long ramble, and passing the Chapone Institution, an old-fashioned boarding-school of great strictness and high gentility, kept by the maiden daughters of a former Bishop of Ely, and named I know not why, unless there was some connection in the case with the lady who wrote such instructive and unentertaining Letters to her Niece, when my eye was caught by a plainly-dressed but uncommonly pretty girl at the gate, who would have spoken to Oliver if I had not been there. It was a true-love business, I knew by my friend's eyes, which he could not keep from following her as she tripped up the lawn and into the house without once turning her head. They were very discreet about it; but I had told Oakland so many similar secrets of mine, that I thought myself entitled to ferret out the only one he had; and a fair opportunity occurred on the following Saturday, when I had him in my rooms at supper, a hamper of game having come from Westwood Manor. We were alone, and he was in rather low spirits, as I observed was often the case with him of late. "You are in love, Oakland,” said I, determined to dash into my subject. "How can that be?" he said. "Falling in love is for such lucky fellows as you, who will have property to marry on if they please, not for such poor souls as myself, who must drudge their lives out at mathematics and dead languages to get a seat among those hard dry old bachelors at the Fellows' table." Oliver spoke with more bitterness than was usual to him; and I, knowing that his college-life was not an easy one, and guessing that he might be hard-up just now, pressed the good wine upon him, by way of consolation. Under its genial influence, my friend warmed, and I got assurance enough to quiz and question him concerning the plainly-dressed pretty girl. After a little beating about the bush, Oliver opened his heart to me: perhaps it was a relief to the solitary and struggling man to tell his tale. The pretty girl was Miss Russell, commonly called Bessy. She was an orphan, without relations or friends, except the maiden ladies of the Institution, of whom her father, a poor curate, had been a scarcely acknowledged connection, and to whom she had been junior assistant since the beginning of her fifteenth year. "She is little over eighteen now," said Oakland; "but a wiser or a better woman does not exist. You're laughing in your sleeve, I dare say, but Bessy could advise the oldest man in the college for his good: women can do the like, if it be in them, without our books and universities. I understand the ladies of the Institution can't find a fault in Bessy; and it must be a small one that escapes them. I never could have got acquainted with her but for a savage dog I had the pleasure and good-luck to save her from one evening in the summer before last. She has a hard life there between the old maids and the young ladies they teach, but Bessy never complains. I know the girl loves me, Westwood, and I can't think of living without her; so, after I take my B. A., I am going to dig into divinity. My cousin the rector will want a curate some day, and I'll settle down to the work, and marry Bessy." "I never thought you had a turn for the church, Oakland," said I; "but if there was a living in the gift of my family, it should be at your service, though it seems to me a downright burying of your talents, and I wonder what your mother will say." "I don't know," said Oliver, with almost a groan, "she has set her heart and hopes on seeing me one of the college dons, and made many a sacrifice for it; but the best girl in Europe would not please her for a daughter-in-law, without some rank or fortune, and Bessy has neither. Westwood, it is hard to think of burying my talents, as you call them, and taking to clerical duties, when, between ourselves, I have no vocation for them; but it is far harder to think of crossing my poor good mother." I tried to dissuade my friend from his design, but he showed me plainly that there was no other chance of a wedding for him and Bessy, and on that wedding Oliver had fixed his mind with all the resolute constancy that was in it. He had not my advantage of getting easily snared and easily free, and Bessy's face was one that might haunt a man at a solitary fireside. He had jealous fears, too: it would be wearing away the best part of her life to wait for good-fortune that might never come; to his certain knowledge she had offers from a drawingmaster and a well-to-do tradesman; but, still, the poor fellow would have made any sacrifice to Plutus, after the fashion of his friends the ancients, could it have availed him to escape the church and his mother's displeasure. "Here We parted sad and sober in spite of the good wine. But when I saw Oliver again, it