off from us in an instant. The duck is rather tough, Vencaty." The knife overcame the reluctant wing, and Mo resumed his jeremiade. "Taken off, too, just as Lord William had promised him the collectorship of Cuddalore! Alas! what poor creatures we are! In the midst of life" Here, suddenly observing that a lady had nothing on her plate, he stopped short. "Mrs. Floyer, a bit of duck. I know it is a favourite dish with you and the General. Well, poor youth, he is no more-there he lies like the clod of the valley.—Mrs. Ogilvy, some sage and onions!" But to witness Mr. Yeldham completely in his element, you should have been at one of those neat breakfasts, which he gave occasionally to a select party of ladies and gentlemen, picked out with great care, and seldom without a due deference to rank and station. He lived in a beautiful garden house, small, but comfortable, with a sort of lawn before it, on which he grazed a small flock of Bengal sheep, which he thought had a pretty pastoral effect, but to us they were more pleasing as tokens of the delightful little haunches and jigots, for which the exquisite dinners of Mo were proverbial. It was at one of these dejeuners, as the ladies were sitting in the veranda, inhaling the last fresh breezes of the morning, before the sun had reached the full might of his tyranny, that they were surprised by an Arcadian divertissement, which the obliging creature had, with great pains, got up to amuse them. As most ladies are sentimental, and nothing is more sentimental than sheep frisking and disporting about, Mo had rehearsed a scene of this kind previously to the arrival of his visitors, and expected that it would go off with great eclat. But in India, sheep are not inclined to be very prodigal of their gambols. Mo had therefore, as he imagined, obviated this defect, by placing some black servants behind a milkhedge with tin tubes, through which they were to puff pebbles at the poor animals, and thus pelt them into a due degree of pastoral alertness. The thing succeeded for a few minutes, but the sheep not relishing the diversion, thought it better to lie down quite regardless of the pellets. At this moment Narrain Saumy, the dubash, fearing the whole spectacle would be spoiled, was seen chasing the sheep in all directions, with a whip in his hand, which had a much better effect in rousing them. Hold, Narrain, you dog!" cried Yeldham, "why do you beat the sheep, Sir?" "Sheep won't jump," returned Narrain; "sheep lazy-1 flog to make sheep jump." The scene was irresistibly comic; the ladies tittered, and the less restrained mirth of the men put a stop to the performance, to the visible annoyance of poor Yeldham, who saw the whole of his contrivance completely defeated. Yet these innocent puerilities, the overflowings of a heart that was never completely at ease but whilst it was giving pleasure to others, scarcely excited a sarcastic comment. It was a convention universally acted on, not to consider Yeldham fair game for ridicule. We put him on the same footing as the privileged birds, the red-breast or the martin, which even the sportive malice of the school-boy has learned to respect. With the women he was eminently popular. Out of the purest, the most genuine good-nature, he kept them in good-humour with themselves, convincing each in her turn that she never looked better in her life. How delightful an assurance to the poor creatures, half-baked by a dry land-wind, or nearly suffocated during one of those still and sultry days in India, when the winds of heaven seem to have breathed their last sigh! How pleasing a reversal of the less pleasing sentence of the glass-how charming a confirmation of the equivocal testimony of the Ayah.* Some little flattery, perhaps, might lurk in the compliment; but if flattery, it was of the most disinterested kind. For it was not lavished upon the ladies of taste and fashion, the givers of excellent dinners and splendid balls-they were dosed with it to satiety;-nor upon the fresh arrivals, whose cheeks still glowing with the roses of England, levied it at will, as their rightful homage. No! He was 'faithful among the faithless,' to a class of spinsters sitting in some deserted nook of the ball-room, not a beau fluttering near them, unless it was in the shape of some battered, squinting Lieutenant-Colonel, or of some graceless stripling of a Writer, bantering them with phrases of mock-heroic gallantry. Here the kind-hearted Yeldham remitted not his assiduities. If ever you visit any of the Indian presidencies, and your feelings are rightly attuned, you will learn to commiserate this despised portion of female society. My heart has often yearned for them. No condition can be more pitiable, and surely it should read a wholesome lesson to the ambition of parents and relatives who calculate upon good husbands and splendid establishments, as the necessary results of the speculation. Let the poor girls miss their first chance; season after season may return, and find them still withering on the virgin thorn, with pallid bilious features, and tempers rendered acescent by disappointment,-naturally reluctant to return, the grand purpose of their lives unachieved: or, perhaps, too destitute to command the requisite funds, subsisting on the precarious hospitality of strangers by blood or affection, and fain to earn that hospitality by