visitor descends by a back-staircase into the rooms immediately below the Picture-gallery. Here is the China-room," -not rich in Delft, or China, or Chelsea, or Dresden ware, but boasting a most elegant and exquisite blue and gold service, that many a lady will linger over with eyes of admiration. Here, too, is Stothard's " Wellington Shield," in gold, presented to the duke in 1822 by the merchants and bankers of London; and here is the silver Plateau presented by the regent of Portugal. A few good busts in bronze crown the cases containing these elegant and costly gifts. the rooms in which the great duke lived and slept, much, if not precisely, as they are now. The sitting-room and bedroom might certainly be kept intact; and if thus kept, with what interest will they continue to be looked on by millions yet to be born! Abbotsford is kept unchanged, and thousands flock to see the romance in stone and lime raised by the Ariosto of the north. The bedroom of Byron at Newstead is preserved just as Byron left it,-with colored prints of Harrow School and Trinity College, Cambridge, hanging on its wall as they were placed there by the poet himself. What would Englishmen subscribe From this little El Dorado of handsome to restore New Place, at Stratford, as Shakthings the visitor passes first to the "Secre- speare left it on the 23d of April, 1616? Who tary's Room,' then to the "Duke's Pri- would not "call up" Pope's villa if he could? vate Room," and, lastly, to the "Duke's Nothing remains of Nelson's house at MerBedroom;"-all three on the ground-floor, ton. The choice contents of Strawberry facing the garden that skirts Park Lane and Hill-those true illustrations of Walpole's the public footway through Hyde Park from writings were scattered under the ruthless the duke's house to Chesterfield Gate. These hammer of George Robins. The vigorous three rooms open on one another, and the ar- exertions of a few men have saved Shakrangements in all three are in every respect speare's birthplace from being sawn into snuff the same as when they were last used by the boxes, knife-handles and tobacco-stoppers. illustrious duke. Will not, then, the present Duke of Wellington preserve to us his father's study and his father's bedroom? The " Secretary's Room" wears the appearance of a room belonging to a man of business, and a methodical man, who is secretary to a great man. The duke's own room is just what one expected the duke's room to be like -lined with bookcases; filled with red-covered despatch-boxes; having a redmorocco reading-chair; a second chair; a desk to stand and write at; a glass screen to keep the cold away and not conceal the books and papers behind it; tables covered with papers, and a few portraits. The portraits here are fewer in number than we had imagined. Here are two engravings of the duke himself, framed, and leaning against a sofa one when young, the other when old (D'Orsay's is the old portrait); a small drawing of the Countess of Jersey, by Cosway; a fulllength over the fireplace, with on one side of it a medallion of the present Duchess of Wellington, and on the other a corresponding medallion of Jenny Lind. A narrow passage to the east leads to the "Duke's Bedroom," -a small, shapeless, ill-lighted room, with a rather common, mahogany, young person's bedstead, surmounted by a tent-like curtain of green silk. Neither feather-bed nor eider-down pillow gave repose to the victor of Waterloo and the writer of the Despatches. This illustrious and rich man was almost as humble in his wants in this way as Charles XII. of Sweden. The iron duke, What though his eightieth year was by, was content with a mattrass and a bolster. The present Duke of Wellington-the future owner of Apsley House—will, we trust, keep Yet the Sea turns never from the sun- And those fair flowers of the heavens. the On his rough heart they lie; Man! like the Sea, even while you moan, Let the heavens lie against your heart And Hope's mild halcyons yet shall come Man! when this Earth's dull cares assail, Cling not to Earth the more; From the Ladies' Companion. AN ANECDOTE OF MRS. RADCLIFFE. TOWARDS the middle of the year 1795, a short time after the deplorable affair of Quiberon, an English lady was taken prisoner just as she was entering France by the Swiss frontier. Her knowledge of French was limited to a few mispronounced words. An interpreter was soon found, and upon his interrogating her as to her motives for attempting so perilous an enterprise without passport, she replied that she had exposed herself to all these dangers for the purpose of visiting the chateau where the barbarous Sieur de Fayel had made Gabrielle de Vergy eat the heart of her lover. Such a declaration appeared so ridiculous to those who heard it that they were compelled to doubt either the sanity or the veracity of the strange being who ventured upon it. They chose to do the latter, and forwarded the stranger to Paris, with a strong escort, as an English spy. Upon her arrival there, she was safely deposited in the Conciergerie. Public feeling just then ran very high against the English. The country-woman of Pitt was loaded with ill-usage; and her terrors, expressed in a singular jargon of English mingled with broken French, served but to augment the coarse amusement of her jailers. After exhausting every species of derision and insult upon their prisoner, they ended by throwing her into the dampest and most inconvenient dungeon they could find. The door of this den was not more than four feet high; and the light, that dimly revealed the dripping walls and earthen floor, came through a horizontal opening four inches in height by fifteen in width. The