Burlesques, by William Makepeace Thackeray

NOVELS BY EMINENT HANDS.

GEORGE DE BARNWELL

BY SIR E. L. B. L., BART.

VOL I.

In the Morning of Life the Truthful wooed the Beautiful, and their offspring was Love. Like his Divine parents, He is eternal. He has his Mother’s ravishing smile; his Father’s steadfast eyes. He rises every day, fresh and glorious as the untired Sun–God. He is Eros, the ever young. Dark, dark were this world of ours had either Divinity left it—dark without the day-beams of the Latonian Charioteer, darker yet without the daedal Smile of the God of the Other Bow! Dost know him, reader?

Old is he, Eros, the ever young. He and Time were children together. Chronos shall die, too; but Love is imperishable. Brightest of the Divinities, where hast thou not been sung? Other worships pass away; the idols for whom pyramids were raised lie in the desert crumbling and almost nameless; the Olympians are fled, their fanes no longer rise among the quivering olive-groves of Ilissus, or crown the emerald-islets of the amethyst Aegean! These are gone, but thou remainest. There is still a garland for thy temple, a heifer for thy stone. A heifer? Ah, many a darker sacrifice. Other blood is shed at thy altars, Remorseless One, and the Poet Priest who ministers at thy Shrine draws his auguries from the bleeding hearts of men!

While Love hath no end, Can the Bard ever cease singing? In Kingly and Heroic ages, ’twas of Kings and Heroes that the Poet spake. But in these, our times, the Artisan hath his voice as well as the Monarch. The people To–Day is King, and we chronicle his woes, as They of old did the sacrifice of the princely Iphigenia, or the fate of the crowned Agamemnon.

Is Odysseus less august in his rags than in his purple? Fate, Passion, Mystery, the Victim, the Avenger, the Hate that harms, the Furies that tear, the Love that bleeds, are not these with us Still? are not these still the weapons of the Artist? the colors of his palette? the chords of his lyre? Listen! I tell thee a tale—not of Kings—but of Men—not of Thrones, but of Love, and Grief, and Crime. Listen, and but once more. ’Tis for the last time (probably) these fingers shall sweep the strings.

E. L. B. L.

NOONDAY IN CHEPE.

’Twas noonday in Chepe. High Tide in the mighty River City!—its banks wellnigh overflowing with the myriad-waved Stream of Man! The toppling wains, bearing the produce of a thousand marts; the gilded equipage of the Millionary; the humbler, but yet larger vehicle from the green metropolitan suburbs (the Hanging Gardens of our Babylon), in which every traveller might, for a modest remuneration, take a republican seat; the mercenary caroche, with its private freight; the brisk curricle of the letter-carrier, robed in royal scarlet: these and a thousand others were laboring and pressing onward, and locked and bound and hustling together in the narrow channel of Chepe. The imprecations of the charioteers were terrible. From the noble’s broidered hammer-cloth, or the driving-seat of the common coach, each driver assailed the other with floods of ribald satire. The pavid matron within the one vehicle (speeding to the Bank for her semestrial pittance) shrieked and trembled; the angry Dives hastening to his office (to add another thousand to his heap,) thrust his head over the blazoned panels, and displayed an eloquence of objurgation which his very Menials could not equal; the dauntless street urchins, as they gayly threaded the Labyrinth of Life, enjoyed the perplexities and quarrels of the scene, and exacerbated the already furious combatants by their poignant infantile satire. And the Philosopher, as he regarded the hot strife and struggle of these Candidates in the race for Gold, thought with a sigh of the Truthful and the Beautiful, and walked on, melancholy and serene.

’Twas noon in Chepe. The ware-rooms were thronged. The flaunting windows of the mercers attracted many a purchaser: the glittering panes behind which Birmingham had glazed its simulated silver, induced rustics to pause: although only noon, the savory odors of the Cook Shops tempted the over hungry citizen to the bun of Bath, or to the fragrant potage that mocks the turtle’s flavor—the turtle! O dapibus suprimi grata testudo Jovis! I am an Alderman when I think of thee! Well: it was noon in Chepe.

But were all battling for gain there? Among the many brilliant shops whose casements shone upon Chepe, there stood one a century back (about which period our tale opens) devoted to the sale of Colonial produce. A rudely carved image of a negro, with a fantastic plume and apron of variegated feathers, decorated the lintel. The East and West had sent their contributions to replenish the window.

The poor slave had toiled, died perhaps, to produce yon pyramid of swarthy sugar marked “ONLY 6 1/2d.”—That catty box, on which was the epigraph “STRONG FAMILY CONGO ONLY 3s. 9d,” was from the country of Confutzee—that heap of dark produce bore the legend “TRY OUR REAL NUT”—’Twas Cocoa—and that nut the Cocoa-nut, whose milk has refreshed the traveller and perplexed the natural philosopher. The shop in question was, in a word, a Grocer’s.

In the midst of the shop and its gorgeous contents sat one who, to judge from his appearance (though ’twas a difficult task, as, in sooth, his back was turned), had just reached that happy period of life when the Boy is expanding into the Man. O Youth, Youth! Happy and Beautiful! O fresh and roseate dawn of life; when the dew yet lies on the flowers, ere they have been scorched and withered by Passion’s fiery Sun! Immersed in thought or study, and indifferent to the din around him, sat the boy. A careless guardian was he of the treasures confided to him. The crowd passed in Chepe; he never marked it. The sun shone on Chepe; he only asked that it should illumine the page he read. The knave might filch his treasures; he was heedless of the knave. The customer might enter; but his book was all in all to him.

And indeed a customer WAS there; a little hand was tapping on the counter with a pretty impatience; a pair of arch eyes were gazing at the boy, admiring, perhaps, his manly proportions through the homely and tightened garments he wore.

“Ahem! sir! I say, young man!” the customer exclaimed.

“Ton d’apameibomenos prosephe,” read on the student, his voice choked with emotion. “What language!” he said; “how rich, how noble, how sonorous! prosephe podas—”

The customer burst out into a fit of laughter so shrill and cheery, that the young Student could not but turn round, and blushing, for the first time remarked her. “A pretty grocer’s boy you are,” she cried, “with your applepiebomenos and your French and lingo. Am I to be kept waiting for hever?”

“Pardon, fair Maiden,” said he, with high-bred courtesy: “’twas not French I read, ’twas the Godlike language of the blind old bard. In what can I be serviceable to ye, lady?” and to spring from his desk, to smooth his apron, to stand before her the obedient Shop Boy, the Poet no more, was the work of a moment.

“I might have prigged this box of figs,” the damsel said good-naturedly, “and you’d never have turned round.”

“They came from the country of Hector,” the boy said. “Would you have currants, lady? These once bloomed in the island gardens of the blue Aegean. They are uncommon fine ones, and the figure is low; they’re fourpence-halfpenny a pound. Would ye mayhap make trial of our teas? We do not advertise, as some folks do: but sell as low as any other house.”

“You’re precious young to have all these good things,” the girl exclaimed, not unwilling, seemingly, to prolong the conversation. “If I was you, and stood behind the counter, I should be eating figs the whole day long.”

“Time was,” answered the lad, “and not long since I thought so too. I thought I never should be tired of figs. But my old uncle bade me take my fill, and now in sooth I am aweary of them.”

“I think you gentlemen are always so,” the coquette said.

“Nay, say not so, fair stranger!” the youth replied, his face kindling as he spoke, and his eagle eyes flashing fire. “Figs pall; but oh! the Beautiful never does. Figs rot; but oh! the Truthful is eternal. I was born, lady, to grapple with the Lofty and the Ideal. My soul yearns for the Visionary. I stand behind the counter, it is true; but I ponder here upon the deeds of heroes, and muse over the thoughts of sages. What is grocery for one who has ambition? What sweetness hath Muscovada to him who hath tasted of Poesy? The Ideal, lady, I often think, is the true Real, and the Actual, but a visionary hallucination. But pardon me; with what may I serve thee?”

“I came only for sixpenn’orth of tea-dust,” the girl said, with a faltering voice; “but oh, I should like to hear you speak on for ever!”

Only for sixpenn’orth of tea-dust? Girl, thou camest for other things! Thou lovedst his voice? Siren! what was the witchery of thine own? He deftly made up the packet, and placed it in the little hand. She paid for her small purchase, and with a farewell glance of her lustrous eyes, she left him. She passed slowly through the portal, and in a moment was lost in the crowd. It was noon in Chepe. And George de Barnwell was alone.

Vol. II.

We have selected the following episodical chapter in preference to anything relating to the mere story of George Barnwell, with which most readers are familiar.

Up to this passage (extracted from the beginning of Vol. II.) the tale is briefly thus:

The rogue of a Millwood has come back every day to the grocer’s shop in Chepe, wanting some sugar, or some nutmeg, or some figs, half a dozen times in the week.

She and George de Barnwell have vowed to each other an eternal attachment.

This flame acts violently upon George. His bosom swells with ambition. His genius breaks out prodigiously. He talks about the Good, the Beautiful, the Ideal, &c., in and out of all season, and is virtuous and eloquent almost beyond belief—in fact like Devereux, or P. Clifford, or E. Aram, Esquires.

Inspired by Millwood and love, George robs the till, and mingles in the world which he is destined to ornament. He outdoes all the dandies, all the wits, all the scholars, and all the voluptuaries of the age—an indefinite period of time between Queen Anne and George II.—dines with Curll at St. John’s Gate, pinks Colonel Charteris in a duel behind Montague House, is initiated into the intrigues of the Chevalier St. George, whom he entertains at his sumptuous pavilion at Hampstead, and likewise in disguise at the shop in Cheapside.

His uncle, the owner of the shop, a surly curmudgeon with very little taste for the True and Beautiful, has retired from business to the pastoral village in Cambridgeshire from which the noble Barnwells came. George’s cousin Annabel is, of course, consumed with a secret passion for him.

Some trifling inaccuracies may be remarked in the ensuing brilliant little chapter; but it must be remembered that the author wished to present an age at a glance: and the dialogue is quite as fine and correct as that in the “Last of the Barons,” or in “Eugene Aram,” or other works of our author, in which Sentiment and History, or the True and Beautiful, are united.

CHAPTER XXIV.

BUTTON’S IN PALL MALL.

Those who frequent the dismal and enormous Mansions of Silence which society has raised to Ennui in that Omphalos of town, Pall Mall, and which, because they knock you down with their dulness, are called Clubs no doubt; those who yawn from a bay-window in St. James’s Street, at a half-score of other dandies gaping from another bay-window over the way; those who consult a dreary evening paper for news, or satisfy themselves with the jokes of the miserable Punch by way of wit; the men about town of the present day, in a word, can have but little idea of London some six or eight score years back. Thou pudding-sided old dandy of St. James’s Street, with thy lacquered boots, thy dyed whiskers, and thy suffocating waistband, what art thou to thy brilliant predecessor in the same quarter? The Brougham from which thou descendest at the portal of the “Carlton” or the “Travellers’,” is like everybody else’s; thy black coat has no more plaits, nor buttons, nor fancy in it than thy neighbor’s; thy hat was made on the very block on which Lord Addlepate’s was cast, who has just entered the Club before thee. You and he yawn together out of the same omnibus-box every night; you fancy yourselves men of pleasure; you fancy yourselves men of fashion; you fancy yourselves men of taste; in fancy, in taste, in opinion, in philosophy, the newspaper legislates for you; it is there you get your jokes and your thoughts, and your facts and your wisdom—poor Pall Mall dullards. Stupid slaves of the press, on that ground which you at present occupy, there were men of wit and pleasure and fashion, some five-and-twenty lustres ago.

We are at Button’s—the well-known sign of the “Turk’s Head.” The crowd of periwigged heads at the windows—the swearing chairmen round the steps (the blazoned and coronalled panels of whose vehicles denote the lofty rank of their owners),—the throng of embroidered beaux entering or departing, and rendering the air fragrant with the odors of pulvillio and pomander, proclaim the celebrated resort of London’s Wit and Fashion. It is the corner of Regent Street. Carlton House has not yet been taken down.

A stately gentleman in crimson velvet and gold is sipping chocolate at one of the tables, in earnest converse with a friend whose suit is likewise embroidered, but stained by time, or wine mayhap, or wear. A little deformed gentleman in iron-gray is reading the Morning Chronicle newspaper by the fire, while a divine, with a broad brogue and a shovel hat and cassock, is talking freely with a gentleman, whose star and ribbon, as well as the unmistakable beauty of his Phidian countenance, proclaims him to be a member of Britain’s aristocracy.

Two ragged youths, the one tall, gaunt, clumsy and scrofulous, the other with a wild, careless, beautiful look, evidently indicating Race, are gazing in at the window, not merely at the crowd in the celebrated Club, but at Timothy the waiter, who is removing a plate of that exquisite dish, the muffin (then newly invented), at the desire of some of the revellers within.

“I would, Sam,” said the wild youth to his companion, “that I had some of my mother Macclesfield’s gold, to enable us to eat of those cates and mingle with yon springalds and beaux.”

“To vaunt a knowledge of the stoical philosophy,” said the youth addressed as Sam, “might elicit a smile of incredulity upon the cheek of the parasite of pleasure; but there are moments in life when History fortifies endurance: and past study renders present deprivation more bearable. If our pecuniary resources be exiguous, let our resolution, Dick, supply the deficiencies of Fortune. The muffin we desire today would little benefit us tomorrow. Poor and hungry as we are, are we less happy, Dick, than yon listless voluptuary who banquets on the food which you covet?”

And the two lads turned away up Waterloo Place, and past the “Parthenon” Club-house, and disappeared to take a meal of cow-heel at a neighboring cook’s shop. Their names were Samuel Johnson and Richard Savage.

Meanwhile the conversation at Button’s was fast and brilliant. “By Wood’s thirteens, and the divvle go wid ’em,” cried the Church dignitary in the cassock, “is it in blue and goold ye are this morning, Sir Richard, when you ought to be in seebles?”

“Who’s dead, Dean?” said the nobleman, the dean’s companion.

“Faix, mee Lard Bolingbroke, as sure as mee name’s Jonathan Swift—and I’m not so sure of that neither, for who knows his father’s name?—there’s been a mighty cruel murther committed entirely. A child of Dick Steele’s has been barbarously slain, dthrawn, and quarthered, and it’s Joe Addison yondther has done it. Ye should have killed one of your own, Joe, ye thief of the world.”

“I!” said the amazed and Right Honorable Joseph Addison; “I kill Dick’s child! I was godfather to the last.”

“And promised a cup and never sent it,” Dick ejaculated. Joseph looked grave.

“The child I mean is Sir Roger de Coverley, Knight and Baronet. What made ye kill him, ye savage Mohock? The whole town is in tears about the good knight; all the ladies at Church this afternoon were in mourning; all the booksellers are wild; and Lintot says not a third of the copies of the Spectator are sold since the death of the brave old gentleman.” And the Dean of St. Patrick’s pulled out the Spectator newspaper, containing the well-known passage regarding Sir Roger’s death. “I bought it but now in ‘Wellington Street,’” he said; “the newsboys were howling all down the Strand.”

“What a miracle is Genius—Genius, the Divine and Beautiful,” said a gentleman leaning against the same fireplace with the deformed cavalier in iron-gray, and addressing that individual, who was in fact Mr. Alexander Pope. “What a marvellous gift is this, and royal privilege of Art! To make the Ideal more credible than the Actual: to enchain our hearts, to command our hopes, our regrets, our tears, for a mere brain-born Emanation: to invest with life the Incorporeal, and to glamour the cloudy into substance,—these are the lofty privileges of the Poet, if I have read poesy aright; and I am as familiar with the sounds that rang from Homer’s lyre, as with the strains which celebrate the loss of Belinda’s lovely locks”—(Mr. Pope blushed and bowed, highly delighted)—“these, I say, sir, are the privileges of the Poet—the Poietes—the Maker—he moves the world, and asks no lever; if he cannot charm death into life, as Orpheus feigned to do, he can create Beauty out of Nought, and defy Death by rendering Thought Eternal. Ho! Jemmy, another flask of Nantz.”

And the boy—for he who addressed the most brilliant company of wits in Europe was little more—emptied the contents of the brandy-flask into a silver flagon, and quaffed it gayly to the health of the company assembled. ’Twas the third he had taken during the sitting. Presently, and with a graceful salute to the Society, he quitted the coffee-house, and was seen cantering on a magnificent Arab past the National Gallery.

“Who is yon spark in blue and silver? He beats Joe Addison himself, in drinking, and pious Joe is the greatest toper in the three kingdoms,” Dick Steele said, good-naturedly.

“His paper in the Spectator beats thy best, Dick, thou sluggard,” the Right Honorable Mr. Addison exclaimed. “He is the author of that famous No. 996, for which you have all been giving me the credit.”

“The rascal foiled me at capping verses,” Dean Swift said, “and won a tenpenny piece of me, plague take him!”

“He has suggested an emendation in my ‘Homer,’ which proves him a delicate scholar,” Mr. Pope exclaimed.

“He knows more of the French king than any man I have met with; and we must have an eye upon him,” said Lord Bolingbroke, then Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and beckoning a suspicious-looking person who was drinking at a side-table, whispered to him something.

Meantime who was he? where was he, this youth who had struck all the wits of London with admiration? His galloping charger had returned to the City; his splendid court-suit was doffed for the citizen’s gabardine and grocer’s humble apron.

George de Barnwell was in Chepe—in Chepe, at the feet of Martha Millwood.

VOL III.

THE CONDEMNED CELL.

“Quid me mollibus implicas lacertis, my Elinor? Nay,” George added, a faint smile illumining his wan but noble features, “why speak to thee in the accents of the Roman poet, which thou comprehendest not? Bright One, there be other things in Life, in Nature, in this Inscrutable Labyrinth, this Heart on which thou leanest, which are equally unintelligible to thee! Yes, my pretty one, what is the Unintelligible but the Ideal? what is the Ideal but the Beautiful? what the Beautiful but the Eternal? And the Spirit of Man that would commune with these is like Him who wanders by the thina poluphloisboio thalasses, and shrinks awe-struck before that Azure Mystery.”

Emily’s eyes filled with fresh-gushing dew. “Speak on, speak ever thus, my George,” she exclaimed. Barnwell’s chains rattled as the confiding girl clung to him. Even Snoggin, the turnkey appointed to sit with the Prisoner, was affected by his noble and appropriate language, and also burst into tears.

“You weep, my Snoggin,” the Boy said; “and why? Hath Life been so charming to me that I should wish to retain it? hath Pleasure no after-Weariness? Ambition no Deception; Wealth no Care; and Glory no Mockery? Psha! I am sick of Success, palled of Pleasure, weary of Wine and Wit, and—nay, start not, my Adelaide—and Woman. I fling away all these things as the Toys of Boyhood. Life is the Soul’s Nursery. I am a Man, and pine for the Illimitable! Mark you me! Has the Morrow any terrors for me, think ye? Did Socrates falter at his poison? Did Seneca blench in his bath? Did Brutus shirk the sword when his great stake was lost? Did even weak Cleopatra shrink from the Serpent’s fatal nip? And why should I? My great Hazard hath been played, and I pay my forfeit. Lie sheathed in my heart, thou flashing Blade! Welcome to my Bosom, thou faithful Serpent; I hug thee, peace-bearing Image of the Eternal! Ha, the hemlock cup! Fill high, boy, for my soul is thirsty for the Infinite! Get ready the bath, friends; prepare me for the feast To-morrow—bathe my limbs in odors, and put ointment in my hair.”

“Has for a bath,” Snoggin interposed, “they’re not to be ‘ad in this ward of the prison; but I dussay Hemmy will git you a little hoil for your ‘air.”

The Prisoned One laughed loud and merrily. “My guardian understands me not, pretty one—and thou? what sayest thou? From those dear lips methinks—plura sunt oscula quam sententiae—I kiss away thy tears, dove!—they will flow apace when I am gone, then they will dry, and presently these fair eyes will shine on another, as they have beamed on poor George Barnwell. Yet wilt thou not all forget him, sweet one. He was an honest fellow, and had a kindly heart for all the world said—”

“That, that he had,” cried the gaoler and the girl in voices gurgling with emotion. And you who read! you unconvicted Convict—you murderer, though haply you have slain no one—you Felon in posse if not in esse—deal gently with one who has used the Opportunity that has failed thee—and believe that the Truthful and the Beautiful bloom sometimes in the dock and the convict’s tawny Gabardine!

***

In the matter for which he suffered, George could never be brought to acknowledge that he was at all in the wrong. “It may be an error of judgment,” he said to the Venerable Chaplain of the gaol, “but it is no crime. Were it Crime, I should feel Remorse. Where there is no remorse, Crime cannot exist. I am not sorry: therefore, I am innocent. Is the proposition a fair one?”

The excellent Doctor admitted that it was not to be contested.

“And wherefore, sir, should I have sorrow,” the Boy resumed, “for ridding the world of a sordid worm;¹ of a man whose very soul was dross, and who never had a feeling for the Truthful and the Beautiful? When I stood before my uncle in the moonlight, in the gardens of the ancestral halls of the De Barnwells, I felt that it was the Nemesis come to overthrow him. ‘Dog,’ I said to the trembling slave, ‘tell me where thy Gold is. THOU hast no use for it. I can spend it in relieving the Poverty on which thou tramplest; in aiding Science, which thou knowest not; in uplifting Art, to which thou art blind. Give Gold, and thou art free.’ But he spake not, and I slew him.”

“I would not have this doctrine vulgarly promulgated,” said the admirable chaplain, “for its general practice might chance to do harm. Thou, my son, the Refined, the Gentle, the Loving and Beloved, the Poet and Sage, urged by what I cannot but think a grievous error, hast appeared as Avenger. Think what would be the world’s condition, were men without any Yearning after the Ideal to attempt to reorganize Society, to redistribute Property, to avenge Wrong.”

“A rabble of pigmies scaling Heaven,” said the noble though misguided young Prisoner. “Prometheus was a Giant, and he fell.”

“Yes, indeed, my brave youth!” the benevolent Dr. Fuzwig exclaimed, clasping the Prisoner’s marble and manacled hand; “and the Tragedy of To-morrow will teach the World that Homicide is not to be permitted even to the most amiable Genius, and that the lover of the Ideal and the Beautiful, as thou art, my son, must respect the Real likewise.”

“Look! here is supper!” cried Barnwell gayly. “This is the Real, Doctor; let us respect it and fall to.” He partook of the meal as joyously as if it had been one of his early festals; but the worthy chaplain could scarcely eat it for tears.

¹ This is a gross plagiarism: the above sentiment is expressed much more eloquently in the ingenious romance of Eugene Aram:—“The burning desires I have known—the resplendent visions I have nursed—the sublime aspirings that have lifted me so often from sense and clay: these tell me, that whether for good or ill, I am the thing of an immortality and the creature of a God. . . . I have destroyed a man noxious to the world! with the wealth by which he afflicted society, I have been the means of blessing many.”

CODLINGSBY.

BY D. SHREWSBERRY, ESQ.

I.

“The whole world is bound by one chain. In every city in the globe there is one quarter that certain travellers know and recognize from its likeness to its brother district in all other places where are congregated the habitations of men. In Tehran, or Pekin, or Stamboul, or New York, or Timbuctoo, or London, there is a certain district where a certain man is not a stranger. Where the idols are fed with incense by the streams of Ching-wang-foo; where the minarets soar sparkling above the cypresses, their reflections quivering in the lucid waters of the Golden Horn; where the yellow Tiber flows under broken bridges and over imperial glories; where the huts are squatted by the Niger, under the palm-trees; where the Northern Babel lies, with its warehouses, and its bridges, its graceful factory-chimneys, and its clumsy fanes—hidden in fog and smoke by the dirtiest river in the world—in all the cities of mankind there is One Home whither men of one family may resort. Over the entire world spreads a vast brotherhood, suffering, silent, scattered, sympathizing, WAITING—an immense Free–Masonry. Once this world-spread band was an Arabian clan—a little nation alone and outlying amongst the mighty monarchies of ancient time, the Megatheria of history. The sails of their rare ships might be seen in the Egyptian waters; the camels of their caravans might thread the sands of Baalbec, or wind through the date-groves of Damascus; their flag was raised, not ingloriously, in many wars, against mighty odds; but ’twas a small people, and on one dark night the Lion of Judah went down before Vespasian’s Eagles, and in flame, and death, and struggle, Jerusalem agonized and died. . . . Yes, the Jewish city is lost to Jewish men; but have they not taken the world in exchange?”

Mused thus Godfrey de Bouillon, Marquis of Codlingsby, as he debouched from Wych Street into the Strand. He had been to take a box for Armida at Madame Vestris’s theatre. That little Armida was folle of Madame Vestris’s theatre; and her little brougham, and her little self, and her enormous eyes, and her prodigious opera-glass, and her miraculous bouquet, which cost Lord Codlingsby twenty guineas every evening at Nathan’s in Covent Garden (the children of the gardeners of Sharon have still no rival for flowers), might be seen, three nights in the week at least, in the narrow, charming, comfortable little theatre. Godfrey had the box. He was strolling, listlessly, eastward; and the above thoughts passed through the young noble’s mind as he came in sight of Holywell Street.

The occupants of the London Ghetto sat at their porches basking in the evening sunshine. Children were playing on the steps. Fathers were smoking at the lintel. Smiling faces looked out from the various and darkling draperies with which the warehouses were hung. Ringlets glossy, and curly, and jetty—eyes black as night—midsummer night—when it lightens; haughty noses bending like beaks of eagles—eager quivering nostrils—lips curved like the bow of Love—every man or maiden, every babe or matron in that English Jewry bore in his countenance one or more of these characteristics of his peerless Arab race.

“How beautiful they are!” mused Codlingsby, as he surveyed these placid groups calmly taking their pleasure in the sunset.

“D’you vant to look at a nishe coat?” a voice said, which made him start; and then some one behind him began handling a masterpiece of Stultz’s with a familiarity which would have made the baron tremble.

“Rafael Mendoza!” exclaimed Godfrey.

“The same, Lord Codlingsby,” the individual so apostrophized replied. “I told you we should meet again where you would little expect me. Will it please you to enter? this is Friday, and we close at sunset. It rejoices my heart to welcome you home.” So saying Rafael laid his hand on his breast, and bowed, an oriental reverence. All traces of the accent with which he first addressed Lord Codlingsby had vanished: it was disguise; half the Hebrew’s life is a disguise. He shields himself in craft, since the Norman boors persecuted him.

They passed under an awning of old clothes, tawdry fripperies, greasy spangles, and battered masks, into a shop as black and hideous as the entrance was foul. “THIS your home, Rafael?” said Lord Codlingsby.

“Why not?” Rafael answered. “I am tired of Schloss Schinkenstein; the Rhine bores me after a while. It is too hot for Florence; besides they have not completed the picture-gallery, and my place smells of putty. You wouldn’t have a man, mon cher, bury himself in his chateau in Normandy, out of the hunting season? The Rugantino Palace stupefies me. Those Titians are so gloomy, I shall have my Hobbimas and Tenierses, I think, from my house at the Hague hung over them.”

“How many castles, palaces, houses, warehouses, shops, have you, Rafael?” Lord Codlingsby asked, laughing.

“This is one,” Rafael answered. “Come in.”

II.

The noise in the old town was terrific; Great Tom was booming sullenly over the uproar; the bell of Saint Mary’s was clanging with alarm; St. Giles’s tocsin chimed furiously; howls, curses, flights of brickbats, stones shivering windows, groans of wounded men, cries of frightened females, cheers of either contending party as it charged the enemy from Carfax to Trumpington Street, proclaimed that the battle was at its height.

In Berlin they would have said it was a revolution, and the cuirassiers would have been charging, sabre in hand, amidst that infuriate mob. In France they would have brought down artillery, and played on it with twenty-four pounders. In Cambridge nobody heeded the disturbance—it was a Town and Gown row.

The row arose at a boat-race. The Town boat (manned by eight stout Bargees, with the redoubted Rullock for stroke) had bumped the Brazenose light oar, usually at the head of the river. High words arose regarding the dispute. After returning from Granchester, when the boats pulled back to Christchurch meadows, the disturbance between the Townsmen and the University youths—their invariable opponents—grew louder and more violent, until it broke out in open battle. Sparring and skirmishing took place along the pleasant fields that lead from the University gate down to the broad and shining waters of the Cam, and under the walls of Balliol and Sidney Sussex. The Duke of Bellamont (then a dashing young sizar at Exeter) had a couple of rounds with Billy Butt, the bow-oar of the Bargee boat. Vavasour of Brazenose was engaged with a powerful butcher, a well-known champion of the Town party, when, the great University bells ringing to dinner, truce was called between the combatants, and they retired to their several colleges for refection.

During the boat-race, a gentleman pulling in a canoe, and smoking a narghilly, had attracted no ordinary attention. He rowed about a hundred yards ahead of the boats in the race, so that he could have a good view of that curious pastime. If the eight-oars neared him, with a few rapid strokes of his flashing paddles his boat shot a furlong ahead; then he would wait, surveying the race, and sending up volumes of odor from his cool narghilly.

“Who is he?” asked the crowds who panted along the shore, encouraging, according to Cambridge wont, the efforts of the oarsmen in the race. Town and Gown alike asked who it was, who, with an ease so provoking, in a barque so singular, with a form seemingly so slight, but a skill so prodigious, beat their best men. No answer could be given to the query, save that a gentleman in a dark travelling-chariot, preceded by six fourgons and a courier, had arrived the day before at the “Hoop Inn,” opposite Brazenose, and that the stranger of the canoe seemed to be the individual in question.

No wonder the boat, that all admired so, could compete with any that ever was wrought by Cambridge artificer or Putney workman. That boat—slim, shining, and shooting through the water like a pike after a small fish—was a caique from Tophana; it had distanced the Sultan’s oarsmen and the best crews of the Capitan Pasha in the Bosphorus; it was the workmanship of Togrul–Beg, Caikjee Bashee of his Highness. The Bashee had refused fifty thousand tomauns from Count Boutenieff, the Russian Ambassador, for that little marvel. When his head was taken off, the Father of Believers presented the boat to Rafael Mendoza.

It was Rafael Mendoza that saved the Turkish monarchy after the battle of Nezeeb. By sending three millions of piastres to the Seraskier; by bribing Colonel de St. Cornichon, the French envoy in the camp of the victorious Ibrahim, the march of the Egyptian army was stopped—the menaced empire of the Ottomans was saved from ruin; the Marchioness of Stokepogis, our ambassador’s lady, appeared in a suite of diamonds which outblazed even the Romanoff jewels, and Rafael Mendoza obtained the little caique. He never travelled without it. It was scarcely heavier than an arm-chair. Baroni, the courier, had carried it down to the Cam that morning, and Rafael had seen the singular sport which we have mentioned.

The dinner over, the young men rushed from their colleges, flushed, full-fed, and eager for battle. If the Gown was angry, the Town, too, was on the alert. From Iffly and Barnwell, from factory and mill, from wharf and warehouse, the Town poured out to meet the enemy, and their battle was soon general. From the Addenbrook’s hospital to the Blenheim turnpike, all Cambridge was in an uproar—the college gates closed—the shops barricaded—the shop-boys away in support of their brother townsmen—the battle raged, and the Gown had the worst of the fight.

A luncheon of many courses had been provided for Rafael Mendoza at his inn; but he smiled at the clumsy efforts of the university cooks to entertain him, and a couple of dates and a glass of water formed his meal. In vain the discomfited landlord pressed him to partake of the slighted banquet. “A breakfast! psha!” said he. “My good man, I have nineteen cooks, at salaries rising from four hundred a year. I can have a dinner at any hour; but a Town and Gown row” (a brickbat here flying through the window crashed the caraffe of water in Mendoza’s hand)—“a Town and Gown row is a novelty to me. The Town has the best of it, clearly, though: the men outnumber the lads. Ha, a good blow! How that tall townsman went down before yonder slim young fellow in the scarlet trencher cap.”

“That is the Lord Codlingsby,” the landlord said.

“A light weight, but a pretty fighter,” Mendoza remarked. “Well hit with your left, Lord Codlingsby; well parried, Lord Codlingsby; claret drawn, by Jupiter!”

“Ours is werry fine,” the landlord said. “Will your Highness have Chateau Margaux or Lafitte?”

“He never can be going to match himself against that bargeman!” Rafael exclaimed, as an enormous boatman—no other than Rullock—indeed, the most famous bruiser of Cambridge, and before whose fists the Gownsmen went down like ninepins—fought his way up to the spot where, with admirable spirit and resolution, Lord Codlingsby and one or two of his friends were making head against a number of the town.

The young noble faced the huge champion with the gallantry of his race, but was no match for the enemy’s strength and weight and sinew, and went down at every round. The brutal fellow had no mercy on the lad. His savage treatment chafed Mendoza as he viewed the unequal combat from the inn-window. “Hold your hand!” he cried to this Goliath; “don’t you see he’s but a boy?”

“Down he goes again!” the bargeman cried, not heeding the interruption. “Down he goes again: I likes wapping a lord!”

“Coward!” shouted Mendoza; and to fling open the window amidst a shower of brickbats, to vault over the balcony, to slide down one of the pillars to the ground, was an instant’s work.

At the next he stood before the enormous bargeman.

***

After the coroner’s inquest, Mendoza gave ten thousand pounds to each of the bargeman’s ten children, and it was thus his first acquaintance was formed with Lord Codlingsby.

But we are lingering on the threshold of the house in Holywell Street. Let us go in.

III.

Godfrey and Rafael passed from the street into the outer shop of the old mansion in Holywell Street. It was a masquerade warehouse to all appearance. A dark-eyed damsel of the nation was standing at the dark and grimy counter, strewed with old feathers, old yellow hoots, old stage mantles, painted masks, blind and yet gazing at you with a look of sad death-like intelligence from the vacancy behind their sockets.

A medical student was trying one of the doublets of orange-tawny and silver, slashed with dirty light blue. He was going to a masquerade that night. He thought Polly Pattens would admire him in the dress—Polly Pattens, the fairest of maids-of-all-work—the Borough Venus, adored by half the youth of Guy’s.

“You look like a prince in it, Mr. Lint,” pretty Rachel said, coaxing him with her beady black eyes.

“It IS the cheese,” replied Mr. Lint; “it ain’t the dress that don’t suit, my rose of Sharon; it’s the FIGURE. Hullo, Rafael, is that you, my lad of sealing-wax? Come and intercede for me with this wild gazelle; she says I can’t have it under fifteen bob for the night. And it’s too much: cuss me if it’s not too much, unless you’ll take my little bill at two months, Rafael.”

“There’s a sweet pretty brigand’s dress you may have for half de monish,” Rafael replied; “there’s a splendid clown for eight bob; but for dat Spanish dress, selp ma Moshesh, Mistraer Lint, ve’d ask a guinea of any but you. Here’s a gentlemansh just come to look at it. Look ‘ear, Mr. Brownsh, did you ever shee a nisher ting dan dat?” So saying, Rafael turned to Lord Codlingsby with the utmost gravity, and displayed to him the garment about which the young medicus was haggling.

“Cheap at the money,” Codlingsby replied; “if you won’t make up your mind, sir, I should like to engage it myself.” But the thought that another should appear before Polly Pattens in that costume was too much for Mr. Lint; he agreed to pay the fifteen shillings for the garment. And Rafael, pocketing the money with perfect simplicity, said, “Dis vay, Mr. Brownsh: dere’s someting vill shoot you in the next shop.”

Lord Codlingsby followed him, wondering.

“You are surprised at our system,” said Rafael, marking the evident bewilderment of his friend. “Confess you would call it meanness—my huckstering with yonder young fool. I call it simplicity. Why throw away a shilling without need? Our race never did. A shilling is four men’s bread: shall I disdain to defile my fingers by holding them out relief in their necessity? It is you who are mean—you Normans—not we of the ancient race. You have your vulgar measurement for great things and small. You call a thousand pounds respectable, and a shekel despicable. Psha, my Codlingsby! One is as the other. I trade in pennies and in millions. I am above or below neither.”

They were passing through a second shop, smelling strongly of cedar, and, in fact, piled up with bales of those pencils which the young Hebrews are in the habit of vending through the streets. “I have sold bundles and bundles of these,” said Rafael. “My little brother is now out with oranges in Piccadilly. I am bringing him up to be head of our house at Amsterdam. We all do it. I had myself to see Rothschild in Eaton Place this morning, about the Irish loan, of which I have taken three millions: and as I wanted to walk, I carried the bag.

“You should have seen the astonishment of Lauda Latymer, the Archbishop of Croydon’s daughter, as she was passing St. Bennet’s, Knightsbridge, and as she fancied she recognized in the man who was crying old clothes the gentleman with whom she had talked at the Count de St. Aulair’s the night before.” Something like a blush flushed over the pale features of Mendoza as he mentioned the Lady Lauda’s name. “Come on,” said he. They passed through various warehouses—the orange room, the sealing-wax room, the six-bladed knife department, and finally came to an old baize door. Rafael opened the baize door by some secret contrivance, and they were in a black passage, with a curtain at the end.

He clapped his hands; the curtain at the end of the passage drew back, and a flood of golden light streamed on the Hebrew and his visitor.

CHAPTER XXIV.

They entered a moderate-sized apartment—indeed, Holywell Street is not above a hundred yards long, and this chamber was not more than half that length—it was fitted up with the simple taste of its owner.

The carpet was of white velvet—(laid over several webs of Aubusson, Ispahan, and Axminster, so that your foot gave no more sound as it trod upon the yielding plain than the shadow did which followed you)—of white velvet, painted with flowers, arabesques, and classic figures, by Sir William Ross, J. M. W. Turner, R. A., Mrs. Mee, and Paul Delaroche. The edges were wrought with seed-pearls, and fringed with Valenciennes lace and bullion. The walls were hung with cloth of silver, embroidered with gold figures, over which were worked pomegranates, polyanthuses, and passion-flowers, in ruby, amethyst, and smaragd. The drops of dew which the artificer had sprinkled on the flowers were diamonds. The hangings were overhung by pictures yet more costly. Giorgione the gorgeous, Titian the golden, Rubens the ruddy and pulpy (the Pan of Painting), some of Murillo’s beatified shepherdesses, who smile on you out of darkness like a star, a few score first-class Leonardos, and fifty of the master-pieces of the patron of Julius and Leo, the Imperial genius of Urbino, covered the walls of the little chamber. Divans of carved amber covered with ermine went round the room, and in the midst was a fountain, pattering and babbling with jets of double-distilled otto of roses.

“Pipes, Goliath!” Rafael said gayly to a little negro with a silver collar (he spoke to him in his native tongue of Dongola); “and welcome to our snuggery, my Codlingsby. We are quieter here than in the front of the house, and I wanted to show you a picture. I’m proud of my pictures. That Leonardo came from Genoa, and was a gift to our father from my cousin, Marshal Manasseh: that Murillo was pawned to my uncle by Marie Antoinette before the flight to Varennes—the poor lady could not redeem the pledge, you know, and the picture remains with us. As for the Rafael, I suppose you are aware that he was one of our people. But what are you gazing at? Oh! my sister—I forgot. Miriam! this is the Lord Codlingsby.”

She had been seated at an ivory pianoforte on a mother-of-pearl music-stool, trying a sonata of Herz. She rose when thus apostrophized. Miriam de Mendoza rose and greeted the stranger.

The Talmud relates that Adam had two wives—Zillah the dark beauty; Eva the fair one. The ringlets of Zillah were black; those of Eva were golden. The eyes of Zillah were night; those of Eva were morning. Codlingsby was fair—of the fair Saxon race of Hengist and Horsa—they called him Miss Codlingsby at school; but how much fairer was Miriam the Hebrew!

Her hair had that deep glowing tinge in it which has been the delight of all painters, and which, therefore, the vulgar sneer at. It was of burning auburn. Meandering over her fairest shoulders in twenty thousand minute ringlets, it hung to her waist and below it. A light blue velvet fillet clasped with a diamond aigrette (valued at two hundred thousand tomauns, and bought from Lieutenant Vicovich, who had received it from Dost Mahomed), with a simple bird of paradise, formed her head-gear. A sea-green cymar with short sleeves, displayed her exquisitely moulded arms to perfection, and was fastened by a girdle of emeralds over a yellow satin frock. Pink gauze trousers spangled with silver, and slippers of the same color as the band which clasped her ringlets (but so covered with pearls that the original hue of the charming little papoosh disappeared entirely) completed her costume. She had three necklaces on, each of which would have dowered a Princess—her fingers glistened with rings to their rosy tips, and priceless bracelets, bangles, and armlets wound round an arm that was whiter than the ivory grand piano on which it leaned.

As Miriam de Mendoza greeted the stranger, turning upon him the solemn welcome of her eyes, Codlingsby swooned almost in the brightness of her beauty. It was well she spoke; the sweet kind voice restored him to consciousness. Muttering a few words of incoherent recognition, he sank upon a sandalwood settee, as Goliath, the little slave, brought aromatic coffee in cups of opal, and alabaster spittoons, and pipes of the fragrant Gibelly.

“My lord’s pipe is out,” said Miriam with a smile, remarking the bewilderment of her guest—who in truth forgot to smoke—and taking up a thousand pound note from a bundle on the piano, she lighted it at the taper and proceeded to re-illumine the extinguished chibouk of Lord Codlingsby.

IV.

When Miriam, returning to the mother-of-pearl music-stool, at a signal from her brother, touched the silver and enamelled keys of the ivory piano, and began to sing, Lord Codlingsby felt as if he were listening at the gates of Paradise, or were hearing Jenny Lind.

“Lind is the name of the Hebrew race; so is Mendelssohn, the son of Almonds; so is Rosenthal, the Valley of the Roses: so is Lowe or Lewis or Lyons or Lion. The beautiful and the brave alike give cognizances to the ancient people: you Saxons call yourselves Brown, or Smith, or Rodgers,” Rafael observed to his friend; and, drawing the instrument from his pocket, he accompanied his sister, in the most ravishing manner, on a little gold and jewelled harp, of the kind peculiar to his nation.

All the airs which the Hebrew maid selected were written by composers of her race; it was either a hymn by Rossini, a polacca by Braham, a delicious romance by Sloman, or a melody by Weber, that, thrilling on the strings of the instrument, wakened a harmony on the fibres of the heart; but she sang no other than the songs of her nation.

“Beautiful one! sing ever, sing always,” Codlingsby thought. “I could sit at thy feet as under a green palm-tree, and fancy that Paradise-birds were singing in the boughs.”

Rafael read his thoughts. “We have Saxon blood too in our veins,” he said. “You smile! but it is even so. An ancestress of ours made a mesalliance in the reign of your King John. Her name was Rebecca, daughter of Isaac of York, and she married in Spain, whither she had fled to the Court of King Boabdil, Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe; then a widower by the demise of his first lady, Rowena. The match was deemed a cruel insult amongst our people but Wilfred conformed, and was a Rabbi of some note at the synagogue of Cordova. We are descended from him lineally. It is the only blot upon the escutcheon of the Mendozas.”

As they sat talking together, the music finished, and Miriam having retired (though her song and her beauty were still present to the soul of the stranger) at a signal from Mendoza, various messengers from the outer apartments came in to transact business with him.

First it was Mr. Aminadab, who kissed his foot, and brought papers to sign. “How is the house in Grosvenor Square, Aminadab; and is your son tired of his yacht yet?” Mendoza asked. “That is my twenty-fourth cashier,” said Rafael to Codlingsby, when the obsequious clerk went away. “He is fond of display, and all my people may have what money they like.”

Entered presently the Lord Bareacres, on the affair of his mortgage. The Lord Bareacres, strutting into the apartment with a haughty air, shrank back, nevertheless, with surprise on beholding the magnificence around him. “Little Mordecai,” said Rafael to a little orange-boy, who came in at the heels of the noble, “take this gentleman out and let him have ten thousand pounds. I can’t do more for you, my lord, than this—I’m busy. Good-by!” And Rafael waved his hand to the peer, and fell to smoking his narghilly.

A man with a square face, cat-like eyes, and a yellow moustache, came next. He had an hour-glass of a waist, and walked uneasily upon his high-heeled boots. “Tell your master that he shall have two millions more, but not another shilling,” Rafael said. “That story about the five-and-twenty millions of ready money at Cronstadt is all bosh. They won’t believe it in Europe. You understand me, Count Grogomoffski?”

“But his Imperial Majesty said four millions, and I shall get the knout unless—”

“Go and speak to Mr. Shadrach, in room Z 94, the fourth court,” said Mendoza good-naturedly. “Leave me at peace, Count: don’t you see it is Friday, and almost sunset?” The Calmuck envoy retired cringing, and left an odor of musk and candle-grease behind him.

An orange-man; an emissary from Lola Montes; a dealer in piping bullfinches; and a Cardinal in disguise, with a proposal for a new loan for the Pope, were heard by turns; and each, after a rapid colloquy in his own language, was dismissed by Rafael.

“The queen must come back from Aranjuez, or that king must be disposed of,” Rafael exclaimed, as a yellow-faced amabassador from Spain, General the Duke of Olla Podrida, left him. “Which shall it be, my Codlingsby?” Codlingsby was about laughingly to answer—for indeed he was amazed to find all the affairs of the world represented here, and Holywell Street the centre of Europe—when three knocks of a peculiar nature were heard, and Mendoza starting up, said, “Ha! there are only four men in the world who know that signal.” At once, and with a reverence quite distinct from his former nonchalant manner, he advanced towards the new-comer.

He was an old man—an old man evidently, too, of the Hebrew race—the light of his eyes was unfathomable—about his mouth there played an inscrutable smile. He had a cotton umbrella, and old trousers, and old boots, and an old wig, curling at the top like a rotten old pear.

He sat down, as if tired, in the first seat at hand, as Rafael made him the lowest reverence.

“I am tired,” says he; “I have come in fifteen hours. I am ill at Neuilly,” he added with a grin. “Get me some eau sucree, and tell me the news, Prince de Mendoza. These bread rows; this unpopularity of Guizot; this odious Spanish conspiracy against my darling Montpensier and daughter; this ferocity of Palmerston against Coletti, makes me quite ill. Give me your opinion, my dear duke. But ha! whom have we here?”

The august individual who had spoken, had used the Hebrew language to address Mendoza, and the Lord Codlingsby might easily have pleaded ignorance of that tongue. But he had been at Cambridge, where all the youth acquire it perfectly.

“SIRE,” said he, “I will not disguise from you that I know the ancient tongue in which you speak. There are probably secrets between Mendoza and your Maj—”

“Hush!” said Rafael, leading him from the room. “Au revoir, dear Codlingsby. His Majesty is one of US,” he whispered at the door; “so is the Pope of Rome; so is . . .”—a whisper concealed the rest.

“Gracious powers! is it so?” said Codlingsby, musing. He entered into Holywell Street. The sun was sinking.

“It is time,” said he, “to go and fetch Armida to the Olympic.”

PHIL FOGARTY.

A TALE OF THE FIGHTING ONETY-ONETH.

BY HARRY ROLLICKER.

I.

The gabion was ours. After two hours’ fighting we were in possession of the first embrasure, and made ourselves as comfortable as circumstances would admit. Jack Delamere, Tom Delancy, Jerry Blake, the Doctor, and myself, sat down under a pontoon, and our servants laid out a hasty supper on a tumbrel. Though Cambaceres had escaped me so provokingly after I cut him down, his spoils were mine; a cold fowl and a Bologna sausage were found in the Marshal’s holsters; and in the haversack of a French private who lay a corpse on the glacis, we found a loaf of bread, his three days’ ration. Instead of salt, we had gunpowder; and you may be sure, wherever the Doctor was, a flask of good brandy was behind him in his instrument-case. We sat down and made a soldier’s supper. The Doctor pulled a few of the delicious fruit from the lemon-trees growing near (and round which the Carabineers and the 24th Leger had made a desperate rally), and punch was brewed in Jack Delamere’s helmet.

“‘Faith, it never had so much wit in it before,” said the Doctor, as he ladled out the drink. We all roared with laughing, except the guardsman, who was as savage as a Turk at a christening.

“Buvez-en,” said old Sawbones to our French prisoner; “ca vous fera du bien, mon vieux coq!” and the Colonel, whose wound had been just dressed, eagerly grasped at the proffered cup, and drained it with a health to the donors.

How strange are the chances of war! But half an hour before he and I were engaged in mortal combat, and our prisoner was all but my conqueror. Grappling with Cambaceres, whom I knocked from his horse, and was about to despatch, I felt a lunge behind, which luckily was parried by my sabretache; a herculean grasp was at the next instant at my throat—I was on the ground—my prisoner had escaped, and a gigantic warrior in the uniform of a colonel of the regiment of Artois glaring over me with pointed sword.

“Rends-toi, coquin!” said he.

“Allez an Diable!” said I: “a Fogarty never surrenders.”

I thought of my poor mother and my sisters, at the old house in Killaloo—I felt the tip of his blade between my teeth—I breathed a prayer, and shut my eyes—when the tables were turned—the butt-end of Lanty Clancy’s musket knocked the sword up and broke the arm that held it.

“Thonamoundiaoul nabochlish,” said the French officer, with a curse in the purest Irish. It was lucky I stopped laughing time enough to bid Lanty hold his hand, for the honest fellow would else have brained my gallant adversary. We were the better friends for our combat, as what gallant hearts are not?

The breach was to be stormed at sunset, and like true soldiers we sat down to make the most of our time. The rogue of a Doctor took the liver-wing for his share—we gave the other to our guest, a prisoner; those scoundrels Jack Delamere and Tom Delaney took the legs—and, ‘faith, poor I was put off with the Pope’s nose and a bit of the back.

“How d’ye like his Holiness’s FAYTURE?” said Jerry Blake.

“Anyhow you’ll have a MERRY THOUGHT,” cried the incorrigible Doctor, and all the party shrieked at the witticism.

“De mortuis nil nisi bonum,” said Jack, holding up the drumstick clean.

