Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XXIII.—April, 1852.—Vol. IV.

This monster was nearly thirty feet in length and thirteen feet in circumference, and the head alone weighed three hundred pounds. On opening him there were found, with other parts of the horse, three legs entire, torn off at the haunch and shoulder, besides a large quantity of stones, some of them of several pounds' weight.

THE MOOR'S REVENGE. 4

A PARAPHRASE FROM THE POLISH OF MICKIEWICZBY EPES SARGENTBefore Grenada's fated walls,Encamped in proud array,And flushed with many a victory,The Spanish army lay.Of all Grenada's fortressesBut one defies their might:On Alphuara's minaretsThe crescent still is bright.Almanzor! King Almanzor!All vainly you resist:Your little band is fading fastAway like morning mist.A direr foe than ever yetThey met on battle-plainAssaults life's inmost citadel,And heaps the ground with slain.One onset more of Spanish ranks —(And soon it will be made!)And Alphuara's towers must reel,And in the dust be laid."And shall the haughty infidelPollute this sacred land?"Almanzor said, as mournfullyHe marked his dwindling band."Upon our glorious crescentShall the Spaniard set his heel?And is there not one lingering hope?Can Heaven no aid reveal?Ay, by our holy Prophet,One ally still remains!And I will bind him close to me, —For better death than chains!"The victors at the banquet sat,And music lent its cheer,When suddenly a sentry's voiceAnnounced a stranger near.From Alphuara had he come.With fierce, unwonted speed,And much would it import to SpainThe news he bore to heed."Admit him!" cry the revelers;And in the pilgrim strode,And throwing off his mantle loose,A Moorish habit showed!"Almanzor! King Almanzor!"They cried with one acclaim:"Almanzor!" said the Moslem chief —"Almanzor is my name."To serve your prophet and your king,Oh, Spaniards! I am here;Believe, reject me, if you will —This breast has outlived fear!No longer in his creed or causeAlmanzor can confide;For all the Powers above, 'tis clear,Are fighting on your side!""Now, welcome, welcome, gallant Moor!"The Spanish chieftain said;"Grenada's last intrenchment nowWe speedily shall tread.Approach, embrace; our waning feastYour coming shall renew;And in this cup of foaming wineWe'll drink to yours and you."Right eagerly, to grasp the handsOutstretched on every side,Almanzor rushed, and greeted each,As bridegroom might his bride;He glued his fevered lips to theirs —He kissed them on the cheek,And breathed on each as if his heartWould all its passion wreak.But suddenly his limbs relax,A flush comes o'er his face,He reels, as with a pressure faint,He gives a last embrace;And livid, purple, grows his skin,And wild his eyeballs roll,And some great torture seems to heaveThe life-roots of his soul."Look, Giaours! miscreants in race.And infidels in creed!Look on this pale, distorted face,And tell me what ye read!These limbs convulsed, these fiery pangs,These eyeballs hot and blear —Ha! know ye not what they portend?The plague – the plague is here!And it has sealed you for its own!Ay! every Judas kissI gave shall bring to you anonAn agony like this!All art is vain; your poisoned bloodAll leechcraft will defy;Like me ye shall in anguish writhe —Like me in torture die!"Once more he stepped, their chief to reachAnd blast him with his breath;But sank, as if revenge itselfWere striving hard with death.And through the group a horrid thrillHis words and aspect woke,When, with a proud, undaunted mien,Their chief Alphonzo spoke:"And deem'st thou, treacherous renegade,Whatever may befall,These warriors true, these hearts of proof,Death ever can appall?Ay, writhe and toss, no taint of fearThe sight to them can bring;Their souls are shrived, and Death himselfFor them has lost his sting!"Then let him come as gory War,With life-wounds deep and red,Or let him strike as fell DiseaseWith racking pains instead —Still in these spirits he shall findA power that shall defyAll woe and pain that can but makeThe mortal body die.So, brethren, leave this carrion here —ay, choke not with thy gall! —And through our camp a note of cheerLet every bugle call!We'll tear yon crescent from its towerEre stars are out to-night:And let Death come – we'll heed him not! —So forward! to the fight!"A groan of rage upon his lips,Almanzor hid his headBeneath his mantle's ample fold,And soon was with the dead.But, roused by those intrepid words,To death-defying zeal,The chieftains armed as if they longedTo hear the clash of steel.The trumpets sounded merrily,While, dazzlingly arrayed,On Alphuara's walls they rushed,And low the crescent laid!And of the gallant, gallant hearts,Who thus grim Death defied,'Mid pestilence and carnage, noneOf plague or battle died!

