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with several of my comrades. We hoped that the French would go to war with the Czar and help us to recover Poland. There was plenty of fine words, but nothing came of it, and at last I joined the foreign legion in Algiers. Here we were kept pretty busy. A Bedouin gave me the wound in the face, and I afterwards had a chance of rescuing a French colonel from the enemy, for which I received the cross of the legion of honor. The one which was given to my father by the Emperor was certainly of greater value. We were at length sent by King Louis Philippe to Spain, in order to aid Queen Maria Christina against Don Carlos. After I heard that the Czar was a friend of Don Carlos, and had aided him with money, I shot down his officers with far more satisfaction. When the legion, which was almost used up, finally returned to France, it was my sixth year of service, and although I might have become an officer, I was unwilling to remain in it any longer. I was too anxious once more to fight with the Russians. I at last reached the Caucasus at Tschetschenzen, by the way of Constantinople, after all sorts of hardships and perils. I was thrown into prison, treated as a slave, and not allowed to fight against the Muscovites. But they saw at length that I was to be trusted, and that I hated the enemy worse than they did. They according ly provided me with arms, and permitted me to go into the service. My highest joy, since I left Poland, was to see once more the columns of the Czar, and to be able to pick off his officers. For five years I thus fought in the Caucasus, and many a Russian officer and many a Cossack got one of my bullets in his body.

"At length I was shot in the left foot, was disabled from marching, and was taken prisoner. The Russians wished first to heal my wound; I was then to take a hundred blows with the knout, and to be bauished for life to the mines of Siberia, because I had fought as a Pole against the Czar. When I had got pretty well again I was confined in a tower, which lay on the Black Sea. I wished to see if I could not get hold of a boat, as I swam well from a boy when I bathed in the Vistula. At all events, I preferred drowning to being knouted by the Russians. Fortune favored me, and I found on the strand an unloaded fishing-boat with a drunken Cossack asleep in it. I easily bound him hand and foot, threw him overboard, and sailed out into the sea. For three days I wandered about, eating nothing in the whole time but an old dead fish which was in the bottom of the boat. I was almost starved, when I was taken up by a Turkish smuggler, which brought female slaves to Constantinople. The Turks treated me as a slave, and sold me in Smyrna to a rich man, who put me as a servant into his stables. After some months

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I ran away from him, allowed myself to be made a Mussulman, was received among the soldiers, and thus became free from slavery. I did not give up the hope that the Sultan would again go to war with the Czar, and that I should be able to do some good. I had been several years in the Turkish service, when one day a Polish officer, who was also in the service, told me to get ready, as there would be more work in Poland. I was greatly rejoiced to hear this, and travelled with two of my conntrymen with great danger and difficulty through Bukowina to Gallicia. Here I met with a rich nobleman, whose huntsmen and servants I helped to drill, every day praying to God that I might yet live to see Poland again great and free. Finally, in the spring of 1846, we came to blows with Austria, but without much effect, and after a few battles, the Imperial troops conquered. I was taken prisoner, and made to run the gauntlet five times both ways through five hundred men, until my bloody flesh hung in strips from my back. I was then put in a regiment stationed in Italy. Then came March, 1848, and Italy broke out. I went over at once to the Sardinians, was made sergeant, and fired many bullets upon the Austrian officers. I had heard that the Emperor was a good friend of the Czar, and must do every thing which he commanded. When peace was made the next winter in Sardinia, I went with many other Poles who were discontented among the Italians, by ship to Zara and thence secretly to Hungary. There was soon a fine war, in which my heart could again rejoice. Then the Czar sent his troops to aid his friend, and now things went on well. The first day, in which I shot a Russian major, was the happiest I had known for many years, although I got a sabre wound on the head. But then there were still too many of the enemy. I wås at last in Comorn under General Klapka, and that was my luck. He made a capitulation, and I received a passport to go to America. I did not wish to go to that country, for there was no war there with the Czar, and I should have been false to my oath. I wanted to sail for England and see if I could not succeed in getting a passage to the Caucasus, where there was still war. But I heard in Hamburgh, that the Czar was on the side of the Danes, and was going to aid them with his ships of war. The cause was of no consequence to me. I did not care whether the Danes or the Schleswig-Holsteiners had the upper hand. But as soon as I heard of the friendship of the Czar form the Danes, I at once took service at Altona. Now it will soon be all over with me, and I am glad of it, for I have kept my oath; and when I shall meet my father, my mother, and my beloved above, they will be well satisfied with me.

