The length of these extracts will, perhaps, be pardoned by the reader, when he reflects that they are the fruits of a mind that has known no field fairer than "this prison of nature," the Isle of Torneo, to whose shore the words of applause or indulgence have seldom come. THE ORPHAN. AT the epoch, when terror covered benefactress, in all of whose labours France with scaffolds and tears, a young lady, equally illustrious by birth and celebrated for beauty, the Princess Fanny Lubomerska, was in Paris. In the midst of the convulsion, she relied for her security on the protection of the law of nations, and devoted her whole attention to the education of her only daughter Rosalia, who was then in her sixth year. Nevertheless, she was denounced to the Revolutionary Committee as a conspirator against the Republic, and was brought before that sanguinary tribunal. To be suspected, accused, and guillotined, was, in a few days, the lot of this interesting victim. On being arrested and separated from all her servants, she was allowed to bring her daughter with her to the Conciergerie, and when the unfortunate mother was dragged to the scaffold, she recommended her child to the care of some of the prisoners who remained behind. These, how ever, in their turn, soon experiencing the same fate, transferred to others the unfortunate infant, who was in this way bequeathed, in articulo mortis, from victim to victim. At last, little Rosalia found a protectress in a good woman, named Bertot, who was the laundress of the prison, who, feeling for the forlorn condition, and charmed by the interesting countenance of this orphan of the dungeous, added her as a sixth to the five children of whom she was already the mother. In this situation, so different from that for which fate seemed to have destined her, Rosalia showed that the qualities of her heart were as valuable, as the graces with which nature had endowed her person were attractive. Her sweet disposition, her eagerness to please her she shared, made the good laundress feel for her all the affection of a mother, and bestow on her the same tender care as on her own children. The reign of terror having passed away, the list of the victims of that period, which was published in every country of Europe, informed the friends of the princess, that, in a land called free, an illustrious Polish lady had paid with the forfeit of her life, the confidence she placed in a people whom she considered generous. On receiving this distressing news, Count Rezewonski, brother to the Princess, hastened to Paris. 'He took lodgings in the Hotel Grange Batelliere, in the street of the same name, and anxiously endeavoured to discover some traces of the daughter of his unfortunate sister; but several weeks were unsuccessfully spent in pursuit of this object. Every means of publicity was resorted to in vain. The poor laundress never read the journals, in which the advertisements, descriptions, and proffered rewards, were inserted. The gaoler of the Conciergerie, who could have given some information respecting the orphan, was dead, had already had two successors. Nothing now remained to promise a favourable result to the Count's inquiries. However, Providence, which had thought fit to close the period of the young orphan's trials, ordained, that she, who had been the laundress of the Conciergerie, should be employed in the same capacity for the Hotel Grange Batelliere. One morning Rosalia accompanied her second mother, when she had to bring her burthen of linen to the hotel. The Count, who happened to be crossing the court at the time, was and 66 struck with the beauty of the child, whose features brought his sister to his recollection."What is your name, my little dear?" said he. "Rosalia, Sir." Rosalia, do you say? Good woman, is this your child?" addressing the laundress. "Yes, Sir, I think I have a good right to call her mine, since I have adopted her and maintained her for these three years; but though I say she is mine, I cannot say I am her mother. Her poor mother was a prisoner, and she has now neither father nor mother." "Her mother a prisoner, did you say?" Aye, and a grand lady she was, Sir, but she was guillotined along with others in Robespierre's time." The Count was persuaded that he had found his niece; but to be farther convinced, he made the experiment of speaking to her in Polish. On hearing the accents of her native tongue, Rosalia burst into tears, and throwing herself into the Count's arms, exclaimed, "Ah! I understand you; that is the way my mother used to speak to me." The Count had no longer any doubt; he pressed the child to his heart, exclaiming," Rosalia! Rosalia! you are my niece, the daughter of my beloved sister!" Then turning to the laundress, whom surprise had ren "Wor dered motionless and silent, [From the unpublished Travels of Theodore Elbert, a young Swede.] THIS, then, is St. Paul's. What but with any other feeling than curia miracle of man's pride; but osity, with any deep sympathy, any how little does it suggest of man's trembling aspiration, with faith, or humility? Here are proportion, size, hope, or charity? Nothing-nothing strength, all the meaner attributes of whatsoever. It may be a good Cabeauty, and beauty, too, itself. But thedral; I am sure it is a bad church. how little of fitness? There is no- This wide blank circumference, with thing of religion. The emblems on the dusty banners above, and the the funeral monuments are all of the statues of victory, and Neptune, and earth, earthy. The whiteness of the stone lions around it, and the the light, the bright, active business pattering feet and loud tones of idle of the area, the payment at the door, wanderers; it is an exchange, a the hard, stolid worldly look of the show-room, a promenade-any thing Cathedral menials; what have these but a temple. It has nothing of the to do, I will not say with