caped my observation, and requested me to open it. Had we been suddenly transported by the magic carpet to fairy ground, our delight could scarcely have been exceeded, such a contrast did it afford to the flinty sides of the mountain, crested by her little colony. We found ourselves in a garden of great comparative extent, and artistically planned; formed of mould brought from a distance at great labor and expense. The designs were all her own. stopped at a tent which she advised She Bartlett to sketch; it was trellis-work covered with odoriferous flowers, and within a luxurious divan. She now led us through a long rustic arbor to a stately summer-house which she dwelt on with evident pride; the vistas, terraces and fountains, all were tasteful and original. From the garden she pointed out the tour she wished us to take on the morrow, offering the unqualified freedom of her house "to go and come, or make our home at, and no botheration if we wished to be private."

She asked who had been my travelling companions. The name of a distinguished Scotch family was mentioned. She interrupted with warmth, "I'll warrant he is the flower of the flock."

Travellers seldom see her by daylight. She usually sits with her visiters from six in the evening till two in the morning.

This evening we were as thick as pickpockets. She gave reminiscences of her early history, savoring somewhat of the marvellous :

"She was born to be a warrior. She had always detested England, and was determined to leave it at eight years of age. About that time was her first attempt to run away. She got on board a boat, which, when her parents got wind of, was pursued by fifty others; when overtaken, she jumped into the water and was taken out by two oars crossed catching her neck like a pair of scissors. A short time afterwards she climbed up into an old tower, where her only amusement was a number of little pewter soldiers, whom she carried through evolutions. Hunger obliged her to descend after two days."

As a narrator she is inimitable, and always her own heroine :

formed some meritorious exploit, and when asked what reward he wished, his only demand was that Mr. Pitt should dine on board of his vessel. All things were arranged, but the King sent for Mr. Pitt at the very moment he was going to

dine; my uncle asked me to represent company, for except the lords and ladies him. Thus it was that I got into such I contrived to take with me, all present very sensible men, but when that opewere cits. Before eating they appeared so novel that I did not eat myself from ration commenced, the exhibition was amazement. quantity of turtle soup, which would have One man near me eat a sufficed for a dinner for four men. He unbuttoned his coat, then his waistcoat; he had two spoons, which he kept agoing with the exactness and rapidity of machinery. Then came venison. An account of what he eat would be perfectly incrediof wine all to himself; he would lean down, put his mouth to the bottle, and guzzle for a minute at a time. He never looked off his plate, or spoke a word, or drank wine with anybody."

ble. Under the table he had two bottles

She gave ludicrous imitations with the vivacity of a girl. While sitting there was no appearance of debility.

She loved to ring the changes on her grandfather as the champion of America. She had no patience with Canning, he was artificial, deceitful and selfish; when out of office abusing those to Mr. Pitt with whom he agreed wonderfully when he came into the cabinet. Her father used to say that she thought more in five minutes than the rest of the world in five years. He had a library of fifty thousand that history was all trash and nonsense. volumes, which he locked up, saying "Now take, if you please, the history of Alexander. They say he was the son of Philip, when in fact he was the son of a priest of the temple of Jupiter. All his battles are fictions; a necessary consequence of his biographers being his own retainers and parasites. I am acquainted with history from a much better source.

writes; her sight has suffered from She never reads now, and seldom illness.

five; perhaps my looks seemed to say, She stated her age at fiftymore or less, for she attempted to prove she was no older, by appealing to historical facts.

She had the plague for thirty-two

"A captain of a man-of-war had per- days. She described her sufferings by

1843.]

Lady Hester Stanhope.

supposing a hook drawn up and down
one's entrails. Very recently she had
a fever, and lay for some days appa-
rently dead. Her little black girl was
the only one who had the courage to
approach her; she opened her mistress's
eyes with her fingers, and discovered
life remaining. When recovered, she
found that her domestics had made
division of all her furniture, and carried
a portion of it away. Of twenty pairs
of sheets, only one and a half remained.
It seems the holy brotherhood of
bedlamites beset her from every quar-
ter, by visits or letters, and some, too,
who have method in their madness. A
certain French astrologer is now an
idle dependent at her winter residence,
near Sidon. He proves from prophe-
cy that he is to marry her; here, says
he, is the very name in the Bible.
They frequently quarrel about future
events. There was another man came
to see her; he could not be persuaded
that he had not known and been attach-
ed to her all his life. Her servants
repelling him by force, he took horse,
put him to the run, and did not draw
bridle for eighteen hours. She did not
seem to relish our incredulity of this
equestrian feat.

Another man thought himself the
Messiah, but after much study became
convinced, and very happy was he to
have even that station, that he was only
to be a second or one of the chief min-
isters of the Messiah.

