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veyance to the shore. The body of the infant which I had seen was not recovered, having probably been torn from the mother's arms in the storm of the preceding night.

when the lunatic saw the object, he became all quarters proceeded to arrange for its conlike a man paralyzed, his face assumed a look of utmost terror, and clasping his hands, with eyes wildly fixed, he cried, "O my leddy! my leddy! forgie me, for His sake. It was na me I was led into it, forgie me, forgie me, my leddy."

While he spoke the form disappeared under water, and the black surging wave rushed past.

Either the revulsion of feeling, or deadly purpose against his life, impelled the wretched man, but in a moment he was in the deep sea, scarcely struggling, apparently unconscious of his danger.

To drop the sail, seize the boat-hook, and keep him above water, was the work of a second; presently, we had him replaced in the bottom of the craft, with the precaution of strong lashing to the thwarts, lest another recurrence of his violence should renew our peril.

We found little difficulty in making our return to the port with our prisoner. I lost no time in communicating with a magistrate, taking care to give my suspicion that the body we had seen was somehow connected with some crime, of which I believed the prisoner either guilty or cognizant. He perfectly agreed with my view of the case. And after much persuasion, and many offers of reward, the wild, superstitious fishermen were induced to begin a search for the corpse. Strongly they protested against the very idea of remuneration, the only reason they would admit, being "that naebody could fish the banks while a corpse was floating about them; and that the sea would na, and could na, settle till it was delivered of its burden."

The search was full of very interesting, and to me pathetic, incidents. The wives and children of the great bronzed men accompanied them to the boats, and the old women, standing out upon the projecting rocks, delivered cautions and prayers to the fishermen as they passed. Now it was their fervent desire" that she should find her rest, God pity her!" Now a shrill voice would remind a passing boatman, "Alick! d'ye hear! Dinna take her in the boat, its no canny to carry aboard them frae whom the Lord has ta'en awa' life!"

And out upon the blue Atlantic, as the boats flew past each other, tacking to and fro, it was strange to find that the usual cheer and good-natured jest were silent and forgotten, and to observe the gloomy, sorrowful looks of the men as they gazed down into the sea, and conversed in whispers about the dead body, which they presumed was near. At last a signal announced the recovery of the corpse, and the boats gathering from

True to their traditions, the fishermen would not receive the body into one of their boats, but wrapping a sail carefully around it, drew it after the leading boat to shore. The others followed in procession, with their dark sails over the melancholy sea, making one of the strangest funerals I ever looked upon.

By an by, a mass of yellow hair escaped from the sail and trailed far out upon the waves. The sight of it affected the rough, strong men, one and all, most deeply. From every eye the tears flowed big and fast, and while some hardy fellow swept them off with his great brown hand, he would half-excuse his weakness, saying, "Ech, sirs, its hard to thole. Whaever saw the like out here. The puir mither, and where's her winsome baby?"

Upon the shore the people of the village were gathered, standing out upon the shelv ing rocks, knee deep in the foam, and the bursts of real sorrow that rose from the crowd as the corpse was carried to the green was, beyond measure, affecting.

"Rin and ca' the rector, some o' ye," gruffly ordered the oldest of the fishermen, who usually took great authority upon emergencies, and was now obeyed by some of the young men about him.

Presently the rector of the parish appeared among his kindly and humble flock, tears in his soft eyes, and his white head uncovered in the presence of the dead.

"We will bury ber," said he, "in our own churchyard, and pray God to comfort her friends and prepare us all whenever he shall call us."

I shall never forget that burial. The quaint old church, with its little slated spire, and white tower and walls; below the evening sea rolling up its hoarse murmurs and blending with the voices of minister and people; the great stern headlands boldy profiled along the lofty coast, and the bold hills rising closely round the smoke of the not distant village; the simple poor people, with frequent sobs, assembled round the grave of one who had no other title to their regard than that she was a woman, a mother, and lost at sea!

Immediately after the funeral, I proceeded to my post, and it was not until years after I heard the remainder of the narrative.

