But, with the exception of the first of these incidents, had any of them really happened? He could not believe it. Was it not rather the sport of a deceitful dream? His fiddle—he held it in his hands—he never could have broken it. In fact, the beginning of it all was his despair at being beaten, and he was indebted to his excited imagination for the rest—the suicide, the lake, and the mysterious Unknown.

"That must be it," he cried at last, delighted at finding a solution to the mystery, and walking joyously up and down his chamber. "I have had a horrible dream—a dream with my eyes open; that is all."

Two gentle taps at the door made him start; but the visitor was only one of the brewery boys, who gave him a letter from the burgomaster.

"Yoran, did you see me go out about two hours ago?" asked Frederick anxiously.

"No, meinheer," said the boy.

"And you did not see me come in?"

"No, meinheer."

"That's all right," said the youth, signing for Yoran to retire. "Now, then," he said, "there can be no doubt whatever that it was all a dream." Opening the burgomaster's letter, he ran through it in haste. The first magistrate of Haarlem informed Frederick Katwingen that he had an important communication to make to him, and requested him to come to his house.

The musician again placed his lips on his instrument, and again pressed it gratefully to his heart; and then placed it with the utmost care within its beautiful case, which he covered with a rich cloth. Locking the case, and looking at it as a mother might look at the cradle of her new-born baby, he betook himself to the mansion of Jansen Pyl.

That stately gentleman was luxuriously reposing in an immense armchair, covered with Hungary leather. His two elbows rested on the arms and enabled him to support in his hands the largest, the reddest, the fattest face that had ever ornamented the configuration of a Dutch functionary before. Mr Jansen Pyl wore at that moment the radiant look of satisfaction which only a magistrate can assume who feels conscious that he is in the full sunshine of the approbation of his sovereign. His whole manner betrayed it—the smile upon his lip, the fidgety motion of his feet, and the look which he darted from time to time around the room, as if to satisfy himself that his happiness was "not a sham but a reality." But his happiness seemed far from contagious. On his right hand there was a lovely creature, seated on a footstool, who did not partake his enjoyment. There was something so sweet and so harmonious in her expression, that you felt sure at once she was as good as she was beautiful. There was poetry also in her dejected attitude, and in the long lashes that shadowed her blue eyes; nor was the charm diminished by the marble neck bent lowly down, and covered with long flowing locks of the richest brown. And the poetry was, perhaps, increased by the contrast offered by the sorrowing countenance of the girl to the radiant visage of the plethoric individual in the chair. Whilst the ambitious thoughts of the burgomaster rose to the regions inhabited by the Stadtholder, the poor girl's miserable reflections returned upon herself. Her eyes were dimmed with tears. It was easy to see that that had long been their occupation, and that some secret sorrow preyed upon the repose of the fair maid of Haarlem.

It was Maina, the betrothed of Frederick. On the left of the burgomaster, negligently leaning on the back of the magistrate's chair, was a man still young in years, but so wrinkled and careworn, from study or bad health, that he might have passed for old. The man's expression was cold and severe; his look proud and fiery; his language rough and harsh. On analysing his features you could easily make out that he had prodigious powers of mind, a character imperious and jealous, and such indomitable pride that he might do a mischief to any rival who might be bold enough to cross his path.

Now, we are aware of one at least who ran the risk; for the man was Laurentius Castero. Frederick Katwingen started back on entering the burgomaster's room. His eye encountered the glance of Castero, and in the look then interchanged, they felt that they were enemies between whom no reconciliation could take place. From Laurentius, Frederick turned his eye to Maina. The sorrowful attitude of the maiden would have revealed to him all that had happened, if the self-satisfied look of his rival had left any thing to be learned. The conqueror brow-beat the vanquished.

"Mr Katwingen," said the burgomaster, deliberately weighing every word, "you are aware of the high compliment paid by the Stadtholder to our city."

"My dream comes true," thought Frederick as he bowed affirmatively to the magistrate's enquiry.

"And you are also aware," pursued the burgomaster, "of the Stadtholder's wishes as far as you are personally concerned?"

Frederick bowed again.

"Thanks to my humble supplications," continued Jansen Pyl, raising his enormous head with an air of dignity, "our gracious governor has condescended to honour our good town with his august presence for twenty-four hours longer. But what ought to fill you with eternal gratitude is this: that he has determined to hear you a second time when he returns to-morrow from inspecting the works at Shravnag. I hope you will redouble your efforts, and do all you can to please your illustrious auditor; and, if any thing is required to stimulate your ambition, and add to your endeavours to excel, I will add this—the hand of Maina will be bestowed on the conqueror at this second trial."

"But, father!——" said the maiden.

"It is all settled," interrupted the burgomaster, looking astonished at the girl's audacity; "you are the reward I offer to the protege of the Stadtholder. You hear what I say, gentlemen?" he added, turning to the rivals.

"I shall certainly not miss the appointment," said Castero, throwing back his head proudly. "If to-morrow is not as glorious to me as to-day has been, I will break my violin, and never touch a bow again as long as I live."

"As for me," said Frederick, "if I do not make up for the check I unluckily met to-day by a glorious victory, I swear I will renounce the flattering name my countrymen have given me, and will hide my shame in some foreign land. The Orpheus of his country must have no rival of his fame."

"To-morrow, then," said the burgomaster.

"To-morrow!" repeated the rivals, casting on each other looks of proud defiance.

"To-morrow!" whispered Maina and buried her face in her hands.

CHAPTER V.

I shall not attempt to describe the strange sensations of Frederick on returning from the burgomaster's house It will have been seen from the glimpses we have had of him already, that he was of a quick and sensitive disposition, and that the chance of defeat in the approaching struggle would sting him into madness. He pictured to himself the ferocious joy of Castero on being declared the victor—the agony of Maina—the misery of his own degradation; and there is no doubt if the mysterious Unknown, whose appearance he now felt certain was nothing but a dream, had visited him in propria persona, that he would have accepted his terms—his soul for triumph over his enemy, for the possession of the girl he loved.

The morrow rose clear and cloudless. At the appointed hour Frederick took his violin, and prepared to set out. But just when he was opening the door, the man in the mantle—the same he had seen the day before—stood before him.

"You did not expect to see me," said the Unknown, following Frederick to the end of the room, where he had retreated. "I told you, nevertheless, that we should meet again," he added, placing himself face to face with the son of the brewer.

"Then it was no dream," murmured the youth, who appeared to have lost all his resolution.

"Certainly not," returned the stranger, looking sarcastically at Frederick from head to foot. "I promised you yesterday, on the banks of the lake, that you would find your fiddle unharmed, and that I would enable you to conquer your rival. But I don't feel that I am bound to do any thing of the kind for nothing; generosity was never my forte, and I have lived long enough among the burghers of Holland to insist on being well paid for every thing I do."

"Who are you, then; and what is it you want?" enquired the Dutch Orpheus, in an agitated voice.

"Who am I!" answered the man in the mantle, with all the muscles of his face in violent convulsions—"Who am I!—I thought I had told you yesterday when you asked me—I am your master. What do I want? I will tell you. But why do you tremble so? you were bold enough when we met. I saw the thought in your heart—if Satan should rise before me, and promise me victory over my rival at the price of my soul, I would agree to the condition!"

"Satan!—you are Satan!" shrieked Frederick, and closed his eyes in horror.

"Didn't you find me out on the side of the lake, when you told me you would exchange your salvation for years of love and glory. Yes, I am that King of Darkness—your master! and that of a great part of mankind. But, come; the hour is at hand—the Burgomaster and the Stadtholder await us. Do you accept the offer I make you?"

After a minute's hesitation, during which his features betrayed the force of the internal contest, the musician made his choice. He had not power to speak, but he raised his hand, and was on the point of making the cross upon his forehead, to guard him from the tempter, when Satan perceived his intention, and seized his arm.

"Think a little before you discard me entirely," he said, raising again in the soul of the musician all the clouds of pride and ambition that had given him power over it at first; "look into the box where your violin is laid, and decide for the last time."

Frederick obeyed his tempter, and opened the case, but uttered a cry of desperation when he saw his Straduarius in the same state of utter ruin to which he had reduced it before. The neck separated from the body; both faces shivered to fragments—the ebony rests, the gold-headed stops, the bridge, the sides—all a confused mass of wreck and destruction.

"Frederick! Frederick!" cried a voice from the brewery—it was his father's.

"Frederick! Frederick!" repeated a hundred voices under the windows—"Come down, come down, the Stadtholder is impatient! Castero swears you are afraid to face him."

They were his friends who were urging him to make haste.

"Well?" enquired Satan.

