the word, were overtaken between St Denis and Paris? Sir Hargrave Pollexfen, it seems, still keeps his chamber; he is thought not to be out of danger from some inward hurt, which often makes him bring up blood in quantities. He is miserably oppressed by lowness of spirits; and when he is a little better in that respect, his impatience makes his friends apprehensive for his head. But has he intellects strong enough to give apprehensions of that nature? Fool and madman we often join as terms of reproach; but I believe fools seldom run really mad. Merceda is in a still more dangerous way. Besides his bruises, and a fractured skull, he has, it seems, a wound in his thigh, which, in the delirium he was thrown into by the fracture, was not duly attended to; and which, but for his valiant struggles against the knife which gave the wound, was designed for a still greater mischief. His recovery is despaired of, and the poor wretch is continually offering up vows of penitence and reformation, if his life may be spared. Bagenhall was the person who had seduced, by promises of marriage, and fled for it, the manufacturer's daughter of Abbeville. He was overtaken by his pursuers at Douay. The incensed father, and friends of the young woman, would not otherwise be pacified than by his performing his promise; which, with infinite reluctance, he complied with, principally through the threats of the brother, who is noted for his fierceness and resolution, and who once inade the sorry creature feel an argument which greatly terrified him. Bagenhall is at present at Abbeville, living as well as he can with his new wife, cursing his fate, no doubt, in secret. He is obliged to appear fond of her before her brother and father; the latter also being a sour man, a Gascon, always boasting of his family, and valuing himself upon a De, affixed by himself to his name, and jealous of any indignity offered to it. The fierce brother is resolved to accompany his sister to England, when Bagenhall goes thither, in order, as he declares, to secure to her good usage, and see her owned and visited by all Bagenhall's friends and relations. And thus much of these fine gentlemen. How different a man is Beauchamp! But it is injuring him, to think of those wretches and him at the same time. He certainly has an eye to Emily, but behaves with great prudence towards her; yet everybody but she sees his regard for her: nobody but her guardian runs in her head; and the more, as she really thinks it is a glory to love him, because of his goodness. Everybody, she says, has the same admiration of him, that she has. Mrs Reeves desires me to acquaint you, that Miss Clements, having, by the death of her mother and aunt, come into a pretty fortune, is addressed to by a Yorkshire gentleman of easy VOL. VIII. circumstances, and is preparing to leave the town, having other connections in that county; but that she intends to write to you before she goes, and to beg you to favour her now and then with a letter. I think Miss Clements is a good sort of young woman; but I imagined she would have been one of those nuns at large, who need not make vows of living and dying Aunt Eleanors, or Lady Gertrudes; all three of them good honest souls! chaste, pious, and plain. It is a charming situation, when a woman is arrived at such a height of perfection, as to be above giving or receiving temptation. Sweet innocents! They have my reverence, if not my love. How would they be affronted, if I were to say pity!-I think only of my two good aunts at the present writing. Miss Clements, you know, is a youngish woman; and I respect her much. One would not jest upon the unsightliness of person, or plainness of feature; but think you she will not be one of those, who twenty years hence may put in her boast of her quondam beauty? How I run on! I think I ought to be ashamed of myself. · 66 Very true, Charlotte." And so it is, Harriet. I have done-Adieu! -Lord G will be silly again, I doubt; but I am prepared. I wish he had half my patience. "Be quiet, Lord G-! What a fool you are!"-The man, my dear, under pretence of being friends, run his sharp nose in my eye. No bearing his fondness; It is worse than insolence. How my eye waters!-I can tell him-But I will tell him, and not you.-Adieu, once more. CHARLOTTE G LETTER CLIV. MR LOWTHER TO JOHN ARNOLD, ESQ. (His brother-in-law) in London. Bologna, May 5-16. I WILL now, my dear brother, give you a circumstantial account of our short, but flying journey. The 20th of April, O. S. early in the morning, we left Paris, and reached Lyons the 24th, at night. Resting but a few hours, we set out for Pont Beauvoisin, where we arrived the following evening. There we bid adieu to France, and found ourselves in Savoy, equally noted for its poverty and rocky mountains. Indeed it was a total change of the scene. We had left behind us a blooming spring, which enlivened with its verdure the trees and hedges on the road we passed, and the meadows already smiled with flowers. The cheerful inhabitants were busy in adjusting their limits, lopping their trees, pruning their vines, tilling their fields; but when we en 2 F tered Savoy, nature wore a very different face; and I must own, that my spirits were great sufferers by the change. Here we began to view on the nearer mountains, covered with ice and snow, notwithstanding the advanced season, the rigid winter in frozen