Diary and Chronology. Wednesday, August 11. St. Susanna.-Moon's Last Quarter, 8m after 8 Morning. Our saint was born of a noble Roman family, and is said to have been niece to Pope Caius. Having made a vow of perpetual virginity, she refused to marry, and was at length found ont to be a christian. She suffered for an adherence to her faith about the year 295. August 11, 1556.-Died, John Bell, Bishop of Worcester, a prelate highly esteemed by Henry the Eighth, who, as a reward for his eminent services in defence of his divorce from Queen Katharine, gave him the above see. He was often employed by Henry as an envoy to foreign princes, and was one of his council. Thursday, August 12. St. Euphus, Martyr, A.D. 304.-High Water 30m after 7 Morning-om after 8 Aftern. August 12, 1749.-On the night of this day a dreadful fire broke out in a building next the dyehouse of Mr. Spence, near Battle Bridge, Southwark, which consumed the same, with the brewhouse of Messrs. Cox and Chichley, four wharfs, Mr. Walter's cooperage, and about 80 houses, with nearly all the goods and furniture contained in them, besides many houses were greatly damaged. In this calamity three men and one woman lost their lives, and one man had his leg broke, and another was killed by the fall of a stack of chimnies. Upwards of 2000 quarters of malt, besides a large quantity of hops and 800 buts of beer were lost by this accident, the damage of which was said to be £50,000. Friday, August 13. St. Hyppolytus Priest and Martyr.-sun rises 38m after 4-sets 21m after 7. This saint was one of the most illustrious martyrs who suffered in the reign of Gallus, he, with twenty-four other priests of Rome, had the misfortune to be engaged in a schism, which fault he expiated by his public repentance and martyrdom in the year 252. August 13, 1783-Expired John Dunning, Lord Ashburton, one of the most distinguished pleaders at the English bar. While in practice as a barrister, he very frequently pleaded the cause of the poor and oppressed, without fee or reward; nor was he ever known to shew less ardour when retained for small fees than when his clients were wealthy and liberal. Saturday, August 14. St. Eusebius, Priest and Confessor.-High Water 10m after 10 Morn-51m after 10 Evening. August 14, 1821.-To-day the remains of her late Majesty Queen Caroline, consort of George IV., were conveyed without any of that funeral pomp that generally attends the interment of royalty, from Hammersmith, with an intention of proceeding through the Uxbridge road to Bayswater, and onwards through Islington to avoid the City; but a tumultuous mob twice arrested the progress of the procession, and succeeded in blockading every street leading out of Tottenham Court Road, in the direction of the New Road, and thereby compelling the cavalcade to go down Drury Lane and through the City; it then passed on to Whitechapel, and reached Harwich on the Thursday following, from whence the body was put on board a vessel which sailed immediately for Stadt. Her majesty left the principal part of her property to William Austin, the youth whom she had brought up from his infancy; she left her advocates, Dr. Lushington and Mr. Wilde, her executors. Sunday, August 15. TENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. Lessons for the Day-21 chapter Kings, b. 1, morn-22 chapter Kings, b. 1, Even. The Assumption of the Virgin Mary is a festival held in both the Greek and Latin churches, in memory of her having been assumed or taken up into Heaven after her dissolution; writers have not yet agreed whether this alleged assumption was of her soul or body; the Latin church, to avoid any mistake, celebrates the assumption of both. The Abbot Authpertus, who died in 778, was the first who started this subject, and applied the term assumption to the supposed miraculous corporeal ascent. Monday, August 16. St. Roche, A.D. 1327-High Water In Im Morning-0h 30m After. In early times the festival of this saint was celebrated as a general Harvest-Home Day. August 16, 1738-Expired ET 54, Joseph Miller, a lively comedian, but better known as Joe Miller, compiler of a famous Jest Book. The remains of this man of mirth lie in the Green church-yard, or burial-ground, in Portugal-street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, belonging to the parish of St. Clement Danes, and close by the once celebrated Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, where Garrick became so famous. Miller's epitaph, by S. Duck, is on a handsome stone on the left hand side on entering the burial-ground, nearly under the window of the workhouse scription was originally on another stone; but time had taken such liberties with it, that, in the year 1816, the churchwarden for the time being, greatly to his credit, caused the present one to be erected. The following is the inscription on the present stone: The in If Humour, Wit, and Honesty, could save Tuesday, August 17. Eun rises 45m after 4-sets 14m after 7. August 17, 1796.