treats, and of rendering more familiar its leading characters; not only such heroic characters as inspire emulation, but also such as may deter from future evil, by showing of what base matter that evil was composed. Nevertheless the Cavalier's narrative in the main is simply the story of his own life, such as it was then, such as it might be now; and if it possess no moral, we can only say that he lived in vain. I do not fear that the antiquity of his experience will prove prejudicial to his interest; for the passions-as immortal as the spirit of which they are the features-are unchangeable by time and almost by circumstances; nay, if anything, the religion and the chivalry, and the love and hatred of other days affect us more, as they stand out in bolder relief from the familiar circumstances of our own.

It is unnecessary to observe that the Autobiographer writes under a feigned name; in the reign of Charles II., in which his tale concludes, it was by no means satisfactory to look back upon any public career in the preceding reign. Those, however, who are acquainted with the characters of the Wentworth, the Godolphin, and the Sunderland of that time, will easily find parallels for the characters and adventures of Reginald and Hugo Hastings. They will not be surprised to find Cavaliers sometimes conversing without oaths, and Puritans (as I hope) applying texts without profanity: the absence of such accustomed seasoning may tell against "dramatic relish," but will not be universally condemned.

To apologize for other and greater faults would be endless and importunate; I prefer to trust my Cavalier and his Confessions, undefended, to the Reader's generous indulgence.

MARCH 20, 1850.

REGINALD HASTINGS.

I AM a prisoner, closely guarded and confined, suddenly secluded from the most stirring strife that ever kindled in the heart of a great people. Three days ago I was free, and fighting with all the energy of mingled hope and desperation; now faint in frame and spirit, I am hidden away in a dungeon's obscurity, condemned perhaps for years to silent and helpless inactivity.

limits: my senses, concentrated on such few objects, became more observant of those few, which dilated in the same proportion. I gradually detected faint sounds and sights in the apparent blank and silence that surrounded me; I could hear the rustle of the sentry's weatherbeaten doublet, and the trail of his pike along the leads of the castle. Once or twice, too, I thought I heard something stirring under the stony floor, but that must be imagination. I approach the window to catch a breath of fresh air through a broken pane, and I perceive some scratches on the glass that appear to me like letters. They have been cut with a keen diamond, but if they have any meaning it is undecipherable, and yet

For the first few days of my captivity I scarcely found it irksome; the scenes of thrilling I had written thus far when the gaoler entered and ceaseless interest I had so long lived in with my dinner, and at once changed the current seemed to be reënacted in imagination; I chewed of my thoughts. Nothing breaks into the reveries the cud of a glutted memory, and was uncon- of a young fasting man like the smell of food; scious of any void in its supply. At length re- and it was not only the savory fumes of a venturning hunger of action seized me, my wounds ison steak, but the presence of a fellow-creature, had ceased to torture, my blood had supplied its that turned my thoughts into a more cheerful loss, and bounded in my veins once more. I channel. The turnkey was a short, stout, bowsprang from my pallet and gazed eagerly upon legged varlet, with broad stooping shoulders, and the rising sun: he soon passed beyond the nar- a neck that might puzzle the hangman to disrow rift of daylight visible between my barred windows and the battlements: that little glimpse of the infinite sky only served to render my confinement more dismal, from its contrast with my tomb-like cell.

The first sense of imprisonment is appalling, and scarcely to be imagined by those to whom freedom seems as natural as life itself. The mass of iron and stone that surrounds you strikes cold upon the eye; the solemn silence of the crowded but sternly-guarded prison oppresses the ear, and a sense of utter helplessness weighs down

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cover, through the tangles of his lank red hair and grizzly beard. A certain stamp of men seems to be produced by nature to fill certain situations, and this man had evidently found his destined place; his small malevolent eyes appeared just adapted to scrutinize a dungeon, and to examine fetters; his mouth was full of bitterness, and there was room for a good deal of it within his huge jaws and wolfish teeth; a grayish sandy beard bristled on his pointed chin, and reached half way up his face. Yet was his presence heartily welcome to me, independently of his savory mission; he was the only fellowcreature I was destined to see for many a day, and I would have liked him if I could.

