Chapter XII (1)

As the company assembled in the drawing-rooms, Mr. Egerton introduced Randal Leslie to his eminent friends in a way that greatly contrasted the distant and admonitory manner which he had exhibited to him in private. The presentation was made with that cordiality, and that gracious respect by which those who are in station command notice for those who have their station yet to win.

"My dear Lord, let me introduce to you a kinsman of my late wife's (in a whisper)--the heir to the elder branch of her family. Stranmore, this is Mr. Leslie, of whom I spoke to you. You, who were so distinguished at Oxford, will not like him the worse for the prizes he gained there. Duke, let me present to you, Mr. Leslie. The duchess is angry with me for deserting her balls; I shall hope to make my peace, by providing myself with a younger and livelier substitute. Ah, Mr. Howard, here is a young gentleman just fresh from Oxford, who will tell us all about the new sect springing up there. He has not wasted his time on billiards and horses."

Leslie was received with all that charming courtesy which is the _To Kalon_ of an aristocracy.

After dinner, conversation settled on politics. Randal listened with attention and in silence, till Egerton drew him gently out; just enough, and no more--just enough to make his intelligence evident, without subjecting him to the charge of laying down the law. Egerton knew how to draw out young men--a difficult art. It was one reason why he was so peculiarly popular with the more rising members of his party.

The party broke up early.

"We are in time for Almack's," said Egerton, glancing at the clock, "and I have a voucher for you; come."

Randal followed his patron into the carriage. By the way, Egerton thus addressed him--

"I shall introduce you to the principal leaders of society; know them and study them; I do not advise you to attempt to do more--that is, to attempt to become the fashion. It is a very expensive ambition; some men it helps, most men it ruins. On the whole, you have better cards in your hands. Dance or not, as it pleases you--don't flirt. If you flirt, people will inquire into your fortune--an inquiry that will do you little good; and flirting entangles a young man into marrying. That would never do. Here we are."

In two minutes more they were in the great ball-room, and Randal's eyes were dazzled with the lights, the diamonds, the blaze of beauty. Audley presented him in quick succession to some dozen ladies, and then disappeared amidst the crowd. Randal was not at a loss; he was without shyness; or if he had that disabling infirmity, he concealed it. He answered the languid questions put to him, with a certain spirit that kept up talk, and left a favorable impression of his agreeable qualities. But the lady with whom he got on the best, was one who had no daughters out, a handsome and witty woman of the world--Lady Frederick Coniers.

"It is your first ball at Almack's, then, Mr. Leslie?"

"My first."

"And you have not secured a partner? Shall I find you one? What do you think of that pretty girl in pink?"

"I see her--but I cannot _think_ of her."

"You are rather, perhaps, like a diplomatist in a new court, and your first object is to know who is who."

"I confess that on beginning to study the history of my own day, I should like to distinguish the portraits that illustrate the memoir."

"Give me your arm, then, and we will come into the next room. We shall see the different _notabilites_ enter one by one, and observe without being observed. This is the least I can do for a friend of Mr. Egerton's."

"Mr. Egerton, then," said Randal,--(as they threaded their way through the space without the rope that protected the dancers)--"Mr. Egerton has had the good fortune to win your esteem, even for his friends, however obscure?"

"Why, to say truth, I think no one whom Mr. Egerton calls his friend need long remain obscure, if he has the ambition to be otherwise. For Mr. Egerton holds it a maxim never to forget a friend, nor a service."

"Ah, indeed!" said Randal, surprised.

"And, therefore," continued Lady Frederick, "as he passes through life, friends gather round him. He will rise even higher yet. Gratitude, Mr. Leslie, is a very good policy."

"Hem," muttered Mr. Leslie.

They had now gained the room where tea and bread and butter were the homely refreshments to the _habitues_ of what at that day was the most exclusive assembly in London. They ensconced themselves in a corner by a window, and Lady Frederick performed her task of cicerone with lively ease, accompanying each notice of the various persons who passed panoramically before them with sketch and anecdote, sometimes good-natured, generally satirical, always graphic and amusing.

By-and-by Frank Hazeldean, having on his arm a young lady of haughty air, and with high though delicate features, came to the tea-table.

"The last new Guardsman," said Lady Frederick; "very handsome, and not yet quite spoiled. But he has got into a dangerous set."

_Randal._--"The young lady with him is handsome enough to be dangerous."

_Lady Frederick_, (laughing.)--"No danger for him there,--as yet at least. Lady Mary (the duke of Knaresborough's daughter) is only in her second. The first year, nothing under an earl; the second, nothing under a baron. It will be full four years before she comes down to a commoner. Mr. Hazeldean's danger is of another kind. He lives much with men who are not exactly _mauvais ton_, but certainly not of the best taste. Yet he is very young; he may extricate himself--leaving half his fortune behind him. What, he nods to you! You know him?"

"Very well; he is nephew to Mr. Egerton."

"Indeed! I did not know that. Hazeldean is a new name in London. I heard his father was a plain country gentleman, of good fortune, but not that he was related to Mr. Egerton."

"Half-brother."

"Will Mr. Egerton pay the young gentleman's debts? He has no sons himself."

_Randal._--"Mr. Egerton's fortune comes from his wife, from my family--from a Leslie, not from a Hazeldean."

Lady Frederick turned sharply, looked at Randal's countenance with more attention than she had yet vouchsafed to it, and tried to talk of the Leslies. Randal was very short there.

