From Chambers' Journal..
THE LOST ENVOY.

On my

certain. Day after day passed, and no tidings of him arrived. It was concluded that On the afternoon of Saturday, the 25th of he had taken a circuitous route, and travNovember 1809, two travellers, accompanied velled incognito to avoid falling into the by a servant, arrived at the post-house of hands of the French. Weeks, however, Perleberg, in Upper Saxony, en route from elapsed, and we still heard nothing of the Berlin to Hamburg, and immediatley ordered missing one. The agonising suspense of his horses. They travelled with Prussian pass-wife and relations it would be difficult to ports, but under fictitious names. Of the describe. I perfectly well remember that elder of the two, little, unfortunately, is every knock at the street-door caused the known; but that little is so full of sinister liveliest emotions arising from the hope that significance, that I am persuaded I am doing it might be our much-loved brother. At him no injustice in branding him as an agent length, one evening in December, my father of the French police. He will be known to received an express from Lord Wellesley, us throughout this paper as the Merchant requesting his immediate attendance at Krüger. His companion was an Englishman Apsley House, his lordship having something of the name of Bathurst a son of the then of importance to communicate. Bishop of Norwich, returning from a secret father's return, we were all alarmed at his diplomatic mission to the court of Vienna. pale and dejected aspect. He informed us Mr. Bathurst seemed to be laboring under that government had received intelligence of some terrible apprehensions. Throughout the sudden and mysterious disappeararce of the journey, all his actions had been marked my brother at Perleberg, a small town on by an air of indecision, which to the several the route from Vienna, where he had stopped post-masters seemed unaccountable. At for rest and refreshment." * Perleberg, the horses which he had ordered A reward of £1000 was immediately offered on his arrival were countermanded before by the British government, and another of they were harnessed. Not feeling himself equal amount by the relatives of the missing safe, as he said, in the post-house, he went, envoy, for any authentic information as to his about five o'clock in the afternoon, to Cap-fate; and his wife prepared in person to set tain Klitzing, the Prussian governor of the out in search of him, as soon as the Baltic town, and begged for a safeguard, which at seven in the evening he dismissed. During some hours, he was engaged at his desk in a small room of the house, and was seen to burn a number of papers which he took from his portfolio. On another occasion he was observed in the kitchen standing before the fire, playing with his watch, and counting his money in the presence of a crowd of postillions, hostlers, and tapsters. At length, about nine o'clock in the evening, the horses were again ordered to be in readiness; but when the post-master went to announce the packing of the carriage, Mr. Bathurst had disappeared. From that hour to this, his fate has remained shrouded in impenetrable mystery.

ports should be free from ice. In the spring. of 1810, accordingly, she proceeded to Stockholm, whence, under the protection of Swedish passports, she entered Prussia through Pomerania, and reached Berlin in safety. At Berlin she found, to her astonishment, a safeconduct awaiting her from the emperor. Napoleon, and, armed with it, she at once proceeded to Perleberg. I entreat the reader to bear this circumstance in mind, as I shall have occasion to refer to it in the sequel.

At Perleberg, Mrs. Bathurst's inquiries were met by statements so conflicting as to impede rather than to facilitate her search. Whether her husband was dead or was still alive; whether, if dead, he had fallen by his own hand, or had perished beneath the knife of some ruffian marauder or political assassin; and whether, if alive, he had been the victim of violent abduction, or had voluntarily absconded, were questions which she found herself unable to solve, and which no

In England, in the meantime, his return had been anxiously expected by the cabinet and his relations. "We knew," says his sister," the dangers to which he was exposed on his journey, surrounded as he was by enemies on all sides; while the impossibility of any intelligence being received of him by letter rendered us doubly anxious and un-ter. London. 1853.

