Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846

But as we cannot, even in the wildest freaks of our imagination, conceive of any one really liking the hurdy-gurdy – nay, we are prepared to demonstrate much affection absolutely impossible – we incline to think there must have been some corruption of this tradition in the course of its being handed down to us, so far at least as concerns the name of the instrument played at such a price; and on the antiquarian principle that consonants are changeable at pleasure, and vowels go for nothing, we take leave for hurdy-gurdy (what a vulgar sound it has!) to read flute, violin, lute, or, in short, any other presentable musical instrument that may chance to find the greatest favour in our eyes. A change which has the twofold merit of saving Abel's character for taste, and preserving so excellent a story from carrying a lie on the face of it; and for this service of ours, we desire alike the thanks of musicians and moralists, to whom we most respectfully present our improved version, as suitable for circulation by the most fastidious artist, or rigid precisian.

Mercy on us! What a rattling and clattering of doors and windows! The windows will certainly be blown in at last, for they strain and creak like a ship at sea; and how the wind roars and bellows in the chimney, as if Æolus and all his noisy crew were met on a tipsy revel! There – that last gust shook the house! It is to be hoped the chimneys stand with their feather-edge to it, or we shall have a stack or two about our ears in a trice. We wonder whether the cellars would be the safest place, or, indeed, whether there is a safe place about the house at all! We have often heard of the music of the wind, but never felt less disposed to admire it in our life – for the gale has been howling in our ears all day; and this last hour or two, there has been, as the sailors say, a fresh hand at the bellows; so that we are in no humour to sentimentalize on what is, within a few yards of us, curling the dark waves, that, since the day in which their fluctuation was first decreed, have swallowed up so much of what is goodly and beloved of this earth, and that now roar as if for their prey! of which may the great God that ruleth over the sea, as well as the dry land, disappoint their ravening jaws! We shrink and are half appalled at their clamour, while we are on the point of uttering a hasty vow never again to locate ourselves at the sea-side, though it were prescribed by fifty physicians; or, at all events, not so very near that dun mass of troubled waters, blending on the horizon in strange confusion with the lowering, tempestuous sky. Who could believe, as he views them in their milder mood, as we did yesterday – lying placid as a clear lake among the mountains, wherein the bright face of heaven is mirrored, reflecting each light cloud that floats in the deep azure, or the many-tinted hues of evening – that anon, lashed into foaming wrath, they should devour "rich fruit of earth, and human kind," the gold, and the gems, and the priceless treasures wrung from both hemispheres; and the young, the brave, the loved – the bright locks, and the manly beauty, and the hoary head; crushing their diverse hopes into one watery ruin, surging a wild tumultuous dirge over their one fathomless tomb! And then, sated with destruction, smile and glisten beneath the morning sunbeams with all the sportiveness of child-like innocence.

No, no – speak not to us of the "music of the wind." For to us, in our gloomy moods, it breathes but of desolation, sorrow, and suffering; while, as the blast rises higher, its sentimental mournfulness is mingled with painful thoughts, which press on our spirit, of the peril in which it places so many of our fellow-creatures; and, "God help the poor souls at sea!" rises earnestly in our heart, and even unconsciously passes the barrier of our lips, as we retire, utterly unsympathizing with the selfish enjoyment of those who delight to wrap up themselves, warm and cozy, in their curtained and downy repose, lulled to deeper slumber by the blustering cold in which others are shivering, or, haply, contending with the winds and waves so soon to overwhelm them. And in our more ordinary everyday humour – if it chance to rise above what in our humble opinion ought to be its maximum, a gentle refreshing breeze, just enough to waft sweet woodland sounds, or ripple the quiet stream – why, it discomposes and discomforts us, whistling, howling, and rattling among slates and chimney-tops, and making whirligigs of the dust, in the town; and in the country, soughing among the boughs, as though the trees had got some horrible secret which they were whispering to each other, while their long arms lash each other as if for a wager; the whole exciting in us a most uneasy and undefinable sensation, as though we had done something wrong, and were every minute expecting to be found out! A sensation which might fairly be deemed punishment sufficient for all the minor offences of this offensive world, and which we most decidedly object to having inflicted on us for nothing.

