"Gentlemen," said our host, "under the least vindictive of Princes we may talk as loudly as we please of liberty, which we could not do without fear and trembling when we were in the full enjoy-" ment of it. What are you pondering so gravely, Mr. Talcranagh ?"

"Woe !" replied he, "woe to the first family that ever dines yonder! Let them each take a bottle of eau de Cologne, against the explosion of mould from the grand evolution of the tablecloth. Now, concerning your Ministers, there are some things not entirely to my mind, neither: your Prince, I dare to say, knows nothing about them."

Pantomichino looked calmly, and replied, "Our Ministers are liberal, my young friend. They have indeed betrayed in succession all the sovrans who employed them, yet they let every man do his best or his worst and if you are robbed or insulted, you may insult or rob again. All parties enjoy the same plenitude of power."

ence of the Trojan war, on which chronicles are | He was in his sixty-ninth or seventieth year when founded."

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Sir," remarked Puntomichino, "the doubt is not of recent origin. Eberard Rudolph Roth attempted in 1674 to prove from three ancient coins that Troy was not taken. What, if the Iliad should be in great measure a translation? Many of the names might lead us to suspect it: such as Agamemnon and Sarpedon, which are oriental ones with dignities prefixed: Aga and Sha, which the Greeks and Romans, not possess ing the shiboleth, could pronounce no otherwise. Thus they wrote Sapor, the same name (with the title preceding it) as Porus. Aga seems indeed to have migrated into Greece among the first Pelasgi, and designates in many things what is excellent, as in àɣaðos, àɣaπηтоя, and several proper names, as Agamedes, Agasicles, Agatharcides; but Memnon is not hellenic."

Signor Cavaliere, I cannot keep up with you on your Turkish horse," cried aloud Taleranagh, "which is better for any business than the road. Upon plain ground nearer us, the acutest men may be much mistaken even after long experience. I assure you, I have found grossly inaccurate the first piece of information given me by a very cautious old traveller. He mentions the honesty of the Savoyards and the thievery of the Italians: now here have I been a fortnight, safe and sound, and have not lost a hair. I had not been twentyfour hours in Savoy when they had the meanness to steal my hatband. In future I shall be persuaded how illusory are sketches of national character."

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"That a traveller," said the Cavaliere, "may receive a wrong opinion of events and things, after even a deep study of them, and with as much knowledge of the world as happens to most men, I myself have a proof in my late uncle Fontebuoni. On that marriage, the best fruit of which was Peter Leopold, he was sent into France, to announce the event to the Court of Versailles: and after the revolution, when the Directory was established, he resolved to revisit the country of pleasure and politeness. He resided there one month only; long enough, he protested to me, for any man in his senses. 'I have heard the same thing, uncle,' said I, and that not only politeness is swept away, but that the women are become most indecent and wanton.' Nephew Puntomichino,' he replied, 'in regard to politeness what you have heard is indeed too true; but, with all my hatred and abhorrence of the present system, I am obliged in conscience to declare that the women are more correct in their morals than they were formerly. A heart is to be touched only by a diamond pin; a head is to be turned only by a peruke à la Lucrèce worth ten louis. A compliment did formerly: if one knelt it was uncivil not to return the condescension by something as like it as possible.' This he said at dinner, with his tooth-pick in his fingers, wandering and flitting here and there for its quarry, over the wold of his hard smooth gums.

6

he went a second time to Paris, and never found out that women are made continent by our ages more often and more effectually than by their own."

"Well, that never struck me," said Mr. Talcranagh. I was here startled by some musical accents from a sofa behind me. Puntomichino cried, "What are you about, Magnelli?" “I must go," replied he, "to the English Minister's. He is composing an opera: he has every note ready and only wants my assistance just to put them in order; which I shall have accomplished in three weeks, by going daily, and taking my dinner and supper with him."