"I accept the bargain. I give you my soul!" said Frederick, while his cheek grew pale, and his eye flashed.

"Your soul!" replied Satan, with a shrug of infinite disdain. "Do you think I would have hindered you from jumping into the lake, if I had wished to get it? Do you think that suicides are not mine already?—mine by their own act, without the formality of a bargain?—Your soul!" repeated the Prince of Darkness, with a sneer; "I don't want it, I assure you: at least not to-day—I feel sure of it whenever I require it!"

"My soul, then, belongs to you—my fate is settled beforehand?" enquired Frederick.

"You are an artiste," answered Satan, with a chuckling laugh, "and therefore are vain, jealous, proud, and full of envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness. You perceive I shall lose nothing by waiting. No, no; 'tis not your own soul I want—but that of your first-born, that you must make over to me this hour!"

"What do you want me to do!"

"Here is the deed," said Satan, pulling a parchment from under his cloak, on which strange characters were drawn, and letters in an unknown language. "In putting your name to this, you bind and oblige yourself to let me know when Maina is about to become a mother; and before the baptismal water shall touch the infant's brow, you shall hang from the window a piece of lace which shall have been worn by Maina at her wedding. One of my satellites will be on the watch; he will come and tell me when the signal is made and—the rest is my own affair! You will find this agreement in your fiddle-case."

"Frederick! Frederick! be quick be quick!" again shouted the father.

"Frederick! Frederick! Castero is boasting about your absence!" cried the chorus of impatient friends.

"I agree!" cried the artiste, and affixed his name. While he was signing, the stranger muttered some words of mysterious sound, of which he did not know the meaning; and immediately the pieces of the broken instrument united themselves—rests, bridge, stops, faces, and sides, all took their proper places, and the soul of the noble violin re-entered its musical prison, at the moment when that of the future baby of Maina was sold to the enemy of mankind!

"Now, then," said Satan, as he sank beneath the floor, "go where glory waits thee."

CHAPTER VI

What need is there to tell the success of Frederick Katwingen—how he triumphed over Castero, captivated the Stadtholder, and was the pride of his native town? The Stadtholder attached him to his person, settled a pension on him of fifteen thousand florins, and treated him as the most cherished of his friends. The burgomaster was delighted to gain so illustrious a son-in-law, and hurried forward the marriage with all his might. On the day of the wedding, when Frederick was leading the bride to church, at the moment when the party was crossing the market-place, a voice whispered in his ear—"A piece of the lace she will wear at the ball this evening." Frederick recognised the voice, though no one else heard it. He turned, but saw nobody. After the ceremony, the burgomaster handed the contract to the bridegroom, to which the Stadtholder had affixed his signature. A present of a hundred thousand florins from the governor of the United Provinces, proved the sincerity of that illustrious personage's friendship, and that his favour had by no means fallen off. The burgomaster was emulous of so much generosity, and introduced a clause in the contract, settling his whole fortune on his son-in-law, in case of Maina's death.

Behold, then, the artiste praised—feted—and happy. Possessed of the wife he loved—rich—honoured—what more had he to hope than that those advantages should be continued him? Castero was true to his word—reduced his violin to powder, acknowledged Frederick's superiority, and betook himself to higher pursuits, which ended in the great discovery of printing.

The Dutch Orpheus is freed from the annoyance of a rival. He reigns by the divine right of his violin, the undisturbed monarch of his native plains. His name is pronounced with enthusiasm from one flat end of Holland to the other. In the splendour of his triumphal condition, he has forgotten his compact with Beelzebub; but Maina reminded him of it one day, when she told him he was about to become a father.

A father!—ha!—Frederick! That word which brings such rapture to the newly married couple—which presents such radiant visions of the future—that word freezes the heart of the artiste and stops the blood in his veins.

It is only now when Maina is so happy that he knows the enormity of his fault.

He is about to be a father—and he—beforehand—basely, cowardly—has sold the soul of his son who is yet unborn—before it can shake off the taint of original sin. Shame! shame! on the proud in heart who has yielded to the voice of the tempter—to the wretch who, for a little miserable glory, has shut the gates of mercy on his own child—shame! shame!

If Satan would consent to an exchange—if—but no—'tis impossible. The "archangel fallen" had explained himself too clearly—no hope! no hope! From that hour there was no rest, no happiness for the protege of the Stadtholder—sleep fled from his eyelids, he was pursued by perpetual remorse, and in the agonies of his heart deserted the nuptial bed: while light dreams settled on Maina's spirit, and wove bright chaplets for the future, he wandered into the midnight fields—across the canals—any where, in short, where he fancied he could procure forgetfulness; but solitude made him only feel his misery the more. How often he thought of going to the gloomy lake where he had first encountered the Unknown! How often he determined to complete the resolution he had formed on the day of Castero's triumph! But Satan had said to him, "The suicide is condemned—irrevocably condemned;" and the condemnation of which he would be sure, would not bring a ransom for his first-born.

The fatal time draws on—in a few minutes more Maina will be a mother. Frederick, by some invisible impulse, has chosen from among the laces of his wife a rich Mechlin, which she wore round her neck on her wedding-day. It is now to be the diabolic standard, and he goes with it towards the door of his house, pensive and sad. When he got to the threshold he stopped—he raised his eyes to heaven, and from his heart and from his lips, there gushed out prayers, warm, deep, sincere—the first for many years. A ray of light has rushed into his soul. He uttered a cry of joy, he dashed across the street into the neighbouring church; he dipped the lace into the basin of consecrated water, and returned immediately to hang it at the door of his apartment.

At that moment Maina gave birth to a son, and Satan rushed impatiently to claim his expected prey. But the tempter was unprepared for the trap that was laid for him. On placing his foot on the first step of the stair, he found himself pushed back by a superior power. The Mechlin, dripping with holy water, had amazing effect. It was guardian of the house and protected the entrance against the fallen angel. Satan strove again and again; but was always repulsed. There rises now an impenetrable barrier between him and the innocent being he had destined for his victim. Forced by the pious stratagem of Frederick Katwingen to give up his purpose, he roamed all night round the house like a roaring lion, bellowing in a most awful manner.

In the morning, when they wrapt up the babe in the precious lace to carry him to be baptized, they perceived that it had been torn in several places. The holes showed the determination with which Satan had tried to force a passage. The enemy of mankind had not retreated without leaving the mark of his talons on the lace.

On coming back from church, Frederick ran to his fiddle; and found in a corner of the case the deed of compact he had signed. With what joy he tossed it into the fire, and heard it go crackling up the chimney!

All was over now; Satan was completely floored. He confessed, by giving up the contract, that he had no further right on the soul of the newly born, when once it had been purified by the waters of baptism. The father had recovered the soul which the musician had bartered away! Since that time, whenever a young woman in Haarlem is about to become a mother, the husband never fails to hang at the door the richest pieces of lace he can find in her trousseau. That standard bids defiance to the evil one, and recalls the noble victory won over the prince of darkness by Frederick Katwingen, surnamed the Dutch Orpheus. And that is the reason that, in passing through Haarlem, the visitor sees little frames suspended from certain houses, ornamented with squares of Mechlin, or Valenciennes, or Brussels point. And that is the reason that, when he asks an explanation of the singular custom, he gets only the one short, unvarying answer—"These are the Devil's Frills!"



ADVENTURES IN LOUISIANA.

PART II.

THE BLOCKHOUSE.

Supper over, and clenched by a pull at Nathan's whisky flask, we prepared for departure. The Americans threw the choicest parts of the buck over their shoulders, and the old squatter again taking the lead, we resumed our march. The way led us first across a prairie, then through a wood, which was succeeded by a sort of thicket, upon the branches and thorny shrubs of which we left numerous fragments of our dress. We had walked several miles almost in silence, when Nathan suddenly made a pause, and let the but-end of his rifle fall heavily on the ground. I took the opportunity to ask him where we were.

"In Louisiana," replied he, "between the Red River, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Mississippi; on French ground, and yet in a country where French power is worth little. Do you see that?" added he suddenly, seizing my arm, and pulling me a few paces aside, while he pointed to a dark object, that at the distance and in the moonlight, had the appearance of an earthen wall. "Do you know what that is?" repeated the squatter.

"An Indian grave, perhaps," replied I.

"A grave it is," was the answer; "but not of the Redskins. As brave a backwoodsman as ever crossed the Mississippi lies buried there. You are not altogether wrong, though. I believe it was once an Indian mound."

