Chapter VI (3)

"When first I met Dick he was second stockman to Mr. Ronalds, and I took a shepherd's place there; it was my second place in this country, for you see I left the old country in a bad year for the weaving trade, and was one of the first batch of free emigrants that came out, the rest were chiefly Irish. I found shepherding suit me very well, and my missis was hut-keeper. Well, Dick and I got very thick; I used to write his letters for him, and read in an evening, and so on. Well, though I undertook a shepherd's place, I soon found I could handle an ax pretty well. Throwing the shuttle gives the use of the arms, you see, and Dick put into my head that I could make more money if I took to making fences; I sharpening the rails, and making the mortice-holes, and a stranger man setting them. I did several jobs at odd times, and was thought very handy. Well, Mr. Ronalds, during the time of the great drought, five years ago, determined to send up a lot of cattle to the north, where he had heard there was plenty of water and grass, and form a station there. Dick was picked out as stockman; a young gentleman, a relative of Mr. Ronalds, went as head of the party, a very foolish, conceited young man, who knew very little of bush life, and would not be taught. There were eight splitters and fencers, besides Charley Anvils, the blacksmith, and two bullock drivers.

"I got leave to go because I wanted to see the country, and Dick asked. My missis was sorely against my going. I was to be storekeeper, as well as do any farming and work, if wanted.

"We had two drays, and were well armed. We were fifteen days going up before we got into the new country, and then we traveled five days; sometimes twenty-four hours without water, and sometimes had to unload the drays two or three times a day, to get over creeks. The fifth day we came to very fine land; the grass met over our horses' necks, and the river was a chain of water-holes, all full, and as clear as crystal. The kangaroos were hopping about as plentiful as rabbits in a warren; and the grass by the river side had regular tracks of the emus, where they went down to drink.

"We had been among signs of the blacks, too, for five days, but had not seen any thing of them, although we could hear the devils cooing at nightfall, calling to each other. We kept regular watch and watch at first--four sentinels, and every man sleeping with his gun at hand.

"Now, as it was Dick's business to tail (follow) the cattle, five hundred head, I advised him to have his musket sawed off in the barrel, so as to be a more handy size for using on horseback. He took my advice; and Charley Anvils made a very good job of it, so that he could bring it under his arm when hanging at his back from a rope sling, and fire with one hand. It was lucky I thought of it, as it turned out.

"At length the overseer fixed on a spot for the station. It was very well for water and grass, and a very pretty view, as he said, but it was too near a thicket where the blacks would lie in ambush, for safety. The old bushmen wanted it planted on a neck of land, where the waters protected it all but one side, and there a row of fence would have made it secure.

"Well, we set to work, and soon had a lot of tall trees down. Charley put up his forge and his grindstone, to keep the ax sharp, and I staid with him. Dick went tailing the cattle, and the overseer sat on a log, and looked on. The second day a mob of blacks came down on the opposite side of the river. They were quite wild, regular _myals_, but some of our men with green branches, went and made peace with them. They liked our bread and sugar; and after a short time we had a lot of them helping to draw rails, fishing for us, bringing wild honey, kangaroos, rats, and firewood, in return for butter and food, so we began to be less careful about our arms. We gave them iron tomahawks, and they soon found out that they could cut out an opossum from a hollow in half-an-hour with one of our tomahawks, while it took a day with one of their own stone ones.

"And so the time passed very pleasantly. We worked away. The young men and gins worked for us. The chiefs adorned themselves with the trinkets and clothes we gave them, and fished and hunted, and admired themselves in the river.

"Dick never trusted them; he stuck to his cattle; he warned us not to trust them, and the overseer called him a blood-thirsty, murdering blackguard for his pains.

