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*

As soon as Maurice regained his liberty, he hastened to the tomb of her whom he loved. Judge of his emotion, upon seeing (as he supposed) the spirit of Leà wandering among the trees his joy upon discovering that she was not dead. The youthful couple tasted for a moment, the happiness of meeting again; but Lea shuddered; she fancied she saw two eyes sparkling through the shrubs. Maurice left her to ascertain the cause of her alarm. They were Ben Aissa's eyes, but he avoided Maurice, and returned to the young Jewess, whom he covered with his cloak, and was dragging her away, when Nathan sprang upon the Arab, struck him with his poignard, and disappeared, struggling with him.

Maurice finding no one-returned. He found Leà insensible. Nathan, believing he had killed the ravisher of his child, returned also seeing Maurice, he threw from him the poignard.

"Again between my child and me! Depart quickly both of you, said the Jew; may I never hear your names again!"

"Ah! wait at least until she revives," cried Maurice," that your pardon may be to her gleam of hope for the future."

When Leà was restored to consciousness, shendeavored by her prayers, her grief, and her tears, to soften the heart of her father.

In a broken voice he said, "I do not know you. I had a gentle and lovely daughter, the comfort of my old age. I have lost her, forever. I shall never see her again, either in this world or the I shall leave Constantina, the witness of my grief. Behold your road, and this is miue ". and he left them.

next.

himself to the spot, and upon seeing Maurice with Leà, a horrid thought crossed his mind: he cried for assistance troopers arrived-he accused the Frenchman of having stabbed him. Leà was going to name her father, but Maurice prevented her; he was carried off by the troopers.

Poor Lea, hid beneath a veil, passed the night protected by Bou Taleb and his Arabs. She waited for the return of Yacoub, whom she had sent in search of his master. Nathan alone could save Maurice.

Kadidja sought the young Jewess: "Marry Ben Aissa," she said to her, "and Maurice shall live."

Leà refused.

"Ah! you do not love him as I do, who am despised. I spoke to him, when the guards conducted him to the Keobah; he has destroyed my last hope-I am no longer your rival. Some words which escaped from my brother, informed me that Maurice was not guilty, and that you are acquainted with the murderer. There is something, then, which you value more than Maurice?"

"Yes," replied Leà, "there is something which I place above my love; I glory in it, and I praise that God whose law has been revealed to me. He is good, he is just, he will save the innocent."

She left the tent in haste. As Ben-Aissa, supported by his Kabyles, entered, "A veiled female," he said to them, "is going to present herself at the door El-Kantara; if that woman cries out, you must gag her, and execute my orders! it is enough for you to know that your Sheik has a right to act as he pleases." The Kabyles went away. "I have caused the mute slave, the bearer of Nathan's reply, to be arrested," said Ben-Aissa to his sister. "He will return to save Maurice."

"He can do it then?" cried Kadidja.

"But he shall not," answered the Arab; "I shall wait for him in the way, and he shall go no farther, for I have his daughter in my power. In saving Maurice, he will lose his child."

"But you do not know that at the risk of my life I will purchase that of this Frenchman? You have no pity,-I will go to meet Nathan."

"Miserable girl! I shall still have strength to make you repent," he said, impeding her progress. "Think you that I shall allow you to accomplish this odious revenge?" exclaimed KadidjaNever; Heaven will inspire me."

With these words she escaped by the same way that Lea had gone. A procession of Jews descended the mountain-several Rabbins walked in front; one of them held in his hand an open book; two slaves followed, bearing on their shoulders the expiatory goat.

"It is the day on which they come to make

Ben-Aissa. "If Nathan would only come-here he is."

"Why this sudden return?" inquired one of the Rabbins.

"Honor compels me to go to Constantina." "Arrest him!" cried Ben-Aissa.

"I remember you," said Nathan, "it was with you I struggled on that fatal night, and it is you who have dared to accuse an innocent man!"

"Leave him to perish."

"By Jehovah, I will declare the truth before all," said the Jew.

"One word more," and he pointed to a rock on the right; "there my Kabyles hold suspended, and ready to dash into the torrent the maiden whom you denied me!"

