that the jury had performed its duty, and sat our minds at ease as to the issue of the proceedings. But, although this clear-headed spokesman en forced his opinion by all the ordinary methods of stamping, grinning, swearing, and looking like a Gorgon's head, upon all who dared to think other wise than he did, he was stoutly contradicted by an honest, fat, sleek ship-chandler, who had not indeed the volubility of language nor activity of body which distinguished the captain, but who opposed all these by dint of mere stubborn vis inertie: the captain's stamps, grins, oaths, and black looks made no more impression upon him than hail-shot would have done on a woolsack. But, although the honest dealer in chandlery withstood the fury of his opponent as unmoved as the bust of Neptune, erst the figure-head of a goodly Dutch East-Indiaman, which now stood by way of a sign over his door, could have borne a puff of wind, it was to be feared that the other gentlemen of the jury would not remain equally unshaken, and it was evident that many of them were strongly impressed with what they had read in that accursed paper; and such of them as could pursue a chain of ideas, stimulated by the declamatory harangue of the fiery advocate for making some one swing for it," to use his own phraseology, began to endeavour to connect the threats said to have been uttered by the colonel with the sudden and evidently violent death of Cumming. But even the most stupid could perceive that there was a great deal of difference between threatening a man and cutting his throat, and our friend the chandler did not fail to point out this circumstance; nay, he went further, for he asked, quietly, yet firmly, what proof there was that any threats had been made? and, luckily for me, there were none, except the assertion of the newswriter, which, of course, could not be received as evidence. And now I perceived that other considerations than the mere guilt or innocence of the parties suspected were involved in this unfortunate inquisition. The scribbler, who had done all this mischief, had published his theory in a ministerial paper, and the slavetrader, as a ministerialist, was bound to support it, as were all his partisans. For exactly the opposite reason did the worthy ship-chandler oppose it, and you might as easily have persuaded him that a kettle of his own pitch was a pan of milk, as that a ministerial reporter could report the truth. This unlucky debate, in fact, began to assume an appearance totally foreign to the original porport of the meeting, and to become entirely political, according to the knowledge of the disputants on politics. The captain talked loudly of democrats and corresponding societies, and the ship-chandler prosed, in return, about the slave trade, and negro driving, and bribery and corruption, and all the other topics, either general or particular, which he thought might offend his adversary, or at least render him ridiculous in the eyes of the assembly. The coroner endeavoured to interfere; but, whatever his authority might be over angry jurymen, he had little or none over angry politicians, and how the matter might have ended I know not, had it not been interrupted; for, just as the captain was accusing his opponent of wishing to renew in England the horrors of the reign of terror, and the other was as openly charging the captain with endeavouring to introduce the Spanish inquisition into the same fortunate land, while the coroner was calling both parties to order, and threatening the exertion of his legal power to still the tumult, the police-officer, who had been employed by me, rushed into the room, followed by a beadle, and one or two other official-looking persons. "Gentlemen," said he, "you may spare yourselves the trouble of further inquiry; an inqnest has been already held on the body of this man." "Bother your inquest, and you too!" cried the captain. "Is the time of a gentleman to be taken up and his principles insulted by a designing democrat, and he not to find a verdict after all? It's a jacobin trick altogether!" Inquest held before!" exclaimed the shipchandler, at the same instant. "Why, this looks like some of your royalist sham plots to bring honest men into trouble." Though both these deadly opponents were quite satisfied with the assertion of the policeofficer, the coroner demanded proofs of what he advanced. The person I call a beadle then stepped forward, and declared that the body of Cumming, which he had been to examine, had ship-been found more than a month ago in a ditch near an obscure hamlet, at a little distance from the north-western end of London; that an inquest had been held upon it, and that good evidence had been brought forward to prove he had committed suicide, and that, as no person had appeared to claim the body, a verdict of lunacy had been given, and the corpse buried at the expense of the parish; but that, upon examining the grave that morning, it was ascertained to be empty. He offered to confirm his testimony upon oath, and after he had been sworn and had again repeated it, the jury, as the phrase is, after a few minutes' deliberation, brought in their verdict accordingly; and thus this affair, which had threatened to be so serious, ended in smoke. Here I could not help exclaiming: "I hope, however, you punished the knave who had cast obloquy on your character by his insinuations," "No," replied the captain, "he retracted of his own accord before I could even inquire who he was. In the same night's paper, after an account of the adjourned inquest, was added a long abusive tirade against a morning paper, from which the writer declared he had copied the whole of his scandalous assertions; further, he stated that his own opinion had been from the beginning, that the said account, as published in the said journal, was utterly false and libellous; and that, aware of the greater circulation of his own paper, he had extracted it on purpose that it might be fully exposed, for the sake of the reputation of two most meritorious individuals, meaning, I presume, the colonel and myself; and so the matter dropped, for I was anxious to sail the next day, and the colonel was desirous to get to Scotland, as he expected immediately to be employed and might never have another opportunity of seeing his parents." "And did you never hear anything farther