She professed to tell my character.
"You are ambitious." True, was the
reply; it was a weakness of youth that
would yield to a few autumns. "Why
should you subdue it ?-did God give it
to you to subdue? No; but for some
The blood of the
great purpose.
Koreish cannot be controlled." This
alluded to her conviction that the
Scotch and Koreish, the family of Ma-
homet, were of the same lineage, the
details of which she promised on con-
dition of my return from Greece, she
would dictate, and permit me to publish
it. She had previously been told of
my Scottish original. "Do you tell me
that by way of information; I knew it
the moment I saw you, your oval cheek
and high instep, are sure marks of the
family. You have a warm
temper," she continued. To a fault,
was the answer. "No, there is not a
particle of badness in your temper; it
is just as warm as it ought to be,

you cannot deceive me, I knew your
disposition the moment I heard your
voice."

Several parts of her wall and many of her buildings are in a tumble-down condition, said to be partly the effects of slight earthquakes; but the whole forms a picturesque coup-d'œil, animated by jovial parties of Albanians, in their snowy camese and silver mounted arms, either caroling their native airs through the neighboring woods, or seated at cards, or puffing the chibouck as if grouped by the hand of an artist.

Lady Hester had received all the Albanians who chose to seek her protection at the reduction of St. Jean d'Acre by Ibrahim Pacha. She merely supplied their wants, and frequently balanced the expediency of sending them home by ship from Beyroot, but they were happy to remain, and she to maintain them in silent treaty of mutual protection. Truly their lines had fallen to them in pleasant places, if we compare them with their filth-covered brethren at home.

She repudiates, however, the idea of personal insecurity. She had passed the desert to Palmyra, mounted and armed as a warrior; the sons of Ishmael, so fatal to the traveller, gave her their unasked escort and hailed her Queen of Palmyra.

Except the merchants of Beyroot, who have bought her protested drafts, all love her, Druses and Franks, Arabs and Maronites; even the cruelty and insolence of Ibrahim Pacha, though she bids him defiance by giving shelter to his enemies, has never dared to invade the sanctity which oriental superstition attaches to an unsettled brain, or to question the impunity which Syrian usage accords to a female.

She resorted to every art to induce us to stay; she had her horse to show us, on condition we stayed one day longer, but our party had been doing penance some days at Beyroot.

Adieus exchanged-with allusion to the grand gathering. We found Antonio gloating over the bottles of wine, cheese and choice fruits with which her servants were storing our baggagemule; with the resolution of martyrs, they rejected our proffered piastres, but with a casuistry not peculiar to Syria, each one unseen by his fellows, suffered 'quelque compliments' to be slid into his pockets with ill-disguised satisfaction.

THE ISSUE AT STAKE.

1843.]

The Issue at Stake.

persons and not about principles-
is written in characters unequivocal
enough on the records of too many of
the elections of the season. If these
are not harmonized, and that thoroughly
and soon-we may as well spare our-
selves from the outset that fruitless
struggle which will not have even hope
to cheer it, and resign ourselves at
once to that inevitable cup, of the mor-
tification and grief of defeat, in whose
bitter draught the worst ingredient
will be the thought that it is by our
own hands alone that it was drugged.

But our pen has led us somewhat
aside from the line of thought we had
designed to pursue in this Article.
What it has written shall however
stand, though we have to recall it from
its wandering, to return to the point
from which it started-which was the
expression of a sincere satisfaction at
the broad and open distinctness of the
general issue about to be joined between
the two great parties of the country.
The false issues, the sectional dupli-
cities of profession, the temporary ex-
citements and delusions, which gave at
once its character and direction to the
election of 1840, no longer now mantle
the country as in one vast cloud of
mystification and midnight blindness.
The Proteus who then could alternate
with such bewildering variety through
his countless resources of metamor-
phosis, stands up now confessed before
our eyes in his own natural nakedness
of form, and when once reduced at
last to that point, if we are but true to
ourselves, like the divinely taught shep-
herd boy of Tempe, we can have no
difficulty in subduing him to our will.
The cry of "CHANGE," which did the
best, or rather the worst, part of the
work of 1840, can no more be raised
that magic horn has lost its power to
set all who hear it awhirl in enchanted
dance. If the people were tired of
hearing Aristides always called "the
Just,"
that passing impatience has
fully exhausted itself, and they are
ready enough to recall him with accla-
mation from his ostracism-provided
he does not himself refuse to return.
If they were tired of the long protracted
ascendency of a party, even though it
were their own-and were willing to
indulge that deep-seated instinct of
human nature which is ever eager for
variety, by making experiment, for at
least a single term, whether there was

really any relief to be found, in all the
tempting promises and professions of
the Whigs, from the maddening agonies
resulting from a great national disease
for which party was not responsible-
the trial has been made; and unless the
Democratic party now justly forfeit, by
their own misconduct, their own selfish
and unpatriotic animosities, the old
confidence to which the popular heart
has reverted with renewed attachment,
it will be long before they will be very
anxious to make it again. If the
Whigs could denounce the imputed
greed of Democratic office-holders, and
claim for themselves on that score a
virtuous disinterestedness of patriotism
which could not be disproved, however
disbelieved, they can do so no longer,
while the memory is yet unforgotten of
those days when the earth fairly shook
beneath the worn pavements of Penn-
sylvania Avenue, as the hungry le-
gions of office-seekers shuffled along
between the two white houses, to and
fro-when they swarmed throughout
the locusts
Washington, not less numerous and
more voracious than
which were

