THE PEDANT: OR CHAPTERS FROM A LIFE SPENT PARTLY IN CAROLINA. PROEM. BY HENRY HOLM, ESQ. I never had the least thought of writing any anecdotes of my youth till last summer, when I was in Holland, and met with your correspondent Mr. B-, at the Oude Doelen, in Amsterdam. As we were chatting over a bottle of Bordeaux wine, in a very dark, long, wainscotted dining-room-the weather being rainy-Professor Broeck, of Utrecht, came in, and being a monstrously inquisitive old man, extracted from me quite an account of my travels in America and my youthful studies. gray and wrinkled without being octogenarian. Let My father was an Oxford man, bred to medicine, "Why, Holm," said my American friend, "you His plantation was great, if you count the number of ought to put this into a book." acres, but meager enough in arable land. I remember the spring seasons in that delicious climate, with a sort of fragrancy in the reminiscence. April was a month which resembled a Northern May; for the calycanthus was blooming in the swamps, the coral honeysuckle blushed in every thicket, and the sweet-briar perfumed the open places and old fields, without cultivation. At this, I was much taken aback; for bookish as I have been, 1 never in all my life put any thing into print, except when a schoolmaster-a small edition of Greek epigrams from the Anthology, which I compiled from the Paris edition-and this was a failure. On recollection, I must add a Latin elegy, which my head boy made with my help on the death of Washington. It was printed at Richmond, and Southern boys grow up equestrians. How freshly abounded in errors of the press, so that I was fain to do I recall the extempore races along the wide botsuppress the edition, all but a few copies to patrons, toms of the creeks-as we call such brooks in Amerwhich I corrected with a pen. But Mr. B. insisted ica-mounted on switch-tailed colts, rough and I should jot down some of the events of my life, say-shaggy from want of grooming, and without shoes, ing that, now in my old age, it would be a comfort to hat or saddle, my competitors being the black Catos, me; and that Lord Kaimes used to give this recipe Hectors, and Antonies of the plantation. to any of his friends who happened to be low-spirited-"Write a book." He added, that it was so uncommon for an American of the old school, and a Carolinian to boot, to have been several times in Europe, and then to nestle in his quondam home on the Roanoke; that, notwithstanding a certain longwindedness, no longer modish, he was sure my scraps would find readers, if among none else, yet among my old pupils, some of whom are in Congress, besides one in a foreign legation. I therefore rigged my little craft, put up a bit of sail, and with a smart whiff of a breeze got out of sounding ere I was aware. Here goes-therefore, and I commit myself to the good will of the friends aforesaid, praying that this may be gently received in quality both of pre-favorites was Buchanan's History. How he would face and dedication. - H. H. CHAPTER I. "Weigh anchor; spread thy sails; call every wind, Eye thy great Pole-Star; make the land of life." YOUNG. The date of my birth is a secret. Time was when I used to laugh at people for being slow to tell their age; but sounder philosophy has shown me a certain wisdom in this reserve. Why should men so pry into the infirmities of their fellows? One may be There was what was called an old-field school about a mile from the court-house, taught by a Scotchman-a Jacobite-who accompanied the famous and beautiful Flora McDonald to Carolina. His name was McLeod, and he used the Highland mull to such an extent, that we learned to call him Sneeshin Sawney. But, when he was sober-which occurred frequently before dinner-he was one of the best classical teachers I ever had. Greek was not his forte; but commend me to him for rattling off screeds of Virgil, Horace and Ovid, as well as whole pages of the historians and orators. He had a chest full of sundry modern Latin books, some of which he would chuckle over when mellow. One of his roll in laughter over the description of the bagpipe in 21 and cunning, all the most piquant cuts of surgical operations, and came at length to fancy myself possessed of half the diseases in the old nosology. When I afterward visited Leyden, I recognized some of the ancient quartos of Van Swieten and Swammerdam, in the vast but musty library. Bythe-bye, when you go thither, note well that the said library contains one of the best portraits of Grotius, and one of the most striking of Erasmus. The garret had also