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RIBS AND TRUCKS, 
 
 FROM DAVY'S LOCKERj 
 
 MAGAZINE MATTER BROKE LOOSE, 
 
 FRAGMENTS OF SUNDRY THINGS IN-EDITED. 
 
 BY W. A. G. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 CHARLES D. STRONG. 
 1842. 
 

 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1842, by 
 
 Charles D. Strong, 
 In tlie Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 A Chapter on "Whaling 9 
 
 Cunegunde. A Ballad of Upper Rbineland 18 
 
 The Oil of Life. An Arabesque. (From the French.) 22 
 
 The Tree-Toad's Song , . 32 
 
 The Flight of Souchong. A Chinese Tale 33 
 
 Master Simon to a Noisy Mantelclock 49 
 
 A Peep at Cadiz 51 
 
 <« Good Bye".. 64 
 
 A Forenoon's Cruise in the China Sea. 66 
 
 Sky-Sail-Fole Lyrics 77 
 
 METROPOLITAN GLIMPSES. 
 
 London Bridge 83 
 
 St. Savior's 85 
 
 Holy Paul's 88 
 
 Green Arbor Court 99 
 
 Day & Martin's 101 
 
 Gray's Inn Garden 103 
 
 The British Museum 105 
 
 The Parks 113 
 
 Westminster Abbey 123 
 
 El Alma Deudor 135 
 
 The Story of ihe '' Commis " 137 
 
 Pere La Chaise 149 
 
 La Rochelle J56 
 
 Aufredy. J62 
 
 Count Geoffry's Ghost 175 
 
 Leonie. A Legend of the Loir 181 
 
RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 A CHAPTER ON WHALING. 
 
 ^* A strange fish ,• were I in England, now, and had but this fish paintedj not a 
 holiday fool there but would give me a piece of silver." — Tempest. 
 
 Whaling ! And what, O what, cries the reader, 
 (thrice critical and captious personage,) can there be 
 in connection with whaHng, the bare mention of 
 which leaves not a palpable grease-spot on the 
 hitherto unsullied pages of Maga? ^ We are not in 
 the ^' oil line," and take comparatively little interest 
 in the light-engendering speculations of our neigh- 
 bors of the '' treeless isle ; '' so pr'y thee, spare us 
 thy spermaceti statistics. Placid reader ! if such be 
 your ejaculation, permit me to say, you are unwar- 
 rantably raw to the romance of the subject. 'T is 
 high time you were aware that few voyages, at least, 
 can boast of greater attractions than a " whaling 
 cruise" offers to the nautical lounger, the novelty 
 hunter, the devotee of exciting sports — the any- 
 thing, or anybody, in short, in any manner " wedded 
 
 * New England Magazine. 
 
10 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 to the imperial sea." 'T is your whaler alone, who 
 goes down to the sea, in ships ; other mariners hurry 
 across it. He alone does business upon the great 
 waters ; and, more emphatically than other " sea- 
 farers," makes the ocean his home. With his top- 
 sail-yard " sharp up," and his helm " four spokes a- 
 lee," he rides out the storm, month in and month 
 out — nestling, like a sea-bird, in the trough, and 
 feeling himself, as it were, in harbor ; while other 
 ships rise on the horizon and scud by, and lessen 
 and reel out of sight, with blind celerity, on their 
 respective courses. A trip to Europe may serve to 
 introduce the novice to the " blue deity ; " but, for 
 a thorough acquaintance, commend me to the long, 
 familiar intercourse of a whaling voyage. 
 
 Art quite asleep ? — if not, follow we yonder sea- 
 seasoned vessel, a few thousand miles, to her frol- 
 icking-place in the Southern ocean. Were she a 
 " Cape Horner," the favor of your company were 
 too much to ask ; but her cruise is to end in nine 
 months ; and she shall confine herself to our own 
 Atlantic — or straying thence, it shall be only for a 
 few months, " beyond the Cape of Hope." Every 
 one knows the incidents of a sail of fourteen days 
 out ; the visits of porpoises, grampuses. Mother 
 ^Haries, &c. &c., too " tedious to mention." So let pass 
 a fortnight ; and lo ! the Azores—rising through the 
 early mist ; the orange-gardens of the Atlantic ; the 
 roosting-place, too, of bevies of clouds, which gather 
 from the surrounding waters, to perch there regu- 
 larly over night. That huge, steamy- looking rock 
 
A CHAPTER ON WHALING. ll 
 
 (so it appears) is Fayal ; the seeming ravines are its 
 vineyards ; and yonder, towers the magnificent cone 
 of Pico ; its peak unveiled as the heat increases, 
 with a girdle of iridescent vapor, and a crown of 
 scattered snow. To-day, you may choose the vint- 
 age of your wine, and revel, to satiety, in lemonade, 
 grapes, bananas, and fresh oranges ; to-morrow, we '11 
 attend mass, tease the senoritas, and ride mule- 
 back ; next day, stow away the ship's marketing, 
 and make sail again — by way of the Cape de Verds, 
 and perhaps Fernando Noronha — for our destined 
 arena, the '^ whaling-ground." Another hiatus, and 
 here are the '' Cape Verds." Unlike the Azores, 
 they would never be mistaken for Hesperides — be- 
 ing rather picturesque than fertile or beautiful ; but 
 there are very primitive people, shells and curious 
 basaltic columns, many tropical features, and, 
 moreover, a very intellectual race of pigs. Tarry 
 we here, for a couple of months, and then return to 
 our vessel. We find her in latitude 42^ south, al- 
 most incog. ; her gala-dress, of uniform, uninjured 
 canvas, gone ; her sides begrimmed and rusty ; sails 
 patched and streaked ; everthing the worse for wear ; 
 in fact, she has been busily at work, and is now on 
 the lookout for more whales. You see the " hands " 
 aloft, like crows on a pine tree-top, and you will 
 probably hear from them shortly. Ha ! yonder rises 
 a fountain-like misty jet, far, far away from out the 
 blue water. They see it — His a whale-spout ! Now 
 listen. ^' There she blows ! " "A right whale ? " 
 ^'Ay, ay, sir." "Where away?" "Four points 
 
12 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 off the lee bow." " Keep her off a bit." " There 
 she blows — ^blo-ows ; " " There 's white water ; " 
 " there — goes — flukes." " Back th^ main yard — 
 stand by the boats." Now look at the bustle ; here's 
 a gathering — and a grouping, worthy of Teniers : 
 striped shirts and checked shirts, and red shirts and 
 blue shirts, and no shirts ; cropped " sou'- westers," 
 and rimless tarpaulins, and conical crimson caps, 
 and weather-worn Scotch bonnets, with eager faces 
 underneath; many postures, and all tints, jumbled 
 together like an unraveled rainbow slightly coated 
 with mud. The watch below have mustered at a 
 moment's warning, trowsered and trowserless, shod 
 and shoeless, rudely recalled from snug chases of 
 phantom whales, in their dreams, to the more ardu- 
 ous pursuit of the real '^ crittur." " Hoist and 
 swing," roars the captain ; '^ lower away," halloo 
 the mates ; " " look out for the tackles, boys ; " 
 " shove off; " " now give way ; " '^ lay down to it " 
 — " pull, pull, bend your backs, my sons." And 
 they are off, on their hazardous quest — startling the 
 solitudes, and gliding over the undulary hills and 
 valleys of the middle ocean ; their bright, keen 
 weapons glittering in the sun, and nearing, with 
 every lusty pull, their Leviathan game. Ha! he is 
 gone; he has sunk to his privileged haunts — a 
 thousand feet below, in the fathomless abyss. No 
 matter — he must rise shortly ; and if any boat now 
 floats above him, the whale may be descried, dwin- 
 dled away in the clear depths, as far as size is con- 
 cerned, " very like a weasel." There ! again he 
 
A CHAPTER ON WHALING. 13 
 
 comes up, and the waters foam and recoil, as his 
 gigantic bulk breaks the surface — hemmed in by 
 four boats, two of which are shooting towards him 
 — the others, with peaked oars, quietly waiting his 
 approach. " Pull, pull — bend your backs ; see that 
 line clear." Now they are close upon him. There 
 stands the boat-steerer, all eagerness, in the bows of 
 the nearest boat ; his harpoon in one hand, and a 
 coil of the line, gathered for greater security, in the 
 other. Hist ! they are near enough. '' Lie, lie, 
 lie ; " " hold water, hold water." There goes the 
 barbed iron, with a gleam! " Starn, all." Out 
 shoots the tow-line, smoking, from the bows. Down 
 dives the huge victim, with a flourish of his lignum- 
 vitae tail, especially to be eschewed. Indeed, if an- 
 nihilation could occur to matter, I know of no fitter 
 means of insuring it, than a few minutes' exposure 
 to a similar weapon. The boat is now (in whaling 
 dialect) fast, and her crew must prepare for a ride. 
 Opine not, placid reader, that their task is ended ; 
 by no manner of means. The prize is harpooned, 
 to be sure ; but bethink you how you would manage 
 a powerful, unbroken colt, with the mere appliance 
 of a rope tied to the root of his tail. The whale, as 
 yet only wounded, is to be killed ; and to be killed, 
 he must be exhausted wath loss of blood ; so 
 '' catching a turn," as the line slackens, off* dart our 
 boat's crew, in the style and manner of pigmies in 
 a cigar-tray, appended to the dorsal extremity of a 
 mad dog. " The white foam dashes high — away ! 
 away " they scour, for thirty or forty minutes, at 
 2# . 
 
14 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 least, before hauling in upon their hne ; and were I 
 wishing bluebeard Neptune an appropriate convey- 
 ance, it should be their cedar boat for a curricle, and 
 a lively young whale for his nag, instead of the 
 nondescript shapes, which serve him for coach- 
 horses, on the antique reliefs. Well; the minutes 
 fly, the boats converge, the game is almost spent; 
 and now for the death ! " Haul in," " pull ahead," 
 ^^lie," "hold water;" and flash, again falls the 
 glittering lance into his very vitals. Every oppor- 
 tunity for a thrust is improved ; not an inch of line, 
 that can be safely retained, is lost ; and onward they 
 fly, through water crimsoned with the life's blood of 
 their prey, which, since the first fatal stab with the 
 lance, has whirled up from his lungs, with every 
 heave, in a tall ruddy fountain. But its volume is 
 lessening now — its color paling fast ; there is little 
 struggling to ensue ; that little, however, is fearful 
 in the extreme. It is difficult to imagine, without 
 seeing it, such intense mobility in so bulky a mass. 
 The whale seems at times literally poised on its 
 head — as two thirds of its immense body whirls up, 
 writhing into the air ; and it is needless to say that, 
 during this exhibition, " starn all " is the order of 
 the day. 
 
 The " cutting in " along side is the signal for a 
 sortof parliamentary assemblage of albatrosses, blue 
 sharks, (fcc, Avith here and there, perhaps, a penguin: 
 the former amusing you, as they gorge, with an un- 
 ceasing, querulous noise, not un like the braying o 
 ten thousand lilliputian trumpets. They make very 
 
A CHAPTER ON WHALING. 15 
 
 tolerable messengers ; would you " see company ? If 
 so, we '11 saddle one with a card of invitation for the 
 next ship — describing ourselves as at home, lat. — , 
 long. — . The next '' cutting-in" ship, wherever 
 she be, will attract our envoy, and the card will very 
 likely avail us. Here is much pleasant visiting 
 and exchanging of boats, as straggling ships chance 
 to come together — with no little fiddling, and occa- 
 sionally, dancing! To say nothing of the tramp of 
 masculine heels, imagine, reader, the surprise of the 
 Tritons, hereabouts, at the first-heard notes of the 
 ^' brisk, awakening viol;'' hereabouts, I say, as 
 whaling stations are remote from the common route 
 of merchantmen ; whence the local deities might 
 be supposed more unsophisticated in their education 
 and habits. Apropos of fiddling : take an illustra- 
 tion of the singular contempt of danger, often to 
 be met with in your whaler; the growth of his 
 doubly hazardous employment. I was once return- 
 ing from a sociable evening call, on board of a 
 neighboring vessel, with our captain ; the night was 
 egregiously dark — our ship very distant. Midway, 
 in passing, behold us suddenly surrounded by a 
 herd of whales — puffing and blowing and kicking 
 up their heels, till the water was a vortex of foam. 
 Completely hedged in, drenched with brine from 
 their spiracles, menaced with immediate contact, and 
 as immediate destruction — '^ Jack," said the captain, 
 "can't you hit the snortin' varmint?" "Why 
 have 'nt we a lance here ? " Remark, placid reader, 
 that you are not embarked on board the vessel which 
 
16 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 we selected for observation ; and thank me for the 
 Asmodean privilege we have retained, of leaving 
 her at will for another, or for home, as well as of 
 transferring ourselves out of any boat, into which 
 we may enter, before she is splintered into atoms ; 
 which must unavoidably happen now and then. 
 Be grateful, too, for your escape from the tedium of 
 confinement, which it is disagreeable even to sym- 
 pathise with. Now (as I grow tired) we will avail 
 ourselves of my ingenious expedient, to withdraw, 
 forthwith. You may fancy, if you like, a lowering 
 of fourteen or fifteen boats, at once, from different 
 ships — the rivalry is highly amusing — in the pursuit 
 of a sperm whale. There, the description just given 
 will assist you (with variations, may be, of a boat 
 bitten in two, or butted to pieces ;) or a boat envel- 
 oped in fog, its fish-horn bleating in vain ; or lost in 
 the haze of the horizon, and overtaken by night, 
 with accompaniment of an anxious gun from its 
 guardian ship, which frets and worries and tacks 
 about, with every symptom of motherly anxiety. 
 The ensuing display of lanterns, as twilight thick- 
 ens ; then their gradual extinction, when the recov- 
 ered boat is swung up to its place alongside, with 
 some congratulation and no little scolding, on the 
 part of the tired ship-keepers. All these you may 
 imagine, or overlook ; but one thing, I pray thee 
 forget not to honor with a parting glance — a night- 
 scene around the " try-works ; '' — it is too like pur- 
 gatory, to be neglected. Three ovens, amidships, 
 surmounted by three huge cauldrons of oil ; the oil 
 
A CHAPTER ON WHALING. 17 
 
 boiling, the ovens lapping out tongues of flickering 
 flame ; the watch chistering and flitting and gibber- 
 ing, in a Hght now hirid, now Uvid — some feeding 
 the gaping furnaces with fuel, some couchant on 
 the windlass, ^^ spinning yarns ;" one brandishing a 
 mighty fork, another " spairging about the brum- 
 stane cootie," with a long, long ladle, and occasion- 
 ally anointing the fire, till it makes the rigging and 
 the sails and the weltering waters gleam again in 
 its blaze ; and each busy, smutty, diabolical-looking 
 figure at hand flash into second daylight ; — all, to- 
 gether, afford a spectacle '' beautiful as rare," and 
 leave nothing to be guessed at, would you fancy to 
 yourself a " situation " in the freehold of ^^ auld 
 Nickie-Ben." 
 
CUNEGUNDE. 
 
 . A BALLAD OF UPPER RHINE-LAND. 
 I. 
 
 The castle hold of Ravenstein, 
 
 Is proud and tall, is mirk and dreary. 
 Fixed upon a scarped rock, 
 It 's windy battlements but mock 
 The warrior wight, the pilgrim weary. 
 
 II. 
 
 A lady of a lofty line, 
 
 Dwelt there — ye dogs ! — a cruel beauty ; 
 
 Her name, fair Cunegunde, I ween ; 
 
 Her style, the Yungfrau Landgravine ; 
 Too chill for troth, too proud for duty. 
 
 III. 
 
 But say — have landgravines to sue 
 
 Through dull desert, for love and honor ? 
 Go to — need Cunegunda care,* 
 So young, so rich, so passing fair, 
 What obligations lay upon her ? 
 
 IV. 
 
 The dame had lovers — fifty-two. 
 
 All kneeling at her feet, by snatches, 
 In dainty bower, on grassy mead. 
 No matter where, with anxious heed, 
 All " unexceptionable matches.'' 
 
CUNEGUNDE. 19 
 
 V. 
 
 As well might they have aimed their sighs 
 (Poor fellows, had they lungs of leather?) 
 Against her scutcheon, flinty cold. 
 That high above the gateway old. 
 Receives the courtship of the weather. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Was there no hope ? Hath state no eyes, 
 No ears, no bowels of compassion ? 
 Oh, ay — the lady might be had. 
 Simply by doing what she bade ; 
 But that — would hardly be '* the fashion.'' 
 
 VII. 
 
 An outer wall had Ravenstein : 
 
 'T was wider than the bridge Al Sirat, 
 
 And steadfast, — as an ague-fit : 
 
 It did not overhang the pit — 
 But one, you 'd hardly choose to sneer at. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Right sheerly fell the fathom twine 
 
 Down thither, when the warder threw it ; 
 
 Right sheerly from the outer wall, 
 
 Himself was very like to fall, — 
 The gulph had ne'er a bottom to it ! 
 
 IX. 
 
 Such girth of dizzy narrowness, 
 
 Who durst thereon ride caracoling — 
 Who curvet there — aloof in air — 
 He sole the lady's love might share : 
 None other held she worth consoling. 
 
20 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 X. 
 
 The catalogue was waxing less, 
 Betimes, of Guneguntl's adorers ; 
 For Cupid, on such ticklish terms 
 As these, the story well confirms, 
 Hath tardier dominion o'er us. 
 
 XI. 
 
 Some flew to mirth — some fell to gloom ; 
 Some, fly-like, round the frau still dangled, 
 Pursued their fates along the wall — 
 Heio;ho ! the vultures got them all ! 
 All perished, miserably mangled. 
 
 XII. 
 
 But lo — a knight, with nodding plume, 
 And such a brace of eyes thereunder ! 
 Such limbs, in beamy steel arrayed. 
 Such — everything ! What ailed the maid ? 
 What had come over Cunegunda ? 
 
 XIII. 
 
 " I 'm going, Yungfrau !" How forlorn 
 She looked, beneath her tiny bonnet ; 
 
 '* That bit of horsmanship, you know — " 
 '^Poh, poh !" said she; *^ nay, nay, not so!'\ 
 Quoth he, '^ But I insist upon it !" 
 
 XIV. 
 
 ^'I 'm thine !'' had Cunegunda sworn, 
 Ready to die of tribulation — 
 
 The knight, pricked round the airy cirque. 
 
 *' He 's done it !" shouted all, clean work ! 
 *' Huzza! Odds bobbs ! what equitation ! 
 
CtJNEGUNDE. 21 
 
 XV. 
 Was it a bridal, out of hand? 
 
 The wedding sports — will I be-rhyme 'em? 
 Oh, such a bow the knight made now ; 
 Known darling of the fair Yungfrau, 
 And said — nay, did he say, " Good-bye, m'em !" 
 
 XVI. 
 
 ^^ D' ye see I 'm Prince of Daintyland ; 
 
 And wedded to a sweeter lady 
 
 Than four of you — I tell ye true !" 
 Cried Cunegunde, ^' Alack ! Boohoo !" 
 
 And so the knight his exit made he. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 I wonder how he saved his pate ; 
 
 But every man-at-arms fell winking, 
 Nudging and dodging, till too late ; — 
 The knight spurred through the castle gate, 
 
 And Cunegunda *' took to drinking." 
 
THE OIL OF LIFE. 
 
 AN ARAB E S aUE. 
 (Prom the French.) 
 
 Fell never sunset more gloriously over Genoa, 
 than on the evening when Count Andrea pursued 
 his way, not afoot, oh, no — in a cosy carriage, up 
 the Strada Balbi. 
 
 The Count had a notable scull. 
 
 And curls like Antinous. 
 
 And the profile — of Achilles. 
 
 Had the loungers hard by, and the passengers to 
 and fro, been able to see the Count, they would have 
 envied him. 
 
 For his lordship was famous, and rich, besides 
 being good looking. 
 
 Men admired — women loved him at sight. 
 
 And yet Count Andrea was no better than he 
 should be. 
 
 The Count was onhis way to a palace where high 
 play obtained. # # # # # 
 
 He had horribly bad luck, but excellent wind. 
 
 He gambled from 9 p. m. till 2 in the morning : — 
 was mopping his temples and swearing to himself, 
 (a sin rather gratuitous,) when some one took the 
 liberty to jog his elbow. 
 
THE OIL OF LIFE. 23 
 
 'T was a messenger from home. 
 
 *^ My Lord," he whispered, " your lordship's father 
 is dying !" 
 
 Count Andrea ground his teeth ; subdu- 
 
 edly. 
 
 The game was overwhelming him — all his for- 
 tune, all his expectancies, were just then at stake: 
 any proxy wns impracticable. 
 
 "I warrant it!" said he — ^^ dying! oh, ay! of 
 course ! The very time to be dying, no doubt — 
 and I — blood and thunder ! You mock me ! Well 
 — what would he have ? I may not stir hence till 
 I know the issue of this game." 
 
 But such was not precisely the Count's audible 
 answer. 
 
 '' God over all forbid ! I come ! " he cried, looking 
 distracted. 
 
 The people at the table were busy ; none but in- 
 terested betters happened to be within earshot. 
 
 Had the Count heard some ill news ? Apparently. 
 
 His lordship followed up the game ; and lost — two 
 hundred thousand ducats. 
 
 " There 's I. O. U. for this day month; will it 
 serve ?" said he to his pleasant antagonist. 
 
 " Certainly, — my dear fellow !" 
 
 And Count Andrea was worth minus two hun- 
 dred thousand ducats — but then he was heir prospec- 
 tive to two hundred thousand five hundred and 
 fifty. 
 
 Morning was forth again, fresh and fair as ever 
 on Guido's panel, gladdening, impulsive, "incense- 
 
24 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 breathing," as the Count, recruited with a bumper 
 of brandy, sought, at last, his father's chamber. 
 
 They left him there alone — 't was the father's 
 order — given with a gasp: — what had not that father 
 endured within the hour? his face was all beady 
 with death dew : spasmodic : — how could he have 
 lasted thus long? 
 
 ' ' And- -rea ! — Th-the shagreen casket ; — ^y ou 
 kn-ow it V 
 
 " Hardly, my dear father !" 
 
 A rattle ensued in the old man's throat ; but he 
 recovered himself as if by miracle, and continued 
 to speak. 
 
 Finally, the son did recognize the casket. 
 
 " Well, father," he sighed. 
 
 " It contains — a crystal — phial — of — oil.'^ 
 
 "And that?" 
 
 "Anoint — my — corpse ; — 't will res-tore thy father 
 to life !" 
 
 The son sought the unguent. 
 
 He turned; — his father was dead! 
 
 Count Andrea double locked each door, and drew 
 the window curtains closer. He examined the crys- 
 tal phial. 
 
 Was such a thing possible ? Absurd ! 
 
 But his late father had made shrewd researches 
 abroad, who should say ? 
 
 At a^iy rate, thought he, be the issue tried ! 
 
 "Here 's for an eye ;" said the Count. 
 
 The oil was applied, — heedfuUy. 
 
 And the eye opened! 
 
THE OIL OF LIFE. 25 
 
 One would hardly essay to picture the look it gave ; 
 alight as it was, moreover, from the nether world. 
 
 The Count paused. 
 
 Had I staid a little longer, thought he, at Palazzo 
 # # #^ the oil receipe must have gone with him. 
 
 The Count shuddered — he had a heart? 
 
 He turned away from the eye. 
 
 (The devil whispered in his ear.) 
 
 My father, ho soliloquized, was a good sort of man ; 
 then why not go to heaven at once ; or if to some 
 purgatory, surely the sooner that 's over, the better ; 
 — Why die twice ? 
 
 But he would turn saint, of course — eh ! that 's 
 not so clear either. He 'd tell a body something, 
 by-the-bye, about the intermediary state. 
 
 (The devil continued whispering.) 
 
 Can't he repent as he is? the eye, ('t is single, by 
 the way) for the man ? I presume he is penitent 
 enough — stay, I '11 resuscitate an ear ! 
 
 He betook himself to the oil once more ; the over- 
 fraught eye, (it had shot horror during his delay, 
 but he would not mark it,) now thanked him. 
 
 Thought the Count, if I were any jot of a priest^ 
 and had a church wafer, I 'd ply the viaticum : 
 psha, if I be not regularly commissioned, 't is no 
 fault of his — and then the scheme would involve an 
 operation on the tongue. I 'd rather not — even for 
 curiosity's sake. 
 
 Father do'st believe on the Lord? Art penitent? 
 
 (of course he is.) Because .... eh ? 
 
 2# 
 
26 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 He risked a glance at the eye : it glared appall- 
 ingly. 
 
 The Count closed the bed-curtains, and sat down 
 (to confer with the devil.) 
 
 " Let me think," he muttered, " about myself. I Ve 
 a lung complaint; death has bespoken me too; and 
 penitence per force, in my peculiar circumstances, 
 I Ve no faith in it ! Who hesitates to prefer his 
 own life to another's? H is nature's law; be that 
 other who it may : and then that I.O.U. ; it covers 
 nearly all he .... has left me in his will. 
 
 " Poor man, I was ever his idol. 
 
 " I can't ! no — no, no, no ! Hell mocks me. Avaunt 
 Satan ! 
 
 '' Ten thousand masses, at so much a piece, would 
 .... but then I 'm a beggar ! very particularly 
 sceptical withal on the score of masses. 
 
 " A father is in one's way. 
 
 " I 've robbed him, too — forged his name — but that 
 he 'd forgive." 
 
 " Take a little brandy?" (said the dedl.) 
 
 " / can't afford to die ; — and behold me, once pos- 
 sessed of the phial, as good as immortal : 
 
 " / want the oil ! he would give it me, if all were 
 told ; my soul hangs by it — -father was a good man 
 —I '11 have it!" 
 
 He drew aside the bed curtain, and whipped out 
 his poignard. 
 
 " Go, in peace, father!" 
 
 '' But, no— no !" 
 
 The Count recoiled from the eye. 
 
THE OIL OF LIFE. 27 
 
 (Take a little more brandy ! whispered the fiend.) 
 
 His lordship had nearly committed himself; the 
 poignard thrust would have betrayed him; — the 
 devil did n't mention that in his hurry, but Count 
 Andrea thought of it, and found a needle. 
 
 A snug puncture, well within the lid, extinguished 
 the eye. 
 
 But Count Andrea's nerves were shaken. I 
 would rather not enlarge on the process pursued. 
 
 " What, ho ! Giacomo !" gasped the Count, undo- 
 ing the door— '^ my father . . . ." 
 
 "Signor!^ 
 
 " Is dying ! in good earnest .... is dead ! Ah me P 
 
 The old servant, and even the nurse, were too 
 much agitated to infer that the corpse had been cold 
 for more than half an hour. 
 
 Count Andrea does feel, thought they. 
 
 A brigantine lay off the port of Malaga. 
 
 It brought a passenger of distinction. He was 
 getting ashore. 
 
 " A presentable man !" said the harbor master, to 
 the port doctor ; " who is it?" 
 
 " Count Andrea Saluzzi — A Genoese — worth hun- 
 dreds of thousands." 
 
 The harbor master sighed. He was ugly, had 
 thirteen sickly daughters, a small house, under a 
 greedy mortgage, and one shirt. 
 
28 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 " He is going to live at Granada, they say/' 
 
 " May your eminence live a thousand years !" ex- 
 claimed the cox- swain of the brigan tine's boat ; 
 pocketing a ducat thrown him by the Count on 
 landing. 
 
 '' I mean to ; phosnix fashion ;'' — soliloquized that 
 nobleman, putting his hand mechanically into his bo- 
 som ; the crystal phial was ever there, done up in pad- 
 ding, with a pocket expressly to hold it. 
 
 It was twenty years since the count had buried 
 his father ; nineteen years eleven months three weeks 
 and three days, since he has won back his inherit- 
 ance at play ; which heritage had gotten by this 
 time, a very pretty growth. 
 
 The Count had lived some nineteen years at 
 Rome ; doing as did the Romans, bating their whim 
 of church going. He was going to settle at Grana- 
 da, where his wife had relatives. 
 
 The Count had a lovely wife. 
 
 And a pattern son. He piqued himself on his 
 mode of educating children. 
 
 A delightful house awaited them. 
 
 "My lady!" 
 
 'T was the family physician that spoke. 
 
 " The gout gains on his eminence ; — I fear . . . ," 
 
 The lady swooned. 
 
 The Count was indeed in critical circumstances ; 
 
THE OIL OF LIFE. 29 
 
 — his lung complaint, after besetting him some 
 couple of lustres, had raised the siege ten years ago. 
 In the very act of crowing ovei this for the ten 
 thousandth time, behold him interrupted by gout in 
 the stomach ! His eminence was tottering. 
 
 " Aw' — aw' away with father Jeremy !'' cried the 
 Count, walloping about in grievous pain ; " let the 
 (ah ugh !) the doctor, too, withraw V 
 
 " But, your eminence !" 
 
 "How — my lord!" 
 
 " Ay (ugh I) no doubt ! pres — ently ; presently ! 
 Just now, I — would see my son ; alone ; (ugh 
 ah !) .... on business. Wife ! — Inez !" 
 
 " I crave a — moment's talk with Rafaelle — clear 
 ^ — the room, dear !" 
 
 The Count was master of his household, under 
 whatever circumstances ; — Father and son were 
 soon alone. 
 
 " Rafaelle !" 
 
 " Dear Father !" 
 
 " I am going ... to die !" 
 
 The son sickened. 
 
 " Nay child (ugh !) no puling, — harkee !" 
 
 The Count was half beside himself; had his du- 
 tiful offspring indeed failed him, what to do ? But 
 his voice was all powerful over filial feeling itself; 
 
 " Lis — listen boy ! Thou shalt even (ugh) re- 
 store me .... to life !" 
 
 Young Rafaelle stared affectingly. 
 
 " Father ?" 
 
 " Do 'st see (ah ah gh ugh !) ihis phial ?" 
 
30 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 He tore the phial out from it's place in his bosom: 
 there seemed little time to lose. 
 
 '• Ay, dear, dear sir, I see it !" 
 
 " It holds an(ughugh)an oil; (ugh) never mind 
 what, but rub my body therewith . . . when I am 
 dead .... (ugh) the head, first, remember, and 
 \ will bring me back to life ; (ugh) dos't mark 
 me?'' 
 
 " Yes, father !" whimpered Rafaelle ; " and well 
 thou knowest I shall do thy bidding." 
 
 " Amen !" said the Count ; " now open the (ugh- 
 ugh) the doors my son." 
 
 The wife and the nurse, and the doctor and the 
 priest, stole in again with curious eyes and ears. 
 The gout was making haste. The ceremonies of the 
 church were gone through with in solemn farce ; the 
 the physician pottered about, a sheer supernumera- 
 ry. Day broke and brightened without. 
 
 And the Count was dead ! — in agony, but in hope. 
 
 Young Rafaelle whispered his weeping mother • 
 his face was tearful, but not blank. 
 
 "Father bade, nay adjured me," said he, " to watch 
 his body for an hour alone." 
 
 The grief-smitten Avidow retired. 
 
 Again were father and son alone. 
 
 With trembling hands, and heart fraught nigh to 
 bursting, the young man busied himself to apply 
 the wonder-working oil. 
 
 He anointed an eye ; and recoiled. 
 
 The eye was indeed re-illumined ! He paused ; 
 for his head swam — then rubbed the otTier. Oh, 
 
THE OIL OF LIFE. 31 
 
 miracle ! his father gazed upon him once again — 
 death had released a prisoner ! could it be ? or did 
 he dream ? 
 
 His own eyes ran over — his pulses galloped in- 
 termittingly — his mouth gaped — his hand shook — 
 
 But he faithfully plied his work ;— and soon the 
 whole head lay re-enlivened :-— only the tongue re- 
 mained to be freed. 
 
 He essayed the tongue. It spake ! 
 
 " Speedy speed thee^ Rafaelle ! Lose not a second /'' 
 
 So vehement, so abrupt were the tones, so sud- 
 den was the gesture they elicited, that Rafaelle .... 
 dropped the phial ! It struck a brandy flagon by 
 the bedside, and flew into atoms. 
 
 The life-giving oil was lost : penetrating, elusive, 
 as it was, he could not recover a drop. 
 
 Rafaelle fell senseless ! 
 
 " Ten thousand thousand curses^ — the malison of 
 a fiend father^ heaverCs wrath and the tortures of the 
 pit he upon thee^ and all^ forever. Amen /" 
 
 So spake the revivified head ; — 
 
 The parricide was overtaken ! 
 
THE TREE-TOAD'S SONG. 
 
 1. 
 
 Merrily, merrily, curtained in green, 
 When peeps the last sunshine, the branches between 
 Of the tall waving ash-tree, at mid-summer e'en 
 Chaunt we our vespers the meadows among ; 
 Chirp away ! 
 Chirp away — for the night-nurtured shadows grow murky 
 and long. 
 
 II. 
 Oh ! cheerily, gaily, 't is ours to awake, 
 When zephyr nods blandiest over the lake — 
 And sweetest the air of the scented brake — 
 And tiny glad wings around us hover ; 
 Chirp away ! 
 Chirp away, virid sisters ! the summer-day fervor is over. 
 
 m. 
 
 We '11 sing to their slumber the birds and flowers — 
 But some of the rarest are night's and ours, — 
 That carol and bloom as the starlight pours, 
 A-twinkle of dew-drops, glancingly, — 
 Chirp away ! 
 Chirp away ! Luna beckons ; the leafage is dancing 
 awry. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Chirp away, thro' the hush of the live-long night ; 
 No flouting intruder, our revels to blight — 
 Where melody haunteth, and holiest light 
 Steals in to the lap of the greenwood tree; 
 Chirp away ! 
 Chirp away, give the twilight a welcoming hearty and free ! 
 
THE FLIGHT OF SOU-CHONG. 
 
 A CHINESE TALE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Caddy Sou-Chong was a mandarin of the first 
 water. With a ruby button surmounting his scull- 
 cap, he administered justice after a fashion pecul- 
 iarly profitable to himself, throughout the entire 
 province of Chet Chiang. Closely connected in 
 blood with the ruling favorite of the emperor, his 
 coffers were gorged at everybody'^s expense, while 
 his virtues were echoed and re echoed upon trust, 
 over the five great mountains and the four rivers, 
 even to the limits of the empire. His personal 
 attractions, no less than his wealth and civic honors, 
 formed a theme of universal envy : not one of all 
 the deputy governors of the most fastidious of coun- 
 tries, could boast of longer nails, larger ears, or a 
 more redundant queue. 
 
