"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 1951. 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 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

Wouse territory, where their apostacy from the Christian faith would not have been a serviceable introduction. Lady Hester's first visit at Acre was to a rich Jew banker, called Haym, who was then one of the most influential men in all Syria, and with whom her ladyship always afterwards kept up a correspondence till the time of his death. During a short visit made to Nazareth and its environs, the party were visited by Shaikh Ibrahim (Burckhardt). The author describes him as a robust and rather athletic man, of about five feet nine, with blue eyes, a broad German face, and a pleasing look. Lady Hester's opinion, he says, was not a favourable one, and she never altered it. An accident occurred on the way back to Acre, Lady Hester's horse having fallen upon and hurt her so much as to detain her for a week in a monastery.

On quitting Acre for Sayda, Hadj Ali, a janissary, and another Mussulman guard were added to the escort, and two grooms walked on each side of Lady Hester's horse's head. Passing the Plain of Tyre, the party met "five blind men led by a sixth," a strange procession equally strangely conducted. Further on a horseman in scarlet with a cocked hat, a certain Signor Damiani, came to offer his services. The doctor introduced him as a deserving person to Lady Hester, who, with her characteristic shrewdness, dismissed him at once with a refusal. As the long file of camels and horses approached Sayda, it was found there, as elsewhere, that the arrival of the " English Princess" had been noised through the city. A visit to and from the governor were, however, the first occurrences in which Lady Hester took a part in the city. These were followed by the arrival of a courier from the Emir of the Druses, with a letter requesting Lady Hester to honour him with a visit at his residence. The invitation was accepted, and the emir sent down camels, mules, and soldiers for an escort. Two dragomans and a cook were also added to the retinue. While in the country of the Druses Lady Hester visited the Emir Bashyr, at Dair al Kamar, and at his palace at Bladyn, and the Shaikh Bashyr at Makhtara. She also satisfied herself by occular demonstration that the Druses eat raw flesh. At her departure, the hospitality of the emir was found to be of a solely mercenary character. According to the author, a strange mode of remunerating him was adopted, 1007. having been sent to him, of which he kept one half, and returned the other!

Lady Hester proceeded from the mountain to Damascus. She had previously written to the pasha to announce her intention of paying him a visit, and a page had been sent to act as conductor. "A woman," says our author, "unveiled, and in man's attire, she entered one of the most fanatic towns in Turkey." Her ladyship had now began to feel her way in earnest towards dominion in the East. She refused even to reside among Christians, and insisted, in opposition to all previous custom, being admitted to dwell in the Turkish quarter. When the superiors of the Christian monasteries waited upon her ladyship she refused to receive them. She rode out attended only by her janissary and page, thus throwing herself entirely on the discretion of the inhabitants, by whom she was, however, uniformly well treated from the open predilection she had shown towards the Muhammadans, and the belief generally current, that there was Muhammadan blood in her veins. Her first visit was to the Haym family, the Rothschilds of Syria-a sufficiently politic proceeding-her second to the Pasha, into whose presence she was ushered, through long antechambers, by the light of flaring torches, which threw their gleam on the

arms of numerous soldiers and attendants. Yet she was not in the least disconcerted, while, as is too frequently the case, her dragoman's tongue so faltered, that he was some time before he could repeat with precision what was said to him. "On her return from this visit," her physician relates, "her janisssary, Hadj Mohammed el Ludkang, whilst standing before her to receive his orders for the morrow, said, 'Your ladyship's reception was very grand;' and upon her replying, 'Yes; but this is all vanity,' he remarked Oh! khanum (or my lady), you carry the splendour of royalty on your forehead, with the humility of a dervise at your heart."" The pilgrim (Hadj), Mohammed, certainly deserved a hundred piastres. After this, Lady Hester visited the wives and harems of all the pashas, sheriffs, beys, and other Muhammedan dignitaries in the city. Her mind, was, however, solely busied in the endeavour to bring about an intended visit to the ruins of Palmyra. It is evident that she cared nothing for the relics of by-gone times, the difficulties of the thing were alone food for her energies. She, in consequence, conferred with every person whom she thought capable of giving information on the subject. The Syrian Rothschilds naturally endeavoured to dissuade her from it altogether, but the pasha who found that he could convert the journey to his own interest, wished her to take a formidable escort of eight hundred or one thousand men, while a certain individual called Hanah Fakhah, who had accompanied Dr. Lee, of Hartwell, to Palmyra, offered alone and unassisted to insure her safety. Lady Hester, with her usual tact, felt that Palmyra was in the hands of the Anizas, the vassal Arabs of the Syrian desert, and she determined to apply to the fountain head, and caused letters to be written to their emir, Mahannah el Fadhel, desiring an interview with him. The emir did not venture into Damascus, but he sent thither his son, Nasar, who in order that the benefits of the excursion might be with the Arabs, and not with the pasha, warned her ladyship against trusting herself with an Osmanli escort, for if such presumed to cross the desert without their permission they would be treated as enemies, but if she would place herself under their protection, and rely upon their honour, they would pledge themselves for conducting her in safety thither and back. In a letter dated Damascus, October 12th Lady Hester describes herself as having met the emir of the Arabs himself at Damascus, but this appears to be contradicted by the whole circumstances of the

case.

The physician had at this time gone to meet Mr. Barker, and a Mr. B., the first of whom had been taken ill on the way from Aleppo to Damascus. Her ladyship was any thing but pleased with the anxiety shown by her countrymen on her account. In a letter dated November 14th, 1812, she says, "It seems very cross to be angry at people who are anxious about you; but had B. and Mr. B. made less fuss about my safety, and let me have had perfectly my own way, I should have been returned by this time from Palmyra." It was during the doctor's absence that her ladyship was induced by the young emir, Nasar, to decline the pasha's offer of troops, to dismiss all those whom she had partly engaged for the journey, and availing herself of the excuse of joining Mr. Barker in his illness, she took the road to Hamah, but only proceeded as far as Nebk, where she induced the celebrated Lascans and his wife to dispose of their goods and accompany her in the capacity of interpreters. She then, in the words of her historian,