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leaned with her elbow upon a small table of or-moulu, and her position was so taken that I seated myself necessarily in a strong light, while her features were in shadow. Still the light was sufficient to show me the expression of her countenance. She was a woman apparently about forty-five, of noble physiognomy, and a peculiar fulness of the eyelids -something like to which I thought I remembered to have seen in a portrait of a young girl, many years before. The resemblance troubled me somewhat."You will pardon me this freedom," said the Baroness, with forced composure, "when I tell you that-a friend-whom I have mourned twenty-five years-seems present to me when you speak.” I was silent, for I knew not what to say. The Baroness shaded her eyes with her hand, and sat silent for a few moments, gazing at me. "You are not like him in a single feature," she resumed, " yet the expression of your face, strangely, very strangely, is the same. darker-slighter." "Of my age?" I enquired, to break my own silence. For there was something in her voice which gave me the sensation of a voice heard in a dream. "O God! that voice! that voice!" she exclaimed wildly, burying her face in her hands, and giving way to a passionate burst of tears." Rodolph," she resumed, recovering herself with a strong effort, "Rodolph died with the promise on his lips that death should not divide us. And I have seen him! Not in dreams-not in reverie. Not at times when my fancy could delude me. I have seen him suddenly before me in the street-in Vienna-here-at home at noonday-for minutes together, gazing on me. It is more in latter years that I have been visited by him; and a hope has latterly sprung into being in my heartI know not how-that in person, palpable and breathing, I should again hold converse with him-fold him living to my bosom. Pardon me! You will think me mad!" I might well pardon her; for as she talked, a vague sense of familiarity with her voice, a memory, powerful, though indistinct, of having before dwelt on those majestic features, an impulse of tearful passionateness to rush to her embrace, wellnigh overpowered me. She turned to me again. "You are an artist ?" she said, enquiringly. "No; though intended for one, I believe, by nature." "And you were born in the year -?" 66 I was!" With a scream she added the day of my birth, and, waiting an instant for my assent, dropped to the floor, and clung convulsively and weeping to my knees. "Rodolph! Rodolph!" she murmured faintly, as her long grey tresses fell over her shoulders, and her head dropped insensible upon her breast. Her cry had been heard, and several persons entered the room. I rushed out of doors. I had need to be in darkness and alone.

It was an hour after midnight when I re-entered my hotel. A chasseur stood sentry at the door of my apartment with a letter in his hand. He called me by name, gave me his missive, and disappeared. It was from the baroness, and ran thus:

"You did not retire from me to sleep. This letter will find you waking. And I must write, for my heart and brain are overflowing.

"Shall I write to you as a stranger?-you whom I have strained so often to my bosom-you whom I have loved and still love with the utmost idolatry of mortal passion-you who have once given me the

soul that, like a gem long lost, is found again, but in a newer casket! Mine still-for did we not swear to love for ever!

"But I am taking counsel of my own heart only. You may still be unconvinced. You may think that a few singular coincidences have driven me mad. You may think that though born in the same hour that my Rodolph died, possessing the same voice, the same countenance, the same gifts-though by irresistible consciousness I know you to be him -my lost lover returned in another body to life-you may still think the evidence incomplete-you may, perhaps, even now, be smiling in pity at my delusion. Indulge me one moment.

"The Rodolph Isenberg whom I lost possessed a faculty of mind, which, if you are he, answers with the voice of an angel to my appeal. In that soul resided, and wherever it be, must now reside, the singular power.

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[The reader must be content with my omission of this fragment of the letter. It contained a secret never before clothed in language-a secret that will die with me, unless betrayed by what indeed it may lead to-madness! As I saw it in writing-defined accurately and inevitably in the words of another-I felt as if the innermost chamber of my soul was suddenly laid open to the day-I abandoned doubt-I answered to the name by which she called me-I believed in the previous existence of which my whole life, no less than these extraordinary circumstances, had furnished me with repeated evidence. But to resume the letter.]

