Percy, who sits yonder in a corner, in the dark, observing them all-is Mrs Vivian, who, much unlike her wont, sits idle in her great chair, holding in her hand a white handkerchief, which she occasionally presses upon her eyes, perhaps to keep tears from falling, perhaps only to relieve some pain in them. Elizabeth is to be married and go away to-morrow; and throughout this whole great house there is a want of Zaidee-a visible void and empty place; and a perpetual aching in Mrs Vivian's kind heart brings the orphan before herbrings before her her own ill-advised and hasty words. If Zaidee had been here, in this room and at home as of old, the chances are ten to one that, bestowed in some out-of-the-way corner, you never would have observed Zaidee; yet it is strange how vividly every one who enters here feels she is gone.

In the mean time, when all are so silent, Mrs Blundell, the chorus of the family drama, runs on in an explanatory monologue-a recitative, familiarly revealing the history of the time.

"I wonder, for my part, if I had not come yesterday, who would have thought of providing these?" said Mrs Blundell, as she deposited another wedding-favour upon the heap. "No doubt every one is very much occupied, but it is always my principle to neglect nothing-especially to preserve all the ordinary decorums at such a time as this; for nothing can look worse, I assure you, than excessive feeling. Philip, when do you go away?”

"Next month, aunt," answered Philip, starting to hear himself addressed.

"I never object to India," said Mrs Blundell. "Everything has such a tinge of wealth, I suppose, that comes from the east; and it does not matter very much what one does there, so long as one grows rich. Of course," continued Aunt Blundell, in her character of example-" of course you understand me that I could never mean any one to do anything improper, or unbecoming a gentleman, even so far away; but business loses its vulgarity: an Indian merchant is not a trader, but a nabob. And Sir Francis really advises you to turn

your thoughts to commerce? That is what your mother tells me, Philip."

With an effort Philip roused himself to answer. "If I can rise in the service of the Company, I will; but if I cannot, aunt, or the progress is too slow, Sir Francis introduces me to his friends, and to that Prince among them who helped himself to his fortune, and bids me hesitate at nothing which comes to my hand. I do not see, indeed," said Philip, colouring slightly, "why I should hesitate to do what Sir Francis Vivian did."

"Sir Francis Vivian represents the younger branch," said Mrs Vivian; "but you, Philip, are the head of the house."

"I have heard my sister Vivian say this a hundred times. What does it matter, when there is nothing but the empty honour-the title and no more?" said Mrs Blundell; "but you, Philip, are a mere Quixote. The Grange is yours by nature, in the first place; and even if it was not, what is to be done with it, now that Zaidee is gone? Why should the estate be lost and yourself banished, while there is no claimant of the lands? Don't speak to me. I would let the child have all when she came to `claim it. Poor little foolish thing, I would look for her too; but I would not throw up everything, and leave the country, as you intend to do."

"I leave the country to make my fortune," said Philip with a momentary smile; "and banished or not, aunt Blundell, the Grange is no longer mine. If I could have accepted it in any case, I should have taken it from Zaidee-poor Zaidee, who has lost herself for love of us; and I would gladly stay to find my dear little cousin," continued the young man, with a slight faltering; "but I have done all I can do, and I leave the matter in Bernard's hands. mother will stay here at home till Zaidee is found—and after Zaidee is found, to take care of her, I hope. As for Percy and I, we are travelling paladins-we must go forth to the wars."

My

Sophy, from her seat apart, echoed this last word with an audible sob. There was a dead silence after it; and even Mrs Blundell put her handkerchief to her eyes.

"Percy too!" said the worldly but not unfeeling aunt. "I cannot say that you are not right, but I am sorry with all my heart. Ah, Elizabeth, my love! I congratulate you; but I am sure, for all the rest-those who go away and those who stay-I have no choice but to grieve for them."

Though this was not very consolatory, no one made any response to it. Mrs Vivian shed some tears secretly behind her handkerchief; Sophy sobbed at intervals, restraining herself with all her might; while Margaret sat fiercely working by the table, heated and angry and miserable, defying herself and all the world. All the world seemed to Margaret personified in aunt Blundell, and she chafed under the intolerable scrutiny of these observing eyes.

