mistress. Both the master and mistress were examined, and they stated distinctly they had seen nothing of the kind, and could not have said so. "The scene at Madame Veitel's had no connection whatever with the events in the Raubstein. "But the prosecutor insists that all doubt is removed by the fact, that the watch and the marriage ring of the deceased are found in the possession of the accused. I admit at once the watch is Hermann's watch; the ring is Hermann's marriage ring. But I ask what proof is there that these ever belonged to the deceased; what proof, in particular, that they were in his possession at or near to the time of his murder? The housekeeper, the servants at K—, the innkeeper at the forest, all speak only of a gold watch,' 'a gold ring;' none of them did or could identify this gold watch and this ring. "Did Baron Ferdinand? He saw his brother in life for the last time when his marriage with my client took place. The separation occurred while he was on his travels; when he returned, Hermann had already gone abroad. What he may have possessed, what trinkets he may have worn after that time, it is impossible that Baron Ferdinand can know. "But how simple, after all, is the explanation? The watch was a marriage present, the ring was Hermann's wedding ring. Is it not a well-known practice for lovers or spouses who have separated, to return to each other the gifts they have received in their days of affection or of union; gifts which would only serve in future to awaken painful recollections? Was it not natural that, when the separation took place, these tokens of affection should have been returned by the husband to his wife? This was the view that occurred at once to the waiting-maid, as she has explained in her evidence. My client, too, never wore her wedding ring after the separation. And why? It was returned, as the waitingmaid states, to her husband. "Thus, then, the circumstance on which the prosecutor insisted so strongly, admits of the simplest explanation. "But were it proved that Albertine Von Preussach had really seen and spoken to her husband shortly before his death, is the case of the prosecutor materially advanced, so far as regards a guilty participation on her part in her husband's death? Were we even to concede that the involuntary exclamation of an agitated mother, uttered in a moment of distraction, inferred in her mind a suspicion-the prosecutor calls it a conviction that her daughter was not a stranger to her husband's death. It remains to be shown that that knowledge was of a criminal character. The prosecutor meets the point fairly, for he maintains that she was herself the perpetrator of the deed. But by what proofs does he support this charge? None whatever. By assuming a fine-spun theory of a secret correspondence-a concerted interview-a meal among the ruins, -a fit of intoxication on the part of the husband-a quarrel -an attempt at violence-the convenient discovery of a knife, and a blow dealt therewith by the wife, which at once reaches the heart of her husband! And this is all-literally allwhich is gravely urged as proof against a person of the noble, the stainless character enjoyed by the prisoner at the bar. "But no! It is said, the evidence may not prove the deed, but it proves that she was capable of committing the deed. What is that evidence? "Has any single act in the course of her life been pointed out which leads to such a conclusion? Any act of cruelty which would make her careless of the life of a fellow creature, capable of committing the deepest of crimes against the being who stood towards her in the most endearing of relations her husband, the father of her dead son, of her surviving daughter? No; trifling miserable gossip as to quarrels with servants, a box on the ear bestowed upon an impertinent waiting-woman, a sharp reply in answer to the imperious speeches of a dictatorial husband. What human being could be safe from the suspicion of being capable of murder, it trifles like these were to be raked up, collected, and seriously brought forward as proofs of such an accusation? "Let the case be supposed that she had met her husband at the time appointed; that others also had been present, (and every thing seemed to point to more than one having been present on the occasion;) that a quarrel of some kind had ensued, in which the husband fell-the wife having no share in it on the contrary, standing by a helpless spectator of the dreadful scene: that her own safety could only be purchased by her vowing secrecy in regard to what had passed -would not this account for all which had taken place, at least as plausibly as the hypothesis of the public prosecutor? | Even if he insisted on the wound as a proved fact in the case, would it not be as well explained upon the supposition that she had ineffectually interfered to prevent her husband's fate, and been wounded in the attempt? The loss of the glove-the scene in the bath-keeper's-her agitation on her return to the family of the countess-her confusion on meeting Ferdinand-the expressions attributed to her-even her obstinate silence, which he fairly allowed to be the circumstance that seemed to weigh most against her, admitted, upon this view of the case, of a satisfactory explanation. That silence might be the result of a mistaken notion of religious obligation-it might be the result of gratitude