I

thank you, sir, that you have come to me, | tacles that help them, but baffle you with their blank dazzle-from the deepest vaults of that vast skull, over that gay, enjoying smile; the curly hair of youth, but gray with years, brought before their time by trouble and thought.-Spectator, May 24.

and I beg you to send me a priest, that I may confess to him and receive the Holy Sacrament. I was obliged in Smyrna to assume the Turkish faith outwardly, but at heart I have always been a good Christian." With these words the old soldier again pressed my hand, and turned his face to the wall as if he wished to yield himself to his recollections in silence. The priest, whom I had sent for immediately, found it impossible to give the dying man the sacrament. At the last moment a few Polish soldiers were present, since he wished to die surrounded his own countrymen. They afterward told me that his last words, when he could only speak in a whisper, were a frightful curse against Russia. When I returned to the room in the evening he was stretched out as a corpse. On his body were found the scars of eleven wounds.

The next morning we buried him with Under his head was military honors. placed the bag with earth from his mother's grave and on his breast the orders. Three volleys were then fired over the grave of the old soldier. A small flag of black, red, and gold adorned the spot. The Danes, who destroyed all the monuments of the German soldiers who fell in Schleswig, have probably burned this. So rests the poor old soldier, without a token of outward remembrance. His name will be forgotten and his memory will pass away.

NOTICES OF MR. THACKERAY'S
LECTURES.

From London Journals.

MR. THACKERAY HIMSELF.

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SWIFT.

Mr. Thackeray began by saying that he must not be expected, in treating of these humorists, to utter only a series of lively and facetious observations. Harlequin without his mask was known to be as grave a man as his neighbors. It was to their lives more than to their books that he proposed to direct his attention, and they now suggested reflections of a serious if not a sad character. As their object had been to comment on others, they now became the subjects of observation themselves; the preachers of yesterday became the text of to-day's sermon He then recapitulated the leading facts of Swift's life, his birth at Dublin, his service in Sir William Temple's, his political career. Alluding to his biographers, he happily characterized Johnson as having given him a surly recognition, and passed in. After all, the best test was to say of any such man, "How would you have liked to have been his friend?" He should have liked to have been Shakspeare's call-boy; he should have liked to have lived in Harry Fielding's staircase to have opened his door for him with his latch-key, and shaken hands with him in the morning, and listened to his talk over his jug of small beer; he should have enjoyed the charm of Addison's conversation. Now, as to Swift, if you had been his inferior, he would have treated you kindly; if you had met him as a man and his equal, he would had been a noblehave assailed if you you; man he would have been the most delightful companion in the world. His servility swaggered so, that it looked like independence He took the road like Macheath, stopping all the carriages that came in his way to get what he could from them; but there was one carriage with a mitre on it which he looked for very anxiously. It never came, however;

THACKERAY in the rostrum is not different from Thackeray anywhere else; a thought graver, perchance, because he is reading, or is nervous at the idea of sustaining himself alone, a colloquy with that distinguished assemblage, But the form which rises before you in that crimson desk is unaltered; it is the same strange, anomalous, striking aspect; the face and contour of a child-of the round-so, said Mr. Thackeray, "he fired his pistol cheeked, humorous boy, who presumes so saucily on being liked, and liked for his very impudence-grown large without losing its infantile roundness or simplicity; the sad, grave eyes looking forth-through the spec

in the air with a curse, and retired to his own country." After some observations on the disorders of that age, he said that Swift could not properly be called an Irishman. Steele and Goldsmith were Irishmen, and to the last

