The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844

I hastily sprang to a grating in the wall, about the height of my head, which opened into the court-yard, and there witnessed a frightful spectacle. The husband, sword in hand, was attacking Ernest with desperate fury. ‘Ah! you love her and she loves you!’ cried he, in a voice hoarse with passion; ‘you love her, do you? and she loves you! Your turn first, and then hers!’

The letter from Ernest to his cousin, conveyed by the malicious interference of Ganguernet to her husband, had apprised him of a secret which had remained hidden for more than four years; and before redressing the wrongs of society as a magistrate, the president of the court had hastened to avenge his own as a husband.

In vain I cried, in vain I called by name the two cousins. Monsieur de L– with blind fury drove Ernest from one corner of the court to another. Suddenly a window opened, and Madame de L–, pale, with dishevelled hair, and terror painted on her countenance, appeared.

‘Leonie!’ cried Ernest, ‘withdraw!’

‘No! let her remain!’ exclaimed Monsieur de L–, ‘she is a prisoner; you need not fear that she will come to separate us.’ And he again rushed upon his cousin with such fury that the fire flew from their swords.

‘It is I—it is I who deserve death!’ cried Madame de L–; ‘kill me!’

I added my cries to theirs. I shouted, I shook the grating. I tried to scale the wall, when suddenly, urged on by despair, bewildered, distracted, Madame de L– threw herself from the window and fell between her lover and her husband. The latter, completely beside himself with passion, directed his sword toward her. But Ernest turned it aside, and in his turn casting off all restraint, exclaimed with vehemence: ‘Madman! would you kill her? Well, then—defend yourself!’ And immediately he commenced a violent assault upon his antagonist.

I could do nothing to separate them; neither could Madame de L–. The unfortunate woman had broken a limb in the fall, and lay groaning upon the pavement. It was a dreadful combat. Nothing can express the violent terror which seized me. Already the blood of the two cousins began to flow, which only served to increase their rage. I had succeeded with some difficulty in climbing to the top of the wall, and was about to leap into the court, when I perceived some of our friends approaching. Ganguernet was at their head; he drew near, calling to me:

‘Halloo! what’s this? Why, you bawl like a man getting flayed; we heard you a quarter of a league off. What the devil is the matter?’

At the sight of this detested wretch, I rushed upon him, seized him by the throat, and forcing him violently against the grating, I cried to him in my turn: ‘Look there, miserable jester!—‘a capital joke!’ is it not?—a ‘capital joke!”

Monsieur de L–, pierced through the heart by a plunge of his antagonist’s sword, was lying by the side of his wife.

Ernest has left France to die in a foreign land. Madame de L– committed suicide the day after this horrible duel.

‘A CAPITAL JOKE!’