“‘Faith, there’s not enough of it to make us CHICKEN-HEARTED, anyhow,” said I; “come, boys, let’s have a song.”

“Here goes,” said Tom Delaney, and sung the following lyric, of his own composition—

“Dear Jack, this white mug that with Guinness I fill,
And drink to the health of sweet Nan of the hill,
Was once Tommy Tosspot’s, as jovial a sot,
As e’er drew a spigot, or drain’d a full pot—
In drinking all round ’twas his joy to surpass,
And with all merry tipplers he swigg’d off his glass.

“One morning in summer, while seated so snug,
In the porch of his garden, discussing his jug,
Stern Death, on a sudden, to Tom did appear,
And said, ‘Honest Thomas, come take your last bier;’
We kneaded his clay in the shape of this can,
From which let us drink to the health of my Nan.”

“Psha!” said the Doctor, “I’ve heard that song before; here’s a new one for you, boys!” and Sawbones began, in a rich Corkagian voice—

“You’ve all heard of Larry O’Toole,
Of the beautiful town of Drumgoole;
He had but one eye,
To ogle ye by—
Oh, murther, but that was a jew’l!
A fool
He made of de girls, dis O’Toole.

“’Twas he was the boy didn’t fail,
That tuck down pataties and mail;
He never would shrink
From any sthrong dthrink,
Was it whisky or Drogheda ale;
I’m bail
This Larry would swallow a pail.

“Oh, many a night at the bowl,
With Larry I’ve sot cheek by jowl;
He’s gone to his rest,
Where there’s dthrink of the best,
And so let us give his old sowl
A howl,
For twas he made the noggin to rowl.”

I observed the French Colonel’s eye glistened as he heard these well-known accents of his country but we were too well-bred to pretend to remark his emotion.

The sun was setting behind the mountains as our songs were finished, and each began to look out with some anxiety for the preconcerted signal, the rocket from Sir Hussey Vivian’s quarters, which was to announce the recommencement of hostilities. It came just as the moon rose in her silver splendor, and ere the rocket-stick fell quivering to the earth at the feet of General Picton and Sir Lowry Cole, who were at their posts at the head of the storming-parties, nine hundred and ninety nine guns in position opened their fire from our batteries, which were answered by a tremendous canonnade from the fort.

“Who’s going to dance?” said the Doctor: “the ball’s begun. Ha! there goes poor Jack Delamere’s head off! The ball chose a soft one, anyhow. Come here, Tim, till I mend your leg. Your wife has need only knit half as many stockings next year, Doolan my boy. Faix! there goes a big one had wellnigh stopped my talking: bedad! it has snuffed the feather off my cocked hat!”

In this way, with eighty-four-pounders roaring over us like hail, the undaunted little Doctor pursued his jokes and his duty. That he had a feeling heart, all who served with him knew, and none more so than Philip Fogarty, the humble writer of this tale of war.

Our embrasure was luckily bomb-proof, and the detachment of the Onety-oneth under my orders suffered comparatively little. “Be cool, boys,” I said; “it will be hot enough work for you ere long.” The honest fellows answered with an Irish cheer. I saw that it affected our prisoner.

“Countryman,” said I, “I know you; but an Irishman was never a traitor.”

“Taisez-vous!” said he, putting his finger to his lip. “C’est la fortune de la guerre: if ever you come to Paris, ask for the Marquis d’ O’Mahony, and I may render you the hospitality which your tyrannous laws prevent me from exercising in the ancestral halls of my own race.”

I shook him warmly by the hand as a tear bedimmed his eye. It was, then, the celebrated colonel of the Irish Brigade, created a Marquis by Napoleon on the field of Austerlitz!

“Marquis,” said I, “the country which disowns you is proud of you; but—ha! here, if I mistake not, comes our signal to advance.” And in fact, Captain Vandeleur, riding up through the shower of shot, asked for the commander of the detachment, and bade me hold myself in readiness to move as soon as the flank companies of the Ninety-ninth, and Sixty-sixth, and the Grenadier Brigade of the German Legion began to advance up the echelon. The devoted band soon arrived; Jack Bowser heading the Ninety-ninth (when was he away and a storming-party to the fore?), and the gallant Potztausend, with his Hanoverian veterans.

The second rocket flew up.

“Forward, Onety-oneth!” cried I, in a voice of thunder. “Killaloo boys, follow your captain!” and with a shrill hurray, that sounded above the tremendous fire from the fort, we sprung upon the steep; Bowser with the brave Ninety-ninth, and the bold Potztausend, keeping well up with us. We passed the demilune, we passed the culverin, bayoneting the artillerymen at their guns; we advanced across the two tremendous demilunes which flank the counterscarp, and prepared for the final spring upon the citadel. Soult I could see quite pale on the wall; and the scoundrel Cambaceres, who had been so nearly my prisoner that day, trembled as he cheered his men. “On, boys, on!” I hoarsely exclaimed. “Hurroo!” said the fighting Onety-oneth.

But there was a movement among the enemy. An officer, glittering with orders, and another in a gray coat and a cocked hat, came to the wall, and I recognized the Emperor Napoleon and the famous Joachim Murat.

“We are hardly pressed, methinks,” Napoleon said sternly. “I must exercise my old trade as an artilleryman;” and Murat loaded, and the Emperor pointed the only hundred-and-twenty-four-pounder that had not been silenced by our fire.

“Hurray, Killaloo boys!” shouted I. The next moment a sensation of numbness and death seized me, and I lay like a corpse upon the rampart.

II.

“Hush!” said a voice, which I recognized to be that of the Marquis d’ O’Mahony. “Heaven be praised, reason has returned to you. For six weeks those are the only sane words I have heard from you.”

“Faix, and ’tis thrue for you, Colonel dear,” cried another voice, with which I was even more familiar; ’twas that of my honest and gallant Lanty Clancy, who was blubbering at my bedside overjoyed at his master’s recovery.

“O musha, Masther Phil agrah! but this will be the great day intirely, when I send off the news, which I would, barrin’ I can’t write, to the lady your mother and your sisters at Castle Fogarty; and ’tis his Riv’rence Father Luke will jump for joy thin, when he reads the letther! Six weeks ravin’ and roarin’ as bould as a lion, and as mad as Mick Malony’s pig, that mistuck Mick’s wig for a cabbage, and died of atin’ it!”

“And have I then lost my senses?” I exclaimed feebly.

“Sure, didn’t ye call me your beautiful Donna Anna only yesterday, and catch hould of me whiskers as if they were the Signora’s jet-black ringlets?” Lanty cried.

At this moment, and blushing deeply, the most beautiful young creature I ever set my eyes upon, rose from a chair at the foot of the bed, and sailed out of the room.

“Confusion, you blundering rogue,” I cried; “who is that lovely lady whom you frightened away by your impertinence? Donna Anna? Where am I?”

“You are in good hands, Philip,” said the Colonel; “you are at my house in the Place Vendome, at Paris, of which I am the military Governor. You and Lanty were knocked down by the wind of the cannon-ball at Burgos. Do not be ashamed: ’twas the Emperor pointed the gun;” and the Colonel took off his hat as he mentioned the name darling to France. “When our troops returned from the sally in which your gallant storming party was driven back, you were found on the glacis, and I had you brought into the City. Your reason had left you, however, when you returned to life; but, unwilling to desert the son of my old friend, Philip Fogarty, who saved my life in ‘98, I brought you in my carriage to Paris.”

“And many’s the time you tried to jump out of the windy, Masther Phil,” said Clancy.

“Brought you to Paris,” resumed the Colonel, smiling; “where, by the soins of my friends Broussais, Esquirol, and Baron Larrey, you have been restored to health, thank heaven!”

“And that lovely angel who quitted the apartment?” I cried.

“That lovely angel is the Lady Blanche Sarsfield, my ward, a descendant of the gallant Lucan, and who may be, when she chooses, Madame la Marechale de Cambaceres, Duchess of Illyria.”

“Why did you deliver the ruffian when he was in my grasp?” I cried.

“Why did Lanty deliver you when in mine?” the Colonel replied. “C’est la fortune de la guerre, mon garcon; but calm yourself, and take this potion which Blanche has prepared for you.”

I drank the tisane eagerly when I heard whose fair hands had compounded it, and its effects were speedily beneficial to me, for I sank into a cool and refreshing slumber.

From that day I began to mend rapidly, with all the elasticity of youth’s happy time. Blanche—the enchanting Blanche—ministered henceforth to me, for I would take no medicine but from her lily hand. And what were the effects? ‘Faith, ere a month was past, the patient was over head and ears in love with the doctor; and as for Baron Larrey, and Broussais, and Esquirol, they were sent to the right-about. In a short time I was in a situation to do justice to the gigot aux navets, the boeuf aux cornichons, and the other delicious entremets of the Marquis’s board, with an appetite that astonished some of the Frenchmen who frequented it.

“Wait till he’s quite well, Miss,” said Lanty, who waited always behind me. “‘Faith! when he’s in health, I’d back him to ate a cow, barrin’ the horns and teel.” I sent a decanter at the rogue’s head, by way of answer to his impertinence.

Although the disgusting Cambaceres did his best to have my parole withdrawn from me, and to cause me to be sent to the English depot of prisoners at Verdun, the Marquis’s interest with the Emperor prevailed, and I was allowed to remain at Paris, the happiest of prisoners, at the Colonel’s hotel at the Place Vendome. I here had the opportunity (an opportunity not lost, I flatter myself, on a young fellow with the accomplishments of Philip Fogarty, Esq.) of mixing with the elite of French society, and meeting with many of the great, the beautiful, and the brave. Talleyrand was a frequent guest of the Marquis’s. His bon-mots used to keep the table in a roar. Ney frequently took his chop with us; Murat, when in town, constantly dropt in for a cup of tea and friendly round game. Alas! who would have thought those two gallant heads would be so soon laid low? My wife has a pair of earrings which the latter, who always wore them, presented to her—but we are advancing matters. Anybody could see, “avec un demioeil,” as the Prince of Benevento remarked, how affairs went between me and Blanche; but though she loathed him for his cruelties and the odiousness of his person, the brutal Cambaceres still pursued his designs upon her.

I recollect it was on St. Patrick’s Day. My lovely friend had procured, from the gardens of the Empress Josephine, at Malmaison (whom we loved a thousand times more than her Austrian successor, a sandy-haired woman, between ourselves, with an odious squint), a quantity of shamrock wherewith to garnish the hotel, and all the Irish in Paris were invited to the national festival.

I and Prince Talleyrand danced a double hornpipe with Pauline Bonaparte and Madame de Stael; Marshal Soult went down a couple of sets with Madame Recamier; and Robespierre’s widow—an excellent, gentle creature, quite unlike her husband—stood up with the Austrian ambassador. Besides, the famous artists Baron Gros, David and Nicholas Poussin, and Canova, who was in town making a statue of the Emperor for Leo X., and, in a word, all the celebrities of Paris—as my gifted countrywoman, the wild Irish girl, calls them—were assembled in the Marquis’s elegant receiving-rooms.

At last a great outcry was raised for La Gigue Irlandaise! La Gigue Irlandaise! a dance which had made a fureur amongst the Parisians ever since the lovely Blanche Sarsfield had danced it. She stepped forward and took me for a partner, and amidst the bravoes of the crowd, in which stood Ney, Murat, Lannes, the Prince of Wagram, and the Austrian ambassador, we showed to the beau monde of the French capital, I flatter myself, a not unfavorable specimen of the dance of our country.

As I was cutting the double-shuffle, and toe-and-heeling it in the “rail” style, Blanche danced up to me, smiling, and said, “Be on your guard; I see Cambaceres talking to Fouche, the Duke of Otranto, about us; and when Otranto turns his eyes upon a man, they bode him no good.”

“Cambaceres is jealous,” said I. “I have it,” says she; “I’ll make him dance a turn with me.” So, presently, as the music was going like mad all this time, I pretended fatigue from my late wounds, and sat down. The lovely Blanche went up smiling, and brought out Cambaceres as a second partner.

The Marshal is a lusty man, who makes desperate efforts to give himself a waist, and the effect of the exercise upon him was speedily visible. He puffed and snorted like a walrus, drops trickled down his purple face, while my lovely mischief of a Blanche went on dancing at treble quick, till she fairly danced him down.

“Who’ll take the flure with me?” said the charming girl, animated by the sport.

“Faix, den, ’tis I, Lanty Clancy!” cried my rascal, who had been mad with excitement at the scene; and, stepping in with a whoop and a hurroo, he began to dance with such rapidity as made all present stare.

As the couple were footing it, there was a noise as of a rapid cavalcade traversing the Place Vendome, and stopping at the Marquis’s door. A crowd appeared to mount the stair; the great doors of the reception-room were flung open, and two pages announced their Majesties the Emperor and the Empress. So engaged were Lanty and Blanche, that they never heard the tumult occasioned by the august approach.

It was indeed the Emperor, who, returning from the Theatre Francais, and seeing the Marquis’s windows lighted up, proposed to the Empress to drop in on the party. He made signs to the musicians to continue: and the conqueror of Marengo and Friedland watched with interest the simple evolutions of two happy Irish people. Even the Empress smiled and, seeing this, all the courtiers, including Naples and Talleyrand, were delighted.

“Is not this a great day for Ireland?” said the Marquis, with a tear trickling down his noble face. “O Ireland! O my country! But no more of that. Go up, Phil, you divvle, and offer her Majesty the choice of punch or negus.”

Among the young fellows with whom I was most intimate in Paris was Eugene Beauharnais, the son of the ill-used and unhappy Josephine by her former marriage with a French gentleman of good family. Having a smack of the old blood in him, Eugene’s manners were much more refined than those of the new-fangled dignitaries of the Emperor’s Court, where (for my knife and fork were regularly laid at the Tuileries) I have seen my poor friend Murat repeatedly mistake a fork for a toothpick, and the gallant Massena devour pease by means of his knife, in a way more innocent than graceful. Talleyrand, Eugene, and I used often to laugh at these eccentricities of our brave friends; who certainly did not shine in the drawing-room, however brilliant they were in the field of battle. The Emperor always asked me to take wine with him, and was full of kindness and attention.

“I like Eugene,” he would say, pinching my ear confidentially, as his way was—“I like Eugene to keep company with such young fellows as you; you have manners; you have principles; my rogues from the camp have none. And I like you, Philip my boy,” he added, “for being so attentive to my poor wife—the Empress Josephine, I mean.” All these honors made my friends at the Marquis’s very proud, and my enemies at Court crever with envy. Among these, the atrocious Cambaceres was not the least active and envenomed.

The cause of the many attentions which were paid to me, and which, like a vain coxcomb, I had chosen to attribute to my own personal amiability, soon was apparent. Having formed a good opinion of my gallantry from my conduct in various actions and forlorn hopes during the war, the Emperor was most anxious to attach me to his service. The Grand Cross of St. Louis, the title of Count, the command of a crack cavalry regiment, the l4me Chevaux Marins, were the bribes that were actually offered to me; and must I say it? Blanche, the lovely, the perfidious Blanche, was one of the agents employed to tempt me to commit this act of treason.

“Object to enter a foreign service!” she said, in reply to my refusal. “It is you, Philip, who are in a foreign service. The Irish nation is in exile, and in the territories of its French allies. Irish traitors are not here; they march alone under the accursed flag of the Saxon, whom the great Napoleon would have swept from the face of the earth, but for the fatal valor of Irish mercenaries! Accept this offer, and my heart, my hand, my all are yours. Refuse it, Philip, and we part.”

“To wed the abominable Cambaceres!” I cried, stung with rage. “To wear a duchess’s coronet, Blanche! Ha, ha! Mushrooms, instead of strawberry-leaves, should decorate the brows of the upstart French nobility. I shall withdraw my parole. I demand to be sent to prison—to be exchanged—to die—anything rather than be a traitor, and the tool of a traitress!” Taking up my hat, I left the room in a fury; and flinging open the door tumbled over Cambaceres, who was listening at the key-hole, and must have overheard every word of our conversation.

We tumbled over each other, as Blanche was shrieking with laughter at our mutual discomfiture. Her scorn only made me more mad; and, having spurs on, I began digging them into Cambaceres’ fat sides as we rolled on the carpet, until the Marshal howled with rage and anger.

“This insult must be avenged with blood!” roared the Duke of Illyria.

“I have already drawn it,” says I, “with my spurs.”

“Malheur et malediction!” roared the Marshal.

“Hadn’t you better settle your wig?” says I, offering it to him on the tip of my cane, “and we’ll arrange time and place when you have put your jasey in order.” I shall never forget the look of revenge which he cast at me, as I was thus turning him into ridicule before his mistress.

“Lady Blanche,” I continued bitterly, “as you look to share the Duke’s coronet, hadn’t you better see to his wig?” and so saying, I cocked my hat, and walked out of the Marquis’s place, whistling “Garryowen.”

I knew my man would not be long in following me, and waited for him in the Place Vendome, where I luckily met Eugene too, who was looking at the picture-shop in the corner. I explained to him my affair in a twinkling. He at once agreed to go with me to the ground, and commended me, rather than otherwise, for refusing the offer which had been made to me. “I knew it would be so,” he said, kindly; “I told my father you wouldn’t. A man with the blood of the Fogarties, Phil my boy, doesn’t wheel about like those fellows of yesterday.” So, when Cambaceres came out, which he did presently, with a more furious air than before, I handed him at once over to Eugene, who begged him to name a friend, and an early hour for the meeting to take place.

“Can you make it before eleven, Phil?” said Beauharnais. “The Emperor reviews the troops in the Bois de Boulogne at that hour, and we might fight there handy before the review.”

“Done!” said I. “I want of all things to see the newly-arrived Saxon cavalry manoeuvre:” on which Cambaceres, giving me a look, as much as to say, “See sights! Watch cavalry manoeuvres! Make your soul, and take measure for a coffin, my boy!” walked away, naming our mutual acquaintance, Marshal Ney, to Eugene, as his second in the business.

I had purchased from Murat a very fine Irish horse, Bugaboo, out of Smithereens, by Fadladeen, which ran into the French ranks at Salamanca, with poor Jack Clonakilty, of the 13th, dead, on the top of him. Bugaboo was too much and too ugly an animal for the King of Naples, who, though a showy horseman, was a bad rider across country; and I got the horse for a song. A wickeder and uglier brute never wore pig-skin; and I never put my leg over such a timber-jumper in my life. I rode the horse down to the Bois de Boulogne on the morning that the affair with Cambaceres was to come off, and Lanty held him as I went in, “sure to win,” as they say in the ring.

Cambaceres was known to be the best shot in the French army; but I, who am a pretty good hand at a snipe, thought a man was bigger, and that I could wing him if I had a mind. As soon as Ney gave the word, we both fired: I felt a whiz past my left ear, and putting up my hand there, found a large piece of my whiskers gone; whereas at the same moment, and shrieking a horrible malediction, my adversary reeled and fell.

“Mon Dieu, il est mort!” cried Ney.

“Pas de tout,” said Beauharnais. “Ecoute; il jure toujours.”

And such, indeed, was the fact: the supposed dead man lay on the ground cursing most frightfully. We went up to him: he was blind with the loss of blood, and my ball had carried off the bridge of his nose. He recovered; but he was always called the Prince of Ponterotto in the French army, afterwards. The surgeon in attendance having taken charge of this unfortunate warrior, we rode off to the review where Ney and Eugene were on duty at the head of their respective divisions; and where, by the way, Cambaceres, as the French say, “se faisait desirer.”

It was arranged that Cambaceres’ division of six battalions and nine-and-twenty squadrons should execute a ricochet movement, supported by artillery in the intervals, and converging by different epaulements on the light infantry, that formed, as usual, the centre of the line. It was by this famous manoeuvre that at Arcola, at Montenotte, at Friedland, and subsequently at Mazagran, Suwaroff, Prince Charles, and General Castanos were defeated with such victorious slaughter: but it is a movement which, I need not tell every military man, requires the greatest delicacy of execution, and which, if it fails, plunges an army into confusion.

“Where is the Duke of Illyria?” Napoleon asked. “At the head of his division, no doubt,” said Murat: at which Eugene, giving me an arch look, put his hand to his nose, and caused me almost to fall off my horse with laughter. Napoleon looked sternly at me; but at this moment the troops getting in motion, the celebrated manoeuvre began, and his Majesty’s attention was taken off from my impudence.

Milhaud’s Dragoons, their bands playing “Vive Henri Quatre,” their cuirasses gleaming in the sunshine, moved upon their own centre from the left flank in the most brilliant order, while the Carbineers of Foy, and the Grenadiers of the Guard under Drouet d’Erlon, executed a carambolade on the right, with the precision which became those veteran troops; but the Chasseurs of the young guard, marching by twos instead of threes, bore consequently upon the Bavarian Uhlans (an ill-disciplined and ill-affected body), and then, falling back in disorder, became entangled with the artillery and the left centre of the line, and in one instant thirty thousand men were in inextricable confusion.

“Clubbed, by Jabers!” roared out Lanty Clancy. “I wish we could show ’em the Fighting Onety-oneth, Captain darling.”

“Silence, fellow!” I exclaimed. I never saw the face of man express passion so vividly as now did the livid countenance of Napoleon. He tore off General Milhaud’s epaulettes, which he flung into Foy’s face. He glared about him wildly, like a demon, and shouted hoarsely for the Duke of Illyria. “He is wounded, Sire,” said General Foy, wiping a tear from his eye, which was blackened by the force of the blow; “he was wounded an hour since in a duel, Sire, by a young English prisoner, Monsieur de Fogarty.”

“Wounded! a marshal of France wounded! Where is the Englishman? Bring him out, and let a file of grenadiers—”

“Sire!” interposed Eugene.

“Let him be shot!” shrieked the Emperor, shaking his spyglass at me with the fury of a fiend.

This was too much. “Here goes!” said I, and rode slap at him.

There was a shriek of terror from the whole of the French army, and I should think at least forty thousand guns were levelled at me in an instant. But as the muskets were not loaded, and the cannon had only wadding in them, these facts, I presume, saved the life of Phil Fogarty from this discharge.

Knowing my horse, I put him at the Emperor’s head, and Bugaboo went at it like a shot. He was riding his famous white Arab, and turned quite pale as I came up and went over the horse and the Emperor, scarcely brushing the cockade which he wore.

“Bravo!” said Murat, bursting into enthusiasm at the leap.

“Cut him down!” said Sieyes, once an Abbe, but now a gigantic Cuirassier; and he made a pass at me with his sword. But he little knew an Irishman on an Irish horse. Bugaboo cleared Sieyes, and fetched the monster a slap with his near hind hoof which sent him reeling from his saddle,—and away I went, with an army of a hundred and seventy-three thousand eight hundred men at my heels. . . .

BARBAZURE.

BY G. P. R. JEAMES, ESQ., ETC.

I.

It was upon one of those balmy evenings of November, which are only known in the valleys of Languedoc and among the mountains of Alsace, that two cavaliers might have been perceived by the naked eye threading one of the rocky and romantic gorges that skirt the mountain-land between the Marne and the Garonne. The rosy tints of the declining luminary were gilding the peaks and crags which lined the path, through which the horsemen wound slowly; and as these eternal battlements with which Nature had hemmed in the ravine which our travellers trod, blushed with the last tints of the fading sunlight, the valley below was gray and darkling, and the hard and devious course was sombre in twilight. A few goats, hardly visible among the peaks, were cropping the scanty herbage here and there. The pipes of shepherds, calling in their flocks as they trooped homewards to their mountain villages, sent up plaintive echoes which moaned through those rocky and lonely steeps; the stars began to glimmer in the purple heavens spread serenely overhead and the faint crescent of the moon, which had peered for some time scarce visible in the azure, gleamed out more brilliantly at every moment, until it blazed as if in triumph at the sun’s retreat. ’Tis a fair land that of France, a gentle, a green, and a beautiful; the home of arts and arms, of chivalry and romance, and (however sadly stained by the excesses of modern times) ’twas the unbought grace of nations once, and the seat of ancient renown and disciplined valor.

And of all that fair land of France, whose beauty is so bright and bravery is so famous, there is no spot greener or fairer than that one over which our travellers wended, and which stretches between the good towns of Vendemiaire and Nivose. ’Tis common now to a hundred thousand voyagers: the English tourist, with his chariot and his Harvey’s Sauce, and his imperials; the bustling commis-voyageur on the roof of the rumbling diligence; the rapid malle-poste thundering over the chaussee at twelve miles an hour—pass the ground hourly and daily now: ’twas lonely and unfrequented at the end of that seventeenth century with which our story commences.

Along the darkening mountain-paths the two gentlemen (for such their outward bearing proclaimed them) caracoled together. The one, seemingly the younger of the twain, wore a flaunting feather in his barret-cap, and managed a prancing Andalusian palfrey that bounded and curveted gayly. A surcoat of peach-colored samite and a purfled doublet of vair bespoke him noble, as did his brilliant eye, his exquisitely chiselled nose, and his curling chestnut ringlets.

Youth was on his brow; his eyes were dark and dewy, like spring-violets; and spring-roses bloomed upon his cheek—roses, alas! that bloom and die with life’s spring! Now bounding over a rock, now playfully whisking off with his riding rod a floweret in his path, Philibert de Coquelicot rode by his darker companion.

His comrade was mounted upon a destriere of the true Norman breed, that had first champed grass on the green pastures of Aquitaine. Thence through Berry, Picardy, and the Limousin, halting at many a city and commune, holding joust and tourney in many a castle and manor of Navarre, Poitou, and St. Germain l’Auxerrois, the warrior and his charger reached the lonely spot where now we find them.

The warrior who bestrode the noble beast was in sooth worthy of the steed which bore him. Both were caparisoned in the fullest trappings of feudal war. The arblast, the mangonel, the demiculverin, and the cuissart of the period, glittered upon the neck and chest of the war-steed; while the rider, with chamfron and catapult, with ban and arriere-ban, morion and tumbrel, battle-axe and rifflard, and the other appurtenances of ancient chivalry, rode stately on his steel-clad charger, himself a tower of steel. This mighty horseman was carried by his steed as lightly as the young springald by his Andalusian hackney.

“’Twas well done of thee, Philibert,” said he of the proof-armor, “to ride forth so far to welcome thy cousin and companion in arms.”

“Companion in battledore and shuttlecock, Romane de Clos–Vougeot!” replied the younger Cavalier. “When I was yet a page, thou wert a belted knight; and thou wert away to the Crusades ere ever my beard grew.”

“I stood by Richard of England at the gates of Ascalon, and drew the spear from sainted King Louis in the tents of Damietta,” the individual addressed as Romane replied. “Well-a-day! since thy beard grew, boy, (and marry ’tis yet a thin one,) I have broken a lance with Solyman at Rhodes, and smoked a chibouque with Saladin at Acre. But enough of this. Tell me of home—of our native valley—of my hearth, and my lady-mother, and my good chaplain—tell me of HER, Philibert,” said the knight, executing a demivolt, in order to hide his emotion.

Philibert seemed uneasy, and to strive as though he would parry the question. “The castle stands on the rock,” he said, “and the swallows still build in the battlements. The good chaplain still chants his vespers at morn, and snuffles his matins at even-song. The lady-mother still distributeth tracts, and knitteth Berlin linsey-woolsey. The tenants pay no better, and the lawyers dun as sorely, kinsman mine,” he added with an arch look.

“But Fatima, Fatima, how fares she?” Romane continued. “Since Lammas was a twelvemonth, I hear nought of her; my letters are unanswered. The postman hath traversed our camp every day, and never brought me a billet. How is Fatima, Philibert de Coquelicot?”

“She is—well,” Philibert replied; “her sister Anne is the fairest of the twain, though.”

“Her sister Anne was a baby when I embarked for Egypt. A plague on sister Anne! Speak of Fatima, Philibert—my blue-eyed Fatima!”

“I say she is—well,” answered his comrade gloomily.

“Is she dead? Is she ill? Hath she the measles? Nay, hath she had the small-pox, and lost her beauty? Speak; speak, boy!” cried the knight, wrought to agony.

“Her cheek is as red as her mother’s, though the old Countess paints hers every day. Her foot is as light as a sparrow’s, and her voice as sweet as a minstrel’s dulcimer; but give me nathless the Lady Anne,” cried Philibert; “give me the peerless Lady Anne! As soon as ever I have won spurs, I will ride all Christendom through, and proclaim her the Queen of Beauty. Ho, Lady Anne! Lady Anne!” and so saying—but evidently wishing to disguise some emotion, or conceal some tale his friend could ill brook to hear—the reckless damoiseau galloped wildly forward.

But swift as was his courser’s pace, that of his companion’s enormous charger was swifter. “Boy,” said the elder, “thou hast ill tidings. I know it by thy glance. Speak: shall he who hath bearded grim Death in a thousand fields shame to face truth from a friend? Speak, in the name of heaven and good Saint Botibol. Romane de Clos–Vougeot will bear your tidings like a man!”

“Fatima is well,” answered Philibert once again; “she hath had no measles: she lives and is still fair.”

“Fair, ay, peerless fair; but what more, Philibert? Not false? By Saint Botibol, say not false,” groaned the elder warrior.

“A month syne,” Philibert replied, “she married the Baron de Barbazure.”

With that scream which is so terrible in a strong man in agony, the brave knight Romane de Clos–Vougeot sank back at the words, and fell from his charger to the ground, a lifeless mass of steel.

II.

Like many another fabric of feudal war and splendor, the once vast and magnificent Castle of Barbazure is now a moss-grown ruin. The traveller of the present day, who wanders by the banks of the silvery Loire, and climbs the steep on which the magnificent edifice stood, can scarcely trace, among the shattered masses of ivy-covered masonry which lie among the lonely crags, even the skeleton of the proud and majestic palace stronghold of the Barons of Barbazure.

In the days of our tale its turrets and pinnacles rose as stately, and seemed (to the pride of sinful man!) as strong as the eternal rocks on which they stood. The three mullets on a gules wavy reversed, surmounted by the sinople couchant Or; the well-known cognizance of the house, blazed in gorgeous heraldry on a hundred banners, surmounting as many towers. The long lines of battlemented walls spread down the mountain to the Loire, and were defended by thousands of steel-clad serving-men. Four hundred knights and six times as many archers fought round the banner of Barbazure at Bouvines, Malplaquet, and Azincour. For his services at Fontenoy against the English, the heroic Charles Martel appointed the fourteenth Baron Hereditary Grand Bootjack of the kingdom of France; and for wealth, and for splendor, and for skill and fame in war, Raoul, the twenty-eighth Baron, was in no-wise inferior to his noble ancestors.

That the Baron Raoul levied toll upon the river and mail upon the shore; that he now and then ransomed a burgher, plundered a neighbor, or drew the fangs of a Jew; that he burned an enemy’s castle with the wife and children within;—these were points for which the country knew and respected the stout Baron. When he returned from victory, he was sure to endow the Church with a part of his spoil, so that when he went forth to battle he was always accompanied by her blessing. Thus lived the Baron Raoul, the pride of the country in which he dwelt, an ornament to the Court, the Church, and his neighbors.

But in the midst of all his power and splendor there was a domestic grief which deeply afflicted the princely Barbazure. His lovely ladies died one after the other. No sooner was he married than he was a widower; in the course of eighteen years no less than nine bereavements had befallen the chieftain. So true it is, that if fortune is a parasite, grief is a republican, and visits the hall of the great and wealthy as it does the humbler tenements of the poor.

***

“Leave off deploring thy faithless, gad-about lover,” said the Lady of Chacabacque to her daughter, the lovely Fatima, “and think how the noble Barbazure loves thee! Of all the damsels at the ball last night, he had eyes for thee and thy cousin only.”

“I am sure my cousin hath no good looks to be proud of!” the admirable Fatima exclaimed, bridling up. “Not that I care for my Lord of Barbazure’s looks. MY heart, dearest mother, is with him who is far away!”

“He danced with thee four galliards, nine quadrilles, and twenty-three corantoes, I think, child,” the mother said, eluding her daughter’s remark.

“Twenty-five,” said lovely Fatima, casting her beautiful eyes to the ground. “Heigh-ho! but Romane danced them very well!”

“He had not the court air,” the mother suggested.

“I don’t wish to deny the beauty of the Lord of Burbazure’s dancing, mamma,” Fatima replied. “For a short, lusty man, ’tis wondrous how active he is; and in dignity the King’s Grace himself could not surpass him.”

“You were the noblest couple in the room, love,” the lady cried.

“That pea-green doublet, slashed with orange-tawny, those ostrich plumes, blue, red, and yellow, those party-colored hose and pink shoon, became the noble baron wondrous well,” Fatima acknowledged. “It must be confessed that, though middle-aged, he hath all the agility of youth. But alas, madam! The noble baron hath had nine wives already.”

“And your cousin would give her eyes to become the tenth,” the mother replied.

“My cousin give her eyes!” Fatima exclaimed. “It’s not much, I’m sure, for she squints abominably.” And thus the ladies prattled, as they rode home at night after the great ball at the house of the Baron of Barbazure.

The gentle reader, who has overheard their talk, will understand the doubts which pervaded the mind of the lovely Fatima, and the well-nurtured English maiden will participate in the divided feelings which rent her bosom. ’Tis true, that on his departure for the holy wars, Romane and Fatima were plighted to each other; but the folly of long engagements is proverbial; and though for many months the faithful and affectionate girl had looked in vain for news from him, her admirable parents had long spoken with repugnance of a match which must bring inevitable poverty to both parties. They had suffered, ’tis true, the engagement to subside, hostile as they ever were to it; but when on the death of the ninth lady of Barbazure, the noble baron remarked Fatima at the funeral, and rode home with her after the ceremony, her prudent parents saw how much wiser, better, happier for their child it would be to have for life a partner like the baron, than to wait the doubtful return of the penniless wanderer to whom she was plighted.

Ah! how beautiful and pure a being! how regardless of self! how true to duty! how obedient to parental command, is that earthly angel, a well-bred woman of genteel family! Instead of indulging in splenetic refusals or vain regrets for her absent lover, the exemplary Fatima at once signified to her excellent parents her willingness to obey their orders; though she had sorrows (and she declared them to be tremendous), the admirable being disguised them so well, that none knew they oppressed her. She said she would try to forget former ties, and (so strong in her mind was DUTY above every other feeling!—so strong may it be in every British maiden!) the lovely girl kept her promise. “My former engagements,” she said, packing up Romane’s letters and presents, (which, as the good knight was mortal poor, were in sooth of no great price)—“my former engagements I look upon as childish follies;—my affections are fixed where my dear parents graft them—on the noble, the princely, the polite Barbazure. ’Tis true he is not comely in feature, but the chaste and well-bred female knows how to despise the fleeting charms of form. ’Tis true he is old; but can woman be better employed than in tending her aged and sickly companion? That he has been married is likewise certain—but ah, my mother! who knows not that he must be a good and tender husband, who, nine times wedded, owns that, he cannot be happy without another partner?”

It was with these admirable sentiments the lovely Fatima proposed obedience to her parents’ will, and consented to receive the magnificent marriage-gift presented to her by her gallant bridegroom.

III.

The old Countess of Chacabacque had made a score of vain attempts to see her hapless daughter. Ever, when she came, the porters grinned at her savagely through the grating of the portcullis of the vast embattled gate of the Castle of Barbazure, and rudely bade her begone. “The Lady of Barbazure sees nobody but her confessor, and keeps her chamber,” was the invariable reply of the dogged functionaries to the entreaties of the agonized mother. And at length, so furious was he at her perpetual calls at his gate, that the angry Lord of Barbazure himself, who chanced to be at the postern, armed a cross-bow, and let fly an arblast at the crupper of the lady’s palfrey, whereon she fled finally, screaming, and in terror. “I will aim at the rider next time!” howled the ferocious baron, “and not at the horse!” And those who knew his savage nature and his unrivalled skill as a bowman, knew that he would neither break his knightly promise nor miss his aim.

Since the fatal day when the Grand Duke of Burgundy gave his famous passage of arms at Nantes, and all the nobles of France were present at the joustings, it was remarked that the Barbazure’s heart was changed towards his gentle and virtuous lady.

For the three first days of that famous festival, the redoubted Baron of Barbazure had kept the field against all the knights who entered. His lance bore everything down before it. The most famous champions of Europe, assembled at these joustings, had dropped, one by one, before this tremendous warrior. The prize of the tourney was destined to be his, and he was to be proclaimed bravest of the brave, as his lady was the fairest of the fair.

On the third day, however, as the sun was declining over the Vosges, and the shadows were lengthening over the plain where the warrior had obtained such triumphs;—after having overcome two hundred and thirteen knights of different nations, including the fiery Dunois, the intrepid Walter Manny, the spotless Bayard, and the undaunted Dugueselin, as the conqueror sat still erect on his charger, and the multitudes doubted whether ever another champion could be found to face him, three blasts of a trumpet were heard, faint at first, but at every moment ringing more clearly, until a knight in pink armor rode into the lists with his visor down, and riding a tremendous dun charger, which he managed to the admiration of all present.

The heralds asked him his name and quality.

“Call me,” said he, in a hollow voice, “the Jilted Knight.” What was it made the Lady of Barbazure tremble at his accents.

The knight refused to tell his name and qualities; but the companion who rode with him, the young and noble Philibert de Coquelicot, who was known and respected universally through the neighborhood, gave a warranty for the birth and noble degree of the Jilted Knight—and Raoul de Barbazure, yelling hoarsely for a two-hundred-and-fourteenth lance, shook the huge weapon in the air as though it were a reed, and prepared to encounter the intruder.

According to the wont of chivalry, and to keep the point of the spear from harm, the top of the unknown knight’s lance was shielded with a bung, which the warrior removed; and galloping up to Barbazure’s pavilion, over which his shield hung, touched that noble cognizance with the sharpened steel. A thrill of excitement ran through the assembly at this daring challenge to a combat a l’outrance. “Hast thou confessed, Sir Knight?” roared the Barbazure; “take thy ground, and look to thyself; for by heaven thy last hour is come!” “Poor youth, poor youth!” sighed the spectators; “he has called down his own fate.” The next minute the signal was given, and as the simoom across the desert, the cataract down the rock, the shell from the howitzer, each warrior rushed from his goal.

***

“Thou wilt not slay so good a champion?” said the Grand Duke, as at the end of that terrific combat the knight in rose armor stood over his prostrate foe, whose helmet had rolled off when he was at length unhorsed, and whose bloodshot eyes glared unutterable hate and ferocity on his conqueror.

“Take thy life,” said he who had styled himself the Jilted Knight; “thou hast taken all that was dear to me.” And the sun setting, and no other warrior appearing to do battle against him, he was proclaimed the conqueror, and rode up to the duchess’s balcony to receive the gold chain which was the reward of the victor. He raised his visor as the smiling princess guerdoned him—raised it, and gave ONE sad look towards the Lady Fatima at her side!

“Romane de Clos–Vougeot!” shrieked she, and fainted. The Baron of Barbazure heard the name as he writhed on the ground with his wound, and by his slighted honor, by his broken ribs, by his roused fury, he swore revenge; and the Lady Fatima, who had come to the tourney as a queen, returned to her castle as a prisoner.

(As it is impossible to give the whole of this remarkable novel, let it suffice to say briefly here, that in about a volume and a half, in which the descriptions of scenery, the account of the agonies of the baroness, kept on bread and water in her dungeon, and the general tone of morality, are all excellently worked out, the Baron de Barbazure resolves upon putting his wife to death by the hands of the public executioner.)

***

Two minutes before the clock struck noon, the savage baron was on the platform to inspect the preparation for the frightful ceremony of mid-day.

The block was laid forth—the hideous minister of vengeance, masked and in black, with the flaming glaive in his hand, was ready. The baron tried the edge of the blade with his finger, and asked the dreadful swordsman if his hand was sure? A nod was the reply of the man of blood. The weeping garrison and domestics shuddered and shrank from him. There was not one there but loved and pitied the gentle lady.

Pale, pale as a stone, she was brought from her dungeon. To all her lord’s savage interrogatories, her reply had been, “I am innocent.” To his threats of death, her answer was, “You are my lord; my life is in your hands, to take or to give.” How few are the wives, in our day, who show such angelic meekness! It touched all hearts around her, save that of the implacable Barbazure! Even the Lady Blanche, (Fatima’s cousin), whom he had promised to marry upon his faithless wife’s demise, besought for her kinswoman’s life, and a divorce; but Barbazure had vowed her death.

“Is there no pity, sir?” asked the chaplain who had attended her.

“No pity?” echoed the weeping serving-maid.

“Did I not aye say I would die for my lord?” said the gentle lady, and placed herself at the block.

Sir Raoul de Barbazure seized up the long ringlets of her raven hair. “Now!” shouted he to the executioner, with a stamp of his foot—“Now strike!”

The man (who knew his trade) advanced at once, and poised himself to deliver his blow: and making his flashing sword sing in the air, with one irresistible, rapid stroke, it sheared clean off the head of the furious, the bloodthirsty, the implacable Baron de Barbazure!

Thus he fell a victim to his own jealousy: and the agitation of the Lady Fatima may be imagined, when the executioner, flinging off his mask, knelt gracefully at her feet, and revealed to her the well-known features of Romane de Clos–Vougeot.

LORDS AND LIVERIES.

BY THE AUTHORESS OF “DUKES AND DEJEUNERS,” “HEARTS AND DIAMONDS,” “MARCHIONESSES AND MILLINERS,” ETC. ETC.

I.

“CORBLEU! What a lovely creature that was in the Fitzbattleaxe box to-night,” said one of a group of young dandies who were leaning over the velvet-cushioned balconies of the “Coventry Club,” smoking their full-flavored Cubas (from Hudson’s) after the opera.

Everybody stared at such an exclamation of enthusiasm from the lips of the young Earl of Bagnigge, who was never heard to admire anything except a coulis de dindonneau a la St. Menehould, or a supreme de cochon en torticolis a la Piffarde; such as Champollion, the chef of the “Traveller’s,” only knows how to dress; or the bouquet of a flask of Medoc, of Carbonell’s best quality; or a goutte of Marasquin, from the cellars of Briggs and Hobson.

Alured de Pentonville, eighteenth Earl of Bagnigge, Viscount Paon of Islington, Baron Pancras, Kingscross, and a Baronet, was, like too many of our young men of ton, utterly blase, although only in his twenty-fourth year. Blest, luckily, with a mother of excellent principles (who had imbued his young mind with that Morality which is so superior to all the vain pomps of the world!) it had not been always the young earl’s lot to wear the coronet for which he now in sooth cared so little. His father, a captain of Britain’s navy, struck down by the side of the gallant Collingwood in the Bay of Fundy, left little but his sword and spotless name to his young, lovely, and inconsolable widow, who passed the first years of her mourning in educating her child in an elegant though small cottage in one of the romantic marine villages of beautiful Devonshire. Her child! What a gush of consolation filled the widow’s heart as she pressed him to it! How faithfully did she instil into his young bosom those principles which had been the pole-star of the existence of his gallant father!

In this secluded retreat, rank and wealth almost boundless found the widow and her boy. The seventeenth Earl—gallant and ardent, and in the prime of youth—went forth one day from the Eternal City to a steeple-chase in the Campagna. A mutilated corpse was brought back to his hotel in the Piazza di Spagna. Death, alas! is no respecter of the Nobility. That shattered form was all that remained of the fiery, the haughty, the wild, but the generous Altamont de Pentonville! Such, such is fate!

The admirable Emily de Pentonville trembled with all a mother’s solicitude at the distinctions and honors which thus suddenly descended on her boy. She engaged an excellent clergyman of the Church of England to superintend his studies; to accompany him on foreign travel when the proper season arrived; to ward from him those dangers which dissipation always throws in the way of the noble, the idle, and the wealthy. But the Reverend Cyril Delaval died of the measles at Naples, and henceforth the young Earl of Bagnigge was without a guardian.

What was the consequence? That, at three-and-twenty, he was a cynic and an epicure. He had drained the cup of pleasure till it had palled in his unnerved hand. He had looked at the Pyramids without awe, at the Alps without reverence. He was unmoved by the sandy solitudes of the Desert as by the placid depths of Mediterranean’s sea of blue. Bitter, bitter tears did Emily de Pentonville weep, when, on Alured’s return from the Continent, she beheld the awful change that dissipation had wrought in her beautiful, her blue-eyed, her perverted, her still beloved boy!

“Corpo di Bacco,” he said, pitching the end of his cigar on to the red nose of the Countess of Delawaddymore’s coachman—who, having deposited her fat ladyship at No. 236 Piccadilly, was driving the carriage to the stables, before commencing his evening at the “Fortune of War” public-house—“what a lovely creature that was! What eyes! what hair! Who knows her? Do you, mon cher prince?”

“E bellissima, certamente,” said the Duca de Montepulciano, and stroked down his jetty moustache.

“Ein gar schones Madchen,” said the Hereditary Grand Duke of Eulenschreckenstein, and turned up his carroty one.

“Elle n’est pas mal, ma foi!” said the Prince de Borodino, with a scowl on his darkling brows. “Mon Dieu, que ces cigarres sont mauvais!” he added as he too cast away his Cuba.

“Try one of my Pickwicks,” said Franklin Fox, with a sneer, offering his gold etui to the young Frenchman; “they are some of Pontet’s best, Prince. What, do you bear malice? Come, let us be friends,” said the gay and careless young patrician; but a scowl on the part of the Frenchman was the only reply.

“Want to know who she is? Borodino knows who she is, Bagnigge,” the wag went on.

Everybody crowded around Monsieur de Borodino thus apostrophized. The Marquis of Alicompayne, young De Boots of the Lifeguards, Tom Protocol of the Foreign Office; the gay young Peers, Farintosh, Poldoody, and the rest; and Bagnigge, for a wonder, not less eager than any one present.

“No, he will tell you nothing about her. Don’t you see he has gone off in a fury!” Franklin Fox continued. “He has his reasons, ce cher prince: he will tell you nothing; but I will. You know that I am au mieux with the dear old duchess.”

“They say Frank and she are engaged after the duke’s death,” cried Poldoody.

“I always thought Fwank was the duke’s illicit gweatgwandson,” drawled out De Boots.

“I heard that he doctored her Blenheim, and used to bring her wigs from Paris,” cried that malicious Tom Protocol, whose mots are known in every diplomatic salon from Petersburg to Palermo.

“Burn her wigs and hang her poodle!” said Bagnigge. “Tell me about this girl, Franklin Fox.”

“In the first place, she has five hundred thousand acres, in a ring fence in Norfolk; a county in Scotland, a castle in Wales, a villa at Richmond, a corner house in Belgrave Square, and eighty thousand a year in the three-per-cents.”

“Apres?” said Bagnigge, still yawning.

“Secondly, Borodino lui fait la cour. They are cousins, her mother was an Armagnac of the emigration; the old Marshal, his father, married another sister. I believe he was footman in the family, before Napoleon princified him.”

“No, no, he was second coachman,” Tom Protocol good-naturedly interposed—“a cavalry officer, Frank, not an infantry man.”

“‘Faith you should have seen his fury (the young one’s, I mean) when he found me in the duchess’s room this evening, tete-a-tete with the heiress, who deigned to receive a bouquet from this hand.”

“It cost me three guineas,” poor Frank said, with a shrug and a sigh, “and that Covent Garden scoundrel gives no credit: but she took the flowers;—eh, Bagnigge?”

“And flung them to Alboni,” the Peer replied, with a haughty sneer. And poor little Franklin Fox was compelled to own that she had.

The maitre d’hotel here announced that supper was served. It was remarked that even the coulis de dindonneau made no impression on Bagnigge that night.

II.

The sensation produced by the debut of Amethyst Pimlico at the court of the sovereign, and in the salons of the beau-monde, was such as has seldom been created by the appearance of any other beauty. The men were raving with love, and the women with jealousy. Her eyes, her beauty, her wit, her grace, her ton, caused a perfect fureur of admiration or envy.

Introduced by the Duchess of Fitzbattleaxe, along with her Grace’s daughters, the Ladies Gwendoline and Gwinever Portcullis, the heiress’s regal beauty quite flung her cousins’ simple charms into the shade, and blazed with a splendor which caused all “minor lights” to twinkle faintly. Before a day the beau-monde, before a week even the vulgarians of the rest of the town, rang with the fame of her charms; and while the dandies and the beauties were raving about her, or tearing her to pieces in May Fair, even Mrs. Dobbs (who had been to the pit of the “Hoperer” in a green turban and a crumpled yellow satin) talked about the great HAIRESS to her D. in Bloomsbury Square.

Crowds went to Squab and Lynch’s, in Long Acre, to examine the carriages building for her, so faultless, so splendid, so quiet, so odiously unostentatious and provokingly simple! Besides the ancestral services of argenterie and vaisselle plate, contained in a hundred and seventy-six plate-chests at Messrs. Childs’, Rumble and Briggs prepared a gold service, and Garraway, of the Haymarket, a service of the Benvenuto Cellini pattern, which were the admiration of all London. Before a month it is a fact that the wretched haberdashers in the city exhibited the blue stocks, called “Heiress-killers, very chaste, two-and-six:” long before that, the monde had rushed to Madame Crinoline’s, or sent couriers to Madame Marabou, at Paris, so as to have copies of her dresses; but, as the Mantuan bard observes, “Non cuivis contigit,”—every foot cannot accommodate itself to the chaussure of Cinderella.

With all this splendor, this worship, this beauty; with these cheers following her, and these crowds at her feet, was Amethyst happy? Ah, no! It is not under the necklace the most brilliant that Briggs and Rumble can supply, it is not in Lynch’s best cushioned chariot that the heart is most at ease. “Que je me ruinerai,” says Fronsac in a letter to Bossuet, “si je savais ou acheter le bonheur!”

With all her riches, with all her splendor, Amethyst was wretched—wretched, because lonely; wretched, because her loving heart had nothing to cling to. Her splendid mansion was a convent; no male person even entered it, except Franklin Fox, (who counted for nothing,) and the duchess’s family, her kinsman old Lord Humpington, his friend old Sir John Fogey, and her cousin, the odious, odious Borodino.

