Blackwood\'s Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. by Various

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Her entrance was hurried, as if she had but just glanced over the
letter, and had been eager to escape from the crowd of attendants to
reperuse it alone. She then read on, in a strong calm voice, until she
came to the passage which proved the preternatural character of the
prediction. "They have more in them than mortal knowledge. When I burnt
with desire to question them further, they made themselves into air
and--_vanished_." As she was about to pronounce the last word, she
paused, drew a short breath, her whole frame was disturbed, she threw
her fine eyes upwards, and exclaimed "_Vanished_!" with a wild force,
which showed that the whole spirit of the temptation had shrunk into her
soul. The "Hail, king that shall be!" was the winding-up of the spell.
It was pronounced with the grandeur of one already by anticipation a
Queen.

Her solitary summons to her distant lord followed, like an invocation--

"Hie thee hither,
That I may pour my spirits in thine ear;
And chastise with the valour of my tongue
All that impedes thee from the golden round."

The murder scene was the next triumph: her acting was that of a
triumphant fiend. I must follow these recollections no further; but the
most admirable piece of dumb show that perhaps ever was conceived, was
her "Banquet scene." That scene, from the terrible business on the
stage--the entrance of Banquo's ghost, the horrors of Macbeth, stricken
in the moment of his royal exultation, and the astonishment and alarm of
the courtiers--is one of the most thrilling and tumultuous. Yet Siddons,
sitting at the extremity of the royal hall, not having a syllable to
utter, and simply occupied with courtesies to her guests, made her
silence so expressive, that she more than divided the interest with the
powerful action going on in front. And when at last, indignant at
Macbeth's terrors, stung by conscience, and alarmed at the result of an
up-breaking of the banquet with such rumours in their lips, she rushed
towards her unhappy husband, and burst out with the words, still though
but whispered, yet intensely poured into his passive ear--

"Are you a _man_?
This is the very painting of your fear!
This is the air-drawn dagger, which, you said,
Led you to Duncan!--
Why do you make such faces? When all's done,
_You look but on a stool_!"

In those accents all else was forgotten.

But her sleep-walking scene! When shall we see its "second or its
similar?" Nothing so solemn, nothing so awful, was ever seen upon the
stage. Yet it had one fault--it was too awful. She more resembled a
majestic shade rising from the tomb than a living woman, however
disturbed by wild fear and lofty passion. It is a remarkable instance of
the genius of Shakspeare, that he here found the means of giving a human
interest to a being whom he had almost exalted to the "bad eminence" of
a magnificent fiend. In this famous soliloquy, the thoughts which once
filled and fired her have totally vanished. Ambition has died; remorse
lives in its place. The diadem has disappeared; she thinks only of the
blood that stains her for ever. She is the queen no more, but an
exhausted and unhappy woman, worn down by the stings of conscience, and
with her frame dying by the disease of her soul.

But Siddons wanted the agitation, the drooping, the timidity. She looked
a living statue. She spoke with the solemn tone of a voice from a
shrine. She stood more the sepulchral avenger of regicide than the
sufferer from its convictions. Her grand voice, her fixed and marble
countenance, and her silent step, gave the impression of a supernatural
being, the genius of an ancient oracle--a tremendous Nemesis.

I have seen all the great tragedians of my day, but I have never seen an
equal to the sublime of this extraordinary actress. I have seen beauty,
youth, touching sensibility, and powerful conception; but I never saw so
complete an union of them all--and that union was the sublime.
Shakspeare must have had some such form before his mind's eye, while he
was creating the wife of Macbeth. Some magnificent and regal
countenance, some movement of native majesty, some imaginary Siddons. He
could not have gone beyond the true. She was a living Melpomene.

The business of the War-Office was not transacted in those days with the
dispatch subsequently introduced by the honest Duke of York. After a
delay of weeks I found myself still ungazetted, grew sad, angry,
impatient; and after some consideration on the various modes of getting
rid of _ennui_, which were to be found in enlisting the service of that
Great Company which extended its wings from Bombay to Bengal, as
Sheridan said, impudently enough, like the vulture covering his prey; or
in taking the chance of fortune, in the shape of cabin-boy on board one
of the thousand ships that were daily floating down the Thames, making
their way to the extremities of the earth; or in finishing my feverish
speculations in a cold bath at the bottom of the Thames itself; I did
what I felt a severer exertion than any of them--I wrote a full and true
statement of my vexations to my lordly brother.

