This "dark side" suggests itself. It is impossible to read the record of Madame Recamier's conquests without thinking of women slighted and neglected for her sake. The greater number of her admirers were married men. That their wives did not hate this all-conquering woman is strange indeed; that they witnessed her triumphs unmoved is scarcely credible. For, while French society allows great laxity in such matters, and a domestic husband, as we understand the term, is a rarity, still French wives, we imagine, differ very little from other women in wishing to be considered a first object. Public desertion is rarely relished even where there is no affection to be wounded, for it is not necessary to love to be jealous. But whatever heart-aches and jealousies were caused by Madame Recamier's conquests, they do not appear on the surface. In her voluminous correspondence we find tender letters from husbands side by side with friendly notes from their wives. Her biographer parades the latter with some ostentation, as a proof of the friendship these women entertained for Madame Recamier. That they respected her is evident; that they loved her is not so apparent. Mere complimentary notes prove but little. He must be but a superficial judge of life who draws decided conclusions simply from appearances. Madame Lucien Bonaparte might invite Madame Recamier to her fetes; but the consciousness that all her world knew that her husband was epris with her beautiful guest did not tend to make her cordial at heart. Madame Moreau, young and lovely, might visit her intimately, and even cherish friendship for her; but she could scarcely be an indifferent spectator, when the great General demanded a white ribbon from her friend's dress as a favor, and afterward wrote to her that he had worn it in every battle, and that it had been the talisman that led him on to victory. Nor is it probable that Madame de Montmorency and Madame de Chateaubriand, unloved wives, saw without a pang another woman possess the influence which they exerted in vain. But, if they suffered, it was in secret; and, moreover, they did justice to the character of their rival. Madame Recamier's reputation was compromised neither in their eyes nor in the eyes of the world. Society is seldom just to any woman whose career in life is exceptional; but to her it was not only just, but indulgent. When we reflect upon her peculiar position, so exposed to injurious suspicions, the doubtful reputation of some of her associates, the character for gallantry possessed by many of her avowed admirers, it seems scarcely possible that she should have escaped calumny. The few scandals caused by some of her early indiscretions were soon dissipated, and she lived down all unpleasant rumors. She, indeed, seemed to possess some talisman, as potent as the magic ring that bewitched King Charlemagne, by whose spell she disarmed envy and silenced detraction. This attaching power she exercised on every person who came within the sphere of her influence. Even the gossiping Duchess D'Abrantes has only words of respectful admiration for her. The preconceived prejudices of Madame Swetchine, whom Miss Muloch numbers among her "Good Women," vanished at a first interview. She wrote to her,—"I found myself a captive before I dreamt of defending myself. I yielded at once to that penetrating and undefinable charm which you exert even over those persons to whom you are indifferent." Madame de Genlis, equally prejudiced, was alike subdued. She made Madame Recamier the heroine of a novel, and addressed letters to her full of affectionate admiration and extravagant flattery. "You are one of the phenomena of the age," she writes, "and certainly the most amiable.... You can look back upon the past without remorse. At any age this is the most beautiful of privileges, but at our time of life it is invaluable." Madame Lenormant, even more enthusiastic, calls her a saint, which she certainly was not, but a gracious woman of the world. Some acts of her life it is impossible to defend. They tarnish the lustre of an otherwise irreproachable career. Still, when we think of the low tone of morals prevalent in her youth, together with her many and great temptations, it is surprising that she should have preserved her purity of heart, and earned the respect and love of the best and wisest of her contemporaries. No woman has ever received more universal and uniform homage, or has been more deeply lamented. Her death left a void in French society that has never been filled. The salon, which, from its origin in the seventeenth century, was so vital an element in Paris life, no longer exists. That of the Hotel de Rambouillet was the first; that of the Abbaye-aux-Bois the last. "On se reunit encore, on donne des fetes splendides, on ne cause plus."

* * * * *

THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN.

Having walked about eight miles since we struck the beach, and passed the boundary between Wellfleet and Truro, a stone post in the sand,—for even this sand comes under the jurisdiction of one town or another,—we turned inland over barren hills and valleys, whither the sea, for some reason, did not follow us, and, tracing up a hollow, discovered two or three sober-looking houses within half a mile, uncommonly near the eastern coast. Their garrets were apparently so full of chambers that their roofs could hardly lie down straight, and we did not doubt that there was room for us there. Houses near the sea are generally low and broad. These were a story and a half high; but if you merely counted the windows in their gable-ends, you would think that there were many stories more, or, at any rate, that the half-story was the only one thought worthy of being illustrated. The great number of windows in the ends of the houses, and their irregularity in size and position, here and elsewhere on the Cape, struck us agreeably,—as if each of the various occupants who had their cunabula behind had punched a hole where his necessities required it, and according to his size and stature, without regard to outside effect. There were windows for the grown folks, and windows for the children,—three or four apiece: as a certain man had a large hole cut in his barn-door for the cat, and another smaller one for the kitten. Sometimes they were so low under the eaves that I thought they must have perforated the plate-beam for another apartment, and I noticed some which were triangular, to fit that part more exactly. The ends of the houses had thus as many muzzles as a revolver; and if the inhabitants have the same habit of staring out of the windows that some of our neighbors have, a traveller must stand a small chance with them.

Generally, the old-fashioned and unpainted houses on the Cape looked more comfortable, as well as picturesque, than the modern and more pretending ones, which were less in harmony with the scenery, and less firmly planted.

These houses were on the shores of a chain of ponds, seven in number, the source of a small stream called Herring River, which empties into the Bay. There are many Herring Rivers on the Cape: they will, perhaps, be more numerous than herrings soon. We knocked at the door of the first house, but its inhabitants were all gone away. In the mean while we saw the occupants of the next one looking out of the window at us, and before we reached it an old woman came out and fastened the door of her bulkhead, and went in again. Nevertheless, we did not hesitate to knock at her door, when a grizzly-looking man appeared, whom we took to be sixty or seventy years old. He asked us, at first, suspiciously, where we were from, and what our business was; to which we returned plain answers.

"How far is Concord from Boston?" he inquired.

"Twenty miles by railroad."

"Twenty miles by railroad," he repeated.

"Didn't you ever hear of Concord of Revolutionary fame?"

"Didn't I ever hear of Concord? Why, I heard the guns fire at the Battle of Bunker Hill." (They hear the sound of heavy cannon across the Bay.) "I am almost ninety: I am eighty-eight year old. I was fourteen year old at the time of Concord Fight,—and where were you then?"

We were obliged to confess that we were not in the fight.

"Well, walk in, we'll leave it to the women," said he.

So we walked in, surprised, and sat down, an old woman taking our hats and bundles, and the old man continued, drawing up to the large, old-fashioned fireplace,—

"I am a poor good-for-nothing crittur, as Isaiah says; I am all broken down this year. I am under petticoat-government here."

The family consisted of the old man, his wife, and his daughter, who appeared nearly as old as her mother,—a fool, her son, (a brutish-looking, middle-aged man, with a prominent lower face, who was standing by the hearth when we entered, but immediately went out,) and a little boy of ten.

While my companion talked with the women, I talked to the old man. They said that he was old and foolish, but he was evidently too knowing for them.

"These women," said he to me, "are both of them poor good-for-nothing critturs. This one is my wife. I married her sixty-four years ago. She is eighty-four years old, and as deaf as an adder, and the other is not much better."

He thought well of the Bible,—or at least he spoke well, and did not think ill, of it, for that would not have been prudent for a man of his age. He said that he had read it attentively for many years, and he had much of it at his tongue's end. He seemed deeply impressed with a sense of his own nothingness, and would repeatedly exclaim,—

"I am a nothing. What I gather from my Bible is just this: that man is a poor good-for-nothing crittur, and everything is just as God sees fit and disposes."

"May I ask your name?" I said.

"Yes," he answered,—"I am not ashamed to tell my name. My name is ——. My great-grandfather came over from England and settled here."

He was an old Wellfleet oysterman, who had acquired a competency in that business, and had sons still engaged in it.

Nearly all the oyster-shops and stands in Massachusetts, I am told, are supplied and kept by natives of Wellfleet, and a part of this town is still called Billingsgate, from the oysters having been formerly planted there; but the native oysters are said to have died in 1770. Various causes are assigned for this, such as a ground frost, the carcasses of black-fish kept to rot in the harbor, and the like; but the most common account of the matter is,—and I find that a similar superstition with regard to the disappearance of fishes exists almost everywhere,—that, when Wellfleet began to quarrel with the neighboring towns about the right to gather them, yellow specks appeared in them, and Providence caused them to disappear. A few years ago sixty thousand bushels were annually brought from the South and planted in the harbor of Wellfleet till they attained "the proper relish of Billingsgate"; but now they are imported commonly full-grown, and laid down near their markets, at Boston and elsewhere, where the water, being a mixture of salt and fresh, suits them better. The business was said to be still good and improving.

