where the new and old have entered into friendly compact, is the capital of the duchy. The duke and his pretty duchess, however, do not reside here, but at Bieberich, which you should also see, as well as Wiesbaden, Schwalbach, Schlangenbad, and the many other places of interest, which I cannot now particularise, belonging to this beautiful territory.

The Duke and Duchess of Nassau are Protestants-Lutherans, as we should formerly have called them-and Nassau is a Protestant state. The exact proportion of Protestants and Roman Catholics in the population of Ems I did not learn, but that of the former is considerable. Apparently no very hostile feeling exists between them, and in one cemetery the dead of both communions sleep together, and before interment they rest in the same building. It is not permitted to keep the dead in a dwelling-house beyond a few hours, after which they are removed to an edifice in the burying-ground, and there remain in uncovered coffins till the funeral day approaches. Another German custom relating to the dead is to prefix the word "selig," or blessed, before their names; a good substitute surely for the "poor," too frequently used among ourselves in the like cases. The inhabitants of Ems, Protestant and Romanist, appeared quiet, industrious, and well disposed; and, invariably kind and civil to strangers, they form a pleasing specimen of the German character. In the duchy of Nassau education is compulsory, and the government schools in Ems appear well conducted; those of the higher class, under the management of a first-rate professor, are admirably so. In all, the pupils learn to sing by note, and perform very creditably. The Lutheran, or, to speak correctly, the Evangelical, much exceeds the Romish church in size, and is filled each Sunday by a large congregation, who, with one voice, sing the fine old chorales, many of which were composed by Luther. The form of worship, I believe, much resembles that of the Presbyterians in Scotland. Here, also, until within the last year, was celebrated the English Episcopal service, now held in a beautiful little church, which, owing to the exertions of the Rev. J. Parminter, for nine years the respected English clergyman of Ems, has been newly erected. Simple and beautiful, it has that look of home in the strange land which, in a higher sense, every church should have. Twice daily the bell tolls for morning and evening prayer, which nowhere in England can be conducted more reverently, or, on Sunday, followed by sermons more interesting or impressive. It is, indeed, the fault of the hearers if they leave Ems the better in bodily health alone. The church porch, at present of wood only, and temporary, is lined with the wellchosen books of a lending library, for the free use of the congregation; and I can say with truth that the clergyman is equally ready to offer, and to give, all the help in his power to any fellow-countryman who needs it. The only thing about this church to be regretted is the smallness of its stipend. But Sunday at Ems, as at other foreign places, is not the day of quiet we are happily accustomed to associate with the name; far otherwise. The band plays as on other days, and the same music, and after the hour of morning service the shops generally are open. Many of them are kept by Jews. Such, towards the end of September, were closed for three days, in honour of the Feast of Tabernacles. In the garden belonging to a Jewish house we saw the little "booth " in which, during the festival, the inmates took their meals; a

poor little shed, about six feet square, roofed with bean-stalks, and ornamented within by green sprays, strings of red hips, and apples; a very pitiful memento of the old days in their own land. For the most part,

the Jews at Ems are doubly wanderers, coming with their wares for the season, and leaving at its close, as all the stranger population were now preparing to do, ourselves unwillingly amongst the number. The end of September was come, but the weather, broken by one day's heavy rain, was again lovely, and the sunset each evening transformed the Lahn into a flood of gold and crimson. I would gladly have lingered among the grapes and reddening vine-leaves, and seen this happy valley in the rich October and the still November days; but the diners at the table d'hôte had shrunk to some half-dozen, and the courses were no less diminished; the hotel were almost empty, and the servants were being discharged; the fashionable shops were altogether shut up; the Cursaal also was closed, and the band had played a farewell serenade by moonlight in the open air; my friends were departing, and I too must say good-by to pleasant Ems, and the happy days we had spent there together.

THE LITTLE SPANISH DOCTOR.

BY WALTER THORNBURY.

(Opposite my window.-Seville, 1630.)

