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A merchant of high respectability in Bordeaux had occasion to visit Paris upon commercial business, carrying with him bills and money to a very large amount. On his arrival at the gates of the French metropolis, a genteel-looking man opened the door of the carriage and addressed him to this effect: Sir, I have been waiting for you some time. According to my notes, you were to arrive at this hour; and your person, your carriage, and your portmanteau exactly answering the description I hold in my hand, you will permit me to have the honour of conducting you to Monsieur de Sartine.'

The gentleman, astonished and alarmed at this interruption, and still more at hearing the name of the lieutenant of the police mentioned, demanded to know what M. de Sartine wanted with him, adding that he had never committed any offence against the laws, and that the police could have no right to detain him. The messenger declared himself ignorant of the cause of the detention, and said that when he had conducted him to M. de Sartine, he should have executed his orders. After some further explanations, the gentleman permitted the officer to conduct him to the police official.

M. de Sartine received him with great politeness, and after requesting him to be seated, to his astonishment described his portmanteau, and told him the exact amount in bills and cash which he had brought with him to Paris, where he was to lodge, his usual time of going to bed, and a number of other circumstances, which he had conceived were known only to himself. Having thus excited his attention, M. de Sartine asked him: Sir, are you a man of courage?'

The gentleman, still more astonished at the singularity of this interrogatory, demanded the reason why such a question was put, adding that no man had ever doubted his courage.

M. de Sartine replied: 'Sir, you are to be robbed and murdered this night. If you are a man of courage, you must go to your hotel, and retire to rest at the usual hour. But be careful not to fall asleep; neither will it be proper for you to look under your bed, or into the closet which is in your chamber. You must place your portmanteau in its usual situation near your bed, and betray no suspicion. Leave what remains to me. If you do not feel your courage sufficient to bear you out, I will procure some one who shall personate you, and go to bed in your stead.'

The merchant being convinced that M. de Sartine's intelligence was accurate in every particular, refused to be personated, and resolved to follow literally the directions he had received. He accordingly drove to the hotel, and went to bed at his usual hour, eleven o'clock. At halfpast twelve-the time mentioned by M. de Sartine

who were concealed under the bed and in the closet, rushed out, and seized the offenders with the property in their possession. The consequence was that the perpetration of the murder was prevented, and sufficient evidence obtained to convict the offenders. M. de Sartine's intelligence thus enabled him to prevent many cases of murder and robbery.

The second story is as follows. The Emperor of Austria, Joseph II., having in the year 1787 formed and promulgated a new code of laws relative to criminal and civil affairs, and having also established what he conceived to be the best system of police in Europe, could scarcely ever forgive the French nation, in consequence of the accuracy and intelligence of M. de Sartine's police having been found superior to his own, notwithstanding the pains he had bestowed on that department of his government. A notorious Austrian offender, who had committed many atrocious acts of violence and depredation in Vienna, was traced to Paris by the police established by His Majesty, who ordered his ambassador at the court of France to demand that this delinquent should be delivered up to public justice. M. de Sartine acknowledged to the imperial ambassador that the person he inquired after had been in Paris; that, if he wished it, he would inform him where he lodged, and the different gaming-tables and other places of resort which he had frequented while there; but that he was now gone.

The ambassador insisted that this offender must still be in Paris, otherwise the emperor would not have commanded him to make such an application.

M. de Sartine smiled at the incredulity of the imperial minister, and replied to the following effect: 'Do me the honour, sir, to inform the emperor your master that the person he looks for left Paris about the 10th of last month, and is now lodged in a back-room, looking into a garden, in the third story of a house, No. 93 in Street, in his own capital of Vienna; where His Majesty will, by sending to the spot, be sure to find him.'

It was literally as the French minister had stated. The emperor, to his astonishment, found the delinquent in the house and apartment described; but he was greatly mortified at this proof of the superiority of the French police.

A SONNET.

