Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. III, No. XVII, October 1851

by Various

CHAPTER XLII.

THE "COUNT DE MAUREPAS," ALIAS ——

There is a wide gulf between him who opens his waking eyes in a splendid chamber, and with half-drowsy thoughts speculates on the pleasures of the coming day, and him, who, rising from the dew-moistened earth, stretches his aching limbs for a second or so, and then hurries away to make his toilet at the nearest fountain.

I have known both conditions, and yet, without being thought paradoxical, I would wish to say that there are some sensations attendant on the latter and the humbler lot which I would not exchange for all the voluptuous ease of the former. Let there be but youth and there is something of heroism, something adventurous in the notion of thus alone and unaided breasting the wide ocean of life, and, like a hardy swimmer, daring to stem the roughest breakers without one to succor him, that is worth all the security that even wealth can impart, all the conscious ease that luxury and affluence can supply. In a world and an age like ours, thought I, there must surely be some course for one young, active, and daring as I am. Even if France reject me there are countries beyond the seas where energy and determination will open a path. "Courage, Maurice," said I, as I dashed the sparkling water over my head, "the past has not been all inglorious, and the future may prove even better."

A roll and a glass of iced water furnished my breakfast, after which I set forth in good earnest on my search. There was a sort of self-flattery in the thought that one so destitute as I was could devote his thoughts and energies to the service of another, that pleased me greatly. It was so "unselfish"—at least I thought so. Alas, and alas! how egotistical are we when we fancy ourselves least so. That day I visited St. Roche and Notre Dame at early mass, and by noon reached the Louvre, the gallery of which occupied me till the hour of meeting the curé drew nigh.

Punctual to his appointment, I found him waiting for me at the corner of the quay, and although disappointed at the failure of all his efforts, he talked away with all the energy of one who would not suffer himself to be cast down by adverse fortune. "I feel," said he, "a kind of instinctive conviction that we shall find her yet. There is something tells me that all our pains shall not go unrewarded. Have you never experienced a sensation of this kind—a species of inward prompting to pursue a road, to penetrate into a pass, or to explore a way, without exactly knowing why or wherefore?"

This question, vague enough as it seemed, led me to talk about myself and my own position; a theme which, however much I might have shrunk from introducing, when once opened, I spoke of in all the freedom of old friendship.

Nothing could be more delicate than the priest's manner during all this time; nor even when his curiosity was highest did he permit himself to ask a question or an explanation of any difficulty that occurred; and while he followed my recital with a degree of interest that was most flattering, he never ventured on a word or dropped a remark that might seem to urge me to greater frankness. "Do you know," said he, at last, "why your story has taken such an uncommon hold upon my attention. It is not from its adventurous character, nor from the stirring and strange scenes you have passed through. It is because your old pastor and guide, the Père Delamoy, was my own dearest friend, my school companion and playfellow from infancy. We were both students at Louvain together; both called to the priesthood on the same day. Think, then, of my intense delight at hearing his dear name once more; ay, and permit me to say it, hearing from the lips of another the very precepts and maxims that I can recognize as his own. "Ah, yes! mon cher Maurice," cried he, grasping my hand in a burst of enthusiasm, "disguise it how you may, cover it up under the uniform of a 'Bleu,' bury it beneath the shako of the soldier of the Republic, but the head and the heart will turn to the ancient altars of the Church and the Monarchy. It is not alone that your good blood suggests this, but all your experience of life goes to prove it. Think of poor Michel, self-devoted, generous, and noble-hearted; think of that dear cottage at Kuffstein, where, even in poverty, the dignity of birth and blood threw a grace and an elegance over daily life; think of Ettenheim and the glorious prince—the last Condé—and who now sleeps in his narrow bed in the fosse of Vincennes!"

"How do you mean?" said I, eagerly, for up to this time I knew nothing of his fate.

"Come along with me and you shall know it all," said he; and, rising, he took my arm, and we sauntered along out of the crowded street, till we reached the Boulevards. He then narrated to me every incident of the midnight trial, the sentence, and the execution. From the death-warrant that came down ready-filled from Paris, to the grave dug while the victim was yet sleeping, he forgot nothing; and I own that my very blood ran cold at the terrible atrocity of that dark murder. It was already growing dusk when he had finished, and we parted hurriedly, as he was obliged to be at a distant quarter of Paris by eight o'clock, again agreeing to meet, as before, on the Quai Voltaire.

From that moment till we met the following day the Duc D'Enghien was never out of my thoughts, and I was impatient for the priest's presence that I might tell him every little incident of our daily life at Ettenheim, the topics we used to discuss, and the opinions he expressed on various subjects. The eagerness of the curé to listen stimulated me to talk on, and I not only narrated all that I was myself a witness of, but various other circumstances which were told to me by the prince himself; in particular an incident he mentioned to me one day of being visited by a stranger who came, introduced by a letter from a very valued friend; his business being to propose to the duke a scheme for the assassination of Bonaparte. At first the prince suspected the whole as a plot against himself, but on further questioning he discovered that the man's intentions were really such as he professed them, and offered his services in the conviction that no price could be deemed too high to reward him. It is needless to say that the offer was rejected with indignation, and the prince dismissed the fellow with the threat of delivering him up to the government of the French Consul. The pastor heard this anecdote with deep attention, and, for the first time, diverging from his line of cautious reserve, he asked me various questions as to when the occurrence had taken place, and where? If the Prince had communicated the circumstance to any other than myself, and whether he had made it the subject of any correspondence. I knew little more than I had already told him: that the offer was made while residing at Ettenheim, and during the preceding year, were facts, however, that I could remember.

"You are surprised, perhaps," said he, "at the interest I feel in all this, but, strangely enough, there is here in Paris at this moment one of the great 'Seigneurs' of the Ardèche; he has come up to the capital for medical advice, and he was a great, perhaps the greatest friend of the poor duke. What if you were to come and pay him a visit with me, there is not probably one favor the whole world could bestow he would value so highly. You must often have heard his name from the prince; has he not frequently spoken of the Count de Maurepas?" I could not remember having ever heard the name. "It is historical, however," said the curé, "and even in our own days has not derogated from its ancient chivalry. Have you not heard how a noble of the court rode postillion to the king's carriage on the celebrated escape from Varennes? Well, even for curiosity's sake, he is worth a visit, for this is the very Count Henry de Maurepas, now on the verge of the grave!"

If the good curé had known me all my life he could not more successfully have baited a trap for my curiosity. To see and know remarkable people, men who had done something out of the ordinary route of every-day life, had been a passion with me from boyhood. Hero-worship was indeed a great feature in my character, and has more or less influenced all my career, nor was I insensible to the pleasure of doing a kind action. It was rare, indeed, that one so humbly placed could ever confer a favor, and I grasped with eagerness the occasion to do so. We agreed, then, on the next afternoon, toward nightfall, to meet at the quay, and proceed together to the count's residence. I have often reflected, since that day, that Lisette's name was scarcely ever mentioned by either of us during this interview; and yet, at the time, so preoccupied were my thoughts, I never noticed the omission. The Chateau of Ettenheim, and its tragic story, filled my mind to the exclusion of all else.

I pass over the long and dreary hours that intervened, and come at once to the time, a little after sunset, when we met at our accustomed rendezvous.

The curé had provided a "fiacre" for the occasion, as the count's residence was about two leagues from the city, on the way to Belleville. As we trotted along, he gave me a most interesting account of the old noble, whose life had been one continued act of devotion to the monarchy.

"It will be difficult," said he, "for you to connect the poor, worn-out, shattered wreck before you, with all that was daring in deed and chivalrous in sentiment; but the 'Maurepas' were well upheld in all their glorious renown, by him who is now to be the last of the race! You will see him reduced by suffering and sickness, scarcely able to speak, but be assured that you will have his gratitude for this act of true benevolence." Thus chatting we rattled along over the paved highway, and at length entered upon a deep clay road which conducted us to a spacious park, with a long straight avenue of trees, at the end of which stood what, even in the uncertain light, appeared a spacious chateau. The door lay open, and as we descended a servant in plain clothes received us, and, after a whispered word or two from the curé ushered us along through a suite of rooms into a large chamber furnished like a study. There were book shelves well filled, and a writing table covered with papers and letters, and the whole floor was littered with newspapers and journals.

A lamp, shaded by a deep gauze cover, threw a half light over every thing, nor was it until we had been nearly a couple of minutes in the room that we became aware of the presence of the count, who lay upon a sofa covered up in a fur pelisse, although the season was far advanced in spring.

His gentle "good evening, messieurs," was the first warning we had of his presence, and the curé, advancing respectfully, presented me as his young friend, Monsieur de Tiernay.

"It is not the first time that I hear that name," said the sick man, with a voice of singular sweetness. "It is chronicled in the annals of our monarchy. Ay, sir, I knew that faithful servant of his king, who followed his master to the scaffold."

"My father," cried I, eagerly.

"I knew him well," continued he. "I may say, without vaunting, that I had it in my power to befriend him, too. He made an imprudent marriage; he was unfortunate in the society his second wife's family threw him among. They were not his equals in birth, and far beneath him in sentiment and principle. Well, well," sighed he, "this is not a theme for me to speak of, nor for you to hear; tell me of yourself. The curé says that you have had more than your share of worldly vicissitudes. There, sit down, and let me hear your story from your own lips."

He pointed to a seat at his side, and I obeyed him at once, for, somehow, there was an air of command even in the gentlest tones of his voice, and I felt that his age and his sufferings were not the only claims he possessed to influence those around him.

With all the brevity in my power, my story lasted for above an hour, during which time the count only interrupted me once or twice by asking to which Colonel Mahon I referred, as there were two of the name? and again, by inquiring in what circumstances the emigré families were living as to means, and whether they appeared to derive any of their resources from France? These were points I could give no information upon, and I plainly perceived that the count had no patience for a conjecture, and that, where positive knowledge failed, he instantly passed on to something else. When I came to speak of Ettenheim his attention became fixed, not suffering the minutest circumstance to escape him, and even asking for the exact description of the locality, and its distance from the towns in the neighborhood.

The daily journeys of the prince, too, interested him much, and once or twice he made me repeat what the peasant had said of the horse being able to travel from Strassburg without a halt. I vow it puzzled me why he should dwell on these points in preference to others of far more interest, but I set them down to the caprices of illness, and thought no more of them. His daily life, his conversation, the opinions he expressed about France, the questions he used to ask, were all matters he inquired into, till, finally, we came to the anecdote of the meditated assassination of Bonaparte. This he made me tell him twice over, each time asking me eagerly whether, by an effort of memory, I could not recall the name of the man who had offered his services for the deed? This I could not; indeed I knew not if I had ever heard it.

"But the prince rejected the proposal?" said he, peering at me beneath the dark shadow of his heavy brow; "he would not hear of it?"

"Of course not," cried I; "he even threatened to denounce the man to the government."

"And do you think that he would have gone thus far, sir?" asked he, slowly.

"I am certain of it. The horror and disgust he expressed when reciting the story were a guarantee for what he would have done."

"But yet Bonaparte has been a dreadful enemy to his race," said the count.

"It is not a Condé can right himself by a murder," said I as calmly.

"How I like that burst of generous royalism, young man!" said he, grasping my hand and shaking it warmly. "That steadfast faith in the honor of a Bourbon is the very heart and soul of loyalty!"

Now, although I was not, so far as I knew of, any thing of a Royalist—the cause had neither my sympathy nor my wishes—I did not choose to disturb the equanimity of a poor sick man by a needless disclaimer, nor induce a discussion which must be both unprofitable and painful.

"How did the fellow propose the act? had he any accomplices? or was he alone?"

"I believe quite alone."

"Of course suborned by England? Of that there can be no doubt."

"The prince never said so."

"Well, but, it is clear enough, the man must have had means; he traveled by a very circuitous route; he had come from Hamburg, probably?"

"I never heard."

"He must have done so. The ports of Holland, as those of France, would have been too dangerous for him. Italy is out of the question."

I owned that I had not speculated so deeply on the matter.

"It was strange," said he, after a pause, "that the duke never mentioned who had introduced the man to him."

"He merely called him a valued friend."

"In other words, the Count D'Artois," said the count; "did it not strike you so?"