the Elegant Extracts, in three thick volumes, and odd ends of good English literature. Among apples, flax, and invalid saddles, I used to lie on the floor of this loft, and read till the sun went down. But sometimes I had to bestride my horse, and take letters to the post, at the court-house; and here I frequented the abode of a Mrs. Grieve, the widow of a Highland captain, who came over in the troubles of '45, and fell a victim to his insane fondness for the prince, having been shot in a duel with a young surgeon of Hanoverian sentiment. Bless me! Do not think I was born at that time? Mrs. Grieve had been many years a widow. She liked me, and I liked Marion; and this was the reason of my being summarily shipped off to England, lest I should incur the burdens of matrimony. They say, I was what-in that part of the earth-is called a "likely" fellow; round-faced, hardy, broadshouldered, and agile, but very shy, and full of gaucherie. CHAPTER II. "Male herbe croit plutost que bonne." OLD FRENCH PROVERB. Montaigne dwells with a chirping, senile complacency on the pains which his father took to make his childhood happy. Though, Arthur Holm, my honored parent took no pains at all about the matter, he so managed matters that his hopeful son-myself, Henry Holm, meaning-passed as delightful a boyhood and youth as ever the best son of the best gentleman of Perigord. I will hang a veil over the infirmities of this loving old gentleman. His days and sometimes his nights were spent at the court-house-a term by which, in Carolina, the hamlet which contains the county tribunal is called—and those were days of high play and deep bowls, with a fiery dash of French brimstone, and sans-culotte theology. The best and gentlest mother that man ever had was gone to her rest. "Mas' Harry”—my aforesaid self, meaning-was left to wander at his own sweet will, and wander he did, with a witness, in all the byways of such reading as half-a-dozen gentlemen's houses, and the parson's study, afforded. What ensued? I was five and forty before I ever knew that I was a pedant. German was not yet a language in which Americans sought literary gratification; but my neighbor, Marion Grieve, and I turned over many a volume of French-half comprehended, and I boggled through an odd volume of Don Quixote in Spanish, and several plays of Calderon. Verses of course-as an unavoidable excretion of the youthful brain-proceeded from me in large amount; not such as now emulate the measures of Beppo or Oriana, but imitations of Darwin and Miss Seward. For delightful boyhood, I maintain the world has no clime comparable to the old States of the South. Wide stretches of country, open forests for hounds, interminable meads in some parts, blooded horses at command, ambrosial mornings, evenings made vocal by the mocking-bird, young comrades in great array, open doors on every estate-we say nothing of the "domestic institution," and the conveniences of an ample retinue-develop any capacities for unstinted satisfaction, which a gay young master may possess. Something there may be of Horace's sudavit et alsit, but chiefly in hard riding after a fox, or keeping up with a coach, full of damsels, going far to an assembly at the next town. Very different is this from the similar stage in the case of the English boy, which I have considered, and which also has its manly discipline; but is marked by long separations from home, direful fagging at public schools, and the restraints of a conventionalism, which is only not Chinese. In looking back, I am very sure it was good for me to be taken away early from scenes of so much indulgence; and I would, if I knew how, subject my boys to a collar somewhat stiffer than that in which I spent my adolescence. Say what you will, young blood needs the pressure of a stern discipline, to induce self-denial, the germ of all self-command; so I can rejoice in hardships now they are over. Yet, in those days, it was but hypocritically that I hummed over the Olim meminisse juvabit. I am writing among the same spring zephyrs, and gorgeous vegetation of the South, spectacles on nose, and my feet in list slippers; but I can leap over a long intercalation, and live over again the hours of the eighteenth century. My departure had, however, the bitterness of an exile. CHAPTER III. The tear forgot as soon as shed. GRAY. The vessel in which I sailed was a round-sterned bark, very black, and English built, with hogsheads of tobacco for Bristol. I was under the care of Mr. Moir, a clergyman from the south of Virginia, who was returning to get orders for his