Chapter VIII: "tronchon." (2)

"Poll was indeed a remarkable specimen of his tribe, and the daily wonder of the whole neighborhood. Years flew by: and although kind treatment had quite reconciled him to his cage, it could not ward off the usual effects of old age, particularly in a climate where the sun rarely penetrated within the bars of his prison. When I first saw him, his memory had greatly failed him; while his bright green plumage was vast verging into a silvery gray He had but little left of that triumphant chuckle which used to provoke such laughter among the younkers; and day after day he would sit mute and moping on his perch, seldom answering the numerous questions that were put to him regarding the cause of his malady. Had any child of the family been sick, it could hardly have been treated with greater tenderness than Poll.

"At last, one fine morning, just as the vernal equinox had blown a few ships into harbor, a stranger was announced, and immediately recognized by the master of the house as a 'Don' something--a Spanish merchant, whose kindness to a young member of the family had been often mentioned in his letters from Mexico. One of his own ships, a brig, in which he had made the voyage, was then in the bay, driven in by stress of weather, for Mull was no market for Spanish goods. But that was not my business; he would most likely pay a visit to Greenock, where, in the present day at least, Spanish cargoes are rife enough.

"No sooner had their visitor exchanged salutations with the master of the house and his family, than the parrot caught his eye; and, going up to the cage, he addressed the aged bird in familiar Spanish. The effect was electric: the poor blind captive seemed as if suddenly awakened to a new existence; he fluttered his wings in ecstasy--opened his eyes, fixed them, dim and sightless as they were, intently on the stranger; then answered him in the same speech--not an accent of which he had ever heard for twenty years. His joy was excessive--but it was very short; for in the midst of his screams and antics, poor Poll dropped dead from his perch."

Such was the incident upon which Campbell composed the little ballad entitled "The Parrot." It had taken strong hold of his memory, and, after the lapse of forty years,[19] found its way into the pages of the "New Monthly," and is now incorporated with his acknowledged poems.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] See "Life and Letters of Campbell." Vol. I. Residence in Mull.

[From Sharpe's London Magazine.]

GALILEO AND HIS DAUGHTER.

BY J. B.

I had been walking in a grove of lime-trees, arched above me, like the stately roofing of a cathedral. As I entered, the daylight was yet strong; but when I left my temporary retreat, the heavens were clustered over with stars, and one of them, high above the old gray tower of the ancient monastery of St. Augustine, almost cast a shadow across the landscape--it was the planet Jupiter: and I have never observed it--at least, thus eminent among its brethren--without being more or less reminded of,

"The starry Galileo, and his woes."

To this planet did the philosopher direct the then newly-invented telescope, the result being the discovery of four attendant moons: while the analogy derived from the motions of these little stars, performing their revolutions round the primary planet in perfect order and concord, afforded an argument that had a powerful influence in confirming Galileo's own views in favor of the Copernican system of the universe, and ultimately converting the scientific world to the same opinion.

Yet little more than two centuries since, on the 14th February, 1633, the astronomer, cited before the Inquisition, arrived at Rome, to answer the charge of heresy and blasphemy; while, a few months ago, in the brief but glorious day-burst of Roman liberty, that very Inquisition was invaded by an exultant populace, and among its archives, full memorials of martyred worth and of heroic endurance, most eagerly, but in vain, was sought the record of the process against the great philosopher.

Galileo, on a former occasion, in reference to some of his scientific discoveries, had heard rumors of papal persecution, and as a cautious friend whispered to him the unpleasing tidings, he had exclaimed, "Never will I barter the freedom of my intellect to one as liable to err as myself!"

The time quickly arrived to test his courage and his resolution.