The Prince de Borodino declared openly that Amethyst was engaged to him. Crible de dettes, it is no wonder that he should choose such an opportunity to refaire sa fortune. He gave out that he would kill any man who should cast an eye on the heiress, and the monster kept his word. Major Grigg, of the Lifeguards, had already fallen by his hand at Ostend. The O’Toole, who had met her on the Rhine, had received a ball in his shoulder at Coblentz, and did not care to resume so dangerous a courtship. Borodino could snuff a bougie at a hundred and fifty yards. He could beat Bertrand or Alexander Dumas himself with the small-sword: he was the dragon that watched this pomme d’or, and very few persons were now inclined to face a champion si redoutable.

Over a salmi d’escargot at the “Coventry,” the dandies whom we introduced in our last volume were assembled, there talking of the heiress; and her story was told by Franklin Fox to Lord Bagnigge, who, for a wonder, was interested in the tale. Borodino’s pretensions were discussed, and the way in which the fair Amethyst was confined. Fitzbattleaxe House, in Belgrave Square, is—as everybody knows—the next mansion to that occupied by Amethyst. A communication was made between the two houses. She never went out except accompanied by the duchess’s guard, which it was impossible to overcome.

“Impossible! Nothing’s impossible,” said Lord Bagnigge.

“I bet you what you like you don’t get in,” said the young Marquis of Martingale.

“I bet you a thousand ponies I stop a week in the heiress’s house before the season’s over,” Lord Bagnigge replied with a yawn; and the bet was registered with shouts of applause.

But it seemed as if the Fates had determined against Lord Bagnigge, for the very next day, riding in the Park, his horse fell with him; he was carried home to his house with a fractured limb and a dislocated shoulder; and the doctor’s bulletins pronounced him to be in the most dangerous state.

Martingale was a married man, and there was no danger of HIS riding by the Fitzbattleaxe carriage. A fortnight after the above events, his lordship was prancing by her Grace’s great family coach, and chattering with Lady Gwinever about the strange wager.

“Do you know what a pony is, Lady Gwinever?” he asked. Her ladyship said yes: she had a cream-colored one at Castle Barbican; and stared when Lord Martingale announced that he should soon have a thousand ponies, worth five-and-twenty pounds each, which were all now kept at Coutts’s. Then he explained the circumstances of the bet with Bagnigge. Parliament was to adjourn in ten days; the season would be over! Bagnigge was lying ill chez lui; and the five-and-twenty thousand were irrecoverably his. And he vowed he would buy Lord Binnacle’s yacht—crew, captain, guns and all.

On returning home that night from Lady Polkimore’s, Martingale found among the many billets upon the gold plateau in his antichambre, the following brief one, which made him start—

“DEAR MARTINGALE.—Don’t be too sure of Binnacle’s yacht. There are still ten days before the season is over; and my ponies may lie at Coutts’s for some time to come.

“Yours,

“BAGNIGGE.

“P. S.—I write with my left hand; for my right is still splintered up from that confounded fall.”

III.

The tall footman, number four, who had come in the place of John, cashiered, (for want of proper mollets, and because his hair did not take powder well,) had given great satisfaction to the under-butler, who reported well of him to his chief, who had mentioned his name with praise to the house-steward. He was so good-looking and well-spoken a young man, that the ladies in the housekeeper’s room deigned to notice him more than once; nor was his popularity diminished on account of a quarrel in which he engaged with Monsieur Anatole, the enormous Walloon chasseur, who was one day found embracing Miss Flouncy, who waited on Amethyst’s own maid. The very instant Miss Flouncy saw Mr. Jeames entering the Servants’ Hall, where Monsieur Anatole was engaged in “aggravating” her, Miss Flouncy screamed: at the next moment the Belgian giant lay sprawling upon the carpet; and Jeames, standing over him, assumed so terrible a look, that the chasseur declined any further combat. The victory was made known to the house-steward himself, who, being a little partial to Miss Flouncy herself, complimented Jeames on his valor, and poured out a glass of Madeira in his own room.

Who was Jeames? He had come recommended by the Bagnigge people. He had lived, he said, in that family two years. “But where there was no ladies,” he said, “a gentleman’s hand was spiled for service;” and Jeames’s was a very delicate hand; Miss Flouncy admired it very much, and of course he did not defile it by menial service: he had in a young man who called him sir, and did all the coarse work; and Jeames read the morning paper to the ladies; not spellingly and with hesitation, as many gentlemen do, but easily and elegantly, speaking off the longest words without a moment’s difficulty. He could speak French, too, Miss Flouncy found, who was studying it under Mademoiselle Grande fille-de-chambre de confiance; for when she said to him, “Polly voo Fransy, Munseer Jeames?” he replied readily, “We, Mademaselle, j’ay passay boco de tong a Parry. Commong voo potty voo?” How Miss Flouncy admired him as he stood before her, the day after he had saved Miss Amethyst when the horses had run away with her in the Park!

Poor Flouncy, poor Flouncy! Jeames had been but a week in Amethyst’s service, and already the gentle heart of the washing-girl was irrecoverably gone! Poor Flouncy! Poor Flouncy! he thought not of thee.

It happened thus. Miss Amethyst being engaged to drive with her cousin the prince in his phaeton, her own carriage was sent into the Park simply with her companion, who had charge of her little Fido, the dearest little spaniel in the world. Jeames and Frederick were behind the carriage with their long sticks and neat dark liveries; the horses were worth a thousand guineas each, the coachman a late lieutenant-colonel of cavalry: the whole ring could not boast a more elegant turn-out.

The prince drove his curricle, and had charge of his belle cousine. It may have been the red fezzes in the carriage of the Turkish ambassador which frightened the prince’s grays, or Mrs. Champignon’s new yellow liveries, which were flaunting in the Park, or hideous Lady Gorgon’s preternatural ugliness, who passed in a low pony-carriage at the time, or the prince’s own want of skill, finally; but certain it is that the horses took fright, dashed wildly along the mile, scattered equipages, pietons, dandies’ cabs, and snobs’ pheaytons. Amethyst was screaming; and the prince, deadly pale, had lost all presence of mind, as the curricle came rushing by the spot where Miss Amethyst’s carriage stood.

“I’m blest,” Frederick exclaimed to his companion, “if it ain’t the prince a-drivin our missis! They’ll be in the Serpingtine, or dashed to pieces, if they don’t mind.” And the runaway steeds at this instant came upon them as a whirlwind.

But if those steeds ran at a whirlwind pace, Jeames was swifter. To jump from behind, to bound after the rocking, reeling curricle, to jump into it, aided by the long stick which he carried and used as a leaping-pole, and to seize the reins out of the hands of the miserable Borodino, who shrieked piteously as the dauntless valet leapt on his toes and into his seat, was the work of an instant. In a few minutes the mad, swaying rush of the horses was reduced to a swift but steady gallop; presently into a canter, then a trot; until finally they pulled up smoking and trembling, but quite quiet, by the side of Amethyst’s carriage, which came up at a rapid pace.

“Give me the reins, malappris! tu m’ecrases le corps, manant!” yelled the frantic nobleman, writhing underneath the intrepid charioteer.

“Tant pis pour toi, nigaud,” was the reply. The lovely Amethyst of course had fainted; but she recovered as she was placed in her carriage, and rewarded her preserver with a celestial smile.

The rage, the fury, the maledictions of Borodino, as he saw the latter—a liveried menial—stoop gracefully forward and kiss Amethyst’s hand, may be imagined rather than described. But Jeames heeded not his curses. Having placed his adored mistress in the carriage, he calmly resumed his station behind. Passion or danger seemed to have no impression upon that pale marble face.

Borodino went home furious; nor was his rage diminished, when, on coming to dinner that day, a recherche banquet served in the Frangipane best style, and requesting a supply of a puree a la bisque aux ecrevisses, the clumsy attendant who served him let fall the assiette of vermeille cisele, with its scalding contents, over the prince’s chin, his Mechlin jabot, and the grand cordon of the Legion of honor which he wore.

“Infame,” howled Borodino, “tu l’as fait expres!”

“Oui, je l’ai fait expres,” said the man, with the most perfect Parisian accent. It was Jeames.

Such insolence of course could not be passed unnoticed even after the morning’s service, and he was chassed on the spot. He had been but a week in the house.

The next month the newspapers contained a paragraph which may possibly elucidate the above mystery, and to the following effect:—

“Singular Wager.—One night, at the end of last season, the young and eccentric Earl of B-gn-gge laid a wager of twenty-five thousand pounds with a broken sporting patrician, the dashing Marquis of M-rt-ng-le, that he would pass a week under the roof of a celebrated and lovely young heiress, who lives not a hundred miles from B-lgr-ve Squ-re. The bet having been made, the earl pretended an illness, and having taken lessons from one of his lordship’s own footmen (Mr. James Plush, whose name he also borrowed) in ‘the MYSTERIES of the PROFESSION,’ actually succeeded in making an entry into Miss P-ml-co’s mansion, where he stopped one week exactly; having time to win his bet, and to save the life of the lady, whom we hear he is about to lead to the altar. He disarmed the Prince of Borodino in a duel fought on Calais sands—and, it is said, appeared at the C—— club wearing his PLUSH COSTUME under a cloak, and displaying it as a proof that he had won his wager.”

Such, indeed, were the circumstances. The young couple have not more than nine hundred thousand a year, but they live cheerfully, and manage to do good; and Emily de Pentonville, who adores her daughter-inlaw and her little grandchildren, is blest in seeing her darling son enfin un homme range.

CRINOLINE.

BY JE-MES PL-SH, ESQ.

I.

I’m not at libbaty to divulj the reel names of the 2 Eroes of the igstrawny Tail which I am abowt to relait to those unlightnd paytrons of letarature and true connyshures of merrit—the great Brittish public—But I pledj my varacity that this singlar story of rewmantic love, absobbing pashn, and likewise of GENTEEL LIFE, is, in the main fax, TREW. The suckmstanzas I elude to, ocurd in the rain of our presnt Gratious Madjisty and her beluvd and roil Concert Prince Halbert.

Welthen. Some time in the seazen of 18— (mor I dar not rewheel) there arrived in this metropulus, per seknd class of the London and Dover Railway, an ellygant young foring gentleman, whom I shall danomminate Munseer Jools De Chacabac.

Having read through “The Vicker of Wackfield” in the same oridganal English tung in which this very harticle I write is wrote too, and halways been remarkyble, both at collidge and in the estamminy, for his aytred and orror of perfidgus Halbion, Munseer Jools was considered by the prapriretors of the newspaper in which he wrote, at Parris, the very man to come to this country, igsamin its manners and customs, cast an i upon the politticle and finalshle stat of the Hempire, and igspose the mackynations of the infyamous Palmerston, and the ebomminable Sir Pill—both enemies of France; as is every other Britten of that great, gloarus, libberal, and peasable country. In one word, Jools de Chacabac was a penny-a-liner.

“I will go see with my own I’s,” he said, “that infimus hiland of which the innabitants are shopkeepers, gorged with roast beef and treason. I will go and see the murderers of the Hirish, the pisoners of the Chynese, the villians who put the Hemperor to death in Saintyleany, the artful dodges who wish to smother Europe with their cotton, and can’t sleep or rest heasy for henvy and hatred of the great inwinsable French nation. I will igsammin, face to face, these hotty insularies; I will pennytrate into the secrets of their Jessywhittickle cabinet, and beard Palmerston in his denn.” When he jumpt on shor at Foaxton (after having been tremenguously sick in the fourcabbing), he exclaimed, “Enfin je te tiens, Ile maudite! je te crache a la figure, vieille Angleterre! Je te foule a mes pieds an nom du monde outrage,” and so proseaded to inwade the metropulus.

As he wisht to micks with the very chicest sosiaty, and git the best of infamation about this country, Munseer Jools of coarse went and lodgd in Lester Square—Lester Squarr, as he calls it—which, as he was infommed in the printed suckular presented to him by a very greasy but polite comishner at the Custumus Stares, was in the scenter of the town, contiggus to the Ouses of Parlyment, the prinsple theayters, the parx, St. Jams Pallice, and the Corts of Lor. “I can surwhey them all at one cut of the eye,” Jools thought; “the Sovring, the infamus Ministers plotting the destruction of my immortial country; the business and pleasure of these pusprond Londoners and aristoxy; I can look round and see all.” So he took a three-pair back in a French hotel, the “Hotel de l’Ail,” kep by Monsieur Gigotot, Cranbourne Street, Lester Squarr, London.

In this otell there’s a billiard-room on the first floor, and a tabble-doat at eighteenpence peredd at 5 o’clock; and the landlord, who kem into Jools’s room smoaking a segar, told the young gent that the house was friquented by all the Brittish nobillaty, who reglar took their dinners there. “They can’t ebide their own quiseen,” he said. “You’ll see what a dinner we’ll serve you today.” Jools wrote off to his paper—

“The members of the haughty and luxurious English aristocracy, like all the rest of the world, are obliged to fly to France for the indulgence of their luxuries. The nobles of England, quitting their homes, their wives, miladies and mistriss, so fair but so cold, dine universally at the tavern. That from which I write is frequented by Peel and Palmerston. I fremis to think that I may meet them at the board today.”

Singlar to say, Peel and Palmerston didn’t dine at the “Hotel de l’Ail” on that evening. “It’s quite igstronnary they don’t come,” said Munseer de l’Ail.

“Peraps they’re ingaged at some boxing-match or some combaw de cock,” Munseer Jools sejested; and the landlord egreed that was very likely.

Instedd of English there was, however, plenty of foring sociaty, of every nation under the sun. Most of the noblemen were great hamatures of hale and porter. The tablecloth was marked over with brown suckles, made by the pewter-pots on that and the previous days.

“It is the usage here,” wrote Jools to his newspaper, “among the Anglais of the fashonne to absorb immense quantities of ale and porter during their meals. These stupefying, but cheap, and not unpalatable liquors are served in shining pewter vessels. A mug of foaming hafanaf (so a certain sort of beer is called) was placed by the side of most of the convives. I was disappointed of seeing Sir Peel: he was engaged to a combat of cocks which occurs at Windsor.”

Not one word of English was spoke during this dinner, excep when the gentlemen said “Garsong de l’afanaf,” but Jool was very much pleased to meet the eleet of the foringers in town, and ask their opinion about the reel state of thinx. Was it likely that the bishops were to be turned out of the Chambre des Communes? Was it true that Lor Palmerston had boxed with Lor Broghamm in the House of Lords, until they were sepparayted by the Lor Maire? Who was the Lor Maire? Wasn’t he Premier Minister? and wasn’t the Archeveque de Cantorbery a Quaker? He got answers to these questions from the various gents round about during the dinner—which, he remarked, was very much like a French dinner, only dirtier. And he wrote off all the infamation he got to his newspaper.

“The Lord Maire, Lord Lansdowne, is Premier Ministre. His Grace has his dwelling in the City. The Archbishop of Cantabery is not turned Quaker, as some people stated. Quakers may not marry, nor sit in the Chamber of Peers. The minor bishops have seats in the House of Commons, where they are attacked by the bitter pleasantries of Lord Brougham. A boxer is in the house; he taught Palmerston the science of the pugilate, who conferred upon him the seat,” &c. &c.

His writing hover, Jools came down and ad a gaym at pool with two Poles, a Bulgian, and 2 of his own countrymen. This being done amidst more hafanaf, without which nothink is done in England, and as there was no French play that night, he & the two French gents walked round and round Lester Squarr smoking segaws in the faces of other French gents who were smoaking 2. And they talked about the granjer of France and the perfidgusness of England, and looked at the aluminated pictur of Madame Wharton as Haryadney till bedtime. But befor he slep, he finished his letter you may be sure, and called it his “Fust Imprestiuns of Anglyterre.”

“Mind and wake me early,” he said to Boots, the ony Brittish subject in the “Hotel de l’Ail,” and who therefore didn’t understand him. “I wish to be at Smithfield at 6 hours to see THE MEN SELL THEIR WIVES.” And the young roag fell asleep, thinking what sort of a one he’d buy.

This was the way Jools passed his days, and got infamation about Hengland and the Henglish—walking round and round Lester Squarr all day, and every day with the same company, occasionally dewussified by an Oprer Chorus-singer or a Jew or two, and every afternoon in the Quadrant admiring the genteal sosiaty there. Munseer Jools was not over well funnisht with pocket-money, and so his pleasure was of the gratis sort cheafly.

Well, one day as he and a friend was taking their turn among the aristoxy under the Quadrant—they were struck all of a heap by seeing—But, stop! who WAS Jools’s friend? Here you have pictures of both—but the Istory of Jools’s friend must be kep for another innings.

II.

Not fur from that knowble and cheerflie Squear which Munseer Jools de Chacabac had selacted for his eboad in London—not fur, I say, from Lester Squarr, is a rainje of bildings called Pipping’s Buildings, leading to Blue Lion Court, leading to St. Martin’s Lane. You know Pipping’s Buildings by its greatest ornament, an am and beefouce (where Jools has often stood admiring the degstaraty of the carver a-cuttin the varous jints), and by the little fishmungur’s, where you remark the mouldy lobsters, the fly-blown picklesammon, the playbills, and the gingybear bottles in the window—above all, by the “Constantinople” Divan, kep by the Misses Mordeky, and well known to every lover of “a prime sigaw and an exlent cup of reel Moky Coffy for 6d.”

The Constantinople Divann is greatly used by the foring gents of Lester Squar. I never ad the good fortn to pass down Pipping’s Buildings without seeing a haf a duzen of ’em on the threshole of the extablishment, giving the street an oppertunity of testing the odar of the Misses Mordeky’s prime Avannas. Two or three mor may be visable inside, settn on the counter or the chestis, indulging in their fav’rit whead, the rich and spisy Pickwhick, the ripe Manilly, or the flagrant and arheumatic Qby.

“These Divanns are, as is very well known, the knightly resott of the young Henglish nobillaty. It is ear a young Pier, after an arjus day at the House of Commons, solazes himself with a glas of gin-and-water (the national beveridge), with cheerful conversation on the ewents of the day, or with an armless gaym of baggytell in the back-parlor.”

So wrote at least our friend Jools to his newspaper, the Horriflam; and of this back-parlor and baggytell-bord, of this counter, of this “Constantinople” Divan, he became almost as reglar a frequenter as the plaster of Parish Turk who sits smoking a hookey between the two blue coffee-cups in the winder.

I have oftin, smokin my own shroot in silents in a corner of the Diwann, listened to Jools and his friends inwaying aginst Hingland, and boastin of their own immortial country. How they did go on about Wellintun, and what an arty contamp they ad for him!—how they used to prove that France was the Light, the Scenter-pint, the Igsample and hadmiration of the whole world! And though I scarcely take a French paper now-a-days (I lived in early days as groom in a French famly three years, and therefore knows the languidg), though, I say, you can’t take up Jools’s paper, the Orriflam, without readin that a minister has committed bribery and perjury, or that a littery man has committed perjury and murder, or that a Duke has stabbed his wife in fifty places, or some story equally horrible; yet for all that it’s admiral to see how the French gents will swagger—how they will be the scenters of civilization—how they will be the Igsamples of Europ, and nothink shall prevent ’em—knowing they will have it, I say I listen, smokin my pip in silence. But to our tail.

Reglar every evening there came to the “Constantanople” a young gent etired in the igth of fashn; and indead presenting by the cleanlyness of his appearants and linning (which was generally a pink or blew shurt, with a cricketer or a dansuse pattern) rather a contrast to the dinjy and whistkcard sosaity of the Diwann. As for wiskars, this young mann had none beyond a little yallow tought to his chin, which you woodn notas, only he was always pulling at it. His statue was diminnative, but his coschume supubb, for he had the tippiest Jane boots, the ivoryheadest canes, the most gawjus scarlick Jonville ties, and the most Scotch-plaidest trowseys, of any customer of that establishment. He was univusaly called Milord.

“Que est ce jeune seigneur? Who is this young hurl who comes knightly to the ‘Constantanople,’ who is so proddigl of his gold (for indeed the young gent would frequinly propoase gininwater to the company), and who drinks so much gin?” asked Munseer Chacabac of a friend from the “Hotel de l’Ail.”

“His name is Lord Yardham,” answered that friend. “He never comes here but at night—and why?”

“Y?” igsclaimed Jools, istonisht.

“Why? because he is engaygd all day—and do you know where he is engaygd all day?”

“Where?” asked Jools.

“At the Foring Office—NOW do you begin to understand?”—Jools trembled.

He speaks of his uncle, the head of that office.—“Who IS the head of that offis?—Palmerston.”

“The nephew of Palmerston!” said Jools, almost in a fit.

“Lor Yardham pretends not to speak French,” the other went on. “He pretends he can only say wee and commong porty voo. Shallow humbug!—I have marked him during our conversations.—When we have spoken of the glory of France among the nations, I have seen his eye kindle, and his perfidious lip curl with rage. When they have discussed before him, the Imprudents! the affairs of Europe, and Raggybritchovich has shown us the next Circassian Campaign, or Sapousne has laid hare the plan of the Calabrian patriots for the next insurrection, I have marked this stranger—this Lor Yardham. He smokes, ’tis to conceal his countenance; he drinks gin, ’tis to hide his face in the goblet. And be sure, he carries every word of our conversation to the perfidious Palmerston, his uncle.”

“I will beard him in his den,” thought Jools. “I will meet him corps-a-corps—the tyrant of Europe shall suffer through his nephew, and I will shoot him as dead as Dujarrier.”

When Lor Yardham came to the “Constantanople” that night, Jools i’d him savidgely from edd to foot, while Lord Yardham replied the same. It wasn’t much for either to do—neyther being more than 4 foot ten hi—Jools was a grannydear in his company of the Nashnal Gard, and was as brayv as a lion.

“Ah, l’Angleterre, l’Angleterre, tu nous dois une revanche,” said Jools, crossing his arms and grinding his teeth at Lord Yardham.

“Wee,” said Lord Yardham; “wee.”

“Delenda est Carthago!” howled out Jools.

“Oh, wee,” said the Erl of Yardham, and at the same moment his glas of ginawater coming in, he took a drink, saying, “A voternsanty, Munseer:” and then he offered it like a man of fashn to Jools.

A light broak on Jools’s mind as he igsepted the refreshmint. “Sapoase,” he said, “instedd of slaughtering this nephew of the infamous Palmerston, I extract his secrets from him; suppose I pump him—suppose I unveil his schemes and send them to my paper? La France may hear the name of Jools de Chacabac, and the star of honor may glitter on my bosom.”

So axepting Lord Yardham’s cortasy, he returned it by ordering another glass of gin at his own expence, and they both drank it on the counter, where Jools talked of the affaers of Europ all night. To everything he said, the Earl of Yardham answered, “Wee, wee;” except at the end of the evening, when he squeeged his & and said, “Bong swore.”

“There’s nothing like goin amongst ’em to equire the reel pronounciation,” his lordship said, as he let himself into his lodgings with his latch-key. “That was a very eloquent young gent at the ‘Constantinople,’ and I’ll patronize him.”

“Ah, perfide, je te demasquerai!” Jools remarked to himself as he went to bed in his “Hotel de l’Ail.” And they met the next night, and from that heavning the young men were continyually together.

Well, one day, as they were walking in the Quadrant, Jools talking, and Lord Yardham saying, “Wee, wee,” they were struck all of a heap by seeing—

But my paper is igshosted, and I must dixcribe what they sor in the nex number.

III.

THE CASTLE OF THE ISLAND OF FOGO.

The travler who pesews his dalitefle coarse through the fair rellum of Franse (as a great romantic landskippist and neamsack of mind would say) never chaumed his i’s within a site more lovely, or vu’d a pallis more magniffiznt than that which was the buthplace of the Eroing of this Trew Tale. Phansy a country through whose werdant planes the selvery Garonne wines, like—like a benevvolent sarpent. In its plasid busum antient cassles, picturask willidges, and waving woods are reflected. Purple hills, crownd with inteak ruings; rivvilets babbling through gentle greenwoods; wight farm ouses, hevvy with hoverhanging vines, and from which the appy and peaseful okupier can cast his glans over goolden waving cornfealds, and M. Herald meddows in which the lazy cattle are graysinn; while the sheppard, tending his snoughy flox, wiles away the leisure mominx on his loot—these hoffer but a phaint pictur of the rurial felissaty in the midst of widge Crinoline and Hesteria de Viddlers were bawn.

Their Par, the Marcus de Viddlers, Shavilear of the Legend of Honor and of the Lion of Bulgum, the Golden Flease, Grand Cross of the Eflant and Castle, and of the Catinbagpipes of Hostria, Grand Chamberleng of the Crownd, and Major–Genaril of Hoss–Mareens, &c. &c. &c.—is the twenty-foth or fith Marquis that has bawn the Tittle; is disended lenyally from King Pipping, and has almost as antient a paddygree as any which the Ollywell Street frends of the Member of Buckinumsheer can supply.

His Marchyniss, the lovely & ecomplisht Emily de St. Cornichon, quitted this mortial spear very soon after she had presented her lord with the two little dawling Cherrybins above dixcribed, in whomb, after the loss of that angle his wife, the disconslit widderer found his only jy on huth. In all his emusemints they ecumpanied him; their edjacation was his sole bisniss; he atcheaved it with the assistnce of the ugliest and most lernid masters, and the most hidjus and egsimplary governices which money could procure. R, how must his peturnle art have bet, as these Budds, which he had nurrisht, bust into buty, and twined in blooming flagrance round his pirentle Busm!

The villidges all round his hancestral Alls blessed the Marcus and his lovely hoffsprig. Not one villidge in their naybrood but was edawned by their elygint benifisns, and where the inhabitnts wern’t rendered appy. It was a pattern pheasantry. All the old men in the districk were wertuous & tockative, ad red stockins and i-eeled drab shoes, and beautiful snowy air. All the old women had peaked ats, and crooked cains, and chince gowns tucked into the pockits of their quiltid petticoats; they sat in pictarask porches, pretendin to spinn, while the lads and lassis of the villidges danst under the hellums. O, tis a noble sight to whitniss that of an appy pheasantry! Not one of those rustic wassals of the Ouse of Widdlers, but ad his air curled and his shirt-sheaves tied up with pink ribbing as he led to the macy dance some appy country gal, with a black velvit boddice and a redd or yaller petticoat, a hormylu cross on her neck, and a silver harrow in her air!

When the Marcus & ther young ladies came to the villidge it would have done the i’s of the flanthropist good to see how all reseaved ’em! The little children scattered calico flowers on their path, the snowy-aired old men with red faces and rinkles took off their brown paper ats to slewt the noble Marcus. Young and old led them to a woodn bank painted to look like a bower of roses, and when they were sett down danst ballys before them. O ’twas a noble site to see the Marcus too, smilin ellygint with fethers in his edd and all his stars on, and the young Marchynisses with their ploomes, and trains, and little coronicks!

They lived in tremenjus splendor at home in their pyturnle alls, and had no end of pallises, willers, and town and country resadences; but their fayvorit resadence was called the Castle of the Island of Fogo.

Add I the penn of the hawther of a Codlingsby himself, I coodnt dixcribe the gawjusness of their aboad. They add twenty-four footmen in livery, besides a boy in codroys for the knives & shoes. They had nine meels aday—Shampayne and pineapples were served to each of the young ladies in bed before they got up. Was it Prawns, Sherry-cobblers, lobster-salids, or maids of honor, they had but to ring the bell and call for what they chose. They had two new dresses every day—one to ride out in the open carriage, and another to appear in the gardens of the Castle of the Island of Fogo, which were illuminated every night like Voxhall. The young noblemen of France were there ready to dance with them, and festif suppers concludid the jawyus night.

Thus they lived in ellygant ratirement until Missfortune bust upon this happy fammaly. Etached to his Princes and abommanating the ojus Lewyphlip, the Marcus was conspiring for the benefick of the helder branch of the Borebones—and what was the consquince?—One night a fleat presented itself round the Castle of the Island of Fogo—and skewering only a couple of chests of jewils, the Marcus and the two young ladies in disgyise, fled from that island of bliss. And whither fled they?—To England!—England the ome of the brave, the refuge of the world, where the pore slave never setts his foot but he is free!

Such was the ramantic tail which was told to 2 friends of ours by the Marcus de Viddlers himself, whose daughters, walking with their page from Ungerford Market (where they had been to purchis a paper of srimps for the umble supper of their noble father), Yardham and his equaintnce, Munseer Jools, had remarked and admired.

But how had those two young Erows become equainted with the noble Marcus?—That is a mistry we must elucydate in a futur vollam.

THE STARS AND STRIPES.

THE AUTHOR OR “THE LAST OF THE MULLIGANS,” “PILOT,” ETC

I.

The King of France was walking on the terrace of Versailles; the fairest, not only of Queens, but of women, hung fondly on the Royal arm; while the children of France were indulging in their infantile hilarity in the alleys of the magnificent garden of Le Notre (from which Niblo’s garden has been copied in our own Empire city of New York), and playing at leap-frog with their uncle, the Count of Provence; gaudy courtiers, emlazoned with orders, glittered in the groves, and murmured frivolous talk in the ears of high-bred beauty.

“Marie, my beloved,” said the ruler of France, taking out his watch, “’tis time that the Minister of America should be here.”

“Your Majesty should know the time,” replied Marie Antoinette, archly, and in an Austrian accent; “is not my Royal Louis the first watchmaker in his empire?”

The King cast a pleased glance at his repeater, and kissed with courtly grace the fair hand of her who had made him the compliment. “My Lord Bishop of Autun,” said he to Monsieur de Talleyrand Perigord, who followed the royal pair, in his quality of arch-chamberlain of the empire, “I pray you look through the gardens, and tell his Excellency Doctor Franklin that the King waits.” The Bishop ran off, with more than youthful agility, to seek the United States’ Minister. “These Republicans,” he added, confidentially, and with something of a supercilious look, “are but rude courtiers, methinks.”

“Nay,” interposed the lovely Antoinette, “rude courtiers, Sire, they may be; but the world boasts not of more accomplished gentlemen. I have seen no grandee of Versailles that has the noble bearing of this American envoy and his suite. They have the refinement of the Old World, with all the simple elegance of the New. Though they have perfect dignity of manner, they have an engaging modesty which I have never seen equalled by the best of the proud English nobles with whom they wage war. I am told they speak their very language with a grace which the haughty Islanders who oppress them never attained. They are independent, yet never insolent; elegant, yet always respectful; and brave, but not in the least boastful.”

“What! savages and all, Marie?” exclaimed Louis, laughing, and chucking the lovely Queen playfully under the royal chin. “But here comes Doctor Franklin, and your friend the Cacique with him.” In fact, as the monarch spoke, the Minister of the United States made his appearance, followed by a gigantic warrior in the garb of his native woods.

Knowing his place as Minister of a sovereign state, (yielding even then in dignity to none, as it surpasses all now in dignity, in valor, in honesty, in strength, and civilization,) the Doctor nodded to the Queen of France, but kept his hat on as he faced the French monarch, and did not cease whittling the cane he carried in his hand.

“I was waiting for you, sir,” the King said, peevishly, in spite of the alarmed pressure which the Queen gave his royal arm.

“The business of the Republic, sire, must take precedence even of your Majesty’s wishes,” replied Dr. Franklin. “When I was a poor printer’s boy and ran errands, no lad could be more punctual than poor Ben Franklin; but all other things must yield to the service of the United States of North America. I have done. What would you, Sire?” and the intrepid republican eyed the monarch with a serene and easy dignity, which made the descendant of St. Louis feel ill at ease.

“I wished to—to say farewell to Tatua before his departure,” said Louis XVI., looking rather awkward. “Approach, Tatua.” And the gigantic Indian strode up, and stood undaunted before the first magistrate of the French nation: again the feeble monarch quailed before the terrible simplicity of the glance of the denizen of the primaeval forests.

The redoubted chief of the Nose-ring Indians was decorated in his war-paint, and in his top-knot was a peacock’s feather, which had been given him out of the head-dress of the beautiful Princess of Lamballe. His nose, from which hung the ornament from which his ferocious tribe took its designation, was painted a light-blue, a circle of green and orange was drawn round each eye, while serpentine stripes of black, white, and vermilion alternately were smeared on his forehead, and descended over his cheek-bones to his chin. His manly chest was similarly tattooed and painted, and round his brawny neck and arms hung innumerable bracelets and necklaces of human teeth, extracted (one only from each skull) from the jaws of those who had fallen by the terrible tomahawk at his girdle. His moccasins, and his blanket, which was draped on his arm and fell in picturesque folds to his feet, were fringed with tufts of hair—the black, the gray, the auburn, the golden ringlet of beauty, the red lock from the forehead of the Scottish or the Northern soldier, the snowy tress of extreme old age, the flaxen down of infancy—all were there, dreadful reminiscences of the chief’s triumphs in war. The warrior leaned on his enormous rifle, and faced the King.

“And it was with that carabine that you shot Wolfe in ‘57?” said Louis, eying the warrior and his weapon. “’Tis a clumsy lock, and methinks I could mend it,” he added mentally.

“The chief of the French pale-faces speaks truth,” Tatua said. “Tatua was a boy when he went first on the war-path with Montcalm.”

“And shot a Wolfe at the first fire!” said the King.

“The English are braves, though their faces are white,” replied the Indian. “Tatua shot the raging Wolfe of the English; but the other wolves caused the foxes to go to earth.” A smile played round Dr. Franklin’s lips, as he whittled his cane with more vigor than ever.

“I believe, your Excellency, Tatua has done good service elsewhere than at Quebec,” the King said, appealing to the American Envoy: “at Bunker’s Hill, at Brandywine, at York Island? Now that Lafayette and my brave Frenchmen are among you, your Excellency need have no fear but that the war will finish quickly—yes, yes, it will finish quickly. They will teach you discipline, and the way to conquer.”

“King Louis of France,” said the Envoy, clapping his hat down over his head, and putting his arms a-kimbo, “we have learned that from the British, to whom we are superior in everything: and I’d have your Majesty to know that in the art of whipping the world we have no need of any French lessons. If your reglars jine General Washington, ’tis to larn from HIM how Britishers are licked; for I’m blest if YU know the way yet.”

Tatua said, “Ugh,” and gave a rattle with the butt of his carabine, which made the timid monarch start; the eyes of the lovely Antoinette flashed fire, but it played round the head of the dauntless American Envoy harmless as the lightning which he knew how to conjure away.

The King fumbled in his pocket, and pulled out a Cross of the Order of the Bath. “Your Excellency wears no honor,” the monarch said; “but Tatua, who is not a subject, only an ally, of the United States, may. Noble Tatua, I appoint you Knight Companion of my noble Order of the Bath. Wear this cross upon your breast in memory of Louis of France;” and the King held out the decoration to the Chief.

Up to that moment the Chief’s countenance had been impassible. No look either of admiration or dislike had appeared upon that grim and war-painted visage. But now, as Louis spoke, Tatua’s face assumed a glance of ineffable scorn, as, bending his head, he took the bauble.

“I will give it to one of my squaws,” he said. “The papooses in my lodge will play with it. Come, Medecine, Tatua will go and drink fire-water;” and, shouldering his carabine, he turned his broad back without ceremony upon the monarch and his train, and disappeared down one of the walks of the garden. Franklin found him when his own interview with the French Chief Magistrate was over; being attracted to the spot where the Chief was, by the crack of his well-known rifle. He was laughing in his quiet way. He had shot the Colonel of the Swiss Guards through his cockade.

Three days afterwards, as the gallant frigate, the “Repudiator,” was sailing out of Brest Harbor, the gigantic form of an Indian might be seen standing on the binnacle in conversation with Commodore Bowie, the commander of the noble ship. It was Tatua, the Chief of the Nose-rings.

II.

Leatherlegs and Tom Coxswain did not accompany Tatua when he went to the Parisian metropolis on a visit to the father of the French pale-faces. Neither the Legs nor the Sailor cared for the gayety and the crowd of cities; the stout mariner’s home was in the puttock-shrouds of the old “Repudiator.” The stern and simple trapper loved the sound of the waters better than the jargon of the French of the old country. “I can follow the talk of a Pawnee,” he said, “or wag my jaw, if so be necessity bids me to speak, by a Sioux’s council-fire and I can patter Canadian French with the hunters who come for peltries to Nachitoches or Thichimuchimachy; but from the tongue of a Frenchwoman, with white flour on her head, and war-paint on her face, the Lord deliver poor Natty Pumpo.”

“Amen and amen!” said Tom Coxswain. “There was a woman in our aft-scuppers when I went a-whalin in the little ‘Grampus’—and Lord love you, Pumpo, you poor land-swab, she WAS as pretty a craft as ever dowsed a tarpauling—there was a woman on board the ‘Grampus,’ who before we’d struck our first fish, or biled our first blubber, set the whole crew in a mutiny. I mind me of her now, Natty,—her eye was sich a piercer that you could see to steer by it in a Newfoundland fog; her nose stood out like the ‘Grampus’s’ jibboom, and her woice, Lord love you, her woice sings in my ears even now:—it set the Captain a-quarrelin with the Mate, who was hanged in Boston harbor for harpoonin of his officer in Baffin’s Bay;—it set me and Bob Bunting a-pouring broadsides into each other’s old timbers, whereas me and Bob was worth all the women that ever shipped a hawser. It cost me three years’ pay as I’d stowed away for the old mother, and might have cost me ever so much more, only bad luck to me, she went and married a little tailor out of Nantucket; and I’ve hated women and tailors ever since!” As he spoke, the hardy tar dashed a drop of brine from his tawny cheek, and once more betook himself to splice the taffrail.

Though the brave frigate lay off Havre de Grace, she was not idle. The gallant Bowie and his intrepid crew made repeated descents upon the enemy’s seaboard. The coasts of Rutland and merry Leicestershire have still many a legend of fear to tell; and the children of the British fishermen tremble even now when they speak of the terrible “Repudiator.” She was the first of the mighty American war-ships that have taught the domineering Briton to respect the valor of the Republic.

The novelist ever and anon finds himself forced to adopt the sterner tone of the historian, when describing deeds connected with his country’s triumphs. It is well known that during the two months in which she lay off Havre, the “Repudiator” had brought more prizes into that port than had ever before been seen in the astonished French waters. Her actions with the “Dettingen” and the “Elector” frigates form part of our country’s history; their defence—it may be said without prejudice to national vanity—was worthy of Britons and of the audacious foe they had to encounter; and it must be owned, that but for a happy fortune which presided on that day over the destinies of our country, the chance of the combat might have been in favor of the British vessels. It was not until the “Elector” blew up, at a quarter past three P.M., by a lucky shot which fell into her caboose, and communicated with the powder-magazine, that Commodore Bowie was enabled to lay himself on board the “Dettingen,” which he carried sword in hand. Even when the American boarders had made their lodgment on the “Dettingen’s” binnacle, it is possible that the battle would still have gone against us. The British were still seven to one; their carronades, loaded with marline-spikes, swept the gun-deck, of which we had possession, and decimated our little force; when a rifle-ball from the shrouds of the “Repudiator” shot Captain Mumford under the star of the Guelphic Order which he wore, and the Americans, with a shout, rushed up the companion to the quarter-deck, upon the astonished foe. Pike and cutlass did the rest of the bloody work. Rumford, the gigantic first-lieutenant of the “Dettingen,” was cut down by Commodore Bowie’s own sword, as they engaged hand to hand; and it was Tom Coxswain who tore down the British flag, after having slain the Englishman at the wheel. Peace be to the souls of the brave! The combat was honorable alike to the victor and the vanquished; and it never can be said that an American warrior depreciated a gallant foe. The bitterness of defeat was enough to the haughty islanders who had to suffer. The people of Herne Bay were lining the shore, near which the combat took place, and cruel must have been the pang to them when they saw the Stars and Stripes rise over the old flag of the Union, and the “Dettingen” fall down the river in tow of the Republican frigate.

Another action Bowie contemplated: the boldest and most daring perhaps ever imagined by seaman. It is this which has been so wrongly described by European annalists, and of which the British until now have maintained the most jealous secrecy.

Portsmouth Harbor was badly defended. Our intelligence in that town and arsenal gave us precise knowledge of the disposition of the troops, the forts, and the ships there; and it was determined to strike a blow which should shake the British power in its centre.

That a frigate of the size of the “Repudiator” should enter the harbor unnoticed, or could escape its guns unscathed, passed the notions of even American temerity. But upon the memorable 26th of June, 1782, the “Repudiator” sailed out of Havre Roads in a thick fog, under cover of which she entered and cast anchor in Bonchurch Bay, in the Isle of Wight. To surprise the Martello Tower and take the feeble garrison thereunder, was the work of Tom Coxswain and a few of his blue-jackets. The surprised garrison laid down their arms before him.

It was midnight before the boats of the ship, commanded by Lieutenant Bunker, pulled off from Bonchurch with muffled oars, and in another hour were off the Common Hard of Portsmouth, having passed the challenges of the “Thetis” and the “Amphion” frigates, and the “Polyanthus” brig.

There had been on that day great feasting and merriment on board the Flag-ship lying in the harbor. A banquet had been given in honor of the birthday of one of the princes of the royal line of the Guelphs—the reader knows the propensity of Britons when liquor is in plenty. All on board that royal ship were more or less overcome. The Flag-ship was plunged in a deathlike and drunken sleep. The very officer of the watch was intoxicated: he could not see the “Repudiator’s” boats as they shot swiftly through the waters; nor had he time to challenge her seamen as they swarmed up the huge sides of the ship.

At the next moment Tom Coxswain stood at the wheel of the “Royal George”—the Briton who had guarded, a corpse at his feet. The hatches were down. The ship was in possession of the “Repudiator’s” crew. They were busy in her rigging, bending her sails to carry her out of the harbor. The well-known heave of the men at the windlass woke up Kempenfelt in his state-cabin. We know, or rather do not know, the result; for who can tell by whom the lower-deck ports of the brave ship were opened, and how the haughty prisoners below sunk the ship and its conquerors rather than yield her as a prize to the Republic!

Only Tom Coxswain escaped of victors and vanquished. His tale was told to his Captain and to Congress, but Washington forbade its publication; and it was but lately that the faithful seaman told it to me, his grandson, on his hundred-and-fifteenth birthday.

A PLAN FOR A PRIZE NOVEL.

IN A LETTER FROM THE EMINENT DRAMATIST BROWN TO THE EMINENT NOVELIST SNOOKS.

“CAFE DES AVEUGLES.

“MY DEAR SNOOKS,—I am on the look-out here for materials for original comedies such as those lately produced at your theatre; and, in the course of my studies, I have found something, my dear Snooks, which I think will suit your book. You are bringing, I see, your admirable novel, ‘The Mysteries of May Fair,’ to an end—(by the way, the scene, in the 200th number, between the Duke, his Grandmother, and the Jesuit Butler, is one of the most harrowing and exciting I ever read)—and, of course, you must turn your real genius to some other channel; and we may expect that your pen shall not be idle.

“The original plan I have to propose to you, then, is taken from the French, just like the original dramas above mentioned; and, indeed, I found it in the law report of the National newspaper, and a French literary gentleman, M. Emanuel Gonzales, has the credit of the invention. He and an advertisement agent fell out about a question of money, the affair was brought before the courts, and the little plot so got wind. But there is no reason why you should not take the plot and act on it yourself. You are a known man; the public relishes your works; anything bearing the name of Snooks is eagerly read by the masses; and though Messrs. Hookey, of Holywell Street, pay you handsomely, I make no doubt you would like to be rewarded at a still higher figure.

“Unless he writes with a purpose, you know, a novelist in our days is good for nothing. This one writes with a socialist purpose; that with a conservative purpose: this author or authoress with the most delicate skill insinuates Catholicism into you, and you find yourself all but a Papist in the third volume: another doctors you with Low Church remedies to work inwardly upon you, and which you swallow down unsuspiciously, as children do calomel in jelly. Fiction advocates all sorts of truth and causes—doesn’t the delightful bard of the Minories find Moses in everything? M. Gonzales’s plan, and the one which I recommend to my dear Snooks, simply was to write an advertisement novel. Look over The Times or the ‘Directory,’ walk down Regent Street or Fleet Street any day—see what houses advertise most, and put yourself into communication with their proprietors. With your rings, your chains, your studs, and the tip on your chin, I don’t know any greater swell than Bob Snooks. Walk into the shops, I say, ask for the principal, and introduce yourself, saying, ‘I am the great Snooks; I am the author of the “Mysteries of May Fair;” my weekly sale is 281,000; I am about to produce a new work called “The Palaces of Pimlico, or the Curse of the Court,” describing and lashing fearlessly the vices of the aristocracy; this book will have a sale of at least 530,000; it will be on every table—in the boudoir of the pampered duke, as in the chamber of the honest artisan. The myriads of foreigners who are coming to London, and are anxious to know about our national manners, will purchase my book, and carry it to their distant homes. So, Mr. Taylor, or Mr. Haberdasher, or Mr. Jeweller, how much will you stand if I recommend you in my forthcoming novel?’ You may make a noble income in this way, Snooks.

“For instance, suppose it is an upholsterer. What more easy, what more delightful, than the description of upholstery? As thus:—

“‘Lady Emily was reclining on one of Down and Eider’s voluptuous ottomans, the only couch on which Belgravian beauty now reposes, when Lord Bathershins entered, stepping noiselessly over one of Tomkins’s elastic Axminster carpets. “Good heavens, my lord!” she said—and the lovely creature fainted. The Earl rushed to the mantel-piece, where he saw a flacon of Otto’s eau-de-Cologne, and,’ &c.

“Or say it’s a cheap furniture-shop, and it may be brought in just as easily, as thus:—

“‘We are poor, Eliza,’ said Harry Hardhand, looking affectionately at his wife, ‘but we have enough, love, have we not, for our humble wants? The rich and luxurious may go to Dillow’s or Gobiggin’s, but we can get our rooms comfortably furnished at Timmonson’s for 20L.’ And putting on her bonnet, and hanging affectionately on her husband, the stoker’s pretty bride tripped gayly to the well-known mart, where Timmonson, within his usual affability, was ready to receive them.

“Then you might have a touch at the wine-merchant and purveyor. ‘Where did you get this delicious claret, or pate de fois gras, or what you please?’ said Count Blagowski to the gay young Sir Horace Swellmore. The voluptuous Bart answered, ‘At So-and-So’s, or So-and-So’s.’ The answer is obvious. You may furnish your cellar or your larder in this way. Begad, Snooks! I lick my lips at the very idea.

“Then, as to tailors, milliners, bootmakers, &c., how easy to get a word for them! Amranson, the tailor, waited upon Lord Paddington with an assortment of his unrivalled waistcoats, or clad in that simple but aristocratic style of which Schneider ALONE has the secret. Parvy Newcome really looked like a gentleman, and though corpulent and crooked, Schneider had managed to give him, &c. Don’t you see what a stroke of business you might do in this way.

“The shoemaker.—Lady Fanny flew, rather than danced, across the ball-room; only a Sylphide, or Taglioni, or a lady chausseed by Chevillett of Bond Street could move in that fairy way; and

“The hairdresser.—‘Count Barbarossa is seventy years of age,’ said the Earl. ‘I remember him at the Congress of Vienna, and he has not a single gray hair.’ Wiggins laughed. ‘My good Lord Baldock,’ said the old wag, ‘I saw Barbarossa’s hair coming out of Ducroissant’s shop, and under his valet’s arm—ho! ho! ho!’—and the two bon-vivans chuckled as the Count passed by, talking with, &c. &c.

“The gunmaker.—‘The antagonists faced each other; and undismayed before his gigantic enemy, Kilconnel raised his pistol. It was one of Clicker’s manufacture, and Sir Marmaduke knew he could trust the maker and the weapon. “One, two, THREE,” cried O’Tool, and the two pistols went off at that instant, and uttering a terrific curse, the Lifeguardsman,’ &c.—A sentence of this nature from your pen, my dear Snooks, would, I should think, bring a case of pistols and a double-barrelled gun to your lodgings; and, though heaven forbid you should use such weapons, you might sell them, you know, and we could make merry with the proceeds.

“If my hint is of any use to you, it is quite at your service, dear Snooks; and should anything come of it, I hope you will remember your friend.”

THE DIARY OF C. JEAMES DE LA PLUCHE, ESQ.,

WITH HIS LETTERS.

A LUCKY SPECULATOR.

“Considerable sensation has been excited in the upper and lower circles in the West End, by a startling piece of good fortune which has befallen James Plush, Esq., lately footman in a respected family in Berkeley Square.

“One day last week, Mr. James waited upon his master, who is a banker in the City; and after a little blushing and hesitation, said he had saved a little money in service, was anxious to retire, and to invest his savings to advantage.

“His master (we believe we may mention, without offending delicacy, the well-known name of Sir George Flimsy, of the house of Flimsy, Diddler, and Flash,) smilingly asked Mr. James what was the amount of his savings, wondering considerably how, out of an income of thirty guineas—the main part of which he spent in bouquets, silk stockings, and perfumery—Mr. Plush could have managed to lay by anything.

“Mr. Plush, with some hesitation, said he had been SPECULATING IN RAILROADS, and stated his winnings to have been thirty thousand pounds. He had commenced his speculations with twenty, borrowed from a fellow-servant. He had dated his letters from the house in Berkeley Square, and humbly begged pardon of his master for not having instructed the Railway Secretaries who answered his applications to apply at the area-bell.

“Sir George, who was at breakfast, instantly rose, and shook Mr. P. by the hand; Lady Flimsy begged him to be seated, and partake of the breakfast which he had laid on the table; and has subsequently invited him to her grand dejeuner at Richmond, where it was observed that Miss Emily Flimsy, her beautiful and accomplished seventh daughter, paid the lucky gentleman MARKED ATTENTION.

