done to us; and with all the ceremonies of goodbreeding we were shewn to our seats on one of the lines of chairs and sofas ranged against the wall, where the ladies sat, and the gentlemen stood by till most of the company arrived, and the dancing began. My aunt presented me to all the Tracies, including Sir Edward, who came to make his compliments as soon as we were seated. He was, as I had been told, a tall, fair-complexioned young man, but very thin, like the rest of his family. His hair was queued in the first style, his shoe and knee buckles were set with diamonds, and his ruffles were of the best point. His manner was polite; and he might have been called handsome, for his features were better than those of the ladies; but there was something sad and sour in his face, which I thought very strange for a young man and a baronet; he spoke little to anybody, had a habit of looking watchfully about him; and I afterwards heard my aunt and cousins saying among themselves how very much Sir Edward was altered by his travels, for all the grand doings he had seen and shared in. For the present, they congratulated him on looking so well, and wished him many happy returns of the day. I did my best to follow their example; but the stare the three ladies gave me had not quite gone off my mind when he came up, and Sir Edward's first look fairly threw me off my balance. It was a scowl of uncommon blackness, as if he had suddenly caught sight of somebody who had done him a serious wrong, but it passed as quickly as lightning. I don't think my aunt and cousins noticed it at all, they were so occupied with their own manners and the incoming company. I was duly presented; Sir Edward spoke to me as he did to the rest, but in a lower tone; then went to do his devoirs to other ladies, but from all ends of the room I could see him stealthily watching me. The thought of that made me unhappy, in spite of the gay dresses and the fine people who filled the room. All the élite of Gloucester were there; my kindly aunt and cousins took both pride and pleasure in pointing them out to me it was not thought rude in my young days, but rather a sign of distinction. They shewed me Lady Sarah in diamonds and brocade; how black she was, and how well her hair suited the queued curls! They also shewed me a tall handsome young officer, then called Lieutenant C, and supposed to be an admirer of Miss Agnes Tracy. There were a great many more notables, whom I have forgotten. They introduced me to some, but none of them looked at me as the Tracies had done; and I felt quite reassured when Cousin Alice whispered: "Do you know, Sophy, that Sir Edward has lost his heart to you; he looks at you from all quarters. Methodist as your mother is, I think she would get over the ball for such a conquest." not like to think of the fierce frown he had cast on me at first sight, but my experienced cousin had assured me of a conquest; and it was with a flutter of girlish vanity that I saw the young baronet, after leading Lady Sarah and some of the more distinguished guests through as many minuets, approach and request the honour of my hand for the next. There was nothing ill-natured or envious in my cousins; Alice adjusted my tucker, Grace whispered not to forget that I preferred the Minuet de Mecklenbourg. My aunt gave permission for me to dance, which Sir Edward asked in due form; and to my own great amazement and greater pride, I was conducted by the bowing baronet to the clear space in the midst of the room where the dancing went on. Minuets would be thought a dull business by young folks of these days, but they did not derange the queued curls, or put one's sac out of the proper folds; they did not take up much room either. The clear space I have mentioned was a chalked strip in the centre of the ball-room, extending almost from the entrance-door to one at the further end which opened on the orangery- -an old-fashioned kind of greenhouse, with steps leading down to the garden, for the ground on which Tracy House stood was a perfect slope. The orangery was well kept, and specially decorated for the ball, the shrubs and plants being arranged so as to form a kind of arbour, with two tables in it-one with Sir Edward's birthday presents, set forth in full display, and the other furnished with light refreshments for the ladies who went there to get cool after dancing, and survey the gifts, which, being mostly from the Tracies' rich relatives, were thought well worth seeing. I mention these things that you may understand what followed. In the meantime, I of course preferred the Minuet de Mecklenbourg. The orchestra, consisting of two hautboys, and as many violins, were set to the appropriate air. I believe my step would have satisfied the dancing-master in his most scrupulous moment. Cousin Grace smiled approvingly on me from her distant seat, and I heard Lieutenant Csay to his partner, Miss Agnes: "From the country, you say; how gracefully she dances!" We had finished the minuet, and I expected Sir Edward to conduct me to my seat, but instead of doing so, he led me towards the orangery. "You have not seen my birthday presents yet, nor our two lemon-trees, which are counted among the wonders of Gloucester. All the