For a little while, we are informed, he was allowed to remain secluded in the palace of his friend Nicolini. In a few months, however, he was removed to an apartment in the Exchequer of the Inquisition, still being permitted the attendance of his own servant, and many indulgences of which they had not decided to deprive him. On the twenty-first of June, of the same year, he appeared before the Holy Office. Through its gloomy halls and passages he passed to the tribunal. There was little here, as in the other ecclesiastical buildings of Rome, to captivate the senses. The dark walls were unadorned with the creations of art; state and ceremony were the gloomy ushers to the chamber of intolerance. In silence and in mystery commenced the preparations. The familiars of the office advanced to the astronomer, and arrayed him in the penitential garment; and as he approached, with a slow and measured step, the tribunal, cardinals, and prelates noiselessly assembled, and a dark circle of officers and priests closed in, while, as if conscious that the battle had commenced in earnest between mind and power, all the pomp and splendor of the hierarchy of Rome--that system which had hitherto possessed a sway unlimited over the fears and opinions of mankind--was summoned up to increase the solemnity and significance of the judgment about to be pronounced against him.

To the tedious succession of technical proceedings, mocking justice by their very assumption of formality, it would be needless to refer. Solemnly, however, and by an authority which it was fatal to resist, Galileo was called on to renounce a truth which his whole life had been consecrated to reveal and to maintain, "The motion through space of the Earth and Planets round the Sun."

Then, immediately, assuming he had nothing to allege, would attempt no resistance, and offer no defense, came the sentence of the tribunal, banning and anathematizing all who held the doctrine, that the sun is the centre of the system, as a tenet "philosophically false, and formally heretical."

And then they sentenced the old and infirm philosopher--this band of infallibles!--they bade him abjure and detest the said errors and heresies. They decreed his book to the flames, and they condemned him for life to the dungeons of the Inquisition, bidding him recite, "once a week, seven penitential psalms for the good of his soul!"

Did Galileo yield? Did he renounce that theory now affording such ample proof of the beauty and order of the universe; to whose very laws Kepler, the friend and contemporary of the philosopher, was even then, though unconsciously, bearing evidence, by his wonderful theorem of velocities and distances, a problem which Newton afterward confirmed and illustrated?

Did Galileo yield? He did. Broken by age and infirmity, importuned by friends more alarmed than himself, perhaps, at the terrors of that merciless tribunal, he signed his abjuration; yielded all his judges demanded; echoed their curse and ban, as their superstition or their hate required. There is a darker tale dimly hinted by those familiar with the technicalities of the Holy Office, that the terms, "Il rigoroso esame," during which Galileo is reported to have answered like a good Christian, officially announce the application of the torture.

Then occurred, perhaps scarcely an hour afterward, that remarkable episode in this man's history. As he arose from the ground on which, all kneeling, he had pronounced his abjuration, he gave a significant stamp, and whispered to a friend, "_E pur si muove!_" "Yet it does move"--ay, and in spite of Inquisitions, has gone round--nay, the whole world of thought itself has moved, and having received an impulse from such minds, will revolve for ages in a glorious cycle for mankind! But the most touching incident of Galileo's story is yet to come.

After several years of confinement at Arcetri, the great astronomer was permitted to retire to Florence, upon the conditions that he should neither quit his house, nor receive the visits of his friends. They removed him from a prison, to make a prison of his home. Alas! it was even worse than this.

Much as the greatest minds love fame, and struggle to obtain it, the proudest triumphs of genius and of science, the applause of the world itself, ever loud and obtrusive, is not to be compared to the low and gentle murmurs of pleasure and of pride from those we love. There was one being from whom Galileo had been accustomed to hear those consolations--his child his gentle Maria Galilei. He had been otherwise a solitary indeed, and now more than ever so, when he was cut off from the communion of the greatest minds. To his lovely girl, his daughter, his heart clung with more than fondness. No wife of Pliny, perhaps, ever wafted to her husband with sweeter devotion the echoes of the applauding world without, greeting him she loved, than she did--his Maria Galilei. As he returned from prison, the way seemed tedious, the fleetest traveling all too slow, till he should once more fold her to his heart; and she, too, she anticipated meeting her father with a pleasure greater than ever before enjoyed, since he had now become a victim, sainted in her eyes, by the persecution he had suffered.

