Coleraine. I am obliged to you both. Bloombury. Well may you be. You have led as wild and wicked a life as one could wish. Repent! repent! Coleraine. Of what? For, faith! there are so many things, I cannot see which to take hold on. Bloombury. If I could suggest any other, I would do it in preference. I know but one. Coleraine. Speak out: don't be modest. fluities, then might you well exclaim, "O Death! where is thy sting?" Coleraine. I should not venture: he might show it me. Bloombury. He could not; I defy him. Coleraine. You are braver: he is one too much for me: he has got me down. Bloombury. If your lordship would take courage and resolve, it is not even yet too late for the Bloombury. You had formerly a strange itch for labour of love. gaming. Coleraine. Not I indeed: but one can game when one can not do the pleasanter thing. Coleraine. It would be a labour indeed for me. Coleraine. I am no more up to it than I am Bloombury. You led me into, or at least you to the labours of Hercules. Ah, my dear Captain countenanced me in, that vice. Coleraine. Which? Bloombury. Gaming. Coleraine. Pardon me, my worthy friend; we never were intimate, till now. Charmed as I certainly should have been by your acquaintance, it can not be more than once that we met before: for in good society no one forgets names or faces, unless of tradespeople and Jews. Bloombury. On that one evening I lost fifty guineas to you. Coleraine. Express no uneasiness; do not trouble yourself, Captain Bloombury; lay it upon the table. If it had escaped your recollection, I assure you it has escaped mine too. Do not, I entreat you, make yourself at all uncomfortable about it. I never said a word upon your leaving town and forgetting me. Bloombury. Forgetting you, my lord! I paid the money down in five rouleaux. I wish I had kept it for the poor. Coleraine. Pooh! another fifty is just as good as that. What do the poor care whether it is packed in rouleaux or not? It is unpacked, I will answer for it, long before they touch it. ... Bloombury. If I had either that or another to give the broken in spirit, the sick and weary Coleraine. O! I now understand you. Upon my soul, you have a most compassionate and significant eye. Give me your hand, my good fellow! don't distress yourself. Yes, my dear Bloombury, times have been hard with me heretofore; but I│I never was broken in spirit; and now I want nothing. Bloombury. Many whom I have visited in their last hours have lent money to the Lord, unasked. Coleraine. Impudent dogs! Bloombury. I part with mine willingly: it is only a snare of Satan. Yet those who have no families have thought of me. Coleraine. And those who have families too; for, I warrant, one of the flock (to say the least) reminded them. You are still a fine stout fellow. Bloombury. I do not understand your lordship: I am, as the Lord made me, a sinner! Coleraine. The deuce you are! I wish I could be! Do not groan; do not be uncomfortable; I am no worse, though I sighed a little. Bloombury. Ah my Lord Coleraine! If you could rightly dispose of your soul and of your super Bloombury, you are much more capable of such feats I wish you joy of them: I have bidden them farewell. I begin to think that the world is a very bad world, and that everything goes amiss in it. Bloombury. Excellent thought! if it had but come earlier. We should think so all our lives: it would prepare us for heaven. Let us remove from the sick room all that ever gave you uneasiness by feeding your vices. I would tear off the old man from you. Coleraine. The vagabond! what! is he here? Who let him in while I was sleeping? Tear him off, with a vengeance, the old thief! Down stairs with him. . I paid the rogue fifteen per cent. Bloombury. Be tranquillised, my lord; you misunderstood me. I would do as much for your Lordship, as my brother in Christ, the reverend Christopher Rawbottom, a rooting man, did in regard to your deceased brother. Coleraine. What did he? Bloombury. Being in prison, a sufferer from false witnesses, he begat him, as Paul begat Onesimus, in his chains. Coleraine. I don't believe it; I never heard it whispered or hinted. My mother was a very different sort of woman, and would hardly run after a fusty old goat, tied by the leg in a court of the Fleet. Bloombury. O my lord! how little are you accustomed to the language of the Holy Scriptures! speak figuratively. Coleraine. Egad did you, Bloombury? ' Bloombury. I can not bring your lordship to think seriously upon death. Coleraine. Excuse me, Captain Bloombury, it is you who think the least seriously. It is you who would ask him where his sting lies, and who would challenge him outright. Bloombury. My lord, if I am so unfortunate that I can not be of use to your lordship in your interests, should there be remaining any slight matter in the temporal and personal, wherein my humble abilities could be serviceable to you, I entreat you to command me. . He meditates! who knows what he may do yet! . . It would be but just. Coleraine. Have you a pencil? Bloombury. Yes, my lord, yes. . but pen-andink would be better. . let me run and find one. Coleraine. No, no, no. Bloombury. O yes, my lord . . Gentlemen, pray walk in again: his lordship is most clear in his intellects.. he has a short codicil to add. I carry the ink.. Is this pen a good one? could he write legibly with it? Physician. Perfectly. I wrote with it early in the morning. Bloombury. My lord, the gentlemen have returned; they are waiting; here are pen, ink, and paper. Coleraine. Favour me, Captain Bloombury; write. Bloombury. It would not do, my lord: if the learned doctor would undertake it, your lordship Death! We don't halt then! march I must, I should have been in rare high glee To make an April-fool of thee.