The old man said that the oysters were liable to freeze in the winter, if planted too high; but if it were not "so cold as to strain their eyes," they were not injured. The inhabitants of New Brunswick have noticed that "ice will not form over an oyster-bed, unless the cold is very intense indeed; and when the bays are frozen over, the oyster-beds are easily discovered by the water above them remaining unfrozen, or, as the French residents say, degele." Our host said that they kept them in cellars all winter.

"Without anything to eat or drink?" I asked.

"Without anything to eat or drink," he answered.

"Can the oysters move?"

"Just as much as my shoe."

But when I caught him saying that they "bedded themselves down in the sand, flat side up, round side down," I told him that my shoe could not do that, without the aid of my foot in it; at which he said that they merely settled down as they grew; if put down in a square, they would be found so; but the clam could move quite fast. I have since been told by oystermen of Long Island, where the oyster is still indigenous and abundant, that they are found in large masses attached to the parent in their midst, and are so taken up with their tongs; in which case, they say, the age of the young proves that there could have been no motion for five or six years at least. And Buckland, in his "Curiosities of Natural History," (page 50,) says,—"An oyster, who has once taken up his position and fixed himself when quite young, can never make a change. Oysters, nevertheless, that have not fixed themselves, but remain loose at the bottom of the sea, have the power of locomotion; they open their shells to their fullest extent, and then suddenly contracting them, the expulsion of the water forwards gives a motion backwards. A fisherman at Guernsey told me that he had frequently seen oysters moving in this way."

Some still entertain the question whether the oyster was indigenous in Massachusetts Bay, and whether Wellfleet Harbor was a natural habitat of this fish; but, to say nothing of the testimony of old oystermen, which, I think, is quite conclusive, though the native oyster may now be extinct there, I saw that their shells, opened by the Indians, were strewn all over the Cape. Indeed, the Cape was at first thickly settled by Indians on account of the abundance of these and other fish. We saw many traces of their occupancy, after this, in Truro, near Great Hollow, and at High-Head, near East-Harbor River,—oysters, clams, cockles, and other shells, mingled with ashes and the bones of deer and other quadrupeds. I picked up half a dozen arrow-heads, and in an hour or two could have filled my pockets with them. The Indians lived about the edges of the swamps, then probably in some instances ponds, for shelter and water. Moreover, Champlain, in the edition of his "Voyages" printed in 1613, says that in the year 1606 he and Poitrincourt explored a harbor (Barnstable Harbor?) in the southerly part of what is now called Massachusetts Bay, in latitude 42 deg., about five leagues south, one point west of Cap Blanc, (Cape Cod,) and there they found many good oysters, and they named it Le Port aux Huistres (Oyster-Harbor). In one edition of his map, (1632,) the "R. aux Escailles" is drawn emptying into the same part of the Bay, and on the map "Novi Belgii" in Ogilby's "America," (1670,) the words "Port aux Huistres" are set against the same place. Also William Wood, who left New England in 1633, speaks, in his "New England's Prospect," published in 1634, of "a great oyster-bank" in Charles River, and of another in the Mystic, each of which obstructed the navigation. "The oysters," he says, "be great ones, in form of a shoe-horn; some be a foot long; these breed on certain banks that are bare every spring-tide. This fish without the shell is so big that it must admit of a division before you can well get it into your mouth." Oysters are still found there. (See, also, Thomas Morton's "New English Canaan," page 90.)

Our host told us that the sea-clam, or hen, was not easily obtained; it was raked up, but never on the Atlantic side, only cast ashore there in small quantities in storms. The fisherman sometimes wades in water several feet deep, and thrusts a pointed stick into the sand before him. When this enters between the valves of a clam, he closes them on it, and is drawn out. The clam has been known to catch and hold coot and teal which were preying on it. I chanced to be on the bank of the Acushnet at New Bedford one day, watching some ducks, when a man informed me, that, having let out his young ducks to seek their food amid the samphire (Salicornia) and other weeds along the river-side at low tide that morning, at length he noticed that one remained stationary amid the weeds, something preventing it from following the others, and on going to it he found its foot tightly shut in a quahaug'a shell. He took up both together, carried them home, and his wife, opening the shell with a knife, released the duck and cooked the quahaug. The old man said that the great clams were good to eat, but that they always took out a certain part, which was poisonous, before cooking them. "People said it would kill a cat." I did not tell him that I had eaten a large one entire that afternoon, but began to think that I was tougher than a cat. He stated that peddlers came round there, and sometimes tried to sell the women-folks a skimmer, but he told them that their women had got a better skimmer than they could make, in the shell of their clams; it was shaped just right for this purpose. They call them "skim-alls" in some places. He also said that the sun-squawl was poisonous to handle, and when the sailors came across it, they did not meddle with it, but hove it out of their way. I told him that I had handled it that afternoon, and had felt no ill effects as yet. But he said it made the hands itch, especially if they had previously been scratched,—or if I put it into my bosom, I should find out what it was.

He informed us that ice never formed on the back side of the Cape, or not more than once in a century, and but little snow lay there, it being either absorbed or blown or washed away. Sometimes in winter, when the tide was down, the beach was frozen, and afforded a hard road up the back side for some thirty miles, as smooth as a floor. One winter, when he was a boy, he and his father "took right out into the back side before daylight, and walked to Provincetown and back to dinner."

When I asked what they did with all that barren-looking land, where I saw so few cultivated fields,—

"Nothing," he said.

"Then why fence your fields?"

"To keep the sand from blowing and covering up the whole."

"The yellow sand," said he, "has some life in it, but the white little or none."

When, in answer to his questions, I told him that I was a surveyor, he said that those who surveyed his farm were accustomed, where the ground was uneven, to loop up each chain as high as their elbows; that was the allowance they made, and he wished to know if I could tell him why they did not come out according to his deed, or twice alike. He seemed to have more respect for surveyors of the old school, which I did not wonder at. "King George the Third," said he, "laid out a road four rods wide and straight the whole length of the Cape"; but where it was now he could not tell.

This story of the surveyors reminded me of a Long-Islander, who once, when I had made ready to jump from the bow of his boat to the shore, and he thought that I underrated the distance and would fall short,—though I found afterward that he judged of the elasticity of my joints by his own,—told me, that, when he came to a brook which he wanted to get over, he held up one leg, and then, if his foot appeared to cover any part of the opposite bank, he knew that he could jump it. "Why," I told him, "to say nothing of the Mississippi, and other small watery streams, I could blot out a star with my foot, but I would not engage to jump that distance," and asked how he knew when he had got his leg at the right elevation. But he regarded his legs as no less accurate than a pair of screw-dividers or an ordinary quadrant, and appeared to have a painful recollection of every degree and minute in the arc which they described; and he would have had me believe that there was a kind of hitch in his hip-joint which answered the purpose. I suggested that he should connect his two ankles by a string of the proper length, which should be the chord of an arc measuring his jumping ability on horizontal surfaces,—assuming one leg to be a perpendicular to the plane of the horizon, which, however, may have been too bold an assumption in this case. Nevertheless, this was a kind of geometry in the legs which it interested me to hear of.

Our host took pleasure in telling us the names of the ponds, most of which we could see from his windows, and making us repeat them after him, to see if we had got them right. They were Gull Pond, (the largest and a very handsome one, clear and deep, and more than a mile in circumference,) Newcomb's, Swett's, Slough, Horse-Leech, Round, and Herring Ponds,—all connected at high-water, if I do not mistake. The coast-surveyors had come to him for their names, and he told them of one which they had not detected. He said that they were not so high as formerly. There was an earthquake about four years before he was born, which cracked the pans of the ponds, which were of iron, and caused them to settle. I did not remember to have read of this. Innumerable gulls used to resort to them; but the large gulls were now very scarce, for, as he said, the English robbed their nests far in the North, where they breed. He remembered well when gulls were taken in the gull-house, and when small birds were killed by means of a frying-pan and fire at night. His father once lost a valuable horse from this cause. A party from Wellfleet having lighted their fire for this purpose, one dark night, on Billingsgate Island, twenty horses which were pastured there, and this colt among them, being frightened by it, and endeavoring in the dark to cross the passage which separated them from the neighboring beach, and which was then fordable at low tide, were all swept out to sea and drowned. I observed that many horses were still turned out to pasture all summer on the islands and beaches in Wellfleet, Eastham, and Orleans, as a kind of common. He also described the killing of what he called "wild hens" here, after they had gone to roost in the woods, when he was a boy. Perhaps they were "Prairie hens" (pinnated grouse).

