Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

of what had been just uttered. That jewelled road, even sometimes to the extent of beds and hand had been passed in tenderness over his black culinary utensils. Thus the traveller in those

locks; that haughty, cold eye, whose contemptuous stare he had but so lately encountered, had once rested on him with sympathy. And that child, that lovely child, was once destined to be the spirit of his home, as the gentle countess had been that of the general. All the bitterness of the past was revived by those few words; and the cruelty of his fate came back upon him with more severity than ever. That angel of light standing there before him would never now help to soften the asperities of his life; but neither should any darkbrowed peasant girl sit in his hut! No humble Salome should obtrude her solicitude between his lonely fate and the remembrance of what it should have been; and that vision of a day-that glimpse of the past-the fugitive reminiscence of a mere shadow flung across his path-exerted a serious influence over the boy's future life. It closed his heart against the softening influence of love. Forevermore between him and her who might have inspired it, rose up the indistinct, dreamy form of an elegant, beautiful, young creature, glittering with jewels, nestling in swan's-down; and to that image alone would his perverse imagination cling -an image which, perhaps, had he remained the heir of Stanoiki, would not have tarried one hour on his memory.

Pavel could not tear himself from the spot, yet he knew not under what pretext to linger. He followed with his eyes little Constance, who played and capered around the room in apparent unconsciousness of her miserable condition, until, at last, fatigued with her gambols, she sat down quietly by her mother, teasing her and the companion to tell her stories. Tired of immobility, she threw her handkerchief on the floor, and looked into the companion's face in a way to intimate that she expected it to be handed to her. The meek girl to whom this mute appeal was made either failed to observe, or would not notice it; but the mother soon roused her to a sense of this neglect of duty.

"Don't you see, my dear," she said, "that Constance's handkerchief has fallen?" A bitter smile stole over Pavel's lips. He remembered the time when his mother used to remind his French tutor that Count Leon's handkerchief had fallen, and when he compared his utter helplessness in those days with his present self-reliancewhen he remembered how he then used to shrink from the dark passage, and now did not mind facing the wolf at dusk in the lone wood-when he remembered how he froze beneath his silken coverlids in his heated chamber, and could now brave the Siberian hardships of his loft in winter-he smiled triumphantly at the thought of what he had gained in manhood in compensation for what he had lost in luxury; and a determination rose in his mind to cultivate that solitary advantage to the utmost limit which his powerful nature would admit of.

parts, provided with a proper equipage, is perfectly independent of chance; and the inexperienced foreigner finds public accommodation more indifferent than he would be led to imagine, from his knowledge of the ways and means of other lands, a circumstance which may, perhaps, be traced to the utter want of enterprise natural to the bondsman, who has no capital and no credit, to spur him on to industry. The carriage of the countess having been disburthened of its resources, the evening found her and her family sitting round a cheerful tea-table, with every convenience for passing the night around them, wax-lights, books, cards, and bedding, having been produced in turn.

Noah, not presuming to offer his own or his family's services, which on an occasion like this would probably have been repulsed with a reprimand, did not approach the common room, and Pavel, who was at last perceived in his corner being unceremoniously thrust out by the countess' servants, the new-comers were left in undisturbed possession of the place.

Daybreak found Pavel the most eager in repairing the bridge. The work was scarcely completed when the expected carriage was seen slowly advancing along the road, and soon after it rolled into Noah's yard. Pavel, with arms folded across his breast, watched the process of unpacking and packing the carriages, originally consorts on the road, but already twice parted by an adventure similar to that which had now separated them, viz., the mending of the one whilst the other proceeded on its route. Chancing to raise his eyes, Pavel encountered those of the countess, who, in fault of better occupation, was inspecting from the window what was passing in the yard. Perceiving him standing idly by, she called out, in a tone of one accustomed to be obeyed

"What are you about there, you lad?-why don't you bestir yourself?"

Pavel feigned not to hear, but the command being repeated by her servants in a manner which roused his natural spirit of contention, he turned and left the yard, feeling the danger of any discussion.

