"My good man, what have I done?"

"Why, sir, the Baron Terroro's eyes had the box-seat, and I strongly suspect you've been and sat upon them."

I looked involuntarily to see whether I had been sitting upon any thing except the simple cushion. Truly enough, there was an eye, which I had crushed and flattened.

"Only one," I said.

"Worse for you, and better for him. The other eye had time to escape, and it will know you again, that's certain. Well, it's no business of mine. Of course you've no appetite now for dinner? Better pay your fare, sir. To the Green Hippopotamus and Spectacles, where we put up, it's ten-and-six."

"Is there room inside?" I inquired. It was advisable to shrink from observation.

"Yes, sir. The inside passengers are mostly skeleton. There's room for three, sir. Inside, one-pound-one."

I paid the money, and became an inside passenger.

CHAPTER THE SECOND.

OF DIVISIONS WHICH OCCUR IN SKITZLAND—I AM TAKEN UP

Professor Essig's Lectures on Anatomy had so fortified me, that I did not shrink from entering the Skitzton coach. It contained living limbs, loose or attached to skeletons in other respects bare, except that they were clothed with broadcloth garments, cut after the English fashion. One passenger only had a complete face of flesh, he had also one living hand; the other hand I guessed was bony, because it was concealed in a glove obviously padded. By observing the fit of his clothes, I came to a conclusion that this gentleman was stuffed throughout; that all his limbs, except the head and hand, were artificial. Two pairs of Legs, in woolen stockings, and a pair of Ears, were in a corner of the coach, and in another corner there were nineteen or twenty Scalps.

I thought it well to look astonished at nothing, and, having pointed in a careless manner to the scalps, asked what might be their destination? The person with the Face and Hand replied to me; and although evidently himself a gentleman, he addressed me with a tone of unconcealed respect.

"They are going to Skitzton, sir, to the hair dresser's."

"Yes, to be sure," I said. "They are to make Natural Skin Wigs. I might have known."

"I beg your pardon, sir. There is a ball to-morrow night at Culmsey. But the gentry do not like to employ village barbers, and therefore many of the better class of people send their hair to Skitzton, and receive it back by the return coach, properly cut and curled."

"Oh," said I. "Ah! Oh, indeed!"

"Dinners, gentlemen!" said a voice at the window, and the waiter handed in four stomachs, now tolerably well filled. Each passenger received his property, and pulling open his chest with as much composure as if he were unbuttoning his waistcoat, restored his stomach, with a dinner in it, to the right position. Then the reckonings were paid, and the coach started.

I thought of my garden, and much wished that somebody could throw Professor Essig down the hole that I had dug. A few things were to be met with in Skitzland which would rather puzzle him. They puzzled me; but I took refuge in silence, and so fortified, protected my ignorance from an exposure.

"You are going to Court, sir, I presume?" said my Face and Hand friend, after a short pause. His was the only mouth in the coach, excepting mine, so that he was the only passenger able to enter into conversation.

"My dear sir," I replied, "let me be frank with you. I have arrived here unexpectedly out of another world. Of the manners and customs, nay, of the very nature of the people who inhabit this country, I know nothing. For any information you can give me, I shall be very grateful."

My friend smiled incredulity, and said,

"Whatever you are pleased to profess, I will believe. What you are pleased to feign a wish for, I am proud to furnish. In Skitzland, the inhabitants, until they come of age, retain that illustrious appearance which you have been so fortunate as never to have lost. During the night of his twenty-first birthday, each Skitzlander loses the limbs which up to that period have received from him no care, no education. Of those neglected parts the skeletons alone remain, but all those organs which he has employed sufficiently continue unimpaired. I, for example, devoted to the study of the law, forgot all occupation but to think, to use my senses, and to write. I rarely used my legs, and therefore Nature has deprived me of them."

"But," I observed, "it seems that in Skitzland you are able to take yourselves to pieces."

"No one has that power, sir, more largely than yourself. What organs we have we can detach on any service. When dispersed, a simple force of Nature directs all corresponding members whither to fly that they may re-assemble."

"If they can fly," I asked, "why are they sent in coaches? There were a pair of eyes on the box seat."

"Simply for safety against accidents. Eyes flying alone are likely to be seized by birds, and incur many dangers. They are sent, therefore, usually under protection, like any other valuable parcel."

"Do many accidents occur?"

"Very few. For mutual protection, and also because a single member is often all that has been left existing of a fellow Skitzlander, our laws, as you, sir, know much better than myself, estimate the destruction of any part absent on duty from its skeleton as a crime equivalent to murder—"

After this I held my tongue. Presently my friend again inquired whether I was going up to Court?

"Why should I go to Court?"

"Oh, sir, it pleases you to be facetious. You must be aware that any Skitzlander who has been left by nature in possession of every limb, sits in the Assembly of the Perfect, or the Upper House, and receives many state emoluments and dignities."

"Are there many members of that Upper Assembly?"

"Sir, there were forty-two. But if you are now traveling to claim your seat, the number will be raised to forty-three."

"The Baron Terroro—" I hinted.

"My brother, sir. His eyes are on the box-seat under my care. Undoubtedly he is a member of the Upper House."

I was now anxious to get out of the coach as soon as possible. My wish was fulfilled after the next pause. One eye, followed by six pairs of arms, with strong hard hands belonging to them, flew in at the window. I was collared; the door was opened, and all hands were at work to drag me out and away. The twelve hands wisked me through the air, while the one eye sailed before us, like an old bird, leader of the flight.

CHAPTER THE THIRD.

MY IMPRISONMENT AND TRIAL FOR MURDER.

What sort of sky have they in Skitzland? Our earth overarches them, and, as the sunlight filters through, it causes a subdued illumination with very pure rays. Skitzland is situated nearly in the centre of our globe, it hangs there like a shrunken kernel in the middle of a nutshell. The height from Skitzland to the over-arching canopy is great; so great, that if I had not fallen personally from above the firmament, I should have considered it to be a blue sky similar to ours. At night it is quite dark; but during the day there is an appearance in the heaven of white spots; their glistening reminded me of stars. I noticed them as I was being conveyed to prison by the strong arms of justice, for it was by a detachment of members from the Skitzton police that I was now hurried along. The air was very warm, and corroborated the common observation of an increase of heat as you get into the pith of our planet. The theory of central fire, however, is, you perceive, quite overturned by my experience.

We alighted near the outskirts of a large and busy town. Through its streets I was dragged publicly, much stared at and much staring. The street life was one busy nightmare of disjointed limbs. Professor Essig, could he have been dragged through Skitzton, would have delivered his farewell lecture upon his return. "Gentlemen—Fuit Ilium, Fuit Ischium, Fuit Sacrum, anatomy has lost her seat among the sciences. My occupation's gone." Professor Owen's book "On the Nature of Limbs," must contain, in the next edition, an Appendix "Upon Limbs in Skitzland." I was dragged through the streets, and all that I saw there, in the present age of little faith, I dare not tell you. I was dragged through the streets to prison, and there duly chained, after having been subjected to the scrutiny of about fifty couples of eyes drawn up in a line within the prison door. I was chained in a dark cell, a cell so dark that I could very faintly perceive the figure of some being who was my companion. Whether this individual had ears wherewith to hear, and mouth wherewith to answer me, I could not see, but at a venture I addressed him. My thirst for information was unconquerable; I began, therefore, immediately with a question:

"Friend, what are those stars which we see shining in the sky at mid-day?"

An awful groan being an unsatisfactory reply, I asked again.

"Man, do not mock at misery. You will yourself be one of them."

"The teachers shall shine like stars in the firmament." I had a propensity for teaching, but was puzzled to discover how I could give so practical an illustration of the text of Fichte.

"Believe me," I said, "I am strangely ignorant. Explain yourself."

He answered with a hollow voice:

"Murderers are shot up out of mortars into the sky, and stick there. Those white, glistening specks, they are their skeletons."

Justice is prompt in Skitland. I was tried incredibly fast by a jury of twelve men, who had absolutely heads. The judges had nothing but brain, mouth, and ear. Three powerful tongues defended me, but as they were not suffered to talk nonsense, they had little to say. The whole case was too clear to be talked into cloudiness. Baron Terroro, in person, deposed that he had sent his eyes to see a friend at Culmsey, and that they were returning on the Skitzton coach, when I, illegally, came with my whole bulk upon the box-seat, which he occupied. That one of his eyes was, in that manner, totally destroyed, but that the other eye, having escaped, identified me, and brought to his brain intelligence of the calamity which had befallen. He deposed further, that having received this information, he dispatched his uncrushed eye with arms from the police-office, and accompanied with several members of the detective force to capture the offender, and to procure the full proofs of my crime. A sub-inspector of Skitzton police then deposed that he sent three of his faculties, with his mouth, eye, and ear, to meet the coach. That the driver, consisting only of a stomach and hands, had been unable to observe what passed. That the guard, on the contrary, had taxed me with my deed, that he had seen me rise from my seat upon the murdered eye, and that he had heard me make confession of my guilt. The guard was brought next into court, and told his tale. Then I was called upon for my defense. If a man wearing a cloth coat and trowsers, and talking excellent English, were to plead at the Old Bailey that he had broken into some citizen's premises accidentally by falling from the moon, his tale would be received in London as mine was in Skitzton. I was severely reprimanded for my levity, and ordered to be silent. The judge summed up, and the jury found me guilty. The judge, who had put on the black cap before the verdict was pronounced, held out no hope of mercy, and straightway sentenced me to death, according to the laws and usage of the realm.

