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of unsafe acquaintances; her beauty, brilliant manners, and desire for admiration must add to the danger: she would be an agreeable guest at Melbourne Priory, and a residence there might preserve her from ensnarers. Lady Jemima assented with joy, and the reappearance of Mr. and Mrs. Gilman put a period to the subject of conversation.

suitable for half her reputed age. In showy attainments she was not deficient; and Mrs. Gilman hoped she could contribute in remedying the glaring defects in her moral and mental education, as Lady Melbourne and her daughter had conferred on herself an inestimable benefit of the same tendency.

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The regiment was ordered to Naples, and Gilman seemed to rejoice that in a warmer climate his Madalena's constitution might be renovated. In her presence, but without consulting her, he asked Miss Jervas to accompany them to Italy. The climate of Naples was speedily beneficial to Mrs. Gilman's health; yet, soon after

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The influence and example of the ladies at Melbourne Priory led Mrs. Gilman to perceive the improprieties and risks attending giddy vivacity, and anxious thoughts about Gilman helped to dispose her for rational consideration. Eac Each day brought a more salutary development of her excellent dispositions and fine understand-she was able to mix in society, a new ing; and when Gilman returned from Egypt, deprived of sight by the ophthalmia, she became eyes to the blind; a guide, a support, and agent in business for the helpless; assuaging his impatience, and exerting her varied attainments to amuse his fretful despondency. He recovered the visual faculty; but the birth of a stillborn son brought Mrs. Gilman to the verge of the grave. Before her recovery, Gilman purchased the majority of his regiment, and Mrs. Gilman had the pain of observing, that his medical skill was no longer at her service. He left her to the care of physicians and nurses, while he and his cousin, Miss Jervas, rode out together on favourable days, or played chess and read novels, if rain confined them within doors. Miss Jervas was said to be fourteen when she came to visit Mrs. Gilman. Her tall, well-formed figure might be the growth of more years, but her childish simplicity, sportive restlessness, and

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intemperate gaiety were more Vol. III. No. XV.

and bitter sorrow preyed on her spirits. She saw proofs on proofs that Gilman was more successful in misleading, than she could be in guiding, the unprincipled Miss Jervas to amend her foibles. Though she endeavoured to save the infatuated young creature from utter ruin, and her husband from a criminal entanglement, she uniformly disdained and avoided the prying inquisitiveness of jealousy, nor did one upbraiding look or word provoke Gilman's unkindness. The British troops were ordered to Sicily; and, in a strange place, Madalena suffered contumely and insult in every shape that could assail a wife, who in private scrupulously guarded against contention, and in public studied to throw a veil of decorum over the profligacy, which all her gentle vigilance, all her enduring sweetness could not prevent. Not to think of her wrongs was impossible; but how to think of them, and how to act, she stedfastly submitted to the unappealable in

X

THE DRILLED GOBLINS.

to ascendency in military councils. More than one artist entreated leave to take from his face and person the most perfect models of manly beauty; and in most questions regarding warlike, erudite, or scientific affairs, the opinion of Colonel Gilman was quot

junctions of duty. She did not deem Major Gilman's crime an exoneration from conjugal forbearance; but she considered also what was due to herself; and assigning as the cause for seclusion a recurrence of some of the ailments she suffered in England, she averted the degradation of ap-ed as ulterior authority. But the pearing in public with a girl who had forfeited all right to unblemished society. Major Gilman often applied to her for the money she saved in retirement, and never was refused the accommodation; yet her heart was wrung to think that the expenditure would be grossly vicious.

Lady Melbourne employed her interest for promotion to the husband of her favourite, which, with his valour and conduct at the battle of Maida, procured him the rank of lieutenant-colonel. His intellectual superiority, his finished education, insinuating address, and professional renown, made him acceptable in the highest and best informed circles. The plaudits of news-writers in England spread his fame as an officer, and echoed the voice of Sicilian nobles, who extolled his graces, and prided themselves in being reputed his intimates. The ladies sung verses in his praise; and the populace almost worshipped a hero, whose affability, with elegant ease, descended to the very lowest that approached him. Speaking their language with fluency, Colonel Gilman often gained from the too much despised labourer or mendicant intelligence which directed his judgment, and entitled him

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large and splendid space he filled in the public eye was at home changed to a gloomy paramo, frigid, barren, and tempestuous.

