Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

elephant, or an ass of letters, to demonstrate the inferiority of man; it is wonderful what a host of authorities the four-footed author could produce in his favour, from the works of human literati. We have adduced but a few examples from a throng of philosophers and divines, who had the humility and candour to acknowledge themselves outdone by the beasts of the forest, the fowls of the air, nay, by the very creeping things, in ethics, in politics, and even in religion itself. Talk of philosophical arrogance after this! Talk of the uncharitableness of theologians! Asses have been admitted to Helicon, swans incorporated with Apollo and the Muses, bees and pismires ranked with Numa and Lycurgus, elephants laden with more honours than their huge backs could carry, and the very rat ushered into heaven! This may serve to abate not a little the surprise occasionally felt at the passion which possesses so many individuals of the human species for the society of the lower animals. Doubtless it is a lively faith in the doctrines of Celsus and Rorarius that leads so many gentlemen in this country to pass so much of their lives in the society of the stable, and the conversation of the kennel. What is commonly thought to be a propensity to mean associations with grooms and dog-boys, is in fact a noble communing with the superior natures of horses and hounds, whose neighings and barkings are of course the moralizings and philosophizings of those "best possible instructors." Ladies, in like manner, have their lapdogs, their squirrels, their parrots, and their bullfinches, not to amuse but to improve them. Shock was Belinda's Mentor, not her pet. Her poodle is to Clarissa what Socrates was to Aspasia, and Snap is Rosina's pedagogue, as Roger Ascham was to the Lady Jane Gray. In children we discern the germ of these tastes for improving and elevating companionships, in the fancy that little boys have for teams of kids, and girls for doves and guineapigs. Strange, if after all a rabbit is the true rabbi, and if it should turn out that the best schoolmaster abroad is the quiet little white mouse, with no Lord Brougham to puff his importance, but only a Savoyard with his hurdygurdy to recommend him to public notice! What if the menageries are the true schools and colleges, and the establishments of the Regent's Park and Surrey better academies for youth than the universities of the. Cam and Isis! To be sure there are horses and dogs at Oxford and Cambridge, and they are followed at least as eagerly as those human usurpers of the province of education, styled tutors, doctors, and professors. Perhaps there may be asses too, as worthy to fill the chair of poetry as the donkey of Ammonius. But if beasts are the best preceptors, the places where beasts do congregate ought to be our chief resort; the Zoological Gardens ought to be declared the grand seminary of the nation, and presented with a charter.

THE BARNABYS IN AMERICA.

BY MRS. TROLLOPE.

CHAP. XVII.

THE party at Judge Johnson's furnished a fund of conversation for the whole of Mrs. Carmichael's large domestic circle on the morrow, and had not the heart of Mrs. Beauchamp been filled by higher considerations (for she had began to feel a very strong conviction that she was likely to become the agent of a revolution in public opinion concerning the slave states of America little less important than that achieved by the immortal Washington), she might have found considerable gratification to her national vanity in the cordial admiration expressed concerning every thing and every body there, by the English party whom she had introduced.

As it was, however, she was intent on higher thoughts, and did little more than smile and bow with contented urbanity, when Miss Matilda Perkins distinctly declared at breakfast, that much as she had always enjoyed the first-rate society of London-" Curzon-street and all, you know my dear Mrs. Allen Barnaby!" she had never seen a more perfectly elegant company than those assembled at Judge Johnson's, "and as for the gentlemen," she added, blushing slightly, and fixing her eyes upon the smoking roll she was engaged in buttering, "I must say that there is a thorough fashionableness and gentility about them that I don't think at all common to be met with in the old world."