"The music of the wind!" Why, what can be more detestable than the wind whistling through a key-hole? or singing its shrill melancholy song among the straining cordage of the storm-threatened ship? Then, uninteresting accidents happen during squally weather: hats are blown off; coat-tails, and eke the flowing garments of the gentler sex, flap, as if waging war with their distressed wearers; grave dignified persons are compelled to scud along before the gale, shorn of all the impressiveness of their wonted solemn gait, holding, perchance, their shovel-hat firmly on with both hands; and finally, there is neither pathos nor glory in having your head broken by a chimney-pot, or volant weathercock. No, the wide sea is an emblem of all that is deceitful and false, smiling most blandly when preparing to devour you; and the wind is only one shade more respectable – nay, perchance the worse of the two; for the waters, in the self-justifying, neighbour-condemning spirit, apparently inherent in human nature – and for which Father Adam be thanked – may very possibly lay the blame of their fickleness upon it, and bring a host of witnesses into court to testify to their general good behaviour – their calmness, and amenity, and inoffensiveness, till exposed to the evil influence of Æolus's unruly troop – the most wholesale agitators going, and never so happy as when raising a riot.

N.B. – The whole tribe of zephyrs, gentle airs, and evening and morning breezes, will please to consider themselves as not included under the term wind; to which alone, in its common-place hectoring style, this tirade is meant to apply.

(We hate any thing important being popped within a parenthesis, but as the literary sin pinches us less than the immorality, we must here state what truth requires us to say – that the above, being written during a fit of the spleen, induced by the hubbub of winds and waters adverted to, must be received by the candid reader with considerable allowance.)

So much for the wind, which has blown music completely out of our head for a while. What a pity we did not bethink us of placing our Æolian harp in the window, before it had sunk into those short angry gusts which are now alone heard – the mere dregs of the gale; and so have drawn our inspiration from that which puffed it out! But, somehow or other, our bright thoughts generally present themselves too late to be of any use; and this is one in that predicament!

Some people profess to be never tired of music, but to enjoy it à l'outrance, at all times and in all places. With such, we must own, we have no sympathy. With all our love– not mere liking – for the art, we still hold that it is indebted for its charm to the categories of time and place, at least as much as its neighbours; for (but this confession should be made in the smallest, most modest-looking type in the world) there are both times and places when we hate it cordially, and fervently wish that neither harmony, nor its ancestor, melody, had ever been invented. In some such mood as made the very heavens themselves odious and pestilential to Hamlet, does music appear to us as unlike itself, as they really were to his crazed imagination of them; and we look forward with malicious pleasure to the time when, if Dryden is to be believed – but your poets are not always prophets – "music shall untune the sky," as a period when all the miseries it has inflicted on us shall be amply revenged by its perpetrating, or assisting at, this gigantic mischief. 'Tis then that your first-fiddle is but impertinent catgut – your fluent organ a vile box of whistles, fit representative of its Tube-al inventor – and the sweetest pipe ever resonant with the clear, music-breathing air of Italy, or bravely struggling against the damper atmosphere of our humid isle, sounds harsh and shrilly in our ears, instead of soothing our "savage breast," which seems to marshal all its powers the more emphatically to give the poet the lie. This – now that we are in the confessional – we are free to own – yea, it is incumbent on us to do ourselves this justice – is only when we are in one of our unamiable moods, luckily about as rare as snow at mid-summer, but correspondingly chilling and shocking to the genial ones around us, – ourselves usually most so, like quiet sunshine in November. We are, by nature, the meekest of individuals – a "falcon-hearted dove," or anything else, pretty and poetical, that might give the idea of our possessing a brave heart under a most gentle exterior; but when roused, then indeed are we a very dragon; or rather, to keep up our former simile, (which we think a taking one, though, alas! it is not our own,) and delineate, by one expressive phrase, a mouldering, rage kept in check; by the constitutional cowardice on which it is superinduced – then are we a pigeon-hearted hawk, wanting only the courage to be desperately cross! (An impertinent friend, who has been looking over our shoulder, suggests that ourselves, under the two above-named phrases, would be better adumbrated by the figure of a dish of skimmed milk, and that same milk curdled! A plague on friends, say we! the most impertinent impertinencies that fall to our lot in this cross-cornered world are sure to emanate from them.)