The delightful creature in gay parties is not always the most pleasant and endearing master of a family. Colonel Gilman was a tyrant to the best of wives, who raised him to affluence; he was the seducer of a weak-minded, puerile relation; a gambler; the slave of convivial excess, and of all the vices that follow inebriety. The pure heart of Madalena revolted at the most sacred affinity to an audacious libertine, and she dared not ask herself, if she still loved the man she must cease to esteem; but the consciousness of repentance for her ill-advised marriage superseded all further inquiry into her feelings, and she shuddered at the conviction, that the character of her husband was repugnant to all she held dear and venerable in rectitude and religion. In her twentieth year, with all the advantages of beauty and fortune, one rash step had made life to her comfortless and desolate; and her afflictions were of a nature that forbade complaint, or the relief afforded by sympathy. (To be continued.)

GHOST STORIES.-No. V.
THE DRILLED GOBLINS.

WHEN Lieutenant-General de Pennavaire of the Prussian army, who died in 1759 of a wound which he

had received near Breslau, belonged to the regiment of cuirassiers, he had occasion, while in quarters, to

John (shewing the black spots on his arms). Look here, sir! Here are proofs that I have not been dreaming, but that I have really been tackled by the goblin.

form an acquaintance with a goblin pair. The following authenticated statement of this adventure is the more remarkable, as it proves that spirits cannot wholly divest themselves of earthly propensities. Major. Pooh! nonsense! If there Early one morning Major de Pen-be such a thing as a ghost, it cannot navaire rang his bell for his valet. gripe one-a ghost has not flesh and It was a considerable time before he bone-if it can gripe, it must have a answered the summons, and when body too. he did appear, he looked like a man in a high fever. Being asked why he had staid so long, and not come at the first call, he replied, that a Kobold had almost worried him to death. This goblin, according to his account, had, the preceding evening, when he had gone into the garret to fetch a saddle, appeared to him, first large, then small, and with eyes like flames of fire: it had seized him with such violence as if it would have torn him piecemeal, a fact which the black spots on his arms sufficiently attested. He added, that he had indeed tried to defend himself, but against so formidable a being resistance was equally dangerous and unavailing.

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Thus far the major, who was a Frenchman by birth, had listened quietly; but, with a smile, he now began in his broken German, the ludicrous effect of which cannot of course be communicated to any translation: "Harkee, Jean, thou art an addle-headed fellow: thy brains are full of Kobolds, or thou art a downright liar. I have never yet met with any goblins in my quarters. Thou must have been in thy cups yesterday, and then dreamt all this stupid stuff."

John. Begging your pardon, sir, I was as sober as your honour always is. Major. Ha! rogue, hold thy tongue! I do get fuddled too now and then. But proceed with thy story.

John could not comprehend this reasoning: at any rate he was less disposed to believe it than his senses, which had too painfully convinced him of the existence of a griping goblin. He appealed moreover to the testimony of the coachman, that the garrets of the house were actually haunted. The latter, a courageous fellow, who would not have hesitated at the command of his master to grapple old Beelzebub himself, declared, that it was impossible to question the fact of the house being haunted by a goblin, which could at pleasure make itself large or small; adding, that he knew it, but was not afraid of it, since it had never seized and griped him as it had done his fellow-servant.

At this confirmation the major stormed furiously against his cowardly and superstitious rascals, and swore that " he would not suffer a Kobold which could make itself large or small to remain in his house, but would send it packing to h-ll.” He was the more seriously bent on fulfilling this intention, as he learned, to his no small vexation, that the story of his house being haunted had already spread throughout the whole town, and, as is generally the case, had received many wonderful additions.

Accordingly, at an hour when the goblin was accustomed to play its

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pranks, the resolute major, without || dimensions, but not till the impatient saying a word to any one, but pro- major had cried, “If you not make vided with a brace of loaded pistols, yourself grand, I pepper you soundrepaired to the haunted spot, and ly!"-Of course the next experiment actually found what he hoped to en- was the making petit-and these alcounter. A fearful figure, in white, ternate orders were repeated withwas cowering in a dark corner behind out intermission. ""Tis a truly coa chimney. Our hero could distinct-mical ghost!" said the major to himly discern only just enough to be satisfied that it was not a human being; because, though seated, it was taller than the flugleman of his company. "Haha!" said he, " this must certainly be Monsieur Kobold! Come forward, Monsieur Kobold!"

self, laughing:-" it can make itself grand and petit-let's now drill it a bit."

