No. 200. OF POPULAR THE LITERATURE Science and Arts. CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1857. LOST ENVOY. On the afternoon of Saturday, the 25th of November 1809, two travellers, accompanied by a servant, arrived at the post-house of Perleberg, in Upper Saxony, en route from Berlin to Hamburg, and immediately ordered horses. They travelled with Prussian passports, but under fictitious names. Of the elder of the two, little, unfortunately, is known; but that little is so full of sinister significance, that I am persuaded I am doing him no injustice in branding him as an agent of the French police. He will be known to us throughout this paper as the merchant Krüger. His companion was an Englishman of the name of Bathurst, a son of the then Bishop of Norwich, returning from a secret diplomatic mission to the court of Vienna. Mr Bathurst seemed to be labouring under some terrible apprehensions. Throughout the journey, all his actions had been marked by an air of indecision, which to the several post-masters seemed unaccountable. At Perleberg, the horses which he had ordered on his arrival, were countermanded before they could be harnessed. Not feeling himself safe, as he said, in the post-house, he went, about five o'clock in the afternoon, to Captain Klitzing, the Prussian governor of the town, and begged for a safeguard, which at seven in the evening he dismissed. During some hours, he was engaged at his desk in a small room of the house, and was seen to burn a number of papers which he took from his portfolio. On another occasion, he was observed in the kitchen standing before the fire, playing with his watch, and counting his money in the presence of a crowd of postilions, hostlers, and tapsters. At length, about nine o'clock in the evening, the horses were again ordered to be in readiness; but when the postmaster went to announce the packing of the carriage, Mr Bathurst had disappeared. From that hour to this, his fate has remained shrouded in impenetrable mystery. PRICE 14d. knock at the street-door caused the liveliest emotions arising from the hope that it might be our much-loved brother. At length, one evening in December, my father received an express from Lord Wellesley, requesting his immediate attendance at Apsley House, his lordship having something of importance to communicate. On my father's return, we were all alarmed at his pale and dejected aspect. He informed us that government had received intelligence of the sudden and mysterious disappearance of my brother at Perleberg, a small town on the route from Vienna, where he had stopped for rest and refreshment.'* A reward of L.1000 was immediately offered by the British government, and another of equal amount by the relatives of the missing envoy, for any authentic information as to his fate; and his wife prepared in person to set out in search of him, as soon as the Baltic ports should be free from ice. In the spring of 1810, accordingly, she proceeded to Stockholm, whence, under the protection of Swedish passports, she entered Prussia through Pomerania, and reached Berlin in safety. At Berlin she found, to her astonishment, a safe-conduct awaiting her from the emperor Napoleon, and, armed with it, she at once proceeded to Perleberg. I entreat the reader to bear this circumstance in mind, as I shall have occasion to refer to it in the sequel. At Perleberg, Mrs Bathurst's inquiries were met by statements so conflicting as to impede rather than to facilitate her search. Whether her husband was dead or was still alive; whether, if dead, he had fallen by his own hand, or had perished beneath the knife of some ruffian marauder or political assassin; and whether, if alive, he had been the victim of violent abduction, or had voluntarily absconded, were questions which she found herself unable to solve, and which no astuteness has yet been found equal to free from obscurity and confusion. It appeared that, immediately on Mr Bathurst's disappearance, his servant had waited on the governor, and apprised him of the circumstance. Klitzing, who was preparing for a ball which was to be held that evening in the Crown Hotel, immediately sent for the civic authorities, and desired them to make all possible inquiries into the case. No lack of zeal can be charged against these gentlemen. They at once arrested Krüger and the servant, and placed them under the guard of a troop of cuirassiers. They took possession of all Mr Bathurst's property, with the exception of a rich fur-cloak which was missing. They sent scouts into the town and into the neighbouring country; but In England, in the meantime, his return had been anxiously expected by the cabinet and his relations. 