But Swift was not an Irishman because he | Swift's declaring himself to him the most was born in Dublin, any more than an Eng- miserable of men; and, approaching directly lishman born in Calcutta was a Hindoo. He the subject of Swift's attachments, apostrouses his words thriftily, as he did his fortune. phized Stella with much tenderness and He has no redundancy of illustration. Often grace. She was, he said, one of the saints he seems afraid of being eloquent. Next, he of English story. In spite of their disunion, gave a picture of Temple's household, and and of Vanessa and the verdicts of most Swift's position there, which was one of the women, who generally took Vanessa's part most characteristic parts of the lecture. in the controversy, the brightest part in There this young obscure genius met, as an Swift's story was his love for Esther Johninferior, some of Sir William's important son. It had been his (Mr. Thackeray's) lot friends. What dull pomposity he must have (of course in the way of his profession) to listened to! What feeble jokes! I wonder go through a great deal of sentimental (continued Mr. Thackeray,) “if it ever struck reading; but he knew no writing more Temple that this man was his master!" touching than those notes of Swift's to her, Doubtless such a notion never came inside in what he called the little language. Such his ambrosial wig. What did the steward a man must have had a great deal of love and Sir William's gentlemen think of that in him. He gave a lively picture of the Irish young gentleman? Here also was in dean's first acquaintance with Vanessa, and troduced some most felicitous ridicule of said—quite in the strain of the author of Temple's quotations and pedantry. And "Vanity Fair”—that Stella had enjoyed one now came the first allusion-introduced with nice little bit of injustice; that that young consummate elegance-to Swift's love of lady-that other person-had been sacriStella. Swift's eyes, according to Pope, were ficed to her. His description of the sad and as azure as heaven, and there was one per- clouded later day of the great man was very son who was inclined to see heaven nowhere powerful and affecting; and he visited else! Contrasting Swift's humble position Swift's treatment of Stella very severely. under Temple with his brilliant and import- But he paid then, as he did throughout, ant station during the Harley government, abundant homage to the dean's genius-of the lecturer came to the question of Swift's which he appeared to have a very high apreligious sincerity. Some of his critics had preciation.—Daily News. turned it in his favor, that he performed his duties secretly in his house. But surely there was no reason why there should not have been an open assembly for such a purpose. One of the most characteristic things was his advice to John Gay to turn clergyman-John Gay, the wildest of the London wits, the author of the "Beggar's Opera!" He considered Swift as having been a skeptic, and having suffered dreadfully from his skepticism. Henry Fielding and Steele were true churchmen: they belabored freethinkers heartily; and each was ready, after he had stumbled, to go on his knees and cry peccavi! Swift was a man of different powers and a different mind. But he was far too great to have any cant. As far as the badness of his sermons goes, he was perfectly honest. They were political pamphlets. Swift was strangled in his band. He seemed to have been haunted all his life by a fury. His sufferings were awful. He was lonely. The great generally are. The giants must be alone. Here he quoted the anecdote of Archbishop King, and

CONGREVE AND ADDISON.

The heroes of the second lecture were Congreve and Addison, not Pope and Gay, as had been anticipated. For Congreve, while he admitted the brilliancy of his wit, he evinced no great respect. He characterized him as the greatest literary "swell" that ever lived. With an air of greatness, Congreve put on his best clothes, stalked among wits who all thronged to admire him, however eminent they might be, and approached fine ladies with a certainty of conquest. The "I am the great Mr. Congreve !" was the complacent ejaculation which seemed to break through all he said and did. His character as a man of gallantry was illustrated by citations from his poems, in which he adulates or insults the ladies whom he immortalizes, and every where appears as the irresistible seducer, sure to be victorious to the end. And who could resist that very great Mr. Congreve, with his very fine coat, squeezing a hand, covered with

of his deep feeling of devotion.

diamonds, through the ringlets of a dishevel- | by which Mr. Thackeray indicated his prediled periwig? lection for Addison. Of Swift he scarcely Of the moral principle of Congreve's come-read a line; Congreve he illustrated, not by dies Mr. Thackeray spoke with disgust and extracts from the comedies in which he lives indignation, and he traced the worship of for posterity, but by those minor poems youth and recklessness, and the disrespect of which, though admired by his cotemporaold age, which are such leading characteristics ries, are now little regarded; but he read in those brilliant works, through a whole se- several extracts from the Spectator, and also ries of dramatic categories, from the comedy | Addison's well-known hymn, as a specimen to the puppet show. The constant tendency, he humorously described, is a recommendation to “Eat and drink, and go to the deuce, when your time comes, if deuce there be;" and he confessed that he regarded these witty banquets without love as he would contemplate the ruins of Sallust's house at Pompeii, with all its ghastly relics of festivity. The foppish depreciation of his own literary productions with which Congreve met the compliments of Voltaire, Mr. Thackeray rather commended than otherwise, but not for a reason which would have pleased the great man. He really did think his productions worthless, if weighed against one kindly line of Steele or Addison.

Joseph Addison is evidently Mr. Thackeray's favorite, of all the "humorists" he has yet brought before the public. In speaking of his merits his heart seemed to expand and his language to assume a gayer tone than while dwelling on the miseries of Swift or the rigid brilliancy of Congreve. If Swift was the most wretched of mankind, Addison appeared to him as the most amiable. He admired the serene, calm character, who could walk so majestically among his fellowcreatures, and viewing with love all below him could raise his eyes with adoration to the blue sky above. He admitted that Addison was not profound, and that his writings betray no appearance of sufferingwhich probably he never knew prior to his unlucky marriage,-but at the same time he expatiated on the kindliness of his wisdom and the genuine character of his piety. The foible of drinking he did not attempt to conceal, but observed that we should have liked Addison less had he been without it, as we should have liked Sir Roger de Coverley less without his vanities. Greatly he admired the gentle spirit of Addison's sarcasm, as distinguished from the merciless onslaught of Swift, remarking, that in his mild court only minor cases were tried. Nor were words of commendation the only means

