the hearts of their pupils? You are too young, low; methinks, had I been the peasant, I should Pavel, to understand what I mean; but one day have struck him dead at my feet." "Ay, but the peasant knew better-his life is dear to him, serf though he be." you will more easily feel that it was as impolitic as it was cruel to refuse so long placing us on a par with the rest of the world. Now, before "Serf-serf," repeated the boy, and not all looking in at the fair, I must go and see if certain the gayety of the fair could dissipate the idea debtors of mine cannot be brought to feel that I connected with that word, which haunted him have a right to my money. I lent it to them at a throughout the day. At last their purchases time when no Christian would have advanced a were made, and Pavel was most eager to return stiver of course, I take an unusual interest on home, for to him the pain of witnessing the deep it, for if nothing had tempted me to take upon humiliation of Noah, part of which was reflected myself so onerous a bargain, what should have upon himself, was as exquisite as it was new. induced me to run the risk?" Emerging from the Jewish quarter into a street of fine appearance, Noah entered one of its most showy houses, leaving Pavel the whilst outside. When he again made his appearance, his face was sadder, and he looked about him with a more timid air than before. "I have been paid, as usual, with threats," he said. "It is one of those many houses that indulge in a criminal expenditure which is to be Turning down the principal street leading to the town gate, they passed beneath a scaffolding erected against one of the houses, and the boy chancing to raise his head, encountered the malicious glances of a couple of young house-painters engaged in their avocations immediately above him. With a cry of derision the youths flung down on poor Noah's bright new silk dress and cap as much of their white paint as their brushes could contain. For the first time that day Pavel covered by any means, lawful or unlawful, that saw the meek being wince under hard usage, and can be devised; but even whilst yon proud gen- as the boys in the street echoed the hoarse laugh"Of that I have not the means of judging," | workmen of the towns that you monopolize all the Noah replied. "Many a lord's son is his own trade." brother's vassal; many a nephew has mounted behind the carriage in which his aunt sat; it all depends which side the relationship comes." eral spoke to me with such contempt, and in so high a tone, and with such coarse words, and would have me thrown down stairs, forsooth, I read on his pale brow and in his anxious eye cares worse than those that hover round my board. I would not change conditions with him." A little further on a drove of cattle blocked the way, and compelled Noah and Pavel to step beneath a gateway. Whilst waiting patiently the moment when they could resume their peregrinations, they heard two voices, one raised in anger, the other in a tone of supplication, issuing from a courtyard, and, turning round, they saw a young man, in a military costume, belaboring to his heart's content, about head, face, and neck, a gigantic young peasant, who held the reins of two powerful horses. To effect this piece of brutality, the young officer had been obliged to mount upon the wheel of the vehicle. One touch of the whip on the fiery animals, and the tormentor would have been flung to the earth, but the young peasant, even whilst howling beneath his master's blows, instinctively tightened the reins. One thrust of his iron hand might have proved deadly to the effeminate-looking being who indulged in this paroxysm of despotism, and yet that strong hand stirred not. Pavel could not endure the sight. He who, a couple of years previous, had coolly witnessed the flogging of men, and, for that matter, of women too, in the general's stable-yard -nay, had himself struck older children than himself, as confident in their passiveness as was now the elegant officer in that of his victim-he covered his eyes in disgust, and ran from the spot. But he then ranked among the strikers, and was now likely to rank among the struck, and this change had quickened his sensibilities. "It was a shocking sight!" he said, as soon as the Jew rejoined him; "I wonder that strong man could endure so much from such a puny fel ter of those on the scaffolding, two hot tears stole down Noah's subdued countenance. Pavel felt his blood boil. partly for the unmerited aggression, and partly at what he considered the unmanliness of Noah's resignation. He was on the point of giving utterance to his feelings in ungentle expressions, when the Jew, guessing by his heightening color and flashing eye what was passing in his mind, seized him by the arm, and hurried him away; nor did he loosen his hold until they had left the town gate behind them. You "You mean it well, you mean it kindly, Pavel, I know," he said, "but you might have brought us to a fearful pass-child that you are! know not yet what it is to be mobbed; you know not what it is to be a Jew! Ah!" he added, heaving a deep sigh as he gazed on his besmeared vestment, " it is not for this foolish stuff that I grieve; it is for my Salome's vexation. But what right have we to wear fine, or even clean things? No other joys are permitted us but those we conceal. We are obliged to hide our every pleasure, however innocent, and people accuse us of mystery! They laugh at our innocence, and shudder at our imagined crimes! Ay, it's a hard lot to bear; 1 know but of one which at all resembles it-it is that of the vassal." "But I-I-" said Pavel; he stopped short, his breathing became thick, his voice husky, " I-I am no vassal!" The inflection of doubt which he gave those words went to Noah's very heart. There were suppressed tears, there was a poignant anguish, in the tremor of that voice. "You, my poor boy," said Noah, "I know it not for sure, but have been told so by your cousin -you are registered as such on the estate on which you were born." "I may be so inscribed, but I am not!" said the boy, proudly. "If I thought so, I would run away," said Pavel. "You would get no passport." "Can a man, then, be rooted, like a tree, to a particular spot?" "Even so." "Then it is his own fault," said Pavel, with vehemence, " if he make not those repent who keep him against his will!" "Very true," said Noah; "but of what use is one man standing forth to revenge the wrongs of the community? He only forfeits his life." "What's life?" exclaimed Pavel, disdainfully. "Even that charge I will not deny. No one could buy or sell-there were no traffic in Poland or in Gallicia without our aid-the whole activity of the land is ours. But why is it? Because we are more industrious, more active than the people of the soil. Where we have found competition, as in Russia, have we been able to supersede the natives? No! Besides, are we not also children of the soil? have we not been born upon it for centuries? Take away a heartless prejudice which the priesthood, in times past, created, and envy has fanned, and have we not a right to call ourselves Poles, and to flourish as part and parcel of the nation? You know, Pavel, you yourself were delighted the other day with the account given us "A thing you don't yet know," said Noah, with by a learned brother of my creed, of a distant coun a sad smile. "Besides, that's not the worst. He who rises singly is but a criminal. It's only when one can, by his example, effect a useful progress gain a general aim, that any deed of violence can be excused-it were otherwise but an instance of private vengeance which a man cannot justify even to his own conscience. It were, moreover, totally useless. It would only embitter the condition of the rest. But what are we talking of?-subjects try called America; well, do you think that the foreign settlers there will not, in fewer centuries than we have dwelled in Europe, call that land their own, and consider themselves part of the nation? Is it not madness to treat us as strangers or mere sojourners who have, generation after generation, been born on the land, and have no other to go to? Why should we not be Poles or Germans; because we do not believe in the divinity of far beyond your years, if not beyond your discre- Christ? Are there not thousands of Poles and tion. I wish my poor Salome had not so set her heart on this dress-ay, it is a sad thing to be a Jew! You have seen but little to-day of the humiliation it is our lot to encounter. I was once present with some friends, at a grand review in Warsaw, and to command a better sight we got up into a tree. Would you believe it?-under pretence of inadvertency, we were fired at, and one or two of us dropped to the ground, more hurt, I will own, by the fall-and the shouts of merriment with which the incident was witnessed by the Christian spectators, ay, even by fine ladies in their carriagesthan by the shot; but blood flowed, and a limb was broken." "I will tell you," said Pavel, "your chief sin lies in submitting as you do-it is your tameness that makes you the scorn of the Christians." Germans who share that heresy? And if we could be crushed into a hopeless poverty-if the laws should increase in severity, what might not be feared from our numbers and our despair?" "But you have no wish to return to Jerusalem," said Pavel. "What should we do there?" "That's it," said Pavel; "the moment you cannot earn money you will