'We knew,' says his sister, the dangers to which he was exposed on his journey, surrounded as he was by enemies on all sides; while the impossibility of any intelligence being received of him by letter rendered us doubly anxious and uncertain. Day after day passed, and no tidings of him arrived. It was concluded that he had taken a circuitous route, and travelled incognito to avoid falling into the hands of the French. Weeks, however, elapsed, and we still heard nothing of the missing one. The agonising suspense of his wife and relations it would be difficult Memoirs and Correspondence of Dr H. Bathurst, Lord Bishop to describe. I perfectly well remember that every of Norwich. By his Daughter. London. 1853. when on Sunday morning they waited on the governor, it was found that all their researches had been in vain. Not a trace of the missing man had been discovered. And now it was that the first suspicious circumstance connected with the conduct of Klitzing occurred. After charging the magistrates to prosecute their inquiries with the utmost ardour, and especially to do their best to probe the mystery of the missing cloak, he announced his intention of going into the country for a few hours. But his return was deferred till Monday evening, when he explained his lengthened absence by saying that he had been at Berlin for the purpose of obtaining instructions. In the interim, the magistrates had been indefatigable. It was necessary to obtain a clue to the identification of the abstracted cloak, which none of them had seen, and for this purpose Mr Bathurst's servant was sent for. His deposition was taken down in writing, and, on the governor's return, was laid before him. Klitzing's character had always stood high; but his behaviour on this occasion looks suspiciously like an attempt to stifle all inquiries that might lead to unpleasant disclosures affecting his government or its task-masters, the French police. He threw the servant's deposition into the fire; he stormed at the magistrates, accused them of arbitrary practices and of investing the case with an undue importance, and threatened to report their conduct to the authorities in Berlin. A feud, which lasted for many weeks, and effectually prevented a proper sifting of the whole affair, was the consequence of this impeachment. Krüger and the servant of the lost envoy succeeded in evading their guards; and the first intimation which the Perleberg authorities received of the former's whereabout was when, nearly three weeks after Mr Bathurst's disappearance, the burgomaster saw in a Berlin paper a notification that an unknown person, calling himself the merchant Krüger, had arrived in that city from Perleberg. Immediate inquiries were made respecting him, of the police of the capital; an exhibition of official zeal for which the police minister expressed his thanks, at the same time courteously assuring his correspondents that it was unnecessary for them to trouble themselves further in the matter, that all was right,' and that the pretended merchant Krüger was the companion of the missing envoy. Of the unfortunate man's servant, no trace could be discovered; but it transpired that Mr Bathurst had been warned by a friend in Berlin to beware of his attendant, and that his suspicions of treachery had been strengthened by finding in the man's possession a bill for L.500, of which he could give no good account. The Perleberg authorities were now completely at fault. Every document which might have served to aid their councils was studiously withheld from them by the governor. Suddenly, however, it was announced that a certain hostler of the name of Schmidt, who had been in the kitchen of the posthouse when Mr Bathurst so imprudently exhibited his purse and watch, had absconded, and that the missing cloak had been found in the possession of his family. Schmidt himself was never afterwards heard of; but his wife and son, both of whom were persons of notoriously bad character, were brought before the magistrates, and, after a rigid examination, which elicited nothing, beyond a bare suspicion, to implicate either of them in the murder or abduction of the unfortunate traveller, were each sentenced to eight weeks' imprisonment for concealment of the stolen property. But the doom of the vanished man remained as mysterious as ever. A reward of ten thalers had, at the instigation of Klitzing, been offered to any one who should bring him to the magistracy either dead or alive. The river Steppenitz was drained of its waters during two days, while search was made along its bed; every barn, hedge, ditch, and wood, for miles around the town, was ransacked for many days with hounds, sticks, nets, and other instruments, but without success. The town itself, and the gardens which surround it, were similarly rummaged. The disreputable resorts frequented by the younger Schmidt, every cellar and loft attached to the taverns wherein it could be ascertained he had been drinking or dancing, the posthouse, and the cellar of the town-hall, which was used as a taproom, were especially scrutinised; but all research was fruitless. The magistrates were in despair, and had reluctantly resolved to abandon the search, when, precisely six weeks after the envoy's disappearance, his pantaloons were found, perforated by two shot-holes, on the border of a fir-wood near the