"Richard of England," said the archbishop, turning up his fine eyes, your vices are your children. Ambition is your eldest child, Cruelty is your second child, Luxury is your third child; and you have nourished them from your youth up. Separate yourself from these sinful ones, and prepare your soul, for the hour of departure draweth nigh." Violent, wicked, sinful, as he might have been, Richard of England met his death like a Christian man. Peace be to the soul of the brave! When the news came to King Philip of France, he sternly forbade his courtiers to rejoice at the death of his enemy. "It is no matter of joy but of dolour," he said, "that the bulwark of Christendom and the bravest king of Europe is no more." I need not point out to a gentleman of your powers of mind how aptly, with a few moral reflections in a grave and dirge-like key, this volume of the Continuation of Ivanhoe may conclude. As for the second volume, King John is on the throne of England. Shakespear, Hume, and the Biographie Universelle, are at hand. Prince Arthur, Magna Charta, Cardinal Pandolfo, suggest themselves to the mind at once; and the deuce is in it if out of these one cannot form a tolerably exciting volume. For instance, in the first part a disguised knight becomes the faithful servant of young Arthur (perhaps Constance of Brittany may fall in love with the mysterious knight, but that is neither here nor there,) attends young Arthur, I say, watches him through a hundred perplexities, and, of course, is decoyed away-just happens to step out, as it were, when the poor young prince is assassinated by his savage uncle. lock of hair round my noble master's neck," sobbed Gurth to Cedric in secret. "Was it mine?" asked the bereaved old thane. "Yours is red, my lord, and that was black," answered Gurth-" as black as the ringlets of the fair Jewish maid he rescued in the lists of Templestowe." Of course not a word was breathed about this fact to Rowena, who received the news of her husband's death with that resignation which became her character, and who, though she did not show any outward signs of emotion at the demise of her lord, must yet have been profoundly affected, because she wore the deepest mourning any of the milliners' shops in York could produce, and erected a monument to him as big as a minster. That she married again the stupid Athelstane when her time of mourning was expired, is a matter of course, about which no person familiar with life could doubt for a moment. Cardinal Pandolfo did the business for them, and lest there should be any doubt about Ivanhoe's death, (for his body was never sent home after all,) his eminence procured a papal rescript annulling the former marriage, so that she might become Mrs. Athelstane with a clear conscience. That she was happier with the boozy and stupid thane than with the gentle and melancholy Wilfrid need surprise no one. Women have a predilection for fools, and have loved donkeys long before the amours of Bottom and Titania. That he was brutal and drunken, and that he beat her, and that she liked it and was happy, and had a large family, may be imagined; for there are some women-bless them!-who pine unless they are bullied, and think themselves neglected if not occasionally belabored. But this I feel is getting too intime. Suffice it that Mr. and Mrs. Athelstane were a great deal happier than Mr. and Mrs. Ivanhoe. And now, with your permission, I would suggest two or three sentimental chapters. Ivanhoe disguised of course-returns to this country, travels into the north of England, arrives at York, The disguised knight vows revenge; he stirs up (where the revels of King John may be described,) the barons against the king, and what is the con- and takes an opportunity, when a Jew is being sequence? No less a circumstance than Magna submitted to the torture, of inquiring what has beCharta, the palladium of Britons. The French- come of Rebecca, daughter of Isaac. "Has she men land under the Dauphin Louis, son of Philip returned to England?" he cursorily asks. "No, Augustus. He makes the grandest offers to the she is still at Granada, where her people are held unknown knight. Scornful resistance of the lat-in honor at the court of Boabdil." He revisits her ter, and defeat of the Frenchmen. And now I am sure you have no need to ask who is this disguised knight. Ivanhoe, of course! But why disguised? In the first place, in a novel, it is very hard if a knight or any other gentleman can't disguise himself without any reason at all; but there is a reason for Ivanhoe's disguising himself, and a most painful reason, ROWENA WAS MARRIED AGAIN. After the siege of Chalus, the faithful Gurth, covered with wounds, came back to Rotherwood, and brought the sad news of the death of the lionhearted Plantagenet, and his truest friend, Wilfrid of Ivanhoe. Wounded to death in endeavoring to defend honest Bertrand de Gourdon, Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe had been carried back to his tent, where he expired in the arms of his faithful squire, after giving him the lock of Rowena's hair which he had in a