Lucretia, Complete

pomp are the monuments of the dead. The dust of conquerors and statesmen, of the wise heads and the bold hands that had guarded the thrones of departed kings, slept around; and

m the remotest times, has been awarded to the great English race. Below, in their robes and coronets, were men who neither in the senate nor the field have shamed their fathers. Conspicuous amongst all for grandeur of mien and stature towered the brothers of the king; while, commanding yet more the universal gaze, were seen, here the eagle feat

me a link between the People and the King, and arrayed against both, if not, indeed, the real Aristocracy, at least the Chamber recognized by the Constitution as its representative. Without the space was one dense mass. Houses, from balcony to balcony,

or Hunt, who had clambered up the iron palisade near Westminster Hall, to exhibit his goodly person in his court attire, the

and fashion, embracing the whilom chase of Marylebone, and the once sedge-grown waters of Pimlico,-by this ignoble boundary (the crossing from the Opera House, at the bottom of the Haymarket, to the commencement of Charing Cross) stood a person whose discontented countenance was in singular contrast with the general gayety and animation of the day. This person, O gentle reader, this sour, querulous, discontented person, was a king, too, in his own walk! None might dispute it. He feared no rebel; he was

nct negro in the profitable crossing whereat he is now standing. All education was unknown to him, so was all love. In those festive haunts at St. Giles's where he who would see "life in London" may often discover the boy who has held his horse in the morning dancing merrily with his chosen damsel at night, our sweeper's character was austere as Charles the Twelfth's. And the poor creature had his good qualities. He was sensitively alive to kindness,-little enough had been shown him to make the luxury the more prized from its rarity! Though fond of money, he would part with it (we do not say cheerfully, but part with it still),-not to mere want, indeed (for he had been too pinched and starved himself, and had grown too obtuse to pinching and to starving for the sensitiveness that prompts to charity), but to any of his companions who had done him a good service, or who had even warmed his dull heart by a friendly smile. He was hone

God help thee, son of the street, why not? He had in it a double affection,-that of serving and being served. He kept the crossing, if the crossing kept him. He smiled at times to himself when he saw it lie fair and brilliant amidst the mire around; it

wd now rapidly grew thinner and more scattered: and when the last carr

l of pains to mak

ing through his betters, now halted, and wiped his forehead as he looked at the

nd made no answer, but began sedulou

streets, Beck. His Majesty King Bill's

Beck, pointing to the dingy crossing, sca

amuffin

to have their rights and libties, hand the luds is to be

will that

sveep the crossings, and ve shall ride in sum vun helse's

me and she, I shall vop you, Joe,-cos vy? I be's the bigges

ed cap with a shout for King Bill, and set off scampering and whoopi

litary Beck. So young was the rider that he seemed still a boy. On his smooth countenance all that most prepossesses in early youth left its witching stamp. A smile, at once gay and sweet, played on his lips. There was a charm, even in a certain impatient petulance, in his quick eye and the slight contraction of his delicate brows. Almaviva m

ght, he put his long limbs into that swinging, shambling trot which characterizes the motion of those professional jackals who, having once caught sight of a groomless rider, fairly hunt him down, and appear when he least expects it, the instant he dismounts. The young ride

older, to appearance at least, than himself, who were dining to

e have only just sat down

g men made room for him at the table, with a smiling alacrity w

one of his contemporaries,-"who is that lad? One

iend of ours," answered the other, droppin

at! Vernon St

es

ese young fellows have a tone, a some

for a year or so. He was a younger son, then,-third, I think. The two elder ones died,

does not loo

remember him in his jacket

! Everything is so bad at this d--d club,-no wonder, when a troop of boys ar

ra-dancers and beauties and the small scandals of town. Talk on these latter topics did not seem to interest him, on the contrary, almost to pain. Shy and modest as a girl, he coloured or looked aside when his more hardened friends boasted of assignations and love-affairs. Spirited, gay, and manly enough in all really manly points, the virgin bloom of innocence was yet visible in his frank, charming manner; and often, out of respect for his delicacy, som

owds that swept through the streets to gaze on the illuminations, when he perceived Beck (still at the rein of his dozing horse), whom he had quite forgotten till tha

to his stables,-No.--, the Mews, behind Curzon Street. P

ngry smile, and pulled

'oss werry saf

ood evening; but don't

ever gets on,-'t

through the crowd, till he v

g gentleman on the steps of the club, and said gayly, "Ah! how do yo

r. Varney. I was just thinking which

ur guide;" and Var

ounded symmetry it betrayed. His hair escaped from his hat in fair unchanged luxuriance. And the nervous figure, agile as a panther's, though broad-shouldered and deep-chested, denoted all the slightness and elasticity of twenty-five, combined with the muscular power of forty. His dress was rather fantastic,-too showy for the good taste which is habitual to the English gentleman,-and there was a peculiarity in his gait, almost approaching to a strut, which bespoke a desire of effect, a consciousness of personal advantages, equally opposed to the mien and manner of Percival's usual companions; yet withal, even the most fastidious would have hesitated to apply to Gabriel Varney the

crowd," said Varney.

