Of our long, rambling garden, fenced about (Instinctive) of offence: and there was doubt With which I kept my secret. - The Birthday (1836)." Caroline Bowles was an exceedingly pretty child, and old relations of hers and of the writer's often spoke of her fairy-like appearance when found reading or writing in the hollow trunk of some old tree, or in a mimic cave, with one flat stone for a floor, overhung with ferns and ivy, by the side of Royden Stream. She spoke French as soon as she did English, for her grandmother, Mrs. George Burrard, or, as she was usually called, Madame Burrard, was a Jersey lady, and always spoke her native language in her own family. She was connected with all the old Norman families of the island, where feudal customs and the manners of la vieille cour long survived their disappearance in France. Her husband was brother to Sir Harry Burrard, warden of the New Forest, and governor of Calshot Castle, who became the first baronet of Walhampton. He had early been betrothed to a handsome and wealthy Jersey heiress by a family compact, and the marriage was to take place when his regiment returned from Flanders. They had seen little of each other, but they parted with the promise of keeping up as constant a correspondence as the uncertain posts of those days allowed. Great was the young soldier's happiness when, as time passed on, each letter from Mademoiselle D became more delightful than the last. She had appeared to him rather cold and imperious, and he fancied she had accepted his addresses too much as a matter of course; but her letters undeceived him, and left him no doubt of her affection. They contained the fullest accounts of her daily life at the old chateau, with all the little adventures that befell herself and her friends, described in the most amusing way, and with a child-like zest and womanly grace, that promised sweet companionship in the future. At last he obtained a short leave of absence, and hurried to Jersey, to assure her better than he could do in writing of the warm affection that had succeeded on his own part to the somewhat chilly ceremonial of their former intercourse. Mademoiselle D- had often alluded to a summer-house at the end of the nut-tree avenue, leading from the garden to the neighboring woods, as her favorite spot for writing. On hearing, therefore, when he arrived unexpectedly at the chateau, that the Seigneur and Madame were paying visits, but that she and her cousin Mademoiselle Madeleine were in the summer-house, he lost not a moment in seeking her there. Full of hope and joy he stood for a moment on that glowing afternoon near the pretty pavilion, afraid of startling his promised bride by so sudden an appearance. The summer leaves were thick, and the noisette-roses clustered round it, but he heard a well-known voice exclaim: "Will you never have done, Madeleine, with that tiresome letter? Thank goodness, it is one of the last we need send, for he seems likely to be here before long! It is lucky we write alike; I should hardly have patience to copy all you find to say Perhaps George Burrard took another turn in the nuttree walk before he presented himself; but when he entered the summer-house he saw his betrothed tying knots of various colored ribbons that lay on the rustic table, and her young cousin writing, with a shower of golden curls falling over her face, as she held her desk on her lap. There was something in that blushing face which told the story of the letters, no less clearly than Mademoiselle's exPamation, and it fixed his fate and hers. When at last all obstacles had been overcome, and petite Madeleine" was his wife instead of the proud he ess, she brought with her to Lymington a maid, who live with her and her descendants till extreme old age. was always called "Ma Bonne," and treated as a friend She continued, like her mistress, the dress of her you and wore her high cap, and long gold ear-rings, and she jackets, to the last. Madame Burrard, as she also gre old, used to be carried from the porch at Buckland Cotta in a sedan chair to her pew in church. There, I am afrai she bowed and courtesied to her friends before the servi began; but I am quite sure that she stood up in her lit high-heeled shoes of black velvet with silver buckles, an that a diamond crescent sparkled just in front of her po dered hair, which was drawn up on a cushion under a la cap and hood. The rest of her dress was invariably black but she also wore the lace ruffles, neckerchief, and apros that had been in fashion when she was exactly like what her little granddaughter afterwards became. She had delightful manner of telling stories, as well as of writing: and it was always said that Caroline inherited her peculia vein of conversation. She had the same beautiful hair, dark gray eyes, and finely-formed forehead, with a slight graceful figure, and a hand as deft and light as ever beid needle, pen, or pencil, though she never had patience to learn to spin. This was an art in which her charming grandmother excelled, and she always kept with affectionate care the pretty wheel from which Madame Burrard used to draw the finest lace-thread of any lady in Hamp shire. The Rev. William Gilpin was vicar of Boldre (the par ish to which Lymington belongs) during Caroline's chidhood. He is still remembered as the author of a work on forest scenery, to the beauties of which he first drew at tention, and being an excellent artist, his illustrations