On this he left the room. "These musicians," said Puntomichino, "are people of no ceremony. He entered, as usual, without a word, threw himself upon the sofa, sate half an hour, and the first we heard of him was the hum of a dozen notes. His observation on parting is very similar to one from a gentleman at my next-door, a worthy creature, and fond of chess. embarrassment, Signor Gozzi?' It is not em"Why so much barrassment,' answered he calmly, 'but reflection: I can move my man in a moment: I am only thinking where I may put him.' 'Ah! Signor Gozzi!' said a friend of mine who was present, "if Ministers of State would think about the same thing as long, they would dispose of places more wisely than they do in general.'"

"As for systems," said Mr. Talcranagh, "come, Signor Cavaliere, you have weighed them well. I have not patience to talk about them. Conclusions are drawn even from skin and bones; eyes, noses, teeth; they will soon come (saving your presence)."

"I know not what they will come to," was the timely reply of the Cavaliere; "but I can mention as wonderful a fact as the sunshine elicited by shilelahs. My father was a physiognomist, and when Lavater first published his work, 'Now,' cried he, rubbing the palms of his hands together, men begin to write again as they should do.' He insisted that a man's countenance, in all its changes, indicated, his virtues or vices, his capacities or defects. The teeth, among other parts, were infallible indexes; they were in the human visage what consonants are in the alphabet, the great guides, the plain simple narrators. Amid his apophthegms was, 'Never trust a man with a twisted tooth.' In fact, of all I had ever seen and of all I have ever seen since under that description, not one has proved worthy of trust. I inquired of my father with submission, whether age or accident might not alter the indications. By no means,' exclaimed he emphatically; if the indications are changed, the character is changed. God, before he removed the mark, removed the taint.' He observed that where the teeth turn inward, there is wariness, selfishness, avarice, inhumanity; where they turn outward, there is lasciviousness, prodigality, gaming, glut

"I was at school: my father," said the Cavaliere, "took his wife to Siena; proof enough that he resented the injury. In our country, as you know, every lady of quality has her cavaliere serviente. It serves to distinguish the superior order from the lower, and belongs to none, legitimately, excepting those who by wealth or services have obtained the liberty to stick their knee-buckles on their coats with a tag of scarlet. My father, as you may suppose, was indignant that a priest out of the gates, neither a canonico nor a maestro di casa, should beget his children, and aspire, as he would have done by degrees (for impudence is never retrogessive) to conduct his lady to her carriage. I have many books in which is the text written with his own hand, 'Never trust a man with a twisted tooth;' but I have searched in vain for any such sentence as, 'Trust a man with an untwisted one.' His enthusiasm seems to have cooled from the time that he found a scholar so capable of his place. Another of my father's maxims was, 'Open a man's mouth and look whether his under-jaw be uneven, with a curvature like a swine's, which curvature is necessarily followed by the teeth, and, discovering these, you will infallibly find him swinish in one way or other: you will find him, take my word for it, slothful, or gluttonous, or selfish. I have observed few such who were not slothful, and never one who was not both selfish and gluttonous.' 'In the latter case, father,' said I, ‘it will not be necessary to open his mouth for him. I may philosophise across the table, finding there all the instruments adapted to the process of investigation.'

