Such is the life of glory and Christian benevolence which Lady Barbara daily leads, making authors, critics, and publishers all happy together, by the overflowing radiance of her indefatigable and inexhaustible genius, though she sometimes slyly laughs to herself, and says, "What a thing is a title! if it were not for that, would all these people come to me?" While Tom, who is member of parliament for the little borough of Dearish, most patriotically discharges his duty by pairing off—visits the classic grounds of Ascot, Epsom, Newmarket, or Goodwood, or traverses the moors of Scotland and Ireland in pursuit of grouse. But once a year they indulge their filial virtues in a visit to the old squire. The old squire, we are sorry to say, has grown of late years queer and snappish, and does not look on this visit quite as gratefully as he should. "If they would but come," he says, "in a quiet way, as I used to ride over and see my father in his time, why I should be right glad to see them; but, here they come, like the first regiment of an invading army, and God help those who are old, and want to be quiet!"

The old gentleman, moreover, is continually haranguing about Tom's folly and extravagance. It is his perpetual topic to his wife, and wife's maiden sister, and Wagstaff. Wagstaff only shakes his head, and says, "Young blood! young blood!" but Mrs. Chesselton and the maiden sister say, "Oh! Mr. Chesselton, you don't consider: Tom has great connections, and he is obliged to keep a certain establishment. Things are different now to what they were in our time. Tom is universally allowed to be a very fine man, and Lady Barbara is a very fine woman, and a prodigious clever woman! and you ought to be proud of them, Chesselton." At which the old gentleman breaks out, if he be a little elevated over his wine:

When the Duke of Leeds shall married be To a fine young lady of high quality, How happy will that gentlewoman be In his grace of Leeds good company!

She shall have all that's fine and fair, And the best of silk and satin to wear; And ride in a coach to take the air, And have a house in St. James's-square.

Lady Barbara always professes great affection and reverence for the old gentleman, and sends him many merry and kind compliments and messages; and sends him, moreover, her new books as soon as they are out, most magnificently bound; but all won't do. He only says, "If she'd please me, she'd give up that cursed opera-box. Why, the rent of that thing—only to sit in and hear Italian women squealing and squalling, and to see impudent, outlandish baggages kicking up their heels higher than any decent heads ought to be—the rent, I say, would maintain a parish rector, or keep half-a-dozen parish schools a-going." As for her books, that all the world besides are in raptures about, the old squire turns them over as a dog would a hot dumpling; says nothing but a Bible ought to be so extravagantly bound; and professes that "the matter may all be very fine, but he can make neither head nor tail of it." Yet, whenever Lady Barbara is with him, she is sure to talk and smile herself in about half an hour into his high favor; and he begins to run about to show her this and that, and calls out every now and then, "Let Lady Barbara see this, and go to look at that." She can do any thing with him, except get him to London. "London!" he exclaims; "no; get me to Bedlam at once! What has a rusty old fellow, like me, to do at London? If I could find again the jolly set that used to meet, thirty years ago, at the Star and Garter, Pall Mall, it might do; but London isn't what London used to be. It's too fine by half for a country squire, and would drive me distracted in twenty-four hours, with its everlasting noise and nonsense."

But the old squire does get pretty well distracted with the annual visit. Down come driving the young squire and Lady Barbara, with a train of carriages like a fleet of men-of-war, leading the way with their traveling-coach and four horses. Up they twirl to the door of old hall. The old bell rings a thundering peal through the house. Doors fly open—out come servants—down come the young guests from their carriages; and while embraces and salutations are going on in the drawing-room, the hall is fast filling with packages upon packages; servants are running to and fro along the passages; grooms and carriages are moving off to the stables without; there is lifting and grunting at portmanteaus and imperials, as they are borne up-stairs; while ladies' maids and nursemaids are crying out, "Oh, take care of that trunk!" "Mind that ban'-box!" "Oh, gracious! that is my lady's dressing-case; it will be down, and be totally ruined!" Dogs are barking; children crying, or romping about, and the whole house in the most blessed state of bustle and confusion.

For a week the hurly-burly continues; in pour all the great people to see Tom and Lady Barbara. There are shootings in the mornings, and great dinner parties in the evenings. Tom and my lady have sent down before them plenty of hampers of such wines as the old squire neither keeps nor drinks, and they have brought their plate along with them; and the old house itself is astonished at the odors of champagne, claret, and hook, that pervade, and at the glitter of gold and silver in it. The old man is full of attention and politeness, both to his guests and to their guests; but he is half worried with the children, and t'other half worried with so many fine folks; and muddled with drinking things that he is not used to, and with late hours. Wagstaff has fled—as he always does on such occasions—to a farm-house on the verge of the estate. The hall, and the parsonage, and even the gardener's house, are all full of beds for guests, and servants, and grooms. Presently, the old gentleman, in his morning rides, sees some of the young bucks shooting the pheasants in his home-park, where he never allows them to be disturbed, and comes home in a fume, to hear that the house is turned upside-down by the host of scarlet-breeched and powdered livery-servants, and that they have turned all the maids' heads with sweethearting. But, at length, the day of departure arrives, and all sweep away as suddenly and rapidly as they came; and the old squire sends off for Wagstaff, and blesses his stars that what he calls "the annual hurricane," is over.

But what a change will there be when the old squire is dead! Already have Tom and Lady Barbara walked over the ground, and planned it. That horrid fright of an old house, as they call it, will be swept as clean away as if it had not stood there five hundred years. A grand Elizabethean pile is already decreed to succeed it. The fashionable architect will come driving down in his smart Brougham, with all his plans and papers. A host of mechanics will come speedily after him, by coach or by wagon: booths will be seen rising all around the old place, which will vanish away, and its superb successor rise where it stood, like a magical vision. Already are ponderous cases lying loaded, in London, with massive mantle-pieces of the finest Italian marble, marble busts, and heads of old Greek and Roman heroes, genuine burial-urns from Herculaneum and Pompeii, and vessels of terra-cotta, gloriously-sculptured vases, and even columns of verde antique—all from classic Italy—to adorn the walls of this same noble new house.

But, meantime, spite of the large income of Tom and Lady Barbara, the old squire has strange suspicions of mortgages, and dealings with Jews. He has actually inklings of horrid post-obits; and groans as he looks on his old oaks, as he rides through his woods and parks, foreseeing their overthrow; nay, he fancies he sees the land-agent among his quiet old farmers, like a wild-cat in a rabbit warren, startling them out of their long dream of ease and safety, with news of doubled rents, and notices to quit, to make way for threshing-machines, winnowing-machines, corn-crushers, patent ploughs, scufflers, scarifiers, and young men of more enterprise. And, sure enough, such will be the order of the day the moment the estate falls to the YOUNG SQUIRE.—Country Year Book.



[From Hogg's Instructor.]

PRESENCE OF MIND—A FRAGMENT.

BY THOMAS DE QUINCEY.

The Roman formula for summoning an earnest concentration of the faculties upon any object whatever, that happened to be critically urgent, was Hoc age, "Mind this!" or, in other words, do not mind that—non illud age. The antithetic formula was "aliud agere," to mind something alien, or remote from the interest then clamoring for attention. Our modern military orders of "Attention!" and "Eyes strait!" were both included in the "Hoc age." In the stern peremptoriness of this Roman formula we read a picturesque expression of the Roman character both as to its strength and its weakness—of the energy which brooked no faltering or delay (for beyond all other races the Roman was natus rebus agendis)—and also of the morbid craving for action, which was intolerant of any thing but the intensely practical.

In modern times, it is we of the Anglo-Saxon blood, that is, the British and the Americans of the United States, who inherit the Roman temperament with its vices and its fearful advantages of power. In the ancient Roman these vices appeared more barbarously conspicuous. We, the countrymen of Lord Bacon and Sir Isaac Newton, and at one time the leaders of austere thinking, can not be supposed to shrink from the speculative through any native incapacity for sounding its depths. But the Roman had a real inaptitude for the speculative: to him nothing was real that was not practical. He had no metaphysics; he wanted the metaphysical instinct. There was no school of native Roman philosophy: the Roman was merely an eclectic or dilettanti picking up the crumbs which fell from Grecian tables; and even mathematics was so repulsive in its sublimer aspects to the Roman mind, that the very word mathematics had in Rome collapsed into another name for the dotages of astrology. The mathematician was a mere variety of expression for the wizard or the conjurer.

From this unfavorable aspect of the Roman intellect it is but justice that we should turn away to contemplate those situations in which that same intellect showed itself preternaturally strong. To face a sudden danger by a corresponding weight of sudden counsel or sudden evasion—that was a privilege essentially lodged in the Roman mind. But in every nation some minds much more than others are representative of the national type: they are normal minds, reflecting, as in a focus, the characteristics of the race. Thus Louis XIV. has been held to be the idealized expression of the French character; and among the Romans there can not be a doubt that the first Caesar offers in a rare perfection the revelation of that peculiar grandeur which belonged to the children of Romulus.

