Chapter XXII (1)

Harley L'Estrange is seated beside Helen at the lattice-window in the cottage at Norwood. The bloom of reviving health is on the child's face, and she is listening with a smile, for Harley is speaking of Leonard with praise, and of Leonard's future with hope. "And thus," he continued, "secure from his former trials, happy in his occupation, and pursuing the career he has chosen, we must be content, my dear child, to leave him."

"Leave him!" exclaimed Helen, and the rose on her cheek faded.

Harley was not displeased to see her emotion. He would have been disappointed in her heart if it had been less susceptible to affection.

"It is hard on you, Helen," said he, "to separate you from one who has been to you as a brother. Do not hate me for doing so. But I consider myself your guardian, and your home as yet must be mine. We are going from this land of cloud and mist, going as into the world of summer. Well, that does not content you. You weep, my child; you mourn your own friend, but do not forget your father's. I am alone, and often sad, Helen; will you not comfort me! You press my hand, but you must learn to smile on me also. You are born to be the Comforter. Comforters are not egotists; they are always cheerful when they console."

The voice of Harley was so sweet, and his words went so home to the child's heart, that she looked up and smiled in his face as he kissed her ingenuous brow. But then she thought of Leonard, and felt so solitary--so bereft--that tears burst forth again. Before these were dried, Leonard himself entered, and obeying an irresistible impulse, she sprang to his arms, and, leaning her head on his shoulder, sobbed out, "I am going from you, brother--do not grieve--do not miss me."

Harley was much moved; he folded his arms, and contemplated them both silently--and his own eyes were moist. "This heart," thought he, "will be worth the winning!"

He drew aside Leonard, and whispered--"Soothe, but encourage and support her. I leave you together; come to me in the garden later."

It was nearly an hour before Leonard joined Harley.

"She was not weeping when you left her?" asked L'Estrange.

"No; she has more fortitude than we might suppose. Heaven knows how that fortitude has supported mine. I have promised to write to her often."

Harley took two strides across the lawn, and then, coming back to Leonard, said, "Keep your promise, and write often for the first year, I would then ask you to let the correspondence drop gradually."

"Drop!--Ah, my Lord!"

"Look you, my young friend, I wish to lead this fair mind wholly from the sorrows of the Past. I wish Helen to enter, not abruptly, but step by step, into a new life. You love each other now, as do two children--as brother and sister. But later, if encouraged, would the love be the same? And is it not better for both of you, that youth should open upon the world with youth's natural affections free and unforestalled?"

"True! And she is so above me," said Leonard mournfully.

"No one is above him who succeeds in your ambition, Leonard. It is not _that_, believe me!"

Leonard shook his head.

"Perhaps," said Harley, with a smile, "I rather feel that you are above me. For what vantage-ground is so high as youth? Perhaps I may become jealous of you. It is well that she should learn to like one who is to be henceforth her guardian and protector. Yet, how can she like me as she ought, if her heart is to be full of you?"

The boy bowed his head; and Harley hastened to change the subject, and speak of letters and of glory. His words were eloquent, and his voice kindling; for he had been an enthusiast for fame in his boyhood; and in Leonard's, his own seemed to him to revive. But the poet's heart gave back no echo--suddenly it seemed void and desolate. Yet when Leonard walked back by the moonlight, he muttered to himself, "Strange--strange--so mere a child, this can not be love! Still what else to love is there left to me?"

And so he paused upon the bridge where he had so often stood with Helen, and on which he had found the protector that had given to her a home--to himself a career. And life seemed very long, and fame but a dreary phantom. Courage, still, Leonard! These are the sorrows of the heart that teach thee more than all the precepts of sage and critic.

Another day and Helen had left the shores of England, with her fanciful and dreaming guardian. Years will pass before our tale reopens. Life in all the forms we have seen it travels on. And the Squire farms and hunts; and the parson preaches and chides and soothes. And Riccabocca reads his Machiavelli, and sighs and smiles as he moralizes on Men and States. And Violante's dark eyes grow deeper and more spiritual in their lustre; and her beauty takes thought from solitary dreams. And Mr. Richard Avenel has his house in London, and the honorable Mrs. Avenel her opera box; and hard and dire is their struggle into fashion, and hotly does the new man, scorning the aristocracy, pant to become aristocrat. And Audley Egerton goes from the office to the Parliament, and drudges, and debates, and helps to govern the empire on which the sun never sets. Poor Sun, how tired he must be--but none more tired than the Government! And Randal Leslie has an excellent place in the bureau of a minister, and is looking to the time when he shall resign it to come into Parliament, and on that large arena turn knowledge into power. And meanwhile, he is much where he was with Audley Egerton; but he has established intimacy with the Squire, and visited Hazeldean twice, and examined the house and the map of the property--and very nearly fallen a second time into the Ha-ha; and the Squire believes that Randal Leslie alone can keep Frank out of mischief, and has spoken rough words to his Harry about Frank's continued extravagance. And Frank does continue to pursue pleasure; and is very miserable, and horribly in debt. And Madame di Negra has gone from London to Paris, and taken a tour into Switzerland, and come back to London again, and has grown very intimate with Randal Leslie; and Randal has introduced Frank to her; and Frank thinks her the loveliest woman in the world, and grossly slandered by certain evil tongues. And the brother of Madame di Negra is expected in England at last; and what with his repute for beauty and for wealth, people anticipate a sensation; and Leonard, and Harley, and Helen? Patience--they will all re-appear.

