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ery of "Murder, murder! seize the mur derer!"

At an exclamation so singular, in such a place, the company thronged into the apart ment, but Sir Philip Forester was no longer there. He had forcibly extricated himself from Lady Bothwell's hold, and had run out of the apartment which opened on the landing-place of the stair. There seemed no escape in that direction, for there were several persons coming up the steps, and others descending. But the unfortunate man was desperate. He threw himself over the balustrade, and alighted safely in the lobby, though a leap of fifteen feet at least, then dashed into the street, and was lost in darkness. Some of the Bothwell family made pursuit, and had they come up with the fugitive they might have perhaps slain him; for, in those days, men's blood ran warm in their veins. But the police did not interfere; the matter most criminal having hap pened long since, and in a foreign land. Indeed, it was always thought that this extraordinary scene originated in a hypocritical experiment, by which Sir Philip desired to ascertain whether he might return to his native country in safety from the resentment of a family which he had injured so deeply. As the result fell out so contrary to his wishes, he is believed to have returned to the Continent, and there died in exile. So closed the tale of the MYSTERI OUS MIRROR.-Keepsake.

TRAVELLING ODDITIES. (From the New Monthly Magazine.)

No. II.

THE people of Geneva, since the establishment of steam-boats on their beautiful lake, are particularly partial to the making its tour, and admiring the magnificent scenery by which it is on all sides surrounded. Accordingly, each Saturday morning the decks of the "William Tell," or the "Winkelried," are crowded with citizens of that limited republic, determined on the pursuit of pleasure; and as they are a refined and talented people, possessing good nature and wit, they seldom experience the disappointment of Seged in their plans; and tale, and anecdote, and song the wish to please and to be pleased are all combined to give effect to the innocent and happy design. The day was fine, the refreshments good, excellent music was heard upon the waters as they issued forth one morning on an excursion, and "all went merry as a marriage-bell," until it was discovered that there was an Englishman on board; a philosopher of the North; one trusting rather to accident than to concert for

enjoyment; one relying more upon himself than others for pleasure; a gregarious, but not a social being; one, in fact, who, they had reason to know, would prefer carving out amusement for himself, and in his own way, to accepting it as prepared by others. To prevent this foreign lump leavening the whole mass, and spoiling their well-concocted arrangements, it was agreed that all the attentions they could display should be lavished on the stranger. Politeness and courtesy, the compliments of men, and the smiles of women, meat, and cakes and wine, were all freely bestowed upon the Briton; Burgundy, Bourdeaux, and Chan:pagne were fully discussed; and "as he drank huge draughts of Rhenish down," the Anglican gloom wore off, his passions were aroused; and, as his senses became somewhat disordered, his vanity imputed to a sense of national or individual merit, the distinctions accorded, at the best, from kindly feelings to a foreigner, or, at the he swore; abused the Swiss as a vile and worst, from policy. He sang, he ranted, and their mountains, and their floods; denounced mercenary race; depreciated their forests, them as spiritless and talentless; the slaves of foreign influence, and but nominally free; been to him) heard him in displeasure but in yet his temperate hosts (for such they had silence. There were many, very many to one, and that one was a stranger and unknown. He then vaunted the glories of England, and the prouder attributes of Englishmen; he was the Columbus of an ancient and renowned people, just landed amongst savages, and on shores hitherto unknown and unexplored; he looked upon himself as godlike, in comparison with the ignorant and debased hordes he visited" yet this availed not." vaunted and he threatened-" yet this availed not." He dared them to the fight; his single arın against the hundreds-" yet this availed not." Some turned in sorrow and in contempt; but all prudently kept aloof from "the mighty master;" until irritated by their indifference, infuriated by their reserve, or mistaking both for fear, he seized a cudgel, and commenced an attack to right and left on all which came within his reach, moral or material-men and mirrors-glasses, bottles, and windows:-he would have stopped the very steam-engine itself, had not such of the passengers and crew, as he had not put hors de combat, resolved upon a general and simultaneous rush upon their single opponent. He was subdued, pinioned, and guarded; and they pursued their way in comparative peace, only occasionally disturbed by the energetic and unflattering expressions of fruitless rage, and now powerless hostility; but the pleasure they had promised themselves had been effectually destroyed, and their plans of enjoyment essentially defeated. They returned to Geneva, vexed, bruised, wearied, and disappointed; and consigned