As when some workers, toiling at a loom,
Having but little portions of the roll
Of some huge fabric, cannot see the whole,
And note but atoms, wherein they entomb-
As objects fade in evening's first gray gloom-
The large design, from which each trifling dole
But goes to make the long much-wished-for goal:
So do we seek to penetrate the doom
That lies so heavily upon our life,
And strive to learn the whole that there must be;
For each day has its own completed piece.
The whole awaits us, where no anxious strife
Can mar completeness: here but God's eyes see
What death shall show us when our life shall cease.
J. E. PANTON.

the door of his bedchamber burst open, and three men entered with a dark-lantern, daggers, and pistols. The merchant perceived one of them to be his own servant. They rifled his portmanteau undisturbed, and settled the plan of putting him to death. Hearing all this, and not knowing by what means he was to be rescued, it may be supposed he was under great perturbation of mind during such an interval of suspense. When at the moment the villains were preparing Printed and Published by W. & R. CHAMBERS, 47 Paterto take the merchant's life, four police officers, noster Row, LONDON, and 339 High Street, EDINBURGH.

All Rights Reserved.

CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL

OF

POPULAR

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART

Fifth Series

ESTABLISHED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, 1832
CONDUCTED BY R. CHAMBERS (SECUNDUS)

No. 76.-VOL. II.

:

SATURDAY, JUNE 13, 1885.

PRICE 1d.

legends as the Arthurian and Fingalian have their birth, and all the land is filled full of faerie.'

These particular legends are the vague and dim expression of some mysterious conflict, at the origin of which and of the combatants we can but guess. But for the British people, the wonderland of childhood has long been left behind; spirits no longer haunt the streams and the meres; the dryads were banished centuries ago from their forest homes in the sunny south; the fairies fled at the sound of the steam-whistle; the pixies of Cornwall died with the old speech. Only in the mountain fastnesses of Scotland and Wales, and in the forlorn isles set 'far amid the melancholy main,' does a general acceptance of belief in the unseen appear at all possible.

CELTIC SUPERSTITION. DESPITE the existence of a Society for the collection of well-authenticated ghost-stories, dreams, omens, and such like, it is little better than a commonplace to remark that the age of superstition is for Europe well-nigh past. Doubtless, in remote nooks there yet linger fragments of eerie tradition; the fortune-teller yet meets with a credulous maid, or an isolated instance of revenge for supposed bewitchment or effects of the evil-eye may be recorded; but the educated mass of the people simply smile at or bewail such antiquated belief. No phantom dare remain to alarm and perplex the era of electricity. It is with races and nations as with man in the particular in their early childhood there is a wondering awe of nature and her forces; the wind and the sea, the river and the waterfall, It is a truism that the race which is brought are either superior beings to be reverenced and into most direct contact with the mighty agencies worshipped in themselves, or they are the of nature is more superstitious than that which haunts of spirits and of gods. As for the inhabits a fertile and populous region. The least children, of certain races, there exist fairies imaginative dweller in a great city probably feels and gnomes; the world is inhabited by num- something akin to awe in the solitude of the berless denizens other than mortal; every-mountains or out on the vast ocean by night, thing is regarded with strange amazement. with the dome of the throbbing sky above, and These beliefs are doubtless affected by the sur- the heaving and tumbling waters beneath. Or roundings and nature of the people. The char- passing through the pine-woods of Culloden in acter and the superstitions of the Saxons, for the gathering gloom, he might find come upon example, harmonise thoroughly; a savage, war- him with strange vividness and force the old like race, mighty and pure, the product of the Celtic belief-the belief which Ossian chanted in stern North. And so in the ancient legends we his lonely despair-that the souls of the heroes are told how, in the beginning, all sprang from are abroad on the breeze that murmurs in the two regions-Niflheim, the frozen, and Muspell, gloaming athwart the field where they fell. And the burning. Into the chaotic chasm the giant so it is that fisher-folk and Highlanders were Ymir, the frozen Ocean, is born; his children the ever the most superstitious of human beings. whirlwinds and the barren mountains are the Now that the phantoms are fleeing before the foes of the life-giving Sun. He is slain, and the standards of the School Board, it is in those earth is formed from his flesh. Then succeeds parts of the Highlands furthest removed from war between 'the monsters of winter and the contact with the new order of things that the luminous fertile gods.' It is all a personification richest field lies open for inquiring into oldof the tremendous struggle of man in those dreary world legends and credulities. Those lonely northern regions against the elements. There isles amid which the tourist sails during his follows a time of fairy tales, the time when deeds summer voyage on the western coast of Scotof heroic romance are performed, when such land are inhabited by a race as far apart from