He laid a coarse white napkin on the window recess, and I observed him adding the different accessories of my meal with interest, but in silence. At length, he reluctantly crowned his labors by placing a flask of wine near the pewter dish, and then expressed by an impatient gesture, that he was waiting to remove the remnants of my dinner.

the heart. The first day of restored consciousness appeared to me to contain an age of suffering and painful thought. I vainly strove to fix my attention on some actual object; my eyes soon lost sight of it, and strayed away to gaze on those imaginary scenes that recalled my uselessnessmy misery of inaction. The thought of escape naturally seized me, but it was only for a moment; the little cell in which I was confined had set all the inspirations of courage and despair at defiance for six centuries. It had been a dungeon "You've wine from the governor's own cellar since the time of the Conqueror, and was about to-day," said he, as I proceeded to act upon his eighteen feet square; the walls composed of implied suggestion; "it's good Rhenish, and fitter huge stones, cemented by tough old mortar that for honest men than for the like of ye, rantipolwas harder still. The only window consisted of ing Cavaliers, limbs of Satan, as ye are. It's four dim panes, deeply set in a massive wall, little of such comfort I thought thou'dst be wantwith iron bars, whose deep, dark rust proved ing in this world, when thou wast brought in their long service and trustworthiness; this win- here, stiff and bloody, some days syne; I thought dow opened upon a narrow battlemented terrace, our musketeers had been saved a job." patrolled by a sentinel, whose shadow alone was I was too well pleased to hear the sound of perceptible as it approached and retired, ghost- the human voice to be critical as to its purport, like his bodily presence, enemy as he was, and I applied myself to my flask and platter would have been a relief to me. with a soldier's appetite, while my attendant Gradually my very soul seemed to share in the continued in almost articulate growls to vent his narrowness of my cell, and to shrink within its spleen.

"Ay, swill away! Never have we a swagger-soul to a confessor, or the ill in health to a physiing and half starved Cavalier, but has the thirst cian. Written by my own hand, my biography of Dives, as if he was already in a place of tor

ment."

"Here, my friend," said I, "you seem to want a drop to cool your own tongue, and when you've done so, please to tell me for what, or to whom, I am indebted for this good fare."

shall relate only to the dead; before any stranger shall read these lines, their author will be unconscious of the blessing of his sympathy, or the insult of his sneer. For this reason, I can,—yea, and will write to the world as freely, as fully, and as truly, as if I were pouring my confessions in the friendliest ear.

The turnkey emptied the horn of wine without ceremony, and replied that it was by the Gover- With these thoughts, I once more grasped my nor's orders that I was so indulged; "but," added pen, and vehemently and hastily wrote down the he, "doant thou be set up for that matter; for the above-the first words that presented themselves; man Aubrey that lay in that bed before you was fearing, if I paused to reconsider them, that such cockered up in the same manner, and four days a commencement would shame me from continuago he was led out and shot like a dog-yea, ance. As a young bird prepares for flight, I flutwith the good liquor yet in his mouth, and wasted. tered through these sentences, and then deterBut I've no business to be here talking to a wine-mined to trust myself for good or ill upon a longer bibbing son of Belial, as thou art. There be pens flight; yea, even if my gray goose-quill should and ink, and paper, and candles, and profane prove but an Icarian wing. books, and I must e'en wait on thee before sunset with more meat, and receive thy orders."

So saying, he collected his cups and platters and departed, leaving me with a plentiful supply of the important matters he had named. Provided with these great and responsible instruments, my mind became more restless than ever; small physical privations occupy the attention far more than we care to admit into rivalry with sentimental sorrow, and when I found myself with a well-satisfied appetite, I felt more than ever the necessity of some occupation to divert sad thoughts. There lay the best implements for solitary labor, if I could use them aright-pen and paper-yea, the very means of immortality! I thought of the great and gallant Raleigh, of Galileo, of Tasso, of our own Lovelace, and felt how glorious a matter imprisonment might be made.

Here, then, is the history of my young life as far as it has gone; it may prove to be but a fragment and a brief one.

