Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XXIII.—April, 1852.—Vol. IV.

Meanwhile, the beautiful Frenchwoman, forgetting her toilet and the ball, paced the apartment with almost childish delight and impatience. She was about to make the acquaintance – in a manner the most piquant and unexpected – of the authoress of those romances which had so often filled her vivid imagination with ideas of apparitions, and prisoners dying of hunger in horrible dungeons. She consulted her watch perpetually, and counted the very seconds. At length there was a sound of carriage-wheels in the court-yard of the hotel. Madame Tallien rushed to the door; it opened, and the two celebrated females stood face to face.

The minister's wife could not avoid recoiling with surprise, and some degree of consternation, before the singular figure that paused in the open doorway; for Mrs. Radcliffe had stopped short, dazzled and bewildered by the lights of the saloon, which wounded eyes accustomed for some hours past to the humid obscurity of a dungeon. The English authoress presented a striking contrast to the radiant being before her. Dry, cold, and angular, her attire necessarily in some degree of disorder from her arrest, forced journey, and imprisonment, her whole aspect had in it something bizarre and fantastic, that added to her age at least ten years.

A little recovered from her first surprise, Madame Tallien advanced toward the stranger, gave her a cordial welcome in English, and told her how happy she esteemed herself in having been the means of setting at liberty so celebrated an authoress. The Englishwoman made a polite reply to this compliment, and then they seated themselves before the fire, whose clear flame and vivifying heat were very welcome to the liberated prisoner, and quickly restored an activity of mind that appeared to have been benumbed by the coldness of her dungeon. The ensuing conversation was gay, piquant, full of charm and abandon, and was only interrupted by the orders given by Madame Tallien to her femme de chambre to send the carriage away, and deny her to all visitors.

Mrs. Radcliffe had traveled much, and related her adventures with grace and originality. Hours flew by unheeded, and the Englishwoman was in the very midst of some bold enterprise of her journey in Switzerland, when the time-piece struck twelve. She turned pale, and a visible shuddering seized her. Then pausing in her tale, she looked wildly and fearfully around, as if following the movements of some invisible being. Madame Tallien, struck with a species of vague terror, dared not address a single word to her visitor. The latter at length abruptly rose, opened the door, and with an imperative gesture ordered some one by the name of Henry to leave the room, after which she appeared to experience a sudden relief.

The lovely Frenchwoman, with the tact of real kindness, appeared not to notice this strange incident, and the new-made friends soon after separated, Madame Tallien herself conducting her guest to the apartment provided for her, where she took leave of her with an affectionate "au revoir!"

The following evening Mrs. Radcliffe appeared in her hostess's saloon, as soon as the latter had signified that she was ready to receive her. Calm and composed, habited a la Française, the English romancist appeared ten years younger than she had done the evening before, and was even not without a certain degree of beauty. She said not a word on the scene of the preceding evening; was gay, witty, amiable, and took an animated part in the conversation that followed. But as soon as the minute-hand of the time-piece pointed to half-past eleven, her color fled, a shade of pensiveness replaced her former gayety, and a few moments afterward she took her leave of the company.

The same thing happened the next day, and every ensuing evening. Madame Tallien could not avoid a feeling of curiosity, but she had too much politeness to question the stranger confided to her hospitality. In this way a month elapsed, at the end of which time Mrs. Radcliffe could not avoid expressing, one evening when she found herself alone with her new friend, her disappointment at being detained a prisoner in France, without the power of returning to her own country. Upon this Madame Tallien rose, took a paper from a desk, and handed it to the Englishwoman. It was a passport dated from the same evening that Mrs. Radcliffe had been liberated from her dungeon.

"Since you wish to leave your French friends," said her lovely hostess, smiling, "go, ingrate!"

"Oh, no, not ungrateful!" replied the authoress, taking the beautiful hands of her friend, and carrying them to her lips; "but the year is fast waning, and a solemn duty recalls me to my native land. In the church-yard of a poor village near London are two tombs, which I visit each Christmas-day with flowers and prayers. If I return not before then, this will be the first time for five years that they have been neglected. You already know all my other secrets," she continued, lowering her voice; "it is my intention to confide this secret also to your friendly ears." Passing her hand across her brow, the Englishwoman then proceeded to relate a strange and tragic tale, for the particulars of which we have not space in our limited sketch. Suffice it to say, that it had left our authoress subject to a distressing and obstinate spectral illusion. In the reality of this appearance she firmly believed, not having sufficient knowledge of science to attribute her visitation to its true origin – a partial disarrangement of the nervous system. This visitation regularly recurred at midnight, and at once accounted for the singular behavior that had so piqued the benevolent Frenchwoman's curiosity.

