"Do not call it unholy," replied the Jew. "Heaven will give me the power to fulfil a portion of the bitter, bitter curse that burst from my lips over my girl's dead body. No! no! by the grave of my father, by my hopes of redemption, I swear to you that I never will forget my daughter's farewell ery, and I never will forgive the fiend who murdered her !"

"But does not that very memory of your past sorrow," I asked, “bring gentler thoughts to your burning breast?"

"Gentler thoughts!" he answered: "I tell you I have had no gentle thoughts for years. All tenderness is quenched for me eternally. I know no peace, nor hope, nor rest, save there alone," pointing towards heaven with his thin hand. As he spoke these melancholy words, he bowed profoundly and passed on his weary way-a lonely wanderer! feeble as a mere child physically, yet morally so strong in purpose. A madness, a horrid longing that must be bootless, and would be immeasurably culpable if gratified, drove him on unceasingly. In the frantic hope that possessed him, he had almost forgotten the intensity of his sorrow. As I said before, a raging fire of vengeance dried up the fount of tears within his withered breast!

A few months after this adventure, I was driving through the county town of L early in the morning. There was a great crowd in the market-place, with faces upturned to where the shire gaol lifted its dark and ugly front. Following the direction of the thousand eager eyes, I soon understood the cause that had drawn the multitude together. A man had just suffered the hideous and disgusting death which, despite our strides in civilisation and our comprehension of religion, our legisla tors still venture to inflict on the felon, and to make a lesson (Heaven knows how evil in effect) to their less enlightened fellows. A quivering form was hanging from a cord in the writhing agonies of death, and from his convulsive tortures the multitude were-to learn!-to learn to respect the peace and pity the sufferings of others. From the murmur in the crowd I soon heard all particulars of the culprit. He was a Frenchman; a noted highwayman, who had had recourse to that guilty life after losing his wealth at the gambling table. He was still young; his name was Victor Armand. And so the vengeance of Heaven had, at last, been wrought, and the pursuer knew it not. The body of the polluter waved disgracefully in the wind, and the wronged old man still went his lonely way, and still would toil in pursuance of his hopeless purpose, until his sufferings should cease beneath the cold sod that his weary feet were treading. For, who shall deny this immutable truth? God reserves to himself alone the chastisement of the guilty-the retribution of the ruthless; vengeance belongs to Him-" He will repay."

204

THE UNKNOWN.

BEING THE EIGHTH CHAPTER OF "INCIDENTS OF THE ROAD; OR, PASSAGES FROM THE LIFE OF A COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER."

"STOP, coachman, stop!" exclaimed a voice, as her Majesty's mail, wheeling round by the Talbot Inn, after its detour to W, entered again the road to S

"Not a penny, you blundering clodpole; and as to the people at the inn, present my compliments, and ask if I shall recommend them to the Bible Society? A nice bunch of ye, truly; drive on, coachee; all right. To tell me," continued the speaker, as he adjusted his cloak on the seat which he had taken; "to tell me the mail had gone, that they might secure me for the night in such a cut-throat hole. Licensed to deal in liquors, indeed; licensed to deal in lies rather-informing me to the nicety of a second how long since the last coach had gone, and here I am. He that hath ears to hear let him hear, I say; but for the mellifluous notes of the guard's horn I should most unmistakably have been booked for the night, in a room where I found the winds playing hide and seek, and blue devils written in every corner. Too bad, sir, too bad!"

Sitting on the box seat, I had only obtained a glance at the new comer as he mounted the coach, occupying a place behind me; but when he had thus given vent to his spleen, and believing the "too bad, sir," to be addressed to myself, I turned to inquire into the particulars, and to look at the speaker.

He was apparently something under thirty, and good-looking, intelligence and humour speaking in his eyes together. He was well dressed, and there was, moreover, that particular style in his general appearance, which, although aided by, is still independent of figure, a well-cut coat, or tie of the cravat. His luggage consisted of a small carpet-bag, which, with a very handsomely chased silver-headed walking-stick, he carried in his hand. From some place in the neighbourhood, to the inn where we had taken him up, it appeared he had posted, with the view of being in time for the mail, and on his arrival had been solemnly assured by the people at the Talbot that the last coach had passed a few minutes before. Whilst inspecting the only spare bedroom which the place afforded, and debating in his mind which would be most desirable, the boards or the bed, for his couch when he should retire to rest, the blast of a horn had caught his ear, and he had instantly beat a retreat from the place, addressing the compound of waiter, boots, and ostler, who, requesting a fee, followed in his wake, as we have already heard.