have nothing to say to anything. I'll be bound you would not care to enter into Paradise if you could not traffic there, and, what 's more cheat!" "We are what people have made us," answered Noah, darkly. "Before casting our sins in our teeth, let them do something towards improving us. No one pays higher taxes to the state; and yet does government give us schools, hospitals, a clergy, asylums, or the benefit of any public institution? All these we have to provide for ourselves, or do without. And think you that hate begets love "Does the savage vindictiveness of the gypsy, a wanderer and an outcast like ourselves, cause him to be respected? An oppressed people who have no hold on the sympathies of the rest of the oppression, cheerful acquiescence? Go ask the human race would be misunderstood in their just resentment as they have been in their resignation." "But, then, the peasants complain," said Pavel, "that you get possession of all their lands, and the [COOKE THE ACTOR-HIS MENTAL INTOXICATIONS.] COOKE the actor says in one of his journals, "To use a strange expression, I am sometimes in a kind of mental intoxication. Some I believe would call it insanity; I believe it is allied to it. I then can imagine myself in strange situations, and in strange places. This humor, or whatever it is, comes uninvited, but is nevertheless easily dispelled; at least generally so. When it cannot be dispelled, it must of course become madness." serf how he feels towards his lord?" And thus was Pavel taught early to enter upon the most dangerous social questions, and to view them in the darkest light. Upon this curious passage his biographer remarks, "These mental intoxications, it is needless to observe, were the consequence of physical intoxications; and it was in these humors, when he could imagine himself in strange situations and strange places. But he used to indulge himself in a species of romancing that might perhaps be termed coherent madness."-Dunlop's Memoirs of George Frederick Cooke, vol. 1, p. 104. From Fraser's Magazine. THE MATCHLIGHTER OF SAN ADRIAN. A TALE OF THE MEXICAN MINES. THE sun had not yet attained its meridian height above the bare and rugged mountains of Zacatecas, when a man in the garb of a Mexican miner descended slowly down a narrow and tortuous path which wound along the side of a steep declivity. At length he reached a spot where a small platform or shelf, jutting from the mountain slope, and covered with vegetation, seemed to invite him to rest. It appeared, indeed, that he had intended to stop at this spot, for he turned aside at once and seated himself on the green sward beside a fountain which here gushed from the overhanging steep, and created by its moisture the verdure that surrounded it. Directly over this spring, a large tree, a species of mountain ash, sent its thousand roots into the crevices of the rock, and shaded with its spreading branches the gushing fount and the green turf beneath. The miner's first act was to take a long draught of the refreshing wave, and then he proceeded to bathe his face and hands in the running water. When the earth-stains which covered his visage were washed away, he appeared a young creole of some twenty-two or three years, with a bright black eye, long straight hair, dark complexion, and a frank, gay, fearless expression of countenance. He wore a coarse jacket and loose trousers of some brown woollen stuff, bound at the waist by a leather girdle, in which was thrust the never-failing knife. He sat for a time, whistling carelessly, with his eyes fixed on the descending path. Presently a wide covered basket became visible in this direction, with a small hand grasping it on one side. Then a pretty face, with a pair of sparkling black eyes, and two small ruddy lips, parted in a smile of pleasure and surprise, came into view. Then followed the erect and shapely figure to which the pretty face belonged, gayly auired, as became a miner's wife, in a gorgeous petticoat, whereof the upper part was of a bright yellow and the lower of a flaming scarlet; an equally brilliant roboso, or cotton shawl, of many variegated hues, was thrown over the shoulders, and the small feet were daintily encased in skyblue satin shoes. "Enhorabuena-in good time, Margarita," said the miner, showing his white teeth. "I am here before you." "Yes, in good truth," replied the young woman, laughing; "and I was afraid all the time that I might be too early, and the tortillas and frijoles would get cold. But now they will be a dinner fit for a governor." red pepper and tomatoes. This was the miner's simple dinner. Tearing off a piece of one of the tortillas, he twisted it with his fingers into a sort of scoop, (called in Mexico la cuchara de