An hour afterwards, Randal, who had not danced, was still in the refreshment room, but Lady Frederick had long quitted him. He was talking with some old Etonians who had recognized him, when there entered a lady of very remarkable appearance, and a murmur passed through the room as she appeared.

She might be three or four and twenty. She was dressed in black velvet, which contrasted with the alabaster whiteness of her throat and the clear paleness of her complexion, while it set off the diamonds with which she was profusely covered. Her hair was of the deepest jet, and worn simply braided. Her eyes, too, were dark and brilliant, her features regular and striking; but their expression, when in repose, was not prepossessing to such as love modesty and softness in the looks of woman. But when she spoke and smiled, there was so much spirit and vivacity in the countenance, so much fascination in the smile, that all which might before have marred the effect of her beauty, strangely and suddenly disappeared.

"Who is that very handsome woman?" asked Randal.

"An Italian--a Marchesa something," said one of the Etonians.

"Di Negra," suggested another, who had been abroad; "she is a widow; her husband was of the great Genoese family of Negra--a younger branch of it."

Several men now gathered thickly around the fair Italian. A few ladies of the highest rank spoke to her, but with a more distant courtesy than ladies of high rank usually show to foreigners of such quality as Madame di Negra. Ladies of a rank less elevated seemed rather shy of her;--that might be from jealousy. As Randall gazed at the Marchesa with more admiration than any woman, perhaps, had before excited in him, he heard a voice near him say--

"Oh, Madame di Negra is resolved to settle amongst us, and marry an Englishman."

"If she can find one sufficiently courageous," returned a female voice.

"Well, she is trying hard for Egerton, and he has courage enough for any thing."

The female voice replied with a laugh, "Mr. Egerton knows the world too well, and has resisted too many temptations, to be--"

"Hush!--there he is."

Egerton came into the room with his usual firm step and erect mien. Randal observed that a quick glance was exchanged between him and the Marchesa; but the Minister passed her by with a bow.

Still Randal watched, and, ten minutes afterwards, Egerton and the Marchesa were seated apart in the very same convenient nook that Randal and Lady Frederick had occupied an hour or so before.

"Is this the reason why Mr. Egerton so insultingly warns me against counting on his fortune?" muttered Randal. "Does he mean to marry again?"

Unjust suspicion!--for, at that moment these were the words that Audley Egerton was dropping forth from his lips of bronze--

"Nay, dear Madam, do not ascribe to my frank admiration more gallantry that it merits. Your conversation charms me, your beauty delights me; your society is as a holiday that I look forward to in the fatigues of my life. But I have done with love, and I shall never marry again."

"You almost pique me into trying to win, in order to reject you," said the Italian, with a flash from her bright eyes.

"I defy even you," answered Audley, with his cold hard smile. "But to return to the point: You have more influence at least over this subtle Ambassador; and the secret we speak of I rely on you to obtain me. Ah, Madam, let us rest friends. You see I have conquered the unjust prejudice against you; you are received and _feted_ every where, as becomes your birth and your attractions. Rely on me ever, as I on you. But I shall excite too much envy if I stay here longer, and am vain enough to think that I may injure you if I provoke the gossip of the ill-natured. As the avowed friend, I can serve you--as the supposed lover, No--" Audley rose, as he said this, and, standing by the chair, added carelessly, "Apropos, the sum you do me the honor to borrow will be paid to your bankers to-morrow."

"A thousand thanks!--my brother will hasten to repay you."

Audley bowed. "Your brother, I hope, will repay me in person, not before. When does he come?"

"Oh, he has again postponed his visit _to_ London; he is so much needed in Vienna. But while we are talking of him, allow me to ask if Lord L'Estrange is indeed still so bitter against that poor brother of mine?"

"Still the same!"

"It is shameful," cried the Italian with warmth; "what has my brother ever done to him, that he should intrigue against the Count in his own court?"

"Intrigue! I think you wrong Lord L'Estrange; he but represented what he believed to be the truth, in defence of a ruined exile."

"And you will not tell me where that exile is, or if his daughter still lives?"

"My dear Marchesa, I have called you friend, therefore, I will not aid L'Estrange to injure you or yours. But I call L'Estrange a friend also; and I cannot violate the trust that--" Audley stopped short, and bit his lip. "You understand me," he resumed, with a genial smile, and took his leave.

The Italian's brows met as her eye followed him; then, as she too rose, that eye encountered Randal's. Each surveyed the other--each felt a certain strange fascination--a sympathy--not of affection, but of intellect.

"That young man has the eye of an Italian," said the Marchesa to herself; and as she passed by him into the ball-room, she turned and smiled.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] Continued from page 557, vol. iii.

[9] If, at the date in which Lord L'Estrange held this conversation with Mr. Egerton, Alfred de Musset had written his comedies, we should suspect that his lordship had plagiarized from one of them the whimsical idea that he here vents upon Audley. In repeating it, the author at least cannot escape from the charge of obligation to a writer whose humor, at least, is sufficiently opulent to justify the loan.

From the London Examiner.

IMAGINARY CONVERSATION AT WARSAW.

NICHOLAS AND NESSELRODE.

BY WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

_Nicholas._--God fights for us visibly. You look grave, Nesselrode! is it not so? Speak, and plainly.

_Nesselrode._--Sire, in my humble opinion, God never fights at all.

_Nicholas._--Surely he fought for Israel, when he was invoked by prayer.

_Nesselrode._--Sire, I am no theologian; and I fancy I must be a bad geographer, since I never knew of a nation which was not Israel when it had a mind to shed blood and to pray. To fight is an exertion, is violence; the Deity in His omnipotence needs none. He has devils and men always in readiness for fighting; and they are the instruments of their own punishment for their past misdeeds.