son from the Bishop of London. The son and his brother were twins, and were gay companions. We were out seven weeks, and were several times in great peril. But I forgot all when I saw England in mid May. The transition is peculiarly strong in contrasts for one who goes from a region not abounding in greensward and roadside flowers, and equally destitute of the castle and the cottage. In June I heard a nightingale near Warwick castle, and took my first lesson in cricket on the green near Hampton Court; I dined at the Mitre, and shortly after looked at the Eton boys shooting their "four-oars" on the Thames. London was all mapped off in my head; and the impression had not been forestalled by a previous sight of Philadelphia, then our only great city. I was acquainted with Sir Roger de Coverley's haunts; I knew where to go for the Boar's Head, which had not yet been thrust aside for a king's statue. The very names of the streets were redolent of memories; St. Swithin's Lane, Aldermanbury, the Minories. Billingsgate was in its full Aristophanic glory; not yet invaded by a lordly structure of brick market - houses. "O rare Ben Jonson!" how I gloated over thy memorial in the Poet's Corner! Though roses no longer bloom in the Temple Garden, yet I walked there as proud as if my veins carried the red and white of York and Lancaster. Methinks I was an antiquary before my time; but certain it is that I whiled away whole weeks in the odd, out-ofthe-way corners of old London, and almost venerated Pie-corner, where the structures remain as of old, before the Great Fire stopped short at that bounding locality. My quarters were at the Axe Inn, Aldermanbury. This is not very far from Christ-Church hospital; and the Blue-coat boys-whom I daily met, in their yellow nether-stocks, dark frocks, and clerical bands -carried me back to the times of old, and made me a frequent visitor of those antique and hospitably open cloisters. My studies toward the Law, were to be under the guidance of a gentleman of Gray's Inn, long since dead; John Thweat, Esq.-His son is now a solicitor in chancery-He was a typical Englishman. In his wig-when he drove in a chaise, without hat, to Westminster Hall-his face was not unlike a boiled lobster, in a garnish of cauliflower. I soon found that my study was to be pen-work, and that my apprenticeship-if entered into-would be a slavish drawing of forms. My father was easier in his ways every year; so he assented to my spending a few months in travel. Do not imagine that I am going to record my journeys? These were the glorious old days of coaching. From the George Inn, opposite Addle street, Aldermanbury, I used to see forty coaches set out. It was near my lodgings. The Hogarthian coachman was then not extinct. In my last visit, I detected one or two of the old sort, degenerated into omnibus-men. Hyde Park was not what it has since become, but it was a marvel, nevertheless; and I studied, with daily application, the heraldry of all the turn-outs, and the horsemanship of gentlemen in boots and small-clothes, who, to my American eyes, seemed sad riders, from the English trick of "rising to the trot." But when summer was over, and the short days came on, and the shops had candles at noon, and the Strand and Holburn were dank and miry, and London smoke became a wetting nimbus, I gathered up my odds and ends, and make a dash over to Ireland. But this should be reserved for another chapter. CHAPTER IV. "That Latin was no more difficile, Than to a black-bird 't is to whistle." BUTLER. The sloop which conveyed me from Holy Island to Kingstown, on my way to Dublin, had on board a merry Irishman, to whom I found myself attracted, because he had been in America. He was further acquainted with the family into which my mother's brother had intermarried--the O'Mearas of Dundalk, of whom one, who was an officer in the garrison, was the object of my present visit. Dennis was full of odd stories about Irish schoolmasters, fit successors of Swift's Tom Sheridan; and he informed me that Captain O'Meara had once been a classical tutor, and was still rather conceited in regard to his attainments. He was a companion of Doctor Barrett, of Trinity College, and, as Dennis affirmed, carried more book-learning under a red-coat than many a bishop under a black one. But the half had not been told me. After seeing the sights of a very beautiful city, driving round Phoenix Park, surveying the Four Courts, and Cathedral, and the palaces, and lawns of Trinity College, I sat down to make myself at home at Captain O'Meara's. This was the less