Alexis Willibald
Walladmor, Vol. I (of 2)
CHAPTER VI
Now this is worshipful society. -King John.
The room, into which Bertram now introduced himself, was spacious beyond any thing that he had anticipated: but, spacious as it was, it seemed barely sufficient for its different occupants. A large playbill, hung in a very conspicuous situation, announced the play of Venice Preserved for representation on that evening. It was now a good deal after 10 o'clock, and the performance was over: but the Venetian Nobili, in the dignified solemnity of their black dresses, were scattered about the room in parties-or laying aside the costlier part of their finery in a remote corner partly screened off from public view, which had been allotted to them as a tiring room. Round about the fire-place, in an elevated sort of dais which had been railed off into a bar, a canopy of smoke proclaimed that a festive party were somewhere seated beneath it. On advancing a few steps further, Bertram could distinguish their faces and arrangement. Close by the fire side sate a huge Dutchman with a huge pipe, solemnly fixing his eyes upon the pomp of clouds which he had created or was in the act of creating, and apparently solacing himself with some vague images of multiplication and division. His leaden eye showed that he was completely rapt away from all that was passing about him: two critics disputing at his right ear upon the relative pretensions of two actresses, – two politicians disputing at his back on the Sinking Fund and the Funds in general, as little disturbed his meditations as two disputants before his face, viz. the landlord and the manager of the theatrical company, who were sharply discussing some private point of finance in their daily reckoning. The poor manager, – with his keen, meagre, and anxious countenance, at this moment rendered doubly anxious by the throes of an arithmetical computation, – seemed the antagonist pole of the Dutchman: he was endeavouring, with little success, to bring the night's receipts into something like a counterbalance to the daily bill: this had just been presented by the landlord, who had placed his bulky person immediately behind him, looked over his shoulder, and having encircled him with his arms for the sake of leaning with his knuckles upon the table, had fairly pinned in the poor manager, who continued at intervals upon every perplexing interruption from his antagonist to wheel round and face him like a stag at bay. Nearer to Bertram sate a man, whose curved nose-black hair-ardent looks-and sallow complexion, at once announced him as a Frenchman: he was occupied in painting a portrait of one actress at the same time that he was making complimentary grimaces to three others. In the chimney-corner, and over against the Dutchman, was seated an elderly man, of short thick-set person, dressed in a shabby grey coat-boots-and a white hat. His features were not in themselves very striking, but had been habitually composed to one intense expression of dissatisfaction with all about him. Like the Dutchman he looked away from the company towards the fire, and appeared to take no interest in any thing which went on: but this in him was mere affectation. The Dutchman, as a child could see, was most sincerely indifferent to every thing but the festoons of smoke which formed about him; nor ever seemed to suffer in his peace of mind except when this aerial drapery was rent or too much attenuated: then indeed he puffed with a perceptible agitation, until he had reinstated the vapoury awning-which done he immediately recovered his equanimity. But as to White Hat, by the complexity of his manœuvres for disguising his interest in the conversation about him-by uniformly shifting his chair upon the approximation of any other chair-and by the jealous anxiety with which he affected to turn away his head if any person were talking near him, he made it sufficiently evident that no one person in the room paid so earnest an attention to what was passing as himself. He also had resorted to a pipe for the sake of expressing his abstraction from the world about him; but how different were his short-uneasy-asthmatic puffs from the floating pomp with which the Dutchman sent up his voluminous exhalations! In his right hand he held a newspaper which he appeared to be reading; sometimes glancing his eye over it, sometimes dwelling upon the words as if he were spelling them; in general however giving himself a great deal of trouble to impress upon all about him that he took little or no interest in any thing he read.
These were the most noticeable persons of the company to which Bertram now advanced; taking care at the same time to call for wine in an imposing tone of voice. At this sound the landlord wheeled suddenly round, which fortunately set the poor manager at liberty. Both stared at Bertram: the Frenchman looked up for a moment: even the White Hat, being taken by surprise, made a half wheel on his chair; though immediately reverting, not without some indignation at himself, to his former position; in fact every soul in the room looked at Bertram except the Dutchman. Silence ensued; and the landlord, after raising and dropping his eyes alternately from Bertram's head to his foot, demanded if he had a horse with him.
"No, I am on foot," replied Bertram.
"Very late time of night," the landlord muttered, "to be walking: pray, which way do you come?"
