sight of the house, in the vain hope of catching a glimpse of its fair inhabitant, he strolled without any definite object into the village.

As he approached a low cottage, he saw a form, which he could not mistake, entering the door, followed by a footman. The door closed after them; but the window was open, and Vivian glanced in. It was Margaret! She was in the act of taking a pillow from the hand of her attendant. “See!” she said to the poor woman of the cottage, who was lying on a bed, looking very ill, “I have brought you another pillow. I hope it will ease your poor shoulders; it is softer than the last, for I tore the papers, with which it is stuffed, much finer;” and tenderly raising the invalid, she placed the pillow beneath her.

“The papers, with which it is stuffed! and this, then, is their destination! and Sir George’s note is in the old woman’s pillow! And I called it a waste of time!”

Vivian was half wild with joy and surprise. He staid to hear no more, but flew rather than walked back to the Hall, and contrived to make his peace with Mr. Walton, and accept an invitation for dinner, before the unconscious Margaret had returned from her errand of benevolence. As he saw her approach from the window, he hurried out to meet her, his face glowing with the joyous excitement of his discovery, and, hastily drawing her arm through his, exclaimed,—“I’m so happy! It is all right! I was quite mistaken; I’m so happy!” When she first recognized him, Margaret’s beautiful features lighted up, for a moment, with irrepressible joy; but the glow faded as she recalled the discourteous manner of his departure, and though she did not withdraw the arm he had taken, she received his protestations of happiness at their meeting, with a quiet dignity and reserve, which amply punished our impetuous lover for his fault. But though she would not deign to inquire in what he was mistaken, by degrees the reserve wore off beneath the genial and irresistible influence of Vivian’s frank and joyous demeanor, and for the rest of the day she allowed herself to be as happy as her heart bade her.

As our hero sat by her work-table after tea, a sudden thought came into his head. “I will see if my writing will share the fate of others,” said he to himself. And scribbling, upon some paper, the verse he had heard her sing on his first visit—beginning with, “One only I love and forever,” he cut it into small pieces and placed it on the table before her, at the same time laughingly pointing to the fatal basket. Margaret began to join the pieces, succeeded in the first line, colored, smiled as she read, and making a playful feint of putting them in the basket, threw them at last, with would-be carelessness, into a book, which lay open on the table.

Vivian’s heart beat high! and higher still, when, gently taking his pencil from his hand, she wrote on a card, and cut to pieces, the following lines, which after much puzzling he placed correctly together. “I sincerely congratulate the ‘one only.’ He or she, whichever it may be, will be happy certainly in the invariable devotion you display.”

Vivian bit his lip at the word “invariable;” for he remembered his fit of ill-humor. But he did not despair, he wrote again, as follows,⁠—

Margaret seemed to become suddenly sensible that this at least was a clandestine correspondence; for blushing again more deeply than before, she rose and left the room, with the paper still in her hand. She did not return that evening, and our hero began to fear that his half playful, half in earnest declaration had offended her. They met at breakfast, however, and save a slight additional shade of reserve, her manner was the same as usual.

Vivian knew not what to think. He pined to be relieved, but he would not, without further encouragement, hazard another and more formal declaration.

Awaking from his reverie, he found himself alone in the breakfast-room, turning, unconsciously, the key of Margaret’s work-box. Suddenly a little secret door sprung open at his accidental touch, and there, on a tiny shelf, lay a paper with “Vivian,” written on the outside, in a delicate female hand! Bewildered with love and hope, he opened it ere he thought of the dishonor of so doing, and found—(yes! it was no dream and he was the happiest of the happy!)—the very bits of paper, which he had laid before her the night previous, and which she had thrown so carelessly into a book! Forgetting, in his passionate delight, the impropriety, the indelicacy of allowing her to know that her secret was betrayed, he hurriedly penciled on a card⁠—

He placed it on the shelf, hastily closed the little door, and left the house; after meeting Mr. Walton on the stairs, and promising to call the next day.

——

Vivian was punctual to his appointment; but Miss Walton received him with a cold and quiet dignity, for which he could not account. Her cheek was flushed, and she looked as if she had been weeping bitterly. She was slowly tearing a note. As soon as she had finished, she touched the spring of the secret door, and, taking from the shelf the unfortunate card, deliberately tore it into atoms, and placed the bits in the basket. Vivian gazed upon her in mingled astonishment and despair.

“Wont they hurt the poor woman’s head?” asked he, attempting to smile.

