bless you, I am going now, but I'm glad to leave | by whom they had been decoyed, in a moment you in the way of making your fortune.' of need, into the debts which we now sought "The first sacrifice I made at the altar of to punish them for owing. Injustice, custom, money was by a marriage, for its love alone, to and the desire of wealth, had effectually closed a thoughtless and senseless girl, who had no the avenues of sympathy in our hearts, and our other positive attractions than a pretty face and a feelings were petrified, or we could not have heavy purse, the first of which was generally con- lived under the ordeals of touching narrative, fronted with a mirror, while of the latter I took tear-waking eloquence, and affecting appeal, especial care myself. The fortune procured me which we had daily to undergo. God!-in that some pleasure; but the only moment of real hap-brief period what a life was mine. Day after day piness I ever enjoyed with my wife was, when, did I enter my counting-house to find on my desk at the end of the first year of our union, I made letters that should have warmed an icicle to pity, the discovery that she was not likely to encumber and melted an avalanche into a torrent of benevome with the expense of children. lence and human mercy for my kind! Here was "I devoted myself to my business, which I told a tale from a lone woman, that her house was you was that of stock-broker, with intense dili- desolated by my execution, that her husband was gence; but, oh! I look back upon it with more in- in prison at my suit. There lay a letter from a tense disgust. All the elements of the earth-young victim just taken to a spunging-house, the quake, that has since shattered my heart and first step on his extravagant path to jail, where, overturned my brain, were moulded in its cursed by our means, his heart was to be hardened, and crucible in which I sought my gold. Upon the his morals made corrupt. Now I read the statesea of life it foundered me, and I am now tossed ment of a father, that his wife must die, his busithere a wretched wreck. By the God of Heaven ness be neglected, his children starve, if I kept it was a fearful trade. Tell me not of the soldier him within stone walls. Personal intercessions, on the plains, nor of the doctor at the bed of suf- too, poured in upon me. A mother from the fering, of torture, and of death: the scenes of the Bench, a wife from the Fleet, a daughter from battle and the plague are a feather in the balance Whitecross-street, a sister from the Marshalsea of misery, when weighed against those which I or Horsemonger-lane, would come before me in have seen and caused-yes, I, the relentless agent quick succession, sometimes mocking their own of other's sorrows, bartered for usury and begot in hearts, by assuming the smile by which they guilt. hoped to charm; but oftener with tears, entreaties, and deluding hopes, soliciting the liberty of those they loved. Strange that I could be so coldly callous as to have left them unrelieved, bowed down by their oppression, for a purposein which humanity was forgotten for gold-so worldly as an enquiry into the validity of a new bill! Since then I have wept burning tears for every shilling that I gained by usury, and raved out curses upon my own head, in madness for every prayer of affection that my brutality refused to grant.

"We had connected ourselves in a short time with a host of attorneys, Jews, bailiffs, moneylenders, and all the offscums of our trade. Does a man fall from his horse, he goes to the surgeon to have blood let, and so did we-leeches in another sense-bleed the hundreds, who having fallen in circumstances came to us for temporary relief. The tide seemed at first to flow from their purses, but often did it eventually prove to be the blood of the hearts! All our connections had to live. This was the great secret of the misery which we caused. It was our business to discount bills with enormous usury, under a certainty that they would not be paid when due, although we were sure of the money soon after, but we never waited. The bits of paper were passed over to the lawyers with whom we were linked, and each took his turn, with a dishonoured bill, to arrest the unfortunates who had their names attached, either as drawers, acceptors, or in the way of indorsement; for, to increase cost, we invariably issued writs against them all." Then the Jew bailiffs were brought into play, and they made money either by arresting the parties, or by taking fees not to arrest. Thus it was an organised system of plunder, of which we were the polluted source. The tide of accommodation rolled onward from our house, but its streams were pregnant with poison, and brought heartburnings to all who drank. As our connection increased, we held in every prison in London, victims whom we had arrested, and not a few in the jails of county towns; and yet not one instance can I recollect that the persons whom we kept in durance deserved imprisonment, for they would have paid us if we had not sent them thither, and we were the swindlers, upon system,

66

Soon, soon, soon followed the retribution; it rushed upon me fiercely like a Niagarean torrent; it gave no warning, it brought no compassion, it left no hope ;-it burned my heart, stone as it was, to a cinder; ravenously as a vulture it fed upon my spirit, and set a seal of darkness upon my brain. The curses of the ruined, embodied in the form of fiends, danced around me in my visions; they put my soul in fury, they encircled me with torments in fever, and from my dreams their howling woke me raving mad! Mad I have been!-mad I must be !-mad I am!"