"That boy wants a good flogging," observed the lady, looking after him. Pavel's ear caught the words, and they cut deep into his heart. He went to shut himself up in his loft, and ponder over them in bitterness; but when he heard beneath the preparations for departure, and the glad young voice of Constance, he could not resist the impulse that again hurried him below. He descended in time to see the family settle themselves in the carriage, to get one last glimpse of the pink gauze veil and azure eyes of the little Constance, and observe, with painful emotion, Noah's inclined figure bending to the proud lady, like an Eastern slave, from whose condition the unfortunate Jew was not many degrees removed. His cringing The Polish travelling britzska contains all man- bows and fawning humility appeared to Pavel for ner of provisions and luxuries necessary for the the first time, because for the first time exhibited in his presence in so marked a manner, as the seal | row to take Pavel along with him, the term of his of baseness and degradation stamped upon a re- licensed absence from the estate of his owner havproved race. Innocent of the desire to contrast ing expired. "I began to hope that they had for

with this self-abasement, and obeying but a mere impulse as if in vindication of the honor of the pot-house and its inhabitants, young Pavel drew himself up and cast a look of scorn and defiance at the tenants of the britzska as it rolled from the yard.

"What a sulky boy they have at that inn!" said the lady, returning his look with a broad stare. It is strange how often the darker passions clothe themselves, to the unobservant eye, in the garb of sulkiness.

Before Noah's back had resumed its ordinary position, or Pavel had dismissed the frown from his brow, the carriage was out of sight.

"When," said Noah, with a deep breath, as he drew up his figure to more than its natural erectness, "when shall the happy day dawn on which that curse will be removed from the land! when there shall be no more countesses to rattle in britzskas, and no more britzskas to be laden with that heap of insolence, folly, frippery, and heartlessness, called a fine lady? Ah! blessed world where there were no such high hill and deep chasm as a proud countess and a poor JewI hate them!" he added, shaking both his fists in the empty air-" would that a hurricane swept them all from the face of the earth."

Pavel hated, too, but he could not bend to the object of his hatred; and there was regret, love, and despair mixed up with hate, and a feeling that in the class among whose members he was destined to live he could find no friend. He could feel what they felt, but not as they felt it. That day and the next he wholly devoted to the woods, nor even returned to sleep beneath Noah's roof. This storm of emotion passed away, but left a refrigerating and a darkening influence over the boy's mind.

During the ensuing winter, Pavel often left the Jew's roof on smuggling and other excursions in the neighboring villages, ever foremost in any enterprise of pleasure or necessity which was likely to draw forth and exercise the presence of mind and strength of limb, steadiness of nerves and insensibility to pain and fatigue which it was his chief ambition to acquire. Noah did not seek to check his tendencies in any one respect, but left him to enjoy a sufficient quantity of that inestimable blessing, liberty, which he was ever declaring to be priceless, but which, unlike most who profess to value it, he was not the first to crush. Summer came and glided by without any change in Pavel's condition, and he had well nigh forgotten his so-called cousin and the vagrant who had presumed to style herself his mother, when he was reminded of the existence of both in an unexpected

manner.

gotten you, my poor boy," continued Noah, "but trust a master or his steward for that they may forget to pay an honest man his due, but remember, to a man, the number of their vassals! No, no, there is no hope of their forgetting that. So it can't be helped; you must even go, Pavel. I'll not say but I am sorry to part with you. You've been a good boy to me, and a useful; and I would fain have kept you with me, though for the last two years I have not received a penny from your friends. Nay, never be cast down-it is not with you I am angry, but with them. I repeat, I would gladly have kept you in spite of their neglect. I feel much concern on your account, Pavel. Your vacant place will be long felt among us; but remember, should you ever need a friend, old Noah's pot-house is not far from the Galician frontier."

