But now was to come our turn. Laden with all manner of good wishes, we hoisted a bit of dark-blue silk for the honour of Oxford, and spurted under the terrace to our starting-place. The only boat entered against us was the Dolphin, containing three stout gentlemen and a thin one, members of the B—— Cutter Club, who evidently looked upon pulling as no joke. Branling gave us a steady stroke, and Cotton of Balliol steered us admirably; the rest did as well as they could. The old boys had a very pretty boat—ours was a tub—but we beat them. They gave us a stern-chase for the first hundred yards, for I cut a crab at starting; but we had plenty of pluck, and came in winners by a length. Of course we were the favourites—the "Dolphins" were all but one married—and hearty were the congratulations with which we were greeted on landing. Clara Phillips' eyes had a most dangerous light in them, as she shook hands with our noble captain, who was in a terrible hurry, however, to get away, and hunting every where for "that d——d Dawson," who had promised to have Bill Thomas in readiness with "the lush." So I was compelled to stay with her and give an account of the race, which she perfectly understood, and be soundly scolded by the prettiest lips in the world for my awkwardness, which she declared she never could have forgiven if it had lost the race.

"You will come to the ball, then, Mr Hawthorne?"

"Am I not to dance with you?"

"Yes, if you behave well, and don't tease Mr Sydney Dawson: he is a great favourite of mine, and took great care of me this morning at breakfast."

"Well, then, for your sake, Miss Phillips, I will be particularly civil to him; but I assure you, Dawson is like the fox that took a pride in being hunted; he considers our persecution of him as the strongest evidence of his own superiority; and if you seriously undertake to patronize him he will become positively unbearable."

The regatta over, we retired to make a hurried dinner, and to dress for the ball. This, with some of our party, was a serious business. Willingham and Dawson were going in fancy dresses. The former was an admirable personification of Dick Turpin, standing upwards of six feet, and broadly built, and becoming his picturesque costume as if it were his everyday suit, he strutted before Mrs Jenkins's best glass, which Hanmer charitably gave up for his accommodation, with a pardonable vanity. Dawson had got a lancer's uniform from his London tailor; but how to get into it was a puzzle; it was delightful to see his attempts to unravel the gorgeous mysteries which were occupying every available spot in his dingy bedroom. The shako was the main stumbling-block. Being unfortunately rather small, it was no easy matter to keep it on his head at all; and how to dispose of the cap-lines was beyond our united wisdom. "Go without it, man," said Branling: "people don't want hats in a ballroom. You can never dance with that thing on your head."

"Oh, but the head-dress is always worn at a fancy-ball, you know, and I can take it off if I like to dance."

At last, the idea struck us of employing the five or six yards of gold cord that had so puzzled us, in securing shako and plume in a perpendicular position. This at length accomplished, by dint of keeping himself scrupulously upright, Mr Sydney Dawson majestically walked down stairs.

CHAPTER III.

Now, there happened to be at that time residing in Glyndewi an old lady, "of the name and cousinage" of Phillips, who, though an old maid, was one of those unhappily rare individuals who do not think it necessary to rail against those amusements which they are no longer in a situation to enjoy. She was neither as young, nor as rich, nor as light-hearted, as she had been; but it was difficult to imagine that she could ever have been more truly cheerful and happy than she seemed now. So, instead of cutting short every sally of youthful spirits, and every dream of youthful happiness, by sagacious hints of cares and troubles to come, she rather lent her aid to further every innocent enjoyment among her younger friends; feeling, as she said, that the only pity was, that young hearts grew old so soon. The consequence was, that instead of exacting a forced deference from her many nephews and nieces, (so are first cousins' children called in Wales,) she was really loved and esteemed by them all, and while she never wished to deprive them of an hour's enjoyment, they would willingly give up a pleasant party at any time to spend an evening with the old lady, and enliven her solitude with the sounds she best loved—the music of youthful voices.

All among her acquaintance, therefore, who were going to the ball in fancy costume, had promised to call upon her, whether in or out of their way, to "show themselves," willing to make her a partaker, as far as they could, of the amusement of the evening. Captain Phillips had asked us if we would oblige him, and gratify a kind old woman, by allowing him to introduce us in our fancy dresses. I had none, and therefore did not form part of the exhibition; but Dick Turpin and the cornet of lancers, with Branling in a full hunting costume, (which always formed part of his travelling baggage,) walked some fifty yards to the old lady's lodgings. Mr Plympton, always polite, accepted Captain Phillips's invitation to be introduced at the same time. Now Mr Plympton, as was before recorded, was a remarkably dapper personage; wore hair powder, a formidably tall and stiff white "choker," and upon all occasions of ceremony, black shorts and silks, with gold buckles. Remarkably upright and somewhat pompous in his gait, and abominating the free-and-easy manners of the modern school, his bow would have graced the court of Versailles, and his step was a subdued minuet. Equipped with somewhat more than his wonted care, the rev. junior bursar of Oriel was introduced into Mrs Phillips's little drawing-room, accompanying, and strongly contrasting with, three gentlemen in scarlet and gold. Hurriedly did the good old lady seize her spectacles, and rising to receive her guests with a delighted curtsy, scan curiously for a few moments Turpin's athletic proportions, and the fox-hunter's close-fitting leathers and tops. As for Dawson, he stood like the clear-complexioned and magnificently-whiskered officer, who silently invites the stranger to enter the doors of Madame Tussaud's wax exhibition; not daring to bow for fear of losing his beloved shako, but turning his head from side to side as slowly, and far less naturally, than the waxen gentleman aforementioned. All, in their several ways, were worthy of admiration, and all did she seem to admire; but it was when her eye rested at last on the less showy, but equally characteristic figure in black, who stood bowing his acknowledgments of the honour of the interview, with an empressement which fully made up for Dawson's forced hauteur—that her whole countenance glistened with intense appreciation of the joke, and the very spectacles danced with glee. Again did she make the stranger her most gracious curtsy; again did Mr Plympton, as strongly as a bow could do it, declare how entirely he was at her service: he essayed to speak, but before a word escaped his lips, the old lady fairly burst out into a hearty laugh, clapped her hands, and shouted to his astonished ears, "Capital, capital! do it again! oh, do it again!" For a moment the consternation depicted upon Mr Plympton's countenance at this remarkable reception, extended to the whole of his companions; but the extraordinary sounds which proceeded from Captain Phillips, in the vain attempt to stifle the laugh that was nearly choking him, were too much for the gravity of even the polite Mr Dawson; and it was amidst the violent application of pocket-handkerchiefs in all possible ways, that the captain stepped forward with the somewhat tardy announcement, "My dear aunt, allow me to present the Rev. Mr Plympton, Fellow and Tutor of Oriel College." This was accompanied by a wink and an attempt at a frown, intended to convey the strongest reprobation of the old lady's proceedings; but which, upon the features of the good captain, whose risible muscles were still rebellious, had any thing but a serious effect. "Indeed!" said she, curtsying yet more profoundly in return for another bow. "How do you do, sir? Oh, he is beautiful, isn't he?" half-aside to Willingham, who was swallowing as much as he could of the butt of his whip. Poor Mr Plympton looked aghast at the compliment. Branling fairly turned his back, and burst from the room, nearly upsetting Hanmer and myself; who, having waited below some time for our party to join us, had made our way upstairs to ascertain the cause of the unusual noises which reached us from the open door of the drawing-room. Dawson was shaking with reckless disregard of the safety of his head-dress, and the captain in an agony between his natural relish for a joke and his real good breeding. "Aunt Martha, this is a clergyman, a friend of Mr Hanmer's, who is on a visit here, and whom I introduce to you, because I know you will like him." Mr Plympton commenced a fresh series of bows, in which there was, perhaps, less gallantry and more dignity than usual, looking all the time as comfortable as a gentleman might do who was debating with himself whether the probabilities, as regarded the old lady's next movements, lay on the side of kissing or scratching. Mrs Martha Phillips herself commenced an incoherent apology about "expecting to see four young gentlemen in fancy dresses;" and Hanmer and the captain tried all they could to laugh off a contretemps, which to explain was impossible. What the old lady took Mr Plympton for, and what Mr Plympton thought of her, were questions which, so far as I know, no one ventured to ask. He left Glyndewi the next morning, but the joke, after furnishing us with a never-failing fund of ludicrous reminiscence for the rest of our stay, followed him to the Oriel common-room, and was an era in the dulness of that respectable symposium.

