Chapter XV (2)

AQUILIUS.—We have; and of late years they have greatly improved in subjects. They at least now look for what is beautiful. The old dead stump, the dunghill, and horse and cart, the pig and the donkey, are no longer considered to be the requisites for English landscape. One has seen publications called English landscape, which must give foreigners a very miserable idea of our country. Cottage scenery, too, has had its day. The old well is dry—the girl married, it is to be hoped, and the pitcher broken. The lane and gipsies, the cross sticks and the crock, are not dissolving but dissolved views. In time, the turnpike road and ruddled sheep going to the butcher will be thought but ill to represent the pastoral. When the mutton has been eaten up—and I hope the artists get their fair share—I wish they would be satisfied, and know when they have had enough. The Act of Parliament we spoke of, should exclude creatures with the ruddle on their backs, and butcher-boys, and men in smock-frocks and low hats, and pitchforks. We have had enough of this kind of pastoral; they are not the “gentle shepherds,” that should people the Arcadia within England, or any other. I would have Rosalind and her farm, without the clown. The French and Dresden china shepherds and shepherdesses, as we see them prettily smiling, and garlanding their pet lambs, as something extra parochial, and _sui generis_, show at least this happiness, that they do not eat their bread by the sweat of their brows. All landscape that reminds you of “the curse of the earth, of the dire necessity of toil, of the beggarly destitution test,” of dingy earths and dirty weather, are, you may be sure, far out of the hearing of Pan’s pipe. He does not adjust his lips to music for the overseer and exciseman, nor rate collectors. Nay, when Pan retires to visit his estate in Arcadia, and Robin Hood reigns, he will have no such ink-horn gentry partake of his venison. The freedom of nature loves not the visible restrictions of law. I would be bold enough to lay it down as a truth, that it is as possible to get poetry out of the earth, as swedes and mangel-wurzel. Let landscape painters look to it, lest they get into bad habits before the act is out, and, of a hard necessity, incur the penalty.

GRATIAN.—Stay, stay,—where are you running to? Surely if a painter takes a _bonâ fide_ view, you would not have him turn the milk-maid out of the field, to bring in Diana and her train.

AQUILIUS.—Views! oh, I thought we were speaking of Pastoral. That is quite another thing; I am somewhat of Fuseli’s opinion, who said, speaking contemptuously, “I mean those things called Views.”

CURATE.—But you will admit, Aquilius, that we have real scenes that are very beautiful, always pleasing to look at, and therefore fit to be painted. Is there not our lake scenery?

AQUILIUS.—There is; and as our subject is art, I should say such scenery is more valuable for what it suggests, than for what it actually represents in the painter’s mirror. In fact, nature offers with both hands: it requires a nice discretion to tell which hand holds the true treasure. She may purposely show you the ornament to deceive.

“So may the outward shows be least themselves,
The world is still deceived with ornament.”

It was the leaden casket, in which was hidden the perfect beauty of Portia; there was the choice, and made with a judgment that won the prize, and took the inheritance of Belmont.

“You that choose not by the _view_,
Chance as fair, and choose as true.”

Would you take away from landscape painters the high privilege of genius?—invention—which you allow to historical painters? You do this, if you do not grant to the fullest extent the suggestive character of nature. The musician takes music from the air, which is his raw material; the conception, which works from mere sounds the perfect mystery of power, to shake, to raise, and melt to pity and to love the whole soul, belongs to the mind. And so, for the more perfect work of landscape, the mind must add of its own immortal store, the keeper and dispenser of which is genius.

CURATE.—You would raise landscape painting to the dignity of a creative, from the lower grade of an imitative art.

AQUILIUS.—I would do more; I would make it creative, not only in things like, but, to speak boldly at once, in things unlike itself; but, nevertheless, perfectly congenial; and to be adopted as a recognised mark of submission of all matter to mind, which alone is privileged to diffuse itself over and into all nature, and to animate it with a soul—life; and when that is superadded, and then only, is the sympathy complete between external nature and ourselves. I care not for art that is not creative, that does not construct poetry. From all that is most soft and tender, to all that is most great and rugged, from the sweet to the awful and sublime, there is in all art, whether it be of landscape or historical, (which embraces the poetical), a dominion bounded only by the limitations of the original power with which genius is gifted. Why may there not be a Michael Angelo for trees, as for the human form? Nay, I verily believe, that those landscapes would have the greatest fascination, where there would be, in fact, the greatest unlikeness to usually recognised nature, both in form and colour, provided one part were in keeping with another, so as to bring the whole within the idea of the natural; and where the conception is clearly expressed, and is worthy the dignity of feeling. Hence, suggestive nature is the best nature. We want not height and magnitude, vast distances: if we have the science of form and colour, the materials need not be vast, let them only be suggestive.

GRATIAN.—You laid down some such theory with regard to colour, as a means of telling the story, in your late paper on Rubens. I could not but agree with you there. I see now how you would extend the subject. We certainly do talk too much about “_the_ truth of nature,” not considering sufficiently how many truths there are.