His answer was lordly enough. He had been "so much occupied with the
numberless duties devolving upon him as landlord, magistrate,
lord-lieutenant, and fifty other things, that he absolutely had not been
able to find a moment to think of me;" and what was rather more
perplexing to my immediate sensibilities, "he had not been able to send
me a shilling. However, he did all that he could, and gave me a note to
a particular friend," Mr Elisha Mordecai of Moorfields.

There is nothing which quickens a man's movements like a depletion of
the purse; and instead of lounging at my hotel until the morning paper
brought me the scandals and pleasantries of the day before fresh for my
breakfast-table, I threw myself out of bed at an hour which I should not
have ventured to mention to any man with whom I walked arm-in-arm during
the day, and made my way in a hackney coach, to avoid the possibility of
being recognised, to the dwelling of my new patron, or rather my guide
and guardian angel.

I make no attempt to describe the navigation through which I reached
him; it was winding, dark, and dirty beyond all description, and gave
the idea of the passages of a dungeon rather than any thing else that I
could name. And in a hovel worthy to finish such a voyage of discovery,
I discovered Mr Elisha Mordecai, the man of untold opulence. For a
while, on being ushered into the office, where he sat pen in hand, I was
utterly unable to ascertain any thing of him beyond a gaunt thin figure,
who sat crouching behind a pile of papers, and beneath a small window
covered with the dirt of ages. He gave me the impression in his dungeon
of one of those toads which are found from time to time in blocks of
coal, and have lain there unbreathing and unmoving since the deluge.
However, he was a man of business, and so was I for the moment. I handed
him my brother's note; and like a ray of sunshine on the torpid snake,
it put him into immediate motion. He now took off his spectacles, as if
to indulge himself with a view of me by the naked eye; and after a
scrutinizing look, which, in another place and person, I should probably
have resented as impertinent, but which here seemed part of his
profession, he rose from his seat and ushered me into another apartment.
This room was probably his place of reception for criminals of a more
exalted order; for it was lined with foreign prints, had one or two
tolerable Dutch pictures, and a bookcase. Out of his bookcase he took
down a folio, examined it, compared the writing of my credentials with
the signatures of a book which, as Cromwell's son said of his trunk,
contained the lives and fortunes, or at least that on which depended the
lives and fortunes, of half the noble _roues_ of England, their
"promises to pay," bonds, mortgages, and post-obits, and then performed
the operation on myself. My L.2500 in prospect was mulcted of a fifth
for the trouble of realizing it; of another fifth for prompt payment,
and of another for expediting the affair of my commission. "Another such
victory would have ruined me."

However, I bore the torture well. In truth, I had so little regard for
any object but the grand one of wearing a sword and epaulette, that if
Mordecai had demanded the whole sum in fifths, I should have scarcely
winced. But my philosophy stood me in good part, for it won a grim smile
from the torturer, and even a little of his confidence.

"This," said he, running his finger down a list which looked endless, "I
call my peerage book." Turning to another of equal dimensions, "there
lies my House of Commons. Not quite as many words wasted in it as in the
Honourable House, but rather to the purpose."

Mordecai grew facetious; the feeling that he had made a handsome
morning's work of it put him into spirits, and he let me into some of
the secrets of high life, with the air of a looker-on who sees the whole
game, and intends to pocket the stakes of the fools on both sides.
"Money, Mr Marston," said my hook-nosed and keen-eyed enlightener, "is
the true business of man. It is philosophy, science, and patriotism in
one; or, at least, without it the whole three are of but little service.
Your philosopher dies in a garret, your man of science hawks telescopes,
and your patriot starves in the streets, or gets himself hanged in
honour of the 'Rights of Man.' I have known all these things, for I was
born a German, and bred among the illustrissimi of a German university.
But I determined not to live a beggar, or at least not to die one. I
left Gottingen behind on a May morning, and trudged, fought, and begged,
'borrowed' my way to London. What I am now, you see."

Probably, the glance which I involuntarily gave round the room, did not
exhibit much admiration.

