our Kaffilah was plundered by sixty horsemen. One fellow asked me what I had got? Forty deenars, I said, are sewed under my garment. The fellow laughed, thinking, no doubt I was joking him. What have you got? said another. I gave him the same answer. When they were dividing the spoil, I was called to an eminence where their chief stood. What property have you, my little fellow? said he. I have told two of your people, already, I replied, I have forty deenars sewed up carefully in my clothes. He desired them to be ript open, and found my money. And how came you, said he, with surprise, to declare so openly what has been so carefully hidden? Because, I replied, I will not be false to my mother; to whom I promised that I will never conceal the truth. Child, said the robber, hast thou such a sense of duty to thy mother, at thy years, and am I insensible, at my age, of the duty I owe to my God? Give me thy hand, innocent boy, he continued; that I may swear repentance upon it. He did so. His followers were all alike struck with the scene. You have been our leader in guilt, said they to their chief; be the same in the path of virtue; and they instantly, at his order, made restitution of their spoil, and vowed repentance on my hand." A Persian MS., in my possession, relates an extraordinary and amusing anecdote of Nadir Shah, which shows how completely he understood the feelings of the most ignorant and the wickedest of his subjects. A native merchant, travelling from Cabul, had been robbed in a plain near Nishapore, and carried his complaint to the Sovereign. "Was no one near but the robbers?" said Nadir. "None," was the reply. "Were their no trees or stones, or bushes?" "Yes," said the man, "there was one large solitary tree, under whose shade I was reposing when I was attacked." Nadir, on hearing this, affected great fury, and ordered two executioners to proceed, instantly, and flog the tree that had been described, every morning, till it either restored the property that had been lost, or revealed the names of the thieves by whom it had been taken. The mandate of a king of Persia is always a law: that of Nadir was considered as irrevocable as fate. The executioners proceeded, and the tree had not suffered flagellation above a week, when all the goods that had been stolen were found, one morning carefully deposited at its root. The alarmed robbers, who soon heard of the extravagant cruelty that inflicted such blows upon an inanimate substance, trembled at the very thought of the horrible punishment that awaited them, if ever discovered. When the result was reported to Na dir, he smiled and said, I knew what the flogging of that tree would produce. The contempt in which Nadir held the arts by which the dervishes, and other religious mendicants imposed upon the credulity of his countrymen, was shown on every occasion. Many of these believed that the holy Imaum Reza, who is interred at Mushed, continued to work miracles; and this belief gave rise to a number of impositions. Persons pretending to be blind, went to his tomb, and after a long period of prayer, opened their eyes and declared, that their sight had been restored by the holy Imaum. One of these was seated at the gate of the holy mausoleum, when Nadir passed. "How long have you been blind?" said the Monarch. "Two years, answered the man. "A proof," replied Nadir, "that you have no faith. If you had been a true believer, you would have been cured long ago. Recollect, my friend, if I come back and find you as you now are, I will strike your head off." When Nadir returned, the frightened fellow pretended to pray violently, and all at once found his sight. "A miracle! a a miracle!" the populace exclaimed; and tore off his coat in small pieces as relics. The monarch smiled, and observed, "that faith was every thing." OLD TIMES. "The world is empty, the heart is dead surely! It went to my heart when they cleared the old parlor of the venerable family furniture, and stripped the oak pannels of the prints of the month; July with her large fan and full ruffles at the elbows; and January in her muff and tippet. They would have pulled down the pannels, too, to make the room as smart and bright as paper could make it; but placing my back against them, I swore by the spirit of my grandfather, that not a joint in the old work should be started, while I could stand to defend it. And I have my revenge when I see how pert, insignificant, and raw every thing looks, surrounded by the high and dark walls of the apartment. But the old furniture was all huddled together topsy-turvy in the garret. The round oak table which had many a time smoked with the substantial dinners of former days, lost one of its leaves, by too rough handling; but an old oak desk, at which my grandfather in his days of courtship was wont to pen epistles and sonnets to my grandmother, escaped the violence of the revolution with only a few scratches. I have had the dust wiped off its black polish, brought it down by my study fire, and placed before it the old gentleman's armchair, which I found standing calm and stately upon its four legs, amidst the disordered rubbish of the garret. The mice have made a hole in the smooth leather bottom; which, however, I have never mended, as I kept it to remind me of the neglect and ingratitude of the world. It does not make you hate the world. No man could sit in my grandfather's chair and hate his fellow beings. I am seated in it this moment; and with my pen fresh dipped in his leaden inkstand, shall scribble on till my mind and heart are eased. To this corner I retire, at the shutting in of day, for selfexamination and amendment. It is here that I sit, in the shadow of a melancholy mind, and see pass before me, in solemn order, my follies and my crimes, and follow them with trembling into the portentous uncertainty of the future. It is here that I learn that we must not lean on the world for comfort. It is here that I give myself up to the visions of the mind, and fill the space about me with millions of beings from distant regions and of other times. Here, too, have I looked with a dream-like contemplation, upon the shadows sliding over the wall, silent as sunlight, till they seemed to me as monitors from the land of the dead, who had come in kindness to tell me of the