Short, indeed, was this happiness, if enjoyed at all. Within the month, she died, and the home of Galileo was more than a prison--it was a desolate altar, on which the last and most precious of his household gods was shivered. And he died too, a few years afterward, that good old man!

But he had yielded--he was no martyr! Yes, indeed! But be it remembered, that if he possessed not the moral courage of a Huss, a Savonarola, or a Luther, he was not called to exercise it in so high a cause. The assertion and support of a religious truth is impressed with far deeper obligations than the advocacy of a scientific one, however well maintained by analogy, and confirmed by reason.

Still there was a deep devotional sentiment that pervaded the character of Galileo. Before he died, he became totally blind; yet he did not despair. Like Milton, he labored on for mankind--nay, pursued his scientific studies, inventing mechanical substitutes for his loss of vision, to enable him still to pursue his arduous researches.

It is true he was shut out, like the elder Herschel, from the view of that glorious company, toward which his spirit had so often soared. Well might his friend Castelli say, in allusion to his infirmity, "that the noblest eyes were darkened which nature had ever made--eyes so privileged, and gifted with such rare qualities, that they might be said to have seen more than all those who had gone before him, and to have opened the eyes of all who were to come." Galileo himself bore noble tribute to his friend, when he exclaimed,

"Never, never will I cease to use the senses which God has left me; and though this heaven, this earth, this universe, be henceforth shrunk for me into the narrow space which I myself fill, so it please God, it shall content me."

The malice of his enemies long survived his death. The partisans of Rome disputed his right to make a will. They denied him a monument for which large sums had been subscribed.

A hundred years afterward, when a splendid memorial was about to be erected to his memory, the President of the Florentine Academy descended into his grave, and desecrated his remains, by bearing off, as _relics for a museum_, the thumb of his right hand, and one of his vertebræ! So the victims of the religious fury of one age become the martyrs of science in another!

And what is the moral of what we have written concerning Galileo? Is there no teaching that may instruct our own times, especially when we see how, through scorn and persecution, and this world's contumely, and through the gloom and shadows of ignorance and fear, the form and substance of mighty Truth rises, slowly and dimly, perchance, at first, but grandly and majestically ere long? Little more than two hundred years have passed since the death of Galileo, but ample justice has been done to his memory. His name will be a watchword through all time, to urge men forward in the great cause of moral and intellectual progress; and the Tree of Knowledge, whose fruits were once on earth, plucked, perhaps, ere they were matured, has shot up with its golden branches into the skies, over which has radiated the smiles of a beneficent Providence to cheer man onward in the career of virtue and intelligence.

"There is something," as a profound writer has observed,[20] "in the spirit of the present age, greater than the age itself. It is, the appearance of a new power in the world, the multitude of minds now pressing forward in the great task of the moral and intellectual regeneration of mankind."

And this cause must ultimately triumph. The energies and discoveries of men like Galileo, remote as their history becomes, have an undying influence.

The power of a great mind is like the attraction of a sun. It appears in the infinite bounds of space, far, far away, as a grain among other gold dust at the feet of the Eternal, or, at most, but as a luminous spot; and yet we know that its influence controls, and is necessary for, the order and arrangement of the nearest, as well is the remotest system. So in the moral and intellectual universe, from world to world, from star to star, the influence of one great mind extends, and we are drawn toward it by an unseen, but all-pervading affinity. Thus has the cause of moral and intellectual progress a sure guarantee of success. It has become a necessity, interwoven with the spirit of the age--a necessity impressed by every revelation of social evil, as well as proclaimed by every scientific discovery--gaining increased energy and power from the manifestation of every new wonder and mystery of nature--nay, from the building of every steam-ship, the laying down of every new line of railway.

FOOTNOTES:

[20] Channing.

[From Dickens's "Household Words."]

