Sir George bounded from his chair. One great ray of daylight broke in upon him.

"Ay," said Mercy, "she was right. Women do see clearer in some things than men. The pair went from my house to hers. He you call Griffith Gaunt had on a new pair of boots; and by the same token 't was I did pay for them, and there is the receipt in that cupboard: he you call Thomas Leicester went hence in hobnailed shoes. I think the body they found was the body of Thomas Leicester, the pedler. May God have mercy on his poor unprepared soul."

Sir George uttered a joyful exclamation. But the next moment he had a doubt. "Ay, but," said he, "you forget the mole! 'T was on that they built."

"I forget naught," said Mercy, calmly. "The pedler had a black mole over his left temple. He showed it me in this very room. You have found the body of Thomas Leicester, and Griffith Gaunt is hiding from the law that he hath broken. He is afeared of her and her friends, if he shows his face in Cumberland; he is afeared of my folk, if he be seen in Lancashire. Ah, Thomas, as if I would let them harm thee."

Sir George Neville walked to and fro in grand excitement. "O blessed day that I came hither! Madam, you are an angel. You will save an innocent, broken-hearted lady from death and dishonor. Your good heart and rare wit have read in a moment the dark riddle that hath puzzled a county."

"George," said Mercy, gravely, "you have gotten the wrong end of the stick. The wise in their own conceit are blinded. In Cumberland, where all this befell, they went not to God for light, as you and I did, George."

In saying this, she gave him her hand to celebrate their success.

He kissed it devoutly, and owned afterward that it was the proudest moment of his life, when that sweet Puritan gave him her neat hand so cordially, with a pressure so gentle yet frank.

And now came the question how they were to make a Cumberland jury see this matter as they saw it.

He asked her would she come to the trial as a witness?

At that she drew back with manifest repugnance.

"My shame would be public. I must tell who I am; and what. A ruined woman."

"Say rather an injured saint. You have nothing to be ashamed of. All good men would feel for you."

Mercy shook her head. "Ay, but the women. Shame is shame with us. Right or wrong goes for little. Nay, I hope to do better for you than that. I must find him, and send him to deliver her. 'Tis his only chance of happiness."

She then asked him if he would draw up an advertisement of quite a different kind from those he had described to her.

He assented, and between them they concocted the following:—

"If Thomas Leicester, who went from the 'Packhorse' two months ago, will come thither at once, Mercy will be much beholden to him, and tell him strange things that have befallen."

Sir George then, at her request, rode over to Lancaster, and inserted the above in the county paper, and also in a small sheet that was issued in the city three times a week. He had also handbills to the same effect printed, and sent into Cumberland and Westmoreland. Finally, he sent a copy to his man of business in London, with orders to insert it in all the journals.

Then he returned to the "Packhorse," and told Mercy what he had done.

The next day he bade her farewell, and away for Carlisle. It was a two days' journey. He reached Carlisle in the evening, and went all glowing to Mrs. Gaunt. "Madam," said he, "be of good cheer. I bless the day I went to see her; she is an angel of wit and goodness."

He then related to her, in glowing terms, most that had passed between Mercy and him. But, to his surprise, Mrs. Gaunt wore a cold, forbidding air.

"This is all very well," said she. "But 't will avail me little unless he comes before the judge and clears me; and she will never let him do that."

"Ay, that she will,—if she can find him."

"If she can find him? How simple you are!"

"Nay, madam, not so simple but I can tell a good woman from a bad one, and a true from a false."

"What! when you are in love with her? Not if you were the wisest of your sex."

"In love with her?" cried Sir George; and colored high.

"Ay," said the lady. "Think you I cannot tell? Don't deceive yourself. You have gone and fallen in love with her. At your years! Not that 'tis any business of mine."

"Well, madam," said Sir George, stiffly, "say what you please on that score; but at least welcome my good news."

Mrs. Gaunt begged him to excuse her petulance, and thanked him kindly for all he had just done. But the next moment she rose from her chair in great agitation, and burst out, "I'd as lief die as owe anything to that woman."

Sir George remonstrated. "Why hate her? She does not hate you."

"O, yes, she does. 'Tis not in nature she should do any other."

"Her acts prove the contrary."

"Her acts! She has done nothing, but make fair promises; and that has blinded you. Women of this sort are very cunning, and never show their real characters to a man. No more; prithee mention not her name to me. It makes me ill. I know he is with her at this moment Ah, let me die, and be forgotten, since I am no more beloved."

The voice was sad and weary now, and the tears ran fast.

Poor Sir George was moved and melted, and set himself to flatter and console this impracticable lady, who hated her best friend in this sore strait, for being what she was herself, a woman; and was much less annoyed at being hanged than at not being loved.

When she was a little calmer, he left her, and rode off to Houseman. That worthy was delighted.

"Get her to swear to those hobnailed shoes," said he, "and we shall shake them." He then let Sir George know that he had obtained private information which he would use in cross-examining a principal witness for the crown. "However," he added, "do not deceive yourself, nothing can make the prisoner really safe but the appearance of Griffith Gaunt. He has such strong motives for coming to light. He is heir to a fortune, and his wife is accused of murdering him. The jury will never believe he is alive till they see him. That man's prolonged disappearance is hideous. It turns my blood cold when I think of it."

"Do not despair on that score," said Neville. "I believe our good angel will produce him."

Three days only before the assizes, came the long-expected letter from Mercy Vint. Sir George tore it open, but bitter was his disappointment. The letter merely said that Griffith had not appeared in answer to her advertisements, and she was sore grieved and perplexed.

There were two postscripts, each on a little piece of paper.

First postscript, in a tremulous hand, "Pray."

Second postscript, in a firm hand, "Drain the water."

Houseman shrugged his shoulders impatiently. "Drain the water? Let the crown do that. We should but fish up more trouble. And prayers quo' she! 'Tis not prayers we want, but evidence."

He sent his clerk off to travel post night and day, and subpoena Mercy, and bring her back with him to the trial. She was to have every comfort on the road, and be treated like a duchess.

The evening before the assizes, Mrs. Gaunt's apartments were Mr. Houseman's head-quarters, and messages were coming and going all day, on matters connected with the defence.

Just at sunset, up rattled a post-chaise, and the clerk got out and came haggard and bloodshot before his employer. "The witness has disappeared, sir. Left home last Tuesday, with her child, and has never been seen nor heard of since."

Here was a terrible blow. They all paled under it: it seriously diminished the chances of an acquittal.

But Mrs. Gaunt bore it nobly. She seemed to rise under it.

She turned to Sir George Neville, with a sweet smile. "The noble heart sees base things noble. No wonder then an artful woman deluded you. He has left England with her, and condemned me to the gallows, in cold blood. So be it. I shall defend myself."

She then sat down with Mr. Houseman, and went through the written case he had prepared for her, and showed him notes she had taken of full a hundred criminal trials great and small.

While they were putting their heads together, Sir George sat in a brown study, and uttered not a word. Presently he got up a little brusquely, and said, "I'm going to Hernshaw."

"What, at this time of night? What to do?"

"To obey my orders. To drain the mere."

"And who could have ordered you to drain my mere?"

"Mercy Vint."

Sir George uttered this in a very curious way, half ashamed, half resolute, and retired before Mrs. Gaunt could vent in speech the surprise and indignation that fired her eye.

Houseman implored her not to heed Sir George and his vagaries, but to bend her whole mind on those approved modes of defence with which he had supplied her.

Being now alone with her, he no longer concealed his great anxiety.

"We have lost an invaluable witness in that woman," said he. "I was mad to think she would come."

Mrs. Gaunt shivered with repugnance. "I would not have her come, for all the world," said she. "For Heaven's sake never mention her name to me. I want help from none but friends. Send Mrs. Houseman to me in the morning; and do not distress yourself so. I shall defend myself far better than you think. I have not studied a hundred trials for naught."

Thus the prisoner cheered up her attorney, and soon after insisted on his going home to bed; for she saw he was worn out by his exertions.

And now she was alone.

All was silent.

A few short hours, and she was to be tried for her life: tried, not by the All-wise Judge, but by fallible men, and under a system most unfavorable to the accused.

Worse than all this, she was a Papist; and, as ill-luck would have it, since her imprisonment an alarm had been raised that the Pretender meditated another invasion. This report had set jurists very much against all the Romanists in the country, and had already perverted justice in one or two cases, especially in the North.

Mrs. Gaunt knew all this, and trembled at the peril to come.

She spent the early part of the night in studying her defence. Then she laid it quite aside, and prayed long and fervently. Towards morning she fell asleep from exhaustion.

When she awoke, Mrs. Houseman was sitting by her bedside, looking at her, and crying.