For a time the circumstances of the death of the lady remained unknown, though many advertisements, descriptive of her person, had been published. A child whose

clothes bore the same initials, and was certainly hers, had drifted on shore and been buried some fourteen miles further to the west. The fisherman who had so nearly destroyed me maintained, after his arrest a gloomy and obstinate silence; nothing could induce him to give the least explanation of his conduct, of the words he had used. When, for want of evidence, he was discharged, he returned to his former employment and residence; but the fishermen and peasantry avoided him so carefully that his life was perfectly solitary. It was known, however, that much of his time was spent over the grave of the lady whose murderer he was supposed to be, and that he frequently visited the grave of her child. At length a gentleman arrived at Camplay and requested permission to remove the body of her who had proved to have been Mrs. M'Clean, of Ghea, as he had previously removed the body of her child from its burying-place. While availing himself of the permission readily granted, his workmen were disturbed by the sudden appearance of

the lunatic fisherman. He had rushed from the grave of the child, which he had found empty, and endeavored by threats and violence to drive the people from the graveyard. Suspicion was again aroused; he was more closely examined; and it appeared that he had been the servant of Mr. M'Clean, of Ghea, who had discharged him for misconduct. Influenced by feelings of fierce revenge against his late master, he had cut loose from the shore a boat into which his young mistress had entered with her child, to wait the arrival of her husband. He had watched the boat carried away by one of the impetuous tides, and believed himself a murderer, and revenged. However, Mrs. M'Clean was recovered from that danger, but a few months afterwards was lost with the many other victims who sank in the ill-fated Argus.

It would seem that the bodies of the hapless mother and child had been conveyed by the currents into my path. It is certain that the extraordinary circumstance I have faithfully recorded was the means of saving me from a sudden and dreadful death.

"The advanced sheets, duly received from France, were immediately placed in the hands of a competent translator, and the Boston publittle delay as possible. But, by the time the lisher prepared to bring out the book with as first twenty-four pages were translated, a careful

DUMAS ROBBING GARIBALDI.-Not long ago Barnes and Burr, of New York, published an interesting Life of Garibaldi, written by himself, with sketches of his companions in arms, translated by his friend and admirer, Theodore Dwight. This biography, it appears by the fol-reader,' well acquainted with current literalowing extract from the Philadelphia Press, has been stolen by that most unscrupulous of literary hacks, Alexandre Dumas :

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ture,' went over them, and speedily discovered that Dumas had simply got some one to make a French translation of Garibaldi's Autobiography, edited by Dwight, and published by marks of his own to this stolen property. Of Barnes and Burr, prefixing a few prefatory recourse, the translation of Dumas' Life of Gariscarcely add that the publisher so scandalously baldi was not proceeded with, and we need cheated by Dumas has not the slightest chance of ever receiving back even a fraction of his

$500."

Some months ago the famous Alexandre Dumas, author of Monte Christo,' The Three Musketeers,' and an immense number of other romances, proceeded to Italy with the avowed purpose of becoming the biographer of Garibaldi. He issued a flaming prospectus of his forthcoming work, in which it was announced that it would contain a great many details received directly from Garibaldi himself. An American publisher (who may be heard of in Boston, we are told), conceived the business-like idea of purchasing advance sheets of Dumas' MR. MURRAY has in the press, and will Life of Joseph Garibaldi, and succeeded in ob- shortly publish, "Francis Bacon, Lord-Chantaining a copy of the work in anticipation of its cellor of England," by Hepworth Dixon, being appearance in Paris. It is said that $500 was an inquiry into his life and character based on the sum paid to Dumas-certainly not a very letters and documents hitherto unpublished. extravagant amount, but a great deal consider-This work, though new in form and in material, ing that the book might have been obtained im- will contain the substance of the articles which mediately after its publication for nothing. appeared in the Athenæum in January last.

From The Spectator.

MEMORIALS OF THOMAS HOOD.*

THE children of Thomas Hood have wisely chosen to make him as much as possible his own biographer, the means at their disposal for that purpose being not inconsiderable in quantity, and very precious in kind. They consist of letters addressed to intimate friends chiefly during the last ten years of the writer's life, and these the editors have connected together by a modest thread of explanation and comment, derived from their recollections of a father who was the playfellow of their childhood, and who made them his close companions to the last; for say they, "we were never separated for any length of time from our parents, neither of us having been sent to a boarding-school, or in earlier years confined to that edifying Botany Bay the nursery-where children grow up by the pattern of unwatched, uneducated, hired servants." They have done their work in a thoroughly filial spirit, free from all desire of self-display, and therefore they have done it fittingly, as every judicious reader will thankfully acknowledge.