were as much admired as his writing. He was very fond of the first put a pencil into her hand. Her portrait of him in intelligent little girl, and she always said Mr. Gilpin had his library, while she stood by to watch him draw, is one of her best pieces of descriptive poetry. Here are a few lines of it : How holy was the calm of that small room! How tenderly the evening light stole in As 't were in reverence of its sanctity! Here and there touching with a golden gleam Book-shelf or picture-frame, or brightening up The nosegay, set with daily care (love's own) Upon the study table. Dallying there Among the books and papers, and with beam Of softest radiance starring like a glory The old man's high bald head and noble brow There still I found him, busy with his pen (Oh, pen of varied power! found faithful ever! Faithful and fearless in the one great cause!) Or some grave tome, or lighter work of taste (His no ascetic, harsh, soul-narrowing creed); Or that unrivalled pencil, with few strokes, And sober tinting slight, that wrought effects Most magical; the poetry of art! - The Birthday. Lymington had long been a dépôt for English troops, owing to its neighborhood to Portsmouth and the passage by the Needles to the Channel. During the French Revolution and the subsequent war with France, a large body of Royalists were encamped near the town; the group of trees was long pointed out under which were the tents of those gallant leaders who fell with their little army at Quiberon. A large dépôt of foreign troops was afterwards established; and the town and neighborhood were also full of naval and military officers, who were either stationed there or invalided. Society, therefore, was remarkably varied and animated; German, Dutch, French, and Italian officers, as well as the families of the emigrant noblesse, took their part in it; and the writer has often heard the Lymington balls of those days described as the gavest ever were known, not excepting those of Bath itself. On one occasion Caroline Bowles, who was usually very fond of dancing, let her mother go to a ball without her. She amused herself with making a sketch of the principal that ps certain to be seen at it; and though slightly caricaed, they were so like, that people thought, when Mrs. wles showed it to her friends, that it must have been en on the spot. No one could imagine where the artist ld have been hidden! This drawing, with some alterans, was afterwards lithographed, with another equally ver. They both had considerable success under the les of "A Country Ball," and "Packing Up after the JL." During these youthful days Caroline paid a visit to some lations in Jersey, and reproduced her hosts long afterrds as the gentle clergyman, Mr. Seale, and his sweet I maiden sister, Mrs. Helen, in her " Chapters on Church rds." At that time she had no idea of writing for publication. a the contrary, the prejudice against female authorship as so strong in the circle to which she belonged that she ould have shrunk from incurring it. It may readily be imagined that with so many pleasant complishments, and a tolerably good fortune, Miss Bowles ad many admirers. She did indeed return the long atachment of one in every respect worthy of her; but it was t last decided by the family conclave that her engagement hould be broken off, owing to want of sufficient means on be gentleman's part. She submitted her own judgment o that of her relations, but she formed no other engageBent till see accepted Robert Southey. From that time he turned to literature as her "chief resource from wearying thoughts." Her first long poem was a novel in verse, called "Ellen Fitzarthur." Southey was then at the height of his fame, and after long hesitation she ventured to send the manuscript to him, determining to abide by his opinion as to whether it should go into a publisher's hands or not. He read it with great interest, and wrote judiciously and kindly to his unknown correspondent, whom he warmly encouraged. The poem, followed by several shorter pieces, was accordingly published; and the latter especially were very much admired. In those happy days authoresses were very few, and she at once received, through her bookseller, letters of praise from many distinguished writers. After her mother's death, in 1817, part of her fortune was lost in the failure of an Indian bank; and as she now lived alone, with her faithful "bonne" and two other attached servants, at Buckland Cottage, she found the reward of her labors very useful. But she never thoroughly settled down into what could be called a literary life. She kept up an animated correspondence with Southey, who from the first felt the charm of her sympathy, and wrote frequently and fully about his own works, with abundant criticisms on those of others. Letter-writing was naturally to them both a more perfect means of pouring out their minds than conversation; and it was some years before they met. No one, however, better deserved the once coveted name of "une charmante raconteuse" than Miss Bowles. She had a quaint, caustic style of telling an anecdote that was entirely her own; and in ghost stories she was inimitable. Besides being agreeable herself, she had the rare talent of making every one she wished to please feel agreeable too; and rather surprised her visitors now and then, not with her own talents, but with those they appeared to be gifted with in her society. It is still only fair to