Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

dark, the rain was pouring down, the horses were worn out, and the steep descent of the road was so dangerous, that it was most hazardous to proceed. The prince tried to reassure the lady; so she locked herself up in the room assigned to her. Her companion, wrapped in his white officer's cloak, under which he kept his pistols in readiness, stepped into the apartment where the robbers were assembled, and sat down at the table facing the window, while his servant, likewise armed, kept watch outside the house, close to the window, on the alert in case his master should want any aid.

The company consisted of about ten or twelve men. Their rifles leaned against the wall; their axes lay upon the board, on which stood the wine-jugs. They drank, sang, and talked over their adventures, and did not take any notice of the newly-arrived guest. The prince mixed in their conversation, took wine with them, and listened to their conversation until it had grown late. Suddenly, he rose, called the publican, threw a gold coin on the table, and said, "This is for the wine these good folks have drunk: they are my guests. But now," he continued, addressing the robbers, "it is time to sleep. In the adjoining room is a sick lady: the entertainment has lasted long enough. I cannot allow any one longer to occupy this room, or disturb the lady's rest by noise."

At this imperative command, one of the robbers jumped from his seat, and, contemptuously laughing, cried out: "Does the gentleman fancy that because he has a carriage-and-four, and plenty of money in his pocket, he has the right to command us?"

An uproar followed. The men vociferated: "We are poor lads, and, therefore, we are masters here!"

"We are no timorous peasants, who take off our hats to every gentleman!"

"We have got money and credit enough to swallow a draught when we are thirsty!"

"We do not accept any gifts from people who fancy themselves better than we are! We will not be ruled!"

All this was simultaneously uttered, with a loud tumult, from all sides. All the robbers had got up. The prince mechanically caught hold of his pistols, and threw off his cloak.

66

"I am a master in the craft in which you are but apprentices," he exclaimed with dignity. You are robbers; I am a soldier; and fear neither the mouth of a rifle, nor the edge of an axe.”

During this uproar, a man of middling height and strongly-marked features had risen from the bench beside the stove, where he had quietly sate during the whole time, without partaking of the wine. He now said, in a commanding tone, "Silence!"

The robbers grew speechless at this order, and again sate down to the table.

"Mr. Officer," continued the man, "don't think that you frighten us. I, too, have been a soldier, and have most probably smelt more powder than you ever did. I am Haburak. If I desired to do you any harm, a single whistle would suffice. The table would be overthrown, the candles extinguished; and, before you were aware of what

was going on, you would be a dead man, no less than your servant there at the window, who thinks he watches us, while we watch him. But I saw you help a lady out of the carriage, and take her to the adjoining room. We never will disturb a lady's rest; we war with men, not with women. For the present, we shall leave this shelter; yet remember, sir, that it is the first time for a fortnight that these men have been under a roof, and that the couch there below on the damp oak-leaves is by no means comfortable. Farewell!"

The prince was greatly struck by the whole proceeding. He did not entirely trust the robber's words; and, relieving his servant, they paced up and down, thus keeping watch the whole night. But no robber again appeared.

'On the morrow the lady continued the journey with her companion. The weather had cleared up, and only the puddles in the lanes, and the drops of rain glistening on the branches, reminded them of the clouds of the previous day. After they had ridden about an hour, they suddenly heard the discharge of a rifle close to them in the woods. Haburak stepped forth from the bushes, and bade the coachman halt.

[ocr errors]

The horses stopped; the prince drew forth his pistols. But Haburak, without heeding his threatening mien, rode close up to the carriage door, and said :

"We yesterday sacrificed our comfort that the rest of this lady should not be disturbed. Now, I will see whether it was worth the trouble!"

With these words he lifted the veil which hung down from the lady's bonnet, and looked for an instant into her face.

"She is really very pretty."

He turned round, plucked a wild rose from a bush close at hand, and offered it to the lady with these words :

"Accept this rose kindly as a keepsake from the poor robber, Haburak; and if you sometime hear that he has been hanged, pray an Ave Maria for his soul."

The lady took the rose, and the robber vanished.

Two years later, newspapers related that the robber, Haburak, had been caught; that he had been tried at the assizes at Torna, convicted of desertion and highway robbery, and hanged.'-Vol. i. pp. 308-327.

We have quoted from the first volume, because the matter in it is more separable, and because also the subjects are more illustrative of the condition of the people of Hungary, their various modes of life, and the legends which enliven their winter firesides. But the historical romance which occupies the two latter volumes is a work of high interest, and of much vigour and freshness in the execution. Mr. Pulszky is well qualified, by his intimate knowledge of the history and political movements of his native country, to place before us a living picture of its circumstances, both in relation to its unfortunate connexion with

Austria, and its internal feelings and aspirations. Having moved amongst its higher classes, and been engaged in its most recent and glorious struggle for the maintenance of its independence, he lays open with a master's hand the very action of the national heart, and all those impulses of patriotism, and resentment of ages of wrongs, which have led to the late great revolt against the House of Hapsburg: a revolt conducted with such splendour of valour and ability, but brought to a melancholy close by the slavish hordes of Russia.

