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but the courier himself said otherwise; he went his other journeys, and either forgot, or tried to forget the circumstance altogether. It would have been happy for him if others had been so inclined, or tried to have buried the affair in oblivion. It was on the evening after that on which we had started that we entered the principality of the prince of Lucca ; a beautiful scene was before me, and I leant out of the carriage windows to view the lovely scenery and admire the beauty of an Italian setting sun. Upon a little eminence on one side of the road were three men, apparently on the watch for some one; they were peasants, and by their dress, of the very lowest order; but what appeared to me a most unusual thing was, that two of them held carbines in their hands. The carriage was obliged to pass the acclivity where the men had placed themselves, and it soon became evident that it was the object of their watchfulness; for no sooner had we approached than one of them fired his carbine in the air; the postilion threw himself on the ground, where he lay, with his face to the earth, and began repeating all the Ave Marias and Pater Nosters he either ever knew or could at that time remember. The men immediately hastened to the carriage and opened the door. I concluded their object was to rob, and immediately offered them my watch and purse. No, signor, said one of them, who seemed to act as the leader, 'tis not your money we want, but the miserable wretch beside you; descend, sir, if you please, we mean you no harm. The man spoke with as much calmness as if he were going through one of the ordinary occurrences of every-day life, whilst the eyes of his companions glared with a frightful spirit of malevolence on my fellow traveller. I had no sooner descended from the carriage than the poor courier was seized upon and dragged to the ground; he fell on his knees, and with clasped hands and imploring looks besought them for mercy take all, all but life;-every amends that man could make, would he make; he would give up all; he had been deceived; oh, mercy! mercy! for heaven's sake grant me mercy! "Mercy," cried the man, with a still, quiet laugh, that curdled my very blood,"mercy! didst thou shew mercy when others wept and prayed, and besought thee to save a father and a husband's life? didst thou shew mercy? No; you never thought it would soon be thy turn to sue and pray in vain for mercy; but I waste time

wretch that thou art!"-at these words he raised his carbine, and swinging it round his head with all his force, struck the unfortunate courier on the forehead, and ere I had time to interpose, the other two had buried their knives in his breast, and with their leader ascended the eminence and disappeared. I raised the unhappy man in my arms; his head fell back; he spoke not a word; and in a few moments breathed his last. I had the body conveyed to the next inn, and made a deposition of the circumstances before the commissary, who promised that no pains should be spared to bring the offenders to justice; but though I staid some months at Nice, I never afterwards heard the affair mentioned.

J. M. B.

CHARACTER OF THE EUROPEAN POWERS IN 1187.

THE Emperor Frederick Barbarossa of Germany wrote a very vaunting letter to Saladin, previous to his taking the cross in 1187, in the course of which occurs the following curious description of some of the principal European nations of that period.

The tall Bavarian-crafty Swedewary France-provident and ingenious England-Saxony sporting with the sword-agile Brabant-Loraine unacquainted with peace-unquiet Burgundy - Friesland excelling in the slingBohemia fiercer than the wild beaststhe pilot Pisan. A. H.

THE

METROPOLITAN RAMBLER.

No. IV.

COURSE OF THE THAMES THROUGH

LONDON.

RESUMING our station at the Panorama of London, I proceed to fulfil the promise given in the conclusion of a former paper of this series, of tracing "the course through London and its vicinity, of their grand and mighty river.”

If ever stream deserved to be deified by the dwellers on its banks, "Father Thames" has surely merited to be so. Without such a river, London could not have arisen. The conquest of the world, indeed, might raise a metropolis equal to London in magnitude, and approaching it in comparative wealth and magnificence, on the banks of the Tiber. if England have indeed been the conqueror of the world, it has been much

But

more by her steady industry, her persevering enterprise, her maritime and commercial spirit, than by her arms; and it was only the broad bosom of a river like the Thames, gently swelled by every tide, that could bear the wealth of the world into the arms of one favoured port.

The beneficent influence of the Thames in nourishing the growth of this mighty city, has been repaid by the grandeur and beauty with which British industry and consequent wealth have graced his banks; and the grand result is, that his course now lies through a thick succession of objects possessing a variety and an amount of interest unparalleled in either the ancient or the modern world.

Looking almost due west, between the two campanile turrets of St. Paul's, we discover in the extreme distance, on the confines of the three counties of Middlesex, Bucks, and Berks, a thick, bold projection, formed by the towered heights of Windsor. Close at their feet, overlooked by that stately pile, so long the great rural mansion and for two generations past the favourite home of English royalty, flows the Thames, in that course of rich and varied sylvan beauty which he runs, after visiting the classic shades and time-honoured monuments of Oxford.