sole movables of the place consisted of a rope pallet and a screen. The bed served for both couch and chair; the screen was intended as a partial barrier between the inhabitant of the dungeon and the curious gaze of the jailers stationed in the adjoining apartment, who could scrutinize at will, through a narrow opening between the cells, the slightest movements of their prisoner. The stranger recoiled with disgust, and asked whether they had not a less terrible place in which to confine a woman. "You are very bad to please, madame," replied her brutal jailer, mimicking her defective French. "You are in the palace of Madame Capet. And shutting behind him the massive door, barricaded with plates of iron and secured by three or four rusty bolts, he left her to repeat his joke to his companions, and enjoy with them the consternation of Madame Rosbif. Meanwhile the prisoner fell upon her knees, and gazed around her with a species of pious emotion. "What right have I," she cried, "to complain of being cast into this dungeon, once inhabited by the Queen of France - the beautiful, the noble Marie Antoinette? I sought food for my imagination; I undertook a journey to France to visit the most celebrated sojourns of the most celebrated individuals. Fortune has come to my aid. Here is what is better than the château of the Sieur de Fayel, and the terrible history of the bleeding heart. Never did a grander inspiration overflow my spirit. I will to work." She drew from her pocket a small roll of paper, that had escaped the scrutiny of the jailers; and, passing her hand across her forehead, approached the horizontal opening, in order to make the most of the little remainder of daylight; then, taking out a pencil, she rapidly covered ten or twelve pages with microscopic characters in close lines. The increasing darkness at length compelled her to pause, and she was refolding the MS. to replace it in her pocket, when a rude hand snatched it from her grasp. "Ah! ah! Madame Rosbif," cried the jailer triumphantly, "so you believe yourself at liberty to scribble away here, hatching plots against the Republic, and holding intelligence with the enemies of the nation. Nous verrons cela! These papers shall be remitted this very day to Monsieur Tallien, and we well know all about this new attack upon liberty. Entendez-vous? miserable agent of Pitt and Cobourg!" The same evening Tallien received the stranger's manuscript. Being unacquainted with the English language, he rang for his secretary; but the latter was nowhere at hand, so the puzzled minister took the papers and proceeded to his wife's apartments. Madame Tallien was just completing her toilet for a fancy ball. Leaning forward in a graceful attitude, she was in the act of twining round her slender ankle the fastenings of a purple buskin. Her Grecian tunic, simply clasped upon the shoulder with diamonds, and her hair knotted like that of the Polyhymnia of the Louvre, harmonized admirably with the classical contour of her features. Monsieur Tallien, as he gazed upon her, half-forgot his errand. The lady uttered a little cry of surprise. "Upon what grave errand has Monsieur deigned to favor me with a visit at this unaccustomed hour?" "I have here some papers," replied the minister, "that have been seized upon the person of a female spy, and are said to contain proofs of a dangerous conspiracy. They are written in English; my secretary is absent; and I must ask you to do me the favor to translate them to me.' Madame Tallien took the MS., and looked it over. "Shall I read aloud?" said she, in an and told her how happy she esteemed herself amused tone of voice. 1999 "Here is a singular conspiracy truly," said Madame Tallien, as she finished reading the above.. "Let me see the envelope; Chapter xii., The Dungeon of the Chateau.' And the authoress' name. 'Anne Radcliffe.' Vite citoyen. Set this woman at liberty, and bring her to me. Your spy is no other than the great English romance-writer, the celebrated authoress of the Mysteries of Udolpho!' Tallien now recalled the romantic intention of the stranger's hazardous journey, as confessed by herself; perceived the mistake of his agents, and laughed heartily. Going quickly out, he issued orders for the immediate liberation of the prisoner, and desired the messenger to bring her straight to the presence of Madame Tallien. Meanwhile, the beautiful Frenchwoman, forgetting her toilet and the ball, paced the apartment with almost childish delight and impatience. She was about to make the acquaintance — in a manner the most piquant and unexpected-of the authoress of those romances which had so often filled her vivid imagination with ideas of apparitions, and prisoners dying of hunger in horrible dungeons. She consulted her watch perpetually, and counted the very seconds. At length there was a sound of carriage-wheels in the courtyard of the hotel. Madame Tallien rushed to the door; it opened, and the two celebrated females stood face to face. The minister's wife could not avoid recoiling with surprise, and some degree of consternation, before the singular figure that paused in the open doorway; for Mrs. Radcliffe had stopped short, dazzled and bewildered by the lights of the saloon, which wounded eyes accustomed for some hours past to the humid obscurity of a dungeon. The English authoress presented a striking contrast to the radiant being before her. Dry, cold, and angular, her attire necessarily in some degree of disorder from her arrest, forced journey, and imprisonment, her whole aspect had in it something bizarre and fantastic, that added to her age at least ten years. A little recovered from her first surprise, Madame