"One day, the whole party were at work, chopping and trimming weather-boards for the hut; the blacks helping as usual. I was turning the grindstone for Charley Anvils, and Dick was coming up to the dray to get some tea, but there was a brow of a hill between him and us: the muskets were all piled in one corner. I heard a howl, and then a scream--our camp was full of armed blacks. When I raised my head, I saw the chief, Captain Jack, we called him, with a broad ax in his hand, and the next minute he had chopped the overseer's head clean off; in two minutes all my mates were on the ground. Three or four came running up to us; one threw a spear at me, which I half parried with a pannikin I was using to wet the grindstone, but it fixed deep in my hip, and part of it I believe is there still. Charley Anvils had an ax in his hand, and cut down the first two fellows that came up to him, but he was floored in a minute with twenty wounds. They were so eager to kill me, that one of them, luckily, or I should not have been alive now, cut the spear in my hip short off. Another, a young lad I had sharpened a tomahawk for a few days before, chopped me across the head; you can see the white hair. Down I fell, and nothing could have saved us, but the other savages had got the tarpaulin off, and were screaming with delight, plundering the drays, which called my enemies off. Just then, Dick came in sight. He saw what was the matter; but although there were more than a hundred black devils, all armed, painted, bloody, and yelling, he never stopped or hesitated, but rode slap through the camp, fired bang among them, killing two, and knocking out the brains of another. As he passed by a top rail, where an ax was sticking, he caught it up. The men in the camp were dead enough; the chief warriors had made the rush there, and every one was pierced with several spears, or cut down from close behind by axes in the hands of the chiefs. We, being further off, had been attacked by the boys only. Dick turned toward us, and shouted my name, I could not answer, but I managed to sit up an instant; he turned toward me, leaned down, caught me by the jacket, and dragged me on before him like a log. Just then Charley, who had crept under the grindstone, cried, 'Oh, Dick, don't leave me!' As he said that, a lot of them came running down, for they had seen enough to know that, unless they killed us all, their job would not be half done. As Dick turned to face them, they gave way, and flung spears, but they could not hurt him: they managed to get between us and poor Charley. Dick rode back a circuit, and dropped me among some bushes on a hill, where I could see all. Four times he charged through and through a whole mob, with an ax in one hand, and his short musket in the other. He cut them down right and left, as if he had been mowing; he scared the wretches, although the old women kept screeching and urging them on, as they always do. At length, by help of his stirrup leather, he managed to get Charley up behind him. He never could have done it, but his mare fought, and bit, and turned when he bid her, so he threw the bridle on her neck, and could use that terrible left arm of his. Well, he came up to the hill, and lifted me on, and away we went for three or four miles, but we knew the mare could not stand it long, so Dick got off, and walked. When the blacks had pulled the drays' loads to pieces, they began to follow us, but Dick never lost heart--"

"Nay, mate," interrupted Dick, "once I did; shall never forget it, when I came to put my last bullet in, it was too big."

"Good Heavens!" I exclaimed, "what did you do?"

"Why, I put the bullet in my mouth, and kept chawing and chawing it, and threatening the black devils all the while, until at last it was small enough, and then I rammed it down, and dropped on my knee, and waited until they came within twenty yards, and then I picked off Captain Jack, the biggest villain of them all."

Here Dick, being warmed, continued the story: "We could not stop; we marched all evening and all night, and when the two poor creturs cried for water, as they did most of the night, as often as I could I filled my boots, and gave them to drink. I led the horse, and traveled seventy miles without halting for more than a minute or two. Toward the last they were as helpless as worn-out sheep. I tied them on. We had the luck to fall in with a party traveling just when the old mare was about giving in, and then we must all have died for want of water. Charley Anvils had eighteen wounds, but, except losing two fingers, is none the worse. Poor Jemmy, there, will never be fit for any thing but a hut-keeper; as for me, I had some scratches--nothing to hurt; and the old mare lost an ear. I went back afterward with the police, and squared accounts with the blacks.

"And so, you see, stranger, the old woman thinks I saved her old man's life, although I would have done as much for any one; but I believe there are some gentlemen in Sydney think I ought to have been hung for what I did. Any how, since that scrimmage in the bush, they always call me 'TWO-HANDED DICK.'"

[From Household Words.]

THE USES OF SORROW.

Oh, grieve not for the early dead,
Whom God himself hath taken;
But deck with flowers each holy bed--
Nor deem thyself forsaken,
When one by one, they fall away,
Who were to thee as summer day.

Weep for the babes of guilt, who sleep
With scanty rags stretch'd o'er them,
On the dark road, the downward steep
Of misery; while before them
Looms out afar the dreadful tree,
And solemn, sad Eternity!

Nor weep alone; but when to Heaven
The cords of sorrow bind thee,
Let kindest help to such be given
As God shall teach to find thee;
And, for the sake of those above,
Do deeds of Wisdom, Mercy, Love.

The child that sicken'd on thy knee,
Thou weeping Christian mother,
Had learn'd in this world, lispingly,
Words suited for another.
Oh, dost thou think, with pitying mind,
On untaught infants left behind?

BENJAMIN WEST.

BY LEIGH HUNT.

The two principal houses at which I visited, till the arrival of our relations from the West Indies, were Mr. West's (late President of the Royal Academy), in Newman-street, and Mr. Godfrey Thornton's (of the distinguished city family), in Austin-Friars. How I loved the Graces in one, and every thing in the other! Mr. West (who, as I have already mentioned, had married one of my relations) had bought his house, I believe, not long after he came to England; and he had added a gallery at the back of it, terminating in a couple of lofty rooms. The gallery was a continuation of the house-passage, and, together with one of those rooms and the parlor, formed three sides of a garden, very small but elegant, with a grass-plot in the middle, and busts upon stands under an arcade. The gallery, as you went up it, formed an angle at a little distance to the left, then another to the right and then took a longer stretch into the two rooms; and it was hung with the artist's sketches all the way. In a corner between the two angles was a study-door, with casts of Venus and Apollo, on each side of it. The two rooms contained the largest of his pictures; and in the farther one, after stepping softly down the gallery, as if reverencing the dumb life on the walls, you generally found the mild and quiet artist at his work; happy, for he thought himself immortal.

