290 ON REVISITING THE SCENES OF MY INFANCY. cause him to be destroyed. Naples was never deficient in assassins even without so large a bribe. His disordered reason displayed itself in several acts of wanton cruelty, with which, till then, his power, absolute as it was, had never been sullied: he wandered about the streets in rags, without anything on his head, and with only one stocking on: in this humiliating state he went to the viceroy, and complained of hunger; a collation was ordered for him, but he declined waiting for it, and ordering his gondola, went on the water, probably to seek relief from his feverish sensations. Unfortunately thirst preyed upon him, and in the course of a few hours he drank twelve bottles of Lachrymæ Christi; an excess which, to one of his temperate habits and long privation, was enough in itself to bring on insanity; and which increased his disorder to so alarming a degree, that the next day he rode furiously up and down the streets, wounding every one he met with his drawn sword, summoning the nobles to kiss his naked feet, striking and in- ; sulting his colleagues, and committing every outrage and inconsistency. Masaniello attended church on the festival of "our Lady of Carmine," July 16; here he told the archbishop that he was ready to resign his office and authority to the viceroy; the archbishop promised him everything he desired, and with fatherly kindness commanded one of the monks to take him to the dormitory, and prevail upon him to refresh himself with a little sleep. Unfortunately his eminence left the church as soon as he saw his order executed; and scarcely was he gone when the assassins rushed in, calling out, "Long live the King of Spain, and death to those who obey Masaniello!" Few as the conspirators were, the cowardly people made no attempt to oppose them; but, on the contrary, fell back for them to pass, and they went accordingly straight to the convent, searching everywhere for Masaniello. He, unhappy man, hearing himself loudly called, and thinking his presence was required on some public matter, started from the pallet on which he had thrown himself, and ran out to meet his murderers, crying, "Is it me you are looking for, my people? behold I am here;" but all the answer he received was the contents of four muskets at once, from the hands of his four detestable assassins: he instantly fell, and expired, with the reproachful exclamation "Ah, ungrateful traitors!" bursting from his dying lips. His murderers then cut off his head, and, fixing it on the top of a pike, carried it to the viceroy, after which it was thrown into one ditch, and his body into another, with numerous indignities bestowed upon it, whilst ten thousand of his late followers stood stupidly by, without making a single effort to redeem it from disgrace. Thus fell Masaniello, after a reign of nine days, from the 7th to the 16th of July. It was a reign marked with some excesses, and with some traits of personal folly; yet as long as it is not an everyday event for a fisher-boy to become a king, the story of Masaniello of Naples must be regarded with equal wonder and admiration, as exhibiting an astonishing instance of the genius to command existing in one of the humblest situations of life, and asserting its ascendency with a rapidity of enterprise to which there is no parallel in history. ON REVISITING THE SCENES OF MY INFANCY. [John Leyden, M.D., born in Denholm, Roxburgh, 8th September, 1775; died in the island of Java, 28th August, 1811. He was distinguished as an oriental scholar and a poet. He was a friend of Scott, and His intense abstraction whenever he had a book in his hand is said to have suggested the character of “Dominie Samson." He was the author and editor of numerous important works. His death occurred shortly after his appointment to the judgeship of the Twentyfour Pergunnahs of Calcutta. His poetical works were published in 1819, with a memoir.] assisted in collecting materials for the Border Minstrelsy. My native stream, my native vale, And infancy revive anew. When first each joy that childhood yields At distance fading dark and blue, Now tired of Folly's fluttering breed, And now, when rosy sunbeams lie In thin streaks o'er the eastern sky, Beside my native stream I rove: Re-echoed by their young confined; And view the water-spiders glide Which, printless, yields not as they pass; The surface blue and clear as glass. I love the rivulet's stilly chime But like the foam-streak pass away!" In death's funereal, cheerless hue, MRS. MELLOR'S DIAMONDS. an assassin; but, lest you should imagine that some dark and terrible mystery environed his being, I may as well tell you briefly and frankly who as well as what he was. He was just a shrewd pushing young man of the nineteenth