CHAPTER I. A long Voyage!

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Much has been sung and written of the charms
of the glorious Hudson—its smiling villages, its noble
cities, its magnificent banks, and its majestic waters.
The inimitable Knickerbocker, the graphic Cooper,
and a thousand less celebrated writers and tourists
have delighted to luxuriate in descriptions of its rich
fields, its flowery meadows, whispering groves, and
cloud-capped mountains, until its name is become
synonymous with all the beautiful and sublime of
nature. Associated as are these beauties with our
earliest recollections, and nearest, dearest friends—
entwined as they inseparably are with memorials
of the past, anticipations of the future, we too would
offer our humble tribute. But the theme has been
exhausted by hands that snatched the pencil from
nature herself, and nothing is left for us but to repress
the feelings of our swelling hearts by silent musings.

Catalina, accompanied by her father, embarked on
board of the good sloop Watervliet, whereof was
commander Captain Baltus Van Slingerland, a most

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experienced, deliberative, and circumspective skipper.
This vessel was noted for making quick passages,
wherein she excelled the much-vaunted Liverpool
packets; seldom being more than three weeks in going
from Albany to New-York, unless when she chanced
to run on the flats, for which, like her worthy owners,
she seemed to have an instinctive preference. Captain
Baltus was a navigator of great sagacity,
and courage, having been the first man that ever
undertook the dangerous voyage between the two
cities without asking the prayers of the church and
making his will. Moreover, he was so cautious in
all his proceedings that he took nothing for granted,
and would never be convinced that his vessel was
near a shoal or a sandbank until she was high and
dry aground. When properly certified by ocular
demonstration, he became perfectly satisfied, and sat
himself to smoking his pipe till it pleased the waters
to rise and float him off again. His patience under
an accident of this kind was exemplary; his pipe
was his consolation—more effectual than all the precepts
of philosophy.

It was a fine autumnal morning, calm, still, clear,
and beautiful. The forests, as they nodded or slept
quietly on the borders of the pure river, reflected
upon its bosom a varied carpet, adorned with all the
colours of the rainbow. The bright yellow poplar,
the still brighter scarlet maple, the dark-brown oak,
and the yet more sombre evergreen pine and hemlock,
together with a thousand various trees and
shrubs, of a thousand varied tints and shades, all
mingled together in one rich, inexpressibly rich garment,
with which nature seemed desirous of hiding
her faded beauties and approaching decay. The
vessel glided slowly with the current, now and then

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assisted by a little breeze that for a moment rippled the
surface and filled the sails, and then died away again.
In this manner they approached the Overslaugh,
a place infamous in all past time for its narrow
crooked channel, and the sandbanks with which it is
infested. The vigilant Van Slingerland, to be prepared
for all contingencies, replenished his pipe and
inserted it in the button-holes of his Dutch pea-jacket,
to be ready on an emergency.

“Boss,” said the ebony Palinarus, who presided
over the destinies of the good sloop Watervliet—
“boss, don't you tink I'd better put about; I tink
we're close to the Overslaugh now.”

Captain Baltus very leisurely walked to the bow
of the vessel, and after looking about a little, replied,
“A leetle furder, a leetle furder, Brom; no occasion
to be in such a hurry before you are sure of a ting.”

Brom kept on his course grumbling a little in an
under-tone, until the sloop came to a sudden stop.
The captain then bestirred himself to let go the
anchor.

“No fear, boss, she won't run away.”

“Very well,” quoth Captain Baltus, “I'm satisfied
now, perfectly satisfied. We are certainly on de
Overslaugh.”

“As clear as mud,” answered Brom. The captain
then proceeded to light his pipe, and Brom followed
his example. Every quarter of an hour a
sloop would glide past in perfect safety, warned of
the precise situation of the bar by the position of
the Watervliet, and adding to the vexation of our travellers
at being thus left behind. But Captain Baltus
smoked away, now and then ejaculating, “Ay, ay,
the more hashte de lesch shpeed; we shall see pyand-py.”

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As the tide ebbed away, the vessel, which had
grounded on the extremity of the sandbank, gradually
heeled on one side, until it was difficult to
keep the deck, and Colonel Vancour suggested the
propriety of going on shore until she righted again.

“Why, where's de use den,” replied Captain
Baltus, “of taking all dis trouble, boss? We shall
be off in two or tree days at most. It will be full-moon,
day after to-morrow.”

“Two or three days!” exclaimed the colonel.
“If I thought so, I would go home and wait for you.”

“Why, where's de use den of taking so much
trouble, colonel? You'd only have to come pack
again.”

“But why don't you lighten your vessel, or carry
out an anchor? She seems just on the edge of
the bank, almost ready to slide into the deep
water.”

“Why, where's de use of taking so much
trouble den? She'll get off herself one of dese
days, colonel. You are well off here; notting to
do, and de young woman dere can knit you a pair
of stockings to pass de time.”