What was that grandeur? We do not need, in this place, to attempt its analysis. One feature will suffice for our purpose. The late celebrated John Foster, in his essay on decision of character, among the accidents of life which might serve to strengthen the natural tendencies to such a character, or to promote its development, rightly insists on desertion. To find itself in solitude, and still more to find itself thrown upon that state of abandonment by sudden treachery, crushes the feeble mind, but rouses a terrific reaction of haughty self-assertion in that order of spirits which matches and measures itself against difficulty and danger. There is something corresponding to this case of human treachery in the sudden caprices of fortune. A danger, offering itself unexpectedly in some momentary change of blind external agencies, assumes to the feelings the character of a perfidy accomplished by mysterious powers, and calls forth something of the same resentment, and in a gladiatorial intellect something of the same spontaneous resistance. A sword that breaks in the very crisis of a duel, a horse killed by a flash of lightning in the moment of collision with the enemy, a bridge carried away by an avalanche at the instant of a commencing retreat, affect the feelings like dramatic incidents emanating from a human will. This man they confound and paralyze, that man they rouse into resistance, as by a personal provocation and insult. And if it happens that these opposite effects show themselves in cases wearing a national importance, they raise what would else have been a mere casualty into the tragic or the epic grandeur of a fatality. The superb character, for instance, of Caesar's intellect throws a colossal shadow as of predestination over the most trivial incidents of his career. On the morning of Pharsalia, every man who reads a record of that mighty event feels[D] by a secret instinct that an earthquake is approaching which must determine the final distribution of the ground, and the relations among the whole family of man through a thousand generations. Precisely the inverse case is realized in some modern sections of history, where the feebleness or the inertia of the presiding intellect communicates a character of triviality to events that otherwise are of paramount historical importance. In Caesar's case, simply through the perfection of his preparations arrayed against all conceivable contingencies, there is an impression left as of some incarnate Providence, vailed in a human form, ranging through the ranks of the legions; while, on the contrary, in the modern cases to which we allude, a mission, seemingly authorized by inspiration, is suddenly quenched, like a torch falling into water, by the careless character of the superintending intellect. Neither case is without its appropriate interest. The spectacle of a vast historical dependency, pre-organized by an intellect of unusual grandeur, wears the grace of congruity and reciprocal proportion. And on the other hand, a series of mighty events contingent upon the motion this way or that of a frivolous hand, or suspended on the breath of caprice, suggests the wild and fantastic disproportions of ordinary life, when the mighty masquerade moves on forever through successions of the gay and the solemn—of the petty and the majestic.

Caesar's cast of character owed its impressiveness to the combination which it offered of moral grandeur and monumental immobility, such as we see in Marius, with the dazzling intellectual versatility found in the Gracchi, in Sylla, in Catiline, in Antony. The comprehension and the absolute perfection of his prescience did not escape the eye of Lucan, who describes him as—"Nil actum reputans, si quid superesset agendum." A fine lambent gleam of his character escapes also in that magnificent fraction of a line, where he is described as one incapable of learning the style and sentiments suited to a private interest—"Indocilis privata loqui."

There has been a disposition manifested among modern writers to disturb the traditional characters of Caesar and his chief antagonist. Audaciously to disparage Caesar, and without a shadow of any new historic grounds to exalt his feeble competitor, has been adopted as the best chance for filling up the mighty gulf between them. Lord Brougham, for instance, on occasion of a dinner given by the Cinque Ports at Dover to the Duke of Wellington, vainly attempted to raise our countryman by unfounded and romantic depreciations of Caesar. He alleged that Caesar had contended only with barbarians. Now, that happens to be the literal truth as regards Pompey. The victories on which his early reputation was built were won from semi-barbarians—luxurious, it is true, but also effeminate in a degree never suspected at Rome until the next generation. The slight but summary contest of Caesar with Pharnaces, the son of Mithridates, dissipated at once the cloud of ignorance in which Rome had been involved on this subject by the vast distance and the total want of familiarity with Oriental habits. But Caesar's chief antagonists, those whom Lord Brougham specially indicated, viz., the Gauls, were not barbarians. As a military people, they were in a stage of civilization next to that of the Romans. They were quite as much aguerris, hardened and seasoned to war, as the children of Rome. In certain military habits they were even superior. For purposes of war four races were then pre-eminent in Europe—viz., the Romans, the Macedonians, certain select tribes among the mixed population of the Spanish peninsula, and finally the Gauls. These were all open to the recruiting parties of Caesar; and among them all he had deliberately assigned his preference to the Gauls. The famous legion, who carried the Alauda (the lark) upon their helmets, was raised in Gaul from Caesar's private funds. They composed a select and favored division in his army, and, together with the famous tenth legion, constituted a third part of his forces—a third numerically on the day of battle, but virtually a half. Even the rest of Caesar's army had been for so long a space recruited in the Gauls, Transalpine as well as Cisalpine, that at Pharsalia the bulk of his forces is known to have been Gaulish. There were more reasons than one for concealing that fact. The policy of Caesar was, to conceal it not less from Rome than from the army itself. But the truth became known at last to all wary observers. Lord Brougham's objection to the quality of Caesar's enemies falls away at once when it is collated with the deliberate composition of Caesar's own army. Besides that, Caesar's enemies were not in any exclusive sense Gauls. The German tribes, the Spanish, the Helvetian, the Illyrian, Africans of every race, and Moors; the islanders of the Mediterranean, and the mixed populations of Asia, had all been faced by Caesar. And if it is alleged that the forces of Pompey, however superior in numbers, were at Pharsalia largely composed of an Asiatic rabble, the answer is—that precisely of such a rabble were the hostile armies composed from which he had won his laurels. False and windy reputations are sown thickly in history; but never was there a reputation more thoroughly histrionic than that of Pompey. The late Dr. Arnold of Rugby, among a million of other crotchets, did (it is true) make a pet of Pompey; and he was encouraged in this caprice (which had for its origin the doctor's political[E] animosity to Caesar) by one military critic, viz., Sir William Napier. This distinguished soldier conveyed messages to Dr. Arnold, warning him against the popular notion, that Pompey was a poor strategist. Now, had there been any Roman state-paper office, which Sir William could be supposed to have searched and weighed against the statements of surviving history, we might, in deference to Sir William's great experience and talents, have consented to a rehearing of the case. Unfortunately, no new materials have been discovered; nor is it alleged that the old ones are capable of being thrown into new combinations, so as to reverse or to suspend the old adjudications. The judgment of history stands; and among the records which it involves, none is more striking than this—that, while Caesar and Pompey were equally assaulted by sudden surprises, the first invariably met the sudden danger (sudden but never unlooked-for) by counter resources of evasion. He showed a new front, as often as his situation exposed a new peril. At Pharsalia, where the cavalry of Pompey was far superior to his own, he anticipated and was in full readiness for the particular man[oe]uvre by which it was attempted to make this superiority available against himself. By a new formation of his troops he foiled the attack, and caused it to recoil upon the enemy. Had Pompey then no rejoinder ready for meeting this reply? No. His one arrow being shot, his quiver was exhausted. Without an effort at parrying any longer, the mighty game was surrendered as desperate. "Check to the king!" was heard in silent submission; and no further stratagem was invoked even in silent prayer, but the stratagem of flight. Yet Caesar himself, objects a celebrated doctor (viz., Bishop Warburton), was reduced by his own rashness at Alexandria to a condition of peril and embarrassment not less alarming than the condition of Pompey at Pharsalia. How far this surprise might be reconcilable with Caesar's military credit, is a question yet undecided; but this at least is certain, that he was equal to the occasion; and, if the surprise was all but fatal, the evasion was all but miraculous. Many were the sudden surprises which Caesar had to face before and after this—on the shores of Britain, at Marseilles, at Munda, at Thapsus—from all of which he issued triumphantly, failing only as to that final one from which he had in pure nobility of heart announced his determination to shelter himself under no precautions.

Such eases of personal danger and escape are exciting to the imagination, from the disproportion between the interests of an individual and the interests of a whole nation which for the moment happen to be concurrent. The death or the escape of Caesar, at one moment, rather than another, would make a difference in the destiny of many nations. And in kind, though not in degree, the same interest has frequently attached to the fortunes of a prince or military leader. Effectually the same dramatic character belongs to any struggle with sudden danger, though not (like Caesar's) successful. That it was not successful becomes a new reason for pursuing it with interest; since equally in that result, as in one more triumphant, we read the altered course by which history is henceforward destined to flow.