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their disturber into the custody of the police, to await that punishment which in Geneva any public offence to manners is ever certain of attracting. He was condemned in an enormous fine (which he as instantly discharged), with an order to quit the territories of the Genevan republic within twenty-four hours. From the latter part of his sentence he appealed, in soliciting his judges to limit the term allowed him for banishment to one-fifth of that specified, coolly observing-"that in less than that he could traverse the entirety of their state, and yet have more than sufficient leisure to arrange his affairs and bid his friends farewell." He was taken at his word, and politely conducted by the gens d'armerie to Dejean's hotel at Secheron, the boundaries of the canton; and, during his brief progress, wonderfully enriched the vocabulary of his conductors by certain emphatic expressions, which, as a precious present, they only display to those who are capable of appreciating their value; they are reserved for the use or abuse of Englishmen, when they refuse to consign their passports on the bridge, or otherwise contest the power of the Executive at Geneva. Such specimens of our country's manners are happily rare; but where they do occur, they fail not to influence largely the degree of welcome, which would otherwise be accorded to those who merit it, and derogate greatly from that social comfort the unoffending would otherwise be permitted to enjoy.

"FAGGING" AT WINCHESTER SCHOOL.

(From the Literary Gazette.)

A PAMPHLET has just appeared by Sir A. Malet, exhibiting the detestable nature of fagging, as practised at Winchester, and most of our leading schools. It is truly said that the whole system is so objectionable, that any attack upon it would have many supporters. Rational in its origin, it has been so perverted as to have become a nuisance and a curse. It is the prolific parent of the worst of feelings and of principles; and under its operation, one class of petty tyrants is surely succeeded by another, and another, the more odious because the tyrants have been originally fags and slaves, and when raised to authority cannot be expected to resist the malevolent passion for making others suffer in turn as they have suffered. That numbers of delicate youths and boys of tender dispositions have their lives sacrificed, from the hardships imposed upon them, we are confidentially assured: but even were they to survive the sleepless nights, the exposures to cold and privations, the extreme

fatigues, and other injuries to which they are subjected-what can restore their minds to the right tone of feeling, to purity, to high notions of self-respect, and to every gentleman-like sense of dignity?

That such a state of things, or that such means of educating the gentry, the future clergy, lawyers, legislators, and peers of England, should have one voice uplifted in their favour, is to us extraordinary; but that such a case as is related by Sir A. Malet, whose brother was the offender on this occasion, should be defended by the head master is still more wonderful. It would hardly be believed were it not that Dr. Williams not only acknowledges but justifies it by his own letter. The strange tale runs thus

"The prefects, or eight senior boys of the school, are in the habit of fagging the juniors; and that they may have a greater command of their services during meal times, they appoint one of the junior boys with the title of course keeper, whose business it is to take care that whilst the prefects are at breakfast or supper, the juniors sit upon a certain cross bench at the top of the hall, that they may be forthcoming whenever a prefect requires any thing to be done. Durthere are no fires kept, a sufficient number ing that part of the short half year in which of boys for this service was generally furnished from the fourth class, and it was considered that the junior part of the fifth class, which is next in the ascending scale, was exempt from so disagreeable a servitude. It appears, however, that within these few years, there has been a much greater press of boys to enter the school than formerly; the consequence has been, that they have come to it older and more advanced in their studies than formerly, and the upper departments of the school have received a greater accession of numbers in proportion than the lower classes. The fourth class, therefore, gradually furnishing a smaller number of fags, the prefects issued a mandate, that the junior part of the fifth class should share with the fourth in the duty of going on hall; this was for some time submitted to; but at length one of the boys of this class intentionally abstained from seating himself on the cross bench at supper-time, and being seen by the senior prefect, and desired by him to go on hall, refused to do so, and argued the point as a matter of right, alleging, as the ancient usage of the school, the exemption of the junior part of the fifth class from this duty till the commencement of fires; be referred to the course keeper as being the depositary of the rules, and expressed himself prepared to abide by his decision. The course keeper, who does not appear to have been very well versed in the usages of the school, decided that the boy ought to go on hall; and the prefect therefore resolved, not only to enforce this new rule, but to punish the contumely of this un

lucky boy by giving him a public chastisement: to this, however, the junior did not feel inclined to submit, and a second prefect laid hold of him, that he might not evade the beating destined for him: a simultaneous movement then took place amongst the juniors, who pinioned the two prefects, released the boy who was being beaten, and gave them to understand that the intended. chastisement should not be inflicted. The

prefects instantly laid a complaint before the head master, who expelled the boy who had refused to go on hall, and five others, who had appeared most active in preventing the prefect from punishing him."

education; and that having been well fagged himself, his prejudices are in favour of that system, out of which he has come an eminently learned and estimable man. But still our dislike and disapprobation of the system itself must not be concealed; and we heartily rejoice that Sir Alexander Malet has been provoked to bring it before the tribunal of the public.

