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"I do not think there is much indication of it in the latter speech," murmured Staremberg; "the reply is certainly more impertinent than witty."

The sum agreed upon for the score, between Bernardone and Joseph, was twenty-four sequins, under an express condition that the young man should deliver the work complete within eight days. It was more time than the composer needed,-far more embarrassed to repress the crowd of ideas whirling through his brain, than to produce the melody. At the end of four days the score was finished, with the exception of a passage which was blank despair to the composer. The good Keller was first consulted, but in vain; the poet in his turn was appealed to :

"You have written upon your manuscript" said Joseph, "here a storm arises, but I have never seen one, and cannot, for the life of me, embody such a thing in music. Can you help me out of this dilemma?"

"Not I," replied the poet; "I put the tempest in a parenthesis, because I could not put into verse. Like you, I have never seen either sea or storm."

The difficulty was serious. How was it to be got over ?-They went to Bernardone.

"Have you ever seen a storm, signior ?" inquired Joseph on entering.

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Pardieu! I should think I have, I have nearly perished four times from shipwreck."

Can you picture it to me, my good friend;-I will go to the piano."

"I'll do it better than that, I'll act you one." And Bernardone exhausting all the resources of ultramontaine pantomime, and giving a thousand varied inflexions to his voice, began to gesticulate with every variety of action, raising and lowering his arms, balancing his body from poop to prow, as he said, to describe the movement of the vessel upon the waves, and at the same time striving to imitate the noise of the thunder and whistling of the wind.

"Do you comprehend, my lad ?"

"Not a whit," said Joseph; "it must be something different from that: your tempest resembles the catterwauling grimalkins make on the housetops."

"Figure to yourself," resumed Bernardone, overturning tables, chairs, and fauteils, one after another, thrusting, kicking and plunging them about with hands and feet, "figure to yourself the heavens overcast: Pchi.... that's the wind howling ;-the lightning cleaves the clouds; the vessel mounts and descends-Bound. . . . that's the thunder. Now look; here a mountain rises up, there a valley plunges down, then again a mountain and a valley; the mountains and the valleys chase after, but cannot catch one another; the mountain is swallowed up by the valley; the valley throws up the mountain, the lightning flashes, the thunder roars, the vessel floats like a straw ;-paint me all that distinctly. Diable! all that I've told you is clear enough, I should think."

"Joseph, dumbfoundered by this imposing description accompanied as it was by imitative contortions, and stunned by such a poetical charivari, shrieked out his part, stamped his feet, rattled his fingers over the keys, running through the chromatic scales, prodigalising his sevenths, leaping from the lowest and flattest to the highest and sharpest notes; it was one of those inconceivable hashes, alike void of time and sense, that in our days are dignified by the title of air varie-but as for a storm, it was far from such. Bernardone perspired sang et eau, and was still unsatisfied; at last the young man, grown impatient, placed his hands at the two ends of the harpsichord, and drew them rapidly together, exclaiming :

"May the devil take the tempest !"

"That's it! Pardieu! that's it!" cried the transported harlequin, and leaping over the wreck of furniture by which he was surrounded, had well nigh stifled the virtuoso in a vigorous embrace.

"You have got it, my lad. Begin once more. That's it. Superb! Astonishing! I give you thirty sequins instead of twenty-four."

The opera of Le Diable Boiteux, got up in a few days, had a great success; but the Count de Staremberg, designated by epigrams all over the town, through the vengeance of Wilhelmina, whom it was well known he had quarrelled with and quitted, had interest sufficient to cause it to be forbidden after the second representation. Disgusted with the theatre, wherein he would ever have

remained in the second rank, Joseph entered upon the legitimate career of his genius, and became the king of instrumental music.

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CHAPTER II.—1790. THIRTY-NINE years after the events narrated in the foregoing chapter, a vessel sailing from Calais to England, overtaken by a violent storm, very narrowly escaped shipwreck. One man alone, amid the general consternation, displayed such fits of inordinate gaiety, that in the critical situation in which the vessel was placed, might have passed for a species of idiotBefore the danger grew imminent he had maintained a rigid taciturnity, and, seemingly absorbed in thought, took no part in that which was passing around him whilst the bravest of the mariners were trembling, he manifested an exuberant mirth-frequently bursting into paroxysms of laughter. They were compelled at length to make him quit the spot he had chosen upon deck, whence the wind would infallibly have blown him into the sea, and in the cabin where the passengers were crowded together, the women weeping and praying, this man laughing unceasingly, was heard to

:

exclaim aloud :

"There's the mountain rising up: there's the valley plunging down : mountains and valleys chasing one another without catching the lightning flashes, the thunder roars, the vessel floats like a straw.... pchi. bound-the deuce take the storm! Ha ha! how like it mine was!"