Mrs. Radcliffe now returned to London, where she shortly afterward published "The Italian, or the Confessional of the Black Penitents."

We can, in our day, realize to ourselves very little of the effect produced by Anne Radcliffe's romances at the time of their appearance. All the contemporary critics agree in testifying to their immense success, only inferior to that of the Waverley novels in more recent times. Now they appear nothing more than the efflux of a morbid imagination, full of hallucinations and absurdities, and insufferably tedious to our modern tastes, accustomed to the condensed writing of the present day. Their unconnected plots are nevertheless not altogether devoid of a certain sort of interest, and are fraught with picturesque situations and melodramatic surprises. The living characters therein introduced present few natural features. We recognize every where the caprices of an unbridled fancy, and a prevailing vitiation of sense and taste.

Anne Radcliffe died near London, on the 7th February, 1823, at the age of 63. The "New Monthly Magazine," for May of that year, announces her decease, and affirms that her death was accompanied by singular visions, which had pursued her ever since a romantic event of her youth.

MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.[5 - Continued from the March Number.]

CHAPTER XVII. – Continued

"Your flatterers will tell you, Signorina, that you are much improved since then, but I liked you better as you were; not but what I hope to return some day what you then so generously pressed upon me."

"Pressed upon you! – I? Signor, you are under some strange mistake."

"Alas! no; but the female heart is so capricious and fickle! You pressed it upon me, I assure you. I own that I was not loth to accept it."

"Pressed it? Pressed, what?"

"Your kiss, my child," said Harley; and then added with a serious tenderness, "And I again say that I hope to return it some day – when I see you, by the side of father and of husband, in your native land – the fairest bride on whom the skies of Italy ever smiled! And now, pardon a hermit and a soldier for his rude jests, and give your hand in token of that pardon, to – Harley L'Estrange."

Violante, who at the first words of this address had recoiled, with a vague belief that the stranger was out of his mind, sprang forward as it closed, and in all the vivid enthusiasm of her nature, pressed the hand held out to her, with both her own. "Harley L'Estrange – the preserver of my father's life!" she cried, and her eyes were fixed on his with such evident gratitude and reverence, that Harley felt at once confused and delighted. She did not think at that instant of the hero of her dreams – she thought but of him who had saved her father. But, as his eyes sank before her own, and his head, uncovered, bowed over the hand he held, she recognized the likeness to the features on which she had so often gazed. The first bloom of youth was gone, but enough of youth still remained to soften the lapse of years, and to leave to manhood the attractions which charm the eye. Instinctively she withdrew her hands from his clasp, and, in her turn, looked down.

In this pause of embarrassment to both, Riccabocca let himself into the garden by his own latch-key, and, startled to see a man by the side of Violante, sprang forward with an abrupt and angry cry. Harley heard, and turned.

As if restored to courage and self-possession by the sense of her father's presence, Violante again took the hand of the visitor. "Father," she said, simply, "it is he —he is come at last." And then, retiring a few steps, she contemplated them both; and her face was radiant with happiness – as if something, long silently missed and looked for, was as silently found, and life had no more a want, nor the heart a void.

Book X. – INITIAL CHAPTER

It is observed by a very pleasant writer – read nowadays only by the brave, pertinacious few who still struggle hard to rescue from the House of Pluto the souls of departed authors, jostled and chased as those souls are by the noisy footsteps of the living – it is observed by the admirable Charron, that "judgment and wisdom is not only the best, but the happiest portion God Almighty hath distributed among men; for though this distribution be made with a very uneven hand, yet nobody thinks himself stinted or ill-dealt with, but he that hath never so little is contented in this respect."[6 - Translation of Charron on Wisdom. By G. Stanhope, D.D., late Dean of Canterbury (1729). A translation remarkable for ease, vigor, and (despite that contempt for the strict rules of grammar, which was common enough among writers at the commencement of the last century) for the idiomatic raciness of its English.]