_Nicholas._--The chariots of God are numbered by thousands in the volumes of the Psalmist.

_Nesselrode._--No psalmist, or engineer, or commissary, or arithmetician, could enumerate the beasts that are harnessed to them, or the fiends that urge them on.

_Nicholas._--Nesselrode! you grow more and more serious.

_Nesselrode._--Age, sire, even without wisdom, makes men serious whether they are inclined or not. I could hardly have been so long conversant in the affairs of mankind (all which in all quarters your majesty superintends and directs) without much cause for seriousness.

_Nicholas._--I feel the consciousness of Supreme Power, but I also feel the necessity of subordinate help.

_Nesselrode._--Your majesty is the first monarch, since the earlier Caesars of Imperial Rome, who could control, directly or indirectly, every country in our hemisphere, and thereby in both.

_Nicholas._--There are some who do not see this.

_Nesselrode._--There were some, and they indeed the most acute and politic of mankind, who could not see the power of the Macedonian king until he showed his full height upon the towers of Cheronoea. There are some at this moment in England who disregard the admonitions of the most wary and experienced general of modern times, and listen in preference to babblers holding forth on economy and peace from slippery sacks of cotton and wool.

_Nicholas._--Hush! hush! these are our men; what should we do without them? A single one of them in the parliament or town-hall is worth to me a regiment of cuirassiers. These are the true bullets with conical heads which carry far and sure. Hush! hush!

_Nesselrode._--They do not hear us: they do not hear Wellington: they would not hear Nelson were he living.

_Nicholas._--No other man that ever lived, having the same power in his hands, would have endured with the same equanimity as Wellington, the indignities he suffered in Portugal; superseded in the hour of victory by two generals, one upon another, like marsh frogs; people of no experience, no ability. He might have become king of Portugal by compromise, and have added Gallicia and Biscay.

_Nesselrode._--The English, out of parliament, are delicate and fastidious. He would have thought it dishonorable to profit by the indignation of his army in the field, and of his countrymen at home. Certainty that Bonaparte would attempt to violate any engagement with him might never enter into the computation; for Bonaparte could less easily drive him again out of Portugal than he could drive the usurper out of Spain. We ourselves should have assisted him actively; so would the Americans; for every naval power would be prompt at diminishing the preponderance of the English. Practicability was here with Wellington; but, endowed with it a keener and a longer foresight than any of his contemporaries, he held in prospective the glory that awaited him, and felt conscious that to be the greatest man in England is somewhat more than to be the greatest in Portugal. He is universally called _the_ duke; to the extinction or absorption of that dignity over all the surface of the earth: in Portugal he could only be called king of Portugal.

_Nicholas._--Faith! that is little: it was not overmuch even before the last accession. I admire his judgment and moderation. The English are abstinent: they rein in their horses where the French make them fret and curvett. It displeases me to think it possible that a subject should ever become a sovran. We were angry with the Duke of Sudermania for raising a Frenchman to that dignity in Sweden, although we were willing that Gustavus, for offences and affronts to our family, should be chastized, and even expelled. Here was a bad precedent. Fortunately the boldest soldiers dismount from their chargers at some distance from the throne. What withholds them?

_Nesselrode._--Spells are made of words. The word _service_ among the military has great latent negative power. All modern nations, even the free, employ it.

_Nicholas._--An excellent word indeed! It shows the superiority of modern languages over ancient; Christian ideas over pagan; living similitudes of God over bronze and marble. What an escape had England from her folly, perversity, and injustice! Her admirals had the same wrongs to avenge: her fleets would have anchored in Ferrol and Coruna; thousands of volunteers from every part of both islands would have assembled round the same standard; and both Indies would have bowed before the conqueror. Who knows but that Spain herself might have turned to the same quarter, from the idiocy of Ferdinand, the immorality of Joseph, and the perfidy of Napoleon?

_Nesselrode._--England seems to invite and incite, not only her colonies, but her commanders, to insurrection. Nelson was treated even more ignominiously than Wellington. A man equal in abilities and in energy to either met with every affront from the East India Company. After two such victories in succession as the Duke himself declared before the Lords that he had never known or read of, he was removed from the command of his army, and a general by whose rashness it was decimated was raised to the peerage. If Wellington could with safety have seized the supreme power in Portugal, Napier could with greater have accomplished it in India. The distance from home was farther; the army more confident; the allies more numerous, more unanimous. One avenger of _their_ wrongs would have found a million avengers of _his_. Affghanistan, Cabul, and Scinde, would have united their acclamations on the Ganges: songs of triumph, succeeded by songs of peace, would have been chanted at Delhi, and have re-echoed at Samarcand.

_Nicholas._--I am desirous that Persia and India should pour their treasures into my dominions. The English are so credulous as to believe that I intend, or could accomplish, the conquest of Hindostan. I want only the commerce; and I hope to share it with the Americans; not I indeed, but my successors. The possession of California has opened the Pacific and the Indian seas to the Americans, who must, within the life-time of some now born, predominate in both. Supposing that emigrants to the amount of only a quarter of a million settle in the United States every year, within a century from the present day, their population must exceed three hundred millions. It will not extend from pole to pole, only because there will be room enough without it.

_Nesselrode._--Religious wars, the most sanguinary of any, are stifled in the fields of agriculture; creeds are thrown overboard by commerce.

