which they were served, than for the quality of the viands. His Royal Master, who knew all the little family details of his household, had discovered that the General was rather parsimonious and fond of money, and was in the habit of rallying him on this subject. Never was a more perfect prototype of Polonius than our groom of the bedchamber; and though the King sometimes hit him rather hard, yet he was a great favourite. Being so much about the royal person, he had adopted his Majesty's manner in conversation with wonderful success. He had not seen much gunpowder, but was colonel of the 7th regiment, the Royal Fusileers, which he knew he should be obliged to vacate for one of the Royal Dukes, and was determined to anticipate the King's wishes, when he found that his resignation would be soon called for. At this time the 71st regiment, a double battalion, serving in India, became vacant, the emolument of which was double, and he hastened to throw his own at his Majesty's disposition, at the same time hinting "that the India regiment being a Highland corps, it would be highly acceptable." The King's tact instantly discovered the motives that had induced his disinterested friend to make this proposal, and with a hearty laugh replied, "Eh! well! what! a double battalion in India, General; no bad thing! ob, Fy! Fy-vie!" Polonius joined in the laugh, and praising the jeu de mot, as he was in duty bound, obtained the double battalion, which I believe he held to the day of his death. The General, it seems, knew my mother, and when I met him always mentioned that he remembered her, adding, "Well! eh! what! she was a fine woman when she was young; I have danced with her at a ball at Gordon Castle-well! I'll be glad to see you at Fyvie Castle." This invitation was only given when he was in London. At length I met him in Scotland, when he was pleased to repeat his recollection of my mother, and that he would be happy to see me at Windsor, where he had a cottage. I determined, however, that I would pay this visit at his castle in the North, and happening to be passing a few days with his neighbour Mr. Urquhart of Meldrum, that gentleman agreed to accompany me. During our ride my friend said, " You will get no claret at Fyvie, or at any rate not more than one bottle."-" I will bet you a guinea," I replied, "that I will squeeze two out of him." The wager was accepted. I was received with great courtesy by the honourable gentleman, and the dinner-hour being at hand, we were invited to take pot luck. I say nothing of the elegance of the entertainment: there was a haunch of mutton, however, which I praised as being the best I had ever tasted, as well as a bottle of execrable Teneriffe, dignified by the name of sherry; my encomiums produced a flask of tolerable Madeira. "This," said I, "General, has seen the world, and travelled, I should think, to Bengal more than once, from its delicious flavour."-" Let us," replied our host, "take a glass to your worthy mother-Well! eh! what! I remember her a fine woman,-dark,-a brunette: I danced with her fifty years ago, eh!” The cheese and butter from the farm did not escape my notice-still no appearance of Bourdeaux, and I saw my friend chuckling that he would have my money. While the cloth was removing, I put the General in mind of the honour he had done me at Cork, twenty years back, by frequently asking me to dinner. "I remember," said I," you lived like a prince, and that you had a service of plate: your regiment drank hard; it was there I was taught to drink three bottles of claret,- -a bad education, General." "Eh! well! what! you like claret? you shall taste mine, Captain Pryce, and tell me what you think of it. La Fittc, of ninety-eight; had it from Jamie Rannie, of Leith, first growth-eh! what!" It was produced, and every encomium that I could get up, in English and French, was bestowed on it. "Superbe! magnifique! quite a bouquet! it perfumed the room, &c. &c." The bait took; the General, though shy of the liquor himself, swallowed all my compliments, and, to my astonishment and the sheriff's dismay, John was ordered to bring another bottle-observing, "Well! what! eh! Captain Pryce, I make it a point to entertain strangers with my best; you should not have had a second bottle, Meldrum." This brought a speech on my part, the bumpers flowed to the General's health, and his son William, whom he had recently declared his heir. In the midst of this hilarity the housekeeper sent in a tray of cold coffee, well diluted from the General's springs, and the party broke up. As we found there was to be no farther refreshment during the evening, we retired at an early hour, and as we took leave, our hospitable host observed, "I'll be glad to see you another time, Captain Pryce. I suppose you'll be off before breakfast, eh!" My companion confessed that I had accomplished the production of the claret admirably, and that I had well earned his guinea; "there is not another man in Scotland, under the rank of a peer," said he, "with sufficient address to squeeze two bottles of La Fitte out of the General's cellar." A year or two after this achievement I met the General and his neighbour Meldrum in London, in that unfashionable season the month of August. The latter proposed we should have a fish dinner in the city on the following day, to which the General consented, confining the party to six persons; and in order to save coach-hire, an arrangement was made to meet at