Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 67, No. 416, June 1850

The double interest excited by her brilliant talent as a vocalist, and by the peculiar circumstances under which she has again sought the scene of her former triumphs, has been so strong, that by this time few can be unacquainted with the leading incidents of the Countess Rossi's career. A humble origin, the precocious development of an exquisite voice and of extraordinary aptitude for music, the conquest with almost unexampled rapidity of a place beside the first singers of the day, a few short years of theatrical triumphs, an advantageous marriage, loss of fortune, return to the stage – and the tale is told. Even in this meagre outline there is no slight savour of the romantic. "The Countess Rossi," it has been truly observed by a French writer, "has scarcely performed in any lyrical drama fuller of incident and romance than her own life. For her the line of flame which in theatres separates the real from the ideal world, has not existed."[7 - Theophile Gautier, L'Ambassadrice. Biographie de la Comtesse Rossi. Paris: 1850.] Doubtless the details of this accomplished lady's life would be otherwise interesting than the bare outline of its leading events with which the world is fain to content itself. Twenty-five years, divided between the aristocracy of musical talent, and the aristocracy of diplomacy and high birth, must afford rich materials for autobiography. Nor would the period of her childhood be without its strong attraction, were she able to remember, and pleased to tell, of those days of infantine renown, when Coblenz and the banks of Rhine rang with praises of the seven-year-old songstress, whose parents, although they had the good sense to refuse the solicitations of managers, anxious to produce the prodigy, would yet at times place her on their table, and bid her sing for the gratification of admiring friends. Her first appearance in public was at the age of eleven, on the Darmstadt theatre; and perhaps even now that dullest of German capitals remains in her memory as a place of brightness and beauty, associated as it is with her early and complete success. But little Henrietta was not yet to continue the career she had so auspiciously begun. Hot theatres and unlimited praise composed a dangerous atmosphere for one so young, and her next step was to the Conservatory or great musical school at Prague, to the head of which she speedily made her way. At the age of fourteen or fifteen her proficiency in the various branches of her art was so great, that her cautious parents had scarcely a pretext for withholding her longer from the stage, which she manifestly was destined to adorn. Still they hesitated, when accident cast the die. The prima donna of the Prague opera was taken ill: not of one of those fleeting maladies to which singers and dancers are proverbially liable – and which appear an hour or two after noon, to disappear in time for a late breakfast next morning – but seriously, and without hope of speedy recovery. The despairing manager appealed to the pity of the Sontags. His only hope was in Henrietta, and Henrietta was allowed to appear upon the boards of the Imperial Opera of Prague – a theatre to which immortality is secured by the first performance of the Nozze di Figaro and the Clemenza di Tito having taken place within its walls. From a recently published and authentic sketch of Madame Sontag's professional life,[8 - A Memoir of the Countess de Rossi, (Madame Sontag.) London: 1850.] we extract an account of her entrance.

"If nothing was wanting in courage, natural gifts of voice, and intellectual power, on the part of the child, as regards the height of her person there was a mancamento of several inches. But the stage-manager was not oblivious of the means by which the Greeks gave altitude to their scenic heroes and heroines; and the little prima donna, to whom was assigned for her début the principal female part in a translation of the favourite French opera Jean de Paris, was supplied with enormous cork heels. There was a time, at the court of Louis XV., when an inch and a half of red heel was the distinctive characteristic of a marquis, or of a lady of sufficient quality to be allowed to sit in the presence of royalty. On the occasion of the début of Henriette Sontag, four inches of vermillion-coloured cork foreshadowed the rank of the little lady, destined to become one of the most absolute mimic queens of the lyrical world, and afterwards a real and much respected countess. When the singer who enacted the pompous seneschal in the opera of Jean de Paris came forward, and said, 'It is no less a personage than the Princess of Navarre whose arrival I announce!' the applause and laughter was universal. When the little prodigy appeared on her cork pedestal, the house re-echoed with acclamations. As the business of the stage proceeded, the auditors found there was no longer any indulgence necessary on the score of age, but that there were claims on their admiration for a voice which, for purity, peculiar flute-like tone, and agility, has never been surpassed. The celebrated tenor, Gerstener, that night surpassed himself, finding he had to cope with the attraction of a new musical power. Many nights successively did she thus sing the Princess of Navarre, with increasing success, to crowded houses. Her next part was one far more difficult – that of the heroine in Paer's fine opera, Sargin. But the capital of Bohemia was not long to retain her. The Imperial court heard of her extraordinary success, and Henriette Sontag was summoned to Vienna, where she appeared, the very next season, at the German Opera."

Fraulein Sontag had not been long in the Austrian capital when the eccentric Domenico Barbaja, then lessee of La Scala, the San Carlo, and of the Italian Opera at Vienna, arrived there, incredulous of the merits of the new prima donna. His incredulity must not be ascribed to mere prejudice, for at that time Italy was generally believed to have the monopoly of melodious throats; and even now the exceptions are only just enough to prove the rule, at least as regards female singers. Of these, Germany and Scandinavia have produced but three who have acquired European reputation. The capricious but wonderfully talented Gertrude Schmeling (La Mara,) who at nine years of age drew large audiences at Vienna by her performance on the violin, who afterwards achieved first-rate excellence on the piano, and then, for nearly forty years, held undisputed sway, as unapproachable prima donna, over the entire musical world – and whose name is almost as celebrated by reason of the strange adventures and vicissitudes of her life as on account of her astonishing voice and genius – is the most ancient of these, and Madame Sontag and Jenny Lind complete the trio. When at length prevailed upon to visit the German Opera, Barbaja was astonished, and he immediately offered the young singer an engagement for the San Carlo. This was declined, her parents having a wholesome, perhaps an exaggerated, dread of the temptations and perils that would await their daughter in the luxurious land of Naples. Nay, so deeply rooted was the aversion of the honest Germans for things Italian, that it was with the greatest difficulty Barbaja could obtain their permission for Henrietta to appear at the Italian Opera at Vienna. There she had colleagues worthy of herself – Rubini, the prince of tenors, and the evergreen Lablache, with whom, after an interval of five-and-twenty years, she is now again singing. There also she heard Madame Mainvielle Fodor, by the study of whose admirable style she greatly improved herself. Leipzig and Berlin next witnessed her triumphs, and there she excited great enthusiasm by her singing in Weber's operas of Der Freischütz and Euryanthe.

"The admirers of the genius of that great composer," says M. P. Scudo, in a lively, but not strictly correct sketch of Madame Sontag's career, inserted in the Revue des Deux Mondes, "consisted of the youth of the universities, and of all the ardent and generous spirits who desired to emancipate Germany intellectually as well as politically from foreign domination… They were grateful to Mademoiselle Sontag for consecrating a magnificent voice, and a method rarely found beyond the Rhine, to the energetic and profound music of Weber, Beethoven, Spohr, and the new race of German composers, who had broken all compact with foreign impiety, and given an impulse to the national genius. Receiving universal homage, celebrated by wits, serenaded by students, and escorted by the huzzas of the German press, Mademoiselle Sontag was called to Berlin, where she made her appearance with immense success at the Koenigstadt Theatre. It was at Berlin, as is well known, that the Freischütz was for the first time performed, in 1821. It was at Berlin, the Protestant and rationalist city, the centre of an intellectual and political movement which sought to absorb the activity of Germany at the expense of Vienna – that catholic capital, where the spirit of tradition, sensuality, the soft breezes and melodies of Italy reigned – it was at Berlin that the new school of dramatic music founded by Weber had taken the firmest hold. With enthusiasm, as the inspired interpreter of the national music, Mademoiselle Sontag was there welcomed. The disciples of Hegel took her for the text of their learned commentaries, and hailed, in her limpid and sonorous voice, the subjective confounded with the objective in an absolute unity! The old King of Prussia received her at his court with paternal goodness. There it was that diplomacy had the opportunity to approach Mademoiselle Sontag, and to make an impression on the heart of the muse."

With all deference to M. Scudo, who is rather smart than accurate, we will remark that the applause of the Berliners was elicited less by the nationality of the music than by the excellence of the singing; and that they were perfectly satisfied to listen to translations of Rossini, and to the music then in vogue in the other chief opera houses of Europe. Doubtless they were proud of their countrywoman; and their jealousy and indignation were highly excited when, after a visit to Paris, she came back to Berlin with the avowed intention of returning to the French capital. This raised a storm, and on her first appearance at the Koenigstadt, she was received, probably for the first and last time in her life, with a storm of groans and hisses. So violent was the tumult that the other actors left the stage in alarm; but the Sontag remained, strong in her right and regardless of the unmerited hurricane of censure, and of the almost menacing adjurations addressed to her by the audience to break off with the French, and remain in her own country. At last, hopeless of making an impression on the resolute young lady, the incensed Prussians calmed themselves, and from that night to the day of her departure she was as popular as ever.