FIVE long years of barred-up doors and gratings,
You may pretty well imagine how she loved his trade;
She his wife-my Inez! queen!-in black mantilla,
Dark cascade of lace, and pink brocade.

Old curmudgeon! bah! how much I hate him,
At the doorway always standing with a bottle,
Holding up the gold to catch the sunlight.

Vermin some day I shall have him by the throttle.

All day long I watch those long black gratings,
Till the moonbeams come, like silver swords,

Cutting keenly at the strong bars' shadows,

What time in every street you hear the harpsichords.

All day long you see her pale face watching
At the dark grating facing to the street;

Church processions, soldiers, horses, mules, or carriage-
Nothing passes but she sees it-sweet!

Could I help but love her, half from pity,

She the fairy bird of such a loathsome cage?
Through the bars I saw her dark hair blowing-
Eighteen was never called a philosophic age.

He knows well I love her-beast and miser,
How he spies me now and weighs that powder,
Smiling malignant as the scale he watches;

He hates me, but conceals it, Satan's self no prouder.

He's such a bilious spider in the centre

Of his bell-wires, and all his nervous nettings; One eye on the stairs, one on his window,

Where his jewel bottles have their gleaming settings.

No duenna comes for cloves or aloes,

No old canon for an ounce of myrrh,
But he watches sleeves and fans, for letters
Slipped out sometimes into drawers for her.

Not a girl comes in for paste of roses,
Not a grocer for a pound of spice,
But he eves them as if Turks or felons,
Dreading the worst turn of the tricky dice.

And yet I cheat him: every night at seven,
When the Alameda's buzzing like a hive,
He goes slowly pacing, for his cigarette and gossip-
A fool that cannot love should never wive.

Ass and jealous hunks! At hush of twilight,
Over the orange tops, the garden-wall,
Just by the mulberry-tree, I fit the ladder,
And down I drop-the melon-bed to break

my fall.

O then the swelling bosom, beating half in terror!
O then the frightened hand that plays in mine!
Too soon the passion-kiss and clasping parting,
When that cursed convent-bell strikes glumly nine.

Curse him! see him weigh his poison-powders,
One day, perhaps, to filter in my wine;
With what a curious care he pounds and squeezes-
Who knows it is not meant for some such cup as mine?

I see him eye me now with searching malice,
Running along his bottles with his bony finger;
Murillo warns me of this wizened devil,

But, moth-like, still around the flame I linger.

Mingle-angle by tlonkshood.

but made a mingle-mangle and a hotch-potch of it-I cannot tell what.BP. LATIMER's Sermons.

A GOUTY SUBJECT.

A DAY much to be had in remembrance was that twenty-fifth day of October, 1555, on which the estates of the Netherlands were assembled in the great hall of the palace at Brussels, to witness, what was then a greater novelty than it now-o'-days is, the abdication of an Emperor. On that October afternoon, in that richly decorated hall, his Imperial Majesty, Charles the Fifth, was to release his subjects from future allegiance to himself as their sovran and kaisar. The scene was a crowded and an excited one. There was Cæsar,--as he was commonly styled, occupying the chief seat for the last time. There, too, was William of Orange, upon whose shoulder Cæsar had leaned as he entered the hall-for not only was Cæsar used-up in general, but in particular Cæsar had the gout. There, too, was Philip the Second, who from that day forth was to be saluted as monarch by that realm. And there, too, was Queen Mary of Hungary; with the Duke of Savoy near her, and the Archduke Maximilian, and throngs of knights and barons bold; "serene and smiling" Granvelle, subtle bishop that was, crafty cardinal that should be; Count Egmont, handsome, sumptuously attired, light-hearted, ill-fated; Count Horn, sombre-looking and querulous, cast in quite another mould than Egmont, but destined to the same dark doom; and boisterous, bullying Brederode, looking bluff and rakish as ever; and plausible President Viglius, a small, green-eyed, red-cheeked, fussy man; and Ruy Gomez, with his ravenswing hair, and pallid face, and graceful figure; and numbers more, of Spanish dons and Flemish notables; all gathered together to receive and reciprocate Cæsar's farewell.

