BOULOGNE AND ITS BY MRS. WHITE. Despite the ill-paved, up-hill, tedious streets the open sewers, and consequent bad odoursthe constancy of dust and whimsicality of climate-Boulogne has points of beauty so fresh and compensating, that one forgets its désagréments in admiration of them. The port (for all the sand of Capecure, and its other abominations) is strikingly pretty; the rugged heights up which the fishing town clambers to the wooden cross, "elevée par les pêcheures," stretching its irregular frontage to the coast; the long line of handsome boarding-houses and hotels, leading inwards to the city, and speaking hospitably in our mother-tongue; the sloping hills, and wooded back-ground on the Capecure side, with La Liane in the lap of the valley, winding downwards to the sea, introduces us with not too loud a note of introduction to the novelty and picturesqueness of the town beyond. The Grand Rue (like nothing but itself) leads us abruptly through the Port des Dunes to the Haute Ville, atoning for the trouble of the ascent by the effect of its situation and appearA lenghty, wide, steep avenue of houses, grotesquely irregular in height and architecture, and yet preserving a local likeness from their uniform yellow colour-the prevalence of green persiennes, and the continuity of dormer windows on the roofs-the old grey church of St. Nicholas, with the guard-house reared against the wall close to the principal entrance, and the market-place at the gable end, is in itself a picture, and the glimpse of the ramparts as you rise the hill side sufficiently suggestive of feudal times to make it highly interesting in the present. These ramparts, converted from the purposes of war to the soft usages of peace, are to the Boulonaise what the parks are to the promenaders and nursery-maids of London. The fosse, filled up with gardens, spreads (at this season of the year) a wreath of flowers round the base of the stone-faced bastions, against which vines and fruit trees are trained; and crowning the whole, are long avenues of trees, affording the pleasantest walks and the most charming views of the city and its environs. ance. Within these ramparts, which are said to be from forty to fifty feet high, and only to be entered or quitted by one of the three gates leading from them, stands the Haute Ville, the most ancient and interesting part of Boulogneremarkable for the unfinished cathedral, which, for the third time, rises on the site of the original Notre Dame de Boulogne, and the antique Tour du Beffroi, the lower storey of which is supposed to date back to the ninth century, when the whole face of the country was studded with dungeons, for which purpose it VICINITY. was used. An oubliette exists beneath it, and here, in what is called "Le Cachot de Parenty,' was imprisoned a wretched culprit of that name, who suffered death in the Place d'Armes, under circumstances of the most horrific barbarity (à la rompre), for the murder of a notaire at the adjacent village of Marquise. It seems like something impossible, that sixty years since—a period within the memory of so many of the inhabitants-that in the broad light of heaven, and in the presence of thousands of his fellowcreatures (who filled the Place au Blé and Place d'Armes on the occasion-that men, in the name of justice, should have dared to outrage nature and humanity, by an execution of such revolting cruelty-sixty years back! and on the white and shining pavement of the place, where the little children played then, as now-under the blue, bright sky (for it was summer time), a scaffold and a wheel, a "Tripod de Fer," as my informant (an eye-witness) called it, an iron tripod, with a human victim bound thereon. "I was but a boy then," said Mons. N―," but I can never forget it, it was much too horrible!-the platform surrounded by gendarmes and soldiersthe mass of people with all their faces turned towards the scaffold-men, women, children, clinging to the lamp-posts, hanging out at the open windows, or seated on the roofs of the houses-anywhere, above the dense mass of heads, that seemed to roll to and fro like the waves of the sea. Then the executioner, with his dreadful instrument of death, tipped with a hand's-breadth of sharp and shining iron; and the extended limbs, and pale and clammy face, and terrified expression of the patient. Mon Dieu! I hear the strokes through his wrists, and ankles, legs, and arms; and, ugh! the coup de grace, the first of the three that crushed in his breast, sounded above the murmur of the people's voices "comme tombour !"-aye, but a drum that wakened heaven and humanity, and banished from the Place d'Armes this dreadful form of execution; Parenty was the last condemned to be broken on the wheel in Boulogne. At present the purposes of the Tour du Beffroi are strictly useful and benevolent; it is used as a watch-tower to overlook the town, and give notice, by means of a finely-shaped and sonorous bell, of impending danger. The hours for opening and closing the shops, watering the streets, &c., are also regulated by another in the same building; and one of the last acts of the ex-mayor, Monsieur Adams, the banker, has farther enhanced its utility, by placing a clock on its summit, one face of which, looking to the Place d'Armes, is illuminated at night. Here stands the Palais Imperial, as it was, the man who raised it, or him to whom it was called even at a time* when the word "Royal," raised!