Tallien advanced towards the stranger, gave her a cordial welcome in English, in having been the means of setting at liberty so celebrated an authoress. The Englishwoman made a polite reply to this compliment, and then they seated themselves before the fire, whose clear flame and vivifying heat were very welcome to the liberated prisoner, and quickly restored an activity of mind that appeared to have been benumbed by the coldness of her dungeon. The ensuing conversation was gay, piquant, full of charm and abandon, and was only interrupted by the orders given by Madame Tallien to her femme de chambre to send the carriage away, and deny her to all visitors. Mrs. Radcliffe had travelled much, and related her adventures with grace and originality. Hours flew by unheeded, and the Englishwoman was in the very midst of some bold enterprise of her journey in Switzerland, when the timepiece struck twelve. She turned pale, and a visible shuddering seized her. Then pausing in her tale, she looked wildly and fearfully around, as if following the movements of some invisible being. Madame Tallien, struck with a species of vague terror, dared not address a single word to her visitor. The latter at length abruptly rose, opened the door, and with an imperative gesture ordered some one by the name of Henry to leave the room, after which she appeared to experience a sudden relief. The lovely Frenchwoman, with the tact of real kindness, appeared not to notice this strange incident, and the new-made friends soon after separated, Madame Tallien herself conducting her guest to the apartment provided for her, where she took leave of her with an affectionate "au revoir!" The following evening Mrs. Radcliffe appeared in her hostess' saloon, as soon as the latter had signified that she was ready to receive her. Calm and composed, habited à la Française, the English romancist appeared ten years younger than she had done the evening before, and was even not without a certain degree of beauty. She said not a word on the scene of the preceding evening; was gay, witty, amiable, and took an animated part in the conversation that followed. But as soon as the minute-hand of the time-piece pointed at half-past eleven, her color fled, a shade of pensiveness replaced her former gayety and a few moments afterwards she took her leave of the company. The same thing happened the next day, and every ensuing evening. Madame Tallien could not avoid a feeling of curiosity, but she had too much politeness to question the stranger confided to her hospitality. In this way a month elapsed, at the end of which time Mrs. Radcliffe could not avoid expressing, one evening when she found herself alone with her new friend, her disappointment at being de for the singular behavior that had so piqued the benevolent Frenchwoman's curiosity. tained a prisoner in France, without the power | curred at midnight, and at once accounted of returning to her own country. Upon this Madame Tallien rose, took a paper from a desk, and handed it to the English woman. It was a passport, dated from the same evening that Mrs. Radcliffe had been liberated from her dungeon. "Since you wish to leave your French friends," said her lovely hostess smiling, "go, ingrate!" Mrs. Radcliffe now returned to London, where she shortly afterwards published "The Italian; or the Confessional of the Black Penitents." We can, in our day, realize to ourselves very little of the effect produced by Anne Radcliffe's romances at the time of their appearance. All "Oh no, not ungrateful!" replied the au- the contemporary critics agree in testifying to thoress, taking the beautiful hands of her their immense success, only inferior to that friend and carrying them to her lips; "but of the Waverley novels in more recent times. the year is fast waning, and a solemn duty re- Now they appear nothing more than the efflux calls me to my native land. In the church- of a morbid imagination, full of hallucinations yard of a poor village near London are two and absurdities, and insufferably tedious to tombs, which I visit each Christmas-day with our modern tastes, accustomed to the conflowers and prayers. If I return not before densed writing of the present day. Their unthen, this will be the first time for five years connected plots are nevertheless not altogether that they have been neglected. You already devoid of a certain sort of interest, and are know all my other secrets," she continued, fraught with picturesque situations and melolowering her voice; "it is my intention to dramatic surprises. The living characters confide this secret also to your friendly ears." therein introduced present few natural featPassing her hand across her brow, the English-ures. We recognize everywhere the caprices woman then proceeded to relate a strange and of an unbridled fancy, and a prevailing vitiatragic tale, for the particulars of which we have tion of sense and taste. not space in our limited sketch. Suffice it to say, that it had left our authoress subject to a distressing and obstinate spectral illusion. In the reality of this appearance she firmly believed, not having sufficient knowledge of science to attribute her visitation to its true origin - - a partial disarrangement of the nervous system. This visitation regularly re SOULS' DISUNION. BY CHARLES H. HITCHINGS. YES! we are severed wide apart, To mortals never yet was given We seem to grow so near, so near The same sweet thoughts that wing their way Each to each other's breast. "T is but our poor, imperfect speech, Our eyes but half-revealing shine, That prompts the pleasant lie to each "His thoughts are e'en as mine." Unfathomed depths in either