“But she can't knit stockings,” said the colonel,
smiling.

“Not knit stockings! By main soul den what is
she good for? Den she must smoke a pipe; dat is
the next best way of passing de time.”

“But she don't smoke either, captain.”

“Not smoke, nor knit stockings! Christus,
where was she brought up den? I wouldn't have
her for my wife if she had a whole sloop for her
fortune. I don't know what she can do to pass de
time till next full-moon, but go to sleep; dat is de
next best ting to knitting and smoking.”

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Catalina was highly amused at Captain Baltus's
enumeration of the sum-total of her resources for
passing the time. Fortunately, however, the next
rising of the tide floated them off, and the vessel
proceeded gallantly on her way, with a fine northwest
breeze, which carried her on almost with the
speed of a steamboat. In the course of a few
miles they overtook and passed several sloops, that
had left the Watervliet aground on the Overslaugh.
“You see, colonel,” said Captain Baltus, complacently,—
“you see—where's de use of being in a
hurry den? Dey have been at anchor, and we have
been on a sandbank. What's de difference den,
colonel?”

“But it is easier to get up an anchor, captain,
than to get off a sandbank.”

“Well, suppose it is; if a man is not in a hurry,
what den?” replied honest Captain Baltus.

At the period of which we are writing, a large
portion of the banks of the river, now gemmed with
white villages and delightful retreats, was still in a
state of nature. The little settlements were “few
and far between,” and some scattered Indians yet
lingered in those abodes which were soon to pass
away from them and their posterity for ever. The
river alone was in the entire occupation of the white
man; the shores were still, in many places, inhabited
by little remnants of the Indian tribes. But they
were not the savages of the free wild woods; they
had in some degree lost their habits of war and
hunting, and seldom committed hostilities upon the
whites, from an instinctive perception that they were
now at their mercy.

Still, though the banks of the river were for the
most part wild, they were not the less grand an
beautiful; and Catalina, as she sat on the deck in

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the evening, when the landscape, tinselled with twilight,
presented one long perspective of lonely grandeur
and majestic repose, could not resist its holy
influence. On the evening of the sixth day the
vessel was becalmed in the centre of the Highlands,
just opposite where West Point now rears its gray
stone seminaries, consecrated to science, to patriotism,
and glory. It was then a solitary rock, where
the eagle made his abode, and from which a lonely
Indian sometimes looked down on the vessels gliding
past far below, and cursed them as the usurpers of
his ancient domain.

The tide ran neither up nor down the river, and
there was not a breath of air stirring. The dusky
pilot proposed to Captain Baltus to let go the anchor,
but the captain saw “no use in being in such
a hurry.” So the vessel lay still, as a sleeping
haleyon upon the unmoving mirror of the waters.
Baltus drew forth his trusty pipe, and the negro
pilot selected a soft plank on the forecastle, on
which he, in a few minutes, found that blessed repose
which is the golden prize of labour, and a
thousand times outweighs the suicide luxuries of
the lazy, sleepless glutton, whose repose is the
struggle, not the relaxation of nature; the conflict
of life and death. If he sleeps, it is in a chaos of
half-real, half-imaginary horrors, from whence he
awakes to a miserable languor, only to be relieved
for a little while by stuffing and stimulating the manbeast,
and preparing him for another nightly struggle
with his dinner and his bottle.

As the golden sun sunk behind the high mountains
of the west, that other lesser glory of the heavens
rose in full, round, silver radiance from out the
fleecy foliage of the forest which crowned them on

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the east bank of the river. The vessel seemed
embosomed in a little world of its own, with nothing
visible but the sparkling basin of water, the waving
mountains, one side all gloom, the other shining
bright, and the blue heavens sparkling with ten
thousand ever-during glories over head. Catalina
wrapped herself in her cloak, and sat on the quarter-deck
alone and abstracted, conscious of the scene
and its enchantments only as they awakened those
mysterious associations of thought and of feeling
that establish the indissoluble union between
the Creator and his works, the soul of man and the
universal soul, which is nothing else but Omnipotence
itself. Imagination, and memory, and hope
mingled in her bosom, alternately the sphere of
heavenly aspirations and gentle worldly wishes,
such as pure virgins who have given away their
hearts may entertain without soiling the white
ermine of their innocent affections. Gradually her
thoughts concentrated themselves upon Sybrandt
Westbrook; she recalled to mind those past incidents
of her life which seemed intended by heaven
to entwine their hearts in one indissoluble being,
and gradually worked herself up to the conviction,
that they neither would nor could be separated. A
flood of tenderness, hallowed by this infusion of a
holy and mysterious sanction, rushed into her soul;
she wished he were present at this apotheosis of
all that was beautiful in nature, all that was tender
in a woman's heart, that she might recline in his
circling arms, lay her head on his bosom, pour out
her overflowing floods of tenderness in his ear, and
exchange her love for his, in one long kiss of melting
rapture.

