THE DEATH-BELL. Heard you that heavy bell beat on the air, It is the long farewell that friends have given modate In tenements of a stamp similar to that of George Talbot, in proportion as the drawing rooms are expanded, the dining room is pinched. Widows and ancient maidens count more upon silver tea spoons than upon silver dining forks. fact, George Talbot could not well accom more than eight at dinner. This circumstance was to him a source of constant lamentation. I have seen him, at least twenty times, sorrowfully measuring the dimensions of the room with his own expanded arms. "I am just six feet high," would George say upon these occasions, "and a well-made man Twould wake the tenants from their iron sleep the tips of his two fore fingers." George, can exactly stretch his own height, from Oh! should the waiting soul the farewell hear, "Twill surely drop, if spirits weep, a tear ! Hark! how it murmurs o'er yon sacred spot, And make them faintly the death note greet Up to the 24th day of December, 1825, there was no house in London (at least not one with whose interior I a macquainted) that could vie in pleasantness of dinner parties with George Talbot's. The mansion, not a hundred miles from a street branching from Park Lane, was one of those oumerous edifices in that neighbourhood that have been successively tenanted by widows, ancient maidens, and others of that stamp, whose object in life is to make a great show with little means. Hence a bow was thrown out of the back drawing-room so as to over-shadow the dwarf dining room below and at the same time to command a sidelong view of Lord Grosvenor's trees, together with part of the back front of his lordship's house. Upon this back front the substitution of new iron palisades for an old brick wall has recently enabled the public to sit in judgment; and I think their sittings need not to be of an equal length with that of the inquest on the Brunswick Theatre to enable them to deliver their verdict. The exterior of the picture gallery ought to be a deodand. who was a well made man in his own esteem (I should like to see the man who is not,) would, thereupon, kick three or four comfortable red morocco chairs from their station against the stucco: and would go on measuring, with his nose dimensions of the apartment, like Figaro against the wall, bidding his wife note the and Susanna in Mozart's opening duet, "Six, that's one stretch; twelve, that's two; eighteen, that's three. (My dear do take away the screen; its always in my way); well, well, never mind, I'll measure the rest with my fingers.' The rest measured, according to George's calculation, just eighteen inches more. So that, with a sigh George would ejaculate. "There, I told you so. It's only eighteen feet eighteen inches long-allowing for the dwarf cupboard in the recess, it is nineteen feet six inches-call it twenty feet at the outside.” Having thus proved, mathematically, that the apartment did not exceed twenty feet in length, Talbot would next set himself sorrowfully to work to delineate its breadth. This, after stretching himself in a similar manner, roasting his knees at the fire-place, and inhaling at his nostrils the dust from the cocked hat of a little bronze Bonaparte on the mantelpiece, was proved not to exceed sixteen feet. Twenty by sixteen; it was lamentable,' he ought to apologise for inviting me to take my dinner in such an apartment, but it could not at present be helped; his lease would fall in soon, and then, if he and his landlord could agree upon terms, he would extend the apartment into the garden, and show me a dining room as it should be. George Talbot is a gentleman by birth, a man of talents by nature, and a scholar by art. He has, moreover, the knack of getting the best society at his table. There were generally two dummies, myself and another, for talkers without listeners would be like the Savoyard and In his monkey without an audience. this humble dining room, twenty feet by sixteen, I have sat down to dinner with Sir James Macintosh, Rogers, William Spencer, and Jekyll, with an occasional intermixture of Luttrell, Moore, and Sidney Smith. After this enumeration it would be superfluous to add that no pleasanter dinners were to be met with within the Bills of Mortality. In fact they were proverbial. "Am I to meet you at the Spotted Dog next Wednesday?" would William Spencer say, in his careless jocose way,)a nickname of his for our host, quasi Talbot,) and the question was a prelude to festivity. Still George Talbot was not satisfied. He could not deny that every thing went off well, he must confess it did. 66 Sidney Smith talked," would he say to me, " and you held your tongue all this was as it should be; nothing could be more proper and agreeable; but, notwithstanding, I wish the dining-room were a few feet longer and wider-well, well, the lease will soon fall in, and then," &c. &c. de-capo-ing from landlord" to "room as it should be." Thus it habitually fared not only with me but my betters.