APOSTROPHE TO AN OLD HAT

BY JOHN G. SAXECome forth, Old Hat! I’ll pluck thee from the ditch,Where thou hadst well nigh found a grave, ‘unwept,Unhonor’d and unsung.’ I’ll rescue theeA moment longer from oblivion,Albeit thou art old, bereaved of rim,And like a prince dethroned, no more canst boastA crown!Would thou couldst talk! I’d e’en consentThat thou shouldst steal my prating grandame’s tongue,And so procure her silence and thy history.Time-worn, adust, degraded as thou art,Thine ancient quality doth still appear;And this fine web, malgré thy present mien,(A batter’d cylinder of dingy brown,)Proclaims that once, some dozen years ago,Thou wert a good and fashionable hat.Perchance thou first wert perch’d right jauntilyA-top some dandy’s poll; a most convenient blockTo keep thee in good shape, and serve besideOne purpose more—to advertise thy brethren.Mayhap a lawyer, in thy pristine yearsAnd his, with thy possession much enhancedHis meagre sum of personal estate;And, in phrase professional, call’d thee ‘chattel’—A vile distinction for a beaver hat!A lawyer’s hat!—alack! what teeming store-house oftOf mischiefs dire; ill-boding parchment; ‘writs,’With hieroglyphics mystical inscribed;Invention curious of graceless men,And in sad mock’ry named ‘the grace of God!’What mighty ‘suits at law,’ begot and bornWithin thy strait enclosure, yet surviveThy tenth successor! And what mighty ‘suitsIn chancery,’ (so named from Chance, who sitsAlternate there and in the legal courts,)Still flourish, endless as the heap of wordsWhich mark the spot where Justice lies entomb’d!Perhaps at first thou wert allow’d to crownThe ‘honorable’ head of some grave senator;Or judge astute; or member of ‘the otherHouse;’ pregnant perforce with weighty matters;‘Petitions’ humbly praying to abolishSlavery and ‘hard times.’ ‘Bills’ to promoteThe better culture of moralityAnd morus multicaulis! Mayhap a briefAnd formal letter to a brother member,In courteous phrase requesting leave to shoot him.‘Notes,’ ‘Resolutions,’ ‘Speeches’ of vast length,And just adapted to produce what thouHast wanted many a year—a decent nap.Perchance an editor, by some mysterious accidentMade passing rich with five-and-forty shillings,First bore thee off in triumph; ’tis pity thenThou canst not speak; else should we hearOf much before unpublished; of countless ‘bills’Unpaid; of libels prudently suppress’d;Of ‘Stanzas’ much, of ‘Lines’ innumerable;And love-sick ‘Songs’ to goddesses mundane,All wickedly committed to the Persian’s god!Thou mayst have crown’d a parson, and couldst tell,If thou hadst power of verbal utterance,Of ‘the divinity that stirred within thee’In shape of sermons; faithful or smooth-tongued,As he who wrote them chanced to covet mostThe smile of God or man. A lover’s hatThou surely wert, (since all men love,Who have a head,) and oft no doubt hast givenTo scented billet-doux and amorous rhymesThy friendly guardianship; secure from aughtSave lifting winds and porter’s curious eye.At second-hand ’tis ten to one thou wertA Jew’s possession, got in honest barter;Next, John the ostler’s; last of all, past doubtA vagrant’s hat; the equitable purchaseOf an ill-sung song. Till quite worn outWith rain, and wind, and sleet, and other ‘illsThy race is heir to,’ the beggar cast theeFrom his plebeian pate—and here thou liest.St. Alban’s, Vermont.

THE COUNTRY

There is something very pleasant in the country, particularly about Thanksgiving-time, when families gather together from north, south, east and west, around the huge roast turkey, and many pairs of jaws masticate vigorously in gratitude for blessings received. At this season of the year the bird which was fortunate enough to excite the enthusiasm of Brillat-Savarin, and to be the theme of many chapters in his immortal ‘Physiologie,’ is the emblem of our republic. A bald eagle indeed! Who ever heard of a roast eagle? But a turkey:

‘The state of a fat turkey, the decorumHe marches in with, all the train and circumstance!’Tis such a matter, such a glorious matter!And then his sauce with oranges and onions;And he displayed in all parts! for such a dish now,And at my need, I would betray my father.’

What native American does not respond Amen! from the depths of his stomach to these appetizing verses of Beamount and Fletcher? But higher far rises the gastronomic phrenzy of the Travelled, who have known the bird, grand in his stuffing of chestnuts, sublime when swelling with the bliss-bringing truffle!

And the country is at all seasons a pleasant idea, if properly considered; but beware of the man of one idea, if that one be Country, as you would of the homo unius libri. If you cannot distinguish timothy from clover, and beets from carrots; if, agriculturally speaking, you don’t ‘know beans;’ he will annihilate you with his rural wisdom. For his whole existence is in the soil. He worships things under the earth. Dust he is, and to dust he shall return; (the sooner the better!) He prattles of potatoes, talks of turnips, harangues about horse-radish, knows no composition except compost. Speak to him of manners, and he will answer of manures. Like the Egyptians, he worships a bull; and has all the fondness of Pythagoras for beans. His only literature is Liebig’s Animal Chemistry; his lighter reading, the Cultivator and the New-England Farmer.

Such an one was whilom a citizen with protruding abdomen and white cravat, who having realized a something in business, exchanges the counter for the country; buys his acre or two, erects his manor-house, with a grass-plat in front and a tree or two behind; and with a little straw hat on his head, a linen coat on his back, and a hoe in his hand, saunters around his limited possessions, as leisurely and as frequently as an old horse in a mill, perfectly content with his place, his plans, and himself.