At this moment a wild shrill shriek or howl broke

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from the shore, echoed among the silent recesses of
the mountains, and roused Catalina from her delicious
revery. In about a minute it was repeated—
and a third time, after a similar interval.

“Dat is de old woman,” said Captain Baltus, who
was sitting on the hatchway, smoking his pipe, something
between sleeping and waking.

“What old woman?” asked Catalina.

“Why, de old Indian woman, what keeps about
de rock just ashore—dere—don't you see it close
under dat pine-tree dere?”

“What Indian woman? and what does she do
there shrieking?” said the young lady.

“What! did you never hear dat story? and
don't you know it's no old woman after all—but a
ghost?”

“A ghost!”

“Ay—yes—a spook. I saw it one night when
I got ashore on de flats just above de rock; and
you may depend I was in a great hurry den for once
in my life, I can tell you. It looked like de very
old Duyvel, standing on de rock, and whetting a great
jack-knife, as dey say.”

“Who say?” asked Catalina.

“Why, my fader and grandfader—who are both
dead, for dat matter; but dey told me de story before
dey died. We shall have sixteen rainy Sundays,
one after de oder, and den it will clear up wid
a great snowstorm.”

“Yes?”

“Yes; as sure as you sit dere. It always happens
after dat old woman shows herself, and screams
so, like de very Duyvel.”

“Do you know the story?” asked Colonel Vancour,
whose attention had been arrested by the conversation.

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“Know it! why, to be sure I do, colonel. I have
heard it a hundred times from my fader and grandfader.
He was de first man dat sailed in a sloop all
de way from Albany to New-York.”

“We can't have higher authority. Come, captain—
I see your pipe is just filled—tell us the story,
and then I will go to sleep.”

The worthy skipper said he was no great hand
at telling a story; but he would try, if they would
promise not to hurry him; and accordingly began:

“Once dere was an old woman—duyvel! dere
she is again!” exclaimed Baltus, as a long quaver
echoed from the shore.

“Well—well—never mind her; go on.”

“Once dere was an old woman—” Here another
quaver, apparently from the mast-head, stopped
Baltus again, and made Catalina start.

“Duyvel!” cried Baltus; “but if I don't pelieve
she is coming apoard of us!”

“Well—never mind,” said the colonel again; “she
wants to hear whether you do her full justice, I suppose.
Go on, captain.”

“Once dere was an old woman,” he began, almost
in a whisper; when he was again interrupted by the
black pilot, who came aft with a light, and asked
Baltus whether it would not be better to haul down
the sails, as he saw some appearance of wind towards
the north-east, where the clouds had now obscured
the moon entirely. “Don't be in such a hurry,
Brom,” quoth the skipper; “time enough when de
wind comes.”

“Once dere was an old woman—” At that moment
Brom's light was suddenly extinguished, and
Baltus received a blow in the face that laid him
sprawling on the quarter-deck, at the same instant

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that a tremendous scream broke forth from some
invisible being that seemed close at their ears. Baltus
roared manfully, and Catalina was not a little
frightened at these incomprehensible manœuvres of
the old woman. The colonel, however, insisted
he should go on—bidding him get up and tell his
story.

“Once dere was an old woman—” But the
legend of honest Baltus, like Corporal Trim's story
of “a certain king of Bohemia,” seemed destined
never to get beyond the first sentence. He was
again interrupted by a strange mysterious scratching
and fluttering, accompanied by a mighty cackling
and confusion, in the chicken-coop, which the provident
captain had stored with poultry for the benefit
of the colonel and his daughter.

“Duyvel! what's dat?” cried Captain Baltus, in
great consternation.

“O, it's only the old woman robbing your henroost,”
replied the colonel.

“Den I must look to it,” said Baltus, and mustering
the courage of desperation, went to see what
was the matter. In a few moments he returned,
bringing with him a large owl, which had, from some
freak or other, or perhaps attracted by the charms
of Baltus's poultry, first lighted on the mast, and then,
either seduced or confused by Brom's light, darted
from thence into the capacious platter-face of the
worthy skipper, as before stated.

“Here is de duyvel!” exclaimed Baltus.

“And the old woman,” said the colonel, laughing,
“But come, captain, the more I see the more anxious
I am to hear the rest of the story.”

“Once dere was an old woman—” a hollow murmur
among the mountains again suddenly interrupted

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him. “There is the old woman again,” said the
colonel. “'Tis de old duyvel!” said Baltus, starting
up and calling all hands to let go the halyards. But
before this could be accomplished, one of those sudden
squalls, so common in the highlands in autumn,
struck the vessel and threw her almost on her beam
ends. The violence of the motion carried Colonel
Vancour and Catalina with it, and had they not
been arrested by the railings of the quarter-deck,
they must inevitably have gone overboard. The
Watervliet was, however, an honest Dutch vessel,
of a most convenient breadth of beam, and it was
no easy matter to capsize her entirely. For a minute
or two she lay quivering and struggling with the
violence of the squall that roared among the mountains
and whistled through the shrouds, until, acquiring
a little headway, she slowly luffed up in the
wind, righted, and flapped her sails in defiance. The
next minute all was calm again. The cloud passed
over, the moon shone bright, and the waters slept as
if they had never been disturbed. Whereupon Captain
Baltus, like a prudent skipper as he was, ordered
all sail to be lowered, and the anchor to be let
go, sagely observing, “it was high time to look out
for squalls.”