And, certainly, the present narrative may serve in notable illustration of the remark so drily made by the witty and wise preacher. For whether our friend Riccabocca deduce theories for daily life from the great folio of Machiavel; or that promising young gentleman, Mr. Randal Leslie, interpret the power of knowledge into the art of being too knowing for dull honest folks to cope with him; or acute Dick Avenel push his way up the social ascent with a blow for those before, and a kick for those behind him, after the approved fashion of your strong New Man; or Baron Levy – that cynical impersonation of Gold – compare himself to the Magnetic Rock in the Arabian tale, to which the nails in every ship that approaches the influence of the loadstone fly from the planks, and a shipwreck per day adds its waifs to the Rock: questionless, at least, it is, that each of these personages believed that Providence had bestowed on him an elder son's inheritance of wisdom. Nor, were we to glance toward the obscurer paths of life, should we find good Parson Dale deem himself worse off than the rest of the world in this precious commodity – as, indeed, he had signally evinced of late in that shrewd guess of his touching Professor Moss; even plain Squire Hazeldean took it for granted that he could teach Audley Egerton a thing or two worth knowing in politics; Mr. Stirn thought that there was no branch of useful lore on which he could not instruct the squire; and Sprott, the tinker, with his bag full of tracts and lucifer matches, regarded the whole framework of modern society, from a rick to a constitution, with the profound disdain of a revolutionary philosopher. Considering that every individual thus brings into the stock of the world so vast a share of intelligence, it can not but excite our wonder to find that Oxenstiern is popularly held to be right when he said, "See, my son, how little wisdom it requires to govern states;" – that is, Men! That so many millions of persons each with a profound assurance that he is possessed of an exalted sagacity, should concur in the ascendency of a few inferior intellects, according to a few stupid, prosy, matter-of-fact rules as old as the hills, is a phenomenon very discreditable to the spirit and energy of the aggregate human species! It creates no surprise that one sensible watch-dog should control the movements of a flock of silly, grass-eating sheep; but that two or three silly, grass-eating sheep should give the law to whole flocks of such mighty sensible watch-dog —Diavolo! Dr. Riccabocca, explain that if you can! And wonderfully strange it is, that notwithstanding all the march of enlightenment, notwithstanding our progressive discoveries in the laws of nature – our railways, steam engines, animal magnetism, and electro-biology – we have never made any improvement that is generally acknowledged, since Men ceased to be troglodytes and nomads, in the old-fashioned gamut of flats and sharps, which attunes into irregular social jog-trot all the generations that pass from the cradle to the grave; still, "the desire for something we have not" impels all the energies that keep us in movement, for good for ill, according to the checks or the directions of each favorite desire.

A friend of mine once said to a millionaire, whom he saw forever engaged in making money which he never seemed to have any pleasure in spending, "Pray, Mr. – , will you answer me one question: You are said to have two millions, and you spend £600 a year. In order to rest and enjoy, what will content you?"

"A little more," answered the millionaire. That "little more" is the mainspring of civilization. Nobody ever gets it!

"Philus," saith a Latin writer, "was not so rich as Lælius; Lælius was not so rich as Scipio; Scipio was not so rich as Crassus; and Crassus was not so rich – as he wished to be!" If John Bull were once contented, Manchester might shut up its mills. It is the "little more" that makes a mere trifle of the National Debt! – Long life to it!

Still, mend our law-books as we will, one is forced to confess that knaves are often seen in fine linen, and honest men in the most shabby old rags; and still, notwithstanding the exceptions, knavery is a very hazardous game; and honesty, on the whole, by far the best policy. Still, most of the Ten Commandments remain at the core of all the Pandects and Institutes that keep our hands off our neighbors' throats, wives, and pockets; still, every year shows that the Parson's maxim —quieta non movere– is as prudent for the health of communities as when Apollo recommended his votaries not to rake up a fever by stirring the Lake Camarina; still people, thank Heaven, decline to reside in parallelograms; and the surest token that we live under a free government is, when we are governed by persons whom we have a full right to imply, by our censure and ridicule, are blockheads compared to ourselves! Stop that delightful privilege, and, by Jove! sir, there is neither pleasure nor honor in being governed at all! You might as well be – a Frenchman.

CHAPTER II

The Italian and his friend are closeted together.

"And why have you left your home in – shire? and why this new change of name?"