I had to confess it had not occurred to me to think so.

"But reflect a little," said he. "Is there any other living who could have dared to make such a proposal but the count? Who, but the head of his house, could have presumed on such a step? No inferior could have had the audacity! It must have come from one so highly placed, that crime paled itself down to a mere measure of expediency, under the loftiness of the sanction. What think you?"

"I can not, I will not think so," was my answer. "The very indignation of the prince's rejection refutes the supposition."

"What a glorious gift is unsuspectfulness," said he, feelingly. "I am a rich man, and you, I believe, are not so; and yet, I'd give all my wealth, ay, ten times told, not for your vigor of health, not for the lightness of your heart, nor the elasticity of your spirits, but for that one small quality, defect though it be, that makes you trustful and credulous."

I believe I would just as soon that the old gentleman had thought fit to compliment me upon any other quality. Of all my acquisitions, there was not one I was so vain of as my knowledge of life and character. I had seen, as I thought, so much of life! I had peeped at all ranks and conditions of men, and it was rather hard to find an old country gentleman, a "Seigneur de Village," calling me credulous and unsuspecting!

I was much more pleased when he told the curé that a supper was ready for us in the adjoining room, at which he begged we would excuse his absence; and truly a most admirable little meal it was, and served with great elegance.

"The count expects you to stop here; there is a chamber prepared for you," said the curé, as we took our seats at table. "He has evidently taken a fancy to you. I thought, indeed I was quite certain, he would. Who can tell what good fortune this chance meeting may lead to, Monsieur Maurice! A votre sante, mon cher!" cried he, as he clinked his champagne glass against mine, and I at last began to think that destiny was about to smile on me.

"You should see his Chateau in the Ardêche; this is nothing to it! There is a forest, too, of native oak, and a 'Chasse' such as royalty never owned!"

Mine were delightful dreams that night; but I was sorely disappointed on waking to find that Laura was not riding at my side through a forest-alley, while a crowd of "Piqueurs" and huntsmen galloped to and fro, making the air vibrate with their joyous bugles. Still, I opened my eyes in a richly-furnished chamber, and a Jaques handed me my coffee on a silver stand, and in a cup of costliest Sèvres.

(TO BE CONTINUED.)

[RECOLLECTIONS OF COLTON, THE AUTHOR OF "LACON."]

Colton was remarkable for the extent and profundity of his talents, the various mutations of fortune, self-entailed, which he underwent, and for his inordinate addiction to a vice of all others the most degrading and destructive to intellectual strength—who was yet great in intellect and purpose amidst all the strange vicissitudes of which he was the self-constituted victim, and beneath the pressure of moral and physical degradation which he would never have undergone but for the influence of one fatal and overwhelming passion. One of the very first objects of my boyish reverence and veneration was, as might be expected with a child religiously educated, the parson of the parish in the market town where I was brought up. Parson C——, who, I believe, held the benefice of St. Peter's in my native place, was a man whom, having once known, it was not very easy to forget. I could have been hardly six years of age when I first saw him without his canonical garb, on which occasion he was playing a trout on the end of his line under one of the weirs in the river Exe. At that time the town was pretty well stocked with French prisoners. The jails were crammed with the miserable soldiery of Napoleon's generals, captured in the Peninsular war, then raging, and numbers of French officers on parole were installed with the housekeepers of the place in the capacity of lodgers. With these our all-accomplished divine was almost the only man in the place who could hold converse. A part of my father's house was occupied by a couple of Gallic strangers, to whom the parson's visits were many and frequent. As they dined at the common table, their society, together with that of the reverend gentleman, was shared by the whole family, and we thus became more intimate with him than we otherwise should. It is said that familiarity breeds contempt. Certain it is that my father's veneration for the character of his and our spiritual guide and instructor suffered considerable declension from his closer acquaintance. Still, what he lost in reverence he perhaps gained in another way. His kind, agreeable, and social manners won the admiration and good-will of the whole family, and though he had a good many enemies in the town, we could not be of the number. He was a man of eccentric manners and fine genius, and, though then but young, had given proofs of talent of no mean order. He had published a rather bulky poem on the subject of Hypocrisy, a subject with which his detractors were not slow to observe he ought to be very well acquainted. But he was not really a hypocrite in the true sense of the word, if indeed, as may be questioned, he deserved the imputation at all. He was rather the subject of ever-varying impulses, under the instigation of which, were they good or bad, he would instinctively proceed to act without consideration and without restraint. He would be eloquent as Demosthenes in the pulpit in praise of the Christian virtues, and would work himself into a passion of tears on behalf of some benevolent or charitable purpose, the claims of which he would enforce with the most irresistible appeals to the conscience; and the next day he would gallop after the fox with a pack of hounds, fish, shoot, or fight a main, in company with sporting blacklegs, bruisers, dicers, et hoc genus omne. But he never made any personal pretensions to religious sentiment that I am aware of, except on one occasion, which, as it tends greatly to illustrate the true character of the man, I shall relate.

Among the companions of his sporting pursuits was a country squire of the neighborhood, a dissolute and drunken specimen of a class of men of which, fortunately for humanity, the present generation knows but little. He had ruined his fortune and nearly beggared his family by extravagance and intemperance, when, after a long course of uninterrupted and abused health and vigor, he was laid by the heels upon a sick bed, from which the doctors had no hopes of ever releasing him. In this dilemma he sent for Parson C——, who appeared forthwith in the chamber of the sick man, and was beginning to mutter over the service for the visitation of the sick, when the latter, belching forth a volley of oaths and curses, swore that he did not send for him for any such purpose; that what he wanted was an acknowledgment from the parson's own lips of the fact which all parsons' lives declared—that their religion, and all religion was a lie. This was an admission which C—— declined to make. A horrible scene ensued, of impotent rage and blasphemy on one part, and shame and confusion on the other. It ended in the death of the frantic and despairing drunkard, in the very presence of his ghostly adviser, whom he cursed with his last breath. This deplorable climax to such a scene of horror, it may be readily imagined, had a powerful effect upon the impulsive and excitable nature of poor C——. He left the chamber of such a death an altered man, and, proceeding homeward, shut himself up in his closet. On the following Sunday morning he took occasion to preach impressively, from the most solemn text he could select, upon the uncertainty of life. In the course of his sermon, he called upon all present to prepare for the doom which none could escape—which, inexorable to all, might be immediate to any, and therefore demanded instant and energetic preparation. He wound up his discourse with the extraordinary declaration that he, for one, had made up his mind upon the subject; that he had seen the error of his ways, and determined to abandon them; and that he was resolved thenceforth, with God's help, to devote the rest of his remaining life to his own preparation, and theirs, for the dreaded hour. He then called upon his auditors to bear witness to the resolution he had expressed, and to aid him in carrying it out. There was something like a commotion even in the church when this announcement was concluded; and the sensation and excitement it occasioned in the town, for some time after, only subsided as the parson's resolution waned in strength, and its effects became less and less observable. For some months he held fast to his purpose with the most laudable tenacity. It was in the spring of the year that he made his public declaration; and though the old friends of his follies laughed at it, and laid heavy wagers against his perseverance, he held on his way steadily—He began a course of pastoral visitation—sought out and relieved the poor and afflicted—parted with his fishing-tackle, and commenced an enthusiastic canvass for a dispensary for the poor. Of his old friends among the "ungodly," and his old enemies among the pious, few knew what to make of it. The Parson C—— of old time was no more; but, in his place, a new man with the same face was every where active in the cause of charity and Christian benevolence. Those who knew him best doubted most of his stability and among these, I remember my father's expressing his conviction that the reformation was "too hot to hold." So it turned out in the end. Three, four, five months of exemplary conduct, and then came the first symptom of declension, in the shape of the parson's gray horse harnessed to a dog-cart, with his gun and brace of pointers, in charge of a groom, the whole "turn-out" ready for starting, and waiting at the entrance of the church-yard on Sunday evening, the last night of August, to carry the parson, so soon as service was over, to a celebrated shooting-ground, five-and-twenty miles off, that he might be on the spot, ready by dawn for the irresistible 1st of September. Those who prophesied from this demonstration a return to old habits had speedy occasion to pride themselves upon their augury.

The Sampford Ghost soon after came upon the stage, with his mysterious knockings and poundings; and defied all objurgations and exorcisms, save and except those of Parson C——, at the sound of whose classical Greek, or gibberish, as it might happen, he absconded to the bottom of the Red Sea, as in duty bound. Here was food for wonder and gaping superstition, to which the reverend divine condescended to pander, by the publication of a pamphlet supporting the supernatural view of the subject, which, being on a marvelous topic, sold marvelously well, and brought grist to the clerical mill.

Of the subsequent career of this eccentric genius, from the time I ceased to reside in Devonshire to that when I encountered him in Paris I have no personal knowledge. I only know that he afterward obtained a benefice in the neighborhood of London; that in the year 1820 he published a work which has run through many editions, is in high repute with a certain class of readers, and is said by competent judges to manifest a profound practical acquaintance with the philosophy of the mind, and to contain more original views in relation to that science than any other work of equal dimensions.

I have already hinted that my vocation as a teacher of English introduced me to a new order of French humanity. Among the various pupils who sought my cheap assistance in the promotion of their studies was one Maubert, a young fellow of four or five and twenty, who was contemplating a removal to London in the exercise of his profession, which was neither more nor less than that of a gambler. He had a relative in one of the hells at St. James's, who had offered him a lucrative engagement so soon as he was sufficiently master of English to be enabled to undertake it. I was astonished to find a person of such mild, meek, and almost effeminate manners engaged in such a pursuit, and still more to hear that he had been brought up to it from boyhood, and was but following in the steps of his father, who was employed in the same establishment in a situation of great trust and responsibility.

In the course of our bilingual conversations, I made no scruple of expressing my perfect horror of gambling, at which he appeared to be heartily amused, and attributed the feeling I manifested not so much to moral principle as to constitutional peculiarity. It soon became apparent to me that he had not himself the slightest idea of disgrace or discredit as attachable to the profession of a gambler, so long as it was carried on upon principles of honesty and fair-play. "What is gambling," said he, "after all, but a species of exchange, skill for skill, or chance for chance? It is true, there is no solid merchandise in question; but, since you are determined to consider it in a moral point of view, what, let me ask, does the merchant or the shopkeeper care for the goods that pass through his hands? Is not his sole object to profit by the transfer? Does he not speculate to gain? and is not all speculation, morally considered, gambling? Now, all the professed gamester does is to get rid of the lumbering medium of trading-speculations—to clear the game, which all men are willing to play, of the cumbrous machinery that clogs its movements when played upon commercial principles, and to bring it to a crisis and a close at once. You talk of the misery and ruin entailed upon families by gambling; but depend upon it the same men who ruin themselves and families by play would do precisely the same thing were there no such thing as play. For one Frenchman ruined by hazard, ten Englishmen are ruined by commerce. In fact, as a people, you gamble much more than we do, though in a different way; and when you choose to gamble as we do, you do it to much greater extent, and with a recklessness to which our habits in that respect afford no parallel. There is an Englishman now in Paris who has repeatedly won and lost ten thousand francs at a sitting, and whom you may see, if you choose to come with me, any evening you like."

"What is his name?" I demanded.

"C——. He is a priest, too, I have heard, and of course, when at home, a preacher of morality."

"Well," said I, "with your permission, I shall be glad to have a look at him."

"Very well; you shall dine with me to-morrow at the Salon Français. Meet me there at six, and then, after dinner, I will accompany you."

"Agreed."