town. They were discovered by a woman of the name of Weide, who, in company with the wife of a shoemaker, had gone to the forest for the ostensible purpose of gathering brushwood. They were found stretched at length upon the ground, and turned inside out; but, although saturated with the rain which had fallen in torrents during many weeks, a few lines, in the handwriting of the missing man, which were discovered, scribbled on a scrap of paper, in one of the pockets, were still easily decipherable. But, as the pantaloons could not have been exposed to such a deluge for many hours, without the waters obliterating the writing, and reducing the paper itself to pulp, the conclusion is a fair one that they had been thus ostentatiously laid out for the purpose of strengthening the impression that their wearer had been murdered and stripped by the hostler Schmidt. The note in the missing man's handwriting was addressed to his wife, and was safely conveyed to her. It had evidently been written in great haste, and in terrible perturbation. It set forth the dangers to which the writer was exposed from his enemies; expressed great fears that he should never reach England, and inveighed bitterly against the Russians and the Count d'Entraigues;* by whom, he said, his ruin had been brought about. Weide and the shoemaker's wife, on their discovery being communicated to the magistrates, underwent a rigorous examination; the fir-wood was once more thoroughly searched, and the surrounding country scoured for miles; but no further trace of the missing man could be discovered. The women were liberated and rewarded; the peasants were presented with ten quarts of brandy and a cask of beer; and Captain Klitzing and the magistrates of Perleberg sat down to report to their superiors in Berlin at once their discovery and their despair. Such was the intelligence which awaited the arrival of Mrs Bathurst at Perleberg, and which she communicated to her friends in England. The impression which it left upon her own mind, and the universal impression of the public mind at home, was, that her husband had been forcibly abducted by the agents of the French government, who then swarmed in every city and town of the continent; and that Klitzing, Krüger, and the servant of the luckless envoy, had been accessories to the deed. That Napoleon was not troubled with any over-scrupulosity in such matters, when state purposes could be subserved by the seizure of important papers, is well known; but, in justice to Klitzing, it can only be supposed that he consented to take part in the dark transaction under the debasing influence of the terror inspired and universally felt throughout Prussia by the French occupation. Two incidents, to one of which I have already_referred, deepened the impression created by the Perleberg revelations into something approaching to conviction. When on the eve of starting for the continent, Mrs A French spy, then resident in London. A few months after Mr Bathurst's disappearance, D'Entraigues was assassinated by his Italian servant, at the instigation, as was supposed, of the French government, some of whose secrets the count had betrayed, or imprudently permitted to escape him. Bathurst had written to the French emperor for passports to guarantee her unmolested freedom in prosecuting her travels and inquiries. Fearing his refusal, she had set out, as we have seen, by way of Sweden, her change of purpose being kept a profound secret from all save her immediate relations and the British cabinet. Napoleon, however, had received-probably from D'Entraigues-such accurate intelligence of her intended movements, that, as I have already stated, she found, on her arrival in Berlin, passports, under his own hand, awaiting her at the French ambassador's. The other incident indicates still more clearly the agency employed in perpetrating the crime, and the end to which the victim came. While the search after Mr Bathurst was still hot, the governor of Magdeburg, distant about fifty miles from Perleberg, assured a lady one night in the ball-room that the English ambassador was confined in the neighbouring fortress. Hearing of the fact during her continental explorations, the agonised wife repaired to Magdeburg, waited upon the governor, and implored him to tell her the truth. He at once admitted having made the statement referred to, but assured Mrs Bathurst that he had made it by mistake, and that the prisoner in question was one Louis Fritz, a spy of Mr Canning's. Mrs Bathurst begged earnestly to see the man: but Fritz, she was told, had been sent some time before into Spain. On inquiring at the Foreign Office after her return to England, Mrs Bathurst found that no such person as Fritz had ever been employed by the British government. The probability is, therefore, great that Mr Bathurst perished, a victim to the odious policy of Napoleon, in the fortress of Magdeburg. It cannot be denied, however, that this hypothesis does not wholly harmonise with circumstances which, whether true or