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At that point, about nineteen miles west of us, as the crow flies," the Thames may be considered as first entering the grand circle visible from the point on which we stand. But from that point, in his advance, he winds, close hidden from our view, by height, and grove, and distance, until he reaches the far-famed hill of Richmond, which we perceive at some distance to the left of the former point, forming a bold ridge in what may be termed the third distance in the picture.

Behind that ridge he still is hidden, and behind the upper portion of the royal gardens of Kew, just on the right of it. Ata turn which he makes close to the little old tower church of Isleworth, on his left, we catch, as he approaches, the first interesting glimpse of his welcome and quiet face. It is pleasant, as many of our readers are doubtless aware, on a fine spring morning or summer evening, after crossing the finely-wooded park of Sion House, to be ferried, at that point, across the cheerful, sparkling current, and stroll up to Richmond on the other side, with the river on the right hand, and Kew gardens on the left.

The tall pagoda in the lower part of

those gardens, is clearly distinguishable from the point where we stand, rather to the right of Isleworth church,and shooting up, at that distance, like a simple obelisk. The white face of Sion House itself, partially embowered, is discernible a little to the right of this latter object, and on the left bank of the river.

Of the stream itself we have no further glimpse for a considerable distance down its course. Flowing quite hidden between Brentford and Kew, and under the well-known bridge at the latter place, it emerges to view for the second time at one of its turnings just above the contiguous villages of Mortlake and Barnes on its Surrey shore, close over the redroofed houses of which we trace its unbroken line running horizontally across the picture to its next great bend against Chiswick, which we recognize by the dark stunted spire of its church standing almost upon the water's brink, and Hammersmith, with its grey, ordinary-looking steeple, rather nearer us and more to the right, and its long ranges of unfinished houses.

Sweeping again to the left, the river disappears entirely as it approaches the tower of Putney church, which we see distinctly on its right bank, and the spire of Fulham on its left-the high wooden bridge there, again, being completely hidden from our view by intervening ground and trees. It is in its course from hence down to Wandsworth, on its right, which we recognise by the steeple of its old church, towards the river, and that of its new one on the hill to the left, that the surface of the Thames is once more becoming visible.

The great curve towards the northeast at Wandsworth, where it receives, from the Surrey side, the truly silver waters of

"The blue transparent Vandalis," shews us at that point the full breadth of the stream, which again tapers off to the eye into a narrow line, until it opens out in the grand wide bend just above Chelsea and Battersea, where we observe the spire of the former on the right bank and the brick tower of Chelsea old church on the left, while Battersea bridge, rather singularly, disappears entirely behind that projection of the Middlesex shore, and the objects upon it as if it had been purposely contrived that as few of the bridges as possible in the upward line of the river should be discernible from St. Paul's.

It is here that, viewed from this

elevation, the Thames begins to look metropolitan. Battersea spire itself is seen just over the towers of Westminster Abbey. We now find its Middlesex bank thickly lined with buildings, among which we distinguish the long slated roofs and tufted groves of Chelsea college, the grand military asylum being the first object of great national interest that marks the entrance of the river into the present metropolis. And in the rear, to the right, lies the thickly-peopled, though openly-built district of Chelsea, with its innumerable streets of small houses of the dingy London brick, erected for the most part within the last twenty years, and forming a dull, levellooking congregation of habitations, scarcely varied, except by the truly elegant Gothic tower of the new church, which this vast increase of population had rendered necessary.

Descending the river-passing, on the Middlesex shore, two remarkably lofty chimneys, one of which, I believe, is that of the Chelsea water-works, and on the Surrey side, several windmills which, it must be owned, are objects more desirable in a landscape,—we come now to the elegant modern bridge of Vauxhall, the first we arrive at, that can, perhaps, be strictly regarded as a metropolitan structure; forming the communication, across the Thames, between the extreme western parts of modern London, and Vauxhall, Kennington, Clapham, and the Brighton and Dover roads, &c. on the Surrey side. This bridge is one of the results of the amazing increase of the metropolis within the present century.

Between it and Westminster bridge, the next as we come down the stream, several objects demand our attention on either shore. First, on the left bank, looking fortress-like, with its round turrets, its long curtains, and its loop-hole windows, is the Milbank Penitentiary, close squatted on its marshy site. Just below it, and to the right, we distinguish a low group of four pointed turrets, peeping above the houses of the older part of Westminster, and shewn dark, like the two black-mouthed chimneys above mentioned, against the light face of the long river line which extends from Chelsea to Vauxhall; which we should hardly have suspected to be the top of a church; but they are, in fact, the small corner towers of the church of St. John the Evangelist, one of the two original parishes of ancient Westminster. They are the feet of the elephant-if there be any truth in the jocose simile, that this structure resembles

"an elephant turned on his back." Be this as it may, we shall find, when we come to a nearer survey, that, notwithstanding the severity of satire levelled against Sir John Vanburgh, the architect of that edifice, there is much elegance in its details, as well as something imposing in its general aspect.