rest of the ladies have seen them; come and see them too;" and without waiting for my answer, he opened the door, and led me in. I was young, utterly unacquainted with society at the time, and greatly delighted with the notice and honour shewn me by the young baronet. Besides, I had seen other ladies into the orangery go with their partners, and though doubtful of what my Of course I was flattered by the fact of Sir Edward aunt would say, and rather surprised to see nobody looking at me from all quarters, as any country girl there but ourselves, I found the birthday presents of seventeen would have been. I had not lost my exceedingly engaging. There were silver cups, point heart to him. I am certain it never could have gone ruffles, embroidered night-caps, and snuff-boxes of that way; but he was the great man of that society- uncommon shapes and workmanship. Sir Edward which seemed to my inexperience the grandest in the shewed them all, told me the names and residences world-the owner of an estate, and a baronet. It was of the titled relations from whom they had come, no fancy of Cousin Alice; he did look at me from time shewed me the two lemon-trees also they were to time, but not as if he wished to be observed. I nearly as tall as myself-and made several flattering couldn't help looking at him in return from behind comparisons between me and the surrounding flowers. my fan, the only way proper for a young lady; but From seeing him in the ball-room, I never could when my attention was diverted by the entrance of a have imagined he could talk so agreeably. The sadgreat Gloucester lady and her seven daughters-ness and sourness were gone from his face; they were they were all immensely large women, but I have forgotten their names-Sir Edward was suddenly missed out of the room. I saw his mother looking for him; I heard my aunt say: "What has taken him off?" but in a minute or two he was there again, making compliments, receiving congratulations, and casting watchful, stealthy glances at me. Under any other circumstances, I would not have liked them. I did gone from my memory too, and I never observed where we were going, till he opened the door, and led me out upon a kind of balcony, from which a flight of stone steps led down to the garden. They had an iron railing, but the balcony had none; it was a dangerous condition to keep the place in, but the Tracies never spent any money on their house that they could help; and I felt half frightened when the full moonlight—it was the clearest winter weather I ever saw-shewed me the unguarded precipice and the wide lonely garden below. At the same moment, I saw Sir Edward rapidly turn an outside key in the door behind us, and then turn to me. Before I knew what to say, he seized me by the arm, and drew me towards the unguarded edge. "Look down," said he. "Is it not cold and quiet in the moonlight? That garden would be a lovely place for a grave." "Let us go in," said I, turning from him in mortal terror, for his face had changed to something like the look of a vicious dog about to spring, and I could hear the grinding of his teeth. "No, we won't go in," he growled, in the same surly tone;" we won't go in till you tell me what brings you here to mock me, after what you did in breaking your promise, and sending me to the madhouse. Yes, it was you that did it all; I was kept under their keepers and strait-waistcoats for nearly three years by your doings; but I'll have revenge. I made this for the keeper one night, but it will do for you." He had fumbled something out of his dress-coat pocket, which I could not see; I think the terror and confusion stupified me for the moment, and as he spoke, I felt a nooze of cord thrown quickly round my neck, and then a violent push, which sent me over the edge of the balcony, while he held the end of the cord in one hand, clutched the iron railing with the other, and planted his feet firmly on the steps. My escape was predestinated, I suppose, for, in the act of falling, my toes caught in a projecting ledge of wall. I never knew the value of life till that moment. With the energy of despair, I flung out my arms, and fortunately caught one of the rails some distance below where he stood, and held on to the ledge of wall with my feet. He saw my advantage. How horrible his face looked in the moonlight, the eyes glaring, and the teeth gnashing, like one possessed. "Ah, you won't get off; I'll hang you, you perjured witch; you won't send me to the madhouse again." That growl was given in an undertone, and I saw him winding the cord round his hand to tighten it. It was so tight already, that I could utter no sound, and the dreadful feeling of suffocation was on me, but one last expedient for life suddenly occurred to me. With the only hand I had free, I seized the nooze, tore the skin off neck and fingers, but succeeded in loosening it sufficiently to utter one scream. I'll never forget the sound of that cry; it must have startled the half of Gloucester. The next thing I remember is a crash of breaking glass, the figure of a man rushing out from the greenhouse, and the sensation of falling. After that, all was blank, till I found myself lying in a bed in Lady Tracy's house, with my aunt, my