Dancing had begun in good earnest when we arrived at the ballroom. There was the usual motley assemblage of costumes of all nations under the sun, and some which the sun, when he put down the impudence of the wax-lights upon his return the next morning, must have marvelled to behold. Childish as it may be called, a fancy ball is certainly, for the first half-hour at all events, an amusing scene. Willingham and myself stood a little inside the doorway for some moments, he enjoying the admiring glances which his tine figure and picturesque costume were well calculated to call forth, and I vainly endeavouring to make out Clara's figure amidst the gay dresses, and well-grown proportions, of the pretty Cambrians who flitted past. Sounds of expostulation and entreaty, mingled with a laugh which we knew to be Branling's, in the passage outside, disturbed both our meditations, and at last induced me to turn my eyes unwillingly to the open door. Branling was leaning against it in a fit of uncontrollable mirth, and beckoned us earnestly to join him. Outside stood Dawson, stamping with vexation, and endeavouring to undo the complex machinery which had hitherto secured his shako in an erect position. He was in the unfortunate predicament of Dr S——'s candelabrum, which, presented to him as a testimony of respect from his grateful pupils, was found by many feet too large to be introduced into any room in the Dr's comparatively humble habitation, and stood for some time in the manufacturer's show-room in testimony of the fact, that public acknowledgments of merit are sometimes made on too large a scale. Architects who give measurements for ordinary doorways, do not contemplate such emergencies as testimonial candelabrums or irremoveable caps and plumes: and the door of the Glyndewi ballroom had no notion of accommodating a lancer in full dress who could not even be civil enough to take off his hat. So there stood our friend, impatient to display his uniform, and unwilling to lessen the effect of his first appearance by doffing so important a part of his costume: to get through the door, in the rigid inflexibility of head and neck which he had hitherto maintained, was a manifest impossibility: Branling had suggested his staying outside, and he would undertake to bring people to look at him: but Dawson, for some unaccountable reason, was usually suspicious of advice from that quarter; so he "stooped to conquer" and lost all. The shako tumbled from its precarious perch, and hung ignobly suspended by the cap-lines. A lancer with a pair of grey spectacles, and a shako hanging round his neck, would have been a very fancy dress indeed: so he was endeavouring, at the risk of choking himself, to disentangle, by main force, the complication of knots which we had woven with some dim hope of the result. In vain did we exhort him to take it patiently, and remind him how preposterous it was to expect, that what had taken our united ingenuity half an hour to arrange "to please him," could be undone in a minute. "Cut the cursed things, can't you?" implored he. No one had a knife. "I do believe Branling, you are tying that knot tighter: I had much rather not have your assistance." Branling protested his innocence. At last we did release him, and he entered the room with a look most appropriately crest-fallen, shako in hard, solacing himself by displaying its glories as well as could be effected by judicious changes of its position.

I soon found Clara, looking more radiantly beautiful than ever I had seen her, in a sweet dress of Stuart tartan. I had to make my apologies, which were most sincerely penitent ones, for not being in time to claim my privilege of dancing the first quadrille with her. She smiled at my evident earnestness, and good-humouredly added, that the next would be a much more pleasant dance, as the room was now beginning to fill. It was a pleasant dance as she said: and the waltz that followed still more delightful: and then Clara, with a blush and a laugh, declined my pressing entreaties until after supper at all events. I refused her good-natured offer of an introduction to "that pretty girl in blue" or any other among the stars of the night: and sat down, or leant against the wall, almost unconsciously watching her light step, and sternly resisting all attempts on the part of my acquaintances to persuade me to dance again. Of course all the dancing characters among our party were Clara's partners in succession; and both Gordon and Dawson, who came to ask what had put me into the sulks, were loud in their encomiums on her beauty and fascination; even Branling, no very devoted admirer of the sex, (he saw too much of them, he said, having four presentable sisters,) allowed that she was "the right sort of girl;" but it was not until I saw her stand up with Willingham, and marked his evident admiration of her, and heard the remarks freely made around me, that they were the handsomest couple in the room, that I felt a twinge of what I would hardly allow to myself was jealousy: when, however, after the dance, they passed me in laughing conversation, evidently in high good humour with each other, and too much occupied to notice any one else, I began to wonder I had never before found out what a conceited puppy Willingham was, and set down poor Clara as an arrant flirt. But I was in a variable mood, it seemed, and a feather—or, what some may say is even lighter, a woman's word—was enough to turn me. So when I found myself, by some irresistible attraction, drawn next to her again at supper, and heard her sweet voice, and saw what I interpreted into a smile of welcome, as she made room for me beside her, I forgave her all past offences, and was perfectly happy for the next hour: nay, even condescended to challenge Willingham to a glass of soi-disant champagne. The Tiger, who was, according to annual custom, displaying the tarnished uniform of the 3d Madras N. I., and illustrating his tremendous stories of the siege of Overabad, or some such place, by attacks on all the edibles in his neighbourhood, gave me a look of intelligence as he requested I would "do him the honour," and shook his whiskers with some meaning which I did not think it necessary to enquire into. What was it to him if I chose to confine my attentions to my undoubtedly pretty neighbour? No one could dispute my taste, at all events; for Clara Phillips was a universal favourite, though I had remarked that none of the numerous "eligible young men" in the room appeared about her in the character of a dangler. She was engaged to Willingham for the waltz next after supper, and I felt queerish again, till she willingly agreed to dance the next set with me, on condition that I would oblige her so far as to ask a friend of hers to be my partner in the mean time. "She is a very nice girl, Mr. Hawthorne, though, perhaps, not one of the belles of the room, and has danced but twice this evening, and it will be so kind in you to ask her—only don't do it upon my introduction, but let Major Jones introduce you as if at your own request." Let no one say that vanity, jealousy, and all those pretty arts by which woman wrongs her better nature, are the rank growth necessarily engendered by the vitiated air of a ballroom; rooted on the same soil, warmed by the same sunshine, fed by the same shower, one plant shall bear the antidote and one the poison: one kind and gentle nature shall find exercise for all its sweetest qualities in those very scenes which, in another, shall foster nothing but heartless coquetry or unfeminine display. Never did Clara seem so lovely in mind and person as when she drew upon her own attractions to give pleasure to her less gifted friend; and I suppose, I must have thrown into the tone of my reply something of what I felt; for she blushed, uttered a hasty "I thank you," and told Willingham it was time to take their places. I sought and obtained the introduction, and endeavoured, for Clara's sake, to be an agreeable partner to the quiet little girl beside me. One subject of conversation, at all events, we hit upon, where we seemed both at home; and if I felt some hesitation in saying all I thought of Clara, my companion had none, but told me how much every body loved her, and how much she deserved to be loved. It was really so much easier to draw my fair partner out on this point than any other that I excused myself for being so eager a listener; and, when we parted, to show my gratitude in what I conceived the most agreeable way, I begged permission to introduce Mr. Sydney Dawson, and thus provided her with what, I dare say, she considered a most enviable partner. I had told Dawson she was a very clever girl; (he was fond of what he called "talented women," and had a delusive notion that he was himself a genius:) he had the impertinence to tell me afterwards he found her rather stupid; I ought, perhaps, to have given him the key-note. During the dance which followed, I remember I was silent and distrait; and when it was over, and Clara told me she was positively engaged for more sets than she should dance again, I left the ballroom, and wandered feverishly along the quay to our lodgings. I remember persuading myself, by a syllogistic process, that I was not in love, and dreaming that I was anxiously reading the class-list, in which it seemed unaccountable that my name should be omitted, till I discovered, on a second perusal, that just about the centre of the first class, where "Hawthorne, Franciscus, e. Coll—" ought to have come in, stood in large type the name of "CLARA PHILLIPS."

The races, which occupied the morning of the next day, were as stupid as country races usually are, except that the Welshmen had rather more noise about it. The guttural shouts and yells from the throats of tenants and other dependents, as the "mishtur's" horse won or lost, and the extraordinary terms in which they endeavoured to encourage the riders, were amusing even to a stranger, though one lost the point of the various sallies which kept the course in one continued roar. As to the running, every body—that is, all the sporting world—knew perfectly well, long before the horses started, which was to win; that appearing to be the result of some private arrangement between the parties interested, while the "racing" was for the benefit of the strangers and the ladies. Those of the latter who had fathers, or brothers, or, above all, lovers, among the knowing ones, won divers pairs of gloves on the occasion, while those who were not so fortunate, lost them.

I fancied that Clara was not in her usual spirits on the race-course, and she pleaded a headach as an excuse to her sister for ordering the carriage to drive home long before the "sport" was over. If I had thought the said sport stupid before, it did not improve in attraction after her departure; and, when the jumping in sacks, and climbing up poles, and other callisthenic exercises began, feeling a growing disgust for "things in general," I resisted the invitation of a mamma and three daughters, to join themselves and Mr Dawson in masticating some sandwiches which looked very much like "relics of joy" from last night's supper, and sauntered home, and sat an hour over a cigar and a chapter of ethics. As the clock struck five, remembering that the Ordinary hour was six, I called at the Phillips' lodgings to enquire for Clara. She was out walking with her sister; so I returned to dress in a placid frame of mind, confident that I should meet her at dinner.

For it was an Ordinary for ladies as well as gentlemen. A jovial Welsh baronet sat at the head of the table, with the two ladies of highest "consideration"—the county member's wife and the would-have-been member's daughter—on his right and left; nobody thought of politics at the Glyndewi regatta. Clara was there; but she was escorted into the room by some odious man, who, in virtue of having been made high-sheriff by mistake, sat next Miss Anti-reform on the chairman's left. The natives were civil enough to marshal us pretty high up by right of strangership, but still I was barely near enough to drink wine with her.