Pavel made no reply. Not that, after his own fashion, he did not feel regret at parting with those who had shown him such unvaried good-will as Noah and Salome, but it was not in his nature to show it. Then, although he was, at first, startled by the announcement of so sudden a departure from a home where he had been so long domesticated, and a renunciation of habits which had become his second nature, it was only through the man who called himself his cousin, and that dreaded woman who had haunted his childhood, that he could gain any clue to his past history; and if he suffered too much with them, why, he was no longer a child; he would be able to right himself, or again cross the frontier as best suited his convenience.

That evening Noah and Salome invited the boy to a last meal beneath their roof. "When friends part," said Noah, " one never knows if they shall meet again, so a little solemnity is not inappropriate to the occasion."

This repast of love was to take place much later than the usual supper hour, in order that no chance visitor might break in upon the festivity. Accordingly, when the children and menials had sought their beds, Noah carefully closed the shutters, fastened and secured the outer gates, unchained the savage yard-dogs, and, all these precautions being taken, trimmed and lighted the Sabbath lamp, laid the cloth, and, rare luxury, a clean one, whilst Salome brought in the dishes, whose contents, simple enough in reality, seemed sumptuous to those who were about to partake of them. Noah, in his but once worn silk gown, so far restored as Salome's skill could devise, sat at the head of his table, on which he had spread his most secret treasures, namely, a silver sugar-basin, with tongs to match, several tea-spoons of the same metal, but by no means of one make or date, and, above all, prized beyond the rest by a Jew, two small baskets of silver, very curiously chased, evidently of Eastern

One autumnal afternoon, on his return from a manufacture, containing one of the few Oriental hunting expedition in the neighborhood, Noah in- luxuries to which the Jews of Poland and Germany formed him that his cousin had been there during have remained faithful, comfitures and comfits. Sathe day, and spoken of coming again on the mor-jlome had discarded her common dress for one of a the ashes of sinking systems; but come, Pavel, we have never tried to make a Jew of you; you must render us that justice."

more festive character, extracted for the occasion | ever with the hope of our own freedom rising from from the secret recesses of her wardrobe; and from its mysterious hiding place had drawn the heir-loom of the family, a crimson Jewish cap and stomacher, of faded, antiquated appearance, whose thick, confused embroidery of tarnished gold and silver, glittered with jewels of price, and her ears were laden with diamonds that a countess might have envied. Pavel stared in amazement, from the face of his hostess to her stomacher, and from her stomacher to her face.

"You are surprised to see me thus," said Salome, "but what I now wear is all the fortune I brought my husband, as it was all my mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother brought to theirs before me. If converted into money, it would be far from making us rich, and it might be extorted from us in a hundred different ways, but in this portable shape, happen what may, we have a resource easy of concealment from the rapacity of the Christians. Should they discover the French goods in our vaults, and seize our chattels, though fines might ruin us, and Noah languish in prison, still I have here the means of buying his judges, and of maintaining his children. You see it is no idle vanity that makes me cling to these ornaments which have never yet, with any of their possessors, seen the light of day, and have only shone to the sacred lamp behind closed shutters. I hope a milder day will come for our persecuted race even in this country, and that my Salome will have no need to conceal them when they become her property."*

"Ay," said Noah, "a milder day-when will it dawn? When will the governments and rulers who have pointed us out, marked, stamped us as fit objects for the contempt of the vulgar, revoke those exception laws made for our tribe? Let us but enjoy the same rights and privileges as other natives of the soil, and the line of demarcation which divides us from the rest of mankind will gradually melt away; we may then expose our wealth without fear of being robbed."

"Ah!" said Salome, "we should not wish for such a change. My poor father, the most saintlike of men, used always to say that the injustice of the Christians had kept us faithful so long-that happiness would cool our zeal."

Before Pavel could reply a loud knocking at the outer gate caused Noah and Salome to start up in alarm.

"Who can it be so late?" said Salome, turning pale.

"Excisemen," faltered Noah, for a moment transfixed with consternation.

