symbols of wisdom, of healing, of life, and regeneration. By means of the staff, it is clear magnetic influence was exercised. In the fifth book of the Odyssey, Jupiter, in the councils of the gods, commands his daughter Minerva to conduct Telemachus with wisdom, and to his son he says: Hermes, who art of my ordinances ever the bearer. Here is proof that the magnetic sleep could be induced by means of the wand. Its magic power is further illustrated in the Æneid, iv. 242: The staff which pale shadows from Orcus Calls up, or down into sorrowful Tartarus sends them, Sleep gives and awakens the sleeper, and seals up the eyes of the dying. Schweigger, in corroboration of the magnetic theory of the staff, shows, from ancient gems, an accurate representation of one of the most beautiful electro magnetic phenomena of modern times, namely, the whirling of snakes of iron wire rapidly round the magnet in a circle of revolving and illuminating sparks. But to pursue this subject further would require more time than we can at present devote to it. The myths of Hercules and Hermes cannot be fairly explained without reference to the magnetic powers in nature. The Hercules stones which received the homage of the ancients were loadstones; to this day the magnet is worshipped in China. NAPOLEON AND THE BURIED TREASURE IN PERSIA.* BY DR. MICHELSEN. IN 1807, General Gardanne was informed by a correspondent that a relative of his own, who had resided for a number of years in Persia, had, in consequence of a popular outbreak, fled from the country, after burying in a secret spot his accumulated wealth, amounting to several millions of piasters. The spot in question was so minutely described, and even sketched out in a forwarded plan of the environs of Ispahan, that Gardanne had not the least doubt of the correctness of the intelligence. He showed the letter to his master the Emperor, and asked his permission to repair to Persia in search of the treasure. Napoleon, having perused the letter, shook his head, and said, "I will think of it." A few days after, the Emperor sent for Gardanne, and conversed good humouredly about the imaginary treasure. "The affair, my good general, seems to me fabulous; buried treasures belong to the Contes Bleus. "But, sire," interrupted Gardanne, "I have such a minute sketch and description of the spot, and all the particulars." "That may be," said Napoleon; "but they come from the land of the Arabian Nights, and I fear that the story of your inheritance is but a * From the unpublished "Chroniques des Tuileries." By Fouchard Lafosse. supplement to that volume. However," added he, more seriously, "your project has suggested to me a certain political movement, and since you are bent upon the journey, you have my permission to go. At the same time, you can render me an important service." That," bowed Gardanne, "will be a second treasure to me." Ay, and far more real than the first." "Your majesty does not believe in gnomes?" "There are two kinds of gnomes," replied Napoleon: "the preserving and the searching ones; the latter being always bent upon plundering the former. To come to the point, however, I have, you know, signed a treaty of peace with the Emperor Alexander of Russia, but it is very doubtful whether our good understanding will be of long duration. We both stand at the extreme points of Europe, and balance of power is not my policy. I must, therefore, look for allies in the East, and the Shah of Persia can serve me most efficaciously in that respect, both materially and politically. I wish, therefore, that my ambassador to that sovereign should drill and train his troops, and make them a real corps de bataille. The Persians are, generally, brave and persevering, and sixty thousand well-disciplined men, who would know how to manœuvre between the Russians and the English in the East Indies, might serve me as an excellent vanguard. The alliance of the Shah appears to me of such importance that I would not spare any sacrifice to obtain it. You understand me, the Rhine-Bund territories are for me at any time a military road. Prussia will permit the passage of my troops, while my good Poles will receive them with open arms, and follow them. Russia, then, if she understands her own interest, will readily open to me the plains of Lithuania, and if not, I can easily force my way at the point of the bayonet to the frontiers of Persia, where I shall find an Eastern army, well trained by my skilful general, to fill up the chasms in my ranks caused by battles and garrisons of occupation in my rear. With these fresh recruits I will march to India, where I mean to restore to the natives their liberty and country, refresh the remembrance of Tippoo Sahib, and make them rally under the standard of my Eagle. The power of England, her true wealth and preponderance at sea, will then be paralysed; for it is only India, and not what is called Great Britain, that constitutes her superiority. After this, I intend to give a firm and lasting peace to the world. It will be possible, since I shall then have removed all the obstacles put in the way of peace by England." "A grand plan!" exclaimed Gardanne. 