for her preservation;-the more strongly felt, the more consistently acted on, in proportion to the purity and ingenuousness of her own mind, and to her punctilious sense of duty in regard to the performance of obligations, even when these were in some measure extorted." Such was the substance (imperfectly reported) of a two hours' speech on the part of the advocate for the defence. The president proceeded to sum up. His speech was a masterpiece of clearness and precision-impartial and candid in the highest degree; yet the impression which it left on the mind of the advocate for the defence was, that his inclination was on the whole unfavorable to the prisoner, so far as his moral conviction went, though he pointed out, with the ut most fairness, the points of the case where the proof appeared to be narrow or defective. The jury were furnished with all the documents necessary for their consideration, and were retiring, after the address of the president, to consider their verdict. THE DANGERS OF IGNORANCE. There are few villages in the country which do not present us specimens of the uneducated; we meet him in the gin-shop and in the street; he is an idler, a drunkard a quarreller: we hear of him in every riot, he is an aider and abettor in every outrage. His family are slovenly, reckless, debased, wretched. He is a quarreller because a drunkard; and he is a drunkard because he is idle. But why is he idle? Because he has never felt the value of labor, the pleasure of thinking, the joy of a good conscience. He has never been habituated to form judgements of these things. The powers necessary to form judgements have been neglected.— He has never been taught to examine, to inquire, to attend. He has become passive. He feels the pressure of want brought on by his own habits; but how does he try to remedy it? All his life he has been taught to spare, as much as pos sible, his own exertions, and to hang, beggar-like, as much as possible on those of others. He is the slave, from laziness, of authority. It is not in a sudden emergency he is likely to throw it off. All his life he has sacrificed, with the short-sighted selfishness of ignorance, the future to the present, and every interest, public and private, to his own. He is turbulent, but not independent; he talks of freedom, and is the slave of every man and thing around. But indolence is not a mere passive vice. Better to "wear out" than to "rust out" has been truly said; but he who "runs out" " too. No greater burden than sloth; no greater consumer of the spirit and body of man than doing nothing and having nothing to do. Every day spent in inactivity renders action more difficult! every hour which does not add, steals away some instrument of virtue and happiness, and leaves the sluggard more at the mercy of those visitations of sickness or want to which even the industrious are exposed. wears out" Nor is this all. Omission of duty soon becomes commission of crime. Painful reflections now beset him. They are sought to be extinguished, but not by reform. Conscience drives him to fresh vice. This goes on for a time; but health, means, companions, must at last fail. Then it is that he sees, for the first time, how bootlessly he has squandered away the healthy morning-tide, the working hours of life.He has paid down existence, and all that makes existence a glory and a good, in advance. Body and soul are spent. He becomes sullen and sour. Disappointments thicken on him, and they are all of his own causing. His farm is covered with weeds, his shop deserted, his children profligates and rebels, his household a hell. He gradually becomes an ene The Stormy Petrel-Vesuvius, Herculaneum and Pompeii in 1840. my to all social ordinance, to law, justice, truth, good faith- Whither is he to rush for rescue from these encompassing evils? The gospel he never understood, and therefore never practised. His religion is an hypocrisy or a superstition. It affords him now no direction in his errors, no consolation in his afflictions. He finds in it neither warmth nor light. The religion he learned never penetrated to the spirit: it was a tinkling cymbal, a jargon of meaningless and profitless words. But crime, which had long been ripe in thought, is at last on the point of bursting. He is at last ready for a desperate attempt. Education has been held up as the great principle of all modern restlessness and disorder. Is this the case? Let facts answer. THE STORMY PETREL. 391 water. At times we hear from these otherwise silent birds by day, a low weet, weet, and in the craving anxiety, apparently to obtain something from us, they utter a low twittering pe up, or chirp. In the night, when disturbed by the passage of a vessel, they rise in a low, vague, and hurried flight from the water, and utter a singular gutteral chattering, like kuk, kuk, k'k'k' k' k' k', ending in a low twitter like that of the swallow. These Petrels are said to breed in great numbers on the rocky shores of the Bahama Islands, and the Bermudas, and along some parts of the coast of East Florida and Cuba. Mr. Audubon informs me that they also breed in large flocks on the mud and sand islands, off Cape Sable, in Nova Scotia, burrowing downwards from the surface to the depth of a foot or more. They also commonly employ the holes and cavities of rocks near the sea for this purpose. After the period of incubation