* Bloombury. Worldly-minded man! There are no hopes then! Physician. I told you so, sir; but although he knew it, you might have spoken lower. MARCELLUS AND HANNIBAL. Hannibal. Could a Numidian horseman ride no faster? Marcellus! ho! Marcellus! He moves not.. he is dead. Did he not stir his fingers? Stand wide, soldiers. . wide, forty paces. . give him air.. bring water. . halt! Gather those broad leaves, and all the rest, growing under the brushwood unbrace his armour. Loose the helmet first. his breast rises. I fancied his eyes were fixed on me.. they have rolled back again. Who presumed to touch my shoulder? This horse? It was surely the horse of Marcellus! Let no man mount him. Ha ha! the Romans too sink into luxury here is gold about the charger. Gaulish Chieftain. Execrable thief! The golden chain of our king under a beast's grinders! The vengeance of the gods has overtaken the impure.. Hannibal. We will talk about vengeance when we have entered Rome, and about purity among the priests, if they will hear us. Sound for the surgeon. That arrow may be extracted from the side, deep as it is . . . The conqueror of Syracuse lies before me. Send a vessel off to Carthage. Say Hannibal is at the gates of Rome Marcellus, who stood alone between us, fallen. Brave man! I would rejoice and can not .. How awfully serene a countenance! Such as we hear are in the islands of the Blessed. And how glorious a form and stature! Such too was theirs! They also once lay thus upon the earth wet with their blood.. few other enter there. And what plain armour! Gaulish Chieftain. My party slew him.. indeed I think I slew him myself. I claim the chain: it belongs to my king: the glory of Gaul requires it. Never will she endure to see another take it: rather would she lose her last man. We swear! we swear! Hannibal. My friend, the glory of Marcellus did not require him to wear it. When he suspended the arms of your brave king in the temple, he thought such a trinket unworthy of himself and of Jupiter. The shield he battered down, the breastplate he pierced with his sword, these he showed to the people and to the gods; hardly his wife and little children saw this, ere his horse wore it. Gaulish Chieftain. O glorious Hannibal! unconquerable hero! O my happy country! to have such an ally and defender. I swear eternal gratitude. . yes, gratitude, love, devotion, beyond eternity. Hannibal. In all treaties we fix the time: I could hardly ask a longer. Go back to thy station. . I would see what the surgeon is about, and hear what he thinks. The life of Marcellus; the triumph of Hannibal! What else has the world in it? only Rome and Carthage. These follow. Surgeon. Hardly an hour of life is left. Marcellus. I must die then! The gods be praised! The commander of a Roman army is no captive. Hannibal (to the Surgeon). Could not he bear a sea-voyage? Extract the arrow. Surgeon. He expires that moment. Marcellus. It pains me extract it. Hannibal. Marcellus, I see no expression of pain on your countenance and never will I consent to hasten the death of an enemy in my power. Since your recovery is hopeless, you say truly you are no captive. (To the Surgeon.) Is there nothing, man, that can assuage the mortal pain? for, suppress the signs of it as he may, he must feel it. Is there nothing to alleviate and allay it? Marcellus. Hannibal, give me thy hand. . thou hast found it and brought it me, compassion. (To the Surgeon.) Go, friend; others want thy aid; several fell around me. * He died on the 1st of April, 1824. Hannibal. Recommend to your country, O| when thou (and the gods alone know whether as Marcellus, while time permits it, reconciliation conqueror or conquered) mayest sit under the roof and peace with me, informing the Senate of my superiority in force, and the impossibility of resistance. The tablet is ready: let me take off this ring.. try to write, to sign it at least. Oh what satisfaction I feel at seeing you able to rest upon the elbow, and even to smile! Marcellus. Within an hour or less, with how severe a brow would Minos say to me, "Marcellus, is this thy writing?" Rome loses one man: she hath lost many such, and she still hath many left. Hannibal. Afraid as you are of falsehood, say you this? I confess in shame the ferocity of my countrymen. Unfortunately too the nearer posts are occupied by Gauls, infinitely more cruel. The Numidians are so in revenge; the Gauls both in revenge and in sport. My presence is required at a distance, and I apprehend the barbarity of one or other, learning, as they must do, your refusal to execute my