relative to this body?" said I. "Why, yes," returned the captain. "When I arrived at Edinburgh I received a polite note, without a signature, in which the writer lamented the trouble I had experienced, and informed me that the body was intended for a teacher of anatomy. Cumming had fallen by his own hand, not in a paroxysm of remorse, for his feelings were too degraded and too callous to be accessible to the attacks of such a passion, but in a fit of despair, when he found himself about to be actually confronted by the intended victim of his avarice, and saw that his inability to make good his charges would involve himself in the ruin he had projected for his former benefactor. To whom the subsequent attack on the colonel concerning this man's death was owing I never learned. It was evidently the work of someone well acquainted with the relations between them, and who found in the circumstance an opportunity to gratify personal malevolence. He is Colonel Cameron was again employed, for his case excited consideration among those whose consideration could be of service. now a half-pay major-general, but he has turned his sword into a ploughshare, or rather into a sugar-hoe. He retired, after the war, to the colony where I first knew him, procured a grant of land, and is now an eminent cultivator, and celebrated for the excellence of his cocoa. is, moreover, somewhat of a merchant, and in the possession of a large and increasing fortune. I am told some of his old comrades look upon him as a degraded brother, and consider it much more honourable to pass as much time every year in club-houses and theatres as he does in overlooking his plantation. He As I am not deeply read in military codes of honour, I imagine the soldier who, in times of peace, devotes his talents and energies towards increasing his own fortune, in a manner which also adds to the wealth and prosperity of his country, to be a much more noble character than one who devotes his whole time and abilities to indolent amusements; but, as old Woolcraft used to say when he made an assertion which he deemed incontrovertible, "I may be wrong." YOUTH beholds happiness gleaming in the prospect. Age looks back on the happiness of youth; and instead of hopes, seeks its enjoyment in the recollections of hopes. Thus happiness ever resides in the imagination. Even her mother wonderingly Saith, "How strange our darling seems, And I answer, "Oft we see Women living as in dreams, When love comes into their dreams, But she says, undoubtingly, Just a child of scarce sixteen, I would think the self-same way, Men have wooed and maidens loved! THE PICTURE GALLERY, PIAZZO SCLIARRA, ROME. Through an old deserted mansion I wander'd all alone, Yet never in the busiest life Such changes have I known: Such sudden, strange transitions- And, first of all, two shepherds Stepp'd forward from the shade, But, stumbling o'er a human skull, Shrunk back into the glade. Loud shouts and shrieks behind me, Writhes bleeding on the ground! I hear the hissing irons As they flesh them in his heart; With rage and pain unbearable His rolling eyeballs start! How now-was it a vision ? A broken pipe his sceptre, As, "Crown me King!" he cried; "for I Laughing, I make a forward step, With darkness, clouds, and floods of fire, All hideous, slimy, crawling things, One shudder, and I dart away. The moment that I fly Around me glows the guardian day, The blue and holy sky. How swelt the scene? The careless nymphs The beaming sun is glancing. Air breathes her kisses through the woods, And folds the distant mountain peaks "O spotless sky, O lovely earth, Three soldiers at a table Through an open door I scann'd, Two gaming; somewhat further back The third one took his stand. I saw him, as I entered, Make signs unto the other. The one he was deceiving I heard him call "dear brother"! I hastened from the blacken'd door, Then, methought, I enter'd suddenly A woman's face bent over me, So sorrowful, so sweet, Where'er I moved still followed me And Fancy caught with quicken'd sense What deathless thought, what constant love, What sorrow unconfest, That longs for human sympathy, MY RECOLLECTIONS OF CHAP. I. CONSTANTINOPLE Towards the latter part of 1855, I arrived in England from a tour of foreign service in the tropics, where, during the previous seven years, I had faced a full share of the trying influences of the burning sun and malarious soils of the and now, whilst expecting to gorgeous East; enjoy at least a few months' respite in the invigorating climate of my native land, there came a summons one morning, not three weeks after I set foot on the pier of Gravesend, to hold myself in readiness for immediate service in the Crimea. On the following day came also the route. Scarcely a fortnight afterwards I landed at Scutari, and, on reporting myself to the chief of the Army, Medical Department, was told off for duty in the hospitals, pending the arrival of a transport; when I would, in all likelihood, be directed to return to England in charge of sick and wounded. Sebastopol had fallen during my journey overland, and the intense excitement in the Turkish capital was now subsiding. Still, there was much talk of a continuance of the war, and preparations were actively going on on the slopes of the Dardanelles for wintering portions of the army, with the view of a fresh campaign in the following spring. Never in the history of Byzantium did its splendid harbours and narrow filthy streets present such a heterogeneous display of shipping and human beings. The war had attracted as motley an assemblage of almost all nations as perhaps were ever convened in so circumscribed an area; moreover, the Allied forces so completely changed the aspect of the city and its environs that, to all appearances, the Ottoman dynasty had, for the time being, completely succumbed to the martial powers of England and France: for, whilst the soldiers of the former occupied every available barrack and public building on the Asiatic side, the latter seized on whatever accommodation they could lay their hands on in Constantinople, and crowded the right bank of the Bosphorus for miles with their camps and hospitals. Apropos of this, there was a story then current of how a pacha, indignant at this usurpation of his native soil by the Infidels, and smarting at the delay in capturing Sebastopol, reproached