"And now that we know each other again-now that I can call you by name, as in the past, and be sure that your inmost consciousness must reply a new terror seizes me! Your soul comes back, youthfully and newly clad, while mine, though of unfading freshness and youthfulness within, shows to your eye the same outer garment, grown dull with mourning, and faded with the wear of time. Am I grown distasteful?

Is it with the sight only of this new body that you look upon me? Rodolph-spirit that was my devoted and passionate admirer! soul that was sworn to me for ever!-Am I-the same Margaret, refound and recognised-grown repulsive? O God! what a bitter answer would this be to my prayers for your return to me!

"I will trust in Him whose benign goodness smiles upon fidelity in love. I will prepare a fitter meeting for two who parted as lovers. You shall not see me again in the house of a stranger, and in a mourning attire. When this letter is written, I will depart at once for the scene of our love. I hear my horses already in the court-yard, and while you read this I am speeding swiftly home. The bridal dress you were secretly shown the day before death came between us is still freshly kept. The room where we sat the bowers by the stream-the walks where we projected our sweet promise of a future-they shall all be made ready. They shall be as they were! And I-O Rodolph! I shall be the same. My heart is not grown old, Rodolph! Believe me, I am unchanged in soul! And I will strive to be-I will strive to look-God help me to look and be—as of yore!'

"Farewell now! I leave horses and servants to wait on you till I send to bring you to me. Alas, for any delay! but we will pass this life

and all other time together. We have seen that a vow of eternal union may be kept that death cannot divide those who will to love for ever! Farewell now! MARGARET."

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Such are the pictures of European society which this Free Penciller has sketched. Of the truth of his descriptions of his own country and countrymen, it is not for us to speak. We shall only mention, that, in characterising them, he remarks that they are much more French than English in many of their qualities. They are,' says he, in dressing, dancing, congregating, in chivalry to women, facility of adaptation to new circumstances, elasticity of recuperation from trouble,' (a most delicious expression!) in complexion and figure, very French!' Had the 'Dashes' been the work of a native genius, we might have hinted, perhaps, some slight occasional objections, pointed out a very few blunders, questioned, very diffidently, the great modesty of some statements, and the truth and accuracy of others. But, as the case stands, we feel that we are bound to excuse much to a young republican visiting a monarchical country for the first time.'

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ART. VIII.-1. The Novels and Miscellaneous Works of Daniel De Foe; with a Biographical Memoir of the Author, Literary Prefaces to the various pieces, and illustrative Notes; including all contained in the Edition attributed to the late Sir Walter Scott, with considerable additions. 20 vols. 8vo. Oxford:

1842.

2. The Works of Daniel De Foe; with a Memoir of his Life and Writings. By WILLIAM HAZLITT, jun. 3 vols. Royal 8vo. London: 1843.

IT T is with De Foe dead, as it was with De Foe living. He stands apart from the circle of the reigning wits of his time. Along with their names, his name is not called over. What in this respect was the fashion formerly, is the fashion still; and whether sought for in the Histories of Smollett or of Lord Mahon, his niche is vacant. He is to be found, if at all, aloof from his great contemporaries. His life, to be fairly written, should be written as the Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Daniel De Foe, who lived above Seventy Years all ' alone, in the Island of Great Britain.'

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He was born much about the time of that year of grace, 1661, when Mr Pepys and his wife, walking in Whitehall Gardens,

saw the finest smocks and linen petticoats of my Lady Castle'maine, laced with rich lace at the bottom,' that ever they saw it did me good to look at them,' adds the worthy man. There was but little in those days to do any body good. The people, drunk with the orgies of the Restoration, rejoiced in the gay dissoluteness of the court. To be a bad Englishman and a worse Christian, was to be a good Protestant and a loyal subject. Sheldon governed the Church, and Clarendon the State; the Bishop having no better charity than to bring a Presbyterian preacher into contempt, and the Chancellor no better wisdom than to reduce him to beggary. While Sheldon entertained his dinner-table with caricatures of a dissenting minister's sermon, 'till,' says one of his guests, it made us all burst;' Clarendon was drawing up that Act of Uniformity, by which, in one day, he threw out three thousand ministers from the benefices they held.