" Robbers, perhaps," suggested Salome" at any rate, strangers."

Pavel, who did not stir a finger to help his host and hostess, now watched in silence and curiosity their rapid evolutions. In an inconceivably short time, silver baskets, tea-spoons, dishes, and cloth disappeared from the table, the lamp was extinguished, and Salome had donned her slovenly, every-day attire; and when Noah, in some trepidation, supported by Peter, just awakened from a sound sleep, and by Pavel, went to the gate, every trace of a surprise was effaced. The calls without were so imperative, and accompanied by such loud Russian curses, that Noah lost no time in unbarring and unlocking.

"I thought you were all dead!" said an officer of Cossacks, prancing into the yard, followed by his little band, at sight of whom Noah gave himself up for lost. "I thought you were all dead! How dare you, dog, keep us waiting at the gate? -Come-quick-a stirrup-cup for myself and my

men."

"Six glasses!" cried out Noah to Salome, who now appeared at the house door. "Seven!" corrected the officer.

Noah repeated the order without a comment, and Pavel's quick eye detected through the doubtful light a double weight on one of the horses. His heart sprang to his lips. His first impulse was to approach the stranger; but he immediately perceived how impossible it would be to do so, surrounded as that horse was by the rest. One of the men dismounting to look after his saddle-girths, Pavel, in the most natural manner he could assume, drew near to hold his bridle, but he was warned away in a voice of thunder. Pavel fell back. gazing with curiosity, mixed with traditional horror, upon the long lances, in the use of which the Cossacks are so skilful. The officer, before touching his glass, endeavored to prevail upon some one to accept the brandy, but it was rejected. Noah's lantern flashing upwards at that moment threw a gleam of light upon the party, and revealed the person of him to whom this courtesy was proffered. He was wrapped in a riding cloak, with his arms tied behind his back, and bound with thongs to the Cossack who sat before him.

"Your father, Salome-without meaning any disrespect to his memory-was exaggerated in his religious notions. He was a bigot-there are such in all religions. The man who could renounce meat throughout his whole life, to the great detriment of his health, and pore over the Talmud from morn till night, until he knew by heart every wise saw it contains, was striving all the time-forgive me for saying so, for I know how tender you are on this point-for the reputation of sanctity which he obtained among our people. No, no, we want reform, and reform we must have, and I won't say be one glass more to my share."

but we foment the disorders in the enemy's camp,

"Well, if you won't," said the officer, "it will

The prisoner, profiting by the moment when the officer was in the act of swallowing his second glass of brandy, called out in a loud tone-" Is Countess Stanoika that her brother is on his road | torn, doubtless, from his home, on grounds true or to Siberia?" false, was connected with his former patron, and if

* The Jewesses, now, I am informed, wear their jewelled caps openly in Galicia, and many other parts of

Poland.

there here no Pole who will bear the news to the

"This is beyond endurance!" exclaimed the he chose, this episode might afford him the means

leader, impetuously; and hastily throwing some money on the ground, he gave the word to march, which was so promptly obeyed, that, but for Pavel's quickness of eye, and readiness of hand, the poor Jew would have been ridden over where he stood humbly bowing.

"Lord save us!" ejaculated Noah, " if my heart can beat thus when their visit is not for me, what would it be if? Pavel, I really think I shall give up all connection with the smugglers-I thought to-night my doom was sealed."

But Pavel at that moment had no thought for Noah and his plans; he heard but the words of the stranger that still rang in his ears. That man, just

NORTHAMPTON.

BY HENRY T. TUCKERMAN.

ERE from thy calm seclusion parted,
O fairest village of the plain!
The thoughts that here to life have started
Draw me to Nature's heart again.

The tasseled maize, full grain, or clover,
Far o'er the level meadow grows,
And through it, like a wayward rover,
The noble river gently flows.
Majestic elms, with trunks unshaken
By all the storms an age can bring,
Trail sprays whose rest the zephyrs waken,
Yet lithesome with the juice of spring.