He liked the beach pea, (Lathyrus maritimus,) cooked green, as well as the cultivated. He had seen them growing very abundantly in Newfoundland, where also the inhabitants ate them, but he had never been able to obtain any ripe for seed. We read, under the head of Chatham, that, "in 1555, during a time of great scarcity, the people about Orford, in Sussex (England) were preserved from perishing by eating the seeds of this plant, which grew there in great abundance on the sea-coast. Cows, horses, sheep, and goats eat it." But the writer who quoted this could not learn that they had ever been used in Barnstable County.

He had been a voyager, then?

Oh, he had been about the world in his day. He once considered himself a pilot for all our coast; but now, they had changed the names so, he might be bothered.

He gave us to taste what he called the Summer Sweeting, a pleasant apple which he raised, and frequently grafted from, but had never seen growing elsewhere, except once,—three trees on Newfoundland, or at the Bay of Chaleur, I forget which, as he was sailing by. He was sure that he could tell the tree at a distance.

At length the fool, whom my companion called the wizard, came in, muttering between his teeth, "Damn book-peddlers,—all the time talking about books. Better do something. Damn 'em, I'll shoot 'em. Got a doctor down here. Damn him, I'll get a gun and shoot him"; never once holding up his head. Whereat the old man stood up and said in a loud voice, as if he were accustomed to command, and this was not the first time he had been obliged to exert his authority there,—"John, go sit down, mind your business,—we've heard you talk before,—precious little you'll do,—your bark is worse than your bite." But, without minding, John muttered the same gibberish over again, and then sat down at the table which the old folks had left. He ate all there was on it, and then turned to the apples which his aged mother was paring, that she might give her guests some apple-sauce for breakfast; but she drew them away, and sent him off.

When I approached this house the next summer, over the desolate hills between it and the shore, which are worthy to have been the birthplace of Ossian, I saw the wizard in the midst of a cornfield on the hillside, but, as usual, he loomed so strangely that I mistook him for a scarecrow.

This was the merriest old man that we had ever seen, and one of the best-preserved. His style of conversation was coarse and plain enough to have suited Rabelais. He would have made a good Panurge. Or rather he was a sober Silenus, and we were the boys Chromis and Mnasilus who listened to his story.

"Not by Haemonian hills the Thracian bard, Nor awful Phoebus was on Pindus heard With deeper silence or with more regard."

There was a strange mingling of past and present in his conversation, for he had lived under King George, and might have remembered when Napoleon and the moderns generally were born. He said that one day, when the troubles between the Colonies and the mother-country first broke out, as he, a boy of fifteen, was pitching hay out of a cart, one Doane, an old Tory, who was talking with his father, a good Whig, said to him, "Why, Uncle Bill, you might as well undertake to pitch that pond into the ocean with a pitchfork as for the Colonies to undertake to gain their independence." He remembered well General Washington, and how he rode his horse along the streets of Boston, and he stood up to show us how he looked.

"He was a r-a-ther large and portly-looking man, a manly and resolute-looking officer, with a pretty good leg, as he sat on his horse.—There, I'll tell you, this was the way with Washington." Then he jumped up again, and bowed gracefully to right and left, making show as if he were waving his hat. Said he, "That was Washington."

He told us many anecdotes of the Revolution, and was much pleased when we told him that we had read the same in history, and that his account agreed with the written.

"Oh," he said, "I know, I know! I was a young fellow of sixteen, with my ears wide open; and a fellow of that age, you know, is pretty wide awake, and likes to know everything that's going on. Oh, I know!"

He told us the story of the wreck of the Franklin, which took place there the previous spring: how a boy came to his house early in the morning to know whose boat that was by the shore, for there was a vessel in distress; and he, being an old man, first ate his breakfast, and then walked over to the top of the hill by the shore, and sat down there, having found a comfortable seat, to see the ship wrecked. She was on the bar, only a quarter of a mile from him, and still nearer to the men on the beach, who had got a boat ready, but could render no assistance on account of the breakers, for there was a pretty high sea running. There were the passengers all crowded together in the forward part of the ship, and some were getting out of the cabin-windows and were drawn on deck by the others.

"I saw the captain get out his boat," said he; "he had one little one; and then they jumped into it, one after another, down as straight as an arrow. I counted them. There were nine. One was a woman, and she jumped as straight as any of them. Then they shoved off. The sea took them back, one wave went over them, and when they came up there were six still clinging to the boat: I counted them. The next wave turned the boat bottom upward, and emptied them all out. None of them ever came ashore alive. There were the rest of them all crowded together on the forecastle, the other parts of the ship being under water. They had seen all that happened to the boat. At length a heavy sea separated the forecastle from the rest of the wreck, and set it inside of the worst breaker, and the boat was able to reach them, and it saved all that were left, but one woman."

He also told us of the steamer Cambria's getting aground on his shore a few months before we were there, and of her English passengers who roamed over his grounds, and who, he said, thought the prospect from the high hill by the shore "the most delightsome they had ever seen," and also of the pranks which the ladies played with his scoop-net in the ponds. He spoke of these travellers, with their purses full of guineas, just as our Provincial fathers used to speak of British bloods in the time of King George III.

Quid loquar? Why repeat what he told us?

"Aut Scyllam Nisi, quam fama secuta est, Candida succinctam latrantibus inguina monstris, Dulichias vexasse rates, et gurgite in alto Ah timidos nautas canibus lacerasse marinis?"

In the course of the evening I began to feel the potency of the clam which I had eaten, and I was obliged to confess to our host that I was no tougher than the cat he told of; but he answered, that he was a plain-spoken man, and he could tell me that it was all imagination. At any rate, it proved an emetic in my case, and I was made quite sick by it for a short time, while he laughed at my expense. I was pleased to read afterward, in Mourt's Relation of the Landing of the Pilgrims in Provincetown Harbor, these words:—"We found great muscles," (the old editor says that they were undoubtedly sea-clams,) "and very fat and full of sea-pearl; but we could not eat them, for they made us all sick that did eat, as well sailors as passengers, ... but they were soon well again." It brought me nearer to the Pilgrims to be thus reminded by a similar experience that I was so like them. Moreover, it was a valuable confirmation of their story, and I am prepared now to believe every word of Mourt's "Relation." I was also pleased to find that man and the clam lay still at the same angle to one another. But I did not notice sea-pearl. Like Cleopatra, I must have swallowed it. I have since dug these clams on a flat in the Bay, and observed them. They could squirt full ten feet before the wind, as appeared by the marks of the drops on the sand.

"Now I am going to ask you a question," said the old man, "and I don't know as you can tell me; but you are a learned man, and I never had any learning, only what I got by natur."—It was in vain that we reminded him that he could quote Josephus to our confusion.—"I've thought, if I ever met a learned man, I should like to ask him this question. Can you tell me how Axy is spelt, and what it means? Axy," says he; "there's a girl over here is named Axy. Now what is it? What does it mean? Is it Scriptur? I've read my Bible twenty-five years over and over, and I never came across it."

"Did you read it twenty-five years for this object?" I asked.

"Well, how is it spelt? Wife, how is it spelt?"

She said,—"It is in the Bible; I've seen it."

"Well, how do you spell it?"

"I don't know. A c h, ach, s e h, seh,—Achseh."

"Does that spell Axy? Well, do you know what it means?" asked he, turning to me.

"No," I replied,—"I never heard the sound before."

"There was a schoolmaster down here once, and they asked him what it meant, and he said it had no more meaning than a bean-pole."

I told him that I held the same opinion with the schoolmaster. I had been a schoolmaster myself, and had had strange names to deal with. I also heard of such names as Zoheth, Beriah, Amaziah, Bethuel, and Shearjashub, hereabouts.

At length the little boy, who had a seat quite in the chimney-corner, took off his stockings and shoes, warmed his feet, and went off to bed; then the fool followed him; and finally the old man. He proceeded to make preparations for retiring, discoursing meanwhile with Panurgic plainness of speech on the ills to which old humanity is subject. We were a rare haul for him. He could commonly get none but ministers to talk to, though sometimes ten of them at once, and he was glad to meet some of the laity at leisure. The evening was not long enough for him. As I had been sick, the old lady asked if I would not go to bed,—it was getting late for old people; but the old man, who had not yet done his stories, said,—

"You a'n't particular, are you?"

"Oh, no," said I,—"I am in no hurry. I believe I have weathered the Clam cape."

"They are good," said he; "I wish I had some of them now."

"They never hurt me," said the old lady.

"But then you took out the part that killed a cat," said I.

At last we cut him short in the midst of his stories, which he promised to resume in the morning. Yet, after all, one of the old ladies who came into our room in the night to fasten the fire-board, which rattled, as she went out took the precaution to fasten us in. Old women are by nature more suspicious than old men. However, the winds howled around the house, and made the fire-boards as well as the casements rattle well that night. It was probably a windy night for any locality, but we could not distinguish the roar which was proper to the ocean from that which was due to the wind alone.

