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how my soul grilled within my skin!--I did as you may suppose as much of his highness's pleasure as squared with my own; and had the satisfaction of informing him on his return that the bird had fled.""-- ""And there was an end of the matter?""-- ""I hoped so! But I am not precisely the confessor his highness is likely to select when love constitutes the sin. At all events the bustle of Margaret's departure for Spa the care of the royal escort and the payment of all that decency required us to take upon ourselves of the cost of our hospitality engrossed my time and thoughts. But the first time the Infant beset me (as he has doubtless done yourself ) with his chapter of lamentations over the sufferings of Belgium --the lawlessness of the camp--the former loyalty of the provinces--the tenderness of conscience of the heretics --and the eligibility of forbearance and peace --I saw as plain as though the word were inscribed by the burning finger of Satan that the turkois eyes and flaxen ringlets were the text of all this snivelling humanity!' ""Blessings on the tender consciences of the heretics who were burning Antwerp and Ghent and plundering the religious houses and putting their priests to the sword!"" ejaculated Gonzaga. ""The exigencies of the hour however left little leisure to Don John for the nursing of his infant passion; and a few weeks past I entertained hopes that Queen Margaret being safe back at her Louvre the heart of the Prince was safe back in its place; more especially when he one day proposed to me an exploit savouring more of his days of Lepanto than I had expected at his hands again. Distracted by the false intelligence wherewith we were perpetually misled by the Brabançon scouts Don John determined on a sortie in disguise towards the intrenchments of the enemy betwixt the Sambre and Dyle. Rumour of the reinforcements of English troops dispatched to the heretics by Queen Elizabeth at the instance of the diet of Worms rendered him anxious; and bent upon ascertaining the exact cantonments of Colonel Norris and his Scottish companies we set forward before daybreak towards the forest of Marlagne as for a hunting expedition; then exchanging our dresses for the simple suits of civilians at the house of the verderer made our way across the Sambre towards Gembloux."" ""A mad project!--But such were ever the delight of our Quixote!""--cried Gonzaga. ""In this instance all prospered. We crossed the country without obstacle mounted on two powerful Mecklenburgers; and before noon were deep in Brabant. The very rashness of the undertaking seemed to restore to Don John his forgotten hilarity of old! He was like a truant schoolboy that has cheated his pedagogue of a day's bird-nesting; and eyes more discerning than those of the stultified natives of these sluggish provinces had been puzzled to detect under the huge patch that blinded him of an eye and the slashed sleeve of his sad-coloured suit that showed him wounded of an arm the gallant host of Queen Margaret! 'My soul comes back into me with this gallop across the breezy plain unencumbered by the trampling of a guard!' cried the Prince. 'There is the making in me yet of another Lepanto! But two provinces remain faithful to our standard: his highness of Orange and the Archduke having filched one by one from their allegiance the hearts of these pious Netherlanders; who can no better prove their fear of God than by ceasing to honour the king he hath been pleased to set over them. Nevertheless with Luxembourg and Namur for our vantage-ground and under the blessing of his holiness the banner under which I conquered the infidel shall sooner or later float victorious under this northern sky!' ""Such was the tenour of his discourse as we entered a wood halfway through which the itinerary I had consulted informed me we had to cross a branch of the Dyle. But on reaching the ferry-house of this unfrequented track we found only two sumpter-mules tied to a tree near the hovel and a boat chained to its stump beside the stream. In answer to our shouts no vestige of a ferryman appeared; and behold the boat-chain was locked and the current too deep and strong for fording. ""Where there is smoke there is fire! No boat without a boatman!"" cried the Prince; and leaping from his horse which he gave me to hold and renewing his vociferations he was about to enter the ferry-house when just as he reached the wooden porch a young girl holding her finger to her lips in token of silence appeared on the threshold!"" ""She of the turkois eyes and flaxen ringlets for a hundred pistoles!""--cried Gonzaga. ""Such then was the bird's nest that made him so mad a truant!"" ""As she retreated into the house "" resumed Nignio without noticing the interruption ""his highness followed hat in hand with the deference due to a gouvernante of Flanders. But as the house was little better than a shed of boards by drawing a trifle nearer the porch not a syllable of their mutual explanation escaped me. ""'Are you a follower of Don John?'--was the first demand of the damsel. 'Do you belong to the party of the States?'--the next; to both which questions a negative was easily returned. After listening to the plea fluently set forth by the prince that he was simply a Zealand burgess travelling on his own errand and sorely in fear of falling in (God wot) with either Protestants or Papists the damsel appeared to hail the arrival of so congenial an ally as a blessing; acquainted him with a rash frankness of speech worthy of his own that she was journeying from the Ardennes towards the frontier of Brabant where her father was in high command; that the duenna her companion outwearied by the exercise was taking her siesta within; for that her pacing nag having cast a shoe on reaching the wood the ferryman had undertaken to conduct to the nearest smithy the venerable chaplain and serving-man constituting her escort. ""'Half a league from hence ' said she 'my father's people are in waiting to escort me during the rest of my journey.' ""'Yet surely gentle lady ' observed the prince 'considering the military occupation of the province your present protection is somewhat of the weakest?'-- ""'It was expressly so devised by my father ' replied the open-hearted girl. 'The Spanish cavaliers are men of honour who war not against women and almoners. A more powerful attendance were more likely to provoke animosity. Feebleness is sometimes the best security.' ""'_Home_ is a woman's only security in times like these!'--cried the prince with animation. ""'And therefore to my home am I recalled ' rejoined the young girl with a heavy sigh. 'Since my mother's death I have been residing with her sister in the Ardennes. But my good aunt having had the weakness to give way to my instances and carry me to Namur last summer to take part in the entertainments offered to the Queen of Navarre my father has taken offence at both of us; and I am sent for home to be submitted to sterner keeping.' ""You will believe that ere all this was mutually explained more time had elapsed than I take in the telling it; and I could perceive by the voices of the speakers that they had taken seats and were awaiting without much impatience the return of the ferryman. The compassion of the silly child was excited by the severe accident which the stranger described as the origin of his fractures and contusions; nor need I tell you that the persuasive voice and deportment of Don John are calculated to make even a more experienced one than this pretty Ulrica forget his unseemly aspect and indigent apparel."" ""And all this time the careful gouvernante snored within and the obsequious aide-de-camp held at the door the bridles of the Mecklenburgers""-- ""Precisely. Nor found I the time hang much heavier than the prince; for at first mistrustful like yourself that the reconnaissance into which he had beguiled me was a mere pretext I was not sorry to ascertain sigh by sigh and word by word the grounds on which he stood with the enemy. And you should have heard how artfully he contrived to lead her back to the fêtes of Namur; asking as with the curiosity of a bumpkin the whole details of the royal entertainments! No small mind had I to rush in and chuck the hussy into the torrent before me when I heard the little fiend burst forth into the most genuine and enthusiastic praises of the royal giver of the feast --'So young so handsome so affable so courteous so passing the kingliness of kings.' She admitted moreover that it was her frantic desire of beholding face to face the hero of Lepanto which had produced the concession on the part of her kinswoman so severely visited by her father. ""'But surely ' pleaded this thoughtless prattler 'one may admire the noble deportment of a Papist and perceive the native goodness beaming in his eyes without peril of salvation? This whole morning hath my father's chaplain (who will be here anon) been giving scripture warrant that I have no right to importune heaven with my prayers for the conversion of Don John:--Yet as my good aunt justly observes the great grandson of Mary of Burgundy has his pedestal firm in our hearts beyond reach of overthrow from all the preachments of the Reformers'""-- ""And you did not fling the bridles to the devil and rush in to the rescue of the unguarded soldier thus mischievously assailed?""--cried Gonzaga. ""It needed not! The old lady could not sleep for ever; and I had the comfort to hear her rouse herself and suitably reprehend the want of dignity of her charge in such strange familiarity with strangers. To which the pretty Ulrica replied 'That it was no fault of hers if people wanted to convert a child into a woman!' A moment afterwards and the ferryman and cortège arrived together; and a more glorious figure of fun than the chaplain of the heretic general hath seldom bestridden a pacing nag! However I was too glad of his arrival to be exceptious; and the whole party were speedily embarked in the ferry taking their turn as the first arrived at the spot which we twain abided watching the punt across the stream which in consequence of the strength of the current it was indispensable to float down some hundred yards in order to reach the opposite shore. ""Hat in hand stood the prince his eyes fixed upon the precious freight and those of Ulrica fixed in return upon her new and pleasant acquaintance; when Jesu Maria!--as every thing that is evil ordained it --behold the newly-shod palfrey of the pretty Brabançonne irritated perhaps by the clumsy veterinaryship of a village smithy began suddenly to rear and plunge and set at defiance the old dunderhead by whom it was held!--The ass of a ferryman in his eagerness to lend his aid let go his oar into the stream; and between the awkwardness of some and the rashness of others in a moment the whole party were carried round by the eddy of the Dyle!--The next and Ulrica was struggling in the waters""-- ""And the next in the arms of the prince who had plunged in to her rescue!""-- ""You know him too well not to foresee all that follows. Take for granted therefore the tedious hours spent at the ferry-house in restoring to consciousness the exhausted women half-dead with cold and fright. Under the unguarded excitement of mind produced by such an incident I expected indeed every moment the self-betrayal of my companion; but _that_ evil we escaped. And when late in the evening the party was sufficiently recovered to proceed I was agreeably surprised to find that Don John was alive to the danger of escorting the fair Ulrica even so far as the hamlet where her father's people were in waiting."" ""And where he had been inevitably recognized!""-- ""The certainty of falling in with the troopers of Horn rendered it expedient for us to return to Namur with only half the object of his highness accomplished. But the babble of the old chaplain had acquainted us with nearly all we wanted to know -- namely the number and disposal of the Statists and the position taken up by the English auxiliaries."" ""And this second parting from Ulrica?""-- ""Was a parting as between friends for life! The first had been the laughing farewell of pleasant acquaintance. But now ere she bade adieu to the gallant preserver of her life she shred a tress of her silken hair still wet with the waters of the Dyle which she entreated him to keep for her sake. In return he placed upon her finger the ruby presented to him by the Doge of Venice bearing the arms of the republic engraved on the setting; telling her that chance had enabled him to confer an obligation on the governor of the Netherlands; and that in any strait or peril that signet dispatched in his name to Don John of Austria would command his protection."" ""As I live a choice romance!--almost worthy the pages of our matchless Boccaccio!"" cried the Italian. ""A thousand pities but that the whole batch of Orangeists had been carried down the Dyle!--However the enemy's lines lie between them. They will meet no more. The Calvinist colonel has doubtless his daughter under lock and key; and his highness has too much work cut out for him by his rebels to have time for peeping through the keyhole.--So now good-night.--For love-tales are apt to beget drowsiness; and i'faith we must be a-foot by break of day."" And having betaken himself to the chamber provided for him Ottavio Gonzaga lost not an hour or a syllable in transcribing all he had learned from the Spanish aide-de-camp; that the state of mind and feeling of the young viceroy might be speedily laid open to the full and uncongenial investigation of his royal brother of the Escurial. Part II. A fortnight afterwards was fought that famous battle of Gembloux which added a new branch to the laurels of Don John of Austria; and constitutes a link of the radiant chain of military glories which binds the admiration of Europe to the soil of one of the obscurest of its countries!--Gembloux Ramillies Nivelle Waterloo lie within the circuit of a morning's journey as well as within the circle of eternal renown. By this brilliant triumph of the royalists six thousand men-at-arms their standards banners and artillery were lost to the States. The cavalry of Spain under the command of Ottavio Gonzaga performed prodigies of valour; and the vanguard under that of Gaspardo Nignio equally distinguished itself. But the heat of the action fell upon the main body of the army which had marched from Namur under the command of Don John; being composed of the Italian reinforcements dispatched to him from Parma by desire of the Pope under the command of his nephew Prince Alexander Farnese. It was noticed however with surprise that when the generals of the States--the Archduke Matthias and Prince of Orange--retreated in dismay to Antwerp Don John instead of pursuing his advantage with the energy of his usual habits seemed to derive little satisfaction or encouragement from his victory. It might be that the difficulty of controlling the predatory habits of the German and Burgundian troops wearied his patience; for scarce a day passed but there issued some new proclamation reproving the atrocious rapacity and lawless desperation of the army. But neither Gonzaga nor Nignio had much opportunity of judging of the real cause of his cheerlessness; for independent of the engrossing duties of their several commands the leisure of Don John was entirely bestowed upon his nephew Alexander Farnese who only a few years his junior in age was almost a brother in affection. To him alone were confided the growing cares of his charge--the increasing perplexities of his mind. To both princes the name of Ulrica had become by frequent repetition a sacred word; and though Don John had the comfort of knowing that her father the Count de Cergny was unengaged in the action of Gembloux his highness had reason to fear that the regiment of Hainaulters under his command constituted the garrison of one or other of the frontier fortresses of Brabant to which it was now his duty to direct the conquering arms of his captains. The army of the States having taken refuge within the walls of Antwerp the royalists instead of marching straight to Brussels according to general expectation effected in the first instance the reduction of Tirlemont Louvain D'Arschot Sichem and Diest --Nivelle the capital of Walloon Brabant next succumbed to their arms--Maubeuge Chimay Barlaimont;--and after a severe struggle the new and beautiful town of Philippeville. But these heroic feats were not accomplished without a tremendous carnage and deeds of violence at which the soul sickened. At Sichem the indignation of the Burgundians against a body of French troops which after the battle of Gembloux had pledged itself never again to bear arms against Spain caused them to have a hundred soldiers strangled by night and their bodies flung into the moat at the foot of the citadel; after which the town was given up by Prince Alexander to pillage and spoliation! Terrified by such an example Diest and Leeuw hastened to capitulate. And still at every fresh conquest and while receiving day after day and week after week the submission of fortresses and capitulation of vanquished chiefs the anxious expectation entertained by Don John of an appeal to his clemency accompanying the Venetian ring was again and again disappointed!-- At times his anxieties on Ulrica's account saddened him into utter despondency. He felt convinced that mischance had overtaken her. All his endeavours to ascertain the position of the Count de Cergny having availed him nothing he trusted that the family must be shut up in Antwerp with the Prince of Orange and Archduke; but when every night ere he retired to a soldier's rugged pillow and pressed his lips to that long fair tress which seemed to ensure the blessings of an angel of purity and peace the hopes entertained by Don John of tidings of the gentle Ulrica became slighter and still more slight. He did not the more refrain from issuing such orders and exacting such interference on the part of Alexander Farnese as promised to secure protection and respect to the families of all such officers of the insurgent army as might in any time or place fall into the hands of the royalists. To Alexander indeed to whom his noble kinsman was scarcely less endeared by his chivalrous qualities than the ties of blood and who was fully aware of the motive of these instructions the charge was almost superfluous. So earnest were from the first his orders to his Italian captains to pursue in all directions their enquiries after the Count de Cergny and his family that it had become a matter of course to preface their accounts of the day's movements with--""_No_ intelligence may it please your highness of the Count de Cergny!"" The siege of Limbourg however now wholly absorbed his attention; for it was a stronghold on which the utmost faith was pinned by the military science of the States. But a breach having been made in the walls by the Spanish artillery under the command of Nicolo di Cesi the cavalry commanded in person by the Prince Alexander and the Walloons under Nignio di Zuniga speedily forced an entrance; when in spite of the stanch resistance of the governor the garrison laid down their arms and the greater portion of the inhabitants took the oath of fealty to the king. Of all his conquests this was the least expected and most desirable; in devout conviction of which the Prince of Parma commanded a _Te Deum_ to be sung in the churches and hastened to render thanks to the God of Battles for an event by which further carnage was spared to either host. Escorted by his _état major_ he had proceeded to the cathedral to join in the august solemnization; when lo! just as he quitted the church a way-worn and heated cavalier approached bearing despatches; in whom the prince recognised a faithful attendant of his household named Paolo Rinaldo whom he had recently sent with instructions to Camille Du Mont the general charged with the reduction of the frontier fortresses of Brabant. ""Be their blood upon their head!"" was the spontaneous ejaculation of the prince after perusing the despatch. Then turning to the officers by whom he was escorted he explained in a few words that the fortress of Dalem which had replied to the propositions to surrender of Du Mont only by the scornful voice of its cannon had been taken by storm by the Burgundians and its garrison put to the sword. ""Time that some such example taught a lesson to these braggarts of Brabant!""--responded Nignio who stood at the right hand of Prince Alexander. ""The nasal twang of their chaplains seems of late to have overmastered in their ears the eloquence of the ordnance of Spain! Yet i'faith they might be expected to find somewhat more unction in the preachments of our musketeers than the homilies of either Luther or Calvin!"" He spoke unheeded of the prince; for Alexander was now engaged apart in a colloquy with his faithful Rinaldo who had respectfully placed in his hands a ring of great cost and beauty. ""Seeing the jewel enchased with the arms of the Venetian republic may it please your highness "" said the soldier ""I judged it better to remit it to your royal keeping."" ""And from whose was it plundered?"" cried the prince with a sudden flush of emotion. ""From hands that resisted not!"" replied Rinaldo gravely. ""I took it from the finger of the dead!"" ""And when and where?""--exclaimed the prince drawing him still further apart and motioning to his train to resume their march to the States' house of Limbourg. ""The tale is long and grievous may it please your highness!"" said Rinaldo. ""To comprise it in the fewest words know that after seeing the governor of Dalem cut down in a brave and obstinate defence of the banner of the States floating from the walls of his citadel I did my utmost to induce the Baron de Cevray whose Burgundians carried the place to proclaim quarter. For these fellows of Hainaulters (who to do them justice had fought like dragons ) having lost their head were powerless; and of what use hacking to pieces an exhausted carcass?--But our troops were too much exasperated by the insolent resistance and defiance they had experienced to hear of mercy; and soon the conduits ran blood and shrieks and groans rent the air more cruelly than the previous roar of the artillery. In accordance however with the instructions I have ever received from your highness I pushed my way into all quarters opposing what authority I might to the brutality of the troopers."" ""Quick quick!""--cried Prince Alexander in anxious haste--""Let me not suppose that the wearer of this ring fell the victim of such an hour?""-- It was in passing the open doors of the church that my ears were assailed with cries of female distresses:--nor could I doubt that even _that_ sanctuary (held sacred by our troops of Spain!) had been invaded by the impiety of the German or Burgundian legions!--As usual the chief ladies of the town had placed themselves under the protection of the high altar. But there even there had they been seized by sacrilegious hands!--The fame of the rare beauty of the daughter of the governor of Dalem had attracted among the rest two daring ruffians of the regiment of Cevray."" ""You sacrificed them I trust in GOD on the spot?""--demanded the prince trembling with emotion. ""You dealt upon them the vengeance due?"" ""Alas! sir the vengeance they were mutually dealing had already cruelly injured the helpless object of the contest! Snatched from the arms of the Burgundian soldiers by the fierce arm of a German musketeer a deadly blow aimed at the ruffian against whom she was wildly but vainly defending herself; had lighted on one of the fairest of human forms! Cloven to the bone the blood of this innocent being scarce past the age of childhood was streaming on her assailants; and when rushing in I proclaimed in the name of God and of your highness quarter and peace it was an insensible body I rescued from the grasp of pollution!"" ""Unhappy Ulrica!"" faltered the prince ""and oh! my more unhappy kinsman!"" ""Not altogether hopeless "" resumed Rinaldo; ""and apprized by the sorrowful ejaculations of her female companions when relieved from their personal fears of the high condition of the victim I bore the insensible lady to the hospital of Dalem; and the utmost skill of our surgeons was employed upon her wounds. Better had it been spared!--The dying girl was roused only to the endurance of more exquisite torture; and while murmuring a petition for 'mercy--mercy to her _father_!' that proved her still unconscious of her family misfortunes she attempted in vain to take from her finger the ring I have had the honour to deliver to your highness:--faltering with her last breath 'for _his_ sake Don John will perhaps show mercy to my poor old father!'""-- Prince Alexander averted his head as he listened to these mournful details. ""She is at rest then?""--said he after a pause. ""Before nightfall sir she was released.""-- ""Return in all haste to Dalem Rinaldo "" rejoined the prince ""and complete your work of mercy by seeing all honours of interment that the times admit bestowed on the daughter of the Comte de Cergny!"" Weary and exhausted as he was not a murmur escaped the lips of the faithful Rinaldo as he mounted his horse and hastened to the discharge of his new duty. For though habituated by the details of that cruel and desolating warfare to spectacles of horror--the youth--the beauty--the innocence--the agonies of Ulrica had touched him to the heart; nor was the tress of her fair hair worn next the heart of Don John of Austria more fondly treasured than the one this rude soldier had shorn from the brow of death in the ward of a public hospital albeit its silken gloss was tinged with blood!-- Scarcely a month had elapsed after the storming of Dalem when a terrible rumour went forth in the camp of Bouge (where Don John had intrenched his division of the royalist army ) that the governor of the Netherlands was attacked by fatal indisposition!--For some weeks past indeed his strength and spirit had been declining. When at the village of Rymenam on the Dyle near Mechlin (not far from the ferry of the wood ) he suffered himself to be surprised by the English troops under Horn and the Scotch under Robert Stuart the unusual circumstance of the defeat of so able a general was universally attributed to prostration of bodily strength. When it was soon afterwards intimated to the army that he had ceded the command to his nephew Prince Alexander Farnese regret for the origin of his secession superseded every other consideration. For the word had gone forth that he was to die!--In the full vigour of his manhood and energy of his soul a fatal blow had reached Don John of Austria!-- A vague but horrible accusation of poison was generally prevalent!--For his leniency towards the Protestants had engendered a suspicion of heresy and the orthodoxy of Philip II. was known to be remorseless; and the agency of Ottavio Gonzaga at hand!-- But the kinsman who loved and attended him knew better. From the moment Prince Alexander beheld the ring of Ulrica glittering on his wasted hand he entertained no hope of his recovery; and every time he issued from the tent of Don John and noted the groups of veterans praying on their knees for the restoration of the son of their emperor and heard the younger soldiers calling aloud in loyal affection upon the name of the hero of Lepanto tears came into his eyes as he passed on to the discharge of his duties. For he knew that their intercessions were in vain--that the hours of the sufferer were numbered. In a moment of respite from his sufferings the sacraments of the church were administered to the dying prince; having received which with becoming humility he summoned around him the captains of the camp and exhorted them to zeal in the service of Spain and fidelity to his noble successor in command. It was the 1st of October the anniversary of the action of Lepanto and on a glorious autumnal day of golden sunshine that towards evening he ordered the curtains of his tent to be drawn aside that he might contemplate for the last time the creation of God!-- Raising his head proudly from a soldier's pillow he uttered in hoarse but distinct accents his last request that his body might be borne to Spain and buried at the feet of his father. For his eyes were fixed upon the glories of the orb of day and his mind upon the glories of the memory of one of the greatest of kings. But that pious wish reflected the last flash of human reason in his troubled mind. His eyes became suddenly inflamed with fever his words incoherent his looks haggard. Having caused them to sound the trumpets at the entrance of his tent as for an onset he ranged his battalions for an imaginary field of battle and disposed his manoeuvres and gave the word to charge against the enemy.[18] Then sinking back upon his pillow he breathed in subdued accents ""Let me at least avenge her innocent blood. Why why could I not save thee my Ulrica!""-- [Footnote 18: The foregoing details are strictly historical.] It was thus he died. When Nignio de Zuniga (cursing in his heart with a fourfold curse the heretics whom he chose to consider the murderers of his master) stooped down to lay his callous hand on the heart of the hero the pulses of life were still!-- There was but one cry throughout the camp--there was but one thought among his captains:--""Let the bravest knight of Christendom be laid nobly in the grave!"" Attired in the suit of mail in which he had fought at Lepanto the body was placed on a bier and borne forth from his tent on the shoulders of the officers of his household. Then having been saluted by the respect of the whole army it was transmitted from post to post through the camp on those of the colonels of the regiments of all nations constituting the forces of Spain.--And which of them was to surmise that upon the heart of the dead lay the love-token of a heretic?--A double line of troops infantry and cavalry in alternation formed a road of honour from the camp of Bouge to the gates of the city of Namur. And when the people saw borne upon his bier amid the deferential silence of those iron soldiers bareheaded and with their looks towards the earth the gallant soldier so untimely stricken arrayed in his armour of glory and with a crown upon his head after the manner of the princes of Burgundy and on his finger the ruby ring of the Doge of Venice they thought upon his knightly qualities--his courtesy generosity and valour--till all memory of his illustrious parentage became effaced. They forgot the prince in the man --""and behold all Israel mourned for Jonathan!"" A regiment of infantry trailing their halberts led the march till they reached Namur where the precious deposit was remitted by the royalist generals Mansfeldt Villefranche and La Cros to the hands of the chief magistrates of Namur. By these it was bourne in state to the cathedral of St Alban; and during the celebration of a solemn mass deposited at the foot of the high altar till the pleasure of Philip II. should be known concerning the fulfilment of the last request of Don John. It was by Ottavio Gonzaga the tidings of his death were conveyed to Spain. It was by Ottavio Gonzaga the king intimated in return his permission that the conqueror of Lepanto should share the sepulture of Charles V. and all that now remains to Namur in memory of one of the last of Christian knights the Maccabeus of the Turkish hosts who expired in its service and at its gates is an inscription placed on its high altar by the piety of Alexander Farnese intimating that it afforded a temporary resting place to the remains of DON JOHN of AUSTRIA.[19] [Footnote 19: Thus far the courtesies of fiction. But for those who prefer historical fact it may be interesting to learn the authentic details of the interment of one whose posthumous destinies seemed to share the incompleteness of his baffled life. In order to avoid the contestations arising from the transit of a corpse through a foreign state Nignio di Zuniga (who was charged by Philip with the duty of conveying it to Spain under sanction of a passport from Henri III.) caused it to be _dismembered_ and the parts packed in three budgets (_bougettes_ ) and laid upon packhorses!--On arriving in Spain the parts were _readjusted with wires!--""On remplit le corps de bourre_ "" says the old chronicler from which these details are derived ""_et ainsi la structure en aiant été comme rétablie on le revétit de ses armes et le fit voir au roi tout debout apuyé sur son bâton de
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énéral de sorte qu'il semblait encore vivant. L'aspect d'un mort si illustre ayant excité quelques larmes on le porta à l'Escurial dans l'Eglise de St Laurens auprez de son père_."" Such is the account given in a curious old history (supplementary to those of D'Avila and Strada) of the wars of the Prince of Parma published at Amsterdam early in the succeeding century. But a still greater insult has been offered to the memory of one of the last of Christian knights in Casimir Delavigne's fine play of ""Don Juan d'Autriche "" where he is represented as affianced to a Jewess!] POEMS AND BALLADS OF GOETHE. No. I. It may be as well to state at the outset that we have not the most distant intention of laying before the public the whole mass of poetry that flowed from the prolific pen of Goethe betwixt the days of his student life at Leipsic and those of his final courtly residence at Weimar. It is of no use preserving the whole wardrobe of the dead; we do enough if we possess ourselves of his valuables--articles of sterling bullion that will at any time command their price in the market--as to worn-out and threadbare personalities the sooner they are got rid of the better. Far be it from us however to depreciate or detract from the merit of any of Goethe's productions. Few men have written so voluminously and still fewer have written so well. But the curse of a most fluent pen and of a numerous auditory to whom his words were oracles was upon him; and seventy volumes more or less which Cotta issued from his wareroom are for the library of the Germans now and for the selection of judicious editors hereafter. A long time must elapse after an author's death before we can pronounce with perfect certainty what belongs to the trunk-maker and what pertains to posterity. Happy the man--if not in his own generation yet most assuredly in the time to come--whose natural hesitation or fastidiousness has prompted him to weigh his words maturely before launching them forth into the great ocean of literature in the midst of which is a Maelstrom of tenfold absorbing power! From the minor poems therefore of Goethe we propose in the present series to select such as are most esteemed by competent judges including of course ourselves. We shall not follow the example of dear old Eckermann nor preface our specimens by any critical remarks upon the scope and tendency of the great German's genius; neither shall we divide his works as characteristic of his intellectual progress into eras or into epochs; still less shall we attempt to institute a regular comparison between his merits and those of Schiller whose finest productions (most worthily translated) have already enriched the pages of this Magazine. We are doubtless ready at all times to back our favourite against the field and to maintain his intellectual superiority even against his greatest and most formidable rival. We know that he is the showiest and we feel convinced that he is the better horse of the two; but talking is worse than useless when the course is cleared and the start about to commence. Come forward then before the British public O many-sided ambidextrous Goethe as thine own Thomas Carlyle might or could or would or should have termed thee and let us hear how the mellifluous Teutonic verse will sound when adapted to another tongue. And first of all--for we yearn to know it--tell us how thy inspiration came? A plain answer of course we cannot expect--that were impossible from a German; but such explanation as we can draw from metaphor and oracular response seems to be conveyed in that favourite and elaborate preface to the poems which accordingly we may term the INTRODUCTION. The morning came. Its footsteps scared away The gentle sleep that hover'd lightly o'er me; I left my quiet cot to greet the day And gaily climb'd the mountain-side before me. The sweet young flowers! how fresh were they and tender Brimful with dew upon the sparkling lea; The young day open'd in exulting splendour And all around seem'd glad to gladden me. And as I mounted o'er the meadow ground A white and filmy essence 'gan to hover; It sail'd and shifted till it hemm'd me round Then rose above my head and floated over. No more I saw the beauteous scene unfolded-- It lay beneath a melancholy shroud; And soon was I as if in vapour moulded Alone within the twilight of the cloud. At once as though the sun were struggling through Within the mist a sudden radiance started; Here sunk the vapour but to rise anew There on the peak and upland forest parted. O how I panted for the first clear gleaming That after darkness must be doubly bright! It came not but a glory round me beaming And I stood blinded by the gush of light. A moment and I felt enforced to look By some strange impulse of the heart's emotion; But more than one quick glance I scarce could brook For all was burning like a molten ocean. There in the glorious clouds that seem'd to bear her A form angelic hover'd in the air; Ne'er did my eyes behold vision fairer And still she gazed upon me floating there. ""Do'st thou not know me?"" and her voice was soft As truthful love and holy calm it sounded. ""Know'st thou not me who many a time and oft Pour'd balsam in thy hurts when sorest wounded? Ah well thou knowest her to whom for ever Thy heart in union pants to be allied! Have I not seen the tears--the wild endeavour That even in boyhood brought thee to my side?"" ""Yes! I have felt thy influence oft "" I cried And sank on earth before her half-adoring; ""Thou brought'st me rest when Passion's lava tide Through my young veins like liquid fire was pouring. And thou hast fann'd as with celestial pinions In summer's heat my parch'd and fever'd brow; Gav'st me the choicest gifts of earth's dominions And save through thee I seek no fortune now. ""I name thee not but I have heard thee named And heard thee styled their own ere now by many; All eyes believe at thee their glance is aim'd Though thine effulgence is too great for any. Ah! I had many comrades whilst I wander'd-- I know thee now and stand almost alone: I veil thy light too precious to be squander'd And share the inward joy I feel with none."" Smiling she said--""Thou see'st 'twas wise from thee To keep the fuller greater revelation: Scarce art thou from grotesque delusions free Scarce master of thy childish first sensation; Yet deem'st thyself so far above thy brothers That thou hast won the right to scorn them! Cease. Who made the yawning gulf 'twixt thee and others? Know--know thyself--live with the world in peace."" ""Forgive me!"" I exclaim'd ""I meant no ill Else should in vain my eyes be disenchanted; Within my blood there stirs a genial will-- I know the worth of all that thou hast granted. That boon I hold in trust for others merely Nor shall I let it rust within the ground; Why sought I out the pathway so sincerely If not to guide my brothers to the bound?"" And as I spoke upon her radiant face Pass'd a sweet smile like breath across a mirror; And in her eyes' bright meaning I could trace What I had answer'd well and what in error She smiled and then my heart regain'd its lightness And bounded in my breast with rapture high: Then durst I pass within her zone of brightness And gaze upon her with unquailing eye. Straightway she stretch'd her hand among the thin And watery haze that round her presence hover'd; Slowly it coil'd and shrunk her grasp within And lo! the landscape lay once more uncover'd-- Again mine eye could scan the sparkling meadow I look'd to heaven and all was clear and bright; I saw her hold a veil without a shadow That undulated round her in the light. ""I know thee!--all thy weakness all that yet Of good within thee lives and glows I've measured;"" She said--her voice I never may forget-- ""Accept the gift that long for thee was treasured. Oh! happy he thrice-bless'd in earth and heaven Who takes this gift with soul serene and true The veil of song by Truth's own fingers given Enwoven of sunshine and the morning dew. ""Wave but this veil on high whene'er beneath The noonday fervour thou and thine are glowing And fragrance of all flowers around shall breathe And the cool winds of eve come freshly blowing. Earth's cares shall cease for thee and all its riot; Where gloom'd the grave a starry couch be seen; The waves of life shall sink in halcyon quiet; The days be lovely fair the nights serene."" Come then my friends and whether 'neath the load Of heavy griefs ye struggle on or whether Your better destiny shall strew the road With flowers and golden fruits that cannot wither United let us move still forwards striving; So while we live shall joy our days illume And in our children's hearts our love surviving Shall gladden them when we are in the tomb. This is a noble metaphysical and metaphorical poem but purely German of its kind. It has been imitated not to say travestied at least fifty times by crazy students and purblind professors--each of whom in turn has had an interview with the goddess of nature upon a hill-side. For our own part we confess that we have no great predilection for such mysterious intercourse and would rather draw our inspiration from tangible objects than dally with a visionary Egeria. But the fault is both common and national. * * * * * The next specimen we shall offer is the far-famed _Bride of Corinth_. Mrs Austin says of this poem very happily--""An awful and undefined horror breathes throughout it. In the slow measured rhythm of the verse and the pathetic simplicity of the diction there is a solemnity and a stirring spell which chains the feelings like a deep mysterious strain of music."" Owing to the peculiar structure and difficulty of the verse this poem has hitherto been supposed incapable of translation. Dr Anster who alone has rendered it into English found it necessary to depart from the original structure; and we confess that it was not without much labour and after repeated efforts that we succeeded in vanquishing the obstacle of the double rhymes. If the German scholar should perceive that in three stanzas some slight liberties have been taken with the original we trust that he will perceive the reason and at least give us credit for general fidelity and close adherence to the text. THE BRIDE OF CORINTH. I. A youth to Corinth whilst the city slumber'd Came from Athens: though a stranger there Soon among its townsmen to be number'd For a bride awaits him young and fair: From their childhood's years They were plighted feres So contracted by their parents' care. II. But may not his welcome there be hinder'd? Dearly must he buy it would he speed. He is still a heathen with his kindred She and her's wash'd in the Christian creed. When new faiths are born Love and troth are torn Rudely from the heart howe'er it bleed. III. All the house is hush'd. To rest retreated Father daughters--not the mother quite; She the guest with cordial welcome greeted Led him to a room with tapers bright; Wine and food she brought Ere of them he thought Then departed with a fair good-night. IV. But he felt no hunger and unheeded Left the wine and eager for the rest Which his limbs forspent with travel needed On the couch he laid him still undress'd. There he sleeps--when lo! Onwards gliding slow At the door appears a wondrous guest. V. By the waning lamp's uncertain gleaming There he sees a youthful maiden stand Robed in white of still and gentle seeming On her brow a black and golden band. When she meets his eyes With a quick surprise Starting she uplifts a pallid hand. VI. ""Is a stranger here and nothing told me? Am I then forgotten even in name? Ah! 'tis thus within my cell they hold me And I now am cover'd o'er with shame! Pillow still thy head There upon thy bed I will leave thee quickly as I came."" VII. ""Maiden--darling! Stay O stay!"" and leaping From the couch before her stands the boy: ""Ceres--Bacchus here their gifts are heaping And thou bringest Amor's gentle joy! Why with terror pale? Sweet one let us hail These bright gods--their festive gifts employ."" VIII. ""Oh no--no! Young stranger come not nigh me; Joy is not for me nor festive cheer. Ah! such bliss may ne'er be tasted by me Since my mother in fantastic fear By long sickness bow'd To heaven's service vow'd Me and all the hopes that warm'd me here. IX. ""They have left our hearth and left it lonely-- The old gods that bright and jocund train. One unseen in heaven is worshipp'd only And upon the cross a Saviour slain; Sacrifice is here Not of lamb nor steer But of human woe and human pain."" X. And he asks and all her words cloth ponder-- ""Can it be that in this silent spot I behold thee thou surpassing wonder! My sweet bride so strangely to me brought? Be mine only now-- See our parents' vow Heaven's good blessing hath for us besought."" XI. ""No! thou gentle heart "" she cried in anguish; ""'Tis not mine but 'tis my sister's place; When in lonely cell I weep and languish Think oh think of me in her embrace! I think but of thee-- Pining drearily Soon beneath the earth to hide my face!"" XII. ""Nay! I swear by yonder flame which burneth Fann'd by Hymen lost thou shalt not be; Droop not thus for my sweet bride returneth To my father's mansion back with me! Dearest! tarry here! Taste the bridal cheer For our spousal spread so wondrously!"" XIII. Then with word and sign their troth they plighted. Golden was the chain she bade him wear; But the cup he offer'd her she slighted Silver wrought with cunning past compare. ""That is not for me; All I ask of thee Is one little ringlet of thy hair."" XIV. Dully boom'd the midnight hour unhallow'd And then first her eyes began to shine; Eagerly with pallid lips she swallow'd Hasty draughts of purple-tinctured wine; But the wheaten bread As in shuddering dread Put she always by with loathing sign. XV. And she gave the youth the cup: he drain'd it With impetuous haste he drain'd it dry; Love was in his fever'd heart and pain'd it Till it ached for joys she must deny. But the maiden's fears Stay'd him till in tears On the bed he sank with sobbing cry. XVI. And she leans above him--""Dear one still thee! Ah how sad am I to see thee so! But alas! these limbs of mine would chill thee: Love they mantle not with passion's glow; Thou wouldst be afraid Didst thou find the maid Thou hast chosen cold as ice or snow."" XVII. Round her waist his eager arms he bended Dashing from his eyes the blinding tear: ""Wert thou even from the grave ascended Come unto my heart and warm thee here!"" Sweet the long embrace-- ""Raise that pallid face; None but thou and are watching dear!"" XVIII. Was it love that brought the maiden thither To the chamber of the stranger guest? Love's bright fire should kindle and not wither; Love's sweet thrill should soothe not torture rest. His impassion'd mood Warms her torpid blood Yet there beats no heart within her breast. XIX. Meanwhile goes the mother softly creeping Through the house on needful cares intent Hears a murmur and while all are sleeping Wonders at the sounds and what they meant. Who was whispering so?-- Voices soft and low In mysterious converse strangely blent. XX. Straightway by the door herself she stations There to be assured what was amiss; And she hears love's fiery protestations Words of ardour and endearing bliss: ""Hark the cock! 'Tis light! But to-morrow night Thou wilt come again?""--and kiss on kiss. XXI. Quick the latch she raises and with features Anger-flush'd into the chamber hies. ""Are there in my house such shameless creatures Minions to the stranger's will?"" she cries. By the dying light Who is't meets her sight? God! 'tis her own daughter she espies! XXII. And the youth in terror sought to cover With her own light veil the maiden's head Clasp'd her close; but gliding from her lover Back the vestment from her brow she spread And her form upright As with ghostly might Long and slowly rises from the bed. XXIII. ""Mother! mother! wherefore thus deprive me Of such joy as I this night have known? Wherefore from these warm embraces drive me? Was I waken'd up to meet thy frown? Did it not suffice That in virgin guise To an early grave you brought me down? XXIV. ""Fearful is the weird that forced me hither From the dark-heap'd chamber where I lay; Powerless are your drowsy anthems neither Can your priests prevail howe'er they pray. Salt nor lymph can cool Where the pulse is full; Love must still burn on though wrapp'd in clay. XXV. ""To this youth my early troth was plighted Whilst yet Venus ruled within the land; Mother! and that vow ye falsely slighted At your new and gloomy faith's command. But no God will hear If a mother swear Pure from love to keep her daughter's hand. XXVI. ""Nightly from my narrow chamber driven Come I to fulfil my destined part Him to seek for whom my troth was given And to draw the life blood from his heart. He hath served my will; More I yet must kill For another prey I now depart. XXVII. ""Fair young man! thy thread of life is broken Human skill can bring no aid to thee. There thou hast my chain--a ghastly token-- And this lock of thine I take with me. Soon must thou decay Soon wilt thou be gray Dark although to-night thy tresses be. XXVIII. ""Mother! hear oh hear my last entreaty! Let the funeral pile arise once more; Open up my wretched tomb for pity And in flames our souls to peace restore. When the ashes glow When the fire-sparks flow To the ancient gods aloft we soar."" * * * * * After this most powerful and original ballad let us turn to something more genial. The three following poems are exquisite specimens of the varied genius of our author; and we hardly know whether to prefer the plaintive beauty of the first or the light and sportive brilliancy of the other twain. FIRST LOVE. Oh who will bring me back the day So beautiful so bright! Those days when love first bore my heart Aloft on pinions light? Oh who will bring me but an hour Of that delightful time And wake in me again the power That fired my golden prime? I nurse my wound in solitude I sigh the livelong day And mourn the joys in wayward mood That now are pass'd away. Oh who will bring me back the days Of that delightful time And wake in me again the blaze That fired my golden prime? WHO'LL BUY A CUPID? Of all the wares so pretty That come into the city There's none are so delicious There's none are half so precious As those which we are binging. O listen to our singing! Young loves to sell! young loves to sell! My pretty loves who'll buy? First look you at the oldest The wantonest the boldest! So loosely goes he hopping From tree and thicket dropping Then flies aloft as sprightly-- We dare but praise him lightly! The fickle rogue! Young loves to sell! My pretty loves who'll buy? Now see this little creature-- How modest seems his feature! He nestles so demurely You'd think him safer surely; And yet for all his shyness There's danger in his slyness! The cunning rogue! Young loves to sell! My pretty loves who'll buy? Oh come and see this lovelet This little turtle-dovelet! The maidens that are neatest The tenderest and sweetest Should buy it to amuse 'em And nurse it in their bosom. The little pet! Young loves to sell! My pretty loves who'll buy? We need not bid you buy them They're here if you will try them. They like to change their cages; But for their proving sages No warrant will we utter-- They all have wings to flutter. The pretty birds! Young loves to sell! Such beauties! Come and buy! * * * * * SECOND LIFE. After life's departing sigh To the spots I loved most dearly In the sunshine and the shadow By the fountain welling clearly Through the wood and o'er the meadow Flit I like a butterfly. There a gentle pair I spy. Round the maiden's tresses flying From her chaplet I discover All that I had lost in dying Still with her and with her lover. Who so happy then as I? For she smiles with laughing eye; And his lips to hers he presses Vows of passion interchanging Stifling her with sweet caresses O'er her budding beauties ranging; And around the twain I fly. And she sees me fluttering nigh; And beneath his ardour trembling Starts she up--then off I hover. ""Look there dearest!"" Thus dissembling Speaks the maiden to her lover-- ""Come and catch that butterfly!"" * * * * * In the days of his boyhood and of Monk Lewis Sir Walter Scott translated the Erl King and since then it has been a kind of assay-piece for aspiring German students to thump and hammer at will. We have heard it sung so often at the piano by soft-voiced maidens and hirsute musicians before whose roaring the bull of Phalaris might be dumb that we have been accustomed to associate it with stiff white cravats green tea and a superabundance of lemonade. But to do full justice to its unearthly fascination one ought to hear it chanted by night in a lonely glade of the Schwartzwald or Spessart forest with the wind moaning as an accompaniment and the ghostly shadows of the branches flitting in the moonlight across the path. THE ERL KING. Who rides so late through the grisly night? 'Tis a father and child and he grasps him tight; He wraps him close in his mantle's fold And shelters the boy from the biting cold. ""My son why thus to my arm dost cling?"" ""Father dost thou not see the Erlie-king? The king with his crown and long black train!"" ""My son 'tis a streak of the misty rain! "" ""Come hither thou darling! come go with me! Fair games know I that I'll play with thee; Many bright flowers my kingdoms hold! My mother has many a robe of gold!"" ""O father dear father and dost thou not hear What the Erlie-king whispers so low in mine ear?"" ""Calm thee my boy 'tis only the breeze Rustling the dry leaves beneath the trees!"" ""Wilt thou go bonny boy! wilt thou go with me? My daughters shall wait on thee daintilie; My daughters around thee in dance shall sweep And rock thee and kiss thee and sing thee to sleep!"" ""O father dear father! and dost thou not mark Erlie-king's daughters move by in the dark?"" ""I see it my child; but it is not they 'Tis the old willow nodding its head so grey!"" ""I love thee! thy beauty charms me quite; And if thou refusest I'll take thee by might!"" ""O father dear father! he's grasping me-- My heart is as cold as cold can be!"" The father rides swiftly--with terror he gasps-- The sobbing child in his arms he clasps; He reaches the castle with spurring and dread; But alack! in his arms the child lay dead! * * * * * Who has not heard of Mignon?--sweet delicate little Mignon?--the woman-child in whose miniature rather than portrait it is easy to trace the original of fairy Fenella? We would that we could adequately translate the song which in its native German is so exquisitely plaintive that few can listen to it without tears. This poem it is almost needless to say is anterior in date to Byron's Bride of Abyos MIGNON. Know'st thou the land where the pale citron grows And the gold orange through dark foliage glows? A soft wind flutters from the deep blue sky The myrtle blooms and towers the laurel high. Know'st thou it well? O there with thee! O that I might my own beloved one flee! Know'st thou the house? On pillars rest its beams Bright is its hall in light one chamber gleams And marble statues stand and look on me-- What have they done thou hapless child to thee? Know'st thou it well? O there with thee! O that I might my loved protector flee! Know'st thou the track that o'er the mountain goes Where the mule threads its way through mist and snows Where dwelt in caves the dragon's ancient brood Topples the crag and o'er it roars the flood. Know'st thou it well? O come with me! There lies our road--oh father let us flee! * * * * * In order duly to appreciate the next ballad you must fancy yourself (if you cannot realize it) stretched on the grass by the margin of a mighty river of the south rushing from or through an Italian lake whose opposite shore you cannot descry for the thick purple haze of heat that hangs over its glassy surface. If you lie there for an hour or so gazing into the depths of the blue unfathomable sky till the fanning of the warm wind and the murmur of the water combine to throw you into a trance you will be able to enjoy THE FISHER. The water rush'd and bubbled by-- An angler near it lay And watch'd his quill with tranquil eye Upon the current play. And as he sits in wasteful dream He sees the flood unclose And from the middle of the stream A river-maiden rose. She sang to him with witching wile ""My brood why wilt thou snare With human craft and human guile To die in scorching air? Ah! didst thou know how happy we Who dwell in waters clear Thou wouldst come down at once to me And rest for ever here. ""The sun and ladye-moon they lave Their tresses in the main And breathing freshness from the wave Come doubly bright again. The deep blue sky so moist and clear Hath it for thee no lure? Does thine own face not woo thee down Unto our waters pure?"" The water rush'd and bubbled by-- It lapp'd his naked feet; He thrill'd as though he felt the touch Of maiden kisses sweet. She spoke to him she sang to him-- Resistless was her strain-- Half-drawn he sank beneath the wave And ne'er was seen again. * * * * * Our next extract smacks of the Troubadours and would have better suited good old King René of Provence than a Paladin of the days of Charlemagne. Goethe has neither the eye of Wouverman nor Borgognone and sketches but an indifferent battle-piece. Homer was a stark moss-trooper and so was Scott; but the Germans want the cry of ""boot and saddle"" consumedly. However the following is excellent in its way. THE MINSTREL. ""What sounds are those without along The drawbridge sweetly stealing? Within our hall I'd have that song That minstrel measure pealing."" Then forth the little foot-page hied; When he came back the king he cried ""Bring in the aged minstrel!"" ""Good-even to you lordlings all; Fair ladies all good-even. Lo star on star within this hall I see a radiant heaven. In hall so bright with noble light 'Tis not for thee to feast thy sight Old man look not around thee!"" He closed his eyne he struck his lyre In tones with passion laden Till every gallant's eye shot fire And down look'd every maiden. The king enraptured with his strain Held out to him a golden chain In guerdon of his harping. ""The golden chain give not to me For noble's breast its glance is Who meets and beats thy enemy Amid the shock of lances. Or give it to thy chancellere-- Let him its golden burden bear Among his other burdens. ""I sing as sings the bird whose note The leafy bough is heard on. The song that falters from my throat For me is ample guerdon. Yet I'd ask one thing an I might A draught of brave wine sparkling bright Within a golden beaker!"" The cup was brought. He drain'd its lees ""O draught that warms me cheerly! Blest is the house where gifts like these Are counted trifles merely. Lo when you prosper think on me And thank your God as heartily As for this draught I thank you!"" * * * * * We intend to close the present Number with a very graceful though simple ditty which Goethe may possibly have altered from the Morlachian but which is at all events worthy of his genius. Previously however in case any of the ladies should like something sentimental we beg leave to present them with as nice a little _chansonette_ as ever was transcribed into an album. THE VIOLET. A violet blossom'd on the lea Half hidden from the eye As fair a flower as you might see; When there came tripping by A shepherd maiden fair and young Lightly lightly o'er the lea; Care she knew not and she sung Merrily! ""O were I but the fairest flower That blossoms on the lea; If only for one little hour That she might gather me-- Clasp me in her bonny breast!"" Thought the little flower. ""O that in it I might rest But an hour!"" Lack-a-day! Up came the lass Heeded not the violet; Trod it down into the grass; Though it died 'twas happy yet. ""Trodden down although I lie Yet my death is very sweet-- For I cannot choose but die At her feet!"" * * * * * THE DOLEFUL LAY OF THE NOBLE WIFE OF ASAN AGA. What is yon so white beside the greenwood? Is it snow or flight of cygnets resting? Were it snow ere now it had been melted; Were it swans ere now the flock had left us. Neither snow nor swans are resting yonder 'Tis the glittering tents of Asan Aga. Faint he lies from wounds in stormy battle; There his mother and his sisters seek him But his wife hangs back for shame and comes not. When the anguish of his hurts was over To his faithful wife he sent this message-- ""Longer 'neath my roof thou shalt not tarry Neither in my court nor in my household."" When the lady heard this cruel sentence 'Reft of sense she stood and rack'd with anguish: In the court she heard the horses stamping And in fear that it was Asan coming Fled towards the tower to leap and perish. Then in terror ran her little daughters Calling after her and weeping sorely ""These are not the steeds of Father Asan; 'Tis thy brother Pintorovich coming!"" And the wife of Asan turn'd to meet him; Sobbing threw her arms around her brother. ""See the wrongs O brother of thy sister! These five babes I bore and must I leave them?"" Silently the brother from his girdle Draws the ready deed of separation Wrapp'd within a crimson silken cover. She is free to seek her mother's dwelling-- Free to join in wedlock with another. When the woful lady saw the writing Kiss'd she both her boys upon the forehead Kiss'd on both the cheeks her sobbing daughters; But she cannot tear herself for pity From the infant smiling in the cradle! Rudely did her brother tear her from it Deftly lifted her upon a courser And in haste towards his father's dwelling Spurr'd he onward with the woful lady. Short the space; seven days but barely seven-- Little space I ween--by many nobles Was the lady--still in weeds of mourning-- Was the lady courted in espousal. Far the noblest was Imoski's cadi; And the dame in tears besought her brother-- ""I adjure thee by the life thou bearest Give me not a second time in marriage That my heart may not be rent asunder If again I see my darling children!"" Little reck'd the brother of her bidding Fix'd to wed her to Imoski's cadi. But the gentle lady still entreats him-- ""Send at least a letter O my brother! To Imoski's cadi thus imploring-- I the youthful widow greet thee fairly And entreat thee by this selfsame token When thou comest hither with thy bridesmen Bring a heavy veil that I may shroud me As we pass along by Asan's dwelling So I may not see my darling orphans."" Scarcely had the cadi read the letter When he call'd together all his bridesmen Boune himself to bring the lady homewards And he brought the veil as she entreated. Jocundly they reach'd the princely mansion Jocundly they bore her thence in triumph; But when they drew near to Asan's dwelling Then the children recognized their mother And they cried ""Come back unto thy chamber-- Share the meal this evening with thy children;"" And she turn'd her to the lordly bridegroom-- ""Pray thee let the bridesmen and their horses Halt a little by the once-loved dwelling Till I give these presents to my children."" And they halted by the once-loved dwelling And she gave the weeping children presents Gave each boy a cap with gold embroider'd Gave each girl a long and costly garment And with tears she left a tiny mantle For the helpless baby in the cradle. These things mark'd the father Asan Aga And in sorrow call'd he to his children-- ""Turn again to me ye poor deserted; Hard as steel is now your mother's bosom; Shut so fast it cannot throb with pity!"" Thus he spoke; and when the lady heard him Pale as death she dropp'd upon the pavement And the life fled from her wretched bosom As she saw her children turning from her. MY FIRST LOVE. A SKETCH IN NEW YORK. ""Margaret where are you?"" cried a silver-toned voice from a passage outside the drawing-room in which I had just seated myself. The next instant a lovely face appeared at the door its owner tripped into the room made a comical curtsy and ran up to her sister. ""It is really too bad Margaret; pa' frets and bustles about nearly runs over me upon the stairs and then goes down the street as if 'Change were on fire. Ma' yawns and will not hear of our going shopping and grumbles about money--always money--that horrid money! Ah! dear Margaret our shopping excursion is at an end for to-day!"" Sister Margaret to whom this lamentation was addressed was reclining on the sofa her left hand supporting her head her right holding the third volume of a novel. She looked up with a languishing and die-away expression-- ""Poor Staunton will be in despair "" said her sister. ""This is at least his tenth turn up and down the Battery.