CURATE.—And what a great truth there is that is of our own making, greater than all the others; for, according to the showing of Aquilius, it comes of a divine gift, of the creative faculty, under a higher power; works the wonders in poetry, painting, music, and architecture, fittest for our admiration and our improvement. It is surprising that our landscape painters have not seen this walk within their reach; nearly all confine themselves to the imitative.

GRATIAN.—But in that they have raised their pretensions. We had nothing great or poetical in the least degree in landscape, before Wilson; nay, to a late period, our landscape subjects were of the most limited range. They do now go at least to beautiful nature, and while we have such painters of landscape as Creswick and Stanfield, and Lee, and Danby, (but there you will say is an advance into a higher walk,) for my own part, I shall hesitate before I give my vote for your more perfect ideal.

AQUILIUS.—The works of the painters you mention are beautiful, fascinatingly so, both from the character of their chosen scenery, and their agreeable manner of representing it. And I rejoice to see, that even these are advancing, are discarding something or other of the old recipes every year. We have at last some better English scenery. We must no longer refer to Gainsborough as _the_ painter of English landscape; we find it not, that is, true English scenery, in his pictures, nor in his “studies.”

GRATIAN.—And yet he painted nature, and came upon the world that began to be sick of the attempts at your ideal compositions, the prince of whom, and who won the prize over Wilson, was Smith of Chichester.

AQUILIUS.—Oh, do not dignify his presumptions with the name of ideal.

GRATIAN.—I can’t give up Gainsborough, his sweet cottage scenery, with his groups of rustic figures.

AQUILIUS.—Was there nothing better within the realms of England than beggary and poverty, rags and brambles,—her highest industry, the cart and the plough,—her wealth in stock, the pig, poultry, and donkey?

GRATIAN.—But it was the taste of the day; even our aristocracy were painted not as ideal, but as real shepherds and shepherdesses. A few years ago, there was a picture fished out of some lumber room, where it ought to have been buried till it had rotted, of George the Third’s family group, as cottagers’ children, playing in the dirt before a mud hovel. It was by Gainsborough, and I believe was held at a high price.

AQUILIUS.—This was a descent from the non-natural pastoral of the by-gone age, to the low natural, from which art derived but little benefit. Goldsmith very aptly and wittily satirised the transition state in the Primrose family-group, in which each individual adopted a singular independence. Venus, Cupids, an Amazon, and Alexander the Great, with Dr Primrose, holding his books on the Whistonian controversy.

CURATE.—One would rather imagine that Goldsmith was severe upon the practice of an earlier date. There are several pictures at Hampton Court, and one large one, if I remember, on the stair-wall, in which the statesmen of the day represent the deities of the heathen mythology.

LYDIA.—Yes, and I remember a very ridiculous smaller picture, a portrait of Queen Elizabeth—but it affects the historical. The queen and her train enter on one side of the piece, and on the other Juno, Venus, and Minerva. The goddesses are in every respect outdone, and start with astonishment,—Juno at the superior power, Minerva, the superior wisdom, and Venus the superior beauty of the queen. There must be something very curious in the nature of taste: seeing such pictures, one cannot but reflect, that though they are now perfectly ridiculous, they could not have been so when they were painted. They were men of understanding who sat for their portraits in these whimsical characters; and the queen—it is surprising!—there is surely something involved in it, that history does not touch.

GRATIAN.—It is the more surprising, as Holbein had painted, and his works were before their eyes.

AQUILIUS.—It would be not undeserving curiosity to sift the history of allegory—what is the cause that it was then so generally accepted in Europe; infected the poetry and painting of every civilised country. The new aspect of religion had much to do with it: images, pictures, particularly the earlier, representing the Deity, and the Virgin, had become objects of hatred—of persecution. And thus the arts made their escape into the regions of allegory.

CURATE.—Chilling regions, in which even genius with all his natural glow was frost-bitten. An escape from what was believed to what could not be believed. It was the cold fit of the ague of superstition.

GRATIAN.—The devotion of the early painters produced, what nothing but devotion could produce; theirs was a true devotion, notwithstanding the superstition contained in it. The iconoclast spirit has scarcely been yet laid. As we rise from the prostrate position of our fears, the more readily shall we acknowledge the spirituality of the early painters. They are daily approximating a more just estimation. But we are wandering; we were speaking of landscape: surely, it is difficult to find a subject that shall be altogether unpleasing. I do not remember ever to have seen an outdoor scene, unless it might have been in a town, that did not please with some beauty or other.

