OF POPULAR LITERATURE Science and Arts. CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS. No. 190. SATURDAY, AUGUST 22, 1857. OLD STONES. 'NONSENSE! Who on earth would take such a journey'-it was forty miles across country, or sixty odd if you went round by rail-'just to see a heap of old stones!' So grumbled our host, whose 'bark was waur than his bite,' who always said the unkindest things, and did the kindest. Of course, we never fretted ourselves about the matter; we knew we should go. PRICE 1d. cheerfully travel anyhow, anywhen, anywhere to see Stonehenge. Then, like wise women, we let the matter rest; we knew we should go. Our plan germinated a day or so, in wholesome silence, till we saw its first leaf peering above ground in the shape of a Bradshaw which, quite par hasard, our host was apparently studying. 'Oh!' observed he-apropos of nothing. 'It would take a long day-a very long day.' 'What would?' somebody said hypocritically. 'I thought you wanted to see Stonehenge.' We smothered our joy; we were meek over our triumph; we even-as days were precious to the masculine portion of the household — acquiesced humbly in the proposal that we should make a long day of it'-that is to say, from six A.M. to about twelve P.M., including a journey by coach and rail of about 110 miles, if even by that slightly arduous means we might purchase an hour or two among our 'old stones.' The very It had been the dream of youth to us all, indulged hopelessly for-well, I had better not say how many years; since, though to the youngest-now our merry hostess, and mother of our host's three boys-time did not so much matter, we two elders, who had not made quite such good use of it, might possibly be sensitive on the subject. Time? Pshaw! we plucked the old fellow by the beard, and laughed at him, all three of us. He had only made us wiser, and richer, and merrier; we did not grudge him one year out of the many that have slipped away since we used to sit Patience prospered; resignation won. in short frocks, and frilled trousers, and long plaited next day, we four-three womenkind, on whom, as tails of hair-à la Chinoise-in shady arbours, poring we have passed the season when we care to be the over Penny Magazines and juvenile Tours through three Graces, I may as well bestow, pro tem., the England-which confirmed us, as I said, in the longing names of the three Virtues, Faith, Hope, and Charity to see Stonehenge, of all places in the world-our-under escort of Hope's husband-found ourselves 'world' which in wildest dreams extended not beyond the British Islands. We never had seen it: not though, since then, some of us had gone up and down Europe, till we had come to talk of the Alps and Italy with a hand-inglove familiarity quite appalling; though to others, the ends of the world' had at second-hand been brought so close, that the marvellous Peter Botte Mountain, about which we drank in so many (ahem!) fabulosities in the said Penny Magazine, and Cape Horn, of gloomy horror, and the delicious Coral Islands, on which we so desperately longed to be cast away as youthful Robinson Crusoes, had dwindled into everyday things. Yet still, still we had never seen Stonehenge. As the idea was started, and we canvassed it over the tea-table, the dream of our girlhood came back with the delicious mystery and ingenious conjectures that attended it, and the wild hope-struck out of the infinite belief of youth in everything, and, above all, in itself that if we only once got a sight of it, who knew but that we, actually we! might be the happy individual to set for ever at rest, by some lucky suggestion, the momentous question: Who built Stonehenge? A heap of old stones!' We scouted the phrase with even youthful indignation; we protested that it had been the desire of our lives, that we would any of us clattering over the stones of our little town, that within two hours fully informed itself of our excursion and plans in all particulars, many of them quite unknown to ourselves. No matter; we were very happy, even when Fate, according to her custom-a wise one, doubtless-dashed our joys, with a pelting rain, which tore us from post travelling and from the breezy heaths-redolent for miles and miles of the apricotscented gorse-to thrust us into a railway carriage, where we had our choice of being smothered or soaked. Still no matter: not though we had to make a circumbendibus which would occupy the whole of the afternoon, and land us in Salisbury just time enough to go to bed: not though the delicious drive across country was put an end to, and we were jolted, and choked, hungry, and wet (likewise dry, very!), labouring under every travelling woe, except ill-humour. As we laughed, our troubles