For instance, how much depended—what a weight of history hung in suspense, upon the evasions, or attempts at evasion, of Charles I. He was a prince of great ability; and yet it confounds us to observe, with how little of foresight, or of circumstantial inquiry, either as regarded things or persons, he entered upon these difficult enterprises of escape from the vigilance of military guardians. His first escape, viz., that into the Scottish camp before Newark, was not surrounded with any circumstances of difficulty. His second escape from Hampton Court had become a matter of more urgent policy, and was proportionally more difficult of execution. He was attended on that occasion by two gentlemen (Berkely and Ashburnham), upon whose qualities of courage and readiness, and upon whose acquaintance with the accidents, local or personal, that surrounded their path, all was staked. Yet one of these gentlemen was always suspected of treachery, and both were imbecile as regarded that sort of wisdom on which it was possible for a royal person to rely. Had the questions likely to arise been such as belong to a masquerading adventure, these gentlemen might have been qualified for the situation. As it was, they sank in mere distraction under the responsibilities of the occasion. The king was as yet in safety. At Lord Southampton's country mansion, he enjoyed the protection of a loyal family ready to face any risk in his behalf; and his retreat was entirely concealed. Suddenly this scene changes. The military commander in the Isle of Wight is acquainted with the king's situation, and brought into his presence, together with a military guard, though no effort had been made to exact securities from his honor in behalf of the king. His single object was evidently to arrest the king. His military honor, his duty to the parliament, his private interest, all pointed to the same result, viz., the immediate apprehension of the fugitive prince. What was there in the opposite scale to set against these notorious motives? Simply the fact that he was nephew to the king's favorite chaplain, Dr. Hammond. What rational man, in a case of that nature, would have relied upon so poor a trifle? Yet even this inconsiderable bias was much more than balanced by another of the same kind but in the opposite direction. Colonel Hammond was nephew to the king's chaplain, but in the meantime he was the husband of Cromwell's niece; and upon Cromwell privately, and the whole faction of the Independents politically, he relied for all his hopes of advancement. The result was, that, from mere inertia of mind and criminal negligence in his two attendants, the poor king had run right into the custody of the very jailer whom his enemies would have selected by preference.

Thus, then, from fear of being made a prisoner Charles had quietly walked into the military prison of Carisbrook Castle. The very security of this prison, however, might throw the governor off his guard. Another escape might be possible; and again an escape was arranged. It reads like some leaf torn from the records of a lunatic hospital, to hear its circumstances and the particular point upon which it split. Charles was to make his exit through a window. This window, however, was fenced by iron bars; and these bars had been to a certain extent eaten through with aqua fortis. The king had succeeded in pushing his head through, and upon that result he relied for his escape; for he connected this trial with the following strange maxim or postulate, viz., that wheresoever the head could pass, there the whole person could pass. It needs not to be said, that, in the final experiment, this absurd rule was found not to hold good. The king stuck fast about the chest and shoulders, and was extricated with some difficulty. Had it even been otherwise, the attempt would have failed; for, on looking down from amidst the iron bars, the king beheld, in the imperfect light, a number of people who were not among his accomplices.

Equal in fatuity, almost 150 years later, were the several attempts at escape concerted on behalf of the French royal family. The abortive escape to Varennes is now familiarly known to all the world, and impeaches the good sense of the king himself not less than of his friends. The arrangements for the falling in with the cavalry escort could not have been worse managed had they been intrusted to children. But even the general outline of the scheme, an escape in a collective family party—father, mother, children, and servants—and the king himself, whose features were known to millions, not even withdrawing himself from the public gaze at the stations for changing horses—all this is calculated to perplex and sadden the pitying reader with the idea that some supernatural infatuation had bewildered the predestined victims. Meantime an earlier escape than this to Varennes had been planned, viz., to Brussels. The preparations for this, which have been narrated by Madame de Campan, were conducted with a disregard of concealment even more astounding to people of ordinary good sense. "Do you really need to escape at all?" would have been the question of many a lunatic; "if you do, surely you need also to disguise your preparations for escape."

But alike the madness, or the providential wisdom, of such attempts commands our profoundest interest; alike—whether conducted by a Caesar or by the helpless members of families utterly unfitted to act independently for themselves. These attempts belong to history, and it is in that relation that they become philosophically so impressive. Generations through an infinite series are contemplated by us as silently awaiting the turning of a sentinel round a corner, or the casual echo of a footstep. Dynasties have trepidated on the chances of a sudden cry from an infant carried in a basket; and the safety of empires has been suspended, like the descent of an avalanche, upon the moment earlier or the moment later of a cough or a sneeze. And, high above all, ascends solemnly the philosophic truth, that the least things and the greatest are bound together as elements equally essential of the mysterious universe.

FOOTNOTES:

[D] "Feels by a secret instinct;"—A sentiment of this nature is finely expressed by Lucan in the passage beginning, "Advenisse diem," &c. The circumstance by which Lucan chiefly defeats the grandeur and simplicities of the truth, is, the monstrous numerical exaggeration of the combatants and the killed at Pharsalia.

[E] It is very evident that Dr. Arnold could not have understood the position of politics in Rome, when he allowed himself to make a favorite of Pompey. The doctor hated aristocrats as he hated the gates of Erebus. Now Pompey was not only the leader of a most selfish aristocracy, but also their tool. Secondly, as if this were not bad enough, that section of the aristocracy to which he had dedicated his services was an odious oligarchy; and to this oligarchy, again, though nominally its head, he was in effect the most submissive of tools. Caesar, on the other hand, if a democrat in the sense of working by democratic agencies, was bending all his efforts to the reconstruction of a new, purer, and enlarged aristocracy, no longer reduced to the necessity of buying and selling the people in mere self-defense. The everlasting war of bribery, operating upon universal poverty, the internal disease of Roman society, would have been redressed by Caesar's measures, and was redressed according to the degree in which those measures were really brought into action. New judicatures were wanted, new judicial laws, a new aristocracy, by slow degrees a new people, and the right of suffrage exercised within new restrictions—all these things were needed for the cleansing of Rome; and that Caesar would have accomplished this labor of Hercules was the true cause of his death. The scoundrels of the oligarchy felt their doom to be approaching. It was the just remark of Napoleon, that Brutus (but still more, we may say, Cicero), though falsely accredited as a patriot, was, in fact, the most exclusive and the most selfish of aristocrats.



[From Cumming's Hunting Adventures in South Africa.]

FEARFUL TRAGEDY—A MAN-EATING LION.

On the 29th we arrived at a small village of Bakalahari. These natives told me that elephants were abundant on the opposite side of the river. I accordingly resolved to halt here and hunt, and drew my wagons up on the river's bank, within thirty yards of the water, and about one hundred yards from the native village. Having outspanned, we at once set about making for the cattle a kraal of the worst description of thorn-trees. Of this I had now become very particular, since my severe loss by lions on the first of this month; and my cattle were, at night, secured by a strong kraal, which inclosed my two wagons, the horses being made fast to a trek-tow stretched between the hind wheels of the wagons. I had yet, however, a fearful lesson to learn as to the nature and character of the lion, of which I had at one time entertained so little fear; and on this night a horrible tragedy was to be acted in my little lonely camp of so very awful and appalling a nature as to make the blood curdle in our veins. I worked till near sundown at one side of the kraal with Hendric, my first wagon-driver—I cutting down the trees with my ax, and he dragging them to the kraal. When the kraal for the cattle was finished, I turned my attention to making a pot of barley-broth, and lighted a fire between the wagons and the water, close on the river's bank, under a dense grove of shady trees, making no sort of kraal around our sitting-place for the evening.

The Hottentots, without any reason, made their fire about fifty yards from mine; they, according to their usual custom, being satisfied with the shelter of a large dense bush. The evening passed away cheerfully. Soon after it was dark we heard elephants breaking the trees in the forest across the river, and once or twice I strode away into the darkness some distance from the fireside to stand and listen to them. I little, at that moment, deemed of the imminent peril to which I was exposing my life, nor thought that a bloodthirsty man-eater lion was crouching near, and only watching his opportunity to spring into the kraal, and consign one of us to a most horrible death. About three hours after the sun went down I called to my men to come and take their coffee and supper, which was ready for them at my fire; and after supper three of them returned before their comrades to their own fireside, and lay down; these were John Stofolus, Hendric, and Ruyter. In a few minutes an ox came out by the gate of the kraal and walked round the back of it. Hendric got up and drove him in again, and then went back to his fireside and lay down. Hendric and Ruyter lay on one side of the fire under one blanket, and John Stofolus lay on the other. At this moment I was sitting taking some barley-broth; our fire was very small, and the night was pitch-dark and windy. Owing to our proximity to the native village the wood was very scarce, the Bakalahari having burned it all in their fires.