-grand, elevated, solitary, it stands upon wherever it existed, had been expunged; and here the high outstretching heights, a mark for all the first Emperor, with his victorious eagles, had the elemental shafts that nature hurls at it-now on the occasion of his coming to Boulogne their in sunshine, now in shadow-a myth in marsejour. In this place is situated the Mairie, or ble of the changeful fame with which the Hotel de Ville; and here all public notices are world generally regards the object and the proclaimed by tuck of drum, and public punish- creator. ments inflicted. It is an ordinary sight on market days to see a platform erected, on which some wretched creature, with a rope round his neck, is bound to a post, there to suffer exposure for an hour, previous to being sent to the galleys. On these occasions the peasants, and other people who congregate in the place, gather round with expressions of sympathy, and make a collection for him in sous. In case of capital punishment, here was formerly the site of the guillotine; and Wacone, a ci-devant gendarme, who afterwards essayed the trade of murderer, suffered here some forty years since. We must not, however, leave the vicinity of the Tour du Beffroi without taking our reader in imagination up the narrow, gloomy stairs, which leads from storey to storey to the summit of the odd-looking fabric, the upper part of which, faced with sand-coloured cement, is of (comparatively speaking) recent construction, a few hundred years or so old-a mere nothing in the existence of a foundation of the ninth century. One should choose a clear calm day to ascend it, when the view of the city and the surrounding country, which it overlooks as far as the sight can range, is of the most pleasing description. The sloping hills, rich with the ripening harvest, the green valleys dotted with red-tiled farm-houses, cottages, and gardens, with here and there a church, a windmill, or a chateau, making salient points of observation in the landscape. Now, breaking the monotony of the white roads (winding over or at the base of the hills), you see an azure cart with a white tilt, creeping slowly along; or a waggon that looks like an elongated wicker-basket without ends, drawn by five horses, with rope harness, returning in a cloud of dust from the market; and at others (but this only on particular days), a solitary diligence that has survived the Chemin de Fer, which, by the way, is stretching out before us on the Capecure side of La Liane; now, steaming straight on by the bank of the river, with meadows and corn-fields beside it-meadows tented with perfumed pyramids of new-mown hay; now all but hidden under shadow of the wood, stretching upwards to Le Tour du Reynard; and anon wholly shut out by the watermill that seems to close the stream below Pont Briquo. Cresting the hill above Capecure, we see the cluster of cottages that forms the insignificant hamlet of Portel; and letting the eye sweep over the wide expanse of sea that washes the port, it rests upon the opposite side; and that strange finger-post of history, the column of Napóleon-strange, indeed, whether as regards * 1848. of a little hill, lies the village and chateau De d'Armes, and crossing from the Rue de Lille to : -- 66 66 : * No. 8, Rue de Chateau. T the chapel (a building on the left-hand side of the archway, as you enter the oval yard round which the barracks are situated), a dungeon which realizes the worst one has read of such places. Those who enter it as prisoners leave hope behind, since none but the condemned to death are sentenced to incarceration in it. | Here Wacone, the wholesale murderer, just mentioned as having suffered by the guillotine in the Place d'Armes, and whose name appears traced in bold characters on the wall of the chapel, was confined. It is sunken beneath the floor of the exterior apartment, nearly to a level with the moat; the walls, rough and damp, have chains fastened in them to which the wretched prisoners were attached. The floor is of humid earth: there is no place to rest-no ray of light-no sound to pierce the massive walls but the echo of their own despair, and the scramblings of the water-efts and rats that breed in the stagnant water that surrounds it. The walls of the chapel (which, though used at various times as a barrack-room, a guard-house, and a prison, still preserves its ecclesiastical form and architecture) are covered with rude drawings in charcoal and coloured earth; a huge lion in red ochre stares upon us on the right, suspiciously close to the names of Francis Thomas and Thomas Smith, familiar cognomens amongst the many as plainly French as there are English-a circumstance easily accounted for, when we learn that some hundreds of English prisoners were kept here during the war. Here a gentleman in full naval costume-there another in the same style (charcoal), in the helmet of a pompier of the National