No, no, no!" said I, fearful of a relapse, from the rising energy of the maniac, and at once I sought to change the theme of talk; but he was not to be diverted.

"No," said he, as he resumed, with a manner calmed by my effort to distract him from his story; "no, I have told you so far, and while I can I will tell you all. We went on with our damnable game of usury, and as we made money we increased our speculations to a large extent. At last we had out an immense number of bills indorsed with our own names, of which however we were pretty confident as to the respectability of most of the acceptors. About the time they

"At last, after a term of suffering in the other prisons, I got removed to the King's Bench, and there I hoped I had no victims-I was wrong; yet all the first day I saw no one whom I knew, and then

'The strong delusion gained me more and more;' but the events of night dispelled it.

became due, I had occasion to leave town for a | my fellow prisoners, it was agony, soul-wringing week. During my absence the day of payment agony, to endure the presence of those whom I came, and nearly all the acceptors disappointed had wronged. us with excuses. In this dilemma my partner gave immediate orders for the working of all the engines of the law, and in the interval drew in all our capital, pulled upon all our resources, and borrowed every where that we had credit, to enable him to gather in these heavy outstanding responsibilities. When he had succeeded, and was prepared to meet the bills-startled at the enormous amount of money which he had collected in his hands-a new idea seized him: judge of its brilliancy, and whether it was profitable or not, when I tell you that with my return was developed the discovery that my money (I give it precedence as having loved it best) and my wife were gone off together with my partner, who had left me all the heavy bills to take up as I could. I was totally ruined, and never did a man more deserve to be so.

"About eleven o'clock, the hour fixed by law for the retirement of the prisoners, an alarm of serious illness was raised, and an expression of general indignation pervaded the debtors as to the cause. A woman, they said, was dying of want in one of the rooms on the ground floor on the poor side of the prison, and a number of persons had gathered round the door of the apartment in which the sufferer lay. I followed mechanically with the rest, and saw what they saw. Little could they feel what I felt.

"On the day of my arrival I was arrested by one of the very lawyers who had lived by our "The crowd, as soon as they had satisfied firm (how many of us have cherished the serpent their curiosity, dispersed in groups to talk over by which we have been stung), taken by a bailiff, the poor woman's fate. But I could not whom I had a hundred times employed to take leave-an impulse which I could not resist, a others, to a sponging-house, and thence by ha-chain which I could not sever, bound me to the beas to jail.

cold stone on which I stood; I could not pass from the door of that room, although I yet only knew that a poor woman had laid down to die, and I had seen nothing but a curtainless bed and a barren chamber, as they had been dimly revealored by the light of a small lamp to all who had gathered without. But after all had gone my heart remained a beating listener to the voice that made itself heard in its most secret cells-a whisper of destiny that mysteriously connected my fate with hers, here the miserable tenant of the desolate rooom; a spell of mingled terror and excitement was upon me and around me, and I felt that I must go within to see her die.

"In another moment the doctor of the prison entered, and I stole after him into the room. There was a deep shadow of the vaulted roof in one corner, and in its darkness I stood to listen and to gaze. The physician had intended to order the patient's removal to the prison infirmary, but he saw that it was too late. On her low bedstead she lay dreaming away her spirit, in her last earthly sleep; the next would be the sleep of death. A woman, who from pity had sat up with her, would have awakened her to the doctor's presence, but he would not have it. ‘Let her be,' said he, it will be soon over.'