tony. I then doubted these indications, and fingers rapidly through the hair over his foreimagined that a part of the latter was taken up head, exclaimed; "Why! how! what! do you against a priest, not indeed in high reputation for talk in this tone and manner? Did not you nor sobriety or continence, who had offended my your father flay the devil alive? Did not you father in a tender quarter. My father had erected spigot him nor singe him?" a stile for the convenience of his peasants; but the inscription was so prolix he was forced to engrave the conclusion of it upon the churchporch. The Latin, as the priest acknowledged, was classical; yet he requested it might be removed to our dovecote, which was farther off, and not by the side of any road. The exoteric teeth of the reverend gentleman by some unknown accident received a blow, which adjusted them between the extremes; and my father was asked in joke, whether he had a better opinion of his spiritual guide since his improvement in dentition. Indeed I have,' he answered gravely; 'for so sudden and so great a change, whether brought about by the organic mutations of the frame, or by an irresistible stress, with which certain sentiments or sensations may bear upon it, must be accompanied by new powers, greater or smaller, and by new qualities and propensities. Some internal struggle may in length of time have produced an effect not only on the fibres, but through them on the harder part of the extremities.' The favourable opinion of my father was carried to the priest; who lamented (he said) no dispensation of Providence by which he conciliated the better sentiments of so enlightened and charitable a man. He was soon a daily visiter at the house; entered into the studies of his Excellency, meditated on his observations, praised them highly, and by degrees had the courage to submit to so experienced a master a few remarks of his own. He pursued them farther and I should blush to relate, if all Florence did not know it, that my stepmother, a young lady of twenty-four, aided him too deeply in his investigations, and confirmed my father, although not exactly by working the problem as he would have recommended, that an internal struggle may produce an effect not only on the fibres, but through them on the harder part of the extremities. Then too became it public, that another husband had been the holy man's dentist, in consequence of too close an application to similar studies in his house."

:

At the end of which calm narration, up started Mr. Talcranagh, and several times pushing his

"It would not demonstrate to you,' added my father, 'how incorrigible is the nature of such men. Goffrido Piccoluomini is of the conformation I have described; and his parents, who themselves love good living, and who are liberal to excess, attempted to divert at a riper age the tendency they were unable to conquer in his childhood. Many means were resorted to, and failed. He had a cousin at Perugia, an heiress, rich, playful, beautiful, and accomplished. Several families were at variance, because the elder son of one had been preferred to the elder of another, this in the morn* Lest an inscription on a stile should surpass the reader's ing, that in the evening; and there were only two faith, here is one On a prince changing horses at a Villa, to things in which they agreed: first, that she was the intent, as it says expressly, that all men and nations an angel of Paradise; secondly, that she was very and ages should know it: "Honori Ferdinandi III. Aust: wrong in not fixing her choice. To quiet these qui ad veterem Etruriæ dominationem redux in hoc animosities, her father, whose health was declining, Capponianæ gentis prætorio xv. Kal. Octob. MDCCCXIV. tantisper substitit, dum rheda itinerariæ regalis substi- resolved to join his brother Guido, the father of tueretur, qua urbem principem inter communes plausus Goffrido, at the baths of Lucca. Goffrido was et gaudii lacrimas introiret; herisque ob faustitatem beckoning to a boy who carried a basket of trout eventûs dignitatemque sibi locoque ab hospite magno impertitam lætitiâ elatis pristinam benevolentiam comitate upon his head, when the carriage drove up to the alloquii gratique animi significatione declaravit; Marchio door. He stood before it, his eye this moment on Petrus Robertus Capponius ad memoriam facti postgenitis the trout, that moment on his cousin. The boy had retreated a step or two, when he caught him

omnibus tradendam."

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with his right hand by the coat, and opened with one, transferred it to his, and gave her two the left the coach-door. He had not seen Leopol- others. His mother said, laughing, Goffrido, I dina since she was a chubby ruddy child. There see no bruise; let me look. He blushed deeply; are blossoms in field and garden, which first are he lost his presence of mind; he could not support pink, and which whiten as they expand: Leopol- the glance of surprise which his change of countedina was like one of these. Her face alone had nance alone had excited in his cousin, nor the retained its plumpness: she was rather pale and idea of yielding to so light a temptation: he slender. At sight of Goffrido, who still held the left the room. The old people sat silent: Leoboy's skirt, she not merely smiled but laughed; poldina was afflicted, for she loved him. She too she would however have put her hand before her retired soon after; and, being alone, began to face, for she had been educated by a French lady revolve in her memory her whole acquaintance of high rank, when she recollected that she must with him; and this revolving of hers cast up give it to her cousin, who now held out his. Never many similar things against him. Finally, her had he felt the force of admiration to such a thoughts wandered as far as Perugia, and dwelt degree: his mouth was open: his teeth, white as for a moment, in the chain of ideas, on a little ivory, but unlucky in their curvature, looked like boy who, a few years before, had fought a battle a broken portcullis which would not come down. with a stouter for having taken a pear from her He actually loosed the fisher-boy's coat, and almost and bitten it before she could catch him. She had forgotten, in the midst of his compliment, to remembered that, when she would have taken desire he would go into the house; which he did, it back and eaten it, her champion cried, No, the first of the party. Signora Leopoldina, the thief has bitten it; I will bring you another instead! Poor Antonino! sighed she, what made me think of thee again?

