MAJOR EGERTON.

FROM THE TALISMAN.

THE critic's first and last injunction to the author and the artist is, to "copy nature." For my own part, I never more than half believed in this standing stock rule of common-place criticism. Nature, and beautiful nature too, may be so very natural, that, if too accurately copied, it will seem unnatural. This assertion has a most paradoxical sound, I confess, and is quite worthy of a Kantian metaphysician. Still it is the fact. That which is true is not always probable. Who has not observed, in natural scenery, a brilliancy of colour, or some singular effect of form or light, which, if faithfully transferred to the canvas, would be pronounced at once, by ninety-nine out of a hundred, to be an extravagant and fantastical cappricio of the art. So, too, in real life-occurrences happen every day before our eyes, which if related in a novel, or interwoven in a drama, would be branded by the whole critical brotherhood as too far out of probability to be tolerated, even in professed fiction.

For myself, though I have been bandied a good deal about the globe, I have encountered no marvellous vicissitudes of fortune. Yet, if I were to tell nakedly, and without explanation, many of the incidents of my life, they would hardly gain credence. For instance, I have at different periods dined familiarly with five European kings, played chess with an empress, given alms to an archbishop, and had my soup cooked by a duke. This is very astounding, and the reader is doubtless already either penetrated with respect for my high rank, or else sets me down in his heart for an impudent liar. Yet upon a little consideration, he may satisfy himself that within the last thirty years, a plain American citizen might, without any marvel, have relieved the wants or received the services of a French temporal or spiritual peer, have dined at tables d'hôte and on broad steam-boats, with Lewis of Holland, Joseph of Spain, Jerome of Westphalia, and Gustavus of Sweden; and have been beaten, at Washington, at the royal game of chess, by a Mexican ex-empress. The fifth, in my catalogue of royal acquaintance, is his present majesty of the Netherlands, who, when a poor prince of Germany, was a very conversable, pleasant Dutchman. I might add, that I have received lessons in mathematics from another prince, who though not exactly the next in succession, now looks proudly towards the first throne on the European conti

nent.

There is one extraordinary chain of incidents in my life, which I have often been tempted (when seized with a fit of authorship) to make the foundation of a Gil Blas or Anastasius novel. But I have always been deterred from executing it, by the conviction, that though I should task my fancy solely for the minor incidents, and add no decorations but the necessary colouring of sentiment, character and description, the very skeleton and ground-work of the whole, though strictly true, would still be so outrageously improbable, as to shock even the easy credulity of the novel-reader.

My readers may perhaps anticipate that after this deprecatory prologue, I am about to unfold a tale of love and arms, or else of wild adventure, of which I am myself to be the prince Arthur, the Amadis or the Rinaldo—or at least the Gil Blas or Tom Jones. No, I am not the hero of it. Right gladly would I transform myself into a hero, at the expense of any danger or hardships, (so that all were now well over,) if I could thus be enabled to make bright eyes weep over my sorrows, and lovely forms bend entranced over the page that speaks of me.

Such, alas! is not my good fortune. But to' my story, which, I begin to fear, will scarcely equal the expectations this introduction may raise.

It was longer ago than I commonly care to tell without special necessity, that, having finished my professional studies, I spent my first fashionable winter in New York. The gay and polite society of the city, which every day's necessity is now dividing up into smaller and more independent circles, was then one very large one, wherein whoever was introduced, circulated freely throughout the whole. I of course went everywhere; and everywhere did I meet with MAJOR EGERTON. He was a young British officer, of high connections. Not one of your Lord Mortimers or Marquises de Crillon, who have so often taken in our title-loving republicans of fashion; but a real officer of the regiment, a major at the age of twenty-six, and the nephew of a distinguished English general: in proof of which he had brought the best letters to the 66 best good men," in our chief cities. He was quite the fashion, and he deserved to be so. Most people thought him handsome tall and well-made, and young and accomplished he certainly was; of easy and graceful manners, ready and bold address, and fluent rattling conversation. He danced to the admiration of the ladies; and that at a time when our belles were accustomed to the incredible performances of so many Parisian partners, was no mean feat for an Englishman. He was overflowing with anecdotes of the great and the gay of London; and listening dinner tables and drawing-rooms hung upon his lips, while he discoursed about the Duchess of Devonshire, Lord Dudley and Ward, the Duke of Norfolk, Lady Louisa Mildmay, Mrs. Siddons, Lord Nelson, Kemble, and the Countess of Derby.