Another of our sins which – to make "a clean breast" – we must confess, is that of fickleness in our loves; an occasional flirting with other arts and sciences, in their turn – for we protest against the profligacy of making love to more than one at once! We string together fearful and unreadable lengths of iambics, and dactyles, and trochaics, and write sonnets to the bright queen of night, beginning "O thou!" and stick fast in the middle of sorely-laboured and at length baffling extempores to this, that, and t'other; and, wickeder still, then we din them into the ears of a wretched friend, who having once, in the extremity of his courtesy, unhappily proved himself a good listener, is, for his sins, fated to continue so to the end of the chapter —i. e., our interminable rhymes; til, tired of exchanging our bad prose for worse poetry, (and having the fear of his maledictions before our eyes,) we throw it aside in a pet. Then comes a change over our spirit; and we dabble in paint-pots, and flourish a palette, and are great on canvass, and in chalks, and there is a mingled perfume of oil and turpentine in our studio (whilome study) that is to us highly refreshing, and good against fainting; and we make tours in search of the picturesque, climbing over stone walls, and what not, to gain some hill-top whence we may see the sun set or the moon rise, haply getting soused in a peat-drain for our pains – and we pencil sketches from nature, really very like; and the blue mountains, the solemn sunsets, and purple shadows among the woods, or falling on the tawny sands, girdling the sea, whose blue-gray melts into the horizon, throw us into quick ecstasies of delight that almost paralyse the adventurous hand as it seeks, often vainly, to transfer the quick-changing loveliness to the enduring canvass. And then we fling away our pencils in despair, and worship, with all the devotion of which ignorance is the mother, (for we never handled the chisel,) the serene beauty of sculpture; most passionless, most intellectual art, breathing the repose of divinity, the grand inaction of the All-powerful; shadowing forth in this its perfection, sublime truth, with its faint, troubled, yet still sublime reflection, error; – the "without passions" of Divine revelation, and its perversion, its undue development, the unconsciousness, issuing in the final perfection of annihilation, of Braminical deity. So are the extremes of truth and error linked – the error depending for its existence on its antagonist truth. Painting is objective, sculpture subjective, throwing the mind more upon itself, to seek there the hidden forms of grace and beauty yet unmanifested by pencil or chisel. The one appeals more to the senses, the other to the imagination and the mind; exciting ideas rather than presenting them. Painting, sublimate it as you will, is still of the earth; albeit a purer one than this desolated habitation in which the sons of Adam mourn their exile – even the unviolated Eden; of which it is one of the fairest, tenderest emanations, reaching forward to the angelic, yet still a child of earth with mortality on its brow. Sculpture is of the gods, with its Titanic majesty, and calm, celestial grace.

But next succeeds one of our hard, stern, misanthropical fits, in which verjuice and aloes might be taken as the type of our condition, and we propound strange heresies concerning the affections, social and domestic; the leading one being that they are greater inlets to misery than happiness, and that mankind would have been less wretched had they grown up, like blades of grass, alone and separate; a cheerless doctrine, but one which misanthropical logic legitimately deduces from the more comprehensive one, that in this world evil is more potential than good – more active and influential in its own nature. And we bitterly call to mind all the treachery with which our trustfulness has been met – our leaning on that broken reed, friendship – the placing our whole hope and stay on some loved one who has failed us in our extremity; – we call up (and how they throng at that call!) these gloomy recollections, clad in all the terrors of the dark and indistinct past, to build ourselves up in our gloomy creed. And in our utter weariness of soul, the thought of an uninterrupted sentient existence is oppressive: and we passionately wish that the rest of the grave might not be vouchsafed to our body alone, but that our spirit also might sleep a deep, tranquil sleep, until the great day of awakening. 'Tis a dreary mood – like clouded moonlight on troubled, turbid waters! And we could roast Love with his own torch – and we see every thing through crape spectacles, and have no clarity for the softer, more refined emotions and contemplations; so we plunge our head and ears into a chaos of most musty, dusty metaphysics; and by the time we are nearly choked with them, and have reasoned ourselves, first, out of all intercourse with an external world, secondly, out of its existence, thirdly, out of our own, we are right glad to be brought back to our senses, and our old love, whom we embrace with all the ardour of reconciliation after a lover's quarrel, and willingly yield ourselves to the humanizing effect of music – grave or gay, as our mood may dictate, either perfect after its kind.