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Last night he was a perfect picture of misery. I could not have had the heart to refuse to dance with him. How could you be so cruel Margaret?"" ""Alas!"" replied Margaret with a deep sigh ""how could I help it? Mamma was behind me and kept pushing me with her elbow. Mamma is sometimes very ill-bred."" And another sigh burst from the overcharged heart of the sentimental fair one. ""Well "" rejoined her sister ""I don't know why she so terribly dislikes poor Staunton; but to say the truth our gallopade lost nothing by his absence. He is as stiff as a Dutch doll when he dances. Even our Louisianian backwoodsman here acquits himself much more creditably."" And the malicious girl gave me such an arch look that I could not be angry with the equivocal sort of compliment paid to myself. ""That is very unkind Arthurine "" said Margaret her checks glowing with anger at this attack upon the graces of her admirer. ""Don't be angry sister "" cried Arthurine running up to her throwing her arms round her neck and kissing and soothing her till she began to smile. They formed a pretty group. Arthurine especially as she skipped up to her sister scarce touching the carpet with her tiny feet looked like a fairy or a nymph. She was certainly a lovely creature slender and flexible as a reed with a waist one could easily have spanned with one's ten fingers; feet and hands on the very smallest scale and of the most beautiful mould; features exquisitely regular; a complexion of lilies and roses; a small graceful head adorned with a profusion of golden hair; and then large round clear blue eyes full of mischief and fascination. She was as the French say _à croquer_. ""Heigho!"" sighed the sentimental Margaret. ""To think of this vulgar selfish man intruding himself between me and such a noble creature as Staunton! It is really heart-breaking."" ""Not quite so bad as that!"" said Arthurine. ""Moreland as you know has a good five hundred thousand dollars; and Staunton has nothing or at most a couple of thousand dollars a-year--a mere feather in the balance against such a golden weight."" ""Love despises gold "" murmured Margaret. ""Nonsense!"" replied her sister; ""I would not even despise silver if it were in sufficient quantity. Only think of the balls and parties the fêtes and pic-nics! Saratoga in the summer--perhaps even London or Paris! The mere thought of it makes my mouth water."" ""Talk not of such joys to be bought at such a price!"" cried Margaret quoting probably from some of her favourite novels. ""Well don't make yourself unhappy now "" said Arthurine. ""Moreland will not be here till tea-time; and there are six long hours to that. If we had only a few new novels to pass the time! I cannot imagine why Cooper is so lazy. Only one book in a year! What if you were to begin to write sister? I have no doubt you would succeed as well as Mrs Mitchell. Bulwer is so fantastical; and even Walter Scott is getting dull."" ""Alas Howard!"" sighed Margaret looking to me for sympathy with her sorrows. ""Patience dear Margaret "" said I. ""If possible I will help you to get rid of the old fellow. At any rate I will try."" Rat-tat-tat at the house door. Arthurine put up her finger to enjoin silence and listened. Another loud knock. ""A visit!"" exclaimed she with sparkling eyes. ""Ha! ladies; I hear the rustle of their gowns."" And as she spoke the door opened and the Misses Pearce came swimming into the room in all the splendour of violet-coloured silks covered with feathers lace and embroideries and bringing with them an atmosphere of perfume. The man who has the good fortune to see our New York belles in their morning or home attire must have a heart made of quartz or granite if he resists their attractions. Their graceful forms their intellectual and somewhat languishing expression of countenance their bright and beaming eyes their slender figures which make one inclined to seize and hold them lest the wind should blow them away their beautifully delicate hands and feet compose a sum of attraction perfectly irresistible. The Boston ladies are perhaps better informed and their features are usually more regular; but they have something Yankeeish about them which I could never fancy and moreover they are dreadful blue-stockings. The fair Philadelphians are rounder more elastic more Hebe-like and unapproachable in the article of small-talk; but it is amongst the beauties of New York that romance writers should seek for their Julias and Alices. I am certain that if Cooper had made their acquaintance whilst writing his books he would have torn up his manuscripts and painted his heroines after a less wooden fashion. He can only have seen them on the Battery or in Broadway where they are so buried and enveloped in finery that it is impossible to guess what they are really like. The two young ladies who had just entered the room were shining examples of that system of over-dressing. They seemed to have put on at one time the three or four dresses worn in the course of the day by a London or Paris fashionable. It was now all over with my _tête-à-tête_. I could only be _de trop_ in the gossip of the four ladies and I accordingly took my leave. As I passed before the parlour door on my way out it was opened and Mrs Bowsends beckoned me in. I entered and found her husband also there. ""Are you going away already my dear Howard?"" said the lady. ""There are visitors up stairs."" ""Ah Howard!"" said Mrs Bowsends. ""The workies[20] have carried the day "" growled her husband. [Footnote 20: The slang term applied to the mechanics and labourers a numerous and (at elections especially) a most important class in New York and Philadelphia.] ""That horrid Staunton!"" interrupted his better half. ""Only think now'-- ""Our side lost--completely floored. But you've heard of it I suppose Mister Howard?"" I turned from one to the other in astonished perplexity not knowing to which I ought to listen first. ""I don't know how it is "" whined the lady ""but that Mr Staunton becomes every day more odious to me. Only think now of his having the effrontery to persist in running after Margaret! Hardly two thousand a-year ""-- ""Old Hickory is preparing to leave Hermitage already.[21] Bank shares have fallen half per cent in consequence "" snarled her husband. [Footnote 21: The name of General Jackson's country-house and estate.] They were ringing the changes on poor Staunton and the new president. ""He ought to remember the difference of our positions "" said Mrs B. drawing herself up with much dignity. ""Certainly certainly!"" said I. ""And the governor's election is also going desperate bad "" said Mr Bowsends. ""And then Margaret to think of her infatuation! Certainly she is a good gentle creature; but five hundred thousand dollars!"" This was Mrs Bowsends. ""By no means to be despised "" said I. The five hundred thousand dollars touched a responsive chord in the heart of the papa. ""Five hundred thousand "" repeated he. ""Yes certainly; but what's the use of that? All nonsense. Those girls would ruin a Croesus."" ""You need not talk I'm sure "" retorted mamma. ""Think of all your bets and electioneering."" ""You understand nothing about that "" replied her husband angrily. ""Interests of the country--congress--public good--must be supported. Who would do it if we""-- ""Did not bet "" thought I. ""You are a friend of the family "" said Mrs Bowsends ""and I hope you will""-- ""Apropos "" interrupted her loving husband. ""How has your cotton crop turned out? You might consign it to me. How many bales?"" ""A hundred; and a few dozen hogsheads of tobacco."" ""Some six thousand dollars per annum "" muttered the papa musingly; ""hm hm."" ""As to that "" said I negligently ""I have sufficient capital in my hands to increase the one hundred bales to two hundred another year."" ""Two hundred! two hundred!"" The man's eyes glistened approvingly. ""That might do. Not so bad. Well Arthurine is a good girl. We'll see my dear Mr Howard--we'll see. Yes yes--come here every evening--whenever you like. You know Arthurine is always glad to see you."" ""And Mr and Mrs Bowsends?"" asked I. ""Are most delighted "" replied the couple smiling graciously. I bowed agreeably surprised and took my departure. I was nevertheless not over well pleased with a part of Mr Bowsends' last speech. It looked rather too much as if my affectionate father-in-law that was to be wished to balance his lost bets with my cotton bales; and as I thought of it my gorge rose at the selfishness of my species and more especially at the stupid impudent egotism of Bowsends and the thousands who resemble him. To all such even their children are nothing but so many bales of goods to be bartered bought and sold. And this man belongs to the _haut-ton_ of New York! Five-and-twenty years ago he went about with a tailor's measure in his pocket--now a leader on 'Change and member of twenty committees and directorships. But then Arthurine with her seventeen summers and her lovely face the most extravagant little doll in the whole city and that is not saying a little but the most elegant charming--a perfect sylph! It was now about eleven months since I had first become acquainted with the bewitching creature; and from the very first day I had been her vassal her slave bound by chains as adamantine as those of Armida. She had just left the French boarding-school at St John's. That by the by is one of the means by which our mushroom aristocracy pushes itself upwards. A couple of pretty daughters brought up at a fashionable school are sure to attract a swarm of young fops and danglers about them; and the glory of the daughters is reflected upon the papa and mamma. And this little sorceress knew right well how to work her incantations. Every heart was at her feet; but not one out of her twenty or more adorers could boast that he had received a smile or a look more than his fellows. I was the only one who had perhaps obtained a sort of passive preference. I was allowed to escort her in her rides walks and drives; to be her regular partner when no other dancer offered and suchlike enviable privileges. She flirted and fluttered about me and hung familiarly on my arm as she tripped along Broadway or the Battery by my side. In addition to all these little marks of preference it fell to my share of duty to supply her with the newest novels to furnish her with English Keepsakes and American Tokens and Souvenirs and to provide the last fashionable songs and quadrilles. All this had cost me no small sum; but I consoled myself with the reflection that my presents were made to the prettiest girl in New York and that sooner or later she must reward my assiduities. Twice had fortune smiled upon me; in one instance when we were standing on the bridge at Niagara looking down on the foaming waters and I was obliged to put my arm round her waist for fear she should become dizzy and fall in--in doing which by the by I very nearly fell in myself. A similar thing occurred on a visit we made to the Trenton falls. That was all I had got for my pains however during the eleven months that I had trifled away in New York--months that had served to lighten my purse pretty considerably. It is the fashion in our southern states to choose our wives from amongst the beauties of the north. I had been bitten by the mania and had come to New York upon this important business; but having been there nearly a year it was high time to make an end of matters if I did not wish to be put on the shelf as stale goods. This last reflection occurred to me very strongly as I was walking from the Bowsends' house towards Wall Street when suddenly I caught sight of my fellow-sufferer Staunton. The Yankee's dolorous countenance almost made me smile. Up he came with the double object of informing me that the weather was very fine and of offering me a bite at his pigtail tobacco. I could not help expressing my astonishment that so sensitive and delicate a creature as Margaret should tolerate such a habit in the man of her choice. ""Pshaw!"" replied the simpleton. ""Moreland chews also."" ""Yes but he has got five hundred thousand dollars and that sweetens the poison."" ""Ah!"" sighed Staunton. ""Keep up your courage man; Bowsends is rich."" The Yankee shook his head. ""Two hundred thousand they say; but to-morrow he may not have a farthing. You know our New Yorkers. Nothing but bets elections shares railways banks. His expenses are enormous; and if he once got his daughters off his hands he would perhaps fail next week."" ""And be so much the richer next year "" replied I. ""Do you think so?"" said the Yankee musingly. ""Of course it would be so. Mean time you can marry the languishing Margaret and do like many others of your fellow citizens; go out with a basket on your arm to the Greenwich market and whilst your delicate wife is enjoying her morning slumber buy the potatoes and salted mackerel for breakfast. In return for that she will perhaps condescend to pour you out a cup of bohea. Famous thing that bohea! capital antidote to the dyspepsia!"" ""You are spiteful "" said poor Staunton. ""And you foolish "" I retorted. ""To a young barrister like you there are hundreds of houses open."" ""And to you also."" ""Certainly."" ""And then I have this advantage--the girl likes me."" ""I am liked by the papa and the mamma and the girl too."" ""Have you got five hundred thousand dollars?"" ""No."" ""Poor Howard!"" cried Staunton laughing. ""Go to the devil!"" replied I laughing also. We had been chatting in this manner for nearly a quarter of an hour when a coach drove out of Greenwich Street in which I saw a face that I thought I knew. One of the Philadelphia steamers had just arrived. I stepped forward. ""Stop!"" cried a well-known voice. ""Stop!"" cried I hastening to the coach door. It was Richards my school and college friend and my neighbour after the fashion of the southern states; for he lived only about a hundred and seventy miles from me. I said good-by to poor simple Staunton got into the coach and we rattled off through Broadway to the American hotel. ""For heaven's sake George!"" exclaimed my friend as soon as we were installed in a room ""tell me what you are doing here. Have you quite forgotten house land and friends? You have been eleven months away."" ""True "" replied I; ""making love--and not a step further advanced than the first."" ""The report is true then that you have been harpooned by the Bowsends? Poor fellow! I am sorry for you. Just tell me what you mean to do with the dressed-up doll when you get her? A young lady who has not enough patience even to read her novels from beginning to end and who before she was twelve years old had Tom Moore and Byron _Don Juan_ perhaps excepted by heart. A damsel who has geography and the globes astronomy and Cuvier Raphael's cartoons and Rossini's operas at her finger-ends; but who as true as I am alive does not know whether a mutton chop is cut off a pig or a cow--who would boil tea and cauliflowers in the same manner and has some vague idea that eggs are the principal ingredient in a gooseberry pie."" ""I want her for my wife not for my cook "" retorted I rather nettled. ""Who does not know "" continued Richards ""whether dirty linen ought to be boiled or baked."" ""But she sings like St Cecilia plays divinely and dances like a fairy."" ""Yes all that will do you a deal of good. I know the family; both father and mother are the most contemptible people breathing."" ""Stop there!"" cried I; ""they are not one iota better or worse than their neighbours."" ""You are right."" ""Well then leave them in peace. I have promised to drink tea there at six o'clock. If you will come I will take you with me."" ""Know then already man. I will go on one condition; that you leave New York with me in three days."" ""If my marriage is not settled "" replied I. ""D----d fool!"" muttered Richards between his teeth. Six o'clock struck as we entered the drawing-room of my future mother-in-law. The good lady almost frightened me as I went in by her very extraordinary appearance in a tremendous grey gauze turban fire-new just arrived by the Henri Quatre packet-ship from Havre and that gave her exactly the look of one of our Mississippi night-owls. Richards seemed a little startled; and Moreland who was already there could not take his eyes off this remarkable head-dress. Miss Margaret was costumed in pale green silk her hair flattened upon each side of her forehead _a la Marguerite_ (see the _Journal des Modes _) and looking like Jephtha's daughter pale and resigned but rather more lackadaisical with a sort of ""though-absent-not-forgot"" look about her inexpressibly sentimental and interesting. The contrast was certainly rather strong between old Moreland who sat there red-faced thickset and clumsy and the airy slender Staunton who for fear of spoiling his figure lived upon oysters and macaroon and drank water with a rose leaf in it. I had brought the languishing beauty above described Scott's _Tales of my Grandfather_ which had just appeared. ""Ah! Walter Scott!"" exclaimed she in her pretty melting tones. Then after a moment's pause ""The vulgar man has not a word to say for himself;"" said she to me in a low tone. ""Wait a little "" replied I; ""he'll improve. It is no doubt his modest timidity that keeps his lips closed."" Margaret gave me a furious look. ""Heartless mocker!"" she exclaimed. Meanwhile Richards had got into conversation with Bowsends. The unlucky dog who did not know that his host was a violent Adams-ite and had lost a good five thousand dollars in bets and subscriptions to influence the voices of the sovereign people at the recent election had fallen on the sore subject. He began by informing his host that Old Hickory would shortly leave the Hermitage to assume his duties as president. ""The blood-thirsty backwoodsman half horse half alligator"" interrupted Mr Bowsends. ""Costs you dear his election "" said Moreland laughing. ""Smokes out of a tobacco pipe like a vulgar German "" ejaculated Mrs Bowsends. ""Not so very vulgar for that "" said blundering Moreland; ""tobacco has quite another taste out of a pipe."" I gave him a tremendous dig in the back with my elbow. ""Do you smoke out of a tobacco pipe Mr Moreland?"" enquired Margaret in her flute-like tones. Moreland stared; he had a vague idea that he had got himself into a scrape but his straightforward honesty prevented him from prevaricating and he blurted out--""Sometimes miss."" I thought the sensitive creature would have swooned away at this admission; and I had just laid my arm over the back of her chair to support her when Arthurine entered the room. She gave a quick glance to me; it was too late to draw back my arm. She did not seem to notice any thing saluted the company gaily and easily tripped up to Moreland wished him good evening--asked after his bets his ships his old dog Tom--chattered in short full ten minutes in a breath. Before Moreland knew what she was about she had taken one of his hands in both of hers. But they were old acquaintances and he might easily have been her grandfather. Meanwhile Margaret had somewhat recovered from the shock. ""He smokes out of a pipe!"" lisped she to Arthurine in a tone of melancholy resignation. ""Old Hickory is very popular in Pennsylvania "" said Richards resuming the conversation that had been interrupted and perfectly unconscious as Moreland would have said of the shoals he was sailing amongst. ""A Bedford County farmer has just sent him a present of a cask of Monongahela."" ""I envy him that present "" cried Moreland. ""A glass of genuine Monongahela is worth any money."" This second shock was far too violent to be resisted by Margaret's delicate nerves. She sank back in her chair half fainting half hysterical. Her maids were called in and with their help she managed to leave the room. ""Have you brought her a book?"" said Arthurine to me. ""Yes one of Walter Scott's."" ""Oh! then she will soon be well again "" rejoined the affectionate sister apparently by no means alarmed. Now that this nervous beauty was gone the conversation became much more lively. Captain Moreland was a jovial sailor who had made ten voyages to China fifteen to Constantinople twenty to St Petersburg and innumerable ones to Liverpool and through his exertions had amassed the large fortune which he was now enjoying. He was a merry-hearted man with excellent sound sense on all points except one--that one being the fair sex with which he was about as well acquainted as an alligator with a camera-obscure. The attentions paid to him by Arthurine seemed to please the old bachelor uncommonly. There was a mixture of kindness malice and fascination in her manner which was really enchanting; even the matter-of-fact Richards could not take his eyes off her. ""That is certainly a charming girl!"" whispered he to me. ""Did not I tell you so?"" said I. ""Only observe with what sweetness she gives in to the old man's humours and fancies!"" The hours passed like minutes. Supper was long over and we rose to depart; when I shook hands with Arthurine she pressed mine gently. I was in the ninety-ninth heaven. ""Now boys "" cried worthy Moreland as soon as we were in the streets ""it would really be a pity to part so early on so joyous an evening. What do you say? Will you come to my house and knock the necks off half a dozen bottles?"" We agreed to this proposal; and taking the old seaman between us steered in the direction of his cabin as he called his magnificent and well-furnished house. ""What a delightful family those Bowsends are!"" exclaimed Moreland as soon as we were comfortably seated beside a blazing fire with the Lafitte and East India Madeira sparkling on the table beside us. ""And what charming girls! 'You're getting oldish ' says I to myself the other day 'but you're still fresh and active sound as a dolphin. Better get married.' Margaret pleased me uncommonly so I""-- ""Yes my dear Moreland "" interrupted I ""but are you sure that you please her?"" ""Pshaw! Five times a hundred thousand dollars! I tell you what my lad that's not to be met with every day."" ""Fifty years old "" replied I. ""Certainly fifty years old but stout and healthy; none of your spindle-shanked dandies--your Stauntons""-- But Staunton smokes cigars and not Dutch pipes."" ""I give that up. For Miss Margaret's sake I'll burn my nose and mouth with those damned stumps of cigars."" ""Drinks no whisky "" continued I. ""He is president of a temperance society."" ""The devil fly away with him!"" growled Moreland; ""I wouldn't give up my whisky for all the girls in the world."" ""If you don't she'll always be fainting away "" replied I laughing. ""Ah! It's because I talked of the Monongahela that she began with her hystericals and went away for all the evening! That's where the wind sits is it? Well you may depend I ain't to be done out of my grog at any rate."" And he backed his assertion with an oath swallowing off the contents of his glass by way of a clincher. We sat joking and chatting till past midnight during which time I flattered myself that I gave evidence of considerable diplomatic talents. As we were returning home however Richards doubted whether I had not driven the old boy rather too hard ""No matter "" replied I ""if I have only succeeded in ridding poor Margaret of him."" Cool calculating Richards shook his head. ""I don't know what may come of it "" said he; ""but I do not think you are likely to find much gratitude for your interference."" The next day was taken up in arranging matters of business consequent on the arrival of Richards. At least ten times I tried to go and see Arthurine but was always prevented by something or other; and it was past tea-time when I at last got to the Bowsends' house. I found Margaret in the drawing-room deep in a new novel. ""Where is Arthurine?"" I enquired. ""At the theatre with mamma and Mr Moreland "" was the answer. ""At the theatre!"" repeated I in astonishment. They were playing Tom and Jerry a favourite piece with the enlightened Kentuckians. I had seen the first scene or two at the New Orleans theatre and had had quite enough of it. ""That really _is_ sacrificing herself!"" said I considerably out of humour. ""The noble girl!"" exclaimed Margaret. ""Mr Moreland came to tea and urged us so much to go""-- ""That she could not help going to be bored and disgusted for a couple of hours."" ""She went for my sake "" said Margaret sentimentally. ""Mamma would have one of us go."" ""Yes that is it "" thought I. Jealousy would have been ridiculous. He fifty years old she seventeen. I left the house and went to find Richards. ""What! Back so early?"" cried he. ""She is gone to the theatre with her mamma and Moreland."" Richards shook his head. ""You put a wasp's nest into the old fellow's brain-pan yesterday "" said he. ""Take care you do not get stung yourself."" ""I should like to see how she looks by his side "" said I. ""Well I will go with you. The sooner you are cured the better. But only for ten minutes."" There was certainly no temptation to remain longer in that atmosphere of whisky and tobacco fumes. It was at the Bowery theatre. The light swam as though seen through a thick fog; and a perfect shower of orange and apple peel and even less agreeable things rained down from the galleries. Tom and Jerry were in all their glory. I looked round the boxes and soon saw the charming Arthurine apparently perfectly comfortable chatting with old Moreland as gravely and looking as demure and self-possessed as if she had been a married woman of thirty. ""That is a prudent young lady "" said Richards; ""she has an eye to the dollars and would marry Old Hickory himself spite of whisky and tobacco pipe if he had more money and were to ask her."" I said nothing. ""If you weren't such an infatuated fool "" continued my plain-spoken friend I would say to you let her take her own way and the day after to-morrow we will leave New York."" ""One week more "" said I with an uneasy feeling about the heart. At seven the next evening I entered what had been my Elysium but was now little by little becoming my Tartarus. Again I found Margaret alone over a romance. ""And Arthurine?"" enquired I in a voice that might perhaps have been steadier. ""She is gone with mamma and Mr Moreland to hear Miss Fanny Wright."" ""To hear Miss Fanny Wright! the atheist the revolutionist! What a mad fancy! Who would ever have dreamed of such a thing!"" This Miss Fanny Wright was a famous lecturess of the Owenite school who was shunned like a pestilence by the fashionable world of New York. ""Mr Moreland "" answered Margaret ""said so much about her eloquence that Arthurine's curiosity was roused."" ""Indeed!"" replied I. ""Oh! you do not know what a noble girl she is. For her sister she would sacrifice her life. My only hope is in her."" I snatched up my hat and hurried out of the house. The next morning I got up restless and uneasy; and eleven o'clock had scarcely struck when I reached the Bowsends' house. This time both sisters were at home; and as I entered the drawing-room Arthurine advanced to meet me with a beautiful smile upon her face. There was nevertheless a something in the expression of her countenance that made me start. I pressed her hand. She looked tenderly at me. ""I hope you have been amusing yourself these last two days "" said I after a moment's pause. ""Novelty has a certain charm "" replied Arthurine. ""Yet I certainly never expected to become a disciple of Miss Fanny Wright "" added she laughing. ""Really! I should have thought the transition from Tom and Jerry rather an easy one."" ""A little more respect for Tom and Jerry whom _we_ patronize--that is to say Mr Moreland and our high mightiness "" replied Arthurine trying as I fancied to conceal a certain confusion of manner under a laugh. ""I should scarcely have thought my Arthurine would have become a party to such a conspiracy against good taste "" replied I gravely. ""_My_ Arthurine!"" repeated she laying a strong accent on the pronoun possessive. ""Only see what rights and privileges the gentleman is usurping! We live in a free country I believe?"" There was a mixture of jest and earnest in her charming countenance. I looked enquiringly at her. ""Do you know "" cried she ""I have taken quite a fancy to Moreland? He is so good-natured such a sterling character and his roughness wears off when one knows him well."" ""And moreover "" added I ""he has five hundred thousand dollars."" ""Which are by no means the least of his recommendations. Only think of the balls Howard! I hope you will come to them. And then Saratoga; next year London and Paris. Oh! it will be delightful."" ""What so far gone already?"" said I sarcastically. ""And poor Margaret is saved!"" added she throwing her arms round her sister's neck and kissing and caressing her. I hardly knew whether to laugh or to cry. ""Then I suppose I may congratulate you?"" said I forcing a laugh and looking I have no doubt very like a fool. You may so "" replied Arthurine. ""This morning Mr Moreland begged permission to transfer his addresses from Margaret to your very humble servant."" ""And you?""-- ""We naturally in consideration of the petitioner's many amiable qualities have promised to take the request into our serious consideration. For decorum's sake you know one must deliberate a couple of days or so."" ""Are you in jest or earnest Arthurine?"" ""Quite in earnest Howard."" ""Farewell then!"" ""'Fare-thee-well! and if for ever Still for ever fare-thee-well!'"" said Arthurine in a half-laughing half-sighing tone. The next instant I had left the room. On the stairs I met the beturbaned Mrs Bowsends who led the way mysteriously into the parlour. ""You have seen Arthurine?"" said she. ""What a dear darling child!--is she not? Oh! that girl is our joy and consolation. And Mr Moreland--the charming Mr Moreland! Now that things are arranged so delightfully we can let Margaret have her own way a little."" ""What I have heard is true then?"" said I. ""Yes; as an old friend I do not mind telling you--though it must still remain a secret for a short time. Mr Moreland has made a formal proposal to Arthurine."" I do not know what reply I made before flinging myself out of the room and house and running down the street as if I had just escaped from a lunatic asylum. ""Richards "" cried I to my friend ""shall we start tomorrow?"" ""Thank God!"" exclaimed Richards. ""So you are cured of the New York fever? Start! Yes by all means before you get a relapse. You must come with me to Virginia for a couple of months."" ""I will so "" was my answer. As we were going down to the steam-boat on the following morning Staunton overtook us breathless with speed and delight. ""Wish me joy!"" cried he. ""I am accepted!"" ""And I jilted!"" replied I with a laugh. ""But I am not such a fool as to make myself unhappy about a woman."" Light words enough but my heart was heavy as I spoke them. Five minutes later we were on our way to Virginia. * * * * * HYDRO-BACCHUS. Great Homer sings how once of old The Thracian women met to hold To ""Bacchus ever young and fair "" Mysterious rites with solemn care. For now the summer's glowing face Had look'd upon the hills of Thrace; And laden vines foretold the pride Of foaming vats at Autumn tide. There while the gladsome Evöe shout Through Nysa's knolls rang wildly out While cymbal clang and blare of horn O'er the broad Hellespont were borne; The sounds careering far and near Struck sudden on Lycurgus' ear-- Edonia's grim black-bearded lord Who still the Bacchic rites abhorr'd And cursed the god whose power divine Lent heaven's own fire to generous wine. Ere yet th' inspired devotees Had half performed their mysteries Furious he rush'd amidst the band And whirled an ox-goad in his hand. Full many a dame on earth lay low Beneath the tyrant's savage blow; The rest far scattering in affright Sought refuge from his rage in flight. But the fell king enjoy'd not long The triumph of his impious wrong: The vengeance of the god soon found him And in a rocky dungeon bound him. There sightless chain'd in woful tones He pour'd his unavailing groans Mingled with all the blasts that shriek Round Athos' thunder-riven peak. O Thracian king! how vain the ire That urged thee 'gainst the Bacchic choir The god avenged his votaries well-- Stern was the doom that thee befell; And on the Bacchus-hating herd Still rests the curse thy guilt incurr'd. For the same spells that in those days Were wont the Bacchanals to craze-- The maniac orgies the rash vow Have fall'
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on thy disciples now. Though deepest silence dwells alone Parnassus on thy double cone; To mystic cry through fell and brake No more Cithaeron's echoes wake; No longer glisten white and fleet O'er the dark lawns of Taÿgete The Spartan virgin's bounding feet: Yet Frenzy still has power to roll Her portents o'er the prostrate soul. Though water-nymphs must twine the spell Which once the wine-god threw so well-- Changed are the orgies now 'tis true Save in the madness of the crew. Bacchus his votaries led of yore Through woodland glades and mountains hoar; While flung the Maenad to the air The golden masses of her hair And floated free the skin of fawn From her bare shoulder backward borne. Wild Nature spreading all her charms Welcomed her children to her arms; Laugh'd the huge oaks and shook with glee In answer to their revelry; Kind Night would cast her softest dew Where'er their roving footsteps flew; So bright the joyous fountains gush'd So proud the swelling rivers rush'd That mother Earth they well might deem With honey wine and milk for them Most bounteously had fed the stream. The pale moon wheeling overhead Her looks of love upon them shed And pouring forth her floods of light With all the landscape blest their sight. Through foliage thick the moonshine fell Checker'd upon the grassy dell; Beyond it show'd the distant spires Of skyish hills the world's grey sires; More brightly beam'd where far away Around his clustering islands lay Adown some opening vale descried The vast Aegean's waveless tide. What wonder then if Reason's power Fail'd in each reeling mind that hour When their enraptured spirits woke To Nature's liberty and broke The artificial chain that bound them With the broad sky above and the free winds around them! From Nature's overflowing soul That sweet delirium on them stole; She held the cup and bade them share In draughts of joy too deep to bear. Not such the scenes that to the eyes Of water-Bacchanals arise; Whene'er the day of festival Summons the Pledged t' attend its call-- In long procession to appear And show the world how good they are. Not theirs the wild-wood wanderings The voices of the winds and springs: But seek them where the smoke-fog brown Incumbent broods o'er London town; 'Mid Finsbury Square ruralities Of mangy grass and scrofulous trees; 'Mid all the sounds that consecrate Thy street melodious Bishopsgate! Not by the mountain grot and pine Haunts of the Heliconian Nine: But where the town-bred Muses squall Love-verses in an annual; Such muses as inspire the grunt Of Barry Cornwall and Leigh Hunt. Their hands no ivy'd thyrsus bear No Evöe floats upon the air: But flags of painted calico Flutter aloft with gaudy show; And round then rises long and loud The laughter of the gibing crowd. O sacred Temp'rance! mine were shame If I could wish to brand thy name. But though these dullards boast thy grace Thou in their orgies hast no place. Thou still disdain'st such sorry lot As even below the soaking sot. Great was high Duty's power of old The empire o'er man's heart to hold; To urge the soul or check its course Obedient to her guiding force. These own not her control but draw New sanction for the moral law And by a stringent compact bind The independence of the mind-- As morals had gregarious grown And Virtue could not stand alone. What need they rules against abusing? They find th' offence all in the using. Denounce the gifts which bounteous Heaven To cheer the heart of man has given; And think their foolish pledge a band More potent far than God's command. On this new plan they cleverly Work morals by machinery; Keeping men virtuous by a tether Like gangs of negroes chain'd together. Then Temperance if thus it be They know no further need of thee. This pledge usurps thy ancient throne-- Alas! thy occupation's gone! From earth thou may'st unheeded rise And like Astræa--seek the skies. MARTIN LUTHER. AN ODE. Who sits upon the Pontiff's throne? On Peter's holy chair Who sways the keys? At such a time When dullest ears may hear the chime Of coming thunders--when dark skies Are writ with crimson prophecies A wise man should be there; A godly man whose life might be The living logic of the sea; One quick to know and keen to feel-- A fervid man and full of zeal Should sit in Peter's chair. Alas! no fervid man is there No earnest honest heart; One who though dress'd in priestly guise Looks on the world with worldling's eyes; One who can trim the courtier's smile Or weave the diplomatic wile But knows no deeper art; One who can dally with fair forms Whom a well-pointed period warms-- No man is he to hold the helm Where rude winds blow and wild waves whelm And creaking timbers start. In vain did Julius pile sublime The vast and various dome That makes the kingly pyramid's pride And the huge Flavian wonder hide Their heads in shame--these gilded stones (O heaven!) were very blood and bones Of those whom Christ did come To save--vile grin of slaves who sold Celestial rights for earthy gold Marketing grace with merchant's measure To prank with Europe's pillaged treasure The pride of purple Rome. The measure of her sins is full The scarlet-vested whore! Thy murderous and lecherous race Have sat too long i' the holy place; The knife shall lop what no drug cures Nor Heaven permits nor earth endures The monstrous mockery more. Behold! I swear it saith the Lord: Mine elect warrior girds the sword-- A nameless man a miner's son Shall tame thy pride thou haughty one And pale the painted whore! Earth's mighty men are nought. I chose Poor fishermen before To preach my gospel to the poor; A pauper boy from door to door That piped his hymn. By his strong word The startled world shall now be stirr'd As with a lion's roar! A lonely monk that loved to dwell With peaceful host in silent cell; This man shall shake the Pontiff's throne: Him Kings and emperors shall own And stout hearts wince before The eye profound and front sublime Where speculation reigns. He to the learned seats shall climb On Science' watch-tower stand sublime; The arid doctrine shall inspire Of wiry teachers with swift fire; And piled with cumbrous pains Proud palaces of sounding lies Lay prostrate with a breath. The wise Shall listen to his word; the youth Shall eager seize the new-born truth Where prudent age refrains. Lo! when the venal pomp proceeds From echoing town to town! The clam'rous preacher and his train Organ and bell with sound inane The crimson cross the book the keys The flag that spreads before the breeze The triple-belted crown! It wends its way; and straw is sold-- Yea! deadly drugs for heavy gold To feeble hearts whose pulse is fear; And though some smile and many sneer There's none will dare to frown. None dares but one--the race is rare-- One free and honest man: Truth is a dangerous thing to say Amid the lies that haunt the day; But He hath lent it voice; and lo! From heart to heart the fire shall go Instinctive without plan; Proud bishops with a lordly train Fierce cardinals with high disdain Sleek chamberlains with smooth discourse And wrangling doctors all shall force In vain one honest man. In vain the foolish Pope shall fret It is a sober thing. Thou sounding trifler cease to rave Loudly to damn and loudly save And sweep with mimic thunders' swell Armies of honest souls to hell! The time on whirring wing Hath fled when this prevail'd. O Heaven! One hour one little hour is given If thou could'st but repent. But no! To ruin thou shalt headlong go A doom'd and blasted thing. Thy parchment ban comes forth; and lo! Men heed it not thou fool! Nay from the learned city's gate In solemn show in pomp of state The watchmen of the truth come forth The burghers old of sterling worth And students of the school: And he who should have felt thy ban Walks like a prophet in the van; He hath a calm indignant look Beneath his arm he bears a book And in his hand the Bull. He halts; and in the middle space Bids pile a blazing fire. The flame ascends with crackling glee; Then with firm step advancing He Gives to the wild fire's wasting rule The false Decretals and the Bull While thus he vents his ire:-- ""Because the Holy One o' the Lord Thou vexed hast with impious word Therefore the Lord shall thee consume And thou shalt share the Devil's doom In everlasting fire!"" He said; and rose the echo round ""In everlasting fire!"" The hearts of men were free; one word Their inner depths of soul had stirr'd; Erect before their God they stood A truth-shod Christian brotherhood And wing'd with high desire. And ever with the circling flame Uprose anew the blithe acclaim:-- ""The righteous Lord shall thee consume And thou shalt share the Devil's doom In everlasting fire!"" Thus the brave German men; and we Shall echo back the cry; The burning of that parchment scroll Annull'd the bond that sold the soul Of man to man; each brother now Only to one great Lord will bow One Father-God on high. And though with fits of lingering life The wounded foe prolong the strife On Luther's deed we build our hope Our steady faith--the fond old Pope Is dying and shall die. TRADITIONS AND TALES OF UPPER LUSATIA. No. II THE FAIRY TUTOR. Discreet Reader! You have seen--and 'tis no longer ago than YESTERDAY!--you must well remember the picture--which showed you from the rough yet delicate--the humorous yet sympathetic and picturesque--the original yet insinuating pencil of a shrewd and hearty Lusatian mountaineer--the aerial brilliant sensitive subtle fascinating enigmatical outwardly--mirth-given inwardly--sorrow-touched congregated folk numberless--of the Fairies Proper!--showed them at the urgency of a rare and strange need--clung in DEPENDENCY to one fair kind good and happily-born Daughter of Man!--And what wonder?--The once glorious but now forlorn spirits leaning for one fate-burthened instant their trust upon the spirits ineffably favoured!--What wonder! that often as the revolution of ages brings on the appointed hour the rebellious and outcast children of heaven must sue--to their keen emergency--help--oh! speak up to the height of the want of the succour! and call it _a lent ray of grace_ from the rebellious and REDEEMED children of the earth!--And see where in the serene eyes of the soft Christian maiden the hallowing influence shines!--Auspiciously begun the awed though aspiring Rite the still the multitudinous the mystical prospers!--_Gratefully_ as for the boon inexpressibly worth--_easily_ as of their own transcending power--_promptly_ as though fearing that a benefit received could wax cold the joyful Elves crown upon the bright hair of their graciously natured but humanly and womanly weak benefactress--the wedded felicity of pure love! And the imaginary curtain has dropped! Lo where it rises again discovering to view our stage greatly changed and a little perhaps our actors!--Once more attaching to the HUMAN DRAMA slight as though it were structured of cloud of air the same light and radiant MACHINERY! Once more only that They whom you lately saw tranquil earnest even to pathos--""now are frolic""--enough and to spare!--Once more--THE FAIRIES. And see too--where centring in herself interest and action of the rapidly shifting scenery--ever again a beautiful granddaughter of Eve steps--free and fearless and bouyant and bounding--our fancy-laid boards!--Ah! but how much unresembling the sweet maid!--_Outwardly_ for lofty-piled is the roof that ceils over the superb head of the modern Amazon Swanhilda--more unlike _within_. Instead of the clear truth the soul's gentle purity the ""plain and holy Innocence"" of the poor fairy-beloved mountain child--SHE in whose person and fortunes you are invited--for the next fifty minutes--to forget your own--harbours fondly harbours ill housemates of her virginal breast! a small resolute well-armed and well confederated garrison of unwomanly faults. Pride is there!--The iron-hard and the iron-cold! There Scorn--edging repulse with insult!--and envenoming insult with despair!--leaps up in eager answer to the beseeching sighs tears and groans of earth-bent Adoration. And there is the indulged Insolency of a domineering--and as you will precipitately augur--an _indomitable_ Will! And there is exuberant SELF-POWER that from the innermost mind oozing up out distilling circulating along nerve and vein effects a magical metamorphosis! turns the nymph into a squire of arms; usurping even the clamorous and blood-sprinkled joy of man--the tempestuous and terrible CHASE which in the bosom of peace imaging war shows in the rougher lord of creation himself as harsh wild and turbulent! Oh how much other than yon sweet lily of the high Lusatian valleys the shade-loving Flower the good Maud--herself looked upon with love by the glad eyes of men women children Fairies and Angels! oh other indeed! And yet have you in this thickly clustered enumeration of unamiable qualities implicitly heard the CALL which must fasten which has fastened upon the gentle Maud's _haughty_ antithesis--the serviceable regard and--the FAVOUR even of THE FAIRIES. The FAVOUR!! Hear impatient spectator the simple plot and its brief process. You are after a fashion informed with what studious persevering and unmerciful violation of all gentle decorum and feminine pity the lovely marble-souled tyranness has in the course of the last three or four years turned back from her beetle-browed castle-gate one by one as they showed themselves there--a hundred all worthily born--otherwise more and less meritorious--petitioners for that whip-and-javelin-bearing hand. You are NOW to know that upon this very morning an embassy from the willow-wearers all--or to speak indeed more germanely to the matter of the BASKET-BEARERS[22] waited upon their beautiful enemy with an ultimatum and manifesto in one importing first a requisition to surrender; then in case of refusal to capitulate the announcement that HYMEN having found in CUPID an inefficient ally he was about associating with himself in league offensive the god MARS with intent of carrying the Maiden-fortress by storm and reducing the aforesaid wild occupants of the stronghold into captivity--whereunto she made answer-- ----our castle's strength Will laugh a siege to scorn-- herself laughing outrageously to scorn the senders and the sent This crowning of wrong upon wrong will the Fairies in the first place wreak and right. [Footnote 22: To German ears--to SEND A BASKET--is to REFUSE A PROPOSAL OF MARRIAGE.] But further later upon the same unlucky day the Kingdom of Elves being in full council assembled in the broad light of the sun upon the fair greensward; ere the very numerous but not widely sitting diet had yet well opened its proceedings--""tramp tramp across the land "" came flying at full speed boar-spear in hand our madcap huntress; and without other note of preparation sounded than their own thunder her iron-grey's hoofs were in the thick of the sage assembly causing an indecorous trepidation combined with devastation dire to persons and--wearing apparel. This wrong in the second place the Fairies will wreak and right. And all transgression and injury under one procedure which is--_summary_; as from the character of the judges and executioners into whose hands the sinner has fallen you would expect; sufficiently prankish too. With one sleight of their magical hand they turn the impoverished heiress of ill-possessed acres forth upon the highway doomed to earn with strenuous manual industry her livelihood; until from the winnings of her handicraft she is moreover able to make good as far as this was liable to pecuniary assessment the damage sustained under foot of her fiery barb by the Fairy realm; comfort with handsome presents the rejected suitors; and until thoroughly tame she yields into her softened and opened bosom now rid of its intemperate inmates an entrance to the once debarred and contemned visitant--LOVE. As to the way and style of the Fairy operations that carry out this drift comparing the Two Tales you will see that omitting as a matter that is related merely not presented that misadventure under the oak-tree--there is in the chamber of Swanhilda but a Fairy delegation active whilst under the Sun's hill whole Elfdom is in presence; in that resplendent hollow wearing their own lovely shapes; within the German castle-walls in apt masquerade. There they were grave. Here we have already said that they are merry. There their office was to feel and to think. Here if there be any trust in apparitions they drink and what is more critical for an Elfin lip--they eat! Lastly to end the comparisons for our well-bred well-dressed and right courtly cavalier who transacted between the Fairy Queen and the stonemason's daughter him you shall presently see turned into a sort of Elfin cupbearer or court butler; not without fairy grace of person and of mind assuredly; not without a due innate sense of the beautiful as his perfumed name (SWEETFLOWER) at the outset warns you; and as the proximity of his function to her Majesty's person--for we do not here fall in with any thing like mention of a king--would suggest independently of the delicately responsible part borne by him in the action the chief stress of which you will find incumbent upon his capable shoulders. Such in respect of the subject is thrice courteous and intelligent reader the second piece of art which we are glad to have the opportunity of placing before you from our clever friend Ernst Willkomm's apparently right fertile easel. The second answering to the first LIKE and UNLIKE you perceive as two companion pictures should be. But it would be worse than useless to tell you that which you have seen and that which you will see unless from the juxtaposition of the two fables there followed--a moral. They have as we apprehend a moral--_i.e._ one moral and that a grave one in common between them. Hitherto we have superficially compared THE FAIRIES' SABBATH and the FAIRY TUTOR. We now wish to develope a profounder analogy connecting them. We have compared them as if ESTHETICALLY; we would now compare them MYTHOLOGICALLY--for in our understanding there lies at the very foundation of both tales A MYTHOLOGICAL ROOT--by whomsoever set whether by Ernst Willkomm to-day or by the population of the Lusatian mountains--three six ten centuries ago; or in unreckoned antiquity by the common Ancestors of the believers who in still unmeasured antiquity brought the superstition of the Fairies out of central Asia to remote occidental Europe. This ROOT we are bold to think is--""A DEEPLY SEATED ATTRACTION ALLYING THE FAIRY MIND TO THE PURITY AND INTEGRITY OF THE MORAL WILL IN THE MIND OF MEN."" And first for the Tale which presently concerns us:--THE FAIRY TUTOR. SWEETFLOWER will beguile us into believing that the interposition of the Fairies in our Baroness's domestic arrangements grows up if one shall so hazardously speak from TWO seeds each bearing two branches--namely from two wrongs the one hitting the other striking from themselves--BOTH which wrongs they will AVENGE and AMEND. We take up a strenuous theory; and we deny--and we defy--SWEETFLOWER. Nay more! Should our excellent friend ERNST WILLKOMM be found taking part real or apparent with SWEETFLOWER we defy and we deny Ernst Willkomm. For in this mixed case of the Fairy wrong we distinguish first INJURIES which shall be retaliated and as far as may be compensated; and secondly a SHREW who is to be turned _into_ a WIFE being previously turned _out of_ a shrew. We dare to believe that this last-mentioned end is the thing uppermost and undermost and middlemost in the mind of the Fairies; is in fact the true and _the sole final cause_ of all their proceedings. Or that the _moral heart_ of the poem--that root in the human breast and will from which every true poem springs heavenward--is here the zeal of the spirits for _morally reforming Swanhilda_; is therefore that deep-seated attraction which as we have averred essentially allies the inclination of the Fairies to the moral conscience in our own kind. One end therefore grounds the whole story although two and more are proposed by _Sweetflower_. It is one that _satisfies_ the moral reason in man; for it is no less than to cleanse and heal the will wounded with error of a human creature. That other which he displays with mock emphasis of restitution to the downtrodden fairyhood is an exotic fair and slight bud grafted into the sturdier indigenous stock. For let us fix but a steady look upon the thing itself and what is there before us? a whim a trick of the fancy tickling the fancy. We are amused with a quaint calamity--a panic of caps and cloaks. We laugh--we cannot help it--as the pigmy assembly flies a thousand ways at once--grave councillors and all--throwing terrified somersets--hiding under stones roots--diving into coney-burrows--""any where--any where""--vanishing out of harm's--if not out of dismay's--reach. In a tale of the Fairies THE FANCY rules:--and the interest of such a misfortune definite and not infinite is congenial to the spirit of the gay faculty which hovers over lives upon surfaces and which flees abysses; which thence likewise in the moral sphere is equal to apprehending resentment of a personal wrong and a judicial assessment of damages--but NOT A DISINTERESTED MORAL END. What is our conclusion then? plainly that the dolorous overthrow of the fairy divan is no better than an invention--the device of an esthetical artist. We hold that Ernst Willkomm has _gratuitously_ bestowed upon us the disastrous catastrophe; that he has done this knowing the obligation which lies upon Fancy within her own chosen domain to _create_ because--there Fancy listens and reads. The adroit Fairy delineator must wile over and reconcile the most sportive capricious and self-willed spirit of our understanding to accept a purpose foreign to that spirit's habitual sympathies--a purpose solemn and austere--THE MORAL PURPOSE OF RESCUING A SIN-ENTANGLED HUMAN SOUL. Or if Ernst Willkomm shall guarantee to us that the reminiscences of his people have furnished him with the materials of this tale; if he is as we must needs hope who have freely dealt with you to believe that he is--honest: honest both as to the general character and the particular facts of his representations--if in short the Lusatian Highlanders do sitting by the bench and the stove aver and protest that the said Swanhilda did overturn both council-board and councillors--then we say upon this occasion that which we must all hundreds of times declare--namely that _The Genius of Tradition_ is the foremost of artists; and further that in this instance _an unwilled fiction_ determined by a necessity of the human bosom has risen up _to mantle seriousness with grace_ as a free woodbine enclasps with her slender-gadding twines and bedecks with her sweet bright blossoms a towering giant of the grove. It will perhaps be objected that the moral purity and goodness that are so powerful to draw to themselves the regard and care of the spiritual people are wanting in the character of the over-bold Swanhilda. We have said that her _faults_ are the CALL to the Fairies for help and reformation: but we may likewise guess that Virtue and Truth first won their love. It must be recollected that the faults which are extirpated from the breast of our heroine are not such as in our natural understanding of humanity dishonour or sully. Taken away the character may stand clear. It is quite possible that this gone there shall be left behind a kind good affectionate generous noble nature. We are free or more properly speaking we are bound to believe that thus the Fairies left Swanhilda. As for Maud we know--for she was told--that the Fairies loved her for herself ere they needed her aid. Hanging as it were upon that wondrous power to help which dwelt within her--her simple goodness--may we not say that the Fairies discover an ENFORCED attraction when they afterwards approach the maiden for their own succour and salvation; as they do a FREE attraction when in the person of Swanhilda they disinterestedly attach themselves to reforming a fault for the welfare and happiness of her whom it aggrieves? * * * * * We will now proceed as in our former communication to adduce instances from other quarters confirming the fairy delineations offered by our tale; or which may tend generally to bring out its mythological and literary character. Two points would suggest themselves to us in the tale of the Fairy Tutor as chiefly provoking comparison. The first is:--_The affirmed Presidency of the Fairies over human morals_ viewed as _a Shape of the Interest_ which they take in the uprightness and purity of the human will. The second is:-- _The Manner and Style of their operations_: or THE FAIRY WAYS. In which we chiefly distinguish--1 The active presence of the Sprites in a human habitation. 2 Their masquerading. 3 Their dispatch of human victuals. 4 The liability of Elfin limbs to human casualties. 5 The personality of that saucy Puck our tiny ambassador elf. We are at once tempted and restrained by the richness of illustration which presents itself under all these heads. The necessity of limitation is however imperious. This and a wish for simplicity dispose us to throw all under one more comprehensive title. Perhaps the reader has not entirely forgotten that in the remarks introductory to THE FAIRIES' SABBATH having launched the question--what is a Fairy?--we offered him in the way of answer _eight_ elements of the Fairy Nature. Has he quite forgotten that for one of these--it was the third--we represented the Spirit under examination as ONE WHICH AT ONCE SEEKS AND SHUNS MANKIND? The cursory treatment of this Elfin criterion will now compendiously place before the reader as much illustration of the two above-given heads as we dare impose upon him. The popular Traditions of entire Western Europe variously attest for all the kinds of the Fairies and for some orders of Spirits partaking of the Fairy character the singularly composed and almost self-contradictory traits of a _seeking_ implicated and attempered with a _shunning_; of a shunning with a seeking. The inclination of our Quest will be to evidences of the _seeking_. The shunning will it need not be doubted take good care of itself. The attraction of the Fairy Species towards our own is 1. Recognised--in their GENERIC DESIGNATIONS. 2. Apparent--in their GOOD NEIGHBOURHOOD with us. 3. IN THEIR FREQUENTING AND ESTABLISHING THEMSELVES in the places of our habitual occupancy and resort. 4. IN THEIR CALLING OR CARRYING US into the places of their Occupancy and Resort; whether to return _hither_ or to remain _there_. 5. BY THEIR ALIGHTING UPON THE PATH worn already with some blithe or some weary steps OF A HUMAN DESTINY;--as friendly or as unfriendly Genii. We collect the proofs: and-- 1. Of their GENERIC APPELLATIVES a Word! One is tempted to say that THE NATIONS as if conscious of the kindly disposition inhering in the spiritual existences toward ourselves have simultaneously agreed in conferring upon them titles of endearment and affection. The brothers Grimm write--""In Scotland they [The Fairies] are called _The Good People Good Neighbours Men of Peace;_ in Wales--_The Family The Blessing of their Mothers The Dear Ladies;_ in the old Norse and to this day in the Faroe islands _Huldufolk_ (_The Gracious People;_) in Norway _Huldre_;[23] and in conformity with these denominations discover a striving to be in the proximity of men and to keep up a good understanding with them.""[24] [Footnote 23: May we for HULDRE read HULDREFOLK; and understand the _following_ or the _Folk_ of HULDRE? Huldre _means_ the Gracious Lady: she is a sort of Danish and Norwegian Fairy-Queen.--See GRIMM'S _German Mythology_ p. 168. First edition.] [Footnote 24: The Brothers GRIMM: _Introduction to the Irish Fairy Tales_.] 2. THIS GOOD NEIGHBOURHOOD to which these last words point is interestingly depicted by the Traditions. In Scotland and Germany the Fairies plant their habitation _adjoining_ that of man--""_under the threshold_""--and in such attached Fairies an alliance is unfolded with us of a most extraordinary kind. ""The closest connexion"" (_id est_ of the Fairy species with our own) ""is expressed "" say the Brothers Grimm ""by the tradition agreeably to which the family of the Fairies ORDERED ITSELF ENTIRELY AFTER THE HUMAN to which it belonged; and OF WHICH IT WAS AS IF A COPY. These domestic Fairies _kept their marriages upon the same day_ as the Human Beings; _their children were born upon the same day_; and _upon the same day they wailed for their dead._""[25] [Footnote 25: The Brothers GRIMM: _Introduction to the Irish Fairy Tales._] Two artlessly sweet breathings of Elfin Table from the Helvetian Dales [26] lately revived to your fancy the sinless--blissful years when gods with men set fellowing steps upon one and the same fragrant and unpolluted sward until transgression exiling those to their own celestial abodes left these lonely--a nearer dearer BARBARIAN Golden Age--wherein the kindly Dwarf nation stand representing the great deities of Olympus. [Footnote 26: See _The Dwarfs upon the Maple-Tree_ and _The Dwarfs upon the Crag-Stone_ in the former paper.] The healthful pure air fans restoration again to us. We lay before you-- GERMAN TRADITIONS No. CXLIX _The Dwarfs' Feet_. ""In old times the men dwelt in the valley and round about them in caves and clefts of the rock the Dwarfs _in amity and good neighbourhood_ with the people for whom they performed by night many a heavy labour. When the country folk betimes in the morning came with wains and implements and wondered that all was ready done the Dwarfs were hiding in the bushes and laughed out loud. Frequently the peasants were angry when they saw their yet hardly ripe corn lying reaped upon the field; but when presently after hail and storm came on and they could well know that probably not a stalk should have escaped perishing they were then heartily thankful to the provident Dwarfs. At last however the inhabitants by their sin fooled away the grace and favour of the Dwarfs. These fled and since then has no eye ever again beheld them. The cause was this following:--A herdsman had upon the mountain an excellent cherry-tree. One summer as the fruit grew ripe it befell that the tree was for three following nights picked and the fruit carried and fairly spread out in the loft in which the herdsman had use to keep his cherries. The people said in the village that doth no one other than the honest dwarflings--they come tripping along by night in long mantles with covered feet softly as birds and perform diligently for men the work of the day. Already often have they been privily watched but one may not interrupt them only let them come and go at their listing. By such speeches was the herdsman made curious and would fain have wist wherefore the Dwarfs hid so carefully their feet and whether these were otherwise shapen than men's feet. When therefore the next year summer again came and the season that the Dwarfs did stealthily pluck the cherries and bear them into the garner the herdsman took a sackful of ashes which he strewed round about the tree. The next morning with daybreak he hied to the spot; the tree was regularly gotten and he saw beneath in the ashes the print of many geese's feet. Thereat the herdsman fell a-laughing and made game that the mystery of the Dwarfs was bewrayed; but these presently after brake down and laid waste their houses and fled deeper away into their mountain. They harbour ill-will toward men and withhold from them their help. That herdsman which had betrayed the Dwarfs turned sickly and half-witted and so continued until his dying day!"" There! Plucked amidst the lap of the Alps from its own hardily-nursed wild-brier by the same tenderly-diligent hand[27] that brought home to us those other half-disclosed twin-buds of Helvetian tradition you behold a third like pure more expanded blossom. Twine the three young poet! into one soft-hued and ""odorous chaplet "" ready and meet for binding the smooth clear forehead of a Swiss Maud!--or fix it amidst the silken curls of thine own dove-eyed innocent nature-loving--Ellen or Margaret. [Footnote 27: Of Professor Wyes.] These old-young things--bequests as they look to be--from the loving singing childhood of the earth may lawfully make children lovers and songsters of us all; and _will_ if we are _fond_ and hearken to them. In that same ""hallowed and gracious time "" lying YON-SIDE our chronologies ""When the world and love were young And truth on every shepherd's tongue "" the men and the Dwarfs
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had unbroken intercourse of _borrowing and lending_. Many traditions touch the matter. Here is one resting upon it. No. CLIV. _The Dwarfs near Dardesheim_. ""Dardesheim is a little town betwixt Halberstadt and Brunswick. Close to the north-east side a spring of the clearest water flows which is called the Smansborn [28] and wells from a hill wherein formerly the Dwarfs dwelled. When the ancient inhabitants of the place needed a holiday dress or any rare utensil for a marriage they betook them to this Dwarf's Hill knocked thrice and with a well audible voice told their occasion adding-- 'Early a-morrow ere sun-light At the hill's door lieth all aright.' [Footnote 28: For LESSMANSBORN _i.e._ LESSMANN'S WELL.] The Dwarfs held themselves for well requited if somewhat of the festival meats were set for them by the hill. Afterward gradually did bickerings interrupt the good understanding that was betwixt the Dwarfs' nation and the country folk. At the beginning for a short season; but in the end the Dwarfs departed away; because the flouts and gibes of many boors grew intolerable to them as likewise their ingratitude for kindnesses done. Thenceforth none seeth or heareth any Dwarfs more."" In _Auvergne_ Miss Costello has just now learned how the men and the Fairies anciently lived upon the friendliest footing nigh one another: how the _knowledge_ and _commodious use_ of the _Healing Springs_ was owed by the former to these Good Neighbours: how of yore the powerful sprites by rending athwart a huge rocky mound opened an _innocuous channel_ for _the torrent_ which used with its overflow to lay desolate arable ground and pasturage: how they were looked upon as being in a general sense _the protectors_ against harm of the country: and in fine how the two orders of neighbours lived in long and happy communion of kind offices with one another; until upon one unfortunate day the ill-renowned freebooter Aymerigot Marcel with his ruffianly men-at-arms having approached by stealth from his near-lying hold stormed the romantically seated rock-mansion of the bountiful pigmies: who scared and in anger forsook the land. Ever since the foul outrage only a straggler may now and then be seen at a distance. Thus too the late _Brillat-Savarin_ from a sprightly acute brilliant Belles-letteriste turned for an hour honest antiquary lets us know how upon the southern bank of the Rhone flowing out from Switzerland in the narrowly-bounded and when he first quitted it yet hidden valley of his birth:--The FAIRIES--elderly not beautiful but benevolent unmarried ladies--kept while time was open school in THE GROTTO which was their habitation for the young girls of the vicinity whom they taught--SEWING. 3. We go on to exemplifying--ELFIN _Frequentation of and Settlement with _ MAN. The Fairies are drawn into the houses and to the haunts of men by manifold occasions and impulses. They halt on a journey. They celebrate marriages. They use the implements of handicraft. They purchase at the Tavern--from the Shambles or in open Market. They _steal_ from oven and field. They go through a house blessing the rooms the marriage-bed--and stand beside the unconscious cradle. They give dreams. They take part in the evening mirth. They pray in the churches. They seem to work in the mines. Drawn by magical constraint into the garden they invite themselves within doors. They dance in the churchyard.[29] They make themselves the wives and the paramours of men; or the serviceable hobgoblin fixes himself like a cat in the house--once and for ever. We present traditions for illustrating some of these points as they offer themselves to us. [Footnote 29: ""Part fenced by man part by the ragged steep That curbs a foaming brook a GRAVE-YARD lies; The hare's best couching-place for fearless sleep! Where MOONLIT FAYS far seen by credulous eyes ENTER IN DANCE!"" WORDSWORTH.--_Sonnet upon an_ ABANDONED _Cemetery._] THEY HALT ON A JOURNEY. No. XXXV. _The Count of Hoia_. ""There did appear once to a count of Hoia a little mauling in the night and as the count was alarmed said to him he should have no fear: he had a word to sue unto him and begged that he should not be denied. The count answered if it were a thing possible to do and should be never burthensome to him and his he will gladly do it. The manling said--'There be some that desire to come to thee this ensuing night into thy house and to make their stopping. Wouldst thou so long lend them kitchen and hall and bid thy domestics that they go to bed and none look after their ways and works neither any know thereof save only thou? They will show them therefore grateful. Thou and thy line shall have cause of joy and in the very least matter shall none hurt happen unto thee neither to any that belong to thee.' Whereunto the count assented. Accordingly upon the following night they came like a cavalcade marching over the drawbridge to the house; one and all--tiny folk such as they use to describe the hill manlings. They cooked in the kitchen fell too and rested and nothing seemed otherwise than as if a great repast were in preparing. Thereafter nigh unto morn as they will again depart comes the little manling a second time to the count and after conning him thanks handed him a _sword_ a _salamander cloth_ and a _golden ring_ in which was RED LION set above--advertising him withal that he and his posterity shall well keep these three pieces and so long as they had them all together should it go with fair accordance and well in the county; but so soon as they shall be parted from one another shall it be a sign that nothing good impendeth for the county. Accordingly the red lion ever after when any of the stem is near the point of dying hath been seen to wax wan. ""Howsoever at the time that Count Job and his brothers were minors and Francis of Halle governor in the country two of the pieces--viz. the Sword and the Salamander Cloth were taken away; but the Ring remained with the lordship unto an end. Whither it afterwards went is not known."" THEY HOLD A WEDDING. No.XXXI. _The Small People's Wedding Feast._ ""The small people of the Eulenberg in Saxony would once hold a marriage and for this purpose slipped in in the night through the keyhole and the window-chinks into the Hall and came leaping down upon the smooth floor like peas tumbled out upon the threshing-floor. The old Count who slept in the high canopy bed in the Hall awoke and marvelled at the number of tiny companions; one of whom in the garb of a herald now approached him and in well-set phrase courteously prayed him to bear part in their festivity. 'Yet one thing ' he added 'we beg of you. Ye shall alone be present; none of your court shall be bold to gaze upon our mirth--yea not so much as with a glance.' The old Count answered pleasantly--'Since ye have once for all waked me up I will e'en make one among you.' Hereupon was a little wifikin led up to him little torch-bearers took their station and a music of crickets struck up. The Count had much ado to save losing his little partner in the dance; she capered about so nimbly and ended with whirling him round and round until hardly might he have his breath again. But in the midst of the jocund measure all stood suddenly still; the music ceased and the whole throng hurried to the cracks in the doors mouse-holes and hiding-places of all sorts. The newly-married couple only the heralds and the dancers looked upward towards an orifice that was in the hall ceiling and there descried the visage of the old Countess who was curiously prying down upon the mirthful doings. Herewith they made their obeisance to the Count; and the same which had bidden him again stepping forward thanked him for his hospitality. 'But ' continued he 'because our pleasure and our wedding hath been in such sort interrupted that yet another eye of man hath looked thereon henceforward shall your house number never more than seven Eulenbergs.' Thereupon they pressed fast forth one upon another. Presently all was quiet and the old Count once again alone in the dark Hall. The curse hath come true to this hour so as ever one of the six living knights of Eulenberg hath died ere the seventh was born."" THEY JOIN THE EVENING MIRTH. No. xxxix. _The Hill-Manling at the Dance_. ""Old folks veritable declared that some years ago at Glass in Dorf an hour from the Wunderberg and an hour from the town of Salzburg a wedding was kept to which towards evening a Hill-Manling came out of the Wunderberg. He exhorted all the guests to be in honour gleesome and merry and requested leave to join the dancers which was not refused him. He danced accordingly with modest maidens one and another; evermore three dances with each and that with a singular featness; insomuch that the wedding guests looked on with admiration and pleasure. The dance over he made his thanks and bestowed upon either of the young married people three pieces of money that were of an unknown coinage; whereof each was held to be worth four kreuzers; and therewithal _admonished them to dwell in peace and concord live Christianly and piously walking to bring up their children in all goodness_. These coins they should put amongst their money and constantly remember him--so should they seldom fall into hardship. _But they must not therewithal grow arrogant but of their superfluity succour their neighbours_. ""This Hill-Manling stayed with them into the night and took of every one to drink and to eat what they proffered; but from every one only a little. He then paid his courtesy and desired that one of the wedding guests might take him over the river Salzbach toward the mountain. Now there was at the marriage a boatman by name John Standl who was presently ready and they went down together to the ferry. During the passage the ferryman asked his meed. The Hill-Manling tendered him in all humility three pennies. The waterman scorned at such mean hire; but the Manling gave him for answer--'He must not vex himself but safely store up the three pennies; for so doing he should never suffer default of his having--_if only he did restrain presumptousness_--at the same time he gave the boatman a little pebble saying the words--'If thou shalt hang this about thy neck thou shalt not possibly perish in the water.' Which was proved in that same year. Finally _he persuaded him to a godly and humble manner of life_ and went swiftly away."" ANOTHER OF THE SAME. No. CCCVI. _The Three Maidens from the Mere._ ""At Epfenbach nigh Sinzheim within men's memory three wondrously beautiful damsels attired in white visited with every evening the village spinning-room. They brought along with them ever new songs and tunes and new pretty tales and games. Moreover their distaffs and spindles had something peculiar and no spinster might so finely and nimbly spin the thread. But upon the stroke of eleven they arose; packed up their spinning gear and for no prayers might be moved to delay for an instant more. None wist whence they came nor whither they went. Only they called them The Maidens from the Mere; or The Sisters of the Lake. The lads were glad to see them there and were taken with love of them; but most of all the schoolmaster's son. He might never have enough of hearkening and talking to them and nothing grieved him more than that every night they went so early away. The thought suddenly crossed him and he set the village clock an hour back; and in the evening with continual talking and sporting not a soul perceived the delay of the hour. When the clock struck eleven--but it was properly twelve--the three damsels arose put up their distaffs and things and departed. Upon the following morrow certain persons went by the Mere; they heard a wailing and saw three bloody spots above upon the surface of the water. Since that season the sisters came never again to the room. The schoolmaster's son pined and died shortly thereafter."" AN ELFIN IS BOUND IN UNLAWFUL CHAINS TO A HUMAN LOVER. No. LXX. _The Bushel the Ring and the Goblet._ ""In the duchy of Lorraine when it belonged as it long did to Germany the last count of Orgewiler ruled betwixt Nanzig and Luenstadt.[30] He had no male heir of his blood and upon his deathbed shared his lands amongst his three daughters and sons-in-law. Simon of Bestein had married the eldest daughter the lord of Crony the second and a German Rhinegrave the youngest. Beside the lordships he also distributed to his heirs three presents; to the eldest daughter a BUSHEL to the middle one a DRINKING-CUP and to the third a jewel which was a RING with an admonition that they and their descendants should carefully hoard up these pieces so should their houses be constantly fortunate."" [Footnote 30: LUNEVILLE.] The tradition how the things came into the possession of the count the Marshal of Bassenstein [31] great-grandson of Simon does himself relate thus:--[32] [Footnote 31: BASSOMPIERRE.] [Footnote 32: _Mémoires du Maréchal de_ BASSOMPIERRE: Cologne 1666. Vol. I. PP. 4-6. The Marshal died in 1646.] ""The count was married: but he had beside a secret amour with a marvellous beautiful woman which came weekly to him every Monday into a summer-house in the garden. This commerce remained long concealed from his wife. When he withdrew from her side he pretended to her that he went by night into the Forest to the Stand. ""But when a few years had thus passed the countess took a suspicion and was minded to learn the right truth. One summer morning early she slipped after him and came to the summer bower. She there saw her husband sleeping in the arms of a wondrous fair female; but because they both slept so sweetly she would not awaken them; but she took her veil from her head and spread it over the feet of both where they lay asleep. ""When the beautiful paramour awoke and perceived the veil she gave a loud cry began pitifully to wail and said:-- ""'Henceforwards my beloved we see one another never more. Now must I tarry at a hundred leagues' distance away and severed from thee.' ""Therewith she did 1eave the count but presented him first with those afore-named three gifts for his three daughters which they should never let go from them. ""The House of Bassenstein for long years had a toll to draw in fruit from the town of Spinal [33] whereto this Bushel was constantly used."" [Footnote 33: EPINAL.] THE HOUSEHOLD SPIRIT DOES HOUSEHOLD SERVICE IN A MILL. No. LXXIII. _The Kobold in the Mill._ ""Two students did once fare afoot from Rintel. They purposed putting up for the night in a village; but for as much as there did a violent rain fall and the darkness grew upon them so as they might no further forward they went up to a near-lying mill knocked and begged a night's quarters. The miller was at the first deaf but yielded at the last to their instant entreaty opened the door and brought them into a room. They were hungry and thirsty both; and because there stood upon a table a dish with food and a mug of beer they begged the miller for them being both ready and willing to pay; but the miller denied them--would not give them even a morsel of bread and only the hard bench for their night's bed. ""'The meat and the drink ' said he 'belong to the Household Spirit. If ye love your lives leave them both untouched. But else have ye no harm to fear. If there chance a little din in the night be ye but still and sleep.' ""The two students laid themselves down to sleep; but after the space of an hour or the like hunger did assail the one so vehemently that he stood up and sought after the dish. The other a Master of Arts warned him to leave to the Devil what was the Devil's due; but he answered 'I have a better right than the Devil to it'--seated himself at the table and ate to his heart's content so that little was left of the cookery. After that he laid hold of the can took a good Pomeranian pull and having thus somewhat appeased his desire he laid himself again down to his companion; but when after a time thirst anew tormented him he again rose up and pulled a second so hearty draught that he left the Household Spirit only the bottoms. After he had thus cheered and comforted himself he lay down and fell asleep. ""All remained quiet on to midnight; but hardly was this well by when the Kobold came banging in with so loud coil [34] that both sleepers awoke in great fright. He bounced a few times to and fro about the room then seated himself as if to enjoy his supper at the table and they could plainly hear how he pulled the dish to him. Immediately he set it as though in ill humour hard down again laid hold of the can pressed up the lid but straightway let it clap sharply to again. He now fell to his work; he wiped the table next the legs of the table carefully down and then swept as with a besom the door diligently. When this was done he returned to visit once more the dish and the beercan if his luck might be any better this turn but once more pushed both angrily away. Thereupon he proceeded in his labour came to the benches washed scoured rubbed them below and above. When he came to the place where the two students lay he passed them over and worked on beyond their feet. When this was done he began upon the bench a second time above their heads; and for the second time likewise passed over the visitants. But the third time when he came to them he stroked gently the one which had nothing tasted over the hair and along the whole body without any whit hurting him; but the other he griped by the feet dragged him two or three times round the room upon the floor till at the last he left him lying and ran behind the stove whence he laughed him loudly to scorn. The student crawled back to the bench; but in a quarter of an hour the Kobold began his work anew sweeping cleaning wiping. The two lay there quaking with fear:--the one he felt quite softly over when he came to him; but the other he flung again upon the ground and again broke out at the back of the stove into a flouting horse-laugh. [Footnote 34: Exactly so the hairy THRESHING Goblin of Milton--at _going out_ again:-- ""Till cropful out o' door HE FLINGS."" He too is paid for his work with ----""_his_ CREAM-BOWL duly set."" ""The students now no longer chose to lie upon the bench rose and set up before the closed and locked door a loud outcry; but none took any heed to it. They were at length resolved to lay themselves down close together upon the flat floor; but the Kobold left them not in peace. He began for the third time his game:--came and lugged the guilty one about laughed and scoffed him. He was now fairly mad with rage drew his sword thrust and cut into the corner whence the laugh rang and challenged the Kobold with bravadoes to come on. He then sat down his weapon in his hand upon the bench to await what should further befall; but the noise ceased and all remained still. ""The miller upbraided them upon the morrow for that they had not conformed themselves to his admonishing neither had left the victuals untouched. It was as much as their two lives were worth."" * * * * * Three heads only of the ATTRACTION above imputed to the Fairies towards our own kind have been here imperfectly brought out; and already the narrowness of our limits warns us--with a sigh given to the traditions crowding upon us from all countries and which we perforce leave unused--to bring these preliminary remarks to a close. _Still_ something has been gained for illustrating our Tale. The Hill-Manling at the dance diligently warns against PRIDE--the rank ROOT evil which the Fairies will weed out from the bosom of our heroine whilst throughout a marked feature of the Fairy ways--""THE ACTIVE PRESENCE OF THE SPIRITS IN A HUMAN HABITATION"" has forced itself upon us in diverse and some perhaps unexpected forms. And _still_ our fuller examples coming to us wholly from the Collection of the Two Brothers and expressing the habitudes of _various_ WIGHTS and ELVES may furnish for comparison with Ernst Willkomm's Upper Lusatian an EXTRA Lusatian picture of the TEUTONIC FAIRYHOOD. THE FAIRY TUTOR. ""In days of yore there lived alone in her castle a maiden named Swanhilda. She was the only child of a proud father lately deceased. Her mother she had lost when she was but a child; so that the education of the daughter had fallen wholly into the hands of the father. ""During the lifetime even of the old knight many suitors had offered themselves for Swanhilda; but she seemed to be insensible to every tender emotion and dismissed with disdainful haughtiness the whole body of wooers. Meanwhile she hunted the stag and the board and performed squire's service for her gradually declining parent. This manner of life was so entirely to the taste of the maiden notwithstanding that in delicacy of frame and in bewitching gracefulness of figure she gave place to none of her sex that when at length her father died she took upon herself the management of the castle and lived aloof in pride and independence in the very fashion of an Amazon. Maugre the many refusals which Swanhilda had already distributed on every side there still flocked to her loving knights eager to wed; but like their predecessors they were all sent drooping home again. The young nobility could at last bear this treatment no longer; and they one and all resolved either to constrain the supercilious damsel to wedlock or to make her smart for a refusal. An embassy was dispatched charged with notifying this resolution to the mistress of the castle. Swanhilda heard the speakers quietly to the end; but her answer was tuned as before or indeed rang harsher and more offensive than ever. Turning her back upon the embassy she left them to depart scorned and ashamed. ""In the night following the day upon which this happened Swanhilda was disturbed out of her sleep by a noise which seemed to her to ascend from her chamber floor; but let her strain her eyes as she might she could for a long while discern nothing. At length she observed in the middle of the room a straying sparkle of light that threw itself over and over like a tumbler tittering at the same time like a human being. Swanhilda for a while kept herself quiet; but as the luminous antic ceased not practising his harlequinade she peevishly exclaimed--'What buffoon is carrying on his fooleries here? I desire to be left in peace.' The light vanished instantly and Swanhilda already had congratulated herself upon gaining her point when suddenly a loud shrilly sound was heard--the floor of the apartment gave way and from the gap there arose a table set out with the choicest viands. It rested upon a lucid body of air upon which the tiny attendants skipped with great agility to and fro waiting upon seated guests. At first Swanhilda was so amazed that her breath forsook her; but becoming by degrees somewhat collected she observed to her extreme astonishment that an effigy of herself sat at the strange table in the midst of the numerous train of suitors whom she had so haughtily dismissed. The attendants presented to the young knights the daintiest dishes the savour of which came sweetly-smelling enough to the nostrils of the proud damsel. As often however as the knights were helped to meat and drink the figure of Swanhilda at the board was presented by an ill-favoured Dwarf who stood as her servant behind her with an empty basket whereat the suitor's broke out into wild laughter. She also soon became aware that as many courses were served up to the guests as she had heretofore dispensed refusals and the amount of these was certainly not small. ""Swanhilda weary of the absurd phantasmagoria was going to speak again; but to her horror she discovered that the power of speech had left her. She had for some time been struck with a kind of whispering and tittering about her. In order to make out whence this proceeded she leaned out of her bed and peering between the silk curtains perceived two smart diminutive cupbearers in garments of blue with green aprons and small yellow caps. She had scarcely got sight of the little gentlemen when their whispering took the character of audible words; and the dumb Swanhilda was enabled to overhear the following discourse: ""'But I pri'thee tell me Sweetflower how this show shall end?' said one of the two cupbearers --'thou art we know the confidant of our queen and certes canst disclose to me somewhat of her plans?' ""'That can I my small-witted Monsieur Silverfine ' answered Sweetflower. 'Know therefore that this sweet and lovely to behold brute of a girl is now beginning to suffer the castigation due to her innumerable offences. Swanhilda has sinned against all maidenly modesty has borne herself proud and overbearing towards honourable gentlemen and besides has most seriously offended our queen.' ""'How so?' enquired Silverfine. ""'By storming on her Barbary steed like the devil himself through the thick of our States' Assembly pounding the arms and legs of I don't know how many of our sapient representatives. What makes the matter worse is that this happened at the very opening of the diet and whilst the grand prelusive symphony of the whole hidden people was in full burst. We were sitting by hundreds of thousands upon blades stalks and leaves; some of us still actively busied arranging comfortable seats for the older people in the blue harebells. For this we had stripped the skins of sixty thousand red field spiders and wrought them into canopies and hangings. All our talented performers had tuned their instruments scraped fluted twanged jingled and shawmed to their hearts' content and had resined their fiddlesticks upon the freshest of dewdrops. All at once tearing out of the wood with your leave or without your leave comes this monster of a girl plump upon upper house and lower house together. Ah lack-a-daisy! what a massacre it was! The first hoof struck a thousand of our prime orators dead upon the spot the other three hoofs scattered the Imperial diet in all directions and what is worse than all tore to pieces a multitude of our exquisite caps. Our queen was almost frantic at the breach of the peace--she stamped with her foot and cried out ""LIGHTNING!"" and what that means we all pretty well know. Just at this time too she received information of the maiden's arrogant behaviour towards her suitors and on the instant she determined to put the sinner to her prayers. We began by devouring every thing clean up giving her the pleasure of looking on.' ""'Silly absurd creatures!' _thought_ Swanhilda as the little butler advanced to the table to put on some fresh wine. During his absence she had time to note how perhaps a dozen other Fairies drew up through the floor whole pailfuls of wine and smoking meats which were conveyed immediately to the table and there consumed as if by the wind. She was heartily longing for the day to dawn that the sun might dissipate her dream when the sprightly little speaker came to his place again. ""'Now we can gossip a little longer ' said Sweetflower. 'My guests are provided for and between this and cock-crow--when house and cellar will be emptied--there's some time yet.' ""Swanhilda uttered (_mentally_) a prodigious imprecation and turned herself so violently in the bed that the little gentlemen were absolutely terrified. ""'I verily believe we are going to have an earthquake!' said Silverfine. ""'No such thing!' answered Sweetflower. 'The amiable young lady in bed there has seen the sport perhaps and is very likely not altogether pleased with it.' ""'Don't you think she would speak if she saw all this wastefulness going on?' asked Silverfine. ""'Yes if she could!' chuckled Sweetflower. 'But our queen has been cruel enough to strike her dumb whilst she looks upon this heartbreaking spectacle. If she once wakes she won't be troubled again with sleep before cock-crow.' ""'A pretty business!' _thought_ Swanhilda once more tossing herself passionately about in her bed. ""'Quite right!' said Sweetflower triumphantly. 'The imp of a girl has waked up.' ""'Insolent wretches!' said Swanhilda (internally.) 'Brute and imp to me! Oh if I could only speak!' ""'Why the whole fun of the thing is ' said Sweetflower almost bursting with laughter 'just that that wish won't be gratified. Does the fool of a woman think that she is to trample down our orchestra with impunity to put our States' Assembly to flight and to crush our very selves into a jelly!' ""'And the unbidden guests divine my very thoughts!' _thought_ Swanhilda. 'Upon my life it looks as if a spice of omniscience had really crept under their caps!' ""'Why of course!' answered Sweetflower. ""'Then will I think no more!' _resolved_ Swanhilda. ""'And there my prudent damsel you show a good discretion ' returned Sweetflower saluting her with an ironical bow. ""'How will it be then with our caps?' enquired Silverfine. 'Are they to be repaired?' ""'Oh certainly ' returned Sweetflower; 'and that will cost our Amazon here more than all. Indeed the conditions of her punishment are to make good the caps to pledge her troth to one of her despised suitors to compensate the rest with magnificent gifts and for the future never to mount hunter more but to amble upon a gentle palfrey as a lady should. And till all this is done am I to have the teaching of her.' ""'Pretty conditions truly!' thought Swanhilda. 'I would rather die than keep them.' ""'Just as you please most worthy madam ' answered Sweetflower; 'but you'll think better of it yet perhaps.' ""'It will fall heavy enough upon her ' said Silverfine 'seeing that we have it in command to seize upon all the lady's treasures.' ""'Capital capital!' shouted Sweetflower. 'That's peppering the punishment truly! For now must this haughty man-hating creature go about begging catching and carrying fish to market and so submitting herself to the scorn and laughter of all her former lovers till her trade makes her rich again. Nothing but luck in fishing will our queen vouchsafe the audacious madam. Three years are allowed her. But in the interim she must starve and famish like a white mouse learning to dance.' ""At this moment a monstrous burst of laughter roared from the table. The guests sang aloud-- ""'The last flagon we end Swanhilda shall mend; Huzza knights and drink To the last dollar's chink!' ""As the song ceased the table descended the floor closed up and stillness was in the room again as when the lady had first retired to her couch. The cock crew and Swanhilda fell into a deep sleep. * * * * * ""When it left her the sun already shone high and bright and played on her silken bed-curtains. She rubbed her eyes and seeing every thing about her in its usual state she concluded that what had happened was nothing worse than a feverish dream. She now arose began dressing herself and would have allayed her waking thirst but she could find neither glass nor water-pitcher. She called angrily to her waiting-woman. ""'How come you to forget water blockhead?' she exclaimed; 'get some quickly and then--Breakfast!' ""The attendant departed shaking her head; for she knew well enough that every thing had been put in order as usual on the evening before. She very quickly returned frightened out of her wits and hardly able to speak. ""'Oh my lady! my lady! my lady!' she stammered out. ""'Well where is the water?' ""'Gone! all drained and dried up! Tub brook well--all empty and dry!' ""'Is it possible?' said Swanhilda. 'Your eyes have surely deceived you! But never mind--bring up my breakfast. A ham and two Pomeranian geese-breasts.' ""'Alack! gracious lady!' answered the girl sobbing 'every thing in the house is gone too! The wine-casks lie in pieces on the cellar floor; the stalls are empty; your favourite horse is away--hay and corn rotted through. It is shocking!' ""Swanhilda dismissed her and broke out at first into words wild and vehement. She checked them; but tears of disappointment and bitter rage forced their way in spite of her. A visit to her cellar store-rooms and granaries convinced her of the horrible transformation which a night had effected in every thing that belonged to her. She found nothing every where but mould and sickly-smelling mildew; and was too soon aware that the hideous images of the night were nothing less than frightful realities. Her hardened heart stood proof; and since the whole region for leagues round was turned into a blighted brown heath she at one resolved to die of hunger. Ere noon her few servants had deserted the castle and Swanhilda herself hungered till her bowels growled again. ""This laudable self-castigation she persevered in for three days long when her hunger had increased to such a pitch that she could no longer remain quiet in the castle. In