difficult, as the captain had four daughters, near enough in kindred and age to relieve me from my mauvaise honte, and Irish enough in complexion, mirth, and wit, to set my inexperienced brain in a very pleasurable whirl. But the captain absorbed every thing to himself. When he discovered that I could comprehend a Latin saying, he gave up all other pursuits for that of riddling me with a fusilade of citations. I am sure such a character is unknown out of Ireland. Miss Mitford has given, in happy detail, the picture of one species in this genus, in her late work. We often meet with this sanguineous, overflowing, half-subtle, half-blundering, off-hand, good fellow, among unlettered Irishmen; but, in good truth, my Cousin O'Meara was a bit of a scholar, had taken prizes at college, was a correspondent of divers learned guilds, and had talked Latin, by the fortnight, with Sulpicians, who came over from France on church errands. Imagine my gallant captain at his mahogany field of manoeuvre, with forces of claret moving over the polished plane. Imagine him well-spread, rubicund, moist with the gentle drops of Bacchic dew, breathing heavily, gesturing vehemently, with fat, dimpled hand, and smiling as none but Hibernian lips and teeth can smile. Behold me in the costume of 1796, slender and brown, as becomes an American, unused to long potations, trembling lest I miss a meaning or violate a quantity, and anxiously waiting for the summons to follow the ladies to coffee. "Cousin Henry," said my host, with all the rotundity of a dean, "you say you have not read Aulus Gellius. Ah! we shall turn him over to-morrow. Not to have read the Attic Nights is, mon cher, the next thing to being a child of darkness. Aulus, my dear fellow-let the bottle tend hitherward-was an Athenian by domiciliation; in this, like Pomponius, who, you know, was denominated Atticus. Aulus came to Athens, my very respected and regarded kinsman-fill your glass-for the purpose of hearing those great expounders, Taurus and Phavorinus; much as you, mon cher, have come to classic Dub "No, no-that must still await me. But when did Irish officers become so enamoured of the ancients?" "You must know, Cousin Harry," said Miss Barbara, "papa dreams of little else. He has tried to teach us all Latin; but we made game of the accidence so effectually, that he is willing now to compound for French and Italian.” lin, to hear-to hear-a-hem-to confabulate with your poor old kinsnam." And here he looked down on the amplitude of his well-stretched waistcoat, and the unwrinkled surface of a plump, feminine hand. 'Barrett and I have often kept it up-pray let me see the claret-hour after hour, as to the question whether Phavorinus was a Roman or a Greek. You remember what Aulus says-ah! no, you have yet to peruse him-you shall hear my excursus on the later schools of Athens. Their dissertatiuncles-allow the phase-were conversational; noctes coena-strong antipathy to the Saxon, he united an overeque deorum.” Here my fidgets became marked, especially as the clear ringing of a girlish trio was heard above stairs. "Don't move-you know I am off duty-you don't weary me-the claret is good. Did I ever tell you what happened on a Twelfth night at Lord Mountstewart's? My lord threw the key out of the window, and swore the party should not rise till a certain hogshead of claret was exhausted." Fidgets more alarming. "On that night I delivered the speech which is so like Ammianus." Captain O'Meara, when claret was out of the question, was placid, sensible, and even dull. With a weening regard for America, and drank Jefferson's health with religious veneration. On his horse, in the Park, he looked every inch the hero, like those handsome, pursy, red-coats one sees in gilt frames around the hall in Free-Mason's Tavern. His color was of the red, red rose, his teeth were ivory, and his voice was full and dulcet. Nothwitstanding his pedantry, he communicated to me some most valuable hints concerning my Greek and Latin reading, and explained to me many a hard place in Plautus and Lucretius; reading from tall octavos of the Bipont edition, in crimson uniform. But he suffered no man to dispute the preeminence of Trinity Colfull-lege, or the authenticity of the Celtic annals. Remembering my father as a doctor, he would not hear me explain that I was not intending to walk in his steps. In hopes of angering him, and so getting off, I ventured here on a citation of Gibbon, charging Ammian with bombast. But the smile only bespread his blown visage more benignly, as he continued"Nay, mon cher, Gibbon