CHAPTER THE FOURTH.

THE LAST HOURS OF THE CONDEMNED IN SKITZLAND—I AM EXECUTED.

The period which intervenes between the sentence and execution of a criminal in Skitzland, is not longer than three hours. In order to increase the terror of death by contrast, the condemned man is suffered to taste at the table of life from which he is banished, the most luscious viands. All the attainable enjoyment that his wit can ask for, he is allowed to have, during the three hours before he is shot like rubbish off the fields of Skitzland.

Under guard, of course, I was now to be led whithersoever I desired.

Several churches were open. They never are all shut in Skitzton. I was taken into one. A man with heart and life was preaching. People with hearts were in some pews; people with brains, in others; people with ears only, in some. In a neighboring church, there was a popular preacher, a skeleton with life. His congregation was a crowd of ears, and nothing more.

There was a day-performance at the Opera I went to that. Fine lungs and mouths possessed the stage, and afterward there was a great bewilderment with legs. I was surprised to notice that many of the most beautiful ladies were carried in and out, and lifted about like dolls. My guides sneered at my pretense of ignorance, when I asked why this was. But they were bound to please me in all practicable ways, so they informed me, although somewhat pettishly. It seems that in Skitzland, ladies who possess and have cultivated only their good looks, lose at the age of twenty-one all other endowments. So they become literally dolls, but dolls of a superior kind; for they can not only open and shut their eyes, but also sigh; wag slowly with their heads, and sometimes take a pocket handkerchief out of a bag, and drop it. But as their limbs are powerless, they have to be lifted and dragged about after the fashion that excited my astonishment.

I said then, "Let me see the poor." They took me to a Workhouse. The men, there, were all yellow; and they wore a dress which looked as though it were composed of asphalte; it also had a smell like that of pitch. I asked for explanation of these things.

A Superintendent of Police remarked that I was losing opportunities of real enjoyment for the idle purpose of persisting in my fable of having dropped down from the sky. However, I compelled him to explain to me what was the reason of these things. The information I obtained was briefly this: that Nature, in Skitzland, never removes the stomach. Every man has to feed himself; and the necessity for finding food, joined to the necessity for buying clothes, is a mainspring whereby the whole clockwork of civilized life is kept in motion. Now, if a man positively can not feed and clothe himself, he becomes a pauper. He then goes to the Workhouse, where he has his stomach filled with a cement. That stopping lasts a life-time, and he thereafter needs no food. His body, however, becomes yellow by the superfluity of bile. The yellow-boy, which is the Skitzland epithet for pauper, is at the same time provided with a suit of clothes. The clothes are of a material so tough that they can be worn unrepaired for more than eighty years. The pauper is now freed from care, but were he in this state cast loose upon society, since he has not that stimulus to labor which excites industry in other men, he would become an element of danger in the state. Nature no longer compelling him to work, the law compels him. The remainder of his life is forfeit to the uses of his country. He labors at the workhouse, costing nothing more than the expense of lodging, after the first inconsiderable outlay for cement wherewith to plug his stomach, and for the one suit of apparel.

When we came out of the workhouse, all the bells in the town were tolling. The superintendent told me that I had sadly frittered away time, for I had now no more than half an hour to live. Upon that I leaned my back against a post, and asked him to prepare me for my part in the impending ceremony by giving me a little information on the subject of executions.

I found that it was usual for a man to be executed with great ceremony upon the spot whereon his crime had been committed. That in case of rebellions or tumults in the provinces, when large numbers were not unfrequently condemned to death, the sentence of the law was carried out in the chief towns of the disturbed districts. That large numbers of people were thus sometimes discharged from a single market-place, and that the repeated strokes appeared to shake, or crack, or pierce in some degree that portion of the sky toward which the artillery had been directed. I here at once saw that I had discovered the true cause of earthquakes and volcanoes; and this shows how great light may be thrown upon theories concerning the hidden constitution of this earth, by going more deeply into the matter of it than had been done by any one before I dug my hole. Our volcanoes, it is now proved, are situated over the market-places of various provincial towns in Skitzland. When a revolution happens, the rebels are shot up—discharged from mortars by means of an explosive material evidently far more powerful than our gun-powder or gun-cotton; and they are pulverized by the friction in grinding their way through the earth. How simple and easy truth appears, when we have once arrived at it.

The sound of muffled drums approached us, and a long procession turned the corner of a street. I was placed in the middle of it—Baron Terroro by my side. All then began to float so rapidly away, that I was nearly left alone, when forty arms came back and collared me. It was considered to be a proof of my refractory disposition, that I would make no use of my innate power, of flight. I was therefore dragged in this procession swiftly through the air, drums playing, fifes lamenting.

We alighted on the spot where I had fallen, and the hole through which I had come I saw above me. It was very small, but the light from above shining more vividly through it made it look, with its rough edges, like a crumpled moon. A quantity of some explosive liquid was poured into a large mortar, which had been erected (under the eye of Baron Terroro) exactly where my misfortune happened. I was then thrust in, the baron ramming me down, and pounding with a long stock or pestle upon my head in a noticeably vicious manner. The baron then cried "Fire!" and as I shot out, in the midst of a blaze, I saw him looking upward.

CHAPTER THE FIFTH.

MY REVENGE ON THE SKITZLANDERS.

By great good fortune, they had planted their artillery so well, that I was fired up through my hole again, and alighted in my own garden, just a little singed. My first thought was to run to an adjoining bed of vegetable marrows. Thirty vegetable marrows and two pumpkins I rained down to astonish the Skitzlanders, and I fervently hope that one of them may have knocked out the remaining eye of my vindictive enemy, the baron. I then went into the pantry, and obtained a basket full of eggs, and having rained these down upon the Skitzlanders, I left them.

It was after breakfast when I went down to Skitzland, and I came back while the dinner bell was ringing.



[From the People's Journal.]

CHARLOTTE CORDAY.

Perhaps the event that lingers longest in the memory, among all the appalling episodes and startling passages of the French Revolution, is the assassination of the tyrant Marat, by Charlotte Corday. With the blood of old Corneille running in her veins, and possessing something of his stern and masculine love of liberty, this simple child of nature hears in her distant home that her friends, the Girondists, are proscribed, and that a hated triumvirate in Paris, tramples on the feelings and liberties of the people. Full of one idea, she purchases a knife, and, without a single confidant, sets out for the metropolis, where, procuring an interview with Marat, she stabs him to the heart, and with one blow accomplishes her revenge, and what she vainly supposed to be the people's redemption.

In Miss Julia Kavanagh's charming volumes she gives us a pretty faithful memoir of this extraordinary woman. Among the women of the French Revolution, there is one, says the gifted authoress, who stands essentially apart: a solitary episode of the eventful story. She appears for a moment, performs a deed—heroic as to the intention, criminal as to the means—and disappears forever; lost in the shadow of time—an unfathomed mystery.

The greatest portion of the youth of Charlotte Corday—to give her the name by which she is generally known—was spent in the calm obscurity of her convent solitude. Many high visions, many burning dreams and lofty aspirations, already haunted her imaginative and enthusiastic mind, as she slowly paced the silent cloisters, or rested, lost in thought, beneath the shadow of the ancient elms. It is said that, like Madame Roland, she contemplated secluding herself for ever from the world in her monastic retreat; but, affected by the skepticism of the age, which penetrated even beyond convent walls, she gave up the project....

All the austerity and republican enthusiasm of her illustrious ancestor, Pierre Corneille, seemed to have come down to his young descendant. Even Rousseau and Raynal, the apostles of democracy, had no pages that could absorb her so deeply as those of ancient history, with its stirring deeds and immortal recollections. Often, like Manon Philipon in the recess of her father's workshop, might Charlotte Corday be seen in her convent cell, thoughtfully bending over an open volume of Plutarch, that powerful and eloquent historian of all heroic sacrifices.

When the Abbaye aux Dames was closed, in consequence of the Revolution, Charlotte was in her twentieth year, in the prime of life, and of wonderful beauty; and never, perhaps, did a vision of more dazzling loveliness step forth from beneath the dark convent portal into the light of the free and open world. She was rather tall, but admirably proportioned, with a figure full of native grace and dignity: her hands, arms, and shoulders were models of pure sculptural beauty. An expression of singular gentleness and serenity characterized her fair, oval countenance and regular features. Her open forehead, dark and well-arched eyebrows, and eyes of a gray so deep that it was often mistaken for blue, added to her natural grave and meditative appearance; her nose was straight and well formed, her mouth serious but exquisitely beautiful.

