phers say, light is extracted from smoke, so from the cause which prolonged the endurance of my misery came unexpected comfort. It reached me in the accents of a voice familiar to my ears, though but of recent acquaintance, and those accents shaped themselves into an emphatic demand for brandy.

"Apportez donc de l'eau de vie! Nous sommes tout à fait mouillés.” I could not be mistaken; a couple of hours had barely passed since I heard the same requisition on quitting the Hermitage of Montmorency. It was the voice of Sir Henry Jones!

Like a desperate mortgagee I struggled once again with my bonds, and fortune at last came to my aid; the gag slipped from my mouth, and I was free to shout like the sparrow on the house-top, or the pelican in the wilderness.

I did not neglect to profit by the opportunity, but cried out to the full extent of my lungs:

"Help! help! Jones! Jones! This way! this way!"

I bethought me of what other prisoners had done to attract attention under similar circumstances. I shouted the well-known blazon of my house :

"En avant deux-Green to the rescue!"

Then gathering fresh breath for the occasion, I pealed forth another volley :

"Murder! Fire! Police! Stop thief! Jones! Jones!"

Still no one came; I writhed like a torpedo, and again I awoke the echoes with my gallant cognisance. I was successful. The undoubted voice of Jones was heard in reply:

"Dammee if that isn't Jolly Green!" and then came a wild burst of tongues and a tornado of footsteps down the corridor. The baronet rushed at the door, and the framework shook beneath his weight. I became almost delirious with excitement.

"Ha! ha!" I cried, "well thrust, gallant knight-brave lance-good falchion-well plied lever and beam-the splinters fly-tête d'arméetête du pont-tête de veau! Ha! ha! ha! Jolly Green! Jolly Green! Jolly Jones!"

Down came the door, and in rushed my deliverer!

There has not, I will venture to say, been any thing so exciting as this in France since Napoleon's return from St. Helena, or the escape of Front de Boeuf from the castle of Ivanhoe. This last event indeed had been strongly fixed in my mind during the whole period of my confine

ment.

But the baronet stood not alone in the doorway. To my astonished but raptured vision appeared the faithful form of Angelique. Her despair at my absence had of course brought her to seek me, and she had made the stalwart Sir Henry her Paladin. The first words uttered by the latter confirmed my conjecture.

66

Hey! how the devil, my dear fellow-who expected to find you in such a plight. How the deuce did you get here? We missed you in the forest, and have been scouring the country round to find you! Mademoiselle de Vaudet and I took this direction quite by chance. I pose you mistook the house for the Rendezvous de la Chasse?"

"Ŏh, mon dieu! est il lié donc !" cried Angelique; and to suppress

sup

her

emotion, she was compelled to avert her head, though by the swelling veins of her fair neck I could see how much she was suffering.

Monsieur Piquet the stout landlord, Petronille, and one or two others now came forward. Sir Henry seized a knife from the table and cut the handkerchief and cord which confined my limbs, and once more I stood erect, a free-born Briton.

The first use I made of my liberty was to grasp the hand of my liberator, and pour forth my thanks to the bewitching Angelique for the heavenly inspiration that had sent her to the cabaret. My next step was to rush to the glass to see if captivity had blanched my flowing hair, a thing that really happened to Lord Byron in the dungeon of the castle of Chillon; but no, the golden gleam was still there, though my tresses were somewhat dishevelled.

Sir Henry and Angelique then renewed their inquiries, desiring to know how I happened to be in this coatless, bootless, torn, and ransacked condition.

I narrated the adventure as it had befallen me, and further demonstrated the fact by turning out the lining of my pockets, at which I could observe Monsieur Piquet, who had all along shown the greatest signs of sympathy with my misfortune, though he did not understand English, raise his hands and eyes to Heaven in deep astonishment.

"Je donnerais cent mille fancs," said he, "que cette affaire n'eut pas lieu dans ma maison. Sacré Gredins! Voler le monde comme ça." "What does he say, Jones?" I asked, for I was exhausted and faint.

It's

"He is very indignant at the treatment you have received. enough to make any one swear. Come, we'll see about those fellows afterwards; hadn't you better take something—a glass of brandyoarrrrr!” This was the way the baronet always pronounced the comforting po

tation.

I acceded to the proposition, and Monsieur Piquet and Petronille both bustled about to procure it for me. Some hot water was brought in a white tea-pot, and the mixture was soon prepared; under its influence I recovered my spirits, and welcomed the smile that stole over the features of Angelique as she marked my altered aspect. Jones laughed heartily —indeed, if I had not felt myself under great obligations to him I should have thought unfeelingly—at my appearance; but the question of remedying my wants in this respect now suggested itself.

