“‘Wallachians! behold your Prince!’”
Mr Mandeville did not get beyond that sentence. I could stand him no longer, and burst into an outrageous roar of laughter, in which Cutts most heartily joined, till the tears ran plenteously down his cheeks. The Margrave of Wallachia looked quite bewildered. He attempted to rise from his chair, but the effort was too much for him, and he dropped suddenly on the floor.
“Well,” said I, after we had fairly exhausted ourselves, “there’s the spoiling in that fellow of as good a novelist as ever coopered out three volumes. He would be an invaluable acquaintance for either Marryat or James. ’Tis a thousand pities his talents should be lost to the public.”
“There’s no nonsense about him,” replied Cutts; “he buckles to his work like a man. Doesn’t it strike you, Freddy, that his style is a great deal more satisfactory than that of some other people I could name, who talk about their pedigree and ancestors, and have not even the excuse of a good cock-and-bull story to tell? Give me the man that carves out nobility for himself, like Mandeville, and believes it too, which is the very next best thing to reality. Now, let’s have up the broiled bones, and send the Margrave of Wallachia to his bed.”
THE FORREST-RACE ROMANCE.
(EXTRACTED FROM PAPERS DATED 1773.)
[MAGA. February 1833.]
I passed my examination with some credit, and was appointed assistant-surgeon to my ship, then lying at Portsmouth. As she was expected, however, to sail every tide to join the fleet off Cherbourg,[A] I was not sent down at once, but received instructions to be on board the Gull tender, at Sheerness, in eight days. In the mean time, with my appointment, and twenty guineas in my pocket, a light heart and a tolerable figure, I went down into Surrey, to Bromley Hall, the seat of an excellent friend, from whom I had long had an invitation. I found the house fall of visitants, chiefly young people about my own age, all making merry, and had little difficulty in being admitted of their crew. I never saw so many happy, fair and handsome faces together, as were there assembled for the next week—but by far the loveliest of the fair faces was that of a young lady from the west, called Fane; and none, perhaps, was happier than my own, when beside her. She delighted in botany; and although I at that time knew little more of the science than would have enabled me to make a tolerable guess at the dried drug in a medicine-chest, yet the temptation was so great that I could not resist the opportunity of becoming her more constant companion, by undertaking the office of her tutor. My inadequacy must have been soon betrayed; nevertheless, we continued to pursue our studies, with as regular attendance as ever on my part, and as implicit attention on hers, till mutually we arrived at the tacit understanding that, provided we looked at the flower together, it mattered little whether I assigned it a right or a wrong place in our rare classification. We soon exchanged the garden for the fields and green lanes; and often before the others had risen to their daily vocations of riding or sailing, we would contrive a ramble in search of some unknown species of an unheard-of genus, to the romantic borders of Holmsdale, which lay within a half mile of Bromley, with the apology of the children for our guides, who rarely failed to find inducement enough in the rabbit-warren or rookery to leave us alone in our search through the glades and avenues of the old holm oak and the furze. It cannot be expected that, with these occasions constantly falling out, an ardent youth of nineteen, as I then was, should long conceal feelings fostered by such appliances of time and circumstance; nor need it be wondered at that, before even the week had elapsed, I had avowed my passion, and had not been altogether unsuccessful in eliciting a confession of its return. My exultation on that evening must have been very apparent, for next morning, as I came down stairs, having lain much later than usual, my host Mr Blundell met me, and took my arm as he bade me good morning, then led me into the library, and, “Harry, my fine fellow,” said he, in his good-natured way, “you must get the M.D. to your name, and make something handsome of your own, before you begin to run away with the hearts of our girls here in the country.”