My conceit of his person," says Ben Johson very | mankind. So at least we understand those striking finely, "was never increased towards him by his place words which have been often quoted, but which we or honors; but I have and do reverence him for the must quote once more—“For my name and memory, I greatness that was only proper to himself; in that he leave it to men's charitable speeches, and to foreign seemed to me ever, by his work, one of the greatest nations, and to the next age." men and most worthy of admiration, that had been in many ages. In his adversity I ever prayed that God would give him strength; for greatness he could not want." The services which he rendered to letters during the last five years of his life, amidst ten thousand distractions and vexations, increase the regret, with which we think on the many years which he had wasted,-—to use the words of Sir Thomas Bodley,-" on such study as was not worthy such a student." He commenced a Digest of the Laws of England,-a History of England under the Princes of the House of Tudor, a body of Natural History, a Philosophical Romance. He made extensive and valuable additions to his essays. He published the inestimable Treatise De Augmentis Scientiarum. The very trifles with which he amused himself in hours of pain and languor bore the mark of his mind. The best Jest-Book in the world is that which he dictated from memory, without referring to any book, on a day on which illness had rendered him incapable of serious study. The great apostle of experimental philosophy was destined to be its martyr. It had occurred to him that snow might be used with advantage for the purpose of preventing animal substances from putrefying. On a very cold day, early in the spring of the year 1626, he alighted from his coach near Highgate, in order to try the experiment. He went into a cottage, bought a fowl, and with his own hands stuffed it with snow. While thus engaged he felt a sudden chill, and was soon so much indisposed that it was impossible for him to return to Gray's Inn. The Earl of Arundel, with whom he was well acquainted, had a house at Highgate. To that house Bacon was carried. The Earl was absent; but the servants who were in charge of the place showed great respect and attention to the illustrious guest. Here, after an illness of about a week, he expired early on the morning of Easter-day, 1626. His mind appears to have retained its strength and liveliness to the end. He did not forget the fowl which had caused his death. In the last letter that he ever wrote, with fingers which, as he said, could not steadily hold a pen, he did not omit to mention that the experiment of the snow had succeeded "excellently well." Our opinion of the moral character of this great man has already been sufficiently explained. Had his life been passed in literary retirement, he would, in all probability, have deserved to be considered, not only as a great philosopher, but as a worthy and good natured member of society. But neither his principles nor his spirit were such as could be trusted, when strong temptations were to be resisted, and serious dangers to be braved. In his will, he expressed with singular brevity, energy, dignity, and pathos, a mournful consciousness that his actions had not been such as to entitle him to the esteem of those under whose observation his life had been passed; and, at the same time, a proud confidence that his writings had secured for him a high and permanent place among the benefactors of His confidence was just. From the day of his death his fame has been constantly and steadily progressive; and we have no doubt that his name will be named with reverence to the latest ages, and to the remotest ends of the civilized world. EVE OF THE BATTLE OF GILBOA. Night came, and drew her jewel'd drapery The gentle Heavens Of the seer-bard, in the pure dews. Yet there were sleepless eyes Philistia's King And warlike bands-'midst revelry and mirth, To repel the foe- And there was cause, not vague nor dubious:- Sing Philistia, sing, When God forsaketh? and the "ruddy youth," What a dark air of mystery there is Now his bow'd head seems buried in the folds His soul was sinking under. But he does fear-- Those two forms, Is it Saul?- The tall, the beautiful, the gallant Saul? Oh, how his haggard face and trembling form They're done!