صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

heart or soul till she is taught; and, sans vous offenser, if I rightly disentangle this very confused romance, beginning, where romances usually end, with a marriage, Lady Lovell hath been spared all indications likely to develope the latent tenderness of woman's nature."

"I had as lief labour to infuse tenderness into an iceberg or a haystack, as to a woman drilled, bongrè malgré, into wedlock by the manœuvres of a doting father," cried Lovell, waxing more and more irritable under their bantering.

66

Ay, if the dad were to share the education of the damsel," persisted Buckingham, provokingly; "but where the lady presents so fair an apology for the family fault

"So handsome an excuse," added Arran.

"I should then be of opinion"

"My Lord of Buckingham, so dainty that scarcely less than a royal shrine is supposed to merit his devotions," interrupted Lovell, "would, I imagine, be the last man in England to desire that the heirs of his name should have to call a Leicestershire grazier grandsire."

"Faith! so their right were established to call me father, I should scarcely look beyond," cried the incorrigible duke. "And I have only to entreat, my lord, that (my duchess waxing infirm) should you ever put away this peerless and injured fair one by legal repudiation, you will deign to give me timely notice, that I may be one of the first to inscribe myself on the list for a chance of becoming your lordship's successor."

"Book yourself then to-morrow, by all means," cried Lovell, already heated with the Spanish wines, which, towards the close of the breakfast, had been liberally imbibed by the party; " for it is my intention, my lord, to betake myself instanter to the Court of Arches for all the succours which law or church can yield to annul this incomplete marriage."

"What if I summon the lady to court, and use my best eloquence in persuading her to lend amicable aid towards the furtherance of the suit?" demanded the king, jocosely. ""Tis little to be doubted, Love, (if I may still honour thee with a soubriquet which thou so grievously beliest,) that the lady is, no less than the lord, desirous of release."

"Unless the caprice of woman's nature has operated a change in her ladyship's views since the old knight joined us in Paris, full of the wonders of her magnanimity in having redeemed him from the bondage of the Philistines, and sworn to live and die a virgin bride, there is no hope that even your majesty's powers of persuasion will work the miracle," replied his lordship.

"I would fain hazard the attempt," said the king, eyeing his favourite with half maudlin derision. "It were poetical justice that, in requital for your ridding me of the infanta of Parma, I released ye from the iron bondage of lawful wedlock."

"I must still presume to doubt the efficacy of your majesty's intervention. "The royal touch may work a cure for the evil," quoth Lovell; "but I find it nowhere set down that it can yield relief to the sore disease called matrimony."

"Meanwhile I challenge the trial,” cried the merry monarch; "who knows but it may discover to me a hitherto unsuspected prerogative of the crown ?"

"No difficulty in raising pretexts for citing the lady to appear at Westminster," exclaimed the Duke of Buckingham. "In these days of sequestration and committees of inquiry into sequestration of landtaxing and hearth-taxing,-it will go hard but my lord commissioners may make or find some tangle for disputation, excusing a subpoena."

“If I know her, she will not come,” cried Lord Lovell, tinkling the jewel of the order of the Golden Spur, appended to his cloak, in manifest vexation.

"A thousand pistoles that she will," cried Buckingham; "so mettlesome and Amazonian a beauty cannot but jump at a pretext for visiting the court. Nay, citation and subpoena apart, I double my stake that, per force of polite rhetoric, charged only with a gracious message from our liege the king, (whose messages, even to his obstreperous Commons, are ever gracious,) I will make my way into Lady Lovell's enchanted castle, and allure her, within six days' space, to Whitehall !"

"A bet-a bet!" cried Arran, as the king, by rising from table, gave the signal for breaking up the party.

"With all my soul!" cried Lovell, now dizzy with the unaccustomed strength of the sherris sack he had unwittingly swallowed. "I have your lordship's permission, then, to dare the adventure?" "Permission?—and my best wishes towards your success!" cried Lovell, with emphasis.

