Did our cousin of France take our cause into dedicated and devoted, and I declared to the consideration? apostles my intention. Beside, I have a bird-ofMiguel. He advised me by all means to swear to paradise for his wife, stuffed with nutmegs, musk, the Constitution. Mother. He advise it! an old battered bestial rake! He advise it! What! the most Christian king! O the weak powder-puff of throne and altar! Miguel. I asked his majesty whether in his wisdom he thought I might safely overturn it. He replied that, whatever any king chose to do, it was the duty and determination of the Holy Alliance to provide that he should do it safely. "As for safety then," said he, "be entirely at your ease." I asked him whether he saw any impropriety in it. He answered that he was not sufficiently versed in the finer and higher parts of divinity to solve the question; and that I had universities and confessors in Portugal as clearsighted as any in France. He doubted not they would enlighten me, and pray for me, and bring their flocks about me to defend me, and was confident I had as little to fear in spirituals as in temporals. "In case of a slight commotion," said his majesty with his usual benignity, "my troops are near at hand, and they have had some practice in composing such slight and transient differences. It is time," added he, "that the Bourbons and their connexions should be united in amity and policy, and that Heresy should repose no longer on one single lily." Mother. Did you know what he meant? Miguel. The duchess of Angoulême told me. Mother. Chaves is in the mountains: you must ride over and embrace him, or let him kiss your hand at least. Pedro has been playing the fool in Brazil, and wishes to play it here. When he was a child I could, with a whip or a whistle, make him hear reason; though, to confess the truth, so little of a prince is he by nature, he had not much more understanding at three years of age than he has at present. You, my dear Miguel, have been constantly the same: a rare quality! Such men are fit to rule the world, and, as far as I can see behind and before me, always have ruled it and always will. Now we will leave reflections for business. Tell me, what said that generous open-hearted man, Prince Metternich? Stay; I hope you did not sit down with him at cards. He plays well; he wins many gold pieces in the year. Tell me, tell me; for if you have lost anything to him, any great matter, I will not send him the seven parrots in honour of the seven churches, nor the twelve monkeys (great and small) in honour of the holy apostles. Miguel. Dear mother! he does not want parrots nor monkeys, and cares as little for the apostles as an Algerine or a Dutchman. I played with him, and, although he plays remarkably well, I won fifty louis of him. Mother. Really! well; having made the vow, I must send the monkeys and parrots; they are and camphor, and with two rubies for the eyes. Listen! one is a garnet. Do you happen to have the fifty louis about you, son Miguel? Miguel. Dear mother! I reserve them as an offering to the archangel. He would be very angry to be treated worse than a dozen poor apostles, some of them not gentlemen by birth. Mother. The archangel is high-minded: he cares little for money. Miguel. A fine candelabrum would gratify him. Mother. There is no room for another in his church. Miguel. A new hilt to his sword... Mother. Beware, child! People like best the sword they are longest used to handle: his hath a gloriously rich hilt to it, and there are many sapphires in it, rough and prominent, that make the grasp steady. He would not cut so well with another for some time. Miguel. Mother! I must keep them; seriously I must, for another momentous service. Mother. Another momentous service! is there any such beside the faith? Miguel. When I was in England I was forced to ride out every day. Mother. Have not you paid for your horse-hire? Miguel. Horses were lent me. Mother. How then? Miguel. I have cracked my pantaloon, riding with the Duque do Duero and Conde Dudeli. Mother. A very christian-like title is the Duque do Duero; is it one of ours, or Castilian? Miguel. Do not you know the title? Mother. I thought it had been extinct. Miguel. Sweet mother! the Duque do Duero is an Englishman, the great captain that killed Don Napoleon da Buenaparte. Mother. With his own hand? Miguel. He unhorsed him, and his charger trampled the giant to death. I inquired, and heard it from those who saw it. Mother. If he had killed the misbeliever with his own hand, I should have thought more highly of him: but that is no great matter which a horse can do best. And who is the other, the Conde Dudeli, who did such signal mischief to your fork? Miguel. I lived in his house, he being the first minister of state. Mother. Did he treat you handsomely, my child? Miguel. Handsomely, for a heretic. He gave me plenty of fish and eggs both Fridays and Saturdays. People say he has in his service one of the best cooks in England: yet you will laugh when you hear how he cooked things. The eggs in England are not unlike ours. They have escaped the effects of what is miscalled the Reformation. Fish, I just now told you, they have in that country; but they are somewhat deficient in