At Paris was fully confirmed the favourable judgment passed upon Mademoiselle Sontag at Prague, Vienna, and Berlin. And, in one respect, her triumph there was more important and complete than any she had previously enjoyed – more important, not so much on account of the superior critical acumen and taste of her hearers, as by reason of the formidable rivals with whom she had to compete. We are far from belonging to that class of persons – a class confined, as we believe, almost exclusively to France – which holds the favourable verdict of the Parisian musical world the most difficult to obtain, and the most flattering to the artist, of any in Europe. This notion has been diligently set abroad by the Parisians themselves, who, with characteristic self-complacency, look upon their tribunal as the court of last appeal in matters of art and music. The only solid ground upon which such a presumption can plausibly be sustained, is the fact that Paris (by its gaiety and central position the European metropolis of pleasure) annually assembles, – or did assemble, before recent disastrous follies closed its saloons and deterred foreign visitors – a very large portion of the intellectual and art-loving of all countries. Upon this basis rests the sole claim of Paris to fastidiousness and infallibility of judgment. This only can give superior value to the laurel wreaths bestowed in the Salle Ventadour, or the Rue Lepelletier, over those that may be acquired in half-a-dozen other European opera houses. As regards the worth of the verdict of an exclusively French audience, we confess that, when we see the crowds that are attracted, and the enthusiasm that is excited, by the usually flimsy and second-rate music given at the Opera Comique, (for many years past unquestionably the most uniformly prosperous and popular of the Paris musical theatres,) we incline to answer in the affirmative the question put by one of the shrewdest and wittiest of Frenchmen, whether the French nation be not rather song-loving than musical?[9 - Beaumarchais, in his admirable preface to the opera of Tarare.] But if Mademoiselle Sontag, after conquering the unbounded applause of Vienna and Berlin audiences, and the suffrage of so keen a connoisseur as Barbaja, had no need to dread the ordeal of Parisian criticism, on the other hand she well might feel trepidation at thoughts of the competitors she was about to encounter, foremost amongst whom were the great names of Pasta, Pisaroni, and Malibran. In presence of such a trio, any but a first-rate talent must have succumbed and fallen back into the rear rank. Not so did the Sontag, but at once took and kept her place on a level with those great singers. It was with Malibran, the ardent, warm-hearted, passionate Spaniard, that she was brought into most frequent comparison. But although many tales have been told of the bitterness of their rivalry, these have been suggested by probability or malice, not by fact; for, from a very early period of their acquaintance, a sincere friendship existed between them. The Countess de Merlin, in her memoir of Malibran, gives the following account of its origin: —

"The presence of Mademoiselle Sontag at the Italian Theatre was fresh stimulus for Maria's talent, and contributed to its perfection. Each time that the former obtained a brilliant triumph, Maria wept and exclaimed, 'Mon Dieu! why does she sing so well?' Then from those tears sprang a beauty and sublimity of harmony, of which the public had the benefit. It was the ardent desire of amateurs to hear these two charming artists sing together in the same opera; but they mutually feared each other, and for some time the much-coveted gratification was deferred. One night they met at a concert at my house; a sort of plot had been laid, and towards the middle of the concert they were asked to sing the duet in Tancredi. For a few moments they showed fear, hesitation; but at last they yielded, and approached the piano, amidst the acclamations of all present. They both seemed agitated and disturbed, and observant of each other; but presently the conclusion of the symphony fixed their attention, and the duet begun. The enthusiasm their singing excited was so vivid and so equally divided, that at the end of the duet, and in the midst of the applause, they gazed at each other, bewildered, delighted, astonished; and by a spontaneous movement, an involuntary attraction, their hands and lips met, and a kiss of peace was given and received with all the vivacity and sincerity of youth. The scene was charming, and has assuredly not been forgotten by those who witnessed it."[10 - Madame Malibran, par la Comtesse Merlin. Paris: 1838.]

The good understanding thus brought about was permanent, and many proofs of it are on record. From that time forward Sontag and Malibran frequently sang together, both in Paris and London, and displayed an amiability very rare amongst operatic celebrities, in respect to distribution of parts, and to other points which often prove a prolific source of strife behind the scenes. In the little English memoir already referred to, we find some anecdotes illustrative of the kindly feeling between the blue-eyed soprano and the dark-browed contralto. Towards the close of the London opera season of 1829, Malibran one day met Donzelli, the celebrated tenor, with discontent stamped upon his features. She asked the cause of his vexation. The time was at hand for his benefit, he said, and he had been unable to fix on an attractive opera.

"'Have you thought of nothing?' inquired Malibran.

"'Yes; I had thought of the Matrimonio Segreto; but Pisaroni says she is quite ugly enough without playing Fidalma: and then you would not be included in the cast; and I don't know what opera to choose in which you would not have the second part to Mademoiselle Sontag's first – that would not please you, and I am in despair.'

"'Well,' said Malibran, 'to please you, and to show you I would play any part with Sontag, I will play Fidalma.'

"'What, old Fidalma? You are joking!'

"'To prove that I am in earnest, announce it this very day.'"

The opera was announced; Malibran was as good as her word, and played the old aunt admirably: not as Fidalma has since been sometimes misrepresented by singers who sacrificed scenic truth to their own coquetry, but with the due allowance of wrinkles and the antiquated costume appropriate to the part.

Some time previously to the date of this last-recorded incident, Mademoiselle Sontag had twice changed her name. The old King of Prussia, informed of her projected marriage with a Sardinian nobleman and diplomatist, to whose sovereign it was possible that her humble birth might be objectionable, ennobled her under the name and title of Mademoiselle de Launstein, which she soon afterwards abandoned for that of Countess de Rossi. Her first visit to England was subsequent to her marriage, then kept private, although pretty generally known. She first sang in this country at a concert at Devonshire House, her passage to which was through a throng of gazers, drawn together by her reputation for grace, beauty, and musical genius. A few days afterwards, on Tuesday the 15th April 1828, occurred her appearance at the London Opera, in the character of Rosina, in the Barbiere di Seviglia. For two seasons she sang in London; then in Berlin and St Petersburg; and then, the King of Sardinia having authorised her husband to declare his marriage, she left the stage – for ever, as she doubtless thought. But in days when kings are discarded, constitutions annulled, and empires turned upside down at a few hours' notice, who shall presume to foretell his fate? For eighteen years Madame de Rossi adorned the various courts to which her husband was successively accredited as ambassador. The Hague, Frankfort, St Petersburg, Berlin, each in turn welcomed and cherished her. Then came the storm: her fortune was swallowed up; her husband's diplomatic prospects were injured; she thought of her children, and sacrificed herself – if sacrifice it is to be called, by which, whilst fulfilling what she feels to be her duty to her family, she may reckon on speedily retrieving the pecuniary losses consequent on German and Sardinian revolutions.

"The position of an actress," says a clever French theatrical critic, in a pamphlet already quoted, "is a very singular one, even in these days, when prejudice is supposed to have disappeared. She is a mark for applause and adulation, for gold and flowers; she is intoxicated with incense and persecuted by lovers; the gravest personages enact follies for her sake; men unharness her horses, and carry her in triumph; the crowns refused to great poets are thrown to her in profusion; the homage that would be servile, done to a queen, seems quite natural when offered to a prima donna. Only, she must not cross the row of lamps which flame at her feet like a magic circle. From the ivory or golden throne of her lyric empire she may demand what she pleases; but let her attempt to overstep the limit, to take her place in the drawing-room by the side of one of those ladies who applaud her to the bursting of their white gloves, and who pluck the bouquets from their bosoms to throw to her, and what a change is there! How haughty now the mien of those who so lately admired! What chilling reserve; what insulting politeness; what a deep and sudden line of demarcation! A polar breeze has succeeded to the warm breath of enthusiasm; frost has replaced flowers; the idol is no longer even a woman, but a creature.

"Some of those singers who are adored amongst the most celebrated and beautiful, imagine that they go into society, because, on certain nights, when camelias deck the staircases and lustres sparkle to the wax-lights, when a crowd throngs the saloons and obstructs the entrance, they are allowed to present themselves, between eleven and twelve o'clock, at everybody's hour, at the hour of uncared-for acquaintances and friends one does not know. But, on their appearance, how quickly is the music-book opened, how speedily are they manœuvred towards the piano or singing desk, how pitilessly is every possible note extracted from these fine singers! If by chance, instead of roulades, they venture upon conversation, and aspire to enjoy the pleasures of elegant and polite society, how quickly comes the cloud on the brow of the fair hostess! How evident is it that, in admitting the singer, she excludes the woman! Let the best received presume to have a cold, and she will soon see!

"A prima donna may obtain everything in the world except one thing. For a smile, for a glance, for a single pearl from her string of notes, for a single rose-leaf from her bouquet, she shall have guineas, rubles, bundles of bank-notes, marble palaces, equipages that kings might envy; the heirs of ancient houses shall give her the castles of their ancestors, and efface their fathers' scutcheon to substitute her cipher. But what she shall not have, and what she never will have is a quarter of an hour's conversation at the chimney corner, in a tone neither too polite nor too familiar, on a footing of equality with a great lady and an honest woman.

"The Countess de Rossi has attained this marvellous result; and certainly, to those who know the invincible obstacles she had to overcome, her talent as a singer will appear but a secondary quality. None can tell all the judgment, tact, reserve, sagacity, delicacy, intuition, the various qualities, in short, that have been required to accomplish this most difficult metamorphosis of the actress into the woman of good society… To behold the prima donna an ambassadress is strange and striking; but still more so is it to see the ambassadress, after twenty years passed in the highest spheres of life, on an equality with all that is most brilliant and illustrious in nobility and diplomacy, again become a prima donna, taking up her success where she had left it, continuing in womanhood what she had begun in early youth, resuming her part in that duet where Malibran, alas! is now missing, and reconquering applause greater perhaps than that of former days. Time has flown for all of us, except for her. Europe has been revolutionised, a throne has crumbled, a republic has replaced the monarchy; but that one thing, so frail, so fleeting, so aërial, that a nothing can annihilate it – that crystal bell which the slightest shock may crack or shiver, the voice of a songstress – has preserved itself unimpaired; in that pure organ still vibrate the silver notes of youth."

M. Gautier is well known to be a man of wit and talent; in the passages from his pen, whose spirit and letter we have here done our best to render, he gives proof of keen observation and good feeling. But whilst implying his sympathy with the musical artist, who, like Tantalus, beholds but may not partake, and whose admittance to the saloons of good society is as a show, not as a guest, he forgets even to glance at the causes of such exclusion, necessary as a rule, but doubtless admitting of exceptions. He omits reference to the laxity of usages and morals which, although perhaps less so than formerly, is still the frequent characteristic of theatrical and musical professors, and which causes them to be, as he shows, kept at arm's length in good French society. In this country – in such matters the least facile and tolerant of any – there is still greater scruple of admitting singers and actresses, however eminent their talent, to the intercourse even of those classes into which, but for their profession, they would have a right to admission. Exceptions have occasionally, and with much propriety, been made, and royalty itself has been known to set the example. But only under the peculiar circumstances of Madame de Rossi's eventful career – only in presence of a reputation which the breath of scandal has never dared assail, and of social qualities and graces which render her an acquisition to any circle – can it occur to a singer to pass from the boards of the Opera to the most exclusive of London's saloons, to be welcomed as an equal by those who, a few minutes previously, applauded her as an actress.