“Not so much as they have hurt my heart,” replied Margaret in a low tone, and rising as she spoke, she was gone before he had time to reply. He resolved to ask an explanation, and simply writing, “How have I offended you?”—he again used the secret shelf as a repository for his thoughts.

The next day he called again. The box was still on the table, but the little door, the shelf, the note, had vanished, and only a hollow space disfigured our heroine’s beautiful India work-box. It seemed she was determined to have no secret correspondence, either with him or any one else. Vivian thought himself alone, and, leaning his head on the box, sighed deeply. His sigh was echoed, and, looking up, he caught Margaret’s eyes bent mournfully upon him—blushing she turned away. He sprung up, caught her hand, drew her gently to the sofa, and pointing to the box, looked imploringly, but silently, in her face.

“Oh!” she said, in a faltering voice, “how could you so humble me in my own eyes, as to let me know that you had discovered the only secret I ever had in my life?”

A sudden light flashed upon Vivian’s mind!

“Was that it, dearest Margaret? It was wrong, it was indelicate; but I did not think of it then, I was so happy, and Heaven knows I have suffered enough for my fault! Forgive me! you will forgive me?”

“I have already forgiven you, Vivian.”

“But that is not enough; you must do more than forgive, you must love me, dear one!” he murmured, drawing her tenderly towards him.

“Must I?” said Margaret playfully; “Well, then, if I must, I must! I have always been a pattern of obedience—have I not, papa?” and Mr. Walton entering, as she spoke, the happy but embarrassed girl escaped from Vivian’s ardent thanks, and flew to her chamber, to recall his every look and tone, and to live over again in fancy the joy of that delightful interview.

An hour afterwards, he joined her in her walk, and gave her the whole history of his love, his suspicions and his jealousy.

“And so, Mr. Vivian Russell,” said the lady, when he had concluded, “those harmless atoms of paper have been the cause of all this misunderstanding and estrangement. Truly, indeed, said the bard that,

COMPOSED FOR GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

Of the works of cotemporary English poets of the second class, perhaps none have been more commented upon or less read in America than those of Alfred Tennyson. The chief reason may be that never until now having been reprinted here, and a very small number only of the first English impression having been imported, they have not been accessible to many whom the praises or the reviewers would have led to examine into their pretensions. The Cardinal de Richelieu, it is said, fancying himself as skilled in poetry as in diplomacy, wrote a tragedy, which having been damned on its anonymous presentation to the critics, he tore into atoms and burned. For like cause Mr. Tennyson, soon after the publication of his “Poems, chiefly Lyrical,” committed all the copies of them he could regain to the fire. But the cardinal and our cotemporary erred. Time, not fire, is the trier of verse. Upon the surface of the stream of ages the good will at some period rise to float forever, the middling for a while live in the under current of the waters, and in the end, with the utterly worthless, sink into the oblivious mire at the bottom. To this conclusion Mr. Tennyson seems now to have been brought, for he has this summer republished his early poems, with many new ones which, though free from some of the more conspicuous faults of his first productions, generally lack their freshness, beauty and originality. We look in vain in the second volume of the edition before us for pieces surpassing his Mariana, Oriana, Madeline, Adeline, Margaret, The Death of the Old Year, or parts of The Dream of Fair Women. He excels most in his female portraitures; but while delicate and graceful they are indefinite; while airy and spiritual, are intangible. As we read Byron or Burns, beautiful forms stand before us, we see the action of their breathing, read the passionate language of their eyes, involuntarily throw out our arms to embrace them; but we have glimpses only of the impalpable creations of Tennyson, as far away on gold-fringed clouds they bend to listen to dreamlike melodies which go up from fairy lakes and enchanted palaces.

Tennyson has been praised as a strikingly original poet. He has indeed a bold and affluent fancy, whereby he tricks out common thoughts in dresses so unique that it is not always easy to identify them; but we have not seen in his works proofs of an original mind. He certainly is not an inventor of incidents, for most of those he uses were familiar in the last century. Dora he acknowledges was suggested by one of Miss Mitford’s portraits, and the Lady Clare by Mrs. Farrar’s Inheritance; The Day Dream, The Lady of Shalott, and Godiva, are versions of old tales, skilfully made, but showing no creative power. There is a statue-like definiteness and warmth of coloring about the following stanzas from the first of these poems which we have not elsewhere observed in his writings:

There is also a beautiful passage in Godiva, which we cannot forbear to quote:

A specimen of description, graphic, but not very poetical, is the following from the Miller’s Daughter:

