Bentley's Miscellany, Volume II

by Various

THE FIVE FLOORS.

To the best of our belief, Paris is the only city in Europe where a prize is annually distributed for the encouragement of Virtue. In England—that Joseph Surface of the civilized globe—we give premiums for the growth of fat sheep and piccotees, we boast of prize-oxen and prize-heartsease; but at present we have no prize-virtue. The celebrated benefaction founded by Monsieur de Monthyon (confided to the administration of the French Academy) consists in annual premiums for the production of the finest trait of moral excellence, and the literary work best calculated to promote its recurrence.

Now, Monsieur Boncœur, of the first-floor of the corner of the Rue Montmartre, might have monopolised the whole Monthyon endowment for the last fifteen years. The whole man was an incarnate virtue; his works, literary or literal, were based upon the strictest morality. From his top-knot to his shoe-tie, propriety predominated. Methodical in his hours and diet, regular as a chronometer in despatch of business, he insured his own ease of mind and body by scrupulous exactitude in the discharge of their duties and pleasures. His apartment was a model of commodiousness,—doors and windows shutting to a hair; not a draught of air, not a creaking hinge, not an unsteady table, not a hard-shutting drawer, not an easy-opening lock in the whole suite. The floors in summer were as polished as their master's demeanour, the carpets in winter as soft as his address. No grand displays of fragile luxury, of Japan porcelain or Bohemian glass, alarmed the anxieties of Monsieur Boncœur's constituency. It was the "comfortable" in perfection,—but nothing more.

What wonder that a man thus basking in the sunshine of prudent prosperity should bask in the favour of the world?—that such an ornament to society should be incorporated in all the learned and charitable societies of the city?—that so worthy a fellow should be a fellow of every academy and literary association? A string of conventional distinctions was attached to Boncœur's name, vying in length with the catalogue of chivalric honours appended in German almanacks to that of Prince Metternich; but, what was more to the purpose, the patronymic thus honoured was inscribed in every public stock or fund, domestic or foreign. His house was a house of universal bondage. Not a railroad could be started by government till Boncœur had been closeted in the stuffy, fussy, great-talking-little-doing cabinet of the Home Department; nor a minister accredited, till he had hinted his hints and inferred his inferences in the sphinxical blue-chamber of the Foreign. The worsted epaulettes of that all-conciliating monarch, the citizen king, were observed to bow lower to their excellent and much-esteemed friend Monsieur Boncœur than to any other of the golden calves invited to feed and ruminate at the royal rack and manger of the Tuileries.

Of all the inhabitants of the house whose cordon was pulled by Madame Grégoire, Boncœur may be considered as at once the least and the most domestic. His business lay elsewhere,—his pleasures lay elsewhere; it was only his respectability that lodged in ostentatious comfort in the first-floor of that memorable dwelling. He knew and cared nothing concerning the neighbours. On his progress from his apartment to his carriage, from his carriage back to his apartment, the banker's countenance expressed only a mild, imperturbable magnanimity, looking neither to the right nor left, but enwrapt in reminiscences of the panacean speech he had been delivering to the Chamber, in proof to the kingdom that it paid no taxes, but lay stretched upon a bed of roses. One day, however, when his ascent happened to be more mercurial than usual, he came suddenly in contact with Claire de Courson, whose slight figure was bending under the weight of a piece of furniture which she was carrying up to her mother's room; and her pure complexion became suffused with the deepest blushes as she acknowledged and declined his polite offers of assistance in her task. Next day, Robert the footman, who had been deputed to relieve her from the burthen of the elbow-chair, was commissioned to convey the "Follet" and apricot marmalade in the same direction. Till that memorable epoch, the virtuous Monsieur Boncœur had remained ignorant that the house contained so powerful an incentive to the fulfilment of the Christian commandment to love his neighbour as himself. But it was not too late. The banker was fond of apricot marmalade, and partial to the prettinesses of a fashionable magazine,—his fair neighbour of an age to share his predilections; and, in presenting these saccharine offerings, he did as he would be done by. The virtuous Monsieur Boncœur was too painfully aware, however, of the scandal-mongering propensities of a sinful world to entrust to the remarks of a common staircase and porter's lodge the visits of a bachelor first-floor to a single third-floor, with large grey eyes, long black eyelashes, and the shape of a nymph. His respectable Robert, a corpulent middle-aged footman, might in the first instance represent his high-principled principal, without provoking the espionage of Ma'mselle Berthe, or the commentations of Madame Grégoire. In the intimacy he hoped to establish, all the advances must come down stairs. The man after the king's own heart was too prudent to stir a single step upward.

Beyond the door of the antechamber, however, which was opened by Mademoiselle de Courson in person, the corpulent footman did not penetrate. The young lady returned, in her mother's name, a civil answer of acknowledgment to their wealthy neighbour, stating that the infirmities of her mother's health rendered it impossible for them to receive visitors. The corpulent footman (despising these wretched people,—as wretched people who keep no establishment of servants ought to be despised by a corpulent footman,) immediately settled it in his own mind that the apartment was too shabby and littered to admit of receiving a gentleman of such far-famed respectability as the eminent banker of the Rue Bergère; that the Coursons' furniture was probably mean,—their fare meagre. The utmost stretch of his pampered imagination did not conjecture that their fare consisted of their furniture,—that ever since Madame's arrival with the truck, she had been dining on chairs and breakfasting on feather-beds. Not a soul in the house (except Guguste) had at present noticed that the meubles carried down and conveyed away "to be mended" never found their way back again.

Small as were the appetites of the third-floor, it is extremely difficult to feed and lodge two full-grown human beings upon a pension of forty pounds a-year; and, by the recent failure of the notary in whose hands the small funds of Madame de Courson were deposited, this was all that remained to support her and her daughter. On the discovery of their misfortune, indeed, Claire had undertaken to increase her own and her mother's daily bread by assiduous needle-work; but the constant attendance required by the poor and sorrowful invalid rendered it difficult for her daughter to fulfil her good intentions. Till the loss of their property, they had resided, in tolerable comfort, in cheerful rooms on the Quai Voltaire, assisted by an effective servant; but all this had been perforce resigned,—the best part of their goods was sold off, their wardrobe stript of its luxuries, and Claire was fully justified in undertaking, as she did, the service of the kitchen and pantry; for it was clear that their diet must henceforward consist of bread and water. Like most poor people, they were proud; and pride served to increase their privations. Madame de Courson, the widow of an officer, one of the victims of the Russian campaign, had never yet solicited a pecuniary favour from living mortal. She preferred working for her livelihood, or starving; that is, she preferred that her daughter should work for their livelihood, and consequently that they should starve together. It must be owned (par parenthèse) that the only favours tendered to her acceptance since she took up her domicile in the corner house, were Monsieur Boncœur's gift of apricot marmalade and loan of a journal, and poor Guguste's earnest entreaty to Mademoiselle, into whose acquaintance he had intruded by carrying up Madame de Courson's first and last batch of wood, to be permitted to black her shoes, and perform other little neighbourly offices of similar delicacy. When, however, the shoes grew thinner and thinner, without being replaced, his aid was more rarely accepted, and at length positively declined; and little Guguste, who was more a man of the world than the corpulent footman, justly concluded that Mademoiselle Claire did not like to expose her attempts at repairing the inevitable fissures to the comments of Monsieur Georges's lad of all work. Still, though tacitly dismissed from her service, the grey-eyed beauty never passed him on the stairs without a word or smile of recognition, even when her heart was sorest and countenance saddest; for Guguste had installed himself her friend. It remained to be seen whether the donor of the apricot marmalade would prove as true a one as the young shoeblack.

Be it not inferred, however, that the amiable attentions of the ragamuffin page were paid solely as a tribute to beauty; they were a tribute to beauty in distress. There were two other particles of the fair sex resident under the same roof, whom most lads of his age would have preferred to the grey-eyed nymph of the third-floor, viz. Madame la Baronne de Gimbecque, a pretty widow, somewhere between twenty-five and fifty years of age, (for in a well-dressed widow it is extremely difficult to determine a woman's age within ten years or so,—none but a lady's husband being admitted to investigate the case before she

"adores,

With head uncover'd, the cosmetic powers;")

and Madame la Baronne de Gimbecque's coquettish waiting-maid, Mademoiselle Aglaé. But for neither of these divinities of the entresol had Guguste ever felt inspired with an inclination to wield the blacking-brush! Not that either the widow or the maid was at any moment guilty of a chaussure susceptible of such plebeian enchainement:—Madame la Baronne walked not only in silk attire, but silken shoes; while Ma'mselle Aglaé, like Lear's soldiers, was shod with felt, shuffling in slippers all the morning, and reserving prunella or satin for her visits, play-goings, and bals masqués.

Madame la Baronne, with a fortune of thirty thousand francs, or twelve hundred pounds, per annum, would have passed in London for a widow of moderate means, and might perhaps have speculated on improving them by marriage. In Paris she passed for a rich one, and occupied herself with her own amusement. It is amazing how much pleasure may be purchased in that circumscript capital at the rate of one hundred pounds per month, particularly in the state of blessedness which is called single. Conscious of her advantage, Madame de Gimbecque was far from anxious to inscribe herself in the register of lodgers in the Rue Montmartre by double entry. France is peculiar in its views of wedded happiness. In England, what is called a well-assorted marriage implies parity of condition, and compatibility of temper; in Paris, it implies equality of fortune. Five thousand a-year proposes to five thousand a-year,—three hundred per annum to three hundred; not Lord Thomas to Miss Sophia, or plain Tom to pretty Sophy. Beauty, harp-playing, quadrilling, have nothing to do with it,—all is matter of arithmetic! If the match turn out ill, it is no fault of the matchmakers; all has been done according to Cocker.

Now Madame la Baronne, like most Frenchwomen, was a capital calculatress. She knew that, though Sophy and Tom are richer with six hundred a-year between them than Sophy with three and Tom with the same pittance, a pretty Madame de Gimbecque, between twenty-five and fifty years of age, is richer as a widow with thirty thousand francs per annum, than as the wife of a man of fashion with sixty. To espouse any man, unfashionable, was out of the question,—that is, any man unfashionable with an income only equal to her own. A Crœsus of any age or calling would have brought his own apology; and she would have added herself and her establishment to that of the respectable banker of the Rue Bergère at a moment's notice. But that consummation was past praying for. A Crœsus would require a Crœsa as his partner for life, as surely as the primitive lion trotted side by side with a lioness into Noah's ark; and Monsieur Boncœur, if matrimonially inclined, would demand hundreds of thousands per annum to amalgamate with his hundreds of thousands. The charming Adolphes and exquisite Amédées, meanwhile, frequenting Madame de Gimbecque's opera-box, or ambling by her side in the Bois de Boulogne, had either not an unmortgaged estate wherewith to pretend to her hand, or, if successful pretendants, would appropriate after marriage to their own gratification, not only their own thirty thousand, but three-fourths of hers. Very early in her widowhood Madame de Gimbecque came to this conclusion; and, on giving utterance at her toilet, as she threw off her widow's weeds, to her anti-matrimonial intention, they were confirmed by Mademoiselle Aglaé with so loud an "amen," that a by-stander might have supposed them two lay-nuns pronouncing vows of eternal celibacy.