Still, I know not why, I liked not the man. There was something singularly disagreeable in the tone, or rather the croak, of his voice. His ready and polite laugh never came from the heart -and his smile, when by a sudden draw of the lip he showed his white teeth, contrasting with his black brow and sallow cheek, had a covert ferocity in it which almost made me shudder.

One evening, at the theatre-it was when Fennel and Cooper were contending for the palm in Othello and Iago-we were crowded together in a corner of the stage-box.

"I don't understand you, Major "Some six or seven years ago you, then a lad, accompanied your father to the west on his mission as a commissioner to make an Indian treaty." "Yes."

"Did you remember among the Tuscaroras the Black Wild Cat, a youth of white blood, the adopted son of Good Peter, the great Indian orator? I mean the one who, after giving you a lesson on the bow and arrow, surprised a reverend divine of your party by reading in his Greek testament, and then mortified him by correcting his pronunciation of Latin, which, like other American scholars, he pronounced in a way intolerable to the ears of one who has had longs and shorts flogged into him at an English school."

"Certainly, I remember him; and it is a mystery which has often puzzled me ever since."

"Then you have now the solution of it. I am the Black Wild Cat."

66 You-how!"

"After leaving Harrow I accompanied my uncle to Canada. There a boyish frolic induced me to join an Indian party, who were returning home from Montreal. Good Peter (a great man by the way, very like our Erskine) took a fancy to me, and I spent my time pleasantly enough. It is certainly a delicious life that of savages, as we call them. But my uncle coaxed me back. I am not sure that I was not a fool for accepting his offer, but I could not resist the temptation of the red coat and an epaulette. The old man has pushed me on as fast as money and interest could promote me. The rest I can do for myself; and if Pitt will leave off his little expeditions to pick up colonies, and give us a fair chance on the continent, the major at six and twenty will be a general, and a peer at thirty."

Here the rising of the curtain interrupted us. Business called me to Albany the next day, and before my return Major Egerton had sailed for England.

I did not, however, forget him; and I often related, as one of the odd vicissitudes of life, the contrast between the young Black Wild Cat, as I first saw him in a Tuscarora wigwam, and the elegant major, glittering in scarlet and gold, when I met him again in the British Consul's ball

room.

A year or two after this I went to England; and not long after my arrival spent a week at Bath. All who are at all learned in English dramatic history, know that the Bath company is commonly good, the Bath audience fashionable and critical, and that there, many of the stars of the theatrical firmament have first risen. Whilst I was there, a first appearance was announced. Mr. Monfort, of whom report spoke favourably, was to make his debut as Romeo. I went with the crowd to see it. Romeo entered, and thunders of applause welcomed the handsome and graceful lover.

Could I believe my eyes? Can this be Major Egerton? Yes-he smiles-that wicked and heartless smile cannot be mistaken; and his voice-that tuneless grating voice. It is he. What can it

mean? Is it a joke or a frolic, or some strange caprice of fortune?

That grating voice which betrayed him to me ruined him with the house. It had sudden and most ludicrous breaks from a high hoarse croak, down at once into a shrill squeak; so that in spite of grace and figure, and a tolerable conception of his author, he was fairly laughed down. I did my best to sustain him, but I was almost alone in the goodnatured attempt.