` He would take Spencer aside, and pour similar griefs into his ear. Moore had to sympathise with him on the same score. Jekyll recommended four elastic walls for that night only, by particular desire, and Sidney Smith reminded him of the consolation of Diogenes. The last ejaculation from George, to which I was an ear witness, occurred in the spring of 1825. He had met a man, whom I knew to be a dummy, by his open mouth, and was inviting him, interchangeably to dinner. The north east wind wafted into my left ear the words" only accommodate eight," whereupon I turned round the corner of New Street, Spring Gardens, to avoid the conclusion of the sentence. At Christmas, 1825, the old lease expired, and George bargained with his landlord for a renewed one for twentyone years, he the said George consenting to build a new room on the basement floor, the length thereof to be thirty-five feet at the least, and the breadth twentyfive feet at the least. George brought me, with an air of great triumph, the 'document," as he called it, signed and sealed. It consisted of three skins of parchment, and I was condemned to hear him read the whole of it, not omitting cellars, sollars, sinks, gutters, and wyedraughts, together with the schedule of fixtures. This bodes us no good," said Spencer one morning as, at an accidental rencontre, we looked through the 66 iron railings, and saw the new diningroom, yet an infant skeleton, projecting its awful bowed front into the back garden of the edifice. "The Spotted Dog will be over-kennelled-mark my words, he will invite the genus omne from Harewood place to Bryanstone-square, and his dinners will be like other people's. While we were communing, Talbot joined us. This is a catastrophe which I always de plore. Never look at improvements in the presence of the improver. If you do, exit candid criticism, and enter cuckoonoted eulogium. George accordingly paraded us over rafters guiltless of floors, picking our paces as though we were proving our chastity amid red hot plough shares; whilst he himself stretched his arms, in his wonted manner, along the naked walls, anointing the tip of his nose with moist mortar, and exclaiming "six, twelve, eighteen, twenty-four, thirty, thirty-six-no, not quite-yes it is; thirty six feet four inches;-and now for the breadth." The latter was ascertained to be twenty-six feet; and George exclaimed, with an air like that of a man who has achieved a battle of Waterloo, "Now I shall be able to give a dinner." I had the honour to be invited to the very first dinner that was given in the new apartment. Jekyll, Rogers, and Spencer were of the party. "Very good milk,” said I to myself, "but I dread the inun dation of water.' Accordingly the knocker began to reverberate with sounds that actually startled the lean courser of a solitary dandy who was yet braving the north-easter in Hyde Park, although all sober Christians had long since ridden home to dress. Then came Lord and Lady Walross-Mrs. and the two Miss Stubbs'-the Wentworths-Tom Asgill in tight pantaloons-Mr. and Mrs. Wood or Hood, or Gude, I never could ascertain which there was also a fat red-faced Major Meredith,-and a tall man in blue, with a cork leg! In short, we were gathered together to the number of twentytwo. Talbot, full of glee at the immense army which he had brought into the field, handed down Lady Walross, on the announcement of dinner, and I brought up the rear with the junior Miss Stubbs. I should have observed, that while Talbot could only accommodate eight, he had eight as comfortable morocco chairs as man could wish to sit upon. These were now discarded in order to accommodate twenty-two, and a set of miserable tottering narrow cane-backed concerns were substituted, which I can only compare to those tall unhappy perpendicular articles, upon which (Orpheus alone knows why) growing girls are condemned to sit at the piano. I tried to preserve my balance, and succeeded, but not until I had fallen into the lap of Mrs. Stubbs; while Mr. Wood, or Hood, or Gude, paid a similar complimeut to the tall man in blue with the cork leg. But have at least some little notion Madame resolved to play her part How rapidly the time had slipp'd." When at the board she took her place, Was hardly said, or soup sent round, How the dinner went off I need not say. There was a confused talk about turbot, Madame Pasta, champagne, Zucchelli, hock, Rossini, Sir Walter Scott, brown bread, ice, and the new buildings in the Regent's Park; but as for Jekyll, Rogers, and Spencer, they might as well have been immured in the Catacombs. This has now happened, to my experimental knowledge, half-a-dozen times with the same result. The best part of the joke, or rather the worst part of the tragedy, is, that George Talbot regularly finds the " quantum mutatus" of the concern. He will repeatedly say ;—" Moore shines most in a small party; Jekyll ought to lead in a select few, Spencer was overtalked by that stupid Lord Walross, with his everlasting improvements at Rose-Ah, par exemple! it appals hill Park. Twenty-two is too many for them," &c. &c.; and yet he regularly falls again into the same wilful error. For myself, dummy as I am, I must say, that unless Talbot contracts the dimensions of his eating room, as Elliston did those of Drury Lane Theatre, I don't care how seldom I repeat my visits." -New Monthly. S. MADAME TALLEYRAND AND THE The famous Talleyrand who knew Like cauliflowers, Till they themselves endured the keen And made way for another faction, To undergo the same re-action:- A rich Bourgeoise