of Cæsar's enemies falls away at once when it | surprises, the first invariably met the sudden is collated with the deliberate composition of danger (sudden but never unlooked-for) by Cæsar's own army. Besides that, Cæsar's counter resources of evasion. He showed a enemies were not in any exclusive sense Gauls. new front, as often as his situation exposed a The German tribes, the Spanish, the Helvetian, new peril. At Pharsalia, where the cavalry of the Illyrian, Africans of every race, and Moors; Pompey was far superior to his own, he anticithe islanders of the Mediterranean, and the pated and was in full readiness for the particular mixed populations of Asia, had all been faced manœuvre by which it was attempted to make by Cæsar. And if it is alleged that the forces of this superiority available against himself. By Pompey, however superior in numbers, were at a new formation of his troops he foiled the atPharsalia largely composed of an Asiatic rabble, tack, and caused it to recoil upon the enemy. the answer is that precisely of such a rabble Had Pompey then no rejoinder ready for meetwere the hostile armies composed from which ing this reply? No. His one arrow being shot, he had won his laurels. False and windy repu- his quiver was exhausted. Without an effort at tations are sown thickly in history; but never parrying any longer, the mighty game was surwas there a reputation more thoroughly histri- rendered as desperate. "Check to the king!" onic than that of Pompey. The late Dr. Arnold was heard in silent submission; and no further of Rugby, among a million of other crotchets, stratagem was invoked even in silent prayer, did (it is true) make a pet of Pompey; and he but the stratagem of flight. Yet Cæsar himwas encouraged in this caprice (which had for self, objects a celebrated doctor (viz., Bishop its origin the doctor's political animosity to Warburton), was reduced by his own rashness Cæsar) by one military critic, viz., Sir William at Alexandria to a condition of peril and emNapier. This distinguished soldier conveyed barrassment not less alarming than the condition messages to Dr. Arnold, warning him against of Pompey at Pharsalia. How far this surprise the popular notion, that Pompey was a poor might be reconcilable with Cæsar's military strategist. Now, had there been any Roman credit, is a question yet undecided; but this at state-paper office, which Sir William could be least is certain, that he was equal to the occasupposed to have searched and weighed against sion; and, if the surprise was all but fatal, the the statements of surviving history, we might, evasion was all but miraculous. Many were in deference to Sir William's great experience the sudden surprises which Cæsar had to face and talents, have consented to a rehearing of before and after this-on the shores of Britain, the case. Unfortunately, no new materials have at Marseilles, at Munda, at Thapsus-from all been discovered; nor is it alleged that the old of which he issued triumphantly, failing only as ones are capable of being thrown into new com- to that final one from which he had in pure binations, so as to reverse or to suspend the old nobility of heart announced his determination to adjudications. The judgment of history stands; shelter himself under no precautions. and among the records which it involves, none is more striking than this-that, while Cæsar and Pompey were equally assaulted by sudden It is very evident that Dr. Arnold could not have understood the position of politics in Rome, when he allowed himself to make a favorite of Pompey. The doctor hated aristocrats as he hated the gates of Erebus. Now Pompey was not only the leader of a most selfish aristocracy, but also their tool. Secondly, as if this were not bad enough, that section of the aristocracy to which he had dedicated his services was an odious oligarchy; and to this oligarchy, again, though nominally its head, he was in effect the most submissive of tools. Cæsar, on the other hand, if a democrat in the sense of working by democratic agencies, was bending all his efforts to the reconstruction of a new, purer, and enlarged aristocracy, no longer reduced to the necessity of buying and selling the people in mere self-defense. The everlasting war of bribery, operating upon universal poverty, the internal discase of Roman society, would have been redressed by Caesar's measures, and was redressed according to the degree in which those measures were really brought into action. New judicatures were wanted, new judicial laws, a new aristocracy, by slow degrees a new people, and the right of suffrage exercised within new restrictions -all these things were needed for the cleansing of Rome, and that Caesar would have accomplished this labor of Hercules was the true cause of his death. The scoundrels of the oligarchy felt their doom to be approaching. It was the just remark