“Such an accident at sea would have been rather
serious,” observed the colonel.

“I don't know what you tink, colonel,” said Baltus,
“but, in my opinion, it don't make much odds
wedder a man is drowned in de sea or in a river.”
The colonel could not well gainsay this, and soon
after retired with his daughter to the cabin.

Bright and early the next morning, Captain Baltus,
having looked round in every direction, east,
west, north, and south, to see if there were any

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squalls brewing, and perceiving not a cloud in the
sky, cautiously ordered half the jib and mainsail
to be hoisted, to catch the little land-breeze that
just rippled the surface of the river. In a few hours
they emerged from the pass at the foot of the great
Dunderbarrack, and slowly opened upon that beautiful
amphitheatre into which nature has thrown all
her treasures and all her beauties. Nothing material
occurred worthy the dignity of our story to record
during the rest of the passage. True it is that
Skipper Baltus ran the good sloop Watervliet two or
three times upon the oyster-banks of the since renowned
Tappan Bay; but this was so common a
circumstance that it scarcely deserved commemoration,
nor would I have recorded it here but for the
apprehension that its omission might at some future
period, peradventure, seduce some industrious scribe
to write an entire new history of these adventures,
solely to rescue such an important matter from oblivion.
Suffice it to say, that at the expiration of ten
days from leaving Albany, the good sloop Watervliet
arrived safe at Coenties-slip, where all the Albany
sloops congregated at that time. This extraordinary
passage was much talked of in both cities, and finally
found its way into the weekly News-Letter, then the
only paper published in the whole new world, as may
be seen by a copy now, or late, in the possession
of the worthy Mr. Dustan, of the Narrows. It is
further recorded, that some of the vessels which
passed the Watervliet as she lay aground on the
Overslaugh, did not arrive in nearly a fortnight after
her; owing, as Captain Baltus observed, “to der
being in such a hurry.” After this famous exploit
the Watervliet had always a full freight, and as many
passengers as she could accommodate; so that, in

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good time, this adventurous navigator retired from
following the water, and built himself a fine brick
house, with the gable end to the street, and the
edges of the roof projecting like the teeth of a saw,
where he sat on his stoop and smoked his pipe time
out of mind.

CHAPTER II. Which may be skipped over by the gentle Reader, as it contains not a single bloody adventure.

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Catalina was received with a welcome kindness
by Mrs. Aubineau, the lady with whom she had been
invited to spend the winter, and who appeared struck
with the improvement of her person since she left
boarding-school two or three years before. Our
heroine was glad to see Mrs. Aubineau again, having
a vivid recollection of her pleasing manners and matronly
kindness.

The husband of this lady was a son of one of
the Huguenots driven by the bigotry or policy of
Louis the Fourteenth to this land of liberty—liberty
of action, liberty of speech, and liberty of conscience.
These emigrants constituted a portion of the best
educated, most enlightened, polite, and wealthy of
the early inhabitants of New-York. They laid the
foundation of families which still exist in good reputation,
and from some of them have descended men
who are for ever associated with the history of our
country. The father of Mr. Aubineau had occupied a
dignified situation under the Dutch government while
it held possession of New-York; but lost it when the
province was assigned to the Duke of York, whose
hungry retainers were portioned off in the new world,
there not being loaves and fishes enough in the old
to satisfy them all. Both father and son cherished

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some little resentment on this occasion; and when a
legislative body was established, one or other being
generally a member, they never failed to be found
voting and acting with the popular side, in opposition
to the governor. They joined the old Dutch
party in all their measures, which were generally
favourable to the rights of the colony, and attained
to great consideration and respect among them.

Notwithstanding his politics, Mr. Aubineau the
younger married a handsome English woman; not
a descendant merely of English parents, but a real
native, born and educated in London. Her father
came over with an appointment, being a younger
brother, with a younger brother's portion, which
generally consists in the family influence employed
on all occasions in quartering the young branches
upon the public. The great use of colonies is to
provide for younger brothers. What this appointment
was I do not recollect; but whatever it was
it enabled Mr. Majoribanks to live in style, and
carry his head high above the unlucky beings who
furnished the means, and whose destiny it had been
to be born on the wrong side of the Atlantic Ocean,
where it is well known every thing, from men down
to dandies, degenerates. To be born at home, as
the phrase then was, operated as a sort of patent of
nobility, and desperate was the ambition of the rich
young citizens, and still more desperate that of the
city heiresses and their mothers, to unite their fate
and fortunes with a real genuine exotic. Many a
soldier of fortune, “who spent half-a-crown out of
sixpence a-day,” was thus provided for; and not a
few female adventurers gained excellent establishments,
over which they were noted for exercising
absolute dominion. For a provincial husband to

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contradict a wife from the mother country was held
equivalent to the enormity of a provincial legislature
refusing its assent to a rescript of his majesty's
puissant governor. It smacked of flat rebellion.