Addison and Congreve were both prosperous men in a worldly point of view, and they were therefore introduced with a survey of that golden age, when an epithalamium on some noble marriage, or an ode to William III., was rewarded out of the public purse to an extent that made the poet comfortable for life. Congreve's first literary achievements earned for him, through the patronage of Lord Halifax, places in the commission for licensing hackney-coaches, in the Custom-house, and in the Pipe-office. “Alas!" said Mr. Thackeray, "there are no Pipe-offices now; the public have smoked all the pipes!"-Times.

DIAMOND DUST.

WE are all of us sick of curable diseases,

and it costs us more to be miserable than would make me perfectly happy.

THE love lost by a continued cooling, can only be regained by as persevering a warming.

KINDNESS and confidence are strengthened by every new act of trust, and proof of fidelity.

A COURTIER'S dependant is a beggar's dog. Or whatever nature our inclinations are, we generally incline to bring others into the road we are travelling ourselves.

THE life of an artist is one of thought rather than action-he has to speak of the struggles of mind rather than the conflict of circumstances.

Be neat without gaudiness, genteel without affectation; for a suit which fits the character is more à la mode than that which sits well on the body.

WE should never wed an opinion for better for worse: what we take upon good grounds, we should lay down upon better.

CHRONICLE OF THE WEEK,

IN A BUNDLE OF GOSSIP.

ALL the American world is preparing for | face,-sleek brokers with showy shirt studs, its almost-solitary national holiday; nor and cavernous-cheeked, wiry-looking editors. are the Americans so used to holidays but We bid them all God speed, and hope they that they need previous drilling, and earnest may find a health and a content in the calculation to know how they may be country which too rarely comes to them in profitably enjoyed. It offers no small char- the city. acteristic of the national habit, of thought and of action,-that Americans know very little about spending holidays. They do not slip into gun-firing, and dancing, and hurrahs so easily as the old nations of Europe. Their amusements are entered upon from a sense of duty; and they enjoy, with very much of the same pertinacity, with which they labor.

As for such city people as have no occupation to detain them in town, the very excess of Fourth of July enjoyment consists in an escape from the din and crowds of the city. Even now desertions are multiplying day by day, and our upper streets will presently show their usual summer waste.

Very naturally, the escaping world is full of talk about the merits of the various watering-places; and the advocates of Sharon, Saratoga, and Newport are comparing colors, aud furbishing up all the old arguments for sea-shore and salts. The papers, meantime, full of dainty advertisements, are setting on the coyly disposed, and every steamer that floats country ward, from the city, is over-burdened with ladies in linen, and with men in sacks. Little children and black nurses,-French waitingmaids, and chattering school-girls,-palefaced over-worked belles, and elegant young gentlemen, innocent of the sun or of handicraft, make up much of one class of the material which is just now escaping from the tedium of the dead city, for the gallop of a summer's dissipation.

In another class we may reckon fat old merchants in white hats; lean, hungrylooking book-keepers on a visit to country friends, dowager ladies, very red in the

Still people persist in talking about the Fair at London, as-two months agothey talked about Jenny Lind. And, if we may judge from the columns of the London press, the British are as much bewitched on this topic as we ourselves. The Exhibition seems to have taken place of Parliament, balls, and empire. "It is a shop and bazaar, theatre, picture-gallery, panorama,

every thing in a word, which a man or a woman wants in the metropolis. The possessor of a season-ticket, with a small surplus for cabs, or, in default thereof, a good pair of legs, is set up for the season. In a palace large enough to be a glass-case for Versailles or Windsor Castle, filled with all that is ingenious, precious, beautiful, curious, or rare, he walks at large, monarch of all he surveys. From the regalia of Indian dynasties to the last invention of European science-from the rude manufactures of people who dwell by the desert, or under the mountains of the moon, to the patent for separating the long and short fibres of wool, which is to found a new family of millionaires, every thing the eye can gaze on, or the mind can apprehend, invites admiration. There is no door to be opened-no wants intimated,-no opportunity to be repelled, -no purchases expected.

Thus soliloquizes the portly Times newspaper, and in similar tone is harping every journal of Great Britain. As for poor America, our English good-natured friends seem never tired of descanting on the paucity of our show; and, so far as we have seen, scarce hint at any products of our country; save the Greek Slave, the Daguerreotypes, the wagons, and the pistols. Among the amiable things that have been

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