If a man wants a good dinner, a hearty laugh, an opportunity of singing songs and speech-making, and can put up with indifferent wine, let him go to the race Ordinary at Glyndewi next year, if it still be among the things which time has spared. There was nothing like stiffness or formality: people came there for amusement, and they knew that the only way to get it was to make it for themselves. There seemed to be fun enough for half-a-dozen of the common run of such dinners, even while the ladies remained. It was, as Hanmer called it, an extra-ordinary. But it was when the ladies had retired, and Hanmer and a few of the "steady ones" had followed them, and those who remained closed up around the chairman, and cigars and genuine whisky began to supersede the questionable port and sherry, and the "Vice" requested permission to call on a gentleman for a song, that we began to fancy ourselves within the walls of some hitherto unknown college, where the "levelling system" had mixed up fellows and under-graduates in one common supper-party, and the portly principal himself rejoiced in the office of "arbiter bibendi." Shall I confess it? I forgot even Clara in the uproarious mirth that followed. Two of the young Phillipses were admirable singers, and drew forth the hearty applause of the whole company. We got Dawson to make a speech, in which he waxed poetical touching the "flowers of Cambria," and drew down thunders of applause by a Latin quotation, which every one took that means of showing that they understood. I obtained almost unconsciously an immortal reputation by a species of flattery to which the Welsh are most open. I had learnt, after no little application, a Welsh toast—a happy specimen of the language; it was but three words, but they were truly cabalistic. No sooner had I, after a "neat and appropriate" preface, uttered my triple Shibboleth, (it ended in rag, and signified "Wales, Welshmen, and Welshwomen,") than the whole party rose, and cheered at me till I felt positively modest. My pronunciation, I believe, was perfect, (a woman's lips and an angel's voice had taught it to me:) and it was indeed the Open Sesame to their hearts and feelings. I became at once the intimate friend of all who could get near enough to offer me their houses, their horses, their dogs—I have no doubt, had I given a hint at the moment, I might have had any one of their daughters. "Would I come and pay a visit at Abergwrnant before I left the neighbourhood? Only twenty-five miles, and a coach from B——!" "Would I, before the shooting began, come to Craig-y-bwldrwn, and stay over the first fortnight in September?" I could have quartered myself, and two or three friends, in a dozen places for a month at a time. And, let me do justice to the warm hospitality of North Wales—these invitations were renewed in the morning: and were I ever to visit those shores again, I should have no fear of their having been yet forgotten.

Captain Phillips had told us, that when we left the table, "the girls" would have some coffee for us, if not too late; and Willingham and myself, having taken a turn or two in the moonlight to get rid of the excitement of the evening, bent our steps in that direction. There were about as many persons assembled as the little drawing-room would hold, and Clara, having forgotten her headach, and looking as lovely as ever, was seated at a wretched piano, endeavouring to accompany herself in her favourite songs. Willingham and myself stood by, and our repeated requests for some of those melodies which, unknown to us before, we had learnt from her singing to admire beyond all the fashionable trash of the day, were gratified with untiring good-nature. Somehow I thought that she avoided my eye, and answered my remarks with less than her usual archness and vivacity. I could bear it on this evening less than ever; a hair will turn the scale, and I had just been, half ludicrously, half seriously, affected by Welsh nationality. One cannot help warming towards a community which are so warm-hearted among themselves. Visions of I know not what—love and a living, Clara and a cottage—were floating dreamlike before my eyes, and I felt as if borne along by a current whose direction might be dangerous, but which it was misery to resist. Willingham had turned away a minute to hunt for some missing book, which contained one of his favourites; and, leaning over her with my finger pointing to the words which she had just been singing, I said something about there being always a fear in happiness such as I had lately been enjoying, lest it might not last. For a moment she met my earnest look, and coloured violently; and then fixing her eyes on the music before her, she said quickly, "Mr Hawthorne, I thought you had a higher opinion of me than to make me pretty speeches; I have a great dislike to them." I began to protest warmly against any intention of mere compliment, when the return of Willingham with his song prevented any renewal of the subject. I was annoyed and silent, and detected a tremor in her voice while she sang the words, and saw her cheek paler than usual. The instant the song was over, she complained with a smile of being tired, and without a look at either of us, joined a party who were noisily recounting the events of the race-course. Nor could I again that evening obtain a moment's conversation with her. She spoke to me, indeed, and very kindly; but once only did I catch her eye, when I was speaking to some one else—the glance was rapidly withdrawn, but it seemed rather sorrowful than cold.

I was busy with Hanmer the next morning before breakfast, when Dick Phillips made his appearance, and informed us that the "strangers" had made up an eleven for the cricket match, and that we were to play at ten. He was a sort of live circular, dispatched to get all parties in readiness.

"Oh! I have something for you from Clara," said he to me, as he was leaving; "the words of a song she promised you, I believe."

I opened the sealed envelope, saw that it was not a song, and left Hanmer somewhat abruptly. When I was alone, I read the following:—

"DEAR MR HAWTHORNE,—Possibly you may have been told that I have, before now, done things which people call strange—that is, contrary to some arbitrary notions which are to supersede our natural sense of right and wrong. But never, until now, did I follow the dictates of my own feelings in opposition to conventional rules, with the painful uncertainty as to the propriety of such a course, which I now feel. And if I had less confidence than I have in your honour and your kindness, or less esteem for your character, or less anxiety for your happiness, I would not write to you now. But I feel, that if you are what I wish to believe you, it is right that you should be at once undeceived as to my position. Others should have done it, perhaps—it would have spared me much. Whether your attentions to me are in sport or earnest, they must cease. I have no right to listen to such words as yours last night—my heart and hand are engaged to one, who deserves better from me than the levity which alone could have placed me in the position from which I thus painfully extricate myself. For any fault on my part, I thus make bitter atonement. I wish you health and happiness, and now let this save us both from further misunderstanding.

"C."

Again and again did I read these words. Not one woman in a hundred would have ventured on such a step. And for what? to save me from the mortification of a rejection? It could be nothing else. How easy for a man of heartless gallantry to have written a cool note in reply, disclaiming "any aspiration after the honour implied," and placing the warm-hearted writer in the predicament of having declined attentions never meant to be serious! But I felt how kindly, how gently, I had been treated—the worst of it was, I loved her better than ever. I wrote some incoherent words in reply, sufficiently expressive of my bitter disappointment, and my admiration of her conduct; and then I felt "that my occupation was gone." She whom I had so loved to look upon, I trembled now to see. I had no mind to break my heart; but I felt that time and change were necessary to prevent it. Above all, Glyndewi was no place for me to forget her in.

In the midst of my painful reflections on all the happy hours of the past week, Gordon and Willingham broke in upon me with high matter for consultation relative to the match, In vain did I plead sudden illness, and inability to play: they declared it would knock the whole thing on the head, for Hanmer would be sure to turn sulky, and there was an end of the eleven; and they looked so really chagrined at my continued refusals, that at length I conquered my selfishness, (I had had a lesson in that,) and, though really feeling indisposed for any exertion, went down with them to the ground. I was in momentary dread of seeing Clara arrive, (for all the world was to be there,) and felt nervous and low-spirited. The strangers' eleven was a better one than we expected, and they put our men out pretty fast. Hanmer got most unfortunately run out after a splendid hit, and begged me to go in and "do something." I took my place mechanically, and lost my wicket to the first ball. We made a wretched score, and the strangers went in exultingly. In spite of Hanmer's steady bowling, they got runs pretty fast; and an easy catch came into my hands just as Clara appeared on the ground, and I lost all consciousness of what I was about. Again the same opportunity offered, and again my eyes were wandering among the tents. Hanmer got annoyed, and said something not over civil: I vas vexed myself that my carelessness should be the cause of disappointment twice, and yet more than half-inclined to quarrel with Branling, whom I overheard muttering about my "cursed awkwardness." We were left in a fearful minority at the close of the first innings, when we retired to dinner. The Glyndewi party and their friends were evidently disappointed. I tried to avoid Clara; but could not keep far from her. At last she came up with one of her brothers, spoke and shook hands with me, said that her brother had told her I was not well, and that she feared I ought not to have played at all. "I wish you could have beat them, Mr Hawthorne—I had bet that you would; perhaps you will feel better after dinner, those kind of headachs soon wear off," she added with a smile and a kind look, which I understood as she meant it. I walked into the tent where we were to dine: I sat next a little man on the opposite side, an Englishman, one of their best players, as active as a monkey, who had caught out three of our men in succession. He talked big about his play, criticised Willingham's batting, which was really pretty, and ended by discussing Clara Phillips, who was, he said, "a demned fine girl, but too much of her." I disliked his flippancy before, but now my disgust to him was insuperable. I asked the odds against us, and took them freely. There was champagne before me, and I drank it in tumblers. I did what even in my under-graduate days was rarely my habit—I drank till I was considerably excited. Hanmer saw it, and got the match resumed at once to save me, as he afterwards said, "from making a fool of myself." I insisted, in spite of his advice "to cool myself," upon going in first. My flippant acquaintance of the dinner-table stood point, and I knew, if I could but see the ball, and not see more than one, that I could occasionally "hit square" to some purpose. I had the luck to catch the first ball just on the rise, and it caught my friend point off his legs as if he had been shot. He limped off the ground, and we were troubled with him no more. I hit as I never did before, or shall again. At first I played wild; but as I got cool, and my sight became steady, I felt quite at home. The bowlers got tired, and Dick Phillips, who had no science, but the strength of a unicorn, was in with me half-an-hour, slashing in all directions. It short, the tide turned, and the match ended in our favour.

I was quite sober, and free from all excitement, when I joined Clara, for the last time after the game was over. "I am so glad you played so well," said she, "if you are but as successful at Oxford as you have been at the boat-race and the cricket, you will have no reason to be disappointed. Your career here has been one course of victory." "Not altogether, Miss Phillips: the prize I shall leave behind me when I quit Glyndewi to-morrow, is worth more than all that I can gain." "Mr Hawthorne," said she kindly, "one victory is in your own power, and you will soon gain it, and be happy—the victory over yourself."