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his own as twilight is from the glare of noonday. Familiarity with nature in her wildest moods never breeds contempt. Something of the desolation of the isles has entered into the islanders. There broods a silence there that is at first awful, broken only by the scream of the seabird. The sadness that envelops them like the mist on the hills is reflected in the pathos of the songs, such as that of Macleod of Dunvegan! or in laments like that of M'Crimmin; it is present in the faces of the natives. The maidens croon ballads as old as Ossian, and as

pathetic as his story. The tales that are told in the bothies around the peat-fires are of lights dancing on the waves where the boat is to go down; of shrouds appearing in the moonlight; of second-sight; of fairies and ghostly pipings; of water-snakes and kelpies. The dreamy grief of the gray sea' has entered into their nature. Yet the Celt fears death less than most. He has thought so much of it, that it has lost its terrors for him. It is a common salutation to wish one a decorous and peaceful departure, instead of the good health which in the Lowlands and the south country is the expression of courteous interest.

A tale of the supernatural loses or gains by its surroundings. That which is regarded as a jest in a brilliantly lit London drawing-room, becomes something very different when recapitulated in a thatched cottage by one for whom every word of the narration is as true as his New Testament. The glow from the peat-fire in the middle of the floor only serves to make the shadows lurk more duskily in the corners; the winds are raging without; a drop of rain is blown now and again upon the window. Nature wears her most awe-inspiring aspect in the Hebridean Isles. The mists drift in strange shapes along the hillsides, rifting and gathering capriciously, now revealing a yawning chasm, now hiding the torrent that roars from the linn. Mile upon mile of dreary moorland stretches away, untrodden by human foot, or without trace of human presence, save where a cairn tells of 'far-off old unhappy things and battles long ago.' The seas are as awe-inspiring as the isles. Between the islands of Scarba and Jura, boils and roars the Atlantic maelstrom-the whirlpool of Corryvreckin. Many a gruesome legend hangs over it, dating from the day when the Scandinavian Prince wagered to sail across, and was whirled round and round, then went down into the depths. Can there be any cause for astonishment at the superstition of the Gael? The Celt is the most melancholy of men; he has turned everything to supernatural uses, and every object of nature, even the unreasoning dreams of sleep, are mirrors which flash back death upon him. He, the least of all men requires the reminder that he is mortal. The howling of his dog will do him that service.' So wrote one who studied long and lovingly the Celtic character, and to whom the Isle of Mist was very dear.

The melancholy and superstition of the Celtic race may be due in part to the unsuccessful struggle which it has maintained against the advance of a slowly but surely conquering power. Speech, custom, the race itself is being slowly overcome; soon in its separate and distinct form it will have passed for ever. But incorporated with the other elements which go to make up the British people, its influence, ennobling and refining, will last with the English.

There is a similarity in the superstitions of all times and countries. The legend of Fraoch Eilan in Loch Awe, of the golden apples guarded by a dragon, is but the story of the fair Hesperides over again. It is curious also to note that the in his biography of the missionary of Iona, powers ascribed by Adamnan to St Columba, coincide with those attributed to witches, seers, and other intermediaries between the visible and the invisible in the Highlands. The Gaelic woman who divines the success of a mission by the direction which the smoke takes in issuing from the chimney of her cottage, is simply fol lowing the example of the ancient Greeks and random to guide one in an enterprise or deliberaRomans. The custom of opening the Bible at tion is but a repetition of the sortes Virgiliana.

