encountering town or village; the lengthened period she represents herself as having spent without food; her encounter with the strange girl so suspiciously distant from her own cottage, but so providentially appearing on the scene at the right moment to relieve our heroine of every thing that could have tested the truth of her story by affording a clue to her identification. It must also appear very strange that, on finding herself deserted, she should have plunged into the wood in quest of Bertha, who, according to her own account, had followed the carriage along the road. This we pass by; but Caroline's piebald dialect is too curious a phenomenon to dismiss without remark. It was, as we have seen, a corrupt Hungarian, interspersed with manufactured and exotic words, and taught her, as she maintains, by her nurse. It seems, then, that Bertha must have been an accomplished linguist, and a great inventor in language; and, as it does not appear that she ever varied her diction or her idiom, she must have prepared her unknown tongue with deliberation, and practised it with assiduity. Her motive for such elaborate toil is less transparent than Caroline's for imputing it to her. By pretending ignorance of the language spoken by those about her, an impostor would gain time to look around, to perfect herself in her story, to observe the characters she had to deal with, and frame her tale and her demeanour accordingly. By employing a foreign tongue she at once excited additional interest, gratified the self-importance of those who found themselves able to com. municate with her, and escaped the danger of self-betrayal, to which an assumed ignorance of all languages would have continually exposed her; while the affectation of a corrupt speech, both served to veil the real imperfection of her acquaintance with her pretended mother-tongue, and at the same time enabled her to evade inconvenient questions, and render conversation as difficult as suited her purpose. The terms, however, which she is incidentally mentioned as having forgotten and replaced by Bertha's jargon, are precisely those which she ought to have retained correctly, if at all. For example, she must have heard the words denoting "uncle" end "aunt" very often at home; from Bertha seldom or never. Yet the terms she employs ("ongkar," "xantlu") bear no resemblance whatever to the Hungarian equivalents, but are most suspiciously like the French "oncle" and "tante." This might have led the authorities to suspect in their protégée a young person of more extensive literary attainments than her native modesty permitted her to acknowledge, and we would almost venture to wager that the adventures of Kaspar Hauser at one time occupied an honourable place in her little library. The resemblance between her story and his is sufficiently striking, and not least in the temporary acceptance of each. Kaspar Hauser, as is well known, became a sort of public institution at Nuremberg; the most renowned jurist of the day was among his disciples, and the citizens would as soon have allowed you to question the antiquity of their ramparts as the truth of his pretensions. There are indications of a similar feeling at Offenbach; to this extent at least, that the authorities evidently considered Caroline's presence as re flecting credit on their town, and would have felt much the same towards the sceptic who should have endeavoured to reduce the mysterious foundling to the dimensions of a common impostor, as the housekeeper at Holyrood towards the commercial traveller who wanted to test the virtues of kis patent soap on the stains left by the murder of Rizzio. Thus the excellent Herr Eck stumbles at nothing; and the acuteness which should have been employed in the examination of Caroline's narrative is entirely expended in anticipating possible objections, and demolishing them before they are made. For example, he writes a long and inconclusive note to reconcile Caroline's incautious assertion, that she saw neither moon nor stars between her abandonment in the wood and her arrival at Offenbach, with the undeniable fact of her journey and exposure having taken place between the new moon and the full; how they should have escaped her attention in the first five years of her life, or how, having seen them, she could have forgotten them, he does not attempt to explain. An admirable man, clearly a grain of the salt of the earth, he accepts Caroline's amiability as a sufficient guarantee for her truthfulness. The patrons of the miscalled Female Jesuit were similarly confiding on similar grounds, and her story at least involved no impossibilities. It is hardly necessary to remark that the most refined deception is in no way incompatible with a placid and affectionate temper, and that in very many instances impostors have proved in reality as blameless as their dupes, being simply the victims of an uncontrollable monomania. Generally, indeed, this morbid secretiveness has occurred in conjunction with a no less abnormal development of the acquisitive faculty, finding a vent in petty thefts, the detection of which has discredited the whole story. This, if