Montezuma, or Montezuma's spoon,) and taking up in this a mouthful of the beans, he dipped it into the burning sauce, and swallowed it, spoon and all. "How is it that you are so early to-day, Manuelito?" asked the female, who watched him with an affectionate smile, while he was thus satisfactorily engaged. "Because, mi corazoncito-my little heart," replied the young man, "there is to be another blast to-day; and the administrador wishes to have it fired while the men are at dinner." The smile instantly disappeared from Margarita's face. "Santa Maria!" she exclaimed, "another blast! Oh, Manuel, how long do you mean to continue in this dreadful duty?" "Until I can find a better, my life," replied the miner gayly. "Would you have me go back to my old employment of barretero of simple miner at six dollars a week, when here as pegador, as the sole and trusted matchlighter, I am earning sixteen?" "Alas!" returned Margarita, " of what use will the money be, if it happen to you as to Pedro Bravo, only three months ago? Ah, I think I see the mangled body, as it was carried by our cottage, with poor Inesita crying over it. And then, there is Juan Valdez, stone-blind now for five years. And old Anton, a cripple from his youth. Of what advantage was their high wages to them?" "None, sweetheart," replied Manuel, "because what they won by boldness and skill they lost by carelessness. If a man will persist in firing matches when his brain is muddled with aguardiente, he must expect to suffer for it. However, I shall not be a pegador always. In good time, if it please San Francisco, I shall be captain of a mine. And who knows but that one of these days I may be an administrador-an overseer, and a rich man, as well as others?" "To be sure," replied Margarita, eagerly. Why not you as well as Miguel Gomez? -Don Miguel, forsooth, as he must be called now! And yet I remember him when he was only a poor buscon-a common mine-hunter, and always in debt to my father for aguardiente and tobacco. Yet because he happened to light on a good vein, and sold it to the English company for ten thousand dollars, and was made overseer, he thinks himself now a great gentleman, and that everybody must give way to him." "Poor Don Miguel!" said the miner, laughing. "You are too hard upon our administrador, Margarita. First, you refuse his hand and heart, not With these words she quickly deposited her burden on the ground, and removed the covers, first from the basket, and then from the earthen- to speak of his dollars; and then you abuse him ware dishes which it contained. There was a behind his back." plate of tortillas, or thin pancakes of maize, a bowl of stewed frijoles, (a kind of small black beans,) and another bowl containing a fiery sauce made of "Ah!" said Margarita, hastily, " if you knew -" and then she stopped suddenly, as if she had said more than she intended. "What is there that you know, mi mugercitamy little wife, that I do not?" asked Manuel, looking up in surprise. "I "It was something that happened before our marriage," replied Margarita, seriously. promised then to conceal it; but I have often been troubled since with the thought of my promise. If I sin in breaking it now, I will beg Padre Isidro to absolve me, for I know there should be no secrets between us two. It was Anita, the wife of Juan Pedraza, the poor drunken cargador, who told me what she heard from her husband. When you and Miguel Gomez were quarrelling for love Si las minas de San Bernabé Which may be rendered : If Saint Barnabas' mine Manuel's song ceased when he reached the Rinconada, a sharp angle in the path, beside which the precipice sank plump down, a sheer descent of more than five hundred feet. The of me," continued the young woman, with naïve recollection of what his wife had just told him the bucket had descended a dozen yards, the roar | him. After some reflection, he fixed upon the of the explosion smote upon their ears, and a direction in which he judged the passage to lie, cloud of smoke and dust was driven violently up and swam carefully towards it. He was soon the shaft, and filled the galera. When it cleared convinced, by the space passed over, that he was away, the faces of all present were seen to be pale with horror. gravity, "Juan said that Miguel promised him the place of captain of the galera, with twenty dollars a week, if he would commit a dreadful crime. It was to follow you when you were coming down the mountain, and push you off the precipice at the Rinconada, so that you might seem to have fallen by accident. Juan would not be guilty of such a horrible act for the world, but he was so afraid of the overseer that he dared not speak of it to any one but his wife. I did not know it till