Mr. Aubineau was, however, tolerably fortunate
in his choice. His wife always contradicted him
aside when in public, and issued her commands in
a whisper. She never got angry with him, and only
laughed and took her own way whenever he found
fault; or, what was still more discreet, took no notice
of his ill-humour, and did just as she pleased.
She was fond of gayety, dress, and equipage, and
particularly fond of flirting with the officers attached
to the governor's family and establishment. These
gentlemen, having nothing to do, and no inclination
to marry, except they were well paid for it, naturally
selected the married ladies as objects for their
devoirs; very properly concluding, that whatever
might be the case with the ladies, there could be
no breach of promise of marriage on their part, and,
consequently, no dishonour in being as particular as
the lady pleased. As to the provincial husbands,
they were out of the question.

Among the most prominent of the foibles of Mrs. Aubineau
was an idea at that time very prevalent among
both English and American women. This was an
undisguised and confirmed conviction, that the whole
universe was a nest of barbarians, compared with
old England, and that there was as much moral and
physical difference between being born there and
here, as there was space between the two countries.
Though not much of the blue-stocking, that sisterhood
not having made its appearance as a distinct
class in those days, like all good English folks, she
could ring the changes on Shakspeare and Milton,

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and Bacon and Locke; those four great names on
which English poetry, philosophy, and metaphysics
seem entirely to depend for their renown; and
which form a standard to which every blockhead
more or less assimilates his mind, as if the reflected
rays of their glory had illuminated in some degree
the midnight darkness of his own intellect. This
truly John Bull notion she considered so settled and
established beyond all reasonable question, that she
always spoke of it with an amusing simplicity, arising
from a perfect confidence in an undisputed point,
upon which all mankind, except her husband, agreed
with as much unanimity as that the sun shone in a
clear day. In regard to the solitary exception aforesaid,
Mrs. Aubineau settled that in her mind, by
referring it to that undefinable matrimonial sympathy
which impels so many men to agree with every
other woman when she is wrong, and oppose their
wives whenever they are right. The connexion between
this lady and our heroine originated in a
marriage between the elder Aubineau and a sister
Colonel Vancour. Into the hands of Mrs. Aubineau
the colonel consigned his daughter for the winter,
at the same time communicating her engagement
with Sybrandt Westbrook, at which she laughed not
a little in her sleeve. She had already a plan in
her head for establishing her rich and beautiful
guest in a far more splendid sphere, as she was
pleased to imagine. At the end of eight or ten days
Colonel Vancour took his departure for home in the
good sloop Watervliet, which had made vast despatch
in unlading and lading, on account of the
lateness of the season.

Catalina was connected in different ways with
almost all the really respectable and wealthy

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inhabitants of New-York and its vicinity; such as, the
Philipses, the Stuyvesants, the Van Courtlandts, the
Beekmans, Bayards, Delanceys, Gouverneurs, Van
Hornes, Rapalyes, Rutgers, Waltons, and a score of
others too tedious to enumerate. Of course she could
be in no want of visiters or invitations, and there
was every prospect of a gay winter. But all these
good folks were only secondary in the estimation
of Mrs. Aubineau, when compared with—not his
majesty's governor and his family, for they were
out of the sphere of mortal comparison—but with
the families of his majesty's chief justice, his majesty's
attorney and solicitor-generals, his majesty's
collector of the customs, and, indeed, with the families
of any of his majesty's petty officers, however
insignificant. These formed the focus of high life
in the ancient city of New-York, and nothing upon
the face of the earth was more ridiculous in the
eyes of a discreet observer than the pretensions of
this little knot of dependants over the truly dignified
independence of the great body of the wealthy
inhabitants, except, perhaps, the docility with which
these latter submitted to the petty usurpation.

CHAPTER III. A Knight and an Honourable. The Reader is desired to make his best bow.

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The morning after Catalina's arrival she received
the visits of several officers, two of whom had the
honour of being aids to his excellency the governor
and commander-in-chief. They therefore merit
a particular introduction. “Gentle Reader, this
is Sir Thicknesse Throgmorton; and this is the
Honourable Barry Gilfillan, of an ancient and noble
Irish family, somewhat poor, but very honest, having
suffered divers forfeitures for its loyalty to the
Stuarts,—that stupid, worthless race, whose persevering
pretensions to a crown they had justly forfeited
by their tyranny, drew after them the ruin of
thousands of generous and devoted victims. Sir
Thicknesse and Colonel Gilfillan, this is the gentle
Reader, a beautiful, accomplished lady of great
taste, as all our female readers are, thank Heaven!”