brooch, and his gold thumb-ring, which she had presented to him, and which bore his signature and seal of arms. "There was another] house, the chamber where she tended him; indulges in old recollections, discovers the depth of his passion for her, and bewails his lot in life, that he is lonely, wretched, and an outcast. Shall he go to Rotherwood and see once more the scenes of his youth? Can he bear to witness the happiness of Athelstane and Rowena the bride of another? He will go if it be but to visit his father's grave, for Cedric is dead by this time, as you may imagine; and, supposing his son dead, has left all his property to Rowena. Indeed it was the old Thane who insisted upon her union with Athelstane, being bent upon renewing his scheme for the establishment of a Saxon dynasty. Well, Ivanhoe arrives at Rotherwood. You might have thought for a moment that the grey friar trembled and his shrunken cheek looked deadly pale; but he recovered himself presently, nor could you see his pallor for the cowl which covered his face. A little boy was playing on Athelstane's knee, Rowena, smiling and patting the Saxon Thane fondly on his broad bull-head, filled him a huge cup of spiced wine from a golden hanap. He drained a quart of the liquor, and, turning round, addressed the friar "And so, Grey Frere, thou sawest good King Richard fall at Chalus by the bolt of that felon bowman?" "We did, an it please you. The brothers of our house attended the good king in his last moments; in truth, he made a Christian ending!" And didst thou see the archer flayed alive? It must have been rare sport," roared Athelstane, laughing hugely at the joke. "How the fellow must have howled!" "Those times are past now, dear Athelstane," said his affectionate wife, looking up to the ceiling. "Marry, thou never couldst forgive him the Jewess, Rowena." "The odious hussy! don't mention the name of the unbelieving creature," exclaimed the lady. "Well, well, poor Will was a good lad-a thought melancholy and milksop though. Why a pint of sack fuddled his poor brains." "Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe was a good lance," said the friar. I have heard there was none better in Christendom. He lay in our convent after his wounds, and it was there we tended him till he died. He was buried in our north cloister." "And there's an end of him," said Athelstane. "But come, this is dismal talk. Where 's Wamba the jester? Let us have a song. Stir up, Wamba, and don't lie like a log in the fire! Sing us a song, thou crack-brained jester, and leave off whimpering for bygones. Tush, man! There be many good fellows left in this world." "There be buzzards in eagles' nests," Wamba said, who was lying stretched before the fire sharing the hearth with the thane's dogs; "there be dead men alive and live men dead; there be merry songs and dismal songs. Marry, and the merriest are the saddest sometimes. I will leave off motley and wear black, Gossip Athelstane. I will turn howler at funerals, and then, perhaps, I shall be merry. Motley is fit for mutes and black for fools. Give me some drink, gossip, for my voice is as cracked as my brain." "Drink and sing, thou beast, and cease prating," the thane said. And Wamba, touching his rebeck wildly, sat up in the chimney-side and curled his lean shanks together and began :— Ho! pretty page, with dimpled chin, That never has known the barber's shear, All your aim is woman to win. Wait till you've come to forty year Curly gold locks cover foolish brains, Billing and cooing is all your cheer, Sighing and singing of midnight strains Under Bonnybells' window-panes. Wait till you 've come to forty year! Forty times over let Michaelmas pass, Pledge me round, I bid ye declare, All good fellows whose beards are gray; Did not the fairest of the fair Common grow and wearisome, ere Ever a month was past away? The reddest lips that ever have kissed, The brightest eyes that ever have shone, Ere yet a month is gone. Gillian's dead, God rest her bier, Dipping my nose in the Gascon wine. "Who taught thee that merry lay, Wamba, thou son of Witless?" roared Athelstane, clattering his cup on the table and shouting the chorus. "It was a good and holy hermit, sir, the pious clerk of Copmanhurst, that you wot of, who played many a prank with us in the days that we knew King Richard. Ah, noble sir, that was a jovial time and a good priest." "They say the holy priest is sure of the next bishopric, my love," said Rowena. "His majesty hath taken him into much favor. My lord of Huntingdon looked very well at the last ball, though I never could see any beauty in the countess-a freckled, blowsy thing, whom they used to call Maid Marian; though, for the matter of that, what between her flirtations with Major Littlejohn and Captain Scarlett, really "Jealous again, haw! haw!" laughed Athelstane, "I am above jealousy, and scorn it," Rowena answered, drawing herself up very majesti cally. Well, well, Wamba's was a good song," Athelstane said. "Nay, a wicked song," said Rowena, turning up her eyes as usual. "What! rail at woman's love? Prefer a filthy wine-cup