I am the eldest son of Reginald, Lord Hastings of Beaumanoir. His ancestors had shared in the dangers and rewards of the Norman Conquest, and for centuries since, had rendered good and knightly service for the lands bestowed by the Conqueror. If, at any time, their title deeds had failed, the loss might have been supplied from their country's history, with which their names were interwoven. In the wars of Ireland, of the Holy Land, of France, and of the Roses, their blood had been profusely shed, and the present unhappy times found my father still ready to stand or fall by the banner of his King. Yet his was no blind, unreasoning obedience, that_abandoned the right of private judgment. In his "But not for me," I mournfully thought, as I youth he had been persecuted by King James for paced up and down my narrow cell; "science, espousing the cause of Raleigh; in his age he philosophy, or poetry, may well glorify the bon- had fallen under the displeasure of King Charles dage of those whom they inspire; but from a for a quarrel with Buckingham, and resistance to rough, idle soldier like myself, whose head and that Duke's successors in the ministry. It was heart are full of all that he has undergone that only the danger of the Crown that brought him he is still undergoing-what material can be to its assistance, and reawakened, as it were, a obtained to enlighten, or even amuse the world? grateful memory, that he and his fathers owed to "Nevertheless," I resumed, (still keeping my it their cherished home and their broad lands. In eyes fixed on the momentous pen, which at length his chivalrous code of honor, the lapse of time I grasped more nervously than when I first drew my maiden sword for war,)" what I have undergone, thousands of my countrymen have, at least in part, experienced; and thousands to come will wish to know what an Englishman has felt and done in times like these; what errors he has fallen into, and by what actions he has endeavored to redeem those errors.

Again, a doubt came over me, and I laid down that tempting pen. To whom am I about to unvail the secrets of my heart-the secrets of my friends?

Who will be the readers and the critics of

what I am about to record ?

Will even those who have known me find interest in the reawakened memories of scenes that we have shared? Will those, to whom the writer is but a name, bestow their sympathies upon my joys and sorrows, for the sake of joys and sorrows of their own which my narration may recall?

It may be that the former are grown too old, or cold, or changed, and that the latter will be too little touched by the strangeness of my story to lend to it a willing ear. Nevertheless, I long to unburden my memory of its load as the sick in

had not weakened the obligation; he still enjoyed the reward of his ancestors' loyalty, and he conceived that he still owed feudal and loyal gratitude for that possession.

This fidelity of my father's to the King was imitated by that of our tenants to himself. They had, for the most part, descended from the tenants of our forefathers, through lines as ancient as their own. Though leases were unknown to our rent-rolls, the same names were to be found in each farm-house through successive centuries; our people had changed from Saxon serfs to British yeomen, without ever having changed their fealty to our house. In the village, indeed, it was whispered, that the newly-popular principles had gained some ground, but many of the inhabitants there were strangers; trade and its votaries being far more liable to change and innovation than agriculture, to which they are for the most part opposed in principle if not in interest. This village stood upon the sea-shore, about halfa-mile from The Manor, as our old house was familiarly called. Our park gates opened on a large bowling-green which stood in the very heart of the little town. A tall May-pole occupied its center, surrounded by some forty or fifty

houses and cottages, each with its gaily-painted to old ancestral houses such as these, that powersign-board, or little garden and trellised arbor, if fully impresses the imagination. The various it appropriated to no public calling.

battle

human experiences that those gray walls have For the manor itself, it was a house of great sheltered; the bright faces that have looked out extent and very varied architecture. Originally through those narrow windows; the grim a hunting-lodge of Earl Godwins, it stood on a sentries that have patrolled those gentle eminence in an extensive chase, or forest, mented towers; the voices of joy and mourning, well opened into glades and meadows. The Saxon of anger, of comfort, of desolation, of despair, palace had been fortified with Norman towers, that have sounded through those halls; the bridal and surrounded by a graff, or moat, in the reign trains and funeral processions that have passed of Rufus. A royal visit from Queen Elizabeth through those wide doors; the startling news, had superinduced the addition of a banqueting- now almost forgotten in history, that was told hall with other apartments; and my grandfather, in the reign of King James, had yet further added to the confusion of all architectural rule, by an endeavor to blend the various discrepancies of his house into one uniform style.

round those large fire-places; the venerable forms that have reposed in that old arm-chair -the merry children that have been hushed to sleep in that old-fashioned cradle; all, within and without, may now be wholly changed, yet each has left its character impressed upon the ancient home of an ancient race.

All this is altered now, they tell me. It is many a day since I have seen my birth-place; besieging artillery and ruthless pillage since then have done their utmost to obliterate all marks of what that home was once. I am thankful that I have been spared that sight, and that I can still picture to myself the old manor in all its hospitable pride, when passers-by would exclaim as they pointed to it: "There lives an English gentleman of the good old time!"