Two days after, turning short round the transept of the Abbey church, I came full upon Major Egerton, who was standing alone, with a listless and melancholy air.

"Major," said I—then correcting myself— Mr. Monfort"-with an offer of my hand. He met me boldly-Herbert," said he, "I see you know my misfortunes." Not at all-I saw you in Romeo, but wherefore you were Romeo I could not guess."

"Sheer necessity-a run of ill luck and other misfortunes to which young soldiers are exposed, threw me out of favour with my uncle the old general, and into the King's Bench. At last I sold my commission, and resolved on a new profession. I had trusted to succeed on the stage; I knew that this husky throat of mine made the attempt hazardous, yet Gifford and his brother wags had laughed at "the hoarse croak of Kemble's foggy throat," and if art and taste had overcome his defects, why might they not mine also? But it is all over now."

"Then you do not mean to pursue the profession ?" "No-the manager talks of twelve and sixpence a week, and ordered me to study Bardolph for Cooke's Falstaff on Monday. I must seek my fortune elsewhere. If nothing better offers, I'll to my old trade, and enlist as a soldier. In the meanwhile lend me a guinea for old acquaintance sake.

I did so, and saw no more of him at Bath. I soon after left England for the continent. At Dover, before the quarters of some general officer, I saw the ci-devant Major Egerton on duty as a sentinel-a private soldier. I did not speak to him, nor did he seem to observe me; but I was sure of my man.

The studies and the amusements of Paris, during the winter, and the excitement of travel for the rest of the year, soon put my unlucky major out of my head; except that now and then when I fell into a narrative mood, I would tell his story to some of my young countrymen, generally ending it with a Johnsonian morality; "that nothing could supply the want of prudence, and that continued irregularity will make knowledge useless, wit ridiculous, and talent contemptible."

In those days it was not easy to get a comforta ble passage from France to the United States, so that I was obliged to return home by the way of England. I therefore crossed from Holland to Harwich. Not far from the road up to London was the country-seat of a wealthy gentleman, who had married a pretty American cousin of mine. I gladly seized the opportunity of paying Sophia

a visit, and as willingly accepted her husband's invitation to spend a day or two with them. The next day was Sunday.

"You will go with us to church," said Sophia; "your passion for gothic churches and old monuments will be gratified there. We have an old carved pulpit, said to be without its match in England."

“Yes, cousin, but what shall we find in the pulpit to-day?"

66

Oh, our rector I suppose. He is not quite such a preacher as your Dr. Mason, yet they say he is very agreeable in society; though I know little about him, for my husband holds him in perfect detestation."

So we went to the village church. As I followed Sophia up the aisle, the "Dearly beloved brethren," grated on my ear in that voice which I can never forget. I looked up in amazement. In the reading desk, duly attired in surplice and band, stood Major Egerton!"

I could not allow my cousin to enter the pew, without asking her, in a hurried whisper: 66 Who is the clergyman?" "Mr. Egerton, the rector," she replied, as coldly as if there was nothing strange in the matter. I was lost in wonder, and stood during the whole service leaning over the high oak pew, gazing at the rector in all the fidgetty impatience of curiosity. He rattled through the service, psalms, lessons, litany and all, in little | more than half an hour, and then preached a sermon of twelve minutes, which I believe was a paper of the Rambler, with a scriptural text substituted for the classical motto. To do Egerton justice, there was nothing of levity or affectation in his manner; but it was as rapid, cold, and mechanical as possible.

As soon as it was over, without thinking of my friends, or any one else, I bustled through the retiring congregation, and met the rector alone at the foot of his pulpit stairs. He had observed me before, and now greeted me with a laugh. "So," said he, "Herbert, you see circumstances have altered with me since you saw me at Dover, a poor private in the 49th."