While he spoke we were walking on, and I now distinguished a hillock or mound of earth, with nearly perpendicular sides, on which was erected a blockhouse, formed of unhewn cypress trunks, of a solidity and thickness upon which four-and-twenty pounders would have had some difficulty in making an impression. Its roof rose about ten feet above a palisade enclosing the building, and consisting of stout saplings sharpened at the top, and stuck in the ground at a very short distance from each other, being moreover strengthened and bound together with wattles and branches. The building had evidently been constructed more for a refuge and place of defence than an habitual residence.

A ladder was now lowered, by which we ascended to the top of the mound. There was a small door in the palisades, which Nathan opened and passed through, we following.

The blockhouse was of equal length and breadth, about forty feet square. On entering it we found nothing but the bare walls, with the exception of a wide chimney of sun-baked brick, and in one corner a large wooden slab partly imbedded in the ground.

"Don't tread upon that board," said the old man solemnly, as we approached the slab to examine it; "it is holy ground."

"How holy ground?"

"There lies under it as brave a fellow as ever handled axe or rifle. He it was built this blockhouse, and christened it the Bloody Blockhouse—and bloody it proved to be to him. But you shall hear more of it if you like. You shall hear how six American rifles were too many for ninety French and Spanish muskets."

Carleton and I shook our heads incredulously. The Yankee took us both by the arm, led us out of the blockhouse, and through the stockade to a grassy projection of the hillock.

"Ninety French and Spanish muskets," repeated he in a firm voice, and weighing on each word. "Opposed to them were Asa Nolins, with his three brothers, his brother-in-law, a cousin, and their wives. He fell like a brave American as he was, but not alone, for the dead bodies of thirty foes were lying round the blockhouse when he died. They are buried there," added he, pointing to a row of cotton-trees a short distance off, that in the pale moonlight might have been taken for the spectres of the departed; "under those cotton-trees they fell, and there they are buried."

The old squatter remained for a short space in his favourite attitude, his hands crossed on his rifle, and his chin resting on them. He seemed to be calling together the recollections of a time long gone by. We did not care to interrupt him. The stillness of the night, the light of the moon and stars, that gave the prairie lying before us the appearance of a silvery sea, the sombre forest on either side of the blockhouse, of which the edges only were lighted up by the moonbeams, the vague allusions our guide had made to some fearful scene of strife and slaughter that had been enacted in this now peaceful glade—all these circumstances combined, worked upon our imaginations, and we felt unwilling to break the stillness which added to the impressive beauty of the forest scene.

"Did you ever float down the Mississippi?" asked Nathan abruptly. As he spoke he sat down upon the bank, and made sign to us to sit beside him.

"Did you ever float down the Mississippi?"

"No; we came up it from New Orleans hither."

"That is nothing; the stream is not half so dangerous there as above Natchez." We came down, six men, four women, and twice as many children, all the way from the mouths of the Ohio to the Red River; and bad work we had of it, in a crazy old boat, to pass the rapids and avoid the sand-banks, and snakes, and sawyers, and whatever the devil they call them, that are met with. I calculate we weren't sorry when we left the river and took to dry land again. The first thing we did was to make a wigwam, Injun fashion, with branches of trees. This was to shelter the women and children. Two men remained to protect them, and the other four divided into two parties, and set off, one south and t'other west, to look for a good place for a settlement. I and Righteous, one of Asa's brothers, took the southerly track.

It was no pleasuring party that journey, but a right-down hard and dangerous expedition, through cypress swamps, where snapping turtles were plenty as mosquitoes, and at every step the congo and mocassin snakes twisted themselves round our ankles. We persevered, however. We had a few handfuls of corn in our hunting-pouches, and our calabashes well filled with whisky. With that and our rifles we did not want for provender.

At length, on the fourth day, we came to an upland, or rolling prairie as we call it, from the top of which we had a view that made our hearts leap for joy. A lovely strip of land lay before us, bounded at the further end by a forest of evergreen oaks, honey locusts, and catalpas. Towards the north was a good ten mile of prairie; on the right hand a wood of cotton-trees, and on the left the forest in which you now are. We decided at once that we should find no better place than this to fix ourselves; and we went back to tell Asa and the others of our discovery, and to show them the way to it. Asa and one of his brothers returned with us, bringing part of our traps. They were as pleased with the place as we were, and we went back again to fetch the rest. But it was no easy matter to bring our plunder and the women and children through the forests and swamps. We had to cut paths through the thickets, and to make bridges and rafts to cross the creeks and marshes. After ten days' labour, however, and with the help of our axes, we were at our journey's end.

We began directly clearing and cutting down trees, and in three weeks we had built a loghouse, and were able to lie down to rest without fear of being disturbed by the wolves or catamounts. We built two more houses, so as to have one for each two families and then set to work to clear the land. We had soon shaped out a couple of fields, a ten-acre one for maize, and another half the size for tobacco. These we began to dig and hoe; but the ground was hard, and though we all worked like slaves, we saw there was nothing to be made of it without ploughing. A ploughshare we had, and a plough was easily made—but horses were wanting: so Asa and I took fifty dollars, which was all the money we had amongst us, and set out to explore the country forty miles round, and endeavour to meet with somebody who would sell us a couple of horses, and two or three cows. Not a clearing or settlement did we find, however, and at last we returned discouraged, and again began digging. On the very first day after our return, as we were toiling away in the field, a trampling of horses was heard, and four men mounted, and followed by a couple of wolf-hounds, came cantering over the prairie. It struck us that this would be a famous chance for buying a pair of horses, and Asa went to meet them, and invited them to alight and refresh themselves. At the same time we took our rifles, which were always lying beside us when we worked in the fields, and advanced towards the strangers. But when they saw our guns, they put spurs to their horses and rode off to a greater distance. Asa called out to them not to fear, for our rifles were to use against bears and wolves and Redskins, and not against Christian men. Upon this, down they came again; we brought out a calabash of real Monongahela; and after they had taken a dram, they got off their horses, and came in and ate some venison, which the women set before them. They were Creoles, half Spanish, half French, with a streak of the Injun; and they spoke a sort of gibberish not easy to understand. But Asa, who had served in Lafayette's division in the time of the war, knew French well; and when they had eaten and drunk, he began to make a bargain with them for two of their horses.

It was easy to see they were not the sort of men with whom decent folk could trade. First they would, then they wouldn't: which horses did we want, and what would we give. We offered them thirty-five dollars for their two best horses—and a heavy price it was, for at that time money was scarce in the settlements. They wanted forty, but at last took the thirty-five; and after getting three parts drunk upon taffia, which they asked for to wet the bargain as they said, they mounted two upon each of the remaining horses and rode away.

We now got on famously with our fields, and soon sowed fifteen acres of maize and tobacco, and then began clearing another ten-acre field. We were one day hard at work at this, when one of my boys came running to us, crying out, "Father! Father! The Redskins!" We snatched up our rifles and hastened to the top of the little rising ground on which our houses were built, and thence we saw, not Injuns, but fourteen or fifteen Creoles, galloping towards our clearing, halloing and huzzaing like mad. When they were within fifty yards of us, Asa stepped forward to meet them. As soon as they saw him one of them called out, "There is the thief! There is the man who stole my brown horse!" Asa made no answer to this, but waited till they came nearer, when one of them rode up to him and asked who was the chief in the settlement. "There is no chief here," answered Asa; "we are all equals and free citizens."

"You have stolen a horse from our friend Monsieur Croupier," replied the other. "You must give it up."

"Is that all?" said Asa quietly.

"No: you must show us by what right you hunt on this territory."

"Yes," cried half a dozen others, "we'll have no strangers on our hunting-grounds; the bears and caguars are getting scarcer than ever, and as for buffaloes, they are clean exterminated." And all the time they were talking, they kept leaping and galloping about like madmen.

"The sooner the bears and caguars are killed the better," said Asa. "The land is not for dumb brutes, but for men."

The Creoles, however, persisted that we had no right to hunt where we were, and swore we should go away. Then Asa asked them what right they had to send us away. This seemed to embarrass them, and they muttered and talked together; so that it was easy to see there was no magistrate or person in authority amongst them, but that they were a party of fellows who had come in hopes to frighten us. At last they said they should inform the governor, and the commandant at Natchitoches, and the Lord knows who besides, that we had come and squatted ourselves down here, and built houses, and cleared fields, and all without right or permission; and that then we might look out. So Asa began to lose patience, and told them they might all go to the devil, and that, if they were not off soon, he should be apt to hasten their movements.

"I must have my horse back," screamed the Creole whom they called Croupier.

"You shall," replied Asa, "both of them, if you return the five-and-thirty dollars."

"It was only fifteen dollars," cried the lying Creole.