cousins, and a number of female servants busy about me, strange sounds of confusion coming up from the ground-floor, and above them all, shouts of curses and imprecations in the voice of Sir Edward. relatives' account of the time he passed in a private asylum. The dress I had bought from Mrs Jenkins was traced to the clergyman's house in Somersetshire, which happened to be the family living bestowed on his college tutor for taking the painter's daughter so completely out of his way; in fact, it had been worn by her at one of the Cambridge balls, and disposed of as an article too gay for her married days. My resemblance to her in figure and complexion made the dress suit me so well, it probably made the resemblance more perfect; hence the surprised stare of the three ladies, and the illusion which had finally upset Sir Edward's reason, and endangered my life. I need not tell you that we got home to the Cathedral Close as soon as we could. The ball had been brought to a premature conclusion; the whole company had heard my scream, and the affair could not be kept from becoming public. We were therefore obliged to let my mother know all about it; indeed, every one of us, and particularly myself, considered it a special judgment on our deceit and disobedience. Worthy woman, she first gave thanks for my providential deliverance, then came to Gloucester with all speed, and gave us a sound. lecture, which doubtless would have been longer and more impressive, if Lieutenant C had not politely called at the time to inquire after my health; and my mother being a gentlewoman as well as a Methodist, took the opportunity to make suitable acknowledgment, and ask him to visit at our house. The lieutenant did visit us in the course of the same winter. He had never been engaged to Miss Agnes Tracy, who, by the by, lived and died an old maid, like her aunt. My father and mother both thought him sensible, and hoped to make him serious. He certainly did a good deal to please them in the way of politeness to the old ladies, and listening to the preachers, and succeeded so well, that they gave me leave to marry him on the very day twelvemonth in which he had saved my life. Now, there is the true cause of my dislike to look at dancing ever since I was seventeen; the unrailed balcony and the moonlight night, Sir Edward and his nooze, came back with every sight of it. It may have been folly, but I never could get over it throughout my long life. It was not a story that one could tell to everybody, so I kept it to myself; but the Tracies are all dead and gone now. A well-to-do tradesman owns their house in Gloucester, but he is a person of strict religious views, and the last fashionable assembly ever given there was my only ball.' MEDIEVAL BLONDINS. NOTWITHSTANDING all the wonders of Blondin, it is curious to observe how far the old adage, 'Nothing new under the sun,' is maintainable in the world of rope-dancers. Let us look back among the old chroniclers and annalists, and see to what extent Blondin was anticipated—perhaps outdone. Walking and dancing on the tight-rope were known I had been saved from him and his nooze by the at least as far back as the time of the Romans; but gallantry and promptitude of young Lieutenant we will keep to the periods of which we have better C, who had seen us go into the orangery, heard records. Froissart describes the festivities which took the cry, and rushed to the rescue. By cutting the place at Paris in 1385, on occasion of the marriage of cord at once with his penknife, he had let me fall Charles VI. with Isabel of Bavaria. Among the from no great height on a smooth sward which exhibiters was a rope-dancer. 'He tyed a cord upon happened to lie below, and then, with the help of the hyest house on the brydge of St Mychell over all some other gentlemen, secured the maniac, for such the houses, and the other ende was tyed to the hyest Sir Edward was by this time, and such I am sorry to tower of Our Ladye's Church [cathedral of Notre say he continued till the end of his days, and they Dame]; and as the Quene passed by and was in the were lengthened out more than forty years after. great strete called Our Ladye's Strete [Rue Notre The explanation of his conduct towards myself seems Dame], this sayd Master, with two brynninge candells to be this: the young man's brain had never been in hys handes, issued out of a littel stage that he had strong; indeed, I believe there was madness in the made on the heyght of Our Ladye's tower, synginge as Tracy family, and under that early disappointment he went upon the corde all alonge the great strete, so at Cambridge it had given way. The grand tour that all that sawe hym hadde marvaille how it might and the brilliant receptions were merely his clever | be; and he bore still in hys handes the two brynninge CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL. candells, so that he might be sene all over Parys, and two myles without the citie.' The different editors of Froissart have disputed whether the man is described as sliding or walking on the rope; but all agree that there is no mention of a balancing-pole. From an old manuscript preserved in the College of Arms, we learn the following particulars in reference