By sportive airs the foliage lifted,
Each green leaf shows its white below,
As foam on emerald waves is drifted,
Their tints alternate come and go.
And then the skies! when vapors cluster
From zenith to horizon's verge,
As wild gusts ominously bluster,

And in deep shade the landscape merge ;

Under the massive cloud's low border,
Where hill-tops with the sky unite,
Like an old minster's blazoned warder,
There scintillates an amber light.

Sometimes a humid fleece reposes
Midway upon the swelling ridge,
Like an aerial couch of roses,

Or fairy's amethystine bridge:
And pale green islets lucid shimmer,
With huge cliffs jutting out beside,
Like those in mountain lakes that glimmer,
Tinged like the ocean's crystal tide;

Or saffron-tinted islands planted
In firmaments of azure dye,
With pearly mounds that loom undaunted,
And float like icebergs of the sky.

Like autumn leaves that eddying falter,
Yet settle to their crimson rest,
As pilgrims round their burning altar,
They slowly gather in the west.
And when the distant mountain ranges
In moonlight or blue mist are clad,
Oft memory all the landscape changes,
And pensive thoughts are blent with glad.

of approaching the family. It would, henceforth, be a matter of choice whether he did or did not intrude upon them.

"Take heed, Pavel," continued Noah, "that what you have heard this night never pass your lips. For your own sake, remember my words, and beware of babbling. The only principle to guide one safely through life, especially a vassal, is never to suffer the names of the great to pass his lips for good, bad, or indifferent. In general, whatever questions people ask you, no matter upon what subject, let your answer be, 'I don't know.' In these three words lies the wisdom of the poor."

For then, as in a dream Elysian,
Val d'Arno's fair and loved domain
Seems to my rapt yet waking vision
To yield familiar charms again.
Save that for dome and turret hoary,
Amid the central valley lies

A white church-spire unknown to story,
And smoke-wreaths from a cottage rise.
On Holyoke's summit woods are frowning,
No line of cypresses we see,
Nor convent old with beauty crowning
The heights of sweet Fiesole.

Yet here may willing eyes discover
The art and life of every shore,
For Nature bids her patient lover
All true similitudes explore.

These firs, when cease their boughs to quiver,
Stand like pagodas Brahmins seek,
Yon isle, that parts the winding river,

Seems modelled from a light caique.
And ferns that in these groves are hidden,
Are sculptured like a dainty frieze,
While choral music steals unbidden,
As undulates the forest breeze.

A gothic arch and springing column,
A floral-dyed, mosaic ground,
A twilight shade and vista solemn

In all these sylvan haunts are found.
And now this fragile garland weaving
While ebbs the musing tide away,
As one a sacred temple leaving,

Some tribute on its shrine would lay, -
I bless the scenes whose tranquil beauty
Have cheered me like the sense of youth,
And freshened lonely tasks of duty,

The dream of love and zest of truth.

Graham's Magazine.

[SENTIMENTAL-IN IRISH.]

LADY COVENTRY. This is the lady of whom Horace Walpole says, "At a great supper the other night at Lord Hertford's, if she was not the best humored creature in the world, I should have made her angry. She said in a very vulgar accent if she drank any more she should be muckibus; 'Lord,' said Lady Mary Coke, 'what is that?''Oh, it is Irish for sentimental.' '"-Letters, vol. 1, p. 498.

From the Examiner, 8th Sept. CANADA AND THE BRITISH AMERICAN LEAGUE.

We have arrived at the second stage of the Canadian rebellion, or insurrection, or revolution, or whatever it is to be called. But as we omitted

liaisons with Lord Metcalfe, and offered sympathy to the British American League. By turns they courted and assailed Lord Stanley, Lord Grey and Mr. Gladstone; and they have held their leaguers in terrorem over the public and the colonial office alternately. No wonder they should have felt

to make any comment upon the intelligence brought themselves disconcerted by this Kingston pro

by the mail before last, we must go back a little in our narrative to make the existing state of affairs intelligible.

gramme. For how should Stanleyites countenance the project of a federal union among all the British American colonies? what hope of Lincolnites assenting to protection? and how remote the possibility of getting anything substantial from such poor allies, toward the two millions for the clearance of Celts out of Ireland. They poohpoohed their old friends of the League, therefore, with as little mercy as the men of the stars and stripes.

