Chapter III (1)

Twice has Mr Warren de Fitzalbert closed a chapter for us, and put us under lasting obligation. Fain would we introduce that very important personage to the reader's more particular acquaintance; fain describe the fascinating form, the inimitable grace, that won all hearts, and captivated, more particularly, every female eye. But, alas! intimacy is forbidden. A mystery has attached itself to his life, with which we are bound to invest his person at the present writing. We cannot promise one syllable from his eloquent lips, or even one glimpse at his dashing exterior. As for referring you, gentle reader, to the home of Mr de Fitzalbert, the thing's absurd upon the very face. Home he has none, unless Peele's coffeehouse; and all the _Bears_ of Holborn, blue, black, and white, to which his letters are directed, assert the sacred designation. Let us hasten back to Messrs Moses. Mr Methusaleh had not been more successful in his attempt to catch a sight of the secretary of state than other people. When Aby heard the double knock, he darted like an arrow from his parent's arms, in order to prevent the entrance of his friend, and to remove him from all possible contact with the astute and too persuasive Moses, senior. In vain did the latter gentleman rush to the window, and, by every soft endearment, seek to call back the retreating forms of Aby and Fitzalbert, now arm-in-arm, making for the corner of the street, and about to turn it. One was unconscious of the voice--the other heard it, and defied it. What passed between father and son, when the latter returned at night, I cannot say; but they were up betimes the following morning, and much excited, whilst they partook together of their morning meal.

"It's no good trying," said the elder gentleman. "I can't eat, Aby, do vot I vill. I'm so delighted with your earthly prospects, and your dootiful behaviour, that my appetite's clean gone."

"Don't distress yourself on that account," said Aby, "I've appetite for two."

"You always had, my dear," replied the sire; "and vot a blessing it'll be to gratify it at your own expense. I never begrudged you, my boy, any victuals as I had in the house, and the thought of that ere vill be a great consolation to me on my death-bed."

"What's o'clock, father?"

"Nine, my dear."

"It's getting on. Only think that at twelve o'clock to-day I shall have entered into another sphere of existence."

"It's very vunderful," said Methusaleh.

"It's one of those dispensations, father, that comes like great actors, once in a thousand years."

Mr Moses, senior, drew from his pocket a dirty cotton handkerchief, and applied it to his eyes.

"Oh, Aby," said he, in a snivelling tone, "if your mother vos but alive to see it. But, tank God, my dear, she's out of this vicked vorld of sorrow and trouble. But let's talk of business," he added, in a livelier tone. "This is a serious affair, my boy. I hope you'll take care of your place, ven you gets it."

"Trust me for that, Septuagenarian," replied the son.

"Votever you does, do it cleverly, and don't be found out. Dere's a mint of money to be made in more vays than one. If your friends vant cash, bring 'em to me. I'll allow you handsome."

"Have you got the three hundred ready, father?"

"Here it is, Aby," replied Methusaleh, holding up three bank-notes of a hundred each. "Now you know, my dear, vot ve're to do exactly; ve may, after all, be done in this 'ere business, although I own it doesn't look like it. Still ve can't be too cautious in our proceedings. You remember, my boy, that ven you gives de nobleman his money, you takes his receipt. The cheque for the balance you'll keep in your pocket till you get the appintment. I goes vith you, and shtays outside the other side of the vay. If any thing goes wrong, you have only to come to the street door, and take off your hat, that vill be quite enough for me; I'll rush in directly, and do vot's necessary."

"Father," said Aby, in a tone of reproof, "your notions of gentlemen's conduct is so disgusting, that I can't help despising you, and giving the honour of my birth to some other individual. No son of your's could be elevated in his ideas. I defy him."

"Never mind, my boy, do as you are bid. You're very clever, I own, but you have a deal to larn yet."

In this and similar conversation, time passed until the clock struck eleven, and warned father and son of the approaching crisis. At half-past eleven precisely they quitted their common habitation, and were already on the road. The old gentleman had made no alteration in his primitive attire. Even on the day which was about to prove so eventful to the family history, he sallied forth with the same lofty contempt of conventionalities that had characterised his very long career. How different the elated and aspiring heir of Moses! No wonder he spurned with indignation the offer of his seedy parent's arm. No wonder he walked a few paces before him, and assumed that unconcerned and vacant air which should assure all passengers of his being quite alone in the public thoroughfare both in person and in thought. Aby had been intensely persevering at his morning toilet. The grease of a young bear had been expended on his woolly head; the jewellery of a Mosaic firm scattered over his lanky personality. He wore a tightly-fitting light blue coat with frogs; a yellow satin waistcoat with a stripe of blue beneath; a massive cravat of real cotton velvet, held down by gilt studs; military trousers, and shining leather boots; spurs were on the latter, and a whip was in his hand. Part of the face was very clean; but by some law of nature the dirt that had retreated from one spot had affectionately attached itself to another. The cheeks were unexceptionable for Aby; but beneath the eyes and around the ears, and below the chin, the happy youth might still indulge his native love of grime. It is not the custom for historians to describe the inner clothing of their heroes. We are spared much pain in consequence.

At three minutes to twelve the worthies found themselves over against the Salisbury Hotel in Oxford Street. The agitation of the happy youth was visible; but the more experienced sire was admirably cool.

"There's the money, Aby," said he, handing over the three hundred pounds. "Be a man, and do the business cleverly. Don't be done out of the cash, and keep vide avake. If you've the slightest suspicion, rush to the door and pull off your hat. I shall look out for the signal. Don't think of me. I can take care of myself. Dere, listen, the clock's striking. Now go, my boy, and God bless you!"