'People without insight and courage," resumed Napoleon, “may find it gigantic, perhaps utopian, but those who know how to weigh and examine resources and obstacles, will believe in the practicability of the plan; and since your private affairs call you to the East, you may as well represent there my Envoy-extraordinary. Take with you a few able officers to assist you in your military task. I will give due orders to that effect; but as your own treasure seems to me rather uncertain, I shall take care to secure you a handsome existence at the Persian court. You will there train and form good soldiers capable of executing my design, and I shall not bargain for the price. You can set out tomorrow, and this evening you will receive an order for a hundred thousand crowns. Napoleon's ambassador must show the Persians that though the soil of Western Europe produces less gold than theirs, it produces, nevertheless, iron and steel in sufficient quantity to conquer, and to allow us to support our ambassadors in splendour and with munificence." Gardanne at once departed for Ispahan, taking with him a certain number of military officers selected from various regiments. We shall not trouble the reader with a description of the entry of the ambassador into an Eastern capital, nor with the details of the ceremonies attending the first audience of Gardanne at the Persian court, or the pipes, cushions, perfumes, and the scores of black slaves bowing with hands above their heads before the eldest son of the Sun, and a thousand other details of Oriental absurdities. The Shah was pleased to review, in the presence of his new guests, a few regiments of his troops, which at once convinced the general of the difficult task he had before him of drilling, training, and disciplining such soldiers in the art of European warfare. The ceremonies of presentation were long and tedious, and it may easily be imagined how impatient Gardanne was to repair to the spot where the treasure was supposed to be deposited. An early night was at last fixed for the exploration, and during the interval the general was visited by sweet dreams of fairies holding before his eyes large diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and other precious stones, while a carbuncle showed him the way where the scores of barrels of gold were deposited by his relative. Late on the appointed evening, Gardanne, accompanied by a few confidential officers, repaired to the spot. All were provided with lamps, pickaxes, shovels, hammers, and other implements required for the occasion. At last the general stopped, and whispered to his companions, "We are close by; here is the grove of aloe-trees, and there the old ruin so plainly sketched in the plan." He then proceeded, in advance of his party, step by step, with his head bent to the ground, searching for a rose-bush which was planted over the entrance of the cave. All at once he disappeared. His followers, terrified, hastened to the spot, and discovered that he had fallen into a clay-pit half filled with slime, from which they had much difficulty in extricating him. Having at last got him on dry ground, they entered a small cave, as indicated in the sketch, but it was entirely empty, and scarcely large enough to hold the whole party. "I have been robbed-plundered !" exclaimed Gardanne. "There is no treasure here. However, I have got something that I did not anticipate." "What is that, general ?" asked an officer. "A cold, and a lame leg. And now, gentlemen," continued he, “let us hasten home, and think no more of fairy tales, which have, no doubt, deluded many a fool before me. What we have henceforth to do is to execute the Emperor's mission, and if we succeed in forming fifty or sixty thousand well-trained troops, we may rely upon a reward of which no goblin will deprive us." The mission perfectly succeeded. Gardanne and his officers returned to France decorated with the Order of the Sun, which the general declared he would not exchange for all the fairy treasures of the East. 408 THE STORY OF LOUISE AND HER LOVERS. ONCE upon a time, nearer yesterday than a hundred years ago, there lived a certain Baron von Arnfeld. Have you ever heard of Bergdorf? It lies about three quarters of an hour's journey by the omnibus from one of the largest and most important cities in the north of Germany. In that country, as I dare say you know, they have a way of reckoning distance by time; they will seldom tell you how many miles it is to such and such a place (though they have miles of their own, good stiff ones too, equal to between four and five of ours in England), but it is so many hours by the railway, or so many to drive, or, again, so many to walk. I have mentioned the omnibus, not because it is my favourite means of locomotion-quite the contrary-but because these vehicles ply between the city and Bergdorf at all hours of the day, and because everybody between the rank of a prince and a beggar rides in them. Bergdorf is a pretty village, not like one of our London suburbs, hot and dusty, with a town air pervading it, but quite country-like, the houses not being built in stately terraces, but detached or semi-detached, with pretty gardens before them, screening them from the broad Land-strasse, along which roll our friends the omnibuses, while both sides of this same Land-strasse are planted with linden-trees, beneath whose overhanging shade of leafy green is pleasant shelter when the summer sun shines hot. Such is, or at any rate such was, Bergdorf