was Monday morning, when he entered my room with a face full of fun and an open letter in his hand. is a pattern epistle in the sentimental line, and I want you, as a gentleman skilled in such matters, to tell me whence it comes: a hoax, of course," he said, handing me the letter, which, to the best of my recollection, ran as follows: "Can the sensible, the accomplished, the fascinating Oakland respond to a sincere and heartfelt passion, not transitory and unprofitable like the love of common minds, but steadfast, and sure to guide his steps to riches and prosperity? If he can, let him reply to Cynthia at the post-office; his letter will be waited for with anxious hope, received with delight, and answered with expedition." My friend and I laughed heartily over the effusion, and agreed that it was a hoax; but who was the perpetrator I could guess as little as Oliver himself. Yet there was something in the writing, though evidently a disguised hand, familiar to my eyes. I thought and pored over it, but could fix on nobody; and the mystery seemed to work upon Oakland, studious and steady as he was, for he resolved to carry on the joke, and thereby find out his fair correspondent, as we both felt sure the hand was that of a woman. Cynthia was answered on the spot, in a strain as grandiloquent as her own. She replied by the very next post, and got another answer. Six or seven letters were thus exchanged, I being the only outsider in the secret; and the only point that either watching or bribery could ascertain for Oliver was, that Cynthia's letters were called for by a variety of ragged boys, who, when they could be got at and questioned, said sometimes an old woman had sent them to the post-office, and sometimes a young lady. The correspondence did not advance rapidly towards a solution. My friend was always declaring himself able and willing to respond to any amount of affection and confidence, while the lady, as I thought to lure him on, took up the strain of men being deceivers ever. But none of her epistles closed without the hint growing plainer at everyrepetition of the riches and prosperity to which she could guide his steps; and at last-it was like a drowning man clutching at a straw poor Oliver seemed to half believe that his good fortune was somehow to come through Cynthia, when a curious | He lost the fellowship; he was called on to fulfil his accident enabled me to unveil the charmer. promise; and he had to go and explain matters to At the end of Trumpington Street, next to St. John's Lane, there was at the time of my story, and had been for many a year before, a shop of all-wares in the students' fancy line. Everything that college-men required in those days, from second-hand books to new boxing-gloves, might be bought there; steel spurs for game-cocks, white kids for eveningparties, pipes of every form, smoking-caps, with other goods too various to mention, made it the constant resort of students. The shop was kept by a Miss Josephs, and a woman whom she pleased to call her nurse, but whom popular tradition affirmed to be her mother. Miss Josephs was of an age not to be ascertained. Her face had a remarkable likeness to that of a parrot; her figure strikingly resembled an upright deal-board; she had a dark, muddy complexion, a considerable squint, and stiff black hair, said to be daily thinned by plucking out the gray. Yet the prettiest woman in England could not have looked more certain of triumph over the hearts of men, or put on more airs and graces for that purpose. It was a study of the ridiculous to see her behind the counter, dressed in the extreme of the fashion, and talking like a fainting duchess. The students one and all laughed at her; and throughout Cambridge (I think it was the boating-thia was none other than the Steerer. I laughed, men who gave her the title), on account of a peculiar mode she had of moving her skinny arms, Miss Josephs was known as the Steerer. till Oliver's rooms rang, over the grandiloquent passages in her love-letters. Oakland laughed too, and agreed with me that it was a capital tale; but the more we talked over it, the less he seemed amused, and I could not help seeing that there was some part of the subject of which he did not speak, but was thinking seriously. Once more, the poor stuDoubtless it was of it They laughed at, and paid her extravagant compliments; paid extravagant prices, too, for most of her wares; the shop was convenient, and the credit long; but the wildest or most mischievous student never cared to go further, great as the encourage-dent's story occurred to me. ment was for practical joking and burlesque romance. The Steerer's nurse-I never knew another name for her was lucky in not living two centuries