century (seventh decade), who had made his way, and meant to go a great deal farther if he could. Perhaps his Christian name was Samuel, with or without the Surbiton following or preceding. His father's name had been certainly Mellor at least he was under that designation declared a bankrupt, under that designation and as a coal merchant, in the year 1836. He never paid any dividend, never got his certificate, and taking to drinking, died. Exit Mellor senior. His widow struggled through a dubious existence in a lodging-house in Salisbury Street, Strand; and when she quitted this vale of tears, poor soul, she had nothing to leave her children-a boy and a girl, aged respectively twenty-two and eighteen-save the fag-end of a lease, and a thin remnant of remarkable ramshackle furniture. The boy Surbiton had been for some time earning a meagre living in the counting-houses of divers city firms. The girl I think her name was Rosa-"went out" as an assistant in a linen-draper's shop in Regent Street; then she went to keep the books at an hotel in Liverpool; then she married a red-faced gentleman who travelled in hemp, hogs' bristles, or sponges, or ever-pointed pencils, or something in that line; and then she and her husband emigrated to Australia, and drifted down the great stream of oblivion. [George Augustus Sala, born in London 1827. His Such breakings-up of families among the father was a Portuguese gentleman, and his mother an eminent vocalist. For some time he studied art with the intention of becoming a painter; but having made several successful ventures in literature, he afterwards devoted himself entirely to that profession, and the celebrity which he rapidly achieved justified the alteration of his plans. The vivacity and marvellous fertility of his genius maintain his wide-spread popularity. He has displayed his power as an essayist, novelist, traveller, and journalist, and in each character has won new laurels. His principal works are-A Journey due North-being Notes of a Residence in Russia in the Summer of 1856. Twice Round the Clock, or the Hours of the Day and Night in London, 1859; The Baddington Peerage, 1860; History of Hogarth and His Times, 1860; Dutch Pictures, 1861; Captain Dangerous, 1863-a story somewhat in the manner of Defoe: My Diary in America in the Midst of War, 1865; &c. Mr. Sala was sometime editor of the Temple Bar magazine; and he is now a regular contributor to the Belgravia magazine (edited by Miss Braddon, the author of Lady Audley's Secret). It is from the latter periodical we take the following lively sketch of London life.] Murder, they say, will out. Surbiton P. Mellor, Esq., had never murdered anybody, and had not the slightest intention to become smaller middle-classes are common enough. The brother was as fond of his sister as need be; but he could not be always tracing her footsteps. He had his way to make in the world, and she had hers; and he had equitably divided with her the product of the ramshackle furniture and the fag-end of the lease in Salisbury Street. He formed new connections, and got on, and prospered. If sister Rosy had come back to him likewise prosperous, he would of course have been delighted to see her. If she had returned sick and poor, he would have done his duty by her, no doubt; but Rosy had written once or twice, at long intervals, and he had been too busy to answer by return of post; and so, by degrees, the bond of blood faded away to the very palest of pink shadows. Now and again Surbiton would think of the old days when he and his sister used to go to Miss Tattworth's morning seminary in Maiden Lane, and when they used to play in the back parlour of the dingy house in Salisbury Street, the shrill scolding of their mother (who had a temper) He breaking in from time to time on their sports; | but these recollections grew dimmer and less frequent every year. The world is so very wide, and the claims of "business" are so very absorbing. Rosy at the Antipodes perhaps had likewise her business to mind. We cannot always be thinking of old times; and tenacity of memory may be very often one of the results of idleness. Surbiton Mellor continued to gain ground in the race of life; but he was far advanced towards thirty ere letters addressed to him began to be addressed Surbiton P. Mellor, Esq. He was all kinds of things commercial: clerk to a wholesale druggist, sampler to a tea-dealer, traveller to a tobacco-manufacturer, bookkeeper to a fashionable West-end tailor. had done law-writing; he had tried his hand at school-teaching; he had made the round of the provinces delivering lectures in "ventilation" of the features of a newly-formed Life Assurance Company. His first important rise in the world was his appointment as secretary to the Company for Manufacturing