skin, another talismanic rings and a necklace of wild chesnuts. He was enjoined to sew nutmegs in his clothes, to wear a certain sort of red ribbon round his throat, to cram himself with sourkraut. And each of his advisers thought him disgustingly obstinate because he turned a deaf ear to their advice, and discredited the virtues of their medicaments, preferring those of his doctor. "I should long since have been a millionaire," he says, "if every good counsel had brought me in a louis-d'or. And truly I uphold the old Spanish proverb against advice-givers: Da me dinero, y no consejos― Give me money, and not advice." Vaerst says little or nothing, except that he and | One recommended swan's down, another a cat's his companions, although unprovided with introductions, received visits and invitations from them, attentions for which they probably had their titles to thank. The Baron seems to have taken more pleasure in the society of the friendly French prefect, M. Azeveno, with whom he had strenuous discussions on the everlasting subject of the Rhine frontier. The Frenchman, like many of his countrymen, insisted that the far-famed German stream is the natural boundary of France, a proposition which M. Vaerst could by no means allow to pass unrefuted. Indeed, the excellent Baron seems particularly sensitive on this subject, for in various parts of his book we find him in hot dispute with presumptuous Gauls who hinted a wish to see the tricolor once more waving on the banks of that river, which Mr. Becker has so confidently affirmed they shall never again possess. The Baron considers a hankering after the Rhine to be ineradicably fixed in every Frenchman's breast, and now and then shows a little uneasiness with regard to the strife and bloodshed which this unreasonable longing may sooner or later engender. We do not learn how he fared in his discussions at Pau and elsewhere, but in his book he advances eloquent and learned arguments against French encroachment. In the very midst of them he is unfortunately interrupted by a severe attack of illness, against which he bears up with much philosophy and fortitude. "If pain purifies and improves, as I have often been told, I ought assuredly to be one of the best and purest of men. But although I have never yet lost courage under physical or any other suffering, and have ever remained cheerful as in the joyous days of my youth, I have yet no wish to continue thus the darling of the gods, who, as it is said, chastise those they best love." His patience, proof against pain, gave way at last, under a less acute but more teasing infliction, and he breaks out into a humorous anathema of the well-meaning tormentors who pestered him with prescriptions. Every body who came within ten paces of him had some sovereign panacea and unfailing remedy to recommend. He began by taking a note of all these good counsels, with no intention to follow them, but out of malicious curiosity to see how far the persecution would extend. At the end of a week he abandoned the practice, finding it too troublesome. In that short time, he had been strongly enjoined to consult twenty different physicians, and to make trial of fourteen mineral baths. One kind friend insisted on bringing him a mesmerizer, another a shepherd, a third an old woman, all of whom had already wrought marvellous cures. Chained to the chimney corner by the unsatisfactory state of his health, the Baron devoted himself to study and literary occupation, pored over Froissart, acquired the old French, and revelled in the gallant pages of Queen Margaret of Navarre. At Pau, indeed, his third Pyrenean expedition concludes, but not so his book, for which he finds abundant materials in the reminiscences of his two previous journeys. His account of the Basques is especially interesting, containing much that could only have been gleaned by long residence in the country, and great familiarity with the usages of that singular people. Few in number, these dwellers amongst the western Pyrenees are formidable by their courage and energy; and from the remotest periods of their history, have made themselves respected and even feared. Hannibal treated them with consideration, and was known to alter his proposed line of march to avoid the fierce attacks of this handful of mountaineers. The Roman proconsuls sought their alliance. Cæsar, against whom, and under Pompey's banners, they arrayed themselves, was unable to subdue them. After the fall of Rome, the men of the Pyrenees were attacked in turn by Vandals, Goths, and Franks; their houses were destroyed, their lands laid waste, but they themselves, unattainable in their mountains, continued free. A deluge of barbarians overflowed Gaul and Spain; conquerors