(TO BE CONTINUED.)

A SCENE FROM IRISH LIFE.

The moorland was wide, level, and black; black as night, if you could suppose night condensed on the surface of the earth, and that you could tread on solid darkness in the midst of day. The day itself was fast dropping into night, although it was dreary and gloomy at the best; for it was a November day. The moor, for miles around, was treeless and houseless; devoid of vegetation, except heather, which clad with its gloomy frieze coat the shivering landscape. At a distance you could discern, through the misty atmosphere, the outline of mountains apparently as bare and stony as this wilderness, which they bounded. There were no fields, no hedgerows, no marks of the hand of man, except the nakedness itself, which was the work of man in past ages; when, period after period, he had tramped over the scene with fire and sword, and left all that could not fly before him, either ashes to be scattered by the savage winds, or stems of trees, and carcases of men trodden into the swampy earth. As the Roman historian said of other destroyers, "They created solitude and called it peace." That all this was the work of man, and not of Nature, any one spot of this huge and howling wilderness could testify, if you would only turn up its sable surface. In its bosom lay thousands of ancient oaks and pines, black as ebony; which told, by their gigantic bulk, that forests must have once existed on this spot, as rich as the scene was now bleak. Nobler things than trees lay buried there; but were, for the most part, resolved into the substance of the inky earth. The dwellings of men had left few or no traces, for they had been consumed in flames; and the hearts that had loved, and suffered, and perished beneath the hand of violence and insult, were no longer human hearts, but slime. If a man were carried blindfold to that place, and asked when his eyes were unbandaged where he was, he would say--"Ireland!"

He would want no clew to the identity of the place, but the scene before him. There is no heath like an Irish heath. There is no desolation like an Irish desolation. Where Nature herself has spread the expanse of a solitude, it is a cheerful solitude. The air flows over it lovingly; the flowers nod and dance in gladness; the soil breathes up a spirit of wild fragrance, which communicates a buoyant sensation to the heart. You feel that you tread on ground where the peace of God, and not the "peace" of man created in the merciless hurricane of war, has sojourned: where the sun shone on creatures sporting on ground or on tree, as the Divine Goodness of the Universe meant them to sport: where the hunter disturbed alone the enjoyment of the lower animals by his own boisterous joy: where the traveler sung as he went over it, because he felt a spring of inexpressible music in his heart: where the weary wayfarer sat beneath a bush, and blessed God, though his limbs ached with travel, and his goal was far off. In God's deserts dwells gladness; in man's deserts, death. A melancholy smites you as you enter them. There is a darkness from the past that envelops your heart, and the moans and sighs of ten-times perpetrated misery seem still to live in the very winds.

One shallow, and widely-spread stream struggled through the moor; sometimes between masses of gray stone. Sedges and the white-headed cotton-rush whistled on its margin, and on island-like expanses that here and there rose above the surface of its middle course.

I have said that there was no sign of life; but on one of those gray stones stood a heron watching for prey. He had remained straight, rigid, and motionless for hours. Probably his appetite was appeased by his day's success among the trout of that dark red-brown stream, which was colored by the peat from which it oozed. When he did move, he sprung up at once, stretched his broad wings, and silent as the scene around him, made a circuit in the air; rising higher as he went, with slow and solemn flight. He had been startled by a sound. There was life in the desert now. Two horsemen came galloping along a highway not far distant, and the heron, continuing his grave gyrations, surveyed them as he went. Had they been travelers over a plain of India, an Australian waste, or the Pampas of South America, they could not have been grimmer of aspect, or more thoroughly children of the wild. They were Irish from head to foot.

They were mounted on two spare but by no means clumsy horses. The creatures had marks of blood and breed that had been introduced by the English to the country. The could claim, if they knew it, lineage of Arabia. The one was a pure bay, the other and lesser, was black; but both were lean as death, haggard as famine. They were wet with the speed with which they had been hurried along. The soil of the damp moorland, or of the field in which, during the day, they had probably been drawing the peasant's cart, still smeared their bodies, and their manes flew as wildly and untrimmed as the sedge or the cotton-rush on the wastes through which they careered. Their riders, wielding each a heavy stick instead of a riding-whip which they applied ever and anon to the shoulders or flanks of their smoking animals, were mounted on their bare backs, and guided them by halter, instead of bridle. They were a couple of the short frieze-coated, knee-breeches and gray-stocking fellows who are as plentiful on Irish soil as potatoes. From beneath their narrow-brimmed, old, weather-beaten hats, streamed hair as unkemped as their horses' manes. The Celtic physiognomy was distinctly marked--the small and somewhat upturned nose; the black tint of skin; the eye now looking gray, now black; the freckled cheek, and sandy hair. Beard and whiskers covered half the face, and the short square-shouldered bodies were bent forward with eager impatience, as they thumped and kicked along their horses, muttering curses as they went.