Madame de Gimbecque, though thus egoistical in her calculations, was nevertheless a light-hearted, good-humoured little woman, who, if she did not go out of her way to do good, did all the good that lay in it. She had been born, bred, married, and widowed according to that matter-of-fact social system of the French which leaves no space for the expansion of the feelings. Nothing like affection had graced her parents' household,—nothing like affection had warmed her own. Her fifteen thousand francs per annum had been married to those of an ex-colonel of cuirassiers, thirty years her senior, who had pretty nearly scolded, sworn, smoked, and expectorated his pretty wife out of patience, when the sour little cherub who sits up aloft keeping watch over matrimonial destinies, took pity on the lady, and took the colonel to itself.

Marianne de Gimbecque, (then not between fifty and five-and-twenty, but between five-and-twenty and fifteen,) though an orphan as well as a widow, consoled herself as thoroughly as propriety would admit for this sudden bereavement. She had neither a tie nor a relative in the world; but what pretty Parisian with trente mille francs de rente can feel lonely, while there is an opera, a carnival, and a milliner's shop in existence!

The baroness speedily set about improving her solitary hours. She devoted herself to the cultivation of her charms, as an Englishwoman might have done to the cultivation of her mind. Her accomplishments as a cosmetician were really surprising; she studied the art as a branch of natural history; not a perfumer in Paris could have deceived her as to the ingredients of a wash, or chemical compounds of a pommade. She knew what acids would injure the enamel of her teeth, what astringents wither the smooth surface of her cheek, what spirituous infusions turn her sable locks to iron-grey or silver, as well as Berthollet or "Sromfridevé." She could tell what atmospheric changes enabled her to exchange blue ribbons for pink, without compromise of the becoming; and regulated by the phases of the moon her ebbs and flows between cap, hat, and turban.

Nothing could be more artistically managed than the apartment of the little coquette. Nothing, by the way, is so easy to render coquettish as an entresol, which is, in fact, a series of boudoirs: saloons like those of Devonshire House, or a hall like that of Stafford, must be stately and ostentatious; the trickery of prettiness would be as much out of place in such places as rouge and pearl powder on the marble cheek of Michael Angelo's Moses. But a light airy entresol, or mezzonino story, whose windows, fronting the south, are shaded by Genoese awnings, overhanging balconies, filled with geraniums, heliotropes, and mignonette,—whose anteroom is painted blue stripewise, to represent a tent, and whose dining-room is varnished scagliola fashion,—whose drawing-room is of white and gold, the fauteuils and divans of yellow satin, the cabarets of pale Saxon blue porcelain, adorned with shepherds, shepherdesses, and garlands of carnations,—the consoles of varnished maple, white as snow, or as the single marble table, taillé en bloc, which sustains a scentless exotic in a vase of pale-green Sèvres,—whose boudoir is a tent of white muslin, drawn over dove-coloured gros de Naples,—whose bed-room is hung with cachemere spotted with palm-leaves, leading to a bath-room altogether spotless, and lined with mirrors;—such an entresol is a paradise for a Peri, (whose age is between twenty-five and fifty!) and such was the one inhabited in the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre by Madame la Baronne de Gimbecque!

The household was concomitant. A page in a neat livery, a powdered-headed middle-aged sobriety of a maître d'hôtel, a chef of sufficient merit for a lady neither a dinner-giver nor dinner-devotee; and, to complete the measure, the soubrette, the waiting-maid, the spruce, cunning, pimpante, fringante, Mademoiselle Aglaé, with her embroidered cambric aprons and pink ribbons;—one pennyworth of waiting-maid to all this monstrous quantity of male-faction! The maître d'hôtel dusted the china, the page rubbed the floors,—everything but the lady's toilet being performed in France by slaves of the masculine gender. Monsieur Simon, the sober maître d'hôtel, and Lindor, the pert page, sometimes suggested to their mistress's mistress that an additional petticoat would be far more advantageous to the establishment than entertaining a workwoman fifteen days in the month for the care of the household linen; but the femme de chambre would not hear of it. She chose to be the sole Helen in Troy; and, though devoid of personal views on either page or butler,—the cook in his white paper casquette, or the coachman in his flaxen wig,—resolved to admit no rival near the throne of her soubrettish autocracy. It was quite plague enough to have the house frequented by Eugène de Marsan, (the handsome cousin-german of the ugly defunct ex-colonel of cuirassiers, Monsieur le Baron Nicodême de Gimbecque,) and Claude de Bercy, (the popular author of seventy-five successful vaudevilles,) without encumbering the little entresol (or its double entrance, double staircase, and corridor, appropriately named in Paris "of escape,") with such lumber as a chambermaid.

"Has Madame Oudot sent home my foulard peignoir?" demanded Madame la Baronne of her waiting-maid, as she lay reclining in her marble-bath, whose tepid warmth served to diffuse through the little room the aroma of the eau de Ninon which Mademoiselle Aglaé was sprinkling on the surface.

"Non, madame! Yet I was particular in making her promise it for yesterday, knowing that Madame expected a visit from Monsieur Eugène before she dressed to take her ride."

"Tiresome woman!" cried the lady in the bath,—an apostrophe which Aglaé of course applied to the unpunctual couturière. "Give me the new number of 'Le Bon Ton,' and in five minutes ring for my chocolate, and bring in my warm linen,—not sooner, or it will be cold before I am ready."

The waiting-maid obeyed; but finding on the marble slab in the corridor the Constitutionnel, damp from the press, she held it for a moment over the drying-basket of the bath-linen, and returned to her lady, taking the liberty, as she slowly paced the room, to cast an eye upon the news of the morning.

"Sacristie! ce cher Monsieur Boncœur! another audience of the king!" exclaimed Mademoiselle Aglaé, presenting the paper to her lady, who extended to receive it, a languid hand, humid with the perfumed exhalations of the bath.

"Doubtless about his title," she replied.

"Title!" inquired the waiting-maid, fearing she might be about to forfeit the envied distinction of belonging to the only household of quality in the hotel.

"Didn't I tell you that our neighbour overhead had purchased the estate of D'Offémont, and was trying to obtain the royal sanction to assume the name? Ay, exactly: the King, I perceive, has created him a baron; not D'Offémont, however,—he is to be Baron de Boncœur. What people this government does ennoble!"

"Monsieur Boncœur has one of the greatest names in the monied world," remonstrated the waiting-woman: "he is mayor of his arrondissement, and marguiller of the parish."

"He may be beadle or drum-major, for anything I know or care," said Madame de Gimbecque with sublime contempt; "but I am convinced that in the time of the elder branch he would never have shaken the dust from his feet in the palace of the Tuileries. Ha!—a critique on Claude's new play. Pray remind me, by and by, to send to Monsieur de Bercy the note-case wadded with vitiver I have been embroidering for him. Voyons! 'Sophie de Melcour, a drama in three acts. We regret—a-hem!—feeble—diffuse—flat—a-hem!—dialogue full of platitudes—characters full of exaggeration—style stilted—catastrophe contemptible—false taste—corrupt morality.' (This must have been written by some particular friend!) 'We cannot take our leave of Monsieur de Bercy without counselling him to turn his mind to some other branch of literary occupation than the stage, for which the bent of his genius evidently disqualifies this pains-taking but ill-judging young man.' Bah!—Eugène de Marsan's doing, I am convinced! He knows I dote upon theatrical entertainments; he knows that I bespoke half-a-dozen boxes to give éclat to Monsieur de Bercy's piece, and thinks to disgust me by this disparagement. Eugène does not know me; he does not appreciate the generosity of woman's nature! His abuse of poor Claude's play has put me more in conceit with it than ever. Certainly the style of 'Sophie de Melcour' is rather stilted, and nobody can deny the exaggeration of the characters. I expected that the catastrophe would cause the damnation of the piece; and as to the dialogue, I could scarcely sit it out without a yawn. Aglaé! on second thoughts, Monsieur de Marsan is going out of town, and has been plaguing me for the last six months for some little trifle of my own work. I will give him the vitiver pocket-book: there will be plenty of time hereafter to get up another for Monsieur de Bercy. People so devoted to letters have no time to think of embroidered pocket-books. I dare say Bercy would like one bought at the Petit Dunquerque twice as well. There is no more sentiment in him than in one of his own farces."

Mademoiselle Aglaé was of the same opinion. The Constitutionnel having decided that Claude's seventy-sixth vaudeville was not to run, she decided that the author of the vaudeville was also at a stand-still. The loss of his droits d'auteur, which would probably deprive her of the gold chain and cross promised by her lady's love, determined his forfeiture of the embroidered note-case!

While the sacred mysteries of the toilet are proceeding in the bath-room, let us take a peep at the equivocal gentleman of the third-floor; no longer arrayed in velvet or sparkling with solitaires, but engirt in a scanty, washed-out printed calico dressing-gown, torn in the button-holes, and short enough to display at the open wristbands the sleeves of a dirty checked shirt, covering a yellow shrivelled skin, apparently washed out, like the calico. A pair of flannel drawers, yellow as arnotto, covered his shrunk shanks; a pair of old shoes, cut down into agonizing slippers, his stockingless feet; while, enfranchised from the spruce, lustrous toupet adorning his brows when exposed to day's or gas-light's garish eye, his mean, narrow, Emperor-of-Austrian forehead recedes into a bare crown, whose denuded ugliness adds thirty years to the age of the full-dressed sallier-forth of the night before. Even his mouth—that critical verifier of age—is strangely oldened; for his set of Desirabodes is still freshening in a glass of water on the chimney-piece, while the mumbling, toothless gums, fallen on each other, allow the lanky sallow cheeks to collapse, like the sides of a half-empty balloon.

Such was the unsophisticated man of the individual whose "getting-up" (as Claude de Bercy would have called it) for public representation was one of the miracles of the Palais Royal; a bazaar which, like the pedlar from the fair Lavinian shore, hath "complexions in its pack," and youth and beauty per yard, per ell, or per ounce, exposed in all its plate-glass windows. It was, as we have already stated, usually half-past seven of an evening when the full-dressed effort of art started forth along the Boulevards; it was as invariably three o'clock in the morning, minus a quarter, when it returned again to lay aside its adornments, and subside into the lean and slippered pantaloon. Ma'mselle Berthe had been three hours snoring when, with a patent key, he nightly let himself in, to deposit his Desirabodes, false fronts, whiskers, and calves on his dressing-table; and in the secretaire beside it realities of a more solid nature: bags of silver pieces, rouleaux of golden ones, and now and then a flimsy I O U from some English flat, or an I O U addressed by the Bank of England to millions of English flats, which he rarely ensnugged within the secret-paper-drawer of his bonheur du jour without pronouncing a benediction over its senseless form, varying in intensity of expression, indeed, according as the document happened to be accompanied by bags of silver or rouleaux of gold. When wholly unaccompanied,—sole trophy of his midnight gains,—the fiendish expression of the little mummy's puckered visage deepened into downright demonism.

Meanwhile it was the morning duty of the sour femme de confiance to summon the shattered remains of humanity, which she called master, to breakfast. But let it not be inferred from the squalid nature of his personal costume that the board of Monsieur Georges was spread penuriously: his outward man regarded the gratification of others; his inward regarded his own. The colour of his dressing-gown tended not a jot to his selfish enjoyment; but the amber coffee and smoking cream, the spongy bread and présalé butter, the slices of hard saucisson d'Arles and tender côtelettes à la minute in their silver réchaud, regarded exclusively his own five senses. It was to ensure to his daily use these sweeteners of human existence that the chevalier d'industrie toiled in his loathsome calling from eight o'clock to two per night; it was to ensure them hot and hot, and upon the most moderate terms, that he bore with the angular and acid female who presided over his domestic arrangements the remaining eighteen hours of the twenty-four. A younger and fairer femme de ménage would have exacted a nicer toilet, and the daintiest half of the dainties wherewith it was her duty to provide his table. But the chissie not only calculated the weight of provisions to be consumed to the thirty-second fraction of an ounce, but was content to eat the drumsticks of the chickens, the wings of the woodcocks, as well as to support the unsightly spectacle of his bald head and nauseous costume.