and conquered amalgamated, and divided the territory amongst them; still the Pyreneans continued unmixed in race, and undisturbed in their fastnesses. The vanquished Goth retreated before the warlike and encroaching Saracen, and the crescent standard fluttered amongst the mountains of northern Spain. It found no firm footing, and soon its bearers retraced their bloody path, strewing it with the bones of their best and bravest, and pursued by the victorious warriors of Charles Martel. But of all the historical fights that have taken place in the Pyrenees, there is not one whose tradition has been so well preserved as the great defeat of Charlemagne. The fame of Roland still resounds | counters in which their fathers have so often in popular melody, and echoes amongst the wild ravines and perilous passes, whose names, in numerous instances, connect them with his exploits. The Basques are brave, intelligent, and proud, -simple, but high-minded. They have ever shown a strong repugnance to foreign influence and habits; and have clung to old customs and to their singular language. It is curious to behold half a million of men - whose narrow territory is formed of a corner of France and another of Spain, closely hemmed in, and daily traversed, by hosts of Frenchmen and Spaniards-preserving a language which, from its difficulty and want of resemblance to any other known tongue, very few foreigners ever acquire. They have their own musical instruments-not the most harmonious in the world; their own music, of peculiar originality and wildness; their own dances and games, dress, and national colors, all more or less different from those of the rest of Spain. There is no doubt of their being firstrate fighting men, but the habit of contending with superior numbers has given them peculiar notions on the subject of military success and glory. They attach no shame to a retreat or even to a flight; but those antagonists who suppose that because they run away they are beaten, sooner or later find themselves egregiously mistaken. Flight is a part of their tactics; to fatigue the enemy, and inflict heavy loss at little to themselves, is upon all occasions their aim. They care nothing for the empty honor of sleeping on the bloody battle-field over which they have all day fought. They could hardly be made to understand the merit of such a proceeding; they take much greater credit when they thin the enemy's ranks without suffering themselves. And if they often run away, they are ever ready to return to the fray. They are born with a natural aptitude for the only species of fighting for which their mountainous land is adapted. We have been greatly amused and interested, when rambling in their country, by watching a favorite game frequently played upon Sundays and other holidays. The boys of two villages meet at an appointed spot and engage in a regular skirmish; turf and clods of earth, often stones, being substituted for bullets. The spirit and skill with which the lads carry on the mock-encounter, the wild yells called forth by each fluctuation of the fight, the fierceness of their juvenile faces, when, after a welldirected volley, one side rushes forward to the charge, armed with the thick bamboo-like stems of the Indian corn, their white teeth firmly set, and a barbarous Basque oath upon their lips, strongly recall the more earnest and bloody en distinguished themselves. These contests, which sometimes become rather serious from the passionate character of the Basques, and often terminate in a few broken heads, are encouraged by the older people, and compose the sole military education of a race, who do not fight the worse because they are unacquainted with the drill-sergeant, and with the very rudiments of scientific warfare. The tenacity with which these mountaineers adhere to the usages of their ancestors, even when they are unfitted to the century, and disadvantageous to themselves, is very remarkable. The Basque is said to be so stubborn, that he knocks a nail into the wall with his head; but the Arragonese is said to surpass the Basque, inasmuch as he puts the head of the nail against the wall, and tries to drive it in by striking his skull against the point. When, in the ninth century, the French Kings conquered for a short time a part of the Basque provinces, they prudently abstained from interference with the privileges and customs of the inhabitants, and when the whole of Spain was finally united into one kingdom under Ferdinand the Catholic, the Basques retained their republican forms. Every Basque is more or less noble. The genealogical pride, proverbially attributed to Spaniards, is out-heroded by that of these mountaineers, amongst whom a charcoal-burner or a