"He had not been one of her lovers: how could he have been; she was scarcely eleven years old, he only fourteen; beside, he was the son of the

acknowledged son. The father had been reproved by his bishop, and threatened with suspension unless he denied it publicly. My Lord! answered the priest, my passions on this one occasion overcame my reason! The mother of the child, cruelly

under the double weight of shame and sorrow. Take my poor infant, cried she: teach him, O unhappy man, to love God.. as well as I thought I did! and she expired in my arms. I have educated the child to virtue; the best reparation of my fault: falsehood, my lord, would be none.

"I am incapable of giving such descriptions as would suit a novel or romance, and must therefore do injustice to the young people. Goffrido is really a fine young man, blooming in health, and addicted to no pleasures but those of the table, which he thinks the most solid of all, and takes especial care shall not be the least durable. These parish-priest, and what is more scandalous, the however by degrees he divided awhile with more visionary and exalted. He failed in no kind of attention to his fair cousin, and, when her appetite seemed to flag a little, looked out for whatever was choicest at table, presented it to her with grace and disinterestedness, and pressed it on her atten-treated by her family for my transgression, sank tion with recommendations the most anxious, and with solicitude the most pathetic. Spring had passed away, long as it lingers in this delightful region, when some moral reflections, I know not from which first, induced the fathers to devise a union: and never were two children more obedient. If my father wishes it, his will is mine, said Goffrido. Dear sir, you have instructed me in my duty: dispose of your Leopoldina, was the answer of his cousin. They agreed to remain together at the baths until the vintage, at which time they must be at Perugia, and the ceremony should be performed. It rarely happened now that either had a bad appetite; and if either had, the other did not observe it: for security had taken place of solicitude, and tenderness had made room for good-humour. The more delicate fruits are seldom conveyed in perfection up these mountains: they are generally bruised and broken. Goffrido, observing this, and corroborated in his observation by Leopoldina, rode manfully to Marlia, bought a basketful of the most lovely peaches, rolled up each separately in several fig-leaves, and returned for dinner. Surely some evil Genius watches the Anti-Vestal fire of our lowest concupiscence, and renders it inextinguishable. Gof- 666 frido presented the peaches to Leopoldina, and she took, whether by choice or accident, the finest. Her lover, seeing it in her plate, fixed his heart upon it, and saying, You have taken a bruised

"Leopoldina, on her return to Perugia, walked often on the field of battle. . a more important one not only to her but to us, if I may judge by the interest I seem to have excited, than that other in the vicinity where Hannibal vanquished the Romans. Antonino, she thought, avoided her she had sometimes seen him, and fancied he had seen her. At last she was certain he had; for while she was talking with an old woman, she perceived the old woman's eyes to wander from her toward the parsonage, and heard a window-blind close. She turned round. Another time will do, said the old woman. I must say he had patience enough: he has little to give me, but he brings it me himself when I can not walk, or when it! rains; and he comforts me as much by smiling and laughing as another could do by pray ing.

"I should like to look a little at Leopoldina's teeth,' added my father, 'for she is a most singular girl. Would you believe it? she is grown at last as decisive as any in the city: she has declined the visits of all her lovers, and has declared to her

1

parents that if she ever marries it shall be Antonino.""

This Conversation is reported in a manner differing from the rest. The meaner of us have spoken but seldom. A conversation with a young Irishman of good natural abilities, and among no race of men are those abilities more general, is like

a forest walk, in which, while you are delighted with the healthy fresh air and the green unbroken turf, you must stop at every twentieth step to extricate yourself from a briar. You acknowledge that you have been amused, but that you rest willingly, and that you would rather take a walk in another direction on the morrow.