I rarely pass five minutes in the company of any individual without forming an opinion as to his occupation, profession, and station in life; in this instance, however, my speculations were completely baffled. At one time I judged the stranger to belong to the same brotherhood as myself, and so led the conversation that ensued between us as to test the correctness of my surmise, and this soon revealed that to be right I must try again. As we proceeded, it next occurred to me that he was, in all probability, an attorney or a surgeon, practising in one of the small towns in the neighbourhood, or, not unlikely, in S, the place of our destination. This hypothesis was, however, upset by some remarks which, in the course of our colloquy, he made, showing that he belonged to neither of the professions named, as also by his intimating that he knew little or nothing of the country through which we were passing, never having visited it before.

As we approached the end of our journey I was pleased to think that my, companionship with the stranger was about to terminate, for calling to mind the scantiness of his luggage, and my conjectures of his being a respectable something having given place to a slight suspicion that he was not unlikely to belong to that Academy of Arts whose members are best known as the "swell mob," I felt not a little anxious on our arrival at Sin seeing my luggage safely deposited in the lobby of the King's Arms, under the immediate care and superintendence of Mr. Boots.

On descending from the coach and about to bid good night to the gentleman with the carpet-bag, judge my astonishment, and, with my later impressions of his character, my annoyance, on hearing him exclaim, "Oh! you are stopping here, the King's Arms; a good house, I doubt not; here, too, will I pitch my tent," and following me into the commercial room, he proceeded to ring the bell, as he said, that he might see a bed-chamber at once. For a moment I hesitated whether or not to beat a retreat from the place; it then occurred to me that I could not with justice quit a house which I had visited for years, merely because the stranger had chosen to avail himself of the accommodation it afforded. Besides, I had only to intimate to him that not being "one of us" he was not privileged to use the room into which he had followed me, and so get rid of him. But again, my suspicions might be wrong; we had been exceedingly chatty during our journeying together; he was exceedingly amusing. I might in my suspicion be doing him injustice, and by so acting deprive myself of a very agreeable companion. Whilst the subject of these speculations was up-stairs seeing a bedroom, I interrogated mine host whether or not he knew the stranger who had arrived with me by the mail. Boniface was somewhat surprised at the question: he thought that the gentleman with the little luggage was a friend of mine; and I verily believe my question was the cause of a communication being made by the landlord to all the functionaries of the establishment, to keep an eye on the silver spoons and the stranger.

I was engaged looking over a newspaper when my coach companion again entered the room. Advancing to the mirror over the fireplace, to contemplate the tie of his cravat, in a tone of voice as though he had known me as many years as we had been together hours, he addressed me with something like the following:

"Ha! deep in the Times I see-what says the Thunderer to-day?

Nothing particularly strange or new, I suppose, in foreign or domestic? By-the-way, have you ordered dinner? You have; that's well-a joint at the fire ready in ten minutes; that's better-shall be happy to join you?"

"Most happy," I returned, wondering who the devil the fellow could be. There was a frankness about him, a buoyancy and spirit in his language, and his looks quite irresistible, and by the time that we sat down to dinner I had banished all reserve, and we chatted and laughed again like old friends met together. The stranger seemed to enjoy his dinner.

"Yesterday," said he, "I dined with an antique; one of the old school -how different to this; nothing like enjoying one's ease at an inn. Of formal dinners I'm heartily sick. Are you familiar with Pope's description of one:

A solemn sacrifice performed in state;

You drink by measure, and to minutes eat.
So quick retires each flying course, you'd swear
Sancho's dread doctor and his wand were there;
In plenty starving, tantalised in state;
And complaisantly help'd to all I hate."