wishes for the common good, and feeling that by this refusal you deprive them of their country, after so long an absence. none. Marcellus. Hannibal, thou art not dying. Hannibal. What then? What mean you? Marcellus. That thou mayest, and very justly, have many things yet to apprehend: I can have The barbarity of thy soldiers is nothing to me mine would not dare be cruel. Hannibal is forced to be absent; and his authority goes away with his horse. On this turf lies defaced the semblance of a general; but Marcellus is yet the regulator of his army. Dost thou abdicate a power conferred on thee by thy nation? Or wouldst thou acknowledge it to have become, by thy own sole fault, less plenary than thy adversary's? I have spoken too much: let me rest: this mantle oppresses me. Hannibal. I placed my mantle on your head when the helmet was first removed, and while you were lying in the sun. Let me fold it under, and then replace the ring. Marcellus. Take it, Hannibal. It was given me by a poor woman who flew to me at Syracuse, and who covered it with her hair, torn off in desperation that she had no other gift to offer. Little thought I that her gift and her words should be mine. How suddenly may the most powerful be in the situation of the most helpless! Let that ring and the mantle under my head be the exchange of guests at parting. The time may come, Hannibal, of my children, and in either case it shall serve thee. In thy adverse fortune, they will remember on whose pillow their father breathed his last; in thy prosperous (heaven grant it may shine upon thee in some other country) it will rejoice thee to protect them. We feel ourselves the most exempt from affliction when we relieve it, although we are then the most conscious that it may befall us. There is one thing here which is not at the disposal of either. Hannibal. What? Marcellus. This body. Hannibal. Whither would you be lifted? Men are ready. Marcellus. I meant not so. My strength is failing. I seem to hear rather what is within than what is without. My sight and my other senses are in confusion. I would have said, This body, when a few bubbles of air shall have left it, is no more worthy of thy notice than of mine; but thy glory will not let thee refuse it to the piety of my family. Hannibal. You would ask something else. I perceive an inquietude not visible till now. Marcellus. Duty and Death make us think of home sometimes. Hannibal. Thitherward the thoughts of the conqueror and of the conquered fly together. Marcellus. Hast thou any prisoners from my escort ? Hannibal. A few dying lie about. . and let them lie. . they are Tuscans. The remainder I saw at a distance, flying, and but one brave man among them.. he appeared a Roman . . a youth who turned back, though wounded. They surrounded and dragged him away, spurring his horse with their swords. These Etrurians measure their courage carefully, and tack it well together before they put it on, but throw it off again with lordly ease. Marcellus, why think about them? or does aught else disquiet your thoughts? Marcellus. I have suppressed it long enough. My son . . my beloved son. Hannibal. Where is he? Can it be? Was he with you? Marcellus. He would have shared my fate.. and has not. Gods of my country! beneficent throughout life to me, in death surpassingly beneficent, I render you, for the last time, thanks. DUKE DE RICHELIEU, SIR FIREBRACE COTES, LADY GLENGRIN, AND MR. NORMANBY. WHEN the Duke de Richelieu had retired from office, ill health, which is usually the cause of retirement, was the consequence of it. Not that ministers ever care about loss of place; privation of dignity and emolument is nothing to them; and if they are excluded from the only area grand enough for the development of their conceptions, those are much to be pitied, although not in the least to be blamed (God forbid !) who gave the key for that purpose to some dark designer, at the instant when such conceptions had arrived at their maturity. He went to Genoa. The narrowness and obscurity of the streets incommoded him, and eighty stairs, which must always be mounted to reach the best apartments, were too many for an invalid. He went to Nice: the bise was troublesome. Here however he was amused a little at the sight of well-dressed strangers, and was not insensible of pleasure in being looked at, and in hearing his name perpetually mentioned in the same low tone of voice as he passed. agreed at last that the expression, to a man not very acute, might require an explanation. "I meant," said he, "a friend's; at dinner or over a bottle; for in my mind, whatever others may think, that would be very base." "You must come among us, duke," said her ladyship. "I must indeed," answered he. "Sir Firebrace, you are witness to the promise." "I am," said Sir Firebrace. There is no person in the world upon whom idleness hangs so heavily as upon a minister of state dismissed. Reprehended for sighing when he only yawned, and ashamed of being thought to yawn when he really sighed, he accepted the invitation, on condition that he should live privately. Do you doubt this weakness? Call it as you please and doubt it as you may . . it