Chapter VI: Act V (1)

In the first scene of this act the _apparent_ and the _real_ are inexplicably mingled together. Lady Macbeth “receives, at once, the benefit of sleep, and does the effects of watching,” which the doctor pronounces “a great perturbation in nature.” Her eyes are open, but their _sense_ is shut; and she _seems_ to wash her hands. Though she is now under the dominion of an awakened conscience, the _formality_ of her nature still displays itself. “Fie, my lord, fie!” she exclaims, “a soldier, and afeard? _What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?_” The Doctor, however, is cautious about drawing conclusions even from _such_ appearances, and remarks that he has known those which have walked in their sleep, who have died holily in their beds. The reader will readily perceive other illustrations of the theme in this scene, in which for the first time Lady Macbeth appears stripped of the mask of ceremony. We are permitted to see the workings of her mind, and the beating of her heart, when her conscience is emancipated from the control of her formal habits and her stern will.

The next scene, which is a very short one, contains several allusions to the _unsubstantial_ nature of Macbeth’s power.

Those he commands move only in command,
Nothing in love, etc.

In the 3d Scene Macbeth still relies on the promises of the weird sisters. He interprets the _look_ of the “cream-faced loon” as indicative of alarming news; and then falls into that memorable train of reflection on his “way of life,” and the _emptiness_ of all his honors—which everybody knows by heart and can at once apply to the theme. In his answer to the Doctor, who tells him of Lady Macbeth’s “thick-coming fancies,” the remedies he proposes, are, it will be observed, adapted to the _unsubstantial_ character of the disease; the troubles of the brain are to be “razed out,” and the stuffed bosom cleansed with “some sweet oblivious antidote.” On the other hand, when he asks the Doctor to “scour the English hence,” he suggests the use of rhubarb, or senna, which, indeed, at first sight, strikes one as very _appropriate_ remedies.

In the 4th Scene, the soldiers are made to hew down boughs in Birnam wood, in order to conceal their numbers; thus giving a _literal_ construction to the language of the weird sisters.

Scene 5th. Macbeth now trusts to the strength of his castle, and _proclaims_ his confidence by ordering his banners to be hung on the outward walls. When he hears the cry of women, he comments on the _effect of custom_.

I have almost forgot the taste of fears.
. . . . . . .
Direness, _familiar_ to my slaughterous thoughts,
Can not once start.

When told of the queen’s death, he says it is _unseasonable_: “she should have died hereafter;” and his reflections on life have the same relation to the theme as those on his “way of life” in Scene 3d.

It is a tale
Told by an idiot, _full of sound and fury_,
_Signifying nothing_.

He is now told that Birnam wood is coming to Dunsinane; and the rock on which he has heretofore stood so firmly begins to crumble beneath his feet. He begins to pall in resolution, and to “doubt the equivocation of the fiend, that _lies like truth_.”

Scene 6th contains less than a dozen lines. The soldiers throw away their leafy screens, and show their true strength.

In the next and last scene the remaining promise of the weird sisters is literally kept to the ear, but “broken to the hope”—for it turns out that Macduff was _not_ of woman born. The force of professional habit appears in old Siward’s conduct on hearing of the death of his son. “Had he his hurts before?” he asks; and, being satisfied on that point, ceases to mourn for him. Finally, _ceremony_ is employed by Malcolm in rewarding _substantial merit_; his thanes and kinsmen are created earls; and all other proper forms observed “in measure, time, and place.”

The reader will readily perceive that different aspects of the theme predominate in the several stages of the play; and if these stages seem somewhat irregular, it must be borne in mind that the present division into acts and scenes was not the work of Shakspeare, but of his editors.

In Macbeth we see a perpetual conflict between the _real_ nature of man, and the _assumed_ character of the usurper. He is “full o’ the milk of human kindness;” loves truth and sincerity; and sets a high value on the good opinions and the sincere friendship of others. But he is also ambitious; he is urged forward by the demoniac spirit of his wife, and entangled in the snare of the weird sisters. Under these influences he endeavors to play the part of a remorseless tyrant; but his kindlier nature is constantly breaking out; and though he strives so hard to maintain his _assumed_ character, that he at length refuses to “scan” his deeds until they have been “acted,” yet we find him in the height of his power mournfully regretting his own blood-guiltiness, and the _hollow-heartedness_ of all around him.

But there is nothing of this _spirituality_ in the character of Lady Macbeth. Her ambition is satisfied with the _name_ of queen, and she cares not whether the obedience of her followers is constrained or voluntary, whether their love is feigned or real. Remorse has no power over her except when she is asleep; and even old Shylock—whose whole character, as has been well said, is a _dead letter_—might, perhaps, betray similar emotions, if one could see him thus off his guard.

If the reader of this play should ever be tempted to the commission of crime for the sake of ambition, let him remember the air-drawn dagger, and the ghost of Banquo; if in danger of being seduced by the specious appearance of vice, let him remember the equivocation of the fiends; if lured by the hope that success will gild o’er the offense and “trammel up the consequence,” let him think of Macbeth’s withered heart after he had won the crown and sceptre; and finally, if he imagine that he can so school his passions and harden his nature that remorse will have no power over him, let him contemplate Lady Macbeth walking in her sleep. Whereever he turns, he will find, in all the incidents of this play, the same great lesson, that “the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.”

* * * * *

ODE.

BY R. H. STODDARD.

