ble of a happiness which could not have descended on the degraded and debased worldling. "And now, dear Joanna," said Herriott, "let me whisper to you the amount of my yearly income." "What of it?" asked Joanna. 66 Only-all-is it enough for your comforts?-will you share it with me?" "I would have done so," said Joanna, "when it was half." They shared it, and were happy. AUTUMNAL TREES. BY T. J. OUSELEY. BEAUTIFUL trees! Clothed in your Autumn's dying robes―ye look More lovely far Than waning star; Or aught that's marked for death in Nature's book: The Autumn Death his victim takes by stealth : Yes, there is Death. Beautiful trees! Clothed in your Autumn's dying robes-ye look More lovely far Than waning star; Or aught that's mark'd for death in Nature's book: MEMS IN THE MEDITERRANEAN.1 BY LAUNCELOT LAMPREY. "Chi va lontan dalla sua patria, vede No. VI. Sciacca Subterranean granary-Tête-a-tête with a snake-Pots, potteries, and Agathocles-A sweepstakes-Sicilian hospitality-Monte Allegro-Rhymes by the roadside. GLADLY we arose from our weary couches at Sciacca, and sallied out for a saunter, to enjoy the rich sunshine of as magnificent a morning as ever brought refreshing to limbs exhausted in the search after slumber. However miserable the entrance to Sciacca may be on the land-side, the broad highway of the sea that runs up to her very walls on the other makes, in point of beauty, ample amends. A gentle land-breeze barely rippled the water inshore, but, freshening as it advanced, laid almost beam-under a lonely speronaro, an emblem of the stinted commerce of Sicily, that was reeling along probably on her way to Malta. The half-fortified houses around, the convent especially, with its battlements above and its tiny loopholes below, its barred windows, so constructed as to give a view of any applicant for admission, while they protected the individual making the examination, reminded us of the time, not very distant, when the Moorish xebec now and then dashed like a falcon on some unprotected part of the coast, and ere the inhabitants could muster for resistance, was again spreading her white wings, and bearing her prey, "beauty and booty," to the sultry shores beyond the blue horizon. Our conversation, after performing a kind of skipping fantasia over a variety of subjects, germane to the view before us, gradually subsided into a kind of mental still life, a reverie of deep enjoyment. Dr. Danks, looking out sternly from under his broadbrim, sat on the stump of a broken wall, his thoughts wandering back probably to the classic days of old, before the Saracens, with their Hey presto! had changed the Thermæ Selinuntiæ into Zacca. Igins sat in that delicious doze, a kind of misty atmosphere of pleasure, when we are but sufficiently awake, either in mind or body, to feel the enjoyment of the warm atmosphere around, imparting its individual pleasure to every square inch of the surface of our bodies-that sensation, which thou, reader, mayst always enjoy in perfection, reclining in the warm sunshine after an hour's swim. Dawson, who is of a more active temperament, was perched somewhat higher on the wall, and in the absent gaiety of his heart was whistling like a skylark, rising higher and higher, until he fairly ran out of his gamut somewhere about A in alt, and came back with a rebound to the level of earth again. Near where we sat, in the side of the declivity sloping down 1 Continued from vol. xxi. page 388. towards the sea, was a singular kind of granary cut in the dry volcanic soil. It was in the shape of a cone, with the opening at the apex, so that the grain, poured in at the top, lay, when the granary was full, in the form which its own gravity naturally caused it to take. Whether it be from some conservative quality in the soil, or merely from its dryness, the grain placed in these receptacles is said to remain uninjured, and to retain its vital, as well as its nutritive properties, for a very long period for a period indeed, according to the report of the Sciacca folks, too long for any thing but experience to believe. The doctor, after long peering into the huge empty chamber from the aperture above, in a manner which suggested to Dawson divers irreverent similes, such as a magpie peeping into a marrow-bone, or a jackdaw into a potato-pot, (which the doctor alleged was the most natural and Hibernian of the two,) declared his intention of descending and exploring the terra incognita below. Dawson suggested the idea of certain mephitic vapours, and putting his head over the edge, as a man of Lilliput might be supposed to inhale the fumes of a Brobdignag decanter, declared it smelt strongly Miltonish, and had a sharp flavour of sulphur. Igins hinted at snakes and centipedes, a branch of the great zoological family to which he knew the doctor entertained a frantic aversion; but the doctor was inflexible, said something about the pursuit of knowledge and the cause of science, and not even the dernier resort of an argumentum ad stomachum, by reminding him it was breakfast-time, though it caused him to hesitate, could shake his resolution. The mode in which the "passage perilous" was to be performed being now the only question, it was put to the vote, and carried with only one dissentient voice, that Igins, who was the junior of the party, should return to the Albergo for a rope. He resisted stoutly, and declared, (a proposition that had some reason in it,) if the doctor wanted a rope he ought to go for it himself. We immediately, however, constituted ourselves into a little republic, with the doctor for president, voted ourselves in the right, and Igins in the wrong, who, being thus overborne by the weight of public opinion, was obliged to yield. He shortly returned; bringing with him a good stout rope, and the assistance of Domenico. The rope, amid much laughing, was tied round the patient's fat chest, the parts most likely to be galled by its pressure being protected by the handkerchiefs of the party. Gently the doctor was let down over the edge of the aperture, his last words, as his ruddy face disappeared, being a request in a rather tremulous voice to hold fast, and let him down easy. This we proceeded to do, Domenico being placed hindmost, sitting on the ground with his heels against a stone to act as a stopper in case of the doctor's weight overcoming our resistance. Stop a minute," said Dawson; "hold hard, Domenico, till I see how the doctor likes it." We held on, and Dawson looked over the brim to where the doctor, swung in mid air, pendente lightly, as I took the liberty, lawyer-like, of suggesting. "Doctor dear," said Dawson, "I think you had better not go any further. You can explore the interior to quite as great advantage where you are. A little twist of the rope-so," (here he set the doctor gyrating at a very considerable rate,) would give you a coup d'œil of the whole, about a hundred and twenty times a minute.' "You vagabond!" we could hear the doctor bellowing from below in the midst of his evolutions; "you potato-eating, bog-trotting, whisky-drinking scoundrel, let me down, or I'll "What, doctor?" "Smother, my dear Dick," he added, coaxingly. "Do slack away, and let me get to terra firma as fast as you can. 