The pride of this quaint but venerable mansion was the entrance hall, some eighty feet in length, and in hight, up to the cedar rafters, perhaps half as much. The carved oak with which it was paneled was invisible to my young eyes, though I might have seen it naked enough afterward: in the days of peace it was covered over with armor, and weapons of every age, from that of Alfred downward. Its arrangement was very perfect as to time; for each helmet, morion, hauberk, or haquetin, hung upon the spot where its last wearer had placed it. This armory was my father's pride; my brother Such, indeed, was my father. He stood among and I learnt the history of our country, and of the first of that almost unnoticed class of country our ancestors, from the battered shields of Hast- gentlemen, who form the principal strength and ings, Acre, Flodden-Field, Cressy, Poictiers, real power of the state. I mean unnoticed in and Agincourt, as from so many medals.-Alas! public life only, for in the wide circle of his own for the day that scattered those trophies widely neighborhood, he possessed an honored name over England! Alas! for the gallant yeomen and moral influence that kings might envy. To friends, who left that harness only with their him, as a common center, converged all the pelives, on Edgehill, Newbury, and Chalgrove titions, applications, and appeals of the surroundField!

At the upper end of the old hall was a dais, on which a table stood crosswise under a huge painted window, which I fear had been sacrilegiously obtained in Bluff King Harry's time. Well I remember the awe with which I used to look upon my father, as he sat enthroned at that table on the King's birthday, with his neighbors assembled round him, and his farmers seated at the long tables that ran from end to end of the great hall. Opposite the doorway yawned a huge fire-place, over-arched by a high mantelpiece, elaborately carved and surmounted by a gallery, in which my mother and her fair guests used to appear on occasions of high solemnity, when the hall below was filled with retainers that would have died to serve her.

ing country; to his justice, his counsel, or his generosity, the wronged, the embarrassed, and the poor with confidence appealed; and by his opinions, ever frankly and fearlessly expressed, the public opinion of his neighborhood was influenced, if not wholly formed.

He possessed not only the confidence, but the love of all his neighbors. There was something genial and generous in his manner that seemed infectious, the cold and cautious warmed beneath its influence, the timid were encouraged, and the poor felt the presence of a friend. Though he had been in his time a courtier, a soldier, and a traveler, yet my father was passionately fond of the country, its labors, its sports, and all the various interests that it yields to those who cultivate them. He had married the daughter of a noble courtier, but her tastes had become so merged in his, that neither of them ever sent a thought in search of pleasure or amusement beyond the limits of their happy home.

The rest of the old house within was like most others of its kind: a labyrinth of galleries and staircases, and almost forgotten rooms, with which none but the oldest servants professed acquaintance. Without, behind the house, was a large court-yard, with stables for a troop of horse, I must not, in speaking of that home, pass on and a smithy, still called the armorer's forge. without a tribute to the character of my mother, There, also, were barns and granaries, and all who rendered it a cherished sanctuary. She was the appurtenances of a country-house, that of so excellent a nature that I have always reboasted to want nothing beyond its own power spected WOMAN for her sake, whatever my afterto supply. There were gardens too, and fish- experience of women may have been. For her ponds surmounted by a heronry, and all the va- sake, I have always met with scorn the fashionrious excrescences supposed necessary or com- able sneers against married life, and been able to fortable, that gather round old family places, where each son preserves, with pious and hereditary care, the things that his dead father cared

for.

There is a venerableness and mystery attached

believe that it was in mercy God gave the first man a wife, notwithstanding the result. Yes, blessed be she-whether of Eden, or of this poor penal earth-who fulfills her mission to her husband! who soothes his sorrows, extenuates his

failings, brightens his bright hours, and irradiates | whether as a student, a sportsman, or a soldier; his darkness! No jealous vanity, no morbid yet his nobler nature shrank from every triumph pride ever stains the pure motives of her minis- that his genius or his daring won at the expense try;-her noble and self-sacrificing thought and of others, and his self-sacrifice in abandoning his thoughtfulness is ever of him whom God hath well-won prizes often passed for indifference or given her of what will wound, of what will inconsistency. soothe, of what will comfort him-the father of her children, the sharer of her destiny. Happy, thrice happy, through all his mortal misery is he who can fold such a woman to his grateful heart. Her gentleness subdues, her meekness softens him; her patient endurance conquers more than the stormiest eloquence; her presence can enable her husband to cherish life, and yet to smile upon the death that spares him the anguish of outliving her. So thought my father, justly; but his wife was not destined to survive him. She had long been delicate, though her illness wore that beautiful and delusive beauty, that so often in our climate only decks the victim for the tomb. But her spirits rose with her decay, and she was happy-happy in her stainless conscience, happy in all around her, and most of all, happy in her merry little child of some two years old, who was her almost constant companion.