to a true wife! Woman's love is eternal, my Athelstane. He who questions it would be a blasphemer were he not a fool. The well-born and well-nurtured gentlewoman loves once and once only." "I pray you, madam, pardon me, I-I am not well," said the grey friar, rising abruptly from his settle, and tottering down the steps of the dais. Wamba sprung after him, his bells jingling as he rose, and casting his arms round the apparently fainting man, he led him away into the court. "There be dead men alive and live men dead," whispered he. "There be coffins to laugh at and marriages to cry over. Said I not sooth, holy friar?" And when they had got out into the solitary court, which was deserted by all the followers of the thane, who were mingling in the drunken revelry in the hall, Wamba, seeing that none were by, knelt down, and kissing the friar's garment, said, "I knew thee, I knew thee, my lord and my liege!" Get up," said Wilfrid of Ivanhoe, scarcely able to articulate; "only fools are faithful." And he passed on and into the little chapel where his father lay buried. All night long the friar spent there, and Wamba the jester lay outside watching as mute as the saint over the porch. When the morning came Gurth and Wamba were gone; but the absence of the pair was little heeded by the Lady Rowena, who was bound for York, where his majesty King John was holding a court. Here you have an idea of the first part of the narrative. And I think there is nothing unsatisfactorily accounted for but Ivanhoe's mysterious silence during four or five years. For though Rowena married the day after her mourning was out, there is not the slightest blame to be cast on her, for she was a woman of such high principle, that had she known her husband was alive she never would have thought of such a thing. As for Ivanhoe's keeping his existence secret, that I consider is a point which, as hero of a novel, he has perfectly a right to do. He may have been delirious from the effects of his wounds for three or four years, or he may have been locked up and held to ransom by some ferocious baron of the Limousin. When he became acquainted with Rowena's second marriage there was a reason for his keeping incog. Delicacy forbade him to do otherwise. And if the above hints suit you, and you can make three or four volumes out of them, as I have little doubt you will be able to do, I will take the liberty, my dear sir, of finishing the tale in the September number. The first thing that strikes the spectator on regarding the machine is a figure, life-size, dressed in Oriental costume. The mouth of this figure alone moves. At the back of the head is an apparatus like the bellows to a blacksmith's forge, which acts as lungs for a supply of air necessary to articulation. Then, on one side are a number of keys, not unlike those of a pianoforte, communicating with the internal arrangements of the figure. By touching these singly, the sounds of the alphabet are produced, and, by touching them in combination, words and sentences are rapidly uttered. Nothing can be more simple and ingenious than the whole arrangement, nothing more surprising than the effects produced. The appearance would, however, be more scientific if the figure, which answers no purpose, were altogether dispensed with. The German alphabet is uttered more distinctly than the English alphabet-in fact the machine speaks English with a German accent, but some sounds common to both languages are given with astonishing accuracy, as f, m, n, s, and x. So in sentences the German pronunciation is clearer than the English; but even in the latter tongue many of the words are perfectly spoken. In the sentence, "How do you do, ladies and gentlemen ?" it is difficult to believe that the last word is not spoken by a human voice. Generally, too, the numerals are correctly uttered, as "twenty-one," "one hundred and thirty-six," the complex sounds appearing more distinct than the simple ones. The liquid sound of u is but imperfectly rendered; all the consonants are pronounced more accurately than the vowels. Professor Faber works the machine nearly, if not quite, as rapidly as a person can speak. Its pronunciation of English is certainly better than his own. He has been twenty years in bringing this singular and beautiful piece of mechanism to its present state of efficiency, yet it is still evidently capable of great improvement. The principles on which it is constructed allow of the most perfect accuracy in speech and sound being attained. In singing the machine gives promise of brilliant vocalization. Really it would be rash to predict that Grisi and Lablache would much longer retain their fame. Successive improvements may, perhaps, give this machine powers that will rival the trill of the nightingale and the lark, and defy all competition from the human organ. THE SPEAKING AUTOMATON. VARIOUS attempts have been made by mechanical agency to imitate the human voice, but hitherto, we believe, with very partial success. The praise of overcoming the difficulty has been reserved for a German artist. With the ingenuity for which his