-On this day a Dutch squadron was captured without resistance, by ViceAdmiral Sir George Keith Elphinstone, in Saldanha Bay, on the coast of Africa, near the Cape of Good Hope. Sir George was in consequence made Lord Keith. NOTE. Our good friend J. H. B. will find his request readily complied with by applying at our publisher's. With No. 141, of Saturday, July 31, was published a Supplemental Sheet, containing a Memoir of her Majesty QUEEN ADELAIDE, embellished with a PORTRAIT Illustrated Article. THE MINER'S WIFE. 4 Thou know'st, that in my desert halls Yet on this dark and dreary pile, Thy love its tender wreaths hath hung; THE young Countess Blanch Volner stood alone in the magnificent saloon which had been just thronged with lordly company. She had that day taken possession of her immense property; and her high rank and remarkable beauty and talent had gathered around her the noblest and wealthiest families of Vienna. Not a guest returned home dissatisfied; the dignity and simple grace of the young Countess, and the unaffected sweetness of her manners, had charmed even more than her surprising loveliness; and much more than the splendour of her enterVOL. VI. I See page 130 tainment. But Blanch had far higher claims to the admiration and love of all who really knew her; every one talked with rapture of her graces and accomplishments; a few hearts thought chiefly of her unpretending consistency of conduct, her real, humble goodness, the fair fruit of genuine piety. Blanch stood alone, and sighed; she partly sighed over her beautiful flowers, which hung in fading garlands round the room; she pressed her hand for a moment over her eyes, for they ached with the glare of the tapers still blazing around her; with a true girlish fancy she took from the tall candelabra beside her a long drooping branch of white roses, which seemed dazzled like herself with the brilliant light; but as she touched them, the rose-leaves fell on the ground; she sighed again, but from a very different cause; her heart had not been in the gaiety and splendour of the evening; she could not help reproaching herself for having shared in it at all, while Herman Alberti was exposed to the dangers of a distant war. As the young Countess 145 was about to retire to rest, the arrival of a stranger, agitated and in haste, who earnestly requested to see her, was announced. She hesitated at first, but after a few minutes' consideration, she consented to appear; and, returning to the deserted saloon, there waited till the stranger was introduced to the presence. The Countess desired her servant to remain in the ante-room, for she observed that the young stranger hesitated to speak. How often did she turn pale!-how often did she tremble with agitation during that short interview! The man was the servant of the Count Alberti, and he had hurried to inform her that his master had dangerously wounded his commanding officer in a duel, and that he had not been since heard of, though a high reward was offered for his life. He had fought against the express command of the Emperor. Many months passed away-months of sorrow and anxiety to the hapless Lady Blanch. The young deserter was never heard of, and the festive magnificence that had flashed for a moment in the palace of the Countess entirely disappeared; but she was not giving way to useless grief; she sought out the wretched and the forsaken, and she relieved and consoled them. Her money, her time, and her prayers, were devoted to the afflicted; and it was not their gratitude, but their restored happiness which rejoiced her; she loved to watch the clouds of sorrow gradually rolling away from the care-worn countenance, and she knelt down to bless God that in all her own heart-breaking grief she could still be made the humble means of diffusing happiness. The wounded general was slowly recovering there seemed some hope that Alberti would be pardoned. Alas! at the very time that the numerous petitions in his favour were beginning to be attended to, he was brought to Vienna with a gang of desperate banditti, among whom he had been taken: he told an improbable story about his not being connected with the banditti, but nobody belieyed him, and he spoke of it no more. Blanch did believe him; she entreated to be allowed to see him, but her entreaties only extorted a promise that on the night before his execution she should be admitted to his cell: he was condemned to be broken on the wheel. The tale which Count Herman had related was true; he had fled all unknowingly to the wild haunts of the banditti amid the mountains of Istria. Among those mountains, which abounded with the dens of the banditti, he was taken by the royal troops. The true captain of the banditti escaped; but, hearing that the brave Herman was mistaken for him, and having been once a man of honour himself, he came forward and gave himself up to justice, relating every particular of the Count's refusal to join his band. The sentence was changed. Was it a merciful change? The young and gallant Count Herman was condemned for life to become a workman in the mines of Idria. Blanch had been long the constant companion of the old Countess Alberti. The intelligence of Herman's life having been spared, was brought to them when they were together; they were about to visit Herman, and they now hastened to the prison. The first surprise which made known to the aged Countess her son's safety was joyful, but her grief soon returned at the thought of the dreadful sentence which still awaited him; but Blanch seemed restored to happiness, and entered the dark cell, trembling indeed, but with overpowering joy. A venerable priest, who had daily attended the young Count, had promised to meet them in the prison, and there Blanch and the Countess Alberti found him conversing with Herman. After the first agitated moments of this affecting interview were over, Blanch rose up, and wiping away her tears, said, "I have a petition to make to you all, and one that may easily be complied with. What I ask must not be refused, unless you will hesitate to promote my happiness. 