The Token, edited by Samuel Griswold Goodrich (Boston: Gray & Bowen, 1832)

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Note. The figures, inserted in the outlines of the letters forming the word ‘Token,’ on the opposite page, are taken from ancient medals. They are explained as emblems of Genius, Imagination, Painting, Poetry and Knowledge.

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[frontispiece]

R. Neale Print. Boston.

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Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year eighteen hundred and thirty-two, by Samuel G. Goodrich, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of Massachusetts.

BOSTON:
Printed by Samuel N. Dickinson,
52 Washington Street.

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[p. ix]

PREFACE.

In issuing our sixth volume, it gives us pleasure to state that an arrangement has been effected with the publishers of the Atlantic Souvenir, by which that work has been united with the Token. Having thus been able to unite the efforts of the artists and writers who have before contributed to each of these publications, we may be allowed to hope that the present volume is, in some respects, superior to any of its predecessors.

The publishers have made great exertions to procure suitable embellishments. Their expenses in this department have been much larger than in any previous year. It is a subject of regret to them that they have been unable to obtain a larger number of original designs for their engravings. The extreme difficulty of procuring such as are appropriate must be their apology. The original subjects in the present volume are thought to possess great merit, and will add to the fame of the artists, to whom they have been indebted for them. As to the other engravings, they believe that the great beauty of many of them will compensate for the fact that they are from designs of European origin.

We have again to thank our literary friends for their numerous favors, and to request a continuance of their kind assistance. Our contributors are particularly requested to preserve copies of their articles, as from the multiplicity of communications received we can in no case promise to return them. They will also please bear in mind that no decision as to the insertion of a piece, can in general be announced to the author till near the time of publication.

It only remains to mention the necessary absence of the editor, while a portion of the volume was going through the press. A part of his duties has consequently been discharged by a friend.

Boston, October 1, 1832.

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EMBELLISHMENTS.

1. Presentation, drawn by E. Gallaudet, and engraved by A. Hartwell.

2. Fancy Title Page, centre piece painted by A. Fisher, drawn and engraved by E. Gallaudet.

3. Vignette, altered, drawn and engraved, after a sketch of C. M. Metz, by A. Bowen … 13

4. The Storm, painted by A. Fisher, engraved by G. W. Hatch … 15

5. The Rescue, painted by A. Fisher, engraved by E. Gallaudet … 33

6. Dancing, painted by S. Le Clerc, engraved by J. J. Pease … 47

7. Guardian Angels, painted by Sir J. Reynolds, engraved by Jno. Cheney … 73

8. Delhi, Drawn by W. Purser, engraved by J. B. Neagle … 113

9. Italian Peasants, painted by P. Williams, engraved by T. Kelly … 135

10. Poor Relations, painted by Stephanoff, engraved by O. Pelton … 145

11. The Bridesmaid, engraved by G. B. Ellis … 167

12. Joan of Arc, engraved by J. B. Neagle … 185

13. The Shipwreck, painted by J. Vernet, engraved by J. B. Neagle … 201

14. Belshazzar’s Feast, painted by J. Martin, engraved by W. Keenan … 217

15. Audrey and Touchstone, engraved by A. Lawson … 249

16. Rural Amusement, painted by Sir T. Lawrence, engraved by G. B. Ellis … 273

17. Mazeppa, painted by H. Vernet, engraved by Illman and Pilbrow … 313

18. The Portrait, painted by Leslie, engraved by J. Cheney … 337

19. A Scene in Spain, engraved by G. W. Hatch … 353

20. Vignette, drawn by P. Violet, engraved by A. Bowen … 354

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CONTENTS.

Page.

To … … 13

The Storm [Epes Sargent] … 15

The Shipwrecked Coaster … 17

The Rescue … 33

Autumnal Musings—By John Pierpont … 34

Passage of the Beresina—By Mrs. Sigourney [Lydia Sigourney] … 43

Dancing Days … 47

Song—By Edward Vere … 48

The Seven Vagabonds—By the Author of ‘The Gentle Boy’ [Nathaniel Hawthorne] … 49

Lines on seeing a Soldier of the Revolution surrounded by his Family [Samuel Griswold Goodrich] … 72

Guardian Angels [B. B. Thatcher] … 73

The Bald Eagle [Henry Wadsworth Longfellow] … 74

The Artist [Samuel Griswold Goodrich] … 90

A Cure for Dyspepsia … 93

Delhi, a Tale of the East—By the Author of ‘The Affianced One’ [Elizabeth M. Sewell] … 113

Sir William Pepperell—By the Author of ‘Sights from a Steeple’ [Nathaniel Hawthorne] … 124

Italian Peasant’s Song—By Thomas Gray, Jun. … 135

Relief of Orleans … 136

To A Wild Deer—By Charles West Thomson … 140

Gibraltar—By the late J. O. Rockwell … 142

The Hypochondriac’s Good Night … 144

Visit of Poor Relations [Frances E. I. Calderon de la Barca] … 145

An Evening in Autumn [Henry Wadsworth Longfellow] … 150

The Canterbury Pilgrims [Nathaniel Hawthorne] … 153

The Bridesmaid—By H. F. Gould [Hannah F. Gould] … 167

Fall of Missolonghi—By B. B. Thatcher … 1[69]

Parisian Milliners and the Fishes—By Mrs. Sigourney [Lydia Sigourney] … 180

Life … 184

Joan of Arc [Frances E. I. Calderon de la Barca] … 185

The Shipwreck—By B. B. Thatcher … 201

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Sketches of Conversation … 203

Belshazzar’s Feast—By Thomas Gray, Jun. … 217

[The Indian’s Welcome to the Pilgrim Fathers—By Lydia Sigourney … 220]

The Bridal Ring—By Miss Sedgwick [Catharine Maria Sedgwick] … 223

Dirge of a Young Poetess [Henry Pickering] … 247

Touchstone and Audrey [William Shakespeare] … 249

Blind Grandfather—By T. Flint [Timothy Flint] … 250

The Quaker—By H. F. Gould [Hannah F. Gould] … 265

A Night Thought—By Grenville Mellen … 270

Rural Amusement … 273

The Stormy Night [Hannah F. Gould] … 275

On a Noisy Politician—By C. Sherry [John O. Sargent] … 276

To a Lady—By Lawrence Manners [John O. Sargent] … 277

Song—By George Grey [John O. Sargent] … 280

The Stolen Match—By Caleb Cushing … 281

The Fountain of Love … 307

What is it? … 308

The Wasp and the Hornet—By Oliver Wendell Holmes … 309

The Philosopher to his Love [Oliver Wendell Holmes] … 310

My Native Land—By H. Vane [John O. Sargent] … 312

Mazeppa … 313

The Capture … 314

To a Fragment of Silk—By Mrs. Sigourney [Lydia Sigourney] … 335

A Portrait [Oliver Wendell Holmes] … 337

Trout Fishing … 338

The Fur Cloak … 342

Philip of Mount Hope [John O. Sargent] … 351

A Spanish Scene … 353

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THE TOKEN.

To ........

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THE STORM.

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THE SHIPWRECKED COASTER.

There are few classes of men more exposed to hardships and disaster, than those employed in the coasting trade of New England, particularly in the winter season. So great are their risks of property and life, at that time of the year, that it is the custom of many to dismantle their vessels and relinquish their employment till the spring; although they can poorly afford this period of cessation from labor, and consequent loss of income. Among those engaged in conveying fuel from the forests of Plymouth and Sandwich to the Boston market, there are some who continue their business through the winter. But they incur great hazards, and sometimes meet with most disastrous issues. One of these events it is my present purpose to relate. The particulars I have ascertained from eye witnesses of a part of the scene; and from one who was a personal partaker of the whole.

In the winter of 1826-7 the weather was uncommonly severe for some weeks, during which the land was covered with snow, and the shores were encased in ice. It was a boisterous, cold and gloomy season. From my dwelling house there was a plain view of the little harbor of Sandwich, in which the few vessels employed in the business before named, shelter themselves, and

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receive their lading of wood to be conveyed to Boston. Some of these were already dismantled for the winter; others were laden, and had been waiting a relaxation of the weather, in order to effect a passage. In that region a period of severe cold is commonly succeeded by rain. The north west wind which brings ‘the cold out of the north,’ gives place to a wind from a southerly point, which comes loaded with a copious vapor, and pours it down like a deluge. It so took place on the occasion to which I refer. Rain from the south east, had continued for two or three days, accompanied with tempestuous wind and occasional thunders and lightenings. [sic] It had dissolved much of the snow; but had filled the roads and low and level places with water. The ground being hard frozen retained the water on its surface, and this, with the remaining snow half dissolved, rendered the aspect of nature cheerless, and the moving from place to place uncomfortable. About noon, on the sixteenth of January, the rain ceased, and the weather being comparatively warmer than it had been, gave some prospect of a few days in which business might be done.

In the afternoon of that day, perceiving that there were some dry places on which the foot might be safely set, I embraced the opportunity to walk forth; glad to inhale the fresh air and meet the faces of men, after having been so long confined by the weather. The wind was comparatively soft, but gusty; the air was loaded with vapors, and, in the higher regions, clouds of all shapes and varying densities, were seen rolling over each other in different directions, as if obeying no

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guidance of the wind, but pursuing each an inward impulse of its own.

While doubting, for a moment, which way to walk, I beheld, on an eminence, not far distant, a solitary individual, with his face towards the harbor, seeming to be deeply intent on something there taking place. An impulse of curiosity moved me to approach him, when I discovered him to be an old experienced master in the coasting trade.

I accosted him in the customary style of salutation, but he answered me not a word. His eye was intently following the motions of a small schooner, loaded with wood, which was slowly moving toward the mouth of the harbor. My own eye pursued the motion of his, till the Almira, (the schooner’s name,) had rounded the point, forming the west side of the harbor, and hoisting her sails stood towards the north. As soon as he saw this, he lifted his hands and exclaimed, ‘He has gone out of this harbor, and he will never come into it again!’ I remarked that the wind was southerly, and of course fair. But he paid no attention to the remark. He again lifted his hands, repeated his exclamation, and, with a sorrowful countenance, departed.

I stood awhile observing the progress of the schooner. It was not very rapid. The wind was vacillating, and shifting round about her, as if uncertain in what direction to establish itself. And the vessel seemed as if conscious of the uncertainty of the wind, and therefore, undecided as to the position of her sails and rudder.

The master of the Almira was Josiah Ellis, a man of between fifty and sixty years of age. He was one whose

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gigantic frame seemed able to abide the fiercest ‘pelting of the pitiless storm.’ He had so often encountered the violence of the elements, and had so often conquered them by the simple energy of a vigorous constitution, that he took little care to guard himself against them. Reckless of what was to come, if he were sufficiently clad and armed for the present state of winds and seas, he thought not of what might be their condition, or his necessities for meeting them to-morrow. When, therefore, he felt a southerly wind and a favoring tide, he launched out for his voyage, with no crew but himself, his son Josiah, and John Smith, a seaman; little regardful that winter was still at its depth, and that an hour might produce the most perilous changes.

Thus prepared and manned, the Almira held on her way with a slow progress for several hours. The wind was changeful, but continued to blow from the southerly quarter, till they had passed Monimet point, a jutting headland about twelve miles from Sandwich harbor, which makes out from the south easterly side of Plymouth, some miles into the sea. It is a high rocky promontory, dangerous to approach; which interferes so much with the passage of vessels from Sandwich to Boston, that, while compelled to avoid it, they yet go as near to it as safety will admit. Beyond this, on its north westerly side, is a bay, at the bottom of which is Plymouth harbor; a safe place when you are once within it; but so guarded with narrow isthmuses on the north and south as to render the entrance difficult, and in tempestuous weather dangerous. They passed Monimet point about ten o’clock, and having Plymouth

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light for a landmark, were working slowly across the outer part of the bay; but under the discouragements of a dark night, a murky atmosphere, ‘a sky foul with clouds,’ and a wind so varying, that no dependence could be placed on it for a moment. For some hours, they seemed to make no progress; and were rather waiting in hope for some change, than fearing one. The master himself was at the helm, Smith was walking to and fro upon the deck, occasionally adjusting a rope, or altering the position of a sail, and the younger Ellis had lain down on a bench in the cabin. Suddenly the master’s voice was heard, calling all hands in haste. His little crew hurried towards him, and looking towards the north west they saw a clear, bright, and cold sky, about half up from the horizon; the clouds were hastening away towards the south east, as if to avoid some fearful enemy, and new stars were appearing at each successive moment in the northern and western region of the heavens.

Beautiful as this sight was, in the present circumstances it was only appalling. It indicated a rapid change to severe cold, the consequences of which must be terrible. All was immediately bustle and agitation with the scanty crew. The first impulse was to run into Plymouth for shelter. But unfortunately that harbor lay directly in the eye of the wind, and there was little encouragement that they could make their way into it. They tacked once or twice, in hopes to attain the entrance, but having little sea room, and the wind becoming every moment more violent, and the cold more severe, they were constantly foiled; till in one of the sudden motions of

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the vessel, coming with disadvantage to the wind, the main boom was wrenched from the mast. The halyards were immediately let go, and the mainsail came down, crashing and crackling as it fell, for it had already been converted to a sheet of ice. Too furl it, or even to gather it up, was impossible. It lay a cumbrous ruin on the deck and partly in the sea; a burden and a hinderance on all their subsequent operations.

Their next resource was to lay the vessel to the wind. This they effected by bracing their frozen foresail fore and aft, and loosing the gib. It was not in their power to haul it down. Its motion in the wind soon cracked its covering of ice, and in so doing, rent the substance of the sail itself. It was subsequently torn in pieces. The vessel now obeyed her helm, came up to the wind, and so remained.

While engaged in these operations, the anxious seamen had little opportunity to observe the heavens. But when they now looked up, behold the whole sky was swept clear of clouds as if by magic. The stars shone with unusual brilliancy. The moon had risen before the change of the wind, but had been invisible on account of the density of the clouds. She now appeared in nearly full-orbed lustre. But moon and stars seemed to unite in shedding that stern brightness which silvers an ice rock, and appears to increase its coldness. The brightness of the heavens was like the light of the countenance of a hard philosopher’s ungracious Deity—clear, serene, and chilling cold. They turned towards the wind, and it breathed upon their faces cuttingly severe, charged not only with the coldness of the region

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whence it came, but also with the frozen moisture of the atmosphere, already converted into needles of ice.

From the care of their vessel, they began to look to that of their persons. They had been wet with the moisture of the air, in the earlier part of the night, and drenched with the spray which the waves had dashed over them during their various labors. This was now congealed upon them. Their hair and garments were hung with icicles, or stiffened with frost, and they felt the nearer approach of that stern power which chills and freezes the heart. But in looking for proper defences against this adversary of life, it was ascertained that the master had taken with him no garments, but such as were suited for the softer weather in which he had sailed. The outer garments of the son had been laid on the deck, and in the confusion of the night, had gone overboard. Smith, likewise, had forgotten precaution, and was wholly unprovided against a time like this. So that here were three men, in a small schooner, with most of their sails useless encumbrances, spars and rigging covered with ice, themselves half frozen, exposed to the severest rigors of a winter’s sky and winter’s sea, and void of all clothing, save such as was suited for moderate weather or the land.

In this emergency, they sought the cabin, and with much difficulty succeeded in lighting a fire; over which they hovered till vital warmth was in some measure restored. On returning to the deck, they found their perils fearfully increasing. The dampness and the spray which had stiffened and loaded their hair and garments, had in like manner congealed in great quantities about the

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rigging, and on the deck, and over the sails. The spray as it dashed over the vessel, froze wherever it struck; several inches of ice had gathered on deck, small ropes had assumed the appearance of cables, and the folds of the shattered mainsail were nearly filled. The danger was imminent, that the accumulating weight of the ice would sink the schooner; yet all means of relieving her from the increasing load were utterly out of their power.

It being now impossible either to proceed on the voyage, or to gain shelter in Plymouth, there was no alternative but to endeavor to get back to their own harbor. It was difficult to make the heavy and encumbered vessel yield to her helm. As to starting a rope, the accumulated ice rendered it impossible. Nevertheless by persevering effort, they got her about; and as wind and tide set together that way, they cleared Monimet point, and came round into Barnstable Bay once more. They were now but a few miles from their own homes. Even in the moonlight, as they floated along, they could discern the land adjacent to the master’s dwelling house; and they earnestly longed for the day, in hopes that some of their friends might discover their condition, and send them relief. It was a long, perilous and wearisome night. The cold continued increasing every hour. The men were so chilled by it, and so overcome with exertion, that after they had rounded the last named point, they could make but little effort for preserving their ship. They beheld the ice accumulate upon the deck, the rigging and sails; they felt the vessel becoming more and more unmanageable, and their own danger growing more imminent every moment; yet were wholly unable to

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avert the peril, or hinder the increase of its cause. It was with them,

Morning at last began to dawn. But in its first grey twilight they could only perceive that they had been swept by the land they desired, the home they loved. Yet not so far, but that in the dim distance, they could see smoke from their chimney top, reminding them of the dear objects of their affections, from whom they were thus fearfully separated, and between whose condition and their own so dreadful a contrast existed. They looked between themselves and the shore, saw the impossibility of receiving assistance from their friends; and abandoning their vessel to fate, sought only to save themselves from perishing of cold.

Their last remaining sail had now yielded to the violence of the blast, and its accumulated burden of ice. It hung in shattered and heavy remnants from the mast. The vessel left to its own guidance, turned nearly broadside to the wind, and floated rapidly along, as if seeking the spot on which it might be wrecked. They passed the three harbors of Sandwich, that of Barnstable and Yarmouth, either of which would have afforded them safe shelter, could they have entered it. But to direct their course was impossible. With hearts more and more chilled as they drifted by these places of refuge,

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which they could see, but could not reach, they floated onward to their fate.

From a portion of the town of Dennis, there makes out northerly into the sea, a reef of rocks. On the westerly side of this, there is a sandy beach, on which a vessel of tolerable strength might be cast without being destroyed; on the easterly side there is a cove, having a similar shore, which is a safe harbor from a north west wind. But the reef itself is dangerous.

In the early part of the day, January seventeenth, an inhabitant of Dennis beheld from an eminence this ill fated schooner, floating down the bay, broadside towards the wind; her sails dismantled, covered with ice, gleaming like a spectre in the cold beams of a winter’s morning. He raised an alarm and hastened to the shore, where he was shortly joined by such of the inhabitants as the sudden emergency allowed to collect. Many were seamen themselves; they knew the dangers and the hearts of seamen, and were desirous to render such assistance as they might.

The strange vessel was seen rapidly approaching the reef of rocks, before named. She was so near, that those on land could look on board, but they saw no man. They could perceive nothing but the frozen mass of the disordered sails; the ropes encrusted with ice, to thrice their proper size, and objects so mingled in confusion, and so heaped over with ice, that even experienced eyes could not distinguish whether these were frozen human beings, or the common fixtures on a vessel’s deck. Thinking, however, that there might be living men on board, who if they could be roused, might change the

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direction of the schooner, so as to avoid the approaching death shock, they raised a shout, clear, shrill, and alarming. Whether it was heard they knew not. But very soon, the three men emerged from the cabin, and exhibited themselves on deck; shivering, half clad, meeting at every step a dashing spray, frozen ere it fell, and exposed to a cutting wind, as if they were

‘Put up your helm,’ exclaimed an aged master, ‘make sail, and round the rocks; there’s a safe harbor on the leeward side.’ Lest his words might not be heard, he addressed himself to their eyes; and by repeated motions, wavings, signs and signals, well known to seamen, warned them of the instant danger, and pointed the direction in which they might avoid it. No movement on board was seen in consequence of this direction and these signals. Ellis and his two men felt that such effort would be unavailing, and did not even attempt it.

It was a moment of thrilling interest to both spectators and sufferers. The difference of a few rods, on either side, would have carried the vessel to safety and preserved the lives of the men. The strait forward course led to instant destruction. Yet that strait forward course the schooner, with seeming obstinacy, pursued, as if drawn by mysterious fascination; and hurried toward the rocks by a kind of invincible desire. Near and more near she came, with her incumbered bulk, till she was lifted as a dead mass on a powerful wave, and thrown at full length upon the fatal ledge.

The men on board, when they felt the rising of their vessel for her last fatal plunge, clung instinctively to

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such fixtures as they could grasp, and in solemn silence waited the event. In silence they endured the shock of her striking; felt themselves covered not now with spray, but with the partially frozen substance of the waves themselves, which made a high way across the deck, filled the cabin, and left them no place of retreat, but the small portion of the quarter abaft the binnacle, and a little space forward near the windlass. To the former place they now retreated, as soon as they recovered from the shock, and there they stood, drenched, shivering and ready to perish; expecting at every moment the fabric under their feet to dissolve; and feeling their powers of life becoming less and less adequate to sustain the increasing intensity of cold.

‘We will make an effort to save them;’ said the agonising spectators of the scene. A boat was procured, and manned by a hardy crew, resolved to risque [sic] their lives for the salvation of their imperilled, although unknown fellow men. The surf ran heavy, and was composed of that kind of ice-thickened substance, called technically sludge; a substance much like floating snow. Through this she was shoved with great effort, by men who waded deep into the semi-fluid mass for the purpose. But scarcely had she reached the outer edge of the surf, when a refluent sea conquered and filled her. Fortunately, she had not gone so far, but that a long and slender warp cast from the shore, reached one of the men. He caught it and attached it to the boat, which was drawn back to land by their friends, and no lives were lost.

They on the wreck had gazed with soul absorbing interest, on this attempt at their rescue. They witnessed

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its failure, and their hearts died within them. One of them was soon after seen to go forward and sit down on the windlass. ‘Rise, rise and stir yourself,’ exclaimed many voiced at once. They had not read the maxim of Dr. Solander, concerning people exposed to severe cold; ‘He that sits down will sleep, and he that sleeps will wake no more.’ They knew this truth by the sterner teachings of the experience of associates of their own, and by the sayings of the fathers, whose wisdom they revered. Hence their exclamation to him who had taken his seat. It was Smith. He rose not, however, at their call, and they said mournfully, one to another, ‘he will never rise again.’ He did not. In truth, in a little while he was so encrusted with ice, that they could not distinguish the human form from other equally disguised objects that lay around it; and when afterwards they got on board the body was gone. It had been washed away, no one knew when, nor has it ever been known that the sea has given up this dead.

The father and son now stood alone. The only shelter they could obtain from the icy wind and drenching sea, was by occasionally screening themselves on the lee side of the low binnacle. But there they experienced so soon the commencement of the deadly torpor, that they ceased making use of this refuge, and only sought to keep themselves in motion. But resolution, struggling against a disposition of nature, fails at last. The father was seen to go forward and seat himself as Smith had done before. Again the warning cry was raised, and again it was disregarded. ‘We will save him yet,’ it was exclaimed by the sympathising spectators. The

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boat was again manned, and again launched, and reached beyond the surf in safety. But to get on board the wreck was utterly impossible. They came so near that they could speak to the younger Ellis, and hear his voice in reply. But such was the violence of winds and waves dashing on the rocks and over the wreck, that they could approach no nearer. They were compelled to turn about, leaving the father to sleep the sleep of death, with scarce a hope that the son could be saved. But they encouraged him to persevere in his efforts to keep from falling asleep. They told him that the rising tide would probably lift the vessel from her present position and bring her where they could come on board: that they would keep a constant watch and embrace the first practicable means for his deliverance. He heard them, saw them depart, and with a sad heart took his station on the cabin stairs, where standing knee deep in the half frozen water that filled the cabin, he could in some measure screen his thin clad form from the cold wind. But here he twice detected himself in falling asleep, and left the dangerous post; preferring to expose himself to the bleak wind on the quarter rather than sit down beneath a shelter and die. There he made it his object to keep himself in motion, and the people, when they saw him in danger of relinquishing this only means of preservation, shouted, and moved, and stirred him to new effort.

It took place as the seamen had predicted. The rising tide lifted the vessel from her dangerous position, and brought her on to a sand, where the people with much effort got on board, about four o’clock in the afternoon.

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They found young Ellis on the quarter deck holding on to the tiller ropes. He had become too much exhausted to continue his life-preserving movements, and the stillness of an apparently last sleep had been for some time stealing over him. His hands were frozen to the ropes which they grasped, his feet and ancles were encrusted with ice, and he was so far gone that he was scarce conscious of the presence of his deliverers.

Their moving him roused him a little. Yet he said nothing, till as they bore him by his father’s body he muttered, ‘there lies my poor father,’ and relapsed into a stupor, from which he only awaked after he had been conveyed on shore, and customary means were employed for his restoration. Through the humane attention of the inhabitants, he was restored, but with the ultimate loss of the extremities of his hands, and his feet. He still survives, a useful citizen, notwithstanding these mutilations. But the memory of that fearful night and day is fresh in his mind. It taught him, in truth, the inefficiency of human strength, when matched against the elements of nature; and made manifest, likewise, the value of that kindness of man to man, which leads him to watch and labor, and expose even his life for the shipwrecked stranger; to minister to his wants, and nurse his weakness, and safely restore him to his family and friends. A child of their own could not have been more kindly or carefully attended than he was, nor more liberally provided for, by the humane people among whom he was cast. I doubt not there is a recompense for them, with him who hath said,

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[‘]inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.’

Reader, I know not what interest you may take in my simple narrative, but I have given you a true account of the SHIPWRECKED COASTER.

Sandwich, June, 1832.

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R. Neale, Print.

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[p. 33]

THE RESCUE.

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AUTUMNAL MUSINGS:
SUNDAY EVENING.

BY JOHN PIERPONT.

We have withdrawn ourselves from the busy crowd, from the noise and the cares of the world, from social converse, and even from the domestic circle, to think upon our ways and to cultivate an acquaintance with our Maker among the things which he hath made. We are amidst the works of nature. We are in the school of natural religion. The volume is open before us on whose pages of light God has written his own character with his own hand. We do not, indeed, see therein his whole character, for not all of his works are visible by any of his creatures, in any part of the universe; still less are all his designs disclosed by the works of his hand. We neither see all that he has done, nor all that he will do; neither all that he has done to load his other creatures with blessing, nor all that he has done and will do, to crown us with immortality. But though we see but a part of his ways, though a cloud still rests upon all but the lower steps of his throne, all that he has shown us in the volume of nature, is presented to us in the light of unerring truth. If, in his word, he has spoken upon topics on which his works are silent, the silence of the latter does not contradict the testimony of the former. So far as the light of nature does lead us in our inquiries

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after the Author of nature, its guidance may be followed with entire confidence. If the light of revelation leads us still farther on, happy shall we be if we walk in that light, and grateful should we be that it is given: but no book can be a revelation from God which speaks of him in a manner that contradicts the language in which he has spoke of himself in the great volume of nature.

We would now seek to approach him by walking, for a few moments, in the light which in his works he hath shed upon our path. We cannot, indeed, look forth upon all his works. We cannot contemplate the great machine of nature in all its parts, and take particular notice of all its complicated operations, in all worlds, and at all times. We cannot even dwell upon all the effects of revolving seasons upon this little world of ours. We are minute objects when we come to compare ourselves with the other works of God, immeasurably extended, incalculably multiplied, perpetually varied as they are. Our view must consequently be narrow. We are, at best, beings of a day; and a great part of even that day must be actively engaged, and consequently we can devote but a little time to the business of retired meditation. But we can spend a few moments in reading one page of the great volume that is open before us, and in gathering instruction from it in relation to its Author and to ourselves.

The day is holy that is now coming to its close. It is congenial to holy meditations. It is a day of rest. The labors that fatigue the body are suspended. The cares that rack the mind, are, or should be, shut out from it. A calm is breathed over the passions that convulse the

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soul. We have been engaged in the worship of God. What day then is more proper than this, on which to meditate upon the object of our worship.

The season is favorable. It is the fall of the year:—a season which, while it goes by us with the wealth, seems also to move along with the gravity of age. There is a composed sobriety, a seriousness, a tender melancholy in the fall, which softens the heart of him who looks upon the fading beauties of the year; and which lifts it insensibly to the Being who is seen to have crowned it with his goodness. The very fields seem to ask repose, as if weary of the delights, or exhausted with the labors of the summer; and, in the air that goes over them, there is so much sedateness, there is something so cool and temperate, that it seems impossible, while we breathe it, that our hearts should be frozen with ingratitude, or that they should burn with unhallowed desires.

It is now eventide. With little effort we may call up to our minds the scene that has so often arrested our attention as we have walked alone in the fields of our fathers; when the toils of the day were over, when the sun was going down in glory, yet a glory so mild that the eye could repose upon it; when the shadows of evening were stretched out, and its dews were falling around us. What one of us, is there, that cannot easily recall to his mind, in all its composing, tranquilizing power—with all its interesting circumstances softened by time, and consecrated by grateful recollections—the picture of an autumnal evening, when he has been out in his native fields, meditating at the eventide! Can

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there be any whose days, from infancy to the present hour, have been so exclusively spent amidst the hum of business, in the glowing focus of a crowded population, that his memory can furnish him with no scene wherein Nature dwells so nearly alone as to make it interesting to him as the dwelling of Nature? The walks of no one, surely, can have been so narrow that he has never seen the sickly hues of autumnal woods, and meadows white with frost; and never witnessed the silent, yet touching sadness of the world, when its light was departing from it.

It is in the cool, calm breath of evening, that the Deity seems peculiarly present. Our first parents are said to have heard the voice of the Lord God, walking in the garden in the cool of the day. The voice of the present Spirit was heard as the leaves of their arbor rustled in the evening breeze: and, conscious of their guilt, they shrunk away into deeper shade, as if to retire from the meditations of that religious hour. It was in the same holy season, that Jeremiah felt the phrophetic [sic] spirit come over him. ‘The hand of the Lord,’ says he, ‘was upon me in the evening.’ And Jesus, ‘when he had sent the multitudes away, went up into a mountain, apart, to pray; and when the evening was come, he was there alone.’ There he might meditate upon the events of the day that was gone; there he might look forward with humble resignation, to scenes of future trial: there he might commune with his heavenly Father, and, like his father David, might say, while ‘I remember the days that are past, while I meditate on all they works, and muse on the work of thy hands—I will stretch forth my hands unto thee.’

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Indeed it seems impossible that he, who withdraws himself from the world in the sober light of the retiring day, who walks alone in fields, or among trees that are brightened with the sun’s last rays; and who then will meditate upon the works of God, and muse upon all that is calm and fair around him; should not then stretch forth his hands, and open his heart to the Author of so much loveliness and peace.

He who can stand forth beneath the autumnal sky, amidst glories so mild, and can be deaf to the whisper of the breeze that speaks of God, and blind to the golden ray that points to his throne; who can then limit his desires to a world that shall so soon grow dark; who can quit such a scene at such a moment, without one thought of God, without one wish, one prayer for heaven, must be blind to all that is lovely in virtue, and deaf to the eloquence of Him who speaks from the skies.

How eloquent, how impressive is this preaching of nature! How valuable the lessons it inculcates upon the mind of him who meditates at eventide, upon what he sees! He looks at the lofty elm which the frost has touched. Its leafy honors have faded, and are falling away; but the grass beneath it is still green. Why then should he envy the proud, or despise him who is of low estate? For the pitiless blast of adversity shall sweep over the one, and bear away all but a faded

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remnant of his glories, and the proud one shall sigh when he feels that even that remnant, must soon be resigned, and that too in the evening of his life; while the other, though humble, is bright and cheerful to the last, and patiently waits till the white robe of death is spread over him.

From the same objects too, he who meditates in the field upon the works of God, and who says, with David, ‘My meditations of him shall be sweet,’ may learn the goodness, as well as the wisdom, and the mild majesty of the Author of nature. The elm has thrown its shade around during the sultry season, and has tempered the blaze of many a summer noon. It continued to do so, so long as that shade is grateful to the traveller that rested, or the laborer that toiled, or the cattle that ruminated beneath it. But the frosts and cold winds of autumn have succeeded, and man now asks the genial warmth of the sun, and shuns the chilling shade; and lo! the shade that he shuns is taken away, and the light which he asks is let in upon him. The beasts of the field, however, still claim their verdant food, and the green pasture is spared to them.

In the dimness that at eventide gradually steals upon the objects before us, and renders our view of them indistinct, and our judgment of them uncertain, we see the doubts that darken our prospects of futurity, and the uncertainty that is thrown over every thing before us in life. It is this evening magic, that in changing the appearance of distant objects, presenting some in a disproportionate magnitude, and giving others a gaudy coloring that does not belong to them, invites us to reflect

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upon the mutability of every thing earthly, and upon the flatteries and falsehoods of the visions of hope. The dwelling that crowns a distant hill, as its windows catch the sun’s last ray, seems illuminated with living rubies; and while we gaze upon it, the mansion which youthful fancy rears for our future abode, and which hope sees in the distance, seems not less brilliantly lighted up with the smiles of love and prosperity, and peace; not less radiant with the honors that shall shine upon it in the sunset of our life. But the sun sinks behind the hills, and with it the glittering pageant is gone. The house that, a moment before, was so brilliant, has become perhaps the comfortless hut of poverty, or at best, the homely dwelling of patient, unaspiring labor. At such a moment, then, it is our own fault if we do not infer that the splendor which a warm imagination has thrown around our future condition, will almost as certainly fade into the sober scene of careful toil; if not even into the sad one of penury and pain. And then, while the feeling of the uncertainties of the future is thus pressed upon our heart, when we feel that our most strenuous efforts may fail, and that our wisest plans may be defeated; that it may be ours to walk unfriended through the vale of obscurity, to be chilled as the cloud of neglect settles upon us, or as the blast of adversity sweeps over us; it is then that we naturally endeavor to fortify ourselves against the evils which we may be called to encounter, and to prepare our hearts to give up, without a murmur, the good things which we may be called to resign, and the brilliant prospects that have once flattered us; and it is then that we almost irresistibly lift our eyes

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to the Great Fountain of good; and in the subdued tone of filial submission, say ‘Father, thy will be done.’

It is in such a contemplative moment, too, when the great ruler of the day is retiring in majesty from the world, when he is seen

that our thoughts turn to the last moments of one whose life has been a blessing to mankind. It is then that we see the glorious exit of a good man from the world. We see with what sublime composure he can sink into the grave, who, in life, has been ‘a burning and a shining light;’ and it is then that our hearts must join in the prayer of the prophet of old, ‘Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his!’

And lastly, it is when we go out to meditate in the field at eventide, when we linger there, in the temple of nature, till its swelling dome is lighted up with stars, till all around us is still, save perhaps the solemn murmur of the ocean, or the roar of the distant water-fall, or the moan of the autumnal blast, that seems to breathe a sigh of regret over the loveliness which it is commissioned to destroy; it is then, that meditation invites to worship; it is then that the heart rises, if indeed it can be moved, with feelings of reverence and profound devotion, towards the all pervading Spirit who sustains ourselves and all that we behold.

If there is any thing softening to the heart, it is the evening song of winds and waters; if any thing overwhelming, it is the grandeur of the skies. Can we listen to the one or gaze upon the other, without one

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thought of him who thus speaks on earth, and shines in heaven? Must we not rather stand, like the father and mother of our race,

If, like the father of Israel, we were often to retire from the world to meditate in the fields, at eventide, from how many of the pollutions of the world might we not escape! How many past errors might we not detect! and for the future what strength might we not give to our virtuous resolutions! How correctly might we come to estimate the relative importance of the present and the future! With what complacency might we dwell upon the character of God, and with what pleasure contemplate his continual presence! How might the mind be tranquilized at evening, after the agitations of the day; and when we feel the frost of age settling on our heads, and the winter of death advancing upon us, with what serenity might we view the shadows gathering and deepening around us; and in another life, how bright would our morning be!

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[p. 43]

PASSAGE OF THE BERESINA.

BY MRS. SIGOURNEY.

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DANCING DAYS.

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SONG.

BY EDWARD VERE.

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THE SEVEN VAGABONDS.

BY THE AUTHOR OF THE GENTLE BOY.

Rambling on foot, in the spring of my life and the summer of the year, I came one afternoon to a point which gave me the choice of three directions. Straight before me, the main road extended its dusty length to Boston; on the left a branch went down towards the sea, and would have lengthened my journey a trifle, of twenty or thirty miles; while, by the right hand path, I might have gone over hills and lakes to Canada, visiting in my way, the celebrated town of Stamford. On a level spot of grass, at the food of the guide post, appeared an object, which though locomotive on a different principle, reminded me of Gulliver’s portable mansion among the Brobdignags. It was a huge covered wagon, or, more properly, a small house on wheels, with a door on one side and a window shaded by green blinds on the other. Two horses munching provender out of the baskets which muzzles them, were fastened near the vehicle: a delectable sound of music proceeded from the interior; and I immediately conjectured that this was some itinerant show, halting at the confluence of the roads to intercept such idle travellers as myself. A shower had long been climbing up the western sky, and now hung so blackly over my onward path that it was a point of wisdom to seek shelter here.

‘Hallo! Who stands guard here? Is the door keeper

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asleep?’ cried I, approaching a ladder of two or three steps which was let down from the wagon.

The music ceased at my summons, and there appeared at the door, not the sort of figure that I had mentally assigned to the wandering show man, but a most respectable old personage, whom I was sorry to have addressed in so free a style. He wore a snuff coloured coat and small clothes, with white top boots, and exhibited the mild dignity of aspect and manner which may often be noticed in aged school masters, and sometimes in deacons, selectmen, or other potentates of that kind. A small piece of silver was my passport within his premises, where I found only one other person, hereafter to be described.

‘This is a dull day for business,’ said the old gentleman, as he ushered me in; ‘but I merely tarry here to refresh the cattle, being bound for the camp meeting at Stamford.’

Perhaps the moveable scene of this narrative is still peregrinating New England, and may enable the reader to test the accuracy of my description. The spectacle, for I will not use the unworthy term of puppet-show, consisted of a multitude of little people assembled on a miniature stage. Among them were artisans of every kind, in the attitudes of their toil, and a group of fair ladies and gay gentlemen standing ready for the dance; a company of foot soldiers formed a line across the stage, looking stern, grim, and terrible enough, to make it a pleasant consideration that they were but three inches high; and conspicuous above the whole was seen a Merry Andrew, in the pointed cap and motley coat of

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his profession. All the inhabitants of this mimic world were motionless, like the figures in a picture, or like that people who one moment were alive in the midst of their business and delights, and the next were transformed to statues, preserving an eternal semblance of labour that was ended, and pleasure that could be felt no more. Anon, however, the old gentleman turned the handle of a barrel organ, the first note of which produced a most enlivening effect upon the figures, and awoke them all to their proper occupations and amusements. By the self-same impulse the tailor plied his needle, the blacksmith’s hammer descended upon the anvil, and the dancers whirled away on feathery tiptoes; the company of soldiers broke into platoons, retreated from the stage, and were succeeded by a troop of horse, who came prancing onward with such a sound of trumpets and trampling of hoofs, as might have startled Don Quixote himself; while an old toper, of inveterate ill-habits, uplifted his black bottle and took a hearty swig. Meantime the Merry Andrew began to caper and turn somersets, shaking his sides, nodding his head, and winking his eyes in as life-like a manner as if he were ridiculing the nonsense of all human affairs, and making fun of the whole multitude beneath him. At length the old magician, for I compared the show man to Prospero, entertaining his guests with a masque of shadows, paused that I might give utterance to my wonder.

‘What an admirable piece of work is this!’ exclaimed I, lifting up my hands in astonishment.

Indeed, I liked the spectacle, and was tickled with the

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old man’s gravity as he presided at it, for I had none of that foolish wisdom which reproves every occupation that is not useful in this world of vanities. If there be a faculty which I possess more perfectly than most men, it is that of throwing myself mentally into situations foreign to my own, and detecting with a cheerful eye, the desirable circumstances of each. I could have envied the life of this gray headed show man, spent as it had been in a course of safe and pleasurable adventure, in driving his huge vehicle sometimes through the sands of Cape Cod, and sometimes over the rough forest roads of the north and east, and halting now on the green before a village meeting house, and now in a paved square of the metropolis. How often must his heart have been gladdened by the delight of children, as they viewed these animated figures! or his pride indulged, by haranguing learnedly to grown men on the mechanical powers which produced such wonderful effects! or his gallantry brought into play, for this is an attribute which such grave men do not lack, by the visits of pretty maidens! And then with how fresh a feeling must he return, at intervals, to his own peculiar home!

‘I would I were assured of as happy a life as his,’ thought I.