True enough, the clock was sounding. Aby heard the last stroke of twelve, and then to leap across the road, and to bound into the house, was the work of an instant.

Now, although Mr Methusaleh Moses was, as we have said, admirably cool up to the moment of parting with his money, it by no means follows that he was equally at his ease after that painful operation had been performed. Avaricious and greedy, Methusaleh could risk a great deal upon the chance of great gains, and would have parted with ten times three hundred pounds to secure the profits which, as it seemed to him, were likely to result from the important business on hand. He could be extravagant in promising speculations, although he denied himself ordinary comforts at his hearth. Strange feelings possessed him, however, as his son tore from him, and disappeared in the hotel. The money was out of his pocket, and in an instant might find itself in the pocket of another without an adequate consideration. Dismal reflection! Mr Methusaleh looked up to one of the hotel windows to get rid of it. The boy was inexperienced, and might be in the hands of sharpers, who would rub their hands and chuckle again at having done the "knowing Jew." Excruciating thought! Mr Methusaleh visibly perspired as it came and went. The boy himself was hardly to be trusted. He had been the plague of Mr Methusaleh's life since the hour of his birth--was full of tricks, and might have schemes to defraud his natural parent of his hard-earned cash, like any stranger to his blood or tribe. As this suspicion crossed the old man's brain, he clenched his fist unconsciously, and gnashed his teeth, and knit his brow, and felt as murderers feel when the hot blood is rampant, and gives a tone of justice to the foulest crime. A quarter of an hour passed in this distressing emotion. Mr Methusaleh would have sworn it was an hour, if he had not looked at his watch. Not for one moment had he withdrawn his eager vision from that banging door, which opened and shut at every minute, admitting and sending forth many human shapes, but not the one he longed yet feared to see. The old man's eyes ached with the strain, and wearying anxiety. One good hour elapsed, and there stood Mr Moses. He was sure his boy was still in the house. He had watched every face closely that had entered and issued. Could he have mistaken Aby? Impossible! I would have given a great deal to read the history of the old man's mind during that agitated sixty minutes! I believe he could have called to recollection every form that had passed either into or out of the hotel, all the time that he had been on duty. How he watched and scanned some faces! One or two looked sweetly and satisfactorily ingenuous--the very men to spend money faster than they could get it, and to need the benevolent aid that Mr Moses was ready to afford them. Methusaleh's spirits and confidence rose tremendously at such appearances. One after the other was silently pronounced "the real Lord Downy." Then came two or three sinister visages--faces half muffled up, with educated features, small cunning eyes, and perhaps green spectacles--conspirators every one--villains who had evidently conspired to reduce Mr Moses's balance at his banker's, and to get fat at his expense. Down went the spirits faster than they had mounted. The head, as well as eyes of Mr Moses, now was aching.

His troubles grew complicated. Have we said that the general appearance of Mr Moses, senior, was such as not to inspire immediate confidence on the part of mankind in general, and police-officers in particular? It should have been mentioned. The extraordinary conduct of the agitated little gentleman had not failed to call forth the attention and subsequent remarks of those who have charge of the public peace. First, he was asked, "What business he had there?" Then he was requested "to move on." What a request to make at such a moment! _Move on!_ Would that thoughtless policeman have given Mr Moses three hundred precious sovereigns to put himself in locomotion? Not he. Then came two or three mysterious individuals, travellers apparently from the east, with long beards, heavy bags on their backs, and sonorous voices, who had evidently letters of introduction to Methusaleh, for they deposited their burdens before him as they passed, and entered with him into friendly conversation, or rather sought to do so; for he was proof against temptation, and, for the first time in his life, not to be charmed by any eastern talk of "first-rate bargains," and victories obtained, by guile, over Christian butlers and such like serving-men. The more the strangers surrounded him, the more he bobbed his head, and fixed his piercing eye upon the door that wrought him so much agony.

An hour and a half! Exactly thirty minutes later than the time prescribed by Aby! Oh, foolish old man, to part with his money! He turned pale as death with inward grief, and resolved to wait no longer for the faithless child. Not faithless, old Methusaleh--for, look again! The old man rubs his eyes, and can't believe them. He has watched so long in vain for that form, that he believes his disordered vision now creates it. But he deceives himself. Aby indeed appears. His hands are a hundred miles away from his hat, and a smile sits on the surface of his countenance. "Oh, he has done the trick! Brave boy, good child!" A respectable gentleman is at his side. Methusaleh does not know him, but the reader recognises that much-to-be-pitied personage, Lord Downy. Oh, how greedily Methusaleh watches them both! "Capital boy, an out-and-outer." Mr Moses "vishes he may die" if he isn't. But, suddenly, the arm and hand of the youth is raised. Old Moses' heart is in his mouth in no time. He prepares to run to his child's assistance; but the hand stops midway between the waistcoat and the hat, and--hails a cab. Lord Downy enters the vehicle; Aby follows, and away it drives. Methusaleh's cab is off the stand quite as quickly. "Follow dat cab to h--l, my man!" says he; jumps in, and never loses sight of number forty-five.

