so predominant. Poor Simpson felt his heart penetrated with the holiest love and veneration when he entered the room.

Nothing could exceed the graceful and benevolent manner in which Mrs Vincent received him. He had been the tried friend of her father, the beloved tutor of her brother; he had lately been of signal service to herself. Mr Simpson was overpowered with his reception. The object of his visit seemed already accomplished. Hardly did it appear necessary to proceed with any verbal statement; surely she knew his position, and this was enough. She had been restored to her rights; she would not, she could not, allow him to suffer by an act which led to that restoration; still less would she consent to reap herself the benefit of an injustice perpetrated upon him.

Some explanation, however, of the object of his visit he found it necessary to make. When he had concluded the brief statement which he thought sufficient, the lady answered in the softest voice in the world-that she was sorry she could not enter upon that subject, as she had promised Sir John Steventon not to interfere between him and Mr Simpson-that Sir John had exacted this promise, and she had given it, as necessary to facilitate the arrangement of her affairs. What could she do, an unprotected woman, with the interests of her child depending upon her? She was bound, therefore, she regretted to say, not to intermeddle in the business. But then Mr Simpson could proceed with his legal remedies. She did not presume to pass an opinion upon the justice of his claim, or to advise him not to prosecute it.

In brief, she had given up the brave and honourable man, who had befriended her at the peril of his fortune, to the revenge of the wealthy, unscrupulous baronet, who had intended to defraud her. It was so agreeable to be on amicable terms with her father's

executor.

Our mathematician doubted his ears. Yet so it was. And it was all repeated to him in the blandest manner in the world. She seemed to think that a duty to any one else but her child was out of the question.

VOL. LVIII. NO. CCCLX.

We believe that many interesting and beautiful mothers have the same idea.

Mr Simpson gasped for breath. Some quite general remark was the only one that rose to his lip. "Yon are angels-to look upon," he halfmurmured to himself.

It was not in his disposition to play the petitioner, and still less to give vent to feelings of indignation, which would be thought to have their origin only in his own personal injuries. It was still surprise that was predominant in him, as at length he exclaimed

"But surely, madam, you do not understand this matter. This aunuity was honestly won by long ser vices rendered to your father, and to his son. Instead of receiving other payments, I had preferred to be finally remunerated in this form-it was my desire to obtain what in my humble ideas was an independence, that I might devote my life to science. Well, this annuity, it is my all-it stands between me and absolute penury-it is the plank on which I sail over the waters of life. I have, too, an object for my existence, which this alone renders possible. I have studies to pursue, discoveries to make. This sum of money is more than my life, it is my license to study and to think."

"Oh, but, Mr Simpson," interrupted the lady with a smile, "I understand nothing of mathematics."

What

Mr Simpson checked himself. No, she did not understand him. was his love of science or his hope of fame to her? What to her was any one of the pains and pleasures that constituted his existence?

"Besides," added the lady, "you are a bachelor, Mr Simpson. You have no children. It can matter little "

A grim smile played upon the features of the mathematician. He was probably about to prove to her, that as children are destined to become men, the interests of a man may not be an unworthy subject of anxiety. However important a person a child may be, a man is something more. But at this moment a servant entered, and announced Sir John Steventon!

On perceiving Mr Simpson, that gentleman was about to retreat, and with a look of something like distrust

2 F

at Mrs Vincent, he said that he would call again. "Nay, come in!" exclaimed the mathematician with a clear voice. "Come in! The lady has not broken her word, nor by me shall she be petitioned to do so. It is I who will quit this place. You have succeeded, Sir John, in your revenge -you have succeeded, and yet perhaps it is an imperfect success. You shall not rack the heart, though you should starve the body. You think, perhaps, I shall pursue you with objurgation or entreaty. You are mistaken. I leave you to the enjoyment of your triumph, and to the peace which a blunted conscience will, I know, bestow upon you."

Sir John muttered, in reply, that he could not debate matters of business, but must refer him to his solicitor.

"Neither personally," continued Mr Simpson, "nor by your solicitor, will you hear more of me. I shall forget you, Sir John. Whatever sufferings you may inflict, you shall not fill my heart with bitterness. Your memory shall not call forth a single curse from me. Approach. Be friendly to this lady. Be mutually courteous, bland, and affable-what other virtues do you know?"