AQUILIUS.—Indeed! then I think you must have been led away by some associations, in which art had but little share. You have loved “A southerly wind and a cloudy sky,” as the song says, for the sport offered. Be not shocked, Gratian, at the confession, but the truth is, that I see very many outward scenes, that not only give me no pleasure but pain. Shall I confess a still more shocking heterodoxy; I have but little love for the scenery of the country!—am very often displeased with what offers itself, and becomes the common picture. Even in what is denominated a beautiful country, I look more for its suggestive materials in form and colour than for whole scenes. If pictures are to be no more than what we see—even landscapes, the art is not creative; and an imitative, uncreative art, leaves the best faculties of the mind unemployed. What is art without enthusiasm?—and you may be sure that no painter of views, and nothing more, was ever an enthusiast. It is the part of enthusiasm not to copy, but to make. Is it more startling if I assert, that the ideal is more true than the natural? Yet am I convinced that it is so. The natural requires the comparison of the eye; the ideal, as it is the work of the mind, will not be controlled by any comparison, but such as mind can bring. It commands the organ of sight, and teaches it. We all have more or less of this creative faculty; the education of the world is against it, for it is a world of much business, more of doing than of thinking, and more of thinking about what is foreign to feeling, than what cherishes it till it embodies itself in imagination. The rising faculty becomes suppressed. More or less all are born poets—to make, to combine, to imagine, to create; but very early does the time come with most of us, when we are commanded to put away, as the world calls it, the “childish things.”

LYDIA.—Oh, I believe it—the infant’s dream is a creation, and perhaps as beautiful as we know it must be pleasing, for there are no smiles like infant smiles.

CURATE.—And past that age, when the external world has given its lessons in pictures, which in practice and education we only imitate, do we not find the impressions then made of a goodness, a beauty, not realised and acknowledged in advanced life, as existing actually in the scenes themselves?

AQUILIUS.—At the earlier time, we take up little but what is consonant to our affections; the minor detail is an after lesson: but, as to this “natural” of landscapes, which seems to have so long held our artists and amateurs under an infatuation—as they construe it—this mindless thing,—after all what is its petty truth? Could the boy who hides himself under a hedge to read his Robinson Crusoe, put on canvass the pictures his imagination paints, do you think they would be exactly of the skies and the fields every day before his eyes? A year or two older, when he shall feel his spirit begin to glow with a sense of beauty, with the incessant love and heroism of best manhood—see him under the shade of some wide-spreading oak devouring the pages of befitting romance, “The Seven Champions of Christendom,” the tale of castles, of enchantments, of giants, and forlorn damsels to be rescued. Do you not credit his mind’s painting for other scenes, in colour and design, than any he ever saw? The fabulous is in him, and he must create, or look on nothing. He will take no sheep for a dragon, nor farmer Plod-acre for an enchanter, nor the village usher for an armed knight. The overseer will not be his redresser of wrongs. There is vision in his day-dream, but it is painting to the mind’s eye; and imagination must be the great enchanter to conjure up a new country, raise rocks, and build him castles; nay, in his action to run to the rescue, he has a speed beyond his limbs’ power, an arm that has been charmed with new strength. Now is he not quite out of the locality, the movement and power of any world he ever saw, of any world to whose laws of motion and of willing he has ever yet been subject? Take his pictures—look at them well; for I will suppose them painted to your sight: nay, put yourself in his place and paint them yourself—forgetting before you do so all you have ever heard said about landscape painting. Have you them? then tell me, are they untrue? No, no, you will admit they are beautiful truth. The lover paints with all a poet’s accuracy, but not like Denner. Now, if this mind-vision be not destroyed,—if the man remain the poet, he will not be satisfied with the common transcript of what, as far as enjoyment goes, he can more fully enjoy without art. He will have a craving for the ideal painting, for more truths and perhaps higher truths than the sketch-book can afford. And if he cultivate his taste, and practise the art too, he will find in nature a thousand beauties before hidden, that while he was the view-seeker, he saw not; he will be cognisant of the suggestive elements, the grammar of his mind and of his art, by which he will express thoughts and feelings, of a truth that is in him, and in all, only to be embodied by a creation.

CURATE.—I fear the patrons of art are not on your side. Does not encouragement go in a contrary direction?

GRATIAN.—Patrons of art are too often mere lovers of furniture,—have not seriously considered art, nor cultivated taste. And if it be a fault, it is not altogether their own; it is in character with genius to be in advance, and to teach, and by its own works. It is that there is a want of cultivation, of serious study, among artists themselves. If the patron could dictate, he would himself be the maker, the poet, the painter, the musician,—excellence of every kind precedes the taste to appreciate it. It makes the taste as well as the work: my friend Aquilius has made me a convert. I had not considered art, as it should be viewed, as a means of, as one of the languages of poetry. In truth, I have loved pictures more for their reminiscences than their independent power; and have therefore chiefly fixed my attention on views—actual scenery, with all its particulars.

AQUILIUS.—What is high, what is great enough wholly to possess the mind, is not of particulars; like our religion, in this it is for all ages, all countries, and must not by adopting the particular, the peculiar one, diminish the catholicity of its empire. “The golden age” is, wherever or however embodied, a creation; and as no present age ever showed any thing like it, that is, visibly so,—what is seen must be nothing more than the elements out of which it may be made.—The golden age—where all is beauty, all is perfect! Purest should be the mind that would desire to see it.