EBENEZER ELLIOTT

The name of Ebenezer Elliott is associated with one of the greatest and most important political changes of modern times, with events not yet sufficiently removed from us, to allow of their being canvassed in this place with that freedom which would serve the more fully to illustrate his real merits. Elliott would have been a poet, in all that constitutes true poetry, had the corn laws never existed.

He was born on 25th March, 1781, at the New Foundry, Masborough, in the parish of Rotherham, where his father was a clerk in the employment of Messrs. Walker, with a salary of £60 or £70 per annum. His father was a man of strong political tendencies, possessed of humorous and satiric power, that might have qualified him for a comic actor. Such was the character he bore for political sagacity that he was popularly known as "Devil Elliott." The mother of the poet seems to have been a woman of an extreme nervous temperament, constantly suffering from ill health, and constitutionally awkward and diffident.

Ebenezer commenced his early training at a dame's school; but shy, awkward, and desultory, he made little progress; nor did he thrive much better at the school in which he was afterward placed. Here he employed his comrades to do his tasks for him, and of course laid no foundation for his future education. His parents, disheartened by the lad's apparent stolidity, sent him next to Dalton's school, two miles distant; and here he certainly acquired something, for he retained, to old age, the memory of some of the scenes through which he used to pass on his way to and from this school. For want of the necessary preliminary training, he could do little or nothing with letters: he rather preferred playing truant and roaming the meadows in listless idleness, wherever his fancy led him. This could not last. His father soon set him to work in the foundry; and with this advantage, that the lad stood on better terms with himself than he had been for a considerable period, for he discovered that he could compete with others in work--sheer hand-labor--if he could not in the school. One disadvantage, however, arose, as he tells us, from his foundry life; for he acquired a relish for vulgar pursuits, and the village alehouse divided his attentions with the woods and fields. Still a deep impression of the charms of nature had been made upon him by his boyish rambles, which the debasing influences and associations into which he was thrown could not wholly wipe out. He would still wander away in his accustomed haunts, and purify his soul from her alehouse defilements, by copious draughts of the fresh nectar of natural beauty imbibed from the sylvan scenery around him.

The childhood and youth of the future poet presented a strange medley of opposites and antitheses. Without the ordinary measure of adaptation for scholastic pursuits, he inhaled the vivid influences of external things, delighting intensely in natural objects, and yet feeling an infinite chagrin and remorse at his own idleness and ignorance. We find him highly imaginative; making miniature lakes by sinking an iron vessel filled with water in a heap of stones, and gazing therein with wondrous enjoyment at the reflection of the sun and skies overhead; and exhibiting a strange passion for looking on the faces of those who had died violent deaths, although these dead men's features would haunt his imagination for weeks afterward.

He did not, indeed, at this period, possess the elements of an ordinary education. A very simple circumstance sufficed to apply the spark which fired his latent energies, and nascent poetical tendencies: and he henceforward became a different being, elevated far above his former self. He called one evening, after a drinking bout on the previous night, on a maiden aunt, named Robinson, a widow possessed of about £30 a year, by whom he was shown a number of "Sowerby's English Botany," which her son was then purchasing in monthly parts. The plates made a considerable impression on the awkward youth, and he assayed to copy them by holding them to the light with a thin piece of paper before them. When he found he could trace their forms by these means his delight was unbounded, and every spare hour was devoted to the agreeable task. Here commenced that intimate acquaintance with flowers, which seems to pervade all his works. This aunt of Ebenezer's, (good soul! would that every shy, gawky Ebenezer had such an aunt!) bent on completing the charm she had so happily begun, displayed to him still further her son's book of dried specimens; and this elated him beyond measure. He forthwith commenced a similar collection for himself, for which purpose he would roam the fields still more than ever, on Sundays as well as week days, to the interruption of his attendances at chapel. This book he called his "Dry Flora," (_Hortus Siccus_) and none so proud as he when neighbors noticed his plants and pictures. He was not a little pleased to feel himself a sort of wonder, as he passed through the village with his plants; and, greedy of praise, he allowed his acquaintance to believe that his drawings were at first hand, and made by himself from nature. "Thomson's Seasons," read to him about this time by his brother Giles, gave him a glimpse of the union of poetry with natural beauty; and lit up in his mind an ambition which finally transformed the illiterate, rugged, half-tutored youth into the man who wrote "The Village Patriarch," and the "Corn Law Rhymes."