 The refinement of his taste, was beyond rivalry; 
 a private sculptor being employed solely to embel- 
 lish his gardens with the most hideous marble mon- 
 sters, which grinned upon you at every turn, among 
 miniature bridges, supported on artificial rocks, over 
 lakes containing several gallons of water. 
 
 3 
 
34 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 In the midst of rare shrubberies and trellised par- 
 apets, vocal with the miicic of pea- fowl, of which 
 Caddy was particularly fond, stood six gilded cot- 
 tages ; five of which made his residence in moods 
 of retirement, while one, the choicest in its decora- 
 tions, was set apart for the timid and blooming Shin- 
 Shin ; the most discreet of wives, and dear to his 
 heart as the mother of four boys ; of whom it was 
 remarked by neighboring sages that they were born 
 little old men. Indeed, their gravity of carriage 
 merited this bold encomium, as neither ever was 
 known to smile, and their bows and fan manoeuvres 
 at the age of five years were executed with the pre- 
 cision of a hinge — the eldest, indeed, was declared 
 by his nurse to have evinced a ceremonious polite- 
 ness at the breast. 
 
 With all these .Sources of content, Caddy Sou- 
 Chong was far from happiness. Though scrupulous- 
 ly devout, lavishing sandal wood and gilt paper on 
 the ugliest of his idols, morning, noon, and night, 
 till they were completely smoke-dried, dedicating a 
 snug temple and housing a runaway priest of Foh 
 though his ancestors were all buried and settled to 
 their liking in the other world ; though he himself was 
 on the best of propitiatory terms with all the tiger- 
 headed and drum-bellied supernumerary deities, 
 Caddy was ill at ease. In vain the infantile Fat 
 Lung, his favorite, exhibited his precocious formah- 
 ties ; — in vain his beautiful and obedient wife puffed 
 herself into apathy with along slender pipe adorned 
 with brilliants, or poured out the broken tide of 
 
THE FLIGHT OP SOtJ-CHONG. 35 
 
 grief on her ricketty little eastern mandolin, the gov- 
 ernor would not be beguiled ; — he shut himself up in 
 the most retired of the cottages, and surrendered his 
 soul to anxiety. 
 
 He had sacrificed on man too many : to wit, the 
 pet client of a powerful enemy, by mistake for a no- 
 body : Oh fool, — soliloquized Caddy, oh ineffable 
 numbscull that I was, not to make inquiries before- 
 hand ! but there 's no help for it now ; — my great 
 cousin Leang can do nothing in a case that must 
 reach the sun's cousin's own imperial ears : and then, 
 Caddy Sou- Ohong, of the cord, or the "cold coun- 
 try," and prisoner's rations ! Zzzzh ! Tut ! Let me 
 ponder ! exile and confiscation are better than death ; 
 but self banishment, eh, dear me? were better than 
 either ; — inasmuch as wealth is very good, and par- 
 tial liberty better than none at all — But how, alas, to 
 secure it ? 
 
 Sou-Chong mused a long time, and at last betook 
 himself to writing: — he accomplished a long letter 
 to his agent on the sea coast, shook a silver bell, 
 despatched a confidential runner with the mes- 
 sage, and breathed more freely. 
 
 Again his hand sought the silver bell, with a jerk. 
 " Call Hulla-Bo-Loo P Hulla-Bo-Loo, the priest of 
 Fob, appeared ; and when the governor led the way to 
 an inner closet, without windows, lined with er- 
 mines' fur, he knew that a matter of life and death 
 was pending. , 
 
 Whisht ! said the governor. 
 
36 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 The priest held his breath for at least four min- 
 utes. 
 
 We must flee the country ! whispered his ex- 
 cellency, in the tone of a man who had made up 
 his mind. 
 
 Madness ! gasped HuUa Bo-Loo ; the thing is 
 impossible ! 
 
 I am preparing the largest of junks — observed 
 Sou Chong. 
 
 Yah ! exclaimed Hulla-Bo-Loo. 
 
 It is to be very commodious, with a cuddy on the 
 poop for the little cross-legged god with one eye, 
 and ample accommodations for all the others ; be- 
 sides a birth under hatches for the blessed image of 
 Kung-Foo-Tse, three hundred bales of gilt paper 
 for sacrifice, some gunpowder, and a chest of bul- 
 lion for you. 
 
 The risk is awful ! cried Hulla-Bo-Loo. 
 
 The crew are secure and you must attend me ; — 
 or ... , 
 
 Here the governor made a funny gesture, as 
 of strangulation ; at which, though very quietly per- 
 formed, the priest looked alarmed. 
 
 Me to Foh ! if I must, I must! muttered Hulla- 
 Bo-Loo ; but when and where are we to go ? 
 
 To the country of the tea-drinking devils — whis- 
 pered Caddy Sou-Chong; and to sail by the second 
 moon. 
 
 They parted. 
 
THE FLIGHT OF SOU-CHONG. 37 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 About the time of the feast of lanterns, when his 
 illuminated gardens rivalled the haunts of Genii in 
 a Persian tale , when the lakes of many gallons glit- 
 tered in foci, like darkling mirrors, and multiplied 
 the softened splendor of a thousand lamps, reveal- 
 ing golden and silvery fish at intervals, where the 
 sheen was brightest. Sou- Chong repaired with hasty 
 steps to the latticed bower of Shin-Shin. 
 
 Your cheeks, he began, are painted of a pleasing 
 carmine to night— and your feet are more graceful 
 than cream-colored mice — I am happy in your soci- 
 ety! 
 
 Shin- Shin was overcome. Did her lord then 
 think her worthy of a flattery so touching ? 
 
 A tear broke from each eye, and cleared itself a 
 little canal through the glowing red towards her 
 chin. 
 
 Thus beauty flies before grief, thought Sou- 
 Chong; and while he made the reflection, his 
 youngest boy, who could not Avalk, ruined his nose 
 against the tiled floor in attempting a profound obei- 
 sance. All this confiding tenderness and self-deny- 
 ing fiUal reverence, so distracted the governor's 
 heart, that he could hardly suppress an impetuous 
 boo-oo-o ! 'T is hard to leave these dear ones to 
 confiscation with the rest of the estate and movea- 
 bles, thought he ; and the revulsion of his feelings 
 3# 
 
38 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 might have unmanned him, had he not darted out, 
 with a velocity that straitened his queue. 
 
 Solace of my childhood, and cradle of my matu- 
 rity, farewell ! sighed he, with pardonable inaccura- 
 cy, considering the circumstances, as attended by 
 HuUa-Bo-Loo, and followed by coolies with a world 
 of luggage, he hurried away, casting a last linger- 
 ing look upon his pleasure-grounds. '' Adieu, poor 
 Shin-Shin ! Thou conceivest as little of the object 
 of this journey, as I do of its end !'' Governor Sou- 
 Chong Avas off! 
 
 The sea coast was to be gained with all possible 
 despatch ; and sedans constructed for the purpose, 
 were resorted to for conveyance, as in them the 
 travelers might avail themselves of by-paths, and 
 avoid display. 
 
 HuUa-Bo-Lqo was much discomfited on finding his 
 coveted bullion bestowed on this occasion, quite out 
 of his reach ; with other ingots and valuables over 
 which the governor brooded in person with most ir- 
 ritating care; — the measure marred a snug un- 
 derplot of his own, which augured better for him- 
 self than his patron, and was indeed quite subver- 
 sive of the voyage. He looked wretchedly resign- 
 ed at best, as they passed through the nearest vil- 
 lage, amid ruddy lanterns, crashing goings, blazing 
 rockets, triumphal arches, and groups of faces 
 beaming with curious complacency ; the governor 
 in turn had screened his person, and felt far less sym- 
 pathy than ever with the pranks of occasional mounte- 
 banks. 
 
THE FLIGHT OF SOU-CHONG. 39 
 
 Sou-Chong urged forward the coolies — and the 
 meek sedans and the world of baggage, trotted on 
 to their destiny, in single file, with the greatest ce- 
 lerity and quiet. 
 
 The night, though short, amply sufficed the party 
 to reach the gray ocean beach ; and the morning 
 revealed the largest of junks, close at hand in a 
 solitary reach, riding by a single anchor. All 
 was ready for departure ; crew and cargo safely on 
 board, — the latter consisting entirely of materials for 
 sacrifice, and sea stores. The magazine was well 
 stocked with powder, affording every facility for 
 blowing up in case of pursuit, and a noted naviga- 
 tor was not wanting in the person of one Hop Q.ua, 
 surnamed the amphibious, who had been acquitted 
 of felony for the express purpose of guiding the 
 vessel; he had already shown singular tact in col- 
 lecting a compliment of men under false pretences, 
 and procuring, in like manner, the requisite papers 
 for legalizing a voyage. 
 
 No time was lost by the governor in getting on 
 board with his clerical attendant, and the sun had 
 barely risen before the valuables and etceteras 
 were duly disposed, idols enshrined, morning de- 
 votions finished, crew marshalled, and anchor 
 aweigh. 
 
 The dismal chaunt at the windlass was nearly 
 ended, when the face of Hulla-Bo-Loo became sud- 
 denly elongated; he pronounced the day unlucky. 
 
 The aspect of things changed in a moment. The 
 cable was again paid out — the Captain ceased bawl- 
 
40 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 ing through his nose, and fingered his opium box ; the 
 crew re-addressed themselves to gambUng; the 
 priest fell pestering the little cross-legged god with 
 one eye, his pet deity, — and Sou- Chong seated him- 
 self, for the day, astride of a cask of gun-powder — 
 smoking his pipe, the very picture of Eastern im- 
 patience brought hopelessly to a stand. 
 
 He retained his place, and took no food for forty- 
 eight hours, excepting one platter of sea-snail jelly, 
 which he swallowed without looking at it, keeping 
 his eyes all the time riveted on the dangerous shore ; 
 so that when a propitious morrow came at last, 
 and the junk was fairly tumbling out to sea, he had 
 only vivacity enough left to ejaculate Tchin-tchin 
 Foh ! steer due east ! and fell fast asleep. When 
 he awoke, the mainland Avas gone— the sun was 
 setting ruddily over a little brown island, hardly 
 big enough to apostrophize, but gazed on with vivid 
 feelings, as giving him the last glimpse of his native 
 land. 
 
 Sou-Chong, though a man of great horticultural 
 genius, was no poet, and beyond a partiality for the 
 voices of pea-fowl, but little of a musician — so that 
 he had little to say or sing audibly at this crisis ; 
 but a glimpse of placid roguery now shot athwart 
 his face for the first time since his departure from 
 home. 
 
THE FLIGHT OF SOU-CHONG. 41 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Ninety days hard sailing had much altered the 
 position of the largest of junks, but nothing had 
 yet occurred particularly to appall the navigators, 
 excepting the appearance of a warlike looking ves- 
 sel at a distance, on the morning of the second day ; 
 on which occasion the governor had proceeded rather 
 abruptly to fire the magazine, before the lookout had 
 time to mention that she was sailing the opposite 
 way. Innumerable islands had been passed, where 
 Sou-Chong's modesty had been shocked at the sight 
 of naked barbarians ; and they were no vv exploring 
 a vast, apparently an illimitable ocean. The wind 
 had sometime since obliged them to swerve consid- 
 erably from their course, but Hop-(iua's reckoning 
 was still respectably clear, and he bore up manfully 
 in the main ; only hinting to the governor in private 
 that he would have done better to seek refuge in 
 one of the islands of nakedness, — as they must 
 have passed the limits of dry land in the night, and 
 were now probably pretty well outside of creation. 
 
 Fiddle-de-dee ! said Sou-Chong, pettishly ; the is- 
 lands of nakedness, indeed ! have we not heard that 
 the tea-drinking devils often occupy six moons in 
 their passage home ? 
 
 Who knows that? the captain pertly rejoined; 
 for Hop-Qua was a free thinker. Their word is not 
 to be believed — and if it were, who is to guide us 
 
42 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 to this country of tea-drinkers — (of all places) 
 which it is to be presumed they can hardly find 
 themselves. Besides — the last jar of samshu is 
 already in requisition, the opium growing scanty, 
 and once sober, the crew will certainly mutiny; 
 poor souls ! they have a natural right to be bamboo - 
 ed to death at home ; and here they are pining away 
 gratis in the southeast corner of the universe, for no 
 fault of their own. Alas that ever we should have 
 passed the islands of nakedness ! 
 
 I would n't live there on any account, said the 
 governor ; so sail away — trust to little cross-legs, 
 and burn matches six times a day. 
 
 Whether in token of the pet idoPs approbation 
 of this pious peroration, or from whatever cause it 
 fell out, a vessel of the barbarians Avas at this mo- 
 ment observed passing in full sight ; and though it 
 proved impossible to speak her, all were gratified 
 and re-assured to find that she sailed the same way 
 as themselves. 
 
 Me to Fob ! what do you think now ? said the 
 governor, chuckling in his capacious sleeve. 
 
 Another moon delighted the fugitives with sight 
 of land. A long verdant coast, mocking the vision 
 with its far extent, and skirted with huge white 
 mountains in the distance, lay spread out in- 
 vitingly before them. All was gratitude, bustle and 
 rejoicing ! 'T is the country of the tea-drinking 
 devils, at last! said the governor; and those tall 
 mountains in the distance, form undoubtedly the 
 outer wall of the world. 
 
THE FLIGHT OF SOU-CHONG. 43 
 
 The shore was soon gained, and a party despatch- 
 ed to reconnoitre; but though they found fruits and 
 sparkhng springs in abundance, the region appeared 
 uninhabited ; at which the governor's refined social 
 taste again took alarm. We must even sail on, said 
 he; and after three busy days in harbor, the largest 
 of junks was again tumbling forward on her blind 
 path, steering southerly, in obedience to the sinuos- 
 ities of the coast. This, however, was not before 
 most of the crew, having grown saucy , had been left 
 behind to settle a colony, against their will. 
 
 Seven successive weeks brought to view no ves- 
 tige of civilization, ashore ; the last of the seven, by- 
 the-bye, being ushered in by a fearful gale ; a gale 
 that spun the vessel incontinently out to sea, al- 
 most rolling her bottom upwards, and revealing all her 
 hidden symmetry. Here snapped a mast, and there 
 flew a sail, with a stunning clatter through the mur- 
 ky air ; the largest of junks groaned like a 
 "thing of life;" the sea roared — the gongs fell peal- 
 ing, fitfully, like mad ; — little cross-legs dived, head 
 foremost, into a box of bran ; — HuUa-Bo-Loo launch- 
 ed overboard a furnace of sacrificial fuel, which he 
 himself barely escaped following : the captain 
 hid himself below — and the governor's ample queue 
 got entangled in a brace block, from which he was 
 only extricated at the expense of his scalp, after 
 screaming with torture for a quarter of an hour. 
 This aspect of things continued for a week; and 
 the ensuing fortnight proved insufficient to restore 
 
44 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 hope to the bewildered mariners, or a tolerably 
 whole skin to the governor's head. 
 
 The land had long since been lost sight of; the 
 sun seemed to have lost his attribute of warmth . . 
 
 Where are we now? inquired Caddy of Hop 
 Qua ; now shivering in sheepskins. 
 
 But the latter had foregone all notion of course 
 or distance in the series of gales, and desired to be 
 bambooed if he knew ; the stars were not the stars 
 of Centre-landjt and every thing about them wore 
 a look of chilling strangeness ! 
 
 The priest had latterly smoked a world of opium ; 
 " Take courage ! " said he, ^'and make your manners 
 to cross-legs and Foh ; they '11 do for us, I warrant.'' 
 
 Oh, for the naked islands ! sighed Hop-dua ; long 
 since become sadly attenuated. 
 
 This ejaculation stirred the governor's bile ; Me 
 to Foh ! said he, sail on ! and sail as easterly as you 
 can ! 
 
 t Centre-land — Chinese name for China. 
 
THE FLIGHT OF SOU-CHONG. 45 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Two-and-twenty moons, and still the largest of 
 junks pursued a solitary course over the waters. 
 The little Captain Hop-(iua,* though he had once 
 served as a pirate, squatted about with all the meek- 
 ness of a lamb ; exhibiting a sort of semi- vitality, — 
 only alive to the fact of having sailed portentously 
 far to the eastward. HuUa-Bo-Loo had worn him- 
 self out in oral compliments to little Cross-legged 
 one-eye ; his pocket deity, as he called him ; as for 
 the sacrificial stores, they had been long ago ex- 
 hausted ; and the governor, wasted to the shadow 
 of his former self, stood balancing beneath his am- 
 ple robes, like a folded umbrella poised on its han- 
 dle. All three were completely tired of computing 
 the lapse of time ; of conjecturing the magnitude 
 of the world. 
 
 They had seen many strange countries, and held 
 fruitless parley with many barbarian ships; — had 
 once been on the point of finally debarking ; but 
 were denied a settlement, much to their surprise, by 
 a hostile people whom they had mistaken for apes : 
 they had afterwards passed by several delectable and 
 ffiendly shores, with utter negligence, owing to cer- 
 tain dismal dreams of pursuit and detection, which 
 had latterly unhinged the governor's mind, urging 
 him irresistibly onward. 
 
 In spite of a crazy gleam in his eye, Sou-Chong's 
 
 4 
 
46 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 ascendancy over his companions was such as to im- 
 part to them a portion of his own anxiety to reach 
 the still undiscovered realm of tea-drinkers, in spite 
 of time, toil and distance. 
 
 " Our bullion is good for nothing elsewhere," said 
 he, as they lay at anchor one day in the shelter of a 
 quiet lagoon, hedged about with islets of seducing 
 verdure. But the observation was thrown away. 
 The eyes of his comrades were fixed upon some- 
 thing just visible from behind a neighboring point. 
 
 He turned. 
 
 "Hy Yah!" cried Hulla-Bo-Loo. 
 
 " We have sailed these two-and-twenty moons 
 and more, towards the rising sun !" faltered Hop- 
 Glua, with eyes distended, and jaws getting station- 
 ary at an angle of 45^. 
 
 " 'T is the apparition of my dreams !" yelled Cad- 
 dy Sou-Chong. 
 
 'T was a junk from home ! 
 
 A very few minutes brought the vessels together, 
 and the stranger hailed. 
 
 " Who are you? and whence come you ?" screamed 
 a tall figure, with a voice that reminded Sou-Ohong 
 of his long forgotten pea-fowl. 
 
 " We are perplexed wanderers," returned Hop- 
 dua, " bound no whither in particular, — or rather to a 
 place impossible to find." The poor fellow was sad- 
 ly bewildered. 
 
 " And your names ?" 
 
 " Hop- Qua, captain, the mandarin Caddy Sou- 
 
THE PLIGHT OF SOU-CHONG. 47 
 
 Chong, HuUa-Bo-Loo priest of Foh, and sundry 
 mariners." 
 
 The latter question was hardly answered, before 
 a crowd of assailants poured into the devoted ves- 
 sel, and the three appalled fugitives were forced on 
 board the stranger. (iuestion, complaint, were 
 alike of no avail ; no heed was given. The gov- 
 ernor speedily found himself and suite accommo- 
 dated, neck and hands, with portable pillories, and 
 consigned to a strong murky cell under hatches. 
 
 "Be there two Centre-lands? Two Chet 
 Chiangs? What? Where? How?" driveled poor 
 Sou-Chong, his wits fast ebbing away. 
 
 " Oh, little Cross-legs, alas !" sobbed Hulla-Bo- 
 Loo. 
 
 Hop-Qua's eyes protruded like a lobster's, but 
 he said nothing. 
 
 " Steer easterly !" was echoed in harsh tones over- 
 head. The dash of curling waters and all the racket 
 of navigation filled their ears, day after day, night 
 after night, week after week, till a peculiar tumult 
 announced the mooring of the vessel, and the ad- 
 venturers were soon again breathing the open air. 
 
 A seaport was before them, all alive with lights, 
 though the hour was past midnight. 
 
 " Surely," said the governor, but the conjectural 
 remark was cut short by immediate gagging, and 
 all effervescence of feeling on the part of HuUa-Bo- 
 Loo suppressed in a similar manner ; even Hop- 
 dua was not allowed to hold his tongue in peace. 
 
48 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 " I could swear to the fashion of the pojtable pil- 
 lory ;" — thought Caddy Sou-Chong. 
 
 " If we had not sailed so far to the eastward," 
 thought the Captain. 
 
 Hulla-Bo-Loo groaned defiance. 
 
 Conveyance to the interior of the country, what- 
 ever region it might be, was unavoidable ; and the 
 jaunt that ensued might have soothed a party less 
 pre-occupied ; but the governor and his comrades 
 were too nervous : The groups of houses occurring 
 on their way, the fire works, the people and the 
 sounds, were a growing puzzle which became quite 
 agonizing as the night wore away. Everything 
 wore a familiar, indeed a feast-of-lantern-y sort of 
 expression, which made their fettered situation a 
 double torture, as neither could by any possibility 
 rub his eyes. 
 
 Morning solved the riddle, — with a panorama not 
 to be mistaken. Those booths, — platforms,— arches, — 
 trees, — accustomed figures and faces, — that pictur- 
 esque walled garden in the distance, with onefantasti 
 cally gilded cottage roof just visible through the trees 
 and gleaming ruddily in the new risen sun, — what 
 showed they? 
 
 The very grounds of the governor, the very 
 birth-place of Hulla-Bo-Loo, priest of Foh, and cap- 
 tain Hop-Q.ua. But neither Caddy Sou-Chong, the 
 priest nor the captain, had any remark to make. 
 Their heads were off! 
 
MASTER SIMON 
 
 TO A NOISY MANTELCLOCK. 
 
 *' Bim-bim-bim-biin-birn ! * * * Biiu-bim-bim-bim-bim !" 
 
 What is it that can ail you, Time, this sunny afternoon ? 
 You were not wont to caper off to such a racing tune, 
 'T Is nothing but your spitefulness ; — for I have ever seen. 
 When I would fain have hurried you, how very slow you 've 
 
 been; 
 But just as one would give his ears to wheedle you to stay, 
 Methinks, you rogue, your wings are oiled to expedite 
 
 your way : 
 I Ve heard them talk of hilling you, if you M believe me, 
 
 Time;— 
 Were it for this provoking speed, 't would hardly be a 
 
 crime — 
 But then for sloth — for sluggishness, — Aha ! I hear you 
 
 say. 
 E'en would they so, — the simpletons ! — we '11 see, some 
 
 future day ! 
 
 We 're not so long acquainted. Time, but I may well re- 
 call. 
 
 When first I recognized your name ; 't was in my grand- 
 sire's hall — 
 
 Do 'st recollect the dear old man ? I dare to say you do, — 
 
 For he called you ancient intimate — and often talked of 
 
 you; 
 
 4# 
 
60 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 And when he was departing hence, to leave us both be- 
 hind, 
 He cautioned me to cherish you, in accents very kind ; 
 And said that you of glorious gifts were very prodigal — 
 But industry and patience were the pledges of them all. 
 
 Ah me ! I then was but a child — and children are not 
 
 wise. 
 And industry and patience found small favor in my eyes ; 
 There was a mossy dial, above the green parterre. 
 And I thought you very lazy, as I saw you circle there — 
 And I treated you but sadly, for I thought to reconcile 
 So tedious an old fellow when I found it worth my while ; — 
 Alas ! I was mistaken, Time ! for now I see you bring 
 To other hearths, and other homes, full many a precious 
 
 thing : 
 Full many a meed of lofty fame, full many a gift of gold — 
 Or dearer far, of quiet bliss, to gladden heart and hold ;• — 
 But nothing to my threshold, e'er save weariness and pain : 
 Hist ! as I live, there goes the clock — you 've come to 
 
 chide again ! 
 Now Time, I take it ill of you, to perch yourself and crow 
 So shrilly from the mantelpiece, above a worsted foe ; 
 It looks by far too petulant, for one of such an age — 
 But you 've forgot the golden rule, thrice over, — I '11 en- 
 gage I 
 
 Stay — can I have mistaken you ? perhaps each startling 
 
 tone 
 Admonishes to prize the days that yet remain my own ; — 
 That I have yet a boon — a task; a priceless soul to save. 
 When, wearied out, old father Time has tottered to his 
 
 grave. 
 
A PEEP AT CADIZ. 
 
 " Domus custodial introitum tuum." 
 
 Legend over the sea-sate. 
 
 Reader, dear ! Wert ever in Europe ? Of course. 
 Well, then, be you lymphatic or vivacious, curious 
 or blind, you must remember the steadfast, hearty 
 gaze you took, when '^ Outre-Mer" first met your 
 eye. The land may have tumbled up from the 
 horizon with all the abruptness of thirteen knots an 
 hour, or coyly courtesied and sidled and bafiled 
 3^our advances for a series of days ; may have 
 scowled upon you in the shape of a tall Irish pro- 
 montory, with a squall for a jacket, and arms akimbo, 
 or peered upward gracefully recumbent, yours ob- 
 sequiously, the Biscayan coast of France ; the sim- 
 ple, strong impression of novelty is Avhat I would 
 recall ; the prettiest conceivable chmax to the relish 
 of a pleasant voyage, and the most grateful interrup- 
 tion to a dull one. There is a peculiar halo about 
 a sunny shore, seen under such circumstances ; 
 though be the weather as sullen, and the landfall 
 as gloomy as they may, one can always patch up 
 and apply some kind of a Avreath of dear old asso- 
 ciations, as a countercheck. But what a flood of 
 
62 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 excitement, as the cloudy chaos brightens into dis- 
 tinct landscape; and assumes its own ten thousand 
 lively tints and outlines, to shame the monotony of 
 the " unchanging sea." You feel as if witnessing 
 the process of a second creation. 
 
 ^' Each hill and dale, each deepening glen and wold," 
 
 each blue summit, and sombre cliff, and legendary 
 village, and haunted wood, throws out a new fila- 
 ment of attraction, till you find yourself in the very 
 bonds of curiosity. Then the getting ashore ! Eng- 
 land, it may be, is too nearly akin to us to allow 
 the feeling of wonder adequate scope ; call England, 
 if you will, a kind of trusty and familiar gentleman- 
 usher; wearing Jonathan's dress, speaking his lan- 
 guage, and whose province it is to break the ab- 
 ruptness of his fall among strangers, and introduce 
 him gently and decently : for inthrallment without 
 fail, to ensure a due expansion of eye, and a proper 
 relaxation of the lower jaw, one would recommend 
 the continent, by all means, to the incipient voyager. 
 Let him single out for debarkation, some old gray- 
 beard of a city, almost coeval with the deluge ; 
 where language, costume, architecture, and imme- 
 morial custom, are all at utter variance with the 
 " notions'' of our land of shingle palaces and half 
 rescued cornfields. Let me see ! 
 
 '* Fair Cadizy rises on the dark blue sea" ^ 
 
 at a most convenient crisis for illustration. The 
 strong-hold of Geryon — the goal of pilgrim Her- 
 
A PEEP AT CADIZ. 53 
 
 ciiles ; the olden site of a temple of Juno — and, for 
 aught I knoWj of the itinerary pulpit of Saint Paul. 
 Darling reader, pray revisit Cadiz with me ; if indeed 
 you be fond of tarry-at-home excursions. 
 
 There — give us your hand ! One long leap, and 
 here we are, on the deck of a staunch ship, with 
 Cape St. Vincent just abaft the beam, standing in 
 cautiously for 
 
 ^' The sea-girdled home of arch ladies 
 Most white and roluptuous Cadiz." 
 
 'T is night — starlight — and no moon ; wind steady ; 
 time, about six bells in the second watch. In the 
 morning, you and 1 will land ; the crew, poor fel- 
 lows! must linger out a fortnight's quarantine. 
 Keep a bright lookout forward there ! '' Ay, ay, 
 sir!" Another man at the larboard cathead. Ah, 
 here we have it, at last ! Land ho ! Come forward 
 now; do n't stumble over that spare anchor stock, 
 and land in the deck tub ; let 's hear what the watch 
 have to say ; — hist ! " Them 's chalk-hills, by Guy." 
 " Avast — it 's a white sand beach." " Noa 't is n't, 
 it's walls and buildins'." And walls and turrets 
 they are, sure enough, whose timid sheen through 
 the darkness, gives the eye its first intimation that 
 we are nearing as cosy a town as ever was clapped 
 on the brow of ocean by way of mural crown. 
 
 We must ^' stand off and on" till daybreak, and 
 the rosy dawn shall give us a true, legitimate, 
 oriental welcome. Earliest morning ; beautiful 
 
54 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 here, is it not ? Wake up, most lethargic reader ! 
 One would think the guns might have sufficed to 
 rouse you ; — I imagine it must be a special holiday ; 
 for Cantera fort, and St. Banez are pealing away as 
 if Nap the Oorsican were again intruding on the 
 volcanic apathy of the Andaluz. How do you like 
 that light house ? A handsome tower, out aloof 
 upon the sea ; it sentinels the town right nobly, 
 does it not ? 
 
 There, then, is Cadiz ! — it has a levantine look, all 
 enclosed as it is, within high walls, rising for the most 
 part, sheer and cleanly from the sea— the houses glis- 
 tening, with here and there a moorish looking attic, 
 or venerable church roof The port is busy, but 
 not thronged ; picturesque with sundry latteen sails. 
 
 Well, our pilot has been on board thee quarters 
 of an hour — you recognized his egregious lingua 
 Franca? And now, unless you choose to tarry for 
 the health boat, we '11 to the landing at once. 
 
 #^^ ^fe. 1^ ^k 
 
 ■^ tJf ^ •^ 
 
 What an old world air every thing wears about 
 this weathet-worn pier ! and what an apt illustration 
 of the dolce far niente^ is that Avhiskered porter, 
 with his little round romantic hat, his laconic 
 breeches, and smart crimson sash, half eclipsed by 
 a draggletail intrusion of shirt ; how voluptuously 
 he leans on that post ; inhaling questionable fra- 
 grance from a ding)^ paper- wrapped cigar ! 
 
A PEEP AT CADIZ. 65 
 
 *^ Much food for marvel he enjoys I ween, 
 Who scans the livery of the motley band'' 
 
 on either side of us, as we stroll beneath the walls 
 towards the sole sea-board, entrance of the town ; 
 much irritation of nerves too^ obtains, from the 
 clatter of ill-tuned voices, where all seem to pos- 
 sess the gift of tongues, and few, alas, that of 
 controlling them. The Custom-house officers, on 
 duty at the gates, are any thing but mutes, and. 
 likely to be very Cerberine^ unless baited with a 
 " consideration." But suppose us free of all deten- 
 tion, loungingly thridding the sea-gate, under the 
 grateful unction of '' gracias a ustedes, senores," 
 and just in full view of the '^ Plaza del Mar." 
 We shall need much traveling to find a livelier 
 spot; market, lazaretto, and exchange; the rally- 
 ing point of all that is novel, bustling or grotesque ; 
 hemmed in with tall, Venitian-looking houses, 
 and surrounded by the outlets of numerous clean, 
 flagged, very narrow streets, which give an Amer- 
 ican almost the impression of being within doors; 
 it is well worthy, I think, of at least twenty min- 
 utes pause in our walk. Now this fruit-stall be 
 our rendezvous. Buy fresh figs, or inquire for 
 grasshoppers^ if you like, for the '^ shrill cigala" sells^ 
 let me tell you, in Cadiz, being held in almost 
 Athenian repute among the ladies, as a household 
 chorister ; I will sketch that quaint little marine, as 
 he stands relieved against the paunch of the gross 
 
56 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 Dominican opposite; or stay, — ^yonder Moor is a 
 shade more imposing : then he strides with such 
 convenient dehberation. Oh for a crayon of treble 
 refined French chalk ! How cosily the smoke of 
 the sempiternal chiboque wantons with his beard. 
 Singularly out of unison is he, by the way, with 
 
 The merry matins, which from tower to tower 
 Fling back their consecrate and gladsome chime. 
 
 I need not call your attention to the ghastly group 
 of mendicants in this square, as you seem to be 
 their nucleus already. I shall make no remarks, 
 either, on the feasibility of relieving them : but I 
 shall call your attention to that pretty Gaditana, win- 
 ning so gracefully up the street, — Avhich, as it leads 
 to a chocolate house, we had better follow, and ena- 
 ble ourselves to study the species ; a kind of Proser- 
 pines,* ever in black. The basquina — is not a ces- 
 tus — the mantilla may be rather irritating, perhaps, — 
 the comb display is fantastic; on the whole a wo- 
 man had need be very well formed, and have lively 
 features, to beseem the Spanish costume ; — 't is only 
 more becoming than ours or the French. Would 
 you like to see the manual exercise of the fan? Avell 
 — by and by. 
 
 A Spanish cafe: a cool, spacious, inviting apart- 
 ment, a few feet above the street level has the honor 
 
 * By-the-lne, this neighborhood is shrewdly set down as Dom Ptuto^s head- 
 quarters erewliile. 
 
A PEEP AT CADIZ. 57 
 
 to receive us ; a marble pavement is under foot, and. 
 a marble colonnade, of two stories, surrounds the 
 area; lemons and citrons, and almond and jonquil, 
 in pots and boxes, are or should be, at hand — the 
 air redolent of their perfume. Before us is a marble 
 table; whereon, limpid as nectar, is placed a sturdy 
 pitcher of agua fresca : start not, unlearn edly zeal- 
 ous votary of temperance! I mean fresh water. 
 Were you a Gaditan, you would know how to prize 
 it. On the counter, of neat marble too, is chocolate, 
 in classic cups ; and oh such chocolate ! no hquor, 
 a fusion! so intensely hot and so substantial! 
 Then the dainty dissolution therein of crystalline 
 sugars ! But I dare not dwell upon it, as I seldom 
 indulge in the pathetic ; besides (between ourselves) 
 it was once the means of excoriating my mouth, — and 
 shall I say it? of very nearly choking me in addi- 
 tion. Sometimes I take a single glass of wine : — do 
 you? Will you have some " sherris sack ?" Are 
 you enterprising? If so, to Xeres we will go, and 
 imbibe the blessing at its fountain ; (that is, when 
 the chocolate is duly honored, and we have read 
 the Madrid jt?aper.) Xeres is near; I forget the 
 number of miles, were it not, we might visit it, and 
 return to supper. I would recommend a felucca 
 to Santa Maria ; and should we meet with a levant- 
 ter, which is not improbable, we may drift over the 
 lost fane of Hercules, for our consolation ; it was 
 snatched away in past ages, with its site, and a sad 
 mouthful of land besides, by the sea ; so say anti- 
 quaries, and as every one knows the latter encroach- 
 
 5 
 
68 JllBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 ments hereabout of that hungry personage, I sup- 
 pose he must be brought in guilty. Forgive my 
 pedantry, cherished reader, but I must warn you 
 that in this temple were deposited Teucer's belt, and 
 Pygmalion's golden olive, — and that costly statue of 
 Alexander before which Cagsar wept when quaestor 
 in Spain, on comparing his own early achievements 
 with those of " Philip's warlike son." Now is not 
 the annihilation itself, of such a ruin, worth float- 
 ing over? One Avould expect the very fish of the 
 neighborhood to have acquired a taste for vertu; 
 and people have noticed among those caught her6 
 a peevish fretfulness at being pulled out of their twi- 
 light element, that savors strongly of the nervous- 
 ness of mouldy research. 
 