_Nicholas._--Theological questions come at last to be decided by the broadsword; and the best artillery brings forward the best arguments. Montecuculi and Wallenstein were irrefragable doctors. Saint Peter was commanded to put up his sword; but the ear was cut off first.

_Nesselrode._--The blessed saint's escape from capital punishment, after this violence, is among the greatest of miracles. Perhaps there may be a perplexity in the text. Had he committed so great a crime against a person so highly protected as one in the high-priest's household, he never would have lived long enough to be crucified at Rome, but would have carried his cross up to Calvary three days after the offence. The laws of no country would tolerate it.

_Nicholas._--How did he ever get to Rome at all? He must have been conveyed by an angel, or have slipt on a sudden into a railroad train, purposely and for the nonce provided. There is a controversy at the present hour about his delegated authority, and it appears to be next to certain that he never was in the capital of the west. It is my interest to find it decided in the negative. Successors to the emperors of the east, who sanctioned and appointed the earliest popes, as the bishops of Rome are denominated, I may again at my own good time claim the privilege and prerogative. The cardinals and their subordinates are extending their claws in all directions: we must throw these crabs upon their backs again.

_Nesselrode._--Some among the Italians, and chiefly among the Romans, are venturing to express an opinion that there would be less of false religion, and more of true, if no priest of any description were left upon earth.

_Nicholas._--Horrible! unless are exempted those of the venerable Greek church. All others worship graven images: we stick to pictures.

_Nesselrode._--One scholar mentioned, not without an air of derision, that a picture had descended from heaven recently on the coast of Italy.

_Nicholas._--Framed? varnisht? under glass? on panel? on canvas? What like?

_Nesselrode._--The Virgin Mary, whatever made of.

_Nicholas._--She must be ours then. She missed her road: she never would have taken her place among stocks and stones and blind worshipers. Easterly winds must have blown her toward a pestilential city, where at every street-corner is very significantly inscribed its true name at full length, _Immondezzaio_. But I hope I am guilty of no profaneness or infidelity when I express a doubt if every picture of the Blessed Virgin is sentient; most are; perhaps not every one. If they want her in England, as they seem to do, let them have her ... unless it is the one that rolls the eyes: in that case I must claim her: she is too precious by half for papist or tractarian. I must order immediately these matters. No reasonable doubt can be entertained that I am the visible head of Christ's church. Theologians may be consulted in regard to St. Peter, and may discover a manuscript at Novgorod, stating his martyrdom there, and proving his will and signature.

_Nesselrode._--Theologians may find perhaps in the _Revelations_ some Beast foreshadowing your Majesty.

_Nicholas._--How? sir! how?

_Nesselrode._--Emperors and kings, we are taught, are designated as great beasts in the Holy Scriptures ... (_Aside_) ... and elsewhere.

SECOND CONVERSATION.

_Nicholas._--We have disposed of our brother, his Prussian Majesty, who appeared to be imprest by the apprehension that a portion of his dominions was in jeopardy.

_Nesselrode._--Possibly the scales of Europe are yet to be adjusted.

_Nicholas._--When the winds blow high they must waver. Against the danger of contingencies, and in readiness to place my finger on the edge of one or other, it is my intention to spend in future a good part of my time at Warsaw, that city being so nearly central in my dominions. Good Nesselrode! there should have been a poet near you to celebrate the arching of your eyebrows. They suddenly dropt down again under the horizontal line of your Emperor's. Nobody ever stared in my presence; but I really do think you were upon the verge of it when I inadvertently said _dominions_ instead of _dependencies_. Well, well: dependencies are dominions; and of all dominions they require the least trouble.

_Nesselrode._--Your Majesty has found no difficulty with any, excepting the Circassians.

_Nicholas._--The Circassians are the Normans of Asia; equally brave, more generous, more chivalrous. I am no admirer of military trinkets; but I have been surprised at the beauty of their chain-armor, the temper of their swords, the richness of hilt, and the gracefulness of baldric.

_Nesselrode._--It is a pity they are not Christians and subjects of your Majesty.

_Nicholas._--If they would become my subjects, I would let them, as I have let other Mahometans, become Christians at their leisure. We must brigade them before baptism.

_Nesselrode._--It is singular that this necessity never struck those religious men who are holding peace conferences in various parts of Europe.

_Nicholas._--One of them, I remember, tried to persuade the people of England that if the bankers of London would negotiate no loan with me I could carry on no war.

_Nesselrode._--Wonderful! how ignorant are monied men of money matters. Your Majesty was graciously pleased to listen to my advice when hostilities seemed inevitable. I was desirous of raising the largest loan possible, that none should be forthcoming to the urgency of others. At that very moment your Majesty had in your coffers more than sufficient for the additional expenditure of three campaigns. Well may your Majesty smile at this computation, and at the blindness that suggested it. For never will your Majesty send an army into any part of Europe which shall not maintain itself there by its own prowess. Your cavalry will seize all the provisions that are not stored up within the fortresses; and in every army those are to be found who for a few thousand roubles are ready to blow up their ammunition-wagons. We know by name almost every discontented man in Europe.

_Nicholas._--To obtain this information, my yearly expenses do not exceed the revenues of half a dozen English bishops. Every _table-d'hote_ on the continent, you tell me, has one daily guest sent by me. Ladies in the higher circles have taken my presents and compliments, part in diamonds and part in smiles. An emperor's smiles are as valuable to them as theirs are to a cornet of dragoons. Spare nothing in the boudoir and you spare much in the field.

_Nesselrode._--Such appears to have been the invariable policy of the Empress Catharine, now with God.