The heron, sailing on broad and seemingly slow vans, still kept them in view. Anon, they reached a part of the moorland where traces of human labor were visible. Black piles of peat stood on the solitary ground, ready, after a summers cutting and drying. Presently patches of cultivation presented themselves; plots of ground raised on beds, each a few feet wide, with intervening trenches to carry off the boggy water, where potatoes had grown, and small fields where grew more stalks of ragwort than grass, inclosed by banks cast up and tipped here and there with a briar or a stone. It was the husbandry of misery and indigence. The ground had already been freshly manured by sea-weeds, but the village--where was it? Blotches of burnt ground; scorched heaps of rubbish, and fragments of blackened walls, alone were visible. Garden-plots were trodden down, and their few bushes rent up, or hung with tatters of rags. The two horsemen, as they hurried by with gloomy visages, uttered no more than a single word: "Eviction!"

Further on, the ground heaved itself into a chaotic confusion. Stony heaps swelled up here and there, naked, black, and barren: the huge bones of the earth protruded themselves through her skin. Shattered rocks arose, sprinkled with bushes, and smoke curled up from what looked like mere heaps of rubbish; but which were in reality human habitations. Long dry grass hissed and rustled in the wind on their roofs (which were sunk by-places, as if falling in); and pits of reeking filth seemed placed exactly to prevent access to some of the low doors; while to others, a few stepping-stones made that access only possible. Here the two riders stopped, and hurriedly tying their steeds to an elder-bush, disappeared in one of the cabins.

The heron slowly sailed on to the place of its regular roost. Let us follow it.

Far different was this scene to those the bird had left. Lofty trees darkened the steep slopes of a fine river. Rich meadows lay at the feet of woods and stretched down to the stream. Herds of cattle lay on them, chewing their cuds after the plentiful grazing of the day. The white walls of a noble house peeped, in the dusk of night, through the fertile timber which stood in proud guardianship of the mansion; and broad winding walks gave evidence of a place where nature and art had combined to form a paradise. There were ample pleasure-grounds. Alas! the grounds around the cabins over which the heron had so lately flown, might be truly styled pain-grounds.

Within that home was assembled a happy family. There was the father, a fine-looking man of forty. Proud you would have deemed him, as he sate for a moment abstracted in his cushioned chair; but a moment afterward, as a troop of children came bursting into the room, his manner was instantly changed into one so pleasant, so playful, and so overflowing with enjoyment, that you saw him only as an amiable, glad, domestic man. The mother, a handsome woman, was seated already at the tea-table; and, in another minute, sounds of merry voices and childish laughter were mingled with the jocose tones of the father, and the playful accents of the mother; addressed, now to one, and now to another, of the youthful group.

In due time the merriment was hushed, and the household assembled for evening prayer. A numerous train of servants assumed their accustomed places. The father read. He had paused once or twice, and glanced with a stern and surprised expression toward the group of domestics, for he heard sounds that astonished him from one corner of the room near the door. He went on--"Remember the children of Edom, O Lord, in the day of judgment, how they said, Down with it, down with it, even to the ground. O daughter of Babylon, wasted with misery, yea, happy shall he be who rewardeth thee, as thou hast served us!"

There was a burst of smothered sobs from the same corner, and the master's eye flashed with a strange fire as he again darted a glance toward the offender. The lady looked equally surprised, in the same direction; then turned a meaning look on her husband--a warm flush was succeeded by a paleness in her countenance, and she cast down her eyes. The children wondered, but were still. Once more the father's sonorous voice continued--"Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us." Again the stifled sound was repeated. The brow of the master darkened again--the mother looked agitated; the children's wonder increased; the master closed the book, and the servants, with a constrained silence, retired from the room.

"What _can_ be the matter with old Dennis?" exclaimed the lady, the moment that the door had closed on the household.--"O! what is amiss with poor old Dennis!" exclaimed the children.

"Some stupid folly or other," said the father, morosely. "Come! away to bed, children. You can learn Dennis's troubles another time." The children would have lingered, but again the words, "Away with you!" in a tone which never needed repetition, were decisive: they kissed their parents and withdrew. In a few seconds the father rang the bell. "Send Dennis Croggan here."

The old man appeared. He was a little thin man, of not less than seventy years of age, with white hair and a dark spare countenance. He was one of those many nondescript servants in a large Irish house, whose duties are curiously miscellaneous. He had, however, shown sufficient zeal and fidelity through a long life, to secure a warm nook in the servants' hall for the remainder of his days.

Dennis entered with an humble and timid air, as conscious that he had deeply offended; and had to dread at least a severe rebuke. He bowed profoundly to both the master and mistress.