With respect to Madame Sontag's voice and talent, it is unnecessary to be diffuse. Few comprehend, and still fewer care for, the jargon of contrapuntal criticism, whether applied to a singer or an opera; and for those few, abundant food is continually supplied by dilettanti more profound and scientific than ourselves. Purity, sweetness, flexibility, are the most prominent characteristics of Madame Sontag's voice; her execution is extraordinarily brilliant, correct and elegant, and supremely easy. No appearance of effort ever distresses her audience; the most difficult passages are achieved without the swelling of a vein, the strain of a muscle, or the slightest contortion of her agreeable countenance. Although excelling in those tours-de-force which captivate the multitude, and skilled to decorate the composer's theme with an embroidery of sweet sounds as intricate as graceful, she also well knows how to captivate the true connoisseur by her exquisite taste and sobriety in rendering simple melodies, and such music as would be the worse for adornment. We commenced this paper with a determination to avoid comparisons, and we shall therefore make none: but assuredly Madame Sontag need fear none. In her own style she is quite unrivalled. That style we consider to be more particularly the genteel comedy of opera – a combination of sentiment with gaiety and grace. In her younger days she was considered less successful in more impassioned parts, but this is no longer the case. None who have witnessed her admirable personation of Amina, Linda, and Elvira, will tax her with want of soul and of dramatic energy; and we scarcely know whether to prefer her in those parts, or in the gayer ones of Rosina, Susanna, and Norina – which last character, peculiarly adapted to her arch and ladylike style of acting, she has made her own as completely as Lablache has identified himself with that of her elderly and disappointed wooer. To say the truth, when we first heard of Madame Sontag's expected return to the stage, it was with no pleasurable feeling. The reappearance of a singer after twenty years' absence can in few instances be other than a melancholy sight. It is mournful to listen to the efforts of a deteriorated voice that one has known in its melodious freshness. But an agreeable disappointment awaited all who ventured such unpleasant anticipations with respect to Madame Sontag. Her early campaign had been so short that she was yet in her vigorous prime when she returned, a veteran in fame but not in age or voice. Amidst various statements of her age, the most favourable give her forty-one years, whilst the least so add but two or three to that number. The subject is a delicate one, and we are too happy to give her the benefit of the doubt, which she is the more entitled to that neither on nor off the stage does she look even the least of the ages assigned to her. This would make her but three years older than Madame Grisi, who first saw the light, if theatrical records tell truth, in 1812, and in whose voice none, that we are aware of, have as yet pretended to discover a falling off. Whether twenty years of almost constant exercise, or the same period of comparative repose, be most favourable to the preservation of the singing faculties, we shall not decide. Madame Sontag, however, has never risked by disuse the rusting of her fine organ. At the different courts at which she resided, she invariably showed the utmost complaisance, and willingly contributed, for the pleasure of her friends – and, on occasion, for the purposes of charity – those treasures of song for which managers, before and since, have been glad to pay a prince's ransom. This season her voice is even fresher and more flexible than in 1849; and there can be no reason why the opera-loving public should not, for many years to come, applaud her as their chief favourite – unless, indeed, the very high rate of remuneration her talent commands should, by speedily realising her object in returning to the stage, induce her soon to quit it. We believe it is no secret that her present engagement secures her about fourteen thousand pounds for twelve months' performances – about thrice the salary of a secretary of state. The sum is a very satisfactory one; and, whatever the fortune Madame Sontag has lost, she has evidently at her disposal the means of rapidly amassing another of no mean amount. Who will give the odds that we do not again see her an ambassadress?

A host in herself, Madame Sontag is powerfully seconded. The management of the Opera House, aware of the danger of trusting for success to any one singer, however eminent, to the neglect of that general excellence essential to an effective operatic company, has shown great activity, and has been exceedingly fortunate, in filling those vacancies left by the defections already alluded to. Of first appearances, the most remarkable this season has been that of a young tenor, who has at once taken a very high place amongst that rare class of singers. Since Mario made his debut, a dozen years ago, on the boards of the Académie Royale, Beaucarde is the only pure tenor who has come forward that can fairly be considered a first-rate. Mario, although his debut was decidedly successful, was little appreciated for some time after his first appearance, and, when desirous to transfer himself to the Italian stage, the manager of the French Opera readily cancelled his engagement on a nominal forfeit. The world knows the excellence, both as actor and singer, to which he has since attained. Beaucarde has come before the London public with more experience of the stage than Mario possessed when he first presented himself to the Parisians, and he has become immediately highly and most deservedly popular. Could any doubt of his excellence have existed in the minds of those who had heard him in other parts, his singing and acting of Arturo in the Puritani must at once have dissipated them. Tenderness and elegance marked his delivery of the whole of that graceful music, which displayed his beautiful quality of voice to the utmost advantage. Beaucarde is a very young man, and a very young singer. His father, a French engineer officer, who had settled at Florence after Napoleon's fall, intended him for a painter; but his own bias was for music, the study of which he secretly and enthusiastically pursued. It is not yet two years since his father's death left him at liberty to follow his own inclinations. With great difficulty he obtained an engagement at a second-rate theatre in his native city. There he was so little appreciated that, after being several months before the public, he was refused the very humble salary of two hundred pounds a-year. He was not discouraged. Perhaps he thought of Rubini – how that tenor of tenors, in his early days, could obtain no better place wherein to warble than a squalid booth at a country festival. Many who knew him in his after period of unrivalled prosperity and renown, will remember, in that room full of trophies, amidst plate and jewels bestowed upon him by kings and emperors, where the eye was dazzled with the glitter of gold and diamonds, a certain picture frame which he was wont to turn round and exhibit to his admiring visitors, who beheld with astonishment on its reverse the announcement of his performance at a fair, admission a single soldo– in English currency, a halfpenny. With such an instance before his eyes, Beaucarde might well persevere. At Florence, Romani, the celebrated musical professor, heard him sing, and insisted upon giving him lessons – by which, however, he did not long profit, having accepted an engagement at a Neapolitan minor opera. At Naples he speedily ascended in the scale, and finally made his debut with complete success at the San Carlo. Mercadante, struck by the beauty of his voice, immediately offered his services as his instructor; but, like Romani, he did not long retain his pupil. Perhaps it was as well he did not; for, whatever Beaucarde might have gained in modish art under his tuition, would have been at the expense of that chaste simplicity which now characterises his style, constituting, in our opinion, one of its greatest merits. How far the taste of his present public will suffer that extreme refinement of style to be compatible with his permanent and complete popularity, may be matter of doubt. The London opera is indebted for his acquisition to the veteran Lablache, who, whilst indulging in a vacation ramble through his old haunts, heard him at the San Carlo, and brought news of his excellence from the shores of the Mediterranean to the banks of the Thames.

Calzolari, a remarkably sweet singer and graceful actor, and Sims Reeves, complete such a trio of tenors as has not often been united at one opera house. Mr Reeves' reception on the stage of the Italian theatre has certainly not been the less favourable on account of his being of home growth; and the same remark applies to Miss Catherine Hayes, a delightful singer, who will do well to pay attention to her acting. We make this remark in no unfriendly spirit: we are amongst the warm admirers of Miss Hayes' voice and talent, but we have seen her in parts whose dramatic requirements she seemed somewhat to overlook. It may express our meaning to say that she at times reminds us of the concert room. Upon the stage this should never be. We may instance her performance of Cherubino. Her singing in that charming part was excellent; her delivery of the thrilling and impassioned air, Voi che sapete, left nothing to wish for, and elicited as fervent an encore from a very crowded house as the most ambitious could desire. But as to illusion, we are bound to confess there was little enough – what with the ladylike calmness of her acting, and the epicene costume in which she thought proper to appear. We beheld before us a graceful young woman and an excellent singer – but of the wilful and enamoured page we had but glimpses. A little more spirit, and a little less satin, would have been a decided improvement. Of course we are all cognisant of the "wild sweet-briery fence" which, Mr Moore asserts, environs the beauties of Erin. But is it quite necessary that Miss Hayes should interpret the metaphor into feminine attire when she plays a male part?

We are unable, nor is it necessary, individually to criticise all the members of the Italian company now performing at her Majesty's Theatre, and which, in all respects, is excellent and most effective. There is one other singer, however, who must have a word of mention, were it only that he was the indirect means of making the English public acquainted with Jenny Lind. Belletti was formerly engaged at the opera at Stockholm, and was a great favourite with the late king, Bernadotte. Jenny Lind heard him, and his admirable method and acting at once revealed to her the treasures of the Italian school. She saw that she had much to acquire, and departed for Paris to study. But Belletti has a claim to other than second-hand gratitude. His singing and acting are alike first-rate. Nothing can be better than his Figaro; in less important characters he is equally careful and efficient. His forte is in buffo parts, where his rich mellow voice and contagious merriment are greatly relished. He will probably become – we will not say popular, for that he already is in the highest degree, but an indispensable member of the London company. We regret to learn that he is shortly to accompany Miss Lind to America, and trust his absence will not be of long duration.

Can we close this enumeration without a word of our old acquaintance, Luigi Lablache? Surely a small corner may be found for the great man, who flourishes in unabated vigour, in spite of accumulating years and, as we fancy, annually increasing bulk. There is a geniality and a joviality about this long-standing pillar of the opera, which never fails of its effect upon his public. Probably no foreign actor ever enlisted so uniformly and heartily the goodwill of an English audience; and his popularity, although of course augmented by his vocal merits, is by no means dependent on them. We lately somewhere encountered a hypercritical comment upon his acting, in which he was accused of condescending to buffoonery. Never was charge more unfounded and absurd. One of the most remarkable characteristics of Lablache is the extreme skill with which he draws the line between humour and vulgarity; the perfect good taste distinguishing his drolleries and occasional deviations from the letter of his part. The practice of now and then introducing a French or English word or sentence in an Italian opera, for the purpose of producing a comic effect, is one that certainly should only be indulged with great discretion; but in this, and in all other respects, we may be sure that any dereliction from correct taste would promptly be detected and reproved by so sensitive an audience as that of her Majesty's Theatre. But from his first appearance in London, in 1829, to the present day, an instance, we believe, was never known of a sally of Lablache not obtaining at least a smile – far oftener a hearty laugh. In him the rich Italian humour of the buffo Napolitano, the droll of the San Carlino, still exists, happily tempered and modified by the gentlemanly tact of the experienced comedian. Long may the colossus of bassos preserve his voice and his good humour! His loss would be sorely felt, and his place be hard to fill. Who, after him, shall dare undertake Dulcamara and Pasquale? One thing certain is, that, whenever fulness of years or pocket may detach him from the stage he has so long adorned, to bask away his old age, with dignity and ease, in some sunny Italian town, the public of London and Paris, accustomed to his annual presence amongst them, will regret, in Lablache, not less the accomplished actor than the amiable and kind-hearted man.