majesty, still preserving its domains; and arriving at St Jean Maurienne the night of the 26th, the snow seemed as if it would dispute with us our passage; and horrible was the force of the boisterous winds, which set full in our faces. Overpowered by the fatigues I had undergone in the expedition we had made, the unseasonable coldness of the weather, and the sight of one of the worst countries under heaven, still clothed in snow, and deformed by continual hurricanes; I was here taken ill. Sir Charles was greatly concerned for my indisposition, which was increased by a great lowness of spirits. He attended upon me in person; and never had a man a more kind and indulgent friend. Here we staid two days; and then, my illness being principally owing to fatigue, I found myself enabled to proceed. At two of the clock in the morning of the 28th, we prosecuted our journey, in palpable darkness, and dismal weather, though the winds were somewhat laid, and reaching the foot of Mount Cenis by break of day, arrived at Lanebourg, a poor little village, so environed by high mountains, that for three months in the twelve, it is hardly visited by the cheering rays of the sun. Every object which here presents itself is excessively miserable. The people are generally of an olive complexion, with wens under their chins; some so monstrous, especially women, as quite disfigure them. Here it is usual to unscrew and take in pieces the chaises, in order to carry them on mules over the mountain; and to put them together on the other side: For the Savoy side of the mountain is much more difficult to pass than the other. But Sir Charles chose not to lose time; and therefore left the chaise to the care of the inn-keeper; proceeding, with all expedition, to gain the top of the hill. The way we were carried, was as follows:A kind of horse, as it is called with you, with two poles like those of chairmen, was the vehicle; on which is secured a sort of elbow chair, in which the traveller sits. A man before, another behind, carry this open machine with so much swiftness, that they are continually running and skipping, like wild goats, from rock to rock, the four miles of that ascent. If a traveller were not prepossessed that these mountaineers are the surest-footed carriers in the universe, he would be in continual apprehensions of being overturned. I, who never undertook this journey before, must own that I could not be so fearless on this occasion as Sir Charles was, though he had very exactly described to me how everything would be. Then, though the sky was clear when we passed this mountain, yet the cold wind blew quantities of frozen snow in our faces; insomuch, that it seemed to be just as if people were employed, all the time we were passing, to wound us with the sharpest needles. They indeed call the wind that brings this sharp-pointed snow, The Tornenta. An adventure, which anywhere else might have appeared ridiculous, I was afraid would have proved fatal to one of our chairmen, as I may call them. I had flapt down my hat to screen my eyes from the fury of that deluge of sharp-pointed frozen snow; and it was blown off my head, by a sudden gust, down the precipices: I gave it for lost, and was about to bind a handkerchief over the woollen-cap, which those people provide to tie under the chin; when one of the assisting carriers (for they are always six in number to every chair, in order to relieve one another) undertook to recover it. I thought it impossible to be done; the passage being, as I imagined, only practicable for birds: however, I promised him a crown reward, if he did. Never could the leaps of the most dexterous of ropedancers be compared to those of this daring fellow: I saw him sometimes jumping from rock to rock, sometimes rolling down a declivity of snow like a ninepin, sometimes running, sometimes hopping, skipping; in short, he descended like lightning to the verge of a torrent, where he found the hat. He came up almost as quick, and appeared as little fatigued as if he had never left us. We arrived at the top in two hours, from Lanebourg; and the sun was pretty high above the horizon. Out of a hut, half-buried in snow, came some mountaineers, with two poor sledges drawn by mules, to carry us through the Plain of Mount Cenis, as it is called, which is about four Italian miles in length, to the descent of the Italian side of the mountain. These sledges are not much different from the chairs, or sedans, or horse we then quitted; only the two under poles are flat, and not so long as the others, and turning up a little at the end, to hinder them from sticking fast in the snow. To the fore-ends of the poles are fixed two round sticks, about two feet and a half long, which serve for a support and help to the man who guides the mule, who, running on the snow between the mule and the sledge, holds the sticks with each hand. It was diverting to see the two sledgemen striving to out-run each other. Encouraged by Sir Charles's generosity, we very soon arrived at the other end of the plain. The man who walked, or rather ran between the sledge and the mule, made a continual noise; hallooing and beating the stubborn beast with his fists, which otherwise would be very slow in its motion. At the end of this plain we found such another hut as that on the Lanebourg side. Here they took off the smoking mules from the sledges, to give them rest. And now