In The Day Dream, from which we have already quoted, the following lines will suggest to the reader’s mind the story of Rip Van Winkle, or Sleepy Hollow:

Tennyson frequently exhibits a rare sense of the beautiful, “a spirit awake to fine issues,” and, in his own language,

Yet this sense is sometimes dead in him, and he exhibits as little taste as is possessed by ante-diluvian McHenry. A critic for whose judgment we have great respect, and who seems determined to believe Mr. Tennyson “the first original English poet since Keats, perhaps the only one of the present race of verse writers who carries with him the certain marks of being remembered hereafter with the classic authors of his language,” points to St. Simeon Stilites as the finest of his productions. It is not his worst, but if he had not written better we should desire none of his companionship. In the opening lines a devotee prays, in the very language of old cloister legends⁠—

Recounting his mortifications, he says⁠—

At length the miserable fool, with no rebuke for the heathen thought that God is moved by penances like these instead of active efforts to promote His cause and human happiness, working miracles such as the earliest saints performed, climbs up into his airy home and there “receives the blessed sacrament.” Where is Mr. Tennyson’s “high, spiritual philosophy,” and “transcendental light?” The ideas, imagery and style of expression in this poem are familiar to all readers of monkish stories, and from the beginning of it to the end there are not half a dozen lines to be remembered when the book is closed.

We cannot foretell to what degree of popularity these poems will attain in America. The fewness of the copies here, before the appearance of the present edition, enabled some persons to steal the author’s livery and achieve great reputation among a class who will now transfer their admiration to him who “stole at first hand from Keats.” That Tennyson has genius cannot be denied, but his chief characteristics pertaining to style, they will not long attract regard. We have better poets in our own country—Bryant, Longfellow, and others—who put “diamond thoughts in golden caskets;” and all true critics will prefer their simple majesty or beauty to the fantastic though often tasteful and brilliant displays of Tennyson. The difference between them is like that which distinguishes the sparkling frost that vanishes in the sun from ingots of silver that may be raked into heaps and will last forever.

Our attention has been directed to resemblances between the poems of Tennyson and those of our own quaint and felicitous humorist, Doctor Oliver Wendell Holmes. We have not space for a parallel. The first is a man of fortune who has given twenty years to the poetic art; the last a young physician who, devoting all his time to a laborious profession, has little leisure for dalliance with the muse, and no ambition to win “a poet’s fame.” Yet even as a versifier Holmes is equal to Tennyson, and with the same patient effort and care, he would in every way surpass him as an author.

These are charming volumes, written with a freshness and spirit that delights and would surprise us were we not familiar with the first work of their author. Mrs. Kirkland has opened a new vein in our national literature. Her sketches of forest scenery and wood-craft, with all its varied details, are not less true than graphic. We Americans are probably inclined to think too lightly of the vigor and intelligence displayed in them; that bad old adage about the estimate of a prophet in his native land unfortunately applies with force to Mrs. Kirkland, Mrs. Brooks and some other writers of this country whose works, while they excite comparatively little attention here, are passing through numerous editions abroad. All the world has read the pleasant stories in “Our Village,” by Miss Mitford. We institute no comparison between her and our own “Mary Clavers,” but we think our countrywoman has exhibited powers infinitely superior to those of the popular delineator of English rural life. She is sometimes extravagant, indeed; but a tendency to extravagance has its foundation in nature, and is necessary in all works of art, from pen or pencil, to produce a true impression. Having made a pedestrian tour through the country about “Montecute,” a few years ago, and gained by observation some knowledge of its inhabitants, we thought after glancing at a few of Mrs. Kirkland’s chapters that she had exaggerated too much their peculiarities; but on closing her volumes we are as confident of their truth as of their extreme cleverness. One or two of Miss Mitford’s stories may be read with pleasure, and a philosopher can endure a third; but the fourth invariably induces sleep or weariness. There is, however, no monotony to pall in “Mary Clavers;” the tragic and the comic, the pathetic and the droll, succeed each other so rapidly in her works that they are as various in their tone as the inimitable “Don Juan.”

We might find some faults in “Forest Life,” but its good qualities so predominate that the task becomes both difficult and ungracious. We will allude to one only—the too frequent introduction of French words and phrases—not, certainly, from vanity, for no woman has less affectation than our author—but doubtless from habit and a desire of condensation. A pithy French phrase of three words, to those who understand the language, will frequently convey more meaning than half a dozen English lines; but, Mrs. Clavers, there are in this world a vast number of very decent people who know as little of French as a politician does of honesty.

