CHAPTER III. THE RING, Meanwhile, alone and often full of saddened thought, Ratcliffe crossed and recrossed the Pyrenees, came back to Rome, and was one morning passing the Post-office, when it suddenly occurred to him to enquire for any letters from England. There was but one, and that in a strange hand-writing. He opened it and read as fol lows (in French): Bureau of Police, To Monsieur Ratcliffe, Sir, Rome. I write these few words at the request of a dying man, who was knocked down and fatally injured this morning by a cabriolet, while hastily crossing the Rue de Cabannol. He is known to several English here, with whom I am now about to communicate. But he begs me first, while life remains, to send tidings to his dear friend Ratcliffe, and, with his last adieu, to forward the enclosed singular " Iron Ring." I obey his every injunction, and remain, &c. &c. JACQUES BELLATRO, With a heavy heart, Ratcliffe turned back once more to his lodgings in the Campo Messina. The fatal words of Caspagna were being fulfilled, and another victim had fallen. What was the message of the ring to him, Ratcliffe-even then hale, strong, and twenty years of age-but, " Prepare, for the time is at hand when you too must follow your companions to that land whence is no return ?" His friends rallied him; for a time successfully, but ere long in vain, and hopelessly. The ring of iron on his finger, with its ominous device, was but a sign of the despair stamped on his heart, and now eating out the life-blood of his existence. In less than at month he would be of age, and then, as they wisely said, all these foolish presentiments would be at an end. Day after day stole gloomily yet harmlessly away; the Sun gilded the Imperial Tiber with rising and setting glory: all was bright, fair, and gay. It wanted but three days. to that on which Ratcliffe "would be no longer a Boy," and Caspagna's words be proved but a snare and delusion. "Come, come away, Ratcliffe," said his old friend the Marquis Berghino, "from this great wilderness of a city, down to my quiet Villa at Cassarno; eat a good dinner on this memorable twentyfirst birthday, and laugh away your troubles over a flask of good wine. And as for that grim-looking old iron Ring-hand it over to me. It's everlasting "memento mori" is bewildering you into a belief that, in spite of youth, health, and spirits, you are no better than dead. Come, man-come away; promise to come and see me on the 21st. Give me the ring and your word!” A reluctant assent was at last obtained. "I will come and see you, Berghino-dead or alive, I will not fail you." With these words the friends parted; Ratcliffe back to Rome, the Marquis to Cassarno, and his wine flasks. CHAPTER IV. THE DINNER. It was the seventh hour after noon on that burning 21st day of July. The Marquis Berghino was a punctual man. He loved his friends, and had much regard for poor desolate Ratcliffe; but he loved his dinner more affectionately than any friend. Louis, the French valet, had announced that the feast waited his nobility's condescending notice. He would wait ten minutes for his friend-and ten only. He waited ten; and sat down solus to a banquet that would have satisfied the most refined epicurism. He ate, drank, drank and ate in silence; now and then glancing at the Ring: and gently ruminating on the probable employment of his absent friend. But all delights even refined feasting, must come to an end; at length the Marquis rested on his oars, and looked serenely over the calm sea which lay stretched before his window. He even thought kindly of the two peasants he had seen carried by the villa gates that morning, stricken down by Malaria. And thus the amiable Nobleman sat and sipped his wine, as the light of Heaven faded and twilight with dusky mantle began to shroud the hills and vales. Louis, that most discreet of valets, had retired; and the room was silently growing dim. All at once-it was while the Marquis was eating a fig-he suddenly became aware-how, he knew not-that he was no longer alone in the room. He had not heard a sound; but he felt a presence and at once turning his head, beheld, in the very act of entering, his friend Ratcliffe! There could be no doubt; he it was, the same sad face-yet how changed! With utter bewilderment he saw his friend gently advance, reach, and pass by him; and finally, after pausing for a moment at the door, disappear as he had come, in silence. The moment's pause was but to point significantly to "The Ring"-another second, and the Marquis was alone. Berghino, calm, imperturbable, refined and logical, was dismayed. He rang the bell furiously, and demanded "why they dared let Ratcliffe come in unannounced?" "Monsieur Ratcliffe ?" ejaculated Louis-"ce n'est pas possible, mi lord-Monsieur Ratcliffe "-" Don't prate to me of not possible, you scoundrel; Ratcliffe was here five minutes ago; I saw him with my own eyes; he is here now." "Ce n'est pas possible-mi lord"—again began the bewildered valet-what more he might have said the Marquis furiously stopped by ordering him in a voice of thunder to quit the room. What Berghino would not hear that night, he heard the