"From the sea-side, where I was set ashore this evening about 5 o'clock."
After a little further cross-examination, the landlord appeared to be satisfied; and directed "Jenny" to bring the wine; the buz of conversation, which had been hushed during the landlord's colloquy with the stranger, freshened again; and Bertram proceeded to take his seat amongst the company.
It is affirmed by some philosophers that Timon of Athens himself, if, on issuing from the darkness and cold of a fifteen miles' walk on a frosty winter's night succeeding to a day of hardship and exposure, he were suddenly to burst on a gay fire-side of human faces, lights, wine, and laughter, – would inevitably forget his misanthropy for that evening, and be glad to take his share in the conversation. Bertram was probably so disposed; it was therefore unfortunate for him that he took his seat by the side of the Dutchman.
"I perceive," said Bertram, "that you have had a play performed this evening."
Without looking up from his pipe, Minheer replied-"Like enough! I was told there were players here."
Nothing discouraged Bertram turned to his opposite neighbour, the White Hat: "You, Sir, probably attended the performance?"
"I?" replied the indignant man, "I trouble myself with such fooleries, when the poor country is ruined and perishing for bread?"
"Fooleries! Mr. Dulberry," exclaimed the manager, "what! Venice Preserved?"
"Venice Preserved, or Venice Treacle; what care I? It's a play-book, isn't it? – Here we are taxed already for the support of libraries, museums, Herculanean manuscripts, Elgin marbles, and God knows what. Very soon, I suppose government will assess us so much a head for the theatres."
"Ah, poor Venice Preserved!" ejaculated the manager, sighing: "it has always some enemy or other. In quiet times it is laid on the shelf. Then comes some season of political ferment: the liberty boys kick up a dust: the public voice calls for the play clamorously: the theatre fills nightly: every allusion is caught at with rapture: and, as to the actors, they may lie upon their oars; for, let them play as ill as they choose, they are sure of applause for the sake of what they utter. But, as often as ever this happens, in steps the government and forbids the representation."
"Forbid the representation?" shrieked Mr. Dulberry; "forbid that excellent play Venice Preserved? What! there's something in it against government, is there? Oh! it's an admirable play. And how, now, how is it they forbid it? Not by act of parliament, I dare swear: bad as parliament is, they would hardly trust it to them. By an order in council, I suppose? and Lord Londonderry sends a regiment of dragoons into the pit, eh?"
"No, Mr. Dulberry: the Lord Chamberlain forbids it."
"The Lord Chamberlain? Worse and worse! And so it's the Lord Chamberlain that sends the dragoons? – Chamberlain! why that's the man that takes care of the government sheets and pillow-slips; the overseer of the chambermaids. And he's to trample on the liberties of the country and to put out the lights of the theatre, by the hoofs of military despotism! – Oh fie! fie! poor old England!"
Partly from political indignation, and partly from some more personal indignation at a little laughing which now arose in some quarter of the room, the patriot returned hastily to the Courier, which he held in his hand; and the conversation seemed likely to droop; when suddenly Bertram's attention was drawn by a bright blaze of light; and, looking up, he beheld his reforming neighbour, Mr. Dulberry, metamorphosed into a pillar of salt. His mouth was wide open; the whites of his eyes were raised to the ceiling; one hand was clenched; the other hung lifeless by his side. The Courier had sunk with one end into the fire; a roaring flame was springing up and enveloping the whole: and, before Mr. Dulberry returned to his self-possession, the newspaper with all its world of history and prophecy was reduced to ashes.
"Mr. Dulberry! for God's sake, Mr. Dulberry! what's the matter?" exclaimed the company on all sides. "Has Bolivar beaten the royalists? Is the Austrian loan repaid? or what is it, for the love of heaven?"
"What is it, gentlemen? a thing to make your ears tingle! the Manchester massacres were a trifle to it. An Englishman-Oh Lord! gentlemen, it's all over with the habeas corpus act-an Englishman has been arrested by the emissaries of government after he had quitted the kingdom."
"What government? the French government?"
"No, gentlemen, by the English government: arrested out of the kingdom: think of that, gentlemen!"
"But where, where?" exclaimed several voices: "in France?"
"Why yes, I think I may say in France: for he was going to France; and he had actually put off in a boat from the Isle of Wight, and was three hundred yards from shore, on his way towards a French ship, which he was going to board."