Suddenly the appalling and murderous voice of an angry, bloodthirsty lion burst upon my ear within a few yards of us, followed by the shrieking of the Hottentots. Again and again the murderous roar of attack was repeated. We heard John and Ruyter shriek "The lion! the lion!" still, for a few moments, we thought he was but chasing one of the dogs round the kraal; but, next instant, John Stofolus rushed into the midst of us almost speechless with fear and terror, his eyes bursting from their sockets, and shrieked out, "The lion! the lion! He has got Hendric; he dragged him away from the fire beside me. I struck him with the burning brands upon his head, but he would not let go his hold. Hendric is dead! Oh God! Hendric is dead! Let us take fire and seek him." The rest of my people rushed about, shrieking and yelling as if they were mad. I was at once angry with them for their folly, and told them that if they did not stand still and keep quiet the lion would have another of us; and that very likely there was a troop of them. I ordered the dogs, which were nearly all fast, to be made loose, and the fire to be increased as far as could be. I then shouted Hendric's name, but all was still. I told my men that Hendric was dead, and that a regiment of soldiers could not now help him, and, hunting my dogs forward, I had every thing brought within the cattle-kraal, when we lighted our fire and closed the entrance as well as we could.

My terrified people sat round the fire with guns in their hands till the day broke, still fancying that every moment the lion would return and spring again into the midst of us. When the dogs were first let go, the stupid brutes, as dogs often prove when most required, instead of going at the lion, rushed fiercely on one another, and fought desperately for some minutes. After this they got his wind, and, going at him, disclosed to us his position: they kept up a continued barking until the day dawned, the lion occasionally springing after them and driving them in upon the kraal. The horrible monster lay all night within forty yards of us, consuming the wretched man whom he had chosen for his prey. He had dragged him into a little hollow at the back of the thick bush beside which the fire was kindled, and there he remained till the day dawned, careless of our proximity.

It appeared that when the unfortunate Hendric rose to drive in the ox, the lion had watched him to his fireside, and he had scarcely laid down when the brute sprang upon him and Ruyter (for both lay under one blanket), with his appalling, murderous roar, and, roaring as he lay, grappled him with his fearful claws, and kept biting him on the breast and shoulder, all the while feeling for his neck; having got hold of which, he at once dragged him away backward round the bush into the dense shade.

As the lion lay upon the unfortunate man, he faintly cried, "Help me, help me! Oh God! men, help me!" After which the fearful beast got a hold of his neck, and then all was still, except that his comrades heard the bones of his neck cracking between the teeth of the lion. John Stofolus had lain with his back to the fire on the opposite side, and on hearing the lion he sprang up, and, seizing a large flaming brand, had belabored him on the head with the burning wood; but the brute did not take any notice of him. The Bushman had a narrow escape; he was not altogether scatheless, the lion having inflicted two gashes in his seat with his claws.

The next morning, just as the day began to dawn, we heard the lion dragging something up the river side, under cover of the bank. We drove the cattle out of the kraal, and then proceeded to inspect the scene of the night's awful tragedy. In the hollow, where the lion had lain consuming his prey, we found one leg of the unfortunate Hendric, bitten off below the knee, the shoe still on his foot; the grass and bushes were all stained with his blood, and fragments of his pea-coat lay around. Poor Hendric! I knew the fragments of that old coat, and had often marked them hanging in the dense covers where the elephant had charged after my unfortunate after-rider. Hendric was by far the best man I had about my wagons, of a most cheerful disposition, a first-rate wagon-driver, fearless in the field, ever active, willing, and obliging: his loss to us all was very serious. I felt confounded and utterly sick in my heart; I could not remain at the wagons, so I resolved to go after elephants to divert my mind. I had that morning heard them breaking the trees on the opposite side of the river. I accordingly told the natives of the village of my intentions, and having ordered my people to devote the day to fortifying the kraal, started with Piet and Ruyter as my after-riders. It was a very cool day. We crossed the river, and at once took up the fresh spoor of a troop of bull elephants. These bulls unfortunately joined a troop of cows, and when we came on them the dogs attacked the cows, and the bulls were off in a moment, before we could even see them. One remarkably fine old cow charged the dogs. I hunted this cow, and finished her with two shots from the saddle. Being anxious to return to my people before night, I did not attempt to follow the troop. My followers were not a little gratified to see me returning, for terror had taken hold of their minds, and they expected that the lion would return, and, emboldened by the success of the preceding night, would prove still more daring in his attack. The lion would most certainly have returned, but fate had otherwise ordained. My health had been better in the last three days: my fever was leaving me, but I was, of course, still very weak. It would still be two hours before the sun would set, and, feeling refreshed by a little rest, and able for further work, I ordered the steeds to be saddled, and went in search of the lion.

I took John and Carey as after-riders, armed, and a party of the natives followed up the spoor and led the dogs. The lion had dragged the remains of poor Hendric along a native foot-path that led up the river side. We found fragments of his coat all along the spoor, and at last the mangled coat itself. About six hundred yards from our camp a dry river's course joined the Limpopo. At this spot was much shade, cover, and heaps of dry reeds and trees deposited by the Limpopo in some great flood. The lion had left the foot-path and entered this secluded spot. I at once felt convinced that we were upon him, and ordered the natives to make loose the dogs. These walked suspiciously forward on the spoor, and next minute began to spring about, barking angrily, with all their hair bristling on their backs: a crash upon the dry reeds immediately followed—it was the lion bounding away.

Several of the dogs were extremely afraid of him, and kept rushing continually backward and springing aloft to obtain a view. I now pressed forward and urged them on; old Argyll and Bles took up his spoor in gallant style, and led on the other dogs. Then commenced a short but lively and glorious chase, whose conclusion was the only small satisfaction that I could obtain to answer for the horrors of the preceding evening. The lion held up the river's bank for a short distance, and took away through some wait-a-bit thorn cover, the best he could find, but nevertheless open. Here, in two minutes, the dogs were up with him, and he turned and stood at bay. As I approached, he stood, his horrid head right to me, with open jaws, growling fiercely, his tail waving from side to side.

On beholding him my blood boiled with rage. I wished that I could take him alive and torture him, and, setting my teeth, I dashed my steed forward within thirty yards of him and shouted, "Your time is up, old fellow." I halted my horse, and, placing my rifle to my shoulder, waited for a broadside. This the next moment he exposed, when I sent a bullet through his shoulder and dropped him on the spot. He rose, however, again, when I finished him with a second in the breast. The Bakalahari now came up in wonder and delight. I ordered John to cut off his head and forepaws and bring them to the wagons, and, mounting my horse, galloped home, having been absent about fifteen minutes. When the Bakalahari women heard that the man-eater was dead, they all commenced dancing about with joy, calling me their father.



[From Howitt's Country Year-Book.]

THE HAUNTED HOUSE IN CHARNWOOD FOREST.

One fine, blustering, autumn day, a quiet and venerable-looking old gentleman might be seen, with stick in hand, taking his way through the streets of Leicester. If any one had followed him, they would have found him directing his steps toward that side of the town which leads to Charnwood. The old gentleman, who was a Quaker, took his way leisurely, but thoughtfully, stopping every now and then to see what the farmers' men were about, who were plowing up the stubbles to prepare for another year's crop. He paused, also, at this and that farm-house, evidently having a pleasure in the sight of good fat cattle, and in the flocks of poultry—fowls, ducks, geese, and turkeys, busy about the barn-door, where the sound of the flail, or the swipple, as they there term it, was already heard busily knocking out the corn of the last bountiful harvest. Our old friend—a Friend—for though you, dear reader, do not know him, he was both at the time we speak of—our old friend, again trudging on, would pause on the brow of a hill, at a stile, or on some rustic bridge, casting its little obliging arch over a brooklet, and inhale the fresh autumnal air; and after looking round him, nod to himself, as if to say, "Ay, all good, all beautiful!" and so he went on again. But it would not be long before he would be arrested again by clusters of rich, jetty blackberries, hanging from some old hawthorn hedge; or by clusters of nuts, hanging by the wayside, through the copse. In all these natural beauties our old wayfarer seemed to have the enjoyment of a child. Blackberries went into his mouth, and nuts into his pockets; and so, with a quiet, inquiring, and thoughtful, yet thoughtfully cheerful look, the good old man went on.

He seemed bound for a long walk, and yet to be in no hurry. In one place he stopped to talk to a very old laborer, who was clearing out a ditch; and if you had been near, you would have heard that their discourse was of the past days, and the changes in that part of the country, which the old laborer thought were very much for the worse. And worse they were for him: for formerly he was young and full of life; and now he was old and nearly empty of life. Then he was buoyant, sang songs, made love, went to wakes and merry-makings; now his wooing days, and his marrying days, and his married days were over. His good old dame, who in those young, buxom days was a round-faced, rosy, plump, and light-hearted damsel, was dead, and his children were married, and had enough to do. In those days, the poor fellow was strong and lusty, had no fear and no care; in these, he was weak and tottering; had been pulled and harassed a thousand ways; and was left, as he said, like an old dry kex—i.e. a hemlock or cow-parsnip stalk, hollow and dry, to be knocked down and trodden into the dust some day.

Yes, sure enough, those past days were much better days than these days were to him. No comparison. But Mr. John Basford, our old wanderer, was taking a more cheerful view of things, and telling the nearly worn-out laborer, that when the night came there followed morning, and that the next would be a heavenly morning, shining on hills of glory, on waters of life, on cities of the blest, where no sun rose, and no sun set; and where every joyful creature of joyful youth, who had been dear to him, and true to him and God, would again meet him, and make times such as should cause songs of praise to spring out of his heart, just as flowers spring out of a vernal tree in the rekindled warmth of the sun.