-the muttered prayer, claims The Spectre. Low the affrighted monarch bows, Hope died. He fell upon the unpitying earth: Your vigils keep, Maine. ELIZA. LIONEL GRANBY. CHAPTER XI. Ad hoc lamenta parentium feminarum fessa senum ac rudis pueritiæ ætas quique sibi, quique aliis consulebant, dum trahunt invalidos, aut apperiuntur, pars morans, pars festinans cuncta impediebant et sæpe dum in tergum res. pectant lateribus aut fronte circumveniebantur. Tact. Ann. Lib. xv. "Many and many is the house, in which a chasm has been made which can never be filled up." Richmond Enquirer. "Paris was In the days of the gay Boccacio, It a place to know the reasons of things, and the causes of the same, as became a gentleman." still freshly bears this label of wit and philosophy; and a Parisian finish attracts, even in our utilitarian age, the same respect which the fair storytellers of the Decameron yielded to it. To its seductive vortex I rushed with the crowd of frivolity and fashion; yet I was a chilled exotic, drooping amid the hollow splendor which blazed around me. The glitter of thronged cities-the rich historic ruin-the speaking marble, and the thrilling canvass, soon glut the appetite of curiosity, and every object which is presented to us becomes darkened by our prejudices or discolored by the associations of our education. We travel to find something new. Alas! man is the same creature of tear-moulded clay in every clime. And in the beautiful land of France, I turned from the blood-stained trophies of kingly ambition, to feel for the maimed soldier; and forgot the glory of the Corsican, in the gushing tear which stained the boyish cheek of the sacrificed conscript. I looked not on society as a mass— I thought of each unit of character which composed the gilded fabric, and my heart hourly quil prosperity of my own forest-girt land. brought before me, in busy comparison, the tranreasoned as a republican; and therefore I took no rank among the leaders of fashion; and should have felt the traitor's blush, had I surrendered those national manners which, springing from our free institutions, are alike the support and pride of our liberty. At Paris I found a letter from my uncle, informing me of Pilton's unexpected recovery, and requesting me to return home. I lost no time in obeying the welcome summons, and I was soon on the confines of France. A clerical error in my passport gave me some alarm, as I was informed that it would be rigidly examined at the last town through which I passed. On reaching it, I was taken before a youthful officer for examination. My passport, folded like a lawyer's brief, lay in my hat, and when I took it up for the purpose of submitting it to him, my name, with the addition, "of Virginia," was disclosed. Pays du Washington!" he exclaimed-at the same moment motioning to me to replace the and in her averted glance, I read a sentence of passport, and courteously bowing to my departure. contempt and abhorrence! I was again in Virginia!—and as we ascended The pantomime was now commenced; and in the wizard stream of the James river, the stillness the first act, the cottage of Baptist the robber of its sleeping banks excited the passion, without was illuminated by a large chandelier, which the repulsive feeling, of solitude. There it lay oscillated fearfully over the stage. When the before us, an earth-born giant! The midnight curtain fell, at the conclusion of the first act, this moon rode joyously through the sapphire sky. chandelier was lifted among the scenery which Her massy, cold and silvery light spread itself over was suspended to the ceiling. The fatal lamp the deepening chasms of the woods, and her flick-was not extinguished! and it was carelessly sufering beams danced among the shadowy vistas offered to remain among the canvass paintings and the leafless forest. An eagle perched on a tow-paper scenery which were deposited in the roof ering oak, the diadem of the woods, mingled his of the house. At the opening of the second act, wild scream with the freshening breeze, while every impulse of soul and sense conspired to strew ever and anon that solitary cry gently died away with flowers that path of pleasure which was fast in the mazy shade of cloud and forest. A holy and leading to the grave! subdued stillness brooded over the slumbering earth. In that solemn hour, I forgot for one moment the treasured hate of my life, and the gushing sympathies of father-land hushed the fierce whisper of revenge. The gloom-the sorrows-the despair-the brooding passions of our nature, were hushed in that swelling torrent of joyous mirth. The barque of life, its pennons gaily floating in the breeze, disported itself on the sunlight bosom of a summer's sea. Full of spirit, harmony and hope, it paused on the verge of the gaping sepulchre which awaited it—and in a moment, it was dashed headlong into an abyss of irretrievable woe and wretchedness. When I reached Richmond, I took lodgings at the old and venerable "Swan," under the hope of meeting my uncle at that place. He had not yet left home; for he still believed that I had not embarked at France. I lounged in the porch; and while in that situation, a play-bill, with the The second act had now commenced; and, turnusual garniture of ink, attracted my listless eye. ing my eyes towards the stage, I observed several