next morning-viz. that poor Ratcliffe had died of Malaria on the previous evening at 7 P. M. and that news of his death had reached the villa just as his lordship sat down to dessert. What could be said in reply? Ratcliffe was dead; and the Ring was on the Marquis's finger. Years sped on. Berghino grew older, as did his wine. As the vintage improved, his palate grew faulty more and more; his cook made mistakes, his valet was continually in the wrong. The Marquis's sight gradually failed him, so did his appetite. Let us hope that his temper did not; nor his spiritual sight, as he sits alone through the long summer twilights and thinks of the past. The "memento mori" was speaking to him. Let us hope that he heard, also heeded, its voice. Once, only once, he tried to lose the Ring by dropping it in the street. In vain; it was brought back to him by a peasant girl who saw it fall from his excellency's hand. Reader, Berghino is gone to that solemn account which awaits us all, kings, beggars, marquises, and peasants. To it we are all tending. Whether he listened to the voice of that "memento," we know not. Meanwhile there are thousands of voices about us in the world, equally solemn, equally clear. He will give account of what he heard; so also shall we of what we hear. We know not how those tremendous words of Caspagna's to the three youths thrilled their hearts, affected their souls, or influenced their after life. Their error-whatever it's excuses-was seeking to pry into that which God has concealed. It is not for us to decide on its magnitude, to proclaim its guilt, or speculate on its punishment. The future is hidden from us, because a knowledge of it to mortal man is full of peril, above all on the subject of death. Let us be content as we are. There are ten thousand memento moris in the world, ever at hand for us if we need them; without the agency of Spanish witches or rings of iron. Life, it is true, is the way to death. But death to the Christian is the Gate of Life. It is a grand and sublime prayer in which we pray as children of one Father to be delivered "from plague, pestilence, and famine, from battle and murder, and from sudden death." Let us be content to leave the question of when in His hands who is all-wise as He is good; who conceals from us the future, that we may use well the present, while we fix our hopes on what is yet to come, unseen and eternal*. CHARADE. Along Crimea's heights, by field and flood, It's courted, e'en through rain, east wind, or snow. Instead of shunning, to my first they go With furious zeal, the greatest joy they know. My Second is just what my first demands, At home, abroad, by cowards, or the brave Who shall describe my Whole, the heat, the row, The ring is still said to be in Berghino's family. 312 THE LATER ESSAYISTS OF THE EIGHTEENTH AMONGST the deposits of English literature, which the everreceding wave of time has left high and dry, and therefore generally neglected, are the series of collected periodical papers composing the minor and later British Essayists of the last century. The Tatler, the Spectator, the Guardian, and (of a later date, but illustrious by Johnson's name) the Rambler, are household words, if no more, to readers whose entire spare moments hardly suffice them to keep up with the newspapers, plus Thackeray, Dickens, and Bulwer. But how few have formed so much as a definite idea of the existence of the World, the Lounger, the Connoisseur, the Observer, the Adventurer (although Johnson was a contributor to that), the Mirror, &c. We do not for one instant hazard a comparison between the literary merits of these journals and of the elder giants, which bore the imprint of Addison and Steele. Their obscurity is the best proof of the difference. But still, if not for superior literary excellence, yet as studies of life and manners, they merit some few minutes now and then out of the half hours which the more studious among us are able to give to retrospective pursuits. They are the most trustworthy guage of our civilization; the most tangible proof of that enormous difference which exists between the Englishman of the present day, and his grandfather, who lived and died before the French Revolution and Waterloo-before the third George, and the American Confederation --before the abolition of the slave trade, reform, and emancipation -before the railway or the telegraph-before steam-navigation and steam-printing-before Warren Hastings and the Indian empirebefore Byron, Wordsworth, Scott, Pitt, Fox, and Peel-before even the fast stage-coaches and well-made road, when the saddle and the pillion were still the recognized ways of travelling. We had the chefs-d'œuvre of romance of the last century; and, in the interest of the tale, we forget the different, state of society then existing. But, in short essays like those we have referred to, the totally diverse world of thoughts open to the man of 1756, compared with him of the present year, comes manifestly within the scope of practical analysis; nor is this process a mere exercise of aimless antiquarianism; for, without such occasional acts of taking literary stock, common |