earlier, for she might have sat to any painter who wanted a perfect witch. It was said there were fierce quarrels between her and the fascinating lady, always about money matters, in which their calculations seldom agreed; but they addressed each other in the most affectionate terms in public, bore strong testimony to each other's virtues, kept no servant, and admitted nobody within their walls except by special invitation, and such events were few and far between. The Steerer was chief shopkeeper, and had the control of windows and counter; but the nurse had a back corner, screened by a half partition, out of which she sold at fitting times, and to confidential customers, cigars that had never paid duty, snuff of unrivalled excellence, and it was said, more questionable wares. The pair were not natives, and whence they came, nobody in Cambridge could certify; but there was a floating tradition that they were somehow descended from Portuguese Jews; and their powers of making out bills, and getting them paid, seemed to warrant its truth. There was another tale concerning them, which probably contributed to make the students keep a safe distance. Some three years before Oliver and myself entered St. John's, there had been among its gownsmen one rather poor, rather clever, and not very wise. He happened to have got three affairs of some moment on his hands at once, namely, reading for a fellowship, making love to the Steerer, and a promise of marriage to his bed-maker's daughter. With such contradictory irons in the fire, success was scarcely possible, and so it proved with him. Oliver was thinking, and I hinted my recollections, with a hope that he would have nothing more to do with the fair unknown. Oakland made no reply, at least no direct one, but I understood he was of the same mind by his immediately pointing out the necessity of keeping all that concerned Cynthia between ourselves, if we did not mean to furnish the whole university with a jest at our own expense. I saw the wisdom of his counsel; for though not a principal in the affair, I at any rate should have felt bound to spare my friend the laughter and jokes it must occasion. I parted with Oliver on that understanding, and did not see him for some days after, as I got engaged with a boating party. We had gone down the Cam, and came home rather tired. Though it was not very late, most of the shops in Trumpington Street were shut; the Steerer's door was, but her window remained open. Through it I remarked a man, not looking at goods, but at her, while he leaned on the counter in earnest conversation, and a movement of his head showed me that it was my friend, Oliver Oakland. I went home, not knowing what to think. Had his newly-discovered Cynthia really attracted my friend and made him waver in his allegiance to the pretty Bessy? If so, the promise to guide his steps to riches and prosperity must be the chief charm; yet how could Oliver, shrewd and sensible as he was, believe such a thing possible to a small shopkeeper in Trumpington Street? The Steerer's gatherings could not be a temptation to a man like him, yet I had seen Oliver earnestly engaged with her; it was not the best or cheapest of her goods that brought him there at such an hour, after warning me to keep the subject of her letters out of the students' ears. In my contempt and indignation at his deceit, I trees, in the midst of which stood a solitary summerhouse made of wood, on the old Dutch pattern, with a pagoda roof and floor of colored tiles. What could Oliver be doing there at all hours of the night? I questioned the good woman closely, got full details, and came to the conclusion that my poor friend's reason was dropping the reins. Over-study and over-anxiety were telling on his strong and active mind; here was the explanation of his visits to the Steerer, his coldness to myself, and all the change that had surprised his fellow-students. I dismissed Mrs. Mops with a request for secrecy; she manifestregard for him; and being no gossip, would probably keep her promise in that respect. Then I sat by the fire, pitying his poor mother, his poor Bessy, and wondering what I ought to do as a friend under the circumstances, till my brown-study was broken up by a knock at my door, and in walked Oliver himself. wished my word had not been given on that matter; but given it was, and nothing remained but to give Oliver the cold shoulder. I tried it for some days; almost weeks, indeed; Oliver saw nothing of me, and I saw nothing of Oliver. He did not avoid me, so far as I could see, but he did not seek me out; conscious guilt, thought I; but somehow the man had become too needful to my life and mind to be thus parted with. I went to his rooms at our usual meeting