to certain feats performed at Richmond (in Surrey) on the occasion of the marriage of Prince Arthur with Catherine of Aragon, November 1501. Upon the outside of the walls'-we modernise the orthography-directly under the windows, were bars and void space for jousts; also, there were set up and raised two high and great posts, with crosses, these posts first set and driven in the ground. Over the crosses was a great cable stretched steadfastly, and drawn with a wheel, and stayed upon both the sides with divers cords, so that the sight of it was Upon this like unto the ridging of an house. frame and cable ascended and went up a Spaniard, the which shewed there many wonders, and delicious points of tumbling and dancing, and other sleights. First, he went up unto the frame (and a certain stay in his hand), to the number of forty feet, somewhat aslope; and when he came to the height, left his stay, and went upon the cable, sometime on pattens, sometime with tennis-balls, sometime with fetters of iron, dancing with bells, and leaping many leaps upon the said cable both forward and backward. He played sometime with a sword and a buckler: eftsoon he cast himself suddenly from the rope, and hung by the toes; sometime by the teeth; most marvellously and with greatest sleight and cunning that any man could possibly exercise or do. After these long beholding, with other goodly disports, the King's Grace and noble company entered again through these pleasant gardens of his lodging of Richemond unto Evensong, and so unto his supper.' A writer in Notes and Queries has drawn attention to an old engraving, dated 1550, representing a ropewalker at Venice. The rope is fastened at one end to the top of the tower of St Mark's, and at the other end to a raft moored on the water. The angle is so excessively steep, that the difficulty of ascending or descending must have been very great, if the engraving is to be trusted. : London has had its full share of such displays. Strutt notices a tight-rope exhibition which took place in the time of Edward VI. There was a rope as great as the cable of a ship, stretched in length from the battlements of Paul's steeple, with a great anchor at one end, fastened a little before the Dean of Paul's house-gate; and when his majesty approached near the same, there came a man, a stranger, a native of Aragon, lying on the rope with his head foreward, casting his arms and legs abroad, running on his breast on the rope from the battlements to the ground, as if it had been an arrow out of a bow, and stayed on the ground. Then he came to his Majesty, and kissed his foot; and so, after certain words to his Highness, he departed from him again, and went upwards upon the rope till he came over the midst of the churchyard, where he, having a rope about him, played certain mysteries on the rope, as tumbling, and casting one leg from the other. Then took he the rope, and tied it to the cable, and tied himself by the right leg a little space beneath the wrist of the foot, and hung by one leg a certain space, and after recovered himself again with the said rope, and unknit the knot, and came down again.' This is something similar to Blondin's slackrope addendum to his tight-rope. On the occasion of the entry of Philip and Mary into London in 1554, after their marriage, there was a man who, in a similar way, slid down a rope from the top of St Paul's, head first, without aid of hand or foot. The spire of old St Paul's was higher than the cross of the present structure; but the rope appears to have been fastened to some battlement, at a less Jacob Hall was a famous rope-dancer in the time of With two heavy baskets drags a dance. Evelyn, in his Diary, under date September 15, 1657, enters a little more into detail concerning a ropedancer who achieved feats quite as wonderful as those of Blondin, though different in kind: 'Going to London with some company, we stept in to see a famous rope-dancer called the Turk. I saw even to astonishment the agility with which he performed. He walked barefooted, taking hold by his toes only of a rope almost perpendicular, and without so much as touching it with his hands; he danced blindfold on the high rope, and with a boy of twelve years old tied to one of his feet about twenty feet beneath him, dangling as he danced, yet he moved as nimbly as if he had been a feather. Lastly, he stood on his head on the top of a very high mast, danced on a rope that was very slack, and finally flew down the perpendicular on his breast, his head foremost, his legs and arms extended.' The eighteenth century had similarly its quota of rope-dancers. Mr Morley, in his curious History of Bartholomew Fair, mentions two damsels who, with trousers on and petticoats off, stood on their heads on a tight-rope. On another occasion, the famous Mr Barnes danced on a rope with two children at his feet.' Some years after this, when the church of St Martin's-in-the-Fields was finished, an adventurous Italian named Violante descended from the steeple, head-foremost, on a rope stretched thence across St Martin's Lane to the Royal Mews. He was honoured with the presence of some of the royal family. In an old volume of the CaleIt would appear that his wife became