I need not enter into the merits of an artist who is so well known, and has been so often criticised. He was a man with regular, mild features; and, though of Quaker origin, had the look of what he was, a painter to a court. His appearance was so gentlemanly, that, the moment he changed his gown for a coat, he seemed to be full-dressed. The simplicity and self-possession of the young Quaker, not having time enough to grow stiff (for he went early to study at Rome), took up, I suppose, with more ease than most would have done, the urbanities of his new position. And what simplicity helped him to, favor would retain. Yet this man, so well bred, and so indisputably clever in his art (whatever might be the amount of his genius), had received so careless, or so homely an education when a boy, that he could hardly read. He pronounced also some of his words, in reading, with a puritanical barbarism, such as _haive_ for _have_, as some people pronounce when they sing psalms. But this was perhaps an American custom. My mother, who both read and spoke remarkably well, would say _haive_, and _shaul_ (for _shall_), when she sung her hymns. But it was not so well in reading lectures at the Academy. Mr. West would talk of his art all day long, painting all the while. On other subjects he was not so fluent; and on political and religious matters he tried hard to maintain the reserve common with those about a court. He succeeded ill in both. There were always strong suspicions of his leaning to his native side in politics; and daring Bonaparte's triumph, he could not contain his enthusiasm for the Republican chief, going even to Paris to pay him his homage, when First Consul. The admiration of high colors and powerful effects, natural to a painter, was too strong for him. How he managed this matter with the higher powers in England, I can not say. Probably he was the less heedful, inasmuch as he was not very carefully paid. I believe he did a great deal for George the Third with little profit. Mr. West certainly kept his love for Bonaparte no secret; and it was no wonder, for the latter expressed admiration of his pictures. The artist thought the conqueror's smile enchanting, and that he had the handsomest leg he had ever seen. He was present when the "Venus de Medicis" was talked of, the French having just taken possession of her. Bonaparte, Mr. West said, turned round to those about him, and said, with his eyes lit up, "She's coming!" as if he had been talking of a living person. I believe he retained for the emperor the love that he had had for the First Consul, a wedded love, "for better, for worse." However, I believe also that he retained it after the emperor's downfall; which is not what every painter did.

PEACE

Peace has a dwelling near a river
Where the darkened waters quiver.
Where the ripple we can hear
Bursting on the pebbly shore,
Making music soft and clear
For evermore, for evermore.

Peace has a dwelling near a wood
Where the cooing pigeons brood,
Where the sweet-voiced nightingale
Unto the moon her song doth pour,
And songsters swell the echoing vale
For evermore, for evermore.

Peace has a dwelling in the soul
That can its hopes and fears control;
In silent wood or city's din
Alike it may be found to dwell;
Its dearest home is that within
The chastened heart's profoundest cell.

Peace has a dwelling where no more
The ear can hear the torrent roar,
Or lists the rippling of the river,
As softly it turns up its wave,
Where never more the moon-beams quiver
Within the silent grave.

Peace--oh, thou white-garmented
Maiden, with the flower-decked head,
Come, make thy mansion in my heart!
A tenant thou shalt freely rest,
And thou shalt soothe each bitter smart
That racks the chambers of my breast

CHARLES DRYDEN.

[From Household Words.]

ALCHEMY AND GUNPOWDER.

The day-dream of mankind has ever been the Unattainable. To sigh for what is beyond our reach is, from infancy to age, a fixed condition of our nature. To it we owe all the improvement that distinguishes civilized from savage life--to it we are indebted for all the great discoveries which, at long intervals, have rewarded thought.

Though the motives which stimulated the earliest inquiries were frequently undefined, and, if curiously examined, would be found to be sometimes questionable, it has rarely happened that the world has not benefited by them in the end. Thus Astrology, which ascribed to the stars an influence over the actions and destinies of man; Magic, which attempted to reverse the laws of nature, and Alchemy, which aimed at securing unlimited powers of self-reward; all tended to the final establishment of useful science.

Of none of the sciences whose laws are fully understood, is this description truer than of that now called Chemistry, which once was Alchemy. That "knowledge of the substance or composition of bodies," which the Arabic root of both words implies, establishes a fact in place of a chimera. Experimental philosophy has made Alchemy an impossible belief, but the faith in it was natural in an age when reason was seldom appealed to. The credulity which accepted witchcraft for a truth, was not likely to reject the theory of the transmutation of metals, nor strain at the dogma of perpetual youth and health; the concomitants of the Philosopher's Stone.

The Alchemists claim for their science the remotest antiquity possible, but it was not until three or four centuries after the Christian era that the doctrine of transmutation began to spread. It was among the Arabian physicians that it took root. Those learned men, through whom was transmitted so much that was useful in astronomy, in mathematics, and in medicine, were deeply tinctured with the belief in an universal elixir, whose properties gave the power of multiplying gold, of prolonging life indefinitely, and of making youth perpetual. The discoveries which they made of the successful application of mercury in many diseases, led them to suppose that this agent contained within itself the germ of all curative influences, and was the basis of all other metals. An Eastern imagination, ever prone to heighten the effects of nature, was not slow to ascribe a preternatural force to this medicine, but not finding it in its simple state, the practitioners of the new science had recourse to combination, in the hope, by that means, of attaining their object. To fix mercury became their first endeavor, and this fixation they described as "catching the flying bird of Hermes." Once embarked in the illusory experiment, it is easy to perceive how far the Alchemists might be led; nor need it excite any wonder that in pursuit of the ideal, they accidentally hit upon a good deal that was real. The labors, therefore, of the Arabian physicians were not thrown away, though they entangled the feet of science in mazes, from which escape was only effected, after the lapse of centuries of misdirected efforts.