 # !j^ ^ ^ ^ 4^ ^ ^ 
 
 ^W ■w' "^ •^ -^ ■^T ^^ 
 
 Here we are at port St. Mary ; far famed for — 
 nothing in particular. Did the boatmen dofl^* their 
 hats, and patter a prayer, on passing the bar of the Gua- 
 dalete ? for I have been dozing, I fear, from the lull- 
 ing effect of the chocolate. They were used thus 
 to interest themselves for the souls of the many pas- 
 sengers drowned there ; as the surf at times is highly 
 dangerous ; swamping your boat with a giant wave, 
 conjured up from the ripple at a moment's warning, 
 as if by a freak of some sour-tempered old river- 
 god» Shall we take mules or a calesin to Xeres ? 
 The route is pleasanter, though bare, as we recede 
 from the shore, and we may possibly find a fringe 
 
A PEEP AT CADIZ. 59 
 
 of dwarf almond trees by the roadside. Xeres 
 is a bustling place enough, very visitable, a town of 
 old fame as you know, and hallowed to the patriot 
 and the historian as well as in the ruddy eyes of the 
 worshipful fraternity of wine-bibbers. It was, as 
 you are probably aware, the scene of the memorable 
 battle between Taric and Don Roderic, which sealed 
 the destiny of Gothic spain : — scope for expatiation, 
 you perceive ; though it would be hard to realize 
 any chivalric vision among the puffing caleseros, and 
 the coal-eyed and slippered coquettes about us. 
 
 Well 
 
 Again at Santa Maria : (we have escaped the bull- 
 fight, I find, that occurred this morning,) and again 
 leisurely undulating across the bay. Look, look ! at 
 the salmon, over the side ! You may trace them by 
 the soft phosphoric light that streams in their wake : 
 and hark ! " those evening bells " chime deliciously 
 over the water, do they not ? There is not the head- 
 long jangling of the matins ; when the changes 
 from numberless turrets are apt to get ludicrously 
 " athwart hawse " of each other ; convincing me, 
 once I remember, that all the sacristans had either 
 gone mad, or were afflicted with Saint Vitus' dance. 
 The town is ^' making an evening of it.''' The 
 gathering lights are glorious. See them wink from 
 the lofty lattice, and flare, like a northern aurora, from 
 the thronged and verdant square ! We must certain- 
 ly join the wakeful groups there. But '- do'st think 
 one can get in, friend, at the gate?" No matter; 
 we '11 take the license of Le- Sage's devil, and alight 
 
60 , RIBS AND TRUCKS, 
 
 forthwith in the " Plaza San Antonio ;" the evening 
 resort of a fair fraction of the fifty -three thousand 
 who form the population of the town. How in- 
 stinct with sauntering gayety and life ! How " be- 
 guilingly foreign " to us, the serried lime groves, — 
 the stone seats beneath, — the many bright lamps, — 
 the easy air of abandonment that characterizes all the 
 native loungers ; for your Andaluz knows just how 
 to move in this fervid latitude of his. There are 
 no obstreperous carriages, mark, to torture you into 
 too rapid a step, or stun you by their saucy rattle ; 
 
 Drowning conversation, 
 Past resuscitation; 
 
 and yet the " place " is a city jt?/«ce. The aspect of 
 things is just what might be expected in a region 
 rife with chocolate and wine, rather proverbial for 
 a kind of quiet and secretive mirth. 
 
 Do I hear the tinkle of a guitar? and do you feel 
 tired? Let it soothe us presently to sleep, in the 
 
 half English hotel of I forget what, or whom ; 
 
 but one with airy oriental chambers, flowers and 
 fruits, tidy waiters, and a pretty situation. 
 
 Morning — and matins — and ten o'clock. What 
 shall we do? Take an olive: and help yourself 
 from that dish of olla porridge. I propose to explore 
 the streets for an hour, and lecture upon architecture. 
 The houses we pass are chiefly Moorish in design, 
 enclosing open courts within a balustrade of two 
 stories ; a wet awning is often spread overhead in 
 hot weather, and the occupants contrive to make a 
 
PEEP AT CADIZ. 61 
 
 little lounging paradise beneath, with the aid of 
 blossoming shrubbery. Many of the buildings are 
 tall and roomy, with lordly balconies, curtained 
 from the sun. 
 
 But here is the solemn and half finished cathe- 
 dral of (I think) Santa Cruz. It has already ex- 
 hausted large sums in building, but being, like 
 many another broad-bottomed pile, rather short- 
 winded, seems to have gotten quite out of breath in 
 its progress upward. Let 's pass within. Those 
 ponderous arches are nobly sprung ! and their quad- 
 ruple support of polished and clustered pillars, how 
 imposing ! like the desert columns of Tadmor, alas, 
 or the giant stalactites of a cavern, with no flooring 
 beneath but terra Jirma^ save an occasional sorry 
 flag-stone. I like the gloom of this premature 
 ruin — the adjuncts withal, — a cresset, of ancient 
 make, and a second-hand graven image of the virgin, 
 with a picturesque old crone upon her marrow-bones 
 before it, have their effect; but so — a scroll ; freshly 
 written, signed by no less a dignitary than my lord 
 Archbishop : do you see it, upon this pilaster ? 'T is 
 forty days absolution, at a bargain. So many aves, 
 so many paternosters, duly muttered here, and be- 
 hold your soul whitewashed : — enticing offer is n't 
 it? The chapels are boarded in, the gates locked, 
 which forbids any further discovery, so off with us 
 for the walls ; — (a fine breezy promenade) — by way of 
 the time-honored church of San Domingo, — another 
 church worth noticing, that of St. Somebody-else, 
 and half a score of hoary, prison-like looking con- 
 
 m 
 
62 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 vents, eloquent of more than hierarchy. Nay, sup- 
 pose you proceed, for the nonce, alone. 
 
 # jj^ ^ M^ ^ ^ ^ ^ 
 ^ W ^ ^ W ^9 ■flS 
 
 There : You Ve acccomplished, have you not, a 
 delightful stroll round the ramparts ; enjoying the 
 vivifying sea air, jostling an army of nondescript 
 soldadoSj and studying the phases of many an Iberian 
 Venus, under partial eclipse of window-blind or coy 
 mantle, while I have had my siesta. Me thinks 
 we shall enjoy sunset on the signal tower. 
 
 What a storied and lovely prospect ! The white 
 city, — sheening beneath us; with its level, plastered, 
 
 nd peopled roofs, its lines and eye-refreshing 
 patches of tropic foliage, its antique squares and 
 monastic turrets, in the very arms of the blue ocean ; 
 the sea itself, — soothed down to a voluptuous hush, 
 silvered with sunlight, and flecked with tiny sails ; 
 the brown forests and pretty villages of Medina 
 Sidonia; the purple ridges of Ronda, — half relieved 
 against an amber sky ; how admirably serve they all 
 to 
 
 " Unite, in one attaching maze, 
 
 The brilliant, fair, and soft, the glories of old days/' 
 
 On yonder little isthmus, where the dusty trav- 
 elers are plodding, and the mules tinkling homeward 
 to Leon, the impetuous Essex gained a bloody foot- 
 ing in the expedition of Effingham and Raleigh. On 
 
A PEEP AT CADIZ. 63 
 
 that shore, the despairing duke of Medina swamped 
 and fired his galleons, to balk his heady antagonists ; 
 Hanno's legions have drawn up on the more distant 
 plain ; Columbus put forth from thence (33=^), — and 
 on yonder calm waters, not far off, was Trafalgar's 
 victory secured. How much that we now see, is made 
 sacred by historic association ! But I will not talk. 
 Let us exhaust the time in gazing and pondering; 
 for the sun is just dipping below the horizon — and 
 when he takes his leave of " fair Cadiz," we too 
 must bid her Vaya Vm con Dios I 
 
" GOOD BYE." 
 
 Good-bye ! I well remember the sensation 
 That apropos of that familiar phrase, 
 
 Half lost amid the rattling wheels' rotation, 
 Oppressed me — ay, the feeling, like amaze, 
 
 That kept me, more than usually pale. 
 
 Watching the dust of the departing mail, — 
 
 That hiding you, as the cloud hid Elijah, 
 
 Bore yoQ from our loved haunts away forever ; 
 
 And then my wondering if our parting tried ye 
 As it did me ; and my most vain endeavor 
 
 To busy me with knife and fork, and spoon, 
 
 At tea-time, — on that long, long afternoon. 
 
 But now, I can recur to all with apathy : 
 
 Though as to my souPs void, I 've not re-filled it ; 
 
 Living as lies a stone upon the lap o' the 
 
 Earth, heedless if the sunlight shun or gild it; 
 
 With a snug panting for annihilation, all 
 
 That hinders me from being still *' quite rational — " 
 
 Where are you now? Nay, prythee pardon me, 
 For years are told since came the one last letter, 
 
 Which was the landmark of your destiny ; — 
 A feeble scrawl — I could afford a better, 
 
 ('Bating the hair, of which there was a lock or two,) 
 
 Were I a Brazil parrot, or a cockatoo. 
 
GOOD BYE. 65 
 
 Where are you ? / am sitting in my chair 
 Mocking dull care with a Cremona fiddle — 
 
 Your seat is tenantless ... But I forbear 
 Alway, the breaking tunes off in the middle, 
 
 So I will fiddle first, and then soliloquize 
 
 About it : tho' I question if it will look wise, — ^ 
 
 In one, whose quietude, though transcendental 
 
 Thus far, (I challenge any to deny it,) 
 If memory could make him sentimental. 
 
 Might chance just here, to be overtaken by it ; 
 Here, where each object wears the self-same air 
 As then — but for the cobwebs here and there. 
 
 Attachment's ghost is certainly a grim one; 
 
 Go swathe it as you will, I like it not ; 
 Let who will choose to christen it a whim, one 
 
 Dislikes to have been forsaken or forgot ; — 
 And bankrupts in faith, love, and such commodities, 
 Can testify at will, how very odd it is, 
 
 To find the heart's whole treasury expended ; — 
 
 Not a regard left for another venture, 
 However beneficially intended. 
 
 Save such as we bestow on flask and trencher — 
 Which latter, I am fain to do them justice. 
 Are the sole creatures now, in which my trust is. 
 
 Good bye — once more ! and with my benison, — 
 And hopes that you are better off than I, 
 
 Lost intimate : if you 'd a haunch of venison 
 To send me, I could bring myself to try 
 
 Its flavor ; — but for souvenirs, and lockets, 
 
 I've now no corner in my waistcoat pockets. 
 
A FORENOON'S CRUISE IN THE CHINA SEA. 
 
 " Helm's a lee !" — "' Raise tacks and sheets'' — 
 " Let go and hauF' — " Clear away that fore top- 
 gallant brace." Such are the phrases that intrude 
 themselves on my unwilling ears as I lie cradled in 
 my cot, in the cabin of the Gadfly, East Indiaman; 
 lat. by obs. 22 north or thereabouts ; long, never 
 mind what, at a quarter past sunrise, in the year 
 of grace eighteen hundred and ; — How pro- 
 voking ! I am irretrievably waked up — Heigh-hei- 
 go ho ! Steward, is that you? " Ya-as, sir." " Have 
 they made the land yet?" '^ Ya-as, sir, coast all 
 along to starboard." " The deuce ! where, oh where 
 are my trowsers." Reader, ahoy ! turn out, — be 
 visible! — on deck forthwith; and (if Ebony the 
 steward leaseth not,) you shall see " the core 
 of utmost Ind" — the giddy foothold of the Anti- 
 podes — the goal, attained, of a weary pilgrim- 
 age over half the circumference of the globe. Many 
 leagues, withal, to the eastward of the rosy East it- 
 self; that nestling-place of love and wonder, dearer 
 in its association with gorgeous fable, than Greece 
 and Rome in theirs with a fascinatin:^ but thread- 
 bare history. A region embalmed of Arabian tales; 
 the land of Mystery and bamboo canes ; of art upon 
 
CRUISE IN THE CHINA SEA. 67 
 
 crutches, and civilization in second childhood ; where 
 moon-descended, potentates were reigning, ages be- 
 fore creation, over moon-smitten men. In brief, you 
 shall look at a bit of the south coast of China, as 
 exhibited in the neighborhood of Lintin. Pray, now 
 that we are up and gazing, does it, think you, appear 
 at all Chinese ? Can you see aught but intermina- 
 ble ranges of bleak, brown, jagged hills, without a 
 rag of proper verdure to cover their nakedness? 
 
 Still do not ridicule my fairy land of promise ; 
 my (iueue-topia, for lack of astounding peculiarities 
 at first sight ; — do'n't sing in disappointed irony, 
 
 A Chinese sun above our heads, 
 
 And Chinese waves below, 
 And Chinese breezes all around, 
 
 How oddly, now, they blow ! 
 
 Do n't foster the vein of the schoolboy who wept 
 because his first-seen elephant Avas not as big as a 
 church ; for I am about to reveal novel features in 
 the sea-scape. Look under the bows — there are 
 white porpoises; — if we gain our roadstead to-night, 
 you shall see the waters turbid with the rush of an 
 Oriental river. Shade your eyes for a moment, and 
 behold that perfect chevaux de frise of fishing- 
 smacks, along the l^Drizon; with their inmates am- 
 phibious, — beings, not partially water-proof, like all 
 other legitimate fish-takers, but living — really, and 
 life-long, on the sea: pickled forever in brine — lap- 
 ping the milk of infancy, and pillowing the dying 
 hoary head, alike on Thetis's bosom ; making their 
 
68 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 wet, uneasy boats, at once cradle and homestead, 
 traveling carriage, fish-stall, and grave. Let us 
 overhaul one or two of the fleet ahead for inspec- 
 tion. 
 
 Stand by to run out that foretopmast studding- 
 sail boom ; — sheet home royals, fore and aft ; — set the 
 flying jib ! — Away we go — the ship waltzing with 
 the water of the tune of " Bounding billows," and 
 rapidly nearing the nearest boat. Here it is at last ; 
 ducking and bobbing, and bowing and scraping, un- 
 der our lee ; stern high and dry, and nose puddling 
 along, half under water, as if sharing the slippery 
 quest of its occupants. The sails are bamboo — the 
 crew, — aid me spirit of G. Cruikshank ! or how shall 
 I cause to be appreciated these quaint '' co-heralds of 
 the dawn ;" — these sentinel cherubim of the Celes- 
 tial Empire : these '' first impressions ;'' these long 
 tailed, squirrel-toothed, swarthy representatives 
 of yet-to-be-discovered Chinamen. But there they 
 lean, and squat, and stare; — the ''too transcen- 
 dant vision " of a fleeting moment, as we are 
 sweeping by. Now or never — the scene is patriar- 
 chal : count we the generations. A bare-headed an- 
 tediluvian couple, are peeping out, half hidden, from 
 a sort of kennel on the deck. Next comes a kind 
 of nondescript slattern, with woollen sash and infi- 
 nite trowsers, cheek by jowl witrra little turnip of a 
 boy, all body and queue. Then a triangular bare- 
 footed helmsman; the tiller in one hand, the sheets 
 in the other, voluble as a magpie, and looking, from 
 choice and necessity, three ways at once. With six 
 
CRUISE IN THE CHINA SEA. 69 
 
 or seven supernumerary grotesques, the common 
 costume being any thing that comes to hand, (where 
 every thing but salt water is scarce,) set off with 
 a huge cape, and surmounted by an acre of hat. 
 So, — there they go : gUding, bounding, chattering, 
 astern; with their nasal- guttural cadences, (think of 
 the Smalltalk of juvenile swine !) their naked feet, 
 their dingy drapery, and every thing that is theirs ; 
 all overshadowed with those parasol hats, liko a 
 senate of Titan toad-stools. 
 
 Another boat. A pendant, possibly, to the last, 
 to judge from its '^ complement of men," which con- 
 sists of one old woman and a little boy ; the latter 
 comprising, perhaps, the '' larboard watch.'' Poor sol- 
 itary things ! 'Tis pity we may not buy some of their 
 fish, were it only for admiration's sake; — they are 
 Chinese fish, let me tell you ; — but the Long-queue 
 government forbids any intercourse between us and 
 the boats ; and so, you see 
 
 Now, as the shore is still distant, and no adven- 
 ture promises or threatens, let us dream of one, by 
 the aid of a very pertinent book which I hold in my 
 hand. Sit,if you please, on that water-cask, and sweep 
 the horizon with your eye. Please to know that 
 these prolific seas were once the cruising-ground 
 of " fishers of men :" not, however, by any means 
 in the apostolic sense. I allude to the Ladrones ; 
 an association of pirates, perhaps, (the old North- 
 men and the Algerines excepted,) the most for- 
 midable on record. Their rise was singular. A 
 few hundred provincials, alienated by petty oppres- 
 6 
 
to RIBS AND I^RUCKS. 
 
 sion, and seeking refuge in petty piracy, were re- 
 inforced from time to time by a few hundred starve- 
 ling neighbors. Less than two lustres beheld them 
 masters of a fleet, whose admiral talked of chang- 
 ing the dynasty of the realm. Anon, seventy thou- 
 sand desperadoes, with eighteen hundred sea- wor- 
 thy vessels, emboldened by successful incursion, 
 brooding, like an incubus, over the whole south- 
 ern coast, threading her rivers for tribute, blockad- 
 ing her sea-ports, strangling her colonial commerce, 
 spurning her feeble force and feebler tactics, placed 
 China much in the posture of a foolish old hen who 
 has unwittingly hatched a cockatrice. The bamboo 
 of celestial justice might have menaced them to this 
 hour, (at a respectful distance,) but for intestine quar- 
 rels, and a subsequent compromise, which resulted in 
 pardon for the submissive Ladrones and a Mandar- 
 inship apiece (by way of indemnity) to each of their 
 admirals. 
 
 The latter have since approved themselves, of 
 course, the most zealous and unsparing among thief 
 takers. Well; I read that, in the year 1810, (no 
 matter what day of what moon,) a cutter of the H* 
 G. ship ^' Marquis of Ely," containing an officer, a 
 Chinese pilot, and six or eight sturdy tars, was lost 
 in a fog, while hastening to rejoin that vessel at her 
 anchorage, not far below Macao; that they stood 
 about hither and thither in sore distress for three 
 days ; saw nothing of the ship, had nothing to eat 
 worth mentioning, and finally (desirable consumma^ 
 tion !) fell in with pirates. The scene of their distress^ 
 
CRUISE IN THE CHINA SEA. 71 
 
 their captivity, and tardy ransom, is now before our 
 eyes. Unlucky dogs ! Methinks I see your wan 
 faces peering through the mist, late in the afternoon 
 of your third day of trials ; guessing at the cardinal 
 points, and searching in vain, for something like a 
 sun to steer by. Stout men sicken by starvation and 
 long exposure, and ye have " learned to watch and 
 wake '' with a vengeance ; have digested your 
 last morsel of green orange forty-eight hours ago. 
 A sad substitute, this, for the merry circling of the 
 capstern, and the seducing Rogue's March, quicken- 
 ing the anchor's rise for " Sweet Home." But the fog 
 breaks! Huzza! and sails, kind, welcome sails, are 
 in sight : two boats to windward, and a whole bam- 
 boo squadron on the lee. The boats bear down : 
 All huzza, save that old oriental wharf-rat, the pi- 
 lot ; and what says he ? "- Lad-rones ! kill us if they 
 catch us." Whe-w ! Then pull, boys, prompt- 
 ly — for dear life, pull — for the fishermen to lee- 
 ward ! And right strenuously do they pull them- 
 selves, into very equivocal quarters. Unwitting sui- 
 cides ! The lee lieet are Ladrones. 
 
 " Their chieftain from his lofty poop, already, with his eye 
 Is bidding them the welcome of the spider to the fly.'' 
 
 And now he courteously lowers his boat. And 
 now forty bare blades are gleaming in the returning 
 sun above their half score of uneasy necks. One 
 word from yon queer scoundrel, and heads and 
 trunks may bid each other good by. . " Inglis ! In- 
 glisman!'' screams the pilot: — short jackets and a 
 
72 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 uniform have proved (under Heaven) their salvation: 
 the Ladrones, recognizing the EngUsh as costly vic- 
 tims, and, better still, as very redeemable commodi- 
 ties at second hand. See the sufferers now fettered 
 to the floorings of a war junk. The first scrutiny 
 of the captors is over. The shower of swinish 
 monosyllables and uncouth acclamations that greet- 
 ed their entry on board, has ceased : and, spite of 
 famine, and insult, and crushed hopes, you may 
 trace that hiptrowsered stoicism, that sort of Wap- 
 ping resignation, that identifies a group of British 
 tars in distress. S lighting all intermeditae loafers, 
 their eyes are coolly dilating upon a figure in jetty 
 skull-cap and purple robes, perched on the shelf-like 
 quarter deck : the grand inquisitor, as it were ; the 
 chairman, of the surrounding committee of roguery. 
 'T is the captain of the squadron ; the redoubtable 
 Slam-bang-ti ; or some such musical designation ; 
 self-styled scourge of the Eastern Ocean ; and, cer- 
 tes, not unworthy the serio-comic perusal of our he- 
 roes. But what now ? A supercilious punch from 
 behind, a sudden side glance, and lo ! the apparition 
 of an earthen trough, with something at last, thank 
 Ceres, to eat. '' Want ye lice?" sneers the bearer: 
 " To be sure !" All fall to, like hyenas ; not, (a plague 
 upon Chinese mouths that cannot sound an R,) not 
 indeed upon the tiny people petted of Leuenhoek, 
 but upon rice ; wholesome, tenderly boiled, and sea- 
 soned with caterpillars ! 
 
 Another turn, an' it please you, of fancy's kaleido- 
 scope. They are tenants of a new prison ; the 
 
CRUISE IN THE CHINA SEA. 73 
 
 flag-ship of thief-admiral Taou. Scowlingly listens 
 that worthy, while the old pilot, acting as interpret- 
 er, and yet quivering from a perquisite of tor- 
 ture, is clenching former testimonies, and treating 
 for ransom on behalf of his less gifted clients. 
 Were ever men so ill fattened by three months' diet 
 upon balked anticipations, accompanied , though they 
 undoubtedly were, with messes of rice " a la La- 
 drone," and occasional god-sends of ambrosial rat- 
 pies. How unlike the once hale, cleanly cutter's 
 crew. A bevy of scare-crows, in scratched noses 
 and tangled hair, with faces the very wrestling- 
 ground of smut and pallor. To-day is the crisis of 
 their fate : a messenger from friends, awaiting a 
 sworn promise or a plump refusal of liberation, is 
 very impartially munching his opium hard by, ut- 
 terly careless of the issue. His burglarious high- 
 ness surly, the mediator cringing, but wary, meet- 
 ing a world of extravagant demands, with '^ Hy, 
 Yah ! no can give," and a most dolorous obeisance 
 and shake of the head. (A hundred thousand dol- 
 lars, be it premised, was the meed of rescue first in- 
 sisted on.) F'ifty thousand — ^' No can ;" forty, thir- 
 ty, twenty thousand — ditto, do. do. And now suc- 
 ceeds a private confab with our corpse of breathless 
 ragamuffins. ^'Oan give three thousand dollars, 
 and make see directly." Whizz ! rejoins the sabre 
 of the chief, by way of a gentle hint against en- 
 croachment. But the offer is most unexpectedly ac- 
 cepted, on the sole stipulation of risking their lives 
 to aid their tormentors in an impending battle. 
 
74 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 Hark to the gongs and the braying horns ! The 
 fierce unintelligible shouts of command ; — the fitful 
 booming of brass cannon, and the baying of rusty 
 swivels ; the hail-like rattle of a myriad of stones 
 on the sides of lobster-shell junks ; the splash of 
 short-coming missiles ; the '^ gentle roar" of a Chi- 
 nese sea-fight ! Crack ! — crack— crack crack : — crack 
 — crack ! English muskets ! — How easily detected 
 is their compact native eloquence amid all this bar- 
 barian thunder. Six hours have our friends taken 
 part in this pleasant pastime, and six more (life last- 
 ing,) will still find them at it ; naval actions here 
 not being '' done up to order," in thirty minutes, 
 as with us. In fact, stones and arrows are apt to 
 wound more than they kill, and the celestial pow- 
 der has a force of inertness, — a home feeling, — a sad 
 unwillingness to go off*, without infinite coaxing. At 
 last the opera closes ; with a desperate self-sacrifice 
 on the part of the government commander, Kwo- 
 lang-lin. He blows up his junk ; a huge gingerbread 
 cradle of five hundred tons, peopHng the air with 
 blazing rubbish, and figures of parched Chinamen 
 ascending and descending. The bulk of national 
 vessels is seized, and the Ladrones bear away; the 
 cutter's men still safe, as might be expected ; their 
 lives, (not, alas ! their noses,) being charmed from 
 the beginning with a sprinkling of garlic water. 
 
 Now let us ransom them, (for 'tis seven bells, and 
 almost dinner thne.) What shall heave in sight on 
 a blessed morning, but the gun-brig * * * (not 
 always a guest so benignant,) with all the means 
 
CRUISE IN THE CHINA SEA. 75 
 
 and appliances, for speedy, certain deliverance. See 
 her careering over the swell, with snowy canvas 
 and elastic hull, brimfull of hope and mercy, and 
 beef and pork, nearer, and nearer, and nearer. 'Tis 
 Elijah's raven, — Noah's dove, — to their long dim 
 and rayless, but now relighted eyes. She '' heaves 
 to," and their hearts flutter ; 
 
 " Can ruth divine thus tire upon the wing V 
 
 Nay, but Ladrones are jealous of armed intru- 
 sion ; the brig must hold aloof, and the communica- 
 be midway, by boats. Oh the impatience of the poor 
 cadgers to shake their fists in safety, at the frosty 
 cruel authors of this delay! The brig's gig has 
 dropped splashing into the water : down from the 
 channels flash a dozen white-trowsered shins, 
 and now the oars are rattling in their row-locks 
 with a jerk and a roll of egregious good-will. They 
 have gained the robber's envoy, and a weighty 
 bag of dollars is transferred and on its way ...... 
 
 His avarice the admiral, is counting : '' Quisi; — bad 
 dollar." (The preposterous old rogue !) At last he 
 rises growlingly, and the ''fonquis" are released. 
 Imagine a knot of eels slipping from a trap ! They 
 are over the side in minus five minutes. Never 
 creaked the bamboo appendages of the comprador's 
 boat as now they creak, straining to the wind, in 
 passage to the gun-brig's gig. 'T is won at last; 
 three cheers ! and what a wild wagging of tongues 
 and whistling of tarpaulins : '' How fare ye, Jack?" 
 
76 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 " Poorly, thank ye, Gill," — rough welcome and kind- 
 ly interchange, season the homeward pull, till now, 
 on the brig^s deck, in the centre of safety, begirt 
 with glad welcome, and mighty guns, and ruminat- 
 ing tars, behold them consigning all pirates, and La- 
 drones in particular, to Hornie and Co. 
 
 All this would be a mighty tedious adventure for 
 us to meet with after all ; and we are perhaps quite 
 as well off to be smoothly approximating to Macao, 
 most ignobly well fed, with whole skins and purses, 
 clean shirts, and a tight uninjured vessel. The 
 hills are grown gloriously distinct, are they not ? and 
 huts and rocks are beginning to — no matter what 
 they are beginning to do — dinner is ready I 
 
 A 
 
SKY-SAIL-POLE LYRICS. 
 
 L 
 
 The broad, exulting sea ! 
 
 Say, brother, would' st thou learn 
 The fashion of his glee ? 
 The majesty discern 
 Of his flow ? 
 Come climb the reeling mastl 
 When heaven is overcast, — 
 And rattles, in the blast 
 All below. 
 
 II. 
 
 Where ocean's eagle fleeth. 
 
 Men's voices cease to sound — 
 Where surges boil beneath 
 And multiply around, 
 Let us rock ; 
 ,And soaring as we swing. 
 Feel a pulse gladdening. 
 That e'en the osprey's wing 
 May not mock. 
 
78 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 III. 
 
 The spirits of the storm 
 
 Admit us of their crew ; 
 Well wot they to transform — 
 A merry work they do ! 
 Hark away ! 
 Their jubilee is ours ; — 
 For us the welkin lowers — 
 Our comrades— reap the showers 
 Of the spray. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Ho, let the stout ship reel ! 
 
 The wind-god, in his race, 
 His viewless form reveal 
 With ravishing embrace, — 
 Hymning loud. 
 Torturing his hempen lyre ; — 
 While we, up-dandled higher 
 O'er dancing hills, aspire 
 To the cloud. 
 
 V. 
 
 More lightsomely to stoop 
 
 The gleaming gulph adown, 
 With sheer and rushing swoop : 
 More thrillingly to own 
 What a world 
 Of Titan harmony 
 Wanders 'twixt wave and sky, 
 When seas to skies reply, 
 Upward hurled. 
 
SKY-SAIL-POLE LYRICS. T9 
 
 VI. 
 
 What other ear can know 
 
 How greets the levin-crash 
 The sister bolt below ? 
 Flash lightening to flash : 
 Whose the eye 
 To mark with circling sight, 
 Each hoary form, bedight 
 With flakes of livid light. 
 Gambol by ? 
 
 VII. 
 
 Come when the lurid morn 
 
 Shrinks throe-convulsed aloof, — ^ 
 
 And second night is born ; 
 — Beneath an inky woof, 
 With a wail, 
 
 Wild waxing, uncontrolled, 
 
 With every hour that 's told. 
 
 Till hearts of steely mould, 
 Learn to quail. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Come when a winnowing blast 
 
 Hath swept the welkin dome ; 
 And crowned spheres reel past, 
 As rolls the starry foam 
 Of the flood ; 
 Come when we list — the spell 
 Abideth, — worketh well : — 
 Come rule the ocean swells 
 Tempest woo'd. 
 
80 ^ RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 IX. 
 
 The bright, low-slumbering sea- 
 Say, brother, would'st enjoy 
 The welcome, fancy free, 
 The sheen without alloy, 
 Of his rest? 
 Come, climb the rolling mast ! 
 Till, cord and canvas past, 
 His azure realm and vast. 
 Lies confessed. 
 
 X. 
 
 The gentle, yielding arms 
 
 Of upper atmosphere, 
 Refreshing while it warms^ 
 Alone enfold us here — 
 Cradle meet. 
 While teeming cloud and sail, 
 Aye tell us their tale. 
 Though eyes and glasses fail 
 'Neath our feet. 
 
 XT. 
 
 The veil of arrowy light, 
 
 The glancing waters wear, 
 Is pervious to our sight ; 
 
 The nether deeps lie bare- 
 Fearful far, 
 Down, down, — till ruddy day, 
 In twilight melts away 
 To the melancholy ray 
 Of a star. 
 
SKY- SAIL -POLE LYfllCS. 81 
 
 XII. 
 
 No envious eclipse ; 
 
 All, all is gladness — lo, 
 'T is herald Iris, trips 
 Before us, as we go. 
 See ! she hath 
 Her dainty floating zone 
 All round the vexed wave thrown, 
 That shivers, bleached and prone, 
 From our path. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Oh, rapturously free 
 
 The Pawnee scours the plain; 
 But freelier skim we 
 The limitless domain 
 Of the deep ; 
 And gather light, endued 
 From holier solitude, 
 A holier meeter mood. 
 As we sweep. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 If steadfast earth is bright. 
 
 And with her pictured maze, 
 From every hoary height, 
 Enthrall the willing gaze,— 
 If she have 
 Her woodlands, rill-bestrewn, 
 Her piles of old renown, — 
 Cloud-land is thrice our own, 
 On the wave. 
 T 
 
82 RIBS AND TRUCKS* 
 
 XV. 
 The fairyland that gilds 
 
 The far horizon's rim I 
 Where rapt Eolus builds, 
 When even waneth dim. 
 Tower and fane; 
 Where golden waters hie 
 'Twixt meads of Tyrian die^ 
 Prone to an amber sky, 
 Like the main. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Hither at eventide- 
 Hither when earliest morn. 
 Flits upward opal-eyed, 
 Or Luna bids her horn 
 Softly shine^ — '■ 
 Hence, read the stars aright. 
 Here wear the day — the night- 
 Song urgeth — sylphs invite — 
 Brother mine 1 
 
 XVH. 
 
 The ruler of the sea ;— ^ 
 Who lulls it in his palm ; — ^ 
 Where meetliest craves he 
 The homage of a psalm? 
 Lo, the sphere. 
 Lofty and airy lone, 
 Where other form or tone 
 Intrudes not, save his own ; 
 Worship here I 
 
METROPOLITAN GLIMPSES. 
 
 LONDON BRIDGE. 
 
 Such a bridge ! of granite: — nine hundred and 
 twenty-eight feet long : costing nearly ten millions 
 of Yankee dollars : — continuation, as it were, of a 
 nicely MacAdamized street ; almost level, fifty-three 
 feet broad, running between massy parapets far 
 higher than one's head, and only to be overlooked 
 where recesses occur, with stone seats for way- 
 farers, above each pier — H is gigantesque ; a largess 
 of modern art, that makes me glad, utility apart, 
 that the old bridge is gone ; unique though it were. 
 The Janus-wise flood of passengers ; (a number 
 equal to half the population of Philadelphia crossing 
 often in a day,) the ceaseless procession of ponderous 
 vehicles ; the collision of river craft ; the untiring, 
 sturdy elbowing of father Thames ; half of which 
 causes would demolish one of our bridges in a 
 couple of years, are absolutely nothing to this rock- 
 trophy : — fly-scamperings on horn of ox ; pranks of 
 conies about Mam- Tor : — the thing would wrestle 
 hopefully with an earthquake. 
 