"What is the meaning of your interruptions during the prayers, Dennis?" demanded the master, abruptly. "Has any thing happened to you?"

"No, sir."

"Anything amiss in your son's family?"

"No, your honor."

The interrogator paused; a storm of passion seemed slowly gathering within him. Presently he asked, in a loud tone, "What does this mean? Was there no place to vent your nonsense in, but in this room, and at prayers?"

Dennis was silent. He cast an imploring look at the master, then at the mistress.

"What is the matter, good Dennis?" asked the lady, in a kind tone. "Compose yourself, and tell us. Something strange must have happened to you."

Dennis trembled violently; but he advanced a couple of paces, seized the back of a chair as if to support him, and, after a vain gasp or two, declared, as intelligibly as fear would permit, that the prayer had overcome him.

"Nonsense, man!" exclaimed the master, with fury in the same face, which was so lately beaming with joy on the children. "Nonsense! Speak out without more ado, or you shall rue it."

Dennis looked to the mistress as if he would have implored her intercession; but as she gave no sign of it, he was compelled to speak; but in a brogue that would have been unintelligible to English ears. We therefore translate it:

"I could not help thinking of the poor people at Rathbeg, when the soldiers and police cried, 'Down with them! down with them, even to the ground!' and then the poor bit cabins came down all in fire and smoke, amid the howls and cries of the poor creatures. Oh! it was a fearful sight, your honor--it was, indeed--to see the poor women hugging their babies, and the houses where they were born burning in the wind. It was dreadful to see the old bedridden man lie on the wet ground among the few bits of furniture, and groan to his gracious God above. Oh, your honor! you never saw such a sight, or--you--sure a--it would never have been done!"

Dennis seemed to let the last words out, as if they were jerked from him by a sudden shock.

The master, whose face had changed during this speech to a livid hue of passion, his eyes blazing with rage, was in the act of rushing on old Dennis, when he was held back by his wife, who exclaimed--"Oswald! be calm; let us hear what Dennis has to say. Go on, Dennis--go on!"

The master stood still, breathing hard to overcome his rage. Old Dennis, as if seeing only his own thoughts, went on--"O, bless your honor! if you had seen that poor frantic woman when the back of the cabin fell, and buried her infant, where she thought she had laid it safe for a moment, while she flew to part her husband and a soldier, who had struck the other children with the flat of his sword, and bade them to troop off! Oh, your honor, but it was a killing sight! It was that came over me in the prayer, and I feared that we might be praying perdition on us all, when we prayed about our trespasses. If the poor creatures of Rathbeg should meet us, your honor, at Heaven's gate (I was thinking) and say--'These are the heathens that would not let us have a poor hearthstone in poor ould Ireland.' And that was all, your honor, that made me misbehave so; I was just thinking of that, and I could not help it."

"Begone! you old fool!" exclaimed the master; and Dennis disappeared, with a bow, and an alertness that would have done credit to his earlier years.

There was a moment's silence after his exit. The lady turned to her husband, and clasping his arm with her hands, and looking into his darkened countenance with a look of tenderest anxiety, said:

"Dearest Oswald, let me, as I have so often done, once more entreat that these dreadful evictions may cease. Surely there must be some way to avert them, and to set your property right, without such violent measures."

The stern, proud man said, "Then, why, in the name of Heaven, do you not reveal some other remedy? Why do you not enlighten all Ireland? Why don't you instruct Government? The unhappy wretches who have been swept away by force are no people, no tenants of mine. They squatted themselves down, as a swarm of locusts fix themselves while a green blade is left. They obstruct all improvement; they will not till the ground themselves; nor will they quit it to allow me to provide more industrious and provident husbandmen to cultivate it. Land that teems with fertility, and is shut out from bearing and bringing forth food for man, is accursed. Those who have been evicted, not only rob me; but their more industrious fellows."

"They will murder us!" said the wife, "some day for these things. They will--"

Her words were cut short suddenly by her husband starting, and standing in a listening attitude. "Wait a moment," he said, with a peculiar calmness, as if he had just got a fresh thought; and his lady, who did not comprehend what was the cause, but hoped that some better influence was touching him, unloosed her hands from his arm. "Wait just a moment," he repeated, and stepped from the room, opened the front door, and without his hat, went out.

"He is intending to cool down his anger," thought his wife: "he feels a longing for the freshness of the air." But she had not caught the sound which had startled his quicker, because more excited ear: she had been too much engrossed by her own intercession with him: it was a peculiar whine from the mastiff, which was chained near the lodge-gate, that had arrested his attention. He stepped out. The black clouds which overhung the moor had broken, and the moon's light struggled between them.

The tall and haughty man stood erect in the breeze and listened. Another moment--there was a shot, and he fell headlong upon the broad steps on which he stood. His wife sprang with a piercing shriek from the door, and fell on his corpse. A crowd of servants gathered about them, making wild lamentations, and breathing vows of vengeance. The murdered master and the wife were borne into the house.