of Napoleon, that Brutus (but still more, we may say, Cicero), though falsely accredited as a patriot, was, in fact, the most exclusive and the most selfish of aristocrats. Such cases of personal danger and escape are exciting to the imagination, from the disproportion between the interests of an individual and the interests of a whole nation which for the moment happen to be concurrent. The death or the escape of Cæsar, at one moment rather than another, would make a difference in the destiny of many nations. And in kind, though not in degree, the same interest has frequently attached to the fortunes of a prince or military leader. Effectually the same dramatic character belongs to any struggle with sudden danger, though not (like Cæsar's) successful. That it was not successful becomes a new reason for pursuing it with interest; since equally in that result, as in one more triumphant, we read the altered course by which history is henceforward destined to flow. For instance, how much depended-what a weight of history hung in suspense, upon the evasions, or attempts at evasion, of Charles I. He was a prince of great ability; and yet it confounds us to observe, with how little of foresight, or of circumstantial inquiry, either as regarded things or persons, he entered upon these difficult enterprises of escape from the vigilance of military guardians. His first escape, viz., that into the Scottish camp before Newark, was not surrounded with any circumstances of difficulty. His second escape from ing his head through, and upon that result he relied for his escape; for he connected this trial with the following strange maxim or postulate, viz., that wheresoever the head could pass, there the whole person could pass. It needs not to be said, that, in the final experiment. this absurd rule was found not to hold good. The king stuck fast about the chest and shoul ders, and was extricated with some difficulty. Had it even been otherwise, the attempt would have failed; for, on looking down from amidst the iron bars, the king beheld, in the imperfect light, a number of people who were not among his accomplices. Equal in fatuity, almost 150 years later, were the several attempts at escape concerted on behalf of the French royal family. The abortive escape to Varennes is now familiarly known to all the world, and impeaches the good sense of the king himself not less than of his friends. The arrangements for the falling in with the cavalry escort could not have been worse managed had they been intrusted to chil Hampton Court had become a matter of more But even the general outline of the scheme, an escape in a collective family party father, mother, children, and servants-and the king himself, whose features were known to millions, not even withdrawing himself from the public gaze at the stations for changing horses-all this is calculated to perplex and sadden the pitying reader with the idea that some supernatural infatuation had bewildered the predestined victims. Meantime an earlier escape than this to Varennes had been planned. viz., to Brussels. The preparations for this, which have been narrated by Madame de Campan, were conducted with a disregard of concealment even more astounding to people of ordinary good sense. "Do you really need to escape at all?" would have been the question of many a lunatic; "if you do, surely you need also to disguise your preparations for escape." But alike the madness, or the providential wisdom, of such attempts commands our profoundest interest; alike-whether conducted by a Cæsar or by the helpless members of families utterly unfitted to act independently for themselves. These attempts belong to history, and it is in that relation that they become philosophThus, then, from fear of being made a pris-ically so impressive. Generations through an oner Charles had quietly walked into the mili- infinite series are contemplated by us as silently tary prison of Carisbrook Castle. The very awaiting the turning of a sentinel round a corner, security of this prison, however, might throw or the casual echo of a footstep. Dynasties the governor off his guard. Another escape have trepidated on the chances of a sudden cry might be possible; and again an escape was from an infant carried in a basket; and the arranged. It reads like some leaf torn from safety of empires has been suspended, like the the records of a lunatic hospital, to hear its descent of an avalanche, upon the moment circumstances and the particular point upon earlier or the moment later of a cough or a which it split. Charles was to make his exit sneeze. And, high above all, ascends solemnthrough a window. This window, however, ly the philosophic truth, that the least things was fenced by iron bars; and these bars had and the greatest are bound together as elebeen to a certain extent eaten through with ments equally essential of the