Upon this Asa called to us, and we stepped out from amongst the cotton-trees, behind which we had been standing all the while; and when the Creoles saw us, each with his rifle on his arm, they seemed rather confused, and drew back a little.

"Here are my comrades," said Asa, "who will all bear witness, that the horses were sold at the prices of twenty dollars for the one and fifteen for the other. And if any one says the contrary, he says that which is not true."

"Larifari!" roared Croupier. "You shan't stop here to call us liars, and spoil our hunting-ground, and build houses on our land. His excellency the governor shall be told of it, and the commandant at Natchitoches, and you shall be driven away." And the other Creoles, who, while Asa was speaking, appeared to be getting more quiet and reasonable, now became madder than ever, and shrieked, and swore, and galloped backwards and forwards, brandishing their fowling-pieces like wild Injuns, and screaming out that we should leave the country, the game wasn't too plenty for them, and suchlike. At length Asa and the rest of us got angry, and called out to them to take themselves off or they would be sorry for it; and when they saw us bringing our rifles to our shoulders, they put spurs to their horses, and galloped away to a distance of some five hundred yards. There they halted, and set up such a screeching as almost deafened us, fired off some of their old rusty guns, and then rode away. We all laughed at their bragging and cowardice, except Asa, who looked thoughtful.

"I fear some harm will come of this," said he. "Those fellows will go talking about us in their own country; and if it gets to the ears of the governors or commanding-officers that we have settled down on their territory, they will be sending troops to dislodge us."

Asa's words made us reflect, and we held counsel together as to what was best to be done. I proposed that we should build a blockhouse on the Indian mound to defend ourselves in if we were attacked.

"Yes," said Asa; but we are only six, and they may send hundreds against us.

"Very true," said I; "but if we have a strong blockhouse on the top of the mound, that is as good as sixty, and we could hold out against a hundred Spanish musketeers. And it's my notion, that if we give up such a handsome bit of ground as we have cleared here without firing a shot, we deserve to have our rifles broken before our faces."

Asa, however, did not seem altogether satisfied. It was easy to see he was thinking of the women and children. Then said Asa's wife, Rachel, "I calculate," said she, "that Nathan, although he is my brother, and I oughtn't to say it, has spoke like the son of his father, who would have let himself be scalped ten times over before he would have given up such an almighty beautiful piece of land. And what's more, Asa, I for one won't go back up the omnipotent dirty Mississippi; and that's a fact."

"But if a hundred Spanish soldiers come," said Asa, "and I reckon they will come?"

"Build the blockhouse, man, to defend yourselves; and when our people up at Salt River and Cumberland hear that the Spaniards are quarreling with us, I guess they won't keep their hands crossed before them."

So, seeing us all, even the women, so determined, Asa gave in to our way of thinking, and the very same day we began the blockhouse you see before you. The walls were all of young cypress-trees, and we would fain have roofed it with the same wood; but the smallest of the cypresses were five or six feet thick, and it was no easy matter to split them. So we were obliged to use fir, which, when it is dried by a few days' sun, burns like tinder. But we little thought when we did so, what sorrow those cursed fir planks would bring us.

When all was ready, well and solidly nailed and hammered together, we made a chimney, so that the women might cook if necessary, and then laid in a good store of hams and dried bear's flesh, filled the meal and whisky tubs, and the water-casks, and brought our plough and what we had most valuable into the blockhouse. We then planted the palisades, securing them strongly in the ground, and to each other, so that it might not be easy to tear them up. We left, as you see, a space of five yards between the stockade and the house, so that we might have room to move about in. It would be necessary for an enemy to take the palisades before he could do any injury to the house itself, and we reckoned that with six good rifles in such hands as ours, it would require a pretty many Spanish musketeers to drive us from our outer defences.

In six weeks all was ready; all our tools and rations, except what we wanted for daily use, carried into the fort, and we stood contemplating the work of our hands with much satisfaction. Asa was the only one who seemed cast down.

"I've a notion," said he, "this blockhouse will be a bloody one before long; and what's more, I guess it will be the blood of one of us that'll redden it. I've a sort of feelin' of it, and of who it'll be."

"Pho! Asa, what notions be these! Keep a light heart, man."

And Asa seemed to cheer up again, and the next day we returned to working in the fields; but as we were not using the horses, one of us went every morning to patrol ten or twelve miles backwards and forwards, just for precaution's sake. At night two of us kept watch, relieving one another, and patrolling about the neighbourhood of our clearing.

One morning we were working in the bush and circling trees, when Righteous rode up full gallop.

"They're coming!" cried he; "a hundred of them at least."

"Are they far off?" said Asa, quite quietly, and as if he had been talking of a herd of deer.

"They are coming over the prairie. In less than half an hour they will be here."

"How are they marching? With van and rear guard? In what order?"

"No order at all, but all of a heap together."

"Good!" said Asa; "they can know little about bush-fighting or soldiering of any kind. Now then, the women into the blockhouse."

Righteous galloped up to our fort, to be there first in case the enemy should find it out. The women soon followed, carrying what they could with them. When we were all in the blockhouse, we pulled up the ladder, made the gate fast, and there we were.

We felt strange at first when we found ourselves shut up inside the palisades, and only able to look out through the slits we had left for our rifles. We weren't used to be confined in a place, and it made us right-down wolfish. There we remained, however, as still as mice. Scarce a whisper was to be heard. Rachel tore up old shirts and greased them, for wadding for the guns; we changed our flints, and fixed every thing about the rifles properly, while the women sharpened our knives and axes all in silence.

Nearly an hour had passed in this way when we heard a shouting and screaming, and a few musket-shots; and we saw through our loopholes some Spanish soldiers running backwards and forwards on the crest of the slope on which our houses stood. Suddenly a great pillar of smoke arose, then a second, then a third.

"God be good to us!" cried Rachel, "they are burning our houses." We were all trembling and quite pale with rage. Harkye, stranger, when men have been slaving and sweating for four or five months to build houses for their wives and for the poor worms of children, and then a parcel of devils from hell come and burn them down like maize-stalks in a stubble-field, it is no wonder that their teeth should grind together, and their fists clench of themselves. So it was with us; but we said nothing, for our rage would not let us speak. But presently as we strained our eyes through the loopholes, the Spaniards showed themselves at the opening of the forest yonder, coming towards the blockhouse. We tried to count them, but at first it was impossible, for they came on in a crowd without any order. They thought lightly enough of those they were seeking, or they would have been more prudent. However, when they came within five hundred paces, they formed ranks, and we were able to count them. There were eighty-two foot soldiers with muskets and carbines, and three officers on horseback, with drawn swords in their hands. The latter dismounted, and their example was followed by seven other horsemen, amongst whom we recognised three of the rascally Creoles who had brought all this trouble upon us. He they called Croupier was among them. The other four were also Creoles, Acadians or Canadians, a race whom we had already met with on the Upper Mississippi, fine hunters, but wild, drunken, debauched barbarians.

The Acadians were coming on in front, and they set up a whoop when they saw the blockhouse and stockade; but finding that we were prepared to receive them, they retreated upon the main body. We saw them speaking to the officers as if advising them; but the latter shook their heads, and the soldiers continued moving on. They were in uniforms of all colours, blue, white, and brown, but each man dirtier than his neighbour. They marched in good order, nevertheless, the captain and officers coming on in front, and the Acadians keeping on the flanks. The latter, however, edged gradually off towards the cotton-trees, and presently disappeared amongst them.

"Those are the first men to frick off," said Asa, when he saw this manoeuvre of the Creoles. "They have steady hands and sharp eyes; but if we once get rid of them we need not mind the others."

The Spaniards were now within an hundred yards of us.

"Shall I let fly at the thieving incendiaries?" said Righteous.

"God forbid!" replied Asa. "We will defend ourselves like men; but let us wait till we are attacked, and the blood that is shed will lie at the door of the aggressors."

The Spaniards now saw plainly that they would have to take the stockade before they could get at us, and the officers seemed consulting together.

"Halt!" cried Asa, suddenly.

"Messieurs les Americains," said the captain, looking up at our loopholes.

"What's your pleasure?" demanded Asa.

Upon this the captain stuck a dirty pocket-handkerchief upon the point of his sword, and laughing with his officers, moved some twenty paces forward, followed by the troops. Thereupon Asa again shouted to him to halt.

"This is not according to the customs of war," said he. "The flag of truce may advance, but if it is accompanied, we fire."

It was evident that the Spaniards never dreamed of our attempting to resist them; for there they stood in line before us, and, if we had fired, every shot must have told. The Acadians, who kept themselves all this time snug behind the cotton-trees, called more than once to the captain to withdraw his men into the wood; but he only shook his head contemptuously. When, however, he heard Asa threaten to fire, he looked puzzled, and as if he thought it just possible we might do as we said. He ordered his men to halt, and called out to us not to fire till he had explained what they cane for.