time in the evening, but he was out. I guessed where, watched about Trumpington Street, and saw him come out of the Steerer's private door. Next day, we met by accident, and I took the opportu-ly thought as I did concerning Oakland: had a great nity to congratulate him on being admitted to Cynthia's bower. Oliver looked as if any other observation would have been more welcome, but he was by no means as much abashed as I expected; on the contrary, he made light of it, like one who was carrying on a jest, talked more gayly and carelessly than ever I had heard him, and in reply to my question, "What will Bessy say?" he merely said, O, never mind Bessy; she is a prudent girl." Oliver was engaged with the Steerer; a pretty strict watch proved to me that he visited her every evening after shop-hours, and Oliver was changed in every particular. Of me, his only intimate friend," Westwood, you are the best, the only friend I ever he had grown positively careless; his less familiar acquaintances remarked that something occupied him more than his usual studies; he was absent at lectures, and took no heed of what was said of him. Still, for our friendship's sake, I would not make the cause of his altered conduct public, knowing that it must make Oliver ridiculous; and I had scarcely taken that resolution, when a new and strange light was thrown on the subject by Mrs. Mops, my bedmaker. All who chance to be acquainted with college-life will know what an indispensable functionary the bed-maker is to every student; for she who bears that humble title is, in fact, the sole manager of his domestic affairs. Mrs. Mops was a jewel of the kind, honest, careful, and sober, of discreet age, for she had been forty years at the bed-making business, and it was her boast that she never did for nobody but steady gentlemen. Mrs. Mops had a discreet tongue, too, a gift rather rare among the ladies of her calling, and as she officiated for Oliver as well as for me, I was somewhat startled by the good woman saying, with a peculiar look, when lighting my fire one evening, "May I ax, sir, if anything strange has happened to Mr. Oakland?" Nothing that I know of. What makes you think there has?" said I, determined to hear all she had to say. "Just because he has taken to such odd ways, not like himself at all; there ain't nothing wrong nor unsteady, you know, but just uncommon strange"; and Mrs. Mops dropped her voice to a whisper. "He's never at his books in the evenings, as he used to be, and I can't find out where he goes. He's always a-thinking and a-talking about something to himself; it ain't learning, sir, for he laughs and whistles over it. But the strangest thing of all is what the gardener's wife tells me, that he going about the college grounds at all hours of the night, ay, in the loneliest part of them, sir, where the old Dutch summer-house stands among the willows beside the river." I knew the spot to which Mrs. Mops referred; it is doubtless improved or altered long ago; but at the time it was a neglected outlying wing of the college grounds, deeply shaded by ancient willow He shook hands with me as warmly as if our friendship had never cooled, and took his accustomed seat beside me. There was nothing wild or disorderly in his look, but I knew he had something particular to say, and the next minute it came. had; and I want you to help me through a business which few men have to do often. Bessy and I are going to get married quietly and quickly. You may stare, but it is true; I have got the means to keep her handsomely "; and Oliver's eyes seemed to dance with joy. "Don't be alarmed; I am in my right mind, Westwood; I have got my grand-uncle's long-lost money. Listen! The old fellow had hidden it under the floor of the Dutch summer-house, where he used to sit day and night, they say, in his latter years; and left a sort of will written in Greek, the purest Attic, I assure you, bequeathing the whole hoard to his next of kin, with particular directions where to find it. The will-I don't know howgot into the hands of a dealer in waste paper, who sold it in a bale of his goods to our friend Cynthia, many years ago. I am not sure that the old witch behind the partition yonder don't use the like in the choice Havanas she makes up; at any rate the bale was bought, and my grand-uncle's will in it. The Greek characters were beyond the Steerer's scrutiny, but the old master had written his name at full length, in English letters on the back; and either the Fates, or the faculty for scenting out money, peculiar to her Jewish race, made her keep it out of the Havanas, and safe in a private drawer. It appears that unfortunate fellow who got into trouble between her and the bed-maker's daughter, and escaped