eloquent rhetoric. Here is another circular from the Great East Indian Brandisherri Wine Company, enclosing quite a pretty pamphlet on the wine trade and prospects of the vintage, and a confidential (lithographed) letter, stating their possession, under very peculiar circumstances, of a pipe of a fine fruity port, which they have not thrown into their general stock, but which they have thoughtfully reserved for their own immediate friends, who will be privileged to purchase it for a mere bagatelle. Now, I wonder what the bagatelle may be when translated into the simple letters £ s. d.; and also, whether or no, they include me among their immediate friends; and, if so, why? But, here, Sophonisba, is the circular over which I cried an Eureka; for it cuts the Gordian knot—it provides us with a solution of the Sphinx’s enigma—it gives us the recipe for throwing the old man of the sea from off our shoulders; in short, it tells us how to put an end to the slave trade. So you see, Sophonisba, that, despite your occasional surprise at what you deem my waste of time in glancing over these trade puffs—which are meant to swell into a trade wind to blow custom to the advertiser—yet that I am able to pick up nuggets of knowledge in these literary diggings. In harmonious and elegant prose, the circular thus commences: it is from the Cosmopolitan Composite and Translucent Candle Company: ‘It is but seldom that any really great improvement in manufactures is achieved. To speak comparatively, it was but yesterday, when cotton dipped in tallow formed the chief candle for general use. But, at this day, products imported from tropical climates, aided by Science, give forth crystallised material from which the beautiful candles now offered are obtained.’ Then follow statistics, treated with Gladstonian skill, and remarks on the palm-oil trade, and then comes my Eureka. ‘The development of this branch of their manufactures will promote the extinction of the slave trade.’ A sufficient reason, of course, why all these Britons who never will be slaves, should patronise the Cosmopolitan Candle Company. By the way, what a useful fact this would be for an Exeter Hall orator, for 1 suppose the May Meetings extend their sympathies to the Man and the Brother, I remember hearing a speech on the subject, and very proper sentiments being expressed, and I certainly thought with the speaker, that we had no longer a right to expect a continuance of those blessings which we have so long enjoyed, if we in the slightest degree encouraged that unhallowed and cruel traffic in man, against which England, for more than fifty years, has been working by the efforts of her greatest statesmen, and her best and bravest sailors. Aye, Sophonisba, but there’s the rub. Look at these circulars, and all the varied literature of the shop, and see how eloquently and ingeniously they commend commodities, our very use of which arises from and assists the development of the slave trade. This puff from the candle company is, in shop-language, a startling novelty. Supposing their statement to be correct, they need not fear that it will be basely plagiarised in this circular of Carraways, the tea-dealers. If we do not wish to encourage, in the slightest degree that unhallowed and cruel traffic in man, we must make up our minds to deprive ourselves of a tithe (to speak rectorially) of those articles of necessity on which the literature of the shop so eloquently descants. You, Sophonisba, will have to reply to Mr. Carraway when he addresses you on the subject of sugar, that you are determined not to lend any support to the slave trade; and I must bear the same testimony when he speaks to me of coffee. Mr. Carraway would probably think us mere Bedlamites. But we might reply to fifty other tradesmen in similar terms, and yet be in our right minds. For use has dulled our senses to facts, and if our comforts and appetites are ministered to, we are content to shut our eyes to the means employed. Take the case of Jones (let us say), who, on the subject of the slave trade, is a very Wilberforce. Well, then, Jones sips his slave-grown chocolate, sweetened with slave grown sugar, wipes his mouth with a cotton pocket handkerchief, and, rising from his bamboo chair, playfully rubs the head of Mrs. Jones’s Jamaica parrot. Jones then gets into his gig with its lance-wood shafts, and drives to a meeting of the Anglo-Mexican Mining Company, where he pays up his instalments, and from thence goes to the sale of American produce, where he makes purchases of Carolina rice. He accompanies one of the directors to the City of London Tavern, where he finds an excellent dinner set out upon a table of mahogany. He eats his turtle with a silver spoon, drinks iced punch flavoured with sugar and rum, sprinkles his turbot with cayenne pepper, bedews his cucumber with Chili vinegar, and winds up with curry and hot pickles, preserved ginger, a glass of noyeau, and a cup of coffee. He then puts down ten pieces of gold as a contribution to the Society for the Suppression of the Slave Trade—whose eloquent circular has brought the literature of the shop home to his very heart; and then goes back to Ms. Jones with the honest conviction that he would sooner cut off his right hand than do anything that would in the remotest degree encourage that pernicious traffic in human souls. I wonder if Jones has received one of those circulars from the candle company! I have quite done now, Sophonisba; and am going into the study to write my sermon.”
“My dear Alphonso,” said the joy of my existence, “I think you have been preaching one to me.”
THE GHOST THAT MY GRANDMOTHER SAW.
One lovely summer’s evening I was sitting with my grandmother on the terrace of one of those beautiful villas situated on the “riviera di Genova,” overlooking the blue Mediterranean. I had been reading Longfellow to her, for although an Italian she was well acquainted with English; she bade me read once more the “Footsteps of Angels,” and it was after these lines—
Then the forms of the departed
Enter at the open door;
The beloved, the true-hearted,
Come to visit me once more,
that I asked her—half in play, half in earnest—whether she had ever seen a ghost?
