صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

Azeth looked long on the beautiful features of the Memnon,-so calm and still, so full of thoughtful repose,—the idealisation of all that the Egyptians had of good and noble in their characters;-their massiveness and strength,their dignified gravity, - their manly severity, - their utter absence of all frivolity, that curse of later days! He looked till an awe crept over him, cold and shuddering. He seemed to stand in the living presence of a supernatural being. Those large unturning eyes gazed into his very soul, and laid bare before himself and the whole world, the utter worthlessness of his heart. Yet their looks had the compassionate reproof of love mingled with the sternness of immaculate virtue. A feeling of entire sinfulness crushed the boy to the very dust. And he, the living, god-given, god-emanated Intelligence, trembled before the cold stone.

And still the eyes glare fixedly upon him, and the lips are parting to speak while the hand is uplifting in warning and censure. And he saw no more the mighty temples, giant shrines of a giant creed, nor the heaven-ward rising obelisks; nor the countless towers and columns raising their noble majesty in the spring-tide air; and he saw no more the thick-strewn lights of the sky,the moon with her bright robe,-the stars with their radiant hair ;--Earth and Heaven were alike shut out from his sight; and nothing was before him but that Titanic statue in its calm gloriousness, looking down with a pitying rebuke.

Mute lay the world. The noise of men and the voices of nature were alike hushed. Not a sound went forth to break this deep stillness, to dispel this holy rest. A sleep and a quiet, like that of death, was spread over all, and the still Shape of Repose brooded over the universe. Even the very airs were asleep among the trees, and dreaming with the flowers; and the grass blades did not stir, nor the buds pour out their scents.

One faint light of glory in the east,-quivering along the horizon like a thread of gold;-the stars clustered near, paling away, and the dusk-hued mist slowly heaping up a gorgeous throne of purple :-one faint line, widening and growing brighter-stealing over the mountain crests like a radiant messenger from the sky-touching the high branches of the trees-descending the temples' lofty pillars,-glowing on the obelisks,-circling the head of the statue with a crown of golden light,-beaming on the eye,-resting on the lip; and a voice of music, at first soft as the whispering of young buds in the noontide, then deepening into a wild, thrilling strain of spirit's melody, poured out from the statue. And it spread round and about its living waves, till it grew a sea, a very flood of harmony: a hymn of praise-the articulate thanksgiving of dumb nature,--the kindling into Life and Worship, by the Light of Love, the very stone of the ground.

The gathering, however, of the so-called "Memphite rats," from their unsoldier-like and indigent origin, went on successfully. The love of Psammetichus triumphed over pride, and he became resolved to act, but apart from Sethos. Other strange interludes to the wars of the Egyptians and the Assyrians are presented to us in the mysterious history of the beautiful Arab maiden Lysinoe, held in bondage by the wicked hierophant of the temple of Amunrà. Magic mirrors, acoustic instruments, poisons, and deadly weapons are brought into play. In vain the desolate Areia sought for her persecuted daughter, she was in toils and nets, three-fold wove, from which Azeth alone could deliver the fair girl. A Druid of the Western Isles is brought in with the mandarin to console the discomfited hierophant; but nought could save the miserable priest and his unfortunate maiden from punishment and an untimely end. With the defeat of the Assyrians, and the erection of the commemorative statue of Sethos' holding a rat in his hand, in return for the insulting epithet applied by Sennacherib, there is a sunset of bright and happy life to this

poetic story, and Azeth, like his wicked persecutor, when the form of his temptation had passed away, and the shape of his sin had fled, returned pure, beloved, repentant, and forgiven, to his star; while "loud songs and rejoicings filled the wide sky, and sank like a stream of life, through the whole soul of the universe.'

"

The materials for such a work as we have described have not been long in existence before they have been seized upon by the genius of the day. And they could not have been used to more truthfully artistic, and, at the same time, to more poetical and philosophical purposes than by Miss Lynn in "Azeth, the Egyptian."

STRAWBERRY HILL.*

"GOING! going! gentlemen and ladies, for the last time of offering this lot. For the last time! No advance upon this bidding? Goinggoing-gone!"

Such was the speech which greeted the ears of the author of this agreeable tale, when, in the month of May, 1842, he made one of an eager curious crowd, whose only introduction to a once-envied distinction—an exploration of one of the most admired of modern structures-appeared in the shape of an auctioneer's catalogue. Among the treasures collected from every quarter in Europe, it was his good fortune to discover, on that memorable occasion, the portrait of a lady, by the side of whose attractions the beauties of the courts of England, France, and Italy, smiled in vain. This portrait, which was endorsed in a small Italian hand, Rome, 1740, Arabella Falkland, to Horace Walpole, revealed, according to the same ingenious historian, the solution of the mystery of the abrupt abandonment of Horace Walpole's political career, his seclusion at Strawberry Hill, and of the bitterness of spirit which subsequently so prominently pervaded his thoughts and feelings.