They were soon clasped in each other's arms, condoling.

But presently Houseman came, and took his wife away rather angrily.

Mrs. Gaunt was prevailed on to eat a little toast and drink a glass of wine, and then she sat waiting her dreadful summons.

She waited and waited, until she became impatient to face her danger.

But there were two petty larcenies on before her. She had to wait.

At last, about noon, came a message to say that the grand jury had found a true bill against her.

"Then may God forgive them!" said she.

Soon afterwards she was informed her time drew very near.

She made her toilet carefully, and passed with her attendant into a small room under the court.

Here she had to endure another chilling wait, and in a sombre room.

Presently she heard a voice above her cry out, "The King versus Catharine Gaunt."

Then she was beckoned to.

She mounted some steps, badly lighted, and found herself in the glare of day, and greedy eyes, in the felon's dock.

In a matter entirely strange, we seldom know beforehand what we can do, and how we shall carry ourselves. Mrs. Gaunt no sooner set her foot in that dock, and saw the awful front of Justice face to face, than her tremors abated, and all her powers awoke, and she thrilled with love of life, and bristled with all those fine arts of defence that Nature lends to superior women.

She entered on that defence before she spoke a word; for she attacked the prejudices of the court, by deportment.

She courtesied reverently to the Judge, and contrived to make her reverence seem a willing homage, unmixed with fear.

She cast her eyes round and saw the court thronged with ladies and gentlemen she knew. In a moment she read in their eyes that only two or three were on her side. She bowed to those only; and they returned her courtesy. This gave an impression (a false one) that the gentry sympathized with her.

After a little murmur of functionaries, the Clerk of Arraigns turned to the prisoner, and said, in a loud voice, "Catharine Gaunt, hold up thy hand."

She held up her hand, and he recited the indictment, which charged that, not having the fear of God before her eyes, but being moved by the instigation of the Devil, she had on the fifteenth of October, in the tenth year of the reign of his present Majesty, aided and abetted one Thomas Leicester in an assault upon one Griffith Gaunt, Esq., and him, the said Griffith Gaunt, did with force and arms assassinate and do to death, against the peace of our said Lord the King, his crown and dignity.

After reading the indictment, the Clerk of Arraigns turned to the prisoner: "How sayest thou, Catharine Gaunt; art thou guilty of the felony and murder whereof thou standest indicted,—or not guilty?"

"I am not guilty."

"Culprit, how wilt thou be tried?"

"Culprit I am none, but only accused. I will be tried by God and my country."

"God send thee a good deliverance."

Mr. Whitworth, the junior counsel for the crown, then rose to open the case; but the prisoner, with a pale face, but most courteous demeanor, begged his leave to make a previous motion to the court. Mr. Whitworth bowed, and sat down. "My Lord," said she, "I have first a favor to ask; and that favor, methinks, you will grant, since it is but justice, impartial justice. My accuser, I hear, has two counsel; both learned and able. I am but a woman, and no match for their skill Therefore I beg your Lordship to allow me counsel on my defence, to matter of fact as well as of law. I know this is not usual; but it is just, and I am informed it has sometimes been granted in trials of life and death, and that your Lordship hath the power, if you have the will, to do me so much justice."

The Judge looked towards Mr. Serjeant Wiltshire, who was the leader on the other side. He rose instantly and replied to this purpose: "The prisoner is misinformed. The truth is, that from time immemorial, and down to the other day, a person indicted for a capital offence was never allowed counsel at all, except to matters of law, and these must be started by himself. By recent practice the rule hath been so far relaxed that counsel have sometimes been permitted to examine and cross-examine witnesses for a prisoner; but never to make observations on the evidence, nor to draw inferences from it to the point in issue."

Mrs. Gaunt. So, then, if I be sued for a small sum of money, I may have skilled orators to defend me against their like. But if I be sued for my life and honor, I may not oppose skill to skill, but must stand here a child against you that are masters. 'Tis a monstrous iniquity, and you yourself, sir, will not deny it.

Serjeant Wiltshire. Madam, permit me. Whether it be a hardship to deny full counsel to prisoners in criminal cases, I shall not pretend to say; but if it be, 'tis a hardship of the law's making, and not of mine nor of my lord's; and none have suffered by it (at least in our day) but those who had broken the law.

The Serjeant then stopped a minute, and whispered with his junior. After which he turned to the Judge. "My Lord, we that are of counsel for the crown desire to do nothing that is hard where a person's life is at stake. We yield to the prisoner any indulgence for which your Lordship can find a precedent in your reading; but no more: and so we leave the matter to you."

The Clerk of Arraigns. Crier, proclaim silence.

The Crier. Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! His Majesty's Justices do strictly charge all manner of persons to keep silence, on pain of imprisonment.

The Judge. Prisoner, what my Brother Wiltshire says, the law is clear in. There is no precedent for what you ask, and the contrary practice stares us in the face for centuries. What seems to you a partial practice, and, to be frank, some learned persons are of your mind, must be set against this,—that in capital cases the burden of proof lies on the crown, and not on the accused. Also it is my duty to give you all the assistance I can, and that I shall do. Thus then it is: you can be allowed counsel to examine your own witnesses, and cross-examine the witnesses for the crown, and speak to points of law, to be started by yourself,—but no further.

He then asked her what gentleman there present he should assign to her for counsel.

Her reply to this inquiry took the whole court by surprise, and made her solicitor, Houseman, very miserable. "None, my Lord," said she. "Half-justice is injustice; and I will lend it no color. I will not set able men to fight for me with their hands tied, against men as able whose hands be free. Counsel, on terms so partial, I will have none. My counsel shall be three, and no more,—Yourself, my Lord, my Innocence, and the Lord God Omniscient."

These words, grandly uttered, caused a dead silence in the court, but only for a few moments. It was broken by the loud mechanical voice of the crier, who proclaimed silence, and then called the names of the jury that were to try this cause.

Mrs. Gaunt listened keenly to the names,—familiar and bourgeois names, that now seemed regal; for they who owned them held her life in their hands.

Each juryman was sworn in the grand old form, now slightly curtailed.

"Joseph King, look upon the prisoner.—You shall well and truly try, and true deliverance make, between our Sovereign Lord the King and the prisoner at the bar, whom you shall have in charge, and a true verdict give, according to the evidence. So help you God."

Mr. Whitworth, for the crown, then opened the case, but did little more than translate the indictment into more rational language.

He sat down, and Serjeant Wiltshire addressed the court somewhat after this fashion:—

"May it please your Lordship, and you, gentlemen of the jury, this is a case of great expectation and importance. The prisoner at the bar, a gentlewoman by birth and education, and, as you must have already perceived, by breeding also, stands indicted for no less a crime than murder.

"I need not paint to you the heinousness of this crime: you have but to consult your own breasts. Who ever saw the ghastly corpse of the victim weltering in its blood, and did not feel his own blood run cold through his veins? Has the murderer fled? With what eagerness do we pursue! with what zeal apprehend! with what joy do we bring him to justice! Even the dreadful sentence of death does not shock us, when pronounced upon him. We hear it with solemn satisfaction; and acknowledge the justice of the Divine sentence, 'Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed.'

"But if this be the case in every common murder, what shall be thought of her who has murdered her husband,—the man in whose arms she has lain, and whom she has sworn at God's altar to love and cherish? Such a murderer is a robber as well as an assassin; for she robs her own children of their father, that tender parent, who can never be replaced in this world.

"Gentlemen, it will, I fear, be proved that the prisoner at the bar hath been guilty of murder in this high degree; and, though I will endeavor rather to extenuate than to aggravate, yet I trust [sic] I have such a history to open as will shock the ears of all who hear me.

"Mr. Griffith Gaunt, the unfortunate deceased, was a man of descent and worship. As to his character, it was inoffensive. He was known as a worthy, kindly gentleman, deeply attached to her who now stands accused of his murder. They lived happily together for some years; but, unfortunately, there was a thorn in the rose of their wedded life: he was of the Church of England; she was, and is, a Roman Catholic. This led to disputes; and no wonder, since this same unhappy difference hath more than once embroiled a nation, let alone a single family.

"Well, gentlemen, about a year ago there was a more violent quarrel than usual between the deceased and the prisoner at the bar; and the deceased left his home for several months.

"He returned upon a certain day in this year, and a reconciliation, real or apparent, took place. He left home again soon afterwards, but only for a short period. On the 15th of last October he suddenly returned for good, as he intended; and here begins the tragedy, to which what I have hitherto related was but the prologue.

"Scarce an hour before he came, one Thomas Leicester entered the house. Now this Thomas Leicester was a creature of the prisoner's. He had been her gamekeeper, and was now a pedler. It was the prisoner who set him up as a pedler, and purchased the wares to start him in his trade.