From the period we have last spoken of, until the commencement of the eleventh century, the only Alchemist of note is the Arabian Geber, who, though he wrote on the perfections of metals, of the new-found art of making gold, in a word, on the philosopher's stone, has only descended to our times as the founder of that jargon which passes under the name of "gibberish." He was, however, a great authority in the middle ages, and allusions to "Geber's cooks," and "Geber's kitchen," are frequent among those who at length saw the error of their ways, after wasting their substance in the vain search for the elixir.

A longer interval might have elapsed but for the voice of Peter the Hermit, whose fanatical scheme for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre was the cause of that gradual absorption, by the nations of the West, of the learning which had so long been buried in the East. The crusaders, or those, rather, who visited the shores of Syria under their protection--the men whose skill in medicine and letters rendered them useful to the invading armies--acquired a knowledge of the Arabian languages, and of the sciences cultivated by Arabian philosophers, and this knowledge they disseminated through Europe. Some part of it, it is true, was derived from the Moors in Spain, but it was all conveyed in a common tongue which began now to be understood. To this era belong the names of Alfonso the Wise, King of Castile; of Isaac Beimiram, the son of Solomon the physician; of Hali Abbas, the scholar of Abimeher Moyses, the son of Sejar; of Aben Sina, better known as Avicenna, and sometimes called Abohali; of Averroes of Cordova, surnamed the Commentator; of Rasis, who is also called Almanzor and Albumasar; and of John of Damascus, whose name has been latinized into Johannes Damascenus. All these, physicians by profession, were more or less professors of alchemy; and besides these were such as Artephius, who wrote alchemical tracts about the year 1130, but who deserves rather to be remembered for the cool assertion which he makes in his "Wisdom of Secrets" that, at the time he wrote he had reached the patriarchal--or fabulous--age of one thousand and twenty-five years!

The thirteenth century came, and with it came two men who stand first, as they then stood alone, in literary and scientific knowledge. One was a German, the other an Englishman; the first was Albertus Magnus, the last Roger Bacon.

Of the former, many wonderful stories are told: such, for instance, as his having given a banquet to the king of the Romans, in the gardens of his cloister at Cologne, when he converted the intensity of winter into a season of summer, full of flowers and fruits, which disappeared when the banquet was over; and his having constructed a marvelous automaton, called "Androis," which, like the invention of his contemporary, Roger Bacon, was said to be capable of auguring all questions, past, present, and to come.

To know more than the rest of the world in any respect, but particularly in natural philosophy, was a certain method by which to earn the name of a necromancer in the middle ages, and there are few whose occult fame has stood higher than that of Roger Bacon. He was afraid, therefore, to speak plainly--indeed, it was the custom of the early philosophers to couch their knowledge in what Bacon himself calls the "tricks of obscurity;" and in his celebrated "_Epistola de Secretis_," he adverts to the possibility of his being obliged to do the same thing, through "_the greatness of the secrets_ which he shall handle." With regard to the invention of his greatest secret, we shall give the words in which he speaks of the properties of gunpowder, and afterward show in what terms he concealed his knowledge. _"Noyses_," he says, "_may be made in the aire like thunders_, yea, with greater horror than those that come of nature; _for a little matter fitted to the quantity of a thimble, maketh a horrible noise and wonderful lightning_. And this is done after sundry fashions, _whereby any citie or armie may be destroyed_." A more accurate description of the explosion of gunpowder could scarcely be given, and it is not to be supposed that Bacon simply confined himself to the theory of his art, when he knew so well the consequences arising from a practical application of it. On this head there is a legend extant, which has not, to our knowledge, been printed before, from which we may clearly see why he contented himself with the cabalistic form in which he conveyed his knowledge of what he deemed a fatal secret.

Attached to Roger Bacon's laboratory, and a zealous assistant in the manifold occupations with which the learned Franciscan occupied himself, was a youthful student, whose name is stated to have been Hubert de Dreux. He was a Norman, and many of the attributes of that people were conspicuous in his character. He was of a quick intelligence, and hasty courage, fertile in invention, and prompt in action, eloquent of discourse, and ready of hand; all excellent qualities, to which was superadded an insatiable curiosity. Docile to receive instruction, and apt to profit by it, Hubert became a great favorite with the philosopher, and to him Bacon expounded many of the secrets--or supposed secrets--of the art which he strove to, bring to perfection. He instructed him also in the composition of certain medicines, which Bacon himself believed might be the means of prolonging life, though not to the indefinite extent dreamed of by those who put their whole faith in the Great Elixir.