His

He strode out of the room. parting word was no idle boast. Sir John heard of him and of his just claims no more; and the brave-hearted man swept the memory of the villain from his soul. He would not have it there. The baronet soothed his conscience, if it ever gave him any uneasiness, by the supposition that the aged mathematician had found some pupils -that probably he eked out as comfortable a subsistence as before, and had only exchanged the dreamy pursuit of scientific fame, for the more practical labours of tuition. But no such fortune attended Mr Simpson. He had lived too long out of the world to find either friends or pupils, and the more manifest his poverty, the

more hopeless became his applications. Meanwhile, utter destitution stood face to face before him. Did he spend his last coin in the purchase of the mortal dose? Did he leap at night from any of the bridges of the metropolis? He was built of stouter stuff. He collected together his manuscripts, a book or two, which had happily for him been unsaleable, his ink-bottle and an iron pen, and marched straight-to the parish workhouse. There was no refusing his claim here. Poverty and famine were legible in every garment, and on every feature. In that asylum he ended his days, unknown, unsought for.

One of his companions, dressed like himself, in the workhouse costume, who had gathered that he was the sufferer by some act of injustice of a rich oppressor, thought, on one occasion, to console him by the reflection, that his wrongdoer would certainly suffer for it in the next world-in his own energetic language, that he would certainly be d―d.

"Not on my account-not, I hope, on my account," said the mathematician, with the greatest simplicity in the world. "No revenge either here or hereafter. But if civil government deserved the name, it would have given me justice now. Had I been robbed of sixpence on the highway, there would have been hue and crythe officers of government would not have rested till they had found and punished the culprit. I am robbed of all; and, because I am poor and unfriended-circumstances which make the loss irremediable-the law puts forth no hand to help me. Men will prate about the expense-the burden on the national revenue-as if justice to all were not the very first object of government-as if-but truce to this. My good friend, you see these fragments of snuff that I have collected-could you get them exchanged for me for a little ink?"

As my mission was but temporary, and might be attended with personal hazard, I had left Clotilde in England, much to her regret, and travelled with as small a retinue as possible; and in general by unfrequented ways, to avoid the French patroles which were already spread through the neighbourhood of the high-roads. But, at Burgos, the Spanish commandant, on the delivery of my passport, insisted so strongly on the necessity for an escort, placing the wish on a feeling of his personal responsibility, in case of my falling into the enemy's hands, that to save the señor's conscience, or his commission, I consented to take a few troopers, with one of his aidesde-camp, to see me in safety through the Sierra Morena.

The aide-de-camp was a character; a little meagre being, who, after a long life of idleness and half-pay, was suddenly called into service, and now figured in a staff-coat and feather. His first commission had been in the luckless expedition of Count O'Reilly against the Moors; and it had probably served him as a topic, from that time to the moment when he pledged his renown for my safe delivery into the hands of the junta of Castile. He had three leading ideas, which formed the elements of his body and soul, his exploits in the Moorish campaign; his contempt for the monks; and his value for the talents, courage, and fame of Don Ignacio Trueno Relampago, the illustrious appellative of the little aide-de-camp himself. He talked without mercy as we rode along; and gave his opinions with all the easy conviction of an "officer on the staff," and all the freedom of the wilderness. The expedition to Africa had failed solely for want of adopting "the tactics which he would have advised;" and his public services in securing the retreat would have

SHAKSPEARE.

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done honour to the Cid, or to Alexander the Great, had not "military jealousy refused to transmit them to the national ear." His opinion of Spanish politics was, that they owed their occasional mistakes solely to the culpable negligence of the war-minister "in overlooking the gallant subalterns of the national army." Spain he regarded as the natural sovereign of Europe; and, of course, of all mankind-its falling occasionally into the background being satisfactorily accounted for by the French descent of her existing dynasty, by the visible deterioration in the royal manufacture of cigars, and, more than either, by the tardiness of military promotion." This last grievance was the sting. "If justice had been done," exclaimed the new-feathered warrior, rising in his stirrups, and waving his hand, as if he was in the act of cleaving down a Moor, “I should long since have been a general. If I had been a general, the armies of Spain would long since have been on a very different footing. Men of merit would have been placed in their proper positions; the troops would have emulated the exploits of their forefathers in the age of Ferdinand and Isabella; and, instead of receiving a king from France, we should have given her one; while, instead of seeing a French emperor carrying off our princes, as the hawk carries off pigeons, or as a gipsy picks your pocket under pretence of telling your fortune, we should have been garrisoning Paris with our battalions, and sending a viceroy to the Tuileries."