The days are growing chill, the Summer stands
Drooping, like Niobe with clasped hands,
Mute o’er the faded flowers, her children lost,
Slain by the arrows of the early frost!
The clouded Heaven above is pale and gray,
The misty Earth below is wan and drear,
And baying Winds chase all the leaves away,
As cruel hounds pursue the trembling deer,
And in the nipping morns, the ice around,
Lieth like Autumn’s gage defiant on the ground!

My heart is sick within me, I have toiled
In iron poverty and hopeless tears,
Tugging in fetters at the oar for years;
And wrestling in the ring of Life have soiled
My robes with dust, and strained my sinews sore;
I have no strength to struggle any more!
And what if I should perish?—none would miss
So strange a dreamer in a world like this—
Whate’er our beauty, worth, or loving powers,
We live, we strive, we die, and are forgot;
We are no more regarded than the flowers;
And death and darkness is our destined lot!
One bud from off the tree of Earth is naught,
One crude fruit from the ripening bough of Thought,
The hinds will ne’er lament, in harvest-time,
The bud, the fruit that fell and wasted in its prime!

Away with Action! ’tis the ban of Time,
The curse that clung to us from Eden’s gate;
We toil, and strain and tug from youth’s fair prime,
And drag a chain for years, a weary weight!
Away with Action and Laborious Life;
They were not made for man,
In Nature’s plan,
For man is made for quiet, not for strife.
The pearl is shaped serenely in its shell
In the still waters of the ocean deep;
The buried seed begins to pulp and swell
In Earth’s warm bosom in profoundest sleep;
And, sweeter far than all, the bridal rose
Flushes to fullness in a soft repose.
Let others gather honey in the world,
And hoard it in their cells until they die;
I am content in dreaminess to lie,
Sipping, in summer hours,
My wants from fading flowers,
An Epicurean till my wings are furled!

What happy hours! what happy, happy days
I spent when I was young, a careless boy;
Oblivious of the world—its wo or joy—
I lived for song, and dreamed of budding bays!
I thought when I was dead, if not before—
(I hoped before!)—to have a noble name
To leave my eager foot-prints on the shore
And rear my statue in the halls of Fame!—
I pondered o’er the Poets dead of old,
Their memories living in the minds of men;—
I knew they were but men of mortal mould,
They won their crowns, and I might win again.
I drank delicious vintage from their pages,
Flasks of Parnassian nectar, stored for ages;
My soul was flushed within me, maddened, fired,
I leaped impassioned, like a seer inspired;
I lived, and would have died for Poesy,
In youth’s divine emotion—
A stream that sought its ocean;
A Time that longed to be
Engulfed, and swallowed in a calm Eternity!

Had I a realm in some enchanted zone,
Some fadeless summer-land, I’d dwell alone,
Far from the little world, luxurious, free,
And woo the dainty damsel Poesy!
I’d loll on downy couches all the day,
And dream the heavy-wingéd hours away:
Reading my antique books, or framing songs,
Whose choiceness to an earlier age belongs,
Or else a loving maid, in gentle fear,
Would steal to me, from her pavilion near,
And kneel before me with a cup of wine,
Three centuries old, and I would sip and taste,
With long-delaying lips a draught divine;
And, peering o’er the brim in her blue eyes
Slow-misting, and voluptuous, she would rise,
And stoop to me, and I would clasp her waist,
And kiss her mouth, and shake her hanging curls—
And in her coy despite undo her zone of pearls!

Oh, Poesy! my spirits crownéd queen,
I would that thou couldst in the flesh be seen
The shape of perfect loveliness thou art
Enshrined within the chambers of my heart!
I would build thee a palace, richer far
Than princely Aladeen’s renowned of old;
Its walls and columns of the massiest gold,
And every gem encrusting it a star!
Thy throne should be an Alp, o’ercanopied
With rainbows, and a shielded Moon o’erhead;
Thy coffers should o’erflow, and mock the Ind,
Whose boasted wealth would dwindle into naught
The rich-ored driftings of the streams of Thought
Washed lucidly from cloven peaks of Mind!—
And I would bring to thee the daintiest things
That grow beneath the summer of thy wings;—
Wine from the Grecian vineyards, pressed with care,
Brimming in cups antique, and goblets rare,
And sweeter honey than the singing bees
Of Helios ever gathered on the leas
Olympian, distilled from asphodels,
Whose lucent nectar truckles from their cells!
And luscious fruitage of enchanted trees,
The peerless apples of the Hesperides,
Stolen by Fancy from the guardant Fates,
Served, by a Nubian slave, on golden plates!
And I would hang around thee day and night,
Nor ever heed, or know the night from day;
If Time had wings, I should not see his flight,
Or feel his shadow in my sunny way!
Forgetful of the world, I’d stand apart,
And gaze on thee unseen, and touch my lute,
Sweet-voiced, a type and image of my heart,
Whose trembling chords will never more be mute;
And Joy and Grief would mingle in my theme,
A swan and shadow floating down a stream!
And when thou didst in soft disdain, or mirth,
Descend thy throne and walk the common earth,
I would, in brave array, precede thee round,
With pomp and pageantry and music sweet,
And spread my shining mantle on the ground,
For fear the dust should soil thy golden-sandaled feet!

Away! away! the days are dim and cold,
The withered flowers are crumbling in the mould,
The Heaven is gray and blank, the Earth is drear,
And fallen leaves are heaped on Summer’s bier!
Sweet songs are out of place, however sweet,
When all things else are wrapt in funeral gloom,
True Poets never pipe to dancing feet,
But only elegies around a tomb!
Away with fancy now, the Year demands
A sterner chaplet, and a deeper lay,
A wreath of cypress woven with pious hands,
A dirge for its decay!