"Of what were you disputing last night with the old witch, Madame Grégoire, when I passed the porter's lodge?" demanded Monsieur Georges of the perpendicular shrew seated opposite to him, as he swallowed to his own share the twentieth of the two dozen oysters of Murênes provided for their breakfast.

"I only stepped in to pay her the twenty francs for Guguste's monthly board."

"But what was there in that to beget a squabble?" demanded the toothless man, in the mumbling chuckle which nothing but long custom enabled his housekeeper to understand. "Had she a complaint to make against the lad?"

"No one has complaints to make of him but you," said Ma'mselle Berthe, (forgetting her own venomous impeachment concerning the coffee and cream.) "We disputed because Madame Grégoire, like an ill-conditioned woman as she is, presumed to insult me."

"And what then?—you can make her étrennes pay for it."

"You can: but what compensation will it be to me that you diminish her New-year's gift from twenty francs to ten? She had the impudence to ask me to have an eye to the people on the third-floor! As if I was paid to do the spy-work of the propriétaire!"

"And who are the people on the third-floor?" demanded Monsieur Georges, who knew and cared very little for the proceedings of any house save the one under government licence in the Rue de Richelieu, amid the blaze of whose Corcel lamps, and glare of whose gilded cornices, he had the honour nightly to assist in fleecing the disloyal subjects of Louis Philippe and the greenhorn foreign visitors to his realms.

"How should I know?"

"Because Madame Grégoire, doubtless, informed you."

"She told me it was a lady and her daughter, about whom she had her doubts."

"What doubts?—that they were disreputable people?"

"Bah!—that they were beggars!"

"Then why don't the landlord get rid of them?"

"How can he?—they pay their rent."

"Then what did she want you to find out?"

"How the young lady employs herself of a morning, and why the mamma did not choose to receive the visits of that excellent man Monsieur le Baron de Boncœur."

"Is the first-floor made a baron?"

"To be sure he is!—everybody is made something now-a-days. If you had the spirit of a mouse, you would call yourself the Chevalier de Georges."

"I have the spirit of a mouse, which is to 'ware trap!" chuckled the dilapidated croupier. "I had a little adventure one season at Bagnères de Bigorre, under the name of the Chevalier St. Georges, which the police may not happen to have forgotten. But to return to the banker: what can he have in view by visiting a couple of beggarly women on a third-floor above the entresol?"

"You are as bad as Ma'me Grégoire! That is just what she inquired of me."

"But though you mightn't choose to acquaint her with what had come to your knowledge—Hark! a ring at the bell," cried Monsieur Georges, interrupting himself as he shuffled out of his seat, and prepared to retreat into his adjoining chamber. "If 'tis any one for me, say I'm gone out, and shan't be at home till evening."

"Don't flurry yourself," replied the housekeeper, moving towards the ante-room; "'tis only Guguste, come up to varnish your boots and bring your toupet from the barber's. Don't you hear him scratching the panel? That is the signal by which I know his ring from any other person's."

And no sooner had she charily opened the door, and prepared to lock it again after admitting him, than the quick-witted gamin, in his fustian blouse, and barret-cap, though thread-bare, set jauntily on one side, insinuated himself into the hated apartment.

"What makes you so late, sirrah?" demanded the mummy in the washed-out calico dressing-gown, grudging the foundling even the savoury steam of the viands that still circled in the eating-room.

"'Tis only half-after eleven, sir," replied the drudge. "You desired there might be no noise in the apartment till half-after eleven."

"'Tis three minutes after the half-hour."

"Mademoiselle does not choose me to come in, till breakfast is cleared away, and the things ready to be washed up," said Guguste, not caring to hear.

"In that case you have no right to be here now. But you know my orders, that you are to enter this room with my dressing things every day at half-past eleven. Where have you been idling for the last three minutes?"

"I have not been idling."

"Where have you been working, then?"

"Helping to put up a truckle-bed in Madame Grégoire's back-room. Her son Jules returned at five o'clock this morning from India."

"From India, child?" demanded the gouvernante, peeling the only slice of saucisson left in the dish, and insinuating it between lips as thin as itself.

"From Algiers in the Indies. Monsieur Jules serves in the twenty-third regiment of the line; and, having suffered considerably from the climate, has obtained his furlough."

"Another lazy useless hanger-on in the house! God help us!" ejaculated the housekeeper. "There, go and arrange your master's things in his dressing-room, while I put away breakfast. I will leave the china for you to wash up, outside the kitchen-door. Go!"

And he went,—neither whistling, however, nor with any want of thought. Between his discoveries concerning the Courson family, and the wonderful events he had just heard recited in the metaphorical military prose of Monsieur Jules, (alias the slang of the twenty-third regiment of the line,) Guguste had a forty-horse power of cogitation at that moment labouring in his brain!

(To be continued.)

---

THE LAST OF THE BANDITS.

I much admired, and have often thought of, two pictures of Horace Verney's, which I saw in the Exposition des Tableaux, of I forget what year, at Paris; in truth to nature, in conception and character, they leave nothing to desire. They were painted at Rome; and represent, one, the attack of brigands,—and the other, the death and confession of the captain of the gang after their falling into the hands of the dragoons.

Much has been written, too, on the subject of these outcasts of society; but no description of their manner of life and habits can compare with Washington Irving's "Painter's Story," or rather Charles de Chatillon's own adventures, when carried off from Lucien Bonaparte's villa at Frescati, in mistake for that prince.

The times are grown degenerate; brigandage is no longer a profession; bandits, like the Mohicans, are become extinct, and from Terracina to Forli, travellers have now-a-days no chance of meeting with a Paolo Ucelli, a Fiesole Ogagna, a De Cesaris, or a Barbone. I remember traversing that tract at a period when I expected every moment to see some of these freebooters in their picturesque costume peep from behind every projecting rock. Civilization and morality have stifled all sentiment;—the Neapolitan frontier is become a Salvator Rosa without its figures.

When I landed at Cività Vecchia from the steamer, I inquired of the landlord of the inn whether the redoubtable Barbone was still an inmate of the fortress; and, on his answering in the affirmative, obtained an order to visit the place. Under the escort of one of the Pope's carabiniers, behold me then in the shadow of that colossal edifice!

It was built by Michael Angelo, and, like all his works, whether in architecture, statuary, or painting, is stamped with the grandeur of his genius. Its stupendous bastions, its ponderous gateway, seem built for eternity. Every stone is a rock such as Briareus and his earth-born brothers might have hurled against Jupiter, in that Titanic war described with such sublime obscurity by Hesiod.

The gendarme was, as is common to all the tribe of cicerones, talkative—not respecting the building, for he had never heard of the great architect, but concerning its then inhabitants. He would, if I had listened to him, have recounted the particulars of Signor Barbone's exploits during the seventeen years that he ravaged like a pestilence the Pontifical states. But I expected to obtain information from the fountain-head, and checked his loquacity.

Our hero had, twice before his present captivity, made terms with the Papal government. Once he was placed with Marocco and Garbarone, two worthy confreres, in the seminary of Terracina; and, just as the priests began to consider him an example of contrition and penitence, bore off the youths into the mountains, where this wolf of the fold barbarously murdered all those whose fathers would not, or could not, pay the exorbitant ransom demanded.

One only of the prisoners escaped the proscription, and the circumstance is a curious one. They were bound two and two, and after great privations and fatigues,—for they were dragged into fastnesses almost inaccessible,—an order was given for their execution. One had already fallen by the stiletto, when his companion invoked Sant' Antonio, the patron saint of brigands, and that name saved him. It is a hint worth knowing. Should any future Barbone arise, remember to call upon Saint Anthony!

Barbone afterwards became keeper of the château of St. Angelo, the great prison at Rome; but quickly relapsed into his old practices, the last of which exceeded in ferocity the rest.

Not far from Forli, an Englishman of distinction, whose name I will not mention, was stopped on his way to Rome. They plundered the father, and carried off the daughter. On reaching his destination he put a price on Barbone's head; but one morning a box arrived, which, instead of his, contained that of the daughter!

The revolting recollection of this ruffian's cruelty made me pause as I stood in the portal and thought of that of the Inferno, for which it would have been no bad model; and thought, too, of the giants who guarded it, whose arms, as they wildly brandished them, looked in the distance like the vans of windmills (the original, by the by, of Cervantes'). They would have been in excellent keeping with the place. For a moment, I say, I hesitated about entering; but curiosity got the better of terror, and I resolved to visit the Bagno, a name which in the month of August it well merited.

In the court-yard were walking several of the brigands who belonged to their monarch's train,—his satellites; but I did not stop to address them. I desired my conductor to show me to the head-quarters of the general, in the interior of the prison.

I found there a great many cells or holes, not unresembling dog-kennels, arched and formed in the massive walls; and, among the rest, the den of the Cacus. He was lying at full length on the floor, which might be eight or ten feet in length; and behind him, almost hid in shade, was crouching another brigand, leaning on his elbows, and stooping low. He was taking his siesta. This bandit was, I afterwards found, Barbone's prime-minister. They were inseparable—the tiger and his jackal, or rather, perhaps, wolf.

Barbone raised himself on one arm at my approach, and eyed me with all the hauteur of a prince. He was dressed like the rest, in the usual uniform,—cap, jacket, and coarse trowsers. He by no means corresponded in appearance with one of Horace Verney's brigands. He was a man of a middle height, corpulent in his person, with a countenance that showed no trace of crime: his features were handsome and regular; and his hair, long, black, and curly, hung over his shoulders. He certainly set all Lavater's theories at defiance. As to his head, I leave that to the phrenologists.

He seemed little inclined to enter into conversation; and, fettered as he was, I should have felt as little disposed to trust myself in his den as in that of a bloodhound. However, perceiving that I did not go away, and stood at the entrance, he at last had the courtesy to come forth. I, too, was inclined to address him civilly, with the hope of knowing something of his history and character; so I said to him,

"You are the famous Barbone, of whom I have heard so much, and long wished to see?"

"Gasparoni, a servirlo," said he.

The reply made me smile, for I doubted not he would have served me, if set at liberty, in his own peculiar way.

"You smile," said he; "perhaps you are come to mock me?" He folded his arms, and looked at me sternly.

"I had no such intention," I replied. "You call yourself Gasparoni. I thought your name had been Barbone?"

"So they styled me," he answered, "from the long beard which I formerly wore."

"Pray may I ask you how you happened to be taken?" I observed inquiringly.