add, that her strong sense of the ridiculous. and her utter absence of sentimentality, disappointed comparative strangers, who expected something pathetic from the writer of so many touching poems. Things common enough in themselves, however, when they had passed through the crucible of her mind, were found to have unlooked-for ore adhering to them. No one more readily caught a friend's idea; but it was quite a chance whether she would hold it up in a comical light, or with a variety of new shades added to it that came from her own fancy; or how, indeed, if it happened to have struck her imagination at all, she would finally dispose of it! Everywhere, of course, she was a welcome guest; and there were many delightful houses amongst the "walks of the New Forest at which she occasionally stayed. Cal shot Castle (of which two Sir Harry Burrards had successively been governors) continued after the death of her uncle to be the home of his widow and family. No one who sees it from the Solent, standing round and grim on a long neck of rocky beach which runs out to sea, would think of it as a pleasant ladies' abode. But such it was. The deep embrasures of the windows in the ordinary sitting-room each formed a recess for drawing or writing, or some artistic fancy-work; the walls were covered with books, carvings, and pictures painted by various members of that accomplished family; and the heavy buttresses were made to afford shelter to flowers, and abundance of climbing plants. The woods that surrounded "Luttrell's Folly" were not far off; and the cottages of the Forest half-hidden by moss and house-leek, formed endless subjects for the pencil; as well as the ever-shifting lights and shadows on the shores of the Isle of Wight. The old fortress was as much a home to Caroline Bowles as Buckland. Comparatively early in her long acquaintance with Southey, she was gratified by his mention of Paul Burrard, who was aid-de-camp to Sir John Moore at Coruña, and fell, mortally wounded, just after his chief had been struck, when scarcely nine teen. These are some of Southey's lines: Not unprepared The heroic youth was found, for in the ways Upon the spot from whence he just had seen Which fired his knell. It was about the time this poem was written that Miss Bowles paid her first visit to Keswick, where Mr. and Mrs. Southey were surrounded with their large household. Her host was chained so resolutely to his desk among the books of his library, that he was only able to give up one day to the enjoyment of showing her the scenery of his beloved hills. On that exquisite summer's day, a party had been got up by the young people, who had themselves prepared the meal that was spread somewhere near the Falls of Lodore. Sara Coleridge, who was then in the bloom of her ethereal beauty, had made a basketful of remarkably nice cakes; and Caroline Bowles kept a record of the charming figure offering them to her friends, in a sketch which was in due assembled on that occasion, and is named "A Picnic among time lithographed. It contains likenesses of all who were the Hills." 66 She had met Southey first in London (as far as I recollect) at her publishers, the Messrs. Blackwood; but she now saw him in the midst of his family, who were attached to him by the strongest ties of affection and gratitude. For them he worked so hard that he denied himself the rest and haps made his enormous learning and industry more prochange of scene that might have prolonged his life, and perductive of books that paid. No one enjoyed a holiday more thoroughly, and it may be well imagined that with so agreeable a guest he put forth his pleasantest powers. There was no lack of conversation at Greta Hall of an evening; but excepting for a short hour's walk, which he took as a duty every day, he remained as usual shut up with his writing, appointing his friend Wordsworth to show her the country. Mr. Wordsworth, she said, used to walk for miles by the side of her pony, pointing out every fold of the hills, with their glens and tarns. Scarcely a shadow from the passing clouds swept across lake or upland pasture without his remarking it. He was fond of repeating his own poetry in illustration of the scenery, and did so with a strong north country accent, and very sonorous voice, pronouncing the in such words as "walk" and "talk," in a peculiar manner. When Miss Bowles left Keswick, she carried away a characteristic present from Southey - an extract he had made while in Portugal from an old wooden-bound book, which he found in a convent library. It had apparently never been opened since the monks had chained it so near the ceiling that he had to stand on a high ladder to read it, and to write out the legend, for it was covered with thick cobwebs. She also took back to Buckland Cottage a drawing she had made of the interior of that pleasant room in which the family collected of an evening with their frequent guests, but which overflowed with the books of the master of the house. These were dear to him as the dearest friends, and he loved an old volume with creamy paper, and broad black printing, finely bound in vellum or Russia-leather, right well, almost to the last. The view of his library, with the open box of books just arrived by coach from London, in the foreground, soon took its place in Miss Bowles' pretty drawing-room; and the extract from the monkish volume made its appearance in "The Legend of Santarem," which she published a