CURATE.—The golden age, if you mean by it the happy age, is but one field for art; you seem for the moment to forget, that we are so constituted as to feel a certain pleasure from terror, from fear—from the deepest tragedy—from what moves us to shed tears of pity, as well as what soothes to repose, or excites to gaiety.

AQUILIUS.—Not so—but as we commenced to discuss chiefly the agreeability of subjects for pictures, let me be allowed to add, that I question if what is disgusting should not be excluded from even the tragic, perhaps chiefly from what is tragic. Cruelty even is not necessarily disgusting; it becomes so when meanness is added to it, and there is not a certain greatness in it. There might be a greatness even in deformity, and where it is not gratuitously given, but for a purpose.

CURATE.—Yet, has not Raffaele been censured for the painfully distorted features of the Possessed Boy in his “Transfiguration.”

AQUILIUS.—And it has with some show of truth (for who would like to speak more positively against the judgment of Raffaele) been thought that Domenichino, who borrowed this subject from him, has improved the interest by rendering the face of the lunatic one of extreme beauty!

The Curate was here called away upon his parochial duties, and our discussion for the present terminated. Will it amuse you, Eusebius? If not, you have incurred the penalty of reading it, by not making one of our party. Yours ever,

AQUILIUS.

JERUSALEM.
BY WILLIAM SINCLAIR.

Thou City of the Lord! whose name
The angelic host in wonder tells;
The halo of whose endless fame
All earthly splendour far excels—
To thee, from Judah’s stable mean,
Arose the Prince from Jesse’s stem,
And since hath deathless glory been
With thee, Jerusalem!

What though thy temples, domes, and towers,
That man in strength and weakness made,
Are, with their priests and regal powers,
In lowly dust and ashes laid!
The story of thine ancient time
Steals on us, as it stole on them,
Thrice hallowed by the lyre sublime
Of thee, Jerusalem!

We see within thy porches, Paul
Uplift the arm, the voice command,
Whose heaven-taught zeal, whose earnest call,
Could rouse or paralyse the land—
Though gold and pomp were his, and more,
For God he spurned the glittering gem,
And cast him prostrate all before
Thy gates, Jerusalem!

Even from the Mount of Olives now,
When morning lifts her shadowy veil,
And smiles o’er Moab’s lofty brow,
And beauteous Jordan’s stream and vale,
The ruins o’er the region spread,
May witness of thine ancient fame,
The very grave-yards of thy dead—
Of thee, Jerusalem!

The temple in its gorgeous state
That in a dreadful ruin fell,
The fortress and the golden gate
Alike the saddening story tell,
How he by Hinnom’s vale was led
To Caiaphas, with mocking shame,
That glad redemption might be shed
O’er thee, Jerusalem!

Fast by the Virgin’s tomb, and by
These spreading olives bend the knee,
For here his pangs and suffering sigh
Thrilled through thy caves, Gethsemane;
’Twas here, beneath the olive shade,
The Man of many sorrows came,
With tears, as never mortal shed,
For thee, Jerusalem!

Around Siloam’s ancient tombs
A solemn grandeur still must be;
And oh, what mystic meaning looms
By thy dread summits, Calvary!
The groaning earth, that felt the shock
Of mankind’s crowning sin and shame,
Gave up the dead, laid bare the rock,
For fallen Jerusalem!

Kind woman’s heart forgets thee not,
For Mary’s image lights the scene:
And, casting back the inquiring thought
To what thou art, what thou hast been,
Ah! well may pilgrims heave the sigh,
When they remember all thy fame,
And shed the tear regrettingly
O’er thee, Jerusalem!

For awful desolation lies,
In heavy shades, o’er thee and thine,
As ’twere to frown of sacrifice,
And tell thy story, Palestine;
But never was there darkness yet
Whereto His glory never came;
And guardian angels watch and wait
By thee, Jerusalem!

The lustre of thine ancient fame
Shall yet in brighter beams arise,
And heavenly measures to thy name
Rejoice the earth, make glad the skies;
And, with thy gather’d thousands, then
Oh! Love and Peace shall dwell with them,
And God’s own glory shine again
O’er thee, Jerusalem!

MY ENGLISH ACQUAINTANCE.