began the most extraordinary way of travelling that can be imagined. The descent of the mountain from the top of this side, to a small village called Novalesa, is four Italian miles. When the snow has filled up all the inequalities of the mountain, it looks, in many parts, as smooth and equal as a sugar-loaf. It is on the brink of this rapid descent that they put the sledge. The man who is to guide it sits between the feet of the traveller, who is seated in the elbow-chair, with his legs at the outside of the sticks fixed at the fore-ends of the flat poles, and holds the two sticks with his hands; and when the sledge has gained the declivity, its own weight carries it down with surprising celerity. But as the immense irregular rocks under the snow make now and then some edges in the declivity, which, if not avoided, would overturn the sledge; the guide, who foresees the danger, by putting his foot strongly and dexterously in the snow next to the precipice, turns the machine, by help of the above-mentioned sticks, the contrary way, and by way of zig-zag goes to the bottom. Such was the velocity of this motion, that we dispatched these four miles in less than five minutes; and when we arrived at Novalesa, hearing that the snow was very deep most of the way to Susa, and being pleased with our way of travelling, we had some mules put again to the sledges, and ran all the way to the very gates of that city, which is seven miles distant from Mount Cenis. In our way we had a cursory view of the impregnable fortress of Brunetta, the greatest part of which is cut out of the solid rock, and commands that important pass. We rested all night at Susa; and, having bought a very commodious post-chaise, we proceeded to Turin, where we dined; and from thence, the evening of May 2, O. S. got to Parma, by way of Alexandria and Placentia, having purposely avoided the high road through Milan, as it would have cost us a few hours more time. Sir Charles observed to me, when we were on the plain, or flat top, of Mount Cenis, that had not the winter been particularly long and severe, we should have had, instead of this terrible appearance of snow there, flowers starting up, as it were under our feet, of various kinds, which are hardly to be met with anywhere else. One of the greatest dangers, he told me, in passing this mount in winter, arises from a ball of snow, which is blown down from the top by the wind, or falls down by some other accident; which, gathering all the way in its descent, becomes instantly of such a prodigious bigness, that there is hardly any avoiding being carried away with it, man and beast, and being smothered in it. "One of these balls we saw rolling down; but, as it took another course than ours, we had no apprehensions of danger from it. At Parma, we found expecting us, the Bishop of Nocera, and a very reverend father, Marescotti by name; who expresssed the utmost joy at the arrival of Sir Charles Grandison, and received me at his recommendation, with a politeness which seems natural to them. I will not repeat what I have written before of this excellent young gentleman; intrepidity, bravery, discre tion, as well as generosity, are conspicuous parts of his character. He is studious to avoid danger; but is unappalled in it. For humanity, benevolence, providence for others, to his very servants, I never met with his equal. My reception from the noble family to which he has introduced me; the patient's case, (a very unhappy one!) and a description of this noble city, and the fine country about it, shall be the subject of my next. Assure all my friends of my health, and good wishes for them; and, my dear Arnold, believe me to be Ever yours, &c. LETTER CLV. SIR CHARLES GRANDISON TO DR BARTLETT. Bologna, Wednesday, May 10-21. I TOLD you, my dear and reverend friend, that I should hardly write to you till I arrived in this city. The affair of my executorship obliged me to stay a day longer at Paris than I intended; but I have put everything relating to that trust in such a way, as to answer all my wishes. Mr Lowther wrote to Mr Arnold, a friend of his in London, the particulars of the extraordinary affair we were engaged in between St Denis and Paris; with desire that he would inform my friends of our arrival at that capital. We were obliged to stop two days at St Jean de Maurienne. The expedition we travelled with was too much for Mr Lowther; and I expected, and was not disappointed, from the unusual backwardness of the season, to find the passage over Mount Cenis less agreeable than it usually is in the beginning of May. The Bishop of Nocera had offered to meet me anywhere on his side of the mountains. I wrote to him from Lyons, that I hoped to see him at Parma, on or about the very day that I was so very fortunate as to reach the palace of the Count of Belvedere in that city; where I found that he and Father Marescotti had arrived the evening before. They, as well as the Count, expressed great joy to see me; and when I presented Mr Lowther to them, with the praises due to his skill, and let them know the consultations I had had with eminent physicians of my own country on Lady Clementina's case, they invoked blessings upon us both, and would not be interrupted in them by my eager questions after the health and state of mind of the two dearest persons of their family. Unhappy! very unhappy! said the Bishop. Let us give you