With that inventive tenderness which nature has implanted in the bosoms of those who love, Angelique insisted on my having one of her shawls, which the baronet had carried on his arm for her. With her own hands she wrapped it round my shoulders like the shirt of Nessus bestowed by the goddess of beauty on the Olympic shepherd, and as she pinned it under my chin I felt that the age of chivalry had not entirely passed away. In lieu of a hat I tied the handkerchief round my head which had previously served to fetter me, and for boots I was fain to put up with a pair of sabots brought by the ostler. The man produced these with the more alacrity in consequence of an observation which I made to the effect that I wondered he had not heard the scuffle in the room as it was so near the stable.

"Je suis surprisé," I observed, "que vous ne pas ecouter les voleurs."

"Sacré, mille bottes de foin," replied the man, "j'n'étions pas dans l'écurie à c'tt' 'eure là. Je pansais mes chevaux d' l'autr' côté."

Monsieur Piquet also was energetic in his desire to explain.

"Voyez vous, milord," said he, respectfully, "j'étais en train de préparer votre diner, parceque j'ai reflechi, ce monsieur là aura faim, je ferai la cuisine moi-même, et le diable de friture à fait tant de bruit que je n'entendais rien du tout, du tout. Rien de plus naturel, n'est ce pas, milord, quand on est tellemement affairé? Mais les Gredins, que je les rosserais si on me les attraperoit."

More he said which I do not remember, but all evincing his solicitude in my welfare. Sir Henry, who afterwards repeated his observations that I might insert them in my journal, at my request paid for what I had ordered; I shook the honest fellow by the hand, and as the storm was over, prepared to set out again for the real Rendezvous de la Chasse.

But I experienced a difficulty, for I was unaccustomed to walk in wooden shoes, and after inflicting two or three heavy kicks on my own ancles I was obliged to relinquish the experiment. Angelique then insisted upon my taking her donkey, and to satisfy her I got into the little basket in which she had been seated, and in this guise we set out, Sir Henry having offered his arm to the dismounted fair one, whose acts spoke plainer to my heart than the most elaborate declaration.

I refrain from describing the reception I met with when we rejoined the party from which I had been so cruelly severed. The conduct of Madame de Vaudet was more than motherly, and the viscount pressed me to his heart with a welcome such as the prodigal son bestowed on his repentant parent. Let it suffice that I made amends for abstinence and suffering by a capital dinner and abundance of champagne; the effect of the latter, added to the exuberance of my spirits, being such as to induce me to dance on the grass with the rest without my boots, and to sleep like a top in the gondole all the way back to Paris.

THE FAIRY-GIFT OF DREAMS.

BY J. E. CARPENTER.

I.

Ir is said there is a power,
To fairies only known,
That can give, in slumber's hour,
Bright visions like their own;
That can call to the land of dreams
The soul of man awhile;
To some star that, distant, beams,
Some far-off pleasant isle;
Where the sunshine never fades,
The air is never cold;
In those perfumed, flowery glades,
The fairy-realms of old.

Full many a magic spell

In slumber o'er us beams,
But there's none I love so well
As the fairy-gift of dreams.

II.

Oh! I would that gift were mine,
The world in slumber light;
Should feel the warm sunshine,
Should never know 'twas night;
Man should dream of a faithful heart
That ne'er gave others pain;
But if guile in his own held part

He ne'er should wake again.
My dreams should with bliss be fraught,
But, most, the whole night long,
Would I give bright gems of thought
To the minstrel-child of song,
And of every magic spell

That o'er him brightly beams,
He none should love so well
As the fairy-gift of dreams.

LADY HESTER STANHOPE'S ORIENTAL CAREER.*

WHILE it is evident that ambition entered largely into the character of Lady Hester Stanhope, and that credulity detracted to a manifest degree from the more pleasing features of her disposition, it is impossible, now that all the circumstances of her career in the East are laid before the public, to deny her great originality of mind, a very remarkable talent, and indomitable courage. Disappointed in the treatment which she experienced from her own countrymen, she wished to show what she could do among a more generous and chivalrous people, and it was well that death terminated the scene before she could become fully sensible of the vanity of her oriental greatness, although she did not breathe her last before she had become painfully intimate with the ingratitude of her own country. Full of noble impulses, and princely in her notions of money matters, her charitable and generous disposition, and her indifference to her own immediate interests, ultimately involved her in irrecoverable pecuniary difficulties; yet her charities were almost always well directed, and her very generosity was tempered by occasional great severities, and by inflexible justice. It pleased Providence to place her for awhile, and indeed till death closed her career, in that position which was most genial to her, and which was apparently best suited for the exercise of her peculiar faculties; nor can it be denied both that she was the means of doing much good, of exalting the national character in the East, and by her example, more especially as a female, of humanising and civilising those who came in contact with her to a very remarkable degree.