Number forty-five proceeded leisurely down Regent Street; along Charing Cross, and Parliament Street, until it arrived at a quiet street in Westminster, at the corner of which it stopped. Close behind it, pulled up the vehicle of old Methusaleh. Lord Downy and Aby entered a house within a few yards of it, and, immediately opposite, the indefatigable sire once more took up his position. Here, with a calm and happy spirit, the venerable Moses reflected on the past and future--made plans of retiring from business, and of living, with his fortunate Aby, in rural luxury and ease, and congratulated himself on the moral training he had given his son, and which had no doubt led to his present noble eminence. During this happy reverie there appeared at the door of the house in which the Moses family were at present interested, a man of fashionable exterior--a baronet at the very least. He had a martial air and bushy whiskers--his movements all the ease of nature added to the grace of art. The plebeian Moses felt an involuntary respect for the august presence, and, in the full gladness of his heart, took off his hat in humble reverence. We promised the reader one glimpse of the incomparable Warren de Fitzalbert. He has obtained it. That mysterious individual acknowledges the salutation of the Hebrew, and, smiling on him graciously, passes on. Methusaleh rubs his hands, and has a foretaste of his coming dignity.

Another ten minutes of unmingled joy, and Aby is at the door. His carefully combed hair is all dishevelled; his limbs are shaking; his cheeks bloodless; and, oh, worse than all, the fatal hat is wildly waving in the air! Methusaleh is struck with a thunderbolt; but he is stunned for an instant only. He dashes across the road, seizes his lawfully begotten by the throat, and drags him like a log into the passage.

"Shpeak, shpeak! you blackguard, you villain!" exclaimed the man. "My money, my money!"

"Oh, father!" answered the stripling, "they have robbed us--they have taken advantage of me. I aint to blame; oh Lor'! oh Lor'!"

The little man threw his boy from him with the strength of a giant and the anger of a fiend. The unhappy Aby spun like a top into the corner of the passage.

"Show me the man," cried Methusaleh, "as has got my money. Take me to him, you fool, you ass; let me have my revenge; or I'll be the death of you."

Aby crawled away from his father, rose, and then bade his father follow him. The father did as he was directed. He ascended a few stairs, and entered a room on the first floor. The only living object he saw there was Lord Downy. His lordship was very pale, and as agitated as any of the party; but his agitation did not save him from the assaults of the defrauded Israelite. The old man had scarcely caught sight of his prey before he pounced upon him like a panther.

"What does this mean?" exclaimed his lordship, in amazement.

"My money!"

"Who are you?" said Lord Downy.

"My money!" repeated Moses, furiously. "Give me my money! Three hundred pounds--bank notes! I have got the numbers; I've stopped the payment. Give me my money!"

"Is this your son, sir?" said Lord Downy, pointing to the wretched Aby, who stood in a corner of the apartment, looking like a member of the swell mob, very sea-sick.

"Never mind him!" cried the old man, energetically. "The money is mine, not his'n. I gave it him to take up a bill. If you have seduced him here, and robbed him of it, it's transportation. I knows the law. It's the penal shettlements!"

"Good heaven, sir! What language do you hold to me?"

"Never mind my language. It vill be vorse by and by. Dis matter shall be settled before the magistrate. Come along to Bow Street!"

And so saying, Mr Moses, who all this time had held his lordship fast by the collar of his coat, urged him forwards to the door.

"I tell you, sir," said the nobleman, "whoever you may be, you are labouring under a mistake. I am not the person that you take me for. I am a peer of the realm."

"If you vos the whole House of Commons," continued Methusaleh, without relaxing his grasp, "vith Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Vellington into the pargain, you should go to Bow Street. Innoshent men aint to be robbed like tieves."

"Oh, heaven! my position! What will the world say?"

"That you're a d--d rogue, sir, and shwindled a gentleman out of his money."

"Listen to me for one moment," said Lord Downy, earnestly, "and I will accompany you whithersoever you please. Believe me, you are mistaken. If you have suffered wrong through me, I am, at least, innocent. Nevertheless, as far as I am able, justice shall be done you." Mr Moses set his prisoner at liberty. "There, sir," said he, "I am a man of peace. Give me the three hundred pounds, and I'll say no more about it."

"We are evidently playing at cross purposes," said the nobleman. "Suffer me, Mr ----," His lordship stopped.

"Oh, you knows my name well enough. It's Mr Moses."

"Then, Mr Moses," continued Lord Downy, "suffer me to tell my story, and then favour me with yours."

"Go on, sir," said Methusaleh. "Mind, vot you says vill go as evidence agin you. I don't ask you to speak. I don't vant to compromise."

"I have nothing but truth to utter. Some days ago I saw an advertisement in the newspaper, offering to advance money to gentlemen on their personal security. I answered the advertisement, and the following day received a visit from Mr Fitzalbert, the advertiser. I required a thousand pounds. He had not the money, he said, at his command; but a young friend of his, for whom, indeed, he acted as agent, would advance the sum as soon as all preliminaries were arranged. We did arrange the preliminaries, as I believe, to Mr Fitzalbert's perfect satisfaction, and this morning was appointed for a meeting and a settlement."

"Yes; but didn't you promise to get me situation," interposed Aby from the corner, in a tremulous tone.

"Hold your tongue, you fool!" exclaimed Methusaleh. "Read that letter," he continued, turning to Lord Downy, and presenting him with the note addressed to Moses, junior, by Warren de Fitzalbert. Lord Downy read it with unfeigned surprise, and shook his head when he had finished.

"It is my usual fate" he said, with a sigh. "I have fallen again into the hands of a sharper. Mr Moses, we have been both deceived. I have nothing to do with rods, blue or black. I am not able to procure for your worthy son any appointment whatever. I never engaged to do so. The letter is a lie from beginning to end, and this Mr Fitzalbert is a clever rogue and an impostor."

Mr Moses, senior, turned towards his son one of those expressive looks which Aby, in his boyhood, had always translated--"a good thrashing, my fine fellow, at the first convenient opportunity." Aby, utterly beaten by disappointment, vexation, and fear, roared like a distressed bear.