The sounds which the ocean makes must be very significant and interesting to those who live near it. When I was leaving the shore at this place the next summer, and had got a quarter of a mile distant, ascending a hill, I was startled by a sudden, loud sound from the sea, as if a large steamer were letting off steam by the shore, so that I caught my breath and felt my blood run cold for an instant, and I turned about, expecting to see one of the Atlantic steamers thus far out of her course; but there was nothing unusual to be seen. There was a low bank at the entrance of the Hollow, between me and the ocean, and suspecting that I might have risen into another stratum of air in ascending the hill, which had wafted to me only the ordinary roar of the sea, I immediately descended again, to see if I lost the sound; but, without regard to my ascending or descending, it died away in a minute or two, and yet there was scarcely any wind all the while. The old man said that this was what they called the "rut," a peculiar roar of the sea before the wind changes, which, however, he could, not account for. He thought that he could tell all about the weather from the sounds which the sea made.

Old Josselyn, who came to New England in 1638, has it among his weather-signs, that "the resounding of the sea from the shore, and murmuring of the winds in the woods, without apparent wind, sheweth wind to follow."

Being on another part of the coast one night afterwards, I heard the roar of the surf a mile distant, and the inhabitants said it was a sign that the wind would work round east, and we should have rainy weather. The ocean was heaped up somewhere at the eastward, and this roar was occasioned by its effort to preserve its equilibrium, the wave reaching the shore before the wind. Also the captain of a packet between this country and England told me that he sometimes met with a wave on the Atlantic coming against the wind, perhaps in a calm sea, which indicated that at a distance the wind was blowing from an opposite quarter, but the undulation had travelled faster than it. Sailors tell of "tide-rips" and "ground-swells," which they suppose to have been occasioned by hurricanes and earthquakes, and to have travelled many hundred, and sometimes even two or three thousand miles.

Before sunrise the next morning they let us out again, and I ran over to the beach to see the sun come out of the ocean. The old woman of eighty-four winters was already out in the cold morning wind, bare-headed, tripping about like a young girl, and driving up the cow to milk. She got the breakfast with despatch, and without noise or bustle; and meanwhile the old man resumed his stories.

After breakfast we looked at his clock, which was out of order, and oiled it with some "hen's grease," for want of sweet oil, for he scarcely could believe that we were not tinkers or peddlers; meanwhile he told a story about visions, which had reference to a crack in the clock-case made by frost one night. He was curious to know to what religious sect we belonged. He said that he had been to hear thirteen kinds of preaching in one month, when he was young, but he did not join any of them,—he stuck to his Bible: there was nothing like any of them in his Bible. While I was shaving in the next room, I heard him ask my companion to what sect he belonged, to which he answered,—

"Oh, I belong to the Universal Brotherhood."

"What's that?" he asked,—"Sons o' Temperance?"

Finally, filling our pockets with doughnuts, which he was pleased to find that we called by the same name that he did, and paying for our entertainment, we took our departure; but he followed us out of doors, and made us tell him the names of the vegetables which he had raised from seeds that came out of the Franklin. They were cabbage, broccoli, and parsley. As I had asked him the names of so many things, he tried me in turn with all the plants which grew in his garden, both wild and cultivated. It was about half an acre, which he cultivated wholly himself. Besides the common garden-vegetables, there were Yellow-Dock, Lemon-Balm, Hyssop, Gill-go-over-the-ground, Mouse-ear, Chickweed, Roman Wormwood, Elecampane, and other plants. As we stood there, I saw a fish-hawk stoop to pick a fish out of his pond.

"There," said I, "he has got a fish."

"Well," said the old man, who was looking all the while, but could see nothing, "he didn't dive, he just wet his claws."

And, sure enough, he did not this time, though it is said that they often do, but he merely stooped low enough to pick him out with his talons; but as he bore his shining prey over the bushes, it fell to the ground, and we did not see that he recovered it. That is not their practice.

Thus, having had another crack with the old man, he standing bareheaded under the eaves, he directed us "athwart the fields," and we took to the beach again for another day, it being now late in the morning.

It was but a day or two after this that the safe of the Provincetown Bank was broken open and robbed by two men from the interior, and we learned that our hospitable entertainers did at least transiently harbor the suspicion that we were the men.

* * * * *

CHARLES LAMB'S UNCOLLECTED WRITINGS.

THIRD PAPER.

"I remember," says "The Spectator," "upon Mr. Baxter's death, there was published a sheet of very good sayings, inscribed, 'The Last Words of Mr. Baxter.' The title sold so great a number of these papers that about a week after there came out a second sheet, inscribed, 'More Last Words of Mr. Baxter.'" And so kindly and gladly did the public—or at least that portion of the public that read the "Atlantic Monthly"—receive the specimens of Charles Lamb's uncollected writings, published somewhile since in these pages, that I am induced to print another paper on the same pleasant and entertaining subject.

The success of that piece of "ingenious nonsense," that gem of biographical literature, the unique and veracious "Memoir of Liston," over which the lovers of wit and the lovers of Charles Lamb have had many a good laugh, was so great that Lamb was encouraged to try his hand at another theatrical memoir, and produced a mock and mirthful autobiography of his old friend and favorite comedian, Munden, whom he had previously immortalized in one of the best and most admired of the "Essays of Elia."

Those who enjoyed the biography of Liston will chuckle over the autobiography of Munden. It was certainly a happy idea to represent Munden as writing a sketch of his life,—not to gratify his own vanity, or for the pleasure and entertainment of the public, but solely and purposely to prevent the truthful and matter-of-fact biographer of Liston from making the old player the subject of a biographical work. The veteran actor's vehement protests against being represented as a Presbyterian or Anabaptist, and his brief, but pungent comments on certain passages in the Liston biography, are delightful. Methinks I see the old man,—

"The gray-haired man of glee,"—

the great and wonderful impersonator of the "Cobbler of Preston" and "Old Dozey,"—methinks I see this fine actor, this genial and jovial comedian, and his son, gravely and carefully examining the great map of Kent in search of Lupton Magna!

Leigh Hunt, in his Autobiography, speaking of some of Elia's contributions to the "London Magazine," thus mentions these two "he-children" of Lamb's:—

"He wrote in the same magazine two lives of Liston and Munden, which the public took for serious, and which exhibit an extraordinary jumble of imaginary facts and truth of by-painting. Munden he made born at "Stoke Pogis"; the very sound of which was like the actor speaking and digging his words."

* * * * *

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MR. MUNDEN.

In a Letter to the Editor of the "London Magazine."

Hark'ee, Mr. Editor. A word in your ear. They tell me you are going to put me in print,—in print, Sir; to publish my life. What is my life to you, Sir? What is it to you whether I ever lived at all? My life is a very good life, Sir. I am insured at the Pelican, Sir. I am threescore years and six,—six; mark me, Sir: but I can play Polonius, which, I believe, few of your corre—correspondents can do, Sir. I suspect tricks, Sir; I smell a rat: I do, I do. You would cog the die upon us: you would, you would, Sir. But I will forestall you, Sir. You would be deriving me from William the Conqueror, with a murrain to you. It is no such thing, Sir. The town shall know better, Sir. They begin to smoke your flams, Sir. Mr. Liston may be born where he pleases, Sir; but I will not be born at Lup—Lupton Magna for anybody's pleasure, Sir. My son and I have looked over the great map of Kent together, and we can find no such place as you would palm upon us, Sir,—palm upon us, I say. Neither Magna nor Parva, as my son says; and he knows Latin, Sir,—Latin. If you write my life true, Sir, you must set down, that I, Joseph Munden, comedian, came into the world upon Allhallows Day, Anno Domini 1759,—1759; no sooner nor later, Sir: and I saw the first light—the first light, remember, Sir—at Stoke Pogis,—Stoke Pogis, comitatu Bucks, and not at Lup—Lup Magna, which I believe to be no better than moonshine,—moonshine; do you mark me, Sir? I wonder you can put such flim-flams upon us, Sir: I do, I do. It does not become you, Sir: I say it,—I say it. And my father was an honest tradesman, Sir: he dealt in malt and hops, Sir; and was a Corporation-man, Sir; and of the Church of England, Sir; and no Presbyterian, nor Ana—Anabaptist, Sir; however you may be disposed to make honest people believe to the contrary, Sir. Your bams are found out, Sir. The town will be your stale puts no longer, Sir; and you must not send us jolly fellows, Sir,—we that are comedians, Sir,—you must not send us into groves and Charn—Charnwoods a-moping, Sir. Neither Charns, nor charnel-houses, Sir. It is not our constitutions, Sir: I tell it you,—I tell it you. I was a droll dog from my cradle. I came into the world tittering, and the midwife tittered, and the gossips spilt their caudle with tittering; and when I was brought to the font, the parson could not christen me for tittering. So I was never more than half baptized. And when I was little Joey, I made 'em all titter; there was not a melancholy face to be seen in Pogis. Pure nature, Sir. I was born a comedian. Old Screwup, the undertaker, could tell you, Sir, if he were living. Why, I was obliged to be locked up every time there was to be a funeral at Pogis. I was, I was, Sir. I used to grimace at the mutes, as he called it, and put 'em out with my mops and my mows, till they couldn't stand at a door for me. And when I was locked up, with nothing but a cat in my company, I followed my bent with trying to make her laugh; and sometimes she would, and sometimes she would not. And my schoolmaster could make nothing of me: I had only to thrust my tongue in my cheek,—in my cheek, Sir,—and the rod dropped from his fingers; and so my education was limited, Sir. And I grew up a young fellow, and it was thought convenient to enter me upon some course of life that should make me serious; but it wouldn't do, Sir. And I articled to a dry-salter. My father gave forty pounds premium with me, Sir. I can show the indent—dent—dentures, Sir. But I was born to be a comedian, Sir: so I ran away, and listed with the players, Sir; and I topt my parts at Amersham and Gerrard's Cross, and played my own father to his face, in his own town of Pogis, in the part of Gripe, when I was not full seventeen years of age; and he did not know me again, but he knew me afterwards; and then he laughed, and I laughed, and, what is better, the dry-salter laughed, and gave me up my articles for the joke's sake: so that I came into court afterwards with clean hands,—with clean hands; do you see, Sir?

