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Bride, father, and brother-in-law are acquitted for want of evidence.

Steppenseifer leaves the court repeating the well-known Berlin saying, "Cutting it fat won't find a dinner!"

TOO LATE !

Herr Rummelberg is sixty-seven years of age. But, regarding his feelings-in spite of his paunch and his gray hair-he is but six-andthirty, and he never met in his life a pretty face without feeling an inclination to make a conquest. Fortunately for his virtue and his health, Herr Rummelberg has near him Madame Streithorst, under the elastic title of a housekeeper, whose exertions are exclusively directed to keeping all temptation far from her master. But, for all that, the old butterfly manages to flutter to all the places where gas and other flames enliven the evening. Our history commences, therefore, at Kroll's, and is developed in the police-court.

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Madame Streithorst. That is-with the jewelry. Miss Rosalie. When the old monster tore off my shawl, opened the window, and called out Help! thieves!" A policeman came directly, and I was taken to the lock-up.

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Madame Streithorst. As a thief deserves. the old gentleman, you will perceive that I am not Miss Rosalie. If your worship will question a thief: at least, I do not think him so wicked as to accuse me of it.

Magistrate. Herr Rummelberg, did the affair take place in the way the prisoner has described it? Rummelberg (stuttering). Your worshipthere are cases in which a man-unpleasant embarrassment-very painful position for me (wipthe perspiration from his forehead). Magistrate. Pray speak more plainly.

In the prisoners' box is a young, most elegantlydressed lady, whose charming face at this moment bears traces of anger, and whose dark, fierying eye casts furious glances on Madame Streithorst, who is seated in the witness-box, and appears to be busily engaged with Herr Rummelberg.

Magistrate (to the young lady). Rosalie Werder, you are charged with having robbed Herr Rummelberg, rentier and householder, of various articles of jewelry.

Miss Rosalie. The charge is as unfounded as it is improbable.

Madame Streithorst. Only hark to the impudence.

Magistrate. Silence! and let the accused party speak. (To Rosalie.) What have you to say in your defence?

Miss Rosalie. One evening I was at Kroll's, and looking for my friend, whom I had lost in the crowd, when, suddenly, an old and very ugly man (Rummelberg fidgets on his seat) offers me his protection. He asserted that he had to deliver to me various articles of jewelry from my cousin at Rathenow, among them a splendid bracelet.

Madame Streithorst. False! utterly false ! Miss Rosalie. That is possible: I have not been able to inquire yet. The venerable exterior of the old gentleman, the corpse-like dignity of his appearance, could not cause me to hesitate in believing him and accompanying him home in his droschki, in order to receive the articles he had mentioned. We arrived. He opened the door of his house, and begged me to go up-stairs as gently as possible, because his housekeeper was dangerously ill.

Madame Streithorst. Well, well-only wait, and I'll show you I'm quite well.

Miss Rosalie. But we had scarce entered his house, before he closed the door, fell on his knees before me, and told me of his love. I had not time to feel horrified at this confession, before an old female monster rushed forward with a wet

broom, and furiously attacked the venerable man, behind whom I had sought shelter in the first moment of terror.

Rummelberg. Yes, that's true; I got it all.

Rummelberg Certainly-no idea of theftquite unfounded--as I said, highly unpleasant for me--still-after all-a man like myself-in his best years-unmarried-no crime-still highly unpleasant-extraordinarily unpleasant!

The court, after a short consultation, acquits Rosalie Werder, who retires hurriedly, with a smiling face.

Madame Streithorst (to Rummelberg). Pretty justice that! Come, we'll arrange the matter very differently at home!

