Gonda. I leaped and danced for joy, and cried "may I indeed? Then I will believe everything; for then I may follow my dear father all over Guzerat ; and if ever he should be wounded again, I may take out my finest shawl (for he gave me two) and tear it and tie it round the place."

Hattaji. Chieftain! I did well to save this girl. .. And thou, timid tender Dewah! wilt thou too follow me all over Guzerat?

Dewah. Father! I am afraid of elephants and horses, and armed men: I should run away.

Hattaji. What then wilt thou do for me?
Dewah. I can do nothing.

Hattaji (to himself). I saved her: yes, I am glad I saved her: I only wish I had not questioned her: she pains me now for the first time. He has heard her: O, this is worst! I might forget it; can he?

Child why art thou afraid?

Dewah. I am two years younger than Gonda. Hattaji. But the women of Sada would slay thee certainly, wert thou left behind, and perhaps with stripes and tortures, for having so long escaped.

Dewah. I do not fear women; they dress rice, and weave robes, and gather flowers.

Hattaji. Dewah! I fear for thee more than thou fearest for thyself.

Dewah. Dear, dear father! I am ready to go with you all over Guzerat, and to be afraid of any. thing as much as you are, if you will only let me. I tremble to think I could do nothing if a wicked man should try to wound you; or even if only a tiger came unawares upon you, I could but shriek

and pray; and it is not always that Vishnou hears in time. And now, O father, do remember that, although Gonda has two shawls, I have one; and she likes both hers better than mine. If ever you are hurt anywhere. . Ah, gracious God forbid it! .. have mine first: I will try to help her: how can I! how can I! I can not see you even now: I shall cry all the way through Guzerat! For shame, Gonda! I am but nine years old, and you are eleven. Do girls at your age ever cry? Is there one tear left upon my cheek?

Hattaji. By my soul, there is one on mine, worth an empire to me.

Dewah. O Vishnou! hear me in thy happy world! and never let Gonda tear her shawl for my father!

Hattaji. And should it please Vishnou to take thy father away?

Dewah. I would cling to him and kiss him from one end of heaven to the other.

Hattaji. Vishnou would not let thee come back again.

Dewah. Hush! hush! would you ask him? Do not let him hear what you are saying.

Hattaji. Chieftain! this is indeed the peace of God.

May he spare you to me, pure and placid souls! rendering pure and placid everything around you.

And have thousands like you been cast away! One innocent smile of yours hath more virtue in it than all manhood, is more powerful than all wealth, and more beautiful than all glory. I possess new life, I will take a new name ;* the daughter-gifted Hattaji.

Oliver. In His name verily I come, and upon His errand; and the love and duty I bear unto my godfather and uncle have added wings, in a sort, unto my zeal.

Sir Oliver. Take 'em off thy zeal and dust thy conscience with 'em. I have heard an account of a saint, one Phil Neri, who in the midst of his devotions was lifted up several yards from the ground. Now I do suspect, Nol, thou wilt finish by being a saint of his order; and nobody will promise or wish thee the luck to come down on thy feet again, as he did. So! because a rabble of fanatics at Huntingdon have equipped thee as their representative in Parliament, thou art free of all men's houses, forsooth! I would have thee to understand, sirrah, that thou art fitter for the

thee out of Hinchinbrook when thou wert scarcely half the rogue thou art latterly grown up to? And yet wert thou immeasurably too big a one for it to hold.

Oliver. It repenteth me, O mine uncle! that in my boyhood and youth the Lord had not touched me.

Sir Oliver. Touch thee! thou wast too dirty a dog by half.

Oliver. Yea, sorely doth it vex and harrow me that I was then of ill conditions, and that my name. even your godson's .. stank in your nostrils.

.

Sir Oliver. Ha! polecat! it was not thy name, although bad enough, that stank first; in my house, at least.+ But perhaps there are worse maggots in stauncher mummeries.

The Orientals are fond of taking an additional name from some fortunate occurrence.

+ See Forster's Life of Cromwell.

urgency.

