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laugh it to scorn, and spit at it as presumptuous and ridiculous; and shall joy to find South Trentsmen enough to hunt the fox of Malvesyn to the death!"

Sir William stamped, and a large robust man, in the splendid attire of a Hansacre herald, entered the hall from a deep embayed oriel, ensconced in which he had been an appointed hearer of the embassy.

"Repeat, Roger de Valroy, the terms of our counter defiance, and command our almoner to give a purse of rosenobles to this fellow, and dismiss him privately."

All this was done: the herald of Hansacre repeated the answer in nearly the same words; and the dismissal of the Malvesyn messenger was attended with the same respect as his entrance; while the knight descended with his lady to cool his chafed blood in the pleasure walks and terraces of the garden. Both were not a little comforted at learning the immediate safety of their son, and the lady inwardly hoped that her lord's innocence as to the death of the Damoiseau might induce De Malvesyn to offer milder terms.

To be continued.

ROYAL PORTRAITS. No. 2. (For the Olio.)

WILLIAM RUFUS.

It is said that this king was "more fierce than seemed consistent with human nature." His contempt for all religious ordinances and his impiety rendered him no favourite with the ecclesiastics, towards whom he always conducted himself with unbecoming levity. In this respect he differed widely from his father. A multitude of his profane jests are recorded. Brave he was to desperation, and his bravery was only exceeded by his magnanimity. Upon one occasion, in Normandy, he was riding alone, when three soldiers attacked him, and bore him out of his saddle; but the king using his saddle as a shield, stoutly maintained the fight until some of his attendants arrived to his succour. Word was brought him, as he once sat at dinner, that a city in Normandy was closely invested, and in danger of being taken, upon which he started on his feet and swore by the face of St. Luke, his usual oath, that he would not turn his back until he had arrived in Normandy; and forthwith ordered masons to break down the wall. He arrived in time to repulse the be

siegers, and took prisoner the Count de la Fesche, who had been the author of the rebellion. The count being brought before him, behaved in a very bold manner, assuring the king, that if he ever regained his liberty, he should find it a difficult matter to retake him. Upon which Rufus, laughing heartily, bade him begone, adding, "Do your worst, and let us see what that will be."

We must not forget an anecdote which is related of him by all the old chroniclers, who tell us that upon his riding to the sea-shore, his attendants begged him to wait until his troops had assembled, upon which he answered, " No-let all who love me follow without delay." Being on board, a violent storm arose, which so alarmed the pilot that he wished to put back; but Rufus sternly forbade him" Go on," said he, "and fear nothing. Did'st thou ever hear of a king being drowned ?" The sentiment were worthy of a Cæsar or an Alexander.

It is somewhat singular that such fiery and turbulent spirits are often found to possess a nice sense of justice. The following anecdote will shew that Rufus was one of these. The abbot of a convent dying, two monks repaired to the court and prayed the king to bestow the abbacy upon them, offering at the same time large sums of money. They by turns outbid each other, upon which Rufus, looking around him, espied another monk, of whom he asked what he would give to be made abbot ? "I have nothing to give," replied the monk, "and if I had, I would not give it: I entered my convent to be poor, and poor I will remain." "By Saint Luke!" said the king, "thou shalt be abbot,-more worthy in thy poverty than they for their price."

His ideas as to religion were sceptical, for he denied that the saints could benefit any man; and upon one occasion, when several gentlemen were condemned to pass through the ordeal by fire, and escaped uhurt, he impiously exclaimed, “What a pretty judgment of Heaven is this, to let so many scoundrels escape unpunished."

He is described as of the middle size, but firmly set. His complexion ruddy, and his hair of a yellow hue. When irritated he stammered in his speech. He was brave and bountiful, a good soldier, and capable of enduring great hardship. He scoffed at religion, but endowed in his time the church of St. Saviour's in Bermondsey, and an hospital at York. Licentious and occa

sional fits of ferocity appear to have been his worst faults; but then we must consider the rude age in which he lived, and the prejudices of the monkish historians.

To conclude, his end was violent, like his father's, and still more sudden, and he left behind him few to lament his fate either as a monarch or as a friend.

ALPHA.

fear a comparison with the comeliest of our own tribes. They have far more natural vivacity than the males, are much more kind and amiable in disposition, and, particularly when young, evince a partiality for the monkey race in general, which has frequently been a source of amusement to me. Their sham skins are usually of various colours, but generally so arranged as to indicate that they wish to look like birds, while

THE REMINISCENCES OF AN OLD their mates endeavour, as much as posMONKEY. sible, to appear like us.

(Continued from p. 20.)