Gael and Cymri alike had intercourse with the fairies, whom they called by any other name than their own; hence the designation of the men of peace,' 'the hunters in green,' 'the good people,' &c. The fairies of the Highlands were There is little affinity with the revellers in the not by any means the fairies of Shakspeare. wood near Athens on midsummer night. Rather they were represented as a discontented and fretful folk, easily offended, delighted when opportu nity afforded to annoy mortals, whom they seem to regard with envy and hate. On Friday, the Celt's aversion to naming them was increased tenfold, for on that day their powers are greatly To wear their favourite colour, augmented. Rites of a green, was an unpardonable insult. complex nature were gone through to protect the unbaptised infant and its mother from their clutches. Even as True Thomas of Ercildoune was spirited away to fairyland, so Ossian falling asleep on a shian (green fairy knoll) is kept a prisoner there for twenty years. One of our oldest ballads-as it chances, a Lowland produc tion-tells of the rescue of Tamlane from his fairy captors. A certain minister of Balquhidder was remains still in the halls of his enemies, notless fortunate, for, if legend is to be credited, he withstanding that an opportunity for obtaining his release was presented. Did space permit, hundreds of similar tales might be recounted. The flag of wondrous virtue which is kept in the castle of Dunvegan on the coast of Skye was given to Macleod by the fairy whom he courted similar to that of the mermaid, whom, on moonon the green braes by the sea, and whose story is light nights, the sailors still hear crooning sad laments on Colonsay. A Gaelic poem, one of many on kindred themes, tells how a maiden-a milkmaid-met in secret with the Hunter in Green. But on going to confession on the eve of St Agnes, she revealed her love, and received from her ghostly adviser instructions to slip under her lover's vest a cross that St Columba had blessed. She did so; and lo! instead of the Hunter in

Journal

Green, there was only 'a brown withered twig, so elf-twisted and dry.'

The urisks were a sort of intermediary race between spirits and mortals, and acted the part ascribed to the brownies of England and of Lowland Scotland. If kindly treated, they might render service to the family to which they had joined themselves. Often the guidwife found her kitchen put to rights, and the fire blazing cheerily when she awoke. But unkindness drove them away at once. A tale is told of an urisk whose customary bowl of milk was one morning forgotten, and who fled with a wild shriek never to return.

The urisks are not to be confounded with the ghostly retainers who guard the fortunes of many an old Scottish family. The phantom drummer of the Bonnie House o' Airlie, beating his bloodcurdling roll, is well known. Like old castles and mansions everywhere, those of the north countrie are mostly haunted. A spirit lingers in deserted Duntulm, for instance. The M'Donalds dwelt there till the ghost of Donald Gorm drove them out. While yet his body lay in Edinburgh, his ghost wandered through Duntulm. Unearthly voices re-echoed along the passages, shadowy tartans waved, there were heard wailing and moaning. A rash youth dared to "beard the lion in his den' with the aid of sword and Bible; but in vain, and so the eerie ruin crumbles away. The Highlanders are indeed constantly receiving messages from the unseen. Thus, it has been revealed to them that another conflict will be fought on dark Drummossie Moor; for often, while crossing it in the gloaming of a summer evening, has the Gael found himself in the midst of the smoke of battle. He has seen the tartans waving, he has seen the broadswords flashing, and though he cannot explain the reason, he still believes that his vision is prophetic.

But a hundred little incidents which by others would pass unheeded are for him fraught with the most solemn meaning. The cock which Crows at midnight conveys the intelligence of a death in the neighbourhood. Itching of the nose or ringing in the ears bears the same message. If his cattle die, the evil-eye has gazed upon them. The boat that drifts empty out to sea has been pushed from its moorings by the fairies. Deeply confident in these beliefs is the Gael.

