I wish I had never seen the countess. Better be convicted of poisoning a postmaster than arrested for trespassing on the czar. I shall surely be shot and probably sent to Siberia, for this is the Livadia cordon, and I am inside it." "Well," I thought, "they are certainly watchdogs and probably Tartar. shall surely be bitten anu possibly devoured. I wish I had walked from Simpheropol. Better have worn out one's boots than have preserved them at the expense of one's person." So 1 turned again, and went into the woods on the right. After pushing some way through the grass I came out on a clear-deep in the ripple in an odd, constrained sun ing planted with vines. In the middle was a staging, and on it stood an unkempt elderly individual. The glinted on the barrel of a long firelock as he moved from side to side, uttering at intervals a melodious bellow. "Well," thought I, "he is certainly a watchman, and he looks like a Jew. If he sees me I shall surely be snot, and possibly prosecuted. Better any fate than a Jewish widow with six children." So I returned to the cliffs, and made my way over the rocks, which were piled halfway up their face, through very thick scrub. When I reached the next headland I saw growing above, on the top of the cliff, a grand bed of wild peonies. I climbed up a steep rock couloir to the top of the bluff, and sitting down among the peonies looked back on the supposed Tartar farm lying below in the full blaze of a Crimean sun. Nothing stirred except some restless or fleabitten dog, but in the strip of shade under the eaves, on a bench which ran the length of the house, lounged yellow serge-clad soldiers in every attitude of heat and boredom. Along the glen, in the shade of rock and tree, stood sentries, as invisible to me when on the opposite bluff as I was then to them, but now as painfully apparent to me as I But I was in the middle of the peonies before this thought had had time to take shape. Unfortunately in moving I started a stone, which fell over the cliffs on the rocks below, ringing through the still air like a pistol shot. It was instantly answered by a hoarse challenge from the beach, repeated a few yards further on, and again further, until the file-fire of Russian gutturals died away round the next headland, and far inland up the glen. "Well." thought I. "they are certainly sentries, and evidently a cordon. I VOL. XI. 571 LIVING AGE. I carefully parted the peonies which screened me from the beach, and looked down. A soldier was standing ankle attitude. I wondered what he was doing, until I noticed that a little bright "o" under his cheek was a rifle barrel, and that I was looking down the muzzle. I withdrew to the depth of the peony bed. A half-hour, I should say, passed; I held my breath all the time. I was roused by a noise of clambering below, and slid one eye towards the edge of the peony bed. Close underneath the round red face of a Russian private rose over the rocks; he clambered steadily up, holding his rifle over his head, and stopping occasionally to wipe the sweat out of his eyes; for the rocks were steep and held the heat like a furnace, and he was a Northerner and a man of the Plains. At the foot of the little cliff he stopped; he looked at the peony bed at the top, he looked at the twenty feet of steep rock below it, then picked up a pebble and threw it up as a deputy. "Hoosh!" said he. I scuffled among the peonies to represent startled animal, and he sat down with his back to the cliffs, with the air of a man who has done more than his duty and means to neglect it a little. 1 picked a bunch of the peonies and looked out again; he still, like a good Russian. had his eyes fixed on Constantinople. a I crept into the woods and through them, keeping a line which would take me out of the angle of the cordon within which I was caught. In the woods 1 passed the other two cordons without difficulty, for I was on the lookout and they were not. Presently I came against a holly hedge, broke through it. and found myself in a labyrinth of gardens, through which I wandered for hours, feeling like a character in the "Arabian Nights." Never again shall I see such a sight as those acres of undercliff. I frequently passed gardeners, but they disturbed me no further than by their profound bows; finally, in a Greek temple arranged as an orchid house, 1 came upon two young ladies cutting flowers. My peonies appeared to draw their attention, and after a little whispering one asked in Russian, "Pray, sir, would you tell us where you found those peonies? My sister and I have often looked for them in the park, but in vain. Oh, thank you! Indeed, we did not mean to deprive you-but if they were really intended for us-at least you must allow us to compensate you;" and she handed me her basket of orchids. "The peonies," said I, "grow on the bluff inside the outside cordon; but they are difficult of access, and if I might sometimes bring some "To General V's quarters, in the left wing," said she. "We will exchange them for some of these flowers which are also difficult of access." A harsh voice outside called, "Sonya, Masha!" "That is the general; we must not stay; do svidanya," said they. I thought I must not either, and hurried away through the other end of the temple; but I now had a purpose. A bunch of peonies had brought me into Livadia; a basket of orchids should get me out of it. I walked as quickly as dignity would permit towards a distant