The spring of the year 183- found me in Paris, whither I had gone, immediately after Christmas, for a fortnight’s stay, and where I had remained four months. The prolongation of my visit will not surprise those who appreciate and enjoy the gay metropolis of France, in the most agreeable season. The festivities of the new year, with its gratulations and embraces, and tons of _bonbons_, of racy flavour and ingenious device, were no sooner over, than we found ourselves in full carnival. From the aristocratic regions of the noble Faubourg, where linger, in fossil preservation, the last relics of the _ancien régime_, to the plebeian district of the Marais; from the brilliant hotels of St Honoré and the Chaussée, peopled by rose-water exquisites and full-maned lionesses, to the remote and ignoble purlieus of Saints Dennis and Anthony, where tailors and tinkers dwell and thrive and propagate their kind, pleasure and enjoyment reigned. With the old year, the wet season had concluded; a clear bright frost had ushered in the new. Paris got rid of its mud and misery, and turned out in a new paletot and well polished boots for a ramble on the Boulevards. This was for four or five hours of the day; but night was the time to see the noisy dissolute old city in its glory, prancing and capering as madly as if it had stumbled upon the fountain of Jouvence, and had taken a pull at the regenerating element that had restored it to its teens. Appalling was the amount of eating, drinking, and merriment, occurring within its precincts; succulent breakfasts in the forenoon, and fat dinners of many courses in the evening, and riotous suppers at all hours of the night, liquidated by Burgundy in big bumpers, and Champagne in pint tumblers, and stiff punch, stinging hot and burning blue, in bright silver bowls. Then there was dancing, and masquing, and flirting, till day-dawn—of pretty late arrival at that season; sleep was at a discount, and desperate revellers who never took a wink of it, that could possibly be discovered, rushed from the ball-room to a cool breakfast on oysters and Sauterne, and rose therefrom fresh as cowslips, ready to begin again. Paris was a vortex of gaiety and dissipation, whence, once drawn in, it was scarcely possible to extricate one’s-self. I did not make the attempt. I was too well pleased with my snug sunny _entresol_ on the Italian boulevard, with my dainty fare at the adjacent restaurant, with the twinkling feet of the Taglioni, and the melodious quaverings of Rubini and Duprez, then in full song; with my occasional visits to rout and masquerade, and more frequent ones to the hospitable dining rooms and saloons of a few old friends, both French and English. Then, for ride or walk, what better than the Champs Elysées, crowded with ruddy pedestrians, arch grisettes and lounging soldiers; traversed by sledges innumerable of every variety of form—dragon, sphinx, and mermaid, dolphin, lion, swan, enough to stock a mythological museum and a zoological garden—coursing up and down the road, and in the crisp frosty alleys of the Bois de Boulogne, drawn by smoking foam-speckled steeds, half hidden beneath ribbon panoply and high _panache_, sending silver sounds of countless bells before them, and delighting the eyes of all beholders by the sight of other _belles_, whose clear-toned voices and lightsome laugh rang not less sweet and silvery than the tinkle of their metal-tongued rivals, through the rare and sun-lit ether, as they sat, sunk in furs and velvets, with bright eyes and ruddy lips, and smooth firm cheeks just slightly mottled by the cold, beside the enviable cavaliers to whose charioteership they confided themselves. In short, the combination of Parisian attractions forbade departure, and I dreamed not of it till February had flown. Then I turned my eyes channelwards, and my thoughts to passports and post-horses, when sudden rumours reached me of eastern gales and virulent influenza raging on Britain’s shores; and of March dust, proverbially precious, but practically odious, careering in dense and blinding clouds through London’s tortured streets. This was ample excuse to linger a few weeks longer in my agreeable quarters, until spring came in earnest, and the sun was so warm, and the air so balmy, and the chestnuts in the Tuileries’ gardens, just burst into foliage, presented so glorious a mass of tender green, that, although often taking leave, I still was loath to depart. And thus it came to pass that, on a bright fresh April morning, I found myself seated in a Palais Royal coffee-house, in tranquil enjoyment of creaming chocolate, a damp newspaper, and the noiseless attendance of admirably drilled waiters.

I have always loved the Palais Royal, associated as it is with my earliest and most pleasurable recollections of Paris; and with sincere regret have I noted the rapid decline of what was once the heart and focus of the French capital. At the time I now speak of, although its best days were long past, it was still far removed from the deserted and desolate state into which it has since sunk: it had not yet dwindled into a dreary quadrangle of cheap tailors, pinchbeck jewellers, and shops to let, traversed in haste by all who enter it, save by newly-imported provincials, sauntering nurserymaids, and a few old loungers, who, from long habit, haunt the fabric after the spirit has fled. The melancholy truth is, that the march of morality ruined the Palais Royal. So long as it was the headquarters of dissipation, it throve and flourished exceedingly; it was merry and much frequented, like the mansion of some rich and jovial profligate, whom all abuse, but from whose well-spread table, few care to absent themselves. Then the Palais Royal, to the stranger, almost comprehended Paris: all the luxuries, necessaries, amusements, and pleasures of life, were found within its walls: it was the bazaar, the tavern, the harem, and the gaming-house of Europe. The reforms wrought in it since the peace by its present royal owner, however advantageous to its good fame and comeliness, have been grievously detrimental to its vivacity and pocket. In 183-, the last of these changes, the finishing-stroke, as it may be termed, the suppression of the gambling tables, although fully resolved upon, had not yet taken place. The coffee-houses were still numerous and crowded, the shops magnificent and prosperous; the garden and arcades, now abandoned to mischievous boys, and to puling infants in nurses’ arms, were thronged from morn till midnight with visitors of all nations and classes, lured thither by curiosity, or by the demon PLAY. There was always abundant food for observation, if only in the noisy groups who paced the avenues of trees, discussing the chances of the dice or the events of the morning’s sitting, and in the flushed or haggard countenances that each moment entered and issued from the doors of the various hells. With a genial sky, a rush-bottomed chair, and the occasional assistance of a sou’s worth of literature, obtained from the old women who dwell in wooden boxes, and hire out newspapers, an entire day might be passed there with amusement and profit. Occasional incidents, sometimes dramatic enough, varied the monotony, never great. The detection of a pickpocket, a loud-voiced quarrel, often resulting in blows or a challenge, the expulsion from the _rouge-et-noir_ temple of some unlucky wretch, whom ruin had rendered unruly, were incidents of daily occurrence. For those whom the minor drama did not satisfy, there was an occasional bit of high tragedy, in the shape of a suicide from losses, or an arrest for fraud. Not long before the time I speak of, a group of persons, standing in the garden, were startled by the fall of a body at their feet. It was that of a gamester, who, after losing his last franc, had thrown himself from the elevated window of the pandemonium where his ruin had been consummated.