lightened; and when, towards dusk, we saw, westward, a red streak peering through the dun sky, and birds began to sing out cheerily in the green, dripping trees, we gloried in all our conquered disasters, for we said: 'It is sure to be a fine day to-morrow.' And when, opening the carriage window, one of us heard, through the stillness of the rainy twilight, The faint and frail cathedral chimes we felt, we knew that we were near Salisbury, that Of a bleak spot, one hears-As bare as Salisbury to-morrow we should see Stonehenge. No chance of the cathedral that night; but we saw above the houses its exquisitely delicate spire; and once again, as we sat over the welcomest of tea-suppers in the inn-parlour, we caught the chimes, 'faint and frail;' and Hope, who used once to be the most romantic of us all, and in whom even matrimony had not quite uprooted that beautiful weed of the soul, took out boldly her pet poem, The Angel in the House, and declared her intention of rising at some unearthly hour next morning, to hunt out the dean's house, where it is supposed the 'Angel' abode, previous to being caught and carried away to the author's. She should find it, she knew, in 'Sarum Close:' Red brick and ashlar, long and low, The windows, all wide open thrown, The wedding-march of Mendelssohn. Gathering all this admirable evidence for identifying -nothing! we laid our plans, took one peep out on the street, where the pavement glittered, shiny with rain, under the gas lamps, and above a queer black gable, out peered the brightest, softest new moonwe all went to bed as merry as children. Out upon old Time! were we not at heart just as young as ever, and going to Stonehenge to-morrow? AND WE WENT. I beg to chronicle this in capitals, as a remarkable corroboration of the proverb, Wish for a gown o' gowd, and ye'll aye get a sleeve o't;' and to shew that people do sometimes get what they want, if they have patience to wait for it.twenty years We went. or 80. It was an exquisite morning; fresh after the rain, breezy and bright, with clouds scudding now and then over the May sun, threatening us just enough to make us feel that we didn't care. It might rain, and welcome -in an hour or two-but we should be at Stonehenge. Even if we saw it-humiliating position!—from under umbrellas, see it we should and would. So we dashed along the quiet morning street, where the respectable inhabitants of Sarum were just breakfasting, little recking of insane tourists, wild over their familiar old stones.' Even our driver, honest man, as he took us through the close and sultry lane'— vide Angel in the House, which we again referred to -turned round once or twice, with a patronising air, to answer topographical questions, and then cracked his whip solemnly, as if proud that he wasn't so foolish as some people! Foolish indeed! but it was a holy intoxication brought on by the fresh, breezy, dewy light, bathing the whole spring-world. How beautiful was that world! with the sky full of larks, and the air of hawthorn-scent, with acres upon acres of champaign land, green with growing wheat, waving and shimmering in the sun-a sea of verdurous plenty. How strange, like a bit of ancient history made visible, looked Old Sarum-a perfect Roman camp, with its regular lines and fosses, now thick-sown with trees, amidst which, for centuries back, we learned, still lurked a house or two-no more. 'Yet that place,' remarked Hope's husband, with severe modern practicality-'that place actually, till the Reform Bill, sent two members to parliament!' We laughed and pondered how much the world had mended since the times of the Romano-Britons, while we walked in a perpetual chorus of larks-a chorus dropping upon us from the white clouds-who sang over us just as they sang over the heads of those grim warriors when throwing up the green walls of Old Sarum. Salisbury Plain. Familiar as a proverb the place is. Plain;' of being shelterless in the rain-Might as well have been out on Salisbury Plain.' All images of dreary desolation and flat uniformity gather round it; and one thinks of that celebrated hero of the Religious Tract Society, the 'Shepherd of Salisbury Plain,' with a mixture of sympathy and veneration. Yes, we were now on Salisbury Plain. A strange place surely. Not flat, as we had expected, but rising and falling in long low waves of landenclosed wheat-land, for a considerable way; till fences and cultivation cease, and you find yourself in the midst of a vast expanse, lying bare under the sky, as far as eye can reach, in all directions—one undulating sea of intense emerald green. Nothing, except the sea, ever gave me such a sense of solitude, stillness, and desolation, quiet, not painful: nature's desolation is never painful. You