the nobler species; no bonita, no dolphin; and porpoises and seals must be excessively dear, and the fishermen very inexpert in catching them, not a single slice having ever been offered to me at the best covered and most delicate table. They seem really to prefer the coarser kinds. The mayor of London sent, as a present to Conde Dudeli, a prodigious fish he called sturgeon; a sort of dog-fish, but of the mastiff breed, and uncontrollable by cookery. If veal could be twisted into the consistency of a cable, it would bear a distant resemblance to veal. My teeth are unexceptionable; but they carried off perforce a coil of it between every two. Fishes of this kind are said to be plentiful in Russia, and come pickled into England. Perhaps much of the deal timber, which bears a heavy duty in the port of London, is smuggled under the name of sturgeon. Mother. Never hint it to them: let the knaves be cheated in the customs. Poor Miguel! so they reduced thee to eat chips, and shavings, and splinters, and blocks! What! nothing more delicate? Miguel. I once was served with what I flattered myself were surely snails; but I found they were only oysters. Another time, when I fancied I had a fine cuttle-fish before me, they put me off with a sole. Mother. Heretics! heretics! poor blind creatures! little better than Moors, Jews, and Freemasons! Miguel. I have tasted in England eight or nine different kinds of soup; and vainly have I sounded the most promising of them for a single morsel of fat bacon or fresh pork. Mother. Have they no chestnuts and acorns then? or are all the pigs kept to clean the streets? Miguel. I do not know: but neither fat bacon nor lean ever enters their soup; nor does pork, nor sausage, nor heart, nor liver, nor cavear, nor vetch, nor gourd, nor oil, nor cheese. Mother. Ha ha! I see how it is. They must trade with some nations where cheese, and oil, and cavear, and gourd, and vetch, are always in great demand; and these they export for lucre. And perhaps their animals have no heart or liver within them. But sausage, and pork, and bacon Son Miguel! don't you smell something there? The English are Jews in disguise: I often thought as much. They won't have Virgin; they won't have Child; they won't have bacon. Miguel. I did not say quite that. They eat swine-flesh bacon has been brought to me at table: I have seen them eat it, though strangely. Mother. With what forms and ceremonies ? Miguel. Little of those; for in the mere act of eating, they really are adepts, and very explicit. Mother. How then? how then? I crack to hear. Miguel. Boiled, actually boiled! hot, smoking hot! and served up whole! Mother. Smoking a little, but put into ice, no doubt, to render it eatable, with the radishes, figs, shalots, chives, bean-pods, green almond-shells, liquorice, and stewed prunes. Miguel. I never saw those with it, all the while I was in England; but I once observed it eaten with half-grown peas: and another time a minister of state was so preoccupied by stress of business, that he forgot there was chicken on his plate, and (as I live!) ate both together. Mother. And they gave you neither stewed prunes nor figs with it! My son, they slighted you out of hatred to me, who always had an eye upon them which they never could bear. Ham before a queen's son in this naked fashion! And forsooth they talk about alliance! Miguel. They often slighted me in the midst of magnificence, and apparently of hospitality. On my birthday, on the festival of our blessed saint and archangel Don Miguel, out of pretence of doing me honour a nobleman of high distinetion invited his sons from a public school to dine with him in London. They did not indeed dine with him: and you will presently guess the reason. Their dinner was served up to them in another room and you must be astonished when I declare to you that the principal dish contained a goose. Mother. A what? Miguel. A goose; and roasted. I do protest to you it smelt like a gang of reapers. Mother. I was never in Galicia; I never saw any reapers. Miguel. I have passed through them, crossing the roads in this our Portugal. Mother. Ay, ay; we must have reapers from somewhere: it escaped me. How did the children chew and swallow such carrion? Plenty of raisins, I hope. Miguel. Not a raisin ! Mother. Why! even a tender and delicate young fox-cub would require a sprinkling of raisins to subdue its domineering lusciousness. Geese are more unctuous than he. Foxes, I suspect, are no dainties when they have left mother's milk for field-mice, and moles, and poultry: but there is never a time when geese have this advantage. Birds, I think I have heard, are unaccustomed to suckle. Miguel. On recollection, the children ate applesauce with their goose. Mother. Ha, now! that really does come a step nearer Christianity. Miguel. Once they placed the hinder quarter of a prodigious sheep directly opposite, with the least becoming part of its tail toward me. Mother. Sheep! tail toward an Infante of Portugal! son of an Infanta of Spain. What, in the name of holy Mary! could a sheep or a tail do there? Miguel. You will hardly believe me, when I tell you that the English, although they do not eat horse-flesh, yet eat mutton. Mother. Of course the very