Not even the decisive and emphatic "very gentlemanlike men indeed" of Major Allen Barnaby, could do more than produce a repetition of the smile and the bow from Mrs. Beauchamp; although the colonel, her husband, was moved thereby to open his eyes more fully than he had yet done that morning, and to reply, "I am glad to find, sir, that you are so thoroughly brought to that conviction at once, because it will prevent any acting of prejudice upon your mind as you go on progressing in your acquaintance with the country. I expect, sir, it was the luckiest thing you ever did, coming to this part of the Union in the first instance, for in no other direction, almost, could you have hoped to have fallen in so completely with the right sort. You may depend upon it, Major Allen Barnaby, that the great proprietors in the slave-holding states of the Union, are the most perfect set of gentlemen upon God's earth."

But Mrs. Carmichael's breakfast table was large enough to admit of more conversations than one being carried on at the same time, and this slow, solemn, and deliberate speech of the colonel's did not at all interfere with what was passing at a little distance from him. For some reason or other, perhaps from remembering the success of Miss Beauchamp's efforts the evening before, to make the melancholy Miss Perkins look gay, Mr. Egerton, who had chanced to overtake the good spinster as she was descending the stairs, not only addressed her cheerfully as rather an intimate acquaintance, but actually offered his arm to conduct her across the hall, and in this way they entered the breakfast

[graphic][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

room together. The Beauchamp family had already taken their places, and Miss Louisa, strengthened in spirit by the civility of her young countryman, actually took courage, as she slipped her arm away from his, to approach, avec intention, towards a vacant chair next below that which her friend Annie occupied, and was rewarded for the courageous exploit by an extended hand, and a smile of very kind welcome. As a matter of course, Mr. Egerton followed the steps of the lady he had escorted, and there being fortunately a second chair to be had, below that of Miss Louisa, he had the satisfaction of being able to place himself in close juxta-position to her, and it soon became evident not only to her observant sister, but to every body else who happened to be looking that way, that the acquaintance between them was ripening into very considerable intimacy, for he talked to her a great deal; and because she talked to her neighbour on the other side he began to talk to her too, notwithstanding his aversion to every thing so completely American. But he felt, or was beginning to feel, that there would be something quite ridiculous in his fighting the battles of his country by being rude to a young girl, however "thoroughly American" she might be, and being once awakened to the absurdity of such a line of conduct, he took great care to avoid it.

Miss Matilda, meanwhile, having gazed for some moments on the very new and puzzling spectacle of her sister in the act of being gaily talked to, and gaily listening, at length hit upon a solution, which easily and rationally accounted for the unusual degree of attention she appeared to be receiving. Miss Matilda remembered how uncommonly well she herself had looked in her pale pink silk the evening before, and what unmistakable proof of this she had received in the marked attentions of no less than six American gentlemen who had asked her to dance.

"I understand it all perfectly," thought she. "This Mr. Egerton is just like all other Englishmen-so vastly fond of whatever they think is coming into fashion. I know well enough what will come next; Louisa will have to introduce me. But I can't say I care much about it just now. That Mr. Franklin Brown is worth a dozen of him any day; and as for that odious American girl! she just sees that it won't do to give herself airs to any of us. We are all getting too much into fashion for that to answer. Yes; I understand it all."

Mrs. Beauchamp had, with an air of decision that no boardinghouse etiquettes could oppose, seated herself next Mrs. Allen Barnaby, and the acquaintance between these two distinguished women was advancing so rapidly towards the familiarity of friendship, that they conversed wholly and solely with each other, and that only in whispers, and when the table broke up they left the room together, arm in arm.

Patty and her Don, seated as usual side by side, conversed also in whispers, but the happy bride condescended from time to time to interrupt this under colloquy by talking a little to the ladies named Hucks, and Grimes, concerning the last night's party, to which they had not been invited, and which, therefore, offered a theme particularly fertile, and to Patty, at least, particularly gratifying.

some

"But I wish you could tell me, Mrs. Grimes," said she, thing about that nice person, Mrs. General Gregory, as they call her. She was most uncommon civil to me, and is coming to call upon me Aug.-VOL. LXV. NO. CCLX.

2 M

« ZurückWeiter »