"Gentlemen, this pedler, as I shall prove, was concealed in the house when the deceased arrived. One Caroline Ryder, who is the prisoner's gentlewoman, was the person who first informed her of Leicester's arrival, and it seems she was much moved: Mrs. Ryder will tell you she fell into hysterics. But, soon after, her husband's arrival was announced, and then the passion was of a very different kind. So violent was her rage against this unhappy man that, for once, she forgot all prudence, and threatened his life before a witness. Yes, gentlemen, we shall prove that this gentlewoman, who in appearance and manners might grace a court, was so transported out of her usual self that she held up a knife,—a knife, gentlemen,—and vowed to put it into her husband's heart. And this was no mere temporary ebullition of wrath. We shall see presently that, long after she had had time to cool, she repeated this menace to the unfortunate man's face. The first threat, however, was uttered in her own bedroom, before her confidential servant, Caroline Ryder aforesaid. But now the scene shifts. She has, to all appearance, recovered herself, and sits smiling at the head of her table; for, you must know, she entertained company that night,—persons of the highest standing in the county.

"Presently her husband, all unconscious of the terrible sentiments she entertained towards him, and the fearful purpose she had announced, enters the room, makes obeisance to his guests, and goes to take his wife's hand.

"What does she? She draws back with so strange a look, and such forbidding words, that the company were disconcerted. Consternation fell on all present; and erelong they made their excuses, and left the house. Thus the prisoner was left alone with her husband; but, meantime, curiosity had been excited by her strange conduct, and some of the servants, with foreboding hearts, listened at the door of the dining-room. What did they hear, gentlemen? A furious quarrel, in which, however, the deceased was comparatively passive, and the prisoner again threatened his life, with vehemence. Her passion, it is clear, had not cooled.

"Now it may fairly be alleged, on behalf of the prisoner, that the witnesses for the crown were on one side of the door, the prisoner and the deceased on the other, and that such evidence should be received with caution. I grant this—where it is not sustained by other circumstances, or by direct proofs. Let us then give the prisoner the benefit of this doubt, and let us inquire how the deceased himself understood her,—he, who not only heard the words, and the accents, but saw the looks, whatever they were, that accompanied them.

"Gentlemen, he was a man of known courage and resolution; yet he was found, after this terrible interview, much cowed and dejected. He spoke to Mrs. Ryder of his death as an event not far distant, and so went to his bedroom in a melancholy and foreboding state. And where was that bedroom? He was thrust, by his wife's orders, into a small chamber, and not allowed to enter hers,—he, the master of the house, her husband, and her lord.

"But his interpretation of the prisoner's words did not end there. He left us a further comment by his actions next ensuing. He dared not—(I beg pardon, this is my inference: receive it as such)—he did not, remain in that house a single night. He at all events bolted his chamber door inside; and in the very dead of night, notwithstanding the fatigues of the day's journey, (for he had ridden some distance,) he let himself out by the window, and reached the ground safely, though it was a height of fourteen feet,—a leap, gentlemen, that few of us would venture to take. But what will not men risk when destruction is at their heels? He did not wait even to saddle his horse, but fled on foot. Unhappy man, he fled from danger, and met his death.

"From the hour when he went up to bed, none of the inmates of the house ever saw Griffith Gaunt alive; but one Thomas Hayes, a laborer, saw him walking in a certain direction at one o'clock that morning; and behind him, gentlemen, there walked another man.

"Who was that other man?

"When I have told you (and this is an essential feature of the case) how the prisoner was employed during the time that her husband lay quaking in his little room, waiting an opportunity to escape,—when I have told you this, I fear you will divine who it was that followed the deceased, and for what purpose.

"Gentlemen, when the prisoner had threatened her husband in person, as I have described, she retired to her own room, but not to sleep. She ordered her maid, Mrs. Ryder, to bring Thomas Leicester to her chamber. Yes, gentlemen, she received this pedler, at midnight, in her bedchamber.

"Now, an act so strange as this admits, I think, but of two interpretations. Either she had a guilty amour with this fellow, or she had some extraordinary need of his services. Her whole character, by consent of the witnesses, renders it very improbable that she would descend to a low amour. Moreover, she acted too publicly in the matter. The man, as we know, was her tool, her creature: she had bought his wares for him, and set him up as a pedler. She openly summoned him to her presence, and kept him there about half an hour.

"He went from her, and very soon after is seen, by Thomas Hayes, following Griffith Gaunt, at one o'clock in the morning,—that Griffith Gaunt who after that hour was never seen alive.

"Gentlemen, up to this point, the evidence is clear, connected, and cogent; but it rarely happens in cases of murder that any human eye sees the very blow struck. The penalty is too severe for such an act to be done in the presence of an eyewitness; and not one murderer in ten could be convicted without the help of circumstantial evidence.

"The next link, however, is taken up by an ear-witness; and, in some cases, the ear is even better evidence than the eye,—for instance, as to the discharge of firearms,—for, by the eye alone, we could not positively tell whether a pistol had gone off or had but flashed in the pan. Well, then, gentlemen, a few minutes after Mr. Gaunt was last seen alive,—which was by Thomas Hayes,—Mrs. Ryder, who had retired to her bedroom, heard the said Gaunt distinctly cry for help; she also heard a pistol-shot discharged. This took place by the side of a lake or large pond near the house, called the mere. Mrs. Ryder alarmed the house, and she and the other servants proceeded to her master's room. They found it bolted from the inside. They broke it open. Mr. Gaunt had escaped by the window, as I have already told you.

"Presently in comes the prisoner from out of doors. This was at one o'clock in the morning. Now she appears to have seen at once that she must explain her being abroad at that time, so she told Mrs. Ryder she had been out—praying."

(Here some people laughed harshly, but were threatened severely, and silenced.)

"Is that credible? Do people go out of doors at one o'clock in the morning, to pray? Nay, but I fear it was to do an act that years of prayer and penitence cannot efface.

"From that moment Mr. Gaunt was seen no more among living men. And what made his disappearance the more mysterious was that he had actually at this time just inherited largely from his namesake, Mr. Gaunt of Biggleswade; and his own interest, and that of the other legatees, required his immediate presence. Mr. Atkins, the testator's solicitor, advertised for this unfortunate gentleman; but he did not appear to claim his fortune. Then plain men began to put this and that together, and cried out, 'Foul play!'

"Justice was set in motion at last, but was embarrassed by the circumstance that the body of the deceased could not be found.

"At last, Mr. Atkins, the solicitor, being unable to get the estate I have mentioned administered, for want of proof of Griffith Gaunt's decease, entered heartily in this affair, on mere civil grounds. He asked the prisoner, before several witnesses, if she would permit him to drag that piece of water by the side of which Mr. Gaunt was heard to cry for help and, after that seen no more.

"The prisoner did not reply, but Mr. Houseman, her solicitor, a very worthy man, who has, I believe, or had, up to that moment, a sincere conviction of her innocence, answered for her, and told Mr. Atkins he was welcome to drag it or drain it. Then the prisoner said nothing. She fainted away.

"After this, you may imagine with what expectation the water was dragged. Gentlemen, after hours of fruitless labor, a body was found.

"But here an unforeseen circumstance befriended the prisoner. It seems that piece of water swarms with enormous pike and other ravenous fish. These had so horribly mutilated the deceased, that neither form nor feature remained to swear by; and, as the law wisely and humanely demands that in these cases a body shall be identified beyond doubt, justice bade fair to be baffled again. But lo! as often happens in cases of murder, Providence interposed and pointed with unerring finger to a slight, but infallible mark. The deceased gentleman was known to have a large mole over his left temple. It had been noticed by his servants and his neighbors. Well, gentlemen, the greedy fish had spared this mole,—spared it, perhaps, by His command, who bade the whale swallow Jonah, yet not destroy him. There it was, clear and infallible. It was examined by several witnesses, it was recognized. It completed that chain of evidence, some of it direct, some of it circumstantial, which I have laid before you very briefly, and every part of which I shall now support by credible witnesses."

He called thirteen witnesses, including Mr. Atkins, Thomas Hayes, Jane Banister, Caroline Ryder, and others; and their evidence in chief bore out every positive statement the counsel had made.

In cross-examining these witnesses, Mrs. Gaunt took a line that agreeably surprised the court. It was not for nothing she had studied a hundred trials, with a woman's observation and patient docility. She had found out how badly people plead their own causes, and had noticed the reasons: one of which is that they say too much, and stray from the point. The line she took, with one exception, was keen brevity.

She cross-examined Thomas Hayes as follows.



THE CHIMNEY-CORNER FOR 1866.

IX.

HOW SHALL WE BE AMUSED?