They were glad all of them to part for the night; but when Elizabeth passed into her mother's dressingroom for one last hour of tenderest intercourse, full of tears and pain, yet not unhappy, and Sophy stole softly after her, to sit at Mrs Vivian's feet and share the interview, Margaret, forlorn and miserable, stood in the dark alone, and looked out upon those dreary, melancholy roads, whence no passenger ever came. They stretched away before her into the misty horizon, so vacant and bare of life-paths which no one ever seemed to tread; and Margaret softened out of her resentful mood, thinking of herself forsaken and of Zaidee lost. To-morrow Elizabeth must go away a bride; byand-by another to-morrow must carry Philip and Percy forth "into the

wars; " and then, alas for the dead and solitary life which would remain to the dwellers in the Grange! These youths could fight open-handed with their evil fortune, and Zaidee-poor Zaidee-had fled from hers; but Margaret, in the martyrdom of her womanhood, could neither fight nor fly.

She went away drearily to her own room. Sermo was lying in the vacant passage, so much like one who no longer cared where he threw himself to rest, that Margaret's heart was touched. "Poor Sermo, the day is changed even for you!" she said, as she stooped to caress him, and softening tears fell upon Sermo's face. Then her door was closed; the door was closed in Mrs Vivian's room; darkness and silence and sleep reigned in the Grange, where there was much sadness, much anxiety, much trouble, but still a home.

But out of doors those solitary roads stretched away into the misty sky-out of doors the moonlight, lying white upon the country, made a deep mystery of shadow on every hand, and a wistful wind crept to and fro, and a whisper ran among the trees. Alas for the wayfarer, forlorn and solitary, in this world of silence! The red cross hangs afloat in the silvery air which streams into Zaidee's vacant room, and the room is solemnly undisturbed and sacred to her memory; there is not a piece of furniture displaced, and everything silently suggests and calls for the wanderer. But Zaidee is gone away no one can tell where-a lonely traveller on the highways of the world.

THE imagination prevails over the real, at least in appearance, in most French narratives of travelling adventures. We refer not, of course, to the grave works of professional or scientific travellers, but to volumes of the class of that before us, the literary offspring of a casual rambler. The French are a gay, a fanciful, and a decorative people, and these qualities are seldom better exhibited than when they take up the pen to tell of the perils they have run and the strange sights they have seen in lands not yet known to the million. Without exceeding the limits of the probable-or at least of the possible-they lay on a romantic varnish, and fill up, from the stores of their imagination, gaps which, if left, might unpleasantly strike the eye. We could adduce, from memory, the titles of a score of books-some of which have been noticed in these pages-that are exact specimens of the class we speak of. We may not accept such works as guide-books, but we gladly resort to them as a pastime. Nor can we deny that we reap profit as well as amusement from their perusal, when long residence in the country has enabled their authors to interweave with fiction, or with embellished facts, curious and instructive details of distant lands, and of nations of which little is known.

For observant and intelligent travellers, Mexico is still a land of promise, an inexhaustible theme. Numerous as are the books that have been written concerning it, its stores of interest are yet evidently far from exhausted. Able pens, both in England and Germany, have busied themselves with that wild and magnificent country, and its strange semi-Spanish, semi-Indian population. France has been less forward in the field, but still makes a good appearance. Monsieur Bellamare, better known under his literary pseudonyme of Gabriel Ferry, was long a resident in Mexicodetained there, we believe, by com