.84 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 The view from the parapet is pecuHar ; nay, has 
 always a croAvdof lounging spectators about it; at- 
 tracted chiefly towards the eastern, or harbor sec- 
 tion of the river, and speculating devoutly at all 
 hou.rs, on the ceaseless embarkations below ; the 
 triple tier of vessels adown the middle of the stream ; 
 its furlong or so of breadtlf, all alive with yawl, 
 coal-barge and wherry ; the snorting progress of a 
 dozen black single-decked, Stygian looking steam- 
 ers ; the busy-orderly quay of the Custom house ; 
 the pinnacles of the Tower ; the steeples of all sorts, 
 St. this, and St. that, and St. t^ other, with which 
 the city bristles outright, and whose bells would 
 ravish Victor Hugo; — lo, all these to the left, and 
 thence across, on the other side, — but there I pause. 
 On the right bank is nothing but the borough of 
 Southwark ; wholly insignificant of profile, where 
 Charles Lamb (I think) takes it for granted that 
 nobody would live who could well take lodgings 
 elsewhere. The borough has, to be sure, its peculi- 
 arities ; a reach perhaps of noisomer mud by the 
 water-side than falls to the city's share, (most slov- 
 enly is gaffer Thames just here,) and a host of 
 spindling factory chimnies. The Greenwich rail- 
 way leaves the place H is true — and stay, there is 
 St. Savior's, clinging, of course, to the skirts of 
 the bridge. 
 
 St. Savior's redeemeth Southwark. Well, now for 
 a glance ''up stream;" lively bespecklement of 
 boats and low-masted craft; the mud and the chim- 
 nies we mentioned, and another majestic bridge ; of 
 
ST. savior's. 85 
 
 iron ; with a middle arch of two hundred and forty- 
 feet span, beyond which the river eludes us by a 
 bend ; the cynosure, however, in this direction, is 
 the mountain-like dome, yonder ; with twin steeples, 
 how gracefully adapted ; their tops half open-work ; 
 — who could mistake St, Paul's ? Met with in mid- 
 Atlantic, the recognition were the same, 't were only 
 supposing some hearty feat of Apostolic faith. 
 
 ST. SAVIOR'S. 
 
 The old times erection at the other end of the 
 bridge, that looks built of gun flint, ugly, but time- 
 defying, with the venerable square tower, void of 
 pretence, is, of course, St. Savior's — the lion edifice 
 of South wark; dating as to its foundation from the 
 beginning of the twelfth century, and founded by a 
 bishop of the early church. It stands, as you see, 
 all humbly by the heels of the bridge, in such 
 manner that one quite overlooks the lady chapel 
 from the parapet. 
 
 Foul proscriptions have been hatched in that little 
 chapel ; 't was the kennel of Bonner ere while, and 
 his inquisitorial table, (heaven sain the thing,) yet 
 occupies its platform at one end of the room. The 
 old church, cathedral indeed, with its nave, chancel 
 and transept, lady chapel and lantern tower, is in 
 
 part, as 1 before hinted, a ruin; while the remaining 
 
 7# 
 
§6 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 portion, still entire, continues to afford a roomy 
 church for service on the Sabbath. Yes, while the 
 snow falls unheeded into the roofless nave, and the 
 wild wind anthem swells through the clerestory, 
 and the hail rattles down upon knightly tomb and 
 sculptured corbell, the organ still peals away over 
 the choir; the lively chant re-echoes there, and the 
 awful beadle keeps watch over bevies of urchins, 
 curiously ensconced, with ruddy faces, and warm 
 feet, among the strange old effigies of the chancel. 
 T' is a hint for a poet ; this partial paralysis of the old 
 pile; and half recalleth some ghostly legend to my 
 mind. 'T is like the cheery fortitude of a saint, 
 half '' swallowed up in death,'' yet vital of heait, 
 and tuneful of tongue, challenging the king of ter- 
 rors with a song; his faith and hope triumphantly 
 retreating — at issue, as it were, to the very last, with 
 dissolution. 
 
 Now shall we drum up the sacristan's dame; and 
 be amused with a specimen of the guide-craft that 
 infests every nook in England, where aught of an- 
 tiquity may be presumed to lurk ? Well — '^ ^ 
 ***** The buttresses ; 
 
 the irregular shapes and sizes of gothic windows, 
 Avith their old pictorial tracery, too rambling, one 
 would say, and rude, even to have been indebted to 
 square, or plumb-line; the odd chimeras, all head 
 and wings, yet nowise cherubic, adhering like bats, 
 in upper angles of the stone work; the legendary 
 posterns, things we have but fancied, heretofore, 
 and which suggest, of course, a whole volume of ro- 
 
ST. 
 
 87 
 
 mance ; — these all catch our eye in passing, and form 
 a rare contrast enough in their hoary betokenings, 
 with the spick and span newness, and mushroom 
 pretensions of most of the neighboring buildings. 
 My eye is particularly offended with staring signs of 
 " Trueman, Hanbury & Buxton," ^' Meux's en- 
 tire," and the like, along sundry tavern fronts hard 
 by; harlequin-hued, replete with new fangled vulgar- 
 ity ; but within — one cannot pass Hwixt the score or 
 more of semi-Saxon pillars, uprising stilly from 
 shattered pavement, to roof half open overhead, 
 
 ^' Where the blue sky and the slow-drifting cloud 
 Look in/* 
 
 alone, and the city's roar itself scarce mars the 
 narrow solitude, without a craving to gossip with 
 them, about the familiar faces of their youth; the 
 gentle folks of Tom a Becket's days. * * 
 ^ * * Shapeless mouldings ; every angle 
 rounded by the rasping tongue of time. * * 
 Lo ! the occupied part of the edifice ! (come at 
 beneath a famous quadruple arch that supports the 
 tower: — ) a most comfortable place of worship, 
 (were 't not in South wark, alas !) and one that would 
 make a very museum in the hands of Roman Cath- 
 olics. Eh? tomb of a squire ; becomingly fenced in, 
 at the transept ; a squire of sundry centuries ago ; 
 his formal effigy all solemnly laid out in the niche 
 above; a niche, such as painters love to sketch, with 
 dainty fetwork all toilfully chiseled out of stone; a 
 monkish Latin rhyme beneath, in old English let- 
 
88 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 ters, and spelling long uncouth. What is it — the 
 name before Armigerq : it cannot be Gower ? 'T is 
 not, indeed. His tomb, however, did occupy a part 
 of the nave. 
 
 But this other monument, so conspicuous ; a 
 master and dame on their marrow-bones '' athwart- 
 ships**' of the lid ; she in coif, he in double ruff and 
 jerkin, with half a dozen grotesque little miniatures 
 of themselves, kneeling beside them. Was such a 
 display" then, once natural and solemn? And here 
 again, upon the wall, espalier- wise ; — of all devices ! 
 a coronetted skull surmounting ^ hatchment ! Sup- 
 pose we meditate! 
 
 '' HOLY PAUL'S." 
 
 St. Paul's churchyard, by no means answereth 
 to the rural notion of a burial place ; being three 
 acres of bustling square, just large enough in all to 
 accommodate the cathedral's Briarean bottom. 
 
 The church — but, there — get a little out of the 
 way — by the window of this trunk store. Now 
 throw your head back, and look straight up into the 
 air! — almost — or you catch not the upper outlines of 
 the house that Jack. built, by proxy of Christopher, 
 to say his prayers in. Colossal, is it not, for a 
 sample of man's handiAvork ? Coral insects however 
 build islands in process of time, and ninety years of 
 
89 
 
 toil unremitting raised this. But what the mischief, 
 you quite disregard what I say ! (Reader loquitur,) 
 "Pardon me! I was thinking that . . . one of these 
 days . . . Jove wilhng . . . and the coUiers . . . 
 an embassy from Timbuctoo would be ravished to 
 be received there ; so delicate a compliment, indeed ; 
 'twill be jet black before long! Is it possible that 
 Day and Martin, . . . but their supplies gave out 
 maybe. . . . Nowof all the great unwashed, Ethiop, 
 Nigritian, be-grimmed, soot-laden, coal-heaverish, 
 chimneyrback hues for a temple to Erebus and Nox ! 
 Why I thought it was white ; Christian ; of marble !'' 
 Pooh ! You mean to say St. Paul's looks grizzled : — 
 so it does; and forty fold more venerable on that 
 very account— is it not so? " Ye-es !" Aha! but 
 we must take a turn, and eye the cathedral from 
 Ludgate-hill. The mischief with London is, that 
 scarce an edifice in it, the '^ Adelaide" excepted, has 
 elbow-room ; a vista ; point of view space to show 
 itself; every palace and fane seems pocketed for 
 safe keeping. If lofty, one gets his eye prematurely 
 poked out by a tray or ladder bearer, or his chops 
 insulted with a fish's tail, just in mid effort of de- 
 spair to compass the roof with his eye ; if it be long, 
 he sees at best a detatched fragment, unsatisfactory, 
 incomplete, as a lobster without claws. This world- 
 famous church, now, — no esplanade, no breathing 
 room, — must be got sightof, if at all, from the gutter, 
 as it were, or over the roofs and chimnies of en- 
 compassing houses. We can, however, at the tri- 
 fling cost of 'biding the issue which dray horse or 
 
90 
 
 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 omnibus team of a fival half dozen shall first fell 
 us, stand presently just in the middle of Ludgate 
 street, and so catch a glimpse of the grand front. 
 Ye dogs! What a '' meetnus V of which three and 
 twenty houses proper serve only to measure a flank. 
 
 Statues, as every one knows, are out of taste on 
 a puny, or even medium sized erection ; — but those 
 aloft yonder, of Apostles, pilgrim-wise, and couchant 
 evangelists, all colossal withal, how beautifully ap- 
 propriate and well bestowed ! Not but that they, 
 too, afford the sacrilegious a text for tittering. One 
 might liken them to sweeps — so wofully smutty 
 and sootily draped are they grown. Should 
 you be surprised, now, if Paul were to raise 
 that half recognizable arm, and brandish the brush 
 that eludes our lowher upgazings, with a " Sweep- 
 O-O-O ! Now to the south door, (Tityos might pass 
 under it without much stooping, a single panel 
 should accommodate your sixfeet three,) through the 
 stately gate of iron, with a glance in passing, at the 
 pavement of tombstones from Avhich the solemn 
 pile uprises. 
 
 Enter! uncovered. How sepulchral chilly, Ken- 
 tucky-cavern-like, the air within ! for the huge hall 
 has a climate of its own; all unlike the balmy June- 
 breath we inhaled but a moment ago. Whew ! 't is 
 all one cavity ! a young mountain disemboweled. 
 Not till now did we recognize the vast proportions. 
 Come here to the fence (what a plague is it for,) 
 that encircles the pound-Vike space beneath the 
 dome. Look aloft! Is the ceiling in fresco, or 
 
91 
 
 boldest relief of the chisel ? The sheer height for- 
 bids our guessing-^a frigate's mainmast, with all its 
 gear, nay, the tallest parish church we wot of at 
 home, might stand at ease, steeple and all, in this 
 " room ;'' its lower proportions re-adjusted, mayhap, 
 but not enlarged therefor ; and we look down from 
 yon circlet of gallery on the sky-sail-pole truck of 
 the one, or the vane of the other, having yet a pret- 
 ty feat of climbing before us ere ^he ball be reached ; 
 and all this not one whit to the prejudice of the 
 church-rivalling choir, where service is performed. 
 Much of the area we see is forbidden ground ; ac- 
 cessible only by silver keys. 
 
 In lounging about among the monimients, of 
 spotless marble, Howard's, Jones's Johnson's, and 
 some thirty-nine others, letting the eye roam about 
 the vast unadorned reach of walls, and the plain, 
 but finely chequered pavement, (you recognize its 
 beauty in the space beneath the dome,) one is half 
 tempted to prefer St. Paul's in its grand simplicity, 
 to all the parti-colored marbles, and lavish embel- 
 lishments that bewilder while they dazzle, in the 
 great cathedral of Rome ; but the monumental 
 groups, and the dozen banner trophies (of Blenheim 
 and duebec,) all coyly bestowed in the depths of 
 the dome, are certes too scanty a " ]^lenishing ;" and 
 serve, perhaps, little better purpose than to breed a 
 livelier sense of the poverty-stricken sublime. The 
 statuary, intended by Sir Christopher, is not forth 
 coming, and even of the candidates for interment here, 
 some refuse to die, and others, by far the greater 
 number, alas ! to be born. 
 
92 RIBS AND THUCKS. 
 
 The chancel, which will accommodate a parish 
 full of worshippers, is gorgeously screened in, gated 
 with a sublime porte of iron, lined with rich oaken 
 stalls and a tasty pulpit, and altogether essentially 
 cosy, to preach or to hear in ; excepting possibly in 
 winter ; where, though it never snows within the 
 church, the heat is apt to follow the orisons aloft. 
 Twenty minutes after the tri-weekly prayers begin, 
 the massy portal is*swung to ; all further ingress or 
 egress prevented, and all in- venturing loiterers en- 
 trapped into the semblance at least, of devotion, till 
 the occasion be over. 
 
 Now Avhere the stair-flights may be, Hwixt hide 
 and cuticle, by which Ave are to mount skyward, 
 goodness wot ! but forward, march ! and we '11 know. 
 So, — guide the first pockets his guerdon of six pence 
 " here below ;" his jurisdiction extending only to yon- 
 der bitdoor in the nave ; — his successor reigns "' lord 
 of the ascendant'' up two flights of stairs ; to where 
 quite a corps of mysterious pioneers is maintained, 
 each pursuing his daily calling in a different part of 
 the edifice ; one chaffering in favor of the great 
 bell of five tons weight, audible twenty miles 
 off; another for the library, a third, — nay, spare me 
 the list, — besides the well informed person in the 
 whispering gallery, and the " captain of the top," 
 to whom is reserved the crowning privilege of 
 boosting the more indefatigable up beetling ladders, 
 and through festoons of venerable cob- webs, into 
 the ball ; 't were too much, indeed, for Hercules 
 himself, to pilot all visitors, afoot, what with ascend- 
 
93 
 
 ing and descending, ferreting and scrambling, 
 through all labyrinthine ducts and crannies, each 
 leading somewhere of consequence, in this intricate 
 shell : the veritable simorg of the place, however, 
 " oldest and wisest thing," and most mysterious, 
 moveless, aloof, in the upper section of the pile, is 
 an ancient woman ; solely occupied, it would seem, 
 in passing on the curious, like empty buckets at a 
 fire, to return betimes, brim full of new impressions. 
 
 AUons ! courage ! We have disappointed a brace 
 of beconing gnomes : the usher of the bell, and 
 him of the book-room (all polemics I warrant) in 
 favor of the wise whisperer in the gallery; there 
 is, it seems, another gallery below, to which admit- 
 tance is refused, probably because it overhangs the 
 whole height between dome and floor without inter- 
 val, and might occasion giddiness in the looker-down. 
 
 Ah ! here we are ; a circle of an hundred and 
 fifty feet in diameter, just one third of the way up 
 
 the dome poh ! one might as wisely go on to 
 
 describe a pair of tongs ; — hist ! '^ The other side, 
 gentlemen, if you please. — This church was ninety 
 years in building ; was completed by one architect, 
 Sir Christopher Wren (!) assisted by one master- 
 mason, during the life time of one Bishop of Lon- 
 don: the panels that you see here beneath, illus- 
 trate the life of St. Paul:^ the noise made in shut- 
 
 * Painted by Sir James Thornhill, at forty shillings the square yard. An anec- 
 dote is told, how the artist, one day, much absorbed in his work, had nearly 
 stepped backward off the scaffolding, three hundred and sixty feet, smash ! wheu 
 a friend arrested him by feigning to bedaub St. Paul, with a spare brush \hat lay 
 at hand. 
 
 8 
 
94 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 ting this little door, (whack, bang, O !) is as loud as 
 the report of the heaviest cannon." The deuce it is ! 
 a piece of shrewd precaution, by-the-bye, to let us 
 know so much : — in a whisper withal ; pure delica- 
 cy that ! assumes no doubt that we are deaf, and 
 would spare our vanity. m m m 
 
 # # # # # a ^ trifle for the 
 
 whisperer. Sir ?" Nay, most willingly ; — good bye ! 
 Why not, by the way, let the whisperer's edifying 
 duties, like the canon's below, devolve on a proxy; 
 a cockatoo for example, as vicar? there were a hint 
 for a minister of public instruction ! a spring would 
 suffice to slam the door, and the formula of instruc- 
 tion might run exactly the same, ''application" 
 and all, only substituting " fellow mortals " instead 
 of gents, for fear '' the gentlemen might be ladies." 
 
 My eye ! what a prospect ! a whole horizon, such 
 as the altitude of three hundred and four feet above 
 high ground must needs present, where but one line 
 of hills proper intrudes, roof replete ; brimful of 
 houses ! Such is the impression first come by in 
 our peep from the cupola. Early morning is the time 
 they say to study the scene ; before the fires are 
 made; the only season to surprise the coy city, just 
 out of bed as it were, in drapeless transition from 
 coverlet of fog to petticoat of smoke : the ingenious 
 draughtsman for the Colloseum found no other hour 
 fit for his purpose ; and accordingly " pitched his 
 tent" for twelve months in the cat's-cradle- shell 
 
" HOLY Paul's." 95 
 
 just below, in order to be at his sketching post, out- 
 side the ball, by cock-crow ; to any one however 
 preferring rather to admire than scrutinize so vast a 
 scene, the noon-tide view should be more imposing, 
 from its very obscurity ; which gives no limits, no 
 distinct shore to the sea of houses. I feel inclined 
 for my OAvn part to supplicate Dan Eolus, lest the 
 prank of a meddlesome blast puff some rural out- 
 line into sight. Remember, we have no Babylon 
 now, no Persepolis, no Cophtic Thebes, (Pekin, I 
 warrant you is but a wilderness of bamboo shan- 
 tees,) and that the heir of their whilom distinction, 
 the metropolis of all this world, is just under our 
 feet. How fondly the whole family of spires seem 
 approximating, ready to hang about the patriarchal 
 shoulders of the dome ! none withal more utterly 
 detached in appearance, than its own lawful Rachel 
 and Leah, the twin steeples of the very pile beneath. 
 St. Austin's, (jump and impale yourself upon it) 
 should make them jealous, were it not for a sly re- 
 ciprocity kept up doubtless under the rose through 
 the medium of our friends the gnomes. Were this 
 same height of ours a water level. Old Scratch might 
 dive for weather-cocks ! so would not methinks the 
 boldest pearl seeker of Oman. The coquetish 
 pinnacles, the dowagerly cupolas, that looked so 
 lofty half an hour ago, have surely dropped upon 
 their knees ; the purse-proud Bank of England, 
 should you know it? — Ko-tooing outright, at the 
 distance of three furlongs, into little better than a 
 ground plan : — My Lord Monument, absolutely en- 
 
96. RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 dwarfed ; his jaunty, flame-like scratch, re-bristling, 
 as it were, with awe ; the dragon on Bow steeple, St. 
 George himself would feel for it. As for the earth 
 beneath, — look at Newgate market ; with all its hive- 
 like alleys, and bevies of buxom huxter wenches ; 
 why, H is a nook in liilliput, reduced ; an inch of ant- 
 hill uncovered ; a very synagogue of mites. But 
 three hundred and four feet, after all, is not sky 
 height; the view hence, vast as it is, shows less a 
 lively map than a wildering expanse of house- 
 tops ;— the streets, alas, are nearly all hidden, and 
 the river reach, with its bridges, lies rather too dis- 
 tant to recall the fable of the Myrmidons, by-and-by, 
 in the vivid manner one could have wished. As 
 this naughty little girl at my elbow says, we can 't 
 possibly '' spit on any body's head." 
 
 The noise ! the chance medley din ! relieved ever 
 with roar, rattle and cry ; the '' tide ripple's tune" 
 of all those ever conflicting human currents; 
 the chafing of the tile ocean without shore ; the 
 snore ^ — as of that many-throated son of Heaven and 
 Earth, so mischievous what time the first radicals 
 revolutionized the kingdom of Saturn! Of all 
 noon-tide snores ! To overlook, by the way, the ver- 
 itable nightly unrest of the town, were worth one's 
 while; ay, to find one's self here, about ten, P. M. 
 suppose, some time on the winter side of the equi- 
 nox, when London has a night ; and peer athwart 
 the forty haunted square miles — there is, as you are 
 probably aware, a luminous atmosphere, a sort of 
 wizard aurora, a ''glory" over-head, traceable for 
 
"holy Paul's." 97 
 
 many leagues, that identifies the site of the metrop- 
 olis o' nights ; eighty thousand street lamps, and 
 some three or four hundred thousand house lights, 
 not being used to burn simultaneously for nothing ; 
 to peer hence then at such an hour, and list the Co- 
 cytus muttering, and mark the Plegethontic flare, 
 sinuous, mazy, limitless, darkling, waning, shooting, 
 dancing, blazing, through smoke and fog from the 
 grand avenues; to wear the hours away, till the 
 house tapers are gone out, by hundreds, by thou- 
 sands, and the glare (skipping as one may, the triple 
 belting of the Thames and the nebulce of Westmin- 
 ster) dies down lividly atwinkle; and the wheel 
 rattle, and the tramp of homeward feet have ceased ; 
 and the honest neighborhoods are purring stilly 
 through their chimnies ; and rampant misery, and 
 eighty thousand-fold prostitution fare forth, and the 
 city's voice is little better than one nightmare invo- 
 cation to Belial 
 
 The scene, though neither Miltonic, Dantesque, 
 nor Virgilian, that I wot of, must have a rare rehsh 
 of Pandemonium about it. Nay, would'st have 
 something more palpable? if so, by the fiddle of 
 Nero ! suppose a midnight conflagration ; of the 
 greedier sort; a tragedy stage illumination to eclipse 
 all the foot lights ; introduced, gradually, by a sub- 
 dued flourish of bells. Lo the fire fiend ! at supper ; 
 feeding modestly at first, on a single tallow chand- 
 ler's garret, by way of ^^ potage a la?"^ what is it? 
 "prepared at a moment's warning;" but all unsat- 
 isfied with the fat of the land, intent presently to 
 
98 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 devour markets ; to clear that table, of which St. 
 Paul's is the stationary tea-urn ; — get unmanageably 
 drunk on a score of brandy vaults, and then, — 
 whew ! there were an opera ! in the taste of the day : 
 all the livelier for coming off without programme. 
 Nay, conjure up the incident ! mature it ! the bell- 
 clangor general ; (spirit of Quasimodo, arfes^e/ dou- 
 ble dense atmosphere this by the way.) What 
 an orchestra! each fantastic tower and steeple, 
 crimson faced, rocking, with emulous din. Old 
 Thames running redder than Nile by Pharaoh's 
 garden foot; the uproar, of a people; unseen, encav- 
 erned, as it were, disputing their dwellings with 
 Moloch. No Lemnian cripple he, nor readily 
 spurned from yon pitchy sky, by such as Vulcan's 
 daddy; the broad-armed fiend, whose meanest 
 ruddy cowlick flames all unsubduable by water, 
 though '' Whitford and Mitford ply their pumps,'' like 
 a sucking deluge. Fancy the broad, heaven-scaling, 
 blaze ; setting cisterns a boiling, and toasting whole 
 neighborhoods with a flare; detaching ever and 
 anon an emissary flame, up flitting into a smoke, 
 spark-peopled, sulphur-fraught, wide-rolling, imper- 
 vious, blasting, many-volumed, as of Tartarus : the 
 Etnean belch, as ponderous roofs fall in; the fever 
 flush, the livid pallor, the stygian relief, of the land- 
 scape ; the alkaline stench ; the crackling, booming, 
 hissing, spurting, roaring, rushing, raging, — all in- 
 belted with blackness of darkness : wh-ew ! This 
 at least were pandemoniac ; a pet spectacle worthy 
 Satan's observatory windows ^' down along :" — it 
 
GREEN ARBOR COURT. 99 
 
 has been presented within the coup dPoeil of this 
 cupola; heaven forfend its recurrence ! 
 
 Shall we step down cellar? to the crypts: the 
 grave in part, and site proper of the old cathedral- 
 earliest, save one or two, in early Britain ; — of Dame 
 Hecate's temple too, in '^ the old time before !'' — the 
 very naked soil that knew St. Augustine, Alfred, 
 Bede, by every day report! 'Tis worth our while, 
 be sure! Nelson's monument, moreover, is down cel- 
 lar : — and .then we shall have a peep at the heels of 
 St Paul's ; pretty pillars of forty feet square — Wilt 
 follow? 
 
 GREEN ARBOR COURT. 
 
 "Right opposite, sir; just at the top of the Bai- 
 ley." 'Tis a shrine^ reader, that I inquire for. Ah, 
 here it is ! Here then, in this alley, without even pic- 
 turesque filth to recommend it, every outline rec- 
 tangular, to the very square-bottomed shirts, dank, 
 drizzling from overhead, — at the top of " break-neck 
 stairs," — pretty Parnassus ! in the midst of soap- 
 suds, — promising Hippocrene ! at the mercy of scrub- 
 bing Erinnyes thereover presiding, dwelt Oliver 
 Goldsmith : this then is Green Arbor Court ! You 
 remember Flaxraan's muse, air wafted, in the act 
 of inspiring Homer; how prettily she sits on noth- 
 ing, harp in hand, her graceful feet just meeting the 
 
100 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 blind old Chian's lyre; and her many- wrinkling 
 airy drapery ; — pry the recall the group clearly ! very 
 well ; — glance upward now and imagine the same 
 heavenly messenger down floating thus, to a dingy 
 port-hole of the garret yonder; cutting her toes 
 against a flinty fragment of jug on the sill ; battling 
 with moist unpleasant shirt tails, just washed dirty, 
 dirtier than before ; — the last and least '^ sea- worthy'' 
 of all, being Oliver's own ^' sola superstes ;'''^ himself 
 abed, till patron Apollo vouchsafe, dispersing a 
 whole atmosphere of fog, to dry the garment, and 
 set him free. 'T were a scene worth sketching. 
 
 Yet there, by yon sky-parlor window, did flit, 
 for aught I know, the whole phantasmagory of the 
 Deserted Village; — and there was penned, so rumor 
 avers, the Vicar of Wakefield. Verily, the mind 
 hath realm environments of its own! ''Such an one, 
 at least, as that of Noll; childish, to absurdity^ 
 though it were at times. One peep, and away ; the 
 ground is yet haunted, maybe, but not the vicar's 
 benediction could make it holy — where next ? 
 
DAY AND martin's. 101 
 
 DAY AND MARTIN'S (!) 
 
 High Holborn. Do I deceive myself? or is it 
 
 *' Day and Martin'' s — which I now survey ; 
 Not in the phrenzy of a dreamer's eye, 
 Not in the fabled landscape of a lay, — " 
 
 So — soberly, exulting pulse! 'tis indeed that cele- 
 brated — 
 
 *' Happier in this than mightiest bards have been, 
 Whose fate to distant homes confined their lot, 
 Shall I unmoved behold the hallowed scene. 
 Which others '' 
 
 No, indeed: one would "sooner die first!" some 
 gentle spirit (not of turpentine) should in sooth per- 
 vade the spot ; and glide, with glassy foot (see your 
 face in it with all ease) about the premises. 
 
 O, fons ('t is an excuse for latin) splendidior 
 vitro: once brought to bear on a boot: embottled 
 Acheron ! rill (virtually and be hanged to thee, too 
 captious reader) of molten jet: molten, yet un- 
 changing — of liquid night. Oh luminous withal, that 
 purlest but out of affinity for silver, and then but 
 three gills at a time. Mysterious Niger ! that from 
 veiled source, dost irrigate half the globe, spanning 
 seas, (Oh wonder) no tributary vassal thou, 
 
 *^ With solemn, ceaseless, economic flood : — '' 
 
102 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 Most imprisoned, yet freest of streams ; — primal 
 dispenser ; — bountiful sire ! I have seen thy chil- 
 dren, thy nurseling JluvialeSy each beside his tiny 
 urn, (bottle some would call it) with polishing 
 brush, '' stroking the raven down of darkness till it 
 smiled,'' nay grinned outright, along my boots : but 
 here, right opposite, (only to think of it) within yon 
 mystic walls Egerian, up-rollest,out-welterest thou !* 
 
 * j3propos of boots — let me introduce here a pretty little fragment of Coleridge, 
 not over pertinent in sooth, which 1 never met with on thia side the water. If it 
 be not a novelty, pray suppose me to blush. 
 
 It is addressed to I know not what Alpine source. 
 
 TJnperishing youth ! 
 
 Thou leapest from forth 
 
 The cell of thy hidden nativity. 
 
 Never mortal saw 
 
 The cradle of the strong one : 
 
 Never mortal heard 
 
 The gathering of his voices : — 
 
 The deep muttered spell of the son of the rock 
 
 That is lisped ever more at his slumberless fountain : 
 
 There 's a cloud at the portal, a spray-woven veil 
 
 At the shrine of his ceaseless renewing: 
 
 ft embosoms the roses of dawn ; 
 
 It entangles the shafts of the moon ; 
 
 And into the bed of its stillness. 
 
 The moonshine sinks down as in slumber 
 
 That the son of the rock, that the nursling of heaven 
 
 May be born in a holy twilight. 
 
 ANTISTROPHE. 
 
 The wild goat in awe 
 
 Looks up and beholds 
 
 Above thee the cliffs inaccessible ; 
 
 Thou at once full born, 
 
 Madd'nest in thy joyance ; 
 
 Whirlest, shatter'st, split*st — 
 
 Life invulnerable ! 
 
INN GARDEN. 103 
 
 GRAY'S INN GARDEN. 
 
 • 
 
 Gray's Inn ! — Very pretty oases in the brick and 
 tile waste of London, are the Inns of Court.* '^ En- 
 folding sunny spots of greenery,'' where birds warble 
 on trees, (not ever-brown) and butterflies {flutter-by 
 my little girl calls the thing) alight on the no flow- 
 ers of the window sills. The solemn quadrangles, — 
 cleanly, sombre, often of lofty pretensions, with 
 their cloistral corridors, and echoing flag-stones, 
 little visited but by quiet gownsmen of the law, — all 
 unprofaned, as befits the sanctuaries of right, aflbrd 
 an escape from the frog-in-a-well feeling of the 
 streets, indeed a sort of a stately rurality, by no 
 means without charms, and quite thrown away, as it 
 seems to me, on the moping fraternity of scribes. 
 I can imagine these green patches, (my quill has a 
 cross of the wild goose,) full of orchard trees in bear- 
 ing ; they would then oflfer to the frequent aeronaut 
 overhead, a bloom galaxy ; a sort of milky- way of 
 blossoms ; girdling the town, capriciously enough 
 'tis true, from the Thames to the northern suburb. 
 As it is, they present a sort of law latitude ; a chain, 
 so to speak, of jurisprudential lakes; of which 
 Chancery, and Gray's inn-lanes, may be said to 
 form the connecting St. Lawrence. Not one of the 
 
 * Or rather Inns of Court and Chancery, the name now attaching to whole 
 neighborhoods, which formerly designated only single residences ; at first I think 
 of nobles, afterwards of lawyers and students at law. 
 
104 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 larger inns but has its peculiar recommendations : — 
 one woos you with a tidy secluded square ; another 
 with acres of green grass ; another with famous old 
 houses ; — the palaces of by-gone days ; the Temple, 
 indeed, has a fountain, in full splash, up-gushing 
 and tumbling away to the right and left in liberal 
 style, freshening the air, and bedewing a whole 
 thicket of leaves; with a perfect maze beside, of 
 twilight passages, and haunted areas, and historic 
 walls, and river-side gardens, in most inviting 
 repair; not to speak of Temple church, one of the 
 few mementos now remaining, of the famous order 
 of Knights Templars ; half buried as it is, though 
 scarcely to the inn's prejudice, among rubbishing 
 houses of Fleet street and the Strand. The quarrel of 
 the roses took shape you remember, according to 
 Shakspeare, in the Temple garden. Now is it not 
 the stilliest of nooks, this, for these wary bachelors 
 to lurk in ? aloof, ( — pinch their profiles !) fat, like 
 trouts under elbows of a brook. How cool and 
 doubly inviting from the dust and din of High Hol- 
 born : A dozen paces, and lo ! echo ! solitary echo ; 
 the echo of your own foot-fall, salutes you : what a 
 transition ! from dustman's bell, and fish-fag's yell, 
 and draymen's halloo, and the whole street orchestra 
 of jar, rattle and squeal ; — a stride or two further, the 
 very walls have sunk into a Coke-upon-Littleton 
 doze ; on so on to the penetralia. I could n't but 
 loiter a moment in Gray's Inn ; 't is now however as 
 you see, behind us. 
 
THE BRITISH MUSEUM. 105 
 
 THE BRITISH MUSEUM. 
 
 Hey over gunwale ! behold our canoe aground, 
 in Great Russel street, in the wane of the after- 
 noon. Have you a mind to spend fifteen minutes 
 in scampering through a museum, of which the cat- 
 alogue is a bulky book? The British museum now 
 occupies, you know, a pile built for one of the Mon- 
 tagues, by Pierre Puget. That pile is of course the 
 sulky looking hotel^ huge of garret, beyond yon 
 sulkier wall ; utterly un-English, for better for worse. 
 Lo ! the lodge ! centinePd : Mais entrons I Art fum- 
 bling for shillings? ^Nay, this is the place in Britain 
 that one sees for nothing : and the absence of the 
 ever recurring most pitiful tax on loyal eyesight 
 (soul window tax) makes the association still more 
 French and less Johannitaurine, 
 
 They do say " that little lord John " in his capac- 
 ity of head of the home department, will see the abuse 
 righted one day ; and that future cocknies will see 
 their tower and their church for less than several 
 shillings and sixpence apiece.* But enter ! quo' 
 I. Humph! large empty court: canoe from the 
 antipodes ; bottom upwards, high and dry for the 
 nonce. Oyster shell of amazing bigness, with 
 hugest whale ribs, lying by the wall, awaiting as it 
 
 * The above was written in 1838. 
 
106 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 were the broom of a Glumdalclitch to sweep them 
 away. That oyster, — nay 
 
 'T is but the dome of life, alas, 
 The palace of the soul, we see ; 
 
 but who can help recalling the whilom occupant, 
 the hospes comesque corticis ; the 
 
 Oyster hed^ for merfolk twain, 
 Whereon they sweetly might repose. 
 Wake up and find it '* made " again. 
 Sans chambermaid, or e'er they rose : 
 
 The more than barrow-full of oysterhood that erst 
 enlivened that ^' eloquent shell ;" — one fancies a 
 roystering young Jupiterian, bolting such at a gulp; 
 picking the bits of whale bones it, and off for a 
 " lark," by moonlight of two moons. But forward, 
 march ! up step, into the vestibule. Must inscribe 
 our names : — H is done. There 's another inscription- 
 hst, hard by ; unclerkly, but bearing great names in 
 turn: Moubray, — Fitz — what is it? — "their mark," 
 no? tfte Magna Charta: with a copy more legible be- 
 side it. Up stairs ! beneath a ceiling sumptuously 
 painted. Portly river-horse on the first landing : firm 
 standing, his own post-obituary monument as it 
 were ; grinning defiance at him of the dart, with 
 that salient, insubordinate mouthful of teeth ; peren- 
 nial of hide, immortal in glass eyes, and "in'ards" 
 of straw. 
 
