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 Maga zine is here mainly to record (in an adequate manner) what she, of her thousandfold myste rious richness and greatness, produces. But the moral lesson? Where is the mora knows it, will patronize; anon that there are | niel's? For the rest, the Thing represented 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. 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 noʻ 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 "respectabie," countless multitude)-into both? The decision is of quite infinite moment; see thou make it aright. 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;" won drously 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 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!" 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 of blood, from it, at discretion? Also, whether thou even now knowest not Private Quacks, innumerable as the sea-sands, toiling half-Cag liostrically, of whom Cagliostro is as the ideal type-specimen? Such is the world. Un derstand 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! 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 nobler sort) ran in his blood. There was in were the conflicting elements; this is the re- him a courage dauntless, not pugnacious; sult they have made out among them. The hardly fierce, by no possibility ferocious: as voice of our 66 'son of thunder," with its deep of the generous war-horse, gentle in its tone of wisdom, (that belonged to all articulate- strength, yet that laughs at the shaking of the speaking ages,) never inaudible amid wildest spear.-But, above all, be what he might, to dissonances, (that belonged to this inarticulate be a reality was indispensable for him. In his age, which slumbers and somnambulates, simple Scottish circle, the highest form of which cannot speak, but only screech and gib- manhood attainable or known was that of ber,) has gone silent so soon. Closed are Christian; the highest Christian was the those lips. The large heart, with its large Teacher of such. Irving's lot was cast. For Dounty, where wretchedness found solacement, the foray-spears were all rusted into earth and they that were wandering in darkness the there; Annan Castle had become a Town-hall; light as of a home, has paused. The strong and Prophetic Knox had sent tidings thither: man can no more: beaten on from without, Prophetic Knox-and, alas, also Skeptic undermined from within, he must sink over- Hume, and (as the natural consequence) wearied, as at nightfall, when it was yet but Diplomatic Dundas. In such mixed inconthe mid-season of day. Irving was forty-two grous element had the young soul to grow. years and some months old: Scotland sent him forth a Herculean man; our mad Babylon wore him and wasted him, with all her engines; and it took her twelve years. He sleeps with his fathers, in that loved birthland: Babylon with its deafening inanity rages on; but to him henceforth innocuous, unheeded-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 thon 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 Grow nevertheless he did (with that strong vitality of his); grow and ripen. What the Scottish uncelebrated Irving was, they that have only seen the London celebrated (and distorted) one can never know. Bodily and spiritually, perhaps there was not (in that November, 1822,) a man more full of genial 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 Bac chic 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 the impossibility to live neglected; to walk on the quiet paths, where alone it is well with us. Singularity must henceforth succeed Singularity. O foulest Circean draught, thou poison 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. within. The misguided nolle-minded had now nothing left to do but die. He died the death of the true and brave. His last words, they say, were: "In life and in death, I am the Lord's.”—Amen! Amen! 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-andOne light still shone on him; alas, through twenty years ago, in his native town, Annan. a medium more and more turbid: the light from He was fresh from Edinburgh, with College Heaven. His Bible was there, wherein must prizes, high character, and promise: he had lie healing for all sorrows. To the Bible he come to see our Schoolmaster, who had also more and more exclusively addressed himself. been his. We heard of famed Professors, of If it is the written Word of God, shall it not high matters classical, mathematical, a whole be the acted Word too? Is it mere sound, Wonderland of Knowledge: nothing but joy, then; black printer's-ink on white rag-paper? | health, hopefulness without end, looked out A half-man could have passed on without an- from the blooming young man. The last time swering; a whole man must answer. Hence I saw him was three months ago, in London. 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 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.] ture-masters, and the tongues of innumerable old women, (named "force of public optTHE age of Romance has not ceased; it 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, mummy. there 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 cere to 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 tragical, if we had eyes to look at it! The -is not this spectacle itself highly romantic, of Romance, yet did. The passions, by grace of the Supernal and also of the Infernal Powers, high-born (highest-born, for he came out of (for both have a hand in it,) can never fail us. Heaven) lies drowning in the despicablest 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 Eter bind 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 1 He kept a Gig."