Sir Thicknesse Throgmorton was what is now
generally designated a “real John Bull,” a being
combining more of the genuine elements of the
ridiculous than perhaps any other extant. Stiff as
buckram, and awkward as an ill-contrived automaton;
silent, stupid, and ill-mannered, yet at the same
time full of pretensions to a certain deference, due
only from others in exchange for courtesy and good-breeding.
Ignorant of his own country from

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incapacity to learn, and of the rest of the world from a
certain contemptuous stupidity, he exalted the one
and contemned the other without knowing exactly
why, except that—that it certainly was so, and there
was an end of the matter. His bow was both an
outrage upon nature and inclination, except when
he bent to the lady of the governor, or the governor
himself; and his dancing the essence of solemn
stupidity, aiming at a dignified nonchalance. Nothing
called forth his lofty indignation more than
being spoken to by an inferior in rank, dress, or station.
This indignation was manifested by a most
laughable jumble of insurmountable clumsiness with
affected dignity and high aristocratic breeding.
There was nothing he so much valued himself upon
as the air noble. Independently of the outrage
upon his personal, hereditary, and official dignity
manifested by an abrupt address from an inferior,
Sir Thicknesse had another special cause for disliking
to be spoken to by strangers. The fact is he
was so long in collecting the materials of an answer
to the most common observation, that he seldom
forgave a person for putting him to the trouble. He
had a most rare and, at that time, original style of
making the agreeable, which is now however pretty
general among high-bred persons. He placed himself
directly opposite the lady, straddling like a gigantic
pair of brass tongs, to collect his ideas into
one great explosion—such, for instance, as “Don't
you find it rather warm, Mawm?” Perfectly satisfied
with this mighty effort, the knight would strut
off in triumph, to repose himself for the rest of
the evening under the shade of his laurels. Added
to this he was a grumbling, ill-tempered, dissatisfied
being, full of pretensions on the score of his personal

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accomplishments and the interest of his family.
There is nothing in fact so dignified in the eyes of
“a real John Bull” as possessing a family influence,
which renders personal merit and services quite superfluous.

With regard to the person of Sir Thicknesse, it was
admirably contrived to set off his exemplary awkwardness
to the best advantage. It was a perfect
caricature of dignified clumsiness. His limbs struck
you as being too large for his body, until you studied
the latter, when it seemed perfectly clear that the
body was too large for the limbs. Taken by itself,
every feature of his face was out of proportion; but
examine them in connexion as a whole, and there
was an harmonious combination of unfinished magnitude,
that constituted a true and just proportion of
disproportions. His eyes sent forth a leaden lustre;
his nose was equally compounded of the pug and
the bottle; his lips would have been too large for
his mouth, had not his mouth been large enough to
harmonize with them; and his cheeks expanded into
sufficient amplitude to accommodate the rest of his
face without any of the features being crowded two
in a room, which every body knows is the abomination
of every “real John Bull” in existence. Sir
Thicknesse was of an ancient and honourable family,
distinguished in the annals of England. One of his
ancestors had committed an assassination in the very
precincts of the court, and being obliged to fly in the
disguise of a peasant, in order the more effectually to
escape detection, was overtaken by the king's pursuivant,
sawing wood with one of his companions in
a forest. His attendant faltering on the appearance
of the pursuivant, for a moment stopped sawing,
when the other exclaimed significantly, “Thorough”

[figure description] Page 024.[end figure description]

—or “Through”—tradition is doubtful which. The
attendant took the hint, continued his work, and the
pursuivant passed them without detection. In memory
of this great exploit, the illustrious fugitive from
justice adopted this phrase as the motto of his coat
of arms; and it descended to his posterity. Another
of his illustrious ancestors was distinguished in the
wars of York and Lancaster for his inflexible loyalty,
being always a most stanch supporter of the
king de facto, and holding kings de jure in great contempt.
A third, and the greatest of all the family
of Sir Thicknesse, was an illegitimate descendant
of a theatrical strumpet and a scoundrel king, who
demonstrated the force of blood by afterward marrying
an actress of precisely the same stamp as her
from whom he sprung. No wonder Sir Thicknesse
was proud of his family.