"Oh come, Mr. Dulberry," said some of the company, laughing, "but that's England, however: as far as an English cannonball will reach, and a little farther too in the opinion of some jurists, the four seas are English property: England's domain; her manor; her park; and she has a right to set up turnpike gates if she pleases."
"By no means, gentlemen, by no means; Blackstone says that, to constitute possession, there must go two things-the act of possessing, and the will to possess. So also no doubt of a man's domicile: to make this bar my domicile, I must not only be here; but secondly, I must will to be here. Now this man willed to be in France; and England was no longer his domicile. And where a man is not, there he ought not by law to be arrested."
This pretty piece of subtilty was received by most of the company with a smile; but as Mr. Dulberry remarked that some little murmuring arose, which announced that some of his auditors were impressed with what he had said, he seized his opportunity, jumped upon his chair, flourished his white hat, and briefly harangued the company.
"Gentlemen," said he, "we all know that ministers have sealed this country against all unhappy foreigners, and have tarnished the old English character for generous hospitality by their cursed alien bill. This we knew before: but now comes a fresh assault on liberty. Not only must we look on and see nets and lines set all round our once hospitable shores to catch the unhappy fugitives from continental tyranny; but at length, it seems, ministers are to be allowed to throw out their grappling hooks after English fugitives from the tyranny of Lord Londonderry. If a man runs to the North Pole, I suppose Lord Londonderry and Ally5 Croaker will soon be after them: and that, by the way, is the meaning of all these polar voyages. – I see that even the ministerial gentlemen present cast down their eyes and look ashamed. No man has a word to say in defence. What I propose therefore is, that we all unite in an address to the king-testifying our abhorrence of this last act which has made the cup of our afflictions run over, and begging that his majesty would dissolve the present administration, and form a new one on a more patriotic basis."
"But, Mr. Dulberry, who is it that has been arrested?" cried many of the company.
"That's nothing to the purpose, gentlemen: the man's an Englishman; and that's enough, I hope."
"But how if he should turn out to be an English lunatic escaped from his keepers?" said a cynical looking man in the corner.
A laugh followed, and a general cry of-, "Name! name!"
Not to forfeit his hold upon the public attention, Mr. Dulberry found himself obliged to relax the rigor of his principles, and to descend from the universal character of Englishman to so impertinent a consideration as the character of the individual. – "His name, gentlemen, is Edward Nicholas."
"Nicholas! Edward Nicholas!" said a number of voices at once: "what our Nicholas?"
"As to that, I know not: he was described in the Courier as a bold adventurer: many honourable traits were recited of his conduct; and in particular I remember it was said that he had fought on the side of liberty in South America, and had once commanded a sloop of war-as a commissioned officer-under Artigas."
"Oh! the same, the same!" exclaimed the greater part of the company: "our Nicholas, sure enough: but what mad trick has he been playing now?"
The patriot was evidently uneasy, and reluctant to answer this question. Being pressed however on all sides, he replied-"I don't know, gentlemen, that he has been playing any tricks: the Courier pretends that he is charged with some knowledge of the Cato-street affair; treason, or misprision of treason, as they call it in their d-d treasury jargon."
"Oh! Cato-street? Is that it?" cried the whole room with one voice, "then we'll have no addresses for him: no, no! we'll not address his Majesty for a Cato-street conspirator."
"But, gentlemen," said the disconcerted patriot-"But gentlemen, I say-"
"Mr. Dulberry, it won't do," interrupted a grave-looking tradesman: "Attack the ministers as much as you will. Let every man attack them. It's all fair. And I dare say they deserve it: for I'm not the man to think any of them saints. But let's hear it all in the old English way; all fair and above board: no foul play: no stabbing of unarmed men: set Junius upon them-set Cato upon them-set Publicola upon them in the newspapers. But no slipping into men's friendly meetings! no cutting throats by the fire-side! No Venice conspirators in England."
"Friendly meetings! and fire-sides!" said Dulberry; "why, God bless me, how you varnish the matter! To hear you talk, – one would suppose these ministers of ours were so many lambs, and met for nothing but to kiss and sing psalms. I tell you, they never meet but to plot against us and our liberties. And as to conspirators, if you come to that, I know of none except at Lord Harrowby's. You say there was a conspiracy of Cato-street against Grosvenor-square: I say-No: there was a conspiracy of Grosvenor-square against Cato-street."