the last and worst
plague of the land of Egypt-when the
overtasked horses scarcely staggered on
beneath the burthen of the mail-bags
bursting with letters of application and
entreaty and when the still more over-
tasked old man whom in an evil hour
for himself they had succeeded in
making a President of, was driven at
last into the only asylum safe from the
unsparing persecution. This prejudice
at least against the party to which time
had before seemed to have given almost
a life monopoly of public office, was
exploded within the first thirty days of
the reformed régime; and not a few
Whigs, at the spectacle then exhibited
by their own party, already then ex-
pressed the disgust of which it was
less graceful for us, the defeated, to be
the interpreters. If they could de-
nounce the Debt forced upon the Admin-
istration by causes no fault of its own,
its huge progressive augmentation on
their own hands turns all these weapons
back against their own breasts. The
whoop and the war rifle are now silent
through the everglades, and that wildest
of "Wild Cats" is now comfortably
domesticated beyond the Father of
Waters. The once terrible Standing
Army has vanished like the ghostly
legions which are said still on dark
nights to muster on the Champ de

Mars, to pass in review before the shadow of a little man in a grey surtout and three-cornered hat. The great Gold Spoon has been melted down, and is supposed to be flowing up the Mississippi. The Bankrupts, honest and dishonest, have been "relieved," and the moment the whole immorality of the act had been consummated in its retrospective application, the benefit which would have attended its prospective action was hastily shut off.

And the fallacy has been fully proved, of all the expectations of a possible reconstruction of the ruin of the old Credit System, which was to be wrought in some inexplicable way by the proposed change of administration. Mr. Webster himself has set down a national bank as an "obsolete idea;" and even at the time when its adoption was urged on the Vice President, who signed all the other bills of his party, and who at first quarrelled with them only on trifling points of detail in this measure, it was very generally conceded that it would not have been possible to get its stock subscribed, so as to carry it into execution.

The issue between the two parties is now, therefore, cleared of all the entanglements and perplexities in which it was involved by these and various other questions which were complicated into it the last time. This election is to be, more than any which the country has witnessed for a long period, one of general principle. The State-Rights and the Federal parties-the two opposite schools of limited and latitudinarian construction-are now to meet in a more simple and direct antagonism than perhaps ever before since 1800. Of the one, Mr. Clay is as complete a representative as could be desired; the other finds its expression satisfactorily in either of the prominent candidates for the Democratic nomination. The country is in a condition of calm, suitable to an intelligent and reflecting choice between the two. If it should be in favor of Clay and all that is included in the name of Clayism, then can there be no pretension that it is not a deliberate and conclusive judgment, and that it does not go the full length of the formal adoption of a complete system of principles and corresponding measures an allegation which could not be made with truth, though it was by Mr. Clay himself without a visible

blush, respecting the election of Harrison and Tyler, the one a Nondescript and the other a Nullifier. If it should be in favor of Clay, then was it all in vain that the struggles were made which expelled both the elder and the younger Adams from the direction of the government,-all in vain that by which General Jackson, in his re-election, was so gloriously sustained in the policy of which his great Internal Improvement and Bank vetoes were the chief measures. If it should be in favor of Clay, then will the perpetuation of the Constitution, and of the Union of which it is the expression, have received a deeper and a deadlier wound than has ever been dealt upon it before.

For it will be the formal, not to say, final, repudiation of the State-Rights Principle as the governing rule of interpretation for the Constitution. It will be to pronounce solemnly that whole policy at an end; to declare the country tired of it, and anxious to fall back into the old abandoned track of its opposite. It will be that which the triumph of the Whigs in 1840 was not, for they did not then dare to venture on such an issue, nor to avow Clay as the exponent of their principles and meditated measures.

The day of such an event would be, indeed, the darkest that has ever yet shrouded the country with mourning for public calamity-for it is the firmest conviction among all our political ideas, that the State-Rights Principle is the vital principle of the Constitution and of the Union, and injury to the one cannot fail speedily to sap the foundations of the very existence of the other.

Why, look only at the fact disclosed by the six decennial censuses that have taken place since the adoption of the Constitution-namely, the increase of our population at the rate of upward of 33 per cent. within every period of ten years. What is there to arrest or to retard this ratio? Nothing, so long as, not only within the borders of the older States are to be found large tracts of unoccupied land, but westward, southward, and northward, stretch such vast regions inviting the subjugation of the settler. The time is yet too far remote at which the crowding of population within territorial limits, accompanied by a Malthusian pressure of numbers upon the means of subsistence, can be felt among us, to check the rapi