Thomas Hood was born on the 23d of

May, 1799, in the Poultry, where Thomas, his father, who was a Scotchman of cultivated taste, and an author of some popularity in his day, carried on business as a bookseller. Sydney Smith's account of his earliest known progenitor was that he disappeared suddenly and forever in Assize time; and Thomas Hood the Second used to say that as his grandmother was a Miss Armstrong, he was descended from two notorious thieves-Robin Hood and Johnnie Armstrong. Little is known of his early years. Mr. Hessey, who was intimate with his father, recollects him as "a singular child, silent and retired, with much quiet humor, and apparently delicate in health." One droll anecdote of this period of his life has survived many others related by him to his son. He drew the figure of a demon with the smoke of a candle on the staircase ceiling near his bedroom door to frighten his brother. Unfortunately, he forgot that he had done so, and, when he went to bed, succeeded in terrifying himself into fits almost-while his brother had not observed the picture." At the age of fifteen or sixteen he was articled to his uncle Mr. Sands, an engraver. His health having suffered from confinement he was sent to a relation in Scotland, where he remained some years and made his first appearance in print; but it was not until the year 1821 that he adopted *Memorials of Thomas Hood. Collected, Arranged, and Edited by his Daughter. With a Preface and Notes by his Son. Illustrated with Copies from his own Sketches. In two volumes. Published by Moxon and Co.

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literature as a profession being then engaged as sub-editor of the London Magazine, which has passed into the hands of his friends Messrs. Taylor and Hessey. His first contributions to the magazine consisted of humorous notices and answers to corre"The spondents in the "Lion's Head." Echo "in Hood's Magazine was a continuation of this idea. Some of the replies to imaginary letters were very quaint-for instance :

"VERITY. It is better to have an enlarged heart than a contracted one, and even such a haemorrhage as mine than a spitting of spite."

"A Chapter on Bustles' is under consideration for one of our back-numbers."

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"N.N. The most characteristic Mysteries of London' are those which have lately prevailed on the land and the river, attended by and other features of Metropolitan interests. If collisions of vessels, robberies, assault, accidents, N.N. be ambitious of competing with the writer, whom he names, let him try his hand at a genuine, solid, yellow November fog. It is dirty, dangerous, smoky, stinking, obscure, unwholesome, and favorable to vice and violence."

Among the contributors to the London Magazine was John Hamilton Reynolds, whose sister Hood married, and conjointly with whom he wrote and published anonymously "Odes and Addresses to Great People," which had a great sale, and occasioned no little speculation as to the author. Coleridge unhesitatingly declares that no other man could have written it than Charles

Lamb.

"On the 5th of May, 1824, the marriage of my father and mother took place. In spite of all the sickness and sorrow that formed the greatest portion of the after-part of their lives, the union was a happy one. My mother was a woman of cultivated mind and literary tastes, and well suited to him as a companion. He had such confidence in her judgment that he read, and reread, and corrected with her all that he to her, and her ready memory supplied him with wrote. Many of his articles were first dictated his references and quotations. He frequently dictated the first draft of his articles, although they were always finally copied out in his own pecul iarly clear and neat writing, which was so legible and good, that it was once or twice begged by printers, to teach their compositors a first and easy lesson in reading handwriting. years, my mother's time and thoughts were entirely devoted to him, and he became restless and almost seemed unable to write unless she were near.

Of late

"The first few years of his married life were the most unclouded my father ever knew. The young couple resided for some years in Robert Street, Adelphi. Here was born their first child, which, to their great grief, scarcely survived its birth. In looking over some old papers, I found a few tiny curls of golden hair, as soft as the

finest silk, wrapped in a yellow and time-worn
paper inscribed in my father's handwriting :
"Little cyes that scarce did see,

Little lips that never smiled;
Alas! my little dear dead child,
Death is thy father and not me,
I but embrace thee, soon as he !'

On this occasion, those exquisite lines of Charles Lamb's On an infant dying as soon as born,' were written and sent to my father and mother."