mercial affairs. Whatever faults may be found in his books, he cannot be set down as one of those confident and superficial gentlemen who gallop through a country, and then write of it with as much assurance as if they had passed their lives within its limits. He somewhere incidentally mentions that he was upwards of seven years in Mexico. A taste for adventure, and for the study of national peculiarities, induced him to extend his wanderings farther than his business rendered necessary. The first results of his observations appeared, some years ago, in a wellknown French review; and although their literary merit was not great, they pleased by their freshness and originality. The sketches before us have the appearance of having also been published, wholly or in part, in the pages of a periodical. They are now first collected in a volume, which consists of studies and ramblesstudies of life in Mexico's capital, rambles in its forests, ravines, mining districts, adventures on its coasts and high-roads. The nine sketches of which the book is composed are slightly connected by the reappearance at intervals of some of the personages. The author was indefatigable in his pursuit of the characteristic and the picturesque. And it is to his credit that he does not abuse the latter. The wonderful scenery and gorgeous climate of Mexico tempt him occasionally to a page of description, but he deals more with man than with inanimate nature, and presents us with many portraits, evidently taken from life. We may venture a doubt whether he himself was present at all the fights, fandangos, bloody encounters, and narrow escapes he writes of, but we feel convinced he has seen and known the characters he depicts. It is impossible to congratulate him on his associates. He seems to have made acquaintance with half the miscreants in Mexico, and it must have been by a miracle that he escaped

(death from a rifle bullet or machete stab. The country that Montezuma ruled and Cortes conquered is now, according to M. Bellamare, the paradise of robbers. From the pettylarceny rogue to the daring highwayIman, who makes a swoop at a convoy of dollars, and shrinks not from a combat with its escort, every variety of the craft thrives in Mexico. On the great square of the capital, when, at the last stroke of the angelus, the crowd begins to disperse, the robber issues forth with knife, sword, or lasso. His hour and his turn have come; and honest men, who have anything to lose, are cautious how they walk the streets when darkness covers the earth. Daylight even is not always a protection. M. Bellamare mentions instances of robbery and murder in open day, and in public places. A Mexican newspaper, of November 1845, published a complaint, addressed to the Corporation, on the subject of the robbers, who carried on their trade at broad noon. In Mexico, crimes, which in European countries would be talked of for weeks, and furnish chapters for the modern Causes Célèbres, occur almost unnoticed, and, most frequently, wholly unpunished. With that disregard of human life which seems inherent in Spanish races, the Mexican robber slays his victim that he may plunder him more at his ease. And private vengeance finds cheap gratification. A stab is a small matter, and a few dollars are a fortune to the Mexican lazzarone. Observe yonder lepero, draped in a tattered cloak, stretched upon the pavement, or slumbering on a door-step, or strumming his guitar in a shady nook. He has, perhaps, to use M. Bellamare's expression, breakfasted on a sunbeam and dined off a paper cigar, and still he is resigned, although he may not be exactly thankful. But although capable of philosophy, and needing little to support life, he has a taste for quarrelling and a passion for gambling, and from time to time he loves to vary his habitual temperance by a furious bout of intoxication. The tempting sight of the spirit-shop, where credit there is none for him, and the fragrant exhalations of alfresco frying-pans, do not always find

him alike indifferent. Superstitious, but without true religion, sure of absolution from his priest, who stands scarcely a step higher than himself in the scale of civilisation and intellect, he scruples little to barter his ready steel for the gold that will enable him to wallow for a short time in sensual gratifications, and to court fortune at the monté table. For he is the most inveterate of gamesters. M. Bellamare was taken by an acquaintance of his, a sort of thieves' lawyer, to a Mexican hell of the lower sort, frequented by robbers, assassins, and evil-doers of all kinds-a den worthy to figure in the Mysteries of Mexico, were such a novel to be written. There they encountered a malefactor, whose release from prison had just been obtained by the lawyer's savoirfaire, aided by the judge's venality. The rescuer bestowed a dollar upon the rescued, to get him a supper. "Pshaw!" replied the ruffian, “I

am

never hungry but when my pockets are empty. When I have a dollar, I play it." And he darted off to the green table, where the banker sat with a Catalan knife before him, pointed as a needle and keen as a razor, and warned the eager crowd that if any cavalier pretended to mistake the bank for his stake, he would pin his hand to the board. But the lawyer who led M. Bellamare to this reputable haunt is a character, and worthy of observation.