some refreshment, before we come to particulars. To my repeated inquiries, Jeronymo, poor Jeronymo! said the Bishop, is living, and that is all we can say. The sight of you will be a cordial to his heart. Clementina is on her journey to Bologna from Naples. You desired to find her with us, and not at Naples. She is weak; is obliged to travel slowly. She will rest at Urbino two or three days. Dear creature! What has she not suffered from the cruelty of her cousin Laurana, as well as from her malady! The General has been, and is, indulgent to her. He is married to a lady of great merit, quality, and fortune. He has, at length, consented that we shall try this last experiment, as the hearts of my mother, and now lately of my father, as well as mine, are in it. His lady would not be denied accompanying my sister; and as my brother could not bear being absent from her, he travels with them. I wish he had staid at Naples. I hope, however, he will be as ready, as you will find us all, to acknowledge the favour of this visit, and the fatigue and trouble you have given yourself on our account. As to my sister's bodily health, proceeded he, it is greatly impaired. We are almost hopeless, with regard to the state of her mind. She speaks not; she answers not any questions. Camilla is with her. She seems regardless of anybody else. She has been told, that the General is married. His lady makes great court to her; but she heeds her not. We are in hopes, that my mother, on her return to Bologna, will engage her attention. She never yet was so ill as to forget her duty either to God or her parents. Sometimes Camilla thinks she pays some little attention to your name; but then she instantly starts as in terror; looks round her with fear; puts her finger to her lips, as if she dreaded her cruel cousin Laurana should be told of her having heard it mentioned. The Bishop and Father both regretted that she had been denied the requested interview. They were now, they said, convinced, that if that had been granted, and she had been left to Mrs Beaumont's friendly care, a happy issue might have been hoped for: But now, said the Bishop-Then sighed, and was silent. I dispatched Saunders, early the next morning, to Bologna, to procure convenient lodgings for me and Mr Lowther. In the afternoon we set out for that city. The Count of Belvedere found an opportunity to let me know his unabated passion for Clementina, and that he had lately made overtures to marry her, notwithstanding her malady; having been advised, he said, by proper persons, that as it was not an hereditary, but an accidental disorder, it might be, in time, curable. He accompanied us about half way on our journey; and, at parting, Remember, chevalier, whispered he, that Clementina is the soul of my hope: I cannot forego that hope. No other woman will I ever call mine. I heard him in silence: I admired him for his attachment: I pitied him. He said, he would tell me more of his mind at Bologna. We reached Bologna on the 15th, N. S. Saunders had engaged for me the lodgings I had before. Our conversation on the road turned chiefly on the case of Signor Jeronymo. The Bishop and Father were highly pleased with the skill, founded on practice, which evidently appeared in all that Mr Lowther said on the subject: and the Bishop once intimated, that, be the event what it would, his journey to Italy should be made the most beneficial affair to him he had ever engaged in. Mr Lowther replied, that as he was neither a necessitous nor a mean-spirited man, and had reason to be entirely satisfied with the terms I had already secured to him, he should take it unkindly, if any other reward were offered him. Think, my dear Dr Bartlett, what emotions I must have on entering, once more, the gates of the Porretta palace, though Clementina was not there. I hastened up to my Jeronymo, who had been apprized of my arrival. The moment he saw me, Do I once more, said he, behold my friend, my Grandison? Let me embrace the dearest of men. Now, now, have I lived long enough. He bowed his head upon his pillow, and meditated me; his countenance shining with pleasure in defiance of pain. The Bishop entered: he could not be present at our first interview. My lord, said Jeronymo, make it your care that my dear friend be treated, by every soul of our family, with the gratitude and respect which are due to his goodness. Methinks I am easier and happier, this moment, than I have been for the tedious space of time since I last saw him. He named that space of time to the day, and to the very hour of the day. The Marquis and Marchioness signifying their pleasure to see me, the Bishop led me to them. My reception from the Marquis was kind; from his lady it was as that of a mother to a long-absent son. I had ever been, she was pleased to say, a fourth son in her eye; and now, that she had been informed that I had brought over with me a surgeon of experience, and the advice in writing of eminent physicians of my country, the obligations I had laid on their whole family, whatever were the success, were unreturnable. I asked leave to introduce Mr Lowther to them. They received him with great politeness, and recommended their Jeronymo to his best skill. Mr Lowther's honest heart was engaged, by a reception so kind. He never, he told me afterwards, beheld so much pleasure and pain struggling in the same countenance, as in that of