good while afterwards. Southey used to say that "she only required concentration of thought and energies to produce a great work." This she never attempted, nor was it at all within the scope of her powers. She contented herself with sending beautiful and popular sketches to Blackwood's Magazine, which were chiefly taken from domestic incidents belonging to her own family histories. The pathetic story of Andrew Cleaves, which is probably her best, belonged purely to fiction; but is worked up with wonderfully graphic details. It was written while she was watching the dying bed of "Ma Bonne," who lived to unusual old age, and sank to rest in the arms of her nurse-child, by whom she was so fondly cherished. She is mentioned in several poems as the last of that household which had surrounded her youth. The good Quaker, Bernard Barton, used often to persuade Miss Bowles to write for his Annual. Alaric Watts also claimed frequent contributions from her pen; and her works became especially popular in America, where Washington Irving had revived the love of all things pertaining to old-fashioned English life. She was very often amused by letters from her American admirers, who implored her to cross the Atlantic and to gladden their country with her presence. Than such a prospect, as may well be supposed, nothing could have been further from her wishes! Her health had always been delicate, and did not improve as she advanced in life on the contrary, she was subject to severe suffering from neuralgic and other causes, which made her frequently unable to see her most intimate friends. It was a very great pleasure to her, therefore, to alter and improve her little domain, which she did with the proceeds of "The Widow's Tale," and other works. She found an unfailing source of interest in her conservatory; and the rustic dairy, richly furnished with old China, which she had built under a great elm-tree on her lawn ; and also in her little pony carriage, in which she constantly visited her poor people on the outskirts of the New Forest, followed by her great black mastiff. One of her greatest friends for many years was an accomplished Swiss lady, whose husband was descended from Lord Chesterfield's "Dayrolles," and who as a widow had happily settled near Lymington. When well enough to enjoy the parties often given by Lady Neale at Walhampton, no one was more cheerful than Miss Bowles, or contributed more to the amusement of guests staying at that hospitable house. On one occasion, when she happened to meet a large party assembled the for Christmas festivities, she, like every one else, appeare thoroughly mystified by a bundle of torn letters which the hostess had picked up in the corridor, and which had parently met with some accident on their way to the post office. Everybody was requested to claim from among them his or her property, the signatures being unluckily missing. They contained strictures, more or less true, every one's manners, aspirations, and general character and so well was the deception kept up that it was not traced to its proper source for some time. About the year 1831, Edward Irving, then still a popa lar preacher, and undoubtedly a man of noble intellectual powers, came for a short summer-holiday with his wife, to Mrs. Baring-Wall's house at Lymington. He preached (as is common with Scotch ministers) at the Independent Chapel, and its narrow walls could not contain the eager crowds who flocked to hear him. He therefore agreed to the generally expressed wish, and it was given out that he would preach once on Milford Common, near the old encampment of the French Royalists. A golden afternoon glowing on the harvest-fields and hedge-rows by which it is surrounded, and on the Solent dotted with white sails, brought out all the carriages of the neighborhood. Most people declared they were driving that way by chance: but so it was, that they all stopped to hear, and it certainly was an hour worth stopping for. The great preacher was then in the prime of life and of energy, with a magnificent figure, which could well bear to stand with the westering sun for a background; and a great crowd gathered in front of him, watching every change of his countenance, and catching to its farthest outskirts every intonation of his wonderfully flexible voice. He preached on the great harvest to be gathered in by all who were ready to serve the Lord of the harvest. His imagery was taken from the surrounding scenery and the associations of the place, and the effect was electrical. No one who heard that sermon ever thought very hardly in after-days of Irving himself, however much they may have dissented from his peculiar views and conduct. Miss Bowles was of course there in her pretty pony carriage; and on the following morning she met him (with the writer) at Mrs. Wall's house. They had a long conversation, in the course of which Mr. Irving spoke warmly of the obligations he owed to Coleridge at the beginning of his career in London. He loved, he said, "to watch for Coleridge's grand ideas looming through the mist." Caroline Bowles afterwards remarked that he reminded her, as a preacher, of Robert Hall, whose eloquence till then she had thought unsurpassed; and in personal appearance of Mr. Southey. She was convinced that if the latter could have held ten minutes' conversation with Edward Irving, against whom he had written with extreme bitterness, "they would have stalked together away