Sir Oliver. More confidently! What! hast got more confidence? Where didst find it? I never thought the wide circle of the world had within it another jot for thee. Well, Nol, I see no reason why thou shouldst stand before me with thy hat off, in the courtyard and in the sun, counting the stones in the pavement. Thou hast some knavery in thy head, I warrant thee. Come, put on thy beaver.

Oliver. Uncle Sir Oliver! I know my duty too well to stand covered in the presence of so worshipful a kinsman, who, moreover, hath answered at baptism for my good behaviour.

Sir Oliver. God forgive me for playing the fool before Him so presumptuously and unprofitably! Nobody shall ever take me in again to do such an absurd and wicked thing. But thou hast some left-handed business in the neighbourhood, no doubt, or thou wouldst never more have come under my archway.

Oliver. These are hard times for them that seek peace. We are clay in the hand of the

potter.

Sir Oliver. I wish your potters sought nothing costlier, and dug in their own grounds for it. Most of us, as thou sayest, have been upon the wheel of these artificers; and little was left but rags when we got off. Sanctified folks are the cleverest skinners in all Christendom, and their Jordan tans and constringes us to the averdupois of mummies.

Oliver. The Lord hath chosen his own vessels. Sir Oliver. I wish heartily He would pack them off, and send them anywhere on ass-back or cart, (cart preferably,) to rid our country of 'em. But now again to the point: for if we fall among the potsherds we shall hobble on but lamely. Since thou art raised unto a high command in the army, and hast a dragoon to hold yonder thy solid and stately piece of horse-flesh, I can not but take it into my fancy that thou hast some commission of array or disarray to execute hereabout.

Oliver. With a sad sinking of spirit, to the pitch well-nigh of swounding, and with a sight of bitter tears, which will not be put back nor staid in anywise, as you bear testimony unto me, uncle Oliver!

Sir Oliver. No tears, Master Nol, I beseech thee! Wet days, among those of thy kidney, portend the letting of blood. What dost whimper at? Oliver. That I, that I, of all men living, should be put upon this work!

Sir Oliver. What work, prythee?

Oliver. I am sent hither by them who (the Lord in his loving-kindness having pity and mercy upon these poor realms) do, under his right hand, administer unto our necessities, and righteously command us, by the aforesaid as aforesaid (thus runs the commission), hither am I deputed (woe is me!) to levy certain fines in this county, or shire,

Sir Oliver. If there is anything left about the house, never be over-nice: dismiss thy modesty and lay hands upon it. In this county or shire, we let go the civet-bag to save the weazon.

Oliver. O mine uncle and godfather! be witness for me.

Sir Oliver. Witness for thee! not I indeed. But I would rather be witness than surety, lad, where thou art docketed.

Oliver. From the most despised doth the Lord ever choose his servants.

Sir Oliver. Then, faith! thou art his first butler.

Oliver. Serving him with humility, I may peradventure be found worthy of advancement.

Sir Oliver. Ha! now if any devil speaks from within thee, it is thy own: he does not sniffle: to my ears he speaks plain English. Worthy or unworthy of advancement, thou wilt attain it Come in; at least for an hour's rest. Formerly thou knewest the means of setting the heaviest heart afloat, let it be sticking in what mud-bank it might: and my wet-dock at Ramsey is pretty near as commodious as that over-yonder at Hinchinbrook was erewhile. Times are changed, and places too! yet the cellar holds good.

Oliver. Many and great thanks! But there are certain men on the other side of the gate, who might take it ill if I turn away and neglect them.

Sir Oliver. Let them enter also, or eat their vie tuals where they are.

Oliver. They have proud stomachs: they are

recusants.

Sir Oliver. Recusants of what? of beef and ale We have claret, I trust, for the squeamish, if they are above the condition of tradespeople. But of course you leave no person of higher quality in the outer court.

Oliver. Vain are they and worldly, although such wickedness is the most abominable in their cases. Idle folks are fond of sitting in the sun: I would not forbid them this indulgence.

Sir Oliver. But who are they?

Oliver. The Lord knows. May-be priests, descons, and such like.