My own occasional lowness of spirits at the present period, however, proceeds, I am convinced, from very different causes. Alone as I am, in a country far distant from the place of my birth and early associations, I cannot avoid recollecting that such things were; and a sigh will sometimes escape me when I reflect that the remainder of my days must be spent among beings so artificial as the human race. I am disgusted with their vain boastings. To hear them talk, one would really imagine that they were all perfection; and yet they are indebted to the beasts of the field and the birds of the air, and even to poor miserable worms, for their outward skins, their own being of such a wretched texture as to be nearly useless; and, strange as it may seem to animals who have been clad by nature, these borrowed coverings are a chief source of pride to the creatures called men and women. The greater part of their lives is spent in putting them off and on, and endeavouring to procure a greater variety, in which to strut about and endeavour to imitate the monkey tribe. But their imitations are perfectly ridiculous, and never can approach the graceful and natural agility of our tribes, which they, notwithstanding, affect to consider as beneath them!

It would be an endless task to recount all the follies of their various at tempts at concealing their natural deformity. The males, having no tail of their own, decorate themselves with one made from the wool of sheep; and so ignorant are they of the real and native elegance of this appendage, that they split it into two pieces, which hang uselessly dangling behind them! The variety of these mock upper skins worn by the females is yet infinitely greater; a circumstance the more remarkable, because that sex have far less occasion for concealing their persons. Indeed, I have seen some of them who need not

It was my misfortune, in early life, to fall into the hands of this species of animals, of whose existence no one, in the extensive districts belonging to our tribe was previously aware: and it has been my lot, with some few brief intervals, to remain among them ever since. I am now grown old and grey in captivity; but I shall not indulge in the natural garrulity of old age to such an extent as to write all the events of my eventful life, notwithstanding that hope sometimes whispers flatteringly in mine ear, that many monkeys will peruse these reminiscences with interest and gratification, if not with advantage.

.

It is acknowledged by all, that the earth has undergone strange and divers revolutions, not only as it regards its organic formation, and the changes constantly in progress by the agency of rivers, floods, seas, and subterranean fires, but in the power held by different animals over extensive tracts upon its surface. Long before man was known, our tribes possessed a wide and undisputed sway over regions now disfigured in a strange manner by what are called houses, little dirty hillocks with holes in them, from whence smoke issues, as if in petty imitation of a volcano. Men dwell in these, and have so increased in number for the last few centuries, that it really becomes a serious question how their encroachments are to be put a stop to, so as to preserve upon the face of the earth a sufficient space for the aboriginal inhabitants. Sometimes a feeling of despair comes over me when I think on the present state of things, and I am haunted with the idea, almost amounting to conviction, that I am doomed to be the last monkey. But it may not be so! The reign of man, like that of the lions, tigers, and elephants, must have an end: and then our tribes may again be in the ascendant. Why they should not now be so I cannot conceive, unless it be from a want of union among ourselves;

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for such is the cowardice of the human race, that even I, old and decrepid as I am, have put half a dozen to flight by merely shewing my teeth, and could clear the whole house where I am now writing in five minutes, were it not that I find their services convenient in this strange country, where there are few trees, and scarcely any fruit worth gathering. So I employ them to bring me food from better climates, and, upon the whole, have little reason to complain of their neglect. But it was not always thus. I have undergone many hardships, particularly after my first arrival in this country, which they call Great Britain, although it is but a small island, and a mere speck when compared with other nations. But the inhabitants possess a great deal of influence among their kind, owing, it is said, principally to certain of them called sailors. And I am inclined to believe the fact, partly because I have had opportunities of witnessing the bravery of that class of men, and received many attentions from them during my voyage here; but, principally, because the generality of them have a real tail, (which, however, grows out of their head!) and are very expert in the noble science of climbing.

I am aware that many things which I may state will probably startle monkeys of a future age; but I consider myself as performing a duty for the benefit of future generations. Future generations did I say? What, and if there should be no more! Again that dreadful apprehension comes over me! Cold and chill, and shudderingly, it creeps throughout my whole system

it shakes me to the centre-and again my blood returns throbbing, boiling, and rushing through my veins, my brain feels scorched, and in vain I seek to quench in tears those torments which inwardly consume me, as I think on my bitter doom of desolation. And am I indeed to be the last monkey? No; I will not admit the idea, notwithstanding the fruitless research which I have prosecuted for years to discover one of my own kind. Still, methinks, some portion of our race must exist in the enjoyment of liberty and independence, basking in the rays of the genuine monkey sun, (for here they have one which scarcely emits any warmth,) or gambolling in the delicious shade of fruit-bearing forests. But the picture is too painful for me to follow up. It recalls to me the charms of my dearest Keeba, my first love, and the

graceful activity of Monicha, my second, and the amiable playfulness of Simiana, my third, and the delicately refined taste of Cercopitheca, my fourth, whose heart I won one morning by a present of two moths, and a beetle of unusual dimensions; and my fifthalas! here memory fails me-I cannot exactly recollect who was my fifth-But it is no matter; for perhaps, after all, it scarcely becomes the gravity of age and grey hairs to dilate on such subjects.