EVILS OF THE KING'S BENCH.

gazine.)

Such are the features of this precious (From a Correspondent of the London Maquarrel. It is not to ensure the better instruction of the juniors; it is not to see that they study and do their duty; it is not even to enforce in them moral and proper habits in school or out of school;-it is that they may be the passive, though discontentedthe obedient, though growling, menials of a set of premature despots! Woe be to the lad of independent and honest spirit, who may dislike to toast his prefect's cheese, or warm his bed, or clean his shoes, or obey his

dirtiest command! He must submit, muttering curses not loud but deep, to be trained in the way which he should not go, in servility and meanness, and often in roguery and vice, or he shall be treated with many stripes; and if he rebel, as in the case before us, he shall he expelled with disgrace from the seminary of learning, where discipline is every thing, and common sense nothing. For Dr. Williams we are ready to allow that he is, in all probability, acting upon principles inherited from a similar course of

In cold winter nights it is one of the prefectorial laws, that a fag or two should lie in their superiors' beds till they are properly warmed, and then my feudal lords prefect turn out the shivering urchins at midnight, and lay themselves down to rest!

As an anecdote of fagging, we may relate, that Lord Byron, when he became senior boy at Harrow (for Harrow, Westminster, Eton, &c. &c. are all alike, and all like Winchester in this respect), was not only a sturdy boxer, beating his equals at fistycuffs, and very fond of thrashing them, whether be longing to the school or the town, but also a terrible dragon upon the smaller fry of fags. It was a common custom with him and a worthy compeer of the same high standing, to take possession of a stair which the younger boys had to descend, and, with some nonsensical accusation and admonition, to knock them down in succession, so that they frequently tumbled from the top to the bottom.-In the Charter-house, where fagging was formerly carried to an unwarrantable length (the smaller boys were nightly slung out of the windows and over the walls, at the risk of their necks, to execute the paltry or mischievous errands of the chief boys), the system is now nearly or altogether abolished. At Westminster, we have heard of cruelties that would disgrace the most barbarous savages that ever destroyed one another by tortures. At Eton, the general profligacy is almost incredible; and all These things are because a scholar dare as soon die as open his lips with a complaint, however shame fully he may be abused. Secrecy and dread are the parents of crime; and society is thus inundated with evil characters, made so by this foul system of

education.

A GENTLEMAN of polished habits and independent fortune, had brought himself, by a course of improvidence, and the crowning aid of his attorney, to the eventual humiliation of the Bench. "I remember him," said here," when he first arrived. His attire in our informant, to whose expressions we adall respects the archetype of fashion; his manner gentle, yet self-possessed; but he was abashed at his implication, and a weight of melancholy incessantly oppressed him. He had to think on a family he loved; he had lost his condition in respectable society; and the sufferings occasioned by his folly, when he remembered that they were not confined to himself alone, appeared to him the result of conduct which deserved a more upbraiding name.

He was beset on various occasions by the volunteers of thoughtless dissipation, who vaunted it as the sovereign panacea for a wounded heart! but his affection and decorum were not then subdued by recourse to sensual expedients, and he would have thought that to take refuge from the reflections suggested by his mingled love and sorrow, in the gross indulgence of profligate society or dissolute enjoyments, was the consummation of unmanliness. His solitary resolutions were, however, gradually relaxed; he joined a table d'hôte; he ventured on a game of racquet; he accepted invitations to dinrer, supper; he took a hand at hazard; he enlarged his usual portion of wine from a pint to a bottle; from the gentlemanly reserve which not only was natural in him, but which was also enforced by the maxims of a judicious education, he became free and jocular, and indiscriminate in his association; he took and admitted liberties; he gained some proficiency in the glorious art of swearing; he travelled through the accidence of flash, and could relate a story highly seasoned with the gross ingredients necessary to regale a callous

taste.