The heron soared from its lofty perch, and wheeled with terrified wings through the night air. The servants armed themselves; and, rushing furiously from the house, traversed the surrounding masses of trees. Fierce dogs were let loose, and dashed frantically through the thickets. All was, however, too late. The soaring heron saw gray figures, with blackened faces, stealing away--often on their hands and knees--down the hollows of the moorlands toward the village; where the two Irish horsemen had, in the first dusk of that evening, tied their lean steeds to the old elder bush.

Near the mansion no lurking assassin was to be found. Meanwhile, two servants, pistol in hand, on a couple of their master's horses, scoured hill, and dale. The heron, sailing solemnly on the wind above, saw them halt in a little town. They thundered with the butt-ends of their pistols on a door in the principal street. Over it there was a coffin-shaped board, displaying a painted crown, and the big-lettered words, "POLICE STATION." The mounted servants shouted with might and main. A night-capped head issued from a chamber casement with--"What is the matter?"

"Out with you, Police! out with all your strength, and lose not a moment; Mr. FitzGibbon, of Sporeen, is shot at his own door."

The casement was hastily clapped to, and the two horsemen galloped forward up the long, broad street; now flooded with the moon's light. Heads full of terror were thrust from upper windows to inquire the cause of that rapid galloping; but ever too late. The two men held their course up a steep hill outside of the town, where stood a vast building overlooking the whole place. It was the barracks. Here the alarm was also given.

In less than an hour, a mounted troop of police in olive-green costume, with pistols at holster, sword by side, and carbine on the arm, were trotting briskly out of town, accompanied by the two messengers; whom they plied with eager questions. These answered, and sundry imprecations vented, the whole party increased their speed, and went on, mile after mile, by hedgerow and open moorland, talking as they went.

Before they reached the house of Sporeen, and near the village where the two Irish horsemen had stopped the evening before, they halted, and formed themselves into more orderly array. A narrow gully was before them on the road, hemmed in on each side by rocky steeps, here and there overhung with bushes. The commandant bade them be on their guard, for there might be danger there. He was right; for the moment they began to trot through the pass, the flash and rattle of fire-arms from the thickets above saluted them, followed by a wild yell. In a second, several of their number lay dead or dying in the road. The fire was returned promptly by the police; but it was at random, for although another discharge, and another howl, announced that the enemy were still there, no one could be seen. The head of the police commanded his troop to make a dash through the pass; for there was no scaling the heights from this side; the assailants having warily posted themselves there, because at the foot of an eminence were stretched on either hand impassable bogs. The troop dashed forward, firing their pistols as they went; but were met by such deadly discharges of fire-arms as threw them into confusion, killed and wounded several of their horses, and made them hastily retreat.

There was nothing for it, but to await the arrival of the cavalry; and it was not long before the clatter of horses' hoofs and the ringing of sabres were heard on the road. On coming up, the troop of cavalry, firing to the right and left on the hill-sides, dashed forward, and, in the same instant, cleared the gully in safety; the police having kept their side of the pass. In fact, not a single shot was returned; the arrival of this strong force having warned the insurgents to decamp. The cavalry in full charge ascended the hills, to their summits. Not a foe was to be seen, except one or two dying men, who were discovered by their groans.

The moon had been for a time quenched in a dense mass of clouds, which now were blown aside by a keen and cutting wind. The heron, soaring over the desert, could now see gray-coated men flying in different directions to the shelter of the neighboring hills. The next day he was startled from his dreamy reveries near the moorland stream, by the shouts and galloping of mingled police and soldiers, as they gave chase to a couple of haggard, bare-headed, and panting peasants.

These were soon captured, and at once recognized as belonging to the evicted inhabitants of the recently deserted village.

Since then years have rolled on. The heron, who had been startled from his quiet haunts by these things, was still dwelling on the lofty tree with his kindred, by the hall of Sporeen. He had reared family after family in that airy lodgment, as spring after spring came round; but no family, after that fatal time, had ever tenanted the mansion. The widow and children had fled from it so soon as Mr. FitzGibbon had been laid in the grave. The nettle and dock flourished over the scorched ruins of the village of Rathbeg; dank moss and wild grass tangled the proud drives and walks of Sporeen. All the woodland rides and pleasure-grounds lay obstructed with briars; and young trees, in time, grew luxuriantly where once the roller in its rounds could not crush a weed; the nimble frolics of the squirrel were now the only merry things where formerly the feet of lovely children had sprung with elastic joy.

The curse of Ireland was on the place. Landlord and tenant, gentleman and peasant, each with the roots and the shoots of many virtues in their hearts, thrown into a false position by the mutual injuries of ages, had wreaked on each other the miseries sown broadcast by their ancestors. Beneath this foul spell men who would, in any other circumstances, have been the happiest and the noblest of mankind, became tyrants; and peasants, who would have glowed with grateful affection toward them, exulted in being their assassins. As the traveler rode past the decaying hall, the gloomy woods, and waste black moorlands of Sporeen, he read the riddle of Ireland's fate, and asked himself when an OEdipus would arise to solve it.

