forcing their prisoner away, led him through the marshes, which were difficult to pass. The horse upon which the Earl was bound was small and weak, and in striving to make a leap, it fell, and rolled into a ditch, from which the conspirators endeavoured in vain to extricate him. Enraged at this accident, and dreading that those in pursuit would arrive in time to effect his rescue, Gerard Van Velsen leaped from his horse, and plunged his sword several times into the Earl's body; then remounting, rode off on the spur, to his own castle, which he immediately put in a state of defence. The Earl's friends arrived in time to receive his last breath; and they immediately put to death several of the conspirator's servants in his presence.

Shortly after, Gerard Van Velsen was besieged and taken alive in his castle, when he was placed in a barrel full of sharp spikes, and rolled up and down the streets of Leyden; his head was then cut off, and his body exposed in the public places. A horrible proscription of all those concerned in the death of the Earl followed, even to the ninth degree of kindred, and numbers were executed whose only crime was their relationship to the conspirators. B.

A CHAPTER ON CHIMNEYS.

CHIMNEYS have characters! I am convinced of that. They are a people; and have minds, dispositions, temperaments, and passions, like other folk. They have also diseases like the human species, and do not want for their "doctors." Are they not affected by east winds just as much as any of us? and have they not their own inexplicable fits of the sullens, and are they not awfully testy when contradicted, just like ourselves?

The faculty of smoke-doctors may be a very learned and respectable faculty for any thing I know; but who ever heard of a chimney being cured? Nobody! The truth is, a chimney's disorders generally proceed from its original physical constitution; and one might just as well talk of expelling an hereditary disease from an individual of the human race. The only way is to destroy the chimney altogether, and create it anew. A "doctor" will speak to you of "old wives," and of "cans, one-mouthed, twomouthed, and poly-mouthed; but put no faith in smoke-doctors. You might just as well expect a doctor to cure you, by ordering a new nightcap.

But the maladies which affect chimneys, often proceed from their situation in life. Circumstances govern us all, and chimneys too. A chimney of my acquaintance once testified this in a remarkable manner. It was a chimney that had just begun the world in the new town, and belonged to a house three stories in height. Now, this chimney was as well-behaved and well-regulated a chimney as one could have seen in a summer's day; and had a juvenile vivacity, which could not be repressed by the east wind itself. At last, however, it became all of a sudden very irregular in its conduct, and seemed to have lost all its former health and spirits. Doctors were called in, who examined the patient, and prescribed all kind of cans, which were speedily got. All would not do, however; instead of recovering, it became worse, and seemed, by the increased vehemence with which it repelled the advances of the smoke, to indicate that the doctors did not understand the nature of its trouble. Alas! it was not the body, but the mind of the chimney that was diseased! My sensitive young friend was affronted at the very idea of these fellows attempting to cure its grievances by such common-place applications. A full convocation of all the smoke-doctors in town being at length called, and their deliberations being assisted by some experienced builders, it was discovered that the cause of all its woes was the tall and over-topping gable of a contiguous house, whose chimneys carried their heads at least twenty feet higher than that of the afflicted chimney in question; so that envy-sheer envy alone, was the occasion of all its ailmerts. This was proved to my full satisfaction, by what happened afterwards; for the patient, being, as it were, continued into the tall gable, and allowed to carry as high a head as any of its neighbours, never gave its masters any more trouble; and when I went to see how it did, I thought the smoke which issued so freely and complacently from its mouth, seemed to say, "You see I have at length gained my point."

Though I allow that chimneys may be jealous of each other's heights, and sometimes look with an evil can at the honour or prosperity of their neighbours, I do not think that they are in general a democratic people. Many a chimney do I know of very humble height, and even unadorned with cans, and yet very decent, quiet chimneys too. There is a spirit of meekness in some chimneys,

which seems to fit them best for the lower walks of life, where they are content to exercise their vocations, perhaps, under the baronial protection of some neighbouring stack of chimneys, without fretting their souls with chimerical ideas of liberty and equality.

That chimneys are sentient beings, nobody can dispute. Le Sage, an author of no little discernment, says that chimneys can speak. I must confess I never heard them pronounce articulate words, or carry on conversations; but there is one thing of which I am certain--they can howl! I have heard them howl in a high wind, in a very sensible style almost like speaking—only the sentences are not connected. In these cases, however, I consider them to be only expostulating with their enemy, the wind.