Though the show man’s wagon might have accommodated fifteen or twenty spectators, it now contained only himself and me, and a third person at whom I threw a glance on entering. He was a neat and trim young man of two or three and twenty; his drab hat and green frock coat with velvet collar, were smart, though no longer new; while a pair of green spectacles, that seemed

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needless to his brisk little eyes, gave him something of a scholar-like and literary air. After allowing me a sufficient time to inspect the puppets, he advanced with a bow, and drew my attention to some books in a corner of the wagon. These he forthwith began to extol, with an amazing volubility of well-sounding words, and an ingenuity of praise that won him my heart, as being myself one of the most merciful of critics. Indeed his stock required some considerable powers of commendation in the salesman; there were several ancient friends of mine, the novels of those happy days when my affections wavered between the Scottish Chiefs and Thomas Thumb; besides a few of later date, whose merits had not been acknowledged by the public. I was glad to find that dear little venerable volume, the New England Primer, looking as antique as ever, though in its thousandth new edition; a bundle of superannuated gilt picture books made such a child of me, that, partly for the glittering covers, and partly for the fairy tales within, I bought the whole; and an assortment of ballads and popular theatrical songs drew largely on my purse. to balance these expenditures, I meddled neither with sermons, nor science, nor morality, though volumes of each were there; nor with a Life of Franklin in the coarsest of paper, but so showily bound that it was emblematical of the Doctor himself, in the court dress which he refused to wear at Paris; nor with Webster’s spelling book, nor some of Byron’s minor poems, nor half a dozen little testaments at twenty-five cents each. Thus far the collection might have been swept from some great book store, or picked up at an evening auction

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room; but there was one small blue covered pamphlet, which the pedlar handed me with so peculiar an air, that I purchased it immediately at his own price; and then, for the first time, the thought struck me, that I had spoken face to face with the veritable author of a printed book. The literary man now evinced a great kindness for me, and I ventured to inquire which way he was travelling.

‘Oh,’ said he, ‘I keep company with this old gentleman here, and we are moving now towards the camp meeting at Stamford.’

He then explained to me, that for th present season he had rented a corner of the wagon as a book store, which as he wittily observed, was a true Circulating Library, since there were few parts of the country where it had not gone its rounds. I approved of the plan exceedingly, and began to sum up within my mind the many uncommon felicities in the life of a book pedlar, especially when his character resembled that of the individual before me. At a high rate was to be reckoned the daily and hourly enjoyment of such interviews as the present, in which he seized upon the admiration of a passing stranger, and made him aware that a man of literary taste, and even of literary achievement, was travelling the country in a show man’s wagon. A more valuable, yet not infrequent triumph, might be won in his conversations with some elderly clergyman, long vegetating in a rocky, woody, watery back settlement of New England, who, as he recruited his library from the pedlar’s stock of sermons, would exhort him to seek a college education and become the first scholar in his class. Sweeter and prouder yet

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would be his sensations when talking poetry while he sold spelling books, he should charm the mind, and haply touch the heart of a fair country school mistress, herself an unhonoured poetess, a wearer of blue stockings which none but himself took pains to look at. But the scene of his completest glory would be when the wagon had halted for the night, and his stock of books was transferred to some crowded bar room; then would he recommend to the multifarious company, whether traveller from the city, or teamster from the hills, or neighouring squire, or the landlord himself, or his loutish hostler, works suited to each particular taste and capacity; proving, all the while by acute criticism and profound remark, that the lore in his books was even exceeded by that in his brain. Thus happily would he traverse the land; sometimes a herald before the march of Mind; sometimes walking arm in arm with awful Literature, and reaping everywhere, a harvest of real and sensible popularity, which the secluded book worms by whose toil he lived, could never hope for.

‘If ever I meddle with literature,’ thought I, fixing myself in adamantine resolution, ‘it shall be as a travelling book seller.’

Though it was still mid-afternoon, the air had now grown dark about us, and a few drops of rain came down upon the roof of our vehicle, pattering like the feet of birds that had flown thither to rest. A sound of pleasant voices made us listen, and there soon appeared halfway up the ladder, the pretty person of a young damsel, whose rosy face was so cheerful, that even amid the gloomy light it seemed as if the sunbeams were

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peeping under her bonnet. We next saw the dark and handsome features of a young man, who with easier gallantry than might have been expected in the heart of Yankee-land, was assisting her into the wagon. It became immediately evident to us, when the two strangers stood within the door, that they were of a profession kindred to those of my companions; and I was delighted with the more than hospitable, the even paternal kindness, of the old show man’s manner, as he welcomed them; while the man of literature hastened to lead the merry eyed girl to a seat on the long bench.

‘You are housed but just in time, my young friends,’ said the master of the wagon. ‘The sky would have been down upon you within five minutes.’

The young man’s reply marked him as a foreigner, not by any variation from the idiom and accent of good English, but because he spoke with more caution and accuracy, than if perfectly familiar with the language.

‘We knew that a shower was hanging over us,’ said he, ‘and consulted whether it were best to enter the house on the top of yonder hill, but seeing your wagon in the road—’

‘We agreed to come hither,’ interrupted the girl, with a smile, ‘because we should be more at home in a wandering house like this.’

I, meanwhile, with many a wild and undetermined fantasy, was narrowly inspecting these two doves that had flown into our ark. The young man tall, agile, and athletic, wore a mass of black shining curls clustering round a dark and vivacious countenance, which, if it had not greater expression, was at least more active,

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and attracted readier notice, than the quiet faces of our countrymen. At his first appearance, he had been laden with a neat mahogany box, of about two feet square, but very light in proportion to its size, which he had immediately unstrapped from his shoulders and deposited on the floor of the wagon. The girl had nearly as fair a complexion as our own beauties, and a brighter one than most of them; the lightness of her figure, which seemed calculated to traverse the whole world without weariness, suited well with the glowing cheerfulness of her face, and her gay attire combining the rainbow hues of crimson, green, and a deep orange, was as proper to her lightsome aspect as if she had been born in it. I hardly know how to hint, that, as the brevity of her gown displayed rather more than her ancles, I could not help wishing that I had stood at a little distance without, when she stept up the ladder into the wagon. This gay stranger was appropriately burdened with that mirth inspiring instrument, the fiddle, which her companion took from her hands, and shortly began the process of tuning. Neither of us, the previous company of the wagon, needed to inquire their trade; for this could be no mystery to frequenters of brigade musters, ordinations, cattle shows, commencements, and other festal meetings in our sober land; and there is a dear friend of mine, who will smile when this page recalls to his memory a chivalrous deed performed by us, in rescuing the show box of such a couple from a mob of great double fisted countrymen.

‘Come,’ said I to the damsel of gay attire, ‘shall we visit all the wonders of the world together?’

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She understood the metaphor at once; though indeed it would not much have troubled me, if she had assented to the literal meaning of my words. The mahogany box was placed in a proper position, and I peeped in through its small round magnifying window, while the girl sat by my side, and gave short descriptive sketches, as one after another the pictures were unfolded to my view. We visited together, at least our imaginations did, full many of a famous city, in the streets of which I had long yearned to tread; once, I remember, we were in the harbour of Barcelona, gazing townwards; next, she bore me through the air to Sicily, and bade me look up at blazing Ætna; then we took wing to Venice, and sat in a gondola beneath the arch of the Rialto; and anon she set me down among the thronged spectators at the coronation of Napoleon. But there was one scene, its locality she could not tell, which charmed my attention longer than all those gorgeous palaces and churches because the fancy haunted me, that I myself, the preceeding summer had beheld just such an humble meeting house, in just such a pine surrounded nook, among our own green mountains. All these pictures were in crayons, and tolerably executed, though far inferior to the girl’s touches of description; nor was it easy to comprehend, how in so few sentences, and these, as I supposed, in a language foreign to her, she contrived to present an airy copy of each varied scene. When we had travelled through the vast extent of the mahogany box, I looked into my guide’s face.

‘Where are you going my pretty maid?’ inquired I, in the words of an old song.

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‘Ah,’ said the gay damsel, ‘you might as well ask where the summer wind is going. We are wanderers here, and there, and every where. Wherever there is mirth, our merry hearts are drawn to it. To-day, indeed the people have told us of a great frolic and festival in these parts; so perhaps we may be needed at what you call the camp meeting at Stamford.’

Then in my happy youth, and while her pleasant voice yet sounded in my ears, I sighed; for none but myself, I thought, should have been her companion in a life which seemed to realize my own wild fancies, cherished all through visionary boyhood to that hour. To these two strangers, the world was in its golden age, not that indeed it was less dark and sad than ever, but because its weariness and sorrow had no community with their etherial nature. Wherever they might appear in their pilgrimage of bliss, youth would echo back their gladness, care stricken maturity would rest a moment from its toil, and age, tottering among the graves, would smile in withered joy for their sakes. The lonely cot, the narrow and gloomy street, the sombre shade, would catch a passing gleam like that now shining on ourselves, as these bright spirits wandered by. Blessed pair, whose happy home was throughout all the earth! I looked at my shoulders, and thought them broad enough to sustain those pictured towns and mountains; mine, too, was an elastic foot, as tireless as the wing of the bird of Paradise; mine was then an untroubled heart, that would have gone singing on its delightful way.

‘Oh, maiden!’ said I aloud, ‘why did you not come hither alone?’

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While the merry girl and myself were busy with the show box, the unceasing rain had driven another way farer into the wagon. He seemed pretty nearly of the old show man’s age, but much smaller, leaner, and more withered than he, and less respectably clad in a patched suit of gray; withal, he had a thin, shrewd countenance, and a pair of diminutive gray eyes, which peeped rather too keenly out of their puckered sockets. This old fellow had been joking with the show man, in a manner which intimated previous acquaintance; but perceiving that the damsel and I had terminated our affairs, he drew forth a folded document and presented it to me. As I had anticipated, it proved to be a circular, written in a very fair and legible hand, and signed by several distinguished gentlemen whom I had never heard of, stating that the bearer had encountered every variety of misfortune, and recommending him to the notice of all charitable people. Previous disbursements had left me no more than a five dollar bill, out of which, however, I offered to make the beggar a donation, provided he would give me change for it. The object of my beneficence looked keenly in my face, and discerned that I had none of that abominable spirit, characteristic though it be of a full blooded Yankee, which takes pleasure in detecting every little harmless piece of knavery.

‘Why, perhaps,’ said the ragged old mendicant, ‘if the bank is in good standing, I can’t say but I may have enough about me to change your bill.’

‘It is a bill of the United States Bank,’ said I, ‘and better than the specie.’

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As the beggar had nothing to object to the national credit, he now produced a small buff leather bag, tied up carefully with a shoe string. When this was opened, there appeared a very comfortable treasure of silver coins, of all sorts and sizes, and I even fancied that I saw, gleaming among them, the golden plumage of that rare bird in our currency, the American Eagle. In this precious heap was my bank note deposited, the rate of exchange being considerably against me. His wants being thus relieved, the destitute man pulled out of his pocket an old pack of greasy cards, which had probably contributed to fill the buff leather bag, in more ways than one.

‘Come,’ said he, ‘I spy a rare fortune in your face, and for twenty-five cents more, I’ll tell you what it is.’

I never refuse to take a glimpse into futurity; so after shuffling the cards, and when the fair damsel had cut them, I dealt a portion to the prophetic beggar. Like others of his profession, before predicting the shadowy events that were moving on to meet me, he gave proof of his preternatural science, by describing scenes through which I had already passed. Here let me have credit for a sober fact. When the old man had read a page in his book of fate, he bent his keen gray eyes on mine, and proceeded to relate, in all its minute particulars, what was then the most singular event of my life; it was one which I had no purpose to disclose, till the general unfolding of all secrets; nor would it be a much stranger instance of inflexible knowledge, or fortunate conjecture, if the beggar were to meet me in the street to-day, and repeat word for word, the page which I have here

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written. The fortune teller after predicting a destiny which time seems loth to make good, put up his cards, secreted his treasure bag, and began to converse with the other occupants of the wagon.

‘Well, old friend,’ said the show man, ‘you have not yet told us which way your face is turned, this afternoon.’

‘I am taking a trip northward, this warm weather,’ replied the conjurer, ‘across the Connecticut first, and then up through Vermont, and may be into Canada before the fall. But I must stop and see the breaking up of the camp meeting at Stamford.’

I began to think that all the vagrants in New England were converging to the camp meeting, and had made this wagon their rendezvous by the way. The show man now proposed, that, when the shower was over, they should pursue the road to Stamford together, it being sometimes the policy of these people for form a sort of league and confederacy.

‘And the young lady too,’ observed the gallant bibliopolist, bowing to her profoundly, ‘and this foreign gentleman, as I understand, are on a jaunt of pleasure to the same spot. It would add incalculably to my own enjoyment, and I presume to that of my colleague and his friend, if they could be prevailed upon to join our party.’

This arrangement met with approbation on all hands, nor were any of those concerned more sensible of its advantages than myself, who had no title to be included in it. Having already satisfied myself as to the several modes in which the four others attained felicity, I next set my mind at work to discover what enjoyments were

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peculiar to the old “Straggler,” as the people of the country would have termed the wandering mendicant and prophet. As he pretended to familiarity with the devil, so I fancied that he was fitted to pursue and take delight in his way of life, by possessing some of the mental and moral characteristics, the lighter and more comic ones of the devil in popular stories. Among them might be reckoned a love of deception for its own sake, a shrewd eye and keen relish for human weakness and ridiculous infirmity, and the talent of petty fraud. Thus to this old man there would be pleasure even in the consciousness so insupportable to some minds, that his whole life was a cheat upon the world, and that so far as he was concerned with the public, his little cunning had the upper hand of its united wisdom. Every day would furnish him with a succession of minute and pungent triumphs; as when, for instance, his importunity urging a pittance out of the heart of a miser, or when my silly good nature transferred a part of my slender purse to his plump leather bag; or when some ostentatious gentleman should throw a coin to the ragged beggar who was richer than himself; or when, though he would not always be so decidedly diabolical, his pretended wants should make him a sharer in the scanty living of real indigence. And then what an inexhaustible field of enjoyment, both as enabling him to discern so much folly and achieve such quantities of minor mischief, was opened to his sneering spirit by his pretensions to prophetic knowledge. All this was a sort of happiness which I could conceive of, though I had little sympathy with it. Perhaps had I been then inclined to admit it, I

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might have found that the roving life was more proper to him than to either of his companions; for Satan, to whom I had compared the poor man, has delighted, ever since the time of Job, in ‘wandering up and down upon the earth;’ and indeed a crafty disposition, which operates not in deep laid plans, but in disconnected tricks, could not have an adequate scope, unless naturally impelled to a continual change of scene and society. My reflections were here interrupted.

‘Another visitor!’ exclaimed the old show man.

The door of the wagon had been closed against the tempest, which was roaring and blustering with prodigious fury and commotion, and beating violently against our shelter, as if it claimed all those homeless people for its lawful prey, while we, caring little for the displeasure of the elements, sat comfortably talking. There was now an attempt to open the door, succeeded by a voice, uttering some strange, unintelligible gibberish, which my companions mistook for Greek, and I suspected to be thieves’ Latin. However, the show man stept forward, and gave admittance to a figure which made me imagine, either that our wagon had rolled back two hundred years into past ages, or that the forest and its old inhabitants had sprung up around us by enchantment. It was a red Indian, armed with his bow and arrow. His dress was a sort of cap, adorned with a single feather of some wild bird, and a frock of blue cotton, girded tight about him; on his breast, like orders of knighthood, hung a crescent and a circle, and other ornaments of silver; while a small crucifix betokened that our Father the Pope had interposed between the Indian and the

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Great Spirit, whom he had worshipped in his simplicity. This son of the wilderness, and pilgrim of the storm, took his place silently in the midst of us. When the first surprise was over, I rightly conjectured him to be one of the Penobscot tribe, parties of which I had often seen, in their summer excursions down our Eastern rivers; there they paddle their birch canoes among the coasting schooners, and build their wigwam beside some roaring mill dam, and drive a little trade in basket work where their fathers hunted deer. Our new visitor was probably wandering through the country towards Boston, subsisting on the careless charity of the people, while he turned his archery to profitable account by shooting at cents, which were to be the prize of his successful aim. The Indian had not long been seated, ere our merry damsel sought to draw him into conversation. She, indeed, seemed all made up of sunshine in the month of May; for there was nothing so dark and dismal that her pleasant mind could not cast a glow over it; and the wild man, like a fir tree in his native forest, soon began to brighten into a sort of sombre cheerfulness. At length, she inquired whether his journey had any particular end or purpose.

‘I go shoot at the camp meeting at Stamford,’ replied the Indian.

‘And here are five more,’ said the girl, ‘all aiming at the camp meeting too. You shall be one of us, for we travel with light hearts; and as for me, I sing merry songs, and tell merry tales, and am full of merry thoughts, and I dance merrily along the road, so that there is never any sadness among them that keep me company.

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But, oh, you would find it very dull indeed, to go all the way to Stamford alone!’

My ideas of the aboriginal character led me to fear that the Indian would prefer his own solitary musings, to the gay society thus offered him; on the contrary, the girl’s proposal met with immediate acceptance, and seemed to animate him with a misty expectation of enjoyment. I now gave myself up to a course of thought, which, whether it flowed naturally from this combination of events, or was drawn forth by a wayward fancy, caused my mind to thrill as if I were listening to deep music. I saw mankind, in this weary old age of the world, either enduring a sluggish existence amid the smoke and dust of cities, or, if they breathed a purer air, still lying down at night with no hope but to wear out to-morrow, and all the to-morrows which make up life, among the same dull scenes and in the same wretched toil, that had darkened the sunshine of to-day. But there were some, full of the primeval instinct, who preserved the freshness of youth to their latest years by the continual excitement of new objects, new pursuits, and new associates; and cared little, though their birth place might have been here in New England, if the grave should close over them in Central Asia. Fate was summoning a parliament of these free spirits; unconscious of the impulse which directed them to a common centre, they had come hither from far and near; and last of all, appeared the representative of those mighty vagrants, who had chased deer during thousands of years, and were chasing it now in the Spirit s Land. [sic] Wandering down through the waste of ages, the woods had vanished

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around his path; his arm had lost somewhat of its strength, his foot of its fleetness, his mien of its wild regality, his heart and mind of their savage virtue and uncultured force; but here, untameable to the routine of artificial life, roving now along the dusty road, as of old over the forest leaves, here was the Indian still.

‘Well,’ said the old show man, in the midst of my meditations, ‘here is an honest company of us—one, two, three, four, five, six—all going to the camp meeting at Stamford. Now, hoping no offence, I should like to know where this young gentleman may be going?’

I started. How came I among these wanderers? The free mind, that preferred its own folly to another’s wisdom; the open spirit, that found companions every where; above all, the restless impulse, that had so often made me wretched in the midst of enjoyments; these were my claims to be of their society.

‘My friends!’ cried I, stepping into the centre of the wagon, ‘I am going with you to the camp meeting at Stamford.’

‘But in what capacity?’ asked the old show man, after a moment’s silence. ‘All of us here can get our bread in some creditable way. Every honest man should have his livelihood. You, sir, as I take it, are a mere strolling gentleman.’

I proceeded to inform the company, that, when Nature gave me a propensity to their way of life, she had not left me altogether destitute of qualifications for it; though I could not deny that my talent was less respectable, and might be less profitable, than the meanest of theirs. My design, in short, was to imitate the story tellers of whom Eastern travellers have told us, and become an

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itinerant novelist, reciting my own extemporaneous fictions to such audiences as I could collect.

‘Either this,’ said I, ‘is my vocation, or I have been born in vain.’

The fortune teller, with a sly wink to the company, proposed to take me as an apprentice to one or other of his professions, either of which, undoubtedly, would have given full scope to whatever inventive talent I might possess. The bibliopolist spoke a few words in opposition to my plan, influenced partly, I suspect, by the jealousy of authorship, and partly by an apprehension that the vivâ voce practice would become general among novelists, to the infinite detriment of the book trade. Dreading a rejection, I solicited the interest of the merry damsel.

‘Mirth,’ cried I, most aptly appropriating the words of L’Allegro, ‘to thee I sue? Mirth admit me of thy crew?’

‘Let us indulge the poor youth,’ said Mirth, with a kindness which made me love her dearly, though I was no such coxcomb as to misinterpret her motives. ‘I have espied much promise in him. True, a shadow sometimes flits across his brow, but the sunshine is sure to follow in a moment. He is never guilty of a sad thought, but a merry one is twin born with it. We will take him with us; and you shall see that he will set us all a laughing before we reach the camp meeting at Stamford.’

Her voice silenced the scruples of the rest, and gained me admittance into the league; according to the terms of which, without a community of goods or profits, we were to lend each other all the aid, and avert all the harm, that might be in our power. This affair settled, a marvellous jollity entered into the whole tribe of us, manifesting itself characteristically in each individual.

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The old show man, sitting down to his barrel organ, stirred up the souls of the pigmy people with one of the quickest tunes in the music book; tailors, blacksmiths, gentlemen, and ladies, all seemed to share in the spirit of the occasion; and the Merry Andrew played his part more facetiously than ever, nodding and winking particularly at me. The young foreigner flourished his fiddle bow with a master’s hand, and gave an inspiring echo to the show man’s melody. The bookish man and the merry damsel started up simultaneously to dance; the former enacting the double shuffle in a style which every body must have witnessed, ere Election week was blotted out of time; while the girl, setting her arms akimbo with both hands at her slim waist, displayed such light rapidity of foot, and harmony of varying attitude and motion, that I could not conceive how she ever was to stop; imagining, at the moment, that Nature had made her, as the old show man had made his puppets, for no earthly purpose but to dance jigs. The Indian bellowed forth a succession of most hideous outcries, somewhat affrighting us, till we interpreted them as the war song, with which, in imitation of his ancestors, he was prefacing the assault on Stamford. The conjurer, meanwhile, sat demurely in a corner, extracting a sly enjoyment from the whole scene, and, like the facetious Merry Andrew, directing his queer glance particularly at me. As for myself, with great exhilaration of fancy, I began to arrange and colour the incidents of a tale, wherewith I proposed to amuse an audience that very evening; for I saw that my associates were a little ashamed of me, and that no time was to be lost in obtaining a public acknowledgement of my abilities.

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‘Come, fellow labourers,’ at last said the old show man, whom we had elected President; ‘the shower is over, and we must be doing our duty by these poor souls at Stamford.’

‘We’ll come among them in procession, with music and dancing,’ cried the merry damsel.

Accordingly, for it must be understood that our pilgrimage was to be performed on foot, we sallied joyously out of the wagon, each of us, even the old gentleman in his white top boots, giving a great skip as we came down the ladder. Above our heads there was such a glory of sunshine and splendour of clouds, and such brightness of verdure below, that, as I modestly remarked at the time, Nature seemed to have washed her face, and put on the best of her jewelry and a fresh green gown, in honour of our confederation. Casting our eyes northward, we beheld a horseman approaching leisurely, and splashing through the little puddles on the Stamford road. Onward he came, sticking up in his saddle with rigid perpendicularity, a tall, thin figure in rusty black, whom the show man and the conjurer shortly recognised to be, what his aspect sufficiently indicated, a travelling preacher of great fame among the Methodists. What puzzled us was the fact, that his face appeared turned from, instead of to, the camp meeting at Stamford. However, as this new votary of the wandering life drew near the little green space, where the guide post and our wagon were situated, my six fellow vagabonds and myself rushed forward and surrounded him, crying out with united voices—

‘What news, what news, from the camp meeting at Stamford!’

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The missionary looked down, in surprise, at as singular a knot of people as could have been selected from all his heterogeneous auditors. Indeed, considering that we might all be classified under the general head of vagabond, there was great diversity of character among the grave old show man, the sly, prophetic beggar, the fiddling foreigner and his merry damsel, the smart bibliopolist, the sombre Indian, and myself, the itinerant novelist, a slender youth of eighteen. I even fancied, that a smile was endeavouring to disturb the iron gravity of the preacher’s mouth.

‘Good people,’ answered he, ‘the camp meeting is broke up.’

So saying, the Methodist minister switched his steed, and rode westward. Our union being thus nullified, by the removal of its object, we were sundered at once to the four winds of Heaven. The fortune teller, giving a nod to all, and a peculiar wink to me, departed on his northern tour, chuckling within himself as he took the Stamford road. The old show man and his literary coadjutor were already tackling the horses to the wagon, with a design to peregrinate southwest along the sea coast. The foreigner and the merry damsel took their laughing leave, and pursued the eastern road, which I had that day trodden; as they passed away, the young man played a lively strain, and the girl’s happy spirit broke into a dance; and thus, dissolving, as it were, into sunbeams and gay music, that pleasant pair departed from my view. Finally, with a pensive shadow thrown across my mind, yet emulous of the light philosophy of my late companions, I joined myself to the Penobscot Indian, and set forth towards the distant city.

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[p. 72]

LINES.

ON SEEING A SOLDIER OF THE REVOLUTION SURROUNDED BY HIS FAMILY.

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[p. 73]

GUARDIAN ANGELS.

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[p. 74]

THE BALD EAGLE.

In one of the little villages sprinkled along the delicious valley of the Connecticut, there stood, not many years ago, a little tavern called the Bald Eagle. It was an old fashioned building, with a small antique portico in front, where, of a lazy summer afternoon, the wise men of the village assembled to read newspapers, talk politics, and drink beer. Before the door stood a tall yellow sign post, from which hung a white sign, emblazoned with a fierce bald headed eagle, holding an olive branch in one claw, and a flash of forked lightning in the other. Underneath was written in large black letters “The Bald Eagle: Good Entertainment for Man and Beast: by Jonathan Dewlap, Esq.[”]

One calm, sultry summer evening, the knot of village politicians had assembled, according to custom, at the tavern door. At the entrance sat the landlord, Justice of the Peace and Quorum, lolling in a rocking chair, and dozing over the columns of an electioneering hand bill. Along the benches of the portico were seated the village attorney, the school master, the tailor, and other personages of less note, but not less idle, nor less devoted to the affairs of the nation.

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To this worthy assembly of patriotic citizens the school master was drowsily doling forth the contents of the latest Gazette. It was at that memorable epoch of our national history, when Lafayette returned to visit in the evening of his days the land that owed so much to his youthful enthusiasm: and to see in the soft decline of life, the consummation of his singular glory, in the bosom of that country where it first began. His approach was every where hailed with heart stirring joy. There was but one voice throughout the land: and every village through which he passed, hailed him with rural festivities, addresses, odes, and a dinner at the tavern.

Every step of his journey was regularly and minutely recorded in those voluminous chronicles of our country, the newspapers: and column after column was filled with long notices of the dinners he had eaten, and of the toasts drank, and of the songs sung on the occasion.

As the school master detailed to the group around him an account of these busy festivals, which were so rapidly succeeding each other all over the country, the little soul he possessed kindled up within him. With true oratorical emphasis he repeated a long list of toasts, drank on a recent celebration of the kind—‘the American Eagle,’—‘the day we celebrate,’—‘the New England Fair,’—‘the Heroes who fought, bled, and died at Bunker Hill—of which I am one!’—and a thousand others equally patriotic. He was interrupted by the merry notes of the stage horn, twanging in long drawn blasts over the blue hills, that skirted the village; and shortly after a cloud of dust came rolling its light volume along the road, and the stage coach wheeled up to the door.

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It was driven by a stout, thickset young fellow, with a glowing red face, that peeped out from under the wide brim of a white hat, like the setting sun from beneath a summer cloud. He was dressed in a wren tailed gingham coat, with pocket holes outside, and a pair of gray linen pantaloons, buttoned down each leg with a row of yellow bell buttons. His vest was striped with red and blue: and around his neck he wore a coloured silk handkerchief, tied in a loose knot before, and tucked in at the waistband. Beside him on his coach box sat two dusty travellers in riding caps, and the group within presented an uncomfortable picture of the miseries of travelling in a stage coach in the month of June.

In an instant all was noise and confusion in the bar room of the inn. Travellers, that had just arrived, and those about to set off in the evening coach, came crowding in with their baggage; some eager to secure places, and others lodgings. A noisy group was gathered at the bar, within which the landlady was bouncing to and from in a huff, and jingling a great bunch of keys, like some wild animal at a raree-show, stalking about its cage, whisking its tail, and jingling its iron chain.

The fire place was filled with pine boughs and asparagus tops: and over it the wall was covered with advertisements of new invented machines, patent medicines, toll gate and turnpike companies, and coarse prints of steam boats, stage coaches, opposition lines, and Fortune’s home forever. In one corner stood an old fashioned oaken settee, with high back and crooked elbows, which served as a seat by day, and a bed by night: in another was a pile of trunks and different

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articles of a traveller’s equipage: travelling coats hung here and there about the room: and the atmosphere was thick with the smoke of tobacco and the fumes of brandy.

At length the sound of wheels was heard at the door: ‘Stage ready,’ shouted the coachman, putting his head in at the door: there was a hurry and bustle about the room: the travellers crowded out: a short pause succeeded: the carriage door was slammed to in haste: and the coach wheeled away, and disappeared in the dusk of evening.

The sound of its wheels had hardly ceased to be heard, when the tailor entered the bar room with a newspaper in his hand, and strutted up to the squire and the school master, who sat talking together upon the settee, with a step that would have done honor to the tragedy hero of a strolling theatre. He had just received the tidings that Lafayette was on his way north. The stage driver had brought the news: the passengers confirmed it: it was in the newspapers: and of course there could be no doubt upon the subject. It now became a general topic of conversation in the bar room. The villagers came in one by one: all were on tiptoe: all talked together, Lafayette, the Marquis, the Gin’ral! He would pass through the village in two days from then. What was to be done! The town authorities were at their wit’s end, and were quite as anxious to know how they should receive their venerable guest, as they were to receive him.

In the mean time, the news took wing. There was a crowd at the door of the Post Office talking with becoming zeal upon the subject: the boys in the street

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gave three cheers, and shouted ‘Lafayette forever,’ and in less than ten minutes the approaching jubilee was known and talked of in every nook and corner of the village. The town authorities assembled in the little back parlour of the inn, to discuss the subject more at leisure over a mug of cider, and conclude upon the necessary arrangements for the occasion. Here they continued with closed doors until a late hour: and after much debate, finally resolved to decorate the tavern hall; prepare a great dinner; order out the militia; and take the general by surprise. The lawyer was appointed to write an oration, and the school master an ode, for the occasion.

As night advanced, the crowd gradually dispersed from the street. Silence succeeded to the hum of rejoicing, and nothing was heard throughout the village but the occasional bark of a dog, the creaking of the tavern sign, and the no less musical accents of the one keyed flute of the school master, who, perched at his chamber window in nightgown and slippers, serenaded the neighborhood with ‘Fire on the Mountains,’ and half of ‘Washington’s March:’ whilst the grocer, who lived next door, roused from sweet dreams of treacle and brown sugar, lay tossing in his bed, and wishing the deuce would take the school master, with his Latin, and his one keyed flute.

As day began to peep next morning, the tailor was seen to issue out of the inn yard in the landlord’s yellow wagon, with the negro hostler Cæsar mounted behind, thumping about in the tail of the vehicle, and grinning with huge delight. As the gray of morning mellowed, life began its course again in the little village. The cock

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hailed the day light cheerly: the sheep bleated from the hills: the sky grew softer and clearer: the blue mountains caught the rising sun: and the mass of white vapour, that filled the valley, began to toss and roll itself away, like ebb of a feathery sea. Then the bustle of advancing day began: doors and windows were thrown open: the gate creaked on its hinge: carts rattled by: villagers were moving in the streets: and the little world began to go, like some ponderous machine, that, wheel after wheel, is gradually put in motion.

In a short time the tailor was seen slowly returning along the road, with a wagon load of pine boughs and evergreens. The wagon was unloaded at the tavern door, and its precious cargo carried up into the hall, where the tailor, in his shirt sleeves, danced and capered about the room, with a hatchet in one hand, and a long knife in the other, like an Indian warrior before going to battle. In a moment the walls were stripped of the faded emblems of former holidays: garlands of withered roses were trampled under foot: old stars, that had lost their lustre, were seen to fall: and the white pine chandelier was robbed of its yellow coat, and dangled from the ceiling, quite wo begone and emaciated. But ere long the whole room was again filled with arches, and garlands, and festoons, and stars, and all kinds of singular devises [sic] in green leaves and asparagus tops. Over the chimney piece were suspended two American flags, with a portrait of general Washington beneath them; and the names of Trenton, Yorktown, Bunker Hill, &c., peeped out from between the evergreens, cut in red morocco, and fastened to the wall with a profusion

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of brass nails. Every part of the room was liberally decorated with paper eagles; and in a corner hung a little black ship, rigged with twine, and armed with a whole broadside of umbrella tips.

It were in vain to attempt a description of all the wonders that started up beneath the tailor’s hand, as from the touch of a magician’s wand. In a word, before night every thing was in readiness. Travellers, that arrived in the evening, brought information, that the general would pass through the village at noon the next day: but without the slightest expectation of the jubilee, that awaited him. The tailor was beside himself with joy, at the news: and pictured to himself with good natured self complacency the surprise and delight of the venerable patriot, when he should receive the public honors prepared for him, and the new blue coat, with bright buttons and velvet collar, which was then making at his shop.

In the mean time the landlady had been busy in making preparations for a sumptuous dinner: the lawyer had been locked up all day, hard at work upon his oration: and the pedagogue was hard ridden by the phantom of a poetic eulogy, that bestrode his imagination like the night mare. Nothing was heard in the village but the bustle of preparation, and the martial music of drums and fifes. For a while the ponderous wheel of labour seemed to stand still. The clatter of the cooper’s mallet was silent, the painter left his brush, the cobler [sic] his awl, and the blacksmith’s bellows lay sound asleep, with its nose buried in the ashes.

The next morning at day break the whole military

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force of the town was marshalled forth in from of the tavern, ‘armed and equipped as the law direct.’ Conspicuous among this multitude stood the tailor, arrayed in a coat of his own making, all lace and buttons, and a pair of buff pantaloons, drawn up so tight, that he could hardly touch his feet to the ground. He wore a military hat, shaped like a clam shell, with little white goose feathers stuck all round the edge. By his side stood the gigantic figure of the blacksmith, in rusty regimentals. At length the roll of the drum announced the order for forming the ranks, and the valiant host displayed itself in a long wavering line. Here stood a tall lantern jawed fellow, all legs, furnished up with a red waistcoat, and shining green coat, a little round wool hat perched on the back of his head, and downward tapering off in a pair of yellow nankeens, twisted and wrinkled about the knees, as if his legs had been screwed into them. Beside him stood a long waisted being, with a head like a hurra’s nest, set off with a willow hat, and a face that looked as if it were made of sole leather, and a gash cut in the middle of it for a mouth. Next came a little man with fierce black whiskers, and sugar loaf hat, equipped with a long fowling piece, a powder horn, and a white canvass knapsack, with a red star on the back of it. Then a country bumpkin standing bolt upright, his head elevated, his toes turned out, holding fast to his gun with one hand, and keeping the other spread out upon his right thigh. Then figured the descendant of some revolutionary veteran, arrayed in the uniform, and bearing the arms and accoutrements of his ancestor, a cocked hat on his

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head, a heavy musket on his shoulder, and on his back a large knapsack marked U. S. Here was a man in straw hat and gingham jacket: and there a pale nervous fellow, buttoned up to the chin in a drab great coat, to guard him against the morning air, and keep out the fever and ague.

‘Attention the whole! Front face! Eyes right! Eyes left! Steady! Attention to the roll call!’ shouted the blacksmith in a voice like a volcano.

‘Peleg Popgun!’

‘Here.’

‘Tribulation Sheepshanks!’

‘He—e—e—re.’

‘Return Jonathan Babcock!’

‘Here.’

And so on through the whole catalogue of long, hard names.

‘Attention! Shoulder—arms! Very well. Fall back there on the extreme left! No talking in the ranks! Present—arms! Squire Wiggins you’re not in the line, if you please, a little farther in, a little farther out, there, I guess that will do! Carry—arms! Very well done. Quick time, upon your post—march![’]

The little red coated drummer flourished his drum sticks, the bandy legged fifer struck up yankee doodle, Cæsar showed his flat face over the horizon of a great bass drum, like the moon in an eclipse, the tailor brandished his sword, and the whole company, wheeling with some confusion round the tavern sign post, streamed down the road, covered with dust, and followed by a troop of draggle tailed boys.

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As soon as this company had disappeared, and the dub of its drum ceased to be heard, the too-too of a shrill trumpet sounded across the plains, and a troop of horse came riding up. The leader was a jolly round faced butcher, with a red fox tail nodding over his head, and came spurring on, with his elbows flapping up and down like a pair of wings. As he approached the tavern, he ordered the troop to wheel, and form a line in front; a manœuvre, which, though somewhat arduous, was nevertheless executed with wonderful skill and precision.

This body of light was the pride of the whole country round; and was mounted and caparisoned in a style of splendor, that dazzled the eyes of all the village. Each horseman wore a cap of bear skin, crested with a fox tail, a short blue jacket, faced with yellow, and profusely ornamented with red morocco and quality binding. The pantaloons were of the same colour as the jackets, and were trimmed with yellow cord. Some rode with long stirrups, some with short stirrups, and some with no stirrups at all; some sat perpendicular upon their saddles, some at an obtuse angle, and others at an angle of forty-five. One was mounted on a tall one eyed bone settler, with his tail and ears cropped, another on a little red nag, with shaggy ane, and long switch tail, and as vicious as if the very devil were in him. Here was a great fellow, with long curly whiskers, looking as fierce as Mars himself; there, a little hook nosed creature, with red crest, short spurs, elbows stuck out, and jacket cocked up behind, looking like a barn door ‘rooster,’ with his tail clipped, just preparing to crow.

When this formidable troop was formed to the

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satisfaction of their leader, the word of command was given, and they went through the sword exercise, hewing and cutting the air in all directions, with the most cool and deliberate courage. The order was then given to draw pistols. Ready!—aim!—fire! Pop—pop—poo, [sic] went the pistols. Too—too—too, went the trumpet. The horses took fright at the sound: some plunged, others reared and kicked, and others started out of the line, and capered up and down ‘like mad.’ The captain being satisfied with this display of the military discipline of his troop, they wheeled off in sections, and rode gallantly into the tavern yard, to recruit from the fatigues of the morning.

Crowds of country people now came driving in from all directions, to see the fun and the general. The honest farmer in broad brimmed hat, and broad skirted coat, jogged slowly on, with his wife and half a dozen blooming daughters, in a square top chaise: and country beaux, in all their Sunday finery, came racing along in wagons, or parading round on horseback to win a sidelong look from some fair country lass in gipsey hat and blue ribbons.

In the mean time the school master was far from being idle. His scholars had been assembled at an early hour, and after a deal of drilling and good advice, were arranged in a line in front of the school house, to bask in the sun, and wait for the general. The little girls had wreaths of roses upon their heads, and baskets of flowers in their hands: and the boys carried bibles, and wore papers on their hats, inscribed ‘Welcome Lafayette.’ The school master walked up and down before them,

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with a ratan in his hand, repeating to himself his poetic eulogy: stopping now and then to rap some unlucky little rogue over the knuckles for misdemeanor: shaking one to make him turn out his toes: and pulling another’s ear, to make him hold up his head and look like a man.

In this manner the morning wore away, and the hour, at which it had been rumored that the general was to arrive, drew near. The whole military force, both foot and horse, was then summoned together in front of the tavern, and formed into a hollow square, and the colonel, a swarthy knight of the forge, by the aid of a scrawl, written by the squire and placed in the crown of his hat, made a most eloquent and patriotic harangue, in which he called the soldiers his ‘brothers in arms, the hope of their country, the terror of their enemies, the bulwark of liberty, and the safe guard of the fair sex.’ They were then wheeled back again into a line, and dismissed for ten minutes.

An hour or two previous, an honest old black, named Boaz, had been stationed upon the high road, not far from the entrance of the village, equipped with a loaded gun, which he was ordered to discharge by way of signal, as soon as the general should appear. Full of the importance and dignity of his office, Boaz marched to and fro across the dusty road, with his musket ready cocked, and his finger on the trigger. This manœuvering in the sun, however, diminished the temperature of his enthusiasm, in proportion as it increased that of his body: till at length he sat down on a stump in the shade, and leaning his musket against the trunk of a tree, took a short stemmed pipe out of his pocket, and began to

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smoke. As noon day drew near, he grew hungry and home sick; his heart sunk into his stomach. His African philosophy dwindled apace into a mere theory. Overpowered by the heat of the weather he grew drowsy, his pipe fell from his mouth, his head lost its equipoise, and drooped, like a poppy, upon his breast, and sliding gently from his seat, he fell asleep at the root of the tree. He was aroused from his slumber by the noise of an empty wagon, that came rattling along a cross road near him. Thus suddenly awakened, the thought of the general’s approach, the idea of being caught sleeping at his post, and the shame of having given the signal too late, flashed together across his bewildered mind, and springing upon his feet, he caught his musket, shut both eyes, and fired, to the utter consternation of the wagoner, whose horses took fright at the sound, and became unmanageable. Poor Boaz, when he saw the mistake he had made, and the mischief he had done, did not wait long to deliberate, but throwing his musket over his shoulder, bounded into the woods, and was out of sight in the twinkling of an eye.