* * * * *

LINES IN MEMORY OF MY LOST CHILD.

BY GEORGE D. PRENTICE.

My child! my dear, lost child! a father’s heart,
Touched by the holy wand of memory,
Would in this hour of loneliness and gloom,
When not a sound is borne upon the air,
And not a star is visible in heaven,
Hold sweet communion with thy soul.
My boy!
Thou wast most beautiful. I never looked
On thee but with a heart of pride. Thy curls
Fell o’er a brow of angel-loveliness,
And thy dark eyes, dark as the midnight cloud,
And soft as twilight waters, flashed and glowed
In strange, wild beauty, yet thy tears were far
More frequent than thy smiles—thy wail of pain
Came oftener on our hearts than thy dear cry
Of infant joyousness. Thy few brief months
Were months of suffering; ay, thy cup of life
Was bitter, bitter, but thou wast not doomed
To drain it, for a God of mercy soon
Let it pass from thee.
Oh! how well, my child,
Do I remember that all mournful day,
When thy young mother bore thy wasting form,
With breaking heart and streaming eyes, afar,
In the vain hope to save the dear young life
To which the tendrils of her own were bound.
With one wild pressure of thy little form
To my sad bosom, with a frantic kiss
Upon thy pallid lips, and a hot tear
Wrung from a burning brain, I said farewell—
Alas! my child, I never saw thee more.
In a strange land, far from thy own dear home,
But with the holy ministries of love
Around thy couch, thy little being passed,
Like the sweet perfume of a bright young rose,
To mingle with the skies from whence it came.
Oh! in that hour, my child, thy lost of earth,
Did not a thought of thy poor father’s love
Soften the anguish of thy parting soul,
And were not thy dear little arms outstretched
To meet his fond caress!
Thou sleepest, child,
Where the Missouri rolls its wild, dark waves,
And I have never gazed upon thy grave.
No tears of deep affection ever blend
With the soft dews and gentle rains that fall
Upon the turf that lies above thy breast;
But, oh! the spot is hallowed. There the Spring,
The bright Spring, yearly throws her loveliest wreaths
Of buds and blossoms—there, at morn and eve,
The viewless spirit of the zephyr breathes
Its holiest whispers in the springing grass
As if communing with thee—there the birds
Glance through the air like winged souls, and pour
Their sweet, unearthly melodies—and there
At the soft twilight hour young angels come
To hover o’er the spot on silver wings,
And mark it with their shining foot-prints.
Thou
Art gone, my child—a sweet and holy bud
Is shaken from the rose-tree of our hopes;
But yet we should not mourn. ’Tis joy to know
That thou hast gone in thy young innocence
And purity and beauty from a dark,
Ungentle world, where many snares beset
The path of manhood. Ay, ’tis joy to know
That the Eolian lyre of thy young soul
Gives out its music in the Eden clime,
Unvisited by earth’s cold, bitter winds,
Its poison-dews, its fogs, its winter rains,
Its tempests and its lightnings.
My sweet child,
Thou art no more a blossom of the earth,
But, oh! the thought of thee is yet a spell
On our sad spirits. ’Tis a lovely flower
On memory’s lonely stream, a holy star
In retrospection’s sky, a rainbow-gleam
Upon the tempest-clouds of life. Our hearts,
Our stricken hearts, lean to thee, love, and thus
They lean to heaven, for thou art there. Yes, thou
And thy young sister are in heaven, while we
Are lingering on the earth’s cold desert. Come,
Ye two sweet cherubs of God’s Paradise,
Who wander side by side, and hand in hand,
Among the Amaranthine flowers that bloom
Beside the living waters—come, oh come,
Sometimes upon your bright and snowy wings,
In the deep watches of the silent night,
And breathe into our souls the holy words
That ye have heard the angels speak in heaven.

* * * * *

PEDRO DE PADILH.

BY J. M. LEGARE.

(_Continued from page 97._)