— * "I always considered him a respectable man-Thurtell's Trial, remains of the glorious Possibility, which we Londly named Man, nothing but an inanimate mass of foul loss and disappointment, which we wrap in shrouds and bury underground, surely with well-merited tears. To the Thinker here lies Tragedy enough; the epitome and marrow of all Tragedy whatsoever. But so few are Thinkers? Aye, Reader, so few think; there is the rub! Not one in the thousand has the smallest turn for thinking; only for passive dreaming and hearsaying, and active babbling by rote. Of the eyes that men do glare withal so few can see. Thus is the world become such a fearful confused Treadmill; and each man's task has got entangled in his neighbour's and pulls it awry; and the Spirit of Blindness, Falsehood, and Distraction (justly named the Devil) continually maintains himself among us; and even hopes (were it not for the Opposition, which by God's Grace will also maintain itself) to become supreme. Thus, too, among other things, has the Romance of Life gone wholly out of sight: and all History, degenerating into empty invoice-lists of Pitched Battles and Changes of Ministry; or, still worse, into * Constitutional History," or "Philosophy of History, or "Philosophy teaching by Experience," is become dead, as the Almanacs of other years, to which species of composition, indeed, it bears, in several points of view, no inconsiderable affinity. "Of all blinds that shut up men's vision," says one," the worst is self." How true! How doubly true, if self, assuming her cunningest, yet miserablest disguise, come on us in neverceasing, all-obscuring reflexes from the innumerable selves of others; not as Pride, not even as real Hunger, but only as Vanity, and the shadow of an imaginary Hunger, (for Applause ;) under the name of what we call "Respectability!" Alas now for our Historian: to his other spiritual deadness (which, however, so long as he physically breathes cannot be complete) this sad new magic influence is added! Henceforth his Histories must all be screwed up into the "dignity of History." Instead of looking fixedly at the Thing, and first of all, and beyond all, endeavouring to see it, and fashion a living Picture of it, (not a wretched politico-metaphysical Abstraction of it,) he has now quite other matters to look to. The thing lies shrouded, invisible, in thousandfold hallucinations, and foreign air-images: what did the Whigs say of it? What did the Tories? The Priests? The Freethinkery! Above all, what will my own listening circle say of me for what I say of it? And then his Respectability in general, as a literary gentleman; his not despicable talent for philosophy! Thus is our poor Historian's faculty directed mainly on two objects; the Writing and the Writer, both of which are quite extraneous; and the thing written of fares as we bran. In our England especially, which in these days is become the chosen land of Respectability, Life-writing has dwindled to the sorrowfullest condition; it requires a man to be some disrespectable, ridiculous Boswell before he can write a tolerable Life. Thus, too, strangely enough, the only Lives worth reading are those of Players, emptiest and poorest of the sons of Adam; who nevertheless were sons of his, and brothers of ours; and by the nature of the case, had already bidden Respectability good-day. Such bounties, in this, as in infinitely deeper matters, does Respectability shower down on us. are thy doings, O Gig; sadder than those of Juggernaut's Car: that, with huge wheel, suddenly crushes asunder the bodies of men ; thou, in thy light-bobbing Long-Acre springs, gradually winnowest away their souls! Sad Depend upon it, for one thing, good Reader, no age ever seemed the Age of Romance to itself. Charlemagne, let the Poets talk as they will, had his own provocations in the world: what with selling of his poultry and potherbs, what with wanton daughters carrying secretaries through the snow; and, for instance, that hanging of the Saxons over the Weser-bridge, (thirty thousand of them, they say, at one bout,) it seems to me that the Great Charles had his temper ruffled at times. Roland of Roncesvalles, too, we see well in thinking of it, found rainy weather as well as sunny; knew what it was to have hose need darning; got tough beef to chew, or even went dinnerless; was saddlesick, calumniated, constipated, (as his madness, too clearly indicates ;) and oftenest felt, I doubt not, that this was a very Devil's world, and he (Roland) himself one of the sorriest caitiffs there. Only in long subsequent days, when the tough beef, the constipation, and the calumny, had clean vanished, did it all begin to seem Romantic, and your Turpins and Ariostos found music in it. So, I say, is it ever! And the more, as your true hero, your true Roland, is ever unconscious that he is a hero: this is a condition of all true greatness. In our own poor Nineteenth Century, the writer of these lines has been fortunate enough to see not a few glimpses of Romance; he imagines this Nineteenth is hardly a whit less romantic than that Ninth, or any other, since centuries began. Apart from Napoleon, and the Dantons, and Mirabeaus, whose fire-words (of public speaking) and fire-whirlwinds, (of cannon and musquetry,) which for a season darkened the air, are, perhaps, at bottom but superficial phenomena, he ras witnessed, in remotest places, much that could be called romantic, even miraculous. He has witnessed overhead the infinite Deep, with greater and lesser lights, bright-rolling, silent-beaming, hurled forth by the Hand of God; around him, and under his feet, the wonderfullest Earth, with her winter snow-storms and her summer spice-airs, and (unaccountablest of all) himself standing there. He stood in the lapse of Time; he saw Eternity behind him and before him. The all-encircling mysterious tide of FORCE, thousandfold, (for from force of Thought to force of Gravitation what an interval!) billowed shoreless on; bore him too along with it-he too was part of it. From its bosom rose and vanished, in perpetual change, the lordliest Real-Phantasmagory, (which was Being;) and ever anew rose and vanished; and ever that lordliest many-coloured scene was full, another yet the same. Oak-trees fell, young acorns sprang: Men too, new-sent from the Unknown, he met, of tiniest size, who waxed into stature, into strength of sinew, passionate fire and light in other Men the light was growing dim, the sinews all feeble; they sank, motionless, into ashes, into invisibility; returned back to the Unknown, beckoning him their mute farewell. He wanders still by the parting-spot; cannot hear them; they are far, how far!