"One, two, three, four,—this makes the fifth accident on the Fourth of July, in the two papers I have just read," said Jenny.

"A very moderate allowance," said Theophilus Thoro, "if you consider the Fourth as a great national saturnalia, in which every boy in the land has the privilege of doing whatever is right in his own eyes."

"The poor boys!" said Mrs. Crowfield. "All the troubles of the world are laid at their door."

"Well," said Jenny, "they did burn the city of Portland, it appears. The fire arose from fire-crackers, thrown by boys among the shavings of a carpenter's shop,—so says the paper."

"And," said Rudolph, "we surgeons expect a harvest of business from the Fourth, as surely as from a battle. Certain to be woundings, fractures, possibly amputations, following the proceedings of our glorious festival."

"Why cannot we Americans learn to amuse ourselves peaceably, like other nations?" said Bob Stephens. "In France and Italy, the greatest national festivals pass off without fatal accident, or danger to any one. The fact is, in our country we have not learned how to be amused. Amusement has been made of so small account in our philosophy of life, that we are raw and unpractised in being amused. Our diversions, compared with those of the politer nations of Europe, are coarse and savage,—and consist mainly in making disagreeable noises and disturbing the peace of the community by rude uproar. The only idea an American boy associates with the Fourth of July is that of gunpowder in some form, and a wild liberty to fire off pistols in all miscellaneous directions, and to throw fire-crackers under the heels of horses, and into crowds of women and children, for the fun of seeing the stir and commotion thus produced. Now take a young Parisian boy and give him a fete, and he conducts himself with greater gentleness and good breeding, because he is part of a community in which the art of amusement has been refined and perfected, so that he has a thousand resources beyond the very obvious one of making a great banging and disturbance.

"Yes," continued Bob Stephens, "the fact is, that our grim old Puritan fathers set their feet down resolutely on all forms of amusement; they would have stopped the lambs from wagging their tails, and shot the birds for singing, if they could have had their way; and in consequence of it, what a barren, cold, flowerless life is our New England existence! Life is all, as Mantalini said, one 'demd horrid grind.' 'Nothing here but working and going to church,' said the German emigrants,—and they were about right. A French traveller, in the year 1837, says that attending the Thursday-evening lectures and church prayer-meetings was the only recreation of the young people of Boston; and we can remember the time when this really was no exaggeration. Think of that, with all the seriousness of our Boston east winds to give it force, and fancy the provision for amusement in our society! The consequence is, that boys who have the longing for amusement strongest within them, and plenty of combativeness to back it, are the standing terror of good society, and our Fourth of July is a day of fear to all invalids and persons of delicate nervous organization, and of real, appreciable danger of life and limb to every one."

"Well, Robert," said my wife, "though I agree with you as to the actual state of society in this respect, I must enter my protest against your slur on the memory of our Pilgrim fathers."

"Yes," said Theophilus Thoro, "the New-Englanders are the only people, I believe, who take delight in vilifying their ancestry. Every young hopeful in our day makes a target of his grandfather's gravestone, and fires away, with great self-applause. People in general seem to like to show that they are well-born, and come of good stock; but the young New-Englanders, many of them, appear to take pleasure in insisting that they came of a race of narrow-minded, persecuting bigots.

"It is true, that our Puritan fathers saw not everything. They made a state where there were no amusements, but where people could go to bed and leave their house doors wide open all night, without a shadow of fear or danger, as was for years the custom in all our country villages. The fact is, that the simple early New England life, before we began to import foreigners, realized a state of society in whose possibility Europe would scarcely believe. If our fathers had few amusements, they needed few. Life was too really and solidly comfortable and happy to need much amusement.

"Look over the countries where people are most sedulously amused by their rulers and governors. Are they not the countries where the people are most oppressed, most unhappy in their circumstances, and therefore in greatest need of amusement? It is the slave who dances and sings, and why? Because he owns nothing, and can own nothing, and may as well dance and forget the fact. But give the slave a farm of his own, a wife of his own, and children of his own, with a school-house and a vote, and ten to one he dances no more. He needs no amusement, because he is happy.

"The legislators of Europe wished nothing more than to bring up a people who would be content with amusements, and not ask after their rights or think too closely how they were governed. 'Gild the dome of the Invalides,' was Napoleon's scornful prescription, when he heard the Parisian population were discontented. They gilded it, and the people forgot to talk about anything else. They were a childish race, educated from the cradle on spectacle and show, and by the sight of their eyes could they be governed. The people of Boston, in 1776, could not have been managed in this way, chiefly because they were brought up in the strict schools of the fathers."

"But don't you think," said Jenny, "that something might be added and amended in the state of society our fathers established here in New England? Without becoming frivolous, there might be more attention paid to rational amusement."

"Certainly," said my wife, "the State and the Church both might take a lesson from the providence of foreign governments, and make liberty, to say the least, as attractive as despotism. It is a very unwise mother that does not provide her children with play-things."

"And yet," said Bob, "the only thing that the Church has yet done is to forbid and to frown. We have abundance of tracts against dancing, whist-playing, ninepins, billiards, operas, theatres,—in short, anything that young people would be apt to like. The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church refused to testify against slavery, because of political diffidence, but made up for it by ordering a more stringent crusade against dancing. The theatre and opera grow up and exist among us like plants on the windy side of a hill, blown all awry by a constant blast of conscientious rebuke. There is really no amusement young people are fond of, which they do not pursue, in a sort of defiance of the frown of the peculiarly religious world. With all the telling of what the young shall not do, there has been very little telling what they shall do.

"The whole department of amusements—certainly one of the most important in education—has been by the Church made a sort of outlaws' ground, to be taken possession of and held by all sorts of spiritual ragamuffins; and then the faults and short-comings resulting from this arrangement have been held up and insisted on as reasons why no Christian should ever venture into it.

"If the Church would set herself to amuse her young folks, instead of discussing doctrines and metaphysical hair-splitting, she would prove herself a true mother, and not a hard-visaged step-dame. Let her keep this department, so powerful and so difficult to manage, in what are morally the strongest hands, instead of giving it up to the weakest.

"I think, if the different churches of a city, for example, would rent a building where there should be a billiard-table, one or two ninepin-alleys, a reading-room, a garden and grounds for ball-playing or innocent lounging, that they would do more to keep their young people from the ways of sin than a Sunday school could. Nay, more: I would go further. I would have a portion of the building fitted up with scenery and a stage, for the getting up of tableaux or dramatic performances, and thus give scope for the exercise of that histrionic talent of which there is so much lying unemployed in society.

"Young people do not like amusements any better for the wickedness connected with them. The spectacle of a sweet little child singing hymns, and repeating prayers, of a pious old Uncle Tom dying for his religion, has filled theatres night after night, and proved that there really is no need of indecent or improper plays to draw full houses.

"The things that draw young people to places of amusement are not at first gross things. Take the most notorious public place in Paris,—the Jardin Mabille, for instance,—and the things which give it its first charm are all innocent and artistic. Exquisite beds of lilies, roses, gillyflowers, lighted with jets of gas so artfully as to make every flower translucent as a gem; fountains where the gas-light streams out from behind misty wreaths of falling water and calla-blossoms; sofas of velvet turf, canopied with fragrant honeysuckle; dim bowers overarched with lilacs and roses; a dancing ground under trees whose branches bend with a fruitage of many-colored lamps; enchanting music and graceful motion; in all these there is not only no sin, but they are really beautiful and desirable; and if they were only used on the side and in the service of virtue and religion, if they were contrived and kept up by the guardians and instructors of youth, instead of by those whose interest it is to demoralize and destroy, young people would have no temptation to stray into the haunts of vice.

"In Prussia, under the reign of Frederick William II., when one good, hard-handed man governed the whole country like a strict schoolmaster, the public amusements for the people were made such as to present a model for all states. The theatres were strictly supervised, and actors obliged to conform to the rules of decorum and morality. The plays and performances were under the immediate supervision of men of grave morals, who allowed nothing corrupting to appear; and the effect of this administration and restraint is to be seen in Berlin even to this day. The public gardens are full of charming little resorts, where, every afternoon, for a very moderate sum, one can have either a concert of good music, or a very fair dramatic or operatic performance. Here whole families may be seen enjoying together a wholesome and refreshing entertainment,—the mother and aunts with their knitting, the baby, the children of all ages, and the father,—their faces radiant with that mild German light of contentment and good-will which one feels to be characteristic of the nation. When I saw these things, and thought of our own outcast, unprovided boys and young men, haunting the streets and alleys of cities, in places far from the companionship of mothers and sisters, I felt as if it would be better for a nation to be brought up by a good strict schoolmaster king than to try to be a republic."