At the country town where I spent my youth, there were some thatched houses near the school, with chimneys of a very outré sort. My heart is smitten when I remember how cruel we were to these grotesque but inoffensive chimneys. There was one belonging to the cottage of a poor old widow woman, at which our scorn and our stones were particularly directed. It was constructed of turf, upon a frame-work of upright sticks-the whole so dilapidated, that there was scarcely any thing but the sticks left. Most unfortunately for the chimney, it was not altogether of an upright character, but inclined a little to one side, and seemed to look down upon us school-boys with open mouth, inviting our attacks. We assuredly did not spare it; for every day we employed the whole quarter of an hour previous to the opening of the school, in throwing missiles of any sort we could lay our hands on, at and down its gaping crater; and not a day passed without old Luckie

coming into the schoolroom, complaining of our wickedness, and exhibiting the melancholy fragments of cutty pipes, and little black tea-pots, which, she said, had suffered from our stones, while lying innocuously by her fire-side. I remember hearing an account of one being cleared of its venerable soot by the good man, who had accomplished his singular task by going head foremost into a sack, and ascending by a ladder to the rannle-tree, where he stood and rubbed the sides of the chimney all round with his shoulders! This custom might be practised with effect in the cure of lum-bag-o!

Speaking of chimney sweeping, we come to chimney-sweeps, who, by the

by, are a very noticeable set of men. A friend of mine, in guarding against contact with them in the streets, calls them angels of darkness, in contradistinction to bakers, whom he denominates angels of light; though I consider the one tribe to be fully as great annoyances as the other. When I pass a chimney-sweep in the street, I myself wearing lightcoloured clothes at the time, I may say, "Conjuro te, Diabole !" and avoid being rude to his person; but in my heart I envy and admire him. Chimney-sweeps see and explore a part of the world which nobody else can see and explore. They surpass the prodigal son in the "Vicar of Wakefield," who saw the outside of the best houses in Amsterdam, for any body may see that; but to chimneysweeps alone is it reserved to see the roofs of the best houses. They walk in glorious pre-eminence over the heads of the rest of mankind, and cast their eyes over the surface of another world, which none of us children of the ground shall ever see. I have heard them tell strange and wild stories of the dangers they have passed, and the roofs of the lands they have seen, like sailors returned from distant voyages; and, what is very strange, there is scarcely a chimney in the town, of which they do not know the whole nature and character, as well as the owner of the house himself. Nay, I have often been surprised, on calling a chimney-sweeper to administer unto a moody or diseased vent, to observe how familiar he was with its history and peculiarities. How they acquire this wonderful knowledge it is impossible to conceive. I suspect that they talk to each other of nothing but the various chimneys which have come under their hands, and so, each communicating to his neighbour the results of his experience, the whole become as it were, universally acquainted. I remember once calling an old chimney-sweep to a very strange chimney, which, before ascending the gable, went across the ceiling of an adjoining room, and, indeed, was all at right angles. Before commencing operations upon this strange specimen of the crooked tribe of chimneys, he frightened me into the offer of a double fee by some dreadful traditionary recollection of boys being smothered in it forty years ago, when he was a climbing boy himself, and of plummet-balls in later times being dispatched down its unimaginable angularities, in order to discover the bottom, and being never more heard of by their disconsolate owners, whose damages were

of course made good by the then proprietor.

In short, the subject which I have thus imperfectly handled, is one well worthy the attention of the truly philosophical; and I hope, ere long, to see a separate volume allotted to it in Dr. Lardner's Cyclopædia, or in the Library of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge.

A SISTER'S LOVE AND

COURAGE.

My heroine (says Mrs. Jameson, in her inimitable sketches), truly, and in every sense does she deserve the name-was the daughter of a rich brewer and winemerchant of Deuxponts. She was one of five children; two much older, and two much younger, than herself. Her eldest brother was called'Henri : he had early displayed such uncommon talents, and such a decided inclination for study, that his father was determined to give him all the advantages of a learned education, and sent him to the university of Elangau, in Bavaria, whence he returned to his family, with the highest testimonies of his talents and good conduct. His father now destined him for the clerical profession, with which his own wishes accorded. His sister fondly dwelt upon his praises, and described him, perhaps with all a sister's partiality, as being not only the pride of his family, but of all his fellow-citizens, "tall, and handsome, and good," of a most benevolent, enthusiastic temper, and devoted to his studies. When he had been at home for some time, he attracted the notice of one of the princes in the north of Germany, with whom he travelled, I believe, in the capacity of secretary. The name of the prince, and the particulars of this part of his life, have escaped me; but it appeared that, through the recommendation of this powerful patron, he became professor of theology in a university of Courland; I think at Riga, or somewhere near it, for the name of the city was continually recurring in her narrative. Henri was at this time about eight-and-twenty.