Guards, figure on the wall; the entire of which, in fact, is more or less charactered with vain efforts at shortening captivity-boats, ships, anchors, implements of war, fish, rustic cars, and cottages, trees, names, dates, inscriptions. Alas, alas! how easily the heart translates them into language, and reads the story of vain yearnings hiero glyphised in them! A wooden guard-bed, capable of containing a dozen men, is placed here; and we were told that in winter time it is much preferable to the prison within the castle, on account of its greater warmth. The three pillars which support the pointed arches and groined roof are each of a different order, and the stone mullions of the windows still remain. On the opposite side of the archway, as you enter the chateau, with the window boarded up to the upper panes, and a net-work of wire over these, is the chamber in which Louis Napoleon was a prisoner during the few days that occurred between his landing at Boulogne and his consignment to Ham.* Leaving the chateau, we find ourselves on the ramparts, under the shade of wych-elms in full leaf. Yonder is the Port Gayole, leading to the Paris road -the port by which the French army entered to take possesson of the fortress, on the occasion of the English giving up Boulogne, after six years' occupation of it: the reason for this movement appears to have been some dreadful illness, which is said to have swept off 10,000 persons in five weeks, and forced the English to compromise with Henri II. of France, and accept, as the price of their resignment, the sum of four hundred thousand crowns, instead of two million golden crowns, originally agreed upon between Henry VIII. of England and Francis I. of France, both of whom had died in the meanwhile. The keys of the city were presented by Lord Clinton on a blue velvet cushion to Françoise de Montmorency, who was charged to take possession in the name of Henri II.—a terminal statue of whom exists on the Esplanade; and as the French army defiled through the Port Gayole, the English went out at the Port de Calais, and Boulogne returned to the possession of the Boulonnaise, Michælmas day, 1554. tion was written, it is probable that many alterations * As some years have passed by since this descriphave been made.-ED. PASSAGES FROM THE LIFE OF A GERMAN SINGER OF THE LAST CENTURY. While listening to the magic strains of the Swedish Nightingale, we could but reflect that she, and those dowered with the like gifts in the same high degree, must frequently mourn over their evanescence. The warrior's laurel and the poet's bay are immortal; while the wreaths which fall at the feet of a far-famed singer scarcely perish sooner than her renown. The faded beauty can point out to her friends, and bequeath to her grandchildren her fair, fresh charms on the "undying canvas;" but what echo remains of voices which have thrilled the hearts of half the world? Surely it is a charity to consecrate one poor half-hour to the memory of a German singer, whose name, now utterly forgotten, was, at the close of the last century, familiar as a household word to the lips of all the beauty and fashion of Christendom; while, in private life, her virtues, her unselfishness, and sweetness of disposition, bore a strong resemblance to our favourite Jenny Lind, who was, however, born under a more fortunate star, and we rejoice to think that the gentle heart of Madame Goldschmidt will never be wrung as was that of the no less gifted, but less happy, Madame Mara. In 1749, that year so signalised by the birth of Goethe, Elizabeth Schmähling, the wife of a poor music teacher, in Cassel, died in childbirth, leaving her husband a sickly infant, the child of his old age. Contrary to all expectations, the little creature struggled through its early infancy, almost to the disappointment of her remaining parent, whose paternal feelings were deadened by poverty, and the reflection that this little worthless life had been purchased by that of his beloved companion. As her father was too poor to command attendance of any kind, the neglected child passed the long hours of his absence in perfect solitude, locked in an almost unfurnished apartment, and her poor little feet fastened to a great chair. One evening, just after she had completed her fourth year, as Schmähling was returning, weary and heavy of heart, to his humble abode, his step was arrested on the stairs by the sound of a scale in music distinctly and perfectly played, proceeding from the prisonroom of his little ailing daughter! He listened again. Yes! he was not mistaken - he had the key of the door-no one could be there but the sickly child, whose existence he had felt to be so sore a burden. A new happiness, that of a father's pride and joy, visited the desolate heart of the poor old man, and entering softly, he found that the little Elizabeth had managed to reach an old violin, whence she drew the sounds which had so unexpectedly greeted her father's ears. to convey Schmähling and his daughter there. The poor child, then hardly eight years old, could scarcely bear the jolting of the carrier's waggon in which she travelled; but she rested her aching head on her