But there never yet was an adept in any art or science who freely communicated to his pupil the full amount of his own knowledge; something for experience to gather, or for ingenuity to discover, is always kept in reserve, and the instructions of Roger Bacon stopped short at one point. He was himself engaged in the prosecution of that chemical secret which he rightly judged to be a dangerous one, and, while he experimented with the compound of sulphur, saltpetre, and charcoal, he kept himself apart from his general laboratory, and wrought in a separate cell, to which not even Hubert had access. To know that the friar had a mysterious occupation, which, more than the making of gold or the universal medicine, engrossed him, was enough of itself to rouse the young man's curiosity; but when to this was added the fact, that, from time to time, strange and mysterious noises were heard, accompanied by bright corruscations and a new and singular odor, penetrating through the chinks close to which his eyes were stealthily riveted, Hubert's eagerness to know all that his master concealed had no limit. He resolved to discover the secret, even though he should perish in the attempt; he feared that there was good reason for the accusation of dealing in the Black Art, which, more than all others, the monks of Bacon's own convent countenanced, but this apprehension only stimulated him the more. For some time Hubert waited without an opportunity occurring for gratifying the secret longing of his heart; at last it presented itself.

To afford medical assistance to the sick, was, perhaps, the most useful practice of conventual life, and the monks had always among them practitioners of the healing art, more or less skillful. Of this number, Roger Bacon was the most eminent, not only in the monastery to which he belonged, but in all Oxford.

It was about the hour of noon on a gloomy day toward the end of November, in the year 1282, while the Friar and his pupil were severally employed, the former in his secret cell, and the latter in the general laboratory, that there arrived at the gate of the Franciscan convent a messenger on horseback, the bearer of news from Abingdon, that Walter de Losely, the sheriff of Berkshire, had that morning met with a serious accident by a hurt from a lance, and was then lying dangerously wounded at the hostelry of the Checkers in Abingdon, whither he had been hastily conveyed. The messenger added, that the leech who had been called in was most anxious for the assistance of the skillful Friar, Roger Bacon, and urgently prayed that he would lose no time in coming to the aid of the wounded knight.

Great excitement prevailed among the monks on the receipt of this intelligence, for Walter de Losely was not only a man of power and influence, but moreover, a great benefactor to their order. Friar Bacon was immediately sought and speedily made his appearance, the urgency of the message admitting of no delay. He hastily enjoined Hubert to continue the preparation of an amalgam which he was desirous of getting into a forward state, and taking with him his case of instruments with the bandages and salves which he thought needful, was soon mounted on an easy, ambling palfrey on his way toward Abingdon, the impatient messenger riding before him to announce his approach.

When he was gone, quiet again reigned in the convent, and Hubert de Dreux resumed his occupation. But it did not attract him long. Suddenly he raised his head from the work and his eyes were lit up with a gleam in which joy and fear seemed equally blended. For the first time, for months, he was quite alone. What if he could obtain access to his master's cell and penetrate the mystery in which his labors had been so long enveloped! He cautiously stole to the door of the laboratory, and peeped out into a long passage, at the further extremity of which a door opened into a small court where, detached from the main edifice and screened from all observation, was a small building which the Friar had recently caused to be constructed. He looked about him timorously, fearing lest he might be observed; but there was no cause for apprehension, scarcely any inducement could have prevailed with the superstitious Franciscans to turn their steps willingly in the direction of Roger Bacon's solitary cell.

Reassured by the silence, Hubert stole noiselessly onward, and tremblingly approached the forbidden spot. His quick eye saw at a glance that the key was not in the door, and his countenance fell. The Friar's treasure was locked up! He might see something, however, if he could not enter the chamber. He knelt down, therefore, at the door, and peered through the keyhole. As he pressed against the door, in doing so, it yielded to his touch. In the haste with which Friar Bacon had closed the entrance, the bolt had not been shot. Herbert rose hastily to his feet, and the next moment he was in the cell, looking eagerly round upon the crucibles and alembics, which bore witness to his master's labors. But beyond a general impression of work in hand, there was nothing to be gleaned from this survey. An open parchment volume, in which the Friar had recently been writing, next caught his attention. If the secret should be there in any known language. Hubert knew something of the Hebrew, but nothing yet of Arabic. He was reassured; the characters were familiar to him; the language Latin. He seized the volume, and read the few lines which the Friar had just traced on the last page.

They ran thus:

"Videas tamen utrum loquar in aenigmate vel secundum veritatem." And, further (which we translate): "He that would see these things shall have the key that openeth and no man shutteth, and when he shall shut no man is able to open again."

"But the secret--the secret!" cried Hubert, impatiently, "let me know what 'these things' are!"

He hastily turned the leaf back and read again. The passage was that one in the "_Epistola de Secretis_" which spoke of the artificial thunder and lightning, and beneath it was the full and precise receipt for its composition. This at once explained the strange noises and the flashes of light which he had so anxiously noticed. Surprising and gratifying as this discovery might be, there was, Hubert thought, something beyond. Roger Bacon, he reasoned, was not one to practice an experiment like this for mere amusement. It was, he felt certain, a new form of invocation, more potent, doubtless, over the beings of another world, than any charm yet recorded. Be it as it might, he would try whether, from the materials around him, it were not in his power to produce the same result.