I made some excuse to Hanmer about letters from home, to account for my sudden departure. How the party got on after I left them, and what was the final result of our "reading," is no part of my tale; but I fear the reader will search the class-lists of 18— in vain for the names of Mr Hanmer's pupils.

HAWTHORNE.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote A: Fact.]



CHAPTERS OF TURKISH HISTORY.

No. X.

THE SECOND SIEGE OF VIENNA.

The Ottoman empire, exhausted by its strenuous and long-continued efforts in the death-struggle of Candia, had need of peace and repose to recruit its resources; but the calm was not of long duration. A fresh complication of interests was now arising in the north, which, by involving the Porte in the stormy politics of Poland and Russia, led to consequences little foreseen at the time, and which, even at the present day are far from having reached their final accomplishment. Since the ill-judged and unfortunate invasion by Sultan Osman II., in 1620 the good understanding between Poland and the Porte had continued undisturbed, save by the occasional inroads of the Crim Tartars on the one side, and the Cossacks of the Dniepr on the other, which neither government was able entirely to restrain. But the oppression to which the Polish nobles attempted to subject their Cossack allies, whom they pretended to regard as serfs and vassals, was intolerable to these freeborn sons of the steppe; and an universal revolt at length broke out, which was the beginning of the evil days of Poland. For nearly twenty years, under the feeble rule of John Casimer, the country was desolated with sanguinary civil wars; the Czar Alexis Mikhailowitz, eager to regain the rich provinces lost by Russia during the reign of his father, at length appeared in the field as the protector of the Cossacks; and, in 1656, the greater part of their body, with the Ataman Bogdan Khmielnicki at their head, formally transferred their allegiance to the Russian sceptre. This fatal blow, which in effect turned the balance of power, so long fluctuating between Poland and Russia, in favour of the latter, failed, however, to teach moderation to the Polish aristocracy; and the remainder of the Cossacks, who still continued in their ancient seats under the Ataman Doroszenko, finding themselves menaced by a fresh attack, embraced the resolution of "placing themselves under the shadow of the horsetails," by becoming the voluntary vassals of the Porte, of which they had so long been the inveterate enemies. In spite of the violent reclamations of the Polish envoy Wizocki, the offer was at once accepted, and a mace and kaftan of honour sent to the ataman as ensigns of investiture, while the Poles were warned to desist from hostilities against the subjects of the sultan. The refusal to accede to this requisition produced an instant declaration of war, addressed in an autograph letter from Kiuprili to the grand chancellor of Poland, and followed up, in the spring of 1672, by the march of an army of 100,000 men for Podolia. The sultan himself took the field for the first time, attended by Kiuprili and the other vizirs of the divan, and carrying with him his court and harem, and the whole host, after a march of four months from Adrianople, crossed the Dniester in the first days of August.

The distracted state of Poland, where the helpless Michael Coribut Wiecnowicki bore but the empty title of king, precluded the possibility of even an attempt at resistance, and the grand marshal of the kingdom, the heroic John Sobieski, who, with only 6000 men, had held his ground against the Cossacks, Turks, and Tartars, through the preceding winter, was compelled to withdraw from Podolia. The whole province was speedily overrun; the fortresses of Kaminiec and Leopol were yielded almost without defence; and the king, terrified at the progress of the invaders, sued for peace, which was signed September 18, 1672, in the Turkish camp at Buczacz. Kaminiec, Podolia, and the Cossack territory, were by this act ceded to the Porte, besides an annual tribute from Poland of 220,000 ducats; and Mohammed, having caused proclamation to be made by the criers that "pardon for his offences had been granted to the rebel kral of the Leh,"[B] (Poles,) returned in triumph to Adrianople, leaving his army in winter quarters on the Danube.

The Diet, however, indignantly refused either to ratify the treaty or pay the tribute; and hostilities were resumed the next year with increased inveteracy on both sides. The sultan accompanied his army only to the Danube, where he remained engrossed with the pleasures of the chase at Babataghi; while Sobieski, who had accommodated for the time his differences with his colleague and rival Pac, hetman of Lithuania, and was at the head of 50,000 men, boldly anticipated the tardy movements of the Turks, who were advancing in several separate corps d'armee, by crossing the Dniester early in October. He was forthwith joined by Stephen, waiwode of Moldavia, with great part of the Moldavian and Wallachian troops, who unexpectedly deserted the standards of the crescent; and, after several partial encounters, a general engagement took place, November 11, 1673, between the Polish army and the advanced divisions of the Ottomans under the serasker Hussein, pasha of Silistria, who lay in an intrenched camp on the heights near Choczim. A heavy fall of snow during the night, combined with a piercing north wind had benumbed the frames of the Janissaries, accustomed to the genial warmth of a southern climate; and the enthusiastic valour of the Poles, stimulated by the exhortations and example of their chief, made their onset irresistible. The Turkish army was almost annihilated: 25,000 men, with numerous begs and pashas, remained on the field of battle, or perished in the Dniester from the breaking of the bridge: all their cannon and standards became trophies to the victors: and the green banner of the serasker was sent to Rome by Sobieski, in the belief that it was the Sandjak-shereef, or sacred standard of the Prophet—the oriflamme of the Ottoman empire. Never had a defeat nearly so disastrous, with the single exception of that of St. Gotthard, ten years before, befallen the Turkish arms in Europe; and the other corps, under the command of the grand-vizir and of his brother-in-law, Kaplan-pasha of Aleppo, which were marching to the support of Hussein, fell back in dismay to their former, ground on the right bank of the Danube. The Poles, however, made no further use of their triumph than to ravage Moldavia, and the death of the king, on the same day with the victory at Choczim, recalled Sobieski to Warsaw, in order to become a candidate for the vacant crown. On his election by the Diet, in May 1674, he made overtures for peace to the Porte, but they were rejected, and the contest continued during several years, without any notable achievement on either side, the war being unpopular with the Turkish soldiery; while the civil dissensions of his kingdom, with his consequent inferiority of numbers, kept Sobieski generally on the defensive. In his intrenched camp at Zurawno, with only 15,000 men, he had for twenty days kept at bay 100,000 Turks under the serasker Ibrahim, surnamed Shaitan or the devil, when both sides, weary of the fruitless struggle, agreed upon a conference, and peace was signed October 27, 1676. The humiliating demand of tribute was no longer insisted upon; but Kaminiec, Podolia, and great part of the Ukraine, were left in possession of the Turks, whose stubborn perseverance thus succeeded, as on many occasions, in gaining nearly every object for which the war had been undertaken.

Before the news, however, of the pacification with Poland had reached Constantinople, Ahmed-Kiuprili had closed his glorious career. He had long suffered from dropsy, the same disease which had proved fatal to his father, and the effects of which were in his case, aggravated by too free an indulgence in wine, to which, after his return from Candia, he is said to have become greatly addicted. He had accompanied the sultan, who had for many years remained absent from his capital, on a visit, during the summer months, to Constantinople, but, on the return to Adrianople, he was compelled, by increasing sickness, to halt on the banks of the Erkench, between Chorlu and Demotika, where he breathed his last in a chitlik, or farm-house, called Kara-Bovir, October 30, at the age of forty-seven, after having administered the affairs of the empire for a few days more than fifteen years. His corpse was carried back to Constantinople, and laid without pomp in the mausoleum erected by his father, amid the lamentations of the people, rarely poured forth over the tomb of a deceased grand vizir. The character of this great minister has been made the theme of unmeasured panegyrics by the Turkish historians; and Von Hammer-Purgstall (in his History of the Ottoman Empire) has given us a long and elaborate parallel between the life and deeds of Ahmed Kiuprili and of the celebrated vizir of Soliman the Magnificent and his two successors, Mohammed-Pasha Sokolli; but we prefer to quote the impartial and unadorned portrait drawn by his contemporary Rycaut:—"He was, in person, (for I have seen him often, and knew him well,) of a middle stature, of a black beard, and brown complexion;[C] something short-sighted, which caused him to knit his brows, and pore very intently when any strange person entered the presence; he was inclining to be fat, and grew corpulent towards his latter days. If we consider his age when he first took upon him this important charge, the enemies his father had created him, the contentions he had with the Valideh-sultana or queen-mother, and the arts he had used to reconcile the affections of these great personages, and conserve himself in the unalterable esteem of his sovereign to the last hour of his death, there is none but must judge him to have deserved the character of a most prudent and politic person. If we consider how few were put to death, and what inconsiderable mutinies or rebellions happened in any part of the empire during his government, it will afford us a clear evidence and proof of his greatness and moderation beyond the example of former times: for certainly he was not a person who delighted in blood, and in that respect far different from the temper of his father; he was generous, and free from avarice—a rare virtue in a Turk! He was educated in the law, and therefore greatly addicted to all the formalities of it, and in the administration of justice very punctual and severe: and as to his behaviour towards the neighbouring princes, there may, I believe, be fewer examples of his breach of faith, than what his predecessors have given in a shorter time of rule. In his wars abroad he was successful, having upon every expedition enlarged the bounds of the empire: he overcame Neuhausel, with a considerable part of Hungary, he concluded the long war with Venice by an entire and total subjugation of the Island of Candia, having subdued that impregnable fortress, which by the rest of the world was considered invincible; and he won Kemenitz (Kaminiec,) the key of Poland, where the Turks had been frequently baffled, and laid Ukraine to the empire. If we measure his triumphs, rather than count his years, though he might seem to have lived but little to his prince and people, yet certainly to himself he could not die more seasonably, nor in a greater height and eminency of glory."