"Preso!" said he contemptuously; "I was never taken. Not all the troops in the Pontifical states could have taken me. None but eagles could have reached our resorts. There we wanted for nothing, besiege us as they might. The peasants were our friends, and brought us plenty of provisions. We annihilated party after party that they sent against us, till the soldiers would fight no longer. Many of them entered our band, which at one time consisted of nearly one hundred. But I got tired of that savage life. In the summer months it was well enough; but to brave the winter among the mountains,—to sleep on the snows with nothing but our mantles to shelter us,—to be deprived of our wives and children,—not to be able to dispose of our booty without great risk, so that even money was often of no use to us! I could point out where many a napoleon and doppia d'oro is buried. And yet," said he after a pause, "that life, with all its privations and miseries, is preferable to confinement in a prison. Oh! you cannot fancy what the want of liberty is to us mountaineers!—to rot in a dungeon,—not to have the free use of our limbs!" Here he clanked his chains.

After this harangue, which he delivered with great volubility, he folded his arms again, à la Napoleon, and a gloom came over him. He seemed to be lost in thought.

"You have said," I observed, "that you were never taken. How then came you here?"

"Here!" he said with emphasis; "I was trepanned—betrayed! The Pope broke his faith; my confessor, his sacred word. I was promised pardon,—full pardon for myself and my brave brothers. We were betrayed—sold; and yet we live in hopes that the holy father will redeem his promise."

"Yes," thought I; "if he had done you justice, you would not be here."

"Your name," I said flatteringly, "is well known in Europe. You are the Napoleon of bandits, and worthy of being classed with De Cesaris."

"De Cesaris," said he contemptuously, "era un miserabile! He took a poor painter for a prince. Ha! ha! Gasparoni would not have made such a blunder." Here he laughed again with a consciousness of superiority. "The fool, too," said he, "to allow the artist to paint his portrait!—it was like a man's putting his name on a stiletto, and leaving it as evidence against himself."

"Perhaps," said I, "like him, you have no objection to the world's knowing something of your story. Charles de Chatillon has immortalized him; he is become an historical character."

"I have no such ambition," said he. "It matters little what the world thinks of me; but you shall have my history, if you have any curiosity to know it."

"The greatest," I replied.

"It is a short one," observed the bandit.

"I am the son of Rinalda, better known in the Roman annals than I am. She was cruelly injured. Deprived of her lover, Peronti, whom they made a priest, she took a hatred to all mankind—a just one, and taught me to revenge her wrongs on the whole human species; brought me up to brigandage as a profession,—and as good a one as any other, and as honourable! I went very early into the mountains, and joined a band of brave fellows, which, on the death of their captain, I was unanimously chosen to command. Chosen from my merit, I governed them by opinion. They knew that I was brave and prudent. I had many times an opportunity of showing that I had all the qualities that constitute a good general: had I commanded an army, like Napoleon, I should have been as invincible. Once we were besieged in the upper ranges of the Abruzzi by a company of Austrians, at the time those maledetti tyranni d'Italia had possession of Naples. We were enclosed on three sides by the troops, and on the other was a precipice of many hundred feet, that plunged, without a shelf or ledge of rock, into the plain. I was at that time detached with nine of my companions; but such was the nature of the crag on which we bivouacked,—so narrow the access to it, that only one person could mount the pass at a time. This our enemies knew, for they lost several men in making a reconnaissance. But our provisions failed us, and we were on the point of giving ourselves up, for fear of starvation, when I discovered an eagle's eyrie, and, to the wonder of our foes, contrived, by plundering it of hares and kids, to support nature for many days. At last the eaglets flew; and then our distress returned, and with it the thought of surrender.

"I recollected, however, that opposite to where a single sentinel had been posted there was a chasm—a fissure—a deep ravine, the top of which was covered with wood; and one dark night, leading my little band, I crawled on hands and knees without being perceived, and poniarded the vidette:—he fell without a groan! We then, after overcoming incredible dangers, reached the brink of the abyss. My troop eyed the gulph with terror. It was narrow; but at the bottom roared a mountain torrent, that from its immeasurable depth looked like a silver thread. I came provided with a rope, to which, when we dare not go down into the plain, we are in the habit of attaching a basket, which we lower to the peasants for provisions; to this rope I adjusted a heavy dagger, and hurled it across the chasm. By good fortune, it got entangled at the first throw among the brushwood, and stuck fast between two of the branches. Having drawn it tight, I fastened it to a tree on our side of the ravine. My companions watched me with anxiety, wondering what next I was about to do. I spoke not a word, but suspended myself over the abyss; and, hand over hand, reached the opposite bank in safety. All followed me, and with like success, save one, whose strength or courage failed him: he unhappily sunk into the boiling gulph, but he was dead long before he reached it; so that his sufferings were less than had he been taken by the Tedeschi. What a supper we made that night! and how soundly we slept! That night—that sleep repaid all our toils!

"Great was the astonishment of our foes when they found we had escaped their snares; and you may by that escape form some notion of the pleasures of a brigand's life.

"But this was not the only time we were near falling into the power of the soldiery. In all my seventeen years of service we were never betrayed but once. You know that one of the great trades in our mountains is that of Carbonari. The wood is of no value but to make charcoal, which principally goes into the markets of Rome and Naples. We always kept on good terms with these gentry. One night we were incautiously—contrary to our usual practice—drinking with them, without having placed a single sentinel, when we found ourselves attacked by an armed party,—not, however, before I heard their arms rattling in the branches; so that we had time to seize our muskets. They were much more numerous than ourselves, but they paid dear for their attack: I killed four with my own hand. I was wounded; but that is nothing—I am full of wounds: look here, and here, and here! The Carbonari fled; but we surprised them afterwards. Who can escape from those intent on revenge!—a time always comes, or soon or late. So with them. We retaliated—terribly retaliated; not a man escaped! Not that I lifted a hand against them,—none ever fell by Gasparoni but in action."

As he said this, his stature seemed to grow; and it was clear that he thought himself a hero. He waited, expecting, no doubt, that I should express my admiration of his exploits; but I remembered the last, and said to him,

"You forget the daughter of the Englishman—her head——"

"Questo Inglese era un impertinente," replied he. "Why did he not send the ransom? He knew, or ought to have known, the laws of brigands; we could not have spared her life had we wished it. No; it would have been an act of injustice—of gross partiality."

Here some of the brigands, who had heard his words, came up, and by their gestures gave confirmation of their general's words.

"And who among the band," I inquired, "was the executioner; for, like Louis XI, I suppose you had your Tristan?"

He pointed to the back of the cave, and called Geronymo, the figure whom I had first observed. He came forward.

"Son quì!" said the man with a hoarse guttural voice, that might have been mistaken for the howl of a wolf.

I looked at him attentively, and not without a sense of horror and disgust. His long and bony, yet athletic form, might have served as a model for a gladiator, for the muscles protruded like one of Michael Angelo's anatomical figures: his cadaverous sallow countenance pale with crime,—his eyes deep sunk, and overhung by thick bushy eyebrows, and emitting a gloomy light as within caverns,—his thin and straight upper lip, with the lower underhung like that of a dog-fish, fitted him well for the bourreau of Signor Gasparoni.

"So you were the executioner of the Englishman's daughter, Geronymo, eh?" I inquired.

"Si, signor," said he, with a grin of satisfaction, that betrayed a pride of office, and a superiority over his fellows.

"Era molto bella!" observed one of the bandits behind me.

I looked over my shoulder. The wretch who spoke was a little corpulent man, and reminded me of one of Rubens' satyrs. There was a most revolting leer on his countenance, which suggested to my mind not her death,—which was a mercy,—but the miserable fate that preceded it. I remembered the story of the peasant girl in the Tales of a Traveller, and shuddered.

Turning round again to that iron-visaged wretch, Geronymo, I said to him,

"Have you no remorse, Geronymo, for all the murders you have committed?"

"Remorse!" he replied, as though he did not understand the meaning of the word: "ought not a good soldier to obey the word of command? Whenever the captain said 'Amazza!' amazzava."

"Avete amazzato molte?" I asked.

"Si, signor, moltissime," he replied, with the greatest nonchalance. His eye lighted up, as he spoke, with a gloomy joy.

I turned from him as from a basilisk, and almost thought I heard the death-rattle of one of his victims.

As I was about to leave the Bagno, I met a capuchin, their confessor. It was the same who had persuaded Gasparoni to deliver himself up to the Roman authorities. I took him aside, and entered into conversation with him. He was a man advanced in age, and of a physiognomy such as I have observed to be common to almost all ecclesiastics in Italy,—heavy, dull, and unmeaning. He told me that Gasparoni and most of his band were very religious, and went regularly to mass and confession. He added, that he had petitioned the holy father for their liberation, and that he had no doubt, if released, that they would now make good subjects.

"The Pope," I observed, "knows them too well by past experience to trust such wretches at large again."

What tales might not this man reveal! but I found he was disinclined to be communicative, and in a hurry to commence his duties. I wished him therefore a buon giorno.

When we have voluntarily shut ourselves up in a Bagno with its unhappy inmates, it seems as though the return to liberty was interdicted to us,—that we are the victims to some snare, and that the iron gates of the prison are actually closed on us for ever. But a moment's reflection dissipates the fearful illusion, and we abandon ourselves, as Lucretius describes those who behold a storm at a distance, to the pleasure derived from our own security; or as we do when leaning over the parapet of a precipice. But, at the same time, I rushed through the open doors like a captive on being delivered from his chains, and, having emerged from the gloomy gateway, breathed more freely, inhaled with a new delight the sea-breeze, and stood watching the sun sink slowly through the vaporous atmosphere till it had totally disappeared below the waters. Then I returned to my inn, reflecting that I had perhaps just seen the last of the bandits. And yet the scene I had witnessed left no impression behind it such as I had expected; it furnished no stores to feed the imagination or to awaken the enthusiasm of art. The poetry of banditism has perished in the citadel of Cività Vecchia.

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THE GLORIES OF GOOD HUMOUR.

BY GODFREY GOODFELLOW.

"Est Ulubris, animus si te non deficit æquus."—Hor.

What a charming thing good humour is! How superexcellent and inestimable a quality, or character, or attribute of the mind! Yes, I unhesitatingly declare there is nothing like it. It is the only true key to the casket of happiness, the real source of all this world's enjoyments, the potent mithridate of misery, the balm of life, the care-dispelling Nepenthe, the rich restoring heavenly elixir drawn by wisdom from the alembic of content.

The good-humoured man is the only true philosopher. He alone knows how to enjoy life. He is wiser far than all the grave Saturnine star-gazers and moralists in the world. Is he not? Why, of what use is all our philosophy if it does not enable a man to be merry and live happy? Psha! to give way to grief, to allow the mind to succumb to despondency, is certainly to exhibit our poor humanity in one of the most ridiculous positions in which it could be placed. Diogenes, domiciled in a tub, cuts rather a curious figure amidst the sages of antiquity; and so do a host of others: but, certainly, Heraclitus in tears exhibits the weakness of human nature more glaringly than any of them. Grieving, forsooth! Why, 'tis just as if a man, plunging into the sea, should tie a stone about his neck in order to enable him to swim the better. Grieving is indeed a bad sort of a safety-jacket in a "sea of troubles." No: give me the good-humoured man; the fine, gay, jovial fellow, whom no disasters can depress; the true minion of merriment and fun, whom no sorrows can sadden; the genuine votary of "heart-easing mirth," whose mind, like the lark at sunrise, is ever cheerful and gay;

"Whose wit can brighten up a winter's day,

And chase the splenetic dull hours away."

Give me such a man; his philosophy is worth all the dogmas, and rules, and precepts, that ever were expounded in the Academe, the Porch, or the Lycæum.