Spain, and Tercera. }
AD. 1583. }

If the weekly mails brought me the Spirit of the Times instead of the Literary World, or in other words, I inclined to a sporting habit of speech, I would “lay an even wager” that not one of Graham’s readers has formed a correct idea of the personal appearance of Hilo de Ladron, from the foregoing account of that unscrupulous young gentleman’s proceedings. I say nothing of his morals, but refer merely to the harmony between features and character which Nature tries hard, and generally with success, to maintain, and which constitutes the main prop of the science of physiognomy. But no lawgiver allows more frequent exceptions to established rules than Nature; and thus, instead of being slouchy and red-haired, or big-whiskered and ferocious, Señor de Ladron, seated on the bows of one of De Chaste’s caravels, full sail for Tercera, belied his ill-name by the delicate beauty of his face and person. I use the word beauty, because his straight features, smooth skin and well-shaped hands, were feminine properties not usually looked for in male attire, and in company such as the owner was keeping. The French men-at-arms were well enough, but I would not fancy sleeping a night in the room with the thick-set Walloon standing next; people with such faces, coarse, crafty about the eyes and treacherous at the mouth—by the way, his laugh, always of an evil sort, was twofold, from a seam in the upper lip reaching half-way up the cheek, and exposing the teeth and gums at every contraction of the muscles thereabouts—should be called by names to correspond, and this man’s, Wolfang, showed remarkable foresight in his parents or sponsors. This face, which had not its duplicate any where in ill-looks, would be recognizable as that of an old acquaintance, if muffling, and false-hair and whiskers, frequently changed while begging an alms of Doña Hermosa, had not destroyed all identity with his natural features as now seen, for Wolfang was one with the free-captain who lived at the expense of that estimable if injudicious lady, until Don Peter turned him loose upon the world again. It was reasonable, under the circumstances, he should bear no great love for the truth-loving knight, and it was probably this feeling in common, accidentally communicated, which had first drawn Hilo and himself together. Don Hilo having inherited most of his father’s hate to the latter’s half-brother; not that he could lay claim to much personal cause for antipathy, having seen Sir Pedro but twice in his life, and one of those when little more than an infant, but it came quite easy to this chip-of-the-block to bear malice. With some grains of redeeming quality, it must be allowed, for he was not wanting in that sort of curious courtesy, common to all Spaniards I believe, which makes taking off his hat with a _buènos nòches_ imperative on the very man who carries his hand from his sombrero to his dagger, to plunge the last under your shoulder blade the moment your back is turned. Friendship, in its usual acceptation, had little to do with the league existing between these worthies, and no small amount of self-interest must have been requisite to keep two such sweet dispositions from open rupture; however, they contrived to get along well enough, by each playing a part designed to dupe the other, although, with less success perhaps than the self esteem of each caused him to imagine. Capt. Carlo, ready, cunning in counsel, and cringing like a tiger ready to seize his keeper’s hand in his jaws, but fearing the short Roman sword in its clutch, followed the guidance of his junior, half through a brute instinct of inferiority, of which he himself was ignorant, and half for the furtherance of certain plans of his own, which will appear at intervals upon the surface of this narrative; but on the whole the pair were not ill-matched, their main characteristics uniting harmoniously enough, by a rule which more resembles dove-tailing in carpentry, than welding in iron-work, the joint being tight and fast so long as force is applied in one way, but easily dislocated by a lateral blow. Thus Wolfang scoffed at every thing holy or otherwise, seldom neglected a chance of shedding blood, when not withheld by manifest interest or personal risk; for the fellow was a coward in the depth of his heart, just as any other savage beast is, frightened by a parasol flirted in a child’s hand, but leaping unhesitatingly upon an unwary man, and in his thirst for gain, played any part however vile by which a _maravedi_ might be dishonestly got. Don Hilo, to give the scapegrace his due, was murderous only in the heat of passion, and somewhat overawed his profane comrade by the resolute devotion he chose to entertain for certain saints in succession, it being a freak of his to hold in disgrace or honor, as the case might be, the celestial patron invoked prior to his last piece of rascality. Moreover the lad had the indefinable sense of pride, much as he lacked cause, which, I verily believe, constitutes the third element of Spanish blood and gives a dignified fold even to the dirty serape of the Mexican half-breed; and this pride kept his fingers from small pilferings if not from wholesale swindling; a turn of virtue which must have afforded high satisfaction to a certain alert fosterer of little errors, who has never been slow to avail himself of the like since the time of Adam and Eden. Even in general quickness of temper there was difference in kind, that of Capt. Carlo settling commonly into a smouldering fire incapable of being extinguished by any kindness whatever, and blown by the breath of opportunity into an instant flame; while Hilo’s, on the contrary, more dangerous and violent at its outbreak, was often succeeded by a reckless sort of recompense for injury done, which showed the boy had something of a soul left in his handsome carcase; but I am constrained to say as a set-off to this tolerable trait, it was only when the hurt or insult was avenged to his mind, a better spirit possessed him, for, if baffled at first, the aggriever had need to do as Bruce did, lose his trail in a running water.

I like to gossip confidentially now and then about matters which indirectly affect my characters, and so don’t mind mentioning a circumstance or two occurring in the early acquaintance of Capt. Carlo and Señor De Ladron, not noticed by historians of the time. The captain, it seems, after relinquishing in a highly praiseworthy manner, his annuity drawn from the unconscious countess, when no longer able to retain it, betook himself to the capital, where, falling in with the señor, the two soon came to understand each other’s projects, so far as it was good for either to do. Hilo made no secret of his hate for Doña Viola, whom he regarded as an incumbrance and interloper, but for whom he would long since have received an estate of more doubloons’ worth than he had ever possessed cobrès. The joint sagacity of the fathers and their notaries having been exhausted in drawing up a contract so stringent that nothing short of total forfeiture of the twin estates to the benefit of one of the infant parties, could release the other. No one knew what bond of union existed between the worse than dissolute half-brother of Sir Pedro, and so honorable a knight as Inique, but the contract stood fast on parchment, and the admirable wisdom of its conditions was shown in due season, when Viola, living at ease in her father’s house, grew up with a love amounting to mania for the handsome cavalier she regarded as her rightful husband, and whose vices she knew little of, until any thing like a just estimate of their enormity had become impossible to her biased mind. On the other side, Hilo, cursing in his heart Inique and his worthy father as founders of the scheme which his magnificent pride prevented his profiting by, even with the temptation of a twofold fortune attached, because it took the form of compulsory action in an affair it suited his humor to decide for himself, ransacked his brain to drive into outraged vindication of her woman’s dignity the innocent girl who stood between him and his claim. The poor little thing, without proper guidance or information in her own concerns, surmised nothing of the true state of the case, but affectionate and trustful to a fault, continued to love the young roué, long after his dislike found stronger expression than in words, with a docile patience and hopefulness for his reform, capable of touching any heart less villainous at the core. For the girl was no fool, I would have it clearly understood, weak as her affection for this Hilo might argue her; error in judgment, to which we are all subject, not necessarily indicating habitual silliness, least of all in one circumstanced as Doña Viola. This helpless child our worthy pair found it to their mutual interest to persecute, or fancied it so, and played very readily into each other’s hands; for Capt. Carlo had got it into his ugly head that such a prize (he was thinking of her money) was fitter for a manly-looking fellow like himself, with a beard to rub a soft cheek against, than for a stick of a lad whose weakly mustache broke the back-bone of the oaths he swore through it.