Sir Oliver. Then, sir, they are gentlemen. And the commission you bear from the parliamentary thieves, to sack and pillage my mansion-house, is far less vexatious and insulting to me, than your behaviour in keeping them so long at my stabledoor. With your permission, or without it, I shall take the liberty to invite them to partake of my poor hospitality.

Oliver. But, uncle Sir Oliver! there are rules and ordinances whereby it must be manifested that they lie under displeasure. . not mine.. not mine. . but my milk must not flow for them.

Sir Oliver. You may enter the house or remain where you are, at your option; I make my visit to these gentlemen immediately, for I am tired of

standing. If thou ever reachest my age,* Oliver! | (but God will not surely let this be) thou wilt know that the legs become at last of doubtful fidelity in the service of the body.

men.

Sir Oliver. I call such treatment barbarous; their troopers will not let the gentlemen come with me into the house, but insist on sitting down to dinner with them. And yet, having brought them out of their colleges, these brutal half-soldiers must know that they are fellows.

Oliver. Yea, of a truth are they, and fellows well met. Out of their superfluities they give nothing to the Lord or his Saints; no, not even stirrup or girth, wherewith we may mount our horses and go forth against those who thirst for our blood. Their eyes are fat, and they raise not up their voices to cry for our deliverance.

Sir Oliver. Art mad? What stirrups and girths are hung up in college halls and libraries? For what are these gentlemen brought hither?

Oliver. They have elected me, with somewhat short of unanimity, not indeed to be one of themselves, for of that distinction I acknowledge and deplore my unworthiness, nor indeed to be a poor scholar, to which, unless it be a very poor one, I have almost as small pretension, but simply to undertake a while the heavier office of burser for them; to cast up their accounts; to overlook the scouring of their plate; and to lay a list thereof, with a few specimens, before those who fight the fight of the Lord, that his Saints, seeing the abasement of the proud and the chastisement of worldlymindedness, may rejoice.

Sir Oliver. I am grown accustomed to such saints and such rejoicings. But, little could I have thought, threescore years ago, that the hearty and jovial people of England would ever join in so filching and stabbing a jocularity. Even the petticoated torch-bearers from rotten Rome, who lighted the faggots in Smithfield some years before, if more blustering and cocksy, were less bitter and vulturine. They were all intolerant, but

*Sir Oliver, who died in 1655, aged ninety-three, might, by possibility, have seen all the men of great genius, excepting Chaucer and Roger Bacon, whom England has produced from its first discovery down to our own times. Francis Bacon, Shakspeare, Milton, Newton, and the prodigious shoal that attended these leviathans through the intellectual deep. Newton was but in his thirteenth year at Sir Oliver's death. Raleigh, Spenser, Hooker, Eliot, Selden, Taylor, Hobbes, Sidney, Shaftesbury, and Locke, were existing in his lifetime; and several more, who may

be compared with the smaller of these. Chapman's Homer, first book.

Oliver. I always bow submissively before the judgment of mine elders; and the more reverentially when I know them to be endowed with greater wisdom, and guided by surer experience than myself. Alas! those collegians not only are strong men, as you may readily see if you measure them round the waistband, but boisterous and pertinacious challengers. When we, who live in the fear of God, exhorted them earnestly unto peace and brotherly love, they held us in derision. Thus far indeed it might be an advantage to us, teaching us forbearance and self-seeking, but we can not countenance the evil spirit moving them thereunto. Their occupations, as you remark most wisely, might have been useful and peaceful, and had formerly been so. Why then did they gird the sword of strife about their loins against the children of Israel? By their own declaration, not only are they our enemies, but enemies the most spiteful and untractable. When I came quietly, lawfully, and in the name of the Lord, for their plate, what did they? Instead of surrendering it like honest and conscientious men, they attacked me and my people on horseback, with syllogisms and enthymemes, and the Lord knows with what other such gimcracks; such venemous and rankling old weapons as those who have the fear of God before their eyes are fain to lay aside. Learning should not make folks mockers. . should not make folks malignants .. should not harden their hearts. We came with bowels for them.