Saphir's humoristich satirischer Volks Calendar, published at Vienna, commences with a variety of prophecies, mostly very bad, but from which we can contrive to make a few extracts. "The year 1855 will enter a new Russian phase. It will make its boots uncommonly dirty in consequence. It will look round for a boot-cleaner, when Paskievitch will recommend Omar Pacha, who is a famous hand at polishing people off. The prisoners in Kamschatka will be liberated by the Turks, and receive free billets of admis sion to the slave market of Constantinople. Napier will be nominated Barber of Cronstadt, and immediately proceed to sharpen his weapons, during which operation he will cut his fingers once more. A whole regiment of Cossacks of the Don will go over to-humanity. Diogenes will join the Turks on account of "Sinope." At a ball in Bucharest, a Turk will be present, who is not a Hungarian, Pole, Italian, or Frenchman. Frederika Bremer will espouse Elibu Burritt, and propagate olive-branches in Norway. In HessenCassel, a poor fellow will be jolly. The doctors consider his condition dangerous. He will be taken to a madhouse. China and

Hesse Cassel will have an international law | of copyright. The truth will find its way into a Petersburg journal at the risk of life. The Prussian Ambassador in Petersburg | (Baron von Werthern) will bring out a new edition of the "Sorrows of Werther." Marius will emigrate from the ruins of Carthage to Bomarsund. Xenophon's Anabasis, or the "Retreat," will be translated from the Greek into the Muscovite. A new planet will be discovered in the tail of "Ursa Major," which the astronomers will christen "Humanity."

"In the year 1855, 365 eclipses will take place, which will be visible at all places where the eyes are not shut. The first of these eclipses will take place on New Year's-day, when the congratulators will not have any thing to see. The second eclipse will take place in Germany, commencing at Bamberg and extending to Frankfurt, and this eclipse will be so total, that folks will not see the knout before their eyes. The third eclipse, coming from the North, will cover the Crescent, and extend its shadow over Arndt's 'Wo ist des Deutschen Vaterland,' set to music, and provided with notes.' The fourth eclipse is a total one, commencing with the 'Gold region' and extending far beyond the Credit zone. The fifth eclipse will be visible at Silistria, where not the smallest Russian can be seen for the heaviest sum of money," &c., &c.

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But the joke of jokes in Saphir's Almanac is contained in his illustrations of the signs of the zodiac. Under "Aries," he writes as follows: "Aries, or Richard Cobden, the lamb of peace and the apostle of wool. This sign indicates the season when the sheep are driven out to pasture. This ram of ours annually drives his flocks of peace to the meadow of publicity. Peace and wool!' is his motto. It is evident that a sheep is the most fitting advocate for both, even if he bleats pro domo."

rain pierces the dense fog, which gives that decided physiognomy to London, without which it could not be recognized. Mr. Simpson had given his friends a magnificent supper, in honor of his being appointed purveyor to her Majesty Queen Victoria, from which the rich tradesman Joffrey is just returning, and in osder to reach the City, cuts across from Regent-street to Trafalgar-square. A man who, like Joffrey, enjoys thrice daily a meal like that he had just finished with his friend Simpson, doubtless knows no trace of hunger. The consumption of meat and eggs, which is as necessary for a real English stomach as the daily dry bread to the 50,000 poor in the same city, at least produces the effect which the boa feels when it has swal lowed a jaguar: it is unsusceptible and indifferent to all that crawls around it.

"The same may be assumed of Joffrey. Stuffed with that respect-demanding quan tum of meat, tea, game, and pudding—who would be astonished that such a man can not comprehend one of his fellow-beings suffering from hunger? Wrapped in his cloak, Joffrey consequently hurried along past all the misery which night in London drives on the streets. Trafalgar square is one of the finest and largest squares in the world, as far as Europe signifies the world. Centre of the fashionable West end, the royal palaces of Old England surround it, and the public buildings and museums; while, divided by a magnificent terrace, it supports on either side a statue-above, the King George; below, the lofty pillar of the naval hero of Trafalgar and Abukir, both of which are bedewed by the fine watery dust of the fountains. Even the palace-resembling private edifices, which rise in a long row from the Strand as far as PallMall, exhale that proud aristocracy which was peculiar to the style of the past century, and whose type the English nobility of the present day most faithfully represents.

"These palaces are generally adorned with small porticos, which with their cold and

The principal jokes, however, in all the comic almanacs, appear to relate to Charley Napier's celebrated order "to sharpen cut-polished stones serve as a resting-place for lasses," and to the "Jahde Busen," or Gulf of Jahde, which Prussia recently purchased from Oldenburg, for the purpose of establishing a national harbor for Germany.