The delegates of the British American League, after threats and placardings of a very ominous description, met a few weeks ago at Kingston, appointed a permanent central committee to hold its sittings in Montreal, and resolved to institute branch committees in every township. They moreover resolved that missionaries should be sent to the sister colonies to preach the duty of joining Such was the condition of affairs when the last the League. Finally, they resolved that the reës- mail brought intelligence of another riot at Montablishment of protection, the promotion of public treal. Some leaders of the mob who burnt down economy, and the restriction of French influence, the Houses of Assembly having been placed under should be the objects of the League. And having government prosecution for their share in that

issued a manifesto exhorting all Canadians to join their banner, and declaring that their grand purpose was to put an end to sectional animosities, (by arraying English against French,) the delegates adjourned.

This result sorely mortified two parties, whose expressions of disappointment have been ludicrous enough. The American sympathizers, annexationists of the States, had made up their minds that the discontented Britishers were about to throw themselves into the arms of the Union; and to men with voices pitched for a solemn Io Paan over the progress of republican principles, the conclusion of the leaguers was of course very lame and impotent. They lost no time in denouncing their malcontent friends in Canada as deplorably below par.

The other discontented party is a knot of speculators here. A political party we can scarcely call them, though they work by political intrigue; seeing that among them are both whigs and tories, free-traders and protectionists. It might be nearer the truth to call them a club of London ship-owners, speculators in colonial lands, and evicting Irish landlords; for to clear one's estates of poor and troublesome tenants, to find employment for one's rickety ships, or to earn an honest penny on the sale of colonial waste lands, will make men, upon occasion, as unexceptionable patriots as their neighbors. Nor the less so, when the possibility of a government loan or grant, at a little distance, helps to keep the scent hot and keen. The Beauharnois Seignory was first set up as the nucleus of operations; but to bring all the waste lands of Canada into the net, and transfer to them all the Celtic population of Ireland, became the ultimate objects of exertion. Our versatile agitators started by professing the faith as it is in

transaction, a crowd of some three hundred sympathizers attacked the house of the attorney general, Mr. Lafontaine; when the latter, with the assistance of a party of friends, gave them what is called a warm reception. One ruffian was shot, and the rest ran away-revenging themselves after their flight by secret acts of incendiarism. The whole affair was of the most contemptible character; but it suggests grave necessities for an instant reform in the police administration of Canada, and it is likely to be of service in putting a wider distinction than hitherto between the rational and irrational "conservatism" of the province. The proceedings of the League at Kingston had been contributing to precisely the same end.

It is ridiculous to suppose that the exertions or results of such an association could continue to be confined to local and electioneering objects, having in view the reestablishment of protection for Canadian timber, and, under some modified form, the revival of the old jobbing ascendency in the local government. It is too late in the day to reconvert Canada into a mere field for the operations of half a dozen London houses speculating in ships, in timber, and in government jobbery. These may have been the aims of the leading organizers of the British American League, but they cannot be the consequences of its organization. The utter impossibility of reestablishing the protective system will soon banish that article from the League's confession of faith. There will then remain the economical administration of government, and the incorporation of all the British American provinces into a federal union. These are now but empty words in the mouths of the leaders of the association, but they are truths earnestly desired by many of their duped followers; and to their realization the exertions of the existing government

Wakefield; but so modified their creed from time of Canada are tending quite as clearly as the un

to time to suit new converts, that little of it remains but the words emigration and colonization. They coquetted with the French Canadians, formed

easy movements of its adversaries. It is not many years since Lord John Russell made the statesmanlike avowal that it was our duty to prepare

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »