The play was played out.
The actors had performed their parts with wit, intelligence, and a noble disinterestedness. They took their leave of the Grand Duke, leaving him with a rich and pretty wife, a powerful brother-in-law, a serviceable alliance, and a commercial treaty which could not fail to replenish his treasury.
Embassies, special missions, banishment, were alleged to the Grand Duchess as the causes of their departure. Then an amnesty was published on the occasion of the marriage; the gates of the fortress of Zwingenberg opened, and the former courtiers resumed their respective posts.
The reviving fortunes of the Grand Duke were a sure guarantee of their fidelity.
THE OLD GENTLEMAN’S TEETOTUM.
[MAGA. August 1829.]
At the foot of the long range of the Mendip hills, standeth a village, which, for obvious reasons, we shall conceal the precise locality of, by bestowing thereon the appellation of Stockwell. It lieth in a nook, or indentation, of the mountain; and its population may be said, in more than one sense of the word, to be extremely dense, being confined within narrow limits by rocky and sterile ground, and a brawling stream, which ever and anon assumes the aspect of an impetuous river, and then dwindles away into a plaything for the little boys to hop over. The principal trade of the Stockwellites is in coals, which certain of the industrious operative natives sedulously employ themselves in extracting from our mother earth, while others are engaged in conveying the “black diamonds” to various adjacent towns, in carts of sundry shapes and dimensions. The horses engaged in this traffic are of the Rosinante species, and, too often, literally raw-boned; insomuch, that it is sometimes a grievous sight to see them tugging, and a woful thing to hear their masters swearing, when mounting a steep ascent with one of the aforesaid loads.
Wherever a civilised people dwell, there must be trade; and, consequently, Stockwell hath its various artisans, who ply, each in his vocation, to supply the wants of others; and, moreover, it hath its inn, or public house, a place of no small importance, having for its sign a swinging creaking board, whereon is emblazoned the effigy of a roaring, red, and rampant Lion. High towering above the said Lion, are the branches of a solitary elm, the foot of which is encircled by a seat, especially convenient for those guests whose taste it is to “blow a cloud” in the open air; and it is of two individuals, who were much given thereon to enjoy their “otium cum dignitate,” that we are about to speak.