Reader, should you haply be of the extreme North, has it ever chanced to you to be present at our glorious English cathedral service? If not, congratulate yourself on this enjoyment in reserve for you; and when you next visit our end of the little island, pass not, we beseech you, those Gothic towers, massive and rich, or taper spires rising majestically above the cloistered arches, buttresses, and pinnacles, of these monuments of the piety, consummate skill, and humility of our ancestors; for no modern black board, with gilt letters, proclaims the name of their founders, who have sought a simple, perchance a nameless, tomb within the sacred walls they have reared. Pass within that lofty doorway; and the silence, the stillness, the vastness within, awe the heart! From the care and turmoil without, one step has placed us lonely as in a desert; – from the surges of life to the presence of the dead, who sleep around as if under the more immediate keeping of the Mighty One in His holy temple! And if, entering, a solitary memorial of the more clouded faith which they inherited from their fathers – the jewel, dimmed by its frail setting – should meet the eye, start not, with the pride of knowledge, from the meek petition, "Ora pro me," enscrolled beneath that mitred effigy, worn by the thoughtless feet of the generations passed away; but believe, and fear not to do so, that "it is accepted according to that a man hath," and that the sincere devotion of the heart, even when erroneously expressed, through involuntary ignorance, shall not be rejected by that just Being who seeks not to reap where He hath not sowed; but that it may come up as holy incense before Him, when our cold, unloving, orthodox prayers, backed by our heathenish lives, and meaner offerings on the altar of our God, shall return, blighted and blighting, into our own bosoms. Or should you be too petrified with pious horror at this – Popery, as with your longest, dismalest face, you will style it – to think with any charity of those who dwelt but in the twilight of your open day – the very verger, sleek, round, and smiling, as he stands by you in his sake-robes, shall, in his honest zeal, supply an antidote for the evil, moralizing on the vanity of such supplications, and winding up his simple homily with the significant – "Where the tree falleth, there it shall lie!" Think on that, rigid critic, and take heed how you fall! – nor, if you have the capacity for finding "good in every thing," will you disdain to learn the lesson of instruction, which your own heart had failed to supply, from so lowly a source.

But you still curl your sanctimonious lip, and shrug your pious shoulders, in intimation of your knowing vastly better than your poor, ignorant forefathers! Ah, well – then live better; that is all we have got to say to you!

Our very parish churches are now emulating the impressive ceremonial and exquisite musical service of the cathedral. Enter, then, with us one that has seemed, in some degree, to revive the glory of the olden time, when men, as they received, gave lavishly for the service of the altar; nor meted out their offerings with the niggard hand that is moved by the heart of this generation; unmoved, unwarmed, but boastful of its light– the light of a moonbeam playing on an iceberg! There is the long sweep of the nave, with the open chancel (not separated from the former by the richly carved and fretted screen, which, however beautiful in itself, mars the grand effect of the whole) leading to the altar – we are old-fashioned people, and fear not to offend by this old-fashioned term – whose sacred garniture glows beneath the many tints of the fine eastern window, with its monograms and emblems, and flowing-robed apostles, through which the mellowed summer sun shines obliquely, throwing strange, grotesque, many-coloured shadows on the walls and pavement; while on either side tall lancet-shaped windows, thickly covered with heraldic devices, bear modest record to the willing service of those whose munificence has reared the pile, and give increased light and richness to the scene. The great western window, also covered with armorial bearings, throws a dim, yet kindling, tint on the stone font aptly placed beneath it, as figurative of its character – initial to that further sacrament, meetly celebrated where the star of Him who first blessed it proclaimed His advent to the expectant world. While throughout the holy building, high-springing arch, and sombre aisle, and vaulted ceiling, and curiously-wrought oaken roof; all combine to impress the mind with awe and admiration, with thoughts of the past and hopes for the future.