What should I be now—or, rather, where should I be—but for my good humour? Alas! perhaps sailing the Styx in company with Charon; or, not having the ferry money, wandering disconsolate upon the banks, (for it is only the good-humoured, such as Menippus, that can manage to get over passage-free.) But here I am now, a fine, fat, rubicund fellow,—and all, I say it unhesitatingly, owing to my good humour. Good humour, thou hast indeed been to me a true, and kind, and trusty benefactress! Oh! thou fair, and sweet, and lovely thing, in whatever form thou holdest communion with mortals: whether thou art an immaterial essence that blends at will with our mortal bodies or whether thou art something more loving and palpable,—that light, blithe, blue-eyed maid,

"Whom lovely Venus at a birth,

With two sister graces more,

To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore;"

or whether a wild spirit, a lovely Ariel of the air, thou transfusest thyself into all the beautiful things of this world,—the green fields, and the silvery streams, and the sunny skies,—and then, rich with the sheen of their loveliness, comest into the presence-chamber of the mind, fixest thyself in the great senate of the senses, cheering and gladdening all their emotions!—whatever thou art, good humour,—be thou a bodiless essence, a lovely maid, a lively spirit, or any other modification of the mysterious and the beautiful, I love thee; love thee as dearly as ever Orpheus loved his Eurydice, Petrarch his Laura, or Waller his Sacharissa. Thou art the harbinger of comfort, the inductress of joy, the dove that bringest to mortals the olive of happiness and peace. Without thee what were life?—a dull, dreary, uninteresting scene,—a bare, bleak, barren, joyless, empyreanless——

Stop—stop—stop—stop!—halloo, Pegasus! where the devil are you going to? Soho! softly; not quite so high if you please; much as you admire good humour, do, pray! stay a little nearer to the confines of this "visible diurnal sphere."

"Who are you? where do you come from? You have no right to be dealing out such fulsome panegyrics about good humour."

Yes, but I have, though; I am universally acknowledged to be the most good-humoured man on town. The pure blood of the Allwits, the Easymirths, and the Goodfellows, flows in my veins. I am heir to a large property in Merryland, and my residence is at Jollity Hall, a picturesque, romantic spot in the county of Greatlaughtershire. I intend to start at the next general election for the borough of Gaybright; when I shall bring in such a measure of reform as shall astonish all our modern menders of constitutions.

I have every right, then, to descant upon the merits of good humour; and I do so the rather because men do not sufficiently appreciate them.

Now I fully agree with Dr. Johnson in thinking that "good humour is the quality to which everything in this life owes its power of pleasing." It is the one great source from which spring all those innumerable streams of enjoyment that intersect, and refresh, and beautify the social and moral world. It is, like Fame, "the spur that the clear spirit doth raise" above the fogs, and the damps, and the vapours that so often hang over and darken this sublunary scene. It is the grand moral alkali that completely neutralizes the corrosive acerbity of all this world's cares and sorrows. It is a pure heavenly sunshine illumining the chambers of the soul; a coal from heaven's own golden hearth, that warms into a congenial and ever-during glow all the best and kindliest emotions of our nature.

How different, indeed, would be the condition of the world if a system of good humour were universally established! For what is it but the absence of good humour that is the cause of almost all the troubles of life? All the wars that have desolated the world spring from no other origin. Kings and rulers wanting good humour have fallen out, and whole nations have been set at loggerheads:

"Quicquid delirant reges plectuntur Achivi."

Now, if good humour universally influenced the actions of men, there would be none of these things; war would be at an end. General Evans might then attend to his parliamentary duties. The "mailed Mars" might "on his altar sit," but it would not be "up to the ears in blood." He might lay by his lance, and commence smoking the calumet of peace. Again, we should have no need of that noisy, brawling, troublesome class of men yclept lawyers,—for it is plainly from the absence of good humour that all the litigation in the world takes its rise. The gentlemen of the long robe might then leave silk gowns to their ladies, and transfer their pleading to some other court than a court of law. At all events, the world would be freed from their forensic displays, for men would be on such good terms with each other that there would be no need of law terms to set them right. And also, under a general system of good humour, we should be freed from all the turmoil and contention of politics. Tithes, and church-rates, and corporation bills, would no longer afford such scope for violent and angry declamation. Would not this be glorious? As for our physicians, they might shut up shop, for there is no such admirable conservative of the constitution as good humour,—it being generally admitted that all diseases take their rise from the prevalence of bad humour in the blood. These disciples of Galen, then,—these knights of the lancet,—might become philosophers, and study physics instead of physic; or they might devote themselves to analyse the faculties of the mind, and thus, instead of physicians, become metaphysicians.

But, indeed, the ramifications are so numerous, that it would not be easy to follow out and describe all the innumerable advantages that would result from the establishment of an universal system of good humour.

And thus we are enabled at once to explain what the poets have meant by the Golden Age. It was plainly nothing else than the reign of universal good humour. The proof is quite obvious. Gold is the most excellent of metals,—good humour is the most excellent of the qualities of the mind; and therefore, the analogy being so striking, the poets at once styled this happy period the Golden Age. And hence it is evident that good humour is the only true philosopher's stone.

"This is the charm by sages often told,

Converting all it touches into gold.

Content can soothe, where'er by Fortune placed:

Can rear a garden in the desert waste."

In this passage "content" is only another name for good humour. Cease, then, ye followers of the Hermetic art, cease toiling over your crucibles; good humour is the true moral alchemy that will really enrich and ameliorate mankind.

This, then, is the reform bill which I intend to introduce as soon as I have the honour of a seat in the house; a bill for striking out, arranging, devising, and establishing some plan by which good humour may be reduced to a system; so that henceforward it will be the cardinal principle of life,—the rule by which all the actions of men shall be guided, regulated, and directed. Let me but pass this; and then, my country! thy happiness is secured. Let us hear no more about the ballot, and universal suffrage, and all those Utopian schemes of our modern speculators. Let us have no more hunting after a visionary political optimism; good humour is the only one thing necessary to bring all our civil institutions to a state of complete perfection. "Give me," said Archimedes, "a point in extra-mundane space, and I will remove the solid earth from its foundations." "Give me," say I, "good humour, and I will uproot all miseries, and contentions, and quarrellings from the world." Away with all the nostrums of our moralists and philosophers!—good humour is the one sole, infallible panacea for all the ills of life. Misfortunes may lower, and disappointments may assail; but still the mind of the good-humoured man, like a Delos emerging from the deep, rises buoyant above them all. Hurrah, then, for an eternal, cloudless, bright, jovial, unsubduable good humour! Let us have nothing but good humour! Let a cheerful smile be for ever playing upon the happy faces of our lovely wives; let our children be born in good humour, and in good humour let them grow up; let the girls be taught to smile with their mother's smile, and the boys after the manner of their father; and thus we shall be taking the best way to establish and consolidate one vast, wide, universal empire of love, happiness, and joy!

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SONG OF THE MODERN TIME.

Oh how the world has alter'd since some fifty years ago,

When coats and shoes would really serve to keep out rain and snow;

But double soles and broadcloth,—oh, dear me! how very low

To talk of such old-fashion'd things, when every one must know

That we are well-bred gentlefolks all of the modern time!

We all meet now at midnight's hour, and form a glitt'ring throng,

Where lovely angels walk quadrilles, and ne'er do l'Eté wrong,

Where Eastern scents all fresh and sweet, from Rowland's, float along,

And the name of a good old country-dance would sound like a Chinese gong

In the ears of well-bred gentlefolks all of the modern time!

Young ladies now of sage sixteen must give their friends a rout,

And teach the cook and housemaid how to "hand the things about;"

And they must pull Ma's bedstead down, and hurry, scout, and flout,

To have a fine refreshment-room, and lay a supper out

Like well-bred, dashing gentlefolks all of the modern time!

And beardless boys, all brag and noise, must do "the thing that's right,"—

That is,—they'll drink champagne and punch, and keep it up all night;

They'll shout and swear, till, sallying forth at peep of morning's light,

They knock down some old woman just to show how well they fight,

Like brave young English gentlemen all of the modern time!

At the good old hours of twelve and one our grandsires used to dine,

And quaff their horns of nut-brown ale, and eat roast-beef and chine;

But we must have our silver forks, ragouts, and foreign wine,

And not sit down till five or six if we mean to cut a shine,

Like dashing, well-bred gentlefolks all of the modern time!

Our daughters now at ten years old must learn to squall and strum,

And study shakes and quavers under Signor Fee-fo-fum;

They'll play concertos, sing bravuras, rattle, scream, and thrum,

Till you almost wish that you were deaf, and they, poor things! were dumb;

But they must be like young gentlefolks all of the modern time!

Our sons must jabber Latin verbs, and talk of a Greek root,

Before they've left off pinafores, cakes, lollipops, and fruit;

They all have splendid talents that the desk and bar will suit,

Each darling boy would scorn to be "a low mechanic brute;"

They must be well-bred college youths all of the modern time!

But bills will come at Christmas-tide, alas, alack-a-day!

The creditors may call again, "Papa's not in the way;

"He's out of town; but, certainly, next week he'll call and pay;"

And then his name's in the Gazette! and this I mean to say

Oft winds up many gentlefolks all of the modern time!

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CAPITAL PUNISHMENTS IN LONDON EIGHTY YEARS AGO.

EARL FERRERS.

The sensation created in London by that which has now become no ordinary spectacle,—two public executions in the course of the last few months,—naturally leads the observant mind to contemplate the march of intellect in this great metropolis with respect to the shedding of human blood by judicial authority. It may be interesting to the general reader to lay before him the reflections thus suggested, together with some curious and minute descriptions of scenes witnessed within the last century.

The practice of Sus per Col, as described in legal abbreviations, or hanging, is the only mode of putting to death ("pressing to death" excepted) known to the law of England for all felonies short of high or petty treason. In cases of conspiracy against the state, traitors of rank were indulged with the privilege of being beheaded; but meaner offenders, besides other inflictions, were to suffer on the gallows. This distinction necessarily caused the punishment to be regarded as very ungenteel, if an expression of levity may be allowed; and, in consequence, no respectable person, or, at any rate, only here and there one, would choose to be hanged. Earl Ferrers, who was convicted of the murder of his steward in the reign of George the Second, petitioned that he might die by the axe. This was refused. "He has done," said the old king, "de act of de bad man, and he shall die de death of de bad man." The feeling of the monarch was good, but it was rather odd that a king should seem to think the punishment of treason, called by judges "the highest crime known to the law," an ennobling indulgence which ought not to be extended to a simple murderer.

One luxury, however, Lord Ferrers is reported to have secured for the last hour of his life,—a silken rope; but a more important deviation from the common mode, so far as abridgement of bodily pain is concerned, was made on that occasion, for then it was that what is now familiarly called the "drop" was first used. Till that period, to draw a cart from beneath the culprit, or to throw him from a ladder, by turning it round, after he had ascended to a certain height for the halter to be adjusted, had been the practice; but for the wretched peer a scaffold was prepared, part of the floor of which was raised eighteen inches above the rest, which, on the signal of death being given, became flat. The contrivance, however, did not very well succeed, according to the narrative left us by Lord Orford; which, from the remarkable circumstances it details of that memorable exit, and of the usages which then prevailed, is worth transcribing.