Christianity, shadowy magnificence of the Teuto nic minster, harmonizing so well with all our higher and more obscure feelings. It was made as a haunt for Deans and Prebendaries; but who would think of bringing to it his prayers, his thanksgivings, and his penitence? But, leaving the interior of the church, and mounting to one of the outer galleries, there is a change indeed. We lose St. Paul's, and see nothing but London. The building becomes no more than a vantage ground, from which to coutemplate the vast city. Far and wide spreads over the earth the huge, dim capital of the world. Look northward over that province of brick, to the dim outlines of the hills, which seem scarce more than a part of the murky atmosphere; and west towards that other realm of houses, outstripping the gaze, and encircling other distant towers, and stretching away to the seats of government and legislation; and again south, where the wilderness of human habitations is cleft by the wide and gleaming river, laden with all its bridges, and flechered with a myriad of keels for wealth or idleness; and see, too, the broad fronts and soaring pinuacles of a hundred churches, and the port that raises against the sky its trellis-work of innumerable masts: and, over all this, is one hue of smoke, and one indistinguishable hum of activity. It is difficult to reduce one's thoughts and feelings at such a spectacle, to any thing definite. The mind at first, is all vague restless astonishment, while the eye wanders over leagues of building: and sees every where the same working mass of busy vitality. How is it that the scene has been produced, which so fills and stirs us? How is it, that this portion of the world has been so cut off from all the rest, and set apart as the agent of such peculiar impressions? Time has been when there was nothing here but marsh and meadow, and woody knoll, and the idle river rolling down its waters between banks only trodden by the wolf and elk, to a sea, whither no 1 human eye had ever traced its course. Time was when the shaggy savage first leaned upon his club on yonder northern hill, turning his eager eyes over the green plain, and the broad river; and then led down some strag gling horde of barbarians to rear their huts of mud and wicker beside the stream, perhaps upon the very spot now filled by this enormous pile of architecture. The wicker was changed for brick and wood, and the narrow dungeons, which were the homes of the other generations, threw their shadows over the wea pons of the Roman legions, and over faces which wore the hues of every climate under the sun. The city became the home of burghers, the haunt of nobles, the seat of kings. The massy bridge, the moated castle rose; and the clumsy boats of those rude centuries began to float hitherward with every tide, till, with the halls of hundreds of Barons, and the guilds of hundreds of trades, now filled with mustering armies, now desolated by plagues and famines, sometimes active with revolt, and again glittering with royal triumphs, London became a mighty city. The growth of many ages, the greatness of a whole people, have made it what it is. Successes, which gave wealth to the nation, gave more than its share to the capital; and misfortunes, which desolated the country, have driven its population hither. The commerce of the world pours into its gates, and circulates through all its streets. Here are the thrones of three kingdoms, and of three-score colonies, of the provinces of the west, and the empires of the east, and hither come the gifts of subject millions. The tides of every sea, and the wheels of every manufactory on earth, speed the current of existence through the veins of London. And thus it is, that I am now surveying at a glance, this whole immense domain of bustle and competition, a kingdom of swarming streets, an enormous concentration of human wealth, power, and misery. The recollections of London but ed by the sight of it. At a distance, we think of a few resplendently bright, of a few pre-eminently dark, points in its history. The slaughter of Roman Catholic and Protestant martyrs by royal tyranny and sectarian intolerance, the escape of the fve members to the city,-the study of Milton, the scaffold of Vaue. But when we look upon the scene itself, we see little but the wide spread collection of vulgar desires and fierce passions, the size of Mammon's temple, and the number of his worshippers. We scarcely connect the idea of religion with those churches which are so entirely imbedded among worldly structures, and many of which we know to be completely the mere husks and shadows of devotion, scarcely ever entered even by a score out of all those thousands now hurrying past them,empty pretences, and solemn mockeries! There is little to indicate any nobler intelligence than the mechanical among the crowds all bent upon gain, and surrounded by the ingenious devices of luxury, which mingle in yonder streets for the various rivalries of traffic. Every thing around is so alien from meditation, that we are inclined not to study and think upon it, but to take part in its restlessness, and give ourselves up to its absorbing interests. There is nothing here to which any feeling attaches itself, but the inclusion beneath our eyes of so many hundreds of thousands of our fellowmen. Extent, number, ceaseless and multitudinous occupation,-these are the objects which strike us. The details are only interesting as linked to these. For there is here no crumbling pyramid, or shattered Coliseum; no volcanic mountain filling the atmosphere of a city with the menace of death. But we are face to face with a larger mass of living and busy humanity, than on any other spot of the world's surface. be little accord with the feeling produc- the hearts of the crowds which pass beneath me, what could earth show of more profound and intense interest? These confluent