'Pon my conscience, Dick, it's no joke. Do let me down. You wouldn't murder me, Dicky, would you?" “Well, I won't then, if you'll apologise." "Apologise !-for what?" Why, for the national reflections you threw out this minute against me and my country. Come, quick!" and he gave the doctor another premonitory half turn to expedite his peccavi. "I only used them in a parliamentary sense, my estimable young friend." "No gentleman can ask more-my honour is satisfied. Slack away." There We slowly lowered until the doctor reached the bottom; but scarcely did we feel ourselves relieved from his weight, when a shout of terror, vibrating from the shrillest treble to G down below, apprized us of some mischance having happened to our worthy friend. We instinctively rushed to the aperture, Domenico among the rest. was barely light enough to distinguish the doctor, who, turning up his face with an expression of extreme fright, screamed, "Take me out! Take me out!" and impatient of the little delay caused by our wonder and amazement, clutched in agony at the rope. The end slipped from Domenico's hands, and there was the doctor Pris, as Gil Blas would say, comme un rat dans une ratière. Dire was the confusion. We strained our eyes into the dimness below, but, dazzled by the glare around, we could only see the doctor bounding from one side to the other of his narrow prison with an agility that to us, who knew the weight he had to carry, seemed little short of miraculous, his evolutions being accompanied with that kind of bleating scream which is characteristic of extreme terror. Anxious were our inquiries as to what was the matter, but it was only from the doctor's incoherent exclamations of "Help! Take me out! Oh, Dick-serpents-murder-police-fire-thieves!" that we gathered the fact of there having been a previous inmate of the cave. Domenico was the only one who immediately set about rectifying matters. The moment he was made acquainted, through my hurried translation, with the real facts of the case, he sped away like a roe towards the albergo, while Dawson, Igins, and myself were engaged in endeavouring to tranquillise the doctor's excited feelings. His exclamations still continued, and gazing intently round the dim circumference of his prison, we were at last able to distinguish the object which had caused all this alarm. It was a long black snake, that had by some accident found its way into the granary, and Sept. 1838.-VOL. XXIII.—NO. LXXXIX. F of which it had remained probably sole monarch for a considerable period. The appearance of the doctor descending slowly into its territories awakened it from its coils, and reciprocating the doctor's alarm, it began whisking from side to side in an attempt to escape with the activity of an animated whipthong. The doctor's frantic endeavours to keep out of its way only increased its fear, and gave additional speed to its motions. The more active it became, the more vigorous were the doctor's exertions, and thus acting and re-acting upon one another, there is no knowing what possible climax of velocity they might have reached, had not the rope which was tied round the doctor's waist got at last fairly twisted round his ancles, and thus embraced, as he thought, in the knotted coils of his dread foe, he came heavily to the ground. For a second or two he struggled franticly, like a modern fat Laocoon, to free his limbs, before the shuddering application of his hands to what he supposed to be his loathsome living fetters made him aware of his error. He sat up, and, pushing himself back against that part of the circumference to which he found himself nearest, gazed round for the cause of his alarm. The snake itself seemed somewhat wearied by its exertions, and finding that the doctor's menacing activity had ceased, was slowly creeping round the base of the surrounding wall, occasionally stretching its long lithe neck upwards as far as possible, seeking for an egress. Now and then, in its "weary round," it approached unconsciously so near its fellow-captive as to disturb its equanimity, and threaten a recommencement of their mutual evolutions. Dawson, however, was earnest in his recommendations to the doctor to remain quiet. I assured him that Domenico would be back with a rope immediately, and Igins endeavoured to rally his courage by declaring the serpent to be an innoxious one. We gradually succeeded so far, that he gave no further sign of discomposure than a shrinking up of the off leg and a kind of cramped outstretching of his forefingers, accompanied by a low loathing "Ugh!" when the reptile came too near his resting-place. As the reptile, however, on a further acquaintance, showed no disposition to attack, he became more tranquil, and contented himself with an occasional anxious inquiry as to Domenico's return, or a grumbling reference to Daniel in the den of lions. At last his sense of the ludicrous becoming developed as his fears subsided, he ventured, taking advantage of his companion's absence at the other side, to turn up his eye towards us, sighing, as he saw me looking down with laughing compassion upon him, "Pleasant this, Lamprey?" "Delightful!" said Dawson. "It's a most entertaining spectacle. A fine specimen of an old gentleman engaged in the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties. You look like an Indian charmer, or a modern Esculapius, playing at bo-peep with his own serpent. There, he's coming, doctor!" "D-o-o-nt, Dick!" groaned the doctor. "Let me out of this, and then joke as you like; at present I don't relish it.” "Here's Domenico with his rope then-would you "O by all means." relish that?" |