THE BRITISH MUSEUM. 107 
 
 O favored above laureates, who may not be stuff- 
 ed ! Three story giraffe at the stair top ; merest 
 sprinlding, however, of zoologic specimens, such 
 being to be sought for in Bruton street : weapons, 
 utensils, gewgaws of sharks' teeth and shells ; picked 
 up, let 's presume, by Ariel Cook, in the south seas 
 and elsewhere. Idols of the ugliest; Esquimaux rar- 
 ities, — costume as of magnified fleas by the solar 
 microscope ; all these comprising but the liminary 
 scatterings. Suite of saloons proper ; right and left ; 
 turn we to the left, an' it please ye. Relics of 
 Cannoe, by jingo ! head pieces, hack'd of Hannibal 
 himself; — who knows? Certes by his immediate 
 proxy ; rings withal of Roman knights, of which 
 only a bushel or two were picked up, you remem- 
 ber, after the field was lost. Anon, to the right about : 
 maze of miscellanies : shells, coin, bottled snakes, 
 and skins of '411 shaped fishes ; " icthiosauric fossils ; 
 indigestions of earth's teething time ; did n't agree 
 with her, it seems, this lizardly diet : poor little plan- 
 et; bothered the gastric solvents entirely, and no 
 wonder. Forbidden chamber to the right; of prints, 
 I believe, but wist not certainly ; hall of minerals ; 
 most liberal and long, occupying almost one entire 
 shank of the building ; enriched with black irrele- 
 vant portraits, (fee. here and there along the walls. 
 AUons ! but thought ye this planet of ours had such 
 pretty bones to her skeleton ? Something to boast 
 of, no ? in the crustaceous way, and rivaling, me- 
 thinks, her outer investiture: these groundling 
 
108 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 gnomes, the fashioners of all this ; the very Chinese* 
 among spirits, be they not? What inexhaustible 
 beauty and change to come of a few meagre earths ! 
 Long operate the gnomes ! what lapidaries! prank- 
 ing adamant as Jack Frost fashions water; what fine 
 interceptors of the mystic principle of color! arrest- 
 ing, for perpetuity, the hues that but mock us for a 
 moment in the skies and the flowers. What con- 
 jurors ! to bid gross metals now radiate like light, 
 nowentwinkle into stars, now germinate into shrub- 
 beries of underground : copper to put out branches, 
 naked but symmetric, siWer to foliate, (like tobacco) 
 and flint itself encluster into grapes; — what insin- 
 uating painters ! in marl ? 't were nothing : in heart 
 of agate •,,■— lo ! fortifications, beauteous mosses; fair, 
 fair illuminations for Nature \s horn-books ; nay, jpor- 
 traits^ now and then ; well chosen withal, fit to illus- 
 trate world biography; — there is a portrait of Chau- 
 cer here in a pebble ; pretty " compliment " to the 
 old well -proprietor of British song? But, presto ! His 
 not ours at this present to make acquaintance with 
 the whole noble family of flints, the lime-stones of 
 Derbyshire, the metals of Cornwall, or any other 
 attractions of this finest mineral cabinet on earth. 
 I dare not guess how many of our fifteen minutes 
 may have elapsed, by Nol Cromwell's watch, (in the 
 room at the landing, you know) an' it be not run 
 down. 
 
 * Foremost, I believe, among mortals, in the art of turning on* thing to all giv- 
 en accounts. Your Chinese will coax you anything out of hamboo, frosft ehimney- 
 piece to nosekerchief ; — but alumine or silex, is not bamboo. 
 
THE BRITISH MUSEUM. 109 
 
 Room for cataract of charity scholars ! down the 
 southwesterly grand staircase: (interminable pile, 
 this, of which the last princely habitant occupied but 
 one wing.) The great staircase leads, it seems, to 
 haunted ground; the purlieus of the reading room. 
 To the left, — is this it? a long, long hall, thirty feet 
 high, and broad in proportion, lined with somewhere 
 about a hundred thousand books, — encaged in wire, 
 on the principle, doubtless, of a Davy lamp; how 
 delightfully secure one feels ! Library of George 
 third, eh? And the reading room proper? Is pri- 
 vate. Well, .... 
 
 Back again at the prime vestibule whence we start- 
 ed. " Ant, ant, here is such an enchanting burst ! " 
 What can the girl be talking of? Do you see ? Stay, 
 \ is a boy Somnus ; napping, of course, and no bust 
 at all ; were such miraculous refinement but aware 
 of the difference ; but thank you, gentle growth of 
 some boarding-school in the lower city road, for re- 
 minding us that we had nearly lost all, in forgetting 
 to double this darkling elbow at the stair foot; lead- 
 ing modestly as it does, (a foil to the vulgar,) to the 
 whole famous series of Phigaleian marbles ; to the 
 Barbarini vase, and to so much of what was the 
 Parthenon, as Leopold would give his ears to see at 
 Athens, in lieu even of Paris-built omnibuses plying 
 to the Piroeus ; — to Egypt, moreover, and the Mem- 
 non! But the feelings called up by these enduring, 
 artful-artless, ever fresh poesies of stone, are scarce 
 
 hurry proof. Your classic vein, even of the idlest, 
 9# 
 
110 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 is no ways abrupt ; and as for enjoying old statu- 
 ary, its page is not for him that runneth. 
 
 Look a moment at this, {the) famous quoit-pitch- 
 er: no mean vohime, as it is, of anatomy; nature 
 subHmed, then impetrified : hoAV ridiculous the at- 
 tempt to snatch an appreciation of it ! What would 
 old (who did it) say to see his toil-fraught idea in- 
 sulted with a momentary glance, and a single raw 
 remark ; let 's be reverent ! As for these loafing 
 Bachuses, hoAvever, and these tipsy-wanton Sileni, 
 too disgustingly true to nature, away with them to 
 Bow street ! Gods of Athens! think of it. 
 
 But the young Hercules, eh? with his bull neck 
 and close curled head and beard; — there is manliness 
 for you! — His melancholy, though, to think that 
 such features would be voted '^ shocking" in the 
 west, and ^' kvite 'orrid,'' in the '^ gorgeous east ''^ of 
 Aldermanbury : truly we have become an absurd 
 enough, and far frailer than enough generation of 
 forked things; and wear very fantastic clothes, and 
 illustrate, beside these old ensamples of our kind, 
 much of the difference Hwixt ridiculous and sub- 
 lime. Is the Venus of the capitol shapeless, pray? 
 Is Thalia prude and slatternly? Hebe '^ a rustic?" 
 But that were praise. Is the hour-glass, verily, a 
 pattern of womanly symmetry ? or the bottle- bottom- 
 ed spider? Were womens' pretty heads intended 
 only for a nucleus around which to dispose all sorts 
 of monstrous agglomerations of feathers and greens, 
 and gaudy ribbons, and what not, half a dozen 
 
THE BRITISH MUSEUM. Ill 
 
 times bigger than the heads themselves, by way of 
 recommendation? Would any man-inodel here (the 
 Greeks had never a notion of deity) be improved by 
 a D'Orsay cravat? a Regent street beaver; or tights? 
 But I won't be violent, — in a public place, and, to 
 alter my strain at once, were it heresy, think you, 
 to suppose an improvement in the cold face, and 
 skull tiny to imbecility, of the Venus? *' ^ 
 What dost see ? '' I see enthroned Pharaohs ; 
 and lion-faced and hawk-faced sphynxes, red, gray, 
 and black, of polished granite : — primeval sculp- 
 ture, out of primeval rock. I see an altar ; a black, 
 mitred head of a giant ; colossal fragments ; and 
 among them a Titan fist, doubled up, as it were, 
 in defiance of Time ; his scythe has lopped it from 
 the arm, but unclench it, shall he never. I see the 
 features, not void of beauty, full of mystical re- 
 pose, of a realm the parent of all realms, and arts : 
 a mother empire that bore and suckled the nations, 
 and passed away : her tomb, indeed, still stands ; 
 't was built for perpetuity. I see upon the enthron- 
 ed images, an emblematic ring cut out, the token of 
 earliest royalty ; I see hieroglyphics, withal, there 
 graven centuries before Esais the Jew first foretold 
 a coming Messiah; I see, elsewhere, what Moses 
 may have seen, nay, Joseph, the son of Jacob — who 
 shall establish the contrary ? what time old Ali- 
 
 phrag (whistle the rest of it) made him premier. 
 
 I see — " * * * Phidias ! hadst thou any 
 thought of embellishing No. — Great iRussel street? 
 
112 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 Any prophetic second sight of Lord Elgin? Wast 
 thou much '' tickled" with his Lordship? 
 
 But the noble earPs virtu was better luck than 
 "utilization'' by an Osmanli mason; 'twould 
 have teazed thee to see thy metopes made lime 
 of, even more than to discover them here, in their 
 rather piecemeal but flattering display, along dead 
 walls of Mr. Bull's curiosity warehouse. I am told, 
 Phid., that you understood the horse; that horses 
 were horses, indeed, in elder times; such as might 
 warrant among them the majestic anatomy your 
 chisel attributes to the beast. I used to think horse- 
 worship (adoration diluted, you know, (?) as of saints 
 at Rome,) a mean enough idolatry; but such ani- 
 mals as walk on yon frieze ! — Philip* was not so 
 ignoble a name, after all ! As for the Centaurs, (they 
 seem to have their hoofs full,yonder, with the Lapi- 
 thse) would n't they jockey the course at Ascot? 
 What ''varmint" teams they would make; four in 
 hand: their own postillions; — what a pity, O what 
 a pity the breed is extinct ! How Tat would exult 
 on his rostrum, in their every imperial pace ; — as 
 the '' knowinist " of his familiars '' kep a vawkin 
 on 'em" to and fro! But a truce to whim — this 
 room, replete with forms of olden beauty, this sol- 
 itary subterrene-seeming chamber, lit with new- 
 est sunlight from over head, where the one door and 
 the lack of windows, confine one to admiration of 
 the noble art which pervades it ; this hall, Avhere is 
 
 * Susan may possibly have forgotten that Philip means horse-lover. 
 
THE PARKS. 113 
 
 nought but graceful caryatides, (pity they Ve lost 
 their noses) and statue, and terminus, and vase, 
 and plinth, and pillar, and page after page of sculp- 
 tured stories of old Greece ; I would banish from it, 
 for the nonce, every soul but myself and you ; even 
 the absorbed artist, yonder, from his perch, and 
 lounge and dream awhile in Keats's vein : — Let 
 me ! Psha ! I had forgotten our hurry ! 
 
 THE PARKS. 
 
 A SERIES of parks, comprising some twelve hun- 
 dred acres ! London has reason to boast the broid- 
 ery of her skirts; the Inns of Court, indeed! I 
 thought them vastly inviting but now ; and pleas- 
 ant they are no doubt, but one must come further 
 west to be enlightened as to London's greeneries. 
 Behold here the real rus in urhe ; the stateliest ru- 
 rality, for aught I know, on earth. Twelve hun- 
 dred acres (rough guessing) of wood, stream and 
 glade, exclusive of public gardens and picturesque 
 suburbs; enflanked, for the most part, with palaces, 
 and laid out according to English taste, allowedly 
 the purest in matters of landscape gardening. This, 
 indeed, is London : the London to which the stran- 
 ger should first (in midsummer, mark me) be intro- 
 duced. Most lordly, most liberal, most airy, most 
 
114 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 elegant of city-country whereabouts ; but having, 
 alas, the misfortune to count thirty dingier miles 
 square within its bounds, and so passing, in the 
 matter of grandeur, for '' no great things." 
 
 Now please to subtract for me, in fancy, the entire 
 fog-swaddled, busier nine-tenths of the town. A 
 whole Naples-full of pure wealth and stateliness 
 remains; utterly unincumbered, most daintily sit- 
 irate, with scarce an equivocal object in sight. Tut! 
 the oversight is absurd! 't is losing the beamy nu- 
 cleus of the comet, in the questionable outflarings 
 of his own tail ; — there 's for you ! To continue ; a 
 prevailing west wind, (Favonius himself) keeps the 
 air clear ; the distance from their own ignoble quar- 
 ters forbids (but that I deprecate) all incursion of 
 loafers, while preoccupancy by tasteful nobles, and 
 the stipulations of certain commissioners, proxies of 
 royalty, precludes any architectural eye-sore, save 
 such as themselves may chance to endow the neigh- 
 borhood withal. Now saw you ever ..... 
 but let 's be moving ! This is the Regent's Park ; of 
 some five hundred acres, laid out not very many 
 years since, and already skirted with terrace after 
 terrace, for miles, of ambitious houses; each built 
 in accordance with a prescribed plan, more or less 
 conformable to Greek or Roman orders of architec- 
 ture, albeit, now and then agog Avith Saracenic, 
 Chinese, or even purely flighty and air-castle con- 
 ceits : — there, for instance, is — Fiddlestring terrace ; 
 nay, I forget the name, a very triumph of the gro- 
 
THE PARKS. 115 
 
 tesque: modeled on tradition, I dare say, after the 
 seraglio of Prester John. The idea seems in a way 
 to be fairly tested here, of accommodating the pomp 
 of public to the snugness of domestic building. I, 
 for one, have little faith in your columnar, beetle- 
 browed fronts for dwelling houses, where the un- 
 happy tenant of upper front rooms, finds noon ema- 
 ciated into twilight, reads with difficulty, kisses the 
 house-maid for pure opthalmia, instead of his wife ; 
 and may thank his stars if he be not pedim^ented 
 into cutting his throat, in a darkling effort to shave. 
 If, however ,-—Pish ! Let Mr. Nash and the terrace 
 folk settle the question; meantime, you notice that 
 each '' terrace,'' itself a symmetric unit, comprises 
 quite a num.ber of showy houses, perfectly independ- 
 ent of each other. Of the Park landscape, what 
 shall I say? It is a very realm of verdure, and chal- 
 lenges your legs, nay, the wind of your horse, wholly 
 to explore it. Lo ! a tasty bridge of stone ; span- 
 ning, not a formal basin, or bald canal, but a rustic 
 stream in dishabille, winding, wild as naiad could 
 wish, in gieamy coquetry with the eye, through 
 fringes of underwood unkempt as the poll of Medu- 
 sa. Anon, a wood, like any other graceful up coun- 
 try wood, with a glade, like a smooth shaven clieek, 
 beside it; and further, a hill-profile, with arable 
 fields, oak clumps, and village spire, seeming, in il- 
 lusory perspective, to make a part of the same de- 
 mesne — paddocks, too, with wattled palings and 
 sheep, and thrice grateful to the lazy walker, and 
 
116 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 most creditable to the ranger^s care, store of wood- 
 land settees ; just where they ought to be, and se- 
 ducing you to lounge and feast the eyes on delecta- 
 ble views. 
 
 The Zoological gardens are here ; (they have oth- 
 ers you know at Surry) and the gates are apt to be 
 besieged with lines of carriages, particularly of fath- 
 ers, mothers and governesses, bringing little folks. 
 
 It was a pretty scheme, that of an out-of-door 
 menagerie ; and the stroll through the gardens, mazy 
 and bosky as they are, replete with odd little snug- 
 geries for the animals, and snatches in likely seem- 
 ing, of foreign landscape, is very amusing ; especially 
 w^ith a leash of six-year-olds in hand. I know of no 
 scene, by-the-bye, where children are more toler- 
 able ; — the naive open niouthedness of the lesser 
 new comers, is a treat. 
 
 Great pains have been taken to make all the beast- 
 ies, birds, (fee, feel at home; the hominiverous gen- 
 try excepted, whose instinct of treason renders im- 
 prisonment necessary ; but I fear, that with the ex- 
 ception, perhaps, of a privileged otter and sundry 
 of the duller '' critters ,'' they will find themselves 
 only ^' at home to company." Regent's Park is a 
 solitary drive ; royalty sometimes affects it. 
 
 Hyde Park is separate from the Regent's by the 
 parish of Marylebone, vulgariter^ Marrowbone; 
 (pray heaven it grow not into cleaver ere long) and 
 is dedicate to show, emphatically as the other to 
 quiet ; being the promenade where England's two 
 
THE f>ARKS, 117 
 
 thousand nobles, and innumerable host of squires 
 and squiresses, honorable and dishonorable, do de- 
 light to be seen of men, and to " witch the world 
 with wondrous horsemanship." But 'tis a turmoil ! 
 one curvet of nags, and giddy whirl of wheels, for 
 any distance you please of beautiful road, where 
 none but private equipages may enter, and no shab- 
 by ones dare be seen. What a finish to the car- 
 riages ! and then their model, fantastic at times, as of 
 out-of-the-way insects, yet forcing me again to insist 
 that the Longacre coach-makers are a post in advance 
 of their age : such conveyances ! (a name of less 
 than four syllables were sinful) so glossy of panel, 
 shaming the beetle's back ; so roomy, to the utmost 
 exigence of gouty toes, and unlawful amplitudes of 
 old lady ; so dulcet of spring, so nice of equipoise, 
 and, accordingly, so easy of draught, — so accessible, 
 no climbing, as into an appletree, for plethoric 
 dowagers: and then, O, unheroic ending! so safe. 
 What permutation of hammer- cloths ! what waxing 
 and waning of blazonry ! Then the teamxS ; upshot 
 of ages of horse-idolatry ; how admirably groomed ! 
 how elegant of harness ! Is it error to overlook in 
 their favor, the freight they draw ? The buxom doll- 
 belles of Britain, whom drowsy Geoffry sings in me- 
 lodious prose? Well — will I name all the notables 
 that pass ? No ! to go on generalizing. The liveries 
 of portly serving-men, reminding you of dandy birds 
 in an aviary; the saddest rarely without a snow- 
 white calf to show, — the gayest, why, their very 
 10 
 
118 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 knee-breeches, of plush, do emulate the day-star, 
 when he 
 
 Tricks his beams, and with new spangled ore. 
 Flames in the forehead of the morning sky; 
 
 the — but 't is well guided, that rattan what-do 
 they-call-it ! Two amazons within, two headlong 
 ponies before : the grooms cut off in the press. Would 
 you like to know whether it be the turn-out of lady 
 Bellona Fitz-frail ; — or if the yellow chariot hold her 
 comeliness the Countess editress of the Chronicle 
 of Hideousness; or the britchka, the Hon. Mrs. 
 Naughty — or either, the gibbous radiance of lady 
 Messaline Crayon? If the cavalier there, curvetting 
 in mid-mob, be Prince Tokay or anybody, or only 
 SirPylades Bolus, Bart? — if the tailor- wise knight, 
 with head turned, face, I would say, be Lord 
 Brougham; rid for the nonce, of his Glasgow check 
 pants ; or the Baron-of-Bradwardine figure, so beset, 
 just in the very act (what a moment for a painter) 
 of bio wing his '^ lithe proboscis," the instrument^ 
 iVb^ey himself, come an airing? But here is the 
 '' statty of un; '' Achilles, in appropriate no costume, 
 by Arthur, Duke of Wellington. Tut, tut, tempora 
 fnutantur^ as we had occasion to notice in the mu- 
 seum ; as the man, who was it? said so neatly, when 
 the turn-coat '' Times " veered white squally from 
 flattery to abuse; — times are altered ; and shapes, ye 
 
 * The late Mr. Gait culled the great Duke '^ leas a man than an instrument." 
 
THE PARKS. 119 
 
 dogs ! since the siege of Troy — do but imagine wiry- 
 Arthur, shirt and decencies discarded, all lendings 
 off, attitudinizing there himself; — better the part of 
 Arthur by Achilles, than the part of Achilles by Ar- 
 thur. Unequivocal tribute, is it not? But what are 
 you looking at? 
 
 Eh? How? I thought that only private equi- 
 pages were admitted here ; behold, by the squint of 
 Polonius, a gaudy-complete mail coach; top-heavy 
 with " fares ! " 
 
 But you see it has not the royal arms : 't is a team 
 of the four-in-hand club. 
 
 Marquis of Watercloset, perhaps; or Lord John 
 Nincompoop ? 
 
 Nay, better folk, but sad specimens, at best, of the 
 Benjamins of '^ Old " England's dotage. What do 
 you think of those houses along Park lane ; over- 
 looking this dainty Panorama, alternately, as the 
 hours roll round, with purest country quiet. The bil- 
 ious tinge, the random build, the bows and odd win- 
 dows and hexagonal juttings, the conservatories 
 and bits of balconies, here and there sheltered with 
 long striped shades, have a pretty pictorial foreign 
 character, have they not? a character of their own, 
 by the way, nowise that of the buildings by the Re- 
 gent's Park. Now shall we follow the Serpentine 
 ('t would be Hog river, with us) for a mile or so, 
 till Hyde Park ends to become Kensington garden ; 
 sit under a grand oak, beside rippling water, in sol- 
 itude, and chat of aristocracy? or pass out by the 
 gate of triumph, (see Penny Magazine) at the 
 
120 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 corner? Stay, while I toss up! Tails have it! [Ex- 
 eunt author and loving reader^ leaving an aching 
 void in the croiodJ] 
 
 The upper portion of Green Park reminds a Yan- 
 kee of the Common at Boston ; and Piccadilly, which 
 skirts it, of a sort Beacon street besmutched; on a 
 great scale, disfigured with shops ; scrutinize, how- 
 ever, but a single house, and the comparison is 
 nought. Nothing less recalls the old maidenly nicety, 
 and indoor finish permitted by our atmosphere, and 
 rarely absent from a Yankee town domicil, than the 
 rusty-bullionly, conch-shell character of a London 
 nobleman's house, of the usual sort ; sans blind, sans 
 door knob, the door large, perhaps, but very plain, — * 
 no small gimcrackery about eaves and window-caps, 
 no elaborately ostentatious fan-lights, — nothing but 
 plate-glass to the windows, giving token of luxury 
 within: the windows being few, to very suIkinrsB, 
 (your modish Londoner is of the nature of owls,) 
 and large enough, withal, to deceive one as to 
 the size of the house, unless a plebeian build- 
 ing, for contrast, be close at hand. But Green 
 Park be improved ! and the ranger's house de- 
 molished ; it makes one envious. I 'm off, across to 
 St. James's Paradise. Do n't find fault with the old 
 oriental name; so nearly befitting: saw you ever 
 prettier landscape of the soft sort, I will not say at- 
 taching by way of public garden to a town, but any- 
 where soever? with no greater undulation than lay 
 here to improve; no advantage of distant horizon, 
 and no indebtedness to architectural or other trick* 
 
THE PARKS. 121 
 
 The intrinsic features of the spot, how warily dealt 
 with ! — the pond, — but we have n't got to that — H is 
 the Queen's Palace, the "Hotel Buckingham," — 
 behind the big arch of triumph, that absorbs you, 
 for the nonce ; most .... light cheese colored, is it 
 not? and, indeed, candidly to speak, jealous or no 
 of its own gate-way, a very fine feature, in the view 
 of the Park. As I said, the pond, — but never mind 
 the remark ; 't is the hour for abandon ; a quarter to 
 eight, the sky in a clear, ruddy glow, and the air 
 odor-laden as e'er a shelf at Atkinson's, perfumer to 
 majesty. 
 
 Shall we bide by the mall, and saunter stilly to- 
 wards the old palace, god-jarent of the Park; or 
 pursue the inner walk? a winding walk, (ungrav- 
 eled, I warrant you, they understand the fitnesses 
 here,) about a reach of water, enfolding a wee wild 
 wood peninsula; sacred from intrusion, where the 
 shyer swans, and a bashful spoonbill, keep out of 
 the children's way. But the water — is glass ! air ! 
 See the double swan ! You remember Words- 
 worth's 
 
 *' Antipodes, unconscious of each other, 
 Yet in partition, with their several spheres, 
 Blended in perfect stillness,'* — 
 
 and so on ! — Behold them ! I could ask a little East- 
 ern drapery, now, for the groups along the margin 
 yonder ; and up the velvety glade that thence re- 
 tires uproUing; an elfin stage, as it were, grass- 
 10* 
 
122 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 carpeted, with sides cenes of leafage, and mingled 
 perspective of palace-Avall and wood ; but the scene 
 will do as it is. The rosy reflection of the sky, (I 
 said not how the pond is blushing, too, all over,) the 
 massiness of the oak outline, and the tremulous 
 grace of the underwood, the shining vistas and 
 verdurous glooms and all, eh 1 considering ; — but, 
 come on ! Alas, that it should be nearly the time 
 of closing the Park ! — every turn is a view ; and here, 
 at last, is a sketcher ; of no mean taste, sketching 
 what but the gray towers of Westminster Abbey ; 
 against the eventide sky, over that impurpled mass 
 of elm and oak. Beautiful picture, is it not? Auspi- 
 cious first glimpse of the venerable pile; which rath- 
 er than see prematurely, we '11 turn to the left, once 
 the southern mall is gained, woo us, though it may, 
 with Admiralty, Horseguards, and two trophies of 
 most noble Arthur's prowess, or Sir Sydney's, or 
 somebody's, I wist not who : Our exit shall be by 
 
 Waterloo Place. Yonder, up the steps : 
 
 airy opening? toward the gentle neighborhood of 
 the clubs; and fine, withal, by reason of the Carle- 
 ton Palace, and the Column, towering above, to the 
 dear memory of Frederick duke of Chalky as a poor 
 foreigner once aptly enough miscalled the title. 
 St. James's street gained, remarkable for newness, 
 and liberal style, I shall take the liberty to bid you 
 good night; only pausing to name the very conspic- 
 uous house, half way up the street, to the left ; the 
 large quaker^elegant house, with double-leafed door 
 agape to the sidewalk,, from up a short, commodious 
 
WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 123 
 
 flight of steps : Very quiet ; a tidy stanhope just now 
 at the door ; but you see ; — 't is Crockford's. 
 
 WESTMINSTER ABBEY. ^ 
 
 Is your Cathedle alive, or only stuffed? said John 
 Raw to the whilom exhibitor, in Littletown, of a 
 " Great Cathedral of Rome,'' to be seen among 
 sundry dioramic daubs, curiosities about which John 
 was ill-informed. John Raw was disappointed : 
 't was not that the Roman style had no charms for 
 him, but he had expected to see '' some'at like a 
 bear." JohuAvas not liberally taught; there is, how- 
 ever, a class of people, mostly, I grant, of the good- 
 for-nothing stamp, whom the very Avord Cathedral 
 (Gothic by preference) sets a musing beyond the 
 craft of Q,ueen Mab. To me, the thing stands for a 
 type outright of Christendom's elder time. Master- 
 piece of building, (what truer index of the genius 
 of a people,) the only common haunt^ the only per- 
 petual care, both of knight and burgess, — absorbent 
 of battle-spoils, — hold of archives, at once, and itself 
 the chronicle, of ages when Europe was a hierarchy, 
 and earls made '' their marks ; " — built with airier 
 grace and stateh'er grandeur, and massier bulk, than 
 e'er a pile of the times, and screened by sacred im- 
 munities that the Baron's fortalice boasted not, ex- 
 pressly, as it were, to leave us a monument. 
 
124 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 Such then, O reader, being my notion of Cathe- 
 drals, please image to yourself my satisfaction of a 
 golden-hazy summer afternoon, the town a-purr^ as 
 as it were, with afternoontide listlessness, Charing 
 Cross in a dose, Scotland yard sound asleep as Dun- 
 can, to find myself walking down the flags of Parlia- 
 ment street, for the first time, toward Westminster 
 Abbey ; the three thousand miles erewhile betwixt 
 the pile and my virgin curiosity, reduced at last to a 
 single furlong : Suppose me never to have seen an 
 old times Cathedral : We won't dispute about St. 
 Savior's, which pretends to no grandeur, only to an- 
 tique dignity, as of a Cheshire squire of most worm- 
 eaten pretensions, but rejoicing only in six hundred 
 pounds a year. Suppose one, white Whitehall at his 
 elbow, — Horseguards, Admiralty, what care I, egre- 
 gious newness everywhere courtesying past, revolv- 
 ing in his mind the veracious legend of the conse- 
 cration of the Abbey; in Sebert's time, (do but 
 think !) after an earthquake had spurned away a 
 heathen temple to make room for it : How its saint- 
 ed patron, the blessed St. Peter himself, must needs 
 fly down from heaven to hallow the " concern ; " 
 how he alit, not surely through ignorance of acros- 
 tics, (such science being, doubtless, understood in 
 heaven) at twelve d' candle^ of a rainy night, plop ! in 
 the muddiest acre of Lambeth Marsh, — on the wrong 
 side of the Thames : how he prevailed on one Ce- 
 dric, a fisherman, to ferry him over, by dint of pres- 
 ent miracle, and promise of perpetual salmon in his 
 net, so the tithe but came regularly to his Abbey : 
 
WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 125 
 
 how the Saint did, sure enough, go through with 
 the consecration, as was amply substantiated, to 
 after times, by the " chrism left behind him, and 
 precious droppings of wax candles, with which the 
 astonished fisherman saw the church illumined ; " 
 how he recrossed the river, preparatory to flitting 
 again, willing to take his departure from Lambeth, 
 which may or may not be the reason why the Arch- 
 bishops of Canterbury have since resided there, as 
 being a river's breadth nearer heaven. Suppose the 
 author imbued, for the occasion, with such veracious 
 tradition, lamenting the tissue of conflagrations and 
 and various mishaps, the phoenix tenure by which 
 these olden monuments appear to hold their hves ; 
 but for which he might tread the isles once trod by 
 Dunstan of Glastonbury; — nay, possibly handle his 
 famous tongs ; and feast his eyes on the confessor's 
 whole cabinet of reliques ; — the bladebone of Bene- 
 dict, the finger of holy Alphage, the jaw of St. Anas- 
 tasy; the whole head, (ominous name for damsel 
 devotee) of St. Jaw ! — besides the veil and some of 
 the milk^ (men had gullets in your days, Ned) of 
 the Virgin Mary ! Suppose him, at last, shrewdly 
 balancing together charm for charm, the rude Ar- 
 chaic and the medi-oeval beautiful of Britain, when, 
 lo ! the Abbey ! '' flank to," in pretty airy quarters; 
 a mammoth sooty-tawny puzzle, of flying buttress, 
 pinnacle, and lack-lustre window; with a huge Cath- 
 arine-wheel staring most conspicuous from the end of 
 a transept. Hue and size after all the forestalling im- 
 pressions: the former not pepper-and-salt, as of New- 
 
126 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 gate, or smut-upon-freestone, like St PauPs, but a 
 patched and pyebald dinginess, now black, now yel- 
 low-bedeviled, like the oxydizing on slate strata in a 
 quarry. The size of the temple, interminable length 
 apart, would not so strike one, were it not by com- 
 parison with the parish church of St. Peggy, in the 
 same inclosure ; a pompous parish church enough, 
 with an emulous tower, rising, it may be, a hundred 
 feet or more, but of all pretentious fanes, the most 
 ineligibly placed; the whole fabric, tower and all, 
 lying lost under the lee of the huge Cathedral, like 
 some diminutive tender beside a ship of the line : 
 its very emulous tower no taller, in proportion, than 
 a dwarf groom compared with his client coach- 
 horse. Well, — Westminster Abbe^/! Solemn upris- 
 ing from a pavement of gravestones of a later gener- 
 ation or two, of the small ephemera that build such 
 temples ; — a good proportion of it the veritable work 
 of Henry the third, Avhile the pointed Gothic was 
 yet a beauteous novelty ; and presenting, no doubt, 
 (time stains and smaller dilapidations apart) much 
 the same aspect as in his days. The completion of 
 the edifice, you know, has been referred, more or 
 less happily, from age to age, down to this very day, 
 without a prospect, after all, of its '' getting its 
 growth." Now a pigmy may criticise the '' points " 
 of a mammoth ; his awe remaining the same ; — I 
 doubt it matters not saying that " St. Peter's West- 
 minster " is by no means perfect as a whole ; figged 
 out as it is by Sir Christopher, no friend to the Goth- 
 ic, whose finishing of the towers was, indeed, acowp 
 
WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 127 
 
 de grace to what of its genius there budded of yore ; 
 beginning again, too, as it does, like father O'Flan- 
 agan at confessional, after making a lawful symmet- 
 ric end, with a hundred and fifty feet of Lady chap- 
 el, conceived in the height of the florid Gothic, an 
 essentially difl^erent style : the daintiest, most com- 
 plete, indeed, unique, of chapels, and having by such 
 token so much the better right to stand by itself; 
 instead of being tagged on to plain St. Peter's, like 
 the tail of a beaver tattooed ; no precedent for build- 
 t^^^, at least, or (sprite of extravagance uphold me !) 
 the witch hoyden of Burns, under taffrail of Tarn 
 O'Shanter's mare. 
 
 As a depository, however, of the illustrious dead, 
 (H is on these, sans punning, that the Abbey takes 
 its stand) match me old St. Peter's, in Christendom 
 or out, from Salsetta to St. Dennis ! a Golgotha, 
 withal, not of Royal skulls alone, but of others yet 
 more than royally endowed ere while; self enthroned 
 on pinnacles of science, and polity, and poesy, and 
 art : the haunted precinct, in a word, of all precincts 
 we wot of, best entitled to peopling by illustrious 
 ghosts. But in with us! follow hark! clean round 
 the beautiful chapel of Henry VII., so delicate of 
 tracery, so mysteriously dirty throughout, of which 
 one may scarce guess what is turret, what window, — 
 what stone, what glass, what iron ; — clean round 
 the whole coUierly chisel work, " the back way," — 
 whither? — to a mean kitchen-wise, most hireling- 
 becoming postern; common entrance, albeit, to the 
 church : through the arm of the cross, known as Po- 
 
128 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 eVs corner. Open sesame ! Make ready ! Present ! 
 bestow . • . threepence !* ('T is not yet service 
 time,) Return — purse ! Enter ! All is chilly, dark- 
 ling, cavernous ; not inducing, however, the hollow- 
 hill impression felt on entering St. Paul's. Narrow- 
 ness of the transept making the vaulted ceiling, nine- 
 ty feet over head, seem yet higher: — broken, dirt- 
 sprent pavement : — bards' and others' monuments 
 laying random siege to bare walls ; — the series pres- 
 ently escaping round a corner. 
 