stone wall in which was a gate and a grille faced outside with sheet iron. Beside it stood a guard-house, before it two sentries. and the great golden double-headed eagle sprawled and gaped above. As I came up the two soldiers crossed bayonets before the gate. "But I have not the key, your Excellency," said the poor man in great dis tress.. "Disgraceful negligence!" said I; “go, get it at once." "But the sergeant has it; and he is digging potatoes, and I dare not leave my post." I turned away in despair, to try somewhere else, when in the distance, up the vista of gardens, I saw the two young ladies of the temple, standing with a big man in a large white cap and the uniform of a general of the Guard. One of them held the fatal peonies in her hand, and the big man appeared to be interested in the conversation. Suddenly he wheeled round and strode swiftly in the direction of the gate. -," said I to "There is General Vthe sentries, pointing out the white cap in the distance, as it appeared over an intervening cluster rose. "If he comes and finds me waiting here, there will be a terrible row. Now I do not like getting anybody into trouble, so I will incommode myself so far as to climb over the gate." "Thank your high-well-born Supreme Excellency," said the guards. I went up that gate like a squirrel, orchids and all, for the general's steps were already crunching the gravel of the path behind. As I bestrode the golden eagle he saw me, picked up his sword, and ran, his spurs winking over the grass in the sunlight and the orders twinkling on his tunic. I pride myself on being the first foreigner who ever made a Russian general run. I cut the descent short, picked myself "Why haven't you opened the gate?" up, and hurried down the avenue, praysaid I; "I shall have to wait." "Your well-bornship will pardon," said one; "none may pass." "Absurd," said I. "You know who I am; open at once." "Your high-well-bornship will deign to have patience; it is an order. His Majesty arrives to-morrow." "Of course, but I hasten to her the Supreme Excellency Countess W -, with these flowers from the noble ladies, the daughters of his Excellency the highly honored General ing that the iron gate might be bulletproof, and the potato garden not convenient to the guard-house. I did not run, but that was on account of the patrols. Some of them barred the way, but I waved them aside with the orchids, and they fell back apologetically, and saluted. Presently I met a wellappointed brougham, empty; I stopped it, got in, and told the coachman to - At drive quickly to the Villa W-sunset I entered the countess's hall. I was met by the count. You're safe, then," said he; "that will save trouble; but," he asked anxiously, "have you | Matt Prior, as his friends affectionthe wild peonies of the countess?" "No, but I have the hothouse orchids of the general's daughter," I replied. He shook his head dubiously, and we went into the drawing-room. "You are late for luncheon," said the countess, "and you have not the peonies. Don't explain; it will bore me Oh! how lovely! You Englishmen are wonderful; at noon I leave you in the forest on foot, looking for peonies; at sunset you come out of it in a carriage and pair, with priceless orchids. Pray explain how you came by them. No, it will not bore me. Why, Livadia has not their like! What, you think it has? Very well, then the count shall take you there to-morrow-you could not get in otherwise-with an introduction to General V, the groom of the palace, who will show you the gardens. He has very pretty daughters; take them a bouquet and they will give you flowers which you can bring to me." But I did not explain; nor did I go to Livadia, not seeing any point in which I could improve on my first visit. YEGOR YEGOREVITSCH. From Temple Bar. MATTHEW PRIOR. One day in the year 1680 the Earl of Dorset and other gentlemen being at the Rummer Tavern, Charing Crossthen a fashionable rendezvous-a dispute arose about the meaning of a particular passage in Horace, which, not being settled to the satisfaction of those present, one of them said he was mistaken if there was not a young fellow in the house-the nephew of mine hostwho was able to set them all right, and proposed sending for him. On this recommendation all the company desired he might be called in, when, the difficulty being proposed to him, he explained it with so much modesty that the Earl of Dorset-the Mæcenas of his age-immediately resolved to take him under his protection, and soon after he was sent to St. John's College, Cambridge. The young scholar who thus came to the rescue was Matthew Prior ately called him-well named our English Horace. “Who now reads Prior?" we might say, as Pope said of Cowley. Yet he is the wittiest and most graceful of all our English poets, whether he is writing lines to "Young Lord Buckhurst playing with a cat," or to "The Countess the Thief and the Grave Cordelier," or of Exeter playing on a flute, a ballad on stanzas to: Miss Kitty, beautiful and young, Prior soon vindicated his patron's discrimination. While he was at Cambridge Dryden published his grotesque but powerful satire, "The Hind and the Panther"-the first fruit of his apostasy to Rome-in which wolves, bears, and foxes gravely debate the deepest points of theology and vent their spite against "the milk-white hind, immortal and unchanged," type of the true Church. The fable lent itself to parody, and Prior and his friend Charles