This view of the case seemed so new and original to the company, that a general laugh followed; and the reformer, finding that he was no longer accompanied by the sympathy of his audience, sate down in dudgeon-muttering something about "lacqueys of Lord Londonderry." The politician being silenced, an opening was now allowed for a subject far more interesting to the majority of those who were present, and to many more in this part of Wales.
"And so Nicholas is taken at last?" said Mr. Bloodingstone a butcher: "Well, now that's what I could never have thought-that Nicholas should let himself be taken as quietly as a lamb. Bless your hearts, on all this coast there's not a creek or a cranny big enough for a field-mouse but he knew it: and all the way from Barmouth to Carnarvon I'll be sworn there's not a man on the Preventive Service, simple or gentle, but Nicholas has had his neck under his foot at one time or another."
"Aye, Mr. Bloodinsgtone," replied the landlord: "but a Bow-street officer with his staff is like Joshua the son of Nun; he can make the sun and moon stand still. So that's not the thing I wonder at. What surprizes me is-that a man like Nicholas should ever meddle with these politics and politicians, that get nothing for their pains but bloody heads and a trifle of fame that would never pay for one glass of good whiskey punch. What! Nicholas was a man of sense; and a d-d long head he had of his own. And, if he would but have been quiet and have gone on in a regular way, he might have been a rich man by this time: for he had credit for evermore with the merchants in Amsterdam and Antwerp; and with some others too that I'll say nothing about."
"Was this Nicholas then settled in business at this place?" asked the Frenchman.
A smile appeared on the major part of the faces present; and the landlord answered with a loud laugh-"Settled! my God! I would be glad to see the place where Nicholas was ever settled for twenty-four hours together. No, bless you! Nicholas was no settler. And there's some folk will say that he never sate down in his life: but that's not true; for I've seen him sit many a time in that very arm-chair where the young gentleman is now sitting: " here he pointed to Bertram who felt somewhat uneasy at the very marked attention which was at this moment directed on him by the company. The landlord however took no notice, but proceeded in his answer: "No, Nicholas was no settler: and just as little can I call him a man in business. He was a sort of agent, you see, in other people's business; and a d-d dangerous sort of business too; and I suppose there's never been his match in that way since the time of Owen Owalys. However we'll say nothing about all that: he stocked the whole country with cheap brandies and other little matters. And so I'll say nothing against his way of doing business; though I reckon we mustn't praise it, except in a corner."
"You must understand, Monsieur," said a voice from behind, "that this Nicholas set up an opposition trade against the government; and undersold it, so that government lost all its trade in this part of the country: for which reason government is jealous of him, and can't abide him. – But, landlord, it seems you knew this Nicholas?"
"I knew him in a manner: but how? I knew him, and I knew him not. Scores of times he has sate in this bar, and I never knew it to be him until after he was gone. Sometimes he would come dressed like an old beggar, and slink into a corner; sometimes like a labouring man, and argue with me for the value of a halfpenny; other times I have known him come like a lord, and make his guineas fly about like so much dust. And once-egad! I can't help laughing-he came in the uniform of a dragoon officer, and he would needs cudgel me for letting Nicholas escape. He got me by the throat: I sung out for my very life: Jenny-she ran for the constables: the neighbours came flocking in: Alderman Gravesand brought all his posse comitatus down, for he was then on the look-out for Nicholas at the town's end: and, would you believe it? by that time all was settled the whole party of the smugglers, bag and baggage, was clean through the town, and ten miles on the road to Ap Gauvon. And all this at noon-day."
"Well, landlord, and what said Nicholas when you saw him next?"
"The next time I saw him, gentlemen, was in my own bar; and dressed in one of my own wigs, jacket, and apron. Gad, I never was so frightened in the whole course of my life. I had just walked a mile out of town to our parson's; and, as I was coming back, a man shot by me like an arrow: but, as quick as he was, says I to myself, – That's Nicholas! And sure enough many minutes had'nt passed before up comes a great company of men, and asks me which way Nicholas had gone. I thought to myself-These'll be the Blazer's men of the revenue service, that's stationed off Caernarvon. So I did'nt trouble myself to give 'em much of an answer, and away they pelted after him in full cry. Well, gentlemen, – before I got home, both hare and hounds (as it happened) had turned into my bar. And, if you'll believe me, the first man I clapt my eyes on as I came into my own house-egad, I thought it was myself or my own ghost."