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a state of half consciousness she staggered down to the lake known far and wide by the name of the Castle mere. Here on the glassy surface basked the liveliest fishes. Swanhilda for a while watched in silence the disport of the happy creatures then snatched up a hazel wand lying at her feet round the end of which a worm had coiled and half maddened by the joyance of the finny tribe struck with it into the water. A greedy fish snapped at the switch. The famishing Swanhilda clutched hungeringly at it but found in her hand a piece of offensive carrion and nothing more; whilst around from every side there rang such a clatter of commingled mockery and laughter that Swanhilda vented a terrible imprecation and shed once more--a scorching tear. ""'Oh! we shall soon have you tame enough!' said a voice straight before her and she recognized it at once for the speaker of that miserable night. Looking about her she perceived a moss-rose that luxuriated upon the rock. In one of the expanded buds sat a little kicking fellow with green apron sky-blue vest and yellow bonnet. He was laughing right into the face of the angry miss; and quaffing off one little flower-cup after another filled them bravely again and jingled with his tiny bunch of keys as if he had been grand butler to the universe. ""'A flavour like a nosegay!' said the malicious rogue. 'Wilt hob-nob with me maiden? What do you say? Are we adepts at sacking a house? 'Twill give thee trouble to fill thy cellars again as we found them. Take heart girl. If you will come to and take kindly to your angling and do the thing that's handsome by your wooers you shall have an eatable dinner yet up at the castle.' ""'Infamous pigmy!' exclaimed Swanhilda lashing with her rod as she spoke at the little rose. The small buffeteer meanwhile had leaped down and in the turning of a hand had perched himself upon the lady's nose where he drummed an animating march with his heels. ""'Thy nose I do protest is excellently soft thou wicked witch!' said the rascal. 'If thou wilt now try thy hand at fishing for the town market thou shalt be entertained the while with the finest band of music in the world. Be good and pretty and take up thy angling-rod. Trumpets and drums flutes and clarinets shall all strike up together.' ""Swanhilda tried hard to shake the jocular tormentor off but he kept his place on the bridge as if he had grown to it. She made a snatch at him and he bit her finger. ""'Hark'e my damsel!' quoth Sweetflower; 'if you are so unmannerly 'tis time for a lesson. You smarted too little when you were a young one. We must make all that good now;' and forthwith he settled himself properly upon her nose dangling a leg on either side like a cavalier in saddle. 'Come my pretty be industrious ' continued he; 'get to work and follow good counsel.' And then he whistled a blithe and gamesome tune. ""Swanhilda not heedlessly to prolong her own vexation dipped the rod into the water and immediately saw another gleaming fish wriggling at its end. A basket delicately woven of flowers stood beside her half filled with clear water. The fish dropped into it of themselves. The wee companion beat meanwhile with his feet upon the wings of the lady's nose played ten instruments or more at once and extemporized a light rambling rhyme wherein arch gibes and playful derision of her present forlorn estate were not unmingled with auguries of a friendlier future. ""'There you see! where's the distress?' said the urchin laughing. 'The basket is as full as it can hold. Off with you to the town and when your fish are once sold you may make yourself--some water-gruel.' With these words the elf leaped into the fish-basket crept out again on the other side plucked a king-cup took seat in it and gave the word--'Forwards!' The flower on the instant displayed its petals. There appeared sail and rudder to the small and delicate ship which at once took motion and sailed gaily through the air. ""'A prosperous market to you Swanhilda!' cried Sweetflower 'behave discreetly now and do your tutor justice!' ""Swanhilda perforce resigned herself to her destiny. She took her basket and carried it home intending to disguise herself as completely as possible before making for the town. But all her clothes lay crumbling into dust. Needs must she then harassed by hunger and thirst begin her weary walk equipped as she was in her velvet riding-habit. ""Without fatigue surprised at her celerity--she was in the market-place. The eyes of all naturally took the direction of the well-born fisherwoman. Still pity held the tongue of scorn in thrall and Swanhilda saw her basket speedily emptied. Once more within her castle walls she beheld a running spring in the courtyard and near it an earthen pitcher. She filled--drank--and carried the remainder to the hall where she found a small fire burning a pipkin and a loaf. She submissively cooked herself a meagre pottage of bread and water appeased the cravings of nature and fell into a sound sleep. ""Morning came and she awoke with thirst burning afresh. She hastened to the spring but fountain and pitcher were no loner there. In their stead a hoarse laugh greeted her; and in the next instant she perceived the tiny butler astride upon a cork galloping before her across the courtyard and addressing his pupil with another snatch of his derisive song. ""The courage of Swanhilda surmounted her wrath and she carried her fish-basket to the lake. It was soon filled and she again on her way to market. An amazing multitude of people were already in motion here who presently thronged about the market-woman. The basket was nearly emptied when two of her old suitors approached. Swanhilda was confounded and a blush of deep shame inflamed her countenance. Curiosity and the pleasure of malice spurred them to accost her; but the sometime-haughty damsel cast her eyes upon the ground and in answer tendered her fish for sale. The knights bought; mixing however ungentle gibes with their good coin. Swanhilda at the moment caught sight of her tutor peeping from a daisy--saluting her with his little cap and nodding approbation. ""'I would you were in the kingdom of pepper!' thought Swanhilda and in the next instant the fairy was running upon her nose and cheeks most unmercifully stamping and tickling her with a little hair till she sneezed again. ""'Stay stay I must teach thee courtesy if I can. What! a profane swearer too! Wish me in the kingdom of pepper! We'll have pepper growing on thy soft cheeks here. There there--is that pepper? Thou art rouged my lady ready for a ball!' ""Swanhilda turned upon her homeward way the adhesive Elf still tripping ceaselessly about her face and bore her infliction with a virtuous patience. In her court and hall she found as before the spring the bread and the fire. As before she satisfied hunger and thirst and slept--the sweeter already for her punishment and pain. ""And so passed day after day. The tricky Elf became a less severe still trusty schoolmaster. The profits of her trading under fairy guardianship were great to marvelling; and it must be owned that her aversion to angling craft did not increase in proportion. As time ran on she had encountered all her discarded knights now singly and now in companies. A year and a half elapsed and left the relation between suitors and maiden as at the beginning. At length a chivalric and gentle knight noble in person as in birth ventured to accost her loving and reverently as in her brighter days of yore. Abashed overcome with shame the maiden was at the mercy of the light-winged blithe and watchful god who seized his hour to enthrone himself upon her heart. She bought the fairy caps and mantles--she made honourable satisfaction to the knights and to him whose generous constancy had won her heart she gave a willing and a softened hand. ""Upon her wedding day the QUIET PEOPLE did not fail to adorn the festival with their radiant presence; albeit the merry creatures played a strange cross-game on the occasion. The blissful day over and the happy bride and bridegroom withdrawing from the banquet and the dance the well-pleased chirping able little tutor hopped before them and led them to the hymeneal bower with floral flute and gratulatory song!"" PORTUGAL.[35] [Footnote 35: _Memoirs of the Marquis of Pombal_. By J. SMITH Esq. Private Secretary to the Marquis of Saldanha. Two vols.] The connexion of Portugal with England has been continued for so long a period and the fortunes of Portugal have risen and fallen so constantly in the exact degree of her more intimate or more relaxed alliance with England that a knowledge of her interests her habits and her history becomes an especial accomplishment of the English statesman. The two countries have an additional tie in the similitude of their early pursuits their original character for enterprise and their mutual services. Portugal like England with a narrow territory but that territory largely open to the sea was maritime from her beginning; like England her early power was derived from the discovery of remote countries; like England she threw her force into colonization at an era when all other nations of Europe were wasting their strength in unnecessary wars; like England without desiring to enlarge her territory she has preserved her independence; and so sustain the similitude to its full extent like England she founded an immense colony in the western world with which after severing the link of government she retains the link of a common language policy literature and religion. The growth of the great European powers at length overshadowed the prosperity of Portugal and the usurpation of her government by Spain sank her into a temporary depression. But the native gallantry of the nation at length shook off the yoke; and a new effort commenced for her restoration to the place which she was entitled to maintain in the world. It is remarkable that at such periods in the history of nations some eminent individual comes forward as if designated for the especial office of a national guide. Such an individual was the Marquis of Pombal the virtual sovereign of Portugal for twenty-seven years--a man of talent intrepidity and virtue. His services were the crush of faction and the birth of public spirit the fall of the Jesuits and the peace of his country. His inscription should be ""The Restorer of his Country."" The Marquis of Pombal was born on the 13th of May 1699 at Soure a Portuguese village near the town of Pombal. His father Manoel Carvalho was a country gentleman of moderate fortune of the rank of _fidalgo de provincia_--a distinction which gave him the privileges attached to nobility though not to the title of a grandee that honour not descending below dukes marquises and counts. His mother was Theresa de Mendonca a woman of family. He had two brothers Francis and Paul. His own names were Sebastian Joseph to which was added that of Mello from his maternal ancestor. Having like the sons of Portuguese gentlemen in general studied for a period in the university of Coimbra he entered the army as a private according to the custom of the country and rose to the rank of corporal which he held until circumstances and an introduction to Cardinal Motta who was subsequently prime-minister induced him to devote himself to the study of history politics and law. The cardinal struck with his ability strongly advised him to persevere in those pursuits appointed him in 1733 member of the Royal Academy of History and shortly after the king proposed that he should write the history of certain of the Portuguese monarchs; but this design was laid aside and Pombal remained unemployed for six years until in 1739 he was sent by the cardinal to London as Portuguese minister. He retained his office until 1745; yet it is remarkable and an evidence of the difficulty of acquiring a new language that Pombal though thus living six active years in the country was never able to acquire the English language. It must however be recollected that at this period French was the universal language of diplomacy the language of the court circles and the polished language of all the travelled ranks of England. The writings too of the French historians wits and politicians were the study of every man who pretended to good-breeding and the only study of most; so that to a stranger the acquisition of the vernacular tongue could be scarcely more than a matter of curiosity. Times however are changed; and the diplomatist who should now come to this country without a knowledge of the language would be despised for his ignorance of an essential knowledge and had better remain at home. Soon after his return he was employed in a negotiation to reconcile the courts of Rome and Vienna on an ecclesiastical claim. His reputation had already reached Vienna; and it is surmised that Maria Theresa the empress had desired his appointment as ambassador. His embassy was successful. At Vienna Pombal who was a widower married the Countess Ernestein Daun by whom he had two sons and three daughters. Pombal was destined to be a favourite at courts from his handsome exterior. He was above the middle size finely formed and with a remarkably intellectual countenance; his manners graceful and his language animated and elegant. His reputation at Vienna was so high that on a vacancy in the Foreign office at Lisbon Pombal was recalled to take the portfolio in 1750. Don John the king died shortly after and Don Joseph at the age of thirty-five ascended the throne appointing Pombal virtually his prime-minister--a rank which he held unshaken and unrivaled for the extraordinary period of twenty-seven years. The six years of unemployed and private life which the great minister had spent in the practical study of his country were of the most memorable service to his future administration. His six years' residence in England added practical knowledge to theoretical; and with the whole machinery of a free active and popular government in constant operation before his eyes he returned to take the government of a dilapidated country. The power of the priesthood exercised in the most fearful shape of tyranny; the power of the crown at once feeble and arbitrary; the power of opinion wholly extinguished; and the power of the people perverted into the instrument of their own oppression--were the elements of evil with which the minister had to deal; and he dealt with them vigorously sincerely and successfully. The most horrible tribunal of irresponsible power combined with the most remorseless priestcraft was the Inquisition; for it not merely punished men for obeying their own consciences but tried them in defiance of every principle of enquiry. It not only made a law contradictory of every other law but it established a tribunal subversive of every mode by which the innocent could be defended. It was a murderer on principle. Pombal's first act was a bold and noble effort to reduce this tribunal within the limits of national safety. By a decree of 1751 it was ordered that thenceforth no judicial burnings should take place without the consent and approval of the government taking to itself the right of enquiry and examination and confirming or reversing the sentence according to its own judgment. This measure decided at once the originality and the boldness of the minister: for it was the first effort of the kind in a Popish kingdom; and it was made against the whole power of Rome the restless intrigues of the Jesuits and the inveterate superstition of the people. Having achieved this great work of humanity the minister's next attention was directed to the defences of the kingdom. He found all the fortresses in a state of decay he appropriated an annual revenue of L.7000 for their reparation; he established a national manufactory of gunpowder it having been previously supplied by contract and being of course supplied of the worst quality at the highest rate. He established regulations for the fisheries he broke up iniquitous contracts he attempted to establish a sugar refinery and directed the attention of the people largely to the cultivation of silk. His next reformation was that of the police. The disorders of the late reign had covered the highways with robbers. Pombal instituted a police so effective and proceeded with such determined justice against all disturbers of the peace that the roads grew suddenly safe and the streets of Lisbon became proverbial for security at a time when every capital of Europe was infested with robbers and assassins and when even the state of London was so hazardous as to be mentioned in the king's speech in 1753 as a scandal to the country. The next reform was in the collection of the revenue. An immense portion of the taxes had hitherto gone into the pockets of the collectors. Pombal appointed twenty-eight receivers for the various provinces abolished at a stroke a host of inferior officers made the promisers responsible for the receivers and restored the revenue to a healthy condition. Commerce next engaged his attention; he established a company to trade to the East and China the old sources of Portuguese wealth. In the western dominions of Portugal commerce had hitherto languished. He established a great company for the Brazil trade. But his still higher praise was his humanity. Though acting in the midst of a nation overrun with the most violent follies and prejudices of Popery he laboured to correct the abuses of the convents; and among the rest their habit of retaining as nuns the daughters of the Brazilian Portuguese who had been sent over for their education. By a wise and humane decree issued in 1765 the Indians and a large portion of Brazil were declared free. Expedients were adopted to civilize them and privileges were granted to the Portuguese who should contract marriage among them. Of course those great objects were not achieved without encountering serious difficulties. The pride of the idle aristocracy the sleepless intriguing of the Jesuits the ignorant enthusiasm of the people and the sluggish supremacy of the priests were all up in arms against him. But his principle was pure his knowledge sound and his resolution decided. Above all he had in the person of the king a man of strong mind convinced of the necessities of change and determined to sustain the minister. The reforms soon vindicated themselves by the public prosperity; and Pombal exercised all the powers of a despotic sovereign in the benevolent spirit of a regenerator of his country. But a tremendous physical calamity was now about to put to the test at once the fortitude of this great minister and the resources of Portugal. On the morning of All-Saints' day the 1st of November 1755 Lisbon was almost torn up from the foundations by the most terrible earthquake on European record. As it was a high Romish festival the population were crowding to the churches which were lighted up in honour of the day. About a quarter before ten the first shock was felt which lasted the extraordinary length of six or seven minutes; then followed an interval of about five minutes after which the shock was renewed lasting about three minutes. The concussions were so violent in both instances that nearly all the solid buildings were dashed to the ground and the principal part of the city almost wholly ruined. The terror of the population rushing through the falling streets gathered in the churches or madly attempting to escape into the fields may be imagined; but the whole scene of horror death and ruin exceeds all description. The ground split into chasms into which the people were plunged in their fright. Crowds fled to the water; but the Tagus agitated like the land suddenly rose to an extraordinary height burst upon the land and swept away all within its reach. It was said to have risen to the height of five-and-twenty or thirty feet above its usual level and to have sunk again as much below it. And this phenomenon occurred four times. The despatch from the British consul stated that the especial force of the earthquake seemed to be directly under the city; for while Lisbon was lifted from the ground as if by the explosion of a gunpowder mine the damage either above or below was not so considerable. One of the principal quays to which it was said that many people had crowded for safety was plunged under the Tagus and totally disappeared. Ships were carried down by the shock on the river dashes to pieces against each other or flung upon the shore. To complete the catastrophe fires broke out in the ruins which spread over the face of the city burned for five or six days and reduced all the goods and property of the people to ashes. For forty days the shocks continued with more or less violence but they had now nothing left to destroy. The people were thus kept in a constant state of alarm and forced to encamp in the open fields though it was now winter. The royal family were encamped in the gardens of the palace; and as in all the elements of society had been shaken together Lisbon and its vicinity became the place of gathering for banditti from all quarters in the kingdom. A number of Spanish deserters made their way to the city and robberies and murders of the most desperate kind were constantly perpetrated. During this awful period the whole weight of government fell upon the shoulders of the minister; and he bore it well. He adopted the most active measures for provisioning the city for repressing plunder and violence and for enabling the population to support themselves during this period of suffering. It was calculated that seven millions sterling could scarcely repair the damage of the city; and that not less than eighty thousand lives had been lost either crushed by the earth or swallowed up by the waters. Some conception of the native mortality may be formed from that of the English: of the comparatively small number of whom resident at that time in Lisbon no less than twenty-eight men and fifty women were among the sufferers. The royal family were at the palace of Belem when this tremendous calamity occurred. Pombal instantly hastened there. He found every one in consternation. ""What is to be done "" exclaimed the king as he entered ""to meet this infliction of divine justice?"" The calm and resolute answer of Pombal was--""Bury the dead and feed the living."" This sentence is still recorded with honour in the memory of Portugal. The minister then threw himself into his carriage and returned to the ruins. For several days his only habitation was his carriage; and from it he continued to issue regulations for the public security. Those regulations amounted to the remarkable number of two hundred; and embraced all the topics of police provisions and the burial of the sufferers. Among those regulations was the singular but sagacious one of prohibiting all persons from leaving the city without a passport. By this those who had robbed the people or plundered the church plate were prevented from escaping to the country and hiding their plunder and consequently were obliged to abandon or to restore it. But every shape of public duty was met by this vigorous and intelligent minister. He provided for the cure of the wounded the habitancy of the houseless the provision of the destitute. He brought troops from the provinces for the protection of the capital he forced the idlers to work he collected the inmates of the ruined religious houses he removed the ruins of the streets buried the dead and restored the services of the national religion. Another task subsequently awaited him--the rebuilding of the city. He began boldly; and all that Lisbon now has of beauty is due to the taste and energy of Pombal. He built noble squares. He did more: he built the more important fabric of public sewers in the new streets and he laid out a public garden for the popular recreation. But he found as Wren found even in England the infinite difficulty of opposing private interest even in public objects; and Lisbon lost the opportunity of being the most picturesque and stately of European cities. One project which would have been at once of the highest beauty and of the highest benefit--a terrace along the shore of the Tagus from Santa Apollonia to Belem a distance of nearly six miles which would have formed the finest promenade in the world--he was either forced to give up or to delay until its execution was hopeless. It was never even begun. The vigour of Pombal's administration raised bitter enemies to him among those who had lived on the abuses of government or the plunder of the people. The Jesuits hated alike the king and his minister. They even declared the earthquake to have been a divine judgment for the sins of the administration. But they were rash enough in the intemperance of their zeal to threaten a repetition of the earthquake at the same time next year. When the destined day came Pombal planted strong guards at the city gates to prevent the panic of the people in rushing into the country. The earthquake did not fulfil the promise; and the people first laughed at themselves and then at the Jesuits. The laugh had important results in time. There are few things more remarkable in diplomatic history than the long connexion of Portugal with England. It arose naturally from the commerce of the two nations--Portugal already the most adventurous of nations and England growing in commercial enterprise. The advantages were mutual. In the year 1367 we have a Portuguese treaty stipulating for protection to the Portuguese traders in England. In 1382 a royal order of Richard II. permits the Portuguese ambassador to bring his baggage into England free of duty--perhaps one of the earliest instances of a custom which marked the progress of civilization and which has since been generally adopted throughout all civilized nations. A decree of Henry IV. in 1405 exonerates the Portuguese resident in England and their ships from being made responsible for the debts contracted by their ambassadors. In 1656 the important privilege was conceded to the English in Portugal of being exempted from the native jurisdiction and being tried by a judge appointed by England. This in our days might be an inadmissible privilege; but two centuries ago in the disturbed condition of the Portuguese laws and general society it might have been necessary for the simple protection of the strangers. The theories of domestic manufactures and free trade have lately occupied so large a portion of public interest that it is curious to see in what light they were regarded by a statesman so far in advance of his age as Pombal. The minister's theory is in striking contradiction to his practice. He evidently approved of monopoly and prohibitions but he exercised neither the one nor the other--nature and necessity were too strong against him. We are however to recollect that the language of complaint was popular in Portugal as it always will be in a poor country and that the minister who would be popular must adopt the language of complaint. In an eloquent and almost impassioned memoir by Pombal he mourns over the poverty of his country and hastily imputes it to the predominance of English commerce. He tells us that in the middle of the eighteenth century Portugal scarcely produced any thing towards her own support. Two thirds of her physical necessities were supplied from England. He complains that England had become mistress of the entire commerce of Portugal and in fact that the Portuguese trade was only an English trade; that the English were the furnishers and retailers of all the necessaries of life throughout the country and that the Portuguese had nothing to do but look on; that Cromwell by the treaty which allowed the supply of Portugal with English cloths to the amount of two million sterling had utterly impoverished the country; and in short that the weakness and incapacity of Portugal as an European state were wholly owing to her being destitute of trade and that the destitution was wholly owing to her being overwhelmed by English commodities. We are not about to enter into detail upon this subject but it is to be remembered that Portugal obtained the cloth even if she paid for it cheaper from England than she could have done from any other country in Europe; that she had no means of making the cloth for herself and that after all man must be clothed. Portugal without flocks or fire without coals or capital could never have manufactured cloth enough to cover the tenth part of her population at ten times the expense. This has occurred in later days and in more opulent countries. We remember in the reign of the Emperor Paul when he was frantic enough to declare war against England a pair of broadcloth pantaloons costing seven guineas in St Peterburg. This would have been severe work for the purse of a Portuguese peasant a hundred years ago. The plain fact of domestic manufactures being this that no folly can be more foolish than to attempt to form them where the means and the country do not give them a natural superiority. For example coals and iron are essential to the product of all works in metal. France has neither. How can she therefore contest the superiority of our hardware? She contests it simply by doing without it and by putting up with the most intolerable cutlery that the world has ever seen. If where manufactures are already established however ineffectual it may become a question with the government whether some privations must not be submitted to by the people in general rather than precipitate those unlucky manufactures into ruin; there can be no question whatever on the subject where manufactures have not been hitherto established. Let the people go to the best market let no attempt be made to force nature and let no money be wasted on the worst article got by the worst means. One thing however is quite clear with respect to Portugal that by the English alliance she has gained what is worth all the manufactures of Europe--independence. When in 1640 she threw off the Spanish usurpation and placed the Braganza family on the national throne she threw herself on the protection of England; and that protection never has failed her to this hour. In the Spanish invasion of Portugal in 1762 England sent her ten thousand men and the first officer of his day Count La Lippe who notwithstanding his German name was an Englishman born and had commenced his service in the Guards. The Spaniards were beaten in all directions and Portugal was included in the treaty of Fontainbleau in 1763. The deliverance of Portugal in the Peninsular war is too recent to be forgotten and too memorable to be spoken of here as it deserves. And to understand the full value of this assistance we are to recollect that Portugal is one of the smallest kingdoms of Europe and at the same time the most exposed; that its whole land frontier is open to Spain and its whole sea frontier is open to France; that its chief produce is wine and oranges and that England is incomparably its best customer for both. Pombal in his memoir imputes a portion of the poverty of Portugal to her possession of the gold mines of Brazil. This is one of the paradoxes of the last century; but nations are only aggregates of men and what makes an individual rich cannot make a nation poor. The true secret is this--that while the possession of the gold mines induced an indolent government to rely upon them for the expenses of the state that reliance led them to abandon sources of profit in the agriculture and commerce of the country which were of ten times the value. This was equally the case in Spain. The first influx from the mines of Peru enabled the government to disregard the revenues arising from the industry of the people. In consequence of the want of encouragement from the government the agriculture and commerce of Spain sank rapidly into the lowest condition whilst the government indolently lived on the produce of the mines. But the more gold and silver exist in circulation the less becomes their value. Within half a century the imports from the Spanish and Portuguese mines had reduced the value of the precious metals by one half; and those imports thus became inadequate to the ordinary expenses of government. Greater efforts were then made to obtain them from the mines. Still as the more that was obtained the less was the general value the operation became more profitless still; and at length both Spain and Portugal were reduced to borrow money which they had no means to pay--in other words were bankrupt. And this is the true solution of the problem--why have the gold and silver mines of the Pe
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insula left them the poorest nations of Europe? Yet this was contrary to the operation of new wealth. The discovery of the mines of the New World appears to have been a part of that providential plan by which a general impulse was communicated to Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Europe was preparing for a new vigour of religion politics commerce and civilization. Nothing stimulates national effort of every kind with so much power and rapidity as a new general accession of wealth or as the political economist would pronounce it a rise of wages whether industrial or intellectual; and this rise was effected by the new influx of the mines. If Peru and Mexico had belonged to England she would have converted their treasures into new canals and high-roads new harbours new encouragements to agriculture new excitements to public education new enterprises of commerce or the colonization of new countries in the productive regions of the globe; and thus she would at once have increased her natural opulence and saved herself from suffering under the depreciation of the precious metals or more partially by her active employment of them have almost wholly prevented that depreciation. But the Peninsula relying wholly on its imported wealth and neglecting its infinitely more important national riches was exactly in the condition of an individual who spends the principal of his property which is continually sinking until it is extinguished altogether. Another source of Peninsular poverty existed in its religion. The perpetual holidays of Popery made even the working portion of the people habitually idle. Where labour is prohibited for nearly a fourth of the year by the intervention of holidays and thus idleness is turned into a sacred merit the nation must prepare for beggary. But Popery goes further still. The establishment of huge communities of sanctified idlers monks and nuns by the ten thousand in every province and almost in every town gave a sacred sanction to idleness--gave a means of escaping work to all who preferred the lounging and useless life of the convent to regular labour and even provided the means of living to multitudes of vagabonds who were content to eat their bread and drink their soup daily at the convent gates rather than to make any honest decent effort to maintain themselves. Every country must be poor in which a large portion of the public property goes to the unproductive classes. The soldiery the monks the state annuitants the crowds of domestics dependent on the families of the grandees all are necessarily unproductive. The money which they receive is simply consumed. It makes no return. Thus poverty became universal; and nothing but the singular fertility of the peopled districts of Spain and Portugal and the fortune of having a climate which requires but few of the comforts essential in a severer temperature could have saved them both from being the most pauperized of all nations or even from perishing altogether and leaving the land a desert behind them. It strangely illustrates these positions that in 1754 the Portuguese treasury was so utterly emptied that the monarch was compelled to borrow 400 000 crusadoes (L.40 000) from a private company for the common expenses of his court. Wholly and justly disclaiming the imputation which would pronounce Portugal a dependent on England it is impossible to turn a page of her history without seeing the measureless importance of her English connexion. Every genuine source of her power and opulence has either originated with or been sustained by her great ally. Among the first of these has been the wine trade. In the year 1756--the year following that tremendous calamity which had sunk Lisbon into ruins--the wine-growers in the three provinces of Beira Minho and Tras-os-Montes represented that they were on the verge of ruin. The adulteration of the Portuguese wines by the low traders had destroyed their character in Europe and the object of the representation was to reinstate that character. Pombal immediately took up their cause; and in the course of the same year was formed the celebrated Oporto Wine Company with a capital of £120 000. The declared principles of the establishment were to preserve the quality of the wines to secure the growers by fixing a regular price and to protect them from the combinations of dealers. The company had the privilege of purchasing all the wines grown within a particular district at a fixed price for a certain period after the vintage. When that period had expired the growers were at liberty to sell the wines which remained unpurchased in whatever market they pleased. Monopolies in the advanced and prosperous career of commercial countries generally sink into abuse; but they are in most instances absolutely necessary to the infant growth of national traffic. All the commerce of Europe has commenced by companies. In the early state of European trade individuals were too poor for those large enterprises which require a large outlay and whose prospects however promising are distant. What one cannot do must be done by a combination of many if it is to be done at all. Though when individual capital by the very action of that monopoly becomes powerful enough for those enterprises then the time is at hand when the combination may be dissolved with impunity. The Oporto Wine Company had no sooner come into existence than its benefits were felt in every branch of Portuguese revenue. It restored and extended the cultivation of the vine which is the staple of Portugal. It has been abolished in the revolutionary changes of late years. But the question whether the country is yet fit to bear the abolition is settled by the fact that the wine-growers are complaining of ruin and that the necessity of the case is now urging the formation of the company once more. The decision of Pombal's character was never more strongly shown than on this occasion. The traders into whose hands the Portuguese wines had fallen and who had enjoyed an illegal monopoly for so many years raised tumults and serious insurrection was threatened. At Oporto the mob plundered the director's house and seized on the chief magistrate. The military were attacked and the government was endangered. The minister instantly ordered fresh troops to Oporto; arrests took place; seventeen persons were executed; five-and-twenty sent to the galleys; eighty-six banished and others subjected to various periods of imprisonment. The riots were extinguished. In a striking memoir written by Pombal after his retirement from office he gives a brief statement of the origin of this company--a topic at all times interesting to the English public and which is about to derive a new interest from its practical revival in Portugal. We quote a fragment. ""The unceasing and urgent works which the calamitous earthquake of November 1st 1755 had rendered indispensable were still vigorously pursued when in the following year one Mestre Frei Joao de Mansilla presented himself at the Giunta at Belem on the part of the principal husbandmen of Upper Douro and of the respectable inhabitants of Oporto in a state of utter consternation. ""In the popular outcry of the time the English were represented as making themselves the sole managers of every thing. The fact being that as they were the only men who had any money they were almost the sole purchasers in the Portuguese markets. But the English here complained of were the low traffickers who in conjunction with the Lisbon and Oporto vintners bought and managed the wines at their discretion. It was represented to the king that by those means the price of wine had been reduced to 7200 rios a pipe or less until the expense of cultivation was more than the value of the produce; that those purchasers required one or two years' credit; that the price did not pay for the hoeing of the land which was consequently deserted; that all the principal families of one district had been reduced to poverty so much so as to be obliged to sell their knives and forks; that the poor people had not a drop of oil for their salad so that they were obliged even in Lent to season their vegetables with the fat of hogs."" The memoir mentions even gross vice as a consequence of their extreme poverty. We quote this passage to show to what extremities a people may be reduced by individual mismanagement and what important changes may be produced by the activity of an intelligent directing power. The king's letters-patent of 1756 establishing the company provided at once for the purity of the wine its extended sale in England and the solvency of the wine provinces. It is only one among a thousand instances of the hazards in which Popery involves all regular government to find the Jesuits inflaming the populace against this most salutary and successful act of the king. At confession they prompted the people to believe ""that the wines of the company were not fit for the celebration of mass."" (For the priests drink wine in the communion though the people receive only the bread.) To give practical example to their precept they dispersed narratives of a great popular insurrection which had occurred in 1661; and both incentives resulted in the riots in Oporto which it required all the vigour of Pombal to put down. But the country and Europe was now to acknowledge the services of the great minister on a still higher scale. The extinction of the Jesuits was the work of his bold and sagacious mind. The history of this event is among the most memorable features of a century finishing with the fall of the French monarchy. The passion of Rome for territory has been always conspicuous and always unsuccessful. Perpetually disturbing the Italian princes in the projects of usurpation it has scarcely ever advanced beyond the original bounds fixed for it by Charlemagne. Its spirit of intrigue transfused into its most powerful order the Jesuits was employed for the similar purpose of acquiring territorial dominion. But Europe was already divided among powerful nations. Those nations were governed by jealous authorities powerful kings for their leaders and powerful armies for their defence. All was full; there was no room for the contention of a tribe of ecclesiastics although the most daring subtle and unscrupulous of the countless slaves and soldiers of Rome. The world of America was open. There a mighty power might grow up unseen by the eye of Europe. A population of unlimited multitudes might find space in the vast plains; commerce in the endless rivers; defence in the chains of mountains; and wealth in the rocks and sands of a region teeming with the precious metals. The enterprise was commenced under the pretext of converting the Indians of Paraguay. Within a few years the Jesuits formed an independent republic numbering thirty-one towns with a population of a hundred thousand souls. To render their power complete they prohibited all communication between the natives and the Spaniards and Portuguese forbidding them to learn the language of either country and implanting in the mind of the Indians an implacable hatred of both Spain and Portugal. At length both courts became alarmed and orders were sent out to extinguish the usurpation. Negotiations were in the mean time opened between Spain and Portugal relative to an exchange of territory and troops were ordered to effect the exchange. Measures of this rank were unexpected by the Jesuits. They had reckoned upon the proverbial tardiness of the Peninsular councils; but they were determined not to relinquish their prize without a struggle. They accordingly armed the natives and prepared for a civil war. The Indians unwarlike as they have always been now headed by their Jesuit captains outmanoeuvred the invaders. The expedition failed; and the baffled invasion ended in a disgraceful treaty. The expedition was renewed in the next year 1755 and again baffled. The Portuguese government of the Brazils now made renewed efforts and in 1756 obtained some advantages; but they were still as far as ever from final success and the war fruitless as it was had begun to drain heavily the finances of the mother country. It had already cost the treasury of Lisbon a sum equal to three millions sterling. But the minister at the head of the Portuguese government was of a different character from the race who had for the last hundred years wielded the ministerial sceptres of Spain and Portugal. His clear and daring spirit at once saw where the evil lay and defied the difficulties that lay between him and its cure. He determined to extinguish the order of the Jesuits at a blow. The boldness of this determination can be estimated only by a knowledge of the time. In the middle of the eighteenth century the Jesuits were the ecclesiastical masters of Europe. They were the confessors of the chief monarchs of the Continent; the heads of the chief seminaries for national education; the principal professors in all the universities;--and this influence vast as it was by its extent and variety was rendered more powerful by the strict discipline the unhesitating obedience and the systematic activity of their order. All the Jesuits existing acknowledged one head the general of their order whose constant residence was at Rome. But their influence powerful as it was by their open operation on society derived perhaps a superior power from its secret exertions. Its name was legion--its numbers amounted to thousands--it took every shape of society from the highest to the lowest. It was the noble and the peasant--the man of learning and the man of trade--the lawyer and the monk--the soldier and the sailor--nay it was said that such was the extraordinary pliancy of its principle of disguise the Jesuit was suffered to assume the tenets of Protestantism and even to act as a Protestant pastor for the purpose of more complete deception. The good of the church was the plea which purified all imposture; the power of Rome was the principle on which this tremendous system of artifice was constructed; and the reduction of all modes of human opinion to the one sullen superstition of the Vatican was the triumph for which those armies of subtle enthusiasm and fraudulent sanctity were prepared to live and die. The first act of Pombal was to remove the king's confessor the Jesuit Moreira. The education of the younger branches of the royal family was in the hands of Jesuits. Pombal procured a royal order that no Jesuit should approach the court without obtaining the express permission of the king. He lost no time in repeating the assault. Within a month on the 8th of October 1767 he sent instructions to the Portuguese ambassador at Rome to demand a private audience and lay before the pope the misdemeanours of the order. Those instructions charged the Jesuits with the most atrocious personal profligacy with a design to master all public power to gather opulence dangerous to the state and actually to plot against the authority of the crowns of Europe. He announced that the king of Portugal had commanded all the Jesuit confessors of the prince and princesses to withdraw to their own convents; and this important manifesto closed by soliciting the interposition of the papal see to prevent the ruin by purifying an order which had given scandal to Christianity by offences against the public and private peace of society equally unexampled habitual and abominable. In 1758 the representation to the pope was renewed with additional proofs that the order had determined to usurp every function and thwart every act of the civil government; that the confessors of the royal family though dismissed continued to conspire; that they resisted the formation of royal institutions for the renewal of the national commerce; and that they excited the people to dangerous tumults in defiance of the royal authority. Their intrigues comprehended every object by which influence was to be obtained or money was to be made. The ""Great Wine Company "" on which the chief commerce of Portugal and almost the existence of its northern provinces depended was a peculiar object of their hostility for reasons which we can scarcely apprehend except they were general jealousy of all lay power and hostility to all the works of Pombal. They assailed it from their pulpits; and one of their popular preachers made himself conspicuous by impiously exclaiming ""that whoever joined that company would have no part in the company of Jesus Christ."" The intrigues of this dangerous and powerful society had long before been represented to the popes and had drawn down upon them those remonstrances by which the habitual dexterity of Rome at once saves appearances and suffers the continuance of the delinquency. The Jesuits were too useful to be restrained; yet their crimes were too palpable to be passed over. In consequence the complaints of the monarchs of Spain and Portugal were answered by bulls issued from time to time equally formal and ineffective. Yet even from these documents may be ascertained the singularly gross worldly and illegitimate pursuits of an order professing itself to be supremely religious and the prime sustainer of the ""faith of the gospel."" The bull of Benedict the XIV. issued in 1741 prohibited from ""trade and commerce all worldly dominion and the _purchase_ and _sale_ of converted Indians."" The bull extended the prohibition generally to the monkish orders to avoid branding the Jesuits especially. But a bull of more direct reprehension was published at the close of the year expressly against the Jesuits in their missions in the east and west. The language of this document amounts to a catalogue of the most atrocious offences against society humanity and morals. By this bull ""all men and especially _Jesuits_ "" are prohibited under penalty of excommunication from ""making slaves of the Indians; from selling and bartering them; from separating them from their wives and children; from robbing them of their property; from transporting them from their native soil "" &c. Nothing but the strongest necessity and the most ample evidence would ever have drawn this condemnation from Rome whether sincere or insincere. But the urgencies of the case became more evident from day to day. In 1758 the condemnation was followed by the practical measure of appointing Cardinal Saldanha visitor and reformer of the Jesuits in Portugal and the Portuguese settlements in the east and west. Within two months of this appointment the following decree was issued:--""For just reasons known to us and which concern especially the service of God and the public welfare we suspend from the power of confessing and preaching in the whole extent of our patriarchate the fathers of the Society of Jesus from this moment and until further notice."" Saldanha had been just raised to the patriarchate. We have given some observations on this subject from its peculiar importance to the British empire at this moment. The order of the Jesuits extinguished in the middle of the last century by the unanimous demand of Europe charged with every crime which could make a great association obnoxious to mankind and exhibiting the most atrocious violations of the common rules of human morality has within this last quarter of a century been revived by the papacy with the express declaration that its revival is for the exclusive purpose of giving new effect to the doctrines the discipline and the power of Rome. The law which forbids the admission of Jesuits into England has shared the fate of all laws feebly administered; and Jesuits are active by hundreds or by thousands in every portion of the empire. They have restored the whole original system sustained by all their habitual passion for power and urging their way with all their ancient subtlety through all ranks of Protestantism. The courage and intelligence of Pombal placed him in the foremost rank of Europe when the demand was the boldest and most essential service which a great minister could offer to his country; he broke the power of Jesuitism. But an order so numerous--for even within the life of its half-frenzied founder it amounted to 19 000--so vindictive and flung from so lofty a rank of influence could not perish without some desperate attempts to revenge its ruin. The life of Pombal was so constantly in danger that the king actually assigned him a body guard. But the king himself was exposed to one of the most remarkable plots of regicide on record--the memorable Aveiro and Tavora conspiracy. On the night of the 3d of September 1758 as the king was returning to the palace at night in a cabriolet attended only by his valet two men on horseback and armed with blunderbusses rode up to the carriage and leveled their weapons at the monarch. One of them missed fire the other failed of its effect. The royal postilion in alarm rushed forward when two men similarly waiting in the road galloped after the carriage and both fired their blunderbusses into it behind. The cabriolet was riddled with slugs and the king was wounded in several places. By an extraordinary presence of mind Don Joseph instead of ordering the postilion to gallop onward directed him instantly to turn back and to avoid alarming the palace carry him direct to the house of the court surgeon. By this fortunate order he escaped the other groups of the conspirators who were stationed further on the road and under whose repeated discharges he would probably have fallen. The public alarm and indignation on the knowledge of this desperate atrocity were unbounded. There seemed to be but one man in the kingdom who preserved his composure and that one was Pombal. Exhibiting scarcely even the natural perturbation at an event which had threatened almost a national convulsion he suffered the whole to become a matter of doubt and allowed the king's retirement from the public eye to be considered as merely the effect of accident. The public despatch of Mr Hay the British envoy at Lisbon alludes to it chiefly as assigning a reason for the delay of a court mourning--the order for this etiquette on the death of the Spanish queen not having been put in execution. The envoy mentions that it had been impeded by the king's illness --""it being the custom of the court to put on _gala_ when any of the royal family are blooded. When I went to court to enquire after his majesty's health I was there informed that the king on Sunday night the 3d instant passing through a gallery to go to the queen's apartment had the misfortune to fall and bruise his right arm; he had been blooded eight different times; and as his majesty is a fat bulky man to prevent any humours fixing there his physicians have advised that he should not use his arm but abstain from business for some time. In consequence the queen was declared regent during Don Joseph's illness."" This was the public version of the event. But appended to the despatch was a postscript in _cipher_ stating the reality of the transaction. Pombal's sagacity and his self control perhaps a still rarer quality among the possessors of power were exhibited in the strongest light on this occasion. For three months not a single step appeared to be taken to punish or even to detect the assassins. The subject was allowed to die away; when on the 9th of December all Portugal was startled by a royal decree declaring the crime and offering rewards for the seizure of the assassins. Some days afterwards Lisbon heard with astonishment an order for the arrest of the Duke of Aveira one of the first nobles and master of the royal household; the arrest of the whole family of the Marquis of Tavora himself his two sons his four brothers and his two sons-in-law. Other nobles were also seized; and the Jesuits were forbidden to be seen out of their houses. The three months of Pombal's apparent inaction had been incessantly employed in researches into the plot. Extreme caution was evidently necessary where the criminals were among the highest officials and nobles seconded by the restless and formidable machinations of the Jesuits. When his proofs were complete he crushed the conspirators at a single grasp. His singular inactivity had disarmed them; and nothing but the most consummate composure could have prevented their flying from justice. On the 12th of January 1759 they were found guilty; and on the 13th they were put to death to the number of nine with the Marchioness of Tavora in the square of Belem. The scaffold and the bodies were burned and the ashes thrown into the sea. Those were melancholy acts; the works of melancholy times. But as no human crime can be so fatal to the security of a state as regicide no imputation can fall on the memory of a great minister compelled to exercise justice in its severity for the protection of all orders of the kingdom. In our more enlightened period we must rejoice that those dreadful displays of judicial power have passed away; and that laws are capable of being administered without the tortures or the waste of life which agonize the feelings of society. Yet while blood for blood continued to be the code; while the sole prevention of crime was sought for in the security of judgment; and while even the zeal of justice against guilt was measured by the terrible intensity of the punishment--we must charge the horror of such sweeping executions to the ignorance of the age much more than to the vengeance of power. This tragedy was long the subject of European memory; and all the extravagance of popular credulity was let loose ill discovering the causes of the conspiracy. It was said in the despatches of the English minister that the Marquis of Tavora who had been Portuguese minister in the East was irritated by the royal attentions to his son's wife. Ambition was the supposed ground of the Duke of Aveira's perfidy. The old Marchioness of Tavora who had been once the handsomest woman at court and was singularly vein and haughty was presumed to have received some personal offence by the rejection of the family claim to a dukedom. All is wrapped in the obscurity natural to transactions in which individuals of rank are involved in the highest order of crime. It was the natural policy of the minister to avoid extending the charges by explaining the origin of the crime. The connexions of the traitors were still many and powerful; and further disclosures might have produced only further attempts at the assassination of the minister or the king. It was now determined to act with vigour against the Jesuits who were distinctly charged with assisting if not originating the treason. A succession of decrees were issued depriving them of their privileges and possessions; and finally on the 5th of October 1759 the cardinal patriarch Saldanha issued the famous mandate by which the whole society was expelled from the Portuguese dominions. Those in the country were transported to Civita Vecchia; those in the colonies were also conveyed to the Papal territory; and thus by the intrepidity wisdom and civil courage of one man the realm was relieved from the presence of the most powerful and most dangerous body which had ever disturbed the peace of society. Portugal having thus the honour of taking the lead Rome herself at length followed; and on the accession of the celebrated Ganganelli Clement XIV. a resolution was adopted to suppress the Jesuits in every part of the world. On the 21st of July 1773 the memorable bull ""Dominus ac Redemptor "" was published and the order was at an end. The announcement was received in Lisbon with natural rejoicing. _Te Deum_ was sung and the popular triumph was unbounded and universal. We now hasten to the close of this distinguished minister's career. His frame though naturally vigorous began to feel the effects of his incessant labour and an apoplectic tendency threatened to shorten a life so essential to the progress of Portugal; for that whole life was one of _temperate_ and _progressive_ reform. His first application was to the finances; he found the Portuguese exchequer on the verge of bankruptcy. A third of the taxes was embezzled in the collection. In 1761 his new system was adopted by which the finances were restored; and every week a balance-sheet of the whole national expenditure was presented to the king. His next reform was the royal household where all unnecessary expenses--and they were numerous--were abolished. Another curious reform will be longer remembered in Portugal. The nation had hitherto used _only_ the _knife_ at dinner! Pombal introduced the _fork_. He brought this novel addition to the table with him from England in 1745! The nobility were remarkably ignorant. Pombal formed the ""College of Nobles"" for their express education. There they were taught every thing suitable to their rank. The only prohibition being ""that they should _not converse in Latin_ "" the old pedantic custom of the monks. The nobles were directed to converse in English French Italian or their native tongue; Pombal declaring that the custom of speaking Latin was only ""to teach them to barbarize."" Another custom though of a more private order attracted the notice of this rational and almost universal improver. It had been adopted as a habit by the widows of the nobility to spend the first years of their widowhood in the most miserable seclusion; they shut up their windows retired to some gloomy chamber slept on the floor and suffering all kinds of voluntary and absurd mortifications forbade the approach of the world. As the custom was attended with danger to health and often with death besides its general melancholy influence on society the minister publicly ""enacted "" that every part of it should be abolished; and moreover that the widows should always remove to another house; or where this was not practicable that they ""should _not_ close the shutters nor '_mourn_' for more than a week nor remain at home for more than a month nor sleep on the ground."" Doubtless tens of thousands thanked him and thank him still for this war against a popular but most vexatious absurdity. His next reform was the army. After the peace of 1763 he fixed it at 30 000 men whom he equipped effectually and brought into practical discipline. A succession of laws made for the promotion of European and colonial trade next opened the resources of Portugal to an extent unknown before. Pombal next abolished the ""Index Expurgitorius""--an extraordinary achievement not merely beyond his age but against the whole superstitious spirit of his age. He was not content with abolishing the restraint; he attempted to _restore_ the PRESS in Portugal. Hitherto nearly all Portuguese books had been printed in foreign counties. He established a ""Royal Press "" and gave its superintendence to Pagliarini a Roman printer who had been expatriated for printing works against the Jesuits. Such in value and extent were the acts which Portugal owed to this indefatigable and powerful mind that when in 1766 he suffered a paralytic stroke the king and the people were alike thrown into consternation. At length Don Joseph the king and faithful friend of Pombal died after a reign of twenty-seven years of honour and usefulness. Pombal requested to resign and the Donna Maria accepted the resignation and conferred various marks of honour upon him. He now retired to his country-seat where Wraxall saw him in 1772 and thus describes his appearance. ""At this time he had attained his seventy-third year but age seemed to have diminished neither the freshness nor the activity of his faculties. In his person he was very tall and slender his face long pale and meagre but full of intelligence."" But Pombal had been too magnanimous for the court and nobles; and the loss of his power as minister produced a succession of intrigues against him by the relatives of the Tavora family and doubtless also by the ecclesiastical influence which has always been at once so powerful and so prejudicial in Portugal. He was insulted by a trial at which however the only sentence inflicted was an order to retire twenty leagues from the court. The Queen was at that time probably suffering under the first access of that derangement which in a few years after utterly incapacitated her and condemned the remainder of her life to melancholy and total solitude. But the last praise is not given to the great minister while his personal disinterestedness is forgotten. One of the final acts of his life was to present to the throne a statement of his public income when it appeared that during the twenty-seven years of his administration he had received no public emolument but his salary as secretary of state and about L.10
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a-year for another office. But he was rich; for as his two brothers remained unmarried their incomes were joined with his own. He lived held in high respect and estimation by the European courts to the great age of eighty-three dying on the 5th of May without pain. A long inscription yet in which the panegyric did not exceed the justice was placed on his tomb. Yet a single sentence might have established his claim to the perpetual gratitude of his country and mankind-- ""Here lies the man who banished the Jesuits from Portugal."" Mr Smith's volume is intelligently written and does much credit to his research and skill. MARSTON; OR THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN. PART XII. Have I not in my time heard lions roar? Have I not heard the sea puft up with wind Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat? Have I not heard great ordnance in the field And Heaven's artillery thunder in the skies? Have I not in the pitched battle heard Loud 'larums neighing steeds and trumpets clang?"" SHAKSPEARE. Elnathan was a man of many cares and every kind of wisdom but one--the wisdom of knowing when he had wealth enough. He evidently loved accumulation; and the result was that every hour of his existence was one of terror. Half the brokers and chief traders in France were already in prison; and yet he carried on the perilous game of commerce. He was known to be immensely opulent; and he must have regarded the day which passed over his head without seeing his strong boxes put under the government seal and himself thrown into some _oubliette_ as a sort of miracle. But he was now assailed by a new alarm. War with England began to be rumoured among the bearded brethren of the synagogue; and Elnathan had ships on every sea from Peru to Japan. Like Shakspeare's princely merchant-- ""His mind was tossing on the ocean There where his argosies with portly sail Like signiors and rich burghers of the flood. Or as it were the pageants of the sea Did overpower the petty traffickers As they flew by them with their woven wings."" The first shot fired would inevitably pour out the whole naval force of England and his argosies would put their helms about and steer for Portsmouth Plymouth and every port but a French one. If this formidable intelligence had awakened the haughtiness of the French government to a sense of public peril what effect must it not have in the counting-house of a man whose existence was trade? While I was on my pillow luxuriating in dreams of French fêtes Paul and Virginia carried off to the clouds and Parisian _belles_ dancing cotillons in the bowers and pavilions of a Mahometan paradise Elnathan spent the night at his desk surrounded by his bustling generation of clerks writing to correspondents at every point of the compass and preparing insurances with the great London establishments; which I was to carry with me though unacquainted with the transaction on which so many millions of francs hung trembling. His morning face showed me that whatever had been his occupation before I met him at the breakfast-table it had been a most uneasy one. His powerful and rather handsome physiognomy had shrunk to half the size; his lips were livid and his hand shook to a degree which made me ask whether the news from Robespierre was unfavourable. But his assurance that all still went on well in that delicate quarter restored my tranquility which was beginning to give way; and my only stipulation now was that I should have an hour or two to spend at Vincennes before I took my final departure. The Jew was all astonishment; his long visage elongated at the very sound; he shook his locks lifted up his large hands and fixed his wide eyes on me with a look of mingled alarm and wonder which would have been ludicrous if it had not been perfectly sincere. ""In the name of common sense do you remember in what a country and in what times we live? Oh those Englishmen! always thinking that they are in England. My young friend you are clearly not fit for France and the sooner you get out of it the better."" I still remonstrated. ""Do you forget yesterday?"" he exclaimed. ""Can you forget the man before whom we both stood? A moment's hesitation on your part to set out would breed suspicion in that most suspicious brain of all mankind. Life is here as uncertain as in a field of battle. Begone the instant your passports arrive and never behind you.--For my part I constantly feel as if my head were in the lion's jaws. Rejoice in your escape."" But I was still unconvinced and explained ""that my only motive was to relieve my friends in the fortress from the alarm which they had evidently felt for my fate and to relieve myself from the charge of ingratitude which would inevitably attach to me if I left Paris without seeing them."" Never was man more perplexed with a stubborn subject. He represented to me the imminent hazard of straying a hair's-breadth to the right or left of the orders of Robespierre! ""I was actually under surveillance and he was responsible for me. To leave his roof; even for five minutes until I left it for my journey might forfeit the lives of both before evening."" I still remonstrated; and pronounced the opinion perhaps too flattering a one of the dictator that ""he could not condescend to forbid a mere matter of civility which still left me entirely at his service."" The Jew at last in despair rushed from the room leaving me to the unpleasing consciousness that I had distressed an honest and even a friendly man. Two hours thus elapsed when a _chaise de poste_ drew up at the door with an officer of the police in front and from it came Varnhorst and the doctor both probably expecting a summons to the scaffold; but the Prussian bearing his lot with the composure of a man accustomed to face death and the doctor evidently in measureless consternation colourless and convulsed with fear. His rapture was equally unbounded when Elnathan ushering them both into the apartment where I sat-- Chewing the cud of sweet and bitter thought""-- explained that finding me determined on my point he had adopted the old proverb--of bringing Mahomet to the mountain if he could not bring the mountain to Mahomet; had procured an order for their attendance in Paris through his influence with the chief of the police and now hoped to have the honour of their company at dinner. This was certainly a desirable exchange for the Place de Grève; and we sat down to a sumptuous table where we enjoyed ourselves with the zest which danger escaped gives to luxurious security. All went on well. The doctor was surprised to find in the frowning banker who had repulsed him so sternly from his desk the hospitable entertainer; and Varhorst's honest and manly friendship was gratified by the approach of my release from a scene of perpetual danger. I had some remembrances to give to my friends in Prussia; and at length sending away the doctor to display his connoisseurship on Elnathan's costly collection of pictures Varnhorst was left to my questioning. My first question naturally was ""What had involved him in the ill-luck of the Austrians."" ""The soldier's temptation every where "" was the answer; ""having nothing to do at home and expecting something to do abroad. When the Prussian army once crossed the Rhine I should have had no better employment than to mount guard escort the court dowagers to the balls and finish the year and my life together by dying of _ennui_. In this critical moment when I was in doubt whether I should turn Tartar or monk of La Trappe Clairfait sent to offer me the command of a division. I closed with it at once went to the king obtained his leave put spurs to my horse and reached the Austrian camp before the courier."" I could not help expressing my envy at a profession in which all the honours of earth lay at the feet of a successful soldier! He smiled and pointed to the police-officer who was then sulkily pacing in front of the house. ""You see "" said he ""the first specimen of my honours. Yet from the moment of my arrival within the Austrian lines I could have predicted our misfortune. Clairfait was at least as long-sighted as myself; and nothing could exceed his despondency but his indignation. His noble heart was half broken by the narrowness of his resources for defending the country and the boundless folly by which the war council of Vienna expected to make up for the weakness of their battalions by the absurdity of their plans. 'I write for regiments ' the gallant fellow used to say; 'and they send me regulations! I tell them that we have not troops enough for an advanced guard; and they send me the plan of a pitched battle! I tell then that the French have raised their army in front of me to a hundred thousand strong; and they promise me reinforcements next year.' After all his chief perplexity arose from their orders--every despatch regularly contradicting the one that came before. ""Something in the style "" said I ""of Voltaire's caricature of the Austrian courier in the Turkish war with three packs strapped on his shoulders inscribed 'Orders'--'Counter-orders'--and 'Disorders.' ""Just a case in point. Voltaire would have been exactly the historian for our campaign. What an incomparable tale he would have made of it! Every thing that was done was preposterous. We were actually beaten before we fought; we were ruined at Vienna before a shot was fired at Jemappes. The Netherlands were lost not by powder and ball but by pen and ink; and the consequence of our ""march to Paris"" is that one half of the army is now scattered from Holland to the Rhine and the other half is like myself within French walls."" I enquired how Clairfait bore his change of fortune. ""Like a man superior to fortune. I never saw him exhibit higher ability than in his dispositions for our last battle. He has become a magnificent tactician. But Alexander the Great himself could not fight without troops: and such was our exact condition. ""Dumourier at the head of a hundred thousand men had turned short from the Prussian retreat and flung himself upon the Netherlands. How many troops do you think the wisdom of the Aulic Council had provided to protect the provinces? Scarcely more than a third of the number and those scattered over a frontier of a hundred miles; in a country too where every Man spoke French where every man was half Republican already where the people had actually begun a revolution and where we had scarcely a friend a fortress in repair or ammunition enough for _feu de joie_. The French of course burst in like an inundation sweeping every thing before them. I was at dinner with Clairfait and his staff on the day when the intelligence arrived. The map was laid upon the table and we had a kind of debate on the course which the Frenchman would take. That evening completed my opinion of him as a general. He took the clearest view among all our conjectures as the event proved so far as the enemy's movements were concerned; though I still retain my own idea of an original error in the choice of our field of battle. Before the twilight fell we mounted our horses and rode to the spot where Clairfait had already made up his mind to meet the French. It was certainly a capital position for defence--a range of heights not too high for guns surmounted by a central plateau; the very position for a battery and a brigade; but the very worst that could be taken against the new enemy whom we had to oppose."" ""Yet what could an army of French recruits be expected to do against a disciplined force so strongly posted?"" was my question. ""My answer to that point "" said Varnhorst ""must be a quotation from my old master of tactics. If the purpose of a general is simply to defend himself let him keep his troops on heights; if his purpose is simply to make an artillery fight let him keep behind his guns; but if it is his purpose to beat the enemy he must leave himself able to follow them--and this he can do only on a plain. In the end after beating the enemy in a dozen attempts to carry our batteries but without the power of striking a blow in retaliation we saw them carried all at once and were totally driven from the field."" ""So much for bravery and discipline against bravery and enthusiasm "" said I. ""Yet the enemy's loss must have been tremendous. Every assault must have torn their columns to pieces."" Even this attempt at reconciling him to his ill fortune failed. ""Yes "" was the cool reply; ""but they could afford it which was more than we could do. Remember the maxim my young friend when you shall come to be a general that the only security for gaining battles is to have good troops and a good many of them.--The French recruits fought like recruits without knowing whether the enemy were before or behind them; but they fought and when they were beaten they fought again. While we were fixed on our heights they were formed into column once more and marched gallantly up to the mouth of our guns. Then we had but 18 000 men to the Frenchman's 60 000. Such odds are too great. Whether our great king would have fought at all with such odds against him may be a question; but there can be none whether he would have fixed himself where he could not manoeuvre. The Frenchman attacked us on flanks and centre just when and where he pleased; there stood we mowing down his masses from our fourteen redoubts and waiting to be attacked again. To do him justice he fought stoutly; and to do us justice we fought sturdily. But still we were losing men; the affair looked unpromising from the first half hour; and I pronounced that if Dumourier had but perseverance enough he must carry the field."" I made some passing remark on the singular hazard of bringing untried troops against the proverbial discipline of a German army and the probability that the age of the wild armies of peasantry in Europe would be renewed by the evidence of its success. ""Right "" said Varnhorst. ""The thing that struck me most was the new character of the whole engagement. It was Republicanism in the field; a bold riot a mob battle. Nor will it be the last of its kind. Our whole line was once attacked by the French demi-brigades coming to the charge with a general chorus of the _Marseillaise_ hymn. The effect was magnificent as we heard it pealing over the field through all the roar of cannon and musketry. The attack was defeated. It was renewed under a chorus in honour of their general and 'Vive Dumourier' was chanted by 50 000 voices as they advanced against our batteries. This charge broke in upon our position and took five of our fourteen redoubts. Even Clairfait now acknowledged that all was lost; two-thirds of our men were _hors de combat_ and orders were given for a retreat. My turn now came to act and I moved forward with my small brigade of cavalry--but I was not more lucky than the rest."" I pressed to hear the particulars but his mind was still overwhelmed with a sense of military calamity always the most reluctant topic to a brave and honest soldier; and he simply said--""the whole was a _mêlée_. Our rear was threatened in force by a column which had stormed the heights under a young _brave_ whom I had observed during the day exposing himself gallantly to all the risks of the field. To stop the progress of the enemy on this point was essential; for the safety of the whole army was compromised. We charged them checked them but found the brigade involved in a force of ten times our number; fought our way out again with heavy loss; and after all a shot which brought my charger to the ground left me wounded and bruised in the hands of the French. I was taken up insensible was carried to the tent of the young commander of the column whom I found to be a Duc de Chartres the son of the late Duke of Orleans. His kindness to his prisoner was equal to his gallantry in the field. Few and hurried as our interviews were while his army remained in its position he gave me the idea of a mind of great promise and destined for great things unless the chances of war should stop his career. But though a Republican soldier to my surprise he was no Republican. His enquiries into the state of popular opinion in Europe showed at once his sagacity and the turn which his thoughts young as he was were already taking.--But the diadem is trampled under foot in France for ever; and with cannon-shot in his front every day of his life and the guillotine in his rear who can answer for the history of any man for twenty-four hours together?"" My time in Paris had now come to a close. All my enquiries for the fate of Lafontaine had been fruitless; and I dreaded the still more anxious enquiries to which I should be subjected on my arrival; but I had at least the intelligence to give that I had not left him in the fangs of the jailers of St Lazare. I took leave of my bold and open-hearted Prussian friend with a regret which I had scarcely expected to feel for one with whom I had been thrown into contact simply by the rough chances of campaigning; but I had the gratification of procuring for him through the mysterious interest of Elnathan an order for his transmission to Berlin in the first exchange of prisoners. This promise seemed to compensate all the services which he had rendered to me. ""I shall see the Rhine again "" said he ""which is much more than I ever expected since the day of our misfortune. ""I shall see the Rhine again!