the next; and so he continued day after day. His social and gentle manners disappeared, his fresh look was gone, and his purse (repeatedly replenished and as often secretly exhausted) no longer afforded him the means of being liberal or even just. The letters of introduction which he had brought to Padua remained undelivered, and one or two friends who had been requested to notice him, complained of his having abandoned them. His landlady now (whose bill was larger than she wished) grew curious and a little impatient on the subject of her lodger. "Our young gentleman grows thinner and thinner every day," observed Lorenza to her mother." Ay girl," replied his hostess, "he is as thin as his purse. I do not understand his doings, not I." "He grows paler," said the daughter."-" Ay, ay, and poorer too," retorted the dame. "I must take some means to get my money soon, or perhaps he'll die in my debt. I do not understand it. Here, he eats and drinks at my cost- "Ah! mother, he eats so little," said the interceding Lorenza. Why, to be sure, he hath grown sparing," answered the mother:-and here the conversation ended. Shortly after this, however, the hostess (having made no further progress into the student's secret) applied to him peremptorily for money. He blushed, and stammered out something about his remittances, and soon after, in a sad and drooping condition, quitted the house. From that time afterwards he was never heard of. The landlady waited for him during that day, and expected him throughout the night, and the next day also,—and the next,-and the next. But he never came. At last, she made known the circumstance of his disappearance to his friends, who set on foot every inquiry, but in vain. There was nothing which threw a light on this mysterious subject: unless it was a passage or two from some letters written by the student to a young countryman of his, to whom it appears he was related. These letters, which are for the most part penned in a small tremulous hand, are addressed to "The Senor Juan Llanos, at Avila in Leon," and contain among other things, (not essential to this story,) the following curious extracts:[After giving a brief account of the dialogue at the inn, which we have been enabled to state much more at length, he details the particulars of his walk homewards, which have been already given; and then proceeds.] "I felt shall I say it?-an appetite, a passion, a burning desire, an intense curiosity beyond all that possesses ordinary men. My devil was an inquisitive spirit, which rode me like a nightmare. I could no longer resolve to be incurious or content. I saw a hell open before me, and I resolved to cast myself into its abyss. My love-but it was not love: It was to true love like what a stove-heated room odorous with jasmine and roses is to the clear and bracing air. My limbs trembled and were restless. My eye glanced about, yet noted nothing. My mouth was dry, and I bit my lips till they ran over with blood. I hurried on through the streets, past shops and warehouses and blazing inns-and at last reached the suburbs. Still I kept on with an unsubdued pace. The moon had risen, and the evening star was strait above me. I looked at it, and it threw down its small piercing eye, as though it saw through my purpose. I had now reached the last house of the town. Before me was a dark lane, whose hedges were overgrown with honeysuckle and flaunting ivy. I plunged into it in a moment, and gave my soul up to intoxication and love." It appears, by another letter, that Rodrigo failed that night in finding the idol of his imagination. She was discovered by him afterwards, however, and he gave himself to her society, utterly reckless of the world around him. He made her magnificent presents, which (to do her justice) she received somewhat unwillingly, and she, in fact, appears to have been ignorant of the amount of his resources. At last, the madness of a boy prevailed with her, and she returned his love with a passion as intense as his own. At this period he writes thus: "You should see her, my friend, as I have seen her, more beautiful than the summer rainbow. You should hear her speak, so sweetly, so smilingly, and sing, like the pining nightingale. For she, too, has no mate, and lives in a green haunt, mysterious and alone, like that bird whom the poets write of. Her breath is like the odour of flowers-her tread like air-and her eyes as the starry nights of August are. But, why do I fret thee with these trite similes? I have felt her kisses! do you hear?-her hot, inticing, intoxicating kisses. Her lips have burned love upon me, and I live!-Oh! Juan, Juan! that was no fable which tells of the witch Circe and her crowd of brute slaves. I myself am transformed in spirit,-prostrate and supine. How willingly would I lay me down on the base ground and bid her trample me to dust!-Juan, am I not lost? I have gone from myself, surely. I have left all study, all amusements, all converse of friends. The intellect of past ages which opened upon me like a Heaven, now looks dull and murky. Į have abandoned all things for one alone, and she may be at last—a woman!" Some of his other letters are such a mere tissue of extravagant sayings, that we cannot venture to transcribe them. He seems to have been bewitched beyond all chance of relief. He talks more rapturously than a poet could do, and as fondly as a life-devoted lover. "I have just left her, and it is a relief to me to write to thee, my dear friend Juan. Do not perplex me with thy advice; it is heartless and cold, and useless. I am hers for ever. We hear of menaces, and strange stories are told to us in secret, and horrid forebodings haunt us; but we are constant to each other, and that makes amends for all. 