66 Do you know," said she, " I, rather think you are under a mistake with respect to me?" "Indeed!" said I, while my heart gave a bounce. "Have I not the pleasure of addressing Lady Jervoise ?" "No," answered she, laughing; and directing my attention to a very pretty little black-eyed woman who sat near the Professor, at the opposite side of the table," that is Lady Jervoise. You did not see her last night, for she was not very well, and stayed away from the Opera. I am her sister, and on a visit with her. My name is Julia Henderson." * * * Reader, shall I go on? or do you anticipate the result? My star was in the ascendant! They say "the course of true love never did run smooth" perhaps so; but with me the waters had been so dark and stormy" at starting, it was but fair that, during the remainder of the voyage, the stream should flow in an even though rapid current. I have not space for the particulars; suffice it to say, that the fair Julia was a co-heiress; that her Indian uncle and stock-exchange father were both dead; that she herself was lately arrived from Paris under the care of a step-mother; that her fortune, which was, however, only half what my crush-room friend had reported, was entirely at her own disposal; and finally, that, within two months of my cab adventure, I had the pleasure of converting Miss Henderson into Mrs. Bermingham,-a transformation which, I am happy to say, we have neither of us, so far, seen occasion to regret. C. H. THE CAPTIVE HEART. BY THE HON. MRS. NORTON. As the freed bird from its prison springs, So my poor heart, so long thine own, At length from Love's enchantment free, Exulting in its liberty. But as that bird, a pris'ner long, And feebly sinks to earth once more, My heart its fainting strength essays, And sinks-as in my prison'd days! Alas! too like that wild bird's flight The heart which love at length sets free; I, welcomed back by friends of yore, GENERAL JACKSON. IN 1831 I accidentally missed my passage in the New York packet for Havre. I was going abroad for some years, but having made my adieux-painful ones in that country of strong domestic attachments-I had ten days upon my hands, and nothing promised to fill the time so satisfactorily as a journey of some four hundred miles, to pay my respects to General Jackson, and see the nominal capital of the United States. I arrived in Washington on a hot evening in August. At this season our diplomatic metropolis is nearly deserted. I was set down by the stage-coach, in which I was the only passenger, at the door of a vast hotel. Ten or fifteen negroes, slaves and servants in the establishment, crowded around to take my baggage, and I was led through an inner court that resounded to my echoing footsteps, and, passing a hundred vacant apartments, arrived at the "cool rooms" I had asked for, at the end of a long kind of opera-house corridor. This was the great hotel of Washington, and the house in which the large proportion of the Members of Congress live during the session. It would accommodate, perhaps, three hundred people, and is built around two considerable courts, with galleries something in the fashion of an auberge in Switzerland. It was a bright moonlight night, and I took the opportunity of the sun's absence to stroll through the city. As I took my hat, a young negro lad, who had been appointed to the particular charge of me, came up, and laid his hand affectionately in the small of my back, and, enquiring if I was rested after my journey, followed me out, and set a chair for me upon the side walk, in front of the hotel. One or two white persons sat smoking on the other side of the door, with their chairs resting upon two legs and leaning back against the house, and the unemployed blacks were gathered in a group at a respectful distance, chattering and laughing with animated voice and gesture, singularly in contrast with the supine attitudes and indolent under-tones of their white masters. My attendant, who I found was called "Vivian Grey," in compliment to the then new novel of Mr. D'Israeli, seemed somewhat surprised at my rejection of the comfortable al fresco which he had provided for me; but finding I was bent upon a walk to see the town, he whipped off his white apron, stuffed it in his bosom, and followed me bareheaded, explaining the lions as he went along, but assiduously maintaining his position at half a step behind me, and though familiar and humorous in his remarks, preserving in everything else the respect of an inferior. Though an American, I was from the north, and as much a stranger to the manners of the southern blacks as an Englishman would have been (this was the first slave I had ever seen), and I must say, after a great deal of experience of servants in all countries since, that "Vivian Grey" and his brethren are by much the best class of servants, take them all in all, that I have yet seen. The objection of their familiarity is a trifle weighed against the simple affectionateness and interest