“We hear it stated that Mr. P. is of a very ancient family (Hugo de la Pluche came over with the Conqueror); and the new brougham which he has started bears the ancient coat of his race.

“He has taken apartments in the Albany, and is a director of thirty-three railroads. He proposes to stand for Parliament at the next general election on decidedly conservative principles, which have always been the politics of his family.

“Report says, that even in his humble capacity Miss Emily Flimsy had remarked his high demeanor. Well, ‘None but the brave,’ say we, ‘deserve the fair.’"—Morning Paper.

This announcement will explain the following lines, which have been put into our box² with a West End post-mark. If, as we believe, they are written by the young woman from whom the Millionnaire borrowed the sum on which he raised his fortune, what heart will not melt with sympathy at her tale, and pity the sorrows which she expresses in such artless language?

If it be not too late; if wealth have not rendered its possessor callous; if poor Maryanne BE STILL ALIVE; we trust, we trust, Mr. Plush will do her justice.

² The letter-box of Mr. Punch, in whose columns these papers were first published.

“JEAMES OF BUCKLEY SQUARE.

“A HELIGY.

“Come all ye gents vot cleans the plate,
Come all ye ladies maids so fair— Vile I a story
vill relate
Of cruel Jeames of Buckley Square.
A tighter lad, it is confest,
Neer valked with powder in his air,
Or vore a nosegay in his breast,
Than andsum Jeames of Buckley Square.

“O Evns! it vas the best of sights,
Behind his Master’s coach and pair,
To see our Jeames in red plush tights,
A driving hoff from Buckley Square.
He vel became his hagwilletts,
He cocked his at with SUCH a hair;
His calves and viskers VAS such pets,
That hall loved Jeames of Buckley Square.

“He pleased the hup-stairs folks as vell,
And o! I vithered vith despair,
Missis VOULD ring the parler bell,
And call up Jeames in Buckley Square.
Both beer and sperrits he abhord,
(Sperrits and beer I can’t a bear,)
You would have thought he vas a lord
Down in our All in Buckley Square.

“Last year he visper’d ‘Mary Ann,
Ven I’ve an under’d pound to spare,
To take a public is my plan,
And leave this hojous Buckley Square.’
O how my gentle heart did bound,
To think that I his name should bear.
‘Dear Jeames.’ says I, ‘I’ve twenty pound;
And gev them him in Buckley Square.

“Our master vas a City gent,
His name’s in railroads everywhere,
And lord, vot lots of letters vent
Betwigst his brokers and Buckley Square:
My Jeames it was the letters took,
And read them all, (I think it’s fair,)
And took a leaf from Master’s book,
As HOTHERS do in Buckley Square.

Encouraged with my twenty pound,
Of which poor I was unavare,
He wrote the Companies all round,
And signed hisself from Buckley Square.
And how John Porter used to grin,
As day by day, share after share,
Came railvay letters pouring in,
‘J. Plush, Esquire, in Buckley Square.’

“Our servants’ All was in a rage—
Scrip, stock,
curves, gradients, bull and bear,
Vith butler, coachman, groom and page,
Vas all the talk in Buckley Square.
But O! imagine vot I felt
Last Vensday veek as ever were;
I gits a letter, which I spelt
‘Miss M. A. Hoggins, Buckley Square.’

“He sent me back my money true—
He sent me back my lock of air,
And said, ‘My dear, I bid ajew
To Mary Hann and Buckley Square.
Think not to marry, foolish Hann,
With people who your betters are;
James Plush is now a gentleman,
And you—a cook in Buckley Square.

“‘I’ve thirty thousand guineas won,
In six short months, by genus rare;
You little thought what Jeames was on,
Poor Mary Hann, in Buckley Square.
I’ve thirty thousand guineas net,
Powder and plush I scorn to vear;
And so, Miss Mary Hann, forget
For hever Jeames, of Buckley Square.’”

***

The rest of the MS. is illegible, being literally washed away in a flood of tears.

A LETTER FROM “JEAMES, OF BUCKLEY SQUARE.”

“ALBANY, LETTER X. August 10, 1845.

“SIR,—Has a reglar suscriber to your emusing paper, I beg leaf to state that I should never have done so, had I supposed that it was your abbit to igspose the mistaries of privit life, and to hinjer the delligit feelings of umble individyouals like myself, who have NO IDEER of being made the subject of newspaper criticism.

“I elude, sir, to the unjustafiable use which has been made of my name in your Journal, where both my muccantile speclations and the HINMOST PASHSN OF MY ART have been brot forrards in a ridicklus way for the public emusemint.

“What call, sir, has the public to inquire into the suckmstansies of my engagements with Miss Mary Hann Oggins, or to meddle with their rupsher? Why am I to be maid the hobjick of your REDICULE IN A DOGGRIL BALLIT impewted to her? I say IMPEWTED, because, in MY time at least, Mary Hann could only sign her + mark (has I’ve hoften witnist it for her when she paid hin at the Savings Bank), and has for SACRIFICING TO THE MEWSES and making POATRY, she was as HINCAPIBLE as Mr. Wakley himself.

“With respect to the ballit, my baleaf is, that it is wrote by a footman in a low famly, a pore retch who attempted to rivle me in my affections to Mary Hann—a feller not five foot six, and with no more calves to his legs than a donkey—who was always a-ritin (having been a doctor’s boy) and who I nockt down with a pint of porter (as he well recklex) at the 3 Tuns Jerming Street, for daring to try to make a but of me. He has signed Miss H’s name to his NONSINCE AND LIES: and you lay yourself hopen to a haction for libel for insutting them in your paper.

“It is false that I have treated Miss H. hill in HANY way. That I borrowed 20lb of her is TREW. But she confesses I paid it back. Can hall people say as much of the money THEY’VE lent or borrowed? No. And I not only paid it back, but giv her the andsomest pres’nts: WHICH I NEVER SHOULD HAVE ALLUDED TO, but for this attack. Fust, a silver thimble (which I found in Missus’s work-box); secknd, a vollom of Byrom’s poems; third, I halways brought her a glas of Curasore, when we ad a party, of which she was remarkable fond. I treated her to Hashley’s twice, (and halways a srimp or a hoyster by the way,) and a THOWSND DELIGIT ATTENTIONS, which I sapose count for NOTHINK.

“Has for marridge. Haltered suckmstancies rendered it himpossable. I was gone into a new spear of life—mingling with my native aristoxy. I breathe no sallible of blame against Miss H., but his a hilliterit cookmaid fit to set at a fashnable table? Do young fellers of rank genrally marry out of the Kitching? If we cast our i’s upon a low-born gal, I needn say it’s only a tempory distraction, pore passy le tong. So much for HER claims upon me. Has for THAT BEEST OF A DOCTOR’S BOY he’s unwuthy the notas of a Gentleman.

“That I’ve one thirty thousand lb, AND PRAPS MORE, I dont deny. Ow much has the Kilossus of Railroads one, I should like to know, and what was his cappitle? I hentered the market with 20lb, specklated Jewdicious, and ham what I ham. So may you be (if you have 20lb, and praps you haven’t)—So may you be: if you choose to go in & win.

“I for my part am jusly PROWD of my suxess, and could give you a hundred instances of my gratatude. For igsample, the fust pair of hosses I bought (and a better pair of steppers I dafy you to see in hany curracle,) I crisn’d Hull and Selby, in grateful elusion to my transackshns in that railroad. My riding Cob I called very unhaptly my Dublin and Galway. He came down with me the other day, and I’ve jest sold him at 1/4 discount.

“At fust with prudence and modration I only kep two grooms for my stables, one of whom lickwise waited on me at table. I have now a confidenshle servant, a vally de shamber—He curls my air; inspex my accounts, and hansers my hinvitations to dinner. I call this Vally my TRENT VALLY, for it was the prophit I got from that exlent line, which injuiced me to ingage him.

“Besides my North British Plate and Breakfast equipidge—I have two handsom suvvices for dinner—the goold plate for Sundays, and the silver for common use. When I ave a great party, ‘Trent,’ I say to my man, ‘we will have the London and Bummingham plate today (the goold), or else the Manchester and Leeds (the silver).’ I bought them after realizing on the abuf lines, and if people suppose that the companys made me a presnt of the plate, how can I help it?

“In the sam way I say, ‘Trent, bring us a bottle of Bristol amid Hexeter!’ or, ‘Put some Heastern Counties in hice!’ HE knows what I mean: it’s the wines I bought upon the hospicious tummination of my connexshn with those two railroads.

“So strong, indeed, as this abbit become, that being asked to stand Godfather to the youngest Miss Diddle last weak, I had her christened (provisionally) Rosamell—from the French line of which I am Director; and only the other day, finding myself rayther unwell, ‘Doctor,’ says I to Sir Jeames Clark, ‘I’ve sent to consult you because my Midlands are out of horder; and I want you to send them up to a premium.’ The Doctor lafd, and I beleave told the story subsquintly at Buckinum P-ll-s.

“But I will trouble you no father. My sole objict in writing has been to CLEAR MY CARRATER—to show that I came by my money in a honrable way: that I’m not ashaymd of the manner in which I gayned it, and ham indeed grateful for my good fortune.

“To conclude, I have ad my podigree maid out at the Erald Hoffis (I don’t mean the Morning Erald), and have took for my arms a Stagg. You are corrict in stating that I am of hancient Normin famly. This is more than Peal can say, to whomb I applied for a barnetcy; but the primmier being of low igstraction, natrally stickles for his horder. Consurvative though I be, I MAY CHANGE MY OPINIONS before the next Election, when I intend to hoffer myself as a Candydick for Parlymint.

“Meanwhile, I have the honor to be, Sir,

“Your most obeajnt Survnt,

“FITZ-JAMES DE LA PLUCHE.”

THE DIARY.

One day in the panic week, our friend Jeames called at our office, evidently in great perturbation of mind and disorder of dress. He had no flower in his button-hole; his yellow kid gloves were certainly two days old. He had not above three of the ten chains he usually sports, and his great coarse knotty-knuckled old hands were deprived of some dozen of the rubies, emeralds, and other cameos with which, since his elevation to fortune, the poor fellow has thought fit to adorn himself.

“How’s scrip, Mr. Jeames?” said we pleasantly, greeting our esteemed contributor.

“Scrip be ——,” replied he, with an expression we cannot repeat, and a look of agony it is impossible to describe in print, and walked about the parlor whistling, humming, rattling his keys and coppers, and showing other signs of agitation. At last, “MR. PUNCH,” says he, after a moment’s hesitation, “I wish to speak to you on a pint of businiss. I wish to be paid for my contribewtions to your paper. Suckmstances is altered with me. I—I—in a word, CAN you lend me —L. for the account?”

He named the sum. It was one so great that we don’t care to mention it here; but on receiving a cheque for the amount (on Messrs. Pump and Aldgate, our bankers,) tears came into the honest fellow’s eyes. He squeezed our hand until he nearly wrung it off, and shouting to a cab, he plunged into it at our office-door, and was off to the City.

Returning to our study, we found he had left on our table an open pocket-book, of the contents of which (for the sake of safety) we took an inventory. It contained—three tavern-bills, paid; a tailor’s ditto, unsettled; forty-nine allotments in different companies, twenty-six thousand seven hundred shares in all, of which the market value we take, on an average, to be 1/4 discount; and in an old bit of paper tied with pink ribbon a lock of chestnut hair, with the initials M. A. H.

In the diary of the pocket-book was a journal, jotted down by the proprietor from time to time. At first the entries are insignificant: as, for instance:—“3rd January—Our beer in the Suvnts’ hall so PRECIOUS small at this Christmas time that I reely MUSS give warning, & wood, but for my dear Mary Hann. February 7—That broot Screw, the Butler, wanted to kis her, but my dear Mary Hann boxt his hold hears, & served him right. I DATEST Screw,”—and so forth. Then the diary relates to Stock Exchange operations, until we come to the time when, having achieved his successes, Mr. James quitted Berkeley Square and his livery, and began his life as a speculator and a gentleman upon town. It is from the latter part of his diary that we make the following

EXTRAX:—

“Wen I anounced in the Servnts All my axeshn of forting, and that by the exasize of my own talince and ingianiuty I had reerlized a summ of 20,000 lb. (it was only 5, but what’s the use of a mann depreshiating the qualaty of his own mackyrel?)—wen I enounced my abrup intention to cut—you should have sean the sensation among hall the people! Cook wanted to know whether I woodn like a sweatbred, or the slise of the breast of a Cold Tucky. Screw, the butler, (womb I always detested as a hinsalant hoverbaring beest,) begged me to walk into the Hupper Servnts All, and try a glass of Shuperior Shatto Margo. Heven Visp, the coachmin, eld out his and, & said, ‘Jeames, I hopes theres no quarraling betwigst you & me, & I’ll stand a pot of beer with pleasure.’

“The sickofnts!—that wery Cook had split on me to the Housekeeper ony last week (catchin me priggin some cold tuttle soop, of which I’m remarkable fond). Has for the butler, I always EBOMMINATED him for his precious snears and imperence to all us Gents who woar livry (he never would sit in our parlor, fasooth, nor drink out of our mugs); and in regard of Visp—why, it was ony the day before the wulgar beest hoffered to fite me, and thretnd to give me a good iding if I refused. Gentlemen and ladies,’ says I, as haughty as may be, ‘there’s nothink that I want for that I can’t go for to buy with my hown money, and take at my lodgins in Halbany, letter Hex; if I’m ungry I’ve no need to refresh myself in the KITCHING.’ And so saying, I took a dignified ajew of these minnial domestics; and ascending to my epartment in the 4 pair back, brushed the powder out of my air, and taking off those hojous livries for hever, put on a new soot, made for me by Cullin of St. Jeames Street, and which fitted my manly figger as tight as whacks.

“There was ONE pusson in the house with womb I was rayther anxious to evoid a persnal leave-taking—Mary Hann Oggins, I mean—for my art is natural tender, and I can’t abide seeing a pore gal in pane. I’d given her previous the infamation of my departure—doing the ansom thing by her at the same time—paying her back 20 lb., which she’d lent me 6 months before: and paying her back not only the interest, but I gave her an andsome pair of scissars and a silver thimbil, by way of boanus. ‘Mary Hann,’ says I, ‘suckimstancies has haltered our rellatif positions in life. I quit the Servnts Hall for ever, (for has for your marrying a person in my rank, that, my dear, is hall gammin,) and so I wish you a good-by, my good gal, and if you want to better yourself, halways refer to me.’

“Mary Hann didn’t hanser my speech (which I think was remarkable kind), but looked at me in the face quite wild like, and bust into somethink betwigst a laugh & a cry, and fell down with her ed on the kitching dresser, where she lay until her young Missis rang the dressing-room bell. Would you bleave it? She left the thimbil & things, & my check for 20lb. 10s., on the tabil when she went to hanser the bell. And now I heard her sobbing and vimpering in her own room nex but one to mine, vith the dore open, peraps expecting I should come in and say good-by. But, as soon as I was dressed, I cut down stairs, hony desiring Frederick my fellow-servnt, to fetch me a cabb, and requesting permission to take leaf of my lady & the famly before my departure.”

***

“How Miss Hemly did hogle me to be sure! Her ladyship told me what a sweet gal she was—hamiable, fond of poetry, plays the gitter. Then she hasked me if I liked blond bewties and haubin hair. Haubin, indeed! I don’t like carrits! as it must be confest Miss Hemly’s his—and has for a BLOND BUTY, she has pink I’s like a Halbino, and her face looks as if it were dipt in a brann mash. How she squeeged my & as she went away!

“Mary Hann now HAS haubin air, and a cumplexion like roses and hivory, and I’s as blew as Evin.

“I gev Frederick two and six for fetchin the cabb—been resolved to hact the gentleman in hall things. How he stared!”

“25th.—I am now director of forty-seven hadvantageous lines, and have past hall day in the Citty. Although I’ve hate or nine new soots of close, and Mr. Cullin fits me heligant, yet I fansy they hall reckonise me. Conshns whispers to me, ‘Jeams, you’r hony a footman in disguise hafter all.’”

“28th.—Been to the Hopra. Music tol lol. That Lablash is a wopper at singing. I coodn make out why some people called out ‘Bravo,’ some ‘Bravar,’ and some ‘Bravee.’ ‘Bravee, Lablash,’ says I, at which heverybody laft.

“I’m in my new stall. I’ve had new cushings put in, and my harms in goold on the back. I’m dressed hall in black, excep a gold waistcoat and dimind studds in the embriderd busom of my shameese. I wear a Camallia Jiponiky in my button-ole, and have a double-barreld opera-glas, so big, that I make Timmins, my secnd man, bring it in the other cabb.

“What an igstronry exabishn that Pawdy Carter is! If those four gals are faries, Tellioni is sutnly the fairy Queend. She can do all that they can do, and somethink they can’t. There’s an indiscrible grace about her, and Carlotty, my sweet Carlotty, she sets my art in flams.

“Ow that Miss Hemly was noddin and winkin at me out of their box on the fourth tear?

“What linx i’s she must av. As if I could mount up there!

“P.S.—Talking of MOUNTING HUP! the St. Helena’s walked up 4 per cent this very day.”

“2nd July.—Rode my bay oss Desperation in the park. There was me, Lord George Ringwood (Lord Cinqbar’s son), Lord Ballybunnion, Honorable Capting Trap, & sevral hother young swells. Sir John’s carridge there in coarse. Miss Hemly lets fall her booky as I pass, and I’m obleged to get hoff and pick it hup, & get splashed up to the his. The gettin on hossback agin is halways the juice & hall. Just as I was on, Desperation begins a porring the hair with his 4 feet, and sinks down so on his anches, that I’m blest if I didn’t slip hoff agin over his tail, at which Ballybunnion & the hother chaps rord with lafter.

“As Bally has istates in Queen’s County, I’ve put him on the St. Helena direction. We call it the ‘Great St. Helena Napoleon Junction,’ from Jamestown to Longwood. The French are taking it hup heagerly.”

“6th July.—Dined today at the London Tavin with one of the Welsh bords of Direction I’m hon. The Cwrwmwrw & Plmwyddlywm, with tunnils through Snowding and Plinlimming.

“Great nashnallity of course. Ap Shinkin in the chair, Ap Llwydd in the vice; Welsh mutton for dinner; Welsh iron knives & forks; Welsh rabbit after dinner; and a Welsh harper, be hanged to him: he went strummint on his hojous hinstrument, and played a toon piguliarly disagreeble to me.

“It was PORE MARY HANN. The clarrit holmost choaked me as I tried it, and I very nearly wep myself as I thought of her bewtifle blue i’s. Why HAM I always thinking about that gal? Sasiety is sasiety, it’s lors is irresistabl. Has a man of rank I can’t marry a serving-made. What would Cinqbar and Ballybunnion say?

“P.S.—I don’t like the way that Cinqbars has of borroing money, & halways making me pay the bill. Seven pound six at the ‘Shipp,’ Grinnidge, which I don’t grudge it, for Derbyshire’s brown Ock is the best in Urup; nine pound three at the ‘Trafflygar,’ and seventeen pound sixteen and nine at the ‘Star and Garter,’ Richmond, with the Countess St. Emilion & the Baroness Frontignac. Not one word of French could I speak, and in consquince had nothink to do but to make myself halmost sick with heating hices and desert, while the hothers were chattering and parlyvooing.

“Ha! I remember going to Grinnidge once with Mary Hann, when we were more happy (after a walk in the park, where we ad one gingy-beer betwigst us), more appy with tea and a simple srimp than with hall this splender!”—

“July 24.—My first-floor apartmince in Halbiny is now kimpletely and chasely furnished—the droring-room with yellow satting and silver for the chairs and sophies—hemrall green tabbinet curtings with pink velvet & goold borders and fringes; a light blue Haxminster Carpit, embroydered with tulips; tables, secritaires, cunsoles, &c., as handsome as goold can make them, and candle-sticks and shandalers of the purest Hormolew.

“The Dining-room furniture is all HOAK, British Hoak; round igspanding table, like a trick in a Pantimime, iccommadating any number from 8 to 24—to which it is my wish to restrict my parties. Curtings crimsing damask, Chairs crimsing myrocky. Portricks of my favorite great men decorats the wall—namely, the Duke of Wellington. There’s four of his Grace. For I’ve remarked that if you wish to pass for a man of weight and considdration you should holways praise and quote him. I have a valluble one lickwise of my Queend, and 2 of Prince Halbert—has a Field Martial and halso as a privat Gent. I despise the vulgar SNEARS that are daily hullered aginst that Igsolted Pottentat. Betwigxt the Prins & the Duke hangs me, in the Uniform of the Cinqbar Malitia, of which Cinqbars has made me Capting.

“The Libery is not yet done.

“But the Bedd-roomb is the Jem of the whole. If you could but see it! such a Bedworr! Ive a Shyval Dressing Glass festooned with Walanseens Lace, and lighted up of evenings with rose-colored tapers. Goold dressing-case and twilet of Dresding Cheny. My bed white and gold with curtings of pink and silver brocayd held up a top by a goold Qpid who seems always a smilin angillicly hon me, has I lay with my Ed on my piller hall sarounded with the finest Mechlin. I have a own man, a yuth under him, 2 groombs, and a fimmale for the House. I’ve 7 osses: in cors if I hunt this winter I must increase my ixtablishment.

“N.B. Heverythink looking well in the City. St. Helenas, 12 pm.; Madagascars, 9 5/8; Saffron Hill and Rookery Junction, 24; and the new lines in prospick equily incouraging.

“People phansy it’s hall gaiety and pleasure the life of us fashnabble gents about townd—But I can tell ’em it’s not hall goold that glitters. They don’t know our momints of hagony, hour ours of studdy and reflecshun. They little think when they see Jeames de la Pluche, Exquire, worling round in a walce at Halmax with Lady Hann, or lazaly stepping a kidrill with Lady Jane, poring helegant nothinx into the Countess’s hear at dinner, or gallopin his hoss Desperation hover the exorcisin ground in the Park,—they little think that leader of the tong, seaminkly so reckliss, is a careworn mann! and yet so it is.

“Imprymus. I’ve been ableged to get up all the ecomplishments at double quick, & to apply myself with treemenjuous energy.

“First,—in horder to give myself a hideer of what a gentleman reely is, I’ve read the novvle of ‘Pelham’ six times, and am to go through it 4 times mor.

“I practis ridin and the acquirement of ‘a steady and & a sure seat across Country’ assijuously 4 times a week, at the Hippydrum Riding Grounds. Many’s the tumbil I’ve ad, and the aking boans I’ve suffered from, though I was grinnin in the Park or laffin at the Opra.

“Every morning from 6 till 9, the innabitance of Halbany may have been surprised to hear the sounds of music ishuing from the apartmince of Jeames de la Pluche, Exquire, Letter Hex. It’s my dancing-master. From six to nine we have walces and polkies—at nine, ‘mangtiang & depotment,’ as he calls it & the manner of hentering a room, complimenting the ost and ostess & compotting yourself at table. At nine I henter from my dressing-room (has to a party), I make my bow—my master (he’s a Marquis in France, and ad misfortins, being connected with young Lewy Nepoleum) reseaves me—I hadwance—speak abowt the weather & the toppix of the day in an elegant & cussory manner. Brekfst is enounced by Fitzwarren, my mann—we precede to the festive bord—complimence is igschanged with the manner of drinking wind, addressing your neighbor, employing your napking & finger-glas, &c. And then we fall to brekfst, when I prommiss you the Marquis don’t eat like a commoner. He says I’m gettn on very well—soon I shall be able to inwite people to brekfst, like Mr. Mills, my rivle in Halbany; Mr. Macauly, (who wrote that sweet book of ballets, ‘The Lays of Hancient Rum;’) & the great Mr. Rodgers himself.

“The above was wrote some weeks back. I HAVE given brekfst sins then, reglar Deshunys. I have ad Earls and Ycounts—Barnits as many as I chose: and the pick of the Railway world, of which I form a member. Last Sunday was a grand Fate. I had the Eleet of my friends: the display was sumptious; the company reshershy. Everything that Dellixy could suggest was provided by Gunter. I had a Countiss on my right & (the Countess of Wigglesbury, that loveliest and most dashing of Staggs, who may be called the Railway Queend, as my friend George H—— is the Railway King,) on my left the Lady Blanche Bluenose, Prince Towrowski, the great Sir Huddlestone Fuddlestone from the North, and a skoar of the fust of the fashn. I was in my GLOARY—the dear Countess and Lady Blanche was dying with lauffing at my joax and fun—I was keeping the whole table in a roar—when there came a ring at my door-bell, and sudnly Fitzwarren, my man, henters with an air of constanation. ‘Theres somebody at the door,’ says he in a visper.

“‘Oh, it’s that dear Lady Hemily,’ says I, ‘and that lazy raskle of a husband of hers. Trot them in, Fitzwarren,’ (for you see by this time I had adopted quite the manners and hease of the arristoxy.)—And so, going out, with a look of wonder he returned presently, enouncing Mr. & Mrs. Blodder.

“I turned gashly pail. The table—the guests—the Countiss—Towrouski, and the rest, weald round & round before my hagitated I’s. IT WAS MY GRANDMOTHER AND Huncle Bill. She is a washerwoman at Healing Common, and he—he keeps a wegetable donkey-cart.

“Y, Y hadn’t John, the tiger, igscluded them? He had tried. But the unconscious, though worthy creeters, adwanced in spite of him, Huncle Bill bringing in the old lady grinning on his harm!

“Phansy my feelinx.”

“Immagin when these unfortnat members of my famly hentered the room: you may phansy the ixtonnishment of the nobil company presnt. Old Grann looked round the room quite estounded by its horiental splender, and huncle Bill (pulling off his phantail, & seluting the company as respeckfly as his wulgar natur would alow) says—‘Crikey, Jeames, you’ve got a better birth here than you ad where you were in the plush and powder line.’ ‘Try a few of them plovers hegs, sir,’ I says, whishing, I’m asheamed to say, that somethink would choke huncle B——; ‘and I hope, mam, now you’ve ad the kindniss to wisit me, a little refreshment won’t be out of your way.’

“This I said, detummind to put a good fase on the matter: and because in herly times I’d reseaved a great deal of kindniss from the hold lady, which I should be a roag to forgit. She paid for my schooling; she got up my fine linning gratis; shes given me many & many a lb; and manys the time in appy appy days when me and Maryhann has taken tea. But never mind THAT. ‘Mam,’ says I, ‘you must be tired hafter your walk.’

“‘Walk? Nonsince, Jeames,’ says she; ‘it’s Saturday, & I came in, in THE CART.’ ‘Black or green tea, maam?’ says Fitzwarren, intarupting her. And I will say the feller showed his nouce & good breeding in this difficklt momink; for he’d halready silenced huncle Bill, whose mouth was now full of muffinx, am, Blowny sausag, Perrigole pie, and other dellixies.

“‘Wouldn’t you like a little SOMETHINK in your tea, Mam,’ says that sly wagg Cinqbars. ‘HE knows what I likes,’ replies the hawfle hold Lady, pinting to me, (which I knew it very well, having often seen her take a glass of hojous gin along with her Bohee), and so I was ableeged to horder Fitzwarren to bring round the licures, and to help my unfortnit rellatif to a bumper of Ollands. She tost it hoff to the elth of the company, giving a smack with her lipps after she’d emtied the glas, which very nearly caused me to phaint with hagny. But, luckaly for me, she didn’t igspose herself much farther: for when Cinqbars was pressing her to take another glas, I cried out, ‘Don’t, my lord,’ on which old Grann hearing him edressed by his title, cried out, ‘A Lord! o law!’ and got up and made him a cutsy, and coodnt be peswaded to speak another word. The presents of the noble gent heavidently made her uneezy.

“The Countiss on my right and had shownt symtms of ixtream disgust at the beayvior of my relations, and having called for her carridg, got up to leave the room, with the most dignified hair. I, of coarse, rose to conduct her to her weakle. Ah, what a contrast it was! There it stood, with stars and garters hall hover the pannels; the footmin in peach-colored tites; the hosses worth 3 hundred apiece;—and there stood the horrid LINNEN-CART, with ‘Mary Blodder, Laundress, Ealing, Middlesex,’ wrote on the bord, and waiting till my abandind old parint should come out.

“Cinqbars insisted upon helping her in. Sir Huddlestone Fuddlestone, the great Barnet from the North, who, great as he is, is as stewpid as a howl, looked on, hardly trusting his goggle I’s as they witnessed the sean. But little lively good naterd Lady Kitty Quickset, who was going away with the Countiss, held her little & out of the carridge to me and said, ‘Mr. De la Pluche, you are a much better man than I took you to be. Though her Ladyship IS horrified, & though your Grandmother DID take gin for breakfast, don’t give her up. No one ever came to harm yet for honoring their father & mother.’

“And this was a sort of consolation to me, and I observed that all the good fellers thought none the wuss of me. Cinqbars said I was a trump for sticking up for the old washerwoman; Lord George Gills said she should have his linning; and so they cut their joax, and I let them. But it was a great releaf to my mind when the cart drove hoff.

“There was one pint which my Grandmother observed, and which, I muss say, I thought lickwise: ‘Ho, Jeames,’ says she, ‘hall those fine ladies in sattns and velvets is very well, but there’s not one of em can hold a candle to Mary Hann.’”

“Railway Spec is going on phamusly. You should see how polite they har at my bankers now! Sir Paul Pump Aldgate, & Company. They bow me out of the back parlor as if I was a Nybobb. Every body says I’m worth half a millium. The number of lines they’re putting me upon is inkumseavable. I’ve put Fitzwarren, my man, upon several. Reginald Fitzwarren, Esquire, looks splendid in a perspectus; and the raskle owns that he has made two thowsnd.

“How the ladies, & men too, foller and flatter me! If I go into Lady Binsis hopra box, she makes room for me, who ever is there, and cries out, ‘O do make room for that dear creature!’ And she complyments me on my taste in musick, or my new Broom-oss, or the phansy of my weskit, and always ends by asking me for some shares. Old Lord Bareacres, as stiff as a poaker, as prowd as loosyfer, as poor as Joab—even he condysends to be sivvle to the great De la Pluche, and begged me at Harthur’s, lately, in his sollom, pompus way, ‘to faver him with five minutes’ conversation.’ I knew what was coming—application for shares—put him down on my private list. Would’nt mind the Scrag End Junction passing through Bareacres—hoped I’d come down and shoot there.

“I gave the old humbugg a few shares out of my own pocket. ‘There, old Pride,’ says I, ‘I like to see you down on your knees to a footman. There, old Pompossaty! Take fifty pound; I like to see you come cringing and begging for it.’ Whenever I see him in a VERY public place, I take my change for my money. I digg him in the ribbs, or slap his padded old shoulders. I call him, ‘Bareacres, my old buck!’ and I see him wince. It does my art good.

“I’m in low sperits. A disagreeable insadent has just occurred. Lady Pump, the banker’s wife, asked me to dinner. I sat on her right, of course, with an uncommon gal ner me, with whom I was getting on in my fassanating way—full of lacy ally (as the Marquis says) and easy plesntry. Old Pump, from the end of the table, asked me to drink shampane; and on turning to tak the glass I saw Charles Wackles (with womb I’d been imployed at Colonel Spurriers’ house) grinning over his shoulder at the butler.

“The beest reckonised me. Has I was putting on my palto in the hall, he came up again: ‘HOW DY DOO, Jeames?’ says he, in a findish visper. ‘Just come out here, Chawles,’ says I, ‘I’ve a word for you, my old boy.’ So I beckoned him into Portland Place, with my pus in my hand, as if I was going to give him a sovaring.

“‘I think you said “Jeames,” Chawles,’ says I, ‘and grind at me at dinner?’

“‘Why, sir.’ says he, ‘we’re old friends, you know.’

“‘Take that for old friendship then,’ says I, and I gave him just one on the noas, which sent him down on the pavemint as if he’d been shot. And mounting myjesticly into my cabb, I left the rest of the grinning scoundrills to pick him up, & droav to the Clubb.”

“Have this day kimpleated a little efair with my friend George, Earl Bareacres, which I trust will be to the advantidge both of self & that noble gent. Adjining the Bareacre proppaty is a small piece of land of about 100 acres, called Squallop Hill, igseeding advantageous for the cultivation of sheep, which have been found to have a pickewlear fine flaviour from the natur of the grass, tyme, heather, and other hodarefarus plants which grows on that mounting in the places where the rox and stones don’t prevent them. Thistles here is also remarkable fine, and the land is also devided hoff by luxurient Stone Hedges—much more usefle and ickonomicle than your quickset or any of that rubbishing sort of timber: indeed the sile is of that fine natur, that timber refuses to grow there altogether. I gave Bareacres 50L. an acre for this land (the igsact premium of my St. Helena Shares)—a very handsom price for land which never yielded two shillings an acre; and very convenient to his Lordship I know, who had a bill coming due at his Bankers which he had given them. James de la Pluche, Esquire, is thus for the fust time a landed propriator—or rayther, I should say, is about to reshume the rank & dignity in the country which his Hancestors so long occupied.

“I have caused one of our inginears to make me a plann of the Squallop Estate, Diddlesexshire, the property of &c. &c., bordered on the North by Lord Bareacres’ Country; on the West by Sir Granby Growler; on the South by the Hotion. An Arkytect & Survare, a young feller of great emagination, womb we have employed to make a survey of the Great Caffranan line, has built me a beautiful Villar (on paper), Plushton Hall, Diddlesex, the seat of I de la P., Esquire. The house is reprasented a handsome Itallian Structer, imbusmd in woods, and circumwented by beautiful gardings. Theres a lake in front with boatsful of nobillaty and musitions floting on its placid sufface—and a curricle is a driving up to the grand hentrance, and me in it, with Mrs., or perhaps Lady Hangelana de la Pluche. I speak adwisedly. I MAY be going to form a noble kinexion. I may be (by marridge) going to unight my family once more with Harrystoxy, from which misfortn has for some sentries separated us. I have dreams of that sort.

“I’ve sean sevral times in a dalitifle vishn a SERTING ERL, standing in a hattitude of bennydiction, and rattafying my union with a serting butifle young lady, his daughter. Phansy Mr. or Sir Jeames and lady Hangelina de la Pluche! Ho! what will the old washywoman, my grandmother, say? She may sell her mangle then, and shall too by my honor as a Gent.”

“As for Squallop Hill, its not to be emadgind that I was going to give 5000 lb. for a bleak mounting like that, unless I had some ideer in vew. Ham I not a Director of the Grand Diddlesex? Don’t Squallop lie amediately betwigst Old Bone House, Single Gloster, and Scrag End, through which cities our line passes? I will have 400,000 lb. for that mounting, or my name is not Jeames. I have arranged a little barging too for my friend the Erl. The line will pass through a hangle of Bareacre Park. He shall have a good compensation I promis you; and then I shall get back the 3000 I lent him. His banker’s acount, I fear, is in a horrid state.”

[The Diary now for several days contains particulars of no interest to the public:—Memoranda of City dinners—meetings of Directors—fashionable parties in which Mr. Jeames figures, and nearly always by the side of his new friend, Lord Bareacres, whose “pompossaty,” as previously described, seems to have almost entirely subsided.]

We then come to the following:—

“With a prowd and thankfle Art, I copy off this morning’s Gayzett the following news:—

“‘Commission signed by the Lord Lieutenant of the County of Diddlesex.

“‘JAMES AUGUSTUS DE LA PLUCHE, Esquire, to be Deputy Lieutenant.’”

“‘North Diddlesex Regiment of Yeomanry Cavalry.

“‘James Augustus de la Pluche, Esquire, to be Captain, vice Blowhard, promoted.”’

“And his it so? Ham I indeed a landed propriator—a Deppaty Leftnant—a Capting? May I hatend the Cort of my Sovring? and dror a sayber in my country’s defens? I wish the French WOOD land, and me at the head of my squadring on my hoss Desparation. How I’d extonish ’em! How the gals will stare when they see me in youniform! How Mary Hann would—but nonsince! I’m halways thinking of that pore gal. She’s left Sir John’s. She couldn’t abear to stay after I went, I’ve heerd say. I hope she’s got a good place. Any sumn of money that would sett her up in bisniss, or make her comfarable, I’d come down with like a mann. I told my granmother so, who sees her, and rode down to Healing on porpose on Desparation to leave a five lb. noat in an anvylope. But she’s sent it back, sealed with a thimbill.”

Tuesday.—Reseaved the folloing letter from Lord B——, rellatiff to my presntation at Cort and the Youniform I shall wear on that hospicious seramony:—

“‘MY DEAR DE LA PLUCHE,—I THINK you had better be presented as a Deputy Lieutenant. As for the Diddlesex Yeomanry, I hardly know what the uniform is now. The last time we were out was in 1803, when the Prince of Wales reviewed us, and when we wore French gray jackets, leathers, red morocco boots, crimson pelisses, brass helmets with leopard-skin and a white plume, and the regulation pig-tail of eighteen inches. That dress will hardly answer at present, and must be modified, of coarse. We were called the White Feathers, in those days. For my part, I decidedly recommend the Deputy Lieutenant.

“‘I shall be happy to present you at the Levee and at the Drawing-room. Lady Bareacres will be in town for the 13th, with Angelina, who will be presented on that day. My wife has heard much of you, and is anxious to make your acquaintance.

“‘All my people are backward with their rents: for heaven’s sake, my dear fellow, lend me five hundred and oblige

“‘Yours, very gratefully,

“‘BAREACRES.’

“Note.—Bareacres may press me about the Depity Leftnant; but I’M for the cavvlery.”

“Jewly will always be a sacrid anniwussary with me. It was in that month that I became persnally ecquaintid with my Prins and my gracious Sovarink.

“Long before the hospitious event acurd, you may imadgin that my busm was in no triffling flutter. Sleaplis of nights, I past them thinking of the great ewent—or if igsosted natur DID clothes my highlids—the eyedear of my waking thoughts pevaded my slummers. Corts, Erls, presntations, Goldstix, gracious Sovarinx mengling in my dreembs unceasnly. I blush to say it (for humin prisumpshn never surely igseeded that of my wicked wickid vishn), one night I actially dremt that Her R. H. the Princess Hallis was grown up, and that there was a Cabinit Counsel to detummin whether her & was to be bestoad on me or the Prins of Sax–Muffinhausen-Pumpenstein, a young Prooshn or Germing zion of nobillaty. I ask umly parding for this hordacious ideer.

“I said, in my fommer remarx, that I had detummined to be presented to the notus of my reveared Sovaring in a melintary coschewm. The Court-shoots in which Sivillians attend a Levy are so uncomming like the—the—livries (ojous wud! I 8 to put it down) I used to wear before entering sosiaty, that I couldn’t abide the notium of wearing one. My detummination was fumly fixt to apeer as a Yominry Cavilry Hoffiser, in the galleant youniform of the North Diddlesex Huzzas.

“Has that redgmint had not been out sins 1803, I thought myself quite hotherized to make such halterations in the youniform as shuited the presnt time and my metured and elygint taste. Pig-tales was out of the question. Tites I was detummind to mintain. My legg is praps the finist pint about me, and I was risolved not to hide it under a booshle.

“I phixt on scarlit tites, then, imbridered with goold, as I have seen Widdicomb wear them at Hashleys when me and Mary Hann used to go there. Ninety-six guineas worth of rich goold lace and cord did I have myhandering hall hover those shoperb inagspressables.

“Yellow marocky Heshn boots, red eels, goold spurs and goold tassels as bigg as belpulls.

“Jackit—French gray and silver oringe fasings & cuphs, according to the old patn; belt, green and goold, tight round my pusn, & settin hoff the cemetry of my figgar NOT DISADVINTAJUSLY.

“A huzza paleese of pupple velvit & sable fir. A sayber of Demaskus steal, and a sabertash (in which I kep my Odiclone and imbridered pocket ankercher), kimpleat my acooterments, which, without vannaty, was, I flatter myself, UNEAK.

“But the crownding triumph was my hat. I couldnt wear a cock At. The huzzahs dont use ’em. I wouldnt wear the hojous old brass Elmet & Leppardskin. I choas a hat which is dear to the memry of hevery Brittn; an at which was inwented by my Feeld Marshle and adord Prins; an At which VULGAR PREJIDIS & JOAKING has in vane etempted to run down. I chose the HALBERT AT. I didn’t tell Bareacres of this egsabishn of loilty, intending to SURPRISE him. The white ploom of the West Diddlesex Yomingry I fixt on the topp of this Shacko, where it spread hout like a shaving-brush.

“You may be sure that befor the fatle day arrived, I didnt niglect to practus my part well; and had sevral REHUSTLES, as they say.

“This was the way. I used to dress myself in my full togs. I made Fitzwarren, my boddy servnt, stand at the dor, and figger as the Lord in Waiting. I put Mrs. Bloker, my laundress, in my grand harm chair to reprasent the horgust pusn of my Sovring; Frederick, my secknd man, standing on her left, in the hattatude of an illustrus Prins Consort. Hall the Candles were lighted. ‘Captain de la Pluche, presented by Herl Bareacres,’ Fitzwarren, my man, igsclaimed, as adwancing I made obasins to the Thrown. Nealin on one nee, I cast a glans of unhuttarable loilty towards the British Crownd, then stepping gracefully hup, (my Dimascus Simiter WOULD git betwigst my ligs, in so doink, which at fust was wery disagreeble)—rising hup grasefly, I say, I flung a look of manly but respeckfl hommitch tords my Prins, and then ellygntly ritreated backards out of the Roil Presents. I kep my 4 suvnts hup for 4 hours at this gaym the night before my presntation, and yet I was the fust to be hup with the sunrice. I COODNT sleep that night. By abowt six o’clock in the morning I was drest in my full uniform; and I didnt know how to pass the interveaning hours.

“‘My Granmother hasnt seen me in full phigg,’ says I. ‘It will rejoice that pore old sole to behold one of her race so suxesfle in life. Has I ave read in the novle of “Kennleworth,” that the Herl goes down in Cort dress and extoneshes Hamy Robsart, I will go down in all my splender and astownd my old washywoman of a Granmother.’ To make this detummination; to horder my Broom; to knock down Frederick the groomb for delaying to bring it; was with me the wuck of a momint. The next sor as galliant a cavyleer as hever rode in a cabb, skowering the road to Healing.

“I arrived at the well-known cottitch. My huncle was habsent with the cart; but the dor of the humble eboad stood hopen, and I passed through the little garding where the close was hanging out to dry. My snowy ploom was ableeged to bend under the lowly porch, as I hentered the apartmint.

“There was a smell of tea there—there’s always a smell of tea there—the old lady was at her Bohee as usual. I advanced tords her; but ha! phansy my extonishment when I sor Mary Hann!

“I halmost faintid with himotion. ‘Ho, Jeames!’ (she has said to me subsquintly) ‘mortial mann never looked so bewtifle as you did when you arrived on the day of the Levy. You were no longer mortial, you were diwine!’

“R! what little Justas the hartist has done to my mannly etractions in the groce carriketure he’s made of me.”³

³ This refers to an illustrated edition of the work.

***

“Nothing, perhaps, ever created so great a sensashun as my hentrance to St. Jeames’s, on the day of the Levy. The Tuckish Hambasdor himself was not so much remarked as my shuperb turn out.

“As a Millentary man, and a North Diddlesex Huzza, I was resolved to come to the ground on HOSSBACK. I had Desparation phigd out as a charger, and got 4 Melentery dresses from Ollywell Street, in which I drest my 2 men (Fitzwarren, hout of livry, woodnt stand it,) and 2 fellers from Rimles, where my hosses stand at livry. I rode up St. Jeames’s Street, with my 4 Hadycongs—the people huzzaying—the gals waving their hankerchers, as if I were a Foring Prins—hall the winders crowdid to see me pass.

“The guard must have taken me for a Hempror at least, when I came, for the drums beat, and the guard turned out and seluted me with presented harms.

“What a momink of triumth it was! I sprung myjestickly from Desperation. I gav the rains to one of my horderlies, and, salewting the crowd, I past into the presnts of my Most Gracious Mrs.

“You, peraps, may igspect that I should narrait at lenth the suckmstanzas of my hawjince with the British Crown. But I am not one who would gratafy IMPUTTNINT CURAIOSATY. Rispect for our reckonized instatewtions is my fust quallaty. I, for one, will dye rallying round my Thrown.

“Suffise it to say, when I stood in the Horgust Presnts,—when I sor on the right & of my Himperial Sovring that Most Gracious Prins, to admire womb has been the chief Objick of my life, my busum was seased with an imotium which my Penn rifewses to dixcribe—my trembling knees halmost rifused their hoffis—I reckleck nothing mor until I was found phainting in the harms of the Lord Chamberling. Sir Robert Peal apnd to be standing by (I knew our wuthy Primmier by Punch’s picturs of him, igspecially his ligs), and he was conwussing with a man of womb I shall say nothink, but that he is a hero of 100 fites, AND HEVERY FITE HE FIT HE ONE. Nead I say that I elude to Harthur of Wellingting? I introjuiced myself to these Jents, and intend to improve the equaintance, and peraps ast Guvmint for a Barnetcy.

“But there was ANOTHER pusn womb on this droring-room I fust had the inagspressable dalite to beold. This was that Star of fashing, that Sinecure of neighboring i’s, as Milting observes, the ecomplisht Lady Hangelina Thistlewood, daughter of my exlent frend, John George Godfrey de Bullion Thistlewood, Earl of Bareacres, Baron Southdown, in the Peeridge of the United Kingdom, Baron Haggismore, in Scotland, K.T., Lord Leftnant of the County of Diddlesex, &c. &c. This young lady was with her Noble Ma, when I was kinducted tords her. And surely never lighted on this hearth a more delightfle vishn. In that gallixy of Bewty the Lady Hangelina was the fairest Star—in that reath of Loveliness the sweetest Rosebud! Pore Mary Hann, my Art’s young affeckshns had been senterd on thee; but like water through a sivv, her immidge disappeared in a momink, and left me intransd in the presnts of Hangelina.

“Lady Bareacres made me a myjestick bow—a grand and hawfle pusnage her Ladyship is, with a Roming Nose, and an enawmus ploom of Hostridge phethers; the fare Hangelina smiled with a sweetness perfickly bewhildring, and said, ‘O, Mr. De la Pluche, I’m so delighted to make your acquaintance. I have often heard of you.’

“‘Who,’ says I, ‘has mentioned my insiggnificknt igsistance to the fair Lady Hangelina? kel bonure igstrame poor mwaw!’ (For you see I’ve not studdied ‘Pelham’ for nothink, and have lunt a few French phraces, without which no Gent of fashn speaks now.)

“‘O,’ replies my lady, ‘it was Papa first; and then a very, VERY old friend of yours.’

“‘Whose name is,’ says I, pusht on by my stoopid curawsaty—

“‘Hoggins—Mary Ann Hoggins’—ansurred my lady (laffing phit to splitt her little sides). ‘She is my maid, Mr. De la Pluche, and I’m afraid you are a very sad, sad person.’

“‘A mere baggytell,’ says I. ‘In fommer days I WAS equainted with that young woman; but haltered suckmstancies have sepparated us for hever, and mong cure is irratreevably perdew elsewhere.’

“‘Do tell me all about it. Who is it? When was it? We are all dying to know.”

“‘Since about two minnits, and the Ladys name begins with a HA,’ says I, looking her tendarly in the face, and conjring up hall the fassanations of my smile.

“‘Mr. De la Pluche,’ here said a gentleman in whiskers and mistashes standing by, ‘hadn’t you better take your spurs out of the Countess of Bareacres’ train?’—‘Never mind Mamma’s train’ (said Lady Hangelina): ‘this is the great Mr. De la Pluche, who is to make all our fortunes—yours too. Mr. de la Pluche, let me present you to Captain George Silvertop,’—The Capting bent just one jint of his back very slitely; I retund his stare with equill hottiness. ‘Go and see for Lady Bareacres’ carridge, George,’ says his Lordship; and vispers to me, ‘a cousin of ours—a poor relation.’ So I took no notis of the feller when he came back, nor in my subsquint visits to Hill Street, where it seems a knife and fork was laid reglar for this shabby Capting.”

“Thusday Night.—O Hangelina, Hangelina, my pashn for you hogments daily! I’ve bean with her two the Hopra. I sent her a bewtifle Camellia Jyponiky from Covn Garding, with a request she would wear it in her raving Air. I woar another in my butnole. Evns, what was my sattusfackshn as I leant hover her chair, and igsammined the house with my glas!

“She was as sulky and silent as pawsble, however—would scarcely speek; although I kijoled her with a thowsnd little plesntries. I spose it was because that wulgar raskle Silvertop WOOD stay in the box. As if he didn’t know (Lady B.‘s as deaf as a poast and counts for nothink) that people SOMETIMES like a tatytaty.”

“Friday.—I was sleeples all night. I gave went to my feelings in the folloring lines—there’s a hair out of Balfe’s Hopera that she’s fond of. I edapted them to that mellady.

“She was in the droring-room alone with Lady B. She was wobbling at the pyanna as I hentered. I flung the convasation upon mewsick; said I sung myself (I’ve ad lesns lately of Signor Twankydillo); and, on her rekwesting me to faver her with somethink, I bust out with my pom:

“‘WHEN MOONLIKE OER THE HAZURE SEAS.

“‘When moonlike ore the hazure seas
In soft effulgence swells,
When silver jews and balmy breaze
Bend down the Lily’s bells;
When calm and deap, the rosy sleap
Has lapt your soal in dreems,
R Hangeline! R lady mine!
Dost thou remember Jeames?

“‘I mark thee in the Marble All,
Where Englands loveliest shine—
I say the fairest of them hall
Is Lady Hangeline.
My soul, in desolate eclipse,
With recollection teems—
And then I hask, with weeping lips
Dost thou remember Jeames?

“‘Away! I may not tell thee hall
This soughring heart endures—
There is a lonely sperrit-call
That Sorrow never cures;
There is a little, little Star,
That still above me beams;
It is the Star of Hope—but ar!
Dost thou remember Jeames?’