The sharp report of the gun rang far and wide through the hush of noontide, awakening many a drowsy echo that grumbled in the distance, like a man aroused untimely from his rest. At the sound of the long expected signal gun, the whole village was put in motion. The drum beat to order, the ranks were formed in haste, and the whole military force moved off to escort the general in, amid the waving of banners, the roll of drums, the scream of fifes, and the twang of the horse trumpet.

All was now anxious expectation at the village. The

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moments passed like hours. The lawyer appeared at the tavern door, with his speech in his hand; the school master and his scholars stood broiling in the sun, and many a searching look was cast along the dusty highway to descry some indication of their guest’s approach. Sometimes a little cloud of dust, rolling along the distant road would cheat them with a vain illusion. Then the report of musketry, and the roll of drums, rattling among the hills, and dying on the breeze, would inspire the fugitive hope, that he had at length arrived, and a murmur of eager expectation would run from mouth to mouth. ‘There he comes!—that’s he,’ and the people would crowd into the street to be again disappointed.

One o’clock arrived; two, three, but no general! The dinner was over done, the landlady in great tribulation, the cook in a great passion. The gloom of disappointment began to settle on many a countenance. The people looked doubtingly at each other, and guessed. The sky, too, began to lower. Volumes of black clouds piled themselves up in the west, and threatened a storm. The ducks were unusually noisy and quarrelsome around the green pool in the stable yard: and a flock of ill-boding crows were holding ominous consultation round the top of a tall pine. Every thing gave indication of an approaching thunder gust. A distant irregular peal rattled along the sky, like a volley of musketry. They thought it was a salute to the general. Soon after the air grew damp and misty, it began to drizzle, a few scattered drops pattered on the roofs, and it set in to rain.

A scene of confusion ensued. The pedagogue and

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his disciples took shelter in the school house, the crowd dispersed in all directions, with handkerchiefs thrown over their heads, and their gowns tucked up, and every thing looked dismal and disheartening. The bar room was full of disconsolate faces. Some tried to keep their spirits up by drinking, others wished to laugh the matter off, and others stood with their hands in their pockets looking out of the window to see it rain, and making wry faces.

Night drew on apace, and the rain continued. Still nothing was to be heard of the general. Some were for dispatching a messenger to ascertain the cause of this delay, but who would go out in such a storm! At length the monotonous too-too of the horse trumpet was heard, there was a great clattering and splashing of hoofs at the door, and the troop reined up, spattered with mud, drenched through and through, and completely crest fallen. Not long after, the foot company came straggling in, dripping wet, and diminished to one half its number by desertions. The tailor entered the bar room reeking and disconsolate, a complete epitome of the miseries of human life written in his face. The feathers were torn out of his clam shell hat, his coat was thoroughly spunged, his boots full of water, and his buff pantaloons clung tighter than ever to his little legs. He trembled like a leaf: one might have taken him for Fever and Ague personified. The blacksmith, on the contrary, seemed to dread the water as little as if it were his element. The rain did not penetrate him, and he rolled into the bar room like a great sea calf, that after sporting about in the waves, tumbles himself out upon the sand to dry.

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A thousand questions were asked at once about the general, but there was no body to answer them. They had seen nothing of him, they had heard nothing of him, they knew nothing of him! Their spirit and patience were completely soaked out of them; no patriotism was proof against such torrents of rain.

Every heart seemed now to sink in despair. Every hope had given way, when the twang of the stage horn was heard, sending forth its long drawn cadences, and enlivening the gloom of a rainy twilight. The coach dashed up to the door. It was empty, not a solitary passenger. The coachman came in without a dry thread about him. A little stream of water trickled down his back from the rim of his hat. There was something dismally ominous in his look, he seemed to be a messenger of bad news.

‘The gin’ral!—the gin’ral!—where’s the gin’ral!’

‘He’s gone on by another road. So much for the opposition line and the new turnpike!’ said the coachman, as he tossed off a glass of New England.

‘He has lost a speech!’ said the lawyer.

‘He has lost a coat!’ said the tailor.

‘He has lost a dinner!’ said the landlord.

It was a gloomy night at the Bald Eagle. A few boon companions sat late over their bottle, drank hard, and tried to be merry: but it would not do. Good humour flagged, the jokes were bad, the laughter forced, and one after another slunk away to bed, full of bad liquor, and reeling with the fumes of brandy and beer.

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[p. 90]

THE ARTIST.

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[p. 93]

A CURE FOR DYSPEPSIA.

There are few beings in the world that are not united by some bonds of relationship; if they have neither brothers, sisters, or still nearer ties, they have generally a great uncle, or a far off cousin, that occasionally sends them an enquiring letter. Such, however, is not my case; I stand alone in the world. How I came to be so is no part of my present narrative; the wounds that time has closed, I have no desire to tear open. I have heard wise people say, the blessings of life are equalized; perhaps they would have pointed to my lot as an exemplification: they might have said, ‘look at his plantation, his negroes, his immense crops, his groves of orange trees.’ ‘Go into the city; see his house with its verandas, his luxuriant garden, his stud of horses! but after all, poor man, he is to be pitied, he is alone in the world, he has no health to enjoy any thing.’ Such was the superficial survey. Alas! they knew not, like me, the weary wasting regrets that pressed on my heart, the recollections that neither religion nor philosophy could banish. All that was fair and beautiful added to the keenness of my sensations, and I found solitude and silence most conducive to my comfort. No one broke in upon my retirement. It is an easy art to live alone. For years I scarcely spoke to a human being; my slaves learnt to communicate with me by signs, and the little negroes, for I am not hard hearted, minded my presence no more than they did one of my palmettos. My ill health

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daily increased; my nights were sleepless; I consulted physicians: some said my complaints were pulmonary, others that they were dyspeptic, all prescribed; but none benefited.

I was one evening sitting in my veranda and anticipating the miserable nights I was to pass as one succeeded another, when one of my servants entered and said, ‘here is a little girl want very much to see Masser.’ I felt some sensation of surprise, but said, ‘let her come.’ A girl approached, about fourteen years old, she held in her hand a little basket of flowers, and seemed doubtful whether to come nearer or not. At length I said, ‘do you want any thing?’ ‘I have brought the gentleman some flowers,’ said she, ‘if he will take them.’ There was an expression in the child’s countenance, that bordered on compassion, her voice too, was soft and sympathetic. ‘I thank you my dear,’ said I, ‘put down the flowers, I will take yours, and you may fill your basket with some of mine.’ ‘Wont you keep the basket, Sir,’ said she, ‘I made it myself.’ I took it in my hand and examined it, it was composed of small crystals, that sparkled in the setting sun, and beautifully contrasted with the rich purple and crimson flowers that hung over it. I took out a piece of money and offered her, she thanked me, but refused to take it, and said she did not bring her basket for sale.

‘Where do you live my dear?’ said I. ‘There,’ said she, pointing to a little narrow building, the upper window of which over looked my garden. ‘You have seen me in my garden?’ said I. ‘Yes,’ replied she, ‘and I heard the gentleman was sick, and I thought,’—she hesitated and coloured,—‘I might help him.’ ‘Then you

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are a doctress,’ said I, smiling. ‘No Sir,’ replied she, ‘I am not one, but Sook is.’ ‘Who is Sook?’ said I. ‘She is an Indian woman, that can cure every thing, all sorts of disorders.’ ‘She cannot cure mine,’ said I involuntarily. ‘O yes Sir, she can,’ said the girl, ‘I have got a cure in my basket; will you please Sir to try it?’ and she turned over her flowers, and took out a little square packet with some figures wrought in Indian characters. ‘This is it Sir,’ said she. ‘I went to her yesterday and got it on purpose for your complaint.’ ‘But, what did you tell her was my complaint?’ ‘I told her,’ said she, with an air of confidence, ‘that it was an indigestion of the heart.’ The girl is right, thought I, she is more skillful than all the physicians. ‘Well, what am I to do with your packet? Swallow it?’ And I made a sound nearer a laugh than I had done for years. ‘O dear, no Sir; you are to hang it round your neck and let it cover your heart; Sook says you have the cold disorder in the heart, and this will cure it; may I leave it Sir?’ said she. I could not refuse, indeed I felt some curiosity to know more about the girl. ‘You may leave it to-night,’ said I. She made a low courtesy and left me. After she was gone, my mind dwelt on her countenance; it perfectly bewitched me, she did not look like any thing I had loved, for her hair was light and curly, and her eyes of a bright blue; there was something however in the tones of her voice that brought recollections! Women’s tones of kindness all resemble each other, they are like the dying notes of an Æolian harp. I made some enquiries of my servant who the girl was, but could only learn that she lived with her mother in the room that over looked my garden. It

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cannot be, thought I, that this girl’s sympathy has operated thus forcibly; no, no, I see the whole plot, her mother has sent her, she is trained to it, and I am to be the dupe. I was indignant for a few minutes, and then again my curiosity was roused to see how they would manage an affair so cunningly begun. I took up the little parcel and examined it, it was carefully closed, but emitted a spicy perfume that was agreeable. I certainly thought more of this occurrence than it deserved, but the truth was, I had but few objects to interest me, and this was a new incident; and then the girl’s voice was so gentle and soft, her articulation so different from the Leah’s and Dinah’s that surrounded me! I threw myself into bed and actually began to doze, when my black boy woke me to give me my laudanum. I could not get to sleep again; the girl had completely discomposed my nerves, and I determined to give orders the next day that she should not be admitted. The next day, however, she did not sue for admittance, nor the next after that; but the third day she came. There was the same gentle, innocent expression of countenance as she enquired after the success of her prescription. When I told her I had not tried it, her disappointment was too apparent to be feigned, and I said, ‘you shall not lose the profit of your prescription,’ and I handed her a bill; it was five dollars; ‘that will do, I suppose,’ said I. She took it and looked at it. ‘O Sir,’ said she, ‘Sook does not ask any thing if it don’t cure you, and only a dollar if it does.’ ‘And what do you charge?’ said I, a little scornfully. ‘Nothing, Sir,’ replied she eagerly, ‘nothing at all.’ ‘Come, be honest,’ said I, ‘tell me your motive.’ The girl did not seem to

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understand me. When I explained myself, she said, ‘I want nothing, noting Sir, I live with my mother, she is a widow, we are very happy, so happy,’ added she, ‘that I could not bear to see any body looking so sick and sd as you do, and I told Sook about the gentleman, and she said she could cure him.’

This was the beginning of my acquaintance with Amie, for so she was called: I was at length persuaded to try the remedy; it certainly did me no harm, and it produced a pungent sensation upon the skin that almost amounted to a blister, and possibly might have done good. I think from some cause or other, I grew a little better. Amie used to come every day, and often brought me some little delicacy. I had gone the round of suspicion; at first I conceived it was for money she had made my acquaintance; then I thought, possibly, young as she was, and old as I was, for there was certainly thirty years difference in our ages, it might be for love; but after three years experience, I became convinced she had no motive under heaven but the desire of serving a fellow creature. All this time, I knew no more about Amie’s mother than the man in the moon; I had no curiosity about her, and I don’t recollect that she ever mentioned her more than once or twice. One day Amie came to me with a sorrowful look, ‘I shall not see you much longer,’ said she, ‘I am going away.’ ‘Where?’ asked I. ‘To Alabama,’ she replied. ‘What in the name of heaven carries you to Alabama?’ exclaimed I, ‘are you going to be married?’ ‘No,’ said she, ‘but my mother is, and she is going to Alabama with her new husband.’ ‘And takes you?’ ‘Yes Sir.’ ‘Poor child!’ I

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involuntarily exclaimed; ‘do you want to go?’ She hung her head, and I saw a few tears hastily brushed away. ‘It is a wild uncultivated country,’ said I. ‘Yes Sir, that is the reason my father-in-law is going; he has worn out his land here, and he can purchase a hundred acres there for fifty dollars.’ ‘But it is good for nothing.’ ‘Indeed, Sir, you are mistaken,’ replied she, ‘it is the best of land; he will have nothing to do but cut down the trees, build a log house, and plant corn or cotton, just as he pleases, and it will grow of itself.’

‘Well, well,,’ said I, peevishly, ‘perhaps your mother will think better of it.’ ‘O no Sir, she is to be married to night, and next week we set off.’ I certainly felt vexed at the folly of the mother, but I determined not to interfere; if Amie chose to go it was nothing to me; I had a kindness for her I could not but acknowledge; I had not had so many disagreeable sensations since I had worn her amulet, and, indeed, I confess I had had the weakness to renew it at her solicitation when she said time had impaired its virtue. At last the day arrived for their departure; Amie came to bid me farewell. I really had laid her under as few obligations as could well be imagined, considering our relative situations; as we parted I put fifty dollars into her hand, and said, ‘here Amie, you can buy your father out if you please;’ she hesitated a little, but I would not be refused. ‘And now,’ said I, ‘tell me honestly which had you rather do, go or stay?’ I don’t know why I put this question, I believe because it rose uppermost to my mind. She said ‘it is my duty to go with my mother, therefore I had rather go.’ ‘Then there is nobody, Amie, you love as well, or

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most as well, as your mother?’ The tears rushed into her eyes, and the blushes to her cheeks, and she turned silently away.

For many years I have not had much curiosity; but after they set off, I thought I should like to see a new settler’s equipage, and I mounted the only horse I could ride, and took the same road they went. It was not long before I overtook them; there were two covered wagons and a small gig, with a sort of calash top, drawn by a miserable horse; the first wagon was driven by the bride groom; the team of both wagons consisted of two mules and two horses for leaders; by the side of the bride groom was seated the bride, on a feather bed; and over he head peeped half a dozen curly pated children. Various articles of house keeping were apparent; a gridiron, frying pan, and other cooking utensils, with two or three wooden chairs, a tin pail, and a collection of old shoes and boots fastened behind. The other wagon was driven by one of the negroes, and a small white boy was mounted on the foremost horse. This wagon contained the fodder for the horses, and the more bulky articles of house keeping. Lastly came poor Amie, seated in the gig with its crazy top, driving the miserable looking horse, and bolstered up by blankets, a coffee pot, an iron skillet and various other little articles that could not be so distinctly enumerated. She wore a little blue bonnet with a cape, and there was an air of neatness and even taste in her dress. Behind the wagons came a troop of negroes of all ages and sizes, with their shoes and blanket on a pole. The sight of the white children, with the new married couple, explained to me the history of the love affair, on the man’s

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side; nothing could be more convenient than Amie and her mother to bring up his children and take care of his family. As I rode past them I looked back on Amie and nodded; never was I so struck with her countenance as in this motley group; her eyes were as blue as her bonnet, and her fair hair was curling in ringlets on her forehead; the excitement of making the horse keep up with the wagons, which did not go more than two miles an hour, had sent a slight tinge into her cheeks, which were usually quite pale. I observed when I came opposite, that her favorite dog, who it must be confessed was an ugly spotted little cur, was tied under the gig by a string too short to give him the shadow of liberty.

Every body knows the changes that dyspepsia undergoes; its short intervals of alleviation, and its tenfold returns. About this time my disorder increased greatly, the physicians called it a nervous affection; I pitied their ignorance; nothing could be more unlike a nervous disorder. After Amie’s departure I remained solitary as usual, nobody near me. I ought to except a young lad that I had sometimes employed in writing; he was an intelligent, well behaved boy, and lived near; I transferred, in a degree my kindness for Amie to him, for he in some measure supplied her place; but who that has experienced the attentions of a gentle, kind hearted woman, can feel compensated for their loss, by the awkward attempts of one of his own sex. I grew more and more sick; the spring and summer wore heavily away; I thought continually of my last interview with Amie; of her evident emotion and embarrassment when I asked her if there was nobody she loved as well as her mother.

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My first idea returned with redoubled conviction. I cannot doubt it, thought I, strange as it is, she loves me, she has loved me from the first! There is no accounting for these kind of prepossessions; there is no rule about them. It is true, I am old enough to be her father; but such instances are frequently recurring. My mind continually dwelt on this idea; I began to think myself the most hard hearted, the most ungrateful of human beings; I thought of her as a sweet drooping plant, a perfect illustration of Washington Irving’s ‘Broken Heart.’ I bitterly reproached myself for letting her go. I was accountable to nobody; I had more wealth than I could make use of; for whom was it accumulating? It is true, I had some vague plan of founding a medical establishment for ‘the investigation of non descript complaints, and bringing forth latent diseases,’ but I had no great reason to feel much complacency towards the faculty. What had they done for me? Amie’s prescription had really afforded me more relief than all the ‘materia medica.’ It was now, however, too late.

My complaints increased to such an alarming degree, that I concluded it necessary to have a consultation of physicians; the result was, that travelling on horse back was the only chance that remained of life; for as to recovering my health, I did not dream of such an impossibility. They urged it perseveringly, and at length I consented, and began to make my arrangements. I concluded I might be able to ride my favorite Charley three or four miles on a fine day. My carriage was to follow and a baggage wagon with my bed and mattrass, [sic] my Napoleon pillows, with all the indispensable accommoda-

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tions of an invalid; my medicine chest I preferred taking in the carriage, that it might be ready at a moment’s warning. After I had made all my arrangements, I informed Dr. Veto, in whose skill I had more confidence than in that of any other of the faculty, what I had done, and that I was ready to set out on my journey; the man actually laughed in my face, and told me all this would not do, I might as well stay at home. He had the audacity to say that my cure depended entirely upon the manner in which the journey was performed, and this must be positively on horse back, with a portmanteau to carry a few changes of clothes, but not a single phial. He said I might choose between a servant or a companion, but both were inadmissible. He concluded by adding that this was the last and only remedy, that he and his brother physicians could suggest; and that if I would follow the prescription to the letter, they would promise me an entire restoration to health. I was at first indignant; the idea of setting a dying man upon horse back to finish his days away from friends and comforts—it was not to be thought of. But I certainly grew worse and worse, and at last came to the conviction that I must die if I did not get relief. I asked Theodore if he was willing to go with me on horse back; he eagerly embraced the proposal. I pass over all the difficulties and misgivings of my mind, how often I relinquished the plan and then resumed it again; at last, however, Theodore and myself were on our way; we travelled south. I never fully decided where I was going; the winter was some how or other to be got through; I loitered a week or two at Charleston, and finally found myself at Augusta. Theodore, I found a

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pleasant companion, he often made me laugh heartily; and, generally speaking, my health was not worse than when I left home; he was very attentive to my accommodation; and though I had many hardships to endure, I was saved from actual suffering by his constant and persevering efforts. At Augusta, the strange plan entered my head to penetrate into the interior of Alabama; they told me I must travel through a wild, uncultivated country, and there was nothing to see after I had done so. They advised me when I reached Montgomery to take passage for Mobile, and from thence to New Orleans, and then pursue my route back through the western country. I made little or no reply, my plan was fixed, and the first of March, Theodore and myself set off for Alabama. The roads are always bad, and at this season particularly so; the streams are swollen high; and internal improvement, in the way of bridges, has not yet made much progress in Georgia; of course we were compelled to ford them. We were often obliged to dismount and help our horses out of quagmires into which they had sunk. When we arrived at the little Ogeechee river, remarkable but for two things that I know of, one for endangering the lives, or delaying the progress of travellers, and the other for its limes, which the fair ladies of Georgia convert into a delicate preserve; we were advised not to attempt to ford it, but to wait, as the stage had done, a few days for the waters to subside. I determined, however, to trust to my horse, and plunged in; he bore me safely over, but I was completely wet through, and why I did not get my death, I do not know, unless upon some philosophical principle of caloric, that at my leisure I intend to inves-

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tigate. As yet I had derived but little benefit from my journey, but I determined to keep on.

It is not my intention to describe the sufferings and hardships I went through, farther than they are connected with my state of health. I detest the egotism of travelers, and hope I shall never fall into that disgusting error. i pass over the miserable quarters we found at night; the scanty meals and dirty table cloths we found at noon; then the interminable pine barrens through which we travelled; the naked half starved negroes we encountered; the danger we ran from falling trees, and woods on fire. One circumstance I must not omit; on the evening of the memorable day when I was wet through in crossing the Little Ogeechee, we arrived late at the bridge which crosses the broader part of the Ogeechee; it was a fine moon light night, and if I had not been under constant anxiety what the effect of the previous wetting might be as to my health, I should have enjoyed the scenery, but I had several miles further to go for a lodging, and I greatly feared I should expire on the road. Proceed, however, I must; Theodore helped me from my horse, and took his reins, and I sauntered over; when I reached the other side I stood to gaze upon the landscape, the tangled vines, the trees that bent their tops to the stream, the soft ripling [sic] of the waters—all soothed my mind, and led me for a moment to forget my sufferings.

Theodore had ascended the hill, and was concealed by a slight bend in the road, suddenly a man jumped from the underwood, and seizing me by the collar, demanded my purse! He had no fire arms, but a large club that resembled a tomahawk. In my younger days I had been

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an expert wrestler; at this moment my so long dormant powers and faculties seemed to return; by a sudden, and to him unexpected movement, I disengaged myself, and turning fiercely upon him, with one push sent him over the bank into the stream. I then called loudly to Theodore, who hastened to me; I thought possibly the man might drown, and though he certainly deserved a heavy cold, I had no wish to take away the life of a human being. Theodore hurried me away; ‘perhaps there is a gang,’ said he, ‘let us begone.’ ‘I do not believe it,’ said I; ‘he is one of the poor half starved wretches we have seen.’ When I perceived he had gained the shore, ‘You are a miserable dog,’ said I; ‘take care how you attempt to rob again; if you are starving, on this stone is something to prolong life;’ and I laid a few shillings upon it. We mounted our horses, and thought it prudent to gallop off. Here is another philosophical question, that at my leisure, I shall investigate: notwithstanding the shock and the exertion I had made, I never slept sounder than I did that night, and felt unusually well in the morning.

We made a short stop at Milledgeville, the seat of government in Georgia, which is situated on the Oconee river; then another at Macon; here I received very bad accounts of the roads, but I had fixed on the western part of Alabama for the boundary of my journey, and to that I resolved to penetrate. I passed a night at Flint river, the place of the former Creek Agency, and the next day proceeded through a barren part of the country, and passed a number of new settlers with their wagons. They all of them brought Amie to my mind, if indeed she could be said to be absent from it. At night a party of them

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encamped near where I put up. I walked out to see them. They had kindled their bright pine fires, and were cooking their suppers; the horses, the wagons, the groups of negroes and children, the tall and magnificent pine woods, free from brush or underwood, formed as picturesque a view as one might wish to see. On one of the beds was stretched a female; she was enduring all the vicissitudes of fever and ague, without any of the alleviations that home, or even a resting place, might give her. They were going to the Mississippi; they told me they had had a succession of rains; the man said his wife had not much bone; that she had got sick by change of weather; that the rain was bad enough, but when the hot sun came afterwards, it was still worse. I gave the poor woman money, and begged her husband to take her to some house and let her rest a few days; he said it was out of the question; that he did not expect she would be any better till the sap turned; that they should be long enough getting through the Mississippi as it was. I left the woman in a burning fever, and returned to the miserable log house where I was to sleep; the night wind penetrated in every direction, and when morning dawned upon my unclosed eye lids it was through the roof and sides of the building. For the first time in my life, I felt an entire conviction that heaven had dealt more mercifully by me than by many others; the image of the poor woman was before me, stretched on her damp bed, and exposed to the vapors that a hot sun exhaled from the humid articles about her; I tried to be thankful, to be grateful for myself; and I sent many a thought to Amie, who had, perhaps, endured all this. By degrees,

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however, my former state of feeling returned, and I recurred to my own miserable lot. Heavens, what an apartment for a sick man! How I survived this night, and innumerable other hardships I encountered in the Creek country, upon which I had now entered, I cannot tell. The boundary has within a few years been removed to Fort Mitchel, just beyond the Chatahoochie river. As there has been much question about Indian rights, perhaps some may be inclined to examine how the purchase of the lands were made from the Indians, and they driven sixty or seventy miles back; but I have neither nerves nor health for the investigation. Many specimens of the scattered race I saw, they were half naked, houseless, and stupid; what they were, or might have been, others must determine. The last night I slept in the Creek country, was at the house of a man not half civilized; he had trained a ferocious race of bull dogs; and whether at war or in alliance with the Indians, I could not determine, though he had married one of the tribe. By this time I had become heartily tired of log houses, pine barrens, and Indians, and was truly thankful to enter the town of Montgomery, which stands on the Alabama. There I determined to rest a few days; after the first, however, I began to grow restless; towards the second evening of my stay, as I stood before the hotel, I heard a great noise and uproar. Upon enquiry, I found the mob were executing summary justice upon a man who had sold them a quantity of stolen goods. I rushed in among them, thinking if the man’s life was endangered, my remonstrances might do some good; they had taken him to a pump, and were throwing cold

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water upon him; I approached near and caught a full view of his countenance; I could not mistake it, though I had only seen it before by moon light, but under circumstances that were sufficiently impressive, as we stood face to face; it was the very robber that attacked me on the banks of the Ogeechee. Perhaps I was wrong not to have arrested him, but I turned silently away and left him to the justice of the mob, well assured he would not be worse treated than he deserved. By the next morning I was quite ready to quit Montgomery. For the first time Theodore remonstrated. ‘My dear Sir,’ said he, ‘you are going out of the reach of interest and amusement; by taking the steam boat we may have a pleasant trip, and follow the Alabama in its fantastic wanderings; we may go on to New Orleans—’ ‘Stop, Theodore,’ said I, interrupting him, ‘my plan is fixed; I go west.’ ‘May I ask,’ said he, ‘how far?’ ‘I think,’ said I, ‘I shall not stop short of Columbus.’ If I had electrifyed [sic] him, he could not have appeared more surprised; he looked stedfastly [sic] at me for a few moments, but said nothing. Again we mounted our horses, and set off, leaving the Alabama river on the right; but it is not my travels I am writing, and I will cut short the way, only mentioning that I stopped at Tuscaloosa, the present seat of government in Alabama. Towards night, as we proceeded on our journey, after travelling all day through forests scarcely marked by the track of wheels, we came to a log house; there was all the marks of a new settlement, a few trees were cut down, others only girdled, and left standing; the house was not more slightly built than I had been accustomed to seeing; it had its open space

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in the middle, and its rooms at each end, with a rough piazza; before it were a group of children playing in the sand; one or two still slighter built log houses, for the negroes and the cattle, completed the settlement. We dismounted to ask for a night’s lodging; a young woman came to the door, with a white handkerchief tied over her head, and fastened under her chin. At one glance I saw it was Amie! Judge of her astonishment; she looked first at me, then at Theodore, and flung herself upon a little wooden bench that stood near, half fainting. As I have said before, I detest egotism; I will not therefore dwell on our meeting; Amie had been sick, and she looked pale and languid; she said the climate agreed better with them all than with her. We were comfortably accommodated. Amie was full of wonder, and repeatedly asked me where we were going, and how we came there. I put her off, however, and merely told her she should know all in the morning. It was a luxury to eat my boiled eggs from a clean table cloth, and a still greater one to throw myself into a clean bed. Long after I closed my eyes I could hear the faint whispers of Amie’s and Theodore’s voices. How soothing it was to reflect that the beings I loved best, were engaged in talking of me. Theodore, thought I, is giving an account of my sufferings, my hardships, and ‘hair breadth escapes,’ Amie is listening. Yes, my mind is made up; I will rescue this fair flower from an untimely fate; I will bear it back and cherish and watch over it; my devoted kindness shall repay her for the years of secret and heart consuming tenderness she has lavished upon me. And I actually dropped asleep with those lines of Shakespeare

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in my head which need not be repeated; ‘she never told her love,’ &c.

The next day Amie looked still paler; I had not the heart to let her languish longer in concealment, and I invited her to walk with me; for in these log houses every sound is communicated from one part to the other. When we reached an old log that made a convenient seat, I sat down, for I was a little out of breath, and I motioned her to sit by me. It was, even for me, an agitating moment, I breathed quicker than usual; she perceived a change, and was alarmed; ‘Let me run back,’ said she, ‘and get some of your restorative drops.’ ‘No, no,’ said I, ‘Amie, you are my restorative, the drop of happiness in my cup.’ She gave me a sweet smile and kissed my hand. ‘Ah, Amie,’ said I, ‘I have found out your secret, and it was for your sake alone I have come this long way; foolish girl’ said I, drawing her towards me, ‘why did you not tell me you were in love, it would have saved us both this long journey.’ Her blushes grew deeper and deeper; I really pitied her, and thought it best to finish the scene. ‘Come, confess,’ said I. ‘There is no need of confessing,’ said she, half playfully, half bashfully, ‘if you have found me out.’ There was something so bewitching in her manner that I really began to feel ‘love’s young dream’ stealing over me. ‘Well, well,’ said I, ‘I will send Theodore to the nearest town for a parson; we will have the ceremony performed, and all return together.’ She seemed wholly overpowered. ‘You are too, too kind,’ exclaimed she, ‘how shall I repay such goodness! It shall be the occupation of my life to make yours happy! and Theodore too, what will

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he say! let me go and tell him this joyful news.’ Before i could speak, for I was seized with a slight attack of my asthmatic cough, she was off. I confess, I thought, considering her previous silence and reserve, she was a little forward in communicating the matter; that it would have been as well to have left it to me; but I made every allowance for the intoxication of happiness; in a few moments I saw them returning, arm in arm. ‘I have brought Theodore to thank you for himself,’ said Amie, as they approached. ‘Indeed,’ said Theodore, modestly looking down, ‘I have no words to do it; how little I imagined what were your intentions; and that it was to make us happy you were enduring all this hardship.’ ‘and how little,’ interrupted Amie, ‘did we suspect that our secret was known!’ I was perfectly astonished; my cough became so violent that I thought I should have strangled; the children were really alarmed. When it ceased, Amie again began to express the overflowing of her heart. ‘Theodore was the first,’ said she, ‘that told me how much you suffered, and how good and kind hearted you were; how you felt for every body, and tried to do every body good. I went to Sook and told her your case; I knew she could cure every thing, but I little thought what a blessing was to come of it!’

She might have run on forever, as she seemed inclined to, for I was perfectly bewildered, ‘Theodore and I,’ continued she, ‘have loved each other from children, he always made my pens for me at school, and proved my sums, but when I came away to the Alabama country,, I never expected to see him again.’ And again she seized hold of my hand, though I really made some resistance,

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and kissed it. But what signifies all this; egotism is detestable. I will only add, that I had the wisdom to keep my own council, and concealed my mistake in the best manner I could. By degrees I grew quite reconciled to the change things had taken, and thought it was for the best. I determined to adopt them as children. Amie returned, Mrs. Theodore Grey. I gave up a useless part of my house and kept the southern veranda for myself. Little Henry Grey, who is named for me, is sleeping on the sofa by my side; his father is a fine, intelligent manly fellow; and Amie, Amie, is the joy and comfort of my life, and bids fair to be the prop of my old age. As for my dyspepsia, I really don’t know what has become of it, or when it left me; I have not thought of it for months but I now recollect that it was to recommend Sook’s prescription that I began this narrative; whether it would be as successful in all complaints I cannot take it upon me to determine; I can only say, I have found it a complete cure for the dyspepsia.

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Duffee Stevens, Printers.

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[p. 113]

DELHI, A TALE OF THE EAST.

BY THE AUTHOR OF ‘THE AFFIANCED ONE.;

It was a festival in Delhi. The fine road leading from Agra, and planted with trees by Jehan-Guire, was crowded in the vicinity of the city with persons of every description, hastening in hopes of profit or pleasure to the capital. Hafiz, the wisest Bramin of the east, renowned among his brethren for his unbounded learning, secluded life, and austere habits, had bestowed the hand of his only daughter, upon one of the wealthiest of the Sacerdotal race; and the rejoicings which ever accompany the nuptials of the poorest Hindoo maiden, were held on the present occasion, with ten fold splendor.

The ambitious Nadjiff Khan, under the title of Generalissimo fo the Emperor, was the real master of Delhi, and held his court in that stupendous palace, which even in its ruins, resembles the deserted haunt of powerful Genii. It was seldom, indeed, that the haughty Hafiz condescended to enter the palace of the Moguls, or to bow before the glittering throne with its golden palm tree, and emerald peacock; yet Nadjiff so far respected the prejudices of the people over whom he reigned as to seek the councils of the Bramin in all matters of emergency, and to revere his superior wisdom and sanctity; and he now rode forth upon his white elephant with its gilded trappings, attended by all the lords of his court, to do honor to the nuptials of the beautiful Zelica.

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Imperial Delhi, plundered as it had been by successive usurpers, the seat of rapine, anarchy, and bloodshed, still retained enough of its former magnificence to enable the beholder to realize in imagination those tales of its splendor under Aurungzebe, which have been enriched with all the glowing brightness of oriental hyperbole. The motley crowd now assembled within its walls, exhibited a varied and animated scene. Besides the different tribes of Hindoos, there were foreigners of almost every nation; Tartars, Persians, Arabs, Malays and Jews. Some were carried in palankeens, some rode on elephants, and others on horses richly caparisoned. The Mogul lords, with many of the neighboring rajahs, made a gallant show; the feathers of the egret of Cashmere in their turbans, and small silver rimmed kettle drums at their saddle bows.

The Bramins, with grave and haughty demeanor, high turban, and the sacred string called Zennar hanging round their shoulders, walked loftily among the multitude, drawing their robes closely round them, to avoid the contamination occasioned by the contact of any of an inferior caste. The Mahratta horsemen, with their quilted cotton jackets, loose trowsers, and broad turbans, rode through the streets, managing, with dexterity, their superb and fiery horses.

The devotees called Pandarams, ran wildly about the city; some singing the praises of their god Sheevah; some striking their hands together for charity; and others, beating a tabor in honor of Vishnouh, their ankles encircled with hollow brass rings filled with pebbles. Nor were the dancing girls wanting, attired in

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their light robes of gold tissue or flowered muslin; their long hair hanging down to their feet and blazing with jewels, their necks adorned with carcanets, and mogrees, as they call their necklaces of fragrant flowers; their arms sparkling with bracelets, and their ankles with chains of gold and silver, enriched with precious stones, and hung with tinkling bells, which rung with a silver sound as they danced. There were also jugglers, with bags filled with serpents of the most poisonous kinds, which they took out with their naked hands, and threw on the ground amidst the shuddering wonder of the crowd, while the animals reared and moved about to the sound of their music, performed upon a rude instrument resembling a bagpipe.

A clash of trumpets, cymbals, and kettle drums, announced the approach of the bridal party. The young Zelica was seated in a lofty palankeen beside the bride groom, and her face was partly shaded by her rose colored veil. A chorus of young girls sung the ziraleet as the passed, and strewed roses in her way, and as she raised her head to thank them, a murmur of applause arose among the crowd, called forth by her surpassing beauty. She was young; scarcely emerged from childhood. She had the countenance peculiar to the women of the highest caste, who are considered the most beautiful in India, and who are distinguished by that pure complexion, which is said to resemble a golden tinge of sun light.

Her long black hair was crowned with a wreath formed of the gold colored blossoms of the champac tree. Her small white fingers were tinged of a scarlet color at the points, with leaves of henna; and her large dark eyes

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were even deepened in their blackness by the artificial dye obtained from the black cohol. The splendor of her dress well became her beauty and her rank; but she seemed like one who would have preferred the simple flowers that twisted her hair, to all the brilliant stones that shone upon her embroidered veil, to her zone of Golconda diamonds, the anclets, bracelets, and jewelled slippers, and all the rings and ear rings of inestimable value that adorned her bridal attire.

Nor did it seem as though Kamœdeva, the god of love, who rides on a parrot by moon light, with his sugar cane bow, and string of bees, had been consulted in the union of the young Zelica, with the old wrinkled Bramin who sat by her side in the gilded palankeen, but rather, the Indian Pluto, Virsinava, at whose shrine, by whatsoever name he may be known, more victims are annually sacrificed in every country, than devotees ever were beneath the car of the sanguinary Vishnouh.

A momentary flush lighted up the countenance of the young bride, as she marked the gaiety of the passing scene, and strained her eyes to watch the approach of her father, distinguished from the crowd by his lofty stature and noble mien. He came nearer, and walked by the side of her palankeen. The procession stopped before the door of the bride groom’s house, and a shadow came over the eyes of Zelica, those eyes which seemed formed for love and happiness. The smile faded away from her lips. She thought of her happy home, far from the pomp and crowd of Delhi; of the mother who had guided her youthful years, and who had passed away to the city of the silent; and as her father bade

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her adieu, she drew her vail over her face, and amidst sounds of music and rejoicing, entered her new abode.

It was evening, and Hafiz returned slowly from his daughter’s dwelling and retraced his steps to his solitary home. The royal gardens of Delhi were brilliantly illuminated, and the gilded mosques and minarets glittered in the artificial brightness. Fire works lighted up the banks of the Jumna, and gilded barges with music, and lamps, floated over the waters. As Hafiz passed along, turning his eyes from these vain shows, and muttering his prayers with an air of affected humility, it would have been difficult to guess at the inordinate thirst of ambition that lurked in his bosom. He was a proud and stern man, scorning the prejudices of mankind, yet respecting them in appearance as the ground work of the distinction which he enjoyed. His heart was steeled against all gentle feeling, save in the one fount of affection which gushed in that barren tenement, for his only child, his beautiful and dark eyes Zelica.

Yet to gratify his ruling passion, he had sacrificed her without hesitation, and had deprived himself of the only solace which his strict adherence to the rules of his profession admitted. He had instructed her in the mysterious dogmas of the religion of Brama, and had shewn her the lofty origin of the Sacerdotal caste, and their consequent preeminence over all other conditions of men. But while he taught her what to revere, he had also taught her to smile at the superstitions by which these doctrines were disgraced; at the errors of the civil code which was founded upon them; and at the absurdity of customs which antiquity alone had rendered

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venerable. He forgot the danger of raising her above these prejudices, and that although she had submitted with a blind obedience to his will in the present instance, a period might arrive when she would hesitate to pay an equal reverence to the mere trammels imposed by custom, and abhorrent to humanity.

Months passed on; and again there was a festival in Delhi; and again the sounds of cymbals and trumpets were heard in her streets; and the great kettle drum, the Nagar, was carried on the back of a camel along the banks of the Jumna. A procession of priests issued from the house of the Bramin, the husband of Zelica; for the angel of death had passed over his dwelling, and the old man was no more. The walls echoed to the shrieks of the mourners. The friends and relatives of the deceased were seated on the floor of a large room, spread with mats, some recounting his virtues, and others surrounding the young widow, and congratulating her upon the glorious sacrifice she was about to make; ‘for she who dies with her husband,’ said they, ‘shall live with him for ever in Heaven.’

Zelica sate silently. She was dress in a mourning robe of deep blue, and her hair was gathered up in a knot, and confined with a fillet of golden chain work. Her eyes glanced mournfully, and with a restless movement from the window which commanded a view of the procession. Her cheek was flushed with crimson. There was a burning spot upon her brow, and there seemed a deep struggle in her mind. The sun shone gloriously. All nature was alive, and glowing with animation.

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Towards sun set, a bright flame was seen slowly ascending from a lofty funeral pile on the banks of the Jumna. The priests were assembled, and at their head was Hafiz, the Bramin, calm and composed, no muscle of his iron countenance exhibiting a trace of feeling or regret. There were wild cries, and shouts of unnatural laughter, mingled with the din of music; and as the flame rose higher and higher, the sun sunk in a blaze of glory behind the mountains. It was the signal for the sacrifice. Perfumes were thrown upon the fierce flame that it might blaze higher. The chief mourners, bearing the body of the Bramin, approached. It was thrown upon the pyre, and the multitude looked out impatiently for the arrival of the living victim.

Suddenly a loud clamor of many voices was heard, and the women who should have accompanied Zelica were seen flying wildly in all directions, and some rushed forward to the place of sacrifice, and declared that she was no where to be found. At this report, a dark and angry scowl over spread the features of Hafiz. All was confusion. The priests looked at one another in silent consternation, and then broke forth in loud and angry menace. Hafiz returned hastily to his daughter’s dwelling ‘She has concealed herself in the house,’ said he. ‘A womanish tremor has come over her, and she has gone to pray to Sheevah for strength.’ The women declared that she had retired to her favorite kiosk in the garden, to wait the appointed signal, and that when they had gone to lead her forth in triumph, the gate of the kiosk was open, and there was no one within.

They sought her in the gardens, but she was no where

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to be found. The gate at the end of the alley of bamboos was open. It was too plain, she had fled. The Bramin mounted his horse furiously. They sought her in the woods. They asked tidings of her in the caravansaries, but in vain. The search lasted for three days, and on the third, Hafiz, with rage in his heart, and a curse on his lips, left the city, feeling as would a stern father whose daughter is for ever dishonored, and who feels himself involved in her disgrace.