The old laborer leaned reverently on his spade as the worthy man talked to him. His gray locks, uncovered at his labor by any hat, were tossed in the autumn wind. His dim eye was fixed on the distant sky, that rolled its dark masses of clouds on the gale, and the deep wrinkles of his pale and feeble temples seemed to grow deeper at the thoughts passing within him. He was listening as to a sermon, which brought together his youth and his age; his past and his future; and there were verified on that spot words which Jesus Christ spoke nearly two thousand years ago—"Wherever two or three are met together in my name, there am I in the midst of them."

He was in the midst of the two only. There was a temple there in those open fields, sanctified by two pious hearts, which no ringing of bells, no sound of solemn organ, nor voice of congregated prayers, nor any preacher but the ever-present and invisible One, who there and then fulfilled His promise and was gracious, could have made more holy.

Our old friend again turned to set forward; he shook the old laborer kindly by the hand, and there was a gaze of astonishment in the old man's face—the stranger had not only cheered him by his words, but left something to cheer him when he was gone.

The Friend now went on with a more determined step. He skirted the memorable park of Bradgate, famous for the abode of Lady Jane Grey, and the visit of her schoolmaster, Roger Ascham. He went on into a region of woods and hills. At some seven or eight miles from Leicester, he drew near a solitary farm-house, within the ancient limits of the forest of Charnwood. It was certainly a lonely place amid the woodlands and the wild autumn fields. Evening was fast dropping down; and as the shade of night fell on the scene, the wind tossed more rushingly the boughs of the thick trees, and roared down the rocky valley. John Basford went up to the farm-house, however, as if that was the object of his journey, and a woman opening it at his knock, he soon disappeared within.

Now our old friend was a perfect stranger here; had never been here before; had no acquaintance nor actual business with the inhabitants, though any one watching his progress hither would have been quite satisfied that he was not wandering without an object. But he merely stated that he was somewhat fatigued with his walk from the town, and requested leave to rest awhile. In such a place, such a request is readily, and even gladly granted.

There was a cheerful fire burning on a bright, clean hearth. The kettle was singing on the hob for tea, and the contrast of the in-door comfort was sensibly heightened by the wild gloom without. The farmer's wife, who had admitted the stranger, soon went out, and called her husband from the fold-yard. He was a plain, hearty sort of man; gave our friend a hearty shake of the hand, sate down, and began to converse. A little time seemed to establish a friendly interest between the stranger and the farmer and his wife. John Basford asked whether they would allow him to smoke a pipe, which was not only readily accorded, but the farmer joined him. They smoked and talked alternately of the country and the town, Leicester being the farmer's market, and as familiar to him as his own neighborhood. He soon came to know, too, who his guest was, and expressed much pleasure in the visit. Tea was carried into the parlor, and thither they all adjourned, for now the farming men were coming into the kitchen, where they sate for the evening.

Tea over, the two gentlemen again had a pipe, and the conversation wandered over a multitude of things and people known to both.

But the night was come down pitch dark, wild, and windy, and old John Basford had to return to Leicester.

"To Leicester!" exclaimed at once man and wife; "to Leicester!" No such thing. He must stay where he was—where could he be better?

John Basford confessed that that was true; he had great pleasure in conversing with them; but then, was it not an unwarrantable liberty to come to a stranger's house, and make thus free?

"Not in the least," the farmer replied; "the freer the better!"

The matter thus was settled, and the evening wore on; but in the course of the evening, the guest, whose simple manner, strong sense, and deeply pious feeling, had made a most favorable impression on his entertainers, hinted that he had heard some strange rumors regarding this house, and that, in truth, had been the cause which had attracted him thither. He had heard, in fact, that a particular chamber in this house was haunted; and he had for a long time felt a growing desire to pass a night in it. He now begged this favor might be granted him.

As he had opened this subject, an evident cloud, and something of an unpleasant surprise, had fallen on the countenances of both man and wife. It deepened as he proceeded; the farmer had withdrawn his pipe from his mouth, and laid it on the table; and the woman had risen, and looked uneasily at their guest. The moment that he uttered the wish to sleep in the haunted room, both exclaimed in the same instant against it.

"No, never!" they exclaimed; "never, on any consideration! They had made a firm resolve on that point, which nothing would induce them to break through."

The guest expressed himself disappointed, but did not press the matter further at the moment. He contented himself with turning the conversation quietly upon this subject, and after a while found the farmer and his wife confirm to him every thing that he had heard. Once more then, and as incidentally, he expressed his regret that he could not gratify the curiosity which had brought him so far; and, before the time for retiring arrived, again ventured to express how much what he had now heard had increased his previous desire to pass a night in that room. He did not profess to believe himself invulnerable to fears of such a kind, but was curious to convince himself of the actual existence of spiritual agency of this character.

The farmer and his wife steadily refused. They declared that others who had come with the same wish, and had been allowed to gratify it, had suffered such terrors as had made their after-lives miserable. The last of these guests was a clergyman, who received such a fright that he sprang from his bed at midnight, had descended, gone into the stable, and saddling his horse, had ridden away at full speed. Those things had caused them to refuse, and that firmly, any fresh experiment of the kind.

The spirit visitation was described to be generally this: At midnight, the stranger sleeping in that room would hear the latch of the door raised, and would in the dark perceive a light step enter, and, as with a stealthy tread, cross the room, and approach the foot of the bed. The curtains would be agitated, and something would be perceived mounted on the bed, and proceeding up it, just upon the body of the person in it. The supernatural visitant would then stretch itself full length on the person of the agitated guest, and the next moment he would feel an oppression at his chest, as of a nightmare, and something extremely cold would touch his face.

At this crisis, the terrified guest would usually utter a fearful shriek, and often go into a swoon. The whole family would be roused from their beds by the alarm; but on no occasion had any traces of the cause of terror been found, though the house, on such occasions, had been diligently and thoroughly searched. The annoying visit was described as being by no means uniform. Sometimes it would not take place for a very long time, so that they would begin to hope that there would be no more of it; but it would, when least expected, occur again. Few people of late years, however, had ventured to sleep in that room, and never since the aforementioned clergyman was so terribly alarmed, about two years ago, had it once been occupied.

"Then," said John Basford, "it is probable that the annoyance is done with forever. If the troublesome visitant was still occasionally present it would, no doubt, take care to manifest itself in some mode or place. It was necessary to test the matter to see whether this particular room was still subject to so strange a phenomenon."

This seemed to have an effect on the farmer and his wife. The old man urged his suit all the more earnestly, and, after further show of extreme reluctance on the part of his entertainers, finally prevailed.

The consent once being given, the farmer's wife retired to make the necessary arrangements. Our friend heard sundry goings to and fro; but at length it was announced to him that all was ready; the farmer and his wife both repeating that they would be much better pleased if Mr. Basford would be pleased to sleep in some other room. The old man, however, remained firm to his purpose; he was shown to his chamber, and the maid who led the way stood at some distance from the denoted door, and pointing to it, bade him good night, and hurried away.

Mr. Basford found himself alone in the haunted room, he looked round and discovered nothing that should make it differ from any other good and comfortable chamber, or that should give to some invisible agent so singular a propensity to disturb any innocent mortal that nocturnated in it. Whether he felt any nervous terrors, we know not; but as he was come to see all that would or could occur there, he kept himself most vigilantly awake. He lay down in a very good feather bed, extinguished his light, and waited in patience. Time and tide, as they will wait for no man, went on. All sounds of life ceased in the house; nothing could be heard but the rushing wind without, and the bark of the yard-dog occasionally amid the laughing blast. Midnight came, and found John Basford wide-awake and watchfully expectant. Nothing stirred, but he lay still on the watch. At length—was it so? Did he hear a rustling movement, as it were, near his door, or was it his excited fancy? He raised his head from his pillow, and listened intensely. Hush! there is something!—no!—it was his contagious mind ready to hear and see—what? There was an actual sound of the latch! He could hear it raised! He could not be mistaken. There was a sound as if his door was cautiously opened. List! it was true. There were soft, stealthy footsteps on the carpet; they came directly toward the bed; they paused at its foot; the curtains were agitated; there were steps on the bed; something crept—did not the heart and the very flesh of the rash old man now creep too?—and upon him sank a palpable form, palpable from its pressure, for the night was dark as an oven. There was a heavy weight on his chest, and in the same instant something almost icy cold touched his face.

With a sudden, convulsive action, the old man suddenly flung up his arms, clutched at the terrible object which thus oppressed him, and shouted with a loud cry,

"I have got him! I have got him!"