And so it came to pass that, about nine o'clock on the following evening—for we had dined at most gentlemanly leisure, and followed up the dinner with a complete debauch of sugared water—I entered, for the first time, one of the saloons devoted to gambling on the first floor of the Palais Royal. There was not so great and gorgeous display of taste and expenditure as I had expected to see; though every thing was substantial and elegant, nothing was pretentious or superb. Tables arranged with a view to convenience rather than order or regularity, and covered with the means and materials of gaming, were surrounded, on three sides, by persons already engaged at the sport. We passed through several rooms thus furnished, and more or less tumultuously filled. Hazard appeared to be the most favorite game; as I noticed during my stay that the tables where that was played were first in full occupation, and throughout the evening were more crowded than others. Maubert led me to a room, which must have been the fifth or sixth we entered, and, pointing to a table at the further end, upon the centre of which rose a brazen dragon, with a pair of emerald eyes, a yawning, cavernous jaw, and a ridgy tail, whose voluminous folds coiled round a column of polished steel—told me that there I should find my man in the course of the evening, though I should have to wait for him, as he had not yet arrived. He informed me that I could act as I chose, without being questioned; and then took his leave, as his services were wanted in his own department. I amused myself for nearly a couple of hours in contemplating, en philosophe, the scene before me. I had heard and read much of gamblers and gambling, and here they were in multitudes to test the truth or falsity of my impressions. I noticed particularly that, while the younger players acted throughout as though gaming were a frolic, and welcomed both their gains and losses with a joke or a laugh, the older hands maintained a perfect silence, and accepted the decrees of fortune without betraying the least emotion. The table near which I stood was appropriated to the following purpose: A ball, or rather solid polygon, of near a hundred sides, each side colored blue, red, or black, was dropped into the mouth of the dragon; and while it was rolling audibly through the long folds of its tail, the players placed what sums they chose upon red, blue, or black-colored spaces on the table. Whatever color the ball, upon emerging from the tail and finally resting, showed uppermost, was the winning color; the rest lost. The first operation of the manager, after each throw, was to rake into the bank in front of him the several amounts placed on the losing colors, after which he paid the winners, doubling the stake for black, trebling it for red, and multiplying it by five for the blue. Most of the young players began upon the black; but whether they won or lost, and the chance was equal for either fate, they invariably migrated to the other colors; or, in other words, doubled or quintupled their stakes as their passions became heated by play. The old ones, on the contrary, kept mostly to one color; and, in pursuance of some cunningly-concocted plan, frequently consulted pricked or penciled cards, upon which they had perhaps made previous calculations, or chronicled the course of play as it went on. The physiognomy of these old stagers certainly afforded a rich variety of exceedingly ugly faces. Disappointment, however, was not the prevailing expression; and, from what I observed of the general manifestation of their hardened visages, I was led to the conclusion that your calculating gambler, who has his passions under control, is not, in the long-run, a loser, but the contrary; and that the support of the bank, and the whole establishment, is derived from the swarming flights of raw, inexperienced, and uncalculating pigeons which every day brings to be plucked. One old fellow walked off with a bag of five-franc pieces, which could not have been worth less than twenty pounds English, accumulated in little more than half an hour; and others pocketed various smaller sums, and then withdrew. An English gentleman lost several five-pound notes in succession on the blue, and, continuing the stake, recovered them all with a profit. An Irishman who had been playing for silver on the black, attempted to do the same; but his heart failed him, or else his pocket, after the loss of his second note, and with a guttural oath, he retired in a rage. To win at gaming, it would seem from such examples, requires but a large amount of courage and capital; and it must be from this fact alone that, where the game, whatever it be, is fairly played, the bank which has the courage to challenge all the world, and unlimited capital to support the challenge, is so largely the gainer. The natural advantage of the bank may, however, be met by calculation and cautious adherence to system in playing; and instances are not wanting where the bank, though well stocked, has been broken, and the whole funds carried off, through the success of a deep-laid scheme.

While I was indulging in these speculations, in which I have no desire that the reader should place implicit faith, the personage whom my curiosity had led me hither to meet, entered the room, and made toward the place where I stood. The long interval that had elapsed since I last saw him had effected such an alteration in his appearance that it is probable, that, had I not been expecting him, he would have passed unrecognized. As it was, the first glance assured me of his identity. From added years, or from long-enduring sedentary habits, he had acquired a slight stoop, and the old sprightly elasticity of step had given place to the sober foot-fall of mature age; but the face, though of a somewhat darker hue, and now lined with faint furrows, bore the same contour and much of the same expression as of yore. There was the same classic and intellectual profile, and the same commonplace and rather sordid indications in the full face, which had formerly given rise to the saying among his flock, that "The parson had two faces, one for Sundays and one for working days." He took his seat at the left-hand of the money-raker, and, presenting a paper, probably a check or foreign note, received a pile of gold and silver, which he spread before him. I had intended to watch his game, and perhaps, if occasion offered, to speak to him; but the sight of the very man from whose lips my infant ears had caught the first accents of public worship, preparing to take part in the debasing orgies of the pandemonium in which I stood, so revolted my feelings—and his action, as he bent over his pocket-book in search of something he wanted, brought so forcibly to my recollection his old gestures in the pulpit—that I resolved to spare myself the witnessing of his degradation, and accordingly walked away, and out of the accursed den, to the side of the fountain in the quadrangle, in the cool spray of which I sat for an hour, not enjoying my reflections upon the past.

I learnt from Maubert subsequently, that, though C—— played the boldest game, he was far from being a welcome guest at some of the tables he chose to patronize. He won, occasionally, large sums; and, if he lost them again, as from his known difficulties at certain seasons it is pretty sure he did, he did not lose them at the public tables, but at some of the private gaming-houses of the nobility which he was known to frequent. That he was occasionally reduced to unpleasant straits I have reason to think; because, long after the encounter above related, I met him at a place whither I had resorted for a cheap dinner, and where we dined together on a deal table from soup and bouilli, for a sum not to be mentioned in connection with the repast of a gentleman. On this occasion, I somewhat alarmed him by inquiring, in a broad Devonshire accent, if he could inform me of the address of M. V——, naming one of the French prisoners with whom the parson had been especially intimate in the time of the war. He stared at me fixedly for a minute, and then, with a voice like one apostrophizing a spirit, said, "You are ——, the son of Thomas ——. I know you from your likeness to your father. Do not know me here. Let me have your address; I should like to talk to you. M. V—— is dead—dead! And your father, is he yet living?"

I was going to reply to his queries, but, snatching the card I presented, he bade me hastily adieu, and disappeared.

It was rumored about that he won a large sum of money previous to the breaking out of the Revolution, and that, having accomplished his object, he withdrew from the gaming-table. But he had played the game of life too fast, and, in desperately acquiring the means of expenditure, had lost those of enjoyment. In the published work, to which allusion has been made, is the following sentence: "The gamester, if he die a martyr to his profession, is doubly ruined. He adds his soul to every other loss, and, by the act of suicide, renounces earth to forfeit heaven." It is wretched to think that the writer put an end to his own existence, after a life devoted to the very vice he so powerfully deprecated. He blew out his brains at Fontainbleau, in 1832—it was said, to escape the pain of a surgical operation from which no danger could be apprehended.

[NEVER DESPAIR.]

The opal-hued and many-perfumed Morn
From Gloom is born;
From out the sullen depth of ebon Night
The stars shed light;
Gems in the rayless caverns of the earth
Have their slow birth;
From wondrous alchemy of winter-hours
Come summer flowers;
The bitter waters of the restless main
Give gentle rain;
The fading bloom and dry seed bring once more
The year's fresh store;
Just sequences of clashing Tones afford
The full accord;
Through weary ages, full of strife and ruth,
Thought reaches Truth;
Through efforts, long in vain, prophetic Need
Begets the Deed:

Nerve then thy soul with direst need to cope;
Life's brightest Hope
Lies latent in Fate's deadliest lair—
Never despair!

[INCIDENT DURING THE MUTINY OF 1797.]

The nineteenth century may now be said to have attained middle age, and in the brilliant noonday of its intellect and science the important events that marked the close of its predecessor are becoming dim and indistinct, like the vanishing images of a dissolving view. Progress has been so rapid since the peace that a wider chasm intervenes between 1799 and 1851 than any dividing the preceding centuries: much more than half a century appears to separate us from the eighteenth. But a stirring and troublous period lies before this interval. Life, doubtless, was more rife with interest and excitement to those whose youth belonged to it than it is in this calmer age. One feels that the "old people" of to-day have more of a "history in their lives" than our age will have; and even while we acknowledge with devout gratitude the blessing of peace, it is pleasant to listen to stories of "the War-time." One evening, while sitting with a relative of our own, gazing on the waters of the Channel, which were trembling and quivering beneath the rosy sunset, we expressed some such sentiments, and after agreeing in our opinion that life in those days was more animated by hope and fear than at present, he added, smiling, "For instance, in '97 I narrowly escaped hanging!"

We were much surprised at such a declaration from one who, at the time he spoke, was a brave and distinguished admiral, and eagerly asked the "how and why" of the adventure; and he told us. We regret that we can not recall the exact words of the animated relation, but we will try to give the substance as nearly as possible.

In 1797 mutiny broke out among the seamen at Spithead—an inexcusable crime in the opinion of naval men, but which he who related the story palliated in some degree, by candidly acknowledging that in those days the poor fellows who were guilty of it had great and just cause for complaint. They were not only ill-paid, but their food was of very bad quality; many captains in the navy were harsh and tyrannical—as, in consequence of the perversity of human nature, will always be the case; and the men whose blood was freely poured out in the defense of their native land were, to say the least, neglected and uncared-for by their rulers. Oh happy consequence of peace and advancing knowledge! these men are now well-fed, have the means of instruction afforded them, and homes provided for them when, returning from "the dangers of the sea," they are discharged and sent on shore. The poor mutineers at Spithead dreamed not of such advantages as these.

Admiral R—— was a junior lieutenant on board the Saturn when the mutiny broke out; but promotion was very rapid then, and though bearing that rank he was still only a youth in his teens. Probably the mutineers had discovered, and in a measure appreciated the kindliness of his nature, for, exempting him from the thralldom of his companions, whom they had confined in the ward-room, they fixed on him to bear their propositions and their threats to the port-admiral—swearing at the same time, that if he did not bring them back a favorable answer they would hang him on the yard-arm! He was obliged to obey their will, of course, secretly resolving, however, not to give them the opportunity of fulfilling their kind intentions by returning to the ship; but the young officer calculated too much upon being his own master. He was put on shore at the Point, and proceeded at once to the admiral's house in the High-street. The naval chief gave him a good-natured and cordial reception, and listened patiently to the message he delivered from the mutineers, which was to the effect that they must have an immediate advance of wages, good biscuit, pork, &c., or that they would carry their ship over to the French.

"Go on board again, sir," was his reply, "and tell these gentlemen that none of their demands can be listened to till they return to their duty: inform them also that the moment they attempt to weigh anchor hot shot will be fired on them from the Isle of Dogs, and their vessel and themselves sent to the bottom."

The lieutenant bowed and left the office. Outside he paused. He was going, in obedience to his superior, to certain death. It was a fearful trial of courage and professional discipline. A mother whom he idolized lived at no great distance: he would at least bid her a last farewell! But the admiral, aware of the sacrifice he exacted, so much greater than that of periling life by mounting "the deadly breach," had followed the poor boy, and lightly tapping his shoulder, told him he would walk with him to the beach. Thus, even the last look at home, for which he longed, was denied him. A waterman's wherry conveyed him to the ship. It was May—a bright, glorious May, such as England used to enjoy "once upon a time;" and very sad were the feelings with which the young officer looked back upon the retreating town, and round on the glad, sunny waters and blue-tinted Isle of Wight, deeming that he beheld them for the last time. Occasionally, also, he told us, his eyes would revert, in spite of his endeavors to forget it, to the fatal yard-arm, distinct with all its tracery of cordage against the clear blue sky. He gained the ship, was received on board, and conducted to the forecastle, where the chief mutineers had assembled. Here he delivered his message. They were greatly enraged, and commanded him not to repeat the admiral's threat of sinking the ship to the crew. He replied simply that it was his duty to obey the orders of his superior officer. Their looks and words threatened him at first with instant and summary vengeance; but after a short consultation they agreed to try him by a court-martial, and proceeding aft, ordered him to be brought before them. It was a fearful scene; the men were terribly excited, frightfully ignorant, and believed that their cause required a victim.

