buted, but the details were left to my discretion, and to the guidance of circumstances as they should happen to emerge from the various enquiries which it would become necessary to set on foot. This first document I soon laid aside, both because I found that its provisions were dependant for their meaning upon the second, and because to this second document I looked with confidence for a solution of many mysteries of the profound sadness which had, from the first of my acquaintance with him, possessed a man so gorgeously endowed as the favourite of nature and fortune-of his motives for huddling up, in a clandestine manner, that connexion which formed the glory of his life and possibly (but then I hesitated) of the late unintelligible murders, which still lay under as profound a cloud as ever. Much of this would be unveiled-all might be: and there and then, with the corpse lying beside me of the gifted and mysterious writer, I seated myself, and read the following statement:

"March 26, 1817.

My trial is finished; my conscience, my duty, my honour, are liberated; my warfare is accomplished.' Margaret, my innocent young wife, I have seen for the last time. Her, the crown that might have been of my earthly felicityher, the one temptation to put aside the bitter cup which awaited me-her, sole seductress (oh, innocent seductress!) from the stern duties which my fate had imposed upon me-her, even her, I have sacrificed.

"Before I go, partly lest the innocent should be brought into question for acts almost exclusively mine, but still more lest the lesson and the warning which God, by my hand, has written in blood upon your guilty walls, should perish for want of its authentic exposition, hear my last dying avowal, that the murders which have desolated so many families within your walls, and made the household hearth no sanctuary, age no charter of protection, are all due originally to my head, if not always to my hand, as the minister of a dreadful retribution.

"That account of my history, and my prospects, which you received from the Russian diplomatist, amongst some errors of little importance, is essentially correct. My father was not so immediately connected with English

blood as is there represented. However, it is true that he claimed descent from an English family of even higher distinction than that which is assigned in the Russian statement. He was proud of this English descent, and the more so, as the war with Revolutionary France brought out more prominently than ever the moral and civil grandeur of England. This pride was generous, but it was imprudent in his situation; his immediate progenitors had been settled in Italy-at Rome first, but latterly at Milan; and his whole property, large and scattered, came, by the progress of the Revolution, to stand under French domination. Many spoliations he suffered; but still he was too rich to be seriously injured. But he foresaw, in the progress of events, still greater perils menacing his most capital resources. Many of the states or princes in Italy were deeply in his debt; and in the great convulsions which threatened his country, he saw that both the contending parties would find a colourable excuse for absolving themselves from engagements which pressed unpleasantly upon their finances. In this embarrassment he formed an intimacy with a French officer of high rank and high principle. My father's friend saw his danger, and advised him to enter the French service. In his younger days, my father had served extensively under many princes, and had found in every other military service a spirit of honour governing the conduct of the officers; here only, and for the first time, he found ruffian manners and universal rapacity. He could not draw his sword in company with such men, nor in such a cause. But at length, under the pressure of necessity, he accepted (or rather bought with an immense bribe) the place of a commissary to the French forces in Italy. With this one resource, eventually he succeeded in making good the whole of his public claims upon the Italian States. These vast sums he remitted, through various channels, to England, where he became a proprietor in the funds to an immense amount. Incautiously, however, something of this transpired, and the result was doubly unfortunate; for, whilst his intentions were thus made known as finally pointing to England, which of itself made him an object of hatred and suspicion, it also diminished his means of bribery. These considerations, along with

another, made some French officers of high rank and influence the bitter enemies of my father. My mother, whom he had married when holding a brigadier-general's commission in the Austrian service, was, by birth and by religion, a Jewess. She was of exquisite beauty, and had been sought in Morganatic marriage by an archduke of the Austrian family; but she had relied upon this plea, that hers was the purest and noblest blood amongst all Jewish families; that her family traced themselves, by tradition and a vast series of attestations, under the hands of the Jewish highpriests, to the Maccabees, and to the royal houses of Judea; and that for her it would be a degradation to accept even of a sovereign prince on the terms of such marriage. This was no vain pretension of ostentatious vanity. It was one which had been admitted as valid for time immemorial in Transylvania and adjacent countries, where my mother's family were rich and honoured, and took their seat amongst the dignitaries of the land. The French officers I have alluded to, without capacity for any thing so dignified as a deep passion, but merely in pursuit of a vagrant fancy that would, on the next day, have given place to another equally fleeting, had dared to insult my mother with proposals the most licentious-proposals as much below her rank and birth, as, at any rate, they would have been below her dignity of mind and her purity. These she had communicated to my father, who bitterly resented the chains of subordination which tied up his hands from avenging his inju ries. Still his eye told a tale which his superiors could brook as little as they could the disdainful neglect of his wife. More than one had been concerned in the injuries to my father and mother; more than one were interested in obtaining revenge. Things could be done in German towns, and by favour of old German laws or usages, which even in France could not have been tolerated. This my father's enemies well knew, but this my father also knew; and he endeavoured to lay down his office of commissary. That, however, was a favour which he could not obtain. He was compelled to serve on the German campaign then commencing, and on the subsequent one of Friedland and Eylau. Here he was caught in some one of the snares