There was a sound as of a deep growl, a vehement struggle, but John Basford held fast his hold, and felt that he had something within it huge, shaggy, and powerful. Once more he raised his voice loud enough to have roused the whole house; but it seemed no voice of terror, but one of triumph and satisfaction. In the next instant, the farmer rushed into the room with a light in his hand, and revealed to John Basford that he held in his arms the struggling form of a huge Newfoundland dog!

"Let him go, sir, in God's name!" exclaimed the farmer, on whose brow drops of real anguish stood, and glistened in the light of the candle. "Down stairs, Caesar!" and the dog, released from the hold of the Quaker, departed as if much ashamed.

In the same instant, the farmer and his wife, who now also came in dressed, and evidently never having been to bed, were on their knees by the bedside.

"You know it all, sir," said the farmer; "you see through it. You were too deep and strong-minded to be imposed on. We were, therefore, afraid of this when you asked to sleep in this room. Promise us now, that while we live you will never reveal what you know?"

They then related to him, that this house and chamber had never been haunted by any other than this dog, which had been trained to play the part. That, for generations, their family had lived on this farm; but some years ago, their landlord having suddenly raised their rent to an amount that they felt they could not give, they were compelled to think of quitting the farm. This was to them an insuperable source of grief. It was the place that all their lives and memories were bound up with. They were extremely cast down. Suddenly it occurred to them to give an ill name to the house. They hit on this scheme, and, having practiced it well, did not long want an opportunity of trying it. It had succeeded beyond their expectations. The fears of their guests were found to be of a force which completely blinded them to any discovery of the truth. There had been occasions where they thought some clumsy accident must have stripped away the delusion; but no! there seemed a thick vail of blindness, a fascination of terror cast over the strongest minds, which nothing could pierce through. Case after case occurred; and the house and farm acquired such a character, that no money or consideration of any kind would have induced a fresh tenant to live there. The old tenants continued at their old rent; and the comfortable ghost stretched himself every night in a capacious kennel, without any need of disturbing his slumbers by calls to disturb those of the guests of the haunted chamber.

Having made this revelation, the farmer and his wife again implored their guest to preserve their secret.

He hesitated.

"Nay," said he, "I think it would not be right to do that. That would be to make myself a party to a public deception. It would be a kind of fraud on the world and the landlord. It would serve to keep up those superstitious terrors which should be as speedily as possible dissipated."

The farmer was in agony. He rose and strode to and fro in the room. His countenance grew red and wrathful. He cast dark glances at his guest, whom his wife continued to implore, and who sate silent, and, as it were, lost in reflection.

"And do you think it a right thing, sir," said the farmer, "thus to force yourself into a stranger's house and family, and, in spite of the strongest wishes expressed to the contrary, into his very chambers, and that only to do him a mischief? Is that your religion, sir? I thought you had something better in you than that. Am I now to think your mildness and piety were only so much hypocrisy put on to ruin me?"

"Nay, friend, I don't want to ruin thee," said the Quaker.

"But ruin me you will, though, if you publish this discovery. Out I must turn, and be the laughing-stock of the whole country to boot. Now, if that is what you mean, say so, and I shall know what sort of a man you are. Let me know at once whether you are an honest man or a cockatrice?"

"My friend," said the Quaker, "canst thou call thyself an honest man, in practicing this deception for all these years, and depriving thy landlord of the rent he would otherwise have got from another? And dost thou think it would be honest in me to assist in the continuance of this fraud?"

"I rob the landlord of nothing," replied the farmer. "I pay a good, fair rent; but I don't want to quit the old spot. And if you had not thrust yourself into this affair, you would have had nothing to lay on your conscience concerning it. I must, let me tell you, look on it as a piece of unwarrantable impertinence to come thus to my house and be kindly treated only to turn Judas against me."

The word Judas seemed to hit the Friend a great blow.

"A Judas!"

"Yes—a Judas! a real Judas!" exclaimed the wife. "Who could have thought it!"

"Nay, nay," said the old man. "I am no Judas. It is true, I forced myself into it; and if you pay the landlord an honest rent, why, I don't know that it is any business of mine—at least while you live."

"That is all we want," replied the farmer, his countenance changing, and again flinging himself by his wife on his knees by the bed. "Promise us never to reveal it while we live, and we shall be quite satisfied. We have no children, and when we go, those may come to th' old spot who will."

"Promise me never to practice this trick again," said John Basford.

"We promise faithfully," rejoined both farmer and wife.

"Then I promise too," said the Friend, "that not a whisper of what has passed here shall pass my lips during your lifetime."

With warmest expressions of thanks, the farmer and his wife withdrew; and John Basford, having cleared the chamber of its mystery, lay down and passed one of the sweetest nights he ever enjoyed.

The farmer and his wife lived a good many years after this, but they both died before Mr. Basford; and after their death, he related to his friends the facts which are here detailed. He, too, has passed, years ago, to his longer night in the grave, and to the clearing up of greater mysteries than that of—the Haunted House of Charnwood Forest.



[From Fraser's Magazine.]

LEDRU ROLLIN—BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

Ledru Rollin is now in his forty-fourth or forty-fifth year, having been born in 1806 or 1807. He is the grandson of the famous Prestidigateur, or Conjurer Comus, who, about four or five-and-forty years ago, was in the acme of his fame. During the Consulate, and a considerable portion of the Empire, Comus traveled from one department of France to the other, and is even known to have extended his journeys beyond the Rhine and the Moselle on one side, and beyond the Rhone and Garonne on the other. Of all the conjurors of his day he was the most famous and the most successful, always, of course, excepting that Corsican conjuror who ruled for so many years the destinies of France. From those who have seen that famous trickster, we have learned that the Charleses, the Alexandres, even the Robert-Houdins, were children compared with the magical wonder-worker of the past generation. The fame of Comus was enormous, and his gains proportionate; and when he had shuffled off this mortal coil it was found he had left to his descendants a very ample—indeed, for France a very large fortune. Of the descendants in a right line, his grandson, Ledru Rollin, was his favorite, and to him the old man left the bulk of his fortune, which, during the minority of Ledru Rollin, grew to a sum amounting to nearly, if not fully, L4000 per annum of our money.

The scholastic education of the young man who was to inherit this considerable fortune, was nearly completed during the reign of Louis XVIII., and shortly after Charles X. ascended the throne il commencait a faire sur droit, as they phrase it in the pays Latin. Neither during the reign of Louis XVIII., nor indeed now, unless in the exact and physical sciences, does Paris afford a very solid and substantial education. Though the Roman poets and historians are tolerably well studied and taught, yet little attention is paid to Greek literature. The physical and exact sciences are unquestionably admirably taught at the Polytechnique and other schools; but neither at the College of St. Barbe, nor of Henry IV., can a pupil be so well grounded in the rudiments and humanities as in our grammar and public schools. A studious, painstaking, and docile youth, will, no doubt, learn a great deal, no matter where he has been placed in pupilage; but we have heard from a contemporary of M. Rollin, that he was not particularly distinguished either for his industry or his docility in early life. The earliest days of the reign of Charles X. saw M. Ledru Rollin an etudiant en droit in Paris. Though the schools of law had been re-established during the Consulate pretty much after the fashion in which they existed in the time of Louis XIV., yet the application of the alumni was fitful and desultory, and perhaps there were no two classes in France, at the commencement of 1825, who were more imbued with the Voltarian philosophy, and the doctrines and principles of Rosseau, than the eleves of the schools of law and medicine.

Under a king so skeptical and voluptuous, so much of a philosophe and pyrrhoneste, as Louis XVIII., such tendencies were likely to spread themselves through all ranks of society—to permeate from the very highest to the very lowest classes; and not all the lately acquired asceticism of the monarch, his successor, nor all the efforts of the Jesuits, could restrain or control the tendencies of the etudiants en droit. What the law students were antecedently and subsequent to 1825, we know from the Physiologic de l'Homme de Loi; and it is not to be supposed that M. Ledru Rollin, with more ample pecuniary means at command, very much differed from his fellows. After undergoing a three years' course of study, M. Rollin obtained a diploma as a licencie en droit, and commenced his career as stagiare somewhere about the end of 1826, or the beginning of 1827. Toward the close of 1829, or in the first months of 1830, he was, we believe, placed on the roll of advocates: so that he was called to the bar, or, as they say in France, received an advocate, in his twenty-second or twenty-third year.