"Yes," said I, "but the difficulty is to get the good schoolmaster king. For one good shepherd, there are twenty who use the sheep only for their flesh and their wool. Republics can do all that kings can,—witness our late army and Sanitary Commission. Once fix the idea thoroughly in the public mind that there ought to be as regular and careful provision for public amusement as there is for going to church and Sunday school, and it will be done. Central Park in New York is a beginning in the right direction, and Brooklyn is following the example of her sister city. There is, moreover, an indication of the proper spirit in the increased efforts that are made to beautify Sunday-school rooms, and make them interesting, and to have Sunday-school fetes and picnics,—the most harmless and commendable way of celebrating the Fourth of July. Why should saloons and bar-rooms be made attractive by fine paintings, choice music, flowers, and fountains, and Sunday-school rooms be four bare walls? There are churches whose broad aisles represent ten and twenty millions of dollars, and whose sons and daughters are daily drawn to circuses, operas, theatres, because they have tastes and feelings, in themselves perfectly laudable and innocent, for the gratification of which no provision is made in any other place."

"I know one church," said Rudolph, "whose Sunday-school room is as beautifully adorned as any haunt of sin. There is a fountain in the centre, which plays into a basin surrounded with shells and flowers; it has a small organ to lead the children's voices, and the walls are hung with oil-paintings and engravings from the best masters. The festivals of the Sabbath school, which are from time to time held in this place, educate the taste of the children, as well as amuse them; and, above all, they have through life the advantage of associating with their early religious education all those ideas of taste, elegance, and artistic culture which too often come through polluted channels.

"When the amusement of the young shall become the care of the experienced and the wise, and the floods of wealth that are now rolling over and over, in silent investments, shall be put into the form of innocent and refined pleasures for the children and youth of the state, our national festivals may become days to be desired, and not dreaded.

"On the Fourth of July, our city fathers do in a certain dim wise perceive that the public owes some attempt at amusement to its children, and they vote large sums, principally expended in bell-ringing, cannons, and fireworks. The sidewalks are witness to the number who fall victims to the temptations held out by grog-shops and saloons; and the papers, for weeks after, are crowded with accounts of accidents. Now, a yearly sum expended to keep up, and keep pure, places of amusement which hold out no temptation to vice, but which excel all vicious places in real beauty and attractiveness, would greatly lessen the sum needed to be expended on any one particular day, and would refine and prepare our people to keep holidays and festivals appropriately."

"For my part," said Mrs. Crowfield, "I am grieved at the opprobrium which falls on the race of boys. Why should the most critical era in the life of those who are to be men, and to govern society, be passed in a sort of outlawry,—a rude warfare with all existing institutions? The years between ten and twenty are full of the nervous excitability which marks the growth and maturing of the manly nature. The boy feels wild impulses, which ought to be vented in legitimate and healthful exercise. He wants to run, shout, wrestle, ride, row, skate; and all these together are often not sufficient to relieve the need he feels of throwing off the excitability that burns within.

"For the wants of this period what safe provision is made by the Church, or by the State, or any of the boy's lawful educators? In all the Prussian schools amusements are as much a part of the regular school-system as grammar or geography. The teacher is with the boys on the play-ground, and plays as heartily as any of them. The boy has his physical wants anticipated. He is not left to fight his way, blindly stumbling, against society, but goes forward in a safe path, which his elders and betters have marked out for him.

"In our country, the boy's career is often a series of skirmishes with society. He wants to skate, and contrives ingeniously to dam the course of a brook, and flood a meadow which makes a splendid skating-ground. Great is the joy for a season, and great the skating. But the water floods the neighboring cellars. The boys are cursed through all the moods and tenses,—boys are such a plague! The dam is torn down with emphasis and execration. The boys, however, lie in wait some cold night, between twelve and one, and build it up again; and thus goes on the battle. The boys care not whose cellar they flood, because nobody cares for their amusement. They understand themselves to be outlaws, and take an outlaw's advantage.

"Again, the boys have their sleds; and sliding down hill is splendid fun. But they trip up some grave citizen, who sprains his shoulder. What is the result? Not the provision of a safe, good place, where boys may slide down hill without danger to any one, but an edict forbidding all sliding, under penalty of fine.

"Boys want to swim: it is best they should swim; and if city fathers, foreseeing and caring for this want, should think it worth while to mark off some good place, and have it under such police surveillance as to enforce decency of language and demeanor, they would prevent a great deal that now is disagreeable in the unguided efforts of boys to enjoy this luxury.

"It would be cheaper in the end, even if one had to build sliding-piles, as they do in Russia, or to build skating-rinks, as they do in Montreal,—it would be cheaper for every city, town, and village to provide legitimate amusement for boys, under proper superintendence, than to leave them, as they are now left, to fight their way against society.

"In the boys' academies of our country, what provision is made for amusement? There are stringent rules, and any number of them, to prevent boys making any noise that may disturb the neighbors; and generally the teacher thinks that, if he keeps the boys still, and sees that they get their lessons, his duty is done. But a hundred boys ought not to be kept still. There ought to be noise and motion among them, in order that they may healthily survive the great changes which Nature is working within them. If they become silent, averse to movement, fond of indoor lounging and warm rooms, they are going in far worse ways than any amount of outward lawlessness could bring them to.

"Smoking and yellow-covered novels are worse than any amount of hullabaloo; and the quietest boy is often a poor, ignorant victim, whose life is being drained out of him before it is well begun. If mothers could only see the series of books that are sold behind counters to boarding-school boys, whom nobody warns and nobody cares for,—if they could see the poison, going from pillow to pillow, in books pretending to make clear the great, sacred mysteries of our nature, but trailing them over with the filth of utter corruption! These horrible works are the inward and secret channel of hell, into which a boy is thrust by the pressure of strict outward rules, forbidding that physical and out-of-door exercise and motion to which he ought rather to be encouraged, and even driven.

"It is melancholy to see that, while parents, teachers, and churches make no provision for boys in the way of amusement, the world, the flesh, and the Devil are incessantly busy and active in giving it to them. There are ninepin-alleys, with cigars and a bar. There are billiard-saloons, with a bar, and, alas! with the occasional company of girls who are still beautiful, but who have lost the innocence of womanhood, while yet retaining many of its charms. There are theatres, with a bar, and with the society of lost women. The boy comes to one and all of these places, seeking only what is natural and proper he should have,—what should be given him under the eye and by the care of the Church, the school. He comes for exercise and amusement,—he gets these, and a ticket to destruction besides,—and whose fault is it?"

"These are the aspects of public life," said I, "which make me feel that we never shall have a perfect state till women vote and bear rule equally with men. State housekeeping has been, hitherto, like what any housekeeping would be, conducted by the voice and knowledge of man alone.

"If women had an equal voice in the management of our public money, I have faith to believe that thousands which are now wasted in mere political charlatanism would go to provide for the rearing of the children of the state, male and female. My wife has spoken for the boys; I speak for the girls also. What is provided for their physical development and amusement? Hot, gas-lighted theatric and operatic performances, beginning at eight, and ending at midnight; hot, crowded parties and balls; dancing with dresses tightly laced over the laboring lungs,—these are almost the whole story. I bless the advent of croquet and skating. And yet the latter exercise, pursued as it generally is, is a most terrible exposure. There is no kindly parental provision for the poor, thoughtless, delicate young creature,—not even the shelter of a dressing-room with a fire, at which she may warm her numb fingers and put on her skates when she arrives on the ground, and to which she may retreat in intervals of fatigue; so she catches cold, and perhaps sows the seed which with air-tight stoves and other appliances of hot-house culture may ripen into consumption.

"What provision is there for the amusement of all the shop girls, seamstresses, factory girls, that crowd our cities? What for the thousands of young clerks and operatives? Not long since, in a respectable old town in New England, the body of a beautiful girl was drawn from the river in which she had drowned herself,—a young girl only fifteen, who came to the city, far from home and parents, and fell a victim to the temptation which brought her to shame and desperation. Many thus fall every year who are never counted. They fall into the ranks of those whom the world abandons as irreclaimable.

"Let those who have homes and every appliance to make life pass agreeably, and who yet yawn over an unoccupied evening, fancy a lively young girl all day cooped up at sewing in a close, ill-ventilated room. Evening comes, and she has three times the desire for amusement and three times the need of it that her fashionable sister has. And where can she go? To the theatre, perhaps, with some young man as thoughtless as herself, and more depraved; then to the bar for a glass of wine, and another; and then, with a head swimming and turning, who shall say where else she may be led? Past midnight and no one to look after her,—and one night ruins her utterly and for life, and she as yet only a child!