father's shoulder, and although her limbs were nearly frozen with the cold, he kept her hands warm, by placing them under his coat upon his heart. But her cold and weariness were forgotten completely when her father, at length, showed Elizabeth the city of Frankfort-then full of the life and bustle of the great fair-and told her that there she would play before the rich and great, and earn not only money, but fame. Schmähling and his daughter lived for two years at Frankfort, succeeding so well as to be in comfortable circumstances, while every day seemed to develop the wonderful powers of the child; her health, too, improved, and she could walk, though with difficulty. The old man, whom poverty had bound for so many years to Cassel, loved a wandering life, and went from Frankfort to Vienna, where his success prompted him to take what was then an arduous journey, and the little German child appeared in London in 1760. But here she was not well received; her extreme plainness, the awkwardness of her movements, and the frightful grimaces she made Now began a new life for these two human while playing, gave a most unfavourable impresbeings a life of happy companionship. It sion. The disappointed father prepared to leave would have been a fine study for a painter to England as quickly as possible; but one of the watch the young musician, still almost an infant, first singers of the day had made an important propped up on her high chair; her features, to discovery-that nature had given Elizabeth a which even the common beauty of childhood most magnificent voice. She urged Schmähling had been denied, lighted up with the spirit of no longer to waste the powers of the child on harmony, as the violin obeyed the little tremb- violin playing, but to return to Germany with ling fingers, and sent forth its sweetest sounds. all speed, and place her under the care of the Close by, on the only other seat the room could best masters; and this counsel, backed as it was boast, sat the now happy father, urging on and by funds for the purpose, was followed. encouraging the little one; at a very difficult passage producing from his capacious pocket a rosy-cheeked apple, a rare dainty for Elizabeth, with which her exertions were to be rewarded. After a short time, under the high patronage of the child's godfather, a rich tailor, and the sacristan, Schmähling and his daughter gave little concerts at the houses of their neighbours, an employment at once pleasant and profitable. They were enabled to make two additions to their household-a servant and a large dog; both accompanied them on their musical expeditions. The little procession always delighted Elizabeth; as her weak limbs would not support her weight, she was carried by her father; then came the maid-servant, carrying the violin, and lastly, the dog, who was intrusted with a little basket filled with violin strings, &c. Some times their auditors required ballads, or country songs, and then the servant joined her rustic voice; but this always displeased the old man, who was nevertheless compelled to obey the. wis hes of his audience. Gradually, however, Elizabeth's fame spread among the richer citizens: the houses of the wealthy tradesmen were opened to the childmusician; and at length a rich merchant, who was going to the great fair at Frankfort, offered The old Capellmeister at Leipsic-Father Hiller, as he was always called-heard Elizabeth Schmähling sing, and struck with her wonderful but ill-cultivated powers, adopted the young singer rather as his daughter than his pupil.* Hiller was one of the first musicians of his age, and eminently qualified to fulfil the charge he had undertaken. Elizabeth now entered with heart and soul upon her musical education, which proceeded as an education seldom doesthe master unwearied in his teaching, the scholar never satisfied with learning. He told her that she had not the beauty or grace so necessary for the theatre, but that her education must prepare her for the envied post of private singer to the king. Hiller had the satisfaction of watching his pupil's dawning fame. The first token of princely favour she received was a summons The portrait of Father Hiller is given at full length in his pupil's life, and it is a somewhat grotesque picture, a real old German face, full of kind. liness and wrinkles, a red cap drawn down over his ears, and a large pair of spectacles in pinchbeck frames, on which almost every student in Leipsic, including Goethe himself, had written an epigram. from the director of the royal private theatre, at Dresden; for the Electress Dowager, Marie Antonie, had heard of the rising star, and wished to judge of her merits herself. Hasse's fine opera of "Semiramis" was chosen, and the principal part assigned to Elizabeth. Father Hiller was almost in an agony of fear. "My child!" he exclaimed, "it will never do; you cannot, you must not be a queen; every one will laugh at us both." Elizabeth herself gives a full account of the affair. She says: "I suffered patiently all that they liked to do with me. They painted my face red and white, and put a great patch on my chin. As this operation was being performed, in came