the lady; so fixed a melancholy, as in that of the Marquis. Mr Lowther is a man of spirit, though a modest man. He is, as on every proper occasion I found, a man of piety, and has a heart tender as manly. Such a man, heart and hand, is qualified for a profession which is the most useful and certain in the art of healing. He is a man of sense and learning out of his profession, and happy in his address. The two surgeons who now attend Signor Jeronymo, are both of this country. They were sent for. With the approbation, and at the request of the family, I presented Mr Lowther to them; but first gave them his character, as a modest man, as a man of skill and experience; and told them, that he had quitted business, and wanted not either fame or fortune. They acquainted him with the case, and their methods of proceeding. Mr Lowther assisted in the dressings that very evening. Jeronymo would have me to be present. Mr Lowther suggested an alteration in their method, but in so easy and gentle a manner, (as if he doubted not, but such was their intention when the state of the wounds would admit of that method of treatment,) that the gentlemen came readily into it. A great deal of matter had been collected, by means of the wrong methods pursued; and he proposed, if the patient's strength would bear it, to make an aperture below the principal wound, in order to discharge the matter downward; and he suggested the dressing with hollow tents and bandage, and to dismiss the large tents with which they had been accustomed to distend the wound, to the extreme anguish of the patient, on pretence of keeping it open, to assist the discharge. Let me now give you, my dear friend, a brief history of my Jeronymo's case, and of the circumstances which have attended it; by which you will be able to account for the difficulties of it, and how it has happened, that, in such a space of time, either the cure was not effected, or that the patient yielded not to the common destiny. In lingering cases, patients or their friends are sometimes too apt to blame their physicians, and to listen to new recommendations. The surgeons attending this unhappy case, had been more than once changed. Signor Jeronymo, it seems, was unskilfully treated by the young surgeon of Cremona, who was first engaged: he neglected the most dangerous wound; and, when he attended to it, managed it wrong, for want of experience. He was, therefore, very properly dismissed. The unhappy man had at first three wounds: one in his breast, which had been for some time healed; one in his shoulder, which, through his own impatience, having been too suddenly healed up, was obliged to be laid open again: the other, which is the most dangerous, in the hipjoint. A surgeon of this place, and another at Padua, were next employed. The cure not advancing, a surgeon of eminence, from Paris, was sent for. Mr Lowther tells me, that this man's method was by far the most eligible; but that he undertook too much; since, from the first, there could not be any hope, from the nature of the wound in the hip-joint, that the patient could ever walk, without sticks or crutches: and of this opinion were the other two surgeons: but the French gentleman was so very pragmatical, that he would neither draw with them, nor give reasons for what he did; regarding them only as his assistants. .They could not long bear this usage, and gave up to him in disgust. How cruel is punctilio, among men of this science, in cases of difficulty and danger! The present operators, when the two others had given up, were not, but by leave of the French gentleman, called in. He valuing himself on his practice in the Royal Hospital of Invalids at Paris, looked upon them as theorists only; and treated them with as little ceremony as he had shewn the others; so that at last, from their frequent differences, it became necessary to part with either him or them. His pride, when he knew that this question was a subject of debate, would not allow him to leave the family an option. He made his demand: it was complied with; and he returned to Paris. From what this gentleman threw out at parting, to the disparagement of the two others, Signor Jeronymo suspected their skill; and from a hint of this suspicion, as soon as I knew I should be welcome myself, I procured the favour of Mr Lowther's attendance. All Mr Lowther's fear is, that Signor Jeronymo has been kept too long in hand by the different managements of the several operators; and that he will sink under the necessary process, through weakness of habit. But, however, he is of opinion, that it is requisite to confine him to strict diet, and to deny him wine and fermented liquors, in which he has hitherto been indulged, against the opinion of his own operators, who have been too complaisant to his appetite. An operation somewhat severe was performed on his shoulder yesterday morning. The Italian surgeons complimented Mr Lowther with the lancet. They both praised his dexterity; and Signor Jeronymo, who will be consulted on everything that he is to suffer, blessed his gentle hand. At Mr Lowther's request, a physician was yesterday consulted; who advised some gentle aperitives, as his strength will bear it; and some balsamics, to sweeten the blood and juices. Mr Lowther told me just now, that the fault of the gentlemen who have now the care of him, has not been want of skill, but of critical cou |