The deceased vizir left no children: and the sultan is said to have offered the seals, in the first instance, as if the office had become in fact hereditary in the family, to Mustapha, another son of Mohammed-Kiuprili, a man of retired and studious habits, who had the philosophy to decline the onerous dignity.[D] However this may have been, (for the story appears to rest on somewhat doubtful authority,) within seven days of the death of Ahmed, the vizirat had been conferred on Kara-Mustapha Pasha, who then held the office of kaimakam, and had for several years been distinguished by the special favour and confidence of the sultan. The new minister was connected by the ties both of marriage and adoption with the house of Kiuprili. His father Oroudj, a spahi, holding land at Merzifoun, (a town and district in Anatolia contiguous to Kiupri,) had fallen at the siege of Bagdad, under Sultan Mourad-Ghazi in 1638: and the orphan had been educated in the household of Mohammed-Kiuprili as the companion and adopted brother of his son Ahmed, one of whose sisters he in due time received in marriage. The elevation of his patron to the highest dignity of the empire, of course opened to Kara-Mustapha the road to fortune and preferment—from his first post of deputy to the meer-akhor, or master of the horse, he was promoted to the rank of pasha of two tails—and after holding the governments successively of Silistria and Diarbekr was nominated capitan-pasha in 1662 by his brother-in-law Ahmed; but exchanged that appointment in the following year for the office of kaimakam, in which capacity he was left in charge of the capital on the departure of the vizir to the army in Hungary. His duties in this situation, as lieutenant of the grand-vizir during his absence, gave him constant access to the presence of the sultan: and being (as he is described by the contemporary writer above quoted) "a wise and experienced person, of a smooth behaviour, and a great courtier," he so well improved the opportunities thus afforded him, as to obtain a place in the monarch's favour second only to that of Kiuprili himself. This excessive partiality was, however, scarcely justified by the good qualities of the favourite; for though the abilities of Kara-Mustapha were above mediocrity, his avarice was so extreme as to lay him open to the suspicion of corruption: and his sanguinary cruelty, when holding a command in Poland in the campaign of 1674, drew down on him the severe reprobation of his illustrious brother in-law. The predilection of the sultan for his society continued, however, unabated:—and during the visit of the court to Constantinople in 1675, he was still further exalted by becoming, at least in name, son-in-law to his sovereign, being affianced to the Sultana Khadidjeh, then only three years old. The fetes of the betrothal, which were celebrated at the same time as those for the circumcision of the heir-apparent, (afterwards Mustapha II.,) were unrivalled for splendour in a reign distinguished for magnificence:—and on the death of Ahmed-Kiuprili in the following year, this fortunate adventurer found little difficulty in stepping, as we have seen, into the vacated place.

The first cares of the new vizir were on the side of the newly acquired frontier in the Ukraine; for, though all claim to that part of the Cossack territory had been expressly resigned by Poland at the treaty of Durawno, the Czar of Muscovy had never ceased to assert his pretensions to the whole Ukraine, in virtue of the convention of 1656 with Khmielnicki; and during the Polish campaign of 1674, his troops on the border, under a general named Romanodoffski, had several times come into collision with the Turks—an era deserving notice as the first hostile encounter between these two great antagonist powers. The defection of Doroszenko, who had gone over to the Russians at the end of 1676, and surrendered to them the important fortress of Czehryn, the capital and key of the Ukraine, and the repulse of the serasker Ibrahim before its walls in the following year, showed the necessity of vigorous measures: and, in 1678, the grand vizir in person appeared at the head of a formidable force in the Ukraine, bringing with him George Khmielnicki, son of the former ataman, who had long been confined as a state prisoner in the Seven Towers, but was now released to counteract, by his hereditary influence with the Cossacks, the adverse agency of Doroszenko. Czehryn, after a close investment of a month, was carried by storm, the garrison put to the sword, and the fortifications razed. But though the war was continued through another campaign, it was obviously not the interest of the Divan to prolong this remote and unprofitable contest at a juncture when the state of parties in Hungary bid fair to present such an opportunity as had never before occurred, for definitively establishing the supremacy of the Porte over the whole of that kingdom. Negotiations were accordingly opened on the Dniepr between the Muscovite leaders and the Khan Mourad-Gherni; and a peace was signed at Radzin, Feb. 12, 1681, by which the frontiers on both sides were left unaltered, while the Porte expressly renounced all claim to Kiow and the Russian Ukraine, which had been in the possession of the Czar since 1656. The ratification of the treaty was brought to Constantinople in the following September by an envoy, whose gifts of costly arctic furs, and ivory from the tusks of the walrus, might have unfolded to the Turks the wide extent of the northern realms ruled by the monarch whom they even yet regarded only as a tributary of their own vassal the Khan of the Tartars, and scarcely deigned to admit on equal terms to diplomatic intercourse.

Though the truce for twenty years, concluded between the Porte and the Empire after the defeat of Ahmed-Kiuprili at St Gotthard in 1564, had not yet expired by nearly three years, the political aspect of Hungary left little doubt that the resumption of hostilities would not be so long delayed. To understand more clearly the extraordinary complication of interests of which this country was now the scene, it will, however, be necessary to take a retrospective glance at its history during the seventeenth century, after the treaty of Komorn with the Porte, in 1606, had terminated for the time the warfare of which it had almost constantly been the theatre since the occupation of Buda by Soliman the Magnificent in 1541, ad had, in some measure, defined the boundaries of the two great powers between which it was divided. The Emperors of the House of Hapsburg, indeed, styled themselves Kings of Hungary, and Diets were held in their name at Presburg; but the territory actually under their sway amounted to less than a third of the ancient kingdom, comprehending only the northern and western districts; while all the central portion of Hungary Proper, as far as Agria on the north, and the Raab and the Balaton Lake on the west, was united to the Ottoman Empire, and formed the pashaliks of Buda and Temeswar, which were regularly divided into sandjaks and districts, with their due quota of spahis and timariots, who had been drawn from the Moslem provinces of Turkey, and held grants of land by tenure of military service. The principality of Transylvania, (called Erdel by the Turks,) which had been erected by Soliman in favour of the son of John Zapolya, comprehended nearly one-fourth of Hungary, and (though its suzerainte was claimed by Austria in virtue of a reversionary settlement executed by that prince shortly before his death,) was generally, in effect, dependent on, and tributary to the Porte, from which its princes, elected by the Diet at Klaucenburg, received confirmation and investiture, like the waiwodes of the neighbouring provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia. During the interval between the death of John Sigismond Zapolya in 1571, and the election of Michael Abaffi in 1661, not fewer than thirteen princes, besides nearly as many ephemeral pretenders, had occupied the throne; and, though at one time the family of Batthori, and, subsequently, that of Racoczy, established a kind of hereditary claim to election, their tenure was always precarious; and, on more than one occasion, the prince was imposed on the states by the Turks or Austrians, without even the shadow of constitutional forms.

This modified independence of Transylvania, however, often gave its princes great political importance, during the endless troubles of Hungary, as the assertors of civil and religions liberty against the tyranny and bad faith of the Austrian cabinet; which, with unaccountable infatuation, instead of striving to attach to its rule, by conciliation and good government, the remnant of the kingdom still subject to its sceptre, bent all its efforts to destroy the ancient privileges of the Magyars, and to make the crown formally, as it already was in fact, hereditary in the imperial family. The extirpation of Protestantism was another favourite object of Austrian policy: and the cruelties perpetrated with this view by George Basta and the other imperial generals at the beginning of the century was such, that a general rising took place under Stephen Boczkai, then waiwode of Transylvania, Wallachia, and Moldavia, who extorted from the Emperor Rodolph, in 1607, the famous pacification of Vienna, which was guaranteed by the Porte, and which secured to the Hungarians full liberty of conscience, as well as the enjoyment of all their ancient rights. This agreement was soon violated; but the Protestants again found a protector in a Transylvanian prince, the celebrated Bethlen-Gabor;[E] who, assuming the royal title, occupied Presburg and Neuhausel in 1619, formed an alliance with the Bohemian revolters under Count Thurn, and was narrowly prevented from forming a junction with them under the walls of Vienna, which, if effected, would probably have overthrown the dynasty of Hapsburg. He is said to have entertained the design of uniting all Hungary east of the Theiss, with Transylvania and Wallachia, into a modern kingdom of Dacia, leaving the west to the Turks as a barrier against Austrian aggression—but his want of children left his schemes of aggrandizement without a motive, and at his death in 1630 they all fell to the ground. The Thirty Years' War procured the Hungarian subjects of Austria a temporary respite; but Leopold, who was elected king in 1655, and succeeded his father Ferdinand in the empire three years later, stimulated by the triumph of his predecessor over the liberties of Bohemia, resumed with fresh zeal the crusade against the privileges of the Magyars. Not only was the persecution of the Protestants recommenced, but the excesses of the ill-paid and licentious German mercenaries, who were quartered on the country in defiance of the constitution after the twenty years' truce, under the pretence of guarding against any fresh attack from the Turks, were carried to such a height that disaffection became universal even among those who had hitherto constantly adhered to the Austrian interest, so that (in the words of a writer[F] of the time,) "they began to contrast their own condition with that of the Transylvanians, who are not forced to take the turban but live quietly under the protection of the Turk—while we (as they say) are exposed to the caprices of a prince under the absolute dominion of the Jesuits, a far worse sort of people than the Dervishes!" As early as 1667, a secret communication had been made to the Porte through the envoy of Abaffi; but Kiuprili, who was then on the point of departure for Candia, and was unwilling to risk a fresh rupture with the empire in his absence, gave little encouragement either to these overtures, or to the more advantageous propositions received in 1670 from Peter Zriny, Ban of Croatia, and previously a famous partisan-leader against the Moslems; in which the malecontents offered, as the price of Ottoman aid and protection, to cede to the sultan all the fortified towns which should be taken by his arms, and to pay an annual tribute of 30,000 ducats. The conspiracy had, however, become known at Vienna; and instant measures were taken for seizing Zriny and his Croatian confederates, Nadasti, Tattenbach, and Christopher Frangipani, who were all executed in the course of the following year. The Emperor, now considering Hungary as a conquered country, formally abolished the dignity of Palatine, and nominated Gaspar Von Ampringham, grand master of the Teutonic knights, to be viceroy of the kingdom; while the Protestants were persecuted with unheard-of rigour, and many of their ministers imprisoned in the fortresses, or sent in chains to the galleys at Naples.