false, were at least at the time very generally reported. It is certain that in one of his last letters to his wife, Mr Bathurst had expressed his intention of returning by Colberg and Stockholm; and a story is still told by the peasantry of Schwerin, how, at a late hour on that fatal night, a stranger called at the house of a consul in the neighbourhood of Wismar on the coast of Mecklenburg, and requested an interview with him. The man, however, being absent, the servant asked what name she should mention. The answer, given in German with a foreign accent, was: 'Never mind that;' but she was desired to say that an English gentleman wished to see her master at the post-house at an early hour on the following morning. When the consul called as directed, however, he found that his midnight visitor had departed, leaving no message. In the course of the day, the wrecks of two boats which had foundered at sea, were washed ashore; and in one of these, it is supposed, the stranger had embarked. But if this stranger were indeed Mr Bathurst, how are we to account for the subsequent discovery of his trousers in the neighbourhood of Perleberg? The only other hypothesis which seems to demand examination, is that which ascribes to the hostler Schmidt and his son Auguste the murder of the missing man. That the younger Schmidt had been much in contact with Mr Bathurst throughout the afternoon of the 25th of November, is beyond a doubt; and, if we could rely upon its authenticity, a story told by a lady, now the wife of a physician at Perleberg, but who was, at the time of Mr Bathurst's disappearance, connected with the household in which Captain Klitzing lodged, would go far to fix the crime upon the fugitive hostler and his profligate son. About five o'clock in the afternoon of the day of the disappearance, a stranger, whom the girl understood afterwards to be Mr Bathurst, called at the house, and requested to see the governor. The reader is already aware that this was for the purpose of soliciting a safeguard at the post-house. Mr Bathurst was evidently labouring under great mental agitation, and, whether from cold or fear, shivered from head to foot. At the request of Klitzing, the girl made the visitor some tea, which revived him greatly. While drinking it, he spoke wildly of the dangers which had threatened him along the whole route from Vienna, and said that he must be quickly off if he would reach the coast in safety. After pressing upon the girl some money, which, however, she refused, the stranger took his leave; but upon going to the window to look after him, she was surprised to see him walking rapidly in a direction quite opposite to that which led to the post-house. Shortly afterwards, the younger Schmidt called in quest of him, and on being informed of the route he had taken, followed fast upon his footsteps. In a few hours afterwards, the town was in a commotion at the stranger's disappearance. Such was the story told by the Perleberg physician's wife to the sister of Mrs Bathurst in 1852; but 'she spoke,' as that lady remarked, 'in so hurried and excited a manner, that it appeared like a tale told by rote, and made up according to directions at the time.' It is further to be observed that, if the lady meant to imply that Mr Bathurst was overtaken at this time, and immediately hustled away by Schmidt, the story is inconsistent with the fact of the former having at nine o'clock in the evening ordered his carriage to be in readiness, and his bill at the post-house to be made out. The fact, moreover, is, that Auguste Schmidt was, about six months after Mr Bathurst's disappearance, actually arrested at the instance of his family, and tried for the murder; but the case completely broke down. Another attempt to bring the crime home to him was made through the instrumentality of an abandoned woman of the name of Hacker, whose house was much frequented by Schmidt, and lay in the direction said to have been pursued by the missing man after leaving Klitzing. Hacker stated that at the time of the occurrence, a party of French soldiers was billeted upon her, and that they, in conjunction with Schmidt, who had lured Mr Bathurst to the house, committed the murder. The body, she added, had been carried to a distant part of the coast, and buried in the sand, upon which all traces of disturbance must have been speedily obliterated. But the woman afterwards confessed that the story had been a pure fabrication, and that she was utterly ignorant of the fate which had befallen the Lost Envoy. A WOMAN'S THOUGHTS ABOUT WOMEN. WOMEN OF THE WORLD. THe world. It is a word capable of as diverse interpretations or misinterpretations as the thing itself-a thing by various people supposed to belong to heaven, man, or the devil, or alternately to all three. But this is not the place to argue the pros and cons of that doctrinal theology which views as totally evil the same world which its Creator pronounced to be very good,' the same world in and for which its Redeemer lived as well as