"Come, come!" said Lord Downy; "matters may not be as bad as they seem. The lad has been cruelly dealt by. I will take care to set him right. I received of your three hundred pounds this morning, Mr Moses, two hundred and fifty; the remaining fifty were secured by Mr Fitzalbert as a bonus. That sum is here. I have the most pressing necessity for it; but I feel it is not for me to retain it for another instant. Take it. I have five-and-twenty pounds more at the Salisbury hotel, which, God knows, it is almost ruin to part with, but they are yours also, if you will return with me. I give you my word I have not, at the present moment, another sixpence in the world. I have a few little matters, however, worth ten times the amount, which I beg you will hold in security, until I discharge the remaining five-and-twenty pounds. I can do no more."

"Vell, as you say, we have been both deceived by a great blackguard, and by that 'ere jackass in the corner. You've shpoken like a gentleman, vich is alvays gratifying to the feelings. To show you that I am not to be outdone in generosity, I accept your terms."

Lord Downy was not moved to tears by this disinterested conduct on the part of Mr Moses, but he gladly availed himself of any offer which would save him from exposure. A few minutes saw them driving back to Oxford Street; Methusaleh and Lord Downy occupying the inside of a cab, whilst Aby was mounted on the box. The features of the interesting youth were not visible during the journey, by reason of the tears that he shed, and the pocket-handkerchief that was held up to receive them.

A little family plate, to the value of a hundred pounds, was, after much haggling from Methusaleh, received as a pledge for the small deficiency; which, by the way, had increased since the return of the party to the Salisbury Hotel, to thirty-four pounds fifteen shillings and sixpence; Mr Moses having first left it to Lord Downy's generosity to give him what he thought proper for his trouble in the business, and finally made out an account as follows--

Commission, L.5 0 0
Loss of time, 2 0 0
Do., Aby, 2 0 0
Hire of cab, 0 15 6
---------
L.9 15 6

"I hope you thinks," said Methusaleh, packing up the plate, "that I have taken no advantage. Five hundred pounds voudn't pay me for all as I have suffered in mind this blessed day, let alone the vear and tear of body."

Lord Downy made no reply. He was heartsick. He heard upon the stairs, footsteps which he knew to belong to Mr Ireton. That gentleman, put off from day to day with difficulty and fearful bribes, was not the man to melt at the tale which his lordship had to offer instead of cash, or to put up with longer delay. His lordship threw himself into a chair, and awaited the arrival of his creditor with as much calmness as he could assume. The door opened, and Mr Mason entered. He held in his hand a letter, which had arrived by that morning's post. The writing was known. Lord Downy trembled from head to foot as he broke the seal, and read the glad tidings that met his eye. His uncle, the Earl of ----, had received his appeal, and had undertaken to discharge his debts, and to restore him to peace and happiness. The Earl of ----, a member of the government, had obtained for his erring nephew an appointment abroad, which he gave him, in the full reliance that his promise of amendment should be sacredly kept.

"It shall! it shall!" said his lordship, bursting into tears, and enjoying, for the first time in his life, the bliss of liberty. Need we say that Mr Ireton, to his great surprise, was fully satisfied, and Mr Moses in receipt of his thirty-four pounds fifteen shillings and sixpence, long before he cared to receive the money? These things need not be reported, nor need we mention how Lord Downy kept faith with his relative, and, once rid of his disreputable acquaintances, became himself a reputable and useful man.

Moses and Son dissolved their connexion upon the afternoon of that day which had risen so auspiciously for the junior member. When Methusaleh had completed the packing up of Lord Downy's family plate, he turned round and requested Aby not to sit there like a wretch, but to give his father a hand. He was not sitting there either as a wretch or in any other character. The youth had taken his opportunity to decamp. Leaving the hotel, he ran as fast as he could to the parental abode, and made himself master of such loose valuables as might be carried off, and turned at once into money. With the produce of this stolen property, Aby extravagantly purchased a passage to New South Wales. Landing at Sydney, he applied for and obtained a situation at the theatre. His face secured him all the "sentimental villains;" and his success fully entitles him, at the present moment, to be regarded as the "acknowledged hero" of "domestic (Sydney) melodrama."

VICHYANA.

No watering-place so popular in France as Vichy; in England few so little known! Our readers will therefore, we doubt not, be glad to learn something of the _sources_ and _re_sources of Vichy; and this we hope to give them, in a general way, in our present Vichyana. What further we may have to say hereafter, will be chiefly interesting to our medical friends, to whom the _waters_ of Vichy are almost as little known as they are to the public at large. The name of the town seems to admit, like its waters, of analysis; and certain grave antiquaries dismember it accordingly into two Druidical words, "Gurch" and "I;" corresponding, they tell us, to our own words, "Power" and "Water;" which, an' it be so, we see not how they can derive _Vichy_ from this source. Others, with more plausibility, hold Vichy to be a corruption of _Vicus_. That these springs were known to the Romans is indisputable; and, as they are marked _Aquæ calidæ_ in the Theodosian tables, they were, in all probability, frequented; and the word _Vicus_, Gallicised into Vichy, would then be the designation of the hamlet or watering-place raised in their neighbourhood. Two of the principal springs are close upon the river; ascertaining, with tolerable precision, not only the position of this _Vicus_, but also of the ancient bridge, which, in the time of Julius Cæsar, connected, as it now does, the town with the road on the opposite bank of the Allier, (Alduer fl.,) leading to Augusta Nemetum, or Clermont. The road on _this_ side of the bridge was then, as now, the high one (_via regia_) to Lugdunum, or Lyons.