The confederates of Upper Hungary had been better on their guard: and on the news of the fate of Zriny and his associates, they forthwith assembled in arms at Kaschau or Cassovia, and electing Francis Racoczy, son of the late prince of Transylvania, and son-in-law of Zriny, as their leader, bade defiance to the Emperor. The civil war continued several years without decisive success on either side; till on the death, in 1676, of Racoczy, (who had previously abandoned the popular cause,) the famous Emeric Tekoeli, then only twenty years of age, was chosen general. He was the hereditary enemy of the Austrians; his father Stephen, Count of Kersmark, having been besieged in his castle by the Imperialists at the time of his death; and while he pressed the Germans in the field with such vigour as to deprive them of nearly all the fortified places they still held in Upper Hungary, the negotiation with the Porte for aid was renewed, and being backed by the diplomatic influence of France, then at war with the empire, was more favourably received by Kara-Mustapha than the former advances of the malcontents had been by his predecessor. The war with Russia, however, prevented the Turks for the present from interfering with effect, but Abaffi was authorized to support the insurgents in the mean time, while Leopold, fearing the total loss of Hungary, summoned a diet at Oedenburg (in 1681) for the redress of grievances, in which most of the ancient privileges of the kingdom were restored, full liberty of conscience promised to the Lutherans and Calvinists, and Paul Esterhazy named Palatine. But these concessions, wrung only by hard necessity from the Cabinet of Vienna, came now too late. Tekoeli replied to the amnesty proclaimed by the Emperor, by the publication of a counter-manifesto, in which were set forth a hundred grievances of the Hungarians; and, having obtained a great accession of strength by his marriage (June 1682) to Helen Zriny, the widow of Racoczy, whereby he gained all the adherents of those two powerful houses, he summoned a rival diet at Cassovia, where he openly assumed the title of sovereign prince of Upper Hungary, exercising the prerogatives of royalty, and striking money in his own name, which bore his effigy on the obverse, and on the reverse the motto inscribed on his standards—"Pro Deo, Patria, et Libertate."

Though Tekoeli professed to act by the authority of the Porte, from which he had received a firman of investiture with the usual ensigns of sovereignty, no formal declaration of war had yet been issued from Constantinople; and many of the Ulemah protested against such a measure, at least till the twenty years' truce, concluded in 1664, should have expired. The aid openly afforded, however, to Tekoeli by Abaffi and the pasha of Buda, as well as the constant march of large bodies of troops to the Danube, afforded sufficient indication that an attack would not be long delayed; and Leopold, disquieted at the prospect of having at once to contend against his own revolted subjects, and the mighty force of the Ottoman empire, sent Count Caprara on a mission to Constantinople, in the hope of averting the storm; while, at the same time, he made overtures for an alliance with Poland, still smarting under her losses in the late Turkish war. The mission of Caprara led to no result, from the exorbitant demands made by the Ottoman ministers on behalf both of the Porte and its Hungarian allies, which amounted to little less than a total cession of the country, and a few days after the arrival of the ambassador, the despatch of the firman to Tekoeli, and the display of the imperial horsetails in the plain of Daood-Pasha, showed that the resolution of the Divan was fixed for war. The negotiation with Poland presented almost equal difficulties, from the rooted jealousy entertained by the Poles of the ambition of Austria, and the opposition of the French envoy, De Vitry, who even carried his intrigues so far as to embark in a plot for the death or dethronement of the king, and the substitution of the grand marshal Iablonowski. The firmness of Sobieski, however, whom no minor considerations could blind to the importance of saving Austria and Hungary from the grasp of the Osmanli, overcame all these machinations; and the ratification of the diet was eventually given to a league, offensive and defensive, with Austria, on March 31, 1683—the same day on which the vast host of the Ottomans broke up from its cantonments about Adrianople, and directed its march towards the Danube.

The sons of Naodasti and Zriny, who had been executed ten years before, were retained as hostages, under the name of chamberlains, in the imperial household; and it fell to the lot of the former to announce to Leopold, that the legions of the crescent were pouring down on Hungary. The cheek of the Emperor blanched at the tidings; for well did he know that, till the arrival of the Poles, his disposable force amounted to scarce 35,000 men, under Duke Charles of Lorraine, who could barely make head against Abaffi and Tekoeli, while so high were the hopes of the Magyars raised of a speedy and final deliverance from Austrian tyranny, that a plot is even said to have been laid between Zriny and his sister, now the wife of Tekoeli, for seizing the person of Leopold in the palace of Vienna, and giving him up to the Tartars, who had already commenced their ravages on the frontiers. The sultan meanwhile—the cumbrous luxury of whose harem and equipages had retarded the march of the army—had halted at Belgrade, after holding a grand review of his forces, and placing the standard of the Prophet in the hands of the vizier, in token of the full powers entrusted to him for the conduct of the campaign. On the 10th of June, Tekoeli, who had crossed the Danube to welcome his potent auxiliaries, was received at Essek with royal magnificence by Kara-Mustapha, who imitated, in the ceremonial observed on this occasion, the pomp of the reception of John Zapolya by Soliman, on his march against Vienna in 1529; but after receiving personal investiture of the royal dignity conferred on him by the sultan, he returned rapidly to Cassovia, where he had fixed his headquarters. The khan of the Tartars had already arrived at Stuhlweissenburg, and was speedily joined by the vizir and the main Turkish army, which, passing the Danube to the number of 140,000 men, swept like a torrent over the rich plains of Lower Hungary: the towns, abandoned by the panic-stricken German garrisons, every where opening their gates to the partisans of Zriny and Tekoeli, in the hope of escaping the fate of Veszprim, which had been sacked by the janissaries for attempting resistance. The march was pressed with unexampled rapidity, till on the 28th the whole army was mustered under the walls of Gran; and the vizir, summoning to his tent the khan and the principal pashas, announced that his orders were to make himself master of Vienna.

The veneration with which the Turks have always regarded the memory of the greatest of their sultans, has led them not only to shrink with superstitious awe from attempting any enterprise in which he failed, but even to attach a prophetic importance to his recorded sayings. A promise attributed to him, that "an Ottoman army should never pass the Raab," had been recalled at the time of the signal defeat experienced by Ahmed-Kiuprili on that river, and his memorable repulse before Vienna had been ever held as a warning, that the Ottoman arms were destined never to prevail against the ramparts of the Kizil-Alma. These considerations, however, had little weight with Kara-Mustapha; bridges, hastily thrown over the ill-omened stream, afforded a passage to the army, (July 8,) and the march was again directed without stop or stay on Vienna. A body of Hungarians in the pay of the emperor, under Budiani, passed over to the ranks of their insurgent countrymen on the first appearance of the standards of Tekoeli; and the Duke of Lorraine, who had withdrawn his infantry to the island of Schutt and the other bank of the Danube, was worsted in a cavalry fight at Petronel by the Tartars, whose flying squadrons were already seen from the walls of Vienna. Proclamation had been made, forbidding the citizens to speak of the present state of affairs!—but the emperor and court, who had confidently reckoned on the invaders being delayed by the sieges of Raab and Komorn, no sooner learned that they had passed those fortresses unheeded, and were rapidly approaching the capital, than, seized with a panic-terror, they fled from the devoted city, on the same day with the combat at Petronel, (July 7,) in such dismayed haste, that the empress was forced to lodge one night under a tree in the open air; nor did they deem themselves in safety from the terrible pursuit of the Tartars, till they reached Lintz, on the furthest western verge of the hereditary states. The Austrian towns along the Danube were overwhelmed by the advancing tide of Turks, or ravaged by the Hungarian followers of Tekoeli, who vied with their Moslem allies in animosity against the Germans; and the light troops and Tartars, overspreading the country, pushed their predatory excursions so far up the river, as even to alarm the imperial fugitives at Lintz, who consulted their safety by a second flight to Passau. The three great abbeys of Lilienfeldt, Moelk, and Klosterneuburg, were preserved from these desultory marauders by the strength of their walls, and the valour of their monastic inmates, who took arms in defence of their cloisters; but the open country was laid waste with the same ferocity as in the invasion by Soliman, and many thousands of the country people were dragged as slaves into the Turkish camp. The regular columns of the janissaries and feudatory troops, meanwhile, continuing their advance, appeared on the morning of the 14th under the walls of Vienna; the posts of the different corps were assigned on the same day, and in the course of the following night, ground was broken for the trenches on three sides of the city.