From this time he set himself resolutely to the work of self-education. His knowledge of the English language was meagre in the extreme; and he succeeded at last only by making for himself a kind of grammar by reading and observation. He then tried French, but his native indolence prevailed, and he gave it up in despair. He read with avidity whatever books came in his way; and a small legacy of books to his father came in just at the right time. He says he could never read through a second-rate book, and he therefore read masterpieces only; "after Milton, then Shakspeare; then Ossian; then Junius; Paine's 'Common Sense;' Swift's 'Tale of a Tub;' 'Joan of Arc;' Schiller's 'Robbers;' Burger's 'Lenora;' Gibbon's 'Decline and Fall;' and long afterward, Tasso, Dante, De Staël, Schlegel, Hazlitt, and the '_Westminster Review_.'" Reading of this character might have been expected to lead to something; and was well calculated to make an extraordinary impression on such a mind as Elliott's; and we have the fruit of this course of study in the poetry which from this time he began to throw off.

He remained with his father from his sixteenth to his twenty-third year, working laboriously without wages, except an occasional shilling or two for pocket-money. He afterward tried business on his own account. He made two efforts at Sheffield; the last commencing at the age of forty, and with a borrowed capital of £150. He describes in his nervous language the trials and difficulties he had to contend with; and all these his imagination embodied for him in one grim and terrible form, which he christened "Bread Tax." With this demon he grappled in desperate energy, and assailed it vigorously with his caustic rhyme This training, these mortifications, these misfortunes, and the demon "Bread Tax" above all, made Elliott successively despised, hated, feared, and admired, as public opinion changed toward him.

Mr. Howitt describes his warehouse as a dingy, and not very extensive place, heaped with iron of all sorts, sizes, and forms, with barely a passage through the chaos of rusty bars into the inner sanctum, at once, study, counting-house, library, and general receptacle of odds and ends connected with his calling. Here and there, to complete the jumble, were plaster casts of Shakspeare, Achilles, Ajax, and Napoleon, suggestive of the presidency of literature over the materialism of commerce which marked the career of this singular being. By dint of great industry he began to flourish in business, and, at one time, could make a profit of £20 a-day without moving from his seat. During this prosperous period he built a handsome villa-residence in the suburbs. He now had leisure to brood over the full force and effect of the Corn Laws. The subject was earnestly discussed then in all manufacturing circles of that district. Reverses now arrived. In 1837, he lost fully one-third of all his savings, getting out of the storm at last with about £6,000, which he wrote to Mr. Tait of Edinburgh, he intended, if possible, to retain. The palmy days of £20 profits had gone by for Sheffield, and instead, all was commercial disaster and distrust. Elliott did well to retire with what little he had remaining. In his retreat he was still vividly haunted by the demon "Bread Tax." This, then, was the period of the Corn-Law Rhymes, and these bitter experiences lent to them that tone of sincerity and earnestness--that fire and frenzy which they breathed, and which sent them, hot, burning words of denunciation and wrath, into the bosoms of the working classes--the toiling millions from whom Elliott sprang. "Bread Tax," indeed, to him was a thing of terrible import and bitter experience: hence he uses no gentle terms or honeyed phrases when dealing with the obnoxious impost. Sometimes coarse invective and angry assertion take the place of convincing reason and calm philosophy. At others, there is a true vein of poetry and pathos running through the rather unpoetic theme, which touches us with its Wordsworthian feeling and gentleness. Then he would be found calling down thunders upon the devoted heads of the monopolists, with all a fanatic's hearty zeal, and in his fury he would even pursue them, not merely through the world, but beyond its dim frontiers and across the threshold of another state. Take them, however, as they stand--and more vigorous, effective, and startling political poetry has not graced the literature of the age.