mysterious uniaqua fortis. The king had succeeded in push-, verse. (From Cumming's Hunting Adventures in South Africa.] FEARFUL TRAGEDY-A MAN-EATING LION. ΟΝ the 29th we arrived at a small village of Bakalahari. These natives told me that elephants were abur Jant on the opposite side of the river. I accordingly resolved to halt here and hunt, and drew my wagons up on the river's bank, within thirty yards of the water, and about one hundred yards from the native village. Having outspanned, we at once set about making for the cattle a kraal of the worst description of thorn-trees. Of this I had now become very particular, since my severe loss by lions on the first of this month; and my cattle were, at night, secured by a strong kraal, which inclosed my two wagons, the horses being made fast to a trek-tow stretched between the hind wheels of the wagons. I had yet, however, a fearful lesson to learn as to the nature and character of the lion, of which I had at one time entertained so little fear; and on this night a horrible tragedy was to be acted in my little lonely camp of so very awful and appalling a nature as to make the blood curdle in our veins. I worked till near sundown at one side of the kraal with Hendric, my first wagon-driver-I cutting down the trees with my ax, and he dragging them to the kraal. When the kraal for the cattle was finished, I turned my attention to making a pot of barley-broth, and lighted a fire between the wagons and the water, close on the river's bank, under a dense grove of shady trees, making no sort of kraal around our sitting-place for the evening. The Hottentots, without any reason, made their fire about fifty yards from mine; they, according to their usual custom, being satisfied with the shelter of a large dense bush. The evening passed away cheerfully. Soon after it was dark we heard elephants breaking the trees in the forest across the river, and once or twice I strode away into the darkness some distance from the fireside to stand and listen to them. I little, at that moment, deemed of the imminent peril to which I was exposing my life, nor thought that a bloodthirsty man-eater lion was crouching near, and only watching his opportunity to spring into the kraal, and consign one of us to a most horrible death. About three hours after the sun went down I called to my men to come and take their coffee and supper, which was ready for them at my fire; and after supper three of them returned before their comrades to their own fireside, and lay down; these were John Stofolus, Hendric, and Ruyter. In a few minutes an ox came out by the gate of the kraal and walked round the back of it. Hendric got up and drove him in again, and then went back to his fireside and lay down. Hendric and Ruyter lay on one side of the fire under one blanket, and John Stofolus lay on the other. At this moment I was sitting taking some barley-broth; our fire was very small, and the night was pitch-dark and windy. Owing to our proximity to the native village the wood was very scarce, the Bakalahari having burned it all in their fires. Suddenly the appalling and murderous voice of an angry, bloodthirsty lion burst upon my ear within a few yards of us, followed by the shrieking of the Hottentots. Again and again the murderous roar of attack was ropeated. We heard John and Ruyter shriek "The lion! the lion!" still, for a few moments, we thought he was but chasing one of the dogs round the kraal; but, next instant, John Stofolus rushed into the midst of us almost speechless with fear and terror, his eyes bursting from their sockets, and shrieked out, "The lion! the lion! He has got Hendric; he dragged him away from the fire beside me. I struck him with the burning brands upon his head, but he would not let go his hold. Hendric is dead! Oh God! Hendric is dead! Let us take fire and seek him." The rest of my people rushed about, shrieking and yelling as if they were mad. I was at once angry with them for their folly, and told them that if they did not stand still and keep quiet the lion would have another of us; and that very likely there was a troop of them. I ordered the dogs, which were nearly all fast, to be made loose, and the fire to be increased as far as could be. I then shouted Hendric's name, but all was still. I told my men that Hendric was dead, and that a regiment of soldiers could not now help him, and, hunting my dogs forward, I had every thing brought within the cattle-kraal, when we lighted our fire and closed the entrance as well as we could. My terrified people sat round the fire with guns in their hands till the day broke, still fancying that every moment the lion would return and spring again into the midst of us. When the dogs were first let go, the stupid brutes, as dogs often prove when most required, instead of going at the lion, rushed fiercely on one another, and fought desperately for some