lowest only. Miguel. Not only the lowest, but marquises and bishops. Mother. In time of scarcity. Miguel. Latterly all times have been times of scarcity in that over-taxed and over-peopled country. These are the very words of one among the wisest in it; who told me, however, that even the rich in better times would eat mutton. Mother. Privately, I presume. too with their ears on; whole hares! I do believe, though I would not assert it, they had even their teeth in their heads. Certainly they had been well-fed by the cook; their interiors were quite full, and I could smell the herbs they had eaten. They were polished on the outside like military Miguel. By degrees they have been brought to boots, and had neither honey nor treacle, neither eat it openly, and even at great dinners. Mother. Lord help 'em! anise nor cinnamon, neither chocolate nor canary, neither pomegranate nor citron, neither elicampane nor angelica, neither chestnuts nor pistacchios, nor even fennel and pine-seeds about 'em. Mother. Do the English take their sustenance by means of the mouth? Miguel. Entirely, as I imagine; I never saw the contrary. Mother. Unfortunate benighted souls! So little notion have they of Christianity, they can Miguel. They have no volcanoes in the capital, not even cook! nor nearer than the county of Iceland. Mother. You mean Ireland, son Miguel: I know they have a volcano there: priests report it. Miguel. The rich families keep prodigious stores of carbon under-ground, and sell it to the poorer in hard seasons. Although, in our acceptation of the word, they are not cannibals, nor, strictly speaking, eat raw flesh, yet they only half-roast it and the government of France came to an understanding with that of England, to give me half-roasted meat, and to serve it up so hot that it burned my mouth. Even the plates and dishes were hot. I think on recollection they once put the same slight upon me at Vienna. That indeed one could endure one has only to wait a few minutes, and in cold weather the food would grow lukewarm and tractable. They do not cut it in pieces, nor separate it in any manner, before they begin to eat; but set about it voraciously, and as fast as a morsel is detached it is consumed. They have servants enough; they might surely have them taught to divide their meat for them. Already they do indeed cut slices from it at the side-board and hand them round. From the mutton I was mentioning I actually saw the blood follow the knife. Mother. How! was it killed in the dining-room? Miguel. No, in carving I saw it, and expected to hear a bleating. Another day there was a peacock served up at the second course, which even had the feathers on its head unsinged, and of as fine a purple as when it strutted on the grass. Involuntarily did I cover my waistcoat and cravat with my napkin and hold it up to my eyes; I feared so the sudden expansion of the tail. Mother. What! had it the tail on too? Miguel. Not within sight: I thought it might be concealed in the body: God knows what they did with it, unless they turned it into sauce. The following Thursday there was a young pig, whole, and almost alive. The dirty creatures did not disembowel it, and out came the entrails, with all it had eaten, and it looked in my face as if it squealed to me for protection. There were hares Miguel. You know they have not any oil, the produce of their county. Mother. No? Mother. Are you sure? Miguel. Near London and Windsor I am ready to swear there is not one. Mother. Not even in the king's park? God then has cursed the land. Miguel. Perhaps toward Scotland there may be, and upon the hills that have the benefit of the sea-breezes. Mother. No, child! no, no, no! I see how it is; I see it clearly. The Lord in his judgment and mercy has cursed the land of the Philistines. Miguel. And, what is more, he takes away the flavour from all the oil that is imported, excepting the fish-oil, which he leaves them for encouragement to turn catholics, it always reminding them of the olive. As for theirs, I declare you could as easily taste fresh butter. They tell us it comes from Provence, a city in France: no wonder then, in the hands of Jacobins, it comes over mixed with water. They have indeed fish-oil in plenty. Mother. But fish-oil, son Miguel, is good neither for body nor soul. Is not Count Dudeli rich enough to allow his wine and oil a seasonable time to mature in? Miguel. The English use more wine than oil. Mother. More wine than oil? Do they light the lamps in the churches with wine? Miguel. I am informed they light none in those places. Mother. They are bad enough; but don't believe that, son Miguel! God would take daylight from them for ever if they dared to put out his lamps. But son Miguel, you seem no thinner than usual: you must have found something you could eat contentedly, and perhaps these dishes were invented for no other purpose than to excite your wonder: a sort of wit, ay? Miguel. Lord Dudeli is a very witty man, and has many clever things of his own, ready both fish together, to say nothing of the butter. I took it ill, but sate silent. To appease my just resentment, the rest of the company did actually eat both at once, and some of them so heartily, it was evident they wished me to