'Amends,' do I say? Is it thus that the slave of Love can speak, who ought to be so grateful, so devoted?-Juan, I have just left her. Oh! hers are the gardens of enchantment. The fountains and fruit trees,—the waving whispering branches, the ground carpeted with flowers, the marble hall, the Persian couches, the glittering wines, and the maddening kisses,-I feel them still. Were I not thus to pour out my folly before thee, I should die of excess of pleasure." * "And yet we are circled all round with peril. That horrible Zetti is near us, who wears his hand eternally on his dagger, and feeds only upon blood and gold. His emissaries are upon us. Every step that I tread is watched. I heard his laugh last night from a thicket in her garden, as I pressed her to escape from him and Padua. He is a very devil, whom revenge and a coarse passion alternately sway. And yet we live under this contemptible tyranny! Juan. What shouldst thou think of me, Juan, were I to leave thee and Spain for ever, to dwell in some desert with this Circe of my love? Wouldst thou forgive me? Would my father pardon me? Yet why do I speak of him, who never threw away a gentle word upon the son of his dead Theresa? He was an ingrate to love, an apostate from his old affection, and I have still enough of my proud mother's Castilian spirit in me, to assist me to this indignant reproach.-Farewell, Juan! farewell! Shouldst thou not receive another letter soon from me, look to hear that I am gone over to the Hesperian islands, where now no uninchanted' dragon watches; or else that I have begun my pilgrimage into the sunset wildernesses, where man has no enemy but the snake and the panther, and love no termination but the grave!" It was about the time of writing this letter, that the student left his home at Padua, never to return. The old landlady wondered, as Į have said, and her daughter, the pretty Lorenza, sighed to think that so sweet and noble a youth should leave her without a word at parting. She had let her heart wander too often towards him, and her pity would soon have risen into love. But he disappeared, and she grieved like a gentle woman for him, through many and many a day, and at last awoke from her love-delusion as from a dream. -Nothing certain was ever heard, after this period, of Cornelia Minotti or the Spanish student. But the captain of a Leghorn trader, who had been obliged to make a voyage to America, and had been up the country as far as Montreuil, stated that a young couple, answering their description, had some years before arrived at that city, and had afterwards purchased a section of land in the neighbourhood. Upon this land they had built a small house, where they lived very secluded, never coming even to Montreuil except upon some very urgent occasion. The man, he said, was about thirty years of age, tall, and of an olive complexion, with a seriousness of aspect which seemed to denote constitutional melancholy. The woman (who appeared about the same age) was extremely pale, but possessed a commanding figure, and a lustrous expression in her eyes that he had never seen equalled. They were, he understood, quiet unoffending people, though reserved, charitable to the poor settlers and people around them, and, above all, appeared to entertain towards each other the most romantic and extravagant affection. T 3 3 3 T MORAL LINES. FLOATING down the current of time to the tomb, As the Indian does the frail fair bloom Of the lotus that drinks of his sacred tide.* But thus should we part with the pearl of Heaven, The cloud of the grave may eclipse thy day! In the midst of them all, to the things above. And thus to thy God, without fear or crime, J. *The Ganges. It holds a high place in the superstitions of the country, in which the lotus-flower is not forgotten. ལ THE SMALL TOUR, OR, UNSENTIMENTAL JOURNEY. EVERY body knows what is, or was, meant by "the grand tour." By the small tour I mean that tour which since the peace of 1814 has been made by high and low, rich and poor, from the stately duke and the superb duchess, to the snug cheesemonger and his snub-nosed spouse. I mean the tour to Paris and back again. This tour I made originally in the latter end of the year 1814: was in Paris during the memorable era of the hundred days, and was the last of the British swallows which took flight on the re-approach of "the wintry clouds of war." This I consider as an epoch in my life, and now with increasing years I find my fondness for alluding to it increase marvellously:-at least my friends tell me so; but I shrewdly suspect that they exaggerate matters. I believe, on my conscience, that I do not mention the fact above twice in the same evening, at least before my third bottle: what may happen after that, I cannot positively swear to. Be that as it may, the tour to Paris, " where I was when Napoleon came from the island of Elba," kept me in good talk for nine years. The topic, to be sure, was beginning to get a little stale; but most fortunately for myself, my friends, and the public, it happened by the most unexpected