"Then cut it short," cried Asa sternly. "You'd have done better to explain before you burned down our houses, like a pack of Mohawks on the war path."

As he spoke, three bullets whistled from the edge of the forest, and struck the stockades within a few inches of the loophole at which he stood. They were fired by the Creoles, who, although they could not possibly distinguish Asa, had probably seen his rifle barrel or one of his buttons glitter through the opening. As soon as they had fired, they sprang behind their trees again, craning their heads forward to hear if there was a groan or a cry. They'd have done better to have kept quiet; for Righteous and I caught a sight of them, and let fly at the same moment. Two of them fell and rolled from behind the trees, and we saw that they were the Creole called Croupier, and another of our horse-dealing friends.

When the Spanish officer heard the shots, he ran back to his men, and shouted out "Forward! To the assault!" They came on like mad a distance of thirty paces, and then, as if they thought we were wild-geese to be frightened by their noise, they fired a volley against the blockhouse.

"Now then!" cried Asa, "are you loaded, Nathan and Righteous? I take the captain—you, Nathan, the lieutenant—Righteous, the third officer—James, the sergeant. Mark your men, and waste no powder."

The Spaniards were still some sixty yards off, but we were sure of our mark at a hundred and sixty, and that if they had been squirrels instead of men. We fired: the captain and lieutenant, the third officer, two sergeants, and another man writhed for an instant upon the grass. The next moment they stretched themselves out—dead.

All was now confusion among the musketeers, who ran in every direction. Most of them took to the wood, but about a dozen remained and lifted up their officers to see if there was any spark of life left in them.

"Load again, quick!" said Asa in a low voice. We did so, and six more Spaniards tumbled over. Those who still kept their legs now ran off as if the soles of their shoes had been of red-hot iron.

We set to work to pick out our touchholes and clean our rifles, knowing that we might not have time later, and that a single miss-fire might cost us all our lives. We then loaded, and began to calculate what the Spaniards would do next. It is true they had lost their officers; but there were five Acadians with them, and those were the men we had most cause to fear. Meantime the vultures and turkey-buzzards had already begun to assemble, and presently hundreds of them were circling and hovering over the carcasses, which they as yet, however, feared to touch.

Just then Righteous, who had the sharpest eye amongst us all, pointed to the corner of the wood, yonder where it joins the brushwood thicket. I made a sign to Asa, and we all looked and saw there was something creeping and moving through the underwood. Presently we distinguished two Acadians heading a score of Spaniards, and endeavouring, under cover of the bushes, to steal across the open ground to the east side of the forest.

"The Acadians for you, Nathan and Righteous, the Spaniards for us," said Asa. The next moment two Acadians and four Spaniards lay bleeding in the brushwood. But the bullets were scarce out of our rifles when a third Acadian, whom we had not seen, started up. "Now's the time," shouted he, "before they have loaded again. Follow me! we will have their blockhouse yet." And he sprang across followed by the Spaniards. We gnashed our teeth with rage at not having seen the Acadian.

There were still three of these fellows alive, who had now taken command of the Spaniards. Although we had shot a score of our enemies, those who remained were more than ten to one of us, and we were even worse off than at first, for then they were all together, and now we had them on each side of us. But we did not let ourselves be discouraged, although we could not help feeling that the odds against us were fearfully great.

We now had to keep a sharp look-out; for if one of us showed himself at a loophole, a dozen bullets rattled about his ears. There were many shot-holes through the palisades, which were covered with white streaks where the splinters had been torn off by the lead. The musketeers had spread themselves all along the edge of the forest, and had learned by experience to keep close to their cover. We now and then got a shot at them and killed four or five, but it was slow work, and the time seemed very long.

Suddenly the Spaniards set up a loud shout. At first we could not make out what was the matter, but presently we heard a hissing and crackling on the roof of the blockhouse. They had wrapped tow round their cartridges, and one of the shots had set light to the fir-boards. Just as we found it out, they gave three more hurras, and we saw the dry planks beginning to flame, and the fire to spread.

"We must put that out and at once," said Asa, "if we don't wish to be roasted alive. Some one must get up the chimney with a bucket of water. I'll go myself."

"Let me go, Asa," said Righteous.

"You stop here. It don't matter who goes. The thing will be done in a minute."

He put a chair on a table and got upon it, and then seizing a bar which was fixed across the chimney to hang hams upon, he drew himself up by his arms, and Rachel handed him a pail of water. All this time the flame was burning brighter, and the Spaniards getting louder in their rejoicing and hurras. Asa stood upon the bar, and raising the pail above his head, poured the water out of the chimney upon the roof.

"More to the left, Asa," said Righteous; "the fire is strongest more to the left."

"Tarnation seize it!" cried Asa, "I can't see. Hand me up another pailful."

We did so; and when he had got it, he put his head out at the top of the chimney to see where the fire was, and threw the water over the exact spot. But at the very moment that he did so the report of a dozen muskets was heard.

"Ha!" cried Asa in an altered voice, "I have it." And the hams and bucket came tumbling down the chimney, and Asa after them all covered with blood.

"In God's name, man, are you hurt?" cried Rachel.

"Hush! wife," replied Asa; "keep quiet. I have enough for the rest of my life, which will not be long: but never mind, lads; defend yourselves well, and don't fire two at the same man. Save your lead, for you will want it all. Promise me that."

"Asa! my beloved Asa!" shrieked Rachel; "if you die, I shall die too."

"Silence! foolish woman; and our child, and the one yet unborn! Hark! I hear the Spaniards! Defend yourselves, and, Nathan, be a father to my children."

I had barely time to press his hand and make him the promise he wished. The Spaniards, who had doubtless guessed our loss, rushed like mad wolves up to the mound, twenty on one side, and upwards of thirty on the other.

"Steady!" cried I. "Righteous, here with me; and you, Rachel, show yourself worthy to be Hiram Strong's daughter, and Asa's wife; load this rifle for me while I fire my own."

"O God! O God!" cried Rachel, "the hellhounds have murdered my Asa!"

She clasped her husband's body in her arms, and there was no getting her away. I felt sad enough myself, but there was scanty time for grieving; for a party of Spaniards, headed by one of the Acadians, was close up to the mound on the side which I was defending. I shot the Acadian; but another, the sixth, and last but one, took his place. "Rachel!" cried I, "the rifle, for God's sake, the rifle! a single bullet may save all our lives."

But no Rachel came, and the Acadian and Spaniards, who, from the cessation of our fire, guessed that we were either unloaded, or had expended our ammunition, now sprang forward, and by climbing, and scrambling, and getting on one another's shoulders, managed to scale the side of the mound, almost perpendicular as you see it is. And in a minute the Acadian and half a dozen Spaniards, with axes, were chopping away at the palisades, and severing the wattles which bound them together. To give the devil his due, if there had been only three like that Acadian, it would have been all up with us. He handled his axe like a real backwoodsman; but the Spaniards wanted either the skill or the strength of arm, and they made little impression. There were only Righteous and myself to oppose them; for, on the other side, a dozen more soldiers, with the seventh of those cursed Acadians, were attacking the stockade.

Righteous shot down one of the Spaniards; but just as he had done so the Acadian tore up a palisade by the roots, (how he did it I know not to this hour, there must have been a stump remaining on it,) held it with the wattles and branches hanging round it like a shield before him, guarding off a blow I aimed at him, then hurled it against me with such force that I staggered backwards, and he sprang past me. I thought it was all over with us. It is true that Righteous, with the butt of his rifle, split the skull of the first Spaniard who entered, and drove his hunting-knife into the next; but the Acadian alone was man enough to give us abundant occupation, now he had got in our rear. Just then there was a crack of a rifle, the Acadian gave a leap into the air and fell dead, and at the same moment my son Godsend, a boy of ten years old, sprang forward, Asa's rifle in his hand still smoking from muzzle and touchhole. The glorious boy had loaded the piece when he saw that Rachel did not do it, and in the very nick of time had shot the Acadian through the heart. This brought me to myself again, and with axe in one hand and knife in the other, I rushed in among the Spaniards, hacking and hewing right and left. It was a real butchery, which lasted a good quarter of an hour; but then the Spaniards got sick of it, and would have done so sooner had they known that their leader was shot. At last they jumped off the mound and ran away, such of them as could. Righteous and I put the palisade in its place again, securing it as well as we could, and then, telling my boy to keep watch, ran over to the other side, where a desperate fight was going on.