We have seen few American books comparable to this in elegance of paper, typography and embellishments. The richest productions of the printers of London and Paris do not surpass it. Of its literary character—having read but a few chapters—we can speak with less confidence. The author, with his family, we believe left New York in the autumn of 1828, and making pleasure the principal object of his pursuit, passed through the most interesting portions of Europe, Africa and Asia. He was in Egypt during an important period, and enjoyed there all the facilities he could well desire for the acquisition of information. But so numerous are the works relative to that country, which have been published within a few years, that little in regard to its antiquities or social condition was left to be discovered, and instead, therefore, of presenting familiar statistics and minute descriptions of fallen columns and crumbling arches, Mr. Cooley has given us a gallery of character-sketches in which the various classes of travelers, exiles, and other “Franks,” encountered on the banks of the Nile, on the deserts and among the ruins, are exhibited. We cannot tell to what degree of confidence these portraitures are generally entitled, but we fancy the English tourists are not truly represented in his “Wrinklebottoms” and “Sneezebiters;” and we are sure our intelligent consul at Cairo, Mr. Gliddon, is not the real original of the picture which bears his name. Mr. Cooley sometimes writes carelessly and incorrectly; such phrases as “fellow-townsmen” and some others in the volume before us, may pass without reproof in hasty conversation, but it is not easy to excuse their appearance in a printed book. Though far from faultless, “The American in Egypt” is an instructive and amusing record of travels and observations.

Mr. James has probably written more than any other living English author. We have not now a list of his works, but a London bookseller advertises a set of them, as “nearly complete,” containing one hundred and twenty-three volumes. Many of them are historical, and one is poetical; but the greater number is composed of novels and romances. These last have some excellent qualities which distinguish them from nearly all other works of their kind, especially from the romances of Walter Scott. They are truer as histories than the chronicles and biographies of the author of Waverley. Whatever incidents he may invent, Mr. James draws his real characters with scrupulous fidelity. Philip Augustus, Richelieu, and Henri IV. are great historical pictures, of which the details are imaginary, but the general impression given so correct that a man may learn nearly as much by reading them as from Sismondi’s History of France for the periods to which they relate. While Scott’s histories are as unworthy of credit as his novels, James, in his historical writings, is singularly careful as well about their minutest incidents as their principal effect, so that he is in a way one of the best of living historians. Of The Life of Edward the Black Prince we have not space for a review; but we have found it exceedingly interesting, and we gladly commend it to the favorable attention of our readers.

Any work descriptive of the characters and events of the great Irish rebellion of 1798, must possess considerable interest. The volumes before us, while they are written with a kindness and candor which distinguish few of the chronicles of the stormy period to which they relate, are constructed so carelessly, are so destitute of continuity and method, as to deserve little praise for their literary execution. The notices of Emmett, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the brothers John and Henry Sheares, to whose fate the indignant eloquence of Curran imparted such interest, and many others will, however, enchain the reader’s attention and well reward him for laboring through the more heavy passages. It is estimated by the most moderate judges that the number of persons slain during the rebellion was not less than seventy thousand; twenty thousand on the side of the government, and fifty thousand on that of the insurgents; and it is generally admitted that more were murdered in cold blood than fell on the fields of battle. The judicial investigations which followed were mere mockeries, and the whole conduct of the triumphing government so atrocious as to shock the sensibilities of the whole civilized world. The history of these scenes cannot yet be written. Doctor Madden has but added material to the accumulating stores which await some laborious and skilful writer of the next century. His work will fulfill its office by attracting a momentary attention to the subject, and afterward by appearing as an authority in quotations on the margins of a successor’s pages.

Female writers have generally a superior tact in painting manners; a discerning eye for the lights and shadows of social life; and their pictures of the family or the ball are marked by a certain detail which we seldom find in the writings of the other sex. Mrs. Charles Gore has an excellent reputation for this kind of ability. Her characters are well drawn, the interest of her stories is well sustained, and their moral is always correct. Of the volumes before us we have read but a moiety, though enough to see that they are worthy of their author. The first contains The Man of Fortune, and Ango, or the Merchant Prince; and the second, The Queen’s Comfit Maker; A Legend of Tottenham Cross; The Young Soldier, or Military Discipline; A Lucky Dog; The Fatal Window; The Railroad; The Mariners of the Pollet; The Wife of an Aristocrat; Neighbor Grey and her Daughter; and The Jewess.