Call not upon him unless with double-soled boots and strapless trowsers; and choose a cool day for the visit, if it must be made; for not over ‘hill and dale,’ but over rock and gully you must march; through ploughed land and through weeds, through bowers of grape-vines and bosquets of Lima beans; scratched by the thorns of the gooseberry and brushed by the long dew-covered leaves of the Indian corn. Numberless shrubs from a foot to eighteen inches in height he will point out to you, and name them with long names: ‘This is the Prota Goras,’ ‘and that the Demo Creitus;’ shrubs which, if you had encountered them when alone, you might have eradicated as weeds, in a moment of generous activity. And when muddy, breathless and dripping, you reach the highest point of his possessions, he will wave his hand majestically over some twenty feet of grass, and pointing to three trees and a white fence in the distance, talk of scenery!

Nevertheless, convinced as we are that the taste for country-places is on the increase, we think it advisable to suggest a few hints for the instruction of the aspirants after rural felicity. Saratoga and the like are no longer indispensable places of resort, but it is indispensable to be out of town for three months of the year, if you would not be out of fashion during the remaining nine. Select then a bare and stony spot, for as your object is employment, the more improvements you can make the better you will be pleased, as you take it for granted of course that improvements cost almost nothing. On the highest part of this ground you will build your house: an airy situation is invaluable in warm weather; and then a view is so desirable. In the choice of a style of architecture some difficulty arises. You may either have a clap-board Parthenon, with Corinthian columns in front and Doric columns in the rear, painted white, to flash back the rays of the sun, or which is perhaps more fashionable, a Gothic cottage, with steep roof, rustic pillars, fantastic barge-boards, and numerous pinnacles painted brown, with oak-stained doors. This style looks well in the situation we have described; the absence of trees bringing out more fully the beauties of the architecture. It is attended with one or two inconveniences; scarcely however, worth mentioning: Gothic windows always leak, and the sloping roof makes the second story a little ovenish in temperature, and garrety in smell. Whichever of the two styles you adopt, you must not fail to refer your plans to some bustling little architect, who will be sure to write articles about himself in one of the weeklies, and will probably give a drawing of your house, and call you the ‘intelligent, gentlemanly, and high-minded proprietor.’ After you have removed the stones, manured the ground, and planted grass, you will have a lawn; and after you have dug deep holes and set out tall thin consumptive trees, you have a wood. Secure the whole with white fences; throw rustic bridges over the impassable streams; sprinkle red dahlias and tiger-lilies here and there; buy a bull-dog to set on any small child who may be reckless enough to trespass; and lo! you have a country-seat as well as a town-house, and can invite your city friends to fill your one spare room in regular rotation.

In the important matter of a name, you must decide for yourself; but surely with Walter Scott and Lord Byron and the innumerable What-d’ye-call-’em dales, Thingumbob brooks, and So-and-so woods, to choose from, you can have no difficulty in fixing upon a suitable one.

But, says an amateur rustic, I have no fondness for floriculture, horticulture, or agriculture; what am I to do? Buy a horse, and take a gallop of some twenty miles or so, and if the horse does not shy you off, or bolt you off, or kick you off, and you do not fall off, or he does not fall under you, you will probably arrive at home safe; but as you walk from the stable to the house, you will quote from George Colman’s parody of the Lady of the Lake:

‘Hunter rest, for thou must ownLeather lost and empty belly,’ etc.

Have you a fondness for fire-arms? Then procure a gun and dog, and sally forth before day-light. Walk five miles through swamp and thicket without starting a bird. Sky cloudless; heat intense. Suddenly dog’s tail begins to beat half-seconds; up whirrs a bird, who is out of sight in a moment; so is the dog, who indulges in an animated chase. You shout yourself hoarse; at length succeed in catching dog, and try to thresh him with decayed sticks. A little while after, dog comes to a point again. This time he stands beautifully. You walk slowly up, trembling with excitement, both barrels cocked. Why don’t the bird get up? You glance inquiringly around, and at length discern a wood-turtle fast asleep near the stump of a tree. Then, if an irascible man, you curse. So passes the day. Now and then a bird springs; off fly both of your barrels, aimed at vacancy, and hurling showers of No. 8 into space; and you arrive at home late in the afternoon, sore-footed from much travel and stiffness of boots, and alas! without a feather except a small quail which your dog caught in his mouth.