But great as his progenitors were, they could not
hold a candle to those of Colonel Barry Fitzgerald
Macartney Gilfillan, a genuine Milesian, whose ancestors
had been kings of Connaught, princes of
Breffny, and lords of Ballyshannon, Ballynamora,
Ballynahinch, Ballygruddrey, Ballyknockamora, and
several lordships besides. Gilfillan was an Irish
Bull, a perfect contrast to an English Bull. He was
all life, love, gallantry, whim, wit, humour, and hyperbole.
His animal spirits were to him as the
wings of a bird, on which he mounted into the regions
of imagination and folly. They flew away with him
ten times an hour. He learned every thing so fast
that he knew nothing perfectly; and such was the
impetuosity of his conceptions, that one-half the time
they came forth wrong end foremost. His ignorance
of a subject never for a moment prevented him from
dashing right into it, or stopped the torrent of his

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ideas, which resembled a stream swelled by the rains,
being excessively noisy and not very clear. His
ideas, in truth, seemed always turning somersets over
the heads of each other, and for the most part presented
that precise rhetorical arrangement which is
indicated by the phrase of “putting the cart before
the horse.” He never pleaded guilty to ignorance
of any thing, nor was ever known to stop a moment
to get hold of the right end of an idea,—maintaining
with a humorous obstinacy, that as he always came
to the right end at last, it was of no consequence
where he began.

Nature had given to Colonel Gilfillan a more than
usual share of the truly Irish propensity to falling in
love extempore. His heart was quite as hot as his
head, and between the two there was a perfect volcano.
He was always under high steam pressure.
He once acknowledged, or rather boasted—for he
never confessed any thing—that he had fallen in love
at the Curragh of Kildare with six ladies in one day,
and was refused by them all in less than twenty-four
hours afterward. “But, faith!” added he, “I killed
two horses riding about the country after them; and
that was some comfort.” “Comfort!” said a friend,
“how do you make that out, Gilfillan?” “Why,
wasn't it a proof I didn't stand shilly-shally, waiting
my own consent any more than that of the ladies, my
dear!” It is scarcely necessary to add, that he was
generous, uncalculating, brave, and a man of his
word, except in love affairs, and sometimes in affairs
of business, when he occasionally lost at play the
money he had promised to a tradesman. His person
exhibited a rich redundancy of manly beauty, luscious
with youth, health, and vigour; he sang charmingly;
played the fiddle so as to bring tears into your eyes;

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danced, laughed, chatted, blundered, gallanted, flattered,
and made love with a graceful confidence and
fearless audacity, that caused him to be a great favourite
and rather a dangerous companion for women
of warm imaginations and mere ordinary refinement of
manners and feelings. Like most men of his profession,
his ideas on certain subjects were of the latitudinarian
order. Gilfillan swore he was a man of as
much honour as ever wore a uniform. He would not
pick a pocket; but as for picking a lady's white bosom
of a sweet little heart—let him alone for that. A fair
exchange was no robbery all the world over; and
he always left his own with them, if there were
twenty. When his brother officers laughed at him
for having so many hearts, “Och, my dears!”
would he reply, “what, do you talk about having but
one heart? A man with only one heart in his bosom
is like a poor divil with only a shilling in his pocket—
he is afraid to part with it, and so starves himself
just for fear of starving!”

CHAPTER IV. A reigning Belle.

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This combustible gentleman fell in love with Catalina
at first sight—and never man had a better excuse;
for she was now in the ripe prime of womanhood,
and lovely as the happiest creations of painting
and poetry. Her eyes, her lips, her cheeks, her
nose, her forehead, and her chin were all cast in the
happy mould of symmetry; and the combination
produced an expression of sensibility, intellect, and
virtue, that struck every one at first sight. Her fair
white neck, her harmonious, graceful shoulders, the
confines of that region on which the eye and the
imagination delight to linger as the chosen spot where
grace and beauty revel as on a bed of snow; the little
finished telltale foot, and the graceful lines that gave
the outline of her touching, full, round figure, all and
each of them bore silent testimony to the perfection
of the hidden glories of the inner temple, sacred to
one alone.

That Colonel Gilfillan should fall headlong in love
at the first sight of such an object, was just as natural,
not to say inevitable, as the explosion of a
barrel of gunpowder on the application of a firebrand.
I will not affirm there was a spark of interest mingled
with his fires, but it may be safely laid down as a
maxim founded in human nature, that the most

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disinterested lover has no very great objection to his
mistress possessing a competent estate. Gilfillan
made downright love to Catalina the tenth time he
saw her; and at the eleventh interview offered her
his hand and fortune, at the same time laying his
sword at her feet, in which he confessed the latter
entirely consisted. He did this however, in a style so
wild and extravagant, and with so odd a mixture of
humour and pathos, jest and earnest, that the young
lady laughed at it as a rhodomontade. She gradually
became accustomed to his extravagance, and
amused with his good-humoured eccentricities. In
the mean time she mixed continually in the winter
gayeties, and became the reigning belle of the season.

Now it was that the spirit moved Sir Thicknesse
Throgmorton to gather himself together and honour
Catalina with his notice. It will ever be found that
the dullest fellows are seen hovering about the most
brilliant objects, just as the bugs and moths, and
other imps of the night, hie them to bask in the
splendours of the lighted candle. Besides this
general propensity, Sir Thicknesse was impelled by
another and more particular incitement. He was
especially envious of Gilfillan, who was perpetually
throwing his accomplishments into the shade, and
whose spirit, brilliancy, and good-nature made the
leaden dullness and stultified pride of the other appear
still more ungracious.