We have room only to announce the appearance of an American edition of this work, and to remark that it is a collection of the most entertaining memoirs in our language.

Alexander Hamilton Bogart.—Our attention was not long ago called to this name by the number of elegiac verses and eloquent obituary paragraphs upon “the admired and lamented young Bogart,” which we found in an old file of Albany papers, while referring to them for other matters connected with some researches in which we were at the time engaged. On inquiring in his native city for the productions of one whose early death had caused so general a sensation in the community of which he was a member, we found that he was still remembered, and still deplored. His literary abilities, not less than his personal character, seemed to have left a profound impression on all who knew him; but of his writings we could recover scarcely any, and those we obtained were principally of a fragmentary character. Yet these fragments, though their local and personal allusions were lost upon us, as they would be upon most of our readers, had in them veins of sentiment and humor that sufficiently proved the easy and versatile genius of their author, and inspired the regret that a man evidently so gifted had not left his countrymen some more finished mementos of his genius. Mr. Bogart was a native of the city of Albany, where, at the early age of twenty-one years, he died, in 1826. He was engaged in the study of the law at the time of his decease, and, as we have learned from an eminent member of the bar in that city, gave the highest promise of professional reputation, when his studies were interrupted by the illness which terminated in his death. In an interval of that illness, he is said to have destroyed such of his writings as were within his reach. The following spirited song, being happily in the hands of a friend, escaped with the fragments we have already alluded to, and, judging by them, is a characteristic specimen of his verse.

Mr. Bogart composed with singular rapidity, and would frequently astonish his companions by an improvisation equal to the elaborate performances of some poets of distinguished reputation. It was good-naturedly hinted on one occasion that his impromptus were prepared beforehand, and he was asked if he would submit to the application of a test of his poetical abilities. He promptly acceded, and a most difficult one was immediately proposed. Among his intimate friends were the late Colonel John B. Van Schaick and Charles Fenno Hoffman, both of whom were present. Said Van Schaick, taking up a copy of Byron, “The name of Lydia Kane”—a lady distinguished for her beauty and cleverness, who died a year or two since, but who was then just blushing into womanhood—“the name of Lydia Kane has in it the same number of letters as a stanza of ‘Childe Harold;’ write them down in a column.” They were so written by Bogart, Hoffman and himself. “Now,” he continued, “I will open the poem at random; and for the ends of the lines in Miss Lydia’s acrostic shall be used the words ending those of the verse on which my finger may rest.” The stanza thus selected was this:

The following stanza was composed by Bogart within the succeeding ten minutes—the period fixed in a wager—finished before his companions had reached a fourth line, and read to them as we print it⁠—

We need not inform the reader that few of the most facile versifiers could have accomplished the task in hours. Bogart nearly always composed with the same rapidity, and his pieces were marked by the liveliest wit and most apposite illustration. Of how many young Americans who, like him, died as the bud of their promise was unfolding, have we heard! “Whom the gods love, indeed die young.”

The Annuaries.—The Gift may be regarded as a dial by which to learn the progress of the arts in America. The best of our painters and engravers are engaged in its embellishment, and in pictorial beauty as well as literary character every new volume surpasses its predecessor. The Gift for 1843 will be issued in a few days, with pictures from Malbone, Huntington, Inman, Chapman, Sully, and others, and prose and verse by Herbert, Simms, Miss Gould, Mrs. Seba Smith, Mrs. Sigourney, and some half dozen beside. The Token, published for fourteen years in Boston, will not again be issued.

John Jacob Astor, the wealthiest citizen of the United States, has with enlightened liberality devoted three hundred thousand dollars to the establishment of a public library in New York, an elegant and durable edifice is being built in the most pleasant part of the city for its reception, and Doctor Cogswell, a gentleman of taste and sound learning, is engaged in the purchase of books for it. There are a large number of libraries in America, owned by societies and individuals, but none yet for the public, and none that, if they were free like the great libraries of the old world, would be of much use to men of science or letters. To so many of the million as can buy shares in them those of Boston, New York and Philadelphia will afford sufficient means of amusement, but if a man wishes to explore any department of science, moral, political, or historical, and resorts to them, he will soon be compelled to abandon his researches or to go abroad for their prosecution. Indeed, except the library of Congress, which is not half so good as an intelligent bibliopole with the requisite means might make it in six months, there is in this country no collection of books relating to our own history comparable with several collections in England, and for works by American authors, for our national literature, such as it is, the very last place to look is in an American library. Stepping a few days since into an extensive bibliographical establishment in this city, we were shown an order for American books, by catalogue, amounting to several thousand dollars; with great difficulty they had been found among the book-stalls and other out-of-the-way places, and shipped to London, to be added to a collection probably already as large as any existing here, except two or three owned by governments and societies, and a few in the hands of private individuals. We have examined carefully most of the libraries of any consequence in the United States, and know something of their condition. Small as they are, compared with the libraries of Europe, they are made up in a great degree of duplicate copies of worthless books, and are most poorly supplied with works by our countrymen or relating to our history and institutions. They are managed by persons incompetent to discharge their duties; have librarians who cannot comprehend the title pages of half the books mentioned in their catalogues; and add very little indeed to the means of obtaining knowledge which have an independent existence. The Astor library will be different. The large amount of money appropriated by its founder, the ability of his actuary, and the system which has been proposed for its government, give promise that we are to have at length the nucleus, gradually and surely to be enlarged into a really good American library, to which scholars may resort with such hopes of advantage as now prompt them to visit England, Germany, Spain, or France.