countrymen are famous he has constructed a speaking machine, which utters every sound of which the human organ is capable, with surprising distinctness; which whispers, speaks aloud, laughs, sings, talks, in every language, and repeats any form of words that any visitor may require. Professor Faber is the inventor of this new marvel. He has brought it from Vienna, where Professor Faber seems absolutely devoted to his it was exhibited with great applause; and has, instrument. A child of his own creation, he has during the early part of the week, exhibited it in the fondness of a parent for it, and is continually a room in the Egyptian-hall, to assemblages dis-developing new capacities in it. He appears to be tinguished for rank and for scientific attainments. a mechanical genius, and to have an extraordinary The result has been highly satisfactory. The most amusement is produced by the laughter of the machine. Without being perfectly natural, it is so grotesquely life-like as to provoke genuine merriment from all who hear it. Another amusing portion of the performance is when it speaks as if laboring under the effect of a bad cold. ear for sound. He is very intelligent, and has an The machine has been constructed from an intellectual head; his face is marked with traces attentive observation of the human organs of of careful study. He is advancing in years, turned articulation; and the professor, by closely follow- of fifty we think, and is short in person, with quick ing nature in the formation of lungs, larynx, and and rapid gestures. Being but very imperfectly mouth, has been able to make his machine ex-acquainted with English himself, he labors under tremely simple and manageable. There is no the difficulty of not immediately catching the exact charlatanry about it; all the arrangements are ex- pronunciation of the words his machine has to reposed, and the professor invites the closest inspec- peat. But, allowing for this, the invention is tion of them. truly extraordinary, and a perfect triumph of 32 mechanical skill. One is tempted to think while listening to the heaven-given faculty of language, so well imitated by art, that this is, perhaps, the nearest approach it is possible for human ingenuity to make, towards realizing Mrs. Shelley's conception of a man-created being.-Britannia. WINTER SPORTS IN NEW BRUNSWICK. YATCHING on the frozen Kenebekasis was but a frigid amusement at the best. The manufacture of an ice-boat is simple enough; over two long skates are placed any construction sufficient to hold the party, and a long pole is lashed across at right angles, which prevents the boat from capsizing. When the wind is high, she flies over the ice at a most terrific rate; and goes so near the wind that the least touch of the helm sends her round, when she is instantly off again on the other tack. A favorite amusement is coasting. On moonlight nights, a party repair to the top of some steep frozen descent, and ladies and gentlemen in pairs seat themselves upon sleighs or coasters and push them off. After a thaw the frost makes the surface of the snow as glare ice; the pace is then awful, and the roll in the snow proportionate. They are steered in their headlong descent by a slight pressure of the heel; but the Bluenose ladies, being more au fait at it than we were, sat in front and guided them. The meeting of the Tandem Club was a very gay affair; twice in each week, twenty sleighs, painted of the most gaudy colors, and decked out with furs of all kinds, trimmed with fringe of different colors, drove off from the barracks or other rendezvous. The last married lady was selected as chaperon, and there were plenty of fair candidates for the drive. The brass band and merry bells added not a little to the cheerfulness of the scene. The sleighs used in New Brunswick are of all forms and kinds-from that constructed with a couple of ashpoles (a nick alone distinguishing where the runners terminate and the shafts commence) with a few boards placed across to support a barrel, in which the victim sits or stands, to the double or single sleighs on high runners, not forgetting the Madawaska cariole, the height and luxury and the perfection of locomotion, and in which you recline, covered up to the chin in furs. It is absolutely necessary in the construction of a sleigh that the "runners" should be a good distance apart, and "flare out" sufficiently; for, should the road be covered with ice and "bogged up" in the centre, the sleigh will slide to one side with great velocity, particularly when turning a corner sharp. This is called "slewing," and the slightest impediment on the ice will be sufficient to upset the sleigh. When a "slew" takes place, it is necessary to pull the shaft-horse with it-a beginner is sure to do exactly the reverse, and is certain to be capsized. Even a high wind is sufficient to blow a sleigh round in an exposed situation, and upon "glare ice," when an upset is likely to happen, unless the runners "flare out" well at bottom. I originally purchased a sleigh with faulty runners, and had several upsets and smashes, on