"Ha," said he with a half smile, which, on his gigantic and sullen
features, looked like a smile on one of the sculptures of a mausoleum,
"you are young--you judge by appearances. Let me give you one piece of
advice: If the Italian said, 'distrust words, they are fit only to
disguise thoughts,' take a Londoner's warning, and distrust your
eyes--they are only fit to pretend to see." He paused a moment, and
turned over some memorandums. "I find," said he, "by these papers, that
I shall have occasion to leave town in the beginning of next week. You
shall then see how I live. If I am to be found in this den, it is not
for want of a liking for light and air. I am a German. I have seen
plains and mountains in my time. If I had been a fool, there I should
have remained a bear-shooter; if I were a fool here, I should act like
others of the breed, and be a fox-hunter. But I had other game in view,
and now I could sell half the estates in England, call half the
'Honourable House' to my levee, brush down an old loan, buy up a new
one, and shake the credit of every thing but the Bank of England."

This was bold speaking, and at another time I should have laughed at it;
but the times were bold, the language of the streets was bold, the
country was bold, and I, too, was bold. There was something singular in
the man; even the hovel round him had a look which added to his
influence. I listened to the Jew as one might listen to a revealer of
those secrets which find an echo in every bosom, when they are once
discovered, and on which still deeper secrets seem to depend. My
acquiescence, not the less effective for its being expressed more in
looks than words, warmed even the stern spirit of the Israelite towards
me, and he actually went the length of ordering some refreshments to be
put on the table. We eat and drank together; a new source of cordiality.
Our conversation continued long. I shall have more to say of him, and
must now proceed to other things; but it ended in my acceptance of his
invitation to his villa at Brighton, which he termed "a small thing,
simply for a week's change of air," and where he promised to give me
some curious explanations of his theory--that money was the master of
all things, men, manners, and opinions.

On one of the finest mornings of autumn, I was on the box of the Royal
Sussex Stage.

I had full leisure to admire the country, for our progress occupied
nearly the whole day. We now laugh at our slow-moving forefathers, but
is not the time coming when our thirty miles an hour will be laughed at
as much as their five? when our passage from Calais to Dover will be
made by the turn of a winch, and Paris will be within the penny-post
delivery? when the balloon will carry our letters and ourselves; until
that still more rapid period, when we shall ride on cannon-shot, and
make but a stage from London to Pekin?

On the roof of the coach I found a strong-featured and closely
wrapped-up man, who, by degrees, performed the part of my cicerone. His
knowledge of the localities was perfect; "every bush and bosky dell,"
every creek and winding, as the shore came in sight, was so familiar to
him, that I should have set him down at once for a smuggler, but for a
superiority of tone in his language, and still more from the evident
deference to him by the coachman, in those days a leading authority with
all the passengers. His occupation is now nearly o'er. Fire and water
have swept him away. His broad back, his broad grin, and his broad
buttons, are now but recollections.

My new acquaintance exhibited as perfect a knowledge of the country
residents as of its map, and nothing could be more unhesitating than his
opinions of them all, from the prince and his set, as he termed them, to
Mordecai himself. Of my Jew friend, he said, with a laugh, "There is not
a better friend to the King's Bench in all England. If you have any
thing to lose, he will strip you on the spot. If you have nothing, you
may escape, unless he can make something by having you hanged." I begged
of him to spare my new friend. "Why," said he, "he is one of my oldest
friends, and one of the cleverest fellows alive. I speak tenderly of
him, from admiration of his talents. I have a liking for the perfection
of a rogue. He is a superb fellow. You will find his 'Hermitage,' as he
calls it, a pond of gold fish. But all this you will soon learn for
yourself." The coach now stopped on a rising ground, which showed the
little fishing village beneath us, basking in the glow of sunset. My
cicerone got down, and bade me farewell. On enquiring his name from my
fellow-travellers, a group of Sussex farmers, I found a general
disinclination to touch on the subject. Even the coachman, the
established source of information on all topics, exhibited no wish to
discuss the stranger; his official loquacity was almost dumb. "He merely
believed that he was something in the navy, or in the army, or in
something or other; but he was often in those parts, and generally
travelled to London by the Royal Sussex Stage."