"Oh!" cried Nathan, overcome with terror, (and hesitating for a moment,) "God of my fathers, yet this one sacrifice to thy glory."

He stepped forward-Ben-Aissa fired a pistolthey beheld the body of a female fall into the

ravine.

"Ah! I have killed my child!" exclaimed Nathan, "my daughter! it was she! my God! I thought I was strong-I was only cruel! Punish

me, I am a murderer!" He fell insensible into the arms of the Rabbius and his attendants.

"At least," said Ben-Aissa, in a gloomy voice, "she will never belong to another. And you," he continued, turning to Nathan, "I shall prove that Maurice was your accomplice; you will not have saved either him or your daughter."

He was going away, when Maurice appeared with Lea, and followed by African troopers.

"She lives!" cried Nathan, rushing with open arms towards his daughter. "Ah, I have forgotten all, except that you are my child, and that nothing in the world can separate us again."

"But who then is fallen into the gulf?" asked

Ben-Aissa, going towards the edge.

"You are my prisoner," said Maurice, arresting him. "Your brothers, on demanding money for ransom, have delivered you up as a hostage."

"Leave me!" replied Ben-Aissa. "Who has been cast into the abyss?"

"Look!" said Bou-Taleb, pointing to some Kabyles, bearing in their arms the lifeless body of a female.

66

"My sister!" exclaimed Ben-Aissa with distraction, iny sister!-Oh! I am accursed!God is just!"

It has been said that the Germans are not witty. There are many who regard it as an established maxim in criticism, that the genius of German literature is heavy and unwieldy, and knows not how to disport itself with grace; that their discussions are without vivacity, and their raillery coarse. It is not so at the present day, certainly, whatever it might have been formerly. Germany has, it is true, her exact and patient scholars, who are as tedious as one could desire in the completeness of their investigations; her metaphysicians are the profoundest and the cloudiest; but she has writers of another stamp, who translate the deductions of philosophy into the language of common life, as Sidney Smith translated Jeremy Bentham, and with as much wit and grace as he; writers who concern themselves with principles of immediate practical application, which they discuss with life and spirit, and the aids of a prolific fancy.

There is a book which I frequently take up, entitled Letters from Paris, by Ludwig Börne, written immediately after the revolution which dethroned Charles the Tenth. I delight in these letters, because they treat of political, moral, and literary subjects, in a manner which blends the poetic and the log cal element, and because in the midst of their playfuluess there is ever an earnest purpose. The only fault I find with them is an occasional want of reverence. Is it not remarkable, that the Jews-Börne was of Jewish origin, though he had couformed to the Protestant communion-is it not strange, I say, that the descendants of Israel, with their solemn Scriptures, and with so much to Ispose the mind to veneration in their history, their traditions, and their worship, should have so many sad scoffers among them? Heine, another German writer of Jewish extraction, who treats of the same class of subjects as Börue, and who writes wittily and with a graceful facility, both in prose and verse, but who seems to have no fixed principles of any sort, is as hardened a scoffer as Voltaire.

The French claim Paul Courrier as the wittiest of political writers. To me, Börne seems to have nearly as much wit as Courrier, and he certainly possesses a more fertile fancy and a greater variety of allusion. His book is contraband in Germany, and the copy I have bears the imprint of Paris, though from its appearance I suspect it was clandestinely printed somewhere in the father-land;

the type is not the German type of Paris, and the paper is of the tough dark-colored kind on which German books are commonly printed. If the book were a dull one, I have no doubt its publication would be licensed by the censorship; but Börue, who was a sturdy republican, wrote in too attractive a manner, and struck at the established order of things with too much force to be allowed to address his countrymen through the press Börne died a few years since in Paris. He was for some time an object of attention to the Prussian police, and though a native of Prussia, was not allowed, at one time, to reside in his own country.

The letters purport to be written to a lady. I believe that men of sense write better than usual when they address the other sex; at all events, they generally write more entertainingly; coxcombs are pretty sure to write worse The opinion I have expressed of Börne's letters is derived from a general perusal of them, and perhaps the extracts I am about to give, being detached passages, will hardly be thought to justify it.