"Three of our party, assisted by the women, were defending the stockade against a score of Spaniards, who kept poking their bayonets between the palisades, till all our people were wounded and bleeding. But Rachel had now recovered from her first grief at her husband's death, or rather it had turned to a feeling of revenge, and there she was, like a raging tigress, seizing the bayonets as they were thrust through the stockade, and wrenching them off the muskets, and sometimes pulling the muskets themselves out of the soldiers' hands. But all this struggling had loosened the palisades, and there were one or two openings in them through which the thin-bodied Spaniards, pushed on by their comrades, were able to pass. Just as we came up, two of these copper-coloured Dons had squeezed themselves through, without their muskets, but with their short sabres in their hands. They are active dangerous fellows those Spaniards in a hand-to-hand tussle. One of them sprang at me, and if it had not been for my hunting-knife, I was done for, for I had no room to swing my axe; but as he came on I hit him a blow with my fist, which knocked him down, and then ran my knife into him, and jumping over his body snatched a musket out of Rachel's hand, and began laying about me with the but-end of it. I was sorry not to have my rifle, which was handier than those heavy Spanish muskets. The women were now in the way—we hadn't room for so many—so I called out to them to get into the blockhouse and load the rifles. There was still another Acadian alive, and I knew that the fight wouldn't end till he was done for. But while we were fighting, Godsend and the women loaded the rifles, and brought them out, and firing through the stockade, killed three or four, and, as luck would have it, the Acadian was amongst them. So when the Spaniards, who are just like hounds, and only come on if led and encouraged, saw that their leader had fallen, they sprang off the mound, with a 'Carajo! Malditos!' and ran away as if a shell had burst amongst them."

The old squatter paused and drew a deep breath. He had forgotten his usual drawl and deliberation, and had become animated and eager while describing the stirring incidents in which he had borne so active a part. When he had taken breath, he continued.

"I couldn't say how long the fight lasted; it seemed short, we were so busy, and yet long, deadly long. It is no joke to have to defend one's life, and the lives of those one loves best, against fourscore bloodthirsty Spaniards, and that with only half a dozen rifles for arms, and a few palisades for shelter. When it was over we were so dog-tired that we fell down where we were, like overdriven oxen, and without minding the blood which lay like water on the ground. Seven Spaniards and two Acadians were lying dead within the stockade. We ourselves were all wounded and hacked about, some with knife-stabs and sabre-cuts, others with musket-shots; ugly wounds enough, some of them, but none mortal. If the Spaniards had returned to the attack they would have made short work of us; for as soon as we left off fighting and our blood cooled, we became stiff and helpless. But now came the women with rags and bandages, and washed our wounds and bound them up, and we dragged ourselves into the blockhouse, and lay down upon our mattresses of dry leaves. And Godsend loaded the rifles and a dozen Spanish muskets that were lying about, to be in readiness for another attack, and the women kept watch while we slept. But the Spaniards had had enough, and we saw no more of them. Only the next morning, when Jonas went down the ladder to reconnoitre, he found thirty dead and several others dying, and a few wounded, who begged hard for a drink of water, for that their comrades had deserted them. We got them up into the blockhouse, and had their wounds dressed, and after a time they were cured and left us."

"And were you never after attacked again?" said I. "I wonder at your courage in remaining here after becoming aware of the dangers you were exposed to."

"We reckoned we had more right than ever to the land after all the blood it had cost us, and then the news of the fight had got carried into the settlements, and up as far as Salt River; and some of our friends and kinsfolk came down to join us, and there were soon enough of us not to care for twice as many Spaniards as we had beaten off before."

While he was speaking the old squatter descended the ladder, and led us out of the forest and over the ridge of a low hill, on the side of which stood a dozen loghouses, which cast their black shadows on the moonlit slope. We found a rough but kind welcome—few words, but plenty of good cheer—and we made acquaintance with the heroes and heroines of the blockhouse siege, and with their sons and daughters, buxom strapping damsels and fine manly lads, Yankees though they were. I have often enjoyed a softer bed, but never a sounder sleep than that night.

The next day our horses were brought round from the swamp, and we took our departure; but as hardships, however painful to endure, are pleasant to look back upon, so have I often thought with pleasure of our adventures in the prairies, and recurred with the strongest interest to old Nathan's thrilling narrative of the Bloody Blockhouse.



COMMERCIAL POLICY—EUROPE

The land absolutely groans under over-material-production of every sort and degree, as on all hands is now acknowledged. The foundations of Manchester tremble under the ponderous piles of Cobden's calicoes, in Cobden's warerooms, ever, like the liver of Prometheus, undiminished, though daily devoured by the vulture of consumption. The sight of the Pelion upon Ossa, accumulated masses of pig upon bar iron, immovable as the cloud-capped Waen and Dowlais of Merthyr Tydvil themselves, should almost generate burning fever, intense enough, among the unfortunate though too sanguine producers, to smelt all the ironstone in the bowels of South Wales, without the aid of furnace or hot blast. Broad cloths, though encumbering cloth halls, are ceasing all over the earth—so say, at least, the Leeds anti-corn-law sages. Loads of linens, as Marshall proclaims, are sinking his mammoth mills; not to lengthen the lamentable list with the sorrows of silks, of cutlery, crockery, and all other commodities, the created or impelled of the mighty steam power that by turns prospers and prostrates us. As the crowning point, the monster grievance of all, comes the cramming over-production of food, farinaceous and animal, under which the overfed stomach of the country is afflicted with nightmare, as we learn on the unimpeachable authority of that wisest and most infallible of all one-idea'd nostrummongers, the immortal Cobden himself.[I]

Vast and overwhelming, however, as the ills which follow in the train of over producing power, in the world material and manufacturing, they sink into utter insignificance—for magnitude, they are as Highgate Hill to sky-enveloped Chimborazo of eternal snow—in comparison with that crowding crush, that prodigious overflow, of charlatanic genius, in the world physical and spiritual, which blocks up every highway and byway, swarms in every circle, roars in every market-place, or thunders in each senate of the realm. There is not one ill which flesh is heir to, which this race original cannot kill or cure. Whilst bleeding the patient to death, Sangrado like, and sacking the fees, they will greet him right courteously with Viva V. milanos—live a thousand years, and not one less of the allotted number. Whilst drenching the body politic with Reform purge, or, with slashing tomahawk, inflicting Repeal gashes, they bid the prostrate and panting state subject rejoice over the wondrous dispatch with which its parts can be dismembered, the arithmetical accuracy with which its financial plethora can be depleted. Eccentric in its motions and universal in its aspirations, for the genius of this age no conception is too mean, no subject too intricate, no enterprise too rash, no object too sacred. It will condescend with equal readiness upon torturing a pauper, fleecing the farmer, robbing a church, or undertaking "the command of the Channel fleet at a moment's notice." With Mr Secretary Chadwick, schooled in police courts, it will metamorphose workhouse asylums for the destitute into parish prisons, with "locks, bolts, and bars," for the safe keeping of unfortunate outcasts found guilty of the felony of pauperism. With Dr Kay Shuttleworth and the privy council, when the masses want bread, it will invite to the "whistle belly" feast of roaring in andante, or dissolving in piano, in full choral concert mobs at Exeter Hall; it will induct into the new gipsy jargon scheme of education at Norwood, where the scholar is introduced to the process of analysation before he has learned to read and almost to articulate; or the miserables initiated into the elements of the linear, the curve, and the perspective in drawing, whose eyeballs are glaring in quest of the perspective of a loaf. Oh! genius profound, and forecasting of privy council philanthropy and utilitarian wisdom; more exquisite of refinement than Nero, who only fiddled when Rome was blazing and wretches roasting, thou, with the wizen wand of Cockney Hullah charmed with Wilhem's incantations, canst teach piping voices how to stay craving stomachs; how Kay upon Jacotot may analytically demonstrate that fast and feasting are both but synonymes of one common termination, the difference squared by time alone, and meaning ten or threescore and ten as the case may be. Misery is but a mockery of language after all; for have I not heard it rampant with lungs, and hoarse with disciplined harmony in Exeter Hall, as Hullah cut capers with his tiny truncheon, with Royalty itself, heroic field-marshals, and grave ministers of state, in seeming ecstasy at the sleight of hand? Just as I have heard and seen in the barracones of Bozal negroes for sale, when, at the crack of the black negro-driver's whip, and not unfrequent application of the lash, the flagging gang of exhausted slavery has ever and again set up that chant of revelry, run mad, and danced that dance of desperation, which was to persuade the atrocious dealers in human flesh how sound of wind and limb they were, and the bystanders how happy.