of homely breeding, Deficient in her general reading.One day, 'twas when he stood elate, Napoleon's minister of state, Having invited to his house Some Literati to confer With a great foreign traveller. The husband thus addressed his spouse:"My dear, at dinner you will meet A foreigner-a man of note; These authors like, that you should quote Of his exploits on land and ocean, Ere with a shrug and a grimace, Voila un conte merveilleux ! The mind to think of your attacks Those horrid savages and blacks, Mais quel bonheur ! to liberate Poor Friday from the murd'rous crew, A servant and companion too!" THE WOOING AT GRAFTON. (Continued from Page 277.) These painful thoughts agitated her mind as from a terrace in the gardens of Grafton Manor she gazed on nearly the same scenery which we have described at the commencement of this narrative-the winding Ouse, whose every ripple gleamed like gold in the beams of the declining sun; the massive oaks, which cast their dark shadows round them, but received on their summits and their leaves a share of the glory of the setting luminary; the stately Manor-house in the foreground sending up wreaths of silver smoke into the deep blue sky; and the distant spire of the village-church of Grafton, catching the latest ray of the fast-declining orb of day, and terminating as with a finger of glory the horizon. This was a scene whose simple quiet beauty had often served to calm and soothe her wounded feelings, and to give a tinge of its own brightness to her anticipations of the future, now, however, it only served to bring back painful recollections to her mind-the interview with March: the affections and hopes which sprang from it; and the cruel manner in which all those affections and hopes had been blighted and destroyed. "Yes," she added, it is a wild and idle hope, and he has proved inconstant and untrue.' At that moment a rustling among the leaves of the bower in which she sat aroused her from her reverie, and starting up, she beheld-not, as for an instant she had fondly expected, Edward March, but a cavalier of a maturer age and less welcome to her eye, yet nevertheless a right noble and valiant cavalier, her father's brother, Sir William Woodville "Gallant uncle!" she said, "right welcome to Grafton manor :—what news from my noble mother?" "Cold news, heavy news, sweet Elizabeth," said the Knight, and he passed his hand across his eyes. "Alas! alas !" she said, sinking back into the seat from which she had sprung a moment before full of hopefulness." Tell it me then-tell it mehowever cold and heavy. Methinks my heart has learned to bear so much, that it can yet bear something-a little, little more-before it breaks." "Sweet lady," said Sir William, I am come to inform you that all our hopes of procuring the restitution of your husband's property are over, the meddling interference of a young esquire of the name of March has proved fatal to our cause, he having been discovered to be the same individual who had the boldness to draw his sword on the Duke of Gloucester in Grafton forest, when the King and his retinue were last in this neighbourhood, following the pleasures of the chase." "Ha!" said the lady, wringing her hands, and shrieking piteously; " and has that gallant young gentleman, to whom my thoughts have done so much injustice, involved himself in danger on my account; and was that foul mis-shapen being, from whose odious caresses he rescued me, the Duke of Gloucester ? I will hasten to London—I will throw my self at the feet of the gallant King--I will tell him that it was in the holiest causein the cause of injured innocence and helplessness, that Edward March dared to draw his sword. I will save him-I will save him." "Sweet cousin," said the Knight, gently detaining her, for she had started from her seat as if to perform the journey to London on the instant-" it is too late -Edward March is no more." "Ha!" said the lady while the blackness of despair gathered on her features, "thou art mad to say it, and I am mad to listen to it." Nay, nay, sweet cousin!" said the Knight, 'tis sad truth that I utter. the details of this young gentleman's fate I can give you no intelligence. All that I know is, that the same messenger from the court who informed the Duchess that your suit was rejected, added that the King had found it necessary to terminate the existence of Edward March." 66 "The cold-blooded ruthless tyrant !" said Elizabeth. Why! every hair on Edward March's head was worth a thousand Gloucesters-that bloated spiderthat viperous deformity-that hideous libel on the human form. Uncle, thou wear'st a sword." Ay, cousin! and it has done good service in its time. It has dyed the white rose redder than its blushing rival." 