"From that time I became a haunted manhaunted by the living not the dead. Shadows would not have scared me, but realities were appalling. I was tossed from prison to prison, just as my difficulties withdrew from me gathered around me, and, like the wandering Hebrew, I had no resting-place away from the misery which I had made. Now it was that my own scarlet crimes first flashed upon me with their conscience-goading and accumulated horrors. Was I in the Fleet prison? There I encountered men whom I had thrust before me into the den; their tale of ruin was told to me in mockery of my own; I saw the gentleman who had once called on me in 'fine attire,' pinched with penury and robed in rags. I learned that the wife who had once reached my house, but not my heart, with her appeal for mercy, was dead; the children whom she had brought with her to rouse pity with their tears, were now crying within my hearing, not for their father's liberty, that had been long hopeless, but for bread. Do I leave the Fleet, and (again arrested) find myself a prisoner in Whitecross-street?-the young profligate who is blaspheming by my side was accounted virtuous, until plunged into a sphere of dissolute companionship by me; and yonder drunkard, By her lay her young children, one on either reeling on with his pot of ale, was both a sober side, awake, watchful, silent, their eyes filled and an honest man till I impaled him in a prison, with tears, and fixed upon the poor parent who where sobriety was scoffed at and honesty de- was soon to leave them alone in the world. As spised. I was the perpetual inmate of jails, she turned her face to the wall we could not see and there I was perpetually tormented with the her, but in her dreams she murmured of her want presence of my victims. To whatever cell I and wo. My heart beat so loudly as almost to might retire the cries of the orphan rang in my make an echo; it startled all within. The docears; the tears of the widow fell upon my heart. tor turned towards me, and would have spoken, Conscience carried me over houses that I had but again the dreamer murmured, and I heard my desolated, and fancy led me to graves that I had own name upon her lips. Gently she spoke it, filled. This this the triumph of remorse was and in sleep, but to me it was as God's announcecruel; but when I turned from the dread convic-ment of eternity in rolling thunder. I felt it as tions of my own thoughts, and went again among the unravelment of fate; the right hand of retri

AULDJO'S VISIT TO CONSTANTINOPLE.

From the London Spectator.

bution was stretched out to seize me-my hour I tottered towards the AULDJO'S VISIT TO CONSTANTINOPLE. of punishment was come. bed to satisfy my sight (as that moment I would Mr. Auldjo departed from Naples in April, 1833, have given my life that my ears had played me false); the woman, as if destiny had determined on board the ship that conveyed the tardy Lord she should confront me in death, turned towards Ponsonby to Constantinople, when Ibrahim was me, her features flashed upon my eyes and blind-threatening to overturn the Ottoman Empire as ed them, a mist was before me, I stood as a man in a dark fog-one gasp, one cold shiver, and the rest was chaos.

"I saw no more of the patient. Soon after I had been carried insensible from her chamber she died, died of grief and starvation-ANOTHER of MY VICTIMS.

an avowed enemy, and the Russians were supposed to be meditating the same end under the guise of friendship. During the voyage, our author was sea-sick in the afternoon of the day he was invited to dine with the captain, and was much disturbed at night by nautical noises; he saw as much of Greece and the Islands as could be distinguished from the vessel's deck, and land

"She had been left a widow with her two fatherless boys, and out of kindness for her hus-ed whenever he had the opportunity to make a band's memory she had put her name to a bill after his death to accommodate one of his former friends. Upon that bill two years before, I had arrested and thrown her into prison; there she lived friendless and pennyless. Often had she sent her eldest boy to appeal to me, with the touching eloquence of childhood, for his mother's liberty; but no, I had no deity but gold, and mercy had no resting-place in my heart. I let her starve. I let her die! Oh, God! Hers was the final triumph.

"Never till I saw her face in her dying hour, did I know that she was the same fair and kind creature whom as a boy I had wooed and loved before my mother's death; whom as a monster I had deserted after my father had changed my worship and altered my faith, and despoiled my heart of purity of early passion, to place there Mammon's altar and Moloch's priest.