Sir Oliver. That ye did! and bowels which would have stowed within them all the plate on board of a galloon. If tankards and wassail-bowls had stuck between your teeth, you would not have felt them.

Oliver. We did feel them; some at least: perhaps we missed too many.

Sir Oliver. How can these learned societies raise the money you exact from them, beside plate? dost think they can create and coin it?

Oliver. In Cambridge, uncle Sir Oliver, and more especially in that college named in honour (as they profanely call it) of the blessed Trinity, there are great conjurors or chemists. Now the said conjurors or chemists not only do possess the faculty of making the precious metals out of old books and parchments, but out of the skulls of young lordlings and gentlefolks, which verily pro

mise less. And this they bring about by certain gold wires fastened at the top of certain caps. Of said metals, thus devilishly converted, do they make a vain and sumptuous use; so that, finally, they are afraid of cutting their lips with glass. But indeed it is high time to call them.

Sir Oliver. Well.. at last thou hast some mercy.

Oliver (aloud). Cuffsatan Ramsbottom! Sadsoul Kiteclaw! advance! Let every gown, together with the belly that is therein, mount up behind you and your comrades in good fellowship. And forasmuch as you at the country-places look to bit and bridle, it seemeth fair and equitable that ye should leave unto them, in full propriety, the mancipular office of discharging the account. If there be any spare beds at the inns, allow the doctors and dons to occupy the same.. they being used to lie softly; and be not urgent that more than three lie in each. . they being mostly corpulent. Let pass quietly and unreproved any light bubble of pride or impetuosity, seeing that they have not always been accustomed to the ser

vice of guards and ushers. The Lord be with ye!.. Slow trot! And now, uncle Sir Oliver, I can resist no longer your loving-kindness. I kiss you, my godfather, in heart's and soul's duty; and most humbly and gratefully do I accept of your invitation to dine and lodge with you, albeit the least worthy of your family and kinsfolk. the refreshment of needful food, more needful prayer, and that sleep which descendeth on the innocent like the dew of Hermon, to-morrow at daybreak I proceed on my journey Londonward.

After

Sir Oliver (aloud). Ho, there! (To a servant.) Let dinner be prepared in the great dining-room; let every servant be in waiting, each in full livery; let every delicacy the house affords be placed upon the table in due courses; arrange all the plate upon the side-board: a gentleman by descent.. a stranger.. has claimed my hospitality. (Serrant goes.)

Sir! you are now master. Grant me dispensation, I entreat you, from a further attendance on you.

Countess. Ludolph! my beloved Ludolph! do we meet again! Ah! I am jealous of these little ones, and of the embraces you are giving them. Why sigh, my sweet husband?

Come back again, Wilhelm! Come back again, Annabella! How could you run away? Do you think you can see better out of the corner?

Annabella. Is this indeed our papa? What, in the name of mercy, can have given him so dark a colour? I hope I shall never be like that; and yet everybody tells me I am very like papa.

Wilhelm. Do not let her plague you, papa; but take me between your knees (I am too old to sit upon them), and tell me all about the Turks, and how you ran away from them.

Countess. Wilhelm! if your father had run away from the enemy, we should not have been deprived of him two whole years.

Wilhelm. I am hardly such a child as to suppose that a Christian knight would run away from a rebel Turk in battle. But even Christians are taken, somehow, by their tricks and contrivances, and their dog Mahomet. Beside, you know you yourself told me, with tear after tear, and scolding me for mine, that papa was taken by them.

Annabella. Neither am I, who am only one year younger, so foolish as to believe there is any dog Mahomet. And, if there were, we have dogs that are better and faithfuller and stronger.

Wilhelm (to his father). I can hardly help laughing to think what curious fancies girls have about

*Andreas Hundorff relates that the Pope sanctioned the double marriage of Count Gleichem, who carried his second wife into Thuringia, where she was well received by the first, and, having no children, was devoted to her rival's.

Mahomet. We know that Mahomet is a dog. spirit with three horsetails.

Annabella. Papa! I am glad to see you smile at Wilhelm. I do assure you he is not half so bad a boy as he was, although he did point at me, and did tell you some mischief.