[Here the manuscript becomes illegible for two or three sheets onwards, which we presume to be occasioned by the absence of Mr. Munden, jun., who clearly transcribed it for the press thus far. The rest (with the exception of the concluding paragraph, which seemingly is resumed in the first handwriting) appears to contain a confused account of some lawsuit in which the elder Munden was engaged; with a circumstantial history of the proceedings on a case of breach of promise of marriage, made to or by (we cannot pick out which) Jemima Munden, spinster, probably the comedian's cousin, for it does not appear he had any sister; with a few dates, rather better preserved, of this great actor's engagements,—as "Cheltenham, [spelt Cheltnam,] 1776," "Bath, 1779," "London, 1789,"—together with stage-anecdotes of Messrs. Edwin, Wilson, Lee, Lewis, etc.; over which we have strained our eyes to no purpose, in the hope of presenting something amusing to the public. Towards the end, the manuscript brightens up a little, as we have said, and concludes in the following manner.]

—— stood before them for six-and-thirty years, [we suspect that Mr. Munden is here speaking of his final leave-taking of the stage,] and to be dismissed at last. But I was heart-whole,—heart-whole to the last, Sir. What though a few drops did course themselves down the old veteran's cheeks? who could help it, Sir? I was a giant that night, Sir, and could have played fifty parts, each as arduous as Dozey. My faculties were never better, Sir. But I was to be laid upon the shelf. It did not suit the public to laugh with their old servant any longer, Sir. [Here some moisture has blotted a sentence or two.] But I can play Polonius still, Sir: I can, I can.

Your servant, Sir, JOSEPH MUNDEN.

* * * * *

In the "Reflector," a short-lived periodical set up by Leigh Hunt, and in which Lamb's quaint and beautiful poem, "A Farewell to Tobacco," and his masterly critical essays on "The Tragedies of Shakspeare," and on "The Genius of Hogarth," and other of his early writings, appeared, I find the following characteristic article from Elia's pen.

The reader will observe (and smile as he observes) that there is a great difference between the "good clerk" of fifty years ago and the "good clerk" of to-day. He of yesterday is a wonderfully simple, humble, automaton-like person, in comparison with the brisk, dashing, independent "votaries of the desk" of the year eighteen hundred and sixty-four.

* * * * *

THE GOOD CLERK: A CHARACTER.

THE GOOD CLERK.—He writeth a fair and swift hand, and is competently versed in the four first rules of arithmetic, in the Rule of Three, (which is sometimes called the Golden Rule,) and in Practice. We mention these things that we may leave no room for cavillers to say that anything essential hath been omitted in our definition; else, to speak the truth, these are but ordinary accomplishments, and such as every understrapper at a desk is commonly furnished with. The character we treat of soareth higher.

He is clean and neat in his person, not from a vainglorious desire of setting himself forth to advantage in the eyes of the other sex,—with which vanity too many of our young sparks nowadays are infected,—but to do credit, as we say, to the office. For this reason, he evermore taketh care that his desk or his books receive no soil; the which things he is commonly as solicitous to have fair and unblemished as the owner of a fine horse is to have him appear in good keep.

He riseth early in the morning,—not because early rising conduceth to health, (though he doth not altogether despise that consideration,) but chiefly to the intent that he may be first at the desk. There is his post, there he delighteth to be, unless when his meals or necessity calleth him away; which time he alway esteemeth as lost, and maketh as short as possible.

He is temperate in eating and drinking, that he may preserve a clear head and steady hand for his master's service. He is also partly induced to this observation of the rules of temperance by his respect for religion and the laws of his country; which things, it may once for all be noted, do add especial assistances to his actions, but do not and cannot furnish the main spring or motive thereto. His first ambition, as appeareth all along, is to be a good clerk; his next, a good Christian, a good patriot, etc.

Correspondent to this, he keepeth himself honest, not for fear of the laws, but because he hath observed how unseemly an article it maketh in the day-book or ledger when a sum is set down lost or missing; it being his pride to make these books to agree and to tally, the one side with the other, with a sort of architectural symmetry and correspondence.

He marrieth, or marrieth not, as best suiteth with his employer's views. Some merchants do the rather desire to have married men in their counting-houses, because they think the married state a pledge for their servants' integrity, and an incitement to them to be industrious; and it was an observation of a late Lord-Mayor of London, that the sons of clerks do generally prove clerks themselves, and that merchants encouraging persons in their employ to marry, and to have families, was the best method of securing a breed of sober, industrious young men attached to the mercantile interest. Be this as it may, such a character as we have been describing will wait till the pleasure of his employer is known on this point, and regulateth his desires by the custom of the house or firm to which he belongeth.

He avoideth profane oaths and jesting, as so much time lost from his employ. What spare time he hath for conversation, which in a counting-house such as we have been supposing can be but small, he spendeth in putting seasonable questions to such of his fellows (and sometimes respectfully to the master himself) who can give him information respecting the price and quality of goods, the state of exchange, or the latest improvements in book-keeping; thus making the motion of his lips, as well as of his fingers, subservient to his master's interest. Not that be refuseth a brisk saying, or a cheerful sally of wit, when it comes unforced, is free of offence, and hath a convenient brevity. For this reason, he hath commonly some such phrase as this in his mouth,—

"It's a slovenly look To blot your book."

Or,

"Red ink for ornament, black for use: The best of things are open to abuse."

So upon the eve of any great holiday, of which he keepeth one or two at least every year, he will merrily say, in the hearing of a confidential friend, but to none other,—

"All work and no play' Makes Jack a dull boy."

Or,

"A bow always bent must crack at last."

But then this must always be understood to be spoken confidentially, and, as we say, under the rose.

Lastly, his dress is plain, without singularity,—with no other ornament than the quill, which is the badge of his function, stuck behind the dexter ear, and this rather for convenience of having it at hand, when he hath been called away from his desk, and expecteth to resume his seat there again shortly, than from any delight which he taketh in foppery or ostentation. The color of his clothes is generally noted to be black rather than brown, brown rather than blue or green. His whole deportment is staid, modest, and civil. His motto is "Regularity."

* * * * *

This character was sketched in an interval of business, to divert some of the melancholy hours of a counting-house. It is so little a creature of fancy, that it is scarce anything more than a recollection of some of those frugal and economical maxims which about the beginning of the last century (England's meanest period) were endeavored to be inculcated and instilled into the breasts of the London apprentices[E] by a class of instructors who might not inaptly be termed "The Masters of Mean Morals." The astonishing narrowness and illiberality of the lessons contained in some of those books is inconceivable by those whose studies have not led them that way, and would almost induce one to subscribe to the hard censure which Drayton has passed upon the mercantile spirit,—

"The gripple merchant, born to be the curse Of this brave isle."

In the laudable endeavor to eke out "a something contracted income," Lamb, in his younger days, essayed to write lottery-puffs,—(Byron, we know, was accused of writing lottery-puffs,)—but he did not succeed very well in the task. His samples were returned on his hands, as "done in too severe and terse a style." Some Grub-Street hack—a nineteenth-century Tom Brown or Mr. Dash—succeeded in composing these popular and ingenious productions; but the man who wrote the Essays of Elia could not write a successful lottery-puff. At this exult, O mediocrity! and take courage, man of genius!

Although Elia was an unsuccessful lottery-puffer, he always took special interest in lotteries, and was present at the drawing of many of them.