"And if this had been in the Scotch Highlands now, landlord, you would have been sure of being in your coffin before the year was out."
"Why I know not for that, Sir: but it's not lucky in any country for a man to see his own likeness walking about: and I'll not deny but I was a little startled; and I sate me down amongst the Blazer's men, and could not speak a word. And says he to me-(but he turned his face rather away) – 'Good man, did you call for whiskey?' And I could have sworn to the voice for my own amongst a thousand: But, when he served me the whiskey, I looked hard at him; and I saw it was Nicholas. But I had'nt the heart to betray him: and I says to him-'Landlord, how are you? and how goes business?'-'Business?' says he, 'we've business for evermore; I'm run off my feet with business.' And sure enough he took sixpence of me in my own bar; and fifteen shillings of the revenue men for smuggled brandy. And whilst they were drinking, out he slips-and whips away at the north gate by the very same road they had all come; and two minutes after the lieutenant and his company were off, as if the devil drove 'em, to the south."
"This extraordinary talent for personating every age and character," said the manager, "he learned (or improved however) whilst he was in my troop. He was the best actor I ever had: nothing came amiss to him-Richard the Third, or Aguecheek; Shylock or Pistol-Romeo or the Apothecary-Hamlet or the Cock6: for by the way he once took it into his head to play the Cock in the first scene of Hamlet; and he crowed in so very superior a style that the oldest cock in the neighbourhood was taken in, and got to answering him; and the crowing spread from one farm-house to another till all the cocks in Carnarvonshire were crowing."
"Ha! ha! ha! Mr. Manager, and what said the audience to this?"
"What said the audience? Why they encored him-pit, boxes, and gallery: and the ghost was obliged to come on again, that he might be crowed off again. But all this was when he was a boy of 17: for he soon got tired of the stage."
"Aye, he grows tired of every thing," said some of the company: "and by this time, I'll be bound for it, he's grown tired of smuggling: and, if it be true that he has had any thing to do with Thistlewood, that's the reason."
"No," said another, "that's not the reason; tired of smuggling, I dare say he was; for a man, like Nicholas, could never have liked it for any thing but its active life, and its danger and its difficulties. But, if any thing has brought him connected with Cato-street, it is love."
"Love! what love for Lord Londonderry?"
"No, no, you guess what I mean; there are few in this room but know pretty well what I mean; love for a young lady in the neighbourhood."
"Miss Walladmor, I suppose?"
"Hush! hush!" said the landlord, – "let us name no names."
"Well! no matter for the name: but we all know that love had turned his brain: he was desperate; and for this last year and a half it's notorious that he has been as mad as a March hare."
"Nicholas in love!" said Mr. Bloodingstone, "well, now that sounds as comical to me as if I should say, that my bull-dog Towser was in love with a bull."
"Why, God bless my soul! haven't the Rotterdam merchants turned him out of their service for that very reason? I know it to be a fact that, no farther back than last February, when one of them was promising him 400 guineas if he'd do this and that, – 'Damn your guineas!' says he, 'if it were not for a fairer face than ever I saw on a guinea, I would never set foot in Wales again.' And he raved at such a rate about the young lady, that all the owners began to be shy of him: and the end of it was, that Captain le-what's his name? – has been put in his room."
"Captain Jackson you mean," said the landlord, "for that's his real name; aye, it's true enough that Jackson has now got the command."
"Well, but mad or not mad, what became of Nicholas after the Bow-street officers had laid hold of him? Mr. Dulberry, you had the paper: what became of him? Clapt into a post-chaise for London, eh?"
"No, sir: with all their plots, it seems government couldn't make sure of catching him on the Cato-street business: witnesses couldn't be bought, or juries couldn't be packed, I suppose: and so they've sent him to this part of the country; and he's to take his trial at Dolgelly or Carnarvon for some old affairs, God knows what, with the Custom-house or the Blazer."
"God bless me!" exclaimed almost every man in the room, "so then we shall see Edward Nicholas once more; and I'll walk fifty miles rather than miss the sight. And which way does he come, Mr. Dulberry?"
"By sea, gentlemen; they shipped him on board the steam-packet Halcyon; and God, in his mercy, grant that this cursed instrument of despotic power may blow up and deliver so good a patriot from their snares!"