"Here are all the necessary ingredients," he exclaimed; "this yellowish powder is the well known sulphur, in which I daily bathe the argent-vive; this bitter, glistening substance is the salt of the rock, the _salis petrae_; and this black calcination, the third agent. But the proportions are given, and here stands a glass cucurbit in which they should be mingled. It is of the form my master mostly uses--round, with a small neck and a narrow mouth, to be luted closely, without doubt. He has often told me that the sole regenerating power of the universe is heat; yonder furnace shall supply it, and then Hubert de Dreux is his master's equal!"

* * * * *

The short November day was drawing to a close, when, after carefully tending the wounded sheriff, and leaving such instructions with the Abingdon leech as he judged sufficient for his patient's well-doing, Roger Bacon again mounted his palfrey, and turned its head in the direction of Oxford. He was unwilling to be a loiterer after dark, and his beast was equally desirous to be once more comfortably housed, so that his homeward journey was accomplished even more rapidly than his morning excursion; and barely an hour had elapsed when the Friar drew the rein at the foot of the last gentle eminence, close to which lay the walls of the cloistered city. To give the animal breathing-space, he rode quietly up the ascent, and then paused for a few moments before he proceeded, his mind intent on subjects foreign to the speculations of all his daily associations.

Suddenly, as he mused on his latest discovery and calculated to what principal object it might be devoted, a stream of fiery light shot rapidly athwart the dark, drear sky, and before he had space to think what the meteor might portend, a roar as of thunder shook the air, and simultaneous with it, a shrill, piercing scream, mingled with the fearful sound; then burst forth a volume of flame, and on the wind came floating a sulphurous vapor which, to him alone, revealed the nature of the explosion he had just witnessed.

"Gracious God!" he exclaimed, while the cold sweat poured like rain-drops down his forehead, "the fire has caught the fulminating powder! But what meant that dreadful cry? Surely nothing of human life has suffered! The boy Hubert--but, no--he was at work at the further extremity of the building. But this is no time for vain, conjecture--let me learn the worst at once!"

And with these words he urged his affrighted steed to its best pace, and rode rapidly into the city.

All was consternation there: the tremendous noise had roused every inhabitant, and people were hurrying to and fro, some hastening toward the place from whence the sound had proceeded, others rushing wildly from it. It was but too evident that a dreadful catastrophe, worse even than Bacon dreaded, had happened. It was with difficulty he made his way through the crowd, and came upon the ruin which still blazed fiercely, appalling the stoutest of heart. There was a tumult of voices, but above the outcries of the affrighted monks, and of the scared multitude, rose the loud voice of the Friar, calling upon them to extinguish the flames. This appeal turned all eyes toward him, and then associating him with an evil, the cause of which they were unable to comprehend, the maledictions of the monks broke forth.

"Seize the accursed magician," they shouted; "he has made a fiery compact with the demon! Already one victim is sacrificed--our turn will come next! See, here are the mangled limbs of his pupil, Hubert de Dreux! The fiend has claimed his reward, and borne away his soul. Seize on the wicked sorcerer, and take him to a dungeon!"

Roger Bacon sate stupefied by the unexpected blow; he had no power, if he had possessed the will, to offer the slightest resistance to the fury of the enraged Franciscans, who, in the true spirit of ignorance, had ever hated him for his acquirements. With a deep sigh for the fate of the young man, whose imprudence he now saw had been the cause of this dreadful event, he yielded himself up to his enemies; they tore him from his palfrey, and with many a curse, and many a buffet, dragged him to the castle, and lodged him in one of its deepest dungeons.

The flames from the ruined cell died out of themselves; but those which the envy and dread of Bacon's genius had kindled, were never extinguished, but with his life.

In the long years of imprisonment which followed--the doom of the stake being averted only by powerful intercession with the Pope--Bacon had leisure to meditate on the value of all he had done to enlarge the understanding and extend the knowledge of his species. "The prelates and friars," he wrote in a letter which still remains, "have kept me starving in close prison, nor will they suffer any one to come to me, fearing lest my writings should come to any other than the Pope and themselves."

He reflected that of all living men he stood well-nigh alone in the consciousness that in the greatest of his inventions he had produced a discovery of incalculable value, but one for which on every account the time was not ripe.

"I will not die," he said, "without leaving to the world the evidence that the secret was known to me whose marvelous power future ages shall acknowledge. But not yet shall it be revealed. Generations must pass away and the minds of men become better able to endure the light of science, before they can profit by my discovery. Let him who already possesses knowledge, guess the truth these words convey."

And in place of the directions by which Hubert de Dreux had been guided, he altered the sentence as follows:

"Sed tamen salis petre,
LURU MONE CAP UBRE
et sulphuris."

The learned have found that these mystical words conceal the anagram of _Carbonum pulvere_, the third ingredient in the composition of Gunpowder.

[From a Month at Constantinople.]

