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BEAU MONDE:

THE BEAU

OR

Monthly Journal of Fashion.

No. 32.]

OLD ISAAC.

LONDON, AUGUST 1, 1833.

A few white hairs thinly sprinkled over a deeplyfurrowed brow, and straggling across a cheek, whose spots of still bright carnation told of free and constant communion with the winds of Heaven, as they blow in their healthful freshness over moor and mountain, headland and sea-coast-and the eye deeply set under that shaggy ridge of eye-brow! the eye with all its shrewd keen meanings, its quick perceptions, its habitual watchfulness, its dark sparkling lustre, almost undimmed as yet by sixty years of travel, over the roughest ways of this world's rough thoroughfare! I see thee now, Old Isaac, luxuriously seated in a warm corner of the chimney nook, thy huge, dusty, knotted staff on the floor beside thee, the rough bandy legged-cur, faithful companion of thy wanderings, posted between thy knees, eyeing alternately thy face and that attractive platter, on which the kitchen damsel is heaping up a meal of savoury scraps, whereof he hopes incontinently to partake with thee. Ah cunning Isaac! well choosest thou the time to display thy store of rare merchandise -a glance at that remnant of edging, (just enough for a cap,) and the hope of wheedling it from thee a bargain, will be worth to thee a mess like Benjamin's, -and that other maiden, how courteously she gives into thine old bony, vein-embossed hand, that comforting cup of warm, white frothing ale! her eyes wandering the while towards that beautiful gold brooch,― "real gold, set with real rubies," made on purpose to hold her sweetheart's hair, the honest price whereof should be ten shillings, but which for her sake, and for the sake of her pretty face, God bless her! thou wilt let her have for half a crown.

Happy girl!-but there stands one, a human relic of old fashioned times, who frowns reproval of such vain waste of money—when she began the world, " a young servant girl thought of putting out her little savings to interest, or getting together a few creditable things, a good bed at least, and a chest of drawers, against she came to settle and have a family, but now, a silly wench, without a good smock to her back, will spend a month's wages in a pack of trumpery fit for nothing but to figure out a puppet-show madam." Ah Goody! those were good old times, but we live in wicked new ones, and Isaac's lures triumph over thy rhetoric. A little ungrateful of thee, by the bye, to employ it to his detriment-when did he ever forget-at which of his annual visitations, to replenish thy mull gratis with a portion of his best rappee?-that which thou lovest, uncontaminated with aught of modern outlandish intermixture? and even nowv-placable Isaac! see, he tenders the accustomed tribute; and more, he has not forgotten thy child,—the child of thy master's childthy darling, the spoiled darling of thine age-she whom thou religiously believest has not her equal among all the children of these degenerate days, a scion of the

NO. XXXII.—VOL. III.

[VOL. 3.

true old stock! She has stolen behind thee into the forbidden precincts-she has spied out her old friends, Isaac and his dog. In a moment she stands beside the old man's knee, and her tiny hands are patting Tinker's head, and her merry tongue is bidding both welcome, both in a breath, Isaac and Tinker, and her young eyes are roving curiously towards the well-known pack, from which many a little watch, many a pretty-box and pincushion, is sure to be purchased annually, in compliance with the baby longing, seldom disciplined by denial. And great joy and profound admiration doth old Isaac manifest at the sight of "little Missy," profound admiration at her wonderful growth, albeit she might at ten years old pair off for stature with Titania, and sit with the Fairy Queen under the broad shadow of a fern-leaf. And Isaac has not forgotten "little Missy" -and lo! from an inner recess of that mysterious cabinet, forth draws he sundry coloured cards, covered with cotton, and curiously inlaid with rows of shining -lances are they?-spears to transfix larks, or spits to roast them?—neither in truth, but harmless needles (such seemingly as were used in Brobdignag)-valuable implements of housewifery, fraught with peculiar virtues, and not elsewhere to be obtained for love or money. So affirmeth Isaac, on presenting one (slowly extracted from the precious file,) his annual offering to "little Missy." And "little Missy" graciously accepts the same, graciously and gratefully-she means to be very grateful, implicitly believing in the intrinsic value of that costly gift, however puzzled in her own mind as to what purpose she shall apply it." But Isaac brought her once a prettier plaything, not, she dares say, more valuable, because Isaac says the needles are worth so much, but she does not much love needles ---she always loses them, or pricks her fingers with them, and she hates sewing--and that other gift was a beautiful little sham rose-tree growing in a flower pot just like life, with moss, real moss about the roots, and a full blown rose, with ever so many buds, all growing upon one stem, with their green leaves about them.--Oh! it was a beautiful rose---and dear old Isaac was so good to bring it for her---and she will love Isaac and Tinker as long as she lives."---And Nurse will love them too---ay, Isaac and Tinker, because the darling patronises both, and because Isaac has the sense to see all the darling's perfections --and, after all, he is an honest old soul, and, to be sure, that edging is cheap, she must own that, and if the brooch is gold, and she herself does not care if she buys a trifle for old acquaintance sake.-Ah cunning Isaac! most persuasive of pedlars what female heart can withstand the complicated temptations of thy pack, and of thy honied tongue?