*Memoirs and Correspondence of Dr. H. Bathurst, Lord Bishop of Norwich. By his Daugh

astuteness has yet been found equal to free peachment. Krüger and the servant of the from obscurity and confusion. It appeared lost envoy succeeded in evading their guards; hat, immediately on Mr. Bathurst's disap- and the first intimation which the Perleberg pearance, his servant had waited on the gov-authorities received of the former's wherea ernor, and apprised him of the circumstance. bout was when, nearly three weeks after Mr. Klitzing, who was preparing for a ball which Bathurst's disappearance, the burgomaster was to be held that evening in the Crown saw in a Berlin paper a notification that an Hotel, immediately sent for the civic authori- unknown person, calling himself the merties, and desired them to make all possible chant Krüger, had arrived in that city from inquiries into the case. No lack of zeal can Perleberg. Immediate inquiries were made be charged against these gentlemen. They respecting him, of the police of the capital; at once arrested Krüger and the servant, and an exhibition of official zeal for which the placed them under the guard of a troop of police minister expressed his thanks, at the cuirassiers. They took possession of all Mr. same time courteously assuring his corresBathurst's property, with the exception of a pondents that it was unnecessary for them to sich fur-cloak which was missing. They sent trouble themselves further in the matter, scouts into the town and into the neighbor- that "all was right," and that the pretended ing country; but when on Sunday morning merchant Kruger was the companion of the they waited on the governor, it was found missing envoy. Of the unfortunate man's that all their researches had been in vain. servant, no trace could be discovered; but it Not a trace of the missing man had been transpired that Mr. Bathurst had been discovered. warned by a friend in Berlin to beware of his attendant, and that his suspicions of treachery had been strengthened by finding in the man's possession a bill for £.500, of which he could give no good account.

The Perleberg authorities were now com pletely at fault. Every document which might have served to aid their councils was studiously withheld from them by the gover nor. Suddenly, however, it was announced that a certain hostler of the name of Schmidt, who had been in the kitchen of the post-house when Mr. Bathurst so imprudently exhibited his purse and watch, had absconded, and that the missing cloak had been found in the possession of his family. Schmidt himself was never afterwards heard of; but his wife and son, both of whom were persons of notoriously bad character, were brought before the magistrates, and, after a rigid examination, which elicited nothing, beyond a bare suspicion, to implicate either of them in the murder or abduction of the unfortunate traveller, were each sentenced to eight weeks' imprisonment for concealment of the stolen property.

And now it was that the first suspicious circumstance connected with the conduct of Klitzing occurred. After charging the magistrates to prosecute their inquiries with the utmost ardor, and especially to do their best to probe the mystery of the missing cloak, he announced his intention of going into the country for a few hours. But his return was deferred till Monday evening, when he explained his lengthened absence by saying that he had been at Berlin for the purpose of obtaining instructions. In the interim, the magistrates had been indefatigable. It was necessary to obtain a clue to the identification of the abstracted cloak, which none of them had seen, and for this purpose Mr. Bathurst's servant was sent for. His deposition was taken down in writing, and, on the governor's return was laid before him. Klitzing's character had always stood high; but his behavior on this occasion looks suspiciously like an attempt to stifle all inquiries that might lead to unpleasant disclosures affecting his government or its task-masters, the French police. He threw the servant's deposition into the fire; he stormed at the But the doom of the vanished man remagistrates, accused them of arbitrary prac-mained as mysterious as ever. A reward of tices and of investing the case with an un- ten thalers had, at the instigation of Klitzdue importance, and threatened to report ing, been offered to any one who should their conduct to the authorities in Berlin. A feud, which lasted for many weeks, and effectually prevented a proper sifting of the whole affair, was the consequence of this im

bring him to the magistracy either dead or alive. The river Steppenitz was drained of its waters during two days, while search was made along its bed; every barn, hedge,