On leaving the convent in which she had been educated, Charlotte Corday went to reside with her aunt, Madame Coutellier de Bretteville Gouville, an old royalist lady, who inhabited an ancient-looking house in one of the principal streets of Caen. There the young girl, who had inherited a little property, spent several years, chiefly engaged in watching the progress of the Revolution.

A silent reserve characterized this epoch of Charlotte Corday's life; her enthusiasm was not external but inward; she listened to the discussions which were carried on around her without taking a part in them herself. She seemed to feel instinctively that great thoughts are always better nursed in the heart's solitude: that they can only lose their native depth and intensity by being revealed too freely before the indifferent gaze of the world. Those with whom she then occasionally conversed took little heed of the substance of her discourse, and could remember nothing of it when she afterward became celebrated; but all recollected well her voice, and spoke with strange enthusiasm of its pure, silvery sound.

The fall of the Girondists, on the 31st of May, first suggested to Charlotte Corday the possibility of giving an active shape to her hitherto passive feelings. She watched with intense, though still silent interest, the progress of events, concealing her secret indignation and thoughts of vengeance under her habitually calm aspect. Those feelings were heightened in her soul by the presence of the fugitive Girondists, who had found a refuge in Caen, and were urging the Normans to raise an army to march on Paris. She found a pretense to call upon Barbaroux, then with his friends at the Intendance. She came twice, accompanied by an old servant, and protected by her own modest dignity. Pethion saw her in the hall, where she was waiting for the handsome Girondist, and observed with a smile, "So the beautiful aristocrat is come to see republicans." "Citizen Pethion," she replied, "you now judge me without knowing me, but a time will come when you shall learn who I am." With Barbaroux, Charlotte chiefly conversed of the imprisoned Girondists; of Madame Roland and Marat. The name of this man had long haunted her with a mingled feeling of dread and horror. To Marat she ascribed the proscription of the Girondists, the woes of the Republic, and on him she resolved to avenge her ill-fated country. Charlotte was not aware that Marat was but the tool of Danton and Robespierre. "If such actions could be counseled," afterward said Barbaroux, "it is not Marat whom we would have advised her to strike."

While this deadly thought was daily strengthening itself in Charlotte's mind, she received several offers of marriage. She declined them, on the plea of wishing to remain free: but strange indeed must have seemed to her, at that moment, those proposals of earthly love. One of those whom her beauty had enamored, M. de Franquelin, a young volunteer in the cause of the Girondists, died of grief on learning her fate; his last request was, that her portrait, and a few letters he had formerly received from her, might be buried with him in his grave.

For several days after her last interview with Barbaroux, Charlotte brooded silently over her great thought; often meditating on the history of Judith. Her aunt subsequently remembered that, on entering her room one morning, she found an old Bible open on her bed: the verse in which it is recorded that "the Lord had gifted Judith with a special beauty and fairness," for the deliverance of Israel, was underlined with a pencil.

On another occasion Madame de Bretteville found her niece weeping alone; she inquired into the cause of her tears. "They flow," replied Charlotte, "for the misfortunes of my country." Heroic and devoted as she was, she then also wept, perchance, over her own youth and beauty, so soon to be sacrificed forever. No personal considerations altered her resolve: she procured a passport, provided herself with money, and paid a farewell visit to her father, to inform him that, considering the unsettled condition of France, she thought it best to retire to England. He approved of her intention, and bade her adieu. On returning to Caen, Charlotte told the same tale to Madame de Bretteville, left a secret provision for an old nurse, and distributed the little property she possessed among her friends.

It was on the morning of the 9th of July, 1793, that she left the house of her aunt, without trusting herself with a last farewell. Her most earnest wish was, when her deed should have been accomplished, to perish, wholly unknown, by the hands of an infuriated multitude. The woman who could contemplate such a fate, and calmly devote herself to it, without one selfish thought of future renown, had indeed the heroic soul of a martyr.

Her journey to Paris was marked by no other event than the unwelcome attentions of some Jacobins with whom she traveled. One of them, struck by her modest and gentle beauty, made her a very serious proposal of marriage: she playfully evaded his request, but promised that he should learn who and what she was at some future period. On entering Paris, she proceeded immediately to the Hotel de la Providence, Rue ties Vieux Augustins, not far from Marat's dwelling. Here she rested for two days before calling on her intended victim. Nothing can mark more forcibly the singular calmness of her mind: she felt no hurry to accomplish the deed for which she had journeyed so far, and over which she had meditated so deeply: her soul remained serene and undaunted to the last. The room which she occupied, and which has often been pointed out to inquiring strangers, was a dark and wretched attic, into which light scarcely ever penetrated. There she read again the volume of Plutarch she had brought with her—unwilling to part from her favorite author, even in her last hours—and probably composed that energetic address to the people which was found upon her after her apprehension.

Charlotte perceived that to call on Marat was the only means by which she might accomplish her purpose. She did so on the morning of the 13th of July, having first purchased a knife in the Palais Royal, and written him a note, in which she requested an interview. She was refused admittance. She then wrote him a second note, more pressing than the first, and in which she represented herself as persecuted for the cause of freedom. Without waiting to see what effect this note might produce, she called again at half-past seven the same evening.

Marat then resided in the Rue des Cordeliers, in a gloomy-looking house, which has since been demolished. His constant fears of assassination were shared by those around him; the porter seeing a strange woman pass by his lodge, without pausing to make any inquiry, ran out and called her back. She did not heed his remonstrance, but swiftly ascended the old stone staircase, until she had reached the door of Marat's apartment. It was cautiously opened by Albertine, a woman with whom Marat cohabited, and who passed for his wife. Recognizing the same young and handsome girl who had already called on her husband, and animated, perhaps by a feeling of jealous mistrust, Albertine refused to admit her; Charlotte insisted with great earnestness. The sound of their altercation reached Marat: he immediately ordered his wife to admit the stranger, whom he recognized as the author of the two letters he had received in the course of the day. Albertine obeyed reluctantly; she allowed Charlotte to enter; and after crossing with her an ante chamber, where she had been occupied with a man named Laurent Basse in folding some numbers of the "Ami du Peuple," she ushered her through two other rooms, until they came to a narrow closet where Marat was then in a bath. He gave a look at Charlotte, and ordered his wife to leave them alone: she complied, but allowed the door of the closet to remain half open, and kept within call.

According to his usual custom, Marat wore a soiled handkerchief bound round his head, increasing his natural hideousness. A coarse covering was thrown across the bath; a board, likewise, placed transversely, supported his papers. Laying down his pen, he asked Charlotte the purport of her visit. The closet was so narrow that she touched the bath near which she stood. She gazed on him with ill-disguised horror and disgust, but answered as composedly as she could, that she had come from Caen, in order to give him correct intelligence concerning the proceedings of the Girondists there. He listened, questioned her eagerly, wrote down the names of the Girondists, then added, with a smile of triumph: "Before a week they shall have perished on the guillotine." "These words," afterward said Charlotte, "sealed his fate." Drawing from beneath the handkerchief which covered her bosom the knife she had kept there all along, she plunged it to the hilt in Marat's heart. He gave one loud, expiring cry for help, and sank back dead, in the bath. By an instinctive impulse, Charlotte had instantly drawn out the knife from the breast of her victim, but she did not strike again; casting it down at his feet, she left the closet, and sat down in the neighboring room, thoughtfully passing her hand across her brow: her task was done.

The wife of Marat had rushed to his aid on hearing his cry for help. Laurent Basse, seeing that all was over, turned round toward Charlotte, and, with a blow of a chair, felled her to the floor; while the infuriated Albertine trampled her under her feet. The tumult aroused the other tenants of the house; the alarm spread, and a crowd gathered in the apartment, who learned with stupor that Marat, the Friend of the People, had been murdered. Deeper still was their wonder when they gazed on the murderess. She stood there before them with still disordered garments, and her disheveled hair, loosely bound by a broad green ribbon falling around her; but so calm, so serenely lovely, that those who most abhorred her crime gazed on her with involuntary admiration. "Was she then so beautiful?" was the question addressed, many years afterward, to an old man, one of the few remaining witnesses of this scene. "Beautiful!" he echoed, enthusiastically; adding, with the eternal regrets of old age: "Ay, there are none such now!"

On the morning of the 17th, she was led before her judges. She was dressed with care, and had never looked more lovely. Her bearing was so imposing and dignified, that the spectators and the judges seemed to stand arraigned before her. She interrupted the first witness, by declaring that it was she who had killed Marat. "Who inspired you with so much hatred against him?" asked the President.

"I needed not the hatred of others, I had enough of my own," she energetically replied; "besides, we do not execute well that which we have not ourselves conceived."

"What, then, did you hate in Marat?"

"His crimes."

"Do you think that you have assassinated all the Marats?"

"No; but now that he is dead, the rest may fear."

She answered other questions with equal firmness and laconism. Her project, she declared, had been formed since the 31st of May. "She had killed one man to save a hundred thousand She was a republican long before the Revolution, and had never failed in energy."

"What do you understand by energy?" asked the President.

