"At this answer the queen said, 'It is true, we had forgotten that the wearing of armour is not suitable for a clergyman. Let us send directly to the nobles and knights, to go in your stead. Dazzled, at first, by the magnificence of your offers, they will not hesitate; and whoever you may choose, will feel bound in honor to fulfil the condition.' "The nobles excused themselves. One was just married, and feared to expose his wife to the tediousness of his long absence; another was building a castle; another making war against his neighbour; and another feared that an adjoining abbey would, in his absence, make away with his inheritance. In short, all alleged different reasons, but all bore the same burthen it was a mere farce to ask people of this quality to go on foot like clowns. To cut short my story, they tried plain squires, pages, and even vassals, and all have refused. "From that time our good king (adding the humiliation of being condemned to do what the meanest of his subjects despise, to his former grief, his shame, and perhaps his remorse,) has become morose, snappish, and ill-natured. He ill uses the queen, and the nobility, till they can bear it no longer; these latter revenge themselves on their officers, their wives, and their servants, who in turn torment their underlings, and these last pay it off on our birds, our horses, and our dogs, so heartily and so well, that neither beasts nor men escape, and all wear most piteous countenances. This, however, is no remedy: every day, the reasons for all this discord are rumoured farther and farther, and every day the greatest rewards are offered and are met by fresh refusals. If it goes on much longer we shall all die." In proportion as the countess proceeded in her story, the wife of Hugh redoubled her attention, and she was still lost in deep thought long after her friend had finished. Then, suddenly rising, "Don't you think, cousin," said she, "that whoever knows a remedy for all these evils, ought to make haste to bring it?" "Without doubt," said her cousin. "Good bye, then; I will send you my husband; let him speak directly to the King; he will find you the remedy." Hereupon she departed, leaving her cousin petrified with astonishment. "Would'nt you like to make a pilgrimage to Palestine?" said Arletta to her husband, on her return. 66 'No, no," said he, 66 my father and grandfather went there too often! By their great piety they mortgaged all their property to the monks, who, by their great avarice, have kept it all! No, no, I don't go; by that road to Judea all my ruin and misery have come." "And by this road all your riches and honours may come back if you choose!" She then told him everything that had passed at court, and begged him to offer himself for the journey to the Holy Land. Hugh having heard her out, began to scratch his head, and feel in his empty pocket. "What, can I ask the king?" said he. "Do think he would fill my purse you with money ?" "Do not fear to ask for plenty of money, lands, honours, and privileges," replied Arletta: " add to your demands as long as you see him in the humour for giving; that is the only way to get on with kings. Above all, boast of your own wealth, and all the blessings you leave behind; for they will not think of offering a small reward to a rich man." The relations of Hugh Lemaire had been totally ruined, while he was still a child. He knew and regretted the lands of which he ought to have been possessed; but he had rarely been in possession of even a small sum of money. On his road to the king's palace, he put his hand to the very bottom of his empty pocket, saying to himself, "if the king were to fill it, I should be very rich; but he never will fill it more than a quarter, or half full, at the utmost." Still calculating and pondering, he arrived at the palace, where he found his wife's cousin waiting for him. As soon as he had introduced himself, "Welcome! welcome!" said she, "I hope you are come to restore us to joy." I will try," was his reply, and she led him to the king. "This is a relation of mine, sire," said she, 66 a rich and noble gentleman, who hopes to restore you to health.” Philip smiled bitterly; and when the lady had departed, turning towards Hugh, "You think, then," said he, can cure me ? What do you intend to do?" "that you "I will put on my coat of mail, my cuisses, and my greaves -and I will go on foot, and carry a lighted taper, to the Holy Sepulchre, for that purpose." "Will you, indeed?” cried the king; "if it be so, speak, for I will do anything for you." "First of all," said the knight," you must fill my pocket with crowns." "Yes, yes," said the king, putting his hands into a large chest, and pulling out the pieces without counting; "here is the earnest money of our bargain. Now,—what next?" The poor man, dazzled at the sight of so much gold, was astonished at this unforeseen question. He felt that it was necessary to say something, but knew not what. "I shall have many tolls and duties in my way to the frontier," stammered he. "Is it privileges you are thinking of?" said Philip—" you shall have a charter in due form, which will exempt from all tolls, customs, turnpikes, bridge-dues, and taxes by land and water, throughout all my domains, and those of my vassals, you and your heirs, male and female, now in being, and to all posterity." Many thanks to your Majesty," said Hugh, who never having had any goods to transport, knew nothing of the importance of the exemptions that he had obtained; but who, while the king had been speaking, had had time to recover himself, and now began to grow a little bolder. “But, what will my wife do, left in her lonely castle? Who will defend it, should robbers attack it in my absence ?” "I will give her a house in the city of Paris; and I myself will watch over and protect her and her family.” 