I laughed; but my ill-timed mirth had nearly cost me an "affair of honour" with the little regenerator. His hand was instantly on the hilt of his sword, and every wrinkle on his brown visage was swelling with wrath; when my better genius prevailed. He

probably recollected that he was sent as my protector, and that the office would not have been fulfilled according to his instructions, by running me through the midriff. But, with all his pomposity, he had the national good-nature; and when we sat down to our chicken and bottle of Tinto in one of those delicious valleys, he was full of remorse for his burst of patriotic temper.

The day had been a continued blaze of sunshine, the road a burning sand, and the contrast of the spot where we made our halt was tempting. The scene was rich and riant, the evening lovely, and the wine good. I could have reposed there for a month, or a year, or for ever. It would have been enough to make a man turn hermit; and I, instinctively gazed round, to look for the convent which "must lie" in so luxurious a site. My companion informed me that I was perfectly right in my conjecture, that spot having been the position of one of the richest brotherhoods of Spain. But its opulence had been unluckily displayed in rather too ostentatious a style in the eyes of a French brigade; who, in consequence, packed up the plate in their baggage, and, in the course of a tumult which followed with the peasantry, burned the building to the ground.

Yet, this misfortune was the source of but slight condolence on the part of my friend. He was perfectly of the new school. "They were Theatines," said he " as bad as the Jesuits in every thing but hypocrisy-powerful, insolent, bold-faced knaves; and after their robbing me of the inheritance of my old, rich uncle, which one of those crafty padres contrived to make the old devotee give them on his deathbed, I had dry eyes for their ill luck. But, I suppose," added he, "you know their creed?" I acknowledged my ignorance. "Well, you shall hear it. It is incomparably true; though, whether written for them by Moratin or Calderon, I leave to the antiquarians." He then chanted it in the style of the monkish service, and with gesticulations, groans, and upturning of eyes, which strongly gave me the idea that he had employed his leisure, if not relieved his sense of the war-minister's neglect, by exerting his talents as the "Gracioso" of some strolling company. The troopers gathered round us, with that odd mixture of familiarity and respect which belongs to all the lower ranks of Spain; and the performer evidently acquired new spirits from the laughter of his audience, as he dashingly sang his burlesque :

Tra lara, &c. Tra lara, &c.

The whole performance was received with an applause which awoke the little aide-de-camp's genius to such an extent, that he volunteered to sing some stanzas of his own, immeasurably more poignant. He was in the act of filling a bumper to the "downfall of all monkery on the face of the earth," when the report of a musket was heard, and the bottle was shivered in his hand. The honour of Don Ignacio Trueno Relampago was never in greater danger, for he instantly turned much whiter than his own pockethandkerchief: but the Spaniard is a brave fellow, after all; and seeing that I drew out my pistols, he drew his sword, ordered his troopers to mount, and prepared for battle. But, who can fight against fortune? Our horses, which had been picketed at a few yards' distance in the depth of the shade, were gone. A French battalion of tirailleurs, accidentally coming on our route, had surrounded the grove, and carried off the horses unperceived, while our gallant troopers were chorusing the songster. The sentinel left in charge of them had, of course, given way to the allurements of "sweet nature's kind restorer, balmy sleep," and awoke only to find himself in French hands. Don Ignacio would have fought a legion of fiends; but seven hundred and fifty sharpshooters were a much more unmanageable affair; and on our holding a council of war, (which never fights,) and with a whole circle of

Tra lara, tra lara, &c.

bayonets glittering at our breasts, I advised a surrender without loss of time. The troopers were already disarmed, and the Don, appealing to me as evidence that he had done all that could be required by the most punctilious valour, surrendered his sword with the grace of a hero of romance. The Frenchmen enjoyed the entire scene prodigiously, laughed a great deal, drank our healths in our own bottles, and finished by a general request that the Don would indulge them with an encore of the chant which had so tickled their ears during their advance in the wood. The Don complied, malgrè, bongrè; and at the conclusion of this feat, the French colonel, resolved not to be outdone in any thing, called on one of his subalterns for a song. The subaltern hopelessly searched his memory for its lyrical stores; but after half a dozen snatches of "chansons," and breaking down in them all, he volunteered, in despair, what he pronounced," the most. popular love-song in all Italy." Probably not a syllable of it was understood by any one present but myself; yet this did not prevent its being applauded to the skies, and pronounced one of the most brilliant 'specimens of Italian sensibility. It was in Latin, and a fierce attack on the Jesuits, which the young officer, a palpable philosophe, had brought with him from the symposia of the "Ecole Polytechnique:"