the British, and proceed to Billingsgate by water. I invited my brother and another gentleman to join us. The Mitre was fixed on as the rendezvous, at the gothic hour of four o'clock, to give us day-light to walk home. The viands, fish, and a beef-steak were left to me, and we were to proceed to the Shades to drink our port from the cask. I ordered the best turbot and lobster-sauce that the market could produce; and as it was the venison and turtle season, I imagined that a neck of the former, and a tureen of green fat from Birch's, would, with a beefsteak and an apricot tart, be sufficient accompaniments. A bottle of champaign, ditto of hock, and lime punch well iced, were indispensables. It seems, however, that the General only expected salt fish, sherry, and a steak; his surprise may therefore be conceived, when he beheld the expensive luxuries which had been ordered! He could hardly restrain his indignation; but the deed was done, and he was obliged to bear this unexpected demand on his purse with as good a grace as possible. I inflamed the matter by putting the extravagance on the shoulders of his friend Urquhart, who sat writhing like a skinned eel, stoutly denying the charge; but there were three to one against him, and he was obliged to submit to the General's taunts. The worthy landlord of the Mitre was astonished when his bill was called for without claret being ordered. I told him " that we had come to eat at his house, not to drink," which did not add to his good humour, and probably induced the honest man to charge for his entertainment 17. 13s. 6d. par tête! The General would have resisted this monstrous demand, which he swore was a gross imposition; but he found he had no redress, and paid his shot reluctantly, again attacking poor Urquhart as the cause of such extravagance. The scene was worthy of the stage! To the Shades we adjourned, where the General found that he got sixteen glasses of port wine for 3s. 6d. which restored him a little to good humour; but unfortunately it rained, and he had 2s. more to disburse for coach-hire! I never had the honour of meeting the Courtier after this memorable day; but I heard that he talked of nothing else for six months but his neighbour's extravagance in ordering a turtle and venison dinner at Billingsgate, price 17. 13s. 6d. exclusive of port wine! Mrs. Jordan. * In the year 1778, when I was on the recruiting service at Cork, Mrs. Jordan, at this time Miss Philips, was brought down from Dublin by her friend Mr. Daly, the Smock-alley manager, who had introduced her on the stage the preceding year, and she had met with great applause, especially in the farce of "The Romp." Heaphy, the manager of the Cork Theatre, engaged her at 20s. per week, along with her father, who got 15s. more as a scene-shifter. The young lady was at this time in her seventeenth year, and though not a regular beauty she was universally admired, and proved a great attraction. On this account the manager gave her a benefit; but, for want of patronage, it proved a complete failure, the expenses of the house being more than her receipts. A party of young men, at the head of which was a Mr. Smith, a banker's clerk, were desirous that their favourite should have another benefit, and they called lustily for Heaphy to come on the stage, but he would not appear. The young Pats, however, were determined to carry their point, and, being joined by the pit, they proceeded to tear up the benches, and to attack the orchestra, who, to drown the clamour, had begun fiddling. This was alarming; and the acting manager, O'Keefe, Heaphy's son-in-law, at length judged it prudent to make his appearance, when a spokesman delivered, in an appropriate harangue, the desire of the audience, that Miss Philips should have a free benefit. O'Keefe remonstrated, stating that the season had been unprofitable to the manager; but this excuse was not admitted, and he was compelled to yield to the wishes of the public, alias a score of wild bucks, of which I made one. The benefit was fixed for an early evening, and our debutante had an audience that produced above 401.—an immense sum in her eyes, as it Two years afterwards, the York manager invited her to play six nights, at 57. a night, although he had previously refused to raise her salary to 51, a week! was probably the first money she ever had: her popularity increased before the season was closed. Henderson had at this time an engagement in Cork, and I met him at a supper party, to which Miss Philips had been also invited. This celebrated actor complimented her in the most flattering manner on her talents, advising her to study her profession, and to assume a higher walk in comedy than playing romps, and her success, he said, would be certain. On her return to Dublin, her salary was raised to three guineas a week. I believe her first engagement in England, some years afterwards, was at York. Smith the actor, and then manager of Drury-lane Theatre, saw her, and procured an engagement for her in town, where she speedily rose into fame. SPORTING SCENES IN INDIA, NO. V. The deep Jungle. "The tall rock, The mountain and the deep and gloomy wood, WORDSWORTH. We were approaching the end of the hot weather; not a breath of air nor a leaf were moving; one vast and murky cloud, as if by an innate power, unfolded its lurid masses, in which shades of fire and smoke were confusedly intermingled between the unruffled serenity of the lovely landscape upon