which occasions the wreck alone of the " conveyance" reached barracks. One day, out sleighing on the Kenebekasis, the ice was glare, and in the most perfect order: there was not the slightest draught, and my horses were trotting along merrily at the rate of twelve miles an hour, when, all at once, a squall of wind caught the sleigh and spun it round; and the runners at the same time encountering some roughness on the surface, the sleigh was upset, and the horses, as is generally the case, instantly set off at full gallop; for some time I was held in by the apron, and slipped along on my side, keeping a tight hold of the reigns. The leader was galloping like a Caraboo, and the shaft-horse giving occasional kicks at the mass of encumbrance about his heels. At length the apron gave way, and, still holding on by "the ribbons," I was jerked off in the manner of one of those swings used in gymnastic academies, to be as quickly banged against the splash-board; and, four or five of these coups coming in quick succession, I was obliged to shorten my hold of the reins, and, the distance between the shaft-horse's heels and my head being in consequence much diminished, I thought with the knight "that discretion was the better part of valor," and-let go. On getting up and shaking myself, I saw my servant, who had been pitched out of the hind seat, some three quarters of a mile behind, and the distance between him and myself preserved in perspective by sundry cushions, skins, linings, and bits of fringe; and, on turning to look after the sleigh, I had the felicity to see the horses still going "Derby pace," and just debouching from the ice," steering wild" for a gap in a "zigzag" fence. Bang they went against the rails, giving the coup de grace to the proceeding, and going well away into the woods with the shafts dangling about their heels. I then built a new sleigh. The painting and trimming up of the sleigh depend much upon the taste of the possessor; the general colors are dark bodies, with scarlet runners. I found that a white ground, picked out with bright vermilion, and bear and buffalo skins. with a liberal quantity of deep scarlet curtain fringe, and scarlet cloth, cut into scallops, arranged in studied confusion, the whole furnished with a huge pair of moose-horns in front, looked extremely light and gay on the snow; and the white, from being relieved by the vermilion, had no dirty appearance when contrasted with the snow. -The Backwoods. POPE PIUS the Ninth proceeds excellently with his intelligent career the political amnesty is published, and it is right hearty in its terms. The exceptions are not extensive, nor absolute, nor altogether improper. It has created quite a sensation in Rome, and the warm applause which it has elicited may be a good lesson to persevere. Should the pope continue in this track of wise liberality, it must have an effect far beyond the pale of his own secular domain: Austria would be quite unable to withstand so new an influence in her neighborhood, and her system of hard tyranny must be broken up. It is curious to see the germs of a peaceful revolution in Rome, the head-quar ters of the old despotic bigotry; but Pius seems, from present appearances, to have the heart, the head, and the courage, to know what a wise pontiff might do to save his country from the rebellious consequences of intolerable oppression.Spectator, August 1. From the North British Review. The Life and Correspondence of John Foster. Edited by J. E. RYLAND. With Notices of Mr. Foster as a Preacher and a Companion, by JOHN SHEPHERD, Author of Thoughts on Devotion, &c., &c. In Two Volumes. London, 1846. Republished by Wiley & Putnam, New York. which everything around us tends to dissipate, or to render impracticable or incongruous. To Foster's contemporaries-we mean to those who remember the first appearance of his essays-these intellectual season-the morning hour of life, oftener volumes will furnish a refreshment of a bright, early We could gladly hope regretted than revived. that, within younger bosoms, they may kindle ALTHOUGH SO recently removed from among us, tastes which little at present serves to nourish, and and so lately employing his pen upon the themes the decline of which marks, as we think, the deof the day, John Foster-every reader of these cay, in this country, of what is, in the highest volumes must feel it-belongs to an era gone by-sense, THE MIND-the life of the soul. an era not defunct in the course of natural decay, or because it had lived on to spend its forces, but because it has been thrust out by the energies of the now present period. Foster's "times" have been superannuated by the vehemence of the times we live in; himself possessed, as he is, unquestionably, as a writer, of a bright and fair immortality, the things with which he was concerned, the opinions he maintained, along with the opinions he so warmly denounced, have already faded into the distance of history; few, if any, of his ominous forebodings have come upon us, and as few of his anticipations of the spread and triumph of the principles he so confidently