"That happened in the back settlements, I suppose ?"

"Exactly so, Sir: you have, perhaps, heard of the affair before? It is tarnation well known in England."

"New England ?"

"New and Old, Sir; and I am well known in both, Sir, believe me. Ay, Sir, and well trusted too: no man stands higher than I do. Let me go to London to-morrow, and who will hold his head above mine? Sir, I am intimately acquainted with the first men in Great Britain."

"By sight?"

"Ay, Sir, and by touch as well. I am made much of by your Princes -I am the bosom friend of your Ambassadors. Your Ministers know my value, and your Monarch admits my merit. The Duke-the Duke -yes, Sir, his Grace himself takes me under the arm, when he would pass by a Bishop with a careless nod, and would scarcely condescend to say, how d'ye do to a commoner. I tell you this just en passant, not that I care a curse for it. Me! no, not I! I despise aristocrats in my heart. A Duke is no more in my eyes than a grave-digger-a King nothing better than a cow-doctor. A man is a man, Sir-and I am a free-born, high-minded, independent republican!"

"On monarchical principles ?"

"Ay, Sir," answered he (shuffling from the question), "principle, principle is everything with me. Principle's my interest, Sir, and I calculate that I am a man that knows what's what. From one end of the Union to the other, north to south, east to west, my principles are notorious. From Niagara to Natchez, from Maine to Massachussets, I might travel on trust, and never want a night's lodging."

"That you might, Doctor, I'll be bound for you," said one of the listeners, who I afterwards found to be a captain of a ship from New York, lying in the harbour, and very gullible, considering the place he came from.

"Yes, gentlemen," resumed Bobadil, "you may take my word for all I say, for I am not a boaster. Sir (turning to me), when I filled a station of deep diplomatic trust, at a certain Court which shall be nameless, my probity and honour were so imminent, that whenever a wonderful story-a bounce I may say—was going the rounds of the city

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They laid it at your door ?"

"Just so, Sir, to know if it was genooine."

"That is to say they fathered all the lies upon you?”

"No, Sir, no; my word was a law, Sir"Which was never broken I'm sure."

"Broken! Sir, it never was even cracked!

men in the world!"

"You have travelled much, no doubt ?"

Sir, I know all the first

"I guess I have, Sir. I know all the inns of Europe-ay, and the outs too. Whigs and Tories, Ultras and Liberals-côté droit and côté gauche. Art, science, literature, politics, have all their secrets and their notabilities, but I am up to them all."

"Men and things?"

"Just so, Sir; just so, Sir-I speak nine languages." Sept.-VOL. LIV. NO. CCXIII.

D

"Nine, Doctor!" exclaimed the Captain.

Ay, and understand six more. Fifteen altogether, Sir, dead and alive."

"Kill them! twenty more, kill them too.' Isn't it so, Doctor?" said I, bursting out into a long-restrained laugh, and thinking of rare old Ben, and " Every Man in his Humour."

Sir," said he, gravely, and with an effort to look stern, "you don't mean to allude to personal practice, I hope? No professional insinuations-no Anguis in herba-eh ?”

I professed my ignorance of his scientific merits.

"I am satisfied, Sir!" exclaimed he. "But you might have heard of my reputation without disparagement to that of the first men in France."

"No doubt," said I.

"Yes, Sir, I stand on a line, I may safely say, with many of the most distinguished men."

"Which end of the line, Doctor?" asked I.

"Which end?-end! What do you mean by end, Sir?"

Only that every line has a top and a bottom, that's all."

Sir, I know nothing of tops or bottoms, but I know the heads of science all over the world."

"Personally, Doctor?"

I

66 No, Sir; life's too short for making personal acquaintances. know eminent men by their works, their contributions to learned recueils, their public lectures, etcetera. But time is too precious to be lost in visits, or wasted in useless talk."

"You are a fast-going traveller, I presume?"

Sir, I get over my ground as fast as I can; but we are sadly deficient in means for speed. We are slow goers, Sir, in this generation.” "Why, are you not satisfied with railroad speed, Doctor?"

"Railroads! they are but snail-paced excuses for travelling as yet, Sir. They may, perhaps, suit the jog-trot march of old, corrupt, wornout Europe; but, in my great and miracle-working country, we think less than 100 miles an hour is time lost-we shall never be satisfied till we come to that."