-It was a sight for angels, and archangels; for, indeed, God himself had made it wholly. One many-glancing asbestos-thread in the Web of Universal-History, spirit-woven, it rustled there, as with the howl of mighty winds, through that "wild roaring Loom of Time." Generation after generation, (hundreds of them, or thousands of them, from the unknown Beginning,) so loud, so stormful busy, rushed torrent-wise, thundering down, down; and fell all silent (only some feeble re-echo, which grew ever feebler, struggling up,) and Oblivion swallowed them all. Thousands more, to the unknown Ending, will follow and thou here (of this present one) hangest as a drop, still sungilt, on the giddy edge; one moment, while the Darkness has not yet engulphed thee. O Brother! is that what thou callest prosaic; of small interest? Of small interest, and for thee? Awake, poor troubled sleeper: shake off thy torpid nightmare-dream; look, see, behold it, the Flame-image; splendours high as Heaven, terrors deep as Hell: this is God's Creation; this is Man's Life!-Such things has the writer of these lines witnessed, in this poor Nineteenth Century of ours; and what are all such to the things he yet hopes to witness? Hopes, with truest assurance. "I have painted so much," said the good Jean Paul, in his old days, "and I have never seen the Ocean; the Ocean of Eternity I shall not fail to see!" : Such being the intrinsic quality of this Time, and of all Time whatsoever, might not the Poet who chanced to walk through it find objects enough to paint? What object soever he fixed on, were it the meanest of the mean, let him but paint it in its actual truth, as it swims there, in such environment; world-old, yet new, and never ending; an indestructible portion of the miraculous All,-his picture of it were a Poem. How much more if the object fixed on were not mean, but one already wonderful; the (mystic) "actual truth" of which, if it lay not on the surface, yet shone through the surface, and invited even Prosaists to search for it! The present writer, who unhappily belongs to that class, has, nevertheless, a firmer and firmer persuasion of two things: first, as was seen, that Romance exists; secondly, that now, and formerly, and ever more it exists, strictly speaking, in Reality alone. The thing that is, what can be so wonderful; what, especially to us that are, can have such significance? Study Reality, he is ever and anon saying to himself; search ou. deeper and deeper its quite endless mystery: see it, know it; then, whether thou wouldst learn from it, and again teach; or weep over it, or laugh over it, or love it, or despise it or in any way relate thyself to it, thou hast the firmest enduring basis: that hieroglyphic page is one thou canst read on for ever, find new meaning in for ever. Finally, and in a word, do not the critic teach us: "In whatsoever thing thou hast thy self felt interest, in that or in nothing hope to inspire others with interest?"-In partial obe dience to all which, and to many other princi ples, shall the following small Romance of the Diamond Necklace begin to come together. A small Romance, let the reader again and again assure himself, which is no brainweb of mine, or of any other foolish man's; but a fraction of that mystic "spirit-woven web,” from the "Loom of Time," spoken of above. It is an actual Transaction that happened in this Earth of ours. Wherewith our whole business, as already urged, is to paint it truly. For the rest, an earnest inspection, faithful endeavour has not been wanting, on our part; nor (singular as it may seem) the strictest re. gard to chronology, geography, (or rather in this case, topography,) documentary evidence, and what else true historical research would yield. Were there but on the reader's part a kindred openness, a kindred spirit of endea vour! Beshone strongly, on both sides, by such united twofold Philosophy, this poor opaque Intrigue of the Diamond Necklace be came quite translucent between us; transf gured, lifted up into the serene of Universal History; and might hang there like a smallest Diamond Constellation, visible without telescope, so long as it could. CHAPTER II. THE NECKLACE IS MADE. Herr, or as he is now called Monsieur, Boehmer, to all appearance wanted not that last infirmity of noble and ignoble minds-a love of fame; he was destined also to be famous more than enough. His outlooks into the world were rather of a smiling character: he has long since exchanged his guttural speech, as far as possible, for a nasal one; his rustic Saxon fatherland for a polished city of Paris, and thriven there. United in partnership with worthy Monsieur Bassange, a sound practical man, skilled in the valuation of all precious stones, in the management of workmen, in the judgment of their work, he already sees himself among the highest of his guild: nay, rather the very highest-for he has secured (by purchase and hard money paid) the title of King's Jeweller; and can en ter the Court itself, leaving all other Jewellers, and even innumerable Gentlemen, Gigmen, and small Nobility, to languish in the vest bule. With the costliest ornaments in his pocket, or borne after him by assiduous shop boys, the happy Boehmer sees high drawing rooms and sacred ruelles fly open, as with tals. manic Sesame; and the brightest eyes of the whole world grow brighter: to him alone of |