laid for him; first trepanned into an act which violated some rule of the service; and then provoked into a breach of discipline against the general officer who had thus trepanned him. Now was the long-sought opportunity gained, and in that very quarter of Germany best fitted for improving it. My father was thrown into prison in your city, subjected to the atrocious oppression of your jailer, and the more detestable oppression of your local laws. The charges against him were thought even to affect his life, and he was humbled into suing for permission to send for his wife and children. Already, to his proud spirit, it was punishment enough that he should be reduced to sue for favour to one of his bitterest foes. But it was no part of their plan to refuse that. By way of expediting my mother's arrival, a military courier, with every facility for the journey, was forwarded to her without delay. My mother, her two daughters, and myself, were then residing in Venice. I had, through the aid of my father's connexions in Austria, been appointed in the imperial service, and held a high commission for my age. But on my father's marching northwards with the French army, I had been recalled as an indispensable support to my mother. Not that my years could have made me such, for I had barely accomplished my twelfth year; but my premature growth, and my military station, had given me considerable knowledge of the world and presence of mind.

"Our journey I pass over; but as I approach your city, that sepulchre of honour and happiness to my poor family, my heart beats with frantic emotions. Never do I see that venerable dome of your minster from the forest, but I curse its form which reminds me of what we then surveyed for many a mile as we traversed the forest. For leagues before we approached the city, this object lay before us in relief upon the frosty blue sky; and still it seemed never to increase. Such was the complaint of my little sister Mariamne. Most innocent child! would that it never had increased for thy eyes, but remained for ever at a distance! That same hour began the series of monstrous indignities which terminated the career of my ill-fated family. As we drew up to the city gates, the officer who inspected the passports, finding my mother and sisters described

as Jewesses, which in my mother's ears (reared in a region where Jews are not dishonoured) always sounded a title of distinction, summoned a subordinate agent, who in coarse terms demanded his toll. We presumed this to be a road-tax for the carriage and horses, but we were quickly undeceived; a small sum was demanded for each of my sisters and my mother, as for so many head of eattle. I, fancying some mistake, spoke to the man temperately, and, to do him justice, he did not seem desirous of insulting us; but he produced a printed board, on which, along with the vilest animals, Jews and Jewesses were rated at so much a head. Whilst we were debating the point, the officers of the gate wore a sneering smile upon their faces; the postilions were laughing together; and this, too, in the presence of three creatures whose exquisite beauty in different styles, agreeably to their different ages, would have caused noblemen to have fallen down and worshipped. My mother, who had never yet met with any flagrant insult on account of her national distinctions, was too much shocked to be capable of speaking. I whispered to her a few words, recalling her to her native dignity of mind, paid the money, and we drove to the prison. But the hour was past at which we could be admitted, and, as Jewesses, my mother and sisters could not be allowed to stay in the city; they were to go into the Jewish quarter, a part of the suburb set apart for Jews, in which it was scarcely possible to obtain alodging tolerably clean. My father, on the next day, we found, to our hor. ror, at the point of death. To my mother he did not tell the worst of what he had endured. To me he told, that, driven to madness by the insults offered to him, he had upbraided the courtmartial with their corrupt propensities, and had even mentioned that overtures had been made to him for quashing the proceedings in return for a sum of two millions of francs; and that his sole reason for not entertaining the proposal was his distrust of those who made it. They would have taken my money,' said he, and then found a pretext for putting me to deaththat I might tell no secrets.' This was too near the truth to be tolerated; in concert with the local authorities, the military enemies of my father conspired against him; witnesses were

suborned; and, finally, under some antiquated law of the place, he was subjected, in secret, to a mode of torture which still lingers in the east of Europe.

