about their necks,— no obduracy of Edward
—no eloquence of the Queen. All these things
however, I give up. In fact I am ready to
profess my unbelief in anything: and when the
object to be sacrificed is only an old-fashioned
incident in the midst of persons and manner;
with which we have nothing to do, the effort
at incredulity is not very difficult. l am
prepared to take a sponge and pass it over all
history, anecdote, tradition and belief, previous
to George the Third. But, when a fellow, in
mere reliance on his powers of denial, begins
to interfere with my modern faith, and with
one flop of his teeth annihilates the most
recent records as if they were moth-eaten
with the rottenness of the Crusades, the thing
becomes serious. Let Cleon, we cry, be a
much-abused individual, and instead of the
notorious demagogue we thought him, let
him be a high-principled whig: let bloody
Mary be beautified into the perfect ensample
of a lofty-minded, tender-hearted woman and
justice-loving queen: let Henry the Eighth
be the most patient of martyrs, and the most
immaculate character of recent times; let
Jeffreys himself be the impersonation of equity
and of the righteous firmness which gives the
sword of justice all its value; but spare us
the dome of St. Paul's! the roof of
Westminster Abbey! Alter as much as you like,
but don't obliterate altogether! Make
Shakespeare out an illiterate ass if you please, but
don't deny that such a man really lived!
Tell us the Pyramids are round, but don't
destroy them uttterly! Yet that is what the
inexorable M'Ritchie has done; not with regard
to Shakespeare and Jeffreys, or the Pyramids;
but about several things much more
valuable to me than the English Justice or the
Egyptian Cheops.

For instance;—One night I said, but almost
in a whisper (I am so subdued I seldom speak
above my breath), that politics (it is thought
quite a novel expression) were as irresistible
as the vortex of the Maelstrom;—and when
I looked at the face of our guest (he had
swallowed his ninth cup of tea, and walked
into a heaped-up plate of muffins till not a
single one was left) I sincerely wished I was
at that moment whirling round and round in
the outer circles, gradually drawing nearer
and nearer to the central pool, in company
with a few howling bears and distracted boats
performing the same dreadful revolution;
for, the mouth was opened, and from it
proceeded the word of fate:

"I big yer par-r-don , there's no such thing
as the Malstrom."

Come, come, I thought, this fellow will
deny the existence of my mother-in-law next.
I'll stand it no longer; wherefore I said,
"Mr. M'Bitchie, I think you go a little too far.
The Maëlstrom is in every geography-book,
and every school-boy-—-"

"I big yer par-r-don. Every school-boy is a
perfit idyitt who believes in any such thing."

And he condescended to proof. From the
same repertory where lie kept his authorities
about Calais, he brought forward a certain
official report, presented to the King of
Denmark by a commission of scientific and naval
men, who had been sent to verify the size and
danger of the greatest whirlpool in the world.
It was dated two or three years ago. It was
very clear, very conclusive; and signed with
all their names. They had searched night
and day in the quarter where the awful
Maëlstrom was supposed to be. Over and
over, backward and forward, sailed the vessel
of inquiry. There was no recoil, no eddy,
no roar; there was nothing but smooth
water, and a gradual tide. The philosophers
examined divers of the fishermen and skippers;
all of them had heard of the Maelstrom,
and believed in it, and prayed against
it; but none of them had ever seen it. All
the coast was traversed, from the mouth of
the Baltic to the north of Norway. There
was no Maëlstrom! And the navigator may
guide his bark in peace; the swimming bears
may dread no suction; the inadvertent whale
may spout through its nose in safety; the
stately ship may fear no irresistible twist and
twirl, and may lazily float with fair wind
and tide across the dreaded spot. It is for
ever extinguished, abolished, and done out of
existence by act of the Danish parliament.
The jubilant lips closed with a bang, and
all my simile was overthrown!

But, the next effort of this exterminator of
acknowledged truths, was more interesting even
than his expungement of the northern Sylla
and Charybdis; I commend the consideration
of it to the erudite inquirers of the Notes
and Queries. He was damming up for ever the
sources of the Nile, when I took courage to
make a remark about the explorers of Africa,
and named my favourite traveller Le Vaillant.
In a moment the dreadful doom was passed.
"I big yer par-r-don; Le Vaillant never wrote
the book! " What! were the plains of
Caffraria to be robbed of the picturesque
accompaniments of waggons and bullocks,
and the groups of attached natives; and the
pleasantries of Kees the monkey; and the
beautiful tenderness of the desert flower— the
fair Narina— the connecting link between
the graceful savagery of a naturally gentle
nature, and the culture and elegance of
European maidenhood? All, all my pretty
ones, at one fell swoop? But so it was; and
here was his story:—

A gentleman, whose name he gave, and
whose character for truthfulness and
honour would guarantee whatever he said
as having occurred to himself, was engaged
in a great commercial speculation in Paris
shortly after the peace of eighteen
hundred and fifteen. This business brought him
often into contact with the members of the
French government at the time, and with
many of the men of science and literature.
Among these, the person with whom he
became most intimate was the celebrated