Vichy, if modern geology be correct, was not always _thus_ a watering-place; but seems, for a long period, to have been a _place under water_. The very stones prate of Neptune's whereabouts in days of langsyne. No one who has seen what heaps of _rounded_ pebbles are gleaned from the corn-fields, or become familiar with the copious remains of _fresh water_ shells and insects, which are kneaded into the calcareous deposits a little below the surface of the soil, can help fetching back in thought an older and drearier dynasty. Vulcan here, as in the Phlegrian and Avernian plains, succeeded with great labour, and not without reiterated struggles, in wresting the region from his uncle, and proved himself the better earth-shaker of the two; first, by means of subterranean fires, he threw up a great many small islands, which, rising at his bidding, as thick as mushrooms after a thunder-storm, broke up the continuous expanse of water into lakes; and by continual perseverance in this plan, he at last rescued the _whole_ plain from his antagonist, who, marshaling his remaining forces into a narrow file, was fain to retreat under the high banks of the Allier, and to evacuate a large tract of country, which had been his own for many centuries.

NATURAL HISTORY, &c.

The natural history of Vichy--that is, so much of it as those who are not naturalists will care to know--is given in a few sentences. Its Fauna contains but few kinds of quadrupeds, and no great variety of birds; amongst reptiles again, while snakes abound as to number, the variety of species is small. You see but few fish at market or at table; and a like deficiency of land and fresh water mollusks is observable; while, in compensation for all these deficiencies, and in consequence, no doubt, of some of them, insects abound. So great, indeed, is the superfoetation of these tribes, that the most unwearying collector will find, all the summer through, abundant employment for his _two_ nets. If the Fauna, immediately around Vichy, must be conceded to be small, her Flora, till recently, was much more copious and interesting; _was_--since an improved agriculture, here as every where, has rooted out, in its progress, many of the original occupants of the ground, and colonized it with others--training hollyhocks and formal sunflowers to supplant pretty Polygalas and soft Eufrasies; and instructing Ceres so to fill the open country with her standing armies, that Flora, _outbearded_ in the plain, should retire for shelter to the hills, where she now holds her court. Spring sets in early at Vichy; sometimes in the midst of _February_ the surface of the hills is already hoar with almond blossoms. Early in April, anemones and veronicas dapple the greensward; and the willows, deceived by the promise of warm weather, which is not to last, put forth their _blossoms_ prematurely, and a month later put forth _their leaves_ to weep over them. By the time May has arrived, the last rude easterly gale, so prevalent here during the winter months, has swept by, and there is to be no more cold weather; tepid showers vivify the ground, an exuberant botany begins and continues to make daily claims both on your notice and on your memory; and so on till the swallows are gone, till the solitary _tree aster_ has announced October, and till the pale petals of the autumnal colchicum begin to appear; a month after Gouts and Rheumatisms, for which they grow, have left Vichy and are returned to Paris for the winter. We arrived long before this, in the midst of the butterfly month of July. It was warm enough then for a more southern summer, and both insect and vegetable life seemed at their acme. The flowers, even while the scythes were gleaming that were shortly to unfound their several pretensions in that leveller of all distinctions, _Hay_, made great muster, as if it had been for some horticultural show-day. Amongst then we particularly noticed the purple orchis and the honied daffodil, fly-swarming and bee-beset, and the stately thistle, burnished with many a _panting goldfinch_, resting momentarily from his butterfly hunt, and clinging timidly to the slender stem that bent under him. Close to the river were an immense number of _yellow_ lilies, who had placed themselves there for the sake, as it seemed, of trying the effect of _hydropathy_ in improving their _complexions_. But what was most striking to the eye was the appearance of the immense white flowers (whitened sepulchres) of the _Datura strammonium_, growing high out of the shingles of the river; and on this same Seriphus, outlawed from the more gentle haunts of their innocuous brethren, congregated his associates, the other prisoners, of whom, both from his size and bearing, he is here the chief!

THE CONTRAST.