The one pure and perfect chrysolite of this story was the daughter of Viscount Falkland, a nobleman of ancient family and of the Catholic faith, and an expatriated Jacobite, known to be in the service of the Pretender. The last of an illustrious line, Arabella Falkland seemed to inherit, with all the beauty for which so many of her female ancestors had been famous-as witness the immortal labours of Holbein, Vandyke, Lely, and Kneller-all the worth and talent which had distinguished the most famous of those churchmen, generals, and statesmen whose effigies, from the same eminent hands, also assisted in adorning the great picturegallery in their abandoned home.

Horace Walpole made the acquaintance of the fair Jacobite at Rome; and although mutual admiration soon ripened into the most fervent attachment, still each was tacitly aware that there was an impassable gulf between them. They parted. Called to active employment and political struggles, Horace kept his attachment a profound secret, even from his nearest friends, and strove to consider it only as a brilliant dream, which had vanished without leaving the slightest tangible proof of its visitation. Arabella Falkland also regarded it as a dream-but it was a dream from which she had been disturbed without having been thoroughly awakened.

* Strawberry Hill; an Historical Novel. By the Author of "Shakespeare and his Friends," "Maids of Honour," &c. &c.

Her poetical imagination united with a peculiarly sensitive organisation, created in that ideal picture-gallery-her youthful mind-a vision, though a very remote one, of bringing over the son of the long-tried minister, to befriend him whom she considered to be his legitimate sovereign. She even ventured in her enthusiasm of loyalty and religion to touch upon so delicate a theme before Horace left the classic ruins of her native city; but like herself Horace Walpole was too much devoted to his parent, to entertain such a thought for a moment, and at his departure, the faint star that twinkled in her future-twinkled more faintly than ever.

Horace Walpole had, on his return from his continental tour, become the representative in parliament of a remote Cornish borough; he had driven a popular candidate from the field by rhapsodising to Cornish miners on Spartan liberties in scraps of mellifluous Greek. The companions of the minister's son were the wits of the day, Hanbury Williams, the choice but rakish spirit, the poet Gray, George Selwyn-" a drowsy phoenix slumbering on the ashes of his own jokes," and his soldiercousin Conway, a young captain who possessed in an eminent degree the peculiarity of always looking on the bright side of things.

The society he moved in beyond this was such as the court of George II. presented, where the precedent had been before set of intense domestic hatreds, and homely yet various attachments; and among the number of Frederick Prince of Wales' favourites was the Lady Archibald Hamilton, whose connexion brought no good for the young Whig member. The prince, under the influence of her fascinations, chose to make her ladyship the depository of all his political secrets. And accordingly we are introduced at her house to full-length portraits of all the leaders of the opposition. Sir William Wyndham, Mr. Pulteney, Viscount Bolingbroke, and last, but not least, Bubb Doddington, with whom the prince was not only in the habit of being extremely confidential and familiar, but also of victimising at cards.

While Captain Conway was fighting at Dettingen, and Horace was scraping acquaintance with his father by communications in regard to the movements of this opposition, Lady Hamilton had removed her court into the vicinity of that of Beau Nash, at Bath, and Arabella Falkland had come over on a visit to a most fashionable and still more capricious aunt, the Dowager Lady Furbelow. Horace Walpole, with all his taste and abilities, was not a saint, and having permitted to himself an assignation with the beauty of the day, he by mischance got into the wrong house, and became the involuntary witness of a meeting of Jacobite conspirators, among whom was no less a person than the fair Arabella herself, at that time hostile to Horace from his unworthy connexion with Lady Hamilton, and whose horror and shame at discovering an imaginary spy in her former high-principled lover, can be imagined.

Any explanation at the time was rendered impossible by the hasty retreat of the discomfited conspirators from Bath, nor were the lovers brought nearer to reconciliation by meeting accidentally in a well told scene-a soirée given by Lady Furbelow, to commemorate the publication of the "Castle of Otranto," in which the younger son first met with a father's kindness, from a perplexed minister; for at this time the opposition was daily gaining in strength, and the all-formidable Sir Robert losing ground. He had quarrelled personally with his tried friend and coadjutor, Lord Townsend. The Duke of Newcastle was holding levees,

an account of which is most earnestly recommended to the lovers of empty pride and shallow pomp. Lord Bolingbroke had returned from his hermitage at Fontainebleau to the classic fields of Battersea, and every thing portended what soon took place, the downfall of the minister of twenty years, who retired as Earl of Orford, upon a pension of 4000l. a year.