after we were married, and then I would not tell you because it could do no good; for Gomez knows now that if I were free to-morrow I would rather jump off the Rinconada myself than take him with all his money." "The villain!" said Manuel, while his eyes sparkled and his hand clutched instinctively at his knife. "It was well for him, Margarita, that you did not tell me this a year ago. But perhaps he has repented of it since; he has been very good-natured to me of late. However, I think his time is up. The English director, Don Jayme, came this morning from Mexico, and seems very much dissatisfied with the working of the mine. It is whispered among the men that the overseer is certain to lose his place." "Ah, that is good news, indeed!" said Margarita, clasping her hands. "And so this was the reason," added Manuel, gayly, "why you preferred a poor barretero, with only his miner's pick and his dollar a day, to the rich administrador?" "Of what good is money," returned Margarita, earnestly, " without happiness? Riches fly away, but the good heart remains." "That is as true as though Padre Isidro had said it," rejoined Manuel, as he rose hastily from his seat on the turf; "but time flies, too, my dear little preacher, and they will be waiting for me at the mine." The young couple separated with many affectionate injunctions on the part of the wife, to which the miner laughingly promised a punctual attention. Margarita, as she replaced the basket on her head, heard the clear manly voice of her husband, far above her, singing the refrain of a ballad once very popular among the miners of Zacatecas, which described the good fortune of a poor adventurer of that town in former days : sent a cold shudder through his frame, and he had not recovered his usual gayety when he reached the mouth of the shaft. Here, in the galera, or great shed surrounding the pit, he found the English director, Don Jayme, the overseer, Miguel Gomez, and several clerks, miners, porters, and mule-drivers. Don Jayme seemed to be in a bad humor, and the overseer looked black and sullen. "Enhorabuena-in good time, my man," said the director. "We are all ready for you; and now let every one here be attentive to his duties. There has been too much carelessness heretofore, particularly in the blasting. Many complaints have been made among the townspeople and proprietors of the accidents which occur here. You, I am told, are a very skilful and quickwitted workman," he continued, addressing Manuel. "It is well that we have some on whom we can rely." Gomez listened to this significant speech without venturing to reply, but his swarthy face grew livid, and his eyes flashed with a baleful fire. Two horses, especially trained to the duty, were now attached to the malacate, a machine by which the buckets were raised and lowered in the shaft. Manuel then placed upon his head a conical hat, having a socket on the top, which held a lighted candle. He took in one hand a small rope, of which the other end was held by the overseer, and by shaking which the matchlighter was to give the signal when he was ready to ascend. On the promptitude with which his ascent took place depended, of course, his safety from the effects of the explosion. Manuel now stepped into the bucket, which was slowly lowered down the shaft, a distance of about a hundred yards. Two arreadores, or drivers, held the horses' heads, and waited in anxious silence for the signal from Gomez. All was still as death in the galera. "Let go!" shouted the overseer. The drivers loosed the heads of the horses, and the well-trained animals dashed off at once, and circled the malacate at full speed. In a minute the bucket rose to view-empty! "Back! Down with it! For life! for life!" exclaimed the director, stamping with impatience and anger. "Oh, what idiotcy, what insanity, is this!" The men hastened to obey his order, but before "You villain!" cried the director to Gomez; "what is the meaning of this?" "Upon my life as I am a Christian-the rope shook in my hands," replied Gomez, whose teeth chattered, and whose whole frame seemed to tremble with nervous agitation, while his eyes carefully avoided those of the director. The latter did not waste another word upon him, but seizing a shovel he sprang into the bucket, along with two of the miners, and was quickly lowered down the shaft. Here they set about removing, as rapidly and carefully as possible, the pile of earth and stones with which the explosion had filled the bottom of the shaft, not doubting that they should find the mangled remains of the poor matchlighter beneath them. mistaken in his judgment; but considering it better to keep on until he found the wall than to waste his strength in swimming about at