The first years of an advocate, even in France, are generally passed in as enforced an idleness as in England. Clients come not to consult the greenhorn of the last term; nor does any avoue among our neighbors, any more than any attorney among ourselves, fancy that an old head is to be found on young shoulders. The years 1830 and 1831 were not marked by any oratorical effort of the author of the Decline of England; nor was it till 1832 that, being then one of the youngest of the bar of Paris, he prepared and signed an opinion against the placing of Paris in a state of siege consequent on the insurrections of June. Two years after he prepared a memoir, or factum, on the affair of the Rue Transonian, and defended Dupoty, accused of complicite morale, a monstrous doctrine, invented by the Attorney-general Hebert. From 1834 to 1841 he appeared as counsel in nearly all the cases of emeute or conspiracy where the individuals prosecuted were Republicans or quasi-Republicans. Meanwhile, he had become the proprietor and redacteur en chief of the Reforme newspaper, a political journal of an ultra-liberal—indeed, of a republican-complexion, which was then called of extreme opinions, as he had previously been editor of a legal newspaper called Journal du Palais. La Reforme had been originally conducted by Godefroy Cavaignac, the brother of the general, who continued editor till the period of the fatal illness which preceded his death. The defense of Dupoty, tried and sentenced under the ministry of Thiers to five years' imprisonment, as a regicide, because a letter was found open in the letter-box of the paper of which he was editor, addressed to him by a man said to be implicated in the conspiracy of Quenisset, naturally brought M. Rollin into contact with many of the writers in La Reforme; and these persons, among others Guinard Arago, Etienne Arago, and Flocon, induced him to embark some portion of his fortune in the paper. From one step he was led on to another, and ultimately became one of the chief, indeed, is not the chief proprietor. The speculation was far from successful in a pecuniary sense; but M. Rollin, in furtherance of his opinions, continued for some years to disburse considerable sums in the support of the journal. By this he no doubt increased his popularity and his credit with the republican party, but it can not be denied that he very materially injured his private fortune. In the earlier portion of his career M. Rollin was, it is known, not indisposed to seek a seat in the chamber under the auspicies of M. Barrot, but subsequently to his connection with the Reforme, he had himself become thoroughly known to the extreme party in the departments, and on the death of Garnier Pages the elder, was elected in 1841 for Le Mans, in the department of La Sarthe.

In addressing the electors after his return, M. Rollin delivered a speech much more republican than monarchical. For this he was sentenced to four months' imprisonment, but the sentence was appealed against and annulled on a technical ground, and the honorable member was ultimately acquitted by the Cour d'Assizes of Angers.

The parliamentary debut of M. Rollin took place in 1842. His first speech was delivered on the subject of the secret-service money. The elocution was easy and flowing, the manner oratorical, the style somewhat turgid and bombastic. But in the course of the session M. Rollin improved, and his discourse on the modification of the criminal law, on other legal subjects, and on railways, were more sober specimens of style. In 1843 and 1844 M. Rollin frequently spoke; but though his speeches were a good deal talked of outside the walls of the chamber, they produced little effect within it. Nevertheless, it was plain to every candid observer that he possessed many of the requisites of the orator—a good voice, a copious flow of words, considerable energy and enthusiasm, a sanguine temperament and jovial and generous disposition. In the sessions of 1845-46, M. Rollin took a still more prominent part. His purse, his house in the Rue Tournon, his counsels and advice, were all placed at the service of the men of the movement, and by the beginning of 1847 he seemed to be acknowledged by the extreme party as its most conspicuous and popular member. Such, indeed, was his position when the electoral reform banquets, on a large scale, began to take place in the autumn of 1847. These banquets, promoted and forwarded by the principal members of the opposition to serve the cause of electoral reform, were looked on by M. Rollin and his friends in another light. While Odillon Barrot, Duvergier d'Hauranne, and others, sought by means of them to produce an enlarged constituency, the member for Sarthe looked not merely to functional, but to organic reform—not merely to an enlargement of the constituency, but to a change in the form of the government. The desire of Barrot was a la verite, a la sincerite des institutions conquises en Julliet 1830; whereas the desire of Rollin was, a l'amelioration des classes laborieuses: the one was willing to go on with the dynasty of Louis Philippe and the Constitution of July improved by diffusion and extension of the franchise, the other looked to a democratic and social republic. The result is now known. It is not here our purpose to go over the events of the Revolution of February, 1848, but we may be permitted to observe, that the combinations by which that event was effected were ramified and extensive, and were long silently and secretly in motion.

The personal history of Ledru Rollin, since February, 1848, is well known and patent to all the world. He was the ame damnee of the Provisional Government—the man whose extreme opinions, intemperate circulars, and vehement patronage of persons professing the political creed of Robespierre—indisposed all moderate men to rally around the new system. It was in covering Ledru Rollin with the shield of his popularity that Lamartine lost his own, and that he ceased to be the political idol of a people of whom he must ever be regarded as one of the literary glories and illustrations. On the dissolution of the Provisional Government, Ledru Rollin constituted himself one of the leaders of the movement party. In ready powers of speech and in popularity no man stood higher; but he did not possess the power of restraining his followers or of holding them in hand, and the result was, that instead of being their leader he became their instrument. Fond of applause, ambitious of distinction, timid by nature, destitute of pluck, and of that rarer virtue moral courage, Ledru Rollin, to avoid the imputation of faint-heartedness, put himself in the foreground, but the measures of his followers being ill-taken, the plot in which he was mixed up egregiously failed, and he is now in consequence an exile in England.



[From Chambers's Edinburgh Journal.]

A CHIP FROM A SAILOR'S LOG.

It was a dead calm—not a breath of air—the sails flapped idly against the masts; the helm had lost its power, and the ship turned her head how and where she liked. The heat was intense, so much so, that the chief mate had told the boatswain to keep the watch out of the sun; but the watch below found it too warm to sleep, and were tormented with thirst, which they could not gratify till the water was served out. They had drunk all the previous day's allowance; and now that their scuttle but was dry, there was nothing left for them but endurance. Some of the seamen had congregated on the top-gallant forecastle, where they gazed on the clear blue water with longing eyes.

"How cool and clear it looks," said a tall, powerful young seaman; "I don't think there are many sharks about: what do you say for a bath, lads?"

"That for the sharks!" burst almost simultaneously from the parched lips of the group: "we'll have a jolly good bath when the second mate goes in to dinner." In about half an hour the dinner-bell rang. The boatswain took charge of the deck; some twenty sailors were now stripped, except a pair of light duck trowsers; among the rest was a tall, powerful, coast-of-Africa nigger of the name of Leigh: they used to joke him, and call him Sambo.

"You no swim to-day, Ned?" said he, addressing me. "Feared of shark, heh? Shark nebber bite me. Suppose I meet shark in water, I swim after him—him run like debbel." I was tempted, and, like the rest, was soon ready. In quick succession we jumped off the spritsail yard, the black leading. We had scarcely been in the water five minutes, when some voice in-board cried out, "A shark! a shark!" In an instant every one of the swimmers came tumbling up the ship's sides, half mad with fright, the gallant black among the rest. It was a false alarm. We felt angry with ourselves for being frightened, angry with those who had frightened us, and furious with those who had laughed at us. In another moment we were all again in the water, the black and myself swimming some distance from the ship. For two successive voyages there had been a sort of rivalry between us: each fancied that he was the best swimmer, and we were now testing our speed.

"Well done, Ned!" cried some of the sailors from the forecastle. "Go it, Sambo!" cried some others. We were both straining our utmost, excited by the cheers of our respective partisans. Suddenly the voice of the boatswain was heard shouting, "A shark! a shark! Come back for God's sake!"

"Lay aft, and lower the cutter down," then came faintly on our ear. The race instantly ceased. As yet, we only half believed what we heard, our recent fright being still fresh in our memories.

"Swim, for God's sake!" cried the captain, who was now on deck; "he has not yet seen you. The boat, if possible, will get between you and him. Strike out, lads, for God's sake!" My heart stood still: I felt weaker than a child as I gazed with horror at the dorsal fin of a large shark on the starboard quarter. Though in the water, the perspiration dropped from me like rain: the black was striking out like mad for the ship.

"Swim, Ned—swim!" cried several voices; "they never take black when they can get white."

I did swim, and that desperately: the water foamed past me. I soon breasted the black, but could not head him. We both strained every nerve to be first, for we each fancied the last man would be taken. Yet we scarcely seemed to move: the ship appeared as far as ever from us. We were both powerful swimmers, and both of us swam in the French way called la brasse, or hand over hand, in English. There was something the matter with the boat's falls, and they could not lower her.

"He sees you now!" was shouted; "he is after you!" Oh the agony of that moment! I thought of every thing at the same instant, at least so it seemed to me then. Scenes long forgotten rushed through my brain with the rapidity of lightning, yet in the midst of this I was striking out madly for the ship. Each moment I fancied I could feel the pilot-fish touching me, and I almost screamed with agony. We were now not ten yards from the ship: fifty ropes were thrown to us; but, as if by mutual instinct, we swam for the same.

"Hurra! they are saved!—they are alongside!" was shouted by the eager crew. We both grasped the rope at the same time: a slight struggle ensued: I had the highest hold. Regardless of every thing but my own safety, I placed my feet on the black's shoulders, scrambled up the side, and fell exhausted on the deck. The negro followed roaring with pain, for the shark had taken away part of his heel. Since then, I have never bathed at sea; nor, I believe, has Sambo been ever heard again to assert that he would swim after a shark if he met one in the water.



[From Howitt's Country Year-Book.]

THE TWO THOMPSONS.