The courage of the youth bore him through the trial, however, bravely. He ventured boldly to reproach them with their guilt in confounding the innocent with those whom they looked upon as their enemies; taunted them with the cowardly injustice of the deed they contemplated; and persisted, in opposition to the ringleaders' commands, in repeating the admiral's message to the crew. He was heard by the officers in the ward-room, and their loud cheers when he spoke probably gave him fresh courage. The ringleaders becoming alarmed at the effect his words and bearing might have on the British instincts of the ship's company, condemned him to be hung in two hours' time, and ordered him to prepare for death meantime in his cabin. There a new and singular scene awaited him: one of the seamen had taken possession of it, opened his lockers, and finding some brandy, had been drinking till he was perfectly intoxicated, and lay in the sleep of drunkenness on the floor, which was strewed and littered with the lieutenant's clothes, books, &c. A deep oath escaped the lips of the ringleaders at this sight. Throughout the fleet the mutineers had forbidden drunkenness on pain of death; for, fully aware of the peril of their position, they kept up among themselves a terribly severe discipline. They were raising their insensible comrade in their arms, and coolly preparing to throw him overboard, when, aware from their words of their intentions, the condemned officer struck one of them to the floor, and standing over the again prostrate drunkard, declared that while he lived he would not see men who had sailed beneath the British flag guilty of murder! The mutineers paused, touched probably by this generous defense of a foe—for the insensible seaman had been peculiarly bitter against the officers—and after a muttered oath or two they left the cabin.

The lieutenant remained alone with his disgusting and unwelcome visitant, and the two hours following he described as the most painful of his life. It was less the fear of death than the destined mode of it which tortured him: not that he was insensible or indifferent to the blessing of life, for he was by nature of a happy, joyous temperament, and fair prospects of advancement were before him; but in "war-time" existence was held on such a precarious tenure that the idea of death in battle would scarcely have troubled his equanimity. Two hours waiting to be hanged, however, is a far different trial for courage, and we have never read or imagined any thing more painful than the description which the aged admiral gave us of that (to him) endless period of time. As if to add to the horror of his position, the silence on board was so great that it appeared as if he could hear the pulsation of his own heart, while the low snoring of the drunken man struck with painful distinctness on his ear. At last the bell struck the fatal hour, and steps were heard on the ladder. His door opened; he rose prepared to show no symptoms of faltering courage, when the leaders of the party advancing, told him "that the people had taken his case into consideration, and as they believed he individually had no ill-feeling toward them, and as he had recently given proof that he cared for the men, they had changed his sentence from death to flogging! He must therefore prepare to receive three dozen on the following morning."

My kinsman, with the ready humor that never deserted him, returned thanks with mock gravity for their clemency, and begged them to carry his compliments to the gentlemen who sent them, and assure them that he could not have believed he should ever have felt so much satisfaction at the prospect of a whipping. The men, always susceptible of fun, laughed. From that moment he was safe! Falstaff wisely despairs of gaining the love of Prince John, "because he could not make him laugh;" the young lieutenant acted as if he possessed Shakspeare's knowledge of human nature when he awoke by his jest the slumbering sympathies of the sailors. He was detained a prisoner, but no further notice was taken of the threatened flogging.

The mutiny subsided on the 16th of May, when Parliament passed an act to raise the seamen's wages, and the royal pardon was bestowed on the mutineers; not, however, before some sacrifice of human life had ensued, as Admiral Colpoys, on the recommencement of the mutiny on board the London, had ordered the marines to fire on the people, and three seamen fell. The funeral of these unfortunates was described to us as a singularly impressive and touching spectacle. The townspeople were fearful of some violence or riot on the part of the sailors when they landed to bury their dead, and consequently closed their shutters and retired into their houses. The mournful procession moved therefore through deserted and silent streets on its way to the village church-yard, in which the victims were to be interred. But there was no cause for alarm. The men walked silently and solemnly, two and two, after their slain comrades, a stern, quiet sorrow legible on their weather-beaten faces; and nothing could exceed the reverence and propriety of their conduct beside the grave. It is a quiet, pretty village church-yard in which these most pardonable rebels have their resting-place, not far from which is the large grave where three hundred bodies of those who perished in the Royal George are buried.

One can scarcely forbear wondering at the little real mischief which proceeded from this alarming mutiny. It afforded, on the whole, a noble display of the principal characteristics of the British seaman—the frolic-spirit peculiar to him manifesting itself even when he is most sadly and seriously in earnest. A captain of marines, who was especially the object of the mutineers' aversion, was brought on shore by them, and compelled to parade up the High-street to the "Rogue's March," which was drummed before him. He was a tall, gaunt old man, with a singularly long neck. The day after his expulsion from his ship, the crew sent a man to his house with a message, ordering him to "come on board again and be hanged!" The unpopular veteran sent back his compliments; but considering his throat unbecomingly long naturally, he did not wish to have it stretched: he declined, therefore, accepting their invitation. The men went away laughing. The people and the times were both extraordinary.

[WOMAN'S OFFICES AND INFLUENCE.]

BY PROF. J. H. AGNEW, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN.

Ours is an age of stirring life, an age of notions and novelties, of invention and enterprise, of steam-motives and telegraph-wires. The ocean, for passage, has become a river. The air a medium for the flight, not only of birds, but of thoughts. Distance scarce any more lends enchantment to the view, for 'tis annihilated. The ends of the earth meet, and the watchmen on her walls see eye to eye. Even worlds long buried in the deep unknown are now revealed to human vision, and we almost penetrate the arcana of our own fair satellite, as she nightly looks down upon us in her beauty. And man would fain believe, too, in his wisdom, or his folly, that e'en the rappings of spirits are heard in this nether planet of ours.

But what of all this? Why, we live in this whirl of galvanic motion: we breathe this excited atmosphere: we revolve on this stirring sphere. And, think you, without feeling aught of its forces?

We have our being, too, amid the busy scenes of a new world, a free world, a forming world. Our geologic species is a conglomerate. Whether it shall be of rude, unshapen masses, or of polished gems, fit not only for the pillars of this republican edifice, but for its adornment also, will depend much on the present generation, more on the women of that generation.

Believing that woman not only takes impressions from the age, but emphatically makes them on it too, I select for my theme Woman's Offices and Influence.

To make home happy is one of the offices of woman. Home, blessed word. Thanks to our Saxon fathers for it. Not the name merely, but the realities it expresses. An English, an American home is a Bethlehem-star in the horizon of earth's sorrows, the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.

"There is a magic in that little word:
It is a mystic circle that surrounds
Comforts and virtues never known beyond
The hallowed limit."

"The tabernacle of our earthly joys
And sorrows, hopes and fears—this Home of ours
Is it not pleasant?"

Yes, home is the centre of all that is sweet in the sympathies, dear in the affections of the soul. There the kiss of love is impressed in its purity, the warm pressure of the hand knows no betrayal, the smile of joy plays no deceiver's part. All is candid, cordial, sincere. The faults and failings which belong to humanity fallen, are there covered by the mantle of charity, and the feeling of every member of the family is, "With all thy faults I love thee still."

How the traveler climbing Alpine summits, looking forth on the sublime creations of Jehovah, thinks of home, and wishes the loved ones there could share his rapture. How the wrecked mariner on some desert isle longs for a mother's fond endearment, a sister's kindly care. Home is in all his thoughts.

It is worth the while, then, to strive to make home happy; to do each his part toward rendering it the spot of all pleasant associations. In the several relations of child, sister, wife, mother, let kindness and cheerfulness reign.

Kindness comes over the spirit like the music of David's harp over the passion of Saul. It softens and subdues. It manifests itself in a thousand nameless forms, but all beautiful. It is a crown of glory on the head of old age, a jewel on the breast of childhood. The light it diffuses is soft, the rays it emits are melting.

"And oh, if those who cluster round,
The altar and the hearth,
Have gentle words and loving smiles,
How beautiful is earth."

Cheerfulness is another attribute of character tending to the happiness of home: and let me commend it to woman's cultivation. Some there are, ever disposed to look on the dark side of life; and thus they not only becloud their own spirits, but cast a shadow over the smiling precincts of home. Every single sour grape portends a cluster; every flash of lightning a riving thunderbolt. Earth's actual cares are not enough; troubles must be borrowed. The present does not fill their heart with sadness; the future must be laid under contribution.

All this is just the opposite of cheerfulness. That scatters wide over the soil of the household the seeds of many little joys, that the weeds of small vexations may be kept under, and ever and anon the sickle be thrust in and a harvest of good fruits be garnered for daily use. It gazes on the bright side of the picture, and throws its delighted glances upon every eye. And thus it not only augments present bliss, but in hoary years the memory of other days around the family hearth will be sweeter, and the influence on ourselves better.

"Cheerfully to bear thy cross in patient strength is duty." "Not few nor light are the burdens of life: then load it not with heaviness of spirit; sickness, and penury, and travail—these be ills enow: the tide is strong against us: struggle, thou art better for the strife, and the very energy shall hearten thee."

"In thy day of grief let nature weep; leave her alone; the freshet of her sorrow must run off; and sooner will the lake be clear, relieved of turbid floodings. Yet see, that her license hath a limit."

"For empty fears, the harassings of possible calamity, pray and thou shalt prosper: trust God and tread them down." "The stoutest armor of defense is that which is worn within the bosom, and the weapon which no enemy can parry is a bold and cheerful spirit."

Beautiful in the family is this spirit of cheerfulness; and surely it is an office of woman to cherish it. It can be wooed and won. Wherever woman goes, and especially at home, let it be as an halo of light around her head, and then shall she be a blessing to the circle in which she moves. Despondency is death, cheerfulness life. But remember that levity and boisterous mirth are no essential ingredients of this wholesome cordial. Its chief element is rather that which Paul spake of when he said, "I have learned in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content."

Another office of woman is, to check the utilitarianism, the money-loving spirit of the day. There is something beside bread and water to be cared for in this probationary world of ours, inhabited by living spirits. And yet one is almost compelled to the conclusion that the whole race, at the present day, has given itself up to the worship of Mammon.

That which is a physical fact, which is capable of being used, is the summum bonum. Cui bono, in a terrene sense, is the great question. "Will it pay," the grand idea of the age. And men are hurrying along, life in hand, breathless and bootless, over the highways and byways to the Great Mogul's temple, where there is no spiritual Divinity to revere.

We almost wish the return of the old Grecian's faith, who enveloped himself with a spiritual world, and this, at least, elevated his intellect, if it did not renovate his heart. To him the majestic mountain was peopled with august entities. To us it is of no account, if it do not contain in its bowels buried stores of wealth, though it may awaken the feeling of the sublime, and lift the soul up to God. To him the shady tree was the habitation of dryads, the rippling brook of naïads: to us, neither has beauty, unless the one can turn a mill, and the other furnish us fire-wood or lumber.

We have made the soul slave to the body; have stripped the Universe of its glory, as a reflecting mirror, pouring down upon us such rays of Heaven's brilliancy as our vision can endure. God's sun is only to lighten us on our pathway of business; His mighty ocean only to bear the burden of our commerce; His magnificent lakes to carry our trade; His beautiful hills and smiling vales but to grow our corn, feed our cattle, and be the substratum for our railways.

This utilitarianism of the day, too, has but little sympathy with the fine arts. It laughs at music and painting, poetry and sculpture, as things of naught, although they may tend mightily to the culture of the spirit and the refinement of humanity. Classical learning it discards, because with its dusty eyes it can not just see how that can qualify man or woman for the better enjoyment of life, or how it will help us plow or measure our fields, grind our grain, or churn our butter.

The mere discipline of the mind, the symmetrical development of man's higher powers, the æsthetic evolution of himself; all this, though it expand his intellect and enlarge his heart, though it impress on him more of the lineaments of the skies, and bring him nearer to his great Original, is but waste of time and thought, because it falls not within the described circle of the utilitarian. Shades of Bacon and Locke, of Shakspeare and Milton, of Goethe and Schiller, come and alight at least on the daughters of our land!

Here is a wide field of influence for woman. You are the vestal virgins to watch the fires on the altar of the fine arts. Yours it is to check the sensuousness of man, to recall him from his ceaseless toil after the mammon of this life, his restless ambition to turn every thing to account in available funds, in bank-stocks, copper-stocks, railroad-stocks. Tell your sons and your sires that there are higher sources of joy. Point them away from earth's sordid gold to the brighter gems of literature. Direct their energies to the intellectual and moral advancement of their age. Help them to slake their quenchless thirst at the pure fountains of knowledge and religion.

There is a poetry of life worth cultivating. There are spiritual entities around us to which we are linked by ethereal chains. Let us not struggle to throw off those chains, but rather to bind them faster about us. And when you see a link broken, and others likely to drop, mend it.