The crime for which the nobleman suffered was a most cruel murder. He had been through life a very depraved character. It was doubted if this were the only homicide he had committed; he had separated from his wife, and ill-used his mistress. He, however, met his fate with great firmness. "On the last morning," says Lord Orford in a letter, "he dressed himself in his wedding clothes, and said he thought this, at least, as good an occasion for putting them on, as that for which they were first made." The account proceeds: "Even an awful procession of above two hours, with that mixture of pageantry, shame, and ignominy, nay, and of delay, could not dismount his resolution. He set out from the Tower at nine, amidst thousands of spectators. First went a string of constables; then one of the sheriffs, in his chariot and six, the horses dressed with ribands; next, Lord Ferrers, in his own landau and six, his coachman crying all the way,—guards at each side; the other sheriff's chariot followed empty, with a mourning coach and six, a hearse, and the Horse-guards. Observe, that the empty chariot was that of the other sheriff, who was in the coach with the prisoner, and who was Vaillant the French bookseller in the Strand. How (exclaims Lord Orford to his correspondent) will you decypher all these strange circumstances? A bookseller, in robes and in mourning, sitting as a magistrate by the side of the earl; and, in the evening, everybody going to Vaillant's shop to hear the particulars. I wrote to him, as he serves me, for the account; but he intends to print it. Lord Ferrers, at first, talked on indifferent matters; and, observing the prodigious confluence of people, (the blind was drawn up on his side,) he remarked, 'they never saw a lord hanged, and perhaps will never see another,' One of the dragoons was thrown, by his horse's leg entangling in the hind wheel: Lord Ferrers expressed much concern, and said, 'I hope there will be no death to-day but mine;' and was pleased when Vaillant told him the man was not hurt. Vaillant made excuses to him for performing the duties of his office in person. 'For that,' said the earl, 'I am much obliged to you: I feared the disagreeableness of the duty might make you depute your under-sheriff. As you are so good as to execute it yourself, I am persuaded the dreadful business will be conducted with more expedition.' The Chaplain of the Tower, who sat backwards, then thought it his turn to speak, and began to talk on religion; but Lord Ferrers received it impatiently. However, the chaplain persevered; and said, he wished to bring his lordship to some confession, or acknowledgment of contrition, for a crime so repugnant to the laws of God and man, and wished him to endeavour to do whatever could be done in so short a time. The earl replied, 'he had done everything he proposed to do, with regard to God and man; and, as to discourses on religion, you and I, sir,' said he to the clergyman, 'shall probably not agree on that subject. The passage is very short; you will not have time to convince me, nor I to refute you; it cannot be ended before we arrive.' The clergyman still insisted, and urged that, at least, the world would expect some satisfaction. Lord Ferrers replied, with some impatience, 'Sir, what have I to do with the world? I am going to pay a forfeit life, which my country has thought proper to take from me; what do I care now what the world thinks of me? But, sir, since you do desire some confession, I will confess one thing to you; I do believe there is a God. As to modes of worship, we had better not talk on them. I always thought Lord Bolingbroke in the wrong to publish his notions on religion: I will not fall into the same error.' The chaplain, seeing that it was in vain to make any more attempts, contented himself with representing to him, that it would be expected from one of his calling, and that even decency required, that some prayer should be used on the scaffold, and asked his leave, at least, to repeat the Lord's Prayer there. Lord Ferrers replied, 'I always thought it a good prayer; you may use it if you please.'

"While these speeches were passing, the procession was stopped by the crowd. The earl said he was dry, and wished for some wine-and-water. The sheriff said, he was sorry to be obliged to refuse him. By late regulations they were enjoined not to let prisoners drink on their way from the place of imprisonment to that of execution, as great indecencies had been formerly committed by the lower species of criminals getting drunk; 'and though,' said he, 'my lord, I might think myself excusable in overlooking this order, out of regard to a person of your lordship's rank, yet there is another reason, which I am sure will weigh with you,—your lordship is sensible of the greatness of the crowd: we must draw up to some tavern; the confluence would be so great, that it would delay the expedition which your lordship seems so much to desire.' He replied he was satisfied, adding, 'Then I must be content with this;' and he took some pigtail tobacco out of his pocket. As they went on, a letter was thrown into his coach; it was from his mistress, to tell him that it was impossible, from the crowd, for her to get round to the spot where he had appointed her to meet and take leave of him, but that she was in a hackney-coach of such a number. He begged Vaillant to order his officers to try to get the hackney-coach up to his. 'My lord,' said Vaillant, 'you have behaved so well hitherto, that I think it is pity to venture unmanning yourself,' He was struck, and was satisfied without seeing her. As they drew nigh, he said, 'I perceive we are almost arrived: it is time to do what little more I have to do; and then, taking out his watch, gave it to Vaillant, desiring him to accept it as a mark of his gratitude for his kind behaviour; adding, 'It is scarce worth your acceptance, but I have nothing else; it is a stopwatch, and a pretty accurate one.' He gave five guineas to the chaplain, and took out as much for the executioner. Then giving Vaillant a pocket-book, he begged him to deliver it to Mrs. Clifford, his mistress, with what it contained, and with his most tender regards; saying, 'The key of it is to the watch, but I am persuaded you are too much a gentleman to open it' He destined the remainder of the money in his purse to the same person, and with the same tender regards.

"When they came to Tyburn, his coach was detained some minutes by the conflux of people; but, as soon as the door was opened, he stepped out readily, and mounted the scaffold. It was hung with black by the undertaker, and at the expense of his family. Under the gallows was a new-invented stage, to be struck from under him. He showed no kind of fear or discomposure, only just looking at the gallows with a slight motion of dissatisfaction. He said little, kneeled for a moment to the prayer, said 'Lord have mercy upon me, and forgive me my errors!' and immediately mounted the upper stage. He had come pinioned with a black sash, and was unwilling to have his hands tied, or his face covered, but was persuaded to both. When the rope was put round his neck, he turned pale, but recovered his countenance instantly; and was but seven minutes from leaving the coach, before the signal was given for striking the stage. As the machine was new, they were not ready at it: his toes touched it, and he suffered a little, having had time, by their bungling, to raise his cap; but the executioner pulled it down again, and they pulled his legs, so that he was soon out of pain, and quite dead in four minutes. He desired not to be stripped and exposed; and Vaillant promised him, though his outer clothes must be taken off, that his shirt should not. This decency ended with him: the sheriffs fell to eating and drinking on the scaffold, and helped up one of their friends to drink with them, while he was still hanging, which he did for above an hour, and then was conveyed back with the same pomp to Surgeons' Hall, to be dissected. The executioners fought for the rope; and the one who lost it, cried. The mob tore off the black cloth as relics; but the universal crowd behaved with great decency and admiration, as they well might, for sure no exit was ever made with more sensible resolution and with less ostentation."

The contrivance above described has caused the cart to fall into general disuse on such occasions. The change, however, was not suddenly effected. For many years after the death of Lord Ferrers, the triangular gallows at Tyburn maintained its ground, and, on execution-days, the cart passed from Newgate up Giltspur-street, and through Smithfield to Cow-lane; Skinner-street had not then been built, and the crooked lane which turned down by St. Sepulchre's church, as well as Ozier-lane, did not offer sufficient width to admit of the cavalcade passing by either of them with convenience to Holborn-hill.

For centuries the prevailing opinion had been, that executions ought to take place at a distance from the crowded part of the city. Anciently malefactors were put to death at The Elms in Smithfield, or rather, between Smithfield and Turnmill-street. But when the houses had increased, so as to encroach on the space which had long been kept open there, it was thought expedient to carry those appointed to die, farther off; and a spot was fixed upon, which received the name of Tyburn, near the beginning of Tottenham-court-road.[41] When Holborn had been built up to St Giles's, a farther removal was deemed necessary, and these tragic scenes were carried from one end of Oxford-street to the other,—from the beginning of Tottenham-court-road to the Tyburn of the present day.

But at length, in the reign of George the Third, it was judged better to abandon the parade so long kept up, and to execute the sentence of death in the immediate vicinity of Newgate. This alteration, though many reasons may be urged in its favour, was not universally approved. There were those who apprehended that, in a constitutional point of view, it was dangerous to abate the publicity which had so long attached to the consummation of the last severity of the law. Mr. Horne Tooke was of the number. To hang a felon at the door of his prison, he considered, "the next thing to putting him to death within the walls," and directly approximating towards secret executions.

By degrees, however, the public mind got perfectly reconciled to the change. Much expense and confusion were spared; and the idle were no longer indulged in a disgusting holiday, to witness a spectacle in but too many instances known to produce anything but the impression which might have been desired. The rabble went to the mournful scene as to a public entertainment. The procession to Tyburn, with the prayers and other ceremonies there, occupied a large portion of the day, which many of the spectators closed in dissipation, outrage, and robbery.

Instead of carrying the condemned three miles, and executing the culprits from a cart, an apparatus was now erected close to Newgate; and the awful ceremony, no longer made the business of many hours, was regularly performed at eight o'clock in the morning, and every vestige of the deplorable scene put away between nine and ten. Some of the first executions witnessed at Newgate were most unlike those which have been seen of late years, even before the late king ascended the throne. Not fewer than eighteen or twenty persons were conducted to the scaffold on the same day; and the gallows originally set up in the Old Bailey was so contrived that three cross-beams could be used, and the sufferers were, by this contrivance, disposed in as many rows.

By degrees these spectacles grew less frequent, and the numbers hurried into eternity on each occasion were fewer. The execution of five or six persons on one day became an uncommon sight, and seldom more than two or three suffered together.

This comparatively small sacrifice of life did not make the Old Bailey less attractive on a hanging-day than Tyburn had formerly been, though the rabble were constantly dismissed shortly after the clock struck nine.

About the beginning of the present century, a notorious highwayman of the name of Clark, with five other malefactors, submitted to the last severity of man together. I went before the day had dawned, and very shortly after the preparations had commenced, to the Old Bailey. The spectacle then presented was most picturesque; and to me, whatever it might be to others, most extraordinary. Wooden posts made in a triangular form with rails, and a rod of iron issuing from the tops to pass through holes prepared in strong bars of timber, which they were to sustain, were lying about in every direction. Lighted torches were carried by the workmen and their assistants, the bars being first laid along the ground, nearly on or over the spot where they were to be set up to keep off the crowd, while the preparations went forward for the work of death. The body of the drop had previously been brought out. This did not take to pieces, but was kept, as at present, standing in the yard attached to the prison; and, being placed on wheels, was—I might say is, as executions have not wholly ceased,—drawn out at a very early hour. It was curious to notice the interest, the levity, the indifference, which prevailed in the different groups drawn together as the awful hour approached, according to the various humours of the individuals who composed them. When the cross-beam of the gallows was raised to its place, it was gazed on with great eagerness. As each rail was fixed, to mark the boundary of the space to be kept clear, a mass of men and boys, with here and there a female, ranged themselves close to it. The constables were occasionally seen struggling through the human wall thus formed, and showing their authority—the staff of office, to prove their right to be there; a form by no means unnecessary, as many of them were only to be known by that sign, as in truth they were almost impostors, having only assumed the character in which they appeared, for the day, being engaged by the respectable tradesmen really serving the office, to save them the time that would be consumed, or to spare feelings that must be wounded, if they appeared in propriâ personâ.

The scaffold was established at the Debtors'-door, in the widest part of the Old Bailey; and the bar which was placed as above described extended from the further side of the scaffold, to a few feet south of the governor's house. The steps leading to the Felons'-door were soon crowded; and several recesses and niches on that side of the prison were peopled from an early hour with living statues.