when the Baron von Arnfeld lived in it. The baron in person would have made a splendid model for a Hercules; he stood six foot three in his stockings, and was broad of limb and strong of sinew proportionately. In his youth he must have been a remarkably handsome man, and now, though the snows of some sixty winters had silvered his head and extinguished the fire in his eye, his form was as upright as ever, and he looked every inch a baron. Poor man! he had little beyond his looks wherewith to support his dignity. The Baron von Arnfeld, his father, himself one of a large family, had had fourteen sons, all by right of German law and custom immemorial Barons von Arnfeld, though the baronial estates, by constant division and subdivision, had dwindled down almost to a fraction. Our baron, Rudolph by name, tenth of the fourteen, had inherited a certain Gut, or small estate, called Friedrichshuld, on which he had resided in earlier years; but finding farming a plain and palpable present loss, with a hope of future profit so remote and dubious, that there was reason to fear the whole Gut would be swallowed up in mortgages before the turning of the tide, he wisely resolved upon letting the same and retiring with his wife and three daughters to live at Bergdorf on the rent of his paternal inheritance. The baron was a good husband and father, and could be a pleasant companion enough when he chose, but he was extremely self-opinionated, and when in one of his argumentative moods often showed himself the reverse of agreeable. He had strong prejudices, and the strongest of them all were against England and the English. He treasured all the old familiar grudges and misconceived notions of foreigners in general, and had his own delusions in particular into the bargain. He had never himself been in England, could neither read nor speak the language, the one sole utterance he had acquired being the words "pass the bottle," which he delighted in quoting as the form of speech ever on the lips of the drunken islanders. In his early youth he had served a single campaign in the Prussian army against Napoleon; he was present, an ensign, at Waterloo; and his thorough acquaintance with our national character, manners, and customs, was professedly drawn from his recollections of the English soldiery of that time. The good baron's prejudices are, however, buried in his grave; he died early in this very year-requiescat in pace. The Frau Baronin, his wife, was a sweet and gentle lady, becoming well her title of Gnädige Frau, by which the people all around addressed her, although she by birth belonged to burgher rank, and had only been. raised to the Adel, or nobility, of which the Germans are so proud, by her marriage with the baron. Her face was still fair at the time when I saw her, and must have been most beautiful in her youth, more beautiful than any of her daughters, now in the full charm and freshness of theirs. The names of these three young ladies were Sophie, Adèle, and Louise, re-christened by their father, das Herz, der Geist, and der Körper, or Heart, Mind, and Body, names allowed by all who knew them to be not inappropriate. Sophie, the eldest-das Herz-was, it must be confessed, rather plainlooking. She had weak eyes, and a complexion which was far from suggesting the idea of lilies and roses; I am afraid I must call it muddy. She was tall and well-grown, and her figure was by the family considered good, but it was lacking in grace, the unnaturally small waist being suggestive of stays in a painful degree. Nevertheless, Sophie had assuredly the kindest and best little heart in the world-a large heart, and not a little one, by the way-a heart which, if it could plot that torture of its own body in the matter of stays, had certainly never caused a moment's pain to any other body, ever since the day it first began to beat. Sophie's was not what would be called a gushing nature, on the contrary, she was quiet and undemonstrative, but she seemed instinctively to anticipate everybody's wants, and to have a heart-felt, if silent, sympathy for everybody's joys and sorrows. Her hands, if not quite so soft and white as they might have been, were always busy, and seldom in behalf of the individual body to which those members belonged. Was any one sick, Sophie was the gentle, thoughtful, untiring nurse. Nothing could ever ruffle her even temper, no envious or unkind thought ever found a place in her mind. All the girls could knit and sew, brew and bake, wash and iron linen, and do a hundred other domestic offices, which even the daughters of a baron are not above learning in Germany (in our baron's establishment there was, by the way, but one small maid of all work, receiving her twelve thalers, or scarcely 31. yearly wages), but none of them could do these things so well as Sophie. Adèle, the second sister, would very soon convince you of the justice of her title as der Geist. Her education intellectual had been deficient and imperfect, many a little English schoolgirl of half her years could have stumped her in questions of history and geography; literature and science were all but empty names to her, but the mind was there; you read it at the first glance in her face, in the broad forehead and clear, intelligent eye; you discerned it ere you had been half an hour in her VOL. LVI. 2 E |