muleteer will hold himself as good and ancient a gentleman as the best duke in the land. "In the valley of the Bastan," says the Baron, "all the peasants' houses are decorated with coats of arms, hewn in stone, and generally placed over the house door; the owner of the smallest cottage is rarely without a parchment patent of nobility. A peasant of that valley once told me his family dated from the time of Queen Maricastana. El tiempo de la reyna Maricastana, is a proverb implying, 'from time immemorial." Certainly there is no country where such equality exists amongst all classes; an equality, however, rather pleasing than disagreeable in its results. The demeanour of the less fortunate of the people towards those whom wealth and education place above them, is as remote from insolence and brutality, as it is from cringing servility. The poorest peasant, tilling his patch of maize, answers the question of the rich proprietor, who drives his carriage past his cottage, with the same frank courtesy and manly assurance, with which he would acknowledge the greeting or interrogatory of a fellow-laborer. Baron Vaerst indulges in some curious speculations as to the origin of this flourishing and unmixed race of mountaineers. "Some say they are an aboriginal tribe, and that their language was spoken by Adam (); others set | sort of crime, without being made personally them down as an old Phoenician colony, whilst others again vaguely guess them to be the descendants of a wandering horde from the north or east. The language is like no other, and those who speak it know nothing of its history. Except before God, these people have never bent the knee in homage, and have never paid taxes, but only a voluntary tribute, collected amongst themselves. "Proud of the independence they have so well defended, they for the most part, in order to preserve their nationality, have married amongst themselves. The Basque tongue has one thing in common with those of Spain and Gascony, namely, the indiscriminate use of the B and the V. They say indifferently Biscaya or Viscaya, Balmaseda or Valmaseda. The story is a wellknown one, of the Spaniard who maintained French to be a miserable language, because in speaking it no distinction was made between a widow and an ox,veuve and bauf receiving from him pretty nearly the same pronunciation. I have still a letter from the well-known Echeverria, addressed to me as Baron Baerst. Scaliger, when speaking of the Gascons and of their custom of confounding the v and b, says; felicitas populi quibus bibere est vivere." Many trouba dours have written and sung in the Gascon dialect; the memory of one of the most ancient of them is preserved in popular legends on account of his tragical fate. Beloved by an illustrious lady, the wife of Baron Castel Roussillon, he was enticed into an ambuscade and murdered by the jealous husband, who then tore out his heart, and had it dressed for the Countess's dinner. The meal concluded, he produced the severed head of her lover, told her what she had eaten, and inquired if the flavor was good. "Si bon et si savoureux," she replied, "que jamais autre manger ne m'en ôtera le gout." And she threw herself headlong from her balcony. The nobles of the land, the King of Arragon at their head, held the conduct of the husband so unworthy, that they threw him into prison, confiscated his estates, and united in one grave the mortal remains of the unfortunate lovers. Whilst the Basques and Bearnese enjoyed a long series of tranquil and happy years, Roussillon was a prey to bloody wars and to the ravages of ruthless conquerors. Goths and Saracens, Normans, Arragonese, and French, fought for centuries about its possession. This state of perpetual warfare naturally had great influence on the character of the people, who continued wild and savage much longer than their neighbours. The passes of the Pyrenees were a constant motive for fresh hostilities, and pretext for lawless aggression. The rich committed every answerable. One of the old laws of Roussillon, significant of the state of the country, fixes the rate of payment at which crimes might be committed. Five sous were the fine for inflicting a wound; if a bone was broken, it was ten times as dear; a box on the ear cost five sous, the tearing out of an eye a hundred; a common murder three hundred sous, that of a monk four hundred, and of a priest nine hundred. Other luxuries in proportion. From which curious statement, a priest in those days appears to have been worth three laymen, and a gouged eye to have been estimated at twice the value of a broken bone. Flesh-wounds and punches on the head were decidedly cheap and within the reach of persons of very moderate means. the delightful