"He sank under the torture and the degradation. I, too, thouglitlessly

but by a natural movement of filial indignation-suffered the truth to escape me in conversing with my mo ther. And she; but I will preserve the regular succession of things. My father died but he had taken such measures, in concert with me, that his enemies should never benefit by his property. Mean-time my mother and sisters had closed my father's eyes; had attended his remains to the grave; and in every act connected with this last sad rite, had met with insults aud degradations too mighty for human patience. My mother, now become incapable of self-command, in the fury of her righteous grief, publicly and in court denounced the conduct of the magistracy; taxed some of them with the vilest proposals to herself; taxed them as a body with having used instruments of torture upon my father; and finally, accused them of collusion with the French military oppressors of the district. This last was a charge under which they quailed, for by that time the French had made themselves odious to all who retained a spark of patriotic feeling. My heart sank within me when I looked up at the bench, this tribunal of tyrants, all purple or livid with rage; when I looked at them alternately and at my noble mother with her weeping daughtersthese so powerless, those so basely vindictive, and locally so omnipotent. Willingly I would have sacrificed all my wealth for a simple permission to quit this infernal city with my poor female relations, safe and undishonoured. But far other were the intentions of that incensed magistracy. My mother was arrested, charged with some offence equal to petty treason, or scandalum magnatum, or the sowing of sedition : and though what she said was true, where, alas! was she to look for evidence? Here was seen the want of gentlemen. Gentlemen, had they been even equally tyrannical, would have recoiled with shame from taking vengeance on a woman. And what a vengeance! Oh, heavenly powers! that I should live to mention such a thing! Man that is born of woman, to inflict upon woman personal scourging on

the bare back, and through the streets at noonday! Even for Christian women, the punishment was severe which the laws assigned to the offence in question. But for Jewesses, by one of the ancient laws against that persecuted people, far heavier and more degrading punishments were annexed to almost every offence. What else could be looked for in a city which welcomed its Jewish guests by valuing them at its gates as brute beasts? Sentence was passed, and the punishment was to be inflicted on two separate days, with an interval between each; doubtless to prolong the tortures of mind, but under a vile pretence of alleviating the physical torture. Three days after would come the first day of punishment. My mother spent the time in reading her native Scriptures; she spent it in prayer and in musing; whilst her daughters clung and wept around her day and night, -grovelling on the ground at the feet of any people in authority that entered their mother's cell. That same interval-how was it passed by me? Now mark, my friend. Every man in office, or that could be presumed to bear the slightest influence, every wife, mother, sister, daughter of such men, I besieged morning, noon, and night. I wearied them with my supplications. I humbled myself to the dust; I, the haughtiest of God's creatures, knelt and prayed to them for the sake of my mother. I besought them that I might undergo the punishment ten times over in her stead. And once or twice I did obtain the encouragement of a few natural tears-given more, however, as I was told, to my piety than to my mother's deserts. But rarely was I heard out with patience; and from some houses repelled with personal indignities. The day came : I saw my mother half undressed by the base officials: I heard the prison gates expand: I heard the trumpets of the magistracy sound. She had warned me what to do; I had warned myself. Would I sacrifice a retribution sacred and comprehensive, for the momentary triumph over an individual? If not, let me forbear to look out of doors: for I felt that in the self-same moment in which I saw the dog of an executioner raise his accursed hand against my mother, swifter than the lightning would my dagger search his heart. When I heard the roar of the cruel mob, I paused; endured; forbore. I

stole out by by-lanes of the city from my poor exhausted sisters, whom I left sleeping in each other's innocent arms, into the forest. There I listened to the shouting populace: there even I fancied that I could trace my poor mother's route by the course of the triumphant cries. There, even then, even then, I made-oh! silent forest, thou heardst me when I made-a vow that I have kept too faithfully. Mother, thou art avenged sleep, daughter of Jerusalem! For at length the oppressor sleeps with thee. And thy poor son has paid, in discharge of his vow, the forfeit of his own happiness, of a Paradise opening upon earth, of a heart as innocent as thine, and a face as fair.

