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fired a hundred and one times. If a daughter, only a hundred; and everybody continued silent in order to count. They had nearly got to the end of the number, when a young lady, standing near the window, accidentally directed her eyes towards the sky, and uttered an exclamation of surprise. All beside her looked up also, and there, at the moment that the cannon ceased firing to announce the birth of an heir-apparent, appeared an eclipse of the moon! It was but a partial one, it is true, just as if a small piece were scooped out of the disk, and many of the party assembled at the villa most probably did not notice it at all; yet at such a moment it struck some of the group in the drawing-room as a singular coincidence, and one person remarked, without having the slightest suspicion of any serious political dissatisfaction, that superstitious people would consider it

a

bad augury for the young prince.*

At this lapse of time I cannot distinctly remember whether it was late in the autumn of the same year, or on the following anniversary, that a brilliant fête was announced as about to take place at the Pitti Palace in commemoration of the birth of an heir, and great preparations were accordingly commenced, as the rejoicing was supposed to be universal. The whole suite of reception-rooms in the palace was to be put in requisition for the occasion, and not only was the usual court circle, Italian and foreign, invited, but all the learned and respectable members of the middle class were likewise to be received in the Pitti; while the gardens of the Boboli were to be thrown open for the lower grade of townspeople and contadini. In these gardens the great scene of the evening was to take place; namely, the presentation of the young Prince Ferdinand to the populace-supposed to be the happy and loving subjects of the grand-duke. For this purpose a temporary bridge was constructed, leading from the back of the palace near the fountain into the garden, where there was considerable space for the accommodation of the multitude expected to attend. Along this bridge the grand-duke and duchess were to go with the baby, and present him to the people as their future sovereign; while temples, colossal statues, and erections innumerable for lights, music, and dancing, were scattered everywhere over the wide expanse of undulating ground, in order to illuminate the various walks and avenues, and render the spectacle as brilliant and imposing as possible.

It is a trite and hackneyed, but too true, observation, how often we unconscious mortals totter on the brink of destruction without having the slightest suspicion or foreshadowing of the danger awaiting us! So it was on this memorable occasion, when the lives of thousands hung upon a thread, and when, apparently, they were only saved from a hideous death by the slightest of possible chances!

Meanwhile dresses were ordered, and engagements formed with friends, to go together to the Pitti, in order to enjoy socially a scene so gay and out of the common as the one anticipated; and thus time went on until within a short period of the much talked-of fête.

On the morning of the third day preceding it, we were surprised by receiving an early visit from an Italian lady to whom we had been introduced by some esteemed mutual friends, which had led to a great intimacy and sincere friendship between us. She came from the country, and looked flurried when telling us that she had stopped at our house with the intention of waiting until her brother, Baron S., returned from the Pitti Palace, whither he had gone to confer with the grand-duke about some business of importance in Siena, from whence he had just arrived. A considerable time elapsed before he called in his carriage to fetch her, and during that interval she talked upon the various indifferent subjects which suggested themselves, in a hurried manner, quite unlike her usual clear and spirituelle style of conversation. When she was gone, we remarked to each other how preoccupied, she had appeared, but little dreamed of the sombre cause, or surmised how much even we ourselves were individually concerned in the subject which filled her thoughts!

* This circumstance was mentioned by the author in her "Lights and Shades on a Traveller's Path," published in 1851.

Next morning, when we assembled to breakfast, our man-servant informed us that a stop was put to the anticipated fête! He said that, when he had gone to church early in the morning, he had seen bills posted up all over the town, stating that owing to the cholera having broken out in Sicily, the grand-duke dreaded collecting so large a mass of people together, lest it might engender the malady among the populace, and therefore had decided to defer the rejoicing to an indefinite period, when the threatened scourge might be supposed to have passed out of the country. Various friends came to call in the course of the day to talk over the disappointment, and to speculate as to what could be the true reason, for it seemed rather an overstrained precaution to give up a fête for which so much preparation had been made, merely because cholera had declared itself in Palermo! Towards evening those surmises assumed a darker colour, and insinuations were whispered about a detected conspiracy, and, consequently, the great danger which might have been incurred by the parties invited to the Pitti Palace. Our attention became much excited, and, being obliged to send intelligence of the anticipated gaiety being at an end, to friends in the country who were to have formed our party for the fête, we were naturally anxious to ascertain what was the truth of the reports now universally circulated and believed in Florence, about something more being the matter than the reason assigned. A decided mystery prevailed, however, until the muchtalked-of day was past, and then people began to be less reserved, and even Italians allowed that we had been upon the brink of an abyss, without exactly saying what it was. To females like ourselves, quite unaccustomed in our own country to political disturbances, all these dark hints and surmises scarcely appeared credible, and we accordingly gave ample allowance for exaggeration upon some slight foundation of truth, until the veil was raised from our eyes by an authority which we could not doubt, though it was one we were pledged not to acknowledge. We were assured that a great conspiracy not only had existed, but that it had been one of the very darkest character. So impatient, we were assured, had the Tuscans generally become of the Austrian yoke, that it had been determined to avail themselves of the intended fête to get rid of the grand-duke, duchess, and infant prince, along with all those attached to the duke's dynasty. The moment of action was to have been when the royal party appeared upon the bridge, leading from the palace to the gardens, to present the infant to the populace. Then the conspirators were to have rushed upon and assassinated them, in conjunction with some of the Guardia Nobile in attendance, and afterwards to have passed from the bridge into the interior and reception-rooms, and have put to the sword all those who were obnoxious. From the fact of a quantity of gunpowder having been found secreted in the vaults below the palace, it was concluded that, after the work of extermination was over, it had been intended to blow up the Pitti, with all its treasures of art and riches, and from this circumstance it was imagined that most of the military had been corrupted. "But who had been the leaders in so terrible a plot?" was our natural inquiry. The answer was, that a great many of the nobility, with the contadini on their estates and most of the townspeople, were banded together. It was also alleged that the governor of Leghorn was deeply implicated, along with a number of influential persons in Siena and elsewhere, and that it was in consequence of something which had transpired in Siena that the information had come which had betrayed the conspiracy to the grand-duke.

This last piece of intelligence made us think of our Italian friend's agitated visit when waiting for her brother on his return from the Pitti, and the impression this conveyed was afterwards confirmed by the nobleman in question being made governor of Leghorn in the place of the previous one, removed. We were likewise told that a great many people were thrown into prison, but that the grand-duke, with wise clemency, intended to allow those of the higher class to return to court by degrees, in order to avoid all possible exposure, and that he was particularly anxious to obviate the necessity of bringing Austrian troops into the states, although a great many were hovering round Tuscany ready to pour down upon Florence in case any further violence had been either threatened or suspected. "Lucky it was that it ended so!" one of our reflective Italian friends observed, "for, putting aside the natural desire of emancipating our crushed country from its rude and bigoted oppressors, still, if in the late conspiracy we had succeeded in murdering our really good grand-duke, it would only have been to have had him replaced by some unprincipled and tyrannical scion of the imperial family. There was nothing else to have been expected in the present position of our national affairs."

Curiosity, shortly after these events, took us to the Boboli Gardens, where the temporary bridge had disappeared, although the temples, statues, and other erections long remained, to remind one of a fête by which so many people might have been launched into eternity without warning or preparation of any kind-a fate from which they were only saved by the interposition of a merciful Providence.

When afterwards we talked of these occurrences-now a recollection of thirty years ago-and especially since recent events have taken place, we have understood how deeply seated had been the political antipathy, which at the moment we did not rightly comprehend. Superstitiously speaking, the eclipse of the moon was so far an augury of the young prince's fate; but it remains to be proved by the ordinances of the Great Disposer of all events whether or not that eclipse is destined to be a partial or permanent one. Let us hope the last.

J. R.

368

POLONIUS ON POLEMICS.

A CUE FROM SHAKSPEARE.

BY FRANCIS JACOX.

THE parting advice of Polonius to his son Laertes, when dismissing him for France, is as full of matter as an egg is of meat. In every item of the catalogue of counsels, and the items are not few, -is manifested the shrewd spirit of the experienced statesman (or perhaps rather statescraftman), and of the seasoned and sagacious man of the world. They who, upon the stage, turn this fussy and prolix old Minister into a mere drivelling, puzzle-headed, anile buffoon, show a most pitiful ambition to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh.