ditch, and wood, for miles around the town, | trates, underwent a rigorous examination; was ransacked for many days with hounds, the fir-wood was once more thoroughly sticks, nets, and other instruments, but with- searched, and the surrounding country out success. The town itself, and the gardens scoured for miles; but no further trace of the which surround it, were similarly rummaged. missing man could be discovered. The woThe disreputable resorts frequented by the men were liberated and rewarded; the peasyounger Schmidt, every cellar and loft at- ants were presented with ten quarts of brantached to the taverns wherein it could be dy, and a cask of beer; and Captain Klitzascertained he had been drinking or dancing, ing and the magistrates of Perleberg sat the post-house, and the cellar of the town- down to report to their superiors in Berlin at hall, which was used as a taproom, were once their discovery and their despair. especially scrutinised; but all research was fruitless. The magistrates were in despair, and reluctantly resolved to abandon the search, when, precisely six weeks after the envoy's disappearance, his pantaloons were found, perforated by two shot-holes, on the border of a fir-wood near the town.

Such was the intelligence which awaited the arrival of Mrs. Bathurst at Perleberg, and which she communicated to her friends in England. The impression which it left upon her own mind, and the universal impression of the public mind at home, was, that her husband had been forcibly abducted They were discovered by a woman of the by the agents of the French government, name of Weide, who, in company with the who then swarmed in every city and town of wife of a shoemaker, had gone to the forest the continent; and that Klitzing, Kruger, for the ostensible purpose of gathering brush- and the servant of the luckless envoy, had wood. They were found stretched at length been accessories to the deed. That Napoupon the ground, and turned inside out; but, leon was not troubled with any over-scrupualthough saturated with the rain which had losity in such matters, when state purposes fallen in torrents during many weeks, a few could be subserved by the seizure of imporlines, in the handwriting of the missing man, tant papers, is well known; but, in justice to which were discovered, scribbled on a scrap Klitzing, it can only be supposed that he conof paper, in one of the pockets, were still sented to take part in the dark transaction easily decipherable. But, as the pantaloons under the debasing influence of the terror could not have been exposed to such a del-inspired and universally felt throughout uge for many hours, without the waters oblit- Prussia by the French occupation. Two inerating the writing, and reducing the paper cidents, to one of which I have already reitself to pulp, the conclusion is a fair one ferred, deepened the impression created by that they had been thus ostentatiously laid the Perleberg revelation into something apout for the purpose of strengthening the im-proaching to conviction. When on the eve pression that their wearer had been mur- of starting for the continent, Mrs. Bathurst dered and stripped by the hostler Schmidt. had written to the French emperor for passThe note in the missing man's handwriting ports to guarantee her unmolested freedom was addressed to his wife, and was safely con- in prosecuting her travels and inquiries. veyed to her. It had evidently been written Fearing his refusal, she had set out, as we in great haste, and in terrible perturbation. have seen, by way of Sweden, her change of It set forth the dangers to which the writer purpose being kept a profound secret from was exposed from his enemies; expressed all save her immediate relations and the great fears that he should never reach Eng- British cabinet. Napoleon, however, had reland, and inveighed bitterly against the Rus-ceived-probably from D'Entraigues-such sians and the Count d'Entraigues;* by whom accurate intelligence of her intended movehe said, his ruin had been brought about. ments, that, as I have already stated, she Weide and the shoemaker's wife, on their found, on her arrival in Berlin, passports, discovery being communicated to the magis

A French spy, then resident in London. A few months after Mr. Bathurst's disappearance, D' Entraigues was assassinated by his Italian servant, at the instigation, as is supposed, of the French government, some of whose secrets the count had Betrayed, or imprudently permitted to escape him.

