came he to let you know that he had relatives | fatherless children, we can believe at least, in Palermo? It is said, he everywhere denies that the fourteen gold Ounces were paid, by a us, and gives himself out for a man of great sure hand, and so her heavy burden, for some birth.' I answered this question, which had space, lightened a little. now arisen by the imprudence of my Guide at our first entrance, in such sort as to make it seem that the Uncle, though he might have reasons for concealing his birth from the public, did yet, towards his friends and acquaintance, keep it no secret.

"The sister, who had come up during this dialogue, and by the presence of her brother, perhaps also by the absence of her yesterday's friend, had got more courage, began also to speak with much grace and liveliness. They begged me earnestly to recommend them to their Uncle, if I wrote to him; and not less earnestly, when once I should have made this journey through the Island, to come back and pass the Rosalia Festival with them.

66

The mother spoke in accordance with her children. 'Sir,' said she, though it is not seemly, as I have a grown daughter, to see stranger gentlemen in my house, and one has cause to guard against both danger and evilspeaking, yet shall you ever be welcome to us, when you return to this city.'

"O yes,' answered the young ones, we will lead the Gentleman all round the Festival: we will show him every thing, get a place on the scaffolds, where the grand sights are seen best. What will he say to the great Chariot, and more than all, to the glorious Illumination!'

"Meanwhile the Grandmother had read the letter and again read it. Hearing that I was about to take leave, she arose, and gave me the folded sheet. Tell my son,' began she with a noble vivacity, nay, with a sort of inspiration, Tell my son how happy the news have made me, which you brought from him! Tell him that I clasp him to my heart'-here she stretched out her arms asunder, and pressed them again together on her breast-that I daily beseech God and our Holy Virgin for him in prayer; that I give him and his wife my blessing; and that I wish before my end to see him again, with these eyes, which have shed so many tears for him.'

"The peculiar grace of the Italian tongue favoured the choice and noble arrangement of these words, which moreover were accompanied with lively gestures, wherewith that nation can add such a charm to spoken words.

"I took my leave, not without emotion. They all gave me their hands; the children showed me out; and as I went down stairs, they jumped to the balcony of the kitchen window, which projected over the street; called after me, threw me salutes, and repeated, that I must in no wise forget to come back. I saw them still on the balcony, when I turned the corner."*

Poor old Felicita, and must thy pious prayers, thy motherly blessings, and so many tears shed by those old eyes, be all in vain! To thyself, in any case, they were blessed.-As for the Signora Capitummino, with her three

Goethe's Werke, (Italienische Reise,) xxviii. 146. 57

Count Cagliostro, all this while, is rapidly proceeding with his Fifth Act; the red coppery splendour darkens more and more into final gloom. Some boiling muddle-heads of a dupeable sort there still are in England: Popish-Riot Lord George, for instance, will walk with him to Count Barthélemy's, or d'Adhémar's; and, in bad French and worse rhetoric, abuse the Queen of France: but what does it profit? Lord George must one day (after noise enough) revisit Newgate for it; and in the meanwhile, hard words pay no scores. Apothecary Swinton begins to get wearisome; French spies look ominously in; Egyptian Pills are slack of sale; the old vulturous Attorney-host anew scents carrion, is bestirring itself anew: Count Cagliostro, in the May of 1787, must once more leave England. But whither? Ah, whither! At Bâle, at Bienne, over Switzerland, the game is up. At Aix in Savoy, there are baths, but no gudgeons in them: at Turin, his Majesty of Sardinia meets you with an Order to begone on the instant. A like fate from the Emperor Joseph at Roveredo;-before the Liber memorialis de Calcostro dum esset Roboretti could extend to many pages! Count Front-of-brass begins confessing himself to priests: yet "at Trent paints a new hieroglyphic Screen,"-touching last flicker of a light that once burnt so high! He pawns diamond buckles; wanders necessitous hither and thither; repents, unrepents; knows not what to do. For Destiny has her nets round him; they are straitening, straitening; too soon he will be ginned!

Driven out from Trent, what shall he make of the new hieroglyphic Screen, what of himself? The way-worn Grand-Cophtess has begun to blab family secrets; she longs to be in Rome, by her mother's hearth, by her mother's grave; in any nook, where so much as the shadow of refuge waits her. To the desperate Count Front-of-brass all places are nearly alike: urged by a female babble, he will go to Rome then; why not? On a May-day, of the year 1789, (when such glorious work had just begun in France, to him all forbidden !) he enters the Eternal City: it was his doom-summons that called him thither. On the 29th of next December, the Holy Inquisition, long watchful enough, detects him founding some feeble (moneyless) ghost of an Egyptian Lodge; "picks him off," (as the military say,) and locks him hard and fast in the Castle of St. Angelo:

Voi ch' intrate lasciat' ogni speranza!