--and thanks to you for it."" He pressed my hand with honest gratitude. The carriage which was to convey me to Calais was now at the door. Still one thought as uppermost in his mind; it was that I should give due credit to the bravery of the Austrian general and his army. ""If I have spoken of the engagement at all "" said he ""it was merely to put you in possession of the facts. You return to England; you will of course hear the battle which lost the Netherlands discussed in various versions. The opinion of England decides the opinion of Europe. Tell then your countrymen in vindication of Clairfait and his troops that after holding his ground for nine hours against three times his force he retreated with the steadiness of a movement on parade without leaving behind him a single gun colour or prisoner. Tell them too that he was defeated only through the marvellous negligence of a government which left him to fight battles without brigades defend fortresses without guns and protect insurgent provinces with a fugitive army."" My answer was--""You may rely upon my fighting your battles over the London dinner-tables as perseveringly if not as much against odds as you fought it in the field. But the fortune of war is proverbial and I hope yet to pour out a libation to you as Generalissimo Varnsdorf the restorer of the Austrian laurels."" ""Well Marston may you be a true prophet! But read that letter from Guiscard; our long-headed friend not merely crops our German laurels but threatens to root up the tree."" He handed me a letter from the Prussian philosopher: it was a curious _catalogue raisonné_ of the _im_probabilities of success in the general war of Europe against the Republic; concluding with the words so characteristic of his solemn and reflective views of man and the affairs of man-- ""War is the original propensity of human nature and civilization is the great promoter of war. The more civilized all nations become the more they fight. The most civilized continent of the world has spent the fourth of its modern existence in war. Every man of common sense of course abhors its waste of life of treasure and of time. Still the propensity is so strong that it continues the most prodigal sacrifice of them all. I think that we are entering on a period when war more than ever will be the business of nations. I should not be surprised if the mania of turning nations into beggars and the population into the dust of the field should last for half a century; until the whole existing generation are in their graves and a new generation shall take their places astonished at the fondness of their fathers for bankruptcy and bloodshed."" After some sharp censures of the unpurposed conduct of the German cabinets he finished by saying--""If the French continue to fight as they have just fought Jemappes will be the beginning of a new era. In the history of the world every great change of human supremacy has been the result of a change in the principles of war; and the nation which has been the first to adopt that change has led the triumph for its time. France has now found out a new element in war--the force of multitude the charge of the masses; and she will conquer until the kings of Europe follow her example and call their nations to the field. Till then she will be invincible but then her conquests will vanish; and the world exhausted by carnage will be quiet for a while. But the wolfish spirit of human nature will again hunger for prey; some new system of havoc will be discovered by some great genius who ought to be cursed to the lowest depths of human memory; but who will be exalted to the most rapturous heights of human praise. Then again when one half of the earth is turned into a field of battle and the other into a cemetery mankind will cry out for peace; and again when refreshed will rush into still more ruinous war:--thus all things run in a circle. But France has found out the secret for this age and--_vae victis!_--the pestilence will be tame to the triumph of her frenzy her rapine and her revenge."" ""Exactly what I should have expected from Guiscard "" was my remark; ""he is always making bold attempts to tear up the surface of the time and look into what is growing below."" ""Well well "" replied my honest fellow soldier ""I never perplex my brain with those things. I dare say your philosophers may be right; at least once in a hundred years. But take my word for it that musket and bayonet will be useful matters still; and that discipline and my old master Frederick will be as good as Dumourier and desperation when we shall have brigade for brigade."" The postillions cracked their whips the little Norman horses tore their way over the rough pavement; the sovereign people scattered off on every side to save their lives and limbs; and the plan of St Denis rich with golden corn and tracked by lines of stately trees opened far and wide before me. From the first ascent I gave a _parting_ glance at Paris--it was mingled of rejoicing and regret. What hours of interest of novelty and of terror had I not passed within the circuit of those walls! Yet how the eye cheats reality!--that city of imprisonment and frantic liberty of royal sorrow and of popular exultation now looked a vast circle of calm and stately beauty. How delusive is distance in every thing! Across that plain luxuriant with harvest surrounded with those soft hills and glittering in the purple of this glorious evening it looked a paradise. I knew it--a pendemonium! I speeded on--every thing was animated and animating in my journey. It was the finest season of the year; the roads were good; the prospects--as I swept down valley and rushed round hill with the insolent speed of a government _employé_ leaving all meaner vehicles travellers and the whole workday world behind--seemed to be to redeem the character of French landscape. But how much of its colouring was my own! Was _I_ not _free?_ was I not _returning to England?_ was I not approaching scenes and forms and the realities of those recollections which even in the field of battle and at the foot of the scaffold had alternately cheered and pained delighted and distressed me?--yet which even with all their anxieties were dearer than the most gilded hopes of ambition. Was I not about to meet the gay smile and poignant vivacity of Mariamne? was I not about to wander in the shades of my paternal castle? to see those relatives who were to shape so large a share of my future happiness; to meet in public life the eminent public men with whose renown the courts and even the camps of Europe were already ringing: and last proudest and most profound feeling of all--was I not to venture near the shrine on which I had placed my idol; to offer her the solemn and distant homage of the heart; perhaps to hear of her from day to day; perhaps to see her noble beauty; perhaps even to _hear_ that voice of which the simplest accents sank to my soul.--But I must not attempt to describe sensations which are in their nature indescribable; which dispose the spirit of man to silence; and which in their true intensity suffer but one faculty to exist absorbing all the rest in deep sleep and delicious reverie. I drove with the haste of a courier to London; and after having deposited my despatches with one of the under-secretaries of the Foreign office I flew to Mordecai's den in the city. London appeared to me more crowded than ever; the streets longer and buildings dingier; and the whole seen after the smokeless and light-coloured towns of the Continent looked an enormous manufactory where men wore themselves out in perpetual blackness and bustle to make their bread and die. But my heart beat quickly as I reached the door of that dingiest of all its dwellings where the lord of hundreds of thousands of pounds burrowed himself on the eyes of mankind. I knocked but was long unanswered; at last a meagre clerk evidently of the ""fallen people "" and who seemed dug up from the depths of the dungeon gave me the intelligence that ""his master and family had left England."" The answer was like an icebolt through my frame. This was the moment to which I had looked forward with I shall not say what emotions. I could scarcely define them; but they had a share of every strong every faithful and every touching remembrance of my nature. My disappointment was a pang. My head grey dizzy I reeled; and asked leave to enter the gloomy door and rest for a moment. But this the guardian of the den was too cautious to allow and I should have probably fainted in the street but for the appearance of an ancient Rebecca the wife of the clerk who feeling the compassion which belongs to the sex in all instances and exerting the authority which is so generally claimed by the better-halves of men pushed her husband back and led the way into the old cobwebbed parlour where I had so often been. A glass of water the sole hospitality of the house revived me; and after some enquiries alike fruitless with the past I was about to take my leave when the clerk in his removal of some papers not to be trusted within reach of a stranger dropped a letter from the bundle on which was my name. From the variety of addresses it had evidently travelled far and had been returned from half the post-offices of the Continent. It was two months' old but its news was to me most interesting. It was from Mordecai; and after alluding to some pecuniary transactions with his foreign brethren always the first topic he hurried on in his usual abrupt strain:--""Mariamne has insisted on my leaving England for a while. This is perplexing; as the war must produce a new loan and London is after all the only place where those affairs can be transacted without trouble.--My child is well and yet she looks pallid from time to time and sheds tears when she thinks herself unobserved. All this may pass away but it makes me uneasy; and as she has evidently made up her mind to travel I have only to give way--for with all her caprices she is my child my only child and my beloved child! ""I have heard a good deal of your proceedings from my correspondent and kinsman in Paris. You have acquitted yourself well and it shall not be unknown in the quarter where it may be of most service to you.--I have been stopped by Mariamne's singing in the next room and her voice has almost unmanned me; she is melancholy of late and her only music now is taken from those ancestral hymns which our nation regard as the songs of the Captivity. Her tones at this moment are singularly touching and I have been forced to lay down my pen for she has melted me to tears. Yet her colour has not altogether faded lately and I think sometimes that her eyes look brighter than ever! Heaven help me if I should lose her. I should then be alone in the world. ""You may rely on my intelligence--a war is _inevitable_. You may also rely on my conjecture--that it will be the most desperate war which Europe has yet seen. One that will break up _foundations_ as well as break down superstructures; not a war of politics but of principles; not a war for conquest but for ruin. All the treasuries of Europe will be bankrupt within a twelvemonth of its commencement; unless England shall become their banker. This will be the harvest of the men of money.--It is unfortunate that your money is all lodged for your commission; otherwise in the course of a few operations you might make cent per cent which I propose to do. _Apropos_ of commissions. I had nearly omitted in my own family anxieties to mention the object for which I began my letter. I have _failed_ in arranging the affair of your commission! This was not for want of zeal. But the prospect of a war has deranged and inflamed every thing. The young nobility have actually besieged the Horse-guards. All the weight of the aristocracy has pressed upon the minister and minor influence has been driven from the field. The spirit is too gallant a one to be blamed;--and yet--are there not a hundred other pursuits in which an intelligent and active mind like your own might follow on the way to fortune? You have seen enough of campaigning to know that it is not all a flourish of trumpets. Has the world but one gate and that the Horse-guards? If my personal judgment were to be asked I should feel no regret for a disappointment which may have come only to turn your knowledge and ability to purposes not less suitable to an ambitious spirit nor less likely to produce a powerful impression on the world--the only thing after all worth living for! You may laugh at this language from a man of my country and my trade. But even _I_ have my ambition; and you may yet discover it to be not less bold than if I carried the lamp of Gideon or wielded the sword of the Maccabee.--I must stop again; my poor restless child is coming into the room at this moment complaining of the chill in one of the finest days of summer. She says that this villa has grown sunless airless and comfortless. Finding that I am writing to you she sends her best wishes; and bids me ask what is the fashionable colour for mantles in Paris and also what is become of that 'wandering creature ' Lafontaine if you should happen to recollect such a personage."" ""P.S.--My daughter insists on our setting out from Brighton to-morrow and crossing the Channel the day after. She has a whim for revisiting Switzerland; and in the mean time begs that if during our absence _you_ should have a whim for sea air and solitude you may make of the villa any use you please.--Yours sincerely ""J.V. MORDECAI."" After reading this strange and broken letter I was almost glad that I had not seen Mariamne. Lafontaine was in her heart still in spite of absence. At this I did not wonder for the heart of woman when once struck is almost incapable of change: but the suspense was killing her; and I had no doubt that her loss would sink even her strong-headed parent to the grave. Yet what tidings had I to give? Whether her young soldier was shot in the attempt to escape from St Lazare or thrown into some of those hideous dungeons where so many thousands were dying in misery from day to day was entirely beyond my power to tell. It was better that she should be roving over the bright hills and breathing the fresh breezes of Switzerland than listening to my hopeless conjectures at home; trying to reconcile herself to all the chances which passion is so painfully ingenious in creating and dying like a flower in all its beauty on the spot where it had grown. But the letter contained nothing of the _one_ name for which my first glance had looked over every line with breathless anxiety. There was not a syllable of Clotilde! The father's cares had absorbed all other thoughts; and the letter was to me a blank in that knowledge for which I panted as the hart pants for the fountains. Still I was not dead to the calls of friendship; and that night's mail carried a long epistle to Mordecai detailing my escapes and the services of his kindred in France; and for Mariamne's ear all that I could conceive cheering in my hopes of that ""wandering creature Lafontaine."" But I was forced to think of sterner subjects. I had arrived in England at a time of the most extraordinary public excitement. Every man felt that some great trial of
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ngland and of Europe was at hand; but none could distinctly define either its nature or its cause. France which had then begun to pour out her furious declamations against this country was of course generally looked to as the quarter from which the storm was to come; but the higher minds evidently contemplated hazards nearer home. Affiliated societies corresponding clubs and all the revolutionary apparatus from whose crush and clamour I had so lately emerged met the ear and the eye on all occasions; and the fiery ferocity of French rebellion was nearly rivalled by the grave insolence of English ""Rights of Man."" But I am not about to write the history of a time of national fever. The republicanism which Cicero and Plutarch instil into us all at our schools had been extinguished in me by the squalid realities of France. I had seen the dissecting-room and was cured of my love for the science. My spirit too required rest. I could have exclaimed with all the sincerity and with all the weariness too of the poet:-- Oh for a lodge in some vast wilderness Some boundless contiguity of shade Where rumour of oppression and deceit Of unsuccessful or successful war Might never reach me more!"" But perhaps fortunately for my understanding if not for my life I was not suffered to take refuge in the wilderness. London was around me; rich and beggared splendid and sullen idle and busy London. I was floating on those waves of human being in which the struggler must make for the shore or sink. I was in the centre of that huge whispering gallery where every sound of earth was echoed and re-echoed with new power; and where it was impossible to dream. My days were now spent in communication with the offices of government and a large portion of my nights in carrying on those correspondences which though seldom known in the routine of Downing Street form the essential part of its intercourse with the continental cabinets. But a period of suspense still remained. Parliament had been already summoned for the 13th of December. Up to nearly the last moment the cabinet had been kept in uncertainty as to the actual intents of France. There had been declamation in abundance in the French legislature and the journals; but with this unsubstantial evidence the cabinet could not meet the country. Couriers were sent in all directions; boats were stationed along the coast to bring the first intelligence of actual hostilities suddenly; every conceivable expedient was adopted; but all in vain. The day of opening the Session was within twenty-four hours. After lingering hour by hour in expectancy of the arrival of despatches from our ambassador at the Hague I offered to cross the sea in the first fishing-boat which I could find and ascertain the facts. My offer was accepted; and in the twilight of a winter's morning and in the midst of a snow-storm I was making my shivering way homeward through the wretched lanes which dark as pitch and narrow as footpaths then led to the centre of the diplomatic world; when in my haste I had nearly overset a meagre figure which half-blinded by the storm was tottering towards the Foreign office. After a growl in the most angry jargon the man recognized me; he was the clerk whom I had seen at Mordecai's house. He had but an hour before received by one of the private couriers of the firm a letter with orders to deliver it with all expedition. He put it into my hand: it was not from Mordecai but from Elnathan and was simply in these words:--""My kinsman and your friend has desired me to forward to you the first intelligence of hostilities. I send you a copy of the bulletin which will be issued at noon this day. It is yet unknown; but I have it from a source on which you may perfectly rely. Of this make what use you think advantageous. Your well-wisher."" With what pangs the great money-trafficker must have consigned to my use a piece of intelligence which must have been a mine of wealth to any one who carried it first to the Stock Exchange I could easily conjecture. But I saw in it the powerful pressure of Mordecai which none of his tribe seemed even to have the means of resisting. My sensations were singular enough as I traced my way up the dark and lumbering staircase of the Foreign office; with the consciousness that if I had chosen to turn my steps in another direction I might before night be master of thousands or of hundreds of thousands. But it is only due to the sense of honour which had been impressed on me even in the riot and roughness of my Eton days to say that I did not hesitate for a moment Sending one of the attendants to arouse the chief clerk I stood waiting his arrival with the bulletin unopened in my hands. The official had gone to his house in the country and might not return for some hours. My perplexity increased. Every moment might supersede the value of my priority. At length a twinkling light through the chinks of one of the dilapidated doors told me that there was some one within from whom I might at least ask when and how ministers were to be approached. The door was opened and to my surprise I found that the occupant of the chamber was one of the most influential members of administration. My name and purpose were easily given; and I was received as I believe few are in the habit of being received by the disposers of high things in high places. The fire had sunk to embers the lamp was dull and the hearer was half frozen and half asleep. Yet no sooner had he cast his eyes upon the mysterious paper which I gave into his grasp than all his faculties were in full activity. ""This "" said he ""is the most important paper that has reached this country since the taking of the Bastile. THE SCHELDT IS OPENED! This involves an attack on Holland; the defence of our ally is a matter of treaty and we must arm without delay. The war is begun but where it shall end""--he paused and fixing his eyes above with a solemnity of expression which I had not expected in the stern and hard-lined countenance ""or who shall live to see its close--who shall tell?"" ""We have been waiting "" said he ""for this intelligence from week to week with the fullest expectation that it would come; and yet when it has come it strikes like a thunderclap. This is the third night that I have sat in this hovel at this table unable to go to rest and looking for the despatch from hour to hour.--You see sir that our life is at least not the bed of roses for which the world is so apt to give us credit. It is like the life of my own hills--the higher the sheiling stands the more it gets of the blast."" I do not give the name of this remarkable man. He was a Scot and possessed of all the best characteristics of his country. I had heard him in Parliament where he was the most powerful second of the most powerful first that England had seen. But if all men were inferior to the prime minister in majesty and fulness of conception the man to whom I now listened had no superior in readiness of retort in aptness of illustration--that mixture of sport and satire of easy jest and subtle sarcasm which forms the happiest talent for the miscellaneous uses of debate. If Pitt moved forward like the armed man of chivalry or rather like the main body of the battle--for never man was more entitled to the appellation of a ""host in himself""--never were front flanks and rear of the host covered by a more rapid quick-witted and indefatigable auxiliary. He was a man of family and brought with him into public life not the manners of a menial of office but the bearing of a gentleman. Birth and blood were in his bold and manly countenance; and I could have felt no difficulty in conceiving him if his course had followed his nature the chieftain on his hills at the head of his gallant retainers pursuing the wild sports of his romantic region; or in some foreign land gathering the laurels which the Scotch soldier has so often and so proudly added to the honours of the empire. He was perfectly familiar with the great question of the time and saw the full bearings of my intelligence with admirable sagacity; pointed out the inevitable results of suffering France to take upon herself the arbitration of Europe and gave new and powerful views of the higher relation in which England was to stand as the general protectress of the Continent. ""This bulletin "" said he ""announces the fact that a French squadron has actually sailed up the Scheldt to attack Antwerp. Yet it was not ten years since France protested against the same act by Austria as a violation of the rights of Holland. The new aggression is therefore not simply a solitary violence but a vast fraud; not merely the breach of an individual treaty but a declaration that no treaty is henceforth to be held as binding; it is more than an act of rapine; it is an universal dissolution of the principles by which society is held together. In what times are we about to live?"" My reply was--""That it depended on the spirit of England herself whether the conflict was to be followed by honour or by shame; that she had a glorious career before her if she had magnanimity sufficient to take the part marked out for her by circumstances; and that with the championship of the world in her hands even defeat would be a triumph."" He now turned the conversation to myself; spoke with more than official civility of my services and peculiarly of the immediate one; and asked in what branch of diplomacy I desired advancement? My answer was prompt. ""In none. I desired promotion but in one way--the army."" I then briefly stated the accidental loss of my original appointment and received before I left the chamber a note for the secretary at war recommending me in the strongest terms for a commission in the Guards.--The world was now before me and the world in the most vivid various and dazzling shape; in the boldest development of grandeur terror and wild vicissitude which it exhibited for a thousand years--ENGLAND WAS AT WAR! There is no sight on earth more singular or more awful than a great nation going to war. I saw the scene in its highest point of view by seeing it in England. Its perfect freedom its infinite and often conflicting variety of opinion--its passionate excitement and its stupendous power gave the summons to hostilities a character of interest of grandeur and of indefinite but vast purposes unexampled in any other time or in any other country. When one of the old monarchies commenced war the operation however large and formidable was simple. A monarch resolved a council sat less to guide than to echo his resolution; an army marched invaded the enemy's territory fought a battle--perhaps a dubious one--rested on its arms; and while _Te Deum_ was sung in both capitals alike for the ""victory"" of neither the ministers of both were constructing an armistice a negotiation and a peace--each and all to be null and void on the first opportunity. But the war of England was a war of the nation--a war of wrath and indignation--a war of the dangers of civilized society entrusted to a single championship--a great effort of human nature to discharge in the shape of blood a disease which was sapping the vitals of Europe; or in a still higher and therefore a more faithful view the gathering of a tempest which after sweeping France in its fury was to restore the exhausted soil and blasted vegetation of monarchy throughout the Continent; and in whose highest England serene and undismayed was to ""Ride in the whirlwind and direct the storm."" I must acknowledge that I looked upon the coming conflict with a strange sense of mingled alarm and rejoicing. For the latter feeling perhaps I ought to make some apology; but I was young ardent and ambitious. My place in life was unfixed; standing in that unhappy middle position in which stands a man of birth too high to suffer his adoption of the humbler means of existence and yet of resources too inadequate to sustain him without action--nay bold and indefatigable exertion. I at the moment felt a very inferior degree of compunction at the crisis which offered to give me at least a chance of being seen known and understood among men. I felt like a man whose ship was stranded and who saw the storm lifting the surges that were to lift him along with them; or like the traveller in an earthquake who saw the cleft in the ground swallowing up the river which had hitherto presented an impassable obstacle--cities and mountains might sink before the concussion had done its irresistible will but at all events it had cleared his way. In thoughts like these rash and unconnected as they were I spent many a restless day and still more restless night. I often sprang from a pillow which if I had lived in the days of witchcraft I should have thought spelled to refuse me sleep; and walking for hours endeavoured to reduce into shape the speculations which filled my mind with splendours and catastrophes worthy of oriental dreams. Why did I not then pursue the career in which I had begun the world? Why not devote myself to diplomacy in which I had hitherto received honour? Why not enter into Parliament which opened all the secrets of power? For this I had two reasons. The first--and let me confess the most imperious--was that my pride had been deeply hurt by the loss of my commission. I felt that I had not only been deprived of a noble profession accidental as was the loss; but that I had subjected myself to the trivial but stinging remarks which never fail to find an obnoxious cause for every failure. While this cloud hung over me I was determined never to return to my father's house. Good-natured as the friends of my family might be I was fully aware of the style in which misfortune is treated in the idleness of country life; and the Honourable Mr Marston's loss of his rank in his Majesty's guards or his preference of a more pacific promotion was too tempting a topic to lose any of its stimulants by the popular ignorance of the true transaction. My next reason was that my mind was harassed and wearied by disappointment until I should not have regreted to terminate the struggle in the first field of battle. The only woman whom I loved and whom in the strange frenzy of passion I solemnly believed to be the only woman on earth deserving to be so loved had wholly disappeared and was by this time probably wedded. The only woman whom I regarded as a friend was in another country probably dying. If I could have returned to Mortimer Castle--which I had already determined to be impossible--I should have found only a callous perhaps a contemptuous head of the family angry at my return to burden him. Even Vincent--my old and kind-hearted friend Vincent--had been a soldier; and though I was sure of never receiving a reproach from his wise and gentle lips was I equally sure that I could escape the flash or the sorrow of his eye? In thoughts like these and they were dangerous ones I made many a solitary rush out into the wild winds and beating snows of the winter which had set in early and been remarkably severe; walking bareheaded in the most lonely places of the suburbs stripping my bosom to the blast and longing for its tenfold chill to assuage the fever which burned within me. I had also found the old delay at the Horse-guards. The feelings of this period make me look with infinite compassion on the unhappy beings who take their lives into their own hands and who extinguish all their earthly anxieties at a plunge. But I had imbibed principles of a firmer substance and but upon one occasion and one alone felt tempted to an act of despair. Taking my lonely dinner in a tavern of the suburbs the waiter handed me a newspaper which he had rescued for my behoof from the hands of a group eager as all the world then was for French intelligence. My eye rambled into the fashionable column; and the first paragraph headed ""Marriage in high life "" announced that on the morrow were to be solemnized the nuptials of Clotilde Countess de Tourville with the Marquis de Montrecour colonel of the French Mousquetaires &c. The paper dropped from my hands. I rushed out of the house; and scarcely knowing where I went I hurried on until I found myself out of the sight or sound of mortal. The night was pitch-dark; there was no lamp near; the wind roared; and it was only by the flash of the foam that I discovered the broad sheet of water before me. I had strayed into Hyde Park and was on the bank of the Serpentine. With what ease might I not finish all! It was another step. Life was a burden--thought was a torment--the light of day a loathing. But the paroxysm soon gave way. Impressions of the duty and the trials of human nature made in earlier years revived within me with a singular freshness and force. Tears gushed from my eyes fast and flowing; and with a long-forgotten prayer for patience and humility I turned from the place of temptation. As I reached the streets once more I heard the trumpets of the Life Guards and the band of a battalion returning to their quarters. The infantry were the Coldstream. They had been lining the streets for the king's procession to open the sitting of Parliament. This was the 13th of December--the memorable day to which every heart in Europe was more or less vibrating; yet which I had totally forgotten. What is man but an electrical machine after all? The sound and sight of soldiership restored me to the full vividness of my nature. The machine required only to be touched to shoot out its latent sparks; and with a new spirit and a new determination kindling through every fibre I hastened to be present at that debate which was to be the judgment of nations. My official intercourse with ministers had given me some privileges and I obtained a seat under the gallery--that part of the House of Commons which is occasionally allotted to strangers of a certain rank. The House was crowded and every countenance was pictured with interest and solemn anxiety. Grey Sheridan and other distinguished names of party had already taken their seats; but the great heads of Government and Opposition were still absent. At length a buzz among the crowd who filled the floor --and the name of Fox repeated in every tone of congratulation announced the pre-eminent orator of England. I now saw Fox for the first time; and I was instantly struck with the incomparable similitude of all that I saw of him to all that I had conceived from his character and his style. In the broad bold forehead the strong sense--in the relaxed mouth the self-indulgent and reckless enjoyment--in the quick small eye under those magnificent black brows the man of sagacity of sarcasm and of humour; and in the grand contour of a countenance and head which might have been sculptured to take its place among the sages and sovereigns of antiquity the living proof of those extraordinary powers which could have been checked in their ascent to the highest elevation of public life only by prejudices and passions not less extraordinary. As he advanced up the House he recognized every one on both sides and spoke or smiled to nearly all. He stopped once or twice in his way and was surrounded by a circle with whom as I could judge from their laughter he exchanged some pleasantry of the hour. When at length he arrived at the seat which had been reserved for him he threw himself upon it with the easy look of comfort of a man who had reached home--gave nod to Windham held out a finger to Grey warmly shook hands with Sheridan; and then opening his well-known blue and buff costume threw himself back into the bench and laughingly gasped for air. But another movement of the crowd at the bar announced another arrival and Pitt entered the House. His look and movement were equally characteristic with those of his great rival. He looked to neither the right nor the left; replied to the salutations of his friends by the slightest possible bow; neither spoke nor smiled; but slowly advancing took his seat in total silence. The Speaker hitherto occupied with some routine business now read the King's speech and calling on ""Mr Pitt "" the minister rose. I have for that rising but one description--the one which filled my memory at the moment from the noblest poet of the world. ""Deep on his front engraven Deliberation sat and public care. Sage he stood With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear The weight of mightiest monarchies. His look Drew audience and attention still as night Or summer's noontide air."" THE WEEK OF AN EMPEROR The week ending the 8th of June was the most brilliant that ever occupied and captivated the fashionable world of a metropolis of two millions of souls the head of an empire of two hundred millions. The recollection runs us out of breath. Every hour was a new summons to a new _fête_ a new fantasy or a new exhibition of the handsomest man of the forty-two millions of Russia proper. The toilettes of the whole _beau monde_ were in activity from sunny morn to dewy eve; and from dewy eve to waxlighted midnight. A parade of the Guards by which the world was tempted into rising at ten o'clock; a _dejeuner à la fourchette_ by which it was surprised into _dining_ at three (_more majorum;_) an opera by which those whose hour for going out is eleven were forced into their carriages at nine; a concert at Hanover Square finished by a ball and supper at Buckingham palace;--all were among those brilliant perversions of the habits of high life which make the week one brilliant tumult; but which never could have been revolutionized but by an emperor in the flower of his age. Wherever he moved he was followed by a host of the fair and fashionable. The showy equipages of the nobility were in perpetual motion. The parks were a whirlwind of horsemen and horsewomen. The streets were a levy _en masse_ of the peerage. The opera-house was a gilded ""black hole of Calcutta."" The front of Buckingham palace was a scene of loyalty dangerous to life and limb; men careful of either gave their shillings for a glimpse through a telescope; and shortsighted ladies fainted that they might be carried into houses which gave then a full view. Mivart's the retreat of princes had the bustle of a Bond Street hotel. Ashburnham House was in a state of siege. And Buckingham palace with its guards cavalcades musterings of the multitude and thundering of brass bands seemed to be the focus of a national revolution. But it was within the palace that the grand display existed. The gilt candelabra the gold plate the maids of honour all fresh as tares in June; and the ladies in waiting all Junos and Minervas all jewelled and none under forty-five enraptured the mortal eye to a degree unrivalled in the recollections of the oldest courtier and unrecorded in the annals of queenly hospitality. But we must descend to the world again; we must as the poet said ""Bridle in our struggling muse with pain That longs to launch into a nobler strain."" We bid farewell to a description of the indescribable. During this week but one question was asked by the universal world of St James's--""What was the cause of the Czar's coming?"" Every one answered in his own style. The tourists--a race who cannot live without rambling through the same continental roads which they libel for their roughness every year; the same hotels which they libel for their discomforts; and the same _table-d'hotes_ which they libel as the perfection of bad cookery and barefaced _chicane_--pronounced that the love of travel was the imperial impulse. The politicians of the clubs--who having nothing to do for themselves manage the affairs of all nations and can discover high treason in the manipulation of a toothpick and symptoms of war in a waltz--were of opinion that the Czar had come either to construct an European league against the marriage of little Queen Isabella or to beat up for recruits for the ""holy"" hostilities of Morocco. With the fashionable world the decision was that he had come to see Ascot races and the Duke of Devonshire's gardens before the sun withered or St Swithin washed them away. The John Bull world--as wise at least as any of their betters who love a holiday and think Whitsuntide the happiest period of the year for that reason and Greenwich hill the finest spot in creation--were convinced that his Majesty's visit was merely that of a good-humoured and active gentleman glad to escape from the troubles of royalty and the heaviness of home and take a week's ramble among the oddities of England. ""Who shall decide "" says Pope ""when doctors disagree?"" Perhaps the nearest way of reaching the truth is to take all the reasons together and try how far they may be made to agree. What can be more probable than that the fineness of the finest season within memory the occurrence of a moment of leisure in the life of a monarch ruling a fifth of the habitable globe roused the curiosity of an intelligent mind excited like that of his great ancestor Peter by a wish to see the national improvements of the great country of engineering shipbuilding and tunnelling; perhaps with Ascot races--the most showy exhibition of the most beautiful horses in the world--to wind up the display might tempt a man of vigorous frame and active spirit to gallop across Europe and give seven brief days to England! An additional conjecture has been proposed by the papers presumed to be best informed in cabinet secrets; that this rapid journey has had for its distinct purpose the expression of the Imperial scorn for the miserable folly and malignant coxcombry of the pamphlet on the French navy; which has excited so much contempt in England and so much boasting in France and so much surprise and ridicule every where else in Europe. Nothing could be more in consonance with a manly character than to show how little it shared the conceptions of a coxcomb; and no more direct mode could be adopted than the visit to prove his willingness to be on the best terms with her government and her people. We readily receive this conjecture because it impresses a higher character on the whole transaction; it belongs to an advanced spirit of royal intercourse and it constitutes an important pledge for that European peace which is the greatest benefaction capable of being conferred by kings. The Emperor may be said to have come direct from St Petersburg as his stops on the road were only momentary. He reached Berlin from his capital with courier's speed in four days and six hours on Sunday fortnight last. His arrival was so unexpected that the Russian ambassador in Prussia was taken by surprise. He travelled through Germany incognito and on Thursday night the 30th arrived at the Hague. Next day at two o'clock he embarked at Rotterdam for England. Here two steamers had been prepared for his embarkation. The steamers anchored for the night at Helvoetsluys. At three in the following morning they continued the passage arriving at Woolwich at ten. The Russian ambassador and officers of the garrison prepared to receive him; but on his intimating his particular wish to land in private the customary honours were dispensed with. Shortly after ten the Emperor landed. He was dressed in the Russian costume covered with an ample and richly-furred cloak. After a stay of a few minutes he entered Baron Brunow's carriage with Count Orloff and drove to the Russian embassy. The remainder of the day was given to rest after his fatigue. On the next morning Sunday Prince Albert paid a visit to the Emperor. They met on the grand staircase and embraced each other cordially in the foreign style. The Prince proposed that the Emperor should remove to the apartments which were provided for him in the palace--an offer which was politely declined. At eleven the Emperor attended divine service at the chapel of the Russian embassy in Welbeck Street. At half-past one Prince Albert arrived to conduct him to the palace. He wore a scarlet uniform with the riband and badge of the Garter. The Queen received the Emperor in the grand hall. A _dejeuner_ was soon afterwards served. The remainder of the day was spent in visits to the Queen-Dowager and the Royal Family. One visit of peculiar interest was paid. The Emperor drove to Apsley House to visit the Duke of Wellington. The Duke received him in the hall and conducted him to the grand saloon on the first floor. The meeting on both sides was most cordial. The Emperor conversed much and cheerfully with the illustrious Duke and complimented him highly on the beauty of his pictures and the magnificence of his mansion. But even emperors are but men and the Czar fatigued with his round of driving on his return to the embassy fell asleep and slumbered till dinner-time though his Royal Highness of Cambridge and the Monarch of Saxony called to visit him. At a quarter to eight o'clock three of the royal carriages arrived for the purpose of conveying the Emperor and his suite to Buckingham palace. On Monday the Emperor rose at seven. After breakfast he drove to Mortimer's the celebrated jeweller's where he remained for an hour and is _said_ to have purchased L.5000 worth of jewellery. He then drove to the Zoological gardens and the Regent's park. In the course of the drive he visited Sir Robert Peel and the families of some of our ambassadors in Russia. At three o'clock he gave a _dejeuner_ to the Duke of Devonshire who had also been an ambassador in Russia. Dover Street was crowded with the carriages of the nobility who came to put down their names in the visiting-book. At five a guard of honour of the First Life-Guards came to escort him to the railway on his visit to Windsor; but on his observing its arrival he expressed a wish to decline the honour for the purpose of avoiding all parade. The Queen's carriages had arrived and the Emperor and his suite drove off through streets crowded with horsemen. On arriving at the railway station the Emperor examined the electrical telegraph and entering the saloon carriage the train set off and arrived at Slough a distance of nearly twenty miles in the astonishingly brief time of twenty-five minutes. At the station the Emperor was met by Prince Albert and conveyed to the castle. The banquet took place in the Waterloo chamber a vast hall hung with portraits of the principal sovereigns and statesmen of Europe to paint which the late Sir Thomas Laurence had been sent on a special mission at the close of the war in 1815. Sir Thomas's conception of form and likeness was admirable but his colouring was cold and thin. His ""Waterloo Gallery"" forms a melancholy contrast with the depth and richness of the adjoining ""Vandyk Chamber;"" but his likenesses are complete. The banquet was royally splendid. The table was covered with gold plate and chased ornaments of remarkable beauty--the whole lighted by rows of gold candelabra. The King of Saxony the Duke of Wellington Sir Robert Peel Lord Aberdeen and the chief noblemen of the household were present at the entertainment. TUESDAY. This was the day of Ascot races. The road from Windsor to the course passes through a couple of miles of the rich quiet scenery which peculiarly belongs to England. The course itself is a file open plain commanding an extensive view. Some rumours doubting the visit of the royal party excited a double interest in the first sight of the cavalcade preceded by the royal yeomen galloping up to the stand. They were received with shouts. The Emperor the King of Saxony and Prince Albert were in the leading carriage. They were attired simply as private gentlemen in blue frock-coats. The Duke of Wellington Sir Robert Peel and the household followed in the royal carriages. The view of the Stand at this period was striking and the royal and noble personages were repeatedly cheered. An announcement was conveyed to the people that the Emperor had determined to give L.500 a-year to the course. The Czarewitch had already given L.200 at Newmarket. The announcement was received with renewed cheering. All kings are fond of horses; and the monarch of the most numerous and active cavalry in the world may be allowed to be a connoisseur in their strength swiftness and perseverance by a superior right. The Emperor can call out 80 000 Cossacks at a sound of his trumpet. He exhibited an evident interest in the races. The horses were saddled before the race in front of the grand stand and brought up to it after the race for the purpose of weighing the jockeys. He had a full opportunity of inspection; but not content with this when the winner of the gold vase the mare Alice Hawthorn was brought up to the stand he descended and examined this beautiful animal with the closeness and critical eye of a judge. On Wednesday the pageant in which
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mperors most delight was exhibited--a review of the royal guards. There are so few troops in England as the Prince de Joinville has ""the happiness"" to observe that a review on the continental scale of tens of thousands is out of the question. Yet to the eye which can discern the excellence of soldiership and the completeness of soldierly equipment the few in line before the Emperor on this day were enough to gratify the intelligent eye which this active monarch turns upon every thing. The infantry were--the second battalion of the grenadier guards the second battalion of the Coldstream guards the second battalion of the fusilier guards and the forty-seventh regiment. The cavalry were--two troops of the royal horse guards (blue ) the first regiment of the life guards and the seventeenth lancers. The artillery were--detachments of the royal horse artillery and the field artillery. A vast multitude from London by the trains and from the adjoining country formed a line parallel to the troops; and nothing could exceed the universal animation and cheering when the Emperor the King of Saxony and the numerous and glittering staff entered the field and came down the line. After the usual salutes and marching past the centre where the royal carriages had taken their stand the evolutions began. They were few and simple but of that order which is most effective in the field. The formation of the line from the sections; the general advance of the line; the halt and a running fire along the whole front; the breaking up of the line into squares; the squares firing then deploying into line and marching to the rear. The Queen with the royal children left the ground before the firing began The review was over at half-past two. The appearance of the troops was admirable; the manoeuvres were completely successful; and the fineness of the day gave all the advantages of sun and landscape to this most brilliant spectacle. But the most characteristic portion of the display consisted in the commanding-officers who attended to give this unusual mark of respect to the Emperor. Wellington the ""conqueror of a hundred fights "" rode at the head of the grenadier guards as their colonel Lord Combermere general of the cavalry in the Peninsula rode at the head of his regiment the first life guards. The Marquis of Anglesey general of the cavalry at Waterloo rode at the head of his regiment the royal horse guards. Sir George Murray quartermaster-general in the Peninsula rode at the head of the artillery as master-general of the ordnance. His royal highness the Duke of Cambridge rode at the head of his regiment the Coldstream. His royal highness Prince Albert rode at the head of his regiment the Scotch fusiliers. General Sir William Anson rode at the head of his regiment the forty-seventh. Lieutenant-Colonel Quentin rode at the head of the seventeenth lancers the colonel of the regiment Prince George of Cambridge being in the Ionian Islands. Thus three field-marshals and four generals passed in review before the illustrious guests of her Majesty. The Emperor expressed himself highly gratified; as every eye accustomed to troops must have been by the admirable precision of the movements and the fine appearance of the men. A striking instance of the value of railways for military operations was connected with this review. The forty-seventh regiment quartered in Gosport was brought to Windsor in the morning and sent back in the evening of the review day; the journey altogether was about 140 miles! Such are the miracles of machinery in our days. This was certainly an extraordinary performance when we recollect that it was the conveyance of about 700 men; and shows what might be done in case of any demand for the actual services of the troops. But even this exploit will be eclipsed within a few days by the opening of the direct line from London to Newcastle which will convey troops or any thing 300 miles in twelve hours. The next step will be to reach Edinburgh in a day! The Emperor was observed to pay marked attention to the troops of the line the forty-seventh and the lancers; observing as it is said ""your household troops are noble fellows; but what I wished particularly to see were the troops with which you gained your victories in India and China."" A speech of this kind was worthy of the sagacity of a man who knew where the true strength of a national army lies and who probably besides has often had his glance turned to the dashing services of our soldiery in Asia. The household troops of every nation are select men and the most showy which the country can supply. Thus they are nearly of equal excellence. The infantry of ours it is true have been always ""fighting regiments""--the first in every expedition and distinguished for the gallantry of their conduct in every field. The cavalry though seldomer sent on foreign service exhibited pre-eminent bravery in the Peninsula and their charges at Waterloo were irresistible. But it is of the marching regiments that the actual ""army"" consists and their character forms the character of the national arms. In the evening the Emperor and the King of Saxony dined with her Majesty at Windsor. THURSDAY. The royal party again drove to the Ascot course and were received with the usual acclamations. The Emperor and King were in plain clothes without decorations of any kind; Prince Albert wore the Windsor uniform. The cheers were loud for Wellington. The gold cup value three hundred guineas was the principal prize. Eight horses ran and the cup was won by a colt of Lord Albemarle's. His lordship is lucky at least on the turf. He won the cup at Ascot last year. FRIDAY. The royal party came to London by the railway. The Emperor spent the chief part of the day in paying visits in the Russian ambassador's private carriage to his personal friends--chiefly the families of those noblemen who had been ambassadors to Russia. SATURDAY. The Emperor the King and Prince Albert went to the Duke of Devonshire's _dejeuner_ at Chiswick. The Duke's mansion and gardens are proverbial as evidences of his taste magnificence and princely expenditure. All the nobility in London at this period were present. The royal party were received with distinguished attention by the noble host and his hospitality was exhibited in a style worthy of his guests and himself. While the suite of _salons_ were thrown open for the general company the royal party were received in a _salon_ which had been decorated as a Turkish tent. Bands of the guards played in the gardens a quadille band played in the ball-room and the fineness of the weather gave the last charm to a _fête_ prepared with equal elegance and splendour. We doubt whether Europe can exhibit any open air festivity that can compete with a _dejeuner_ at Chiswick. The gardens of some of the continental palaces are larger but they want the finish of the English garden. Their statues and decorations are sometimes fine; but they want the perfect and exquisite neatness which gives an especial charm to English horticulture. The verdure of the lawns the richness and variety of the flowers and the general taste displayed in even the most minute and least ornamental features render the English garden wholly superior in fitness and in beauty to the gardens of the continental sovereigns and nobility. In the evening the Queen and her guests went to the Italian opera. The house was greatly and even hazardously crowded. It is said that in some instances forty guineas was paid for a box. But whether this may be an exaggeration or not the sum would have been well worth paying to escape the tremendous pressure in the pit. After all the majority of the spectators were disappointed in their principal object the view of the royal party. They all sat far back in the box and thus to three-fourths of the house were completely invisible. In this privacy for which it is not easy to account and which it would have been so much wiser to have avoided the audience were long kept in doubt whether the national anthem was to be sung. At last a stentorian voice from the gallery called for it. A general response was made by the multitude; the curtain rose and God save the Queen was sung with acclamation. The ice thus broken it was followed by the Russian national anthem a firm rich and bold composition. The Emperor was said to have shed tears at the unexpected sound of that noble chorus which brought back the recollection of his country at so vast a distance from home. But if these anthems had not been thus accidentally performed the royal party would have lost a much finer display than any thing which they could have seen on the stage--the rising of the whole audience in the boxes--all the fashionable world in _gala_ in its youth beauty and ornament seen at full sight while the chorus was on the stage. SUNDAY. On this day at two o'clock the Emperor after taking leave of the Queen and the principal members of the Royal family embarked at Woolwich in the government steamer the Black Eagle commanded for the time by the Earl of Hardwicke. The vessel dropped down the river under the usual salutes from the batteries at Woolwich; the day was serene and the Black Eagle cut the water with a keel as smooth as it was rapid. The Emperor entered into the habits of the sailor with as much ease as he had done into those of the soldier. He conversed good-humouredly with the officers and men admired the discipline and appearance of the marines who had been sent as his escort was peculiarly obliging to Lord Hardwicke and Lieutenant Peel (a son of the premier ) and ordered his dinner on deck that he might enjoy the scenery on the banks of the Thames. The medals of some of the marines who had served in Syria attracted his attention and he enquired into the nature of their services. He next expressed a wish to see the manual exercise performed which of course was done; and his majesty taking a musket went through the Russian manual exercise. On his arrival on the Dutch coast the King of Holland came out to meet him in a steamer; and on his landing the British crew parted with him with three cheers. The Imperial munificence was large to a degree which we regret; for it would be much more gratifying to the national feelings to receive those distinguished strangers without suffering the cravers for subscriptions to intrude themselves into their presence. On the Emperor's landing in Holland he reviewed a large body of Dutch troops and had intended to proceed up the Rhine and enjoy the landscape of its lovely shores at his leisure. But for him there is no leisure; and his project was broken up by the anxious intelligence of the illness of one of his daughters by a premature confinement. He immediately changed his route and set off at full speed for St "
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Donald Perry and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. * * * * * NO. CCCXLVI. AUGUST 1844. VOL. LVI. * * * * * CONTENTS. AFFGHANISTAN ETCHED THOUGHTS BY THE ETCHING CLUB A LOVE CHASE--IN PROSE ANCIENT CANAL--THE NILE AND THE RED SEA THE OLD SCOTTISH CAVALIER TRADITIONS AND TALES OF UPPER LUSATIA. NO. III. THE DWARF'S WELL SOME REMARKS ON SCHILLER'S MAID OF ORLEANS THE STOLEN CHILD M. GIRARDIN LORD ELDON * * * * * EDINBURGH: WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS; 45 GEORGE STREET; AND 22 PALL-MALL LONDON. _To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed_ SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM. * * * * * PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND HUGHES EDINBURGH. BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. * * * * * NO. CCCXLVI. AUGUST 1844. VOL. LVI. * * * * * AFFGHANISTAN. There are those persons now living who would give their own weight in sovereigns though drawing against thirteen to sixteen stone that all of this dreadful subject might be swallowed up by Lethe; that darkness might settle for ever upon the insanities of Cabool; and the grave close finally over the carnage of Tezeen. But it will not be. Blood will have blood they say. The madness which could sport in levity with a trust of seventeen thousand lives walks upon the wind towards heaven coming round by gusts innumerable of angry wailings in the air; voices from nobody knows where are heard clamouring for vengeance; and the caves of Jugdulloc gorged with the "un-coffined slain " will not rest from the litanies which day and night they pour forth for retribution until this generation shall have passed away. Are we to have justice or not?--not that justice which executes the sentence but which points the historical verdict and distributes the proportions of guilt. The government must now be convinced by the unceasing succession of books on this subject which sleeps at intervals but continually wakens up again to new life that it has not died out nor is likely to do so. And for _that_ there is good reason: a sorrow which is past decays gradually and hushes itself to sleep; not so a sorrow which points too ominously to the future. The last book on this horrible tragedy is that of Mr Lushington;[1] and in point of ability the best; the best in composition; the best for nobility of principle for warning for reproach. But for all that we do not agree with him: we concede all his major propositions; we deny most of his minors. As for the other and earlier discussions upon this theme whether by boots by pamphlets by journals English and Indian or by Parliamentary speeches they now form a library; and considering the vast remoteness of the local interest they express sublimely the paramount power of what is moral over the earthy and the physical. A battle of Paniput is fought which adds the carnage of Leipsic to that of Borodino and numerically speaking heaps Pelion upon Ossa; but who cares? No principle is concerned: it is viewed as battle of wolves with tiger-cats; and Europe heeds it not. But let a column of less than 5000 from a nation moving by moral forces and ploughing up for ever new soils of moral promise betray itself by folly or by guilt into the meshes of a frightful calamity and the earth listens for the details from the tropics to the arctic circle. Not Moscow and Smolensko through all the wilderness of their afflictions ever challenged the gaze of Christendom so earnestly as the Coord Cabool. And why? The pomp the procession of the misery lasted through six weeks in the Napoleon case through six days in the English case. Of the French host there had been originally 450 000 fighting men; of the English exactly that same amount read as the numerator of a fraction whose denominator was 100. Forty-five myriads had been the French; forty-five hundreds the English. And yet so mighty is the power of any thing moral because shadowy and illimitable so potent to magnify and unvulgarize any interest that more books have been written upon Cabool and through a more enduring tract of time than upon Moscow. Great was the convulsion in either case; but that caused by Cabool has proved the less transitory. The vast _anabasis_ to Moscow had emanated from a people not conspicuously careful of public morality. But that later _anabasis_ which ascended to the shining pinnacles of Candahar and which stained with blood of men the untrodden snows of the Hindoo Koosh was the work of a nation--no matter whether more moral in a practical sense upon that we do not here dispute--but undeniably fermenting with the anxieties and jealousies of moral aspirations beyond any other people whatever. Some persons have ascribed to Blumenbach (heretofore the great Goettingen naturalist) an opinion as to the English which we have good reason to think that he never uttered--viz. that the people of this island are the most voluptuous of nations and that we bear it written in our national countenance. But suppose him to have said this and secondly (which is a trifle more important ) suppose it to be true not the less we assert the impassioned predominance of a moral interest in this nation. The intensity of this principle is such that it works with the fury and agitation of an appetite. It urges us to the very brink of civil war. Two centuries back--yes exactly to a month two centuries--we were all at Marston Moor cutting throats upon the largest scale. And why? under the coercion of principles equally sublime on _both_ sides. Then it _did_ urge us into war. Now it does not--because the resistance is stronger and by no means because the impulse is less. On a May morning in 1844 a question arises in the senate as to factory labour. On one side it shows an aspect critical for the interests of human nature in its widest stratum--viz. amongst the children of toil. Immediately as at the sound of a signal-gun five hundred of our fervent journals open their batteries this way and that upon an inquest of truth. "All the people quake like dew." The demoniacs of Palestine were not more shaken of old by internal possessions than the heart of England is swayed to and fro under the action of this or similar problems. Epilepsy is not more overmastering than is the tempest of moral strife in England. And a new dawn is arising upon us in the prospect that henceforth the agitations of peace will be more impassioned for the coming generation than the agitations of war for the last. But that sympathy almost morbid which England feels with the condition of social man other nations echo by a reflex sympathy with England; not always by a friendly sympathy. Like the [Greek: aerobatentes] and _funambuli_ of ancient days equally when keeping the difficult line of advance or when losing it England is regarded with a searching gaze that might seem governed by the fabulous fascination of the rattlesnake. Does she ascend on her proper line of advance? There is heard the murmur of reluctant applause. Does she trip? There arises the yell of triumph. Is she seen purchasing the freedom of a negro nation? The glow of admiration suffuses the countenance of Christendom. Is she descried entering on wars of unprovoked aggression? All faces in Europe are illuminated with smiles of prosperous malice. It is a painful preeminence which England occupies--hard to keep dangerous to forfeit. Hit and a million of hearts are tainted with jealousy; fail and a million revel in malignity. Therefore it was that Cabool and its disasters drew an attention so disproportioned to their military importance. Cabool was one chapter in a transaction which truly or not had come to be reputed incompatible with those august principles of public justice professed and worn amongst the phylacteries of Great Britain. Therefore also it was that on this subject as we have already said a library of works has been accumulated. [1] _A Great Country's Little Wars_. By HENRY LUSHINGTON. London: Parker 1844. Of these works we assert fearlessly but not arrogantly that all are partially in error. They are in fact one and all controversial works; often without the design of the writers and not always perhaps with their consciousness--but the fact is such. Not one of them but has a purpose to serve for or against Lord Auckland or Dost Mahommed or the East India Company or the government at home and at Calcutta which replaced that of the Whigs. Some even go into such specialties of partisanship as to manage the cause chiefly as a case depending against the political agents--Mr Ross Bell Mr Loveday Captain Outram or Sir Alexander Burnes. Whilst others which might seem a service of desperation hold their briefs as the apologists of that injured young gentleman Akbar Khan. All in short are controversial for a _personal_ interest; and in that sense to be controversial is to be partial. Now we who take our station in the centre and deliver our shot all round the horizon by intervals damaging every order of men concerned as parties to the Affghan affair whether by action by sanction by counsel or by subsequent opinion may claim to be indifferent censors. We _have_ political attachments: we do not deny it; but our own party is hardly touched by the sting of the case. We therefore can be neutral and we shall pursue our enquiry thus:--_First_ What was the original motive for the Affghan expedition? We insist upon it that the motive generally assumed and reasoned upon was absurd in a double sense puerile as arguing a danger not possible and (if it had been possible) not existing and yet after all not open to much condemnation from most of those who _did_ condemn it. They might object to the particular mode of execution but they were pledged to the principle of a war in that direction. _Secondly_ When the amended form was put forward a rational form and the true form of the motive for this expedition in what respect was that open to criticism? Far enough are we from going along with the views of the Auckland cabinet at this juncture; but these two things we are sure of--that those views were unsound not by any vice which has yet been exposed and that the vice alleged argues gross ignorance of every thing oriental. Lord Auckland might err as heavily we believe him to have done in his estimate of Affghanistan and the Affghan condition: he had untrue notions of what the Affghans needed and what it was that they could bear: but his critics Indian and domestic were not in error by default merely of philosophic views as to the state of society in Affghanistan; they erred by want of familiarity with the most prominent usages of eastern economy. Lord Auckland was wrong only as whole masses of politicians are wrong in Europe; viz. by applying European principles to communities under feelings and prejudices systematically different. But his antagonists were wrong as to palpable facts. _Thirdly_ If we pass from the motive to the execution of the motive from the purpose to the means of effecting it we are compelled to say that Lord Auckland's government adopted for its primary means the most extravagant that could have been devised; viz. the making itself a party to the financial torture of the land. _Fourthly_ When local insurrection had arisen whether directed (as every body assumes) against the abuses of a system introduced by ourselves or (as _we_ assert) proper to the land and hereditary to the morbid condition of Affghan society--we shall expose the feeble and inadequate solution yet offered by any military guide for the tragical issue of these calamities. Kohistan or particular cases need not detain us; but coming at once _in medias res_ as to Cabool itself we shall undertake to show that as yet we have no true or rational account of the causes which led to the fatal result. What! four thousand five hundred regular troops officered by Englishmen--a number which in the last eighty years had shown itself repeatedly able to beat armies of sixty thousand men armies having all the appurtenances and equipments of regular warfare--was this strong column actually unable to fight its way with bayonet and field artillery to a fortress distant only eighty miles through a tumultuary rabble never mustering twenty thousand heads?[1] Times are altered with us if this was inevitable. But the Affghans you will say are brave men stout and stout-hearted not timid Phrygian Bengalees. True--but at Plassy and again forty years after at Assye it was not merely Bengalees or chiefly such whom we fought--they were Rohillas Patans Goorkhas and Arabs; the three first being of Affghan blood quite as good as any Barukzye or Ghilzye and the last better. No no--there is more to tell. The calamity ascends to some elder source than the imbecility of General Elphinstone or the obstinacy of Brigadier Shelton. Others than the direct accomplices in that disaster are included in its guilt; some of the hitherto known only as the slain who have suffered by the insurrection and as the survivors who have denounced it. Amongst _them_ lie some of those impeached by the circumstances. So far we might add little to the satisfaction of the public; to see the rolls of the guilty widening would but aggravate the sorrow of a calamity which now it could do nothing to diminish. But oftentimes to know the persons concerned in a great disaster is a step to knowing something of its causes. And this we will venture to say--that in defiance of all professional pedantry incident to military men and engineers the reader is likely to be of opinion that we at a distance of 7000 miles have pointed out capital blunders ensuring ruin and forming temptations to conspiracy which Lieutenant Eyre a principal artillery officer on the spot has failed to notice; and if he failed to notice them in his book _à fortiori_ he must have failed to notice them officially whilst yet it would have been in time. There were those things done in Cabool by the "fantastic tricks" of men dressed in authority which placed in their proper light go far to explain all the horrors that ensued. We know not whether they made "the angels weep " or rather made the devils laugh when hovering over Coord Cabool: but this we know that they are likely to make the hair stand on end of all considerate men in this land of energetic foresight. [1] "_Heads_ " we say because it is one amongst the grievous neglects of the military writers that they have made it impossible for us to describe the Affghan soldiery under any better representative term by giving no circumstantial account of the arms or discipline prevailing through the Affghan forces the tenure of their service &c. Many had matchlocks; but many we presume had only swords; and artillery the Affghans had none but what they had been suffered to steal in Cabool. _Fifthly_ It may be asked What is the moral of this dreadful affair? What inferences in the way of warning are to be drawn from it? This is a topic untouched by all the writers on the Affghan war. But undoubtedly the Cabool reverse was not more fitted to fix attention as a judgment for the past than as a warning for the future; not more as being (or being thought) the reaction from a public wrong authorized by English councils than as a premonitory case showing us what may be expected under the recurrence of similar circumstances. Circumstances altogether similar are not likely to recur in two centuries; but circumstances only in part similar a commander-in-chief incapacitated by illness or a second-in-command blind with infatuation might easily recur in critical or dreadful emergencies. Such circumstances _did_ happen in the Nepaul campaigns; imbecility in more leaders than one as abject as that at Cabool. And though it could not lead to the same awful results where there had not been the same elaborate _preparation_ of folly and upon ground so much nearer to the means of rectification still it was then sufficient to tarnish the lustre of our arms for the time and under worse circumstances would menace worse misfortunes. Neither is this all; there are other infirmities in our eastern system than the vicious selection of generals. But all the topics proper to this fifth head will fall more naturally under a paper expressly applying itself to India; and for the present we shall confine ourselves to the previous four. I. And _first_ then as regards the original motive assigned for the Affghan expedition. What profit in prospect or what danger in reversion moved us to so costly an enterprise? We insist singly on its cost which usually proves a sufficient _sufflamen_ in these days to the belligerent propensities of nations. Cicero mentions the advocate by name who first suggested the question of _Cui bono_ as a means of feeling backwards in a case of murder for the perpetrator. Who was it that had been interested in the murder? But the same question must be equally good as a means of feeling forwards to the probable wisdom of a war. What was the nature of the benefit apprehended and who was to reap it? The answer to this very startling question in the case of the Affghan expedition stood thus for a long time on the part of our own unofficial press--that the object had been to forestall Russia driving with headlong malice _en route_ for the Indus by surprising her advanced guard in Kohistan. Certainly if the surprise were all there might be something plausible in the idea. If the Russians should ever reach Kohistan we will answer for their being exceedingly surprised at finding an English camp in that region for the purpose of entertaining themselves. In reality no lunatic projector not Cleombrotus leaping into the sea for the sake of Plato's Elysium not Erostratus committing arson at Ephesus for posthumous fame not a sick Mr Elwes ascending the Himalaya in order to use the rarity of the atmosphere as a ransom from the expense of cupping in Calcutta ever conceived so awful a folly. Oh playful Sir John Mandeville sagacious Don Quixote modest and ingenious Baron Munchausen!--ye were sober men almost dull men by comparison with the _tête exaltée_ from some upper element of fire or limbo of the moon who conceived this sublime idea of leaping forward by a thousand miles to lay salt on the tail of a possible or a conceivable enemy. The enemy--the tail--the salt--these were all _in nubibus_; the only thing certain was the leap and the thousand miles. And then having achieved this first stage on the road why not go on to St Petersburg and take the Czar by the beard? The enormity of this extravagance showed from what mint it came. Ever since we have harboured the Czar's rebels in England there has been a craze possessing our newspaper press that Russia was or might be brewing evil against India. We can all see the absurdity of such reveries when exemplified by our quicksilver neighbour France bouncing for ever in her dreams about insults meditated from the perfidious England; but we are blind to the image which this French mirror reflects of our own attitude towards Russia. One hundred and fifty years ago the _incubus_ which lay heavy on the slumbers of England was the Pope; of whom Swift remarked that constantly his holiness was seen _incog_. under one disguise or other drinking at gin-shops in Wapping and clearly proved to be spying out the nakedness of the land. In our days the Pope has vanished to the rear of the English phantasmagoria and now lies amongst the [Greek: neknôn amenêna kasêna]. But not therefore is England without her pet nightmare; and that nightmare is now the Czar who doubtless had his own reasons lately for examining the ground about Windsor and Ascot Heath--fine ground for the Preobasinsky dragoons. How often in this journal have we been obliged to draw upon these blockheads and disperse them sword in hand! How gentlemen (we have said to them in substance ) if you must play the fool as alarmists can you find no likelier towers for menacing Calcutta with thunder storms than those of arctic St Petersburg; between which cities lies an interspace equal to both tropics? We remember as applicable to this case a striking taunt reported by Dampier that when one bucanier on the west coast of Peru was sailing away from the oppression of another to some East Indian port with a weak crew in a crazy vessel the ruffian from whom he fled told him at parting that by the time he saw green fields again the boys in his vessel would be greyheaded. And we suspect that the Russian drummer-boys by the time they reach the Khyber pass will all have become field-marshals seeing that after three years' marching they have not yet reached Khiva. But were the distance the snows the famine and thirst nothing is the bloodshed nothing? Russia is a colossus and Bokhara Khiva Kokan &c. are dwarfs. But the finger of a colossus may be no match for the horny heels of a dwarf. The Emperor Tiberius could fracture a boy's skull with a _talitrum_ (or fillip of his middle finger;) but it is not every middle finger that can do that; and a close kick from a khan of Toorkistan might leave an uglier scar than a fillip at arm's length from the Czar. Assuredly his imperial majesty would be stopped at many toll-bars before he would stable his horses in an Affghan caravansery; and would have more sorts of boxes than diamond snuff-boxes to give and take in approaching the Hindoo Koosh. But suppose him there and actually sitting astride of the old Koosh in boots and spurs what next? In our opinion the best thing he could do in case he desired any sleep for the next three months would be to stay where he was; for should he come down stairs into Affghanistan we English can by this time give some account of the shocking roads and bad entertainment for man and horse all the way to the Indus. Little to choose between the Khyber Pass or the Bolan: more kicks perhaps on the first but worse dinners on the other. And then finally about the costs the reckoning the "little account" which will be presented for payment on the banks of the Indus. _Us_ it cost forty thousand camels which for years could not be replaced at any price and nine millions sterling for a _part_ of our time. But the Czar who might wish to plant a still larger army on the Indus say thirty thousand and would have six times our length of march could not expect to suffer by less than three times the money and by the total generation of camels from Mecca to "Samarcand by Oxus--Temir's throne." Could any man rationally believe of a governor-general left at large by his council that under the terrors of a phantom invasion such as this visionary as a dream and distant as heaven is distant he could seriously have organized an armament which merely by its money costs would be likely to shake the foundations of the empire which he administered? Yet if Lord Auckland _had_ moved upon the impulse of a panic so delirious under what colour of reason could he have been impeached by the English press of which the prevailing section first excited and to this day nurses intermittingly that miserable Russian superstition?[1] The Polish craze adopted by the press of England and France and strengthened by the conviction that in Russia lay the great antagonist balance to the disorganizing instincts of Western Europe had made the Czar an object of hatred to the Liberal leaders. But to improve this hatred into a _national_ sentiment in England it was requisite to connect him by some relation with English "interests." Hence the idea of describing him as a vulture (or as Sinbad's roc ) constantly hovering over our sheep-folds in India. Gog and Magog are not more shadowy and remote as objects for Indian armies artillery and rockets than that great prince who looks out upon Europe and Asia through the loopholes of polar mists. Anti-Gog will probably synchronize with the two Gogs. And Lord Auckland would have earned the title of Anti-Gog had he gone out to tilt on an Affghan process of the Himalaya with--what? With a reed shaken by the wind? With a ghost as did the grandfather of Ossian? With an _ens rationis_ or logical abstraction? Not even with objects so palpable as these but with a Parisian lie and a London craze; with a word with a name nay with a _nominis umbra_. And yet we repeat a thousand times that if Lord Auckland had been as mad as this earliest hypothesis of the Affghan expedition would have made him the bulk of the English journals could have had no right to throw the first stone against a policy which at great cost of truth and honesty they had been promoting for years. [1] "_Miserable Russian superstition_."--This is now we believe decaying. But why? Not from sounder politics but from more accurate geography. The Affghan campaigns with the affairs of Bokhara of Khiva and Khoondooz have lighted up as with torches those worlds of wilderness and obstruction; so that in any practical sense people are ashamed _now_ to talk of St Petersburg as threatening Delhi or Calcutta. But _secondly_ what was the amended hypothesis of that expedition? Not Russia was contemplated aërial Russia but Affghanistan for herself--_that_ was the object present to Lord Auckland's thoughts; no phantom but a real next-door neighbour in the flesh. The purpose was to raise Affghanistan into a powerful barrier; and against what? Not specially against so cloudy an apparition as Russia but generally against all enemies who might gather from the west; most of all perhaps against the Affghans themselves. It must be known to many of our readers--that about the opening of the present century a rumour went traversing all India of some great Indian expedition meditated by the Affghans. It was too steadfast a rumour to have grown out of nothing; and our own belief is--that but for the intestine feuds then prevailing amongst the Suddozye princes (Shah Soojah and his brothers ) the scheme would have been executed; in which case falling in with our own great Mahratta struggle under Lord Wellesley such an inroad would have given a chance worth valuing that the sceptre might have passed from England--England at that time having neither steamers for the Indus nor improved artillery against Affghan jezails besides having her hands full of work. Between 1801 and 1838 it is true that things had altered; for the better we admit; but also for the worse. Much stronger were we; but on the other hand much nearer were the Affghans. Delhi and Agra with their vast adjacencies had become ours. Cutch was ours our outposts were pushed to the Sutlege; and beyond the Sutlege we had stretched a network of political relations. We therefore were vulnerable in a more exquisite sense. And on the other hand as respected the power of the Affghans to wound _that_ had not essentially declined. The Affghan power it must be remembered had never exposed a showy front of regal pomp such as oftentimes deceives both friend and foe masking a system of forces hollow and curious when probed by foreign war but had combined the popular energy arising from a rough republican simplicity and something even of republican freedom with the artificial energy for war of a despotism lodged in a few hands. Of all oriental races the Affghans had best resisted the effeminacy of oriental usages and in some respects we may say--of Mahometan institutions. Their strength lay in their manly character; their weakness in their inveterate disunion. But this though quite incapable of permanent remedy under Mahometan ideas could be suspended under the compression of a common warlike interest; and _that_ had been splendidly put on record by the grandfather of Shah Soojah. It was not to be denied--that in the event of a martial prince arising favourably situated for gaining a momentary hold over the disunited tribes he might effectually combine them for all the purposes of an aggressive war by pointing their desires to the plunder of India. The boundless extent of India the fabulous but really vast magnificence of her wealth and the martial propensities of the Affghans were always moving upon lines tending to one centre. Sometimes these motives were stationary sometimes moving in opposite directions; but if ever a popular soldier should press them to a convergence there could be no doubt that a potent Affghan army would soon be thrown beyond the Punjaub. An Affghan armament requires little baggage; and if it be asked how the Affghans were to find supplies for a numerous army which they never could subsist at home the answer is--for that very reason because they would _not_ be at home. The Roman principle of making war support war would be easily applied to the rich tracts of central India which an Affghan leader would endeavour to make the theatre of his aggression. They could move faster than we could. Semi-barbarism furnishes strength in that respect; and it would be vain to think of acting politically upon Affghanistan when all her martial children were in the act of projecting themselves upon stages of action which would soon furnish their own recompense to strength of character and to persevering courage. In fact the slightest review of Indian history ever since the first introduction of Mahometanism justifies Lord Auckland's general purpose of interweaving Affghanistan with the political system of India. This was no purpose of itinerant Quixotism-- seeking enemies where none offered of themselves. Affghans were _always_ enemies; they formed the _castra stativa_ of hostility to India. For eight hundred years ever since the earliest invader under the Prophet's banner (Mahommed of Ghuznee ) the Affghans had been the scourges of India; for centuries establishing dynasties of their own race; leaving behind them populous nations of their own blood; founding the most warlike tribes in Hindostan; and not content with this representative influence in the persons of their descendants continually renewing their inroads from the parent hives in Affghanistan. Could such a people brought by our own advance into so dangerous a neighbourhood have been much longer neglected? With any safety to ourselves certainly not. At least the outline of Lord Auckland's policy must be approved as wise and seasonable. All the great internal enemies of Indian peace had been reduced within English control by former governments; others had dealt so far as circumstances required with the most petulant of our outlying neighbours Nepaul and Burmah; and sooner or later if mischief were to be _prevented_ as well as healed it would be necessary to bring Affghanistan within the general system of cautionary ties. We wanted nothing with the independence of that country nor with its meagre finances; but reasonably we might desire that she herself should not wield either for the perpetual terror of her eastern neighbours. Westwards and northwards furnished surely an ample range for mischief; and with those quarters of the compass we had no mission to interfere. Like Hamlet the Affghans would still have a limited license for going mad viz.--when the wind sate in particular quarters; and along a frontier of more than a thousand miles. Still whilst seeing the necessity of extending the Indian network of tranquillization to the most turbulent and vigorous of neighbouring powers the reader will feel a jealousy as we do with respect to the time chosen for this measure:--why _then_ in particular? After which comes a far more serious question why by that violent machinery that system of deposing and substituting which Lord Auckland chose to adopt? As to the question of time it is too clear from the several correspondences however garbled which have been laid before Parliament that Herat was a considerable element in the councils at Calcutta. This seems so far a blunder; because of what consequence to India or even to Affghanistan was the attack of an imbecile state like Persia upon the Affghan frontier? Here however occurs the place for an important distinction; and it is a distinction which may better the case of Lord Auckland. In ridiculing the idea which regarded Russia as the natural enemy of India between which two mighty realms we may conceive a _vacuum_ to exist so as to cut off all communication we applied our arguments to the case of a _direct_ attempt upon India. This we hold not only to be impossible at present but even for centuries to come unless Russia shall penetrate to Bokhara and form vast colonies along the line of the river Amor; and if ever such changes should be made corresponding changes will by that time have established a new state of defensive energy in India. The Punjaub will by that time have long been ours: all the roads passes and the five great rivers at the points of crossing will have been overlooked by scientific fortresses; but far beyond these mechanic defences Christianity
