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poured balm upon my bruises, by condescending, once or twice in the course of the evening, to talk to me. The great historian was light and playful, suiting his manner to the capacity of the boy; but still his mannerism prevailed-still he tapped his snuff box-still he smirked and smiled, and rounded his periods with the same air of good breeding as if he were conversing with men." Then comes a characteristic touch of George's own pencil :-" His mouth, mellifluous as Plato's, was a round hole in the centre of his visage !"

:

Her

Bensley the actor, a popular favourite, was a rare instance of the change of personal character. In early life he had led so dashing a career, that Garrick named him " Roaring Bob of the Garden." He married by accident, and from that period his temperament seems to have taken a wiser turn. The accident was his postchaise having come into collision with a lady on horseback, the lady was thrown; and Bensley, on getting out to offer his assistance, was so much struck with her beauty, that he fell in love, and made his proposal. fortune was but L.1500; but, by frugality and his talents, he lived in comfort until he left the stage in 1796. His friend, the celebrated Wyndham, who was secretary at war, then gave him a barrack-mastership. But his good fortune was not yet at an end. A relative, Sir William Bensley, an East India Director, dying, left him a large property. Bensley enjoyed it for a while with the spirit of a gentleman; but, having no children, said, "that he had not wanted it, and that it came too late."

There is an acknowledged frenzy in the universal passion for theatrical management; and Colman, who had escaped so long, and after such vexatious experience, now returned to the turmoil of a theatre of his own. Foote, previously to leaving London for Calais, had thus written to Garrick" There is more of prudence than of pleasure in my trip to the continent. To tell you the truth, I am tired with racking my brain, toiling like a horse, and crossing seas and mountains in the most dreary seasons, merely to pay servants' wages and tradesmen's bills. I have therefore directed my friend Jewell to discharge the lazy vermin of my hall,

and to let my hall too, if he can meet with a proper tenant. Help me to one, if you can." Colman heard of this intention, and he finally took the Haymarket Theatre, on the terms of paying Foote an annuity of L.1600, and L.500 for the copyright of his unpublished plays. "The paradoxical celebrity," says George Colman,' "which Foote maintained on his stage, was very singular; his satirical sketches were scarcely dramas, and he could not be called a good legitimate performer. Yet there is no Shakspeare or Roscius on record, who, like Foote, supported a theatre for a series of years by his own acting, in his own writings, and for ten years of the time on a wooden leg." This prop to his person I once saw, standing by his bedside, ready dressed in a handsome silk stocking, with a polished shoe and gold buckle, awaiting the owner's getting-up. It had a kind of tragi-comical appearance; and I leave to inveterate punsters the ingenuity of punning upon a Foote in bed and a leg out of it."

This is followed by a capital story. The elder Colman, in proposing for the purchase of the theatre, had kept himself wholly out of sight, and employed a matter-of-fact man of busi.. ness to carry on the negotiation. ; Foote having no knowledge of the real party until the business was concluded. He, however, often met Colman at dinner, and the subject being public, became a topic of common conversation. On one of those occasions, Foote turned to Colman and said:– "Now, here is Mr Colman, an experienced manager, he will tell you that nobody can conduct so peculiar a theatrical concern as mine but myself. But there is a fat-headed fellow of an agent, who has been boring me every morning at breakfast, with terms from some block head who knows nothing about the stage, but whose money burns in his pocket:"-" Playhouse mad, I presume," said my fa ther. "Right," said Foote, "and, if bleeding will bring him to his senses, he will find me a capital doctor.”

The scene, when the parties at last met to sign and seil, must have been amusing; it would probably have furnished Foote with, another farce, but all his pleasantries were now near an end. He died at Dover, October 21st, in the same year, having received but

the first half year's payments. His illness had been long, but the immediate cause of his death was apoplexy. The Haymarket proved, on the whole, a tolerable speculation. Colman's knowledge of the stage kept it alive; and, as he had got rid of the weight of the purchase-money, he made a respectable income. But his time, too, was coming fast. In 1789, he was struck with paralysis; the disease attacked his brain, and he was reduced to the most melancholy of all conditions-that of a bewildered mind. Some lines in one of Churchhill's poems, feelingly allude to the especial liability of active intellects to this

misfortune:

"With curious art the brain too finely wrought,

Preys on itself, and is destroy'd by thought; Constant attention wears the active mind, Blots out her powers, and leaves a blank behind."