In a letter written in January, 1833. he says: "A Prussian naturalist was desirous of making a scientific voyage to North America, and applied to the king for aid. He was answered that America was already sufliciently explored, but that great discoveries were yet to be made in Siberia. Another naturalist was found who declared himself ready to go to Siberia, and received eight hundred dollars for his travelling expenses. Was not that kind? This America torments them like a hollow tooth, and will not let them sleep. If it could only be plugged! A republic without the guillotineand yet they have been saying for the last forty years, that a republic and the guillotine are the same thing. Liberty without blood--and yet they teach the youth in all the schools, that Liberty is a kind of fish which lives only in the Red Sea. But their hopes rest upon a better futureupon blood and monarchy even in the new world. Long since they predicted that the bond which holds together the different regions of America would soon be snapped asunder, and then would the United States be struck from the godless catalogue of republics. And in these days it has re ly happened, that one of the provinces of the United States, discontented with a law injurious to its trade, threatens to separate itself from the Union by force. Already the aristocrats, in their exulta

tion, are beginning to exclaim, "The work of Franklin and Washington is falling in pieces." Already the European princes are holding, in private, a family review, and parcelling out America among their Ottos, their Charleses, their Williams, and their Fredericks; already Von Gagern is holding confidential communications with Rothschild, a prince whose credit stands the highest, and composing a speech for the Chambers of Hesse Darmstadt, in which he speaks of the brotherhood between the Mississippi and the Rhine. The way in which the royalists talk of the necessity of monarchical institutions, and express their confident hopes that God in his mercy will yet bestow the blessing of kings upon the American States, is silly beyond parallel. A nation, say they, in its infancy and in its old age, cannot dispense with monarchy. Granted, with all the pleasure in the world. What follows? why, that monarchy is nothing but a gocart or a crutch; and that when we no longer need the go-cart, and do not yet need the crutch, we have no occasion for kings. I grant them even more than they ask; and admit that states, not only in their childhood and in their old age, but at any time of their existence, need the government of a prince when they become distempered. On these occasions, monarchy is the remedy and the prince is the physician. But as soon as health returns, the gallipot is thrown out at the window and the doctor dismissed. In this state of recovered health is now the greater part of the European world. What need, then, of doctor and apothecary any longer? Why so much money sqaudered in medicines which we might more usefully and agreeably expend for our nourish

ment?"

In a subsequent letter is an account of a visit to the house formerly inhabited by Beaumarchais, as well known to the readers of newspapers, by the claim of his heirs upon the government of the United States, pressed upon Congress year after year for about a quarter of a century, as to the literary world by his Marriage of Figaro. Of this remarkable man Börne thus speaks:

Beaumarchais was not so fortunate as to die the next day after the monarchy. He survived far into the revolution, heard its promises, saw what it failed to perform, then died and saw not what it fulfilled.

"It is remarkable how the spirit of man becomes helpless when the spirit of the times is changed. In one night Beaumarchais had become a blockhead; in one night he had lost his fine intellectual temperament, his prudence, his dexterity, even his immovable firmness.

"With the warfare of life, the weapons and armor of life had changed, and the revolution found Beaumarchais in his morning-gown. Voltaire, so much better armed than Beaumarchais,

41

would have found himself, under the same circumstances, so much the more defenceless. You know Beaumarchais as an author, but you do not know, perhaps, that he was one of the most eminent and active men of business, one of the most enterprising persons of his time, one of the most polished, courteous, and most dexterous men of the world; and that, in all the embarrassments, all the dangers of social and civil life, he had shown the highest degree of courage, and an astonishing presence of mind. His adventure with Clavigo in Spain has become known by Goethe's narrative; but I first learned yesterday, from letters left behind him, how once, quite alone in a forest near Nuremberg, he was attacked by robbers, and although severely wounded, saved his life by his coolness and bravery, striking one of the robbers to the ground and putting the others to flight. He was, at the same time, an Ouvrard and a Voltaire. By his bold and fortunate commercial undertakings, he had become one of the richest men in France. In the war of American liberty, he furnished, through an understanding with the French government, supplies of arms to the insurgents. As in all such undertakings, there were captures, shipwrecks, payments deferred or refused, yet Beaumarchais by his dexterity succeeded in extricating himself with personal advantage from all these difficulties.