No country in Europe has changed its appearance more than the greater
part of England during the last fifty years. Sussex was then as wild as
the wildest heath of Yorkshire. The population, too, looked as wild as
the landscape. This was once the very land of the bold smuggler; the
haunt of the dashing defier of the customhouse officer, who in those
days generally knew his antagonist too well to interfere with his days
or nights, the run between every port of the west of France and the
coasts of the Channel, being, in fact, as familiar to both as the
lounger in Bond Street to the beau of the day.

We passed groups of men, who, when they had not the sailor's dress, had
the sailor's look; some trudging along the road-side, evidently not in
idleness; others mounted on the short rough horse of the country, and
all knowing and known by our coachman.

On our passing one group, leaning with their backs against one of the
low walls which seemed the only enclosure of this rugged region, I,
half-laughingly, hinted to one of my neighbours, a giant of a
rough-headed farmer, that "perhaps a meeting with such a party, at a
late hour, might be inconvenient, especially if the traveller had a full
purse." The fellow turned on me a countenance of ridicule. "What?" said
he, "do you take them for robbers? Heaven bless you, my lad, they could
buy the stage, horses, passengers, and all. I'll warrant you, they will
have news from over there," and he pointed towards France, "before it
gets into the newspapers, long enough. They are the richest fellows in
the county."

"Are they smugglers?" I asked, with sufficient want of tact.

"Why, no," was the answer, with a leer. "We have nothing of that breed
among us; we are all honest men. But what if a man has an acquaintance
abroad, and gets a commission to sell a cargo of tea or brandy, or
perhaps a present from a friend--what shall hinder him from going to
bring it? I'm sure, not I."

It was evidently not the "etiquette" on the roof of the Royal Sussex to
think much on the subject, and before my curiosity could reach the
length of actual imprudence, the coachman pulled up, and informed me
that I had reached the nearest turn to "the Hermitage." My valise was
lowered down, a peasant was found to carry it, and I plunged into the
depth of a lane as primitive as if it had been a path in Siberia.

It was brief, however, and in a few minutes I was within sight of the
villa. Here I at once discovered that Mordecai was a man of taste;
perhaps the very roughness of the Sussex jungle, through which I had
just come, had been suffered to remain for the sake of contrast. A small
lodge, covered with late blooming roses, let me into a narrow avenue of
all kinds of odorous shrubs; the evening sun was still strong enough to
show me glimpses of the grounds on either side, and they had all the
dressed smoothness of a parterre. The scene was so different from all
that I had been wearied of during the day, that I felt it with double
enjoyment; and the utter solitude and silence, after the rough voices of
my companions in the journey, were so soothing, that I involuntarily
paused before I approached the house, to refresh not more my senses than
my mind. As I stood leaning against a tree, and baring my hot brain and
bosom to the breeze, that rose with delicious coolness, I heard music.
It was a sweet voice, accompanied at intervals by some skilful touches
of a harp; and, from the solemnity of the measure, I supposed it to be a
hymn. Who was the minstrel? Mordecai had never mentioned to me either
wife or daughter. Well, at all events, the song was sweet. The minstrel
was a woman, and the Jew's household promised me more amusement than I
could have expected from the man of Moorfields. The song ceased, the
spell was broken, and I moved on, fully convinced that I had entered on
a scene where I might expect at least novelty; and the expectation was
then enough to have led me to the cannon's mouth or the antipodes.

* * * * *

THE VIGIL OF VENUS.

TRANSLATED FROM THE LATIN.

This old poem, which commemorates the festivities with which ancient
Rome hailed the returning brightness of spring, may, perhaps, awaken in
our readers some melancholy reflections on the bygone delights of the
same season in our own country. To the Romans, it would seem, this
period of the year never ceased to bring rejoicing holidays. There is
good reason to suppose that this poem was written in the declining times
of the empire; if so, it seems that, amidst the public misfortunes that
followed one another during that age, the people were not woe-worn and
distressed; that they were able to forget, in social pleasures, the
gradual decay of their ancient glory. Rome "smiled in death." England is
still great and powerful, but she is no longer Merry England.

