tried for theft-found guilty-and only, by a mere accident, remained unhanged! The bare idea of such a disclosure distressed me beyond measure; and one attempt that I did force myself to make to enter upon the humiliating subject by letter, brought back the complaint upon my nerves with such violence that I was obliged to relinquish it. In short, I resolved to spare myself for the present; so I wrote to my wife to desire her to sail in the first ship for England. I told her many things had happened during her absence of a most distressing and extraordinary nature-that I would inform her of every one of them in time -but that my health and spirits were weak, and that she must indulge me in my earnest wish not to recur to any past events whatever, till I should voluntarily begin the subject myself. I called upon her to show that perfect obedience to my wishes for which she had always been so remarkable. I charged her, moreover, to know me in future by no other name than "Perkins," and to call herself, from the moment she received my letter," Mrs. Perkins," (this name I had assumed immediately after my trial: I had borne it ever since, where I lived in an obscure street in the city of London; and my nurse and physician had known me by no other). I proceed with my letter to my wife: I desired her merely to land in England, then to take a passage instantly on board a packet for Calais. There I bade her go to the hotel of Mons. Rue and await my arrival-always under the name of " Perkins;" and I ended with these words: "Be not uneasy at my altered appearance-I am a man of many sorrows. Be not surprised if I should long be silent on all that has passed—your curiosity shall have full satisfaction in time: with your accustomed obedience to my wishes, avoid all topics which can carry my mind back to my former state-let us have new amusements, new prospects, new names-I am changed in many ways, but you will find me the same in my constant affection for you. Till death your faithful husband, Peter Perkins."

I despatched my letter, and calculated that it would be from nine to ten months before I could hope to see my wife. I endeavoured, by frequent little excursions into the country, to make the time pass less heavily, always keeping my assumed name and character, and carefully avoiding those places which are the most frequented by my brethren of the city. My health continued to improve, but no change of scene, no pure country air, no faint hope of future comfort, could lighten the load that oppressed my spirits: and the dreaded disclosure I had promised to make to my wife acted as a spell that broke my slumbers by night, and embittered all my waking hours.

Month after month passed away, and I now expected her speedy arrival. I went to Calais. It was late in the evening when I arrived, and I had some difficulty in finding the hotel of Mons. With a

beating heart, and trembling knees, I asked if "a Mrs. Perkins happened to be there?" More voices than were at all necessary answered in the affirmative. Every door flew open with officious haste, and in less than a minute I stood before her. She received me with gentle kindness, spoke of the weather, and gave me time to recover from the agitation of my nerves. We drank tea together, and took a quiet walk by moonlight. I can ill express the gratitude I felt for the delicate and kind manner in which she showed her obedience to my wishes, and ab

stained from all questions. Still, I could not rally my spirits, and felt like a criminal before her, and I hardly dared to raise my eyes from the ground. I was pained to observe that she too was somewhat altered. Her complexion was faded, and, even with my poor eyes, I could perceive that she had helped it with a little rouge. But this circumstance, which at any former time I should have resented highly, now only filled me with tenderness. The Indian climate had injured her health, perhaps had reached her liver! and she had attempted to repair the ra vages it had made upon her bloom by a little innocent art, which I, for whom it was employed, might well appreciate and excuse. Time passed on not once, during several weeks, had she suffered a word to drop from her lips by which I could perceive that her mind dwelt upon the past, or that she felt the smallest concern as to the future; and I began to think there was a ninth wonder in the world-an incurious woman!

But one morning, when I was waiting for her at the breakfast-table, and reading the English news, I perceived that she entered the room. with a degree of solemnity that was not usual with her. She took a letter from her pocket, and placed it with dignity on the table: then putting her handkerchief to her eyes, "Mr. Perkins," said she, "I feel very awkward-I am unwilling either to pain or to hurry you, but my situation is extremely awkward; we have passed a whole month together, and a subject, absolutely necessary to my peace of mind, has never yet been alluded to by you. You must allow me to say that it is time the promises contained in that letter should be performed." This mild reproach was too just, too natural, to excite in me any feelings but those of kindness and confidence. My heart was warmed and opened. I had, indeed, passed a whole month in her society, and a month of perfect tranquillity—I had almost said happiness. We had never before lived so perfectly well together; for there used to be, in the best of times, frequent little unpleasantnesses and jarrings, which I had considered as inseparable from the married state. The ice was broken, and I resolved to tell her every thing. "Mrs. Perkins," said I, "this very day your wishes shall be realized; from this moment I give you my full confidence; you deserve it for your exemplary discretion and obedience to my directions. Oh, my dear!" continued I, with considerable emotion, " to secure such a happy meeting, who would repine at our former miserable parting?" -"Former miserable parting!" said she, and she turned half round to stare at me:" Mr. Perkins! what do you mean?"