under his own hand, awaiting her at the French ambassador's. The other incident indicates still more clearly the agency employed in perpetrating the crime, and the end to which the victim came. While the search after Mr. Bathurst was still hot, the governor

of the 25th of November, is beyond a doubt; and, if we could rely upon its authenticity, a story told by a lady, now the wife of a physician at Perleberg, but who was, at the time of Mr. Bathurst's disappearance connected with the household in which Captain Klitzing lodged, would go far to fix the crime upon the fugitive hostler and his profligate son. About five o'clock in the afternoon of the day of the disappearance, a stranger, whom the girl understood afterwards to be Mr. Bathurst called at the house, and requested to see the

of Magdeburg, distant about fifty miles from the murder of the missing man. That the Perleberg, assured a lady one night in the younger Schmidt had been much in contact ball-room that the English ambassador was with Mr. Bathurst throughout the afternoon confined in the neighboring fortress. Hearing of the fact during her continental explorations, the agonized wife repaired to Magdeburg, waited upon the governor, and implored him to tell her the truth. He at once admitted having made the statement referred to, but assured Mrs. Bathurst, that he had made it by mistake, and that the prisoner in question was one Louis Fritz, a spy of Mr. Canning's. Mrs. Bathurst begged earnestly to see the man; but Fritz, she was told, had been sent some time before into Spain. On inquiring at the Foreign Office after her re- governor. The reader is already aware that turn to England, Mrs. Bathurst found that no such person as Fritz had ever been employed by the British government. The probability is, therefore, great, that Mr. Bathurst perished, a victim to the odious policy of Napoleon, in the fortress of Magdeburg.

It cannot be denied, however, that this hypothesis does not wholly harmonize with circumstances which, whether true or false, were at least at the time very generally re.ported. It is certain that in one of his last letters to his wife, Mr. Bathurst had expressed his intention of returning to Colberg and Stockholm; and a story is still told by the peasantry of Schwerin, how, at a late hour on that fatal night, a stranger called at the house of a consul in the neighborhood of Wismar on the coast of Mecklenburg, and requested an interview with him. The man, however, being absent, the servant asked what name she should mention. The answer given in German, with a foreign accent, was: "Never mind that; " but she was desired to say that an English gentleman wished to see her master at the post-house at an early hour on the following morning. When the consul called as directed, however, he found that his midnight visitor had departed, leaving no message. In the course of the day, the wrecks of two boats which had foundered at sea, were washed ashore; and in one of these, it is supposed, the stranger had embarked. But if this stranger were indeed Mr. Bathurst, how are we to account for the subsequent discovery of his trousers in the neighborhood of Perleberg?

this was for the purpose of soliciting a safeguard at the post-house. Mr. Bathurst was evidently laboring under great mental agitation, and, whether from cold or fear, shivered from head to foot. At the request of Klitzing, the girl made the visitor some tea, which revived him greatly. While drinking it, he spoke wildly of the dangers which had threatened him along the whole route from Vienna and said that he must be quickly off if he would reach the coast in safety. After pressing upon the girl some money, which, however, she refused, the stranger took his leave; but upon going to the window to look after him, she was surprised to see him walking rapidly in a direction quite opposite to that which led to the post-house. Shortly afterwards, the younger Schmidt called in quest of him, and on being informed of the route he had taken, followed fast upon his footsteps. In a few hours afterwards, the town was in a commotion at the stranger's disappearance. Such was the story told by the Perleberg physician's wife to the sister of Mrs. Bathurst in 1852; but "she spoke," as that lady remarked, "in so hurried and excited a manner, that it appeared like a tale told by rote, and made up according to direc tions at the time." It is further to be observed that if the lady meant to imply that Mr. Bathurst was overtaken at this time, and immediately hustled away by Schmidt, the story is inconsistent with the fact of the former having at nine o'clock in the evening ordered his carriage to be in readiness and his bill at the post-house to be made out.