“When I came to the last words, ‘Dost thou remember Je-e-e-ams?’ I threw such an igspresshn of unuttrable tenderniss into the shake at the hend, that Hangelina could bare it no more. A bust of uncumtrollable emotium seized her. She put her ankercher to her face and left the room. I heard her laffing and sobbing histerickly in the bedwor.

“O Hangelina—My adord one, My Arts joy!” . . .

“BAREACRES, me, the ladies of the famly, with their sweet Southdown, B’s eldest son, and George Silvertop, the shabby Capting (who seems to git leaf from his ridgmint whenhever he likes,) have beene down into Diddlesex for a few days, enjying the spawts of the feald there.

“Never having done much in the gunning line (since when a hinnasent boy, me and Jim Cox used to go out at Healing, and shoot sparrers in the Edges with a pistle)—I was reyther dowtfle as to my suxes as a shot, and practusd for some days at a stoughd bird in a shooting gallery, which a chap histed up and down with a string. I sugseaded in itting the hannimle pretty well. I bought Awker’s ‘Shooting–Guide,’ two double-guns at Mantings, and salected from the French prints of fashn the most gawjus and ellygant sportting ebillyment. A lite blue velvet and goold cap, woar very much on one hear, a cravatt of yaller & green imbroidered satting, a weskit of the McGrigger plaid, & a jacket of the McWhirter tartn, (with large, motherapurl butns, engraved with coaches & osses, and sporting subjix,) high leather gayters, and marocky shooting shoes, was the simple hellymence of my costewm, and I flatter myself set hoff my figger in rayther a fayverable way. I took down none of my own pusnal istablishmint except Fitzwarren, my hone mann, and my grooms, with Desparation and my curricle osses, and the Fourgong containing my dressing-case and close.

“I was heverywhere introjuiced in the county as the great Railroad Cappitlist, who was to make Diddlesex the most prawsperous districk of the hempire. The squires prest forrards to welcome the new comer amongst ’em; and we had a Hagricultural Meating of the Bareacres tenantry, where I made a speech droring tears from heavery i. It was in compliment to a layborer who had brought up sixteen children, and lived sixty years on the istate on seven bobb a week. I am not prowd, though I know my station. I shook hands with that mann in lavinder kidd gloves. I told him that the purshuit of hagriculture wos the noblist hockupations of humannaty: I spoke of the yoming of Hengland, who (under the command of my hancisters) had conquered at Hadjincourt & Cressy; and I gave him a pair of new velveteen inagspressables, with two and six in each pocket, as a reward for three score years of labor. Fitzwarren, my man, brought them forrards on a satting cushing. Has I sat down defning chears selewted the horator; the band struck up ‘The Good Old English Gentleman.’ I looked to the ladies galry; my Hangelina waived her ankasher and kissd her &; and I sor in the distans that pore Mary Hann efected evidently to tears by my ellaquints.”

“What an adwance that gal has made since she’s been in Lady Hangelina’s company! Sins she wears her young lady’s igsploded gownds and retired caps and ribbings, there’s an ellygance abowt her which is puffickly admarable; and which, haddid to her own natral bewty & sweetniss, creates in my boozum serting sensatiums . . . Shor! I MUSTN’T give way to fealinx unwuthy of a member of the aristoxy. What can she be to me but a mear recklection—a vishn of former ears?

“I’m blest if I didn mistake her for Hangelina herself yesterday. I met her in the grand Collydore of Bareacres Castle. I sor a lady in a melumcolly hattatude gacing outawinder at the setting sun, which was eluminating the fair parx and gardings of the ancient demean.

“‘Bewchus Lady Hangelina,’ says I—‘A penny for your Ladyship’s thought,’ says I.

“‘Ho, Jeames! Ho, Mr. De la Pluche!’ hansered a well-known vice, with a haxnt of sadnis which went to my art. ‘YOU know what my thoughts are, well enough. I was thinking of happy, happy old times, when both of us were poo—poo—oor,’ says Mary Hann, busting out in a phit of crying, a thing I can’t ebide. I took her and tried to cumft her: I pinted out the diffrents of our sitawashns; igsplained to her that proppaty has its jewties as well as its previletches, and that MY juty clearly was to marry into a noble famly. I kep on talking to her (she sobbing and going hon hall the time) till Lady Hangelina herself came up—‘The real Siming Pewer,’ as they say in the play.

“There they stood together—them two young women. I don’t know which is the ansamest. I coodn help comparing them; and I coodnt help comparing myself to a certing Hannimle I’ve read of, that found it difficklt to make a choice betwigst 2 Bundles of A.”

“That ungrateful beest Fitzwarren—my oan man—a feller I’ve maid a fortune for—a feller I give 100 lb. per hannum to!—a low bred Wallydyshamber! HE must be thinking of falling in love too! and treating me to his imperence.

“He’s a great big athlatic feller—six foot i, with a pair of black whiskers like air-brushes—with a look of a Colonel in the harmy—a dangerous pawmpus-spoken raskle I warrunt you. I was coming ome from shuiting this hafternoon—and passing through Lady Hangelina’s flour-garding, who should I see in the summerouse, but Mary Hann pretending to em an ankyshr and Mr. Fitzwarren paying his cort to her?

“‘You may as well have me, Mary Hann,’ says he. ‘I’ve saved money. We’ll take a public-house and I’ll make a lady of you. I’m not a purse-proud ungrateful fellow like Jeames—who’s such a snob (‘such a SNOB’ was his very words!) that I’m ashamed to wait on him—who’s the laughing stock of all the gentry and the housekeeper’s room too—try a MAN,’ says he—‘don’t be taking on about such a humbug as Jeames.’

“Here young Joe the keaper’s sun, who was carrying my bagg, bust out a laffing thereby causing Mr. Fitwarren to turn round and intarupt this polite convasation.

“I was in such a rayge. ‘Quit the building, Mary Hann,’ says I to the young woman—and you, Mr. Fitzwarren, have the goodness to remain.’

“‘I give you warning,’ roars he, looking black, blue, yaller—all the colors of the ranebo.

“‘Take off your coat, you imperent, hungrateful scoundrl,’ says I.

“‘It’s not your livery,’ says he.

“‘Peraps you’ll understand me, when I take off my own,’ says I, unbuttoning the motherapurls of the MacWhirter tartn. ‘Take my jackit, Joe,’ says I to the boy,—and put myself in a hattitude about which there was NO MISTAYK.

***

“He’s 2 stone heavier than me—and knows the use of his ands as well as most men; but in a fite, BLOOD’S EVERYTHINK: the Snobb can’t stand before the gentleman; and I should have killed him, I’ve little doubt, but they came and stopt the fite betwigst us before we’d had more than 2 rounds.

“I punisht the raskle tremenjusly in that time, though; and I’m writing this in my own sittn-room, not being able to come down to dinner on account of a black-eye I’ve got, which is sweld up and disfiggrs me dreadfl.”

“On account of the hoffle black i which I reseaved in my rangcounter with the hinfimus Fitzwarren, I kep my roomb for sevral days, with the rose-colored curtings of the apartmint closed, so as to form an agreeable twilike; and a light-bloo sattin shayd over the injard pheacher. My woons was thus made to become me as much as pawsable; and (has the Poick well observes ‘Nun but the Brayv desuvs the Fare’) I cumsoled myself in the sasiaty of the ladies for my tempory disfiggarment.

“It was Mary Hann who summind the House and put an end to my phisticoughs with Fitzwarren. I licked him and bare him no mallis: but of corse I dismist the imperent scoundrill from my suvvis, apinting Adolphus, my page, to his post of confidenshle Valley.

“Mary Hann and her young and lovely Mrs. kep paying me continyoul visits during my retiremint. Lady Hangelina was halways sending me messidges by her: while my exlent friend, Lady Bareacres (on the contry) was always sending me toakns of affeckshn by Hangelina. Now it was a coolin hi-lotium, inwented by herself, that her Ladyship would perscribe—then, agin, it would be a booky of flowers (my favrit polly hanthuses, pellagoniums, and jyponikys), which none but the fair &s of Hangelina could dispose about the chamber of the hinvyleed. Ho! those dear mothers! when they wish to find a chans for a galliant young feller, or to ixtablish their dear gals in life, what awpertunities they WILL give a man! You’d have phansied I was so hill (on account of my black hi), that I couldnt live exsep upon chicking and spoon-meat, and jellies, and blemonges, and that I coudnt eat the latter dellixies (which I ebomminate onternoo, prefurring a cut of beaf or muttn to hall the kickpshaws of France), unless Hangelina brought them. I et ’em, and sacrafised myself for her dear sayk.

“I may stayt here that in privit convasations with old Lord B. and his son, I had mayd my proposals for Hangelina, and was axepted, and hoped soon to be made the appiest gent in Hengland.

“‘You must break the matter gently to her,’ said her hexlent father. ‘You have my warmest wishes, my dear Mr. De la Pluche, and those of my Lady Bareacres; but I am not—not quite certain about Lady Angelina’s feelings. Girls are wild and romantic. They do not see the necessity of prudent establishments, and I have never yet been able to make Angelina understand the embarrassments of her family. These silly creatures prate about love and a cottage, and despise advantages which wiser heads than theirs know how to estimate.’

“‘Do you mean that she aint fassanated by me?’ says I, bursting out at this outrayjus ideer.

“‘She WILL be, my dear sir. You have already pleased her,—your admirable manners must succeed in captivating her, and a fond father’s wishes will be crowned on the day in which you enter our family.’

“‘Recklect, gents,’ says I to the 2 lords,—‘a barging’s a barging—I’ll pay hoff Southdown’s Jews, when I’m his brother. As a STRAYNGER’—(this I said in a sarcastickle toan)—‘I wouldn’t take such a LIBBATY. When I’m your suninlor I’ll treble the valyou of your estayt. I’ll make your incumbrinces as right as a trivit, and restor the ouse of Bareacres to its herly splender. But a pig in a poak is not the way of transacting bisniss imployed by Jeames De la Pluche, Esquire.’

“And I had a right to speak in this way. I was one of the greatest scrip-holders in Hengland; and calclated on a kilossle fortune. All my shares was rising immence. Every poast brot me noose that I was sevral thowsands richer than the day befor. I was detummind not to reerlize till the proper time, and then to buy istates; to found a new family of Delapluches, and to alie myself with the aristoxy of my country.

“These pints I reprasented to pore Mary Hann hover and hover agin. ‘If you’d been Lady Hangelina, my dear gal,’ says I, ‘I would have married you: and why don’t I? Because my dooty prewents me. I’m a marter to dooty; and you, my pore gal, must cumsole yorself with that ideer.’

“There seemed to be a consperracy, too, between that Silvertop and Lady Hangelina to drive me to the same pint. ‘What a plucky fellow you were, Pluche,’ says he (he was rayther more familiar than I liked), ‘in your fight with Fitzwarren—to engage a man of twice your strength and science, though you were sure to be beaten’ (this is an etroashous folsood: I should have finnisht Fitz in 10 minnits), ‘for the sake of poor Mary Hann! That’s a generous fellow. I like to see a man risen to eminence like you, having his heart in the right place. When is to be the marriage, my boy?’

“‘Capting S.’ says I, ‘my marridge consunns your most umble servnt a precious sight more than you;’—and I gev him to understand I didn’t want him to put in HIS ore—I wasn’t afrayd of his whiskers, I prommis you, Capting as he was. I’m a British Lion, I am as brayv as Bonypert, Hannible, or Holiver Crummle, and would face bagnits as well as any Evy drigoon of ’em all.

“Lady Hangelina, too, igspawstulated in her hartfl way. ‘Mr. De la Pluche (seshee), why, why press this point? You can’t suppose that you will be happy with a person like me?’

“‘I adoar you, charming gal!’ says I. ‘Never, never go to say any such thing.’

“‘You adored Mary Ann first,’ answers her ladyship; ‘you can’t keep your eyes off her now. If any man courts her you grow so jealous that you begin beating him. You will break the girl’s heart if you don’t marry her, and perhaps some one else’s—but you don’t mind THAT.’

“‘Break yours, you adoarible creature! I’d die first! And as for Mary Hann, she will git over it; people’s arts aint broakn so easy. Once for all, suckmstances is changed betwigst me and er. It’s a pang to part with her’ (says I, my fine hi’s filling with tears), ‘but part from her I must.’

“It was curius to remark abowt that singlar gal, Lady Hangelina, that melumcolly as she was when she was talking to me, and ever so disml—yet she kep on laffing every minute like the juice and all.

“‘What a sacrifice!’ says she; ‘it’s like Napoleon giving up Josephine. What anguish it must cause to your susceptible heart!’

“‘It does,’ says I—‘Hagnies!’ (Another laff.)

“‘And if—if I don’t accept you—you will invade the States of the Emperor, my papa, and I am to be made the sacrifice and the occasion of peace between you!’

“‘I don’t know what you’re eluding to about Joseyfeen and Hemperors your Pas; but I know that your Pa’s estate is over hedaneers morgidged; that if some one don’t elp him, he’s no better than an old pawper; that he owes me a lot of money; and that I’m the man that can sell him up hoss & foot; or set him up agen—THAT’S what I know, Lady Hangelina,’ says I, with a hair as much as to say, ‘Put THAT in your ladyship’s pipe and smoke it.’

“And so I left her, and nex day a serting fashnable paper enounced—

“‘MARRIAGE IN HIGH LIFE.—We hear that a matrimonial union is on the tapis between a gentleman who has made a colossal fortune in the Railway World, and the only daughter of a noble earl, whose estates are situated in D-ddles-x. An early day is fixed for this interesting event.’”

“Contry to my expigtations (but when or ow can we reckn upon the fealinx of wimming?) Mary Hann didn’t seem to be much efected by the hideer of my marridge with Hangelinar. I was rayther disapinted peraps that the fickle young gal reckumsiled herself so easy to give me hup, for we Gents are creechers of vannaty after all, as well as those of the hopsit secks; and betwigst you and me there WAS mominx, when I almost wisht that I’d been borne a Myommidn or Turk, when the Lor would have permitted me to marry both these sweet beinx, wherehas I was now condemd to be appy with ony one.

“Meanwild everythink went on very agreeable betwigst me and my defianced bride. When we came back to town I kemishnd Mr. Showery the great Hoctionear to look out for a town maushing sootable for a gent of my qualaty. I got from the Erald Hoffis (not the Mawning Erald—no, no, I’m not such a Mough as to go THERE for ackrit infamation) an account of my famly, my harms and pedigry.

“I hordered in Long Hacre, three splendid equipidges, on which my arms and my adord wife’s was drawn & quartered; and I got portricks of me and her paynted by the sellabrated Mr. Shalloon, being resolved to be the gentleman in all things, and knowing that my character as a man of fashn wasn’t compleat unless I sat to that dixtinguished Hartist. My likenis I presented to Hangelina. It’s not considered flattring—and though SHE parted with it, as you will hear, mighty willingly, there’s ONE young lady (a thousand times handsomer) that values it as the happle of her hi.

“Would any man beleave that this picture was soald at my sale for about a twenty-fifth part of what it cost me? It was bought in by Maryhann, though: ‘O dear Jeames,’ says she, often (kissing of it & pressing it to her art), ‘it isn’t ansum enough for you, and hasn’t got your angellick smile and the igspreshn of your dear dear i’s.’

“Hangelina’s pictur was kindly presented to me by Countess B., her mamma, though of coarse I paid for it. It was engraved for the ‘Book of Bewty’ the same year.

“With such a perfusion of ringlits I should scarcely have known her—but the ands, feat, and i’s, was very like. She was painted in a gitar supposed to be singing one of my little melladies; and her brother Southdown, who is one of the New England poits, wrote the follering stanzys about her:—

“LINES UPON MY SISTER’S PORTRAIT.

“BY THE LORD SOUTHDOWN.

“The castle towers of Bareacres are fair upon the lea,
Where the cliffs of bonny Diddlesex rise up from out the sea:
I stood upon the donjon keep and view’d the country o’er,
I saw the lands of Bareacres for fifty miles or more.
I stood upon the donjon keep—it is a sacred place,—Where
floated for eight hundred years the banner of my race;
Argent, a dexter sinople, and gules an azure field,
There ne’er was nobler cognizance on knightly warrior’s shield.

“The first time England saw the shield ’twas round a Norman neck,
On board a ship from Valery, King William was on deck.
A Norman lance the colors wore, in Hastings’ fatal fray—St.
Willibald for Bareacres! ’twas double gules that day!
O Heaven and sweet St. Willibald! in many a battle since
A loyal-hearted Bareacres has ridden by his Prince!
At Acre with Plantagenet, with Edward at Poitiers,
The pennon of the Bareacres was foremost on the spears!

“’Twas pleasant in the battle-shock to hear our war-cry ringing:
O grant me, sweet St. Willibald, to listen to such singing!
Three hundred steel-clad gentlemen, we drove the foe before us,
And thirty score of British bows kept twanging to the chorus!
O knights, my noble ancestors! and shall I never hear
Saint Willibald for Bareacres through battle ringing clear?
I’d cut me off this strong right hand a single hour to ride,
And strike a blow for Bareacres, my fathers, at your side!

“Dash down, dash down, yon Mandolin, beloved sister mine!
Those blushing lips may never sing the glories of our line:
Our ancient castles echo to the clumsy feet of churls,
The spinning Jenny houses in the mansion of our Earls.
Sing not, sing not, my Angeline! in days so base and vile,
’Twere sinful to be happy, ’twere sacrilege to smile.
I’ll hie me to my lonely hall, and by its cheerless hob
I’ll muse on other days, and wish—and wish I were.—A SNOB.”

“All young Hengland, I’m told, considers the poim bewtifle. They’re always writing about battleaxis and shivvlery, these young chaps; but the ideer of Southdown in a shoot of armer, and his cuttin hoff his ‘strong right hand,’ is rayther too good; the feller is about 5 fit hi,—as ricketty as a babby, with a vaist like a gal; and though he may have the art and curridge of a Bengal tyger, I’d back my smallest cab-boy to lick him,—that is, if I AD a cab-boy. But io! MY cab-days is over.

“Be still my hagnizing Art! I now am about to hunfoald the dark payges of the Istry of my life!”

“My friends! you’ve seen me ither2 in the full kerear of Fortn, prawsprus but not hover prowd of my prawsperraty; not dizzy though mounted on the haypix of Good Luck—feasting hall the great (like the Good Old Henglish Gent in the song, which he has been my moddle and igsample through life), but not forgitting the small—No, my beayvior to my granmother at Healing shows that. I bot her a new donkey cart (what the French call a cart-blansh) and a handsome set of peggs for anging up her linning, and treated Huncle Bill to a new shoot of close, which he ordered in St. Jeames’s Street, much to the estonishment of my Snyder there, namely an olliffgreen velvyteen jackit and smalclose, and a crimsn plush weskoat with glas-buttns. These pints of genarawsaty in my disposishn I never should have eluded to, but to show that I am naturally of a noble sort, and have that kind of galliant carridge which is equel to either good or bad forting.

“What was the substns of my last chapter? In that everythink was prepayred for my marridge—the consent of the parents of my Hangelina was gaynd, the lovely gal herself was ready (as I thought) to be led to Himing’s halter—the trooso was hordered—the wedding dressis were being phitted hon—a weddinkake weighing half a tunn was a gettn reddy by Mesurs Gunter of Buckley Square; there was such an account for Shantilly and Honiton laces as would have staggerd hennyboddy (I know they did the Commissioner when I came hup for my Stiffikit), and has for Injar-shawls I bawt a dozen sich fine ones as never was given away—no not by Hiss Iness the Injan Prins Juggernaut Tygore. The juils (a pearl and dimind shoot) were from the establishmint of Mysurs Storr and Mortimer. The honey-moon I intended to pass in a continentle excussion, and was in treaty for the ouse at Halberd-gate (hopsit Mr. Hudson’s) as my town-house. I waited to cumclude the putchis untle the Share–Markit which was rayther deprest (oing I think not so much to the atax of the misrable Times as to the prodidjus flams of the Morning Erald) was restored to its elthy toan. I wasn’t goin to part with scrip which was 20 primmium at 2 or 3: and bein confidnt that the Markit would rally, had bought very largely for the two or three new accounts.

“This will explane to those unfortnight traydsmen to womb I gayv orders for a large igstent ow it was that I couldn’t pay their accounts. I am the soal of onour—but no gent can pay when he has no money—it’s not MY fault if that old screw Lady Bareacres cabbidged three hundred yards of lace, and kep back 4 of the biggest diminds and seven of the largist Injar Shawls—it’s not MY fault if the tradespeople didn git their goods back, and that Lady B. declared they were LOST. I began the world afresh with the close on my back, and thirteen and six in money, concealing nothink, giving up heverythink, Onist and undismayed, and though beat, with pluck in me still, and ready to begin agin.

“Well—it was the day before that apinted for my Unium. The ‘Ringdove’ steamer was lying at Dover ready to carry us hoff. The Bridle apartmince had been hordered at Salt Hill, and subsquintly at Balong sur Mare—the very table cloth was laid for the weddn brexfst in Ill Street, and the Bride’s Right Reverend Huncle, the Lord Bishop of Bullocksmithy, had arrived to sellabrayt our unium. All the papers were full of it. Crowds of the fashnable world went to see the trooso, and admire the Carridges in Long Hacre. Our travleng charrat (light bloo lined with pink satting, and vermillium and goold weals) was the hadmaration of all for quiet ellygns. We were to travel only 4, viz. me, my lady, my vally, and Mary Hann as famdyshamber to my Hangelina. Far from oposing our match, this worthy gal had quite givn into it of late, and laught and joakt, and enjoyd our plans for the fewter igseedinkly.

“I’d left my lovely Bride very gay the night before—aving a multachewd of bisniss on, and Stockbrokers’ and bankers’ accounts to settle: atsettrey atsettrey. It was layt before I got these in horder: my sleap was feavrish, as most mens is when they are going to be marrid or to be hanged. I took my chocklit in bed about one: tride on my wedding close, and found as ushle that they became me exeedingly.

“One thing distubbed my mind—two weskts had been sent home. A blush-white satting and gold, and a kinary colored tabbinet imbridered in silver: which should I wear on the hospicious day? This hadgitated and perplext me a good deal. I detummined to go down to Hill Street and cumsult the Lady whose wishis were henceforth to be my HALLINALL; and wear whichever SHE phixt on.

“There was a great bussel and distubbans in the Hall in Ill Street: which I etribyouted to the eproaching event. The old porter stared meost uncommon when I kem in-the footman who was to enounce me laft I thought—I was going up stairs—

“‘Her ladyship’s not—not at HOME,’ says the man; ‘and my lady’s hill in bed.’

“‘Git lunch,’ says I, ‘I’ll wait till Lady Hangelina returns.’

“At this the feller loox at me for a momint with his cheex blown out like a bladder, and then busts out in a reglar guffau! the porter jined in it, the impident old raskle: and Thomas says, slapping his and on his thy, without the least respect—I say, Huffy, old boy! ISN’T this a good un?’

“‘Wadyermean, you infunnle scoundrel,’ says I, ‘hollaring and laffing at me?’

“‘Oh, here’s Miss Mary Hann coming up,’ says Thomas, ‘ask HER’—and indeed there came my little Mary Hann tripping down the stairs—her &s in her pockits; and when she saw me, SHE began to blush and look hod & then to grin too.

“‘In the name of Imperence,’ says I, rushing on Thomas, and collaring him fit to throttle him—‘no raskle of a flunky shall insult ME,’ and I sent him staggerin up aginst the porter, and both of ’em into the hall-chair with a flopp—when Mary Hann, jumping down, says, ‘O James! O Mr. Plush! read this’—and she pulled out a billy doo.

“I reckanized the and-writing of Hangelina.”

“Deseatful Hangelina’s billy ran as follows:—

“‘I had all along hoped that you would have relinquished pretensions which you must have seen were so disagreeable to me; and have spared me the painful necessity of the step which I am compelled to take. For a long time I could not believe my parents were serious in wishing to sacrifice me, but have in vain entreated them to spare me. I cannot undergo the shame and misery of a union with you. To the very last hour I remonstrated in vain, and only now anticipate by a few hours, my departure from a home from which they themselves were about to expel me.

“‘When you receive this, I shall be united to the person to whom, as you are aware, my heart was given long ago. My parents are already informed of the step I have taken. And I have my own honor to consult, even before their benefit: they will forgive me, I hope and feel, before long.

“‘As for yourself, may I not hope that time will calm your exquisite feelings too? I leave Mary Ann behind me to console you. She admires you as you deserve to be admired, and with a constancy which I entreat you to try and imitate. Do, my dear Mr. Plush, try—for the sake of your sincere friend and admirer, A.

“‘P.S. I leave the wedding-dresses behind for her: the diamonds are beautiful, and will become Mrs. Plush admirably.’

“This was hall!—Confewshn! And there stood the footmen sniggerin, and that hojus Mary Hann half a cryin, half a laffing at me! ‘Who has she gone hoff with?’ rors I; and Mary Hann (smiling with one hi) just touched the top of one of the Johns’ canes who was goin out with the noats to put hoff the brekfst. It was Silvertop then!

“I bust out of the house in a stayt of diamoniacal igsitement!

“The stoary of that ilorpmint I have no art to tell. Here it is from the Morning Tatler newspaper:—

“ELOPEMENT IN HIGH LIFE.

“THE ONLY AUTHENTIC ACCOUNT.

“The neighborhood of Berkeley Square, and the whole fashionable world, has been thrown into a state of the most painful excitement by an event which has just placed a noble family in great perplexity and affliction.

“It has long been known among the select nobility and gentry that a marriage was on the tapis between the only daughter of a Noble Earl, and a Gentleman whose rapid fortunes in the railway world have been the theme of general remark. Yesterday’s paper, it was supposed, in all human probability would have contained an account of the marriage of James De la Pl-che, Esq., and the Lady Angelina ——, daughter of the Right honorable the Earl of B-re-cres. The preparations for this ceremony were complete: we had the pleasure of inspecting the rich trousseau (prepared by Miss Twiddler, of Pall Mall); the magnificent jewels from the establishment of Messrs. Storr and Mortimer; the elegant marriage cake, which, already cut up and portioned, is, alas! not destined to be eaten by the friends of Mr. De la Pl-che; the superb carriages, and magnificent liveries, which had been provided in a style of the most lavish yet tasteful sumptuosity. The Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Bullocksmithy had arrived in town to celebrate the nuptials, and is staying at Mivart’s. What must have been the feelings of that venerable prelate, what those of the agonized and noble parents of the Lady Angelina—when it was discovered, on the day previous to the wedding, that her Ladyship had fled the paternal mansion! To the venerable Bishop the news of his noble niece’s departure might have been fatal: we have it from the waiters of Mivart’s that his Lordship was about to indulge in the refreshment of turtle soup when the news was brought to him; immediate apoplexy was apprehended; but Mr. Macann, the celebrated surgeon of Westminster, was luckily passing through Bond Street at the time, and being promptly called in, bled and relieved the exemplary patient. His Lordship will return to the Palace, Bullocksmithy, tomorrow.

“The frantic agonies of the Right Honorable the Earl of Bareacres can be imagined by every paternal heart. Far be it from us to disturb—impossible is it for us to describe their noble sorrow. Our reporters have made inquiries every ten minutes at the Earl’s mansion in Hill Street, regarding the health of the Noble Peer and his incomparable Countess. They have been received with a rudeness which we deplore but pardon. One was threatened with a cane; another, in the pursuit of his official inquiries, was saluted with a pail of water; a third gentleman was menaced in a pugilistic manner by his Lordship’s porter; but being of an Irish nation, a man of spirit and sinew, and Master of Arts of Trinity College, Dublin, the gentleman of our establishment confronted the menial, and having severely beaten him, retired to a neighboring hotel much frequented by the domestics of the surrounding nobility, and there obtained what we believe to be the most accurate particulars of this extraordinary occurrence.

“George Frederick Jennings, third footman in the establishment of Lord Bareacres, stated to our employe as follows:—Lady Angelina had been promised to Mr. De la Pluche for near six weeks. She never could abide that gentleman. He was the laughter of all the servants’ hall. Previous to his elevation he had himself been engaged in a domestic capacity. At that period he had offered marriage to Mary Ann Hoggins, who was living in the quality of ladies’-maid in the family where Mr. De la P. was employed. Miss Hoggins became subsequently lady’s-maid to Lady Angelina—the elopement was arranged between those two. It was Miss Hoggins who delivered the note which informed the bereaved Mr. Plush of his loss.

“Samuel Buttons, page to the Right honorable the Earl of Bareacres, was ordered on Friday afternoon at eleven o’clock to fetch a cabriolet from the stand in Davies Street. He selected the cab No. 19,796, driven by George Gregory Macarty, a one-eyed man from Clonakilty, in the neighborhood of Cork, Ireland (of whom more anon), and waited, according to his instructions, at the corner of Berkeley Square with his vehicle. His young lady, accompanied by her maid, Miss Mary Ann Hoggins, carrying a band-box, presently arrived, and entered the cab with the box: what were the contents of that box we have never been able to ascertain. On asking her Ladyship whether he should order the cab to drive in any particular direction, he was told to drive to Madame Crinoline’s, the eminent milliner in Cavendish Square. On requesting to know whether he should accompany her Ladyship, Buttons was peremptorily ordered by Miss Hoggins to go about his business.

“Having now his clue, our reporter instantly went in search of cab 19,796, or rather the driver of that vehicle, who was discovered with no small difficulty at his residence, Whetstone Park, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where he lives with his family of nine children. Having received two sovereigns, instead doubtless of two shillings (his regular fare, by the way, would have been only one-and-eightpence), Macarty had not gone out with the cab for the two last days, passing them in a state of almost ceaseless intoxication. His replies were very incoherent in answer to the queries of our reporter; and, had not that gentleman himself been a compatriot, it is probable he would have refused altogether to satisfy the curiosity of the public.

“At Madame Crinoline’s, Miss Hoggins quitted the carriage, and A GENTLEMAN entered it. Macarty describes him as a very CLEVER gentleman (meaning tall) with black moustaches, Oxford-gray trousers, and black hat and a pea-coat. He drove the couple TO THE EUSTON SQUARE STATION, and there left them. How he employed his time subsequently we have stated.

“At the Euston Square Station, the gentleman of our establishment learned from Frederick Corduroy, a porter there, that a gentleman answering the above description had taken places to Derby. We have despatched a confidential gentleman thither, by a special train, and shall give his report in a second edition.

“SECOND EDITION.

“(From our Reporter.)

“NEWCASTLE, Monday.

“I am just arrived at this ancient town, at the ‘Elephant and Cucumber Hotel.’ A party travelling under the name of MR. AND MRS. JONES, the gentleman wearing moustaches, and having with them a blue band-box, arrived by the train two hours before me, and have posted onwards to SCOTLAND. I have ordered four horses, and write this on the hind boot, as they are putting to.

“THIRD EDITION.

“GRETNA GREEN, Monday Evening.

“The mystery is at length solved. This afternoon, at four o’clock, the Hymeneal Blacksmith, of Gretna Green, celebrated the marriage between George Granby Silvertop, Esq., a Lieutenant in the 150th Hussars, third son of General John Silvertop, of Silvertop Hall, Yorkshire, and Lady Emily Silvertop, daughter of the late sister of the present Earl of Bareacres, and the Lady Angelina Amelia Arethusa Anaconda Alexandrina Alicompania Annemaria Antoinetta, daughter of the last-named Earl Bareacres.

(Here follows a long extract from the Marriage Service in the Book of Common Prayer, which was not read on the occasion, and need not be repeated here.)

“After the ceremony, the young couple partook of a slight refreshment of sherry and water—the former the Captain pronounced to be execrable; and, having myself tasted some glasses from the VERY SAME BOTTLE with which the young and noble pair were served, I must say I think the Captain was rather hard upon mine host of the ‘Bagpipes Hotel and Posting–House,’ whence they instantly proceeded. I follow them as soon as the horses have fed.

“FOURTH EDITION.

“SHAMEFUL TREATMENT OF OUR REPORTER.

“WHISTLEBINKIE, N. B. Monday, Midnight.

“I arrived at this romantic little villa about two hours after the newly married couple, whose progress I have the honor to trace, reached Whistlebinkie. They have taken up their residence at the ‘Cairngorm Arms’—mine is at the other hostelry, the ‘Clachan of Whistlebinkie.’

“On driving up to the ‘Cairngorm Arms,’ I found a gentleman of military appearance standing at the doer, and occupied seemingly in smoking a cigar. It was very dark as I descended from my carriage, and the gentleman in question exclaimed, ‘Is it you, Southdown my boy? You have come too late; unless you are come to have some supper;’ or words to that effect. I explained that I was not the Lord Viscount Southdown, and politely apprised Captain Silvertop (for I justly concluded the individual before me could be no other) of his mistake.

“‘Who the deuce’ (the Captain used a stronger term) ‘are you, then?’ said Mr. Silvertop. ‘Are you Baggs and Tapewell, my uncle’s attorneys? If you are, you have come too late for the fair.’

“I briefly explained that I was not Baggs and Tapewell, but that my name was J—ms, and that I was a gentleman connected with the establishment of the Morning Tatler newspaper.

“‘And what has brought you here, Mr. Morning Tatler?’ asked my interlocutor, rather roughly. My answer was frank—that the disappearance of a noble lady from the house of her friends had caused the greatest excitement in the metropolis, and that my employers were anxious to give the public every particular regarding an event so singular.

“‘And do you mean to say, sir, that you have dogged me all the way from London, and that my family affairs are to be published for the readers of the Morning Tatler newspaper? The Morning Tatter be ——(the Captain here gave utterance to an oath which I shall not repeat) and you too, sir; you unpudent meddling scoundrel.’

“‘Scoundrel, sir!’ said I. ‘Yes,’ replied the irate gentleman, seizing me rudely by the collar—and he would have choked me, but that my blue satin stock and false collar gave way, and were left in the hands of this GENTLEMAN. ‘Help, landlord!’ I loudly exclaimed, adding, I believe, ‘murder,’ and other exclamations of alarm. In vain I appealed to the crowd, which by this time was pretty considerable; they and the unfeeling post-boys only burst into laughter, and called out, ‘Give it him, Captain.’ A struggle ensued, in which I have no doubt I should have had the better, but that the Captain, joining suddenly in the general and indecent hilarity, which was doubled when I fell down, stopped and said, ‘Well, Jims, I won’t fight on my marriage-day. Go into the tap, Jims, and order a glass of brandy-and-water at my expense—and mind I don’t see your face tomorrow morning, or I’ll make it more ugly than it is.’

“With these gross expressions and a cheer from the crowd, Mr. Silvertop entered the inn. I need not say that I did not partake of his hospitality, and that personally I despise his insults. I make them known that they may call down the indignation of the body of which I am a member, and throw myself on the sympathy of the public, as a gentleman shamefully assaulted and insulted in the discharge of a public duty.”

“Thus you’ve sean how the flower of my affeckshns was tawn out of my busm, and my art was left bleading. Hangelina! I forgive thee. Mace thou be appy! If ever artfelt prayer for others wheel awailed on i, the beink on womb you trampled addresses those subblygations to Evn in your be1/2!

“I went home like a maniack, after hearing the announcement of Hangelina’s departur. She’d been gone twenty hours when I heard the fatle noose. Purshoot was vain. Suppose I DID kitch her up, they were married, and what could we do? This sensable remark I made to Earl Bareacres, when that distragted nobleman igspawstulated with me. Er who was to have been my mother-inlor, the Countiss, I never from that momink sor agin. My presnts, troosoes, juels, &c., were sent back—with the igsepshn of the diminds and Cashmear shawl, which her Ladyship COODN’T FIND. Ony it was whispered that at the nex buthday she was seen with a shawl IGSACKLY OF THE SAME PATTN. Let er keep it.

“Southdown was phurius. He came to me hafter the ewent, and wanted me adwance 50 lb., so that he might purshew his fewgitif sister—but I wasn’t to be ad with that sort of chaugh—there was no more money for THAT famly. So he went away, and gave huttrance to his feelinx in a poem, which appeared (price 2 guineas) in the Bel Assombly.

“All the juilers, manchumakers, lacemen, coch bilders, apolstrers, hors dealers, and weddencake makers came pawring in with their bills, haggravating feelings already woondid beyond enjurants. That madniss didn’t seaze me that night was a mussy. Fever, fewry, and rayge rack’d my hagnized braind, and drove sleap from my throbbink ilids. Hall night I follered Hangelinar in imadganation along the North Road. I wented cusses & mallydickshuns on the hinfamus Silvertop. I kickd and rord in my unhuttarable whoe! I seazed my pillar: I pitcht into it: pummld it, strangled it. Ha har! I thought it was Silvertop writhing in my Jint grasp; and taw the hordayshis villing lim from lim in the terrible strenth of my despare! . . . Let me drop a cutting over the memries of that night. When my boddy-suvnt came with my ot water in the mawning, the livid copse in the charnill was not payler than the gashly De la Pluche!

“‘Give me the Share-list, Mandeville,’ I micanickly igsclaimed. I had not perused it for the past 3 days, my etention being engayged elseware. Hevns & huth!—what was it I red there? What was it that made me spring outabed as if sumbady had given me cold pig?—I red Rewin in that Share-list—the Pannick was in full hoparation!

***

“Shall I describe that kitastrafy with which hall Hengland is familliar? My & rifewses to cronnicle the misfortns which lassarated my bleeding art in Hoctober last. On the fust of Hawgust where was I? Director of twenty-three Companies; older of scrip hall at a primmium, and worth at least a quarter of a millium. On Lord Mare’s day my Saint Helenas quotid at 14 pm, were down at 1/2 discount; my Central Ichaboes at 3/8 discount; my Table Mounting & Hottentot Grand Trunk, no where; my Bathershins and Derrynane Beg, of which I’d bought 2000 for the account at 17 primmium, down to nix; my Juan Fernandez, my Great Central Oregons, prostrit. There was a momint when I thought I shouldn’t be alive to write my own tail!”

(Here follow in Mr. Plush’s MS. about twenty-four pages of railroad calculations, which we pretermit.)

“Those beests, Pump & Aldgate, once so cringing and umble, wrote me a threatnen letter because I overdrew my account three-and-sixpence: woodn’t advance me five thousand on 25,000 worth of scrip; kep me waiting 2 hours when I asked to see the house; and then sent out Spout, the jewnior partner, saying they wouldn’t discount my paper, and implawed me to clothes my account. I did: I paid the three-and-six balliance, and never sor ’em mor.

“The market fell daily. The Rewin grew wusser and wusser. Hagnies, Hagnies! it wasn’t in the city aloan my misfortns came upon me. They beerded me in my own ome. The biddle who kips watch at the Halbany wodn keep misfortn out of my chambers; and Mrs. Twiddler, of Pall Mall, and Mr. Hunx, of Long Acre, put egsicution into my apartmince, and swep off every stick of my furniture. ‘Wardrobe & furniture of a man of fashion.’ What an adwertisement George Robins DID make of it; and what a crowd was collected to laff at the prospick of my ruing! My chice plait; my seller of wine; my picturs—that of myself included (it was Maryhann, bless her! that bought it, unbeknown to me); all—all went to the ammer. That brootle Fitzwarren, my ex-vally, womb I met, fimilliarly slapt me on the sholder, and said, ‘Jeames, my boy, you’d best go into suvvis aginn.’

“I DID go into suvvis—the wust of all suvvices—I went into the Queen’s Bench Prison, and lay there a misrabble captif for 6 mortial weeks. Misrabble shall I say? no, not misrabble altogether; there was sunlike in the dunjing of the pore prisner. I had visitors. A cart used to drive hup to the prizn gates of Saturdays; a washywoman’s cart, with a fat old lady in it, and a young one. Who was that young one? Every one who has an art can gess, it was my blue-eyed blushing hangel of a Mary Hann! ‘Shall we take him out in the linnen-basket, grandmamma?’ Mary Hann said. Bless her, she’d already learned to say grandmamma quite natral: but I didn’t go out that way; I went out by the door a whitewashed man. Ho, what a feast there was at Healing the day I came out! I’d thirteen shillings left when I’d bought the gold ring. I wasn’t prowd. I turned the mangle for three weeks; and then Uncle Bill said, ‘Well, there IS some good in the feller;’ and it was agreed that we should marry.”

The Plush manuscript finishes here: it is many weeks since we saw the accomplished writer, and we have only just learned his fate. We are happy to state that it is a comfortable and almost a prosperous one.

The Honorable and Right Reverend Lionel Thistlewood, Lord Bishop of Bullocksmithy, was mentioned as the uncle of Lady Angelina Silvertop. Her elopement with her cousin caused deep emotion to the venerable prelate: he returned to the palace at Bullocksmithy, of which he had been for thirty years the episcopal ornament, and where he married three wives, who lie buried in his Cathedral Church of St. Boniface, Bullocksmithy.

The admirable man has rejoined those whom he loved. As he was preparing a charge to his clergy in his study after dinner, the Lord Bishop fell suddenly down in a fit of apoplexy; his butler, bringing in his accustomed dish of devilled kidneys for supper, discovered the venerable form extended on the Turkey carpet with a glass of Madeira in his hand; but life was extinct: and surgical aid was therefore not particularly useful.

All the late prelate’s wives had fortunes, which the admirable man increased by thrift, the judicious sale of leases which fell in during his episcopacy, &c. He left three hundred thousand pounds—divided between his nephew and niece—not a greater sum than has been left by several deceased Irish prelates.

What Lord Southdown has done with his share we are not called upon to state. He has composed an epitaph to the Martyr of Bullocksmithy, which does him infinite credit. But we are happy to state that Lady Angelina Silvertop presented five hundred pounds to her faithful and affectionate servant, Mary Ann Hoggins, on her marriage with Mr. James Plush, to whom her Ladyship also made a handsome present—namely, the lease, good-will, and fixtures of the “Wheel of Fortune” public-house, near Shepherd’s Market, May Fair: a house greatly frequented by all the nobility’s footmen, doing a genteel stroke of business in the neighborhood, and where, as we have heard, the “Butlers’ Club” is held.

Here Mr. Plush lives happy in a blooming and interesting wife: reconciled to a middle sphere of life, as he was to a humbler and a higher one before. He has shaved off his whiskers, and accommodates himself to an apron with perfect good humor. A gentleman connected with this establishment dined at the “Wheel of Fortune” the other day, and collected the above particulars. Mr. Plush blushed rather, as he brought in the first dish, and told his story very modestly over a pint of excellent port. He had only one thing in life to complain of, he said—that a witless version of his adventures had been produced at the Princess’s theatre, “without with your leaf or by your leaf,” as he expressed it. “Has for the rest,” the worthy fellow said, “I’m appy—praps betwixt you and me I’m in my proper spear. I enjy my glass of beer or port (with your elth & my suvvice to you, sir,) quite as much as my clarrit in my prawsprus days. I’ve a good busniss, which is likely to be better. If a man can’t be appy with such a wife as my Mary Hann, he’s a beest: and when a christening takes place in our famly, will you give my complments to MR. PUNCH, and ask him to be godfather.”

LETTERS OF JEAMES.

JEAMES ON TIME BARGINGS.

“Peraps at this present momink of Railway Hagetation and unsafety the follying little istory of a young friend of mine may hact as an olesome warning to hother week and hirresolute young gents.

“Young Frederick Timmins was the horphan son of a respectable cludgyman in the West of Hengland. Hadopted by his uncle, Colonel T——, of the Hoss–Mareens, and regardless of expence, this young man was sent to Heaton Collidge, and subsiquintly to Hoxford, where he was very nearly being Senior Rangler. He came to London to study for the lor. His prospix was bright indead; and he lived in a secknd flore in Jerming Street, having a ginteal inkum of two hundred lbs. per hannum.

“With this andsum enuity it may be supposed that Frederick wanted for nothink. Nor did he. He was a moral and well-educated young man, who took care of his close; pollisht his hone tea-party boots; cleaned his kidd-gloves with injer rubber; and, when not invited to dine out, took his meals reglar at the Hoxford and Cambridge Club—where (unless somebody treated him) he was never known to igseed his alf-pint of Marsally Wine.

“Merrits and vuttues such as his coodnt long pass unperseavd in the world. Admitted to the most fashnabble parties, it wasn’t long befor sevral of the young ladies viewed him with a favorable i; one, ixpecially, the lovely Miss Hemily Mulligatawney, daughter of the Heast–Injar Derector of that name. As she was the richest gal of all the season, of corse Frederick fell in love with her. His haspirations were on the pint of being crowndid with success; and it was agreed that as soon as he was called to the bar, when he would sutnly be apinted a Judge, or a revising barrister, or Lord Chanslor, he should lead her to the halter.

“What life could be more desirable than Frederick’s? He gave up his mornings to perfeshnl studdy, under Mr. Bluebag, the heminent pleader; he devoted his hevenings to helegant sosiaty at his Clubb, or with his hadord Hemily. He had no cares; no detts; no egstravigancies; he never was known to ride in a cabb, unless one of his tip-top friends lent it him; to go to a theayter unless he got a horder; or to henter a tavern or smoke a cigar. If prosperraty was hever chocked out, it was for that young man.

“But SUCKMSTANCES arose. Fatle suckmstances for pore Frederick Timmins. The Railway Hoperations began.

“For some time, immerst in lor and love, in the hardent hoccupations of his cheembers, or the sweet sosiaty of his Hemily, Frederick took no note of railroads. He did not reckonize the jigantic revalution which with hiron strides was a walkin over the country. But they began to be talked of even in HIS quiat haunts. Heven in the Hoxford and Cambridge Clubb, fellers were a speculatin. Tom Thumper (of Brasen Nose) cleared four thousand lb.; Bob Bullock (of Hexeter), who had lost all his proppaty gambling, had set himself up again; and Jack Deuceace, who had won it, had won a small istate besides by lucky specklations in the Share Markit.

“HEVERY BODY WON. ‘Why shouldn’t I?’ thought pore Fred; and having saved 100 lb., he began a writin for shares—using, like an ickonominicle feller as he was, the Clubb paper to a prodigious igstent. All the Railroad directors, his friends, helped him to shares—the allottments came tumbling in-he took the primmiums by fifties and hundreds a day. His desk was cramd full of bank notes: his brane world with igsitement.

“He gave up going to the Temple, and might now be seen hall day about Capel Court. He took no more hinterest in lor; but his whole talk was of railroad lines. His desk at Mr. Bluebag’s was filled full of prospectisises, and that legal gent wrote to Fred’s uncle, to say he feared he was neglectin his bisniss.

“Alass! he WAS neglectin it, and all his sober and industerous habits. He begann to give dinners, and thought nothin of partys to Greenwich or Richmond. He didn’t see his Hemily near so often: although the hawdacious and misguided young man might have done so much more heasily now than before: for now he kep a Broom!

“But there’s a tumminus to hevery Railway. Fred’s was approachin: in an evil hour he began making TIME-BARGINGS. Let this be a warning to all young fellers, and Fred’s huntimely hend hoperate on them in a moral pint of vu!

“You all know under what favrabble suckemstanses the Great Hafrican Line, the Grand Niger Junction, or Gold Coast and Timbuctoo (Provishnal) Hatmospheric Railway came out four weeks ago: deposit ninepence per share of 20L. (six elephant’s teeth, twelve tons of palm-oil, or four healthy niggers, African currency)—the shares of this helegeble investment rose to 1, 2, 3, in the Markit. A happy man was Fred when, after paying down 100 ninepences (3L. 15s.), he sold his shares for 250L. He gave a dinner at the ‘Star and Garter’ that very day. I promise you there was no Marsally THERE.

“Nex day they were up at 3 1/4. This put Fred in a rage: they rose to 5, he was in a fewry. ‘What an ass I was to sell,’ said he, ‘when all this money was to be won!’

“‘And so you WERE an Ass,’ said his partiklar friend, Colonel Claw, K.X.R., a director of the line, ‘a double-eared Ass. My dear fellow, the shares will be at 15 next week. Will you give me your solemn word of honor not to breathe to mortal man what I am going to tell you?’

“‘Honor bright,’ says Fred.

“‘HUDSON HAS JOINED THE LINE.’ Fred didn’t say a word more, but went tumbling down to the City in his Broom. You know the state of the streets. Claw WENT BY WATER.

“‘Buy me one thousand Hafricans for the 30th,’ cries Fred, busting into his broker’s; and they were done for him at 4 7/8.

***

“Can’t you guess the rest? Haven’t you seen the Share List? which says:—

“‘Great Africans, paid 9d.; price 1/4 par.’

“And that’s what came of my pore dear friend Timmins’s time-barging.

“What’ll become of him I can’t say; for nobody has seen him since. His lodgins in Jerming Street is to let. His brokers in vain deplores his absence. His Uncle has declared his marriage with his housekeeper; and the Morning Erald (that emusing print) has a paragraf yesterday in the fashnabble news, headed ‘Marriage in High Life.—The rich and beautiful Miss Mulligatawney, of Portland Place, is to be speedily united to Colonel Claw, K.X.R.’

“JEAMES.”

JEAMES ON THE GAUGE QUESTION.

“You will scarcely praps reckonize in this little skitch⁴ the haltered linimints of 1, with woos face the reders of your valluble mislny were once fimiliar,—the unfortnt Jeames de la Pluche, fomly so selabrated in the fashnabble suckles, now the pore Jeames Plush, landlord of the ‘Wheel of Fortune’ public house. Yes, that is me; that is my haypun which I wear as becomes a publican—those is the checkers which hornyment the pillows of my dor. I am like the Romin Genral, St. Cenatus, equal to any emudgency of Fortun. I, who have drunk Shampang in my time, aint now abov droring a pint of Small Bier. As for my wife—that Angel—I’ve not ventured to depigt HER. Fansy her a sittn in the Bar, smiling like a sunflower and, ho, dear Punch! happy in nussing a deer little darlint totsywotsy of a Jeames, with my air to a curl, and my i’s to a T!