The first demonstration Sir Thicknesse gave of
his devotion to our heroine was one night actually
stooping to pick up her fan, at a party at his puissant
excellency the governor's. Whereupon Madam
Van Borsum, Madam Van Dam, Madam Twentyman,
and twenty other madams, who had marriageable
daughters, were thrown into a trepidation. What

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rendered this act of devotion the more conspicuous,
such was the rigidity of Sir Thicknesse's habits and
costume, that he was obliged to go down on one knee
in order to its performance. The young ladies tittered
behind their fans, and Gilfillan swore it put him
in mind of a wooden god offering incense to a beautiful
young priestess, which sounded somewhat like a bull.
When Sir Thicknesse had performed this successful
feat of gallantry, he strutted away, and passed
the rest of the evening in a corner, in dignified indifference,
justly conceiving he had done enough for
one night.

There was a certain feeling of self-complacency
which was vastly conciliated by having his name connected
with that of the reigning belle of the day, in the
whispers of the young ladies and the tittle-tattle of
their mothers. With all his absurd affectation of
proud indifference, his vanity was highly excited by
the association. Like my Lord Byron, he was always
pretending the most sovereign indifference and contempt
for the world and its opinions, while at the
same time his very soul smarted under its censure
or neglect. Of all the affectations of vanity
that of indifference to the opinions of the world is
the most inconsistent with the feelings and actions
of men, and the most easily detected by its inconsistencies.
Sir Thicknesse followed up his first overt
act of picking up the fan by other demonstrations
still more significant, until it came to pass that Madam
Van Borsum, Madam Van Dam, Madam Twentyman,
and the rest, came to a unanimous decision
that it was all over with their daughters, and that
Catalina would certainly, in good time, become Lady
Throgmorton. Not one of them conceived it possible
she could be so mad as to refuse a baronet, a

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governor's aid-de-camp, and a man actually born in
old England. It is unnecessary to say that these
worthy madams from this time took a decided distaste
to our heroine, and treated her with extraordinary
marks of attention.

Mrs. Aubineau soon, with the quick instinct of a
chaperon having a young lady to establish, perceived
the important conquests Catalina had achieved in so
short a time. She accordingly forthwith fell to balancing
accounts between the two suitors, for as to
honest Sybrandt she looked upon that affair as a
mere country arrangement, made to be broken the
first convenient opportunity. Engagements made
in the country are never considered binding in town,
all the world over. If Catalina, quoth Madam Aubineau,
in her secret cogitations, marries Gilfillan,
she will be a countess in time, but then it's only
an Irish title, and there is no estate to it I know.
If she marries Sir Thicknesse, she will be a lady
at once, wife to an English baronet—and lady is
lady all the world over. Besides he has an estate,
and though it is out at the elbows, a little of Catalina's
fortune will make it whole again. The inevitable
conclusion of Madam Aubineau was to encourage
Sir Thicknesse, and discourage his rival.

But Gilfillan was an Irishman, and, as he affirmed,
he could always tell the difference between the
false and true Milesian, by the latter never being
discouraged. “By my soul,” would he say, “there's
no such word in the old Irish tongue—its an English
importation.” To discourage such a man was
out of the question. If Madam Aubineau looked
coolly towards him, or failed in any of the customary
attentions, he rallied her with such a triumphant
good humour, or received her slights with such

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imperturbable negligence, that the good lady sometimes
laughed herself friends with him, or sat down
in despair at the perfect impotence of her scheme of
discouragement.

CHAPTER V. Manœuvring.

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The busiest and at the same time the most injudicious
of all schemers is a good lady overanxious
to make a match for a daughter, or a young
spinster under her protection. Madam Aubineau did
nothing but give parties at night, and her worthy
husband had no rest until he gave parties by day,
at which Sir Thicknesse was always seated next
to Catalina at dinner, where he never failed to observe
upon the weather, and drink a glass of wine
with her. There is no telling what these seductive
attentions might have achieved in time, had not the
genius of Gilfillan crossed the path of Sir Thicknesse.
That enterprising Milesian, with singular
skill and intrepidity, never omitted to gain a seat on
the other side of our heroine, where his humour,
vivacity, and gallantry seldom failed to obscure the
solemn, dignified stupidity of his rival, and throw him
into utter oblivion. It was observed at these merrymakings,
that Sir Thicknesse ate himself into still
greater stupidity, while Gilfillan drank himself into
such an effervescence of spirits, that Catalina became
actually afraid of him. The good matron,
Madam Aubineau, accordingly soon found out that
dinner-parties are the worst places in the world for
matchmaking, at least with Englishmen and Irishmen.

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