This was the wording of the meditation which occupied Don Wolfang’s brain while on his way to make himself known to his intended wife; not that Hilo would have refused his friend an introduction, he would have been only too gratified to present a Hottentot, if by so doing he could have caused her a pang of shame; but the captain, acting with unusual caution, chose to be independent of his hot-headed associate, perhaps fearing the latter might insist upon more than his legal share of the spoils, or from a natural aversion to working, except in the dark. Whatever his reasons, its cool impudence tempts me from my resolution of only hinting at these villainies, to give some account of the proceeding.

One night the house of Doña Viola was attacked by a gang of robbers, who, having no fear of police before their eyes in Philip the Second’s time, seemed every moment on the point of breaking in. Within was neither garrison nor protector worth the name, for the virtuous duenna, who was the young lady’s present guardian and companion, only rocked herself to and fro in a garment more snowy than becoming, and lamented her hard (approaching) fate with such heartfelt _ay-de-mì’s_, that it was evident nothing but the hope of ultimate rescue prevented her false hair (in which, for better self-deception, she slept) being plucked out by the roots. Moreover, the butler was busied in secreting the family plate, and a few little properties of his own, and the men-servants, with Spanish devotion, found occupation enough in quieting the maids and supplicating the saints; no doubt they would have fought, too, the race being noted for pluck—but there was no one to lead them on. At this opportune moment, who should appear before the terror-stricken ladies but Capt. Wolfang Carlo, all ruffles, ribbon-knots and rings, like a gay cavalier returning from some late merry-making, flying sword-in-hand to the rescue of besieged innocence. How he got in was a mystery; I suppose by dint of valor, for, as the number of the assailants was diminished by one on his entrance, it is more than likely one at least of the robbers was run through the body by this paladin, and the breach the former made turned to account by the latter.

When the party outside had been routed, which was accomplished immediately on the captain’s sallying forth at the head of the revived household,

“Sir,” said Doña Viola, to the disinterested hero who stood regarding her with a smile, as one should say, “look at me! Danger cannot shake my nerves: I am quite in my clement in it; it is just such a protector you need,” but which reminded for all that of the supple waving of a cat’s tail just before the animal springs. “Sir, if my father, Don Augustino, were present, he would know better how to thank you than I.”

“Oh,” interrupted her deliverer, with more truth than was common in his speech, and bowing low, partly because he designed to be exceedingly polite, and partly to hide his rectangular grin, “I am delighted to find he is not, Doña Viola.”

“I understand your noble motives, señor, and by your calling me by name, you probably know Señor Inique also.”

“Intimately,” said the unblushing vagabond; “we were comrades in arms against the Moors in the last war; and but that my mother’s being a Portuguese induces a reasonable distaste to waging war on one’s own kindred, we would have been lying side by side in Portugal, at this very hour. We disagree, perhaps, in this little matter, but there is no ill-feeling between us; and you may imagine, señora, the haste I made to snatch my distinguished friend’s daughter from such pressing danger.”

“Señor,” cried the lady at this, simply, “the house and all it contains is yours. (Capt. Carlo wished it was.) Command me; you have only to make known your wishes.”

Saying this, she left the room to order refreshments for her guest. Don Wolfang, in high feather at his success, and looking upon a part of the Doña’s property as his own in right of salvage, which saved any scruples arising in his tender conscience, pocketed a few valuables lying about, and assumed the bearing of a Rico, occupying four chairs with his burly person, for the better, that is, more truthful enactment of the character in hand. In which easy attitude he lolled until the tray, with its choice eatables, arrived; and it was while on the point of putting into his mouth a pâté-de-fois-gras (I use the word generally, as designating something good; but did you ever hear Dr. C. talk of _real_ pâtés) that—

But what happened I must begin in a different manner to relate, or the moral of this episode will be lost.

I have said Doña Viola was no fool, and here I intend bringing forward proof of my position. No one would have supposed any thing like nerve existed in so delicate a creature, unless they had seen her descending the stairs with a light in one hand, and a great sword, too stiff for her to draw, in the other, to rally the servants, while that timid old soul, her duenna, was creeping under the bed above as fast as a sudden weakness in her ancient knees would allow. The girl was brimfull of character, and made a worse impression on her first appearance, because fevered and crushed in spirit by the final wickedness of her betrothed husband, and its likely consequences; possibly the fever which afterward brought her to death’s door, had begun to show itself already in unnatural excitement of the brain, for it is not easy otherwise to reconcile the crazy eagerness she showed with her usual modesty.

But this is straying from the truffle-eating captain. Poor, simple, lamb-like captain! what could have induced him to pull off his leathern doublet and mask under the eyes of a girl not out of her teens, to be sure, but whose Gallician blood was all afire while watching from a dark window what was passing beneath. I am filled with pity and admiration for Doña Viola, when I think how, with one protector leagues away in Portugal, and the other up stairs, making her toilette to appear becoming in the eyes of this prince who had come to their rescue, she traversed the whole house, accompanied by a desperado whose only restraint lay in the greatness of his hopes dependent in part on present good conduct. She was a little fluttered, and ready to faint with fear, as any other woman short of a novel heroine would have been, but for all that she spoke so connectedly, and showed such faith in the captain’s will and ability to protect her, that it never entered his slow, Netherlandish brain, the figure before him was possessed of no more vitality in itself than an electro-magnetized body, or that she had noticed without start or scream his left, jetty whisker slip down far enough to expose the scrubby red growth underneath. Still less did it occur to him as a remote possibility, the idea of taking him, Captain Wolfang Carlo, fairly in the trap, could be occupying her head at the very moment he talked of “his dear friend, Don Augustino, her father;” and when one servant went up with the tray, a second went out with a summons to the Hermandad.