It is only with the formal proem, prelude, or preliminary flourish, in the prolix speechifications of that memorable day, that we have any present concern. Ours, like Cæsar himself, is a gouty subject. Amid profound silence, then, arises at the Emperor's command, Philibert de Bruxelles, a member of the privy council of the Netherlands, who mouths a long oration in honour of his master, and laments that broken health and failing powers make abdication necessary. According to the historian Pontus Heuterus, who was present at the ceremony, and gives the speeches in full-possibly with amplifications and periods all his own-a direct onslaught was made by the orator, as eloquent as fervid in its invective, upon that cruel tormentor, so implacable, so unmerciful, the gout. As modern reporters say, you might have heard a pin drop, while Philibert declaimed the following pathological parenthesis. ""Tis a most truculent executioner; it invades the whole body, from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet, leaving nothing untouched. It contracts the nerves with intolerable anguish, it enters the bones, it freezes the marrow, it converts the lubricating fluids of the joints into chalk, it pauses not until, having exhausted and debilitated the whole body, it has rendered all its

"

necessary instruments useless, and conquered the mind by immense torture."* At the delivery of which passage, we may be sure that, among the many great men there present, many a great toe winced assent.

For, then as now, if not more than now, great folks were greatly liable to demoniacal possession by the démon de la Goutte, as an old French writer calls it himself an expert in its pains and penalties, as an extant sonnet of his bears pathetic witness :

Il exerce sur moi tout ce qu'il a de rage;

Je ne fais que languir, et si je ne suis mort,
C'est afin que, vivant, je souffre davantage.†

Le pauvre homme! Such a sufferer, while the fit was on him, would scarcely think dying King John's language too strong for the devilries of la Goutte:

Within me is a hell; and there the poison
Is, as a fiend, confined to tyrannise
On unreprievable condemned blood.‡

"Oh! when I have the gout," said Sydney Smith, "I feel as if I was walking on my eyeballs." In one of Walpole's letters to Lady Ossory (1770) we read: "Had you come hither, Madam, at your return from Winterslow, you would have found me about as much at ease as St. Lawrence was upon his gridiron. . . . . . . I do not believe roasting is much worse than what I have suffered-one can be broiled, too, but once; but I have gone through the whole fit twice, it returning the moment I thought myself cured." It is in reference to this particular attack that Horace tells his namesake Mann, also a gouty subject,- -"I can tell you, for your comfort, that by the cool, uncertain manner in which you speak of your fits, I am sure you never have had the gout. I have known several persons talk of it, that might as well have fancied they had the gout when they sneezed." Fourteen years later our Complete Letterwriter informs Lady Ossory (1784): "I am told that I am in a prodigious fine way; which, being translated into plain English, means, that I have suffered more sharp pain these two days than in all the moderate fits together that I have had for these last nine years: however, Madam, I have one great blessing, there is drowsiness in all the square hollows of the red-hot bars of the gridiron on which I lie, so that I scream and fall asleep by turns like a babe that is cutting its first teeth."** The experience of three lustres had taught this modern martyr that the comparison to another kind of martyr, old St. Lawrence and his gridiron, was not a whit too strong.

We started with Charles the Fifth, leaning on his crutch and on the Prince of Orange, and intimated that gout was prevalent among the grandees who surrounded him. And so it was. The war in the Netherlands which his son and successor had so soon to wage, makes us acquainted with a surprising number of gouty Generals-who are not, therefore, as some newspaper critics seem to assume, a product peculiar

Pontus Heuterus, 336. See Motley's Rise of the Dutch Republic, vol. i. ch. i. † Baudoin (Fr. Academician, died 1650). King John, V. 7. Memoir of the Rev. Sydney Smith, I. 346. Letters of Horace Walpole, vol. v. p. 258. Ibid. p. 261.

** Letters, vol. viii. p. 534.