Let me be serious, and write of more important concerns and events, so that my manuscript may prove a treasure of instruction and amusement to the fortunate monkey into whose hands it may fall, and my name and memory be cherished in after ages. First, then, of my name. I am known in this climate by that of Jocko, an appellation given to me by the human race, who thereby evinced their deplorable ignorance, since every well-informed monkey knows that Pongo* and Jocko are the names of animals very different from us, and, as I have ascertained by comparison, bearing a much greater affinity to man, and consequently, every way inferior to us in the scale of nature. Indeed, the only striking similarity between man and our tribes appears to be the reciprocal taste for imitating each other; a foolish propensity, to which, in my younger days, I was much addicted, and which, to confess my folly, was the cause of my captivity. It happened in this wise. We were sitting, a whole troop of us, in calm and rational chat, under the shelter of a noble banyan-tree, which threw its hundred stems and thousand roots into the earth, and its million branches, curving in beauty, into the upper air. There were the splendid and gaudycoloured birds, pluming themselves in tranquillity, and there were we, sitting in picturesque groups, amid the verdant foliage, with our wives, our sweethearts, and our little ones; sometimes cracking a joke, and sometimes cracking a nut, or regaling upon the various dainties with which our pouches were stored. Suddenly an alarm was given by our sentinels of the approach of strangers. We were instantly upon the alert, and to our astonishment, perceived about half a score animals of different and extraordinary colours advancing upon their hind legs, some with split tails, and some with the little single tail growThe greater and smaller species of OrangOutang.

ing out of their head, as before described. Their heads were almost all different in form; one was small and flat, another large and round, like a huge gourd; a third, long and high, with a tuft of feathers at the top; and a fourth, with the sides squeezed together, and curved like a cressit moon reversed. All, however, were unnatural, and we gazed upon them, for some time, with various feelings, according to our different temperaments. For my own part, I must say that I did not share in the alarm visible in many countenances around me; a strong feeling of curiosity swallowed up every other emotion, and I kept my eyes intently fixed upon the intruders, who, for some time appeared to be totally unconscious of our vicinity.

At length some of our females, in spite of strict orders to the contrary, found it impossible to keep their tongues quiet any longer, and began a-jabbering, which drew the attention of the strange creatures upon us. It was now useless to hesitate, so we all immediately joined in the cry of our tribe, and warned the intruders not to approach nearer, upon their peril, or they must abide the consequences.

The animals, however, persisted, in spite of all our vociferations, to which they only replied by a strange sort of cackling, which I have since found is called laughing, and, discordant as it is, held by them in high estimation, as a peculiar privilege and perfection of their species. When they had come under the shade of our banyan, we gave them notice to quit, in a manner which it was impossible to misunderstand, namely, by pelting them with sticks and stones, which we had previously collected, and other convenient missiles. For some time, notwithstanding, they kept their ground, and continued the cackling as before, varied occasionally by a sharp noise made by clapping their forepaws together. One among them attempted to climb into the tree; but his clumsiness was perfectly ridiculous, and amused us exceedingly. So much indeed was I delighted, that I jumped and squeaked, and nearly fell off the branch on which I sat. Never, that I recollect, was I in higher spirits. I considered the animals below us, in every respect beneath me; and in mere wantonness, took deliberate aim at the one with a half-moon head, whom I hit with part of a cocoa nutshell in the cheek, whereat he appeared to be much exasperated, and immediately

seized what I then fancied was a stick, from one of his companions, and pointed it towards me. The manner in which he did this was, as I thought, exceedingly preposterous; for he held it as if to make me believe that it formed part of his own nose. I was much astonished, however, when a great noise, as of thunder, issued out of the end, with a cloud of dust, and my wife, who was close by my side, began to scream, and tumbled out of the tree. I attributed the fall to her own clumsiness, as she was an awkward monkey; and, to say the truth, we had not lived happily together for some time, for she was considerably larger than myself, and had given me a severe beating only the day before. When I saw her lying on the ground, and perfectly quiet, I knew she must be dead, being satisfied that nothing less would have quieted her ; and I felt my mind greatly relieved, and began to look round among our troop for another mate.