vanity of present things, and of the hastening on of another and an enduring world. It is natural in these lonely musings to brood over the heartlessness and noisy joys of the world. There is at bottom, a feeling of self-complacency in it. Our calmed reason sets us above the beings about us, while we forget how many, at that very moment are as sober and rational as ourselves; and how few there are, amidst the multitudes that cover the earth, that have not their hours of solitary contemplation too. It was in this cast of thought in which the heart is made sad for want of communion with some living thing; when the tasteless character of all which surrounds us hurries the mind forward to the excitement of hope, or carries it back to dwell for a time amidst the softened, but deep feelings of the past; that the fresh and thoughtless joys, and the pure and warm affections of my boyhood came over me like a dream; and the cares of years, and the solemn and darkening scene about me, gave way, and I stood in the midst of the green and sunshine of a child. I felt again the wrinkled cheek, over which my baby hand had a thousand times past in fondness, entered into all the plays of children, and then remembered the quaint customs, the individualities of the age of strong character and warm feeling, which marked the times of our fathers; when the old sometimes mingled with the young, and the young bowed in reverence to the old. That was the age of feeling. Would that this over-wise age had something of its childlike simplicity; something of its rough and honest manliness, which dared at times to be a boy. But the age has changed, and those amusements in which we were all children together, and which made the heart better without weakening the understanding, are at an end. There are no April fool's day tricks in this period of decorum; no "merry Christmas;" no "happy New Year." I feel the blood move quick again at the recollection of the glad faces. I once used to see, when every body was running to wish you "happy New Year." I can remember when hurrying from my chamber, with my fingers too stiff and cold to button my little jacket, I burst open the parlor door, that I might be the first to "wish." Though, on this morning I was sure to be up an hour earlier than usual, yet I always found the family standing round the new-made, crackling fire, ready to break out upon me in full voices with the old greeting. There was something restoring in it, which made me feel as if we had all awoke in a new world, and to another existence; and a vague, but grateful sensation that new and peculiar joys were in store for us, went warm and vivifying to the heart. I was filled with kindness; and eager as I had been but a moment before, to surprise every one in the house, the laugh of good natured triumph at my defeat, made it dearer to me than a victory. But old things are passed away; all things are become new. Not only those customs which now and then met us in our dull travel over the road of life, are gone; even the seasons seem changing. We no longer gather flowers in May; and our very last new year's morning, instead of rising upon the crusted snow, and fields glittering with ice, spread itself with a sleepy darkness over the naked earth. I awoke with an ill foreboding languor upon me, and with a weighed down heart. sauntered into the silent parlor. The brands had fallen over the hearth, and by their half extinguished heat, seemed to doubt their welcome. I knew not where to sit or stand; the fireside looked cheerless and there was an uncomfortable, illnatured chill at the window. The vapor was passing off from the withered grass; the freshness of every thing about me appeared deadened, and the beauty of nature faded. In the midst of this dull decay and solitude a sense of desertion overshadowed me. The world's inhabitants were as strangers, and even the objects of nature, with which I was wont to hold discourse, seemed to shut me out from communion with them. The family at last came in one after another. I was about wishing them the new year's blessing, but the memory of the heartfelt sprightliness of old times came across my mind, and brought along with it those that were at rest in the grave. I gave a loud "hem!" (for my throat was full) and bade a cold "good morning." I would not have uttered the old wish, if I could have done it. There was a feeling of proud resentment at the neglect of ancient customs, which forbade it. I did not care to wipe off the dust, which is fast and silently gathering over the sacred customs of past times, to bring them forward to the ridicule of the affected refinement and cold rationality of this enlightened age. They would as ill sort with our modern labored polish of manners, as our grandmother's comfortable arm-chair and worked cushion in a fashionable drawingroom, with distressingly slender fancy chairs, and settees, on which ladies are now seated together, to crowd and elbow one another. No; these good-natured and homely observances are past away, and I have a sacred attachment for their memory, which, like that for a departed friend, forbids mention of them to strangers. Amidst this neglect and decay of old customs and characters, when every thing is brought to a wearisome level, when all is varnish and polish, so that even the roughness upon the plum, (to use the modern cant,) is vulgar and disgusting, when the utterance of strong feeling is ill breeding, and dissimulation wisdom; it is well for the world that there are beings not mindless of the past; who live with ages long gone by, and look upon the characters of the present time as trifling and artificial; who bring back, and keep alive amongst us, something of the wild and unpruned beauties of the earth, the ardent and spontaneous movements of man; so that the forest and rock, the grassplot, and field-flower, are yet about us; and some few walking in the midst, who are mighty and awing, kind and like a child. In that period of the world, when the ignorance, which had settled down upon the mind of man, was passing off, and his understanding and heart were turned up and laid open to the day, there was a morning, earthy freshness in all he saw and felt. The dust and hot air of noon had not dimmed the colors, or killed the wholesomeness of all about him, |