⁴ This refers to an illustrated edition of the work.

“I never thought I should have been injuiced to write anything but a Bill agin, much less to edress you on Railway Subjix—which with all my sole I ABAW. Railway letters, obbligations to pay hup, ginteal inquirys as to my Salissator’s name, &c. &c., I dispize and scorn artily. But as a man, an usbnd, a father, and a freebon Brittn, my jewty compels me to come forwoods, and igspress my opinion upon that NASHNAL NEWSANCE—the break of Gage.

“An interesting ewent in a noble family with which I once very nearly had the honor of being kinected, acurd a few weex sins, when the Lady Angelina S——, daughter of the Earl of B——cres, presented the gallant Capting, her usband, with a Son & hair. Nothink would satasfy her Ladyship but that her old and attacht famdyshamber, my wife Mary Hann Plush, should be presnt upon this hospicious occasion. Captain S—— was not jellus of me on account of my former attachment to his Lady. I cunsented that my Mary Hann should attend her, and me, my wife, and our dear babby acawdingly set out for our noable frend’s residence, Honeymoon Lodge, near Cheltenham.

“Sick of all Railroads myself, I wisht to poast it in a Chay and 4, but Mary Hann, with the hobstenacy of her Sex, was bent upon Railroad travelling, and I yealded, like all husbinds. We set out by the Great Westn, in an eavle Hour.

“We didnt take much luggitch—my wife’s things in the ushal bandboxes—mine in a potmancho. Our dear little James Angelo’s (called so in complament to his noble Godmamma) craddle, and a small supply of a few 100 weight of Topsanbawtems, Farinashious food, and Lady’s fingers, for that dear child, who is now 6 months old, with a PERDIDGUS APPATITE. Likewise we were charged with a bran new Medsan chest for my lady, from Skivary & Morris, containing enough Rewbub, Daffy’s Alixir, Godfrey’s cawdle, with a few score of parsles for Lady Hangelina’s family and owsehold: about 2000 spessymins of Babby linning from Mrs. Flummary’s in Regent Street, a Chayny Cresning bowl from old Lady Bareacres (big enough to immus a Halderman), & a case marked ‘Glass,’ from her ladyship’s meddicle man, which were stowed away together; had to this an ormylew Cradle, with rose-colored Satting & Pink lace hangings, held up by a gold tuttle-dove, &c. We had, ingluding James Hangelo’s rattle & my umbrellow, 73 packidges in all.

“We got on very well as far as Swindon, where, in the Splendid Refreshment room, there was a galaxy of lovely gals in cottn velvet spencers, who serves out the soop, and 1 of whom maid an impresshn upon this Art which I shoodn’t like Mary Hann to know—and here, to our infanit disgust, we changed carridges. I forgot to say that we were in the seeknd class, having with us James Hangelo, and 23 other light harticles.

“Fust inconveniance: and almost as bad as break of gage. I cast my hi upon the gal in cottn velvet, and wanted some soop, of coarse; but seasing up James Hangelo (who was layin his dear little pors on an Am Sangwidg) and seeing my igspresshn of hi—‘James,’ says Mary Hann, ‘instead of looking at that young lady—and not so VERY young neither—be pleased to look to our packidges, & place them in the other carridge.’ I did so with an evy Art. I eranged them 23 articles in the opsit carridg, only missing my umberella & baby’s rattle; and jest as I came back for my baysn of soop, the beast of a bell rings, the whizzling injians proclayms the time of our departure,—& farewell soop and cottn velvet. Mary Hann was sulky. She said it was my losing the umberella. If it had been a COTTON VELVET UMBERELLA I could have understood. James Hangelo sittn on my knee was evidently unwell; without his coral: & for 20 miles that blessid babby kep up a rawring, which caused all the passingers to simpithize with him igseedingly.

“We arrive at Gloster, and there fansy my disgust at bein ableeged to undergo another change of carridges! Fansy me holding up moughs, tippits, cloaks, and baskits, and James Hangelo rawring still like mad, and pretending to shuperintend the carrying over of our luggage from the broad gage to the narrow gage. ‘Mary Hann,’ says I, rot to desperation, ‘I shall throttle this darling if he goes on.’ ‘Do,’ says she—‘and GO INTO THE REFRESHMENT room,’ says she—a snatchin the babby out of my arms. Do go,’ says she, youre not fit to look after luggage,’ and she began lulling James Hangelo to sleep with one hi, while she looked after the packets with the other. Now, Sir! if you please, mind that packet!—pretty darling—easy with that box, Sir, its glass—pooooty poppet—where’s the deal case, marked arrowroot, No. 24?’ she cried, reading out of a list she had.—And poor little James went to sleep. The porters were bundling and carting the various harticles with no more ceremony than if each package had been of cannonball.

“At last—bang goes a package marked ‘Glass,’ and containing the Chayny bowl and Lady Bareacres’ mixture, into a large white bandbox, with a crash and a smash. ‘It’s My Lady’s box from Crinoline’s!’ cries Mary Hann; and she puts down the child on the bench, and rushes forward to inspect the dammidge. You could hear the Chayny bowls clinking inside; and Lady B.‘s mixture (which had the igsack smell of cherry brandy) was dribbling out over the smashed bandbox containing a white child’s cloak, trimmed with Blown lace and lined with white satting.

“As James was asleep, and I was by this time uncommon hungry, I thought I WOULD go into the Refreshment Room and just take a little soup; so I wrapped him up in his cloak and laid him by his mamma, and went off. There’s not near such good attendance as at Swindon.

***

“We took our places in the carriage in the dark, both of us covered with a pile of packages, and Mary Hann so sulky that she would not speak for some minutes. At last she spoke out—

“‘Have you all the small parcels?’

“‘Twenty-three in all,’ says I.

“‘Then give me baby.’

“‘Give you what?’ says I.

“‘Give me baby.’

“‘What, haven’t y-y-yoooo got him?’ says I.

***

“O Mussy! You should have heard her sreak! WE’D LEFT HIM ON THE LEDGE AT GLOSTER.

“It all came of the break of gage.”

MR. JEAMES AGAIN.

“DEAR MR. PUNCH,—As newmarus inquiries have been maid both at my privit ressddence, ‘The Wheel of Fortune Otel,’ and at your Hoffis, regarding the fate of that dear babby, James Hangelo, whose primmiture dissappearnts caused such hagnies to his distracted parents, I must begg, dear sir, the permission to ockupy a part of your valuble collams once more, and hease the public mind about my blessid boy.

“Wictims of that nashnal cuss, the Broken Gage, me and Mrs. Plush was left in the train to Cheltenham, soughring from that most disgreeble of complaints, a halmost BROKEN ART. The skreems of Mrs. Jeames might be said almost to out-Y the squeel of the dying, as we rusht into that fashnable Spaw, and my pore Mary Hann found it was not Baby, but Bundles I had in my lapp.

“When the Old Dowidger Lady Bareacres, who was waiting heagerly at the train, herd that owing to that abawminable Brake of Gage the luggitch, her Ladyship’s Cherrybrandy box, the cradle for Lady Hangelina’s baby, the lace, crockary and chany, was rejuiced to one immortial smash; the old cat howld at me and pore dear Mary Hann, as if it was huss, and not the infunnle Brake of Gage, was to blame; and as if we ad no misfortns of our hown to deplaw. She bust out about my stupid imparence; called Mary Hann a good for nothink creecher, and wep, and abewsd, and took on about her broken Chayny Bowl, a great deal mor than she did about a dear little Christian child. ‘Don’t talk to me abowt your bratt of a babby’ (seshe); ‘where’s my bowl?—where’s my medsan?—where’s my bewtiffle Pint lace?—All in rewing through your stupiddaty, you brute, you!’

“‘Bring your haction aginst the Great Western, Maam,’ says I, quite riled by this crewel and unfealing hold wixen. ‘Ask the pawters at Gloster, why your goods is spiled—it’s not the fust time they’ve been asked the question. Git the gage haltered aginst the nex time you send for MEDSAN and meanwild buy some at the “Plow”—they keep it very good and strong there, I’ll be bound. Has for us, WE’RE a going back to the cussid station at Gloster, in such of our blessid child.’

“‘You don’t mean to say, young woman,’ seshe, ‘that you’re not going to Lady Hangelina: what’s her dear boy to do? who’s to nuss it?’

“‘YOU nuss it, Maam,’ says I. ‘Me and Mary Hann return this momint by the Fly.’ And so (whishing her a suckastic ajew) Mrs. Jeames and I lep into a one oss weakle, and told the driver to go like mad back to Gloster.

“I can’t describe my pore gals hagny juring our ride. She sat in the carridge as silent as a milestone, and as madd as a march Air. When we got to Gloster she sprang hout of it as wild as a Tigris, and rusht to the station, up to the fatle Bench.

“‘My child, my child,’ shreex she, in a hoss, hot voice. ‘Where’s my infant? a little bewtifle child, with blue eyes,—dear Mr. Policeman, give it me—a thousand guineas for it.’

“‘Faix, Mam,’ says the man, a Hirishman, ‘and the divvle a babby have I seen this day except thirteen of my own—and you’re welcome to any one of THEM, and kindly.’

“‘As if HIS babby was equal to ours,’ as my darling Mary Hann said, afterwards. All the station was scrouging round us by this time—pawters & clarx and refreshmint people and all. ‘What’s this year row about that there babby?’ at last says the Inspector, stepping hup. I thought my wife was going to jump into his harms. ‘Have you got him?’ says she.

“‘Was it a child in a blue cloak?’ says he.

“‘And blue eyse!’ says my wife.

“‘I put a label on him and sent him on to Bristol; he’s there by this time. The Guard of the Mail took him and put him into a letter-box,’ says he: ‘he went 20 minutes ago. We found him on the broad gauge line, and sent him on by it, in course,’ says he. ‘And it’ll be a caution to you, young woman, for the future, to label your children along with the rest of your luggage.’

“If my piguniary means had been such as ONCE they was, you may emadgine I’d have ad a speshle train and been hoff like smoak. As it was, we was obliged to wait 4 mortial hours for the next train (4 ears they seemed to us), and then away we went.

“‘My boy! my little boy!’ says poor choking Mary Hann, when we got there. ‘A parcel in a blue cloak?’ says the man. ‘No body claimed him here, and so we sent him back by the mail. An Irish nurse here gave him some supper, and he’s at Paddington by this time. Yes,’ says he, looking at the clock, ‘he’s been there these ten minutes.’

“But seeing my poor wife’s distracted histarricle state, this good-naterd man says, ‘I think, my dear, there’s a way to ease your mind. We’ll know in five minutes how he is.’

“‘Sir,’ says she, ‘don’t make sport of me.’

“‘No, my dear, we’ll TELEGRAPH him.’

“And he began hopparating on that singlar and ingenus elecktricle inwention, which aniliates time, and carries intellagence in the twinkling of a peg-post.

“‘I’ll ask,’ says he, ‘for child marked G. W. 273.’

“Back comes the telegraph with the sign, ‘All right.’

“‘Ask what he’s doing, sir,’ says my wife, quite amazed. Back comes the answer in a Jiffy—

“‘C. R. Y. I. N. G.’

“This caused all the bystanders to laugh excep my pore Mary Hann, who pull’d a very sad face.

“The good-naterd feller presently said, ‘he’d have another trile;’ and what d’ye think was the answer? I’m blest if it wasn’t—

“‘P. A. P.’

“He was eating pap! There’s for you—there’s a rogue for you—there’s a March of Intaleck! Mary Hann smiled now for the fust time. ‘He’ll sleep now,’ says she. And she sat down with a full hart.

***

“If hever that good-naterd Shooperintendent comes to London, HE need never ask for his skore at the ‘Wheel of Fortune Otel,’ I promise you—where me and my wife and James Hangelo now is; and where only yesterday a gent came in and drew this pictur⁵ of us in our bar.

⁵ This refers to an illustrated edition of the work.

“And if they go on breaking gages; and if the child, the most precious luggidge of the Henglishman, is to be bundled about this year way, why it won’t be for want of warning, both from Professor Harris, the Commission, and from

“My dear Mr. Punch’s obeajent servant,

“JEAMES PLUSH.”

THE TREMENDOUS ADVENTURES OF MAJOR GAHAGAN.

CHAPTER I.

“TRUTH IS STRANGE, STRANGER THAN FICTION.”

I think it but right that in making my appearance before the public I should at once acquaint them with my titles and name. My card, as I leave it at the houses of the nobility, my friends, is as follows:—

MAJOR GOLIAH O’GRADY GAHAGAN, H.E.I.C.S.,

Commanding Battalion of Irregular Horse,

AHMEDNUGGAR.

Seeing, I say, this simple visiting ticket, the world will avoid any of those awkward mistakes as to my person, which have been so frequent of late. There has been no end to the blunders regarding this humble title of mine, and the confusion thereby created. When I published my volume of poems, for instance, the Morning Post newspaper remarked “that the Lyrics of the Heart, by Miss Gahagan, may be ranked among the sweetest flowrets of the present spring season.” The Quarterly Review, commenting upon my Observations on the “Pons Asinorum” (4to. London, 1836), called me “Doctor Gahagan,” and so on. It was time to put an end to these mistakes, and I have taken the above simple remedy.

I was urged to it by a very exalted personage. Dining in August last at the palace of the T-lr-es at Paris, the lovely young Duch-ss of Orl—ns (who, though she does not speak English, understands it as well as I do,) said to me in the softest Teutonic, “Lieber Herr Major, haben sie den Ahmednuggarischen-jager-battalion gelassen?” “Warum denn?” said I, quite astonished at her R——l H———ss’s question. The P——cess then spoke of some trifle from my pen, which was simply signed Goliah Gahagan.

There was, unluckily, a dead silence as H. R. H. put this question.

“Comment donc?” said H. M. Lo-is Ph-l-ppe, looking gravely at Count Mole; “le cher Major a quitte l’armee! Nicolas donc sera maitre de l’Inde!” H. M—— and the Pr. M-n-ster pursued their conversation in a low tone, and left me, as may be imagined in a dreadful state of confusion. I blushed and stuttered, and murmured out a few incoherent words to explain—but it would not do—I could not recover my equanimity during the course of the dinner and while endeavoring to help an English Duke, my neighbor, to poulet a l’Austerlitz, fairly sent seven mushrooms and three large greasy croutes over his whiskers and shirt-frill. Another laugh at my expense. “Ah! M. le Major,” said the Q—— of the B-lg—ns, archly, “vous n’aurez jamais votre brevet de Colonel.” Her M——y’s joke will be better understood when I state that his Grace is the brother of a Minister.

I am not at liberty to violate the sanctity of private life, by mentioning the names of the parties concerned in this little anecdote. I only wish to have it understood that I am a gentleman, and live at least in DECENT society. Verbum sat.

But to be serious. I am obliged always to write the name of Goliah in full, to distinguish me from my brother, Gregory Gahagan, who was also a Major (in the King’s service), and whom I killed in a duel, as the public most likely knows. Poor Greg! a very trivial dispute was the cause of our quarrel, which never would have originated but for the similarity of our names. The circumstance was this: I had been lucky enough to render the Nawaub of Lucknow some trifling service (in the notorious affair of Choprasjee Muckjee), and his Highness sent down a gold toothpick-case directed to Captain G. Gahagan, which I of course thought was for me: my brother madly claimed it; we fought, and the consequence was, that in about three minutes he received a slash in the right side (cut 6), which effectually did his business:—he was a good swordsman enough—I was THE BEST in the universe. The most ridiculous part of the affair is, that the toothpick-case was his, after all—he had left it on the Nawaub’s table at tiffin. I can’t conceive what madness prompted him to fight about such a paltry bauble; he had much better have yielded it at once, when he saw I was determined to have it. From this slight specimen of my adventures, the reader will perceive that my life has been one of no ordinary interest; and, in fact, I may say that I have led a more remarkable life than any man in the service—I have been at more pitched battles, led more forlorn hopes, had more success among the fair sex, drunk harder, read more, and been a handsomer man than any officer now serving her Majesty.

When I at first went to India in 1802, I was a raw cornet of seventeen, with blazing red hair, six feet four in height, athletic at all kinds of exercises, owing money to my tailor and everybody else who would trust me, possessing an Irish brogue, and my full pay of 120L. a year. I need not say that with all these advantages I did that which a number of clever fellows have done before me—I fell in love, and proposed to marry immediately.

But how to overcome the difficulty?—It is true that I loved Julia Jowler—loved her to madness; but her father intended her for a Member of Council at least, and not for a beggarly Irish ensign. It was, however, my fate to make the passage to India (on board of the “Samuel Snob” East Indiaman, Captain Duffy,) with this lovely creature, and my misfortune instantaneously to fall in love with her. We were not out of the Channel before I adored her, worshipped the deck which she trod upon, kissed a thousand times the cuddy-chair on which she used to sit. The same madness fell on every man in the ship. The two mates fought about her at the Cape; the surgeon, a sober, pious Scotchman, from disappointed affection, took so dreadfully to drinking as to threaten spontaneous combustion; and old Colonel Lilywhite, carrying his wife and seven daughters to Bengal, swore that he would have a divorce from Mrs. L., and made an attempt at suicide; the captain himself told me, with tears in his eyes, that he hated his hitherto-adored Mrs. Duffy, although he had had nineteen children by her.

We used to call her the witch—there was magic in her beauty and in her voice. I was spell-bound when I looked at her, and stark staring mad when she looked at me! O lustrous black eyes!—O glossy night-black ringlets!—O lips!—O dainty frocks of white muslin!—O tiny kid slippers!—though old and gouty, Gahagan sees you still! I recollect, off Ascension, she looked at me in her particular way one day at dinner, just as I happened to be blowing on a piece of scalding hot green fat. I was stupefied at once—I thrust the entire morsel (about half a pound) into my mouth. I made no attempt to swallow, or to masticate it, but left it there for many minutes, burning, burning! I had no skin to my palate for seven weeks after, and lived on rice-water during the rest of the voyage. The anecdote is trivial, but it shows the power of Julia Jowler over me.

The writers of marine novels have so exhausted the subject of storms, shipwrecks, mutinies, engagements, sea-sickness, and so forth, that (although I have experienced each of these in many varieties) I think it quite unnecessary to recount such trifling adventures; suffice it to say, that during our five months’ trajet, my mad passion for Julia daily increased; so did the captain’s and the surgeon’s; so did Colonel Lilywhite’s; so did the doctor’s, the mate’s—that of most part of the passengers, and a considerable number of the crew. For myself, I swore—ensign as I was—I would win her for my wife; I vowed that I would make her glorious with my sword—that as soon as I had made a favorable impression on my commanding officer (which I did not doubt to create), I would lay open to him the state of my affections, and demand his daughter’s hand. With such sentimental outpourings did our voyage continue and conclude.

We landed at the Sunderbunds on a grilling hot day in December, 1802, and then for the moment Julia and I separated. She was carried off to her papa’s arms in a palanquin, surrounded by at least forty hookahbadars; whilst the poor cornet, attended but by two dandies and a solitary beasty (by which unnatural name these blackamoors are called), made his way humbly to join the regiment at head-quarters.

The —th Regiment of Bengal Cavalry, then under the command of Lieut.-Colonel Julius Jowler, C.B., was known throughout Asia and Europe by the proud title of the Bundelcund Invincibles—so great was its character for bravery, so remarkable were its services in that delightful district of India. Major Sir George Gutch was next in command, and Tom Thrupp, as kind a fellow as ever ran a Mahratta through the body, was second Major. We were on the eve of that remarkable war which was speedily to spread throughout the whole of India, to call forth the valor of a Wellesley, and the indomitable gallantry of a Gahagan; which was illustrated by our victories at Ahmednuggar (where I was the first over the barricade at the storming of the Pettah); at Argaum, where I slew with my own sword twenty-three matchlock-men, and cut a dromedary in two; and by that terrible day of Assaye, where Wellesley would have been beaten but for me—me alone: I headed nineteen charges of cavalry, took (aided by only four men of my own troop) seventeen field-pieces, killing the scoundrelly French artillerymen; on that day I had eleven elephants shot under me, and carried away Scindiah’s nose-ring with a pistol-ball. Wellesley is a Duke and a Marshal, I but a simple Major of Irregulars. Such is fortune and war! But my feelings carry me away from my narrative, which had better proceed with more order.

On arriving, I say, at our barracks at Dum Dum, I for the first time put on the beautiful uniform of the Invincibles: a light blue swallow-tailed jacket with silver lace and wings, ornamented with about 3,000 sugar-loaf buttons, rhubarb-colored leather inexpressibles (tights), and red morocco boots with silver spurs and tassels, set off to admiration the handsome persons of the officers of our corps. We wore powder in those days; and a regulation pigtail of seventeen inches, a brass helmet surrounded by leopard-skin with a bearskin top and a horsetail feather, gave the head a fierce and chivalrous appearance, which is far more easily imagined than described.

Attired in this magnificent costume, I first presented myself before Colonel Jowler. He was habited in a manner precisely similar, but not being more than five feet in height, and weighing at least fifteen stone, the dress he wore did not become him quite so much as slimmer and taller men. Flanked by his tall Majors, Thrupp and Gutch, he looked like a stumpy skittle-ball between two attenuated skittles. The plump little Colonel received me with vast cordiality, and I speedily became a prime favorite with himself and the other officers of the corps. Jowler was the most hospitable of men; and gratifying my appetite and my love together, I continually partook of his dinners, and feasted on the sweet presence of Julia.

I can see now, what I would not and could not perceive in those early days, that this Miss Jowler—on whom I had lavished my first and warmest love, whom I had endowed with all perfection and purity—was no better than a little impudent flirt, who played with my feelings, because during the monotony of a sea-voyage she had no other toy to play with; and who deserted others for me, and me for others, just as her whim or her interest might guide her. She had not been three weeks at head-quarters when half the regiment was in love with her. Each and all of the candidates had some favor to boast of, or some encouraging hopes on which to build. It was the scene of the “Samuel Snob” over again, only heightened in interest by a number of duels. The following list will give the reader a notion of some of them:—

1. Cornet Gahagan . . Ensign Hicks, of the Sappers and Miners. Hicks received a ball in his jaw, and was half choked by a quantity of carroty whisker forced down his throat with the ball.

2. Capt. Macgillicuddy, B.N.I., . . Cornet Gahagan. I was run through the body, but the sword passed between the ribs, and injured me very slightly.

3. Capt. Macgillicuddy, B.N.I., . . Mr. Mulligatawny, B.C.S., Deputy–Assistant Vice Sub–Controller of the Boggleywollah Indigo grounds, Ramgolly branch.

Macgillicuddy should have stuck to sword’s-play, and he might have come off in his second duel as well as in his first; as it was, the civilian placed a ball and a part of Mac’s gold repeater in his stomach. A remarkable circumstance attended this shot, an account of which I sent home to the “Philosophical Transactions:” the surgeon had extracted the ball, and was going off, thinking that all was well, when the gold repeater struck thirteen in poor Macgillicuddy’s abdomen. I suppose that the works must have been disarranged in some way by the bullet, for the repeater was one of Barraud’s, never known to fail before, and the circumstance occurred at SEVEN o’clock.⁶

⁶ So admirable are the performances of these watches, which will stand in any climate, that I repeatedly heard poor Macgillicuddy relate the following fact. The hours, as it is known, count in Italy from one to twenty-four: the day Mac landed at Naples his repeater rung the Italian hours, from one to twenty-four; as soon as he crossed the Alps it only sounded as usual.—G. O’G. G.

I could continue, almost ad infinitum, an account of the wars which this Helen occasioned, but the above three specimens will, I should think, satisfy the peaceful reader. I delight not in scenes of blood, heaven knows, but I was compelled in the course of a few weeks, and for the sake of this one woman, to fight nine duels myself, and I know that four times as many more took place concerning her.

I forgot to say that Jowler’s wife was a half-caste woman, who had been born and bred entirely in India, and whom the Colonel had married from the house of her mother, a native. There were some singular rumors abroad regarding this latter lady’s history: it was reported that she was the daughter of a native Rajah, and had been carried off by a poor English subaltern in Lord Clive’s time. The young man was killed very soon after, and left his child with its mother. The black Prince forgave his daughter and bequeathed to her a handsome sum of money. I suppose that it was on this account that Jowler married Mrs. J., a creature who had not, I do believe, a Christian name, or a single Christian quality: she was a hideous, bloated, yellow creature, with a beard, black teeth, and red eyes: she was fat, lying, ugly, and stingy—she hated and was hated by all the world, and by her jolly husband as devoutly as by any other. She did not pass a month in the year with him, but spent most of her time with her native friends. I wonder how she could have given birth to so lovely a creature as her daughter. This woman was of course with the Colonel when Julia arrived, and the spice of the devil in her daughter’s composition was most carefully nourished and fed by her. If Julia had been a flirt before, she was a downright jilt now; she set the whole cantonment by the ears; she made wives jealous and husbands miserable; she caused all those duels of which I have discoursed already, and yet such was the fascination of THE WITCH that I still thought her an angel. I made court to the nasty mother in order to be near the daughter; and I listened untiringly to Jowler’s interminable dull stories, because I was occupied all the time in watching the graceful movements of Miss Julia.

But the trumpet of war was soon ringing in our ears; and on the battle-field Gahagan is a man! The Bundelcund Invincibles received orders to march, and Jowler, Hector-like, donned his helmet and prepared to part from his Andromache. And now arose his perplexity: what must be done with his daughter, his Julia? He knew his wife’s peculiarities of living, and did not much care to trust his daughter to her keeping; but in vain he tried to find her an asylum among the respectable ladies of his regiment. Lady Gutch offered to receive her, but would have nothing to do with Mrs. Jowler; the surgeon’s wife, Mrs. Sawbone, would have neither mother nor daughter; there was no help for it, Julia and her mother must have a house together, and Jowler knew that his wife would fill it with her odious blackamoor friends.

I could not, however, go forth satisfied to the campaign until I learned from Julia my fate. I watched twenty opportunities to see her alone, and wandered about the Colonel’s bungalow as an informer does about a public-house, marking the incomings and the outgoings of the family, and longing to seize the moment when Miss Jowler, unbiassed by her mother or her papa, might listen, perhaps, to my eloquence, and melt at the tale of my love.

But it would not do—old Jowler seemed to have taken all of a sudden to such a fit of domesticity, that there was no finding him out of doors, and his rhubarb-colored wife (I believe that her skin gave the first idea of our regimental breeches), who before had been gadding ceaselessly abroad, and poking her broad nose into every menage in the cantonment, stopped faithfully at home with her spouse. My only chance was to beard the old couple in their den, and ask them at once for their cub.

So I called one day at tiffin:—old Jowler was always happy to have my company at this meal; it amused him, he said, to see me drink Hodgson’s pale ale (I drank two hundred and thirty-four dozen the first year I was in Bengal)—and it was no small piece of fun, certainly, to see old Mrs. Jowler attack the currie-bhaut;—she was exactly the color of it, as I have had already the honor to remark, and she swallowed the mixture with a gusto which was never equalled, except by my poor friend Dando apropos d’huitres. She consumed the first three platefuls with a fork and spoon, like a Christian; but as she warmed to her work, the old hag would throw away her silver implements, and dragging the dishes towards her, go to work with her hands, flip the rice into her mouth with her fingers, and stow away a quantity of eatables sufficient for a sepoy company. But why do I diverge from the main point of my story?

Julia, then, Jowler, and Mrs. J. were at luncheon: the dear girl was in the act to sabler a glass of Hodgson as I entered. “How do you do, Mr. Gagin?” said the old hag, leeringly. “Eat a bit o’ currie-bhaut,”—and she thrust the dish towards me, securing a heap as it passed. “What! Gagy my boy, how do, how do?” said the fat Colonel. “What! run through the body?—got well again—have some Hodgson—run through your body too!”—and at this, I may say, coarse joke (alluding to the fact that in these hot climates the ale oozes out as it were from the pores of the skin) old Jowler laughed: a host of swarthy chobdars, kitmatgars, sices, consomahs, and bobbychies laughed too, as they provided me, unasked, with the grateful fluid. Swallowing six tumblers of it, I paused nervously for a moment, and then said—

“Bobbachy, consomah, ballybaloo hoga.”

The black ruffians took the hint and retired.

“Colonel and Mrs. Jowler,” said I solemnly, “we are alone; and you, Miss Jowler, you are alone too; that is—I mean—I take this opportunity to—(another glass of ale, if you please)—to express, once for all, before departing on a dangerous campaign”—(Julia turned pale)—“before entering, I say, upon a war which may stretch in the dust my high-raised hopes and me, to express my hopes while life still remains to me, and to declare in the face of heaven, earth, and Colonel Jowler, that I love you, Julia!” The Colonel, astonished, let fall a steel fork, which stuck quivering for some minutes in the calf of my leg; but I heeded not the paltry interruption. “Yes, by yon bright heaven,” continued I, “I love you, Julia! I respect my commander, I esteem your excellent and beauteous mother; tell me, before I leave you, if I may hope for a return of my affection. Say that you love me, and I will do such deeds in this coming war as shall make you proud of the name of your Gahagan.”

The old woman, as I delivered these touching words, stared, snapped, and ground her teeth, like an enraged monkey. Julia was now red, now white; the Colonel stretched forward, took the fork out of the calf of my leg, wiped it, and then seized a bundle of letters which I had remarked by his side.

“A cornet!” said he, in a voice choking with emotion; “a pitiful, beggarly Irish cornet aspire to the hand of Julia Jowler! Gag, Gahagan, are you mad, or laughing at us? Look at these letters, young man—at these letters, I say—one hundred and twenty-four epistles from every part of India (not including one from the Governor–General, and six from his brother, Colonel Wellesley,)—one hundred and twenty-four proposals for the hand of Miss Jowler! Cornet Gahagan,” he continued, “I wish to think well of you: you are the bravest, the most modest, and, perhaps, the handsomest man in our corps; but you have not got a single rupee. You ask me for Julia, and you do not possess even an anna!”—(Here the old rogue grinned, as if he had made a capital pun).—“No, no,” said he, waxing good-natured; “Gagy, my boy, it is nonsense! Julia, love, retire with your mamma; this silly young gentleman will remain and smoke a pipe with me.”

I took one; it was the bitterest chillum I ever smoked in my life.

***

I am not going to give here an account of my military services; they will appear in my great national autobiography, in forty volumes, which I am now preparing for the press. I was with my regiment in all Wellesley’s brilliant campaigns; then taking dawk, I travelled across the country north-eastward, and had the honor of fighting by the side of Lord Lake at Laswaree, Deeg, Furruckabad, Futtyghur, and Bhurtpore: but I will not boast of my actions—the military man knows them, MY SOVEREIGN appreciates them. If asked who was the bravest man of the Indian army, there is not an officer belonging to it who would not cry at once, GAHAGAN. The fact is, I was desperate: I cared not for life, deprived of Julia Jowler.

With Julia’s stony looks ever before my eyes, her father’s stern refusal in my ears, I did not care, at the close of the campaign, again to seek her company or to press my suit. We were eighteen months on service, marching and countermarching, and fighting almost every other day: to the world I did not seem altered; but the world only saw the face, and not the seared and blighted heart within me. My valor, always desperate, now reached to a pitch of cruelty; I tortured my grooms and grass-cutters for the most trifling offence or error,—I never in action spared a man,—I sheared off three hundred and nine heads in the course of that single campaign.

Some influence, equally melancholy, seemed to have fallen upon poor old Jowler. About six months after we had left Dum Dum, he received a parcel of letters from Benares (whither his wife had retired with her daughter), and so deeply did they seem to weigh upon his spirits, that he ordered eleven men of his regiment to be flogged within two days; but it was against the blacks that he chiefly turned his wrath. Our fellows, in the heat and hurry of the campaign, were in the habit of dealing rather roughly with their prisoners, to extract treasure from them: they used to pull their nails out by the root, to boil them in kedgeree pots, to flog them and dress their wounds with cayenne pepper, and so on. Jowler, when he heard of these proceedings, which before had always justly exasperated him (he was a humane and kind little man), used now to smile fiercely and say, “D—— the black scoundrels! Serve them right, serve them right!”

One day, about a couple of miles in advance of the column, I had been on a foraging-party with a few dragoons, and was returning peaceably to camp, when of a sudden a troop of Mahrattas burst on us from a neighboring mango-tope, in which they had been hidden: in an instant three of my men’s saddles were empty, and I was left with but seven more to make head against at least thirty of these vagabond black horsemen. I never saw in my life a nobler figure than the leader of the troop—mounted on a splendid black Arab: he was as tall, very nearly, as myself; he wore a steel cap and a shirt of mail, and carried a beautiful French carbine, which had already done execution upon two of my men. I saw that our only chance of safety lay in the destruction of this man. I shouted to him in a voice of thunder (in the Hindustanee tongue of course), “Stop, dog, if you dare, and encounter a man!”

In reply his lance came whirling in the air over my head, and mortally transfixed poor Foggarty of ours, who was behind me. Grinding my teeth and swearing horribly, I drew that scimitar which never yet failed its blow,⁷ and rushed at the Indian. He came down at full gallop, his own sword making ten thousand gleaming circles in the air, shrieking his cry of battle.

⁷ In my affair with Macgillicuddy, I was fool enough to go out with small-swords—miserable weapons only fit for tailors.—G. O’G. G.

The contest did not last an instant. With my first blow I cut off his sword-arm at the wrist; my second I levelled at his head. I said that he wore a steel cap, with a gilt iron spike of six inches, and a hood of chain mail. I rose in my stirrups and delivered “ST. GEORGE;” my sword caught the spike exactly on the point, split it sheer in two, cut crashing through the steel cap and hood, and was only stopped by a ruby which he wore in his back-plate. His head, cut clean in two between the eyebrows and nostrils, even between the two front teeth, fell one side on each shoulder, and he galloped on till his horse was stopped by my men, who were not a little amused at the feat.

As I had expected, the remaining ruffians fled on seeing their leader’s fate. I took home his helmet by way of curiosity, and we made a single prisoner, who was instantly carried before old Jowler.

We asked the prisoner the name of the leader of the troop; he said it was Chowder Loll.

“Chowder Loll!” shrieked Colonel Jowler. “O fate! thy hand is here!” He rushed wildly into his tent—the next day applied for leave of absence. Gutch took the command of the regiment, and I saw him no more for some time.

***

As I had distinguished myself not a little during the war, General Lake sent me up with despatches to Calcutta, where Lord Wellesley received me with the greatest distinction. Fancy my surprise, on going to a ball at Government House, to meet my old friend Jowler; my trembling, blushing, thrilling delight, when I saw Julia by his side!

Jowler seemed to blush too when he beheld me. I thought of my former passages with his daughter. “Gagy my boy,” says he, shaking hands, “glad to see you. Old friend, Julia—come to tiffin—Hodgson’s pale—brave fellow Gagy.” Julia did not speak, but she turned ashy pale, and fixed upon me her awful eyes! I fainted almost, and uttered some incoherent words. Julia took my hand, gazed at me still, and said, “Come!” Need I say I went?

I will not go over the pale ale and currie-bhaut again; but this I know, that in half an hour I was as much in love as I ever had been: and that in three weeks I—yes, I—was the accepted lover of Julia! I did not pause to ask where were the one hundred and twenty-four offers? why I, refused before, should be accepted now? I only felt that I loved her, and was happy!

***

One night, one memorable night, I could not sleep, and, with a lover’s pardonable passion, wandered solitary through the city of palaces until I came to the house which contained my Julia. I peeped into the compound—all was still; I looked into the veranda—all was dark, except a light—yes, one light—and it was in Julia’s chamber! My heart throbbed almost to stilling. I would—I WOULD advance, if but to gaze upon her for a moment, and to bless her as she slept. I DID look, I DID advance; and, O heaven! I saw a lamp burning, Mrs. Jow. in a nightdress, with a very dark baby in her arms, and Julia looking tenderly at an ayah, who was nursing another.

“Oh, mamma,” said Julia, “what would that fool Gahagan say if he knew all?”

“HE DOES KNOW ALL!” shouted I, springing forward, and tearing down the tatties from the window. Mrs. Jow. ran shrieking out of the room, Julia fainted, the cursed black children squalled, and their d——d nurse fell on her knees, gabbling some infernal jargon of Hindustanee. Old Jowler at this juncture entered with a candle and a drawn sword.

“Liar! scoundrel! deceiver!” shouted I. “Turn, ruffian, and defend yourself!” But old Jowler, when he saw me, only whistled, looked at his lifeless daughter, and slowly left the room.

Why continue the tale? I need not now account for Jowler’s gloom on receiving his letters from Benares—for his exclamation upon the death of the Indian chief—for his desire to marry his daughter: the woman I was wooing was no longer Miss Julia Jowler, she was Mrs. Chowder Loll!

CHAPTER II.

ALLYGHUR AND LASWAREE.

I sat down to write gravely and sadly, for (since the appearance of some of my adventures in a monthly magazine) unprincipled men have endeavored to rob me of the only good I possess, to question the statements that I make, and, themselves without a spark of honor or good feeling, to steal from me that which is my sole wealth—my character as a teller of THE TRUTH.

The reader will understand that it is to the illiberal strictures of a profligate press I now allude; among the London journalists, none (luckily for themselves) have dared to question the veracity of my statements: they know me, and they know that I am IN LONDON. If I can use the pen, I can also wield a more manly and terrible weapon, and would answer their contradictions with my sword! No gold or gems adorn the hilt of that war-worn scimitar; but there is blood upon the blade—the blood of the enemies of my country, and the maligners of my honest fame. There are others, however—the disgrace of a disgraceful trade—who, borrowing from distance a despicable courage, have ventured to assail me. The infamous editors of the Kelso Champion, the Bungay Beacon, the Tipperary Argus, and the Stoke Pogis Sentinel, and other dastardly organs of the provincial press, have, although differing in politics, agreed upon this one point, and with a scoundrelly unanimity, vented a flood of abuse upon the revelations made by me.

They say that I have assailed private characters, and wilfully perverted history to blacken the reputation of public men. I ask, was any one of these men in Bengal in the year 1803? Was any single conductor of any one of these paltry prints ever in Bundelcund or the Rohilla country? Does this EXQUISITE Tipperary scribe know the difference between Hurrygurrybang and Burrumtollah? Not he! and because, forsooth, in those strange and distant lands strange circumstances have taken place, it is insinuated that the relater is a liar: nay, that the very places themselves have no existence but in my imagination. Fools!—but I will not waste my anger upon them, and proceed to recount some other portions of my personal history.

It is, I presume, a fact which even THESE scribbling assassins will not venture to deny, that before the commencement of the campaign against Scindiah, the English General formed a camp at Kanouge on the Jumna, where he exercised that brilliant little army which was speedily to perform such wonders in the Dooab. It will be as well to give a slight account of the causes of a war which was speedily to rage through some of the fairest portions of the Indian continent.

Shah Allum, the son of Shah Lollum, the descendant by the female line of Nadir Shah (that celebrated Toorkomaun adventurer, who had wellnigh hurled Bajazet and Selim the Second from the throne of Bagdad)—Shah Allum, I say, although nominally the Emperor of Delhi, was in reality the slave of the various warlike chieftains who lorded it by turns over the country and the sovereign, until conquered and slain by some more successful rebel. Chowder Loll Masolgee, Zubberdust Khan, Dowsunt Row Scindiah, and the celebrated Bobbachy Jung Bahawder, had held for a time complete mastery in Delhi. The second of these, a ruthless Afghan soldier, had abruptly entered the capital; nor was he ejected from it until he had seized upon the principal jewels, and likewise put out the eyes of the last of the unfortunate family of Afrasiab. Scindiah came to the rescue of the sightless Shah Allum, and though he destroyed his oppressor, only increased his slavery; holding him in as painful a bondage as he had suffered under the tyrannous Afghan.

As long as these heroes were battling among themselves, or as long rather as it appeared that they had any strength to fight a battle, the British Government, ever anxious to see its enemies by the ears, by no means interfered in the contest. But the French Revolution broke out, and a host of starving sans-culottes appeared among the various Indian States, seeking for military service, and inflaming the minds of the various native princes against the British East India Company. A number of these entered into Scindiah’s ranks: one of them, Perron, was commander of his army; and though that chief was as yet quite engaged in his hereditary quarrel with Jeswunt Row Holkar, and never thought of an invasion of the British territory, the Company all of a sudden discovered that Shah Allum, his sovereign, was shamefully ill-used, and determined to re-establish the ancient splendor of his throne.

Of course it was sheer benevolence for poor Shah Allum that prompted our governors to take these kindly measures in his favor. I don’t know how it happened that, at the end of the war, the poor Shah was not a whit better off than at the beginning; and that though Holkar was beaten, and Scindiah annihilated, Shah Allum was much such a puppet as before. Somehow, in the hurry and confusion of this struggle, the oyster remained with the British Government, who had so kindly offered to dress it for the Emperor, while his Majesty was obliged to be contented with the shell.

The force encamped at Kanouge bore the title of the Grand Army of the Ganges and the Jumna; it consisted of eleven regiments of cavalry and twelve battalions of infantry, and was commanded by General Lake in person.

Well, on the 1st of September we stormed Perron’s camp at Allyghur; on the fourth we took that fortress by assault; and as my name was mentioned in general orders, I may as well quote the Commander-inChief’s words regarding me—they will spare me the trouble of composing my own eulogium:—

“The Commander-inChief is proud thus publicly to declare his high sense of the gallantry of Lieutenant Gahagan, of the —— cavalry. In the storming of the fortress, although unprovided with a single ladder, and accompanied but by a few brave men, Lieutenant Gahagan succeeded in escalading the inner and fourteenth wall of the place. Fourteen ditches lined with sword-blades and poisoned chevaux-de-frise, fourteen walls bristling with innumerable artillery and as smooth as looking-glasses, were in turn triumphantly passed by that enterprising officer. His course was to be traced by the heaps of slaughtered enemies lying thick upon the platforms; and alas! by the corpses of most of the gallant men who followed him!—when at length he effected his lodgment, and the dastardly enemy, who dared not to confront him with arms, let loose upon him the tigers and lions of Scindiah’s menagerie. This meritorious officer destroyed, with his own hand, four of the largest and most ferocious animals, and the rest, awed by the indomitable majesty of BRITISH VALOR, shrank back to their dens. Thomas Higgory, a private, and Runty Goss, havildar, were the only two who remained out of the nine hundred who followed Lieutenant Gahagan. Honor to them! honor and tears for the brave men who perished on that awful day!”

***

I have copied this, word for word, from the Bengal Hurkaru of September 24, 1803: and anybody who has the slightest doubt as to the statement, may refer to the paper itself.

And here I must pause to give thanks to Fortune, which so marvellously preserved me, Sergeant–Major Higgory, and Runty Goss. Were I to say that any valor of ours had carried us unhurt through this tremendous combat, the reader would laugh me to scorn. No: though my narrative is extraordinary, it is nevertheless authentic; and never, never would I sacrifice truth for the mere sake of effect. The fact is this:—the citadel of Allyghur is situated upon a rock, about a thousand feet above the level of the sea, and is surrounded by fourteen walls, as his Excellency was good enough to remark in his despatch. A man who would mount these without scaling-ladders, is an ass; he who would SAY he mounted them without such assistance, is a liar and a knave. We HAD scaling-ladders at the commencement of the assault, although it was quite impossible to carry them beyond the first line of batteries. Mounted on them, however, as our troops were falling thick about me, I saw that we must ignominiously retreat, unless some other help could be found for our brave fellows to escalade the next wall. It was about seventy feet high. I instantly turned the guns of wall A on wall B, and peppered the latter so as to make, not a breach, but a scaling place; the men mounting in the holes made by the shot. By this simple stratagem, I managed to pass each successive barrier—for to ascend a wall which the General was pleased to call “as smooth as glass” is an absurd impossibility: I seek to achieve none such:—

“I dare do all that may become a man,
Who dares do more, is neither more nor less.”

Of course, had the enemy’s guns been commonly well served, not one of us would ever have been alive out of the three; but whether it was owing to fright, or to the excessive smoke caused by so many pieces of artillery, arrive we did. On the platforms, too, our work was not quite so difficult as might be imagined—killing these fellows was sheer butchery. As soon as we appeared, they all turned and fled helter-skelter, and the reader may judge of their courage by the fact that out of about seven hundred men killed by us, only forty had wounds in front, the rest being bayoneted as they ran.

And beyond all other pieces of good fortune was the very letting out of these tigers; which was the dernier ressort of Bournonville, the second commandant of the fort. I had observed this man (conspicuous for a tri-colored scarf which he wore) upon every one of the walls as we stormed them, and running away the very first among the fugitives. He had all the keys of the gates; and in his tremor, as he opened the menagerie portal, left the whole bunch in the door, which I seized when the animals were overcome. Runty Goss then opened them one by one, our troops entered, and the victorious standard of my country floated on the walls of Allyghur!

When the General, accompanied by his staff; entered the last line of fortifications, the brave old man raised me from the dead rhinoceros on which I was seated, and pressed me to his breast. But the excitement which had borne me through the fatigues and perils of that fearful day failed all of a sudden, and I wept like a child upon his shoulder.

Promotion, in our army, goes unluckily by seniority; nor is it in the power of the General-inChief to advance a Caesar, if he finds him in the capacity of a subaltern: MY reward for the above exploit was, therefore, not very rich. His Excellency had a favorite horn snuff-box (for, though exalted in station, he was in his habits most simple): of this, and about a quarter of an ounce of high-dried Welsh, which he always took, he made me a present, saying, in front of the line, “Accept this, Mr. Gahagan, as a token of respect from the first to the bravest officer in the army.”

Calculating the snuff to be worth a halfpenny, I should say that fourpence was about the value of this gift: but it has at least this good effect—it serves to convince any person who doubts my story, that the facts of it are really true. I have left it at the office of my publisher, along with the extract from the Bengal Hurkaru, and anybody may examine both by applying in the counting-house of Mr. Cunningham.⁸ That once popular expression, or proverb, “are you up to snuff?” arose out of the above circumstance; for the officers of my corps, none of whom, except myself, had ventured on the storming-party, used to twit me about this modest reward for my labors. Never mind! when they want me to storm a fort AGAIN, I shall know better.

⁸ The Major certainly offered to leave an old snuff-box at Mr. Cunningham’s office; but it contained no extract from a newspaper, and does not QUITE prove that he killed a rhinoceros and stormed fourteen intrenchments at the siege of Allyghur.

Well, immediately after the capture of this important fortress, Perron, who had been the life and soul of Scindiah’s army, came in to us, with his family and treasure, and was passed over to the French settlements at Chandernagur. Bourquien took his command, and against him we now moved. The morning of the 11th of September found us upon the plains of Delhi.

It was a burning hot day, and we were all refreshing ourselves after the morning’s march, when I, who was on the advanced piquet along with O’Gawler of the King’s Dragoons, was made aware of the enemy’s neighborhood in a very singular manner. O’Gawler and I were seated under a little canopy of horse-cloths, which we had formed to shelter us from the intolerable heat of the sun, and were discussing with great delight a few Manilla cheroots, and a stone jar of the most exquisite, cool, weak, refreshing sangaree. We had been playing cards the night before, and O’Gawler had lost to me seven hundred rupees. I emptied the last of the sangaree into the two pint tumblers out of which we were drinking, and holding mine up, said, “Here’s better luck to you next time, O’Gawler!”

As I spoke the words—whish!—a cannon-ball cut the tumbler clean out of my hand, and plumped into poor O’Gawler’s stomach. It settled him completely, and of course I never got my seven hundred rupees. Such are the uncertainties of war!

To strap on my sabre and my accoutrements—to mount my Arab charger—to drink off what O’Gawler had left of the sangaree—and to gallop to the General, was the work of a moment. I found him as comfortably at tiffin as if he were at his own house in London.

“General,” said I, as soon as I got into his paijamahs (or tent), “you must leave your lunch if you want to fight the enemy.”

“The enemy—psha! Mr. Gahagan, the enemy is on the other side of the river.”

“I can only tell your Excellency that the enemy’s guns will hardly carry five miles, and that Cornet O’Gawler was this moment shot dead at my side with a cannon-ball.”

“Ha! is it so?” said his Excellency, rising, and laying down the drumstick of a grilled chicken. “Gentlemen, remember that the eyes of Europe are upon us, and follow me!”

Each aide-de-camp started from table and seized his cocked hat; each British heart beat high at the thoughts of the coming melee. We mounted our horses and galloped swiftly after the brave old General; I not the last in the train, upon my famous black charger.

It was perfectly true, the enemy were posted in force within three miles of our camp, and from a hillock in the advance to which we galloped, we were enabled with our telescopes to see the whole of his imposing line. Nothing can better describe it than this:—

            ________________________________
           ................................. A
          .
         .
        .
       .

—A is the enemy, and the dots represent the hundred and twenty pieces of artillery which defended his line. He was, moreover, intrenched; and a wide morass in his front gave him an additional security.

His Excellency for a moment surveyed the line, and then said, turning round to one of his aides-de-camp, “Order up Major–General Tinkler and the cavalry.”

“HERE, does your Excellency mean?” said the aide-de-camp, surprised, for the enemy had perceived us, and the cannon-balls were flying about as thick as peas.

“HERE, sir!” said the old General, stamping with his foot in a passion, and the A.D.C. shrugged his shoulders and galloped away. In five minutes we heard the trumpets in our camp, and in twenty more the greater part of the cavalry had joined us.

Up they came, five thousand men, their standards flapping in the air, their long line of polished jack-boots gleaming in the golden sunlight. “And now we are here,” said Major–General Sir Theophilus Tinkler, “what next?” “Oh, d—— it,” said the Commander-inChief, “charge, charge—nothing like charging—galloping—guns—rascally black scoundrels—charge, charge!” And then turning round to me (perhaps he was glad to change the conversation), he said, “Lieutenant Gahagan, you will stay with me.”