The ancient ramparts of Vienna, which had withstood the assault of the great Soliman, had been replaced, not long after the former siege, by fortifications better adapted for modern warfare; but during the long interval of security, the extensive suburbs, with the villas and gardens of the nobles and opulent citizens, had been suffered to encroach on the glacis and encumber the approaches; and the ruins of these luxurious abodes, imperfectly destroyed in the panic arising from the unexpected celerity of the enemy's movements, were calculated at once to impede the fire from the walls, and to afford shelter and lodgement to the besiegers. Such preparations for defence, however, as the time allowed of, had been hastily made by the governor, Rudiger Count Stahrenberg, a descendant of the stout baron who, in the former siege, had repulsed the Tartars in the defiles near Enns, and an artillery officer of proved skill and valour. Most of the gates had been walled up, platforms and covered ways constructed, and the students of the university, with such of the citizens as were able and willing to bear arms, were organized into companies in aid of the regular troops, whose number did not exceed 14,000. But the flower of the Austrian nobility, with many gallant volunteers, not only from Germany, but from other parts of Christendom, were within the walls, and animated by their example the spirits of the defenders, whose only hope of relief lay apparently in the distant and uncertain succours of Poland. The Duke of Lorraine, with his cavalry, had still hoped to maintain himself in the Prater and the Leopoldstadt, (which were on an island separated from the city by a narrow arm of the river,) and thus to keep up the communication with the north bank:—but an overwhelming body of Turkish horse, (among whom were conspicuous the Arab chargers and gorgeous equipments of a troop of Egyptian Mamlukes, a force rarely seen in the Ottoman armies,) was directed against him on the 17th, and after a desperate conflict, he was driven across the main stream with the loss of 500 men, and with difficulty secured himself from pursuit by breaking the bridge. The suburb of Leopold, in itself a second city, was given up to the flames; and the Turks, erecting two batteries on the bank opposite Vienna, completed the investment on the only side which had hitherto remained open. Kara-Mustapha, in the confidence of anticipated triumph, now summoned Stahrenberg to surrender, by throwing a cartel into the city, wrapped up in linen and fastened to an arrow: and no answer being returned, the fire of the batteries on the Leopold island opened on the town; and in less than a week ten others were completed and mounted with cannon on the landward side.

The main point of attack, in the former siege under Soliman, had been the gate of Carinthia, (Kaernther-Thor,) and the adjoining bastions; but the weight of the Turkish fire on the land side was now directed principally against the Castle-Gate, (Burg-Thor,) lying to the left of the former, and against the curtain between the Castle bastion and that of Loebel; and on the river side from the batteries of the Leopold island against the Rothenthurm or Red Tower, at the point where the fortifications abut on the stream of the Danube. The tent of the vizir was pitched opposite the Burg-Thor, in the midst of the janissaries and Roumeliote troops, while the feudatories of Anatolia and Syria, under their pashas, were posted right and left of this central point, and the encampments of the various divisions stretched far round the city in a semi-circle many miles in extent, touching the Danube at its two extreme points of Ebersdorff below Vienna, and Nussdorff in the higher part of the stream, where a bridge thrown over the narrow channel formed a communication between the outposts on the mainland, and those on the Leopold island. The charge of this bridge was assigned to the Moldavian and Wallachian contingents, under the command of Scherban, waiwode of the latter province, and one of the most remarkable adventurers of the age. Born of a noble Wallachian family, which claimed descent from the ancient imperial house of Cantacuzene, he had earned from the Turks, not less by the reckless bravery he had displayed under the standard of the crescent in the wars of Poland, than by the consummate address with which he had steered his way through the tortuous intrigues of the Fanar, the sobriquet of Shaitan Ogblu, son of Satan—nor was he unknown as a gay and gallant visitor to the more polished and voluptuous courts of the west. In his elevation to the throne of his native country, he was said to have been materially assisted by the criminal favour of the consort of his predecessor, the Princess Ducas:—but in the camp before Vienna he assumed the guise of extraordinary piety—a lofty cross was erected before his tent, where the rights of the Greek Church were daily celebrated with extraordinary pomp, and the priests of that communion offered up prayers for the success of the Ottoman arms against the schismatics of the Western Church![G]

On the 23d of July, two mines were fired under the counterscarp of the Loebel bastion, and though from the want of skill in the Turkish engineers, they did little damage, the alarm caused among the garrison, who called to mind the formidable use made of this species of approach in the siege of Candia, was such, that Stahrenberg issued orders that one person should be constantly on the watch in each house, to prevent the Turks from making their way into the city by these subterraneous passages. No more than forty mines, however, were sprung during the whole siege, and their effect, from the industry with which they were countermined by the garrison, was far less destructive than at Candia:—but the fire from the batteries continued without cessation, till the counterscarp and ravelin between the two bastions were reduced to a heap of ruins, and the covered approaches of the Turks, in spite of the constant sorties of the besieged, were pushed so close to the outer works that the defenders could reach the pioneers employed on the galleries by thrusting at them through the palisades with the long German pikes, the efficiency of which had been so severely experienced in the former siege. The first assault on the ravelin was made July 25—but the explosion of a mine at the instant threw the attacking column into disorder, and they were repulsed after a severe conflict, in which Stahrenberg himself was wounded. The attack was not repeated in force till the night of Aug. 3, when the troops of the pasha of Temeswar, and a select body of janissaries under their houlkiaya or lieutenant-general, rushed with such fury upon the ruined rampart, that though four times driven back, they at last succeeded in effecting a lodgement in the ravelin, and threw up parapets to screen themselves from the fire of the walls. The city, meanwhile, was repeatedly set on fire by bombs thrown from the Turkish batteries; and during the confusion arising from one of these partial conflagrations, a fresh mine was run under the angle of the court bastion, and sprung with such effect as to cause a practicable breach. The quantity of powder, however, had been so greatly over calculated that great part recoiled among the Turks and the garrison, by a well-timed sortie, did great damage to the enemy's works. Before the breach, however, could be repaired, the janissaries, recovering from their panic, again assailed it, and, after a desperate struggle, established themselves in the ditch and front of the bastion, while the defenders endeavoured, by changing the direction of their guns, to enfilade the ground thus won by the enemy, so as to prevent their penetrating into the interior, which now lay open to them.

Great had been the panic throughout Europe at the advance of the Turks into Austria, and their appearance before Vienna. The infidel host was magnified, by the exaggerations of popular terror, to the number of 100,000 horse and 600,000 foot! And it was doubted whether, after destroying the power of the House of Hapsburg, the vizir would march to the Rhine, and annihilate the remaining strength of Christendom by the overthrow of Louis XIV., or would cross the Alps to fulfil the famous threat of Bayezid I., by stabbing his horse before the high altar of St Peter's. Even among those better qualified to take a calm view of the state of affairs, little hope was entertained that Vienna could hold out till the armies of Poland and the empire could be collected in sufficient force for its relief, if the Turks continued to press the siege with that vigour and stubborn perseverance, the combination of which in the attack of fortified places had hitherto been one of their most remarkable military characteristics. But Kara-Mustapha, deficient alike in martial experience and personal courage, was little qualified either to stimulate the fanatic ardour of the Ottomans or to guide it to victory. While within the wide enclosure of his own tents, carefully pitched beyond the range of cannon-shot from the ramparts, he maintained a household and harem of such luxurious magnificence as none of the sultans had ever carried with them into the field, the rations of the soldiers were reduced, on the pretext that the supplies expected from Hungary had been intercepted by the garrisons of Raab and the other towns on the Danube, which still held out for the emperor; and so little did he care to disguise his apprehensions for his own safety, that he visited the lines only in a litter rendered musket-proof by plates and lattices of iron! Whether he entertained the wild design, as asserted by Cantemir, (whose authority, as that of a contemporary, may in this case perhaps deserve some credit,) of throwing off his allegiance to the sultan, and erecting an independent Western Empire of the Ottomans in Austria and Hungary, or whether he was simply instigated by his avarice to preserve the imagined treasures of the capital of the German Caesars from the pillage which must follow from its being taken by storm—he no sooner saw the imperial city apparently within his grasp, than he restrained, instead of encouraging, the spirit of the troops, endeavouring rather to wear out the garrison by an endless succession of petty alarms, than to carry the place at once by assault. The murmurs of the soldiers, who even refused to remain in the trenches, were with difficulty quieted by the exhortations of Wani-Effendi, a celebrated Moslem divine, who had accompanied the army in order to share in the merit of the holy war—while the remonstrances of the pashas and generals were silenced by the exhibition of the sultan's khatt-shereef, which conferred on the vizir plenary powers for the conduct of the war.