which it frowned, and the clear blue sky that arched itself above it. The thunder growled in its depths, and large single drops of rain occasionally would fall with a heavy and solitary plash. The heat of this period is most oppressive-respiration becomes difficult-a nausea is felt, and the mind involuntarily ponders on all and each of the ills to which we are liable in a land which the uncomfortable sensation of mere existence tells us we were not made for. It was on one of these days, when the half-sick, half-apprehensive feel, which doctors would call a predisposition, and superstitious people a presentiment, was general amongst us, that we listened to Ferishta's history-two of us cleaning our locks, and a third trying to dose, with a fixed smile upon his face, which, signifying either approval or civil dissent to what was said, was intended to guarantee him from the charge of inattention. Our reader was one who, hating the deep jungle, which, to borrow his language," he held to be a blackguard combination of wood and water against the lives of the lieges," was never more pleased than when any authority came to back his notion that we loved it "not wisely, but too well;" and it was this idea that gave so peculiarly triumphant an emphasis to his delivery of the following passage:"They entered paths so horrible that a male tiger, through dread of their terrors, would have become a female; fuller of windings than the curly locks of the fair, and narrower than the path of love. Demons would have started at the precipices and caverns, and the globe would have been panic-struck at one view. The sun never enlivened the valleys, nor had Providence fixed bounds to their extent. The grass was tough as the teeth of serpents, and the air fetid as the breath of dragons. Death dwelt in the water, and poison in the breeze!" He here closing the book, and rising from his recumbent position to wave it over his head, cried, "Ferishta for ever! There's your high jungle, with its frights and fevers! What do you think of that for a piece of Orientalism?" "That it is a perfect one," replied one of us, "but for the solitary truth that has crept into its last line." "Hear him, hear him! 'Death dwelt in the waters, and poison in the breeze!' and yet you go for months to drink the one and breathe the other." "Excuse me ! I drink half and half, and breathe manillas. I obey the faculty, and live generously in exposed situations." "Ah, you are hopeless; 'frenzied! to that worst pitch that wears a reasoning show;' but I declare when you fellows go provoking fate for all the jungle can give, I feel as De Coucy did when his gentle friends were to risk themselves against the Saracens.* To call it sport to stand for hours on rocks, or to creep, perspiring pails full, through beast-tracts! and for what? Why, one fellow hears a dozen junglecocks-another catches two glimpses of a pea-fowl's tail-a third comes in flushed up to the eyes, having just cocked both barrels at the rustle of a lizard-while, after waiting an hour for that hero (pointing him out) and wondering what he can have met as shot after shot comes pealing up, in he comes, and in reply to our shouting interrogatories, laughs at the disappointment of our hopes, and favours us with What -me! Oh, I was firing for the echo up yonder among the rocks.' Take my word, you'll suffer for it. Though the Gueber worship the fire a hundred years, it yet will burn him!" (He continued, after looking out,) "That cloud has passed over, so I'll go and kick up a hare." We laughed as we asked "if the Guebers found the sun more grateful for their worship than the fire ;" and his smile approved the ridicule he affected to deprecate, by his reply" Pooh, pooh, I only risk a grilling -I was holding forth to you against poison." But the fact is, like most men within the tropics, he cared little for either, if his wilfulness whispered him to brave them. Where life seems to be perilled for mere existence, we jeopard it readily for enjoyment; and the suggestions of prudence are no where so powerless as here, where we should expect them to be most imperative. Our friend only hated the forests because he had no relish for the sensations in which they are unquestionably much richer than in more substantial returns. The charm of sport in them is in the scenery to which it leads us, and in the incident and accident to which it is liable; and it is to give some idea of these that I have introduced the foregoing conversation. The I forget all are not familiar with Froissart. The allusion is taken from that period of his Chronicles that contains the Duke of Bourbon's war in Africa. "The Lord de Coucy disliked this, saying, Here be ten noble gentlemen about to fight ten Saracens,-how do we know if their opponents are gentlemen? They may bring to the combat ten varlets or knaves, and if they are defeated, what is the gain?" The cause of this war was essentially chivalrous. The Saracens having asked why they were attacked, were told " that their ancestors had crucified and put to death the Son of God, called Jesus Christ, without any cause, and that the Christians were come to retaliate on them for their infamous and unjust judgment; secondly, that they were infidels in the faith of the Holy Virgin, and had no creed of their own-for these and other causes they were held to be enemies." The Saracens had the ill-manners to laugh heartily at this, saying it was the Jews who had done these things. |