_Nicholas._--My father of glorious memory was less observant of it. He had prejudices and dislikes; he expected to find every body a gentleman, even kings and ministers. If they were so, how could he have hoped to sway them? and how to turn them from the strait road into his?

_Nesselrode._--Your Majesty is far above the influence of antipathies; but I have often heard your Majesty express your hatred, and sometimes your contempt, of Bonaparte.

_Nicholas._--I hated him for his insolence, and I despised him alike for his cowardice and falsehood. Shame is the surest criterion of humanity. When one is wanting, the other is. The beasts never indicate shame in a state of nature; in society some of them acquire it; Bonaparte not. He neither blushed at repudiating a modest woman, nor at supplanting her by an immodest one. Holding a pistol to the father's ear, he ordered him to dismount from his carriage; to deliver up his ring, his watch, his chain, his seal, his knee-buckle; stripping off galloon from trouser, and presently trouser too: caught, pinioned, sentenced, he fell on both knees in the mud, and implored this poor creature's intercession to save him from the hangman. He neither blushed at the robbery of a crown nor at the fabrication of twenty. He was equally ungrateful in public life and in private. He banished Barras, who promoted and protected him: he calumniated the French admiral, whose fleet for his own safety he detained on the shores of Egypt, and the English admiral who defeated him in Syria with a tenth of his force. Baffled as he often was, and at last fatally, and admirably as in many circumstances he knew how to be a general, never in any did he know how to be a gentleman. He was fond of displaying the picklock keys whereby he found entrance into our cabinets, and of twitching the ears of his accomplices.

_Nesselrode._--Certainly he was less as an emperor than as a soldier.

_Nicholas._--Great generals may commit grievous and disastrous mistakes, but never utterly ruinous. Charles V., Gustavus Adolphus, Peter the Great, Frederic of Prussia, Prince Eugene, Marlborough, William, Wellington, kept their winnings, and never hazarded the last crown-piece. Bonaparte, when he had swept the tables, cried _double or quits_.

_Nesselrode._--The wheel of Fortune is apt to make men giddier, the higher it rises and the quicklier it turns: sometimes it drops them on a barren rock, and sometimes on a treadmill. The nephew is more prudent than the uncle.

_Nicholas._--You were extremely wise, my dear Nesselrode, in suggesting our idea to the French President, and in persuading him to acknowledge in the face of the world that he had been justly imprisoned by Louis Philippe for attempting to subvert the existing powers. Frenchmen are taught by this declaration what they may expect for a similar crime against his own pretensions. We will show our impartiality by an equal countenance and favor toward all parties. In different directions all are working out the design of God, and producing unity of empire "on earth as it is in heaven." Until this consummation there can never be universal or indeed any lasting peace.

_Nesselrode._--This, lying far remote, I await your Majesty's commands for what is now before us. Your Majesty was graciously pleased to express your satisfaction at the manner in which I executed them in regard to the President of the French Republic.

_Nicholas._--Republic indeed! I have ordered it to be a crime in France to utter this odious name. President forsooth! we have directed him hitherto; let him now keep his way. Our object was to stifle the spirit of freedom: we tossed the handkerchief to him, and he found the chloroform. Every thing is going on in Europe exactly as I desire; we must throw nothing in the way to shake the machine off the rail. It is running at full speed where no whistle can stop it. Every prince is exasperating his subjects, and exhausting his treasury in order to keep them under due control. What nation on the continent, mine excepted, can maintain for two years longer its present war establishment? And without this engine of coercion what prince can be the master of his people? England is tranquil at home; can she continue so when a foreigner would place a tiara over her crown, telling her who shall teach and what shall be taught. Principally, that where masses are not said for departed souls, better it would be that there were no souls at all, since they certainly must be damned. The school which doubts it is denounced as godless.

_Nesselrode._--England, sire, is indeed tranquil at home; but that home is a narrow one, and extends not across the Irish channel. Every colony is dissatisfied and disturbed. No faith has been kept with any of them by the secretary now in office. At the Cape of Good Hope, innumerable nations, warlike and well-armed, have risen up simultaneously against her; and, to say nothing of the massacres in Ceylon, your Majesty well knows what atrocities her Commissioner has long exercised in the Seven Isles. England looks on and applauds, taking a hearty draught of Lethe at every sound of the scourge.

_Nicholas._--Nesselrode! You seem indignant. I see only the cheerful sparks of a fire at which our dinner is to be dressed; we shall soon sit down to it; Greece must not call me away until I rise from the dessert; I will then take my coffee at Constantinople. The crescent ere long will become the full harvest-moon. Our reapers have already the sickles in their hands.

_Nesselrode._--England may grumble.

_Nicholas._--So she will. She is as ready now to grumble as she formerly was to fight. She grumbles too early; she fights too late. Extraordinary men are the English. They raise the hustings higher than the throne; and, to make amends, being resolved to build a new palace, they push it under an old bridge. The Cardinal, in his way to the Abbey, may in part disrobe at it. Noble vestry-room! where many habiliments are changed. Capacious dovecote! where carrier-pigeons and fantails and croppers, intermingled with the more ordinary, bill and coo, ruffle and smoothen their feathers, and bend their versicolor necks to the same corn.

From Bentley's Miscellany for July.

LONDON, PARIS, AND NEW-YORK.

Standing in the City Hall, New-York, and drawing from that point a circle whose radius shall be three miles, we embrace a population of three-quarters of a million. We say this at the outset, by way of securing respect for our theme.