Most people have heard of the Floralia, and have learned to deduce the
frolics of Maid Marian and her comrades from the Roman observances on
that festive occasion. But few are aware of the close similarity which
this poem shows to have existed between the customs of the Romans and
those of our fathers. In the denunciations of the latter by the acrid
Puritans of the 17th century, we might almost imagine that the tirade
was expressly levelled against the vigils described in the _Pervigilium
Veneris_. If the poem had ever fallen into the hands of those worthies,
it would have afforded them an additional handle for invective against
the foul ethnic superstitions which the May-games were denounced as
representing. Hear Master Stubbes, in his _Anatomie of Abuses_,
published in 1585:--

"Against May, Whitsonday, or other time, all the yung men and
maides, old men and wives, run gadding over the night to the
woods, groves, hils, and mountains, where they spend all the
night in pleasant pastimes, and in the morning they return,
bringing with them birch and branches of trees, to deck their
assemblies withall; and no meruaile, for there is a great Lord
present amongst them as superintendent and Lord of their
sports, namely, Sathan prince of hel. But the chiefest jewel
they bring from thence is their May-pole, (say rather their
stinking poole,) which they bring home with great veneration."

Who does not remember Lysander's appointment with Hermia:

----"in that wood, a league without the town,
Where I did meet thee once with Helena,
To do observance to a morn of May,
There will I stay for thee."

These passages point us to the time when man and nature met to rejoice
together on May-day: to the time before the days of the workhouse and
factory; when the length and breadth of the land rung to the joyaunce
and glee of the holiday-rejoicing nation, and the gay sounds careered on
fresh breezes even where now the dense atmosphere of Manchester or
Ashton glooms over the dens of torture in which withered and debauched
children are forced to their labour, and the foul haunts under the
shelter of which desperate men hatch plots of rapine and slaughter.

The poem shows that the Romans, like the English of those days,
celebrated the season by betaking themselves to the woods throughout the
night, where they kept a vigil in honour of Venus, to whose guardianship
the month of April was assigned, as being the universal generating and
producing power, and more especially to be adored as such by the Romans,
from having been, through her son AEneas, the author of their race. The
poem seems to have been composed with a view to its being sung by a
choir of maidens in their nocturnal rambles beneath the soft light of an
Italian moon. The delicious balm of that voluptuous climate breathes
through every line of it, and vividly presents to the reader's
imagination the scene of the festivity; but whether we can claim these
celebrations for our own May-day, is a doubtful point; for Wernsdorf,
who has included the Pervigilium Veneris in his edition of _Poetae Latini
Minores_, vol. iii., maintains that it is to be referred to the
Veneralia, or feast of Venus, on the 1st of April. The Kalendar of
Constantius marks the 3d day of April as Natalis Quirini. If, then, the
morrow spoken of in the poem is to be taken to mean this birthday of
Romulus, we must suppose the vigil of three nights to have begun on the
night of the last day of March. But perhaps our readers will agree with
us, that there are quite as good grounds for attributing this vigil to
the Floralia, which commenced on the 27th of April, and ended on the
first of May. For although the rites of the Floralia were in honour of
Flora, yet we may easily conceive the principle by which the worship of
Venus, the spirit of beauty, and love, and production, would come to be
intermingled with the homage paid to the flower-goddess. And then the
three nights would denote the nights of the Floralia already past, if we
suppose the hymn to have been sung on the night before the 1st of May.
This seems more natural, as coinciding with the known length of the
festival, than Wernsdorf's hypothesis, which makes the vigil commence
before the month of Venus had opened. As regards the time of year, too,
May is far more suited than April, even in Italy, for outwatching the
Bear on woodland lawns.

The question regarding the author of the Pervigilium Veneris is still a
_lis sub judice_. Aldus, Erasmus, and Meursius, attributed it to
Catullus; but subsequent editors have, with much more probability,
contended that its age is considerably later. We may notice a scholastic
and philosophical spirit about it, which is ill-suited to the Bard of
Verona. Lipsius claimed it for the Augustan age, in consequence of the
mention of Caesar which is introduced. But we think we may safely assume,
that the observance of this vigil grew into custom after the time of
Ovid, otherwise it is difficult to account for the total absence of all
allusion, in his Fasti, to a subject so perfectly adapted to his verse.
But we will not enter any further into a discussion which Salmasius and
Scaliger could not settle, but shall at once present our readers with
the following translation of the Pervigilium Veneris:--

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