On the third night, Hafiz sat in his lonely dwelling in the deep woods, where no sound was heard but the cry of the jackall, [sic] as it wandered forth in search of prey, when a gentle knock was heard at his door. He started up, and bade the intruder enter. A moment more, and Zelica was at his feet. Her face was pale, her robe torn, and her hair dishevelled. The light of her beauty was dimmed. ‘My father!’ she cried, ‘My father, forgive me!’ She clung to his robe, but he drew it from her, as though there were contamination in her touch. She looked in his eyes, and read no pity there. In a voice of thunder, he bade her begone. She turned away, all pale and tearless, and his curse rang in her ears, as she fled alone through the dark woods.

For three days she had hid her5self in their deep recesses, while the human blood hounds were on her track. The death of her husband was sudden, and her mind was unprepared for the sacrifice she was called upon to make. She loved him not. He was a mercenary tyrant, and had treated her as his slave. The love of life was strong within her. She looked out upon the joyous face of nature, and sighed to think that in a few short hours it

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would be for ever hid from her eyes. She went to her kiosk in the garden, with its gilded lattices entwined with jessamine and the bright roses of Cashmere, and gazed upon the fierce flame, burning in the glare of day. She looked at her flowers. Her gazelle bounded forward, and licked her hand. The sound of voices approached, the clash of music gave forth the horrid signal, and like a startled deer, she rose and fled, passed through the terraced garden, and along the alley of bamboos, and hid herself in the thick foliage of the woods. When the thought of her father’s wrath came over her mind, she trembled. Yet had she not heard him condemn the barbarous superstitions enforced by religion? And would he not, in the joy of again seeing his only child, forgive her for having disobeyed these cruel mandates? But she did not know the stern and merciless nature of Hafiz, and that to the opinion of the very world he despised, he would sacrifice without a struggle his dearest affections.

And now her tears were dried, as she wandered along through these dark solitudes, and thought of her father’s abandonment, and the world’s scorn. Hope had died within her, and with the hope of enjoying life, the fear of death had also fled, and she passed without trembling the dreaded signal of the bamboo staff, and the pile of stones, giving evidence that on that spot the tiger had made his bloody feast on some unwary traveller.

Morning broke upon her sad thoughts, and even upon her wounded spirit its cheering rays were not without some influence. She found herself by the side of a lonely and sequestered valley, in the midst of which was a tank surrounded by mango trees, with multitudes of the blue

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and red lotus floating on its clear cool waters. The most graceful and lofty trees of the east, the Indian palm, the tamarind, the acacia, and the silken plantain, were mingled with the fan like foliage of the palmyra, and the bright green leaves of the chenar. There were antelopes cropping the red wild berries, butterflies of such shining colors as to resemble flying flowers, the little purple winged birds of paradise perching on the green branches, with wild peacocks and turtle doves; while the Pagoda thrush sent forth its soft and thrilling note from among the encircling foliage.

As Zelica looked round upon the scene, its soothing influence gradually stole over her heart. She sate down to rest under the shade of a spreading acacia. Her eye lids were heavy, and she fell asleep; a slight rustling among the leaves awakened her, and she perceived a young girl looking at her with a timid and anxious glance. She called to her, but the child no sooner saw that she was observed, than she fled with cries of wild fear down a steep path that led into the valley. Zelica rose and followed her, until she came to a low hut, composed of bamboo trellice, and nearly hid by the thick forest trees that surrounded it. As she came nearer, she heard loud cries proceeding from the interior, as warning her not to approach; and as she continued her path, two persons, a man and woman, issued from the cottage, and prostrated themselves to the earth before her. Then she understood that they were of the accursed race called Parias. These outcasts from society, should they even by accident touch the garment of one of a higher caste, are punished with death. They hide themselves by day,

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and come forth by night from their wretched dwellings in search of food to sustain their miserable existence; they are employed in the vilest offices, and separated by an insurmountable barrier, from the rest of their species.

Zelica approached, though not without shuddering, and prayed them to rise, and to give her some water to cool her parched lips. At the gentle sound of her voice, they rose from their prostrate attitude, and looked at her with pity, and still more with wonder, that there should exist the being so miserable as to ask for succour from one of their degraded race. They put rice before her, and cool water from the neighboring tank, and stood watching her from a distance, not venturing to approach. But when Zelica told them her story, and that she was the daughter of the renowned Hafiz, and that by flying from death she was for ever degraded, they came nearer, and spoke words of consolation to her; and as the Hindoo woman wept, the tears of Zelica were mingled with hers, and she willingly consented to the humble entreaties of the poor Parias, that she should remain with them, until time should have appeased the wrath of her father.

But the heart of Zelica was broken; and the hand of death was upon her. She lingered for a few days, then passed away like a flower blighted ere its prime. They dug her grave in that lonely valley, in a shady place where the waters murmured, and where the mournful cypress spread its green branches. At night, when no human eye was upon them, they strewed her humble grave with flowers, and watered the turf with their tears; and it pleased them to think that even they, in their abject state, had soothed the last hours of the high born and beautiful daughter of the race that scorned them.

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SIR WILLIAM PEPPERELL.

BY THE AUTHOR OF ‘SIGHTS FROM A STEEPLE.’

The mighty man of Kittery has a double claim to remembrance. He was a famous general, the most prominent military character in our anterevolutionary annals; and he may be taken as the representative of a class of warriors peculiar to their age and country, true citizen soldiers, who diversified a life of commerce or agriculture by the episode of a city sacked, or a battle won, and having stamped their names on the page of history went back to the routine of peaceful occupation. Sir William Pepperell’s letters, written at the most critical period of his career, and his conduct then and at other times, indicate a man of plain good sense, with a large share of quiet resolution, and but little of an enterprising spirit, unless aroused by external circumstances. The Methodistic principles with which he was slightly tinctured, instead of impelling him to extravagance, assimilated themselves to his orderly habits of thought and action. Thus respectably endowed, we find him when near the age of fifty, a merchant of weight in foreign and domestic trade, a provincial counsellor, and colonel of the York county militia,, filling a large space in the eyes of his generation, but likely to gain no other posthumous memorial than the letters on his tomb stone, because undistinguished from the many worshipful gentlemen who had lived prosperously and died peacefully

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before him. But in the year 1745, an expedition was projected against Louisbourg, a walled city of the French in the Island of Cape Breton. The idea of reducing this strong fortress was conceived by William Vaughan, a bold, energetic, and imaginative adventurer, and adopted by governor Shirley, the most bustling, though not the wisest ruler that ever presided over Massachusetts. His influence at its utmost stretch, carried the measure by a majority of only one vote in the legislature; the other New England provinces consented to lend their assistance; and the next point was to select a commander from among the gentlemen of the country, none of whom had the least particle of scientific soldiership, although some were experienced in the irregular warfare of the frontiers. In the absence of the usual qualifications for military rank, the choice was guided by other motives, and fell upon colonel Pepperell, who, as a landed proprietor in three provinces, and popular with all classes of people, might draw the greatest number of recruits to his banner. When this doubtful speculation was proposed to the prudent merchant, he sought advice from the celebrated Whitfield, then an itinerant preacher in the country, and an object of vast antipathy to many of the settled ministers. The response of the apostle of Methodism, though dark as those of the oracle at Delphos, intimating that the blood of the slain would be laid to colonel Pepperell’s charge, in case of failure, and that the envy of the living would persecute him, if victorious, decided him to gird on his armor.

That the French might be taken unawares, the legislature had been laid under an oath of secrecy while their

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deliberations should continue; this precaution, however, was nullified by the pious perjury of a country member of the lower house, who in the performance of domestic worship at his lodgings, broke into a fervent and involuntary petition for the success of the enterprise against Louisbourg. We of the present generation, whose hearts have never been heated and amalgamated by one universal passion, and who are perhaps less excitable in the mass than our fathers, cannot easily conceive the enthusiasm with which the people seized upon the project. A desire to prove in the eyes of England the courage of her provinces, the real necessity for the destruction of this Dunkirk of America, the hope of private advantage, a remnant of the old Puritan detestation of Papist idolatry, a strong hereditary hatred of the french, who for half a hundred years, had shed the blood of the English settlers in concert with the savages, the natural proneness of the New Englanders to engage in temporary undertakings, even though doubtful and hazardous; such were some of the motives which soon drew together a host, comprehending nearly all the effective force of the country. The officers were grave deacons; justices of the peace, and other similar dignitaries, and in the ranks were many warm house holders, sons of rich farmers, mechanics in thriving business, husbands weary of their wives, and bachelors disconsolate for want of them; the disciples of Whitfield also turned their excited imaginations in this direction, and increased the resemblance borne by the Provincial army to the motley assemblages of the first crusaders. A part of the peculiarities of the affair may be grouped into one picture, by selecting the moment of general Pepperell’s embarkation.

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It is a bright and breezy day of March, and about twenty small white clouds are scudding seaward before the wind, airy forerunners of the fleet of privateers and transports that spread their sails to the sunshine in the harbor. The tide is at its height, and the gunwale of a barge alternately rises above the wharf and then sinks from view, as it lies rocking on the waves in readiness to convey the general and his suite on board the Shirley galley; in the back ground, the dark wooden dwellings of the town have poured forth their inhabitants, and this way rolls an earnest throng, with the great man of the day walking quietly in the midst. Before him struts a guard of honor, selected from the yeomanry of his own neighborhood, stout young rustics in their Sunday clothes; next appear six figures who demand our more minute attention. He in the centre is the general, a well proportioned man, with a slight hoar frost of age just visible upon him; he views the fleet in which he is to embark, with no stronger expression than a calm anxiety, as if he were sending a freight of his own merchandise to Europe. A scarlet British uniform, made of the best of broad cloth, because imported by himself, adorns his person, and in the left pocket of a large buff waistcoat, near the pommel of his sword, we see the square protuberance of a small Bible, which certainly may benefit his pious soul, and perchance may keep a bullet from his body. The middle aged gentleman at his right hand, to whom he pays such grave attention, in silk, gold, and velvet, and with a pair of spectacles thrust above his forehead, is governor Shirley; the quick motion of his small eyes in their puckered sockets, his grasp on one of

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the general’s bright military buttons, the gesticulation of his fore finger, keeping time with the earnest rapidity of his words, have all something characteristic. His mind is calculated to fill up the wild conceptions of other en with its own minute ingenuities, and he seeks, as it were, to climb up to the moon by piling pebble stones one upon another. He is now impressing on the general’s recollection the voluminous details of a plan for surprising Louisbourg in the depth of midnight, and thus to finish the campaign within twelve hours after the arrival of the troops. On the left, forming a striking contrast of the unruffled deportment of Pepperell and the fidgetty vehemence of Shirley, is the martial figure of Vaughan; with one hand he has seized the general’s arm, and he points the other to the sails of the vessel fluttering in the breeze, while the fire of his inward enthusiasm glows through his dark complexion and flashes in tips of flame from his eyes. Another pale and emaciated person, in neglected and scarcely decent attire, and distinguished by the abstracted fervor of his manner, presses through the crowd and attempts to lay hold of Pepperell’s skirt. He has spent years in wild and shadowy studies, and has searched the crucible of the alchemist for gold, and wasted the life allotted him in a weary effort to render it immortal; the din of warlike preparation has broken in upon his solitude, and he comes forth with a fancy of his half maddened brain, the model of a flying bridge, by which the army is to be transported into the heart of the hostile fortress with the celerity of magic. But who is this, of the mild and venerable countenance shaded by locks of a hallowed whiteness,

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looking like Peace with its gentle thoughts in the midst of uproar and stern designs? It is the minister of an inland parish, who, after much prayer and fasting, advised by the elders of the church and the wife of his bosom, has taken his staff and journeyed townward: the benevolent old man would fain solicit the general’s attention to a method of avoiding danger from the explosion of mines, and of overcoming the city without bloodshed of friend or enemy. We start as we turn from this picture of Christian love to the dark enthusiast close beside him, a preacher of the new sect; in every wrinkled line of whose visage we can read the stormy passions that have chosen religion for their outlet. Wo to the wretch that shall seek mercy there! At his back is slung an axe, wherewith he goes to hew down the carved altars and idolatrous images in the Popish Churches, and over his head he rears a banner, which, as the wind unfolds it, displays the motto given by Whitfield, C H R I S T O D U C E, in letters red as blood. But the tide is now ebbing, and the general makes his adieus to the governor, and enters the boat; it bounds swiftly over the waves, the holy banner fluttering in the bows; a huzza from the fleet comes riotously to the shore, and the people thunder back their many voiced reply.

When the expedition sailed, the projectors could not reasonably rely on assistance from the mother country. At Canso, however, the fleet was strengthened by a squadron of British ships of the line and frigates, under commodore Warren, and this circumstance undoubtedly prevented a discomfiture, although the active business and all the dangers of the siege fell to the share of the

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Provincials. If we had any confidence that it could be done with half so much pleasure to the reader as to ourself, we would present a whole gallery of pictures from these rich and fresh historic scenes. ever, certainly, since man first indulged his instinctive appetite for war, did a queerer and less manageable host sit down before a hostile city; the officers, drawn from the same class of citizens with the rank and file, had neither the power to institute an awful discipline, nor enough of the trained soldier’s spirit to attempt it; of headlong valor, when occasion offered, there was no lack, nor of a readiness to encounter severe fatigue; but, with few intermissions, the Provincial army made the siege one long day of frolic and disorder. Conscious that no military virtues of their own deserved the prosperous result which followed, they insisted that Heaven had fought as manifestly on their side, as ever on that of Israel in the battles of the Old Testament. We, however, if we consider the events of after years, and confine our view to a period short of the Revolution, might doubt whether the victory was granted to our fathers as a blessing or as a judgment. Most of the young men, who had left their paternal firesides, sound in constitution and pure in morals, if they returned at all, returned with ruined health, and with minds so broken up by the interval of riot, that they never after could resume the habits of good citizenship. A lust for military glory was also awakened in the country, and France and England gratified it with enough of slaughter; the former seeking to recover what she had lost, the latter to complete the conquest which the colonists hd begun. There was a brief season of repose, and then a fiercer

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contest, raging almost from end to end of North America. Some went forth and met the red men of the wilderness, and when years had rolled, and the settler came in peace unburied bones, among the fallen boughs and withered leaves of many autumns. Others were foremost in the battles of the Canadas, till, in the day that saw the downfall of the French dominion, they poured their blood with Wolfe on the heights of Abraham. Through all this troubled time, the flower of the youth were cut down by the sword, or died of physical diseases, or became unprofitable citizens by moral ones, contracted in the camp and field. Dr. Douglass, a shrewd Scotch physician of the last century, who died before war had gathered in half its harvest, computes that many thousand blooming damsels, capable and well inclined to serve the state as wives and mothers, were compelled to lead lives of barren celibacy by the consequences of the successful siege of Louisbourg. But we will not sadden ourselves with these doleful thoughts, when we are to witness the triumphal entry of the victors into the surrendered town.

The thundering of drums, irregularly beaten, grows more and more distinct, and the shattered strength of the western wall of Louisbourg stretches out before the eye, forty feet in height, and far overtopt by a rock built citadel; in yonder breach the broken timber, fractured stones, and crumbling earth, prove the effect of the Provincial cannon; the draw bridge is down over the wide moat, the gate is open, and the general and British commodore are received by the French authorities beneath the dark and lofty portal arch. Through the massive

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gloom of this deep avenue, there is a vista of the main street, bordered by high peaked houses, in the fashion of old France; the view is terminated by the centre square of the city, in the midst of which rises a stone cross; and shaven monks, and women with their children, are kneeling at its foot. A confused sobbing and half stifled shrieks are heard, as the tumultuous advance of the conquering army becomes audible to those within the walls. By the light which falls through the arch way, we perceive that a few months have somewhat changed the general’s mien, giving it the freedom of one acquainted with peril, and accustomed to command; nor amid hopes of more solid reward, does he appear insensible to the thought that posterity will remember his name among those renowned in arms. Sir Peter Warren, who receives with him the enemy’s submission, is a rough and haughty English seaman, greedy of fame, but despising those who have won it for him. Pressing forward to the portal, sword in hand, comes a comical figure in a brown suit, and blue yarn stockings, with a huge frill sticking forth from his bosom, to which the whole man seems an appendage; this is that famous worthy of Plymouth county, who went to the war with two plain shirts and a ruffled one, and is now about to solicit the post of governor in Louisbourg. In close vicinity stands Vaughan, worn down with toil and exposure, the effect of which has fallen upon him at once in the moment of accomplished hope. The group is filled up by several British officers, who fold their arms and look with scornful merriment at the Provincial army, as it stretches far behind in garments of every hue,

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resembling an immense strip of patch work carpeting thrown down over the uneven ground. In the nearer ranks, we may discern the variety of ingredients that compose the mass. Here advance a row of stern, unmitigable fanatics, each of whom clenches his teeth and grasps his weapon with a fist of iron at sight of the temples of the ancient faith, with the sun light glittering on their cross crowned spires; others examine the surrounding country and send scrutinizing glances through the gate way, anxious to select a spot, whither the good woman and her little ones in the Bay Province may be advantageously transported; some, who drag their diseased limbs forward in weariness and pain, have made the wretched exchange of health or life for what share of fleeting glory may fall to them among four thousand men. But these are all exceptions, and the exulting feelings of the general host combine in an expression like that of a broad laugh on an honest countenance. They roll onward riotously, flourishing their muskets above their heads, shuffling their heavy heels into an instinctive dance, and roaring out some holy verse from the New England Psalmody, or those harsh old warlike stanzas which tell the story of ‘Lovell’s Fight.’ Thus they pour along, till the battered town and the rabble of its conquerors, and the shouts, the drums, the singing and the laughter, grow dim and die away from Fancy’s eye and ear.

The arms of Great Britain were not crowned by a more brilliant achievement during that unprosperous war, and in adjusting the terms of a subsequent peace, Louisbourg was an equivalent for many losses nearer home. The

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English, with very pardonable vanity, attributed the conquest chiefly to the valor of the naval force. On the continent of Europe, our fathers met with greater justice, and Voltaire has ranked this enterprise of the husbandmen of New England among the most remarkable events in the reign of Louis XV. The ostensible leaders did not fail of reward. Shirley, originally a lwayer, was commissioned in the regular army, and rose to the supreme military command in America; Warren, also, received honors and professional rank, and arrogated to himself, without scruple, the whole crop of laurels gathered at Louisbourg; pepperell was placed at the head of a royal regiment, and first of his countrymen, was distinguished by the title of baronet. Vaughan, alone, who had been the soul of the deed, from its adventurous conception till the triumphant close, and, in every danger, and every hardship, had exhibited a rare union of ardor and perseverance—Vaughan, was entirely neglected, and died in London, whither he had gone to make known his claims. After the great era of his life, Sir William Pepperell did not distinguish himself either as a warrior or a statesman. He spent the remainder of his days in all the pomp of a colonial grandee, and laid down his aristocratic head among the humbler ashes of his fathers, just before the commencement of the earliest troubles between England and America.

H * * * * * * * *

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Duffee Stevens Printers.

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ITALIAN PEASANTS’ SONG.
THE TWILIGHT HOUR.

BY THOMAS GRAY, JUN.

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THE RELIEF OF ORLEANS,

BY THE ALLIED GOTHS AND ROMANS WHEN BESIEGED BY THE HUNS, AS DESCRIBED BY GIBBON.

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TO A WILD DEER,
RUN DOWN IN THE BOROUGH OF COLUMBIA, LANCASTER COUNTRY, PENNSYLVANIA.

BY CHARLES WEST THOMSON.

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GIBRALTER.

BY THE LATE J. O ROCKWELL.

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GOOD NIGHT.

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I. Cary, Printer.

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VISIT OF POOR RELATIONS.

It was a cold winter evening, and Sir Jacob Royalstone, Baronet, M. P. for the County of —, Justice of the Peace, &c. &c. &c., having wound up the important affairs of the day, dismissed sundry paupers to the house of correction, attended a County meeting, at which he had eloquently expressed his opinion concerning the necessity of maintaining the game laws in all their pristine purity, and concluded dinner with his customary modicum of genuine old Port, sat down before a blazing fire, to enjoy all the luxury of the otium cum dignitate, in the company of his honorable spouse.

The hail pattering against the windows, enhanced the comforts that reigned within. Every thing in the apartment bespoke wealth and ease, from the massive silver tea urn, that smoked upon the table, to the well fed lap dog that snored upon the hearth rug. Then there were warm damask curtains, a soft Turkey carpet, and comfortable arm chairs, velvet foot stools, and all the appendages of luxury. Sir Jacob’s swelled feet resting in velvet slippers, and a certain peevish expression discernible upon his countenance, hinted that he paid the penalty of good living in occasional twinges of the gout. But my lady was the perfection of comfort.

Embedded in a soft arm chair, with her black velvet gown, warm shawl, well plaited ruff, and an over fed poodle asleep upon her lap; her round fat physiognomy exhibited the very beau ideal of self satisfied and selfish

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insanity. Nor were these enviable feelings of self satisfaction at all surprising, for no lady in the County of — was a greater pattern of respectability and decorum.

At the head of all public charities stood the names of Sir Jacob and Lady Royalstone. Every Sunday, as regularly as the cracked bell of the parish church ceased to toll, Sir Jacob’s old family coach, with four sleek long tailed horses, and fat coachman with bag wig and boquet, might be seen making its way among the gaping rustics; and shortly after, the squire and his lady, preceded by a footman carrying the family Bible, condescendingly walked up the aisle, and seated themselves in their well cushioned pew, where the audible responses of the squire were the edification of all hi humble neighbors.

‘My dear,’ said the squire, turning pompously with spectacles on his nose, towards his better half, ‘I am told that great preparations are making at the Castle, for the reception of Lord —; that it is his Lordship’s intention to form a matrimonial alliance in the course of the winter, and to fix his residence permanently in our County.’ ‘And pray, who is named as the future Countess?’ enquired Lady Royalstone. ‘No one appears to be informed upon that point,’ replied the squire, ‘but she will doubtless be selected from a family of distinction.’ A pause ensued; during which, Sir Jacob continued to peruse the newspaper which the footman, after carefully drying, had put into his hands. The sound of carriage wheels coming up the avenue broke in upon the silence. ‘A hack chaise, Sir Jacob;’ said

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the servant, ‘and, my eyes! such a pair of jaded horses!’ In a few moments, the bell rung, the door opened, and no spectre could have been more appalling to the eyes of Sir Jacob and his lady, than the apparition which suddenly presented itself in the shape of a family of poor relations, whose very names they had long since consigned to oblivion.

‘Mrs. Hartington, Sir Jacob, with her son and daughter;’ whispered the servant, in the ear of the squire. Lady Royalstone drew herself up, smoothed down her shawl, and without rising from her chair, eyed the group askance. The squire looked uneasy, took off his spectacles, and appeared afflicted with a sudden fit of deafness. A little fat cur waddled off a velvet cushion, and barked at the intruders. The very poodle that sat on her ladyship’s lap seemed to imitate her air of supercilious dignity.

Meanwhile Mrs. Hartington, a first cousin of Sir Jacob’s, but who had been discarded by her family, some twenty years back, for an imprudent marriage with a poor lieutenant in the army, stood at the door, dressed in deep mourning, holding in her hand a letter with a black seal, the traces of recent tears upon her cheek. Her pretty daughter, keeping a little behind, timidly eyed her proud relatives, while the little boy stood twirling his cap, and vacantly gazing at what he thought by much the finest room he had ever seen in his life.

‘I have taken the liberty Sir Jacob,’ said Mrs. Hartington in a low and mournful voice, ‘to apply to you in a circumstance so deeply afflicting, that—[’] ‘I believe my dear,’ said his lady, sourly, ‘that if you

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were to attend to all the applications that are made to you, you would shortly have to make an application for yourself’ ‘Very true, my dear;’ said Sir Jacob. ‘I have just received news of my husband’s death;’ said the widow, bursting into tears. ‘Time, madam,’ said Sir Jacob, coldly, ‘is the only remedy for an affliction of that nature.’ ‘His affairs are left in the utmost disorder. The creditors have seized all we have. As my nearest relative, I have ventured to come to you—’ ‘Madam!’ said Sir Jacob, rising wrathfully, and kicking aside a footstool, to the manifest detriment of his gouty foot. ‘Don’t agitate yourself, Sir Jacob,’ said his lady, quietly. ‘But for the sake of my children,’ said Mrs. Hartington, ‘worlds would not have prompted me to take this step,’ ‘Let us go, mother!’ whispered Lucy. The tears of the widow were dried, and she turned away silently. Sir Jacob pompously put his hand in his pocket, drew thence, and slowly opened a pocket book filled with bank notes, one of which he tendered for the acceptance of his cousin, though without venturing to meet her eye as he gave it. ‘You must be aware, madam,’ said he, ‘that the claims daily made upon the charity of a person of my condition are extensive, and I am under the necessity of requesting that this is the last application which I may receive on the subject.’

A feeling of pride for a moment prompted Mrs. Hartington to return the paltry offering; but she looked at her children and thought of her home, and wishing the Baronet good evening, took her leave. ‘How much did you give them, my dear?’ said Lady Royalstone. ‘A ten pound note,’ said Sir Jacob. ‘Extremely handsome,

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and very liberal,’ said the lady. ‘Decidedly,’ rejoined the squire; but either the gout or his conscience gave him a terrible twinge at the moment.

Some months afterwards, reports of a strange nature reached the ears of the squire and his ldy. It was said that the young Lord —, the proprietor of the Castle, a great man of the County, was privately betrothed to a young and beautiful girl of obscure parentage, and no fortune, whose affections he had gained without disclosing his rank. Sir Jacob and Lady Royalstone listened in silence and consternation, for there were several circumstances in the story which induced them to fear that the young lady in question, was no other than Miss Lucy Hartington.

In a few days, the matter was put beyond all doubt. A note with a coronetted seal was put into the hands of the Baronet, who after perusing it, handed it in silence to his lady. It ran as follows:

‘Lord — presents his compliments to Sir Jacob and Lady Royalstone, and begs to request the honor of their company on the occasion of his marriage with Miss Hartington; at the same time enclosing a draft to the amount of the sum which Sir Jacob bestowed upon Mrs. Hartington, as that lady would regret a further interference with the deserving objects of Sir Jacob’s charity.’

‘What shall we do!’ exclaimed Sir Jacob. ‘What should we do;’ said his lady, who was not burdened with any extra feelings of sensitiveness; ‘but accept the invitation. Lord — has certainly enough scavoir vivre to understand the difference that must invariably be made between rich and poor relations.’

F. E. I.

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AN EVENING IN AUTUMN.

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THE CANTERBURY PILGRIMS.

The summer moon, which shines in so many a tale, was beaming over a broad extent of uneven country. Some of its brightest rays were flung into a spring of water, where no traveller, toiling as the writer has, up the hilly road beside which it gushes, ever failed to quench his thirst. The work of neat hands and considerate art, was visible about this blessed fountain. An open cistern, hewn and hollowed out of solid stone, was placed above the waters, which filled it to the brim, but, by some invisible outlet, were conveyed away without dripping down its sides. Though the basin had not room for another drop, and the continual gush of water made a tremor on the surface, there was a secret charm that forbade it to overflow. I remember, that when I had slaked my summer thirst, and sat panting by the cistern, it was my fanciful theory, that nature could not afford to lavish so pure a liquid, as she does the waters of all meaner fountains.

When the moon was hanging almost perpendicularly over this spot, two figures appeared on the summit of the hill, and came with noiseless footsteps down towards the spring. They were then in the first freshness of youth; nor is there a wrinkle now on either of their brows, and yet they wore a strange old fashioned garb. Once, a young man with ruddy cheeks, walked beneath the canopy of a broad brimmed gray hat; he seemed to have inherited his great-grand-sire’s square skirted coat,

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and a waistcoat that extended its immense flaps to his knees; his brown locks, also, hung down behind, in a mode unknown to our times. By his side was a sweet young damsel, her fair features sheltered by a prim little bonnet, within which appeared the vestal muslin of a cap; her close, long waisted gown, and indeed her whole attire, might have been worn by some rustic beauty who had faded half a century before. But, that there was something too warm and life like in them, I would here have compared this couple to the ghosts of two young lovers, who had died long since in the glow of passion, and now were straying out of their graves, to renew the old vows, and shadow forth the unforgotten kiss of their earthly lips, beside the moonlit spring.

‘Thee and I will rest here a moment, Miriam,’ said the young man, as they drew near the stone cistern, ‘for there is no fear that the elders know what we have done; and this may be the last time we shall ever taste this water.’

Thus speaking, with a little sadness in his face, which was also visible in that of his companion, he made her sit down on a stone, and was about to place himself very close to her side; she, however, repelled him, though not unkindly.

‘Nay, Josiah,’ said she, giving him a timid push with her maiden hand, ‘thee must sit farther off, on that other stone, with the spring between us. What would the sisters say, if thee were to sit so close to me?’

‘But we are of the world’s people now, Miriam,’ answered Josiah.

The girl persisted in her prudery, nor did the youth,

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in fact, seem altogether free from a similar sort of shyness; so they sat apart from each other, gazing up the hill, where the moonlight discovered the tops of a group of buildings. While their attention was thus occupied, a party of travellers, who had come wearily up the long ascent, made a halt to refresh themselves at the spring. There were three men, a woman, and a little girl and boy. Their attire was mean, covered with the dust of the summer’s day, and damp with the night dew; they all looked woe begone, as if the cares and sorrows of the world had made their steps heavier as they climbed the hill; even the two little children appeared older in evil days, than the young man and maiden who had first approached the spring.

‘Good evening to you, young folks,’ was the salutation of the travellers; and ‘Good evening, friends,’ replied the youth and damsel.

‘Is that white building the Shaker meeting house?’ asked one of the strangers. ‘And are those the red roofs of the Shaker village?’

‘Friend, it is the Shaker village,’ answered Josiah, after some hesitation.

The travellers, who, from the first had looked suspiciously at the garb of these young people, now taxed them with an intention, which all the circumstances, indeed, rendered too obvious to be mistaken.

‘It is true, friends,’ replied the young man, summoning up his courage. ‘Miriam and I have a gift to love each other, and we are going among the world’s people to live after their fashion. And ye know that we do not transgress the law of the land; and neither ye, nor the elders themselves, have a right to hinder us.’

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‘Yet you think it expedient to depart without leave taking,’ remarked one of the travellers.

‘Yea, ye-a,’ said Josiah, reluctantly, ‘because father Job is a very awful man to speak with, and being aged himself, he has but little charity for what he calls the iniquities of the flesh.’

‘Well,’ said the stranger, ‘we will neither use force to bring you back to the village, nor will we betray you to the elders. But sit you here awhile, and when you have heard what we shall tell you of the world which we have left, and into which you are going, perhaps you will turn back with us of your own accord. What say you?’ added he, turning to his companions. ‘We have travelled thus far without becoming known to each other. Shall we tell our stories, here by this pleasant spring, for our own pastime, and the benefit of these misguided young lovers?’

In accordance with this proposal, the whole party stationed themselves round the stone cistern, the two children being very weary, fell asleep upon the damp earth, and the pretty Shaker girl, whose feelings were those of a nun or a Turkish lady, crept as close as possible to the female traveller, and as far as she well could from the unknown men. The same person who had hitherto been the chief spokesman, now stood up, waving his hat in his hand, and suffered the moonlight to fall full upon his front.

‘In me,’ said he, with a certain majesty of utterance, ‘in me, you behold a poet.’

Though a lithographic print of this gentleman s extant, it may be well to notice that he was now nearly forty, a thin and stooping figure, in a black coat, out at

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elbows; notwithstanding the ill condition of his attire, there were about him several tokens of a peculiar sort of foppery, unworthy of a mature man, particularly in the arrangement of his hair, which was so disposed as to give all possible loftiness and breadth to his forehead. However, he had an intelligent eye, and on the whole a marked countenance.

‘A poet!’ repeated the young Shaker, a little puzzled how to understand such a designation, seldom heard in the utilitarian community where he had spent his life. ‘Oh, ay, Miriam, he means a varse maker, thee must know.’

This remark jarred upon the susceptible nerves of the poet; nor could he help wondering what strange fatality had put into this young man’s mouth an epithet, which ill natured people had affirmed to be more proper to his merit than the one assumed by himself.

‘True, I am a verse maker,’ he resumed, ‘but my verse is no more than the material body into which I breathe the celestial soul of thought. Alas! how many a pang has it cost me, this same insensibility to the etherial essence of poetry, with which you have here tortured me again, at the moment when I am to relinquish my profession for ever! Oh, Fate! why hast thou warred with Nature, turning all her higher and more perfect gifts to the ruin of me, their possessor? What is the voice of song, when the world lacks the ear of taste? How can I rejoice in my strength and delicacy of feeling, when they have but made great sorrows out of little ones? Have I dreaded scorn like death, and yearned for fame as others pant for vital air, only to find

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myself in a middle state between obscurity and infamy? But I have my revenge! I could have given existence to a thousand bright creations. I crush them into my heart, and there let them putrify! I shake off the dust of my feet against my countrymen! But posterity, tracing my footsteps up this weary hill, will cry shame upon the unworthy age that drove one of the father’s [sic] of American song to end his days in a Shaker village!’

During this harangue, the speaker gesticulated with great energy, and, as poetry is the natural language of passion, there appeared reason to apprehend his final explosion into an ode extempore. The reader must understand, that for all these bitter words, he was a kind, gentle, harmless, poor fellow enough, whom Nature tossing her ingredients together without looking at her recipe, had sent into the world with too much of one sort of brain and hardly any of another.

‘Friend,’ said the young Shaker, in some perplexity, ‘thee seemest to have met with great troubles, and, doubtless, I should pity them, if—if I could but understand what they were.’

‘Happy in your ignorance!’ replied the poet, with an air of sublime superiority. ‘To your coarser mind, perhaps, I may seem to speak of more important griefs, when I add, what I had well nigh forgotten, that I am out at elbows, and almost starved to death. At any rate, you have the advice and example of one individual to warn you back; for I am come hither, a disappointed man, flinging aside the fragments of my hopes, and seeking shelter in the calm retreat which you are so anxious to leave.’

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‘I thank thee friend,’ rejoined the youth, ‘but I do not mean to be a poet, nor, Heaven be praised! do I think Miriam ever made a varse in her life. So we need not fear thy disappointments. But, Miriam,’ he added, with real concern, ‘thee knowest that the elders admit nobody that has not a gift to be useful. Now what under the sun can they do with this poor varse maker?’

‘Nay, Josiah, do not thee discourage the poor man,’ said the girl, in all simplicity and kindness. ‘Our hymns are very rough, and perhaps they may trust him to smooth them.’

Without noticing this hint of professional employment, the poet turned away, and gave himself up to a sort of vague reverie, which he called thought. Sometimes he watched the moon, pouring a silvery liquid on the clouds, through which it slowly melted till they became all bright; then he saw the same sweet radiance dancing on the leafy trees which rustled as if to shake it off, or sleeping on the high tops of hills, or hovering down in distant vallies, like the material of unshaped dreams; lastly, he looked into the spring, and there the light was mingling with the water. In its crystal bosom, too, beholding all heaven reflected there, he found an emblem of a pure and tranquil breast. He listened to that most ethereal of all sounds, the song of crickets, coming in full choir upon the wind, and fancied, that, if moonlight could be heard, it would sound just like that. Finally he took a draught at the Shaker spring, and, as if it were the true Castalia, was forthwith moved to compose a lyric, a Farewell to his Harp, which he swore should be its closing strain, the last verse that an

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ungrateful world should have from him. This effusion, with two or three other little pieces, subsequently written, he took the first opportunity to send by one of the Shaker brethren to Concord, where they were published in the New Hampshire Patriot.

Meantime, another of the Canterbury Pilgrims, one so different from the poet, that the delicate fancy of the latter could hardly have conceived of him, began to relate his sad experience. He was a small man, of quick and unquiet gestures, about fifty years old, with a narrow forehead, all wrinkled and drawn together. He held in his hand a pencil, and a card of some commission merchant in foreign parts, on the back of which, for there was light enough to read or write by, he seemed ready to figure out a calculation.

‘Young man,’ said he abruptly, ‘what quantity of land do the Shakers own here, in Canterbury?’

‘That is more than I can tell thee, friend,’ answered Josiah, ‘but it is a very rich establishment, and for a long way by the road side, thee may guess the land to be ours by the neatness of the fences.’

‘And what may be the value of the whole,’ continued the stranger, ‘with all the buildings and improvements, pretty nearly, in round numbers?’

‘Oh, a monstrous sum, more than I can reckon,’ replied the young Shaker.

‘Well, sir,’ said the pilgrim, ‘there was a day, and not very long ago, neither, when I stood at my counting room window, and watched the signal flags of three of my own ships entering the harbour, from the East Indies, from Liverpool, and from the Straits; and

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I would not have given the invoice of th least of them for the title deeds of this whole Shaker settlement. You stare. Perhaps, now, you won’t believe that I could have put more value on a little piece of paper, no bigger than the palm of your hand, than all these solid acres of grain, grass, and pasture land would sell for?’

‘I won’t dispute it, friend,’ answered Josiah, ‘but I know I had rather have fifty acres of this good land, than a whole sheet of thy paper.’

‘You may say so now,’ said the ruined merchant, bitterly, ‘for my name would not be worth the paper I should write it on. Of course, you must have heard of my failure?’

And the stranger mentioned his name, which, however mighty it might have been in the commercial world, the young Shaker had never heard of among the Canterbury hills.

‘Not heard of my failure!’ exclaimed the merchant, considerably piqued. ‘Why, it was spoken of on ’Change in London, and from Boston to New Orleans, men trembled in their shoes. At all events I did fail, and you see me here on y road to the Shaker village, where, doubtless, (for the Shakers are a shrewd set,) they will have a due respect for my experience, and give me the management of the trading part of the concern, in which case, I think I can pledge myself to double their capital in four or five years. Turn back with me, young an, for though you will never meet with my good luck, you can hardly escape my bad.’

‘I will not turn back for this,’ replied Josiah, calmly, ‘any more than for the advice of the varse maker, between

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whom and thee, friend, I see a sort of likeness, though I can’t justly say where it lies. But Miriam and I can earn our daily bread among the world’s people, as well as in the Shaker village. And do we want any thing more, Miriam?’

‘Nothing more, Josiah,’ said the girl quietly.

‘Yea, Miriam, and daily bread for some other little mouths, if God send them,’ observed the simple Shaker lad.

Miriam did not reply, but looked down into the spring, where she encountered the image of her own pretty face, blushing within the prim little bonnet. The third pilgrim now took up the conversation. He was a sunburnt countryman, of tall frame and bony strength, on whose rude and manly face there appeared a darker, more sullen and obstinate despondency, than on those of either the poet or the merchant.

‘Well now, youngster,’ he began, ‘these folks have had their say, so I’ll take my turn. My story will cut but a poor figure by the side of theirs; for I never supposed that I could have a right to meat and drink, and great praise besides, only for tagging rhymes together, as it seems this man does; nor ever tried to get the substance of hundreds into my own hands, like the trader there. When I was about of your years, I married me a wife, just such a neat and pretty young woman as Miriam, if that’s her name, and all I asked of Providence was an ordinary blessing on the sweat of my brow, so that we might be decent and comfortable, and have daily bread for ourselves, and for some other little mouths that we soon had to feed. We had no very

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great prospects before us; but I never wanted to be idle, and I thought it a matter of course that the Lord would help me, because I was willing to help myself.’

‘And did’nt [sic] He help thee, friend?’ demanded Josiah, with some eagerness.

‘No,’ said the yeoman, sullenly; ‘for then you would not have seen me here. I have labored hard for years; and my means have been growing narrower, and my living poorer, and my heart colder and heavier, all the time; till at last I could bear it no longer. I set myself down to calculate whether I had best go on the Oregon expedition, or come here to the Shaker village; but I had not hope enough left in me to begin the world over again; and to make my story short, here I am. And now, youngster, take my advice, and turn back; or else, some few years hence, you’ll have to climb this hill, with as heavy a heart as mine.’

This simple story had a strong effect on the young fugitives. The misfortunes of the poet and merchant had won little sympathy from their plain good sense and unworldly feelings, qualities which made them such unprejudiced and inflexible judges, that few men would have chosen to take the opinion of this youth and maiden, as to the wisdom or folly of their pursuits. But hers was one whose simple wishes had resembled their own, and who, after efforts which almost gave him a right to claim success from fate, had failed in accomplishing them.

‘But thy wife, friend?’ exclaimed the young man, [sic] ‘What became of the pretty girl, like Miriam?’ ‘Oh, I am afraid she is dead!’