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....

These strange exclamations were as so many enigmas to the terrified hearers; and when the danger had passed, they were vividly recalled to mind on perceiving that this same man, so obstreperous a while ago, had become calm and taciturn. His physiognomy was inexpressive indeed, common-place. His peruke and general attire, of an antiquated fashion, gave him the appearance of an aulic counsellor from France. He was seated in a nook of the cabin, and listened not to the pleasantries that were showered upon him; he appeared occupied in counting the beads of a rosary. A young man, resolving to divert the company at the expense of this singular personage, made up, and accosted him. "Sir," said he, you seemed very merry just now. Would there be any indiscretion in asking what might be the cause of your laughter ?"

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This man, torn from his reverie by such an interpellation, and perceiving that all eyes were turned towards him,

rose up with a somewhat embarrassed air, and bowed with all the simple urbanity and bland good-nature one meets with sometimes in aged men; the which caused no small diversion to the by. standers, and increased the general inclination to quiz him.

"I was remembering me of a youthful adventure, at the time when I composed my first opera!"

"The gentleman is a musician then; and doubtless an illustrious one?"

"I do not know as to that, gentlemen; I do my best; drawing all my inspiration from yonder heaven, which so kindly bestows it upon me. Not a single opera have I written without inscribing at its head, In nomine Domine; and at the end, Laus Deo. The critics are pretty well satisfied with me, and I am going to London, invited thither by Saloman the concertist. By my compositions I earn my bread; but as for fame, I do not think it will be my lot to attain it."

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That's a doubt of which it may be in our power to absolve you, if you'll tell us your name.

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"My name is Joseph Haydn !" All present rose up and took off their

hats.

"Pardon me," cried the young man who had accosted him, "pardon me; I would have jested at your expense, and I ought rather to fall at your feet!"

"At my feet! and wherefore?" said the old man, who, perhaps, was the sole individual in Europe ignorant of the fame attaching to the name of Haydn, which he believed confined to the circumference of Vienna.

"Wherefore?" rejoined the young man, "because you are the greatest musician in the world!"

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"You are mistaken,” replied Haydn; you would mean Mozart.* Would you like now, ladies," continued he, with an engaging smile (his name having embellished him in their eyes), would you like me to relate the adventure which made me laugh so heartily, when you were all of you shaking with fear?"

The proposition was eagerly accepted. They made a circle round him, and Haydn commenced the history of his opera, Le Diable Boiteux, and of the ludicrous storm of the harlequin Bernardone.

J. S. M.

* In 1785, Mozart's father asked Haydn what he thought of his son. Hay du replied, “I dethat I look upon your son as the greatest comclare to you before God, and as an honest man,

poser of whom I have ever heard inention."

LONDON:

Published by Effingham Wilson, Junior, 16, King William Street, London Bridge Where communications for the Editor (post-paid) will be received.

[Printed by Manning and Smithson, Ivy-lane,]

OF FICTION, POETRY, HISTORY, AND GENERAL LITERATURE.

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THE

scrupulously avoided every relaxation that might arise from the limited intercourse with the world which that thinly peopled neighbourhood afforded; never quitting his cave, except for the purpose of fulfilling some vow at the shrine of a

FRIAR WITH THE GORY COWL. saint, visiting the bedside of the dying

BY HORACE GUILFORD.

(For the Parterre).

"It is not fifty years agone," thus the Baron Roland began-"and soon after the establishment of the mendicant preachers in England, that a stranger, wearing the garb of a gray, or Franciscan friar, was observed to have taken up his abode in one of the wildest and most intricate caverns in the fair and sequestered dale of Matlock. Strange rumours were in general circulation respecting him; for though he wore the garb, he neither observed the rules, nor frequented the societies of his order, but lived in the dark and dreary recesses of his cave, after the fashion of a hermit.