Count. I ought to be indeed most happy at seeing you all again.

Annabella. And so you are. Don't pretend to look grave now. I very easily find you out. I often look grave when I am the happiest. But forth it bursts at last: there is no room for it in tongue, or eyes, or anywhere.

Count. And so, my little angel, you begin to recollect me.

Annabella. At first I used to dream of papa, but at last I forgot how to dream of him: and then I cried, but at last I left off crying. And then, papa, who could come to me in my sleep, seldom came again.

Count. Why do you now draw back from me, Annabella?

Annabella. Because you really are so very very brown: just like those ugly Turks who sawed the pines in the saw-pit under the wood, and who refused to drink wine in the heat of summer, when Wilhelm and I brought it to them. Do not be angry; we did it only once.

Wilhelm. Because one of them stamped and frightened her when the other seemed to bless us. Count. Are they still living? Countess. One of them is. Wilhelm. The fierce one.

Count. We will set him free, and wish it were the other.

Annabella. Papa! I am glad you are come back without your spurs.

Countess. Hush, child, hush.

Annabella. Why, mama? Do not you remember how they tore my frock when I clung to him at parting? Now I begin to think of him again : I lose everything between that day and this.

Countess. The girl's idle prattle about the spurs has pained you: always too sensitive; always soon hurt, though never soon offended.

Count. O God! O my children! O my wife! it is not the loss of spurs I now must blush for. Annabella. Indeed, papa, you never can blush at all, until you cut that horrid beard off.

Countess. Well may you say, my own Ludolph, as you do; for most gallant was your bearing in the battle.

Count. Ah! why was it ever fought? Countess. Why were most battles? But they may lead to glory even through slavery.

Count. And to shame and sorrow.

Countess. Have I lost the little beauty I possessed, that you hold my hand so languidly, and turn away your eyes when they meet mine? It was not so formerly . . unless when first we loved. That one kiss restores to me all my lost happiness.

Come; the table is ready: there are your old wines upon it: you must want that refreshment. Count. Go, my sweet children! you must eat your supper before I do.

Countess. Run into your own room for it. Annabella. I will not go until papa has patted me again on the shoulder, now I begin to remember it. I do not much mind the beard: I grow used to it already but indeed I liked better to stroke and pat the smooth laughing cheek, with my arm across the neck behind. It is very pleasant even

80.

Am I not grown? I can put the whole length of my finger between your lips.

Count. I will not dissemble. . such was never my intention.. that my deliverance was brought about by means of . .

Countess. Say it at once. . a lady.
Count. It was.

Countess. She fled with you.
Count. She did.

Countess. And have you left her, sir?

Count. Alas! alas! I have not; and never can. Countess. Now come to my arms, brave, honourable Ludolph! Did I not say thou couldst not be ungrateful? Where, where is she who has given me back my husband?

Count. Dare I utter it! in this house.
Countess. Call the children.

Count. No; they must not affront her they must not even stare at her: other eyes, not theirs, must stab me to the heart.

Countess. They shall bless her; we will all. Bring her in. [Zaida is led in by the Count. Countess. We three have stood silent long enough: and much there may be on which we will for ever keep silence. But, sweet young creature! can I refuse my protection, or my love, to the preserver of my husband? Can I think it a crime, or even a folly, to have pitied the brave and the unfortunate? to have pressed (but alas! that it ever should have been so here !) a generous heart to a tender one?

Why do you begin to weep?

Zaida. Under your kindness, O lady, lie the

to deserve your love.

Countess. Did he never tell you he was married? Zaida. He did indeed.

Countess. That he had children?

Zaida. It comforted me a little to hear it.
Countess. Why? prythee why?

Zaida. When I was in grief at the certainty of holding but the second place in his bosom, I thought I could at least go and play with them, and win perhaps their love.

Countess. According to our religion, a man must have only one wife.

Count. I have forfeited all I ever could boast of, your affection and my own esteem. Away with caresses! Repulse me, abjure me; hate, and

purely through kindness.

Countess. We can love but one.

Zaida. We indeed can love only one: but men have large hearts.