streams of life are big with a thousand varieties of opinion and feeling, into all of which we can in some degree enter, and which cannot be thought of without an anxious and mysterious curiosity. The greater number of these persons are ignorant, misguided, opposing their will to duty, never to passion, utterly reckless and almost utterly wretched. I have, as it were, neath my hand, a million of living souls; yet, in fact, to moral purposes, dead and decaying. Nurtured in alternations of toil and vice, they are, through life, bound down by the tyrannous necessities of their daily existence, or only loosed at intervals for the relaxation of debasing excess. Their sympathies are deadened by the want of sympathy around them; for the greedy poverty of the crowd has devoured almost all their love for their neighbour, and the more ravening selfishness of the rich, has, alas! swallowed up the whole of theirs. Many of these myriads know scarce any thing, but the pressure of the hour; the retrospect of the past is similarly painful; and, when they look forward for a moment to the future, they transfer to it the direct suffering or the unsatisfying pretence of pleasure which deforms the present. The dust eats the dust; and the image of God is degraded in man to the likeness of the beasts that perish. Yet wherefore should this be so? There are also in the city I look upon hundreds, at least, of expansive hearts and searching intellects, not indeed arrived at clear satisfaction, yet stirred by the prompting consciousness that there is a higher aim of being than the outward world or our senses and passions can furnish. They vary perhaps on innumerable subjects of prudence, of duty, of religion; but, while there is within a living power, restless and aspiring, there are also hope, and strength, and comfort. But, above all, there may be even And is not this enough to think of? If the height on which I stand would enable me to look down into 44 ATHENEUM, VOL. 9, 2d series. now moving among those undistinguished swarms below me, or dwelling upon that dim eminence which rises in the distance, some great and circular mind, accomplished in endow ment, of all-embracing faculties, with a reason that pervades like light, and an imagination that embodies the essence of all truth in the forms of all beauty, even such an one as C, the brave, the charitable, the gentle, the pious, the mighty philosopher, the glorious poet. How strange is the bond which unites all these together under the name of man! Or is not that which they have in common, the very capacity, by the cultivation of which we might exalt the meanest of those I see, into perhaps the highest perfection I have thought of? I am now standing on a building which proclaims to every eye in the capital of England the nominal supremacy of Christianity; yet nine in ten of its inhabitants never turn a thought towards the benevolence and piety of Christ, while many of the remainder, with all the phrases ready in their mouths, which make their speech a confused jargon of worldliness and religion, yet feel, it is to be feared, no whit of love to God or man, but angrily cling to their sect, and idolatrously bow to some lifeless creed. Nor is this to be wondered at. Every thing around us tends to make religion a matter of forms, and names, and lip-service, and thereby to deprive it of all permanent hold upon the hearts of men. All, all is selfishness. Selfishness in the conduct of every one of the corporations which compose or minister to the government: selfishness in the intercourse of society: selfish ness in the auxiety of every class to weigh down those below it. But where is the attempt at the moral culture of the people? Or who the men that, without thought for the feeding of their own vanity, or the spread of their own power, go forth in courage and sincerity for the regeneration of their country? If such there be, (and some such there are,) where are the signs of their exertions? Track home to their lanes and cellars many of the craftsmen and the labourers, the servants of our pleasure, and see amid their families the unquiet tempers, the sullen rages, the evil cravings, the mutual unrepentant reproaches, which add a sting to penury, and throw poison into the waters of bitterness, But if, instead of stopping there by the squalid fireside of the poor, we turn away to the dwellings of the rich, how much is changed im the shape, but how little in the material! Here, too, are jealousies, and has treds, and malignity, vulgar anxieties, and miserable ambitions. To be sure, the lean cheek of envy is fed from plate instead of earthenware, and self-oblivion is sought for in the costliest, not the cheapest, intoxication; but the miserable debasement of human nature shows as foul in velvet and jewels as in rags. * Look at that dark roof,-it covers a prison: and there the laws of the country proclaim that the most atrocious guilt is collected,—the worst moral diseases. We do nothing to make men self-denying and consei entious. The Government says, “If you do not agree with us on every point of doctrine, you have no title to become wise or good, and we will not assist you." We surround the people with innumerable temptations. We do little towards instructing, nothing towards educating them; and we set them the perpetual example of secure selfishness. A wretched child, born perhaps in a work-house, and nurtured in a brothel, is taught to gain his daily bread by crime; and compelled, by the menaces of his protectors and the physical sufferings of hunger, to trample down his moral repugnance, plunders some rich man's superfluity. Again and again, perhaps, he succeeds: at last comes the sudden vengeance of the law; and, to remedy the evil, he is thrown into a prison; probably the only abode on earth worse than his habitual home. He learns still more to glory in criminal enterprise. The |