But this is not all: these are but the glories of art, worthily employed, indeed, in the service of the temple; 'tis but the body without the life, the soul that animates it. Return at the decline of day, when "man, who goeth forth unto his labour even unto the evening," has received a respite from his ordained toil, and seeks to refresh and elevate his spirit, wearied and worn down with the low, inevitable cares of the day, with the mingled prayer and chant, "rising and falling as on angels' wings," that duly, at each appointed eve, swell through the consecrated structure, filling its concave with solemn melody. The last flush of evening has died in the west, and the scattered worshippers are indistinctly seen by the dim lights, which, bringing out into strong relief the parts immediately adjacent to the massive yet graceful pillars to which they are attached, throw the rest of the interior into deeper gloom, brought into sharp contrast with the illuminated portions, by intersecting arch, clustered shaft, and all the endless intricacies of Gothic architecture; exuberant with profusely decorated spandrils, sculptured bosses, light flying buttresses, and delicate fan-like tracery. How beautiful and hushed is all around! Now the stillness is broken by approaching footsteps, and the white-robed train of priests and choristers is seen advancing along the aisle, the organ uttering its impressive modulations to soothe the heart, and still its tumult of worldly care and feelings, that these may not, "like birds of evil wing," mar the sacrifice about to be offered on its unworthy altar. And then, amid the succeeding silence, fall on the ear – ay, on the very soul! – the words of Holy Writ, deprecating the wrath of an offended Creator, announcing pardon to the repentant, and cleansing from the pollution of guilt to the heart, vexed with the defilement of this evil world, and yearning after the purity of that higher existence for which, erst designed, the inherited frailty of its nature, and the threefold temptations that unweariedly beset it, have rendered it unfit and unworthy.

How clear, simple, yet most thrilling, is the enunciation of those words! and mark the superb harmony with which, proceeding in the sacred service, the single plaintively modulated voice of the officiating minister is answered by the choral supplications of the assembled worshippers – swelling out in joyous exulting tones, and dying away in sorrowful minor cadence, as though the shadow of sin and suffering fell on those pathways to the highest heaven, clouding the radiance unmeet for mortal eye! And if rude tremulous notes, from some of the lowly ones who, still habited in their garb of daily toil, kneel by our side – for, in that house, distinctions are there none – mingle with the harmony, they mingle not harshly, for there is melody in the heart, and it is the voice of a brother; not the less "bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh," that the blessings of this life have been more sparingly bestowed on him – perchance to crown him more abundantly with glory and honour in that which is to come. Succeeding each other, the antiphonal chant – venerable with the port of near eighteen centuries; yea, with the hoar of Jewish, as well as Christian antiquity – the exuberant anthem with its ponderous chorus, and again, the joyous, melancholy, choral response, wherein blend the voices of childish innocence, strong manhood, and plaintive age, hear us on to the close; – that threefold blessing which none may hear unmoved, and whose magnitude seems to transcend our poor belief, as we reverently bow, in awed silence, musing on its unfathomable import; while the deep, mellow voice that pronounced it still lingers on the ear.

How imposing is the sight! One kneeling throng around – the indistinct light, that clothes with mysterious grace the beautiful lineaments of the Gothic structure – the bright gleam on the white and flowing vestments; – and the stillness! broken at length by a low, sad melody, in accordance with the subdued tone resting on all, gradually rising into the more swelling chords of the solemn organ, that, earthly strains though they be, seen not unmeet to mingle with those exalted ones that have gone before – rousing the heart from its more celestial contemplations, and by gentle transition – like a descending dove – bringing it down from its heavenward flight to that earth with which its present daily and active duties are concerned, the more fitly and cheerfully performed when thus hallowed; for, be it remembered, the preparation for that unseen world to which we are tending, is the best preparation for our continuance in this.