A TASTE OF FRENCH DUNGEONS

AN INCIDENT IN THE LIFE OF MRS. RADCLIFFE

Toward 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 château 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 countrywoman 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 companion, 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 spirits. 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. ous verrons cela! These papers shall be remitted this very day to Monsieur Tallien, and we will know all about this new attack upon liberty. Entendez-vouz? 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 amused tone of voice.

Her husband assented.

"The wind howls mournfully through the foliage, and the descending rain falls in torrents. The terrors of my prison become every instant more fearful. Phantoms arise on every side, and wave their snowy winding-sheets. Misfortune, with her cold and pitiless hand, weighs heavily on my youthful brow.'

"Thus spoke the lovely prisoner, as she groped with her trembling hands over the humid walls of the dungeon."

"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 Château.' And the authoress's 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 court-yard 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 toward the stranger, gave her a cordial welcome in English, and told her how happy she esteemed herself 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 traveled 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 time-piece 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's saloon, as soon as the latter had signified that she was ready to receive her. Calm and composed, habited a 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 to half-past eleven, her color fled, a shade of pensiveness replaced her former gayety, and a few moments afterward 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 detained a prisoner in France, without the power of returning to her own country. Upon this Madame Tallien rose, took a paper from a desk, and handed it to the Englishwoman. 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!"

"Oh, no, not ungrateful!" replied the authoress, taking the beautiful hands of her friend, and carrying them to her lips; "but the year is fast waning, and a solemn duty recalls me to my native land. In the church-yard of a poor village near London are two tombs, which I visit each Christmas-day with flowers and prayers. If I return not before then, this will be the first time for five years that they have been neglected. You already know all my other secrets," she continued, lowering her voice; "it is my intention to confide this secret also to your friendly ears." Passing her hand across her brow, the Englishwoman then proceeded to relate a strange and tragic tale, for the particulars of which we have 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 recurred at midnight, and at once accounted for the singular behavior that had so piqued the benevolent Frenchwoman's curiosity.

Mrs. Radcliffe now returned to London, where she shortly afterward 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 the contemporary critics agree in testifying to their immense success, only inferior to that of the Waverley novels in more recent times. Now they appear nothing more than the efflux of a morbid imagination, full of hallucinations and absurdities, and insufferably tedious to our modern tastes, accustomed to the condensed writing of the present day. Their unconnected plots are nevertheless not altogether devoid of a certain sort of interest, and are fraught with picturesque situations and melodramatic surprises. The living characters therein introduced present few natural features. We recognize every where the caprices of an unbridled fancy, and a prevailing vitiation of sense and taste.

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.

MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 5

CHAPTER XVII. – Continued

"Your flatterers will tell you, Signorina, that you are much improved since then, but I liked you better as you were; not but what I hope to return some day what you then so generously pressed upon me."

"Pressed upon you! – I? Signor, you are under some strange mistake."

"Alas! no; but the female heart is so capricious and fickle! You pressed it upon me, I assure you. I own that I was not loth to accept it."

"Pressed it? Pressed, what?"

"Your kiss, my child," said Harley; and then added with a serious tenderness, "And I again say that I hope to return it some day – when I see you, by the side of father and of husband, in your native land – the fairest bride on whom the skies of Italy ever smiled! And now, pardon a hermit and a soldier for his rude jests, and give your hand in token of that pardon, to – Harley L'Estrange."

Violante, who at the first words of this address had recoiled, with a vague belief that the stranger was out of his mind, sprang forward as it closed, and in all the vivid enthusiasm of her nature, pressed the hand held out to her, with both her own. "Harley L'Estrange – the preserver of my father's life!" she cried, and her eyes were fixed on his with such evident gratitude and reverence, that Harley felt at once confused and delighted. She did not think at that instant of the hero of her dreams – she thought but of him who had saved her father. But, as his eyes sank before her own, and his head, uncovered, bowed over the hand he held, she recognized the likeness to the features on which she had so often gazed. The first bloom of youth was gone, but enough of youth still remained to soften the lapse of years, and to leave to manhood the attractions which charm the eye. Instinctively she withdrew her hands from his clasp, and, in her turn, looked down.