It was not to be supposed but that this trumpet-blast of defiance, and shrill scream of "war to the knife," should bring down upon him much obloquy, much vituperation: but all this fell harmlessly upon him; he rather liked it. When people began to bear with the turbid humor and angry utterances of the "Corn Law Rhymer," and grew familiar with the stormy march of his verse, it was discovered that he was something more than a mere political party song-writer. He was a true poet, whose credentials, signed and sealed in the court of nature, attested the genuineness of his brotherhood with those children of song who make the world holier and happier by the mellifluous strains they bring to us, like fragments of a forgotten melody, from the far-off world of beauty and of love.

Elliott will not soon cease to be distinctively known as the "Corn Law Rhymer;" but it will be by his non-political poems that he will be chiefly remembered by posterity as the Poet of the People; for his name will still be, as it has long been, a "Household Word," in the homes of all such as love the pure influences of simple, sensuous, and natural poetry. As an author he did not make his way fast: he had written poetry for twenty years ere he had attracted much notice. A genial critique by Southey in the "Quarterly," another by Carlyle in the "Edinburgh," and favorable notices in the "Athenæum" and "New Monthly," brought him into notice; and he gradually made his way until a new and cheap edition of his works, in 1840, stamped him as a popular poet. His poetry is just such as, knowing his history, we might have expected; and such as, not knowing it, might have bodied forth to us the identical man as we find him.

As we have said, Nature was his school; but flowers were the especial vocation of his muse. A small ironmonger--a keen and successful tradesman--we should scarcely have given him credit for such an exquisite love of the beautiful in Nature, as we find in some of those lines written by him in the crowded counting-room of that dingy warehouse. The incident of the floral miscellany; the subsequent study of "The Seasons;" the long rambles in meadows and on hill-sides, specimen-hunting for his _Hortus Siccus_, sufficiently account for the exquisite sketches of scenery, and those vivid descriptions of natural phenomena, which showed that the coinage of his brain had been stamped in Nature's mint. The most casual reader would at once discover that, with Thomson, he has ever been the devoted lover and worshiper of Nature--at wanderer by babbling streams--a dreamer in the leafy wilderness--a worshiper of morning upon the golden hill-tops. He gives us pictures of rural scenery warm as the pencil of a Claude, and glowing as the sunsets of Italy.

A few sentences will complete our sketch, and bring us to the close of the poet's pilgrimage. He had come out of the general collapse of commercial affairs in 1837, with a small portion of the wealth he had realized by diligent and continuous labor. He took a walk, on one occasion, into the country, of about eighteen miles: reached Argilt Hill, liked the place, returned, and resolved to buy it. He laid out in house and land about one thousand guineas. His family consisted of Mrs. Elliott and two daughters; a servant-maid; an occasional helper; a Welch pony and small gig; "a dog almost as big as the mare, and much wiser than his master; a pony-cart; a wheel-barrow; and a grindstone--and," says he, "turn up your nose if you like!"

From his own papers we learn that he had one son a clergyman, at Lothedale, near Skipton; another in the steel trade, on Elliott's old premises at Sheffield; two others unmarried, living on their means; another "druggisting at Sheffield, in a sort of chimney called a shop;" and another, a clergyman, living in the West Indies. Of his thirteen children, five were dead, and of whom he says. "They left behind them no memorial--but they are safe in the bosom of Mercy, and not quite forgotten even here!"

In this retirement he occasionally lectured and spoke at public meetings; but he began to suffer from a spasmodic affection of the nerves, which obliged him wholly to forego public speaking. This disease grew worse; and in December, 1839, he was warned that he could not continue to speak in public, except at the risk of sudden death. This disorder lingered about him for about six years; he then fell ill of a more serious disease, which threatened speedy termination. This was in May, 1849. In September, he writes, "I have been _very, very_ ill." On the first of December, 1849, the event, which had so long been impending, occurred, and Elliott peacefully departed in the sixty-ninth year of his age.

