Thaddeus of Warsaw. Jane Porter

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СКАЧАТЬ of the great monarch of that name; and the count, who is at its head, is Palatine of Masovia, which, next to the throne, is the first dignity in the state. He is one of the warmest champions of his country's rights; and though born to command, has so far transgressed the golden adage of despots, 'Ignorance and subjection,' that throughout his territories every man is taught to worship his God with his heart as well as with his knees. The understandings of his peasants are opened to all useful knowledge. He does not put books of science and speculation into their hands, to consume their time in vain pursuits: he gives them the Bible, and implements of industry, to afford them the means of knowing and of practising their duty. All Masovia around his palace blooms like a garden. The cheerful faces of the farmers, and the blessings which I hear them implore on the family when I am walking in the field with the young count (for in this country the sons bear the same title with their fathers [Footnote: Prince, (ancient Kniaz) and Boyard, (which is equivalent in rank to our old English Baron,) are titles used by Russians and Polanders, both nations being descended from the Sclavonians, and their languages derived from the same roots. Prince indicates the highest rank of a subject; Boyard simply that of Nobleman. But both personages must be understood to be of hereditary power to raise forces on their estates for the service of the sovereign, to lead them in battle, and to maintain all their expenses. The title of Count has been adopted within a century or two by both nations, and occasionally appended to the ancient heroic designation of Boyard. The feminine to these titles is formed by adding gina to the paternal title; thus Kniazgina Olga, means Princess Olga; also, Boyarda, Lady. The titles of Palatine, Vaivode, Starost and the like belong to civil and military offices.]), have even drawn a few delighted drops from the eyes of your thoughtless son. I know that you think I have nothing sentimental about me, else you would not so often have poured into my not inattentive ears, 'that to estimate the pleasures of earth and heaven, we must cultivate the sensibilities of the heart. Shut our eyes against them, and we are merely nicely- constructed speculums, which reflect the beauties of nature, but enjoy none.' You see, mamma, that I both remember and adopt your lessons.

      "Thaddeus Sobieski is the grandson of the palatine, and the sole heir of his illustrious race. It is to him that I owe the preservation of my life at Zielime, and much of my happiness since; for he is not only the bravest but the most amiable young man in the kingdom; and he is my friend! Indeed, as things have happened, you must think that out of evil has come good. Though I have been disobedient, I have repented my fault, and it has introduced me to the knowledge of a people whose friendship will henceforward constitute the greatest pleasure of my days. The mother of Thaddeus is the only daughter of the palatine; and of her I can say no more than that nothing on earth can more remind me of you; she is equally charming, equally tender to your son.

      "Whilst the palatine is engaged at the diet, her excellency, Thaddeus, and myself, with now and then a few visitors from Warsaw, form the most agreeable parties you can suppose. We walk together, we read together, we converse together, we sing together—at least, the countess sings to us, which is all the same; and you know that time flies swiftly on the wings of harmony. She has an uncommonly sweet voice, and a taste which I never heard paralleled. By the way, you cannot imagine anything more beautiful than the Polish music. It partakes of that delicious languor so distinguished in the Turkish airs, with a mingling of those wandering melodies which the now- forgotten composers must have caught from the Tartars. In short, whilst the countess is singing, I hardly suffer myself to breathe; and I feel just what our poetical friend William Scarsdale said a twelvemonth ago at a concert of yours, 'I feel as if love sat upon my heart and flapped it with his wings.'

      "I have tried all my powers of persuasion to prevail on this charming countess to visit our country. I have over and over again told her of you, and described her to you; that you are near her own age (for this lovely woman, though she has a son nearly twenty, is not more than forty;) that you are as fond of your ordinary boy as she is of her peerless one; that, in short, you and my father will receive her and Thaddeus, and the palatine, with open arms and hearts, if they will condescend to visit our humbler home at the end of the war. I believe I have repeated my entreaties, both to the countess and my friend, regularly every day since my arrival at Villanow, but always with the same issue: she smiles and refuses; and Thaddeus 'shakes his ambrosial curls' with a 'very god-like frown' of denial; I hope it is self-denial, in compliment to his mother's cruel and unprovoked negative.

      "Before I proceed, I must give you some idea of the real appearance of this palace. I recollect your having read a superficial account of it in a few slight sketches of Poland which have been published in England; but the pictures they exhibit are so faint, they hardly resemble the original. Pray do not laugh at me, if I begin in the usual descriptive style! You know there is only one way to describe houses and lands and rivers; so no blame can be thrown on me for taking the beaten path, where there is no other. To commence:—

      "When we left Zielime, and advanced into the province of Masovia, the country around Praga rose at every step in fresh beauty. The numberless chains of gently swelling hills which encompass it on each side of the Vistula were in some parts checkered with corn fields, meadows, and green pastures covered with sheep, whose soft bleatings thrilled in my ears and transported my senses into new regions, so different was my charmed and tranquillized mind from the tossing anxieties attendant on the horrors I had recently witnessed. Surely there is nothing in the world, short of the most undivided reciprocal attachment, that has such power over the workings of the human heart as the mild sweetness of nature. The most ruffled temper, when emerging from the town, will subside into a calm at the sight of a wide stretch of landscape reposing in the twilight of a fine evening. It is then that the spirit of peace settles upon the heart, unfetters the thoughts and elevates the soul to the Creator. It is then that we behold the Parent of the universe in his works; we see his grandeur in earth, sea, and sky: we feel his affection in the emotions which they raise, and, half mortal, half etherealized, forget where we are, in the anticipation of what that world must be of which this earth is merely the shadow. [Footnote: This description of the banks of the Vistula was given to me with smiles and sighs. The reality was once enjoyed by the narrator, and there was a delight in the retrospection "sweet and mournful to the soul." At the time these reflections arose on such a scene, I often tasted the same pleasure in evening visits to the beautiful rural environs of London, which then extended from the north side of Fitzroy Square to beyond the Elm Grove on Primrose Hill, and forward through the fields to Hampstead. But most of that is all streets, or Regent's Park; and the sweet Hill, then the resort of many a happy Sunday group, has not now a tree standing on it, and hardly a blade of grass, "to mark where the primrose has been."]

      "Autumn seemed to be unfolding all her beauties to greet the return of the palatine. In one part the haymakers were mowing the hay and heaping it into stacks; in another, the reapers were gathering up the wheat, with a troop of rosy little gleaners behind them, each of whom might have tempted the proudest Palemon in Christendom to have changed her toil into 'a gentler duty.' Such a landscape intermingled with the little farms of these honest people, whom the philanthropy of Sobieski has rendered free (for it is a tract of his extensive domains I am describing), reminded me of Somerset. Villages repose in the green hollows of the vales, and cottages are seen peeping from amidst the thick umbrage of the woods which cover the face of the hills. The irregular forms and thatched roofs of these simple habitations, with their infant inhabitants playing at the doors, compose such lovely groups, that I wish for our dear Mary's pencil and fingers (for, alas! that way mine are motionless!) to transport them to your eyes.

      "The palace of Villanow, which is castellated, now burst upon my view. It rears its embattled head from the summit of a hill that gradually slopes down towards the Vistula, in full view to the south of the plain of Vola, a spot long famous for the election of the kings of Poland. [Footnote: It was from this very assumption by the nation, on the extinction of the male line of the monarchs of the house of Jaghellon, that all their subsequent political calamities may be dated. The last two sovereigns of this race were most justly styled good and great kings—father and son—Sigismund I. and II. But on the death of the last, about the middle of the sixteenth century, certain nobles of the nation, intoxicated with their wealth and privileges, run wild for СКАЧАТЬ