Foremost, maybe, in familiarity as well as significance, among these monitory items, is that which bids the young man

-Beware

Of entrance to a quarrel: but, being in,
Bear it that the opposer may beware of thee.*

Do all you can to avoid a conflict: concede a great deal rather than have to fight: parley, and procrastinate, and be at once strenuous in your endeavours, and ingenious in your persevering devices, to keep the peace. But if all is of no avail; if conflict is unavoidable; if fight your adversary will, and fight therefore you must; then go in with a will. Deal your hardest-hitting strokes upon him fast and freely; no thought of parley or half measures then. Smash him, if you can, and as soon as you can. Forget all compromise, scout all conciliation, and only remember your swashing blow.

Hamlet himself, later in the play, is not far from the same meaning, when he says that

Rightly to be great,

Is, not to stir without great argument ;†

though his after-clause diverges from the Polonian drift: "but greatly to find quarrel in a straw, when honour's at the stake." More pat to the purpose is a passage between Sampson and Gregory, Capulet's servingmen, when they enter armed with swords and bucklers:

Sampson. I strike quickly, being moved.

Gregory. But thou art not quickly moved to strike.‡

And in the like sense might be strained a passage between Antony and Eros, of entirely diverse import in itself :

Ant. Lo thee.

Eros. My sword is drawn.

Ant. Then let it do at once

The thing why thou hast drawn it.§

* Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 3.

‡ Romeo and Juliet, Act I. Sc. 1.

§ Antony and Cleopatra, Act IV. Sc. 12.

† Act IV. Sc. 4.

More legitimate in its application is King Richard's utterance, when
Richmond is reported prosperous and on the march :

Come, I have learn'd, that fearful commenting
Is leaden servitor to dull delay;
Delay leads impotent and snail-paced beggary:
Then fiery expedition be my wing.*

The Shakspearean Ulysses, again, in his panegyric on the youngest son of Priam, not yet mature, yet matchless; firm of word; speaking in deeds, and deedless in his tongue, has this line, which indeed comprises in itself the Polonian system entire :

Not soon provoked, nor, being provoked, soon calm'd.† In this respect suggesting a degree of affinity to Othello, as one "not easily jealous, but, being wrought, perplexed in the extreme." As again, and only once more, an illustrative parallel might be found in the contrast between Macbeth's "I'll not fight with thee," to Macduff, followed so instantly when the fight is inevitable, by the vehement defiance, "Lay on, Macduff!" and the imprecation of perditions on him of the two that shall first cry, Hold, enough !

Among the proverbs of Solomon, which the men of Hezekiah, King of Judah, copied out, occurs the warning, "Go not forth hastily to strive, lest thou know not what to do in the end thereof." || The counsel in Sallust has passed into a proverb, -at any rate has found its way into Latin collections, which bids you, before you begin, take advice; but having maturely considered, use despatch. Priusquam incipias consulto, et ubi consulueris mature, facto opus est. A saying is on record of Paulus Æmilius to his son Scipio, that a good general never gives battle but when he is led to it, either by the last necessity, or by a very favourable occasion. And Paulus Æmilius might have stood, more fairly than some, for Thomson's representative man of patriotism militant:

Backward to mingle in detested war,
But foremost when engaged.

Montaigne moralises on the necessity of deliberation before we engage in affairs, especially quarrels: a little thing, says he, will involve you in one, " but being once embarked, all cords draw; greater considerations are then required, harder and weightier." We should go to work, he continues, contrary to the reed, which at its first spring produces a long and straight shoot, but afterwards, as if tired and out of breath, runs into thick and frequent joints and knots, as so many pauses, which show that it no longer has its first vigour and consistency. "Twere better to begin fair and calmly, and to keep a man's breath and vigour for the height and stress of the business." Montaigne finds some who rashly and furiously rush into the lists, but are dull in the race itself. He who enters lightly into a quarrel, is "subject to run as lightly out of it. The same

* King Richard III., Act IV. Sc. 3.

† Troilus and Cressida, Act IV. Sc. 5.

§ Macbeth, Act V. Sc. 7.

The Seasons: Summer.

Othello, Act V. Sc. 2.
Prov. xxv. 8.

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