No more shooting? Try fishing then. Sit all day on a rock watching your float, or cork, or dobber, as the Dutch boys call it, dance merrily over the waves, occasionally disappearing under the surface, when the hook catches a weed. Does not even this suit you? Then, dear friend, buy a boat of from four to six tons burthen, properly rigged and ballasted; also buy a red shirt, a small low-crowned straw hat, some tar to smear over your hands, and learn the first stanza of ‘The sea! the sea!’ to make every thing seem more nautical and ship-shape. Hoist jib and mainsail, and venture out. After you have drifted a mile or two, it will fall a dead calm, and the boat (Gazelle? Wave? Gull?) will float two or three hours, the sun flashing back from the glassy surface of the water, burning your face to the color of bricks, and almost frying the eyes out of your head. Then is the time to sing ‘The sea! the sea!’ and to take some Monongahela to still the qualmishness you begin to experience. At length the wind rises, and your boat, after many yawings, dashes away before it. Suddenly, without any voluntary or visible agency on your part, the main-boom sweeps from one side to the other, carrying your hat overboard in its passage, and dipping the gunwale deep under water. Agitated by this significant gesture, you steer straight for the wharf. In attempting to round-to, the bowsprit comes in contact with the piles and renounces its allegiance to the bow. The boat drifts away from the landing, and finally deposits you high and dry on the beach.

What! Disgusted with this, too? Then take our advice, and like a reasonable man, stay in town.

TO AN EVENING CLOUD

BY A YOUNG LADYThou beautiful cloud, a glorious hue is thine!I cannot think, as thy bright dyes appearTo my enraptured gaze, that thou wert bornOf Evening’s exhalations: more sublime,Light-giver! is thy birth-place, than of earth.Wert thou not formed to herald in the day,And clothe a world in thy unborrowed light?Or art thou but a harbinger of rainsTo budding May?—or in thy subtle screenNursest the lightnings that affright the world?Or wert thou born of th’ thin aërial mistThat shades the sea, or shrouds the mountain’s brow?Whate’er thou art, I gaze on thee with joy.Spread thy wings o’er the empyrean, and awayFleetly athwart the untravelled wilds of space,To where the Sun-light sheds his earliest beams,And blaze the stars, that vision vainly scansIn distant regions of the universe!Tell me, Air-wanderer! in what burning zoneThou wilt appear, when from the azure vaultOf our high heaven thy majesty shall fade;Tell me, winged Vapor! where hath been thy homeThrough the unchangeable serene of noon?Whate’er thy garniture, where’er thy course,Would I could follow thee in thy far flight,When the south wind of eve is low and soft,And my thought rises to the mighty sourceOf all sublimity! O fleeting cloud,Would I were with thee in the solemn night!B.

LITERARY NOTICES

History of the Conquest of Mexico, with a Preliminary View of the Ancient Mexican Civilization, and the Life of the Conqueror, Hernando Cortes. By William H. Prescott. In three volumes. New-York: Harper and Brothers.

We have awaited the appearance of these very elegant volumes with deep and anxious interest. The ability, industry and taste which the author displayed in his ‘History of Ferdinand and Isabella,’ which won for him a noble reputation in the most cultivated states of Europe, still more endeared his name to his own countrymen, and led them to look, with the highest hope and the most pleasant anticipations, to the future efforts of his elegant and fascinating pen. We have for some time known that he was assiduously engaged in collecting materials, and preparing from them a history of the famous Conquest of Mexico; an event which, although of a very splendid and romantic character, was still but vaguely known, even in accomplished and well-informed literary circles. The facts relating to it were nowhere recorded in an authentic and connected form; for it has not been until within the last fifty years that the attention of historians and general scholars has been turned in this direction. The labors of Spanish antiquarians since that time, conducted as they have been with great skill and industry, and under the supervision and encouragement of the government itself, have been abundantly rewarded; and a vast number of original documents have been accumulated in the public and private libraries, which shed floods of light upon all historical events connected with the conquests of Spanish armies, or the discoveries of Spanish fleets, and have thus placed within the reach of writers at the present day materials for lack of which even the able histories of Robertson and his contemporaries became meagre and unattractive. The historians of our era are making the best possible use of these copious and invaluable collections. The first result of their efforts was Washington Irving’s magnificent ‘Life of Columbus,’ one of the most polished and perfect works of its class in the English language, and which has done as much for American literature abroad as it has for its eminent author at home. Then followed Prescott’s ‘Ferdinand and Isabella,’ pronounced by the best critics on both sides the Atlantic to be one of the most interesting and valuable histories ever published: and here we have, in his ‘History of the Conquest of Mexico,’ drawn from the same rich source, a work eminently worthy to succeed its brilliant and most ‘illustrious predecessors.’