believe it is the custom of the country. for friends and strangers, and moreover is much | valet had already brought, he bowed with the enriched by succeeding to Don Jorge da Cannin, gravest face in the world, and offered me the two in whose office he found catalogues and strings of 'em, hanging on every peg for every occasion. He showed me the labels to several of these, in his Right Honourable predecessor's own hand; which labels I mistook for doctors' prescriptions, although the writing was clear and steady. I took down the words; here they are in my new pocket-book. "For gout for gravel for hernia: for asthma: for gun-shot wounds: for sabre-cuts: for ophthalmia.” I observed that a broad-nibbed pen had been drawn over the words, "for gout," and apparently with violence that in very fine characters there was written under hernia, "employed in the house of commons with great success:" under sabre-cuts and ophthalmia, "a division in the house upon it.. Egypt. . Walcheren . . thought too like Will Wyndham's 'killed off."" Mother. Fit punishment! though imposed by themselves. Strange uncivilised people! It may be however that this is their way of fasting: for they have some notions of religion, though erroneous and foolish. Miguel. Mother, nothing can escape your sagacity and penetration: you are perfectly right. And now I remember another fast of theirs, kept in perverseness on Monday. Count Dudeli had partridges at table; and I observed that he took a piece of bread poultice, brought hot to him from a hospital, and ate it with the breast of the bird. The others thought to get offices under him by doing the same; and, although several did it, there was not one that was forced to leave the company; such strong stomachs have the English, however unfortified by saffron and asafoetida. I could say more upon this subject that would stagger the faith of a capuchin: but the capuchin would be glad to hear it. Mother. So should I then. Miguel. The English have a university at a city they call Oxford; city they call it, not knowing that cities must have walls, and customhouse officers at the gates. There is one college in that university, where a most singular and most abominable kind of penance is inflicted; and not only the members of that, but several in others, are condemned to eat, on certain days of the year, or perhaps on one day only (let us hope it!), what they call the New-college pudding. Mother! I dare not tell you of what material it is composed. They would alter the form at least, if they had any decency. I should be inaccurate if I called it inhuman: but how brandy or cinna mon or pimento, or drug of any kind, can enable men to swallow one morsel, is beyond my comprehension. Mother. Gibberish! gibberish! most wit is. Miguel. His friends assured me that his wit upon these subjects was irresistible, and will immortalise him. But immortality, my confessor told me, is become so creaky and crazy, that he would not be tempted to buy an annuity upon it at three years' purchase. He demonstrated that true immortality in this world can only be given by the pope, and only when two centuries have elapsed after the burial, and when all but His Holiness have forgotten the deeds and existence of the defunct about to be beatified. One gentleman who was present, a good catholic too, begged to differ from him. He said he certainly had seen the foliage of plants between the leaves of books, and that they must have been there a hundred years; on which principle the great men in England contrive to get their names inserted in large well-shutting volumes, called biographical; and the most malignant detractor can not lug them out again. Beside, in the Treasury and Exchequer there are others peculiarly belonging to those offices, open for the Insurance of this said immortality, and whoever is minister receives a ticket gratis: that is, the people pay for it. Lord Dudeli gave me one of these jests daily, five-and-twenty minutes after dinner; and once, Mother. The English have strange notions in with the assistance of his cook, a sharp and sati- regard to what appeases the wrath of God. As rical one at the dinner itself, under a dish-cover. for the court, I have always hated it. What baseMother. Ha! cooks are great helps to greatness and avarice! not to make amends for the men in wit and pleasantry. What was it he said when he came in? Miguel. He did not enter. It was Friday, and there were several kinds of fish at table; and knowing that I could eat little else, and observing that I had been helped to a slice of turbot, and had requested a trifle of asafoetida and a few lumps of sugar and a pinch of saffron and a radish and a dandelion, a servant brought me a lobster, well enough cut into pieces, but swimming, or bemired rather, in a semiliquid paste of flour and butter: and though he saw I had turbot before me, and had heard me call for oil and vinegar and grated goat-cheese, which a civiler devastation of your raiment, occasioned by the backwardness of the people in the science of saddlery. Was there no pad, velvet or rabbit-skin? Miguel. None, upon my life! Mother. Was it then from a brass-nail that had lost its head, or from a corner of the board that had broken out