This was in 1662; and the beginning of that system of religious persecution, under which, with God's blessing, the better part of the English character reawakened, and the hardy virtues of Dissent struck root and flourished. Up to this time, vast numbers of the Presbyterians, strongly attached to Monarchy, desired but a reasonable settlement of Episcopacy; and would have given in their adherence to any moderate system. The hope of such a compromise was now rudely closed. In 1663 the Conventicle Act was passed, punishing with transportation a third offence of attendance on any worship but that of the Church; and while the plague was raging, two years after, the Oxford Act banished five miles from any corporate town all who should refuse a certain oath, which no Nonconformist could honestly take. Secret, stealthy worship was the resource left; and other things throve in secret with it, which would less have prospered openly. Substantial citizens, wealthy tradesmen, even gossiping Secretaries to the Admiralty, began to find other employment than the criticism of Lady Castlemaine's lace, or admiration of Mistress Nell Gwynne's linen. It appeared to be dawning on them at last, that they were really living in the midst of infamy and baseness; that buffoons and courtesans were their rulers; that defeat and disgrace were their portion; that a Dutch fleet was riding in their Channel, and a perjured and pensioned Popish despot sitting on their Throne.

The indulgence granted to Dissenters in the year of the Dutch war, (the previous year had been one of fierce persecution,) opened, among other meeting-houses, that of Little St Helen's, Bishopsgate; where the Rev. Dr Annesley, ejected from his living of Cripplegate by the Act of Uniformity, administered his

godly lessons. Under him there sate, in that congregation of carnest listeners, the family of a wealthy butcher of St Giles, Cripplegate; and the worthy minister would stop approvingly, as he passed the seats of Mr Foe, to speak to that bright-eyed lad of eleven, by name Daniel, whose activity and zeal in the good cause were already such, that, in fear their Popish governors might steal away their printed Bibles, he had worked like a horse till he had written out the whole Pentateuch.' For

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the gleam of liberty to Dissenters had been but a veil for the like indulgence to Papists; and it was known at this very time, that the high-minded Richard Baxter had refused a bribe of £50 a year, to give in his public approval of these questionable favours of the crown.

Mr James Foe seems to have been proud of his son Daniel. He gave him the best education which a Dissenter had it in his power to give. He sent him to the then famous Academy at Newington Green, kept by Mr Charles Morton, an excellent Oxford scholar, and a man of various and large ability; whom Harvard College in New England afterwards chose for vicepresident, when driven by ecclesiastical persecution to find a home beyond the Atlantic. Here the lad was put through a course of theology; and was set to study the rudiments of political science. These things Mr Morton reckoned to be a part of education. He also acquired a competent knowledge of mathematics and natural philosophy; of logic, geography, and history; and when he left the school, was reasonably accomplished in Latin and Greek, and in French and Italian. He had made himself known, too, as a 'boxing English boy;' who never struck his enemy when he was down. All this he recounted with no immodest or unmanly pride, when assailed in after life for his mean Dissenter's education; and he added that there was a fifth language, beside those recounted, in which it had been Mr Morton's endeavour to practise and improve his scholars. He read all his lectures; gave all his systems, whether of philosophy or divinity; and had all his declaimings and dissertations; in English. We were not critics in the Greek and Hebrew, perfect in languages, and perfectly ignorant, if that term may be allowed, of our mother tongue. We were 'not destitute of languages, but we were made masters of English; and more of us excelled in that particular, than of any 'school at that time.'

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So passed the youth of Daniel Foe, in what may be well accounted a vigorous and healthy English training. With sharp and strong faculties, with early and active zeal, he looked out from his honest father's home and his liberal teacher's study,

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