"The Halcyon!" exclaimed Bertram, with a vehemence proportioned to his sudden surprise and the interest which by this time he felt in the subject of the conversation-"The Halcyon! Why then, Mr. Dulberry, your prayer is granted: for the Halcyon blew up two days ago in St. George's Channel; somewhere, I believe, off the Isle of Anglesea: I was one of the passengers; and, to the best of my belief, all on board have perished-except myself."
In Lloyd's coffee-house, or other places of great resort in London, when a placard is exhibited reporting any important news, the restlessness of public impatience seems often as though it would extort an answer to its further curiosity from the inanimate pillar or post to which the placard is affixed: it may be supposed how much more liable to such importunity is the bearer of a placard that happens to be no stone pillar but a living man. Bertram was pressed upon from all sides for his narrative of the catastrophe, which he gave in substance as the reader has already heard it. Of Nicholas, whom he now understood to have been his fellow-passenger, he knew nothing: that some state prisoner, of extraordinary character, was on board-he had indeed casually heard; but had seen nothing of him to his own knowledge; and if he were under hatches and in irons, there was no room to doubt that he must have been amongst those who were most sure to have perished. All that he could certainly report of the final sequel to his own share in the adventure-was that, since his eyes had opened on shore, they had rested on no countenance which he remembered to have seen on board the Halcyon. It is needless to say that a mixed expression of wonder, deep interest in the events, and compassion for the unfortunate sufferers, accompanied Bertram's narrative. The narrator himself was the object of a mingled sympathy of condolence and congratulation-blended however with an air of keen examination directed to his features (now that they were brought nearer to the observers and under a steadier light) which had once before distressed him in the course of the evening, and for which he could find no satisfactory explanation. The prevailing sentiment, which arose at the end of the account, was a lively regret that the near prospect of seeing Edward Nicholas again-so suddenly opened upon them-should have been so suddenly overcast. Nevertheless, such was the general confidence in his good fortune and his unrivalled resources in presence of mind and bodily activity-that considerable odds were offered by many of the company that Nicholas, who had outlived so many desperate storms, both by sea and land, in all climates of the world, would yet be heard of again.
For any of these feelings or considerations Mr. Dulberry had no leisure: the moral, which he drew from this, as from all other events great or small-sad or merry, was exclusively civic and full of patriotic spleen: – "So then," said he, "you see what sort of ships government choose for transporting their state prisoners?"
"But, good God, Mr. Dulberry, you can hardly suppose that the boiler of the Halcyon was in the pay of my Lord Londonderry?"
"The boiler! – No: but where was the engineer that should have been in his pay? Didn't Mr. Bennett propose a year or two ago, that no steam-packet should be lawfully turned off the stocks before it was thoroughly examined by a state engineer? Didn't-"
But here supper was announced, a summons welcome in itself, and at this moment doubly so as putting a stop to the reformer. Even that person condescended to be pleased on the former consideration, though reasonably incensed on the other; and he advanced to the table in a continued ejaculation of inarticulate grunts-a sort of equivocal language in which he designed to convey alike his approbation of supper and displeasure at the interruption.
Bertram took his seat with the rest of the party; but sought an early opportunity of withdrawing himself from a scene of convivial merriment, in which his previous fatigues had by this time wholly disqualified him for sharing with any cordiality. Wearily he followed the person who conducted him to his bedchamber: but, spite of his sleepiness and exhaustion, he was roused to a slight shock of something like terror, by a little incident which occurred on the way: – in one of the galleries, through which they passed, a man was standing at the further end: he was apparently in the act of admitting himself into a bedroom: but something, which embarrassed him about the lock or the key, detained him until they advanced near enough to throw the light of a candle full upon his profile. It was the profile of a face tanned into a gypsey complexion, and for so young a face-weather-beaten, thin, and wasted; but otherwise of Grecian beauty of outline; and, as far as could be judged from so hasty and oblique a glance, remarkably expressive and dignified. The man did not look round or take any other notice of them, as they advanced: and the attendant either had not, or affected not to have, any knowledge of his person: but Bertram felt a bewildering remembrance, as if suddenly snatched and recovered from a dream, of the same features seen under circumstances of some profounder interest. He labored anxiously to recollect in what situation and when; but the events of the last few days had so agitated and bewildered his mind, that he labored in vain; and, the more he thought, the more he entangled himself in a web of perplexity. From this and all other perplexities, however, he was speedily liberated by the sound sleep which seized him the moment he had laid his head on the pillow.