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nd true civilization will by that time have regenerated the population who will then be conscious of new motives for defending themselves. A native _militia_ will then every where exist; and mere lawless conquerors on a mission of despotism or of plunder will have become as powerless against the great ramparts of civilization as American savages. The supposed Russian colonies indeed in stages of society so advanced would probably have shared by that time in the social changes; possibly would themselves form a barrier between the countries to the south and any ambitious prince in St Petersburg. Any _direct_ action of Russia therefore flies before us like a rainbow as futurity expands. But in the mean time an _indirect_ action upon India is open to Russia even at present. That action which she is powerless to carry on for herself she may originate through Persia. And in that we see the remarkable case realized--that two ciphers may politically form an affirmative power of great strength by combining: Russia though a giant otherwise is a cipher as to India by situation--viz. by distance and the deserts along the line of this distance. Persia though not so ill situated is a cipher by her crazy condition as to population and aggressive resources. But this will not hinder each power separately weak _quoad hoc_ from operating through the advantages of the other; as the blind man in the fable benefits by the sight of the lame man whom for the sake of wider prospect he raises upon his shoulders; each reciprocally neutralizing his own defects by the characteristic endowments of the other. Russia might use Persia as her wedge for operating with some effect upon the Affghans; who again might be used as the wedge of Persia for operating upon ourselves either immediately if circumstances should favour or mediately through the Seiks and the Beloochees. On this theory we may see a justification for Lord Auckland in allowing some weight to the Persian Shah's siege of Herat. Connected with the alleged intrigues of the Russian agent (since disavowed ) this movement of the Shah did certainly look very like a basis for that joint machinery which he and Russia were to work. Yet on the other hand we cannot but think that Lord Auckland might safely have neglected it; and on the following argument that whatever influence Persia could have acquired in Affghanistan through the possession of Herat would to a certainty have been balanced or overbalanced by an opposition growing out of that very influence. This happened to ourselves; and this will arise always in similar cases out of the incohesion essential to say nothing of the special feuds incident to the Affghan tribes khans and sirdars. Whilst therefore we recognize as a policy worthy of an Indian statesman the attempt to raise up a barrier in Affghanistan by way of defensive outwork to India we conceive that all which should have been desired was a barrier against the Affghans themselves by means of guarantees reposing on the structure of the Affghan government and not any barrier against Persia as the agent of Russia; because from the social condition of the Affghans Persia was always sure to raise up barriers against herself in exact proportion as she should attempt to intermeddle with Affghan affairs. The remedy was certain to grow up commensurately with the evil. But now quitting the question of the _when_ or why particularly at that time Lord Auckland interfered with Affghanistan let us touch on the much more important question of the _how_ or by what machinery it was that he proposed during this interference to realize his object? Here comes the capital blunder as we regard it of our Affghan policy. Lord Auckland started from the principle--and in _that_ doubtless he was right--that the security sought for Western India could be found only in a regular treaty of alliance with an Affghan government--firm at least by its tenure if circumstances forbade it to be strong by its action. But where was such a government to be found? Who in the distracted state of Affghan society was the man presumptuous enough to guarantee any general submission to his authority? And if no man could say this for himself could we say it _for_ him? Was there any great Affghan philosopher in a cave for whom Lord Auckland could become sponsor that he should fulfil all the purposes of British diplomacy? We are come upon evil ground where not a step can be taken without cutting away right and left upon friend and foe. Never in fact do we remember upon any subject so many untruths as were uttered upon this by our own journals English and Indian; not untruths of evil intention but untruths of inconsideration or of perfect ignorance. Let us review the sum of what was said both as to the man chosen and the man rejected; premising this however on behalf of Lord Auckland--that if he made an evil choice means there were not for making a better. The case was desperate. Not if Mr Tooke's Pantheon had clubbed their forces to create an Affghan Pandorus could the perfect creature have faced the emergency. With the shafts of Apollo clanging on one shoulder he could not have silenced the first feud viz. on his personal pretensions. But with the tallies of his exchequer rattling on the other--so furiously would a second feud have exploded that as easily might you gather a hail-storm into a side-pocket as persuade the Affghans of his right to levy taxes. Do you see the cloud of African locusts warping on the east wind? Will they suffer you to put them into Chancery? Do you see those eagles rising from Mont Blanc on the morning breeze? Will the crack of your mail-coachman's whip bring them to be harnessed? In that case you are the man to tax the Affghans. Pigs can see the wind; and it is not less certain that Affghans can scent a tax-gatherer through the Hindoo Koosh: in which case off they go on the opposite tack. But no matter if they stay--not the less with them to be taxed is to be robbed--a wrong to be remembered on death-beds and to be avenged were it in the fourth generation. However as the reckoning does not come before the banquet so the taxes do not come before the accession. Let us look therefore at the men the possible candidates simply in relation to that magnificent claim. There are two only put in nomination Dost Mahommed and the Shah Soojah: let us bring them forward on the hustings. Or considering them as horses entering at Epsom for the Derby the first to be classed as a five-year old the other as ""aged "" let us trot them out by way of considering their paces. The comments upon these men in England whether for or against were all personal. The Dost was the favourite--which was generous--as he had no solitary merit to plead except that he had lost the election; or as the watchmaker's daughter so pointedly said on behalf of Nigel Lord Glenvarloch ""Madam he is unfortunate."" Searching however in all corners for the undiscovered virtues of the Dost as Bruce for the coy fountains of the Nile one man reported by telegraph that he had unkenneled a virtue; that he had it fast in his hands and would forward it overland. He did so; and what was it? A certain pedlar or he might be a bagman had said--upon the not uncommon accident in Cabool of finding himself pillaged--""What! is there no justice to be had amongst you? Is Dost Mohammed dead?"" Upon which rather narrow basis was immediately raised in London a glorious superstructure to the justice of the Dost. Certainly if the Dost's justice had ever any reference to pedlars it must have been a nervous affection of penitential panic during some fit of the cholera and as transient as the measles; his regard for pedlars being notoriously of that kind which tigers bear to shoulders of lamb; and Cabool has since rung with his pillagings of caravans. But we believe the pedlar's _mot_ to have been thoroughly misconceived. If we see a poor man bleeding to death in a village lane we naturally exclaim--""What! is Dr Brown that used to practise here gone away?"" Not meaning that the doctor could have stopped the hemorrhage but simply that the absence of all medical aid is shocking and using the doctor's name merely as a shorthand expression for that aid. Now in the East down from scriptural days the functions of a sovereign were two--to lead his people in battle and to ""sit in the gate"" for the distribution of justice. Our pedlar therefore when invoking Dost Mahommed as the redresser of his wrongs simply thought of him as the public officer who bore the sword of justice. ""He cried to Pharaoh "" or he ""cried to Artaxerxes""--did not imply any reliance in their virtue as individuals but merely an appeal to them as professionally the ministers of justice. ""Are there no laws and no prisons amongst you?"" was the poor man's meaning; and he expressed this symbolically under the name of him who was officially responsible for both. But as one throws a bone to a dog we do not care to dispute the point further if any man is resolute to settle this virtue upon the Dost as a life-annuity. The case will then stand thus: We have all heard of ""Single-speech Hamilton;"" and we must then say--""Single-virtue Dost;"" for no man mentions a second. ""Justice for pedlars"" will then be the legend on his coin as meaning that there is none for any body else. Yet even then the voters for the Dost totally overlooked one thing. Shah Soojah had some shadow of a pretence which we shall presently examine to the throne of all Affghanistan; and a king of that compass was indispensable to Lord Auckland's object. But Dost Mahommed never had even the shadow of an attorney's fiction upon which he could stand as pretender to any throne but that of Cabool where by accident he had just nine points of the law in his favour. How then could we have supported him? ""Because thou art virtuous "" we must have said are we to support future usurpation? Because the Dost is just to pedlars ""shall there be no more ale and cakes"" for other Affghan princes? All Asia could not have held him upright on any throne comprehensively Affghan. Whether _that_ could have been accomplished for any other man is another question. Yet unless Lord Auckland could obtain guarantees from the unity of an _Affghan_ government nothing at all was done towards a barrier for the Indus. Let us resume however the personal discussion. The Dost's banking account is closed; and we have carried _one_ to his credit; but as the reader knows ""under protest."" Now let us go into the items of the Shah's little account. Strange to say these are all on the wrong side-- all marked with the negative sign. The drollest of all was the charge preferred against him by our Radicals. Possibly the Chartists the Leaguers and the Repealers have something in reserve against him. What the Radicals said was to this purpose: having heard of the Shah's compulsory flight more than once from Affghanistan they argued that this never _could_ have happened had he not committed some horrible _faux pas_. What could that be? ""Something very naughty be assured "" said another; ""they say he keeps a haram.""--""Ay "" rejoined a third ""but they care little about that in the East. Take my word for it he has been playing tricks against the friends of liberty: he has violated the 'constitution' of Caboolistan."" And immediately reverting to the case of Charles X. under the counsels of Prince Polignac they resolved that he must have been engaged in suppressing the liberal journals of Peshawur; and that the Khyberees those noble parliamentary champions of the cause for which Sidney bled on the scaffold had risen as one man and under tricolor banners had led his horse by the bridle to the frontiers of the Seiks. This was the colouring which the Radical journals gave to the Shah's part in the affair; and naturally they could not give any other than a corresponding one to ours. If Soojah were a tyrant kicked out for his political misdeeds we must be the vilest of his abettors leading back this _saevior exul_ reimposing a detested yoke and facilitating a bloody vengeance. O gentlemen blockheads! _Silent inter arma leges_-- laws of every kind are mute; and as to such political laws as you speak of well for Affghanistan if through European neighbourhood she comes to hear of those refinements in seven generations hence. Shah Soojah saw in youth as many ups and downs as York and Lancaster; but all in the good old honest way of throat-cutting without any fraternal discord on questions of _Habeas corpus_; and had he been a luckier man in his long rough-and-tumbles for the Affghan sceptre so as to have escaped the exile you reproach him with he would not therefore by one jot have been more or less a guilty one. The _purisms_ of political delinquency had little share therefore in any remorse which Shah Soojah might ever feel; and considering the scared consciences of oriental princes in such matters quite as little perhaps had the two other counts in his London impeachment. One imputed savage cruelty to him; the other with a _Johnny-rawness_ that we find it difficult to comprehend profligacy and dissoluteness of life. As to the cruelty it has often been alleged; and the worst case besides being the only attested case of the Shah's propensities in that direction is the execution of the Ghazees near the fortress of Ghuznee. We scorn to be the palliators of any thing which is bad in eastern usages--too many things are _very_ bad--but we are not to apply the pure standards of Christianity to Mahometan systems; and least of all are we to load the individual with the errors of his nation. What wounds an Englishman most in the affair of the Ghazees is the possibility that it may have been committed with the sanction of his own country officially represented by the British commander-in-chief. But then that consideration leads an Englishman to suspend with a stoic [Greek: epochê] and exceedingly to doubt whether the fact could have been as it was originally reported. So said we when first we heard it; and now when the zeal of malice has ceased to distort things let us coolly state the circumstances. A Mahometan Ghazee is a prededicated martyr. It is important to note the definition. He is one who devotes himself to death in what he deems a sufficient cause but as the old miser of Alsatia adds--""for a consideration;"" the consideration being that he wins Paradise. But Paradise he will _not_ win unless he achieves or attempts something really meritorious. Now in the situation of things before Ghuznee where a new ruler was brought in under the wing of Feringee infidels what meritorious service was open to him? To have shot the commander-in-chief would have merely promoted some other infidel. The one sole revolutionary act appropriate to the exigency was to shoot the Shah Soojah. There and in one moment would have gone to wreck the whole vast enterprize of the Christian dogs their eight hundred lakhs of rupees and their forty thousand camels. The mighty balloon would have collapsed; for the children of the Shah it was naturally imagined by Affghans would divide the support of their father's friends. That alone would have been victory to the Mussulmans; and in the case of the British army leaving the land (which then was looked for at any rate after one campaign ) the three Shahzades would by their fraternal feuds ensure rapid defeat to each other. Under this state of expectations there was a bounty on regicide. All Ghazees carried the word _assassin_ written on their foreheads. To shoot the Shah in battle was their right; but they had no thought of waiting for battle: they meant to watch his privacy; and some even after they were captured attempted in good earnest to sting. Such were the men-- murderers by choice and proclamation--and the following were the circumstances:--On the afternoon immediately preceding the storming of Ghuznee from the heights to the southward of that fortress descended a body of these fanatics making right for the Shah's camp. They were anxious to do business. Upon this a large mass of our cavalry mounted went forward to skirmish with them and drove them back with the loss of a standard. There the matter would have stopped; but Captain Outram casually passing persuaded some of the cavalry to go round the hills to a point where they would have intercepted the retreat of the Ghazees upon that line. Seeing this the devotees mounted the heights whither the cavalry could not follow; but Captain Outram vexed at the disappointment just then remarked an English officer marching in command of some matchlocks--him he persuaded to join the chase. Outram leading the whole party pushed on under a severe fire to the very topmost pinnacle of the rocks where was flying the consecrated banner green and white of the fanatic Mussulmans. This was captured the standard-bearer was shot thirty or forty killed and about fifty made prisoners. The sequel we give from page 164 of the _History_ edited by Mr. Charles Nash:[1]--""A scene now ensued much less pleasant to contemplate. It of course became a question what to do with the captives and they were brought before the Shah. _Some of them were released upon their declaring that they had been forced into the ranks of the king's opponents against their will_."" We pause to remark that already in this fact viz. the cheerful dismissal of prisoners upon their own verbal assurance of friendliness though so little reconcilable with the furious service on which they were taken there is enough to acquit the Shah of unmerciful designs. He made an opening through which all might have escaped. ""But "" proceeds the author ""the majority excited by fanaticism were not restrained even by the Shah's presence from evincing their animosity towards his person and avowing their determination to have been to seek his life. One of them more violent than the rest upon the interference of one of his majesty's attendants stabbed him with his dagger; and they were then"" [_then?_ what! because one was worse than the rest?] ""immediately ordered for execution. Two of them however were afterwards spared; one upon the plea of his being a Syud "" (i.e. a descendant collaterally from the Prophet ) ""and the other because he pleaded hard for his life."" [1] _History of the War in Affghanistan_. Brookes: London. 1843. We cite this work as one of respectable appearance and composition; but unaccountably to us from page 269 for a very considerable space (in fact from the outbreak of the Cabool insurrection to the end of General Elphinstone's retreat ) we find a _literatim_ reprint of Lieutenant Eyre's work. How is _that_? This account is not very luminous; and it is painful to observe that the man who was abject and the man who was lucky were the two selected for mercy. What proportion had previously been dismissed is not said. The affair occasioned much discussion as we all know; and the author speaks doubtfully of the necessity[1] under which the execution took place as not ""satisfactorily ascertained."" He speaks even more doubtfully of the _persons_ supposed to be implicated viz. the Shah and the commander-in-chief than of the _thing_. Little indeed could have been known distinctly where rumour ascribed to each separately the most contradictory acts and motives. Us it surprises that Lord Keane has not publicly explained himself under such gloomy insinuations. But in the mean time this is plain that the Shah is entitled to benefit by the doubts hanging over the case not less than our own officer. The writer suggests as one reason for a favourable judgment on the Shah ""previous acts of humanity in the course of his life."" Undoubtedly there are such acts and there are none well attested in the opposite scale. In particular he spared the eyes of his brother Mahmood when by all oriental policy he had every temptation to incapacitate an active competitor for the throne. Two considerations heighten the merit of this merciful forbearance; Mahmood was the elder a fact which slightly improved his title; and Mahmood in a similar situation had _not_ spared the eyes of an elder brother. [1] But afterwards at page 166 there is a dreadful insinuation that such a necessity might have founded itself on the danger of taking prisoners ""in a camp already subsisting on half and quarter rations."" Now we in a paper on Casuistry (long since published by this journal ) anticipated this shocking plea contending that Napoleon's massacre of 4000 young Albanians at Jaffa could draw no palliation from the alleged shortness of provisions whether true or false; and on the ground that a civilized army consciously under circumstances which will not allow it to take prisoners has no right to proceed. Napoleon's condition had not changed from the time of leaving Cairo. We little expected to see a Jaffa plea urged even hypothetically for a British army. We may certainly therefore dismiss the charges of cruelty against the Shah unless hereafter they shall be better established. But in doing this it is right to make one remark overlooked by all who have discussed the subject. If these Ghazees were executed as murderers elect and as substantially condemned by the very name and character which they assumed the usages of war in all civilized countries would sustain the sentence; though still there is a difficulty where on one side the parties were _not_ civilized. But if they were executed as traitors and rebels taken in arms such an act _pendente lite_ and when as yet nobody could say _who_ was sovereign must be thought little short of a murder. With the remaining charge we shall make short work. The reader would laugh heartily if we should call the Dey of Tunis a _dissenter_ the Pasha of Egypt an old _nonconformist_ or the Turkish sultan a _heretic_. But this way of viewing Islamism in some inconceivable relation to the Church of England or to Protestantism would not be more extravagant than the attempt to fasten upon an oriental prince the charge of debauchery and a dissolute life. The very viciousness of Asiatic institutions protects him from such reproaches. The effeminate delicacy of easterns and the morbid principle of seclusion on which they build their domestic honour will for ever secure both Hindoo Pagans and Mussulmans from blame of this kind until they pass under the influence of a happier religion. How can _they_ act licentiously in a way cognizable or proveable whom rank and usage will not permit to wander and who cannot have a temptation to wander from their own harems authorized by the institutions of their country? This last charge indeed being so intrinsically absurd is hardly of a nature to have merited any answer had it not been the one most insisted upon in England where its ludicrousness is not so apparent until the mind is recalled from the life of Christendom to that very different life which prevails in Asia. The charge then exhales into vapour; and a man laughs as a ship's company on the broad Atlantic would laugh if charged with roaming abroad at night. But why do we notice _personal_ considerations at all in a case where public relations to Affghanistan should naturally be paramount? We notice them because our own press dwelt on personal qualities almost exclusively; and since this Cabool tragedy will make the whole Affghan policy immortal we are anxious by dispersing the cloud of calumny connected with the object of our choice to clear the ground for a juster estimate of what was either good or erroneous in our further conduct. Not that personal accomplishments of mind or of body were unimportant in a ruler of simple half-barbarous men; nor again is it to be denied that Dost Mahommed from advantages of age (forty-five years against the seventy of the Shah ) and from experience more direct and personal would under equal circumstances have been the better man. But the circumstances were _not_ equal. The Dost could not have been more than a provincial ruler in the land; consequently he could not have undertaken that responsibility for the whole which formed the precise postulate of our Indian government. Yet because the Dost could _not_ meet our purposes is it true that the Shah _could_? That is the point we are going to consider; and to have postponed this question to a question of personalities even if those personalities had been truly stated is specifically the error which vitiated all the speculations of our domestic press. We say then that Shah Soojah had a _primâ facie_ fitness for our purposes which the Dost had not; Soojah was the brother son and grandson of men who had ruled all Affghanistan; nay in a tumultuary way he had ruled all Affghanistan himself. So far he had something to show and the Dost had nothing; and so far Lord Auckland was right. But he was wrong and we are convinced ruinously wrong by most extravagantly overrating that one advantage. The instincts of loyalty and the _prestige_ of the royal title were in no land that ever was heard of so feeble as in coarse unimaginative Affghanistan. Money was understood: meat and drink were understood: a jezail was understood but nothing spiritual or ancestral had any meaning for an Affghan. Deaf and blind he was to such impressions and perhaps of all the falsehoods which have exploded in Europe for the last six years the very greatest is that of the _Edinburgh Review_ in saying that the Suddozye families were ""sacred"" and inviolable to Affghans. How could such a privilege clothe the _species_ or subdivision when even the Dooaraunee or entire _genus_ was submitted to with murmurs under the tyranny of accident. In what way had they won their ascendency? By thumps by hard knocks by a vast assortment of kicks and by no means through any sanctity of blood. Sanctity indeed!--we should be glad to see the Affghan who would not upon what he held a sufficient motive have cut the throat of any shah or shahzade padishah or caliph though it had been that darling of European childhood--Haroun Alraschid himself. But how could royalty enjoy any privilege of consecration in a land where it was yet but two generations old? Even those two had been generations of tumultuous struggle. Oftener had the Shah been seen racing for his life on a Arab of the Hedjas than eating ""dillecrout""[1] in peace or dealing round a card-table grand crosses of the Dooraunee order. The very origin of Affghan royalty fathoms the shallowness of the water on which it floated. Three coincidences of luck had raised Ahmed to the throne. One dark night his master Kouli Khan for the benefit of all Asia had his throat cut. This Kouli or Nadir Shah was much more of a monster than Ahmed; but not very much less of a usurper. Riding off with his cavalry from Persia to Candahar Ahmed these robbed a caravan! Upon which every body cried out to him ""Go it!"" and his lucky connexion by birth with the best of the Dooraunee blood did the rest. A murder a flight and a robbery or pretty nearly in the words of our English litany ""Battle and murder and sudden death "" together with a silver spoon in his mouth at his natal hour had made Ahmed a shah; and this Ahmed was the grandfather of our own pet Soojah. In such a genealogy there is not much for a poet-laureate to found upon nor very much to make a saint out of. Ahmed after a splendid and tumultuous reign of twenty-six years died of cancer in 1773. His son Timour feigned distractedly for twenty years. Dying in 1793 Timour left a heap of shahzades amongst whom our good friend Soojah was almost the youngest. As they call people Tertius Septimus or Vicesimus from their station in the line of birth let us call _him_--Penultimate Soojah Penultimate if he was he could fight as respectably as the rest: and many was the kick he bestowed on antepenultimate Mahmood. From that year 1793 the zenith of the French Revolution in Affghanistan was nothing but fighting for some ten or fifteen years. Truly a battle royal it was; and if we cannot report to a fraction the ""list of the killed and wounded "" we know the main results. How many of the fraternal combatants leaped upon the throne we are not quite sure. Four we can swear to who were all pulled out by the ears before they had time to adjust the folds of their purple. The case of Eteocles and Polynices was a joke to it; and by the time the row or termashaw was over and the candles were brought back amongst this happy family the following was the state of matters--two stone blind three (if not four) stone dead and two in exile living upon charity; amongst which last was Penultimate Soojah. It is proper to mention by the way as an appendix to the adventures of this old friend that (improving upon his grandpapa's example) he had run off from his elder brother with the crown jewels; but like Colonel Blood in our Charles II.'s reign he benefited only by the glory of this distinguished larceny; for soon after falling amongst thieves at the head of whom was our late worthy ally the Seik Maharajah Runjeet Singh he in _his_ turn was effectually cleaned out; and in particular his silk ""wipe "" in which he had wrapped up the famous _Koh-i-noor_ or _summit of glory_ was cleanly forked out of his fob by the artful dodger old Runjeet himself. Here was a pleasant commentary on the adage of ""_Diamond cut Diamond_."" The jewels originally stolen by Ahmed were passed on (as in our game of _Hunt the Slipper_) from thief to thief until at least forty thieves had possessed them for a few weeks or months. All the forty are now dead; and at this moment the _summit of glory_ possibly never once worn by one of them is a derelict in the hands of the latest murderer at Lahore of course attracting by its light all hands towards his interesting throat. [1] ""_Dillecrout_.""--This is the traditional dish of royalty at our English coronation banquet in Westminster Hall. We have thus sketched a slender memoir for the leading family of saints amongst the Edinburgh reviewer's holy Suddozyes. Great must have been their sanctity amongst the Affghans. The reader will judge for himself whether that _aureola_ or supernatural glory about their heads was altogether sufficient to guarantee the throne of King Soojah. And it must not be quite forgotten that on the roll-call of legitimacy Penultimate Soojah did not stand next for promotion. Prince Caumraum who commanded at Herat stood before him equally in active qualities and in precedence of title; for he was the son of Mahmood. The sons of Zemaun had a still higher precedency. However the Affghans who are essentially democratic by the necessities of their turbulent condition often make a compromise in their choice of khans between strict primogeniture and personal merits where they happen to be appropriate. And they might have done so here. But we are now going in conclusion to bring forward one remark which utterly prostrates Lord Auckland's scheme as a scheme of hope for Affghanistan or of promise for his own purpose. It is this--no legitimacy of title and no personal merits supposing both to have met pre-eminently in the person of Soojah had a chance of winning over the Affghans to a settled state. This truth not hitherto noticed reveals itself upon inspecting the policy of all the Suddozye shahs from Ahmed downwards; and probably that policy was a traditional counsel. Ahmed saved himself from domestic feuds by carrying away all the active or aspiring or powerful spirits to continual wars in the Punjaub in Persia or India. Thus he sustained their hopes thus he neutralized their turbulence. Timour next and his son Zemaun after _him_ pursued the very same policy. They have been both taxed with foolish ambition. It was not _that_: the historian has not perceived the key to their conduct:--it was the instinct of self-preservation. No otherwise than by exhausting the martial restlessness of the Affghans upon foreign expeditions was durability to be had for any government. To live as a dynasty it was indispensable to cross the Indus in pursuit of plunder. But exactly that policy it was the one resource of prudent Affghan princes the escape-valve for conspiracy and treason which Lord Auckland's army had been put in motion to abolish. Now _thirdly_ let us examine the machinery by which these plans were to be executed. Under the last head we have seen that if on the whole perhaps the best instrument at hand and better essentially than the Dost very soon indeed Shah Soojah must have learned the necessity of passing over to that aggressive system which he had been raised up to destroy. Merely for his own safety he must have done this. But now suppose this otherwise and that Soojah had continued to be that p
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ssive instrument for the Indian cabinet which their plans required and presumed. Even on this supposition our agent or lieutenant Soojah would have required at first some support. By what machinery was this to be given? What was to be the instrument for sustaining our instrument? Simply taxation energetic taxation. Yet if _that_ should happen to fail what was to be the resource? Simply to fine and to amerce--_i.e._ more intense taxation. So in Molière's _Malade Imaginaire_ the only remedy is ""_Saignare et Purgare_."" But _lavemens_ had been known to fail. What was to be done in that case? _What is to be done?_ shrieks the Macaronic chorus--Why of course ""_Purgare et ensuita purgare_."" To the present government of India this organ of administration is all in all. And it was natural to transfer this doctrine to Affghanistan. But in that they mistook the notions of the Affghans. And in order to understand them it may be well to review the possible aspect and modifications under which the idea of a tax may fall. First there is the lawful and peaceful revenue raised in free Christian states under their noble civilization which is paid even thankfully as the purchase money for inappreciable social benefits. Next and in the very opposite extreme is the ruffian levy once raised upon central India by the ferocious Pindarree who asked for it with the insolence of a robber and wrenched it from the recusant with the atrocities of a devil. Here there was no pretence of equivalent given or promised: and this was so exquisite an outrage a curse so withering that in 1817 we were obliged to exterminate the foul horde (a cross between the Decoit and the Thug) root and branch. Now between these two poles lie two different forms of mitigated spoliation. One was the Mahratta _chout_ the other the _black mail_ of the Scottish cateran. Neither of these gave any strict or absolute equivalent; but with a rude sense of justice both on different principles endeavoured to indemnify the sufferer. The Mahratta generally by a treaty with the local government induced them to allow for the _chout_ as twenty-five per cent advanced out of their own claim for taxes. And the cateran if he did not go upon a convention with the government gave the compounder a protection from other caterans a discharge from irregular demands and a means of recovering what might be stolen by knaves. The European case of taxation may be viewed as the fairest case of buying and selling; the Pindarree as the vilest of robberies; and the two last as cases of compromise (or what in Roman law was called _transactio_ )--as a toll or fine in fact though too arbitrarily assessed. Such are the categories of taxation; and at the very best all Affghans viewed it in the light of _chout_ or _black mail_ a tribute to be thrown into the one scale if a gleaming sabre lay in the other. King Soojah levying taxes was to him a Mahratta at the least if he was not even a Pindarree or a Thug. Indeed it is clear that where the government does nothing for the people nor pretends to do any thing where no courts of justice exist no ambassadors no police no defensive militia (except for internal feuds ) title there can be none to any but a nominal tribute as a mere peppercorn acknowledgment of superiority: going beyond _that_ taxation is borne only as robbery is borne. Under these circumstances and having a motive so strong for reconciling the Affghans to the new government of all the incidents belonging to sovereignty on our European notions least and last should we have suffered the Shah to exercise that of taxation. But to exercise it ourselves that was midsummer madness! If _he_ would have seemed a robber in such a function what must we have seemed? Besides it is held by some who have more narrowly watched the Affghan modes of thinking that even where they _do_ submit to pay a tax it is paid as a loan and on the understanding that the chief receiving it is bound to refund it indirectly by leading them at some convenient season (which many conceive to be in every alternate year) upon a lucrative foray. But this was exactly what we came to prevent. What we should have done is manifestly this. How much could the Shah have levied on all Affghanistan? A matter of L. 300 000 at most. But this was the _gross_ sum before deducting any thing for costs of collecting which costs were often eighty shillings in the pound besides counting on the _little_ aid of our bayonets as a service wholly gratuitous. The sum netted by the exchequer must have been laughably small; and even in that respect the poor king must often have sighed for his quiet English lodgings on the left bank of the Sutlege. Now surely this trivial revenue might have been furnished on the following plan. In a country like Affghanistan where the king _can_ be no more than the first of the sirdars it is indispensable to raise his revenue meaning the costs of his courtly establishment as we ourselves did in England till the period of 1688. And how was _that?_ Chiefly on crown estates parks forests warrens mines just as every private subject raised his revenue reserving all attempt at _taxes_ in the shape of aids subsidies or benevolences for some extraordinary case of war foreign or domestic. Our kings English and Scotch lived like other country gentlemen on the produce of their farms. Fortunately for such a plan at that moment there must have been a fine harvest of forfeitures rising to the sickle all over the Affghan land for rebels were as thick as blackberries. But if any _deficit_ had still shown itself on the Shah's rent-roll one half of that L.30 000 a-year which we allowed to the Dost when our prisoner or of that smaller sum[1] which we allowed to the Shah when our guest would have made it good. Yet what if we had spent a million sterling through a period of ten years as a sort of scaffolding for the support of our new edifice whilst yet green and rising? Even in that case and supposing us to have taken our leave of the Dooraunee throne at the end of one year after planting it as firmly as it ever could be planted we should have pocketed six million of pounds sterling that now are gone; whereas we insisted on sinking three millions per annum for the first three years in some bottomless Affghan Chatmoss with the effect (seemingly with the intention) of enabling King Soojah to earn universal hatred by netting a few lacs of rupees. [1] _Smaller sum._--L.20 000 a-year. There was however a separate allowance we believe to Zemaun the king's blind brother. This was the rock on which we split. Had we restrained the king from levying taxes all might have gone well. Had we restrained ourselves from enforcing his levies all might have gone decently. And had we prompted the king to inaugurate some great public benefit--as for instance by conferring upon the people a simple system of judicial process and distributive justice--both he and we might have become popular; for even in Affghanistan there must be multitudes of poor men peasants and tradesmen in towns mothers and wives who sigh for peace and curse their endless agitations. Yes even amongst their martial spirits who now live by war and the passions of war many are they who would relent from their angry feuds if it were possible to get justice without them. The sum therefore of that question; viz. of the _How_ and by what machinery Lord Auckland proposed to accomplish his not unstatesmanlike object is this--that we failed utterly and chiefly by applying European principles to Oriental communities; and in particular 1st By throwing a prodigious stress on the fancied consecration of royalty in a country where it would have snapped under the weight of a L.10 note. 2dly By enforcing (and even exercising in our own persons as principals) the odious power of taxation under the monstrous delusion that it was the first of a king's privileges where in fact and with some reason it was viewed as the last of his excesses. The first was a _negative_ delusion. We fancied a mighty power where simply there was none; fancied a substance where there was not even a shadow. But the second was worse: it was a _positive_ delusion. We fancied a resource where simply there was a snare--a mooring cable where simply there was a rope for our execution--a sheet-anchor where simply there was a rock waiting for our shipwreck. Not the less however we maintain that whilst in fact our ruin was self-prepared come it would sooner or later from the necessity of Affghan society had the actual occasion of that ruin been wanting. You build a palace on the waters and you complain that a monsoon has overthrown it. True; but had there been no monsoon equally it would have been supplanted by the _natural_ unsteadiness of the waves. Now _fourthly_ however for Cabool and the crape-bound banners ""perituraque castra!"" Fourthly and lastly for the solution of that hideous calamity whose memory is accursed for ever. But the solution-- is not _that_ plain already? If what we allege be true if the delusions exposed under the third head are rightly stated will not _they_ solve the ruin of Cabool? Are not _they_ sufficient? No nothing will solve it--no causes are sufficient for such a result unless a strong spirit of delusion had been inflicted from heaven distraction frenzy judicial madness. No dangers from the enemy no pressure from without _could_ have accomplished that wreck had they not been aided by treachery within the counsels of our own hearts. It is an old saying of any subject too vast or too sad to measure by hurried words--that ""_de Carthagine satius est silere quam parcius dicere_."" And in this case where we have left ourselves too narrow a space to turn round in and where no space would exhaust the infinities of the affliction it is not our purpose to heighten or rhetorically to colour any one feature of the dismal story. Rhetoric and art of all kids we forswear in a tragedy so torturing to our national sensibilities. We pass in sympathy with the burning wrath of our readers the madness of dallying and moping over the question--to starve or not to starve. We pass the infamy of entertaining a treaty with barbarians _commenced_ in this foul insult to a British army--that _after_ we should have submitted to indignities past expression they (the barbarians) would consider at their leisure whether it would please them to spare our necks; a villany that gallant men _could_ not have sanctioned an which too certainly was not hurled back in their teeth as it ought to have been. We pass the lunacy of _tempting_ barbarians to a perfidy almost systematic in their policy by consenting to a conference _outside_ the British cantonments not even within range of the British guns not even within the overlooking of British eyes. We pass the lunacy of taking out sixteen men as an escort against a number absolutely unlimited of the enemy and where no restraint even of honour or mutual understanding forbade that unlimited enemy to come armed from head to foot. It is a trifle to add--that no instructions were given to the sixteen men as to what they were to do or in what circumstances to act; and accordingly that one man only out of the whole sixteen attempted any resistance; and this in defiance of warnings eight several times reiterated by English officers and by friendly Affghans that treachery was designed. We pass the triple lunacy of treating at all in a case where Sir William M'Naughtan well knew and himself avowed his knowledge that no man or party existed amongst the enemy who could pretend to have authority sufficient for ratifying or for executing any treat of whatsoever tenor. The Cabool forces perished eventually by the _dissension_ of the two first in command. This is notorious. And yet to mark the dread fatality which pursued them the _concord_ of these two officers was even more destructive to their victims than the worst of their disputes. In the one solitary case where they agreed the two leaders Elphinstone and Shelton _sealed_ their doom. That case was this:--Many felt at that time as all men of common sense feel now that the Bala Hissar and not Jillalabad was the true haven for the army. In resisting this final gleam of hope for the army both General Elphinstone and Brigadier Shelton heartily concurred; _and they concurred then first and then last_. This also this almost incredible fact should be added to the anecdote--General Elphinstone when hard pressed by the general wishes on this point pleaded as a last reason for his obstinacy--that a particular article essential to the army was wanting in the Bala Hillar. Subsequently but after all was over it turned out that this plea had been the windiest of chimaeras. True you reply but perhaps he was deceived. Yes reader but by what manner of deception? He was distant from the Bala Hissar by less than two miles; he was then in almost daily communication with it; and yet upon a matter confessedly one of life and death for 17 000 souls he took no steps for ascertaining the truth! But these things we pass in order to reach a point most superficially treated by Lieutenant Eyre which was in truth the original fountain of the whole calamity. We have said already that (guilty as might be the leaders by unexampled fatuity obstinacy and improvidence ) in our judgement the mischief ascended to elder sources than either General Elphinstone or Shelton. And here was the main source which (on the principle explained above) we shall barely indicate not saying one word in aggravation. The cantonments--who was it what man what men what council on whom rests the horrible responsibility of that selection and that execution? We contend that besides those _directly_ responsible parties others were so to a criminal extent; every artillery officer was so; and therefore unless some further explanations are made Lieutenant Eyre is so. But surely Lieutenant Eyre has exposed the vices of these cantonments. True he has so; _some_ of the vices but not all but not the worst. The ground he tells us was bad; the line of fortifications too extensive; the interior overlooked in parts; and (with a view to the accommodation of the envoy) the defences absolutely interrupted in their regular series. True; and therefore night and day it became the duty of every artillery officer to cry out _Delenda est Carthago_. But all this is not the worst. Even a child knows that under the circumstances of the case and the known reversionary uses of such a retreat in the event of its being wanted at all (except as a barrack ) it was of the last importance to destroy all the strong places nay even all the cover strong or not strong which could shelter an enemy. This was not attempted or thought of until it became too late. Next it was of even more clamorous importance to have the corn magazine _within_ the line of defences: no effort was made in that direction. Now had these been the only defects of the cantonments they were enough to argue a constructive treason in those who neglected to denounce then. We know how they operated. These three ruins issued from these most culpable negligences:--1st Starvation fell in one day upon the British host; and _that_ it was which placed them at the mercy of the enemy. 2dly The troops were inadequate to the extent of the defences; so that together with starvation loss of sleep fell upon the fighting men. 3dly As another effect from that cause a perpetual Penelope's web was to be maintained; for as often as detachments went out from cantonments against the many neighbouring forts before they could possibly have time to destroy these nests of hornets back they were summoned to the defence of their own _lares_; often in broad daylight by combined assaults of the enemy on their own ramparts but always by the approach of night. So that all momentary advantages became idle and useless; none could be followed up none could be maintained. Lucan says of Caesar when besieged in the fortified palace of the Ptolemies at Alexandria that often whilst thrown on his most difficult defence the matchless soldier became the assailant-- ""Obsessusque gerit tanta est constantia mentis _Offensoris_ opus."" But what _he_ did as a trophy of his superiority we did by imbecile improvidence and for final ruin. Yet even these shocking neglects or oversights were not the worst. Let us now suggest what _were_. Wherefore were the cantonments placed in proximity so close to Cabool? Let that be answered and we shall see the early commencement of our infatuation. Two considerations will clench the case and then we shall leave it. 1st The cantonments were never meant to act upon the city of Cabool: that task was thrown upon the Bala Hissar from its situation. And yet no trial had ever been made of the power possessed by that fortress. The private houses were known to be forts: not until rebellion commenced was it ascertained of what strength they were; and eventually the city proved more formidable to the Bala Hissar than the Bala Hissar to the city. Such a blunder of ignorance and miscalculation we believe was never heard of. But 2dly Even that was a trifle by comparison with the capital evil--and the capital evil was this. The enemy was allowed throughout the autumn of 1841 to accumulate _ad libitum_ in Cabool. Retainers of the chiefs Ghilzyes and others gathered unwatched throughout October. Now mark what followed from our choice of cantonments. Had they been fixed fifteen or even ten miles off the impossibility of marching daily to and from Cabool would have strangled the rebellion in its first three days. The evil which crushed ourselves of having always at sunset to go homewards would have been thrown upon the enemy and with as much more of ruinous effect as the distance was greater. As it never was alleged that the cantonments were meant for the overawing of Cabool and in effect they were totally inefficient as regarded that city--it is clear that the one great advantage by which the Affghans accomplished our destruction was coolly prepared for them by ourselves without the shadow of any momentary benefit for our own interests. Even for provisions the event showed that we had never looked to Cabool. And there reveals itself the last feature of our perfect madness. ETCHED THOUGHTS BY THE ETCHING CLUB. In the Number of _Maga_ of January 1842 we reviewed one of the labours of the Etching Club--_The Deserted Village_. We congratulated the lovers of art upon the resumption of the needle and showed the advantages which in some important respects it has over the graver. Etching as it is less mechanical is more expressive. We have from it the immediate impress of the painter's mind; that peculiar autographic character which marks every turn and shade of thought even transition of thought and feeling in what may at first view seem vagaries of lines; which we know not how (nor is the artist himself at the time conscious of the operation ) discriminate innumerable niceties each having its own effect and yet tending to one whole. We rarely come at once _uno ictu_ to a decision. The operation is progressive--from conception to conception from feeling to feeling from many shades of uncertainty to decision. The first fresh hand upon any work is obedient to the mind in this process; and hence it is that we so value so admire the sketches and drawings of the great masters. We see not only the full complete sentiment of the subject but how they came to it; we trace it back through all its varieties and feel a sensible delight in being in possession of the very mind of the master. Were this not the case how are we to account for the charm felt in turning over a portfolio of old drawings? How exquisitely beautiful are those of Raffaelle and Titian! The sale of the collection of Sir Thomas Lawrence proves the high estimation in which these are ever held. Thousands of pounds for a few drawings! What sums were given for Claude's ""Liber Veritatis!"" and why?--Because these original drawings of the old masters possess this very autographic character that we have described. And this is precisely the case with etching. Nor is it only the case with those of the Italian but those of every school; and singularly enough the Flemish and Dutch painters whose high finish and elaborate colouring give such great value to their works were eminently successful in the free and expressive style of etching. Rembrandt we need not speak of--wondrous indeed are his works of the needle. How exquisite are the etchings of Berghem Both and Karel du Jardin! and to show how characteristic they are how different are they from each other! It is to be regretted that this art is of modern invention. What treasures might we not have possessed had this inestimable secret been known to the ancients! We should not be left to conjecture the merits of Apollodorus Zeuxis Parrhasius Timanthes Apelles. We might have had outlines--first thoughts--""etched thoughts "" by Phidias himself. And as the art of design was earlier than any of those names--even coeval with or prior to Homer himself--those who engraved and worked in metal their shields might have handed down to us etchings of Troy itself and particulars of the siege. Do we lose or gain by not having the ancient book of beauty? But we must be content with what we have and in the regret see the value of the present looking to future value. Etching is still old enough to interest by its portraiture of ages gone by. The inventor is not known. Perhaps the earliest specimen is the well-known ""Cannon"" by Albert Durer dated 1518; and there is one by him ""Moses receiving the Tables of the Law "" dated 1524. The art was soon after practised by Parmegiano and extended to general use. Yet it is clear that the real power and merit of etching was not known to the inventor nor to those who in its early state applied themselves to it. The first aim seems to have been exact imitation of the graver. Le Bosse in his treatise on engraving makes the perfection of the art consist in the close similitude of the graver's work. It was this which at first cramped the artist and delayed the progress of etching and gave it not only the appearance but the reality of inferiority--and often times the name and reputation of inferiority is as prejudicial as the thing itself and we verily believe that it still has its effect upon the public taste. Artists have not sufficiently taken to etching. We have had more amateurs excel in it than professional artists. There was a collection of amateur etchings at Strawberry Hill given to Walpole by the etchers. The greater part of them is excellent though they are mostly copies from other works but not all. There are some surprising imitations of Rembrandt. The best are by Lady Louisa Augusta Neville afterwards Lady Carlisle. Then again the union of etching and engraving has certainly retarded the art and has given it another character. If that union has engrafted freedom on engraving it has given to the needle too much precision--it has taken from it the working out effects. We have elsewhere noticed that the taste for the precise and labored engraving in landscape introduced by Woollet drove out from the field that which was very superior to it. The prints from Claude and Poussin by Vivares Wood Mason and Chatelet and published by Pond are infinitely more characteristic of the masters than the works which succeeded them. But we speak here only of imitation. It is in the original handling of artists themselves not in translated works and according to the translating phraseology ""done by different hands "" that we are to look for the real beauty and power of the art. It is this handwriting of the artist's original mind that constitutes the real beauty; we would not have a touch of the graver to any work professing to be an etching--the graver cannot be used with impunity. If it will admit of any adventitious aid it may perhaps be in a very subordinate degree mezzotint and aquatint. But etching rather improves Prince Rupert's invention than is advantaged by it. The sootiness of mezzotint is dangerous--in bad hands it is the ""black art"" of Prince Rupert though the term was applied to a metal of the prince's invention not to his discovery of mezzotint. Modern times have brought the art of engraving to a wonderful perfection. Its mechanical work is most exquisite and reaches the whole effect of picture surprisingly. If the publishing public knew as well what to engrave as our engravers know how to engrave we should not see our printsellers' windows teem with worthless works beautifully executed. We often wonder as we stop occasionally to look at the display where the purchasers are found for things that pain the eye and weary the mind to see--history or landscape or familiar life it matters not nearly all without feeling elaborate nothings--obtrusions unless we are disposed to examine only the work of the engraver; and even then we must lament to see it thrown away or rather employed in disseminating bad taste. How rarely is it we see even a subject of any value or interest attempted! It is as in our play-writing not the subject but the peculiarity of some actor that is to be written up to; so the peculiarities of some few flashy favourite artists employ our best engravers who ought to be far otherwise employed in making transcripts from the best works ancient or modern by which taste may be improved the mind enlarged and the heart made to feel as it ought. If our flashy prints are the index of the public taste in this country we have little of which to boast; and we undoubtedly keep our artists from rising to any worthy aim by showing them how satisfied we can be with mediocrity and even some degrees below it. There is in etching a lightness and playfulness of execution which excuses if it does not quite reconcile us to a bad subject. We lose the idea of effort in the freedom. To present to the eye a laboured nothing is to disgust by the sense of labour alone. We calculate the time and cost and look for an object worthy the outlay in vain and become thoroughly dissatisfied. We have a great mind to describe the process of etching that the lovers of art who read _Maga_ and happen to be ignorant of it may try their hands--it is very fascinating work and even the uncertainty in the first attempts and the very failures give pleasure in the operation. There is something more pleasant in hoping our labour will turn out well than knowing it. If there be any whose time hangs heavy on their hands let them take up etching. Johnson lamented that men did not work with their needles considering the employment of the hands a great aid to thought--and so it is. Now the etching-needle is the one a man may take up without becoming ridiculous. As there are so many ""Handmaids"" to the art from which the whole mystery may be learned we forbear. We have however turned to our friend Gerard Larresse for the purpose of setting down _secundum artem_ a practical account and find it not: but we like little old treatises better than modern there is something unsophisticated in their manner of giving information and there is no study of periods which in their music steal away the understanding; so we refer to Faithorne. But nevertheless our friend Gerard if he does not give information supplies amusement. He thinks every thing best told by an emblem--so receive reader his pictorial account of the art; we cannot give his plate so be content with _his_ description of it that is Etching. ""This beautiful virgin sitting at a table has before her a copperplate lying on a sand-bag; and near it stands a little monkey placing a lighted lamp before her. She is attended by Prudence and Diligence and Practice is setting the tools on an oil-stone. Her chair is of ebony adorned with figures of Sincerity and Assiduity wrought in ivory and mutually embracing; behind which stands Judgment showing her a little further Painting accompanied by Apollo and Diana; he holding up his torch in order to enlighten Sculpture and she hers reversed with purpose to extinguish it; the Genii in the mean time are every where busy in providing necessary materials. The eldest offers her a drawing either redded or whited on the back and a point or needle for tracing it on the plate; this drawing represents the design he is going about. Others in an inner apartment are employed in heating a plate on a chafing-dish and laying the ground even with a feather. Here one is etching--there another biting a plate; others taking and reviewing proofs with great attention and pleasure--while Fame having a proof of a portrait in her hand with her trumpet sounds out at a window the praises of masters or engravers. Honour crowned with laurel and bearing a small pyramid is entering the room ushering in Annona or Prosperity who has a cornucopia or horn filled with fruits. Round the room are set on pedestals divers busts of famous etchers and engravers; as Marc Antonio Audlan Edelinck Vander Meulen and several other Italian and French as well as Dutch and German masters. In the off-skip Europe Asia and Africa appear standing in surprise at the sound of the trumpet."" There is nothing like example! Who sees in this prophetic enigma in his ""chair of ebony "" other than ""Ebony"" himself the ""_most accomplished Christopher_ "" beaming with ""sincerity "" and placid in his ""assiduity "" with ""Judgment"" waiting upon him at command wielding neither crutch nor pen but in affable condescension the contemned needle etching the portrait of his own ""Colonsay "" and his own famous exploit to show that one needle in the hand of genius can make a man and a horse too; though nine tailors and nine needles scarcely make up the complement of a man--yet would these nine in one the renowned of Brentford scarcely have matched ""Christopher on Colonsay!"" And as for Fame blowing out of the window he in spite of himself and his modesty is his own trumpeter and as _Maga_ reaches them surprises ""Europe Asia Africa "" and America too. Such is the emblematical representation of etching and we have embellished it with a first-rate performer. And now let us turn to ""Etched Thoughts by the Etching Club."" We find a new name or two added to the list--C.G. Lewis the renowned and best of etchers; and Severn whose etchings are new to us not so his other works of art. We remember his ""Ship of the Ancient Mariner "" and his expressive sentimental figures; and poor Fearnley--now no more--we remember greatly admiring a somewhat large picture of his--""A River-Scene in Norway ""--evidently painted immediately from nature powerfully expressively given. Somehow or other he did not take in this country and quitted it leaving behind him very beautiful studies strangely undervalued and sold for little. The fact is he was too true to the solemnity and sobriety of nature to please a public led away by gaudy display and meretricious colouring. Yet was he a man of more genius--in landscape--than any nine out of ten of our best artists that have these last ten years attempted to show nature or art upon our academical walls. Poor Fearnley! We have heard that elsewhere he was appreciated and successful. Stone and Herbert are good additions. Happy is it when the feelings of the artist and poet are in unison; happier still when the poet is himself the artist: and such is the case here. So that in many cases they are really ""Etched Thoughts""--not etched translations of thoughts; and the work of the pen is not inferior to that of the needle. In the ""Deserted Village"" was a continuous story; every plate was in connexion with its preceding. In this publication every artist seems to have been left to his own choice of subject and to his free fancy. Cope first comes under our notice. He commences the work with ""Love "" and a quotation from Spenser. As an etching it is powerful but we doubt if quite true: there should be something to account in such a twilight scene for the strong light upon the ""Ladye-love!"" Nor are we quite satisfied with the love of the lover or the reception it meets with. The man or his guitar one of the two if not both must be out of tune. His ""Veteran's Return"" tells its tale and a somewhat mournful one; it is in illustration of some very good and pathetic lines by a member of the club H.J. Townsend; and as we believe they are not to be met with out of ""Etched Thoughts "" we extract them for the gratification of the reader:-- THE VETERAN'S RETURN. The old yew deck'd in even's parting beams From his red trunk reflects a ruddier ray; While flickering through the lengthen'd shadow gleams Of gold athwart the dusky branches play
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The jackdaws erst so bustling on the tower Have ceased their cawing clamour from on high; And the brown bat as nears the twilight hour Circles--the lonely tenant of the sky. The soldier there ere pass'd to distant climes On Sabbath morn his early mates would meet; There list the chant of the familiar chimes And the fond glance of young affection greet. There too at eve--before the twilight grey Led the dark hours when sprites are wont to walk-- With his sweet Nancy how he joy'd to stray And tell his rustic love in homely talk. Now home return'd far other thoughts he owns Though still the same the scene that meets his view! The same sun glistens o'er the lichen'd stones-- Scarce one year more seems to have gnarl'd the yew. There too the hamlet where his boyhood pass'd Sends as of old its curls of smoke to ken-- So near his stalwart arm a stone might cast Among the cots that deck the coppiced glen! But ere the joys of that domestic glade Can wipe the tear from off his rugged brow A stone beneath the yew-tree's ebon shade Deep o'er his heart a heavier shade doth throw. (Oh! sad indeed when thus such tidings come That stun even when by slow degrees they steal ) That tablet tells how cold within the tomb Are hands whose fond warm grasp he long'd to feel. The ""Painter of the Olden Time.""--""His shop is his element and he cannot with any enjoyment to himself live out of it.--Dr South."" This is very good. The painter has his back to you and is at work apparently on a wall. Little wots he of the world without. He is embodying angels and spreading angelic light; himself slipshod and loosely girdled centring the radiance he creates. How differently arrayed are body and mind! By the title we presume Mr Cope means to satirize some modern fops of the profession. Of all Mr Cope's etchings in the volume we mostly admire ""Love's Enemies."" It is from the well-known passage of Shakspeare ""Ah me! for aught that ever I could read "" &c. The conception is excellent. War Death and Sickness are taking off their prisoner Cupid chained from the door of an aged couple willing enough to part with him while their poor broken-hearted daughter with disheveled hair hides her face with her hands; and above her the hard father's uplifted crutch is ready to speed the departure. It is lightly etched in very good keeping; so that the grouping is clear and the moral is perceptible at a glance. His ""Rejected Addresses"" is of another cast. Here he is in the common and beggarly world: yet represents he no common beggar; for though he be often so named he is one of rare accomplishments. ""He can write a capital letter enough to make any of the 'quality people' cry. The begging-letter people give him a shilling for a letter. He is now on the tramp."" The man was a lawyer and so astute that he can so adjust himself and his shadow that he will hide in it from your scrutiny any habitual expression of his villany. And Cope has been most happy in this idea. ""Morning Prayer"" is introduced with a few elegant lines we presume by Mr Cope himself. They have no name to them. The figure is graceful the effect tender; but we confess we have been so satiated with such subjects in the Annuals that we do not relish this as perhaps we ought. From the same cause we do not dwell upon ""The Mother."" ""The Wanderer-- the beggar and his dog "" is good. The impostor beggar was in sunshine and which he turned to his purpose: he could cope with the world's broad glare. This is no impostor; and the atmosphere he breathes is suited to his fortunes. The rejecting hand with its shadow of the dry skinny fingers is well conceived. ""The Readers "" from Boccaccio is not happy. The figures are not Italian; nor is the costume of the age of the book. His ""Girl and Cupid"" is a little gem reminding us of Schidoni. We presume these lines are by the etcher-- ""Love in the virgin breast of beauty lying Laughs at the fate for her he doth prepare-- Will swiftly turn her sweetest smiles to sighing And flee when she is fixed in despair."" We have seen so many ladies with up-turned eyes called in the annual catalogues ""Meditation "" that we will not interrupt the calm of Mr Cope's. C.G. Lewis has but one plate ""A Woodland Dell."" A quiet spot of shade and flickering sunshine--a streamlet and a rural bridge. It is sweetly etched true to the character. Richard Redgrave in more than one instance in the book shows that he has power over the deep and solemn pathetic as well as over the tender. His first plate is ""The Survivors of the Storm."" The story is from Petronius as told by Jeremy Taylor. A floating body of one of a shipwrecked crew lies pillowed on a wave and is met with by the survivors in their boat. Solemn and awe-stricken is their expression. The plate is of a fine tone befitting death in that awful shape. This story of Petronius was the subject of a poetical piece which we remember to have read in a volume of poems by Thomas Flatman one of the ""mob of gentlemen"" condemned by Pope who nevertheless did not care about borrowing from him pretty much of his version of the ""Animula blandula vagula""--the Emperor Adrian's address to his soul. We remember the commencement of the piece:-- ""After a blustering tedious night The winds all hush'd and the rude tempest o'er Rolling far off upon a briny wave Compassionate Philander spied A floating carcass ride That seem'd to beg the kindness of a grave. At near approach he thought he knew the man "" &c. His ""Fairy Revels"" make a light and elegant plate. A fairy group in a frame of leaves. He is here both painter and poet. ""Hast thou not seen the summer breeze The eddying leaves and downy feather Whirl round a while beneath the trees Then bear aloft to heaven together? With just such motion gliding light These fairies vanish'd from my sight."" Poor unfortunate Dadd! some years ago he exhibited a picture of this subject somewhat similarly treated that was exquisitely ideal. The ""Ellen Orford "" from Crabbe's _Borough_ is good in the effect; but it has not the pathos that usually distinguishes Redgrave. ""Rizpah watching her Sons "" is very fine. The night the glaring torchlight to scare away the approaching wolves and the paler more distant light in the sky with the melancholy mourning Rizpah are of the best conception. ""The Sick Child"" has quite the effect of a Rembrandt plate; yet it is very tender--a scene fit for the angelic visit and pure and devout of thought and purpose is that angel--we do not like the mother. The best description is from Mr Redgrave's own pen. ""THE SICK CHILD. ""He shall give his angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways.""--PSALM xci. ""In a chamber faintly crying With its mother o'er it sighing Lay a baby pale and wan; Ever turning--restless turning-- Much she dreaded fever burning Sickness slow or sickness hasting Cough convulsion ague wasting. Bitter tears there fell upon The pale face of her little son. ""The evening chimes had ceased their ringing And the even song was singing In the old kirk grey with years; Through the air sweet words came welling-- Words of peace unto that dwelling; Hymns they sang how angels shielded Those who ne'er to sin had yielded:-- And her pale face lost its fears-- That lonely mother dried her tears. ""In her arms the babe soon slumber'd; That little son whose days seem'd number'd Smiled upon his mother sleeping. The Lord indeed had sorely tried her But his angel knelt beside her; Heavenly breezes cool'd the fever Of her child--He shall not leave her! And this mother ceased her weeping."" The ""Expected Return"" is quite in Redgrave's best manner ""Fancy impatient of all painful thoughts Pictured the bliss should welcome his return; * * * * * And hope and memory made a mingled joy.""--SOUTHEY This is a lovely figure; a loving and lovable gentle creature! and many such have we seen by Redgrave's hand. Not Raffaelle himself could more truly paint the pure mind--that precious jewel innocence in its most lovely casket. Severn has two plates which may be called companions; racy and good are they and of one vintage. We are not quite satisfied with either face or figure of the maiden in the ""Roman Vintage."" Hers is not a face of feeling; nay we would almost beg Mr Severn's pardon and pronounce her a bit of a fool. The ""Neapolitan"" is much better. They are executed in a very bold broad free style of etching and effective. Horsley's ""English Peasant"" might be allowed to be a little weatherbeaten; but at first sight we should say that he was not of the temperance society when the aquafortis was on the table. It is black from being overbitten. Yet after a while we see through the darkness into the character. He is an honest fellow but a little ""disguised."" His ""Twilight"" is very good yet perhaps is the light a little too sharp and strong for that hour. The subject is from verses by Redgrave and good and quaintlike old gentle rhymes they are. But how comes it that the figures are both feminine?--that does not accord with the lines. ""Time was no more for them: the sun had gone The stars from sunset glow began to peer; Yet 'neath those stars that pair still linger'd on Unconscious of the night fast drawing near! His voice to her was daylight and her smile A sunny morning breaking o'er his soul: Such hours of bliss come only once--the while Long-silent love speaks forth without control And of its hopes and fears first telleth out the whole."" ""Welsh Gossips.""-- ""At every word a reputation dies."" For the credit of Wales we hope Mr Horsley did not sketch these from nature; yet is there a fearful look of natural acrimony in the one and sheer busybodyism in the other. The plate is beautifully etched. His ""Moonlight"" is not quite clear enough--there are too many sparkling lights. The ""Shady Seat"" is prettily designed; the lady looks rather too alarmed and for the subject perhaps there is not enough of shadow-- certainly not ""enough for two."" We at once recognize Stonhouse in the ""Evening effects of Solitude "" and his ""Neath Abbey."" The former he thus describes:-- ""There woods impervious to the breeze Thick phalanx of embodied trees-- Here stillness height and solemn shade Invite and contemplation aid."" We are sure that Neath Abbey is from nature for it has the sooty and smoked character of that manufacture-ruined ruin. But we must not pass by his ""Dorothea"" from Don Quixote. Nothing can be more happily expressed than the deep shady retirement of the wood; there are nice gradations of shades which is the very character of retirement and Dorothea is herself in it not a bright figure in a black mass--and good is the figure too but the feet are unfinished. Mr Creswick is a large contributor and least fortunate in his first: it is not the scene so well given in verse by his friend Townsend; for it is too pretty too tight. It wants the ""lane;"" it is the road-side. ""THE WAYSIDE. ""A lane retired from noisy haunts of men Whose ruts the solitary lime cart tracks Whose hedge-sides propp'd by many a mossy stone Are checker'd o'er with foxglove's purple bloom Or graceful fern or snakehood's curling sheath Or the wild strawberry's crimson peeping through. There where it joins the far-outstretching heath A lengthen'd nook presents its glassy slope A couch with nature's velvet verdure clad Trimm'd by the straggling sheep and ever spread To rest the weary wanderer on his way. There oft the ashes of the camp-fire lie Marking the gipsy's chosen place of rest. Black roots of half-charr'd furze and capons' bones-- Relic of spoils from distant farmers' coop-- Point to the revels of preceding night. And fancy pictures forth the swarthy group Their dark eyes flashing in the ruddy glare; While laughter louder after long constraint From every jocund face is pealing round. His ""Summer"" is a simple unaffected scene such as may be met with any where if you have but ""eyes to see:"" and pretty much like it but inferior--for if it be not more common in subject it is in treatment-- is the ""Old Farm-House "" from that delighting and most natural painter with her pen Miss Mitford. Very exquisite in his ""Moonlight""--so true with all the quivering and blending light of nature where all things are at once lucid and in shade--as Virgil happily expresses it ""luce sub incertâ linae."" Sweet too and in the deep solemn repose of religious eve is the ""Village Church""--from lines by Rogers. He is not so happy in his ""Smithy;"" neither is the scene of interest nor the effect pleasing. But he makes up for all by his ""Outward Bound."" The home is left in the calmest stillest of days; though the ""outward bound"" has sails they rather wait for than feel the wind; there is the village church still in view and will yet be an hour and more. The sky is though really printers' ink like many a sooty vapour converted into light-shedding yet faint clouds--we can see the colour--it is a grey in which is gold and ultra-marine. The boat is conveying the ""outward bound"" to the vessel; there is the moving and the waiting. It is poetical. ""The Castle"" we do not much admire; it is a villa castle and on no agreeable river. ""Low Water"" is quite another thing; it is a beautiful etching. He thus describes it with his pen-- ""The flowing tides that spread the land And turn to sea again."" The ""River Scene "" illustrating lines from Southey is delicately touched and a pleasing scene; yet we feel sure it is not from nature. Why we can hardly tell. Is it that there is a bridge apparently without a bank on one side to rest upon? ""The Terrace "" from lines by Andrew Marvel is a most fascinating upright plate. It is perfectly true giving all the thousand intricacies and shades of such a scene; and there is grace in the forms and the figures well suit the whole. All is gentleness and ease; not a light is too strong or a shadow too deep; there is no violence--which too many are apt to express when they would give powerful effect. His ""Fishing Scene on the Coast of Ireland"" is not to our taste yet is it not without meaning--it is windy and sunny. ""The Oriental Palace"" is solemn with its ancient yew in the silence of the crescent moon; but the ruin is to fill up and does no good. We have read with pleasure and extracted some of Mr Townsend's poetry; let us now see his etching. ""Boyhood:"" those who delight in the easy every-day every-hour play of boyhood will enjoy this plate. A boy is with a peacock's feather tickling a child asleep in the arms of a grave old lady--so sedate have we seen grimalkin look whilst encouraging her kitten lightly and coquettishly to play with a ball of cotton. ""The Beach"" is a well-sketched coast scene and shows Mr Townsend to have an eye for nature's scenery as well as nature's sympathies. Very good is ""The Model""--an artist sketching in the figure of a Lascar. But his best plate is ""Sad Tidings."" It is a very sweet figure--youth elegance tenderness are there--and such an even melancholy light or rather such a mournful evenness of light and shade that as a whole it is neither light nor dark and should have no other name than melancholy. He had the judgment and forbearance to hide the face--we know it is lovely and that is enough; it is this in part which separates ""Sad Tidings"" from such subjects as they are usually treated. There are two etchings by Frederic Tayler--""The Chase"" from Somerville and ""The Auld Grey"" from Burns--both are lightly etched and good; but they have not that free and certain hand which marks Mr Tayler's style in his drawings where one wash of the brush hits off his object with great truth. ""The Gypsy Boy "" by Mr Knight is very masterly in chiaroscuro and certainly characteristic of the race. Effect of chiaroscuro seems to be his aim. It is marked in his ""Old Fable"" (which always means the newest) of ""The Peasant and the Forest."" It is thus given: ""A peasant once went into an old forest of shady oaks and humbly entreated the same to grant him a small branch to make a handle for his axe and thereby enable him to pursue his labours at home. The forest very graciously acceded to his request and the peasant soon formed the required handle; but presently he began to lay about him in every direction using the very substance with which the forest had furnished him out of its own bosom and in a short time hewed down its whole growth."" Which are we bound most to admire--John Bell's pen or John Bell's needle? It is a difficulty. ""The Devil's Webbe"" is admirable in both. What a spider-like wretch is he watching the toils that he has spread! ""This webbe our passions be and eke the flies Be we poor mortals: in the centre coyles Old Nick a spider grimme who doth devyse Ever to catch us in his cunning toyles. Look at his claws--how long they are and hooked! Look at his eyes--and mark how grimme and greedie! Look at his horrid fangs--how sharp and crooked! Then keep thy distance so I this arreede ye Oh sillie Flie! an thou wouldst keep thee whole; For an he catch thee he will eate thy soul."" And there they are! the winged insect lovers of pleasure and of gain and strife--in one word of sin--entangled in the ladder webb; while such a monster is in the centre watching his larder. John Bell is instinctively a moral weaver. Fine-spun are his philosophical threads; we stop not to enquire if they will bear the tug of life. He is trying them however on the ""tug of war."" Pen and needle are set to work philosophically methodically benignly. In this he is but a unit out of many thousands. His opinions are not singular. Amiable moralist!-- delightful is the dream sweetly sounding the wisdom; but is it practicable? John Bell's warfare ""The Assault "" is without a doubt ""confusion worse confounded;"" it is not easy at a view to find legs and arms and heads in their anatomical order. We must trace the human figure as through its map. Perhaps this is purposely done to resemble a battle the more truly where limbs are apt to fly out of their places. But John Bell thinks-- ""The play's the thing Wherewith to touch the conscience of the king."" So he pours forth from his ""Unpublished Play"" a choice tirade against the royal play of human ninepins:-- ""And then a battle too--no doubt it is A right fine thing; or rather to have been there. But all things have their price; and this methinks Is rather dear sometimes. Oh! glory's but The tatter'd banner in a cobwebb'd hall Open'd not once a-year--a doubtful tomb With half the name effaced. Of all the bones Have whiten'd battle-fields how many names Live in the chronicle? and which were in the right? One murder hangs a man upon a rope A hundred thousand maketh him a god And builds him up a temple in the air Out of men's skulls. A loving mother bears A thousand pangs to bring into the world One child; your warrior sends a thousand out Then picks his teeth."" JOHN BELL--_Unpublished Play_. Such was Shakspeare's momentary humour when he put it into Falstaff's mouth to ask what honour is ""to him that died o' Wednesday."" It is a humour that won't last--'tis against nature--man is more than half belligerent and has a ""murder"" in him (to give it a bad name) ""that will out."" Even the peaceable Ephraim took up the handspike and used it too with ""friend keep thee in thy own ship."" The ""friend"" was hyprocrisy--the use of the handspike natural; the very elements are at war and were made to be so--storms are as necessary as sunshine. But excellent able John Bell likes sunshine best; and who does not like him the better for that? And sweet sunshine has he shed around ""The good Mayde""--a sunshine that makes its own magic circle within which evil spirits or evil men shall not come. Tempt on ye wizards--she looketh upwards yet think not she will fall or miss her way--the Unseen guideth her steps. Bell's account of the matter is however far better. Let him publish his quaint poem all of it; the specimens warrant the request. ""Thus doth the goode Mayde with a stedfaste eye Walke through the troubles vaine and peryls dire That doe beset mayde's path with haytes full slie The trappes and gynnes of mischief's cunning syre. Ne nought to her is riches' golden shower Ne gaudy baites of dresse and rich attyre Ne lover's talke ne flatteries' worthless store Ne scandal's forked tongue--that ancient liar Ne music's magic breath ne giddy wheel Of gay lascivious daunce ne ill-raised mirthe Ne promised state doth cause her mind to reel Or lure from thoughts of heaven to joys of earthe."" Our poet a moralist etcher reverts to the old subject; and we have ""The Progresse of Warre "" in a series as part of a frieze for his Temple of Peace. This is most clear--for he who runs may read; yet on a second view we doubt that--for we see what we did not at first see writing under each tablet that is by no means intelligible. Having with Mr Bell seen an end of the battle it is fit time with Mr Herbert to discuss ""The Day after the Battle."" ""Next day did many widows come""-- that verse of _Chevy Chase_ is the subject. The slaughtered knight the widow and the dog tell the tale and tell it well too. The widow is the best figure. We have had enough of battle and all its horrors; let us turn to tranquillizing nature where the undisturbed lichen may grow upon the rocks and the branches of unpruned trees throw out their sheltering leafage and the innocent insects know it is their home; and even in the seeming silence if you listen may you hear the still voice of a busy creation a world of a few summer hours--yet seemeth it to them an eternity of enjoyment. And such a scene we have in the ""Woody Scene "" by Thomas Fearnley--poor Fearnley!--and is it not lightly elegantly touched with the needle? the scene realized? Or would you see a wilder spot turn to his ""Norwegian Scenery "" and see the saw-mill or whatever the building be at the very entrance of the deep wood in its gloom with the mountain torrent pouring over the rocks. In this sequestered spot man has built him a home and turned to human uses the rebellious waters even on the very skirts of the wilderness; and there he is for his hours are not all of toil gloriously angling for he has hooked his fish. Poor Fearnley! would he could have remained in this country! Had he been moderately patronised he might have added an honourable name to our dictionary of painters. And what has become of Webster? We remember well his ""Boys let loose from School."" Here he is--and but one plate--""Anticipation""--well named. The pie is come home and the boy's eyes open and his mouth waters. The story is quaintly told by Townsend thus:--Lights and shadows of boyish days! how bright and deep they are! The schoolmaster's frown may be charmed away by the gift of a new top or a score of marbles. But what are these in the cotter's life to the stirring vicissitudes of a pie! ----Before its departure for the bakehouse did he not ponder admiringly on the delicate tact that mingled the bony scraps with. 'Herbs and other country messes Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses?' ""Since then _imagination_ has been at play; and in accordance with its suggestions his bib and tucker have been donned as trusty adjutants to the formidable wooden spoon. Thus armed while sister Phillis--the creative genius of the savoury structure--regards the baker's boy with her modest glance young Corydon with his prophetic anticipation is ogling the baker's burden. If his knife be as sharp as his appetite 'twill want no whetting! We must expect that in the afternoon when anticipation shall have faded through the stages of its fulfilment if no longer entranced by the pleasures of Hope he will solace himself with those of Memory."" And there sure enough is the grinning baker's boy and the pie admirably baked; and the boy of the bib and tucker and the wooden spoon realizing it through his nostrils and magnifying it through his eyes; and there is the neat-handed Phillis who cares little for the eating. Feminine and gluttonous seldom come together. ""The little glutton"" is ever the male. This was in Webster's own way and he has hit it off truly; he has seen it hundreds of times and knew as well as Townsend who should have the wooden spoon. We find we have omitted to notice one plate and that by Redgrave. We did not expect landscape by his hand. It is however very clever; there is a light over the dark church-tower which a little offends. Keep down that a little and you recognize the true effect of nature. It is a view of Worcester. ""A spot "" says Mr Redgrave ""memorable as the scene of that battle signalized by Oliver Cromwell as the 'crowning mercy;' and whence the young Charles II. commenced the series of romantic and perilous adventures which terminated in his safety."" Our work of criticism is at an end; not so our pleasure. We shall look at this choice volume again and again; and as we have somewhat arrogantly and with a conceit of our ability and right so to do taken the Etching Club under our especial care regard and patronage we shall think ourselves at liberty to encourage and to exhort them whenever we see fit. We therefore do exhort them to go on to give a taste for painters' etchings to improve themselves too; and let each make it a rule to himself never to take the trouble to touch a subject that is not worth doing; nor to tell a story not worth telling however such may seem to look pretty or with effect upon copper or paper; by all means to avoid ""annual sentimentalities "" and commonplace ""acting charades;"" and never to forget that expression is the soul of the art. For the present we dismiss them with thanks--like the prudent physician who as Fielding says always stands by to see nature work and contents himself by clapping her on the back by way of approbation when she does well. A LOVE-CHASE--IN PROSE. CHAPTER I. Bandvale Hall had lain empty for a long time--old Frank Edwards so well known as a sportsman had been dead for eighteen years his horses sold his kennels dismantled and his son after so absurdly long a minority (for his father had capriciously fixed his majority at twenty-three ) only now coming of age; but whether he would reside at Bandvale or continue in the neighbourhood of Leicester where his guardian lived or what he would do nobody could tell. The estate we were told in spite of the economical management of four or five attorneys and a couple of stewards was more involved than when old Frank died; and many a time have I sighed as I ambled past the lodges and saw grass growing over the drive contrasting these appearances with the jolly days I had known in the hall ""when the beards wagged all--shall we ever see the like again?"" But change passes over all; and Bandvale was not the only place or the only thing that felt its influence. We were all very different from what we were; we had a railway within half an hour's drive; we had a Methodist chapel in the village; we had a clergyman who preached in his surplice and would have had a hurl off a lame donkey if he had ventured into the saddle; the hounds were given up; you were asked to dinner at half-past seven and got home again by ten; rather a changed state of affairs since old Frank kept the ball alive and Parson Holt rode his grey nag over bank and fence and we had two packs within ten miles and no Methodists in the village and no railroad in the county and every thing was exactly as it ought to be; and we dined at five and got home--when it pleased Heaven. Sometimes I turned down the avenue and took a melancholy look at the old Hall. It is a great square house; flanked with two turrets with fine old stone windows and a stone porch in the middle. The Bandvale river runs through the park about three hundred yards from the front door and is crossed by two bridges in the direction of the lodges east and west; and beyond it rises the upland all dotted over with clumps of elm--and at the highest part of the park is the church; a great black figure kneeling on one knee used to bear up the sun-dial in the centre of the sweep--his leg had given way from the weight of years and the huge globe he supported and the poor old fellow lay on his back kicking up the stump of his leg in a most audacious manner in the very face of the sun. ""The great globe itself had dissolved and left not a wreck behind."" They talk of Marius among the ruins of Carthage and Coliseums unroofed and temples of Theseus with crumbling pillars--all these are desolate enough; but then their condition is picturesque: and I doubt whether Marius in the capitol and the Coliseum newly finished and the Temple at the time of its consecration were half such interesting objects as in the days of their decline and fall. But to me the true representative of desolation was the long tufts of grass that grew in old Frank Edwards's stable-yard the weeds that choked up the hall door and the broken panes of the great dining-room windows--the spacious yard the hospitable door the jocund dining-room. And now young Frank was just coming to his legal age and we were all forming our guesses and conjectures as to what the youth's proceedings would be when he came into possession. I made sure if the property was really involved to the extent reported that he would sell some of the lands he had in other counties; a farm or two he had in Sussex; a tolerable estate in the north; and a foolish marine villa somewhere in Devonshire and pay off all incumbrances and settle himself for life at Bandvale Hall. He would still have a very fine fortune; and it had been the family seat since the reign of Charles the Second. All the mothers and aunts in the county thought it was a seat like a Spanish saddle and would carry double; and it certainly was amazing to see the preparations that were made to get the proper foot in the stirrup. It seemed agreed that for a young gentleman of twenty-three seventeen was the only admissible age; and to reach that desirable date as great cruelty was practised on the baptismal register books as on ancient travellers by the bed of Procrustes-girls of twenty-four were shortened by seven years and little children of fourteen elongated by three. In some families there were three or four daughters all of the same age yet not the least like twins; brothers and fathers were kept in marching order ready to be dispatched to make poor Frank's acquaintance the moment he took possession. I also though unendowed with any possession so valuable as either daughter or sister or niece kept myself prepared to welcome my old friend's son whenever he arrived. The day of majority came at last--the third of June. The tenants of the Bandvale farms had a dinner at the Rose and Crown and one of the managing attorneys proposed the young landlord's health in a speech full of amazing eloquence but with a countenance that would have been more appropriate to a funeral oration than a toast; and it was in fact the funeral oration over his stewardship as he gave notice that it was Mr Edwards's intention to take the management into his own hands--a piece of information that gave great satisfaction to every one except the firm of Goody and Fripp. But in spite of this announcement young Frank never made his appearance--the walks continued overgrown with grass--the wounded Atlas looked proudly to heaven from his deathbed of fame-and the young ladies remained on the tiptoe of expectation. ""What can be the matter with the boy?"" thought I; ""has he no regard for his father's neighbours and his own birthplace?"" ""What can be the matter with the boy?"" thought Miss Sibylla Smith and all the maidens young old and middle aged. ""Has he fallen in love with his tutor's daughter or got engaged to his guardian's niece?"" for our young people had studied life so zealously in three-volume novels that they never doubted for a moment that Frank Edwards's tutor (if he had a tutor) had a daughter or that his guardian (and they knew he had a guardian) had a niece. But in spite of all our thoughts Bandvale Hall continued empty. ""I'll take another look at the old place "" I said one day in August as I was passing the lodge and rode at a quiet contemplative walk down the avenue. I hung my rein over one of the rails of the porch steps and passed round into the garden. Not a flower to be seen; but the place of them famously supplied with potatoes and other useful articles--and the same evidence of absenteeism in the shape of tottering walls and grass grown walks and dusty fountains in all directions. What a shame!--if I knew the boy's address I would write to him to come home at once; but that Leicestershire guardian has kept him quite separated from those who