closer inspection. Arrived at Constantinople, he saw a good deal if not all that was to be seen, visiting the principal mosques, the bazaars, and the taverns; buying pipes, perfumes, and curiosities; eating, drinking, and making merry. He made some casual inspections of the Russian camp, and attended a review; he frequented the suburban pleasure places to which the Byzantines resort for amusement; and appears to have made some impression upon the fair sex, whether Armenians, Greeks, or Turks. He saw the slavemarket, and a procession wherein the Sultan bore a part; of both of which he gives us a pretty full account. He also had the honour of a ramble with Lord Ponsonby, during which they reciprocally unfolded their views as to the political condition of the Ottoman Empire and the Eastern World: but these profound speculations are, for obvious reasons, kept from the reader; who only "I awoke with the brain fever which overtook learns that there was a marvellous coincidence me a wild raving madman, but not so mad as to between the ambassador and his humble friend. The vision of Nor did the confidential communications end forget that I was a murderer too. that woman and her children was ever before my here. Having gone to Constantinople, as it for a change," when our author heart and eyes, and not less was I haunted by would seem, my other victims. Aloud I counted over the had seen all he could find worthy of observation, curses of those whom I had wronged and ruined. he sighed to change again: and Lord Ponsonby, I shrieked forth imprecations upon my own head confidentially informing him that in the then state for hearts that I had blighted and homes that I of affairs he should detain the Actæon for an inhad despoiled. The wife, the widow and the definite period, Mr. Auldjo took advantage of the orphan, the husband, the father and the friend departure of the Francesco (tourist steam-boat) to As Mr. were revenged upon me with the terrible ven-return to Naples; visiting Smyrna, the grotto of geance of my own voice. They bound my limbs Antiparos, and Malta, on their route. and chained my body, but they could not prevent Auldjo kept a daily journal of all he saw or did, me from cursing myself, from crying aloud in the and, when these were wanting, of what he hell-pains of my spirit, from raving with the thought, his excursion afforded him the requisite And now who dares say quantity of matter for the octavo volume before agony of my remorse. that I am not a murderer, when the fiends of dark- us. It will be concluded from our description of ness are pointing at me, and my victims are besetting me with their cries? Look, look, look!-some of its subjects, that the Journal has little yonder where the sun has cleared away the novelty of matter, nor has it much depth or keencloudy mist; there they come to torment me; ness of observation neither does the writer seem see how the children weep; hark how the mo-to possess any of that scientific knowledge which There is a hand thers wail in the storm. pointing at me through the tempest, and look, my name is written in tears and blood upon the sky!"

sharpens the natural faculties, or in a measure supplies their place. When sentimental he writes nonsense; his classical enthusiasm is not much better; but his descriptions are clear, plain, and unaffected, with a kind of amusing vivacity that renders them agreeable, and when the circum

I could not now stay the wild ravings of the ma-stances have an interest in themselves, they lose niac, for with the conclusion of his story, and the nothing by his mode of telling. As he sojourned memories which it had called up, his lucid inter-at Constantinople during a stirring time, and seems to have lived altogether in diplomatic and val had ceased.

military society, he has transferred to his pages | compelled to read him a practical lecture on the necessisome of the spirit and feelings of the circles in which he mingled, and which give to parts of his work a conventional interest. The Journal, in short, is an agreeable hodge-podge; fresh, lively, and frequently amusing, and never straining the attention if it fails to excite it.

In the course of our author's travels, he encountered some great personages. He saw Otho, king of Greece, soon after his arrival in his dominions; had his brother, the Prince of Bavaria, for a fel low passenger, on board the steamer, (and a very disagreeable one we are told he made;) and was likewise honoured by the Duchess de Berri treading the same deck with himself. We take a description of the lady and an anecdote of the prince.

THE HEROINE OF LA VENDEE.

ty of complying with the established regulations. He had been told that, as punctuality was a most indispensable maxim on board a man-of-war, where every thing depended on the example afforded to the sailors by their officers and superiors, he would be expected at breakfast by eight o'clock every morning.

"On the following day, at the hour prescribed, the king was seated at the cabin-table, and, after waiting a quarter of an hour, as the prince came not, breakfast was finished. About half-past nine, his royal highness made his debut, and expressed some surprise at seeing the table cleared: however, the captain told him he was sorry he had lost his breakfast, particularly as it was a long time to dinner, and the regulations of the ship precluded his having any meal served before that was ready. The prince frowned, and looked marvellously discomfited; but, pocketing his lecture, he made an apology, and went sulkily on deck.

AN EASTERN STORY-TELLER.