hear no birds, for there are no trees to sing in; nay, the larks have ceased, or are heard indistinctly far away over the wheat-fields; an occasional bee alone comes buzzing over the short turf, the flowers of which, dainty, curious, and small, are chiefly of a scentless kind, such as saxifrage, tiny yellow lotos, and primrose-coloured hawkweed. Now or then, every mile or so, you see, lying at anchor in a hollow, or steering across the Plain like a fleet of white sails, whose course you can track for miles, what you know must be a flock of sheep. Or you come upon them close, and the little brown-faced shepherd takes off his cap with a nod and a smile—and his shaggy dog just lifts up his lazy head to look at you: then you leave them all, flock, shepherd, and dog, to a solitude which seems as complete as that of an Arab in the desert, or a ship far out at sea. And this is Salisbury Plain; and in its centre lies that extraordinary circle of stones, about which, let antiquaries prate as they will, nobody really knows anything whatever. As we ascended and descended ridge after ridge of the waves of land, we all stretched anxious eyes, east, west, north, and south. Who would be the first to catch sight of Stonehenge? We scorned to inquire of the driver where to look; we felt sure we should recognise it at once; but on we went, and ever so many imaginary 'old stones' did our satirical escort point out to our eager notice as the veritable Stonehenge. At last he said, with a quiet air of unquestionable superiority, 'That's it: there are your old stones.' 'Where?'-'Oh, please, where?'-' Yes, where ?' cried in different and yet concurring tones, Hope, Faith, and Charity-the latter being mild even in her enthusiasm: she had seen Mont Blanc and a few other trifles. "There!' 'Oh !'-' Ah !'—' Well!' I grieve to confess that these ejaculations were-not enthusiastic! Did ever the thing attained seem, in the moment of winning, half so grand as when unattained, possibly unattainable? Nay, as our poetical friend observes-not too politely-of his 'Angel' (the book's corner peered still out of Hope's pocket): The whole world's wealthiest and its best Poor from its very want of bound. Alas! whether from the vastness of the Plain, which made the gigantic stones seem small, from the want of something to compare them with; or whether youthful imagination had, like 'vaulting ambition, o'erleaped its selle,' and fell prone by the side of ordinary and pos sible fact-certain it is that nothing but the shame and dread of being crowed over by the superior masculine wisdom, prevented our confessing ourselves disappointed in the first sight of Stonehenge. But afterwards, as often happens, and, let us hope, happened with our poet and his 'Angel,' coming nearer, its grandeur and beauty grew upon us, till, by the time our horses stopped, and drew up under the large shadow of one of the Druid (?) rocks,' we descended, silenced by their exceeding sublimity. It has been described scores of times, this extraordinary circle, or rather series of circles one within another, varying in size, from the outer stones, which are all of silicious sandstone, apparently about fifteen feet in height, and six or seven in diameter-to the inner ones, of granite, and not beyond the size of a man-and the two great centre trilithons, which still stand, erect and uninjured, over the large flat stone of blue lias, which is supposed to have been the sacrificial altar. These minutia we neither observed nor heeded then. With an involuntary quietness, unbroken even by the sunshiny wind, rough enough to make hats weigh heavy on our minds and only too light on our craniums, and sharp enough to cause a glad recollection of lunch in a basket-in spite of these human weaknesses, we all felt a certain awe on entering the 'ancient solitary reign' of these great gray stones, upright or prostrate, the mystery of which will probably never be revealed till the judgment-day. felt rather ashamed to run in and out among them, and measure our height with them-puny mortals as we looked, the tallest of us!