to retire into private life. Gladly, perhaps, would he have done so, had he consulted only his inclinations; but he had not forgotten his pledge to his dying father, never to sheath his sword till the right cause had triumphed. In common with many of his party, he believed that triumph to be near at hand. Their recent successes, and the death of the only man amongst the Pretender's partisans who had shown military talents of a high order, made the Christinos confident of the speedy termination of a war which was yet to be prolonged for four years. And when Herrera, in compliance with the Count's wishes, urged as entreaties rather than commands, agreed to wait its conclusion before claiming the hand of his daughter, he little dreamed how many hard-fought fields he should be present at, how many tearful partings and joyful meetings would occur, before peace should be restored to Spain, and Rita could become his wife without risk of finding herself the next day a widow. From summer to winter, from winter to spring, the marriage was deferred, until at length the Count was about to withdraw his opposition, well-founded though it was, and as Herrera felt it to be, when the convention of Vergara took place, and removed the only objection to the union of Rita and Luis. By that convention the war was in fact concluded; for although Cabrera and other chiefs still waved the banner of rebellion in the mountains of Catalonia and Arragon, there could now be no doubt of their speedy subjugation. Deprived of the support of Biscay and Navarre, and especially of the moral weight which the adherence of those provinces gave to it, the Carlist rebellion was virtually crushed.
On a bright autumnal afternoon of the year 1839, a travelling carriage, of form and dimensions by no means incommodious, although its antique construction, and the tawny tint of its yellow paint, might in London or Vienna have subjected it to criticism, drove rapidly past the roadside inn at which our story commenced. As it did so, a young man of military appearance looked out of the window of the vehicle, and then turning his head caught the eye of the coachman, who had also glanced at the inn, and looked round at his master. Both smiled, although with a somewhat melancholy expression; the driver touched his cap, cracked his long whip, and the next instant the rapid gallop of the mules had taken the carriage out of sight of the venta. The driver was Paco the muleteer, the gentleman was General Herrera; and the sight of the inn, still shaded by the huge tree in its front, and flanked by the broken wall, had recalled to their recollection the famous game at ball played by Paco and Velasquez, and which subsequently cost the one a horse and the other a broken head. A ball of another description had since proved fatal to the dragoon. He had fallen in one of the last actions of the war, fighting gallantly by the side of the Mochuelo, whose fortunes he had continued to share.
Accompanied by his bride and father-in-law, Herrera was on his way to the villa near Tudela, now again the property of Count Villabuena. Desirous to conciliate a nobleman of ancient name and high character, and out of consideration for the great services which Herrera's zeal and talents had rendered the cause, the queen's government had some time previously restored to the Count his confiscated estates. At length the clouds that had darkened the career of Louis Herrera were entirely dissipated, and the long perspective of happiness before him appeared the brighter, when contrasted with the misfortunes and sufferings that had embittered the early manhood of the Student of Salamanca.
SHAKSPEARE AND THE DRAMA
My Dear Sir – or let me at once break through the formalities of a first acquaintance, and say, dear Smith; – Dear Smith, I am delighted to have been at last introduced to a real member of the theatrical profession – a bonâ fide flesh and blood, silk-stocking'd and tinsel-rapier'd "pride of Astley's stage." If you unite in your own person the artist and the player; if you occasionally handle the painter's brush as well as the field-marshal's truncheon – for have I not seen you lead the British troops with heroic valour through the awful passes of Cabul, which I had seen you creating with lamp-black and grey chalks in the morning? – it will only prove that your genius is universal, or, at least, not limited to one mode of development; but that, as D'Israeli is an orator and a statesman, you are a scene-painter and performer. But your qualities are not of so confined a nature even as this. For have I not seen you, in the intervals of your possessing the stage, employ your great strength in pushing forward the ponderous woods of Bondy you have painted? Have I not seen you dash off dungeon in the Castle of Udolpho with all the vigour of Rembrandt, roll it forward on the stage with the strength of Hercules, and then murder the turnkey in it with the power and elegance of Thurtell? But it is not the multifariousness of your merits that makes me proud of calling you my friend: no, it is the modesty with which you bear your honours thick upon you – the ignorance, as it were, of your own position, as compared with that of others infinitely your inferiors – that shows you at once the man of genius and the gentleman. Macready, you acknowledge, is perhaps your superior in such parts as Lear and Hamlet; but did he ever paint a single side-scene in his life? Beverley, they say, is equal to Stanfield in the poetry of his landscapes; and you confess that in his airs and distances he surpasses your noblest efforts. Ask yourself, my dear friend, if he ever fought a terrific combat with a sword in each hand, with such courage as I have seen you display in front of one of your own scenes? Ask him if he ever painted his mother's cottage in one character, pushed it forward in another, and poisoned her in it in a third? No, no, dear Smith, do not try to hide from yourself that there is no man your equal in so many different walks; that some may approach you in one branch and some in another; but that, in the combination of high qualifications, you are yourself your only parallel.
When we had the pleasure to spend an hour or two together after the play, the last time I was in London, I ventured to make a few remarks on theatrical subjects that seemed to meet with your approbation; and as, in the midst of so much hiliarity as was raging round us in the tap-room of the Ducrow's Head, you may have forgotten the purport of my observations, I will repeat them here. You were reclining with your back against the table, and a pewter pot of foaming beer resting on the knee of the red stocking-breeches in which you had performed the Crimson Fiend of the Haunted Dell, when, after some preliminary matter, I expressed an opinion – unusual, I grant, but still conscientiously entertained – of the immortal Shakspeare, on which you used language stronger perhaps than the occasion justified, and reminding me, by its conciseness and power, of some energetic M.P., against which I will enter a short protest before proceeding further in this letter. No, my dear Smith, Shakspeare was not "a bloody fool;" I should say he was very far from it; and you also added, that Fitzball would kick his soul out of his elbow in less than no time. What Mr Fitzball might be able to do by dint of great kicking, I have no means of judging; but I have no intention of placing the two authors in an antagonistic attitude on the present occasion, and therefore I trust the soul of Shakspeare will be left in peace.
What I stated was, as a general proposition, that Shakspeare has done more harm than good to the English stage.
It has always struck me that the phrase, "There is a time for all things," had a wider meaning than we usually attach to it. I think that the seed of all discoveries, past and present, was scattered ages ago – perhaps at the very creation of the world – in the mind of man; that when it had rested there long enough, and the season of its ripening came, up grew the stalk and the ear, and the harvest was gathered, and mankind garnered it up as a provision for them and their heirs for ever. The sense of beauty lay for generation and generation, germinating in the intellects and hearts of men; and, when the time came, a whole harvest of it was gathered at one time in the statues and pictures and temples of ancient Greece. But it was only the greater and more flourishing portion of the increase that grew in that birth-place of gods and heroes. The seed was scattered over a wider surface; and, if we could recover proofs of it, I should not at all fear to bet you two half-pints to one, that there were sculptors and painters in Asia and in Egypt, equal, in their several manners, to Phidias and Apelles. When printing, in the same way, had lain in furrow the proper time, the first blades of it began to appear in many regions at the same period. With steam it is the same; and, when the next invention is brought into practical use, it will be found that the thought of it had agitated hundreds of minds by the Rhine, by the Thames, by the Hudson, and perhaps by the sacred Ganges, or the still more sacred Nile.
I think I hear your deep sepulchral tones in