We have not room for any particular review of the operas that have been this year performed; and, for the same reason, we can give but a few words to the chief novelty announced. We refer to the forthcoming opera of the Tempest, whose composition devolved, after the death of Mendelssohn, upon Halévy, the youngest, and one of the most distinguished, of living French composers. Scribe has supplied the poem. Upon his merits as a librettist it were superfluous to expatiate; it were perhaps more necessary, did it come within the scope of this paper, to correct the popular error that, compared with the music, the libretto of an opera is of little or no consequence. That kind of poetry has certainly been much degraded by the incapacity of many who have presumptuously undertaken it. Good writers of librettos are even more rare than good composers. Since Metastasio's day, those who alone can fairly claim a place in the first rank are Romani, Da Ponte, (the librettist of Don Giovanni,) and Scribe, that able and indefatigable purveyor of the stage, to whom English managers and playwrights owe so heavy a debt of gratitude – a debt which they are not always very prompt to acknowledge. Mendelssohn, when he agreed to compose an opera on the Tempest, stipulated that the libretto should be confided to Scribe, who willingly undertook it, and afterwards declared that he knew few subjects so well adapted for music. This opinion, proceeding from a man who, amongst the various classes of theatrical composition in which he has succeeded, is considered to have been especially successful in that of libretti – so much so, indeed, that it has been asserted he owed more than one vote, at his election as member of the French Academy, to their excellence alone – is of no slight weight. Nor were it reasonable to doubt that the composer of the Juive and of Guido et Ginevra, who seems to have caught, especially in the last-named opera, no feeble spark of the inspiration of his brother Israelite, the great Meyerbeer, will have succeeded in clothing the verse of Scribe in music correspondingly worthy.

We must conclude without even touching upon the ballet. It needs no praise from us: the names alone of Carlotta Grisi, Marie Taglioni, and Amalia Ferraris, are sufficient guarantee of its excellence. Perhaps upon some future day we may be able to discuss its merits.

THE GREEN HAND

A "SHORT" YARN

PART X

As soon as you near St Helena by a few miles, the trade-wind falls light; and making the rock, as you do from the South Atlantic, a good deal to leeward of the harbour, 'twould be pretty slow work beating round to north-east, but for the breeze always coming off the height, with the help of which one can coast easy enough along. Captain Wallis said no more than to bid the first lieutenant make the brig's number at her mast-head, while she still bore in direct upon the breast of the land, as much out of soundings as the day before; the smooth heavy swell seeming to float the island up in one huge lump ahead of us, till you saw it rolling in to the very foot, with a line of surf, as if it all rose sheer out of the bottom of the sea; as grim and hard as a block of iron, too, and a good deal the same colour. By noon, it hung fairly as it were over our mast-heads, the brig looking by comparison as tiny and as ticklish as a craft made of glass; she coasting away round, with yards braced first one way then another, and opening point after point from three hundred to two thousand feet high; while at times she would go stealing in with a faint ripple at her bows, near enough to hear the deep sound of the sea plunging slowly to the face of the rock, where the surf rose white against it without a break. There wasn't so much as a weed to be seen, the rocks getting redder and more coppery, sending out the light like metal, till you'd have thought they tingled all over with the heat. Then as you opened another bulge in the line, the sharp sugar-loaf hills, far away up, with the ragged cliffs and crags, shot over against the bare white sky in all sort of shapes; and after a good long spell of the sea, there was little fancy needed to give one the notion they were changing into these, as we passed ahead, to mock you. There was one peak for all the world like the top of St Paul's, and no end of church spires and steeples, all lengths and ways; then big bells and trumpets, mixed with wild-beasts' heads, grinning at each other across some split in the blue beyond, and soldier's helmets – not to speak of one huge block, like a Nigger's face with a cowl behind it, hanging far out over the water. Save for the colour of it all, in fact, St Helena reminds one more of a tremendous iceberg than an island, and not the less that it looks ready in some parts to topple over and show a new face; while the sea working round it, surging into the hollows below water-mark, and making the air groan inside of them, keeps up a noise the like of which you wouldn't wish to cruise alongside of every day. The strangest thing about it, however, was that now and then, as you came abreast of some deep gully running up inland, a sudden blast of wind would rush out of it, sufficient to make the Podargus reel – with a savage thundering roar, too, like the howl out of a lion's mouth; while you looked far up a narrow, bare black glen, closing into a hubbub of red rocks, or losing itself up a grey hill-side in a white thread of a water-course; then the rough shell of the island shut in again, as still as before, save the light breeze and the deep hum of the surf along its foot. Curiously enough in a latitude like St Helena's, the island seems, as it were, a perfect bag of air. What with the heat of the rock, its hollow inside, the high peaks of it catching the clouds, and the narrow outlets it has, 'tis always brewing wind, you may say, to ventilate that part of the tropics – just as one may keep up cold draughts through and through a wet heap of loose stones, no matter how hot the weather is, as long as he pleases. As for a landing-place, though, there wasn't one of the gullies that didn't yawn over without falling to the sea; and not to mention the surf underneath, where the dark swell came in unbroken from deep water without a shoal to soften it, why, watching it from the brig's side, I shouldn't have said a cat would scramble up or down the steep slopes and the wreck of stones, from the water's edge to the jaws of the easiest gully you saw.

Once or twice, standing further off, we caught sight of Diana's Peak over the shoulder of a hill, with the light haze melting about it; at last you noticed a large gun mounted against the sky on a lofty peak, where it looked like a huge telescope; and on clearing another headland, a beautiful frigate came in between us and the burst of light to seaward, cruising to windward under easy sail. She bore up and stood towards the brig-of-war, just as the line of wall was to be seen winding round the middle of Sugar-Loaf Point, where the sentry's bayonet glittered near his watch-box, and the soldiers' red coats could be seen moving through the covered passage to the batteries. Five minutes after, the Podargus swept round the breast of Rupert's Hill into the bay, in sight of James Town and the ships lying off the harbour; cluing up her sails and ready to drop anchor, as the frigate hove to not far astern.

You can fancy land heaving in sight after thrice as many weeks as you've been at sea, ladies; or the view of a ship to a man that's been long laid up in bed ashore; or a gulp of fresh water in a sandy desert, – but I question if any of them matches your first glimpse of James Town from the roadstead, like a bright piece of fairy-work in the mouth of the narrow brown valley, after seeing desolation enough to make you wish for a clear horizon again. More especially this time, when all the while one couldn't help bringing to mind one's notion of the French Emperor, how, not long ago, the sight of the French coast, or a strange frigate over the Channel swell, used to make us think of him far ashore, with half the earth for his own, and millions of soldiers. We reefers down in the cockpit would save our grog to drink confusion to Napoleon, and in a rough night near a lee-shore, it was look alive aloft, or choose betwixt cold brine and the clutch of a gendarme hauling you to land. I do believe we looked upon him as a sort of god, as Captain Wallis did in the Temple; every ship or gun-boat we saw taken, or had a hand in the mauling of, why, 'twas for the sheer sake of the thing, and scarce by way of harm to Boney; while nothing like danger, from breakers on the lee-bow to a November gale, but had seemingly a taste of him. None of us any more thought of bringing him to this, than we did of his marching into London, or of a French frigate being able to rake our old Pandora in a set-to on green water or blue, with us to handle her.

But there was the neat little cluster of houses, white, yellow, and green, spreading down close together in the bottom of the valley, and out along the sea's edge; the rough brown cliffs sloping up on each side, with the ladder-like way to the fort on the right, mounting, as it were, out of the very street, to the flag-staff on the top, and dotted with red-coats going up and down; a bright line of a pier and a wall before the whole, the Government House dazzling through a row of spreading trees, and a little square church tower to be seen beyond. 'Twas more like a scene in a play, than aught else; what with the suddenness of it all, the tiny look of it betwixt the huge rocks, the greenness of the trees and bushes, and patches of garden struggling up as far as they could go into the stone, and the gay little toys of cottages, with scarce flat enough to stand upon: save for the blue swell of the sea plunging lazily in through the bit of a bay, and the streak of air behind, that let you in high over the head of the hollow, up above one height and another, to a flat-headed blue rise in the distance, where Longwood could be seen from the main-cross-trees I had gone to as the sails were furled. The sunlight, striking from both the red sides of the ravine, made the little village of a place, trees and all, glitter in a lump together, out of it, like no spot in the rest of the world; while elsewhere there wasn't so much as a weed to be seen hanging from the rock, nor the sign of another human habitation, saving the bare batteries on each hand, with a few sheds and warehouses over the beach along the landing-place. Once or twice the same sudden gust as before would come slap down through the valley into the brig's bare rigging, hot as the air was, with a howling kind of a sigh you took some time to get accustomed to, lest there was a hurricane to follow: in fact one didn't well know whether it was the wild look of it outside, or the lovely spot in its grim mouth of a landing-place, but the whole island gave you the notion of a thing you couldn't be long sure of, without fancying it would give a shake some day or other again; or else spout fire, as no doubt it had done before, if there wasn't more fear of Napoleon getting back somehow to France, and wreaking bloody vengeance on the kings that shut him up in St Helena.