Lavenderwater from Irish Bog-peat. That led to connection with the Joots Testimonial Committee (Joots was a commercial philanthropist, who was testimonialized to the extent of ten thousand pounds as a reward for having made a fortune of half a million by "amalgamating" impecunious companies). Subsequently he became secretary to the Society for the Suppression of Snuff-taking; and was one of the most active promoters of the Anti-Pale Ale League. The road to success was now open; for the chairman of the League happened to be Harpie Wyndford, Esq., who was said to be the son either of the Marquis of Malagrowthie's bailiff or of his butler. When H. Wyndford, Esq., promoted the Æolian and Hyperborean Joint-stock Bank, and was appointed paid secretary thereof, what was more natural than that he should prefer to a confidential post therein a young man whose shining capacity for business he had fortunately discerned? From a cashier in the chief office Surbiton P. Mellor speedily became manager of the Primrose-hill branch. There, the murder is all out Mr. Mellor had simply "got on" in the He may not have been ashamed of his origin, or of his early struggles; but where was the need of his alluding to them? No one impeached him: what had he to answer? If a man has a wooden leg, or a great scar on his face, some inquisitive people may conceive that they have a right to inquire how he came by those hurts; but Surbiton Mellor was neither a Greenwich pensioner nor Le Balafré. His success was his own, his money was his own; now. world. and both were honestly earned. He had a thousand a year as manager of the branch bank, but that was only a portion of his income. He speculated widely and profitably. He had the revenue of a gentleman, and he lived like one, continuing to pay as keen attention to business as he did to pleasure. At the commencement of his career he was-notwithstanding a magnificent handwriting and ability to pronounce his h's correctly-profoundly illiterate; but, like many other young men of the nineteenth century (seventh decade), he had educated himself to a very fair intellectual status. He had taught himself French and German out of Ollendorff; had always utilized his annual holidays in continental trips; had made careful epitomes of Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Mill; and Chambers' Educational Course and the Penny Cyclopedia had done the rest. He read the morning and evening newspapers very carefully, and could hold his own in any society. He went to the theatre very frequently, and could talk about Shakspeare and about burlesques. He had taken surreptitious lessons from an instructress who taught adults to dance in twelve lessons; and a three-guinea course at a Brompton riding-school had enabled him to bestride a livery-stable hack in Rotten Row without tumbling off. He had even been seen driving a mail phaeton in Piccadilly very creditably. Wherever he had learned the charioteer's accomplishment I must confess that I do not know; but technics have their intuitions, and there are some men who do excellently well that which they have never been taught to do. Up to the age of thirty Surbiton P. Mellor had remained a gay young bachelor, occupying, since his prosperity had become a substantial fact, an elegant suite of chambers in Parliament Street, Westminster. In process of time it occurred to him that his position demanded that he should take a house, that the house in question should be elegantly and expensively furnished, and that a wife would be a very excellent adjunct to the mansion and to the ameublement in question. The house was soon found, and a handsome sum paid for a long lease, with the faculty of purchasing the freehold when convenient. Nor was there much difficulty in securing a wife as elegant and as expensive as the furniture of her destined home. There is a curious section of society in London which seems to bear a close affinity to first-class upholstery, first-class millinery and dress-making, first-class china, glass, and table-linen, and diners à la Russe sent in from the pastrycook's. In this society are to be found numbers of young ladies-comely, healthy, virtuous, accomplished, well-dressed, well-groomedwhom you have only to pick out, choose, and agree with the manufacturer as to the terms of purchase, and the article will be sent home with the promptitude and despatch expected in the delivery of a new brougham or a grand pianoforte. There is the demand, and there is the supply to meet it. The article is superfine, and fitted with the newest improvements. Nothing is lacking—a big church-service, a handsome trousseau, bride's-maids, brothers, sisters, a father and mother in law, and a distant relative in India, from whom the article has expectations. With any