minutes. After this they got his wind, and, going at him, disclosed to us his position: they kept up a continued barking until the day dawned, the lion occasionally springing after them and driving them in upon the kraal. The horrible monster lay all night within forty yards of us, consuming the wretched man whom he had chosen for his prey. He had dragged him into a little hollow at the back of the thick bush beside which the fire was kindled, and there he remained till the day dawned, careless of our proximity. It appeared that when the unfortunate Hendric rose to drive in the ox, the lion had watched him to his fireside, and he had scarcely laid down when the brute sprang upon him and Ruyter (for both lay under one blanket), with his appalling, murderous roar, and, roaring as he lay, grappled him with his fearful claws, and kept biting him on the breast and shoulder, all the while feeling for his neck; having got hold of which, he at once dragged him away backward round the bush into the dense shade. As the lion lay upon the unfortunate man, he I took John and Carey as after-riders, armed, and a party of the natives followed up the spoor and led the dogs. The lion had dragged the remains of poor Hendric along a native footpath that led up the river side. We found fragments of his coat all along the spoor, and at last the mangled coat itself. About six hundred yards from our camp a dry river's course joined the Limpopo. At this spot was much shade, cover, and heaps of dry reeds and trees deposited by the Limpopo in some great flood. The lion had left the foot-path and entered this secluded spot. I at once felt convinced that we were upon him, and ordered the natives to make loose the dogs. These walked suspiciously forward on the spoor, and next minute began to spring about, barking angrily, with all their hair bristling on their backs: a crash upon the dry reeds immediately followed faintly cried, "Help me, help me! Oh God! Several of the dogs were extremely afraid of him, and kept rushing continually backward and springing aloft to obtain a view. I now pressed forward and urged them on; old Argyll and Bles took up his spoor in gallant style, and led on the other dogs. Then commenced a short but lively and glorious chase, whose conclusion was the only small satisfaction that I could obtain to answer for the horrors of the preceding evening. The lion held up the river's bank for a short distance, and took away through some wait-a-bit thorn cover, the best he could find, but nevertheless open. Here, in two minutes, the dogs were up with him, and he turned and stood at bay. As I approached, he stood. his horrid head right to me, with open jaws, growling fiercely, his tail waving from side to side. On beholding him my blood boiled with rage. I wished that I could take him alive and torture him, and, setting my teeth, I dashed my steed forward within thirty yards of him and shouted, "Your time is up, old fellow." I halted my horse, and, placing my rifle to my shoulder, waited for a broadside. This the next moment he exposed, when I sent a bullet through his shoulder and dropped him on the spot. He rose, however, again, when I finished him with a second in the breast. The Bakalahari now came up in wonder and delight. I ordered John to cut off his head and forepaws and bring them to the wagons, and, mounting my horse, galloped home, having been absent about fifteen minutes. When the Bakalahari women heard that the man-cater was dead, they all commenced dancing about with joy, calling me their father. [From Howitt's Country Year-Book.] THE HAUNTED HOUSE IN CHARNWOOD FOREST. before the sun would set, and, feeling refreshed ONE by a little rest, and able for further work, I ordered the steeds to be saddled, and went in search of the lion. NE fine, blustering, autumn day, a quiet and venerable-looking old gentleman might be seen, with stick in hand, taking his way through the streets of Leicester. If any one had fol The old laborer leaned reverently on his spade as the worthy man talked to him. His gray locks, uncovered at his labor by any hat, were tossed in the autumn wind. His dim eye was fixed on the distant sky, that rolled its dark masses of clouds on the gale, and the deep wrinkles of his pale and feeble temples seemed to grow deeper at the thoughts passing within him. He was listening as to a sermon, which brought together his youth and his age; his past and his future; and there were verified on that spot words which Jesus Christ spoke nearly two thousand years ago-" Wherever two or three are met together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." lowed him, they would have found him direct- morning, shining on hills of glory, on waters of ing his steps toward that side of the town which life, on cities of the blest, where no sun rose, leads to Charnwood. The old gentleman, who and no sun set; and where