the battle, of which his sister wished to see a repetition. It cost the Romans many ships sunk, ninety-three taken, and according to the historian, the miraculous loss of eight thousand men killed and twenty thousand taken prisoners, while the Carthaginians lost not a ship

or a man.

XLVII.-SHAKING HANDS.

AMONG the first things which we remember noticing in the manners of people, were two errors in the custom of shaking hands. Some we observed, grasped everybody's hand alike, -with an equal fervour of grip. You would have thought that Jenkins was the best friend they had in the world; but on succeeding to the squeeze, though a slight acquaintance, you found it equally flattering to yourself; and on the appearance of somebody else (whose name, it turned out, the operator had forgotten,) the crush was no less complimentary the face was as earnest, and beaming the "glad to see you as syllabical and sincere, and the shake as close, as long, and as rejoicing, as if the semi-unknown was a friend come home from the Deserts.

On the other hand, there would be a gentleman, now and then, as coy of his hand, as if he were a prude, or had a whitlow. It was in vain that your pretensions did not go beyond the "civil salute" of the ordinary shake; or that being introduced to him in a friendly manner, and expected to shake hands with the rest of the company, you could not in decency omit his. His fingers, half coming out and half retreating, seemed to think that you were going to do them a mischief; and when you got hold of them, the whole shake was on your side; the other hand did but proudly or pensively acquiesce-there was no knowing which; you had to sustain it, as you might a lady's, in handing her to a seat; and it was an equal perplexity to know whether to shake or to let it go. The one seemed a violence done to the patient, the other an awkward responsibility brought upon yourself. You did not know, all the evening, whether you were not an object of dislike to the person; till, on the party's breaking up, you saw him behave like an equally ill-used gentleman to all who practised the same unthinking civility.

Both these errors, we think, might as well be avoided; but, of the two, we must say we prefer the former. If it does not look so much like particular sincerity, it looks more like general kindness; and if those two virtues are to be separated (which they assuredly need not be, if considered without spleen), the world can better afford to dispense with an unpleasant truth than a gratuitous humanity. Besides, it is more difficult to make sure of the one than to practise the other, and kindness

itself is the best of all truths. As long as we are sure of that, we are sure of something, and of something pleasant. It is always the best end, if not in every instance the most logical

means.

This manual shyness is sometimes attributed to modesty, but never, we suspect, with justice, unless it be that sort of modesty whose fear of committing itself is grounded in pride. Want of address is a better reason; but this particular instance of it would be grounded in the same feeling. It always implies a habit either of pride or mistrust. We have met with two really kind men who evinced this soreness of hand. Neither of them, perhaps, thought himself inferior to anybody about him, and both had good reason to think highly of themselves, but both had been sanguine men contradicted in their early hopes. There was a plot to meet the hand of one of them with a fish-slice, in order to show him the disadvantage to which he put his friends by that flat mode of salutation; but the conspirator had not the courage to do it. Whether he heard of the intention we know not, but shortly afterwards he took very kindly to a shake. The other * was the only man of a warm set of politicians, who remained true to his first hopes of mankind. He was impatient at the change in his companions, and at the folly and inattention of the rest; but though his manner became cold, his consistency remained warm, and this gave him a right to be as strange as he pleased.

XLVIII.-ON RECEIVING A SPRIG OF

LAUREL FROM VAUCLUSE. AND this piece of laurel is from Vaucluse! Perhaps Petrarch, perhaps Laura sat under it! This is a true present. What an exquisite, dry, old, vital, young-looking, everlasting twig it is! It has been plucked nine months, and yet looks as hale and as crisp as if it would last ninety years. It shall last, at any rate, as long as its owner, and longer, if care and love can preserve it. How beautifully it is turned! It was a happy pull from the tree. Its shape is the very line of beauty; it has berries upon it, as if resolved to show us in what fine condition the trees are; while the leaves issue from it, and swerve upwards with their elegant points, as though they had come from adorning the poet's head. Be thou among the best of one's keepsakes, thou gentle stem, in deliciis nostris ; and may the very maid-servant, who wonders to see thy withered beauty in its frame, miss her lover the next five weeks, for not having the instinct to know that thou must have something to do with love!

Perhaps Petrarch has felt the old ancestral boughs of this branch stretching over his head,

*The late Mr. Hazlitt.

and whispering to him of the name of Laura, of his love, and of their future glory; for all these ideas used to be entwined in one. (Sestina 2, canzone 17, sonetti 162, 163, 164, 207, 224, &c.) Perhaps it is of the very stock of that bough, which he describes as supplying his mistress with a leaning-stock, when she sat in her favourite bower.