Think not that charlatanic genius rests content with triumphs even so transcendent as these. It disports itself also in "self-supporting" colonization; it runs riot in the ruin of "penny-postage;" it would be gloriously self-suicidal in abolition of corn-laws and free trade. Nay, as—

"Great genius to great madness is allied."

the genius of these days looks even to St Luke's, like Oxford, as a berth in dernier ressort, where a sinecurist may enjoy bed and board at the cost of the state, and as a fair honorario for the trouble of concocting a new scheme for raising the wind, or getting a living. The time may come, and sooth to say, seems drawing near, when Gibbon Wakefield, seated on the woolsack, shall be charged specially with the guardianship of all the fair wards in Chancery. Wo to infant heiress kidnappers, when a chancellor, more experienced than Rhadamanthus, more sanguineous than Draco, shall have the care of the innocent fold, and come to deal with abduction! In womanly lore, his practice and experience are undoubted; for has he not had the active superintendence, and the arduous task, of transportation of all the womankind, virgin, and matronly as well, exported to New Zealand on account, with other goods and chattels, of that moral corporation, the New Zealand trading and emigration company, which so liberally salaries him with L.600 per annum for the use of his "principle?" Again, who so fitted as the renowned Rowland Hill, the very prig pragmatic of pretension, for the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer, or First Lord of the Treasury if you will? A man who could contrive a scheme for annihilating some two millions of post-office revenue at one stroke, must be qualified beyond all other pretenders for dealing with a bankrupt treasury; for upon the homoeopathic principle, the physic which kills is that alone which should cure. The scientific discovery, indeed, is not of the modern date exactly which is assumed; for the poet of ancient Greece, his "eyes in a fine frenzy rolling," must have had homoeopathy in view when he sang—

"So Telephus, renown'd of yore, can tell How cured the fatal spear by which he fell."

The disinterestedness of Rowland (not he of Roncesvalles, nor even of the honest Macassar oil) need not be doubted, because he claims a large reward for a penny-post scheme, ruinous as it is, utterly unavailable and impracticable, even if as excellent as notoriously prejudicial, but for the really ingenious discovery of the pre-paying stamp system, by a party preferring no title to remuneration, and through which alone, unfortunately, the pretentious project could be practically placed in operation.

Dismissing minor worthies, such as Benjamin Hawes, junior, of the Commission of Fine Arts, selected probably and appropriately from the consideration that home-produced savonnerie may lead to clean ideas of taste, and who, in his own interest, would be a capital Commissioner of Excise; and Bowring, so well qualified to be chairman of a general board of Commissioner Tourists, from his multifarious practice—come we at last to Cobden, of corn and colonial fame, fiercely struggling with gaunt O'Connell himself for stentorian supremacy—

"Linguae centum sunt, oraque centum, Ferrea vox."

Cobden and the colonies! The conjunction is euphoniously alliterative at least, if not a consistent consequence; yet who more fit to perform at the funeral as the undertaker who alone has got the hearse and mules all ready for the job? Cobden, who has denounced—more still, has passed sentence upon—the colonies, should be the executioner. All hail, therefore, to the Right Hon. Alderman Richard Cobden, M.P., Secretary of State for the Colonial Department—worthy compeer of the Cabinet, where sit Lord Chancellor Gibbon Wakefield, and First Lord of the Treasury Rowland Hill! Rare will be the labours of the trio; the "self-supporting" supported on either hand by a destroying angel.

In the prospective cabinet of Charlatanerie, composed inter aliis, moreover, in addition to the Haweses, the Bowrings, the Brights, the R. R. R. (why does not the man write the names out in full, as Raving, Roaring, Rory) O'Moores, there is, however, already a "split;" the members are each and all at sixes and sevens, for as each has his own sovereign conceit, so each would rule sovereign over the rest, and bear no rival near the throne. All would be kings, but not in turn. That powerful and sarcastic writer, Paul Louis Courier, depicts the same regiphobia as raging among the Parisian Charlatanerie of his day; and with an anxious care for his own reputation and respectability, thus purges himself from contact or connexion with it:—"Ce qui me distingue de mes contemporains et fait de moi un homme rare dans le siecle ou nous vivons, c'est que je ne veux pas etre roi, et que j'evite soigneusement tout ce qui pourrait me mener la." Chadwick and Cobden are agreed upon pauperizing the whole kingdom; but the former insists upon keeping the paupers in bastiles, whilst the latter requires them in cotton manufactories; both are agreed upon the propriety of reducing the labouring classes to diet less of quantity and coarser of quality, by which the rates of wages are, and are to be, ground down: but Chadwick naturally insists, that to new poor-laws the post of honour should be assigned in the work of desolation; whilst Cobden, though acknowledging their efficient co-operation as a means to an end, and their priority as first in the field, fiercely contends for the greater aristocratical pretensions and more thoroughgoing operation of corn-law abolition. The Wakefield "self-supporting" colonial specific comes into collision, moreover, with Cobden's "perish all colonies." Kay Shuttleworth vaunts the superiority above all of his analytical schemes for training little children at Norwood to construe, for after age,—

"The days that we went gipsying a long time ago;"

whilst Hullah simpers forth, in softest accents of Cockaigne, the superlative claim of choral shows in Exeter Hall—

"That roar again, it had a dying fall. Oh! it came o'er my ear like the rude north, That bursts upon a bank of violets."

Bowring and Hume did, certes, pull together once in the matter of Greek scrip; but, Arcades ambo no longer, the worthy doctor turned anti-slavery monger, whilst Joseph, more honest in the main, cares not two straws whether his sugar be slave-grown or free, excepting as to the greater cheapness of the one or the other. So also with Hawes, never yet pardoned by the financiering economist of "cheese parings and candle ends" for the splendid Thames tunnel job, and L200,000 of the public money at one fell swoop. These people range under the generic head Charlatanerie, as of the distinct species classified as farceurs according to the French nomenclature. For other species, and diversities of species, of a lower scale, but of capacity to ascend into the higher order with time and opportunity, the daily papers may be usefully consulted under the headings devoted to the "pill" specific line—pildoras para en contrar perros, as the Spanish saynete has it.

Happily the country need never despair of salvation, even should the cabinet prospective of farceurs fall to pieces, for there yet remain two species of a genus taking higher rank in the social system; species that really have a root, a name, and pretensions hereditary or legitimately acquired. These each affect philosophy, and represent it too; they of the caste hereditary in grande tenue, they of the new men with much pompous parade of words, and all the Delphic mystics of the schools. They are none of your journeymen—your everyday spouters—in the Commons or common places. They exhibit only on state occasions, after solemn midnight preparation made; their intended movements are duly heralded beforehand; their approach announced with a flourish of trumpets. They carry on a vast wordy traffic in "great principles;" they condescend upon nothing less than the overthrow or manufacture of "constitutions"—in talk. The big swagger about "great principles" eventuates, however, in denouncing by speech from the throne repeal as high treason, and O'Connell the repealer as a traitor to the state; and next, with cap in hand, and most mendicant meanness, supplicating the said traitor—denounced—repealing O'Connell, to deign acceptance of one of the highest offices in the realm. Their practice in the "constitution" line consists in annihilating rotten borough A because it is Tory; in conserving rotten borough B because it is Whig. The grand characteristic of each species is—vox et preterea nihil. Need I further proclaim them and their titles? In the order of Parisian organization they stand as faiseurs and phraseurs. You can make no mistake about the personality ranged under each banner; they are as perfectly distinguishable each from the other, though even knit in close and indissoluble alliance, as Grand Crosses of the Bath from Knights of the Garter. At the head of the faiseurs you have Lord John Russell, Lord Viscount Palmerston, and Lord Viscount Howick. You have only to see them rise in the House of Commons—Lord John, to wit—

"Pride in his port, defiance in his eye"—

to be led into the belief that

—"Now is the day Big with the fate of Cato and of Rome."

The physical swell of conscious consequence—the eye-distended "wide awake" insinuation of the inconceivable, unutterable things—the grand sentiments about to be outpoured—hold you in silent wonderment and expectation. You conceive nothing less, than either that the world is about to come to an end, or the millennium declared to be the "order of the day." You imagine that the orator will lose self and party in his country. Nothing of all this follows, however. You have some common-places, perhaps common truisms, some undefined, mean-all-or-nothing, declamation about "constitution" and "principles," by way of exordium; for the rest, Rome is sunk as if it existed not, down to the peroration it is all about Cato himself, and his little Whig party about him.

—"Parturiunt montes, Nascitur ridiculus mus."