The theatre-a crowd-and Ellen Pilton rushed sparks of fire fall on the floor, and each second on my fancy, and the idle hope of meeting her they increased with frightful velocity. A broad, there instantly occurred to me. My toilet was steady and unwavering flame gleamed from the top soon made, and I walked to the theatre; but of the stage, casting a huge column of muddy light did not reach it until the play was nearly on the horror-stricken countenances of the multiperformed. The beauty, the intelligence, the tude below. Suddenly, a mass of fire, about the size chivalry of Virginia, were gathered in a dense of a man's hand, fell from the burning roof. It mass on that fatal Thursday. Old age, smiling caught for a moment, on a part of the disjointed youth, and blooming infancy filled the tier of scenery, which quickly blazed up, and, with the boxes and crowded the rude benches of the pit; rapidity of the serpent, the ball sped its hissing and as I gazed on that brilliant assembly of genius course, until it descended on the stage, and burst and of beauty, I forgot the glare of Parisian so- into a thousand fragments of fierce and uncontrolciety, in the gems and flowers of my own native lable fire. A player came forward, earnestly land. With much difficulty I forced my way to gesticulating to the audience to leave the house. the centre of the pit; and, turning around, I saw The flame increased rapidly behind him; and in Ellen Pilton. Her face was pale, and sadness a voice whose electric tone penetrated the heart had set a funereal seal on that brow where genius of every human being in that assembly, he exwas wont to hold his proudest festival of thought. claimed, "the theatre is on fire!" In a moment the Her wavy hair was bound loosely with a tress of whole roof was a sheet of living flame. It burst its own, and a sickly flower languished amid her with irresistible force through the windows. Fed dishevelled locks. The box in which she sat by the vast columns of air in the hollows and paswas full of glee, spirit and joy. She alone was sages of the theatre-increased by the inflammasilent; and though her eye wandered, it yet failed ble pannels of the boxes, by the dome of the pit, to catch my ardent gaze. The curtain dropped, and by the canvass ceiling of the lower seats-like and the pantomime of the "Bleeding Nun" was a demon of wrath it converged its hundred arms announced as the concluding piece. Placing my- to the centre of human life. A wild and heartself directly before her, the curtain had no sooner rending shriek burst from the devoted multitude. risen, than her large and lustreless eyes fell on me. Women, frantic with terror, screaming for help, A sudden flush athwart her cheek-a tremulous and tossing their arms and dishevelled hair amid movement of her snowy hand-and the quivering the curling flame-fathers and mothers shrieking of her coral lips, declared the stormy memory of out for their children, brothers for their sisters, her heart. She looked on me but for a moment; and husbands for their wives, while the plaintive scream of childhood rose like the knell of hope my feet were pressed down. My grasp on Ellen above that billowy volume of flame, whose ap- was not relinquished, and she fell with me on the proach was despair, and whose embrace was floor. A hot and scorching vapour swept over death. All who were in the boxes, and most of my face, and I felt its breath coursing through those in the pit, immediately rushed for the lob- my hair. I rescued one foot from its fatal prison; bies. Many escaped through the windows; but the other remained fixed and immoveable, while the greater portion had no other retreat than to my body, partially suspended from the window, descend the stairs. Here the pressure became became bruised and trodden down by the rushing closer and closer; each retarded the escape of the multitude. Ellen's head sank drooping and conother, and every addition (for nearly all sought vulsed on my bosom, and a plaintive wail issued that mode of escape,) more and more swelled that from her lips. Every limb was wrung with crowd of devoted victims. The stairways were agony, and her labored respiration exhibited the instantly blocked up, and the throng was so great struggle of relentless death. Moving my hand to that many were elevated several feet above the elevate her head, it passed a rent in the wall, heads of the rest. Hundreds were trodden under through which streamed a current of cold and foot; and over a prostrate multitude I vainly at- untainted air. With great labor I moved our tempted to reach the box in which Ellen Pilton position to this welcome fount of life, and a breeze, sat. Twice was I thrown down on the floor fresher than a meadow gale of spring, slaked our of the pit, and the iron heel of a boot crushed bitter thirst, and whispered hope. The