Woman's office is it also to soften political asperities in the other sex, and themselves to shun political publicity. Not that woman need be ignorant of the great questions of the age; better be familiar with them. But let her not become absorbed in them: rather keep so aloof from exciting occasions as to be better qualified to form and express a deliberate and unbiased judgment on men and measures. Let her opinions be well matured, and always uttered with calmness and caution. When her dearest friends of the other sex seem embittered toward others, and in danger of forgetting the sweet charities of life amid the chafings of party rivalry, let her pour out the milk of human kindness into the cup of courtesy, and ask them to drink of it. When the waters are troubled and the billows roar, let her diffuse over them the oil of love to still the waters into a great calm. Surely this is an office higher, better far, than to be pressing on, as some would have her, into the busy bustle of out-door politics. Here is influence, and it is better than power.

Who that loves woman, that really admires her worth as woman, that thinks of her as the delicate, refined, tasteful, sensitive development of humanity, the incarnation of all that is lovely, gentle, modest, peaceful, and pure, the highest earthly manifestation of God as love; who that remembers her as the "help-meet," can bear the thought of hurrying her out upon the theatre of politics, the platform of legislation?

"Woman's rights," they cry, and so loud the cry, that even woman's ambition has conquered her judgment and her delicacy, and she has gone forth, out of her appointed and fitting sphere, to be gazed on by a curious crowd, and perhaps to hear the plaudits of a noisy populace. O tempora! O mores! Save us from such a race of women!

Now woman has rights, many rights, and let them be well guarded; but she has no right to be a man. Yet, no wonder 'tis, if amid the stirring enterprises and new discoveries of the age, some half-amazon should defy the customs of social life, and assume the right of leveling all distinctions between the sexes, walking forth à la Turk, and becoming the gazing-stock of the street. Oh, let beauteous, winning woman wear the gracefully-flowing robes of modesty; let her not be met by us "up to the eyes" in politics, nor at the ballot-box, nor the caucus, nor in the legislative hall, nor on the judicial bench, surrounded, perchance, by tobacco-chewing barristers, nor as the public haranguer, addressing promiscuous multitudes.

Let us rather see her in the quiet retirement of home, not doomed to the busy drudgery of hard housekeeping merely, but there the refined woman, whose pure sensibilities are shocked at the thought of a public notoriety; who shuns the wistful gaze of the crowd, and finds in her own family circle her kingdom and her rights, and seeks to adorn that with all that is lovely and of good report. Thus will she win our admiration and secure our love. Were her intellect and her eloquence displayed at the bar or on the platform, we might indeed wonder with deep amazement, but we should not love; and wanting this, both she and we were unhappy.

While sensible, then, of her equality with man in the possession of a soul like his own, capable of the highest enterprises in science and literature, may she yet recognize, as the appointment of her all-wise Creator, subordination to man in power, superordination in influence. Be content to be woman. It is a province high enough. If not cherubic, it is seraphic. It is that phase of humanity we think most godlike; for if Jehovah's highest expression of himself is Love, then that form of humanity expressing most of it, is most like Him. That form, in our opinion, is woman.

Let her not, then, strip herself of her chief glory, and depart further from her God and Saviour, by shooting out from her own feminine orbit, and aiming to revolve in that of the other sex, under the false impression that it is a higher one. Even if it were, it is not hers, and by thus battling with the order of nature, and swinging loose from the proper relations of her being, she might become a wandering star in the blackness of darkness forever.

Another evident office of woman is, to regulate the forms and control the habits of social life. In this land, especially, do the "lords of creation" bow with due deference to their ladies. We give them our arms, 'tis true, and we ask them to lean upon us, yet do we take step with them, and in turn lean on them, amid the trying times of life, and look to them for many of our joys, for most of our happiness. He is vulgar, even barbarous, we think, who does not appreciate her worth and respect her character. Hence, every where, hers is the first place, the best place; and an American gentleman would rather suffer an agony than subject women to a discomfort.

Such being her relative position, hers it must be to prescribe the customs of social life, and say to man, "hitherto shalt thou go and no further." The tone of morals will be such as she makes it. Man will be conformed to the model she exhibits. He seldom, if ever, rises above the level of his female associates. Surround him with the vulgar, the thoughtless, the impure, and you shall not see him pure, thoughtful, refined. Place him ever in the society of intelligent, dignified, Christian women, and their virtues will be reflected on him.

And is it so, that woman is responsible, in a great measure, for the fashions and habits of the community in which she lives? It is even so. If she discard that foolish frippery and passion for display, which occasionally characterize her own sex, it will not long live. It must be buried in its own foibles, and have no resurrection. If she frown upon him who robs woman of her jewel, he is a fugitive on the face of the earth. If she discountenance the use of intoxicating beverages, the young man will learn that abstinence on his part is the price of respect and love on hers. Her office here is magnified: her influence has become a power. The other offices were guiding and directory; this is reformatory. Society looks to her for its type. Its virtues and its vices are of her moulding. It is what she bids it be.

What a potency! Let her wield it for her country's welfare. Then shall it be a beacon light to other lands now in darkness and degradation, because there woman is still the slave of man's passions, and has never risen, under Christianity, to know her dignity, and make her brutal master feel her moral equality in the scale of being.

Only one other office of woman shall we notice at present—the exemplification and diffusion of Christianity—of Christianity, not so much in its forms and dogmas, as in its spirit; not solely as a redeeming scheme, but also as a reforming power.

To Christianity woman is emphatically a debtor. It has breathed into her its breath of life, and she has become a living soul. Else had she been but a dead manikin. To it she owes her present advanced position, her commanding influence. Even all the literature and refinement of Greece and Rome could not confer on woman the boon which the religion of Jesus has brought her. He was woman's son, and his religion tells it. Go where that religion is not, and there woman is naught.

Christianity has not only broken down the wall of partition between male and female, but has opened the sealed fountains of her soul, and caused them to send forth rills of gentleness and love, which have refreshed humanity and poured out gladness on a dark and dreary world. Let the cross, then, be woman's standard, Jesus woman's trust, Christianity woman's charter. That thrown overboard, we are wrecked. Its principles abandoned, the world sinks again into barbarism, and woman to brute degradation. "The last at the cross and earliest at the sepulchre," must remember to cling to Christianity as her hope, her life. Let her never be ashamed to confess it her ruling principle, her source of joy, nor be hesitant in disseminating its seeds, that she may every where behold its lily-flowers.

Can it ever be well said of woman, "she careth not if there be a God, or a soul, or a time of retribution; pleasure is the idol of her heart: she thirsteth for no purer heaven." Let such an one be decked in all the gorgeous trappings of wealth, let her brow be crowned with the coronet of rank, let her girdle hold the key which unlocks the treasures of California, and yet she wants that which ennobles her sex, and would render her an object of love and a source of joy to others.

"Oh, what is woman, what her smile,
Her lip of love, her eyes of light.
What is she, if her lips revile
The lowly Jesus? Love may write
His name upon her marble brow,
And linger in her curls of jet:
The light spring-flower may scarcely bow
Beneath her step—and yet—and yet—
Without that meeker grace she'll be
A lighter thing than vanity."

Never, then, let the sneer of the infidel, nor the scorn of the skeptic drive woman from compounding the spices to embalm her crucified Master, nor make her ashamed to be seen early at his sepulchre. Rather let her glory in the cross, and make the most of her high mission here to send its healing influences to every sick and sorrowing creature on this green earth. Why should any poor, perishing mortal be left in all the degradation of idolatry, when there is in our possession a power that would lift him to heights of bliss, temporal and eternal? Why should the world be left to its wailings and its woes, when Christianity diffused, in its benign spirit, would convert those woes into joys, those wailings into hallelujahs? How can woman, owing her all to the religion of the Bible, refrain from exerting her energies to place this word of life in the hands of every pilgrim over the deserts of time? And may she so breathe its spirit and feel its power, that it shall never again be thus written of her:

"There came
A stranger bright and beautiful
With steps of grace, and eye of flame,
And tone and look most sweetly blent
To make her presence eloquent;
Oh, then I looked for tears. She stood
Before the prisoner of Calvary.
I saw the piercing spear—the blood—
The gall—the writhe of agony.
I saw his quivering lips in prayer,
'Father, forgive them'—all was there!
I turned in bitterness of soul,
And spake of Jesus. I had thought
Her feelings would refuse control:
For woman's heart I knew was fraught
With gushing sympathies. She gazed
A moment on it carelessly,
Then coldly curl'd her lip, and praised
The high priest's garment! Could it be
That look was meant, dear Lord, for thee!"

A few words on Influence. This is woman's power. That distinctively belongs to man, and is exercised by authority. Law and penalty grow out of it. It regulates actions, it punishes crime. Influence, on the other hand, awakens feeling, generates opinions, implants sentiments in the soul, silently yet emphatically; and thus it crushes vice, promotes virtue, and avoids the necessity of penal infliction.

Now this is pre-eminently the potent lever in the hands of woman for regenerating and reforming the political and moral world. We may stand in awe, indeed, before the exhibition of power, whether physical or moral, but we are not won by them to the love of truth and goodness, while influence steals in upon our hearts, gets hold of the springs of action, and leads us into its own ways. It is the inflowing upon others from the nameless traits of character which constitute woman's idiosyncracy. Her heart is a great reservoir of love, the water-works of moral influence, from which go out ten thousand tubes, conveying off the ethereal essences of her nature, and diffusing them quietly over the secret chambers of man's inner being.

Even the weakness of woman softens and subdues, and thus unseals the soul for the infusion of her own sentiments. Her winning smiles, her tender sympathies, her sensible expressions, her gentle ways, all influence us, flow in upon our spirits. Who can be long boisterous in the presence of woman? No more can the yeasty waves dash and foam when superinfused by the mollifying touch of oil, than can the passions of man rage with impetuosity in contact with the oleaginous serenity of gentle woman.

Let man, then, exercise power; woman exert influence. By this will she best perform her offices, discharge her duties. Thus will she most effectually make home happy, restrain utilitarianism, allay party asperities, regulate the habits of social life, and both exemplify and diffuse Christianity. Thus will she become vanqueur des vanqueurs de la terre—"conqueror of the conquerors of earth," and do more to bless the world, and make it truly happy, than all political institutions, fiscal agencies, and merely intellectual educations.

Surely this is a mission exalted. Let no woman despise it, though it exclude her from the senator's seat and the chair of state. Let her rather remember that she honors herself more, glorifies her God better, and elevates her race higher, by adorning the sphere which her very physical organization prescribes. Never will she be improved in her nature, elevated in her influence, happier in her own spirit, or more potent in effecting the happiness of the world, by aiming at the proper dignities of man, throwing herself out upon the arena of public life, meddling and mingling in its chafings and chances. Ah no! let us still hope that woman will have good sense enough to discern the wisdom of God in her proper relation, and that man shall still and ever have the privilege and the joy of admiring and loving her as gentle, retiring, delicate, yet influential woman.

[THE TOWN-HO'S STORY.[5]

BY HERMAN MELVILLE.

[5] From "The Whale." The title of a new work by Mr. Melville, in the press of Harper and Brothers, and now publishing in London by Mr. Bentley.

The Cape of Good Hope, and all the watery region round about there, is much like some noted four corners of a great highway, where you meet more travelers than in any other part.

It was not very long after speaking the Goney that another homeward-bound whaleman, the Town-Ho, was encountered. She was manned almost wholly by Polynesians. In the short gam that ensued she gave us strong news of Moby Dick. To some the general interest in the White Whale was now wildly heightened by a circumstance of the Town-Ho's story, which seemed obscurely to involve with the whale a certain wondrous, inverted visitation of one of those so called judgments of God which at times are said to overtake some men. This latter circumstance, with its own particular accompaniments, forming what may be called the secret part of the tragedy about to be narrated, never reached the ears of Captain Ahab or his mates. For that secret part of the story was unknown to the captain of the Town-Ho himself. It was the private property of three confederate white seamen of that ship, one of whom, it seems, communicated it to Tashtego with Romish injunctions of secresy, but the following night Tashtego rambled in his sleep, and revealed so much of it in that way, that when he was awakened he could not well withhold the rest. Nevertheless, so potent an influence did this thing have on those seamen in the Pequod who came to the full knowledge of it, and by such a strange delicacy, to call it so, were they governed in this matter, that they kept the secret among themselves so that it never transpired abaft the Pequod's mainmast. Interweaving in its proper place this darker thread with the story as publicly narrated on the ship, the whole of this strange affair I now proceed to put on lasting record.