a group of Englishmen concerning the boast made by the "how Allies on first landing in the Crimea, they had promised to beat the Russians and capture their stronghold in a fortnight," to which one of the Westerns replied: "We have done better than that. Are we not the masters of Constantinople?" the The natural, or I should rather say unnatural, history of man, as observed in the streets of the capital at the time of which I write, DURING THE was about the strangest imaginable. Between exclaim," and what a contrast to the rest of his countrymen," at the same time a proof that the Turkis made of good bone and sinew, could he only be persuaded to exercise them! Among all the crowds of natives then swarming in the bazaars and streets, the Persians were most conspicuous, not only from their high head-dresses, but the fine and stalwart appearance of many of the men. One forenoon I was surprised, at the gateway leading to the hospital of Scutari, by hearing (to me) the familiar language of Hindoostan spoken by several dusky Orientals huddled together in a corner to escape the north-wind. They turned out to be natives of Lahore, and had made their way overland with the view of accomplishing the grandest aspiration of a Moslem, but, finding themselves without sufficient means, had taken service with their old masters in the Crimea, as labourers on the Balaclava-road, and now, to use their own words, "had made sufficient pice (Anglicè money) to enable them to see Mecca and return to their native country." After their long and tedious pilgrimage, they seemed perfectly astonished when told that I had lately come all the way from Lahore by water. Unfortunately for me, I was just at the moment being painfully reminded of their native soil by the premonitory symptons of an attack of ague, which, strange to say, had never seized me when residing in India, not even in the most malarious district of Peshawur, nor until a few days after my arrival in England. The latency of the poison of this disease, and its modes of development in the human frame, are assuredly strange in many ways; indeed, it seems that neither removal from the infected locality nor cold are certain to eliminate the venom from the constitution. Many examples are known of persons who had suffered from ague and were free from attacks for years, and whilst residing in localities where the disease was unknown, became unexpectedly seized on exposure to viccissitudes of temperature, as if the lurking poison had been in the body all the time, and was only kept in abeyance by a healthful action of the functions, so that when once the balance was lost, then the disease developed itself. During my rambles in and about the great city, seldom a day passed without some strange adventure or engaging novelty. At one time it was the Sultan in his kayek shooting across from the Golden Horn; at another, some distinguished foreigner. One morning, whilst getting into a ferry-boat on the Asiatic side, to which an elderly female had been conveyed from Constantinople, I was surprised by my companion, a young medical officer, exclaiming : "There goes the Maid of Athens !" I must confess I could not resist the curiosity of looking at the countenance of this famous lady; so, running past her, I suddenly turned, expecting to accomplish my wish, but was doomed to disappointment, for she was deeply veiled, and I lost my only chance of seeing Mrs, Here, however, she was, in the very city to which Byron was bound 45 years before, when he sang "Though I fly to Istamboul, Athens holds my heart and soul." The cemetery in connection with the British troops at Scutari. at the time of which I am writing, was well-filled, considering the short period it had been in use; for, what between the sick and wounded sent from the Crimea, there seemed little room for more tenants within its low, whitewashed walls. It stands on a small promontory behind the great barracks, which was then the general hospital for the British force, and overlooked the sea of Marmora and mouth of the Bosphorus. On the first occasion of my visit, the day was cool and cloudy, with a remarkable stillness of the atmosphere; so that distant sounds could he heard quite clearly. I well remember, as my companion and myself were seated on the wall admiring the beautiful scene stretching out before us, we were attracted by loud hurrahs from a transport, homeward bound. They proceeded from a ship-load of invalids, who were giving vent to their feelings at the prospect of getting back to Old England. As their fervent exclamations died away in the distance I could not help ruminating on the strange fortunes of war, and that there might be few or many of these poor fellows who in thus raising their voices were expressing heartfelt thankfulness that they had escaped a soldier's grave in the Scutari Cemetery; and how little did the hundreds lying in the soil below us think, scarcely more than twelve months previously, as they passed yonder Seraglio Point, that they would be buried on this little promontory! During our ramble through the Cemetery we were forcibly struck by the strange commingling of friend and foe, as depicted on the little pieces of wood which served to mark the individual graves. By the side of a Major of the 49th Regiment lay a Russian officer. There was no respect for rank; for next to a fine marble monument to the memory of an officer of the Guards lay a carpenter of the Army Works Corps. There were numerous tombs with simply the name and regiment of the occupants, the doctors predominating, which showed that bullets and disease had been fairly faced by them. In the back-ground stretched long mounds, containing the rank and file; for in the early days of the war, death stalked so rapidly through the ranks that no time was allowed to mark the graves of individual soldiers; yet now and then it seemed that a private had managed to preserve his comrade's memory in a simple tale. Close to the General Hospital there lived a Greek, who, at the time I speak of, was driving a thriving trade in furnishing grave-stones for the Crimea and Scutari. Late and early this man's establishment was open, and the front of his shop-wall decorated with marble slabs, presenting a sad record of the war; those for the Crimea invariably ending with a request, in Russian, that the memento |