“I believe I have the pleasure of seeing Mr ——,” said a voice in English, as I paused for a moment, my breakfast concluded, before the door of the coffeehouse, planning the disposal of my day.

I looked at the person who thus addressed me; and, although I pique myself on rarely forgetting the faces of those with whom I have once been acquainted, I confess that in this instance my memory was completely at fault. But for his knowledge of my name, I should have concluded my interlocutor mistaken as to my identity. I was at least as much surprised at the perfectly good English he spoke, as at having my acquaintance claimed by a person of his profession and rank. He was a young man of about five-and-twenty, attired in the handsome and well-fitting undress of a sergeant of French light dragoons. His dark brown hair curled short and crisp from under his smart green forage-cap, cavalierly placed upon one side of his head; his clear blue eyes contrasted with the tawny colour of his cheek, a tint for which it was evidently indebted to sun and weather; his face was clean shaven, save and except small well-trimmed mustachios and a chin-tuft. Altogether, he was as pretty a model of a light cavalryman as I remember to have seen: square in the shoulder, slender in the hip, well-limbed, lithe and muscular. His carriage was soldierly, without the exaggerated stiffness and swagger commonly found amongst noncommissioned officers of dragoons; and altogether he had a gentlemanly air which, I doubt not, would have made itself as visible under the coarse _basane_ and drugget of a private soldier as beneath the garb of finer materials and more careful cut, which, in his capacity of _maréchal de logis_, or sergeant, it was permitted him to wear. But my admiration of this pretty model of a man-at-arms did not assist me to recognise him, although, whilst gazing at him, and especially when he slightly smiled at my visible embarrassment, his features did not seem totally unfamiliar to me. I looked, I have no doubt, considerably puzzled. The stranger came to my assistance.

“I see you do not remember me,” he said. “Not above four years since we met, if so much; but four years, an African sun, and a French uniform, have made a change. I met you in Warwickshire, at George Clinton’s. I have seen you once or twice since; but I think the last time we spoke was when cantering over Harleigh downs. My name is Frank Oakley.”