The austerities he practised were represented as almost superhuman

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sinner, or officiating at those ceremonies in the high festivals of the church, which, but for him, in that mountain wilderness, would have wanted their priest. His penances were so severe, that the belated traveller, passing near his cell, has frequently been scared by the harrowing groans and hideous cries which accompanied the sounding strokes of his flagellations: and it was subsequently ascertained that among his other frightful self-inflictions, Clement the Recluse (as he was called) would, for an entire night, place his lacerated back, raw from the recent scourge, bleeding and bare upon the sharp spars and flints that strewed his cell. The fame of his eloquence attracted numbers from far and near to listen to his preaching. The Franciscan held these assemblies, on a broad green plat before the entrance of his cave; and

the tears and moans and smitten breasts of his audience, attested the penetrating and prevailing power of his celestial rhetoric; but, when the recluse had concluded by giving his blessing to his subdued listeners, it was never known that, on any emergence, whether of fatigue from distant travel, or exhaustion from emotions his own eloquence had produced, the friar suffered a single human being to cross the threshold of his cell. A draught from the limpid and sparkling waters that welled freshly from amidst the starry cresses and lilies of the little fountain at its entrance, was the extreme limit of his hospitality; and, if after that they lingered, rudeness, and even contumely, soon chased his importunate visitors away.

Various were the reports to which this unprecedented cruelty to himself, and discourtesy to others, gave rise. Some said that they had caught rumours in distant parts of the kingdom, of "a nobleman who, for the commission of some tremendous crime, had been compelled to fly from his residence, and that the strictness of his disguise and place of concealment had alone baffled the pursuit of justice." And then the speaker paused, and filled up the remainder of his narrative by a mysterious nod, or a forefinger significantly laid on his lip.

Others encouraged an opinion that this terribly austere anchorite was neither more nor less than a victim to remorse; and then what a world of instances would be cited of unhappy lovers,-stern fathers, and meddling brothers;-the lady slain by the sword that was aimed at her sire; and the wretched lover driven into an exile of lifelong penance, strives to deaden the misery of his mind by the agonies he inflicts upon his flesh. But the favourite opinion, and one, indeed, that formed an integral part of every rumour respecting the Franciscan Recluse,—was, that the place of his retreat contained immense treasure, which (by what means they knew not) Brother Clement had made the companion of his flight; and that the care with which he guarded his cell from intrusion, had no other motive than the security of his gold. Whatever might be the degree of truth attached to these several reports certain it is that the one last mentioned proved fatal to the unfortunate friar; who was found murdered in his inmost cell, under circumstances of revolting barbarity, on the Vigil of the Ascension. A party of peasant girls from Dethick, who had brought baskets of peonies and lilies, and laburnums to

the Hermitage, for an offering to the anchorite, against the approaching ceremony of well-flowering,-left them at the threshold, which they durst not cross, and retired disappointed of the usual acknowledgments with which the otherwise crabbed Friar Clement' always received these little services. But it was not till those flowers had been long dead, and after many a fountain-nymph had bewailed the omission of her accustomed rites-that the disappearance of the Franciscan, and the apparent abandonment of his cell, emboldened a party of hardy villagers to intrude into the forbidden chambers of the Hermitage; and of a certainty there they found, not only coffers broken open and plundered, but also their luckless guardian and martyr (if I may so style him), the gray friar, with his skull cloven, and his cowl so saturated with blood, that it was all one red. The abstraction of the treasure, however, appeared to have been subordihate to the master motive of revenge; for upon closer examination, the person of this miserable man was discovered to have been mutilated with the most disgusting barbarity; and on his gown all streaked with blood, was attached a label with this inscription:

What penance purged not—justice punished. No further light hath since been thrown upon the mystery of this horrible transaction; but if we may credit popular belief, it would appear that neither the rigorous penances of his life, nor the cruel manner of his death, could expiate the Franciscan's crimes, or give repose to his soul; for it is asserted, and, in these parts, religiously believed, that from the period of his assassination, the dead hermit became a wandering demon, possessing some of the horrible attributes ascribed in the German and Hungarian superstitions to the human vampire; in short, The Friar with the Gory Cowl, as they call him, is looked upon as the scourge and terror of this, and the neighbouring counties; the principal source and engine of his mischievous exploits being the faculty, he is said to possess, of assuming any shape and semblance that may suit his purpose for the time being; and this power he employs always for malicious, and frequently, for most atrocious ends. Lords and ladies I have told my tale; but I see by his eager eye and restless attitude, that our worthy goldsmith from Lichfield, Master Ambrose Brabazon, hath pregnant matter touching this demon of the scarlet cowl, which he would fain unfold; and with your leave to him I

appeal, that he may confirm and enlarge upon what I have spoken!"