To prolong our sitting, after dinner I proposed desert and another bottle. What was it that my lively companion did not know? What was the subject with which he was not quite at home? What the theme around which his wit did not illumingly play? He was evidently enjoying a full flow of animal spirits; and I doubt not, that finding I appreciated the many good things he gave utterance to, was an additional inducement for him to show me the extent of the store from which he so prodigally drew.

He was a strange compound, and puzzled me not a little.

"I'm not a commercial man," said he, "but I like the commercial body and the commercial room.”

"You are aware, then," I returned with a smile, "that our table always commands the pick of the larder and the best bin."

"I know it well; but that is not the inducement, believe me; no, it is the variety of character one meets with. I have passed very agreeable hours in the commercial room, and met with many very pleasant, finehearted fellows amongst the body-some, it is true, rather the reverse, but I must confess they appear to be very few."

I need scarcely say, that I was pleased to hear my companion thus speak of our brotherhood; and I told him, in return, that he did but justice to the body generally in the remarks he had made.

And here let me take this opportunity to acknowledge the compliment paid to us by a public writer-an author who revealed his genius when he wrote "Virginius" and the "Hunchback"-James Sheridan Knowles. Here let me declare, that he has not done the body more than justice in the eulogiums passed by him on the commercial men generally, his knowledge arising from his avowed enjoyed companionship with them. Geoffrey Crayon, when in England, mingled with the commercials; he also speaks of them, but merely with a pleasant conceit, comparing them to the knights of old, and ably illustrating the simile. But since the gentle Geoffrey's first wandering in England, a

change, a very great change, has taken place in the brotherhood; and were he to write another sketch-book in this country, I am inclined to believe that Irving's fascinating pen would treat more largely of commercial travellers as a now intelligent body, seeing much of the world, and whose lives are, indeed, as full of strange adventure as the errant knights of old.

They who, guided by the general excellence of Blackwood's Magazine, may have formed an opinion of the commercial body by a series of articles which, under the title of "The Northern Circuit," some time ago appeared in its pages, would probably be surprised to hear, that however much of amusement the writer wrought out of the subject, he therein displayed complete ignorance of the customs of commercial travellers whom he selected as fit vehicles for the fictitious coining of his brain, under the semblance of true pictures of the realities of life. As far as they answered his purpose, he might just as well have chosen the members of the Bullock Smithy Tripe and Treacle Club, or the Sons of Harmony, who vegetate in the classic purlieus of Chowbent.

Had the author of the "Northern Circuit" written on the subject three parts of a century ago, his articles, even then, would have been a libel upon the class selected as a fit subject for his efforts at wit; at the present period, the least of their qualifications is that they can correctly speak their mother tongue, denied them by the author in question, who puts language into their mouths that would disgrace a dustman; and, if I am not greatly mistaken, there is not one out of every hundred of the thirty thousand commercial travellers in Great Britain who is not sufficiently conversant with letters to detect the great inferiority of the papers alluded to, as compared with the general contents of Blackwood. Indeed, I am inclined to believe the articles were admitted to that able publication through an error, or that great Christopher had such a fit of the gout at the time, that, had they been submitted to him, he would have cried "Pass" to the lucubrations of Dubbs the Dustman.

To return to the Unknown.

Our wine and filberts finished, my companion proposed a walk, to which I assented. He took my arm with all the familiarity of an old acquaintance, and forth into the streets of S we sallied. As we strolled through the busy thoroughfares, my companion seemed to have entered on a field in which his conversational powers were peculiarly fitted for display. There was point and originality in all his observations; an occasional vein of sarcasm revealing itself in his commentaries on men and things which, together with dottings of philosophical speculation amidst his hilarity, surprised me not a little, and left me more than ever puzzled with the Unknown.

Well do I remember how heartily I laughed at the remarks which he made on a big six-foot fellow, who, in a confectioner's shop, we saw handing some of the minute sweets to a little child, which could scarce reach the top of the counter with the equivalent; and also how readily I joined him in the sudden change of his manner, when, a little after, in a tone of sympathy, he stopped to express his pity for a poor pale-faced woman who was staggering towards us beneath a heavy burden, with a little half-starved urchin walking by her side, and holding on by her dress. Although regarding my companion with a favourable eye, knowing