So Capt. Carlo was on the point (as I have said) of putting a pâté into his capacious mouth, when there came a rapping at the street-door, such as only the Hermandad made, it being the custom of the holy brotherhood to give due notice of their arrival on such occasions, lest one of themselves should prove to be the culprit. The captain knew to a stroke what mercy _he_ would be likely to receive if arrested, and alert enough when danger pressed, clapped a couple of goblets in his pockets, and in the same instant seized by the throat the tray-bearer, (who had his hand already on the latch,) so that the poor simpleton had not breath enough in his body to whisper, when his assailant threw him into the corner limp as a bundle of rags.

The former had not perambulated the house without using his eyes, and knew the shortest way to the leads, where he dodged the Hermandad until an opportunity presented itself for making good his descent, the citizen police probably being not wide awake at two o’clock in the morning.

That estimable youth, Hilo, was highly amused when the adventure reached his ears, and in his customary reckless speech gave his Flemish associate to understand he was not wise beyond his years, and had quite overshot his aim by too much caution; nothing could have caused himself more pleasure than to be rid of that (what I don’t choose to write in Spanish or English,) who had cheated him out of his estate by her artful behavior. And he would not mind settling a round sum out of the to be recovered fortune on Wolfang, provided he could contrive to enter the house a second time, without so much useless stir; but our prudent friend had the Hermandad in too vivid remembrance, and excused himself, suggesting, however, a scheme no less rascally, which all readers of this true history know already to have been carried out to its full extent.

To return to the caravel; some one was talking of Neptune.

“What a clatter about your Neptune,” cried a soldier, peevishly, “I wish I’d never heard the name, and had stayed where I was. Here we are pitched from one storm into another, and land just in sight. I’m sick of it.”

“La casa quemada, acudir con el agua!” put in Hilo, who was swinging his legs over the bowsprit, and did not trouble himself to take his eyes from the blue land ahead.

“What does he say?” demanded the Frenchman, eagerly, looking suspiciously about.

“He says your house is burnt, and you run for the water,” exclaimed Wolfang, with a short chuckle.

“Ha!” retorted the other, setting down a steel cap he was polishing, to gesticulate and call attention to Hilo with his forefinger. “Look here, comrades, here’s a man to talk to another as if he had never made any blunders he would like to take back. But this kind of talking behind you, is the way with all these cowardly Spaniards.”

Hilo turned his head just sufficiently to send a glance at the irascible speaker from his wicked black eyes. “Take care!” it said.

“Take care!” repeated the Netherlander, warningly, this time translating the look. “You’re a born fool, Jean, to tempt the devil in him.”

“Fool!” cried Jean. “Who meddled with him first? He kicked my casque out of his way yesterday, and set me to work cleaning and straightening it out this morning. As to running for water when it’s too late, he’ll think so too some day when Señor Inique catches him, and he gets down on his knees to beg for life, or the Marquis of Villenos’s friends corner him. He needn’t think he’s thought less a villain by us Frenchmen than by his own countryfolks.”

Here the man-at-arms stopped to take breath and glower at Señor De Ladron, who lifting in his feet, walked coolly over, opposite the first, saying, with a smile on his face, “Come, come, there is no use in comrades quarreling. Do you suppose I knew it was your casque? Give me your hand, and let’s make it up.”

The soldier looked down distrustfully at his slight enemy, but not being able to make up his mind what to do at this unexpected proposal, hesitatingly laid his broad palm in Hilo’s.

“That’s as it should be,” said a shrunken little cannonier, perched on his gun. “Hey! I remember how we shook hands all round at St. German-en-Laye. You see, we had been fighting like mad at Montcontour, and when one cools it isn’t pleasant to think you’ve knocked on the head your old chum at bird-nesting, and the like, only because he differs from you a little when grown up.”

“So you fetch water!” interrupted Hilo, mockingly, half to the speaker and half to Jean, whose fingers suddenly wrenched back forced him to stamp and foam with rage and pain while struggling to loosen the iron hold of the speaker.

“Sacrè! Devil!” he stammered, “let go; my wrist is out of joint.”

“It will be worse for you if you don’t recant,” muttered our Don, speaking faster than before, and holding a dagger to the side of his throat.

“Stop!” cried two or three men-at-arms, springing up, “that is not fair play. We are Frenchmen, not cut-throats, here.” Capt. Carlo merely grinned in his usual agreeable fashion.

“Don’t bite!” cried Hilo fiercely to his prisoner, drawing back his hand to strike. And, perhaps, as that amiable young gentleman was in no wise particular in such matters, and took no heed of the interruption, Hilo’s hand might have been the last bit of flesh held between the Frenchman’s teeth for evermore, (as the raven would say.) But the officer on duty came down the deck at this crisis, demanding the cause of the disturbance.

“Ha! _you_, sir?” he cried, directly he caught sight of the chief actor, as if he might have guessed as much. “I order you under arrest. Give up your dagger.”

Señor de Ladron faced his superior with an audacious smile, saying, “You jest?”