Count Cagliostro did not lose all hope: nevertheless a few words will now suffice for him. In vain, with his mouth of pinchbeck and his front of brass, does he heap chimera on chimera; demand religious Books, (which are freely given him :) demand clean Linen, and an interview with his Wife, (which are refused him;) assert now that the Egyptian Masonry is a divine system, accommodated to erring and gullible men, which the Holy Father, when he 2 P 2

knows it, will patronize; anon that there are some four millions of Freemasons, spread over Europe, all sworn to exterminate Priest and King, wherever met with in vain! they will not acquit him, as misunderstood Theophilanthropist; will not emit him, in Pope's pay, as renegade Masonic Spy: "he can't get out." Donna Lorenza languishes, invisible to him, in a neighbouring cell; begins at length to confess! Whereupon he too, in torrents, will emit confessions and forestall her: these the Inquisition pocket and sift (whence this Life of Balsamo); but will not let him out. In fine, after some eighteen months of the weariest hounding, doubling, worrying, and standing at bay, His Holiness gives sentence: The Manuscript of Egyptian Masonry is to be burnt by hand of the common Hangman, and all that intermeddle with such Masonry are accursed; Giuseppe Balsamo, justly forfeited of life, (for being a Freemason,) shall nevertheless in mercy be forgiven; instructed in the duties of penitence, and even kept safe thenceforth and till death,-in ward of Holy Church. Illstarred Acharat, must it so end with thee! This was in April, 1791.

niel's? For the rest, the Thing represented on these pages is no sham, but a Reality; thou hast it, O reader, as we have it: Nature was pleased to produce even such a man, even so, not otherwise; and the Editor of this Magazine is here mainly to record (in an adequate manner) what she, of her thousandfold mysterious richness and greatness, produces.

But the moral lesson? Where is the moral lesson? Foolish reader, in every Reality, nay in every genuine Shadow of a Reality, (what we call Poem,) there lie a hundred such, or a million such, according as thou hast the eye to read them! Of which hundred or million lying here (in the present Reality,) couldst not thou, for example, be advised to take this one, to thee, worth all the rest: Behold, I too have attained that immeasurable, mysterious glory of being alive; to me also a Capability has been intrusted: shall I strive to work it out (manlike) into Faithfulness, and Doing; or (quacklike)into Eatableness, and Similitude of Doing? Or why not rather (gigman-like, and following the "respectable," countless multitude)-into both? The decision is of quite infinite moment; see thou make it aright.

He addressed (how vainly!) an appeal to the French Constituent Assembly. As was said, in Heaven, in Earth, or in Hell there was no Assembly that could well take his part. For four years more, spent one knows not how, most probably in the furor of edacity, with insufficient cookery, and the stupor of indigestion, the curtain lazily falls. There rotted and gave way the cordage of a tough heart. One summer morning of the year 1795, the Body of Cagliostro is still found in the prison at St. Leo; but Cagliostro's Self has escaped,-whither no man yet knows. The brow of brass, behold how it has got all un-taloned roots are with the fair boughs, and their lackered; these pinchbeck lips can lie no more: Cagliostro's work is ended, and now only his account to present. As the Scherif of Mecca said, "Nature's unfortunate child, adieu !"

But in fine, look at this matter of Cagliostro (as at all matters) with thy heart, with thy whole mind; no longer merely squint at it with the poor side-glance of thy calculative faculty Look at it not logically only, but mystically. Thou shalt in sober truth see it (as Sauerteig asserted) to be a "Pasquillant verse," of most inspired writing in its kind, in that same "Grand Bible of Universal History;" wondrously and even indispensably connected with the "Heroic" portions that stand there; even as the all-showing Light is with the Darkness wherein nothing can be seen; as the hideous

leaves and flowers and fruit; both of which, and not one of which, make the Tree. Think also whether thou hast known no Public Quacks, on far higher scale than this, whom a Castle of St. Angelo never could get hold of; and how, as Emperors, Chancellors, (having found much fitter machinery,) they could run their Quack-career; and make whole kingdoms, whole continents, into one huge Egyptian Lodge, and squeeze supplies, of money or blood, from it, at discretion? Also, whether thou even now knowest not Private Quacks, innumerable as the sea-sands, toiling half-Cagliostrically, of whom Cagliostro is as the ideal type-specimen? Such is the world. Understand it, despise it, love it; cheerfully hold on thy way through it, with thy eye on higher

Such, according to our comprehension thereof, is the rise, progress, grandeur, and decadence of the Quack of Quacks. Does the reader ask, What good was in it, Why occupy his time and hours with the biography of such a miscreant? We answer, It was stated on the very threshold of this matter, in the loftiest terms, by Herr Sauerteig, that the Lives of all Eminent Persons (miscreant or creant) ought to be written. Thus has not the very Devil his Life, deservedly written not by Daniel Defoe only, but by quite other hands than Da-loadstars!