"That feeling," she replied, "which induces us to east aside selfish considerations, and sacrifice ourselves for our country."

Fouquier Tinville here observed, alluding to the sure blow she had given, that she must be well practiced in crime. "The monster takes me for an assassin!" she exclaimed, in a tone thrilling with indignation. This closed the debates, and her defender rose. It was not Doulcet de Pontecoulant—who had not received her letter—but Chauveau de la Garde, chosen by the President. Charlotte gave him an anxious look, as though she feared he might seek to save her at the expense of honor. He spoke, and she perceived that her apprehensions were unfounded. Without excusing her crime, or attributing it to insanity, he pleaded for the fervor of her conviction; which he had the courage to call sublime. The appeal proved unavailing. Charlotte Corday was condemned. Without deigning to answer the President, who asked her if she had aught to object to the penalty of death being carried out against her, she rose, and walking up to her defender, thanked him gracefully. "These gentlemen," said she, pointing to the judges, "have just informed me that the whole of my property is confiscated. I owe something in the prison: as a proof of my friendship and esteem, I request you to pay this little debt."

On returning to the conciergerie, she found an artist, named Hauer, waiting for her, to finish her portrait, which he had begun at the tribunal. They conversed freely together, until the executioner, carrying the red chemise destined for assassins, and the scissors with which he was to cut her hair off, made his appearance. "What, so soon!" exclaimed Charlotte Corday, slightly turning pale; but rallying her courage, she resumed her composure, and presented a look of her hair to M. Hauer, as the only reward in her power to offer. A priest came to offer her his ministry. She thanked him and the persons by whom he had been sent, but declined his spiritual aid. The executioner cut her hair, bound her hands, and threw the red chemise over her. M. Hauer was struck with the almost unearthly loveliness which the crimson hue of this garment imparted to the ill-fated maiden. "This toilet of death, though performed by rude hands, leads to immortality," said Charlotte, with a smile.

A heavy storm broke forth as the car of the condemned left the conciergerie for the Place de la Revolution. An immense crowd lined every street through which Charlotte Corday passed. Hootings and execrations at first rose on her path; but as her pure and serene beauty dawned on the multitude, as the exquisite loveliness of her countenance and the sculptural beauty of her figure became more fully revealed, pity and admiration superseded every other feeling. Her bearing was so admirably calm and dignified, as to rouse sympathy in the breasts of those who detested not only her crime, but the cause for which it had been committed. Many men of every party took off their hats and bowed as the cart passed before them. Among those who waited its approach, was a young German, normed Adam Luz, who stood at the entrance of the Rue Saint Honore, and followed Charlotte to the scaffold. He gazed on the lovely and heroic maiden with all the enthusiasm of his imaginative race. A love, unexampled perhaps in the history of the human heart, took possession of his soul.

Unconscious of the passionate love she had awakened, Charlotte now stood near the guillotine. She turned pale on first beholding it, but soon resumed her serenity. A deep blush suffused her face when the executioner removed the handkerchief that covered her neck and shoulders, but she calmly laid her head upon the block. The executioner touched a spring and the ax came down. One of Samson's assistants immediately stepped forward, and holding up the lifeless head to the gaze of the crowd, struck it on either cheek. The brutal act only excited a feeling of horror; and it is said that—as though even in death her indignant spirit protested against this outrage—an angry and crimson flush passed over the features of Charlotte Corday.



[From Household Words.]

GREENWICH WEATHER-WISDOM.

In England every body notices the weather, and talks about the weather, and suffers by the weather, yet very few of us know any thing about it. The changes of our climate have given us a constant and an insatiable national disease—consumption; the density of our winter fog has gained an European celebrity; while the general haziness of our atmosphere induces an Italian or an American to doubt whether we are ever indulged with a real blue sky. "Good day" has become the national salutation; umbrellas, water-proof clothes, and cough mixtures are almost necessities of English life; yet, despite these daily and hourly proofs of the importance of the weather to each and all of us, it is only within the last ten years that any effectual steps have been taken in England to watch the weather and the proximate elements which regulate its course and variations.

Yet, in those ten years positive wonders have been done, and good hope established that a continuance of patient inquiry will be rewarded by still further discoveries. To take a single result, it may be mentioned, that a careful study of the thermometer has shown that a descent of the temperature of London from forty-five to thirty-two degrees, generally kills about 300 persons. They may not all die in the very week when the loss of warmth takes place, but the number of deaths is found to increase to that extent over the previous average within a short period after the change. The fall of temperature, in truth, kills them as certainly as a well-aimed cannon-shot. Our changing climate, or deficient food and shelter, has prepared them for the final stroke, but they actually die at last of the weather.

Before 1838, several European states, less apt than ourselves to talk about the weather, had taken it up as a study, and had made various contributions to the general knowledge of the subject; but in that year England began to act. The officials who now and then emerge from the Admiralty under the title of the "Board of Visitors," to see what is in progress at the Greenwich Observatory, were reminded by Mr. Airy, the astronomer royal, that much good might be done by pursuing a course of magnetic and meteorological observations. The officials "listened and believed."

The following year saw a wooden fence pushed out behind the Observatory walls, in the direction of Blackheath, and soon afterward a few low-roofed, unpainted, wooden buildings were dotted over the inclosure. These structures are small enough and humble enough to outward view, yet they contain some most beautifully-constructed instruments, and have been the scene of a series of observations and discoveries of the greatest interest and value. The stray holiday visitor to Greenwich Park, who feels tempted to look over the wooden paling, sees only a series of deal sheds, upon a rough grass-plat; a mast some eighty feet high, steadied by ropes, and having a lantern at the top, and a windlass below; and if he looks closer, he perceives a small inner inclosure, surrounded by a dwarf fence; an upright stand, with a movable top, sheltering a collection of thermometers; and here and there a pile of planks and unused partitioning, that helps to give the place an appearance of temporary expediency, an aspect something between a collection of emigrants' cottages and the yard of a dealer in second-hand building materials. But—as was said when speaking of the Astronomical Observatory—Greenwich is a practical place, and not one prepared for show. Science, like virtue, does not require a palace for a dwelling-place. In this collection of deal houses, during the last ten years, Nature has been constantly watched, and interrogated with the zeal and patience which alone can glean a knowledge of her secrets. And the results of those watches, kept at all hours, and in all weathers, are curious in the extreme; but before we ask what they are, let us cross the barrier, and see with what tools the weather-students work.

The main building is built in the form of a cross, with its chief front to the magnetic north. It is formed of wood, all iron and other metals being carefully excluded; for its purpose is to contain three large magnets, which have to be isolated from all influence likely to interfere with their truthful action. In three arms of the cross these magnets are suspended by bands of unwrought, untwisted silk. In the fourth arm is a sort of double window, filled with apparatus for receiving the electricity collected at the top of the mast which stands close by. Thus, in this wooden shed, we find one portion devoted to; electricity—to the detection and registry of the stray lightning of the atmosphere—and the other three to a set of instruments that feel the influence and register the variations of the magnetic changes in the conditions of the air. "True as the needle to the pole," is the burden of an old song, which now shows how little our forefathers knew about this same needle, which, in truth, has a much steadier character than it deserves. Let all who still have faith in the legend go to the magnet-house, and when they have seen the vagaries there displayed, they will have but a poor idea of Mr. Charles Dibdin's sea-heroes, whose constancy is declared to have been as true as their compasses were to the north.

Upon entering the magnet-house, the first object that attracts attention are the jars to which the electricity is brought down. The fluid is collected, as just stated, by a conductor running from the top of the mast outside. In order that not the slightest portion may be lost in its progress down, a lamp is kept constantly burning near the top of the pole, the light of which keeps warm and dry a body of glass that cuts off all communication between the conductor and the machinery which supports it. Another light, for the purpose of collecting the electricity by its flame, is placed above the top of the pole. This light, burning at night, has given rise to many a strange supposition in the neighborhood. It is too high up to be serviceable as a lantern to those below. Besides, who walks in Greenwich Park after the gates are closed? It can light only the birds or the deer. "Then, surely," says another popular legend, "it is to guide the ships on the river, when on their way up at night; a sort of landmark to tell where-abouts the Observatory is when the moon and stars are clouded, and refuse to show where their watchers are."

All these speculations are idle, for the lights burn when the sun is shining, as well as at night; and the object of the lower one is that no trace of moisture, and no approach of cold, shall give the electricity a chance of slipping down the mast, or the ropes, to the earth, but shall leave it no way of escape from the wise men below, who want it, and will have it, whether it likes or no, in their jars, that they may measure its quantity and its quality, and write both down in their journals. It is thus that electricity comes down the wires into those jars on our right as we enter. If very slight, its presence there is indicated by tiny morsels of pendent gold-leaf; if stronger, the divergence of two straws show it; if stronger still, the third jar holds its greater force, while neighboring instruments measure the length of the electric sparks, or mark the amount of the electric force. At the desk, close by, sits the observer, who jots down the successive indications. In his book he registers from day to day, throughout the year, how much electricity has been in the air, and what was its character, even to such particulars as to whether its sparks were blue, violet, or purple in color. At times, however, he has to exercise great care, and it is not always that he even then escapes receiving severe shocks.