"Never! never!" echoed the little knot of Yankee disciples, who swallowed everything he uttered.

"Right, gentlemen, right!" exclaimed he, "never be satisfied while aught is to be attained. Ah, Sir! (to me again) ours is a mighty nation, where the energies of man are gloriously put forth. Gentlemen, (to the Yankees) Alexander wept because he had no new realms to conquer. Think of that, my countrymen !"

"We will-we will!"

"And, remember, gentlemen, that when Archimedes wanted space to fix a lever that might raise the world, America was not discovered! Do you remember that?"

"We do-we do!"

"And what were Alexander and Archimedes to our great men-to the gigantic mind of Jackson-to the inexhaustible intellect of Webster? Sir, the men of Europe are pigmies to our high-minded, intelligent, and wonder-working citizens. Sir, your orators, your statesmen, your scho

lars, are not fit to hold a candle to ours-they are mere bunglers and botchers. But we, Sir, do nothing by halves."

"No, Doctor, you go the whole hog."

"True, Sir, we do, indeed; to use as an illustration of our power and our vigour, that splendid Orientalism!"

"A splendid what?"

"A splendid Orientalism! Ay, Sir, originally an Orientalism, an image drawn from the profound mysteries of Mohammedan worship, Going the whole hog, Sir, as it is now adapted in realms of Transatlantic refinement, has become an elegant Americanism, a refined appropriation of one of the sublime ceremonies of the East, at which was served up the quarter, the half, or the whole hog, as the case might be. What a noble simplicity of expression! what nervous condensation of thought! Yes, Sir, as you most truly observed to our great honour and glory, we go the whole hog!"

"Body and bones, bristles and crackling, spare ribs and pettitoes!" exclaimed I, with another burst of laughter, which did not ruffle my hero in the least, and which the young men around him took very goodhumouredly. The fact was they got rather ashamed of their oracle; for, though led away a while by his Charlatanic effrontery, their shrewdness and good sense got the better of his egotism and bombast; and he (being quite as quick-sighted as they were) perceived the shift in the wind, and tacked accordingly.

He was, in a moment more, in the midst of a party of natives talking French-did I say that this happened in France ?-with prodigious fluency and excellent accent. I could not help admiring the tact with which he adapted himself to the varied moods of his hearers, whether male or female, and the cleverness with which he made himself still the hero of his discourse. He was infinitely entertaining. He was extremely good looking both in face and figure, something about forty years of age, and, as I very soon discovered, a person of talent as well as great knowledge of life and experience. I have no doubt but he would have been a pleasant as well as an amusing companion had not his overweening vanity gone riot as it did, running a muck against truth, taste, principle, and, whenever it suited it, all the conventional practices of good breeding,

Among the large party assembled on this occasion there were people of various nations. I fell into conversation with a couple of Spaniards, who were rich in information as to the political state of their country, when Bobadil joined us and soon took a lead in the discourse, turning it, of course, into a new (that is to say, the old) channel-himself.

I remarked with some surprise how admirably well he spoke Spanish, like a native, in fact; and I asked him if he had devoted much time to its study?

"Three days, Sir," said he: "I shut myself up in my room, went to bed, took a dictionary with me, and learned all the words from beginning

to end."

"And the grammar?"

cc Grammar! any fool can teach himself any grammar in a week,

Sir."

"But it is impossible to apply such a rule to you, Doctor,"

D 2

In reply to this compliment he paused, looked full in my face, and then said in a most gracious and patronising tone

66 Sir, I shall be proud if you will favour me with your company at dinner to-morrow. Let me have the honour of presenting you to my wife."

And thereupon he introduced me, as a particular friend of his, to his lady spouse, a very fine and fashionably dressed dame, a Frenchwoman, whose composed and steady manners formed a wide contrast to the flighty ways of her husband.

His next display of knowledge was with a German gentleman, and there again he gave a new proof of facility in language that was quite surprising.

"This almost universal skill of yours, Doctor, arises no doubt from your many diplomatic changes?" said I.

Sir,

Sir," said he, "I have had many removals, but no changes. my principles are like so many rocks. The honour, the glory, the overwhelming ascendancy of my magnanimous nation has been the heart-heaving and spirit-stirring impulse of all my services."