While here, it was his fate to fall passionately in love with the daughter of a rich Jew merchant. His religious zeal mingled with his love; he was as anxious to convert his mistress as to possess her-the first was a necessary prelimisary to the second. The consequences were all in the usual style of such matThe relations discovered the cor

ters.

respondence, and the young Jewess was forbidden to see or to speak to her lover. They met in secret. What arguments he might use to convert this modern Jessica, I know not, but they prevailed. She declared herself convinced, and consented to fly with him beyond the frontiers, into Silesia, to be baptized, and to become his wife.

Apparently their plans were not well arranged, or were betrayed; for they were pursued by her relations and the police, and overtaken before they reached the frontiers. The young man was accused of carrying off his Jewish love by force; and this, I believe, at Riga, where the Jews are protected, is a capital crime. The affair was brought before the tribunal, and the accused defended himself by declaring that the girl had fled with him by her own free will; that she was a Christian, and his betrothed bride, as they had exchanged rings, or had gone through some similar ceremony. The father Jew denied this on the part of his daughter, and Henri desired to be confronted with the lady who was thus said to have turned his accuser. Her family made many difficulties, but by the order of the judge she was obliged to appear. She was brought into the court of justice, pale, trembling, and supported by her father and others of her kindred. The judge demanded whether it was by her own will that she had fled with Henri Ambos? She answered in a faint voice, "No." Had then violence been used to carry her off? "Yes." Was she a Christian? "No." Did she regard Henri as her affianced husband? "No."

On hearing these replies, so different from the truth-from all he could have anticipated-the unfortunate young man appeared for a few minutes stupified; then, as if seized with a sudden frensy, he made a desperate effort to rush upon the young Jewess. On being prevented, he drew a knife from his pocket, which he attempted to plunge into his own bosom, but it was wrested from him; in the scuffle he was wounded in the hands and face, and the young lady swooned away. The sight of his mistress insensible, and his own blood flowing, restored the lover to his senses. He became sullenly calm, offered not another word in his own defence, refused to answer any questions, and was immediately conveyed to prison.

These particulars came to the knowledge of his family after the lapse of many months, but of his subsequent fate

they could learn nothing. Neither his sentence nor his punishment could be ascertained; and although one of his relations went to Riga, for the purpose of obtaining some information, some redress, he returned without having effected either of the purposes of his journey. Whether Henri had died of his wounds, or languished in a perpetual dungeon, remained a mystery.

Six years thus passed away. His father died: his mother, who persisted in hoping, while all others despaired, lingering on in heart-wearing suspense. At length, in the beginning of last year, (1833), a travellng merchant passed through the city of Deuxponts, and inquired for the family of Ambos. He informed them, that in the preceding year he had seen and spoken to a man in rags, with a long beard, who was working in fetters with other criminals, near the fortress of Barinska, in Siberia; who described himself as Henri Ambos, a pastor of the Lutheran church, unjustly condemned, and besought him with tears, and the most urgent supplications, to convey some tidings of him to his unhappy parents, and beseech them to use every means to obtain his liberation.

You must imagine-for I cannot describe as she described-the feelings which this intelligence excited. A family council was held, and it was determined at once that application should be made to the police authorities at St. Petersburgh, to ascertain beyond a doubt the fate of poor Henri-that a petition in his favour must be presented to the emperor of Russia; but who was to present it? The second brother offered himself, but he had a wife and two children; the wife protested that she should die if her husband left her, and would not hear of his going; besides, he was the only remaining hope of his mother's family. The sister then said that she would undertake the journey, and urged that, as a woman, she had more chance of success in such an affair than her brother. The mother acquiesced. There was, in truth, no alternative; and being amply furnished with the means, this generous, affectionate, and strong-minded girl, set off alone, on her long and perilous journey. "When my mother gave me her blessing," said she, "I made a vow to heaven and my own heart, that I would not return alive without the pardon of my brother. I feared nothing. I had nothing to live for. I had health and strength, and I

had not a doubt of my own success, because I was resolved to succeed; but ah! liebe madame! what a fate was mine! my poor old mother!" Here she burst into tears, and threw herself back in the carriage; after a few minutes she resumed her narrative.

She reached the city of Riga without mischance. There she collected the necessary documents relative to her brother's character and conduct, with all the circumstances of his trial, and had them properly attested. Furnished with these papers, she proceeded to St. Petersburgh, where she arrived safely, in the beginning of June, 1833. She had been furnished with several letters of recommendation, and particularly with one to a German ecclesiastic, of whom she spoke with the most grateful enthusiam, by the title of M. le Pasteur. She met with the utmost difficulty in obtaining from the police the official return of her brother's condemnation, place of exile, punishment, &c.; but at length, by almost incredible boldness, perseverance, and address, she was in possession of these, and with the assistance of her good friend the pastor, she drew up a petition to the emperor. With this she waited on the minister of the interior, to whom, with great difficulty, and after many applications, she obtained access. He treated her with great harshness, and absolutely refused to deliver the petition. She threw herself on her knees, and added tears to entreaties; but he was inexorable, and added brutally"Your brother was a mauvaise sujet ; he ought not to be pardoned, and if I were the emperor I would not pardon him."