'Tis a strange request for me to make, but I do not blush to make it," she said, as a deepening blush spread over her downcast face, and completely belied her assertion. "Dear Herman," she said, "it was not always thus: must I remind you of our long plighted affection? I have known the time when you were very eloquent in pleading a cause that you appear now to have forgotten. I see that you will not recall that time; but do not think me too bold in seeming to forget my sex's modesty. You know, my Herman, that I should not once have spoken thus-I should not once have come to you and offered you my hand, as I do now; I should have waited, like a bashful maid, to be entreated like all bashful maids; and when at last I yielded to your suit, I should have done so but at long entreaty. Dear Herman, will you not accept my hand?" Blanch looked up through her blushes and smiled, as she held out her small white hand. "Blanch," said Herman, while he gently took her proffered hand; and, having pressed it to his lips, still held it trembling in his own. "Sweet Blanch, I was prepared for this, I knew that you would speak as you do now; I doubted not but the same timid maid, whose modesty sprung from true, and virtuous love, would think it a most joyful duty to prove her faithfulness in such a time as this; and yet I almost wish that you had been less true, less like yourself; for to refuse the most trifling of your chaste favours, is a grief I will not speak of poverty, although the change would be too hard for you, a young and delicate lady of high rank, whom Providence had nursed in the soft lap of affluence and ease: but for a woman, Blanch, a tender helpless woman to be doomed to pine away in a dark, horrid cavern, whose very air is poison to me. "Herman," said Blanch, eagerly, "have not the miners wives now living with them?" "It may be so," he answered; "but remember, those women must be poor, neglected wretches; accustomed to the sorrows and hardships of their life, they may be almost callous to distress." "And think you then," said Blanch, her whole countenance brightening as she spoke, think you, that such cold and deadened feeling can produce that fortitude, that patient, heavenly fortitude which the spirit of the gospel gives and only gives? When I thus freely offer to become the partner, the happy partner, of your misery, I think not, dearest, of my woman's weakness, (though I can hardly believe that it would fail.) No; to another's arm I look for strength; to those everlasting arms which now support the burden of the whole world's sinking woes. My strength is in my God, and he will hear my never-ceasing prayers. I have no fears but that a miner's hut would be a happy home; it must be so to me, for now the happiest lot for me, is to remain with you. I should indeed be wretched with my wealth and my titles, utterly wretched, without one sweet consoling thought, which conscience will often bring in those dreary mines. Here, then, I am pleading for my happiness, not so much for yours, dear Herman. Kneel with me, do kneel with me, to ask your mother's blessing; for that is the request I make to her; and then the third petition may soon be guessed; that you, my holy father, will consent to join the hands of Count Alberti and myself in marriage." It was not her language; it was the almost unearthly eloquence of tone and manner, that gave to the words of the Lady Blanch an effect which it seemed impossible to resist. When she finished speaking, her hand extended to Herman and her face as she leaned forward, turning alternately to the aged Countess and the Friar; her eyes shining with the light of expression, and the pure blood flooding in tides of richer crimson to her cheek and parted lips; lips on which a silent and trembling eloquence still hung; they all sat gazing on her in speechless astonishment; one sunbeam had darted through the narrow window of the cell, and the stream of light, as Blanch moved, at last fell on her extended hand. When Herman saw the pale transparent red, which her slender fingers assumed, as the sunbeams shone through them, he thought, with horror, that the blood now so purely giving clearness to her fair skin, and flowing so freely and freshly through her delicate frame, would in the mine's poisonous atmosphere, become thick and stagnant; he thought how soon the lustre of her eyes would be quenched, and the light elastic step of youth, the life which seems exultant in the slight and graceful form of Blanch would be palsied for ever. Herman was about to speak, but the old priest interrupted him by proposing that nothing should be finally settled till the evening of the fourth ensuing day; then the Lady Blanch, he observed, would have had more time to consider the plan she had formed; and till then the young Count would be permitted to remain in Vienna. "I will consent, but on this one