them both by the brain fever, gave her an inkling of its value;-by the by, he could not have been a good Grecian, or there should have been little for me to find. So the Steerer took to promising riches and prosperity; you remember her letters, of course, Westwood; it must have been my good genius that prompted me to make out what she meant by that." "And you made it out," said I, getting sure enough of Oliver's sanity; "made love to the charming Cynthia over her shop-counter; got hold of the paper and thereby of the money." "That was exactly what I did, Westwood," and Oliver winced as he spoke. "It was not strictly honorable I'll allow, but what else was to be done with the woman? However, I have bought Beechly Farm, which will keep Bessy and me comfortably, in my own county. My mother shall live with us; or, if she can't agree with Bessy, though I think anybody might, she 'll have a cottage to herself at the end of the lane. You and I will be neighbors, and I hope friends, for the rest of our lives; but, Westwood, I must get married at once. If the thing were done, matters might be settled with the Steerer; I have kept a decent sum to pay her off. Will you help me to get the license? will you give Bessy away? There will be nobody but yourself at our wedding; my mother must know nothing of the business till it's done. Westwood, can I reckon on you? "That you can," said I, seeing that Oliver was in desperate haste, and in considerable fear of his charming Cynthia; and in those green days of mine, the course he proposed to take seemed the readiest, if not the most commendable. We talked over it till far in the night; got the license next day; and on a cold, drizzly morning, the curate of St. Peter's Church made Oliver and Bessy one, in presence of myself and the clerk. I can't say on what excuse the assistant-teacher got out so early; but directly after the ceremony, she went back to the Chapone Institution, till Oliver could get the Steerer paid off, and make the fact of his marriage respectably public. How he went about the first part of the business I never exactly learned, but it appeared to have been successfully managed; and when he called at my rooms in the evening, Oliver was perfectly enthusiastic in the Steerer's praise. "She stood it like an angel," said he. "I never imagined she could be so sensible and considerate; never scolded, never cried, though, between ourselves, a fit was the least that I expected, but seemed to understand at once that the thing was done, and accepted it with uncommonly good grace. By the by, I paid her down two thousand pounds in lieu of myself, you'll say. Well, Westwood, it clears one's conscience; and I must tell you the old woman was as friendly as Cynthia; she knew all about the affair, of course; and between them, they made me promise that Bessy and I should spend Saturday evening with them. A queer visiting-place for a young bride; but they brought it about so that I could not refuse, and Bessy is not like ordinary girls to stand on a trifle. I have taken apartments in town, and written to my mother. I could n't take Bessy home without knowing how she would be received; but I won't have her staying any longer with those old prigs at the Institution." some one. Öliver and I had a good deal of conversation regarding his prospects, which indeed seemed fair and pleasant. He did not tell me the exact sum he had found hidden under the colored tiles in the summer-house floor, but it must have been a handHe had bought Beechly Farm, a very comfortable property; told me how he would enlarge the house, lay out the grounds, have done with college-life, and spend the rest of his days in the manner of Palemon, now that he had found his Lavinia. With these fair hopes, Oliver went from me that night, after exacting a promise that I would come to see him and Bessy at their new address on the following Sunday, for, till then, he knew I must be busy with certain reading that had to be done, and country cousins that were to be shown over Cambridge. Well, that Sunday came; the reading and the lionizing had been got through, and I was dressing at an earlier hour than usual, when my room-door suddenly opened, and in rushed Oliver looking like a ghost." Westwood!" he cried, "for God's sake, come with me and see Bessy; she awoke this morning out of her mind. I have sent for three doctors, and they can do nothing for her. O my friend, come and tell me what you think." I went with him to a very respectable lodging, and there found poor Bessy stark mad. No other term could give an idea of her condition: she knew nobody, she recollected nothing, her husband, her marriage, her honeymoon, all were forgotten; and her incoherent ravings always recurred to something