But the grand point of interest to the eye on that portion of the river's bank, is the solemn-looking mass of edifices which rises to our view just over the northwestern extremity of Westminster bridge, thick-clustering, like the historical associations that hover around them. These, as a whole, we see to great advantage from the point where we stand, and are also well situated for discriminating the several masses. First, and most prominent, the two great western towers, well and distinctly shewn as we look obliquely behind and between them;-then the massive fore-shortened ridges of the nave and transept, with the pinnacles of Henry the Seventh's chapel peeping over and relieving the great ridge of all, the long sharp roofing of Westminster Hall, which plants its portly presence across that end of the line of ecclesiastical buildings; and against which, again, with its grand western gable looking upon the river, and just discernible, a little to the right of the high crown of Westminster bridge, is the House of Commons, as it appeared before the late conflagration. The buildings of the House of Lords having been for the most part hidden from view in this direction by the Hall and the House of Commons, the late fire has made little alteration in the appearance of the whole mass as seen from this position.

The tower of St. Margaret's, Westminster (the fellow-parish of St. John's, in the ancient city), which, elsewhere, would look by no means insignificant, seems there, nestling close under the giant sides of the Abbey, like something out of its place-like a superfluity at least, if not an excrescence. Yet, since the Abbey towers have so long been mute, we could ill spare the cheerful voices of St. Margaret's bells, enlivening our holidays and state processions. The majestic sweep of Westminster bridge, spanning the river almost in its broadest part, and seen here in fine perspective, adds much to the general grandeur of effect of that group of objects as seen in this distant view.

We cannot here pause to meditate upon the countless sources of interest about a locality which has been the scene of so many august spectacles-so many

solemn deliberations and momentous decisions, which has rung for so many ages with the thunders of the English bar and parliament,-where the fate of mighty nations has so often trembled in the scales, which enshrines the dust of many a lion-hearted warrior, many a resistless orator, many a heaven-touched bard, to merit a grave in which has stimulated, through a course of centuries, The poet's, scholar's, soldier's eye, tongue, sword,

to unwearied effort, and to glorious achievement. This is a spot to which, hereafter, we must often ramble.

The opposite shore presents us with some objects of a different character. It is refreshing to turn from the solemn and the stony, from "the dark grey tint of centuries," the stern and the sepulchral, to the deep groves of Vauxhall, and to think of their fairy splendours, and the myriads of gay feet and light hearts that each succeeding summer sees roving

among them.

Midway between these gardens and the Surrey side of Westminster bridge, a grotesque-looking cluster of buildings

rises to our view over another tufted mass

of trees, and cuts its outline upon the river's face. There is the grand seat and centre of English ecclesiastical jurisdiction, the ancient archiepiscopal palace of Lambeth, looking old and odd. There is its Lollards' tower of old black-red iron-looking brick-Persecution's favourite hue-while the rough grey

tower on the left, with its staircase turret oddly projecting above it, looks also like some close appendage to the primate's residence, but is in fact the ancient parish church of Lambeth. The fine old elmgroves in the archbishop's grounds, verging to the water, and, as viewed from this side, embowering the antique mansion, combine with those of Vauxhall to give a beautiful variety to that level shore.

Westminster bridge itself dates only from the middle of the last century; and the opening of that fine communication has contributed greatly to the rapid increase of buildings over that great level tract extending from the Thames in this part to the nearest line of the Surrey hills, and included for the most part in the newly-formed borough of Lambeth.

EGOTISM OF TOURISTS.

A person once asked a compositor why he had an unusual quantity of the capital letter I in his case. "Sir," said he, "I am composing a book of travels."

A NIGHT'S ADVENTURE. (Translated from the French).

"HIST! hist! are you still there ?" "We are, both of us. Have you seen him?"

"Yes, the wretch! I have tried for the last time to obtain from him-you know what he received me no better than usual. So now, since extremities have become indispensable, let us proceed as agreed upon. Kirmann, courage, my boy! 'Tis close upon the stroke of twelve; he will then go out follow, till you see him entering a dark and deserted street, then pounce upon him, hand to wrist, and make him deliver up the objects in question. No pity, my friends! swear that you will have none. "We swear!"

"

"'Tis well; I shall be near at hand, and watch the result!"

The three individuals thus conversing, did not present the ordinary resem

blance to malefactors.

One of them, he who would appear to direct the enterprise, seemed to be a good sort of citizen, well clothed, healthy, of honest dimensions, and such a one as you may see every day in any frequented street, with a full handkerchief under his arm, or an Something empty one in his hand. observable in the gait, starched look, and apparently disjointed haunches, would lead you to believe that this man employed himself at some very common trade, which, that we may make no mistake, we shall not yet name.