At this moment the door was thrown open with violence, and another lady rushed into the room with an open letter in her hand. Good God! what a sight for me to see and live! This, indeed, was my wife; my real wife from India. (She had heard enough from the people of the hotel to justify the excitement in which she presented herself before us.) For some minutes we were all three silent; she from excess of rage, I from utter despair, and the other lady from astonishment. I handed this last-mentioned person to the window; I put on my best double spectacles, and I examined her closely with the light full upon her features. Too truly she was a stranger to me! but she was not unlike my wife; and that unhappy circumstance, acting as it did in concert with my fatal defect of sight, had caused me completely August.-VOL. XXIII. NO. XCII.

M

to mistake her. I could now perceive (alas! how much too late!) that she was considerably older than my wife; that the rouge, which to my poor naked eye had seemed but as a slight tinge, was laid on thickly. In short, as I looked upon her, I lost every hope of making my innocence apparent to Mrs. Perkins.

Good heavens! what an explanation followed! Jealousy had transformed my poor woman into a perfect fury; she accused me of wilful intrigue, and—but I should be ashamed to repeat her words! The other lady forgot all her dignity of deportment, and called loudly upon me to perform my promise and to marry her directly. Each presented me with an open letter signed "Peter Perkins." One of these I had no difficulty in acknowledging-it was my last letter to my wife, desiring her to quit India without loss of time, and to meet me at Calais. The other lady's letter ran thus :-" Madam, I am so well satisfied with your last answer to my advertisement, that I have to request you will forthwith give me the meeting at the Hotel of Monsieur Rue at Calais. If, after a short time spent in each other's society, we think we can be happy together, and should your person, manners, and disposition accord with the description you have favoured me with, I shall be happy to make you my lawful wife, bring you to England, and present you to my friends-taking care to conceal from them the circumstances of our first acquaintance, which they and a foolishly punctilious world might consider as too romantic for one of my years, but which the cautious timidity of my temper has induced me to propose. I wish you to see me before you make up your own mind. I am an elderly man, silent, and grave; formal in my manners, precise in my dress, and retired in my habits; a defect in my sight, and a stoop in my gait, serve but to add to the peculiarity of my appearance. If, however, I have reason to flatter myself that you have no objection to me, when you shall have seen me, such as I am, and have made some trial of my temper, as I said before, I shall be happy to make you my wife. To prevent curiosity, it may be as well if you assume my name at once. I remain, Madam, your most obedient servant, Peter Perkins."

By the time I had come to the end of this letter, and had begun in some degree to unravel this perplexing maze of fatal coincidences, both ladies were in strong hysterics. What could I do? I had never before seen any one in hysterics, and I thought they were both dying. I ran to my wife, but she pushed me from her; I approached the other lady, and my wife's screams were dreadful to hear. They soon brought not only Monsieur and Madame - but half Calais to their assistance. The French love a scene, and we indulged them. At last Madame succeeded in quieting my wife, and Monsieur tranquillized the other lady. I cleared the room, and then addressed my wife. Perkins," said I, "I hope you are satisfied; I hope you have sufficiently exposed a husband who may have been unfortunate, but who has not been wilfully guilty. It is too true I have for some time mistaken this lady for you-my unfortunate defect of sight-"_" Hold your tongue, Sir," replied this infuriated woman, interrupting me. "Hold your tongue, and do not add insult to falsehood. Mistake that Jesabel for me! Thank God, for stark blind, that would be impossible. Oh, Mr. B- none are so blind as those that won't see !" She

Mr. B

"Mrs.

flung out of the room with these cutting words, and I have never set eyes upon her since!

It is now six years since this finishing stroke took place. There is now little left for me to say before I take a long leave of my reader. My wife, when she left me in the manner I have stated, went directly to England, and to her father. She told her own story in her own way, and took care to expose me wherever my unlucky name was known. My former friends were already extremely well disposed to believe any thing in my disfavour. I read my own story (it may be supposed how garbled!) in the newspapers; it appeared in the shape of a warning against a notorious character, "One Peter B, alias Peter Perkins." My father-in-law is since dead. He has left his daughter sole heir to his wealth, but under the conditions that she should resume and use only her maiden name, and never see her wretched husband more, nor help him with one farthing! in failure of which conditions she will forfeit the whole property in favour of the next heir. How I have supported life under all these trials is a riddle to myself. Sometimes I am half resolved to turn my back for ever upon my native land, and seek a new existence with Mr. Birkbeck in America; but there is a spell upon me, and it binds me to the spot where I first drew my breath, and I do believe I should pine and die in any other atmosphere.