More even than in the Highlands of Scotland, is the influence of the age felt in Wales. They're changing everything nowadays, aren't they, sir?' was the remark addressed to the writer by an old Welsh woman in the oldest of churchyards in the oldest and quaintest of walled cities. The nineteenth and the thirteenth centuries come very close together in Conway. The train dashing out through the tube and under the walls of the castle is the spirit of utilitarianism; the mouldering towers and battlements of the mighty castle of Edward I. and Eleanor his queen embody the ancient chivalry. The sound of the old woman's words rings on like the voice of a passing bell; and as it tolls, lo! the stately dames and gallant knights pass out through the arched gateways into the mist, and return never more; the castle waxes old and crumbles; the navvy comes with his pick and undermines it; snorting fire, a shrieking monster dashes upas he comes, all the old beliefs, all the simple

manners and customs, fly disgusted into the mountains, there to linger.

But among the hills there are wondrous legends floating about: the nineteenth century has receded into the dim vagueness of a dream. Merlin chanting his incantations; Llywarch Hen singing sad dirges for Gwenn; Taliesin, the chief of bards: these are nearer you there. In the Cardigan mines, the knockers are still heard, indicating where a rich lode may be expected. It is yet believed that if you cut a turf from St David's and stand upon it, you will see the Islands of the Blessed. The stones of Helog-abCunog have their weird story; many a cottage in the lonely uplands is haunted. Witches were consulted and believed in so lately as 1826. The Cymri of Wales have their giant too, the good Foulkes Ty Du, who is always helping them. When evil, on the other hand, is about to overtake them, the Tybiath (=German Ahnung) or presentiment forebodes it. No singer can be a true bard unless the divine Awen has descended upon him. Cader Idris is famous for its inspiring influence. Legend has it that to sleep upon its summit makes a man a poet or a madman.

We cannot better conclude than in the words of one of Mary Howitt's Welsh heroines: 'I believe that there are two great realms in nature, the outward and the inward, the one being as real as the other. Science can and does penetrate the one, the outward, and will in time lay bare all its mysteries; but at present-whatever science or even intellect may do in time to come-they now lead away from and are antagonistic to the inward, which is the realm of spiritual life. We Welsh people, like all primitive and simple nations, as yet retain our hold upon the realin of spirit; it has not quite gone from us yet, and there are many living amongst us to whom more or less of the inward, the spiritual, is revealed.'

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.

CHAPTER XXIV.

FRANCES had not succeeded in resolving this question in her mind when Thursday came. The two intervening days had been very quiet. She had gone with her mother to several shops, and had stood by almost passive and much astonished while a multitude of little luxuries which she had never been sufficiently enlightened even to wish for, were bought for her. She was so little accustomed to lavish expenditure, that it was almost with a sense of wrong-doing that she contemplated all these costly trifles, which were for the use not of some typical fine lady, but of herself, Frances, who had never thought it possible she could ever be classed under that title. To Lady Markham, these delicacies were evidently necessaries of life. And then it was for the first time that Frances learned what an evening dress meant-not only the garment itself, but the shoes, the stockings, the gloves, the ribbons, the fan, a hundred little accessories which she had never so much as thought of. When you have nothing but a set of coral or amber beads to wear with your white frock, it is astonishing how much that matter is simplified. Lady Markham opened her jewel-boxes to provide for the same endless

roll of necessities. This will go with the white dress, and this with the pink,' she said, thus revealing to Frances another delicacy of accord unsuspected by her simplicity.

But, mamma, you are giving me so many things!'

'Not your share yet,' said Lady Markham. And she added: 'But don't say anything of this to your aunt Cavendish. She will probably give you something out of her hoards, if she thinks you are not provided.'

This speech checked the pleasure and gratitude of Frances. She stopped with a little gasp in her eager thanks. She wanted nothing from her aunt Cavendish, she said to herself with indignation, nor from her mother either. If they would but let her keep her ignorance, her pleasure in any simple gift, and not represent her, even to herself, as a little schemer, trying how much she could get. Frances cried rather than smiled over her pearls and the set of old gold ornaments, which but for that little speech would have made her happy. The suggestion put gall into everything, and made the timid question in her mind as to Lady Markham's generous forbearance with her sister-in-law, more difficult than ever. Why did she bear it? She ought not to have borne it-not for a day.