66 I have a son," said Hugh, "who will be an orphan should I die on the journey." 66 I create you, from this day, Lord of the domain of ChaloSt.-Mard, near Etampes, which will descend to him should you die." "A son is easier to provide for than daughters; I have five who may be a great trouble to their mother." 66 "I will portion them," said the king. 'Besides, have I not already promised that they shall carry the right of exemption from taxes into other families? I now add, thereto, the right of conferring nobility, in order that, even without a portion, their daughters may be sought by every one.' 66 'But;" said Hugh, "if I come back, shall I not be entitled to quarter in my arms a cross of Jerusalem ?" 66 Assuredly," said Philip, "you shall bear quarterly vert and gules, a Jerusalem cup argent between four crosslets of the same, charged with an oak leaf argent, bordered, or—” "Then as to the expenses of my journey and equipment: it seems to me to be right that you should pay them all." "Take the key of this chest; all that it contains shall be at your disposal for that purpose." 66 Arletta, who was getting very impatient, mounted to the very top of the tower, to see if her husband was returning. "I shall know if he has managed his business well," said she to herself; a man whose heart is at ease, moves lightly; while, if he has any cares, his step is heavy, and his walk slow." At last she spied him; he was walking very slowly. Not suspecting that he was overloaded with gold, she was very angry, concluding that he had bungled the business." (To be concluded in our next.) THE CHUDLEIGH PAPERS. A DINNER SCENE IN THE REIGN OF GEORGE THE SECOND. [Sir Orlando Chudleigh, was a man of some note in his time. He sat in three parliaments for the county of Hereford, and distinguished himself on all occasions as a staunch supporter of the House of Brunswick. Educated at Oxford, he early imbibed that taste for books, which enabled him to pass the greater portion of his life in the country, without depending upon foxhunting, or drinking, for the means. He seems, like the great Lord Clarendon, to have made it a rule to cover a certain quantity of writing-paper with his thoughts every day; but as his matter was not quite so important as that of the noble historian, his descendants have not thought it incumbent upon them to make posterity acquainted with any of the numerous MSS. he left behind. The taste of the present age, however, being decidedly favourable to ransacking the repositories of the last and preceding ones, I have determined to transcribe a specimen from those of Sir Orlando. The worthy kuight, among other things, kept a DIARY for nearly twenty years; the first entry being dated March 6th, 1735, and the last, Nov. 11th, 1754. In this Diary, amid much that is now of no interest, there is a great deal which is excellent, especially his reflections upon the various authors that constituted his daily course of reading. In making my first selection, however, I have preferred the following account of a dinner, which is given with more than the minuteness of a Boswell, and I think with nearly equal discrimination of character.] G. O. June 3rd, (1745.) I dined to-day with my friend Marmaduke Langdale. It was the anniversary of his wedding-day; and in pursuance of a custom, which, like many old customs, had its origin in feelings that exist no longer, the practice is still adhered to, of inviting certain friends to celebrate the return of the happy day. Not that my friend Marmaduke can be reckoned among those who have verified the sarcasm of the satirist, that marriage has but two happy days-the first and the last. Yet, disguise it as we may, four-and-twenty years do strip off a great many of the flowers which composed our garland on the happy day. It never looks quite so fresh, nor is it ever quite so fragrant, afterwards. It is good, however, to keep up these periodical memorials of decaying happiness. What though they gradually make their re-appearance with wrinkles, like an old friend whom we knew in our youth? Are we not wrinkled ourselves? Alas! The bridegroom sinks into the husband-the husband into the father-while the sober felicity and serious cares of both, engross the whole man. And the bride, too-that vision of brightness-that bland dream of the young imagination-that incarnation of surpassing loveliness which in ecstasy we call angelic,-she turns out merely