and thus supported, he marched to Bucharest, of which he took possession. The Pashas of the Danube having hastily combined all their disposable troops, sent 20,000 men against Ypsilanti. The Prince, avoiding a general action, retreated slowly to the mountains, which were inaccessible to the Turkish cavalry; but not withstanding his obstinate resistance, and the military talents he displayed, he was unsuccessful. Betrayed by Wladimiresko, the Prince soon found himself entirely abandoned by his troops. After making a last effort, he perceived the inutility of farther resistance, and in the month of June, 1821, resolved to join his brother Demetrius, who had preceded him in the Peloponnesus. He then crossed the Carpathian mountains, and took the road to Transylvania; but he was arrested by the Austrians, and confined two years in the fortress of Montgatz,* in Hungary, and four years and a half in Theresienstadt, in Bohemia. "Treason ne'er succeeds, and what's the reason? When it succeeds, it is no longer treason." All the efforts of his friends, to procure his liberty, were exerted in vain. A deaf ear was turned to all their prayers, and they soon found it necessary to discontinue farther appli-cations, lest their interference should render his treatment worse. The Emperor Alexander disavowed the enterprise of Ypsilanti, and ordered his name to be struck off the Russian army list. This Prince was then convinced, that in politics to fail is to be criminal. The Admirals who recently beat the Turkish fleet have been loaded with honours, while he who made a fruitless attempt to subdue them, was loaded with chains. However, when the three great Powers entered into stipulations for bringing about the pacification of Greece, either by representations, or by force of arms, Russia demanded the liberation of Ypsilanti; but that was only granted on the express condition that he should not leave the Austrian States; and he was then ordered to reside in Verona. Alas! the Austrian clemency came too late. Seven years of suffering had undermined his constitution. In passing through Vienna, on his way to Italy, he fell sick; and, after two months of severe illness, died on the 31st of January last, aged only 36, in the arms of his sister, Princess Rouzamowska, who caused him to be buried with the funeral honours due to his rank, and to the esteem with which he was justly regarded. As the friend of this unfortunate Prince, I may now publish the papers he entrusted to my care, and remove the thick veil with which a tortuous policy has too long covered its interesting victim. I shall do so; for, perhaps, even the tomb will not protect his memory. Calumny disappears on the death of the obscure, but clings to the urn of the illustrious, and, after ages have passed away, seeks to disturb and degrade their ashes. Ypsilanti, however, had friends during life, and ought not to want defenders after death. Peace to the soul of the departed hero, who devoted his talents, his life, and his fortune, to the defence of his country; and may his memory be revered as long as patriotism, courage, and loyalty, are honoured among men! Illustrious but unfortunate names seem to be from age to age associated with Montgatz. Prince Bagotski, and Counts Tekeli and Sereski, the victims of their unsuccessful courage, were long imprisoned in this fortress. But in defending their rights, they had attacked Austria; Ypsilanti, on the contrary, had only combated the enemies of Christianity. NE THE MAN WITH THE MOUTH. TEVER did I behold such a mouth!" This was my internal exclamation, as I gazed upon the man who sat opposite to me in the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh. He was an elderly personage-tall, meagre, long-chinned, hook-nosed, pale complexioned, and clothed from top to toe in a suit of black. It was wearing towards twilight, and the noble apartment in which I was seated had been forsaken by all its loungers, save myself and the man who called forth my observation. We were alone, he perusing the Morning Chronicle, I engaged with Blackwood's Magazine. The article I was reading was a capital one. It waslet me see "Streams,"-that exquisite creation of Christopher North's matchless pen. But admirable as the article might be, it was not so admirable as the man's mouthwho perused the Chronicle. For some time, indeed, there was a combat between the mouth and the article, both soliciting my regards with equal ardour, and compelling me every moment to turn my eyes, first to the one and then to the other. Each possessed a magnetic property; and my mind was, like a piece of iron, reciprocally acted upon by a couple