 Body of the church concealed, as yet, by a screen. 
 You shall presently saunter, an' my advice be taken, 
 adown the nave. The building resolves itself into a 
 three-fold aisle, like three grove alleys, of a winter 
 evening; impetrified, shorn, bewitched, what you 
 will: — the pillar trunks uprising, far and dimly aloft, 
 to inarch, like elm boughs, athwart a ceiling of chalky 
 brick-like stones, relieved, here and there, with gild- 
 ing: What a "dim, religious light ! " a twilight of 
 centuries ; — do but think ! where through ever fall, 
 but unintrusively, far filterings of sheen, — red, vio- 
 let, emerald, .golden, to fleck the pave; — where the 
 crowned spectres aforesaid might fetch their ghostly 
 promenades, age in and age out, careless of cock- 
 crow, and admire the twelve apostles, bedizened like 
 so many Josephs, along the great west window. Not 
 theirs, alas ! to cast out the Yankee demon of hurry, 
 that constrains us, doubling the opaque screen I 
 spoke of, toward the south arm of the transept: it is 
 
 * There 's a warning inscription at the door, not exactly as follows— 
 LASCEATE OGNI 3d (!) VOI CH' INTRATE. 
 
WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 129 
 
 here that scrutiny grows a task, — amid the multi- 
 plicity of shrines, and the maze of notable sepulture. 
 A burial place of statesmen first arrests you, where 
 the names of William Wilberforce,aiid William Pitt, 
 modestly graven under heel, warn the visitor to walk 
 in awe : Anon, succeed three tombs of old time 
 Abbots ; no longer 
 
 Soothed, along their hard matresses, 
 
 FJinty lap of mother church, 
 With her lullaby of masses, — 
 
 But these win scarce a glance, in juxta-position with 
 the hideous group of Roubillac, hard by : — the skel- 
 eton monument, so often described; in which sculp- 
 ture is prostituted to the breeding of horror ; a mira- 
 cle of art wrought to confirm, alas ! instead of heal- 
 ing, the morbid loathing with which men are apt to 
 look upon death. It was a child, by-the-bye, who 
 first detected a fault in the fracture of the tomb front : 
 is there not a critique on criticism there involved? 
 The little bare-shinned Highlander, at your knee, 
 (pretty savage-classic costume theirs,) must pass for 
 a mere commentator : — too tiny to catch the crown- 
 ing horror, he has yet identified somewhat; a ''round 
 O " among the inscription letters beneath ; and may 
 not rest till you be informed of the same. He, too, 
 but pooh ! 
 
 The cinerary spell goes on deepening : the chap- 
 els , peopled with kneeling or recumbent effigies, pre- 
 11 
 
130 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 sent momently rifer dormitories of death : the shad- 
 owy gloom still wanes ; the inmost recess of the huge 
 sepulchre is gained, when, lo, a gate inviting us ; — 
 a gate of richest open-work brass, surmounting a 
 flight of steps : Within the gate, a chapel grot, well 
 worthy any jealousy of seclusion ; all ornament, yet 
 sinning in no point : its feminine richness, if I may 
 so define it, how contrasting with the rude male 
 grandeur of the Abbey ! — windowed, as it were, with 
 screens of gem- work ; the roof down- drooping into 
 air-light pendants 
 
 Like dugs of clouds, — that whirlwind snouts 
 Will ravish of their water spouts ( ! ) 
 
 reminding one less of mortal mason-craft than of 
 sparry concretions, along a fillagree of metal : petri- 
 factions of posy and tendril in some Hippocrene of 
 the West. 
 
 The real design of the chapel is modified, and 
 marred egregiously, say architects, by the pinnacled 
 stalls of the knights of the Bath, on either side, quite 
 concealing the aisles : the stalls, however, of carved 
 and time-tinted oak, each with its banner above, 
 belting the whole hall with blazonry, have, certes, a 
 charm of their own : their nut brown hue, so whole- 
 some, the rusty-brilliant sheen of the banners, en- 
 dow the place with a sort of autumnal life ; shadowyj 
 indeed, but almost cheerful, after the cadaverous 
 tint that saddens the maze of melancholy urns just 
 without. Add but a handful of moveables, and one 
 
WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 131 
 
 might fancy himself to have happened on a verita- 
 ble to-day of centuries agone; a coy hour made cap- 
 tive in Henry's time, and detained here by enchant- 
 ment : a tide of A. D. 14 — buried alive ; left in the 
 lurch by its fellow dates of yore — entrapped in this 
 cul-de-sac^ and shut in for perpetuity, with yon gate 
 of brass : held in abeyance ; not entombed, as in the 
 dim sepulchre yonder, not embalmed, dried up, wire- 
 strung, enskeletoned, in the manner of museums, 
 not toad wise dormant, as in some pyramid or duct, 
 but all lively fostered, and eloquently safe ; like 
 the core-globule in frozen wine ; racier for what 
 it owes to the gelid mass that immures it. Art 
 quite sure, now, that the figures, pictorially due to 
 the scene, are not lurking within ear-shot? behind 
 yon screen, perhaps ; ready to sidle out and not sur- 
 prise us ; — quite sure that 
 
 Every lord and lady bright 
 That was in chapel here, 
 
 in the matrimonial epoch of Henry the spouse fan- 
 cier, is clean gone, ten generations ago, from lap to 
 pocket of mother earth? Humph ! well, our verger 
 seems waxing impatient. One " shock," 't is cus- 
 tomary, Uwixt the tombs of Mary and Elizabeth, 
 with their positive and negative electricities, — one 
 glance at the miser monarch's ultimate " safe," and 
 away with.^us, back again to what we purposely 
 passed but now, — the core of the Abbey: such, in- 
 
132 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 deed, is the shrine of the confessor; sanctuary of 
 elder interest, altar- place of " rich spoils " erevvhile, 
 where the perennial twilight fades into perennial 
 gloom ; where the " stone of power " (Jacob's own 
 pillow, say Irish chronicles,) enriches the bottom of 
 the famous crowning chair, in a way to remind one 
 of another chair convenience that shall be nameless : 
 where . . . but surely all this may sufSce. 
 The shrine stands like a sort of subterranean sum- 
 mer-house ; central to a dozen gray chapels, over 
 which it domineers, and through the dusty air of 
 which, the sunbeams reach it, filtered almost into 
 nought. The whole place, what with the talisman so 
 degraded in place, the gloom and the seclusion, with- 
 in a double cincture, so to speak, of awe instilling 
 tokens, forms a fit mausoleum for the royal mystic 
 whose remains it wont to guard ; and seems almost 
 haunted: I could envy the watcher here, (Ned him- 
 self, perchance, who knows ?) during a midnight 
 storm ; — the rain threshing the windows, and the 
 thunder re-echoing, from vault to vault, adown the 
 waste isles : troops of ghostly effigies flashing into 
 sight for a second, and vanishing again as the levin 
 gleamed athwart the wilderness of graves, — flinging a 
 thousand mirk traceries into relief, — creating, anni- 
 hilating, by turns, the whole wizard scene, — cancel- 
 ing the obscure of ages, — laying bare every angle 
 of the Gothic cupboard, where Longshanks lies in 
 pickle, — coquetting with the silver, (no) head of the 
 victor of Cressy — quivering up, instantaneous, along 
 the stair turrets of iron that centinel his tomb, 
 
WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 133 
 
 and bidding the graven images in the chaun tries leap 
 to life, St. Dunstan and all, poll in hand, ready to 
 gibber up arrears of masses for his soul. Midsum- 
 mer night were the one of all to bespeak ; the mys- 
 tic night of St. John ; when the dead awake and 
 spectres fare forth in cere-cloth and shroud. And 
 then if a head-long blast could introduce itself, 
 whistling here, wailing there, and possessing the 
 whole pile, so much the better :— if again, — but so 
 fair and softly my fancy! this tranquil afternoon 
 shall serve our turn. Hark to that sweetest, boldest, 
 of organs ! the choir are come, — breathing into the 
 whole vast frame the breath of music : despatch- 
 ing momently pulses of sweet sound to every 'dim 
 loft and remote extremity, till the whole rock-ribbed 
 chimera grows vital ; and choruses of echoes club 
 together for very surprise : — protracting, redoubling 
 their ^' bout of linked sweetness,'' rippling, rolling, 
 surging, adown, athwart, aloft, till the air is all one an- 
 them; and the majestic building pants, at last, and 
 shudders, replete with melody. Is it not the earthly 
 sublime of music ? Anon, a pause ; the jar subsides ; 
 the voice of the pile itself, (for such the potent organ- 
 tone would seem,) gives place to the chaunting of 
 the choir ; and troops of tinier echoes detatch them? 
 selves at enfilade, and reach us, oddly garbled 
 among angles of the stone work; like sprites of 
 sound a- truant— 
 
 '* With lone halloo and roundelay." 
 
 Hist ! you would say the choir children were siap- 
 11* 
 
134 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 ping their mouths, for sport, in mid song : anon, 't is 
 the mellow-fitful decanting of rills from a river god's 
 urn ; the very music, altogether, of a lee lurch ; — 
 botheration complete in the ear of an amateur, per- 
 haps, but commend me for the present to lee lurches ! 
 The strains are in keeping, too, with the lucent mo- 
 saic of that window : truly Dan Phoebus bears no 
 malice for his sometime ejection hence by the 
 earthquake: never lavished he on kaleidoscope of 
 urchin, tints of color so rare : 't is the very raw ma- 
 terial of rainbows: the prism gone crazy, with a 
 beautiful insanity : method, fine method, in its 
 madness : — bah ! let us sober ourselves with the 
 olden sculpture of the frieze — a frieze of meek 
 Henry III. 
 
 To begin with, — lo! Sathan on the Dane gelt: — 
 no law treatise, as might be inferred, no com- 
 mentary by the arch lawyer, but a meny morice 
 dance on the Dane gelt, or tribute bags appropriate 
 to your rascal Dane of yore ; which dance of devil 
 gave hint to Ned the martyr stoutly to refuse the 
 same : 't is the transcript of an authentic vision ; 
 and next presents itself, another of the seven sleep- 
 ers : proof positive of their having existed, which 
 some have been bold enough to doubt. Then suc- 
 ceeds the masking of St. John, as pilgrim in pal- 
 mer's weeds, at Edward's court; resulting in a 
 prophecy, presently fulfilled, as every body knows, 
 of the monarch's death : with a whole tissue of le- 
 gendary scraps beside, and feats of ghostly insight; 
 among which stands conspicuous the sixth of a half 
 
WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 135 
 
 dozen visions of our Redeemer, severally vouchsafed 
 to this most visionary potentate. 
 
 Dost think we could conjure up a snug trance of 
 our own, on the strength of any influence attaching 
 to the spot? You sitting in chair of royal state, 
 over stone of Scone, and I light leaning, as twilight 
 ebbs from us, on the seer-king's tomb ? Suppose we 
 try! 
 
 EL ALMA DEUDOR. 
 
 A niche should scarce have escaped us, where 
 the bodies of two foreign ambassadors, seized for 
 debt in James II.'s time, still bide redemption, I am 
 told, encoffined, labelled, and in all points pawn- 
 brokerishly bestowed. One is the corpse of a Senor 
 Don; and the following " eff*usion " supposes his 
 wraith on furlough to Madrid, exerting itself to raise 
 the wind. 
 
 I. 
 
 From her lattice, Dame Elvira 
 
 To her pillow turneth she ; 
 Evening's every charm is near her, 
 
 But her words are ^' Ay de mi !" 
 
 II. 
 
 " Woe is me for Don Ramirez !" 
 
 Such the burden of her sighs ; 
 " Tell me fancy where his bier is — 
 
 Tell me how they closed his eyes ? 
 
136 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 III. 
 
 ** Dead ! say wist the caballero, 
 Coaxing me to sing and smile, 
 
 How my heart's own gentle hero 
 Lies a corse in Britain's isle ? 
 
 IV. 
 
 ^' Knows he, — who shall answer to me, 
 (Mary, mother, mercy show !) 
 
 If the sprite that wont to woo me. 
 Be this night in ease or no." 
 
 V. 
 
 From her lattice turns the Donna, — 
 'Pon the stroke of twelve are we ; — 
 
 Mary, mother, breathe upon her ! 
 Look, and say what seeth she? 
 
 VI. 
 
 Tremble doth she, like the serest 
 Leaf, in autumn's coward host ? 
 
 Jesu ! 't is her lost — her dearest, 
 From the tomb, — an icy ghost ! 
 
 VII. 
 
 See ! with bloodless arm he beckons ; 
 
 And with hollow voice would plain — 
 Every bead the lady reckons. 
 
 And her knees, they smite again. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Hark ! with hollow voice — ** Elvira !" 
 *' Wills he masses night and morn ?" 
 
 *' Not exactly that, my dear, — A- 
 hem ! the fact is — I 'm in pawn !" 
 
THE STORY OF THE " COMMIS.'' 
 
 Was it a dream? or had I seen, within the hour, 
 a paly Gothic porch ; of great richness, and rare 
 proportions, bathed in bright moonhght, at noon 
 of night, with an oddly draped knot of travelers 
 beneath, all beside utter stillness and shadow : the 
 thing was an eye-serenade outright. '' Sir," quoth 
 my companion for the nonce, (No. 2 of the coupe,) 
 " it was a church porch of Louviers ; famous for 
 its woolens; our Huddersfield." (Little thought 
 your humble servant that a chance of being an- 
 swered in English, had lain latent, all along, at his 
 very elbow.) 
 
 " And may I ask," said I, '^ where we are at this 
 moment ?" 
 
 " In the skirts of the forest of Laye." 
 
 " The largest in France •, and hallowed to the top- 
 most peg, by a thousand . . . why, what with the 
 fourth proof moonlight, now slanting athwart our 
 knees, the utter novelty, and all,body-o-me ! I could 
 hardly wish it the Black forest itself" 
 
 " The Black forest ! — certainly not, sir ! — why, 
 the Black forest, in Faustus' name ?" 
 
138 RIBS ANEJ Trucks. 
 
 " Tut ! but one is so wide awake just now, and 
 this odor-laden dewy air so inspiriting, be it whole- 
 some or no, — by-the-bye, French highways lack the 
 charm of robbers, now-a-days, do they not?" 
 
 " Pardon, monsieur ! — in my part of the coun- 
 try ''-- 
 
 " You are not English, then?''' 
 
 " No, sir : in Provence, we have enjoyed very lately 
 the adv^antage you speak of, such as it is : — it is only 
 a fortnight since the very diligence, . . . but apro- 
 pos of jouv wakefulness, I will take the liberty to 
 tell you a short robber story." 
 
 '^ With all my heart — proceed." 
 
 " He-hem ! You perceive my right arm in a 
 sling! Thereby, then, as your immortal Shak . . . 
 Shak. . . '' Shaksphere ?" Shak-sphere says, hangs 
 my tale. Well — you must know that I am a 
 commis voyageur^ or commercial traveler ; who have 
 bumped about a good deal in my day, over France, 
 England, and elsewhere, and that a very short time 
 since, I f )und myself on my way from Genoa to 
 Paris, by way of Marseilles ; entrusted (more 's the 
 pity,) with a sealed bag of zecchins, Venetian cur- 
 rency, which must needs be transmitted precisely by 
 a given day of the month, to Paris. There was just 
 time enough, owins: to a protracted steam trip, to 
 finish the journey betimes, when I landed at Mar- 
 seilles, of a dismal evening, only one hour before 
 the northern diligence would start. The messa- 
 gerie inn yard was full of gossip. It seemed that 
 the very last return coach had been waylaid by 
 
THE STORY OF THE COMMIS. 139 
 
 robbers, and a general pillage made of all it con- 
 tained. But what then ? my orders were explicit; 
 and any other means of progress in my power, 
 still less eligible. The very coach had been de- 
 tained, and we were to serve ourselves as we best 
 might, in its place, with a rheumatic affair, indeed a 
 very car of St. Vitus, long since condemned, and 
 most dispiriting to behold. Four persons only were 
 forthcoming, when the hour of departure drew nigh. 
 Oh, it was a most melancholy " complement !" 
 wholly without arms, too, excepting .... but I an- 
 ticipate. 
 
 I stood under a gloomy pent-house of the inn, 
 feeling anyhow rather than encouraged, as two raw 
 countrymen bestowed themselves in the " rotonde,'' 
 (barely cajoled by the conducteur^ who indeed swore 
 lustily that the jaunt next after a robbery was doubly 
 safe,) to be followed by a silly nurse with a baby, 
 and a weather-beaten sergeant, much in liquor, with 
 a wooden leg; who might or m.ight not have been 
 smitten with the nurse — but that is nothing to the 
 story : these four, with the addition of myself and a 
 jack tar just arrived, sufi&cing for the whole way-bill. 
 The sailor, to be sure, was armed ; he had opened 
 a huge sea-chest, and drawn forth betimes a brace of 
 enormous holster pistols, not, he said, with reference 
 to any robbers in particular, not he — but simply by 
 way of sailorly precaution against the perils of the 
 shore in general; of which, and its land- pirates, he 
 professed ever to have had shrewd misgivings ; now 
 indeed that he was bound far inland, many a day's 
 
140 
 
 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 course out of sight of water, — the deuce ! what could 
 ensure a poor fellow against what might turn up — 
 in a general way ! I was much smitten with Jack, 
 who promised to make the life, such as it was, of 
 the party ; a proper pine knot of a fellow, all grimly 
 be-whiskered, but full of good spirits ; now cracking 
 his jokes on the unseaworthy apology for a diligence, 
 with its tattered and scant tarpaulin, full of holes at 
 top, — now quizzing the forlorn crew that was to man 
 it against the prospect of pirates, — now slappinginto 
 spasms the back of the puny postillion, as he valor- 
 ously upheld the blowsy conductor''s views, — quite 
 scoffing at the notion of any danger to be apprehend- 
 ed — gossipping, anon, rather curiously over the 
 way-bill,— and finally inflicting on the by-standers 
 a bottle of Cote d'or, paid for in gold, and saddled 
 with a maritime toast. The toast was rather unin- 
 telligible ; it embraced a wish for some sort of cruise ^ 
 and plenty of prize money. Jack's last move was to 
 clamber up into the banquette, secure and duly be- 
 stow the enormous holster pistols within arm's reach, 
 and then, — the conductor and postilUon being 
 promptly enthroned, — behold us at last fairly agog. 
 *' Mais on diahle est done Sathan ? mon gros chien : 
 que diaU'* .... ^' Avast there! hold on ! where the 
 deuce is Satan? my dog Satan?" quoth the mari 
 ner, in alarm. The coach reined in ; a bustle en- 
 sued, after which, behold the climax put to our socia- 
 bility by some one's boosting up a huge, grizzled, 
 vice-mouthed monster of a dog ; sea-seasoned, ill 
 favored, — his master's surlier counterpart, — to oc- 
 
THE STORY OF THE COMMIS. 141 
 
 cupy the place betw:een that worthy and myself. 
 At last, forth we fared, under a melancholy boom 
 from the catliedral belfry, well after nightfall, with 
 a cataract of rain dashing down upon us the moment 
 the inn gateway was cleared. The sailor pleaded 
 the drenching rain and the many holes in the tar- 
 paulin cover, promising soon to render all fire-proof, 
 as an excuse for lighting a large outlandish pipe ; at 
 which he proceeded to puff like mad, illuminating 
 the gloom in wizard style, at each whiff, and reveal- 
 ing the wicked eyes and bare shining teeth of his 
 dog, not inaptly christened (?) Satan. He presently 
 began at intervals an interminable gossip about 
 rough landfall in the Lion's gulf; and afterwards 
 dealt out wonder on wonder about foreign parts, — 
 the Levant, the Nile, the Indian colonies, beguiling 
 the poor conductor of his very wits, until at last, 
 what with smoke and long yarns, I was ready to 
 drop asleep. 
 
 Imagine us to have passed along thus over many 
 a league of beauteous Provence, (just then, it must 
 be owned, in process of scouring,) by many bloom- 
 ful vineyards and olive orchards, and many pleasant 
 country neighborhoods, (in the dark,) till midnight 
 was long forth, and the moon's argent pinnace^ 
 launched forth, again to silver the norVard skirts 
 of the storm ; dimly revealing, at last, a long, lonely 
 forest road — unenlivened by any building, and lined 
 with tall, sighing, rustling, wailing woods. Sup- 
 
 * 1 presume the Commis to be descended from some troubadour. 
 
 12 
 
142 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 pose US thus far in the wane of the night, and the 
 garrulous marine not yet done spinning, when — 
 Pardonnez moi Monsieur — mais ... if you take 
 snuff, I should enjoy a pinch — (mzph I) — when, sud- 
 denly, behold the headlong team brought to, — with 
 a thug! rear, plunge, snort, rattle, jingle, curvet, — 
 what you please, against ... a rope? stretched 
 from side to side of the road. 
 
 Down springs '' M. le conducteur :" — gug-gug- 
 guggles the wee postillion ! What the dickens ! . . . 
 can it be, that our sailor, the life of the party, the 
 jealous of land-sharks, the newly arrived from 
 earth's end, has his corded left hand in the postil- 
 lion's neck-cloth, from behind, and with the other, 
 puts one of the huge pistols, I told of, to his ear ? 
 The reins are dropped for very agony — Tut, tut ! 
 the man is choking ! Hark ! 
 
 ^' Dis done Vmni^ — are you fond of living?" 
 ^' Gug-gug !" 
 
 " Eh bien alors, ayez la bonte de'' .... have the 
 goodness to get out of this !'' Away, forthwith, tum- 
 bles the poor little postillion, and after him wal- 
 lops the big dog Satan. Meanwhile, — or rather 
 from the first, behold us quite surrounded with 
 burly figures, all-sufliciently armed, of whom who 
 but our apprehensive, unweaned bantling of ocean, 
 takes lively command! '• Now, then, mon excel- 
 lent conducteur," he cries, '^ call all hands, if you 
 please ! pipe to quarters ! call the roll ! What, you 
 can't? For shame ! hopple him !" And the conductor 
 is hoppled, in the manner of runaway cattle ; — hath 
 his arms pinioned behind him, withal, while ono 
 
THE STORY OF THE COMMIS. 143 
 
 would say " Tie." " Well, I must call the roll my- 
 self, I suppose. Ho ! Pierrot ! hand hither the way- 
 bill ; and the lantern ; I Ve forgotton a name or so, 
 and would n't miss any. Take care, Messieurs et 
 dames^ that nobody run who does n't crave shoot- 
 ing ! 
 
 '' Thus far the chief," 
 
 What says the poet? what 's his name. Lubber, 
 — Glubber, the great English epic poet. . . . 
 
 " Fiddle faddle ! proceed !" 
 
 Thus far the chief — while I, do but think! — 
 the zecchins ! my employers ! were it my life 
 alone .... or were the money my own .... 
 but my duty to the house of Higgle, Haggle, Hook, 
 branches, and Co. admits of no hesitation ; and the 
 way I burrow accordingly among the rubbish of 
 scant baggage and straw behind me, were a lesson 
 to elderly conies. Not, alas, to my forethought be the 
 credit given, if my head lie at last where 1 can see 
 what passes at the calling of the roll. Hist ! 
 
 " Now then. Messieurs et Dames, attention ! Tele- 
 maque Duhuffel Mais remuez ! hatez vous done, Tele- 
 maque ! Make haste Telemachus ! or by . . . all 
 the sneaking propensities of your sire, — here comes 
 a Mentor to advise you! — Crack! — There — dost 
 credit me ? 
 
 And obediently, it would seem, to a bullet sent 
 through the window, very nigh his skull, out leaps the 
 
144 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 poor wooden-legged sergeant, with a plaintive " Mais 
 Messieurs!" — wooden-leg foremost, in his hurry, 
 and plants himself inextricably in the soil. 
 
 " Ohe, 't is our old companion in arms ! our gener- 
 al ! by virtue of others' absence : — our military 
 force ! A thousand pardons, my dear friend ! be- 
 lieve, me I had forgotten the embarrassment of your 
 walnut peg, or I would not for life thus have hur- 
 ried you. Pardon the indecorum, but we are in 
 haste. Ho, Andrisson ! a cord for the sergeant'^s 
 arms — nevermind hoppling, this time— I think he is 
 safe — indeed may take root, by and by, if not dis- 
 turbed. Mademoiselle Marguerite Puget and child! 
 hxxlpestel we can't have that noise — be so kind as 
 to gag your baby ! indeed I am surprised at your 
 bringing one, knowing how troublesome they are — 
 Ah that's it! muffle its musical instrument — the 
 little nuisance! my eye, — how it would squeal if it 
 could ! — and now, pardon, miss, the liberty. . ." 
 
 Behold the '' bonne" hoppled, pinioned, and gagged 
 in turn : — the two rustics no less, and lastly the puny 
 postillion similarly served : the whole party being 
 arranged, at last, in a line by the road-side — of which 
 the sergeant, by reason of his planted predicamentj 
 stands oddly fixed a little in advance. 
 
 " Now, then, gentlemen and ladies, heaven forbid 
 that any of you should be without watches, or well- 
 filled purses, to say the least ; — as for those who 
 may have been shabby enough to come unprovided, 
 they must be smothered ; and sold to the Ecole de 
 medicine folks, for the benefit of science ; — of 
 
THE STORY OF THE COMMIS. 145 
 
 science, messieurs et dames — to be a martyr to 
 science, is, after all, a fine thing — your relatives, 
 too, may profit, you know, by your dissection, in the 
 prolonging their worthy lives — always supposing 
 they be not previously bespoken by the state. Com- 
 mence, Pierrot !" The ugly scrutiny began. 
 
 " This corporal, — sergeant of beggars, has got 
 only fifteen francs and no watch V' 
 
 " Peste ! 't is infamous — and his body, too, — sec- 
 ond hand— minus a leg — damaged article — hardly 
 worth selling at auction — here, Sathan, pincez le par 
 derriere; — bite his seat of honor!" GiT-gnapl 
 " Stay, come here, sir ! Bete de caporal ! the block- 
 head ! Suppose that 's all he is worth, however ; — 
 that miserly army list ! why the deuce could n't you 
 coax them to raise your wages ? 
 
 The poor sergeant's very honor itself had run risk 
 of incision. As for the bonne . . . But where is 
 your humble servant, say you, and how missing in 
 the roll-call ? The process had occupied already 
 some five minutes, and I, not being inscribed with 
 the rest, all inside passengers, flattered myself that 
 I had been overlooked. So, indeed, it seemed. The 
 horror of waiting to hear " Auguste Flibbertigibbet'' 
 (that sir is my name) bawled out in order, and of 
 getting perhaps a couple of slugs in my brains be- 
 fore I could possibly unearth myself, was over. The 
 hasty search had ceased — and hark ! the announce- 
 ment, in tones of bland but hurried courtesy, — 
 ^^ Gentlemen and ladies ! with much regret for your 
 unavoidable detention, you are now at liberty. My 
 12# 
 
146 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 threat of selling those who should prove without 
 watches, (fcc, was only a pleasantry; my disappoint- 
 ment, indeed . . . but you must feel for me ! You are 
 free, I say, one and all, to proceed on your journey ! 
 Though methinks it were the part of humanity, first 
 to relieve the sergeant. As for the diligence, I re- 
 gret to say, I shall want it for my own party ; but 
 to avoid all talk of unfairness, will leave you the 
 conductor and postillion. There are but eleven miles 
 to the next hamlet, inhabited by four good-natured 
 idiots, and a cross but cunning old woman, very 
 deaf Let me caution you to mind how you step, as 
 it is extremely difficult, nay a feat of address, for 
 hoppled gentlemen and ladies, with arms pinioned, 
 to get on their legs again after a fall. I recommend 
 Mademoiselle Marguerite to the sergeant's particular 
 charge — valor and love — how is it ? Satharij regar- 
 dez lez unpen! My dog Avill go a little way to 
 defend you — and holloa, Jacques D'Enfer ! you too. 
 Don't make a noise, gentle folks ; Adieu ! Now 
 then, Pierrot, lay aloft! up with you ! touch up the 
 team ! you know the way !'* 
 
 Horror of horrors! Lo you, the whole gang be- 
 stowing themselves in the coach; — the prime ruf- 
 fian of all scrambling up into the box, to drive off — 
 whither? with ^ne^ poor me, twice trapped, sequins 
 and all. 
 
 ^' Eh there, come up with the tripping line — now 
 then !" 
 
 Snap! snap! whit! st! st ! whirr! away goes the 
 dilapidated diligence, heaving and setting, and groan- 
 
THE STORY OF THE COMMIS. 417 
 
 ing, possessed with merry thieves, to turn off at last, 
 over ditch by a cart route, into the forest. Just in turn- 
 ing, I hear a tramp of horses, down the road ; dull 
 sounding, a-spatter in the mud. My heart is ia my 
 throat; — the municipality of Aries, no doubt: Gra- 
 cious heaven speed them ! They have reached our be- 
 crippled corps and steadfast corporal. Now heaven 
 hurry them ! — Hark ! 
 
 ^' Ha, ha, ha, ha," " ha, ha^ ha, ha !" " Boo woo-oo, 
 woo woo woo, boo !" " Tais-toij mon Gros .'" 
 
 Alas, and wo is me ! 't is only are-inforcement of 
 the gang ; joining us just as the diligence brings up 
 a-shelter from the grand route, behind an angle of 
 thick woods. Hist ! whai says the foremost ? 
 
 "Now then, mon Rncien^ Robert Levilain^ oiheT- 
 wise entitled ' branded Bob,^ allow me to say" .... 
 
 " Stop, fool ! pest on your silly tongue — you Ve 
 thrust a murder on my conscience, when all would 
 have been but good-natured theft :-Sac?Trrre booby ! 
 braying ass ! would nothing serve you, bete de scele- 
 rat^ but one's real name ? Sacrr ... oh ! I 've more 
 than a mind to stick you too ! we might have packed 
 him off with the rest; but you 've seen fit to put my 
 life in his hands. Bete! well here goes! Its your crime, 
 mind, and be thrice hanged to you ! Hola, you up 
 yonder with the gold ! show leg ! Presentez vous 
 done, Monsieur de Flibbertigibbet, late from Genoa : 
 come, stir! Stay, Pierrot shall fix him where he 
 is : — throtde the poor animal, and give him twelve 
 inches of knife under the ribs ; obliquely, very, you 
 know the experiment !" 
 
 'T was the sailor that spoke. Imagine my 
 
148 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 feelings ! I, then, deluded fool, was the very- 
 bait and reason sufficient of the robbery; — my zee- 
 chins the '' prize-money !" In a moment, before I 
 could clear myself in any wise, a ruffian was upon 
 me — his clutch about my throat — his knife at my 
 bowels. I grappled. " Grrr-Woio P^ the grizzly 
 dog woke me, with an insinuation of long teeth 
 into my arm, most heartily to be eschewed. 
 " You don't mean to say . . . . " 
 "That I was dreaming? Oh yes, — and must 
 needs lay hold of the sailor's diabolical dog, (my next 
 neighbor, you remember,) by way of crowning inci- 
 dent ; when I had so much better have staid and 
 been stabbed where I was. The brute bit to the 
 bone : alas ! had it not been for that, what would 
 not have been my feelings of self-gratulation on 
 finding the tar no robber at all, but still reeling off 
 one of his endless yarns, the Smyrniote pipe yet 
 alight, and all in promising order " alow and aloft," 
 as he said, but for my innocent-equivocal handling 
 of his dog. The monster was ejected with three 
 kicks and a tail-foremost blessing at best, and the 
 mariner even went so far in his chagrin as to offer 
 to fight me on the spot; with the huge pistols for 
 weapons, to be holden fairly in the left hand, if it 
 would give me any satisfaction. I declined, with 
 many thanks. The whole thing, plague on the 
 very memory of it, was traceable, I am disposed to 
 think, to a hearty dinner-supper on brawn: can't 
 recommend brawn — can't, indeed, to sleep upon! 
 On the whole, if any man say there is never any- 
 thing in dreams .... I dissent from him! 
 
PERE LA CHAISE. 
 
 Coming from Vincennes, along the quiet grand 
 route, having Vidocq's country box (shrine of civic 
 worth) under skirt of it, lo you, athwart piebald 
 arable, and suburban groupings of what not, aside- 
 long ridge of hill ; like ditownlet^ seen from far; with 
 two parts white and one part green, the greenery 
 mirk and bristling: a garniture, on the whole, as of 
 " raggeder'** Christmas cake ; frosted andbe-sprigged : 
 T' is Corpseville, especial, of our days : — city of nar- 
 row houses : metropolis right orderly of Pere la 
 Chaise :— wedding-cate, an you will of gaffer Death ; 
 tomb-frosted, sprigged with cypress ; nay his 
 
 ** White cockade and jaunty feather" 
 
 where he percheth with sidelong glance, relievedly 
 a-glimmer, light leering over Paris. " Nay! I thought 
 now that Pere la Chaise lay darkling; in some dim 
 coppice ; meadow- wise, with solitary sepulchres, 
 half lost." By no means ; 't is a very roosting place 
 of mortality against latter day-break ; trussed as to 
 its elbows, sheeny ; glaring; obtrusive. 
 
 We get to the cemetery through a strip of guin- 
 guettes and plebeian dancing yards ; and by way of 
 
150 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 sundry tombstone shops ; (lively trade theirs) — may 
 save a step or two by taking the ^' business gate." 
 Of these shops, is it true, or but a joke, think you^ 
 that they offer large lots of monuments, ready graven, 
 to the last dot of one's fashionable epitaph ? the 
 more regret, the more money, of course : that deso- 
 late widowhood " for one," heart-broken relationship 
 " with trimmings," poignant grief '' to order," of 
 whatever water, (lachrymal) for whomsoever, may 
 be found ready expressed, open to the moribund's 
 living inspection, lacking nought but name: the 
 hazard, indeed, were trifling, with such steady lib- 
 eral patronage as Paris gives the grave ; needing 
 but a judicious allotment of qualities: absolutely 
 at random, they could not, certes, be dealt in this 
 carping age ; but let an average of merits be deduced, 
 a brace or so of clear social virtues be insisted on, 
 and the rest inferred ; any one's posthumous credit 
 may thus be discounted^ without monstrous leasing 
 as times go. Give Hastings kindness, and Clarence 
 conviviality, and Wolsey scholarship, and Shylock, 
 " well-won thrift," — why Old Nick himself might 
 look for current compliments : Nay, heraldry should 
 grace this latter personage, so it strikes me, with 
 infinite laud ; no wise therein departing from its 
 daily tenor and wont. Plentiful ^i/fe^ in escutch- 
 eon, with a motto of '' Crede BeliaV^ or '' Nemo 
 me," &c.,or '^ Fortescutum solus ducum^'^ — inscrib- 
 ing, these beneath, '' Prince," " Commander-in- 
 Chief," '' Sturdy Patriot," and so on. What marshal 
 of what empire gets better off? I doubt that David's 
 
PERE LA CHAISE. 151 
 
 precedent of eulogy (the prime ensamplej no ?) in 
 SauPs case, affords good authority for interring men's 
 roguery, an it may be, with their bones. There is 
 doubtless a caution to be observed as to what merits 
 be insisted on, and what deducible at pleasure : in 
 regard even of neuter commendations, one might 
 smile to see on a pompous altar tomb, 
 
 M. JUDE ISCARIOT. 
 SWORN FRIEND OP THE POOR. 
 
 ZEALOUS FISCAL. 
 