Said I not, that every now and then, reminiscences of past times, and bygone things, stream in such vivid beauty across the shadowy now of my existence, that I am a child again—a very child in sooth-" pleased

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with a feather, tickled with a straw"? Such a gleam it was that even now beguiled me from my present self, and from my immediate subject, to my former self, and to old Isaac, yet the episode (however unpremeditately introduced) may not be altogether irrelevant, and at all events, my thoughts, forbidden to ramble, are as it were arrested in their course, and the shallow current shrinks back to its scanty source. After many annual visits paid and welcomed, a year came and passed away, a whole year, and old Isaac came not.-About January had been the usual time of his periodical apparition, about the middle, or towards the latter end of January, -generally it chanced that there was snow upon the ground, and so when snow began to fall about that season, it was looked on as a herald of the old man's approach, and hitherto he had not failed to present himself at the doors, within a few days of the usual period, swinging off the feathery snow-flakes from his old hat, and slipping aside his cumbrous pack, in full assurance of the admission never yet denied to him at ******* It was pleasant to see that humble confidence of courteous welcome. It is pleasant to mark the least link of that great chain which draws, or should draw together all christian hearts. But in the year I spoke of, January came, and the snow fell, and almost the whole stock of tapes and bobbins and needles was expended in the house, and from day to day its renewal was deferred; for such small wares had from "auld lang syne" been yearly purchased of Isaac, and “ one would not but wait a little while for the poor old man." But he was waited for more than " a little while,❞—and very hard weather set in; the small birds came famishing to the window sills, the running brooks became steel, and the soft earth iron, and the snow, the hard frozen snow, lay deep all over the country, in many places along the high roads, over the tops of the highest hedges, and in less frequented ways, over commons and wastes, and through coppice dingles, and in the sinuous clefts of the hills, not an indication of track, or pathway, not a human footmark, nor a single hoofprint, was discernible-and by those intricate roads it was old Isaac's wont to travel, and now he came not. And " poor Isaac! poor old soul!" was often sorrowfully uttered in the family; "what can have become of him? the old man grows feeble too, and the days are so short!"—And pitying eyes were strained early and late in quest of his solitary figure, towards the quarter where it might be expected to appear, breaking the dreary horizontal line, where, reversing the general effect of nature, the black sky was seen descending like a leaden vault to the verge of the white desert beneath. Early and late anxious looks were sent in quest of him, into the dark cheerless morning, and more earnestly still into the lowering twilight; and if the dogs barked after nightfall, and an approaching step was heard, willing feet hastened to the door, and ready hands undrew the bolts, and glad tongues were beginning to exclaim, "Come in, come in, good Isaac!" But January past, the snow melted away-the unfrozen brooks ran rapidly again, the little birds sang merrily, for sweet spring was come, but the old man came not -he never came again.

[Extracted from a beautiful article on "Childhood," in an old number of Blackwood].

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The gentle Ruth, obedient bow'd her head,
As to the weeping Naomi she press'd,
And thus in softest pleading accents said,
And sooth'd the hapless matron she address'd.
"Entreat me not to leave thee here in woe,
Or to refrain from following thee afar:
For where thou goest, thither will I go,
And still thy poor and humble lodging share.
Thy people shall be mine, thy God my God,
And when thon diest, buried by thy side,
I'll bow submissive to the Almighty rod,
So nought but death shall thee and me divide.
And when Naomi saw her steadfast mind,
No more she said, but onwards bent ber way,
To Bethlehem's fields, in converse soft and kind,
Did Ruth beguile the matron's darken'd day.

In Bethlehem's fields," fair Ruth," was favor shewn,
T'was there that Boez the good, the rich, and great,
Saw her and lov'd:—with virtues like his own,
Their hands were joined, Naomi bless'd their fate.

UNDA.

A TRADITION OF TYROL.

WHEN the wanderer, traversing the beautiful valley called the Ortzthal, in Tyrol, has passed the magnificent waterfall of Stuben, and the path, gradually becoming narrower and steeper, winds on among detached masses of rock, sometimes along fearful abysses on the one hand, and sometimes beneath immense perpendicular walls of stone on the other, he comes to a rude, uncultivated tract, where, at the foot of a beetling cliff, overhanging the foaming torrent of the impetuous Ortzbach, there is a cavern almost closed by a block of gigantic magnitude. Having squeezed himself with difficulty through the narrow aperture, he discovers in the interior, which is nearly choked up with rubbish, seven crosses of black wood; and, in the rock forming the side of the cavern are to be seen the same number of crosses, and an inscription now nearly obliterated, cut in the decayed stone, and bearing the stamp of very high antiquity. It cost me considerable trouble to make out the date 1198 and the word UNDA. The romantic wildness of the spot, the evidences of some vast convulsion, and the singular situation of the place itself, together with these symbols apparently denoting some fatal catastrophe, excited my curiosity; but neither my guide nor any of the persons whom I met with could give me further information than that this was the burial-place of some people who had been killed by lightning. The traveller in these parts is accustomed to memorials of such accidents, for he frequently meets with votive tablets, as they are called, upon which is to be seen painted the melancholy story of one who has perished by the fall of a rock or a tree, or tumbled down a precipice, or been drowned by the sudden swelling of some mountain torrent. I conjectured therefore that the more modern crosses might commemorate an event of this kind: but that there shonld be the same number hewn in the rock with so ancient a date and a long inscription, to me to be sure illegible, piqued my curiosity, and I suspected that this might be

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