But the last wave of harmony has died away in the sounding aisles; one by one the lights are extinguished, throwing the varied beauty of arch, and niche, and pillar, into indistinguishable and fast deepening shade; and, last of the train, we, with heart tranquillized and elevated by the service of that evening hour, slowly follow the departing worshippers into the still, clear night.

    M. J.

MARTHA BROWN

By an Ancient Contributor

TO THE EDITOR OF BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE

Sir, – It is twenty years since I first contributed to your Magazine; – it was rather a brief article, and was not inserted in the early part of the work. In short, it consisted of a few lines in the Obituary at the end of the Number, and was as follows: – "Died at Bunderjumm, in the East Indies, Thomas Sneezum, Esq., much and justly regretted by a numerous circle of friends and acquaintances." He was my uncle, sir, and I was his heir, – a highly respectable man, and a remarkable judge of bullocks. He was in the Commissariat, and died worth forty thousand pounds. If you saw his monument, on the wall of our parish church, and read his character, you would know what a beautiful sympathy exists between a dead uncle and a grateful nephew. I took the name of Sneezum in addition to my own – bought an estate, and an immense number of books – and cultivated my land and literature with the greatest care. I planted trees – I drained meadows – and wrote books. The trees grew – the meadows flourished – but the books never came to an end. Something always interfered. I never could get the people in my novels disposed of. When they began talking, they talked for ever; when they fought duels, they were always killed; and, by the time I had got them into the middle of a scrape, I always forgot how I had intended to get them out of it. In history, it was very nearly the same. Centuries jostled against each other like a railway collision. I confused Charlemagne with Frederick Barbarossa, and the Cardinal Richelieu with M. Thiers. So, with the exception of the article I alluded to, in your Magazine, and a few letters on the present potato disease in the Gardener's Guide, I am a Great Unpublished – in the same way as I understand there are a number of extraordinary geniuses in the dramatic line, who have called themselves the Great Unacted. I can only hope that advancing civilization will bring better days to us both – types for me – actors for them.

At the time of the lamented death of my uncle, I was about thirty years of age, and for ten years before that, had been sleeping partner in a house in Liverpool; and I can honestly say I did my part of the duty to the perfect satisfaction of all concerned. I slept incessantly – not exactly in a house in Liverpool but in a very comfortable one – the drawing-room floor, near the Regent's Park. Twice a-year a balance-sheet came in, and a little ready money. I put the money carefully away in a drawer, and threw the balance-sheet in the fire. It was a very happy life, for I subscribed to a circulating library, and wrote the beginnings of books continually.

One day, about six months after I was in possession of the fortune, I heard a ring at the bell. There was something in the ring different from any I had ever heard before – a sort of sweet, modest tingling kind of a ring. I felt as if somebody was shaking my hand all the time; and, on looking back on the event, I think there must be something in mesmerism and every thing else – homœopathy and the water cure included; for it was certainly quite unaccountable on ordinary principles – but so it was. The maid was very slow in answering the bell. There was another pull. The same mysterious effects – a sort of jump – a tremor as it were, not at all unpleasant, but very odd – so I went to the door myself; and there fixed on me, in the most extraordinary manner, were two of the blackest eyes I ever saw – illuminating cheeks of a dark yellow colour, and increasing the whiteness of the most snowy teeth – the brightest, glistenest, shiningest, teeth that can possibly be imagined. She wore – for I may as well tell you it was a woman – she wore a flowing white veil upon her head, the queerest petticoats, and funniest shoes – at that time I had not seen the Chinese Collection and thought it was Desdemona (whom I had seen Mr Kean put to death a few nights before) "walking" in some of Othello's clothes. What she said, or if she said any thing, I was too much astonished to make out; but she walked into my room, smiling with her wonderful teeth, and curtsying with the extraordinary petticoats down to the very floor – and calling me "Massa Sib."

"My good woman," I said, "I am afraid you make a mistake. I don't know any one of the name of Sib;" but I checked myself, for I thought she perhaps mistook me – I wore prodigious whiskers at that time – for a gallant colonel, whose name begins with that euphonious syllable.

"No, no – no colonel," she said; "me wants you– me no care for colonels." What could she possibly want with me? I had never seen the woman before, or any body like her, except a picture of the Queen of Sheba when she was on a visit to Solomon. Could this woman come from Sheba? Could she take me for – no, no – she couldn't possibly take me for Solomon. So I was quite non-plussed.