In this pause of embarrassment to both, Riccabocca let himself into the garden by his own latch-key, and, startled to see a man by the side of Violante, sprang forward with an abrupt and angry cry. Harley heard, and turned.

As if restored to courage and self-possession by the sense of her father's presence, Violante again took the hand of the visitor. "Father," she said, simply, "it is he —he is come at last." And then, retiring a few steps, she contemplated them both; and her face was radiant with happiness – as if something, long silently missed and looked for, was as silently found, and life had no more a want, nor the heart a void.

Book X. – INITIAL CHAPTER

It is observed by a very pleasant writer – read nowadays only by the brave, pertinacious few who still struggle hard to rescue from the House of Pluto the souls of departed authors, jostled and chased as those souls are by the noisy footsteps of the living – it is observed by the admirable Charron, that "judgment and wisdom is not only the best, but the happiest portion God Almighty hath distributed among men; for though this distribution be made with a very uneven hand, yet nobody thinks himself stinted or ill-dealt with, but he that hath never so little is contented in this respect."6

And, certainly, the present narrative may serve in notable illustration of the remark so drily made by the witty and wise preacher. For whether our friend Riccabocca deduce theories for daily life from the great folio of Machiavel; or that promising young gentleman, Mr. Randal Leslie, interpret the power of knowledge into the art of being too knowing for dull honest folks to cope with him; or acute Dick Avenel push his way up the social ascent with a blow for those before, and a kick for those behind him, after the approved fashion of your strong New Man; or Baron Levy – that cynical impersonation of Gold – compare himself to the Magnetic Rock in the Arabian tale, to which the nails in every ship that approaches the influence of the loadstone fly from the planks, and a shipwreck per day adds its waifs to the Rock: questionless, at least, it is, that each of these personages believed that Providence had bestowed on him an elder son's inheritance of wisdom. Nor, were we to glance toward the obscurer paths of life, should we find good Parson Dale deem himself worse off than the rest of the world in this precious commodity – as, indeed, he had signally evinced of late in that shrewd guess of his touching Professor Moss; even plain Squire Hazeldean took it for granted that he could teach Audley Egerton a thing or two worth knowing in politics; Mr. Stirn thought that there was no branch of useful lore on which he could not instruct the squire; and Sprott, the tinker, with his bag full of tracts and lucifer matches, regarded the whole framework of modern society, from a rick to a constitution, with the profound disdain of a revolutionary philosopher. Considering that every individual thus brings into the stock of the world so vast a share of intelligence, it can not but excite our wonder to find that Oxenstiern is popularly held to be right when he said, "See, my son, how little wisdom it requires to govern states;" – that is, Men! That so many millions of persons each with a profound assurance that he is possessed of an exalted sagacity, should concur in the ascendency of a few inferior intellects, according to a few stupid, prosy, matter-of-fact rules as old as the hills, is a phenomenon very discreditable to the spirit and energy of the aggregate human species! It creates no surprise that one sensible watch-dog should control the movements of a flock of silly, grass-eating sheep; but that two or three silly, grass-eating sheep should give the law to whole flocks of such mighty sensible watch-dog —Diavolo! Dr. Riccabocca, explain that if you can! And wonderfully strange it is, that notwithstanding all the march of enlightenment, notwithstanding our progressive discoveries in the laws of nature – our railways, steam engines, animal magnetism, and electro-biology – we have never made any improvement that is generally acknowledged, since Men ceased to be troglodytes and nomads, in the old-fashioned gamut of flats and sharps, which attunes into irregular social jog-trot all the generations that pass from the cradle to the grave; still, "the desire for something we have not" impels all the energies that keep us in movement, for good for ill, according to the checks or the directions of each favorite desire.

A friend of mine once said to a millionaire, whom he saw forever engaged in making money which he never seemed to have any pleasure in spending, "Pray, Mr. – , will you answer me one question: You are said to have two millions, and you spend £600 a year. In order to rest and enjoy, what will content you?"