"They have indeed, but what does it mean?" "Nothing more than that a rich and noble cousin was ashamed of having a relation and a godson who bore his name, and had borne a commission in his Majesty's service, now known to be a private of foot. He paid my debts, took me out of the ranks, and was about to ship me off for Sierra Leone, as clerk of the courts there, when this living, which is his gift, became vacant. I had Greek and Latin enough left out of my old Harrow stock for any ordinary parson; and the living is not bad. So having no particular fancy to spend my days 'all among the Hottentots a capering on shore,' I begged the living, and got myself japanned." “Japanned!” said I.

"Yes, got my red coat dyed black, you know. The Bishop of London was squeamish about me, though I don't see why; but his Lordship of had no such silly scruples, and I have been these two months rector of Buffington cum Norton."

My fair cousin and her worthy husband were waiting for me at the church door, and our conversation ended abruptly with some common-place offers of civility. When I rejoined my friends, the suspicious looks which my host cast at me, showed that my apparent intimacy with his new rector was not at all calculated to raise me in his estimation. I had to explain, by relating my former New York acquaintance with the ex-major; and then by way of repelling all suspicions of too close intimacy, on our way home took occasion to vent my indignation at the system of church and state, which could tolerate such abuses of the ecclesiastical establishment. At last I grew eloquent and declamatory, and finished by quoting Cowper:

"From such apostles, oh ye mitred heads,

Preserve the church! and lay not careless hands
On skulls that cannot teach and will not learn."

The John Bullism of my good host was roused. He could not bear that a foreigner should censure any institution of his country, whatever he might think of it himself. He too became eloquent; and thus we lost sight of the rector in the dust of an argument which lasted till evening.

On Monday I went up to London, and soon after returned home.

On my second visit to Europe some years after, I became very intimate with a party of young Cantabs, some of them rich, and all of them well educated, who were suffering under that uneasiness at home, and desire of locomotion abroad, which infects idle Englishmen of all ages; a malady of which, by the way, we have inherited a full share with our English blood. Shut out from the common tour of Europe by the domination of Napoleon, my Cambridge friends had planned a grand tour to Russia, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, and thence perhaps to Persia and India. I was easily persuaded to be of the party.

This, of course, is not the place to relate my travels, nor, indeed, is it necessary that I should ever do it. My companions have long ago anticipated me in sundry well printed London quartos, with splendid engravings; wherein I have the honour to be perpetuated by the burin of Heath and other great artists, now, perched half way up a pyramid, then jolting on the bare back of a hardtrotting camel, and sometimes sitting cross-legged on the floor between two well-bearded Turks, at a Pasha's dinner table, eating roast lamb and rice with my fingers. Meanwhile, in the letter press go down to posterity as the author's "intelligent friend," his "amusing friend," and even his "enterprising friend." Thus, upon the whole, without the risk or trouble of authorship, I have gained a very cheap and agreeable literary immortality, except, however, that when any disaster occurs in the tour, I am somehow made to bear a much larger portion of it than I can recollect to have ever actually fallen to my share. On all such occasions I am made to figure as "our unfortunate friend."

I

It was not till we had again turned our faces towards civilized Europe, after having traversed in all directions the frozen North and the gorgeous

East, and gazed on many a "forest and field and flood, temple and tower," renowned in song or in story, that we reached the land of Egypt.

We had consumed a full year in our tour more than we had calculated on, and were all of us in a feverish anxiety to return home. We therefore, una voce, gave up the thoughts of penetrating to the sources of the Nile, and of eating live beefsteaks with Bruce's Abyssinian friends.

But the Pyramids and the Sphinx, and the other wonders of antiquity thereunto appurtenant, we could not return without seeing, though they must be seen in haste. And we did see them.

It was after having seen all the sights, and explored the great Pyramid in the usual way within, and clambered to its top without, whilst my fatigued companions were resting in the shade with our guard, that I, who am proof against any fatigue of this sort, and a little vain too of being so, strolled forward towards the Sphinx, which, as everybody knows, rears its ugly colossal head out the sand at some distance in front of what is called the second Pyramid. I was standing near it, making a sketch, after my fashion, of the relative position of the four great Pyramids, when I was startled by the sudden appearance of a gay troop of MameJuke horse, whose approach had been hidden from my sight by the ruins of the small pyramid on my left, and who now suddenly darted by me in gallant style. To my surprise, the leader of the troop, who, from the dazzling splendour of his equipments, seemed to be a chief of rank, in passing looked me full in the face, and then rapidly wheeling twice round me, sprang from his horse. In the meanwhile, his party, to whom he gave some brief command, went on at a slow walk, and halted in the shade of a neighbouring ruin.

The stranger stood silently before me, tall and stately, in that gorgeous amplitude and splendour of dress which Eastern warriors love. His wide scarlet trowsers marked him as a Mameluke. A rich cashmere shawl, such as an English Duchess might have envied, was fancifully wreathed, turban-like, round his helm, and fell over his shoulders. This, as well as his clasped and silvermounted pistols and jewel-hilted dagger in his belt, and his crooked cimeter in its crimson velvet sheath, with gold bosses and hilt, marked the rank and wealth of the wearer. So too did his slenderlimbed, small-headed, bright-eyed iron-gray Arabian, with black legs, mane, and tail, and sprinkled all over with little stars of white, who had a moment before passed me with the swiftness of an arrow's flight, and who now stood behind his master, with the reins loose on his neck, gentle and docile as a spaniel.

Supposing that this might be some Turk whom I had known at Alexandria or Cairo, I looked him full in the face, but could not recollect having seen him before. He appeared young, except that his coal-black whiskers and beard were here and there grizzled by a grayish hair. The scar of a deep sabre cut across the forehead and left cheek, showed hin no holiday soldier. There was nothing in his manner to excite alarm, and besides, my friends,

But how is it that you are in Egypt; and that, it seems, in honour and affluence ?"

"Yes. It goes well enough with me here. Accident brought me to Egypt. The Pasha wanted men who knew European tactics, and I found a place in his service. Another accident, of which I bear the mark, (passing his hand across his forehead,) placed me about his person. Au reste, I made my own way, and have a very pretty command, which I would not care to exchange for any regiment in his Majesty's service."

But the language?"

“Oh—I have a great facility in catching languages by the ear. I believe I owe it to my Tuscarora education. Apropos-How is Good Peter! Is the old man alive?" I was about to tell him what I knew about Good Peter, when he again interrupted me. But for yourself-what are you doing here? Have you money-making Yankees caught the English folly of digging up mummies, measuring pyramids, and buying stone coffins?-sarcophagi of Alexander and Ptolemy, as the fools call them."

"As respects myself," I answered, "it seems

But why Hussein? Zimri should be your name. You are the very Zimri of Dryden's glorious satire." "In the first rank of these did Zimri stand; A man so various as he seemed to be, Not one, but all mankind's epitome." Thus musing and quoting I rejoined my friends; whom, by the way, I did not let into the whole history of the Mameluke, as he had reposed some degree of confidence in me. I satisfied them with some general account of meeting a Turk whom I had seen before in England.

We returned to Cairo, and soon left Egypt. Six months after I landed once more in New York. Years rolled on, all pregnant with great events to the world, and with sinaller ones of equal interest to myself. I did not talk any more about Egerton; for his transformations had now become so multiplied, that they began to sound too like a traveller's story to be told by as modest a man as I am. Besides there was then no need of telling any old stories; for those were the glorious and stirring days of Napoleon, when

"Events of wonder swelled each gale,

And each day brought a varying ale." Meantime my natural instinct for travel-for it is certainly an instinct-Dr. Gall, himself, once pointed me out in his own lecture-room as wholly deficient in the organ of inhabitiveness, and equally conspicuous for my capacity for localities. This instinct, though long restrained, was as ardent as ever; and when my old friend Commodoreinvited me to accompany him in his Mediterranean cruise, to try a new seventy-four, and parade our naval force before Turks and Christians, I could not refuse him.