the director, who, I saw, could hardly help laughing at my appearance. He said, he was commissioned to conduct me to her Highness, who wished to see me before I went upon rhe stage. I hastily threw my purple mantle tound me, and followed the director, through some dark passages, to a little cabinet hung with crimson velvet. Here stood the Electress, and behind her some young ladies, who looked anxiously at me, as I stood in my splendour, like a doll under a Christmas tree. I held my sceptre behind me, to hide my red, coarse arms. What have you there at your back?' asked the royal lady. At this question I produced my sceptre, and, in doing so, unfortunately hit the director a violent blow on the nose, which made it bleed. You must not carry your sceptre so,' said her Serene Highness, with an involuntary smile; it should always be held before you; but I would advise you to lay it down; a queen does not always carry her sceptre.' After this little lecture, I had permission to leave, which, you may be sure, I did very speedily. As soon as I reached the stage, the instruments struck up, and I had to commence my recitative immediately; so that, fortunately for me, I could think of nothing but the music. I forgot my false hair, my crown, my purple mantle, and crimson velvet train, that I was Queen Semiramis, and only remembered that I was a singer." A few months after this adventure, Frederick the Great was told of the young German singer, and commanded that she should be brought before him. She was conducted into that famous little concert-room at Sans Souci, where Frederick was lying, in ill-health, and out of humour, on a sofa. He asked her roughly "They tell me you can sing; is it true?" "If it please your Majesty, I can try." “Very well, then; sing.' When Elizabeth had finished the piece assigned her, the king, without any token either of satisfaction or displeasure, took up a musicsheet containing a very difficult bravura by Graun, which he knew she could never have seen. "Sing this, if you can," again commanded the imperious monarch. The young singer obeyed, and then withdrew, the king only remarking, "Yes, you can sing." But this interview decided Elizabeth's fate. A proposal was made to her to become the king's private singer, with an annuity of three thousand dollars secured to her for life. In 1772, Elizabeth's evil fate brought her into contact with one of the most fascinating and most unprincipled men of his time- Mara, the violoncellist to Prince Henry of Prussia. In vain did her friends warn her; in vain were anonymous letters sent from every part to expose the true character of her pretended lover; she listened only to the protestations of her handsome fiancé. On her twenty-fourth birthday, Elizabeth laid a petition for the royal assent to her marriage before Frederick. The answer, which she found written in pencil upon the margin was more characteristic than courteous; it was-"You are a fool, and must be more reasonable. You shall not make that fellow your husband." After repeated entreaties, and the delay of half a year, Frederick was brought to give a most unwilling permission. The marriage was solemnized; and now, in the midst of her success and honour, began the secret sorrows and shame of the unhappy Elizabeth Mara. She soon discovered how fatal a step she had taken; her husband lavished her earnings on the lowest, both of his sex and her own; he was almost always in a disgraceful state of intoxication; and not content with heaping every neglect on his patient wife, he openly reproached her with her want of beauty. Now, too, she began to experience that her position at Court was only a gilded slavery; for the king, who hated the worthless husband, made the innocent wife feel his anger. A request she made to be allowed, on account of her health, to visit the Bohemian baths, was refused; and on the edge of a petition her husband compelled her to present for leave to accompany him on a tour, she found written in pencil by the king: "Let him go, but you shall remain." Mara was furious against the king, and behaved most brutally to his wife, who persuaded him in vain to keep a prudent silence; he complained loudly of Frederick's tyranny, and even wrote ridiculous pamphlets upon his wrongs. This was, perhaps, the most miserable period of Madame Mara's unhappy married life. The king showed his displeasure openly against her, and she shared the odium with which her husband was universally regarded; anxiety, grief, and distress threw her into a dangerous fever. Just at this juncture, the Grand Duke, Paul of Russia, a great admirer, almost a worshipper, of the Colossus of the century," as he styled Frederick, arrived at Berlin. Among the festivities arranged for the occasion was a great opera, by Tomelli, in which Madame Mara was to sing the principal part. On the morning of the day on which it, was to be performed, it was announced that Mara was very ill. The king sent her a message, to the effect that she could be well if she pleased, and it was his pleasure that she should be. She returned a respectful answer, saying that she was really very ill. All Berlin was in commotion, and eagerly watched |