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‘Yea, poor man, she must be dead, she and the children too,’ sobbed Miriam.

The female pilgrim had been leaning over the spring, wherein latterly a tear or two might have been seen to fall, and form its little circle on the surface of the water. She now looked up, disclosing features still comely, but which had acquired an expression of fretfulness, in the same long course of evil fortune that had thrown a sullen gloom over the temper of the unprosperous yeoman.

‘I am his wife,’ said she, a shade of irritability just perceptible in the sadness of her tone. ‘These poor little things, asleep on the ground, are two of our children. We had two more, but God has provided better for them than we could, by taking them to himself.’

‘And what would thee advise Josiah and me to do?’ asked Miriam, this being the first question which she had put to either of the strangers.

‘ ’Tis a thing almost against nature, for a woman to try to part true lovers,’ answered the yeoman’s wife, after a pause; ‘but I’ll speak as truly to you as if these were my dying words. Though my husband told you some of our troubles, he did’nt mention the greatest, and that which makes all the rest so hard to bear. If you and your sweet-heart marry, you’ll be kind and pleasant to each other for a year or two, and while that’s the case, you never will repent; but by-and-by, he’ll grow gloomy, rough, and hard to please, and you’ll be peevish, and full of little angry fits, and apt to be complaining by the fireside, when he comes to rest himself from his troubles out of doors; so your love will wear away by little and little, and leave you miserable at last.

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It has been so with us; and yet my husband and I were true lovers once, if ever two young folks were.’

As she ceased, the yeoman and his wife exchanged a glance, in which there was more and warmer affection, than they had supposed to have escaped the frost of a wintery fate, in either of their breasts. At that moment, when they stood on the utmost verge of married life, one word fitly spoken, or perhaps one peculiar look, had they had mutual confidence enough to reciprocate it, might have renewed all their old feelings, and sent them back, resolved to sustain each other amid the struggles of the world. But the crisis past, and never came again. Just then, also, the children, roused by their mother’s voice, looked up, and added their wailing accents to the testimony borne by all the Canterbury Pilgrims, against the world from which they fled.

‘We are tired and hungry,’ cried they. ‘Is it far to the Shaker village?’

The Shaker youth and maiden looked mournfully into each others’ eyes. They had but stepped across the threshhold of their homes, when lo! the dark array of cares and sorrows that rose up to warn them back. The varied narratives of the strangers had arranged themselves into a parable; they seemed not merely instances of woeful fate that had befallen others, but shadowy omens of disappointed hope, and unavailing toil, domestic grief, and estranged affection, that would cloud the onward path of these poor fugitives. But after one instant’s hesitation, they opened their arms, and sealed their resolve with as pure and fond an embrace, as ever youthful love had hallowed.

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‘We will not go back,’ said they. ‘The world never can be dark to us, for we will always love one another.’

Then the Canterbury Pilgrims went up the hill, while the poet chanted a drear and desperate stanza of the Farewell to his Harp, fitting music for that melancholy band. They sought a home where all former ties of nature or society would be sundered, and all old distinctions levelled, and a cold and passionless security be substituted for moral hope and fear, as in that other refuge of the world’s weary outcasts, the grave. The lovers drank at the Shaker spring, and then, with chastened hopes, but more confiding affections, went on to mingle in an untried life.

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THE BRIDESMAID.

BY H. F. GOULD.

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THE FALL OF MISSOLONGHI.

BY B. B. THATCHER.

Among the miserable population of Missolonghi, in the spring of 1826, was a family consisting of a young Greek, named Theodore Sessini, with his wife Viola, and a single infant. They had been married a year or two before the revolution broke out, and had lived in the same cottage with the parents of Theodore, on the banks of a river which runs among the highlands of Thessaly. It was a beautiful spot. The whole valley between the river and the little hamlet of Velestin was sprinkled with orange and olive woods, whose bloom drifted about like snow showers, with every gush of the breeze. A fragrant vine burthened the cottage roof with its purple verdure; the birds carolled forever in the boughs of the old plane tree that rustled over it; and far and wide on the sunny slope before it, in velvet couches of violet leaves, or clusters of the scarlet anemone, the cicada sang, and the butterfly balanced its blue wings airily, and many a wild bee quaffed and buzzed, and buzzed and quaffed.

But even places like this, so remote from the theatre of contest, could not remain long undisturbed. The territory of Greece is small at the best: the war was of such a spirit as the limits of a few Provinces could not easily confine: and it had grown fiercer from day to day, till it came to be understood at last, that, unless the Greeks

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could save themselves by a knife blade defence, they should be hunted, one and all, from the face of the earth.

There was motion, then, as there well might be, over all that bleeding but unconquered country. Liberty and life, and things nearer and dearer than either, were at stake; and for these every thing else must be abandoned. Wherever a Greek could be found, on land or sea, on mount or isle, from the Mainote myrtle groves to the green hills of Scio, the rumor of revolt came ringing in his ears; and lofty and proud hopes, though blended with fear, thrilled in his veins, as if he had heard the very shouts of his countrymen, and the battle class of their sabres. On every tower and on every temple, he saw the banner of the cross beckoning in the strength of the land to her last struggle. He saw it, and blessed God. Like a vine press had his nation been trampled under the foot of the Infidel, till their dishonor had filled the earth, and the voice of their suffering had ascended to Heaven. Well might they gird on the sword, well might they listen to the summoning tone of the Kleft bugle, as if now, indeed, were the hour granted them in answer of prayer, and in recompence for ages of shame.

Theodore was young at this period; but he was old enough to have learned the perfect use of his mountain arms, and to sympathise deeply with his countrymen. For the sake of his wife and parents, only, had he remained with them while his neighbors in the hamlet had almost all left it, forming themselves into bands for the Greek service in the Morea, and for the defence of the highland passes. But it became too much for the spirit of the gallant soldier to brook. ‘I must leave you,’

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said he, one bright morning in June, as the family sat together by the cottage door, on the hill side. they were watching a troop of Greek mountaineers, as they wound their way far below, by the river bank, their plumes tossing, and their sabres gleaming in the sun. The murmur of a war song was heard faintly, and the clang of a cymbal. Theodore started up, and sighed. ‘It will not do, dear Viola,’ he added; ‘where are my arms?’ They had long lain ready for instant use, and he mounted them before his question could be answered.

All saw his intention at a glance; and they knew they had no power to alter it, if they would. His father, himself, hoary and feeble as he was, had too much of the warrior, if not of the patriot, in his veins, to hinder those who were young enough to battle for their country and their homes. ‘Well, Theodore,’ said he, while his voice faltered in spite of him, ‘go, my son, but not without the blessing of an old soldier.’ The young mountaineer doffed his plumed cap and knelt, with his silver mounted yataghan shining in his hand: the old man laid his own white and tremulous hand on his locks, and blessed him.

It was a harder task to part with his younger brothers and sisters. They thronged about him, and hung upon his knees, and held him by both hands, sobbing as if their hearts would burst. Theodore kissed them all tenderly, again and again, till he came to his wife. ‘It will not do!’ she responded, musingly, to the abrupt expression of Theodore. ‘If you go,’ added she in a whisper, ‘you may never return; and can I live without you? could you die without me?’ There was something in her manner that repelled denial. The soldier saw that nothing could be said to dissuade her, and he

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clasped her to his bosom, and brushed away a tear from his eye. ‘Dear Viola!’ said he, ‘you have nerved me with steel. I thank thee, O God! If I am destined to fall for my country, wherever, whenever it may be, there will be hope with me and for me in my last moments.’ In an hour or two, every necessary arrangement being made, Theodore availed herself of the company of some old acquaintances who happened to pass by Velestin, and with them and his young bride was soon on his way to the army.

Since that time, he had fought in various battles and skirmishes with the Turks, distinguished himself by his bravery, and attained a high rank in the Greek service. After Missolonghi had been besieged some months, he formed a plan, with a few of his comrades, to relieve the town. The object was to introduce a reinforcement by sea. But the plan failed: the little squadron was separated by a storm, and the vessel of Theodore, with his own family on board, entered the harbour of Missolonghi alone.

Different, indeed was their manner of life here, from that in the vale of Velestin. The town had now been pressed to the utmost, for little less than two years. The general population of the place, constituting a sort of half armed guerrilla, and the garrison of the fortress, still counting more than a thousand, might indeed have been strong enough for further defence; but their ammunition was exhausted, the water springs within the walls drying up, and even provisions, plentifully supplied them hitherto by their countrymen at sea, becoming alarmingly insufficient. The harbor, and all its shores and islands, were held by the innumerable power of the

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enemy. On land and sea, the Crescent waved from every hill and every mast; and before and around, far as the eye could reach, the Infidel troops glittered in loose but long array.

There was need, truly, of stern hearts within these miserable walls. Famine and thirst and disease were brooding over them. The populace could do nothing but wait for the successive attacks of the Turks; and these they continued to resist with a kind of mechanical effort. In the intervals, they would meet in the market place; converse together from mere habit, and without interest; or sit and gaze silently at each other, hour after hour, with the motionless, listless eyes of statues.

There was still a hope, indeed, such as the human heart ever will cherish to its last pulse. Groups of women and children might be seen every morning, looking out upon the sea, from the walls and the roof of the fortress; and whenever a vessel came nearer than usual to the mouth of the harbor, with the Greek flag streaming at its mast, they would toss their hands like mad people, and shout and scream with their whole strength; and then a noisy murmur would spread among the populace that their countrymen were at hand. But they were buoyed up by something more than the chance of relief. Wretched as they were, and desperate as their case was, they were proud of their fate. They felt, one and all, that the fame of their defence had covered the earth. Here was a new Thermopylæ. Nations were their spectators. The liberties of Greece were their praise; and a glory, like the glory of their fathers of old, their immortal victory.

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But in all these scenes, where was the young officer of Velestin, with his wife and her infant. The truth was, he had been among the most spirited defendants of Missolonghi, but was at last wounded in a sally from the walls; and though an old Greek soldier, who followed him, had rescued him from the Turks at the hazard of his own life, his case was still desperate. His wound was deep, and there was no surgeon in the town, as there were scarcely half a dozen in Greece. In a word, in spite of his wife’s bandages, and the awkward management of Andrea, the old soldier, he was bleeding to death. Slowly, but surely as the sands of an hour glass, drop by drop, day and night, life was leaving him. Already had his cheek grown deadly pale, and his eye dim, and his frame slender and feeble.

As for Viola, another woman in her place might have been overwhelmed with despair. But she never forgot that she had followed her husband to console and support him. It was a feeling stronger than sorrow in her heart, that every thing depended on her. Theodore had left his couch, one day, and was trying to walk about his room, with her aid, in the sunshine that streamed through the window. At that moment a bird lit upon the window sill, and began to warble with its full voice. It was one of that kind which had built formerly in the viney eaves of their own cottage. Its song was the very same: and it brought up at once all the sweet memories of childhood and home; the bloom of the beautiful vale; the fragrance of its violet breezes; and the old cottage, and the father and mother, with the children at their feet, watching for the long lost wanderers. It was too much for them. Theodore sat down again upon his

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couch, covering his face with the only hand he could move, and Viola sank at his side; she laid her head upon his bosom and wept.

But the transport was soon over; she grew calmer and rose. ‘O Viola!’ said the poor Greek, ‘you will believe now what I told you before: it makes me miserable that I have made you so.’ ‘No! no!’ answered she: she had conquered a woman’s beautiful weakness with a woman’s noble strength, and her fine black eye shone with her triumph. ‘Oh, no! Heaven knows, dear Theodore, oh, no!’ ‘Do you think of Velestin when you say that? do you remember?—’ The bird was singing again in the sunshine. ‘I think of them all,’ she replied, ‘I remember every thing.’ ‘And you do not weep for the cottage, and the orange wood, and the twilight arbor; and are never faint with weariness, nor sick with the sight of blood?’ ‘I have done my duty, Theodore:’ said the high hearted woman, ‘would you have failed to do yours, would you weep?’ She looked full in his face, and he could give no answer. She knew his own heart better than himself. He took her hand tenderly; kissed her in a fervor of tears; and lay down, totally exhausted, but with something more like light in his bosom than he had known fro months before.

In a few hours the bird roused him from a sound sleep. It had quieted his agitation and soothed his pain: but when he raised his head again from the couch, even Viola started, he was so horribly ghastly with the loss of blood. At this moment Andrea opened the door of the sick room, and came in with a step like a boy’s. ‘Courage, my children,’ cried he, ‘there is hope for us

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yet.’ ‘What hope?’ asked the Greek and his wife at the same instant. ‘Why, the people and the troops,’ answered Andrea, ‘have had a meeting in the market place: and the word is, the town shall be deserted to night.’ Theodore sunk on his couch, paler than ever. ‘I must die here;’ said he, ‘I can neither move nor be moved. But you, Viola, as you love me, as you feel for that dear babe in the cradle, as you think of the gray hairs and the sorrow of all that love you, you must go this night—Andrea will go with you.’ ‘And you will die here?’ answered she, clasping her hands, and lifting her head loftily, with the air of an angel. ‘You will die here?’ she repeated. ‘God forbid! Theodore, I am the daughter of a mountain warrior. He would blush for me. I am your wife—you would die alone—God forbid!’ ‘You forget, dear Viola,’ said the Greek, ‘you can do me no more good; you have done every thing. Save yourself, and I shall die gladly.’ ‘Never!’ she replied. ‘Even for this dear babe, I cannot go. Never! Never!’ she clasped her child to her bosom: ‘let us die together!’ And she raised her eye heavenward again, shining with tears, and called God to witness that the love of her own life should not make her forgetful of her proud duty.

Poor Andrea stood aghast, miserably disappointed. He had done all in his power, and it availed nothing. He shut the door gently, and lay down in the vestibule, covering his face with his hands, ready to die. That night, however, the sally was made from the town. Of two bodies which started, the one an hour after the other, the first, consisting chiefly of the populace, succeeded in breaking through the Turkish lines without

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losing more than a third of their number. The troops in the second detachment, after a desperate skirmish, were almost all killed or driven back. Andrea, who was among the populace, bearing his master’s child in his arms, found his way back before morning, having left him in the care of a young officer, a friend of Theodore, who was going home by the way of Velestin. The old man was entirely reconciled to Viola, when he found she was satisfied with his conduct; and from this time nothing on earth troubled him.

At day break, the Turks began to enter the city. There was no necessity of assaulting it as before. It had no defenders; not a living being was visible in its streets. This enraged them the more. The blood they had shed that night, but exasperated the fierce vengeance which had nerved them for years. They began with firing the houses, and in half an hour the town was sounding with a whirlwind of flame, while the troops rushed in with drawn swords, searching every house, and cursing the ‘cowardly Greek dogs.’

By and by, however, they either found or suspected that the citadel was still occupied. The garrison which remained there had, in fact, collected all the remaining inhabitants within the gates; and Andrea had conveyed his master thither in his own arms. A rush of the Turks now ensued in that direction, ‘Allah! Allah!’ they shouted; and plunged on, horse and foot, an indiscriminate roaring mass. In ten minutes they had surrounded the citadel on all sides, and were clambering over its gates and windows, and beating upon its massy doors with their muskets.

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Within all was still. Now and then, only, a yataghan gleamed in the light of a window; and the voice of command was once heard, in an interval of the Turkish uproar—‘Be ready all, for the signal!’ It was a deep powerful tone from the lowest quarter of the citadel. At this awful moment, in one of the central rooms of the building, Theodore was kneeling at his couch, with one hand upon the cross at his breast, and the other thrown tenderly about the bosom of Viola. She was kneeling t his side, but neither spake: the spirits of both were before God. They were praising him that their child had been saved from this terrible hour; and that they were themselves permitted to perish together. The old soldier sat behind them, with his arms folded, and surveyed them with an air of immovable calmness.

But the tumult without grew every moment louder and nearer, till the very walls trembled as with an ocean’s thunder. A bugle blast was heard as the signal of a fresh assault. ‘Allah! Allah!’ shouted the Infidel mob: their cannon were brought to bear: the gates were demolished: the throng plunged through them and over them like a flood, the citadel rocked with their uproar. ‘Where are the Greeks?’ they cried fiercely. ‘The Greeks! the Greeks!’ And the cannon roared again, and the bugles rang, while a yell of fiendish disappointment rose from the multitude without. Once more for an instant they were quiet, as if to listen for the Greeks; and once more the voice was heard under ground. ‘Are you ready, my brave men?’ ‘Ready all!’ was the burst of a thousand voices. ‘Then God have mercy on our souls!’ That moment, the citadel, with all its tenants,

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Greeks and Turks together, and an immense crowd around it, were blown into the air with a tremendous explosion. It was the Fall of Missolonghi! There was the grave of its heroes!

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THE PARISIAN MILLINERS AND THE FISHES.

BY MRS. SIGOURNEY.

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LIFE.

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JOAN OF ARC.

The sun was pouring his last rays over the fertile valley of the Vosges, and gleaming brightly on the lowly village of Domremi, by the vine clad banks of the Meuse; and the young girls of the village were dancing round the haunted fountain, and sporting beneath the ‘Fairies tree,’ famous in the legendary annals of the hamlet. Apart from her companions, and singing to herself in a low and subdued voice, sat a young peasant girl, whose eyes were intently fixed upon the stone image of the Virgin, that adorned the rude entrance of the little chapel of ‘Our Lady of Bellemont.’

She was a modest and gentle girl, well loved in the village where she was born; reserved in her manners, and remarkable chiefly for her deep devotion, the quiet industry of her habits, and her attention to the humble duties befitting her station. Perhaps there are chords in the human heart, which, if not awakened by a master hand, would for ever lie dormant; even as the sweet music of the lyre might have remained for ever unknown, had Mercury not struck with his foot the shell of the tortoise that lay unheeded on the sea shore.

Had Joan of Arc been born in tranquil days, she would probably have passed her life unnoticed and unknown, in the silent stillness of her village home; those burning feelings of enthusiasm and patriotic devotion which raised her to the pinnacle of glory and misfortune, unsuspected even by herself; her destiny

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inglorious but happy; remote from the clang of arms, and the war blast of the trumpet; surrounded by familiar faces, and listening to no sounds less gentle than those of kind household voices, and the soft wood notes of the birds that sang among the trees near her father’s cottage door.

And who could have deemed that the young and gentle girl who was quietly occupied in her domestic employments, and who might frequently be seen tending her father’s sheep near the Virgin’s chapel, was destined to lead forth the chivalry of France to victory, to expel a powerful army from the heart of France, to restore her sovereign to the throne of his ancestors, and to hear her obscure name proclaimed aloud by the united and grateful voice of a mighty nation. Yet so it was; nor is there in the annals of history a heroine more glorious, more pure, and more unsullied by crime, even in the dangerous path of glory; who won her laurels more bloodlessly, or wore them with more humility than

It was indeed a period to sadden all loyal hearts, from the noble in his castle to the peasant in his cottage. The prince who was expelled from his throne by seditious subjects and foreign arms, could not fail to move the compassion of all whose hearts were uncorrupted by faction. He was a youth of nineteen, handsome, brave, and chivalrous; and, though wanting in firmness and resolution, warm hearted and generous in his feelings. English arms and talent were alike united against him.

The renowned duke of Bedford, with the flower of

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the English nobility, brave earls and stalwart knights, Suffolk and Somerset, Arundel and sir John Talbot, Warwick and Fastolffe, were among the English commanders. The earl of Salisbury had led on his troops to the siege of Orleans. On the safety of this city the destiny of France depended; and the brave garrison with Gaucour, their governor, were already reduced to the last extremities from want of troops and provisions.

In the village of Domremi was a small hostelrie, where travellers passing to Vancouleurs would frequently stop for rest and refreshment; and as the passing knight buckled on his armor, and with his foot in the stirrup quaffed the parting cup with his host, he would answer the questions of the rustic crowd who would learn the last news from Chinon, where the young king held his court, with mournful tidings of the rapid progress of the foreign troops, and the desponding feelings of the royal party.

In the mind of Joan, these narrations, and the universal excitement whose influence extended itself even to these peaceful vallies, produced other feelings besides those of sorrow. In the darkness of the night, her mind brooded over the misfortunes of her king and country, until at length she became possessed by one sole absorbing sentiment, to the exclusion of all other worldly feelings. She lived in an age of darkness and superstition, and the mind of a believing and even an enlightened Catholic is ever prone to religious excitement. True, she was a low born peasant; but the Word was preached to fishermen, and on the starry plains of Bethlehem, the glad tidings were delivered to shepherds by angel voices.

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It seemed to her that, in the stillness of the night, the Holy Virgin, at whose shrine her daily prayers were offered up for the salvation of France, deigned to appear to her, clad in robes of celestial brightness, and bade her arise, and go forth, strong in her protection, and save her country. Her feelings were raised to a pitch of enthusiasm which defied danger. We shall not assert that a divine revelation was indeed made to her; yet it is not wonderful that in a credulous age, the wisest men should have believed, that even if an excess of visionary enthusiasm could have induced a young and simple girl, without friends, or patrons, or interest, or council of any sort, to issue forth from her obscurity, and declare herself the protrectress of her country; yet, that nothing short of a miraculous power could have enabled her to perform the mission upon which she declared herself sent; to sway the deliberations of the wisest generals, and to conduct in the most critical emergencies the military operations of a vast army.

It was spring, when Joan of Arc left her native village and her father’s house, where she was never more to return. The wild flowers of the meadow were bursting into brightness, and the young leaves breaking from their wintry prison, and she deemed not, as she passed along, that her eye rested on them for the last time. Alone, on foot, and in her peasants’ dress, she took the road to Vancouleurs, nor stopped till she reached the residence of Robert of Baudricourt, the governor of the city.

She requested him to grant her an audience. Her request was twice refused; but at length her importunity

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prevailed, and she was admitted into his presence. With energy and simplicity she stated her errand; declared her divine mission, and earnestly conjured him not to neglect the voice of God, whose agent she was. The governor listened to her with astonishment. He was struck by her intrepidity and enthusiasm, and, unable to resist her earnest and eloquent appeal, he treated her with respect, and ordered her to be conducted under a safeguard to the French court at Chinon, with an explanatory letter to king Charles.

The young prince was struck with astonishment on reading the letter of Baudricourt. The arrival of Joan of Arc seemed to coincide with a prophecy, which had been made to him by a pious nun of Avignon, and which had made a deep impression upon his mind, that the hand of a woman should save France. But he was willing to try her claims to inspiration; and descending from his chair of state, he divested himself of his royal robes and jewelled crown, and all the insignia of his shadowy power, and assuming a private habit, mingled with his suite. He then gave orders that the maid should be admitted.

Joan of Arc was pale and fair; her figure slight and delicate. Her eye was calm, soft, yet enthusiastic; with a mingled grandeur and gentleness of expression rarely equalled. Her ‘still, clear face, youthful but bright,’ was shaded by a profusion of light brown hair. Her peasants’ ornaments were a gold collar and cross, and a necklace of small linked chain, as may be seen by her picture in the hotel de Ville, at Orleans.

She entered the royal apartments, not as one whose

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life had been spent remote from courts. The agent of a supreme power, the pomp and pageantry of an earthly king were as nothing in her eyes. Queen Mary of Anjou, the fair Agnes Sorel, and all the ladies of the court, in their splendid robes and glittering jewels, felt awed as by a superior influence in the presence of the young peasant girl. There was no desire of admiration in her demeanor; no lurking female vanity in her deportment. She passed unawed through the brilliant assembly, and advancing to king Charles, saluted him without hesitation as the sovereign of France. It might be that she had heard a description of his person, or that an involuntary look of deference in those who surrounded him, betrayed his rank. Be that as it may, her discrimination was hailed as a miracle.

With modesty, but firmness, she entered at once upon the subject that occupied her thoughts, and offered in the name of the Creator, to raise the siege of Orleans, and to conduct the king to Rheims, which was now in the hands of the enemy, to be there crowned and anointed. Her words threw a spell over all who listened. Her voice appeared like the voice of an angel. She seemed like a sun beam in the midst of darkness, and a ray of hope suddenly gleamed through the despair in which the minds of all men were before enveloped. An assembly of learned theologians examined her mission, and pronounced it undoubted and supernatural. She was sent to the parliament at Poictiers, and severely interrogated by all the talent of the land. Those who came convinced of her imposture, went away assured of her divine inspiration.

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The English affected to ridicule her pretensions; but the minds of the soldiers, and even of their leaders were secretly overawed, and their imagination struck by the general belief that prevailed in all around them; and they waited with anxiety, and even with horror, the result of this extraordinary affair.

At length all preparations being completed, Joan of Arc made her entry into Blois, where a large convoy was prepared for the supply of Orleans, with an army of ten thousand men, under the command of St. Severre, assembled to escort it. She was received with loud and repeated acclamations. She wore on her head a golden helmet, with a plume of snow white feathers, while her hair fell in profusion over her shoulders. She was clad in complete armor, with a brazen cuirass, and wore round her waist an embroidered girdle, and by her side a miraculous sword, taken by her desire from the tomb of a knight, buried in the church of St. Catherine de Fierbois.

She was mounted on a fiery steed, which she managed with admirable dexterity. In her hand she held aloft a consecrated banner, where the Supreme Being was represented grasping the globe of the earth, and surrounded by the sacred flower-de-luce. She issued a general order that all the soldiers should confess themselves and join in prayer before setting out upon the enterprise. She then placed herself as the head of the convoy, and took the road to Orleans.

Arrived at the banks of the river Beausse, the heroine covered the embarkation of the provisions with her troops, and Suffolk, the English general, was so over-

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awed by the divine influence that was supposed to accompany her, that he did not dare to attack her, and the convoy passed unmolested. On the fourth of May, Joan entered the ancient city of Orleans, arrayed in her military garb, and displaying her consecrated standard, and as she rode over the splendid bridge with its nine arches, which is thrown over the Loire, and entered the fortified gates, the air was rent with acclamations, and she was hailed as the guardian angel of France. All the sentiments of love and chivalry, as well as those of enthusiasm were united in her favor.

From this day, victory followed her steps. The English troops quailed at her approach, and declared themselves unable to content with invisible agents. The English generals believed her to be an agent from satan. The French regarded her as an angel from Heaven. Meanwhile, no earthly feeling of triumph seems to have clouded, even for an instant, the pure mind of this devoted heroine. Resolute, brave, pious and chivalrous, she looked forward to the accomplishment of a single aim, without one selfish, or unholy, or vain glorious thought to sully her noble enthusiasm. No unfeminine cruelty ever blemished her ardor. Though often wounded, and exposed to constant danger, her sword was never stained with blood.

By her command the garrison attacked the redoubts of the enemy, which had so long kept them in awe. The attack was successful, and the English who defended the entrenchments, were either put to the sword or taken prisoners. In attacking one of the enemies forts, the French were repulsed. Joan found

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herself almost alone. She displayed her sacred banner, and animating her soldiers by her countenance, her gestures, and exhortations, led them on again to victory.

On another occasion, she was wounded in the neck by an arrow from the bow of an English archer; she galloped behind the assailants, pulled out the weapon, all trickling with her blood, and hastened back to head her troops, and to plant her banner on the ramparts. She then returned triumphant over the bridge, and the nobles and the people alike acknowledged her as their deliverer. Having headed the attack at the siege of Jergeau, she descended into the fosse, and there received a blow on the head with a stone, which threw her from her horse, and laid her stunned and prostrate on the ground. But she soon recovered herself, resumed her station with dauntless courage, and in the end rendered the assault successful.

The English had now lost six thousand men; and their wonted courage and confidence had given place to amazement and despair. The siege of Orleans was raised, and the first part of Joan’s prophecy being accomplished, she desired that king Charles should instantly set out for Rheims, and receive in that ancient city the crown of his forefathers.

It was now the summer season. The maid of Orleans had appeared with the buds of spring, and the roses of summer had scarce blossomed in their brightness, before her prophecies were on the eve of fulfilment.

It was a glorious morning in July, and every hill and valley in the province of the Rhemois echoed to the glad sound of martial music; and the streets and squares of

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the ancient capital were thronged with a vast and joyous multitude of all ranks and ages. There were mitred bishops, and robed priests, and armed knights, fair dames with jewelled head gear and velvet masks, peasants in their holiday garbs, and noblemen with vast retinues of pages in silk attire, and retainers in armor. A deputation of the chief magistrates of Rheims had issued forth with the keys of the city to welcome the young monarch. A burst of military music announced the approach of the royal party, and a regiment of cavalry, with the gallant Dunois at their head, were received with loud shouts of welcome.

Various regiments passed in succession, headed by the princes of the blood royal, and the generals who had commanded in the late fierce struggles. But all eyes were strained with eagerness to view the approach of the royal retinue, which was seen advancing with gallant show. Surrounded by all the chivalry of France, by knights and nobles clad in their armor of steel, king Charles rode upon a noble war horse, encircled by a moving field of waving feathers, his head uncovered, and his plumed helmet borne by a young page who rode behind.

His head was bent in an attitude of respect, and as he reined in his horse at the gates, the cavalcade stopped, the crowd opened, and the maid of Orleans was seen mounted upon a white charger, with rich housings, riding on the king’s right hand, and holding aloft the consecrated banner. As she listened to the grateful words of the king, her face was shaded by the plumes of her helmet; but as she raised her head, and with an

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animated gesture pointed out the glittering spires of the cathedral, her face was seen all glowing with joy, and her eyes radiant with divine brightness.

Then arose one long, loud shout of triumph, ‘long live the aid of Orleans; and Charles our king!’ and the princes and nobles sprung from their horses, and kneeling before her, did her homage and obeisance—handkerchiefs waved from balconies, and crowns of flowers were showered down from the windows—and Joan raised her eyes to Heaven, and kissed the cross that hung round her neck, with a pious enthusiasm; then bent her head lowly, with humble and modest grace, and the cavalcade moved on, till it reached the gates of the ancient cathedral. Arrived there, the king dismounted, and as Joan alighted, he held the bridle of her horse; and giving her his hand, they entered the ancient abbey.

King Charles sate upon his throne of state, placed near the high altar, and the armed nobles kneeling around, swore fealty to the descendant of Clovis.—Peal upon peal of solemn music rolled forth from the cathedral, and the multitude at the doors were hushed and mute, as the solemn hymn rose triumphantly, swelling down the long dim aisles, and floating over the long array of arms and sweeping stoles.

The air was fragrant with incense, and through the richly stained windows of the abbey, the sun poured a golden light, glittering upon sword, and hauberk, and coat of mil, and blazing upon the bright crucifix and jewelled censors [sic] of the high altar. The archbishop of Rheims, a duke and peer of France, officiated in his

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splendid robes; but the constable of France found his office superseded, for the maid of Orleans herself stood by the king’s right hand, upon the marble steps of the altar, holding over his head the snowy banner, and bearing her victorious sword unsheathed. The statue of the Virgin seemed to smile benignantly upon her youthful votaress, and a ray of light falling upon her golden helmet encircled her head as with a glory.

The miraculous and fragrant oil brought from Heaven by a snow white dove on the day of the coronation of Clovis was poured upon the head of his descendant; and the solemn chaunts and responses of Saint Remi, and the angel, echoed through the vaulted church. The oaths were taken, the crown placed upon the brows of the monarch, and the deep tolling of the cathedral bell announced that France had once more a sovereign of her own. Again,, throughout the whole of Rheims, arose one loud and simultaneous shout of joy, and every hill and valley seemed to echo with gladness.

Then for the first time came a gleam of womanly feeling into the triumphant eyes of the heroine. She unbound her glittering helm, and descending the steps of the altar, threw herself at the feet of the king, and burst into a flood of tears—tears perhaps of mingled feeling, of joy, gratitude and wonder—it might be, of sad and prophetic foreboding.

She declared that her mission was now accomplished, and laying her sword at the feet of the king, requested permission to return once more to her hamlet in the valley. The new monarch raised her from her kneeling posture, and the nobles and churchmen crowding round

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her, mingled their entreaties with his, that she would not desert them; and conjured her not to abandon the great work so nearly achieved, but to remain amongst them till the English were wholly expelled from France. Their importunities prevailed. King Charles issued letters conferring a title of nobility upon her and her family, and decreed that her crest should be two golden lilies, and a sword pointing upwards and bearing a crown.

By the advice of Dunois, she threw herself into the town of Compiègne, besieged by the duke of Burgundy, and as the garrison beheld her enter their walls, they declared themselves invincible. Their joy was of short duration. The day after her arrival, Joan headed a sally upon the troops of John of Luxembourg; and drove the enemy from their entrenchments, when, finding their numbers increase every moment, she ordered a retreat to be sounded. The pursuers advanced; she turned upon them, and again they retreated. She found herself alone, in the midst of numbers, deserted by her friends, and surrounded by the enemy. She defended herself with valor to the last, but was at length taken captive by a Burgundian knight, Lyonel de Vendôme.

Glorious even in her fall, she heard, unmoved, the shouts of joy that resounded through the English cap. A Te Deum was celebrated at Paris by the English in honor of the event. She was thrown into the castle of Beaurevoir, and having heard that the duke of Bedford had sent a vast sum of money for her ransom, she endeavored to make her escape by the grated window, but was discovered, and remanded to prison.

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An ecclesiastical court was assembled at Rouen, and she was led forth from her confinement, clad in military apparel, and loaded with chains, to stand the mockery of a trial, in the presence of the fierce and unrelenting prelates, who had already doomed her to death. She was accused of heresy, witchcraft, idolatry and magic. The prelates presided in full state;—among them, were the bishop of Beauvais, and the king of England’s uncle, the Cardinal of Winchester. No advantage could be gained over her; she betrayed neither weakness nor womanish submission. Her judges were astonished and enraged at her intrepidity.

Accused of attempting to escape from captivity, she confessed the fact, maintained her right to do so, and owned that if she could, she would still execute that purpose. They asked her, why she put her trust in a magical standard. ‘In God alone,’ said she, ‘do I put my trust, whose image is thereon represented.’ She was condemned to death; but fearful, perhaps, of executing the cruel sentence without the shadow of justice, they gave out that she had repented of her errors, and condemned her to perpetual imprisonment, and to be fed during life on bread and water.

Alone, and hopeless, deserted by her friends, brow beaten and insulted by her enemies, the maid of Orleans lay upon a heap of straw, loaded with chains, and clothed in a coarse robe, on the stone floor fo her dungeon. No helmet was now upon her brow, nor nodding plume. The star of her glory was set, and it seemed as though the Divine protection was withdrawn from her. A long and dreary vista of hopeless years was

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before her. Better that she had fallen on the field of victory, while her spirit was yet high and unbroken!

And where were the myriads who had bowed the knee before her; where the nobles who had done her homage; where the young monarch who had sworn her an eternal gratitude? All had deserted her in that sad hour. And now, perhaps, her thoughts wandered to the green haunts of her infancy, the lowly hamlet, the sparkling fountain, and the rustic chapel; and she thought of the companions of her youth, her sisters, and her gray haired sire. It was too late; she had chosen the path of glory, and could never more tread the lowly ways of obscure happiness.

One morning her jailor placed her solitary meal beside her, and a lamp, for the dungeon was dark, and the rays of the sun could not penetrate through the crevices. She saw the light fall upon some glittering object, and rising hastily, beheld the sword w[it]h which she had conquered, the golden helm, and embroidered girdle. All her visions of glory were brought before her. Eagerly she placed the helmet on her brow, as if to ease its throbbing pain, and girding herself with the sword, was transported in idea before the walls of Orleans. Suddenly the door burst open, and the bishops of Beauvais and Winchester stood before her, shouting with fiendish glee! ‘Behold,’ cried they, ‘how unmindful of the tender mercies of the church; she has relapsed into her errors.’ She sunk back upon her bed of straw, for she saw that her doom was sealed.

The next day she was dragged from her dungeon clothed in the black cap of the Inquisition, and a

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yellow robe, to undergo her fearful sentence,—burning in a slow fire! A vast pile was erected in the market place of Rouen, and she was led through the senseless shouting of the rabble, in the midst of a vast procession of friar, and priests, and officers both French and English, whose hearts were steeled against her by vengeance and superstition.

With undaunted firmness, she cast her eyes upon these fearful preparations, and as she mounted the pile, she turned with a face of cheerful resignation to her attendants. ‘By the grace of God,’ said she ‘I shall be this evening in Paradise.’ According to the orders of the Inquisition, the fire burned slowly, but at length a heap of ashes was all that remained of the devoted heroine. Her heart was found entire in the midst of the flames; and it was said that a white dove, the emblem of her soul’s purity, was seen to arise from the pile. When all was over, they scattered her ashes in the Seine.

Rome and Athens, would have erected temples in her honor; yet such, in the last days of chivalry, was the fate of a young girl whose only crime was an excess of patriotism. She saved France, and left a glorious and undying name,

F. I * * * * *

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Duffee Stevens Printers.

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THE SHIPWRECK.

BY B. B. THATCHER.

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SKETCHES OF CONVERSATION.

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BELSHAZZAR’S FEAST.

BY THOMAS GRAY, JUN.

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THE INDIAN’S WELCOME TO THE PILGRIM FATHERS.

BY MRS. SIGOURNEY.

‘Soon after the arrival of the Colonists at Plymouth, while they were busied in the usual labors of the early spring, they were much surprised to see a savage walk boldly towards them, saluting them with ‘much welcome, English, much welcome, Englishmen!’ ’

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THE BRIDAL RING.

BY MISS SEDGWICK.

It is now nearly three years since I was told that two travellers, an elderly gentleman and his daughter, had stopped at the principal inn of the village, and were like to be detained there a long time, by the illness of the young lady, whom our physician had pronounced to be threatened with a ‘course of fever.’ This I knew to be an opinion which our professor, of what Napoleon has so happily called ‘the conjectural art,’ was apt oracularly to intimate of every case which he did not comprehend, and moreover that his nostrums and confinement in a close room, in most cases, verified his prediction.

My humanity was awakened by the forlorn condition of the strangers, and, I may as well confess the infirmity, my curiosity was excited by all that I heard of them. I was reminded of the story of La Roche. Who that has ever read that most beautiful, and in this age of story writing, still unequalled tale, could hear of a father and daughter, detained at an inn, without enquiring into their condition? I could not, and I repaired to the tavern, secretly hoping to find some resemblance to ‘Mademoiselle,’ or to the saintly La Roche, in my travellers, who seemed to me to have lighted upon our

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uneventful village, to sustain my almost famished appetite for romance. I was announced to the father, and admitted to the little parlor he occupied. My first glimpse of captain St. Clair put my imagination to flight. A more striking contrast to the meek, devout La Roche, could scarcely have been found. The captain had the erect and elaborate deportment that is the usual result of military breeding; the consequential etiquettical politeness that is rather a tribute to self respect, than a deference to the subject of it. He was on the verge of old age, but without any thing of the gentleness, humility, and spirituality that so well becomes the old, and is the crown of those who have ‘fought a good fight.’

He received me politely, being, as he has since told me, struck with what Johnson calls the air of a ‘born gentleman;’ the only quotation from a book I ever heard from the captain. I apologized for my intrusion, by boasting of my talents as a nurse, and expressing an earnest wish to be of service to his daughter. The captain’s heart was but a poor instrument at first, but worn, broken and neglected, as it now was, there was one chord that vibrated to the touch, and that chord I had fortunately struck.

His courtesy, as formal, external, and military as his epaulettes, gave place to an expression of real feeling, as he conducted me to his daughter’s apartment.

Dear Arabella! after the lapse of three years of daily and confidential intercourse, can I recall my first impressions of the youthful stranger, who, even amidst the unbecoming shrouding of a sick bed, seemed to me one of the most lovely and graceful creatures I had ever

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seen. A small bible was lying open on her pillow, and beside it a freshly plucked white rose, whose leaves were not more soft nor fair than her cheek. Her night cap was untied and pushed back, and discovered such a wealth of hair as I have never seen equalled in hue or quality, unless it be in Miss Hall’s exquisite picture of the Greek girl, Garaphelia. Every one acknowledged the tenderness and sweetness that characterized Arabella’s beauty; cavillers sometimes said she wanted spirit and variety, but to me, there was an immeasurable power in the purity and elevation of her countenance, and her eye had the calm, mysterious, wonderful expression which reveals the deathless spirit that informs this soul speaking organ. Captain St. Clair communicated my errand to his daughter. She gave me her hand, and expressed her gratitude with an earnestness and simplicity that evinced her susceptibility to kindness. Her accent was slightly foreign. ‘My daughter,’ said captain St. Clair, ‘unhappily, cannot quite rid herself of her French accent. She has lived for the most part in the south of France, in the family of a protestant clergyman, a relative of her mother. Poor Belle! she has always been delicate, and I was flattered into the hope that a favorable climate would strengthen her, but it has been of no use, she still bends like a reed to every blast.’

‘My dear father is too anxious,’ said Miss St. Clair, looking at me with a smile—‘And can I help being anxious, madam,’ replied the captain, ‘when all the treasure I have on God’s earth—yes all—is in that frail casket.’