appreciable amount of ready money the article bride is perhaps not always provided; but vast numbers of the Surbiton Mellors of the nineteenth century are perfectly well contented with the money they have themselves made or are making, and will endure the pennilessness of their spouses if they are pretty. The manager of the Primrosehill branch bank, being bidden to a dinner, to be followed by a carpet-dance, at Mr. Harpie Wyndford's residence, Wimbledon Common, did there and then fix his eyes and affections upon Miss Maude Fenton, youngest (and seventh) daughter of Captain Fenton, half-pay R. N. The young people being properly introduced, it became transparently obvious to everybody in the particular circle of society in which they moved, that Surbiton Mellor intended to propose to Miss Fenton so soon as ever he could in common decency pop the question. The girl was as fully aware of this as her mother and her feminine cronies were. The wedding breakfast and the wedding outfit might, with scarcely any deviation from propriety, have been ordered within a fortnight after that dinner and carpet-dance at Wimbledon. Through a proper respect for les convenances, the courtship was spread over two or three months; but during that period Surbiton Mellor was very philosophically occupied in furnishing and decorating his new house in Occidental Grove, and in looking after the building of his new brougham; while Miss, on her part, you may be sure, did not lose her time. Young ladies who have been well brought up have an immensity of things to do before they are married. There are old letters to burn, old scores to be settled, old "foolish nonsenses" to be stifledfor ever. Le roi est mort; vive le roi! Ah, William the Conqueror; ah, Rudolph of Hapsburg, you think yourselves the founders of your line; but there were kings of hearts before you, and the wedding breakfast often contains some curious baked meats which were served at the funeral of your predecessor. If The love-making was of the most conventional description. Everything was done that should have been done; but nothing more. Surbiton had anything to say, he wrote to his intended, and he wrote affectionately; but he was too busy a man to waste time in talking about hearts and darts, or the sun, moon, and stars, or in indulging in vehement declamations concerning the fervour of a passion which he knew full well would ere long be legitimately gratified. Either absence or obstacles, jealousy or doubt, are essential as fuel in feeding that furnace in which real billet-doux are cooked; love's freshest honey must be taken with the bitter wax of the comb to give a zest to the sweetness; Cupid's morning rolls must be munched in secret to be toothsome; and the ink with which amorous epistles are made should be diluted with stolen waters. Thus the finest love-letters extant in the world are those written by Héloïse to Abelard, and by Mirabeau to Sophie-letters which, by persons in good society and who respected themselves, would never have been written at all. It was a mariage de raison, if you will, this union between the prosperous bank manager and the pretty penniless, half-pay captain's daughter. For my part, I am content to maintain that it was a marriage of the nineteenth century (seventh decade), and not of a three-volume novel. Perhaps out of ten weddings which take place at St. George's, Hanover Square, not more than one has had the slightest tinge of romance in its preliminary courtship; and perhaps nine out of the alliances turn out well, and the tenth-the romantic one-turns up some day in Lord Penzance's dolorous court. For sound, earnest, and intense matrimonial hatred, commend me, as a rule, to the parties in a love-match. Nor be so foolish as to assume that reason and calmness-and a little prosiness maybe-are qualities at all incompatible with conjugal love-the well-ordered respectable love which suffices to cause a young man and woman to pass thirty or forty years of married life without open scandal and without secret explosions, to rear up a numerous family, and to go down at last to the grave esteemed by all their relatives and friends. Surbiton Mellor nurtured naturally sanguine hopes that such would be his matrimonial course. There was no skeleton in his closet; he was no Barnes Newcome; he had never compromised himself; he owed no more debts of love than he did debts of money; he was prepared to be very fond of his wife, and had already made up his mind that his eldest son should be christened Surbiton. So in due course of time-the furnishing and decoration from Amsterdam, and who looked well-nigh of the house at Bayswater being satisfactorily completed-Surbiton P. Mellor led Maude Matilda Wilhelmina Fenton to the altar of St. James's, Piccadilly, or