died; nor, taking it at its present worst, a sinful, miserable, mysterious, yet neither wholly comfortless, hopeless, nor godless world, shall I refer further to that strange manichæanism which believes that anything earth possesses of good can have sprung from any other source than the All-good, that any happiness in it could exist for a moment, unless derived from Infinite Perfection. A woman of the world''Quite a woman of the world'—' A mere woman of the world'—with how many modifications of tone and emphasis do we hear the phrase; which seems inherently to imply a contradiction. Nature herself has apparently decided for women, physically as well as mentally, that their CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL. natural destiny should be not of the world. In the earliest ages of Judaism and Islamism, nobody ever seems to have ventured a doubt of this-it was Christianity alone that raised the woman to her rightful and original place, as man's sole help-meet, bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh, his equal in all points of vital moment, yet made suited to him by a harmonious something which is less inferiority than difference. And this difference will for ever exist. written on female progress; speeches, interminable, Volumes delivered from the public rostrum in female treble, which from that very publicity and bravado, would convert the most obvious 'rights' into something very like a wrong; biographies numberless of great women -ay, and good-who, stepping out of their natural sphere, have done service in courts, camps, or diplomatic bureaus: all these exceptional cases will never set aside the universal law, that woman's proper place is home. Not merely To suckle fools and chronicle small-beerShakspeare, who knew us well, would never have made any but an Iago say so-but to go hand-in-hand with man on their distinct yet parallel roads, to be within doors what he has to be in the world without-sole influence and authority in the limited monarchy of home. Thus, to be a 'woman of the world,' though not essentially a criminal accusation, implies a state of being not natural, and therefore not happy. Without any sentimental heroics against the hollowness of such an existence, and putting aside the religious view of it altogether, I believe most people will admit that no woman living entirely in and for the world, ever was, ever could be, a happy woman; that is, according to the definition of happiness which supposes it to consist in having our highest faculties most highly developed, and in use to their fullest extent. Any other sort of happiness, either dependent on externally favourable circumstances, or resting on safe negations of ill, we must be considered to possess in common with the oyster; indeed, that easy-tempered and steadfast mollusk, if not in love,' probably has it in much greater perfection than we. Starting with the proposition that a woman of the world is not a happy woman; that if she had been, most likely she never would have become what she is I do not think it necessary to nail her up, poor painted jay, as a shocking example' over society's barn-door, around which strut and crow a great many fowls quite as mean and not half so attractive. For she is very charming in her way—that is, the principal and best type of her class; she wears à merveille that beautiful mask said to be the homage paid by vice to virtue.' And since the successful imitation of an article argues a certain acquaintance with the original, she may once upon a time have actually believed in many of those things which she now so cleverly impersonates-virtue, heroism, truth, love, friendship, honour, and fidelity. She is like certain stamped-out bronze ornaments, an admirable imitation of real womanhood-till you walk round her to the other side. The woman of the world is rarely a very young woman. It stands to reason, she could not be. To young people, the world is always a paradise-a fool's paradise devoutly believed in: it is not till they have found out its shams that they are able to assume them. By that time, however, they have ceased to be fools: it takes a certain amount of undoubted cleverness to make any success, or take any rule in the world. By the world, I do not mean the aristocratic Vanityfair-let those preach of it who move up and down or keep stalls therein-I mean the world of the middle classes-the society into which drift the homeless, thoughtless, ambitious, pleasure-loving; those who have no purpose in life except to get through it some how, and those who never had any interest in it except their own beloved selves. placed at the lowest deep of womanhood, because her A woman of the sort I write of may in one sense be centre of existence is undoubtedly herself. You may trace this before you have been introduced to her five minutes: in the sweet manner which so well simulates a universal benevolence, being exactly the same to air of interest with which she asks a dozen polite or everybody-namely, everybody worth knowing; in