Once more then I gazed on the towers and minarets of Constantinople. Once more that fair scene-but all that is in Dr. Clarke and the other travellers, and I hate telling thrice-told tales.

Whilst at Constantinople, or rather in its suburbs, with a party of American officers, after having satisfied our curiosity, as far as we could, on the shore of European Turkey, my friends were anxious to take a look at the Asiatic coast, where the true Turk was to be seen in more unadulterated purity. So, among other excursions we went to Scutari. It is an old Turkish town, full of mosques, and monasteries of Dervishes; and the great lion of the place is the exhibition of the Mehveleveh, or dancing Dervishes, one of the very few religious ceremonies of the Mohammedans which an infidel is allowed to witness.

It is a strange thing that there is so little variety among men in this large world. Nature is inexhaustible in her changes, but man is always alike. Here are we all, east, west, north, and south, and have been these two thousand years, telling and hearing the same stories, laughing at the same jokes, and playing the fool all over in the same dull way. That the business of life, and its science and its passions, should be uniform, is a matter of course. People must, of necessity, till their fields and learn their mathematics, must make money, make war, make shoes, and make love, pretty much as the rest of the world do. But

their fancies and their follies, one would think, might be dissimilar, irregular, wild, capricious, and original. Nevertheless the nonsense of the world smacks everywhere of wearisome sameness; and wherever the traveller roams, the only real variety he finds in man is that of coat, gown, cloak, or pelisse-hat, cap, helm, or turban-the sitting cross-legged or on a chair-the eating dinner with a fork or the fingers.

This nonsense of the dancing and howling Dervishes at Scutari, is very much the same nonsense that many of my readers must have seen at Lebanon and Niskayuna among our Shakers. It is a kind of dancing by way of religious exercises, at first heavy, and then becoming more and more violent. The chief difference is, that the Turks, when once excited, have more violence in whirling round and round on their tip-toes, with shouting and howling, than I have ever seen in our placid and well-fed Shaker monks. The Turks have, besides, the music of flutes and tambour, and the psalter of patriarchal days, which they accompany with a maniac guttural howling of Ullah-hoo, Ullah-hoo. Those who pretend to special sanctity, add some slight of hand tricks, such as seeming to drive daggers into their flesh, and taking hot irons into their mouths.

Altogether it is a very tedious and very disgusting spectacle.

The emir or abbot of the Mohammedan monastery was old and feeble, and the chief duty of leading the dance and setting the howl, devolved upon a kind of aid-de-camp, to whom great respect was evidently paid. He had the ordering of the whole ceremony, and the arranging of spectators, and was in fact, as one of my naval companions called him, the Beau Nash of the Dervishes' ball-room.

He was a stout dirty Turk, with bushy gray locks and beard, dressed in the old costume of his fraternity; his brow overshadowed by the cap which they wear instead of the graceful turban of the east, and his cheek swelled up with that tumour and scar, which is left by the peculiar distemper of some Syrian cities, and is called, in Turkey, the Aleppo tumour. I remarked too, that his eyes, before he was excited by the dance, had that dreamy vacancy, and his skin that ghastly pale glossiness, which indicate the habitual opium-taker.

This fellow eyed our party frequently and closely, and, as I thought, seemed to meditate some plan for laying us under special contribution.

When the dance was over, and the rabble, who formed the mass of the congregation, had gone off, our guide proceeded to show us the monastery, which I thought curious only because it differed less than I had expected from the convents of Europe. Just as we were going off, an underling howler pulled me by the coat, and pointed to a cell with many gesticulations, and some words which I could not understand. Our guide told me that I was specially honoured, for I was invited to converse separately with the Dervish Yussuf the Wise, a most holy man, and, as he said, commonly called the Wise, because he was thought to be out of his senses.