From the date of his first trespass, all the decency of his nature was subverted; he had strong and frequent pangs of a returning spirit, which seemed to tell him he was a renegade from honour and humanity; but these

Compunctious visitings were feeble in comparison with the abandonments which the ready ministry of libertine associates presented to his solace; and which the agonizing distraction of his mind now indisputably required, as the only nostrum that could yield it temporary ease. His excesses wrought intensely on a temperament inordinately sensative; and his conduct thenceforth indicated symptoms of the insanity which clouded the remainder of his career.

"It was necessary to preface the scene I am about to describe by these previous observations. I was invited once to dinner with Mr., for the purpose of making one of a lodge of mock Freemasons. Mr. Swas to be proposed on the occasion. I remember well the morbid anxiety that preyed on him throughout the dinner, which was an incomparable specimen of that laughable inequality of parts, of which that refection in a prison is frequently composed. A very noble turbot on a small and broken dish, a neck of venison equally respectable, and a brace of grouse, were to have furnished the repast; but the latter article was pertinaciously retained by the culinary ministrant as security for a score of eighteen pence: which it was obvious the party would have willingly (had such an operation of finance been feasible) advanced to liberate the glory of the second course. In the corner of the small apart ment, which was to behold at first the rites of Comus, and subsequently to become the lodge of a masonic mystery, were standing twenty bottles of delicious Chambertin. A table-cloth was not to be procured; and considerable difficulties were confronted in the purveyance of bread, which eventually appeared; though the porter and potatoes, which were associated with that indispensable comestible in the commission of supply, were not to be acquired by any art, promise, or persuasion. A paucity of wine-glasses was remedied by the substitution of cups and saucers; and the table being drawn towards a bed, the latter piece of furniture supplied a seat for two of the society, who uttered no reproaches at its uncomfortable lowness. Abstracts, pleas, detainers, in a fasciculus with the red tape noose, were profusely scat tered round the room, and when encountered by the foot, were usually saluted with a kick and glowing malison, that indicated an appropriate estimate of the beneficence of law and lawyers. The company consisted of a gallant officer, who had acquired distinction in the scientific branches of the military calling, and had received the Duke of Wellington's ex press and frequent commendation; an Irish barrister of sixty years of age, possessing an unusual rubicundity of visage, a yellow wig of spare dimensions, and the testamentary rema ins of linen which, from their atramental hues, appeared to mourn for their departed predecessors! a clergyman of bril

liant parts and gaiety: a poacher who was famous for a song; an unfortunate of respectable birth and numerous progeny, who had languished there ten years in jeopardy; and a captain, of remarkable vivacity and elegance of person and deportment, who had borne a commission in a regiment of Lancers, and who was the master of the room and donor of the festivity.

Our informant goes on minutely to delineate the orgies of this wretched den. The low wit, the audacious profligacy, the miserable buffoonery, are not subjects of public exhibition. The unhappy man, whom he has so powerfully described, was made the butt in one of these ridiculous ceremonies, which are found amongst those absurd associations called "Odd Fellows," and "Druids," and in which the fears of the credulous are employed to call forth practical jests of the most contemptible character. In prison, or out of prison, the amusements of the stupid and the profligate are amongst the most miserable exhibitions of human weakness. In this mummery of the King's Bench, the debased faculties of the unfortunate gentleman alluded to were made the object of cruel and licentious sport;-and still he performed his part with perfect seriousness, acting with a feeling of unfeigned solemnity throughout the whole egregious foolery. The fact and the chief actors in that fact are well remembered. Distress of recollection gained on Mr. S. with daily violence; his liberation was followed, it is true, with all that the beneficence of patronage could do: he sailed for the West Indies, where the climate aggravated his disease of mind; he returned to England in a state of destitution, was immured in Bedlam, and concluded his disastrous career in calamitous necessity and mental darkness.

We could point out, in the squalid purlieus of the Bench, many instances of ruined fortune, desolated hope, and spiritless abandonment: all bowed beneath the foul humiliation of their destiny-officers who held commissions in distinguished regiments, turned horse-dealers or bailiffs' followers; the son of a wealthy Indian, the cad to a stage-coach; a learned Theban, who has the honour to receive the visits of illustrious dukes, a driveller in a miserable cul-de-sac, where, like his former protetype, Alcides in the court of Omphale, he bends to the infliction of the slipper: another, eminent for wit, for knowledge, and descent, may be beheld in wan and linenless attire, treading the Dædalean mazes of that foul locale, drowning misery and thought at every fountain of forgetfulness, and lighting fires at the shrines of the Geneva Diva, to be extinguished in the rank recess of temples more odious still.