SCOTTISH REVENGE.

A long time ago, when the powerful clan of the Cumyns were lords of half the country round, the chief of that clan slew a neighboring chieftain, with whom he had a feud; for feuds in those days were as easily found as blackberries, and quarrels might be had any day in the year for the _picking_. He that was slain had, at the time of his death, an only child, an infant, of the name of Hugh. The widow treasured deep within her heart the hope of vengeance, which the daily sight of her son, recalling, by his features, the memory of her slaughtered husband, kept ever awake. With the first opening of his intellect, he was instructed in the deed that made him fatherless, and taught to look forward to avenging his parent as a holy obligation cast upon him; and so, with his strength and his stature, grew his hatred of the Cumyns, and his resolution to take the life of him who had slain his father. He spent his days in the woods practicing archery, till at length he became a most expert bowman. None could send a shaft with so strong an arm, or so true an aim, as Hugh Shenigan; and the eagle or the red deer was sure to fall beneath his arrow, when the one was soaring too high in the air, or the other fleeing too swiftly on the hill, for ordinary woodcraft. But it was not the eagle or the deer that kept Hugh in the forest, and upon the mountains, from the dawn of the morning till the setting of the sun. He was watching for other prey, and at length chance brought what he sought within his reach. One day he climbed up the side of Benigloe, and took his station upon a spot that commanded a view of the glen between it and the opposite range of hills. He had ascertained that Cumyn would return to Blair by the glen that evening; and so it happened, that an hour or so before sun-fall he espied the chieftain, with two of his clan, wending onwards toward the base of the hill. A few minutes more, and they would reach a point within the range of his bow. His practiced eye measured the distance, and his heart throbbed with a fierce, dark emotion, as he put the shaft to the thong, and drew it, with a strong arm, to his ear. With a whiz, the arrow sped from the bow, and cleft the air with the speed of light, while a wild shout burst from the lips of the young archer. His anxiety, it would seem, did not suffer him to wait till his foe had come within range of his arrow, for it sank quivering into the earth at the foot of him for whose heart it was aimed. The shout and the shaft alike warned the Cumyns that danger was nigh, and not knowing by what numbers they might be assailed, they plunged into the heather on the hill side, and were quickly lost to the sight. But the young man watched with the keenness of an eagle, and his sense seemed intensified with the terrible desire of vengeance that consumed him. At length, just where the little stream falls from the crown of the hill, the form of a man became visible, standing out from the sky, now bright with the last light of the setting sun. With a strong effort, the young man mastered the emotion of his heart, as the gambler becomes calm, ere he throws the cast upon which he has staked his all. The bow is strained to its utmost, the eye ranges along the shaft from feather to barb, it is shot forth as if winged by the very soul of him who impelled it. One moment of breathless suspense, and in the next the chief of the Cumyns falls headlong into the stream, pierced through the bowels by the deadly weapon.

POSTAL REFORM--CHEAP POSTAGE.

It is now upward of eleven years since the writer of this commenced advocating "postal reform and cheap postage." At first it found but little favor either from the public or the Post-Office Department. Many considered the schemes Utopian, and if carried into effect would break down the post-office: but neither ridicule or threats prevented him from prosecuting his object until Congress was compelled in 1845 to reduce the rates of postage to five and ten cents the half-ounce.

The success attending even this partial reduction equaled the expectations of its friends, and silenced the opposition of its enemies. The friends of cheap postage, in New York and other places, renewed their efforts to obtain a further reduction, and petitioned for a uniform rate of two cents prepaid. But such was either the indifference or hostility of a majority of the members that no definite action was taken on the subject for six years, nor was it until the last session that any reduction was made from the rates adopted in 1845. Notwithstanding this shameful delay in complying with the wishes of the people, the new law adopted _four_ rates instead of one, leaving the prepayment of postage optional. Besides this, the new law imposes on newspapers and printed matter a most unreasonable, burdensome, and complicated tax, which has created universal dissatisfaction.

The obnoxious features of the present law imperiously demand the immediate attention of Congress. Neither the rates of postage on letters, nor the tax on newspapers and printed matter, meet the wishes of the friends of cheap postage. They have uniformly insisted upon simplicity, uniformity, and cheapness. But the present law possesses none of these requisites. On letters the rates in the United States are three and five, six and ten cents, according to distance. Ocean postage is enormous and too burdensome to be borne any longer. The rates of postage on newspapers are so complicated that few postmasters can tell what they are, and those on transient newspapers and printed matter generally, are so enormous as to amount to a prohibition. A revision of this law is rendered indispensable. Other reforms are required, some of which I shall here notice.

1. Letter postage should be reduced to a uniform rate of _two cents prepaid_. This rate has been successfully adopted in Great Britain. It has increased the letters and the income of the post-office. It is the revenue point, sufficiently low, to encourage the people to write, and to send all their letters through the post-office; and yet high enough to afford ample revenue to pay the expenses of the Department. If this rate is adopted, it will defy all competition, for none will attempt to carry letters cheaper than the post-office.