ever I could become distinguished, I,

to become distinguished?" asked V

er glow over his cheek, at Varney's question. But he was slow in answering; and when he

selves. We are not all born great, nor

our fortune," said Varney; and the

painter like

you could paint at all, you would ha

Varney's arm. "Courage! you

popularity, it depends on two qualities, each singly, or both united,-cowardice and charlatanism; that is, servile compliance with the taste and opinion of the moment, or a quack's spasmodic eff

al, with a sly demureness. "

Varney, laughing; "and does you

alive! But that is something really worth looking at!" And Percival pointed, a

rs at Laughton hung with coloured lamps. Ah, you must ask me

think you say, in m

ev

ou kne

sligh

ever saw m

over you that I am sure she must be a very

tly proud, for she is very me

lking in Piccadilly with Gabriel Varney, the natural son of old Sir Mile

whatever his origin or parentage. But my mother would be sad if she knew me intimate with a Bourbon or a Raphael, the first in rank or the first in genius, if ei

while he continued carelessly: "Impossible to walk the streets and k

g picture-gallery at Laughton and say: 'Walk through life as if those brave gentlemen looked down on you.' And," adde

accents as he said this; it gave the key to his unusual

arney's lip sn

ve never loved yet. Do y

t I could love one

cigar in his mouth, each seemed flushed with wine. One wore long brass spurs and immense mustaches; another was distinguished by an enormous surface of black satin cravat, across which meandered a Pa

ows, well met! You sup with us to-night at little

red a second. And the third screwed hi

saw that his friends were too far gone in their cups to be easily shaken off, and he felt relieved when Percival, after a dissatisfied glance at the three,

no real genius,--it was a false apparition of the divine spirit, reflected from the exquisite perfection of his frame (which rendered all his senses so vigorous and acute) and his riotous fancy and his fitful energy, which was capable at times of great application, but not of definite purpose or earnest study. All about him was flashy and hollow. He had not the natural subtlety and depth of mind that had characterized his terrible father. The graft of the opera-dancer was visible on the stock of the scholar; wholly without the habits of method and order, without the patience, without the mathematical calculating brain of Dalibard, he played wantonly with the horrible and loathsome wickedness of which Olivier had made dark and solemn study. Extravagant and lavish, he spent money as fast as he gained it; he threw away all chances of eminence and career. In the midst of the direst plots of his villany or the most energetic pursuit of his art, the poorest excitement, the veriest bauble would draw him aside. His heart was with Falri in the sty, his fancy with Aladdin in the palace. To make a show was his darling object; he loved to create effect by his person, his talk, his dress, as well as by his talents. Living from hand to mouth, crimes through which it is not our intention to follow him had at times made him rich to-day, for vices to make him poor again to-morrow. What he called "luck," or "his star," had favoured him,-he was not hanged!-he lived; and as the greater part of his unscrupulous career had been conducted in foreign lands and under other names, in his own name and in his own country, though something scarcely to be defined, but equivocal and provocative of suspicion, made him displeasing to the prudent, and vaguely alarmed the experience of the sober, still, no positive accusation was attached to the general integrity of his character, and the mere dissipation of his habits was naturally little known out of his familiar circle. Henc

otsteps were arrested, and he leaned against one of the columns in admiration of the various galaxies in view. In front blazed the rival stars of the United Service Club and the Athenaeum; to the

armless sense of pleasure was yet vivid and unsatiated, caught from the assemblage only that physical hilarity which heightened his own spirits. If in a character as yet so undeveloped, to which the large passions and stern ends of life were as yet unkno

th Varney, that he was "at home in a crowd." For a crowd did not fill him with the sense of his own individual being and importance, but grappled him to its mighty breast with the thousand tissues of a common destiny. Who shall explain and disentangle those high and restless and interwoven emotions with which intellectual ambition, honourable and ardent, gazes upon

ed, to the young vivacity of the one man, the solemn visions of the other. So, O London, amidst the universal holiday to monarch and to mob, in those three souls lived the three elements which, duly mingled and administered,