St. George's, Hanover Square, I forget which; and the Rev. Bajazet Bergamotte, M. A., assisted by the Rev. Arthur Gwynplaine, B. D., joined them together in the bonds of holy matrimony; and there were no cards; and the young couple spent their honeymoon in the Engadine, and found the baths of St. Maurice full of the most delightful company. There was no madness in the Mellor-Fenton alliance no love madness, at least. Surbiton was never troubled with the slightest approach to jealousy as regarded his wife. He knew very well that, being in society and handsome and showy, she must have admirers. He would as soon have thought of forbidding them to admire her as of covering up his handsome furniture, or locking up his wine-cellar. He was an attentive husband, but not an uxorious He was eminently reasonable, always in the way when wanted, never inopportunely present. I believe that the man was really and sincerely attached to his wife; that he had early discovered her one weak point, and that her weakness was not of a nature to excite any Othello-like suspicions on his part. one. Murder will out, I have already had the honour to observe in these pages. Let me make a clean breast of it as regards Mrs. Surbiton Mellor's foible. The poor woman was desperately extravagant: her prodigality in dress was well-nigh inconceivable. When I hint that she thought nothing of giving 2 guineas a pair for her stays, my lady readers will understand the scale of her sumptuary lavishness. expenditure in every other respect was on a commensurate scale. An extravagant person must always be poorer than a workhouse pauper. At the beginning of the fifth year of her wedded life Mrs. Surbiton Mellor was desperately in debt, and was as desperately dunned on every side. Her as solid and substantial as the Stadt Huis of the Batavian capital. She was the most mysterious of women, carrying jewelry of great value in a dirty market-basket, point-lace in her umbrella, and undertaking all kinds of cloudy tasks-from providing false plaits and rouge for ladies of quality to smuggling cigars and schiedam under her crinoline on board the Rotterdam steamers. She lived anywhere and, as it seemed, everywhere-now to be heard of at Brighton; now lurking about Bath or Cheltenham; now prowling about the corridors of the Grand Hôtel, Paris; now sending in occult messages to ladies stopping at the Quatres Saisons at Hombourg, or attending the petits levers of duchesses in Belgravia Square. I have met Madame Schumakers myself in the verandah of the Continental Hotel, Saratoga, U.S., where she told me she was "fixing' ladies' hair at a dollar per coiffure; and she lent me three sovereigns once to go down to the Derby, on condition that I left four pounds ten for her on the ensuing Saturday at the bar of the Shoulder of Mutton, Lower Norcott Street, Lambeth Marsh. Poor Maude Matilda Wilhelmina had given herself up, body and soul, to this abdominous hag, this Witch of Endor qui avait pris du ventre. She was altogether in the Schumakers' hands, who, besides providing her with innumerable articles of finery, lent her money to pay something on account to the fashionable tradespeople when they became disagreeably pressing for the settlement of their little accounts. Of course the articles were supplied at extravagant prices, and the loans advanced at exorbitant rates of interest. The woman was always at Mrs. Mellor's elbow; she had always something to sell or something to lend; until (as commonly happens when you have dealings with Mephistopheles) she suddenly announced one fine morning, at the very height of the season of 186-, that she would not advance another sixpence or another pocket-handkerchief to her customer; and that unless she was forthwith Was her husband aware of her weakness, her paid the sum of one hundred pounds in cash, folly, her madness? We shall see. It is difficult for any person, man or woman, to go to the deuce financially, without some active and obliging Mephistopheles to show the way, make it smooth for you, open the gates, clear the tolls and bridges, and do other friendly acts for you, until you are safely landed in the place whence Dante returned, but where Eurydice remained. Mrs. Surbiton Mellor's Mephistopheles was a certain Madame Schumakers, a prodigious fat Dutchwoman on account of her long outstanding claims, the amount of which, she declared, exceeded five hundred pounds, she would forthwith repair to the office of the branch of the Eolian and Hyperborean Joint-stock Bank, and inform Surbiton P. Mellor how matters stood; "an' den," said Madame Schumakers, in conclusion, "dere will pe der duyvel's dondershine!" This threat happened to have been uttered on precisely the same morning which had brought Mrs. Mellor by post a number of polite |