1

DEATH OF THE REV. EDWARD IRVING.

[FRASER'S MAGAZINE, 1835.]

EDWARD IRVING's warfare has closed; if not | lanthropism, and the Revolution of Three in victory, yet in invincibility, and faithful en- Days! He might have been so many things; durance to the end. The Spirit of the Time, not a speaker only, but a doer; the leader of which could not enlist him as its soldier, must hosts of men. For his head (when the Fogneeds, in all ways, fight against him as its ene- Babylon had not yet obscured it) was of my: it has done its part, and he has done his. strong far-searching insight; his very enthuOne of the noblest natures-a man of antique siasm was sanguine, not atrabiliar; he was so heroic nature, in questionable modern garni- loving, full of hope, so simple-hearted, and ture, which he could not wear! Around him made all that approached him his. A giant a distracted society, vacant, prurient; heat force of activity was in the man; speculation and darkness, and what these two may breed: was accident, not nature. Chivalry, advenmad extremes of flattery, followed by madder | turous field-life of the old Border (and a far contumely, by indifference and neglect!-these were the conflicting elements; this is the result they have made out among them. The voice of our "son of thunder," with its deep tone of wisdom, (that belonged to all articulatespeaking ages,) never inaudible amid wildest dissonances, (that belonged to this inarticulate age, which slumbers and somnambulates, which cannot speak, but only screech and gibber,) has gone silent so soon. Closed are those lips. The large heart, with its large Dounty, where wretchedness found solacement, and they that were wandering in darkness the light as of a home, has paused. The strong man can no more: beaten on from without, undermined from within, he must sink over-Hume,-and (as the natural consequence) wearied, as at nightfall, when it was yet but the mid-season of day. Irving was forty-two years and some months old: Scotland sent him Grow nevertheless he did (with that strong forth a Herculean man; our mad Babylon vitality of his); grow and ripen. What the wore him and wasted him, with all her en- Scottish uncelebrated Irving was, they that gines; and it took her twelve years. He have only seen the London celebrated (and sleeps with his fathers, in that loved birth- distorted) one can never know. Bodily and land: Babylon with its deafening inanity rages spiritually, perhaps there was not (in that Noon; but to him henceforth innocuous, unheed-vember, 1822,) a man more full of genial ed-for ever.

Reader, thou hast seen and heard the man (as who has not?) with wise or unwise wonder; thou shalt not see or hear him again. The work, be what it might, is done; dark curtains sink over it, enclose it ever deeper into the unchangeable Past.-Think (if thou be one of a thousand, and worthy to do it) that here once more was a genuine man sent into this our ungenuine phantasmagory of a world, which would go to ruin without such; that here once more, under thy own eyes, in this last decade, was enacted the old Tragedy (and has had its fifth-act now) of The Messenger of Truth in the Age of Shams, and what relation thou thyself mayest have to that. Whether any? Beyond question, thou thyself art here; either a dreamer or awake; and one day shalt cease to dream.

This man was appointed a Christian Priest; and strove with the whole force that was in him to be it. To be it: in a time of Tithe Controversy, Encyclopedism, Catholic Rent, Phi

nobler sort) ran in his blood. There was in him a courage dauntless, not pugnacious; hardly fierce, by no possibility ferocious: as of the generous war-horse, gentle in its strength, yet that laughs at the shaking of the spear.-But, above all, be what he might, to be a reality was indispensable for him. In his simple Scottish circle, the highest form of manhood attainable or known was that of Christian; the highest Christian was the Teacher of such. Irving's lot was cast. For the foray-spears were all rusted into earth there; Annan Castle had become a Town-hall; and Prophetic Knox had sent tidings thither: Prophetic Knox-and, alas, also Skeptic

Diplomatic Dundas. In such mixed incon-* grous element had the young soul to grow.

energetic life in all these Islands.

By a fatal chance, Fashion cast her eye on him, as on some impersonation of NovelCameronianism, some wild product of Nature from the wild mountains; Fashion crowded round him, with her meteor lights, and Bacchic dances; breathed her foul incense on him; intoxicating, poisoning. One may say, it was his own nobleness that forwarded such ruin: the excess of his sociability and sympathy, of his value for the suffrages and sympathies of men. Syren songs, as of a new Moral Reformation, (sons of Mammon, and high sons of Belial and Beelzebub, to become sons of God, and the gumflowers of Almack's to be made living roses in a new Eden,) sound in the inexperienced ear and heart. Most se. ductive, most delusive! Fashion went her idle way, to gaze on Egyptian Crocodiles, Iro quois Hunters, or what else there might be, forgot this man,-who unhappily could not in his turn forget. The intoxicating poison had been swallowed; no force of natural health could cast it out. Unconsciously, for most

part in deep unconsciousness, there was now | within.