THE BURIAL GROUND OF VERA CRUZ.

(From the London Weekly Review.)

Of all the dreadful receptacles for the dead that ever were described in the romances of Mr. Lewis or Mrs. Radcliffe, I do not think any one could be found to equal this. I term it a "burial ground" out of courtesy, and in order to convey an idea of the use to which it is appropriated; but certainly, if by burial we are to understand the interment of a body, this disgusting portion of mother earth can by no means be honoured by such an appellation. To say that it is literally a Golgotha, will barely convey a fraction of the horrors which abound there: the earth, the trees, the ledges of ruinous walls and sandy banks, all have their share.

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I had received intimation from several quarters already, that the burial ground of Vera Cruz was worth seeing, and accordingly, one fine sun-shiny morning," as we say in England (with a feeling of gratitude seldom experienced in these regions), I set out alone for the place, not wishing any uncongeniality of companionship to interfere with my first impressions, I walked about a quarter of a mile out of the town before I reached it.

Ominous enough it was. A long straggling wall, of the colour of pestilence, if one may so express it, extended from the rear of the church to a distance which I cannot precisely determine, not having measured it with a traveller's accuracy, at all events, it withdrew somewhat indefinitely, and turned a corner, I suppose. An open door was before me, or rather a gap in the wall, the door having been worn off its hinges most probably, as the scape-grace J- said the other day, by the continual application for places during the sickly season.

A wild weed-grown plantation presented itself; the trees unhealthy, stunted, and many of them broken in the middle, and trailing the upper half of their decayed foliage across the pathways. The sun struck down in full glare over the place, and a pestiferous heat rose up in palpable exhalations from the ground. It was now the commencement of the sickly season. My steps were now impeded by a quantity of human bones of all shapes, hues, and dimensions; bare and bleached, black or decaying, and what was infinitely worse, some of them were covered with a dry and discoloured skin. I paused awhile and looked around me. It seemed like the high road to Hades; and some minutes elapsed ere I felt thoroughly disposed to proceed. A few paces further, however, brought me more immediately into the scene; for on the right hand side, piled up in the angle of a decayed and crumbling wall, lay a tremendous heap of bare and VOL. I.

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grinning skulls? They were not arranged in any express form, but had evidently been cast there for the purpose of clearing away a little, just as we see rubbish heaped up in a corner. A drunken party of soldiers and sailors sacking a town, or a herd of resurrection men, who should act thus, would occasion little surprise to those who are at all acquainted with such "men and times;" we might even excuse a society of antiquaries, or other depredators and despoilers for the good of science, had they done so in a strange country (their own native land being a natural, if not a philosophical exception); but that any nation of people so far removed from barbarism as the Mexicans now are, should thus heedlessly toss about the mangled remains of their countrymen-beside many of whom they had fought and bled; with whom they had toiled, and eat, and slept, in close companionship-would puzzle any one to explain, until he became thoroughly acquainted with this singular people. I seemed to stand in a vision of skulls! Just in the act of turning off to a path between the trees on my left, I caught sight of an object which instantly brought all my impressions to a climax. Upon a high green bank, a few yards from this hideous heap of the last remnants of mortality, stood one solitary skull, apparently looking down at me from its dark and hollow eye-caves! What made it so pre-eminently dreadful, was the circumstance of its having all the hair upon the head, while the face, temples, jaws, and teeth, were of a ghastly and ivory whiteness! I shuddered involuntarily, and for a moment felt myself fascinated, as it were, and rivetted to the spot by its apparent consciousness, both of itself and of my presence. I could not help looking behind at it as I walked away.

I now advanced farther into this desolate plantation, and entered a narrow path between some trees, over which the unhealthy and discoloured leaves seemed to have been sparely sprinkled by handfuls. I had not proceeded above a dozen paces ere I was arrested by a fresh object of terror. A human hand, covered with a parched and livid skin, rose up out of the earth, just in the centre of my path! In walking towards it I had taken it for some dry root, and my sudden perception of the reality made it doubly startling. The path, if path it might be termed, was very narrow, and my first impulse, as the shortest way to avoid this threatening apparition, was to jump over it; but the attempt made me shudder (of course, being attended with the expectation that it would seize me by the leg-a fancy which looks very ridiculous in words); squeezing myself therefore among the boughs, I passed by as hastily as possible. Before, however, I had penetrated to the middle of the plantations, I descried, through an opening to the left, something

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