We must now hasten to the close. George Colman, taking the management of the theatre on his father's retirement, conducted it for a succession

At

of years with remarkable animation, but with fluctuating success. length difficulties gathered round him, which compelled him to resign the theatre into other hands. His social qualities, however, had so far rendered him pleasing to George IV., that he appointed him "Examiner of Plays," an office worth about L.400 a-year. In his latter years he became liable to some organic infirmities, of which he died, October 17th, 1836, with the reputation of one of the wittiest men, the most amusing companion, and perhaps the best comic writer since the days of Sheridan. It has not been our purpose to review these volumes, in the usual sense of the word. They have the fault of being too much of a compilation, and making too large a use of authorities already known. But it is only justice to say, that they contain a great deal of very curious matter-many recollections of the Colmans that have hitherto escaped the public-and that they are written in a spirited and intelligent style.

MARQUINEZ AND LA COLLEGIALA.

A ROMANTIC INCIDENT OF THE PENINSULAR WAR.

THE small town of Ayllon in Old Castile is picturesquely situated at the foot of a ridge of mountains of the same name, and at about half-a-dozen leagues to the left of the camino real from Burgos to Madrid. Although dignified by the name of a villa, or town, and containing a population of five hundred vecinos,* at the period we are referring to, it bore more resemblance to an overgrown country village, both by the character of its houses and the occupations of their inhabitants. The former were rudely constructed of mis-shapen and irregularly sized blocks of stone, hewn from the adjacent mountains, the interstices being filled up with a coarse cement. They were for the most part covered with thatch, although here and there a roof formed of black and red tiles,

arranged in alternate lines, varied the uniformity of the layers of straw, to which the weather and the smoke of the wood fires had imparted a dingy greyish hue. According to Spanish custom, every dwelling had a clumsy but solid and spacious balcony running round the upper windows. These balconies were sheltered from the rain either by a wooden roof or by a projection of the thatch and rafters, and in the summer and autumn were usually strewed with the golden pods of the Indian corn and the juicy scarlet fruit of the tomata, placed there to dry and to ripen in the sunbeams.

The inhabitants of Ayllon were principally peasants, who gained their living by the cultivation of the fields which surrounded the town; and in time of peace this resource was suffi

The Spaniards have a somewhat loose manner of calculating the population of their towns and villages by vecinos, or heads of families, literally neighbours. They multiply the number of vecinos by four and a half, and that is supposed to give the number of inhabitants.

cient for the ample supply of their scanty wants and unambitious desires; but the war, which was so heavy a Scourge for the Peninsula, did not spare this quiet corner of Castile. On the contrary, the position of the town rendered it a favourite resort of the guerillas, who from that point had the double facility of pouncing on whatever passed along the high-road, and of retreating to the mountains when troops were sent against them. Thus it not unfrequently happened that the unfortunate Ayllonese, after emptying their grauaries and wine stores for the benefit of the Spanish troops, were visited, a few hours afterwards, by a column of French, who stripped them of what little they had reserved for their own support, accompanying their extortions by the ample measure of ill treatment they considered themselves justified in bestowing on those who had so recently sheltered their foes. Between friends and enemies the peasants were impoverished, their houses dismantled and pillaged, their fields trampled and laid waste.

It was on an autumn morning of the year 181, that a large number of cavalry soldiers were grooming their horses in the streets of Ayllon. Some ill-clothed but hardy-looking infantry men were grouped about the doors of the houses, busily engaged in furbishing their arms, whilst here and there, at the corners of the streets, or in open spaces between the houses, a few greasy-looking individuals were superintending the preparations of the rancho,* a strong smelling anomalous sort of mess, contained in large iron kettles suspended over smoky fires of green wood. Cavalry, infantry, and cooks were laughing, joking, singing, and talking with the gayety character istic of the Spanish soldier, and which

scarcely ever abandons him even in the most difficult and unfavourable circumstances.

The horses had been cleaned and returned to their stables; the muskets burnished till they shone again; the rations cooked and eaten. It was past noon, and the rays of an October sun, which in Castile is often hotter than a July sun in our more temperate climate, had driven the soldiery to seek shade and coolness where best it might be found. Some were sharing the litter of their horses, others were stretched under trees and hedges in the outskirts of the town, whilst the most weary or the least difficult lay wrapped in their cloaks on either side of the street. A deep silence had succeeded to the previous noise. It was the hour of the siesta.