And well for him I did, for I do not hesitate to say that the battle WAS GAINED BY ME. I do not mean to insult the reader by pretending that any personal exertions of mine turned the day,—that I killed, for instance, a regiment of cavalry or swallowed a battery of guns,—such absurd tales would disgrace both the hearer and the teller. I, as is well known, never say a single word which cannot be proved, and hate more than all other vices the absurd sin of egotism; I simply mean that my ADVICE to the General, at a quarter past two o’clock in the afternoon of that day, won this great triumph for the British army.

Gleig, Mill, and Thorn have all told the tale of this war, though somehow they have omitted all mention of the hero of it. General Lake, for the victory of that day, became Lord Lake of Laswaree. Laswaree! and who, forsooth, was the real conqueror of Laswaree? I can lay my hand upon my heart and say that I was. If any proof is wanting of the fact, let me give it at once, and from the highest military testimony in the world—I mean that of the Emperor Napoleon.

In the month of March, 1817, I was passenger on board the “Prince Regent,” Captain Harris, which touched at St. Helena on its passage from Calcutta to England. In company with the other officers on board the ship, I paid my respects to the illustrious exile of Longwood, who received us in his garden, where he was walking about, in a nankeen dress and a large broad-brimmed straw-hat, with General Montholon, Count Las Casas, and his son Emanuel, then a little boy; who I dare say does not recollect me, but who nevertheless played with my sword-knot and the tassels of my Hessian boots during the whole of our interview with his Imperial Majesty.

Our names were read out (in a pretty accent, by the way!) by General Montholon, and the Emperor, as each was pronounced, made a bow to the owner of it, but did not vouchsafe a word. At last Montholon came to mine. The Emperor looked me at once in the face, took his hands out of his pockets, put them behind his back, and coming up to me smiling, pronounced the following words:—

“Assaye, Delhi, Deeg, Futtyghur?”

I blushed, and taking off my hat with a bow, said—“Sire, c’est moi.”

“Parbleu! je le savais bien,” said the Emperor, holding out his snuff-box. “En usez-vous, Major?” I took a large pinch (which, with the honor of speaking to so great a man, brought the tears into my eyes), and he continued as nearly as possible in the following words:—

“Sir, you are known; you come of an heroic nation. Your third brother, the Chef de Bataillon, Count Godfrey Gahagan, was in my Irish brigade.”

Gahagan.—“Sire, it is true. He and my countrymen in your Majesty’s service stood under the green flag in the breach of Burgos, and beat Wellington back. It was the only time, as your Majesty knows, that Irishmen and Englishmen were beaten in that war.”

Napoleon (looking as if he would say, “D—— your candor, Major Gahagan”).—“Well, well; it was so. Your brother was a Count, and died a General in my service.”

Gahagan.—“He was found lying upon the bodies of nine-and-twenty Cossacks at Borodino. They were all dead, and bore the Gahagan mark.”

Napoleon (to Montholon).—“C’est vrai, Montholon: je vous donne ma parole d’honneur la plus sacree, que c’est vrai. Ils ne sont pas d’autres, ces terribles Ga’gans. You must know that Monsieur gained the battle of Delhi as certainly as I did that of Austerlitz. In this way:—Ce belitre de Lor Lake, after calling up his cavalry, and placing them in front of Holkar’s batteries, qui balayaient la plaine, was for charging the enemy’s batteries with his horse, who would have been ecrases, mitrailles, foudroyes to a man but for the cunning of ce grand rogue que vous voyez.”

Montholon.—“Coquin de Major, va!”

Napoleon.—“Montholon! tais-toi. When Lord Lake, with his great bull-headed English obstinacy, saw the facheuse position into which he had brought his troops, he was for dying on the spot, and would infallibly have done so—and the loss of his army would have been the ruin of the East India Company—and the ruin of the English East India Company would have established my empire (bah! it was a republic then!) in the East—but that the man before us, Lieutenant Goliah Gahagan, was riding at the side of General Lake.”

Montholon (with an accent of despair and fury).—“Gredin! cent mille tonnerres de Dieu!”

Napoleon (benignantly).—“Calme-toi, mon fidele ami. What will you? It was fate. Gahagan, at the critical period of the battle, or rather slaughter (for the English had not slain a man of the enemy), advised a retreat.”

Montholon. “Le lache! Un Francais meurt, mais il ne recule jamais.”

Napoleon.—“STUPIDE! Don’t you see WHY the retreat was ordered?—don’t you know that it was a feint on the part of Gahagan to draw Holkar from his impregnable intrenchments? Don’t you know that the ignorant Indian fell into the snare, and issuing from behind the cover of his guns, came down with his cavalry on the plains in pursuit of Lake and his dragoons? Then it was that the Englishmen turned upon him; the hardy children of the north swept down his feeble horsemen, bore them back to their guns, which were useless, entered Holkar’s intrenchments along with his troops, sabred the artillerymen at their pieces, and won the battle of Delhi!”

As the Emperor spoke, his pale cheek glowed red, his eye flashed fire, his deep clear voice rung as of old when he pointed out the enemy from beneath the shadow of the Pyramids, or rallied his regiments to the charge upon the death-strewn plain of Wagram. I have had many a proud moment in my life, but never such a proud one as this; and I would readily pardon the word “coward,” as applied to me by Montholon, in consideration of the testimony which his master bore in my favor.

“Major,” said the Emperor to me in conclusion, “why had I not such a man as you in my service? I would have made you a Prince and a Marshal!” and here he fell into a reverie, of which I knew and respected the purport. He was thinking, doubtless, that I might have retrieved his fortunes; and indeed I have very little doubt that I might.

Very soon after, coffee was brought by Monsieur Marchand, Napoleon’s valet-de-chambre, and after partaking of that beverage, and talking upon the politics of the day, the Emperor withdrew, leaving me deeply impressed by the condescension he had shown in this remarkable interview.

CHAPTER III.

A PEEP INTO SPAIN—ACCOUNT OF THE ORIGIN AND SERVICES OF THE AHMEDNUGGAR IRREGULARS.

HEAD QUARTERS, MORELLA, Sept. 16, 1838.

I have been here for some months, along with my young friend Cabrera: and in the hurry and bustle of war—daily on guard and in the batteries for sixteen hours out of the twenty-four, with fourteen severe wounds and seven musket-balls in my body—it may be imagined that I have had little time to think about the publication of my memoirs. Inter arma silent leges—in the midst of fighting be hanged to writing! as the poet says; and I never would have bothered myself with a pen, had not common gratitude incited me to throw off a few pages.

Along with Oraa’s troops, who have of late been beleaguering this place, there was a young Milesian gentleman, Mr. Toone O’Connor Emmett Fitzgerald Sheeny, by name, a law student, and member of Gray’s Inn, and what he called Bay Ah of Trinity College, Dublin. Mr. Sheeny was with the Queen’s people, not in a military capacity, but as representative of an English journal; to which, for a trifling weekly remuneration, he was in the habit of transmitting accounts of the movements of the belligerents, and his own opinion of the politics of Spain. Receiving, for the discharge of his duty, a couple of guineas a week from the proprietors of the journal in question, he was enabled, as I need scarcely say, to make such a show in Oraa’s camp as only a Christino general officer, or at the very least a colonel of a regiment, can afford to keep up.

In the famous sortie which we made upon the twenty-third, I was of course among the foremost in the melee, and found myself, after a good deal of slaughtering (which it would be as disagreeable as useless to describe here), in the court of a small inn or podesta, which had been made the head-quarters of several Queenite officers during the siege. The pesatero or landlord of the inn had been despatched by my brave chapel-churies, with his fine family of children—the officers quartered in the podesta had of course bolted; but one man remained, and my fellows were on the point of cutting him into ten thousand pieces with their borachios, when I arrived in the room time enough to prevent the catastrophe. Seeing before me an individual in the costume of a civilian—a white hat, a light blue satin cravat, embroidered with butterflies and other quadrupeds, a green coat and brass buttons, and a pair of blue plaid trousers, I recognized at once a countryman, and interposed to save his life.

In an agonized brogue the unhappy young man was saying all that he could to induce the chapel-churies to give up their intention of slaughtering him; but it is very little likely that his protestations would have had any effect upon them, had not I appeared in the room, and shouted to the ruffians to hold their hand.

Seeing a general officer before them (I have the honor to hold that rank in the service of his Catholic Majesty), and moreover one six feet four in height, and armed with that terrible cabecilla (a sword so called, because it is five feet long) which is so well known among the Spanish armies—seeing, I say, this figure, the fellows retired, exclaiming, “Adios, corpo di bacco, nosotros,” and so on, clearly proving (by their words) that they would, if they dared, have immolated the victim whom I had thus rescued from their fury. “Villains!” shouted I, hearing them grumble, “away! quit the apartment!” Each man, sulkily sheathing his sombrero, obeyed, and quitted the camarilla.

It was then that Mr. Sheeny detailed to me the particulars to which I have briefly adverted; and, informing me at the same time that he had a family in England who would feel obliged to me for his release, and that his most intimate friend the English ambassador would move heaven and earth to revenge his fall, he directed my attention to a portmanteau passably well filled, which he hoped would satisfy the cupidity of my troops. I said, though with much regret, that I must subject his person to a search; and hence arose the circumstance which has called for what I fear you will consider a somewhat tedious explanation. I found upon Mr. Sheeny’s person three sovereigns in English money (which I have to this day), and singularly enough a copy of The New Monthly Magazine, containing a portion of my adventures. It was a toss-up whether I should let the poor young man be shot or no, but this little circumstance saved his life. The gratified vanity of authorship induced me to accept his portmanteau and valuables, and to allow the poor wretch to go free. I put the Magazine in my coat-pocket, and left him and the podesta.

The men, to my surprise, had quitted the building, and it was full time for me to follow; for I found our sallying party, after committing dreadful ravages in Oraa’s lines, were in full retreat upon the fort, hotly pressed by a superior force of the enemy. I am pretty well known and respected by the men of both parties in Spain (indeed I served for some months on the Queen’s side before I came over to Don Carlos); and, as it is my maxim never to give quarter, I never expect to receive it when taken myself. On issuing from the podesta with Sheeny’s portmanteau and my sword in my hand, I was a little disgusted and annoyed to see our own men in a pretty good column retreating at double-quick, and about four hundred yards beyond me, up the hill leading to the fort; while on my left hand, and at only a hundred yards, a troop of the Queenite lancers were clattering along the road.

I had got into the very middle of the road before I made this discovery, so that the fellows had a full sight of me, and whiz! came a bullet by my left whisker before I could say Jack Robinson. I looked round—there were seventy of the accursed malvados at the least, and within, as I said, a hundred yards. Were I to say that I stopped to fight seventy men, you would write me down a fool or a liar: no, sir, I did not fight, I ran away.

I am six feet four—my figure is as well known in the Spanish army as that of the Count de Luchana, or my fierce little friend Cabrera himself. “GAHAGAN!” shouted out half a dozen scoundrelly voices, and fifty more shots came rattling after me. I was running—running as the brave stag before the hounds—running as I have done a great number of times before in my life, when there was no help for it but a race.

After I had run about five hundred yards, I saw that I had gained nearly three upon our column in front, and that likewise the Christino horsemen were left behind some hundred yards more; with the exception of three, who were fearfully near me. The first was an officer without a lance; he had fired both his pistols at me, and was twenty yards in advance of his comrades; there was a similar distance between the two lancers who rode behind him. I determined then to wait for No. 1, and as he came up delivered cut 3 at his horse’s near leg—off it flew, and down, as I expected, went horse and man. I had hardly time to pass my sword through my prostrate enemy, when No. 2 was upon me. If I could but get that fellow’s horse, thought I, I am safe; and I executed at once the plan which I hoped was to effect my rescue.

I had, as I said, left the podesta with Sheeny’s portmanteau, and, unwilling to part with some of the articles it contained—some shirts, a bottle of whiskey, a few cakes of Windsor soap, &c. &c.,—I had carried it thus far on my shoulders, but now was compelled to sacrifice it malgre moi. As the lancer came up, I dropped my sword from my right hand, and hurled the portmanteau at his head, with aim so true, that he fell back on his saddle like a sack, and thus when the horse galloped up to me, I had no difficulty in dismounting the rider: the whiskey-bottle struck him over his right eye, and he was completely stunned. To dash him from the saddle and spring myself into it, was the work of a moment; indeed, the two combats had taken place in about a fifth part of the time which it has taken the reader to peruse the description. But in the rapidity of the last encounter, and the mounting of my enemy’s horse, I had committed a very absurd oversight—I was scampering away WITHOUT MY SWORD! What was I to do?—to scamper on, to be sure, and trust to the legs of my horse for safety!

The lancer behind me gained on me every moment, and I could hear his horrid laugh as he neared me. I leaned forward jockey-fashion in my saddle, and kicked, and urged, and flogged with my hand, but all in vain. Closer—closer—the point of his lance was within two feet of my back. Ah! ah! he delivered the point, and fancy my agony when I felt it enter—through exactly fifty-nine pages of the New Monthly Magazine. Had it not been for that Magazine, I should have been impaled without a shadow of a doubt. Was I wrong in feeling gratitude? Had I not cause to continue my contributions to that periodical?

When I got safe into Morella, along with the tail of the sallying party, I was for the first time made acquainted with the ridiculous result of the lancer’s thrust (as he delivered his lance, I must tell you that a ball came whiz over my head from our fellows, and entering at his nose, put a stop to HIS lancing for the future). I hastened to Cabrera’s quarter, and related to him some of my adventures during the day.

“But, General,” said he, “you are standing. I beg you chiudete l’uscio (take a chair).”

I did so, and then for the first time was aware that there was some foreign substance in the tail of my coat, which prevented my sitting at ease. I drew out the Magazine which I had seized, and there, to my wonder, DISCOVERED THE CHRISTINO LANCE twisted up like a fish-hook, or a pastoral crook.

“Ha! ha! ha!” said Cabrera (who is a notorious wag).

“Valdepenas madrilenos,” growled out Tristany.

“By my cachuca di caballero (upon my honor as a gentleman),” shrieked out Ros d’Eroles, convulsed with laughter, “I will send it to the Bishop of Leon for a crozier.”

“Gahagan has CONSECRATED it,” giggled out Ramon Cabrera; and so they went on with their muchacas for an hour or more. But, when they heard that the means of my salvation from the lance of the scoundrelly Christino had been the Magazine containing my own history, their laugh was changed into wonder. I read them (speaking Spanish more fluently than English) every word of my story. “But how is this?” said Cabrera. “You surely have other adventures to relate?”

“Excellent Sir,” said I, “I have;” and that very evening, as we sat over our cups of tertullia (sangaree), I continued my narrative in nearly the following words:—

“I left off in the very middle of the battle of Delhi, which ended, as everybody knows, in the complete triumph of the British arms. But who gained the battle? Lord Lake is called Viscount Lake of Delhi and Laswaree, while Major Gaha—nonsense, never mind HIM, never mind the charge he executed when, sabre in hand, he leaped the six-foot wall in the mouth of the roaring cannon, over the heads of the gleaming pikes; when, with one hand seizing the sacred peishcush, or fish—which was the banner always borne before Scindiah,—he, with his good sword, cut off the trunk of the famous white elephant, which, shrieking with agony, plunged madly into the Mahratta ranks, followed by his giant brethren, tossing, like chaff before the wind, the affrighted kitmatgars. He, meanwhile, now plunging into the midst of a battalion of consomahs, now cleaving to the chine a screaming and ferocious bobbachee,⁹ rushed on, like the simoom across the red Zaharan plain, killing with his own hand, a hundred and forty-thr—but never mind—‘ALONE HE DID IT;’ sufficient be it for him, however, that the victory was won: he cares not for the empty honors which were awarded to more fortunate men!

⁹ The double-jointed camel of Bactria, which the classic reader may recollect is mentioned by Suidas (in his Commentary on the Flight of Darius), is so called by the Mahrattas.

“We marched after the battle to Delhi, where poor blind old Shah Allum received us, and bestowed all kinds of honors and titles on our General. As each of the officers passed before him, the Shah did not fail to remark my person,¹⁰ and was told my name.

¹⁰ There is some trifling inconsistency on the Major’s part. Shah Allum was notoriously blind: how, then, could he have seen Gahagan? The thing is manifestly impossible.

“Lord Lake whispered to him my exploits, and the old man was so delighted with the account of my victory over the elephant (whose trunk I use to this day), that he said, ‘Let him be called GUJPUTI,’ or the lord of elephants; and Gujputi was the name by which I was afterwards familiarly known among the natives,—the men, that is. The women had a softer appellation for me, and called me ‘Mushook,’ or charmer.

“Well, I shall not describe Delhi, which is doubtless well known to the reader; nor the siege of Agra, to which place we went from Delhi; nor the terrible day at Laswaree, which went nigh to finish the war. Suffice it to say that we were victorious, and that I was wounded; as I have invariably been in the two hundred and four occasions when I have found myself in action. One point, however, became in the course of this campaign QUITE evident—THAT SOMETHING MUST BE DONE FOR GAHAGAN. The country cried shame, the King’s troops grumbled, the sepoys openly murmured that their Gujputi was only a lieutenant, when he had performed such signal services. What was to be done? Lord Wellesley was in an evident quandary. ‘Gahagan,’ wrote he, ‘to be a subaltern is evidently not your fate—YOU WERE BORN FOR COMMAND; but Lake and General Wellesley are good officers, they cannot be turned out—I must make a post for you. What say you, my dear fellow, to a corps of IRREGULAR HORSE?’

“It was thus that the famous corps of AHMEDNUGGAR IRREGULARS had its origin; a guerilla force, it is true, but one which will long be remembered in the annals of our Indian campaigns.

***

“As the commander of this regiment, I was allowed to settle the uniform of the corps, as well as to select recruits. These were not wanting as soon as my appointment was made known, but came flocking to my standard a great deal faster than to the regular corps in the Company’s service. I had European officers, of course, to command them, and a few of my countrymen as sergeants; the rest were all natives, whom I chose of the strongest and bravest men in India; chiefly Pitans, Afghans, Hurrumzadehs, and Calliawns: for these are well known to be the most warlike districts of our Indian territory.

“When on parade and in full uniform we made a singular and noble appearance. I was always fond of dress; and, in this instance, gave a carte blanche to my taste, and invented the most splendid costume that ever perhaps decorated a soldier. I am, as I have stated already, six feet four inches in height, and of matchless symmetry and proportion. My hair and beard are of the most brilliant auburn, so bright as scarcely to be distinguished at a distance from scarlet. My eyes are bright blue, overshadowed by bushy eyebrows of the color of my hair, and a terrific gash of the deepest purple, which goes over the forehead, the eyelid, and the cheek, and finishes at the ear, gives my face a more strictly military appearance than can be conceived. When I have been drinking (as is pretty often the case) this gash becomes ruby bright, and as I have another which took off a piece of my under-lip, and shows five of my front teeth, I leave you to imagine that ‘seldom lighted on the earth’ (as the monster Burke remarked of one of his unhappy victims), ‘a more extraordinary vision.’ I improved these natural advantages; and, while in cantonment during the hot winds at Chittybobbary, allowed my hair to grow very long, as did my beard, which reached to my waist. It took me two hours daily to curl my hair in ten thousand little cork-screw ringlets, which waved over my shoulders, and to get my moustaches well round to the corners of my eyelids. I dressed in loose scarlet trousers and red morocco boots, a scarlet jacket, and a shawl of the same color round my waist; a scarlet turban three feet high, and decorated with a tuft of the scarlet feathers of the flamingo, formed my head-dress, and I did not allow myself a single ornament, except a small silver skull and crossbones in front of my turban. Two brace of pistols, a Malay creese, and a tulwar, sharp on both sides, and very nearly six feet in length, completed this elegant costume. My two flags were each surmounted with a red skull and cross-bones, and ornamented, one with a black, and the other with a red beard (of enormous length, taken from men slain in battle by me). On one flag were of course the arms of John Company; on the other, an image of myself bestriding a prostrate elephant, with the simple word, ‘Gujputi’ written underneath in the Nagaree, Persian, and Sanscrit characters. I rode my black horse, and looked, by the immortal gods, like Mars. To me might be applied the words which were written concerning handsome General Webb, in Marlborough’s time:—

“‘To noble danger he conducts the way,
His great example all his troop obey,
Before the front the Major sternly rides,
With such an air as Mars to battle strides.
Propitious heaven must sure a hero save
Like Paris handsome, and like Hector brave!’

“My officers (Captains Biggs and Mackanulty, Lieutenants Glogger, Pappendick, Stuffle, &c., &c.) were dressed exactly in the same way, but in yellow; and the men were similarly equipped, but in black. I have seen many regiments since, and many ferocious-looking men, but the Ahmednuggar Irregulars were more dreadful to the view than any set of ruffians on which I ever set eyes. I would to heaven that the Czar of Muscovy had passed through Cabool and Lahore, and that I with my old Ahmednuggars stood on a fair field to meet him! Bless you, bless you, my swart companions in victory! through the mist of twenty years I hear the booming of your war-cry, and mark the glitter of your scimitars as ye rage in the thickest of the battle!¹¹

¹¹ I do not wish to brag of my style of writing, or to pretend that my genius as a writer has not been equalled in former times; but if, in the works of Byron, Scott, Goethe, or Victor Hugo, the reader can find a more beautiful sentence than the above, I will be obliged to him, that is all—I simply say, I WILL BE OBLIGED TO HIM.——G. O’G. G., M. H. E. I. C. S., C. I. H. A.

“But away with melancholy reminiscences. You may fancy what a figure the Irregulars cut on a field-day—a line of five hundred black-faced, black-dressed, black-horsed, black-bearded men—Biggs, Glogger, and the other officers in yellow, galloping about the field like flashes of lightning; myself enlightening them, red, solitary, and majestic, like yon glorious orb in heaven.

“There are very few men, I presume, who have not heard of Holkar’s sudden and gallant incursion into the Dooab, in the year 1804, when we thought that the victory of Laswaree and the brilliant success at Deeg had completely finished him. Taking ten thousand horse he broke up his camp at Palimbang; and the first thing General Lake heard of him was, that he was at Putna, then at Rumpooge, then at Doncaradam—he was, in fact, in the very heart of our territory.

“The unfortunate part of the affair was this:—His Excellency, despising the Mahratta chieftain, had allowed him to advance about two thousand miles in his front, and knew not in the slightest degree where to lay hold on him. Was he at Hazarubaug? was he at Bogly Gunge? nobody knew, and for a considerable period the movements of Lake’s cavalry were quite ambiguous, uncertain, promiscuous, and undetermined.

“Such, briefly, was the state of affairs in October, 1804. At the beginning of that month I had been wounded (a trifling scratch, cutting off my left upper eyelid, a bit of my cheek, and my under lip), and I was obliged to leave Biggs in command of my Irregulars, whilst I retired for my wounds to an English station at Furruckabad, alias Futtyghur—it is, as every twopenny postman knows, at the apex of the Dooab. We have there a cantonment, and thither I went for the mere sake of the surgeon and the sticking-plaster.

“Furruckabad, then, is divided into two districts or towns: the lower Cotwal, inhabited by the natives, and the upper (which is fortified slightly, and has all along been called Futtyghur, meaning in Hindoostanee ‘the-favorite-resort-of-the-white-faced-Feringhees-near the-mango-tope-consecrated-to Ram’) occupied by Europeans. (It is astonishing, by the way, how comprehensive that language is, and how much can be conveyed in one or two of the commonest phrases.)

“Biggs, then, and my men were playing all sorts of wondrous pranks with Lord Lake’s army, whilst I was detained an unwilling prisoner of health at Futtyghur.

“An unwilling prisoner, however, I should not say. The cantonment at Futtyghur contained that which would have made ANY man a happy slave. Woman, lovely woman, was there in abundance and variety! The fact is, that when the campaign commenced in 1803, the ladies of the army all congregated to this place, where they were left, as it was supposed, in safety. I might, like Homer, relate the names and qualities of all. I may at least mention SOME whose memory is still most dear to me. There was—

“Mrs. Major–General Bulcher, wife of Bulcher of the infantry.

“Miss Bulcher.

“Miss BELINDA BULCHER (whose name I beg the printer to place in large capitals.)

“Mrs. Colonel Vandegobbleschroy.

“Mrs. Major Macan and the four Misses Macan.

“The Honorable Mrs. Burgoo, Mrs. Flix, Hicks, Wicks, and many more too numerous to mention. The flower of our camp was, however, collected there, and the last words of Lord Lake to me, as I left him, were, ‘Gahagan, I commit those women to your charge. Guard them with your life, watch over them with your honor, defend them with the matchless power of your indomitable arm.’

“Futtyghur is, as I have said, a European station, and the pretty air of the bungalows, amid the clustering topes of mango-trees, has often ere this excited the admiration of the tourist and sketcher. On the brow of a hill—the Burrumpooter river rolls majestically at its base; and no spot, in a word, can be conceived more exquisitely arranged, both by art and nature, as a favorite residence of the British fair. Mrs. Bulcher, Mrs. Vandegobbleschroy, and the other married ladies above mentioned, had each of them delightful bungalows and gardens in the place, and between one cottage and another my time passed as delightfully as can the hours of any man who is away from his darling occupation of war.

“I was the commandant of the fort. It is a little insignificant pettah, defended simply by a couple of gabions, a very ordinary counterscarp, and a bomb-proof embrasure. On the top of this my flag was planted, and the small garrison of forty men only were comfortably barracked off in the case-mates within. A surgeon and two chaplains (there were besides three reverend gentlemen of amateur missions, who lived in the town,) completed, as I may say, the garrison of our little fortalice, which I was left to defend and to command.

“On the night of the first of November, in the year 1804, I had invited Mrs. Major–General Bulcher and her daughters, Mrs. Vandegobbleschroy, and, indeed, all the ladies in the cantonment, to a little festival in honor of the recovery of my health, of the commencement of the shooting season, and indeed as a farewell visit, for it was my intention to take dawk the very next morning and return to my regiment. The three amateur missionaries whom I have mentioned, and some ladies in the cantonment of very rigid religious principles, refused to appear at my little party. They had better never have been born than have done as they did: as you shall hear.

“We had been dancing merrily all night, and the supper (chiefly of the delicate condor, the luscious adjutant, and other birds of a similar kind, which I had shot in the course of the day) had been duly feted by every lady and gentleman present; when I took an opportunity to retire on the ramparts, with the interesting and lovely Belinda Bulcher. I was occupied, as the French say, in contering fleurettes to this sweet young creature, when, all of a sudden, a rocket was seen whizzing through the air, and a strong light was visible in the valley below the little fort.

“‘What, fireworks! Captain Gahagan,’ said Belinda; ‘this is too gallant.’

“‘Indeed, my dear Miss Bulcher,’ said I, ‘they are fireworks of which I have no idea: perhaps our friends the missionaries—’

“‘Look, look!’ said Belinda, trembling, and clutching tightly hold of my arm: ‘what do I see? yes—no—yes! it is—OUR BUNGALOW IS IN FLAMES!’

“It was true, the spacious bungalow occupied by Mrs. Major–General was at that moment seen a prey to the devouring element—another and another succeeded it—seven bungalows, before I could almost ejaculate the name of Jack Robinson, were seen blazing brightly in the black midnight air!

“I seized my night-glass, and looking towards the spot where the conflagration raged, what was my astonishment to see thousands of black forms dancing round the fires; whilst by their lights I could observe columns after columns of Indian horse, arriving and taking up their ground in the very middle of the open square or tank, round which the bungalows were built!

“‘Ho, warder!’ shouted I (while the frightened and trembling Belinda clung closer to my side, and pressed the stalwart arm that encircled her waist), ‘down with the drawbridge! see that your masolgees’ (small tumbrels which are used in place of large artillery) ‘be well loaded: you, sepoys, hasten and man the ravelin! you, choprasees, put out the lights in the embrasures! we shall have warm work of it to-night, or my name is not Goliah Gahagan.’

“The ladies, the guests (to the number of eighty-three), the sepoys, choprasees, masolgees, and so on, had all crowded on the platform at the sound of my shouting, and dreadful was the consternation, shrill the screaming, occasioned by my words. The men stood irresolute and mute with terror! the women, trembling, knew scarcely whither to fly for refuge. ‘Who are yonder ruffians?’ said I. A hundred voices yelped in reply—some said the Pindarees, some said the Mahrattas, some vowed it was Scindiah, and others declared it was Holkar—no one knew.

“‘Is there any one here,’ said I, ‘who will venture to reconnoitre yonder troops?’ There was a dead pause.

“‘A thousand tomauns to the man who will bring me news of yonder army!’ again I repeated. Still a dead silence. The fact was that Scindiah and Holkar both were so notorious for their cruelty, that no one dared venture to face the danger. Oh for fifty of my brave Abmednuggarees!’ thought I.

“‘Gentlemen,’ said I, ‘I see it—you are cowards—none of you dare encounter the chance even of death. It is an encouraging prospect: know you not that the ruffian Holkar, if it be he, will with the morrow’s dawn beleaguer our little fort, and throw thousands of men against our walls? know you not that, if we are taken, there is no quarter, no hope; death for us—and worse than death for these lovely ones assembled here?’ Here the ladies shrieked and raised a howl as I have heard the jackals on a summer’s evening. Belinda, my dear Belinda! flung both her arms round me, and sobbed on my shoulder (or in my waistcoat-pocket rather, for the little witch could reach no higher).

“‘Captain Gahagan,’ sobbed she, ‘GO—GO—GOGGLE—IAH!’

“‘My soul’s adored!’ replied I.

“‘Swear to me one thing.’

“‘I swear.’

“‘That if—that if—the nasty, horrid, odious black Mah-ra-a-a-attahs take the fort, you will put me out of their power.’

“I clasped the dear girl to my heart, and swore upon my sword that, rather than she should incur the risk of dishonors she should perish by my own hand. This comforted her; and her mother, Mrs. Major–General Bulcher, and her elder sister, who had not until now known a word of our attachment, (indeed, but for these extraordinary circumstances, it is probable that we ourselves should never have discovered it,) were under these painful circumstances made aware of my beloved Belinda’s partiality for me. Having communicated thus her wish of self-destruction, I thought her example a touching and excellent one, and proposed to all the ladies that they should follow it, and that at the entry of the enemy into the fort, and at a signal given by me, they should one and all make away with themselves. Fancy my disgust when, after making this proposition, not one of the ladies chose to accede to it, and received it with the same chilling denial that my former proposal to the garrison had met with.

“In the midst of this hurry and confusion, as if purposely to add to it, a trumpet was heard at the gate of the fort, and one of the sentinels came running to me, saying that a Mahratta soldier was before the gate with a flag of truce!

“I went down, rightly conjecturing, as it turned out, that the party, whoever they might be, had no artillery; and received at the point of my sword a scroll, of which the following is a translation:—

“‘TO GOLIAH GAHAGAN GUJPUTI.

“‘LORD OF ELEPHANTS, SIR,—I have the honor to inform you that I arrived before this place at eight o’clock P.M. with ten thousand cavalry under my orders. I have burned, since my arrival, seventeen bungalows in Furruckabad and Futtyghur, and have likewise been under the painful necessity of putting to death three clergymen (mollahs), and seven English officers, whom I found in the village; the women have been transferred to safe keeping in the harems of my officers and myself.

“‘As I know your courage and talents, I shall be very happy if you will surrender the fortress, and take service as a major-general (hookahbadar) in my army. Should my proposal not meet with your assent, I beg leave to state that tomorrow I shall storm the fort, and on taking it, shall put to death every male in the garrison, and every female above twenty years of age. For yourself I shall reserve a punishment, which for novelty and exquisite torture has, I flatter myself, hardly ever been exceeded. Awaiting the favor of a reply, I am, Sir,

“‘Your very obedient servant,

“‘JESWUNT ROW HOLKAR.

“‘CAMP BEFORE FUTTYGHUR, Sept. 1, 1804.

“‘R. S. V. P.’

“The officer who had brought this precious epistle (it is astonishing how Holkar had aped the forms of English correspondence), an enormous Pitan soldier, with a shirt of mail, and a steel cap and cape, round which his turban wound, was leaning against the gate on his matchlock, and whistling a national melody. I read the letter, and saw at once there was no time to be lost. That man, thought I, must never go back to Holkar. Were he to attack us now before we were prepared, the fort would be his in half an hour.

“Tying my white pocket-handkerchief to a stick, I flung open the gate and advanced to the officer; he was standing, I said, on the little bridge across the moat. I made him a low salaam, after the fashion of the country, and, as he bent forward to return the compliment, I am sorry to say, I plunged forward, gave him a violent blow on the head, which deprived him of all sensation, and then dragged him within the wall, raising the drawbridge after me.

“I bore the body into my own apartment: there, swift as thought, I stripped him of his turban, cammerbund, peijammahs, and papooshes, and, putting them on myself, determined to go forth and reconnoitre the enemy.”

***

Here I was obliged to stop, for Cabrera, Ros d’Eroles, and the rest of the staff, were sound asleep! What I did in my reconnaisance, and how I defended the fort of Futtyghur, I shall have the honor of telling on another occasion.

CHAPTER IV.

THE INDIAN CAMP—THE SORTIE FROM THE FORT.

HEAD-QUARTERS, MORELLA, Oct. 3, 1838.

It is a balmy night. I hear the merry jingle of the tambourine, and the cheery voices of the girls and peasants, as they dance beneath my casement, under the shadow of the clustering vines. The laugh and song pass gayly round, and even at this distance I can distinguish the elegant form of Ramon Cabrera, as he whispers gay nothings in the ears of the Andalusian girls, or joins in the thrilling chorus of Riego’s hymn, which is ever and anon vociferated by the enthusiastic soldiery of Carlos Quinto. I am alone, in the most inaccessible and most bomb-proof tower of our little fortalice; the large casements are open—the wind, as it enters, whispers in my ear its odorous recollections of the orange grove and the myrtle bower. My torch (a branch of the fragrant cedar-tree) flares and flickers in the midnight breeze, and disperses its scent and burning splinters on my scroll and the desk where I write—meet implements for a soldier’s authorship!—it is CARTRIDGE paper over which my pen runs so glibly, and a yawning barrel of gunpowder forms my rough writing-table. Around me, below me, above me, all—all is peace! I think, as I sit here so lonely, on my country, England! and muse over the sweet and bitter recollections of my early days! Let me resume my narrative, at the point where (interrupted by the authoritative summons of war) I paused on the last occasion.

I left off, I think—(for I am a thousand miles away from proof-sheets as I write, and, were I not writing the simple TRUTH, must contradict myself a thousand times in the course of my tale)—I think, I say, that I left off at that period of my story, when, Holkar being before Futtyghur, and I in command of that fortress, I had just been compelled to make away with his messenger; and, dressed in the fallen Indian’s accoutrements, went forth to reconnoitre the force, and, if possible, to learn the intentions of the enemy. However much my figure might have resembled that of the Pitan, and, disguised in his armor, might have deceived the lynx-eyed Mahrattas, into whose camp I was about to plunge, it was evident that a single glance at my fair face and auburn beard would have undeceived the dullest blockhead in Holkar’s army. Seizing, then, a bottle of Burgess’s walnut catsup, I dyed my face and my hands, and, with the simple aid of a flask of Warren’s jet, I made my hair and beard as black as ebony. The Indian’s helmet and chain hood covered likewise a great part of my face and I hoped thus, with luck, impudence, and a complete command of all the Eastern dialects and languages, from Burmah to Afghanistan, to pass scot-free through this somewhat dangerous ordeal.

I had not the word of the night, it is true—but I trusted to good fortune for that, and passed boldly out of the fortress, bearing the flag of truce as before; I had scarcely passed on a couple of hundred yards, when lo! a party of Indian horsemen, armed like him I had just overcome, trotted towards me. One was leading a noble white charger, and no sooner did he see me than, dismounting from his own horse, and giving the rein to a companion, he advanced to meet me with the charger; a second fellow likewise dismounted and followed the first; one held the bridle of the horse, while the other (with a multitude of salaams, aleikums, and other genuflexions), held the jewelled stirrup, and kneeling, waited until I should mount.

I took the hint at once: the Indian who had come up to the fort was a great man—that was evident; I walked on with a majestic air, gathered up the velvet reins, and sprung into the magnificent high-peaked saddle. “Buk, buk,” said I. “It is good. In the name of the forty-nine Imaums, let us ride on.” And the whole party set off at a brisk trot, I keeping silence, and thinking with no little trepidation of what I was about to encounter.

As we rode along, I heard two of the men commenting upon my unusual silence (for I suppose, I—that is the Indian—was a talkative officer). “The lips of the Bahawder are closed,” said one. “Where are those birds of Paradise, his long-tailed words? they are imprisoned between the golden bars of his teeth!”

“Kush,” said his companion, “be quiet! Bobbachy Bahawder has seen the dreadful Feringhee, Gahagan Khan Gujputi, the elephant-lord, whose sword reaps the harvest of death; there is but one champion who can wear the papooshes of the elephant-slayer—it is Bobbachy Bahawder!”

“You speak truly, Puneeree Muckun, the Bahawder ruminates on the words of the unbeliever: he is an ostrich, and hatches the eggs of his thoughts.”

“Bekhusm! on my nose be it! May the young birds, his actions, be strong and swift in flight.”

“May they DIGEST IRON!” said Puneeree Muckun, who was evidently a wag in his way.

“O-ho!” thought I, as suddenly the light flashed upon me. “It was, then, the famous Bobbachy Bahawder, whom I overcame just now! and he is the man destined to stand in my slippers, is he?” and I was at that very moment standing in his own! Such are the chances and changes that fall to the lot of the soldier!

I suppose everybody—everybody who has been in India, at least—has heard the name of Bobbachy Bahawder: it is derived from the two Hindustanee words—bobbachy, general; bahawder, artilleryman. He had entered into Holkar’s service in the latter capacity, and had, by his merit and his undaunted bravery in action, attained the dignity of the peacock’s feather, which is only granted to noblemen of the first class; he was married, moreover, to one of Holkar’s innumerable daughters: a match which, according to the Chronique Scandaleuse, brought more of honor than of pleasure to the poor Bobbachy. Gallant as he was in the field, it was said that in the harem he was the veriest craven alive, completely subjugated by his ugly and odious wife. In all matters of importance the late Bahawder had been consulted by his prince, who had, as it appears, (knowing my character, and not caring to do anything rash in his attack upon so formidable an enemy,) sent forward the unfortunate Pitan to reconnoitre the fort; he was to have done yet more, as I learned from the attendant Puneeree Muckun, who was, I soon found out, an old favorite with the Bobbachy—doubtless on account of his honesty and love of repartee.

“The Bahawder’s lips are closed,” said he, at last, trotting up to me; “has he not a word for old Puneeree Muckun?”

“Bismillah, mashallah, barikallah,” said I; which means, “My good friend, what I have seen is not worth the trouble of relation, and fills my bosom with the darkest forebodings.”

“You could not then see the Gujputi alone, and stab him with your dagger?”

[Here was a pretty conspiracy!] “No, I saw him, but not alone; his people were always with him.”

“Hurrumzadeh! it is a pity; we waited but the sound of your jogree (whistle), and straightway would have galloped up and seized upon every man, woman, and child in the fort: however, there are but a dozen men in the garrison, and they have not provision for two days—they must yield; and then hurrah for the moon-faces! Mashallah! I am told the soldiers who first get in are to have their pick. How my old woman, Rotee Muckun, will be surprised when I bring home a couple of Feringhee wives,—ha! ha!”

“Fool!” said I, “be still!—twelve men in the garrison! there are twelve hundred! Gahagan himself is as good as a thousand men; and as for food, I saw with my own eyes five hundred bullocks grazing in the court-yard as I entered.” This WAS a bouncer, I confess; but my object was to deceive Puneeree Muckun, and give him as high a notion as possible of the capabilities of defence which the besieged had.

“Pooch, pooch,” murmured the men; “it is a wonder of a fortress: we shall never be able to take it until our guns come up.”

There was hope then! they had no battering-train. Ere this arrived, I trusted that Lord Lake would hear of our plight, and march down to rescue us. Thus occupied in thought and conversation, we rode on until the advanced sentinel challenged us, when old Puneeree gave the word, and we passed on into the centre of Holkar’s camp.

It was a strange—a stirring sight! The camp-fires were lighted; and round them—eating, reposing, talking, looking at the merry steps of the dancing-girls, or listening to the stories of some Dhol Baut (or Indian improvisatore) were thousands of dusky soldiery. The camels and horses were picketed under the banyan-trees, on which the ripe mango fruit was growing, and offered them an excellent food. Towards the spot which the golden fish and royal purdahs, floating in the wind, designated as the tent of Holkar, led an immense avenue—of elephants! the finest street, indeed, I ever saw. Each of the monstrous animals had a castle on its back, armed with Mauritanian archers and the celebrated Persian matchlock-men: it was the feeding time of these royal brutes, and the grooms were observed bringing immense toffungs, or baskets, filled with pine-apples, plantains, bandannas, Indian corn, and cocoa-nuts, which grow luxuriantly at all seasons of the year. We passed down this extraordinary avenue—no less than three hundred and eighty-eight tails did I count on each side—each tail appertaining to an elephant twenty-five feet high—each elephant having a two-storied castle on its back—each castle containing sleeping and eating rooms for the twelve men that formed its garrison, and were keeping watch on the roof—each roof bearing a flag-staff twenty feet long on its top, the crescent glittering with a thousand gems, and round it the imperial standard,—each standard of silk velvet and cloth-of-gold, bearing the well-known device of Holkar, argent an or gules, between a sinople of the first, a chevron, truncated, wavy. I took nine of these myself in the course of a very short time after, and shall be happy, when I come to England, to show them to any gentleman who has a curiosity that way. Through this gorgeous scene our little cavalcade passed, and at last we arrived at the quarters occupied by Holkar.

That celebrated chieftain’s tents and followers were gathered round one of the British bungalows which had escaped the flames, and which he occupied during the siege. When I entered the large room where he sat, I found him in the midst of a council of war; his chief generals and viziers seated round him, each smoking his hookah, as is the common way with these black fellows, before, at, and after breakfast, dinner, supper, and bedtime. There was such a cloud raised by their smoke you could hardly see a yard before you—another piece of good luck for me—as it diminished the chances of my detection. When, with the ordinary ceremonies, the kitmatgars and consomahs had explained to the prince that Bobbachy Bahawder, the right eye of the Sun of the universe (as the ignorant heathens called me), had arrived from his mission, Holkar immediately summoned me to the maidaun, or elevated platform, on which he was seated in a luxurious easy-chair, and I, instantly taking off my slippers, falling on my knees, and beating my head against the ground ninety-nine times, proceeded, still on my knees, a hundred and twenty feet through the room, and then up the twenty steps which led to his maidaun—a silly, painful, and disgusting ceremony, which can only be considered as a relic of barbarian darkness, which tears the knees and shins to pieces, let alone the pantaloons. I recommend anybody who goes to India, with the prospect of entering the service of the native rajahs, to recollect my advice and have them WELL-WADDED.

Well, the right eye of the Sun of the universe scrambled as well as he could up the steps of the maidaun (on which in rows, smoking, as I have said, the musnuds or general officers were seated), and I arrived within speaking-distance of Holkar, who instantly asked me the success of my mission. The impetuous old man thereon poured out a multitude of questions: “How many men are there in the fort?” said he; “how many women? Is it victualled? Have they ammunition? Did you see Gahagan Sahib, the commander? did you kill him?”

All these questions Jeswunt Row Holkar puffed out with so many whiffs of tobacco.

Taking a chillum myself, and raising about me such a cloud that, upon my honor as a gentleman, no man at three yards’ distance could perceive anything of me except the pillar of smoke in which I was encompassed, I told Holkar, in Oriental language of course, the best tale I could with regard to the fort.

“Sir” said I, “to answer your last question first—that dreadful Gujputi I have seen—and he is alive: he is eight feet, nearly, in height; he can eat a bullock daily (of which he has seven hundred at present in the compound, and swears that during the siege he will content himself with only three a week): he has lost in battle his left eye; and what is the consequence? O Ram Gunge” (O thou-with-the-eye-as-bright-as-morning and-with-beard-as-black-as-night), “Goliah Gujputi—NEVER SLEEPS!”

“Ah, you Ghorumsaug (you thief of the world),” said the Prince Vizier, Saadut Alee Beg Bimbukchee—“it’s joking you are;"—and there was a universal buzz through the room at the announcement of this bouncer.

“By the hundred and eleven incarnations of Vishnu,” said I, solemnly, (an oath which no Indian was ever known to break,) “I swear that so it is: so at least he told me, and I have good cause to know his power. Gujputi is an enchanter: he is leagued with devils; he is invulnerable. Look,” said I, unsheathing my dagger—and every eye turned instantly towards me—“thrice did I stab him with this steel—in the back, once—twice right through the heart; but he only laughed me to scorn, and bade me tell Holkar that the steel was not yet forged which was to inflict an injury upon him.”

I never saw a man in such a rage as Holkar was when I gave him this somewhat imprudent message.

“Ah, lily-livered rogue!” shouted he out to me, “milk-blooded unbeliever! pale-faced miscreant! lives he after insulting thy master in thy presence! In the name of the prophet, I spit on thee, defy thee, abhor thee, degrade thee! Take that, thou liar of the universe! and that—and that—and that!”

Such are the frightful excesses of barbaric minds! every time this old man said, “Take that,” he flung some article near him at the head of the undaunted Gahagan—his dagger, his sword, his carbine, his richly ornamented pistols, his turban covered with jewels, worth a hundred thousand crores of rupees—finally, his hookah, snake mouthpiece, silver-bell, chillum and all—which went hissing over my head, and flattening into a jelly the nose of the Grand Vizier.

“Yock muzzee! my nose is off;” said the old man, mildly. “Will you have my life, O Holkar? it is thine likewise!” and no other word of complaint escaped his lips.

Of all these missiles, though a pistol and carbine had gone off as the ferocious Indian flung them at my head, and the naked scimitar fiercely but unadroitly thrown, had lopped off the limbs of one or two of the musnuds as they sat trembling on their omrahs, yet, strange to say, not a single weapon had hurt me. When the hubbub ceased, and the unlucky wretches who had been the victims of this fit of rage had been removed, Holkar’s good humor somewhat returned, and he allowed me to continue my account of the fort; which I did, not taking the slightest notice of his burst of impatience: as indeed it would have been the height of impoliteness to have done for such accidents happened many times in the day.

“It is well that the Bobbachy has returned,” snuffled out the poor Grand Vizier, after I had explained to the Council the extraordinary means of defence possessed by the garrison. “Your star is bright, O Bahawder! for this very night we had resolved upon an escalade of the fort, and we had sworn to put every one of the infidel garrison to the edge of the sword.”

“But you have no battering train,” said I.

“Bah! we have a couple of ninety-six pounders, quite sufficient to blow the gates open; and then, hey for a charge!” said Loll Mahommed, a general of cavalry, who was a rival of Bobbachy’s, and contradicted, therefore, every word I said. “In the name of Juggernaut, why wait for the heavy artillery? Have we not swords? Have we not hearts? Mashallah! Let cravens stay with Bobbachy, all true men will follow Loll Mahommed! Allahhumdillah, Bismillah, Barikallah?”¹² and drawing his scimitar, he waved it over his head, and shouted out his cry of battle. It was repeated by many of the other omrahs; the sound of their cheers was carried into the camp, and caught up by the men; the camels began to cry, the horses to prance and neigh, the eight hundred elephants set up a scream, the trumpeters and drummers clanged away at their instruments. I never heard such a din before or after. How I trembled for my little garrison when I heard the enthusiastic cries of this innumerable host!

¹² The Major has put the most approved language into the mouths of his Indian characters. Bismillah, Barikallah, and so on, according to the novelists, form the very essence of Eastern conversation.

There was but one way for it. “Sir,” said I, addressing Holkar, “go out to-night and you go to certain death. Loll Mahommed has not seen the fort as I have. Pass the gate if you please, and for what? to fall before the fire of a hundred pieces of artillery; to storm another gate, and then another, and then to be blown up, with Gahagan’s garrison in the citadel. Who talks of courage? Were I not in your august presence, O star of the faithful, I would crop Loll Mahommed’s nose from his face, and wear his ears as an ornament in my own pugree! Who is there here that knows not the difference between yonder yellow-skinned coward and Gahagan Khan Guj—I mean Bobbachy Bahawder? I am ready to fight one, two, three, or twenty of them, at broad-sword, small-sword, single-stick, with fists if you please. By the holy piper, fighting is like mate and dthrink to Ga—to Bobbachy, I mane—whoop! come on, you divvle, and I’ll bate the skin off your ugly bones.”

This speech had very nearly proved fatal to me, for when I am agitated, I involuntarily adopt some of the phraseology peculiar to my own country; which is so uneastern, that, had there been any suspicion as to my real character, detection must indubitably have ensued. As it was, Holkar perceived nothing, but instantaneously stopped the dispute. Loll Mahommed, however, evidently suspected something, for, as Holkar, with a voice of thunder, shouted out, “Tomasha (silence),” Loll sprang forward and gasped out—

“My lord! my lord I this is not Bob—”

But he could say no more. “Gag the slave!” screamed out Holkar, stamping with fury: and a turban was instantly twisted round the poor devil’s jaws. “Ho, furoshes! carry out Loll Mahommed Khan, give him a hundred dozen on the soles of his feet, set him upon a white donkey, and carry him round the camp, with an inscription before him: ‘This is the way that Holkar rewards the talkative.’”

I breathed again; and ever as I heard each whack of the bamboo falling on Loll Mahommed’s feet, I felt peace returning to my mind, and thanked my stars that I was delivered of this danger.

“Vizier,” said Holkar, who enjoyed Loll’s roars amazingly, “I owe you a reparation for your nose: kiss the hand of your prince, O Saadut Alee Beg Bimbukchee! be from this day forth Zoheir u Dowlut!”