Giovane donna sotto un verde lauro
Vidi più bianca e più fredda che neve
Non percossa dal sol molti e molt' anni;
El suo parlar, e 'l bel viso, e le chiome,
Mi piacquer sì, ch' i' l'ho a gli occhi miei,
Ed avro sempre, ov' io sia in poggio o'n riva.

I

Part i. sestina 2.

A youthful lady under a green laurel
Isaw, more fair and colder than white snows
Veil'd from the sun for many and many a year:
And her sweet face, and hair, and way of speaking,
So pleased me, that I have her now before me,
And shall have ever, whether on hill or lea.

The laurel seems more appropriate to Petrarch than to any other poet. He delighted

to sit under its leaves; he loved it both for itself and for the resemblance of its name to

that of his mistress; he wrote of it continually,

and he was called from out of its shade to be

crowned with it in the capitol. It is a remark

able instance of the fondness with which he cherished the united idea of Laura and the laurel, that he confesses this fancy to have been one of the greatest delights he experienced in receiving the crown upon his head.

It was out of Vaucluse that he was called.

Vaucluse, Valchiusa, the Shut Valley (from which the French, in the modern enthusiasm for intellect, gave the name to the department in which it lies), is a remarkable spot in the old poetical region of Provence, consisting of a little deep glen of green meadows, surrounded with rocks, and containing the fountain of the river Sorgue. Petrarch, when a boy of eight or nine years of age, had been struck with its beauty, and exclaimed that it was the place of all others he should like to live in, better than the most splendid cities. He resided there afterwards for several years, and composed in it the greater part of his poems. Indeed, he says in his account of himself, that he either wrote or conceived, in that valley, almost every work he produced. He lived in a little cottage, with a small homestead, on the banks of the river. Here he thought to forget his passion for Laura, and here he found it stronger than ever. We do not well see how it could have

been otherwise; for Laura lived no great way off, at Chabrières, and he appears to have seen her often in the very place. He paced along the river; he sat under the trees; he climbed the mountains; but Love, he says, was ever by his side,

Ragionando con meco, ed io con lui.

He holding talk with me, and I with him. We are supposing that all our readers are acquainted with Petrarch. Many of them

doubtless know him intimately. Should any of them want an introduction to him, how should we speak of him in the gross ? We should say, that he was one of the finest gentlemen and greatest scholars that ever lived; that he was a writer who flourished in Italy in the 14th century, at the time when Chaucer was young, during the reigns of our Edwards; that he was the greatest light of his age; that although so fine a writer himself, and the author of a multitude of works, or rather because he was both, he took the greatest pains to revive the knowledge of the ancient learning, recommending it everywhere, and copying out large manuscripts with his own hand; that two great cities, Paris and Rome, contended which should have the honour of crowning him; that he was crowned publicly, in the Metropolis of the World, with laurel and with myrtle; that he was the friend of Boccaccio, the Father of Italian Prose; and lastly, that his greatest renown nevertheless, as well as the predominant feelings of his existence, arose from the long love he bore for a lady of Avignon, the far-famed Laura, whom he fell in love with on the 6th of April, 1327, on a Good Friday; whom he rendered illustrious in a multitude of sonnets, which have left a sweet sound and sentiment in the ear of all after

lovers; and who died, still passionately beloved, in the year 1348, on the same day and

hour on which he first beheld her. Who she was, or why their connexion was not closer, remains a mystery. But that she was a real person, and that in spite of her staid manners she did not show an altogether insensible countenance to his passion, is clear from his long-haunted imagination, from his own repeated accounts-from all that he wrote, uttered, and thought. One love, and one poet, sufficed to give the whole civilised world a sense of delicacy in desire, of the abundant riches to be found in one single idea, and of the going out of a man's self to dwell in the soul and happiness of another, which has served to refine the passion for all modern times; and perhaps will do so, as long as love renews the

world.