was this low tone of voice which the manly hearts of a Marius and a Cromwell panted for. Vanity and agiotage are to a Parisian the oxygen and hydrogen of life. Richelieu, as honest a man as he was an ill-requited minister, had little of the latter; of the former as much as was requisite. There were at Nice, at the same time, Sir Fire-" For," said he smiling, "your government would brace Cotes, an Irish general, and the Countess of watch me; and I should be sorry to be under Glengrin, an Irish lady inconsolable for her hus-martial law in Ireland, my skin being none of the band. I do not mean the one she had just lost, but the one she feared never to have. The general thought it his duty to pay his respects to the minister, as none in place was there, and as he had a rich uniform which he never could so well show before, and indeed had never put on. Lady Glengrin too left her card. That is contrary to etiquette. One among the many reasons why she did it: Confident in her beauty, for she really had been pretty in her youth, and possessing in an eminent degree that facility of reply, which, if delivered with sharpness, is called repartee, and claims relationship, by a left-hand connexion, with wit, she never lost an opportunity of passing into the company of distinguished personages. She was of all politics; so that when rank failed her, nobody was surprised to hear that she had headed a deputation of fishwomen at Paris. Related to one of those who preserve the peace by cocking the pistol, and the gradations of social order by trampling on their equals, she associated and assimilated with the worst in the polar circle of both vulgars. Her petulance and liveliness amused the duke, and mostly when she talked about her country. He had not been accustomed to Irish society, though he had known some of Irish extraction, and a few born and educated in Ireland. He had found them decorous and graceful, frank, and full of humour, not much addicted to study, but respectful to those who were, until some peculiarity caught them, and they exploded in loud laughter. He considered them particularly delicate in affairs of love and friendship. One of them, suspected (as it appears most wrongfully) of many amorous intrigues, swore he never had and never would have one with a man's wife or daughter. Richelieu admired his primitive chastity. Among his friends, however, was an elderly gentleman, who had meditated long upon the declaration, and felt certain there was some blunder in it. At supper he found it out; and when they were alone, "Faith!" said he," Marcus, your mischief will lie then in a mighty narrow compass." Being locked up in logic, and unable to put his head through the grating, he toughest, and suspicious as my character must be, both as a catholic and a minister out of place. I will be colonel . . . colonel . . . I wish I could think of some colonel among my old friends who would consent to lend me his name." 66 Oh," said Lady Glengrin, "if you want a name and are resolved to be a colonel, I have one for you, now you are so good and tractable: you shall be Colonel Le Doux." "On receiving our commissions we kiss hands,' said he; and by the gracefulness of his action, if Madame de Genlis had been present, she would have fancied herself in the Louvre some years before the last century. They embarked. Of all the coasts in the universe of the same extent, those of France for nearly their totality in three seas, are the least beautiful, and those which the eye tires the worst upon are in the vicinity of Marseilles. When you are at sea, the hills above the town appear like little mounds which some children have been just whitewashing. Here the party was becalmed two days. The regular beating of time by the waves against the sides of the vessel; the regular creaking as she moved slowly on, heaving and nodding like some bulky churl half-asleep; the flapping of the sail against the mast; the monotonous and wearisome song (there was only one) of the sailors, who being Englishmen could neither dance nor fiddle, and had not even a monkey nor a cat among them for the strangers to joke about and play with; rendered the colonel and his companions sad and silent. Sir Firebrace was flat and smooth as a billiard-table. Lady Glengrin having no object to attack or defend, at least no person known to Le Doux, turned, as we read of scorpions, upon herself, and her features and conversation languished equally. To relieve her listlessness, she sometimes made a spring at some friend of Sir Firebrace: but alas! she really had lost her elasticity. Le Doux smiled when he should have been serious, and was serious when he should have smiled. "One would think he hardly could have been attentive, though he seemed so,” said her ladyship to herself. Sir Firebrace often begged 66 Sir," said the sailor, "your observation, I perceive, is but a delicate and discreet inquiry. There is nothing romantic in my history: I never was what you call noble: I never was better than a schoolmaster in a small market-town. My education has taught me to reprove any open disre spect to the Bible. If the lady had spoken where only her equals were