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ught to have been his friends and had the bringing up of him from his youth. If we are to have him all the rest of his life he could not have come among us too early; and in the firm intention of carrying this resolution into effect I determined to look out for some workman about the place to ask where Mr Edwards was to be found. The man that has the care of the garden can't be far off;--and accordingly I went in search of him. But either the vegetables were illustrations like Southey's butlers of self-culture or the gardener had gone to dinner; and in the expectation of finding him in the kitchen I clambered into the house by an open window and walked quietly along the passage. I thought I heard voices in the garden library a delightful room on the ground-floor where I had passed many an evening with old Frank; and supposing the gardener had taken possession of it I opened the door. Close to the window two persons were sitting so deeply engaged in conversation that they did not remark my entrance and I took the opportunity of observing them at leisure. They were both young men--both tall and good-looking; one remarkably dark with great umbrageous whiskers and mustaches; the other a chestnut-haired fresh-complexioned youth so like poor old Frank in the set on of his head and breadth of his shoulders that I knew in a moment it could be no one but his son. They seemed both very much excited about something; but from the whispered tone of their conversation it was difficult to make out what it was. The dark man who was six or seven years older than his companion had apparently been saying something that shocked the other for he clenched his hand and threw his eyes despairingly to the ceiling; and no wonder for the words I heard as I advanced from the screen at the door were enough to raise a shudder in any person's breast. He said-- ""I had him murdered in the shooting-box."" ""But why?"" enquired Frank Edwards looking less startled than could be expected. ""Why? Because Isabella could not be happy while he lived."" ""Recollect I had no hand in it "" said Frank. ""I wouldn't have agreed to it on any account and told you so before you did it."" Great heavens! what a secret to be thrust upon me! and what an introduction to the son of my poor friend--the accomplice of a murderer--who had evidently been consulted about the crime and though he certainly had protested against it had allowed it to be carried into effect! I was hesitating whether I should not retire at once when Frank turned round and saw me. He rose and received the apologies I muttered for my intrusion with the most astonishing self-command. I determined to conceal my knowledge of their conversation from them; and really looking at the clear open countenance of the boy it was difficult to believe that he knew any thing of so shocking a kind. I was introduced to the other Mr Percy Marvale and saw so much Italian or perhaps gipsy blood in his dark skin and such a fierce expression in his coal-black eyes that I was not so much surprised at his being implicated in the fearful deed. He looked just like one of the fellows on the stage who cut throats in a heroic fashion on the slightest provocation. But both were so free in their manner and talked so pleasantly that if it had not been for what I had overheard I should have taken them for two very agreeable young men. And in spite of it all I could hardly avoid asking them both to leave the deserted house and take up their quarters with me. I forced myself however to abstain from giving them the invitation; and after a half hour of friendly conversation I got up to go away. They accompanied me a portion of the way; and when I looked at young Frank and listened to the tones of his voice twenty years seemed to roll off my shoulders. I took his hand. ""You must dine with me to-morrow "" I said; ""and--and--your friend Mr Marvale "" I added with some little difficulty. They both accepted without a moment's hesitation. ""Hang it there must be some mistake after all!"" I thought as I put my foot in the stirrup; ""but I'll go and ask a few of the neighbours to meet them. Old Smith of Howkey is a magistrate with an amazing nose for a crime. We'll see what he makes of it."" CHAPTER II. Now old Smith was the son of a great London millionaire--an alderman or even a lord mayor for any thing I know--who had bought Howkey and built an enormous house to which his son had taken the moment the old gentleman died; had cut the shop got on the commission and now rejoiced in a fat jolly good-tempered wife and a multiplicity of sons and daughters. Such a fellow for points of law was never heard of out of Westminster Hall nor in it either. He read Acts of Parliament as other people read novels--for his amusement; and every body thought he knew more about them than a lord chancellor. There was great rejoicing at Howkey from the drawing-room up to the very nursery when I told of Frank Edwards's arrival. All manner of enquiries were made in various tones of interest from the romantic Miss Sibylla down to the youngest of the girls as to his appearance manner height and complexion. I answered them all to the extreme satisfaction of the enquirers but took care to make no allusion to his companion; though at the same time I confess I could not persuade myself that what I had overheard had the dreadful meaning I at first attached to it. He must have meant something else; for I had not become acquainted with the new style of flash language where so many allusions are made to people's mothers and their mangles without any real reference either to one or other. Getting a man murdered in a shooting-box might mean something equivalent to ""There you go with your eye out!"" which has no meaning at all. But although I had persuaded myself of this I made no mention at Howkey of the ferocious-looking Percy Marvale but merely asked my friend Old Smith to come over and help me to welcome the new neighbour. Sibylla who had all along been of opinion that Mr Frank Edwards was engaged to his tutor's daughter and took no interest in him accordingly was all of a sudden seized with an uncommon affection for my wife. She felt for the awkwardness of her position so much in being the only lady among so many gentlemen that she insisted on going over with her father merely to bear her company; and from the sympathizing countenance of her fair sister Monimia I expected every moment a similar offer from her. The Williamses and old Harry Lambert and his son were the only others I could catch on so short a notice; but we all determined to make up in friendliness for the paucity in numbers and give young Frank a hearty welcome to his native county. We were all assembled in the drawing-room--that is to say all but the party from Bandvale--and Mr Smith was laying down the law or rather explaining it after his usual manner when Sibylla who had stood at the window all of a sudden gave a slight scream and flushed up to the eyes like a peony rose. ""Why what's the matter Sib?"" said Old Smith; ""has a bee stung you."" ""No no!"" she said; ""but I saw likeness--a something""-- ""What was it you saw?"" enquired my wife--""a ghost?"" Sibylla lifted up her eyes to the ceiling and said nothing; for at that moment the door opened and Frank Edwards and Mr Percy Marvale were announced. ""No not a ghost "" whispered Sibylla to my wife ""but an apparition I as little expected to see--I knew Mr Marvale in town."" The introduction was soon over; and Mr Marvale on being presented to Miss Sibylla exhibited as much surprise as that young lady had done at the window. I watched him as closely as if I had been one of the detective police; but saving an enormous amount of puppyism and affectation I could trace nothing very unusual in his appearance. Frank on the other hand was a fine open-mannered fellow that one took to at once; and it was a mystery to me how he could be so intimate with a person so different from himself. Pity such a good-dispositioned youth should fall into the hands of such an atrocious character! ""You've met Mr Marvale before?"" I said to Sibylla as I took her into the dining-room. ""Oh yes--at my cousin Jane's in Russell Square--a wonderful man--a perfect genius!"" ""I hope to Heaven he's no worse "" said I ""though that's bad enough."" ""Bad enough! Oh I doat on men of genius! Did you never hear of him? He is quite a celebrity. Cousin Jane always has him at her literary parties for she does not know Bulwer or Dickens; and he's so handsome too--such a wild expression."" ""Wild enough to get him two months of the tread-mill if your father lays hands on him."" But when I saw the glance of profound admiration darted by Sibylla at the interesting stranger I felt sure she would only like him the more if he were found out to be a murderer in reality; for there is a certain school of young ladies who do not stand upon trifles in the way of their flirtations but extract fresh reasons for glorifying the object of their preference from facts which the unwary lay before them by way of warnings. If he is a spendthrift it is so noble to be free and generous; if he is a gambler he is of such a fine unsuspecting disposition he is only the dupe of the designing. In short whatever you say to put them on their guard only makes them expose themselves the more; and therefore I made no further attempt to open the eyes of Miss Sibylla Smith. All passed off very well at dinner. Every one was kind to Frank and for his sake were abundantly civil to his friend; but that individual seemed to care very little whether we were civil to him or not. He talked more than all the rest of us put together-- corrected Old Smith on points of law--and put me right on the routine of crops; proved to old Lambert's own satisfaction that he knew nothing of stall-feeding and so belaboured us with great people with their whole birth parentage and connexions that we might have fancied he was Mr Debrett. Sibylla evidently believed he was the most delightful of men; and certainly the looks she darted at _him_ and the looks he darted at _her_ were the most extraordinary phenomena of the look kind I ever happened to see. It was quite evident that the daughter's feelings were not shared by Old Smith; and I made little doubt he would have been delighted to give him seven years of the hulks if he could have found out any act of Parliament making it penal for a good-looking young fellow to encourage a silly young woman to make a fool of herself. He found time in spite of his apparently monopolizing the whole conversation to whisper incessantly into Sibylla's ear. He was evidently asking questions about her household position--how many sisters she had--how many brothers--their ages characters looks and the state of their education. He seemed practising for an inspector of schools. Then he went off to her cousin's where he had met her in Russell Square and the same series of questions about family affairs was repeated. Was the man engaged in collecting the census returns? ""What a dreadful thing the death of poor Mr Mopple!"" said Sibylla. ""They said he wasn't kind to his wife though I never saw any signs of it at my cousin's."" ""Mopple! Mopple!"" he said as if trying to remember. ""Ah! a poor man with a beautiful wife is he dead?"" ""Oh yes--quite suddenly! He was down in Scotland on the moors. Some people say there is something wrong about it."" ""Indeed--ha!"" said Mr Marvale. ""What--what do they say?"" ""He was found dead in a shooting-box. His gun had gone off and killed him; but""-- I looked at the man's face. He was trying to appear as if he scarcely attended to what she was saying. ""Some of the friends are not quite satisfied that it was accidental "" continued Sibylla. ""How I pity poor Mrs Mopple."" ""Pray Sibylla "" I said ""what was the poor woman's Christian name?"" ""Her name was Isabella."" ""So!"" I said and looked firmly at Mr Marvale. ""Do you hear that sir? Her name was Isabella."" ""Isabella or the Fatal Marriage--a good thing in its time but out of fashion now "" he answered. ""A curious fact there is an incident of precisely the same kind of which I claim the credit."" ""Of what kind sir?"" I said. ""Take care what you say."" ""Oh it's no secret! Mr Edwards and I concocted it between us; that is to say he objected to it a little at first but I flatter myself it will make some little noise in the world when it is fairly known."" I looked again at the brazen-faced fellow and nearly fell off my chair at hearing him make such a horrid confession. ""I don't believe a word of it sir "" I exclaimed ""as far as Frank Edwards is concerned."" ""I assure you he had very little hand in it "" he replied. ""The merit as you say is entirely my own."" ""And the consequences too I hope."" ""I hope so. I offered a good deal before I undertook it; and I think it will pay very well."" ""What will pay?"" ""The Surrey when the melodrama is finished."" ""Oh! it is a melodrama you're speaking of? I was not aware I am sure or I should""-- ""My dear sir make no apologies. I hate the fuss people make about a man because he happens to be a successful author. I assure you the plain entertainment you have given is better than all the _fêtes_ my friends Devonshire and Lansdowne gave me when I published the _Blasted Nun_."" So my murderer had sunk into a writer of plays. Sibylla looked at him with still more intense admiration when she heard him speak of the honours his works had procured him and he entered at once into a minute description of the festivities of Chatsworth and Bowood that would have done honour to the _Morning Post_. After the ladies had gone to the drawing-room I took the opportunity of having a quiet conversation with Frank while his friend was astonishing the minds of the rest of the party with an account of his having refused the Guelphic Order which the Queen had pressed upon him on the twenty-fourth night of his _Blood-stained Milkmaid_. ""Who in Heaven's name and what is your friend Mr Percy Marvale?"" ""Oh a very good fellow!"" replied Frank. ""I have known him at the Club for a long time."" ""He seems a rum one."" ""A very useful ally I can assure you. I study him as the _beau ideal_ of vanity and impudence."" ""But your studies seem somewhat useless if you have no higher object?"" ""Oh but I have though--a very serious object--the only object in fact I care for in the world!"" And here the young man sighed. ""Well if your object "" I said ""has any connexion with my old friend Smith I think he is in a fair way of securing you a confederate in Miss Sibylla."" ""She may perhaps be useful; but Marvale will find out whether she will be so or not before he lets her go to-night."" ""Well if it's any thing where other assistance is needed you may depend on me."" ""You're very good; but I fear you have neither the vanity nor the impudence that are so invaluable in my friend Percy Marvale."" ""Is that his real name?"" ""I am sure I don't know. It is what he is known by in the Club. He dramatizes all the bloodthirsty horrors at the Surrey--pushes his way every where--puffs and praises himself wherever he goes--is very good-looking and makes love like a French hero--and in short is at this moment indispensable to me."" I made no further enquiries for Frank filled his glass and sighed like a smith's bellows. But I was filled with wonder at all that passed and could form no guess at the bond that united two such dissimilar men nor at the reason so much value was attached to the services of a boastful clattering pushing inquisitive vagabond like the bewhiskered dramatist. Before I joined in the general conversation it was evident that Mr Percy Marvale by dint of downright categorical questions had acquired an intimate knowledge of poor old Harry Lambert's and Williams's domestic affairs; and it is useless to say he had bound himself in the most solemn manner to visit both them and Mr Smith though neither of them as far as I could see seemed much delighted with his repeated asseverations. ""It's what I always do my dear sir "" he said to Harry Lambert; ""for how could a man pick up any information unless he made himself intimate with all classes? Why should I keep myself separate from good fellows merely because I happen to have written the _Frozen Island_ or the _Fire King of the Caucasus_? I will see you the day after to-morrow. I give you my honour. Your daughters have perhaps read my works?"" ""I'm afraid they're too young sir."" ""What age are they? But if they are well taught they have studied the drama of course. They have a governess I suppose? ""Yes."" ""Has she red hair? I have an idea that red-haired people are all good teachers."" ""I don't recollect the colour of her hair I'm sure."" ""I'll come over and judge for myself. I will not disappoint you on any account. So you may be quite easy."" And the same thing he said to Mr Williams with the slight variation of an enquiry whether _his_ governess squinted; for he had another theory that squinting people had a peculiar faculty for speaking French. ""I'll tell you what Frank Edwards "" I said to my young guest when we were about to separate ""I was an old friend of your father's and I wish to show my regard to his memory by kindness to you; and as I don't think you have formed the best acquaintance in the world in the person of your companion Mr Marvale I wish you would give me an hour to-morrow at Bandvale and I will offer you a little advice."" He shook my hand very warmly and thanked me; and I agreed to be with him at one o'clock. ""I'll save the poor fellow from that harpy at any rate; and have him back to Bandvale in half a year."" ""You must get him married first "" said my wife ""or his life will be miserable."" ""How?"" ""Why there are three Miss Smiths two Lamberts and seven or eight others. They will set on him like a swarm of bees; and as they can't all make honey of him""-- ""They will sting him to death. I see--I see."" CHAPTER III. Next day I trotted over to the Hall. Mr Percy Marvale was busy putting the finishing stroke to his _Demon of the Waste_ in which the interesting incident of the murder in the shooting-box is introduced; and Frank and I had a long and confidential conversation in the garden. Miss Sibylla Smith and the students of three-volume novels were for once very nearly right in their guesses on the subject of his tutor's daughter. He certainly was in love if not engaged but not exactly in the way they had imagined; and it struck me that in spite of his declaration of constancy and firmness there was still a very reasonable chance of there being an opening for some of the bees alluded to by my wife. For my own part I am no believer in sentiment and romance and could not enter into Frank's feelings at all. Not far from Frank's guardian's house in Leicestershire there was a small white-walled villa surrounded by pretty pleasure grounds and inhabited by the most enchanting family in the world. The father a clergyman too much of an invalid to hold a living and only rich enough to struggle on in the quietest possible way with a wife and a daughter. The wife of course was all that was amiable and wise; and the daughter Alice endowed with every possible perfection. As to her beauty it was above description and her disinterestedness almost incredible. Every week and at least every day of every week Frank found himself at the fireside of the Reverend Mr Elstree and no mother and sister could be so affectionate to him as Mrs Elstree and Alice. He was only fourteen to be sure when the acquaintance began and the girl nine or ten; so that when he was twenty-one he could not recall by what means or on what occasion he had told Alice he was devoted to her; nor could he even recollect what method she had taken to tell him she was delighted to hear it; but the case was nevertheless as complete a case of engagement and true love as if he had made formal propositions on his knees or signed a bond on parchment. By this time he was at Cambridge and considered himself as much a man as undergraduates always consider themselves--and wrote twice a-week to Alice--and heard twice a-week in return--and looked at her portrait which he kept in a secret drawer of his desk about twenty times a-day; and (which was the only thing about it that made me think it a real instance of true love) he never mentioned her name to one of his companions. Yet Cambridge has its temptations even to people as constant as Amadis de Gaul. Frank was a gay young fellow with a good allowance--had his father's seat on horseback and sported a red coat whenever the hounds came within twenty miles. He was blessed also with a capacious appetite both for solids and fluids and occasionally astonished the waiter at the Eagle and Child by ordering in an extra basket of magnums; but in the main he was steady--and looked at the little portrait with undiminished admiration. All this time poor Mr Elstree knew nothing of the engagement but looked on Frank more as a son than as a mere acquaintance without any thought of its being in his power to attain in reality to that degree of relationship by means of the beautiful Miss Alice. If Frank believed this I will be bound Miss Sibylla Smith would not have given him credit for such stupidity. But there are innocent minded people in the world and poor Elstree was one of them. The visits to the white-walled villa were continued all the vacation; love went on increasing; and nothing could be more delightful than the description Frank gave of the happiness of that youthful time. But black days were in store for them. He left Cambridge and went to London--the great trial for country affections. The affections by his account continued exactly the same; but the ideas altered--he saw other people he mixed with the world--he overlaid the passion that lay snug and powerful at the bottom of his heart with a score or two of flirtations; but so far from burying it they only kept it warm. In the mean time however the correspondence was not so regular as before--and perhaps the expressions on both sides not quite so tender; for it is impossible for a man in the Clarendon with a carriage at the door to carry him down to Ascot to write about flames and arrows which come so naturally when musing on the Cam or Isis. And in the midst of this London career--during all which he assured me he liked her better than ever--he was startled by hearing that Mr Elstree was very ill. He hurried down to Leicestershire but found he was too late. The good man had died after having learned from his daughter the secret of her engagement and having refused his consent to it not on the ground that he was too good a match for Alice--which would be almost as vulgar a reason as if he had been too poor--but on the ground that he was young giddy thoughtless and the wasting health and wan cheek of his daughter had told him that he was fickle too. People in the country make so little allowance for young men during their first season in town; and mother and daughter in spite of all his protestations in spite of all the vows he made to Alice which she believed in her heart--were firm in breaking off the connexion and would see him no more. And this resolution seemed to be formed on the maturest deliberation and in spite of every inducement to the contrary they kept it. He had not seen them for nearly a year. Their income at all times small had been annihilated by the father's death; they left the white-walled villa and after bidding him farewell for ever in a letter and thanking him for his friendship to her father and some few tender recollections on her own account Alice had begged him to forget her! And Frank thought of her of course every hour of his life--tried every means to find out where they had gone that he might resume his suit and to offer them the fortune of which he had now come into full possession--but all in vain. His friend Mr Percy Marvale had undertaken to find them out within six months if they were still on the habitable globe and thought he had discovered that the scene of their retirement was in our county; and with a knowledge of nature drawn from melodramas French and English he had laid it down as a rule that as they were reduced in circumstances Alice had gone out as a governess-- which accounted for his theories about squints and red hair. It was a curious story; but there was perfect sincerity in all he said; and instead of trying to dissuade him I could not help offering my services to discover the vanished pleiad--if she twinkled in any part of our Worcestershire heavens. During this long communication we had left the garden and were lounging slowly by the side of the river that runs through the park. We were both engaged in the narrative and I was no little surprised on looking to the other side to see my magisterial friend Old Smith and his two daughters busy with fishing-rods. The girls were tastefully dressed-- but more to catch admiration than fish; two very showy handsome girls they were and I could not help thinking in my secret soul that there were not much odds to be risked on the late favourite Alice against such a spanker as Monimia Smith. As for Sibylla she despised gold and acres in comparison with genius and mustaches; and therefore I concluded she intended to be the second horse to her sister and keep out the rest of the field. A clever dashing creature Monimia certainly with such a pretence at childishness that nobody felt any wonder at any thing she did. And that same childishness is a very captivating quality till a girl is rising twenty or thereabouts; but after that time it does not take. At the same time it is only a show qualification after all and may do for a ball-room but has no chance any where else. We looked at them without making any remark and all three pretended to be so busy watching their floats that they had no idea--not they poor souls!--that Frank Edwards of Bandvale Hall was within a mile of them. Sibylla occasionally glanced towards the house in hopes I suppose of seeing Mr Percy Marvale emerge from his literary labours; but Monimia looking under her long beautiful eyelashes saw very well where we were and threw herself into twenty attitudes of expectation hope and disappointment ad ran through the whole gamut of a fisher's passions in a way that would have done for a recitation of Collins's ode; and graceful playful and beautiful the attitudes were-- and I saw in a moment that Frank's attention was caught. He was silent all of a sudden and said no more about Alice Elstree. Monimia had it all her own way; but when she saw that her bait had taken she determined to play the trout a little longer. She cast herself into finer and more captivating attitudes than ever threw back her bonnet till it hung at her back--her beautiful hair broke loose--and in her hurry to pull up her hook though I am ready to declare the float had never moved she pressed so vehemently on poor Old Smith who was deep in a contention with the root of a tree which had held his hook prisoner for half an hour that he lost his footing and fell plump into the water. If Monimia's motions were astonishing her screams were appalling; and though I feel sure she had no intention of drowning her father she had put him into tremendous hazard. The water was deep--he could not swim a stroke--the banks were steep; and there stood Monimia wringing her hands while Sibylla had taken the quieter method of showing her agitation by falling into a faint upon the grass. In a moment Frank had left my side dashed into the stream and half forced half supported Old Smith to the side with my assistance brought him safe on dry land. The girls hurried round by the bridge and came upon us like a charge of Cossacks while we were attending to the half-drowned parent on the bank. ""Where is my papa?"" exclaimed Monimia--""my dear papa!""--and threw herself beside him on the turf showing her figure I must say to the very best advantage. ""And you "" she cried ""his saviour--his preserver!"" --and here she actually flung herself into poor Frank's arms and laid her head upon his shoulder in one of the most becoming faints I ever saw. There being no other person worth fainting for Sibylla retained her composure; and as Monimia continued insensible and Old Smith was really chilled and might catch his death of cold we conveyed them both as carefully as we could to the house; gave Monimia in charge to the gardener's wife and her sister and installed Old Smith in Frank's own bed. I sent off a labourer on my pony for the doctor and went to make enquiries after Miss Monimia. She was very ill but Sibylla hoped she would soon be well enough to attend upon her father. Mr Percy Marvale made a multitude of quotations from some of his own melodramas _apropos_ to the occasion and Sibylla replied in the same high-flown style. It was evident they were quite used to such incidents in the Surrey and I left them to entertain each other. On the doctor's arrival he pronounced it improper to remove Mr Smith after his system had undergone such a shock; and the same judgment very nearly was past on Miss Monimia. ""I told mamma before I left home "" whispered that young lady to her sister as she lay gracefully on the outside of the bed ""that I would make an impression on Mr Edwards if I could. I think this will do it if any thing will; for we sha'n't let papa be well enough to move for a week. He is a delightful fascinating man and we have him all to ourselves."" CHAPTER IV. Have you?--poor girl you never heard of Alice Elstree! But Frank to be sure has not heard of her for a year--and you're certainly pretty and he's young--and has an eye for the sublime and beautiful. The betting grows nearly even. All the skill of the gardener's wife and as many other women as could be pressed into the service was put into requisition to prepare a dinner for such unexpected guests; but as if by some half miraculous foreknowledge of events preparations seemed to have been made on a great scale at Howkey; and on hearing of the accident the good-natured Mrs Smith had despatched a light luggage cart filled with cold pies preserved soups and joints of meat as if in anticipation of a blockade--in this respect imitating the good French marshal who besieged Gibraltar and supplied old Elliot with provisions. But even after dinner was provided how were the invalids in addition to the original garrison to be lodged for the night? Frank and his friend would not hear of coming over to me and it was finally arranged that they should take up their quarters at the Rose and Crown. Old Smith kept his bed but for an invalid performed wonders on the veal-pies; and also by way of recruiting his exhausted strength and showing his regard for Lord Cardigan at the same time kindly made a crystal decanter of his throat and decanted a black bottle of port into it with astonishing skill. Monimia was not so weak as to be kept in her apartment and joined us--for I stayed to see how matters would end in the dining-room--and I am bound to say that gratitude for a father's safety was never shown in a more captivating manner than by that pale and interesting young lady both in words and glances during the whole evening. Sibylla and Mr Percy Marvale were equally pleased with the unlooked-for incident that threw them together; and I could not help thinking that the spy for Mr Frank Marvale's interest had an eye kept pretty open for his own; but watching the proceedings of people who would be fifty times better pleased if the race of Paul Prys were extinct is very tiresome and I soon took leave. The ladies betook themselves to their room at the same time and the young men walked alongside of my pony down to the village inn. As we went Mr Percy Marvale was loud in his praises of all the inhabitants of Howkey--from the half-drowned sire to the youngest of the children; so it is not to be supposed that Sibylla and Monimia were omitted in his eulogies. I remarked that he made no allusion to red hair or squinting and that Frank himself said nothing against his extravagant laudations of Monimia's beauty. As little did he say any thing in corroboration. Was silence a tribute to his old love or the ominous commencement of a new? One whole day he had been with her--a week perhaps was before him of constant association. How difficult for a young fellow to continue deaf and blind to soft tones and softer glances that spoke in reality of herself though professedly they were all about her father! Next day Monimia was still further recovered and her venerated governor not yet fit to be moved. It
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as so bright and sunny that it would have been a shame to stay in doors and Frank accompanied the lively Monimia into the garden. Oh! the running to and fro the reaching up of the white arm and standing on tiptoe to get at the fruit-trees on the wall--the merry laugh the conscious looks the blushing cheek--if Frank isn't made of stone he'll yield to a certainty. She trips over all the beds with a wicker-basket on her arm to gather flowers and clips them off so gracefully and arranges them so tastefully and all to be presented to the gallant deliverer of her papa. She is already on her way back having achieved a nosegay of surpassing sweetness when Mr Percy Marvale hurries out of the library window with a letter in his hand. ""We've found her at last! I told you if she was in England I would ferret her out in no time."" Frank seized the letter tore open the seal--a flush passed over his cheek--he devoured the words--read the over again--and did not even look up when Monimia dropt her basket and picked it up again with the grace of Taglioni. ""Glorious--glorious!"" he said and nearly kissed the scarcely legible scrawl. ""I will go this moment--it can't be far."" ""Are you going Mr Edwards?"" said Monimia holding the nosegay in her hand. ""I hope you will soon return."" ""Perhaps I may--but pray make my excuses to your father--my friend Mr Marvale will do the honours of the house."" ""And you go away so suddenly?"" she said and pouted. ""I can't help it--business--sudden intelligence. Can you tell me where the village of Wibbelton is?"" ""No "" said the young lady and laid the nosegay very quietly in her basket. ""If I should not return before Mr Smith is well enough to go home will you present my compliments to your sister and assure her""-- ""Oh! she will he very sorry I dare say "" said Miss Monimia tartly tying the strings of her bonnet which had again fallen back and shown her beautiful ringlets. ""I wish the flowers were better "" continued Frank; ""and at some future time I trust""-- ""Oh the flowers are good enough!"" said the young lady. ""I think the moss rose is Charles Lambert's favourite so I have gathered this bunch for him."" You would scarcely have known the cold-voiced calm-eyed Miss Monimia to be the playful graceful hoyden of five minutes before. She made Frank a stately curtsy and without farther parley he hurried down to the village and ordered the solitary post-chaise of which the Rose and Crown could boast. ""Stay you here "" he said to Mr Percy Marvale ""and I will join you in two days if any thing occurs. We may be disappointed again though the present intelligence seems authentic."" The intelligence which so suddenly altered the destination of Miss Monimia Smith's nosegay was from one of Frank's Leicestershire correspondents; and was to the effect that Alice had gone into a situation in the little village of Wibbleton where she had been securely hidden from all her lover's pursuits for half a year. Wibbelton he found was fifteen miles from Bandvale on the Birmingham road and merrily away he trotted as fast as the two posters could go. The news the air the motion that had such an exhilirating effect on Frank Edwards seemed to be equally efficacious in the case of my old friend Smith. He felt so well on being told of his host's departure that he was able to move at once; and without waiting for consultation with the doctor or even for his carriage he accompanied his daughter and the indefatigable Percy Marvale across the fields to Howkey on foot. Meanwhile the hopeful lover drew near the hamlet of Wibbelton. He drove to the inn as the likeliest place where he could get information and entered the common parlour a neat little whitewashed room with clean sanded floor that looked out upon the village green. At a little table by the window sat a gentleman reading the newspaper and occasionally relieving the dryness of the parliamentary debates by a sip at a little tankard of beer. He was a neatly dressed old man with his thin long hair tied behind in a cue a bright blue coat buttoned close up to the throat stocking-thread pantaloons and high Hessian boots. His upright carriage and projecting chest pointed him out at once as a military man; and the bow he had made on Frank entering the room showed at once he was a man of the old school--very formal and ceremonious--but was indicative of good-nature at the same time. ""A stranger in Wibbelton?"" he said laying down the paper. ""Ha! I thought so--never remarked you before though I keep my eye on any new face that appears in our parish."" ""There are not many strangers I presume who find their way to this out-of-the-way village "" replied Frank. ""I beg your pardon my young friend. Many do. It is just the place for strangers to come to. A more complete retirement is not to be found in England."" ""But every one is not enamoured of retirement "" answered Frank. ""Then they have never been in active life. As for my step-son and me who have been pushed about the world all our days we find no place like Wibbelton."" ""A soldier I presume?"" enquired Frank. The old _militaire_ bowed. ""A soldier sir not quite unknown to fame if I may be allowed to say so. My step-son also."" ""And both reside here?"" ""My step-son's house is the large white manorial mansion you see on the other side of the green. It is the noblest house in the county. Ah! there is nothing equal to the fine residences of our venerable agricultural nobility. My step-son is chief of the family; and though I had the misfortune to lose his mother in a very few years after our marriage I always look upon him as a son. He looks on me as a father. We fight our battles over again and only feel the want of a little addition to our pleasing intelligent society."" Frank looked towards the mansion described as one of the noblest in England and saw a tolerably sized square house with a range of white palings before the door and a vine trailing over the front but with no appearance of grandeur more than the very ordinary houses by its side. ""It would perhaps destroy the charm of the retirement you spoke of if too many were admitted to share it "" said Frank. ""Has your step-son a family?"" ""Four blooming girls and an equal number of boys not quite old enough yet to be treated as companions."" ""Still at school?"" ""Oh no! My step-son hates public education. He brings them up beneath his own roof."" ""With the help of a tutor I suppose?"" ""No sir--no. A tutor is too harsh. A governess does it all."" ""Ah!"" said Frank. ""You start my friend as if you thought it impossible; but 'tis the case I assure you--quite a young woman too--and yet what order she keeps them in. If I had had an adjutant-general when I had my command with half such zeal! We military men are judges of discipline whether it is in the school-room or the field. So is my step-son."" ""Pray what age is the young person you speak so highly of?"" ""I should say not more than eighteen--so gentle too with it all."" ""Have you had the benefit of her services long?"" ""About half a year; yes I think she has introduced her system about half a year. We are quite a family party here. You see the house next to my step-son's?--the large mansion in the Tudor style of architecture? That belongs to my other step-son; a man of the purest philanthropy who merely to benefit the poor of his own village and the surrounding country practises as the medical man. Next to him again in the turreted building with the Gothic portico is his younger brother who from equally philanthropic principles and to prevent litigation among our neighbours acts here as an attorney. You see the brass plate on the office door? We are quite a family party you see."" ""I congratulate you on your neighbourhood "" said Frank. ""But the next house to the youngest of your step-sons--the lath and plaster cottage with the broken casements and untiled roof?"" ""Ah! that is to be let. It belongs to The Chobb."" ""To The Chobb! Who is The Chobb!"" ""My step-son sir. He is head of the great family of the Chobbs and follows the example of The O'Conor Don The Chisholm and other representatives of the old blood by taking the distinction 'the' before his name. Should you like to look at the _cottage ornée_ sir?"" ""The one with the broken windows?"" enquired Frank; ""is it empty?"" ""Yes; the Marquis di Carralva left it last week. If you would like a lodging in it for a few weeks The Chobb will be happy to put in a little furniture. You would join our circle""-- ""And take lessons in discipline from The Chobb's governess?"" ""Of course; you would immediately become one of the family. We are all united in the village; no secrets no privacy."" ""Then I take the house sir "" said Frank. ""May I ask who it is I have the honour of talking to?"" ""My name is General Hosham--you've heard of my being commander-in-chief in Mexico; my step-son Colonel Chobb fought for the glorious Isabella of Spain. Will you go and look at the villa sir?"" ""I shall take it "" said Frank ""at all events. Very little accommodation will be enough for me."" ""And you will take possession?"" ""Immediately; I consider myself Colonel Chobb's tenant from this hour."" ""You do?"" said the general taking him by the hand. ""You put me in mind of my poor aide-de-camp Saint Rosalio; he was a perfect gentleman. I am proud to make your acquaintance sir. I will be back in a few minutes."" And so saying the general made a military salam and walked in a stately manner out of the room. ""By this manoeuvre I have at all events secured admission to The Chobb's house; and if this governess is indeed poor Alice--but no--how could I think she would be connected in any way with such strange people as these? At all events she is in the village and by staying in it for a few days I am certain to find her out."" In the midst of these and similar reflections the general returned and brought with him no less an individual than The Chobb in person. He was a little man very dark in the complexion and very fat with the coarse look that a habit of low dissipation is sure to leave upon the best features. Small impudent eyes peeped sharply over the puffed out cheeks and gave a look of mingled bullying and cunning to his countenance which told a very intelligible tale of beer and tobacco. He held out his hand in the most open unaffected manner and echoed all his step-sire's speeches on the subject of the ornamental villa and his pride and happiness in finding so desirable a neighbour. ""Rather worse quarters than if you came into the great house as my poor mansion is called but a mighty deal more comfortable than many I've had to put up with. I remember bivouacking in a wet cave on the shores of the Bay of Biscay. I was in command that day of the army of observation. Carlos was on the heights of St Sebastian and I was tired of reconnoitring: I bivouacked I tell you in a cave--no blankets no counterpane and covered with wounds. In the middle of the night I heard a noise; looked up; it was pitch dark. I cocked my pistol and fired into the corner where the noise was made and went to sleep again! In the morning my aides-de-camp came in and on groping in the cave what do you think we found?--but you will never guess it: a boa-constrictor-- an immense animal--thicker than stepfather's body. I had shot him right through the eye for I never missed a mark in my life."" ""I thought you said it was pitch dark?"" said Frank. ""Oh no! you misunderstood me. I did not say it was dark father?"" ""Certainly not. You distinctly said it was light enough to see the animal. I have heard you tell the story a dozen times. It was as light as day."" Frank looked at the old gentleman with surprise but said nothing; and they proceeded as before. ""You will have no boa-constrictors to contend with "" said The Chobb. ""One of the bed-rooms is splendidly furnished already. There is the tent-bed in it which the general took from Tippoo Saib in Mexico; and as to your dining-room and kitchen why you can dine with me."" And here he held out his hand and shook Frank's again. ""You will not have far to come and there will always be a knife and fork."" ""He is certainly the most generous fellow in England "" whispered the general to Frank; ""a perfect gentleman and open as the day."" ""We shall get on very well I have no doubt "" pursued the colonel who pretended not to have heard the general's remark; ""but here comes the landlord with dinner. I ordered it as I came up stairs; and by way of consolidating our friendship I hope you will take it here to-day instead of in the great house."" Along with dinner came in the two brothers of The Chobb and were introduced in due form. The philanthropist who practised as attorney brought with him an agreement for the house; and the general explaining to Frank that these business details were merely for form's sake and that he had told his step-son that the terms they had fixed on for the cottage were for half a year at a rent of twenty pounds Frank signed the paper and they all sat down to dinner. The Chobb presided and the general acted as vice. ""This is a mighty deal better than the buffalo soup we had at Pondicherry when we were besieged by Santa Anna and the Monte Videans "" said the general. ""Or the tiger broth we had at Cadiz when we were defending the town against Don Pedro "" said The Chobb. ""I used to shoot the tigers myself which was capital amusement."" ""At Cadiz did you say?"" enquired Frank. The Chobb nodded and said--""You'll think it odd perhaps; but I give you my honour I never saw so many tigers in my life as during the whole of that bombardment. I ought to remember it well for I was in command of the batteries--three of twelve twenty-fours and one of six thirty-twos."" ""But tigers are not found in Spain "" observed Frank. ""I beg your pardon "" said The Chobb; ""I did not say tigers. Did I say tigers General Hosham?"" ""Certainly not; you said merino sheep. I remarked it particularly."" ""So did I "" said the philanthropic attorney. ""I will trouble you sir "" said The Chobb twisting his mustaches ""to be a little more particular in your recollection of what I said. How could any person think I could talk such nonsense as to mention tigers in Spain?"" ""There are tigers in Mexico though "" observed the general ""and we must excuse our young friend if he confused between the two places. I was generalissimo and remember the whole thing perfectly; and very bad broth they made. The Chobb "" he added in a low tone to Frank ""is very touchy if any one interrupts him in his anecdotes. He has seen an immense deal of service though he is so young and is very instructive and entertaining."" Frank held his tongue and listened the whole evening to the Mexican and Spanish recollections of the two warriors. His object was too nearly gained to throw it away by a quarrel with his new friends; and he played cards with them till a late hour and lost at the end of the evening sixteen points. ""We played guinea points "" said The Chobb rising to go away he having always paid his losses in shillings ""and I will thank you for sixteen."" ""We were playing shilling points you will remember "" said Frank. ""General Hosham "" said The Chobb ""I merely appeal to you. What points were we playing?"" ""Does the other party refer it to me?"" said the general blandly smiling; ""you may both depend on my unbiased decision."" ""Certainly sir "" said Frank; ""there can't be a doubt upon the point."" ""You were certainly playing guinea points "" said the general ""as I am a gentleman and a man of honour; but I think I know the origin of your mistake. You saw that I and my step-son George were playing shilling points; though I did most distinctly see you receive at the rate of guinea points from my friend and step-son Colonel Chobb."" Frank paid the money and would have given ten times the amount rather than forego the chance of seeing Alice. ""And now good-night my excellent friend and tenant "" said the colonel; ""and by the by will you allow me to borrow the ten-pound note of you I saw you take from your pocket? I wish to settle with the landlord as I go down stairs--I hate running up a bill at an inn; and besides we can consider it a first instalment of your rent."" Frank gave him the ten-pound note; and the colonel whose attentions to wine and brandy-and-water had been unremitted stuffed it into his waistcoat pocket and staggered out of the room. The general took leave with the most stately courtesy and soon followed. ""Now then "" said Frank ""one day will decide my fate. Time money and temper will not have been wasted if I get only half an hour's talk with Alice Elstree."" CHAPTER V. Mr Percy Marvale in the mean time had not been idle at Howkey. He had established himself in the house in spite of all the sour looks and short answers Mr Smith could bestow on him. All his attempts at a lodgment were aided by the invitations of Sibylla whether conveyed in words or in untranslatable smiles and glances. An instantaneous friendship was established between him and the younger branches; and from some of the children who came down to see their papa and congratulate him on his return he picked out a great mass of information about the affairs of the nursery and school-room. There certainly was as a governess--young pretty and very shy--exactly such as he supposed Miss Elstree would be; and his hopes were further raised by learning that her name was Alice. His next object was to see her--to speak to her if possible--and satisfy himself of her identity; for as the information contained in Frank's letter did not emanate from himself and he had not even been admitted by his principal to a knowledge of its contents he was not inclined to believe that the discovery could be made without him. By dint of remaining at Howkey till it was impossible for Old Smith to avoid asking the friend of his preserver to stay all night he managed to make good his quarters on the ground of his operations and resolved to commence proceedings as early as possible in the morning. Sibylla lay awake half the night revolving all the strange speeches he had made her--his allusions to the hidden treasure in the house--the lost star-- the incognito goddess--and tracing in all his fine expressions one paramount idea of his anxiety to make himself master of a perfect paragon of beauty and romance she could not avoid coming to the conclusion that these were all metaphorical declarations of attachment to herself. And on the following day her manner had derived so much _empressement_ from these cogitations that all the efforts of Monimia on the imperturbable Frank were cast into the shade by the extraordinary evolutions of the sentimental Sibylla. ""Gads!"" said Mr Percy Marvale to himself ""this beats the Surrey all to sticks. He must be shockingly rich""--he thought looking round the splendidly furnished drawing-room; ""I'll see if I can't do a little business on my own account as well as Mr Edwards's."" ""You've heard what I have been asking you madam about an undiscovered jewel in this elegant abode? Pity it should be left to the dimness of the rural shades!"" ""Alas!"" said Sibylla casting down her eyes in modest embarrassment ""it is little fitted to meet the eye of the world."" ""It needs a fresh setting that's all; and they say there's an exquisite silversmith on the Scottish border. The railway brings him within twenty hours."" A few arguments _pro_ and _con_--a few blushes--a few quotations from the love scenes of the Surrey and it was finally arranged. At three they were to meet at the foot of the lane where a chaise was to be in waiting; and Frank Edwards was left by his faithless assistant to look after Alice Elstree for himself. The village of Wibbleton had not slept all night for thinking of the new inhabitant of the _cottage ornée_; and the landlord of the Rose and Crown had not been backward in singing the praises of his generosity and riches. ""Them Chobbs has cotch another pigeon "" said the hostler to the boots; ""and a rare good thing they makes of that 'ere old house. The last tenant paid 'em two years's rent in forfeit; and this 'un will do the same."" ""They are the bullyingest meanestest lyingest fellies as ever I heard of "" replied the boots. ""Tom Chobbs the eldest one owes me no end of money; but there aint no use asking it for the whole kit on them--the lawyer the doctor and the old corporal his stepfather--would all swear they had seen him pay it."" ""They'll be found out some day and the village cleared of them "" replied the hostler; ""and if they're in want of rope I'll not grudge ere a halter in the stable."" ""But there he goes poor young gentleman!--they'll not leave him a farden of money if they get him into their clutches."" This pitying observation was made as Frank Edwards crossed over from the hotel and knocked at the door of the great house to pay his respects to The Chobb. Before he left the hotel the landlord with many apologies had presented his bill for the dinner of the day before which the military gentleman had forgotten to discharge. The door was opened and he was shown into a parlour on the ground floor and told to sit down till his arrival was announced. ""Maister's just a-coming sir "" said the slipshod maid again putting her head into the parlour where Frank was sitting; and in a few minutes The Chobb the general the lawyer and the medical man walked into the room. ""I must say sir "" said The Chobb touching his hat slightly which he kept on while he spoke ""that this is rather extraordinary conduct and needs explanation."" ""What do you allude to sir? You asked me to call and I now wait on you."" ""But you have not apologised sir nor rectified the mistake if it _was_ a mistake "" he added looking for support to the general. ""If it _was_ a mistake!"" repeated that distinguished commander looking very stiff and solemn. ""Appearances are against it "" chimed in the lawyer. ""What is it all about gentlemen?"" enquired Frank Edwards biting his lip. ""All about this sir "" replied The Chobb. ""I am a gentleman and I was in hopes any tenant of mine would be a gentleman also; but when you descend to such conduct as in presence of these parties you did last night--there is no excuse for it--even the state of intoxication you were in is no excuse--no excuse for it at all."" ""No excuse for it at all!"" repeated the general looking stately and solemn as before. ""Perhaps the gentleman did it for a joke and will make it good "" suggested the benevolent lawyer. ""Oh that's a different matter!"" said The Chobb slightly relaxing; ""and if the gentleman withdraws it and replaces the sum correctly I am the last man in the world to find fault with a harmless pleasantry."" ""As I don't know what you mean ""--Frank began. ""Oh let me explain it!"" interposed the general. ""You offered last night to pay my step-son Colonel Chobb a month's rent of your _cottage orné_ in advance. He agreed to accept it and the ten-pound note with which you discharged the amount turns out to be a flash note on the Bank of Fashion. These are the simple facts. I regret to state that appearances are against you."" ""We do not know you you will observe "" said the lawyer. ""And my brother Colonel Chobb is always a great deal too careless in money matters. He should not have let you the cottage without a reference."" ""You also raised a slight suspicion by your attempt at a wrangle on the guinea stakes "" added the medical man. ""I am bound to say "" observed the general ""that it would have an awkward appearance in a court of justice."" ""But""-- ""Oh you need not deny it!"" said The Chobb. ""I hate roundabout stories. I am a gentleman. Was it a joke or not? Will you pay me a good ten-pound note or not?"" ""Where is this note?"" ""It is in the hands of my children's governess. I have lodged it with her for security and gain her evidence if unfortunately the business goes further."" ""Gentlemen "" said Frank ""before I answer you I must insist on seeing the lady and the note exactly in the state it now is."" ""Certainly! nothing can be fairer "" said the general. ""I will conduct you to the school-room at once."" ""I should like if you please to be paid for these documents first "" said the lawyer. ""The agreement stamp is very high."" ""And as short accounts make long friendships "" said the medical man ""I should like to receive my fee for attendance."" ""What attendance sir?"" said Frank whom even the approaching interview with Alice could scarcely keep cool. ""I visited you professionally at the inn yesterday sir and sat by your side till nearly twelve o'clock. Time with a medical man is money; and I think my demand moderate at five guineas."" ""Very moderate indeed!"" said The Chobb. ""Sir Henry Halford would have charged you five times the sum for half the time."" ""But I never called this skilful physician in "" said Frank amazed in spite of himself. ""Didn't you? But here comes General Hosham. General Hosham did this gentleman call me in professionally yesterday?"" ""Most assuredly he did "" replied the general. ""I have a perfect recollection of the fact; but perhaps he may confuse it with something else. I thought I heard the name of Sir Henry Halford. He did not call _him_ in. If I might advise as an older man than any of you and a mutual friend of both parties I would suggest that this gentleman had better at once pay my step-son George--Dr Chobb--five pounds--pounds instead of guineas--a compromise is always best between friends. Pay him the money my good sir and come up with me to the school-room."" A five-pound note instantly covered the doctor's face with smiles and two tens had the same effect upon the lawyer's. ""Now sir "" he said ""I go with you;"" and preceded by the general he went up a narrow flight of stairs. ""The French and Italian lessons are over "" said the general ""and the music is not yet begun."" He opened a door and at the farther end of the room a young woman with extraordinary breadth of back was busy over a large washing-tub in the act of wringing a child's shirt. Five or six dirty children were sewing and knitting in different parts of the room and Frank looked round enquiringly to discover Alice Elstree. ""This is the young lady that keeps the note "" said the general. ""Miss M'Screigh you have the evidence?"" ""Tiel a toot!"" said the lady thus appealed to in a broad Highland accent turning round from her labours and displaying a countenance as strongly redolent of Aberdeenshire as her tongue. But Frank would wait for no further parley. He passed rapidly down stairs but was waylaid at the foot of them by The Chobb in person. Frank was endowed with prodigious strength and favoured the head of the distinguished family with a dig in the ribs that left him in the condition of an exhausted air receiver. ""That's enough--assault and battery "" said the philanthropist; ""swinging damages at the next assizes and a comfortable bill of costs."" But Frank regardless of Chobbs and assizes pursued his way. He kicked the crazy door open and was rejoiced to find himself in the open air. His progress through the village had not been unobserved by other eyes besides those of the hostler and boots of the Rose and Crown. There was a low thatched cottage on the opposite side of the road from the residence of The Chobb; clusters of white roses clambered in all directions over the wall and the little lawn in front was tastefully laid out and the turf and shrubs kept in perfect order. Along the gravel walks of this little lawn walked slowly as if in infirm health a middle-aged lady leaning for support on the arm of a tall and graceful girl; and ever and anon she turned on her companion's suffering face a look of such love and sweetness--it was sure to create a smile even on the wan lips of the invalid. That girl's eyes had rested on Frank Edwards as he passed--a red flush had crossed her brow--a whiteness as of death had come upon her cheek--and leading the elder lady with tottering steps to the garden bower she had sat down beside her and covered her face with her hands and burst into tears. At the moment Frank Edwards emerged into the road he was nearly jammed against the railings in front of the thatched cottage by the rapid approach of a post-chaise. While he looked in at the window the wheel dipped into a rut the axle instantaneously broke and the body of the carriage bumped upon the ground. In an instant he had secured the horses and the Chobb family rushing out advanced to the door of the vehicle. With some difficulty the passengers were extracted and consisted of a tall dark-complexioned gentleman with mustaches looking as sheepish and uncomfortable as possible. ""What! Marvale!"" exclaimed Frank ""What has brought you here? and who is the lady beside you?"" ""Hush my dear sir she's in a faint."" ""Why William "" cried the philanthropic attorney ""do you pretend not to know us?"" ""Ah! how d'ye do George--ha'n't seen you a long time "" said Percy Marvale looking contemptuously at the lawyer. ""You look very grand with these mustaches "" continued George; ""your own father would scarcely know you."" ""Is the old snob alive then?"" enquired the dutiful son. ""To be sure and here he's coming. General Hosham here's Bill come back again."" ""Has he brought back the watch and spoons?"" enquired the affectionate father; ""if not I'll have him up for the theft."" The fainting lady had been carried in the mean time by the villagers into the thatched cottage and into it Frank also proceeded to watch over her recovery. Two ladies were bending over her; and on Frank's approach the elder one looked up. The younger one also saw him. There was nothing more needed than that look. Frank took a hand of each. There was an end of his uncertainties. It was Alice Elstree and her mother. While the recognitions were going on outside and Sibylla was slowly recovering a phaeton had driven rapidly up and Old Smith and his son had jumped out and laid violent hands on Percy Marvale's collar. ""You villain you ruffian you swindler!"" began my old friend out of breath. ""Actionable!"" observed the philanthropic attorney. ""I'll take down his words."" ""Where is my daughter sir?"" ""I don't know. I--that is--my friend Edwards""-- ""What has he to do with it sir?"" ""I should say sir "" said General Hosham advancing in a most polite manner and lifting his hat--""that it is probable the person alluded to by my son is guilty of the crime whatever it is you now charge my boy with. The person has gone into that cottage and you can arrest him on the spot."" ""Oho!"" said Mr Smith ""I think I recollect your faces my fine fellows. Haven't we met at the quarter sessions? Was not there some rumour about your extorting money from a tenant a year or two ago by threats of accusing him of passing a forged note?"" The general made a stately bow and The Chobb himself who had joined the crowd felt crestfallen and limped back again into the house. In the cottage all things proceeded favourably. Frank Edwards with an adroitness that would have done honour to the hero of one of Percy Marvale's melodramas assured the angry father that Sibylla had come at his special request to act as companion to his bride and consult as to the preparations for the approaching wedding. And on that same evening Sibylla and Frank accompanied Mrs Elstree and her daughter to my house where it was arranged they were to remain for three weeks or a month till the ceremony took place. A HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF THE CANAL WHICH CONNECTED THE NILE AND THE RED SEA IN ANCIENT TIMES. The questions relating to the different lines of communication between Europe and India have been so frequently discussed of late and such a mass of ill-digested information on the subject has been printed that we shall not plunge into any discussion relating to the conflicting opinions of the moderns but proceed without preface to supply an accurate history of the ancient canal which connected the Nile with the Red Sea.[1] We are satisfied that any exact knowledge of what actually existed in former times and the precise object of the ancient undertaking are necessary in order to form sound conclusions concerning the future. [1] For modern information we refer our readers to the Reports on Steam Navigation with India. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed. 14th July 1834 and 15th July 1837. This canal like every other in Egypt had its origin in the formation of a canal for irrigation caused by an increased demand for arable land in consequence of the augmentation of the pop
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lation. It was in its origin one of the numerous canals which spread the waters of the Nile for the irrigation of the land of Egypt. The country between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea is intersected in its longitude by a valley which commences at Suez and joins the lake Menzaleh and the eastern mouth of the Nile. The level of the Red Sea is considerably higher than that of the Mediterranean. The difference at high water is about thirty-two feet six inches; and this difference is seldom less than twenty-five feet even at low water. The whole of this valley would be inundated and the waters of the Red Sea would flow into the Mediterranean through a series of lakes were it not for a strong embankment of elevated sand which forms the shore at Suez. The existence of the bitter lakes in the lower levels of this valley induced Aristotle [1] and many of the ancients to believe that Africa had once been an island--Egypt having been separated from Syria and Arabia by the union of the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. Colonel Leake in his map of Egypt observes ""that there is no material obstacle to a communication by lakes and inundations from Suez to the lake Menzaleh and to Tineh--by which Africa would become an island."" And some observations on the formation of a canal in this valley will be found in the _Mémoire sur la communication de la Mer des Indes à la Méditerranée par la Mer Rouge et l'Isthme de Soueys_ in the great French work on Egypt.[2] [1] Meteorologica i. 14. [2] Chap. iii. § iii. and iv. p. 60 of the _Mémoire_. The valley running from Suez to Tineh is joined about halfway between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean by another valley called Seba Biar which meets it at right angles stretching in latitude from the elevated ground on the right bank of the eastern branch of the Nile. The valley of Seba Biar was the land of Goshen.[1] When this district is first mentioned in history it consisted of a low level liable to partial inundation and affording good pasturage though hardly suited to regular cultivation. For this reason and from its vicinity to Syria it was given by Joseph to the children of Israel who were a pastoral tribe. Though Joseph was the prime minister of the country under a dynasty of foreign conquerors--the Hyksos or Nomad Arabs--still the laws and usages of a dense native population placed such restraint on the sovereign's power that the Israelites being a race of shepherds would not be mixed with the Egyptians or put in possession of any arable land. On this account Joseph told his father and brethren to say to the king--""Thy servants' trade hath been about cattle from our youth even until now both we and also our fathers; that ye may dwell in the land of Goshen: for every shepherd is an abomination unto the Egyptians.""[2] [1] On this point D'Anville Gosselin and Major Rennell agree. [2] Genesis xlvi. 34. Yet with this restraint on his power Joseph succeeded in effecting the greatest change in the condition of the Egyptians which any nation ever submitted to in peace. As vizier of the country he converted the property of all the agricultural class from a freehold inheritance into a lease from government at a rent of one-fifth of the produce of the land.[1] The project was doubtless adopted to augment the revenues of the crown for the purpose of improving the irrigation and augmenting the produce and population of Egypt. We know that it made the race of Egyptians a race of warriors and conquerors until it exhausted their resources; and then by placing the property of the people at the mercy of the government is prepared the way for the extermination of the native Egyptian or Coptic population. [1] Genesis xlvii. 18-26. The Nomads or Hyksos were driven from the throne of Egypt by the kings of Thebes a native race; and under their government the prosperity and population of the country rapidly increased. The demand for land capable of cultivation became immense. Moeris constructed the wonderful artificial lake for the purpose of regulating the inundation and augmenting the productive powers of Egypt which was always regarded as one of the most extraordinary undertakings of man. Monsieur Linant has lately discovered the traces of this lake and has shown that it was formed by making embankments round a high level from which the waters could be drawn off for irrigation. The absurd opinion of many travellers and geographers that the _Birket-el-Karaun_ a salt lake in a deep natural basin was the lake of Moeris is therefore completely exploded; that lake could never have been any thing but a cess-pool for the superabundant waters of the lake Moeris and a sink for the waste waters of the Nile. When land became of so great value in Egypt as to cause such vast undertakings to be made for improving its fertility as the formation of the lake Moeris it is not to be supposed that the Egyptians would overlook the capabilities of the land of Goshen. The Israelites were regarded with no favourable eye. They had been the friends of the foreign rulers of the land; and consequently both the people and the native princes declared against them and resolved to drive them from the territory they occupied.[1] This was effected in the reign of Amenoph II. after they had remained in Egypt 430 years.[2] [1] Exodus i. 8 9. [2] Exodus xii. 40. At the time of the exodus therefore it is evident that no canal could have existed in the valley of Goshen. The population of Israelites and Nomads however which dwelt on the confines of the irrigable land must have been very great; as the Hebrews alone exceeded 600 000 souls and they were accompanied by ""a mixed multitude "" which is the phrase used in Scripture to designate the nomad Arabs. But though no canal existed at this period we find evidence that a considerable trade in the produce of Egypt was already carried on through this district caused by the want of agricultural produce in Arabia; and this trade induced the Egyptians to ""guild for Pharaoh treasure-cities Pithom and Raamses.""[1] [1] Compare Genesis xlvii. 11 Exodus i. 11 and xii. 37. As soon as the children of Israel were driven out of the land of Goshen the new occupants would naturally commence the formation of a canal for irrigating the land they had gained. Now a great part of the valley of Seba Biar is lower than the level of the Nile at the height of the inundation this was easily done. A canal from the eastern branch of the river near Bubastes did not require to be cut to a greater distance than seven miles in order to allow the waters to fill the valley. By this operation the irrigation could have been carried as far as the northern boundary of the bitter lakes between Suez and the Mediterranean; and at least 20 000 acres of land gained for agricultural purposes. This irrigation would extend itself to the Serapeion--a distance of about forty-five miles from Bubastes and about forty from the Red Sea. Let us now observe the chronology of the events we have already noticed. Without pretending to offer any opinion on the disputed questions of Egyptian chronology we shall adopt the dates given by Dr Nolan in his memoir on the use of the ancient cycles in settling the differences of chronologists published in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature.[1] It must be observed that the 430 years of the sojourning of the children of Israel in Egypt is to be computed from the call of Abraham and not from the going down of Israel as is explained by St Paul in the Epistle to the Galatians chap. iii. v. 17.[2] [1] Vol. iii. p. 2. [2] Josephus Antiquit. Jud. ii. 15 2; Clinton's Fasti Hellenici i. 297. The administration of Joseph occurred during the reign of the last king of the race of the Hyksos B.C. 1687 The reign of Mephres or Moeris B.C. 1538 The exodus occurred in the year B.C. 1492 The Egyptians enjoyed a long period of prosperity after they had driven out the Israelites. Their national history during a period of four hundred years is recorded on their monuments; and though not very intelligible in its details it affords irrefragable proof that their country was always in a flourishing condition and possessed a considerable commerce with other nations. The Egyptians however had as great an aversion to foreign traders as to shepherds; and it was long before they undertook any work for improving their commercial communications. At length however the canal which had been carried as far as the longitudinal valley between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean began to excite their attention as affording a cheap means of transport for that portion of the produce of the country which was purchased by the inhabitants of Arabia and of the shores of the Red Sea. We have the testimony of Aristotle Strabo and Pliny that the project of forming a canal to unite the Nile with the Red Sea was entertained by Sesostris.[1] Aristotle says ""that Egypt the most ancient seat of mankind was formed by the river Nile as appears from the examination of the country bordering on the Red Sea. One of the ancient kings attempted to form a navigable communication between the river and the sea; but Sesostris finding that the waters of the Red Sea were higher than those of the Nile both he and Darius after him desisted from the attempt lest the lower part of the delta should be inundated with salt water."" It is extremely difficult to ascertain what king is meant by Sesostris since that name seems to have been given by the Greeks to more that one of the distinguished monarchs of the country. Aristotle however clearly refers in his account to the king he calls Sesostris and to an earlier monarch. The one may have been Sethosis who reigned about B.C. 1291 and the other Sesonchis of Bubastes the Shishac of Scripture in the year B.C. 976. These sovereigns may have converted the canal of irrigation into a regular commercial route; and the last may have commenced the greater work of connecting it with the bitter lakes. The fear of inundating the Delta with salt water by cutting through the northern shore of the Red Sea and allowing a communication with the bitter lakes to remain always open has been shown by the French engineers whose report is printed in the great work on Egypt to be no idle fear.[2] [1] Arist. Meteorol. i. 14. Strabo lib. i. c. 2 vol. i. p. 60; lib. xvii. c. 1 vol. iii. 443.--Ed. Tauch. Plinii Natur. Hist. lib. vi. 33. [2] _Mémoire sur la communication de la Mer des Indes à la Méditerranée par la Mer Rouge et l'Isthme de Soueys par_ M.J.M. Le Père. Several circumstances combine to show that the completion of the canal and the importance of opening a direct navigable communication between the Nile and the Red Sea must have occupied more particularly the attention of Sesonchis than of the preceding kings. He was a native of Bubastes; and the seat of his power was in the Delta. The importance of this navigation for enriching his fellow-citizens and placing the whole trade of the Delta to the eastward under his control was evident; but the great wealth which might be gained from sharing in the trade on the Red Sea was also forced on his attention by the immense riches which Solomon had been able to accumulate on acquiring a share in this trade which had been previously in the hands of the Phoenicians. Solomon had extended the trade he carried on in the Red Sea by means of the ports on the gulf of Eloth (Ailath ) far beyond its former bounds.[1] Now as the grain and provisions required for supplying the fleets in the Red Sea and the greater part of the commercial population on its coasts must have been drawn from Egypt by the port of Suez and as Egypt must have afforded one of the most valuable markets for the produce of Arabia and India it is not surprising that Sesonchis made great endeavours to obtain a share in a branch of commerce from which he had seen Solomon derive such wealth. From some reason he abandoned the project of completing the canal to Suez; but in order to secure a portion of Solomon's riches he invaded Judea and plundered Jerusalem.[2] ""So Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem: and he took away the treasures of the house of the Lord and the treasures of the king's house; he even took away all: and he carried away all the shields of gold which Solomon had made."" That this Shishak or Sesonchis of Bubastes was the Sesostris alluded to by Aristotle Strabo and Pliny though it cannot perhaps be positively proved can nevertheless hardly admit of a doubt. [1] I Kings ix. 26; 2 Chronicles viii. 17. [2] I Kings xiv. 27; 2 Chronicles xii. 2. Thus far we have only been able to draw a few inferences relating to the canal from historical facts connected with the subject; but from this period we become furnished with materials for a consecutive history. Herodotus is the earliest author who affords direct testimony of the completion of the canal and its employment for carrying on a navigable communication between the Nile and the Red Sea. His description requires to be cited in his own words in order to testify the sagacity of his enquiries and the accuracy of his information. ""Psammetichus had a son whose name was Nekos. This prince first commenced that canal leading to the Red Sea which Darius king of Persia afterwards continued. The length of the canal is equal to a four days' voyage and it is wide enough to admit two triremes abreast. The water enters it from the Nile a little above the city of Bubastes. It terminated in the Red Sea not far from Patumos an Arabian town. In the prosecution of this work under Nekos no less than 120 000 Egyptians perished. He at length desisted from his undertaking being admonished by an oracle that all his labour would turn to the advantage of a barbarian."" As soon as Nekos discontinued his labours with respect to the canal he turned all his thoughts to military enterprise. He built vessels of war both on the Mediterranean and in that part of the Arabian gulf which is near the Red Sea.[1] [1] Herod. book ii. § 158. Beloe's Translation vol. i. p. 411. This statement of Herodotus is confirmed by Diodorus Siculus another Greek historian who had visited Egypt and like Herodotus paid great attention to its history and antiquities. The words of Diodorus are--""A canal has been dug from the Pelusiac branch of the Nile to the gulf of Arabia and the Red Sea. It was commenced by Nekos son of Psammetichus and afterwards continued by Darius king of the Persians who made some progress with the work but abandoned it when he learned that if the isthmus was dug through all Egypt would be inundated as the level of the Red Sea is higher than that of the soil of Egypt. At last Ptolemy II. (Philadelphus) completed the undertaking; having adapted an ingenious contrivance to the ingress of the canal which was opened when a vessel was about to enter and afterwards closed. Experience proved the utility of this invention. The waters which flow in this canal are called the river of Ptolemy the king who executed this great work. The town of Arsinöe is constructed at its mouth.""[1] [1] Diodorus Siculus i. 33. Nekos reigned B.C. 616 to 601. See also 2 Kings chap. xxiii. ver. 29. It must be recollected that Diodorus wrote about four hundred years after Herodotus; and his information concerning the earlier events from want of precision appears to be deficient in accuracy. These two passages make it evident that Nekos had commenced some great improvements on the canal of Sesostris; and it appears to have been his intention to have made use of it in order to secure a naval superiority in the Red Sea. It is plain too from the statement of Herodotus that Darius had completed the canal in so far as that was possible without the invention of locks for forming an immediate communication with the Red Sea. And from the account of Diodorus it seems that he viewed the canal of Darius which for ages had served for a commercial route as incomplete; because the actual junction of the waters of the canal and the Red Sea had not taken place until Ptolemy Philadelphus by applying the invention of locks had enabled vessels to quit the canal in order to navigate the sea. Strabo who was also well acquainted with Egypt from personal residence mentions the locks constructed by Ptolemy. After saying that even Darius had left the junction of the canal with the Red Sea incomplete from the danger of inundating the country he adds--""During the government of the Ptolemies the isthmus was cut through and a closed passage (a _euripus_) formed so that a ship whenever it was required could enter the outer sea or pass into the canal.""[1] [1] Strabo xvii. c. 1. Vol. iii. p. 444.--Ed. Tauch. Though the canal constructed by Darius had been in general use for commercial purposes and was regarded by Herodotus when he visited Egypt as a work in every way complete still there can be no doubt that its importance would be greatly increased by the locks connecting it with the Red Sea. The augmentation in the trade and the improvement in the class of vessels which navigated the canal induced Ptolemy to make the changes in the whole course from which it received the name of the river of Ptolemy. A very great addition was thus made to the prosperity of Egypt as the canal would remain navigable for four months annually from the end of August to the end of December. During this season of the year the people of the Delta had little to attend to but the exportation of their surplus produce and clearing their granaries for a new harvest by selling all that portion of their grain which was neither required for seed nor for the maintenance of their families. It has been supposed very generally but on no adequate authority that Ptolemy Philadelphus constructed this canal with a view of making it the route of the Indian trade; but this was by no means the case. Even Robertson in his historical disquisition concerning ancient India falls into this error to which he adds the greater mistake of declaring ""that the work was never finished.""