towards Brockenhurst, the best friends in the world." But Southey never had such an opportunity, and Miss Bowles never saw Irving again. In the course of the same summer she had the pleasure of a second visit from Southey; but the chief part of his time was occupied in writing for the Quarterly Review. In a letter to Mrs. Hodson he says: "The remainder of the paper was written at Caroline Bowles', where I shut myself up for eleven days, refusing all invitations, seeing no visitors, and never going out, excepting when she mounted her Shetland pony and I walked by her side for an hour or two before dinner." So far, indeed, did he carry this sauvagerie, that on one occasion, when an old and dear relative of his hostess persuaded her to open door of the room in which Southey was writing, she was so much struck by his air of annoyance that she directly closed it. As they met again, her guest exclaimed, "When you had shown my mane and my tail, you might as well have let me roar !" the In 1834 his great sorrow came upon him in the illness of his wife, which ended in mental alienation. 'Forty years," he writes, "has she been the life of my and I have left her this day in a lunatic asylum. God, o has visited me with this affliction, has given me ength to bear it, and will, I know, support me to the d. whatever that may be." His letters at this period all breathe the same spirit of signation and of steadfast endurance, but his health was eatly impaired by three years of devoted watchfulness, companied by the necessity for literary labor. On the 16th of November, 1837, Edith Southey sank inlessly and peacefully to rest. However thankful her sband must have been for such a release from suffering, e did not recover the loss of one who had been for two hirds of his life his chief object, as he was hers. His riends persuaded him to seek restored health and cheerulness by going abroad; and on his return to England he paid a visit of some weeks to Buckland cottage, arriving here in October, 1838. His spirits revived in the society of his old friend, and a few months later he wrote thus to Walter Savage Landor: "Reduced in number as my family has been within the last few years, my spirits would hardly recover their habitual and healthy cheerfulness if I had not prevailed on Miss Bowles to share my lot for the remainder of our Eves. There is just such a disparity of age as is fitting. We have been well acquainted with each other more than twenty years, and a more perfect conformity of disposition could not exist: so that in resolving upon what must be either the weakest or the wisest act of a sexagenarian's life, I am well assured that, according to human foresight, I have judged well and acted wisely, both for myself and my remaining daughter." He naturally did not allude to the fact, that when he first made an offer to Caroline Bowles, she “refused to burden him with an invalid wife." That objection was happily removed by her gaining an unwonted degree of health; and on the 5th of June, 1839, she was married to him at Boldre Church. The rest of the summer was chiefly spent in paying visits among her relations, to whom her husband now showed himself in his pleasantest character. He was extremely agreeable, when throughly at his ease in society; and he apparently took great interest in the new family circle in which he found himself so cordially welcomed. The first symptoms of failure of memory soon unhappily appeared, but they were looked upon as mere absence of mind, and excited no uneasiness. Southey had once dedicated a poem to Caroline Bowles, his "kind friend and sister poetess," called "The Sinner well saved." It was the story of "the wretched Eliemon who sold his soul to the demon;" and of course belonged to a class of subjects wich had a singular attraction for him. He explained that the Satan of the Middle Ages appeared to him a purely mythological personage, whom he had as much right to use as he would have had to introduce Pan or Faunus into a poem. This in some degree accounts for the reasonable offence given by many -too many of his writings. Quite a new subject was now to engage his own pen and his wife's. They projected and partly accomplished a poem, which was to take up and weave together the legends of our Saxon hero, Robin Hood. Mrs. Southey was full of hope, when he had settled again amongst his old pursuits and friends and books, that he would entirely recover a healthy tone of mind, and all his former vigor; and she still looked forward to many happy years. This, however, as we all know, was a fallacious hope; his mental powers gradually diminished; and although he long enjoyed hearing her read, and nearly to the end loved the sound of her voice and of her name, the torch burnt lower and lower till it was finally extinguished. The last year of his life was passed in a tranquil, dreamy state, in which he recognized no one, not even his wife. Robert Southey died on the 21st of March, 1843, and was borne to his rest on a stormy morning, in the beautiful church-yard of Crosthwaite. Few besides his own family and immediate neighbors followed his remains; but his intimate friend Mr. Wordsworth crossed the hills on that wild morning to be present at the funeral. As soon as her shattered health allowed her to undertake the journey to Hampshire, Mrs. Southey returned to Buckland Cottage. There, surrounded by her nearest relations and oldest friends, she gradually recovered the