The smaller of the remaining two had one of the most grotesque faces you can conceive. His projecting proboscis trussed up between the eyes, might prove that nature had not forgotten to make some noses for the convenience of spectacles; his mouth was encircled with scanty and large teeth, and add to all this-he was humpbacked. By the unsteady glimmer of a lamp swinging in the night wind, it was not impossible to perceive that the keen sight of the dwarf glanced with delight upon a pistol which he held in his right hand.

The third personage, owing to his physical conformation, partook in some manner of a relationship between his two associates. Gaunt, withered, and cadaverous looking, his left arm raised, as if to point his weapon at the breast of a giant, it gave him no distant resemblance to a gibbet. Ever and anon he was quaking. Was it from cold, or fear? It struck the hour of midnight.

From a house well known in the

forward by the fresh morning breeze, and a slight crack of a whip which descended on his shoulders, as he was turning the first corner. He received the following morning by the earliest post, a billet thus penned :

quarter of St. Martin, slowly poured out nearly a dozen men; the two suborned individuals, ever on the alert, were issuing at intervals, for the purpose of reconnoitring, from the dark alley, which they had chosen for concealment; they were obliged at least twenty times to go back and wait anew. At length they espied the being of their search. It was a kind of fashionable animal, frizzed, scented, and adopting a peculiar tie of the cravat. He crossed over to the other side of the street, shivering and humming an air, and was soon lost in one of the narrow cross-streets. He walked on rapidly, as if to avoid coming in contact with another wayfarer, whose heavy footsteps sounded not far off; but changing all at once from the disposition of dread to that of boldness, he suddenly stopped short, and allowed sufficient time for those to come up who were effectually pursuing him. "Halt!" cries one of them: "money A MARRIED MAN'S REVERIE.

or life!"

"Eh? what? eh?"

"Money, or life!" And the mouths of two pistols were presented, the one at his hat, the other at the height of his stomach.

"Speak but a word and you are a dead man," chimed in the two voices.

"For heaven's sake, gentlemen! I have nothing to give you. I possess but this watch, and 't is a pinchbeck one."

"In that case, then, off with your clothes!"

"Do, kind gentlemen, be content with my hat. I have of late made the dearest sacrifices to clothe myself. My poor aged mother denied herself her little earnings to pay for my outfit."

"Liar! off with your coat, and no delay, or else Ah, to commence,

throw away that switch."

"There, then, gentlemen; there is my beautiful superfine black coat and velvet collar; you can get a hundred and twenty francs for it anywhere, if the tailor has not deceived me.'

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"Considering you as much a coward as a swindler, I contrived last night to set my two journeymen, Paul and Kirmann, across your path, each furnished with a chocolate pistol. You might have supped off them. I had them previously attested by my worthy friend, the commissary of police. You preferred restoring the clothes with which I had furnished you, and for which you had refused paying me; you have done right, for we are now quits. Get angry, if you choose, and receive the felicitations of your very humble servant,

YOUR TAILOR."

BY JOHN INMAN.

WHAT a blockhead my brother Tom is, not to marry! or rather, perhaps, I should say, what a blockhead not to marry some twenty-five years ago, for I suppose he'd hardly get any decent sort of a body to take him, as old as he is now. Poor fellow! what a forlorn, desolate kind of a life he leads; no wife to take care of him -no children to love him-no domestic enjoyment-nothing snug and comfortable in his arrangements at home-nice sociable dinners-pleasant faces at breakfast.-By the way, what the deuce is the reason my breakfast does not come up? I've been waiting for it this half hour. Oh, I forgot; my wife sent the cook to market to get some trash or other for Dick's cold. She coddles that boy to death. But, after all, I ought not to find fault with Tom for not getting a wife, for he has lent me a good deal of money that came quite convenient, and I suppose my young ones will have all he's worth when he dies, poor fellow! They'll want it, I'm afraid; for although my

"Now your vest. "Would you send me away en che- business does very well, this house-keepmise ?"

"Now off with the rest."

"Oh! merciful heaven! the sole pair I possess: for pity's sake, gentlemen, for pity!" A peal of laughter answered his supplication. And the same voice continued,

66

Away with you, and beware how you look behind you."

The bird so strangely plucked of his plumage, waited not for a second injunction. He sped on his course, propelled

ing eats up the profits, with such a large family as mine. Let me see; how many mouths have I to feed every day? There's my wife and her two sisters-that's three; and the four boys-seven; and Lucy and Sarah and Jane, and Louisa, four more-eleven; then there's the cook and the house-maid, and the boy-fourteen; and the woman that comes every day to wash and do odd jobs about the house-fifteen; then there's the nurserymaid-sixteen; surely there must be

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