Well do I remember the awe with which I heard the chimes of St. Sepulchre's church announce the lapse of another and another quarter of an hour, the calculations which were made of the exact number of minutes which the victims had yet to breathe, and the speculations as to the manner in which they were then engaged, and the deportment which they would assume in the closing scene.

The appearance of the city marshals between seven and eight arranging the constables, announced that the time had nearly arrived. A humourist would have jested at the overacted dignity of the functionaries just named of that day. A Wellington disposing his ranks to meet the fiercest shock of the best warriors of France, could not have given a finer idea of the importance of command, than these civic heroes suggested while placing in Newgate order their crowd of clubmen.

It had been usual to hang black cloth on the chains which ran along three sides of the scaffold. On the occasion now recalled this part of the ceremonial was not omitted. The black was duly paraded; but so beggarly a display in connexion with any public proceeding my not "young memory" cannot parallel. It had been so worn and torn, that such a collection of tatters, it might fairly be concluded, could hardly have been found in any part of his Majesty's dominions,—Rosemary-lane, perhaps, excepted. The idlers, who by this time had assembled in great force, and who—the majority of them at all events—evidently considered they had but to enjoy themselves, laughed immoderately, and indulged in all sorts of jokes on this Ragfair set-out; which, to confess the truth, as their streamers, shaped into all imaginable forms, fluttered in the wind,—bearing in mind the solemnity of the occasion, and the supposed object of the exposure of the sable shreds, namely, mourning,—was the perfection of burlesque.

The hand of St. Sepulchre's clock was pointed at the quarter to eight. Fifteen minutes more, and the unhappy ones appointed to die were expected to ascend that platform from which they were to sink into eternity. The immense multitude extended far up Giltspur-street one way, and almost reached to Ludgate-hill in the opposite direction. In all the houses commanding a view of the gallows the windows were crowded; the ledges without the parapets and roofs were in like manner surmounted by numerous spectators.

It would not be easy to describe the sensation created by the appearance of the very important actors who next came on the stage,—the executioners.

"Here are Jade Ketch and his man!" was the exclamation of almost every individual in the crowd to his neighbour.

There was something in the look of the men which really challenged attention. The principal, or "Jack Ketch himself," as he was called, was a tall, elderly personage. His costume presented a long blue frock-coat, a scarlet waistcoat, and his hose bound with red garters below the knee-buttons of his inexpressibles. He wore a flower in his coat, or carried one in his mouth. He surveyed the eagerly-staring populace, and sustained their gaze with an air of calm indifference, which, however, had nothing of startling effrontery about it. His assistant was a very different figure; he was a coarse-featured, pock-marked, short, thick-set man. All his motions indicated great vivacity; and, if a judgment might be formed from his exterior, he was proud and rejoiced to fill an office of such high distinction, and felt more satisfaction in reflecting on the conspicuous situation in which he was placed, than pity for the poor creatures who almost instantly were to be committed to his professional care. He generally wore dark clothes; but sometimes had a bit of his master's distinguishing finery,—a red waistcoat. He nimbly paced the scaffold on this occasion, and looked on the mob, as I fancied, with an air of mirth or exultation, and presently applied himself, with no bad taste, to tear down the miserable black rags which have been mentioned; and, I believe, since that day they have never reappeared, or anything of the kind in their place. This operation completed, he seemed to confer with the other hangman on the business before them. The tall steps necessary to enable them to attach the halters to the gallows they moved towards the end of the platform near the spot on which the first who came forth was to stand; and, everything now being ready, they composedly waited the coming of the sheriffs with their prisoners.

The clock of St. Sepulchre's church struck eight; a murmur burst from the vast assemblage near it: and the solemn bell of St. Paul's cathedral a moment afterwards confirmed, so to speak, the announcement of the fatal hour. All was expectation. The executioners frequently looked towards the door from which those expected, were to advance, as if to ascertain if they were coming. There was something of excitement in their manner, and a silent indescribable movement among those within the enclosure, that told more distinctly than could speech, that the last scene was about to open.

It was nearly ten minutes after eight when the heavy tone of the prison-bell was heard. Such a sound!—a knell of death sounded for the living, who were then in perfect health, but who were next minute to be consigned to the grave, is well calculated to thrill the most unfeeling. This usage always appeared to me to heighten the solemnity of the scene, and the misery of the convicts for whom it tolled. Yet the authorities deemed it a compliment, or honour, to the sufferer, too great to be conceded in every case. The murderer, for instance, was denied the privilege of hearing it. None but those condemned for the less heinous crimes of forgery, or other capital felony unattended with the spilling of human blood, were favoured with the melancholy distinction.

The signal for the bell, I believe, was given at the instant when the brief procession, from the room in which the prisoners were pinioned to the door from which they pass to the final scene of expiation, commenced. The sullen sound was but three or four times repeated when those immediately in front of the prison-entrance saw the white wand of the sheriff approach from within. An officer appeared ascending the ladder, and by his side a man whose solemn aspect indicated with sufficient clearness that he was one of the doomed. The next moment he had passed to the platform, and stood in presence of the gazing populace. When the wand, the insignia of office, was seen, the word was given "Hats off!" and the multitude on every side obeyed the mandate, and stood uncovered.

The unfortunate man who appeared first of the six who were to surrender their lives on this day, was perfectly resigned to his deplorable fate. His eye was bright, his step was firm, and it was impossible for a human being in such circumstances to be more collected, or to deport himself with more propriety. If sorrow at leaving this world oppressed him, hope solaced him with the cheering prospect that it would be his, immediately, to enter on a better. He wore his hat,—such being the usage at that time,—which was removed by the executioners, and placed at one end of the scaffold; and then the clergyman made his appearance. With him the culprit conversed devoutly, but with cheerfulness. His cravat having been taken off, the old executioner elevated himself by the steps, put the fatal noose over the sufferer's head, on which the cap was immediately placed, and the end of the halter being then passed round the beam, was carefully tied. The chain and hook now introduced had not yet been adopted. The companions in woe and death of the unfortunate I have described, quickly followed. Clark was the third or fourth that appeared, and he had the weakness to distinguish himself by the idle bravado of throwing away his hat. To each of them the ordinary addressed a few words. The caps, which had been left up for some moments, were next drawn down over the whole face. A prayer was commenced; but, before it concluded, the minister passed a white handkerchief over his mouth. That was the fatal signal; the drop fell with a dismal noise, and the death-struggle ensued. It was then twenty minutes after eight, and in three or four minutes, all appearance of life had ceased. In the same instant that they were suspended the crowd began to withdraw, while those who had been at a distance pressed forward to gain a more distinct view of the appalling spectacle. A cry of horror burst from a portion of the multitude when the floor gave way; but the impression it made was singularly transient. In less than a quarter of an hour cool indifference was everywhere to be marked, and foolish levity and boisterous mirth succeeded to the awe and commiseration lately manifested.

A year or two after this scene, the public mind was violently excited by the case of Governor Wall. This culprit, twenty years before, being then the king's representative at Goree, had caused a man to be flogged so severely that he died. He was present when the punishment was inflicted, and excited the floggers by calling to them, "Cut his liver out!" among other horrible expressions. The crime of whipping a man to death was well calculated to awaken public indignation; but it was not his guilt alone which caused the ferment then witnessed in the metropolis. The belief that, because he had been a governor, mercy was likely to be shown to him, which would be denied to another, probably sealed his doom, and proved a cruel aggravation of his wretched destiny. He was tried on a Wednesday, and ordered for execution on the Friday next following, but was respited till Monday. This was considered an indication that the sentence would not be carried into effect at all, although on the last-mentioned day a vast crowd assembled in the Old Bailey. A second respite had been granted; but this was not generally known, at least to the multitude congregated on the occasion. Great was the disappointment when the hour of seven struck, and no preparations for the execution were visible. Many clung to the expectation that it would yet take place; and several affirmed, untruly I believe, that the apparatus had often been brought out and erected after that hour. I mingled with some of the numerous groups, and listened to the discussions, which were carried on with great vivacity, on the subject of the crime, and probable fate of the criminal. Not till after eight was the idea totally abandoned that the raging thirst of the infuriated populace for his blood would not then be gratified. It was between eight and nine that I had an opportunity of speaking with Mr. Newman, the governor of Newgate, and learned from him that further time had been granted, and that Wall was to suffer on the coming Thursday.

The mob separated with bitter execrations; and the belief that a murderer, whose guilt was of the blackest dye, would escape punishment because he had powerful friends, gained ground throughout the nation. If horror had previously been inspired by his crime, to that personal and political rancour were now added, and the public mind was in a state of violent exasperation. The Thursday arrived! and another crowd assembled in front of Newgate, but doubting much whether the spectacle so ardently desired would at last be offered to their longing eyes. Though the officers were at their posts, and the scaffold in its place, it was still insisted that the governor would escape the fate he merited. The most ridiculous stories were circulated of the influence exercised in his favour, and of the culpable resolution of those who were in power to prevent the administration of justice. These, however, were all confuted when the appointed hour arrived, and the miserable object of public indignation was brought out to suffer like a common offender.

When Governor Wall heard his sentence pronounced on the Wednesday, with whatever dismay it filled him, he prepared to submit to it with resignation. He threw himself, when he had returned to the prison, on his wretched bed, and said he should not rise from it till the officers of justice came to lead him to his fate. The respites granted awakened in him a hope not before entertained, only to render the rigour of the law more dreadful, from the unsettled state of his mind up to the last moment.

He was a remarkably fine man in appearance, standing more than six feet high. When he came on the scaffold, his figure served but to swell the exultation of the crowd. As he advanced, he was greeted with three loud huzzas. When these subsided, a thousand ferocious voices addressed to the executioners the language which the cruel governor was charged with having used while the victim of his severity was writhing under the lash. The furious exclamations were not lost on the criminal; he requested the executioners to perform their part as expeditiously as possible. The drop almost instantly fell, and the shouts of the mob were in that dreadful moment renewed. He struggled long, and it was supposed that his sufferings were greater than those of any other victim on whom the same sentence had been executed. When about to be turned off, Wall entreated that his legs might not be pulled. The wish was respected till his long-protracted agonies compelled the sheriff, in the humane performance of his duty, to order that it should be done in order to terminate his misery. After hanging an hour, he was cut down; and the remains were conveyed in a cart, attended by a joyful rabble, to a house in Castle-street, Saffron-hill, there to be anatomized.

Subsequent to the period of which I have been speaking, an idea was entertained of recurring to the old mode of execution; at least it was revived on one occasion. A triangular gallows was made, and sockets were inserted in the road, opposite Green-arbour-court, to receive the supporting posts. On this, Anne Hurle, convicted of forgery, and a male culprit, were put to death, about thirty years ago. The criminals were brought out at the Felons'-door in a cart, and carried to the upper end of the Old Bailey. There, after the necessary preparations, the ordinary took his leave. The executioner urged the horse forward, and the vehicle was drawn from under the feet of the criminals. The motion caused them to swing backwards and forwards; but this was speedily stopped by the hangman, who leaped from the cart for the purpose. It appeared to the spectators that the victims suffered more than they would have done if executed from the drop. This was probably represented to the city authorities, for the latter method of carrying the law into effect was promptly restored.