Mr. Pulszky could not introduce this into the pages of a romance; it is too near both to the reader and to the feelings of the writer; but he has taken a parallel case, and by that means shown us very much how the Government of Austria causes such resistances by its miserable policy, and how it proceeds in putting them down. The subject of this romance, is a conspiracy which took place soon after the outbreak of the first French Revolution, and when French ideas of revolution were spreading throughout every oppressed country of Europe. It introduces us to a secret society in which Martinovitch, the Abbot of Sasvár, and several of the nobility, as well as some young students and lawyers, were engaged. We are brought into the family of Dr. Kovatch, where we find his daughter, Lenke, and a Madame Raimond, a French lady, who figure much in the story. We are deeply interested in the fortunes of Alexander Solartchek, a young lawyer of a noble nature, who is engaged in the conspiracy, and at the same time in love with Louisa Raimond, the young French widow. We must not, however, reveal the secrets of the story. They are strongly exciting, very tragic, and very true, as may be learned from the Appendix. The whole work will, without doubt, be read with extreme interest, its intrinsic merits being heightened by the novelty of the scenery, and the freshness of the materials.

ART. III.-Memoirs of the Life and Times of Daniel De Foe. By Walter Wilson, Esq., of the Inner Temple. In Three Volumes. London. 1834.

HUMAN nature, which must worship, worships the Dead rather than the Living. To award extraordinary praise to a man while he is among us is generally avoided, as though it were a tacit admission of inferiority. But when he is dead, he seems to be removed beyond comparison. Men do not then wound their

own pride by being fair to him; they rather gratify it in the very act of praising, which at that period is a sort of assumption of equality, if not of superiority.

To the truly great man, however, human praise or blame is of small value. He knows its worthlessness, and looks to a higher Judge. He runs his course steadily, although no hand is raised for him-although all hands are raised against him; and when it is over, he goes calmly to his rest. To him it matters little if the earth resounds with praises or reproaches-for there is another and a better world.

[ocr errors]

This truth is illustrated in the life of the extraordinary man whose name heads this paper. He pursued an honest and manful course; he was hated, and persecuted, and wronged in every way by his contemporaries; but posterity have done him justice, and there are few hearts now that refuse respect, if not reverence, to his name. But the general public do not know how many claims he has on their esteem. They associate his name with his Family Instructor,' 'Religious Courtship,''Memoirs of the Plague,' and, above all, 'Robinson Crusoe.' But all these were works of his old age. His chief labours were as a politician and Nonconformist; and he was a sufferer in the cause of religious liberty. The fact is, that De Foe had no biographer worth notice till more than fifty years after his death. Since then several memoirs of him have seen the light; but scarcely any of them deserve to see light any longer. They lack the animation and reality, which their subject demands. The energetic hero of them shows calm and passive under treatment. They are as lifeless as he is. The best is that by Mr. Wilson, whose elaborate and painful work will always be the standard for future biographers; but it is written with a diffusiveness of style not calculated to lure those who begin it, to the end.

This is so opposed to what should be the case, that we think it well to present a brief account of his life and opinions, touching chiefly on his career as a politician and Nonconformist.

To go no further back in his pedigree, his father was a butcher in Cripplegate, where Daniel was born in 1661. His parents were Independent Dissenters; their minister Dr. Annesley, was once rector of Cripplegate, but, having seceded from the Establishment, preached in St. Helen's, Bishopsgate.

Under such care, he was brought up in the strictest rules of the Dissenters of those times. The sect was then comparatively small, for it was dangerous to belong to it; and true piety had then, as it would have now, under similar circumstances, but few votaries. As Lord Bacon says of virtue, we may say of religionit is like precious odours, most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed.

Of his early years we know little. They were overshadowed, we know, by one cloud-the Great Plague. He was in London all the while it raged; his father judging that his family was as safe there as anywhere else, if it were God's pleasure they should be preserved. The scenes he then saw, and constantly heard of, remained, though he was very young at that time, indelibly impressed upon his mind, but he did not write about them till many years after.

In 1675, at the age of fourteen, he was put to Mr. Morton's academy, or college, in Newington, where, he afterwards says, the pupils had one advantage over those in the established universities; namely, that while, in the latter, the tutors were` careful about the dead tongues, and had all their readings in Latin and Greek-in this one, the tutors gave all their lectures and systems, whether of philosophy or divinity, in English; by which, of course, great advantages were gained. For, as he says, it seems absurd to the last degree that preaching the gospel, which was the end of their studies, being in English, the time should be spent in the language which it is to be fetched from, and none in the language it is to be delivered in. And to this error he humorously attributed it that many learned, and otherwise excellent, ministers preached away their hearers; while jingling, noisy boys, with a good stock in their faces and a dysentery of the tongue, though little or nothing in their heads, ran away with the whole town.

The languages, however, were not neglected. He learned Latin and Greek, Italian and French. He also appears to have acquired a good stock of mathematics, geography, logic, and the like; although the bent of all his studies was primarily towards the office of the ministry.

He

But it was not intended that this should be his career. was to preach from the press, and not from the pulpit. He was solemnly set apart to the clerical profession; but in the impatience of no common genius, he so mixed himself with political controversies, sharp-witted discussions, and secular matters, that it was found necessary, as time drew on, to withdraw him from this employment.

Two years afterwards, he began authorship; and it appears that his worthy parents got over his disgrace at college on learning that he was likely to become of some note and use as a defender of Nonconformity, and in the troubled atmosphere of politics. It seems to us as if he never lost sight of his original destination, though he left the regular road to itwe mean preaching; but that, in the majority of his writings, he was constantly aiming at the spread and growth of true and unfettered religion.

« НазадПродовжити »