“Noose that rope,” ordered the lieutenant, purple with fury. “Close around, men; we will hang up this mutineer without trial.”

“’Pshaw!” answered our scapegrace, throwing his weapon overboard. “What a stir about a trifle, Señor mine. Better do this than hang.”

So Don Hilo de Ladron, when the island of Tercera lay close under the bows of the fleet, sat in the hold with irons around his ankles, and there probably would have remained, in obscurity, until the vessel returned to France, had not his fast friend, the captain, contrived to say a word or two to Commander De Chaste in person, while that brave knight was reviewing his forces on shipboard preparatory to landing.

“Who are you?” asked the commander, looking from a bit of paper he now twisted between his fingers to the bearer. “I have seen your face before.”

“Your excellency must be mistaken,” returned the unblushing Wolfang, who nevertheless remembered perfectly the gold piece the knight once put in the mouth of a holy war soldier without arms or feet, if appearances were true.

“Well,” interrupted De Chaste, “this scrawl tells me your friend was not materially to blame in the affair, his honor being concerned in repelling the charges.”

“True to a letter,” replied Wolfang, bowing low, as usual, to hide his unprepossessing grin. “Besides, the officer on duty owed the poor young gentleman a grudge.”

“That has nothing to do with it, sir. A man’s honor is his best possession, and needs unsleeping guardianship; but this taking its vindication into his own hands, must not be allowed in the service. However, the error is one on the side of right, and let him behave well in the field and we will pass over his indiscretion. We want every brave man we can get,” he added, turning to one of his officers.

“But, M. de Commandant,” objected the gentleman addressed, “is it likely a renegade like this fellow should prove a good soldier, or even be really possessed of ordinary honor!”

“How!” cried De Chaste, quickly. “I did not think the ranks of our little army contained any such. Is he a Spaniard, M. de Haye?”

“Yes, and guilty of every manner of crime.”

“Ha! Well, he must remain as he is until we find time to look into his case. How is it, Mr. What’s-your-name, Carlo, you suppressed his place of birth?”

“His mother was a French lady, Monseigneur, and fighting for one’s mother country is as good, any day, as fighting for a father’s.”

“True, in a measure, sir,” returned the knight. “What’s the prisoner’s name?”

“Hilo de Ladron.” This was said in no unusual tone, yet it seemed singularly to catch the commander’s attention, for he eyed the speaker keenly and then fell into a fit of musing, which lasted while he paced the deck between the officers of his suite. “M. de Haye,” he said at last, pausing before that officer and looking up, “you may be mistaken in your charges. They are grave ones and should be advanced when they can be examined at leisure, not at a hurried moment like this. I have need of every man in our too feeble squadron, and will take it upon myself to entrust the restoration of his character to M. de Ladron himself for the present.”

The gentleman addressed bowed, shrugged his shoulders, as well as a Frenchman could in a steel cuirass, and there the matter dropped.

Hilo laughed when the captain told him the favorable result of his application, and professed equal curiosity as to the commander’s motives—professions which honest Wolfang received as attempts to impose on his credulity—(he was probably touchy on the subject since his introduction to Doña Viola)—with less justice than usual, however, as Hilo, for a wonder, was telling the truth.

About this time the Sieur Cusson returned in his sloop from reconnoitering the island, and his report being that the Spanish squadron had not yet arrived, the little armament of De Chaste ran gallantly into the harbor, and came to anchor amidst a great firing of cannon and arquebuses from the Portuguese, who liked expending powder in this way much better than in front of an enemy, and besides, had lived in such daily dread of the descent of the Spanish fleet, that they could not sufficiently viva their delight at finding out who the new comers really were. The Viceroy, de Torrevedros, himself, came down to the water side to receive the commander, and made such a brave appearance in his embroidered surcoat and gilded harness, surrounded by other cavaliers equally well dressed, that the Frenchmen, walking with unsteady legs after their twenty-four days of stormy weather on shipboard, and in shabby doublets, presented nothing very imposing in their march through the streets.

But if the Portuguese gentlemen, riding on either hand, could scarce suppress their mirth at the ill looks of their allies, the ladies were anxious to propitiate men who would prove their main defence, and threw down showers of all sorts of gay flowers from the windows and balconies; some of the young señoritas even meeting the procession at unexpected corners, and flinging orange water into the knight’s face, who would have been more gratified by the ablution (it being a hot June day) had not the thought of his best ruff growing limper at each sprinkling interfered with the enjoyment.

“Better smell of gunpowder.” he said shortly, to a French gentleman from the court, whose nose was audibly expressing its delight at the fine perfume.

But the satisfaction of the Portuguese was as nothing compared with the joy of a few hundred Frenchmen, a remnant of the Strossy expedition of the year before, who had lost all hope of ever leaving the Azores again, and, having little money at the first, had been treated with any thing but hospitality by their unwilling hosts. These poor fellows mixed with the crowd in the streets, kept the commandant’s company in sight, and running into the quarters assigned the latter, met them with such antics and embraces as caused the Gallic army to suppose at first that they had fallen into an ambuscade of madmen. Their two captains gave De Chaste a full narration of their sufferings, which was impartial in the main, and tended very little to elevate the Portuguese residents in the eyes of their audience, whose fancy for that people was not great from the beginning.

“Sirs,” replied the commandant at the end, with his customary high-toned suavity, looking around him, “we must only remember this is done at the will of our queen, and act as loyal gentlemen should. For my part, I will be content with brown bread and water and living in the open air, as we are all accustomed to, to have the satisfaction of defeating the landing of so good a soldier as the Marquis of Santa-Cruz, and to-morrow I will examine in person the accessible points of the island, which are only three in number.”