the kindly questions, of which she never waits for the answer; in the instinctive consciousness you have that all the while she is talking agreeably to you, or flatteringly listening to your talented conversation, her attention is on the qui vive after everybody and everything throughout the room-that is, everything that conhave passed out of her sight, or ceased to minister to cerns herself. As for yourself, from the moment you her amusement or convenience, you may be quite certain you will have as completely slipped out of her Her sphere cannot contain you; for though it seems memory, as if you had vanished into another sphere. so large, it has no real existence; it is merely a reflection of so much of the outer earth as can be taken into one small drop of not over-clear water, which constitutes this woman's soul. to be pitied as blamed. Do not grow savage at hearing Yet waste not your wrath upon her-she is as much her, in that softly pitched voice of hers, talk sentiment by the yard, while you know she snubs horribly in private every unlucky relative she has; whose only hours of quiet are when they joyfully deck her and send her out to adorn society. Do not laugh when she criticises pictures, and goes into raptures over books which you are morally certain she has never either seen or read; or if she had, from the very character of her mind, could no more understand, than your cat could appreciate Shakspeare. Contemn her not, for her state might not have been always thus; you know not the causes which produced it; and-stay till you see her end. mind, is much worse than this; because their shams There is a class of worldly women which, to my every human being must have one-the conqueror his are less cleverly sustained, and their ideal of good (for crown, and the sot his gin-bottle) is far lower and usually her pet philanthropies, her literary, learned, more contemptible. The brilliant woman of society has or political penchants, in which the good she thirsts after, though unreal, is the imitation of a vital reality; and in spite of itself, is often useful to others. But this pseudo-woman of the world has no ideal beyond these she does not value for their own sakes; only fine dresses, houses, carriages, acquaintances, and even because they are superior to her neighbour's. nouveaux riches of the professional classes, vainly striv- of sway in society, this one is society's most prostrate personal insult, and, if she dared-only she seldom ventures on any decisive proceedings-would cut your acquaintance immediately. The celebrated Mrs Grundy keeps her in a state of mortal servitude. Even in London, which to a lady of medium age, established character, and decent behaviour, is the most independent place in the world; where, as I once heard said: 'My dear, be assured you are not of the least importance to anybody-may go anywhere, dress anyhow, and, in short, do anything you like except stand on your head-even here she is for ever pursued by a host of vague adjectives, 'proper,' 'correct,' 'genteel,' which hunt her to death like a pack of rabid hounds. is superior to the weakness of washing her hands or combing her hair properly, whose milliner and dressmaker must evidently have lived about the year one, and who, in her manners and conversation, often breaks through every rule of even the commonest civility. How the same thoroughly respectable set, which would be shocked to let its young daughters take a morning shopping in Regent Street, unprotected by a tall footman, will carry them at night to a soirée given by a Lady Somebody, of rather more than doubtful reputation, till a rich marriage, which in its utter lovelessness and hypocrisy may have been, in the sight of Heaven, the foulest of all her sins, in the sight of man covered every one of them at once. Yet this 'world' which, when we come to look at it, seems nothing-less than nothing-a chimera that no honest heart need quail at for a moment-is at once the idol and the bête noire of a large portion of womenkind during their whole existence. Ay, from the day when baby's first wardrobe must be of the most extravagant description, costing in lace, braiding, and embroidery almost as much as mamma's marriage outfit-which was a deal too fine for her stationwhen all the while unfortunate baby would be quite as pretty and twice as comfortable in plain muslin and lawn; down to the last day of our subjugation to fashion, when we must needs be carried to our per manent repose under a proper amount of feathers, and followed by a customary number of mourning-coaches lined coffin, stuffed pillow, and ornamental shroud. True, the world, like its master, is by no means so black as it is sometimes painted: it often has a foundation of good sense and right feeling under its most ridiculous and wearisome forms; but this woman sees only the forms, among which she blunders like one of those quack-artists who pretend to draw the human figure without the smallest knowledge of anatomy. Utterly ignorant of the framework on which society moves, she is perpetually straining at gnats and swallowing camels, both in manners and morals. To her, laborious politeness stands in the stead of kindliness; show, of hospitality; etiquette, of decorum. Les bienséances, which are only valuable as being the index and offering of a gentle, generous, and benevolent heart, are to this unfortunate woman the brazen altar upon which she immolates her own-after being coaxed to it-useless luxury! by a satincomfort and that of everybody connected with her. What will the world say ?'