crowd my cheek into a stream of blood. One moment above me had now greatly decreased-wounded, more, and impious suicide would have relieved bruised and suffocated, they had dropped away my vindictive despair, for I had drawn a loaded like forest leaves in autumn's frost-and the pistol, and with a firm hand had placed it against my heart. Suddenly the throng above me swept itself away, and arising, with a violent effort of strength I leaped into the box where I had seen Ellen Pilton. She was lying on the floor, her head supported by the seat from which she had fallen. Her countenance betrayed neither terror nor alarm, and woman's fortitude seemed in that storm of death to have found its only refuge in her placid brow. The conventional rules of etiquette were laid aside in that hour of wretchedness, and without speaking, I grasped her waist with my left arm. The warm blood from my cheek fell on her face and hair and stained her palpitating bosom. "You are hurt!" she exclaimed; "save yourself!-go! leave me !-dear Lionel, I forgive you!" window having been burst open, my foot fell from its fearful position. The grasp of a strong and powerful hand wound itself in my hair, and a voice whose animated tones brought back, even in that terrific hour, the fadeless memory of childhood, exclaimed, "You are safe, Mass Lionel!” My preserver leaped into the window, drawing me with him. Suspended to the outside of the house by one hand, resting on the casement of the window, with the other he received the lifeless form of Ellen. I saw them reach the earth in safety; and ere I leaped beside them, I involuntarily looked behind. A few feet from the window the floor had fallen in. An ocean of flame spread its greedy waves as far as the eye could reach. Like a huge serpent, raging for food, the swelling volume of fire gathered its gigantic bulk I had no time to reply to the endearing tender- and wreathed its spiral course in a thousand hideness of her language, nor to wonder at those cir-ous and terrific shapes. A low, deep and piercing cumstances of horror which disclosed the secret of moan of human suffering arose from the centre her heart. Her brother's blood was on my hands, of the flames. On, on, rolled the fiery torrent, yet she would not bear to a speedy grave the spon-hissing and gasping in a cloud of sulphureous and taneous forgiveness of a confiding heart. She scorching vapour. Vain was the arm of valor— was woman!-and the early bud of affection, impotent the energy of courage-helpless the whose opening pride represses, ever finds its sea-power of mind! The suffocating groan, the faintly son of bloom in the winter of adversity, and bursts into fragrance only on the precipice of the grave. A current of flame now hissed over the box, and redoubling my grasp, I attempted to reach a window in the lobby of the lower boxes. I bore my precious burden over the bodies and heads of a dense crowd between ine and the window, and finally reached it, surrounded by the screams and unavailing cries of the multitude who were suffocating and dying around. I stepped within the window, and with great exertion raised its lower sash. My feet were thrust into the opening, and I was gradually escaping, when the sash fell, and uttered prayer, and the shriek of horror mingled themselves in the sweeping surge of fire. Heaved from their flimsy foundations, the walls tottered, staggered, and fell into an ocean of molten flame. A crushing sound-a hideous crash-a wild and agonizing cry-and all was over. PARADISE LOST. There exists a prose version of Milton's Paradise Lost, which was innocently translated from the French version of that epic. One Green also published a new version of the poem into blank verse. THE COPY-BOOK. DISMAL SWAMP. There is a rail road now, running five miles right through the upper part of this great Serbonian bog. It looks like a grand avenue, surrounded on either hand by magnificent forests. The trees here are cypress, juniper, oak, pine, &c. of enormous size, and richest foliage; and below is a thick entangled undergrowth, of reeds, woodbine, grape-vines, mosses and creepers, shooting and twisted spirally around, interlaced and complicated, so as almost to shut out the sun. The engineer who had constructed the road through this extraordinary swamp, told me that he had found it so formidable a labor, as almost to despair of success. In running the line, his feet were pierced by the sharp stumps of cut reeds; he was continually liable to sink ankle or knee deep into a soft muddy ooze; the yellow flies and moschetoes swarmed in myriads; and the swamp was inhabited by venomous serpents and beasts of prey. son deer-berry, which was very abundant. There is a sombre grandeur in the aspect of this dark and gloomy swamp; but even in these solitary morasses, the hand of man is changing the face of