New-York is a mere Jonah's gourd or Jack the Giant-killer's beanstalk compared with London. London was London when St. Paul was a prisoner in Rome, ten years before the destruction of Jerusalem. Sixteen hundred years afterwards, when New-York was but just named, London lost some seventy thousand inhabitants by the plague, and more than thirteen thousand houses by the Great Fire, and hardly missed them.

Before this period, however, the little Dutch town of Niew Amsterdam, called by the aborigines Manahatta, or Manhattan, had commenced a dozing existence, under the government of Walter the Doubter and Peter the Headstrong, celebrated by that great chronicler, Diedrich Knickerbocker. Some consider this a mythic period, and class the legends of Wilhelmus Van Kieft's wisdom, and Peter Stuyvesant's valor, with the stories of Romulus and Remus, and the Horatii and Curiatii. But to cast any doubt upon a historian like Knickerbocker--the Grote of colonial history--at once minute and philosophical, just and enthusiastic--is surely unwise. His picture of the portly burghers of Niew Amsterdam, their habits and manners, pursuits, politics, and laws, is verified by the impress left on their descendants. All the foreign floods that have swept over the city have not been able to wash out the footsteps of the original settlers; and Walter the Doubter and Peter the Headstrong still figure, it is said, in the Assembly of the City Fathers, though the voluminous nether habiliments, which characterized them of old, have dwindled to the modern pantaloon.

Casting our eyes backward for a moment, let us imagine the condition of things before English innovation had interfered with the quiet current of Dutch ideas in the metropolis of the West. "The modern spectator," says our historian, "who wanders through the streets of this populous city, can scarcely form an idea of their appearance in the primitive days of the Doubter. The grass grew quietly in the highways; bleating sheep and frolicksome calves sported about that verdant ridge where now the Broadway loungers take their morning stroll. The cunning fox and ravenous wolf skulked in the woods where now are to be seen the dens of the righteous fraternity of money-brokers. The houses of the higher class were generally constructed of wood, excepting the gable end, which was of small black and yellow Dutch bricks, and always faced the street. The house was always furnished with abundance of large doors, and small windows on every floor; the date of its erection was curiously designated by iron figures on the front, and on the top of the roof was perched a fierce weathercock, to let the family know which way the wind blew. The front door was never opened, except on marriages, funerals, New Year's days, the festival of St. Nicholas, or some such great occasion * * *. A passion for cleanliness was the leading principle in domestic economy. The whole house was constantly in a state of inundation, under the discipline of mops and brooms, and scrubbing-brushes; and the good housewives of that day were a kind of amphibious animal, delighting exceedingly to be dabbling in water; insomuch, that many of them grew to have webbed fingers like a duck. In those happy days a well-regulated family always rose with the dawn, dined at eleven, and went to bed at sundown. Fashionable parties were confined to the higher class, or _noblesse_; that is to say, such as kept their own cows or drove their own wagons. The company commonly assembled at three o'clock, and went away about six; unless it was winter-time, when the fashionable hours were a little earlier, that the ladies might get home before dark. At these tea-parties the utmost propriety and dignity of deportment prevailed. No flirting or coquetting; no gambling of old ladies, nor chattering and romping of young ones; no self-satisfied strutting of wealthy gentlemen with their brains in their pockets," &c.

Speaking further of the ladies, Mr. Knickerbocker says: "Their hair, untortured by the abominations of art, was scrupulously pomatumed back from their foreheads with a candle, and covered with a little cap of quilted calico. Their petticoats of linsey-woolsey, were striped with a variety of gorgeous dyes, and all of their own manufacture. These were the honest days, in which every woman stayed at home, read the Bible, and wore pockets, and that too of a goodly size, fashioned with patch-work of many curious devices, and ostentatiously worn on the outside. Every good housewife made the clothes of her husband and family," &c.

Such and so homely was the germ of the present goodly town that sits, like a queen, throned between two mighty streams, with a magnificent bay at her feet. Marks of her Dutch origin were numerous a few years since, and are still to be found, though sparely. Of the national customs enumerated and described by the veracious Diedrich, we find at the present day but few. The last of the gable-fronted houses, with curious steps in the brickwork on the sides of the peak, disappeared some years since. Calves never frisk in Broadway now, though they sometimes pass through it tied in carts, in defiance of humanity and decency. The year of building is no longer written in iron on the fronts of the houses, for

"Panting Time toils after us in vain,"

and chronology is out of date. Large doors have now large windows to keep them company, and weather-cocks are rendered unnecessary by the arrival of vessels from some part of the earth with every wind that blows. The front door is now opened to every body but the master of the house, who goes out of it in the morning not to see it again till evening. The practice of daily inundation is now nearly limited to the street, since Kidderminster, Brussels, and Wilton, conspire to cover every inch of floor; but the annual house-cleaning is still in full vogue, and no amount of slop, discomfort, destruction, and self-sacrifice, is considered too great in the accomplishment of this civic festival. As to rising with the dawn, the citizen of to-day considers breakfast-time daybreak; and the dinner-hour is as various as the fluctuations of business and pleasure. "Fashionable society" has, at present, no very decided limits, as few of the inhabitants keep a cow, and many of the highest pretenders to _bon ton_ do not drive their own wagons--getting home before dark! New-York ladies make a point of getting home before light; and if they assemble at three o'clock it is for a _dejeuner_, or a _matinee dansante_. As for Mr. Knickerbocker's further characterization of the genteel manners of the olden time, it would be unhandsome in us to pursue our counter-picture; but this we will say, in mere justice, and all joking aside, that there are no gambling ladies in New-York, either young or old.