For my humor's sake, I shall preserve the style in which I once narrated it at Lima, to a lounging circle of my Spanish friends, one saint's eve, smoking upon the thick-gilt tiled piazza of the Golden Inn. Of those fine cavaliers, the young Dons, Pedro and Sebastian, were on the closer terms with me; and hence the interluding questions they occasionally put, and which are duly answered at the time.

"Some two years prior to my first learning the events which I am about rehearsing to you, gentlemen, the Town-Ho, Sperm Whaler of Nantucket, was cruising in your Pacific here, not very many days' sail eastward from the eaves of this good Golden Inn. She was somewhere to the northward of the Line. One morning, upon handling the pumps, according to daily usage, it was observed that she made more water in her hold than common. They supposed a sword-fish had stabbed her, gentlemen. But the captain, having some unusual reason for believing that rare good luck awaited him in those latitudes; and therefore being very averse to quit them, and the leak not being then considered at all dangerous, though, indeed, they could not find it after searching the hold as low down as was possible in rather heavy weather, the ship still continued her cruisings, the mariners working at the pumps at wide and easy intervals; but no good luck came; more days went by, and not only was the leak yet undiscovered, but it sensibly increased. So much so, that now taking some alarm, the captain, making all sail, stood away for the nearest harbor, among the islands, there to have his hull hove out and repaired.

"Though no small passage was before her, yet, if the commonest chance favored, he did not at all fear that his ship would founder by the way, because his pumps were of the best, and being periodically relieved at them, those six-and-thirty men of his could easily keep the ship free; never mind if the leak should double on her. In truth, well nigh the whole of this passage being attended by very prosperous breezes, the Town-Ho had all but certainly arrived in perfect safety at her port without the occurrence of the least fatality, had it not been for the brutal overbearing of Radney, the mate, a Vineyarder, and the bitterly provoked vengeance of Steelkilt, a Lakeman and desperado from Buffalo.

"'Lakeman!—Buffalo! Pray, what is a Lakeman, and where is Buffalo?' said Don Sebastian, rising in his swinging mat of grass.

"On the eastern shore of our Lake Erie, Don; but—I crave your courtesy—may be, you shall soon hear further of all that. Now, gentlemen, in square-sail brigs and three-masted ships, well nigh as large and stout as any that ever sailed out of your old Callao to far Manilla; this Lakeman, in the land-locked heart of our America, had yet been nurtured by all those agrarian free-booting impressions popularly connected with the open ocean. For in their interflowing aggregate, those grand fresh-water seas of ours—Erie, and Ontario, and Huron, and Superior, and Michigan—possess an ocean-like expansiveness, with many of the ocean's noblest traits; with many of its rimmed varieties of races and of climes. They contain round archipelagoes of romantic isles, even as the Polynesian waters do; in large part, are shored by two great contrasting nations, as the Atlantic is; they furnish long maritime approaches to our numerous territorial colonies from the East, dotted all round their banks; here and there are frowned upon by batteries, and by the goat-like craggy guns of lofty Mackinaw; they have heard the fleet thunderings of naval victories; at intervals, they yield their beaches to wild barbarians, whose red painted faces flash from out their peltry wigwams; for leagues and leagues are flanked by ancient and unentered forests, where the gaunt pines stand like serried lines of kings in Gothic genealogies; those same woods harboring wild Afric beasts of prey, and silken creatures whose exported furs give robes to Tartar Emperors; they mirror the paved capitals of Buffalo and Cleveland, as well as Winnebago villages; they float alike the full-rigged merchant ship, the armed cruiser of the State, the steamer, and the beech canoe; they are swept by Borean and dismasting blasts as direful as any that lash the salted wave; they know what shipwrecks are, for out of sight of land, however inland, they have drowned full many a midnight ship with all its shrieking crew. Thus, gentlemen, though an inlander, Steelkilt was wild-ocean born, and wild-ocean nurtured; as much of an audacious mariner as any. And for Radney, though in his infancy he may have laid him down on the lone Nantucket beach, to nurse at his maternal sea; though in after life he had long followed our austere Atlantic and your contemplative Pacific; yet was he quite as vengeful and full of social quarrel as the backwoods seaman, fresh from the latitudes of buck-horn handled Bowie-knives. Yet was this Nantucketer a man with some good-hearted traits; and this Lakeman, a mariner, who though a sort of devil indeed, might yet by inflexible firmness, only tempered by that common decency of human recognition which is the meanest slave's right; thus treated, this Steelkilt had long been retained harmless and docile. At all events, he had proved so thus far; but Radney was doomed and made mad, and Steelkilt—but, gentlemen, you shall hear.

"It was not more than a day or two at the furthest after pointing her prow for her island haven, that the Town-Ho's leak seemed again increasing, but only so as to require an hour or more at the pumps every day. You must know that in a settled and civilized ocean like our Atlantic, for example, some skippers think little of pumping their whole way across it; though of a still, sleepy night, should the officer of the deck happen to forget his duty in that respect, the probability would be that he and his shipmates would never again remember it, on account of all hands gently subsiding to the bottom. Nor in the solitary and savage seas far from you to the westward, gentlemen, is it altogether unusual for ships to keep clanging at their pump-handles in full chorus even for a voyage of considerable length; that is, if it lie along a tolerably accessible coast, or if any other reasonable retreat is afforded them. It is only when a leaky vessel is in some very out of the way part of those waters, some really landless latitude, that her captain begins to feel a little anxious.

"Much this way had it been with the Town-Ho; so when her leak was found gaining once more, there was in truth some small concern manifested by several of her company; especially by Radney the mate. He commanded the upper sails to be well hoisted, sheeted home anew, and every way expanded to the breeze. Now this Radney, I suppose, was as little of a coward, and as little inclined to any sort of nervous apprehensiveness touching his own person as any fearless, unthinking creature on land or on sea that you can conveniently imagine, gentlemen. Therefore when he betrayed this solicitude about the safety of the ship, some of the seamen declared that it was only on account of his being a part owner in her. So when they were working that evening at the pumps, there was on this head no small gamesomeness slily going on among them, as they stood with their feet continually overflowed by the rippling clear water; clear as any mountain spring, gentlemen—that bubbling from the pumps ran across the deck, and poured itself out in steady spouts at the lee scupper-holes.

"Now, as you well know, it is not seldom the case in this conventional world of ours—watery or otherwise; that when a person placed in command over his fellow-men finds one of them to be very significantly his superior in general pride of manhood, straightway against that man he conceives an unconquerable dislike and bitterness; and if he have a chance he will pull down and pulverize that subaltern's tower, and make a little heap of dust of it. Be this conceit of mine as it may, gentlemen, at all events Steelkilt was a tall and noble animal with a head like a Roman, and a flowing golden beard like the tasseled housings of your last viceroy's snorting charger; and a brain, and a heart, and a soul in him, gentlemen, which had made Steelkilt Charlemagne, had he been born son to Charlemagne's father. But Radney, the mate, was ugly as a mule; yet as hardy, as stubborn, as malicious. He did not love Steelkilt, and Steelkilt knew it.

"Espying the mate drawing near as he was toiling at the pump with the rest, the Lakeman affected not to notice him, but unawed, went on with his gay banterings.

"'Ay, ay, my merry lads, it's a lively leak this; hold a cannikin, one of ye, and let's have a taste. By the Lord, it's worth bottling! I tell ye what, men, old Rad's investment must go for it! he had best cut away his part of the hull and tow it home. The fact is, boys, that sword-fish only began the job; he's come back again with a gang of ship-carpenters, saw-fish, and file-fish, and what not; and the whole posse of 'em are now hard at work cutting and slashing at the bottom; making improvements, I suppose. If old Rad were here now, I'd tell him to jump overboard and scatter 'em. They're playing the devil with his estate, I can tell him. But he's a simple old soul—Rad, and a beauty, too. Boys, they say the rest of his property is invested in looking-glasses. I wonder if he'd give a poor devil like me the model of his nose.'

"'Damn your eyes! what's that pump stopping for?' roared Radney, pretending not to have heard the sailors' talk. 'Thunder away at it!'

"'Ay, ay, sir,' said Steelkilt, merry as a cricket. 'Lively, boys, lively, now!' And with that the pump clanged like fifty fire-engines; the men tossed their hats off to it, and ere long that peculiar gasping of the lungs was heard which denotes the fullest tension of life's utmost energies.

"Quitting the pump at last, with the rest of his band, the Lakeman went forward all panting, and sat himself down on the windlass; his face fiery red, his eyes bloodshot, and wiping the profuse sweat from his brow. Now what cozening fiend it was, gentlemen, that possessed Radney to meddle with such a man in that corporeally exasperated state, I know not; but so it happened. Intolerably striding along the deck, the mate commanded him to get a broom and sweep down the planks, and also a shovel, and remove some offensive matters consequent upon allowing a pig to run at large.

"Now, gentlemen, sweeping a ship's deck at sea is a piece of household work which in all times but raging gales is regularly attended to every evening; it has been known to be done in the case of ships actually foundering at the time. Such, gentlemen, is the inflexibility of sea-usages and the instinctive love of neatness in seamen; some of whom would not willingly drown without first washing their faces. But in all vessels this broom business is the prescriptive province of the boys, if boys there be aboard. Besides, it was the stronger men in the Town-Ho that had been divided into gangs, taking turns at the pumps; and being the most athletic seaman of them all, Steelkilt had been regularly assigned captain of one of the gangs; consequently he should have been freed from any trivial business not connected with truly nautical duties, such being the case with his comrades. I mention all these particulars so that you may understand exactly how this affair stood between the two men.

"But there was more than this: the order about the shovel was almost as plainly meant to sting and insult Steelkilt, as though Radney had spat in his face. Any man who has gone sailor in a whale-ship will understand this; and all this and doubtless much more, the Lakeman fully comprehended when the mate uttered his command. But as he sat still for a moment, and as he steadfastly looked into the mate's malignant eye and perceived the stacks of powder-casks heaped up in him and the slow match silently burning along toward them; as he instinctively saw all this, that strange forbearance and unwillingness to stir up the deeper passionateness in any already ireful being—a repugnance most felt, when felt at all, by really valiant men even when aggrieved—this nameless phantom feeling, gentlemen, stole over Steelkilt.

"Therefore, in his ordinary tone, only a little broken by the bodily exhaustion he was temporarily in, he answered him, saying that sweeping the deck was not his business, and he would not do it. And then, without at all alluding to the shovel, he pointed to three lads as the customary sweepers; who, not being billeted at the pumps, had done little or nothing all day. To this, Radney replied with an oath, in a most domineering and outrageous manner unconditionally reiterating his command; meanwhile advancing upon the still seated Lakeman, with an uplifted cooper's club hammer which he had snatched from a cask near by.

"Heated and irritated as he was by his spasmodic toil at the pumps, for all his first nameless feeling of forbearance the sweating Steelkilt could but ill brook this bearing in the mate; but somehow still smothering the conflagration within him, without speaking he remained doggedly; rooted to his seat, till at last the incensed Radney shook the hammer within a few inches of his face, furiously commanding him to do his bidding.

"Steelkilt rose, and slowly retreating round the windlass, steadily followed by the mate with his menacing hammer, deliberately repeated his intention not to obey. Seeing, however, that his forbearance had not the slightest effect, by an awful and unspeakable intimation with his twisted hand he warned off the foolish and infatuated man; but it was to no purpose. And in this way the two went once slowly round the windlass; when, resolved at last no longer to retreat, bethinking him that he had now forborne as much as comported with his humor, the Lakeman paused on the hatches and thus spoke to the officer:

"'Mr. Radney, I will not obey you. Take that hammer away, or look to yourself.' But the predestinated mate coming still closer to him, where the Lakeman stood fixed, now shook the heavy hammer within an inch of his teeth; meanwhile repeating a string of insufferable maledictions. Retreating not the thousandth part of an inch; stabbing him in the eye with the unflinching poniard of his glance, Steelkilt, clenching his right hand behind him and creepingly drawing it back, told his persecutor that if the hammer but grazed his cheek he (Steelkilt) would murder him. But, gentlemen, the fool had been branded for the slaughter by the gods. Immediately the hammer touched the cheek; the next instant the lower jaw of the mate was stove in his head; he fell on the hatch spouting blood like a whale.