If I thus linger on my native threshold, I may be excused, for my after-life presents far different events. From the recollection of these last, I often seek refuge in childish memories; they are always welcome. I am still happy in that home I have described, though for me it now exists only in imagination.

I well remember when he was about to leave school, the eagerness with which he looked for ward to the first place and prize in the concluding examination. I had then been entered at the University, and was admitted to occupy the strangers bench together with my father and others who were interested. I think I see Hugo before me now, almost motionless at his absorbing task; so calm, indeed, that but for the perspiration that sometimes glistened on his broad white forehead, a looker-on might have supposed his mind to be as passive as his frame. In quick succession he mastered all his trials, and toward the close of the examination but one competitor remained; a boy of patient and untiring industry, the son of our village curate. The prize of the day had been a life-long object of ambition to him and to a father who had been his only tutor; for many a year the poor churchman had toiled to qualify his child for an honor that secured to him not only distinction but independence. The trial had hitherto proved how ably, as well as earnestly, the effort had been made, for his son had obtained equal marks with my far more gifted brother. One subject alone remained to decide the victory between the two young rivals.

Hugo, carried away by the spirit of emulation, was unconscious of everything but his approaching triumph; a glance at the papers was sufficient to assure him; he raised his eyes to where we sat; they met my father's gaze, and, in a moment, communicated this proud confidence. But at the same moment, Hugo observed the poor curate's anxious eyes making the same inquiries of his son's countenance; they read no hope in the boy's embarrassed and care-worn aspect. Hugo could see the old man's color mount to his forehead, and then leave it deadly pale; his form was bent downward, and his long lean fingers convulsively twined in one another.

My second brother, Hugo, was scarcely seventeen when my story commences. In spite of all their efforts to conceal it, he was the favorite of both our parents. I never grudged-I scarcely To be brief, the Examiner approached; the envied him that priceless distinction. Nor could curate's son faltered through a few imperfect I wonder at it; he was so gentle and so gen- answers and was silent. Then came Hugo's erous, so brave, and good, and true. I was too turn. I was accustomed to read his thoughts in proud of his genius and acquirements to feel his transparent countenance, and I was not surjealous of the comparative shade in which they prised to see a shade of generous sorrow for a placed me. There was a strong contrast between moment struggling with a bright unconscious us too, which served to destroy any thought of smile. He answered the first question as I exrivalry. We were both impetuous, but Hugo pected, promptly and lucidly, but then he became was more yielding and somewhat fickle in his pursuits; I was more thoughtful and determined, and generally took up a common object where he had left it off. He was imaginative and fond of poetry; I was but little of a book-man. His spirits were inexhaustible, and there was a note of exultation in his joyous laughter that thrilled like a trumpet in my ear: yet his tears were almost as ready as his smiles, and his large bright eyes would fill, not only at the recital of any tale of sorrow, but of any noble trait of character, or gallant action.

embarrassed, faltering and silent. Finally, and with evident reluctance, the Examiner pronounced him beaten, and the next moment, forgetful of all ceremony, the curate clasped his son' to his sobbing but exulting heart.

At first my father's face flushed with bitter, if not angry disappointment; but he soon read something in Hugo's look that changed his mood. "I see it all, my generous boy," he whispered, as he pressed the young scholar's hand; "I see it all, and I thank you from my soul for the decision that you made; one such victory over yourEven the higher sources of pleasure, all ex-self is worth a thousand over others." Hugo requisite sensations of mental enjoyment, produced the same effect on his finely-sensitive organization. Nevertheless, he was no whining sentimentalist, or vain, pensive dreamer. His instinct was to be ever in advance of all his comrades,

turned the pressure of his father's hand, but, from that time forth, no word or sign escaped him that could tarnish his young rival's triumph.

I select this circumstance from a thousand others equally characteristic of my brother, rather