Thinking of New-York in her early life, we were about to say that from 1614 to 1674 she was a mere shuttlecock between the Dutch and English; but the recollection that neither of the contending parties ever tossed her towards the other, spoiled our figure, and we find her more like the unfortunate baby whom it took all Solomon's wisdom to save from utter destruction between rival mothers. The Dutch certainly had the prior claim; but that circumstance, though something in a case of maternity, seems far from conclusive in the matter of adoption. The little Dutch city had accumulated a thousand inhabitants, and wrenched from the home government leave to govern itself, by the aid of a schout, burgomasters, and schepens, when King Charles II., of pious memory, coolly gave a grant of the entire province to his brother James, Duke of York, who forthwith proved his right (that of the strongest), and put an English governor in place of Peter Stuyvesant, called by Knickerbocker, "a tough, valiant, sturdy, weather-beaten, mettlesome, obstinate, leathern-sided, lion-hearted, generous-spirited old governor," who nearly burst with rage when obliged to sign the capitulation, and who finished by dying of sheer mortification on hearing that the combined English and French fleets had beaten the Dutch under De Ruyter. Nine years after, the tables were turned, and Dutch rule once more brought in sour-krout and oly-koeks; but, in 1674, New-York became English by treaty, and so remained until November, 1783.

Since that epoch, although growth and prosperity have been the general rule, yet the island city has had her ups and downs, by means of fire, pestilence, war, embargo, mobs, &c., quite enough to stimulate the energy of her sons and ripen the wisdom of her councils. In 1825, the completion of the Erie Canal, which united the Atlantic with the great lakes, gave a prodigious impulse to trade. In 1832 came the cholera, threatening utter desolation; and in 1835 a fire, which consumed property worth twenty millions of dollars. Yet, in 1842, the Great Aqueduct was finished, at a cost of thirteen million dollars. Thus much premised, let us look at New-York of to-day.

"She has no time
To looken backe, her eyne be fixed before."

In describing American towns, if we would make our picture a likeness, we must

"Catch, ere she change, the Cynthia of the minute."

The New-York of 1851 resembles her of fifty years ago scarcely more than the West End of London resembles Birmingham or Bristol. In 1800, one might easily believe the old story, that the streets were originally laid out by the cows, as they went out to pasture and returned at evening. Streets running in all sorts of curves crossed each other at all conceivable angles, making a maze without a plan, through which strangers needed to drop beans, like the children in the fairy-tale, to avoid being wholly lost. Fortunately, the city is not very wide, so that Broadway, which always ran lengthwise through the centre, has served as a tolerable clue from the beginning. Great sacrifices have been made for the sake of regularity, and there is now a tolerable degree of it, even in the old, or south part of the city, cross streets running from Broadway to either river with an approach to parallelism. In the early time, the town presented no bad resemblance in shape to the phenomenon called a "mackerel sky," Broadway representing the spine, and the streets running to either river the ribs, while northward and southward was a tapering off; on the south, where the Battery juts into the bay, and on the north, where the uppermost houses gradually narrowed till Broadway came to an end, with few buildings on either side of it. But in these later days, when Knickerbocker limits no longer confine the heterogeneous thousands that have pushed the old race from their stools, sixteen great avenues, each a hundred feet wide, run parallel with Broadway and the rivers, cut at right angles by wide streets, lined with costly dwellings, churches, schools, and other edifices. As is usual in great commercial towns, the lowest portion of the population haunt the neighborhood of the wharfs; and, in New-York, the eastern side of the city in particular attracts this class. But, perhaps, no city of the size has fewer streets of squalid poverty, although the encouragement given to immigration is such that there must necessarily be great numbers of wretched immigrants who have neither the will nor the power to live by honest industry. It is in truth for this class of persons that hospitals and penitentiaries are here built, foreigners supplying at least nine-tenths of the inmates of those institutions in New-York.

As to clean and healthy streets, the upper and newer part of the city has, of course, the advantage. It is laid out with special attention to drainage, for which the ridged shape of the ground affords great facility; the island on which New-York is built being highest in the middle, and sloping off, east and west, towards the Hudson and East Rivers.

Manhattan island is about fourteen miles long, with an average breadth of one mile and a half, the greatest width being two and a half miles. At the southerly point of the island, where the Hudson unites with the strait called the East River, lies one of the finest harbors in the world, affording anchorage for ships of the largest size, and surrounded by cultivated land and elegant residences. Several fortified islands diversify this bay, and numerous forts occupy the points and headlands on either side. The general appearance of the bay is that of great beauty, of the milder sort. The shores are rather low, but finely wooded, and the approach to the city from the ocean very striking. The battery, a promenade covered with fine old trees, offers a rural front, but the forests of masts stretching far up either river attract the stranger's attention much more forcibly. The _coup d'oeil_ is here magnificent. Brooklyn, on Long Island, a large city, whose white columned streets gleam along the heights, giving a palatial grandeur to the view, is just opposite New-York, on the south-east, and divided from it by so narrow a strait that it appears more truly to be a part of it than the Surrey side of the Thames to belong to London, although the rush of commerce forbids bridges. On the west side, the banks of the Hudson are lined with towns, an outcrop of the central metropolis.