"John Newton had a very wise saying: 'Here is a man trying to fill a bushel with chaff. Now if I fill it with wheat first, it is better than to fight him.' This apothegm contains in it the whole of what I would say on the subject of amusements."



AN ITALIAN RAIN-STORM.

The coast-road between Nice and Genoa,—known throughout the world for its unrivalled beauty of scenery, the altitudes to which it climbs, and the depths to which it dives,—now on the olive-clad heights, now close down upon the shore shaded by palm or carob-trees, now stretching inland amid orange-grounds and vineyards, now rounding some precipitous point that hangs hundreds of feet over the Mediterranean,—is generally seen with all the advantage of an unclouded sky above, and a sea as blue beneath.

It was the fortune of a certain party of four to behold it under the unusual aspect of bad weather. They set out in the diligence one winter evening, expecting to arrive at Genoa by the same time next day, according to ordinary course. But no one unaccustomed to the effect of rain, continuous rain, in mountainous districts, can conceive the wonders worked by a long succession of wet days. The arrival was retarded six hours, and the four found themselves in Genova la superba somewhere about midnight. However, this was only the commencement of the pouring visitation; and the roads had been rendered merely so "heavy" as to make the horses contumacious when dragging the ponderous vehicle up hill, which contumacy had occasioned the delay in question. Despite the hopes entertained that the weather would clear, the rain set in; and during no interval did it hold up, with the exception of a short period, which permitted one gentleman of the party of four to visit on business two bachelor brothers, manufacturers in Genoa. The residence of these brothers being in rather an out-of-the-way quarter of the city, and being very peculiar in itself, the gentleman advised the rest of his party to accompany him on this visit.

The four, only too glad to find themselves able to get out of doors, set forth on foot through the steep and narrow streets of Genoa, which make driving in a carriage a fatigue, and walking a feat of great excitement, especially when mud prevails. Trucks, ponderously laden with bales of goods, and pushed along at a reckless rate of speed by mahogany-complexioned men; dashing coaches, impelled by drivers hallooing when close upon you with distracting loudness and abruptness; mules coming onward with the blundering obtuseness peculiar to their tribe, or with their heads fastened to doorways, and their flanks extending across the street, affording just space enough for the passenger to slide behind their heels; a busy, jostling crowd of people hurrying to and fro, with no definite current, but streaming over any portion of the undistinguishable carriage-way and foot-way,—all combine to make Genoese pedestrianism a work only less onerous than driving.

Choosing the minor trouble, our party trusted to their own legs; and, after picking their way through sludge and mire, along murky alleys that branched off into wharves and quays, and up slippery by-ways that looked like paved staircases without regular steps, the four emerged upon an open space in front of a noble church. Leaving this on their left hand, they turned short into a place that wore something the appearance of a stable-yard,—with this difference, that there were neither steeds nor stabling to be seen; but instead there were blank walls, enclosing a kind of court adjoining a huge old mansion, and beyond there was a steep descent leading down to the sea-side.

On ringing a bell that hung beside a gate in the wall enclosure, the door opened apparently of itself, and a dismal scream ensued. The scream proceeded from a sea-gull, peering out of a kind of pen formed by a wooden paling in one corner of a grass-grown patch, half cabbage-garden, half excavated earth and rock; and the mysterious opening of the door was explained by a connecting cord pulled by some unseen hand within a smaller house that stood near to the huge old mansion. From the house appeared, advancing towards us, the two bachelor brothers, who welcomed our friend and his three companions with grave Italian courtesy. Understanding the curiosity the four felt to see their premises, they did the honors of their place, with a minuteness as politely considerate towards the strangers as it was gratifying to the interest felt by them.

First the visitors were led by the bachelor brothers to see the huge old mansion, which they called the Palazzo. Let no one who has seen an ordinary Genoese palace, magnificent with gilding, enriched by priceless pictures, supplied with choice books, and adorned with gorgeous furniture, figure to himself any such combination in the palazzo in question. This was a vast pile of building, that would make five moderate-sized dwelling-houses, one in the roof, and the other four in the habitable portion of the edifice. A general air of ramshackledness pervaded the exterior, while the interior presented an effect of interminable ranges of white-washed walls, divided off into numberless apartments of various sizes, from a saloon on the piano nobile, or principal floor, measuring more than forty feet long, to small square attic rooms that were little more than cupboards. But this attic story was not all composed of chambers thus dimensioned. Among its apartments were rooms that might have accommodated a banqueting assemblage, had diners been so inclined; while among the accommodations comprised in this garret range was a kitchen, with spacious dressers, stoves, closets, and a well of water some hundred and odd feet deep. It was impossible for the imagination to refrain from picturing the troops of ghosts which doubtless occupied these upper chambers of the old palazzo, and held nightly vigil, undisturbed, amid the silence and solitude of their neglected spaces. Through one of the dwarf windows that pierced at intervals all sides of the mansion, just beneath the lofty roof, and which gave light to the attic story, we were directed to look by the emphatic words of the elder bachelor brother,—"Ma, veda che vista c' e!"

The view thence was indeed well worthy his praise; and he himself formed an appropriate companion-picture to the scene. Bluish-gray eyes, a fairer complexion than usually belongs to men of his clime and country, a look of penetration, combined with an expression of quiet content, were surmounted by a steeple-crowned hat that might have become a Dutch burgomaster, or one of Teniers's land-proprietors, rather than a denizen of a southern city. Yet the association which his face, figure, and costume had with some of George Cruikshank's illustrations of German tales afforded pictorial harmony with the range of ghostly rooms we were viewing. He "marshalled us the way that we should go," by leading us down a steep flight of steps, which landed us on the piano nobile. This, for the present, was tenanted by a set of weavers, to whom the principal floor of the palazzo had been let for a short term. They had proved but turbulent occupants, being in a constant state of refractoriness against their landlords, the bachelor brothers, who seemed to be somewhat in awe of them. On the present occasion, for instance, the brothers apologized for being unable to show us the grand saloon, as the weavers (whom we could hear, while he spoke, singing in a loud, uproarious, insurgent kind of way, that might well have drawn three souls out of one of their own craft, and evidently made the souls of their two landlords quail) did not like to be disturbed.

Their contumacious voices, mingled with the clamor of their looms, died off in the distance, while we proceeded down the back staircase to the ground-floor. We at first fancied that this apparently surreptitious proceeding was perhaps traceable to the awe entertained by the bachelor brothers for their unruly tenants; but we were relieved from the sense of acting in a style bordering on poltroonery, by finding that the principal staircase had been boarded up to preserve its marble steps and sides from injury. On arriving at the foot we found ourselves in a spacious hall, opposite the approach to the grand staircase, which looked like an archway built for giants, toweringly defined above the scaffold-planks by which it was barricaded. Many doors opened from this hall, to each of which, in turn, one of the bachelor brothers applied successive keys from a ponderous bunch that he held in his hand. These doors led to vast suites of apartments, all unfurnished, like the upper rooms, with the exception of one suite, which the brothers had lent to a friend of theirs, and which was sparely supplied with some old Italian furniture, of so antique a fashion that each article might have been a family heirloom ever since the times of that famous Genoese gentleman, Christopher Columbus. One peculiarity the four remarked, which spoke volumes for the geniality of the climate: in all this huge rambling edifice they saw only one room which could boast of a fireplace. The sun's warmth evidently supplied all the heat necessary, and—as might be conjectured from its other peculiarities as well as this—anything like what the English call "the joys and comforts of the domestic hearth" seemed an impossible attainment in this dreary old palazzo. The social amenities must wither in its desolate atmosphere, and dwindle to chill shadows, like the ghosts that haunt the attic story.

To complete the air of saddening vacancy that clung like a damp to the really arid white walls, when the brothers led us down a wide staircase to the vaulted space beneath the basement, we came upon some hundreds of small bird-cages, containing each a miserable linnet, titmouse, or finch, condemned to chirp out its wretched existence in this airless underground region. In reply to our pitying exclamation, we were told that the bachelors' friend who occupied the corner apartment on the ground-floor was a great sportsman, and devotedly fond of la caccia; that these unhappy little prisoners were employed by him in the season as decoy-birds; that they were kept in these dungeons during the other months of the year; and that they were BLINDED to make them sing better and be more serviceable at the period when he needed them. As we looked shudderingly at these forlorn little creatures, and expressed our commiseration at their fate, the younger brother stepped forward, and, examining one of the cages, in which sat hunched up in one corner a stiff lump of feathers, coolly announced that "this goldfinch" was dead.