I immediately recollected my man. About four summers previously, whilst on a flying visit at a country house, whither a friend had taken me, and where I had been made heartily welcome by the hospitable owner, I had formed a slight acquaintance with Mr Frank Oakley, who had then just come of age, and into possession—by the death of his father, which had occurred a twelvemonth previously—of a few thousand pounds. The interest of this sum, which would have been an agreeable and sufficient addition to a subaltern’s pay or curate’s stipend, or which would have enabled a struggling barrister to bide his briefs, was altogether insufficient to supply the wants and caprices of an idler, especially such an idler as Oakley. Master Francis was what young gentlemen fresh from school or at college, sucking ensigns, precocious templars, _et id genus omne_, are accustomed to call a “fast” man; the said fastness not referring, as Johnson’s dictionary teaches us it might do, to any particular strength or firmness of character, but merely to the singular rapidity with which such persons get through their money and into debt. At the time I speak of, Oakley was going his fastest, that is to say, spending the utmost amount of coin, for the least possible value; indeed he could hardly have run madder riot with his moderate patrimony, had he cast his sovereigns into bullets and made pipe-lights of his bank notes. But verily, he had his reward in the open-mouthed admiration of three or four younkers of his own standing, or a year or two less, then assembled at Harleigh Hall, who looked up to him as something between a hero and an oracle; and in the encouraging familiarity and approval of one or two gentlemen of maturer age, who swore he was a fine fellow, and proved they thought so by winning bets of him at billiards, and by selling him horses that would have fetched “twice the money at Tattersall’s,” with other bargains of an equally advantageous description. Although we were four days in the same house, meeting each evening at dinner, and occasionally riding and walking in the same group, our acquaintance continued of the very slightest description, and I took my departure without any thing approaching to intimacy having sprung up between us. Amongst the large party of visitors at the Hall, were not wanting persons of tastes more suited to my own, than those of Oakley and his little knot of flatterers and admirers; and he, on his part, was far too much taken up with his newly-inherited fortune—which he evidently considered inexhaustible—with planning amusements, and inhaling adulatory incense, to pay attention to a man whom, as full fifteen years his senior, he doubtless set down as an old fellow, a “slow coach,” and perhaps even as a member of that distinguished corporation known as the “Fogie Club.” So that when we met in London, during the ensuing season, occasionally in the street and once or twice in a ballroom, a slight bow or word of recognition was all that passed between us. I could perceive, however, that Oakley still kept up the rapid pace at which he had started, and lived, with a few hundreds a year, as if he had possessed as many thousands. The proximity of my quiet club to the fashionable and expensive one into which he had obtained admission, gave me many opportunities of observing his proceedings, and those opportunities, in my capacity of a student of human nature, I was careful not to neglect. I had marked his career and ultimate fate in my mind, and was curious to see my predictions verified, although I sincerely wished they might not be, for they were any thing but favourable to the welfare of Oakley, who, in spite of his follies, had generous and manly qualities. His prodigality was not of that purely egotistical description most commonly found in spendthrifts of his class. He would give a lavish alms to a whining beggar, as freely as he would throw away a handful of gold on some folly of the moment or extravagant debauch; and I had heard an old one-armed soldier, who sometimes held his horse at the club door, utter blessings, when he had ridden out of hearing, on his kind heart and open hand. These and similar little traits that came under my notice, made me regret to see him going post-haste to perdition. That he was doing so, I could not for one moment doubt. His extravagance knew no limit, and in six months he must have got through as many years’ income. Wherever pleasure was to be had, no matter at what price, Oakley was to be seen.—Upon a revenue overrated at five hundred a-year, he kept half a dozen horses, a cab, and a strange nondescript vehicle, made after an eccentric design of his own, and which every body turned to look at, as he drove down Piccadilly of an afternoon, on his way to the Park. He had his stall at the opera, of course, and an elegant set of apartments in the most expensive street in London, where he gave suppers and dinners of extravagant delicacy to thirsty friends and greedy _danseuses_. The former showed their gratitude for his good cheer by winning his money at cards; the latter evinced their affection by carrying off the costly nicknacks that strewed his rooms, and by taking his diamond shirt-pins to fasten their shawls. In short, he regularly delivered himself over to the harpies. In addition to these minor drafts upon his exchequer, came others of a more serious nature. He played high, and never refused a bet. Like many silly young men, (and some silly old ones,) he had a blind veneration for rank, and held that a lord could do no wrong. Even a baronetcy conferred a certain degree of infallibility in his eyes. No amount of respectable affidavits would have convinced him that if Lord Rufus Slam, who not unfrequently condescended to win a cool fifty of him at écarté, did not turn the king each time he dealt, it was only because he despised so hackneyed a swindle, and had other ways of securing the game, equally nefarious but less palpable. Neither would it have been possible to persuade him that Sir Tantivy Martingale, “that prime fellow and thorough sportsman,” as Frank admiringly and confidingly styled him, was capable of taking his bet upon a horse which he, the aforesaid Sir Tantivy, had just made “safe to lose.” In short, poor Oakley, who, during his father’s lifetime, had been little, if at all, in London, thought himself excessively knowing and fully up to all the wiles and snares of the metropolis. In reality he was exceedingly raw, was victimised accordingly, and, at the end of a few months in town, found himself minus a sum that brought reflection, I suspect, even to his giddy head. I conjectured so, at least, when, at the end of the season, I encountered him on a Boulogne steamer, looking fagged and out of spirits. It was only a year since we had met at Harleigh Hall, but that year had told upon him. Dissipation had driven the flush of health from his cheek, and his youthful brow was already care-loaded. I spoke to him, and made an attempt to converse; but he seemed sulky and unwilling; and, on reaching Boulogne, I lost sight of him. After a short tour, I went to winter at Paris, and there I frequently saw him. He had forgotten, apparently, the annoyances that weighed on him when he left London, and was again the gayest of the gay; living as if his purse were bottomless, and his _Gibus_ hat the wishing cap of Fortunatus. Nothing was too hot or too strong for him: rated a “fast man” in England, in France he was held a _viveur enragé_. I did not much admire the society he selected: I saw him alternately with the most _roué_ and dissolute young Frenchmen of fashion, and with an English set which, if it comprised men against whom nothing positively bad could be proved, also included others whose reputation was more than doubtful. At first he was chiefly with the French, whose language, from long residence in the country when a boy, he spoke as one of themselves; then he seemed to abandon them for the English clique, and then he suddenly disappeared. I no longer saw him pacing the Boulevard or riding in the Bois, or issuing at night from the Café Anglais, flushed with wine and bent upon riotous debauch. All his former companions remained, pursuing their old amusements, frequenting the same haunts; but he was never with them. I could not understand his leaving Paris just as the best season commenced, (it was in January that he disappeared,) and at first I supposed him ill. But week after week slipped by, and no Oakley appearing, I made up my mind he had departed, whither I knew not. I was rather vexed at this, for I had made up my mind to watch him to the end of his career. Moreover, although we never spoke, and had almost left off bowing, my idle habit of observing his proceedings had given me a sort of interest in him. Once only, after his eclipse, did I fancy I caught a glimpse of him. I was fond of long rambles in the low and remote quarters of Paris, through those labyrinths of narrow streets, filthy courts, and rickety houses, where the character and peculiarities of the humbler classes of Parisians are best to be studied. Returning, after dark, from an expedition of this kind, I was surprised by a violent shower in a shabby street of the Faubourg St Antoine, and took refuge under a doorway. Immediately opposite to me was the wretched shop of a _traiteur_, in whose dingy window a cloudy white bowl of mashed spinach, a plate of bouilli, dry as a deal plank, and some triangular fragments of pear, stewed with cochineal and exposed in a saucer, served as indications of the luxurious fare to be obtained within. On one of the grimy shutters, whose scanty coat of green paint the weather had converted into a sickly blue, was the announcement, in yellow letters, that “_Fricot, Traiteur, donne à Boire et à Manger_;” whilst upon the other the hieroglyphical representation of a bottle and glass, flanked by the words “_Bon Vin de Macon à 8 et à 10 S._” hinted intelligibly at the well-provided state of Monsieur Fricot’s cellar. It was one of those humble eating-houses, abounding in the French capital, where a very hungry man may stave off starvation for about the price of a tooth-pick at the _Café_ or the _Trois Frères_, and where an exceedingly thirsty one may get comfortably intoxicated upon potato brandy and essence of logwood, for a similar amount. It needs a three days’ fast or a paviour’s appetite to induce entrance into such a place. I was gazing with some curiosity at the windows of this poor tavern, through whose starred and patched panes, crowded with bottles, and backed by a curtain of dirty muslin, the waving of iron forks and spoons was dimly discernible by the light of two flickering candles, when the door suddenly opened, a man came out, heedless of the rain, which fell in torrents, and walked rapidly away. It was but a second, and he was lost in the darkness of the ill-lighted street, but in that second I thought I distinguished the gait and features of Frank Oakley. But my view of him was very indistinct, and I concluded myself misled by a resemblance. Since that day nothing had occurred to remind me of him, and for a long time I had entirely forgotten the good-hearted but reckless scamp, who for a brief period had attracted my attention.