of powerful loadstones. By degrees, however, the balance was destroyed: Ebony either grew weaker, or the mouth stronger; and I was obliged, with a weeping heart, to throw the former aside, and submit myself entirely to the domination of the latter. It was, in truth, a noble mouth, stretching, in one magnificent sweep, from ear to ear-such a mouth as the ogres of romance must have had, or the whale that swallowed Jonah. I remember the first time when-from the bottom of the stairs leading to the Fountain of Neptune-I beheld the front of Versailles' stupendous palace. One feeling only occupied my mindthat of breathless astonishment-as the huge fabric rose up before me, in sublime proportion, from the bosom of its matchless garden. Such astonishment-such breathlessness came over me, when my eyes first encountered the man, or rather his mouth. I was more than astonished; I was delighted-delighted, as when stepping into the Sistine Chapel, the grand creations of Michael Angelo, frescoed upon its roof and walls, burst like a glimpse of Paradise upon my tranced spirit. Such was the delight afforded by the mighty mouth: not the man-beloved reader-for men as fair in all respects as he have I often seen. It was not his cheeks, thin as parchment, his nose curved like an eagle's beak, his chin promi nent as a bayonet in full charge, or his complexion, pale and lustreless as a faded lily. It was not theseno, reader, it was not these which operated with such wizard power upon me. It was his mouth-that mouth-wonderful as Versailles, and beautiful as the Sistine Chapelwhich carried my sympathies away, and led me a captive worshipper at its shrine. But Such were my first impressions on beholding the Man with the Mouth. They were those of unmingled awe and pleasure, and appealed with resistless effect to my imagination. They came upon me like a rainbow bursting out from the bosom of a dark cloud-as a stream of sunshine at midnight-as the sound of the Eolian harp in a summer eve. they appealed to the fancy alone: they touched the heart, but not the head; and it was some time before the latter could bring its energies to bear, so completely had it been overwhelmed with the tumult of passions which agitated the feelings. It did act at last; and as soon as the incipient impressions subsided a little, I felt an irresistible desire to ascertain why such wonderful effects should spring from such a cause. But it was in vain; and being neither casuist nor phrenologist, I was obliged to drop a subject, to which my powers were altogether unequal. I wondered, and was delighted; but what the remote springs of such wonder and delight might be, baffled my philosophy, and set my reasoning faculties at naught. Meanwhile the man continued opposite to me, reading the Chronicle, and I continued to look at him, marvelling at the dimensions of that feature which had vanquished Christopher North in single combat, and absorbed his beautiful" Streams" in its insatiable gulf. He never turned his eyes from the paper: they were rigidly fixed upon its democratic columns, and, but for the motion of his hands, as he shifted it up and down, I should have supposed him an image carved for some Dutch college by Chantry, or Thorwaldson the Dane. I had no curiosity about the man: his name, his country, his profession, his character, were alike matters of indifference. I would not have given the toss of a farthing to know all about them. My attention was engaged with a nobler theme. I was analyzing his mouth, admiring the blandness of its expression, wondering at its hugeness, and envying its happy owner the possession of so magnificent a characteristic. It was not an ireful mouth: the corners were not turned down in the attitude of wrath or contempt, but curled upwards, in that benign flexibility of curve, which Charles Bell has so well illustrated in his Anatomy of Expression. He did not laugh he was too sedate for that -but his mouth was clothed with a gentle smile, betokening inward tranquillity of spirit. Never did I gaze upon a being so full of mildness-so void of gall; and the longer I looked at him, I became convinced that those lips had been nurtured with milk and manna, and that the mind to whose was thoughts they gave utterance one which knew not guile or bitter When I first noticed this marvellous man, it was six o'clock, which at that very moment pealed from the clock of St. Giles; and the room, as I have already stated, was becoming obscured with the shades of approaching eve. The light which glared in at the windows was sullen and sepulchral, and flung a broad, dull radiance, upon the fluted Corinthian columns, that extended