equally distinguished for the art. donian Mercury for 1736, is a curious paragraph to the following effect: While Allan Ramsay was preparing his playhouse, an Italian female rope-dancer, named It was asserted that she danced Signora Violante, performed in Edinburgh and some other Scotch towns. a minuet on the rope as well as it could be done on the floor-danced on a board placed loosely on the rope-danced on the rope with two boys fastened to her feet-danced with two swords at her feet; the rope being no thicker than penny whip-cord.' Those little fellows, the two boys fastened to her feet,' must have had a queer life of it. The wheelbarrow trick of M. Blondin is not new than the rest; for Mr Morley quotes great more an old Bartlemy Fair placard concerning a Italian Scaramouch, who will dance on a rope, with a wheelbarrow before him, with two children and a dog in it, and with a duck on his head; who sings to the company, and causes much laughter.' Later in the century there were several exhibiters who had become proficient in sliding down a rope; they had a board fastened to the breast, with a groove running down the centre of the outer side; this groove was placed on the rope, and the man, having established his balance, started off with great rapidity, head downwards. The elite among these performers not only avoided touching the rope with their hands, but blew trumpets and tired off pistols during their descent. One of these men performed this feat at Hertford in 1750, descending from the steeple of All Saints Church. Another, about the same time, was the famous Cadman,' who belonged to the unlucky class represented by poor Scott the diver. He was killed by his ropeachievements at Shrewsbury. His cord stretched from Shrewsbury Church tower across the Severn to the meadows on the other side. The epitaph on Cadman's tombstone tells the cause of his death in a very straightforward, matter-of-fact way : 'Twas not for want of skill, Or courage, to perform the task, he fell : A copy of verses,' in the Gentleman's Magazine, recording Cadman's sad fate, immortalised some of his exploits in the following way: The proudest spire in Salop's lofty town Undazzled, views th' inverted chasm below: It was a volunteering time, and the poet managed to bring the volunteers and the rope-dancer together in his verses. There is one matter which, so far as we know, belongs exclusively to the seventeenth century, and leaves our present age far behind-this is a horse walking on a tight-rope. Mr Morley speaks of a man at Bartholomew fair, in 1778, who exhibited serpents dancing to music on a silken rope; this we can understand, but we want strong evidence concerning the horse, and all we have is the following. When Malcolm was collecting materials for his Londinium Redivivum, he obtained much curious matter relating to the manners and customs of other countries, which he afterwards published under the title Manners and History of Europe. One of his scraps relates to certain festivities at Venice on St Mark's Day, 1680; when the doge, the senate, the imperial ambassador, and about fifty thousand citizens, witnessed the extraordinary performances of an exhibiter. 'Adorned in a tinsel ridinghabit, having a gilt helmet upon his head, and holding in his right hand a lance, and sitting upon a white horse, with a swift pace, he ambled up a rope, six hundred feet long, fastened from the quay to the top of St Mark's Tower. When he had arrived half-way, his tinsel coat fell off, and he made a stand, and, stooping his lance submissively, saluted the doge, who was sitting in the palace, and flourished the banner three times over his head. Then resuming his former speed, he went on, and with his horse, entered the tower where the bell hangs, and presently returning on foot, he climbed up to the highest pinnacle of the tower, where, sitting on the golden angel, he flourished his banner again several times. This performed, he descended to the bell-tower, and then, taking horse, rode down again to the bottom in the like manner as he had ascended.' Knowing how safely a mule will carry a burden along a narrow precipice of rock, we must not at once disbelieve this Venetian exploit; yet it would be satisfactory to know a little more of the equestrian Blondin and his wonderful horse. But even this affair of the horse is not the most marvellous. The reader must prepare himself to believe that the massive and ponderous elephant may be indoctrinated with the mysteries of ropedancing. Nothing of the kind has been known in recent times; but there are so many allusions to the matter by classical writers, that we are hardly justified in utterly ignoring them. Although details are not given, the general tenor is as follows: According to Pliny, at the spectacles given by Germanicus, it was not an uncommon thing to see elephants hurl javelins in the air, and catch them in their trunks, fight with each other as gladiators, and then execute a Pyrrhic dance. Lastly, they danced upon a rope; and their steps were so practised and certain, that four of them traversed the rope, bearing a litter which contained one of their companions, who feigned to be sick. This feat of dancing or walking upon a rope might perhaps be