in their masters from which it springs, and is better, a thousand times, than the insolent civility and selfishly-measured attentions of the boasted English waiter. Even with the charm of moonlight, Washington was a desolate scene. The capitol, really a most noble and imposing structure, and capable of great defence as a work of art, stood lofty and lonely on the slight ascent which it crowns; and a mile off, on a similar swell of land, the snow-white mansion of the President was clearly visible through the transparent night; and between lay a long and broad street, lined with trees and houses, but with scarce a human being stirring from one end to the other. A group or two of negroes, distinguishable far off by their merry voices and hearty laughter, were the only interruption to the solitude and silence of the scene. I breakfasted early the following morning, and in the course of the amusing gossip of " Vivian Grey," I discovered that I had two acquaintances then in Washington, one of whom, under the auspices of my Asmodeus, I started immediately to find. He was a very young man, the son of the President's most intimate personal friend. I found him in bed, and, having satisfied his curiosity as to the object which could " possibly "have brought me to Washington at such a season, he rang the bell. A black servant appeared. "Here, George," said he, still half-asleep, "run up to the President's, and ask if he is well enough to see any one to day?" Unskilled as I then was in the etiquette of courts, I was somewhat surprised at the facility with which a visit to the chief magistrate of a republic of fifteen millions of freemen was to be managed, and sat moralizing, while my grand chamberlain of twenty years got out of bed and despatched a most hasty morning toilet in the expectation of accompanying me immediately. The servant returned in a few minutes with the intelligence that the President was ill in bed, but hoped to be up to-morrow. He was recovering from a severe attack of dysentery. I employed the day in a visit to Mount Vernon, some seven miles distant: a spot not only interesting as the residence and tomb of Washington, but unsurpassed as a gem of natural scenery. The old mansion stands on a high terrace above the Potomac, commanding one of the loveliest views of mountain and water in the world. There are still living upon the place a few old negroes, who survive the service of the great saviour of his country; and several rooms in the house remain untouched, as they were left at his death. On the following morning, at twelve, I met my friend by appointment, and walked up to the President's. The house is a fine one, and worthy of its tenant-considering him as a republican chief magistrate. The door was opened by a servant in plain clothes, who introduced us immediately to a small drawing-room on the first floor, in which we found several gentlemen, who had called unexpectedly like ourselves, sitting in animated conversation with a person who could not be mistaken for a moment. The President rose as my young friend presented me, came forward a step or two, and gave me his hand; and, after a few inquiries of civility, the conversation went on, and left me at leisure to study his physiognomy at my ease. General Jackson is very tall, bony and thin, with an erect military bearing, and a head set with a considerable fierté upon his shoulders. A stranger would at once pronounce upon his profession; and his frame, features, voice, and action, have a natural and most peculiar warlike ness. He has (not to speak disrespectfully) a game-cock look all over him. His face is unlike any other: its prevailing expression is energy; but there is, so to speak, a lofty honourableness in its thin-worn lines, combined with a penetrating and sage look of talent, that would single him out, even among extraordinary men, as a person of a more than usually superior cast. He looks like the last person in the world to be "humbugged;" and yet a caricature of him would make an admirable Don Quixote. In the days of chivalry he would have been the mirror of tried soldiers-an old iron-grey knight, invincible and lionlike, but something stiff in his courtesy. His eye is of a dangerous fixedness, deep set, and overhung by bushy grey eyebrows; his features long, with strong, ridgy lines running through his cheeks; his forehead a good deal seamed; and his white hair, stiff and wiry, brushed obstinately back, and worn quite with an expression of a chevaux-de-frize of bayonets. In his mouth there is a redeeming suavity as he speaks; but the instant his lips close, a visor of steel would scarcely look more impenetrable. His manners are dignified, and have been called high-bred and aristocratic by travellers; but, to my mind, are the model of republican simplicity and straightforwardness. He is quite a man one would be proud to show as the exponent of the manners of his country.