"Yet this same Beaumarchais showed himself, in the revolution, as inexperienced as a child, and as timid as a German closet-scholar. He contracted to furnish weapons to the revolutionary government, and not only lost his money, but was near losing his head into the bargain. Formerly, he had to deal with the ministers of an absolute monarchy. The doors of great men's cabinets open and close softly and easily to him who knows how to oil the locks and hinges. Afterwards, Beaumarchais had to do with honest, in other words, with dangerous people; he had not learned to make the distinction, and accordingly he was ruined.

It was reported that he was buying up arms in foreign countries, and he fell under suspicion of doing this for the enemy; the rumor spread among the people. One night the inhabitants of the Fauxbourgs, hot for vengeance, stormed his house; they raised the cry that weapons were concealed within. Beaumarchais fled in mortal fear. The whole house was turned inside out, the earth of the garden was dug into pits, nothing was found. The women of St. Antoine were the most extravagant in their rage. These have often been called the furies of the revolution; they were not so; they were the avenging furies of the monarchy; they followed upon the heels of the sin. The enemies of freedom would be glad to make the punishment appear to be the crime.

"The trembling servants of Beaumarchais had remained in the house, and were able afterwards to relate to their master all that happened. In that rich and full house, nothing was taken; not even the value of a penny. Not a glass of wine was tasted; the crowd, hot with rage, quenched their thirst with water. The ragged fellow who led the mob, declared that the first of his followers who touched anything should be cut down. A who had broken off a pink in the garden, got thirty boxes on the ear, and was near being drowned in a fountain. When Beaumarchais came back to his house next morning, he was astonished to find again all his treasures. He was astonished-so little did he understand the revolution, he who had himself labored for thirty years to produce it.

woman,

"He died in 1799, in his seventieth year, his powers of body and mind not yet weakened by age; he had only lost his cheerfulness. A friend who had seen him a few hours before his death, with not the slightest sign of ill-health about him, expresses the opinion that his end was voluntary. Beaumarchais said to him in dying, 'I am no longer curious.' And in the house where all this happened, where lived such a world of life, they now sell kitchen-salt."

In the next letter, after giving an account of the extreme difficulty which Beaumarchais found in bringing his comedy upon the stage, on account of the unwillingness of the court to allow its performance, Börne proceeds thus:

"The objection made, or the pretext employed, was less the political tendency of the comedy than its licentiousness in a moral point of view. So judged the frivolous Frenchmen. But a Northern Prince, then in Paris, of that grave, teutonic, aristocratic nature, which is too well-tempered in all the virtues even to feel the breath of a licentious

word, found out immediately the real point of danger. The King of Sweden, who saw the play, said to Marie Antoinette, This comedy is not indecent, but insolent.' He alluded to the boldness with which the weaknesses of governments, and of the nobility, were ridiculed in the piece.

"The wise Prince judged rightly. Six years afterwards he was taught, in his own country, to know and prize the modesty of the nobility, as contrasted with the insolence of the plebeian class. In a masked ball, held at his court, amidst the intoxications of joyous music, amidst dance, and jest, and laughter, and clouds of vapor from the punch bowl, Gustavus III. fell, murdered by the hands of his faithful nobility, the enemies of insolence. Poison, the dagger, the ball, and the cord, are truly more modest ways of setting a government right than the monologues of Figaro. Henry IV., Gustavus III., Paul I., died by the hands of noble assassins; there is scarce a land which has not had a Prince, who has fallen a victim to the vengeance of the nobility, or the priesthood. But these are not fatal days forever to be deplored,' (as the French Chamber of Peers call the day on which Louis XVI. was beheaded,) which ever, at their annual return, are to be solemnized with mourning and penance. When the nobility and priesthood assassinate a King, it is the deed of honorable judges; but when, as has twice happened after the patient endurance of a thousand years, a people sits in judgment on its king, a foul murder is done, and the fatal day is forever to be deplored.'"

On looking over the samples I have given of Börne's letters, I find that somehow I have taken some of the gravest passages. They give an idea, however, of the union of a playful fancy with profound earnestness which is one of the characteristics of the work.