It was with a feeling of relief that we left the death-released bird, and the vaults beneath the old palazzo, to return once more to the fresh air and the breathing-space of the broad earth and sky. Our next visit was to the bachelor brothers' factory, which was for the fabrication of wax candles. Adjoining this was a terrace-plot of ground, dotted over with what looked like Liliputian tombstones. We were beginning to wonder whether this were a cemetery for the dead birds,—speculating on the probability that these might be the monumental tributes placed over their graves by the sportsman friend of the two brothers,—when the elder informed us that this was the place they used for bleaching the wax, and that the square stones we saw were the supports on which rested the large flat stands whereon it was laid to whiten in the sun. From this terrace-plot of ground,—which projected in a narrowish green ledge, skirted by a low ivy-grown wall, over the sea,—we beheld a prospect of almost matchless beauty. Before us stretched a wide expanse of Mediterranean waters; to the extreme left was just visible the bold rocky point of Porto Fino; to the right extended westward a grand line of picturesque coast, including the headlands of Capo di Noli and Capo delle Mele; and near at hand lay the harbor of Genoa, with its shipping, its amphitheatre of palaces, surmounted by the high ground above, and crowned by the fortressed summits beyond.

We were roused from the absorbing admiration which this majestic sea and land view had excited, by one of the four asking whether there were any access to the palazzo from this terrace. Whereupon the brothers showed us a winding turret staircase, which led by a subterranean passage into one of the lower vaulted rooms. Nothing more like a place in a wonderful story-book ever met us in real life; and while we were lost in a dream of romantic imaginings, one of the brothers was engaged in giving a prosaic relation of how the old palazzo had come into their family by a lawsuit, which terminated in their favor, and left them possessors of this unexpected property. During the narrative a brood of adolescent chickens had come near to where we stood listening on the green plot, and eyed us with expectant looks, as if accustomed to be fed or noticed. The elder brother indulged the foremost among the poultry group—a white bantam cock of courageous character—by giving him his foot to assault. Valiantly the little fellow flew at, and spurred, and pecked the boot and trousers; again and again he returned to the charge, while the blue-gray eyes beamed smilingly down from beneath the steeple-crowned hat, as the old man humored the bird's pugnacious spirit.

Presently a shy little girl of some ten or twelve years came peering out at the strangers from beneath a row of evergreen oaks that ornamented the back of the dwelling-house overlooking the terrace. There she stood at the foot of the ilexes, shading her eyes with one hand, (for the sun coyly gleamed through the rain-clouds at that moment,) while the other was employed in restraining the lumbering fondness of two large bull-dogs, that gambolled heavily round her. She was introduced to us as the daughter of the younger of the two brothers; who proved after all to be no bachelor, but a widower. One ponderous brindled brute poked his black muzzle against the child with such a weight of affection that we expected to see her overturned on the sward; but she seemed to have complete control over her canine favorites, and to live with them and a large macaw she had up stairs in her own room (we afterwards found it perched there, when taken to see the upper floor of the bachelor residence), as her familiars and sole associates,—like some enchanted princess in a fairy-tale.

On entering the house from the terrace, we found ourselves in its kitchen, which strongly resembled a cavern made habitable. It was hewn out of the rock on which the dwelling stood; and it only required the presence of the black man and the old woman who figure in Gil Blas's story to give, to the life, the cooking-department of the robbers' cave there. As we ascended a rude stone staircase that led from it, we heard the lowing of cows; and, turning, we saw two of these animals comfortably stalled in a side recess, not far from the rocky ledge on which the culinary apparatus for dressing the food of the establishment was deposited. Mounting into the parlor, we discovered a good-sized apartment, its windows looking out through the foliage of the ilexes over the sea, skirted by the extensive coast view. Behind was the dining-room; on each side were the brothers' bedrooms; and leading from a small entrance-hall at the back was a large billiard-room. This opened on a small garden nook, in which were orange-trees and camellias, full of bud and blossom,—from which some of the flowers were gathered for us by the Italian brethren, on our taking leave and thanking them for the unusual treat we had had in going over their curious abode.

The transient gleam of sunshine that had shone forth while we were there was the only intermission vouchsafed by the rain, which afterwards poured down with a steady vehemence and pertinacity seldom seen on the Ligurian Riviera. The effects of this rare continuance of wet weather were soon made impressively perceptible to the four as they emerged upon the open road, after passing the Lighthouse of Genoa and the long straggling suburbs of San Pier d'Arena, Pegli, and Voltri. The horses splashed through channels of water which filled the spongy ruts, smoking, and toiling, and plunging on; while the whoops and yells of the postilion urging them forward, together with the loud smacks of his whip, made a savage din. This was farther increased as we crashed along a ledge road, cut in a cliff overhanging the sea;—the waves tearing up from beneath with a whelming roar; the rocks jutting forth in points, every one of which was a streaming water-spout; the rain pelting, the wind rushing, the side-currents pouring and dashing. These latter, ordinarily but small rills, carrying off the drainage of the land by gentle course, were now swollen to rough cataracts, leaping with furious rapidity from crag to crag in deluges of turbid water, discolored to a dingy yellow-brown by the heaps of earth and stone which they dislodged and brought down with them, and hurled hither and thither over the precipitous projections, and occasionally flung athwart the highway. At one spot, where a heap of such stones—large, flat slabs—had been tossed upon the road, and a few of their companions were in the very act of plunging down after them, our postilion drew up to guide his cattle among those already fallen; and, raising his voice above the thunder of the sea-waves, rain, wind, and waters, shouted out in broad Genoese to the falling ones, "Halloo, you there, up above! Stop a bit, will you? Wait a moment, you up there!" Then, driving on carefully till he had steered by the largest of the fragments that lay prostrate, he turned back his head, shook his whip at it, and apostrophised it with, "Ah, you big pig! I've passed you, for this time!"

The first change of horses took place at a village close down on the sea-shore, where some fishermen were busily employed hauling up the last of a row of boats that lay upon the beach. Every available hand, not occupied in aiding the conductor and postilion to unharness the diligence horses and put to the fresh team, was enlisted in the service of the boat-hauling. Young gentlemen out for an evening's amusement, attired in sacks or tarpaulins thrown over their shoulders, while their nether garments were rolled up tightly into a neat twist that encircled the top of each thigh, were frisking about a line of men with weather-beaten countenances and blown hair, who tugged bare-legged at the sides of the fishing-boat, half in the water and half out. Occasionally one of these young gentry, feeling perhaps that he had aided sufficiently in the general work, betook himself to a doorway near, dripping and shaking himself, and looking out through the sheeted rain at his companions, who were still in the excitement of whisking round the heaving and tugging fishermen, while the waves rose high, the spray dashed up in mist over their grizzled heads and beards, and the wind whistled sharply amid the deeper tumult of the sea and torrent waters. To heighten the grim wildness of the scene, the shades of evening were closing round, and by the time the four travellers were off again and proceeding on their way, darkness was fast setting in.

Nightfall found them toiling up a steep ascent that diverges inland for a few miles, winding round the estate of some inflexible proprietor, upon whom nothing can prevail to permit the high-road to take its passage through his land, there bordering the sea-side. Up the ascent we labored, and down the descent we lunged, the wheels lodging in deep mire at every moment, and threatening to abide in the deeper holes and furrows which the water-courses (forced from their due channels by overflowing and by obstructive fallen masses) had cut and dug into the road as they strayed swiftly over it.

By the time the next stage was reached, the conductor consulted the four on the advisability of stopping to sleep, instead of proceeding on such a tempestuous night, the like of which, for perilous effects, he said he had but once before encountered during the whole of the sixteen years he had been in office on this road. The three coupe passengers, consisting of two ladies—sisters—and a ruddy-faced, cheerful gentleman in a velvet travelling-cap, who made it a principle, like Falstaff, to take things easily, and "not to sweat extraordinarily," warmly approved the conductor's proposal as a sensible one; and even the alert gentleman in the banquette agreed that it would be more prudent to remain at the first good inn the diligence came to. This, the conductor replied, was at Savona, one stage farther, as the place they now were at was a mere boat-building hamlet, that scarcely boasted an inn at all,—certainly not "good beds." A group of eager, bronzed faces were visible by lamp-light, assembled round the conductor, listening to him as he held this conference with his coach-passengers; and at its close the bronze-faced crowd broke into a rapid outburst of Genoese dialect, which was interrupted by our conductor's making his way through them all, and disappearing round the corner of the small piazza wherein the diligence stood to have its horses changed. After some moments' pause,—not in the rain, or wind, or sea-waves, for they kept pouring and rushing and roaring on,—but in the hurly-burly of rapid talk, which ceased, owing to the talkers' hurrying off in pursuit of the vanished conductor, he returned, saying, "Andiamo a Savona." It soon proved that he had been to ascertain the feasibility of what the group of bronze-faced men had proposed, namely, that they would undertake to convey the diligence (without its horses, its "outsides," and its "insides") bodily over a high, steep, slippery mule-bridge, which crossed a torrent near at hand, now swollen to an unfordable depth and swiftness. The four beheld this impassable stream, boiling and surging and sweeping on to mingle itself with the madly leaping sea-waves out there in the dim night-gloom to the left, as they descended from the diligence and prepared to go on foot across something that looked like a rudely-constructed imitation of the Rialto Bridge at Venice, seen through a haze of darkness, slanting rain, faintly-beaming coach-lamps, pushing and heaving men, panting led horses, passengers muffled up and umbrellaed, conductor leading and directing. Then came the reharnessing of the horses, the reassembling of the passengers, the remounting of the "insides," the reclambering to his seat of the alert banquette "outside" (after a hearty interchange of those few brief, smiling words with his coupe companions which, between English friends, say so much in so little utterance at periods of mutual anxiety and interest), the payment of the agreed-for sum by the conductor to the bronze-faced pushers and heavers, amid a violent renewal of the storm of Genoese jargon, terminated by an authoritative word from the payer as he swung himself up into his place by a leathern strap dangling from the coach-side, a smart crack of the postilion's whip, a forward plunge of the struggling horses, an onward jerk of the diligence, and the final procedure into the wet and dark and roar of the wild night.