During this exercise the officer fancied that he could perceive another goblin-like shape in the obscure corner, "Halt!" he all at once exThe spectre did not think fit to claimed: "where Monsieur Kobold obey the injunction, but the major, is, there must surely be Madame to give weight to his command, de- Koboldine too." The major guessclared, that unless the figure instant- ed perfectly right. The Koboldine, ly complied, he would certainly fire. enveloped in a white sheet, was likeNo sooner had the goblin received wise obliged to come forward, and as the second summons coupled with she too understood the art of makthis menace, than, struck by the ma- ing herself large and small, she had jor's resolute air, it sprung forth from to go through the same course of its dark retreat, and endeavoured to discipline as her mate. It was one escape its disturber by flight. The of the maid-servants who had assumcry of "Halt! or I'll fire!" soon, ed this disguise, to favour certain prihowever, arrested its steps." Now, vate interviews with the major's coachharkee, Monsieur Kobold,make your-man, the natural consequence of which self grand!" The gigantic figure was, that in due time she presented accordingly increased its prodigious" the world with a little Kobold,

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PARISIAN GAMBLING-HOUSE DINNER.

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MEN of business commonly ima-, graphers, by means of compass and the stars, find the pathways through the great world with more ease than your men of business with their special map can find the high-roads. Provided with a stock of philosophical knowledge, I contrived, notwithstanding my youth, to avoid all the snares of sharpers, and to withstand the allurements of pleasure. Many of my countrymen who boast of their knowledge of the world have not

gine that the studious know nothing
of life: they regard us as a species
of nightingales, who are out of their
element unless in solitude and dark-
ness. I must own that I was long
of this opinion myself; and it was a
real consolation to me to discover,
that after all I was not so excessively
learned. I have been thoroughly
cured of this notion, however, since
I have been at Paris. I have con-
vinced myself, that we general geo-" been so fortunate.

ed this temple of Fortune, that I soon forgot the humour in which I had come, and was thrown for some hours into the greatest embarrassment. I fancied myself at the court of Philip II. and it required the aid of the champagne and other generous wines to restore to me all my self-possession.

Mr. Corduroy, a rich Manchester question, inclosing tickets of admismanufacturer, of my acquaintance, sion for himself and two others. He was one day extolling his laquai de requested me to accompany him. place, whom he described as the About five o'clock in the afternoon most honest fellow in the world. I we repaired to the hôtel in question. came, heard, and on philosophical With the confidence with which a grounds concluded that the fellow virtuous man faces villains, I entered was a rogue. When a young man, the house, that might with greater he had assisted in storming the Bas- propriety be termed a palace. But-tille; during the Revolution, includ- what a fool is man! and how easily ing the imperial reign, he had been is he dazzled by the grossest delusuccessively a coachman, friseur, wa- sions!-such was the gravity, the soter-carrier, porter, and commissio-lemnity, the decorum which pervadnaire; but since the Restoration he had followed the profession of a lacquey Though fifty-six years old, <he was still brimful of sentimentality. He declared, that the aim of all his exertions was to save so much money as would enable him to retire to the lovely village which gave him birth on the banks of the Loire, that he might there end his days far from We began indeed to feel some the vices and depravity of Paris, He qualms in the street before we endescribed to my friend all the various tered the hôtel. The most brilliant species of dissipation to be found in equipage, with tall yägers behind, that dissipated capital, in order to drove up, and set down persons dewarn him against them. He could corated with stars and ribbons. We not in particular depict the gambling- were the only pedestrians. The porhouses and those who frequented ter, as we passed his lodge, inquired them in colours sufficiently black, our business. We replied, that we and deplored the culpable means em- had come to dinner. The porter ployed to lead strangers into ruin. smiled, and said, that no dinners were He related, among other things, that given here. My conductor shewed at one of these establishments there his tickets, and we were allowed to was kept an open table twice a week proceed. We entered an apartment for strangers, who were there right on the ground-floor, where a dozen royally entertained. The magnifi- insolent menials were playing their cence of his description piqued the wanton pranks. Mr. C. asked where curiosity of his employer, who ex- the company dined. "Not here," pressed a strong desire to dine for was the reply. We left the place, once at this decoy-house. The ho- and went up one pair of stairs, where nest lacquey shrugged his shoulders, at length we found the dining-room. as a silent intimation of his danger. My companion inquired of the atNext day, however, my friend re- tendants, who were engaged in layceived a polite invitation to dinnering the table, when dinner would be from the directors of the house in ready; but the scoundrels gave him

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