their double rows along the Library, supporting its painted roof upon their foliaged capitals. Within and without, all was calm. Save our two selves, there was not a soul in the apartment. The librarian had gone, Lord knows whither-the advocates had bidden their literary sanctum adieu, and the man with the mouth and myself were left in undisputed possession of the premises. We had now sat for a considerable time together, he reading the Chronicle, I admiring his mouth. It was certainly the most extraordinary mouth ever created, and challenged observation in an uncommon degree. His whole face was absorbed in this mighty feature. He had, it is true, ears, and eyes, and cheeks, and nose, and chin; but they were pigmied to nothing in such a lordly neighbourhood. He was, in fact, earless, eyeless, cheekless, noseless, and chinless. To speak comparatively, he had neither the one nor the other: he was all mouth. I must say that I felt gratified in having it in my power to witness such a spectacle. I respected the man, or rather his mouth. He was, it is true, a radical, as his newspaper reading testified, but then he had vanquished Christopher North; and after great an achievement, what feats might he not perform? I began to think that there was no exploit in the world beyond his accomplishment. That mouth was to him the brazen head of Friar Bacon-the sword of Achilles-the mirror of Merlin-the wand of Prospero-the griffin of He could rule Astolpho-the Elixir Vita-the Philosopher's Stone. the nations with it; terrify the Gouls and Dives with its grin; convulse the universe with laughter, beyond the power of Liston, and draw more tears from Beauty's eyes, than Siddons in Belvidera, or O'Neil in Juliet. The mouth was, in fact, omnipotent: it would be wronging it to say that it belonged to the man, for the man belonged to it. It was to him body and soul; and the other parts of his frame, such as trunk, limbs, and head, were merely its appendages. Such were the reflections which, in spite of fate, arose in my mind on witnessing this extraordinary phenomenon, when a circumstance occurred which gave rise to a new train of ideas. Hitherto the mouth had been quiescent: not a muscle of it had moved, while its appendage, the man, was employed at his occupation. It was fixed, rigid, and apparently as incapable of change as the eternal rocks. I had even begun to wonder whether it possessed the power of motion-whether it could open and shut like other mouths-whether, in a word, its powers were equal to its pretensions. But these unworthy surmises were soon put to flight; for, on looking attentively, I perceived, with a feeling of intense awe, that it began to move. Upon my honour, the lips began to separate, first a hairbreadth--then two--then threethen a whole line, and at last half an inch. There was a solemn grandeur about the process of opening. The mouth was unquestionably one of too much importance to open itself on trifling occasions, or in a trifling man ner. It performed the operation slowly, deliberately, sublimely; and I looked on with the same breathless, anxiety, as when listening in the Great Glen, of Scotland to the expectant bursting of a thunder-cloud, which hangs in threatening mood over the summit of Bennevis. To say that it resembled a church-door would be doing it injustice--no churchdoor, even the main one of Notre Dame or St. Paul's ever expanded its huge jaws with such deliberate majesty. Reader, if you have seen the opening of the dock-gates at Portsmouth, or of the locks on the Caledonian Canal, you may form some idea of that of the mouth. I think I said it had opened half an inch; to do so it took no less than three minutes-this I particularly noticed. "Now," said I," this mouth is capable of expanding at least twelve times that length, or six inches. Three minutes to half an inch make six minutes to a whole inch. Six multiplied by six, make thirty-six. In all, one half hour and six minutes must elapse before this glorious mouth can attain its ne plus ultra." While this process was going on, day waned apace, and twilight was on the point of being succeeded by darkness. Those broad floods of light which bathed the pillars with their lurid lustre, were becoming fainter and fainter-and nocturnal gloom threatened, in a few minutes, to reign "Lord of the ascendant." But this approaching obscuration was no im pediment to the mouth. It opened wider every instant. At last it attained the climax of its extension; and, wide as it was, would stretch no farther. The mouth, after all, was not so omnipotent as I supposed. There were limits to its powers, and after thirty-six minutes of