There was apparently a busy scene ashore, however, both in the little town, which has scarce more than a single street, and along the quay, full of residents, as well as passengers from two Indiamen lying in-shore of us, while the Government esplanade seemed to be crowded with ladies, listening to the regimental band under the trees. The Newcastle frigate, with Sir Dudley Aldcombe's flag hoisted at her mizen, was at anchor out abreast at Ladder Hill; and our first lieutenant had scarce pulled aboard of the Hebe, which was hove-to off the brig's quarter, before I noticed the Admiral's barge lying alongside the Hebe. Seeing Mr Aldridge on his way back shortly after, I came down the rigging, more anxious than ever to have my own matter settled; indeed, Captain Wallis no sooner caught sight of my face, uncomfortable as I daresay it looked, than he told me he was going to wait on the Admiral aboard the Hebe, and would take me with him at once, if I chose. For my part, I needed nothing but the leave, and in ten minutes time I found myself, no small mark of curiosity, betwixt the waist and the quarterdeck of the Hebe, where the officers eyed me with as little appearance of rudeness as they could help, and I overhauled the spars and rigging aloft as coolly as I could, waiting to be sent for below. The Hebe, in fact, was the very beauty of a twenty-eight; taking the shine, and the wind, too, clean out of everything even at Plymouth, where I had seen her once a year or two before: our poor dear old Iris herself had scarce such a pattern of a hull, falling in, as it did, from the round swell of her bilge, to just under the plank-sheer, and spreading out again with her bright black top-sides, till where the figurehead shot over the cut-water, and out of her full pair of bows, like a swan's neck out of its breast. As for the Iris, our boatswain himself one day privately confessed to me, almost with tears in his eyes, that she tumbled home a thought too much just in front of the fore-chains, and he'd tried to get it softened off with dead planking and paint, but it wouldn't do; everybody saw through them. The truth was, to feel this fine ship under one, with her loose topsails hanging high against the gloom of the red gully towards Longwood, and the gay little town peeping just over her larboard bow, a mile away, it somehow or other cleared one's mind of a load. I was thinking already how, if one had the command of such a craft, to do something with her at sea – hang it! but surely that old Judge couldn't be too proud to give him a fair hearing. By Jove! thought I – had one only wild enough weather, off the Cape, say – if I wouldn't undertake to bother even a seventy-four a whole voyage through, till she struck her flag; in which case a fellow might really venture to hold his head up and speak his mind, lovely as Violet Hyde would be in Calcutta. But then, again, there was St Helena towering red and rough over the ships, with the grand French Emperor hidden in it hard and fast, and all the work he used to give us at an end!

Just at the moment, happening to catch sight of the American mate's sallow black visage over the brig-of-war's hammock-cloths, peering as he did from the cliffs to the lofty spars of the frigate, while his Negro shipmates were to be made out nearer the bows – somehow or other the whole affair of their being burnt out and picked up started into my mind again, along with our late queer adventures in the Indiaman. Not to mention Captain Wallis's story, it flashed upon me all at once, for the first time, that the strange schooner was after some scheme as regarded the island; and a man more likely to try something uncommon than the Frenchman, I never had seen yet. The truth was, but for my thoughts being otherwise taken up, I'd have wondered at my own confounded stupidity in not fathoming the thing sooner; whereas now, I'm not going to deny it, I half began actually to wish him good success, or else a close miss of it, where either way one couldn't well fail having a share in the squall. At any rate, I saw it was cunningly enough gone about; this same burnt barque of the Yankee's, I perceived in a moment, was part of the plot; though as for meddling in it till I saw more, 'twas likely to spoil the whole; let alone making an ass of one's-self in case of mistake. I was eyeing the shipwrecked mate, indeed, when one of the lieutenants told me politely the Admiral wanted to see me in the cabin below.

Not being much accustomed to admirals' society, as a little white-haired fellow-reefer of mine once said at a tea-party ashore, I came in at the door with rather an awkward bow, no doubt; for Sir Dudley, who was sitting on the sofa with his cocked hat and sword beside him, talking to Captain Wallis, turned his head at the captain's word, as if he were trying to keep in a smile. A tall, fine-looking man he was, and few seamen equal to him for handling a large fleet, as I knew, though his manners were finished enough to have made him easy in a king's court. As for the captain of the Hebe, he was leaning out of an open stern-window, seemingly a young man, but who he might be I didn't know at the moment. The Admiral had only a question or two to put, before he looked back to Captain Wallis again, remarking it was clear he had brought away the wrong man. "I didn't think you were so dull in the Podargus," said he, smiling, "as to let an Indiaman play off such a trick on you – eh, Captain Wallis!" Captain Wallis glanced round the cabin, and then sideways down at Sir Dudley's cocked hat, in a funny enough way, as much as to say he took all the blame on himself; and it struck me more than ever what a kind heart the man had in him – if you only set aside his hatred to Buonaparte, which in fact was nothing else but a twisted sort of proof of the same thing. "Pooh, pooh, Wallis," continued Sir Dudley, "we can't do anything in the matter; though, if the service were better than it really is at present, I should certainly incline to question a smart young fellow like this, that has held His Majesty's commission, for idling in an Indiaman after the lady passengers! I am afraid, sir," said he to me, "you've lost your passage, though, – unless the captain of the Hebe will give you his second berth here, to make amends." "You need not be afraid, Lord Frederick!" added he, looking toward the captain of the frigate, and raising his voice; "you do not know him, after all, I suppose!" The captain drew in his head, saying he had been doubtful about one of the pivots of the rudder, then turned full round and looked uneasily at me, on which his face brightened immediately, and he said, "No, Sir Dudley, I do not!" I was still in ignorance for a moment or so, myself, who this titled young post-captain might be, though I had certainly seen him before; till all at once I recollected him, with a start as pleasant to me as his seemed to him at not knowing me. Both Westwood and I had been midshipmen together for a while in the Orion, fifty-gun ship, where he was second lieutenant, several years before. As for me, I was too fond of a frigate to stay longer in her than I could help; but I remembered my being a pest to the second lieutenant, and Tom's being a favourite of his, so that he staid behind me, and got master's mate as soon as he was 'passed.' The Honourable Frederick Bury he was then, and the handsomest young fellow in the squadron, as well as the best-natured aboard. I don't believe he knew how to splice in a dead-eye, and any of the masters'-mates could take charge of the ship better in a rough night, I daresay; but for a gallant affair in the way of hard knocks, with management to boot, there wasn't his match. He never was known to fail when he took a thing in hand; lost fewer men, too, than any one else did; and whenever there turned up anything ticklish for the boats, it was always "Mr Bury will lead." "The honourable Bury," we used to call him, and "Fighting Free-the-deck." Westwood was one of his school, whereas I had learnt from Jacobs in a merchantman's forecastle; and many a time did we play off such tricks on the second lieutenant as coming gravely aft to him during the watch, three or four of us together, me carrying a bit of rope where a "turk's-head" or a "mouse" was be worked, while I asked him innocently to show us the way. Or else it was some dispute we contrived beforehand, as to the best plan of sending up new topmasts at sea, or running out of a "round" gale in the Indian Ocean, on which the men forward would be all ready to break out laughing; and the second lieutenant, after thinking a moment, would quietly pitch upon me to go aloft, and study the point for two hours at the mast-head.

"What is your name then, young man?" inquired Sir Dudley Aldcombe of me. The instant I told him, Lord Frederick Bury gave me another look, then a smile. "What?" said he, "Collins that was in the Orion?" "Yes, Lord Frederick," said I, "the same; I was third in the Iris off the West African coast, since then." "Why," said he, "I recollect you quite well, Mr Collins, although you have grown a foot, I think, sir – but your eye reminds me of sundry pranks you used to play on board! What nickname was it your mess-mates called you, by the bye?" "Something foolish enough, I suppose, my lord," replied I, biting my lip; "but I remember clearly having the honour to steer the second cutter in shore one dark night near Dunkirk, when your lordship carried the Dutch brig and the two French chasse-marées – " "'Faith," broke in the captain of the Hebe, "you've a better memory than I have – I do not recollect any chasse-marées at all, that time, Mr Collins!" "Why," said I, "I got a knock on the head from a fellow in a red shirt – that always kept me in mind." "Oh," remarked the Admiral to Captain Wallis, laughing, "Lord Frederick Bury must have had so many little parties of the kind, that his memory can't be expected to be very nice! However, I shall go ashore at present, gentlemen, leaving the Hebe and you to dispose of this runaway lieutenant in someway or other. Only you'd better settle it before Admiral Plampin arrives!" "Have you seen the – the – Longwood lately, Sir Dudley?" asked the captain of the Podargus, carelessly. "Yes, not many days ago I had an interview," said the Admiral gravely; "proud as ever, and evidently resolved not to flinch from his condition. 'Tis wonderful the command that man has over himself, Wallis – he speaks of the whole world and its affairs like one that sees into them, and had them still nearly under his foot! All saving those miserable squabbles with Plantation House, which – but, next time, I shall take my leave, and wash my hands of the whole concern, I am glad to think!" Lord Frederick was talking to me meanwhile at the other end of the cabin, but I was listening in spite of myself to Sir Dudley Aldcombe, and noticed that Captain Wallis made no answer. "By the way, Wallis," continued the Admiral, "'tis curious that he seemed anxious more than once to know what you think of him – I believe he would like to see you!" "To see me!" said the commander of the Podargus, suddenly. "At last, does he! No, Sir Dudley, he and I never will meet; he ought to have thought of it twelve years sooner! God knows," he went on, "the commander of a ten-gun brig is too small a man to see the Emperor Napoleon a prisoner – but in ten years of war, Sir Dudley, what mightn't one have been, instead of being remembered after as only plain John Wallis, whom Buonaparte kept all that time in prison, and who was sent, in course of time, to cruise off St Helena!" Here the Admiral said something about a British sailor not keeping malice, and Captain Wallis looked up at him gravely. "No," replied he; "no, Sir Dudley, I shouldn't have chosen the thing; but in the mean time I'm only doing my duty. There's a gloomy turn in my mind by this time, no doubt; but you've no idea, Sir Dudley, how the thought of other people comes into one's head when he's years shut up – so I may stand for many a one Buonaparte will never see more than myself, that'll ring him round surer than those rocks there, though they're dead and in their graves, Sir Dudley!" The Admiral shook his head, observing that Napoleon was no common man, and oughtn't to be judged as such. "Too many victories in that eye of his, I suspect, Captain Wallis," said he, "for either Plantation House or his own conscience to break his spirit!" "Ay, ay sir," answered the captain respectfully, "excuse me, Sir Dudley, but there it is – so long as he's got his victories to fall back upon, he can't see how, if he'd regarded common men more, with all belonging to them, he wouldn't have been here! Why did Providence shut him up in a dead volcano, with blue water round it, Sir Dudley, if it wasn't to learn somehow or other he was a man after all?" Sir Dudley Aldcombe shrugged his shoulders and looked to Lord Frederick, upon which he rose, and the two captains followed him out of the cabin; in five minutes I heard the side piped for the Admiral's leaving, and soon after the captain of the Hebe came below again.