‘But you are too apprehensive papa—I had but a

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slight chill and fever, and papa must send for a physician, and then I must take medicine.’

‘And of course be sick, Miss St. Clair—I well understand all those sequences, if indeed they be not consequences. But as the doctor has humanely suspended his drugs to day, we will try what nursing and the sensitive powers of nature will do.’

Arabella gratefully accepted my proposition—the circumstances of sickness banish ceremony—my superior age inspired Arabella with a childlike confidence; her father was delighted with my success, and before the day was over, we were on the footing of intimate friends—and before a week had passed, she and her father were inmates of my house. I had learned their history, and become thoroughly acquainted with their characters.

Captain St. Clair, when considerably past forty, had married a lovely young woman, the daughter of a Swish officer in the English service—she had died a few months after the birth of Arabella. The regiment to which captain St. Clair was attached, was ordered to the East Indies, and Arabella was left with her mother’s connections in the south of France. The captain, from a series of ill fortune, for such he esteemed his regiment being exempted from the desperate chances of war, wore away year after year, without promotion, and finally, when he had a reasonable expectation of a majority, he was superseded by a younger officer. In his first disgust, he resigned his commission and returned to Europe; and being joined by his daughter in England, where his asperity had been increased by

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finding himself forgotten or slighted by the friends of his youth, he embarked for America, and withdrew from a country whose ingratitude, he thought, had severed the bonds of his allegiance. But, in spite of his resentment, the captain’s long cherished national partialities often broke forth. An Ethiopian will change his color before an Englishman ceases to be English—before he changes the first article of faith in his national creed—that England is the wisest, happiest, best portion of the habitable globe. Captain St. Clair’s strict adherence to this creed, atoned for his voluntary expatriation, though it manifested a discrepancy, (not very uncommon) between faith and practice. If he ever found a shadow of a fault in Arabella, he traced it to her French education, and whatever was wrong in America, was so because it was not English. I remember asking my new friends, before I knew them quite well enough to understand their biases, ‘if they had ever seen any thing so beautiful as our autumnal foliage? No pen,’ I added, in the fervor of my home bred admiration, ‘no pen can describe it; no painter dare copy it.’

‘No, madam, no, certainly not,’ replied the captain, ‘it is gaudy and unnatural—quite unlike any thing in England.’

I appealed to Arabella, if she did not think it magnificent. ‘I am not fond of brilliant colors’, she answered, ‘I am so used to the russet hue of our old trees at Clermont.’ How different are the same sentiments from different persons. Arabella turned away to hid the tear that had risen at the remembrance of her French home, while captain St. Clair graciously

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proceeded to inform me of the particulars in which English scenery far excelled ours.

Captain St. Clair was in quest of a place to fix his residence, when accident detained him in our village. The American world was all before him, and the advantage of being near me, as he kindly said, induced him to purchase a place in my neighborhood, that just suited his taste and finances. Clermont cottage, as Arabella named her new residence in memory of her former home, was about a mile from the village, on the borders of a pretty sheet of water, that she called a lake, and I am not therefore bound to give it its vulgar appellation. There is some virtue in names, and the new nomenclature which Arabella adopted at Clermont, graced the other refinements introduced there. The farm house became a cottage—a name to conjure with, and call up a thousand images of rural beauty. The front yard that sloped to the lake, after having the ambitious fence that enclosed it removed, became a lawn. The stoop, with no other alteration than a latticing of sweet briars and honey suckles, was converted into a piazza—and the pond, an appellation that recalls to mind pickerel and geese, became a lake—a name consecrated by poetry—one of the water privileges of the muses.

My friend seemed to have a mysterious tie to the innocent and beautiful in nature. Never have I seen the birds so tame as they were on the lawn at Clermont cottage, and the flowers that grew under Arabella’s culture were more graceful, had a sweeter odour, and a brighter tint—at least I thought so—than any other.

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I have often wondered that Arabella’s reserved manners and secluded life did not give offence to the good people of the village. She never left her home, except to see me, or on a visit of charity. Her superior elegance was tempered by a soft diffidence, that seemed to fall over it like a veil, increasing its charm, while it dimmed its lustre. She was religious, and yet, if I may be allowed the word, her religion was the most uncreeded I ever knew. The bible she never criticised, but believed with implicit faith. In our age and land of theological discussion, she could not always be so fortunate as to escape hearing controversy, but she listened to it as a child listens, silent and deferential it may be—but uninterested and uncomprehending. If ever appealed to, she modestly replied that having been bred a protestant in the midst of catholics, she had been instructed to avoid theological discussion, and to be content with feeling and practising religion; and in these departments of our faith all acknowledged her superiority, although some might have regretted that she had not been indoctrinated in the mysteries of theology. To confess the truth, Arabella was rather ignorant in all departments of science. The little pedants of our infant schools, who rattle off their definitions of spheroids, rhomboids, and equilateral triangles, far surpassed her in science. She had a respectable acquaintance with history, but of politics she knew no more than a fair Circassian, though she red the newspapers aloud to her father from beginning to end. She was familiar with the best poets of England, Italy, and France—this was the extent of her erudition. She had an exquisite taste

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in poetry, and her sweet voice seemed to give it its natural vehicle of music. It was perhaps this sublimated aliment that gave a romantic cast to her mind. She had no taste for romance reading. Few works of this description had enough of nature and elevation for so pure and unperverted a mind as hers.

I used often to speculate with womanly solicitude, on Arabella’s future destiny. Her father, according to the common course of nature, could not long survive; Arabella was so tender, so relying in her character, that the protection, and dependance of conjugal life seemed essential to her, but where in our ‘working day world,’ and in the obscurity in which she lived, was she to find a person suited to her. How vain is our forecast!

A popular law school, which soon became celebrated from the reputation of the eminent professor who presided over it, was established in the village, about a year after captain St. Clair’s settlement among us. Pupils resorted hither from all parts of the United States. Among the rest came Wingfield Clayborne, a son of a former acquaintance of mine. Of course he was welcomed to all the hospitalities I could offer him. At my house he obtained the rare privilege of frequent intercourse with Arabella. I say, rare, for owing to captain St. Clair’s aristocratic demeanor, and Arabella’s reserve, and her unaffected and utter indifference to young men in their official character of beaux, the law students had no access to Clermont cottage. In vain were formal introductions, in vain poetic effusions to the lily, the snow drop and the snow berry, for by the names of these pure and cold emblems, was she

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addressed. In vain, too, moonlight serenades—she remained as impassive as polar ice to the sunbeam. Tender and affectionate as my young friend was to me, and devoted as she was to her father, I sometimes doubted whether she possessed a due portion of that sensibility essential to the perfection of woman. Alas! I was not long left to doubt.

Clayborne was at first sight struck with Arabella’s beauty and grace. He admired the refinement, and even the reserve of her manners. He admired the refinement, and even the reserve of her manners. He had himself been partly educated abroad. He disliked excessively what he called the brusquerie of our northern ladies: laughed at their all-knowingness, and detested their independence and rationality. I defended my countrywomen, and asked Arabella if she did not think there was more of false refinement, than true sentiment in Clayborne’s fastidiousness. She replied that she had no skill at analyzing, but I saw by the deep suffusion on her cheek, that she understood Clayborne’s opinions, as they were meant as a tribute to her. It was plain whatever Clayborne did not admire, he did devotedly admire my friend, and that her heart was filled with new emotions which she indulged without question or fear.

Clayborne’s tastes corresponded with hers, but I sometimes thought his were merely the offspring of a cultivated imagination. I feared, too, (but I was aware that I was somewhat over jealous for my friend,) that Clayborne’s love was tinged and adulterated by gratified vanity. That he had the pride of a virtuoso, in attaining a gem that was unattainable to others. But I did not often criticise severely; I could not, Clayborne knew too well

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how to propitiate the few he cared to please. I can now look back upon a thousand little flatteries that I then called attentions.

The captain’s heart too was soon completely won. He pronounced Clayborne the only accomplished man he had seen in America, which, ‘no doubt,’ he would add in one of his patriotic parentheses, ‘is owing to his having seen society in England.’ I believed him to be well principled, and I felt him to be excessively interesting, and regarding anxiously Arabella’s solitary condition; and casting a prudent eye on the future prospects of this well born and talented young man, I was gratified by his intense devotion to my friend; and I observed with satisfaction, the sudden flushing of her cheek and faltering of her voice at his approaching footstep. She dwelt on the passages of poetry he selected, cherished every flower he gave her, sung over his favorite songs, and betrayed by many other signs, infallible to a veteran eye, the existence of a sentiment of whose power over her she was not herself fully aware.

After a thousand indirect, but intelligible declarations, Clayborne made a formal avowal of his hopes; they were sanctioned by Arabella, and ratified by captain St. Clair.

Clayborne’s father was dead. He had no one to consult but a doating mother who had never denied him any thing. He showed me her letter in reply to one communicating his engagement. She assented to his wishes, and sent a polite assurance of future kindness to Miss St. Clair, but the letter concluded with an expression of disappointment that seemed to have been too pungent

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to be repressed, that her son had neglected the article of fortune, so important to him, in his matrimonial arrangement. The letter displeased me, I was displeased too, with his showing it to me, and for the first time, seeing Arabella’s lover in an unfavorable light, I fancied his ardor had abated since his certainty of possessing her affections. I began to analyse his character, to suspect that the element of his fastidiousness was pride, and that his demand of an intense devotion, an exclusive and all absorbing sentiment, proceeded, not as he fancied from sensibility, but from a purely human feeling, compounded of selfishness and vanity.

Not long after the engagement, a circumstance occurred that increased my concern, lest my pure and trustful friend, had lavished her heart on one unworthy of the treasure.

Captain St. Clair’s banker in London failed, and his narrow income was reduced to less than a hundred pounds sterling per annum. This, with the place he occupied, would have been an ample fortune to a New England father and daughter, who should have understood thoroughly that wonderful science, the worth of a shilling, and should have had the maxims of poor Richard, inwrought in the fabric of their characters. But though my friend was capable of any mode or degree of self denial, the art of turning a penny was as inscrutable to her as the art of the alchymist; and how, without some such legerdemain, was a luxurious table, and wine, his staff of life, to be provided for her father?

Captain St. Clair was prostrated by his misfortune.

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Arabella communicated to me his despondency. ‘If I could do any thing?’ said she, half enquiringly.

‘You can,’ I replied, ‘but how, my dear Arabella, with your feelings and your reserved manners, how can you meet the trials and mortifications of a sub-teacher in a boarding school, for instance?’

‘Oh, do not think so meanly of me,’ she said, ‘if my feelings disqualify me for my duties, the sooner I get rid of them the better.’

‘Then, my dear child, your troubles are at an end. Mrs. Butler, (Mrs. B. was the mistress of a successful school in the village,) has just parted with her teacher of music, your accomplishment in music will command the highest salary she can give.’

Arabella begged me to secure the place for her immediately, and said she would return home and make the plan acceptable to her father.

‘But Clayborne,’ said I, ‘he must first be consulted.’

Arabella hesitated for a moment, and then replied. ‘No; to consult him, would be to appeal to him. We will make our arrangements, and communicate them to him afterwards.’

The arrangement was quickly made. Mrs. Butler was liberal in her terms. The girls were enchanted with the expectation of having the lovely Miss St. Clair for their teacher, and the captain’s pride, after a slight hesitation, deferred to his necessities.

But Clayborne’s pride was invincible. He was at first indignant. He felt injured. He remonstrated with me, and entreated Arabella; the fatigues, vexations, and anxieties of a teacher seemed never to cross his mind[ ]

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but the degradation! ‘Arabella St. Clair, a teacher in a yankee school!’ he exclaimed, ‘at the call and beck of half bred girls; daughters of tailors and shoemakers!’ At first I laughed at his folly, and then treated it with the serious contempt it deserved. I even tried to solace his pride by reminding him of the illustrious persons that had been compelled by vicissitudes, to make their talents available in this way; I told him that throughout New England, even in our polished Metropolis, teachers were on the highest level; but he was unyielding, and so was my gentle friend. Her decision might be called pride too, but it was that ratified and rectifying principle that is sustained by conscience.

Her first and present duty was to her father. If, as Clayborne urged, she had consented to an immediate marriage, she must have left her father with a narrowed income to pine in solitude, and have encumbered Clayborne with a burden of expences, [sic] before he had finished the study of his profession. She did not waver for an instant, but entered on her new occupation with a vigor and grace that surprised even me, her fond friend.

One thing I noted; after this, Clayborne, though he had been the most passionate admirer of Arabella’s music, never asked her to play or sing. I once inconsiderately remarked this to her, she made no reply, but I perceived that her eyes filled with tears.

Months passed on. Arabella’s employment inevitably brought her into observation, and her beauty, grace and accomplishments were a constant theme. Clayborne’s passion, or at least its manifestations, became more ardent, and as the time for his return to his native state, drew

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nigh, he was possessed with a lover’s apprehensions and jealousies. He expressed a fear; it might have arisen from the conscious fallibility of his own affections, that he might be superseded. He entreated Arabella to permit their marriage to take place before his departure. He obtained her father’s consent, this gave authority to his entreaties, but Arabella resisted them, and resisted the pleadings of her own heart. Her resolution was fixed, never to leave her father while his well being depended on her exertions. In his selfish importunity he betrayed a doubt of her constancy. She meekly replied, that her fidelity to her father, should be her warrant that she could not prove faithless to him.

This was the only approach to a boast I ever heard from her lips. How well did her subsequent conduct justify it!

The evening preceeding Clayborne’s departure, the lovers passed on my piazza; I took care that they should not be molested by intruders. It was late when I heard his parting footsteps; I waited for Arabella, but she did not appear, and afraid that she would be exhausted by the indulgence of her feelings, I went to her. She stood where Clayborne had left her, leaning her head against one of the pillars of the piazza. Her hands were clasped and raised, and I perceived on her finger a diamond ring, which Clayborne had always worn, and which he had told me was given to him by his mother at the time of her second marriage. It had been his father’s bridal gift, and he had received it on condition that it should never be transferred, till he placed it on the finger of his bride. After a few days, and when I thought Arabella

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could bear a little bantering, I reminded her of this. She said nothing, but I never shall forget the sudden contraction of her brow, nor the deep painful blush that suffused her pale cheek and alabaster neck.

Clayborne wrote by every post. His letters, which I have since seen, were as impassioned, and almost as eloquent as Rousseau’s; they all began, ‘My beloved wife,’ and finished with ‘your devoted husband.’

After a while, they became more temperate, and contained such notices of his occupations and pleasures, as she could read to me. In less than six months the ‘beloved wife’ gave place to ‘dear Arabella,’ and the fever heat of the lover seemed to have subsided to the calm temperament of the friend. Arabella, till now, mindful of every present duty, devoted to the happiness of every one around her, became abstracted and almost melancholy; the faint but distinct rose like tinge on her cheek, faded to absolute and sickly paleness. She still gave lessons at the school, but with languor and effort.

One little month more passed away. She was sitting with me one day, when my servant brought her a letter. She read it, sat for a few moments as if she were petrified, then threw on her hat and shawl, and left me without a word of explanation. I did not for a long time know the contents of the letter. I have since seen it: what follows is an extract from it.

‘After long and painful reflection on the subject, my dear Arabella, I have come to the decision that it would be ungenerous in me, not to offer to release you from an engagement, in the shackles of which you are

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wasting your beautiful youth. Gifted creature! you may create your own destiny! while I, a poor devil of a lawyer, must go my daily round for ‘nought bu provender.’ [’] There was much more in the letter, but all ‘words, words’ without any distinct, or certainly apparent, meaning.

I transcribe the following passage from his next letter. ‘You are in the Melpomene vein, my dear Arabella, and since you have taken me so seriously, why serious I will be. I cannot see, I confess, by you should estimate promised made in a moment of excited, and extravagant feeling as indissolubly binding. I do not claim to be as deeply read in the code of sentiment as you are, but it seems to me to be a very plain dictate of common sense, that promises cannot be binding if the parties will mutually relinquish them. Why be tremulous over a fancied duty? I disdain to hold you bound by a by-gone promise, and henceforth release you from any obligation in any way contracted with me, and wish you to be as free from any real or imaginary ties to me as if we had never met.’

After this Arabella received at distant intervals, and answered letters from Clayborne, but his were burned as soon as read, and I could only guess at their contents. Her father was ignorant and unsuspicious of any change in her affairs. He imputed the change in Arabella’s appearance to Clayborne’s protracted absence, and sometimes wondered that the young man no longer forwarded him the southern newspapers, which he had at first done punctually. When I remarked to him that Arabella’s health seemed to be failing, he took the

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alarm, insisted that she should relinquish teaching, and acquiesced in my proposal that they should abandon the cottage and pass the winter with me. Arabella was still alive to every look and word of kindness, and she gratefully acceded to my wishes.

Not long after their removal to my house, I received a letter from Clayborne. He said he presumed I was aware that his engagement with Miss St. Clair was at an end, and he begged my influence to persuade her to relinquish and forward to him a diamond ring. ‘Miss St. Clair,[’] he says, ‘will my dear madam pay deference to your opinion, and your good sense will at once perceive her weakness in retaining, from girlish sentiment, a ring which has no longer any significance to her, and is of incalculable moment to me, as the lady to whom I hope shortly to be united, for reasons which it is not necessary to communicate, insists on deferring our nuptials till she receives it. I would be the last to impute any baseness of mind to Miss St. Clair; but how am I to explain her obstinate retention of the pledge of a retracted vow.’

All the passions of my woman’s nature were roused. I could not comprehend why Arabella should permit such a request to be repeated, and I resolved if I had any influence with her, that no indulgence of memory or hope should delay the transmission of the ring to its most unworthy giver. It was a difficult task to approach the subject. Affectionate as Arabella was, and as trustful as a child on all other subjects, she had never even alluded to Clayborne since she first doubted his fidelity. I first spoke in hints. Arabella would not understand me. I then went directly and explicitly to the point. Bitterly

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have I since repented it! I read Clayborne’s letter to her. I reproached her with throwing away her life, in cherishing a hopeless passion for a most unworthy object. I besought her by every motive of pride and delicacy—I adjured her, as she would preserve my esteem and her own self respect, to relinquish the worthless pledge of false and broken vows.

She heard me out with an expression of dignity and gentleness. When I afterwards recalled it, I knew she had pitied me while I reproached her. When I finished, she collected all the energies of her would to reply, and she did so in a low but sustained voice.

‘You too doubt me,’ she said, ‘but I will not blame you. Cannot you believe that I have sufficient reasons for retaining this ring. I cannot now communicate them. Your judgment might differ from mine, and I have no strength to oppose your arguments. Death alone can divorce me from this ring—it has long been in my eyes the signet of my death warrant. Clayborne will not have to wait long for it,’ she added, holding up her emaciated hand, and showing me the small guard she was obliged to wear to retain the ring on her slender finger. ‘When you send it to him, send it simply with a notice of my death.’

‘You have reproached me with cherishing a hopeless passion for a worthless object. Indeed you have mistaken me. My love for Clayborne was extinguished, when I discovered that he whom I loved was a creature of my imagination—a creature of noble qualities and high aims; of pure, tender and disinterested affections, one whom neither events nor place, life nor death could change—but to improve.’

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‘My dear friend, it was not continuing, but ceasing to love, that gave such a shock to my life. It was the sudden loss of that which was the sweet employment of my thoughts, the object of my efforts, the stimulant of my mind. In the first amazement of my grief I forgot that life was God’s gift, to be preserved and cherished, not for the object I should select, but for those it should please him to assign me. For this, I deserve your reproach. I selfishly shrunk from my duties; I permitted the feelings that were given me for benevolent uses to consume my life. I meditate much and bitterly on all this. And I trust that He who looks with a pitiful eye on the sins of his children, has forgiven me. I feel my death to be rapidly approaching; I dread it only for my poor father.’

For the first time, Arabella shed tears, she paused for a few moments, and wept in my arms, silently and freely.

‘I cannot,’ she resumed, ‘think of his loneliness and disappointment without anguish.’

I assured her that her father should want no kindness I could render. She replied, that she doubted not my kind disposition, ‘but who,’ she added, with characteristic truth and simplicity, ‘who, but his child can bear with all the infirmities of my poor old father?’

She requested me never again to speak to her of Clayborne. ‘I am not willing,’ she said, ‘to break the holy calm it has pleased God to grant me. Are you now satisfied with me, my dearest friend?’

I told her, ‘that I was certain she acted from the purest and most exalted motives.’ ‘Simply, from a sense of duty,’ she replied, and the conversation dropped there.

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Afterwards, for many weeks, she constantly, though almost imperceptibly, declined. She made unceasing efforts to conceal the progress of her malady from her father. ‘I long to be at rest,’ she would say to me, ‘but for his sake, I will do and suffer whatever may prolong my life.’ And most patiently did she listen to medical advice, most cheerfully take every remedy prescribed. It had been her custom to play her father to sleep in the afternoon, and this she continued to do, even after she became so weak, that she secretly begged me to sit by her, and support her with my arm. Every day, till the very last week of her life, she sat or reclined on the sofa, till her father retired to bed, and then she was carried exhausted to her own apartment.

It was heart breaking to see one so generous in her affections, so true to her duties, the victim of a selfish and capricious passion. It is true, in spite of the poet of nature, and the millions that quote him, that many have died for love. Not of love, perhaps, for it is in its nature a sustaining and vivifying passion; but from the extinction of hope, of expectation, of purpose, of all that breathes a soul into life.

Clayborne, finding his letter to me ineffectual, addressed a similar one to captain St. Clair. The old man had, I believe, before this, gradually come to a right conclusion respecting the recreant lover; but his pride and his feeling were too deeply wounded to allow him to speak on the subject. Never did I witness any thing so fierce and frightful as his rage at Clayborne’s letter. He swore that he would rather have cut off his daughter’s hand and sent it, than to have waited for a second

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request for the ring. When the energy of his rage was spent, he wept like a child, and in this moment of weakness, I obtained a reluctant promise from him that he would not disturb Arabella with this grievous subject. He kept his promise, and when with her was apparently calm, but

A few more weeks passed on, and I received a southern newspaper. One passage was encircled by a pen line. It was the advertisement of Clayborne’s marriage with a Miss Wythe, a lady of whom I had heard as a beauty and a fortune. Of course, I burnt the paper without communicating its tidings. Arabella’s life was gently wearing away; each day left her with abated strength, but her spirit seemed to receive peace and courage, from the fountain of strength and joy to which it was so rapidly approaching. Even her father caught a ray from the light of that world that was opening upon his child. He was calm and gentle, and would listen, with a look almost devotional, to her intreaties that he would be resigned to the will of God. He would walk in her room and sit by her bed hour after hour, and forget and forego his walk, his cigars, and his wine, and all those daily recurring indulgencies [sic] that had seemed to constitute his sum of life. I was sitting one evening beside Arabella. She had passed a day of extreme weakness, hardly discovering any consciousness, excepting once or twice when I read a few passages from the bible, and she l[oo]ked up with a sweet

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smile of assent—the response of her spirit to the words of inspiration.

My servant, by mistake, admitted two of our neighbors, who, with some drops of benevolence, have a flood of curiosity that impels them to witness, wherever they can, the last conflict of humanity. Use has given them a sort of official right to intrude on deathbed scenes, and they go to them, con amore, like the wretched cummers in the ‘Bride of Lammermoor.’ When they entered, I was sitting beside Arabella, holding her hand in mine. Her beautiful hair lay in rich masses on the pillow. There was a slight contraction on her brow, and a quick and labored respiration; excepting these manifestations of the presence of the spirit, she was as serene as death itself. Mrs. Smith came to the bedside, and after standing there for a few moments, ‘she changes fast, I think ma’am,’ she said, —I answered by pointing to a seat at the farther end of the room. She turned to her companion and said ‘she still breathes, Patty, and that is all.’ They seated themselves on each side captain St. Clair; protracted anxiety seemed to have exhausted his sensibility. His eyes were half closed, and he was nearly unconscious of any external impressions. Yet it was curious to see the power of habit in his customary politeness. ‘It is a dying world, captain,’ said Mrs. Smith.

‘Yes, madam.’

‘And an uncommon dying season it has been,’ interposed Miss Patty—‘eleven deaths since Fast—no, I am wrong, widow Brown’s was the tenth, Miss Arabella’s will be the eleventh. It is a solemn time, captain.’

‘Yes, madam.’

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‘It is a dark world, captain,’ resumed Mrs. Smith, ‘and we are blind creatures. If Miss Arabella is prepared, we ought not to mourn for her.’

‘Madam?’

Here I interposed; I observed a slight tremulousness about Arabella’s mouth, that indicated she was not unnoticing, as I had supposed, and I hesitated no longer to request the women to leave the room.

But their dull sense did not feel the instruments of torture they were handling. ‘If you should need us during the night, captain,’ said Miss Patty, ‘don’t hesitate to send for us.’

‘Need you!—for what, in Heaven’s name?’ asked the captain, for the first time speaking naturally.

‘To lay out your daughter, sir.’

‘Good God!’ exclaimed the wretched father; the women left the apartment.

Arabella gently pressed my hand, opened her eyes, and fixed them intently on me. ‘Am I dying,’ she asked, ‘tell me truly, I did not think it was so near, but I am not frightened.’

‘I believe, my dear child,’ I replied, ‘that you have little more to endure.’

‘God’s will be done,’ she said, ‘I am ready; one thing yet remains to do, and then I am perfectly ready.’ Her father approached the bedside at the sound of her voice. ‘This ring,’ she continued, feebly raising her hand, ‘was put on my finger on your piazza, the night before Clayborne’s departure. He feared my constancy, and he prayed me to kneel with him, and with God for our witness, to exchange the marriage vow. I promised in

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the awful presence we had invoked, to wear this ring till death should divorce us.’

Her father heard her thus far, and then the flood that had been so long accumulating and fretting against its barriers, burst forth in imprecations and curses. Never shall I forget the deep heart rending groan, that Arabella, who had scarcely given an audible sigh to her own injuries and sufferings, now uttered; never can I describe the energy with which she raised her head from the pillow, and clasping her arms around her father’s neck, drew his head down to her bosom, saying, ‘Oh father, as you hope to be forgiven; as you are thankful to God for giving peace to your dying child, take back those horrid words and forgive him—father, forgive him.’

‘I do—I do, my child.’

‘Dear father!’ she murmured, and pressed her lips to his burning cheek. A few moments after, I disengaged her clasped hands from her father’s neck, while yet the sweet smile, which the parted spirit had left there, hovered on her lips.

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[p. 247]

DIRGE OF A YOUNG POETESS.

In reviewing the Poetical Remains of Lucretia Maria Davidson, the British poet, Southey, asserts that enough is discernible in them to have warranted the most sanguine expectations of her friend—expectations that have been painfully frustrated by her premature death.

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FALKLAND.

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Duffee Stevens Printers.

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[p. 249]

TOUCHSTONE AND AUDREY.

Touch. You do love this maid?

Wil. I do, sir.

Touch. Give me your hand: Art thou learned?

Wil. No, sir.

Touch. Then learn this of me; To have, is to have: For it is a figure in rhetoric, that drink, being poured out of a cup into a glass, by filling the one doth empty the other: For all your writers do consent, that ipse is he; now you are not ipse, for I am he.

Wil. Which he, sir?

Touch. He, sir, that must marry this woman: Therefore, you clown, abandon—which is in the vulgar, leave: the society—which in the boorish is, company: of this female: which in the common is, woman, which together is, abandon the society of this female; or, clown thou perishest; or, to thy better understanding, diest; to wit: I kill thee, make thee away, translate thy life into death, thy liberty into bondage; I will deal in poison with thee, or in bastinado, or in steel; I will bandy with thee in faction; I will o’er-run thee with policy; I will kill thee an hundred and fifty ways; therefore tremble, and depart.

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[p. 250]

THE BLIND GRANDFATHER.

BY T. FLINT.

The world assumes an entirely different aspect to beholders, according to their views and temperaments. To the sanguine inexperienced and unfortunate, every object takes the coloring of gaiety and joy. Others see on the whole face of nature nothing but sorrow and gloom. But to the far greater portion of our race, it shows neither the one, nor the other. Where they, who are endowed with a contemplative mind, see food for volumes of meditation, the undistinguishing million feel nothing but their own sensations; see nothing but the bearings and relations of their own case, and have found no calls to note whether those about them enjoy, or suffer.

I related to my fellow passengers on a journey, the incidents of a story which I had just heard, and the intenseness of my interest in the appearance, and circumstances of the narrator. To them the whole seemed a common place tale; and they joined in the astonishment which I have often heard expressed in more select circles, that they never happened to see any of these affecting catastrophes, or have their feelings called up by these harrowing incidents. I know not but my readers will join with them in regard to the tale which follows; the circumstances of which dwelt so deeply on my mind, that I admit, I felt some alleviation even in relating them.

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Before steam boats navigated lake Erie, a great number of passengers were making a summer voyage to the head of the lake. The wind was contrary and baffling; and we made slow progress in beating. A sultry day promised to be followed by a night of squalls and thunder. The captain deemed it advisable to put in to a harbor on the Pennsylvania shore. As but very few of us could find a berth through the night in the narrow cabin, most of the passengers went on shore to seek shelter and a bed during the night of storms that was impending. The few log cabins near at hand were filled to overflowing with the noisy, card playing and gay, whose reckless mirth was heard over even the heavy and approaching thunder.

They told me, that by walking a mile through the beech woods, I should find a large and commodious cabin, occupied only by an old gentleman and his grand daughter, who, they doubted not, would cheerfully accommodate me for the night. It was a deep, level forest, and the walk a direct one, with a pleasant, green, and grass grown path. Rejoicing to escape from the confusion about me, I took the direction of the cabin. I had advanced but a little distance on my way, when, at right angles to my path, there came from the forest into the same road, the owner of the cabin and his grand daughter. No hint that there was any thing singular in either, had been given. Judge them my surprise, when the first glance convinced me, that both the one and the other were distinguished persons, that leave an indelible impression. The senior felt his way before him with his staff, occasionally holding up his sightless orbs, as if

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from habit, in the direction of the loud and menacing thunder and wind, that were every moment drawing nearer. I saw that he was blind. A girl, whose countenance showed exquisite sensibility and beauty, with a face of talent, timidity and modesty, which speaks one language to all beholders, held him by the arm.

She seemed fifteen, was dressed neatly in cottonade, and her fresh and glossy curls hung over her neck, in charming contrast with the silver whiteness of the crown of him, whom she led. I had never seen a more impressive comparison, of bright and fresh and beautiful youth with venerable age. Her eyes were brilliant and yet languishing; and seemed, as if striving to transfuse their radiance and affection of filial piety into the benighted seat of vision of the loved and feeble one, who hung on her arm for guidance and support.

‘Step here, grandfather,’ she said. ‘The ground is level and dry, let us hurry, or we shall not reach home, before the storm comes; the wind musters, and the thunder roars fearfully.’ ‘Fear nothing, my love,’ he replied; ‘He, who has gathered the storm in the sky, and who will rule it till it has past [sic] away, is the unfailing friend of filial piety, and will suffer no evil to come nigh thy innocent head.’ There was that in the black and angry sky, and the mustering winds, and the hollow roar along the forest, and the heavy thunder, which might have quailed a stouter heart than that of this fair girl. Her face was pale, while she told him, that it was rather for him, than herself, that she feared. I saluted them, and stated my wishes; and offered to aid the lovely girl in discharging her pious duties. ‘Thou art

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welcome,’ said the old man. ‘Come on. I have been betrayed, and stung by those, to whom I intended kindness. But I will never hate, nor shut up my heart against my fellow, made in the image of God, were I sure to be deceived by every one I met.’ I took the other arm of the blind man, and joined my sight and strength to her’s. [sic] We could hear the rain pouring at a distance, and the lightning every moment flashed in our faces, as though the forest were one wide conflagration [‘]I should thank God,’ she said, ‘if we could get him home, before the rain comes; for he is feeble, and out of health.’ Of course we hurried him on, almost bearing him in our arms. The hail began to beat in our faces, and very large drops to fall; but we reached the door, and were under the sheltering roof, just as the storm poured upon it, in driving sheets of rain and hail. ‘There is comfort in hearing the storm,’ said the blind man, ‘now that we are safe. But my dear grand child has the misfortune to be frightened at thunder. If you knew the reason, as I do, you would neither wonder, nor withhold your pity.’

For some time the artillery of heaven continued to be discharged in loud burst of thunder upon the forest; and the pale and suffering countenance of the grand daughter sufficiently showed a terror, which she could neither overcome nor disguise.

But the fury of the storm soon past by; and she threw open the cabin door, with the joy of youth and confidence once more beaming in her countenance; and went to cheerful and busy preparations for supper. The ambrosial fragrance of nature just watered by a copious

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shower, the reviving coolness of the atmosphere, the solemn splendor of the sun sinking behind the western forests, and lighting up the deep verdure with that striking, yellow, and almost portentous splendor, that every one has admired, and none, to my knowledge, adequately described, produced that delightful rejuvenescence of nature, which succeeds a thunder shower in the sultry days of summer. The chanticleer followed, as usual, by his whole empire of subjects, came forth to perch among the cabbages, shook his dripping plumes, and sounded his clarion note of welcome to the sun. A sweet bird, that no one, as far as I know, has yet described, but whose deep and plaintive note has softened the heart of every lover of nature, in such circumstances, started its melancholy strain in the deep woods. ‘Thou canst not know what reflections arise in my bosom,’ said the blind man, ‘as I inhale this air, imagine this last splendor of day, and hear that bird. Strange, that the naturalist has not named it, nor the poet sung it. It chaunts its dirge only when the groves drip, and its sweetest and mellowest song is, during such an hour as this. If my tale would not fatigue thee, stranger, I would give thee some clue to my associations with this scene.’ I expressed, of course what I felt, an exceeding interest to hear his story. He related as follows:

‘I was of New England, one of her poor instructed sons, educated by a fond father, who had no more than a college education to give. I went through my collegiate course without scope, and with no one to guide me in the choice of a profession. There can scarcely be a condition imagined, more unhappy, than that of a poor

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scholar, debilitated by study and sedentary habits, his mind enervated by an acquired temperament of nervous sensibility, pushed out into this hard hearted, selfish, scrambling world, without employment or pursuit. Such was my case. My parents were no more. My brothers and sisters, never very affectionate to the envied scholar, received me from my graduation, as a stranger. To crown the hopelessness of my case, I loved the second daughter of the minister—a beautiful girl, as shrinking, as timid, as little qualified to sustain the scramble of life, as myself. Like yonder sweet girl, she was terrified at thunder. I had returned from college, and was there in the evening to recite the tale of our loves, and talk over our purposes together. It was such a thunder storm as we have just seen, when I arrived. She had hid her face in my lap, till the thunder had gone by. We then sat at the door, amid a scene like the present. The same bird struck its dirge. Our hearts were softened. We agreed upon immediate marriage. The weak parents consented; and I added to my own inefficiency for any useful pursuit the shrinking sensibility of a girl, still less fitted to struggle with the world than myself, but as affectionate and amiable, as she was inexperienced, and incapable of making any effort to purpose for the goods, or against the evils of life.

‘The reverend father could have no idea, that a man of good sense and a college education could be in any want of an honorable and useful way of subsistence. He urged me to assume his profession. I studied a few days, became discouraged, and convinced that I had no capabilities to become a minister. I entered my name

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with the lawyer of the village, as a student in law. A week satisfied me that I was not destined to make the voyage of life on that tack. The study of medicine was still less to y taste. Alas! I wanted energy and firmness of purpose; and that is wanting every thing.

‘Many of our people were emigrating to the west, and talked most eloquently about the ease of obtaining comfort and competence in that remote and fertile wilderness. To be brief with my story, my fair and tried wife joined the throng; and I brought my scholarship and my wife’s beauty over the hills to these forests. No words can convey any adequate conception of the sickness and dejection of heart, with which I began to cut down the prodigiously thick, hard and heavy forest. I have given up a hundred times in despair, in cutting down a single tree. My dear wife, proved the better scholar of the two, in this back wood’s training. She was not only sooner reconciled to our new way of life, but sooner versed in its duties, and adequate to its toils. Blessed be God for having so formed us, that there is no condition, physical or moral, to which we may not become reconciled. In process of time, my hands no longer blistered, and my heart no longer sunk in dismay, at the prospect of the incessant and severe toil before me. I became interested in the process of converting a wilderness into a field. Each one of my young apple, peach and plum trees, became to me as a friend. From this point of my cabin, I used to seat myself of an evening, when my toil was finished, to contemplate the lake, the forest, my little cultivated domain scooped out of the verdant expanse, until it became instead of the

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whole world to me. I began to contract that passionate admiration for nature, which soon became, along with the growing love of my wife, and a daughter that was born to us, not only a fund of contentment, but even satisfaction and joy. I grew in the esteem of the people, who were proud that they could record a scholar, who was at the same time, an unpresuming, industrious and humble farmer of their number. Man, who has eyes to see, and a heart to feel, in the midst of nature, and with the multiplied proofs of the wisdom, power and beneficence of the Almighty about him, can be happy on a very little. My wife was healthy and cheerful; and was more happy in noting the developing charms of her sweet Ruth, and in tending her poultry, her cows and her pigs, I dare presume, than are the fashionable belles of your cities.

‘One weakness I constantly combatted, but could never cure. She was excessively alarmed at thunder. The spring and the summer come to me with an indescribable charm. How delightful I used to find our little water fishing excursions on the lake, whence the green shores showed in ten fold beauty. It was the source too of an abundant supply of fish. But in these delightful pursuits, the manifestation of a rising thunder cloud, in the summer sky, was sufficient for her to throw terror and gloom over all our secluded and rustic enjoyments. When the storm was drawing near, it was in vain that I argued, persuaded, remonstrated, and even ridiculed. She became pale as death. On the feather bed, her ears stopped, and her heart throbbing in an agony of terror, she wore away the storm. When I ventured to apply

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ridicule, tears rushed to her eyes—and she told me, as she threw her arms around my neck, ‘my dear husband, you are every thing to me. I love you so intensely that I cannot endure the thought of leaving you and my sweet little Ruth in the woods alone; and I have a presentiment that I shall die by lightning.’

‘Such a storm as has just past, arose soon after. The aspect of the clouds was peculiarly portentous and menacing, and the thunder uncommonly heavy and frequent. To my surprise, she showed little alarm; but conversed with a kind of hurried earnestness, kissing her little daughter, showing a wild and sparkling eye, and an enthusiastic tenderness of affection, which,, perhaps, I should not have noted, but for what followed. The storm came on. Darkness brooded over the forest. She sat beside me, holding the little Ruth on her knee; and, as she first kissed the little one, and then her husband, she said, ‘how thankful am I to my Heavenly Father, that in this terrible thunder storm I feel perfectly calm.’ While she spake the words, an insupportable radiance scorched across my forehead, and I fell unconscious. At midnight I regained my recollection and sensation, by hearing the screams of our little one. She was almost spent with moaning, ‘father, father! mother, mother! please to wake up.’ I felt that something strange and terrible had happened. There was excessive pain in my head, and agony in my eyes. ‘Alas!’ I said, ‘I have been struck with lightning. The visual nerves are scorched. I shall never see more.’ As soon as I answered the little one, she felt her way to me, threw her arms about my neck. ‘Dear papa,’ she

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said, ‘I thought I never should wake you.’ Think how terrible was the stillness of the mother! I moved myself round, and began to grope my hands in the darkness. They soon fell upon a face as cold as clay. Oh! God, thou art just and righteous!’

The blind man here paused in his story. His hollow orbs, though they no longer yielded vision, evinced that the fountains of tears were not dry. His charming grand daughter caught the infectious weakness, and kissing his forehead, begged him to desist from the harrowing tale. Supper too was prepared—tea, with fine wheat bread, fresh butter, sugar from the maple, honey, cheese and milk. The whole would have been delicious, but for the tale of sadness, and the affecting memento in the sightless eyes of the venerable narrator. Insensibly the rites of hospitality engrossed their thoughts, and an unwillingness to renew the memory of so much sorrow induced me to make efforts not to seem gloomy. The supper, which this sad tale alone hindered from being delightful, was finished. Lights were brought, and we three sat round the cabin door, inhaling an atmosphere, which might be termed empyrean. The lake gently rippled on the shore. Distant and gone by thunder was heard; and the faint flashes of lightning could scarcely be distinguished from the million fire flies in the tops of the trees. Two whippoorwills sung near at hand, and owls and wolves carried on their own desolate melody in the depths of the forest.

‘Wouldst thou hear farther, stranger,’ asked the blind man. ‘There is a sadness which doeth the heart

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good.’ I assured him of my reluctance to renew the tale of his sorrows, but admitted, that I felt greatly desirous to have him resume his narrative.