behind? Miguel. Neither: they have no nails whatsoever, nor boards of a hand's breadth, in their saddles. Mother. Not even the nobles? Mother. The late war then has brought them down where they should be. So pressed for tim ber and stores, we have nothing to fear from 'em. Since we are resolved on a rupture, I see no better way than through your pantaloon. We will remonstrate here is a fine opening; and much may come from it if properly handled. Should we engage in war, we must all contribute. The fifty pieces. . . Metternich would not lose fifty pieces for nothing. Miguel. He did though. Mother. Perhaps you saw him privately some time afterward. Miguel. He told me that his head ached violently, from the vast exertion he had made in his unsuccessful and hopeless attempt at cards with me; and that until the present time he had thought himself a calculator. Mother. How did he proceed to cure his headache? did he go to bed and cry credo three-timesthree? Miguel. He forgot to inform me. ... Mother. It might not have done. I have a formulary: but none shall ever hear it: for God could never punish a drunkard or demagogue who might happen to pick it up and to carry it in his mouth. Perhaps on my death-bed. mind, I don't promise: I only said perhaps. I am liberal if you are. Now tell me about the clever Prince Metternich.. so clever that nobody knows what he would be at; and at last he deceives the wisest of us. Miguel. When we were alone, he kissed my hand affectionately and humbly, and said that henceforward he could consider me in no other light than as king of Portugal and Algarve, and not so much in pursuance of the powers entrusted to me by my august brother . . Mother. August blockhead! my choler rises into my throat! The Constitutional mule! Miguel! Miguel! deserve the title of the Most Faithful, deserve to sit among the other kings of Europe, and dethrone the lamp-lighter. Did not Prince Metternich give you this counsel ? Miguel. In truth he did no such thing. Mother. Pretty prince! fine counsellor! what is the man fit for? what did he say then? Miguel. He said he did not consider me the true and worthy possessor of the Lusitanian sceptre so much from any regard to the appointment of Don Pedro, his Imperial Majesty of the Brazils, while there were restrictions upon me which his Imperial wisdom showed no disposition to remove... Mother. What would you have? how could he speak more plainly or more sensibly, in diplomatic language? Proceed, proceed. Miguel. As from the prodigious genius I had displayed in matters requiring. "pah! pah!" cried he, "no voice can express it. Such kings want no advisers; they are only impediments to the royal spirit. What a stroke will it be of your Majesty's, to raise or countenance a slight disturbance in Lisbon, whereby the English troops will be detained from assisting the insurgents and schismatics in Greece, and from oppressing the poor catholics in Armenia, and in the East and West Indies, and in Ireland and Sumatra." Mother. He deserves the name he has acquired in Europe. Miguel. Why so hard upon him, mother, all on a sudden? Mother. Hard upon him! I say again he deserves it, for the clearness and rectitude of his views. In regard to the fifty pieces, they being the fruit of the gaming-table, might be placed by me in holier hands than those they came from, and may help to bring down on us the benediction of heaven. Being king, you can not want them. Miguel. Mother, you always prevail: do with 'em as you please. Mother. I will spend them in prayers to turn the hearts of the English. They have many things in common with us: I myself have seen them smoke cigars: they can play at cards, and even cheat: they can whistle, and almost dance. Having been baptized, they might be brought over to our doctrines, if God would have any thing to say to them after so long and obstinate a rebellion. Well, my son, you promise to take the oath to-morrow, and to cancel it the day following? Miguel. Solemnly. Mother. Jesu bless you then! and San Miguel remind him! Here is a little list of names it may be as well to run over: some trifling fines from the proud and wealthy a few imprisonments for those who are only heirs, longer or shorter in proportion to the ages of their fathers: very rare executions; thirty or forty, it may be, for those who bring the axe on their necks by having such stiff ones. Six or seven of the more obstinate regiments may be consigned in succession to dungeons, into which the water can enter as freely as the jailer; or into the holds of ships, in which it would puzzle a Dominican to determine whether the timber or the biscuits are fullest of worms. Let us hear mass directly in the chapel. I am hungry; and dinner is ready at noon to a mo ment. NICOLAS AND MICHEL. Nicolas. Well, my brother! you have been among the frequenters of court and coffee-house more recently than I have; pray tell me what is the opinion, or rather, what are the opinions, of people in general on our march against Constantinople. Michel. Brother, we were not educated on the principle of noticing the ideas of the powerless. Our policy has ever been invariable, whether in the hands of the intelligent or of the ignorant. The men who surrounded Catharine, who con |