"This is a disagreeable affair of your old messmate's, Mr Collins," said he, seriously. "You are, perhaps, not aware that Captain Duncombe was a relative of my own, and the fact of his property having fallen by will to myself, rendered my position the more peculiarly disagreeable, had I been obliged not only to recognise Lieutenant Westwood here, but afterwards to urge proceedings against him, even if he were let off by court-martial. I cannot tell you how the sight of a stranger, as I thought, relieved me, sir!" "Indeed, Lord Frederick!" replied I, too much confused in the circumstances to say more. However, his lordship's manner soon set me at my ease, the old good-humoured smile coming over his fine features again, while he went on to offer me the place of his second lieutenant, who was going home very ill by one of the homeward bound Indiamen; adding, that Sir Dudley would confirm the appointment; indeed, he could scarce help himself, he said, as there was nobody else he could get at present. "You must be a thorough good sailor by this time, Collins," continued he, "if you have gone on at the rate you used to do. I remember how fond you were of having charge for a minute or two of the old Orion, or when I let you put her about in my watch. Why they called you 'young Green,' I never could understand, unless it was 'ut lucus a non lucendo' as we used to say at Eton, you know. Well, what do you say?" Now, as you may suppose, the idea of boxing about St Helena, for heaven knew how long, didn't at all suit my liking – with the thought of the Seringapatam steering away for Bombay the whole time, and a hundred notions of Violet Hyde in India, – 'twould have driven me madder than the Temple did Captain Wallis: but it was only the first part of my mind I gave Lord Frederick. "What!" exclaimed he, with a flush over his face, and drawing up his tall figure, "you didn't suppose I should remain here? Why, the Hebe is on her way for Calcutta and Canton, and will sail as soon as the Conqueror arrives at James Town with Admiral Plampin." "Your lordship is very kind," said I looking down to cover my delight; "and if I am not worthy of the post, it shan't be my fault, Lord Frederick." "Ah, very good!" said he smiling; "'tis an opportunity you oughtn't to let slip, Collins, let me tell you! For my own part, I should just as soon cut out a pirate in the Straits of Malacca as a French brig in the Channel; and there are plenty of them, I hear, there. As for a chase, sir, I flatter myself you won't easily see a finer thing than the Hebe spreading her cloth after one of those fast proas will be – I think you are just the fellow to make her walk, too, Mr Collins – pah! to compare a day on the Derby turf with that, would be a sin! You have no idea, sir, how one longs for a fair horizon again, and brisk breezes, when so ineffably tired out of all those ball-rooms, and such things as you see about town just now – only I fear I shall wish to be second lieutenant again, eh?" The noble captain of the Hebe turned to look out through the stern window to seaward, his face losing the weary sort of half-melancholy cast it had shown for the last minute, while his eye glistened; and it struck me how well-matched the Hebe and her commander were: you'd have said both had good blood in them, both being models to look at of their kind, and the frigate lifting under you at the moment, from the keel upward, with a check aloft in her main-topsail, that lifted her stem to the surge. A small telescope rolled off the sofa on to the cabin deck, and as I picked it up, another gust could be heard coming down St James' Valley from inside the island; through the gun-port one saw the trees wave over the hot white houses in the bright coloured little town, while the ship's canvass gave another flutter above decks. Lord Frederick laughed, and said, "Then, I suppose, we need say no more about it, Mr Collins, except referring once for all to Sir Dudley?" I bowed, and the upshot was, that, an hour or two after, I had my acting commission sent me from the Admiral, the same boat having called at the Podargus for my things; upon which Lord Frederick introduced me to the first lieutenant, and I found myself once more doing duty in the service – the Hebe standing out to leeward with the last light, just as the Podargus was tripping anchor to beat round again the other way. As for our friends from the burnt vessel, I must say I had forgot them already, for the time at least.

Every block, crag, and knot in the huge crust of the rock, shone terribly bright for a minute or two, aloft from over the yard-ends, as she stood suddenly out into the fiery gleam of the sun going down many a mile away in the Atlantic. Then up leapt the light keener and keener to the very topmost peak, till you'd have thought it went in like a living thing behind a telegraph, that stood out against a black cleft betwixt two cliffs. We saw the evening gun off Ladder Hill flash upon the deep blue of the sky, seemingly throwing up the peak and flag-staff a dozen feet higher; and the boom of the gun sounding in among the wild hills and hollows within the island, as if one heard it going up to Longwood door. Scarce was it lost, ere a star or two were to be seen in the shadow on the other side, and you listened almost, in the hush following upon the gunfire, for an echo to it, or something stranger; in place of which the Hebe was already forging ahead in the dark to get well clear of the land, every wave bringing its own blackness with it up toward her forechains, then sparkling back to her waist in the seeth of foam as she felt the breeze; while St Helena lay towering along to larboard, with its ragged top blotting against the deep dark-blue of the sky, all filling as it was with the stars.

I had the middle watch that night; the ship being under short canvass, and slowly edging down to make the most leewardly point of the island, from which she was to beat up again at her leisure by the morning. All we had to do was to keep a good look-out, on the one hand, into the streak of starlight to seaward, and on the other along the foot of the rocks, as well as holding her well in hand, in case of some sudden squall through the valleys from inside. However, I shan't easily forget the thoughts that ran in my mind, walking the quarterdeck, with the frigate under charge, the first time I noticed Orion and the Serpent begin to wheel glittering away from over Diana's Peak – the others stealing quietly into sight after them, past the leech of our main-topsail: scarce an English star to be seen for the height of the island off our quarter; some of the men on one side of the booms humming a song about Napoleon's dream, which you'll hear to this day in ships' forecastles; another yarning solemnly, on the other side, about some old sweetheart of his – but all of them ready to jump at my own least word. In the morning, however, there we were, stretching back by degrees to go round the lee side of the island again; the haze melting off Diana's Peak as before, and the sea rolling in swells as blue as indigo, to the huge red lumps of bare crag; while the bright surges leapt out of them all along the frigate's side, and the spray rose at times to her figure-head.

During the day we cruised farther out, and the Hebe had enough to do in seeing off one Indiaman for home, and speaking another outward-bound craft, that passed forty miles off or so, without touching; the governor's telegraphs were eternally at work on the heights, bothering her for the least trifle, and making out a sail sixty miles off, it was said. For my part, I was pretty well tired of it already, sincerely wishing for the Conqueror, with Admiral Plampin, to heave in sight; but glad enough all aboard the Hebe were, when, after an entire week of the thing, it came to her turn, with the Newcastle and Podargus, to lie at anchor off James Town, where half the ship's company at a time had their liberty ashore. For my part, I had to see after the frigate's water-tanks, and a gang at the rigging, till the afternoon, when Lord Frederick took the first lieutenant and myself ashore with him in his gig; and no joke it was landing even there, where the swell of the surf nighhand hove her right up on the quay, while you had to look sharp, in case the next wave washed you back again off your feet. The whole place was hot as could be from the sun's rays off the rocks, slanting bare red to the cloudless sky, on both sides of the neat little gaudy houses crowded in the mouth of the valley, which narrowed away beyond the rise of the street, till you didn't see how you'd get farther. But for the air of the sea, indeed, with now and then a breath down out of the hills, 'twas for all the world like a half-kindled oven; except under the broad trees along the Government esplanade, where one couldn't have stood for people. What with blacks, lascars, Chinamen, and native 'Yamstocks,' together with liberty men from the men-of-war and Indiamen, as well as reefers trotting about on ponies and donkeys, the very soldiers could scarce get down the foot of the road up Ladder Hill: as for the little town holding one half of them, it was out of the question, but the noise and kick-up were beyond aught else of the kind, saving a Calcutta bazaar. Accordingly, it was pleasant enough at last to come within a shady walk of thick green fig-trees, growing almost out of the rock near the main battery, above the small sound of the water far below; the very sea looking bluer through the leaves, while some birds no bigger than wrens hopped, chirruping, about the branches. Here we met Sir Dudley Aldcombe coming down from the batteries along with some Company's officers from India, and he stopped to speak to Lord Frederick, giving the first lieutenant and me a bow in return, as we lifted our hats and waited behind. The Admiral proposed to get Lord Frederick a pass to visit Napoleon along with himself next day, as the Conqueror would probably arrive very soon. "You will oblige me greatly, Sir Dudley," said the captain of the Hebe. "He seems as fond of seeing a true sailor," said the Admiral, "as if we'd never done him harm! Things will be worse after I go. By the way," added he suddenly, "'tis curious enough, but there's one person on the island at present, has made wonderful progress in Sir Hudson's good graces, for the short time – that American botanist, or whatever he calls himself, that Captain Wallis took off the burnt vessel on his way here. Your new lieutenant was aboard at the time, you know, Lord Frederick." "You saw him, sir, of course?" said the Admiral, looking to me. "Only for a minute that night, Sir Dudley," answered I; "and afterwards both he and his servant were under the surgeon's charge below." "Well," continued Sir Dudley to the captain, "they seem quite recovered now; for I saw them to-day up at Plantation House, where the philosopher was in close discourse with the Governor about plants and such things; while her ladyship was as much engaged with the assistant, who can only speak Spanish. A remarkable-looking man the latter is, too; a Mexican, I understand, with Indian blood in him, apparently – whereas his principal has a strong Yankee twang; and queer enough it was to hear him snuffling away as solemnly as possible about buttany and such things – besides his hinting at some great discovery likely to be made in the island, which Sir Hudson seemed rather anxious to keep quiet from me." What Sir Dudley said made me prick up my ears, as you may fancy. I could scarce believe the thing; 'twas so thoroughly rich, and so confoundedly cool at once, to risk striking at the very heart of things this way with the Governor himself; but the whole scheme, so far, flashed upon me in a moment, evidently carried on, as it had been all along, by some one bold enough for anything earthly, and with no small cunning besides. All that he needed, no doubt, was somebody else with the devil's own impudence and plenty of talk; nor, if I'd thought for a day together, could one have pitched easily upon a customer as plausible as our friend Daniel, who hadn't a spark of fear in him, I knew, just owing to his want of respect for aught in the entire creation. Still I couldn't, for the life of me, see what the end of their plan was to be, unless the strange Frenchman might have been some general or other under Buonaparte, and just wanted to see his old commander once more; which, thought I, I'll be hanged if I don't think fair enough, much pains as he had put himself to for the thing.