:

"I returned, and found my mother returned: she slept by starts, but she was feverish and agitated; and when she awoke and first saw me, she blushed as if I could think that real degradation had settled upon her. Then it was that I told her of my VOW. Her eyes were lambent with fierce light for a moment; but, when I went on more eagerly to speak of my hopes and projects, she called me to her, kissed me, and whispered

Oh, not so, my son: think not of me: think not of vengeance, think only of poor Berenice and Mariamne.' Ay, that thought was startling. Yet this magnanimous and forbearing mother, as I knew by the report of our one faithful female servant, had, in the morning, during her bitter trial, behaved as might have become a daughter of Judas Maccabæus: she had looked serenely upon the vile mob, and awed even them by her serenity; she had disdained to utter a shriek when the cruel lash fell upon her fair skin. There is a point that makes the triumph over natural feelings of pain easy or not easy-the degree in which we count upon the sympathy of the by-standers. My mother had it not in the beginning; but long before the end her celestial beauty, the divinity of injured innocence, the pleading of common womanhood in the minds of the lowest class, and the reaction of manly feeling in the men, had worked a great change in the mob. Some began now to threaten those who had been active in insulting her: the silence of awe and respect succeeded to noise and uproar; and feelings which they scarcely understood mastered the rude rabble as they witnessed

more and more the patient fortitude of the sufferer. Menaces began to rise towards the executioner. Things wore such an aspect that the magistrates put a sudden end to the scene.

"That day we received permission to go home to our poor house in the Jewish quarter. I know not whether you are learned enough in Jewish usages to be aware, that in every Jewish house, where old traditions are kept up, there is one room consecrated to confusion; a room always locked up and sequestered from vulgar use, except on occasions of memorable affliction, where every thing is purposely in disorder-broken-shattered-mutilated, to typify, by symbols appalling to the eye, that desolation which has so long trampled on Jerusalem, and the ravages of the boar within the vineyards of Judea. My mother, as a Hebrew princess, maintained all traditional customs; even in this wretched suburb she had her 'chamber of desolation.' There it was that I and my sisters heard her last words. The rest of her sentence was to be carried into effect within a week. She, mean-time, had disdained to utter any word of fear; but that energy of selfcontrol had made the suffering but the more bitter. Fever and dreadful agitation had succeeded. Her dreams showed sufficiently to us, who watched her couch, that terror for the future mingled with the sense of degradation for the past. Nature asserted her rights. But the more she shrank. from the suffering, the more did she proclaim how severe it had been, and consequently how noble the self-conquest. Yet, as her weakness increased, so did her terror; until I besought her to take comfort, assuring her that, in case any attempt should be made to force her out again to public exposure, I would kill the man who came to execute the order-that we would all die together and there would be a common end to her injuries and her fears. She was reassured by what I told her of my belief that no future attempt would be made upon her. She slept more tranquilly; but her fever increased; and slowly she slept away into the everlasting sleep which knows of no to-morrow.

"Here came a crisis in my fate. Should I stay and attempt to protect my sisters? But, alas! what power had I to do so amongst our enemies? Rachael and I consulted; and many a scheme we

This

Nor

planned. Even whilst we consulted, and the very night after my mother had been committed to the Jewish burying-ground, came an officer, bearing an order for me to repair to Vienna. Some officer in the French army having watched the transaction respecting my parents, was filled with shame and grief. He wrote a state. ment of the whole to an Austrian officer of rank, my father's friend, who obtained from the Emperor an order, claiming me as a page of his own, and an officer in the household service. Oh, Heavens! what a neglect that it did not include my sisters! However, the next best thing was that I should use my influence at the imperial court to get them passed to Vienna. I did, to the utmost of my power. But seven months elapsed before I saw the Emperor. If my applications ever met his eye he might readily suppose that your city, my friend, was as safe a place as another for my sisters. did I myself know all its dangers. At length, with the Emperor's leave of absence, I returned. And what did I find? Eight months had passed, and the faithful Rachael had died. The poor sisters, clinging together, but now utterly bereft of friends, knew not which way to turn. In this abandonment they fell into the insidious hands of the ruffian jailer. My eldest sister, Berenice, the stateliest and noblest of beauties, had attracted this ruffian's admiration whilst she was in the prison with her mother. And when I returned to your city, armed with the imperial passports for all, I found that Berenice had died in the villain's custody: nor could I obtain any thing beyond a legal certificate of her death. And finally, the blooming laughing Mariamne, she also had died-and of affliction for the loss of her sister. You, my friend, had been absent upon your travels during the calamitous history I have recited. You had seen neither my father nor my mother. But you came in time to take under your protection, from the abhorred wretch the jailer, my little broken-hearted Mariamne. And when sometimes you fancied that you had seen me under other circumstances, in her it was, my dear friend, and in her features that you saw mine.

"Now was the world a desert to me. I cared little, in the way of love, which way I turned. But in the way of ha tred I cared every thing. I trans