Thus, then, the sun set on one whose life was one continued heroic struggle with opposing influences--with ignorance first, then trade, then the corn laws, then literary fame, and, last of all, disease: and thus the world saw its last of the material breathing form of the rugged but kindly being who made himself loved, feared, hated, and famous, as the "CORN LAW RHYMER."

[From Cumming's Hunting Adventures in South Africa.]

CONFLICT WITH AN ELEPHANT.

In a few minutes one of those who had gone off to our left came running breathless to say that he had seen the mighty game. I, halted for a minute, and instructed Isaac, who carried the big Dutch rifle, to act independently of me, while Kleinboy was to assist me in the chase; but, as usual, when the row began, my followers thought only of number one. I bared my arms to the shoulder, and, having imbibed a draught of aqua pura from the calabash of one of the spoorers, I grasped my trusty two-grooved rifle, and told my guide to go ahead. We proceeded silently as might be for a few hundred yards, following the guide, when he suddenly pointed, exclaiming, "Klow!" and before us stood a herd of mighty bull elephants, packed together beneath a shady grove about a hundred and fifty yards in advance. I rode slowly toward them, and, as soon as they observed me, they made a loud rumbling noise, and, tossing their trunks, wheeled right about and made off in one direction, crashing through the forest and leaving a cloud of dust behind them. I was accompanied by a detachment of my dogs, who assisted me in the pursuit.

The distance I had come, and the difficulties I had undergone to behold these elephants, rose fresh before me. I determined that on this occasion at least I would do my duty, and, dashing my spurs into "Sunday's" ribs, I was very soon much too close in their rear for safety. The elephants now made an inclination to my left, whereby I obtained a good view of the ivory. The herd consisted of six bulls; four of them were full grown, first-rate elephants; the other two were fine fellows, but had not yet arrived at perfect stature. Of the four old fellows, two had much finer tusks than the rest, and for a few seconds I was undecided which of these two I would follow; when, suddenly, the one which I fancied had the stoutest tusks broke from his comrades, and I at once felt convinced that he was the patriarch of the herd, and followed him accordingly. Cantering alongside, I was about to fire, when he instantly turned, and, uttering a trumpet so strong and shrill that the earth seemed to vibrate beneath my feet, he charged furiously after me for several hundred yards in a direct line, not altering his course in the slightest degree for the trees of the forest, which he snapped and overthrew like reeds in his headlong career.

When he pulled up in his charge, I likewise halted; and as he slowly turned to retreat, I let fly at his shoulder, "Sunday" capering and prancing, and giving me much trouble. On receiving the ball the elephant shrugged his shoulder, and made off at a free, majestic walk. This shot brought several of the dogs to my assistance which had been following the other elephants, and on their coming up and barking another headlong charge was the result, accompanied by the never-failing trumpet as before In his charge he passed close to me, when I saluted him with a second bullet in the shoulder of which he did not take the slightest notice. I now determined not to fire again until I could make a steady shot; but, although the elephant turned repeatedly, "Sunday" invariably disappointed me, capering so that it was impossible to fire. At length, exasperated, I became reckless of the danger, and, springing from the saddle, approached the elephant under cover of a tree and gave him a bullet in the side of the head, when, trumpeting so shrilly that the forest trembled, he charged among the dogs, from whom he seemed to fancy that the blow had come; after which he took up a position in a grove of thorns, with his head toward me. I walked up very near, and, as he was in the act of charging (being in those days under wrong impressions as to the impracticability of bringing down an elephant with a shot in the forehead), stood coolly in his path until he was within fifteen paces of me, and let drive at the hollow of his forehead, in the vain expectation that by so doing I should end his career. The shot only served to increase his fury--an effect which, I had remarked, shots in the head invariably produced; and, continuing his charge with incredible quickness and impetuosity, he all but terminated my elephant-hunting forever. A large party of the Bechuanas who had come up, yelled out simultaneously, imagining I was killed, for the elephant was at one moment almost on the top of me: I, however, escaped by my activity, and by dodging round the bushy trees. As the elephant was charging, an enormous thorn ran deep into the sole of my foot the old Badenoch brogues, which I that day sported, being worn through, and this caused me severe pain, laming me throughout the rest of the conflict.