"Cousin of Buckingham, be not too bold!" cried the king, setting his wig and pourpoint in order, before he proceeded to the councilchamber.

[ocr errors]

"Be bold-be bold,' and yet again be bold,'" quoted Lord Arran, in Spenserian strain. Bring but to Hyde Park the lady of the black mare, and I promise you that all existing countesses and duchesses shall hide their diminished heads."

"Au revoir, then," said the king, kissing his finger tops à l'Italienne to his noisy companions; "a week hence we meet here to decide the wager.

[ocr errors]

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES.1

BY MRS. CRAWFORD.

I ONCE heard my father, when speaking of the various excellent qualities of the dog, relate the following circumstance, amongst others, in illustration of his remarks. Captain Lyon, another of his early companions in arms, was mortally wounded at the battle of Bunker's Hill. The captain had a little spaniel that had shared in all the dangers and fatigues of its master, till the morning of that fatal engagement on which poor Fidele was left behind. The dog, who had shown symptoms of extreme impatience, running about, and uttering a low but continuous cry, no sooner beheld Captain Lyon brought in by the soldiers, and laid upon his rude couch, than she sprang upon the body of her dying master, licked his face and hands again and again, and when life had fled, still lay upon the cold remains, till the attendants, coming to perform the last offices of humanity, drove her away. She then set up a melancholy howl, and creeping under the bed, was found there, on the following morning, stretched out perfectly dead.

The wife of Captain Lyon was a young lady of considerable personal attractions and most amiable manners, and had (like Lady Harriet Acland) followed her husband during the campaign. On the fatal day of his death she stood on a hill, and witnessed the whole of the dreadful conflict: but I have already said enough on these painful subjects. After the interment of her brave husband, she sailed for England, accompanied by Captain Lyon's faithful servant; and shortly after her arrival in this country, my mother, in going on a visit to Winchester, met accidentally with Mrs. Lyon, with whom she had been previously well acquainted, at an inn on the road, where they were both resting for the night. Here she related to my mother the different trials she had undergone since they last met, and the most painful and afflicting one of all, which had brought her back to her native land, clothed in the weeds she then wore. The various circumstances of Mrs. Lyon's narration, which were highly interesting in themselves, were doubly so to my dear mother, as my father was still in America, exposed to continual peril; and she sat up nearly the whole night, listening to her friend. Amongst other things, Mrs. Lyon related the anecdote of poor Fidele. My mother happened then to have with her a little dog, which my father had given to her a short time before he sailed, and which was of course a great favourite; and I have heard her say that the sight of this dog, when she heard Mrs. Lyon's simple and affecting tale, brought so forcibly before her mind the death of Captain Lyon, and the dangers to which my father was himself exposed, that her feelings at the time were almost insupportable.

The fidelity and attachment of the captain's valet, who accompanied (as I have before stated) his widow to England, deserve to be recorded

1 Continued from vol. xxii. p. 317.

by a better pen. Mrs. Lyon said that, at the time she sailed from America, her confinement was drawing near, but she hoped to be able to reach her native shore in time for the necessary preparations. The trying events, however, through which she had just passed, hastened the period, and she had not been many days at sea, when she was delivered of a fine little boy, the infant she then had with her. Without a friend of her own sex, or any attendants but the surgeon and the faithful man-servant, the situation of a delicate young female, at such a time, may be easily conceived. The poor soldier washed and dressed the infant, brought nourishment to the mother, and so fearful was he that his mistress's health might suffer from want of proper attention in airing her linen, that he always wrapt it round his own body to dry before he brought it to her. But unhappily the straitened circumstances of Mrs. Lyon would not allow of her properly rewarding such disinterested_attachment, or even of retaining him in her service. On landing in England they parted, the honest fellow, with tears in his eyes, begging her to take some of his dollars, for fear her own purse should be exhausted before she could reach her friends.