they return to feed their young only during the night, with oily food which they raise from their stomachs. At these times they are heard through most part of the night, making a continual cluttering sound like frogs. In June or July, or about the time that they breed, they are still seen out at sea for scores of leagues from the land, the swiftness of their flight allowing them daily to make these vast excursions in quest of their ordinary prey; and hence, besides their sus ruler of the air, they breed, according to the superstitious opinion of sailors, like no other honest bird, for taking no time for the purpose on land, they merely hatch their egg, it is said, under their wings, as they sit on the water! This ominous harbinger of the deep is seen nearly through-picious appearance in braving storms, as if aided by the dark out the whole expanse of the Atlantic, from Newfoundland to the tropical parts of America, whence it wanders even to Africa and the coasts of Spain. From the ignorance and superstition of mariners, an unfavorable prejudice has long been entertained against these adventurous and harmless wanderers, and as sinister messengers of the storm, in which they are often involved with the vessel they follow, they have been unjustly stigmatized by the name of Stormy Petrels, Devil's Birds, and Mother Carey's Chickens. At nearly all seasons of the year, these Swallow Petrels, in small flocks, are seen wandering almost alone, over the wide waste of the ocean. Whoever sojourns at Naples, were it only but a day, experiences the irresistible desire of going to see what is passing at the bottom of that crater which perpetually smokes. It is especially towards evening, when the sun has disappeared beneath the horizon, that the vapors of Vesuvius assume a denser tint, and deck its summit with a bouquet of brighter whiteness. At Resina you find horses, donkeys, and conductors, who convey travellers half way up the mountain to a spot called the 'Hermitage.' This first ride is not an uninteresting one. Here nature is not yet dead. You pass through vineyards planted in ashes, which yield the celebrated Lacryma Christa wine, two sorts of which there are much inferior to their fame; then come some nameless trees, the foremost sentinels of vegetation, which the next eruption will devour; and, lastly, you reach the 'Hermitage,' surrounded on all sides, save one, by the lava of 1794, 1810, and 1822.Here you alight, and enter a region of chaos. No more trees, vegetation, birds, or insects are to be seen. Every thing is dark, bristling with points, rent into deep and rugged fractures, covered with scoria, of a sulphurous smell, which tear your feet before they burn them. You are now at the foot of the con; all that remains to be done is to ascend vertically along the external sides of the volcano, halting on your way to cast a glance at a lateral plateau, called La Somma, which was, no doubt, at one time the main focus of Vesuvius. On the edge of soundings, as she loses sight of the distant VESUVIUS, HERCULANÆUM AND POMPEII-1840. headland, and launches upon the depths of the unbounded and fearful abyss of waters, flocks of these dark, swift flying and ominous birds begin to shoot around the vessel, and finally take their station in her foaming wake. In this situation, as humble dependants, they follow for their pittance of fare, constantly and keenly watching the agitated surge for any floating mollusca, and are extremely gratified with any kind of fat animal matter thrown overboard, which they invariably discover, however small the morsel, or mountainous and foaming the raging wave on which it may happen to float. On inaking such discovery, they suddenly stop in their airy and swallow like flight, and whirl instantly down to the water. Sometimes nine or ten thus crowed together like a flock of chickens scrambling for the same morsel; at the same time pattering on the water with their feet, as if walking on the surface, they balance themselves with gently fluttering and outspread wings, and often dip down their heads to collect the sinking object in pursuit. On other occasions, as if seeking relief from their almost perpetual exercise of flight, they jerk and hop widely over the water, re-bounding as their feet touch the surface, with great agility and alertness. There is something cheerful and amusing in the sight of these little flocks, steadily following after the vessel, so light and unconcerned across the dreary ocean. During a gale it is truly interesting to witness their intrepidity and address. Unappalled by the storm that strikes terror into the breast of the mariner, they are seen coursing wildly and rapidly over the waves, descending their sides, then mounting with the breaking surge which threatened to burst over their heads; sweeping through the hollow waves as in a sheltered valley, and again mounting with the rising billow, the Petrel trips and jerks sportively and securely on the surface of the roughest sea, defying the horrors of the storm, and like some magic being seems to take delight in braving overwhelming dangers. At other times we see these aerial messengers playfully coursing from side to side in the wake of the ship, making excursions far and wide on every side, now in advance, then far behind, returning again to the vessel, as as if she were stationary, though moving at the