The only other hypothesis which seems to The fact, moreover, is, that Auguste Schmidt demand examination, is that which ascribes was, about six months after Mr. Bathurst's to the hostler Schmidt and his son Auguste disappearance, actually arrested at the in

stance of his family, and tried for the mur-in conjunction with Schmidt, who had lured der; but the case completely broke down. Mr. Bathurst to the house, committed the Another attempt to bring the crime home to murder. The body, she added, had been him was made through the instrumentality carried to a distant part of the coast, and of an abandoned woman, of the name of buried in the sand, upon which all traces of Hacker, whose house was much frequented disturbance must have been speedily obliterby Schmidt, and lay in the direction said to ated. But the woman afterwards confessed have been pursued by the missing man after that the story had been a pure fabrication, leaving Klitzing. Hacker stated that at the and that she was utterly ignorant of the fate time of the occurrence, a party of French which had befallen the Lost Envoy. soldiers was billeted upon her, and that they

CRIMEAN TOMBS.* Under the ambiguous is given). A woman or a priest here and there, title of "The Last of the Brave," two gallant a few Sardinians, Mr. Stowe, the administrator officers have performed the reverent and accep- of the Times Fund, vary at rare intervals the table service of giving, in the form both of pic-records of officers, soldiers, and seamen. One torial representation and of verbal transcript, a of the most touching mottoes in its simplicity, complete register of all the tombs and graveyards of our perished soldiers of the Crimean campaign. The list includes the privates of the Army and seamen of the Naval Brigade no less than the Field-Marshal Commander-in-Chief; and is faithful even to the humble devices on the tombs, and the mistakes in spelling.

and doubtless in its truth, is "She hath done what she could" to the grave of "Sophia Walford, Matron, Barrack Hospital, Scutari." From the verse-mottoes the following may be selected as among the more characteristic.

Though boisterous winds, and Neptune's

waves,

Have tossed us to and fro,

In spite of both, by God's decree,
We harbor here below:
And at an anchor here we ride,
With many of the fleet,
In hopes again for to set sail,

Our Redeemer Christ to meet."
(To Quartermaster Burrell, of the Leander.)

Soldierlike, the compilers have done their work, and say little of the manner in which it was done; the volume consisting wholly of a copy of the inscriptions, lithographic views of the cemeteries, a few hearty words of introduction, and some statistical details of the strength of the British Army, the numbers killed, and the like. We are left to infer that Captains Colborne and Brine themselves sketched the places and copied the inscriptions; and that the illus-"Plant, plant wild flowers around their bed, trations, carefully lithographed, have been execated from original designs so supplied-if not possibly from photographs. The most common material of the tombs is the ordinary stone of the country, dazzlingly white, and durable though soft the masons were mostly the Royal Engineers.

:

"

The inscriptions are generally of the simplest kind; sometimes no more than the name, and« date of death; often with such additions as "Died from his wounds received at the Redan," or "Erected by his Comrades, as a token of their esteem.' Lord Raglan's monument itself carries this simplicity to the extremest pointbeing merely a flat tombstone, inscribed "To the Memory of Field-Marshal Lord Raglan,' G.C.B., Commander-in-chief of the British Army in the Crimea; died 28th June 1855." Several, including General Cathcart's, have Russian inscriptions (of which no interpretation

The Last of the Brave; or the resting-places of our Fallen Heroes in the Crimea and at Scutari. By Captains the Honorable John Colborne, 60th Royal Rifles, late 77th Regiment, and Frederick Brine, Royal Engineers. Published by Ackermann and Co.

Your brothers numbering with the dead;
A sacred duty 'tis you owe

To all mankind-to friend, to foe.
Gather, gather from yon dell,

The snowdrops, crocus, and blue-bell:
Unsparing strew them o'er each grave;
The dead but marks the truly brave."
(To Men of the Land Transport Corps.)
Here lies an old soldier whom all must ap-
plaud :

He fought many battles both at home and
abroad;

But the fiercest engagement he ever was in
Was the battle of self in the conquest of sin."
(To a Private of Marines.)

"Unis pour la victoire,
Du soldat c'est la gloire :
Réunis par la mort,
Des braves c'est le sort."

(At the Malakoff.)

In artistic decoration, we find nothing more elaborate than a cross, an obelisk, or a broken column.

The Statistics show a total of 2755 killed in the Army, and 124 in the Naval Brigade.