Mr. Bickerstaff, we remember,—though I fear that in these days the pleasant and profitable pages of "The Father" are hardly more known to the generality of readers than the lost books of Livy or the missing cantos of the "Faerie Queene,"—possibly we may remember, I say, that the wise, witty, learned, eloquent, delightful Mr. Bickerstaff, in order to raise the requisite sum to purchase a ticket in the (then) newly erected lottery, sold off a couple of globes and a telescope (the venerable Isaac was a Professor of Palmistry and Astrology, as well as Censor of Great Britain); and finding by a learned calculation that it was but a hundred and fifty thousand to one against his being worth one thousand pounds for thirty-two years, he spent many days and nights in preparing his mind for this change of fortune.

And albeit I do not believe that Lamb, in his poorest and most needy days, was ever tempted by any Alnaschar-dreams of wealth to exchange the raggedest and least valuable of his "midnight darlings" for the wherewithal to purchase lottery-tickets, I dare say the money which Elia had saved for the purchase of some choice and long-coveted old folio or other went into the coffers of the lottery-dealers. Though Lamb drew nothing but blanks, "or those more vexatious tantalizers of the spirit, denominated small prizes," yet he held himself largely indebted to the Lottery, and, upon its abolition in England in 1825, he wrote a long, eloquent, pathetic discourse on the great departed. It appeared in Colburn's "New Monthly Magazine," and is, I think, a very pleasant, entertaining paper, worthy of its subject, and not unworthy of the pen of Charles Lamb. I take great pleasure in introducing the article to the readers of the "Atlantic."

* * * * *

THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEFUNCT.[F]

"Nought but a blank remains, a dead void space, A step of life that promised such a race."

—Dryden.

Napoleon has now sent us back from the grave sufficient echoes of his living renown: the twilight of posthumous fame has lingered long enough over the spot where the sun of his glory set; and his name must at length repose in the silence, if not in the darkness of night. In this busy and evanescent scene, other spirits of the age are rapidly snatched away, claiming our undivided sympathies and regrets, until in turn they yield to some newer and more absorbing grief. Another name is now added to the list of the mighty departed,—a name whose influence upon the hopes and fears, the fates and fortunes of our countrymen, has rivalled, and perhaps eclipsed, that of the defunct "child and champion of Jacobinism," while it is associated with all the sanctions of legitimate government, all the sacred authorities of social order and our most holy religion. We speak of one, indeed, under whose warrant heavy and incessant contributions were imposed upon our fellow-citizens, but who exacted nothing without the signet and the sign-manual of most devout Chancellors of the Exchequer. Not to dally longer with the sympathies of our readers, we think it right to premonish them that we are composing an epicedium upon no less distinguished a personage than the Lottery, whose last breath, after many penultimate puffs, has been sobbed forth by sorrowing contractors, as if the world itself were about to be converted into a blank. There is a fashion of eulogy, as well as of vituperation, and, though the Lottery stood for some time in the latter predicament, we hesitate not to assert that "multis ille bonis flebilis occidit." Never have we joined in the senseless clamor which condemned the only tax whereto we became voluntary contributors, the only resource which gave the stimulus without the danger or infatuation of gambling, the only alembic which in these plodding days sublimized our imaginations, and filled them with more delicious dreams than ever flitted athwart the sensorium of Alnaschar.

Never can the writer forget, when, as a child, he was hoisted upon a servant's shoulder in Guildhall, and looked down upon the installed and solemn pomp of the then drawing Lottery. The two awful cabinets of iron, upon whose massy and mysterious portals the royal initials were gorgeously emblazoned, as if, after having deposited the unfulfilled prophecies within, the King himself had turned the lock, and still retained the key in his pocket,—the blue-coat boy, with his naked arm, first converting the invisible wheel, and then diving into the dark recess for a ticket,—the grave and reverend faces of the commissioners eying the announced number,—the scribes below calmly committing it to their huge books,—the anxious countenances of the surrounding populace,—while the giant figures of Gog and Magog, like presiding deities, looked down with a grim silence upon the whole proceeding,—constituted altogether a scene which, combined with the sudden wealth supposed to be lavished from those inscrutable wheels, was well calculated to impress the imagination of a boy with reverence and amazement. Jupiter, seated between the two fatal urns of good and evil, the blind goddess with her cornucopia, the Parcae wielding the distaff, the thread of life, and the abhorred shears, seemed but dim and shadowy abstractions of mythology, when I had gazed upon an assemblage exercising, as I dreamt, a not less eventful power, and all presented to me in palpable and living operation. Reason and experience, ever at their old spiteful work of catching and destroying the bubbles which youth delighted to follow, have indeed dissipated much of this illusion; but my mind so far retained the influence of that early impression, that I have ever since continued to deposit my humble offerings at its shrine, whenever the ministers of the Lottery went forth with type and trumpet to announce its periodical dispensations; and though nothing has been doled out to me from its uudiscerning coffers but blanks, or those more vexatious tantalizers of the spirit denominated small prizes, yet do I hold myself largely indebted to this most generous diffuser of universal happiness. Ingrates that we are, are we to be thankful for no benefits that are not palpable to sense, to recognize no favors that are not of marketable value, to acknowledge no wealth unless it can be counted with the five fingers? If we admit the mind to be the sole depositary of genuine joy, where is the bosom that has not been elevated into a temporary Elysium by the magic of the Lottery? Which of us has not converted his ticket, or even his sixteenth share of one, into a nest-egg of Hope, upon which he has sat brooding in the secret roosting-places of his heart, and hatched it into a thousand fantastical apparitions?

What a startling revelation of the passions, if all the aspirations engendered by the Lottery could be made manifest! Many an impecuniary epicure has gloated over his locked-up warrant for future wealth, as a means of realizing the dream of his namesake in the "Alchemist":—

"My meat shall all come in in Indian shells,— Dishes of agate set in gold, and studded With emeralds, sapphires, hyacinths, and rubies; The tongues of carps, dormice, and camels' heels, Boiled i' the spirit of Sol, and dissolved in pearl (Apicius' diet 'gainst the epilepsy); And I will eat these broths with spoons of amber Headed with diamant and carbuncle. My footboy shall eat pheasants, calvered salmons, Knots, goodwits, lampreys. I myself will have The beards of barbels served; instead of salads, Oiled mushrooms, and the swelling unctuous paps Of a fat pregnant sow, newly cut off, Dressed with an exquisite and poignant sauce, For which I'll say unto my cook, 'There's gold: Go forth, and he a knight.'"

Many a doting lover has kissed the scrap of paper whose promissory shower of gold was to give up to him his otherwise unattainable Danae; Nimrods have transformed the same narrow symbol into a saddle by which they have been enabled to bestride the backs of peerless hunters; while nymphs have metamorphosed its Protean form into

"Rings, gauds, conceits, Knacks, trifles, nosegays, sweetmeats,"

and all the braveries of dress, to say nothing of the obsequious husband, the two-footmaned carriage, and the opera-box. By the simple charm of this numbered and printed rag, gamesters have, for a time at least, recovered their losses, spendthrifts have cleared off mortgages from their estates, the imprisoned debtor has leaped over his lofty boundary of circumscription and restraint and revelled in all the joys of liberty and fortune, the cottage-walls have swelled out into more goodly proportion than those of Baucis and Philemon, poverty has tasted the luxuries of competence, labor has lolled at ease in a perpetual armchair of idleness, sickness has been bribed into banishment, life has been invested with new charms, and death deprived of its former terrors. Nor have the affections been less gratified than the wants, appetites, and ambitions of mankind. By the conjurations of the same potent spell, kindred have lavished anticipated benefits upon one another, and charity upon all. Let it be termed a delusion,—a fool's Paradise is better than the wise man's Tartarus; be it branded as an ignis-fatuus,—it was at least a benevolent one, which, instead of beguiling its followers into swamps, caverns, and pitfalls, allured them on with all the blandishments of enchantment to a garden of Eden, an ever-blooming Elysium of delight. True, the pleasures it bestowed were evanescent: but which of our joys are permanent? and who so inexperienced as not to know that anticipation is always of higher relish than reality, which strikes a balance both in our sufferings and enjoyments? "The fear of ill exceeds the ill we fear"; and fruition, in the same proportion, invariably falls short of hope. "Men are but children of a larger growth," who may amuse themselves for a long time in gazing at the reflection of the moon in the water; but, if they jump in to grasp it, they may grope forever, and only get the farther from their object. He is the wisest who keeps feeding upon the future, and refrains as long as possible from undeceiving himself by converting his pleasant speculations into disagreeable certainties.