about two old women and wine. No cause could be assigned for the sudden visitation. She had been in good health and spirits on the preceding evening, which the new-married pair spent according to promise with Miss Josephs and her nurse; she retired to rest without any noticeable change, and woke at the break of day in frantic madness. To make a sad tale short: all that medical skill and experience could suggest was tried for poor Bessy, but tried in vain; her insanity was hopeless, and without one lucid interval, nor could all the doctors engaged throw the smallest light on its cause. There was indeed a suspicion hinted at by one of our old professors, and firmly believed by Oliver, that some drug, of extraordinary and peculiar power, had been mixed with something which the unlucky bride had eaten or drunk in the house of her paid-off rival. Whether the suspicion were true or not, the Steerer and her nurse made a mighty show of regret and commiseration; but their shop got deserted, and they left Cambridge very quietly at the next quarter-day. My poor friend spent the rest of his days on the farm he had bought, and his mother lived with him; but his bride spent hers in a lunatic asylum, where she survived him many a year, for he died early, a man broken down and worn out before the time; and so must end my tale of Oliver Oakland. FOREIGN NOTES. IN a paper lately published in the German Zeitschrift für Chemie, Mulder states that, when common salt is heated with coal in a gas retort, it is volatilized to the extent of sixty per cent. PROFESSOR Steinhäuser, of Baden, has lately been making mineralogical researches in the Tyrol, and has discovered at Laas, near Bozen, a vein of marble said to be equal to Parian. AN English journal, speaking of several choice "So imspecimens of American printing, says, proved has American typography become of late, through the exertion of the University Press, the have determined to contest the palm of excellence Riverside Press, and other houses, that their owners with us at the French International Exhibition next year." MR. HENRY G. BOHN, the eminent London publisher, has just issued a catalogue of second-hand books containing Greek and Latin Miscellanies, including Theology, Fathers of the Church, Philology, Modern Latin Poetry, Facetiæ, Satires, Manuscripts, and Chinese Drawings. In his preface he speaks of this list as in all probability his last catalogue, purposing "retiring from business, as far as practicable, within the next twelve months." Mr. Bohn says that "after an arduous career of nearly half a century, and now approaching his grand climacteric, he feels it desirable to retire from the immediate pressure of business details; but, while | Minor, Hungary, and some parts of the East. In he enjoys life, he is not likely to dissociate himself entirely from literary pursuits, and will probably continue to develop schemes long registered in his mind." "HER Majesty," says an English paper, "has been graciously pleased to accept a copy of Mr. Washington Moon's poem, Elijah the Prophet,' now in the second edition." If her Majesty will be graciously pleased to read that remarkable production, her Majesty will find herself laboring under the effects of one of the most efficacious anodynes of the age. THE current number of the Leipziger Illustrirte Zeitung contains an interesting biographical sketch, together with an exceedingly well-executed likeness, of Professor Max Müller. The paper in question enjoys a long-established reputation abroad, and has also a fair circulation in this country. It is not only the most respectable and best-conducted of all German illustrated periodicals, but it occupies, from an artistic point of view, the foremost rank among its competitors in Germany. 1847, Mr. Dickens appointed him correspondent at Rome for the Daily News. During the past fifteen or sixteen years, he has been one of the Globe staff, representing that paper in Paris. Concerning this engagement, a friendly writer remarks: 'It is well known that to his letters that paper owes much of its attractiveness. No one can fail to recognize his style, - brimful of scholarly allusions culled from all sorts of unheard-of authors, who were familiar enough to him,-witty, caustic, spiced here and there with some sly quotation from Irish ballads, and yet as to facts so cautious, so trustworthy, and so transparently honest.' The scene of Mr. Mahony's death was, we believe, in the Rue des Moulins, where he had resided many years." We find in the Pall Mall Gazette the following genial pen-portrait of Father Prout: "Many of our readers must have remarked, passing in and out the reading-room of Galignani's Library of late years, a figure singular enough to attract