"You no get no letter, Massa Sib, to tell you we was to come – eh?"

A letter? a letter? – I had had a hundred and fifty letters, but put them all into a box. How was it possible for me to read such a number? and who did she mean by us? How many more of then were coming?

"Massa Sib vill be so fond of him's babba – him vill" —

A dreadful thought came into my head – a conspiracy to extort money – a declaration at Bow Street – a weekly allowance. "Woman!" I said, "what, in heaven's name, do you mean by babba?"

"Dee little babb; it is so pretty – so like him papa."

"And whose baby is it? for I suppose it's a baby you mean, by your chatter about a babb."

"Your's. Oh! you will so lubb it."

"Mine? you detestable impostor, I never had such a thing in all my life."

"And here it is – oh, dee pretty dear!"

And at that moment, another woman, dressed in the same outlandish style as herself, brought up a little round parcel, that looked like a bundle of clothes, and, before I had time to say a word, or shut the door, or fly, placed it in my arms; and then both the women showed their glistening teeth, stretching from ear to ear, and screamed out in chorus, "You vill so lubb dee babba – it is such a pretty dear!"

I stood in a state of stupefaction for some time, but the dark-visaged visitors by no means shared my inactivity; they ran, and screamed, and bustled; trotted down stairs, jumped up again, and filled the whole passage; then the drawing-room; then the little bedroom behind it, with trunks, and bags, and band-boxes, and bird-cages full of parrots, and cloaks, and shawls; till at last, when I started from my trance – in doing which, nearly let the baby fall – I found my whole house taken possession of, and the two women apparently as much at home as if they had lived with me twenty years.

I unrolled the shawls and things from the baby's face. It was an infant about a year old, and opened its eyes as I was looking at it, and looked so wisely and sagaciously at me in return, that I could almost believe it knew as much of the proceeding as I did – and this it might very easily have done, without being a miracle of premature information, for I had not the remotest conception of what the whole thing was about. So I laid the child on the sofa, and went to the bell to ring for a policeman.

"Oh, don't ring him bell, ve are so comfitable here!" said one of the women. "Yesha vill go home 'gain, and I vill habb little bed in t'oder room, and vill sleep vid dee babb – so nice!"

"Oh, you will – will you? We'll see about that," I answered, astonished at the woman's impudence. "I will get you and your little lump of Newcastle" – this was an allusion to her colour – "turned out into the street."

"Oh, Massa Moggan vill soon be here! Him wrote letter a veek since; but him vill come to-day."

"Oh!" —

So I did not pull the bell, but looked at the two intruders just as Macready looks at the witches in Macbeth; for Mr Morgan was my legal adviser, and had been my uncle's agent, and transacted all the business connected with the succession; and I had such confidence in him that I never opened his letters, and had of course thrown the note they talked of into the great wooden box that was the receptacle of all my correspondence.

In the mean time, the baby began to squall.

"Take the brat away, and I'll tell a little bit of my mind to Mr Morgan," I said, grinding my teeth in a horrible passion; and, in a moment, the two women disappeared with the child, roaring and screaming, as if they had stuck pins into it on purpose to drive me mad.

If I had been a man of a tragic turn of mind, and fond of giving vent to the passion of a scene, I would have walked up and down the room, striking myself on the brow or breast, and shouting, "Confusion! distraction!" and other powerful words which Mr Kean used to deliver with astonishing emphasis; but I had no talent for the intense, and threw myself on the sofa, exclaiming, "Here's a pretty go!"

And a pretty go it undoubtedly was – two black women and a saffron-coloured baby established with me, as if I had been married to a Hottentot; and my sister-in-law, as is very often the case, had come to attend to her nieces' morals and education.

"So! Mr Morgan, what is the meaning of all this?"

But before I had time for further exclamations, my friend Mr Morgan, who had come quietly into the room, interrupted me —

"Hush, my dear Sneezum – you are delighted, I'm sure. A most interesting incident – eh, Sneezum?"