‘Two overwhelming sorrows,’ he continued, ‘when operating at the same time, as physicians affirm of diseases, neutralize, and in some measure blunt each other. Every thing, except my child, that I loved on the earth was taken from me; and every ray of light had been, to me, as completely extinguished as though light had not been. What a home has this fair world become to me; rayless, comfortless, covered with a darkness of the eye and of the mind, that might be felt. My chief physical enjoyment in existence had been, for hours together, to look on the green of the forest, the blue of the sky, the grandeur of the star gemmed firmament, the infinite beauty of the combinations and diversities of verdure. All this to me had now passed away; and when I meditated the thrilling words of the sublime bard, ‘Thus with the year seasons return’—what a pathos and power, all new and unfelt before, did the passage assume! But God is rich in mercy, and he graciously opened me resources. To combine and repaint the everlasting remembrances of vision, this became an unfailing fountain of satisfaction. I put myself to the employment of remoulding a better and fairer ideal world, from these treasured images. In it my departed wife always dwelt in loveliness and light; and the taking away of sight restored me to new heavens and a new earth, and the physical removal of my dear wife, gave me to see her always in the paradise of God; and to my mind’s eye, as bright and as happy as, I

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doubt not, she actually appeared to the angels of the Divine presence.

‘The sweet, soft voice of my daughter Ruth sounded in my ear—and the music aided the illusions of my ideal world. I could feel her silken locks, and the velvet of her cheek; and the thrilling touch of her caressing hand was all of physical enjoyment that I coveted; and soon compensated the loss of vision. At the same time a distant relative left me a small and unexpected annuity; which, in my new and utterly forlorn condition, as regarded any exertions for temporal support, placed me above the fear of actual want. Here, where I used so rapturously to enjoy the beauties of vision, I continued to sit, and enter into the beatific vision of my ideal world; and I had the repose and submission, if not happiness. My daughter grew up in loveliness, as every one told me, and as her unwearied and inexhaustible filial tenderness, and the touching tones of her voice more unanswerably assured me. As she was the single magnet of all my heart’s earthly affections, I loved her to the excess of a sinful idolatry.

‘A man of some talents, a land speculator, handsome and rich, I was told, and fair spoken, and plausible I knew, dwelt in our vicinity. He addicted himself to visiting me, reading to me, talking to me of books, literature, taste and science; of the revolutions and changes of the great and the little world. Insensibly he gained on my thoughts; and his communications became necessary to my enjoyment. A thousand circumstances which after wisdom can easily interpret, but which at the time passed unheeded and unsuspected

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over my mind’s eye, as natural objects did over my vision, should have convinced me, that it was my daughter, and not me, that he basely sought, in this intercourse. To her he talked sentiment. To her he loaned books, that gradually seduced, before the eyes were opened to their purpose. Could she entertain suspicions of the villain? He had won my confidence; and what I loved, she loved. He was forward too in religious meetings, and was the most ready and eloquent in exhortations, and in the detail of experiences. Every tongue was eloquent in his praises. Can it be strange, that my daughter regarded him with partiality? None of us knew, whether he was unmarried, or a husband and a father. Conjecture fed upon these uncertainties, and wonder, that he kept us all so entirely in the dark. Do not weep, my dear Ruth, or I will desist from the harrowing sequel, though the lamb, my child, ought early to be instructed, that wolves are abroad. * *

‘In this room, and unwitnessed by mortal eye, this my grand daughter entered wailing upon this transitory scene. Oh! what words ensued? How strange were the sensations of the feeble and forlorn one, when the tide of her heart’s affections divided into two channels; when the cry of her infant opened new and slumbering fountains, hitherto undiscovered in her bosom! Most of all, it astonished her, that the loathing and abhorrent associations of the father attached not to the offspring. The babe was fair and healthful. We invited an itinerant minister of reputation to christen it, and the feeble mother related all the circumstances of its birth, that modesty would allow. He demurred. He stated

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cases and precedents, and the usages of his church; and demanded a written confession and creed. I told him to go, and make converts in some other place. I will be to thee, I said, my dear Ruth, father, priest, husband. I will give the child a christian name, and devote it to the deliverer from sin, and the conqueror of death. She led me, of a beautiful sabbath eve, to the spring branch, that you crossed, stranger, on your way hither. I took the little one in my arms. Thou art called Ruth, I said, in the name of thy heavenly father and of thy Redeemer, and I poured the spring water from my open palm upon the tiny and shrinking face. The mother seemed glad at heart, though feeble and exhausted. We talked much, and upon subjects that are engraven on my memory till death shall erase all that is there; and of all the remembered conversations of my life, no one is equally consolatory and pleasant in the reflection. More than once, alarmed with the sinking weakness of her tones, I begged her to desist, and go to her sleep. She told me to have no fear—that a gladness, which she had no words to describe, was diffused through her mind and heart; and that it was only the fulness of joy that gave seeming languor and feebleness to her speech. We prayed, as was our wont. She dressed her babe, took food, and having laid it sleeping on the bed, returned to fondle it in her bosom. There was something in her voice, when she bade me good night! that I shall never forget.

‘I slept long and heavily, and with many dreams through the night; and the sultry beams of the sun were on my forehead, when I opened the cabin door. I called

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to my child, but she answered not. A presentiment of horror impelled me to the bed. Her babe was nursing the cold and lifeless bosom; that babe became, what you now see in my grand daughter. I beseech thee, Ruth, restrain thy tears, God survives, although thy aged grandfather, must shortly go down to the dust. Some one will be found to protect thee. Doubt it not.

* * * * *

I had but little rest that night. The morning ushered in a bright, calm summer day. We again sped along the bosom of the blue lake. But amidst all the tedious babble, and heartless mirth and garrulity, it was long before I ceased to think, painfully, of the lovely Ruth and her blind grandfather.

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THE QUAKER.

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A NIGHT THOUGHT.

BY GRENVILLE MELLEN.

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Printed by B. Rogers.

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RURAL AMUSEMENT.

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THE STORMY NIGHT.

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—

ON A NOISY POLITICIAN.

BY C. SHERRY.

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TO A LADY,
WHO GAVE ME A LAUREL LEAF.

BY LAWRENCE MANNERS.

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SONG.

BY GEORGE GREY.

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THE STOLEN MATCH.

BY CALEB CUSHING.

The vesper bell had tolled the hour of oraciones, in Valladolid, at the close of an autumnal day, in the year 1469, and crowds of worshippers reverted to their accustomed pleasures and pursuits, after making their evening salutation to the Virgin. Small parties of armed horsemen had been seen to enter the city during the day, who one by one disappeared under the half opened and quickly shut gate way of here and there a dark stone dwelling, whose grated windows and heavy walls seemed to be designed to guard its inmates against the assault of feudal enemies, quite as much as to shelter them from the elements. But the spectacle of military array was of too ordinary occurrence to awaken the attention of the plodding burghers, who, muffled in their large cloaks, were sufficiently happy to remain unmolested themselves by the mail clad cavaliers, without seeking to pry into their business; to do which, would only have subjected such over curious persons to fierce words, and perchance rude blows to back insulting speech. And it was vain to speculate on such a matter, in times when grandee and peasant alike made war at will on their own account; and no powerful chieftain moved without a retinue of right good lances beside him, inured to violence, and bound to follow his banner for weal or woe. As the sun descended behind the mountains of Leon, a sharp wind

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rushed along the valley of the Duero, and sweeping up the Pisuerga filled Valladolid with its chilling blasts; but the tramp of steeds and the clang of armor still rang upon the ear, long after night had thrown her dark mantle over the gothic towers of the city.

Occupying a large space on a side of the Campo Grande, at one extremity of the city, stood a stately edifice, rising amid the numerous churches and long ranges of unsightly convent walls, which formed the prominent objects in that immense irregular square. The richly ornamented front of this mansion, although its heavy carved mouldings and friezes, and indeed its entire surface, had acquired the deep brown hue of venerable age, was yet untouched by the hand of decay; and in its mass no less than its ornaments bespoke the wealth and consequence of its occupant. Indeed, the coat of arms of ample size, overhanging as it were the key stone of a huge arched gate way, which being placed in the centre of the façade, constituted the sole entrance to the inner court yard, and the apartments of the building, afforded conclusive evidence that it belonged to one of the proud nobles of Castile. Its lower range of windows was guarded by strong stanchions or bars of iron, extending longitudinally up and down, and built fast into the solid masonry. Balconies, also of massive iron bars, but wrought into tasteful shapes, and resting upon sculptured slabs of stone, jutted out in relief from the window sills of the upper windows, which were secured by means of thick shutters of carved oak, made to open inwards, like folding doors, and fastened by moveable stanchions of a peculiar form,

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called fallebas, somewhat resembling in make and movement the iron crane used for hoisting merchandize. Within the quadrangle or patio, where a small fountain played into a marble basin, was a postern door, which conducted through a terraced garden towards the outer wall of the city. A small square turret, rising at each corner of the roof, rather for ostentation than use, completes the picture of the town residence of Don Juan de Vivero.

Late in the evening, a solitary cavalier, attended only by a mozo de espuelas, or groom, spurring along his weary steed, rode up to the front gate of this house, and knocked for admission. At the signal, the mirilla, or little door in the gateway, just large enough to look through and see what was without, was cautiously unclosed; and to the challenge of the porter the whispered reply of ‘Gente de paz,’ in the well known voice of Don Gutierre de Cardenas, caused the gate to be quickly unbarred for the reception of the horseman and his follower. The appearance of Don Gutierre, as he became exposed to the light of the torches within, indicated a plain citizen; it might be a common trader, it might be a mere artisan; and ere he had well dismounted and given his jaded and travel soiled horse to the domestics, a lady hastily entered, who started at the garb and appearance of the new comer; but without waiting for the usual exchange of salutations, ‘Now what tidings, señorito, for my lady,’ cried she, ‘and why dost thou come hither thus travestied and alone, when we look for other attendance?’ ‘Content thee, Doña Beatriz,’ said the cavalier, ‘and conduct me straight

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to thy lady, or to the lord Archbishop, if he be here.’ ‘I trow,’ answered Doña Beatriz, ‘she will welcome thee none the better for the precious specimen thou wearest of the skill of Zaragoza tailors, nor for carrying into her presence thy sweet person covered with dust from every bye path between Osma and Valladolid, nor for speeding so ill in thy mission.’ ‘Content thee, again, I say, and lead on,’ rejoined he, ‘lest I be tempted, in guerdon of thy swift wit, to kiss thy soft hand unbidden;’ and he followed the laughing Doña Beatriz to the apartments of her lady. Scarce had their footsteps died away on the stair case, when Don Juan de Vivero, was summoned in all haste to the presence of his fair guest; and the hurry of sudden preparation, and the eager looks of anxious expectation pervaded the late quiet household.

Midnight was fast approaching, when Don Gutierre once more appeared, and sought admission into the cabinet of Doña Beatriz. He now came forth, clad in the rich apparel of a Spanish cavalier of that day, which he bore with the habitual grace and ease that showed this, rather than the humble garb he had worn before, was the appropriate dress of his rank. The apartment, into which he was ushered, was simply, and compared with the usage of our age and country it would have been called meanly, furnished. An estera, or matting of woven sedge, was spread on the floor, and heavy embroidered hangings covered the walls, rudely representing the gests and triumphs of Bernardo del Carpio and my Cid the Campeador; but the chairs and other utensils were coarse in make, and such only as

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necessity required. It was in other form that the grandees of that day displayed their magnificence and squandered their wealth.

Prominent in the room sat an elderly man in the long ungainly robe and other attire of an ecclesiastic of rank, who, although advanced in years, yet evidently retained the vigor of manhood unbroken, and, to judge from his stately air and the fair glance of his eye, could do his part in the melée as bravely as the best, and would not scruple, if occasion required, to change his crosier for a lance. It happened then, as it does now, that the higher benefices of the church were generally the appanage of the younger members of noble families; but it was the case then, as it is not now, that to maintain his place a noble must have been either wise in council, or daring in fight; the glories of a horse jockey and cock fighter may become a peer in the era of improvement, but herein did not consist their glories; and the prelates, who sprung from the blood of men accustomed to command, naturally partook of the spirit of their sires. They were not rarely foremost in the civil wars, that formed the chief business of mankind in the middle age; and Don Alonso Carrillo, Archbishop of Toledo, for it was no less a personage who sat in that presence, had played his part undauntedly among the boldest knights of Castile.

He was earnestly conversing in a low voice with a lady near, whose face as she sat was slightly averted from the door; while Doña Beatriz and a third lady stood in the apartment, who, with the Archbishop and Don Gutierre, made up the whole party. Doña Beatriz

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had the full black eye and the raven tresses, which we associate with a southern clime, and that brown shade of complexion, which, but for the healthfulness of her tint, and the animation of her whole face, would scarcely have escaped the reproach of tending to sullenness of aspect. But of her, afterwards so celebrated by the name of Condesa de Moya, time had not yet touched the beauty. The lady, who stood by her side, Don Gutierre saluted as Doña Mencia de la Torre; and both of their ladies waited, with all the subdued respect of tone and deference of deportment due to the highest rank, upon the youthful incarnation of loveliness, with whom the Archbishop conferred.

A low bodice or corset of black velvet, fitted closely to her waist, displayed the perfect proportions of a bust that was just blooming out into womanhood. A brial or petticoat of the same rich material depended over the full, but well formed and graceful, contour of her limbs. This part of her dress was fastened at the waist by a kind of brocaded belt, embroidered with jet and brilliants, and a band of similar workmanship ran from the belt down the middle of the brial or skirt, and was continued in a border around the bottom of it; a border of the same general description running around the upper part of the bodice next to the neck kerchief. The tight wristbands of the dress were adorned by several bands of corresponding make and materials. Above the bodice she wore a wrought handkerchief of the costliest Flanders lace, fastened at the throat with a gold brooch, and having a border of very peculiar workmanship. It was narrow, as compared with the

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belt and bands of her brial, and instead of the wreathes and fanciful figures embroidered on them, it bore the form alternately of a castle and a lion, wrought in rich gems of various kinds on a silver ground, forming a splendid edging to the kerchief, double in front, and passing all around the neck. A large diamond cross, set in pearls, was suspended over her bosom from the rich pearl collar, which, as being the princely gift of him whose coming she awaited, was the fitting ornament of her person on this occasion. To complete her habiliments, a flowery tabard, as it was then called, or rich mantle of crimson silk, bordered with damask, was thrown over her shoulders and arms, hanging down to the floor, and a white veil of thin delicate lace, gauze like and transparent as woven air, covered, without concealing, her dark brown tresses, and being fastened in front by the brooch on her bosom could be dropped over her face at will, so as to increase the effect of the beauty which it veiled, like the light fleecy clouds flitting along the moon’s orb in a bright autumnal eve.

It is easy to give a description of garments, but, how describe the surpassing loveliness of form and countenance, which consists, not in the peculiar shape of each separate feature or limb, but in the perfect harmony of parts, and heavenly combination of elements in the whole person? She, of whom we speak, was of middling stature, and rather fuller in form than might be considered consistent with a faultless model; but the grace of every movement and the mingled sweetness and dignity of her whole manner would alone have sufficed to mark the royal daughter of a line of kings. Her face was not of that

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stamp, which fancy is prone to attribute to the maidens of Spain. We have already said that her hair was brown; and her complexion was pure blushing red and white, the unclouded carnation of the fairest youthful beauty. A broad open brow, an oval face gently curving off into a rounded chin, even well defined lips, expressing a firm character united with a gentle spirit, and eyes of dark grey deepening into blue,—ojos entre verdes y azules, says a good friar of her day, who seems to have studied the constituents of beauty rather more attentively than became a monk: such were the separate features of the fair young maiden. Her general cast and look did not speak her more than eighteen; but a certain maturity of expression in her face, and a grave and somewhat devotional air, increased by the appearance of a richly illuminated missal, which she held in her hand, would have suited a much riper age.

To the low salutation of Don Gutierre, she graciously nodded in reply, without interrupting her conversation with the Archbishop. So earnestly, indeed, was it continued, that a young cavalier had entered the open door unobserved by her, and advanced towards the centre of the room. He stood with one foot slightly set forward, his short cloak, of the finest cloth of Segovia, flung back from his shoulders, displaying the close jacket of Genoese velvet, which covered his manly form, the gold hilted sword which hung over his slashed under clothes, and a chain of massive chased gold links with a cross of Montesa suspended from his neck, while in his left hand he held a black velvet hat, ornamented with a plain diamond aigrette and a single tuft of white ostrich

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plumes, leaving uncovered a high, noble brow and expressive dignified features, with sparkling eyes, that gazed on the beautiful vision before them, entranced, as it were, with love and admiration. ‘ ’Tis he, ’tis he,’ cried Don Gutierre, pointing with his finger to the silent stranger; and as the lady started with a slight exclamation of surprise, Fernando de Aragon kneeled at her feet, and seizing her not unwilling hand, covered it with the kisses of her accepted lover, whom she now, for the first time saw, and that in secrecy and disguise. Need we say, that the lady was Isabel of Castile, the lovely and the loved, the model of queens, of wives, and of mothers; the unaffected reality of all that her false hearted namesake of England, Elizabeth, affected to be, but was not, a woman, namely, with all a woman’s sensibilities, and yet a great and high ruled princess; that Isabel, whose reign is the golden age of prosperity and glory, in the annals of fallen Spain!

At the time when the events of our story happened, Henry the Imbecile held the sceptre of Castile and Leon, and the disorders of a sickly state had reached their acme. Don Henrique ascended the throne under circumstances the most inauspicious. The kingdom was devastated and exhausted by the long and bloody civil wars which preceded the accession of his ancestor, Henrique de Trastamara. The infirm health and premature death of his grandfather, Henry III, prevented his applying those remedies to the public relief, which a capacious mind and enterprising spirit might otherwise have devised and undertaken. His predecessor, Don Juan, destitute of either energy or talents to govern his

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turbulent nobles, was equally degraded, in being at all times, either their tool or their victim. Condemned to see them dispute the possession of his person and his power on the fatal plains of Olmedo, he resigned all his authority to the constable, Don Alvaro de Luna, and afterwards with still greater weakness gave up his tried and faithful minister to the fury of their common enemies. Don Henrique himself inherited the mean spirited and servile character of Don Juan.

Wavering and pusillanimous in his purposes, despised by his vassals, corrupt in his habits, and given up to the pursuit of pleasures of which nature had denied him the enjoyment, he soon acquired a most invincible repugnance to business of whatever kind, which he gladly suffered to pass entirely into the hands of ambitious and unprincipled favorites. A never ending succession of troubles in his family, and of civil war between contending factions of the aristocracy, was the necessary consequence of the weakness of their common head. So long as he could enjoy his personal amusement unmolested, no public calumny moved the impassiveness of his indolence. While the profligate court spent in tournaments and gallantry, or in the wild distractions of the chace, that time which belonged to the necessities of the state, the fierce grandees made civil war upon each other from province to province, dividing, with impunity, the spoils of the crown and the substance of the people. Corruption, venality and violence became universal; and the whole kingdom, convulsed by every species of disorder, and infected with all the principles of dissolution was hurrying onward towards absolute and irretrievable ruin.

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But that we may fully appreciate the condition of unhappy Castile at this period, it is well to refer to the touching pictures given by the old chronicles, not merely of the general aspect of things, but also of some remarkable incidents in particular.

All Spain was overwhelmed, says Don Alonso Ortiz, who spoke of what he actually saw; all Spain was overwhelmed by the most terrible storm, in those days when the flames of civil war raged with the greatest fury, and total perdition impended over the prostrate commonwealth. There was no spot exempt from the common misery. There was no man who enjoyed his patrimony without fear or peril of his life. All classes of the community were filled with affliction, flying to the cities for refuge, since robbery and murder stalked unchallenged through the land. Our barons did not take up arms to defend our borders against the Infidel, but to strike the thirsty sword into the bowels of their common country. The domestic enemy banquetted in the blood of his fellow citizens. The strongest of arm and deepest in fraud bore the palm of power and praise among us; so that all things had broken wholly forth from the check and scope of justice, and the venerable majesty of the law had quenched its light in the darkness of general corruption.

How true to the life is the general description of the canon Ortiz, may be seen from a trait of the times recorded by Fernando del Pulgar. It seems that Don Pedro de Mendaña was alcaide of Castronuñno during the period during review. Seeing the time well disposed for his natural desires and inclinations, he received in

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that fortalice many robbers with the booty which they made, and protected them from pursuit, as also desperate men of every kind, absconding debtors, murders, and other outlaws. And when he found himself accompanied by such followers, induced by impunity from the laws and by large rewards to do his bidding, he seized on the castles of Cubillas and Cantalapiedra, and fortified that of Sieteiglesias, and placed his men in them; from which strong holds they sallied forth to rob in all the regions round about, and brought to him the treasure and goods they collected. He also captured the town of Tordesillas, and augmented his power in such wise, that the great cities of Burgos, Avila, Salamanca, Segovia, Valladolid, and Medina, and all the other towns in that country, gave him a regular tribute of bread, wine, and money, to purchase security. And thence forward he continued to make other demands from them, of money and cattle, all which was yielded to his satisfaction. And by such oppressions he acquired great riches, so as to maintain constantly in his pay no less than three hundred mounted banditti. All the grandees of the kingdom, who had estates in these districts, held him in fear, and gave him largesses that he might not make war against them on their lands. And from the success of this alcaide, many other alcaides in the kingdom took example, and set themselves to pillaging and ransoming the people, and defending the crimes and misdeeds which robbers perpetrated. Some time elapsed in this wise, when Pedro de Mendaña was besieged in his castle of Castronuño, and after an obstinate defence surrendered only upon honorable terms of capitulation; he and his

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bands escaping all punishment, as if what he had done was in the mere common course of war.

We shall give one other incident equally characteristic, but differing from the foregoing, as it shows how the great nobles and their immediate followers demeaned themselves in the same reign. Don Henrique had abandoned the control of affairs to his queen, and to her paramour Don Beltram de la Cueva, Conde de Ledesma, who was universally believed to have dishonored the royal bed, and to be the father of the Infanta Juana, sitmatised from this circumstance by the soubriquet of la Beltraneja, by which name she is uniformly styled in Spanish history. The power enjoyed by this ancient Godoy excited a confederation of the discontented grandees and prelates, having for its object the deposition of Don Henrique, and the elevation of his brother Don Alonso to the throne. The chroniclers Diego Enriquez del Castillo and Alonzo de Palencia describe the scene which ensued.

The leagued barons being assembled at Avila, selected an extensive plain without the city, on which they erected a large scaffold, open on all sides, so that the citizens of Avila and the multitude who came from other towns to witness the ceremonial, might plainly see every thing which took place. Here was displayed a royal throne, on which sat a figure representing Don Henrique with the crown on his head, a sword before, and the sceptre in his hand, in the usual manner of arraying the person of kings. Every thing being thus arranged, the barons rode out from the city towards the scaffold, accompanied by Don Alonso. When they had arrived,

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Don Juan Pacheco, Marquis de Villena, with the master of Alcantara, and the Conde de Medellin, took the prince a little way aside, while the other lords approached and placed themselves behind the effigy, ready to perform the act of dethronement.

Having done this, one of them advanced to the front of the scaffold, and read a paper with a loud voice, setting forth the offences of Don Henrique, which they divided into four principal heads. For the first, they alleged that he deserved to lose his royal dignity, whereupon the Archbishop of Toledo, Don Alonso Carrillo, advanced and took the crown from the brows of the mimic king. For the second, he forfeited the right of jurisdiction and justice, wherefore Don Alvaro de Zuñiga, Conde de Plasencia, removed the sword which lay on his lap. For the third, he ought to lose the government of his kingdom, and so Don Rodrigo Pimentel, Conde de Benavente, snatched the sceptre which he held in his hand. Lastly, for the fourth, he deserved to be deprived of the throne and establishment of a king, wherefore Don Diego Lopez de Zuñiga, approaching and striking the effigy from the chair in which it was seated, kicked it ignominiously from the scaffold to the ground, accompanying the act with bitter terms of invective and reproach against the person and character of Don Henrique.

Immediately upon this, Don Alonso came up, and being placed on the throne, received the insignia of royalty, with the homage and fealty of the banded knights, who kissed his hands as king and right lord of the realm, ordering the trumpets to sound a loud note of

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joy and triumph, amid the shouts of ‘viva el rey’ from themselves and their partisans, and the muttered lamentations of the extremities of civil war must tread close on the heels of such high handed and outrageous misdemeanors. And so indeed it was, to the scandal of all Spain, and to the desolation and misery of the people, until the sudden death of Don Alonso deprived the disaffected lords of a rallying point, and abated, but did not extinguish, the fury of embattled factions in wretched Castile.

After the death of Don Alonso, there remained only Doña Isabel, the young sister of the king, who could dispute with him the possession of the crown. She was daughter of Don Juan by a second marriage, being born ad Madrigal, in old Castile, the twenty-second day of April, in the year 1451. Ere she had completed her fourth year, her father died, and Don Henrique, on succeeding to the crown, left Isabel and her mother to languish in poverty and obscurity in the seclusion of their town and lordship of Arevalo. The queen mother, Doña Isabel of Portugal, soon lost her reason from the accumulated burden of degradation and other sorrows, and her deserted daughter, far from the luxury of palaces, and stripped of all the flattering incidents of royal birth, entered upon that childhood and youth of affliction, whose trials were to conduct to so glorious an issue in her after life. Don Henrique did indeed after a while repent him of his abandonment of the injured Isabel, and received her into his palace, to enjoy the advantages which belonged to her rank.

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But what a scene was there for the pure and ingenuous recluse of the walls of Arevalo! The implacable foe of the Gothic name strengthened himself among the hills of Granada, and defied the chivalry of Castile to the field; but the descendant of Don Pelayo was now a craven knight and a minion ruled prince, the scorn, alike of Christian and of Moor; and consumed the treasures of his kingdom in revelry and favoritism, and its blood in civil broils, in the stead of devoting them to the noble task of driving Muley Hassan from the golden halls and marble courts of the Alhambra, back to the native deserts of his race.

And worst of all, the profligate consort of a shameless monarch, the guilty Doña Juana, lived in unchecked adultery with Don Beltram, at once the falsest of friends and most incapable of ministers, and reared up the offspring of their crime, the unfortunate Beltraneja, to be the watch word of treason in Castile for many a weary year of bloodshed and confusion. Fortunately, for Isabel, she possessed a native dignity and purity of character, fortified and refined by the seeming mischances of her lot, which, however, had but taught her the ‘sweet uses’ of adversity; and she passed through the fiery ordeal of a dissolute court unscathed, or rather with her genuine nobility of soul, yet more elevated by a shrinking repulsion for the foul atmosphere she had been compelled to breathe.

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When the death of Don Alonso, the victim of poison, administered to him in his food, left the insurgent nobles without a suitable chief, they went to Doña Isabel, with the Archbishop of Toledo at their head, and tendered her the sceptre of Castile. She had taken refuge in a convent at Avila, anxious to escape from the horrors of civil war, which every where met her eye. If her principles of conduct had been less pure and upright, the spectacle of her country given up to the reciprocal rage of hostile partisans, and her beloved brother the early victim of unregulated ambition, would have come to confirm her resolutions in such a crisis. But she needed not this; and immovable in her loyalty to her unworthy lord and brother, Don Henrique, she unhesitatingly and decidedly refused the proffers of allegiance made her by the grandees in arms against the Crown. A procedure so full of high toned generosity, while it won the regards of Don Henrique, was not without its influence upon his enemies, and greatly furthered the conclusion of a qualified peace at the congress of Los Toros de Guisando, where Don Henrique proclaimed Doña Isabel sole heiress of his kingdom, thus forever sealing the fate of La Beltraneja, whom he declared under oath not to be his child.

The barons, who had so contumeliously enacted the ceremony of dethroning the king in effigy, at Avila, now returned to his confidence, and engaged in a new series of intrigues for the disposal of the hand of Doña Isabel, who, as heiress of Castile and Leon, was sought for in marriage by many of the great princes of Europe. Don Juan Pacheco obtained the grand mastership of

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Santiago, and the Archbishop of Toledo was again trusted. Of the various alliances which offered, that of the house of Aragon, as uniting the two great fragments of the Spanish monarchy, it was the interest of every true patriot to promote; and thus it was viewed by the Archbishop. But Don Juan had reasons of personal interest for opposing this, and managed to gain exclusive control of the movements and purposes of the king. They endeavored to compel the princess by threats of imprisonment to marry the king of Portugal, a widower far advanced in years, and wholly unsuitable as a husband for the fair and youthful Isabel. Failing this hopeful scheme, they fixed on Charles, Duke of Berri and Guienne, brother of Louis XI of France. Don Fadrique Enriquez, Admiral of Castile, and Don Mosen Pierres de Peralta, Constable of Navarre, were coadjutors of the Archbishop in furthering the proposals of the young Ferdinand of Aragon, who had a still more powerful partisan than either in the growing tenderness of Doña Isabel.

In fact, Isabel, like a discreet and prudent lady as she was, had been playing a game of her own under the rose, quite as cunningly as the politic nobles and astute churchmen of her brother’s court. Two of the applicants for her hand were quickly disposed of. She would not think of the old king of Portugal, who might as well be her father as her husband. George of Clarence, another of her suitors, had acquired a reputation of ferocity in the wars of York and Lancaster, that put him out of the question. There remained only Charles and Ferdinand as subjects of deliberate consideration. She privately

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dispatched her chaplain, a man of entire trust called Alonso de Coca, with instructions to repair to the court of France on some pretended object of business or pleasure, and seek out the Duc de Guienne, and carefully make enquiries concerning him, and then return through Aragon to do the same with regard to Don Fernando, so as to bring back a full and faithful report to his mistress. He gave Doña Isabel a complete account of the appearance and habits of both princes, relating in how many things the prince of Aragon excelled the duke of Guienne. Don Fernando, he said, was in countenance and proportion of person very handsome, and of noble air and manner, and apt in every knightly exercise or princely deed. The duke of Guienne, on the contrary, he said, was weak and effeminate, with legs so small as to be altogether deformed, and with weeping eyes already sinking into blindness, so that ere long, he would stand more in need of a page to lead him by the hand, than of horse and lance for the battle field or tourney. Doña Isabel instantly came to a right conclusion upon what course to pursue, resolving to bestow her virgin heart and young affections upon a prince worthy of her choice, instead of giving over her person to caducity and deformity, to accommodate the ambitious projects of scheming statesmen. The Archbishop having a perfect understanding with the gentlemen of her household, Don Gonzalo Chacon and Don Gutierre de Cardenas, a private correspondence with Isabel was commenced and carried on for some time unsuspected, and she finally accepted a rich collar of gems and pearls sent her by Don Fernando, with other suitable presents, and consented to become his bride.

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Doña Isabel resided at this time in Ocaña, whither she and the king had been conducted by Don Juan Pacheco, in order that they might be completely in his hands, it being a place subject to his control as master of Santiago. Hither Don Henrique summoned the Cortes, in order that the compact of Los Toros de Guisando might be carried into effect, and Doña Isabel recognized by the estates of the realm as heiress of Castile and Leon. Beginning, however, to fluctuate in his intention, and receiving tidings of disturbances in Andalusia which rendered his presence necessary there, he left Ocaña before any thing was done, after compelling Doña Isabel to swear that ‘she would not undertake any novelty respecting her marriage during his absence.’ As Doña Isabel had already engaged to espouse Don Fernando, although Don Henrique knew it not, her clerical counsellors persuaded her that she might conscientiously swear not to ‘undertake any novelty respecting her marriage,’ and that she ought to do so, to lull the suspicions of Don Henrique and the master. But no sooner had these last departed from Ocaña, than the conspirators, if so they may be termed, proceeded with all possible dispatch to conclude the marriage, and so place themselves beyond the resentment of the king and the manœuvres of Don Juan.

Doña Isabel was first conveyed to Madrigal, where her mother then lived, it being given out that her object was to remove her brother’s body from Arevalo, and superintend the interment of it at Avila. uneasy at her leaving Ocaña, and suspecting all was not right, the master now took measures for posssessing himself of her

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person by force; but the Archbishop and Don Fadrique, getting intelligence of his designs, mustered a party of their friends, and conducted her in all haste to Valladolid, which was wholly at the devotion of the Admiral. As the Marquis of Villena was now on his guard, and ready to take any desperate step to secure the disputed prize, the friends of Doña Isabel saw that no time was to be lost in deliberation. Every thing had been previously arranged, so far as it could be, preliminary to the marriage, a dispensation having been procured from the Pope, and Don Fernando having been raised by his father to the dignity of king of Sicily to make him better worthy of Doña Isabel. Nothing remained but that Don Fernando should come to Valladolid, and espouse the Infanta; and this was a task of greater difficulty than at first sight it would seem.

The management of the affair was entrusted to Don Guiterre de Cardenas and Don Alonso de Palencia, the latter a gentleman attached to the Archbishop. They counted upon the Bishop of Osma, Don Pedro Montoya, to furnish one hundred and fifty lances, and Don Luis de la Cerda, the Count of Medinaceli, five hundred, which, with three or four hundred more to be procured from other sources, they deemed a sufficient escort to ensure the safety of Don Fernando. But when cardenas and Palencia reached Osma on their way to Zaragoza, they learnt to their consternation that the Bishop and the Conde de Medinaceli, with the usual levity of the Castilian nobles of that day, had deserted the party of Doña Isabel, and joined that of the master. The whole frontier was held by the powerful bands of Mendoza,

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who occupied with their retainers and connexions all the castles along the line from Almazan to Guadalajara. Cardenas and Palencia became convinced that it was now impossible for Don Fernando to enter Castile openly, and that unless they could succeed by some ingenious stratagem, the whole object, for which they had labored so long and so earnestly, would be utterly and perhaps for ever defeated. They determined to make a bold push to overmatch the machinations of their enemies.

Concealing their immediate purpose, which they could easily do, by Cardenas passing for the servant of Don Alonso, who frequently had occasion to go to and fro on business of the Archbishop’s, they hastened forward to Zaragosa, and proposed to Don Fernando to repair to Valladolid in disguise and without attendance. Cardenas communicated to the prince the loving messages of Doña Isabel, with her maidenly complaints that he had not yet visited her in Castile, and her prayers that he would not abandon her in the perilous predicament wherein she was placed for his sake. Don Fernando instantly resolved to hasten to Valladolid at all hazards, on the wings of love and hope; having first sent forward Don Mosen Pero Vaca, a confidential servant of his father, the king of Aragon, on the simulated embassy to Don Henrique, so as to blind the eyes of the Mendozas, of Don Luis de la Cerda, and of the rest of their faction along the road to Valladolid.

Don Fernando, then, accompanied only by a few domestics in whom he could repose implicit confidence, put himself under the guidance of Cardenas, and boldly passed the line which separates Aragon from Castile.

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Being obliged to stop to refresh themselves and their mules, they halted at a hamlet between Gomara and Osma, where they passed for mere traders, the prince busying himself to take care of the mules and horses, and to serve at the table, so as to divert all suspicion from his own person. After a multitude of difficulties and hair breadth escapes, he safely arrived in the dead of night at Osma, where he found Don Pedro Manrique, Conde de Treviño, and three hundred lances secretly got together and prepared to escort him for the residue of his journey; the Manriques, the Rojas under the Conde de Castro, and other friends of Doña Isabel, being on the alert and in command of the road from Osma to Valladolid. Don Fernando was welcomed by the Conde de Treviño and his followers at Osma with cries of joy and flourish of trumpets, and conducted through the streets by the light of flaming torches, which blazed out upon the astonished sight of the inhabitants and the soldiers of the garrison waking from their slumbers to witness the triumphant entry of Don Fernando. Cardenas pushed on with fresh horses to Valladolid, to give tidings of the approach of the party, who followed with all possible speed.

Meanwhile, the Archbishop and the Admiral had been secretly gathering in their friends, and introducing them by small parties into Valladolid, as we have already seen. When Don Gutierre arrived in the evening at the house of Vivero, he found them anxiously awaiting the coming of Don Fernando. Chacon was sent back to meet him, and conduct him into the house by the postern door from the garden, so as to avoid the risk of his being

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seen and recognized in the streets of the city. His followers halted at a village a few miles from Valladolid, while he rode in almost alone, to plight his faith as a prince and a knight to the fair Isabella. This interview took place the fourteenth day of October, 1649. [sic] Don Fernando returned to Dueañs the same night, and remained there until the eighteenth day of the month, when all the conditions of the intended marriage having been fully settled, he publicly entered Valladolid, in company with several lords of the houses of Manrique and Rojas, and was received without the gates by the Archbishop, the Admiral, and a brilliant cortège of the principal cavaliers of the city. Concealment was no longer necessary, and in the evening the espousals of the prince and princess were published and ratified before a great concourse of spectators, assembled in the house of Don Juan de Vivero. And there on the following morning, the marriage ceremony was performed, and the nuptial benediction pronounced with feasts and rejoicings, it is true, but without the magnificence of display, the tournaments, the public dances, and the bull fights, which the custom of the times and place required in honor of royal espousals.

It was, in fact, a STOLEN MATCH, to which the weak tyranny of the king, and the factious violence of the nobles, who possessed his good will, drove the future lords of Spain, Italy, and the Indies. And distrust as with ample cause we may, the virtue that is reared in the moral contagion of palaces, never yet did prince or subject take to his arms a more pure and lovely wife,—loyal, affectionate, tender, and true, endowed with every

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queen-becoming grace mingled and tempered with the blander charms of humble life, than yielded up her maiden hand and heart on that occasion to her lover king.

If the gentle reader would appreciate the moral of our tale, let him summon up before his mind’s eye, the picture of Isabel of Castile, married by stealth in the hall of a private dwelling, and hardly with the solemnities of a common Spanish bridal; and then compare the scene with that of the same Isabel, in the overpowering glories and stupendous triumphs of her after life, as exhibited in the graphic, picturesque, and impressive pages of Washington Irving. It were idle for us to attempt a task accomplished to our hands by his magic pen. Why advance to break spears with him, when the challenger would thus but show his own weakness, without calling into display the strength of the challenged? Instead of this, we shall have recourse to that mine, from which he has dug so many gems, borrowing a single trait to fill up our canvass from the naive pages of the curate of Los Palacios.

The right noble and ever blessed queen Doña Isabel, with the king Don Fernando her husband, reigned over the realms and lordships of Castile, nine and twenty years and ten months; in the which time was the greatest exaltation, triumph, honor, and prosperity, that ever chanced in Spain. Consider that being the stainless daughter of such noble lineage and royal stock and ancestry, she entertained in her person so many other and excellent havings, the which our Lord adorned her withal, wherein she outshone and overtopped all the

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queens, whether of Christendom or of any differing law which did go before her, not only, I say, in Spain, but in all the world, of those whereof by their virtue and their graces, and by their wisdom and their power, the memory doth live and flourish. Who could worthily recount the grandeur, the magnificence of her court; the prelates, learned men, and venerable counsellors, who always accompanied her; the reverend fathers, the precentors, and the musical accordances in honor of divine worship; the solemnity of the masses and honors continually chanted in her palace; the knightly and martial nobles of Spain, dukes, masters, marquisses, and ricos hombres; the gallants and dames, the jousts and tournaments, the multitude of poets and troubadours and minstrels of every degree; the men of arms and war, ever in battle against the Moors, with all their artillery and engines of infinite variety; and the gold and silver and gems and pagan men brought from the Indies newly discovered, where the setting sun goes down behind the ocean sea! Spain was in the time of these victorious kings, Don Fernando and Doña Isabel, more triumphant, sublimated, and potent, and more feared and honored, than ever before or since; and so of this right noble and all blessed queen, the fame shall be cherished for ever in the realms and lordships of Castile.

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[p. 307]

THE FOUNTAIN OF LOVE.

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[p. 308]

WHAT IS IT?

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[p. 309]

THE WASP AND THE HORNET.

BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

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[p. 310]

THE PHILOSOPHER TO HIS LOVE.

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[p. 312]

MY NATIVE LAND.

BY H. VANE.

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[p. 313]

MAZEPPA.

A story that has been touched by the pen of Voltaire and Lord Byron is, of course, too well known to admit of any further illustration. The following lines, from the ‘Mazeppa’ of the English poet, appear to have furnished the artist with the materials for his spirited production.

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[p. 314]

THE CAPTURE.

Catharine Ormsby was the prettiest girl in the village of C—. Sixteen summers had nearly ripened her beauty, without destroying the charm of childhood, its simplicity and frankness. The little town in which she lived, about fifty miles from Boston, in which she had been born and bred, and her father before her, had, until now, comprised to her experience, the whole outward world. Mr. Ormsby had for many years been devoted to a seafaring life, but having amassed a handsome fortune, he was content to abide on shore, if he might be permitted to remain quietly in his native place,, and under the same roof-tree that had sheltered his boyhood. Here then he dwelt in old fashioned hospitality, with an excellent wife and one darling child. He had, indeed, been sadly affronted that this child was a daughter; and it was not till she could listen in breathless attention to his tales of ocean dangers, and lisp his sea phrases, that he had cordially forgiven her this mal-a-propos circumstance.