Passing on, we approach the magnets. They are three in number; of large size, and differently suspended, to show the various ways in which such bodies are acted upon. All hang by bands of unwrought silk. If the silk were twisted, it would twist the magnets, and the accuracy of their position would be disturbed. Magnets, like telescopes, must be true in their adjustment to the hundredth part of a hair's breadth. One magnet hangs north and south; another east and west; and a third, like a scale-beam, is balanced on knife-edges and agate planes, so beautifully, that when once adjusted and inclosed in its case, it is opened only once a year, lest one grain of dust, or one small spider, should destroy its truth; for spiders are as troublesome to the weather-student as to the astronomer. These insects like the perfect quiet that reigns about the instruments of the philosopher, and with heroic perseverance persist in spinning their fine threads among his machines. Indeed, spiders occasionally betray the magnetic observer into very odd behavior At times he may be seen bowing in the sunshine, like a Persian fire-worshiper; now stooping in this direction, now dodging in that, but always gazing through the sun's rays up toward that luminary. He seems demented, staring at nothing. At last he lifts his hand; he snatches apparently at vacancy to pull nothing down In truth his eye had at last caught the gleam of light reflected from an almost invisible spider line running from the electrical wire to the neighboring planks. The spider who had ventured on the charged wire paid the penalty of such daring with his life long ago, but he had left his web behind him, and that beautifully minute thread has been carrying off to the earth a portion of the electric fluid, before it had been received, and tested, and registered by the mechanism below. Such facts show the exceeding delicacy of the observations.

For seven years, the magnets suspended in this building were constantly watched every two hours—every even hour—day and night, except on Sundays, the object being that some light might be thrown upon the laws regulating the movements of the mariner's compass; hence, that while men became wiser, navigation might be rendered safer. The chief observer—the genius loci—is Mr. Glaisher, whose name figures in the reports of the Register-General. He, with two assistants, from year to year, went on making these tedious examinations of the variations of the magnets, by means of small telescopes, fixed with great precision upon pedestals of masonry or wood fixed on the earth, and unconnected with the floor of the building, occupying a position exactly between the three magnets. This mode of proceeding had continued for some years with almost unerring regularity, and certain large quarto volumes full of figures were the results, when an ingenious medical man, Mr. Brooke, hit upon a photographic plan for removing the necessity for this perpetual watchfulness. Now, in the magnet-house, we see light and chemistry doing the tasks before performed by human labor; and doing them more faithfully than even the most vigilant of human eyes and hands. Around the magnets are cases of zinc, so perfect that they exclude all light from without. Inside those cases, in one place, is a lamp giving a single ray of prepared light, which, falling upon a mirror soldered to the magnet, moves with its motions. This wandering ray, directed toward a sheet of sensitive photographic paper, records the magnet's slightest motion! The paper moves on by clock-work, and once in four-and-twenty hours an assistant, having closed the shutters of the building, lights a lantern of yellow glass, opens the magnet-boxes, removes the paper on which the magnets have been enabled to record their own motions, and then, having put in a fresh sheet of sensitive paper, he shuts it securely in, winds up the clock-work, puts out his yellow light, and lets in the sunshine. His lantern glass is yellow, because the yellow rays are the only ones which can be safely allowed to fall upon the photographic paper during its removal from the instrument, to the dish in which its magnetic picture is to be fixed by a further chemical process. It is the blue ray of the light that gives the daguerrotypic likeness—as most persons who have had their heads off, under the hands of M. Claudet, or Mr. Beard, or any of their numerous competitors in the art of preparing sun-pictures, well know.

Since the apparatus of Mr. Brooke for the self-registration of the magnetic changes has been in operation at Greenwich, the time of Mr. Glaisher and his assistants has been more at liberty for other branches of their duties. These are numerous enough. Thermometers and barometers have to be watched as well as magnets. To these instruments the same ingenious photographic contrivance is applied.

The wooden building next to the magnet-house on the southwest contains a modification of Mr. Brooke's ingenious plan, by which the rise and fall of the temperature of the air is self-registered. Outside the building are the bulbs of thermometers freely exposed to the weather. Their shafts run through a zinc case, and as the mercury rises or falls, it moves a float having a projecting arm. Across this arm is thrown the ray of prepared light which falls then upon the sensitive paper. Thus we see the variations of the needle and the variations in heat and cold both recording their own story, within these humble-looking wooden sheds, as completely as the wind and the rain are made to do the same thing, on the top of the towers of the Observatory. The reward given to the inventor of this ingenious mode of self-registration has been recently revealed in a parliamentary paper, thus: "To Mr. Charles Brooke for his invention and establishment at the Royal Observatory, of the apparatus for the self-registration of magnetical and meteorological phenomena, L500." Every year the invention will save fully L500 worth of human toil; and the reward seems small when we see every year millions voted for warlike, sinecure, and other worse than useless purposes.

Photography, however, can not do all the work. Its records have to be cheeked by independent observations every day, and then both have to be brought to their practical value by comparison with certain tables which test their accuracy, and make them available for disclosing certain scientific results. The preparation of such tables is one of the practical triumphs of Greenwich. Many a quiet country gentleman amuses his leisure by noting day by day the variations of his thermometer and barometer. Heretofore such observations were isolated and of no general value, but now, by the tables completed by Mr. Glaisher, and published by the Royal Society, they may all be converted into scientific values, and be made available for the increase of our weather-wisdom. For nearly seventy years the Royal Society had observations made at Somerset House, but they were a dead letter—mere long columns of figures—till these tables gave them significance. And the same tables now knit into one scientific whole, the observations taken by forty scientific volunteers, who, from day to day, record for the Registrar-General of births and deaths, the temperature, moisture, &c., of their different localities, which vary from Glasgow to Guernsey, and from Cornwall to Norwich.

What the Rosetta stone is to the history of the Pharaohs, these Greenwich tables have been to the weather-hieroglyphics. They have afforded something like a key to the language in which the secrets are written; and it remains for industrious observation and scientific zeal to complete the modern victory over ancient ignorance. Already the results of the Greenwich studies of the weather have given us a number of curious morsels of knowledge. The wholesale destruction of human life induced by a fall in the temperature of London has just been noticed. Besides the manifestation of that fact, we are shown, that instead of a warm summer being followed by a cold winter, the tendency of the law of the weather is to group warm seasons together, and cold seasons together. Mr. Glaisher has made out, that the character of the weather seems to follow certain curves, so to speak, each extending over periods of fifteen years. During the first half of each of these periods, the seasons become warmer and warmer, till they reach their warmest point, and then they sink again, becoming colder and colder, till they reach the lowest point, whence they rise again. His tables range over the last seventy-nine years—from 1771 to 1849. Periods shown to be the coldest, were years memorable for high-priced food, increased mortality, popular discontent, and political changes. In his diagrams, the warm years are tinted brown, and the cold years gray, and as the sheets are turned over and the dates scanned, the fact suggest itself that a gray period saw Lord George Gordon's riots; a gray period was marked by the Reform Bill excitement; and a gray period saw the Corn Laws repealed.

A few more morsels culled from the experience of these weather-seers, and we have done.

Those seasons have been best which have enjoyed an average temperature—not too hot nor too cold.

The indications are that the climate of England is becoming warmer, and, consequently, healthier; a fact to be partly accounted for by the improved drainage and the removal of an excess of timber from the land.

The intensity of cholera was found greatest in those places where the air was stagnant; and, therefore, any means for causing its motion, as lighting fires and improving ventilation, are thus proved to be of the utmost consequence.

Some day near the 20th of January—the lucky guess, in 1838, of Murphy's Weather Almanac—will, upon the average of years, be found to be the coldest of the whole year.

In the middle of May there are generally some days of cold, so severe as to be unexplainable. Humboldt mentions this fact in his Cosmos; and various authors have tried to account for it—at present in vain. The favorite notion, perhaps, is that which attributes this period of cold to the loosening of the icebergs of the north. Another weather eccentricity is the usual advent of some warm days at the beginning of November.

Certain experiments in progress to test the difference between the temperature of the Thames, and of the surrounding atmosphere, are expected to show the cause of the famous London fog. During the night the Thames is often from ten to seventeen degrees warmer, and in the day time from eight to ten degrees colder than the air above it.

If the theory of weather-cycles holds good, we are to have seasons colder than the average from this time till 1853, when warmth will begin again to predominate over cold. A chilly prophecy this to close with, and therefore, rather let an anecdote complete this chapter on the Weather-Watchers of Greenwich.