She rose from her knees, and stretching her arms towards heaven, exclaimed with fervour-"I call heaven to witness that my brother was innocent! and I thank heaven that you are not the emperor, for I can still hope!"

The minister, in a rage, said—“ Do you dare to speak thus to me! Do you know who I am?"

"Yes," she replied: "6 you are his excellency the minister C; but what of that! you are a cruel man! but I put my trust in heaven and the emperor; and then," said she, "I left him, without even a courtesy, though he followed me to the door, speaking very loud and very angrily."

Her suit being rejected by all the ministers, (for even those who were most gentle, and who allowed the hardship of the case, still refused to inter

to

fere, or deliver her petition), she resolved to do, what she had been dissuaded from attempting in the first instance appeal to the emperor in person: but it was in vain she lavished hundreds of dollars in bribes to the inferior officers; in vain she beset the imperial suite, at reviews, at the theatre, on the way to the church invariably beaten back by the guards, or the attendants, she could not penetrate to the emperor's presence. After spending six weeks in daily ineffectual attempts of this kind, hoping every morning, and almost despairing every evening-threatened by the police, and spurned by the officials Providence raised her up a friend in one of her own sex. Among some ladies of rank, who became interested in her story, and invited her to their houses, was a Countess Elise, something or other, whose name I did not write down. One day, on seeing her young protegée overwhelmed with grief, and almost in despair, she said, with emotion, "I cannot dare to present your petition myself, I might be sent off to Siberia, or at least banished the court; but all I can do I will. I will lend you my equipage and servants. I will dress you in my robes; you shall drive to the palace the next levee day, and obtain the audience under my name; when once in the presence of the emperor, you must manage for yourself. If I risk thus much, will you venture the rest ?"

"And what," said I, "was your answer?"

"Oh!" she replied, "I could not answer; but I threw myself at her feet, and kissed the hem of her gown!"

I asked her whether she had not feared to risk the safety of her generous friend? She replied, "That thought did not strike me-but what would you have? I cast it from me. I was resolved to have my brother's pardon-I would have sacrificed my own life to obtain it -and, heaven forgive me! I thought little of what it might cost another."

This plan was soon arranged, and at the time appointed my resolute heroine drove up to the palace in a splendid equipage, preceded by a running footman, with three laquais in full dress, mounted behind. She was announced as the Countess Elise- who supplicated a particular audience of his majesty. The doors flew open, and in a few moments she was in the presence of the emperor, who advanced one or two steps to meet her, with an air of gallantry, but suddenly started back

Here I could not help asking her,

whether at that moment she did not feel her heart sink?

"No," said she firmly; on the contrary, I felt my heart beat quicker and higher! I sprang forward and knelt at his feet, exclaiming with clasped hands, 'Pardon, imperial majesty! Pardon!"" "Who are you?" said the emperor, astonished; "and what can I do for you?"

He spoke gently, more gently than any of his ministers, and overcome, even by my own hopes, I burst into a flood of tears, and said,

66

May it please your Imperial Majesty, I am not the Countess Elise I am only the sister of the unfortunate Henri Ambos, who has been condemned on false accusation. O pardon! pardon! Here are the papers-the proofs. O imperial majesty! pardon my poor brother!" I held out the petition, and the papers, and at the same time, protrate on my knees, I seized the skirt of his embroidered coat, and pressed it to my lips. The emperor said,

"Rise, rise!" but I would not rise; I still held out my papers, resolved not to rise till he had taken them. At last the emperor, who seemed much moved, extended one hand towards me, and took the papers with the other, saying,

"6 Rise, mademoiselle-I command you to rise." I ventured to kiss his hand; and said, with tears,

"I pray of your majesty to read that paper."

He said, "I will read it." I then rose from the ground, and stood watching him while he unfolded the petition and read it. His countenance changed, and he exclaimed once or twice,

"Is it possible ?—This is dreadful !" -When he had finished, he folded the paper, and without any observation, said at once,

"Mademoiselle Ambos, your brother is pardoned !" The words rung in my ears, and I again flung myself at his feet, saying, and yet I scarce knew what I said,

"Your imperial majesty is a good man upon earth; do you indeed pardon my brother? Your ministers would not suffer me to approach you; and even yet I fear !" He said,

"Fear nothing: you have my promise." He then raised me from the ground, and conducted me himself to the door. I tried to thank and bless him, but could not; he held out his hand for me to kiss, and then bowed his head as I left the room.

"Ach ja! the emperor is a good man