Frank Oakley, then, it was, who now stood before me under the arcades of the Palais Royal. I held out my hand, with a word or two of apology for my slowness in remembering him.

“No excuse, I beg,” was his reply. “Not one in twenty of my former acquaintances recognises the spendthrift dandy in the humble sergeant of dragoons, and in the few who do, I observe, upon my approach, a strong partiality for the opposite side of the street. They give themselves unnecessary trouble, for I have no wish to intrude upon them. I have been four months in Paris, and have constantly met former intimates, but have never spoken to one of them. And I cannot say what induced me to address you, with whom my acquaintance is so slight, except that I should be very glad to have a talk about dear old England, and if I am not mistaken you are a likely man to grant it me.”

“With pleasure, Mr Oakley,” said I. “I am glad to see you, although I confess myself surprised at your present profession. For an Englishman, I should have thought our own service preferable to a foreign one; and doubtless your friends would have got you a commission—that is—if—”

I hesitated, and paused, for I felt that I was upon delicate ground, getting run away with by my own foregone conclusions, and likely, unintentionally, to wound my interlocutor’s feelings. Oakley observed my embarrassment, smiled, and completed my unfinished sentence.

“If I had not money left, after my extravagance, to buy one for myself. Well, I had not; and moreover—but you shall hear all about it, if you care to learn the adventures of a scapegrace, now, I hope, reformed. And, in return, you shall tell me if London is still in the same place, and as wicked and pleasant as ever; and how it fares with old George Clinton, and all the jolly Warwickshire lads. Have you all hour to spare?”

“Half a dozen, if you like,” I replied warmly, for I was greatly taken with the frank manly tone of the young man, whom I had last known as a conceited, frivolous coxcomb. “Half a dozen. Shall we walk?”

“I will not tax your kindness so long,” replied Oakley; “and as for walking,” he added, glancing from the silver stripe upon his sleeve, indicative of his non-commissioned rank, to my suit of civilian broadcloth, “although I am by no means ashamed of my position, that is no reason for exposing you to the stare and wonder of your English acquaintances, by parading in your company the public promenade. So, if you have no objection, we will step up here. The place is respectable; but unfrequented, I dare say, by any you know.”