flattering the fresher bloom of the daughters, or toadying and rendering themselves useful to the mothers. Go where you will in your pursuit of the ridiculous, from the pert youth in Parliament, whom they have just made an under-secretary, and a coxcomb for life, down to the municipal dignity of a country mayor or alderman,-vanity and self-importance will always have the chief parts in the burletta. It was so at Madras. There was fine amusement in watching the superannuated civil servant arrived at the long protracted consummation of his hopes. Next to the Governor, the highest rank and best pay is to be in Council. A councillor in India does not necessarily imply a man of counsel; nor in a multitude of them would there be much safety, if there were any danger. It was quite a comedy to remark the first symptoms of an elevation so eagerly coveted, and so long expected, and the transformation of character that is almost sure to go with it. There is just pomp and circumstance enough in it to serve weak minds for playthings; and they lulled my old friend Cas, as they called him from the first syllable of his name, into a delicious dream of greatness; and as the peons ran before him with huge plated staves, and he heard the louder and more deepened grunt with which the bearers announced their dignified load, he found himself in the highest heaven of his elevation. His tone was more A Native lady's maid. oracular; his strut more solemn. He was no great clerk; at times, however, he loved to converse upon subjects of literature, when his confusion of books, incidents, and authors, excited infinite mirth. Poor Cas! I forget what led to the subject: he was one day talking to me about Julius Cæsar, a great general, as he had heard, though he could never find any victories of note he had been concerned in. But he could not help admiring, he said, his astonishing faculties of dictating to four or five secretaries at once; adding, "he would have been very high, had he been in the Company's service with such a talent as that. By the by," said he, "could you not recommend me to some author for a good account of this same Julius Cæsar?" He had a small library in the room where we were conversing, and I well knew that, amongst other works," Clarendon's History of the Rebellion" had long held a sinecure place on its shelves. I told him that the noble historian had given some curious particulars of Julius Caesar, referring him to the index, which he instantly consulted, and took down the volume in which Clarendon commemorates a Sir Julius Cæsar, who was Master of the Rolls to James and Charles the First. He thanked me, and told me he would read what was said about Julius Cæsar. Some days after, I met him at a dinner-party, when he called out to me from the end of the table-"Well, I have read Lord Clarendon's account of Julius Cæsar."-"Lord Clarendon's account of Julius Cæsar!" buzzed out several voices, expressive of astonishment. But they took my hint, and entered into the joke, which they enjoyed exceedingly. "No doubt," continued the Madras Councillor, "no doubt Julius Cæsar was a good lawyer, or they would not have made him Master of the Rolls." "Julius Cæsar, Master of the Rolls!" exclaimed Doctor Anderson, who rather liked a pun-" Julius Cæsar, Master of the Rolls!" he repeated, in his Scottish accent. And pray, Mr. Cas, in what heestory do you read that Julius Cæsar was Master of the Rolls? It must surely have been in Baker's Chronicles." But old Cas, quite regardless of the joke, went on. "I don't, however, see that Lord Clarendon says any thing of the military genius of this Julius Cæsar. Perhaps he was no such great general, after all ;-not equal to Lord Cornwallis, or General Harris, that I'll be sworn.' From this time he went by no other name but Julius Cæsar. 66 " EPIGRAM. From Martial. LORD William buys his clothes at dearest rate, HATEM TAI, AN ARABIAN TALE. AN Arabian Tale! Positively, I cannot relate it unless I have Arabian listeners; and to become such my auditors must all sit cross-legged, and in a circle, which is as indispensable to my proper inspiration as was the tripod to that of the ancient Pythoness. One cross-legged personage I must have at all events to prevent my imagination from flagging; and as there is no tailor at hand, thou, gentle reader, must submit to the operation. There! that attitude will do perfectly well; your chair looks like an ottoman; you yourself have the aspect of a Turk; and, as far as exteriors go, there is nothing farther to be desired for either. But have you prepared your mind, most accommodating reader, as well as your body? Have you laid in a stock of the genuine Arabian, blind, uninquiring credulity? Somebody said of Louis XIV. "qu'il avoit la foi du charbonnier." Yours must be as implicit and omnivorous; I will have no incredulous grimaces, no uplifting of hands, no enlarging of eyes, not one of Mr. Fudge Burchall's exclamations. If you cannot, upon the present pinch, suppose the flat ceiling of the room in which you are reading to be the pointed top of a tent, and yonder draperied window to be the opening in its front, commanding an extensive view over the great wilderness of Paran, it will be of no use to listen to me. Look! yonder are the camels kneeling down at the wells; and hark! what a pleasant, cooling sound it is to hear them sucking up the water with