On the Wednesday evening before the visit to Portland Place, to which she looked with so much alarm, two gentlemen came to dinner at the invitation of Markham. The idea of two gentlemen to dinner produced no exciting effect upon Frances so as to withdraw her mind from the trial that was coming. Gentlemen were the only portion of the creation with which she was more or less acquainted. Even in the old Palazzo, a guest of this description had been occasionally received, and had sat discussing some point of antiquarian lore or something about the old books at Colla, with her father without taking any notice, beyond what civility demanded, of the little girl who sat at the head of the table. She did not doubt it would be the same thing to-night; and though Markham was always nice, never leaving her out, never letting the conversation drop altogether into that stream of personality or allusion which makes Society so intolerable to a stranger, she yet prepared for the evening with the feeling that dullness awaited her, and not pleasure. One of the guests, however, was of a kind which Frances did not expect. He was young, very young in appearance, rather small and delicate, but at the same time refined, with a look of gentle melancholy upon a countenance which was almost beautiful, with child-like limpid eyes, and features of extreme delicacy and purity. This was something quite unlike the elderly antiquarians who talked so glibly to her father about Roman remains or Etruscan art. He sat between Lady Markham and herself, and spoke in gentle tones, with a soft affectionate manner, to her mother, who replied with the kindness, easy affectionateness, which were habitual to her. To see the sweet looks which this young gentleman received, and to hear the tender questions about his health and his occupations which Lady Markham put to him, awoke in the mind of Frances another doubt of the same character as those from which she had not been able to get free. Was this

sympathetic tone, this air of tender interest, put on at will for the benefit of everybody with whom Lady Markham spoke? Frances hated herself for the instinctive question which rose in her, and for the suspicions which crept into her mind on every side and undermined all her pleasure. The other stranger opposite to her was old-to her youthful eyes-and called forth no interest at all. But the gentleness and melancholy, the low voice, the delicate features, something plaintive and appealing about the youth by her side, attracted her interest in spite of herself. He said little to her, but from time to time she caught him looking at her with a sort of questioning glance. When the ladies left the table, and Frances and her mother were alone in the drawingroom, Lady Markham, who had said nothing for some minutes, suddenly turned and asked: 'What did you think of him, Frances?' as if it were the most natural question in the world.

'Of whom?' said Frances in her astonishment. 'Of Claude, my dear. Whom else? Sir Thomas could be of no particular interest either to you or me.'

I did not know their names, mamma; I scarcely heard them. Claude is the young gentleman who sat next to you?'

'And to you also, Frances. But not only that. He is the man of whom, I suppose, Constance has told you to avoid whom, she left home, and ran away from me.-Oh, the words come quite appropriate, though I could not bear them from the mouth of Charlotte Cavendish. She abandoned me, and threw herself upon your father's protection, because of'

Frances had listened with a sort of consternation. When her mother paused for breath, she filled up the interval: "That little, gentle, small, young man!'

Lady Markham looked for a moment as if she would be angry; then she took a better way, and laughed. 'He is little and young,' she said; but neither so young nor even so small as you think. He is most wonderfully, portentously rich, my dear; and he is very nice and good and intelligent and generous. You must not take up a prejudice against him because he is not an athlete or a giant. There are plenty of athletes in Society, my love, but very, very few with a hundred thousand a year.'

'It is so strange to me to hear about money,' said Frances. I hope you will pardon me, mamma. I don't understand. I thought he was perhaps some one who was delicate, whose mother, perhaps, you knew, whom you wanted to be kind to.'

'Quite true,' said Lady Markham, patting her daughter's cheek with a soft finger; and weli judged: but something more besides. I thought, I allow, that it would be an excellent match for Constance; not only because he was rich, but also because he was rich.-Do you see the difference?'

'I—suppose so,' Frances said; but there was not any warmth in the admission. 'I thought the right way,' she added after a moment, with a blush that stole over her from head to foot, 'was that people fell in love with each other.'

'So it is,' said her mother, smiling upon her. 'But it often happens, you know, that they fail in love respectively with the wrong people.'

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