most rapid rate. A little after dark they generally cease their arduous course, and take their uninterrupted rest upon the water, arriving in the wake of the vessel they had left, as I have observed, by about nine or ten o'clock of the following morning. In this way we were followed by the same flock of birds to the soundings of the Azores, and until we came in sight of the Isle of Flores. According to Buffon, the Petrel acquires its name from the Apostle Peter, who is also said to have walked upon the If your heart has not failed you along this ladder of dried lava, you will reach the top of the volcano in three quarters of an hour. Here the sight begins-a terrible, original, and unexpected one, notwithstanding all the descriptions given of it. Imagine a funnel five hundred metres deep, whose upper edges present innumerable crevices, whilst from the lower part rise clouds of sulphurous vapor, which escape by numberless apertures, bordered with dust of a lively orange color. If you stop to admire in the distance the city of Naples, softly spreading round the gulf, and at your feet the ever smoking crater, you feel the fire penetrating your boots, and the guide will urge you to walk, in order to avoid accidents. The ground, when strongly struck, yields a certain metalic sound, and as you go round the mountain you meet with gaping apertures, at the bottom of which burns a red and fattish flame. I have plunged into one of those pits a long chesnut-tree stick, fresh cut, and covered with its still moist bark, and it has instantly caught fire. As you kneel before those infernal gates to ascertain their depth you distinctly perceive within hand-reach the flame bending upon itself, dense, quiet, and almost limpid; it discharges clouds of sulphurous acid gas, which excite a cough, and soon compel the observer to quit the spot. The ground, if such name can be given to the dangerous floor which covers the orifice of the volcano, is strewed with grey lava, ashes, melting sulphur, and pyrite substances, whence escapes, at intervals, a white smoke, which affects your eyes and lungs, and yet you cannot retire without reluctance from that awful scene. One can scarcely conceive how that crater, so narrow in its lower part, has vomited heaps of lava large enough to form a mountain four times as bulky as the Vesuvius itself, without mentioning the ashes, small pebbles, and masses of boiling water, which the wind has sometimes carried to enormous distances. Notwithstanding its fearful aspect, the Vesuvius may be easily approached, even when its eruptions take place. The lava itself, whose progress is so formidable and inflexible, advances with extreme slowness. One has time to avoid or fly before it. The slightest obstacle stops it; it turns round objects, burns them if they be combustible, and envelopes and petrifies them as it cools, if they be not so. Thus it is that the city of Herculaneum has been sealed into a semi-metallic mass, and as it were cast in the lava which now covers it.Pompeii has disappeared under a discharge from Vesuvius under a shower of ashes and little stones which have gradually though rapidly covered it, just as certain Alpine villages disappear beneath the snow in our severe winters. Such is the reason why so much money hes been expended in uncovering but a few small parts of Herculaneum, namely, its theatre, which continues hid in utter darkness; while a third part of Pompeii has been cleared, exhibits itself to the open sky, and renders us contemporary with its inhabitants. Let us, therefore, hasten down the Vesuvius, and view its ravages, which have been miraculously preserved for us in its whole splendor, a city of thirty thousand souls, buried for eighteen hundred years past. his door. If you penetrate into one of those tombs, you will Whom do you wish to be taken to? You have but to speak -the names are written on the door of every house, in large red letters. Here is an apothecary's shop, with his drugs in phials, with surgical instruments and balsams still yielding a smell. Here are far different things, by my faith! Enter, you have nothing to fear: but I dare not tell you where you are, unless you perceived the sign over the door. What think you of it ?-and yet facing one of those houses stands a temple of Vesta! Let us, then, pay a few visits; we are in a baker's, shop, and here is the flower-grindstone; suppose a stone sugar-loaf, covered with an extinguisher also of stone-rub the one against the other, after throwing some corn between them, and you have a Roman mill. This wretched piece of machinery was entrusted to the han Is of slaves. But I have reserved a surprise for you: here is some bread-do you read the ba ker's name hollowed out of the carbonised pancake; take and break it. Open that cupbard, you will find there preser ved olives, dried figs, lintels, and eatables of all descriptions. A saucepan has been carried to the Naples Museum, containing a piece of meat, as well preserved as by Mr. Appert's process. What a number of meals Vesuvius interrupted en that woful day! I, nevertheless, do not think that the Romans were great eaters. I have carefully explored a number of kitchens and dining rooms at Pompeii, and I have found, even in the richest houses, but very trifling cooking apparatus, and miniature table utensils. Their plates were real saucers, and the tables upon