When in Mexico city, M. Bellamare had a debt to recover from a certain Don Dionisio Peralta. The re-. covery was rendered particularly difficult, by his being able to find no trace of his debtor, and by the repugnance of the Mexican lawyers to busy themselves with the affair. He applied to several, who all were willing enough until they heard the name of the defendant, when they immediately found an excuse to decline. At last one of them, more candid than his colleagues, confessed the true cause of their reluctance. The Dionysius in question was as unscrupulous, and almost as dreaded, as his namesake the tyrant. He was in the habit of killing his creditors instead of paying them. The only man of law at all likely to undertake the business was the licentiate Tadeo Cristobal, who, in the figurative

language of M. Bellamare's informant, had a hand of iron and a heart of rock. But the licentiate was almost as hard to find as the debtor. He dwelt not in snug chambers, with his name neatly painted on the door, but frequented the queer resorts of those amongst whom he found his clients. At last M.Bellamare hunted him up, and from him he derived much curious information concerning the dangerous classes of the Mexican population. Don Tadeo was not at all the sort of man a thieves' lawyer usually is in more civilised cities. Far from aiming at respectability in his appearance, he was a wild-looking blade, from under whose ample cloak a long rapier projected, and whose mane of hair was surmounted by a tawny Spanish hat, bound with gold lace. He was just such a lawyer, in short, as might probably have been encountered in Alsatia, in the days when Nigel sought shelter there. He was of Seville, had studied at Salamanca, and having killed a man in a duel, had come to seek his fortune in the New World, where his skill in fence was not less useful to him than his knowledge of the law. He had been more than ten years in Mexico, and a tragical event, that nearly concerned him, had first brought him into contact with the banditti, thieves, and gamblers, into whose haunts and habits he gave M. Bellamare an insight. A creole lady, to whom he was to be married, was decoyed by a forged letter to a lonely spot, and there stabbed for the sake of the jewels she wore. Mexican justice is indolent and blundering. Don Tadeo was himself arrested on suspicion, and detained for months in prison; but the real criminal was not discovered, and the judges declared it was impossible he ever should be. The Spaniard, however, was not to be discouraged. He obtained possession of the letter which had led his intended wife into the snare, and, with this for his only guide, he devoted himself to the search for her assassin. Whilst practising his profession, he applied himself particularly to that branch of it which gave him opportunities of interrogating robbers and murderers, and of visiting their lurking-places, and the taverns they frequented. How he succeeded in his

researches is a long story, and not the most interesting or agreeable part of the volume before us; but in the course of them he became initiated in the secrets of various bands of criminals; and the services which his knowledge of the laws enabled him to render them, gave him great influence amongst those desperadoes. Some of the details he furnished to M. Bellamare are highly curious, amongst others those concerning a band of robbers, known as the ensebados (from sebo, tallow), who, during a whole year, kept the inhabitants of Mexico's capital in a state of constant terror. The ensebados were men who at night stripped themselves naked, rubbed themselves with tallow or oil, and waylaid persons who passed late through the streets, robbing and frequently stabbing them. Their anointed limbs and bodies could not be grasped; slippery as eels, they invariably escaped, and long set at defiance all the efforts of the police.

The licentiate of Salamanca undertook M. Bellamare's case, and after making him transfer the debt to himself, managed so well, without recourse to the tribunals, but by employing certain dangerous agents of his own, that, within a short time, he not only discovered the whereabouts of the dreaded Dionysius, but intimidated him into giving up a house and some land nearly equal in value to the amount due. The property was situated at the little village of Tacuba, about a league from Mexico, and the Frenchman and the licentiate rode out together to take possession. In presence of a number of ragged witnesses, with cut-throat physiognomies, whom the prospect of largesses from the new proprietor quickly assembled in the weed-choked garden of Dionysius's country villa (a dilapidated den with a rickety staircase), M. Bellamare was formally installed in his new estate. "My lords cavaliers," quoth Pepito Rechifla (a sort of brigand, who had volunteered his escort to his friend the lawyer) to the tawny tatterdemalions who stood gaping around, "you are witnesses that, in the name of the law, his lordship here present"-and Pepito pointed to M. Bellamare-" takes regular possession of this estate.

Dios y