2. _Ocean postage_ is enormous and burdensome, especially upon that class of persons which is least able to bear it. It has been computed by those who are competent to judge, that about three-quarters of the ship letters are written by emigrants, and are letters of friendship and affection. The greater portion of them are from persons in poor circumstances, and to tax them with _twenty-four_ or _twenty-nine_ cents for a single letter is cruel. To send a letter and receive an answer, will cost a servant girl half a week's wages, and a poor man in the country will have to work a day to earn the value of the postage of a letter to and from his friends in Europe. Were the postage reduced to a low rate, _ten_ letters would be written where one now is, and the revenue, in a short period, would be equal if not greater than under the present high rates. During the last twelve months, the amount received for transatlantic postages was not less than _a million of dollars_, and three-fourths of this sum has been paid by the laboring classes on letters relating to their domestic relations and friendship.

3. Next to the reduction of inland and ocean postage is the _free delivery_ of mail letters in all the large towns and cities. An improvement has been attempted by the Postmaster-general in respect of letters to be sent by the mails. They are now conveyed to the post-office free of any charge; and the next step necessary is to cause them to be delivered without any addition to the postage. A letter is carried by the mails _three thousand miles_ for three cents, but if it is sent three hundred yards from the post-office, it is charged _two cents_! This is not only an unreasonable tax, but is attended with much inconvenience both to the carrier and receiver of the letter, in the trouble of making the change, and the delay attending the delivery of letters. If the prepayment of the postage covered the whole expense, a carrier could deliver ten letters where he now delivers _one_, and fewer persons would be able to deliver them. Two cents cover the whole expense of postage and delivery of letters in London, and there is no reason why they can not be delivered in New York and other cities as cheaply as they are in the capital of Great Britain. The expense to the post-office would be comparatively small, as the income from city letters would be nearly equal to what would be paid if an efficient city delivery was adopted. If the free delivery should be adopted, it would be a great relief to the people, and this like every other facility afforded by the post-office, would tend to increase the number of letters sent by the mails.

4. The _franking privilege_ should be wholly abolished. This has been so much abused, that the people have loudly complained of it, and almost every Postmaster-general for the last ten years has recommended its abolition. Instead, however, of diminishing or repealing it, it has been increased, so that two sets of members can now exercise it, and the cart-loads of franked matter sent from Washington show that it is a dead weight upon the Department. At the last session, one member had twenty-eight large canvas bags of franked matter, weighing not less than _five thousand pounds_! To say nothing of the vast expense of printing and binding millions of documents and speeches which are never read, the burden, and labor, and cost to the post-office are incalculable. When newspapers were few in number, there might have been a necessity to send out speeches and documents, but as newspapers are published in all parts of the Union, every important report and speech is published and read long before it can be printed and sent from Washington. Let the members of Congress be furnished with a sufficient number of stamps to cover their postage, and these be paid for as the other expenses of Congress. The frank was wholly abolished in Great Britain, when the cheap system was adopted, so that Queen Victoria herself can not now frank a letter!

5. But the grievance, which is now felt and most complained of by the people, is the complicated and burdensome tax on newspapers and other printed matter. It has heretofore been the good policy of Congress to favor the circulation of newspapers throughout the country, and accordingly one and a half cents was the highest rate charged to regular subscribers for any distance, and two cents, prepaid, for transient papers. These rates were plain and easy to be understood, and few were disposed to complain of them, although they were much higher than they should be. The new bill has some _sixty_ or _seventy_ different rates, and so complicated, depending upon _weight_ and _distance_, that not one postmaster in twenty can tell what postage should be charged upon newspapers. Again the rates are enormous. For example, a newspaper in California, weighing one ounce or under, is charged _five cents_ prepaid, and if not prepaid _ten cents_, and the same for every additional ounce; hence the Courier and Enquirer or Journal of Commerce, weighing two and one quarter ounces, is charged to San Francisco _fifteen cents_ prepaid, and if not prepaid _thirty cents_! What is the effect of this law? It prohibits the circulation of newspapers through the post-office entirely, and all that are now sent go by private expresses. If I understand the subject correctly, it was the object of those who proposed the "substitute" to the Bill which passed the House of Representatives, to _exclude_ from the mails _newspapers_ and _printed_ matter. _Is this right?_

6. Another reform which should be made by Congress, is the payment of postage entirely by _stamps_. If no money was received at the post-office except for stamps, and the postage on every thing passing through the office prepaid, the saving of labor would be immense, both to the general post-office and local offices. But this is not the only advantage. The amount lost, by the destruction of post bills, is incalculable. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are unaccounted for and lost every year by the Department, by the present loose, inefficient system of accounting for the postages received on letters and newspapers. While this system continues there is not, and can not be any _check_ on the postmasters. Let the payment of postage be made by stamps, and it would be an effectual check upon every post-office, and the Department would receive the money for every stamp sold, whether it was used by the purchaser or not. This is a subject worthy of the serious consideration of Congress and the Post-Office Department.