It

the chaise; it may be swifter even than the mail, leaves the stage at a still greater distance in every respect, and (forgetting what it may come to itself) darts by the poor old lumbering hackney with immeasurable contempt. rolls with a prouder ease than any other vehicle. It is full of cushions and comfort; elegantly coloured inside and out; rich, yet neat; light and rapid, yet substantial. The horses seem proud to draw it. The fat and fair-wigged coachman "lends his sounding lash," his arm only in action and that but little, his body well set with its own weight. The footman, in the pride of his nonchalance, holding by the straps behind, and glancing down sideways betwixt his cocked-hat and neckcloth, stands swinging from east to west upon his springy toes. The horses rush along amidst their glancing harness. Spotted dogs leap about them, barking with a princely superfluity of noise. The hammer-cloth trembles through all its fringe. The paint flashes in the sun. We, contemptuous of everything less convenient, bow backwards and forwards with a certain indifferent air of gentility, infinitely predominant. Suddenly, with a happy mixture of turbulence and truth, the carriage dashes up by the curb-stone to the very point desired, and stops with a lordly wilfulness of decision. The coachman looks as if nothing had happened. The footman is down in an instant; the knocker reverberates into the farthest corner of the house; doors, both carriage and house, are open ;—we descend, casting a matterof-course eye at the by-standers; and the moment we touch the pavement, the vehicle, as if conscious of what it has carried, and relieved from the weight of our importance, recovers from its sidelong inclination with a jerk, tossing and panting, as it were, for very breath, like the proud heads of the horses.

All this, it must be owned, is very pretty; but it is also gouty and superfluous. It is too convenient, too exacting, - too exclusive. We must get too much for it, and lose too much by it. Its plenty, as Ovid says, makes us poor. We neither have it in the republic of letters, nor would desire it in any less jacobinical state. Horses, as many as you please, provided men have enough to eat ;hired coaches, a reasonable number: - but health and good-humour at all events.

Gigs and curricles are things less objectionable, because they cannot be so relied upon as substitutes for exercise. Our taste in them, we must confess, is not genuine. How shall we own it? We like to be driven, instead of drive; to read or look about us, instead of keeping watch on a horse's head. We have no relish even for vehicles of this description that are not safe. Danger is a good thing for giving a fillip to a man's ideas; but even danger, to us, must come recommended by something

useful. We have no ambition to have TANDEM written on our tombstone.

The prettiest of these vehicles is the curricle, which is also the safest. There is something worth looking at in the pair of horses, with that sparkling pole of steel laid across them. It is like a bar of music, comprising their harmonious course. But to us, even gigs are but a sort of unsuccessful run at gentility. The driver, to all intents and purposes, had better be on the horse. Horseback is the noblest way of being carried in the world. It is cheaper than any other mode of riding; it is common to all ranks; and it is manly, graceful, and healthy. The handsomest mixture of danger with dignity, in the shape of a carriage, was the tall phaeton with its yellow wings. We remember looking up to it with respect in our childhood, partly for its loftiness, partly for its name, and partly for the show it makes in the prints to novels of that period. The most gallant figure which modern driving ever cut, was in the person of a late Duke of Hamilton; of whom we have read or heard somewhere, that he used to dash round the streets of Rome, with his horses panting, and his hounds barking about his phaeton, to the equal fright and admiration of the Masters of the World, who were accustomed to witness nothing higher than a lumbering old coach, or a cardinal on a mule.

A post-chaise involves the idea of travelling, which in the company of those we love is home in motion. The smooth running along the road, the fresh air, the variety of scene, the leafy roads, the bursting prospects, the clatter through a town, the gaping gaze of a village, the hearty appetite, the leisure (your chaise waiting only upon your own movements), even the little contradictions to home-comfort, and the expedients upon which they set us, all put the animal spirits at work, and throw a novelty over the road of life. If anything could grind us young again, it would be the wheels of a post-chaise. The only monotonous sight is the perpetual up-and-down movement of the postilion, who, we wish exceedingly, could take a chair. His occasional retreat to the bar which occupies the place of a box, and his affecting to sit upon it, only remind us of its exquisite want of accommodation. But some have given the bar, lately, a surreptitious squeeze in the middle, and flattened it a little into something obliquely resembling an inconvenient seat.

If we are to believe the merry Columbus of Down-Hall, calashes, now almost obsolete for any purpose, used to be hired for travelling occasions a hundred years back; but he preferred a chariot; and neither was good. Yet see how pleasantly good-humour rides over its inconveniences.

Then answer'd 'Squire Morley, "Pray get a calash,
That in summer may burn, and in winter may splash;
I love dirt and dust; and 'tis always my pleasure
To take with me much of the soil that I measure.”

But Matthew thought better; for Matthew thought right, And hired a chariot so trim and so tight,

That extremes both of winter and summer might pass; For one window was canvas, the other was glass. "Draw up," quoth friend Matthew; "Pull down," quoth friend John;

"We shall be both hotter and colder anon."

Thus, talking and scolding, they forward did speed;
And Ralpho paced by under Newman the Swede.
Into an old inn did this equipage roll,

At a town they call Hodson, the sign of the Bull;
Near a nymph with an urn that divides the highway,
And into a puddle throws mother of tea.

?