GLIMPSES OF THE EAST.

BY ALBERT SMITH.

A TURKISH BATH.--The second day I was at Constantinople I had a bath, in the proper Turkish fashion; and this was quite as novel in its way as every thing else had been. The establishment patronized was the head one in Stamboul; and we went from the street into a very large hall, entirety of marble, with a gallery round the walls, in which were couches, as well as down below. On these different visitors were reposing: some covered up and lying quite still, others smoking narghiles, and drinking coffee. Towels and cloths were drying on lines, and in the corner was a little shed, serving as a Cafe.

We went up-stairs and undressed, giving our watches and money to the attendant, who tied our clothes up in a bundle. He then tucked a colored wrapper round our waists, and threw a towel over our shoulders, after which we walked down stairs, and put on some wooden clogs at the door of the next apartment. The first thing these did was to send me head over heels, to the great discomfiture of my temporary costume, and equal delight of the bathers there assembled. We remained in this room, which was of an increased temperature, idling upon other couches, until we were pronounced ready to go into the second chamber. I contrived, with great care and anxiety, to totter into it upon my clogs, and found another apartment of marble, very warm indeed, and lighted from the top by a dome of glass "bull's-eyes." In the middle of this chamber was a hot, raised octagon platform, also of marble, and in the recesses of the sides were marble vases, and tanks, with taps for hot and cold water, and channels in the floor to carry off the suds. Two savage, unearthly boys, their heads all shaved, with the exception of a tuft on the top, and in their scant costume of a towel only, looking more like wild Indians than Turks, now seized hold of me, and forcing me back upon the hot marble floor commenced a dreadful series of tortures, such as I had only read of as pertaining to the dark ages. It was of no use to resist. They clutched hold of the back of my neck, and I thought they were going to strangle me; then they pulled at my arms and legs, and I thought again they were going to put me on the rack; and lastly, when they both began to roll backward and forward on my chest, doubling my cracking elbows underneath them, I thought, finally, that my last minute was come, and that death by suffocation would finish me. They were fiends, and evidently delighted in my agony; not allowing me to look to the right or left after my companions, and throwing themselves on me again, whenever they conceived I was going to call the dragoman to my assistance. I do not know that I ever passed such a frightful five minutes, connected with bathing, nervous as are some of the feelings which that pastime gives rise to. It is very terrible to take the first summer plunge into a deep, dark river and when you are at the bottom, and the water is roaring in your ears, to think of dead bodies and crocodiles; it is almost worse to make that frightful journey down a steep beach, in a bathing machine, with a vague incertitude as to where you will find yourself when the doors open again: but nothing can come up to what I suffered in my last extremity, in this Constantinople bath. Thoughts of Turkish cruelty and the sacks of the Bosphorus; of home, and friends, and my childhood's bowers--of the sadness of being murdered in a foreign bath--and the probability of my Giaour body being eaten by the wild dogs, crowded rapidly on me, as these demons increased their tortures; until, collecting all my strength for one last effort, I contrived to throw them off, one to the right and the other to the left, some half dozen feet--and regained my legs.

The worst was now over, certainly; but the persecution still continued sufficiently exciting. They seized on me again, and led me to the tanks, where they almost flayed me with horse-hair gloves, and drowned me with bowls of warm water, poured continuously on my head. I could not see, and if I again tried to cry out, they thrust a large soapy swab, made of the fibres that grow at the foot of the date palm, into my mouth, accompanying each renewed act of cruelty with a demand for _baksheesh_. At last, being fairly exhausted, themselves, they swathed me in a great many towels; and I was then half carried, half pushed, up stairs again, where I took my place upon my couch with feelings of great joy and thankfulness.

I now began to think that all the horrors I had undergone were balanced by the delicious feeling of repose that stole over me. I felt that I could have stopped there forever, with the fragrant coffee steaming at my side, and the soothing bubble of the _narghiles_ sounding in every direction. I went off into a day dream--my last clear vision being that of a man having his head shaved all but a top knot, which was long enough to twist round and round, under his fez--and could scarcely believe that an hour had elapsed, when the dragoman suggested our return to the bustling world without.

* * * * *

THE SLAVE MARKET AT CONSTANTINOPLE.--No European goes to the East with a clear idea of a Slave-market. He has seen fanciful French lithographs, and attractive scenes in Eastern ballets, where the pretty girls appeared ready, on the shortest notice, and in the most bewitching costumes, to dance the Gitana, Romaika, Tarantella, Redowa, or any other characteristic _pas_ that might be required of them. Or if not schooled into these impressions, he takes the indignant view of the subject, and thinks of nothing but chains and lashes, and finds, at last, that one is just as false as the other.

There is now no regular slave-market at Constantinople. The fair Circassians and Georgians reside in the houses of the merchants, to whom many of them are regularly consigned by their friends, and of these it is impossible for a Frank to obtain a glimpse, for the usual privacy of the harem is granted to them. The chief depot of the blacks is in a large court-yard attached to the Mosque of Suleyman. In a street immediately outside the wall was a row of coffee-houses, where opium, was also to be procured for smoking, which is by no means so general a practice as is imagined; and over and behind these were buildings in which the slaves were kept. It is true that these were grated, but the lattices through which only the Turkish women can look abroad, gave a far greater notion of imprisonment.