A general acclamation spoke the hearty concurrence of the company with the lord of Goldenrood, in his last proposition, and every eye was turned upon the goldsmith of Lichfield, and every tongue challenged his legend of the red cowled friar.

Now Master Ambrose Brabazon was a thin man, between forty and fifty, with a peaked visage, hooked nose, rolling black eyes, and a mouth of ineffable foolishness; a kind of civil smirk, chastened with a dash of awe, hovered over its firm compressed lips; long, lanky red hair, drooped on each side of his cheeks, which seemed as if they were drawn in by a perpetual suction; and a look of foolish wisdom distinguished these promising features whenever he opened his mouth, be the theme what it might.

At present the worthy man seemed absolutely labouring with the importance of his subject; he smiled and goggled, and fidgetted; bowed to the lord of the castle, ducked round to the courtly ring, and, clearing his voice, with a look of sacred solemnity, in a shrill, but subdued tone, half grumble, and half squeal, he forthwith embarked upon his legend of The Friar with the Gory Cowl.

Our readers, however, will perhaps excuse our inserting the worthy goldsmith's tediousness at length, as it consisted chiefly of sundry garrulous commendations of the good city of Lichfield, which he was pleased to term a pleasant town, and the joy of Staffordshire, a place of sweet waters and shady woods, and fair gardens. "The palace," quoth he, "wherein the lord bishop, the holy Roger Clinton, hath delighted to set up the staff of his rest, hath no rival for its stately chambers and costly furniture; the castle is exceeding fair and strong; and if any among you have not seen the minster, I would counsel you to journey thither before Easter tide, were it but to behold our Ladye's chapel and the shrine of the blessed St. Chad. There be, moreover, many goodly hostelries in our city, as divers strangers and pilgrims have found, to their marvellous content ment; but among them all, I do think the largest and the best accustomed, be the Cardinal's Hat. And, now, listeth lords and ladies gay! and you worthy Franklins, and my esteemed good friends, and you shall hear of a most horrid, audacious, bloody, and unnatural deed, perpetrated in that aforesaid hostel of the Cardinal's Hat, through the infernal

agency of that demon with the red hood, of whom my good lord the baron hath told you."

And in this style the good goldsmith of Lichfield told his tale-of which we need say no more than that it purported to show-"How the friar with the gory cowl, at the great festival of Pentecost, for the celebration of which Lichfield was conspicuous among the old English cities, assumed the shape of the master cook at the hostel of the Cardinal's Hat, after strangling and flinging him into his own furnace; how he got hold of mine host's two little sons; and, himself, dished up both the cook and children at the Whitsun feast, in the shape of a boar, boiled entire, and flanked by two little roasted pigs!"

The

The Monk of Croxden's turn came next; a demure and melancholy-looking Benedictine; and he told a sad story, not unmingled with sighs and tears (good man!)-how the red hooded demon assumed the shape of one of their brothers (perhaps of himself!), and entering the Abbot of Alveston's gardens, stole thence a popinjay, with its gilded cage. next time the unsuspecting brother visited the gardens, whither he was aforetime often wont to make resort, he was suddenly collared and seized as he passed the arched vault of the porter's lodgehurried into an inner chamber, and there taxed with the theft. It was in vain that Brother Philip protested his innocence; he had been seen often to caress the bird, and even heard to express a wish that it was his own; for the popinjay was a well-taught bird, and employed none but holy and edifying phrases, such as it had caught from the brotherhood. In short, after a world of abuse and menace from the proprietors of the stolen popinjay, and a vain effusion of eloquence from Brother Philip-the supposed delinquent was hurried off to his own convent at Croxden, in custody of the sub-prior and sacristan; and, after a formal complaint had been lodged before the superior, the unfortunate Benedictine's cell was searched; and there, sure enough, in the niche, where the image of the Virgin should have been, stood the gilded cage and the gaudy popinjay, who, not to be behind-hand in the affair, began the moment they entered to shout, "Brother Philip loves Poll!""Ave Maria Sanctissima!" &c. &c.

With groans of horror, the brethren seized the cage and its vociferous inmate, and bore it back to the chamber where the lord abbot, the unhappy prisoner,

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