soul Full of stern discords still remain, Souls strung in life must ever be Anne Radcliffe died near London, on the 7th February, 1823, at the age of 63. The “New Monthly Magazine," for May of that year, announces her decease, and affirms that her death was accompanied by singular visions, which had pursued her ever since a romantic event of her youth. Then in that deathless choir above THE NEW COMER. A POEM FOR MOTHERS ONLY. II. C. THE hour arrives, the moment wished and feared, part, Watch o'er his slumbers, like the brooding dove, From Blackwood's Magazine. JOHN RINTOUL; OR, THE FRAGMENT OF THE WRECK. PART I. CHAPTER I. "Ir's a' because ye will have your own | Agnes Raeburn by the fireside yonder; but a gate. What ails ye to stay ae night langer brown hand, well formed, though scarred and at hame? Black March weather, and no a weatherbeaten, supports his forehead, and the star in the sky; and me your married wife, face itself is in shadow. John Rintoul !" "Eh, Euphie, woman !” John Rintoul made no other answer; but scratched his black head dubiously, and throwing one wistful glance at his pretty wife, as she gathered herself up in her elbowchair, cast another at the window, through which the lowering sky, without, met him with an answering frown. The wind was whistling wildly round the point, which deprived the waves in Elie bay of their full share of the turmoil without; but even here, sheltered though it was, the roll of the surf on the shore sounded like a perpetual cannonade; and the dark sky lowered upon the dark water, with only the fierce crest of a wave, or the breast of some benighted sea-mew, desperately fluttering to its nest, to break the universal blackness of the storm. Mrs. Rintoul sitting there, half-angry, halfcrying, in her elbow-chair at present convinced that she has said something unanswerable was Euphie Raeburn a year ago, the belle and toast of Elie. The fire lights up her pretty self-willed face, with its full red pouting lips and flushed cheeks, and the soft flaxen hair, which hangs in short thick curls just under her brow. She is only two-and-twenty, an acknowledged beauty, a wife whose husband is very proud of her as Euphie herself feels he has good reason to be- and, crowning glory of all, a young mother, whom every one has been petting, and nursing, and humoring, since ever little Johnnie came home-after all, only a month ago. Little Johnnie lies on her knee, his long white frock sweeping over the arm of her chair; and she herself has still something of the state and dignity of an invalid. No wonder that tears of vexation and impatience glitter in Euphie's eyes, and that a flat contradiction of her will seems an impossible thing to John. Scarcely the breadth of an ordinary street interposes between this window and the highwater mark to which these waves have reached to-night. The room has a boarded floor, very clean and white, just brightened here and there with a faint trace of the golden So he stands between the window and the sand which Captain Rintoul crushes under his table, rubbing his fingers through his short heel, as he sways himself between his wife's black hair, and swaying on one heel helpchair and the window. The twilight is slowly lessly. John Rintoul, sailing long voyages darkening into night-all the earlier for for ten good years, and being the most frugal this squall; and the fire-light leaps about all of good sailors all the time, is rich enough the corners, throwing a brilliant illumination now to call himself joint-owner of the strong upon the bed before it, with its magnificent little sloop which rocks yonder on the troubled patchwork quilt, and curtains of red and water at Elie pier. Joint-owner with Samuel white linen. At the foot of the bed, the Raeburn, his father-in-law, writing himself chest of drawers stands solemnly, conscious captain of the "Euphemia," and having his of its own importance, supporting, with sober own father, an old, respectable fisherman, and dignity, the looking-glass, and the family Patrick, his young brother, for his crew. Bible, and two or three of the grandest shells. They are to sail to the Baltic in a day or Between it and the door, gravely discoursing two from Anster, another little town a few with those fugitive moments whose course it miles down the Firth; and John had made tells, the eight-day clock, sagacious and self-up his mind to proceed so far to-night. absorbed, glorifies the wall with the carvings It's no canny sailing at night," said of its mahogany case. There is a small round Agnes from the corner. "Stay at hame, table-mahogany too, with a raised ledge John, lad, when Euphie wants you- what's round it, like the edge of a tray-in the the good of vexing Euphie?and ye can iniddle of the room. On ordinary occasions sail the morn's morning, when the blast's this table stands in a corner, tilted up into by." the perpendicular, for display, and not for Gin the morn's morning were here, ye use; but to-night Mrs. Rintoul has had a would wile him to bide till the morn's nicht," solemn tea, and her table, in all its magnifi- said a deep voice from the window. "I'm cence, has been doing service, as on a very no the man to vex a woman'specially a great occasion, though only a family party bit creature like Euphie there; but I've have assembled round it. One still sits by it, brought him up a' his days never to gang playing abstractedly with its carved rim. You back of his word, and I canna change my can see his blue sailor-dress, his short black counsel noo. John, you 're captain, and I'm curls, and how his face is half-turned towards naething but foremast Jack; but if CCCCLXIV. LIVING AGE. VOL. I. 8 you |