random, he proceeded steadily forward for a distance, as he judged, of nearly two hundred yards. At length he encountered the wall, which rose per pendicularly far above his head, as he found by the splash of the water which he threw against it. Coasting along it, and occasionally touching it with one hand, he advanced for about a hundred yards further, by which time his limbs were becoming stiff and benumbed in the ice-cold water, and his heart had almost failed him. But he was not destined to perish thus. He suddenly came upon a passage, the opening of which was a little lower than the surface of the water. It was evident from this fact, as well as from the size of the passage, that it could not be that by which he had While they are thus engaged in a fruitless entered. However, it offered him at least a ressearch, let us follow the actual course of Manuel's pite from death, and he promptly availed himself proceedings. He had just lighted the matches, of it. After sitting motionless for a time to reand was on the point of stepping into the bucket, cover from the exhaustion of his recent efforts, he when it was suddenly drawn up. A conviction rose and proceeded to explore the passage. It of the overseer's perfidy instantly flashed upon him, and with it a sense of the horror of his position. But Manuel was, as the director had said, a quickwitted fellow. He knew that the workmen employed in the shaft had, a few days before, come upon a small side-cut, or passage, barely large enough to admit the body of a man, and that, on tracing it to its termination, it was found to lead to an immense chamber in the old mine of San Adrian. This famous mine, as is well known, proved to be a sort of vaulted chamber, of about. his own height, and just wide enough for him to touch its sides with his outstretched hands. A soul-cheering idea suddenly flashed upon his mind. There was a tradition of an ancient socabon, or adit, which had been driven at vast expense through the mountain, to effect the drainage of the old mine of San Adrian. When the mine was abandoned, the adit, of course, was no longer attended to; its external opening became closed up, and, in the was worked shortly after the conquest of Mexico, space of more than two hundred years which had and, having yielded immense wealth to its proprie- passed, its precise locality-indeed, everything but tors, was abandoned, about the end of the sixteenth the mere fact of its existence-was forgotten. century, on account of the difficulty experienced in its drainage. The workmen who had explored the passage had reported that the chamber was nearly full of water, and was so large that the light of their candles did not penetrate to the further extremity. The recollection of this discovery now occurred to Manuel's mind, and seemed to offer him a chance of escape. Looking eagerly around, he observed the opening about three feet above his head; and gaining it by a desperate spring, he drew himself up by the hands, and plunged into the passage. Urged by the dread of the coming explosion he rushed eagerly onward, and just as the roar of the blast filled his ears he fell headlong forward into a sheet of water, which spread about three feet below the extremity Manuel well remembered to have one day heard Don Jayme say to a Mexican gentleman, who accompanied him on a former visit to the mine, that he should consider the discovery of the old socabon an inestimable service, as it would, probably, save the company an immense expense for drainage in their new works. The further the miner advanced the more assured he became of the truth of his supposition. The adit was-as from its situation it must necessarily be of great length; and Manuel walked, as he supposed, nearly five hundred yards before reaching the extremity. The water all the way was just up to his ankles, and he thought he could perceive at times that it had a slight current in the direction in which he was going. The passage of the passage. He sank beneath the surface, was closed, as he had anticipated, by a solid mass and when he rose, confused and breathless, it was of earth and stones, which he at once set about to find himself floating in utter darkness, without removing. Making good use of his long knife, the slightest idea of the point by which he had he worked indefatigably for more than an hour. entered, and with hardly a chance of discovering At last he struck the roots of a tree, a circumthe opening, which lay so high above the water. stance which assured him that he was approachA more horrible situation can hardly be conceived. ing the surface. The conviction gave him reStill, even in this extremity, hope did not desert newed strength. He cut with his knife, and dug |