nature: many gianttrunked cypresses and junipers have sunk before the stroke of the axe. Arrived at the end of the little canal, we suddenly shot right into Lake Drummond; like entering the door of a saloon, at once the whole scene opens to the view. Drummond's pond, as it is commonly called, is eighteen miles in circumference, six miles across, eight feet deep all over, circular, and surrounded on all sides by magnificent forests. Besides the canal we had come in, there was another, five miles long, connecting the lake with the Dismal Swamp Canal proper. Rowing around the pond, we came to a shed of boards much like a cow-house, in which lived an old fisherman and his family. We afterwards met on the lake another fisherman, with his daughter-a pretty sunburnt girl of fourteen-in a canoe, which was well laden with fish. Indeed this lake abounds in fish of an excellent quality; we hooked a few, bought some from our sunburnt lady The Dismal Swamp was once a favorite hunting-of the lake, and pulled away for the centre of the lake. ground of the Indians; arrow heads, stone knives, and There we gazed awhile with delight on that charming hatchets are yet found there, and it still abounds in sheet of water, which lay, calm as a mirror, glittering deer, bears, wild turkies, wild cats, &c. The water of in the morning sun. this swamp is generally impregnated with juniper, and is considered medicinal by the people of the surrounding country, who convey it to some distance in barrels. I found myself in a packet bound for New York, This swamp is much more elevated than the surround-dropping down the James river. There was a Frenching country, and by means of the Dismal Swamp Canal, might be drained, and thus a vast body of most fertile soil reclaimed, and the canal might be transformed into a rail road—and the juniper soil, which is vegetable, might perhaps be used as peat. LAKE DRUMMOND. There is in the interior of the Dismal Swamp, a body of water bearing this name, after the discoverer, who wandering in pursuit of game, with two companions, was lost, and in his rambling, came upon this lake. His comrades failed to thread their way out. Drummond returned, and gave an account of the sheet of water, which was accordingly called after him. A superstition which finds its "local habitation" in this lake, is the subject of a song by the poet Moore, of a spectre lady and her lover, who paddle a canoe nightly across this water. "But oft from the Indian hunter's camp, And paddle their white canoe." THE TOUR. man aboard very intemperate and very communicative. It appeared from his history of himself that he was born in France, educated in Germany, had travelled in Italy, Greece and Turkey. In Constantinople, where he was an attachè of the French legation, in the streets a Turk set a number of lean and hungry dogs upon him, which would have torn him in pieces, but for an old woman, who gave him shelter in her house. He had visited Siberia, where he lay sick at Tobolsk, and was most kindly nursed by the natives. He had been in Switzerland-at Geneva saw Lord Byron in the streets, and swimming in lake Leman. Had seen Sir Walter Scott in London. Had often seen Napoleon, and had been present in the Champs de Mai where Louis Philippe, King of the French, reviewed 450,000 men. Had been in Spain, and had passed ten years in England, where he was professor of French at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. At a gaming house in London, he saw a Spanish officer, a fine looking man, blow himself through with a pistol, on account of losing at play ;-his last words were to those about him-"Messieurs, prenez garde de mes enfans." THE VOYAGE. Sunday morning-broiling sun-negroes coming off in boats from the plantations along the river, with eggs, roasting-ears, chickens, fruit, &c. to sell. That night, to escape from the heated air of a confined cabin, I slept on deck, in my cloak, my head on a hawser, under a The engineer before mentioned, and myself, visited this lake. We went first on horseback, to the lumber yard of the Dismal Swamp Timber Company, not far from which we dismounted, and embarked on board a boat called a Periauger, in which we were pushed with poles, by two negroes, ten miles, along a narrow canal constructed by the Timber Company for the transpor-heavy dew. tation of shingles and staves. On the way, we listened to the marvellous stories of the negroes about bears, wild cats, &c.—or chatted-or admired the huge trees beneath whose spreading branches we were movingthe reeds, flowers and berries, especially the rich crim Monday morning, ran aground off Jamestown-reading lectures by the Moravian poet Montgomery-went down into the cabin-the Frenchman took a seat by me on a chest, and looking at me with a rueful countenance, said, "Monsieur je suis mariè, c'est mauvais.” VOL. IV.-4 |