"The duchess came on board with her husband and suite, Count Menars, and the Prince and Princess "I went with my friend, the American Secretary, to Her face is by no means a handsome one; and she is visit the coffee-houses in the Armenian quarter, where an very short, thin, and vulgar-looking. Nothing in her improvisatore exhibits his talents every holyday. Impersonal appearance marks her out for a heroine, or is mense crowds of respectable Turks assemble there to calculated to inspire her followers with the awe and re- listen to the narrations of this accomplished story-teller; spect with which they seem to worship her. She soon and it is even said that the grand signior himself is often sat down to whist with her husband, Butera, and the old present as an auditor, in disguise. We sat in Princess St. Theodore; but the game received many un- the open air, on a long pier of wood built out into the pleasant interruptions from the pitching and rolling of sea, where there were hundreds besides, perched upon the boat. Each time the fit came on, she sprang upon low stools, smoking, or eating delicious ices and mahathe bench on which she had been sitting, and after bend-labé, and laughing and talking with more vivacity than her head sans ceremonie over the vessel's side, quietly I could have expected in beings generally so taciturn, quietly sat down again to resume her cards. This rather and so absorbed in the contemplation of their own imunroyal and unlady-like exhibition occurred repeatedly; portance. At last a man came to the door of the largest and we were impressed with the idea that her manners coffee-room and clapped his hands, when the Turks imaltogether were very unfitting her rank and station. As mediately moved into this apartment, in which seats it was publicly known that we had the Duchess de Berri were arranged in a semicircular form, one above the on board, she attracted considerable attention; otherwise other, as in a theatre. A portion of the floor, in front of her carriage would never have distinguished her from the benches, was occupied by low stools, probably reserv. the most ordinary passenger. Our Carlist friend appeared for visiters of distinction; and close to the wall was ed on the quarter-deck, wearing the colours of his party: at first she took no notice of him; but at length it occurred to her that he might be a spy in disguise, and she haughtily demanded who he was. His loyalty and devotion were not proof against this affront: in an instant he retreated below, ahd having disencumbered himself of the once-cherished badge, reappeared on deck with a countenance glowing with indignation; and, if I am not much deceived, Louis Philip gained a convert from that

moment.

"We had a great increase of passengers, besides the duchess and her suite; most of whom, being unaccustomed to sailing, were quickly on their beam-ends. The weather, which at starting had threatened to be stormy, now cleared up; and, though the evening was calm and beautiful, a heavy swell still continued to render the motion of the vessel disagreeable. The Heroine of La Vendée is sleeping in her arm-chair; the faithful Menars reposes at her feet; and her husband, whom she hardly seems to notice, is sitting on a bench beside her.

MAN-OF-WAR DISCIPLINE-STRICT IF TRUE.

"I went on board the Madagascar in the evening, and enjoyed a pleasant confab with the officers. There is a striking difference in the tempers and dispositions of the two royal brothers; the one being greatly beloved, while the other is disliked by every person in the ship. The King (Otho) is very kind and affable, giving no unnecessary trouble, and mixing freely with the midshipmen and sailors; many a luncheon has he partaken of in the den of the former. His brother (the Prince of Bavaria), on the contrary, is all fuss and superciliousness; and the very first morning after he embarked, the captain was

a rostrum and a large easy arm-chair, on one side of which stood a little desk.

"Our Oriental friends behaved with much politeness; for, perceiving from our European costume, that we were strangers, they offered us places in front of the stage; and after a few minutes' delay a man entered, and was handed up to the platform and chair amidst a burst of universal applause. In his hand he carried a small stick, and in gait, physiognomy, and manner, bore a singular resemblance to our English Mathews. He was dressed in a frock-coat, now so generally worn in Constantinople; and wore on one of his fingers a most superb brilliant ring, which, it is said, was presented to him by the sul tan, as a mark of his especial approbation. A profound silence prevailed among the company the moment he made his appearance; every one seeming desirous to be amused, and most anxious to catch every word that fell from his lips. No story-teller of Stamboul had ever enjoyed so much fame and popularity as this Turkish Mathews; who, rising from his seat and making three very profound obeisances to the company, commenced his" At Home" with a series of imitations, in which he personated a Turk from Aleppo, the Yorkshire or Calabria of the East. This Oriental John Trot is represented as setting out on his journey to see the world and make his fortune; and with this intent visits various places. On one occasion, being mistaken for a pacha in disguise, he is every where feasted and treated with the most respectful attention, until, the real truth being discovered, he is bastinadoed, spit upon, plucked by the beard, and, in short, maltreated in a thousand different ways. At last he finds his way to Stamboul, and manages to obtain an interview with his sublime highness; after which he