The elephant held on through the forest at a sweeping pace; but he was hardly out of sight when I was loaded and in the saddle, and soon once more alongside. About this time I heard Isaac blazing away at another bull; but when the elephant charged, his cowardly heart failed him, and he very soon made his appearance at a safe distance in my rear. My elephant kept crashing along at a steady pace, with blood streaming from his wounds; the dogs, which were knocked up with fatigue and thirst, no longer barked around him, but had dropped astern. It was long before I again fired, for I was afraid to dismount, and "Sunday" was extremely troublesome. At length I fired sharp right and left from the saddle: he got both balls behind the shoulder, and made a long charge after me, rumbling and trumpeting as before. The whole body of the Bamangwato men had now come up, and were following a short distance behind me. Among these was Mollyeon, who volunteered to help; and being a very swift and active fellow, he rendered me important service by holding my fidgety horse's head while I fired and loaded. I then fired six broadsides from the saddle, the elephant charging almost every time, and pursuing us back to the main body in our rear, who fled in all directions as he approached.

The sun had now sunk behind the tops of the trees; it would very soon be dark, and the elephant did not seem much distressed, notwithstanding all he had received. I recollected that my time was short, and therefore at once resolved to fire no more from the saddle, but to go close up to him and fire on foot. Riding up to him. I dismounted, and, approaching very near, I gave it him right and left in the side of the head, upon which he made a long and determined charge after me; but I was now very reckless of his charges, for I saw that he could not overtake me, and in a twinkling I was loaded, and, again approaching, fired sharp right and left behind his shoulder. Again he charged with a terrific trumpet, which sent "Sunday" flying through the forest. This was his last charge. The wounds which he had received began to tell on his constitution, and he now stood at bay beside a thorny tree, with the dogs barking around him. These, refreshed by the evening breeze, and perceiving that it was nearly over with the elephant, had once more come to my assistance. Having loaded, I drew near and fired right and left at his forehead. On receiving these shots, instead of charging, he tossed his trunk up and down, and by various sounds and motions, most gratifying to the hungry natives, evinced that his demise was near. Again I loaded, and fired my last shot behind his shoulder: on receiving it, he turned round the bushy tree beside which he stood, and I ran round to give him the other barrel, but the mighty old monarch of the forest needed no more; before I could clear the bushy tree he fell heavily on his side, and his spirit had fled. My feelings at this moment can only be understood by a few brother Nimrods who have had the good fortune to enjoy a similar encounter. I never felt so gratified on any former occasion as I did then.

By this time all the natives had come up; they were in the highest spirits, and flocked around the elephant, laughing and talking at a rapid pace. I climbed on to him, and sat enthroned upon his side, which was as high as my eyes when standing on the ground. In a few minutes night set in, when the natives, having illuminated the jungle with a score of fires, and formed a semicircle of bushes to windward, lay down to rest without partaking of a morsel of food. Mutchuisho would not allow a man to put an assagai into the elephant until the morrow, and placed two relays of sentries to keep watch on either side of him. My dinner consisted of a piece of flesh from the temple of the elephant, which I broiled on the hot embers. In the conflict I had lost my shirt, which was reduced to streamers by the wait-a-bit thorns, and all the clothing that remained was a pair of buckskin knee-breeches.

[From The Ladies' Companion.]

LETTICE ARNOLD.

By the Author of "TWO OLD MEN'S TALES," "EMILIA WYNDHAM," &C.

[_Concluded from page 178._]