incessant operation, it had done its best. I now began to wonder what object my opposite neighbour could have in opening his mouth to such an apocry phal extent-or rather what could tempt the mouth itself to perform so extraordinary an exploit-for, somehow, I could never think of it as being under the control of the man. It could not be to eat, for eatables abound not in libraries; nor to speak, for speech requires not such oral dimensions. It was for neither; the purpose for which it condescended to open itself was nobler far. It was to give a yawn, which sounded through the apartment-shook me on my seat, and made the proudest folio quiver like an aspen from its firm founda tion. I never heard such a yawn: it was worthy of the great source from whence it emanated: it was worthy of the Advocates' Library; and, as its echo sounded from shelf to shelf, from pillar to pillar, and from table to table, I thought that it would rival the loudest yawn ever uttered by luckless wight, while luxuriating in the recondite pages of that profound philosopher, Dr. Black. Kings might have owned it, heroes claimed it as their own, sages contended for it, poets sung about it. In one word, it was worthy of the Man with the Mouth. Need more be said? Answer, "No." Nor was this the only yawn. There were one, two, three, each louder than its predecessor. The last in particular was tremendous, and filled me with awe and admiration. I even yawned myself in hopeless rivalry, but I might as well have tried to outbrave the thunders of Jove with a pop-gun, as enter the lists with this most doughty opponent. These mighty yawns being at an end, I naturally concluded that the mouth would resume its former condition that it would close and be as when I first beheld it. But it closed not. Dark as the evening was, I saw that the man still gaped-that his mouth was as wide as ever: he seemed in truth, yawning though inaudibly. He no longer perused upon the Chronicle this the darkness rendered a hopeless attempt; and he quietly deposited the paper upon the table and looked at me-not with his eyes, but with his mouth. I cannot describe the feelings which pervaded me at this time.The room was almost pitch dark; no relic of the solar influence remained behind ; the pillars had lost the gaudy lustre lent them by the twilight, and stood like rows of sable giants in their respective places, while a silence, dread and drear as the grave, prevailed on every side. My admiration-my love -my respect for the mouth was as great as ever, but in a short time they began to be coupled with fear; and had it not been for some mysterious witchery exercised upon my understanding, I believe I should have taken leg-bail, and left the man to yawn and gape till the "crack of doom." The Library was robed in darkness-true-but that did not prevent me from seeing him. Obscurity could not shroud him. He still gaped prodigiously. His mouth was large, round and deep, and formed a circle in the centre of his face-a black circle, only broken at the top of his nose, which peeped over it-and below by his chin, which protruded forward as if to harmonize with the nasal protuberance, and render the symmetry perfect. I saw also his eyes, that shone like two lambent lights, and shed a sepulchral lustre around the boundaries of his awful and mysterious mouth. Altogether I felt alarmed-still respect for the remarkable object of my meditations bound me to my seat; and though minutes and hours passed by, I was yet gazing intently at it. I could perceive no diminution of its size: it was still the same yawning gulf-the same "antar vast," which gave birth to the portentous yawns. On one side I sat rapt in a frenzied awe; on the other, sat the Man with the Mouth, like an idol, commanding and compelling my adoration. I knew not what to make of him—or rather of his mouth. There was something surprising in the whole business; and now, for the first time, did I feel my respect for this wonderful feature beginning to decline. The gradual opening of the feature was fine-the yawning magnificent--but such a persevering system of gaping seemed to me absurd. There was something in it which shocked my causality; and I began to suspect that, after all, his mouth was a very so so affair, scarcely worthy of the time and trouble it had cost me. At last, what with violent excitement, and the fatigue of gazing, my imagination got violently agitated. I no longer saw things with my own eyes, but with the optics of faucy, and revelled in a profusion of extravagant and unbridled thought. The man who at first seemed nameless and unknown, was now invested with a "habitation and a name." |