"Come here, my sweet landlady, pray how d'ye do?
Where is Cicely so cleanly, and Prudence, and Sue?
And where is the widow that dwelt here below?
And the hostler that sung about eight years ago
And where is your sister, so mild and so dear,
Whose voice to her maids like a trumpet was clear?"
"By my troth," she replies, "you grow younger, I think :
And pray, Sir, what wine does the gentleman drink?
"Why now let me die, Sir, or live upon trust,
If I know to which question to answer you first:
Why, things, since I saw you, most strangely have varied;
The hostler is hang'd, and the widow is married.
"And Prue left a child for the parish to nurse,
And Cicely went off with a gentleman's purse;
And as to my sister, so mild and so dear,

She has lain in the church-yard full many a year."
"Well; peace to her ashes! What signifies grief?
She roasted red veal, and she powder'd lean beef:
Full nicely she knew to cook up a fine dish;
For tough were her pullets, and tender her fish."-Prior.

This quotation reminds us of a little poem by the same author, entitled the Secretary, which, as it is short, and runs upon chaise-wheels, and seems to have slipped the notice it deserves, we will do ourselves the pleasure of adding. It was written when he was Secretary of Embassy at the Hague, where he seems to have edified the Dutch with his insisting upon enjoying himself. The astonishment with which the good Hollander and his wife look up to him as he rides, and the touch of yawning dialect at the end, are extremely pleasant.

While with labour assiduous due pleasure I 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 my right:
No Memoirs to compose, and no Post-boy to move,
That on Sunday may hinder the softness of love;
For her, neither visits, nor parties at tea,
Nor the long-winded cant of a dull Refugee:
This night and the next shall be hers, shall be mine,-
To good or ill-fortune the third we resign:
Thus scorning the world and superior to fate,
I drive on my car in processional state.
So with Phia through Athens Pisistratus rode;
Men thought her Minerva, and him a new god.
But why should I stories of Athens rehearse,
Where people knew love, and were partial to verse?
Since none can with justice my pleasures oppose,
In Holland half drowned in interest and prose?
By Greece and past ages what need I be tried,
When the Hague and the present are both on my side?
And is it enough for the joys of the day,

To think what Anacreon or Sappho would say?
When good Vandergoes, and his provident vrow,
As they gaze on my triumph, do freely allow,
That, search all the province, you'll find no man dar is
So blest as the Englishen Heer Secretar' is.

If Prior had been living now, he would have found the greatest want of travelling accommodation in a country for whose more serious wants we have to answer, without having her wit to help us to an excuse. There is a story told of an Irish post-chaise, the occupier of which, without quitting it, had to take to his heels. It was going down hill as fast as wind and the impossibility of stopping could make it, when the foot passengers observed a couple of legs underneath, emulating, with all their might, the rapidity of the wheels. The bottom had come out; and the gentleman was obliged to run for his life.

We must relate another anecdote of an Irish post-chaise, merely to show the natural tendencies of the people to be lawless in self-defence. A friend of ours *, who was travelling among them, used to have this proposition put to him by the postilion whenever he approached a turnpike. "Plase your honour, will I drive at the pike?" The pike hung loosely across the road. Luckily, the rider happened to be of as lawless a turn for justice as the driver, so the answer was always a cordial one :-" "Oh yes drive at the pike." The pike made way accordingly; and in a minute or two, the gate people were heard and seen, screaming in vain after the illegal charioteers.

Fertur equis auriga, neque audit currus.-Virgil.
The driver's borne beyond their swearing,
And the post-chaise is hard of hearing.

As to following them, nobody in Ireland thinks of moving too much, legal or illegal.

The pleasure to be had in a mail-coach is not so much at one's command, as that in a postchaise. There is generally too little room in it, and too much hurry out of it. The company must not lounge over their breakfast, even if they are all agreed. It is an understood thing, that they are to be uncomfortably punctual. They must get in at seven o'clock, though they are all going upon business they do not like or care about, or will have to wait till nine before they can do any thing. Some persons know how to manage this haste, and breakfast and dine in the cracking of a whip. They stick with their fork, they joint, they sliver, they bolt. Legs and wings vanish before them like a dragon's before a knight-errant. But if one is not a clergyman or a regular jolly fellow, one has no chance this way. To be diffident or polite, is fatal. It is a merit eagerly acknowledged, and as quickly set aside. At last you begin upon a leg, and are called off.