"Peschiera is in England."

"I know it."

"And bent on discovering me; and, it is said, of stealing from me my child."

"He has had the assurance to lay wagers that he will win the hand of your heiress. I know that too; and therefore I have come to England – first to baffle his design – for I do not think your fears are exaggerated – and next to learn from you how to follow up a clew which, unless I am too sanguine, may lead to his ruin, and your unconditional restoration. Listen to me. You are aware that, after the skirmish with Peschiera's armed hirelings, sent in search of you, I received a polite message from the Austrian government, requesting me to leave its Italian domains. Now, as I hold it the obvious duty of any foreigner, admitted to the hospitality of a state, to refrain from all participation in its civil disturbances, so I thought my honor assailed at this intimation, and went at once to Vienna to explain to the Minister there (to whom I was personally known), that though I had, as became man to man, aided to protect a refugee, who had taken shelter under my roof, from the infuriated soldiers at the command of his private foe, I had not only not shared in any attempt at revolt, but dissuaded, as far as I could, my Italian friends from their enterprise; and that because, without discussing its merits, I believed, as a military man and a cool spectator, the enterprise could only terminate in fruitless bloodshed. I was enabled to establish my explanation by satisfactory proof; and my acquaintance with the Minister assumed something of the character of friendship. I was then in a position to advocate your cause, and to state your original reluctance to enter into the plots of the insurgents. I admitted freely that you had such natural desire for the independence of your native land, that, had the standard of Italy been boldly hoisted by its legitimate chiefs, or at the common uprising of its whole people, you would have been found in the van, amidst the ranks of your countrymen; but I maintained that you would never have shared in a conspiracy frantic in itself, and defiled by the lawless schemes and sordid ambition of its main projectors, had you not been betrayed and decoyed into it by the misrepresentations and domestic treachery of your kinsman – the very man who denounced you. Unfortunately, of this statement I had no proof but your own word. I made, however, so far an impression in your favor, and, it may be, against the traitor, that your property was not confiscated to the State, nor handed over, upon the plea of your civil death, to your kinsman."

"How! – I do not understand. Peschiera has the property?"

"He holds the revenues but of one-half upon pleasure, and they would be withdrawn, could I succeed in establishing the case that exists against him. I was forbidden before to mention this to you; the Minister, not inexcusably, submitted you to the probation of unconditional exile. Your grace might depend upon your own forbearance from farther conspiracies – forgive the word. I need not say I was permitted to return to Lombardy. I found, on my arrival, that – that your unhappy wife had been to my house, and exhibited great despair at hearing of my departure."

Riccabocca knit his dark brows, and breathed hard.

"I did not judge it necessary to acquaint you with this circumstance, nor did it much affect me. I believed in her guilt – and what could now avail her remorse, if remorse she felt? Shortly afterward, I heard that she was no more."

"Yes," muttered Riccabocca, "she died in the same year that I left Italy. It must be a strong reason that can excuse a friend for reminding me even that she once lived!"

"I come at once to that reason," said L'Estrange, gently. "This autumn I was roaming through Switzerland, and, in one of my pedestrian excursions amidst the mountains, I met with an accident, which confined me for some days to a sofa at a little inn in an obscure village. My hostess was an Italian; and, as I had left my servant at a town at some distance, I required her attention till I could write to him to come to me. I was thankful for her cares, and amused by her Italian babble. We became very good friends. She told me she had been servant to a lady of great rank, who had died in Switzerland; and that, being enriched by the generosity of her mistress, she had married a Swiss innkeeper, and his people had become hers. My servant arrived, and my hostess learned my name, which she did not know before. She came into my room greatly agitated. In brief, this woman had been servant to your wife. She had accompanied her to my villa, and known of her anxiety to see me, as your friend. The government had assigned to your wife your palace at Milan, with a competent income. She had refused to accept of either. Failing to see me, she had set off toward England, resolved, upon seeing yourself; for the journals had stated that to England you had escaped."

"She dared! – shameless! And see, but a moment before, I had forgotten all but her grave in a foreign soil – and these tears had forgiven her," murmured the Italian.