In 1826 appeared the first series of "Whims and Oddities" with the following

"Dedication to the Reviewers "

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very

sea, but disliked the great ocean too much to fulfil the intention. The only ground he could imagine for this assertion was that he had written in one of the Comics a burlesque account of a landsman's sufferings in a first voyage. Thus is contemporary biography written. The author of another memoir got hold of a bit of truth as to Hood's mental character, but turned it into untruth by overstatement when he said, "we believe his mind to be more serious, than comic; we have never known him laugh heartily either in company or in rhyme." But the queerest blunder was that made by Mr. Horne, when in The New Spirit of the Age, by a mistake of a single letter he gave to Mr. Hood the pages descriptive of Mr. Hook, and enriched the self-knowledge of the former with the discovery that he was "a diner-out and a man about town," and that he had given the

world" unfavorable views of human nature." At the end of 1834, Hood suffered a very heavy loss by the failure of a firm, and became involved in pecuniary difficulties. The course he took to extricate himself is thus described in a letter of his own:—

"What is a modern poet's fate? To write his thoughts upon a slate: The critic spits on what is done, Gives it a wipe-and all is gone!" The first series reached a second edition in the same year, and other works followed in quick succession. In 1831-2, Hood wrote some pieces for the stage, and an entertainment for Charles Mathews the Elder, "who was heard by a friend most characteristically to remark that he liked the entertainment very much, and Mr. Hood too, but that all the time he was reading it, Mrs. Hood would "Emulating the illustrious example of Sir keep snuffing the candles. This little fidgety Walter Scott, he determined to try whether he observation," says Mrs. Broderip, could not scoro off his debts as effectually and much shocked my mother, and, of course, de- more creditably with his pen than with the legal lighted my father." whitewash or a wet sponge. He had aforetime About this time the Duke of Devonshire asked Hood for a set of in arrear, and there was, consequently, fair reason realized in one year a sum equal to the amount titles for a door of sham books for the en- to expect that, by redoubled diligence, econotrance of a library staircase at Chatsworth, mizing, and escaping costs at law, he would soon and received a list of about four score among be able to retrieve his affairs. With these views, which were, "The Life of Zimmermann. leaving every shilling behind him, derived from By Himself" (Zimmermann, the author of the sale of his effects, the means he carried with Solitude); "Designs of Friezes. By Captain him being an advance upon his future labors, he Parry; ""On the Site of Tully's Offices; "voluntarily expatriated himself, and bade his "On Sore Throat and the Migration of the native land good-night.” Swallow. By T. Abernethy," etc. Hood As the readers of Up the Rhine are aware, was now living in a very pretty little cottage Hood started alone for the Rhineland, and in a pleasant garden on Winchmore Hill, finally fixed his residence at Coblentz, where which he quitted in 1832 for Lake House, he was joined by his family. The expatriation Wanstead, a beautiful but exceedingly incon- was in every way an unfortunate one. venient old place. It was a bad exchange, was caught in the fearful and memorable and he always regretted it. Much of the storm of the 4th and 5th of March, 1835, scenery and description of his only completed when eleven vessels, including a Dutch East novel, Tylney Hall, was taken from Wan- Indiaman, were lost off the coast of Holland; stead and its neighborhood. Here, as at and he attributed much of his subsequent Winchmore Hill, his life seems to have passed sufferings to the mental and bodily exhaussmoothly enough with the exception of some tion which attended this danger. He was sharp but comparatively harmless attacks of disgusted with the Rhinelanders, a mongrel illness. It was not until 1834 that his pe- race in whom he discovered all the bad qualcuniary troubles began and brought with ities of the French without the good ones of them continual aggravations of his bodily either French or Germans. They were all sufferings. He used to make frequent ex- comprised in two classes, Jew Germans and cursions to the sea, for which he had an ar- German Jews. The diet of the country was dent love, being an expert boatman and a wretched, and the domestic comforts few; good swimmer, as well as a poet; and he and he found that he and his might have was much amused when one of his contem-lived in England in the same squalid style poraries, in a little sketch of his life, gravely for the same money. "It is not pleasant," asserted that he had been destined for the he says in one of his letters, "nor even a