The true mental epicure always purchased his ticket early, and postponed inquiry into its fate to the last possible moment, during the whole of which intervening period he had an imaginary twenty thousand locked up in his desk: and was not this well worth all the money? Who would scruple to give twenty pounds interest for even the ideal enjoyment of as many thousands during two or three months? "Crede quod habes, et habes"; and the usufruct of such a capital is sorely not dear at such a price. Some years ago, a gentleman, in passing along Cheapside, saw the figures 1,069, of which number he was the sole proprietor, flaming on the window of a lottery-office as a capital prize. Somewhat flurried by this discovery, not less welcome than unexpected, he resolved to walk round St. Paul's that he might consider in what way to communicate the happy tidings to his wife and family; but, upon repassing the shop, he observed that the number was altered to 10,069, and, upon inquiry, had the mortification to learn that his ticket was a blank, and had only been stuck up in the window by a mistake of the clerk. This effectually calmed his agitation; but he always speaks of himself as having once possessed twenty thousand pounds, and maintains that his ten-minutes' walk round St. Paul's was worth ten times the purchase-money of the ticket. A prize thus obtained has, moreover, this special advantage: it is beyond the reach of fate; it cannot be squandered; bankruptcy cannot lay siege to it; friends cannot pull it down, nor enemies blow it up; it bears a charmed life, and none of woman born can break its integrity, even by the dissipation of a single fraction. Show me the property in these perilous times that is equally compact and impregnable. We can no longer become enriched for a quarter of an hour; we can no longer succeed in such splendid failures: all our chances of making such a miss have vanished with the last of the Lotteries.

Life will now become a flat, prosaic routine of matter-of-fact; and sleep itself, erst so prolific of numerical configurations and mysterious stimulants to lottery-adventure, will be disfurnished of its figures and figments. People will cease to harp upon the one lucky number suggested in a dream, and which forms the exception, while they are scrupulously silent upon the ten thousand falsified dreams which constitute the rule. Morpheus will stifle Cocker with a handful of poppies, and our pillows will be no longer haunted by the book of numbers.

And who, too, shall maintain the art and mystery of puffing in all its pristine glory, when the lottery-professors shall have abandoned its cultivation? They were the first, as they will assuredly be the last, who fully developed the resources of that ingenious art,—who cajoled and decoyed the most suspicious and wary reader into a perusal of their advertisements by devices of endless variety and cunning,—who baited their lurking schemes with midnight murders, ghost-stories, crim-cons, bon-mots, balloons, dreadful catastrophes, and every diversity of joy and sorrow, to catch newspaper-gudgeons. Ought not such talents to be encouraged? Verily the abolitionists have much to answer for!

And now, having established the felicity of all those who gained imaginary prizes, let us proceed to show that the equally numerous class who were presented with real blanks have not less reason to consider themselves happy. Most of us have cause to be thankful for that which is bestowed; but we have all, probably, reason to be still more grateful for that which is withheld, and more especially for our being denied the sudden possession of riches. In the Litany, indeed, we Call upon the Lord to deliver us "in all time of our wealth"; but how few of us are sincere in deprecating such a calamity! Massinger's Luke, and Ben Jonson's Sir Epicure Mammon, and Pope's Sir Balaam, and our own daily observation, might convince us that the Devil "now tempts by making rich, not making poor." We may read in the "Guardian" a circumstantial account of a man who was utterly ruined by gaining a capital prize; we may recollect what Dr. Johnson said to Garrick, when the latter was making a display of his wealth at Hampton Court,—"Ah, David! David! these are the things that make a death-bed terrible"; we may recall the Scripture declaration as to the difficulty a rich man finds in entering into the kingdom of heaven; and, combining all these denunciations against opulence, let us heartily congratulate one another upon our lucky escape from the calamity of a twenty or thirty thousand pound prize! The fox in the fable, who accused the unattainable grapes of sourness, was more of a philosopher than we are generally willing to allow. He was an adept in that species of moral alchemy which turns everything to gold, and converts disappointment itself into a ground of resignation and content. Such we have shown to be the great lesson inculcated by the Lottery, when rightly contemplated; and if we might parody M. de Chateaubriand's jingling expression, "Le Roi est mort: vive le Roi!" we should be tempted to exclaim, "The Lottery is no more: long live the Lottery!"

* * * * *

The foregoing article, as the reader may possibly remember, was not Lamb's only contribution to the "New Monthly Magazine." Indeed, it was in that pleasant and popular periodical,—then at the height of its popularity, with many of the most admired writers in Great Britain among its contributors, and edited by the elegant and polished poet who sang the "Pleasures of Hope,"—it was in this magazine that Elia's admirable "Popular Fallacies" were first given to the world. (I fear, however, that the exquisite grace, beauty, and polish of these delightful papers were hardly appreciated by the readers of the "New Monthly.") And it was for this publication that he undertook to write a novel. Although Elia had but little fancy for novels himself, and in the writing of them would not have done justice, perhaps, to his rare genius, yet, nevertheless, I suspect that all admirers of "Rosamund Gray," if not all readers of novels, regret that he did not complete the work of fiction he began for the "New Monthly Magazine." Judging from the specimen that was published, it would have been, had the author seen fit to finish it, quite an original and very characteristic production. Here is the first chapter of the story. Though advertised to be continued, this is all of it that ever appeared.

* * * * *

REMINISCENCES OF JUKE JUDKINS, ESQ., OF BIRMINGHAM

I am the only son of a considerable brazier in Birmingham, who, dying in 1803, left me successor to the business, with no other incumbrance than a sort of rent-charge, which I am enjoined to pay out of it, of ninety-three pounds sterling per annum, to his widow, my mother, and which the improving state of the concern, I bless God, has hitherto enabled me to discharge with punctuality. (I say, I am enjoined to pay the said sum, but not strictly obligated: that is to say, as the will is worded, I believe the law would relieve me from the payment of it; but the wishes of a dying parent should in some sort have the effect of law.) So that, though the annual profits of my business, on an average of the last three or four years, would appear to an indifferent observer, who should inspect my shop-books, to amount to the sum of one thousand three hundred and three pounds, odd shillings, the real proceeds in that time have fallen short of that sum to the amount of the aforesaid payment of ninety-three pounds sterling annually.

I was always my father's favorite. He took a delight, to the very last, in recounting the little sagacious tricks and innocent artifices of my childhood. One manifestation thereof I never heard him repeat without tears of joy trickling down his cheeks. It seems, that, when I quitted the parental roof, (August 27th, 1788,) being then six years and not quite a month old, to proceed to the Free School at Warwick, where my father was a sort of trustee, my mother—as mothers are usually provident on these occasions—had stuffed the pockets of the coach, which was to convey me and six more children of my own growth that were going to be entered along with me at the same seminary, with a prodigious quantity of gingerbread, which I remember my father said was more than was needed: and so, indeed, it was; for, if I had been to eat it all myself, it would have got stale and mouldly before it had been half spent. The consideration whereof set me upon my contrivances how I might secure to myself as much of the gingerbread as would keep good for the next two or three days, and yet none of the rest in a manner be wasted. I had a little pair of pocket-compasses, which I usually carried about me for the purpose of making draughts and measurements, at which I was always very ingenious, of the various engines and mechanical inventions in which such a town as Birmingham abounded. By the means of these, and a small penknife which my father had given me, I cut out the one half of the cake, calculating that the remainder would reasonably serve my turn; and subdividing it into many little slices, which were curious to see for the neatness and niceness of their proportion, I sold it out in so many pennyworths to my young companions as served us all the way to Warwick, which is a distance of some twenty miles from this, town: and very merry, I assure you, we made ourselves with it, feasting all the way. By this honest stratagem, I put double the prime cost of the gingerbread into my purse, and secured as much as I thought would keep good and moist for my next two or three days' eating. When I told this to my parents, on their first visit to me at Warwick, my father (good man) patted me on the cheek, and stroked my head, and seemed as if he could never make enough of me; but my mother unaccountably burst into tears, and said "it was a very niggardly action," or some such expression, and that "she would rather it would please God to take me"—meaning, God help me, that I should die—"than that she should live to see me grow up a mean man": which shows the difference of parent from parent, and how some mothers are more harsh and intolerant to their children than some fathers,—when we might expect quite the contrary. My father, however, loaded me with presents from that time, which made me the envy of my school-fellows. As I felt this growing disposition in them, I naturally sought to avert it by all the means in my power; and from that time I used to eat my little packages of fruit and other nice things in a corner, so privately that I was never found out. Once, I remember, I had a huge apple sent me, of that sort which they call cats'-heads. I concealed this all day under my pillow; and at night, but not before I had ascertained that my bed-fellow was sound asleep,—which I did by pinching him rather smartly two or three times, which he seemed to perceive no more than a dead person, though once or twice he made a motion as if he would turn, which frightened me,—I say, when I had made all sure, I fell to work upon my apple; and though it was as big as an ordinary man's two fists, I made shift to get through it before it was time to get up. And a more delicious feast I never made,—thinking all night what a good parent I had (I mean my father) to send me so many nice things, when the poor lad that lay by me had no parent or friend in the world to send him anything nice; and thinking of his desolate condition, I munched and munched as silently as I could, that I might not set him a-longing, if he overheard me. And yet, for all this considerateness and attention to other people's feelings; I was never much a favorite with my school-fellows; which I have often wondered at, seeing that I never defrauded any one of them of the value of a halfpenny, or told stories of them to their master, as some little lying boys would do, but was ready to do any of them all the services in my power that were consistent with my own well-doing. I think nobody can be expected to go further than that.—But I am detaining my reader too long in the recording of my juvenile days. It is time that I should go forward to a season when it became natural that I should have some thoughts of marrying, and, as they say, settling in the world. Nevertheless, my reflections on what I may call the boyish period of my life may have their use to some readers. It is pleasant to trace the man in the boy, to observe shoots of generosity in those young years, and to watch the progress of liberal sentiments, and what I may call a genteel way of thinking, which is discernible in some children at a very early age, and usually lays the foundation of all that is praiseworthy in the manly character afterwards.