But before parting from our kind readers, we will fulfil our promise of giving them some German notions of English manners, which we will derive from the opening part of the story to which we alluded. "London, that central point of trade, of riches and want, has fallen into the arms of sleep and rest, for midnight is long past. The fine, penetrating

the homeless. There it is where children of five years cower behind a pillar, tremble for cold, and try in vain to wrap themselves in their rags. Horrible women take refuge there, and in bestial carelessness throw their heads, heavy with gin or rum, on the cold stones, while they clutch tightly a long bottle of spirits, which offers them the acme of all human delight. Men with shaggy beards, and only covered with the absolutely necessary rags, barefooted, without shirts, coat, perhaps with only a patched jacket on their

shoulders-naked and starving--these are a few sketches from that picture which misery produces nightly in London. Round the proud palaces of Trafalgar-square crime and misery lurk, defiling those marble pillars with their pestilential breath, and during the night the stones and the mortar of these porticos are horrified listeners to curses against fate, to lamentations and complaints against the rich--the same stones which, on the next day, the delicate feet of a duchess or countess will trip over."

There! have our readers had enough? If

they have not, we have! But how true it is that a prophet is not honored in his own country! We always thought Trafalgarsquare the laid idéal of everything that was execrable; and yet here comes a, doubtlessly worthy, German, and calls it the finest square in Europe! We wish we had known Herrn Rellstab when in England--we should have been glad to hear his opinion about the Wellington Statue at Hyde Park. However, if fortune favor, we may be enabled to enlighten our readers on the subject next year.

From the Biographical Magazine.

WARREN HASTINGS.

MORE than a century ago, when the inhabitants of London expected a hostile visitation of Highland clans, when the Thames was comparatively a pure river, and pleasant gardens and villas still existed between Charing-Cross and Temple-Bar, a boy wandered to and from Westminster School, in whose character, as in that of many other little boys, the career of the future man was very dimly foreshadowed. His family were in decayed circumstances, and he easily detected the respect paid to wealth, even in those years at Westminster; while at home he heard traditions of times not far removed, when his ancestors held a high place among the Eng. lish squirearchy. He would be often told of his Danish ancestry-the connection of his family with barons and earls-and those fair English manors, sold by his grandfather's grandfather, for means to fight the battle of the Cavaliers and Royalists, when he followed the Stuarts' standard through folly and ruin to the end. Daylesford, the last of the family possessions, had belonged to them until a recent date; and their records bore the names of its owners for nearly five hundred years. Eighteen years before the schoolboy's birth it had been sold to a Bristol citizen, but the Westminster lad determined to buy it back again; and seventy-four years after its sale he realized this juvenile pur

scenes of magnificence and Oriental splendor, and in many a journey through beautiful lands placed under his sway, through wide regions thrice greater in extent and population than England, which he won for England's crown.

Nearly forty years had passed away after this resolution was formed; forty years of arduous toil and weary work to that middleaged gentleman, peculiarly handsome, with a broad and high forehead, and a quiet smile playing over features hardened and worn with care, who is reading Horace, in the small, although richly-furnished cabin of a ship from India, which is doubling the Cape on the homeward voyage to England. He paraphrases one of the Latin poet's difficult odes, and we copy some of the verses which he has written:"

He who enjoys, nor covets more,
The lands his father held before,

Is of true bliss possessed;
Let but his mind unfettered tread
Far as the paths of knowledge lead,
And wise, as well as blest,
No fears his peace of mind annoy,
Lest printed lies his fame destroy,

Which labored years have won;
Nor packed committees break his rest,
Nor avarice sends him forth in quest
Of climes beneath the sun.

pose, a purpose to which he clung amid Daylesford and his Westminster purposes

are floating over the statesman's mind while |
he reads and writes in the Southern ocean.
Ten years after the ship had reached Eng-
land, this great Eastern politician, wishing to
convince the world that he was not an Eas-
tern nabob, published a statement of his ex-
penditure; and challenged reproach on that
head except in the matter of Daylesford, for
which he admitted that the money paid was
probably too much. But we must wander
over this romance of half-a-century. A
proud boy, conscious of poverty and of talent,
decides to earn fame and wealth with the res-
olution of manhood. He selects a course,
studies hard, wins a way through grammars
made difficult (as were all elementary works
in those times), and leaves his classes at an
early age, with the character of a remarkably
clever lad, but rather gloomy and man-like,
-just as if his body and soul were not of
the same age, and the material was much
younger than the mental section of his being.
The school is abandoned, and then the
question occurs, how is his capacity for
acquiring languages to be turned into gold?
Far away in the East English power begins
to be recognized. The British flag has been
firmly planted in Asia, and waves beside
the deep rivers of India, yet often to be red-
dened by the blood of Britain's boldest youth.
The Oriental crusade from the Western Isles
has commenced. Many young hearts will
beat high on the way to death ere it be closed.
But India has unbounded wealth, and the
adventurous or the hopeful turn therefore
to it. They commence the reflux of “huma-
nity" to the old home of our race, but the
tide moves slowly. The Westminster boy
needs influence for the first step.
It is pro-
cured, and the East India Company bestow
a writership on him, not recognizing in the
nameless heir of Daylesford, who sails to
win again his alienated Worcestershire ma-
nor their future master.

The boy was WARREN HASTINGS. Born in 1733, he was, in 1750, upon his first voyage to Hindostan, classed as a writer in the Company's Bengal service. He discharged his routine duties with assiduity and care; while forming an intimate acquaintance with the Hindoo and Persian languages. His attainments combined with his knowledge of business to recommend him to his superiors, and at a very early age he was appointed to the superintendence of a new factory, in the interior of the country. This mercantile enterprise was unsuccessful, for war commenced in the district, and Hastings was taken prisoner by the soldiers of Surajah

was

Dowla. He had gained the esteem of the natives, and his captivity was light; although Surajah Dowla violently opposed the English interest; but this Indian chief was soon afterwards defeated by Meer Jaffier, losing his throne, and subsequently his life; while his former prisoner was accredited by Lord Clive as Resident Minister to the Court of the

conqueror.

The calamities of some men become the springs of their prosperity; and the captivity of Hastings may have prepared the way for his diplomatic employment. He acquired great influence over the natives in his new capacity; and after contributing materially in his contracted sphere to the interests of the empire, he returned from India in 1765. Hastings remained in this country for a few years, and in 1768 he was appointed by the Directors of the East India Company a member of the Council for Madras; with the understanding that he should succeed to the government of the Presidency. He proceeded to his post in 1769. It was a period of great embarrassment; for the British Empire was then menaced by numerous foes. Civil war threatened its finest colonies. Intestine division was followed by successful revolt, and revolution, in America. A great conspiracy of Indian kings had been formed against the infant empire of the East. All the influence and power of the French in India were employed to sweep the British flag from Hindostan. The pecuniary resources of the Company in the country were forestalled. The competency of our military chiefs in Asia was denied. Even our naval forces in the Indian seas had been unable to defend the coasts of the Presidency from the attacks of the French fleet. The East India Company's power was then on the brink of destruction. The Directors and Proprietary trembled for the value of their stock; and the history of the Anglo-Indian Empire seemed nearly complete. Such was the emergency when the Directors at home determined to place their affairs at Calcutta under the control of a man of energy and genius; and Warren Hastings was ordered to proceed from Madras, and assume the Governorship of Bengal, in 1771.

The Bengal Presidency had recently become British property. A few years previously the Company with difficulty obtained permission to trade where then they were the virtual rulers. Warren Hastings was the first Governor-General of India who ex

ercised direct authority over the population.

1855.]

WARREN HASTINGS.

His predecessors, Lord Clive, Mr. Verelst, and |
Mr. Cartier, had acted in conjunction with
the Court of Moorshedabad. They doubtless
exercised complete powers under a pretence;
which Hastings was instructed to withdraw.
He had therefore to construct a new system
of government for thirty millions of persons,
without a Parliament, without precedents;
with a distracted Cabinet at home and a di-
vided council in India; while the basis of
his power was shaken by the attacks of ex-
ternal foes and intriguing partisans. In this
conjuncture of difficulties he was almost the
only one capable of government, for his
assistants knew little of the habits, the his-
tory, the laws, languages, and religions of
those nations whom he was to form into a
compact state.

The Rohilla war broke out immediately
after his appointment. The contest originated
in an alliance with the Nawab of Oude,
which Hastings did not frame, although he
approved of its conditions; and they strength-
ened the frontier of Hindostan by securing a
That
faithful ally among the native princes.
war had scarcely been brought to a conclu-
sion, when he was drawn into a serious
contest in defence of Bombay against the
Mahrattas. The Presidency of Bengal was
then far removed from the nearest territory
of Bombay. Independent nations stood be-
tween them; and a Governor at Calcutta of
less patriotism than Hastings would have
left the Bombay authorities to fight by them-
selves those battles which they had under-
taken. This policy might have been prudent
for a man of ease; but it could not be
adopted by the sagacious statesman who
probably foresaw the union of the three
Presidencies under one government. The
Bombay forces had been beaten by the
Mahrattas, when the Bengal army arrived,
changed the current of events, and saved
the Presidency. But Bombay was saved
only to allow Bengal and Hastings to succor
Madras, overwhelmed by Hyder Ali and the
incompetency of its governors, while threat-
ened by a French army and fleet. The armies
of Madras were either defeated in the field
or starved in the forts. The commissariat
was in distress, and the treasury was empty.
Captivity and disgrace, or death by famine
and the sword, were the only apparent alter-
natives of the British in Madras, when the
genius of Hastings devised, and his perse-
verance accomplished their rescue.

During these struggles the GovernorGeneral's position with his Council at Calcutta and the Directors in London was em

539

barrassing and painful. The Court of Directors endeavored always to provide a majority against his measures in his Council. The land-tax adopted in 1772 was limited to five years. All the plans of renewal proposed by him were invariably resisted by General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis; while they were as invariably supported by Mr. Barwell. The revenues of the Presidency were endangered by this division of opinion; but the death of Colonel Monson in 1776 delivered the Governor-General from this thraldom, for the Council being equally divided, his casting vote rendered him supreme; and he applied his energy and genius to the financial business of the country, without the fear of defeat. The five years' leases had not realized the nominal rental.

The arrears amounted to 129,000l., and the remissions to 118,000l. At the end of the period, Mr. Francis, the great opponent of the Governor-General, in Council, proposed a fixed and invariable rent; while the latter, in conjunction with Mr. Barwell, desired a strict inquiry into the capabilities of the soil, and the adoption of a variable tax. Hastings enforced his opinion by his vote.

And as the Directors wished

to postpone the adjustment of the rent-roll,
annual arrangements were made until 1781.
The vacillating policy of the Directors turned
all Hindostan into a tenure at will for a
their
number of years, and yet the inconvenience
repre-
upon
of an unsettled revenue fell
sentative, to whom "life in India" was a suc-
The Directors, re-
cession of annoyances.
ceiving dispatches four months after their
date, issued orders, proceeding upon their
contents, which were to be enforced four
months after they had been written. These
orders generally were to undo whatever Hast-
ings had performed, who, with nearly equal
determination, postponed or refused compli-
ance with their requests.

The Rohilla war was discussed and condemned by the Directors, who passed a resolution reflecting severely upon the GovernorGeneral.

The proprietors, at their next meeting, passed a contra-resolution, expressive of their "highest opinion of the services and integrity of Warren Hastings, Esq.," adding, that "they could not admit a corrupt suspicion of him without proof." This vote was given on the 6th December, 1775; but on the 8th May, 1766, the Directors resolved to address the King for the recall of Hastings; while on the 17th of the same month the Proprietors, by a vote of 377 to 271, instructed the Directors to reconsider

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