and it is reported that your women are still less scrupulous.

You can pardon me the preservation of my girls. So careful are you yourselves in the concealment of your daughters, that I have heard of several sent over to India, to keep them away from the sofa of Rajahs, and the finger of mothers: even the Portuguese take due precautions. None perhaps of their little ones born across the ocean, are considered worth the expenditure of so long a voyage, like yours; but those who are born in Goa, are seldom left to the mercy of a parent. The young creatures are suckled and nursed, and soon afterward are sent into places where they are amused by bells and beads and embroidery, and where none beside their priests and santons can get access to them. These holy men not only save their lives, but treat them with every imaginable kindness, teaching them many mysteries. Indeed, they perform such a number of good offices in their behalf, that on this account alone they, after mature deliberation, hold it quite unnecessary to hang by the hair or ribs from trees and columns, or to look up at the sun till they are blind.

Walker. Were I a santon, I should be much of the same opinion.

Gonda. O no, no, no. So good a man would gladly teach us anything, but surely would rather think with our blessed dervishes, and would be overjoyed to hang by the hair or the ribs, to please God.

he tells us; and God has made us all three happy, and my father has made happy only me and Dewah. He seems to love no one else in the world; and now we are with him, he seldom goes forth to demand his tribute of the Rajahs, and is grown so idle, he permits them to take it from every poor labourer; so that in time a Rajah will begin to think himself as brave and honest a man as a robber. Can not you alter this? Why do you smile?

Walker. We Englishmen exercise both dignities, and therefore are quite impartial, but we must not interfere with Hattaji and his subsidiary Rajahs. Have you lately been at Goa, Hattaji? Hattaji. Not very.

Walker. Nevertheless you appear to have paid great attention to their religious rites.

Hattaji. They are better off than you are in those matters. I would advise you to establish a fishery as near as possible to the coasts of their territory, and seize upon their salt-works for curing the fish.

Walker. Why so?

Hattaji. They have several kinds which are effectual remedies for sins. I do not know whether they have any that are preventative; nor does that seem a consideration in their religion. Indeed, why should it? when the most flagrant crime can be extinguished by putting a fish against it, with a trifle of gold or silver at head and tail. Walker. A very ingenious contrivance ! Hattaji. I would not offend. . but surely their priests outdo yours.

Walker. In the application of fish? or what? Hattaji. When I say it of yours, I say it also of ours, in one thing. We have people among us, who can subdue our worst serpents, by singing:

Gonda. Everyone: but I am little; all things please me.

Walker. Well, Hattaji! thou art not little; tell me then, does not every caress of these children awaken thy tenderness?

Hattaji. It makes me bless myself that I gave them existence, and it makes me bless God that he destined me to preserve it.

Walker. It opens to thee in the desarts of life, the two most exuberant and refreshing sources of earthly happiness, love and piety. And if either of these little ones should cut a foot with a stone, or prick a finger with a thorn, would it delight thee?

Hattaji. A drop of their blood is worth all mine the stone would lame me, the thorn would pierce my eye-balls.

Walker. Wise Hattaji! for tender love is true wisdom; the truest wisdom being perfect happiness. Thinkest thou God less wise, less beneficent than thyself, or better pleased with the sufferings of his creatures?

Gonda. No; God is wiser even than my father, and quite as kind: for God has done many things which my father could never do, nor understand,

may have heard some account, and make him appear and disappear, and devour one man and spare another, although of the same size and flavour; which the wisest of our serpent-singers can not do with the most tractable and the best-conditioned snake.

Gonda. O my dear father! what are you saying! You would make these infidels as great as those of the true faith. Be sure it is all a deception; and we have jugglers as good as theirs. We alone have real miracles, framed on purpose for us, not false ones like those of the Mahometans and Portuguese.

Walker. What are theirs, my dear?

Gonda. I do not know: I only know they are false ones.

Hattaji. Who told thee so? ay, child! Gonda. Whenever a holy man of our blessed faith has come to visit you, he seized the opportunity, as he told me, if you were away for a moment, to enlighten and instruct me, taking my hand and kissing me, and telling me to be- | lieve him in everything as I would Vishnou, and assuring me that nothing is very hateful but unbelief, and that I may do what I like if I believe. Walker. And what was your answer?

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

some and unruly there as here. Did I not turn 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 victuals 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, deacons, 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

(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.

Oliver. Uncle Sir Oliver! now that, as it seemeth, you have been taking a survey of the courtyard and its contents, am I indiscreet in asking your worship whether I acted not prudently in keeping the men-at-belly under the custody of the men-atarms? This pestilence, like unto one I remember to have read about in some poetry of Master Chapman's,+ began with the dogs and the mules, and afterwards crope up into the breasts of

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. According to their own notions, they might have had, at an outlay of a farthing.

Sir Oliver. Art facetious, Nol? for it is as hard to find that out as anything else in thee, only it makes thee look, at times, a little the grimmer and sourer.

But, regarding these gentlemen from Cambridge. Not being such as, by their habits and professions, could have opposed you in the field, I hold it unmilitary and unmanly to put them under any restraint, and to lead them away from their peaceful and useful occupations.

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. After 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.

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. (Sercant 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 dogspirit 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.