Among other experiments going on some time ago in the observatory inclosure, were some by which Mr. Glaisher sought to discover how much warmth the earth lost during the hours of night, and how much moisture the air would take up in a day from a given surface. Upon the long grass, within the dwarf fence already mentioned were placed all sorts of odd substances, in little distinct qualities. Ashes wood, leather, linen, cotton, glass, lead, copper and stone, among other things, were there to show how each affected the question of radiation. Close by upon a post was a dish six inches across, in which every day there was punctually poured one ounce of water, and at the same hour next day, as punctually was this fluid remeasured to see what had been lost by evaporation. For three years this latter experiment had been going on, and the results were posted up in a book; but the figures gave most contradictory results. There was either something very irregular in the air, or something very wrong in the apparatus. It was watched for leakage, but none was found, when one day Mr. Glaisher stepped out of the magnet-house, and looking toward the stand, the mystery was revealed. The evaporating dish of the philosopher was being used as a bath by an irreverent bird! a sparrow was scattering from his wings the water left to be drunk by the winds of Heaven. Only one thing remained to be done; and the next minute saw a pen run through the tables that had taken three years to compile. The labor was lost—the work had to be begun again.



DOING.

Oh, friend, whoe'er thou art, who dost rejoice In the sweet tones of thy melodious voice; Which to thy fancy are so rich and clear, Falling like music, on the list'ning ear, Of thee I ask, What hast thou done of that thou hast to do? Art silent? Then I say, Until thy deeds are many let thy words be few.

Oh, man, whoe'er thou art, within whose breast The glowing thoughts disdain ignoble rest; Whose soul is laboring with a monstrous birth Of winged words, to scatter through the earth Of thee I ask, What hast thou done of that thou hast to do? Art silent? Then I say, Until thy deeds are many let thy words be few.

Oh, brother mine, who would'st reform mankind Purging the dross, and leaving all refined; Preaching of sinless love, sobriety, Of goodness, endless peace, and charity, Of thee I ask, What hast thou done of that thou hast to do? Art silent? Then I say, Until thy deeds are many let thy words be few.

Speech without action is a moral dearth, And to advance the world is little worth: Let us think much, say little, and much do, If to ourselves and God we will be true; And ask within, What have I done of that I have to do? Is conscience silent—say, Oh! let my deeds be many and my words be few.

J. G. L. BULLEID.



[From Household Words.]

YOUNG RUSSIA.

Certain social theorists have, of late years, proclaimed themselves to the puzzled public under the name and signification of "Young." Young France, Young Germany, and Young England have had their day, and having now grown older, and by consequence wiser, are comparatively mute. In accordance with what seems a natural law, it is only when a fashion is being forgotten where it originated—in the west—that is reaches Russia, which rigidly keeps a century or so behind the rest of the Continent. It is only recently, therefore, that we hear of "Young Russia."

The main principles of all these national youths are alike. They are pleasingly picturesque—simperingly amiable; with a pretty and piquant dash of paradox. What they propose is not new birth, or dashing out into new systems, and taking advantage of new ideas; but reverting to old systems, and furbishing them up so as to look as good as new. Re-juvenescence is their aim; the middle ages their motto. Young England, to wit, desires to replace things as they were in the days of the pack-horse, the thumb-screw, the monastery, the ducking-stool, the knight errant, trial by battle, and the donjon-keep. To these he wishes to apply all possible modern improvements, to adapt them to present ideas, and to present events. Though he would have no objection to his mailed knight traveling per first-class railway, he would abolish luggage-trains to encourage intestine trade and the breed of that noble animal the pack-horse. He has, indeed, done something in this monastic line; but his efforts for the dissemination of superstition, and his denunciations of a certain sort of witchcraft, have signally failed. In truth, the task he has set himself—that of re-constructing society anew out of old materials—though highly archaeological, historical, and poetic, has the fatal disadvantage of being simply impossible. It is telling the people of the nineteenth century to carry their minds, habits, and sentiments back, so as to become people of the thirteenth century; it is trying to make new muslin out of mummy cloth, or razors out of rusty nails.

"Young Russia" is an equal absurdity, but from a precisely opposite cause; for, indeed, this sort of youth out of age is a series of paradoxes. The Russian of the present day is the Russian of past ages. He exists by rule—the rule of despotism—which is as old as the Medes and Persians; and which forces him into an iron mould that shapes his appearance, his mind, and his actions to one pattern, from one generation to another Hence every thing that lives and breathes in Russia being antique, there is no appreciable antiquity. The new school, therefore—even if amateur politics were allowable in Russia, which they are not, as a large population of exiles in Siberia can testify—has no materials to work upon. Stagnation is the political law, and "Young Russia" dies in its babyhood for want of sustenance. What goes by the name of civilization, is no advance in wealth, morals, or social happiness. It is merely a tinsel coating over the rottenness and rust with which Russian life is "sicklied o'er." It has nothing to do with a single soul below the rank of a noble; and with him it means Champagne, bad pictures, Parisian tailors, operas, gaming, and other expenses and elegancies imported from the West. Hundreds of provincial noblemen are ruined every year in St. Petersburg, in undergoing this process of civilization. The fortunes thus wasted are enormous; yet there is only one railroad now in operation throughout the whole empire, and that belongs to the Emperor, and leads to one of his palaces a few miles from the capital. Such is Russian civilization. What then is "Young Russia" to do? Ask one of its youngest apostles, Ivan Vassilievitsch.

This young gentleman—for an introduction to whom we are indebted to Count Sollogub—was, not long ago, parading the Iverskoy boulevard—one of the thirteen which half encircle Moscow—when he met a neighbor from the province of Kazan. Ivan had lately returned from abroad. He was a perfect specimen of the new school, inside and out. Within, he had imbibed all the ideas of the juvenile or verdant schools of Germany, France, and England. Without, he displayed a London macintosh; his coat and trowsers had been designed and executed by Parisian artists; his hair was cut in the style of the middle ages; and his chin showed the remnants of a Vandyke beard. He also resembled the new school in another respect: he had spent all his money, yet he was separated from home by the distance of a long—a Russian—journey.

To meet with a neighbor—which he did—who traveled in his own carriage, in which he offered a seat, was the height of good fortune. The more so, as Ivan wished to see as much of Russian life on the road as possible, and to note down his impressions in a journal, whose white leaves were as yet unsullied with ink. From the information he intended to collect, he intended to commence helping to re-construct Russian society after the order of the new Russiaites.

The vehicle in which this great mission was to be performed, was a humble family affair called a Tarantas. After a series of adventures—but which did not furnish Ivan a single impression for his note-book—they arrive at Vladimir, the capital of a province or "government." Here the younger traveler meets with a friend, to whom he confides his intention of visiting all the other Government towns for "Young Russia" purposes. His friend's reply is dispiriting to the last degree.

"There is no difference between our government towns. See one, and you'll know them all!"

"Is it possible?"

"It is so, I assure you. Every one has a High-street one principal shop, where the country gentlemen buy silks for their wives, and Champagne for themselves; then there are the Courts of Justice, the assembly-rooms, an apothecary's shop, a river, a square, a bazaar, two or three street-lamps, sentry-boxes for the watchmen, and the governor's house."

"The society, however, in the government towns must be different?"

"On the contrary. The society is still more uniform than the buildings."

"You astonish me: how is that?"

"Listen. There is, of course, in every government town a governor. These do not always resemble each other; but as soon as any one of them appears, police and secretaries immediately become active, merchants and tradesmen bow, and the gentry draw themselves up, with, however, some little awe. Wherever the governor goes, he is sure to find Champagne, the wine so much patronized in the province, and every body drinks a bumper to the health of the 'father of the province.' Governors generally are well-bred, and sometimes very proud. They like to give dinner-parties, and benevolently condescend to play a game of whist with rich brandy-contractors and landowners."

"That's a common thing," remarked Ivan Vassilievitsch.

"Do not interrupt me. Besides the governor, there is in nearly every government town the governor's lady. She is rather a peculiar personage; generally brought up in one of the two capitals, and spoiled with the cringing attentions of her company. On her husband's first entry into office, she is polite and affable; later, she begins to feel weary of the ordinary provincial intrigues and gossips; she gets accustomed to the slavish attentions she receives, and lays claim to them. At this period she surrounds herself with a parasitical suite; she quarrels with the lady of the vice-governor; she brags of St. Petersburg; speaks with disdain of her provincial circle, and finally draws upon herself the utmost universal ill-feeling, which is kept up till the day of her departure, when all goes into oblivion, every thing is pardoned, and every body bids her farewell with tears."

"Two persons do not form the whole society of a town," interrupted again Ivan Vassilievitsch.

"Patience, brother, patience! Certainly there are other persons besides the two I have just spoken of: there is the vice-governor and his lady; several presidents, with their respective ladies, and an innumerable crowd of functionaries serving under their leadership. The ladies are ever quarreling in words, while their husbands do the same thing upon foolscap. The presidents, for the most part, are men of advanced age and business-like habits, with great crosses hanging from their necks, and are, during the day time, to be seen out of their courts only on holidays. The government attorney is generally a single man, and an enviable match. The superior officer of the gens-d'armes is a 'good fellow.' The nobility-marshal a great sportsman. Besides the government and the local officers, there live in a government town stingy landowners, or those who have squandered away their property; they gamble from evening to morning, nay, from morning to evening too, without getting the least bit tired of their exercise."