doubted if it rested merely upon the testimony of a single author; but the practice is confirmed by many ancient writers of authority, who agree with Pliny that the elephants trained at Rome would not only walk along a rope forward, but retire backward with equal precision. Seneca describes an elephant, who, at the command of his African keeper, would kneel down and walk upon a rope. Suetonius also mentions that an elephant, in the presence of the emperor Galba, climbed up an inclined rope to the roof of the theatre, and descended in the same way, bearing a litter. Dion gives a similar testimony to the extraordinary power of so heavy an animal to walk along a rope without any balance-a docility which is the more wonderful when we bear in mind that one of the strongest instincts which the elephant possesses is that which impels him to experiment upon the stability of every surface which he is required to cross before he will trust his body to the chance of breaking down the support which is prepared for him.'* The four elephants on a rope (or ropes ?), carrying in a litter their friend who pretended to be ill, is a feat that out-Blondins all that we know in the present degenerate age. LEIGH HUNT'S CORRESPONDENCE. IN the whole range of English literature, there is no man more loved by those who are acquainted with his writings than Leigh Hunt. Whatever else may be wanting in them, the rare faculty of attaching reader to author is certainly there. In most cases, when a writer is extravagantly admired by a few persons, but unacknowledged by the world, his disciples lose their tempers in defending him. They are irritated by the stupidity or malignity of the public. The lovers of Leigh Hunt, however, are not angry; and his teaching would indeed be thrown away upon them if they were. 'There is nothing worth contesting here below,' writes he, 'except who shall be kindest to one another.' The world is three centuries off from the time when it shall open its arms, at any width, to one like him. At present, it is only the young who appreciate him, or who (alas!) are blind to his defects. They clasp hands with him across his pages as with a charming friend; they would have liked to have known him in the flesh, they are sure, and would not have been afraid. To how many glorious writers does he introduce them, whom, but for him, they would scarcely have had a chance of knowing! How catholic he was; how admirably apt to point out what is best in each, and to reject the bad! The two little volumes, Imagination and Fancy, and Wit and Humour, have been to many a youth the keys of an intellectual paradise. If his philosophy could be said to be antagonistic to any other, it was to that of the nil admirandum school; for he admired all things written that are admirable, from the works of Archbishop Leighton to those of Rabelais. What he loved himself, he was eager that all should love. Nor must we forget how much we owe him upon his own account; for his Indicator-than which no pleasanter volume of essays (Messrs Addison, Steele, and Goldsmith notwithstanding) was ever printedand for his Poems, which, as any poet will gladly witness, are far, far better than the booksellers hold them to be. *THE ELEPHANT: Library of Entertaining Knowledge. The The Correspondence of Leigh Hunt* will probably share the fate of all that has been published of his during life-it will be perused with infinite interest and affectionate sympathy by his admirers, and be neglected by the public at large. The reason of this is truthfully stated by the editor of the volumes in question: Although attracting the personal affection as well as the admiration of those readers who took to him at all, Leigh Hunt still spoke with so much speciality of idea and expression, that the circle always proved to be comparatively limited. intensity of the fervour with which his writing was received invariably gave an idea of a wider success than was ultimately realised.' He was often, as it seemed, upon the point of making his fortune, but the venture always ended in a deficit. He was totally unfitted for the management of any sort of business. 'It was no affectation when he declared himself entirely incompetent to deal with the simplest question of arithmetic. The very commonest sum was a bewilderment to him. He learned addition, in order that he might be fitted for his place in a public office. It was a born incapacity, similar to that of people who cannot distinguish the notes of music, or the colours of the prism. Perpetually reproached with it, very conscious of his mistakes, he took his deficiency to heart, and with the emphatic turn of his temperament, increased it by exaggerating his own estimate of it. Thus, he regarded himself as a sort of idiot in the handling of figures, and he was consequently incapacitated for many subjects which he could handle very well when they were explained to him in another form. A secondary consequence was the habit, acquired very early, of trusting to others. His wife was clever in the special handling of arithmetic, a fact which he knew and admired. She had been brought up by a mother who was a thrifty housewife, and thus became in all domestic matters a business agent for a man who trusted