What a change from the plains of Latium!-a change as imposing in its larger and more characteristic features, as it is curious in its minutest details; and who that has witnessed the return of six summers calling into life the rank verdure of the Colosseum, can fail to contrast these jocund revels of the advancing year in this gay region of France, with the blazing Italian summers, coming forth with no other herald or attendant than the gloomy green of the "_hated_ cypress," and the unrelieved glare of the interminable Campagna? Bright, indeed, was that Italian heaven, and deep beyond all language was its blue; but the spirit of transitory and changeable creatures is quelled and overmastered by this permanent and immutable scene! It is like the contrast between the dappled sky of cheerful morning, when eye and ear are on the alert to catch any transitory gleam and to welcome each distant echo, and the awful immovable stillness of noon, when Pan is sleeping, and will be wroth if he is awakened, when the whole life of nature is still, and we look down shuddering into its unfathomable depth! Standing on the heights of Tusculum, or on the sacred pavement of the Latian Jupiter, every glance we send forth into the objects around us, returns laden with matter to cherish forebodings and despondencies. The ruins speak of an immovable past, the teeming growths which mantle them, the abundant source of future malaria, of a destructive future, and _activity_, the only spell by which we can evoke the cheerful spirit of the present--activity within us, or around us, there is _none_. What wonder if we now feel as though the weight of all those grim ruins had been heaved from off the mind, and left it buoyant and eager to greet the present as though we were but the creatures of it! Whatever denizen of the vegetable or the animal kingdom we were familiar with in Italy and miss hereabouts, is replaced by some more cheerful race. What a _variety_ of trees! and how various their _shades_ of green! Though not equal to thy pines, Pamfili, and to thy fair cypresses, Borghese, whose feet lie cushioned in crocuses and anemones, yet a fine tree is the poplar; and yonder, extending for a couple of miles, is an avenue of their stateliest masts. The leaves of those nearest to us are put into a tremulous movement by a breeze too feeble for our skins to feel it; and as the rustling foliage from above gently _purrs_ as instinct with life from _within_, this peculiar sound comes back to us like a voice we have heard and forgotten. No "marble wilderness" or olive-darkened upland, no dilapidated "Osterie," famine within doors and fever without, here press desolation into the service of the picturesque. Neither here have we those huge masses of arched brickwork, consolidated with Roman cement, pierced by wild fig-trees, crowned with pink valerians or acanthus, and giving issue to companies of those gloomy funeral-paced insects of the _Melasome_ family, (the Avis, the Pimelia, and the Blaps,) whose dress is _deep mourning_, and whose favoured haunt is the tomb! But in their place, a richly endowed, thickly inhabited plain, filled with cottages and their gardens, farms and their appurtenances, ponds screaming with dog-defying geese, and barnyards commingling all the mixed noises of their live stock together. Encampments of ants dressed out in uniforms quite unlike those worn by the _Formicary_ legions in Italy; gossamer cradles nursing progenies of _our Cisalpine_ caterpillars, and spiders with new arrangements of their _eight pairs of eyes_, forming new arrangements of meshes, and _hunting_ new flies, are here. Here too, once again, we behold, not without emotion, (for, _small_ as he is, this creature has conjured up to us former scenes and associations of eight years ago,) that tiny light-blue butterfly, that hovers over our ripening corn, and is not known but as a stranger, in the south; also, that minute diamond beetle[1] who always plays at bo-peep with you from behind the leaves of his favourite hazel, and the burnished corslet and metallic elytra of the pungent unsavoury _gold beetle_;[2] while we miss the _grillus_ that leaps from hedge to hedge; the thirsty dragon-fly, restless and rustling on his silver wings; the hoarse cicadæ, whose "time-honoured" noise you _durst_ not find fault with, even if you would, and which you come insensibly to like; and that huge long-bodied hornet,[3] that angry and terrible disturber of the peace, borne on wings, as it were, of the wind, and darting through space like a meteor!

MISCELLANEA.

Though the "Flora" round about Vichy be, as we have said it is, very rich and various, it attracts no attention. The fat Boeotian cattle that feed upon it, look upon and _ruminate_ with more complacency over it than the ordinary visitors of the place. The only flowers the ladies cultivate an acquaintance with, are those manufactured in Paris; _artificial_ passion flowers, and false "forget-me-nots," which are about as true to nature as they that wear them. Of fruits every body is a judge; and those of a sub-acid kind--the only ones permitted by the doctors to the patients--are in great request. Foremost amongst them, after the month of June, are to be reckoned the dainty fresh-dried fruits from Clermont; of which, again, the prepared pulp of the mealy wild apricot of the district is the best. This _pâté d'abricot_ is justly considered by the French one of the best _friandises_ they have, and is not only sold in every _department_ there, but finds its way to England also. Eaten, as we ate it, fresh from Clermont twice a-week, it is soft and pulpy; but soon becoming candied, loses much of its fruity flavour, and is converted into a sweetmeat.

We should not, in speaking of Vichy to a friend, ever designate it as a _comfortable_ resort for a family; which, according to our English notion of the thing, implies both privacy and detachment. Here you can have neither. You must consider yourself as so much public property, must do what others do--_i. e._ live in public, and make the best of it. No place can be better off for hotels, and few so ill off for lodgings--the latter are only to be had in small dingy houses opening upon the street. They are, of course, very noisy; nor are the let-ters of them at any pains to induce you by the modesty of their demands to drop a veil over this defect. Defect, quotha! say, rather misery, plague, torture. Can any word be an over-exaggeration for an incessant _tintamare_, of which dogs, ducks, and drums are the leading instruments, enough to try the most patient ears? The hotels begin to receive candidates for the waters in May; but the season is reputed not to commence till a month later, and ends with September. During this period, many thousand visitors, including some of the ministers of the day; a royal duke; half the Institute; poets, a few; _hommes des lettres_, many; _agents de change_, most of all; deputies, wits, and dandies; in fact, all the _élite_, both of Paris and of the provinces, pay the same sum of seven francs per man, per diem; and, with the exception of the duke, assemble, not to say fraternize, at the same table. But though the guests be not formal, the "Mall," where every body walks, is extremely so. A very broad right-angled [**] intersected by broad staring paths, cut across by others into smaller squares, compels you either to be for ever throwing off at right angles to your course, or to turn out of the enclosure. When the proclamation for the opening of the season has been _tamboured_ through the streets--with the doctors rests the announcement of the day--immediately orders are issued for clean _shaving_ the grass-plats, lopping off redundant branches, to recall the growth of trees to sound orthopedic principles, and to reduce that wilderness of impertinent forms, wherewith nature has disfigured her own productions, into the figures of pure geometry! Hither, into this out-of-doors drawing-room, at the fashionable hour of four P.M., are poured out, from the _embouchures_ of all the hotels, all the inhabitants of them; all the tailor's gentlemen of the Boulevard des Italiens, and all the _modisterie_ of the Tuileries.

OUR AMUSEMENTS.