-'All very right; but you see we live in the world.' Or, speaking of some one-'A good soul enough, but totally ignorant of the world.' It is worth while pausing a moment to consider what this world' is that women seem at once to run after and to be so terribly afraid of. Not the moral world, which judges their sinswith, alas, how short-sighted and unevenly balanced a judgment, often!-but the perpetually changing world of custom, which regulates their clothes, furniture, houses, manner of living, sayings, doings, and sufferings. Take it to pieces, and what is it? Nothing but a floating atmosphere of common-place people, surrounding certain congeries of people, a little less ordinary, the nucleus of which is generally one person decidedly extra-ordinary, who, by force of will, position, intellect, or character, or by some unquestionable magnitude of virtue or vice, stands out distinctly from the average multitude, and rules it according to his or her individual choice. All the rest are, as I said, a mere atmosphere of nobodies; which atmosphere can be cloven any day-one sees it done continually by a single flesh-and-blood arm: yet in it the woman of the world allows herself to sit and suffocate; dare not dress comfortably, act and speak straightforwardly, live naturally, or sometimes even honestly. For will she not rather run in debt for a bonnet, than wear her old one a year behind the mode? give a ball, and stint the family dinner for a month after? take a large house, and furnish handsome reception-rooms, while her household pigs together anyhow in untidy attic bed-chambers, and her servants swelter on shakedowns beside the kitchen fire? She prefers this a hundred times to stating plainly, by word or manner: My income is so much a year-I don't care who knows it-it will not allow me to live beyond a certain rate, it will not keep comfortably both my family and society; therefore, society, you must just take us as we are, without any pretences of any kind; or you may shut the door, and-good-bye!' And society, in the aggregate, is no fool. It is astonishing what an amount of 'eccentricity' it will stand from people who will take the bull by the horns, too fearless or too indifferent to think of consequences. How respectfully it will follow a clever woman who In the intermediate stage, marriage, we are worse off still, because the world's iron hand is upon us at a time and under circumstances when we can most keenly feel its grinding weight. 'Do you think,' said a young lady once to me, 'that Henry and I ought to marry upon less than four hundred a year?' 'No, certainly, my dear, because you marry for so many people's benefit besides your own. How, for instance, could your acquaintance bear to see moreen curtains, instead of the blue and silver damask you were talking of? And how could you give those charming little dinner-parties which, you say, are indispensable to one in your position, without three servants, or a boy in buttons as well? Nay, if you went into society at all, of the kind you now keep, a fifth of Henry's annual income would melt away in dresses, bouquets, and white kid-gloves. No, my dear girl, I can by no means advise you to marry upon less than four hundred a year.' My young friend looked up, a little doubtful if I were in jest or earnest; and Mr Henry gave vent to an impatient sigh. I thought-'Poor things!' for they were honestly in love, and there was no earthly reason why they should not marry. How many hundreds more are thus wasting the best years of their life, the best hopes of their youth, love, home, usefulness, energy-and God only knows how much besides-and for what? Evening-parties, dresses, and gloves, a fine house, and blue and silver curtains? Yet a woman of the world would have said that this couple were quite right; that if they had married and lived afterwards with the honest prudence that alone would have been possible to a young man of Mr Henry's independent character, they must infallibly have gone down in society, have dropped out of their natural circle, to begin life as their parents did, as most middle-class parents have begun life, narrowly and humbly. Though without much fear of positive starvation, they must have given up many luxuries, have had to learn and practise many domestic economies which probably never had come into the head of either lady or gentleman; and yet love might have taught them, as it teaches the most ignorant. They would undoubtedly have had to live, for the next few |