Chief of the phraseurs stand Mr Babington Macaulay and Mr Lalor Shiel, the peculiarity of whose craft—a profitable craft of late years—consists in furbishing up old ideas into new and euphonious forms of speech. Of the one it may be said, that

—"He could not ope His mouth, but out there flew a trope."

The other more finished leader of the class mystifies you with metaphysics, half conned and unmastered by himself—more anxious still to make his points than to please his party; and, of the two, would rather sink his country than his climax. He is a rhetorician, a dealer in set phraseology, an ingenious gatherer and polisher of "other men's stuff." Of the faiseurs, may be repeated what Marshal Marmont, in his Voyage en Hongrie, en Transylvanie, &c., says of the faiseurs of Paris—"Subjugues par le gout et cette manie d'uniformite absolue, qui est la maladie de l'epoque, et qui resulte de principes abstraits, dont l'application est presque toujours funeste aux peuples qui l'eprouvent, ils ignoraient combien il est dans la nature des choses et dans le bien des nations de modifier l'organization sociale suivant le temps, les lieux, suivant le plus on moins grana degre de civilization, et d'apres mille circonstances, qui ne peuvent etre prevues d'avance, mais que le legislateur capable apprecie au moment ou il est appele a fonder la societe." On the cession of the Illyrian provinces, by Austria, after the battle of Wagram, the faiseurs, or abstract principle men, of Paris, were prompt with their plans, not for "constitutions"—Bonaparte had put an end to that branch of their metier—but for reorganizing the laws, administration, &c., of Transylvania de fond en comble, without knowing any thing of the people or country, without having seen either the one or the other. Marmont, appointed governor of the ceded provinces, who had studied on the spot the institutions established by Austria, found these so perfect and well adapted to the genius and inclination of the population, and the purposes of government, that he opposed the faiseurs with success, and, by his representations, induced Bonaparte to confirm and act upon what existed.

This immense agglomeration, this monstrous over-production of the tribes of farceurs, faiseurs, and phraseurs is a misfortune of the first magnitude—a pest worse than that of the locusts which lay waste the land of Egypt, as here the substance of the people is devoured. Conflagrations may, and do, occasionally diminish the number of cotton-mills, and lighten the warehoused accumulation of cottons, or other inert matter; but no lucky plague, pestilence, or cholera, comes to thin the crowded phalanx, and rid this empire of some portion of the interminable brood of mongers of all shapes and sizes. As Horace says—

"'Tis hard, but patience must endure And bear the woes it cannot cure."

And now, leaving this discursive preliminary sketch, the length of which was unpremeditated, of the leading influences which are fast hurrying to social disorganization, it is time that once more we stand face to face with the one disorganizing doctrine of one-sided free trade; with the banner on which the phraseurs and farceurs have inscribed the cabalistic devices, in flaming characters—"Leave the imports alone, the exports will take care of themselves;" and, "A fixed duty is a fixed injustice." One might be tempted to believe the first borrowed from the armorial bearings of Lord Huntingtower's "bill" friends, whose motto is, or should be—"Leave the fools alone, and the knaves will take care of themselves;" the second is clearly no better than a petty-larceny paraphrase of Newgate felony, in whose code of duties it stands decreed, from all time, that "a fixed law is a fixed despotism."

The history of industry and commerce in every country, from the most ancient down to modern times, gives the lie to these pertly pretending truisms; for there is scarcely one branch of manufacture to be named which does not owe its rise, progress, and perfection, to the protective or financial, or both combined, control exercised over imports. If we look at home only, where, we ask, would the woollen manufacture be now, but for the early laws restrictive of the importation of foreign woollens, nay more, restrictive of the export of British fleeces with which the manufactories of Belgium were alimented? Where the cotton trade, even with all Arkwright and Crompton's inventions of mule and throstle frames, and the steam-engine wonders of Watt, but for the importation tax of 87 per cent with which the cotton manufactures of India were weighted and finally crushed? Where the British iron mines and the iron trade, now so pre-eminent over all the world, but for the heavy import duties with which the iron of Swedish, Russian, or other foreign origin was loaded? And so also, may it be asked, in respect to almost all industry and production. If, as contended, the woollen, cotton, and iron industries would not only have been created, but much more largely have flourished, without the aids and appliances of friendly tariffs, the one-sided free traders are, at least, bound to something more potential than mere assertion and idle declamation in support of the vague allegation. They have the evidence of facts patent and abundant to confront and gainsay them; they shall have more; but is there to be no reciprocation of facts counter? Is the evidence and the argument to remain all on one side, and on the other nothing but wordy nothingness—

"Dat inania verba, Dat sine mente sonum."

Where are the unknown lands of factories and furnaces, of puddling and power looms, of steam-engines and blowing machines, all self-created and "self-supporting," scorning the crutches of patronage, and high-mounted on the stilts of free, or one-sided free trade? Either they exist in the shape of matter tangible and substantial; or they exist not except as chateaux en Espagne are dreamt of, or as bubbles blown and chased by idle urchins—modern philosophers in petticoats. This bubble-blowing has been, indeed, converted into something of a mine of industry of late years, most successfully exploite by all the chevaliers d'industrie of the race of farceurs before referred to. Let us not forget, however, that one of the most indefatigable of the class, after various and many voyages by sea, and travels by land, in quest of the picturesque in political economy, did, indeed—or says so, and has compiled a book to prove it—light on this long-sought, never-before discovered land, in whose Arcadian bowers sits enthroned the very genius of trade, free and unfettered as the eagle in his eyry on the crowning crest of St Gotthard. Would you know this thrice-blest region—"Go climb the Alps," as the Roman satirist bids—it is Switzerland snugly ensconced in their bosom.

Nevertheless, before the title of Switzerland Felix be fully conceded, the legitimacy of its derivation remains to be investigated. The concession can only be registered upon three conditions fulfilled. It must be shown, firstly, that manufacturing industry was not fostered in its early stages by the governing power; secondly, that if it had attained a large development unprotected, the proportions of such development shall have been at the least equal, as upon the theory of free trade they should be superior, to the ratio of progression manifested in other countries where protection has been the ruling principle; thirdly, that free trade was not a necessity imposed by circumstances and position, not the result of a barter of value for value, but of free and spontaneous choice, and as the result of the profound conviction of the superior excellency and adaptability of the abstract principle. We shall deal briefly with the subject, because it has been discussed more at length heretofore in those special articles in which we have treated of the rise and progress of the cotton manufacture in this and other countries. In regard to the first condition, it was established on a former occasion, that the ruling powers of one or more of the Cantons, did advance large capitals, and offered more, in order to encourage and assist in the establishment of cotton-spinning mills, with machinery of the most perfect construction, under the superintendence, and with a share in the profits, of persons duly skilled from England. Happily, one of the individuals to whom such offers (on the basis of a L100,000 capital) were made, and by whom declined, then and subsequently one of the largest exporting merchants of Lancashire to Switzerland, and the Continent generally, still lives, and we have had the statement confirmed by himself within the last two or three years. This was somewhere between 1795 and 1800, further our memory does not serve for the precise date at present, nor is it indispensable. A manufacture thus, as may be said, artificially created and bolstered up, we do not say unwisely, does not assuredly answer the first condition required. With respect to the measure of the manufacturing development, the data are unfortunately wanting for precise verification; for Switzerland possesses no returns of foreign trade at all, nor can any satisfactory approximation be arrived at from inspection of the official tables of the foreign and transit commerce now before us of Holland, Belgium, and France, through which all the transmarine intercourse of Switzerland must necessarily pass. The exports and imports of Holland, by the Rhine, are not so classed as to show what proportion appertains to Germany and what to Switzerland, as both stand under the one head of Germany and the Rhine. In the Belgian tables, Switzerland does not enter at all until 1841, therefore they can afford no materials for the comparison with former years. From the French tables, more scientifically constructed, correct information may be gathered, so far as the commerce with and through France. But we are wanting nearly altogether in materials for estimating the land traffic of Switzerland with Germany and Italy. Taking the French tables alone, it may be collected, however, that the commerce of Switzerland has been considerably on the increase with and through France. In the cotton trade, for example, the imports of raw cotton in transit through Havre, for Switzerland, had already augmented from 2,973,159 kilogrammes in 1830, to 6,446,703 kilogrammes in 1836; and again, from the latter term, to 104,842 metrical quintals in 1840, which declined to 77,534 in 1841. Our returns do not enable us to state with exactitude whether the whole, or what portion, of the transit of cotton for the two latter years was destined for Switzerland, because our French tables do not, as up to 1836, embrace the details of the separate transit trade to each country, but only the total quantities. The increase of imports by way of France must not, however, be taken to all the extent as an absolute increase, nor can we conclude, with any assurance,