With the warmest inclinations towards that way of life, and a serious conviction of its superior advantages over a single one, it has been the strange infelicity of my lot never to have entered into the respectable estate of matrimony. Yet I was once very near it. I courted a young woman in my twenty-seventh year,—for so early I began to feel symptoms of the tender passion! She was well to do in the world, as they call it, but yet not such a fortune as, all things considered, perhaps I might have pretended to. It was not my own choice altogether; but my mother very strongly pressed me to it. She was always putting it to me, that I "had comings-in sufficient,—that I need not stand upon a portion"; though the young woman, to do her justice, had considerable expectations, which yet did not quite come up to my mark, as I told you before. She had this saying always in her mouth: that I "had money enough; that it was time I enlarged my housekeeping, and to show a spirit befitting my circumstances." In short, what with her importunities, and my own desires in part cooeperating,—for, as I said, I was not yet quite twenty-seven, a time when the youthful feelings may be pardoned, if they show a little impetuosity,—I resolved, I say, upon all these considerations, to set about the business of courting in right earnest. I was a young man then, and having a spice of romance in my character, (as the reader doubtless has observed long ago,) such as that sex is apt to be taken with, I had reason in no long time to think my addresses were anything but disagreeable.

Certainly the happiest part of a young man's life is the time when he is going a-courting. All the generous impulses are then awake, and he feels a double existence in participating his hopes and wishes with another being. Return yet again for a brief moment, ye visionary views, transient enchantments! ye moonlight rambles with Cleora in the Silent Walk at Vauxhall,—(N.B.—About a mile from Birmingham, and resembling the gardens of that name near London, only that the price of admission is lower,)—when the nightingale has suspended her notes in June to listen to our loving discourses, while the moon was overhead! (for we generally used to take our tea at Cleora's mother's before we set out, not so much to save expenses as to avoid the publicity of a repast in the gardens,—coming in much about the time of half-price, as they call it)—ye soft intercommunions of soul, when, exchanging mutual vows, we prattled of coming felicities! The loving disputes we have had under those trees, when this house (planning our future settlement) was rejected, because, though cheap, it was dull, and the other house was given up, because, though agreeably situated, it was too high-rented,—one was too much in the heart of the town, another was too far from business. These minutiae will seem impertinent to the aged and the prudent. I write them only to the young. Young lovers, and passionate as being young, (such were Cleora and I then,) alone can understand me. After some weeks wasted, as I may now call it, in this sort of amorous colloquy, we at length fixed upon the house in the High Street, No. 203, just vacated by the death of Mr. Hutton of this town, for our future residence. I had till that time lived in lodgings (only renting a shop for business) to be near to my mother,—near, I say: not in the same house with her, for that would have been to introduce confusion into our housekeeping, which it was desirable to keep separate. Oh, the loving wrangles, the endearing differences I had with Cleora, before we could quite make up our minds to the house that was to receive us!—I pretending, for argument's sake, that the rent was too high, and she insisting that the taxes were moderate in proportion, and love at last reconciling us in the same choice. I think at that time, moderately speaking, she might have had anything out of me for asking. I do not, nor shall ever, regret that my character at that time was marked with a tinge of prodigality. Age comes fast enough upon us, and, in its good time, will prune away all that is inconvenient in these excesses. Perhaps it is right that it should do so. Matters, as I said, were ripening to a conclusion between us, only the house was yet not absolutely taken. Some necessary arrangements, which the ardor of my youthful impetuosity could hardly brook at that time (love and youth will be precipitate)—some preliminary arrangements, I say, with the landlord, respecting fixtures,—very necessary things to be considered in a young man about to settle in the world, though not very accordant with the impatient state of my then passions,—some obstacles about the valuation of the fixtures,—had hitherto precluded (and I shall always think providentially) my final closes with his offer, when one of those accidents, which, unimportant in themselves, often arise to give a turn to the most serious intentions of our life, intervened, and put an end at once to my projects of wiving and of housekeeping.

I was never much given to theatrical entertainments,—that is, at no time of my life was I ever what they call a regular play-goer; but on some occasion of a benefit-night, which was expected to be very productive, and indeed turned out so, Cleora expressing a desire to be present, I could do no less than offer, as I did very willingly, to squire her and her mother to the pit. At that time it was not customary in our town for tradesfolk, except some of the very topping ones, to sit, as they now do, in the boxes. At the time appointed I waited upon the ladies, who had brought with them a young man, a distant relation, whom it seems they had invited to be of the party. This a little disconcerted me, as I had about me barely silver enough to pay for our three selves at the door, and did not at first know that their relation had proposed paying for himself. However, to do the young man justice, he not only paid for himself, but for the old lady besides,—leaving me only to pay for two, as it were. In our passage to the theatre, the notice of Cleora was attracted to some orange-wenches that stood about the doors vending their commodities. She was leaning on my arm; and I could feel her every now and then giving me a nudge, as it is called, which I afterwards discovered were hints that I should buy some oranges. It seems, it is a custom at Birmingham, and perhaps in other places, when a gentleman treats ladies to the play, especially when a full night is expected, and that the house will be inconveniently warm, to provide them with this kind of fruit, oranges being esteemed for their cooling property. But how could I guess at that, never having treated ladies to a play before, and being, as I said, quite a novice at these kind of entertainments? At last she spoke plain out, and begged that I would buy some of "those oranges," pointing to a particular barrow. But when I came to examine the fruit, I did not think that the quality of it was answerable to the price. In this way I handled several baskets of them; but something in them all displeased me. Some had thin rinds, and some were plainly over-ripe, which is as great a fault as not being ripe enough; and I could not (what they call) make a bargain. While I stood haggling with the women, secretly determining to put off my purchase till I should get within the theatre, where I expected we should have better choice, the young man, the cousin, (who, it seems, had left us without my missing him,) came running to us with his pockets stuffed out with oranges, inside and out, as they say. It seems, not liking the look of the barrow-fruit any more than myself, he had slipped away to an eminent fruiterer's, about three doors distant, which I never had the sense to think of, and had laid out a matter of two shillings in some of the best St. Michael's, I think, I ever tasted. What a little hinge, as I said before, the most important affairs in life may turn upon! The mere inadvertence to the fact that there was an eminent fruiterer's within three doors of us, though we had just passed it without the thought once occurring to me, which he had taken advantage of, lost me the affections of my Cleora. From that time she visibly cooled towards me, and her partiality was as visibly transferred to this cousin. I was long unable to account for this change in her behavior; when one day, accidentally discoursing of oranges to my mother, alone, she let drop a sort of reproach to me, as if I had offended Cleora by my nearness, as she called it, that evening. Even now, when Cleora has been wedded some years to that same officious relation, as I may call him, I can hardly be persuaded that such a trifle could have been the motive to her inconstancy; for could she suppose that I would sacrifice my dearest hopes in her to the paltry sum of two shillings, when I was going to treat her to the play, and her mother too, (an expense of more than four times that amount,) if the young man had not interfered to pay for the latter, as I mentioned? But the caprices of the sex are past finding out: and I begin to think my mother was in the right; for doubtless women know women better than we can pretend to know them.

* * * * *

WORKS AND DAYS.

—"Ritorna a tua scienza! Che vuol, quanto la cosa e piu perfetta, Piu senta il bene, e cosi la doglienza."—DANTE.

Record, O Muse! and let the record stand, That, when Bellona ravaged half the land, When even these groves, from bloody fields afar, Oft shook and shuddered at the sounds of war, When the drum drowned the music of the flail, And midnight marches broke the peace of Yale, Then gathered here amid these vacant bowers A band of scholars, men of various powers, Various in motion, but with one desire, Through wreck and war to watch the sacred fire, The authentic fire that great forethoughted Mind Stole from the gods for good of humankind.