ANDREW HOFER, COUNT METTERNICH, AND THE EMPEROR FRANCIS. Metternich. Who are you, man? I hear you have brought some intelligence from Tyrol. Be brief; I have little time for audiences, and am surprised that you should have required one, although you mountaineers are somewhat used to liberties. What, in few words, have you brought from your country? Hofer. This.

Hofer. Excellent sir, I do not ask so much. Metternich. A little money, if I could dispose of it, should not be wanting... but...

Metternich. No enigmas: at the court of Vienna we understand no other than plain language.

Hofer. Your Excellency commanded me to be brief: I was. This is the heron's feather which moved merrily over the Alps, when not an eagle's was stirring. If the slaughter of thirty thousand enemies is worth a recompense, I come at the instigation of those who followed me, to ask one. Metternich. I expected it: never was an audience asked of me, or of any other minister, which did not begin or end so. But, friend, many years of war have exhausted the treasury: England is penurious and we have innumerable young men, of high rank and great promise, disappointed in their hopes of preferment: beside, who ordered you to take up arms?

Hofer. Pardon me, sir, an interruption to the current of your kindness. I have grain and wine under a certain rock I could mention, with two hundred crowns, and my freehold may be valued at twelve hundred more, and I have children who are brave and healthy, who love their father and | fear God.

Metternich. You want something, and it is neither money nor promotion. I believe I am as acute as most people, yet here I confess my dullness.

Hofer. If I have devoted my little property, which is always dearer to the possessor than a great one; as every shrub and hillock is familiar to him, and the scene of some joviality, some tenderness, or some kindness; if I have hazarded and exposed my life in all places and seasons, for him whom we both are serving, grant me only a cell or a dungeon in this city. I have a country to defend, I have a family to educate, I have duties to teach and to perform; and your Excellency knows that the French police has traced me into the Austrian states and has demanded that I should be delivered up. Never shall this happen. I could not preserve the dominions of my master, but I will pre

Hofer. My oath of allegiance, the voice of my country, my hatred of the French, and my contempt of the Italians, by whom principally our towns and villages were garrisoned. Metternich. You would fain be another William serve his honour. Little did I ever dream of

Tell.

prisons to us Tyrolese they are horrible as hell, and like hell the abodes of crime only: but he whom I have sworn to obey must do nothing unworthy of his name and station. Rather would I waste away my strength in this dreary asylum; rather would I live among the unholy and unjust ; rather would I, if such be God's ordinance, lose the blossoming of my brave lads at home, which Metternich. I have found your name in the is worth a thousand times more, not only than all French gazettes, and you have just now men- | the future, but than all the past of life. There are tioned it, I think, but really I quite forget what it may be.

Hofer. As willingly as William Tell, now among the saints in heaven, would, if he were living, be | another Andrew Hofer. We are creatures too humble for jealousy; we have neither rank nor beauty, neither silk hosiery nor powdered cawl; we write no poems, challenge no club for attention, and solicit no clerk for preferment.

Hofer. Andrew Hofer.

Metternich. Such is the tenderness of the Emperor my master for those who have served him faithfully, that, although you are no longer his subject, yet, as you are a person of known bravery and of some repute in your county, if you will only change your name and enter into the service as an Austrian, I myself will venture to mention you as worthy of the earliest promotion, and, within three or four years at furthest, I entertain the best-founded hopes that you may be made a corporal.

those about them who will tell them of me, and there are places to take them into, on the cliffs and in the valleys, in many a copse and craggy lane, where my name, summer or winter, will sound in their ears right well.

Metternich. Mr. Hofer, I cannot enter into these discussions. It appears by your own acknowledgment that there will be little loss on either side. Your children will be taken care of, you say, whatever may happen, and a trifle at most can be the damage to your affairs. What then do you miss?

Hofer. The sight of my native hills, my homestead, my garden-plot of sweet herbs, the young