Two o'clock had chimed from the church tower of Ayllon, and had been repeated by the clocks of the neighbouring convents and villages, when a battalion of infantry entered the principal street, and advanced at a rapid pace towards the open square in the centre of the town, where it halted and formed up. A body of cavalry which followed separated into small parties, and dispersed in various directions. More infantry arrived, and proceeded by detachments to occupy the stables and houses in which the troops were quartered, and from which they ejected the original occupants. the first arrival of the new comers, the guerillas, who were lying sleeping about the streets, had started up in alarm; but on recognizing the grey uniforms and painted shakoes of the regiment of Arlanza, and the blue pelisses of the hussars, under the orders of the Cura Merino, they for the most part resumed their recumbent position, with all the nonchalance of those Neapolitan lazzaroni for whom

On

The rancho, or mess of the Spanish soldiery, is generally composed of fat pork, garlic, and rice or dry beans, according as the one or the other may have been issued for rations: the whole being plentifully seasoned with red pepper, and boiled so as to form a sort of thick pottage. The manner in which this is eaten is somewhat original. Each company is divided into messes of twenty or thirty men, and each mess forms a circle round the vessel in which their dinner has been cooked, every man with his bread and a large wooden spoon in his hand. They tell off by fours, and a non-commissioned officer calls out "El uno," No. 1. The five or six men who have told off No. 1 take a pace to the front, dip their spoon in the kettle and resume their place in the circle. "El dos," No. 2, is next called, and performs the same manœuvre. After No. 4, the turn of No. I comes again, and so on till the pot is emptied and the bellies of the soldiers more or less filled.

the dolce far niente is the sum and substance of human happiness. The less indolent remained staring at the troops as they marched by ; and even when they saw them entering the stables and barracks they manifested no surprise, unsuspicious of any hostile intention on the part of men fighting for the same cause as themselves, and with whom they were accustomed to fraternize. Those who were sleeping in the houses and stables, were scarcely well awaked before they were thrust into the street. The whole procceding was so rapid on the part of the Cura's soldiers, and so unlooked for by those quartered in the town, that in less than ten minutes fifteen hundred men found themselves unarmed and defenceless, whilst their horses, weapons, and accoutrements were in possession of Merino's follow ers. So complete was the surprise, and so trifling the resistance offered, that not a life was lost, scarcely a man wounded, on either side.

Whilst the astonished guerillas were asking one another what could be the meaning of this extraordinary conduct of Merino, that chief himself appeared, surrounded by several officers, and followed by a strong escort of cavalry. He galloped through the main street, and, halting in the plaza, received the reports of the officers who had been entrusted with the execution of the coup-de-main that had just been accomplished; then, turning to a group of the disarmed who were standing by, he enquired for Colonel Principe. Before he had received a reply, a man rushed, bareheaded, and with a drawn sabre in his hand, from the door of a neighbouring house. He stopped when he found himself face to face with the Cura, and, in a voice almost inarticulate from passion, demanded by what authority the latter had disarmed his men and taken possession of their quarters.

"By my own authority, Tomas Principe," coolly replied Merino. "Your band is one of those which do more harm to the peasant than the enemy. When they march, their progress is marked by rapine and violence; and, if they now and then distinguish themselves by their gallantry in the field, they take care to counterbalance its merit by daily robberies and unlawful acts. Your horses and arms I have

VOL. L. NO. CCCIX,

taken for my soldiers, and by this time your men are informed that they are disbanded and may return to their homes."

Merino had scarcely finished his sentence when Principe, who literally foamed at the mouth with rage, made a dash at the imperturbable priest, and dealt him a blow which would probably have brought the career of that celebrated member of the church militant to a premature termination, had it not been intercepted by the swords of some of the Cura's officers. Several of the escort pressed forward, and the unlucky guerilla was overpowered and deprived of his sabre. The scuffle was scarcely over when Marquinez, the friend and lieutenant of Principe, appeared, followed by some officers and a few men of his corps. He was a handsome, soldierly-looking man, in the prime of life, with a highly intelligent countenance; and, instead of showing the same excitement and headlong fury as his commandant, he saluted Merino with urbanity, and addressed him in a somewhat ironical tone.

The Cura repeated what he had already said to Principe as to his reasons for disarming the partida.