Pair by pair, as you see them _costumés_ in the fashions of the month; pinioned arm to arm, but looking different ways; leaning upon polished reeds as light and as expensive as themselves--behold the chivalry of the land! The hand of _Barde_ is discernible in their _paletots_. The spirit of _Staub_ hovers over those _flowery waistcoats_; who but _Sahoski_ shall claim the curious felicity of _those heels_? and Hippolyte has come bodily from Paris on purpose to do their hair. "_Un sot trouve toujours un plus sot qui l'admire_," says Boileau, and here, in supply exactly equal to the demand, come forth, rustling and _bustling_ to see them, bevies of long-tongued belles, who ever, as they walk and meet their acquaintance, are announcing themselves in swift alternation "_charmées_," with a blank face, and "_toutes desolées_," with the _best good-will_! Here you learn to value a red riband at its "juste prix," which is just what it will fetch per ell; specimens of it in button-holes being as frequent as poppies amidst the corn. Pretending to hide themselves from remark, which they intend but to provoke, here public characters do private theatricals _a little à l'écart_. Actors gesticulate as they rehearse their parts under the trees. Poets

"Rave and recite, and madden as they stand;"

and honourable members read aloud from the _Débats_ that has just arrived, the speech which they spoke yesterday "_en Deputés_." Our promenade here lacks but a few more Saxon faces amidst the crowd, and a greater latitude of extravagance in some of its costumes, to complete the illusion, and to make you imagine that this public garden, flanked as it is on one side by a street of hotels, and on the opposite by the bank of the Allier, is the Tuilleries with its Sunday population sifted.

Twenty-five francs secures you admission to the "Cercle" or club-house, a large expensive building, which, like most buildings raised to answer a variety of ends, leaves the main one of architectural propriety wholly out of account. But when it is considered how many interests and caprices the architect had to consult, it may be fairly questioned, whether, so hampered, Vitruvius could have done it better; for the _ground floor_ was to be cut up into corridors and bathing cells; while the ladies requested a ball and anteroom; and the gentlemen two "billiards" and a reading-room, with detached snuggeries for smoking--_all_ on the _first floor_.

Public places, excepting the above-mentioned "Cercle," exist not at Vichy, and as nobody thinks of paying visits save only to the doctor and the springs, "_on s'ennui très considerablement à Vichy_." If it be true, that, in some of the lighter annoyances of life, fellowship is decidedly preferable to solitude, _ennui_ comes not within the number--every attempt to divide it with one's neighbours only makes it worse; as Charles Lamb has described the _concert_ of silence at a Quakers' meeting, the intensity increases with the number, and every new accession raises the public stock of distress, which again redounds with a surplus to each individual, "_chacun en a son part, et tous l'ont tout entier_."[4] What a chorus of yawns is there; and mutual yawns, you know, are the dialogue of ennui. No wonder; for the physicians don't permit their patients to read any books but novels. They seek to array the "Understanding" against him who wrote so well concerning its laws; Bacon, as _intellectual food_, they consider difficult of digestion; and even for their own La Place there is no place at Vichy! Every unlucky headache contracted here, is placed to the account of _thinking_ in the bath. If Dr P---- suspects any of his patients of thinking, he asks them, like Mrs Malaprop, "what business they have to think?" "_Vous êtes venu ici pour prendre les eaux, et pour vous desennuyer, non pas pour penser! Que le Diable emporte la Pensée!_" And so he _does_ accordingly!

How _we_ got through the twenty-four hours of each day, is still a problem to us; after making due deductions for the time consumed in eating, drinking, and sleeping. Occasionally we tried to "_beat time_" by _versifying_ our own and our neighbours' "experiences" of Vichy. But soon finding the "_quicquid agunt homines_" of those who in fact did nothing, was beyond our powers of _description_, gave up, as abortive, the attempt to maintain our "suspended animation" on means so artificial and precarious. When little is to be told, few words will suffice. If the word fisherman be derived from _fishing_, and not from _fish_, we had a great many such fishermen at Vichy; who, though they could neither scour a worm, nor splice the rod that their clumsiness had broken, nor dub a fly, nor land a fish of a pound weight, if any such had had the mind to try them, were vain enough to beset the banks of the Allier at a very early hour in the morning. As they all fished with "flying lines," in order to escape the fine imposed on those that are _shotted_, and seemed to prefer standing in their own light--a rare fault in Frenchmen--with their backs to the sun; the reader will readily understand, if he be an angler, what sport they might expect. Against them and _their lines_, we quote a few _lines_ of _our own_ spinning:--

Now full of hopes, they loose the lengthing twine,
Bait harmless hooks, and launch a _leadless_ line!
Their shadows on the stream, the sun behind--
Egregious anglers! are the fishes blind?
Gull'd by the sportings of the frisking bleak,
That now assemble, now disperse, in freak;
They see not _deeper_, where the quick-eyed trout,
Has chang'd his route, and turned him quick about;
See not those scudding shoals, that mend their pace,
Of frighten'd bream, and silvery darting dace!
Baffled at last, they quit the ungrateful shore,
Curse what they fail to catch--and fish no more!
Yet fish there be, though these unsporting wights
Affect to doubt what Rondolitier[5] writes;
Who tells, "how, moved by soft Cremona's string,
Along these banks he saw the _Allice_ spring;
Whilst active hands, t' anticipate their fall,
Spread wide their nets, and draw an ample haul."

Our sportsmen do not confine themselves to the gentle art of angling--they _shoot_ also; and some of them even acquire a sort of celebrity for the precision of their aim. This class of sportsmen may be divided into the _in_, and the _out_-door marksmen. _These_, innocuous, and confining their operations principally to small birds in trees; those, to the knocking the heads off small plaster figures from a stand. The following brief notice of _them_ we transcribe from our Vichy note-book:--

Those of bad blood, and mischievously gay,
Haunt "_tirs au pistolets_," and kill--the day!
There, where the rafters tell the frequent crack,
To fire with steady hand, acquire the knack,
From rifle barrels, twenty feet apart,
On gypsum warriors exercise their art,
Till ripe proficients, and with skill elate,
Their aimless mischief turns to deadly hate.
Perverted spirits; reckless, and unblest;
Ye slaves to lust; ye duellists profess'd;
Vainer than woman; more unclean than hogs;
Your life the felon's; and your death the dog's!
Fight on! while honour disavow your brawl,
And outraged courage disapprove the call--
Till, steep'd in guilt, the devil sees his time,
And sudden death shall close a life of crime.