chance, that I was obliged the other day to take the small tour again. In fact, dear reader, I visited the capital of France a very short time before "another son of St. Louis had ascended into heaven." I mean now to entertain the reader with a few of the most piquant of my personal adventures during my absence from the smoky Eden, or foggy paradise of London. But before I begin, let me hasten to relieve him from the distressing apprehension that I shall insult his probably superior knowledge on the subject by any description of buildings, sights, or localities of any kind; or his understanding by any moral or political dissertations. Let not the fear of dramatic criticism be before his eyes, nor let any anticipated strictures on the fine arts weigh down his eyelids. Of these things we have had enough "“ usque ad nauseam," both in print and in conversation. It had a fine sound once (I remember the time) to say "when I was in Paris;" this brief but magic phrase was sure in the most crowded circles to arrest "attention still as night, or summer's noon-tide air." But, alas! the charm is dissolved, the spell hath lost its power. The full-fraught traveller, returned from the small tour, may now unload his precious cargo, and parade his " speciosa miracula," without exciting either gape or exclamation. It won't do in any part of London, not even in Whitechapel or Walworth, and I much doubt if it would succeed in any part of the united kingdom, except, perhaps, among the electors of Corfe Castle. Every one "has been to Paris." The stones (confound them!) of the Rue St. Honoré are as familiar to the banker's clerk, as the flags of Cheapside. He knows the column of the "Place Vendome" as well as he does the Monument, and he will affirm without the least compunction, that he has promenaded as often in the "Tuileries" as ever he did in Hyde Park or Kensington Gardens. Every milliner's apprentice has been educated in Paris, and if asked how long she sojourned there, will reply with equal readiness and elegance, "troyze anne, monseer." And so on of all the rest. If they have not been "to Paris," they have been "in France," for they have been from Dover to Calais and back again. This is the small tour with a vengeance! But even if they have never set foot on the Gallic shore, what is there to prevent their affirming that they have? What more easy than to tell a lie, the materials of which are so amply supplied in every corner? Therefore, dear reader, I shall trouble thee with none of all these things. Locals I shall not name, save when I cannot help it. Even into the mysteries of gastronomy, or those of the mazy dance, I shall not dip profoundly; consecrated as those noble sciences have been by the immortal labours of Kitchener and Wilson, it would be worse than presumption to touch them. It would be a sort of Philistine profanation, and would merit a similar punishment. No, reader, I shall stick to myself, take care of No. 1. Mine shall be truly a personal narrative," and myself my own great parallel. Now, thus to try my hand as a tourist: On blank day, in blank month, present year, I hoisted " my old trunk" upon my shoulders, and proceeded with sturdy pace to the Tower-stairs, where I took me a boat, and went on board the good steam-packet, "the Lord Melville." Nothing occurred during the passage to Calais worthy of this imperishable record of myself, except that standing at one time too near the forecastle (to save appearances), I was washed from head to foot by an officious billow, which completely spoiled the new buttons of my old blue coat. I was very sick indeed, but there is nothing new in that; yet this I must remark, there is something in the motion of those steam vessels admirably calculated to act on the most determined stomachs. I am as old a sailor (of a landsman) as any I know. I have crossed the Atlantic, the Bay of Biscay, and the German Ocean. I have repeatedly crossed the Channel; to say nothing of sundry perilous adventures "all a-board of a Margate Hoy," and a never-to-beforgotten voyage from Hull to London. And yet I never was sea-sick but once, (the first time I ever was at sea,) until I set my foot on board that confounded steamer. The cause of this I leave to philosophers; --perhaps there may be something in the Russian tallow. We arrived at Calais at half-past ten at night, the worst time a man can arrive at Calais, or any other place, where locals are not as familiar to him as his garter. A crowd of French sharks are always ready to receive you on the pier; and be assured, dear reader, that darkness has the most fatally relaxing effects on the purse-strings; at least I found it so. I was immediately taken under the care of one of the benevolent guardians who were waiting on shore with the kindest intentions towards their British visitors. What with custom-house, opening gates, debarquement, &c. this friendly personage contrived to land me at "mine inn," minus six franks and a half. You will call me perhaps a fool for this; as you please. But it is my maxim in travelling always to pay rather than altercate. I always take the cheapest way of going to work of which regulations will admit. For example, I take the outside of a coach in preference to the inside, &c. I sacrifice nothing to vanity, and very little to other gratifications. But I would sacrifice any thing for the preservation of my temper; I would rather be duped |