-and take hands to clamber over the great fallen blocks, and try to find out which was the identical spot upon which, year after year, the human victim must have lain, taking his last open-eyed fill of the wide emerald plain and blue remorseless sky. We So would romance have dreamed; but Practicality, here predominant, soon set themselves let me say himself to calculate the height and weight of the 'old stones,' and to invent a plan, by means of levers and earthworks, whereby, without any other machinery, even ancient Britons might have erected the trilithons and the outer circle, in the uprights of which he soon discovered circular tenons, fitting exactly into the mortices carved in the top stones, to prevent their sliding off. Clever fellows!' he observed, with the satisfied patronage of modern science. "Yes, those Druids were very clever fellows indeed.' I hope their ghosts were gratified, if any still lingered in the familiar temple, supposing it ever was a temple, or that the Druids ever built it at all-all which questions, and many more, we discussed over sandwiches and sherry, incensed by faint wreaths of odour from a weed which modern Britain worships as ancient Briton did the misletoe, and, en passant, under colour of which, probably effects quite as many human sacrifices. Here, though, it was harmless enough; harmless, too, were the jokes and laughter that broke the utter dead solitude of the place, until we dispersed to gather, for ourselves or other folk, moss, bits of broken stone, and dainty wee flowers that perked up their innocent faces under the very shadow of the immemorial stones. Harmless and pretty too was the determined pertinacity with which Hope, bringing out her eternal book, caught Practicality's coat-sleeve, and insisted on reading aloud the idyl Sarum Plain, which endeth thus appropriately: By the great stones we chose our ground Sat the three ladies; at their feet I sat, and smelt the heathy smell (Nor harebells either. But then it might have been autumn-time,' mildly remarked Charity.) Plucked harebells, turned the telescope To the country round. My life went well, That scowled their chill gloom from above, The lightness of immortal love. Immortal love! Yes, in this place, this dumb oracle of a forgotten world-this broken, dis-hallowed temple raised by unknown worshippers to a lost god immutable, something which in one little word ex-one felt the need of something immortal, something presses the best thing of all good things, human and think in heart or eyes, visible or invisible, we all had divine, and which in itself belongs to both; and I it, and rejoiced in it there. And now we were going, leaving a small token of affection in the shape of a paper of biscuits, and a neckless, though not quite wineless bottle, to two of the aborigines, who had appeared from nowhere in particular, to meekly maunder about the stones, and offer us specimens, but who retired abashed before we could get out of them a syllable of conversation. But slowly across the Plain towards us, a mysterious just ere departing, we saw, half a mile off, winding behind it at least a big hat, which indicated a man machine, half-wheelbarrow half-peepshow, with a man underneath. business-like way, took out your sketch-book, plans, My good man-when you stopped, and in that curiosities, and laid them out in a sheltered nook, and ever heard from any cicerone, on the antiquities of began to lecture, in the most intelligent fashion I Stonehenge-you little suspected that one of those three innocent-looking ladies would ever put you down in print! Not that I think you'll have the slightest objection to it, Mr Joseph Browne of Amesburytwenty-four years attending illustrator of Stonehenge,' as your guide-book says (price one shilling, and worth two, for its extraordinary amount of intelligent fact and even more intelligent fiction). You are a great character, and long may you live to startle tourists with your apparition, and enlighten them with your discourse-a condensed edition of your guide-book, or rather, your father's. Literatim-behold its title!THE UNPREJUDICED, AUTHENTIC, AND HIGHLY-INTERESTING ACCOUNT WHICH THAT STUPENDOUS and BeautiFUL EDIFICE STONEHENGE IN WILTSHIRE, IS FOUND TO GIVE OF ITSELF. Therein is proved, to the author's satisfaction at least, the undoubted origin of Stonehenge. How it was the work of neither Romans, Celts, Druids, nor Phoenicians, but of antediluvians! How though, as the writer allows, the difficulty in determining the situation of the abodes of those antediluvians who were concerned in the erection of the Serpent and Temple at Abury, of Silbury Hill and of Stonehenge, is very considerable,' he brings a mass of evidence, wanting in nothing but a few slight premises to start from, and proves that the giants that were before the Flood could alone have erected the stones, and the Flood only could have thrown them down. Of these antediluvians, their manners and customs, and general goings on, domestic, social, and religious-'of the earnest desire that existed in Adam to perpetuate a ("There's no heath hereabouts-all turf,' observed knowledge of original sin,' which he did, in all prob Practicality.) Plucked harebells ability, by the erection of a great serpentine temple -qy. at Abury ?