state of comfort and prosperity, indicated by this tariff of mutilation and manslaughter, the men of Roussillon had to thank their last Count, who, in the year 1173, bequeathed his dominions to Alphonso II. of Arragon. Thence eternal strife with the French, who did not choose to see the key to their country in the hands of a Spanish prince; and Roussillon, the bone of contention, was also the battleground. Nearly five centuries elapsed before the treaty of the Pyrenees put an end to these dissensions. For The sea, the Ebro, and the Pyrenees, form the natural boundaries and bulwarks of the Spanish Basque provinces. Favored by these defences, the three provinces were the natural and safe refuge of the Iberians, when hunted by various conquerors from the plains of southern and middle Spain. Of Navarre, only the mountainous portion afforded similar safety; the levels, and especially the rich banks of the Ebro, were occupied by the victors. Biscay, Alava, and Guipuzcoa were never under the dominion of the Moors, who obtained quiet possession of Navarre as far as Pampeluna, but only held it about twelve years. Each of the three provinces has its own constitution and rights, peculiar to itself, some of the privileges and laws being of a very original character. In Alava, the general procurator, or chief of the provincial government, swears every year upon an old knifethe Machete Vitoria..o-to uphold the privileges of the province. I desire," he says, "that my throat may be cut with this knife if I fail to maintain and defend the fueros of the land." The Biscayan coasts breed excellent sailors; as already mentioned, they were the first to undertake the distant fisheries of the whale and cod. They are probably better calculated for enterprising merchant-seamen than for men-of-war's men, the inveterate independence and stiff-neckedness of the race being obnoxious to regular mili tary discipline. "Quisiera mucho mas ser leonero que tener carga de Biscaynos," was a saying of Gonsalvo de Cordova. The naval squadrons of Biscay, however, are to be read of in history. It seems strange enough to Englishmen, to whom these petty provinces are known but as obscure nooks of the Peninsula, to read in Baron Vaerst's pages that "the fleet of Guipuzcoa, united with that of Biscay, completely annihilated, in a bloody naval action, fought on the 29th August, 1350, the English fleet of King Edward the Third, and thereby procured Spain an advantageous treaty of commerce with England." There is small probability, we presume, of Lord Auckland's sending half-a-dozen frigates to revenge this old insult, by fetching the present Spanish fleet into an English port, and there retaining them until the wise men of Madrid reduce their suicidal duties on foreign manufactures. We have stated our firm conviction that England would gain little by such reduction. Little, that is to say, in the way in which Messieurs Louis-Philippe and Guizot and their organs are pleased to assume that she expects to be benefited. "England," says a writer, already quoted, "has never asked any thing for which she did not offer a generous reciprocity. If the Spanish government, blind to its true interests, has constantly refused, in consequence of chimerical fears and false views, to renounce a prohibitive system, rendered illusory by smuggling, itself alone has suffered. For England it is a mere question of morality. The contraband trade compensates her for the ignorance of Spanish rulers. . . . . But the government of a commercial country must grieve to see commercial transactions resting on the basis of smuggling-on a violation of law and of public morality. England, where every thing reposes on credit and good faith, submits with strong repugnance to stipulations so organized that smuggling is the rule, and legal traffic the exception." *— Blackwood's Magazine. THE TWO RIVERS. I own thou flowest fair and free, I own thou art a noble sight! The sun and clouds of heaven Do make thee many-hued and bright; Oars flash, sails gleam, a ruddy light Tinges thy ripples from the blaze Where wide and high the sun's last rays, With fiery glow and gorgeous haze, Prelude the purple even. But evermore upon thy brink, Broad water, sweeping cheerly! I walk within the woody place; pace, The twilight sigheth in my face, "I would much rather be a keeper of lions than have charge of Biscayans." THE NATURAL HISTORY OF HUMBUGS. The Natural History of Humbugs. By dignity-full-blown and uncompromising digIllustrated by A. ANGUS B. REACH. Mr. Reach's 'Bores' proved rather sprightly company at Midsummer time, it may be recollected. The new monograph which he here puts forth, like its predecessor, somewhat belies its title-being rather more of a Humbug than a History! The thing, peradventure, must needs be so. Our author confesses it himself. How could any one profess to pack away so vast a subject into a shilling duodecimo? As well might Tom Thumb undertake to carry Lablache in his waistcoat pocket! The topic is Wide as the earth and boundless as the sea. (We once, by the way, heard the Great Ocean itself called "a Humbug," by a distressed gentleman from Yorkshire, on board the Hamburgh Packet!) What is the Dalai Lama?