It was a pretty sight to see the rough looking sailor with this petted girl on one knee, a large Newfoundland dog resting his head on the other; and both apparently equally attentive to the narrative; or, to mark him presiding over her first nautical adventures on a little rill, which, after trickling through his grounds formed, at the foot of a weeping elm, a tiny lake. Here would he launch her mimic fleet of sloops and schooners, and

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watch with her their perilous course among the bays and headlands, rapids and inlets, formed by the water as it oozed and played among the old fantastic roots. In his traffic to the East and West Indies, he always returned freighted with love tokens for her; and her baby house exhibited the spoils of land and sea. There was a Chinese shoe, not much too large for an immense Holland doll, who, like an oriental idol, occupied the little temple, above which was displayed a picture of the royal family of the ‘Celestial Empire,’ with their formal faces and grotesque costume, on a bright crimson ground. There too, were curious specimens of coral; sea weed, whose fibres were ingeniously woven into fans, by Amphitrite’s own fingers, for aught that we can tell; rare shells, a pagoda of rice, japanned boxes; but above all, was a glass ship! having complete every rope and spar, and parts of which we know not even the names. In process of time, more costly offerings were made by the lavish father at the shrine of his little darling; crapes, shawls, muslins, every thing to which fashion or remoteness has attached value. But notwithstanding this prodigality of love, Catharine remained what nature had made her, kind, tractable, and disinterested.

Though Mrs. Ormsby had thus far acquiesced cheerfully in her husband’s wish to detain their daughter at home, she had the usual maternal solicitude on the subject of manners and accomplishment; and a secret desire that this little jewel should be sent to receive a six months polishing in Boston. Catharine had indeed diligently availed herself of those accidental advantages which seem like a god-send in a village. A college

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student in his recess had instructed her in botany. Of an itinerant professor of chemistry, (every one is a ‘professor’ now a days,) she had learned all that any one could, from an ‘introductory lecture.’ Another, by the simple machinery of a magic lantern, would have revealed to her the entire Newtonian system, in addition to every other, but the villagers not proving enterprising enough to pay for the whole course, the man went off in a tangent, leaving them under an eclipse ‘nearly total.’ Besides this ‘summary view’ of the sciences, an ex-dancing master, who had abdicated the city during the summer months, had initiated her into the mysterious evolutions of a cotillon.

To fill up the interstices left by this imperfect mode of teaching, Mrs. Ormsby manœuvred as much as a good wife and woman of truth might; but hints, coaxing, and remonstrance were of no avail with her husband. ‘Catharine,’ he said, ‘danced well enough to please him, sung naturally and sweetly without foreign airs and quavers, had read more history, travels and voyages, he would engage, than all the girls educated at a fashionable boarding school put together, could keep her own accounts, and the house too, if her mother would let her, and what should she go to Boston for?’ This, to be sure, appeared unanswerable, and Mrs. Ormsby herself felt half ashamed to suggest that these acquisitions were insufficient. Here, then, the matter rested; for besides the reasons just alleged, Mrs. Ormsby knew that her husband, though affectionate and indulgent, could be pertinacious. He had proved this on occasions more important than the present. An only and beloved

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sister had disobliged him by marrying a proud Carolinian whom he detested, and he had forsworn all connexion with her. Mrs. Ormsby, when she became his wife, had gently and wisely endeavored to turn his affections into the deserted channel, but in vain; nor were her subsequent efforts more successful.

‘She is still your sister, she would say, ‘you cannot, if you would, destroy the tie that nature wrought. As we descend into the vale of life, we should lose sight of the angry passions that glared upon its summit. She, [I] dare say, however her husband may feel, longs for a reconciliation.’

‘No, no; the aversions of near connexions are contagious; wives always take part with their husbands.’

‘Not always,’ said Mrs. Ormsby, with a smile, ‘I at least am an exception’

‘Yes, you are I know,’ replied he, reproachfully, ‘and were you not in other respects a good wife, I should not forgive it.’

His affections, thus concentrated in his immediate family, had become so intense, as to result in a nearly womanish apprehensiveness in regard to his daughter. Compared with the loss of her society, or the evils which when out of his sight his fancy represented as assailing her, all the advantages her mother proposed by her absence, were as nothing. An unexpected circumstance however, favored Mrs. Ormsby’s wishes; business of importance, and which might detain him some time, summoned her husband to Martinique. One morning soon after this intelligence was received, he sat apparently ruminating some matter of importance.

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‘My dear,’ said he at length, ‘I have observed that our opinions, generally pretty much alike, differ a little as to what is best for Catharine; but, as it is fair that you should choose sometimes as well as myself, suppose we let her spend the next few months in Boston?’

Mrs. Ormsby smiled; the spring of this proposal she well understood, but, glad to succeed in any way, she took her husband at his word; and as he would embark from that port, it was decided that Catharine should accompany him thus far, and be left with Mrs. Howard, a kind friend who had repeatedly urged them to commit their daughter to her care. It is not necessary to trace her improvement minutely. Who is not the wiser, if willing to be so, for a visit to Boston? and in the lighter matters of outward adorning our little villager made equal progress. her rustic graces were as easily converted into ease and good breeding, as her pretty shape was moulded into the latest fashion, and her luxuriant tresses trained into new forms of taste and beauty.

Four months passed delightfully, when the declaration of war with great Britain in June, 1812, sent anxiety into many bosoms as well as our little Catharine’s. War! and her father absent—perhaps on the ocean! She would have fled at once like a frighted dove to the consolation of her dear quiet home, but Mrs. Howard would not permit it; and was the more urgent to detain her as the marriage of her eldest daughter approached, and Catharine was to sustain the yet untried honors of bridesmaid to her friend Emily, about to become Mrs. Talbot. Images of love and festivity, for a while, banished the terrors which war had conjured up. Among the

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attendants was a naval officer, who as a compliment to the bride arranged a party to visit the Constitution, then in the port of Boston, after her recent skilful escape from the British fleet. A vessel of war was, of course, a novel sight to Catharine, and though her heart beat quickly as she entered the carriage which was to convey them to the wharf, it was with a pleasurable emotion. They were soon transferred to the ship’s barge, and on their way to the vessel. It was a beautiful morning in July, and the waters of the bay were so tranquil, that they were borne with the gentlest undulations to the side of the dark browed vessel, upon whose ample deck they were received amidst a burst of martial music, which proclaimed their welcome. Captain H— was not on board, and the command was for the time delegated to Lieutenant M. who advanced, to express his sense of the honor thus vouchsafed to his ship, and prepared to exhibit its arrangements. They were now led from deck to deck, from room to room. Catharine, absorbed in admiration of the order, neatness, and admirable contrivance every where manifest in this noble production of human skill, this epitome of the arts by which life is preserved and destroyed, forgot for a moment that she was in the court of Death.

Their curiosity satisfied, the ladies were requested to enter the state cabin, where a collation was prepared for them. The decorations, the air of comfort as well as elegance, spread an illusion over the scene; and Catharine, excited by the novelty of her situation, the delightful music, the courtesy of the officers, was not less an object of admiration herself. After they had partaken of the refreshment, a book and writing materials were produced.

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‘We hope the ladies,’ said Lieutenant M. ‘will do us the additional honor to inscribe their names and residences in this volume. We always keep a register of our fair visitors, that when at sea we may cheer ourselves by the pleasant reminiscences the sight of this page recalls. In a storm, it affords glimpses of a fairer heaven; and in a calm, a dead calm, it excites an agreeable agitation that prevents our stagnating with the waters around us.’

The ladies in turn complied with this request, until Catharine alone was left. Taking the pen, she wrote her name, and then paused, and shaking back the beautiful light curls which had fallen over her eyes, as her head inclined towards the book, she looked up at Mrs. Talbot, and smilingly said, ‘there’s my name, but as for my residence, I have been of late such an absentee, that I am somewhat at a loss.’

‘Say afloat, then, madam, as we do,’ said a voice in a gentle tone; and Catharine turning to the quarter whence it came, perceived a young man near her, regarding her with a gaze, which to one more skilled would have expressed admiration, but which she, all unused to such interpretation, only felt to be embarrassing; without replying, she hastily finished her writing, and rose from the table. But though propriety forbade a too eager enquiry by word or look, as to the individual who had thus addressed her, in her heart she would have liked to know to whom belonged the beautiful eyes which had been fastened on her, and the slight and graceful figure which half bent forward, betrayed a desire to catch the characters as they fell from her pen. Nevertheless she

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maintained her averted position, until the party turned to leave the room in their way to the deck. Her glance was now directed to the spot which she supposed occupied by the stranger, but he was no longer there. While preparations were making for their return to the city, her attention was attracted by iron headed pikes, stacked against the masts, and as she looked around for some one of whom to inquire their purpose, she perceived the young officer at her side.

‘They are boarding pikes;’ said he, in reply to her interrogation, and suiting the action to the word, ‘it is with these we beat down the Englishman on his own quarter.’

Catharine’s gay smile was gone. The sight of this, to her, new instrument of destruction, dispelled the fascination which gallantry, brilliant array and beautiful contrivance had created. The living, laughing beings around her, were slaughtering or slaughtered,—female forms bright in beauty and happiness, were succeeded by the dying and dead,—and instead of melting music, were the roar of cannon, and sounds of strife and anguish. As these thoughts passed rapidly through her mind, and her eye rested on the youthful sailor, whose appearance seemed more befitting a ‘squire of dames,’ she involuntarily exclaimed, ‘and could you direct such a murderous weapon?’

‘Certainly,’ said he, ‘at the call of duty, or I have badly chosen my profession. But were it not better,’ added he, gaily, ‘to stimulate our courage by your applause and sympathy? believe me, we may sometimes need them.’

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Catharine turned mournfully away; she felt that her moralizing was out of place.

‘Will you not then,’ said he, ‘bestow your parting blessing upon our good ship?’

‘Heaven prosper the right!’ said Catharine.

He bowed—‘We ask no more,’ replied he.

A summons from her party now called her to the vessel’s side, whence they were descending into the barge. Catherine was the last. As she placed her foot on the step, another hand was extended to assist her. From a girlish timidity she forbore an enquiring glance at her conductor; and as the barge receded, among the many hats and hands which waved a parting salute to their fair guests, she could not distinguish him.

When talking over the excursion of the morning, ‘Do tell me, Catharine,’ said Mrs. Talbot, ‘who was the young man that handed you into the barge?’

‘I did not see him,’ replied Catharine.

‘Not see him! did he say nothing?’

‘No.’

‘That’s very odd; I suppose though he had sufficiently recommended himself, in his tète à tète with you in that grove of pikes, in which I saw you; or were you trying to convert him to your pacific dispositions? and advising him to establish himself in a cotton manufactory, or to engage in the breeding of Merino sheep!’

‘No, I was not quite so ridiculous, quaker as you consider me.’

‘He seemed a modest youth,’ continued Mrs. Talbot, ‘who, I should think, would be more enamoured with you, poltroon as you are! than with an Amazonian lady, who

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could on an emergency spike a gun, or handle a cutlass. But for all that there’s a sparkle in his eye that shows spirit; I wish we knew his name, that we might rejoice in the glory that I have no doubt awaits him in the next cruise of the Constitution.’

‘Our ignorance may perhaps be more for our tranquillity, it may save us the necessity of lamenting his death.’

‘Oh, shocking! you are the veriest croaker I ever knew. You are enough to spread disaffection and cowardice through a whole fleet. How can you associate such fearful imaginations, with the elegant creatures we have just seen!’

‘I cannot separate them; the horrors of war are only the more present to my mind from this morning’s visit; so much so, that I could wish I had not gone.’

Another week completed Catharine’s visit to her Boston friends, and found her once more beside her mother. Occupied in domestic duties, and easily converting ordinary occurrences into matter of interest and amusement, they would have been happy but for their anxieties about Mr. Ormsby, who, from his last letters, they knew to be now on his return. Now and then too, a thought of the handsome young officer would cross the bright sunshine of Catharine’s brow; not with the sickly fancy of a romantic girl, for her naturally good sense had not been perverted by tales of love at first sight; but with the humane regret, that one so young, apparently made for gentler vocations, should be devoted to the bloody trade of war, perhaps, its victim. ‘But then his country!’ her own patriotism suggested, ‘his country! should the fairest and the best be deemed too

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good to be laid on her altar?’ It was a fearful contest of opposite duties, a moral problem that she could not solve; and she dismissed it from her mind with the benevolent, though feminine ejaculation, ‘oh, that men would learn to war no more!’

Meanwhile Mr. Ormsby, having accomplished his business in Martinique, was on his homeward bound voyage, when the schooner, in which he was a passenger, was encountered by the British frigate, Guerrière. The American captain had hoped to run in unmolested, but war had spread her toils too skilfully. Resistance on his part was out of the question, and captain D., the English commander, having taken Mr. Ormsby on board his frigate, sent the captain, crew, and captured vessel, into one of the British Islands, and stood towards the American coast, in the hope of falling in with some of our infant Navy, of whose presumption he designed a summary chastisement.

The circumstances under which Mr. Ormsby found himself, were awkward and irritating. A true American, he was compelled daily to hear his country undervalued, her temerity in thus daring to cope with the lords of the ocean ridiculed, her skill set at nought, and her vessels deemed only built to swell the list of British prizes. Although justly offended, by remarks which courtesy to a captive should have restrained, Mr. Ormsby could reply little to assumptions, the folly of which had not then been fully demonstrated, and he kept his temper under tolerable subjection. This he was the better able to do, as from his own observations he was satisfied, that their confidence would, before long, receive a more effectual check than any he could administer.

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The cruise continued till the nineteenth of August, when a sail was discovered from the mast head, though still so distant that it could not be ascertained whether she were friend or foe. The Guerrière was now under easy sail, close on the wind; and before long it was evident that the vessel in sight was a frigate, and in chase.

‘Then they’re coming at last, the Yankee Doodles!’ cried a sailor.

A group of officers, who were eagerly observing the sail as it gained on them, corroborated his conjecture.

‘I hope to Heaven they are!’ exclaimed Mr. Ormsby, ‘for I would a little rather return to the United States, than waste my time cruising about here!’

For some moments a breathless silence prevailed, and every eye was riveted on the vessel; when the increasing certainty which was now felt of the approaching foe, manifested itself in speculations on her value, and unceremonious calculations as to the amount of prize money they should divide.

‘Back the main-top-sail!’ said captain D. They did so, and awaited the coming down of the enemy. On her nearer advance she was descried to take in her light sails, haul up her courses, send down the royal yards, and to be getting clear for action.

Mr. Ormsby’s heart beat violently as the moment approached which was to test his countrymen, yet his reliance on them was unabated.

‘Captain D.’ said he, ‘I must tell you, with the frankness of a sailor, and the disregard of ceremony, of which your officers and men have set me the example,

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that if there be not better discipline on board your ship, during action, than I have hitherto observed here, that ‘Yankee’ will have you in twenty minutes after you meet; which may Heaven grant!’ added he, with an earnestness and solemnity which seemed to startle even the sanguine spirits around him. When within gun shot, the Guerrière hoisted three English ensigns.

‘Nail them to the mast!’ said captain D. ‘they shall sink with the ship, before they are vailed to an American!’

A broadside was now fired on the approaching frigate, and another on the next tack, but they fell short. The Constitution, for such the reader is aware she was, returned not a shot; the men reefing sails, sending down yards, and making other preparations, calmly reserved their fire for the close engagement they had earnestly requested. The American colors were now seen at each mast head, and at the mizen peak.

The Guerrière continued wearing and manœuvring [sic] to obtain a raking position, but failing, she bore up. No sound had as yet been heard from the Constitution, but the drum beating to quarters. At six o’clock in the afternoon, she was within half pistol shot, and brought the Guerrière to close action by a heavy fire from all her guns, accompanied by three gallant cheers!

‘With your permission, captain D.’ said Mr. Ormsby, ‘I will go below; I have no fancy to be killed by my own countrymen, and as little to witness a battle in which I can take no part.’

‘As you choose, sir,’ replied captain D. ‘your assistance may, perhaps, be acceptable in the cock pit.’

Mr. Ormsby had not long made good his retreat,

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when with a tremendous crash, the mizen mast of the Guerrière went over board, fifteen minutes after the commencement of the action.

‘Huzza! my boys!’ cried the American commander, in the enthusiasm of the moment, swinging his heat around his head, ‘Huzza! my boys, we have made a brig of her!’

The ships were now in absolute contact, the Guerrière’s bowsprit foul of the mizen rigging of the Constitution. At this moment, an officer of the marines, as he stood on the quarter prepared to board, received his death wound, and the brave Lieutenant M. in the same situation, was struck down by a musket ball through his body, an injury which, though feared at the time to be mortal, he survived, for the further service and honor of his country. Captain H. himself had advanced to the boarding position, and was mounting the arm chest for the purpose, when he was drawn back by a sailor.

‘For the love of Heaven, sir!’ cried he, ‘do not get up there, unless you first take off those swabs,’ pointing to his epaulettes, ‘you’ll be a mark for every musket.’

At this instant, he perceived the flag shot away from the Constitution’s main-top-gallant mast head. Even the life of his commander was secondary to the honor of his flag, and releasing his hold, he ascended amidst a shower of bullets, and lashed it to the mast!

Boarding was however deemed unnecessary. A warm fire took such effect that in another fifteen minutes the fore and main mast of the Guerrière were carried away with every spar except the bowsprit; and the hull, above and below water, was so shattered, that a few more broadsides would have carried her down.

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During this time, the situation of Mr. Ormsby was one of strange and peculiar interest. A humane, and even tender hearted man, he would, at any other time, have shrunk from the sight of blood and suffering by which he was surrounded; but now, his mind intent on one single idea, he neither saw or heard what was immediately about him, and mechanically rendered such assistance as was required, while his soul and senses were amidst the strife above. The firing ceased! he listened in agonizing suspense. ‘I can no longer stay here!’ cried he, and rushing to the deck, he beheld the Guerrière a wreck; the deck strewed with bodies, and slippery with gore!

still the British colors waved in ‘melancholy glory’ over the dismantled ship. In a few moments a boat was seen to approach from the Constitution, which had now shot ahead. As it came along side, a young midshipman rose, took off his hat, and respectfully addressed the commander.

‘Captain H—’s compliments to captain D., and requests to be informed if this ship has struck.’

To admit this, in these precise terms, was too galling; and the pride of the Briton qualified it by replying, ‘that she was incapable of further resistance.’

The midshipman bowed.

‘Captain H— begs to know if he can render captain D. any assistance. A surgeon and a surgeon’s mate are at his command.’

‘In Heaven’s name,’ cried the astonished Englishman, casting a glance at his own diminished numbers, ‘is there no one wounded on board your vessel?’

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‘So few, that we are able and happy to be of service to you.’

Mr. Ormsby, having made himself known as an American, was invited into the boat, and conveyed to the Constitution; and between seven and eight in the evening, captain D. was received on board, with the respect due to an honorable and unfortunate foe. The removal of the prisoners and baggage from the Guerrière, no longer sea worthy, occupied the time till the next day at three, when the signal guns were fired to recall the boats.

There is a melancholy feeling produced by the sight of inanimate objects in desertion and ruin—objects with which we have associated images of life and energy!—and it was with a similar emotion that the victors gazed at the Guerrière as the last boat obeyed the signal, and their late formidable antagonist, ‘breathing out threatenings and slaughter,’ was left a solitary wreck.

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A stillness like that which succeeds death ensued. No expression of indecent triumph marked the explosion. The first voice that was heard was that of a British seaman.

‘That’s better,’ cried he, ‘than Davy’s locker, any how! His majesty, Heaven bless him! has ships enough and to spare. He can afford it!’

Shortly after Mr. Ormsby’s reception on board the Constitution, his attention was withdrawn from the exciting interests which had absorbed him, to the young midshipman, under whose escort he had placed himself. He remarked his fair brow, yet unchanged by sun or service; a mouth, the sweetness of which softened the daring of his eye; his smooth cheek well according with his slender figure, not yet arrived at its full proportion and vigor. While he thus observed him, an expression of pain suddenly crossed his face, his color faded, and he grasped Mr. Ormsby’s arm for support.

On examination, it appeared that a ball had entered his shoulder, and was there lodged. The wound, received in the height of the action, had not been observed by others, and in the animation of the contest, and his subsequent deputation to the Guerrière, he had himself scarcely heeded it. The extracting of the ball was attended with much suffering, but he bore it without shrinking; and Mr. Ormsby pleased with his manly

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resolution, and disregard of the injury, exclaimed, ‘You’re a fine fellow! I shall see you a commodore yet, before I die; I do not know your name, but I wish it were Ormsby, for my sake.’

‘Ormsby!’ cried the young man, ‘Ormsby of C—?’

‘Yes," replied he with surprise, ‘what can you have to say to my name?’

‘Only sir, that I respect it—mine is Elliot.’

‘Elliot of Carolina?’

‘The same.’

‘The son of Frederick Elliot?’

‘The same?’

‘My flesh and blood!’ cried Mr. Ormsby, ‘child of my siter!’ And in the gush of natural feeling, which this unexpected meeting called forth, every angry passion was quenched.

‘And your mother?’ said Mr. Ormsby, after a pause, ‘does she yet live?’

‘Yes; to love you, if you would allow it.’

‘And—and your father?’

‘He too, I trust is yet alive, though hard reverses have broken him down.’

‘Reverses!—why did I not hear of them?’

‘His pride survived his fortune.’

This imperfect communication, all that their situation admitted, was however sufficient; and during the voyage home, the attraction of kindred, at first operating as an instinct, grew into mutual confidence and esteem.

Our friends at C—, in the meantime, Mrs. Ormsby and Catharine, were anxiously inspecting the papers and catching every rumor that could quiet their fears,

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or confirm their hopes. One evening, after having exhausted every topic that could furnish either amusement or encouragement, they were roused from the fit of musing into which they had fallen, by a confused murmur of voices beneath their window, and at the same instant the church bell rung a loud and startling peal.

‘Can it be fire?’ cried Catharine, in a terrified tone, and running to the door, she enquired of a person who was just passing.

‘Fire! yes indeed, the fire of our gallant seamen! The Constitution has arrived, having captured a British frigate! Is not that glorious news?’

‘Huzza, huzza!’ cried a mob of boys, who had just caught the intelligence.

A flash of joy lighted up Catharine’s face, and she could have willingly returned the shout of triumph which the urchins raised.

‘And are any of our men killed?’ asked she, in all simplicity.

‘To be sure they are! did you ever hear of a victory without killed and wounded on both sides? ’tis said, though that the loss of the British has greatly exceeded ours, but still some of our brave fellows must have gone by the board.’

‘Any officers?’ faltered Catharine.

‘Yes; but reports vary as to the number.’

Her informant passed on, the boys shouted, and the bell rung, but Catharine scarcely knew whether she rejoiced or lamented.

‘War is a dreadful evil!’ said Mrs. Ormsby. ‘Even in a victory, there is to a good mind something appalling,

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and we scarce know how to thank God for an event, which has been purchased by the destruction of beings, as precious in his sight as ourselves.’

The next morning, a brief letter from Mr. Ormsby announced his arrival in Boston, and that he should be with them in a few hours. That was a happy day! every thing that love could devise for his comfort and gratification was thought of; joy and preparation held the whole house in a bustle; Catharine arrayed herself, as her father best loved to see her, and Mrs. Ormsby, looked almost as young and handsome as ever; such a beautifier is affection! At length the well known step was heard in the hall, and the next moment Mr. Ormsby’s arms enclosed his wife and daughter.

‘and now, Kate!’ said he, gently releasing himself from her pretty hands, which were clasped around his neck, ‘let me introduce to you a relation. Mr. Elliot, my dear,’ said he, addressing his wife, ‘and this, sir, is my daughter, and your cousin.’

The gentleman bowed; and as he raised his eyes, the young stranger of the Constitution stood confessed!

‘Why, how now! you both look as if you had seen an apparition.’

Mr. Elliot first recovered, because prepared for such a denouement.

‘My nerves, my dear sir, ought not to be moved by an apparition, which, having seen before, I have ascertained to be on ‘charitable thought intent.’ ’

‘Seen before!’

An explanation naturally ensured. There is a piece of homely counsel which we have known addressed to

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letter writers, who believing themselves obliged to fill a certain amount of foolscap, go on diluting and exemplifying, till their ideas bear about the same proportion to their words, as Gratiano’s ‘reasons’ to his discourse. This advice was, ‘when they had told all, to stop.’ Now this being precisely our own case, we shall in prudence avail ourselves of the same direction. We have only to add, that Mr. Ormsby, under that sort of counteraction, to which persons of his temper are prone, soon conceived the idea of uniting his daughter to her cousin; and that Catharine, unwilling to thwart his favorite project, dutifully consented. But as we would not encourage young ladies of seventeen, to fall in love with midshipmen of nineteen, under the idea that their kind hearted fathers will propose a marriage in about three months, we must add that the parties, of whom we are speaking, were not thus precipitate. They wisely waited till they had had time and opportunity for better knowledge of each other, till the war was over, and till our ‘little airy midshipman’ was, for sundry gallant actions, hard knocks and ugly wounds, promoted to the rank of lieutenant, and ‘rated’ himself five-and-twenty.

T. S.

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[p. 335]

TO A FRAGMENT OF SILK.

BY MRS. SIGOURNEY.

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Printed by Illman Pilbrow.

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[p. 337]

A PORTRAIT.

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[p. 338]

TROUT FISHING.

If there were any returns made of this branch of industry, they would show a great falling off in New England, and the trout will soon be extinct. Like the poor negro, he is persecuted for his skin; had he been covered with the coat of an eel, many a worm that, to tempt him, has been impaled upon a barb, might have been living to this day, for it is one of the grievous sins of the sport, that the angler pursues it by the torture of a brother worm, as well as of his speckled victim.

The trout received from nature the fatal gift of beauty: the angler, however, veils his motives under the less defensible plea of the palate, as if it were better to please that, than to gratify the eye. The very brutes that perish have this choice of food, but they care not to please the eye by looking upon the wondrous works of creation. It is this beauty of the trout, and the petty triumph that men feel in vanquishing him in a contest of artifice against simplicity that are his ruin. If the angler would be contented with a sight only of the fish, as of a picture, or a prospect, he may lay himself down upon the green bank and behold the trout under the projecting roof: but the man gazes below as Satan looked round on paradise, and thirsts for the destruction of so much gracefulness and beauty. If the poor fish could speak now, as he one day may in accusation, he might well express wonder, that, like Caractacus, he should have been envied the possession of his humble happiness.

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No angler, not even the best poet of the tribe, can satisfy the uninitiated, wherein the tickling of a trout transcends the hooking of a skulpin. [sic] It is peculiar to those who follow criminal courses, to cover the guilt of them with quaint or ironical terms. The smuggler is engaged in ‘free trade,’ the pugilist ‘floors’ his antagonist, and the angler ‘tickles a trout;’ but were the law of retaliation in force, the fisherman would have no occasion to ask with Shylock, ‘if you tickle us do we not laugh?’

There are many pretenders to the sport, who from a desire to deceive others, at last delude themselves into the belief that they have a passion for the pursuit. But no man is a trout fisher at once—nemo repente fuit turpissimus; the taste, like the cruelties of Commodus, must be kindled in the boy before it can blaze in the man. Unhappily for me, there rippled by my grandmother’s mansion the outlet of a little spring, with two feet of water in some of its curves or ‘bends.’ Much has my uncle Paul to answer for, in making for me a hook of a cast steel pin, line of packthread, and a rod from the twig of a tree. Scarcely had this gear touched the water, before a little fish was flapping on the bank. I ran off with it as unconscious of every thing but a pleasing emotion, as though I had breathed exhilarating gas. From that time my taste received its direction, and insano captus amore, I grew up a trout fisher. Spring is not now the most lovely season for me because it has birds and flowers, because the woods are fragrant and the fields green, but because it is the time for trouts.

Angling hath its pastorals, its lyrics, and its eclogues. With these, and with rural scenery, ‘meadow green,

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and mountain grey,’ the angler’s pursuit becomes so inseparably associated, that it seems to him as gentle as a passion for flowers, while he reads with horror a description of a bull fight or any other mode of torturing animals. I have destroyed more trout than Torquemada cut off heretics, but I have not his plea of bigotry. A trout is in my eyes one of the most beautiful objects in creation, yet I have a passion for its destruction. A trout, ‘an please your honor, has a soul,’ if not, he has a taste or an instinct for beauty. At the very point in a brook which a painter would choose for a sketch, there is always a fish, haunting the fairest bank as thought lingers round ‘the greenest spot in memory’s waste.’ I know a place where a brook tumbles down from rock to rock, and at the very spot, between motion and rest, where the water is calm, though the foam of the fall is on it, in a dark pool made by a curve in the bank, there is invariably a trout. I have stolen silently along like a snake in the grass, inspired by the very beauty of the place, with increased delight in my destructive purpose. Images of beauty came thronging on me, and I loved all the world but a trout. The very fragments of poetry that kept glancing before my memory, like brilliant motes in a sun beam, conveyed an unheeded lesson that all which is fair in creation is sufficiently perishable, without the interference of man.

With the book of nature open before me, I had a

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volume of the bard of nature in my pocket. I read perhaps the scene of Ophelia’s willow, hanging over the brook. I pronounce Shakspeare to be a brother of the angle, and though I find elsewhere that

yet I impale a fresh worm, and still believe that Shakspeare was an angler. But a favorite pursuit, whether angling or ambition, will not only harden the heart but pervert the understanding.

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[p. 342]

THE FUR CLOAK.

A REMINISCENCE.

It was in the winter of 1805, that I was dining at Mr. Jefferson’s, when soon after leaving the table, I was seized with an ague, and obliged to leave the charming circle that collected in the drawing room.

Mr. Jefferson, with almost paternal kindness, insisted on wrapping me in his fur cloak, which, while it completely shielded me from the night air, had the more powerful effect of conquering my shiverings, by exciting my imagination.

‘Strange!’ thought I, ‘that I, an obscure individual in America, should be wrapped in the same mantle that once enveloped the Czar of Russia—that was afterwards long worn by the patriot hero of Poland, and now belongs to one of the greatest men alive! I wish the cloak could speak and tell me something of each of its possessors. Of the insane despot, to whom it originally belonged, it could tell me of no act of his life half so good as the one by which the cloak was transferred to the good Kosciusko.’

This brave man, inspired by an inherent and inextinguishable love of liberty, had, when a mere youth, forsaken his native country—the luxuries of wealth, and the allurements of pleasure, to enlist and fight in our cause. Many were the privations he endured and the dangers he encountered for the sake of that righteous

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cause to which his whole life was devoted. To a courage the most unshrinking and a spirit the most daring, he added a tenderness and delicacy of feeling, almost feminine, and a refinement of taste which led him, amidst the ruggedness and hardships of a camp, to cultivate the gentle arts of peace. The daring soldier in the field of battle, was the tender and sentimental companion of virtuous woman; the ornament of the drawing room, and the favorite of the domestic circle.

Even in garrison, the pursuits of a simple and refined taste were not neglected. At the fort of West Point, where his regiment was long beleaguered by the British forces, we are still ed to a spot amidst the rocks, called Kosciusko’s garden. There, on the high and rocky banks of the Hudson, he amused his leisure moments in cultivating flowers. Nature had supplied no soil for their growth, but, with indefatigable toil and inexhaustible patience, he supplied the deficiency of Nature. The spot he had chosen was inaccessible to vehicles of any kind, and he carried the soil himself in baskets and deposited it in the recesses of the rocks.

There, morning and evening, leaving the coarse merriment and sensual pleasures of the camp, he tended his flowers, or giving himself up to the stillness of solitude, would sit on some projecting rock and watch the majestic stream that flowed at his feet, or the clouds that floated over his head.

Who that could then have looked on the slight and tender youth, the pretty boy, for so small and delicate were his form and features, that he seemed little more; who that looked on him, hanging with delight over a

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bed of flowers, would have recognized in him the commander of armies, the hero of his nation? How lovely is the union of greatness and goodness! It was the blending of these qualities that made Kosciusko as beloved as he was admired, and kindled in other bosoms a portion of that enthusiasm which glowed in his own. Yes, even I, then a young and thoughtless girl, felt the power of that enthusiasm, which inspired a nation of freemen, and collected thousands round the standard of this patriot soldier.

For days and weeks have I sat, with increasing delight beside his couch, and listened to the stories of his battles and hair breadth escapes, of his successes and defeats, his triumph and his captivity, one day a conqueror, the next a prisoner.

Though more than thirty years have since passed, I can still see him, as I saw him then, pale, emaciated, wounded; his almost fragile form reclined upon a couch, supported by pillows, with a little table drawn close beside him, on which he leaned his elbow, supporting his head on his hand; that wounded head around which he wore a bandage of black riband, instead of the laurel wreath he had so nobly won. But the indelible scar, which that bandage covered, was the seal of glory.

The little table was covered with books, pens, pencils; with letters from numerous friends, and tributary verses from every European nation. With what delight did I avail myself of his permission to examine all these things, and how kindly did he indulge my youthful curiosity in reading to me many of these effusions of friendship, admiration and love; yes, love, for I remember

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well, that one of the letters was from a lady, who had loved him when a volunteer in our army. It began thus:

‘By what title shall I address thee, oh being still too dear and too well remembered! shall I call thee the defender of thy country? oh, no, it is too awful. Hero of liberty it is too high. Noble Pole? oh! that speaks of another and far distant country; what then shall I call thee, that will bring to recollection the days f past years? I will call thee Kosciusko! other names may need titles, but this is itself the highest title. This, indelibly engraven on my heart, will brightly shine in the pages of history. Welcome, then Kosciusko, welcome to the country that reveres, and to the heart that adores you!’

Such, or nearly such, were the glowing words of this impassioned letter; they were so accordant with the girlish romance of my disposition, that they made an ineffaceable impression on my memory. Perhaps—nay, certainly he ought not to have shown this letter. But after all, heroes are but mend, and had, alas, too many of the weaknesses of poor human nature, and I cannot deny, that vanity was one. I recollect too some very beautiful verses sent him by Miss Porter, the distinguished novelist; but they came not from her heart, and therefore did not reach mine. They were complimentary verses, in praise of the patriot and hero. Hero!—how different were my ideas of the person of a hero, from that of Kosciusko.

From my childhood his name had been familiar to my ear, and I had heard of his youthful achievements in defence of our liberty. At the time of his return to our

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country, his fame had preceded his arrival. His bold enterprises, his patient endurance, his invincible courage, his unyielding firmness and his ardent patriotism, were the daily theme of private circles and public journals, and when he landed on our shores, he was welcomed with unbounded enthusiasm, and crowds eagerly ran to catch a glimpse of one of their earliest defenders.

When he arrived in the little town in which I lived and became an inmate of the house of one of my relations, I felt emotions it is impossible to describe. My young imagination embodied this ‘apostle of liberty, as he was sometimes called, in a form grand, imposing, and venerable; with a figure as commanding as that of our own Washington, and a countenance far more expressive. My fancy pictured him forth with noble features, large penetrating eyes, and an air of loftiness and grandeur. When I was led up to his couch, and saw a diminutive and feeble old man, with a pale face, turned up nose, little blue eyes, and thin light colored hair, I could not at first believe that it really was the renowned Kosciusko, and for a time my enthusiasm was entirely extinguished, for there was nothing about him to counteract the effect produced by his appearance, adn I must own I never recovered those feelings which his fame had inspired—feelings excited by moral grandeur. His manners and conversation were as little imposing as his person and countenance. I continually endeavored, by recalling his great actions to mind, to rekindle my enthusiasm. I never succeeded—nothing he said, or looked, assisted the illusion; no, not even when he described the conflicts in which he had been engaged, could I realize that the pale,

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feeble, little man, whom I looked upon, was the commander of armies, and the idol of his country. But a tenderer sentiment soon took the place of this high wrought enthusiasm, for when he talked of his sufferings, his bosom cares, and anxieties—his high hopes and his deep despair, it was impossible to listen and not to feel a deep interest and tender sympathy.

His mild countenance, soft voice, and gentle manners, were in harmony with such details.

In our little town, there were few who thought of approaching the great man, and he was left in comparative solitude—at least to the quiet of the domestic circle of our family.

I was a romantic girl, a young enthusiast, and much indulged. I soon found a low seat beside his couch, on which I every day passed many hours. He loved to talk of himself, and perhaps perceived no one listened to him with so eager and untiring an attention as I did; who is there insensible to the pleasure of exciting strong emotion, deep interest and tender sympathy? Some there are, and I think he was one who felt peculiar pleasure in awakening these emotions, in the artless and unsophisticated mind of youth, where they were blended with strong curiosity and astonishment.

My fixed gaze, tearful eyes, and glowing face, so clearly evinced the interest I took in his conversation, that no doubt it led him into details he would not otherwise have given. I have forgotten few of these details, and could fill a volume, were I to write all I remember; but at present, will only repeat the account he gave me of the manner in which he became possessed of the Fur

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Cloak, though the incidents connected with his defeat, following the battle in which he was made prisoner, and his feelings on the occasion are so interesting, that I can scarcely omit them. But these are matters of history.

‘I expected,’ said he, ‘on my arrival at St. Petersburg, to be thrown into a dungeon and loaded with chains; but no such thing—Catharine, though an embittered, was not a cruel enemy; I had fought only for the liberty of my country, and although she wished to destroy that liberty, she respected its defender.

‘The confinement to which she consigned me was rigorous in the extreme—but I was allowed every comfort compatible with the security of my person and prevention of any intercourse with society.

‘My apartment was large and commodious, my table well spread, and books, materials for writing, drawing and painting amply supplied.

‘Could I for one moment have forgotten my poor, bleeding, and enslaved country, I could have been almost happy. But my country in chains, and struggling for freedom, was a thought never absent from my mind, and produced a restlessness and impatience scarcely to be endured. Imagine a mother hearing the cries of a child in agony, forcibly withheld from running to its assistance, and you may then imagine my feelings. I sometimes thought, that in a dark dungeon and chained to the ground, I could have endured confinement with less impatience than in my spacious and lightsome apartment, which wore the semblance and breathed the air of liberty, while I was in fact as much enchained, as if loaded with fetters. I was not indeed, fettered with

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iron chains, but what was more intolerable, with the eternal presence of men; by men, on whose sympathies I might have worked had time been allowed me. But this was a contingence, against which my sagacious, as well as powerful enemy had securely guarded.

‘During the eighteen months I was confined at S. Petersburg, I never, for two hours successively saw the same face. the guard stationed in my apartment was changed every hour. Compute how many hours there are in eighteen months, and you will know how many strange faces I looked upon during the time of my imprisonment. Never, for one moment was I left alone!

‘Escape was impossible. After a time, this conviction brought with it more composure, and I could read, write, and draw; the latter talent was the source of much amusement, and in the creations of my pencil, I found a substitute for those of nature. Yes, the flowers grew under my hand—the landscape was lit with sunshine and smiled in verdure, and at times, I felt emotions of pleasure, similar, if not equal to those which living flowers and real landscapes could give. And sometimes too, I would recover the presence of those I loved—I would trace their features, and draw eyes that seemed to look at me, and lips that seemed to speak.

‘Thus did I seek to beguile the weary monotony of my confinement. But more heavy and more weary was each succeeding day, and there were moments when I felt such disgust to life, that I was tempted to destroy it—yet loathing life, I lived: for against hope, I hoped.

‘One day, awakening from a sleep into which I had fallen, on opening my eyes, I saw a stranger sitting on

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the foot of my couch, earnestly regarding me. I started up with, I suppose, a look of alarm, for the stranger said to me, ‘be not alarmed, I bring you good tidings—your inexorable enemy is dead. Catharine died this morning; you are free!’

‘ ‘Free,’ I exclaimed, ‘impossible’—‘not impossible,’ he answered.

‘ ‘I am Paul, and I tell you, you are free.’

‘After the first emotions of joy and surprise had subsided, the emperor told me I was at liberty to leave St. Petersburg and to go to any country I pleased, Poland excepted. I declined receiving more than was sufficient to defray my expenses to London, and from thence to America. When he found I would not take the heavy purse he earnestly pressed on me, he took from his shoulders a rich fur cloak he wore, and throwing it over mine—‘wear this for my sake,’ said the emperor.’

On leaving this country for Europe, Kosciusko left this cloak with his revered friend, Jefferson.

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[p. 351]

PHILIP OF MOUNT HOPE.

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[p. 353]

A SPANISH SCENE.

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