-'that hieroglyphic being fully adequate to so momentous an end'-likewise of the Deluge, and the course of its waters, 'running as they are known to have done, from the south-west to the north-east-our author speaks with a decision, confidence, and familiarity quite enviable. Nevertheless, despite one's smile at the ease with which 'facts' can be accumulated into a great cairn of evidence over the merest dead dust of a theory, which a breath would blow away, one cannot help appreciating the exceeding intelligence and antiquarian ingenuity of both Henry Browne, senior, and Joseph Browne, junior; and all visitors to Stonehenge will miss a great treat if they do not invest a shilling in the guide-book, and one or two more in the acute explanations of the guide. We did so; left him beaming with satisfaction, and bowing till the big hat nearly touched his knees in manners, at least, our friend might have taken lessons from his favourite antediluvians-then we rolled slowly over the smooth soft turf, often looking behind till the great gray circle lessened and lessened, and finally dropped behind one of the green ridges. 'You can't see it any more.' the old houses and small bright gardens-its glittering windows and flying buttresses, up from which one's gaze wandered to the most delicate of spires, that tapered up till it vanished into nothing in the broad blue-I feel it is impossible to describe-I can only shut my eyes and dream of this first vision of Salisbury Cathedral. We sauntered slowly along the path through the buttercups; how much better than a field of tombstones, as it was for centuries, till bold Bishop Barrington on one momentous night sent an army of workmen, who before daylight had levelled the whole, laid each tombstone carefully over its proper grave; only-four feet below the surface, instead of upon it! How the good people of Salisbury must have stared, and stormed, and been scandalised; but the deed was done, and could not be undone; the turf grew green, the dead slept quietly and unharmed, and ceased to be, what provi dence never meant them to be, though man has tried hard to make them-a burden, a terror, or a destruction to generations of the living. Now, there are no more burials in Salisbury Close, and very few even in the cloisters. 'I wonder if we ever shall see it any more.' Charity was afraid not;' Hope thought 'she Passing through the nave to the chapter-house, we should like to bring her boys here, when they were entered these cloisters. Others, elsewhere, are grander old enough to understand it;' Faith-did what Faith-Gloucester, for instance-but here, again, I doubt always does, and let the question bide. One thing, whether any can compete with Salisbury in beauty. however, was certain, that we should, in all human This covered cloister-walk encircles a space open to probability, never be all here again as now. In mortal the sky, with, I think, only two yew-trees planted in life are renewals, but no repetitions-no 'second' it. The verger told us that the late bishop took great times. Each pleasure, as well as each pain, stands by pride in it; and after his wife was buried there, would itself; and though the new thing may be ten times not allow even a daisy to mar the exquisite green better than the old, still, it cannot be the very thing the turf, but paid old women to go and pick them -that is gone for ever, as it is right it should go. every morning! His three family tomb-stones are the only tombs allowed: over all the other graves are tiny tablets, let into the level grass; and so narrow is the space, that each grave is dug coffin-shaped. We could trace still, in one or two places, the known outline which, however familiar, humanity never looks upon without a certain awe. We knew well-and in spite of our laughter, I think we felt that though we might all live to be old men and old women, and see many grand sights up and down the world, we should never again have a day exactly like this our day at Stonehenge. 'Well, do you want to see any more "old stones?" Of course we did. We had not dragged our benevolent Practicality all that distance from his home and work to let him off with anything short of the utmost we could get. Besides, some of us, rising early, had already given glowing descriptions of what, not having seen, I shall not attempt to paint Salisbury Cathedral and Close, under the aspect of seven A.M, and a sunshiny morning. And some others of us had, from the first dawning of the plan, set our heart with a silent pertinacity which is not often beaten in anything, on seeing all that could be seen and told about the said cathedral. So, after a few carnal but not unnecessary arrangements at the inn with reference to lamb and asparagus, we sallied forth again into Sarum Street-a quaint pretty old town it is!