every joyful creature was a Quaker, took his way leisurely, but of joyful youth, who had been dear to him, and thoughtfully, stopping every now and then to true to him and God, would again meet him, see what the farmers' men were about, who and make times such as should cause songs of were plowing up the stubbles to prepare for praise to spring out of his heart, just as flowers another year's crop. He paused, also, at this spring out of a vernal tree in the rekindled and that farm-house, evidently having a pleas- warmth of the sun. ure in the sight of good fat cattle, and in the flocks of poultry-fowls, ducks, geese, and tur keys, busy about the barn-door, where the sound, of the flail, or the swipple, as they there term it, was already heard busily knocking out the corn of the last bountiful harvest. Our old friend-a Friend-for though you, dear reader, do not know him, he was both at the time we speak of―our old friend, again trudging on, would pause on the brow of a hill, at a stile, or on some rustic bridge, casting its little obliging arch over a brooklet, and inhale the fresh autumnal air; and after looking round him, nod to himself, as if to say, "Ay, all good, all beautiful!" and so he went on again. But it would not be long before he would be arrested again by clusters of rich, jetty blackberries, hanging from some old hawthorn hedge; or by clusters of nuts, hanging by the wayside, through the copse. In all these natural beauties our old wayfarer seemed to have the enjoyment of a child. Blackberries went into his mouth, and nuts into his pockets; and so, with a quiet, inquiring, and thoughtful, yet thoughtfully cheerful look, the good old man went on. He seemed bound for a long walk, and yet to be in no hurry. In one place he stopped to talk to a very old laborer, who was clearing out a ditch; and if you had been near, you would have heard that their discourse was of the past days, and the changes in that part of the country, which the old laborer thought were very much for the worse. And worse they were for him for formerly he was young and full of life; and now he was old and nearly empty of life. Then he was buoyant, sang songs, made love, went to wakes and merry-makings; now his wooing days, and his marrying days, and his married days were over. His good old dame, who in those young, buxom days was a roundfaced, rosy, plump, and light-hearted damsel, was dead, and his children were married, and had enough to do. In those days, the poor fellow was strong and lusty, had no fear and no care; in these, he was weak and tottering; had been pulled and harassed a thousand ways; and was left, as he said, like an old dry kex-i. e. a hemlock or cow-parsnip stalk, hollow and dry, to be knocked down and trodden into the dust some day. Yes, sure enough, those past days were much better days than these days were to him. No comparison. But Mr. John Basford, our old wanderer, was taking a more cheerful view of things, and telling the nearly worn-out laborer, that when the night came there followed morning, and that the next would be a heavenly He was in the midst of the two only. There was a temple there in those open fields, sanctified by two pious hearts, which no ringing of bells, no sound of solemn organ, nor voice of congregated prayers, nor any preacher but the ever-present and invisible One, who there and then fulfilled His promise and was gracious, could have made more holy. Our old friend again turned to set forward; he shook the old laborer kindly by the hand, and there was a gaze of astonishment in the old man's face-the stranger had not only cheered him by his words, but left something to cheer him when he was gone. The Friend now went on with a more determined step. He skirted the memorable park of Bradgate, famous for the abode of Lady Jane Grey, and the visit of her schoolmaster, Roger Ascham. He went on into a region of woods and hills. At some seven or eight miles from Leicester, he drew near a solitary farm-house, within the ancient limits of the forest of Charnwood. It was certainly a lonely place amid the woodlands and the wild autumn fields. Evening was fast dropping down; and as the shade of night fell on the scene, the wind tossed more rushingly the boughs of the thick trees, and roared down the rocky valley. John Basford went up to the farm-house, however, as if that was the object of his journey, and a woman opening it at his knock, he soon disappeared within. Now our old friend was a perfect stranger here; had never been here before; had no acquaintance nor actual business with the inhabitants, though any one watching his progress hither would have been quite satisfied that he was not wandering without an object. But he merely stated that he was somewhat fatigued with his walk from the town, and requested leave to rest awhile. In such a place, such a request is readily, and even gladly granted. |