The gas and stir of Savona came as welcome tokens of repose to the toilsome journey; and the four alighted at one of the hotels there with an inexpressible sense of relief. His fellow-travellers were warned, however, by the alert gentleman, that they must hold themselves in readiness to start before dawn next morning, as the conductor wished to avail himself of the first peep of daylight in passing several torrents on the road which lay beyond Savona. Velvet-cap assented with a grunt; one of the sisters—all briskness at night, but fit for nothing of a morning—proposed not to go to bed at all; while the other—quite used up at night, but "up to everything" of a morning—undertook to call the whole party in time for departure.

This she did,—ordering coffee, seeing that some was swallowed by the sister who had been unwillingly roused from the sleep she had willingly offered to forego overnight, collecting cloaks, baskets, and travelling-rugs, and altogether looking so wakeful and ready that she wellnigh drove her drowsy sister to desperation.

The preannounced torrents proved as swollen as were expected; so that the passengers had to unpack themselves from the heaps of wrappings stowed snugly round their feet and knees, and issue forth into the keen morning air, armed with difficultly-put-up umbrellas, to traverse certain wooden foot-bridges, in the midst of which they could not help halting to watch the lightened diligence dragged splashingly through the deep and rapid streams, expecting, at every lunge it made into the water-dug gullies, to see it turn helplessly over on its side in the very midst of them. Nevertheless, no such accident occurred; and the four jogged on, along soaking, soppy, drenched roads, that seemed never to have known dust or drought. At one saturated village, they saw a dripping procession of people under crimson umbrellas, shouldering two rude coffins of deal boards, which were borne to the door of a church that stood by the wayside,—where the train waited in a kind of moist dejection to be admitted, and to look dispiritedly after the passing diligence. The alert gentleman heard from what the conductor gathered from an old woman wrapped in a many-colored gaudy-patterned scarf of chintz, which, wet through, covered her head and shoulders clingingly, that this was the funeral of a poor peasant-man and his wife, who had both died suddenly and both on the same day. The old woman held up her brown, shrivelled hands, and gesticulated pityingly with them in the pouring rain, as she mumbled her hurried tale of sorrow; while the postilion involuntarily slackened pace, that her words might be heard where he and the conductor sat.

The horses were suffered to creep on at their own snail pace, while the influence of the funeral scene lasted; but soon the long lash was plied vivaciously again, and we came to another torrent, more deep, more rapid, more swollen than any previous one. Fortunately for us, a day or two before there had been a postilion nearly drowned in attempting to drive through this impassable ford; and still more fortunately for us, this postilion chanced to have a relation who was a servant in the household of Count Cavour, then prime-minister to King Victor Emanuel. "Papa Camillo's" servant's kinsman's life being endangered, an order had come from Turin only a few hours before our diligence arrived at the bank of the dangerous stream,—now swollen into a swift, broad river,—decreeing that the new road and bridge, lately in course of construction on this spot, should be opened immediately for passage to and fro. The road was more like a stone-quarry than a carriageable public highway, so encumbered was it with granite fragments, heaped ready for top-dressing and finishing; and the bridge led on to a raised embankment, coming to a sudden fissure, where the old coach-road crossed it. Still, our conductor, finding that some few carts and one diligence had actually passed over the ground, set himself to the work of getting ours also across. First, the insides and outsides were abstracted from the coach,—which they had by this time come to regard as quite an extraneous part of their travelling, not so much a "conveyance" as something to be conveyed,—and the four took their way over the stones, amused at this new and most unexpected obstacle to their progress. Hastening across the fissure, they went and placed themselves (always under umbrellas) beside a troop of little vagabond boys,—who had come to see the fun, and had secured good front places on the opposite bank,—to view the diligence brought down the sharp declivity of the embankment to the old road below. The spectators beheld the jolting vehicle come slowly and gratingly along, like a sturdy recusant, holding back, until the straining horses had tugged it by main force to the brink of the fissure. Here the animals stopped, snorted, eyed the sheer descent with twitching ears and quivering skins, as though they said in equine language, "We're surely not required to drag it down this!" They were soon relieved from their doubt, by being taken out of the traces, patted, and gently led down the embankment, leaving their burdensome charge behind. There it stuck, helplessly alone,—even more thoroughly belying its own name than diligences usually do,—perched on the edge of a declivity of the height of a tall house, stock still, top-heavy with piled luggage, deserted by its passengers, abandoned of its friend in the velvet cap, a motionless and apparently objectless coach. How it was to be dislodged and conveyed down the "vast abrupt" became matter of conjecture to the four, when presently some men came to the spot with a large coil of cable-cord, which they proceeded to pass through the two hindmost side-windows of the diligence, threading it like a bead on a string; and then they gradually lowered the lumbering coach down the side of the descent, amid the evvivas of the vagabond boys, led by an enthusiastic "Bravissimo!" from Velvet-cap.

This incident occupied much time; and though the travellers made some progress during the afternoon, the gray shades of twilight were gathering over and deepening the gloom of the already gray sky and gray landscape,—deadened to that color from their naturally brilliant hues by the prevailing wet,—as the travellers stopped to change horses again at the entrance of the town of Oneglia. Here, while the conductor ran into a house to make purchase of a loaf about half a yard in length and a corpulent bottle of wine, the four saw another funeral train approaching. This time it was still more dreary, being attended by a show of processional pomp, inexpressibly forlorn and squalid. The coffin was palled with a square of rusty black velvet, whence all the pile had long been worn, and which the soaking rain now helped age to embrown and make flabby; a standard cross was borne by an ecclesiastical official, who had on a quadrangular cap surmounted by a centre tuft; two priests followed, sheltered by umbrellas, their sacerdotal garments dabbled and draggled with mud, and showing thick-shod feet beneath the dingy serge and lawn that flapped above them, as they came along at a smart pace, suggestive of anything but solemnity. As little of that effect was there in the burial-hymn which they bawled, rather than chanted, in a careless, off-hand style, until they reached the end of the street and of the town, when the bawlers suddenly ceased, took an abrupt leave of the coffin and its bearers, fairly turned on their heels, accompanied by the official holy standard-bearer, and went back at a brisk trot, having, it seems, fulfilled the functions required of them. Obsequies more heartless in their manner of performance, it was never the fate of the four to behold. The impression left by this sight assorted well with the deep and settled murkiness that dwelt like a thick veil on all around. Even the cheery tones of Velvet-cap's voice lost their elasticity, and the sprightliness of the sister's spirits, that invariably rose with the coming on of night, failed under the depressing influence of that rain-hastened funeral and that "set-in" rainy evening. As for the sister whose spirits fell with the fall of day, she was fast lapsing into a melancholy condition of silence and utter "giving-up."

Rattling over the pavement of the long, straggling town,—plashing along a few miles of level road,—struggling up hill,—rattling through another pavemented town,—striking into the country again,—we came to another long ascent. As we toiled to the top, a postilion, having the care of five return horses, joined company with ours, the two men walking up hill together, while their beasts paced slowly on, with drooping heads and smoking sides. Now and then, when the road was less steep, and levelled into trotting-ground, the postilions climbed to their seats,—ours on his rightful box-seat, the other on an impromptu one, which he made for himself upon a sack of corn slung beneath the front windows of the coupe,—and while our horses fell into an easy jog, we could see the return ones go on before at a swagging run, with their loosened harness tossing and hanging from them as they took their own course, now on one side of the way, now on the other, according to the promptings of their unreined fancy.