The misguided noble-minded had the impossibility to live neglected; to walk on now nothing left to do but die. He died the the quiet paths, where alone it is well with us. death of the true and brave. His last words, Singularity must henceforth succeed Singu- they say, were: "In life and in death, I am the larity. O foulest Circean draught, thou poison Lord's."-Amen! Amen!

of Popular Applause! madness is in thee, and death; thy end is Bedlam and the Grave. For the last seven years, Irving, forsaken by the world, strove either to recall it, or to forsake it; shut himself up in a lesser world of ideas and persons, and lived isolated there. Neither in this was there health: for this man such isolation was not fit; such ideas, such persons.

One light still shone on him; alas, through a medium more and more turbid: the light from Heaven. His Bible was there, wherein must lie healing for all sorrows. To the Bible he more and more exclusively addressed himself. If it is the written Word of God, shall it not be the acted Word too? Is it mere sound, then; black printer's-ink on white rag-paper? A half-man could have passed on without answering; a whole man must answer. Hence Prophecies of Millenniums, Gifts of Tongues,whereat Orthodoxy prims herself into decent wonder, and waves her Avaunt! Irving clave to his Belief, as to his soul's soul; followed it whithersoever, through earth or air, it might lead him; toiling as never man toiled to spread it, to gain the world's ear for it,—in vain. Ever wilder waxed the confusion without and

One who knew him well, and may with good cause love him, has said: "But for Irving, I had never known what the communion of man with man means. His was the freest, brotherliest, bravest human soul mine ever came in contact with: I call him, on the whole, the best man I have ever (after trial enough) found in this world, or now hope to find.

"The first time I saw Irving was six-andtwenty years ago, in his native town, Annan. He was fresh from Edinburgh, with College prizes, high character, and promise: he had come to see our Schoolmaster, who had also been his. We heard of famed Professors, of high matters classical, mathematical, a whole Wonderland of Knowledge: nothing but joy, health, hopefulness without end, looked out from the blooming young man. The last time I saw him was three months ago, in London. Friendliness still beamed in his eyes, but now from amid unquiet fire; his face was flaccid, wasted, unsound; hoary as with extreme age: he was trembling over the brink of the grave. Adieu, thou first Friend; adieu, while this confused Twilight of Existence lasts! Might we meet where Twilight has become Day!"

THE DIAMOND NECKLACE.

CHAPTER I.

AGE OF ROMANCE.

[FRASER'S MAGAZINE, 1837.]

it

ture-masters, and the tongues of innumerable old women, (named "force of public opiTHE age of Romance has not ceased; nion") by prejudice, custom, want of knownever ceases; it does not, if we will think of ledge, want of money, want of strength, into, it, so much as very sensibly decline. The say, the meager Pattern-Figure that, in these passions are repressed by social forms; great created Man," all but abnegating the character days, meets you in all thoroughfares; a "godpassions no longer show themselves?" Why, of Man; forced to exist, automatized, mummythere are passions still great enough to re-wise, (scarcely in rare moments audible or plenish Bedlam, for it never wants tenants; visible from amid his wrappages and cereto suspend men from bed-posts, from improved-ments,) as Gentleman or Gigman; and so drops at the west end of Newgate. A passion selling his birthright of Eternity, for the three that explosively shivers asunder the Life it took rise in ought to be regarded as consider- daily meals, poor at best, which time yields: able more, no passion, in the highest hey-day -is not this spectacle itself highly romantic, of Romance, yet did. The passions, by grace of tragical, if we had eyes to look at it? The the Supernal and also of the Infernal Powers, Heaven) lies drowning in the despicablest high-born (highest-born, for he came out of (for both have a hand in it,) can never fail us. And then as to "social forms," be it granted puddles; the priceless gift of Life, which he that they are of the most buckram quality, and can have but once, for he waited a whole Eterbind men up into the pitifullest, straitlaced, nity to be born, and now has a whole Eternity common-place Existence, you ask, Where is waiting to see what he will do when born,the Romance? In the Scotch way one an- of him by innumerable packthreads; and there this priceless gift we see strangled slowly out swers, Where is it not? That very spectacle of an Immortal Nature, with faculties and destiny extending through Eternity, hampered and bandaged up, by nurses, pedagogues, pos

what do you mean by respectable? He kept a Gig.”
* "I always considered him a respectable man.-
Thurtell's Trial.