"Now, about their mode of living?" asked Ivan Vassilievitsch.

"The mode of living is a very dull one. At exchange of ceremonious visits. Intrigues, cards—cards, intrigues. Now and then, perchance, you may meet with a kind, hospitable family, but such a case is very rare; you much oftener find a ludicrous affectation to imitate the manners of an imaginary high life. There are no public amusements in a government town. During winter a series of balls are announced to take place at the Assembly-rooms; however from an absurd primness, these balls are little frequented, because no one wants to be the first in the room. The 'bon genre' remains at home and plays whist. In general, I have remarked, that on arriving in a government town, it seems as if you were too early or too late for some extraordinary event. You are ever welcomed: 'What a pity you were not here yesterday!' or, 'You should stay here till to-morrow.'"

In process of time Ivan Vassilievitsch and his good-natured fat companion, Vassily Ivanovitsch, reach a borough town, where the Tarantas breaks down. There is a tavern, and here is a description of it.

"The tavern was like any other tavern—a large wooden hut, with the usual out-buildings. At the entrance stood an empty cart. The staircase was crooked and shaky, and at the top of it, like a moving candelabrum, stood a waiter with a tallow candle in his hand. To the right was the tap-room, painted from time immemorial to imitate a grove. Tumblers, tea-pots, decanters, three silver and a great number of pewter spoons, adorned the shelves of a cup-board; a couple of lads in chintz shirts, with dirty napkins over their shoulders, busied themselves at the bar. Through an open door you saw in the next room a billiard-table, and a hen gravely promenading upon it.

"Our travelers were conducted into the principal room of this elegant establishment, where they found, seated round a boiling tea-urn, three merchants—one gray-haired, one red-haired, and one dark-haired. Each of these was armed with a steaming tumbler; each of them sipped, smacked his lips, stroked his beard, and sipped again the fragrant beverage.

"The red-haired man was saying,

"'I made, last summer, a splendid bargain. I had bought from a company of Samara-Tartars, some five hundred bags of prime quality, which I purchased from a nobleman who was in want of money, but such dreadful stuff it was, that if it had not been for the very low price, I would never have thought of looking at it. What did I do? I mixed these two cargoes and sold the whole lot to a brandy-contractor at Ribna, for prime quality.'

"'It was a clever speculation,' remarked the dark-haired.

"'A commercial trick!' added the gray-haired.

"While this conversation was proceeding, Vassily Ivanovitsch and Ivan Vassilievitsch had taken seats at a separate little table; they had ordered their tea, and were listening to what the three merchants were saying.

"A poor-looking fellow came in, and took from his breast-pocket an incredibly dirty sheet of paper, in which were wrapped up bank-notes and some gold, and handed it over to the gray-haired merchant, who, having counted them over, said,

"'Five thousand two hundred and seventeen roubles. Is it right?'

"'Quite right, sir.'

"'It shall be delivered according to your wish.'

"'Ivan asked why the sender had not taken a receipt?'

"The red and dark-haired merchants burst out laughing; the gray-haired got into a passion.

"'A receipt!' he cried out, furiously, 'a receipt! I would have broken his jaw with his own money, had he dared to ask me for a receipt. I have been a merchant now more than fifty years, and I have never yet been insulted by being asked to give a receipt.'

"'You see, sir,' said the red-haired merchant, it is only with noblemen that such things as receipts and bills of exchange exist. We commercial people do not make use of them. Our simple word suffices. We have no time to spare for writing. For instance, sir: here is Sidor Avdeivitsch, who has millions of roubles in his trade, and his whole writing consists of a few scraps of paper, for memory's sake, sir.'

"'I don't understand that,' interrupted Ivan Vassilievitsch.

"'How could you, sir? It is mere commercial business, without plan or facade. We ourselves learn it from our childhood: first as errand boys, then as clerks, till we become partners in the business. I confess it is hard work.'"

Upon this text Ivan preaches a "Young Russia discourse."

"'Allow me a few words,' he said with fervor. 'It appears to me that we have in Russia a great number of persons buying and selling, but yet, I must say, we have no systematic commerce. For commerce, science, and learning, are indispensable; a conflux of civilized men, clever mathematical calculations—but not, as seems to be the case with you, dependence upon mere chance. You earn millions, because you convert the consumer into a victim, against whom every kind of cheat is pardonable, and then you lay by farthing by farthing, refusing yourselves not only all the enjoyments of life, but even the most necessary comforts.... You brag of your threadbare clothes; but surely this extreme parsimony is a thousand times more blamable than the opposite prodigality of those of your comrades who spend their time among gipsies, and their money in feasting. You boast of your ignorance, because you do not know what civilization is. Civilization, according to your notions, consists in shorter laps of a coat, foreign furniture, bronzes, and champagne—in a word, in outward trifles and silly customs. Trust me, not such is civilization.... Unite yourselves! Be it your vocation to lay open all the hidden riches of our great country; to diffuse life and vigor into all its veins; to take the whole management of its material interests into your hands. Unite your endeavors in this beautiful deed, and you may be certain of success! Why should Russia be worse than England? Comprehend only your calling; let the beam of civilization fall upon you, and your love for your fatherland will strengthen such a union; and you will see that not only the whole of Russia, but even the whole world will be in your hands.'

"At this eloquent conclusion, the red and the dark-haired merchants opened wide their eyes. They, of course, did not understand a single word of Ivan Vassilievitsch's speech.

"'Alas, for Young Russia!' Ivan dolefully remarks in another place:

"I thought to study life in the provinces: there is no life in the provinces; every one there is said to be of the same cut. Life in the capitals is not a Russian life, but a weak imitation of the petty perfections and gross vices of modern civilization. Where am I then to find Russia? In the lower classes, perhaps, in the every-day life of the Russian peasant? But have I not been now for five days chiefly among this class? I prick up my ears and listen; I open wide my eyes and look, and do what I may, I find not the least trifle worth noting in my 'Impressions.' The country is dead; there is nothing but land, land, land; so much land, indeed, that my eyes get tired of looking at it: a dreadful road, wagons of goods, swearing carriers, drunken stage inspectors; beetles creeping on every wall; soups with the smell of tallow candles! How is it possible for any respectable person to occupy himself with such nasty stuff? And what is yet more provoking, is the doleful uniformity which tires you so much, and affords you no rest whatever. Nothing new, nothing unexpected! To-morrow what has been to-day; to-day what has been yesterday. Here, a post-stage, there a post-stage, and further the same post-stage again; here, a village elder asking for drink-money, and again to infinity village elders all asking for drink-money. What can I write? I begin to agree with Vassily Ivanovitsch; he is right in saying that we do not travel, and that there is no traveling in Russia. We simply are going to Mordassy. Alas! for my 'Impressions.'"

Whoever wants to know more of this amusing Young Russian, must consult "The Tarantas." We can assure the reader that the book is fraught with a store of amusement—chiefly descriptions of town and country life in Russia—not often compressed into the modest and inexpensive compass of a thin duodecimo.



[From Household Words.]

THE ORPHAN'S VOYAGE HOME.

The men could hardly keep the deck, So bitter was the night; Keen northeast winds sang through the shrouds, The deck was frosty white; While overhead the glistening stars Put forth their points of light.

On deck, behind a bale of goods, Two orphans crouch'd, to sleep; But 'twas so cold, the youngest boy In vain tried not to weep: They were so poor, they had no right Near cabin doors to creep.

The elder round the younger wrapt His little ragged cloak, To shield him from the freezing sleet, And surf that o'er them broke; Then drew him closer to his side, And softly to him spoke:

"The night will not be long"—he said, "And if the cold winds blow, We shall the sooner reach our home, And see the peat-fire glow; But now the stars are beautiful— Oh, do not tremble so!

"Come closer!—sleep—forget the frost— Think of the morning red— Our father and our mother soon Will take us to their bed; And in their warm arms we shall sleep." He knew not they were dead.

For them no father to the ship Shall with the morning come; For them no mother's loving arms Are spread to take them home: Meanwhile the cabin passengers In dreams of pleasure roam.

At length the orphans sank to sleep All on the freezing deck; Close huddled side to side—each arm Clasp'd round the other's neck. With heads bent down, they dream'd the earth Was fading to a speck.

The steerage passengers have all Been taken down below, And round the stove they warm their limbs Into a drowsy glow; And soon within their berths forget The icy wind and snow.

Now morning dawns: the land in sight Smiles beam on every face! The pale and qualmy passengers Begin the deck to pace, Seeking along the sun-lit cliffs Some well known spot to trace.

Only the orphans do not stir, Of all this bustling train: They reached their home this starry night! They will not stir again! The winter's breath proved kind to them, And ended all their pain.

But in their deep and freezing sleep, Clasp'd rigid to each other, In dreams they cried, "The bright morn breaks, Home! home! is here, my brother! The Angel Death has been our friend— We come! dear Father! Mother!"



[From the Autobiography of Leigh Hunt.]

LORD BYRON, WORDSWORTH, AND CHARLES LAMB.