7. There is one more improvement which I would recommend before closing this already long article, and that is the establishment of a _money-order office_. This would not only be a great convenience to the people, especially to the poorer class, but it would also prove a source of revenue to the post-office. During the last year, there were sent through the money-order office in Great Britain upward of _forty millions_ of dollars! When it is recollected that each order is limited to _twenty-five dollars_, the number of letters carrying these orders must be very large, adding to the receipts of the post-office. The same results would follow a similar establishment in the United States. There being no guarantee for the safe delivery of money, transmitted by the mails, such letters are now sent by private expresses, for which they receive a remunerating compensation.

I have briefly suggested some of the reforms which I deem necessary for the improvement of the post-office. It was said last winter by some of our Senators in Congress, in their places, that "OURS IS THE WORST MANAGED POST-OFFICE IN THE WORLD." I can not agree with them in this assertion. But I regret to say that it is not the _best_ managed, nor so good as it should and _must_ be. The great drawback to its improvement, and, I may add, the curse that rests upon it, is its being made a _political_ machine. It was a great and fatal mistake to make the Postmaster-general a member of the Cabinet. The great personal worth of Mr. McLean induced President Monroe to take him into his Cabinet, and the practice has been continued ever since. The consequence is, that the Postmaster-general is changed under every new administration. In less than two years we had _three_, and two assistants. How can it be expected that men, whatever may be their talents, can make themselves acquainted with the business of the office in the short space of three or four years? Before they are warm in their seats they are removed. Besides, after a new administration comes in, it takes six or twelve months to turn out political opponents and appoint their friends. If, instead of this, when intelligent and efficient men are in office (no matter what their political affinities may be), they were continued, it would be an inducement to make improvements, and an encouragement to fidelity; but now there is no security to any man that he will be continued one hour, nor any encouragement to excel in the faithful discharge of his duty. These things ought not so to be.

There is another practice which greatly retards the improvement of our post-office, and that is the manner in which the post-office committees are appointed in Congress. At every session of Congress new committees are appointed by the Senate and House, a majority of which is composed of the dominant political party, without much regard to their qualifications. For a number of years there has been scarcely a single member selected from any of our large cities, where the principal portion of the revenue is collected, consequently, they are persons who have little or no knowledge of post-office business, or the wants of the people. Their principal business is to obtain new post-routes, but any improvement of postal concerns is little thought of. Hence the Post-Office Department may be considered a vast political machine, wielded for the benefit of the party in power; and there is not an appointment made, from the Postmaster-general down to the postmaster of the smallest office, without a special regard to the politics of the person appointed.

The only correction of this evil, under the present system, is to give the appointment of all the postmasters to the people. They are the best qualified to judge of the character and qualifications of the person who will serve them in the most acceptable manner; and the postmasters, knowing that they are dependent upon the people for their offices, will be more obliging and attentive in the discharge of their duties. This will diminish the patronage of the President and the Postmaster-general, which I have not a doubt they would gladly part with, as there is nothing more troublesome and perplexing to a conscientious man, than the exercise of this power.

In the old world, where monarchy exists, the press is called the "fourth estate;" but with us, where "_vox populi_, _vox Dei_," the press and the ballot-box may be considered the sovereign. The press utters the wish of the people, and the ballot-box confirms that wish. Hence, if the press speaks out clearly and strongly in favor of postal reform, the people will sanction it by their votes in selecting men to represent their wishes in the councils of the nation. Our post-office, instead of being denounced the "worst," should be made the _best_ managed in the world. We have no old prejudices or established customs to abolish, no pensioners or sinecures to support, no jealousy on the part of the government against the diffusion of knowledge through the mails; but we have an intelligent, active, liberal gentleman at the head of the Post-Office Department, who desires to meet the wants and wishes of the people. Therefore we have reason to hope that in due time our post-office will be established on such a footing as to secure the patronage and support of the people, defying all competition, and superior to any similar establishment in the world.

B.B.

SYRIAN SUPERSTITIONS.

There are some superstitious observances, which are strictly adhered to by the peasants employed in rearing the silk-worm. Thus, when the eggs are first hatched, the peasant's wife rises up very early in the morning, and creeping stealthily to the master's house, flings a piece of wet clay against the door. If the clay adheres, it is a sign that there will be a good mousoum or silk harvest: if it do not stick, then the contrary may be expected. During the whole time the worms are being reared, no one but the peasants themselves are permitted to enter the khook or hut; and, when the worms give notice that they are about to mount and form their cocoons, then the door is locked, and the key handed to the proprietor of the plantation. After a sufficient time has elapsed, and the cocoons are supposed to be well and strongly formed, the proprietor, followed by the peasants, marches in a kind of procession up to the huts, and, first dispensing a few presents among them, and hoping for good, to which they all reply, "Inshalla! Inshalla!--please God! please God," the key is turned, the doors thrown wide open, and the cocoons are detached from the battours of cane mats, and prepared for reeling the next day.

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