While Kara Mustapha thus lay inactive in his lines before Vienna, Tekoeli, who had been detached with his Hungarian followers and an auxiliary Turkish corps to reduce the castle of Presburg, which held out after the surrender of the town, had been defeated by the Duke of Lorraine, aided by a body of Polish cavalry under Lubomirski, the forerunners of the army now assembling at Cracow. All the European princes, meanwhile, with the exception of Louis XIV., who, even in the danger of their common faith, forgot not his hostility to the house of Hapsburg, vied with each other in forwarding the equipment of the host which was to save the bulwark of Christendom. The cardinals at Rome sold their plate to supply funds for the German levies; Cardinal Barberini alone contributed 20,000 florins, and the Pope was profuse in his indulgences to those who joined the new crusade. The emperor, meanwhile, from his retreat at Passau, was abject in his entreaties to Sobieski for speedy succour, offering to cede to him his rights upon Hungary if he could preserve his Austrian capital; but the zeal of the Polish hero needed no stimulus. Though so disabled by the gout as to be unable to mount his horse without help, he was indefatigable in his exertions to hasten the march of his troops, to whom he gave the rendezvous, "Under the counterscarp at Vienna." On his march into Germany, he was every where received as a deliverer; the Jesuits of Olmutz erected, at his entrance into the town, a triumphal arch, with the inscription, "Salvatorem expectamus;" and all hailed, as a sure omen of victory, the presence of the champion whose very name had become a byword of terror among the Turks. The beleaguered garrison was, meanwhile, cheered by frequent messages promising speedy relief from the Duke of Lorraine, whose emissaries, selected for their knowledge of the Turkish language, contrived to pass and re-pass securely; but an epidemic disease, in addition to the sword and the bombardment, was rapidly thinning their numbers; and Callonitz, bishop of Neustadt, who, in his younger days, had gained distinction against the Turks in Candia, now acquired a holier fame by his pious care of the sick and wounded, who crowded the hospitals and houses. The siege had been languidly carried on during the greater part of August, but at the end of the month fresh symptoms of activity were observed in the Ottoman lines; several mines were sprung on the 27th and 28th, and the fire from the batteries was so warmly kept up, that on the 29th the garrison, conjecturing that the anniversary of the battle of Mohacz had been chosen for the general assault, stood to their arms in anxious suspense. But the day passed over without any alarm, and it was not till September 4, that, having blown up great part of the right face of the court bastion by a powerful mine, 5000 of the elite of the janissaries sprang, sword in hand, with loud shouts and the clangour of martial music, into the breach thus made, and forcing their way, with the fanatic valour which had in their best days characterized the sons of Hadji-Bektash, into the interior of the bastion, planted their bairahs, or pennons, on the ruined ramparts. Stahrenberg himself, with his officers and guards, was fortunately going the rounds at the menaced point at the moment of the explosion and assault, but the Osmanlis held firm the ground they had gained; and Stahrenberg, seeing the enemy thus fairly established within the defences, directed barriers to be constructed and trenches sunk at the head of the streets nearest the breach, while thirty rockets, fired in the night from the steeple of St Stephen's Domkirch, announced the extremity of their distress to their approaching friends; and all eyes were turned to the rocky heights of the Kahlenberg, which bounded the prospect to the west, in hope of descrying the standards of the Christian army.

It was at Tuln, six leagues above Vienna, that Sobieski received, the day after this assault, a despatch from Stahrenberg, containing only the words—"There is no time to be lost!" On the 6th the Poles passed the river by the bridge of Tuln, and the king, amazed at the supineness of the vizir in suffering this movement to be effected without molestation, exclaimed, "Against such a general the victory is already gained!"—and advanced as to an assured triumph. Though far inferior in numbers to the Turks, who, after all their losses by the sword and desertion, still mustered 120,000 effective men, when passed in review on the 8th by the vizir, it was in truth a gallant army which Sobieski now saw united under his command. The Imperialists, under the Duke of Lorraine, were not more than 20,000; but the Saxons and Bavarians, led by their respective electors, and the contingents of the lesser states of the empire, with the fiery hussars and cuirassiers of Poland, formed an aggregate of 65,000 men, more than half of whom were cavalry; while in the ranks were found, besides the German chivalry who fought for their fatherland, many noble volunteers, who had hastened from Spain and Italy to share in the glories anticipated under the leadership of Sobieski. Among these illustrious auxiliaries was a young hero, who had escaped from France in defiance of the mandate of Louis XIV., to flesh his maiden sword in view of the Polish king, and who at a later period, under the well-known name of Prince Eugene, himself earned deathless fame by his achievements against those redoubted enemies, whose first great overthrow he was destined to witness.

On the evening of the 10th the two armies were separated only by the ridge of the Kahlenberg, and the thick forests covering its sides; and a still more urgent message arrived from the governor, who intimated that he had little chance of repelling another assault. "On the same night, however," (says the diary of a Dutch officer in the garrison,) "we saw on the hills many fires, and rockets thrown up, as signals of our approaching succours, which we joyfully answered in like manner ... and next day the Turks were moving, and their cavalry riding about in confusion, till about four P.M. we saw several of their regiments drawing off towards the hills, and those in Leopoldstadt marching over the bridge." The knowledge, indeed, that the terrible Sobieski was at the head of the Christian army, had spread such a panic among the Osmanli, that several thousands left the camp the same night; but Kara-Mustapha, though urged by all his officers to march with his whole force to meet the coming storm, contented himself with sending 10,000 men, under Kara-Ibrahim, pasha of Buda, to watch the Poles, while the rest were kept in their lines before the city, which was cannonaded with redoubled fury throughout the 11th and the night following. The summits of the Kahlenberg glittered with the arms of the confederates, who bivouacked there during the night, being unable to pitch their tents from the violence of the wind, which Sobieski, in one of his letters to his queen, (his "charmante et bien aimee Mariette,") says, was attributed by the soldiers to the incantations of the vizir, "who is known to be a great magician." From the top of the Leopoldsberg, the king and the Duke of Lorraine reconnoitred the Turkish camp, which lay in all its wide extent before them, from the opposite skirts of the Wienerberg almost to the foot of the ridge on which they stood, with the lofty pavilions and scarlet screens of the vizir's quarters conspicuous in the midst, while the incessant roar of the artillery rose from the midst of the smoke which enveloped the city.

At five in the morning of the 12th, the sound of musketry was heard from the thickets and wooded ravines at the foot of the Kahlenberg, where the Saxons were already engaged with the Turkish division under Ibrahim-Pasha; and the king, having heard mass on the Leopoldsberg from his chaplain Aviano, mounted his favourite sorrel charger, and, preceded by his son James, whom he had just dubbed a knight in front of the army, and by his esquire bearing his shield and banner, led the Poles, who held the right of the allied line, down the slopes of the mountain. The left wing, which lay nearest the river, was commanded by the Duke of Lorraine, and the columns in the centre were under the orders of the two electors, and the Dukes of Saxe-Lauenburg and Eisenach. By eight A.M. the action had become warm along the skirts of the Kahlenberg—the Turks, who were principally horse, dismounting to fight on foot behind hastily-constructed abattis of trees and earth, as the nature of the ground was unfavourable to cavalry, and keeping up a heavy fire on the enemy while they were entangled in the ravines. The ardour of the Christians, however, speedily overcame these obstacles; and by ten A.M., their van was debouching from the defiles into the plain with loud shouts of battle; and the Turks, though from time to time receiving reinforcements from the camp, were gradually obliged to give ground. The vizir, meanwhile, remaining immovable in his tent, directed a fresh cannonade to be directed against the city, under cover of which a general assault was to be made; but the long files of camels laden with the spoils of Austria, which were sent off in haste on the road to Hungary, revealed his secret disquietude—and the troops in the trenches, effectually disheartened by the delay and privations of the siege, showed little inclination again to advance against the shattered bastions. The towers and steeples of Vienna were thronged with anxious spectators, who with throbbing hearts watched the advance of their deliverers, who pressed on at all points, "making the Turks give way" (says the diary above quoted) "whenever they came to a shock." The villages of Nussdorff and Heiligenstadt on the Danube, where several odas of janissaries, with heavy cannon, were posted, checked for some time the progress of the Austrians on the left; the Duc de Croye, a gallant French volunteer, fell in leading the attack, but a body of Polish cuirassiers were at last sent to their aid, who, levelling their lances, and dashing with loud shouts against the flank of the Turkish batteries, carried the position, and put the defenders to the sword. It was not so much a battle, as a series of desperate but irregular skirmishes scattered over wide extent of ground—the Turkish troops (who were almost all cavalry, as most of the regulars and artillery were still in the camp) gradually receding before the heavy advancing columns of the Christians. By four P.M. they were driven so close to their intrenchments, that Sobieski could descry the vizir, seated in a small crimson tent, and tranquilly drinking coffee with his two sons. At this moment, a torrent of the wild cavalry of the Tartars, headed by the khan in person, poured forth from the Moslem lines, and thundered upon the right of the Poles, only to recoil in disorder before the lances of Iablonowski and the Lithuanians, who pushed in pursuit close to a deep ravine, which covered the redoubts of the Turks. But the khan had recognized in the melee the well-known figure of Sobieski, whose personal presence had been as yet uncertain. "By Allah!" said he to the vizir on his return from his unsuccessful charge, "the heavens have fallen upon us; for the ill-omened kral of the Leh (Poles) of a truth is with the infidels!"