was incapable of measuring such dimensions of style as those of Ammianus Marcellinus. O, that we had his opening books! They are lost-unless Mai should turn them up in some Ambrosian palimpsest. Out of Dublin-the claret-there are not ten men who can taste the richness of Ammian. I will pronounce to you his description of one of Julian's battles." Here a fit of irrepressible coughing took me to the window, and my diaphragm was so agitated, that the rehearsal was interrupted. Making my recovery as protracted as might be, I found my captain-still holding his glass, and still smiling-sunk into a sweet slumber, under cover of which, I slipped into the ladies' apartment. "Ha!" cried Grace O'Meara, "papa has let you off well. You have scarcely heard him pronounce the second Philippic." "You will," said he, "complete a course at Trinity-then, ho! for Leyden. There is the spot for the healing art. I know two Americans there; one of them fought O'Shaughnessy, our adjutant. Leyden, mon cher, is the modern Salerno. Never name Edinburgh-where the prelections-horresco referens-are in English. Leyden is your place. Don't touch their gin-we call it Geneva, a corruption of the Dutch gedever, or juniper-stick to claret. You will find a compotator, that is, a bottle-companion, in Professor Van Valkenburg, in the street by the old Roman castle. Their anatomical preparations are alone worth a visit. And then the library"— But I weary my readers with gossip of fifty odd years ago. My eyes grow dim. I must bid adieu to Dublin and the O'Meara's. TO ADHEMAR. BY E. ANNA LEWIS. I THINK of thee till all is dim confusion, And my pale cheeks are drenched with a suffusion And while these burning tides my lids o'erflow, Then back, with gathered sweets, returns to me, MY FIRST SUNDAY IN MEXICO. FROM THE JOURNAL OF A VOLUNTEER OFFICER. BY W. W. H. DAVIS. I HAD reached the goal of my hopes and my ambition, and was comfortably quartered in the city of the Montezumas. There, in that proud and ancient capital, and surrounded with so many of the comforts and luxuries of life, I almost forgot the toils and sufferings of the march and the bivouac, and here, for awhile in comparative ease, "the pomp, pride and circumstance of glorious war," which is so fascinating to the untried soldier, seemed almost realized. | The American army had occupied the city long enough to establish order, by a well-regulated and efficient military police, and the enemy having retired some distance, the officers and men began to extend their sphere of observation beyond the limits of the capital, when off duty, to the beautiful suburban towns and villages near by. I spent my first Sunday in sight-seeing, in a visit to the somewhat celebrated city of Guadalupe de Hidalgo, about four miles to the north of Mexico. It is situated at the foot of a rocky mount, called Tapeyac, in the midst of a romantic but not very fertile country, and is approached by one of the six causeways which lead out from the city. They are broad, straight, finely McAdamized, and planted on each side with shade-trees, and have been constructed through the waters of the lake at great expense. In point of size this place is not of much importance, and does not contain more than a thousand inhabitants all told. Besides the church erected there, dedi- | cated to the patron saint of the country, and a few religious establishments, the buildings are of mud and reeds, inhabited by a miserable and filthy population. Here it was the "Virgin of Gaudalupé" is said to have made her miraculous appearance, and here, once every year, a great festival and celebration is held in honor of her, which is looked upon as one of the most important days in the church. The manner in which the "Virgin" made her first appearance is very remarkable, and the story, as related by one of the early bishops, seems quite as incomprehensible to us, who are without the pale of the church, as the myths which come down to us from pagan antiquity. But since the priesthood appear to put full faith in the modus operandi of her advent, the people of the country, as a matter of course, believe it. The legend runs as follows: In the year 1531, an Indian, named Juan Diego, was passing by this mountain of Tapeyac, on his return home from the city, when the Most Holy Virgin appeared to him, and directed him to go back to the city and tell the bishop to come out there and worship her. The bishop refused to admit him into his presence, having no faith in the miracle. In passing by the same spot a few days On Sunday, the 12th of December, 1847, I rode 25 |