In this house, Lord Byron continued the visits which he made me in prison. Unfortunately, I was too ill to return them. He pressed me very much to go to the theatre with him; but illness, and the dread of committing my critical independence, alike prevented me. His lordship was one of a management that governed Drury-lane Theatre at that time, and that were not successful. He got nothing by it, but petty vexations and a good deal of scandal.

Lord Byron's appearance at that time was the finest I ever saw it. He was fatter than before his marriage, but only just enough so to complete the elegance of his person; and the turn of his head and countenance had a spirit and elevation in it, which, though not unmixed with disquiet, gave him altogether a very noble look. His dress, which was black, with white trowsers, and which he wore buttoned close over the body, completed the succinctness and gentlemanliness of his appearance. I remember one day, as he stood looking out of the window, he resembled in a lively manner the portrait of him by Phillips, by far the best that has appeared; I mean the best of him at his best time of life, and the most like him in features as well as expression. He sat one morning so long, that Lady Byron sent up twice to let him know she was waiting. Her ladyship used to go on in the carriage to Henderson's nursery ground, to get flowers. I had not the honor of knowing her, nor ever saw her but once, when I caught a glimpse of her at the door. I thought she had a pretty, earnest look, with her "pippin" face; an epithet by which she playfully designated herself.

* * * * *

It was here also I had the honor of a visit from Mr. Wordsworth. He came to thank me for the zeal I had shown in advocating the cause of his genius. I had the pleasure of showing him his book on my shelves by the side of Milton; a sight which must have been the more agreeable, inasmuch as the visit was unexpected. He favored me, in return, with giving his opinion of some of the poets his contemporaries, who would assuredly not have paid him a visit on the same grounds on which he was pleased to honor myself. Nor do I believe, that from that day to this, he thought it becoming in him to reciprocate the least part of any benefit which a word in good season may have done for him. Lord Byron, in resentment for my having called him the "prince of the bards of his time," would not allow him to be even the "one-eyed monarch of the blind." He said he was the "blind monarch of the one-eyed." I must still differ with his lordship on that point; but I must own, that, after all which I have seen and read, posterity, in my opinion, will differ not a little with one person respecting the amount of merit to be ascribed to Mr. Wordsworth; though who that one person is, I shall leave the reader to discover.

Mr. Wordsworth, whom Mr. Hazlitt designated as one who would have had the wide circle of his humanities made still wider, and a good deal more pleasant, by dividing a little more of his time between his lakes in Westmoreland and the hotels of the metropolis, had a dignified manner, with a deep and roughish, but not unpleasing voice, and an exalted mode of speaking. He had a habit of keeping his left hand in the bosom of his waistcoat; and in this attitude, except when he turned round to take one of the subjects of his criticism from the shelves (for his contemporaries were there also), he sat dealing forth his eloquent but hardly catholic judgments. In his "fathers house," there were not "many mansions." He was as skeptical on the merits of all kinds of poetry but one, as Richardson was on those of the novels of Fielding.

Under the study in which my visitor and I were sitting was an archway, leading to a nursery-ground; a cart happened to go through it while I was inquiring whether he would take any refreshment; and he uttered, in so lofty a voice, the words, "Any thing which is going forward," that I felt inclined to ask him whether he would take a piece of the cart. Lamb would certainly have done it. But this was a levity which would neither have been so proper on my part, after so short an acquaintance, nor very intelligible perhaps, in any sense of the word, to the serious poet. There are good-humored warrants for smiling, which lie deeper even than Mr. Wordsworth's thoughts for tears.

I did not see this distinguished person again till thirty years afterward; when, I should venture to say, his manner was greatly superior to what it was in the former instance; indeed, quite natural and noble, with a cheerful air of animal as well as spiritual confidence; a gallant bearing, curiously reminding one of a certain illustrious duke, as I have seen him walking some dozen years ago by a lady's side, with no unbecoming oblivion of his time of life. I observed, also, that he no longer committed himself in scornful criticisms, or, indeed, in any criticisms whatever, at least as far as I knew. He had found out that he could, at least, afford to be silent. Indeed, he spoke very little of any thing.

Walter Scott said, that the eyes of Burns were the finest he ever saw. I can not say the same of Mr. Wordsworth; that is, not in the sense of the beautiful, or even of the profound. But certainly I never beheld eyes that looked so inspired or supernatural. They were like fires half burning, half smouldering, with a sort of acrid fixture of regard, and seated at the further end of two caverns. One might imagine Ezekiel or Isaiah to have had such eyes.

* * * * *

Charles Lamb had a head worthy of Aristotle, with as fine a heart as ever beat in human bosom, and limbs very fragile to sustain it. There was a caricature of him sold in the shops, which pretended to be a likeness. Procter went into the shop in a passion, and asked the man what he meant by putting forth such a libel. The man apologized, and said that the artist meant no offense. There never was a true portrait of Lamb. His features were strongly yet delicately cut: he had a fine eye as well as forehead; and no face carried in it greater marks of thought and feeling. It resembled that of Bacon, with less worldly vigor and more sensibility.

As his frame, so was his genius. It was as fit for thought as could be, and equally as unfit for action; and this rendered him melancholy, apprehensive, humorous, and willing to make the best of every thing as it was, both from tenderness of heart and abhorrence of alteration. His understanding was too great to admit an absurdity; his frame was not strong enough to deliver it from a fear. His sensibility to strong contrasts was the foundation of his humor, which was that of a wit at once melancholy and willing to be pleased. He would beard a superstition, and shudder at the old phantasm while he did it. One could have imagined him cracking a jest in the teeth of a ghost, and then melting into thin air himself, out of a sympathy with the awful. His humor and his knowledge both, were those of Hamlet, of Moliere, of Carlin, who shook a city with laughter, and, in order to divert his melancholy, was recommended to go and hear himself. Yet he extracted a real pleasure out of his jokes, because good-heartedness retains that privilege when it fails in every thing else. I should say he condescended to be a punster, if condescension had been a word befitting wisdom like his. Being told that somebody had lampooned him, he said, "Very well, I'll Lamb-pun him." His puns were admirable, and often contained as deep things as the wisdom of some who have greater names; such a man, for instance, as Nicole the Frenchman, who was a baby to him. He would have cracked a score of jokes at him, worth his whole book of sentences; pelted his head with pearls. Nicole would not have understood him, but Rochefoucault would, and Pascal, too; and some of our old Englishmen would have understood him still better. He would have been worthy of hearing Shakspeare read one of his scenes to him, hot from the brain. Commonplace found a great comforter in him as long as it was good-natured; it was to the ill-natured or the dictatorial only that he was startling. Willing to see society go on as it did, because he despaired of seeing it otherwise, but not at all agreeing in his interior with the common notions of crime and punishment, he "dumb-founded" a long tirade one evening, by taking the pipe out of his mouth, and asking the speaker, "Whether he meant to say that a thief was not a good man?" To a person abusing Voltaire, and indiscreetly opposing his character to that of Jesus Christ, he said admirably well (though he by no means overrated Voltaire, nor wanted reverence in the other quarter), that "Voltaire was a very good Jesus Christ for the French." He liked to see the church-goers continue to go to church, and wrote a tale in his sister's admirable little book (Mrs. Leicester's School) to encourage the rising generation to do so; but to a conscientious deist he had nothing to object; and if an atheist had found every other door shut against him, he would assuredly not have found his. I believe he would have had the world remain precisely as it was, provided it innovated no farther; but this spirit in him was any thing but a worldly one, or for his own interest. He hardly contemplated with patience the new buildings in the Regent's Park: and, privately speaking, he had a grudge against official heaven-expounders, or clergymen. He would rather, however, have been with a crowd that he disliked, than felt himself alone. He said to me one day, with a face of great solemnity, "What must have been that man's feelings, who thought himself the first deist?" Finding no footing in certainty, he delighted to confound the borders of theoretical truth and falsehood. He was fond of telling wild stories to children, engrafted on things about them; wrote letters to people abroad, telling them that a friend of theirs had come out in genteel comedy; and persuaded George Dyer that Lord Castlereagh was the author of Waverley! The same excellent person walking one evening out of his friend's house into the New River, Lamb (who was from home at the time) wrote a paper under his signature of Elia, stating, that common friends would have stood dallying on the bank, have sent for neighbors, &c., but that he, in his magnanimity, jumped in, and rescued his friend after the old noble fashion. He wrote in the same magazine two lives of Liston and Munden, which the public took for serious, and which exhibit an extraordinary jumble of imaginary facts and truth of by-painting. Munden he made born at "Stoke Pogeis:" the very sound of which was like the actor speaking and digging his words. He knew how many false conclusions and pretensions are made by men who profess to be guided by facts only, as if facts could not be misconceived, or figments taken for them; and, therefore, one day, when somebody was speaking of a person who valued himself on being a matter-of-fact man, "Now," said he, "I value myself on being a matter-of-lie man." This did not hinder his being a man of the greatest veracity, in the ordinary sense of the word; but "Truth," he said, "was precious, and not to be wasted on every body."