 Getting in by the business gate, we come present- 
 ly upon the tomb of Abelard and Heloise : a Gothic 
 shrine, like a pix-house in shape, dingy of hue, 
 four fronted, slender pinnacled, lightly encolumned, 
 having stark recumbent effigies of the lovers, lichen 
 stained, within : the whole a fragment readjusted 
 from the Abbey of the Paraclete. This attractive 
 shrine has elbow room ; the which waneth awfully 
 scarce as we climb the hill by a gravel walk towards 
 the ^' Carre Massena.^' 
 
 Pere la Chaise has, after all, but a hundred acres 
 of surface: I question if any necropolis, much less 
 the chief cemetery of a place like Paris, can be 
 really picturesque, with a surface of less than three 
 hundred acres. 
 
 'Tis toil for dowagers, and dowagers' pall-bearers, 
 the climbing this fashionable steep; but so, Masse- 
 na square! where repose also Ney, Davoust, Le- 
 febvre; prisoners at last: and many modish and 
 
152 
 
 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 many revolutionary French, hard by ; now nowise 
 restless, supposing their masses duly said and sung. 
 Verily, soil is dear in Corpseville; and the hint, 
 thus far, right obvious, how little sufficeth at last 
 for loftiest pretensions. That little, (oh Mehitable,) 
 that little, not always one's own: — here as often 
 rented for a term of years. One hath indeed the 
 chance to become a skeleton, with pains, before his 
 ground lease be out. As for fee simple, 't is a costly 
 tenure! Well, forward! the southward rise grows 
 most noteworthy, affording partial glimpses of Paris, 
 'tween temple-Vi^ise tombs and trim screen of leafage, 
 cyppi, columns, pyramids, altar, obelisk, and urn, 
 with nameless corpse cupboards, much raw fantastic 
 ornature, many small grimaces of sepulchre, and 
 incubi not a few; grinning, ironic of eulogy, above 
 the sleepers beneath : one, of a soldier, mounted 
 with miniature guns ! Of the inscriptions, (here 
 lies the surviver were truer, how much, upon most,) 
 I find one, at least, eloquent ; and speaking to the 
 heart of whomsoever. 
 
 "Here lies our dear daughter." 
 
 No more. Many of the tombs, after all, would be 
 " pretty things" by themselves, the odious iron rail- 
 ings apart, if not thus crowded together ; presenting 
 often chaste little Theban, Greek, or Gothic shrine 
 chambers : the latter having windows of stained 
 glass, and all or most being garnished with meek 
 bouquets : But toy shrines afford not, after all, the 
 simple moral, unsophisticate, of the daisied sod. A 
 breezy lofty platform of turf, green velvety verging 
 
PERE LA CHAISE. 153 
 
 into parapet, makes the heart of the cemetery ; here 
 stands a ctiapel, Greek of model, for the dead — 
 Quack dispensary, alack, of wilful-doting Rome; 
 wherein she will e'en readjust the fallen tree we 
 wot of in EccJesiastes, on the strength of a passage 
 in Herod's epistle to the Philistines ; or some even 
 more canonical book. The platform is enriched 
 with sundry flower-pots, and presents a famous 
 view of Paris. Plain watchmen centinel the spot, 
 fit '' beat" for '^ those gentlemen, Marcellus and 
 Bernardo." 
 
 There is one feature about French burial places, 
 which is highly attractive. Graves in England (of 
 country grave yards) are often protected with a slight 
 basket-work of osiers, that the coverlet of turf 
 ^^ tucked about'' may gather a greener '^ nape ;" and 
 girls' graves in remoter hamlets there are posy 
 strewn at times ; but here a common fashion obtains 
 of garlanding the tomb, with small circlets of rose- 
 mary; or, better, while warm weather permits, with 
 living honeysuckle, or vine-wise multaflora, trained 
 about : vases of real or mock flowers being rarely for- 
 gotten, if the sepulchre be costly, and have a ''bin- 
 nacle" (shall I call it?) above ground. Again there 
 is a custom here of visiting friends' graves on All 
 Saints days : a salutary habit, and well worthy 
 mention. As for us, how utterly we overlook our 
 dead ! By the way, was not Pere la Chaise occu- 
 pied, in 1814, as an advance post against the Russ? 
 A circumstance, that ! Death on the offensive. His 
 banqueting room and hails of reception metamor- 
 13 
 
154 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 phosed into batteries : qiialifyingj for the nonce, his 
 invitation to Paris lieges to meet '' a few friends in 
 a snug way." 
 
 Dropping gateward anon, lo sundry long seed- 
 furrows, where lie the poor; commingling germinant 
 against the latter harvest, buried in lap darkling of 
 dank evergreens. By these along, the facile descent 
 leads us presently back to the grand gate. 
 
 A visit to the other cemeteries would but repeat 
 the same general prospect on a lesser scale. There 
 is that of Mt. Parnassus, a field on high ground 
 southerljT- ; another of Montmartre, unfinished gar- 
 den, thus far, of stark Asrael ; and again, stay, 
 another humblest burial place, lying somewhere 
 within the barrier, where, among nameless neigh- 
 bors, are the bones of Pichegru; there deposited, 
 modestly enough, ^^ by filial piety." Where is 
 " Patrie aux grands homines reconnoisanteV^ All, 
 or nearly all, the dead of Paris, and indeed of all 
 other towns in the kingdom, are interred, you know, 
 now-a-days, for health's sake, in outskirts aloof; 
 scarce a grave yard attaching to any city or borough ; 
 a feature contrasting scarce more vividly with the 
 church yard usage in England, than does the accu- 
 mulation of tombs ; making each chief cemetery 
 here, a city proper of the dead. What may be the 
 present population of Ptre la Chaise, I wist not: 
 the catacombs contain, I beheve, three millions. It 
 should give Paris folks pause, to remember the 
 hollow furlongs of sepulchre beneath ; counting, at 
 the least, three skeletons and a fraction, for every 
 
PERE LA CHAISE. 155 
 
 living mortal above : to see the glimmer of these so 
 large and prominent cities of death, aglare on the 
 heights about them ; mortality so salient, obtrusive, 
 above, below, around; the goal, withal, of yearly- 
 pilgrimage and frequent stroll: but Paris folk dwell 
 scantily on graves — they have ever ^' fish to fry."* 
 
 * *' I vood do dat vat you do vish, 
 
 ]Bat I must go and fry some fish." Crapaud, 
 
LA ROCHELLE. 
 
 ^' proud city of the waters. '^ 
 
 Quotha? To think that Mr. Secretary Macauley 
 should so misapply the term ! either to its old Hu- 
 guenot peopling, (with " nought but their piety to 
 be proud of,'') or to the town itself! read rather 
 " 5/^^^Gr city of the Avaters." Whew! however, but 
 I 'm fairly enamored of the spot ! Cosiest of seemly 
 cities provincial ! it gives me the feeling I had, when 
 a child, to j&nd myself hurrying home from school, 
 of a stormy evening, between three warm sisters, in 
 a carryall driven by Brian O'Shane ; charioteer 
 unsung, but not unworthy, which indeed is in no 
 wise any business of yours. 
 
 Rochelle is a fortress; girt all about with wall, 
 moat, and bastion, sleeping and waking by tat- 
 too and reveille, having barracks at one end, and 
 a liberal arsenal at the other. These between lurketh 
 a comfortful fair legendary town ; of area just suffi- 
 cient for due social sympathy ; circumambiable by 
 the breezy ramparts, through all their angles, in fifty 
 minutes; time not wanting the while, to study 
 the sea beach and the shorn sunny champaign ; yel- 
 low-verdant, enlivened with white hamlets, odd 
 
LA ROCHELLE. 167 
 
 attics of odd country houses, sightly white wind- 
 mills, walled greeneries, and road-side malls. There's 
 a relief, after its kind, in getting here, away from the 
 sight banquet of thousand courses that so appalls, 
 at least, if not utterly discourages one at Paris. 
 Too many lions, are, after all, a nuisance; and then 
 as regards the necessary choice to be made, think of 
 a donkey, (donkies all are we,) between ten thou- 
 sand equi-distant thistle-tops ! Not that La Rochelle 
 yawns lionless ; Oh, no ! there are atleast half adozen 
 small Avonders to see, besides the outline proper of 
 the place ; one, again, of the very few notable towns 
 here, not arrived at second childhood of building — 
 a phenix, such as it is, yet virgin of the pyre; 
 young; dating only from A. D. 1450, and present- 
 ing, accordingly, wealth of old fashioned features. 
 Such streets ! of bare-ribbed Gothic houses here, 
 such queer under-cover sidewalks anon ! each 
 house-front becrutched on sturdy matter-of-fact By- 
 zantine pillars : — Such a painter's-pallet-like nook of 
 a market! the whole redeemed with just enough 
 prospective leaven of newness, in the shape of trim 
 Place d' Armesj and sidelong section of hotels. 
 
 One of these latter, (wings advanced, in token 
 as H were of hospitable yearning,) shall welcome us; 
 through lordly />or^e cochere^ (a '^ sublime" porte " is 
 never wanting to French fine houses,) through airy 
 paved court, with huge windows about, through door 
 of large promise, up liberal staircase, through ante- 
 rooms(mind your footing !) floored with bare inlay- 
 ings of oak, slippery as glass, into parlors fine as at 
 13* 
 
158 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 Paris; only older in decoration, with gilt mouldings, 
 and what not of the elder style : In the rear of all, be- 
 hold a quiet garden ; airier, sunnier, more fruitful 
 at than Paris, be sure ; the whole establishment ten- 
 able here in fitting fashion, with cosy carriage, and 
 servants, at infinitely less, of course, than the Paris 
 rate of expense. (Mem. French houses, furnish- 
 ings apart, the opposite of neat ; — as be, perhaps, the 
 people: — the meaner sort, slovenly of access, ware- 
 house-like, and smacking throughout, somehow, of 
 out-of-doors ; — the great dwellings, carelessly grand.) 
 Well, we have sea-baths to visit, of high preten- 
 sions ; the arsenal — the hos — humph ! underground 
 chapels of Huguenots, iang syne, now cellars of snug 
 citizens ; a library, (which boasted but now the Pu- 
 celle's own armor amongst other relics,) offering, to 
 all intents, a very sleepily seductive lounge ; sundry 
 church towers, of queer pretensions; a convent or 
 two ; a nondescript spire, of old date ; the Town 
 House, &c.; — all readily to be seen, and indeed by no 
 means " Little Pedlingtonian :" — the last, a very 
 chapter of the picturesque ; having within, a fine an- 
 tique hall — with huge marble table, whereinto Jean 
 Guiton, chivalrous mayor in time of the siege, — did 
 strike his dagger any fraction of an inch , whack ! be- 
 fore assembled burgessy, by way of illustrating — 
 something that he said about not surrendering, not 
 he ! — which did greatly inspirit the burgesses, so 
 that the town held out to the end. Stay, — I had 
 quite overlooked the two principal things, the very 
 salient items in the town's catalogue of marvels ; — 
 
LA ROCHELLE. 159 
 
 namely, two romantic old towers — a sort of Gog and 
 Magog of masonry, that guard the narrow entrance 
 of the harbor, and figure in all pictures of the place, 
 to the exclusion, in fact, of almost every thing else. 
 Bide a wee, for one to get at ease, and the taller of 
 the two shall be ours to inhabit. It is bespoken; — 
 in this wise. 
 
 There be cafes in Rochelle, not showy, but 
 rather notable for civility and goodly beverage, in 
 one of which, it is my pleasure to lounge a good 
 deal; musing, now on the sunny harbor side with- 
 out, and now on landscape hangings, poesy domes- 
 ticate, fine company for dreamers, along the walls. 
 There are, indeed, four of us, who wont to chat, and 
 plan little wholesome excursions in this cafe ; — a 
 count, a professor of English, an architect, and I. 
 Well, you must know that yesterday evening we 
 spoke of these old towers : the which, not a soul of 
 the party, all neighbor-born save myself, ever had 
 entered. The more imposing one, at least, thought 
 we, must be visited forthwith: — it is empty: — the 
 architect can get the key, retain it if he like ; so there 
 we go, all four of us, this night, all appliances be- 
 spoken, sine die, to reside. 
 
 A castle, one of the temporary ^prisons, so tradition 
 saith, of the man with the iron mask ; certes the 
 sometime shelter, both of Henri Quatre and Riche- 
 lieu. Eligible, is 't not? A fine break-neck, hap- 
 hazard scramble and search Ave make of it — explor- 
 ing where best to bestow ourselves and the baggage 
 yet to come : up queer old crumbling staircases of 
 
160 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 Stone, in the very thickness of the walls; whole 
 fathoms of the steps falling a tottering at once, with 
 a prospect of dropping one out some crazy port 
 seventy feet into the harbor: over ugly scuttles, 
 into yawning historic rat-holes of all sorts ; mount- 
 ing and diving and groping, for fifteen good minutes, 
 to find ourselves just where we were before : — now 
 discovering a chapel, with rich wroughten altar, 
 
 and dainty niche, and dim lucarne ; now a bah ! 
 
 anon, pausing to take breath in a huge stone- vaulted 
 hall, each rib of the roof tailed off with the figure 
 of a rampant monster, or some exquisitely droll 
 gaping, wide-mouthed, goggle-eyed corbell ; study- 
 ing a famous shield, chiseled out in relief from the 
 uniform rock of the wall ; appropriating a cell to the 
 memory of Ironmask; then taking a five-and-for- 
 tieth departure by zigzag, to emerge at last on leads 
 bald beetling some ninety feet above the harbor 
 channel ; with southward lee-board all bristling 
 with bit shrubs and flowering weeds, which the 
 birds had planted in the dust of ages, and sun and 
 rain had nourished into a sort of aerial parterre : 
 Then, lo you, the prospect ! the teeming old fashion- 
 ed prospect 1 spoke of; where is not a square league 
 of land uneloquent of good old fighting, pillaging, 
 persecuting times. Well ! behold us at home : the 
 old hall proper very lively with wassail shout this 
 night. 
 
 Not one of us just now has aught save the deca- 
 logue to fulfill: — all on furlough: — ''unbending, 
 to gather strength for the future." We make th« 
 
LA ROCHELLE. 161 
 
 town a mere appanage ; its peopling our hangers-on : 
 scour off into the country on horseback, or cruise 
 in the bay, with no goal or rendezvous save the 
 tower, which sentinels itself, not as of yore, in cele- 
 brated sieges, and awaits our coming or keeping 
 aloof without a murmur. We ramble about square, 
 rampart, and lane below, in the witching time of 
 night; lighting our pipes at a barrack, when the 
 late Avatching cafes have twinkled off to sleep, hav- 
 ing ever one ruddy torch aflicker in hall, gossip a 
 plenty to wear the night withal, scope for lively ad- 
 journment, and wings for the small hours when we 
 choose. We tell stories ; too entertaining for pages 
 like these, (of which accordingly, you, reader darl- 
 ing, are not to hear a word,) all apropos^ nightly or 
 daily, of the time and tide. Nay, for single in- 
 stances, not to be churlish, take, a couple of the 
 poorest— here ! So : — 
 
AUFREDY. 
 
 You are to imagine the sunset of an afternoon of 
 tears and smiles, jiist broken out broadly, beadily 
 agrin ; a light as of liquid amber, revealing a thous- 
 and unsuspected outlines along the maze of queer 
 old buildings below; tinting them, as it were, with 
 a sort of vinous flush ; and pouring about the para- 
 pets hke a respirable cordial. We have come down 
 from our tallest perch, for fear of slipping off; and 
 are now cosily disposed at an altitude of only eighty 
 feet, under the sky curtain, on scraps of Turkey 
 carpet, with pipes and coffee at elbow ; so snug, so 
 exalted, so comfortable ! free to wear the hours as 
 we list, in such an eyrie ! 't were attractive game 
 should lure us down. The Dragoman is going to 
 tell a story ! '^ Attention, messieurs et dames ; 
 Ecoutez tousl please to listen!" 
 
 Once upon a time — I scorn to remember exactly 
 when, but in the days of yore, when merchant en- 
 terprise was poetry outright, — when a galleon secur- 
 ed in a single voyage a competency for an empire, 
 and a single paltry venture was wont to make your 
 trader a prince; when sailor-hood was heroism, 
 
AUFREDY. 163 
 
 ('t was worth while going to sea in those days !) aild 
 ocean a scarce-fingered volume of romance, .... 
 Hem! Commencons de nouveau! give me breath, 
 chums ! In the nonage of traf&c, — when men read 
 Marco Polo, and believed in Prester John ; while, as 
 yet, the broad Levant lay but half explored by the 
 Franks, and the eastern Indies kept courteous faith 
 with Christendom, while the bad means of Jesuits 
 were thus far only in progress to sanctify abortive 
 ends — 
 
 " Hear ! hear ! ease off — do n't overcome us ! 
 what then ?" 
 
 Order, gentlemen ! and be hanged to you — if you 
 please — don't interrupt: — Ere " Centreland" grew 
 jealous, or Japan 'gan trample on the cross, before 
 the heartless Dutchman, or the not more cruel Span- 
 iard had alienated the isles of Orient, while as yet the 
 large Atlantic was but the highway to El Dorado, and 
 ocean heaved a mighty mine for the venturesome — . 
 
 " Hip, hip, hip — go to grass with your mighty 
 mine! — is that what you call telling a story?" 
 
 There dwelt here in La Rochelle — 
 
 " Aha ! Land ho ! give you joy ! soundings at last, 
 eh V 
 
 A prosperous merchant, of the name of Aufredy : 
 
 '^Humph V 
 
 A princely merchant; unallied, all were his friends; 
 unwedded, save to fortune; — what then? — though 
 the boldest of schemers, not one of his enterprises 
 had miscarried, and his supercargoes had orders at 
 last never to return, on any pretence, till their ven- 
 tures should at least be tripled. 
 
164 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 Well ! it happened one day, that Sieur Aufredy's 
 whole fleet, a pretty little navy for those days, lay 
 at once in this lazy-looking bit of harbor — and 
 whether to daunt the rovers, or to make a notable 
 display, or to effect a shrewd monopoly, and so 
 gulp down his ultimatum of wealth at once, 1 know 
 not — but the whim seized him, to bid all forth to- 
 gether; — freighted with his whole fortune — and 
 thus stake all upon one seducing cast. 
 
 The day came for embarkation ; waxed, waned, 
 and sunset was mellowing down, as now, upon the 
 restless bosom of Biscay Bay, when forth they fared ; 
 a noble suits of caravels of the olden time; a picture, 
 as it were, of Backhuysen, or the elder Fernet, in 
 legendary vein, box-hauled for the nonce out of its 
 panel; warping, hull for hull, out into the sea- 
 board under the heels of this very old tower. Im- 
 agine yourselves looking down hence upon their 
 cross-trees ; studying the quaint hubbub, and many- 
 voiced, and many-legged stir, of many-costumed old 
 sea-dogs — patriarchs of the brine, going forth to 
 confront and to pocket, Belial wot what, not they, 
 but hoped and feared as hopes and fears occur not 
 now-a-days at sea; '^at the rate of knots" the hour. 
 There — imagine it all — the last is extricate ! no pilot 
 needs — or needed even then, where 't is but a 
 stretch or two at any practicable time, to the very 
 bosom of the outer seas. Pass an hour or so, and 
 lo ! the ten broad sails flaky molten into three or 
 four, on the outermost rim of the bay, against the 
 mellow-painted sky : — twilight ebbs — they are gone! 
 
AUFREDY. 165 
 
 and with them is gone, for many a Uvelong month, 
 the occupation of Aufredy : he retires hence in deep 
 sohloquy, not without a becoming prayer to his 
 patron saint. The angelus finds him still awake. 
 
 Never through the impatient merchant's calendar, 
 crept year, tortoise-wise, on all fours, becrippled, 
 
 burdensome, like the year of grace , next after 
 
 the departure of his hopeful fleet. He had reserved, 
 as I said, nothing but high hopes wherewith to 
 busy himself — had absolutely nothing to do, but 
 wait, and troll how fortune favoreth the bold ; \ was 
 a trifle tedious. Another year came and went — 
 't was presently the second twelvemonth of sus- 
 pense ; the appointed " trysting time'' between him 
 and fortune, flew fruitless by : the more modest 
 ventures of other folk had been enviably crowned — 
 still no tidings for him. Aufredy grew pensive; — 
 the tide of his animal spirits ebbed, and brought to 
 view a chaos of uncouth cares ; he began to bethink 
 him of coaxing the blessed virgin; and ordered 
 tapers by avoirdupois for each contiguous shrine — 
 on credit. Correspondence with Outre-mer, could 
 hardly be said to exist in those days ; as regarded 
 his actual aff*airs, sea-tempting Noah might as well 
 have hoped for letters post from his raven. 
 
 The third year passed : — the shoemaker sent in 
 his bill for soles worn out in passing to and from 
 the pier, for very agony of hope deferred. He shall 
 be paid, said Aufredy, when my ships come home. 
 The promise has since become proverbial. 
 Long before the end of the third year, every 
 14 
 
166 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 body's vessels had been duly accounted for, or duly 
 mourned over as lost, with a sorrow in proportion 
 to their presumed cargoes, or the amount of living 
 machinery of enterprise embarked. One trader 
 had had a fourth, another a fifth, another a tithe of 
 his gains swallowed up in process of adventure, con- 
 soling himself, that no more had been exposed. 
 Some had recovered precious freights from the very 
 jaws of the hurricane, at the last hour, and hung 
 their " ex votos^' accordingly, in the shape of illus- 
 trative paintings, along the pillars of the harbor-side 
 church of Saint What's-his-name, wherein, whatever 
 the actual risk might have been, the portraiture of 
 the scenes was hideous in the last degree. 
 
 With the fourth year h was past a doubt that 
 Aufredy's all was lost. He had now more than 
 ever abundant leisure for the endearments of friend- 
 ship ; but as the warmth of his house-holding grew 
 less, the mercury of friendly regard had fallen, as 
 might be expected, token by token, from fever-heat 
 of domestic intimacy, to zero of utter staring ir- 
 recognition. 'T was astonishing, — the habit of pre- 
 occupation, of nervous doubling, dodging, and re- 
 tracing of steps, that had overtaken the heartiest of 
 his old cronies. The pillars of the old Byzantine 
 sidewalks seemed too few; their shadowyness too 
 sheeny. 
 
 From hotel to '' logis garnis," thence to a crazy 
 garret, with one chair and a fraction, leaky to the 
 rain, and forming Avith its single petty poit-hole a 
 sort of bag-pipe for the wind to play upon, the tran- 
 
AUFREDY. 167 
 
 sition was vastly more speedy than auspicious : at 
 last a proposal on his landlady's part to introduce 
 two more single gentlemen lodgers into his garret- 
 for-one, fairly drove poor Aufredy into the street. 
 People began again to recognize, who had sedulous- 
 ly avoided him — this time, however, it was to 
 engage for running an errand ; or to entrust with 
 the holding a horse ; or in the case of sundry 
 his own merest underlings of yore, to patronize 
 capriciously . . . with words ; — finally, a sou dropped 
 into his hat by a sailor, as he leaned bare-headed 
 and melancholy musing by the basin-side, brought 
 Aufredy, with a cruel sliock, to his bearings. He had 
 not a dozen liards in the world. Was he then a beg- 
 gar? Poor ex-speculator! he could hardly make real 
 the sore alternative he had so rashly dared : '' honor, 
 love, obedience, troops of friends,'' were they then 
 mere items of the prices current ? — matters of monied 
 monopoly ? perquisites of lucre ? was the road so 
 abrupt, from princely state to utter destitution? 
 Poor Aufredy ! he was fain thenceforward to turn 
 porter, lumper, drudge of all work, for escape from 
 very starvation. He found, however, somewhat to 
 his surprise, a coarse but real sympathy, among 
 the new associates, '' beggars all," with whom he 
 was driven to mix : a metal, truly, that did not ring 
 symphonious to his every mood, but then it was 
 not hollow. There was one poor fellow, whose 
 very name was new to him, but who had once been 
 a sort of servant of his own, on liberal wages, — 
 whom not the very abjectness of poverty, to which 
 
168 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 he was now reduced, could beguile of a kindly 
 respect: his children might snicker at the portly 
 provost, but wo betide them, if a bow or scrape were 
 wanting to M. Aufredy. The hovel of this latter be- 
 came the home of both: master and man fared forth 
 as fellow-laborers about the quay; and after the first 
 embarrassment of their novel relation was over, when 
 many a coarse exigency had done away the whi- 
 lome servant's awe, and while health and strength 
 remained, and the sweat of his brow availed him, 
 the ruined merchant knew moments of positive 
 happiness. There was an unconstraint about such 
 life that had its charm — and then he had a tried 
 heart to count upon. But poor Aufredy fell sick; 
 and remained so : — his hair got grizzled, untimely, 
 and hectic hues came with the damp of evening 
 into his cheek ; — his limbs became emaciated ; he 
 could work but rarely — and then only at slight un- 
 profitable jobs ; — finally, he wished himself snug in 
 a pauper's cofiin ; — having become little better than 
 a burden on his poor but loyal friend. 
 
 One day, when the story of the missing argosy 
 was old and out of mind, and the few of his former 
 associates who knew him to be yet alive, had learned 
 to think of him only as a vagabond, — one ruddy 
 autumn afternoon, he had sauntered down, as he 
 loved to do, outside the sea- ward gate ; to breathe 
 freelier, and pensively to gaze on the coquet element 
 that had raised his fortunes, like its own bubbles, 
 into sudden light and splendor, only to withdraw, 
 and dissipate them in air. Such indeed was not 
 
AUFREDY. 169 
 
 his thought; — far from querulous, he had outlived 
 already the relish of pomp, and but for his depend- 
 ent position, would have been content with the 
 prospect of working his passage, toilful though the 
 tug might be, — to his grave. 
 
 " My good comrade,'' said Aufredy, '^ this way of 
 protracting a worse than useless life, will never do: 
 were suicide lawful in God's eye, I would sooner 
 die, than hang thus, a dead weight, about thy neck." 
 
 " Nay, 't is trial enough master," replied the 
 other, '' for a great man, rich as you were, and yet 
 should be, to scramble for mean jobs about the pier ; 
 and be obliged to make shift in a hut like mine: — 
 don 't speak of the obligation — it gives me pain ; — 
 we '11 talk of it when your ships come hom.e ; — not 
 before : nay, I meant but to say that the disappoint- 
 ment is yours, not mine, if you be not now far 
 above the assistance of neighbors." 
 
 While this mutual deprecatory talk was pursuing, 
 lo ! many sails peering up from the outboard : 
 two, — four, — five, — ten sails, faint heaving into 
 sight, Avithin thrice as many minutes. 
 
 " Three — five — ten fat sheep bound straight for our 
 pen — eh, master? three livres, at the least, in the 
 breaking bulk, and little odd windfalls a plenty be- 
 side, while the jack tars are carousing their way to 
 sea again up town. Ten sails, by St. Paul the stitch- 
 er; but it looks — pardon me, like old times; — what 
 corporation, for certes, no two merchants here ..." 
 
 The wave-worn argosy sped forward. There 
 was no mistaking the cheery booming, the inspirit- 
 14* 
 
170 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 ing call, the gleeful bellowing, alow and aloft — the 
 whole joyons hubbub characteristic of the clime, 
 that presently came on the headlong breeze of Bis- 
 cay, to their ears; — but long before the procession of 
 barnacled and weedy hulls grew distinct from the 
 pier, gay signals were all a flaunt from gaff-staff 
 and mast-head — and what were they? There were 
 glasses leveled from hence, and glasses a many 
 from yonder ; the round tower, and the " Grosse 
 horloge," and the prison pinnacle, and the whole 
 sea-board pier, were alive: the old harbor master 
 was puzzling his bullet sconce, in vain ; — a positive 
 gang, withal, of portly echevins came waddling 
 down to gaze : whose were the signal tokens ? 
 
 '^ Les voila qui viennent enfin !'' Behold them at 
 last I said Aufredy, with a strange unintelligible 
 sigh. His comrade left off peering out-board — 
 stared in his face — back again at the vessels, and 
 back again at Aufredy. It was a study for Vandyk ; 
 — his dropping jaw, forehead a- wrinkle, and wide 
 open eye : and a deeper study yet, was the face of 
 the e:r-ruined merchant. '' My caravels — dost not 
 know them?'' 
 
 There was magic outright in the coming of those 
 hulks, once fairly within ken of the crowd : — old 
 friends, — kept a-cork as it were in reserve, and be- 
 comingly ripened, of course, no particle of nitric 
 feeling wasted, questioned, '^ made eyes," thanked 
 God, and found out Aufredy : — divining rods no 
 truer, to the prospect of gold. There was one — ^' a 
 backer of brass," who lost no tittle of time for grat- 
 
AUFREDY. . 171 
 
 ulation. " Ah ca : maintenant — que dit il? notre 
 fameux negocianl ce cher gredin rf' Aufredyl — this 
 dear dog ! Give ye joy, old intimate ! Tut, the man 
 is sick ! heard of it but yesterday, and was coming 
 . . . knew your deuce of a spirit though, — and so, — 
 but now — thou must bring thy duds, — nay ! no 
 refusal, forthwith, to my hotel. — Call it yours, — once 
 for all ! I '11 send this moment ! — a . . . a . . . Avhere 
 d' ye live?'' 
 
 Another, the auctioneer of his old effects, came 
 next — '^ Mais vive Vaudace I the longer rake the 
 luckier, eh, eh ? fortune favors the bold ! said I not 
 ever as much? but harkee, an' it please your wor- 
 ship — a Avord, Sieur Aufredy, in your private ear! — 
 the commissions on all this, remember, I 've be- 
 spoken each and all — can double everything — add 
 more to most, by 'r lady of the locker — an' there be 
 such a saint ; — Oh, we '11 do a thing or two, this bout, 
 never fear, that shall make netted fish of a certain 
 dowager countess we wot of: — but so — where hast 
 been? I 've looked and inquired, and looked and 
 inquired — was a little afraid of you, though, — disap- 
 pointed lion — let him alone till by and by ! — best 
 plan, no?" 
 
 Mi. Aufredy, your worship, if your worship would 
 but deign to look in at my shop! whined a little 
 snipe-like tailor. The friend of adversity shrunk 
 instinctively aloof: his heart misgave him for a 
 moment ; he had heard of a disease called hunian 
 nature. For once, however, common augury was 
 at fault. 
 
172 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 The caravels got warmest welcome. A weather- 
 beaten complement they exhibited, in sooth, all duly 
 to be drunken, and exquisitely fleeced betimes. As 
 for the supercargoes, and officers, they were recon- 
 ciled to their term of exile by virtue of huge profits : 
 they had been detained for full nine years, visiting 
 many out-of the-way ports, before any prospect of 
 barter presented that warranted return; but abode 
 stoutly by the orders given them, and finally 
 weighed anchor for home, five times richer than 
 they went away. 
 
 The auctioneer had the present sale of all the 
 cargoes ; got well paid, and was fain thereupon to 
 propose re-embarkations of capital ; — talked of agen- 
 cies, fully empowered; — of eligible terms of transfer, 
 procurable by none but himself: but most feelingly, 
 of the unprecedented good account to which he had 
 turned the wares just given him for disposal; — the 
 cargoes, 't was true, were somewhat in demand — 
 but the value his adroitness had superadded; — tut! 
 it was not to calculate in figures : — He would have 
 Sieur Aufredy to appreciate his ardor, and his ulti- 
 mate dues : — ^' but if a copartnership". . . . 
 
 " Nay, my good friend," said the latter, " thou for- 
 gettest I am on my last legs : indeed, much as I|prize 
 your offers, my business days are over; but you 
 shall certainly be remembered in my ..." 
 
 " Nay, nay, don 't talk of wills" — interrupted the 
 friend — '' we 're not going to die these many, many 
 years — why you Ve a bloom . . . . " 
 
 '^ In my prayers !" 
 
 Pylades bit his lip, and retired. 
 
AUFREDY. 173 
 
 Sieur Aufredy stirred little ; — where was he ? — 
 went about confidentially with his late nurse and 
 landlord, the lumper : what would he do ? he was 
 very rich — enormously ; — funds chiefly at Paris : — 
 sick withal — no ? sick as wealthy — or was he better? 
 
 Sieur Aufredy was choosing a site ; purchasing 
 ground (so rumor said,) for a spacious new hotel 
 and gardens. A quiet area, close by the cloistral 
 precincts of the Cathedral, was alive at last with 
 bustle of masonry, from dawn till candle hght — but, 
 as the model of the pile developed itself, what an 
 original ; — of all hotels ! 
 
 Aufredy was building a hospital! his whole for- 
 tune went to endow it, save so much as the friend 
 of his adversity could be prevailed on to accept; 
 and therewithin did he insist, endowed with strange 
 philanthropy hy mens' neglect, weaned from earth- 
 ly pomp, and earthly desire, among gray wimpled 
 ^^ sisters of charity," and quiet ecclesiastics, on pass- 
 ing the remnant of his life, in succouring others' dis- 
 tress. The hospital fell heir, of course, to all his 
 claims : long may the noble institution last ! (to this 
 day boast of the town) a noble mausoleum, yet fairer 
 monument of living man's revenge upon his kind. 
 
COUNT GEOPFRY'S GHOST, 
 
 OR THE 
 
 SPECTRE OF LUSIGNAN. 
 
 Are sitting again, under a gibbous moon, with all 
 night before us, and roquelows at hand, when lo, a 
 Biscay storm ! heavy-mantled in westerly clouds, 
 that sends the spray dashing against the tower foot, 
 and presently such a deluge as if Aquarius had 
 " capsized" his watering pot over our heads : bid- 
 ding all warm householders of Rochelle under shel- 
 ter, and converting a ruined staircase or two, into 
 cascades more picturesque than desirable. We ad- 
 journ to the upper hall ; coax a lamp or two into 
 flame, adjust ourselves once more, cosily wide awake, 
 into a forty-thievish group, and hist! a story in 
 turn, such as it is, from the cockney professor ; John 
 Bull, Junior, Esq. 
 
 " Has anybody a partiality for ghost stories ?" 
 
 " Nothing more appropriate — the blast will give 
 them effect." 
 