her less like a husband than a child.' His want of punctuality was excessive, nay, absolutely ludicrous. When a clerk in the War Office [fancy Captain Pen in the War Office!] he could scarcely command leisure for breakfast, although he seldom reached his desk in time. On one occasion, he was to visit his friend, Charles Robertson, in Lincolnshire, and the young ladies rose early to make his breakfast before he went off, but he was too late for the coach. The next day, he rose in the same manner; he was again too late. But that night he slept at the Golden Cross, and managed to commence his journey on the third day. Yet a friend who knew him well justly remarked, that "procrastination" was not the proper term for the habit; he did not put off;" it was not entirely the enjoyment of the passing moment that made him defer exertion; it was rather that he became so completely absorbed in the immediate occupation of the moment, whatever it might be whether it were conversation, music, study, or hard work, that he had no faculty for noting the lapse of time. On another occasion, writing to his affianced bride from an inn during a journey to Nottinghamshire, he says: I happened to meet in the coach, when I set off on Tuesday mor Marianne (lifting up two bright astonished eyes) On Tuesday morning, sir? You must mean Monday morning, sir. H. Madam, you must excuse me; I mean Tuesday morning. M. Why, sir, you took leave of us on Monday morning. H. Yes, madam, and the coach took leave of me. M. You were too late, then, sir? H. (with much sorrow) Yes, madam. M. And lost half your fare? H. Yes, madam. M. A guinea and a half? H. Yes, madam. M. Well, sir, you have only paid a guinea and a half for a lesson of prudence. H. True, madam; some pay as much for a lesson on the fiddle. Which is the more useful of the two? M. But, my dear sir, why did you not return to Titchfield Street? H. Why, my dear madam, there is something inexpressibly foolish in going twice on the same errand in vain. I took a place at the White Horse, in Fetter Lane, so I slept in Gray's Inn to be in time next morning.' Marianne doubtless felt as we do, that it was quite impossible to be angry with Leigh Hunt. One of the very things, indeed, which most unfitted him for the battle of life, endeared him to all who knew him-namely, his conscientious kindliness. Before leaving his cottage at Berkenham, and coming to reside in town, he writes thus to the local house-agent: As to the cottage itself, Mr H. can by no means reconcile it to his conscience to let it during the winter. If anybody should be inclined to take it for the summer, which is not likely, considering it is unfurnished and out of the road of coaches, well and good; but it is no more fit to stand rain and wind than a house of paper; and at such times, Mr H. would rather keep it at the expense of his purse, than let it at the expense of his decency.' These very volumes prove how much time, that he ill could spare, was spent in writing letters to the unhappy and the afflicted, conveying the most comforting and affectionate sympathy; and that, too, when his fingers ached with the labour they had already undergone. Notwithstanding the books of his own that might be on hand (and the printing-press-a yawning dragon demanding his virgin thoughts-was ever at his heels), he had still advice, suggestions, and the most encouraging praise and appreciation for other writers far less pressed than he. To Miss Kent he writes: Until you told me the other day, I never gathered from your letters that you were at all advanced in your tree book, much less that you had nearly done it. So, partly from illness in the first instance, and partly from occupation with Wishing-caps afterwards, I have only got the following memorandums. I send them to you, rather to shew you I had been thinking about the work, than from any hope of their being useful. 'Preface, vitality of trees-the leaves, their lungs, &c. Many have thought they have sensation; the Arabians, in their imagination, even gave them a language. Trees once furnished altogether the habitations, meat and drink, and clothes of some nations, still supply us with medicine, furniture, houses, food, ships, and instruments of numberless sorts. Furnished wood for the statues of gods formerly, as they do even now for those of saints in the south; were dedicated to gods, and rendered the abodes of woodnymphs. The insides of our cathedrals are supposed to have been suggested by those noble twilight walks which are formed by stately groves.' He adds to this a long list of authors to be quoted, and a beautiful description of many trees. Now this, be it observed, was not mere information communicated to a friend, but the giving away of time and thought, which were in his case not only so much money, but the means of procuring daily bread; for this true gentleman, so rich in kindly courtesies, in knowledge, in accomplishments of all kinds, was miserably poor. His whole life,' says his biographer, was one of pecuniary anxiety;' and in illustration of The Correspondence of Leigh Hunt. Edited by his eldest Son. this, he tells us things which, considering the sensitive Smith & Elder nature of the victim, are about the saddest we have |