had, however, the melancholy satisfaction to find that this was not the case: Elizabeth was soon at the prison, where in the arms of her lover, she endeavoured to whisper the comfort she herself so much needed. But the "gentle reader," as in all such cases, is requested to imagine the grief of a young couple under such heavy affliction The next day came, and a priest was ushered into Karl's prison. There was a something in the countenance of the ecclesiastic which the prisoner did not fancy his grey, sharp, twinkling eye had more of cunning than of sanctity in it, and his whole manner was unprepossessing. His subsequent advice corroberated the prisoner's suspicions. : "Karl Wynck" said the priest, "you are a lost man unless you make a bold effort for your deliverance." "That is too true, father; but I see no means of escaping from this dungeon, from which I shall soon be dragged to the scaffold. Oh! 't is terrible to have one's name pronounced with horror by the good, and scoffed at by the wicked; but I die innocent of murder." "This is but idle prating, my son," interrupted the priest; " will you profit by my advice, or will you die that death you dread so much?" "I would fain hear your counsel, father." "Hearken then," rejoined the priest; "the keeper of the gaol has a son who was this day married, and the wedding will be kept in the rooms above: an hour before midnight every one will be engaged in the revel, except the man whose duty it is to see all safe. When he enters your dungeon, use this knife resolutely-why, what ails thee, boy?" cried the priest, perceiving Karl's already pallid features become still paler. "Oh father!" said the poor prisoner, "counsel me not thus; that would indeed be murder-I cannot do it. "Fool!" muttered his adviser as his thin lip curled with scorn: "is it for such as thee to judge of sin or virtue? hast thou not heard how Moses slew the Egyptian who smote his countryman? was that"-Karl heard no more. Begone! (he cried) begone, tempter! I have heard how the blessed Saint Anthony was beset by devils who affected sanctity, and I begin to fear that thou art one of that hellish legion. Begone, I say!" The priest (or devil, if you please) smiled another dark smile, and his eyes gleamed like bright coals of fire. "Idiot," he muttered, as he turned upon his heel, "thou art lost! Perish in thine own obstinacy! "" Karl heard the door close upon his visiter, and falling on his knees, uttered a prayer to heaven. The stranger who had been killed was not known to any of the town's-people. He had that day arrived at Amsterdam, and from his appearance was judged to be a gentleman. Karl was put upon his trial, and the evidence against him being deemed conclusive, he was condemned to die. In vain did he urge his innocence; in vain did he repeat his story of the combat between the two cavaliers, and how the slayer had proeured the weapon with which he had destroyed his antagonist; and equally vain were the numerous testimonials of good conduct. and sobriety which his neighbours tendered in his favour. Poor Karl was condemned to die; and though pitied by many, was thought deserving the fate to which he had doomed another. The day of execution arrived, and Karl took leave of his dear Elizabeth with a bursting heart; but he resolved to meet death like a man, and walked with a firm step to the place of death. Ascending the scaffold, he looked with a hurried glance upon the vast crowd which had assembled to see him die. A body of the town guard surrounded the scaffold to keep off the throng which completely filled the square, while every window and house-top was occupied by the burghers and their families. The melancholy sound of the death-bell mingled with the murmur of the immense crowd, from which Karl endeavoured to avert his face; but as he did so, his eye rested on the athletic figure and stern features of the executioner, whose brawny arms, bared to the elbows, reposed on his huge two-handed sword, which, already unsheathed, gleamed brightly in the morning's sun. Alas! thought Karl, what preparation for the death of a poor tailor! A priest unobserved, ascended the scaffold and knelt by his side: it was he who had visited him in prison. "Karl Wynck," whispered the tempter, "I can save thee even now." "How?" murmured the tailor, his blood curdling at the sound of that voice. "Acknowledge thyself mine, and I will transport thee in an instant, to some far distant country." Karl started on his feet so suddenly, that the guards grasped their halberts, supposing he meditated an escape, but he had no such intention. "Avaunt, fiend!" he cried, shudder ing violently, "remember the reproof which our blessed Lord gave thee of old, Sathanas, avaunt!" The headsman's assistant here advanced, and bade Karl prepare himself. The sufferer observed that he was ready, and begged that the false priest might be dismissed; but when they turned to bid him begone, he was nowhere to be seen. Karl knelt again to receive the fatal blow; the headsman approached and raised his huge sword, but suddenly withheld the blow, for a thousand voices bade him desist, and a horseman was seen to urge his foaming steed through the dense crowd. "Hold! hold!" cried the new comer, "for Jesu's sake forbear-stay the execution. I am the slayer, and that poor man is innocent of murder!" It was, indeed, the cavalier who had possessed himself of Karl's sword; and the poor youth, overcome by this unexpected rescue, fell senseless into the arms of the executioner. "Sir,” said the cavalier, surrendering himself to the officer of the town-guard, "the crime is mine, if crime it be to destroy one of the most barefaced villains that ever scourged society. I am gentleman of Leghorn, my name is Bernardo Strozzi: the man I slew was of а good family, but he robbed me of all I valued in this world, and I resolved to seek him wherever he fled. Chance led me to your city, and walking out without my sword, I met my foe in the street. He would have avoided me, but I resolved to possess myself of even a knife, so that might destroy him. I luckily seized a sword in the house of this poor man; vengeance nerved my arm, and he fell, almost as soon as our weapons had crossed. The combat was fair and equal. I left Amsterdam immediately; and at the next town, learnt that another had been condemned for the slayer. The saints be praised that my good steed bore me here in time!" Crowds pressed around Karl to congratulate him upon his escape from death, while the cavalier placed in his hands a purse well filled with gold. 66 Friend," said he, "take this and be happy. I regret the misery you have suffered, but this may make you some amends." Our tale is ended; but as some may need a postscript, we add for their especial information, that Karl, with such an acquisition of wealth, forgot the suffering he had endured, and was the happiest man in Holland. He married his dear Fane of th' unworshipped fiend of storm! Sole relic, and chief boast of all,— * Supposed to have been built on the site of an ancient temple to Jupiter Taranis; so called from the horse, Taran, signifying thunder. 7. The sculptured chestnut's Norman roof, With sublime acclaims hath trembled, And I have sate in Moray's chair, Oh, storied house! with claims like thine, Note.-Tarnaway was a magnificent old castle, or rather palace, built in all the freakish splendour of the Flemish or Burgundian style of architecture. In its vast hall (built by Thomas Randolf, the nephew of Bruce), the puissant Earls of Moray used to assemble the inferior barons, and they, in turn, were attended by the several ranks of their house and maintenance, till a puisne parliament was displayed in all its ceremony and importance-the great feudal superior being the comes or earl, who occupied an elevated seat or siege, as it was termed, in the centre of the dais; the minor barons, &c. being duly ranked on each side. It would hold upwards of a thousand men fully armed. This illustrious and venerable fabric has of late years been pulled down, with the sole exception of the hall; and the most execrable mass of deformities that ever teemed from builder's brain has arisen in its stead. But it was built only to be deserted, so it did not much matter! It stands about four miles to the north of Forres. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. ECCENTRICITIES OF THE AUTHOR OF IN the life of Mrs. Siddons, by the poet Campbell, there is an amusing account of the author of Doctor Syntax, which we here place before our readers. It is not a solitary instance of a man of genius playing the vagabond; but Combe was no ordinary performer, as the following extract will demonstrate. "Mr. Combe's history is not less remarkable for the recklessness of his early days than for the industry of his maturer age, and the late period of life at which he attracted popularity_by_his talents. He was the nephew of a Mr. Alexander, an alderman of the city of London; and, as he was sent first to Eton College, and afterwards to Oxford, it may be inferred that his parents were in good circumstances. His uncle left him sixteen thousand pounds. On the acquisition of this fortune he entered himself of the Temple, and in due time was called to the bar. On one occasion he even distinguished himself before the Lord Chancellor Nottingham. But his ambition was to shine as a man of fashion, and he paid little attention to the law. Whilst at the Temple, his courtly dress, his handsome liveries, and, it may be added, his tall stature and fine appearance, procured him the appellation of Duke Combe. Some of the most exclusive ladies of fashion had instituted a society which was called the Coterie, to which gentlemen were admitted as visitors. Among this favoured number was the Duke Combe. One evening, Lady Archer, who was a beautiful woman, too fond of gaudy colours, and who had her face always lavishly rouged, was sitting in the Coterie, when Lord Lyttleton, the graceless son of an estimable peer, entered the room evidently intoxicated, and stood before Lady Archer for several minutes with his eyes fixed on her. but The lady manifested great indignation, and asked why he thus annoyed her. "I have been thinking," said Lord Lyttleton, "what I can compare you to, in your gaudy colouring, and you give me no idea but that of a drunken peacock." The lady returned a sharp answer, on which he threw the contents of a glass of wine in her face. All was confusion in a moment; but though several noblemen and gentlemen were present, none of them took up the cause of the insulted female till Mr. Combe came forward, and, by his resolute behaviour, obliged the offender to withdraw. His spirited conduct on this occasion gained him much credit among the circles of fashion; but his Grace's diminishing finances ere long put an end to the fashionableness of his acquaintance. He paid all the penalties of a spendthrift, and was steeped in poverty to the very lips. At one time he was driven for a morsel of bread to enlist as a private in the British army; and, at another time, in a similar exigency, he went into the French service. From a more cogent motive than piety, he afterwards entered into a French mo nastery, and lived there till the term of his noviciate expired. He returned to Britain, and took service wherever he could get it; but in all these dips into low life, he was never in the least embarrassed when he met with his old acquaintance, A wealthy divine, who had known him in the best London society, recognised him when a waiter at Swansea actually tripping about with the napkin under his arm, and, staring at him, exclaimed, "You cannot be Combe?" "Yes, indeed, but I am," was the waiter's answer. He married the mistress of a noble lord, who promised him an annuity with her, but cheated him; and in revenge he wrote a spirited satire, entitled "The Diaboliad." Among its subjects were an Irish peer and his eldest son, who had a quarrel that extinguished any little natural affection that might have ever subsisted between them. The father challenged the son to fight; the son refused to go out with him, not, as he expressly stated, because the challenger was his own father, but because he was not a gentleman. He After his first wife's death, Mr. Combe made a more creditable marriage with a sister of Mr. Cosway, the artist, and much of the distress which his imprudence entailed upon him was mitigated by the assiduities of this amiable woman. For many years he subsisted by writing for the booksellers, with a reputation that might be known to many individuals, but that certainly was not public. He wrote a work, which was generally ascribed to the good Lord Lyttleton, entitled "Letters from a Nobleman to his Son," and "Letters from an Italian Nun to an English Nobleman," that professed to be translated from Rousseau. published also several political tracts, that were trashy, time-serving, and scurrilous. Pecuniary difficulties brought him to a permanent residence in the King's Bench, where he continued about twenty years, and for the latter part of them a voluntary inmate. One of his friends offered to effect a compromise with his creditors, but he refused the favour. "If I compounded with my creditors," said Mr. Combe, "I should be obliged to sacrifice the little substance which I possess, and on which I subsist in prison. These chambers, the best in the Bench, are mine at the rent of a few shillings a week, in right of my seniority as a prisoner. My habits are become so sedentary, that if I lived in the airiest square of London, I should not walk round it once in a month. I am contented in my cheap quarters." When he was near the age of seventy he had some literary dealings with Mr. Ackermann, the bookseller. The late caricaturist, Rowlandson, had offered to Mr. Ackermann a number of drawings, representing an old clergyman and schoolmaster, who felt, or fancied himself, in love with the fine arts, quixotically travelling during his holidays in quest of the picturesque. As the drawings needed the explanation of letter-press, Mr. Ackermann declined to purchase them unless he should find some one who could give them a poetical illustration. He carried one or two of them to Mr. Combe, who undertook the subject. The bookseller, knowing his procrastinating temper, left him but one drawing at a time, which he illustrated in verse, without knowing the subject of the drawing that was next to come. The popularity of the "Adventures of Dr. Syntax "induced Mr. Ackermann afterwards to employ him in two successive publications, "The Dance of Life," and "The Dance of Death," in England, which were also accompanied by Rowlandson's designs. It was almost half a century before the appearance of these works that Mr. Combe so narrowly missed the honour of being Mrs. Siddons's reading master. He had exchanged the gaieties of London for quarters at a tap-room in Wolverhampton, where he was billeted as a soldier in the service of his Britannic Majesty. He had a bad foot at the time, and was limping painfully along the high street of the town, when he was met by an acquaintance who had known him in all his fashionable glory. This individual had himself seen better days, having exchanged a sub-lieutenancy of marines for a strollership in Mr. Kemble's company. "Heavens!" said the astonished histrion, "is it possible, Combe, that you can bear this condition?" “ Fiddlesticks!” answered the ex-duke, taking a pinch of snuff, "a philosopher can bear anything." The player ere long introduced him to Mr. Roger Kemble; but, by this time, Mr. Combe had become known in the place through his conversational talents. A gentleman, passing through the public-house, had observed him reading, and, looking over his shoulder, saw with surprise a copy of Horace. What,' said he, "my friend, can you read that book in the original?" "If I cannot," replied Combe," a great deal of money has been thrown away on my education." His landlord soon found the literary redcoat an attractive ornament to his taproom, which was filled every night with the wondering auditors of the learned soldier. They treated him to gratuitous potations, and clubbed their money to procure his discharge. Roger Kemble gave him a benefit-night at the theatre, and Combe promised to speak an address on the occasion. In this address, he noticed the various conjectures that had been circulated respecting his real name and character; and, after concluding the enumeration, he said, “Now, ladies and gentlemen, I shall tell you what I am." While expectation was all agog, he added, "I am-ladies and gentlemen, your most obedient humble servant." He then bowed, and left the stage. country met my enraptured view, it was Coniston.-I and Sam, broke our fast within a snug cove, where the lucid waters gently passed at our feet. Pastures stored with cattle, or grain now collecting, descended to the very brim. Our road was shaded by trees, which admitted partial gleams of Conistonia's sunny bosom-huge hills clothed with timber, were our immense barriers to the very skirts of the road. As we proceeded, they closed around the head of the lake, and wonderfully elevated the view with them; the water also changed, the wind arose, the billows swelled, till they became "tempest tost," and reared aloft their white and angry heads, till they LETTERS FROM THE LAKES. appeared no mean emblems of the mighty No. 2. THE REV. H. WHITE, TO MISS Ullswater, October 3d, 1795. "For the last ten days, dear- leisure has made her curtsy to admiration and delight, who have so fully occupied her place, as not even to allow a momentary cessation, till the present evening. In my last, I omitted to notice the immense flocks of sea gulls that enlivened Lancaster's first sands-some gracefully circling with shewy, black tipt wings, either alighting or ascending; but the majority were feeding in the little ponds left by the tide, occasionally flocking away in troops at the approach of the horses. At Lancaster, that art might not insult nature, I went out of powder, and my head has been in admirable unison with this new world, this sublime Eden. "I ask no other proof," said an elegant female at Keswick yesterday, " "of your being worthy to enjoy our matchless scenery. From dear Ulverston, my last was dated; its environs abound both in shady and exposed walks, the principal, leads through the neat church-yard to a level terrace, commanding the channel and the town, lined with seats, from whence you soon reach the foot of a very steep mountain, whose summit commands the sand view before described, and peeps into a green valley, protected by the immense hills of Cumberland and Westmorland. Wednesday, 23d September, I took chaise for Furness Abbey; and if this wide extent of noble ruins, its overhanging night of woods peopled with ever-cawing rooks, its rapid stream, checked by fallen fragments, and foaming in rage over them, had been the sole object of my tour, I should not have considered it as an unworthy one. Thursday, 24th, the first lake of this unrivalled The sea. Their roar was a grand accompaniment to the wonderful scene. head of Coniston has not been excelled, unless by that of Ullswater, to whose upper waves, the meads of Patterdale, its low-towered church, the numerous groves and humble cottages, crowd around as if embracing, and guarding the glassy mirror, that reflects and adorns their varied features. Beneath her Majesty, who hangs forth, in point-lace kerchief, like the covering of a breast of veal, at the pretty town of Hawkstead, I stayed from Sunday to Friday noon 25th, and then descended into a lovely valley, glowing with Esthwaite Water, upon which the sun-beams spread diamonds. The road leads by its side for two miles, and at its crown two large promontories embowered in wood, rush into its waves, and create a scene of exquisite beauty. Leaving this liquid gem, we soon arrived at an almost precipitous ascent, and from its brow beheld majestic Windermere stretching to the right—a long breadth of water flowing beneath supreme majesty of rock. To the left our view was obstructed by a sky-aspiring cliff, which had rolled down vast portions of stone beneath our feet, and appeared shudderingly awful. As we descended the steep declivity, the lake shone forth, at happy peeps. At the bottom of the hill, the silver-edged billows welcomed us in soothing murmurs; but owing to jutting elbows of the crag, we could only see across the lake, which here inlets and forms a reedy bay. We now passed at the foot of the terrific precipice, large gleams of the lake bursting upon us in exquisite contrast, till we gained an eminence that presented long reaches of animated waves on either hand studded with verdant islands, whose Queen bears a temple, with a lofty alcove containing |