The Jacobites were, in the meantime, thrown in the prosecution of their designs into strange company and equally strange situations. At one time we have Arabella rescued from a band of smugglers in a cave of the Kentish coast, by the bravery of the hero of Dettingen, Conway; at another it is Horace Walpole himself, and his curious and amusing valet, Fibbs, saving the fair Jacobite from the clutches of Captain Kite, the highwayman, a gallant act, which is followed by the extremely ungallant one, of a political squabble with his love, in the parlour of a wayside inn, where the ex-minister's son first learnt from the irate Arabella that the Pretender has actually effected his descent in Scotland.

The result of the story, after much bustling progress, is, that Lord Falkland and his daughter, after the retreat from Derby, are taken prisoners at Carlisle, but not till after the fair enthusiast has made a last attempt to win over her lover to the cause of the Stuarts, at a moment when that cause appeared most prosperous. Transferred to the Tower, and condemned by his peers to forfeit his head for treason to the Hanoverian dynasty, Lord Falkland is ultimately saved by Horace, assisted by the powerful influence of the Earl of Orford, granted, however, upon only one condition, that he should think no more of the fair follower of the Stuarts; and here we have the history of his subsequent retirement from public life, and the conversion of the theoretical young statesman into a practical castle-builder.

There are steps in this briefly-announced progress that are full of dramatic interest. It would be doing great injustice to the author of Strawberry Hill," not to say that he has made the most of his subject. Indeed, for light and racy sketches of society in the last century, for accurate and vivid characteristics of the time, and for sparkling dialogue, "Strawberry Hill" as much surpasses many of its contemporaries as the modern romance excels the old Gothic story, which conferred in its day so much reputation on the mansion of Strawberry Hill.

THE RECOVERY OF H. M. S. GORGON.*

THE narrative of the difficulties surmounted by perseverance and ingenuity in rescuing the fine steam-frigate Gorgon, and of the labours carried on during a period of six months before they were attended with success, rises in interest with the progress of the details, to a point far beyond what would have been anticipated from such a subject. ́ Such a narrative not only contains a noble example to others of what courage and skill can be made to effect under the most disadvantageous circumstances, but it also exhibits, in the most favourable point of view, those qualities of the British sailor in which we may justly take a national pride.

A Narrative of the Recovery of H. M. S. Gorgon (Charles Hotham, Esq., Captain), stranded in the Bay of Monte Video, May 10th, 1844. By Astley Cooper Key, Commander, R.N. London: Smith, Elder, and Co.

THE

NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE

AND

HUMORIST.

CONTENTS FOR MARCH.

MARGARET GRAHAM. BY G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ., AUTHOR OF “DARNLEY," "RICHELIEU," &c.

[ocr errors]

РАСВ

[ocr errors]

. 285

[ocr errors]
[merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

THE NORWEGIAN LOVERS. BY CHARLES HOOTON, ESQ.
A GRAYBEARD'S GOSSIP ABOUT HIS LITERARY ACQUAINTANCE
LIFE AFTER DEATH. BY ANdrew Winter, ESQ.

A CHAPTER ON ANTIPATHIES.

[ocr errors]

BY A MAN ABOUT TOWN

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

"I WEEP NOT, DEAR MOTHER.” AN IRISH BALLAD. BY J. E. CARPENTER, Esq. .

[ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors]

LIFE AND REMINISCENCES OF THOMAS CAMPBELL.
REDDING, ESQ.

THE MALARIA. BY CYRUS REDDING, ESQ.

SECRET HISTORY OF THE COURT, MINISTRY, AND TIMES OF

GEORGE IV. BY AN OLD DIPLOMATIST.

PERU

ADRIEN ROUX; OR, THE ADVENTURES of a COURIER.

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small]
[merged small][ocr errors]

MET HER IN THE PRIMROSE TIME. BY J. E. CARPENTER, ESQ. 385 MODERN PORTUGAL. BY W. H. G. KINGSTON, ESQ. SKETCHES OF CHARLES HOOTON, Esq., and thE REV. J. T. HEWLETT, A.M. THE OPERA

[ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]
[ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors]

LITERATURE:-Truth and Falsehood. By Elizabeth Thornton.-
Hampden and Cromwell.-Temptation and Atonement. By
Mrs. Gore.-From Oxford to Rome.-The Poacher's Wife.
By Charlton Carew.-Miscellaneous Notices

. 405 to 410

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

Mr. AINSWORTH begs it to be distinctly understood that no Contributions what、 ever sent him, either for the NEW MONTHLY or AINSWORTH'S MAGAZINES will be returned. All articles are sent at the risk of the writers, who should invariably keep copies.

« السابقةمتابعة »