deemed to be good, have been realized. The cycle of a very few years, with their mighty changes-changes, some ostensible and some occult, has brought us to a position whence John Foster's period may be looked at along with John Milton's. We do not know, and should not care to ask, to what extent Foster's Essays is now a selling book: but, in frequent instances, have been vexed to meet with educated young persons, and who were conversant, quite enough for their welfare, with German mysticism, but who were not even cognizant of the name of an English writer so well able to stir the spirit and to awaken the loftiest emotions! It is surely a mistake-it is a bad fashion, to import and consume an inferior foreign article, while neglecting a home growth of far finer quality! Is Foster sometimes obscure? Yes, but there is always a meaning to be had, and a rich meaning too, within the compass of his paragraphs. German pantheists are hard to be understood, because with them so often the crust of words overlays nothing that is intelligible—or, what is so absurd, if intelligible, that we reject it as "certainly not the intention of so fine a writer." It was not so with Arnold. Arnold died, as if designedly, at a moment the best for bringing be- It will, we fear, be inevitable, once and again, fore the world, with a startling vividness, the to make an allusion to Arnold; yet, deprecating as greatness and the high import of those transitions, we do any design to institute a formal comparison theological, moral, and political, which we were or to offer a contrast. Arnold supplies us in his then, and are now, passing through. His "Life letters with the means, indirectly, of acquiring a and Correspondence" was like a sudden and an knowledge of the constitution of his mind, and of unlooked for summing up of the evidence, while his moral structure: but he forgets himself in the the cause is still in hearing. Those signal letters, heat and haste of his beneficent concernment with dated "Fox How" and " Rugby," were "dis- the well-being of those around him, and of the patches" written upon the field, and sent off while human family. Foster sits down to paint, to dethe enemy is still in sight and intrenched; and the scribe, to anatomize himself-his individual soul; hold they took of men's minds was attributable, yet he does not do this from egotism, or at the not simply to their intrinsic force, but to the read-impulse of an excessive self-esteem: far from it: er's own consciousness of being personally implicated in the issue :-hopes and alarms, touching a man's social or political well-being, or that of his children, opened a way for those letters into all hearts, and imprinted them indelibly on the mem-the bottom of his heart as swelled the bosom of ory. but because, as a meditative recluse, misliking the world, he is glad always to run into an enclosure where none could follow or annoy him. With as much perhaps of the rudiment of benevolence at Arnold and sparkled in his features, he is too lofty The points of resemblance or analogy between in his notions, and too sensitive, and too captious, Foster and Arnold are too few and indistinct, and to think of the world as a thing worth the mendthe points of contrariety are too many and too ing, or of mankind as reclaimable: too indolent prominent to allow of the attempt to institute a also to enter upon any course of life which would comparison, such as should be fair to both these have given the moral emotions their due advantage great men, or profitable to the reader. We shall over the imaginative sentiments. He profoundly attempt nothing of the sort, and, in truth, are re-laments, therefore, the prevalence of those evils minded of Arnold's name in this instance by the merely incidental fact, that the volumes before us stir the mind in a manner which nothing, in this department of literature, has done-of late years -Arnold's Life excepted. How many thousands of persons, wherever the English language is known, have felt that, so long as they could eke out the perusal of Arnold from day to day, they were possessed at once of a source of the most intense intellectual gratification, and of the most solid moral benefit. Feelings, far less vivid, will attach to the perusal of Foster's letters, and fewer, probably, will be the readers; but, to a class much more select, the perusal will afford a most delicious revival of trains of thought, and of emotions, which Arnold lived and died to remove, or at least to alleviate. What would not the head master of Rugby have done; what personal comfort would he not have relinquished, for the sake of raising, only a little, the "moral tone" of the "Rugby boys," or how many martyrdoms would he have endured, could he thereby have brought the millions of India within hearing of the truth! Foster was indifferent to none of those moral interests which occupied Arnold's hands and soul; but he looked abroad upon the moral world in another manner; as thus: "What is the use or value of communities, extending beyond actual communication-of states, republics, kingdoms, empires? |