And you have served as ambassador? minister? chargé d'affaires? secretary of legation? attaché?"

Every one of those questions, rather impertinently curious, I confess, were answered by so many negative shakes of the head.

Sir," said he, with a ludicrous solemnity, "you little know my estimate in the eyes of my own and foreign governments. I am not a man to be employed in the dull drudgery of mere tape-tying, commonplace, official routine. My missions, Sir, were secret ones-missions involving the most intricate mazes of diplomacy-missions on which the fate of the civilised world has more than once hinged. Sir, the man who would buy me at the valuation of the great powers would have no bargain!"

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Unless, perhaps, he found an opportunity of selling you at your

own ?"

"Admitted. Sir, the man who knows his own worth, and rates himself highly-"

"Will never sell himself cheaply. Is not that it, Doctor?"

Perhaps it is," answered he, and a faint smile curled the corner of his lip. I thought I knew my man better and better every minute. But I was not yet quite satisfied, so I resolved to pursue the crossexamination.

"Your professions seem to have been multiform, Doctor?"

Sir, my practice has been unique. That is of more moment.” "Your degree is a medical one, I presume? or in theology? of laws?

music ?"

Bobadil did not seem inclined to answer those questions distinctly. He shuffled from them with a pun.

66 Sir," said he, "the man who makes his reputation per saltum cannot be said to obtain it by degrees. Doctor, Sir, is a title of great honour

"I honour it highly."

"The immortal Franklin was a doctor, Sir."

"Indeed!" exclaimed I; whereupon he stared at me as if striving

to discover whether I was really in earnest, and he then suddenly turned away and left me to myself.

He had scarcely quitted my side, when a short thick man, with a large head and a brown wig, took his place, and, addressing me abruptly in a broad Scotch accent, said

"That's a rum fellow, a'n't he?”

"Perhaps he is," said I.

"Be on your guard, Sir; all isn't gold that glitters. He is a humbug."

"A doctor you mean.”

"Captain is a good travelling name for a swindler, a fortune-hunter, a gambler so is doctor for a charlatan."

"You would say a diplomatist."

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"But if

Sir, you use synonymes," drily replied my informant. you had said a spy, you had been still nearer the mark; so be on your guard."

With these words the little man with a brown wig and large head left me to my reflections. The next day he sat opposite to me at the hospitable dinner-table of the American Bobadil.

And very often did my hero and myself interchange civilities of the kind. He kept a pleasant house, saw much good company, and entertained handsomely. It is odd to say it, but he won a good deal of my confidence in some small but trifling transactions: whether I had reason to be glad or sorry is now of no matter. That secret is buried in poor Bobadil's grave! He had many good qualities, many more than I have found in some men of better reputation and greater respectability. What a number of plausible, church-going, smooth-talking, respectable scoundrels have I met with among my travelling acquaintance!

It

I will now shortly sketch the circumstances of my hero's death, those which led to it I mean: and never did consumption (though I know not if that was the strictly technical name of his complaint) gallop so rapidly over the constitution of one of "Nature's masterpieces." was cowardice that killed him after all: not a sudden explosion of terror, such as breaks the heart like the bursting of a bombshell, but that sapping and mining of the mind and body which is the consequence of an act of supereminent poltroonery. My Bobadil was, like his notorious prototype, an arrant lâche. He generally carried pistols in his pockets, and travelled with a blunderbuss peeping out of his carriage window, but would have no more dared to use one or the other than the original Bobadil his Toledo. Like him, he was fond of dainty oaths, and swore the legiblest of any man christened;" but if a quarrel came of his swaggering, he was sure to be "planet-struck -fascinated by Jupiter!" One of the chief causes of his aversion to lords was one of the most celebrated gourmands of" the order" having published a rigmarole sort of book, in which " the Doctor" was fairly (or unfairly) accused of being a police spy. This he considered a most unkind cut in return for the sundry entertainments he had given the ungrateful peer. The jokes and sarcasms to which he was subjected in consequence led to various disputes, and, on one occasion, being grossly insulted, he was absolutely obliged to come to " the scratch," to send a message, and (like the original Bobadil) " out with his tools," and put himself on his "sweet, comely, gentleman-like guard."

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