In front of some of the hotels you always observe a number of persons engaged successively in throwing a ring, with which each endeavours to encircle a knife handle, on a board, stuck all over with blades. If he succeeds, he may pocket the knife; if not he pays half a franc, and is free to throw again. It is amusing to observe how many half franc pieces a Frenchman's vanity will thus permit him to part with, before he gives over, consigning the ring to its owner, and the blades to his electrical anathema of "_mille tonnerres!_" A little farther on, just beyond the enclosure, is another knot of people. What are they about? They are congregated to see what passengers embark or disembark (their voyage accomplished) from the gay vessels, the whirligigs or merry-go-rounds (which is the classical expression, let _purists_ decide _for themselves_) which, gaily painted as a Dutch humming-top, sail overhead, and go round with the rapidity of windmills.

In hopes to cheat their nation's fiend, "Ennui,"
_These_ cheat themselves, and _seem_ to go to sea!
Their galley launch'd, its rate of sailing fast,
Th' _Equator_ soon, and soon the _Poles_ they've past,
And here they come to anchorage at last!
_These_, tightly stirrupt on a wooden horse,
Ride at a ring--and spike it, as they course.
Thus with the aid that ships and horses give,
Life passes on; 'tis labour, but they live.--
And some lead "bouledogues" to the water's edge,
There hunt, _à l'Anglais_, rats amidst the sedge;
And some to "pedicures" present--their corns,
And some at open windows practise--horns!
In noisy trictrac, or in quiet whist,
These pass their time--and, to complete our list,
There are who flirt with milliners or books,
Or else with nature 'mid her meads and brooks.

But Gauthier's was our lounge, and therefore, in common gratitude, are we bound particularly to describe it. Had we been Dr Darwin we had done it better. As it is, the reader must content himself with _Scuola di Darwin_--

In Gauthier's shop, arranged in storied box
Of triple epoch, we survey the rocks,
A learned nomenclature! Behold in time
Strange forms imprison'd, forms of every clime!
The Sauras quaint, daguerrotyped on slate,
Obsolete birds and mammoths out of date;
Colossal bones, that, once before our flood,
Were clothed in flesh, and warm'd with living blood;
And tiny creatures, crumbling into dust,
All mix'd and kneaded in one common crust!
Here tempting shells exhibit mineral stores,
Of crystals bright and scintillating ores!
Of milky _mesotypes_, the various sorts,
The _blister'd silex_ and the _smoke-stain'd quartz_;
Thy _phosphates lead!_ bedeck'd with _needles green_,
Of _Elbas speculum_ the _steely sheen_,
Of _copper ores_, the poison'd "_greens_" and "_blues_,"
Dark _Bismuth's cubes_, and Chromium's _changing_ hues.

Here, too, (emblematical of our own position with respect to Ireland,) we see _silver alloyed with lead_. In the "repeal of such union," where the _silver_ has every thing to _gain_ and the _lead_ every thing to _lose_, it is remarkable at what a _very dull heat_ ('tis scarcely superior to that by which O'Connell manages to inflame Ireland) the _baser metal_ melts, and would forsake the other, by its incorporation with which it derives so large a portion of its intrinsic value, whatever that may be!

Here, too, we pass in frequent review a vast series of casts from the antique; they come from Clermont, and are produced by the dripping of water, strongly impregnated with the carbonate of lime, on moulds placed under it with this view. Some of these impressions were coarse and rusty, owing to the presence of iron in the water; but where the necessary precautions had been taken to precipitate this, the casts came out with a highly polished surface, together with a sharpness of outline and a precision of detail, that left no room for competition to _Odellis_, else unrivalled Roman casts, which, confronted with these, look like impressions of impressions derived through a hundred successive stages; add, too, that these have the _solid_ advantage over the others of being in marble in place of washed sulphur.

Thus much concerning _us_ and _our_ pastimes, from which it will have appeared that the _gentlemen_ at Vichy pass half the day in _nothings_, the other half _in nothing_. As to the ladies, who lead the same kind of out doors life with us, and only don't smoke or play billiards, we see and note as much of their occupations or listlessness as we list.

In unzoned robes, and loosest dishabille,
They show the world they've nothing to conceal!
But sit abstracted in their own _George Sand_,
And dote on Vice in sentiment so bland!
To necklaced Pug appropriate a chair,
Or sit alone, _knit_, _shepherdise_, and _stare!_
These seek _for fashion_ in a _mourning dress_,
(_Becoming_ mourning makes affliction less.)
With mincing manner, both of ton and town,
Some lead their _Brigand_ children up and down;
Invite attention to small girls and boys,
Dress'd up like dolls, a silly mother's toys;
Or follow'd by their _Bonne, in Norman cap_,
Affect to take their first-born to their lap--
To gaze enraptured, think you, on a face,
In which a husband's lineaments they trace?
Smiling, to win the notice of their elf?
No! but to draw the gaze of crowds on _Self_.

Sunday, which is always in France a _jour de fête_, and a _jour de bal_ into the bargain, is kept at Vichy, and in its neighbourhood, with great apparent gaiety and enjoyment by the lower orders, who unite their several _arrondissements_, and congregate here together.