[1] On the other hand he points out with accuracy the real direction which Ptolemy gave to the trade with India by Berenice and Coptos and the great works he constructed for the convenience of transporting goods from the Nile across the desert to the Red Sea; and it may be remarked that the Indian trade always kept this route or one similar until the discovery of that by the Cape of Good Hope--the great route of the merchants being either by Coptos and Berenice or by Coptos and Myos Hormos or at a later period by the Vicus Apollinis to Philotera. Ptolemy was perfectly aware of all the difficulties of the navigation of the northern part of the Red Sea during the summer months against the north wind. The great object of the canal was the export of produce from the Delta for which there was a great demand in the countries on the northern shores of the Red Sea. But there can be no doubt that ships would often sail from Arsinöe to India disposing of their Egyptian cargo on the way and returning with their Indian goods to Berenice and sometimes to Arsinöe. Lucian indeed mentions that ""a young man having sailed up the Nile to Clysina and finding a ship ready to depart for India was induced to embark.""[2] [1] P. 46 and note xvii. [2] Alexander 44. The fact that the ancients found the navigation of the Nile more commodious and cheaper than that of the Red Sea even though it entailed on them the burden of transporting their merchandise from Coptos by caravan for six or seven days to Berenice or Myos Hormos should not be lost sight of in examining the objects for which the ancient canal to Arsinöe was constructed. The immense extent of the Indian trade by Berenice and Myos Hormos is attested by many passages in the Greek and Roman classics.[1] [1] Compare Strabo xii. c. 5 vol. i. p. 187 ed. Tauch.; xviii. i. vol. iii. p. 461. Plinii Hist. Nat. vi. 23; xii. 18. Arriani Perip. maris Erythr. in Hudson's Geog. min. Tom. i. 32. Athenaeus v. p. 201. The opinion which prevails very generally concerning the great inferiority of the ancients in naval skill requires also to be confined strictly to nautical knowledge and should not lead us to underrate their mechanical powers or their means of transporting objects of as great bulk as ourselves by sea. The parade which was made at Paris about transporting the obelisk from Egypt and erecting it in the Place de Concorde caused our neighbours to overlook the fact that there are several larger obelisks still existing at Rome which were brought from Egypt and there is one at Constantinople. The largest obelisk at Rome was brought there from Alexandria in the tine of Constantius when the arts and sciences are generally supposed to have been in a declining state.[1] [1] The height of the Parisian obelisk is 76 feet 6 inches that of the Lateran 105 feet 6 inches; of the Piazza del Popolo 87 feet 6 inches; of the Piazza San Pietro 83 feet. Only about 50 feet of the obelisk in the Atmeidan at Constantinople is now in existence but its proportions indicate that it must originally have exceeded 80 feet. We have two obelisks in the British Museum but we cannot boast much of our mechanical or naval skill in transporting them as they are only eight feet each in length. That the Romans found little difficulty in transporting the largest obelisks and columns by sea is not wonderful when we attend to the great size of some of the vessels which were constructed in ancient times. Our ignorance of the manner in which forty banks of oars were disposed in vessels larger than our three-deckers in such a way as to enable them to make long voyages does not authorize us to doubt the fact with such proofs as exist. Our ideas of ancient navies are generally derived from our recollections of the battle of Salamis as described by Herodotus and of the engagements between the Romans and Carthaginians in Polybius. This however was the infancy of the navel art though the Romans had made great advances beyond the Athenians. Polybius in noticing the improvement observes that they never made use of vessels like the small triremes of the Greek states but constructed only quinqueremes for war; and that of these they lost seven hundred in the first Punic war while the Carthaginians lost five hundred.[1] [1] The war lasted twenty-three years from B.C. 264 to 241.--POLYBIUS i. 63. It may not however be superfluous to mention the measurement of some of the largest ships constructed by the ancients. A very large ship was built for Hiero king of Syracuse under the direction of Archimedes. We ought therefore to pause before we decide that any deficiency in scientific skill rendered it a useless and unwieldy hulk. That it was not calculated to keep the sea when an English frigate would be sailing under close-reefed topsails there can be no doubt; but we must know the intentions with which the ancients constructed their enormous ships before we decide on their insufficiency. The ship constructed by Archimedes had twenty banks of oars and was built as a man-of-war. It was sent from Syracuse to Egypt as a present to Ptolemy Philopater and was laid up in the docks of Alexandria. But the largest vessel on record was a ship constructed for Ptolemy Philopater which had forty banks of oars. This vessel was rather a royal yacht built to gratify the vanity of the court than a ship intended for any useful purpose. It was 424 feet in length and 58 broad. The height of the forecastle from the water was 60 feet. The longest oars were 58 feet and their handles were loaded with lead to facilitate their motion. The equipage consisted of 4400 men of whom 4000 were rowers. A ship constructed for the voyages of the court on the Nile was 330 feet long and 45 feet wide.[1] These passages are sufficient to show the immense size of ancient ships and to prove that their system of naval architecture could not have been directed to contend against contrary winds but was calculated to transport the largest burdens. [1] A modern first-rate is about 205 feet long 54 feet broad and draws 25 feet water. Its weight is about 4600 tons when the guns and provisions are on board. Of course the weight even of Ptolemy's immense ship could not have approached this. Athen. Deipnosophistae lib. v. § 37 (p. 203.) Our skill in transporting large blocks of marble is so small that we have been compelled to cut in two some of the Lycian monuments of no great size. We must now notice the passages which have been supposed to controvert the account we have given of the completion of the canal between the Nile and the Red Sea. The first is a passage of Pliny the Elder which asserts that Ptolemy Philadelphus only carried the canal to the bitter lakes. ""Ex quo navigabilem alveum perducere in Nilum qua parte ad Delta dictum decurrit sexagies et bis centena mill. passuum intervallo (quod inter flumen et Rubrum mare interest ) primus omnium Sesostris Aegypti rex cogitavit: mox Darius Persarum: deinde Ptolemaeus sequens: qui et duxit fossam latitudine pedum centum altitudine XL in longitudinem XXXVII mill. D passuum usque ad Fontes amaros."" It is needless to remind the reader that Diodorus and Strabo who lived before Pliny and had both resided long in Egypt had seen the canal finished and described the lock by which it communicated with the Red Sea. It appears indeed that the passage as it stands has arisen from some inadvertence of Pliny or perhaps from some blunder of his copyists; for he contradicts his statement that the canal of Ptolemy terminated at the bitter lakes in a subsequent passage in which he mentions that Philadelphus constructed the branch which reached Arsinöe and was called the river of Ptolemy.--""Eae viae omnes Arsinöen ducunt conditam sororis nomine in sinu Charandra a Ptolemaeo Philadelpho qui primus Troglodyticen excussit et amnem qui Arsinöen praefluit Ptolemaeum appellavit.""[1] [1] Plinii Natur. Hist. lib. vi. § 33. The other passage is contained in Plutarch's life of Antony; and to a casual reader who forgets that the canal could only have been navigable during the season of the inundation in consequence of the high level of the waters of the Red Sea a difficulty in explaining the passage will immediately occur and an inference will be drawn against the existence of the canal at the time. Monsieur Letronne with his usual critical sagacity has however pointed out the combination of facts which render the anecdote in Plutarch a confirmation of the ordinary employment of the canal rather than an argument against its existence at the time.[1] Cleopatra when alarmed at the result of the war between Antony and Augustus had sent her son Caesario the reputed child of Julius Cesar with a considerable amount of treasure through Ethiopia into India.[2] ""When Antony returned to Alexandria after the battle of Actium he found Cleopatra engaged in a very stupendous and bold enterprise. She was endeavouring to transport her fleet over the isthmus between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean which in the narrowest part is three hundred stades and by this means with her fleet in the Arabian gulf and with her treasures to escape from slavery and war.""[3] Letronne has pointed out that the battle of Actium having been fought on the 2nd of September B.C. 31 it is evident from the subsequent events that Antony could not have rejoined Cleopatra in Egypt before the month of February or perhaps even later in the ensuing year. Now this period coincides with that at which the low state of the waters of the Nile must have rendered the canal useless for the passage of Cleopatra's fleet. Her extreme terror would not allow her to wait until the rise of the Nile again rendered the canal navigable and she resolved on transporting her fleet to the Red Sea by land. It must be observed however that the project could hardly have occurred to Cleopatra as feasible unless she had been well aware that vessels often passed from the Mediterranean into the Red Sea. The project was abandoned as the Arabs of Petra burned the first ships that Cleopatra attempted to transport; and Antony soon persuaded her that his affairs were by no means so desperate as she supposed. [1] Mémoire sur l'Isthme de Suez dans la Revue des deux Mondes tom. xxvii. 223. [2] Plutarch in Anton. § 81.--Langhorn's Translation in 1 vol. p. 656. [3] Plutarch in Anton. § 69.--Translation p. 652. The canal was of far too great importance to the prosperity of Egypt and the revenues of the country were too immediately connected with its existence as one of the highways for exporting the produce of the Delta for the Romans to neglect its conservation. It is true that the Romans never paid much attention to commerce which they despised; and during the long period they governed their immense empire in comparative tranquillity they did less to improve and extend its relations than any other people of antiquity. But they were always peculiarly attentive to preserve every undertaking which was connected with the agricultural industry and land revenue of their provinces. Unless therefore their attention had been directed to the canal of Suez either as an important military line of communication or as an instrument for displaying the pride and power of the empire it would have undergone no improvement under the Roman emperors. It happened however that when Trajan became anxious to display his magnificence in adorning Rome with new buildings that the fashion of the times rendered the granite and the porphyry in the neighbourhood of the Red Sea indispensable. To obtain the immense columns and the enormous porphyry vases which were then admired with sufficient celerity and in sufficient quantity it became necessary to render the canal navigable for a longer period of time every year. In order to effect this Trajan constructed a new canal from the vicinity of Babylon and connected it with the ancient canal through the valley of Seba Biar.[1] This new work is called the river of Trajan by Ptolemy the geographer; and as it gave an additional elevation of thirteen feet to the stream which fed the canal it may have supplied the means of keeping the navigation open for about six months yearly.[2] [1] Babylon was near Cairo. [2] Ptolemy lib. iv. 5. The quarries of granite and porphyry which supplied the Romans in the time of Trajan were discovered by Sir Gardner Wilkinson and Mr Burton in the years 1821-22 at Djebel-Fattereh and Djebel-Dokhan; and Monsieur Letronne has pointed out the connexion of these quarries with the improvements made by Trajan in the canal.[1] Many large works of porphyry exist which must have been worked in the quarries of Djebel-Dokhan. We need only enumerate the great porphyry vase in the Vatican which exceeds fourteen feet in diameter--that of the museum at Naples which is cut out of a block nearly as large--the tombs of St Helen in the Vatican and of Benedict XIII. in St John Lateran--and the blocks of the porphyry column at Constantinople. It is evident that the masses could never be conveyed from Djebel-Dokhan to the Nile by land; but no great difficulty would be found in transporting them to Myos Hormos on the Red Sea and embarking them there for Arsinöe; from whence their conveyance to Alexandria by the canal and the Nile was easy. It is well known that the quarries of porphyry in Egypt could not have grown into importance until after the reign of Claudius as Vitrasius Pollio sent the first porphyry statues which had been seen at Rome as a present to that emperor.[2] The chief if not the only quarries of red porphyry known to the ancients were in the Thebaid at Djebel-Dokhan. [1] Journal of the Royal Geographical Society vol. ii. [2] Plinii Natur. Hist. xxxvi. 11. At the granite quarries of Djebel Fattereh Sir Gardner Wilkinson found many columns in various stages of completion some ready to be removed; and of these there were several of the enormous size of fifty-five feet long and nearly eight feet in circumference. These quarries are at least thirty miles distant from the Red Sea; but as the ground affords a continual descent and some traces of the road exist there cannot be a doubt that these immense columns were destined to be carried to Philotera and there shipped for Arsinöe and that like the porphyry vases they were to find their way to Rome by the canal the Nile and the port of Alexandria. Sir Gardner Wilkinson has shown that these granite quarries were abandoned not long after the reign of Hadrian; and an inscription quoted by Letronne proves that the granite quarries at Syene were first worked about the years A.D. 205-209. The great facilities afforded by the Nile for transporting the largest columns from Syene to
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Alexandria appears to have caused the immediate abandonment of the quarries of Djebel Fattereh; as the expense of transporting the columns already finished was doubtless greater than the cost of working and conveying new ones from Syene to Alexandria. The canal of Trajan continued to be kept open after the building mania to which it owed its origin had ceased. It had extended the sphere of the export trade of the Delta; and it continued to serve as the means of transporting the blocks of porphyry--for which there was a constant demand at Rome and Constantinople and indeed in almost every city of wealth in the Roman empire. Eusebius in his ecclesiastical history mentions that the porphyry quarries of the Thebaid were worked during the time of the great persecution in the reign of Dioclesian. He says ""that one hundred martyrs were selected from the innumerable crowd of Christians condemned to labour in the Thebaid in the place called Porphyritis from the marble which was quarried at the spot.""[1] [1] Eusebius lib viii. c. 8. In the reign of Justinian we find these quarries still worked on a considerable scale as they are alluded to more than once by Paul the Silentiary in his description of the Church of St Sophia at Constantinople. He affords evidence that the porphyry still continued to be transported by the Nile to Alexandria; and though his words contain no express mention of the canal it is evident that the workmen of Justinian would always prefer the easier road by Myos Hormos and Arsinöe to the almost impracticable task of conveying the blocks across the desert.[1] In the reign of Justin I. the trade of the Red Sea was of great importance and must have created an immense demand for the agricultural produce of Egypt. The King of Ethiopia resolving to attack Dunaan the Jewish king of the Homerites in Arabia collected during the winter a fleet of seven hundred Indian vessels and six hundred trading ships belonging to the Roman and Persian merchants who visited his kingdom.[2] [1] Pauli Silentianii Descripto Magnae Ecclesiae Sanctae Sophiae v. 379 620. [2] Acts of the Martyrs; Metaphrast. Ap. Sur. tom v. p. 1042. After the reign of Justinian it is not improbable that the repairs necessary for maintaining the navigation of the canal open began to be neglected as we know that the population and industry of Egypt began to decline. The tribute of grain to Constantinople and the public distributions to the people of Alexandria appear to have exhausted all the surplus produce of the country; and to facilitate their collection Justinian forbade the exportation of grain from any part of Egypt but Alexandria except under great restrictions.[1] This edict doubtless ruined both the canal and the trade in the Red Sea and may be looked upon as one of the proximate causes of the increasing power of the Arabs about the time of the birth of Mohammed. The Arabian caravans became possessed of the commerce formerly carried on in the northern part of the Red Sea; and as the wealth and civilization of the Arabs increased a demand for a new religion and a more extended empire arose.[2] Had the complete abandonment of the canal not taken place shortly after the publication of Justinian's edict it must have been completed during the universal anarchy which prevailed while Phocas reigned at Constantinople. Shortly after Heraclius delivered the empire from Phocas the Persians invaded Egypt and kept possession of it for ten years; nor is it probable that Heraclius could have made any efforts to restore the canal during the time he ruled Egypt after recovering it from the Persians. When the Saracens conquered Egypt they found the canal filled with sand. [1] Edict xiii. Lex de Alexandrinis et Egyptiaciis provinciis. [2] Transport in some states of civilization is cheaper by caravan than by sea. The principle of all Mohammedan governments places the supreme power of the state in the person of the sovereign; and these sovereigns in the simplicity or barbarism of their political views have always considered the construction of wells fountains caravanseries and mosques as the only public works except palaces (if palaces can be properly so called ) worthy of a monarch's attention. Ports and canals they have always utterly despised and roads and bridges have been barely tolerated. It is as difficult to civilize the mind of a true Mohammedan as it is to wash the skin of a negro white. But the earlier caliphs were not moulded into true Mussulmans; they had been witnesses to the making of their religion; and when they forsook the rude superstitions of their forefathers of the desert they had admitted some gleams of common sense and sound reason into their minds along with the sermons of Mohammed. And in the early ages of the caliphate Syria and Egypt were inhabited by a numerous Christian population of the Nestorian and Jacobite heresies firmly attached to the Saracen power on their hatred to the orthodox Roman emperors at Constantinople. The importance of the canal of Suez to the well-being of these useful subjects of the Arab empire could not escape the attention of the caliphs. The native population of Egypt had with the greatest unanimity joined the Saracens against the Romans; and the Caliph Omar would have been led by policy to restore the canal in order to enrich these devoted partisans as he was induced to burn the library of Alexandria to diminish the moral influence of the Greeks. The Arabian historians and geographers contain numerous passages relating to the re-opening of the canal and many of these will be found translated at the end of the _Mémoire sur le Canal des Deux Mers_. They state that Omar ordered the canal of Trajan to be cleared out in its whole extent. The necessity of securing a greatly increased supply of grain for the holy cities of Medina and Mecca whose population had been suddenly augmented by their becoming the capitals of all Arabia and the centres of the Mohammedan power could not be overlooked. But the mind of Omar was particularly directed to the subject in consequence of a famine which prevailed in Arabia in the eighteenth year of the Hegira (A.D. 639 ) which was afterwards called the year of the mortality. In that year the caliph's attention was also more especially called to the fertility of Egypt as Amron at his pressing demand for provisions sent such an immense caravan that the Arabian writers with their usual exaggeration declare that the convoy was so numerous as to extend the whole way from Medina to Cairo; the first camel of the train entering the Holy City with its load as the last of the uninterrupted line quitted Misr. The descriptions of the abundance this supply spread among the Arabs are indeed less miraculous though such eloquence is displayed in painting the gastronomic delights of the hungry Mussulmans in devouring the savoury food cooked with the fat of the beasts of burden which had transported it.[1] [1] Ebn-A'bdoul-Hokin. The account of the canal given by the geographer Makrizy requires to be transcribed in his own words from the accurate summary which it contains of the later history of this great monument of civilization. ""When the Most High "" says the writer ""gave Islamism to mankind and Amrou-Ben-el-A'ss conquered Egypt by the order of Omar-ben-âl-Khatâb chief of the Faithful he cleared out the canal in the year of the mortality. He carried it to the sea of Qolzoum from which ships sailed to the Hedjâz to Yemen and to India. This canal remained open until the time when Mohammed-ben-Abdoullah-ben-El-Hosseïn-ben-Aly-ben-Aby-Thâleb revolted in the city of the Prophet (Medina) against Abou-dja'far-Abdoullah ben-Mohammed Al-Manssour then caliph of Irâk. This prince immediately wrote to his lieutenant in Egypt ordering him to fill up the canal of Qolzoum that it might not serve to transport provisions to Medina. The order was executed and all communication was cut off with the sea at Qolzoum. Since that time matters have remained in the state we now see them.""[1] As the rebellion of Mohammed Abdoullah against the caliph Al Manssour occurred between the 145th and the 150th years of the Hegira (A.D. 762-767 ) the canal had remained open for about 125 years under the Arab government. [1] See the extracts of Makrizy in the work on Egypt and in the _Notice par Langlès dans les notices et extraits des Manuscrits de la Bibliothèque du Roi_ vi. 334. We have now traced the history of the canal to its close; and we believe our readers will allow that we have proved by incontrovertible evidence that a continued navigation from the Nile to the Red Sea existed from the time of Darius (B.C. 500) to the time of Al-Manssour (A.D. 765 ) with the interruption of a short period preceding the extinction of the Roman power in the east. It hardly requires any proof to establish that system of navigation and a commercial route which remained in use for nearly 1300 years must have been based on the internal sources of Egypt and been regarded as absolutely necessary under every vicissitude of foreign trade to the prosperity of the country. The great object of the canal was to afford a high-road for the exportation of the produce of Egypt; and its connexion with the Indian trade was merely a secondary and unimportant consideration. Its connexion with the existence of the agricultural Egyptian or Coptic population was more immediate. At present the question of restoring the canal is solely connected with the Indian trade. We own we have very great doubts whether its re-establishment if destined only to connect our lines of steam-packets from India to Suez and from Southampton to Alexandria would be found a profitable speculation. The tedious navigation of the Red Sea and we may almost add of the Mediterranean would render the route by the Cape preferable for sailing vessels; and we have not yet arrived at such perfection in the construction of steamers as to contemplate their becoming the only vessels employed in the Indian trade. It appears to us that before any reasonable hope of restoring the canal can be entertained or at least before it can ever be kept open with profit that Egypt must be again in a condition to employ the irrigable land on the banks of the canal for agricultural purposes. Unless the country be flourishing the population increasing and the canal constantly employed it would be half-filled with the sand of the desert every year. On the other hand as soon as a demand for more irrigable land is created by an augmented population a canal of irrigation would soon be carried through the valley of Seba Biar; and the surplus produce of the Delta would again seek for a market on the shores of the Red Sea and in Arabia. Until these things happen even should a canal be excavated whether from Cairo to Suez or from Suez to Tineh during some pecuniary plethora in the city we venture to predict that the Suez canal shares or Mohammedan bonds will be as disreputable a security as honest Jonathan's American repudiated stock or the Greek bonds of King Otho not countersigned by Great Britain. We cannot close this article without alluding to two able pamphlets which have been recently published recommending the formation of a canal from Suez to Tineh as that line might be kept always open from the elevation of the Red Sea above the Mediterranean.[1] The subject has been ably treated by the French engineers in the great work on Egypt and Monsieur Linant has since examined the question; but the information we possess on the effect of the currents and winds at Tineh is not sufficient to enable any engineer to decide on the works which would be necessary to enable ships to enter the canal in bad weather. It is clear that a bar would immediately be formed; and almost as certain that any break-water but a floating one would soon be joined to the continent by a neck of sand. If it be possible to form any part at this point on the Egyptian coast it could only be done at an enormous cost; and our information is at present too imperfect to warrant our entering on the subject. The question requires a more profound scientific examination than it has yet undergone. [1] Enquiry into the Means of Establishing a Ship Navigation between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea with a Map. By Captain Veitch R.E. F.R.S. Communications with India China &c.; Observations on the Practicability and Utility of Opening a Communication between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean by a Ship Canal through the Isthmus of Suez with Two Maps. By Arthur Anderson. One of the ablest scholars who has written on the subject of this canal has advanced the opinion that Nekos the king of Egypt who Herodotus mentions undertook the completion of this work borrowed the idea of his project from the Greeks. Monsieur Letronne conjectures that he only imitated the plan which is attributed to Periander of having designed to cut through the isthmus of Corinth. Willing as we are to concede a great deal to Grecian genius we are compelled to protest against the probability of the Egyptians having borrowed any project of _canalization_ from the Greeks. We own we should entertain very great doubts whether Periander had ever uttered so much as a random phrase about cutting through the isthmus of Corinth were it not that there are some historical grounds for believing that he was a professed imitator of Egypt. He had a nephew named Psammetichus who must have been so called after the father of Nekos.[1] All projects for making canals in Greece had a foreign origin from the time Periander imitated Egyptian fashions down to the days of the Bavarian regency which talked about making a ship canal from the Piraeus to Athens and instructed a commission to draw up a plan of canalization for the Hellenic kingdom where every thing necessary is wanting--even to the water. The earlier projectors who proposed to cut through the isthmus of Corinth after Periander were the Macedonian adventurer Demetrius Poliorcetes and the Romans Julius Caesar Caligula Nero and Herodes Atticas.[2] We should not be surprised to see this notable project revived or to hear that the Greeks were on the point of sinking new shafts at the silver mines of Laurium. A joint-stock company either for the one or the other would be quite as profitable to the capitalists engaged as the scheme of making sugar from beet-root at Thermopylae which has found some unfortunate shareholders both at Athens and Paris. Travellers scholars and antiquaries would undoubtedly take more interest in the progress of the canal and of the silver mine than in the confection of the sugar. [1] Aristotolis Politic lib. v. cap. 10 § 22 p. 193.--Ed. Tauch. [2] A collection of the classic authorities for the different attempts at cutting the canal through the isthmus of Corinth may be interesting to some of our readers. PERIANDER'S Diogenes Laertius i. 99--DEMETRIUS POLIORCETES Strabo vol. i. p. 86 ed. Tauch.--JULIUS CAESAR Dion Cassius xliv. 5. Plutarch in Caesar lviii. Suetonius in Caesar. xliv.--CALIGULA Suetonius in Calig. xxi.--NERO Plinii N.H. iv. 4. Lucian Nero. Philostratus in vit. Apollon. Tyan. iv. 24. Zonaras i. 570 ed. Paris.--HERODES ATTICUS Philostratus in vit. Sophist. ii. 26. There was another canal in Greece which proved a sad stumbling-block to the Roman satirist Juvenal whose unlucky accusation of ""lying Greece "" is founded on his own ignorance of a fact recorded by Herodotus and Thucydides. --""Creditur olim Velificatus Athos et quicquid Graecia mendax Audet in historia."" The words of Herodotus and Thucydides would leave no doubt of Xerxes having made a canal through the isthmus to the north of Mount Athos in the mind of any but a Roman.[1] But since there are modern travellers as ready to distrust the ancients as a gentleman we once encountered at Athens was to doubt the moderns we shall quote better evidence than any Greek. Our acquaintance of the Athenian inn who had a very elegant appearance appealed to us to confirm the _Graecia mendax_ saying he had just returned from Marathon and his guide had been telling him far greater lies than he ever heard from an Italian cicerone. ""The fellow had the impudence to say that his countrymen had defeated 500 000 Persians in the plain he showed me "" said the gentleman in green. ""Let alone the number--that fable might be pardoned--but he thought me such an egregious ass as not to know that the war was with the Turks and not with the Persians at all."" We bowed in amazement to find our English friend more ignorant than Juvenal. We shall now transcribe the observations of Colonel Leake the most sharp-sighted and learned of the modern travellers who have visited the isthmus of Mount Athos:--""The modern name of this neck of land is _próvlaka_ evidently the Romanic form of the word [Greek: proaulax] having reference to the canal _in front_ of the peninsula of Athos which crossed the isthmus and was excavated by Xerxes. It is a hollow between natural banks which are well described by Herodotus as [Greek: kolônoi ou megaloi] the highest points of them being scarcely 100 feet above the sea. The lowest part of the hollow is only a few feet higher than that level. About the middle of the isthmus where the bottom is highest are some traces of the ancient canal; where the ground is lower it is indicated only by hollows now filled with water in consequence of the late rains. The canal seems to have been not more than sixty feet wide. As history does not mention that it was ever kept in repair after the time of Xerxes the waters from the heights around have naturally filled it in part with soil in the course of ages. It might however without much labour be renewed; and there can be no doubt that it would be useful to the navigation of the Egean such is the fear entertained by the Greek boatmen of the strength and uncertain direction of the currents around Mount Athos.""[2] [1] Herodotus vii. 21. Thucydides iv. 109 [2] Leake's Travels in Northern Greece. Vol. iii. p. 143. THE OLD SCOTTISH CAVALIER. I. I'll sing you a new song that should make your heart beat high Bring crimson to your forehead and the lustre to your eye;-- It is a song of olden time of days long since gone by And of a Baron stout and bold as e'er wore sword on thigh! Like a brave old Scottish cavalier all of the olden time! II. He kept his castle in the north hard by the thundering Spey; And a thousand vassals dwelt around all of his kindred they. And not a man of all that clan had ever ceased to pray For the Royal race they loved so well though exiled far away From the steadfast Scottish cavaliers all of the olden time. III. His father drew the righteous sword for Scotland and her claims Among the loyal gentlemen and chiefs of ancient names Who swore to fight or fall beneath the standard of King James And died at Killiecrankie pass with the glory of the Graemes Like a true old Scottish cavalier all of the olden time! IV. He never own'd the foreign rule no master he obey'd But kept his clan in peace at home from foray and from raid; And when they ask'd him for his oath he touch'd his glittering blade And pointed to his bonnet blue that bore the white cockade Like a leal old Scottish cavalier all of the olden time! V. At length the news ran through the land--THE PRINCE had come again! That night the fiery cross was sped o'er mountain and through glen; And our old Baron rose in might like a lion from his den And rode away across the hills to Charlie and his men With the valiant Scottish cavaliers all of the olden time! VI. He was the first that bent the knee when THE STANDARD waved abroad He was the first that charged the foe on Preston's bloody sod; And ever in the van of fight the foremost still he trod Until on bleak Culloden's heath he gave his soul to God Like a good old Scottish cavalier all of the olden time! VII. Oh! never shall we know again a heart so stout and true-- The olden times have pass'd away and weary are the new: The fair White Rose has faded from the garden where it grew And no fond tears but those of heaven the glorious bed bedew Of the last old Scottish cavalier all of the olden time! W.E.A. TRADITIONS AND TALES OF UPPER LUSATIA. No. III. THE DWARF'S WELL. We have been shown in our two preceding pieces from Ernst Willkomm Pathetic Fairies and Fairies merry to rioting. Here we have not without merriment either Working Fairies. In the mines of the Upper Lusatian Belief the tale of THE DWARF'S WELL strikes into a vein which our author has promised us but of which we have not heretofore handled the ore. Here we shall see the imagination touching in some deeper sterner colours to the sketches flung forth by the fancy; and in the spirit of unreal creation a wild self-will which rejoices to waft into the presence of the beautiful and of unbridled laughter cold blasts from the region of pure affright. There is in this however no prostration of strength--quite the reverse! Not a nervous and enfeebled sensibility yielding itself up to a diseased taste for pain.--No child fascinated with fear and straining its eyes to take in more horror. But here the unconquerable consciousness of strong life throws itself with an unmastered glee of battle right into the thick of its mortal adversaries to slay and strip and bind to its own triumphant chariot-wheels. The Upper Lusatian Highlander turned poet dreaming at his discretion amuses himself with converting terror and madness into merriment and reconciles conflicting elements of invention--with an overpowering harmony?--No. But by subjugating them all alike to one imperious lord viz. to himself;--to his own pleasure. Hence in the Traditions and Tales in which he embodies his illusory creed of the Invisible there is engendered an esthetical species which waits perhaps for a name with us and might accept that of the _Ghastly_ or at least of the _Ghostly-Humorous_ the _Gay-Horrible_. The story of the PRIEST'S WELL soars boldly upon this pinion; that of the WILL-O'-THE-WISP HUSSAR has gone stark-raving in the same grimly-mirthful temper. The mind in which Burns imagined and chaunted his TAM-O'-SHANTER is right down Upper Lusatian in this key. Our Elves however are not yet witches. The kinds of the spirits confine upon every side with one another and the boundary lines vanish. Within the circumscription of the Fairy domain an indeterminable difference appears betwixt the truest Fairies and the Dwarfs. The two sorts or the two names are sometimes brought into glaring opposition. Again like factions made friends they blend for a time indistinguishably. So in the Persian belief the ugly _Dios_ who may represent the Dwarfs of our west are--under one aspect of the Fable--the implacable _cannibal_ foes--under another --the loving spouses of the beautiful Peris. Comparing the Fairies of our two former tales and the Dwarfs of this the reader will probably see in THOSE the daintier the more delicate: in THESE a little more hardness of nature. The great length of the story precludes all thoughts (be the opportunities what they may and these are not deficient) of bringing its illustration from other expositors--Teutonic or otherwise-of the Fairy Lore. THE DWARF'S WELL. ""Nicholas Stringstriker was the most popular ale-house fiddler for a good twenty miles round and consequently quite indispensable at all christenings marriages and wakes. Klaus knew this as well as every body else and like a wise man did the best he could to turn his popularity to account--the more so poor fellow! because he was obliged to put up with all kinds of ridicule and teasing. Stringstriker you must know was a most comical little fellow with very small thin bandy legs that had to bear the burden of a huge square trunk which in its turn supported a big head that was for ever waggling to and fro without affording the slightest indication of a neck. The entire little man measured exactly three feet five inches and an eighth and he was best known to his acquaintance by the name of _Dwarf-fiddler_ or _Dwarf-piper_; for the little gentleman smoked away for his life and liked nothing better. ""So misshapen a figure it may readily be supposed made a very good target for the shafts of mockery. Nicholas however troubled himself but little about them; and it was small complaint you heard from him so long as he was well paid got his savoury morsel and above all a liberal supply of his choice favourite--_Tobacco_. True folks might now and then as the saying is _draw the cord too tight_ and be too hard upon the scraper; and then Klaus like most deformed creatures had wit and venom enough at his command and could rid himself right easily of his tormentors. ""The Dwarf--it might be to render himself thoroughly independent or more likely still to surround his diminutive individuality with an air of mystery--had abandoned his birth-place and established himself about two miles away from it near a singularly-formed sandstone rock situated in a small but exceedingly pretty fir-wood and commonly known by the name of the Bear's church. Here he spent his quiet life wholly engaged in the practice of his art. Travellers taking their road by night and in calm weather from _Bertsdorf_ to _Hörnitz_ or over the Breitenberg to _Gross-schönau_ were arrested by the exquisite strains now touchingly plaintive now joyously merry that poured from Klaus's magical instrument; and many a happy soul allured by the enchanting melody lingered within sound of it until wholly subdued and rendered powerless by awe and superstitious fear. Although by day the fiddler was visible to none yet by night he was often seen waddling out of the wood and over the fields on his way to a clear spring whence he drew water for his housekeeping which--to add to the mystery that he delighted to create--he doggedly looked after himself. This spring belonged to a substantial farmer in Bertsdorf named _Michael Simon_ though called by the people _Twirling-stick Mike_ in commemoration of his cutting down yearly in his wood a handsome quantity of young trees which he afterwards manufactured into twirling-sticks. Simon not only was master of a good farm but proprietor likewise of the village tavern in which he gave a dance every Sunday taking care to secure for the festivity the services of Stringstriker to whose fiddle it was well known the lads and lasses invariably danced an hour longer than to that of any other scraper in the country. ""The visits of Stringstriker to the well were a continual vexation to the farmer. The Dwarf asked no man's permission to draw his water but helped himself as often and as liberally as he thought proper without the slightest regard to the wants of other people which were often left unsatisfied by his wantonness and extravagance. It was in consequence of this audacious appropriation that the spring by degrees acquired the name of THE DWARF'S WELL. Countless were the complaints and menaces of Mike--numberless the promised threshings if he did not give up his thieving; but the effect of them all upon Klaus was to make him laugh outright fill his pipe and strike up a jolly tune upon his fiddle. ""Now it happened that Twirling-stick Mike held a christening and he not only asked the Dwarf as a guest to the feast but actually went so far as to invite the creature to stand godfather to his child. Klaus was mightily pleased with the honour and behaved like a gentleman on the occasion. He made his godson a handsome present and promised to do a good deal more for him stipulating only that the child being a boy should be named Nicholas after himself. ""There was a merry party at the christening and at first matters went on smoothly and comfortably enough; but as the eating and drinking and dancing advanced quips and cranks became very plentiful and the greater number as might be expected were flung and not very lightly at the head of poor Stringstriker. The fiddler for a time received his cuffs very manfully--but they grew intolerable at last. First his legs were criticised--then his lank withered arms; even his fiddling was disparaged and he himself pronounced highly indecorous because he persisted in smoking his pipe all the while he scraped. ""'Klaus Klaus!' said the master of the house his sides shaking with laughter 'if you don't forswear smoking this very instant your sponsorship sha'n't stand. As sure as my name is Twirling-stick Mike I won't allow it; and the boy shall be called Michael after his father.' ""Klaus laughed too went on smoking and tuned his fiddle. ""'Did you hear what I said you bandy-legged Dwarf-piper?' bawled Simon in continuation. ""Klaus laid his fiddle aside. ""'Gossip!' said he in a tone of meaning 'keep within bounds--within bounds I say--and don't force me for once to fiddle to an ugly tune. I am your boy's godfather; his name is Klaus and Klaus he shall be called amongst my children!' ""The whole company simultaneously broke out into loud laughter and exclaimed with one voice-- ""'Amongst his children!' ""'Why where have you left your respectable better-half then?' asked Simon 'and what wench ever gave herself up to two such noble shanks? Where in Heaven's name Klaus was the parson ordained that trusted a poor woman to you for better or worse?' ""The Dwarf smoked away and could hardly be seen through the cloud that enveloped him. ""'Idiots!' he murmured to himself 'as if we lived like mere human Creatures'-- ""'What's that you say?' asked Simon interrupting him. 'Don't talk blasphemy you heathenish imp or'-- ""'Be quiet gossip!' returned the Dwarf with a savage frown. 'Don't put me up or I and my children may be troublesome to you and yours yet. You had better give me some more tobacco for I love smoking and so do my people!' ""'If he isn't cracked I am a Turk!' exclaimed Simon. 'Pride has turned that added head of his quite round. Well Heaven preserve me from a cracked godfather any how!' ""'Body of me!' interposed an old boor one of the party 'what the crab says is true.' ""'True!' said Simon. ""'Yes! What have you never heard of the Spirits and Dwarfs who for thousands of years have carried on their precious games in all kinds of underground pits and holes? Now take my word for it he has something to do with them. Klaus is just the fellow for the rogues. They make choice of a king once every fifty years--one of flesh and blood like ourselves. His majesty must be shaped like a dwarf--that's quite necessary; but when he is lifted to the throne the creatures heap upon him all sorts of wondrous gifts. They teach him to play the fiddle flute and clarinet like an angel. They put him up to the art of manufacturing wonderful clocks--of eclipsing the sun and moon and all that kind of thing. They once had a dwarf king a shoemaker and that fellow never had his equal. Whenever he took it into his head he would sit down call for seventy thousand skins and then set to work. How long do you suppose he was getting them out of hand? Why in just one hour and a half the whole stock was manufactured. Shoes gaiters spatterdashes jack-boots and bluchers for five hundred thousand men and all their wives and children. You may believe it. There never was a chap that flung the things about as he did. And you may take my word for it Klaus Stringstriker could do something too if he chose. Why do you think he is so insolent and conceited and presumes so much upon his playing and smoking? Why--just because these little earthmen are his familiars and back him up in every thing!' ""'Oh that's it--is it?' said Simon dryly. 'Klaus is King of the Dwarfs is he? Then if that's the case he shall perform a trick for us directly. Now I give you all warning young and old not to stop his pipe or fill his glass again till he fiddles himself into a fit and glass and pipe replenish themselves!' ""Klaus remonstrated against the proceeding--but the guests were brimful of fun and mischief and wouldn't listen to him. It was evident that nothing would satisfy the company but the exhibition of the misery to which they resolved to subject the unhappy knave forthwith. The Dwarf implored threatened cursed; he struck about him like a madman screamed roared and struggled to escape; all in vain. The untractable little fellow was held fast and then amidst the jokes and gibes of the assembly securely tied with his fiddle in his hand against the roof-tree of the room. Once pinned there was no use in further resistance. The poor deformed creature had nothing better to do than to play as commanded. ""And he did play so touchingly and heartbreakingly that the listeners were very soon in agonies before him. The eyes of the Dwarf rolled like little fire-balls in their cells--his cheeks g
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ew paler and paler and cold sweat poured down in a stream from his forehead. Nevertheless he fiddled away incessantly--now merrily now mournfully now slowly now quicker than ever. Every dancer had reason that night to thank his stars if he left off without having thrown himself into a phthisic; for when he once began it was as easy for him to fly into the air as to come to a stand-still until it pleased Klaus Stringstriker to make a pause with his fiddle. ""The horrible jest lasted till towards midnight and then the tormentors were willing to grant their victim some indulgence. The fiddler was unbound and he would have had to eat and drink and his own dear pipe of tobacco would have been restored to him had not the company immediately perceived to their astonishment that both his pipe and glass stood already filled before him although not a single soul amongst them had lifted or touched either one or the other. If the guests had been riotous before they were hushed and quiet enough now. And Klaus too struck up another tune _instanter_. He bowed ironically to the assembly emptied his glass lit his pipe and tucked his fiddle under his arm. ""'Thank you gossip!' said he 'thank you kindly for your christening. I have enjoyed every thing--thoroughly; your compliments your beer your tobacco and your sport! Rest assured Mike I shall quit scores with you in good time for all. As to my little godchild you'll be pleased to call the boy Nicholas that is to say if you are not tired of your life. For yourself Twirling-stick Mike ' he continued with a frown 'depend upon it you shall be settled all in good time very comfortably amongst my children. Meanwhile Fare-you-well!' ""And with these words the little fellow repeating his scornful obeisance hobbled away. He was heard to strike up a lively air and some of the guests whose curiosity took them out of doors averred that he cut across the fields with supernatural swiftness whilst there glittered around him a bright tremulous light in which at times the tiniest phantoms were distinguishable. ""Whether this statement were really true or whether a mere imagination came never to be rightly known; and it is most likely that nothing more would have been said about it if on the following morning the report had not run like a fire through the village that the Dwarf-piper in the night had come to an untimely end and was then lying as dead as mutton on Twirling-stick Mike's farm and field with his fiddle jammed under his broad chin and the bow still resting on the strings. Half the village headed by the authorities sallied forth upon the intelligence. Simon you may be certain was not long in following--and sure enough there lay the poor Dwarf dead upon the ground. His head was half immersed in the Dwarf's Well which in the dark he had probably not observed. But whether or not Klaus Stringstriker had been upset and had stumbled poor wretch upon his death! ""It was very natural for Twirling-stick Mike to repent him suddenly of his wanton cruelty. The scoffing words of the dwarf rang in his ears and he felt by no means easy. To make what amends he might to the deceased he had him sumptuously buried at his own expense with funeral oration psalms prayer and benediction; and what is more put up a very pretty monument to his memory which in very legible characters made known the talents and virtues of the fiddler and carried them down to remote posterity. The Dwarf however was scarcely in his grave before all manner of strange reports were whispered about in the neighbourhood. In the first place Twirling-stick Mike's garden was said to be haunted o' nights. Noises were heard and lights seen on the path crossing his fields; and you had only to stray into the vicinity of the Dwarf's Well to be forsaken at once of seeing and hearing. If Simon enquired more particularly into these worrying rumours every body professed to know nothing at all of the matter. One man referred him to his neighbour and he to the next; who in his turn protested that the whole was a heap of lies; or said any thing that seemed most likely to appease the farmer's anxious state of mind. Simon troubled as he was by the absurd babbling of the people was nevertheless unable to suppress it or prevent its growth. Indeed there was a small chance of its diminishing when in less than two months there was not a soul in the neighbourhood who could not swear that he had been a witness to most unearthly doings. There was no need of further mystery of doubtful head-shaking and ominous whispers--every one had seen Klaus Stringstriker near Twirling-stick Mike's house playing his fiddle in the clear light of the moon. It was true none could aver that he had heard a single note; but it was impossible to mistake his figure and that had been seen time after time gliding in from the adjoining field making the tour of Simon's house and exhibiting all the gesticulations of a violin-player. Many affirmed too that the fiddler was followed by a swarm of fluttering lights causing an odd noise like nothing so much as the multitudinous clacking of little hammers. If the Dwarf and his luminous retinue encountered any one he stood still until the latter had passed and then quietly pursued his road. The more inquisitive who had ventured to steal after the apparition swore deep and high that the Dwarf and his lights had gone hissing into the well that stood upon Twirling-stick Mike's land and then the ghostly procession altogether ceased. ""Simon gave himself a deal of trouble to witness some of these remarkable things; but he met with nothing; and accordingly seeing that the ghost of the dead sponsor in no way molested him he permitted the people to chatter on as they would. His indifference indeed had nearly reduced all disagreeable rumours to silence when another very sensible unpleasantness took rise under his own roof. ""Young Klaus could hardly run alone before he manifested a most undesirable faculty of seeing spirits. It grew with his years; and at last it came to pass that no day or night went by upon which he had not something very extraordinary to relate. The occurrences certainly were chiefly of that nature that it required a most resolute and unbounded-- an absolute Christianly-simple faith to believe them: and since the majority of Klaus's auditors were not excessively that way disposed the accounts of the boy were held for so much downright swagger; and the poor ghost-seer acquired to the no small vexation of his parent the unenviable nickname of _Mike's Lying Klaus_. It was very singular however and could not fail to be remarked by every reflecting mind that all the stories related by young Nicholas were in close connexion with the notorious well belonging to his father. There it was that he saw prodigious flames blazing forth gold burning and dances performed by the most grotesque and strangely-shaped little creatures. Passing this spot earth sand glass and even silver-pieces would strike him on the head without doing him the slightest injury. If he led his waggon by the spring his good horses had to strain and torture themselves for a full quarter of an hour before they could draw the empty wain from the spot. The wheels seemed to have been locked and set fast and yet the slightest hindrance could not be detected. ""Even to these incidents the ageing Simon had by degrees accustomed himself; but at length and all on a sudden it became his own frightful lot to perceive that his fine property was diminishing--yes daily and hourly dropping and dropping away from him. He lived economically as he had always done even to parsimoniousness. The produce of his land the income from his twirling-stick trade were as satisfactory as could be-- both improving! How could it happen then? Simon made known his misery to his neighbours craved counsel from his pastor. Each chucked in his farthing's worth of wisdom; but it availed him nothing. In the meanwhile the strapping youth grew every day more and more a ghost-seer; and the Dwarf was said to beset the premises of the farmer nightly. Simon at all events to show a reason in his complaints building upon these facts boldly cast upon his son the imputation of robbing him. Violent scenes ensued between the two--they quarrelled and wrangled from morning till night; and at length upon Simon's refusing his assent to the marriage of his hulking boy with a very honest but at the same time somewhat uncouth and very poor girl--went bodily to law. ""Whilst father and son were valiantly tugging against each other in court the lawyers gleefully rubbing their hands over the case and many a good joint flying into their larders from the stalls of Twirling-stick Mike the substance of the honest farmer underwent rapid decay. His neighbours soon aware that Simon had falsely taxed his son cleared up the question as folks in such cases are fain to do with suppositions and surmises. They gave out that the Dwarfs were gnawing away his fortune; every body believed it and from that moment forward he was a marked and doomed man. ""As the belief became general Simon grew irritable and wild. He cursed and stormed and raved till his people trembled for their master's reason. Vexation ate his flesh away and Avarice which had gained entire possession of His soul drove him restlessly about in the endeavour to save and to secure as much as still remained to him. At night with his sullenly-burning lamp he sped from room to room bearing in his two quivering hands leathern purses of money; then shutting himself up in the most secret of his hiding-places he counted his dollars again and again--and with such haste and fear that the cold sweat dropped from him as he laboured. Horrible to relate as often as he added the same sums together so often he found the total less. Oh it was like nothing else than the devil's own game; for the money unperceived by mortal eye melted in the pure air! ""Unfortunately for Simon he was a man of violent passions and on one occasion his fury betrayed him into blasphemous exclamations. Sadly beside himself he swore with a most fearful oath that he was ready and willing to make over body and soul to the devil or even to his old gossip the fiddler provided either of them would undertake to restore to him the mass of wealth that had so unaccountably escaped from him. ""There is an old proverb that runs--_'Give the devil your little finger and he will take your whole hand.'_ And the truth of this saying Simon was now about to experience; for he had scarcely brought his impious words to a close before the fiddler popped into his presence too willing to enter into any arrangement which the reckless farmer was silly enough to propose. 'Here I am gossip!' said the cunning little rascal with well-assumed affability 'and ready to do your will. Not that I shall ask your body and soul. I am not so greedy. Bequeath me your head at your death you shall have all you ask and I'll be satisfied.' ""'Go to the devil you bandy-legged monster!' screamed Michael in his fury poking his lamp at the same time under the Dwarf's beard so that the vapoury phantom was nigh being in a blaze. ""'Don't put yourself out Mike; don't put yourself out!' said Klaus patronizingly seating himself upon a chest and then tuning his fiddle. 'Getting into a passion won't bring the shiners back! What do you say gossip to a tune? Will you dance if I play? I have improved wonderfully I can tell you since I left this half-and-half sort of a world. Nobody dances now to my touch who doesn't praise it to the skies. You can't care much for dancing at your time of life I know; and yet if you could get a ducat for every step and one or two for every hop you would put your best foot forward and try to do something any how-- wouldn't you?' ""'What what what? What's that you say?' cried Simon squeezing his empty money-bags. 'A ducat for every step! two for a hop! _Kremnitz_ or _Dutch_ my dear old friend?' ""'_Kremnitz_ old gentleman and full weight too!' replied the Dwarf. 'But ' added the little monster 'about the head Mike--what do you say am I to get it?'"" Simon put his hand to his hair--involuntarily. ""'Oh! I am no Turk gossip!' said the fiddler. 'I sha'n't scalp you. I'll gild every hair that you have on your crown; but your pate I must have or else I can say nothing about the ducats.' ""'But what do you mean to do with it dear ducat--dear Klaus I mean?' asked the bewildered Mike. ""'That's my concern. I promise you not to hurt a hair; and your noddle shall be kept warm enough ' added the creature with a hideous chuckle. 'I engage myself to that by all the Kremnitz ducats in the world!' ""Hesitation seldom prospers. It was fatal to poor Mike. He couldn't bring himself to answer. 'What ' he kept saying to himself--'what can I want with my head when I am dead? What matters who gets it?' ""'Have you settled?' enquired the Dwarf. 'Don't keep me Mike; there are plenty of fellows who'll jump to get the ducats.' ""'Ducats! ducats!' continued Simon still arguing with himself.--'What's a dead head in a scale with ducats? Nothing at all!--precious ducats! How many I have lost! one for a step two for a hop. I had better close the bargain!' ""'You won't have them then!' exclaimed the Dwarf. ""'Yes! Done--agreed!' cried Simon eagerly. 'I'll consent dear Klaus!' ""'Very well!' replied the Dwarf. 'We'll to business then!' ""'You recollect the terms dear gossip! One for a step two for a hop; and you are to have my head as soon as I die and have no further use for it. Now play a very slow waltz there's a good Klaus--very slow if you love me! Don't fiddle too long and let the ducats come down prettily!' ""The Dwarf made no reply; but simply laughed like a growling bear. He cocked his fiddle under his chin however as quick as lightning; scraped a little by way of timing and then broke out. Klaus Stringstriker had fiddled for a very few minutes before Simon was springing about and cutting such capers as no professional performer had ever attempted whilst the beams and rafters of the house quivered again. The impoverished farmer held in his hands about twenty large empty money-bags which he grasped very tightly. It was quite wonderful to see how at every caper at every kick of the foot there fell at least two dozen real and true Kremnitz ducats right down from his head straight into the pockets. Down they came faster and faster so thick that before the dance was half over the bags were all chokeful and the dancer himself hardly able to bear the weight of all his treasure. But mad with joy at the unexpected rushing back of all his wealth he burst into the wildest laughter flung himself about like a lunatic and devoured with greedy gluttonous eyes the clinking twinkling gold that in starry showers discharged itself around him. ""At the end of a short quarter of an hour the bags were bursting in Simon's hands. The Dwarf wriggled with delight and played on--on--on; and the old farmer intoxicated and insane jumped till his hoary and fated skull struck against the ceiling. Now his joints cracked under the weight of gold that he bore; but he could not put it from him for the bags stuck to his hands as though they had grown to them. His strength decayed; his thoughts languished. He tried to speak; but he could not stammer out a word. ""'Gos-en-o Kl-kl-oh-oh-oh'-- ""The Dwarf kicked his feet with pleasure and laughed again like a bear. He never played in right earnest until now. He scraped with all his might and main. Poor Twirling-stick Mike groaned and his unhappy head dropped exhausted upon his breast. Miserable man his last capers were cut! His dancing was no longer worth mentioning. He went up a little way like a baby's shuttlecock and came down again feebly and dull. The ducats poured out. The bags swelled; playing and dancing--dancing such as it was--went forward and one terrible hour passed away. At last the wrists of the farmer snapped asunder; his hands and the bags of gold fell to the ground together. The dancer gave one desperate and convulsive leap into the air. Klaus stopped his violin; and in the next instant Simon lay dead upon the floor. Will it be believed that the rascally Dwarf had fiddled every hair of the poor devil's head and brought them all down to his feet in the shape of ducats! Simon's skull was as smooth and clean as if it had been shorn. ""The Dwarf put his fiddle up; quietly possessed himself of the money-bags and then grinned at the corpse before him. ""'Well you old fool!' said he. 'Have I shaved your ugly jobber-nowl clean enough? I don't want any of your tiresome barbers to do my work! Are we quits gossip? Can we wipe off the old scores yet friend Simon? No no! We have something to do still! Let your boy look well to himself and get reconciled to my people whilst there is yet time!'"" * * * * * Early in the morning Simon was found lying dead on the floor. The hairs of the unfortunate man plucked out and scattered over the boards in part confirmed the vehement declaration of the servants; viz. that their master had wrestled with the devil and had got the worst of the bout. Young Klaus however shaken as he was by the unexpected sight at once guessed the true history. Returning home the night before from a nocturnal visit to his sweetheart he had passed his father's house and here he had not only heard the playing of the fiddler but looking through a crevice of the garret-door he had likewise discerned the very form of the Dwarf-spirit and heard his laughter as well as the noisy leaping of his unhappy parent. In his first grief at the frightful termination of his father's career Klaus hurled the bitterest execrations at the head of the revengeful Stringstriker; cursed him over and over again and himself no less on account of his plaguing ghost-seeing faculty. Raving over the handless body of Simon he vowed at length that if ever again the shadow of the fiend crossed his path he would double him up in a sack and hang him on the first tree that he came to. This excited state of mind did not last very long with the volatile youth; for truth to say the sudden dereliction of mortality on the part of his quarrelsome old father did not come altogether amiss to him. What hindered him now from wedding the girl of his heart and leading as jolly a life as any? According to good old custom he put on his dress and looks of mourning donned his three-cornered hat pulled it deep over his forehead and walked decently and soberly up the church-path to the parson's house. 'Reverend sir!' said the precious youth to the minister 'the Lord has been very gracious to my father and this night he has taken him to himself. May the Lord comfort us! If you please reverend sir he shall be buried on Friday next; and I should like him to have a funeral oration and a parentation. He was a good man sir and I know I shall miss him at every turn and corner. But God's name be praised sir he always sends us what's best!' And so saying Klaus wiped the tears on his eyes. In due time old Simon was put under ground and there was not a word to be said by his many followers against either the deceased father or the living son; for the latter gave a capital feast in honour of the occasion which setting aside two bloody heads passed off in the most satisfactory manner. On the evening of the funeral Klaus got very impatient to look over his lawful inheritance. Bethinking him of the avarice of his father he had made up his mind to routing out no end of wealth; for as to the old man's continual complaints and grumblings he had always looked upon them as so much flummery. To his great astonishment and dismay however he found every chest and coffer empty. Money-bags there were in plenty; but torn and moneyless and the very little ready cash that remained in the house was by no means sufficient to satisfy the disappointed lawyers whose bills drawn out respectively to the loss which they had suffered through the sudden demise of Mike were large enough as you may believe. This discovery and turn of affairs sensibly interfered with the rejoicings of Klaus; and no wonder! For whilst he was still warm with the idea of bringing his bride home to a well-stocked property he had to learn that he was actually as poor as a church-mouse. What could he do? He was not long in forming a resolution. House and farm field and coppice were in pretty good condition; no mortgages as far as he knew cumbered the estate. Surely till better times came there would be no difficulty in borrowing? At all events the effort should be made. Klaus went to Zittau to beg the loan of a thousand dollars from the trustees of pious legacies. He stammered out his request to the board with as much confidence as he could command; but whether his awkward way and manner or his unsteady look or the wealth which it was supposed he possessed or the nickname which he bore--whether one or all of these gave rise to suspicion and alarm it is very certain that although friend Nicholas received fine words enough to tear his pocket open not one farthing of money did he catch but was fain to return home as rich as he had come. This was a heavy blow to the young farmer. As usual with him in seasons of trouble he thought of the Dwarf and cursed him. Then he prayed for a sight of the monster only till he had wreaked his vengeance on him; and then he went like a drunken man homeward. To his intense vexation as often as he relieved himself of an execration his ear was assailed with a scornful peal of laughter. It escorted him to his very door and there left him mad with rage because he could by no means perceive whence the mockery proceeded. Once at home again he repeated the rummaging of rooms cellars and corners in the still unextinguished hope of finding something were it only paper bonds of which he had known his father at one time to possess several. His search availed him nothing--the chests were empty--there was not an atom of money left. As if this were not misery enough he perceived with inexpressible grief that the rafters of the house the wainscoting of the rooms were beginning to totter and crack so fearful that it would be impossible to reside much longer beneath them. And oh sorrow upon sorrow! those unpleasant gentlemen the lawyers were daily asking payment and threatening an execution. Klaus grew very wretched. Breathing time at all events was necessary and so he sold the tavern and a considerable portion of his land. With part of the proceeds he appeased the blood-suckers; and with what remained he purposed repairing his cracked and rickety tenement. Accustomed from his youth upwards to go to work with a full pocket the thrifty way of life to which he was obliged to conform was any thing but pleasant to him; but worse than all and more difficult to support were the evidences of disrespect which poor Nicholas observed in the conduct of the neighbouring farmers--and which every day became more palpable. Before his poverty was known as the son of his father he had been treated with some regard--and if folks did call him _Lying Klaus_ it was more by way of joke than to give him pain. Now however the neglect of him was bare-faced; and the meanest of the village learnt to make their ill-natured remarks and to fling his nickname over meadow and field after him as he went. He was welcome nowhere--deserted and forsaken on every side. Even in his work he was the most unfortunate of labourers. Ill-luck ever attended it. If he ploughed either the ploughshare would go to pieces or the furrows would turn over so often that he could not stir. If he sowed in the serenest weather when not a breath of air was moving a whirlwind would arise as soon as he had begun carrying the grain to some one distant spot and rendering it there perfectly useless. Sometimes he would find that he held a handful of mere husks and then if in the bitterness of his soul he began to curse and tear his hair--he would all at once espy in those very husks-- eyes that fleered at him whilst a horrible laughter echoed from every side. These were Klaus's out o' doors troubles. Those within were still worse. His sound strong horses perished one after another--till at last he had nothing left in his stables but one old gaunt mare called _Blässel_. A distemper broke out amongst his horned stock and before a month passed destroyed every thing in his stalls with the exception of an old goat and a gormandizing and insatiable porker. A much more sedate man than Klaus would have been ready to jump out of his skin in the midst of so much disaster. Once more he had recourse to a sale. With a heavy heart he put up his inheritance and with inexpressible dismay he received the first buyers. Upon their close inspection of house and farm it soon became too apparent that the whole of the woodwork was thoroughly worm-eaten and in the ground-floor destructive fungus hard at work. Those who came inclined to buy shook their heads and wished him good-morning: and in less than four-and-twenty hours after their departure every soul in the parish knew that Lying Klaus was as good as a bankrupt; that his house was already tumbling about his ears; and that he himself would be forced to go from house to house and practise the art of lattice-tapping.[1] [1] The more ancient village houses have still for the most part before the house door a kind of _lattice_ upon which the beggar taps by way of announcing himself to the dwellers. ""Rumour in this case proved a true prophet. The end of the summer found Klaus's homestead all to pieces. The wind whistled through the broken windows. Rats frolicked about the floor: a lease of the rafters was taken by a society of martens and Klaus was left the choice of making friends with the vermin or being dislodged from his miserable den altogether. ""When a poor man suddenly becomes rich there is no lack of good words thrown away; but when a rich man suddenly comes to beggary all that is said is--that he is a deplorable wretch--that everybody expected it--and that it serves him right. Klaus led a horrid life. He was shunned by universal consent. The youngest urchins of the parish threw dirt at him made faces called him Lying Klaus and trotted after him imitating the gait and gestures of an ill-conditioned dwarf. If Klaus entered the tavern--so lately his own property--the boors shrunk from him as though he were a leper--the landlord lazily shoved a dirty glass before him and looked at the piece of money which he got in exchange a dozen times before he put it into his till. The most abandoned criminal who had undergone his ten years of imprisonment and hard labour could not have been treated more ignominiously. Had Klaus not lived on in a sort of mental intoxication he must have committed murder or manslaughter if in his desperation he had not even laid unholy hands upon himself. ""All help cut away every means of support dried up and the beggar denied even the bread of charity Klaus at length resolved upon abandoning his birthplace and seeking his fortune in the open world. He had all along carried on his stick trade without being able to earn even salt to his porridge. A small piece of copse-wood of little value for which he had been unable to find a purchaser he could yet call his own--the lean and bony Blässel was also spared him. With sticks and steed therefore he quitted his native place and began to take his rounds abroad scarcely hoping to gather what was denied him amongst his own people--a scanty pittance. It was little that poor Nicholas got to break and bite upon his road; he made amends for the deficiency by consulting the brandy flask from which the deserted one sucked his temporary solace. With the hot liquor in his head he could whistle and sing forget his misery and boldly face mankind. ""Late one evening Klaus returned from a distant business tour. Blässel had not a leg to stand upon Klaus himself had eaten nothing the whole day and he was besides parched with thirst. To satisfy the cravings of nature he stepped unwillingly enough into _The Sun_ at _Herwigsdorf_. The parlour was full of boors one of whom in a gruff voice read aloud the Weekly Intelligencer whilst the rest remarked upon its contents. Klaus edged himself into a corner to avoid observation and mine host brought him for his two or three pence a very melancholy supper. The reading came at length to a close and the stage then became alive. The farmers discussed and argued the news that had been delivered to them until they grew very warm and had exhausted all their eloquence when they commenced knocking the table with their doubled fists for want of better arguments. In the height of the dispute a neighbouring miller--a very learned gentleman--entered the apartment. He was at once unanimously appealed to for a decision and then nobody would abide by his verdict. A general tumult ensued; in the midst of it unlucky Klaus was detected and then politics and the welfare of mankind were immediately lost sight of. ""'Devil take me!' cried one advancing towards the wretched man 'If there doesn't sit Lying Klaus from _Starving Castle_!' ""Klaus was surrounded in an instant. The whole assembly hooted him and he for shame and rage would gladly have buried himself for ever in the earth. ""Well I will say "" continued the unfeeling boor ""the rich Klaus has become the very careful and thrifty. I wonder if the churchwarden means to give him the bell-purse money for ever!""[1] Well Liar how gets on the stick trade? Will you soon be able to patch your coat out of your earnings? If you happen now to have a sixpence more than you want I think we may do a little business together. I have some four-year-old straw that will come in well for your palace. It is eaten away a little by the mice but that doesn't matter. Why what are you thinking of you nincompoop? Don't you know when Klaus wants straw or money or an honest name he has only to go to his couch-grassed stubble-fields and sneeze three times into the Dwarf's wall and then he gets directly what he asks for? Who wouldn't have a Dwarf for his godfather! a fellow just three cheeses high and a fiddle-scrapper A pretty scrape he has made of it for you--only scraped your precious soul into hell as he would have done if Holy Peter had bound it three times round his key-bit. It is a great pity though that Dwarf-piper don't fiddle money into his darling's pocket as well as out of it. Kick the blackguard out pull his ears for him--I say he isn't honest. He can't be for he has dealings with the devil!' [1] The churchwardens go about the church during the service and collect alms from the congregation _in a purse with a bell_.--TRANSLATOR. ""Many sinewy arms were stretched out at the moment to grasp the weak defenceless man who sat gnashing his teeth and awaiting the assault whilst in his heart he cursed himself and all the world besides. The miller called upon the company to desist and they retreated a stop or two whilst he stepped forth and placed himself at the side of the unprotected wanderer. ""'Come come!' said the unexpected friend 'this isn't fair. Klaus is a very worthy fellow though things are going against him because as I believe his old father bore too hard upon that imp Stringstriker. If Klaus were only a clever fellow and knew how to say a private word or so to his godfather he would soon make it all right with him again. Dwarfs must be managed. Bless you I have one in my own mill. Every ninth night he hammers away on the twenty-first cog of the third wheel; and as soon as he begins three honey cells must be put upon the millstone for him if I don't wish the mill to stand still immediately and all the grain to breed worms. It is nothing but Dwarf's roguery and so I say let Klaus go quietly his way. I'll wager what you like if the fellow asks the Dwarf's pardon and makes it up with him he'll be as rich as ever again. For you see masters Dwarfs must sometimes play all sorts of pranks with poor mortals that they may so have occasion to help them at a future time and secure for themselves a place in Heaven at last.' ""This learned address so dumbfoundered the peasants that they retreated by degrees further and further from their intended victim who like a shrewd fellow seized his opportunity and made his escape. He was not long in harnessing his hack mounting his cart and driving from the inhospitable spot. The words of the miller had made a deep impression on his mind. The wish to hold communion by any means with the world of spirits which had been closed upon him from the moment that he had hurled his curse against one of them--grew strong and lively within him. His miserable condition s