"How!" asked Lord Frederick, "a discovery, did you say, Sir Dudley?" "Oh, nothing of the kind we should care about, after all," said the Admiral; "from what I could gather, 'twas only scientific, though the American called it 'a pretty importaint fact.' This Mr Mathewson Brown, I believe, was sent out by the States' Government as botanist in an expedition to southward, and has leave from Sir Hudson to use his opportunity before the next Indiaman sails, for examining part of the island; and to-day he thought he found the same plants in St Helena as he did in Gough's Island and Tristan d'Acunha, twelve hundred miles off, near the Cape; showing, as he said, how once on a time there must have been land between them, perhaps as far as Ascension!" "Why," put in Lord Frederick, "that would have made a pretty good empire, even for Napoleon!" "So it would, my lord," said Sir Dudley, "much better than Elba, – but the strangest part of it is, this Mr Brown was just telling his Excellency, as I entered the room, that some of the ancient philosophers wrote about this said country existing in the Atlantic before the Flood – how rich it was, with the kings it had, and the wars carried on there; till on account of their doings, no doubt, what with an earthquake, a volcano, and the ocean together, they all sunk to the bottom except the tops of the mountains! Now I must say," continued the Admiral, "all this learning seemed to one to come rather too much by rote out of this gentleman's mouth, and the American style of his talk made it somewhat ludicrous, though he evidently believed in what may be all very true – particularly, in mentioning the treasures that must lie under water for leagues round, or even in nooks about the St Helena rocks, I thought his very teeth watered. As for Sir Hudson, he had caught at the idea altogether, but rather in view of a historical work on the island, from the earliest times till now – and I believe he means to accompany the two botanists himself over toward Longwood to-morrow, where we may very likely get sight of them."

"O – h?" thought I, and Lord Frederick Bury smiled. "Rather a novelty, indeed!" said he; and the first lieutenant looked significantly enough to me, as we leant over the battery wall, watching the hot horizon through the spars of the ships before James Town. "What amused me," Sir Dudley said again, "was the American botanist's utter indifference, when I asked if he had seen anything of 'the General' in the distance. The Governor started, glancing sharp at Mr Brown, and I noticed his dark companion give a sudden side-look from the midst of his talk with her ladyship, whereupon the botanist merely pointed with his thumb to the floor, asking coolly 'what it was to science?' At this," added Sir Dudley to the captain, "his Excellency seemed much relieved; and after having got leave for myself and your lordship to-morrow, I left them still in the spirit of it. It certainly struck me that, in the United States themselves, educated men in general couldn't have such a vulgar manner about them, – in fact I thought the Mexican attendant more the gentleman of the two – his face was turned half from me most of the time, but still it struck me as remarkably intelligent." "Ah," said Lord Frederick carelessly, "all the Spaniards have naturally a noble sort of air, you know, Sir Dudley – they'll never make republicans!" "And I must say," added the Admiral, as they strolled out of the shade, up the battery steps, "little as I know of Latin, what this Mr Brown used did seem to me fearfully bad!"

"And no wonder!" thought I "from a Yankee schoolmaster," as I had found my late shipmate was, before he thought of travelling; but the valuable Daniel turning his hand to help out some communication or other, no doubt, with Napoleon Buonaparte in St Helena, took me at first as so queer an affair, that I didn't know whether to laugh at him or admire his Yankee coolness, when he ran such risks. As for the feasibleness of actually getting the prisoner clear out of the island, our cruising on guard was enough to show me it would be little short of a miracle; yet I couldn't help thinking they meant to try it; and in case of a dark night, which the southeaster was very likely to bring, if it shifted or freshened a little, – why, I knew you needn't call anything impossible that a cool head and a bold heart had to do with, provided only they could get their plans laid inside and out so as to tally. The more eager I got for next day, when it would be easy enough for any of us to go up inland after Lord Frederick, as far as Hut's Gate, at least. Meantime the first lieutenant and I walked up together to where the little town broke into a sort of suburb of fancy cottages, with verandahs and green venetians in bungalow style, scattered to both sides of the rock amongst little grass plots and garden patches; every foot of ground made use of. And a perfect gush of flowers and leaves it was, clustering over the tiles of the low roofs; while you saw through a thicket of poplars and plantains, right into the back of the gulley, with a ridge of black rock closing it fair up; and Side Path, as they call the road to windward, winding overhead along the crag behind the houses, out of sight round a mass of cliffs. Every here and there, a runlet of water came trickling down from above the trees to water their roots; you saw the mice in hundreds, scampering in and out of holes in the dry stone, with now and then a big ugly rat that turned round to face you, being no doubt fine game to the St Helena people, ill off as they all seemed for something to do – except the Chinese with their huge hats, hoeing away under almost every tree one saw, and the Yamstock fishermen to be seen bobbing for mullet outside the ships, in a blaze of light sufficient to bake any heads but their own. Every cottage had seven or eight parrots in it, apparently; a cockatoo on a stand by the door, or a monkey up in a box – not to speak of canaries in the window, and white goats feeding about with bells round their necks: so you may suppose what a jabbering, screaming, whistling, and tinkling there was up the whole hollow, added to no end of children and young ladies making the most of the shade as it got near nightfall – and all that were out of doors came flocking down Side-Path.

Both of us having leave ashore that night, for a ball in one of these same little bungalows near the head of the valley, 'twas no use to think of a bed, and as little to expect getting off to the ship, which none could do after gunfire. For that matter, I daresay there might be twenty such parties, full of young reefers and homeward-bound old East Indians, keeping it up as long as might be, because they had nowhere to sleep. The young lady of the house we were in was one of the St Helena beauties, called "the Rosebud," from her colour. A lovely creature she was, certainly, as it was plain our Hebe's first lieutenant thought, with several more to boot: every sight of her figure gliding about through the rest, the white muslin floating round her like haze, different as her face was, made one think of the Seringapatam's deck at sea, with the men walking the forecastle in the middle watch, and the poop quiet over the Judge's cabins. Two or three times I had fancied for a moment that, if one had somewhat stirring to busy himself with, why, he might so far forget what was no doubt likely to interfere pretty much with a profession like my own; and so it might have been, perhaps, had I only seen her ashore: whereas now, whether it was ashore or afloat, by Jove! everything called her somehow to mind. The truth is, I defy you to get rid very easily of the thought about one you've sailed in the same ship with, be it girl or woman – the same bottom betwixt you and the water, the same breeze blowing your pilot-coat in the watch on deck, that ripples past her ear below, and the self-same dangers to strive against! At a break in the dance I went out of the dancing-room into the verandah, where the cool of the air among the honeysuckle flowers and creepers was delightful to feel; though it was quite dark in the valley, and you couldn't make out anything but the solemn black-blue of the sky full of stars above you, between the two cliffs; or right out, where the stretch of sea widening to the horizon, looked almost white through the mouth of the valley, over the house-roofs below: one heard the small surf plashing low and slow into the little bay, with the boats dipping at their moorings, but I never saw sea look so lonely. Then tip at the head of the gulley one could mark the steep black crag that shut it up, glooming quiet and large against a gleam from one of the clusters of stars: the sight of it was awful, I didn't know well why, unless by comparison with the lively scene inside, not to say with one's own whole life afloat, as well as the wishes one had at heart. 'Twas pretty late, but I heard the music strike up again in the room, and was going back again, when all of a sudden I thought the strangest sound that ever came to one's ears went sweeping round and round far above the island, more like the flutter of a sail miles wide than aught else I can fancy; then a rush of something like those same blasts of wind I was pretty well used to by this time – but wind it was not – growing in half a minute to a rumbling clatter, and then to a smothered roar, as if something more than mortal shot from inland down through the valley, and passed out by its mouth into the open sea at once. I scarce felt the ground heave under me, though I thought I saw the black head of the ravine lift against the stars – one terrible plunge of the sea down at the quays and batteries, then everything was still again; but the whole dancing party came rushing out in confusion at my back, the ladies shrieking, the men looking up into the sky, or at the cliffs on both sides; the British flag, over the fort on Ladder Hill, blowing out steadily to a stiff breeze aloft. It wasn't for some time, in fact, that they picked up courage again, to say it had been an earthquake. However, the ball was over, and, as soon as matters could be set to rights, it was nothing but questions whether it had aught to do with him up at Longwood, or hadn't been an attempt to blow up the island – some of the officers being so much taken aback at first, that they fancied the French had come. At last, however, we who had nothing else for it got stowed away on sofas or otherwise about the dancing-room: for my part, I woke up just early enough to see the high head of the valley coming out as clearly as before against the morning light, and the water glancing blue out miles away beyond the knot of ships in the opening. The news was only that Napoleon was safe, having been in his bed at the time, where he lay thinking one of the frigates had blown up, they said. Not a word of his that got wind but the people in James Town made it their day's text – in the want of which they'd even gossip about the coat he wore that morning – till you'd have said the whole nest of them, soldiers and all, lay under his shadow as the town did at the foot of the cliffs, just ready to vanish as soon as he went down. The Longwood doctor had told some one in the Jew Solomon's toy-shop, by the forenoon, that Buonaparte couldn't sleep that night for making some calculations about a great battle he had fought, when he counted three separate shocks of the thing, and noticed it was luckily right up and down, or else James Town would have been buried under tons of rock. The doctor had mentioned besides that there was twice an earthquake before in the island, in former times; but it didn't need some of the town's people's looks to tell you they'd be afraid many a night after, lest the French Emperor should wake up thinking of his battles; while, as for myself, I must say the notion stuck to me some time, along with my own ideas at that exact moment – at any rate, not for worlds would I have lived long ashore in St Helena.