In the meanwhile, the new comers below began pulling my dead old wife about in a strange manner, turning her round and round, and jabbering to each other. At first I fancied they were going to eat her; but, at length, they laid her down, and I was glad to perceive that they had not had the sense to take the fruit which was in her pouch, and which I resolved to make my own immediately on their departure, for it is one thing to lose one's wife, and another to be deprived of her property.

The strange creatures now clustered together, and began to eat and drink, after an extraordinary fashion, out of the shells of cocoa nuts and large gourds. Their mode of drinking out of the latter particularly interested us; and, when they went away, we were somewhat surprised to observe that they left several behind them standing on the ground.

Perhaps my spirits were somewhat elevated in consequence of my wife's fall. Be that as it may, I was one of the first to descend and examine the hollow gourds left by the strangers; and I was accompanied by several young females of our tribe, who had witnessed Glumdalla's accident, and therefore knew that I was at liberty to attend them. The things were half filled with what seemed to be water; so following our natural imitative propensity, we either lifted them in our forepaws, or dipped in our heads and began to drink, as the strange animals had done. In a very short space of

time, I felt myself unusually vigorous and active, it seemed to me as though I was larger and stronger than any of our troop; and my courage was such, that I almost wished my old wife alive again, that I might return the drubbings she had given me. My companions likewise appeared to have undergone a change. The females seemed handsomer, and the males uglier than usual; but all were merry and clamorous; and indeed, it appeared as though we were trying which should make the most noise, and most frequently get possession of the gourds to imitate the strangers.

I have a very confused recollection of the manner in which that eventful scene terminated. There was some quarrelling, I remember, among us, and we fought; but I have no idea what it was about. The last thing that I can call to mind appears like a dream; and I should ever have believed it nothing more, but for the deplorable consequences, by which the whole tenor of my life has been changed. It seemed as though the strange and great animals suddenly came upon us; but their manner was altogether different from that which they had practised on their first visit. Instead of moving slowly as before, they now flew about, like birds, in every direction; and I was astonished to see them overtake and lay hold of several of the most active among us. At length one approached me, and stretched out his long forepaw. Resistance against such a monster was not to be thought of. I therefore ran towards a stem of the banyan, which I unaccountably missed; but in a very short time I laid hold of another, which I thought to climb with the speed of lightning; when, to my amazement, the whole tree had suddenly grown to such a height that its branches were above the clouds, which I plainly perceived rolling between me and them. Overcome by the dread of my pursuer, and this appalling change in the face of nature, my limbs refused to perform their office- fell, exhausted, to the ground, and all remains a blank on the tablet of memory, from that moment till I awoke, ill and feverish, and surrounded by the human species.

It seems that the liquid which they had left in the calibashes (as they call them) was of an intoxicating nature, and had deprived us of the use of our faculties. I had got drunk. What "drunk" means, together with many other terms and things unknown among us, shall be explained in a glossary,

which I shall annex to this manuscript, for the benefit of all inquisitive monkeys. The cruelty of thus depriving us of our senses, for the sake of afterwards taking us prisoners, must appear to the reader as most execrable. But, to do justice to the human race, they do not consider the former any punishment; on the contrary, it is an infliction which they constantly practise on their dearest friends, and nothing seems to afford them greater pleasure. They meet together frequently in large bodies for this very purpose, and at the commencement of their proceedings, I have sometimes been quite startled at their very close resemblance to us, as they sit and grin and nod at each other: but, after a while, they become awkward and stupid, and are not fit to be compared with the meanest of our tribes. The only motive that I guess for this strange practice is, that they thereby get rid, for a time, of a very troublesome thing which they call "reason," about which they are eternally chattering, and pretending that it is something superior to our instinct.

What the precise nature of this boasted "reason" is, I have never been able satisfactorily to decide. It is, however, somewhat remarkable, that whenever a man has lost what little falls to his share, in one of these drinking bouts, he always imagines that he is possessed of much more than any one else, and believes himself the only animal fit to rule over his tribe. One can hardly conceive any thing more ridiculous. If they had any quality at all comparable with instinct, it would be impossible for them to fall twice into such a stupid error; for they really make themselves quite ill by this foolish custom, and I have heard that some even hasten their death, and make their lives miserable thereby. Yet, while they are at it, they every now and then interrupt the general course of conversation, and cry out "Health!" folly!

But enough of this Blackwood's Mag.

Anecdotiana.

GLORIOUS UNCERTAINTY OF WAR. At the sale of some deceased officers' effects at Salamanca, the man who officiated as auctioneer on one occasion, on producing a prayer-book as the next lot for competition, remarked that "he must indeed be a brave man who purchased it, as that was the fourth time during a month he had submitted it for sale."

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