"I am well aware, Señor Cura," said Marquinez, "that some of your followers, weary of lurking in mountain caverns, have preferred leaders under whom they were sure to meet with opportunities of displaying their courage in the plain, and of revenging themselves on the invaders of their country. It is probably to prevent further defection, and to remount your cavalry, that you have thus treacherously surprised and disarmed men, who, had they been aware of your in-. tention, would have given ample occupation to you and the whole of your forces. You have, for the moment, deprived your country of two thousand defenders, the least worthy of whom is a better man than ever crossed your saddle. We shall not attempt a resistance which now would be absurd, but you will have to answer to the Junta of Cadiz for your treason."

The Cura smiled scornfully, but made no reply. Marquinez, after gazing steadfastly at him for a moment, turned upon his heel; and leading, or rather dragging along, Principe by the arm, left the plaza. The same day Merino marched out of Ayllon,

с

taking with them nearly a thousand manded. Principe was only modehorses, and a large number of muskets, sabres, and other arms.

Marquinez and Principe had been sergeants in the Spanish regiment of Bourbon. They were of humble extraction, and Marquinez had, in his youth, been a barber at Madrid. Both men of great intrepidity, and of some military talent, those qualifications availed them little at a period when wealth and family interest were the surest, if not the only stepping stones to advancement in the Spanish army, and our two sargentos instruidos left the service with the humble chevrons which their merits had procured them soon after their arrival under the colours, but which they had no hope of exchanging for the epaulette of a commissioned officer. At the commencement of the Peninsular war, they joined a party of guerillas, of which they soon became the leaders, and Principe, although inferior in talent and education to his brother sergeant, was the first in command. At the period that Merino disarmed them in the manner we have described, the partida had acquired considerable celebrity, and although not so well disciplined as the troops of the Cura, had committed no excesses to justify the step taken by the latter. Merino was jealous of their success, and annoyed at the desertion of his men, many of whom had recently left his standard to join that of Principe. As Marquinez had predicted, however, the Regency was excessively angry at the unauthorized and unwarrantable conduct of the guerilla priest, in which it was evident that he had consulted his own interest more than that of the service, or of the country. A severe reprimand was addressed to him; but the war was raging in all its fury, the Junta had its hands full, and Merino was too valuable a partizan to be dispensed with, or even disgusted. Moreover, the mischief done was soon repaired, in great part, by the activity of Marquinez. After the guerilla corps was disbanded by the Cura, the two adventurers who had headed it found themselves with a mere handful of followers, the remainder either having been sent to their villages, or having joined Merino. Principe and Marquinez agreed to separate, and to reorganize two bands, instead of the one which they had hitherto com

rately successful; the free corps which he raised never amounted to above six or eight hundred men; but Marquinez, putting out all his energy, before long found himself at the head of a strong body of cavalry, well mounted and equipped; and he took the field with renewed confidence, and this time with the sole command.

In one of the first expeditions which he undertook, after this resurrection of his partida, he encountered three hundred Westphalian cavalry in the French service, whom he totally defeated, after fighting for a whole morning, and losing a large number of men and horses. The Westphalians were returning from a reconnoissance, in which they had made several prisoners, and amongst others, a lady of a good family of Sahagun, and wife of a captain in the Spanish army. This woman, during the few days which the insecurity of the roads compelled her to pass in the society of Marquinez, became violently enamoured of that officer, and finally abandoned her husband and children to follow him in his adventurous course of life. Endowed with masculine courage, strong minded, and possessed of greater physical strength than is usual in her sex, she did not hesitate to assume the costume of a hussar, and to fight by the side of the dashing guerilla to whom she had attached herself. She soon became well known in the district which was the scene of operations of Marquinez's troops, by the appellation of La Collegiala, a name given to her from the circumstance of her youth having been spent in a college, which exists at Valladolid, for the education of the female children of noble families. She had already been engaged in several skirmishes, and had displayed a degree of courage which had gained for her the rank of an officer, and the respect and admiration of the hardy soldiers amongst whom she lived, when an opportunity occurred of proving her devotion and attachment to the man for whom she had sacrificed her fair fame and her domestic ties.

It was in the early part of the month of March. A succession of heavy rains had nearly suspended all military operations in the plains of Valladolid and Palencia. Marquinez's hussars, at this time nearly two thousand in num

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