condition," said Blanch,-“ that my proposal, bold as it is, shall not be then opposed, if, as you say, my resolution be not changed. You know, dear Herman, that I cannot change." Blanch went, and with her husband, to the mines. The dismal hut of a workman in the mines of Idria, was but a poor exchange for the magnificent palace of the Count Alberti, on the banks of the Danube, which was now confiscated to the crown; though a small estate was given to the venerable and respected Countess during her life.But Blanch smiled with a smile of satisfied happiness, as leaning on her hus hand's arm, she stopped before the hut which was to be their future home. Their conductor opened the door, but the Count had forgotten to stoop, as he entered the low door-way, and he struck his lofty forehead a violent blow. Blanch uttered a faint shriek, her first and only exclamation in that dark mine. The alarm which Blanch betrayed at his accident, banished the glooom which had begun to deepen on her husband's spirits to remove her agitation, he persuaded himself to speak, and even to feel cheerfully; and when Blanch had parted away his thick hair, to examine the effects of the blow, and had pressed her soft lips repeatedly to his brow, she said playfully, as she bent down with an arch smile, and looked into her husband's face, "After all, this terrible accident and my lamentations have not had a very bad effect, as they have brought back the smiles to your dear features, my own Herman." The miner's hut became daily a more happy abode; the eyes of its inhabitants were soon accustomed to the dim light, and all that had seemed so wrapt in darkness when they first entered the mines, gradually dawned into distinctness and light. Blanch began to look with real pleasure on the walls and rude furniture of her two narrow rooms; she had no time to spend in useless sorrow, for she was continually employed in the necessary duties of her situation; she performed with cheerful alacrity the most menial offices-she repaired her husband's clothes, and she was delighted if she could sometimes take down from an old shelf one of the few books she had brought with her. The days passed on rapidly; and, as the young pair knelt down at the close of every evening, their praises and thanksgivings to the Almighty were as fervent as their prayers. Herman had not been surprised at the high and virtuous enthusiasm which had enabled Blanch to support, at first, all the severe trials they underwent without shrinking; but he was surprised to find that in the calm, the dull, and hopeless calm of undiminished poverty and hardship, her spirit never sank; her sweetness of temper and unrepining gentleness rather increased. Another trial was approaching.Blanch, the young and tender Blanch, was about to become a mother; and one evening, on returning from his work, Herman found his wife making clothes for her unborn infant. He sat down beside her, and sighed; but Blanch was singing merrily, and she only left off singing to embrace her husband with smiles-he thought the sweetest smiles he had ever seen. The wife of one of the miners, whom Blanch had visited when lying ill of a dangerous disease, kindly offered to attend her during her confinement; and from the arms of this woman Herman received his first-born son-the child who, born under different circumstances, would have been welcomed with all the care and splendour of noble rank. But he forgot this in his joy that Blanch was safe, and stole on tiptoe to the room where she was lying: she had been listening for his footstep, and as he approached, he saw in the gloom of the chamber her white arms stretched towards him. "I have been thanking God in my thoughts," said Blanch, after her husband had bent down to kiss her; "but I am so very weak! Dear Herman, kneel down beside the bed, and offer up my blessings with your own." Surprising strength seemed to be given to this delicate mother by Him" who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb," and she recovered rapidly from her confinement; but when her infant was about a month old, Blanch began to fear for his health. It was a great sorrow for her to part with her own darling child, but she felt it to be her duty to endeavour to send him out of the mines to the care of the old Countess Alberti: it was very hard to send him away before he could take into the world the remembrance of those parents who never would behold him more-before his first smiles had seemed to notice the love and the care of the mother who bore him; but Blanch did not dare to think of her sorrowful regret, for it was necessary to make every exertion to effect this separation, so painful to herself. She knew that the wretched inhabitants of the immense mines were dropping into the grave daily; she knew that their lives seldom exceeded the two first years of their horrid continement, and she panted with eager desire to send her pallid child to pure, untainted air. It was at this time that Herman, as he was at work in one of the galleries, beheld a stranger, attended by the surveyor of the mines, approaching the place where he stood. Herman turned away as the stranger passed, but he started with surprise to hear the tones of a voice which he well remembered; he could not be mistaken, for the person spoke also with a foreign accent. |