mortal, when we have called her wife, and lisping children hail her mother. Well, then, why complain? The banquet is ended: the revel is over: the music has ceased; and we have laid aside our masks with our holiday suits. Are we, therefore, to snarl and grumble? Let us rejoice, rather, that we have been happy, without too curiously examining what made us so. Among the guests invited, were the Rev. Jonas Dankes, Godfrey Burlingham, a Major Bagot, Caleb Oldaker, and Jeremiah Chesterton. In their train came wives, daughters, sons, nieces and nephews. There were, besides, at least twenty other heads of families, some of whom, though bachelors, were not unprovided with that well-known description of kindred, the orphan sons and daughters of dear brothers and sisters who had died abroad. Marmaduke, indeed, had contrived to assemble more friends than I thought he possessed but to give a dinner, and to want one, are the two certain tests of friendship. The first collects-the second counts our friends. The Rev. Jonas Dankes is one of those learned men, the race of which is becoming, I fear, extinct. Indiscriminate and indefatigable reading, aided by a powerful memory, has made his mind a sort of receiving-house for other men's ideas. I have heard him ridiculed as a seeker of useless knowledge (if that which is useless, by the by, can be called knowledge), and his acquisitions compared to a man who has a thousand acres of land in a wilderness, whereof only some half-dozen are profitably cultivated. Be that as it may, he will sometimes rush into the arena of an argument, so armed at all points, with his Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Greek, and Latin, that he seems able to stand alone, and confute, single-handed, the picked scholars of his age. Jeremiah Chesterton is a mere droll; one who ekes out small means of living by the use he makes of small wit: he is a sort of dinner buffoon, who plays mountebank for the amusement of the company. He can sing a merry song; tell a facetious story before the ladies retire, and a broad one afterwards; is smart at repartee; successful, I think, in a pun, once out of seven times; laughs at his own humour, to set others the example; never takes offence at what is said to him, out of respect to his host; loves church, king, and port wine; and hates a Jacobite. Jeremiah is certainly a valuable addition to every company where a joke takes precedence of an argument, and where the nothings of such kind of talk are accounted excellent. society is so much in request, indeed, that I have heard his butcher's bill, one year with another, rarely exceeds fifteen shillings; for his two servants are on board wages. His Caleb Ŏldaker, of Oldaker House, was originally an attorney at Ross, where he lived in habits of close intimacy with that excellent man, John Kyrle, whom Mr. Pope, I see, has mentioned in one of his late poems; and an attorney he would have remained to this day, had not those clients whose wills he was called in to make, evinced a uniform and singular aversion to leaving his name out of them. How this propensity arose, it might puzzle philosophy to explain; but I remember it was a common saying among the good people of Ross, when they heard of the death of one of his clients, that "Caleb would come in for something snug." And so he generally did; insomuch, that after a few years he was enabled to purchase the estate on which he now lives. Godfrey Burlingham and Major Bagot, when they chance to meet, may be compared to a variorum edition of an ancient author. The major is a very Sancho Panza in the use of those compendious oracles of wisdom, proverbs; while Burlingham has made it the business of his life to trace their origin through every corruption of colloquial discourse, and every observance of ancient but forgotten manners and customs. Whenever, therefore, a venerable saw is uttered in his presence, asked or unasked, he gives its history, shows how it came to be first used, and by what accidents of time, or perversions of language, it has degenerated into its present application. The only person who likes this humour on all occasions is the major; for though he receive ninety-nine explanations of the same proverb, the hundredth never lacks any of its novelty, owing to that happy quality of his memory, which gives him the advantage of always hearing a thing for the first time. I have dined, in the course of my life, with many learned, witty, and agreeable persons, but I hardly remember ever to have heard a good thing come out of their mouths, till a reasonable quantity of the good things at table had gone into them. Let any one note the same individuals waiting for dinner, at dinner, and after dinner; they will see how intellect expands as appetite contracts. In the first state, they are absorbed in silent musings; they are faint; they wax sick with hope deferred, especially if the cook happen to be behind time; they are ready to exclaim with the prophet, My bowels! my bowels! I am pained at my very heart; my heart maketh a noise in me: I cannot hold my peace." In the second state they are like the bee, busy in 66 |