"Ere the cry could go aft Steelkilt was shaking one of the backstays leading far aloft to where two of his comrades were standing their mast-heads. They were both Canalers.

"'Canalers!' cried Don Pedro. 'We have seen many whaleships in our harbors, but never heard of your Canalers. Pardon: who and what are they?'

"Canalers, Don, are the boatmen belonging to our grand Erie Canal. You must have heard of it.

"'Nay, Senor; hereabouts in this dull, warm, most lazy, and hereditary land, we know but little of your vigorous North.'

"Ay? Well, then, Don, refill my cup. Your chicha's very fine; and, ere proceeding further I will tell you what our Canalers are; for such information may throw side-light upon my story.

"For three hundred and sixty miles, gentlemen, through the entire breadth of the state of New York; through numerous populous cities and most thriving villages; through long, dismal, uninhabited swamps, and affluent, cultivated fields, unrivaled for fertility; by billiard-room and bar room; through the holy-of-holies of great forests; on Roman arches over Indian rivers; through sun and shade; by happy hearts or broken; through all the wide contrasting scenery of those noble Mohawk counties; and especially by rows of snow-white chapels, whose spires stand almost like milestones, flows one continual stream of Venetianly corrupt and often lawless life. There's your true Ashantee, gentlemen; there howl your pagans; where you ever find them, next door to you; under the long-flung shadow, and the snug patronizing lee of churches. For by some curious fatality, as it is often noted of your metropolitan freebooters that they ever encamp around the halls of justice, so sinners, gentlemen, most abound in holiest vicinities.

"'Is that a friar passing?' said Don Pedro, looking downward into the crowded plaza, with humorous concern.

"'Well for our northern friend, Dame Isabella's Inquisition wanes in Lima,' laughed Don Sebastian. 'Proceed, Senor.'

"'A moment! Pardon!' cried another of the company. 'In the name of all us Limeese, I but desire to express to you, sir sailor, that we have by no means overlooked your delicacy in not substituting present Lima for distant Venice in your corrupt comparison. Oh! do not bow and look surprised; you know the proverb all along this coast—"Corrupt as Lima." It but bears out your saying, too; churches more plentiful than billiard-tables, and forever open—and "Corrupt as Lima." So, too, Venice; I have been there; the holy city of the blessed evangelist, St. Mark!—St. Dominic, purge it! Your cup! Thanks: here I refill; now, you pour out again.'

"Freely depicted in his own vocation, gentlemen, the Canaler would make a fine dramatic hero, so abundantly and picturesquely wicked is he. Like Mark Antony, for days and days along his green-turfed, flowery Nile, he indolently floats, openly toying with his red-cheeked Cleopatra, ripening his apricot thigh upon the sunny deck. But ashore, all this effeminacy is dashed. The brigandish guise which the Canaler so proudly sports; his slouched and gayly-ribboned hat betoken his grand features. A terror to the smiling innocence of the villages through which he floats; his swart visage and bold swagger are not unshunned in cities. Once a vagabond on his own canal, I have received good turns from one of those Canalers; I thank him heartily; would fain be not ungrateful; but it is often one of the prime redeeming qualities of your man of violence, that at times he has as stiff an arm to back a poor stranger in a strait, as to plunder a wealthy one. In sum, gentlemen, what the wildness of this canal life is, is emphatically evinced by this; that our wild whale-fishery contains so many of its most finished graduates, and that scarce any race of mankind, except Sydney men, are so much distrusted by our whaling captains. Nor does it at all diminish the curiousness of this matter, that to many thousands of our rural boys and young men born along its line, the probationary life of the Grand Canal furnishes the sole transition between quietly reaping in a Christian corn-field, and recklessly ploughing the waters of the most barbaric seas."

"'I see! I see!' impetuously exclaimed Don Pedro, spilling his chicha upon his silvery ruffles. 'No need to travel! The world's one Lima. I had thought, now, that at your temperate North the generations were cold and holy as the hills. But the story.'

"I left off, gentlemen, where the Lakeman shook the backstay. Hardly had he done so, when he was surrounded by the three junior mates and the four harpooners, who all crowded him to the deck. But sliding down the ropes like baleful comets, the two Canalers rushed into the uproar, and sought to drag their man out of it toward the forecastle. Others of the sailors joined with them in this attempt, and a twisted turmoil ensued; while standing out of harm's way, the valiant captain danced up and down with a whale-pike, calling upon his officers to manhandle that atrocious scoundrel, and smoke him along to the quarter-deck. At intervals, he ran close up to the revolving border of the confusion, and prying into the heart of it with his pike, sought to prick out the object of his resentment. But Steelkilt and his desperadoes were too much for them all; they succeeded in gaining the forecastle deck, where, hastily slewing about three or four large casks in a line with the windlass, these sea-Parisians entrenched themselves behind the barricade."

"'Come out of that, ye pirates!' roared the captain, now menacing them with a pistol in each hand, just brought to him by the steward. 'Come out of that, ye cut-throats!'

"Steelkilt leaped on the barricade, and striding up and down there, defied the worst the pistols could do; but gave the captain to understand distinctly, that his (Steelkilt's) death would be the signal for a murderous mutiny on the part of all hands. Fearing in his heart lest this might prove but too true, the captain a little desisted, but still commanded the insurgents instantly to return to their duty.

"'Will you promise not to touch us, if we do?' demanded their ringleader.

"'Turn to! turn to!—I make no promise; to your duty! Do you want to sink the ship, by knocking off at a time like this? Turn to!' and he once more raised a pistol.

"'Sink the ship?' cried Steelkilt. 'Ay, let her sink. Not a man of us turns to, unless you swear not to raise a rope-yarn against us. What say ye, men?' turning to his comrades. A fierce cheer was their response.

"The Lakeman now patrolled the barricade, all the while keeping his eye on the Captain, and jerking out such sentences as these: 'It's not our fault; we didn't want it; I told him to take his hammer away; it was boys' business: he might have known me before this; I told him not to prick the buffalo; I believe I have broken a finger here against his cursed jaw; ain't those mincing knives down in the forecastle there, men? look to those handspikes, my hearties. Captain, by God, look to yourself; say the word; don't be a fool; forget it all; we are ready to turn to; treat us decently, and we're your men; but we won't be flogged.'

"'Turn to! I make no promises: turn to, I say!'

"'Look ye, now,' cried the Lakeman, flinging out his arm toward him, 'there are a few of us here (and I am one of them) who have shipped for the cruise, d'ye see; now as you well know, sir, we can claim our discharge as soon as the anchor is down; so we don't want a row; it's not our interest; we want to be peaceable; we are ready to work, but we won't be flogged.'

"'Turn to!' roared the Captain.

"Steelkilt glanced round him a moment, and then said: 'I tell you what it is now, Captain, rather than kill ye, and be hung for such a shabby rascal, we won't lift a hand against ye unless ye attack us; but till you say the word about not flogging us, we don't do a hand's turn.'

"'Down into the forecastle then, down with ye, I'll keep ye there till ye're sick of it. Down ye go.'

"'Shall we?' cried the ringleader to his men. Most of them were against it; but at length, in obedience to Steelkilt, they preceded him down into their dark den, growlingly disappearing like bears into a cave.

"As the Lakeman's bare head was just level with the planks, the Captain and his posse leaped the barricade, and rapidly drawing over the slide of the scuttle, planted their group of hands upon it, and loudly called for the steward to bring the heavy brass padlock belonging to the companionway. Then opening the slide a little, the Captain whispered something down the crack, closed it, and turned the key upon them—ten in number—leaving on deck some twenty or more, who thus far had remained neutral.

"All night a wide-awake watch was kept by all the officers, forward and aft, especially about the forecastle scuttle and fore hatchway; at which last place it was feared the insurgents might emerge, after breaking through the bulkhead below. But the hours of darkness passed in peace; the men who still remained at their duty toiling hard at the pumps, whose clinking and clanking at intervals through the dreary night dismally resounded through the ship.

"At sunrise the Captain went forward, and knocking on the deck summoned the prisoners to work; but with a yell they refused. Water was then lowered down to them, and a couple of handfuls of biscuit were tossed after it; when again turning the key upon them and pocketing it, the Captain returned to the quarter-deck. Twice every day for three days this was repeated; but on the fourth morning a confused wrangling, and then a scuffling was heard, as the customary summons was delivered; and suddenly four men burst up from the forecastle, saying they were ready to turn to. The fetid closeness of the air, and a famishing diet, united perhaps to some fears of ultimate retribution, had constrained them to surrender at discretion. Emboldened by this, the Captain reiterated his demand to the rest, but Steelkilt shouted up to him a terrific hint to stop his babbling and betake himself where he belonged. On the fifth morning three others of the mutineers bolted up into the air from the desperate arms below that sought to restrain them. Only three were left.

"'Better turn to, now!' said the Captain with a heartless jeer.

"'Shut us up again, will ye!' cried Steelkilt.

"'Oh! certainly,' said the Captain, and the key clicked.

"It was at this point, gentlemen, that enraged by the defection of seven of his former associates, and stung by the mocking voice that had last hailed him, and maddened by his long entombment in a place as black as the bowels of despair; it was then that Steelkilt proposed to the two Canalers, thus far apparently of one mind with him, to burst out of their hole at the next summoning of the garrison; and armed with their keen mincing knives (long, crescentic, heavy implements with a handle at each end) run a muck from the bowsprit to the taffrail; and if by any devilishness of desperation possible, seize the ship. For himself, he would do this, he said, whether they joined him or not. That was the last night he should spend in that den. But the scheme met with no opposition on the part of the other two; they swore they were ready for that, or for any other mad thing, for any thing, in short, but a surrender. And what was more, they each insisted upon being the first man on deck, when the time to make the rush should come. But to this their leader as fiercely objected, reserving that priority for himself; particularly as his two comrades would not yield, the one to the other, in the matter; and both of them could not be first, for the ladder would but admit one man at a time. And here, gentlemen, the foul play of these miscreants must come out.

"Upon hearing the frantic project of their leader, each in his own separate soul had suddenly lighted, it would seem, upon the same piece of treachery, namely: to be foremost in breaking out, in order to be the first of the three, though the last of the ten, to surrender; and thereby secure whatever small chance of pardon such conduct might merit. But when Steelkilt made known his determination still to lead them to the last, they in some way, by some subtle chemistry of villainy, mixed their before secret treacheries together; and when their leader fell into a doze, verbally opened their souls to each other in three sentences; and bound the sleeper with cords, and gagged him with cords; and shrieked out for the Captain at midnight.

"Thinking murder at hand, and smelling in the dark for the blood, he and all his armed mates and harpooners rushed for the forecastle. In a few minutes the scuttle was opened, and, bound hand and foot, the still struggling ringleader was shoved up into the air by his perfidious allies, who at once claimed the honor of securing a man who had been fully ripe for murder. But all three were collared, and dragged along the deck like dead cattle; and, side by side, were seized up into the mizen rigging, like three quarters of meat, and there they hung till morning. 'Damn ye,' cried the Captain, pacing to and fro before them, 'the vultures would not touch ye, ye villains!'

"At sunrise he summoned all hands; and separated those who had rebelled from those who had taken no part in the mutiny, he told the former that he had a good mind to flog them all around—thought, upon the whole, he would do so—he ought to—justice demanded it; but, for the present, considering their timely surrender, he would let them go with a reprimand, which he accordingly administered in the vernacular.

"'But as for you, ye carrion rogues,' turning to the three men in the rigging—'for you, I mean to mince ye up for the try-pots;' and, seizing a rope, he applied it with all his might to the backs of the two traitors, till they yelled no more, but lifelessly hung their head sideways, as the two crucified thieves are drawn.