which the dinner was served up but little stands, in general of stone or marble, which could hold but one dish at a time. The guests lay down around, as soldiers round their mess. What is admirable, delightful, charming, and overwhelming to us barbarians of the nineteenth century, is the exquisite pureness and delicacy of shape of all the uten sils which served in Roman domestic life. One must see those candelabras, lamps, vases of all sizes, those charming little bronze calefactors (for every thing was of bronze), those tripods, scales, beds, chairs, those graceful and so ingeniously wrought shields which fill up whole rooms at the Naples Mu Herculaneum and Pompeii seem both very distant from the focus of Vesuvius. They are now separated from it by inhabitants, and cultivated spaces have been conquered from the lava, and recovered from the volcano. The village of Portici is built upon the roofs of the first of those two cities, which was petrified on the day of its death, and into the tomb of which one descends as into a mine, by a sort of a shaft, ending at the theatre where, it is conjectured, the inhabitants were assembled when the eruption surprised them. It was in 1689 that the ruins of the city made their appearance for the first time in an excavation made at random, which was resumed in 1720, and finally organized in 1738, with admirable success. The discovery of the theatre and of every thing else has taken place since that period. The theatre is of Greek architecture; it is ornamented with a fine front, and with marble columns standing on the stage itself; the specta-seum. tors occupied twenty-one rows of steps, with a gallery above embellished with bronze statues. One can still distinguish the places allotted to the magistrates, the scene behind which the actors withdrew, and a number of objects which excite in the traveller mingled astonishment and emotion. There are also at Herculaneum a Forum surrounded with porticoes and temples, which are almost all of them damaged, and a jail with old iron rusty bars, to which the prisoners were chained -a melancholy feature of all times and places, and a monotonous emblem of society at all periods. As you leave these excavations, which have as yet made little progress, and cannot be much extended without endangering the safety of Portici, you distinctly perceive several strata of lava, proving beyond a doubt that Herculaneum was drowned in repeated eruptions of Vesuvius. The difficulty of carrying on the excavations at so great a depth, and under the very foundations of a new town, has caused the ruins of Herculaneum to be almost abandoned for those of Pompeii, which present a far more striking interest. At Herculaneum there are only catacombs. At Pompeii the Romans entirely revive; the houses stand, and are furnished and ornamented with picturesque paintings; the cellars are stocked as well as the tables; in more than one dwelling the dinner has been found on the table, and the skeletons of the guests round it, and then you enter every where on some floor; and as the ashes, which lie but a few metres thick upon the ancient buildings, are cleared, the town appears, as ours come to light again when the snow melts in mountainous countries. You arrive by a suberb wholly lined with Roman tombs, and walk over a Roman pavement, worn out by Roman vehicles; you may enter the inn; there are the stables, with the rings to fasten the horses; close by is the farrier, with his sign over One must, above all, see the toilet arsenal of the Roman ladies, their combs, toothpicks, curling irons, and the pots of vegetable or mineral rouge found in a boudoir. Thus the Roman ladies used rouge and deceived people, just as is practised now-a-days; they wore, like our ladies, those necklaces, rings, and ridiculous earrings which add nothing to beauty and diminish not ugliness. How times resemble one another, in spite of the space that separates them. Above thirty streets of Pompeii are now restored to light: it is a third part of the town. The walls which formed its ancient inclosure have been recognised; a magnificent amphitheatre, a theatre, a forum, the temple of Isis, that of Venus, and a number of other buildings have been cleared. The se cret stairs by which the priests of those times slily crept to prompt the oracles have been detected. On beholding so many monuments which display in so lively a n anner the im portance of public and the independence of private life among the Romans, it is impossible to resist a feeling of sadness and melancholy. Behold, along that fall of earth, the vestige of the breast of a woman who was buried alive, and stiffened by death-behold the stones of that well, worn by the rubbing the ropes-examine that guardhouse, covered with caricatures of soldiers-one might suppose that the Roman people still existed, and that we were but strangers in one of their towns. Who knows what future discoveries may be made in those august ruins! Murat employed upon them 2,000 men every year. Only 60 men and 1,000l. are now employed wpon them. The excavations proceed, in coneequence, with dismal slowness, however great may be the interest which his Sicilian Majesty takes in their success. It is not to Rome-devastated and disfigured Rome-that one must go to study the Romans-it is to Pompeii. Pompeii, as regards antiquities, is worth all Italy together. |