The good old man’s eyes filled with tears. “I can bear thy severity, O Prince,” said he; “I cannot bear thy love. Was it not an honor that your Highness did me just now when you condescended to pass over the bridge of your slave’s nose?”

The phrase was by all voices pronounced to be very poetical. The Vizier retired, crowned with his new honors, to bed. Holkar was in high good humor.

“Bobbachy,” said he, “thou, too, must pardon me. A propos, I have news for thee. Your wife, the incomparable Puttee Rooge,” (white and red rose,) has arrived in camp.”

“My WIFE, my lord!” said I, aghast.

“Our daughter, the light of thine eyes! Go, my son; I see thou art wild with joy. The Princess’s tents are set up close by mine, and I know thou longest to join her.”

My wife? Here was a complication truly!

CHAPTER V.

THE ISSUE OF MY INTERVIEW WITH MY WIFE.

I found Puneeree Muckun, with the rest of my attendants, waiting at the gate, and they immediately conducted me to my own tents in the neighborhood. I have been in many dangerous predicaments before that time and since, but I don’t care to deny that I felt in the present instance such a throbbing of the heart as I never have experienced when leading a forlorn hope, or marching up to a battery.

As soon as I entered the tents a host of menials sprang forward, some to ease me of my armor, some to offer me refreshments, some with hookahs, attar of roses (in great quart-bottles), and the thousand delicacies of Eastern life. I motioned them away. “I will wear my armor,” said I; “I shall go forth to-night; carry my duty to the princess, and say I grieve that to-night I have not the time to see her. Spread me a couch here, and bring me supper here: a jar of Persian wine well cooled, a lamb stuffed with pistachio-nuts, a pillaw of a couple of turkeys, a curried kid—anything. Begone! Give me a pipe; leave me alone, and tell me when the meal is ready.”

I thought by these means to put off the fair Puttee Rooge, and hoped to be able to escape without subjecting myself to the examination of her curious eyes. After smoking for a while, an attendant came to tell me that my supper was prepared in the inner apartment of the tent (I suppose that the reader, if he be possessed of the commonest intelligence, knows that the tents of the Indian grandees are made of the finest Cashmere shawls, and contain a dozen rooms at least, with carpets, chimneys, and sash-windows complete). I entered, I say, into an inner chamber, and there began with my fingers to devour my meal in the Oriental fashion, taking, every now and then, a pull from the wine-jar, which was cooling deliciously in another jar of snow.

I was just in the act of despatching the last morsel of a most savory stewed lamb and rice, which had formed my meal, when I heard a scuffle of feet, a shrill clatter of female voices, and, the curtain being flung open, in marched a lady accompanied by twelve slaves, with moon faces and slim waists, lovely as the houris in Paradise.

The lady herself, to do her justice, was as great a contrast to her attendants as could possibly be: she was crooked, old, of the complexion of molasses, and rendered a thousand times more ugly by the tawdry dress and the blazing jewels with which she was covered. A line of yellow chalk drawn from her forehead to the tip of her nose (which was further ornamented by an immense glittering nose-ring), her eyelids painted bright red, and a large dab of the same color on her chin, showed she was not of the Mussulman, but the Brahmin faith—and of a very high caste; you could see that by her eyes. My mind was instantaneously made up as to my line of action.

The male attendants had of course quitted the apartment, as they heard the well-known sound of her voice. It would have been death to them to have remained and looked in her face. The females ranged themselves round their mistress, as she squatted down opposite to me.

“And is this,” said she, “a welcome, O Khan! after six months’ absence, for the most unfortunate and loving wife in all the world? Is this lamb, O glutton! half so tender as thy spouse? Is this wine, O sot! half so sweet as her looks?”

I saw the storm was brewing—her slaves, to whom she turned, kept up a kind of chorus:—

“Oh, the faithless one!” cried they. “Oh, the rascal, the false one, who has no eye for beauty, and no heart for love, like the Khanum’s!”

“A lamb is not so sweet as love,” said I gravely: “but a lamb has a good temper; a wine-cup is not so intoxicating as a woman—but a wine-cup has NO TONGUE, O Khanum Gee!” and again I dipped my nose in the soul-refreshing jar.

The sweet Puttee Rooge was not, however, to be put off by my repartees; she and her maidens recommenced their chorus, and chattered and stormed until I lost all patience.

“Retire, friends,” said I, “and leave me in peace.”

“Stir, on your peril!” cried the Khanum.

So, seeing there was no help for it but violence, I drew out my pistols, cocked them, and said, “O houris! these pistols contain each two balls: the daughter of Holkar bears a sacred life for me—but for you!—by all the saints of Hindustan, four of ye shall die if ye stay a moment longer in my presence!” This was enough; the ladies gave a shriek, and skurried out of the apartment like a covey of partridges on the wing.

Now, then, was the time for action. My wife, or rather Bobbachy’s wife, sat still, a little flurried by the unusual ferocity which her lord had displayed in her presence. I seized her hand and, gripping it close, whispered in her ear, to which I put the other pistol:—“O Khanum, listen and scream not; the moment you scream, you die!” She was completely beaten: she turned as pale as a woman could in her situation, and said, “Speak, Bobbachy Bahawder, I am dumb.”

“Woman,” said I, taking off my helmet, and removing the chain cape which had covered almost the whole of my face—“I AM NOT THY HUSBAND—I am the slaver of elephants, the world renowned GAHAGAN!”

As I said this, and as the long ringlets of red hair fell over my shoulders (contrasting strangely with my dyed face and beard), I formed one of the finest pictures that can possibly be conceived, and I recommend it as a subject to Mr. Heath, for the next “Book of Beauty.”

“Wretch!” said she, “what wouldst thou?”

“You black-faced fiend,” said I, “raise but your voice, and you are dead!”

“And afterwards,” said she, “do you suppose that YOU can escape? The torments of hell are not so terrible as the tortures that Holkar will invent for thee.”

“Tortures, madam?” answered I, coolly. “Fiddlesticks! You will neither betray me, nor will I be put to the torture: on the contrary, you will give me your best jewels and facilitate my escape to the fort. Don’t grind your teeth and swear at me. Listen, madam : you know this dress and these arms;—they are the arms of your husband, Bobbachy Bahawder—MY PRISONER. He now lies in yonder fort, and if I do not return before daylight, at SUNRISE HE DIES: and then, when they send his corpse back to Holkar, what will you, HIS WIDOW, do?”

“Oh!” said she, shuddering, “spare me, spare me!”

“I’ll tell you what you will do. You will have the pleasure of dying along with him—of BEING ROASTED, madam: an agonizing death, from which your father cannot save you, to which he will be the first man to condemn and conduct you. Ha! I see we understand each other, and you will give me over the cash-box and jewels.” And so saying I threw myself back with the calmest air imaginable, flinging the pistols over to her. “Light me a pipe, my love,” said I, “and then go and hand me over the dollars; do you hear?” You see I had her in my power—up a tree, as the Americans say, and she very humbly lighted my pipe for me, and then departed for the goods I spoke about.

What a thing is luck! If Loll Mahommed had not been made to take that ride round the camp, I should infallibly have been lost.

My supper, my quarrel with the princess, and my pipe afterwards, had occupied a couple of hours of my time. The princess returned from her quest, and brought with her the box, containing valuables to the amount of about three millions sterling. (I was cheated of them afterwards, but have the box still, a plain deal one.) I was just about to take my departure, when a tremendous knocking, shouting, and screaming was heard at the entrance of the tent. It was Holkar himself, accompanied by that cursed Loll Mahommed, who, after his punishment, found his master restored to good humor, and had communicated to him his firm conviction that I was an impostor.

“Ho, Begum,” shouted he, in the ante-room (for he and his people could not enter the women’s apartments), “speak, O my daughter! is your husband returned?”

“Speak, madam,” said I, “or REMEMBER THE ROASTING.”

“He is, papa,” said the Begum.

“Are you sure? Ho! ho! ho!” (the old ruffian was laughing outside)—“are you sure it is?—Ha! aha!—HE-E-E!”

“Indeed it is he, and no other. I pray you, father, to go, and to pass no more such shameless jests on your daughter. Have I ever seen the face of any other man?” And hereat she began to weep as if her heart would break—the deceitful minx!

Holkar’s laugh was instantly turned to fury. “Oh, you liar and eternal thief!” said he, turning round (as I presume, for I could only hear) to Loll Mahommed, “to make your prince eat such monstrous dirt as this! Furoshes, seize this man. I dismiss him from my service, I degrade him from his rank, I appropriate to myself all his property: and hark ye, furoshes, GIVE HIM A HUNDRED DOZEN MORE!”

Again I heard the whacks of the bamboos, and peace flowed into my soul.

***

Just as morn began to break, two figures were seen to approach the little fortress of Futtyghur: one was a woman wrapped closely in a veil, the other a warrior, remarkable for the size and manly beauty of his form, who carried in his hand a deal box of considerable size. The warrior at the gate gave the word and was admitted, the woman returned slowly to the Indian camp. Her name was Puttee Rooge; his was—

G. O’G. G., M. H. E. I. C. S., C. I. H. A.

CHAPTER VI.

FAMINE IN THE GARRISON.

Thus my dangers for the night being overcome, I hastened with my precious box into my own apartment, which communicated with another, where I had left my prisoner, with a guard to report if he should recover, and to prevent his escape. My servant, Ghorumsaug, was one of the guard. I called him, and the fellow came, looking very much confused and frightened, as it seemed, at my appearance.

“Why, Ghorumsaug,” said I, “what makes thee look so pale, fellow?” (he was as white as a sheet.) “It is thy master, dost thou not remember him?” The man had seen me dress myself in the Pitan’s clothes, but was not present when I had blacked my face and beard in the manner I have described.

“O Bramah, Vishnu, and Mahomet!” cried the faithful fellow, “and do I see my dear master disguised in this way? For heaven’s sake let me rid you of this odious black paint; for what will the ladies say in the ball-room, if the beautiful Feringhee should appear amongst them with his roses turned into coal?”

I am still one of the finest men in Europe, and at the time of which I write, when only two-and-twenty, I confess I WAS a little vain of my personal appearance, and not very willing to appear before my dear Belinda disguised like a blackamoor. I allowed Ghorumsaug to divest me of the heathenish armor and habiliments which I wore; and having, with a world of scrubbing and trouble, divested my face and beard of their black tinge, I put on my own becoming uniform, and hastened to wait on the ladies; hastened, I say,—although delayed would have been the better word, for the operation of bleaching lasted at least two hours.

“How is the prisoner, Ghorumsaug?” said I, before leaving my apartment.

“He has recovered from the blow which the Lion dealt him; two men and myself watch over him; and Macgillicuddy Sahib (the second in command) has just been the rounds, and has seen that all was secure.”

I bade Ghorumsaug help me to put away my chest of treasure (my exultation in taking it was so great that I could not help informing him of its contents); and this done, I despatched him to his post near the prisoner, while I prepared to sally forth and pay my respects to the fair creatures under my protection. “What good after all have I done,” thought I to myself, “in this expedition which I had so rashly undertaken?” I had seen the renowned Holkar, I had been in the heart of his camp; I knew the disposition of his troops, that there were eleven thousand of them, and that he only waited for his guns to make a regular attack on the fort. I had seen Puttee Rooge; I had robbed her (I say ROBBED her, and I don’t care what the reader or any other man may think of the act) of a deal box, containing jewels to the amount of three millions sterling, the property of herself and husband.

Three millions in money and jewels! And what the deuce were money and jewels to me or to my poor garrison? Could my adorable Miss Bulcher eat a fricassee of diamonds, or, Cleopatra-like, melt down pearls to her tea? Could I, careless as I am about food, with a stomach that would digest anything—(once, in Spain, I ate the leg of a horse during a famine, and was so eager to swallow this morsel that I bolted the shoe, as well as the hoof, and never felt the slightest inconvenience from either,)—could I, I say, expect to live long and well upon a ragout of rupees, or a dish of stewed emeralds and rubies? With all the wealth of Croesus before me I felt melancholy; and would have paid cheerfully its weight in carats for a good honest round of boiled beef. Wealth, wealth, what art thou? What is gold?—Soft metal. What are diamonds?—Shining tinsel. The great wealth-winners, the only fame-achievers, the sole objects worthy of a soldier’s consideration, are beefsteaks, gunpowder, and cold iron.

The two latter means of competency we possessed; I had in my own apartments a small store of gunpowder (keeping it under my own bed, with a candle burning for fear of accidents); I had 14 pieces of artillery (4 long 48’s and 4 carronades, 5 howitzers, and a long brass mortar, for grape, which I had taken myself at the battle of Assaye), and muskets for ten times my force. My garrison, as I have told the reader in a previous number, consisted of 40 men, two chaplains, and a surgeon; add to these my guests, 83 in number, of whom nine only were gentlemen (in tights, powder, pigtails, and silk stockings, who had come out merely for a dance, and found themselves in for a siege). Such were our numbers:—

Ladies 74
Troops and artillerymen 40
Other non-combatants 11
MAJOR-GEN. O’G. GAHAGAN 1000

1,125

I count myself good for a thousand, for so I was regularly rated in the army: with this great benefit to it, that I only consumed as much as an ordinary mortal. We were then, as far as the victuals went, 126 mouths; as combatants we numbered 1,040 gallant men, with 12 guns and a fort, against Holkar and his 12,000. No such alarming odds, if—

IF!—ay, there was the rub—IF we had SHOT, as well as powder for our guns; IF we had not only MEN but MEAT. Of the former commodity we had only three rounds for each piece. Of the latter, upon my sacred honor, to feed 126 souls, we had but

Two drumsticks of fowls, and a bone of ham.
Fourteen bottles of ginger-beer.
Of soda-water, four ditto.
Two bottles of fine Spanish olives.
Raspberry cream—the remainder of two dishes.
Seven macaroons, lying in the puddle of a demolished trifle.
Half a drum of best Turkey figs.
Some bits of broken bread; two Dutch cheeses (whole); the crust
of an old Stilton; and about an ounce of almonds and raisins.
Three ham-sandwiches, and a pot of currant-jelly, and 197 bottles
of brandy, rum, madeira, pale ale (my private stock); a couple
of hard eggs for a salad, and a flask of Florence oil.

This was the provision for the whole garrison! The men after supper had seized upon the relics of the repast, as they were carried off from the table; and these were the miserable remnants I found and counted on my return, taking good care to lock the door of the supper-room, and treasure what little sustenance still remained in it.

When I appeared in the saloon, now lighted up by the morning sun, I not only caused a sensation myself, but felt one in my own bosom, which was of the most painful description. Oh, my reader! may you never behold such a sight as that which presented itself: eighty-three men and women in ball-dresses; the former with their lank powdered locks streaming over their faces; the latter with faded flowers, uncurled wigs, smudged rouge, blear eyes, draggling feathers, rumpled satins—each more desperately melancholy and hideous than the other—each, except my beloved Belinda Bulcher, whose raven ringlets never having been in curl, could of course never go OUT of curl; whose cheek, pale as the lily, could, as it may naturally be supposed, grow no paler; whose neck and beauteous arms, dazzling as alabaster, needed no pearl-powder, and therefore, as I need not state, did not suffer because the pearl-powder had come off. Joy (deft link-boy!) lit his lamps in each of her eyes as I entered. As if I had been her sun, her spring, lo! blushing roses mantled in her cheek! Seventy-three ladies, as I entered, opened their fire upon me, and stunned me with cross-questions, regarding my adventures in the camp—SHE, as she saw me, gave a faint scream, (the sweetest, sure, that ever gurgled through the throat of a woman!) then started up—then made as if she would sit down—then moved backwards—then tottered forwards—then tumbled into my—Psha! why recall, why attempt to describe that delicious—that passionate greeting of two young hearts? What was the surrounding crowd to US? What cared we for the sneers of the men, the titters of the jealous women, the shrill “Upon my word!” of the elder Miss Bulcher, and the loud expostulations of Belinda’s mamma? The brave girl loved me, and wept in my arms. “Goliah! my Goliah!” said she, “my brave, my beautiful, THOU art returned, and hope comes back with thee. Oh! who can tell the anguish of my soul, during this dreadful, dreadful night!” Other similar ejaculations of love and joy she uttered; and if I HAD perilled life in her service, if I DID believe that hope of escape there was none, so exquisite was the moment of our meeting, that I forgot all else in this overwhelming joy!

***

[The Major’s description of this meeting, which lasted at the very most not ten seconds, occupies thirteen pages of writing. We have been compelled to dock off twelve and a half; for the whole passage, though highly creditable to his feelings, might possibly be tedious to the reader.]

***

As I said, the ladies and gentlemen were inclined to sneer, and were giggling audibly. I led the dear girl to a chair, and, scowling round with a tremendous fierceness, which those who know me know I can sometimes put on, I shouted out, “Hark ye men and women—I am this lady’s truest knight—her husband I hope one day to be. I am commander, too, in this fort—the enemy is without it; another word of mockery—another glance of scorn—and, by heaven, I will hurl every man and woman from the battlements, a prey to the ruffianly Holkar!” This quieted them. I am a man of my word, and none of them stirred or looked disrespectfully from that moment.

It was now MY turn to make THEM look foolish. Mrs. Vandegobbleschroy (whose unfailing appetite is pretty well known to every person who has been in India) cried, “Well, Captain Gahagan, your ball has been so pleasant, and the supper was despatched so long ago, that myself and the ladies would be very glad of a little breakfast.” And Mrs. Van giggled as if she had made a very witty and reasonable speech. “Oh! breakfast, breakfast by all means,” said the rest; “we really are dying for a warm cup of tea.”

“Is it bohay tay or souchong tay that you’d like, ladies?” says I.

“Nonsense, you silly man; any tea you like,” said fat Mrs. Van.

“What do you say, then, to some prime GUNPOWDER?” Of course they said it was the very thing.

“And do you like hot rowls or cowld—muffins or crumpets—fresh butter or salt? And you, gentlemen, what do you say to some ilegant divvled-kidneys for yourselves, and just a trifle of grilled turkeys, and a couple of hundthred new-laid eggs for the ladies?”

“Pooh, pooh! be it as you will, my dear fellow,” answered they all.

“But stop,” says I. “O ladies, O ladies: O gentlemen, gentlemen, that you should ever have come to the quarters of Goliah Gahagan, and he been without—”

“What?” said they, in a breath.

“Alas I alas! I have not got a single stick of chocolate in the whole house.”

“Well, well, we can do without it.”

“Or a single pound of coffee.”

“Never mind; let that pass too.” (Mrs. Van and the rest were beginning to look alarmed.)

“And about the kidneys—now I remember, the black divvles outside the fort have seized upon all the sheep; and how are we to have kidneys without them?” (Here there was a slight o—o—o!)

“And with regard to the milk and crame, it may be remarked that the cows are likewise in pawn, and not a single drop can be had for money or love: but we can beat up eggs, you know, in the tay, which will be just as good.”

“Oh! just as good.”

“Only the divvle’s in the luck, there’s not a fresh egg to be had—no, nor a fresh chicken,” continued I, “nor a stale one either; nor a tayspoonful of souchong, nor a thimbleful of bohay; nor the laste taste in life of butther, salt or fresh; nor hot rowls or cowld!”

“In the name of heaven!” said Mrs. Van, growing very pale, “what is there, then?”

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’ll tell you what there is now,” shouted I. “There’s

“Two drumsticks of fowls, and a bone of ham.
Fourteen bottles of ginger-beer,” &c. &c. &c.

And I went through the whole list of eatables as before, ending with the ham-sandwiches and the pot of jelly.

“Law! Mr. Gahagan,” said Mrs. Colonel Vandegobbleschroy, “give me the ham-sandwiches—I must manage to breakfast off them.”

And you should have heard the pretty to-do there was at this modest proposition! Of course I did not accede to it—why should I? I was the commander of the fort, and intended to keep these three very sandwiches for the use of myself and my dear Belinda. “Ladies,” said I, “there are in this fort one hundred and twenty-six souls, and this is all the food which is to last us during the siege. Meat there is none—of drink there is a tolerable quantity; and at one o’clock punctually, a glass of wine and one olive shall be served out to each woman: the men will receive two glasses, and an olive and a fig—and this must be your food during the siege. Lord Lake cannot be absent more than three days; and if he be—why, still there is a chance—why do I say a chance?—a CERTAINTY of escaping from the hands of these ruffians.”

“Oh, name it, name it, dear Captain Gahagan!” screeched the whole covey at a breath.

“It lies,” answered I, “in the POWDER MAGAZINE. I will blow this fort, and all it contains, to atoms, ere it becomes the prey of Holkar.”

The women, at this, raised a squeal that might have been heard in Holkar’s camp, and fainted in different directions; but my dear Belinda whispered in my ear, “Well done, thou noble knight! bravely said, my heart’s Goliah!” I felt I was right: I could have blown her up twenty times for the luxury of that single moment! “And now, ladies,” said I, “I must leave you. The two chaplains will remain with you to administer professional consolation—the other gentlemen will follow me up stairs to the ramparts, where I shall find plenty of work for them.”

CHAPTER VII.

THE ESCAPE.

Loth as they were, these gentlemen had nothing for it but to obey, and they accordingly followed me to the ramparts, where I proceeded to review my men. The fort, in my absence, had been left in command of Lieutenant Macgillicuddy, a countryman of my own (with whom, as may be seen in an early chapter of my memoirs, I had an affair of honor); and the prisoner Bobbachy Bahawder, whom I had only stunned, never wishing to kill him, had been left in charge of that officer. Three of the garrison (one of them a man of the Ahmednuggar Irregulars, my own body-servant, Ghorumsaug above named,) were appointed to watch the captive by turns, and never leave him out of their sight. The lieutenant was instructed to look to them and to their prisoner, and as Bobbachy was severely injured by the blow which I had given him, and was, moreover, bound hand and foot, and gagged smartly with cords, I considered myself sure of his person.

Macgillicuddy did not make his appearance when I reviewed my little force, and the three havildars were likewise absent: this did not surprise me, as I had told them not to leave their prisoner; but desirous to speak with the lieutenant, I despatched a messenger to him, and ordered him to appear immediately.

The messenger came back; he was looking ghastly pale: he whispered some information into my ear, which instantly caused me to hasten to the apartments where I had caused Bobbachy Bahawder to be confined.

The men had fled;—Bobbachy had fled; and in his place, fancy my astonishment when I found—with a rope cutting his naturally wide mouth almost into his ears—with a dreadful sabre-cut across his forehead—with his legs tied over his head, and his arms tied between his legs—my unhappy, my attached friend—Mortimer Macgillicuddy!

He had been in this position for about three hours—it was the very position in which I had caused Bobbachy Bahawder to be placed—an attitude uncomfortable, it is true, but one which renders escape impossible, unless treason aid the prisoner.

I restored the lieutenant to his natural erect position: I poured half a bottle of whiskey down the immensely enlarged orifice of his mouth, and when he had been released, he informed me of the circumstances that had taken place.

Fool that I was! idiot!—upon my return to the fort, to have been anxious about my personal appearance, and to have spent a couple of hours in removing the artificial blackening from my beard and complexion, instead of going to examine my prisoner—when his escape would have been prevented. O foppery, foppery!—it was that cursed love of personal appearance which had led me to forget my duty to my general, my country, my monarch, and my own honor!

Thus it was that the escape took place:—My own fellow of the Irregulars, whom I had summoned to dress me, performed the operation to my satisfaction, invested me with the elegant uniform of my corps, and removed the Pitan’s disguise, which I had taken from the back of the prostrate Bobbachy Bahawder. What did the rogue do next?—Why, he carried back the dress to the Bobbachy—he put it, once more, on its right owner; he and his infernal black companions (who had been won over by the Bobbachy with promises of enormous reward), gagged Macgillicuddy, who was going the rounds, and then marched with the Indian coolly up to the outer gate, and gave the word. The sentinel, thinking it was myself, who had first come in, and was as likely to go out again,—(indeed my rascally valet said that Gahagan Sahib was about to go out with him and his two companions to reconnoitre,)—opened the gates, and off they went!

This accounted for the confusion of my valet when I entered!—and for the scoundrel’s speech, that the lieutenant had JUST BEEN THE ROUNDS;—he HAD, poor fellow, and had been seized and bound in this cruel way. The three men, with their liberated prisoner, had just been on the point of escape, when my arrival disconcerted them: I had changed the guard at the gate (whom they had won over likewise); and yet, although they had overcome poor Mac, and although they were ready for the start, they had positively no means for effecting their escape, until I was ass enough to put means in their way. Fool! fool! thrice besotted fool that I was, to think of my own silly person when I should have been occupied solely with my public duty.

From Macgillicuddy’s incoherent accounts, as he was gasping from the effects of the gag and the whiskey he had taken to revive him, and from my own subsequent observations, I learned this sad story. A sudden and painful thought struck me—my precious box!—I rushed back, I found that box—I have it still. Opening it, there, where I had left ingots, sacks of bright tomauns, kopeks and rupees, strings of diamonds as big as ducks’ eggs, rubies as red as the lips of my Belinda, countless strings of pearls, amethysts, emeralds, piles upon piles of bank-notes—I found—a piece of paper! with a few lines in the Sanscrit language, which are thus, word for word, translated:

“EPIGRAM.

“(On disappointing a certain Major.)

“The conquering Lion return’d with his prey,
And safe in his cavern he set it,
The sly little fox stole the booty away;
And, as he escaped, to the lion did say,
‘AHA! don’t you wish you may get it?’”

Confusion! Oh, how my blood boiled as I read these cutting lines. I stamped,—I swore,—I don’t know to what insane lengths my rage might have carried me, had not at this moment a soldier rushed in, screaming, “The enemy, the enemy!”

CHAPTER VIII.

THE CAPTIVE.

It was high time, indeed, that I should make my appearance. Waving my sword with one hand, and seizing my telescope with the other, I at once frightened and examined the enemy. Well they knew when they saw that flamingo-plume floating in the breeze—that awful figure standing in the breach—that waving war-sword sparkling in the sky—well, I say, they knew the name of the humble individual who owned the sword, the plume, and the figure. The ruffians were mustered in front, the cavalry behind. The flags were flying, the drums, gongs, tambourines, violoncellos, and other instruments of Eastern music, raised in the air a strange, barbaric melody; the officers (yatabals), mounted on white dromedaries, were seen galloping to and fro, carrying to the advancing hosts the orders of Holkar.

You see that two sides of the fort of Futtyghur (rising as it does on a rock that is almost perpendicular) are defended by the Burrumpooter river, two hundred feet deep at this point, and a thousand yards wide, so that I had no fear about them attacking me in THAT quarter. My guns, therefore (with their six-and-thirty miserable charges of shot) were dragged round to the point at which I conceived Holkar would be most likely to attack me. I was in a situation that I did not dare to fire, except at such times as I could kill a hundred men by a single discharge of a cannon; so the attacking party marched and marched, very strongly, about a mile and a half off, the elephants marching without receiving the slightest damage from us, until they had come to within four hundred yards of our walls (the rogues knew all the secrets of our weakness, through the betrayal of the dastardly Ghorumsaug, or they never would have ventured so near). At that distance—it was about the spot where the Futtyghur hill began gradually to rise—the invading force stopped; the elephants drew up in a line, at right angles with our wall (the fools! they thought they should expose themselves too much by taking a position parallel to it); the cavalry halted too, and—after the deuce’s own flourish of trumpets and banging of gongs, to be sure,—somebody, in a flame-colored satin-dress, with an immense jewel blazing in his pugree (that looked through my telescope like a small but very bright planet), got up from the back of one of the very biggest elephants, and began a speech.

The elephants were, as I said, in a line formed with admirable precision, about three hundred of them. The following little diagram will explain matters:—

                                       __G
                                      |
           ....................       |
                    E                 |
                                      |
                                      |
                                      | F

E is the line of elephants. F is the wall of the fort. G a gun in the fort. NOW the reader will see what I did.

The elephants were standing, their trunks waggling to and fro gracefully before them; and I, with superhuman skill and activity, brought the gun G (a devilish long brass gun) to bear upon them. I pointed it myself; bang! it went, and what was the consequence? Why, this:—

                    X
           ____________________       |__G
           ....................       |
                    E                 |
                                      |
                                      |
                                      | F

F is the fort, as before. G is the gun, as before. E, the elephants, as we have previously seen them. What then is X? X IS THE LINE TAKEN BY THE BALL FIRED FROM G, which took off ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-FOUR elephants’ trunks, and only spent itself in the tusk of a very old animal, that stood the hundred and thirty-fifth.

I say that such a shot was never fired before or since; that a gun was never pointed in such a way. Suppose I had been a common man, and contented myself with firing bang at the head of the first animal? An ass would have done it, prided himself had he hit his mark, and what would have been the consequence? Why, that the ball might have killed two elephants and wounded a third; but here, probably, it would have stopped, and done no further mischief. The TRUNK was the place at which to aim; there are no bones there; and away, consequently, went the bullet, shearing, as I have said, through one hundred and thirty-five probosces. Heavens! what a howl there was when the shot took effect! What a sudden stoppage of Holkar’s speech! What a hideous snorting of elephants! What a rush backwards was made by the whole army, as if some demon was pursuing them!

Away they went. No sooner did I see them in full retreat, than, rushing forward myself, I shouted to my men, “My friends, yonder lies your dinner!” We flung open the gates—we tore down to the spot where the elephants had fallen: seven of them were killed; and of those that escaped to die of their hideous wounds elsewhere, most had left their trunks behind them. A great quantity of them we seized; and I myself, cutting up with my scimitar a couple of the fallen animals, as a butcher would a calf, motioned to the men to take the pieces back to the fort, where barbacued elephant was served round for dinner, instead of the miserable allowance of an olive and a glass of wine, which I had promised to my female friends, in my speech to them. The animal reserved for the ladies was a young white one—the fattest and tenderest I ever ate, in my life: they are very fair eating, but the flesh has an India-rubber flavor, which, until one is accustomed to it, is unpalatable.

It was well that I had obtained this supply, for, during my absence on the works, Mrs. Vandegobbleschroy and one or two others had forced their way into the supper-room, and devoured every morsel of the garrison larder, with the exception of the cheeses, the olives, and the wine, which were locked up in my own apartment, before which stood a sentinel. Disgusting Mrs. Van! When I heard of her gluttony, I had almost a mind to eat HER. However, we made a very comfortable dinner off the barbacued steaks, and when everybody had done, had the comfort of knowing that there was enough for one meal more.

The next day, as I expected, the enemy attacked us in great force, attempting to escalade the fort; but by the help of my guns, and my good sword, by the distinguished bravery of Lieutenant Macgillicuddy and the rest of the garrison, we beat this attack off completely, the enemy sustaining a loss of seven hundred men. We were victorious; but when another attack was made, what were we to do? We had still a little powder left, but had fired off all the shot, stones, iron-bars, &c. in the garrison! On this day, too, we devoured the last morsel of our food: I shall never forget Mrs. Vandegobbleschroy’s despairing look, as I saw her sitting alone, attempting to make some impression on the little white elephant’s roasted tail.

The third day the attack was repeated. The resources of genius are never at an end. Yesterday I had no ammunition; today, I discovered charges sufficient for two guns, and two swivels, which were much longer, but had bores of about blunderbuss size.

This time my friend Loll Mahommed, who had received, as the reader may remember, such a bastinadoing for my sake, headed the attack. The poor wretch could not walk, but he was carried in an open palanquin, and came on waving his sword, and cursing horribly in his Hindustan jargon. Behind him came troops of matchlock-men, who picked off every one of our men who showed their noses above the ramparts: and a great host of blackamoors with scaling-ladders, bundles to fill the ditch, fascines, gabions, culverins, demilunes, counterscarps, and all the other appurtenances of offensive war.

On they came: my guns and men were ready for them. You will ask how my pieces were loaded? I answer, that though my garrison were without food, I knew my duty as an officer, and had put the two Dutch cheeses into the two guns, and had crammed the contents of a bottle of olives into each swivel.

They advanced,—whish! went one of the Dutch cheeses,—bang! went the other. Alas! they did little execution. In their first contact with an opposing body, they certainly floored it but they became at once like so much Welsh-rabbit, and did no execution beyond the man whom they struck down.

“Hogree, pogree, wongree-fum (praise to Allah and the forty-nine Imaums!)” shouted out the ferocious Loll Mahommed when he saw the failure of my shot. “Onward, sons of the Prophet! the infidel has no more ammunition. A hundred thousand lakhs of rupees to the man who brings me Gahagan’s head!”

His men set up a shout, and rushed forward—he, to do him justice, was at the very head, urging on his own palanquin-bearers, and poking them with the tip of his scimitar. They came panting up the hill: I was black with rage, but it was the cold, concentrated rage of despair. “Macgillicuddy,” said I, calling that faithful officer, “you know where the barrels of powder are?” He did. “You know the use to make of them?” He did. He grasped my hand. “Goliah,” said he, “farewell! I swear that the fort shall be in atoms, as soon as yonder unbelievers have carried it. Oh, my poor mother!” added the gallant youth, as sighing, yet fearless, he retired to his post.

I gave one thought to my blessed, my beautiful Belinda, and then, stepping into the front, took down one of the swivels;—a shower of matchlock balls came whizzing round my head. I did not heed them.

I took the swivel, and aimed coolly. Loll Mahommed, his palanquin, and his men, were now not above two hundred yards from the fort. Loll was straight before me, gesticulating and shouting to his men. I fired—bang! ! !

I aimed so true, that one hundred and seventeen best Spanish olives were lodged in a lump in the face of the unhappy Loll Mahommed. The wretch, uttering a yell the most hideous and unearthly I ever heard, fell back dead; the frightened bearers flung down the palanquin and ran—the whole host ran as one man: their screams might be heard for leagues. “Tomasha, tomasha,” they cried, “it is enchantment!” Away they fled, and the victory a third time was ours. Soon as the fight was done, I flew back to my Belinda. We had eaten nothing for twenty-four hours, but I forgot hunger in the thought of once more beholding HER!

The sweet soul turned towards me with a sickly smile as I entered, and almost fainted in my arms; but alas! it was not love which caused in her bosom an emotion so strong—it was hunger! “Oh! my Goliah,” whispered she, “for three days I have not tasted food—I could not eat that horrid elephant yesterday; but now—oh! heaven! . . . .” She could say no more, but sank almost lifeless on my shoulder. I administered to her a trifling dram of rum, which revived her for a moment, and then rushed down stairs, determined that if it were a piece of my own leg, she should still have something to satisfy her hunger. Luckily I remembered that three or four elephants were still lying in the field, having been killed by us in the first action, two days before. Necessity, thought I, has no law; my adorable girl must eat elephant, until she can get something better.

I rushed into the court where the men were, for the most part, assembled. “Men,” said I, “our larder is empty; we must fill it as we did the day before yesterday. Who will follow Gahagan on a foraging party?” I expected that, as on former occasions, every man would offer to accompany me.

To my astonishment, not a soul moved—a murmur arose among the troops; and at last one of the oldest and bravest came forward.

“Captain,” he said, “it is of no use; we cannot feed upon elephants for ever; we have not a grain of powder left, and must give up the fort when the attack is made tomorrow. We may as well be prisoners now as then, and we won’t go elephant-hunting any more.”

“Ruffian!” I said, “he who first talks of surrender, dies!” and I cut him down. “Is there any one else who wishes to speak?”

No one stirred.

“Cowards! miserable cowards!” shouted I; “what, you dare not move for fear of death, at the hands of those wretches who even now fled before your arms—what, do I say YOUR arms?—before MINE!—alone I did it; and as alone I routed the foe, alone I will victual the fortress! Ho! open the gate!”

I rushed out; not a single man would follow. The bodies of the elephants that we had killed still lay on the ground where they had fallen, about four hundred yards from the fort. I descended calmly the hill, a very steep one, and coming to the spot, took my pick of the animals, choosing a tolerably small and plump one, of about thirteen feet high, which the vultures had respected. I threw this animal over my shoulders, and made for the fort.

As I marched up the acclivity, whiz—piff—whir! came the balls over my head; and pitter-patter, pitter-patter! they fell on the body of the elephant like drops of rain. The enemy were behind me; I knew it, and quickened my pace. I heard the gallop of their horse: they came nearer, nearer; I was within a hundred yards of the fort—seventy—fifty! I strained every nerve; I panted with the superhuman exertion—I ran—could a man run very fast with such a tremendous weight on his shoulders?

Up came the enemy; fifty horsemen were shouting and screaming at my tail. O heaven! five yards more—one moment—and I am saved! It is done—I strain the last strain—I make the last step—I fling forward my precious burden into the gate opened wide to receive me and it, and—I fall! The gate thunders to, and I am left ON THE OUTSIDE! Fifty knives are gleaming before my bloodshot eyes—fifty black hands are at my throat, when a voice exclaims, “Stop!—kill him not, it is Gujputi!” A film came over my eyes—exhausted nature would bear no more.

CHAPTER IX.

SURPRISE OF FUTTYGHUR.

When I awoke from the trance into which I had fallen, I found myself in a bath, surrounded by innumerable black faces; and a Hindoo pothukoor (whence our word apothecary) feeling my pulse and looking at me with an air of sagacity.

“Where am I?” I exclaimed, looking round and examining the strange faces, and the strange apartment which met my view. “Bekhusm!” said the apothecary. “Silence! Gahagan Sahib is in the hands of those who know his valor, and will save his life.”

“Know my valor, slave? Of course you do,” said I; “but the fort—the garrison—the elephant—Belinda, my love—my darling—Macgillicuddy—the scoundrelly mutineers—the deal bo— . . . .”

I could say no more; the painful recollections pressed so heavily upon my poor shattered mind and frame, that both failed once more. I fainted again, and I know not how long I lay insensible.

Again, however, I came to my senses: the pothukoor applied restoratives, and after a slumber of some hours I awoke, much refreshed. I had no wound; my repeated swoons had been brought on (as indeed well they might) by my gigantic efforts in carrying the elephant up a steep hill a quarter of a mile in length. Walking, the task is bad enough: but running, it is the deuce; and I would recommend any of my readers who may be disposed to try and carry a dead elephant, never, on any account, to go a pace of more than five miles an hour.

Scarcely was I awake, when I heard the clash of arms at my door (plainly indicating that sentinels were posted there), and a single old gentleman, richly habited, entered the room. Did my eyes deceive me? I had surely seen him before. No—yes—no—yes—it WAS he: the snowy white beard, the mild eyes, the nose flattened to a jelly, and level with the rest of the venerable face, proclaimed him at once to be—Saadut Alee Beg Bimbukchee, Holkar’s prime vizier; whose nose, as the reader may recollect, his Highness had flattened with his kaleawn during my interview with him in the Pitan’s disguise. I now knew my fate but too well—I was in the hands of Holkar.

Saadut Alee Beg Bimbukchee slowly advanced towards me, and with a mild air of benevolence, which distinguished that excellent man (he was torn to pieces by wild horses the year after, on account of a difference with Holkar), he came to my bedside, and taking gently my hand, said, “Life and death, my son, are not ours. Strength is deceitful, valor is unavailing, fame is only wind—the nightingale sings of the rose all night—where is the rose in the morning? Booch, booch! it is withered by a frost. The rose makes remarks regarding the nightingale, and where is that delightful song-bird? Penabekhoda, he is netted, plucked, spitted, and roasted! Who knows how misfortune comes? It has come to Gahagan Gujputi!”

“It is well,” said I, stoutly, and in the Malay language. “Gahagan Gujputi will bear it like a man.”

“No doubt—like a wise man and a brave one; but there is no lane so long to which there is not a turning, no night so black to which there comes not a morning. Icy winter is followed by merry spring-time—grief is often succeeded by joy.”

“Interpret, O riddler!” said I; “Gahagan Khan is no reader of puzzles—no prating mollah. Gujputi loves not words, but swords.”

“Listen, then, O Gujputi: you are in Holkar’s power.”

“I know it.”

“You will die by the most horrible tortures tomorrow morning.”

“I dare say.”

“They will tear your teeth from your jaws, your nails from your fingers, and your eyes from your head.”

“Very possibly.”

“They will flay you alive, and then burn you.”

“Well; they can’t do any more.”

“They will seize upon every man and woman in yonder fort,”—it was not then taken!—“and repeat upon them the same tortures.”

“Ha! Belinda! Speak—how can all this be avoided?”

“Listen. Gahagan loves the moon-face called Belinda.”

“He does, Vizier, to distraction.”

“Of what rank is he in the Koompani’s army?”

“A captain.”

“A miserable captain—oh shame! Of what creed is he?”

“I am an Irishman, and a Catholic.”

“But he has not been very particular about his religious duties?”

“Alas, no.”

“He has not been to his mosque for these twelve years?”

“’Tis too true.”

“Hearken now, Gahagan Khan. His Highness Prince Holkar has sent me to thee. You shall have the moon-face for your wife—your second wife, that is;—the first shall be the incomparable Puttee Rooge, who loves you to madness;—with Puttee Rooge, who is the wife, you shall have the wealth and rank of Bobbachy Bahawder, of whom his Highness intends to get rid. You shall be second in command of his Highness’s forces. Look, here is his commission signed with the celestial seal, and attested by the sacred names of the forty-nine Imaums. You have but to renounce your religion and your service, and all these rewards are yours.”

He produced a parchment, signed as he said, and gave it to me (it was beautifully written in Indian ink: I had it for fourteen years, but a rascally valet, seeing it very dirty, WASHED it, forsooth, and washed off every bit of the writing). I took it calmly, and said, “This is a tempting offer. O Vizier, how long wilt thou give me to consider of it?”

After a long parley, he allowed me six hours, when I promised to give him an answer. My mind, however, was made up—as soon as he was gone, I threw myself on the sofa and fell asleep.

***

At the end of the six hours the Vizier came back: two people were with him; one, by his martial appearance, I knew to be Holkar, the other I did not recognize. It was about midnight.

“Have you considered?” said the Vizier as he came to my couch.

“I have,” said I, sitting up,—I could not stand, for my legs were tied, and my arms fixed in a neat pair of steel handcuffs. “I have,” said I, “unbelieving dogs! I have. Do you think to pervert a Christian gentleman from his faith and honor? Ruffian blackamoors! do your worst; heap tortures on this body, they cannot last long. Tear me to pieces: after you have torn me into a certain number of pieces, I shall not feel it; and if I did, if each torture could last a life, if each limb were to feel the agonies of a whole body, what then? I would bear all—all—all—all—all—ALL!” My breast heaved—my form dilated—my eye flashed as I spoke these words. “Tyrants!” said I, “dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.” Having thus clinched the argument, I was silent.

The venerable Grand Vizier turned away; I saw a tear trickling down his cheeks.

“What a constancy,” said he. “Oh, that such beauty and such bravery should be doomed so soon to quit the earth!”

His tall companion only sneered and said, “AND BELINDA—?”

“Ha!” said I, “ruffian, be still!—heaven will protect her spotless innocence. Holkar, I know thee, and thou knowest ME too! Who, with his single sword, destroyed thy armies? Who, with his pistol, cleft in twain thy nose-ring? Who slew thy generals? Who slew thy elephants? Three hundred mighty beasts went forth to battle: of these I slew one hundred and thirty-five! Dog, coward, ruffian, tyrant, unbeliever! Gahagan hates thee, spurns thee, spits on thee!”

Holkar, as I made these uncomplimentary remarks, gave a scream of rage, and, drawing his scimitar, rushed on to despatch me at once (it was the very thing I wished for), when the third person sprang forward, and seizing his arm, cried—

“Papa! oh, save him!” It was Puttee Rooge! “Remember,” continued she, “his misfortunes—remember, oh, remember my—love!”—and here she blushed, and putting one finger into her mouth, and banging down her head, looked the very picture of modest affection.

Holkar sulkily sheathed his scimitar, and muttered, “’Tis better as it is; had I killed him now, I had spared him the torture. None of this shameless fooling, Puttee Rooge,” continued the tyrant, dragging her away. “Captain Gahagan dies three hours from hence.” Puttee Rooge gave one scream and fainted—her father and the Vizier carried her off between them; nor was I loth to part with her, for, with all her love, she was as ugly as the deuce.

They were gone—my fate was decided. I had but three hours more of life: so I flung myself again on the sofa, and fell profoundly asleep. As it may happen to any of my readers to be in the same situation, and to be hanged themselves, let me earnestly entreat them to adopt this plan of going to sleep, which I for my part have repeatedly found to be successful. It saves unnecessary annoyance, it passes away a great deal of unpleasant time, and it prepares one to meet like a man the coming catastrophe.

***

Three o’clock came: the sun was at this time making his appearance in the heavens, and with it came the guards, who were appointed to conduct me to the torture. I woke, rose, was carried out, and was set on the very white donkey on which Loll Mahommed was conducted through the camp after he was bastinadoed. Bobbachy Bahawder rode behind me, restored to his rank and state; troops of cavalry hemmed us in on all sides; my ass was conducted by the common executioner: a crier went forward, shouting out, “Make way for the destroyer of the faithful—he goes to bear the punishment of his crimes.” We came to the fatal plain: it was the very spot whence I had borne away the elephant, and in full sight of the fort. I looked towards it. Thank heaven! King George’s banner waved on it still—a crowd were gathered on the walls—the men, the dastards who had deserted me—and women, too. Among the latter I thought I distinguished ONE who—O gods! the thought turned me sick—I trembled and looked pale for the first time.

“He trembles! he turns pale,” shouted out Bobbachy Bahawder, ferociously exulting over his conquered enemy.

“Dog!” shouted I—(I was sitting with my head to the donkey’s tail, and so looked the Bobbachy full in the face)—“not so pale as you looked when I felled you with this arm—not so pale as your women looked when I entered your harem!” Completely chop-fallen, the Indian ruffian was silent: at any rate, I had done for HIM.

We arrived at the place of execution. A stake, a couple of feet thick and eight high, was driven in the grass: round the stake, about seven feet from the ground, was an iron ring, to which were attached two fetters; in these my wrists were placed. Two or three executioners stood near, with strange-looking instruments: others were blowing at a fire, over which was a caldron, and in the embers were stuck other prongs and instruments of iron.

The crier came forward and read my sentence. It was the same in effect as that which had been hinted to me the day previous by the Grand Vizier. I confess I was too agitated to catch every word that was spoken.

Holkar himself, on a tall dromedary, was at a little distance. The Grand Vizier came up to me—it was his duty to stand by, and see the punishment performed. “It is yet time!” said he.

I nodded my head, but did not answer.

The Vizier cast up to heaven a look of inexpressible anguish, and with a voice choking with emotion, said, “EXECUTIONER—DO—YOUR—DUTY!”

The horrid man advanced—he whispered sulkily in the ears of the Grand Vizier, “Guggly ka ghee, hum khedgeree,” said he, “the oil does not boil yet—wait one minute.” The assistants blew, the fire blazed, the oil was heated. The Vizier drew a few feet aside: taking a large ladle full of the boiling liquid, he advanced—

***

“Whish! bang, bang! pop!” the executioner was dead at my feet, shot through the head; the ladle of scalding oil had been dashed in the face of the unhappy Grand Vizier, who lay on the plain, howling. “Whish! bang! pop! Hurrah!—charge!—forwards!—cut them down!—no quarter!”

I saw—yes, no, yes, no, yes!—I saw regiment upon regiment of galloping British horsemen riding over the ranks of the flying natives. First of the host, I recognized, O heaven! my AHMEDNUGGAR IRREGULARS! On came the gallant line of black steeds and horsemen, swift, swift before them rode my officers in yellow—Glogger, Pappendick, and Stuffle; their sabres gleamed in the sun, their voices rung in the air. “D—— them!” they cried, “give it them, boys!” A strength supernatural thrilled through my veins at that delicious music: by one tremendous effort, I wrested the post from its foundation, five feet in the ground. I could not release my hands from the fetters, it is true; but, grasping the beam tightly, I sprung forward—with one blow I levelled the five executioners in the midst of the fire, their fall upsetting the scalding oil-can; with the next, I swept the bearers of Bobbachy’s palanquin off their legs; with the third, I caught that chief himself in the small of the back, and sent him flying on to the sabres of my advancing soldiers!

The next minute, Glogger and Stuffle were in my arms, Pappendick leading on the Irregulars. Friend and foe in that wild chase had swept far away. We were alone; I was freed from my immense bar; and ten minutes afterwards, when Lord Lake trotted up with his staff, he found me sitting on it.

“Look at Gahagan,” said his lordship. “Gentlemen, did I not tell you we should be sure to find him AT HIS POST?”

The gallant old nobleman rode on: and this was the famous BATTLE OF FURRUCKABAD, OR SURPRISE OF FUTTYGHUR, fought on the 17th of November, 1804.

***

About a month afterwards, the following announcement appeared in the Boggleywollah Hurkaru and other Indian papers:—“Married, on the 25th of December, at Futtyghur, by the Rev. Dr. Snorter, Captain Goliah O’Grady Gahagan, Commanding Irregular Horse, Abmednuggar, to Belinda, second daughter of Major–General Bulcher, C.B. His Excellency the Commander-inChief gave away the bride; and after a splendid dejeune, the happy pair set off to pass the Mango season at Hurrygurrybang. Venus must recollect, however, that Mars must not ALWAYS be at her side. The Irregulars are nothing without their leader.”

Such was the paragraph—such the event—the happiest in the existence of

G. O’G. G., M. H. E. I. C. S., C. I. H. A.

Burlesques

William Makepeace Thackeray

NOVELS BY EMINENT HANDS.

CHAPTER XXIV.

I.

II.

III.

CHAPTER XXIV.

IV.

I.

II.

I.

II.

III.

I.

II.

III.

I.

II.

III.

I.

II.

THE DIARY OF C. JEAMES DE LA PLUCHE, ESQ.,

THE TREMENDOUS ADVENTURES OF MAJOR GAHAGAN.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VII.

CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER IX.

A LEGEND OF THE RHINE.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.