Within the limits which restrain us, we can of course do nothing more than intimate very vaguely the general character and scope of this great work; nor are we sure that even this is not quite a useless labor, as it must find its way at once into the library of every literary gentleman throughout the country, and be read with the greatest avidity by men of every class. One of the most valuable portions of the history is the extended view which Mr. Prescott has presented, at the opening of the work, of the character and civilization of the ancient inhabitants of Mexico. The Spaniards conquered no tribe of untutored savages, roaming, in the wild lawlessness of the aborigines of our section of the western continent, over the sunny plains and smiling fields of Anahuac: they found a people there who, centuries before the discovery of the western world by Columbus, possessed the arts of civilization, and had reached a point of intellectual and moral culture in many respects surpassing that of the most renowned nations of the other world. We are surprised to find the high degree of refinement which they had reached. The sciences, especially of mathematics and astronomy, were understood to a degree of nicety scarcely attained by the Romans in their palmiest days. Their political organization was of a wonderfully perfect character; and their laws, and especially the organization of the judiciary, the department by which they were to be interpreted and administered, were stamped by a clear insight into the nature of moral obligation, and the mutual duties and rights of the members of society, which strike us with the utmost astonishment. Their mythology, with the single exception of the sanction it gives to human sacrifices, indicates a much nearer approach to a knowledge of the true God than the popular faith of the Greeks or Romans; and sentiments are recorded as having been uttered by a prince of the Tezcucan tribe, guided solely by the light of his own indwelling reason, which were worthy of Plato or of any sage that has ever lived, unenlightened by the hopes of revelation on which Christians build their faith. The history of such a people, dwelling centuries ago upon our own continent, shrouded as it has heretofore been in darkness and vague uncertainty, under the lucid and brilliant pen of Mr. Prescott becomes more attractive than any offspring of the fancy or imaginative fiction could possibly be. This preliminary sketch occupies nearly half of the first volume; and we have never read any similar effort of the same extent with equal gratification.

We can of course give no outline of the main portion of the work, the history of the train of events by which the whole Mexican empire fell into the hands of the conquering Spaniard. It is one of the most romantic narratives which ever bore the seal of truth. Its prominent actors are men of eminent genius, who performed exploits worthy the greatest captains of Europe or Asia; and the history of their lives abounds with interest and instruction. Mr. Prescott has a most happy historical style, glowing with all the warmth and shining with a far more substantial brilliancy than that of Bancroft; and blending the strict truth of accurate narrative with the free flow of a fine imagination, all under the control of an exquisite taste, with more success than that of any other American writer, Irving perhaps alone excepted. The authorities upon which he relies for his facts are uniformly given in notes, and the fullest information is presented in the same form, on all points which concern the accuracy and completeness of the work. We read the following passage in our author’s preface with profound regret: ‘For one thing, I may reasonably ask the reader’s indulgence. Owing to the state of my eyes, I have been obliged to use a writing-case made for the blind, which does not permit the writer to see his own manuscript; nor have I ever corrected, or even read, my own original draft.’ Mr. Prescott may well consider this as an ample excuse for any errors of typography; of which, by the way, we have not discovered even one. We were already aware, on the best authority, that Washington Irving had prepared to take up the ground so ably occupied by our author; a fact to which Mr. Prescott alludes in the following graceful terms:

‘It was not till I had become master of my rich collection of materials, that I was acquainted with this circumstance; and had he persevered in his design, I should unhesitatingly have abandoned my own, if not from courtesy, at least from policy; for though armed with the weapons of Achilles, this could give me no hope of success in a competition with Achilles himself. But no sooner was that distinguished writer informed of the preparations I had made, than with the gentlemanly spirit which will surprise no one who has the pleasure of his acquaintance, he instantly announced to me his intention of leaving the subject open to me. While I do but justice to Mr. Irving by this statement, I feel the prejudice it does to myself in the unavailing regret I am exciting in the bosom of the reader.’