"Let them forgive her still," said Harley, with all his exquisite sweetness of look and tone. "I resume. On entering Switzerland, your wife's health, which you know was always delicate, gave way. To fatigue and anxiety succeeded fever, and delirium ensued. She had taken with her but this one female attendant – the sole one she could trust – on leaving home. She suspected Peschiera to have bribed her household. In the presence of this woman she raved of her innocence – in accents of terror and aversion, denounced your kinsman – and called on you to vindicate her name and your own."

"Ravings indeed! Poor Paulina!" groaned Riccabocca, covering his face with both hands.

"But in her delirium there were lucid intervals. In one of these she rose, in spite of all her servant could do to restrain her, took from her desk several letters, and reading them over, exclaimed piteously, 'But how to get them to him? – whom to trust? And his friend is gone!' Then an idea seemed suddenly to flash upon her, for she uttered a joyous exclamation, sate down, and wrote long and rapidly; inclosed what she wrote with all the letters, in one packet, which she sealed carefully, and bade her servant carry to the post, with many injunctions to take it with her own hand, and pay the charge on it. 'For, oh!' said she (I repeat the words as my informant told them to me) – 'for, oh, this is my sole chance to prove to my husband that, though I have erred, I am not the guilty thing he believes me; the sole chance, too, to redeem my error, and restore, perhaps, to my husband his country, to my child her heritage.' The servant took the letter to the post; and when she returned, her lady was asleep, with a smile upon her face. But from that sleep she woke again delirious, and before the next morning her soul had fled." Here Riccabocca lifted one hand from his face, and grasped Harley's arm, as if mutely beseeching him to pause. The heart of the man struggled hard with his pride and his philosophy; and it was long before Harley could lead him to regard the worldly prospects which this last communication from his wife might open to his ruined fortunes. Not, indeed, till Riccabocca had persuaded himself, and half persuaded Harley (for strong, indeed, was all presumption of guilt against the dead), that his wife's protestations of innocence from all but error had been but ravings.

"Be this as it may," said Harley, "there seems every reason to suppose that the letters inclosed were Peschiera's correspondence, and that, if so, these would establish the proof of his influence over your wife, and of his perfidious machinations against yourself. I resolved, before coming hither, to go round by Vienna. There I heard with dismay that Peschiera had not only obtained the imperial sanction to demand your daughter's hand, but had boasted to his profligate circle that he should succeed; and he was actually on his road to England. I saw at once that could this design, by any fraud or artifice, be successful with Violante (for of your consent, I need not say, I did not dream), the discovery of this packet, whatever its contents, would be useless: his end would be secured. I saw also that his success would suffice forever to clear his name; for his success must imply your consent (it would be to disgrace your daughter, to assert that she had married without it), and your consent would be his acquittal. I saw, too, with alarm, that to all means for the accomplishment of his project he would be urged by despair; for his debts are great, and his character nothing but new wealth can support. I knew that he was able, bold, determined, and that he had taken with him a large supply of money, borrowed upon usury; – in a word, I trembled for you both. I have now seen your daughter, and I tremble no more. Accomplished seducer as Peschiera boasts himself, the first look upon her face, so sweet, yet so noble, convinced me that she is proof against a legion of Peschieras. Now, then, return we to this all-important subject – to this packet. It never reached you. Long years have passed since then. Does it exist still? Into whose hands would it have fallen? Try to summon up all your recollections. The servant could not remember the name of the person to whom it was addressed; she only insisted that the name began with a B, that it was directed to England, and that to England she accordingly paid the postage. Whom, then, with a name that begins with B, or (in case the servant's memory here mislead her) whom did you or your wife know, during your visit to England, with sufficient intimacy to make it probable that she would select such a person for her confidante?"

"I cannot conceive," said Riccabocca, shaking his head. "We came to England shortly after our marriage. Paulina was affected by the climate. She spoke not a word of English, and indeed not even French as might have been expected from her birth, for her father was poor, and thoroughly Italian. She refused all society. I went, it is true, somewhat into the London world – enough to induce me to shrink from the contrast that my second visit as a beggared refugee would have made to the reception I met with on my first – but I formed no intimate friendships. I recall no one whom she could have written to as intimate with me."

"But," persisted Harley, "think again. Was there no lady well acquainted with Italian, and with whom, perhaps, for that very reason, your wife become familiar?"

"Ah, it is true. There was one old lady of retired habits, but who had been much in Italy. Lady – Lady – I remember – Lady Jane Horton."