we remember rightly, was the case with the Female Jesuit. The mental constitution of Caroline would appear to be more fortunately organised, and, up to the publication of Herr Eck's memoir, her conduct, so far as it had fallen under his observation, must be admitted to have been wholly irreproachable. His pamphlet bears date 1856, and no further particulars respecting Caroline have reached us. Perhaps the deception of her narrative has been made evident, perhaps its truth has been established, to the confusion of all sceptics. More probably than either, affairs remain in statu quo, and Caroline, it may be in the married state, continues to set an example of domestic excellence to all the fair sex in the two Hesses. We cannot doubt that, whether she be an impostor or not, the excitement and entertainment she has occasioned have amply compensated the good people of Offenbach for the trifling cost of her maintenance; and we should be really sorry could we imagine these remarks arriving among them, to perturb with unkind suspicions a state of things equally agreeable and advantageous to both parties. In the hope that this will not be the case, we have ventured to relate a story which appears to us equally interesting whether regarded as a passage from the romance of real life, or from the annals of ingenious and successful imposture. R. G. Donne the Metaphysician. FOR the sake of the gushing young Minerva who has written to me on the subject of my Temple Bar articles, I almost regret that I am united in tender bonds of wedlock to Daphne. The little odoriferous pink roseblossom, delicately embroidered with elfin caligraphy, which flutters before me as I write, can only have emanated from the taper fingers of youthful loveliness; and (as Dryden said, when the exercise of constantly turning his coat had made him corpulent) "Old as I am, for ladies' love unfit, The power of beauty I remember yet." Of course I am ineligible; but I hope, for the sake of the youngest contributor to these pages, that Minerva is a spinster; and that, moreover, she has not yet taken to blue stockings, which ruin the ancles, or to spectacles, which distort the vision. Tasso, Spenser, and Herrick have all told us, and in identical language, to gather the rosebuds early in life, because Time flies; and I hope that my fair correspondent will look elsewhere for a congenial partner. Nulla retro via: At the same time, I thank Minerva for writing to me, because she has kindly suggested an introduction to my paper on Dr. Donne the Poet. She finds fault with me, she says, because I sound the praises of Bishop Corbet, who was a (6 tippler," in much the same way as I sound the praises of Mr. Herbert, who was almost a saint. She considers me in error for recording Richard Norwich's drinking-bouts; and she emphatically affirms that the Bishop had better have been left in oblivion. You see, I feel the greatest possible relish for literary antiquities of all kinds; while for poetical antiquities I feel an absolute enthusiasm. As a boy, I ate Parnassian fruit with Erato, just as Buonaparte ate Corsican cherries with Madame Colombier. I like to scramble over those dry lingual moats which environ the old castle of Antiquarianism; and I am happier than Mr. Gigadibs when I gain the pleasant sober-coloured chambers within. It is the rarest treat in the world to rummage in those strange corners and dusty crannies; to study the venerable portraits, and to listen to the low Memnonian music which stirs so mysteriously about the shadowy rooms; and ultimately, to make my way to the still older watch-towers above, where the Spirit of the Past stands always, like the watchman in the Agamemnon, and casts her long moveless shadow over the wide plantains of literature lying underneath. In the course of my peregrinations, I have stumbled over such relics as John Ford's melancholy hat, the goblet in which Thomas the Rhymer pledged convivial Dunbar, and the golden scroll with Withers' "nec habeo, nec careo, nec curo" blazoned on it. Do you mean to tell me, Miss Minerva, that these little relics do not help me to comprehend the men who wore them, and the times in which those men lived and breathed? Is it nothing to know how certain things were viewed once upon a time, and what members of the literary clergy have cut their cloth after the prettiest pattern? .Do not the monuments of man, which survive the hands that reared them, lead men to ruminate on the strength or weakness of those hands, and to ascertain, from the amount of heroism put into the life and work, what sort of stuff the old heroes were made of? Am I not walking on glorious ground?