Entering the city from any quarter, we are sure to find ourselves in Broadway, long the pride of the inhabitants, though its glories are rather traditional than actual, as compared with the greatest thoroughfares of commerce in older cities. It extends, eighty feet in width, two miles and a half in a straight line, northward from the Battery; and then, making a slight deflection at Union Park, runs on, _ad infinitum_, though it is at present but sparely built after another mile or so. Nearly all the best shops in the retail trade are in this street, some of them comparable to the richest of London and Paris, and the whole affording means for every device of elegant decoration and boundless expenditure. Residences here are comparatively few, especially in the lower part, the din of business and the ceaseless thunder of omnibuses having driven far away every family that has the liberty of choice. Many churches still exist in Broadway, which, on Sunday, is as quiet as any other street. Other architectural decorations there are few. The City Hall, a costly building of white marble, too long and low to make a dignified appearance, but standing in a well-wooded park, of some eleven or twelve acres in extent, has a certain beauty, especially when seen gleaming through the spray of a fountain, which sends up a tall jet at some distance in front of the building. Farther on is a hospital, of rather ancient date for this western world--built in 1775, and now surrounded by venerable trees, and clothed in the richest ivy. After this, scarcely a break in the line of dazzling shops, until we reach the vicinity of Union Square, a pretty oval park, with a noble fountain in the midst, and lofty and handsome houses all round, situated on perhaps the highest ground on this part of the island. Half a mile beyond is Madison Square, a green expanse, about which wealthy citizens are now building elegant residences of brown freestone, with some attempt at architectural display. Near this, still northward, is the lower or distributing reservoir of the Croton Aqueduct, standing on high ground, and looking something like a fortress--no great ornament, perhaps, but an object of much interest.

Fifth Avenue, on the west of Broadway, stretching north from Washington Square--an inclosure of about ten acres, well planted with elms and maples--it is the Belgravia of New-York--in the estimation of those who inhabit it; a paradise of marble, upholstery and cabinet work, at least; not much dignified, as yet, by works of high art, though the region boasts a few specimens, ancient and modern; but in luxury and extravagance emulating the repudiated aristocracy of the old world. This is, and is to be, a street of palaces and churches throughout its whole extent, always provided that the changeful current of Fashion do not set in some other direction too soon, carrying with it all the _millionaires_ that are yet to arise within the century. In that event, the costly mansions of Fifth Avenue will inevitably become hotels and boarding-houses,--a reverse which so many grandly intended houses of elder New-York have already experienced.

The distinction of East and West is marked in New-York as in London, though for different reasons. In London, the prevalence of westerly winds drives the surge waves of coal-smoke eastward, blackening every thing; in New-York the western part of the town is cleaner, because newer and built on a better plan. Broadway is the dividing line; and it is a violent strain upon one's standing in fashionable life to live eastward of it, below Union Square, even in the most expensive style. But the eastward world has its own great thoroughfare, wider than Broadway, though not as long, running nearly parallel with the main artery of the grander world. The Bowery--so called when it was the high road leading through the public farms or _Boweries_--is a sort of exaggerated Bishopsgate-street and Shoreditch united; more trades and callings, more articles offered for sale in the open air, more noise, more people, and at least as much natural, undisguised, vulgar life. A railway for horse-carriages passes through it, and hundreds of omnibuses and stage coaches, not to speak of carts and country wagons without number. A "rowdy" theatre or two, a hay-market, great clothing-shops, and livery-stables, a riding-school, an anatomical museum--such are its ornaments. Not a church countenances its entire length, nor any other public building aiming at elegance or dignity. The goods displayed in the windows are of a secondary quality, at best; and the people who throng the pavements are people who want second-rate articles. Yet the Bowery is worth walking through by a stranger, little as it is known or valued by the native citizen, whose lot has been cast in choicer neighborhood. The common pulse of humanity beats audibly and visibly there, wrapped in no cloak of convention or pseudo-refinement. The fundamental business of life is carried on there as being confessedly the main business; not, as in Broadway, as if it were a thing to be huddled into a corner to make way for the carved-work and gilding, the drapery and color of the great panorama. There is another reason why the Bowery has a claim on our attention. Strange as it may seem, it is from the people who haunt the Bowery that the United States take their character abroad. Foreigners insist upon considering the "Bowery b'hoys,"--a class at once an enigma and a terror to the greater portion of their fellow-citizens,--as distinctive specimens of Americanism, much to the horror of their more fastidious countrymen. This we think a great mistake, though truly there are worse people in the world than the "Bowery b'hoys," who are noted for a sort of _bonhomie_, in the midst of all their coarseness.

As to parks and public promenades, New-York is lamentably deficient--the whole space thus appropriated being hardly more than eighty acres, for the refreshment of a population which will soon cease to be counted by hundreds of thousands. "Eight million dollars worth of land," say the city fathers, "is as much as we can afford!" The penurious estimate which has resulted in this miserable deficiency has been long and ably combated by patriotic and clear-headed citizens, but their influence has as yet proved wholly unavailing. Public meetings have been now and then held, with a view of exciting a general interest in this important matter, but they invariably end in fruitless resolutions. The island still affords good sites for public gardens, but there is scarce a gleam of hope that any of them will be reserved. The few breathing spaces that now exist, are thronged, and by the very people who most need them--children and laboring people. The vicinity of the fountains is full of loiterers, quietly watching the play of the bright water, and growing, we may hope, milder and better by the gentle influence. At certain hours of the day whole troops of merry children, with their attendants, make the walks alive and resounding. The hoop, the ball, the velocipede, the skipping-rope, rejoice the grass and sunshine, and the eyes of the thoughtful spectator, who sees health in every bounding motion, and hears joy in every tiny shout. It is strange that the citizens do not, one and all, cry aloud for the easy and happy open-air extension of their too often crowded homes. London is the world's example in this thing.