-and passed under the heavy gateway which shuts out from the world the quiet sanctities of Sarum Close. We Breathed the sunny wind that rose And blew the shadows o'er the spire, And shaped the clouds in waifs and zones, Of Sarum bells Not exactly yet, as it was before service-time. Otherwise the picture was just as we beheld it that 26th of May 1857. Of all English cathedrals, perhaps Salisbury most merits the term 'beautiful.' Its exquisite lightness, whiteness, and airy grace, set in the midst of a wide and open Close, sometime turf, but now one golden ocean of wavy buttercups, and belted in by a square walk, where chestnut and lime trees of thickest, vividest foliage overhung the path, and half-shadowed We entered the chapter-house, which-better than any monumental tomb-is being restored, by subscription, to this late bishop's memory. Here, again, the exquisite airiness of Salisbury architecture struck us. This great lofty circular chamber-chapel almost-is entirely supported by one centre pillar, or rather cluster of united pillars, from which all the arches spring. You stand under it as under some slender palm-tree, and look up wondering at its aërial lightness, its ineffable grace. Nor, even when overpowered by the extreme ornamentation of the 'restored' building (one of us suggesting that the restorer had better have left it alone, was quite annihilated by the verger'sIndeed!-you think so, madam!'), does this sense of that unity and simplicity which constitute a perfect form of beauty, ever pass away. 'Rather different from Stonehenge. Quite a variety in old stones,' observed our escort, after examining and recognising the Purbeck marble and pavement of Minton's tiles-admirable modern imitations of the antique. Yes-it could not fail to set us pondering how The One remains-the many change and pass. The ONE, whom Shelley knew not, or knew so dimly; whom, ignorantly and blindly, all earthly generations have, in divers manner, striven to adore; in all manner of temples-from these rude stones of Stonehenge, so placed that the sun, rising in his place upon the longest day-and only then-shall strike through the gateway, on to the sacrificial stone-to this fair cathedral, on which the devices of man's brain and hand, through six hundred years, have been lavished, to glorify in material shape the Immaterial, whose glory the whole earth and heavens cannot contain. We trod lightly, as instinctively one treads on what must ever be regarded as consecrated ground. We heard the many traditions of the place-saw the usual cross-legged, broken-nosed Crusaders; the boy-bishop who, in the midst of his murmurings, ate himself to death-poor little rogue! was buried with all canonical honours, and whose tiny effigy may be seen to this day; the skeleton-monk—who still lives in stone, to impress beholders with a wholesome terror of mortality and corruption. With these wonders, and a score more, we regaled our curiosity; till a few figures, quaint and quiet, such as one always notices in cathedral towns, entered a little door, and stole, prayer-book in hand, along the nave, towards the choir-while over our heads-far up, as it were the service-bell began to toll dreamily and slow. We had no time to stay longer; so, out into the open air! through the door at the great west front, which we turned back to look at; and, though quite unlearned in church architecture, stood marvelling at its rich decorative work, endlessly varied, over which a little bold happy sparrow ran up and down and in or out, as if the whole of Salisbury Cathedral were made for him to build his nest in. Thence, slowly round the Close, in one corner of which a group of boys were just quitting a game of most unsanctified cricket, and disappearing hastily either for school or prayers; out through the gateway, leaving the bell still ringing, and the clouds still floating over the airy spire-the May winds still rustling the chestnut trees, and waving the buttercups, and the sunshine glorifying into almost unimaginable whiteness and beauty Salisbury Cathedral. Finally, home; in the cool of the day, travelling right across country, a country purely English; skirting parks, where the trees stood, one by one, majestic pyramids of green, with their branches sweeping the very ground; past rich fields, dotted with red and white cows, ruminating in the grass, or standing kneedeep in a pond, too lazy to do more than turn to us the mild, calm, sleepy gaze, whence Homer calls Juno 'the ox-eyed;' through quiet villages, where children and old women gaped at us out of open doors, where every cottage had a porch, and every porch was a mass of woodbine or China roses. A drive not easily to be forgotten, in the lovely pictures it gave of one's own country-one's modern, everyday living and breathing England, which, with all her faults, we fondly believe to be Beloved of heaven o'er all the world beside. Finally, as I said, home; to find the children fast asleep; and sit for an hour or so over a quiet fireside, talking over all our doings, which will serve for talk still, when we are all gray-headed, and the 'little ones-probably six feet high-may be taken-I beg pardon, may take themselves-to see Stonehenge. 