Perhaps I may be expected to allude once more to the lady with whom, the attentive reader will recollect, I was left tête à tête, at the hotel of Monsieur at Calais, by my own wife! That lady took advantage of the opportunity thus afforded her, and made a pathetic appeal to my finest feelings. I had no better, indeed no other, compensation to offer her for the uneasiness and disappointment I had so unwittingly occasioned her, and I begged her acceptance of a sum which was the full half of the small pittance I had reserved from the wreck of my fortune. She accepted it with apparent confusion and reluctance; but, I soon discovered, was the first to laugh at me for my generosity. I likewise found that it was long since that lady had a character to lose. She had come to Calais upon a speculation, having answered an advertisement which appeared in a public print under the head of " Matrimony." The advertisement was a hoax. The reader knows who was the victim! That lady sent me, towards the end of the year, a great pug-nosed, red-headed, ill-disposed brat, of at least a year and a half old; and she has taken her Bible oath, before a magistrate, contrary to all probability, and, as far as I can judge, to truth, that he is my son ! All I know about it is, that the law obliges me to educate, provide for, and own him; and that already he is the worst plague of my most miserable existence.

PETER B

NOTIONS OF THE AMERICANS.*

THE present attempt of Mr. Cooper, the well-known American novelist, to give a correct view of his countrymen, their manners and institutions, has been treated by some party critics in this country with affected ridicule, and by others with most unmerited vituperation. The Servile of England, as of Spain or Austria, bears an inflexible hatred to republics in general, but more particularly to that of the United States. Their greatness is gall and wormwood to him. His system is to conceal their prosperity, and belie facts which none but he could have the audacity to contradict. He considers love of country in an American a crime; and the love of freedom any where a damnable heresy. For years past, every high Tory publication, from the Quarterly down to Blackwood, has laboured to increase the spirit of dislike to America, among the partizans of their own man-degrading doctrines. Where America is worthy of imitation here, as in her economical government and rigid exclusion of favouritism, interest, and bribery, her merit is denied, or facts are wilfully perverted; her faults are magnified; and however essential it is, upon political grounds, that the truth relative to this rising empire should be thoroughly understood in England, they endeavour to blind and deceive as many as they may respecting her actual situation. It is not against Americans personally, but against their free and energetic institutions, that these malignant arrows are launched. Yet it is but natural that they who, under a constitutional monarchy like our own, are for ever grubbing, mole-like, to undermine all of a free and generous character we possess, should spirt their venom against every thing of the like description in other countries. Still though such are the practices and shallow arts of a rapidly-diminishing faction among the English aristocracy, they affect not the bulk of the people in this great nation, in whom the hereditary love of freedom survives. These last do not regard the Americans with increasing antipathy, nor pin their faith upon the gossiping of vagrant farmers, and bankrupt manufacturers, who visit the New World to better their condition, and, returning as ignorant as they went, save of American inns and canal navigators, write books about the character of an entire people. Their effusions are no criterion of English feelings on the one hand, or of truth on the other. We have been surprised, we admit, at times, at the sensitiveness of some Americans at a joke cut on the phraseology of their backwoodsmen, as if it were a test of the British opinion of America at large. We certainly should not deduce the American opinion of England from hearing a native of New York mock the Yorkshire dialect either in print, or viva voce. In the injustice done us by the Americans, and done them by the party I have already mentioned, and its tools, as well as by certain vagrant visitors, it must be candidly owned they are far more sinned against than sinning. As to the British Government, we do not believe it is guided in its views by any but motives which are purely political; and under the late great Minister, whose loss is a misfortune to the whole world, the leaning was decidedly towards free principles and governments: this was the reason of the calumnies heaped upon him by the enemies of mankind. That this policy is in some degree changed by his death is very probable; but even the present Premier, we are confident, will not suffer any lurking affection for arbitrary rule to interfere with clear and obvious duty. Were John Lord Eldon premier, by virtue of his bigotry and prejudices it might be otherwise; a war in and with Ireland and America might then be thought expedient for the advancement of "social order" in "church and state."

* Notions of the Americans, picked up by a Travelling Bachelor. In 2 vols. 8vo.

+ It is true, one book has lately been published on the American character, by a writer who appears never to have been in one of the old States of the Union, but who had sailed up the Mississippi, and sojourned awhile among the Kentuckians on the Ohio!