"'My wrist is sprained with ye!' he cried, at last; 'but there is still rope enough left for you, my fine bantam, that wouldn't give up. Take that gag from his mouth, and let us hear what he can say for himself.'

"For a moment the exhausted mutineer made a tremulous motion of his cramped jaws, and then painfully twisting round his head, said, in a sort of hiss, 'What I say is this—and mind it well—if you flog me, I murder you!'

"'Say ye so? then see how ye frighten me'—and the Captain drew off with the rope to strike.

"'Best not,' hissed the Lakeman.

"'But I must'—and the rope was once more drawn back for the stroke.

"Steelkilt here hissed out something, inaudible to all but the Captain; who, to the amazement of all hands, started back, paced the deck rapidly two or three times, and then suddenly throwing down his rope, said, 'I won't do it—let him go—cut him down: d'ye hear?'

"But as the junior mates were hurrying to execute the order, a pale man, with a bandaged head, arrested them—Radney the chief mate. Ever since the blow, he had lain in his berth; but that morning, hearing the tumult on the deck, he had crept out, and thus far had watched the whole scene. Such was the state of his mouth, that he could hardly speak; but mumbling something about his being willing and able to do what the Captain dared not attempt, he snatched the rope and advanced to his pinioned foe.

"'You are a coward!' hissed the Lakeman.

"'So I am, but take that.' The mate was in the very act of striking, when another hiss stayed his uplifted arm. He paused: and then pausing no more, made good his word, spite of Steelkilt's threat, whatever that might have been. The three men were then cut down, all hands were turned to, and, sullenly worked by the moody seamen, the iron pumps clanged as before.

"Just after dark that day, when one watch had retired below, a clamor was heard in the forecastle; and the two trembling traitors running up, besieged the cabin-door, saying they durst not consort with the crew. Entreaties, cuffs, and kicks could not drive them back, so at their own instance they were put down in the ship's run for salvation. Still, no sign of mutiny re-appeared among the rest. On the contrary, it seemed, that mainly at Steelkilt's instigation, they had resolved to maintain the strictest peacefulness, obey all orders to the last, and, when the ship reached port, desert her in a body. But in order to insure the speediest end to the voyage, they all agreed to another thing—namely, not to sing out for whales, in case any should be discovered. For, spite of her leak, and spite of all her other perils, the Town-Ho still maintained her mast heads, and her captain was just as willing to lower for a fish that moment, as on the day his craft first struck the cruising-ground, and Radney the mate was quite as ready to change his berth for a boat, and with his bandaged mouth seek to gag in death the vital jaw of the whale.

"But though the Lakeman had induced the seamen to adopt this sort of passiveness in their conduct, he kept his own counsel (at least till all was over) concerning his own proper and private revenge upon the man who had stung him in the ventricles of his heart. He was in Radney the chief-mate's watch; and as if the infatuated man sought to run more than half way to meet his doom, after the scene at the rigging, he insisted, against the express counsel of the captain, upon resuming the head of his watch at night. Upon this, and one or two other circumstances, Steelkilt systematically built the plan of his revenge.

"During the night, Radney had an unseaman-like way of sitting on the bulwarks of the quarter-deck, and leaning his arm upon the gunwale of the boat which was hoisted up there, a little above the ship's side. In this attitude, it was well known, he sometimes dozed. There was a considerable vacancy between the boat and the ship, and down between this was the sea. Steelkilt calculated his time, and found that his next trick at the helm would come round at two o'clock, in the morning of the third day from that in which he had been betrayed. At his leisure, he employed the interval in braiding something very carefully in his watches below.

"'What are you making there?' said a shipmate.

"'What do you think? what does it look like?'

"'Like a lanyard for your bag; but it's an odd one, seems to me.'

"'Yes, rather oddish,' said the Lakeman, holding it at arm's length before him; 'but I think it will answer. Shipmate, I haven't enough twine—have you any?'

"But there was none in the forecastle.

"'Then I must get some from old Rad;' and he rose to go aft.

"'You don't mean to go a-begging to him!' said a sailor.

"'Why not? Do you think he won't do me a turn, when it's to help himself in the end, shipmate?' and going to the mate, he looked at him quietly, and asked him for some twine to mend his hammock. It was given him—neither twine nor lanyard was seen again; but the next night an iron ball, closely netted, partly rolled from the pocket of the Lakeman's monkey-jacket, as he was tucking the coat into his hammock for a pillow. Twenty-four hours after, his trick at the silent helm—nigh to the man who was apt to doze over the grave always ready dug to the seaman's hand—that fatal hour was then to come; and in the fore-ordaining soul of Steelkilt, the mate was already stark and stretched as a corpse, with his forehead crushed in.

"But, gentlemen, a fool saved the would-be murderer from the bloody deed he had planned. Yet complete revenge he had, and without being the avenger. For by a mysterious fatality, Heaven itself seemed to step in to take out of his hands into its own the damning thing he would have done.

"It was just between daybreak and sunrise of the morning of the second day, when they were washing down the decks, that a stupid Teneriffe man, drawing water in the main-chains, all at once shouted out, 'There she rolls! there she rolls! Jesu! what a whale!' It was Moby Dick.

"'Moby Dick!' cried Don Sebastian; 'St. Dominic! Sir sailor, but do whales have christenings? Whom call you Moby Dick?'

"A very white, and famous, and most deadly immortal monster, Don; but that would be too long a story.

"'How? how? cried all the young Spaniards, crowding.

"Nay, Dons, Dons—nay, nay! I can not rehearse that now. Let me get more into the air, sirs.

"'The chicha! the chicha!' cried Don Pedro; 'our vigorous friend looks faint; fill up his empty glass!'

"No need, gentlemen; one moment, and I proceed. Now, gentlemen, so suddenly perceiving the snowy whale within fifty yards of the ship—forgetful of the compact among the crew—in the excitement of the moment, the Teneriffe man had instinctively and involuntarily lifted his voice for the monster, though for some little time past it had been plainly beheld from the three sullen mast-heads. All was now a frenzy. 'The White Whale—the White Whale!' was the cry from captain, mates, and harpooners, who, undeterred by fearful rumors, were all anxious to capture so famous and precious a fish; while the dogged crew eyed askance, and with curses, the appalling beauty of the vast milky mass, that lit up by a horizontal spangling sun, shifted and glistened like a living opal in the blue morning sea. Gentlemen, a strange fatality pervades the whole career of these events, as if verily mapped out before the world itself was charted. The mutineer was the bowsman of the mate, and when fast to a fish, it was his duty to sit next him, while Radney stood up with his lance in the prow, and haul in or slacken the line, at the word of command. Moreover, when the four boats were lowered, the mate's got the start; and none howled more fiercely with delight than did Steelkilt, as he strained at his oar. After a stiff pull, their harpooner got fast, and, spear in hand, Radney sprang to the bow. He was always a furious man, it seems, in a boat. And now his bandaged cry was, to beach him on the whale's topmost back. Nothing loath, his bowsman hauled him up and up, through a blinding foam that blent two whitenesses together; till of a sudden the boat struck as against a sunken ledge, and keeling over, spilled out the standing mate. That instant, as he fell on the whale's slippery back, the boat righted, and was dashed aside by the swell, while Radney was tossed over into the sea, on the other flank of the whale. He struck out through the spray, and, for an instant, was dimly seen through that vail, wildly seeking to remove himself from the eye of Moby Dick. But the whale rushed round in a sudden maelstrom—seized the swimmer between his jaws; and rearing high up with him, plunged headlong again, and went down.

"Meantime, at the first tap of the boat's bottom, the Lakeman had slackened the line, so as to drop astern from the whirlpool; calmly looking on, he thought his own thoughts. But a sudden, terrific, downward jerking of the boat, quickly brought his knife to the line. He cut it; and the whale was free. But, at some distance, Moby Dick rose again, with some tatters of Radney's red woolen shirt, caught in the teeth that had destroyed him. All four boats gave chase again; but the whale eluded them, and, finally, wholly disappeared.

"In good time, the Town-Ho reached her port—a savage, solitary place—where no civilized creature resided. There, headed by the Lakeman, all but five or six of the foremast-men deliberately deserted among the palms; eventually, as it turned out, seizing a large double war-canoe of the savages, and setting sail for some other harbor.

"The ship's company being reduced to but a handful, the Captain called upon the Islanders to assist him in the laborious business of heaving down the ship to stop the leak. But to such unresting vigilance over their dangerous allies was this small band of whites necessitated, both by night and by day, and so extreme was the hard work they underwent, that upon the vessel being ready again for sea, they were in such a weakened condition that the captain durst not put off with them in so heavy a vessel. After taking counsel with his officers, he anchored the ship as far off shore as possible; loaded and ran out his two cannon from the bows; stacked his muskets on the poop; and warning the Islanders not to approach the ship at their peril, took one man with him, and setting the sail of his best whale-boat, steered straight before the wind for Tahiti, five hundred miles distant, to procure a reinforcement to his crew.

"On the fourth day of the sail, a large canoe was descried, which seemed to have touched at a low isle of corals. He steered away from it; but the savage craft bore down on him; and soon the voice of Steelkilt hailed him to heave to, or he would run him under water. The captain presented a pistol. With one foot on each prow of the yoked war-canoes, the Lakeman laughed him to scorn; assuring him that if the pistol so much as clicked in the lock, he would bury him in bubbles and foam.

"'What do you want of me?' cried the captain.

"'Where are you bound? and for what are you bound?' demanded Steelkilt; 'no lies.'

"'I am bound to Tahiti for more men.'

"'Very good. Let me board you a moment—I come in peace.' With that he leaped from the canoe, swam to the boat; and climbing the gunwale, stood face to face with the captain.

"'Cross your arm, sir; throw back your head. Now, repeat after me. As soon as Steelkilt leaves me, I swear to beach this boat on yonder island, and remain there six days. If I do not, may lightnings strike me!'

"'A pretty scholar,' laughed the Lakeman. 'Adios, Senor!' and leaping into the sea, he swam back to his comrades.

"Watching the boat till it was fairly beached, and drawn up to the roots of the cocoa-nut trees, Steelkilt made sail again, and in due time arrived at Tahiti, his own place of destination. There, luck befriended him; two ships were about to sail for France, and were providentially in want of precisely that number of men which the sailor headed. They embarked; and so forever got the start of their former captain, had he been at all minded to work them legal retribution.

"Some ten days after the French ships sailed, the whale-boat arrived, and the captain was forced to enlist some of the more civilized Tahitans, who had been somewhat used to the sea. Chartering a small native schooner, he returned with them to his vessel; and finding all right there, again resumed his cruisings.

"Where Steelkilt now is, gentlemen, none know; but upon the island of Nantucket, the widow of Radney still turns to the sea which refuses to give up its dead; still in dreams sees the awful white whale that destroyed him....

"'Are you through?' said Don Sebastian, quietly.

"I am, Don.

"'Then I entreat you, tell me if to the best of your own convictions, this your story is, in substance, really true? It is so passing wonderful! Did you get it from an unquestionable source? Bear with me if I seem to press.'

"'Also bear with all of us, sir sailor; for we all join in Don Sebastian's suit,' cried the company, with exceeding interest.

"Is there a copy of the Holy Evangelists in the Golden Inn, gentlemen?

"'Nay,' said Don Sebastian; 'but I know a worthy priest near by, who will quickly procure one for me. I go for it; but are you well advised? this may grow too serious.'

"'Will you be so good as to bring the priest also, Don?'

"'Though there are no Auto-da-Fés in Lima now,' said one of the company to another; 'I fear our sailor friend runs risk of the archiepiscopacy. Let us withdraw more out of the moonlight. I see no need of this.'

"Excuse me for running after you, Don Sebastian; but may I also beg that you will be particular in procuring the largest sized Evangelists you can....

"'This is the priest; he brings you the Evangelists,' said Don Sebastian, gravely, returning with a tall and solemn figure.

"Let me remove my hat. Now, venerable priest, further into the light, and hold the Holy Book before me that I may touch it.

"So help me Heaven, and on my honor, the story I have told ye, gentlemen, is, in substance and its great items, true. I know it to be true; it happened on this ball; I trod the ship; I knew the crew; I have seen and talked with Steelkilt since the death of Radney."

[MY NOVEL, OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.[6]

[6] Continued from the September Number.