'Well, have you, on the whole, enjoyed your "Old Stones ?""" I should rather think we had! KIRKE WEBBE, THE PRIVATEER CAPTAIN. CHAPTER IV. To speak, to think of dinner at such a moment was revolting, insufferable! The callous animalism of the privateer captain annoyed, disgusted me, and I flung out of the house in a hot rage. The wind, I found, had increased to a gale-the ships at Spithead had sent down their upper spars, in preparation for a dirty night; and so piercing was the blast, that it took the wine-fire out of my blood in a very short time, and I was enabled to take a cool dispassionate view of Captain Webbe's assumedly frank, confidential, straightforward communication; the result being to deepen, rather than efface, the feeling of mistrust with which I had listened to it. I do not know that I could have given any very logical or lucid reason for that mistrust; but I had, notwithstanding, a strong impression that he was seeking to hoodwink, bamboozle me, and to carry out a purpose widely different from the ostensible one. Yet, except that he imagined it possible to palm off a daughter of Madame de Bonneville for the lost Lucy Hamblin-an altogether wild, insane project, of which it was really absurd to suspect so cool-headed a man— I could not see what sinister purpose he could have in view. Then my mother, who had known him so many years, confided in his good faith, if with some misgivings, and commanded me to do the same. It was imperative, consequently, that I should not suffer myself to be discouraged by shadowy dangers, having no existence, possibly, save in my own imagination. Concluding, therefore, to place heedful confidence, so to speak, in the privateer captain-to follow his leading boldly, and with both eyes wide open-I returned to the hotel. Captain Webbe had finished his dinner, proclaimed by his rosy gills and generally placid aspect to have been a satisfactory one. I apologised for having so abruptly left him. 'My dear boy, the loss was yours, not mine,' replied Mr Webbe. Besides, it is a common failing in the morning of life, when the blandishments of passion take the reason prisoner- I forget the exact words of the quotation, but the practical moral is, that inexperienced youth is prone to attach a higher value to imaginary raptures than to the sober reality of a southdown wether-leg, done to a bubble-a weakness which the strong years never fail to cure. A glass of wine with you, Master Linwood.' 'Willingly; and now, perhaps, you will have the goodness to sketch, and with as rapid a pencil as possible, the action of the all-important, all-compensating last act you speak of?' 'Certainly. Madame de Bonneville, ci-devant Louise Féron, exclaimed upon catching sight of me-she has about the sharpest pair of eyes I know of: "Le Capitaine Webbe! Est-il possible!" Now, Captain Webbe, whether in French or English, is not a name to be ashamed of, but there is a time and place for all things-even for picking up stones, as I learned at school and certainly the month of November 1813, and the street Dupetit Thouars, St Malo, were not the suitable time and place for so shrill a proclamation of that respectable name. Instantly, therefore, entreating silence and a word in private, I followed her into the magasin. A few minutes sufficed to establish mutually amicable relations; and circumstances detaining me in St Malo longer than I feared might prove beneficial to my health, we became mighty intimate. 'As a proof of that friendly intimacy,' continued Captain Webbe with a grimace, as if half-a-dozen invisible surgeon-dentists were operating upon him at once, 'I may mention that Madame de Bonneville, not having quite sufficient capital for her business, declared that she preferred being obliged for the trifle required -five thousand francs only-two hundred pounds sterling-to her old friend, Captain Webbe, than to her nearest and dearest relatives! It was withal a mere bagatelle, as she said; for which bagatelle, counted out in acknowledgment and acquittal: "O that you are in solid five-franc pieces, le Capitaine Webbe received good! O that you are generous, my dear captain!" and a laugh,' added Webbe with a savage snap of his teeth that would have taken a piece out of a pewterpot-'a laugh which said as plainly as laugh could, |