He

pecuniary trifle to pay from twenty to thirty quaint and humorous fancies, for they were all per cent on your whole expenditure for being associated with memories of illness and anxiety. an Englishman-and you cannot avoid it; Although Hood's Comic Annual,' as he himbut it is still more vexatious to the spirit self used to remark with pleasure was in every and offensive to the mind to be everlastingly house seized upon, and almost worn out by the engaged in such a petty warfare for the de- frequent handling of little fingers, his own children did not enjoy it till the lapse of many years fence of your pocket, and equally revolting had mercifully softened down some of the sad to the soul to be unable to repose confidence recollections connected with it. The only article on the word or honesty of any human being that I can remember we ever really thoroughly around you." The only fruit of his visit to enjoyed, was Mrs. Gardiner, a Horticultural Germany which might not as well have been Romance,' and even this was composed in bed. matured in England, was his Up the Rhine, But the illness he was then suffering from was the sale of which was spoiled by the dishon- only rheumatic fever, and not one of his dangeresty of his agent. The book is now entirely ous attacks, and he was unusually cheerful. He out of print; why is it suffered to remain so? sat up in bed, dictating it to my mother, interTurning his back with delight on Cob-rupted by our bursts of irrepressible laughter, as lentz, Hood went in June, 1837 to Ostend, a while laughing and relishing it as much as we joke after joke came from his lips, he all the place which was very much to his liking did. But this was a rare-indeed almost soliuntil he found himself the victim of its ma-tary-instance; for he could not usually write larious atmosphere, of which he felt the so well at any time as at night, when all the effects as long as he lived. In July or Au- house was quiet. Our family rejoicings were gust, 1840, he finally returned to England, generally when the work was over, and we were utterly broken in health, but as strong in too thankful to be rid of the harass and hurry, to mind and as gallant in spirit as ever. The care much for the results of such labor." B- mentioned in the following extract. from a letter, dated February, 1841, was the agent of whom we have already spoken.

"You will be gratified to hear that, without any knowledge of it on my part, the Literary Fund (the members of the committee having frequently inquired about my health, and the B business, of Dilke), unanimously voted me £50, the largest sum they give, and, setting aside their standing rules, to do it without my application. I, however, returned it (though it would have afforded me some case and relief), but for many and well-weighed reasons. I am, however, all the better for the offer, which places me in a good position. It was done in a very gratifying and honorable manner, and I am the first who has said 'no.' But I am in good spirits, and hope to get through all my troubles as independently as heretofore."

In the August of the same year he was made comparatively affluent by succeeding, on the death of Theodore Hook, to the editorship of the New Monthly, but he soon resigned it to edit Hood's Magazine which began with the year 1844, and ended with its proprietor's life on the 3d of May, 1845. That life had been truly a long disease, aggravated in its last ten years by care and annoyances that "fell with a double weight on the mind overtasked by such constant and harassing occupation." Very touchingly does his daughter say :

"The income his works now produce to his children, might then have prolonged his life for many years; although when we looked on the calm, happy face after death, free at last from the painful expression that had almost become habitual to it, we dared not regret the rest so long prayed for, and hardly won."

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"... His own family never enjoyed his

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.. He had, for years past, known, as well as his doctors, his own frail tenure of existence,

and had more than once, as he said himself, 'been so near death's door, he could almost fancy he heard the creaking of the hinges;' and he was now fully aware that at last his feeble step was on its very threshold. With this knowledge he wrote the following beautiful letter to Sir Robert Peel-worthy of being the last letter of such a man.

"Dear Sir,-We are not to meet in the flesh. Given over by my physicians and by myself, I am only kept alive by frequent instalments of mulled port wine. In this extremity I feel a comfort, for which I cannot refrain from again thanking you, with all the sincerity of a dying man, and at the same time, bidding you a respectful farewell.

"Thank God! my mind is composed and my reason undisturbed, but my race as an author is in a steel pen, otherwise I would have written run. My physical debility finds no tonic virtue evil, or the danger of it, arising from a literary one more paper-a forewarning one-against an movement in which I have had some share, a one-sided humanity, opposite to that Catholic Shakspearian sympathy, which felt with king as well as peasant, and duly estimated the mortal temptations of both stations. Certain classes at the poles of society are already too far asunder; it should be the duty of our writers to draw them nearer by kindly attraction, not to aggramoral gulf between rich and poor, with hate on vate the existing repulsion, and place a wider

the one side and fear on the other. But I am too weak for this task, the last I had set myself; it is death that stops my pen, you see, and not the pension.

"God bless you, sir, and prosper all your measures for the benefit of my beloved country. "I have the honor to be, sir, your most grateful and obedient servant.

666 'THOS. HOOD.'"

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