 " It — an it please you; only one; but that one 
 authentic; a great point: of the circumstances of 
 which, so far as they went, I was myself a witness- 
 
COUNT GEOFFRY's GHOST 175 
 
 Well — ^we were a party, in my "silly nonage,'' 
 in one of your pleasant cafes : on much such a 
 night as this, in the raw month of November: — a 
 party of youth round a mystic tripod, beclouded 
 about with pipe smoke, having patera pontific in the 
 midst — " 
 
 ^^ Pat— pat — what 's that? thought you professed 
 English^ Bull, dear!" 
 
 " And suppose terse English fails ? as Latin would 
 fail to express ' Sherry cobler,' without circumlocu- 
 tion ? I 'd a pagan idea to clothe, you monkey ! and 
 wouldbe exact : — well, chalices, — an' you prefer it so, 
 — priestly chalices, in the midst; each a-flicker with 
 wizard -wise blue flame : — were discussing the possi- 
 bility of ghosts." 
 
 " All nations" said one, " have the instinct of be- 
 lief in comers back (fleshless indeed by way of 
 customs,) from the undiscovered country." 
 
 " Which means, being interpreted, that a majority 
 of men have marvelousness full," sputtered a Gall- 
 ite, fresh from the Rue Sorbonne. 
 
 " What then? 't is but a re-statement of the case 
 —that." 
 
 "Humph! all nations, quotha?" put in the Marco 
 Polo of the group, a reefer late from the Indies, — " I 
 challenge exception for the Chinese ; Avho have n't 
 curiosity." 
 
 "Nonsense! what means their constant interjec- 
 tion, Hy yah! But, then, a Chinese ghost! — I 
 give in! the idea is absurd! a puss-eyed ghost, 
 with a queue, — in a striped shirt, for aught one 
 
176 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 knows ; — they mourn in white, go to court in yellow, 
 who knows in what color their dead affect to be 
 buried?'' 
 
 " Everybody, — sumph ! a Chinese is laid out 
 in ... " but here the pendule clicked eleven. 
 
 " Question ! question V 
 
 " Move an adjournment ;" 
 
 "I'm off!" 
 
 "AndV 
 
 " And I," 
 
 " And I," 
 
 All indeed were going, — gone; hurry scurry, 
 " fortified with fear," in the teeth of the storm ; 
 fond expectancy at home growing acid, like other 
 sweets, by too long exposure. The room was pres- 
 ently vacant throughout, but for two, not bother- 
 ed (alas ! thank heaven !) with friends : a comrade 
 namely, and myself; who did straitway fee the nod- 
 ding garcon to have patience, plenish a last lamp in 
 the penetralia, with oil for a fortnight, and bring 
 fresh coffee : being fully resolved to snap our fingers 
 at time and circumstance, and finish what we had 
 to say. 
 
 " They are pleasant fellows, those, — with their ar- 
 guments, no ?" recommenced my comrade ;--" shrewd 
 arbiters, in sooth ; — but when one knows . ." 
 
 (This said with such an air ! and then the fel- 
 low was skeptical in religion; which you know 
 puts a hint of credulity in aught else out of the 
 question.) Just as you say ! said I ; — when one 
 knows, the thing is placed past doubt. 
 
COUNT GEOFPRy's GHOST. 177 
 
 " There is, by the way, — but I — nay, what say to 
 exploring a haunted chateau ? " 
 
 " Proceed." 
 
 " You have heard, possibly, of the sometime lords 
 of Lusignan?" 
 
 *' And how the family had a cross of the were- 
 wolf; — of Geoffry Fang; toothy Geoff; Geoffry a 
 la grand dent; certes, who has not? And how 
 the house was founded by the fay Melusine; 
 (whence the name Lusignan ;) who built their cas- 
 tle, indeed, and made it impregnable by ^ cantrip 
 sleight;'— well !'' 
 
 ^' Well — the chateau still stands, of course ; thrice 
 haunted, not wholly dismantled, in keeping of . . . . 
 Count Geoffry's ghost! A peasant intendant there 
 is, who must give supper and a night's lodging to any 
 bold enough to pass midnight in the pile. Now I Ve 
 two prime saddle horses ; — suppose we go there, for 
 whim sake, and lodge ! None of your every-day 
 ghosts, that of Geoffry; none of your second-rate, 
 subservient, low-bred sprites; None of your sloven- 
 ly-beggarly, road-side spectres, ready each moment 
 to be tripped up by their own unwieldy drapery ; 
 and as much at one-s mercy, but for their melt-away 
 privilege, as so many '' fey'' tipplers ; none of your 
 Ossianly phantoms, made of gas, and dispersable 
 by a very skewer; none of your civil dead folk, 
 with favors to ask; — but a grim, old-fashioned, 
 hard-fighting, hard-drinking goblin: — ensconced in 
 15 
 
178 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 castle of its own ; — armed to a point ; and considering 
 your intrusion, as Avell it may, in the light of a chal* 
 lenge : a fanged ghost — bred in the feudal wars — of 
 elfin extraction— with a cross of the were-wolf: 
 Heigho ! by Guy !" 
 
 " But I had thought haunted castles, open to the 
 traveler, quite out of fashion.'^ 
 
 "Oh, the peasantry ... so superstitious — in re- 
 mote .... humph ! in provinces like Yienne : 
 ^gad but I can set the fact at rest ; — give you chapter 
 and verse ; have the very book before me, that my 
 information was got from.'" 
 
 And behold, sure enough, in a popular, matter-of- 
 fact, sketch-book of the reahn — Lusignan — old cha- 
 teau — popular tradition — said to be founded by fairy 
 Melusine — peasantry — -superstitious — an d so on. 
 Precisely, save as touching any invitation to the 
 wayfarer, exactly what my legendary friend had 
 avouched. These old countries — who knows? 
 faith, methinks there lurketh some sport under all 
 this ! so thought I, in my profanity and fool-hardi- 
 ness of heart; — but you shall see. Suffice it — that 
 we made an appointment presently, for one idle 
 autumn day, to go to Lusignan: and so contrive 
 matters, whether or no, as to sleep in the grim old 
 chateau. But lo you, my friend and his horses oflf 
 to La Vendee, on business, just the day before that 
 appointed for our excursion. Plainly it liked him 
 not, on cooler reflection, an interview with Count 
 Geoffry's ghost. 
 
 Well, about four weeks after, behold me posting 
 
179 
 
 leisurely to Paris: awaking, of a frosty December 
 midnight, somewhere this side of Poic tiers, in a lit- 
 tle shoulder-to-shoulder village street, sleepily a- glim- 
 mer through the dark. 
 
 "- Where are we, Nappy? (short for Napoleon, the 
 name of my drowsy post-boy.) " Wake up, Nap ; — 
 you 're oversetting ! Where are we now ?" 
 
 " In Lusignan, Monsieur.'' 
 
 " Eh ! the dickens we are ! I thought Lusignan 
 was far elsewhere." 
 
 So I was there! The late intended adventure 
 came back to mind, with appeal perfectly resistless. 
 
 " Where was the inn ? " 
 
 ''Just past it, sir." 
 
 " Turn about, turnabout, Nap! — get out the bag- 
 gage, and put up the horses ! Now, then, if that 
 ghost slip through my fingers, hang me ! But stay, 
 there may be a halting place nearer the castle." 
 
 " Comment, Monsieur?" 
 
 '' The chateau ; — I would stop as near it as pos- 
 sible." 
 
 " Quel chateau done Monsieur veut il visiter V 
 
 "What one sir?" 
 
 "What chateau, why the one, blockhead! — the 
 chateau of Lusignan, to be sure." 
 
 " Mais Monsieur,'^'' — (what, you too such a coward ! 
 thought I) "Mais Monsieur, voila cent cinqua?ite ans 
 qu HI n\j en a pas I /" There has n't been any for 
 these hundred and fifty years. 
 
 " Drive on, Nap !" 
 
180 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 ^^ Plait iir 
 
 " Drive on, I say, rogue." 
 
 Such, Messieurs, was my direction to Nap the pos- 
 tillion. 
 
LEONIE. 
 
 A LEGEND OF THE LOIR. 
 
 Let me tell you. Oh, reader! that once upon a time, in ^'greener 
 years," I found in a country newspaper a sort of story ; meagre 
 enough, but ingenious, the hints whereof I afterward took the lib- 
 erty to turn, from memory, into a serpentine sort of sing-song 
 Judeolyrical ballad; thinking the thing, on the whole, much hon- 
 ored in the liquefaction : — well, what was my horror to find, in 
 process of time, that I had been engaged, as it were,'' Fagin "-wise, 
 melting down stolen goods; consummating, ay me! the bedev- 
 ilment past legal reclaimer, of a well known story by Balzac. 
 Such however as was the sing-song ballad, shall I reel it off to 
 you ? Here goes ! 
 
 • 
 
 There's many a pile of olden time, with walls full fair 
 
 to see, 
 In the green land thou look'st upon. Chateau of Sancerry ! 
 Full many a hold of barons bold, by many a minstrel sung, 
 But none where lurks the wildering spell about thy tur- 
 rets flung : 
 It is not that thy banners bright have held in Palestine 
 Their place among the proudest in the consecrated line. 
 Or that the placid moonlight, that sleeps upon thee now, 
 Falls not on many a sister-bower imperial as thou, — 
 With equal wealth of waving woods, and gladly gushing 
 
 rills, 
 And vineyards, that the sunset flush grows redder as it 
 fills ; 
 
 15* 
 
182 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 But one, the loveliest of the land, has made her home 
 
 in thee. 
 And she it is who hallows thee, — the lady Leonie ! 
 
 What makes the Castellan alone? say why, at early hour, 
 Broods such a solemn stillness over parapet and tower? 
 The baron hath gone forth to-night ; and with him he has 
 
 ta'en 
 With rowel-stroke and bugle-call, the chiefest of his train : 
 The lamps that burn for their return are swinging to 
 
 and fro. 
 And letting fall in the voiceless hall strange shadows as 
 
 they go— 
 I wot that they are few and faint, and elsewhere is there 
 
 none. 
 Save one, a silver cresset, in my lady's chamber lone ; — 
 A chamber meet for beauty, whither every wind that blows 
 Is rife with blended perfume of the violet and rose; 
 Along its pictured arras, in fanciful array, • 
 
 Are bodied forth strange annals of ages past away; 
 And glowingly or half revealed, upon the pannels rare. 
 Kneel forms of seraph loveliness, in attitude of prayer, — 
 With sunny locks and liquid eyes ; — but fairer none than 
 
 she 
 Who wont to kneel beside them, — the lady Leonie ! 
 
 The virgin shield thee, Leonie, and shelter thee from harm ! 
 For I ween the arm that 'circles thee, is not a husband's 
 
 arm — 
 And thou hast ne'er a brother — and thy kindred are not 
 
 near, — 
 And words a matron may not list are whispering in thine 
 
 ear ; 
 
A LEGEND OF THE LOIR. 183 
 
 I fear "me for thy struggling heart — now Jesu be thy stay, 
 That pure erewhile as are thy flowers, thou be not frail 
 as they ! 
 
 —The lady by her liege's couch is leaning on her lover ; — 
 
 Half-tearfully — full pale ; her days of innocence are over ! 
 
 Her bosom, heaves it for remorse, while Adolph bends 
 above her ? 
 
 While he for whom her heart's fair fane but now is 
 desecrate, 
 
 Stands thus, a barrier so dear, betwixt her soul and fate? 
 
 That bloodless cheek — the mounting sigh — say augur ye 
 from thence 
 
 An ebb in the fierce passion's tide, so spurning all defence, 
 
 Shame, conscience, faith ? Not so — 't is but the billow- 
 swell retreating 
 
 Of fathomless desire, that looks for many and many a 
 meeting 
 
 Dearer than this : — What recketh she, his chos'n, of aught 
 beside — 
 
 Of guilt or peril that hath been, or is, or may befall. 
 
 Thus leant with eyes insatiate on her arbiter and all ? 
 
 The wind-harp from its crevice never sang so mournfully 
 As now, and never swept its tones so all unheeded by; — 
 Thy wayward heart is rife with love — yet listen, Leonie ! 
 It is the knell of heavenward hope, — of earthly peace to 
 thee ! 
 
 A step ! a light and stealthy step, within the corridor — 
 How? 'T was a costful dalliance, heaven wot — and is 
 it o'er ? 
 
184 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 The footstep of her jealous lord ; whom she hath met, till 
 
 now, 
 With such a tranquil majesty upon her cheek and brow ; 
 How shall she hide her beating heart ? 't is he ! — it wax- 
 
 eth nearer ! 
 And where, Oh where, the paramour her sullied soul holds 
 
 dearer ? 
 
 There is a closet in the wall — a consecrated cell. 
 Where Leonie was wont, at times, her rosary to tell ; — 
 It has heard the gushing music of her purest secret prayer, 
 When the Virgin's image graced it, — shall her idol enter 
 
 there ? 
 Full readily doth Adolph seek the sanctuary's gloom 
 Too readily ; Oh, were it his t' anticipate his doom ! 
 And she — could heaven grant her in mercy to foresee 
 The issue of a i^ew short hours, Alas, it may not be ! 
 
 The baron paceth up and down ; — right menacingly burn 
 Those eyes that since the bridal moon, are seldom aught 
 
 but stern ; 
 His lips are strained, how lividly ; but doth the matron 
 
 quail ? 
 Sits rebel conscience in her cheek, and tells her fateful 
 
 tale? 
 A breathing slightly tremulous, a half retreating eye. 
 As if her heart were ill at ease, yet not betraying why. 
 Are all a doubt may dwell upon ; and that were done 
 
 away, 
 But that her air hath been, till now, so calm, — it ne'er 
 
 was gay ; — 
 ** Methinks my lord is ill to-night ; or brings he evil news?" 
 **My errand," saith the haughty chief, "is hardly to amuse :" 
 
A LEGEND OF THE LOIR. 185 
 
 Such were his province, more than mine, oh fair and 
 
 faithful bride, 
 Who, startled at a quiet step, but now hath left thy side ; 
 I wot, a careless stripling, — he should have closed the door 
 Of yonder penitential niche more softly, — or before." 
 And Leonie hath made reply ; a prompt, a simple nay 
 So rife with maiden rectitude, what shall he think or say? 
 So worthy of the vanished hour when he was proud to 
 
 woo her. 
 And called her early troth his own exultingly and sure ; — 
 But hist ! a cross of ebony hath caught his troubled gaze ! 
 (Ay me ! the lady's blood is chill — each drop hath gone 
 
 its ways :) 
 A pledge, — ivhose fatal pledge, but now, — say reads he in 
 
 her eyes? 
 E'en so — the language of his look is broader than surmise ; 
 It settleth to a chilling stare : What would the baron now? 
 ** Come hither, gentle spouse of mine ]■ — thy constancy, I 
 
 trow. 
 Scarce lacks the warrant of an oath, to screen it from the 
 
 sneer 
 That malice meeteth unto all, yet, Leonie, thine ear ! 
 Yon gage, least fit for lawless love, — nay challenge not a 
 
 jest. 
 Yon dainty-wroughten cross — what tho' I crave to see it 
 
 prest 
 Superfluous to those guileless lips ? what an' I bid thee 
 
 swear 
 That none hath found a shelter in thy shrine-wise closet 
 
 there ? — 
 Behold, for little as it were, my purposed search forgone! 
 'T is but to add a word or twain the holy type thereon — 
 
186 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 By Jesus, latter agony — by all thou hop'st of heaven — 
 — And Leonie hath ta'en the oath — ta'en it as it was 
 given ! 
 
 The baron stalketh to and fro — he bends to fling aside, 
 The window-leaf; his blood is hot, to cool its fevered tide ; 
 Oh all is gentlest hush without, and timid stars are seen 
 Coy twinkling on the gazer thro' a wilderness of green, 
 And o'er them hangs the crescent moon, — while from 
 
 their garden lair 
 The summer winds come stealing in to wanton with her 
 
 hair ; — 
 What recks the lady of the scene, if it be soft or no. 
 Or if the glades are dewy bright, or saddened with her 
 
 wo; 
 Or if the leaves all soothingly around her lattice quiver? 
 She looks but on the crucifix — she thinks but on the giver ! 
 Well may she ! — for the knight hath found a further, fear- 
 ful test 
 May sate the fiend of jealousy that harbors in his breast ; — - 
 Say wherefore came, and whither went, that low-browed 
 
 menial, — 
 So wolf-like in his stealthy pace, so prompt for midnight 
 
 call? 
 He hath a mounted errand — and the babbling echoes tell 
 It is a headlong hoof and fleet that paws the ground so 
 
 well : — 
 From hour to hour the lady sighs, ** behoves the cock to 
 
 crow," 
 Ere sped the fatal best he hath, she may the issue know : — 
 And when returneth, not alone, that caitiff* menial. 
 Who totters after, as he glides thro' vestibule and hall ? 
 
A LEGEND OF THE LOIR. 187 
 
 Who strive, as 'neath a weary weight, with half relaxing 
 
 knee. 
 And feeble vantage, in the old resounding gallery ? 
 And who, at last, bewildered, pale, an all untimely guest, 
 Intrudes upon the matron's bower — the chamber of her 
 
 rest? 
 I wot, a mason of the bourg ; — and he hath hither brought, — 
 Oh horror for the lady, this ne'er mingled with her 
 
 thought ! 
 It needeth not to tell her what, with agonizing skill. 
 Those stones, — the tempered mortar, shall soon be made 
 
 to fill— 
 It needs not for the knight to name yon tiny glassy door, 
 Where . . hath the curse o'erta'en her, that she falls not 
 
 to the floor ? 
 But stands, — God sain the struggle in her freezing form 
 
 and air, 
 'Twixt bootless guile, and baseless hope, and imbecile 
 
 despair ! 
 
 Alas, that blank dilating eye too well hath told the truth. 
 
 Else had ye deemed the narrow cell all tenantless in 
 sooth — 
 
 For Adolph stilly stands as death ; tho' not by him un- 
 heard 
 
 Each sound, precursor of his doom, each hoarsely mutter- 
 ed word ; — 
 
 Tho' not unmarked the busy shade flung to and fro be- 
 fore him, 
 
 Up-piling with each turn the tomb that darkly riseth o'er 
 him, — 
 
 Tho' not unfelt the creeping glooom that mounts from 
 pane to pane, — 
 
188 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 The trowel's fitful click — great God ! how rings it on his 
 
 brain ! 
 While fast as falls each hasty click, flits forth another ray, 
 And with it ebbs another breath of leagaered life away : 
 Of proud, ripe, dainty, lusty life ; — Oh say 't is but a 
 
 swound. 
 And not the grave's own loathly mirk that thickeneth 
 
 around I 
 O say 't is but a dream — a prank of hideous unrest ! 
 The crisis of a laidly dream, just ready to be broken, 
 And render back of lightsome ease each well accustomed 
 
 token ; — 
 For Adolph is of old the very mate of luxury : 
 Broad lands, and stately palace bowers, and ruddy gold 
 
 hath he, 
 And more than bounteous gold bestows, or palace fiefs 
 
 imply, 
 Lore, lordly parentage, old friends, devout for him to die, 
 And senses fine, that nature's dole vouchsafeth unto few, 
 In every gracious mood of hers, a charm to feel or view ; — 
 The craving and the wont withal to tempt her uncon- 
 trolled — 
 Youth, and young love. Ay me ! time was, he read, in 
 
 legends old, 
 Thro' direst penalties of yore, how many a Christian 
 
 martyr 
 Was called a life of weary woes for heaven's bliss to barter, 
 And Adolph while a gentle child the martyr's fate hath 
 
 mourned : 
 Was it to be reserved for this ? earth-worshipping, — un- 
 warned, — 
 
A LEGEND OF THE LOIR. 189 
 
 All unannealed — unfortified with pious faith sublime, 
 For this Oh more than martyrdom, — to unrepented crime ? 
 Not so doth Adolph read his fate. A fearsome risk, well 
 
 run, 
 He deemeth it, — insane ! — well due to that beloved one ; — 
 And findeth he in his rash hopes a buoyancy unblest, 
 In dreaming yet again to be caressing and caressed ; 
 Free fulsomer to follow yet the guilty paths he trod — 
 The while the hour escapeth him to make his peace with 
 
 God! 
 
 One glance, but one, the baron wasteth on the waning 
 
 night ;— 
 It is enow — full well hath she redeemed that oversight ! 
 ** One crevice ! — here are gems of price — my caskets offer 
 
 more — 
 One current !" — Nay, the mason wight is busy as before : — 
 But when the trowel blade betimes rings thro' a shattered 
 
 pane, 
 God prosper him, the lady knows her pregnant hint is 
 
 ta'en ; 
 While thro' the breach the mason wight he witnesseth, I 
 
 wot 
 A sight that in his memory long shall linger unforgot; 
 Seems it that he a spectre there within awakeneth ; 
 A spectre bathed in horrid sweat and panting sore for 
 
 breath ; — 
 And featly if his task proceed, the sleight is not of thought, 
 Encountering aye those lineaments, mute, shadowy, tor- 
 
 ture-fr aught, 
 Alive but in the lab'ring breath, and in the eye alight 
 That gleameth — but it gleams no more, — ^the wall hath 
 
 reached its height ! 
 16 
 
190 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 And showeth fair, and hideth yet the crevice left therein 
 
 Half unawares, for pity's sake, and dread of mortal sin. 
 
 What aileth now the mason wight ? the weight his shoul- 
 der borCj 
 
 Would seem transferred upon his heart ; and heavier than 
 before ; — 
 
 Hie thee from Sancerry, poor knave ! but think not gold 
 shall sain. 
 
 Or blessing of the dewy dawn relieve thy aching brain ; 
 
 Or that a lazy luxury in lands beyond the seas 
 
 Where thou must get thee presently, shall bring an age 
 of ease ; 
 
 In novelty's and gold's despite, shrew^d glamourie I ween 
 
 Were that should curtain from thy sight the vision thou 
 hast seen ! 
 
 ** My lord !" *' Thy errand, knave ! Be brief! A dainty 
 
 fair pretence 
 Methinks it were, in sooth, just now should wheedle me 
 
 from hence — 
 Go^ slave! (the menial whispereth.) Nay, be my charger 
 
 brought ! — 
 And hark ! wo worth the messenger, so this alarm be 
 
 nought !" 
 All chafed of mood, and hot in haste, the baron pricks 
 
 him forth : 
 Now, Leonie, 't is thine to prove what ladies' thews be 
 
 worth ! 
 " Ho hither ! haste ! my maiden bold — the steely bar 
 
 now ply. 
 And stout needs be their masonry, our sinews to defy !'' 
 Already, ly ! a rift is won ; — it widens ! — ye had thought 
 
A LEGEND OF THE LOIR. 191 
 
 Twain Amazons up-conjured there, for gentler frailty 
 
 wrought ; — 
 The wall of yesternight will yield ! another wrench — a 
 
 bolder ! 
 What ails the maid, that palsied, stony-stareth o'er her 
 
 shoulder ! 
 The baron hath . . . returned? One throb, and stark along 
 
 the floor 
 Falls Leonie : — Methinks her mortal pilgrimage is o'er ! 
 
 And wins the lady back to life? E'en so ; if life ye call 
 Such state than which the penal world hath scarce a 
 
 eadlier thrall ; — 
 Betimes full fain to bid again her tingling blood congeal, 
 While he, collectedly the while, toys with his morning 
 
 meal. 
 *^ A pardon ! fairest lady-love, for one who from this hour 
 Doth purpose never more to prove a truant from thy bower : 
 Whom thou hast won from foul distrust, and humblinglj 
 
 hast taught 
 The measure of confiding love and duty that he ought; — 
 For whose repast 'tis grace enow henceforth to know 
 
 thee nigh, 
 And think to wear the day within the lustre of thine eye." 
 Such taunts withal and leer askance the knight his meal 
 
 pursueth, 
 O might the prompting fiend respond for what he saith 
 
 and doeth ! 
 Such taunts the lady listeneth, nor kindles once her eye, 
 Distraught she lies, nor speaks nor sighs, inured to agony ; 
 Day in, day out, night's tide about, still 'bides the baron 
 
 there. 
 Still bends the lady on the wall, entranced, an idiot stare; 
 
192 " RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 But with the third, from out the cell there parts a hissing 
 moan — 
 
 So slight, so low, ye caught it not? yet scarce the trum- 
 pet's tone 
 
 Of doom, a surer summons on her latter rest shall wreak. 
 
 Oh then the dame upriseth — well I wot she may not speak, 
 
 For parched throat and bursting heart, but what she may 
 she gaspeth. 
 
 And round about the baron's knees in agony up-claspeth : 
 
 " My life, ... no more for life can she : The knight re- 
 joins, ** and doth 
 
 My lady fair forget herself? bethink thee dame, — thine 
 oath!" 
 
 Say, warder wight, how speeds the night? *'In faith, not 
 
 over well ; — 
 The midnight blast that scurries past hath tolled the cas- 
 tle bell : 
 I like it not — an omen drear — it soundeth like a knell.'' 
 With many a curse upon the blast that round the arras 
 
 wails 
 And ravishes the cresset lone that ever shrinks and pales 
 In briefest ear-shot of the cell the baron hearkeneth ; — 
 And when the tempest-tone grows wild, then holdeth he 
 
 his breath. 
 "Man void of ruth ! thou hear'st, in sooth, and mark'st the 
 
 rattling sigh, 
 The last vain parley of the sense, that seals death's victory 
 O'er one, who dearly thee hath wronged, yet . . . Hath it 
 
 ceased ? 'T is well ! 
 God sain the sprite hath ta'en its flight! hark, once again, 
 
 the knell ! 
 
A LEQEND OF THE LOIR. 193 
 
 Ay, knight, again behold ye twain, where late enlingered 
 
 three ; 
 Baron and dame — Is 't her ye name the lady Leonie? 
 
 Oh many a hold of ruin the pilgrim sees and sighs 
 Where thou, 'lorn Sancerry, dost frown athwart the pleas- 
 ant skies ; 
 And many a mossy tower and fane lone tottering to its fall, 
 Emprostrate long ago but for the wild-vines verdant thrall 
 That in and out and round about o'er rift and mullion 
 
 flaunteth, 
 But none where sorely as in thee stark desolation haunteth. 
 It is not for the ivy pall hath hid thy belfry high. 
 Or creeper curtaining the hall with restless drapery 
 Green, gaudy, sere, as wanes the year, — or birds that 
 
 therein build 
 And twitter from the corbel's cleft and helm of chiseled 
 
 shield ; 
 Oh many a sister bower of thine hath vacancy for state. 
 And peopling vile of crawling things for beauty's march 
 
 elate ; 
 All, all are desolate enow, and some there be that borrow 
 Such gloom as eld entaileth not, from deeds of shame and 
 
 sorrow ; 
 But these among who sigheth, sighs o'er centuries decay ; 
 O'er crime and sorrow of a race from memory past away : 
 The tale thou tell'st, 'lorn Sancerry, is a tale of yesterday ! 
 
 The wild wood vast, with bugle blast ne'er rang more 
 merrily, 
 
 16* 
 
194 IIIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 But the wild wood fiefs to other chiefs have passed from 
 
 Sancerry ; 
 The vineyard from its blushful urn pours lavishly as ever 
 Adown the south slope of the hill, along the placid river, 
 — Its racy hoards own other lords ; — but court and garden 
 
 bide 
 A desert undisturbed, for thrice ten years come hallow- 
 tide : 
 With ban of law, with hints of horror vague, encinct 
 
 around, 
 And wall and gate of olden state, a bulwark huge and 
 
 sound; 
 For thrice ten years, no foot of man hath pressed the 
 
 muffling moss 
 Where clattered heel on heel of yore the court yard pave 
 
 across, — 
 For thrice ten years no human tone hath waked the echo 
 
 there 
 That wont for very din to prate so fitfully and rare — 
 And lustres five are reckoned since the latest flower is 
 
 gone 
 That erst with peerless broidery enriched the garden lawn; 
 The urn is prone— the dial quaint hath bid the sun 
 
 good-bye, 
 That stood so fair in mid parterre and not a shrublet nigh ; 
 All thro' the glade the wolf hath frayed a path to the 
 
 river-bank, 
 He lightly heeds the gulf of weeds that was the garden 
 
 tank ; 
 The she wolf gaunt, from wild wood haunt she hither 
 
 skulketh, too. 
 Her house to found where hind and hound less likely 
 
 may pursue ; 
 
A LEGEND OF THE LOIR. 195 
 
 And where the yelps of her lean whelps may ring with 
 
 less ado; — 
 Long, long she gnawed at the postern board, and howled 
 
 when gat she through. 
 The she wolfs trail, thro' coppice frail, is free enough to 
 
 follow, 
 Well-dinted in the loamy soil, a channel strait and hollow — 
 And all along the terrace lo ! the printing of her toes! 
 Her nails make way with the lichens gray — know'st where 
 
 the she wolf goes? 
 Out on the upper terrace there opes a window low, 
 Its lattice by the frolic blast was shivered long ago — 
 Oh therewithin is a cozy den, and hither she hies, soho ! 
 Soho ! then she of wolves that be is daintiest lodged I 
 
 trow ! 
 The slant sun thro' the window low yet blazeth at the 
 
 eve ; 
 But who at him outgazeth, as he takes his ruddy leave. 
 From out the lattice window with its tracery so fair, 
 Is it the she wolfs youngling, with a yowl and with a stare ? 
 
 And even thence did Leonie admire the sunset glow? 
 And thither did the tempter hie, so seraph-like of brow, 
 When lay the glade in bloom-full shade a paradise below, 
 And daylight thro' the greenery fled glory-girt as now? 
 E'en there within, (if deadly sin on earth were expiate, 
 Well expiate were his, I wis,) met he his martyr fate. 
 Methoughtye spake of emptiness — the chamber is not bare. 
 Oh no, they left the tenant wolf a gaily garnished lair ! 
 Each fair appurtenance of old yet standeth where it stood, 
 Save what the tenant wolf hath edged aside in merry mood. 
 And a vase or two that the owl o'erthrew e'er even 
 donned her hood — 
 
196 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 More yet than moth has ta'en away the spider hath made 
 
 good : 
 Down from the window valance sere hang silver tassels 
 
 twain, 
 That quiver as the tendril sways, and blacken in the rain; 
 The window seat hath a cushion meet, new wrought, of 
 
 rarest gloss, 
 A vivid velvet, specked with red, of soft and living moss — 
 Save where the she wolf scrambles with her marring toes 
 
 athwart. 
 Or where the heirling whelp hath clomb and frittered it 
 
 to nouofht. 
 The silver cresset, (said I sooth 'twas a virgin wilderness?) 
 Hangs where it hung ; the wolf and young they prize it 
 
 scarce, I guess; 
 Not so the hermit owl of yore ; — it served him for a perch ; 
 Whereon, shrewd thing, he wont to swing oft-times in 
 
 breezy lurch 
 With both his broad bright eyes a-blink, the mockery of 
 
 a flame. 
 Till warned a-wing by the wolfling, he vanished as he 
 
 came. 
 Ay me ! it is a sorry sight and drear ye may avouch 
 To see the wild wolf's litter sprawl along the lady's couch ; 
 To see the wolfling rear and tap and snap at the pictured 
 
 shred 
 That flutters out to 's ticklish snout from o'er the lady's 
 
 bed ; 
 And strange, athwart a pannel as the she wolf wags her 
 
 tail. 
 To see the image of a saint peer forth, — adust and frail. 
 Like iris-hues on clouds apart, imperfect, but not pale — 
 A lovely saint, with arms uplift as to win a soul from bale ! 
 
A LEGEND OF THE LOIR. 19T 
 
 And mark ye as the eye dilates upon the inner gloom 
 How the narrow breach is furrowed, that in that nameless 
 
 tomb 
 The aoronizinff dame beoran, unwitting all for whom? 
 The she wolf — by the lichen stain methinks 't is many a 
 
 day 
 Since last the will-o-wisp danced forth and scared her 
 
 thence away, — 
 Slid close to her eyne, as with nuzzle and whine she 
 
 tugged with tooth and paw, 
 Close to her eyne, with sudden shine, — how flung she 
 
 back, ha, ha ! 
 Tugging away for the festering clay* she scented but not 
 
 saw. 
 The festering clay that so for aye bemocked her craving 
 
 maw! 
 The clay is nought, for years agone ; the skeleton withal, 
 The skeleton drops bone for bone — the she wolf hears 
 
 them fall- 
 Hears how the sepulchre's dull rot the ruin overtaketh 
 That round about the walls without such wizard havoc 
 
 maketh, 
 Until the sepulchre be void : No longer time, I wis — 
 The wantonness of ruin, it 'bideth but for this, — 
 Until the cell that erst immured the manhood of a man, 
 Holds not a winnow-worth of dust the feeblest air may 
 
 fan — 
 Lo, then the hold of Sancerry to a lordling gay shall fall, 
 And bill and spade the copse invade and torch illume the 
 
 hall, 
 
 * I fancy the she wolf to hare been hungry. 
 
198 RIBS AND TRUCKS. 
 
 And chambers blaze by night apace that darkled in high 
 
 noon — 
 All which the skeleton's blithe heir he prayeth may be 
 
 soon ; 
 All which must be long after he hath crept into his 
 
 grave,— 
 And mirthfuller than e'er the roofs ring out with festal 
 
 stave, 
 And gentle hands of gentle dames refit .... How augur 
 
 ye? 
 That minstrel bout or revel rout may gladden Sancerry? 
 
 They say the lady Leonie hath muttered, when she died, 
 ('T was in a convent far aloof, at latest hallow-tide,) 
 Than Jesus' name or holy-dame another name beside ; — 
 And words, alas, that savored scarce of penitence or 
 
 prayer, 
 Enclutching aye a crucifix enwroughten rich and rare — 
 Ay me, that would but overwhelm her soul with horrid 
 
 care : 
 With horrid care — God witness there ! it left her in her 
 
 shroud ! 
 But she the convent coffers hath bounteously endowed, 
 And masses for twain forfeit souls wail sweetly there and 
 
 loud ; 
 From week to week, from year to year, the choir. Oh ! 
 
 not alone, 
 Doth duly wake in their behoof, the plaintive organ tone, 
 Immingling with a piteous chaunt that thrilleth to the 
 
 bone : 
 
A LEGEND OP LHE LOIR. 199 
 
 Ah welladay ! there be that say such masses not avail — 
 And lightly hold their orisons, that sisterhood so pale ; 
 But so in chapel speedeth aye the chaunt, withouten fail, 
 And when 'tis done, I wist not one of all that therein be 
 With moistened eyes but saith and sighs, Alas for Leonie ! 
 
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