It is needless in the present day to revert to the narrative of Lady Hester's early travels when she first quitted this country. Malta, Zante, Corinth, and Athens, were in due course visited, The late Lord Sligo joined in his yacht, and Lord Byron was first met with characteristically jumping into the sea from the mole-head of the Piræus. Next followed

Constantinople, from whence her ladyship soon removed to Brusa. was delighted with the city of the Asiatic Olympus.

She

"How," she writes, "I wish you were here to enjoy this delicious climate, and the finest country I ever beheld. Italy is nothing to it in point of magnificence."

This was, however, but a momentary enthusiasm, it soon gave way to the wish to quit these temperate latitudes and go and winter in Egypt. Misfortune attended her on this journey. The vessel she sailed in was wrecked off the Isle of Rhodes, her ladyship was exposed for many hours on a naked rock, and was subjected to severe illness in consequence. The doctor and narrator of these events was obliged to find his way across the peninsula to Smyrna, where, in tattered garments, and with a disconsolate countenance, his reception by the hydrographer-royal and the British consul, accidentally seated at breakfast together, appears to have been of a somewhat distrustful character. At length Alexandria was reached in safety, and Lady Hester was by no means taken with the remnant of the Ptolemean city.

* Travels of Lady Hester Stanhope; forming the completion of her Memoirs ; narrated by her Physician. 3 vols. Henry Colburn.

"This place," she writes, "I think quite hideous, and if all Egypt is like it I shall wish to quit it as soon as possible."

She accordingly hurried away by Rosetta to Cairo; there were no steamers in those days plying from Aftah to Misr al Kahira, as the natives designate the Egyptian capital. Here, in a sumptuous dress, beautifully embroidered, of purple velvet and gold, Lady Hester paid a visit of ceremony to the pasha. The dress cost her 1957. sterling. On a return from the Pyramids the boat would have been swamped on the Nile but for the presence of mind of her page, Giorgio, who plugged the hole with his turban. Nothing could show more distinctly how perfectly Lady Hester's character was understood in Egypt than to find that during her short sojourn in that country, the pacha reviewed his troops before her, and presented her with a charger magnificently caparisoned. What must the inmates of fifty thousand harems have thought of such attentions to a female?

At length, reinforced by two French renegade Mamelukes, each with his groom, and numerous other domestics and attendants, making up altogether a party of thirteen persons, her ladyship sailed from Damietta for Jaffa on the coast of Syria. Lady Hester, on this her first entrance upon the scene of her future destination, affected the Mameluke dress, which, her physician says, became her much.

"She was," he 66 says, generally mistaken for some young bey, with his moustaches not yet grown, and this assumption of the male dress was a subject of severe criticism among the English."

What is there so harmless that shall be beyond the pale of criticism? Accordingly, afterwards, the Mameluke costume was laid aside, and long robes were substituted. Abu Gosh, whose customary civilities to wayfarers from Jaffa to Jerusalem, especially when ladies are in the question, so discomfited and frightened Sir James Emerson Tennent's party, was as attentive and hospitable to Lady Hester as he was himself well managed by her. She accepted his courteous offerings, partook of the repast prepared by his four wives, and delighted the old shaikh, who may truly be said to hold the keys of the Holy City, with her conversation and dignified manners, but when night came, and the Mamelukes proposed to mount guard, her ladyship would rely for her security on the shaikh only, and delighted with the confidence thus placed in him Abu Gosh himself kept watch during the whole of the night. There was an intuitive wisdom in such an act that is the more admirable, as her experience of the East was as yet very limited. Abu Gosh ever after entertained the highest respect for her ladyship.

Nothing worthy of remark occurred at Jerusalem except that Lady Hester administered to the wants of the Bey of the Mamelukes, whose extraordinary escape from the massacre at Cairo has been frequently narrated. The party returned to Ramlah, where the governor made an unsuccessful attempt to obtain possession of Lady Hester's firmans under pretence of forwarding them to Mohammed Aga of Jaffa, and they proceeded thence by Cæsarea to Acre, where the approach of her ladyship excited much curiosity. Arrived at this renowned seaport, her ladyship's establishment underwent a complete reform, and was more assimilated to the country she was now travelling in. The Cypriots were sent about their business at once, but the Mamelukes were not dismissed till the party arrived at Sayda, on the frontier of the