a glance of curiosity even in Paris. The figure we mean was that of a little elderly man with an intellectual head, and whose keen bluish eyes had a A CORRESPONDENT informs the London Times queer way of looking up sharply over the rims of that in Switzerland the telegraph is the property his spectacles. His garb was ecclesiastical in its of the state, an office is established in almost every general character, but, above all, was the garb of village, and the charge is uniform, one franc for one very little careful of appearances; for if his twenty-five words, irrespective of distance. The shirt happened to be white it seldom boasted butdespatches are printed, and the establishment yields tons, and there were many days when both whitea large revenue to government. The writer advo-ness and buttons were wanting to it. The manner cates a similar system in England, where the need for it is much greater than in Switzerland, and where the profit would be enormous. At present messages are badly sent at dear rates, whole districts are without telegraphs, and the state gains nothing. FRANCIS MAHONY, known as Father Prout, recently died in a monastery at Paris. The London Review says: "Although for many years a resident in the French capital, Mr. Mahony was well known to modern readers in this country as one of the wittiest and most brilliant writers, and one of the most genial men of his day. Father Prout's' essays in Fraser, his contributions to Bentley's Miscellany, and the well-known Paris correspondence in the Globe, with frequent, and invariably pleasant, mention of him in the books of friendly authors, have kept his name and fame fully alive on this side of the Channel. The subject of our notice was born in Ireland, about 1805, but left that country at an early age for Jesuit colleges in France and the University of Rome. A very short experience of the duties of a modern Catholic clergyman induced him to turn his attention to literature as a profession; and he formed an acquaintance with Dr. Maginn, and was soon enrolled amongst the band of able men who contributed to Fraser's Magazine. At that time Father Prout' was a frequent visitor to Fraser's backparlor in Regent Street, and in Maclise's picture of the Fraserians we observe Mahony, along with his friends Coleridge, Thackeray, Lockhart, Count D'Orsay, Carlyle, the Rev. Edward Irving, Harrison Ainsworth, Jerdan, and many other notabilities. of this little figure, too, was as quaint and interesting as his appearance. If you knew him, he saluted you with some quaint caustic bit of badinage, all the richer for a touch of brogue which had long ceased to be provincial, and gave only a fine tinge of nationality that suited the speaker's humor. He would make some half-droll inquiry, tell some droll anecdote, not improbably garnished with a bit of classic parsley in the form of a quotation from Horace, and then, as likely as not, would dart off, sticking his hands in his coat pockets, without saluting either yourself or the companion whom you had introduced to him. "In the afternoon our little man of the good head and the keen eyes was at his desk on a ground-floor in the Rue des Moulins (not far from where the Jacobin Club used to meet) redacting the news and gossip of Paris that day in a letter, easy, pithy, sensible, with a dash of mockery and scholarship about it just enough to make it distinctive and unique. The letter over, he strolled out, holding a favorite white dog in a string, to dine in the Palais Royal and smoke a cigar in a café afterwards, and so wind up the day. There was in all he said and wrote and did meanwhile a certain impress of character, a certain cachet d'originalité, which set him apart from the common run even of clever men. And indeed Francis Mahony, commonly called Father Prout, was no common man either in genius or expression. Many elements met in him, as in a mayonnaise, to make a piquant mixture. He was a Jesuit and a humorist; a priest and a Bohemian; a scholar and a journalist; a wag and a song-writer; a Cork man familiar to everybody in Rome; a Roman Catholic ecclesiastic well known in the convivial clubs of London. The Sacred College knew all about him, and he bandied innumerable repartees with Douglas Jerrold. Such a man ought not to pass away, even were he not a celebrated man, without some estimate being attempted of what he did in the "When it was resolved to print the Prout' contributions in a separate form, Maclise did the illustrations for the book, and it is in this volume that the most truthful portrait of Sir Walter Scott is said to be found. Scott is represented kissing the Blarneystone. Soon after this republication, Mr. Mahony left London, and travelled through Greece, Asia | world." |