- what the Emperor of Tee-to-tum, with his sublime proclamations, only one degree less sublime than Mr. Sealy's caricatures of the same?-what is The Brazen Duke-now perpetual Street Porter of Piccadilly? Nay, let every modest man ask of himself, "WHAT AM I?”- and there are few who will not crouch down, humbled by the colossal vastness of the theme and its desperate personality, fewer still who will assert that one tithe of its points or counterpoints, one thousandth of its features and phases, great or small, have been here reached. Who would not pluck the Natural History of Strange Birds' that should tell nothing of the Ostrich, the Dodo, or the Pouting Pigeon? Omissions at least as important as the above are to be found in the nity. Let us plant ourselves, gentle reader, on the decks of this gaudy, glittering steam-packet, the Boenigen bon Bruschen, now sweeping rapvine-clustered ledges of the Rhein-fells. There idly down stream, beneath the gray walls and is a fine specimen of an English exclusive family. The travelling carriage is upon the deck, and John sits in a stately manner in the rumble, thinking of Old England. The glasses are down, but fluttering green silk blinds do duty in their stead; and it is only when a fresher puff of air than ordinary jerks them aside that we can catch a glimpse of the occupants of the interior- the old gentleman, fat, comfortable, and choleric, reading a London newspaper; the mamma, hot, cross, and flustered, fanning herself with a handkerchief wet with eau-de-Cologne; and the young lady, languid, pale, and insouciante, listlessly knitting her Berlin wool, and occasionally glancing at the guide book which lies open in her lap. The Hon. Tom, the son and heir, is not visible, having met a couple of Melton men on board, and descended with them to a private cabin, there in privacy and peace to smoke their cigars and make up their books for the Leger over many bottles of golden Rhenish wine. Their courier has preceded them to Cologne, to engage the best apartment in the Rhenischerhoff, where they can have dinner served by English waiters in English fashion, just as quietly and pleasantly as if they had not stirred from Portman Square. And when the meal has been discussed in great state and gravity, and the grapes and peaches have been put upon the table, and the old gentleman calls for his bottle of port, and the ladies talk of and write to May Fair till bed-time, Tom having gone on to Aix with the Melton men to risk his thalers at roulette.... And these people, not content with being Humbugs themselves, make down the Seine last Autumn in the pretty others Humbugs as well. Gliding pleasantly packet La Normandie,' I encountered the Firmcounters. Being an habitué of the little dingy parlor looking over the Mews, they did. not naturally think me of sufficient consequence to make themselves fools before me; and so the family, released from the crushing fetters of their forced gentility, came out remarkably strong and pleasant; Firmcounter telling a lot of funny Stock Exchange stories about par and discount whereof the point was not clearly discernible; and mamma and the girls laughing and flirting as comfortably as possible, and half frantic with fun and delight when they tried on specimens "As he is so fond of Humbug at home, honest of those steeple-like Norman caps, which they John Bull is not likely to part with it when he had purchased at Rouen. All at once the goes abroad. In the steamer and the diligence younger girl, who had run away from the family he wraps himself as in a cloak in that particular group to see a fat little waddling curé get into variety of his national temperament which it a clumsy punt which came alongside for him, pleases him generally to exhibit when he is hon- marched back, looking as if she had had a têteoring foreign soil by placing his boots upon it-à-tête with a ghost.Mamma,' said she, ‘did treatise before us. We, who Love to live at peace with all the world, will have nothing to do with the home specimens of Humbugs so timidly and sparingly collected by Mr. Reach. Here, however, are a few, culled at a convenient distance from Grub Street and Amen Corner-which may be ventured upon without danger of a prosecution for libel. |