There were a great many women and children grouped about in the court-yard, and all those who appeared to possess any degree of intelligence were chatting and laughing. Some were wrapped up in blankets and crouching about in corners: but in these, sense and feeling seemed to be at the lowest ebb. I should be very sorry to run against any proper feelings on the subject, but I do honestly believe that if any person of average propriety and right-mindedness were shown these creatures, and told that their lot was to become the property of others, and work in return for food and lodging, he would come to the conclusion that it was all they were fit for--indeed, he might think that they had gained in exchanging their wretched savage life for one of comparative civilization. I would not pretend, upon the strength of a hurried visit to a city, to offer the slightest opinion upon the native domestic and social economy; but I can say, that whenever I have seen the black slaves abroad, they have been neatly dressed, and apparently well kept; and that, if shopping with their mistresses in the bazaars, the conversation and laughing that passed between them was like that between two companions. The truth is that the "virtuous indignation" side of the question holds out grander opportunities to an author for fine writing than the practical fact. But this style of composition should not always be implicitly relied upon; I knew a man who was said by certain reviews and literary _cliques_ to be "a creature of large sympathies for the poor and oppressed," because he wrote touching things about them; but who would abuse his wife, and brutally treat his children, and harass his family, and then go and drink until his large heart was sufficiently full to take up the "man-and-brother" line of literary business, and suggest that a tipsy chartist was as good as a quiet gentleman. Of this class are the writers who even call livery "a badge of slavery," and yet, in truth, if the real slave felt as proud of his costume and calves as John feels, he might be considerably envied for his content by many of us.

As we entered the court-yard, a girl rose and asked Demetri if I wanted to buy her. I told him to say that I did, and would take her to England. She asked Demetri where that was, and on being told that it was so many days' journey, she ran away, declaring that she would never go so far with any body. We next went up to a circle of black females, who had clustered under the shade of a tree. A Turkish woman in her vail was talking to them. I made Demetri tell them that we had no slaves in England, as our queen did not allow it, but that every one was free as soon as they touched the land. This statement excited a laugh of the loudest derision from all the party, and they ran to tell it to their companions, who screamed with laughter as well; so that I unwittingly started a fine joke that day in the slave-market.

* * * * *

DOGS IN CONSTANTINOPLE.--After an hour's doze I woke up again, and went and sat by the window. The noise I then heard I shall never forget.

To say that if all the sheep-dogs going to Smithfield on a market-day had been kept on the constant bark, and pitted against the yelping curs upon all the carts in London, they could have given any idea of the canine uproar that now first astonished me, would be to make the feeblest of images. The whole city rang with one vast riot. Down below me at Tophane--over at Stamboul--far away at Scutari--the whole eighty thousand dogs that are said to overrun Constantinople, appeared engaged in the most active extermination of each other, without a moment's cessation. The yelping, howling, barking, growling, and snarling, were all merged into one uniform and continuous, even sound, as the noise of frogs becomes when heard at a distance. For hours there was no lull. I went to sleep, and woke again, and still, with my windows open, I heard the same tumult going on: nor was it until daybreak that any thing like tranquillity was restored. In spite of my early instruction, the dogs delight to bark and bite, and should be allowed to do so, it being their nature, I could not help wishing that, for a short season, the power was vested in me to carry out the most palpable service for which brickbats and the Bosphorus could be made conjointly available.

Going out in the day-time, it is not difficult to find traces of the fights of the night, about the limbs of all the street-dogs. There is not one, among their vast number, in the enjoyment of a perfect skin. Some have their ears gnawed away or pulled off; others have had their eyes taken out; from the backs and haunches of others, perfect steaks of flesh have been torn away; and all bear the scars of desperate combats.

Wild and desperate as is their nature, these poor animals are susceptible of kindness. If a scrap of bread is thrown to one of them now and then, he does not forget it; for they have, at times, a hard matter to live--not the dogs among the shops of Galata or Stamboul, but those whose "parish" lies in the large burying-grounds and desert-places without the city; for each keeps, or rather is kept, to his district; and if he chanced to venture into a strange one, the odds against his return would be very large. One battered old animal, to whom I used occasionally to toss a scrap of food, always followed me from the hotel to the cross-street at Pera, where the two soldiers stand on guard, but would never come beyond this point. He knew the fate that awaited him had he done so; and therefore, when I left him, he would lie down in the road and go to sleep until I came back. When a horse or camel dies, and is left about the roads near the city, the bones are soon picked very clean by these dogs, and they will carry the skulls or pelves to great distances. I was told that they will eat their dead fellows--a curious fact, I believe, in canine economy. They are always troublesome--not to say dangerous--at night; and are especially irritated by Europeans, whom they will single out among a crowd of Levantines.

[From the Autobiography of Leigh Hunt.]

CHRIST-HOSPITAL WORTHIES.