Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 139.pdf/520

Rh alive, his brother officers, while they were yet in the field, jestingly asked him where was his prophecy now. Prendergast gravely answered, "I shall die notwithstanding what you see." Soon afterwards there came a shot from a French battery, to which the orders for a cessation of arms had not reached, and he was killed upon the spot. Colonel Cecil, who took possession of his effects, found in his pocket-book the following solemn entry: "Dreamt —— or —— Sir John Freind meets me" (here the very day on which he was killed was mentioned). Prendergast had been connected with Sir John Freind, who was executed for high treason. General Oglethorpe said he was with Colonel Cecil when Pope came and inquired into the truth of this story, which made a great noise at the time, and was then confirmed by the colonel.

Right pleasant, Master Boswell, must have been General Oglethorpe's dinners, and lovable the giver; and would that we could know more of his personal history! We cannot, however, quite assent to Joseph Warton's assertion that "he was at once a great hero and a great legislator." He was, doubtless, a brave, honorable man, a thorough "fine old English gentleman," earnestly discharging his duty, to the best of his ability, in the senate and in the field. His supposed Jacobite tendencies excited the animosity of the Whigs, to his exclusion from those professional honors to which he was otherwise justly entitled; and the same reason probably elevated him in the eyes of such admirers as Dr. Johnson. To us, however, he appears in the light of an eminently philanthropic man and good Christian, who adorned the lax and sceptical age in which he lived by an example of genuine piety in faith and practice; and who will ever recall to our minds the ideal of the "chevalier sans peur et sans reproche."


 * A passage in our narrative may be corrected from the Gentleman's Magazine for November 1787, in an obituary notice of the general's widow, at the age of 77. It would seem from her will that she was wealthy, and that Westbrook Place was still in her possession. The writer says: "To her magnanimity and prudence, on an occasion of much difficulty, it was owing that the evening of their lives was tranquil and pleasant, after a stormy noon."

 

 

, — The small town of Amélie-les-Bains, in the eastern Pyrenees, close to the Spanish frontier, under the shadow of Mont Canigon, and hanging over the gorges of the River Tech, and its tributary, the Mondony, has been this week en fête, and middle-class French and Spaniards, and peasants of both countries, have flocked in for their annual jollification. The usual gambling-stalls, where you invest your sou and run your chance for a packet of sweatmeats or whatever else you have a mind to, offered temptations as irresistible as ever; the bains and boissons refreshed the guests as far as hot-sulphur waters can refresh, and the time passed gaily with music and dancings à la Catalan. But chief among the attractions, and that which is looked forward to as the great event of the feast, is the bull-fight. For days the terrace on which the thermes Romains are placed was in preparation for the occasion; barriers were put up, surmounted by benches, and the place turned into a small amphitheatre. Some American friends of ours offered us room at a window in their hotel which overlooked the scene, but we said with great self-abnegation, "No! bull-fights are bloody and brutal, and as the only English here, we will uphold our testimony against them." "Not at all," said they. "No horses are used, and neither the matadores nor the bulls are ever hurt; we have seen them in Barcelona, and a more harmless exhibition could not be witnessed." "Is it possible?" and with some slight misgiving at what promised to be rather a slow affair, we accepted our places. Many things in travelling come to modify one's prievously conceived ideas, but was it possible that our notions of a Spanish bull-fight were all wrong?

The preparations being complete, the ground was cleared, the matadores, two in number, with one or two non-professional volunteers, put themselves in readiness, and the first bull rushed into the arena. He was small, and appeared frightened out of his senses by the spectacle that met him, the clamor of the people, and the din of the music, and seemed more solicitous for his own safety than anxious for the blood of his antagonists.

Some appearance of wrath was, however, excited in him by the matadores, who did their utmost with red blanket and goads to irritate him, and he was induced to "run" them once or twice, but in a manner so inefficient that it could have resulted in nothing, even if the men had kept their ground. At length, when nothing more could be got out of the animal, he was let out, and another was 