It was at this early period, while my father was in Canada, that he first began to turn his attention, when opportunity offered, to those pursuits of natural science for which he had so strong a predilection, and for which he was afterwards so much distinguished. He first commenced with shooting any of the more curious specimens of American birds that fell in his way, a few of which he stuffed and pre-< served with his own hands, but with no further intention, at the time, than that of presenting them to my dear mother, should he live to return to her, as memorials of his past adventures, and proofs that, when far away, his thoughts had often travelled back to her across the wide Atlantic. When my father did return to England, the interest which he had always felt from his boyhood in the works of nature, animate and inanimate, had been much excited and increased by the wildness and grandeur of the scenes he had traversed abroad, and the novelty of many of the feathered and four-footed tribes which peopled those romantic solitudes. Thus what had its beginning in the tenderness of affection was subsequently continued on a more extensive and systematic plan, and constituted much of the pleasure and recreation of his after life. He determined, however, to limit his researches and his specimens to British birds and British shells, thinking that every collection ought to be as complete as possible of its kind, and being desirous that his own should be the result of his practical studies, in the wide field of nature. It was thus that he gradually formed that very extensive and beautiful collection of birds for which he was so celebrated, and which, after his death, was disposed of to the trustees of the British Museum for a considerable sum, (I believe 3,000%,) and thus becoming national property, was (I am pleased to think) secured from future dispersion and injury. It was thus, too, that he gradually collected the materials for those works, the Ornithological Dictionary, and the Testacea Britannica, which are still quoted as standard authorities, in those departments of natural science to which they relate.

Professor Rennie, of King's College, who published a new edition

66

of the former in the year 1831, strongly recommends the study of nature to be commenced and carried on upon the same plan in her own unbounded domains. "In books," says the learned professor, we can only obtain knowledge at second-hand; and this, like a story circulated among village gossips, is more apt to gain in falsehood than in truth, as it passes from one to another. But, in field study, we go at once to the fountain-head, and obtain our facts pure, and unalloyed by the theories and opinions of previous observers." Having not long ago accidentally met with a review of this edition of the "Ornithological Dictionary," I hope I may not be charged with an unpardonable vanity, if I briefly quote the critic's opinion of its merits, pronounced upwards of fifteen years after my lamented father's death, since which many new discoveries must of course have been made. "In this department," observes the reviewer, "and also in British conchology, Colonel Montagu's works have the chance of standing long unrivalled."

My father likewise formed very extensive collections in botany and entomology, to both of which, in conjunction with the other branches of natural history, he had devoted considerable attention and research. Although he was so much occupied in these pursuits, he never adverted to them in conversation, unless the subject was introduced by others. In general society, his topics were as diversified as the company; and it was remarked by those who knew him well, and were themselves competent judges, that it was impossible to gather from his ordinary conversation, which was in a high degree both instructive and entertaining, what was his own particular pursuit, or on what subject he excelled the most. He wrote several essays and treatises, which he did not publish, and the manuscripts of some of which are now in my possession. In all my intercourse with the world I never met with a character so divested of all personal vanity; and as to the claims or pretensions of mere family pride, he held them in contempt. Indeed I have often heard him say, that if he could do as he pleased, the estates, (which were entailed,) instead of going to his eldest son, should be divided amongst all his children, or if any difference were made, that the largest portion should be given to the most deserving. My father's temper was remarkably sweet and serene, and I remember that when I was about seven or eight years of age, I occasionally put to it rather a severe test. If I observed that he had chanced to leave the door of his study or museum open, I crept in, like a mischievous little sprite, and would amuse myself by disarranging such of the loose specimens as lay within my reach, and tumbling about his manusricpts and papers. Now, it is well known that if anything will disturb the equanimity even of a philosopher, it is to interfere with his favourite pursuit. But I have heard my father merely exclaim to himself on returning to the room, "Ah! I see that little monkey has been here!" and he would then tell me, when he afterwards saw me, that if I ever played those naughty pranks again, he would not love me any more. Accidentally, however, I once or twice made some small amends for the mischief, by contributing a stray specimen to his cabinet of conchology. Having noticed the gratification which this cabinet appeared

« السابقةمتابعة »