A very troublesome degree of science is necessary for being well settled in the coach. We remember travelling in our youth, upon the north road, with an orthodox elderly gentleman of venerable peruke, who talked much with a grave-looking young man about univer

* Mr. Shelley.

sities, and won our inexperienced heart with a notion that he was deep in Horace and Virgil. He was deeper in his wig. Towards evening, as he seemed restless, we asked with much diffidence whether a change, even for the worse, might not relieve him; for we were riding backwards, and thought that all elderly people disliked that way. He insinuated the very objection; so we recoiled from asking him again. In a minute or two, however, he insisted that we were uneasy ourselves, and that he must relieve us for our own sake. We protested as filially as possible against this; but at last, out of mere shame of disputing the point with so benevolent an elder, we changed seats with him. After an interval of bland meditation, we found the evening sun full in our face. -His new comfort set him dozing; and every now and then he jerked his wig in our eyes, till we had the pleasure of seeing him take out a nightcap and look very ghastly. The same person, and his serious young companion, tricked us out of a good bed we happened to get at the inn.

The greatest peculiarity attending a mailcoach arises from its travelling at night. The gradual decline of talk, the incipient snore, the rustling and shifting of legs and nightcaps, the cessation of other noises on the road-the sound of the wind or rain, of the moist circuit of the wheels, and of the time-beating tread of the horses -all dispose the traveller, who cannot sleep, to a double sense of the little that is left him to observe. The coach stops, the door opens, a rush of cold air announces the demands and merits of the guard, who is taking his leave, and is anxious to remember us. The door is clapped to again; the sound of everything outside becomes dim; and voices are heard knocking up the people of the inn, and answered by issuing yawns and excuses. Wooden shoes clog heavily about. The horses' mouths are heard, swilling up the water out of tubs. All is still again, and some one in the coach takes a long breath. The driver mounts, and we resume our way. It happens that we can sleep anywhere except in a mail-coach; so that we hate to see a prudent, warm, old fellow, who has been eating our fowls and intercepting our toast, put on his night-cap in order to settle himself till morning. We rejoice in the digs that his neighbour's elbow gives him, and hail the long-legged traveller that sits opposite. A passenger of our wakeful description must try to content himself with listening to the sounds above mentioned; or thinking of his friends; or turning verses, as Sir Richard Blackmore did, "to the rumbling of his coach's wheels."

The stage-coach is a great and unpretending accommodation. It is a cheap substitute, notwithstanding all its eighteen-penny and twoand-sixpenny temptations, for keeping a carriage or a horse; and we really think, in spite of its gossiping, is no mean help to village

liberality; for its passengers are so mixed, so often varied, so little yet so much together, so compelled to accommodate, so willing to pass a short time pleasantly, and so liable to the criticism of strangers, that it is hard if they do not get a habit of speaking, or even thinking more kindly of one another than if they mingled less often, or under other circumstances. The old and infirm are treated with reverence; the ailing sympathised with; the healthy congratulated; the rich not distinguished; the poor well met: the young, with their faces conscious of ride, patronised, and allowed to be extra. Even the fiery, nay the fat, learn to bear with each other; and if some high thoughted persons will talk now and then of their great acquaintances, or their preference of a carriage, there is an instinct which tells the rest, that they would not make such appeals to their good opinion, if they valued it so little as might be supposed. Stoppings and dust are not pleasant, but the latter may be had on grander occasions; and if any one is so unlucky as never to keep another stopping himself, he must be content with the superiority of his virtue.

The mail or stage-coachman, upon the whole, is no inhuman mass of great-coat, gruffness, civility, and old boots. The latter is the politer, from the smaller range of acquaintance, and his necessity for preserving them. His face is red, and his voice rough, by the same process of drink and catarrh. He has a silver watch with a steel-chain, and plenty of loose silver in his pocket, mixed with halfpence. He serves the houses he goes by for a clock. He takes a glass at every alehouse; for thirst, when it is dry, and for warmth when it is wet. He likes to show the judicious reach of his whip, by twigging a dog or a goose on the road, or children that get in the way. His tenderness to descending old ladies is particular. He touches his hat to Mr. Smith. He gives "the young woman" a ride, and lends her his boxcoat in the rain. His liberality in imparting his knowledge to any one that has the good fortune to ride on the box with him, is a happy mixture of deference, conscious possession, and familiarity. His information chiefly lies in the occupancy of houses on the road, prize-fighters, Bow-street runners, and accidents. He concludes that you know Dick Sams, or Old Joey, and proceeds to relate some of the stories that relish his pot and tobacco in the evening. If any of the four-in-hand gentry go by, he shakes his head, and thinks they might find something better to do. His contempt for them is founded on modesty. He tells you that his off-hand horse is as pretty a goer as ever was, but that Kitty-" Yeah, now there, Kitty, can't you be still? Kitty's a devil, Sir, for all you wouldn't think it." He knows that the boys on the road admire him, and gives the horses an indifferent lash with his