their parched mouths. Ha! the men are quarrelling at the farther well; all struggling to be first to fill their skins and leathern bottles. Lo! daggers are gleaming in the air! it cannot be helped; the sand round about the margin of the water is generally stained with blood. Well, let them fight, we will begin our story, for this clashing of steel will soon be over. But what is it to be? Shall it be one of the tales of Lokman the fabulist, the kinsman of Job, who lived to the time of David? or of Sandabar, who died only one hundred years before Christ? Shall I recount to you the marvellous history of Solomon's magical ring; or divulge some of the secrets he learnt by knowing the language of birds; or conjure up before you the dwarf spirit, little in stature but tremendous in power, who dwells in the dark bowels of the earth beneath the great pyramid? You are aware, of course, that according to the Arabian creed, a bird, called Manoh, issues from the brain of every dead person, and haunts his sepulchre, uttering lamentable screams, and divulging to the ears of the initiated all the secrets and the crimes of the defunct. Shall I reveal some of these dread mysteries? No," this eternal blazon must not be to ears of flesh and blood." I will tell you, instead, the story of Hatem Tai, the greatest warrior, and the keenest hunter that ever drew a sword or wound a horn in Arabia. Hatem Tai had gone down into the wilderness, with his horses, hounds, and a party of his friends, to enjoy the pleasures of the chace; but he had no sooner pitched his tents, than one of those thick mists which sometimes spread themselves over the sultry plains of the Desert, giving it the appearance of an extended lake, surrounded him on all sides, and utterly prevented his stirring forth to seek the sport he had anticipated. To beguile the tedious time, he sipped coffee every half-hour, arranged his turban fifty different ways in the mirror of his bright Damascus scymetar, went to the back of the tent to pat his favourite barb, or conversed with his friend Shafay Ben Idris, as they both reclined upon cushions, bewailing the unlucky chance that consigned him to such an unwelcome inactivity. "It is always lamentable to lose time," said the grave and sententious Shafay, "for man is but the phantom of a night; life is a sleep of threescore and ten years— death bids us wake, and hail the light; wherefore we do well to term a burial-ground the house of the living. The little insect that flutters "Talking of little insects," interposed Hatem Tai, "yonder comes the diminutive Hassan Alasady :—when I see his little feet running obsequiously after his long beard, methinks I see a father followed by his son. Perchance he cherishes his beard in hopes of hiding himself behind it; but I must not let him hear me, for, little as he is, Hassan is fierce and choleric." "But his anger is short-lived," said Shafay; "it is like one of our Arabian rivulets, no sooner doth it wax warm than it vanisheth away, and is forgotten. It is not thus with the overflowing tide of his benevolence, which, even when it ceases, leaves its benignant effects behind, as the verdure of the plains attests the influence of the Nile, long after its stream has ceased to be visible. Since life is so short, why should our angry passions "I could listen to you for the whole remainder of the afternoon," cried Hatem Tai; "but hark, hist! methought I caught the more welcome baying of a hound." His keen ear was not mistaken; for suddenly the whole welkin echoed with the noise of bugles, the tramp of horses, the baying of dogs, and the gallant cheers and halloos of the huntsmen, all sounding as if they were rushing past the skirts of his encampment. At the same moment his own courser neighed loudly and impatiently, and his deep-mouthed dogs howled and raved as if they would break their chains in their eagerness to join the chace. "Follow me, Shafay!" cried Hatem Tai; "I will join these bold hunters, even though the mist should prevent my seeing beyond my horse's ears." So saying, he grasped his bow, with the tinger-stalls and the ring for drawing it, vaulted upon his steed, and in an instant was hidden by the white fog, into the midst of which he galloped. As he plunged rapidly forward, the same jocund cries and sounds continually accompanied him; they seemed to be close to his ear, and yet he could see neither horses nor dogs, neither hunters nor bugleblowers,‚—a circumstance at which he marvelled the more, because as he advanced he could perceive that the Desert whirlwind had arisen, and immense columns of sand, whirling round and round upon their own axes, rushed forward out of the white mist, the setting sun shining through some of them, and throwing a lurid glare upon others which were still partially shrouded in the vapour. Nothing could be more ominous, ghastly, and terrific, than the appearance of these spectral monsters, now advancing, and now receding with a frightful impetuosity; some wrapped in a winding-sheet of mist, from which only their heads emerged; others kindled by the bright ray, showing like pillars of fire; not coming, however, as did that which was sent to guide and to save the Israelites, but more like avenging angels, commissioned to whelm and to destroy. They seemed to say, "We are the giant guardians of the Desert-invade not our precincts, or you |