present, I should have gone away quietly; but sailors may be corrupted." leave to set her ladyship right upon the character | bable that they may have partially occurred in of very good fellows, if she knew them thoroughly, others." and worthy women enough. . at least he always believed so. He never went beyond in word or thought; excepting that, if he was mistaken, as any man might be, he was certain from her goodness of heart that her ladyship would pardon him. There was not a book belonging to the party: she asked the captain whether he had any interesting one he brought her the log-book. Tossing it aside, "O that we had a book! though it were the Bible or the Peerage," said the countess: and observed for the first time a young man whom the duke had noticed before, and whom he had taken for a runaway barber, his beard being always close-shaven, and his linen and face quite clean. He smiled with somewhat of concern and sarcasm. "Well, my friend," said she, "let us hear the joke." "Really, madam," he replied, "I have no joke worth hearing." "Favour us, at least," added she maliciously, "with the fruits of your reflection." Sir Firebrace now began to brighten. "They might not please you, madam," replied the sailor. "O yes they would: I insist upon having them." "In that case, madam, there is no denial. I was thinking it strange that, of all the books in the world, you should pitch upon either of those. On the contrary, I wonder that petitions are not laid before parliament to suppress them, and signed by every person of the first distinction." "Why so?" "Without doubt there are good things in the Bible," said Le Doux. "Bossuet has quoted it in the place about the white cemetery. Then you read Latin!" 66 "No, sir!" "How! O! I forgot: you have a translation of it. . have you not? A little . . it does not quite correspond with the original?" This he spoke, not so much in his own character as in his country's. One would have supposed that he understood Greek and Hebrew, yet he did not understand a sentence even of Latin. One would have supposed that he had collated the original with the English version, yet it was by an old and obscure report that he knew of its existence. "I was zealous for my Bible," said the sailor. "I love my country and am proud of my language: the Bible is the best thing in both. Often have I thought of those who translated it, what they were, what their fathers were, what were their friends and teachers. Sir, I would have given my life, when it was a life of hope and happiness, to "Because the one shows us their vices, and the make by such holy means as this book the English other does worse." 66 "What does the other?" "It shows us their ages." language known through the world. And yet my "The fellow would be witty," said Sir Firebrace, be: indeed there are few who are not so of hearing as all ignorant people would." "All?" said the man submissively. "I think I have seen some too modest; but one can not judge of character in a couple of days." "Sir Firebrace," said the captain, "you would better let that chap alone: he is too much for you and me. I have no power over him; seaman he is and a right good one; but though he lends a hand at any time, he takes nothing, not a can of grog. The lemon he puts into his water is to blame. He is the quietest and silentest man in the world, but if an oath escapes, you would fancy it was a leak, so quickly is he upon the plank. He has been a scholar not long ago, I mistrust, though he has dollars and better things in his box. As for madam, clever as she is, I would not have her fish for sting-rays." any harm some from sympathy, some from malignity, some from curiosity, the rest from a wish of excitement. Lady Glengrin beckoned him away. Favour me another time," said he to the sailor; "I am deeply penetrated." Lady Glengrin nodded again, and asked him how he could be so ill-natured, when he had a musician with him, as not to call forth his talent. "Oracles are obscure," replied he. "Mac Arthur tells me," she rejoined, "that Michael showed him a flute, made out of a broken cane which he picked up in Genoa." "We will have a dance then, please God!" cried he. "Life is at stake, general! You and I must draw lots for the lady, since I dare not leave it to her choice, and she would not make mortal enemies." This he spoke, bowing in turn to each, appealing to her solicitously, and awaiting with deference her deter mination. From his calmness and self possession, Le Doux now imagined there was something in the man announcing high birth, and thought him, for an The proposal was sanctioned: the three stood Englishman, well-bred, though satirical. He ap- up: the Russian was commanded to bring out proached him; and first expressed his sorrow his flute: the seal-skin that contained his clothes that a person of an appearance so prepossessing and his treasure, was unstrapped: he ran upon should put forth so much strength where homage deck with it in his hand: but this and the is best becoming. "The changes in my own other too were raised upon his head and tearcountry, sir," added he, "make me think it pro-ing his black bear-like hair: tears ran down |