Montague came out with a clever burlesque called "The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse." Montague was an earl's grandson, and soon got preferment. Prior had to wait, and he plaintively laments: That one mouse thrives while t'other 's starved. The Earl of Dorset did not, however, forget his protégé. He introduced him to the king, adding facetiously, "I have brought a mouse to have the honor of kissing your Highness's hand." The joke was explained to William, and he at once replied smiling, "You will do me a favor if you will put me in the way of making a man of him." And he was as good as his word. Prior was soon made secretary of the English Embassy to the Congress at the Hague. His quick parts, his industry, his politeness, and his perfect knowledge of the French language marked him out for diplomatic employment. He was a man of the world with the Horatian bonhomie and the Horatian capacity for enjoyment. At the Hague, as throughout life, he took care, he tells us: With labor assiduous due pleasure to mix, And in one day atone for the business of six; In a little Dutch chaise on a Saturday night, On my left hand my Horace, a nymph on A very characteristic picture of the you were a poet, and I took it for granted you did not believe in God." "My lord," said the wit, "you do us poets the greatest injustice. Of all people we are the farthest from atheism, for the atheists do not even worship the true God whom the rest of mankind acknowledge, and we are always invoking and hymning false gods whom everybody else has renounced." This last was true enough. Venus, Which create al: the pleasure poor mortals Jupiter, Mercury, Cupid-the whole enjoy —but his epicureanism, like that of the Roman poet, is so genial and so graceful that it never jars upon us. mythological machinery of Olympus is . Prior's gaiety and wit were just suited There is another anecdote-told by Macaulay-which illustrates his diplomatic address. His chief in the embassy to the Hague was Portland, who thought wits and poets a profane and licentious set. Prior set himself to remove this unfavorable impression. He talked on serious subjects seriously, quoted the New Testament appositely, vindicated Hammond from the charge of popery, and by way of a decisive blow, gave the definition of a true Still dancing in an airy round, He Prior himself never soars to the empyrean, nor does he seek to. rises in his "Solomon" to a lofty didactic strain, but mostly he pipes on "the lower slopes." It is the wit and the savoir faire of the man of the world which charms us in him, not any poetic rhapsodies-a wit not misanthropic, like that of Swift, or malignant, like that of Pope, but good-humored, sparkling, and always sane. He threw off epigrams, tales, songs, satires, epitaphs, and odes just as the inspiration seized Surely he him or the subject arose. must have had a prophetic glimpse of Mr. Gladstone when he penned the lines: For you may speak in Tully's tongue, And all the while be in the wrong; wrote: Church from the nineteenth article. Portland stared at him. "I am glad, Mr. Prior, to find you so good a Chris- and of the Board School when he tian. I was afraid you were an athe"An atheist! My good Lord," ist." cried Prior, "what could lead your lordship to entertain such a suspicion?" "Why," said Portland, "I knew that And.. you would improve your thought, Here is his own epitaph by himself: Nobles and heralds, by your leave came into power his conduct was chal Here lies what once was Matthew Prior, lenged; he was impeached on a charge The son of Adam and of Eve: In his version of the old story of Danae, entitled "The Padlock," we have a good instance of his wit and sense: Tell us, mistaken husband, tell us Why so mysterious, why so jealous? Does the restraint, the bolt, the bar, Make us less curious, her less fair? Sir, will your questions never end? She'll prick her mind-she will, you say, I keep her in one room: I lock it. Dear angry friend, what must be done, Prior, as diplomatist, had helped to arrange the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht, and of course when the Whigs of holding clandestine conferences with the enemy-as if, as he remarks, any treaty was ever settled without preliminary negotiations-and formally imprisoned for two years. He turned his imprisonment, however, to good account, like Bunyan and Lovelace, and composed his "Alma"-a Hudibrastic poem in three books on "The Progress of Mind." Nothing could better illustrate Prior's power of enlivening a dull subject than this. It was the only poem the authorship of which Pope coveted. Here is some of Prior's philosophy: Alma merely is a scale, And motives like the weights prevail If neither side turn down or up With loss or gain, with fear or hope. The balance always would hang even Like Mahomet's tomb 'twixt earth and heaven. This, Richard, is a curious case: Not knowing which was mild or stale; Unless some chance inclines your sight, With his fall Prior lost of course all his emoluments; but he had still his fellowship-it would be bread and cheese to him when all else failed, he had said, when reproached with keeping it, and his fellowship and the profits of a five guinea quarto edition of his poems kept him in affluence as a bachelor, for Prior never married; he is constantly girding at marriage. In his tale called "The Ladle" he tells how: The honest farmer and his wife. Kissing to-day, to-morrow snarling, |