66 Now, then, draw it to perform a nobler service than aye. Unsheath it in the cause of murdered innocence-unsheath it in the cause of the helpless and oppressed. Rid the world of a monster in mind and form. Search with it for the heart, if he has one, of this Duke of Gloucester." "Why, gentle cousin," said the Knight, almost smiling, notwithstanding the heaviness of the news of which he had been the bearer, at the violence of his niece's emotion-" what means this? Surely the loss of your suit to his Highness was not an event so improbable and unexpected, that it should find you thus unprepared to meet the consequences?" But the noble gentleman who has perished in the attempt to serve me!" said the lady, weeping. "Peace be with his ashes!" said the Knight, crossing himself: "but, fair Elizabeth, it is vain and idle to lament the past. Let us rather provide for the future. The King may yet be prevailed upon to do thee justice. Hasten to the palace; throw thyself at his feet; show him thy orphan children, show him thy sable weeds above all, show him thy own fair face, and, my life for it, the broad acres of Groby are thy own.' "Wouldst have me kneel at the feet of a homicide? wouldst have me kiss the hand red with the blood of Edward "Nay, nay," said Elizabeth, interrupting him; thou hast touched me to the quick. Í did indeed forget. I will throw myself at the feet of this crowned barbarian-I will dry my tears-I will mask my cheek in smiles-I will procure for my children the restitution of their inheritance, and then I will hasten-" "To Groby castle ?" said the Knight. "To the grave! to the grave!" said the lady. Sir William Woodville no sooner saw that his niece acquiesced in his proposition, than he hastened to execute it, trusting that time would alleviate her sorrow, and not very well understanding all its violence, for the real cause of her sympathy for the fate of Edward March had not occurred to the imagination of the Knight. "The Court, the Court," he said, mentally, "is the atmosphere to dry a widow's tears: the tilt and the tournament, the revel and the masque, these are the true comforters of the afflicted. Many a gallant has pierced a lady's heart through the ring, and lured a nobler falcon than ever soared into the air, when he called only to his mounting goshawk.' Such were the Knight's reflections as he rode towards London. The lady's as our readers will easily divine, were of a different and more painful character. Fear and sickly hope, mingled horror and awe, for the personage whom she was about to supplicate; and cureless grief for the loss of the being who had taken such a chivalrous interest in her fate, were the varying emotions by which her bosom was agitated. The journey to the metropolis was concluded without the occurrence of any incident worthy of record. Elizabeth Gray was speedily clasped in the arms of her mother, who mingled her tears with her own; and then both ladies, accompanied by Sir William Woodville, and the two orphan Grays, proceeded to the palace at Westminster to make a personal appeal to the bounty of the King. The monarch was seated in his private chamber, surrounded by the few but distinguished courtiers who had the privilege of access to him there, when it was announced to him that the Lady Gray of Groby craved admittance to the royal presence. Tut! tut!" said the King; " this puling widow and her friends think that the King of England has nothing to attend to but the interests of the family of a rebel who died fighting sword in hand against his sovereign. Thrice have I peremptorily refused the supplication of the old Duchess of Somerset, and now the young lady is to play off the battery of her sighs and tears upon me in the hopes of a more prosperous result." "And in truth, my liege," said the Marquis of Montague, "the young lady has not been badly advised in trying that experiment, if report speaks truly of her charms." "Sayest thou so! cousin Montague," said the King; "then in God's name let her enter." And then carefully adjusting his robes, and assuming an air between the dignity of a monarch and the assumption of an Adonis conscious of his personal attractions, he leaned back in his throne. The door of the presence chamber unfolded, and the suppliant party, attired in deep mourning, approached the foot of the throne. The Lady Gray was led forward by Sir William Woodville, while the Duchess and her disinherited grandchildren came behind. A murmur of approbation and surprise passed from lip to lip, among the courtiers, as they gazed on the surpassingly beautiful features of the fair petitioner whom sorrow had not robbed of one of her charms, but had rathe improved and heightened them all. She entered with head depressed and downcast eyes, not daring to look at the person whom she supplicated, and for whom, as the murderer of her lover, and the sovereign of the realm, she entertained a sentiment in which abhorrence and reverence were strangely mingled. "A boon! a boon! most dread sovereign," she said, sinking at the monarch's feet. "Rise, gentle lady, said the King, ❝ and name, if thou canst, the boon which thy sovereign will refuse thee." "Ha!" said Elizabeth, starting, as though the voice of the dead had sounded in her ears. "Those tones-that voice! surely I am not mad." She lifted her eyes towards the King, and an expression of wonder and delight burst from her lips, as she recognized beneath the royal diadem the features of Edward March. That expression, however, was repressed as a deep feeling of fear and awe came over her, and sinking again to the ground, she exclaimed"Pardon! gracious Sire. Pardon ! pardon !'' "Pardon! sweet Elizabeth," said the King, descending from the throne, and raising her in his arms; " and wherefore? But thou hast a petition, fair lady, to which thou wouldest crave our answer. |