“Three!” cried Capt. Baptista, an Italian, one of the Strossy fugitives, “there are thirty! He must have been a rank liar, who told you so, M. le Commandant.”

“That can hardly be,” returned De Chaste, gravely, “for it was the king of Portugal himself who gave the information.”

“Oh, if it comes to that one had best bite his tongue,” grumbled the Italian to De Haye, who stood next him. “But a parrot’s word is no better than a magpie’s, and so our general will find out.”

[_To be continued._

* * * * *

A VISIT TO STATEN ISLAND.

BY MRS. L. H. SIGOURNEY.

I have always had an especial fondness for islands. When, in earlier days, Fancy fashioned some favorite abode, it was often in the aspiration of Moore, “Oh! had we some green little Isle of our own!” I am inclined to think there is something in Nature to sanction this preference. Perhaps the safety of an insular situation from border inroad, and the wild foray, might have given it pre-eminence in feudal or barbarous times. A strange illusion seemed to linger around it, in days of yore: “We, islanders,” said Camden, “are lunares—or the moon’s men.”

The tuneful king of Israel considered the praise of the Creator incomplete, until “the multitude of the Isles,” should swell that chorus. The islands are required to “keep silence,” when an eloquent prophet was about to declare a message from Jehovah. The apostle, to whom the dread future unveiled itself, “was in the island that is called Patmos,” when he saw in a vision the “the heavens wrapped together like a scroll, and the dead, small and great, stand before God.”

Heathen mythology sang to her disciples of the “isles of the blessed.” Classic Greece fixed the birth-place of her deity of the seven-stringed lyre in wave-girdled Delphos, and bade her most beautiful goddess from the foam of the sea.

Modern Poetry has not forgotten to invoke the island-spirits. Shakspeare lifts the magic wand of Prospero in a strange, wild isle, full of

“Sweet sounds and airs that give delight, and hurt not.”

He makes another less lofty character propose “to sow the kernels of a broken islet in the sea, that they may bring forth more islands.” The patriotism of Milton beheld in his own native clime, the chief favorite of Neptune:

“this isle,
The greatest and the best of all the main,
He quarters to his blue-haired deities.”

The Bard of the Seasons still further glorified it, as the

“Island of bliss amid the subject seas.”

It is as easy as it would be tautological to multiply suffrages in praise of insular regions. Still less necessary is it to bespeak popular favor for the island that gives this sketch a subject and a name.

The Dutch settlers of Staten Island seem to have regarded it with an enthusiasm quite in contrast with their usual phlegmatic temperament. Scarcely a century after its occupation by them, the patient and true-hearted Huguenots came to solace the woes of their exile amid its sheltering shades. The armies of Great Britain held it in possession during the whole of our revolutionary contest; and even the indurating influences of war did not render them insensible to its surpassing loveliness.

In later times, the States of New York and New Jersey have contended for its jurisdiction with the warmth of lovers, and the jealousy of rivals. The latter approaches with extended arms, as if to enfold it in an earnest embrace, its bright shores curving closely around the coveted treasure; but the Empire State, upon whose waters it reposes “as a star on the breast of the billow,” has bound the gem to her bosom forever.

Yet neither the taciturn Hollander, nor the mournful alien from France, nor the warring Saxon, nor the native-born American, yearned over it with such intense affection as the poor red man, its earliest lord. He longed to rear his cone-roofed cabin upon its sunny slopes, and to sweep with light canoe into its quiet coves, as his fathers had done of old. Forced by his pale-faced and powerful brother to yield this dearest birthright, he sold for as poor a compensation as the hunter-patriarch, then repented, retracted, reclaimed, re-sold, contended, and vanished like the smoke-wreath among the hills that he loved. Still, he cast the Parthian arrow, and the forests where he lingered and lay in ambush were crimsoned with blood.

Still, his parting sigh, wreathed itself into a name of blessing. “_Monocnong_,” or the Enchanted Woods, was the epithet he bestowed upon his beloved and forsaken heritage. In the bitterness of parting, he said that no noxious reptile had ever been found there, till the white man, like a wily serpent, coiled himself amid its shades.

MONOCNONG.

Gem of the Bay! enchased in waves of light,
That ’neath the sunbeam rear a diamond crest,
But to the wrathful spirit of the night
Turn unsubdued, with thunder in their breast—
Fair Isle! where beauty lingereth as a dower
O’er rock and roof, and densely-wooded dell,
And in the bosom of the autumnal flower
Foiling the frost-king in its quiet cell,
The Indian hunter of the olden time
Saw thee with love, and on his wandering way
Staid the keen bow, at morning’s earliest prime,
A name of blessing on thy head to lay—
Baptism of tears! it liveth on thy shore,
Though he, the exiled one, returneth never more.

The sail from the city of New York to Staten Island is delightful. The bay sparkled in the broad sunbeam; six miles of diamonds set in turquoise and amethyst. We land, and are borne rapidly along, amid tasteful abodes imbosomed in trees and shrubbery, and adorned with flowers. We pass also the Hospital, a spacious building, where many beds and pillows spread in the open air for purification, denote that disease and death have given a ghastly welcome to some mournful emigrants. Often are we reminded, amid the most luxuriant scenery, that even “in the garden there is a sepulchre.”

New Brighton, as seen from the water, is like a cluster of palaces. Large and well arranged boarding-houses furnish accommodations to numerous strangers, who seek in summer the invigorating atmosphere of this island. Among these, the Pavilion and Belmont are conspicuous.