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bdued him into sorrow and repentance and in a loud and earnest voice he implored his godfather to take pity upon him to forgive him and to show him the means by which he might be reconciled again to _him_ and made worthy of the regard and consideration of his people. ""He had reached _Hörnitz_ when his stricken heart indulged itself in such outpourings. _Breiteberg_ arose at a short distance before him with the few acres of land that still belonged to him lying waste for want of hands. Klaus threw a look of sullen discontent towards the land and lo--he beheld there the figure of the Dwarf gliding along and surrounded by countless sparkling lights. The lad stood still and stared with astonishment at the apparition. Dissevered tones as of a violin floated in the disturbed air; and when the phantom lifted his fiddlestick it seemed as if he sent a recognising nod towards his godchild. Klaus urged his beast forward and at the same moment the Dwarf turned off at a cross-road and with the speed of an arrow swept towards the neighbourhood of the Dwarf's well. ""Klaus lay awake half the night dwelling upon this encounter and when he fell to sleep it was the subject of his dreams. 'The miller ' thought he 'is right after all! Godfather may be pacified yet if he is properly and becomingly spoken to. How kindly he nodded to me! O if I could get only half my fortune back!' Before Klaus was out of bed again he resolved to have a trial and on the very next day humbly to present himself to his godfather if that great personage would deign him an interview. He had to go to the wood for sticks and time and place were both favourable to a meeting with the spirit. ""The road to the wood lay hard by the Dwarf's well. Klaus arriving there reined his horse up and looked upon the spring with profoundly cogitative eyes. It was clear and still. Pearly bright the water ascended from the rent basaltic bottom and rippled in a small thread-like rill through whispering rushes across meadows and fields until it reached the village. ""'Now this is the strangest well!' quoth Klaus knocking out the ashes from his short stump of a pipe--'always humming and brumming when I take my way by it--and when I have passed it it is just as though I had loaded on another hundred-weight. The poor thing regularly gasps and plants her hoof as if she were pulling the church after her. Now wo-ho Whiteface!--wo-ho!"" As Klaus spoke the horse snorted gasped and stamped without making any way. It was as though the devil had tied a hair about the spokes. After fearful struggling and long agony the wood was at length reached. Klaus fell manfully to work. A sheaf of young trees were presently down before his axe. In the haste of the felling he cut down some shrubbery of no use in the manufacture of twirling-sticks but trees and shrubs were heaped together on his cart; he stopped his pipe and with provision at least for the next week he gaily pushed towards home. ""It was a fine warm evening of autumn. The moon stood in the cloudless heavens above the blue hills and the rich region lay in her splendour. Klaus hummed a careless tune; smoked and hummed hummed and smoked. In the swampy marsh meadows to the right and left of him number of social frogs joined in the concert; the streams were steaming in the valleys and silvery mists strayed catching the radiance along the mountain forests. ""'Wo-ho Blässe!' growled Klaus as his favourite began to snort and caracole. 'No shying Whiteface! It is only the night-fog bubbling up a bit. 'Twon't singe thy poor bones wo-ho!' and then he cracked his whip and made it sing about the ears of the mulish beast. At the same moment a bright flame sprang up before him--but only like a flash of lightning; for in an instant all was again hushed dim and lonely. The moon was visible through the mist and in Hörnitz the lights were seen glimmering. ""'Oho!' thought Klaus 'godfather is lighting his pipe is he? We shall soon see then how the world wags with him. Hollo! Godfather Stringstriker be good and kind to your child and show yourself. Tell me dear godfather how I am to fill my money-bags again; for you know who had the emptying of them! There's a nice dear old gentleman come out to me--I do so long to see you!' ""It was all very proper for Klaus to evince such amiability but it had not the effect intended. Not a sound could he hear in reply. He waited for a space; then bellowed again into the open air--waited again and holloed again. But all was quiet save the water of the spring which purled amongst the pebbles and the grassy reeds that rustled and sighed through the mist now reeking thicker and thicker around the speaker and his sorry jade. Klaus waxed spiteful. ""'Godfather!' he cried striking poor Whiteface in his wrath 'thou art a thick-lipped crooked-legged lubber; that's what you are! Every question is worth an answer; it is a rule that holds good with man and beast; and why not amongst ghosts? Why did you beckon to me yesterday if you did not mean to show? You invited me here and now that I have come the tortoise creeps into his hole. You are a cruel hard-hearted godfather. But never mind--good-night Dwarf-piper Here's a present for thee. I bear thee no malice!' ""So speaking Klaus threw a pocket-knife into the well which he passed at the moment. The knife dropped into the water; a flame shot suddenly up and was as quickly out. Klaus pressed his nag again; but the poor beast reared snorted and dragged at the gearing without being able to move the cart an inch. The fog severed a little and the moonbeams lay in great beauty upon a hundred acres. Klaus attempted to give his animal ease; but let Whiteface tug as she would the cart stood still as if it had been frost-bound. ""'That ugly thick head of godfather's has certainly caught amongst the felloes "" said Klaus almost worried to death and looking about him half-curiously half-timorously. It wanted very little to pitch him backwards out of the vehicle so astonished and affrighted was he with all that he beheld. The ghost-seer had seen many sights but this beggared them all. His cart in length and breadth was covered with millions of dwarfs; every fir-spray every dark green spike of a leaf every pole nay even wheels and wheelspokes to the nave itself were beset with the creatures. And what were they all about? Tiny miraculous beings! labouring with unexampled diligence at the prettiest dancing-pumps ever seen! The Lilliput shoelings glistered like Spelt in the tiny brown hands of the workmen as turned to and fro they came under the numerous and almost invisible hammers and awls. Every brilliant pair finished and out of hand was briskly strung up on cobwebs with which the cart vaultwise was overwoven; and upon which at the very first glance Klaus himself could count more than three hundred thousand finished shoes. The astounded waggoner could for a long time do nothing more than fold his arms and stare on in silence. The little rogues looked inexpressibly comical it must be confessed. They were exactly half an inch in length with great thick heads on which were fixed leathern-coloured caps at least six times the size every one being decorated in front by way of clasp with a tiny glow-worm. Their legs were very slender and very crooked although their feet were delicate and beautifully formed. Their little bodies endowed in excess with high shoulders were clad in fine dark-brown satin jackets and about the waist were girdles of glistening silver from which jingled the needful workman's apparatus. As soon as one of the little fellows had to hammer a sole he adroitly tucked round his left leg and upon his tiny heel beat out the bit of leather into order. ""'This must be profitable work any how!' quoth Klaus breaking out at length and at the instant the busy workers raised their headikins and goggled so drolly at the young boor that the latter was seized with a laughter which he found it impossible to control. The Dwarfs were set off also and for some time they roared together; that is to say Klaus roared but the voicelets of the Dwarfs sounded only like a light whisper. Their laughing however did not prevent the smoking of their twirling-stick pipes which they seemed to take much delight in; each Dwarf it must be known carrying in his mouth the strangest little twirling-stick the four little arms of which reeked like pipe-heads. ""'If it is quite allowable gentlemen!' said Klaus taking off his hat-- a politeness which was immediately responded to by every dwarf--'I should be glad to have a minute's chat with you; and to ask first and foremost for whom all this tremendous stock is that you are finishing off so busily and magnificently?' ""One of the cordwainers fastened the shoe that he had just finished close before the young boor's eyes upon the cobweb; then he folded his arms in imitation of Klaus stared at him roguishly and answered ""'They are dancing-pumps for thy wedding Klaus!' ""'For my what?' exclaimed the youth. ""'Thy wedding Klaus!' ""'Ah my pretty shoemakers that's a long way off I fear. Annie has no great longing to milk the spiders in my stalls and who can blame her? But who gave you the order? Who took the measures? I guess our Marthas and Marys will want a considerable shoe-horn to get the pumps on if the greater number don't prove misfits!' ""The Dwarfs laughed and clapped their hands for joy nodding to one another with such vivacity that the glow-worms upon their bonnets flew one amongst another. ""'Don't believe it gossip--don't believe it ' rejoined the spokesman. 'We work for ourselves only. We mean to dance at thy wedding--every one of us regularly one after the other with thy virtuous bride."" ""'What! all of you?' asked Nicholas hurriedly. ""'All all! as many of us as there are pairs of shoes!' ""'Thank you for nothing!' returned Klaus. 'Why you would make me a widower before my wedding was over. Annie is a good strapping girl I know and she carries her bushel of winter wheat in defiance of Geordie the miller's man up three flights without stop or sigh; and that from old time has always been with us a sign of sound lungs: but a man can't drink my little cobblers beyond his thirst. You understand? Now would it not be better--mind you I am much obliged to you for the honour all the same--if you sent a few delegates say two or three; wouldn't that be more considerate to the lady and show your politeness just as well?' ""'Not a bit of it not a bit of it!' screamed the broad-bonnets. 'We must all eat and all dance!' ""'Just like all the world!' muttered Klaus to himself. 'If you invite one of the townsfolk to a church ale he'll take three cakes for one and stuff himself till the steps groan as he goes down again. I say gentlemen ' he continued turning to the Dwarfs 'are you aware that I am your king's godson and on the most intimate terms with him?' ""'And that thy father made him fiddle himself to death?' answered the little one resentfully; 'and that thou hast grown a good-for-nought ready to bung up our whole gracious kingdom in a mouse-hole had'st thou thy will? Eh Master Nicholas?"" 'Ah don't be too hard now! Recollect what your king did to my father and all that I have suffered for the last six months. Look at me! Hasn't Gossip Crookleg stripped me of money field and house?' Again the dwarfs laughed. 'Ha Klaus!' said the speaker ""Tell us now wouldn't you like to see all that went out at the doors fly in again ere to-morrow at the windows?"" 'Only tell me ' said Klaus quickly 'how to fill my bags again and I invite you all every man Jack of you to the wedding. There's nothing like shaking hands and being friends again. Forget and forgive say I!' 'And Annie dances with us?' interposed the Dwarf with eagerness swinging a pair of newly-made shoes at the same time so impetuously that they slipped out of his hand and dropped just into the young boor's lap. 'Hollo! I didn't say that!' cried Klaus. 'I'll turn that over in my mind and give you an answer in the morning.' A marvellous kind of whining interrupted the discourse. The innumerable band of dwarfs pulled the drollest faces folded their handikins and made the most lamentable gesticulations; but the speaker slid like a spider upon one of the threads which canopied over the cart down into Klaus's lap; thence he clambered up his jacket and mounted until he reached the youngster's hand--'Give me the shoes!' he exclaimed maliciously snatching and catching at the lost property. ""'Not so not so dear cousin Broadcap. This bit of workmanship will I hoard up against my marriage when I promise to put them on you myself if you will visit me.' ""'No no no--give me the shoes!' said the Dwarf fiercely stamping with both feet and lifting his manikin fists in menace against Klaus. 'I must and will have the shoes!' ""The remaining dwarfs again set up their sorrowful whine; and then Klaus became aware that an accident had happened which with prudence might be turned to great account. ""'Now fine fellows listen to me!' said he. 'The shoes you don't have back. But if you will promise to set me to rights again with your king and people and to give me only the neediest livelihood then are you welcome to my wedding to eat and dance as much as you like. ""'Well Klaus!' answered the Dwarf 'I see thou hast the best of us; and we have no time to spend in disputation. In thirteen hours from this we must breathe upon the silver veins of the earth that they may keep nicely fresh and in good growth. But an thou wilt hold faith with us hear my proposal. Come hither again to-morrow evening and strike with that sprig of yew that hangs down below thee into the well water. So perchance shalt thou learn what is best to do. Quick yea or nay?' ""'There can be little harm in that!' returned the farmer. 'I answer--_yea!_' ""'Brrrr----!' snarled and whizzled behind him all over the cart. The dwarfs tumbled down from every twig bough spoke and felloe and vanished in one large pointed flame that could be seen for a second blazing from the well. ""Baldface took fright tore from the spot and galloped as if for life and death over stock and stone until the village was reached. As for Klaus he did not recover his senses until he found himself again in his own farmyard. ""It was with solicitude and a beating heart that Nicholas awaited the arrival of the next evening. In the meanwhile he took another and more exact survey of his already half-ruined house; and the result was so melancholy that he felt he must stake life itself for the chance of bettering his fortune. There was not a beam a board a rafter a lath in the whole house that was not ready upon the slightest assault to go to wreck. Of glass windows the rumour was long since extinct. All stood open; and had Klaus been a student of meteorology a better observatory than his loopholed tumble-down homestead could not have been to be had. He returned from his tour of inspection more firmly resolved than ever to risk his adventure; and as soon as the sun was set and the moon traced darker shadows upon the ground he took his yew-branch and dwarfs' shoes and set out. ""Klaus made a long circuit and lingered a long time in the fields before he could summon courage to approach the spring. He plucked up a heart at last struck a light and lit his pipe. Thus armed he advanced to the well. The yew-twig struck the bright motionless water and strongly agitated it. The stream exundated on every side; kindled as it mounted and tumbling and commingling in a few seconds like an enormous flame of fire rolled forwards and backwards round the margin of the fountain. ""Klaus steadily regarded the mysterious phantasm. The flame enringed the whole well and at length falling back in an incomprehensible manner into itself began to darken and to emit vapour. In the midst of the smoke the young boor recognized Godfather Stringstriker. He was sitting upon a crystal throne a-squat with his crooked legs tucked under him smoking with exquisite complacency a pipe as thick as his arm terminating in a bowl as large as his head. He seemed wholly occupied in tracing the progress of the massive curls of smoke which gushed abundantly from his capacious mouth and took no notice of his godchild. It was left to young Nicholas therefore to commence the colloquy. ""'Good even godfather!' said the lad not quite at ease. 'I hope you enjoy your evening pipe. You need something to keep yourself warm and comfortable. The air strikes chilly hereabouts!' ""A smile diffused itself over the whole breadth of the dwarf's face and he puffed away for his life. ""'You're i' th' right Godson Klaus. I like my bit of pipe! That I can say and honestly. It's good tobacco too; a little dear no doubt but fairly earned. Wilt try a Whiff?' ""'I--I--I am much obliged Godfather Stringstriker but I am no great smoker and I like to stick to one sort--Porto-rico--threepence a packet. Would you like to taste it?' ""'Cabbage!' rejoined the Dwarf contemptuously. 'Tobacco to be good must smell like mine. Here put your nose to it. It's Hungarian of the best!' ""The Dwarf pushed out his broad hand and Klaus stooped towards it. His heart leaped into his throat as he gazed upon a dozen or two of the purest Kremnitz ducats. He darted at them like a tiger; but the Dwarf was prepared for him. ""'Not so not so!' replied the latter drawing his hand back. 'Ere thou have them we must strike a bargain.' ""And with these words the Dwarf took up his pipe which only a moment before he had laid aside. The attention of young Nicholas was drawn more closely to it by the movement and he perceived for the first time that the colossal bowl was neither more nor less than a bald smooth and perfectly white human skull. A closer inspection convinced him that it was that of his own deceased and venerated parent. Above upon the forehead there was a moveable clapper through which the superfluous smoke ascended; the tube was fixed in the mouth and the eye-holes were continually supplied with gold pieces by a couple of thousand of indefatigable dwarfs twenty or thirty of whom tugged along one ducat and were sorely put to it to bring it to the proper place. Klaus was almost unsettled by the discovery. ""'I see ' he said with an unsteady tremulous voice--'I see godfather you have quite a new-fashioned headpiece there. Is it your own particular fancy or a new French mode?' ""'Quite my own private and individual _goût_ godson Klaus!' answered the Dwarf proudly. 'The flavour is perfect out of an old rogue's skull that has been danced to death. When it is thoroughly smoke-seasoned I expect the Grand Turk will give me a million piasters for it. Before then I must look about and get me another. Heark'ee godson! how clear it rings already!' And before Klaus could get in a word the Dwarf gave the well-smoked skull a dozen unmerciful kicks with his heavy topboots. ""'For God's sake godfather Stringstriker ' exclaimed Klaus 'have some discretion or I shall forget myself and fall foul of you! What! do you think a child has no feeling for his dead parents? and is that a respectable way of treating your friends?' ""'Spare your breath child!' interposed the Dwarf; 'talking makes no headway with men of my stamp. Let us come to an understanding! Tell me Klaus--art thou content that in ten years' time when this pipe-head is handed over to the Grand Turk to give up thy numskull for my evening pipe? I own to thee I envy it. It is of first-rate thickness and would smoke a pretty while for thou dost hold I think a good quantity.' ""'Come to an end--out with it all godfather!' said Klaus in a tone of wretchedness. 'What do you wish me to do? I am willing to fast till I die of hunger and whatever is humanly possible to perform I will do; but as to your cursed head-smoking I tell you once for all it's out of the question. The thing must be put an end to; for it is a disgrace to me and a shame to all Christendom!' ""As Klaus spoke in sheer vexation he smote several times with his yew-slip into the water of the well without noticing that the clear flood swelled over upon all sides like a lightning fire-glow; whilst a whining moan was plainly audible. The Dwarf put on a very serious countenance his pipe slipped from his mouth and in a completely altered tone he rejoined-- ""'Godchild Klaus take heed to me! I like your ways and will make you a well-meant offer. As for this head here ' and he knocked the ducat-ashes out of Simon's skull--'it shall be transferred to thee and thou shalt keep thine own too provided thou wilt give me back the two shoes which yesterday one of my merry pages lost. What say you to it?' ""'Eh! what?' said Nicholas in doubt. ""'Give me the shoes!' repeated Stringstriker. ""'Now look you godfather!' said Klaus determinedly 'what if I accept your proposal! Here are your shoes and you are welcome to them. But I ask you is life worth having if I am to be for ever a poor eschewed scoffed and scorned castaway? The devil a bit you care for what the world says; but one of us who is a mere man spitted upon by a whole village feels what it is to be poor and contemned. I tell you boldly godfather and on my very heart you must put an end to my misery--for you can do it. Give me back my money and land and make me honourable amongst my neighbours. I can't sit alone like a night-owl in my hovel. I like to have my fellow-creatures about me to eat bread and drink water or it may be a draught of beer with me. I can't live the life of a blessed hermit. I am as you know but a simple plain fellow a boor a foolish forlorn lad the unhappy son of poor Mike danced to death for his sins.' ""Here Nicholas stopped sobbing piteously and dropping big and heavy tears that found their way to the well beneath him. ""'Have you done?' said Stringstriker. ""'I have nothing more to say godfather ' sighed the lad; 'only be kind and put all to rights again. I have paid dearly for cursing you upon occasion and now I humbly ask your pardon for my fault. Give me a handful or two of ducats that I may get my barn repaired marry my poor Annie and again set up for an honest boor. If you will do this Godfather Stringstriker your children shall dance at my marriage and here are your shoes!' ""'A bargain godson!' said the Dwarf. 'Thou art a right sort of lad and I will help thee. My children must have their shoes too; for by the loss of them they have gone already a great stride back in their education. Thou canst hear how they cry and beg the poor things! Come here and dip into thy father's head. The poor dog no longer feels it. So! that'll do. For the skull concern thee no further. In a quarter of an hour it shall be where it should be. But now I rede thee look that thou art presently ready to marry and neglect not bidding good plenty of guests; but invite especially those that have hitherto tightly toused mocked and scorned thee. If thou hast lack of coin thou wottest where Godfather Stringstriker dwells. On thy wedding-day send hither thy three largest waggons and to each a team of four strong horses for I shall load them heavily--and hear'st Godson Klaus? they shall drive nice and slowly round about the springlet and then away again at a good gallop back to thy farm-yard. As to thyself mark me Klaus! upon thy wedding-day thou shalt stick a yew-leaf in thy left ear and as soon as I sign to thee throw some handfuls of the like upon all the tables. Now at once good-night!' ""The shoes were already delivered up. There was a hissing in the air the water in the well moved in luminous circles and a hearty laughter seemed to force its way out of all the fissures of the earth. All was then still. The moon burst forth and shone so brightly that one might have looked for a pin. Klaus felt his good gold in his pockets and returned gleesome and in ease of heart back to his ruinous house. ""After a night spent in pleasant dreams Klaus reckoned up his cash and found it sufficient to procure some horses a few cows waggon and gearing. As to the repairs of the mansion his notion was to do at first only the indispensable clearly discerning that in order to live comfortably in future an entire pulling down and rebuilding was inevitable. He was much more bent upon reappearing as a man of money and estate in the eyes of his fellow farmers. His first care accordingly was to hire domestics male and female to rig himself out a little and then without delay to push on the preparations for his marriage. ""In less than a fortnight every thing requisite was done and the neighbours opened their eyes to thrice their usual size as they suddenly saw life moving again in Nicholas's farmhouse--active labourers once more in his fields. Their astonishment increased upon hearing next Sunday the banns published from the pulpit. But when a week afterwards the functionary whose office it was with silver-headed cane velvet waistcoat and frill to bid the guests to the approaching wedding appeared upon the farms of those who a little before were Klaus's most memorable calumniators and invited all without exception to the merry-making then indeed as if by magic did the despised Lying Klaus become 'a worthy creature after all ' 'a capital fellow at last ' and have his praises echoed from every beer-bench in the parish. Nobody ever thought of asking how Klaus got possessed of his new money. He had it; that fact was all-sufficient for the multitude. One or two might itch to make their comments upon the quick metamorphosis but self-love kept them quiet; for every man already licked his lips in anticipation of the marriage-feast that awaited all. ""The preparations for the wedding were busily pushed on. Joiners and carpenters were closing windows and fastening tottering beams from morning till night. Walls were broken down and kitchens built up. Nothing had been seen like it by 'the oldest inhabitant.' ""Well time ran on and the banns were three times called; there was the spousal at the parsonage the fetching of the bride by the bridegroom with an escort of musicians and at length there was the marriage ceremony itself--all happily got through. The guests men and women were numerous and amongst them not a few who for a sennight had lived on half-allowance the better and more steadily to devour at Klaus's marriage. ""In due time orders were given to take the three largest waggons to the Dwarf's well to drive slowly round this thrice and then to push back at a gallop. The servants did not dare to refuse their master's bidding; but they shook their heads significantly when they received their strange commission and suspected firm and fast that Klaus in his excessive joy had already drunk a cup or two beyond his thirst. ""The pastor sitting at the right hand of the bride had said grace and the schoolmaster and the marriage-entreater were about commencing the distribution of the enormous masses of carp beneath which the tables fairly groaned when the rattle of the three returning waggons made known to Klaus the arrival of his subterranean guests. His heart beat violently for at the same instant a well-known whispering and humming met his ear. In obedience to command he secured the yew-leaf in his left ear and prepared himself for what might follow. He expected much but what he saw almost threw him from his seat with astonishment. ""Wherever there was an aperture a split or a rent in walls windows doors there came in the dwarfs by hundreds: so as that in a few minutes the whole space was swarming with the little ones. They were most smartly dressed just as Klaus had previously seen them only that now instead of the top boots they wore those delicate dancing-pumps upon which the young husbandman had at first caught them at work. ""Klaus attentively noted whether any of his guests had a suspicion of the apparition of these earth mannikins but there was not a sign of it. The gentlemen forked away gallantly and the tankards were not running over. As the bridegroom saw the spiritual company still gliding in so that their number amounted already to hundreds of thousands and stove-cornices window-sills joint-stools and backs of chairs were thickly beset with the comical companions he began to be uneasy. He feared lest the brothers of the bride who were waiting upon the guests might trample the small brood into fine dust; and in order to divert at least all blame from himself he addressed himself to his godfather then approaching him. ""'You do me great honour respected godfather by your presence--but please remember I cannot answer for dwarf slaughter--and murderous crushings. Only look at the quantity of spruce vermin you have done me the favour to bring with you!' ""Stringstriker waved his hand magnanimously and told his godson that it was of little consequence. Then with a bold leap the king mounted the long table picked his way to the middle of it and there with legs astride fast planted himself. Not one of all the guests perceived the larger Dwarf any more than they could see the countless little ones. Even Annie and the clergyman were stone-blind: so that Klaus speaking unintelligibly at every turn had to bear the jokes of all; for young and old woman and man chimed readily in with the tone of sportive raillery as soon as it was once pitched. ""The company indeed persisted in laughing and rioting so loudly at the bridegroom's expense that the pastor of the flock at length felt himself called upon to assume his face of office--to put a damper as it were upon the unseemly proceeding. Just as he began a new dish soup with crabs' noses (hotchpotch ) engaged exclusively the regard of the whole of the guests. A full plate was set before every visitor but scarcely set before him before with the speed of lightning from chair-backs window-sills stove-cornices nay from the floor itself innumerable dwarfs bounded on to the table and taking their places by all the plates in three seconds consumed the savoury viand. To complete the astonishment the confusion the wrath the fury of the voracious boors Stringstriker himself galloped up and down the whole length of the table breaking all the vessels and draining all the beer and brandy with wonderful celerity. ""Had the most precious jewels of the Holy Roman Empire been plundered by the Turks there could not have been a greater commotion than arose among the wedding-guests. Every man jumped up turned in anger and disgust towards his neighbour sate down again and again began to reach after the food without being able of course to get a morsel. Then every man swore his neighbour was making a fool of him and from the coarsest words it came without loss of time to dreadful menaces and blows. So greedy were some after the liquorish cookery that they gave themselves good smart punctures in lip and tongue; inasmuch as the mischievous dwarfs as soon as any in his haste forked up a piece of meat incontinently had it down their own throats. With such provocation the blows on all sides came down in showers; more ears were peppered backs thumped ribs punched than the prize-ring of England had ever seen. And as if it were not enough for the men to be sparring the women seeing their husbands covered with blood and bruises must needs take up the cudgels and fall to fighting too! A hundred arms were a-kimbo in a twinkling. Caps were dragged off and nails shown with amazonian spirit. There was a general mêlée; every soul at the table was engaged in the contest. Marriage and bridal pair were forgotten; and Klaus roared at the droll uproar till his throat smarted again: for not much to his regret he soon enough became aware that his enemies and his calumniators were the parties who were coming off second best. ""This mutual threshing had lasted a good quarter of an hour when a sign from Stringstriker directed the bride-groom to scatter the yew-leaves. In an instant the table was covered with them; and the guests as if bewitched dispersed in grotesque groups and remained transfixed. Every eye was on the busy dwarfs. Klaus's godfather crossing his legs seated himself upon the table and began to scrape his fiddle. The earth mannikins then arranged themselves in order swung their broad hats gracefully and one stepping upon the shoulder of another built up a living pyramid above the bride. A number clambered up to the very top of her tinsel crown where still two and two they took possession of a spangle fixed themselves upon it and rocking to and fro set up a soft and tender song. The bride danced to its tune the pyramid of dwarfs along with her; and it was enchanting to see how their shining silvery girdles and the bright clasps upon their caps flashed and sparkled in the varying figure. Three times the dwarfs
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hanged in the building of this pyramid and three times attended by it must the bride dance round the table through the gaping groups of guests. This done Stringstriker played a lively march broke through a window with his fiddlestick and leapt out through the opening--whilst the whole dwarf brotherhood waltzing laughing tumbling in a countless crowd prepared to follow him. For a time the procession fluctuated through the air where the girdles yet sparkled. Soon like a dissolving gleam all vanished! ""The stupified boors were now able to stir themselves again. Doubtless there were many bumps black and blue faces and bloody noses: but the sight of all could not suppress the most extravagant merriment. All that had happened was looked upon as a prank of the fiddler and many in their hearts felt that they had only received a just punishment for their coarse and unchristian calumnies. ""Klaus Stringstriker's fame lived upon every tongue. The dwarfs obtained no mean eulogies: and when it was at last discovered that the small mannikins had close before the window one and all thrown down their broad brown capkins with the brilliant clasps the company for joy was almost mad. The bridegroom was importuned in remembrance of this marvellous festival to bestow upon each guest one such dwarf-hatkin and Klaus did not need a long begging. Each one acquired a hatkin with its agraffe: some of a greedy nature by stealth possessed themselves of two. The presents given the company returned to the board and drank and uproared far into the night. ""Upon the morrow Klaus found the Dwarf-hatkins turned into so many Kremnitz double ducats and upon each there lay glittering in the sunshine a fine diamond. As he gathered them a delicate voice from unseen lips whispered to him that these were his father's hairs. All the gift-receivers had the same wonder to tell. Those however who had secretly taken away the second dwarf's cap were punished for the theft-- for they got nothing from the transformation but a wet and worthless beech-leaf. ""From that hour all haunting upon Klaus's estate ceased. Even at the Dwarf's well nothing remarkable was seen save once a-year--upon the anniversary of the young boor's wedding-day--when a great gamboling flame appeared upon the waters in which a singing and ringing might be heard like the voices of the smallest beings. The fortunate Klaus built himself a great house repurchased the tavern and upon the pillar where Stringstriker tied up by his father had had to fiddle so long he carved an inscription which published the Dwarf's praise to every guest And his father's grave he surrounded with a fair iron grating. As for himself his intercourse with the Dwarf had made him prudent. He ruled his substance discreetly helped the poor and cautioned the light-witted by the relation of his own history. So he became the richest and most respected man of the whole neighbourhood; and at length acquired the name of the _Dwarf's advocate_: because as Klaus maintained and as it was generally believed a most important service had been rendered by the passages of Klaus's history to these singular and benevolent earth-spirits themselves."" SOME REMARKS ON SCHILLER'S MAID OF ORLEANS. Perhaps there is no play of Schiller's which is read with more general pleasure than the _Maid of Orleans_ nor one against which so many critical objections have been raised. Some of these we wish to examine in order either to remove or with greater accuracy to re-state them. It will be seen at once that we have no intention of entering into any general review or estimate of this great dramatic poet. Too much has been written and especially in this place on Schiller to permit us to be tempted into any such design. We shall not wander from the single play we have selected for our criticism. On recalling to mind the story of Joan d'Arc what is the point of view in which that singular person presents herself to us? Joan d'Arc--whom we shall call after her title in the play Johanna--a village maiden and a fugitive from her home turned the tide of victory in the great war which in her time was raging in France. As she effected this through the influence which a belief in her supernatural power and celestial inspiration exerted upon the army of Charles; and as on the other hand the cruel fate she herself personally encountered from her enemies was the consequence of an opposite belief in her witchcraft or possession by the devil; the unhappy maiden presents herself to us in a strictly historical point of view as one of those wild visionaries whom solitude occasionally rears become suddenly the sport of the tumultuous feelings of two rival hosts elevated by the one to a saint and the companion of angels and by the other blackened into a witch and the associate of demons. History has relieved her moral character from the aspersions thrown upon it and philosophy has quite denuded her of the least claims to supernatural power whether derived from above or from below: nothing remains but the enthusiast and the visionary and the strange position into which circumstances conducted her. And this position of the thought-bewildered maid is rendered the more striking when we consider that it was her own countrymen who judged of her in so contradictory a manner; for the war which raged around her was rather a civil war in which one of the parties had formed an alliance with England than a national war between France and England. It was by Frenchmen that she was extolled and reverenced and by Frenchmen that she was condemned and executed: it was under the auspices and with the blessings of the church that she conquered; it was the church that execrated her and sent her as an abomination to the stake. This point of view is not only historically true but replete we think with poetic interest. The maiden is not indeed invested with any supernatural attributes; we see her here neither more nor less than the pious and day-dreaming enthusiast; but an enthusiast for her country--an enthusiast for a young prince whom she has been taught to honour and whose reverse of fortune has deeply affected her. We see this young enthusiast--her imagination swarming with visions her heart beating with generous aspirations--thrown out from her village retirement upon the tumult of war; we see her snatched up as by a whirlwind by the fanaticism of the multitude who bear her as she bears her banner onwards in their career and conquer under this new standard they have reared. We see her arriving at a success which notwithstanding her own prophecies must have astonished herself. When the king has been crowned at Rheims something whispers to her that she ought now to retreat into her native village or what was the only fitting termination for her course into some religious house and find there a harbour from the tempest on which she is tossing. But the selfish men around her will not let her go. She may guide them a little yet. They bear the torch while there is an ember left. Then comes the changeful fortune of war defeat and imprisonment; and now we see the same poor human heart its visions soiled and clouded its courage beaten down surrounded only by enemies and scoffers beginning even to suspect itself of imposture and impiety. She who had felt as a saint hears herself exorcised as a sorcerer; and by and by a crowd of men churchmen and civilians stand round in triumph to see her burnt and consumed as a thing unholy and impure whose life had been not as she had deemed a perpetual devotion but a perpetual blasphemy. But although it appears to us that this which is the true historical point of view is also the most replete with poetic interest it may not be an interest so well adapted to the drama as to other species of poetry. The heroine is here made the prey of the two rival factions who appear to contend not only for the possession of her person but for the domination over her mind; not enough is attributed to her individual will and character; the action of the piece does not immediately flow from her; and the people with its strange faiths and monstrous caprices becomes the veritable hero. It was for this reason we presume that Schiller rejected what in our days is the simple and natural manner of considering his subject and adopted a different point of view. Designating his play as a _romantic_ tragedy he resolved to represent the maid as really inspired by Heaven--as veritably commissioned by the Virgin--as endowed _bonâ fide_ with miraculous powers. She is thus the living centre of the action. Whatever is effected by the appearance of the Maid of Orleans is effected by her individual prowess or the aid of heaven administered through her. This was a bold attempt and very boldly has Schiller executed it. He has stopped at no middle point. He has not scrupled to represent the fabulous miracles of a superstitious age as actually taking place before us. Johanna gives proofs of her faculty of second-sight; she sees while at the camp of the Dauphin the death of Salisbury before Orleans; she performs in our presence those miracles by which she is said to have first established her reputation at the court--recognising the Dauphin at once although he had purposely resigned his post of dignity to another and reciting to him the secret prayer which he had the night before offered up to God in the solitude of his own chamber. And not only are the fables which the chronicles of the times have handed down to us enacted as veritable facts but the poet has added miracles and prodigies of his own invention; and in particular a certain spectre of a black knight--who appears to us to have been introduced as much for the sake of supporting the supernatural character of the piece as for any other purpose. This hardihood of the poet has by some critics been censured. For ourselves we have a lingering and obstinate regret that Schiller ever thought it necessary to forsake the true for the fabulous; that he did not restrict himself to representing the faith of the age in the dialogue of his personages; that he did not content himself with marvels related only in the imitated conversation of superstitious persons. The most sceptical of men admit the reality and fervour of superstitious beliefs; and in depicting _them_ in all their vitality the poet is still adhering rigidly to truth: it is for the reader to sympathize with them or not at his pleasure. But Schiller having resolved to represent as fact the superstitious faith of the times instead of building upon that faith as his _fact_; having determined that Johanna should be verily inspired and see visions and be the champion of the Holy Virgin for the salvation of France--we think he was quite right in casting aside all timidity all remaining scruples of reason and freely giving up his scene to prodigies and marvels. If you must lie lie boldly--is a good maxim for poets as well as rogues. Above all do we dislike that dubious and pitiful position which a narrator of supernatural events sometimes falls into where the reader is perpetually asking himself whether the author seriously intends to task his credulity or not. We must here however remark that even when the poet represents the supernatural as the faith only of others he must still in order to do this effectively awaken some degree of superstitious feeling in ourselves. To understand the belief or delusion of another without more or less participating in it is a state of mind in which the philosopher might be very well content to place us but which by no means suits the purposes of the poet. We must be made to partake for the moment to some slight degree in the superstitious feelings of the past age which is brought before us or we can no longer feel that sympathetic interest which the poet seeks to create. The spectacle presented to us becomes one of mere curiosity. As well might we look through a microscope and watch the world of _animalculae_ it reveals. Very curious that little world; but we take no part in any of its proceedings violent as they evidently are. And here lies the reason we apprehend why dramatic representations of insanity are so generally unsuccessful. We cannot participate in the capricious delusions of the maniac who becomes therefore a mere object of wonder or curiosity. The moment when the lunatic affects us most deeply is when he approaches nearest to the ordinary current of human thought--it is the moment when he comes _back_ to reason and its too frequent companion the sense of pain. We make this observation because it probably had its weight in determining the poet in the course he pursued. Schiller probably reflected that whether he _related_ his marvels in the dialogue of his personages or represented them as _facts_ in his drama he must in both cases depend for the impression he should produce on a successful appeal to the superstitious feelings of his contemporaries. In whatever era a poet may find his materials his authority for using them must lie in the age he writes for--in the interest they are capable of exciting in that age. His success as a dramatic poet required that he should kindle the love of the marvellous; and he may have thought that in an artistical point of view the question resolved itself into one of policy of means to an end--whether it were better to assail our credulity by open force and so take it by storm or to content himself with a less advantage gained by more insidious but surer approaches. With all his boldness and all his genius has Schiller succeeded in his treatment of the miraculous? We hesitate to reply. There is a peculiar difficulty in deciding how far a poet has been successful in an appeal to superstitious feelings; it is this that in such cases every intelligent reader feels that he must be aidant and assistant in the subjection of his own rebellious reason prompt at every moment to turn with impatience and derision from the utterly incredible. This necessity to be a party concerned in the business leaves him in doubt how far he has been compelled by the poet and how far he has or _ought to have_ voluntarily surrendered. After all the use of the marvellous in poetry is not so much itself to impress us with awe and astonishment as to supply novel and striking situations for the display of human feelings. When Johanna for instance describes the visitation by the Virgin and declares her sacred mission we listen unmoved. Not so when having felt the touch of human passion she sighs to re-enter into the common rank of mortals and laments the dreadful honour that has been imposed upon her. Yet this latter sentiment so natural and so affecting could not be separated from the previous fable. In this lies the difference between the poetry of a rude and a cultivated age. In the first the supernatural is for itself sought for and admired; in the second it is admitted for the sake of the singular opportunities it affords for the display of natural and powerful emotions. There is another point in the tragedy of _The Maid of Orleans_ on which we feel no hesitation whatever in expressing a decisive opinion-- namely the violent departure from history in the catastrophe. But in order to make our remarks on this and some other points intelligible we must enter a little further into the plot of the drama. Our detail shall be as brief as possible.[1] [1] In the few extracts we shall have occasion to make we would have willingly had recourse at once to an English translation if such had been within our reach. That not being the case the reader must accept our own attempts at translation. The drama opens with a scenic prologue. The scene is the village of Dom Remi; on the left is the Druid oak--on the right the image of the Virgin in a small chapel. Thibaut d'Arc enters with his three daughters Margaret Louison and Johanna together with their three suitors Etienne Claude Marie and Raimond. Thibaut deplores the state of his fatherland. Young Henry VI. of England has just been crowned at Paris and Charles the hereditary prince is wandering a fugitive through his own kingdom. They themselves are in danger every day of seeing the enemy pour down into their own quiet valleys. Nevertheless partly from this very cause he determines upon giving his daughters in marriage without further delay. He bestows Margaret upon Etienne. Then turning to the second daughter Louison and to her suitor who it seems can lay little claim to worldly possessions he says-- ""Shall I because ye proffer me no wealth Sunder two hearts that seem so well attuned? Who _has_ wealth now? Home and homestead now Are booty for the robber and the flames: The strong heart of a brave and constant man Is the sole roof-tree which these stormy times Must pass unshaken."" Hitherto father Thibaut seems an amiable personage but he turns out to be one of the most disagreeable atrabilious parents that ever made his appearance on the stage. He next addresses and reproaches his daughter Johanna who is beloved by Raimond but who rejects the ties of earthly affection. He has taken an exceedingly morose view of the character of his daughter; a circumstance which becomes of great importance in the progress of the piece; for Johanna's reverse of fortune is brought about by the strange intervention of this dark and sinister parent. He believes his child more prone to ally herself with evil spirits through a vain and sinful ambition than inspired by piety to emulate the lives of saints. Raimond combats this gloomy notion. He thinks that the love of Johanna like the most costly fruits is only late in ripening. ""_Raimond._--As yet she loves to dwell upon the hills And trembles to descend from the free heath To man's low roof beset with narrow cares. _Thibaut._--Ay that it is displeases me. She flies Her sisters' frolicsome companionship For the bare hills--deserts her sleepless couch Before the cock-crow--in that fearful hour When man so willingly his shelter seeks Housed with his kind within familiar walls She like a solitary bird hies forth Into the gloomy spirit-haunted night Stands on the cross-way holding with the air Mysterious intercourse. Why will she choose Perpetually _this_ place? Why will she drive Her flocks for ever _here?_ I've seen her sit Musing whole hours together underneath This Druid oak which all good Christians shun; There's nothing blest beneath it; a foul spirit Has made his refuge in it ever since The old and sinful times of Paganism. The old men of the village can relate Horrible tales of this same tree: one hears Oft in its thick dark branches whisperings Of strange unearthly voices. I myself As once my way led past the tree at night Saw sitting at its trunk a spectral woman Who slowly from her wide enfolding robe Stretch'd a thin hand and beckon'd me."" Raimond points to the sacred image of the Virgin which stands opposite the oak and replies that _it_ is the attraction which brings Johanna to this spot. But the old man persists in his own interpretation. Because his daughter is more beautiful than any other maiden in the valley she is proud and disdains her humble condition. He has had moreover ominous dreams. The entrance of Bertrand a countryman just arrived from the neighbouring town of Vaucouleurs interrupts the conversation. He carries a helmet in his hand which has been forced upon him in the marketplace by a strange woman. Johanna who has all this while remained quite silent not answering a word to the rebuke of her parent comes suddenly forward and claims the helmet as having been sent for her. Through the interposition of her lover it is granted to her. Bertrand being asked what news of the war he has heard at Vaucouleurs gives a desponding account of the king's cause and brings the report that Orleans pressed by the besiegers is on the point of surrendering. Johanna now breaks forth:-- ""Of treaty of surrender not a word! A saviour comes and arms her for the fight. At Orleans wrecks the fortune of the foe! His measure full he is for harvest ripe And with her sickle shall the virgin come And reap the rank luxuriance of his pride. Down from the heavens she tears that blazon'd fame These English knights have hung about the stars. Fly not! droop not! Before the corn is yellow in the fields Before this moon has fill'd her globe of light There shall not drink an English horse Of the sweet-flowing waters of the Loire. _Bertrand._--Alas! the age of miracles is past. _Johanna._--Not past! ye shall behold a miracle. Lo! a white dove with eagle courage flies Down on the vulture that still rends his prey Our mangled country. The traitor Burgundy The haughty Talbot that would storm the skies This Salisbury scandal of the Temple's order And all these insolent proud islanders Shall fly before her like a herd of lambs."" Of this prologue it has been justly said that it might as well have been the first scene of the first act: for it is as essential to the progress of the piece as any one scene in the play; and the speakers re-appear and for very important purposes in the body of the drama. For our part we look upon prologues of this description as little else than a device of the poet to gain more space than his five acts afforded him. When it has no connexion with the action of the piece we wish to know what claim it has to be there at all; and when it is so connected we are at a loss to perceive what end it answers which could not be as legitimately prosecuted under the old title of Act I. Scene 1. The nominal first act opens with the little court of Charles at Chinon. Here all is verging towards a state of desperation. Finances exhausted troops threatening to disband and a deputation from Orleans to inform the king that the town had agreed to surrender if within fourteen days effectual succour was not sent to relieve it. Charles answers in despair:-- ""Can I by stamping with my feet Raise armies from the ground? Can I Pour granaries from this bare and naked palm? Rend me in pieces! Tear me out this heart And coin it for gold! Blood have I for you But silver have I none nor corn nor soldiers."" Agnes Sorel enters with a casket of jewels in her hand. Although she has always refused to accept of the king any more costly present than a rare flower or an early fruit she now comes to devote all her wealth and possessions to his service. But her aid affords him little more than a noble proof of her love and generosity: it can effect nothing to the restoration of his shattered fortunes. He dismisses the deputies from Orleans with permission to make the best terms they can for themselves. Dunois the bastard of Orleans who has eloquently protested against this desponding desertion as he deems it of his own cause quits the king in anger. Sorel dispatches La Hire after him to persuade him to return. La Hire re-enters. ""_Sorel_. You come alone you bring him not with you. _[then observing him more closely._ La Hire! What is it? What means this kindled look? Alas! Some new misfortune. _La Hire_. Misfortunes Are overblown--'tis sunshine lady sunshine! _Sorel_. What is it?--I entreat-- _La Hire to the King_. Call back the embassy The deputies from Orleans! _Charles_. Why? What is this? _La Hire_. Haste! call them back! Thy fortunes change A battle has been fought and thine the victory. _Sorel_. Victory! Oh heavenly music! _Charles_. La Hire Some fabulous report has cheated you. Victory! I believe no more in victories. _La Hire_. You will believe--in greater wonders still Here comes the archbishop and with him Dunois. And with them comes also a knight who relates how this victory has been won by the sudden appearance of an armed virgin who scattered dismay and terror amongst their enemies. Shouts are heard from without and Johanna enters. Here the course of history is followed in the account the maid gives of herself and the proofs she affords of her divine mission. At the opening of the second act we find that Orleans has been relieved by the inspired Johanna. Talbot and Lionel the English leaders attribute the late defeat to the Burgundians; the Duke of Burgundy retorts. These angry chiefs are on the point of separating and terminating their alliance when the queen-mother Isabeau enters and reconciles them. But when Isabeau who from her unnatural hatred to her son Charles and a certain coarseness of temper is altogether a very disagreeable personage offers woman against woman to lead her own party against Johanna they all unite in bidding her return forthwith to Paris. The army they say is dispirited when it thinks it fights for _her_ cause--the cause of the mother against the son. Isabeau says:-- ""Ye know not weak souls that ye are the rights Of a wrong'd mother. I for my part love Who honours me; who injures me I hate; And should this be my own begotten son He is for this more hateful. I gave life And I will take--if he with shameless rage Scandal the womb that bore him. Ye proud nobles Who war against my son ye have no right To pillage him. What injury has he done To you? what duty violated? Ambition and low envy spur ye on: I who begot him have a right to hate."" While the English are still in their camp little dreaming of surprise the maiden rushes on them conquers and disperses them. Here passes a scene between Johanna and Montgomery a young Welsh knight who begs for his life in a truly Homeric manner--pleading his youth the anguish of his mother and the sweet bride he had left upon the Severn. It is quite Homeric professedly and successfully so and therefore quite out of place. The Welsh knight speaks in a most unknightly strain. And the change of metre that is adopted assists in giving to the whole the air of a mere poetical exercise. The scene is not however without its purpose in the development of the character of the maid because it shows how utterly she is at this time engrossed in her warlike mission; she is not a moment affected by the entreaties of Montgomery and dooms him to death without pity. The war still continues fatal to the English. Talbot is slain. In the next scene the ghost of this warrior appears to Johanna under the form of a black knight with the visor closed. The apparition lures her away from the heat of the contest and then addresses to her this solemn warning:-- ""Johanna d'Arc! Up to the gates of Rheims hast thou been borne Upon the wings of victory. Now pause. Content thee with the fame that thou hast won. Let fortune go whom thou hast held in bonds Ere it in anger shall break loose from thee; For never is it constant to the end."" Johanna however who can hear of nothing and think of nothing but of fighting for her country and who has a particular detestation for this black knight strikes at it with her sword. It vanishes with the appropriate accompaniments of thunder and lightning. The apparition of the black knight has occasioned some embarrassment and discussion among the critics. It was at first quite plain that it was the ghost of Talbot; and when there was no longer any doubt on this head it was not easy to decide what brought the ghost of Talbot there and why he should give what knowing as we do the history of Johanna has the appearance of very sound advice. But in that lay the very snare of Satan. It was wise counsel that the devil through this ghost gave to Johanna; but it was _worldly_ wise. It was well suited to some ambitious person engaged in a career of conquest. Had such a black knight appeared for example to Napoleon on the eve of entering on his war with Russia and warned him to furl his banner of conquest it would have been a friendly and intelligent ghost though we do not believe it would have been listened to for a moment. A human passion is stronger than a whole regiment of ghosts. But such advice addressed to Johanna the missionary of heaven who fought from duty not ambition could have no other effect than to infuse into her mind ideas of vain-glory and love of fame a selfish regard to personal consequences and a distrust of the protection of her divine mistress. The ghost of Talbot therefore was evidently in league with her enemies the devils in the insidious counsel it gave. But the counsel was rejected with disdain and Johanna went on still victorious over all. But the maiden next encounters a more pernicious apparition than the black knight. She contends with the gallant Lionel. Here as elsewhere she is the victor; she raises her sword to strike but fatally for her peace she looks twice before she deals the blow. She cannot strike. Now follows--but in vain for Johanna--the full accomplishment of her glorious enterprise in the coronation of the king at Rheims. Contrary to the obligation of her high mission she has received into her heart a human passion. Her peace is gone. Here the poet in order to express the rapid alternations of feeling to which she is a prey breaks from the even tenor of blank verse into a lyrical effusion of remarkable beauty and pathos. She is sought for to take her part in the ceremony of the coronation; it is now with a feeling of horror that she receives into her hands the sacred banner which she had borne triumphantly to so many victories. Amongst the crowd who have flocked from all parts to witness the ceremony are the family of Johanna and her old lover Raimond. Her father Thibaut is also there. He has come to save if yet possible his child from perdition whom he still persists in thinking under the influence of wicked spirits and to have wrought all her wonders by the aid of diabolic enchantments. Now therefore when the king after his coronation turns towards Johanna and in the presence of all his nobility addresses her as the deliverer of France this melancholy father rushes forward to reproach and to blaspheme his child. She heartstricken and conscious of a secret error though of a quite different kind from what is laid to her charge receives in submissive silence as the chastisement of heaven the strange inculpations of her parent:-- ""_Thibaut to the King_. Thou deem'st thyself deliver'd by God's power. Thou art abused--this people of France are blinded! Thou art deliver'd by the devil's craft! _Dunois_. Does this man rave? _Thibaut_. Not I but thou art raving; All these the wise archbishop at their head Rave in believing that the voice of heaven Speaks in this wicked girl. Mark if she dare Maintain before her father's face the juggle With which she cheats the people and her king. In the name of the Holy Trinity! Speak! I conjure thee! Dost thou serve with saints And with the pure in heart? [_A universal silence. Every eye is strained towards Johanna who stands motionless._ _Sorel_. God! she is mute! _Thibaut_. So must she be before that awful name Which in the depth of hell itself is fear'd. She--she a saint! she sent from God! No in a cursed spot--our magic tree Where devils from of yore their Sabbath keep--Has all this been contrived; there did she sell Her soul to the eternal Fiend to be With brief vain-glory honour'd in this world. Bid her stretch forth her arm and ye will see The punctures by which hell has mark'd its own. _Burgundy_. Horrible! Yet must the father be believed Who thus against his own child testifies. _Dunois_. No no the madman shall not be believed Who in his own child vilifies himself. _Sorel to Johanna_. O speak! break this disastrous silence! we Believe in _thee_. We have firm trust in thee. One word from thy own mouth one only word Shall be enough. But speak! Denounce confound This hideous accusation. Do but say That thou art innocent and we believe it. [_Johanna remains motionless. Agnes Sorel steps back with horror._ _La Hire_. She is amazed! Astonishment and terror Have closed her mouth. Before such hellish charge Must purity itself recoil with fright. [_Approaches her._ Take courage! Be thyself! The innocent Have their own proper language and their look Is lightning to consume foul calumny. In noble scorn arouse thyself--look up--Confound with shame this most unworthy doubt Which wrongs thy sacred virtue. [_Johanna remains motionless. La Hire steps back. The general horror increases._ _Dunois_. What scares the people? What dismays the king? Oh she is innocent! I pledge myself I pledge for her my honour as a prince. Here do I throw my gauntlet down. Who dares To slander her with guilt? [_A violent peal of thunder is heard. All start back terrified._ _Thibaut_. God answers! God Who thunders from above. Pronounce thyself Child of perdition guiltless if thou dar'st-- [_A second peal of thunder is heard. The people fly on all sides._ _Burgundy_. God shield us! What an awful signal! _Du Chatel_. Come come my sovereign let us fly this place! _Archbishop to Johanna_. In the name of God I speak
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o thee. Art silent From pride of innocence or shame of guilt? If now this voice of thunder testify _For_ thee --in sign thereof embrace this cross. [_Johanna remains motionless. Repeated peals of thunder. All leave the church except Dunois._ _Dunois._ Thou art my own bride Johanna! I Have from the first believed and still believe. Thee will I rather trust than all these signs Than even this thunder speaking from above. 'Tis noble pride withholds thee thou disdain'st Wrapt in thy sacred innocence these mad Outrageous charges to refute. Disdain so still; confide alone in me Who of thy purity have doubted never I ask no word; place but thy hand in mine In token that thou wilt confide in me In this arm and thy own good cause. [_He extends his hand. She turns away with convulsive start._ (_Du Chatel re-enters and afterwards Raimond._) _Du Chatel_. Johanna d'Arc! The king permits That undisturb'd you quit the town of Rheims. The gates stand open; no man shall molest you. Count Dumois follow me--you gain no honour in lingering here. [_Du Chatel and Dunois leave_ _Raimond_. Seize on this moment! The streets are empty--give me your hand. [_Johanna looks upwards to heaven then hastily taking his hand goes out_. Under the guidance of Raimond the prophetess and champion deserted it seems by man and heaven enters a wood where she is taken prisoner by a party of English. She is sent a captive to _Lionel_. But adversity has now reinstated her in all the primitive austerity of her heart; the weakness she has so severely expiated has left her; she has no heart now but for her country. In vain Lionel promises all--for Lionel as well as Dunois loves her; she answers only by denouncing the enemies of France. A battle is joined under the walls of the tower in which she is imprisoned; she has been bound in fetters of threefold strength; Lionel has gone forth to lead his army and the fierce Isabeau is her jailer. She holds a drawn dagger over her head. If the king of France conquers Johanna dies. Nevertheless she ceases not to pray for his success; and when she hears that the king is so closely beset by his enemies that he is in danger of his life she implores heaven with such fervour that power is given her to rend asunder her chains. Snatching a sword from one of her guards she makes from the tower and appears on the field of battle in time to rescue her monarch. But she herself has received a mortal wound; she sinks on the ground and expires in the moment of victory. They cover her with the banners of the victorious army. The curtain falls. Now this violent departure from history in the latter part of the play is what we chiefly regret in the tragedy of Schiller. The melancholy fate of Joan d'Arc is so inseparably connected with her memory that we cease to identify the portrait of Schiller with the personage of history. As the tragedy proceeds we feel that it is no longer our Joan d'Arc that it concerns--so impossible is it for us to forget that the village maiden of Dom Remi expiated her pious and visionary patriotism in the flames at Rouen. Only half her tragedy has been written; the other half remains for some future Schiller. Nor can we conceive of a better opportunity for the display of the peculiar powers of this poet than would have been afforded by that catastrophe he has chosen to alter. Was the opportunity felt to be _too great_? Had the poet become wearied and exhausted with his theme and did he feel indisposed to nerve himself afresh for scenes which called for the strenuous efforts of his genius? We know that it was not his original intention to make this violent departure from history and that he came to the determination with regret. We wish to state distinctly on what grounds we make our objection; because there is current among a class of critics a censure for the mere departure from historical truth--made it would seem out of a sensitive regard for history--in which we by no means acquiesce. We have no desire to bind a poet to history merely because it is history. He has his own ends to accomplish and by those shall he be judged. As assuredly we should not accept it as the least excuse for the least measure of dulness on the part of the poet that he had followed faithfully the historical narrative so neither do we impose upon him a very close adherence to it. We censure the course which Schiller has here pursued not because he has marred history but because he has marred his own poem. The objection lies entirely within the boundary of his own art. He has selected a personage for his drama with whom a certain fate is so indissolubly associated that it is impossible to think of her without recalling it to mind; and this ineffaceable trait in her history he has attempted for the time to obliterate from our memory. By this procedure the imagination of the reader is divided and distracted. The picture presented by the poet _is and is not_ a portrait of the historical figure which lives in our recollection. There are many points of resemblance; but the chief is omitted. And we always feel that it is omitted; for history here is too strong for the poet: he cannot expel her from the territory he wishes to enclose for himself. As well might one describe a Socrates who did not drink the hemlock--as well a Napoleon who did not die at St Helena as a Joan d'Arc who did not suffer in the flames of Rouen. _Von Hinrich_ in his critical work upon Schiller gives a curious defence of this departure from history:--""The martyrdom "" he says ""of the forlorn maiden could hardly satisfy us on the stage. In history it is different; we see these events in their connexion with the past and the future and we do not abstract some single fact and judge of it apart from all others. The history of the world is the tribunal of the world. It has justified Johanna; posterity has restored to her the fame and honour of which a malicious fate had for a season deprived her. The poet was obliged to change his catastrophe in order to introduce in his own epoch that finger of justice which in reality revealed itself only at a subsequent period.""[1] [1] Part II. p. 183. But who sees not that in all such cases the poet sufficiently and completely reverses the unjust sentence of contemporaries by representing the sufferer as undeserving of it?--that by depicting her as innocent he anticipates and introduces the equitable judgment of posterity? When Schiller had described the Maid of Orleans as pious in heart--as the chosen of Heaven he had at once reversed the sentence of the court of Rouen. It was assuredly not necessary that he should conceal the fact of any such sentence having been passed in order to exculpate Johanna: and to exculpate or to spare the august judges was no part of the business of the poet. Socrates dies in prison denounced as a corrupter of youth. He himself is sufficiently vindicated when he is shown to be no corrupter of youth. Is there any sentiment of equity that would prompt us to suppress the fact that he died by the public executioner of Athens? Or would it be doing honour to history--to this great tribunal of appeal--to stifle our indignation against the unjust and criminal sentences which she has had to repeal? No doubt the poet would have had difficulties to contend with in following the course of history. In particular as he had chosen to represent Johanna as veritably inspired he would have been tasked to reconcile this severity of her fate on the one hand with the justice of Heaven towards its own missionary; or on the other with the unblemished character of his heroine. Either Heaven must appear forgetful of Johanna or Johanna must be represented as having forfeited a right to its protection. But this difficulty Schiller has not entirely escaped in his own plot and he has shown how it may be encountered. Johanna might well yield to the tenderness of a human passion without forfeiting our sympathy or incurring a stain upon her moral character; and yet this aberration of heart--this dereliction from the austere purity required by her sacred mission--might in a theological point of view be supposed to have forfeited her claim to the miraculous interposition of Heaven in her behalf. So that in the closing scenes though Johanna might have no claim on the miraculous favours of Heaven she would still be a saint at heart and entitled to our deepest sympathy; and Heaven would receive back if not its prophetess and champion yet a noble child of earth still further purified by more than expiatory sufferings. This species of difficulty meets us in one instance in the tragedy of Schiller in an unexpected and unnecessary manner. How are we to understand the thunder which is heard in apparent confirmation of the cruel accusation of Thibaut? As a mere coincidence as a mere natural phenomenon we can hardly view it; appearing as it does in this atmosphere of wonders. The archbishop seems to think that possibly the thunder might testify _for_ Johanna. But as the effect is to produce her condemnation it is impossible it could have been _intended_ by Heaven for her acquittal. And yet if we are to look upon it as corroborating the accusation of the father it not only passes a very severe sentence upon Johanna but it sanctions the gross falsehood of this atrabilious parent. Amongst the continental critics Schiller's _Maid of Orleans_ has been especially commended as a vindication of the character of Johanna from the vile representation it had endured from the hands of Voltaire. But here in England _La Pucelle_ was never more popular than it deserved to be--was never popular at all; no one had taken his impression of Joan d'Arc from this tawdry performance; and we find a difficulty in understanding how Schiller writing to Wieland could represent the poem of Voltaire as a great obstacle in his way. As little had we received our impression of Joan d'Arc from Shakspeare's tragedy of the _First Part of Henry VI_. where she is represented as a mere witch and courtesan represented in fact in the vulgar aspect in which she still probably appeared to an English populace. The subject was with us when Schiller wrote new and open; we had received our impression only from history and history had spoken well of Johanna.[1] [1] It is thus that Hume concludes his account of her:--""This admirable heroine to whom the more generous superstition of the ancients would have erected altars was on pretence of heresy and magic delivered over alive to the flames and expiated by that dreadful punishment the signal services she had rendered to her prince and her native country."" Madame de Staël after applauding Schiller's tragedy for the restoration it effected of the character of the French heroine adds:--""The French alone have consented to this degradation of the character of the maiden; even an Englishman Shakspeare represents her in the beginning as inspired by Heaven and afterwards led astray by the demons of ambition."" The delineation of the Maid of Orleans in the _first Part of Henry VI_. is associated with the greatest name in our literature and therefore we presume must be treated with respect; but it is the only title to respect we can discover in it. We cannot with Madame de Staël trace the inspired maid in any part of the play. La Pucelle gives us it is true in the commencement a very good account of herself; as she was playing the part of an impostor it was not probable she would do otherwise: but her own manner very soon betrays the courtesan; and when alone we find her in the Company of no other spirits than such as witches are accustomed to raise. We were still more surprised to find Schlegel describing the Maid of Orlean of _Henry VI_. as more _historical_ than the portraiture of Schiller. There is the same amount of fable in both. In _Henry VI_. we have an echo of the coarse superstition and vulgar scandal of the English camp--in Schiller the fable is beautiful and assists to develop a character of exquisite purity. THE STOLEN CHILD. A TRUE TALE OF THE BACK-WOODS. It was towards the commencement of the month December 1825 that I was going down the Mississippi in the steam-boat Feliciana. We had arrived in the neighbourhood of Hopefield Hampstead county when one of our paddles struck against a sawyer [1] and was broken to pieces. We were obliged in consequence to cast anchor before the town. [1] The local name for large tree-trunks which get partially buried in the mud one end sticking up just below the surface of the water. They cause frequent accidents to the steam-boats on the Mississippi. Hopefield is a small town on the west bank of the river about six hundred miles above New Orleans and five hundred below the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi. It consisted at the time of which I speak of about fifteen houses two of which were taverns and shops of the usual kind found in such places--their stock in trade consisting of a cask or two of whisky a couple of dozen knives and forks a few coloured handkerchiefs some earthenware lead powder and the like. Our party was composed of ten ladies the same number of young men and several elderly gentlemen. Nothing appears so desirable during a long voyage in a river steam-boat as a stroll upon shore; and as there was nothing to be done at Hopefield the proposal of one of our number to take a ramble in the forest was met with unqualified approbation by all the young men. We equipped ourselves each with a rifle and a bottle of wine or brandy to keep the vapours of the swamps out of our throats; the son of one of the tavern-keepers who offered himself for a guide was loaded with a mighty ham and a bag of biscuits which we procured from the steam-boat; and thus provided we sallied forth on our expedition attended by the good wishes of the ladies who accompanied us a few hundred yards into the wood and then left us to pursue our march. I have often had the occasion to notice that the first entrance into one of our vast American forests is apt to reduce the greatest talker to silence. In the present instance I found the truth of this remark fully confirmed. Whether it was the subdued half-light of the luxuriant wilderness through which we were passing the solemn stillness only broken by the rustling of the dead leaves under our feet or the colossal dimensions of the mighty trees that rose like so many giants around us that wrought upon the imagination I cannot say; but it is certain that my companions who were mostly on the northern states and had never before been beyond Albany or the Saratoga springs became at once silent and almost sad. The leaves of the cotton-tree that giant of the south-western forests had already assumed the tawny hues of latter autumn; only here and there a streak of sunbeam breaking through the canopy of branches that spread over our heads brought out the last tints of green now fast fading away and threw a strange sparkling ray a bar of light across our path. Here was a magnolia with its snow-white blossoms or a catalpa with its long cucumber-shaped fruit amongst which the bright-hued red birds and paroquets glanced and fluttered. We walked for some time through the forest amused more than once by the proceedings of two young clerks from Boston who saw a wild animal in every thicket and repeatedly leveled their guns at some bear or panther which turned out to be neither more nor less than a bush or tree-stump. They pestered our guide with all sorts of simple questions which he with a true backwoodsman's indifference left for the most part unanswered. After about an hour we found ourselves on the borders of a long and tolerably wide swamp formed by the overflowings of the river and which stretched for some five miles from north to south with a broad patch of clear bright-green water in the centre. The western bank was covered with a thick growth of palmettos the favourite cover of deer; bears and even panthers; and this cover we resolved to beat. We divided ourselves into two parties the first of which consisting of the New Englanders and accompanied by the guide was to go round the northern extremity of the swamp while we were to take a southerly direction and both to meet behind the marsh on a certain path which led through a thicket of wild plum-trees and acacias. Our guide's instructions were not of the clearest and the landmarks he gave us were only intelligible to a thorough backwoodsman; but as too many questions would probably have puzzled him without making matters clearer to us we set off trusting to our eyes and ears and to the pocket-compasses with which several of us were provided. After another hour's walk during which we had seen nothing but wild pigeons and squirrels and a few mocassin snakes warming themselves in the sunbeams which latter on our approach drew hastily back under the heaps of dry leaves we arrived at the southern extremity of the swamp. Proceeding a short distance westward we then took a northerly direction along the edge of the palmetto field with the marsh upon our right hand. It was a sort of cane-brake we were passing through firm footing and with grass up to our knees; the shore of the swamp or lake was overgrown with lofty cedars shooting out of water four or five feet deep which reflected their circular crowns. The broad streak of water looked like a huge band of satin and the slightest motion of the leaves was immediately perceptible in the mirror beneath them. From time to time the least possible breeze rustled through the trees and curled the water with a tiny ripple. The water itself was of the brightest emerald-green; and the forest of palmetto stems that grew along the edge was reflected in it like myriads of swords and lances. In the small creeks and inlets flocks of swans pelicans and wild geese were sunning themselves and pluming their feathers for their winter flight. They allowed us to come within a score of paces of them and then flew away with a rushing whirring noise. We had been for some time plodding patiently along when our attention was suddenly attracted by a slow but continued rustling amongst the palmettos. Something was evidently cautiously approaching us but whether panther stag or bear we could not tell--probably the last. We gave a glance at our rifles cocked them and pressed a few paces forward amongst the canes; when suddenly a bound and a cracking noise which grew rapidly more distant warned us that the animal had taken the alarm. One of our companions who had as yet never seen a bear-hunt ran forward as fast as the palmettos would allow him and was soon out of sight. Unfortunately we had no dogs and after half an hour's fruitless beating about during which we started another animal within sight or shot of which we were unable to get we became convinced that we should have to meet our friends empty-handed. It was now time to proceed to the place of rendezvous on the further side of the palmetto field which was about half a mile wide. The man who had gone after the bear had rejoined us and from him we learned that the brake was bordered on the western side by a dense thicket of wild-plum apple and acacia trees through which there was not the least sign of a path. On arriving there we saw that his account was a correct one; and to add to our difficulties the nature of the ground in our front now changed and the cane-brake sank down into sort of swampy bottom extending to the northern extremity of the lake. Our situation was an embarrassing one. Before us an impassable swamp; to our right water; to our left an impenetrable thicket; and four hours out of the eight that had been allotted to us already elapsed. There seemed nothing to be done but to retrace our steps; but before doing so we resolved to make a last effort to find a path. To this end we separated taking different directions and for nearly half an hour we wandered through the thicket amongst bushes and brambles tearing and scratching ourselves to no purpose. At last when I for one was about to abandon the search in despair a loud hurrah gave notice that the path was found. We were soon all grouped around the lucky discoverer; but to our considerable disappointment instead of finding him at the entrance of the wished-for road we beheld him gravely contemplating a cow which was cropping the grass quite undisturbed by our approach. Nevertheless this was no bad find if we could only ascertain whether it was a strayed cow that had wandered far from its home or a beast of regular habits that passed each night in its master's cow-house. An Ohioman solved the question by pointing out that the animal had evidently been milked that morning; and as we were debating how we should induce Brindle to proceed in the direction of its domicile he settled that difficulty also by firing off his rifle so close to the beast's tail that the bullet carried off a patch of hair and grazed the skin. The cow gave a tremendous spring and rushed through a thicket as if a score of wolves had been at its heels. We followed and the brute led us to a tolerably good path through the wilderness which we had thought impenetrable. It was doubtless the path that was to take us to the appointed place of meeting; and we now slackened our pace and followed the cow's trail more leisurely. We had proceeded about a mile when a strong light in the distance made us aware that we were coming to a clearing; and on arriving at the place we found several maize fields enclosed by hedges and a log-house the smoking chimney of which bespoke the presence of inhabitants. The dwelling was pleasantly situated on a gentle slope roofed with clapboards and having stables and other out-houses in its rear such as one usually finds in backwood settlements of the more comfortable kind. Peach-trees were trailed against the house in front of which stood some groups of papaws. The whole place had a rural and agreeable aspect. We were scarcely within the hedge that surrounded the domain when a brace of bull-dogs rushed upon us with open jaws. We were keeping off the furious brutes with some difficulty when a man came out of the barn and upon seeing us again entered it. After a few moments he appeared for a second time in company with two negroes who were leading by the horns the very same cow which we had so unceremoniously compelled to become our guide. We greeted the man with a ""good-morning;"" but he made no answer merely gazing hard at us with a cold sullen look. He was a tall broad-shouldered powerful man with an expressive but extraordinarily sad gloomy and almost repulsive countenance. There was a restless excitement of manner about him which struck us at the very first glance. ""A fine morning "" said I approaching the stranger. No answer. The man was holding the cow by one horn and staring at the tail from which a drop or two of blood was falling. ""How far is it from here to Hopefield?"" asked I. ""Far enough for you never to get there if it's you who've been drivin' my cow "" was the threatening reply. ""And if we had driven your cow "" said I ""you would surely not take it amiss? It was a mere accident."" ""Such accidents don't often happen. People don't shoot cows if they haven't a mind to eat other folk's beef."" ""You do not suppose "" said the Ohioman ""that we should wish to hurt your cow--we who have no other intention but to shoot a few turkeys for the voyage. We are passengers by the Feliciana--one of our paddles is broken; and that is the reason that our boat is at anchor in front of Hopefield and that we are here."" This circumstantial explanation seemed to produce little effect on the backwoodsman. He made no reply. We walked towards the house and on stepping in found a woman there who scarcely looked at us or seemed aware of our entrance. There was the same appearance of fixed grief upon her countenance that we had remarked in the man; only with the difference that the expression was less morose and fierce but on the other hand more mournful. ""Can we have something to eat?"" said I to the woman. ""We don't keep a tavern "" was the answer. ""The other party cannot be far off "" said one of my companions. ""We will give them a sign of our whereabout."" And so saying he passed out at the door and walked a few paces in the direction of a cotton field. ""Stop!"" cried the backwoodsman suddenly placing himself before him. ""Not a step further shall you go till you satisfy me who you are and where from."" ""Who and where from?"" replied our comrade a young doctor of medicine from Tennessee. ""That is what neither you nor any other man shall know who asks after such a fashion. If I'm not mistaken we are in a free country."" And as he spoke he fired off his rifle. The report of the piece was echoed so magnificently from the deep forests which surrounded the plantation that my other companions raised their guns to their shoulders with the intention of firing also. I made them a sign in time to prevent it. Although there could hardly be any real danger to be apprehended it appeared to me advisable to hold ourselves prepared for whatever might happen. The next moment a shot was heard--the answer to our signal. ""Keep yourself quiet "" said I to the backwoodsman; ""our companions and their guide will soon be here. As to your cow you can hardly have so little common sense as to suppose that five travellers would shoot a beast that must be perfectly useless to them."" As I left off speaking there emerged from the forest our other detachment and the guide the latter carrying two fat turkeys. He greeted the backwoodsman as an old acquaintance but with a degree of sympathy and compassion in the tone of his salutation which contrasted strangely with his usual rough dry manner. ""Well Mr Clarke "" said he ""heard nothing yet? I'm sorry for it--very sorry."" The backwoodsman made no reply but his rigid sturdy mien softened and his eyes as I thought glistened with moisture. ""Mistress Clarke "" said our guide to the woman who was standing at the house-door ""these gentlemen here wish for a snack. They've plenty of every thing if you'll be so good as to cook it."" The woman stood without making any reply: the man was equally silent. There was a sort of stubborn surly manner about them which I had never before witnessed in backwoodspeople. ""Well "" said the doctor ""we need expect nothing here. We are only losing time. Let us sit down on a tree-trunk and eat our ham and biscuits."" The guide made us a significant sign and then stepping up to the woman spoke to her in a low and urgent tone. She did not however utter a word. ""Mistress "" said the doctor ""something must have happened to you or your family to put you so out of sorts. We are strangers but we are not without feeling. Tell us what is wrong. There may be means of helping you."" The man looked up; the woman shook her head. ""What is it that troubles you?"" said I approaching her. ""Speak out. Help often comes when least expected."" The woman made me no answer but stepped up to our guide took a turkey and the ham from him and went into the house. We followed sat down at the table and produced our bottles. The backwoodsman placed glasses before us. We pressed him to join us but he obstinately declined our invitation and we at last became weary of wasting good words on him. Our party consisted as before mentioned of ten persons: two bottles were soon emptied and we were beginning to get somewhat merry whilst talking over our morning's ramble when our host suddenly got up from his seat in the chimney-corner and approached the table. ""Gemmen "" said he ""you mus'n't think me uncivil if I tell ye plainly that I can have no noise made in my house. It aint a house to larf in-- that it aint by G--!"" And having so spoken he resumed his seat leant his head upon both hands and relapsed into his previous state of gloomy reverie. ""We ask pardon "" said we; ""but really we had no idea that our cheerfulness could annoy you."" The man made no reply and half an hour passed away in whisperings and conjectures. At the end of that time a negro girl came in to spread the table for our meal. After much entreaty our host and hostess were prevailed on to sit down with us. The former took a glass of brandy and emptied it at a draught. We filled it again he drank it off and it was again replenished. After the third glass a deep sigh escaped him. The cordial had evidently revived him. ""Gemmen "" said he ""you will have thought me rough and stubborn enough when I met you as you had been huntin' my cow; but I see now who I have to do with. But may I be shot myself if whenever I find _him_ I don't send a bullet through his body; and I'll be warrant it shall hinder his stealin' any more children."" ""Steal children!"" repeated I. ""Has one of your negroes been stolen?"" ""One of my niggers man! My son my only son! Her child!"" continued he pointing to his wife. ""Our boy the only one remaining to us out of five whom the fever carried off before our eyes. As bold and smart a boy as any in the back woods! Here we set ourselves down in the wilderness worked day and night went through toil and danger hunger and thirst heat and cold. And for what? Here we are alone deserted childless; with nothin' left for us but to pray and cry to curse and groan. No help; all in vain. I shall go out of my mind I expect. If he were dead!--if he were lyin' under the hillock yonder beside his brothers I would say nothing. _He_ gave and He has a right to take away! But Almighty God!""---And the man uttered a cry so frightful so heartrending that the knives and forks fell from our hands and a number of negro women and children came rushing in to see what was the matter. We gazed at him in silence. ""God only knows "" continued he and his head sank upon his breast; then suddenly starting up he drank off glass after glass of brandy as fast as he could pour it out. ""And how and when did this horrible theft occur?"" asked we. ""The woman can tell you about it "" was the answer. The woman had left the table and now sat sobbing and weeping upon the bed. It was really a heartbreaking scene. The doctor got up and led her to the table. We waited till she became more composed anxiously expecting her account of this horrible calamity. ""It was four weeks yesterday "" she began; ""Mister Clarke was in the forest; I was in the fields looking after the people who were gathering in the maize. I had been there some time and by the sun it was already pretty near eleven; but it was as fine a morning as ever was seen on the Mississippi and the niggers don't work well if there's not somebody to look after them--so I remained. At last it was time to get the people's dinner ready and I left the field. I don't know what it was but I had scarcely turned towards the house when it seemed as if somebody called to me to run as fast as I could; a sort of fear and uneasiness came over me and I ran all the way to the house. When I got there I saw little Cesy our black boy sitting on the threshold and playing all alone. I thought nothing of this but went into the kitchen without suspecting any thing wrong. As I was turning about amongst the pots and kettles I thought suddenly of my Dougal. I threw down what I had in my hand and ran to the door. Cesy came to meet me:"" ""Missi "" said he ""Dougal is gone!"" ""Dougal is gone!"" cried I. ""Where is he gone to Cesy?"" ""Don't know "" said Cesy; ""gone away with a man on horseback."" ""With a man on horseback?"" said I. ""In God's name where can he be gone to? What does all this mean Cesy?"" ""Don't know "" said Cesy. ""And who was the man? Did he go willingly?"" ""No! he didn't go willingly!"" said Cesy: ""but the man got off his horse put Dougal upon it and then jumped up behind him and rode away."" ""And you don't know the man?"" ""No missi!"" ""Think again Cesy "" cried I; ""for God's sake remember. Don't you know the man?"" ""No "" said the child ""I don't know him."" ""Didn't you see what he looked like? Was he black or white?"" ""I don't know "" said Cesy crying; ""he had a red flannel shirt over his face!"" ""Was it neighbour Syms or Banks or Medling or Barnes?"" ""No!"" whined Cesy. ""Gracious God!"" cried I. ""What is this? What is become of my poor child?"" I ran backwards and forwards into the forest through the fields. I called out. I looked every where. At last I ran to where the people were at work and fetched Cesy's mother. I thought she would be able to make him tell something more about my child. She ran to the house with me promised him cakes new clothes every thing in the world; but he could tell nothing more than he had already told me. At last Mister Clarke came. Here the woman paused and look
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d at her husband. ""When I came home "" continued the latter ""the woman was nearly distracted; and I saw directly that some great misfortune had happened. But I should never have guessed what it really was. When she told me I said to comfort her that one of the neighbours must have taken the child away though I didn't think it myself; for none of the neighbours would have allowed themselves such a freedom with my only child. I shouldn't have thanked 'em for it I can tell you. I called Cesy and asked him again what the man was like; if he had a blue or a black coat? He said it was blue. 'What sort of horse?' 'A brown one.' 'What road he had taken?' 'That road!' answered the boy pointing to the swamp. I sent all my niggers men women and children round to the neighbours to seek for the child and tell them what had happened. I myself followed the path that the robber had taken and found hoof-prints upon it. I tracked them to the creek but there I lost the trail. The man must have got into a boat with his horse and the child had perhaps crossed the Mississippi or perhaps gone down the stream. Who could tell where he would land! It might be ten twenty fifty or a hundred miles lower down. I was terribly frightened and I rode on the Hopefield. There nothing had been seen or heard of my child; but all the men got on their horses to help me to find him. The neighbours came also and we sought about for a whole day and night. No trace or track was to be found. Nobody had seen either the child or the man who had carried him off. We beat the woods for thirty miles round my house crossed the Mississippi went up as far as Memphis and down to Helena and the Yazoo river; nothing was to be seen or heard. We came back as we went out empty-handed and discouraged. When I got home I found the whole county assembled at my house. Again we set out; again we searched the forest through; every hollow tree every bush and thicket was looked into. Of bears stags and panthers there were plenty but no signs of my boy. On the sixth day I came home again; but my home was become hateful to me-- every thing vexed and disgusted me. My clothes and skin were torn off by the thorns and briers my very bones ached; but I didn't feel it. It was nothing to what I suffered in my mind."" On the second day after my return I was lying heart and body sick in bed when one of the neighbours came in and told me that he had just seen at Hopefield a man from Muller county who told him that a stranger had been seen on the road to New Madrid whose description answered to that which Cesy had given of the child-stealer. It was a man with a blue coat and a brown horse and a child upon his saddle. I forgot my sickness and my sore bones bought a new horse--for I had ridden mine nearly to death--and set out directly rode day and night three hundred miles to New Madrid and when I arrived there sure enough I found the man who had been described to me and a child with him. But it was not my child! The man belonged to New Madrid and had been on a journey with his son into Muller county. I don't know how I got home again. