tended by the choristers of the convent, chanting | It very soon ceased, however, when he saw the a Dona Requiem for the soul of the departed.

But one was not there who was wont to raise her sweet voice amongst them. Senseless, pale and deathlike Cannie lay, at the first intelligence, amid the noise and frighted confusion of the domestics. Some feared that she would not recover; she cared not-for the one she lived to love was gone.

The body of Essex had scarcely arrived at the convent chapel, before signs of life exhibited themselves. It was however several days before he came to his senses. He found himself lying on a clean cot in a small room; and near him an old and trembling Friar was mumbling over his beads before a small stone crucifix hewn out in the wall. For a long time Henry spoke nothing; finally, however, he lifted his hands feebly to his forehead, and addressed the old man in a voice almost like a whisper.

"Father," he said, endeavoring to call his attention.

ghastly hue which overspread Henry's counte-
nance; and fearing that he was about to die,
the Friar rose very hastily and was about to call
the Abbot: and would have done so but for
Henry.

"Stop!" he cried hoarsely and quickly.
"What?" said the old man timidly.

"Set down and tell me more-tell me all." The old man shook his head doubtfully; but presently seemed to bethink himself, as of something he had to do, and then sat down close to the bed-peering upon Henry with a lack-lustre eye.

"And Cannie," asked the half-dead youth eagerly-"what of her--what does she think-and say?"

"Why she has been persuaded of the truth of the charges made against you-and has even rejoiced in your”.

The old man stopped swiftly here and ran forth for assistance, for Henry had swooned now, most

“Aye-in a moment." And the old man con- surely. tinued without turning his eyes.

It was a long time-many days and weeks

"Father," said Henry again, not having heard ere the young man's sense returned. When he or heeded his reply.

"In a moment-just one moment, I say," he said pettishly. At last the old man turned his small smirking eyes full upon him.

recovered them, however, he found in his room the Abbot and the sisters of the Abbey, attending and ministering to him with great care. His illness after this was very long; his life being at

"Tell me, father, what has happened?" Henry times almost despaired of. So soon, however, asked.

"Yea, verily, what hath happened!" "What?"

as he recovered health, he signified his intention of remaining in the monastery, and finally obtained the garb of the monastic order of the Old

"You ought to know." The old man gave Reading Abbey. here a short dry chuckle.

“Yes, you," said the old man with another short dry laugh, like the sound of a dry leaf in autumn on frozen ground.

"But I do not-tell me-why am I here?" "These will tell you the whys and wherefores better than I." And with this the old man raised up the bloody raiment of which Essex had been divested.

The Earl of Clare had suspected the love of his daughter for Henry of Essex, but had never had that suspicion so confirmed as when the death of the young nobleman was announced to her. He was very much enraged, as are all other fathers, when their children show signs of disloyalty; and he immediately determined with an oath, that she should marry Robert de Montford, and none other. And accordingly, when he heard that Henry had revived on his arrival at the AbHenry groaned and turned over as some feint bey, where he was taken from the field, he gave of the truth flashed upon him. Yet he was too command that she should not be undeceived with weak to rote anything, other than of his contest, regard to his death: and also employed the Friar, and so turned again to the old man, earnestly who has been introduced above, to inform him beseeching the recital of all that had happened. that Cannie had voluntarily and happily been The old man, after some persuasion, told him wedded to his rival Robert de Montford.

all: how he had fought and fallen, embellished, however, as he wished.

"And Robert de Montford-what of him!" exclaimed Henry, when the old man paused. "Montford-your victor?"

"The same."

Henry of Essex had been a Monk for five years, and with much trouble he was chastened and purified. He was even yet young; and his face bore a look of melancholy sweetness. He had lived there loved by all as a good and pious

"Ha-Robert is now making merry as the man, and now at the death of the old Abbot he

son-in-law of Roger and as his heir."

The old man here gave another dry laugh.

had been promoted to that position.

Shortly after this, he was sitting one evening

anon in the progress of human thought-times of counsellors there is safety," has an applicawhen all thinkers, like worshippers of the sun on tion of no ill appropriateness in historical matPersian plains, have their faces turned eastward. ters. Another maxim of a people who were no The fable of the chameleon used to be in the fools, may also be thought of by the readers of school-books. It has a new fulfilment in the these Sketches: Audi alteram partem; or as the deep perplexity which overlies the minds of men elder McCalla used to render it: Keep the other in these days, as to the real color of the reputa-ear open. Aye, let them all come-all that are tion of our much-lauded and much-traduced, an- based on undying truth, sought and found; until cient and unterrified, degenerate and ever-glori- they amount even to a great cloud of good, bold, ous Commonwealth of Virginia. We are prob- clear witnesses; not with voices muffled in the ably not a thousand leagues off from the denoue- effort to appear impartial where impartiality ment of the apologue. Something like due at- would be either more than human, and so detention-we rejoice to see and to say-is begin-mand angelic attributes; or less than human, and ning to be paid to its history. Howe's very val- so suicidally turn itself into hypocrisy ; but each uable, but improvable antiquarian collections-speaking forth his own honest convictions in the History of Virginia, by Charles Campbell, brave and manly tones; each supplying some of with which the pages of this magazine were first the colors of the past which the others had overadorned-Mr. Howison's History of Virginia-looked; each throwing into a fuller relief and Contributions to her Ecclesiastic History by Dr. into a clearer light, some scenes in the mellowHawks-and now the very important addition to ing drama of the life of former days, which the the list, "SKETCHES OF VIRGINIA," by Dr. Foote rest had shown too dimly; each touching more of Romney, bearing a general analogy to the skilfully than the rest, the key-note of some eterlast mentioned, but directing attention to a differ-nal truth, which shall reverberate amid the pracent class of facts-have all been published within the score of years already mentioned as so enriched with historic productions.

tical utilities of human life to the end of time.

These thoughts about our knowledge of what is now past, lead us to implore a place in the Dr. Foote's volume on Virginia is after the reader's attention for a word or two about the model of a well-received volume published by present, its lessons and its whole history, when him a few years since, entitled "Sketches of it shall have become the past; and when the fuNorth Carolina," by which he obtained merited ture men of Virginia shall be looking back to these honor as an indefatigable and successful gatherer very days of ours, as days of which they would of fast-vanishing legends, concerning things as fain read the full history could they find the tabprecious as gold, whose memory would have blets on which it could be found written. The been lost from among men. The thanks of the historic spirit, as has been shown, is now aroused public are the more due to such a Froissart, that in the reading and the writing world. Can we in the half of another score of years, many, if not avail ourselves of these auspices, to put not all of the gray-haired witnesses of former into operation some means of making the future times from whom the best parts of these vol- historian's work easier-some way to catch and umes have been gleaned, would have been num-stenograph and stereotype admonitory, instrucbered with the unreturning dead, and the work tive, cheering events as they occur? would thus have been rendered impossible.

Questions of grave practical import arise in "There have lived men, in Virginia, whose every generation which it must solve in the light names are worthy of everlasting remembrance. of the probabilities by which after all, the affairs There have been events which should never be of life are governed. Time, and that alone, forgotten. There have been principles avowed proves the wisdom of such solutions. And the whose influence will be felt throughout all time. record of these solutions, and the verdict of time There have been historians of Virginia-there as to their wisdom, uttered in the ears of the have been volumes of biography worthy of the generations to come, as a voice of experience, writers, and of the men whose lives they record. will render the probabilities by which men shall The materials for these volumes have been found decide the same questions in future days, stronabundant, and are not yet exhausted." Such is ger and clearer, and thus aid in dispelling the the spirit-stirring utterance with which these clouds from human judgment. And that is the "SKETCHES" begin. We shall reserve for a fu- best legacy which one generation can transmit ture number, and for a more attentive perusal, to another. In that way alone can man justify our full verdict. But we heartily welcome these the old sage's definition of him, that he is a being Sketches, and we believe that the public will who looks behind him and before him. How full also heartily welcome them. Let these fresh is every year of our nation of such instruction! contributions come! Let them all come! The There are thirty-one centres of political thought proverb of the wise man, that "in the multitude and discussion within it. Momentous moral and

religious problems also are annually working too late in the day to consider such things—as themselves to a solution. And yet indeed from an honest, flat-footed, republican citizen we used the very multiplicity of its points of inquiry, its to know, did-as Heliconisms, chimeras, air-cashistory is singularly intangible, inaccessible. The tles. Public men at least, hereafter, must know leaves on which time writes his oracles, are by a something of what has been, or they must be sort of necessity, scattered like those of the Sybil. noodles and nobodies. And it would seem to be Files of old newspapers, which at their current accepting for ourselves the terms which describe date are by no means thought to give a correct the stolid and unwise among the nations, to be picture of the times; minutes of legislative bo- willing for a minute to run the risk of growing dies as numerous and as dry as the bones in the no wiser by the lessons of time; so as to have to valley of vision; volumes written for the pres- endure the crucible and the refining fire over ent market by authors to whom the most valua- again, whenever the dilemma arises, as it often ble of the materials were inaccessible, and who does, of drawing wisdom from past experience, had not heard the verdict of time-these must or renewing the pain and wisdom, mingled like be the guides of our future historians, unless they the arrows of Love and Death, of new experimay be the rare Old Mortalities, Froissarts, anti-ence. quarian rummagers in the crypts of hidden lore. In early Rome the Pontifex Maximus prepared and preserved a short annual catalogue of remarkable public events. Some literary journals, here and abroad, have tried similar periodical "views of public affairs," but without sufficient pertinacity; and have, in some cases at least, abandoned them before they became sufficiently known and tried to be esteemed. We believe

"THE BATTLE SUMMER.""

B.

"Ik. Marvel," our esteemed friend and contribsuch a plan, in spite of the obvious difficulties, utor, has written another book. It lies before us might be made eminently successful. We should in the clean typography of an excellent publishing attach a very high value to such annals, if we house of New York, and we have read it, from had them, of the twenty-five years last past. the little scrap of Montaigne which is stuck by And the period of the same length commencing way of motto on the title-page, to the fragment with the commencement of the present century of recondite Latinity which he cites at the conhow full would they be of what would not be inclusion. We need scarcely say that the whole no small degree pertinent and instructive! True, book has given us great delight-a sensation this history is not clean gone forever. But it is which we propose to communicate to our readnot in the most accessible of crevices and cran-ers by means of that privilege of unlimited quonies. No matter if such annals were tinctured tation accorded to the modern reviewer, who with partisan judgments and opinions. All hu- sits like an intellectual Jack Horner at the board man productions must be so tinctured to a greater of literature, appropriating the plums which garor less extent. There is no uninspired narrator nish the puddings of the publishers-extrahens of events whose standing point we can dispense prunum pollice, as the "Arundines Cami" has it, with knowing, in order to appreciate his historic with equal ease and satisfaction. judgments. But it is very far better to have that description of chromatic history than to be without it, or any other in its place.

It is a critical moment with the young author who has produced one work of recognized merit, when he comes forward with a second volume Could not some arrangement be formed be- for public approval. This second volume is to tween some office of the Commonwealth already establish him as an able writer, or to dash to the extant at the metropolis, and the offices of the ground the little reputation he has already built clerks of the counties, by which the ANNALS OF up-and it may fairly be assumed that the auTHE STATE should be written and embodied with thor, fully conscious of the issues that wait upon very small expense and trouble? Such a bureau the work itself, has put forth all his powers to would be worthy of a wise and civilized State. ensure a favorable sentence. No allowance is There can be no reasonable doubt of its complete therefore made for haste or inconsideration, and practicability; and though it would not be either rail-road, tunnel, canal, or turn-pike, yet it might and probably would, in the flight of years, even in the most utilitarian computation, and by the most completely troy-weight standard, become worth more to thinking and deliberate men than all rail-roads, tunnels, canals or turnpikes. It is

although the Frenchman tells us Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute, we are not sure that the second step is not even more difficult. Consid

THE BATTLE SUMMER: BEING TRANSCRIPTS FROM PERSONAL OBSERVATIONS IN PARIS, During The Year 1848. By IK. MARVEL, Author of Fresh Gleanings, New York: Baker and Scribner, 1850.

ering this fact, we confess to have looked for-weary of my Lord Coke and sighed for a glimpse ward with some anxious interest to the appear-at La Liberté in the loose flaunting robes of her ance of "The Battle Summer," Ik. Marvel's Babylonian vesture. Our author expresses this second literary effort. Our apprehensions, such desire somewhat differently, in the Dedicatory as they were, have been happily quieted as to its letter which serves as preface— merit, and while it is not all we could wish (for we shall have a word or two of gentle complaint to utter by and by) we have no hesitation in declaring that, in our judgment, it fixes its author's position as one of the most graphic and spirited writers of the day.

The gentleman who figures under the domino of "Ik. Marvel" made a tour of Europe, after taking his degree at a Northern College, and upon his return, nearly three years since, like many of his peripatetic predecessors, wrote a book of travels. There was something in the appearance of the volume to attract observation. It did not look like the mass of continental diaries and Alpine albums that had been kept by the herd of former tourists in Europe, and what was more--it did not read like them. It seemed to be, on the contrary, just such a Sentimental Journey as Laurence Sterne would have written in 1847-if he had gone flying over the face of Picardy by the rail, instead of travelling in the chaise from Calais with the lady whose "face of about six and twenty-of a clear transparent brown" is so fresh in our recollections. There were passages, here and there, scarcely less deeply pathetic than the story of Maria, touches of that peculiar humor that no one else than Sterne ever displayed, and views of life and character indicating an intellect of rare strength and acuteness. The book was generally read. Everybody began to inquire about "Ik. Marvel" and whether that was his real name or not. Meanwhile our pseudonymous author had commenced the study of the law in an office in Wall Street, leaving his literary reputation to take care of itself.

"To me, with whom the memories of courts and monarchic splendors were still fresh and green, such sudden news was startling. I tortured my brain with thinking-how the prince of cities was now looking;-and how the shops; -and how the gaiety? I conjured up images of the New Order, and the images dogged me in the street, and at my desk, and made my sleep -a nightmare! They blurred the type of Blackstone, and made the mazes of Chitty ten fold greater. The New Statutes were dull, and a dead letter; and the New Practice worse than new. For a while I struggled manfully with my work, but it was a heavy school-boy task-it was like the knottiest of the Tusculan Questions, with vacation in prospect.

"The office was empty one day: I had been breaking ground in Puffendorf;;-one page-two pages-three pages-very dull, but illumined here and there with a magical illustration of King Louis, or stately poet Lamartine; when on a sudden, as one of these illustrations came in, with the old Palais de Justice in the back ground, I slammed together the heavy book-lids, saying to myself;-Is not the time of Puffendorf, and Grotius, and even amiable, aristocratic Blackstone gone by? And are there not new Kingdommakers, and new law-makers, and new codemakers astir, mustering with all their souls and voices, such measures of Government as will, by not these New-men, making, and doing, and and by, make beacons and maxims? And are being, what the old men only wrote of?

"Are not those people of France and wide-skirted German land, hit up by hatred and aggression, and love of something better, putting old law, and maxim, and jurisprudence into the crucible of human feeling, and pouring them into the of human right, and heating them over the fire mould of human judgment, to make up a new casting of Constitutional Order?

But very soon the news came across the water that strange events had occurred in la belle ville— "And as for the New Practice, is there not a a Republic had been proclaimed for France, and new practice evolving over seas,-not very prethe fat old King had taken flight by a back cise, perhaps, about costs and demurrers, and staircase, without even carrying with him the bills of exception.-but a practice of new-gained famous cotton umbrella, the riflard royal, to shel-ties, new-wakened mind,-in short, the whole rights, new-organized courts, new-made authorter him from the driving raius of the Channel, practice, not only of Courts, but of Human Naand altogether without protection against the ture, and Passion, and Power? still more cruel tempest of popular rebuke."Are they not acting over there in France, in Paris was now to be seen in a new phase, and the street, in the court, and in the Assembly, although it might not wear as gay an air as under palpably and visibly, with their magnificent Labor Organizations, and Omnibus-built barricades, the fallen monarchy, though fewer dashing equip- and oratoric strong-words, and bayonet bloodyages were to be met in the Bois de Boulogne and thrusts, a set of ideas about Constitutional Libles Anglaises had fled, we do not wonder that erty, and Right to Property, and offences civil, those Americans who had lived there during the wider, and newer, and richer than all preached ancient regime, and who still retained delight- about, in all the pages of all these fusty Latinful recollections of Very's, should desire to see And I threw Puffendorf, big as he the great metropolis under republican rule. We was, into the corner, and said, I will go and are not surprised therefore that Ik. Marvel grew see?"

ists?

66