By the wayside, not far from the town of Mansfield—on a high and heathy ground, which gives a far-off view of the minster of Lincoln—you may behold a little clump of trees, encircled by a wall. That is called THOMPSON'S GRAVE. But who is this Thompson; and why lies he so far from his fellows? In ground unconsecrated; in the desert, or on the verge of it—for cultivation now approaches it? The poor man and his wants spread themselves, and corn and potatoes crowd upon Thompson's grave. But who is this Thompson; and why lies he here?

In the town of Mansfield there was a poor boy, and this poor boy became employed in a hosier's warehouse. From the warehouse his assiduity and probity sent him to the counting-house; from the counting-house, abroad. He traveled to carry stockings to the Asiatic and the people of the south. He sailed up the rivers of Persia, and saw the tulips growing wild on their banks, with many a lily and flower of our proudest gardens. He traveled in Spain and Portugal, and was in Lisbon when the great earthquake shook his house over his head. He fled. The streets reeled; the houses fell; church towers dashed down in thunder across his path. There were flying crowds, shrieks, and dust, and darkness. But he fled on. The farther, the more misery. Crowds filled the fields when he reached them—naked, half-naked, terrified, starving, and looking in vain for a refuge. He fled across the hills, and gazed. The whole huge city rocked and staggered below. There were clouds of dust, columns of flame, the thunder of down-crashing buildings, the wild cries of men. He suffered amid ten thousand suffering outcasts.

At length, the tumult ceased; the earth became stable. With other ruined and curious men he climbed over the heaps of desolation in quest of what once was his home, and the depository of his property. His servant was nowhere to be seen: Thompson felt that he must certainly have been killed. After many days' quest, and many uncertainties, he found the spot where his house had stood; it was a heap of rubbish. His servant and merchandise lay beneath it. He had money enough, or credit enough, to set to work men to clear away some of the fallen materials, and to explore whether any amount of property were recoverable. What's that sound? A subterranean, or subruinan, voice? The workmen stop, and are ready to fly with fear. Thompson exhorts them, and they work on. But again that voice! No human creature can be living there. The laborers again turn to fly. They are a poor, ignorant, and superstitious crew; but Thompson's commands, and Thompson's gold, arrest them. They work on, and out walks Thompson's living servant, still in the body, though a body not much more substantial than a ghost All cry, "How have you managed to live?"

"I fled to the cellar. I have sipped the wine; but now I want bread, meat, every thing!" and the living skeleton walked staggeringly on, and looked voraciously for shops and loaves, and saw only brickbats and ruins.

Thompson recovered his goods, and retreated as soon as possible to his native land. Here, in his native town, the memory of the earthquake still haunted him. He used almost daily to hasten out of the place, and up the forest hill, where he imagined that he saw Lisbon reeling, tottering, churches falling, and men flying. But he saw only the red tiles of some thousand peaceful houses, and the twirling of a dozen windmill sails. Here he chose his burial-ground; walled it, and planted it, and left special directions for his burial. The grave should be deep, and the spades of resurrection-men disappointed by repeated layers of straw, not easy to dig through. In the church-yard of Mansfield, meantime, he found the grave of his parents, and honored it with an inclosure of iron palisades.

He died. How? Not in travel; not in sailing over the ocean, nor up tulip-margined rivers of Persia or Arabia Felix; nor yet in an earthquake—but in the dream of one. One night he was heard crying in a voice of horror, "There! there!—fly! fly!—the town shakes! the house falls! Ha! the earth opens!—away!" Then the voice ceased; but in the morning it was found that he had rolled out of bed, lodged between the bedstead and the wall, and there, like a sandbag wedged in a windy crevice, he was—dead!

There is, therefore, a dead Thompson in Sherwood Forest, where no clergyman laid him, and yet he sleeps; and there is also a living Thompson.

In the village of Edwinstowe, on the very verge of the beautiful old Birkland, there stands a painter's house. In his little parlor you find books, and water-color-paintings on the walls, which show that the painter has read and looked about him in the world. And yet he is but a house-painter, who owes his establishment here to his love of nature rather than to his love of art. In the neighboring Dukery, some one of the wealthy wanted a piece of oak-painting done; but he was dissatisfied with the style in which painters now paint oak; a style very splendid, but as much resembling genuine oak as a frying-pan resembles the moon. Christopher Thompson determined to try his hand; and for this purpose he did not put himself to school to some great master of the art, who had copied the copy of a hundred consecutive copies of a piece of oak, till the thing produced was very fine, but like no wood that ever grew or ever will grow. Christopher Thompson went to nature. He got a piece of well-figured, real oak, well planed and polished, and copied it precisely. When the different specimens of the different painters were presented to the aforesaid party, he found only one specimen at all like oak, and that was Thompson's. The whole crowd of master house-painters were exasperated and amazed. Such a fellow preferred to them! No; they were wrong; it was nature that was preferred.

Christopher Thompson was a self-taught painter. He had been tossed about the world in a variety of characters—errand-boy, brickmakers' boy, potter, shipwright, sailor, sawyer, strolling player; and here he finally settled down as painter, and, having achieved a trade, he turned author, and wrote his life. That life—The Autobiography of an Artisan—is one of the best written and most interesting books of its class that we ever read. It is full of the difficulties of a poor man's life, and of the resolute spirit that conquers them. It is, moreover, full of a desire to enlighten, elevate, and in every way better the condition of his fellow-men. Christopher Thompson is not satisfied to have made his own way; he is anxious to pave the way for the whole struggling population. He is a zealous politician, and advocate of the Odd Fellow system, as calculated to link men together and give them power, while it gives them a stimulus to social improvement. He has labored to diffuse a love of reading, and to establish mechanics' libraries in neglected and obscure places.

Behold the Thompson of Edwinstowe. Time, in eight-and-forty years, has whitened his hair, though it has left the color of health on his cheek, and the fire of intelligence in his eye. With a well-built frame and figure, and a comely countenance, there is a buoyancy of step, an energy of manner about him, that agree with what he has written of his life and aspirations. Such are the men that England is now, ever and anon, in every nook and corner of the island, producing. She produces them because they are needed. They are the awakeners who are to stir up the sluggish to what the time demands of them.

The two Thompsons of Sherwood are types of their ages. He of the grave—lies solitary and apart from his race. He lived to earn money—his thought was for himself—and there he sleeps, alone in his glory—such as it is. He was no worse, nay, he was better than many of his contemporaries. He had no lack of benevolence; but trade and the spirit of his age, cold and unsympathetic, absorbed him. He was content to lie alone in the desert, amid the heath "that knows not when good cometh," and where the lonely raven perches on the blasted tree.

The living Thompson is, too, the man of his age: for it is an age of awakening enterprise, of wider views, of stronger sympathies. He lives and works, not for himself alone. His motto is Progress; and while the forest whispers to him of the past, books and his own heart commune with him of the future. Such men belong to both. When the present becomes the past, their work will survive them; and their tomb will not be a desert, but the grateful memories of improved men. May they spring up in every hamlet, and carry knowledge and refinement to every cottage fireside!



[From Five Years' Hunting Adventures in South Africa.]

HABITS OF THE AFRICAN LION.

The night of the 19th was to me rather a memorable one, as being the first on which I had the satisfaction of hearing the deep-toned thunder of the lion's roar. Although there was no one near to inform me by what beast the haughty and impressive sounds which echoed through the wilderness were produced, I had little difficulty in divining. There was no mistake about it; and on hearing it I at once knew, as well as if accustomed to the sound from my infancy; that the appalling roar which was uttered within half a mile of me was no other than that of the mighty and terrible king of beasts. Although the dignified and truly monarchical appearance of the lion has long rendered him famous among his fellow quadrupeds, and his appearance and habits have oftener been described by abler pens than mine, nevertheless I consider that a few remarks, resulting from my own personal experience, formed by a tolerable long acquaintance with him, both by day and by night, may not prove uninteresting to the reader. There is something so noble and imposing in the presence of the lion, when seen walking with dignified self-possession, free and undaunted, on his native soil, that no description can convey an adequate idea of his striking appearance. The lion is exquisitely formed by nature for the predatory habits which he is destined to pursue. Combining in comparatively small compass the qualities of power and agility, he is enabled, by means of the tremendous machinery with which nature has gifted him, easily to overcome and destroy almost every beast of the forest, however superior to him in weight and stature.

Though considerably under four feet in height, he has little difficulty in dashing to the ground and overcoming the lofty and apparently powerful giraffe, whose head towers above the trees of the forest, and whose skin is nearly an inch in thickness. The lion is the constant attendant of the vast herds of buffaloes which frequent the interminable forests of the interior; and a full-grown one, so long as his teeth are unbroken, generally proves a match for an old bull buffalo, which in size and strength greatly surpasses the most powerful breed of English cattle: the lion also preys on all the larger varieties of the antelopes, and on both varieties of the gnoo. The zebra, which is met with in large herds throughout the interior, is also a favorite object of his pursuit.