—campos ubi Troja fuit,—and may I not by chance stumble on some weapon, which may explain the method of warfare which was used on this battlefield, or on some old suit of armour, whereby I may guess at the height and girth of the literary soldiers who fought here long ago? And to my fancy, Minerva, my puss, modern criticism is a little too bilious. There was Gifford, now, the brave, courageous, but bitter gentleman, who was whipped by Dr. Wolcot, and who endeavoured to kill off John Keats by one critique. There was Jeffrey, who was juster than the tarterly Quarterly; he wrote a sound healthy criticism on Keats, but look what a savage attack he made on the virtuous Christabel. There was Hazlitt, a generous fellow in some respects, but too opinionated. There is our friend the critic in the who fills foolscap pages with attempts to prove (what we all know already) that a spondee is not a dactyl. We fail to recognise the personal qualifications of our poets; and our poets in private life go to church, pay the tax-gatherer, rock the cradle, and desiderate respectability. Confess, my dear Minerva, that you would have these shopkeepers, who write verses, a little more poetical in real life, and that you cannot help going back to the past to search for your heroes? And, by the way, don't you think that the young rhymesters might become a little more chivalrous if the fair sex would try to be a little more romantic? We should have more heroes if we had a little more heroworship; and we should have more poets if the ladies were a little more romantic, if the critics were a little more appreciative. Be that as it may, I like a lay figure to work upon; and it is my delight to clothe it with graceful drapery. Here is Dr. Donne, some time Dean of St. Paul's. I am glad to be able to say that John Donne was, like Sterne's poor Yorick, "as heteroclite a creature in all his declensions, with as much life and whim and gaîté de cœur about him, as the kindest climate could have engendered and put together." He was born in London, as early as the year 1573. His father was an eminent merchant, descended from a distinguished Welsh family; his mother was descended from Sir Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England, and from the eminent lawyer Judge Rastrall. His grandfather on the mother's side was (as I learn from Jonson, in his Conversation with Drummond) no less a person than witty John Heywood, the epigrammist, who wrote that funny interlude called the Four P.'s, and whose merry conversation was the delight of the old age of Henry VIII. In his eleventh year, Donne was sent to Hart Hall, Oxford, where he soon distinguished himself as "another Picus Mirandula," being "rather born than made wise by study." He was prevented from taking his first degree by his relations, who, being of thè Roman-Catholic persuasion, objected to the usual oath. When fourteen years old, he went to Cambridge, where he greatly distinguished himself; and before he was eighteen, he was admitted into Lincoln's Inn, where he began studying law. His father, however, died shortly after his son's initiation into the mysteries of law, and left him three thousand pounds as a marriage portion. Left to the pious care of a good mother, the boy found himself diligently beset by the theological arguments of Roman-Catholic tutors. It was partly to avoid these gentry, I think, that he went with the Earl of Essex to Cales, passed the island voyages, spent some years. in Italy, sauntered for a time in sunny Spain, and finally returned to England, well stocked with that wisdom which sharp-sighted travellers find waiting for them in every corner of the globe. On his return to fatherland, he was made chief secretary to the Chancellor of England, Lord Ellesmere, by whom he was regarded with deep esteem, and who went so far as to say that Donne "was fitter to serve a king than a subject." In this capacity, he spent five long and industrious years, stocking his fertile mind with political and legal knowledge. His employer was the same "Lord Elsmere" to whom Ben Jonson addressed two highly complimentary epigrams. Early in life, Donne's metaphysical mind began to busy itself in religious speculations, and to weigh the Protestant faith against the faith in which he had been brought up. It was, of course, some time before he arrived at any definite conclusion; but he studied the question with a sagacity and a vigour which would make a lad's fortune in this conventional age, when people go to church because their neighbours do so likewise, and say their prayers, as they insure their lives, in the event of an accident. In the midst of his difficulty, however, he met Cupid at a time when, as Drayton saith, "Cupid's wings were not then cut, Given to boys to shoot at sparrows." Cupid solved the problem for the time being, by making him the devout and orthodox worshiper of a young gentlewoman, daughter of Sir George Moore, Chancellor of the Garter, and Lieutenant of the Tower. Pretty Mistress Anne encouraged the advances of the young lawyer. "No grape that's kindly ripe could be and finding John good-looking and clever, for his sake she was tempted to be naughty. "He was of stature moderately tall, of a straight and equally proportioned body, to which all his words and actions gave an unexpressible addition of comeliness." They were in a hurry to kiss lips lawfully; but festinatio tarda est. Ah, Daphne, dear, how much more domesticity there would be if the old people would let the young people alone! "Good shepherd, tell this youth what 'tis to love?" asks pert country Phoebe in the play, and ""Tis to be all made up of sighs and |