Mr Newland the first lieutenant, and I, set out early in the day, accordingly, with a couple of the Hebe's midshipmen, mounted on as many of the little island ponies, to go up inland for a cruise about the hills. You take Side Path along the crags, with a wall betwixt the hard track and the gulf below, till you lose sight of James Town like a cluster of children's toy-houses under you, and turn up above a sloping hollow full of green trees and tropical-like flowering shrubs, round a pretty cottage called the Briars – where one begins to have a notion, however, of the bare blocks, the red bluffs, and the sharp peaks standing up higher and higher round the shell of the island. Then you had another rise of it to climb, on which you caught sight of James Town and the harbour again, even smaller than before, and saw nothing before your beast's head but a desert of stony ground, running hither and thither into wild staring clefts, grim ravines, and rocks of every size tumbled over each other like figures of ogres and giants in hard fight. After two or three miles of all this, we came in view of Longwood hill, lying green on a level to north and east, and clipping to windward against the sea beyond; all round it elsewhere was the thick red crust of the island, rising in ragged points and sharp spires: – the greenish sugar-loaf of Diana's Peak shooting in the middle over the high ridge that hid the Plantation House side of St Helena to leeward. Between the spot where we were and Longwood is a huge fearful-looking black hollow, called the Devil's Punch-Bowl, as round and deep as a pitch-pot for caulking all the ships in the world – except on a slope into one corner of it, where you saw a couple of yellow cottages with gardens about them; while every here and there a patch of grass began to appear, a clump of wild weeds and flowers hanging off the fronts of the rocks, or the head of some valley widening away out of sight, with the glimpse of a house amongst trees, where some stream of water came leaping down off the heights and vanished in the boggy piece of green below. From here over the brow of the track it was all like seeing into an immense stone basin half hewn out, with all the lumps and wrinkles left rising in it and twisting every way about – the black Devil's Punch-Bowl for a hole in the middle, where some infernal liquor or other had run through: the soft bottoms of the valleys just bringing the whole of it up distincter to the green over Longwood hill; while the ragged heights ran round on every side like a rim with notches in it, and Diana's Peak for a sort of a handle that the clouds could take hold of. All this time we had strained ourselves to get as fast up as possible, except once near the Alarm House, where there was a telegraph signal-post, with a little guard-hut for the soldiers; but there each turned round in his saddle, letting out a long breath the next thing to a cry, and heaving-to directly, at sight of the prospect behind. The Atlantic lay wide away round to the horizon from the roads, glittering faint over the ragged edge of the crags we had mounted near at hand; only the high back of the island shut out the other side – save here and there through a deep-notched gully or two – and accordingly you saw the sea blotched out in that quarter to the two sharp bright ends, clasping the dark-coloured lump between them, like a mighty pair of arms lifting it high to carry it off. Soon after, however, the two mids took it into their wise heads the best thing was to go and climb Diana's Peak, where they meant to cut their names at the very top; on which the first lieutenant, who was a careful middle-aged man, thought needful to go with them, lest they got into mischief: for my part I preferred the chance of coming across the mysterious Yankee and his comrade, as I fancied not unlikely, or what was less to be looked for, a sight of Buonaparte himself.

Accordingly, we had parted company, and I was holding single-handed round one side of the Devil's Punch-Bowl, when I heard a clatter of horse-hoofs on the road, and saw the Admiral and Lord Frederick riding quickly past on the opposite side, on their way to Longwood – which, curiously enough, was half-covered with mist at the time, driving down from the higher hills, apparently before a regular gale, or rather some kind of a whirlwind. In fact, I learned after that such was often the case, the climate up there being quite different from below, where they never feel a gale from one year's end to the other. In the next hollow I got into it was as hot and still as it would have been in India, the blackberry trailers and wild aloes growing quite thick, mixed with prickly pear-bushes, willows, gum-wood, and an African palm or two; though, from the look of the sea, I could notice the south-east trade had freshened below, promising to blow a good deal stronger that night than ordinary, and to shift a little round. Suddenly the fog began to clear by degrees from over Longwood, till it was fairly before me, nearer than I thought; and just as I rode up a rising ground, out came the roof of a house on the slope amongst some trees, glittering wet as if the sun laid a finger on it; with a low bluish-coloured stretch of wood farther off, bringing out the white tents of the soldiers' camp pitched about the edge of it. Nearly to windward there was one sail in sight on the horizon, over an opening in the rocks beyond Longwood House, that seemingly let down toward the coast; however, I just glanced back to notice the telegraph on the signal-post at work, signalling to the Podargus in the offing, and next minute Hut's Gate was right a-head of me, not a quarter of a mile off – a long-shaped bungalow of a cottage, inside of a wall with a gate in it, where I knew I needn't try farther, unless I wanted the sentries to take me under arrest. Betwixt me and it, however, in the low ground, was a party of man-o'-war's-men under charge of a midshipman, carrying some timber and house-furniture for Longwood, as I remembered, from seeing them come ashore from the Podargus that morning; so I stood over, to give my late shipmates a hail. But the moment I got up with them, it struck me not a little, as things stood, to find three of the four Blacks we had taken aboard from that said burnt barque of the American mate's, trudging patiently enough under the heaviest loads of the gang. Jetty-black, savage-looking fellows they were, as strong as horses, and reminded me more of our wild friends in the Nouries River, than of 'States niggers; still, what caught my notice most wasn't so much their being there at all, as the want of the fourth one, and where he might be. I don't know yet how this trifling bit of a puzzle got hold on me, but it was the sole thing that kept me from what might have turned a scrape to myself – namely, passing myself in as officer of the party; which was easy enough at the time, and the tars would have entered into the frolic as soon as I started it. On second thoughts, nevertheless, I bade them good-day, steering my animal away round the slant of the ground, to see after a good perch as near as possible; and, I daresay, I was getting within the bounds before I knew it, when another sentry sung out to me off the heights to keep lower down, first bringing his musket to salute for my uniform's sake, then letting it fall level with a ringing slap of his palm, as much as to say it was all the distinction I'd get over plain clothes.

At this, of course, I gave it up, with a blessing to all lobster-backs, and made sail down to leeward again as far as the next rise, from which there was a full view of the sea at any rate, though the face of a rough crag over behind me shut out Longwood House altogether. Here I had to get fairly off the saddle – rather sore, I must say, with riding up St Helena roads after so many weeks at sea – and flung myself down on the grass, with little enough fear of the hungry little beast getting far adrift. This said crag, by the way, drew my eye to it by the queer colours it showed, white, blue, gray, and bright red in the hot sunlight; and being too far off to make out clearly, I slung off the ship's glass I had across my back, just to overhaul it better. The hue of it was to be seen running all down the deep rift between, that seemingly wound away into some glen toward the coast; while the lot of plants and trailers half-covering the steep front of it, would no doubt, I thought, have delighted my old friend the Yankee, if he was the botanising gentleman in question. By this time it was a lovely afternoon far and wide to Diana's Peak, the sky glowing clearer deep-blue at that height than you'd have thought sky could do, even in the tropics – the very peaks of bare red rock being softened into a purple tint, far off round you. One saw into the rough bottom of the huge Devil's Punch-Bowl, and far through without a shadow down the green patches in the little valleys, and over Deadwood Camp, – there was nothing, as it were, between the grass, the ground, the stones and leaves, and the empty hollow of the air; while the sea spread far round underneath, of a softer blue than the sky over you. You'd have thought all the world was shrunk into St Helena, with the Atlantic lying three-quarters round it in one's sight, like the horns of the bright new moon round the dim old one; which St Helena pretty much resembled, if what the star-gazers say of its surface be true, all peaks and dry hollows – if, indeed, you weren't lifting up out of the world, so to speak, when one looked through his fingers right into the keen blue overhead!

If I lived a thousand years, I couldn't tell half what I felt lying there; but, as you may imagine, it had somewhat in it of the late European war by land and sea. Not that I could have said so at the time, but rather a sort of half-doze, such as I've known one have when a schoolboy, lying on the green grass the same way, with one's face turned up into the hot summer heavens: half of it flying glimpses, as it were, of the French Revolution, the battles we used to hear of when we were children – then the fears about the invasion, with the Channel full of British fleets, and Dover Cliffs – Trafalgar and Nelson's death, and the battle of Waterloo, just after we heard he had got out of Elba. In the terrible flash of the thing all together, one almost fancied them all gone like smoke; and for a moment I thought I was falling away off, down into the wide sky, so up I started to sit. From that, suddenly I took to guessing and puzzling closely again how I should go to work myself, if I were the strange Frenchman I saw in the brig at sea, and wanted to manage Napoleon's escape out of St Helena. And first, there was how to get into the island and put him up to the scheme – why, sure enough, I couldn't have laid it down better than they seemed to have done all along: what could one do but just dodge about that latitude under all sorts of false rig, then catch hold of somebody fit to cover one's landing. No Englishman would do it, and no foreigner but would set Sir Hudson Lowe on his guard in a moment. Next we should have to get put on the island, – and really a neat enough plan it was to dog one of the very cruisers themselves, knock up a mess of planks and spars in the night-time, set them all a-blaze with tar, and pretend we were fresh from a craft on fire; when even Captain Wallis of the Podargus, as it happened, was too much of a British seaman not to carry us straight to St Helena! Again, I must say it was a touch beyond me – but to hit the Governor's notions of a hobby, and go picking up plants round Longwood, was a likely enough way to get speech of the prisoner, or at least let him see one was there!