Mr. Francis J. Grund, our Consul at Bremen, and author of “Aristocracy in America,” “The Americans in their Moral, Social and Political Condition,” etc., has nearly ready for press a work on the state and prospects of Germany, which will be published in a few weeks by Longman, Reese, Orme, Browne & Longman, of London. It will of course be reprinted in this country.

Doctor Marsh.—We learn with great pleasure that Professor Torrey, of the University of Vermont, is preparing for publication the writings, religious, philosophic and literary, of the late President Marsh, the greatest American who has died in this decade.

Mr. Fay’s Notes on Shakspeare.—The series of articles by Mr. Theodore S. Fay, on the writings of Shakspeare, which we are publishing in this Magazine, prove that the subject, however ably or frequently it has been treated, is not exhausted. Shakspeare’s works will probably continue through all future time to be more read than any other productions save the inspired books which compose the Holy Bible. They contain peculiarities which distinguish the author from every other writer, and have made him for two centuries the object of the world’s attention and admiration. With all the praise awarded to him by the greatest critics of all nations, we believe with our correspondent that he is not even yet generally understood, and that many thousands read his plays, and see them performed, without a true idea of their particular beauty and profound meaning. The system of the German critic, Ulrici, alluded to by Mr. Fay, is highly interesting, and this entire series of papers—which will be completed in four or five more numbers—without being so studied as the critiques of Schlegel and Hazlitt, is well calculated to call the popular attention to beauties which have not generally been observed, and many of which we do not remember having seen pointed out before at all.

The Antiquities of Central America.—Few subjects have recently attracted more attention than that of the discovery of the vast remains of ancient cities in the southern port of this continent. The “hand book” of Mr. John L. Stephens, descriptive of his hasty journey through Central America, though it contains little new information, and none of the curious learning which we look for in the chronicle of an antiquary’s researches, has been read with avidity in this country and in Europe, and is soon to be followed by an account of a second visit to the same scenes. Since the return of Mr. Stephens, Mr. Norman, an intelligent and careful explorer, has passed several months in Yucatan, visiting Tchechuan and other places not discovered by former travellers, and abounding in interesting relics of an aboriginal race, and monuments, yet undecayed by time, which show that their builders were far advanced in civilization. Mr. Norman is now preparing for this magazine a series of articles on the ruins of Yucatan, the first of which, with illustrative engravings by Butler, from original drawings, will probably appear in our next number.

National Songs.—Among the new works to be published in Philadelphia, during the autumn, is “A Collection of American Patriotic, Naval and Military Songs, in three volumes,” by the veteran bookseller, Mr. McCarty. It will be curious and unique.

Thulia, a Tale of the Antarctic, is the title of a beautiful poem by J. C. Palmer, U. S. N., written while the author, attached to the Exploring Expedition, was in the Southern seas, which will soon be published in New York, with illustrations engraved by Adams, from designs by Agate.

The Smuggler’s Son, with other Tales and Sketches, in Prose and Verse, is the title of a volume from the pen of a lady of Tennessee, soon to be published by Herman Hooker, of this city.

Mr. Alfred B. Street, one of the most graphic and natural of the poets who have attempted the description of external nature, we learn has a collection of his writings in press.

Transcriber’s Notes:

Table of Contents has been added for reader convenience. Archaic spellings and hyphenation have been retained. Obvious punctuation and typesetting errors have been corrected without note.

[End of Graham’s Magazine, Vol. XXI, No. 3, September 1842, George R. Graham, Editor]