* General Jackson would be a bad diplomatist in Europe, or any where without power. He has but one cheval de bataille-he rides down and breaks through every thing that other men would think of avoiding or circumventing. He cuts all gordian knots. His is no "head to creep into crevices." Having made up his mind as to his aim, and trusting to his own directness of purpose, he shuts his eyes, like the monarch of the herd, and charges-generally with success. His passions are said to be tremendously violent; and a long life has but little subdued their warmth. His paroxysms are not unfrequent; and sooth to say, he has often cause for never man was so crossed and thwarted as he has been in his administration. His stern uprightness and singleness of mind, however, bring him generally well through. His immediate passion is soon over, but his purpose does not evaporate with his anger; and he has shown, since he has been in power, some rather startling specimens of his inflexibility. This extends to the desire of serving his friends, and hinc illæ lachrymæ,-it is the only thing like a breath on his justice. Immediately on his inauguration, he turned out inexorably every officer of the government, from the highest next himself, to the clerks in the post-offices, and rewarded his partizans with the places. Offering no pretence of excuse or apology however. He is quite above that. His reasons were openly avowed: he thought that where there was an advantage in his gift, his friends had the first claim. And a sacrificing business he would have made of it, if America had not been a * In his early life Jackson was a partizan soldier upon the frontier in the Western Country. The principal scene of his exploits was in Tennessee, (where he has since resided,) which was not then one of the States of the Union. He acquired at this time (between the age of eighteen and twenty-five) a formidable reputation among the Indian tribes as a warrior, and was called, in their significant language, "The Pointed Arrow." In one of the deputations of Sachems to the Government, since he has been President, an old chief, who remembered him well, complimented him in the course of his speech, and quoted, in the graphic manner of Indian eloquence, a speech made at a war-council of the tribe, in which it was proposed to attack him and his party. "Shall we attack the white man ?" "No! The Pointed Arrow is there!" country where a man may turn his hand to anything at half a day's notice. I remember very well that when Andrew Jackson was first named in a Western paper as a candidate for the Presidency, it was generally considered a joke. He is said to have thought it so himself; and a conversation has been published between him and some political agent of the party that took him up, in which he quite laughed at the idea. "No, no!" said the old General, "they may send me out to fight the Indians, but I should never do for a President." Little, in fact, had been known of him for many years. He lived in quiet retirement in the West, upon a fine estate he had hewn out of the forests of Tennessee; and now and then a traveller visited him as the old hero of New Orleans, and mentioned it in a letter to a newspaper; but he was considered quite as belonging to history. His "points" came out, however, upon inquiry, and, to everybody's astonishment, he was soon ahead of every competitor in popularity, and triumphantly defeated Adams (then President, and canvassing for his second election), one of the deepest diplomatists and wisest and most scholar-like of men. The latter, by the way, has since been returned by his native town as a representative; and after having been President of the United States for four years, is now a Member of Congress. President Jackson is surrounded by men of first-rate talent; but he is a person to take advice, and follow it- -if he likes! The leading man, the right hand of his party, is MARTIN VAN BUREN, who was recalled a year or two ago from the Court of St. James, his nomination having been negatived by Congress. Van Buren was the architect of his own fortunes, and is a winning, clever, subtle, politic man, who, in a country of more tortuous policy, would have doubled upon Machiavel or the Devil. I should think him by no means a bad man; but he acts as if he believed every one capable of betraying him; and while he pleases everybody by his agreeable manners, trusts nobody beyond the outside of his lips. He is cautious, impenetrable, and of infallible sagacity, turning the unluckiest contretemps to account, and never less defeated than when apparently down. Witness his election to the Vice-Presidency of the United States, immediately on his mortifying recall from England, when his enemies thought him politically "done for." He has quite made up his mind to be the next President (to which the Vice-Presidency has hitherto been the sure step); but, if I was of his politics (which I am not), I should fear that the tide upon which he and the old General have ridden to port has reached its limit. The next thing is the ebb! |