It was formerly the usage, when a crime of remarkable atrocity had been committed, to execute the offender near the scene of his guilt. The minds then exercised on these painful subjects judged that a salutary horror would be inspired by the example so afforded, and that localities once dangerous would thus be rendered comparatively secure. Those who were punished capitally for the riots of 1780 suffered in various parts of the town; and, in the year 1790, two incendiaries were hanged in Aldersgate-street, at the eastern end of Long-lane. Since that period there have been few executions in London except in front of Newgate. The last deviation from the regular course was in the case of a sailor named Cashman, who suffered death about the year 1817, in Skinner-street, opposite the house of a gunsmith whose shop he had been concerned in plundering. The gunsmith was anxious that this should not be; but his voice was overruled, and the criminal was carried in a cart to the scaffold. It was then, it should seem, supposed that an awful warning would be given to the dissolute in Skinner-street, which would be in a great measure lost if the executioner performed his work at a distance of some forty yards from the scene of depredation.

Time, which alters everything, effected a remarkable change in this respect; and, however appalling the guilt of the condemned, it was at length presumed to be adequately visited by death in the Old Bailey. When the fiend-like Burkers were brought to justice, they were sent to their account at the usual place of execution. To mark horror for their crime, or to arrest its progress in the neighbourhood of Shoreditch, it was not thought necessary to erect the gallows in Nova Scotia Gardens.

In the course of the rambling thoughts and recollections here brought together, it has been shown that various alterations have from time to time been made; and one, not the least remarkable, has recently been brought under public notice. Formerly it was usual for the recorder to report the cases of those sentenced at one Old Bailey sessions, to the king in council after the next ensuing sessions. It however not unfrequently happened that, through negligence, or perhaps from a feeling of commiseration for those to whom it must bring death, the report was postponed, till the cases of several sessions remained in arrear. In those days loud were the complaints on the subject of the evil consequences of the delay. The grand argument against it was, that the long interval which separated punishment from crime caused the latter to be forgotten by the public, and the violater of the law was in consequence regarded with sympathy to which he had no just claim: the wrong, the violence which he had perpetrated, were almost wholly lost sight of; and thus the lesson, that an ignominious death would promptly requite a fearful crime, was feebly impressed on the minds of the pitying spectators. Such was the notion when executions followed at some considerable distance from conviction, and the superior efficacy of the course taken with regard to murders was often referred to as being directly in point. Now, this is changed; death for robbery or forgery is hardly known, and he who is sentenced to die for hurrying a fellow-creature out of existence has five or six weeks allowed him to prepare for eternity. In noticing the change, I do not mean to censure it. Time will show whether the course now taken is followed by an increase of homicide: as yet it is too early to pronounce an opinion; but no suspicion of the sort up to the present moment has been entertained.

One strange practice was common to all executions at Newgate: a number of persons were "rubbed for wens," as it was called. Men, women, and children afflicted with them were introduced within the body of the vehicle of death, and elevated so as to be seen by the populace, within a few minutes after the convicts had been turned off. The patients were then indulged with a choice of the individual culprit, from those who had suffered, whose touch was to be applied to the part affected. The hands of the corpse selected were untied by the executioner, and gently moved backwards and forwards for about two minutes, which was supposed sufficient to effect a cure. This custom has now ceased; it was abolished as a piece of contemptible superstition, the continuance of which it would be disgraceful to permit. The executioner was deprived of this lucrative part of his business, without receiving for it any public compensation.

H.T.

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A PETER-PINDARIC TO AND OF THE FOG.

Impartial Fog!

Imperial Smellfungus!

Great Cacafogo! High (and low) Mundungus!

Wherever born,—

Whether in Allan's or in Holland's bog,

Or where the wakeful Morn

Dresses herself by starlight—at the Pole,

Nature's impassable goal;

Or whether born and bred on agueish Essex' shore,

With stagnant waters greenly mantled o'er;—

Thou least-illustrious visitor!

Poking thy foreign way along,

Link-led and stumbling,

Blind-led and fumbling,

And always in the wrong;

Thou great unsung of song!

Inimical to light as an inquisitor,

But not so blood-ferocious,

Dark-hooded, and atrocious;

For, give thee undisturb'd thy gloomy way,—

Uninterrupted, let thee clap

A dark extinguisher on lightsome Day,

On early Morning a night-cap,

And 'tis remarkable how easy,

Though somewhat queasy,

Thou slumberest—how Session-long thy stay!

And very marvellous how

Innocuously quiet!

Passive as Daniel in the lions' den—

The living Daniel—flung to rav'nous men,—

(Delicious picking,

Although no chicken!)

Who lick their longing chaps, and get a precious licking!—

Daniel, who dreads that any row

Should spring up anywhere, and he not breed the riot!

All hail, great Fog! not but a leetle rain—

A small, slight drizzling of natural, moist sorrow—

Would make our dark perplexities more plain,

And give us hopes of seeing a to-morrow!

Dear Fog, abate the vigour

Of your full-volumed breath!

Day was a dingy white

Till you "put out the light,"

Like black Othello

When stifling his dear wife to death;

And, here, you've gone and made the comely fellow

A pretty figure,—

A horrid Nigger!

Hear me, if you're a hearkener!—

An English day at best is but a darkener

At any time o' year;

(It costs housekeepers many

A pretty pound and penny

To see that clear.)

Look through the lustrous city,

And you will think 'tis pity

That Phœbus—

So shrewd a god, good at a rhyme

And rebus—

Should waste his precious time

In trying to look down

Upon this independent town;

And pertinaciously keep poking—

(While all the city wags are joking

At his egregious folly

And failure melancholy)—

Poking his ineffectual beams between the clouds,

Hovering sootily over it in crowds

To intercept his rays,

And turn them other ways.

He ought by this time to have known—

(His chaste, night-wandering sister,

Who does contrive to glister,

She should have told him)—that London, day and night,

Is better lit by gas than by his sultry light.

Come, brighten up, great Fog, and don't look gloomy

While I can see you—for these eyes grow rheumy!

Clear up, for Heaven's and dear London's sakes:

For, while you're groping here, there's sad mistakes

Making in every possible direction,

And some without detection!

There's some one, as I've struggled through the Strand,

Has had his hand

In my coat-pocket more than half a minute,

Though there is nothing but one sonnet in it!

La! bless me! well, how odd! why, I declare

It is my own hand I've detected there!—

I think that wasn't me that trod upon my toes?

There—dear me! why I've hit some other person's nose!

Lord! how the Simpson swears,

And hits about, and tears,

While I keep snug, and leave the angry ass

Just room enough to let his passion pass,

And laugh to hear him give himself such ultra-Donkey airs!

Madam, I really beg a person of your charms

A thousand pardons

For running so unbidden to your arms!

"Och! for five fardens

Your honour's wilcum as the flowers in May

To call agin there any day!

And p'r'aps it's you don't want a basket-woman?"—

Kitty Malone, by all that's Irish-human!—

"Och! long life to your honour! May your eyes

Be iver jist as bright as the Green Island's skies,

And niver foggy!"

I add—"Nor groggy;

Ay, Katty?"

"'Od dra't ye!"

For if to Kate some female errors fall,

Pay her gin-score, and you whitewash them all.

Now, which way should I turn to escape the Strand?

"Fait', then, it's handy—turn to your right hand!"

'Gad! I'm so posed, I know not left from right;

But, here goes—anywhere! Oh, guide me, Sight!

Heaven bless me! what

Is this I've run against, and fix'd it to the spot?

Bless the dear child! you really shouldn't stand

In people's way

In such a day.

Dear me! I've stunn'd her so, she cannot speak,

Not even shriek!

How pale she turns—white as a Greenland ghost!

Oh, horror! what a hue!

What shall I—can I do!

Her face is frozen-cold—her eyes all whites!

Here, help! watch! murder! lights! oh, lights!——

Zounds! what a fool I am! Why, here have I

Been wasting all this morbid sympathy—

This tenderness and pity—on a post!

Come, that is strange and laughable enough!

Talk of the drolleries of "Blind-man's buff,"

And "Catch who can,"

This is as laughable,

And chaffable,

To a good-humour'd man!—

(Between parentheses, and just by way

Of taking breath—sub rosá, I will say

That I like Blind-man's buff, and I confess it,

Bless it!

For, in that playful sport, if you 're inclined,

And your hand sees, though both your eyes are blind,

You may, perhaps, catch the petticoat of Miss

Some one or other,

Or her still-handsome mother,

And snatch a kiss,

Which taken impromptu in that lively way.

In pure Platonic play,

Is pleasant—very!

And makes one merry,

And very easily finds ready pardon.)

Well, by this time, I must be near the Garden?

Yes, there's the smell eternal

Of cabbages infernal,

Those flatulencies vernal!

And there's the Hummums—(which my dear friend Stubbs,

Who speaketh through his nose, calls the Hubbubs!)—

Yes, and although the fog's

Perplexing in th' extreme, this must be Mogg's?

And this the Arcade which the dear Cockneys call

"Pie-hay-sir,"—sounds not like the sounds at all!

Corruption villanous! I here denounce it,

And pronounce it

"Pi-atz-za,"

And rhyme it to "Buy hat, sir!"

And there's the Theatre where solemn Siddons,

And that great "last of all the Romans," Kemble,

Made you for pity weep, or with touch'd passion tremble!

And this is Robins's—Robins, whose Darwin powers

In making his poetic flowers

(See his advertisements and auctions) tell—

(While those for sale upon the florists' leads.

Hard by,

"Hide their diminished heads,"

And, envious, die)—

Are known so well!

So far, so good. Hah! here is Gliddon's!

And now I am no longer at a loss

Which way to go;

So, here I'll shoot across

Quick as a fool's bolt from his bow.

'Sblood! what a bump—

Not named in Spurzheim—

This cursed, confounded, and confounding pump,

With its large handle stretch'd out to the nor'ward,

Has suddenly developed on my forehead,

Which nothing hurts him!

How I should like to give some one a thumping!

You little scoundrel! night or day,

Whene'er I pass this way,

You d—d young rascal, you are always pumping!

Take that—and that—and that!—

Och, murder! if I haven't kick'd

(For which I shall get lick'd)

A stout, broad-shoulder'd, five-foot-seven Pat,

Just the unlikeliest chap

To take a given rap!

"Fly, Fleance, fly!" Don't stop to "take

Your change," for Heaven's and England's sake!

Well run, for forty-seven!—a tolerable foot-race!

And now I calmly recollect the place,

Its ins and outs,

And roundabouts,

A batter'd nose and broken shin

Are not too much to pay to win.

Pit-pat!

What's that?

Something that moves soft and slow,

Like graceful dancer in a furbelow!—

What are you? Ho!

A walking Vestris, with a leg to show?

So be it!

Come, come, you all-engrossing Fog,

You're "going the whole hog,"

And hoggishly won't let me see it!

Pit-pat again! encore pit-pat!

Oh, disappointment dire! a vagabond tom-cat!

Here, Paddy that I kick'd, if you can see,

Kick this great mousing brute in lieu of me!

Well, if again I go out in a fog,

May I be call'd a blind man's stupid dog,

A bat, a beetle, "a good-nater'd fellar!"

Headlong I dive—out of it—into the Cider-cellar!

November, 1837.

Punch.

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NIGHTS AT SEA;
Or, Sketches of Naval Life during the War.

BY THE OLD SAILOR.

WITH AN ILLUSTRATION BY GEORGE CRUIKSHANK.

No. VI.

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