energies of a mind shaken indeed by long anxiety and sorrow, but not weakened. Her old gayety was forever gone, and she shrunk from any new literary exertion. During the remaining years of her life she chiefly occupied herself with arranging a complete edition of her works, including the finished portions of " Robin Hood," and a life of Peter Bell, which she had begun at Keswick. On her marriage Mrs. Southey had lost an annuity bequeathed to her by a relation of her father's, Colonel Bruce. It was therefore with great satisfaction that she learnt in 1852 that the Queen had conferred on her a pension of two hundred a year, in consideration of the benefits received by literature from her husband's works. This pension had been granted owing to the unceasing efforts of her brother-in-law, Dr. Southey, on her behalf; and was therefore all the more welcome to her. She paid at least one visit to London to see the beautiful recumbent statue of Southey which lies above his tomb. The original intention and agreement with Mr. Lough, the sculptor, was that the monument should be of Caen stone; but with characteristic liberality he executed it in white marble; he presented also a fine cast of the bust to his widow. When the writer of these brief records went to see it at his studio, Mr. Lough remarked how like Mrs. Southey's eye and the expression of her features was to her husband's. In 1853 Caroline Southey also passed away. Only a few hours before her death she was watching a fine EastIndiaman that had purposely been run aground near the Needles, to avoid swamping a little fishing-boat that crossed her track. She observed to Lady Burrard, who was with her to the last, how impossible it was for her to realize that death was close at hand, with her mind so fully awake to all the interests of life! Her early prayer was fulfilled, as it seemed to the letter: Come not in terrors clad to claim This statement, though rather "tall," can hardly be set down as a positive exaggeration. During the past summer Russia has been outdoing herself in fires, in a way astonishing even to those who remember the great conflagrations of 1862. All the journals have been teeming with fire after fire, to an extent which might lead a casual observer to conclude either that the Russians are in the habit of regaling themselves annually with a patriotic rehearsal of the burning of Moscow, or that the entire nation has attained the condition of the Chinese in Charles Lamb's incomparable" Essay on Roast Pig," among whom the only known method of cookery was by burning the entire premises. North, south, east, and west, the public at large appears to have been amusing itself by making a bonfire of everything that comes to hand, while the insurance companies of every degree are repenting in dust and ashes. One could hardly open a newspaper without seeing announced, in a careless, off-hand summary of half a dozen lines, as a matter of no moment, the destruction by fire of "fifty houses," "one hundred and thirteen houses," entire street containing several public buildings." Hitherto, however, I have remained, like Gideon's fleece, dry amid abundance, not a single fire out of all this multitude having been obliging enough to come in my way; but it is decreed that this delay shall be atoned for by the spectacle of a conflagration worth all the rest put together. 99.66 an One dreary September night, I had been sitting up late over the fifth volume of Count Tolstoi's "War and Peace," perhaps the best Russian historical novel ever written. I was just midway through the Borodino chapter, and had so thoroughly enjoyed the life-like description of the great battle, that it was little wonder if it haunted me even in sleep. But I could hardly have slept more than an hour, when I was roused by a clamor that might have awakened a rural policeman, and, rushing to the window, found myself in the midst of a scene that almost realized the visions of battle upon which it had broken. Alarm-lights were hoisted upon the tower of the fire brigade station, which was next door to me; lamps were flitting about the courtyard; the trampling of horses and the rumble of wheels, mingled with the hoarse shouting of many voices, came echoing from below; and overhead, the whole sky was purple with the reflection of a fierce red glare that broke the darkness far away to the eastward. There could be no doubt of it, I had got my wish at last. I dressed myself as if "running it close" for morning chapel at Oxford, and was down-stairs and out of the house in a twinkling. "Where is it?" ask I of one of the helmeted figures in gray frieze who are rushing about in front of the station. "Tootchkoff Bridge," answers the man, and the next moment I am running at full speed towards the scene of action. There is no need to inquire further; at the mention of the Tootchkoff Bridge, I comprehend at once the whole extent of the catastrophe. The bridge in question crosses the Lesser Neva about half-way along the eastern shore of the island on which the Vasili-Ostroff suburb is built; and close to it, on the farther side of the river, lies an enormous hemp-wharf, containing four or five warehouses, and usually covered with piles of loose bales, in addition to the quantity stored within. Such a magazine of fuel, once fired, would make a blaze to startle all Petersburg; and, indeed, the whole neighborhood is already in commotion. Heads are thrusting themselves out of windows; voices calling to each other; half-dressed figures running about the streets; and more than once, as I fly along, a fire-engine comes thundering past at full gallop, the brazen helmets of its men glancing redly in the fitful light. At length, as I turn the corner of the street leading to the Tootchkoff Bridge, the whole scene bursts upon me at once. The entire front of the hemp-wharf is one sheet of dancing flame, which, tossed by the rising wind, swoops forward ever and anon as if to overleap the very river itself, casting out a heat which, even across the whole breadth of the stream, is well-nigh unendurable. Beneath the deepening glare, the river seems to run blood; the faces of the crowd, looking wan and ghastly beneath that infernal lustre, appear and vanish like phantoms; while, in the distant background the tall, lance-like tower of the great church of the citadel looms out through the rolling smoke like a threatening giant. Of the store-house in which the fire began nothing is left but a great heap of glowing embers, around which the flames rising from the loose hemp lap and surge like a whirlpool. A second warehouse is just bursting into a blaze, and the engines are working with might and main to save it, the long black line of the water-jet standing out against the flaming background like a bar sinister drawn athwart some gorgeous escutcheo But all is in vain. The hemp within is already alight The smoke deepens thickens-reddens suddenly—an up through the roof leaps a great spout of fire, with a long rejoicing roar, accompanied by a sharp snapping like report of a firework. The rafters crack and hiss in the blaze; the "chirr" of broken glass is heard from the up per windows; and right and left the fiery claws clutch the adjoining timbers, till all is one broad flame, above and below. Wilder and wilder grows the tumult. Engine after engine comes rattling up, goes thundering across the bridg into sudden darkness, and comes out again in the full glare of the fire the faces of the men, and the very buttons their uniform, standing out as clear as if under a microscope What with the stifling heat, the fierce intensity of movement, and the deafening uproar, my battle-visions are more than realized. Every feature of the panorama — the hoarse words of command, the incessant play of the engines, the helmeted figures running and scrambling under the red glare, the crash of falling timbers, the masses of men looming shadow-like through the rolling smoke — is in grim harmony with the idea. It is the escalade of Badajoz over again! now. As yet the great warehouse in the centre of the wharf has escaped unscathed, though environed on every side by a perfect wall of flame; but it has evidently not long to live Flakes of burning hemp fall upon it like rain, and a long jet of fire from the nearest of the blazing buildings keeps darting viciously out at it, in stroke after stroke, like the arm of a boxer. One blow, swifter and fiercer than the rest, at length gets well home; the dark mass is suddenly lit up from within, sparks and pieces of wood fly in all directions, and in a few seconds the whole building is in flames. And now the destruction has reached its height. From the head of the bridge to the farthest storehouse, the whole wharf is one great roaring blaze, the floating sparks of which shoot athwart the black sky overhead like the fiery rain of Dante's "Inferno; " and in its ghastly splendor, the whole length of the quay, the dark woods that cluster along the farther shore, and even the golden domes of the churches far away beyond the Great Neva, stand out in a weird, unearthly picturesqueness. At this moment-how or whence no man can tell-a fearful whisper runs through the crowd that there are men shut up in the great warehouse - probably stupefied by the smoke, and unable to get out. The rumor speedily reaches the firemen, and the bare suggestion is enough to stimulate them to redoubled exertion. Half a dozen stalwart volunteers, with their clothes steeped in water to keep off the flames, dash into the glowing mass, flinging aside the halfconsumed timbers with the strength of giants; but the they stagger, stifling heat soon overpowers even them scorched and gasping, out of the furnace, and sink exhausted on the ground. One man actually plants a ladder against the burning building, and mounts it with a hosepipe under his arm, in the hope of giving it a surer aim. background like a statue of bronze For one moment he is seen outlined against the flaming and then an ill-aimed jet from one of the other engines strikes the brave fellow full on the body, and sweeps him like a feather into the very heart of the fire! Not a trace of him was ever seen again; and his very name is most probably unknown. Why should it not be? he was neither grandee nor general — Only an honest man Doing his duty; 66 and human life, like human labor, is cheap in Russia. And so, through the long night, the fire roars and rages; and when the day dawns upon it at last, there is but little left for the destroyer to feed on. Slowly and sullenly his rage dies away in hoarse growls and gaspings, and the silence of utter desolation now sinks upon that great wilderness of ruin. While the fire raged, the indescribable magnificence of the spectacle made one half forget its horror, and the ruin which it entailed; but in the gray of early morning, when the uproar and excitement are over, it is a dreary and hid |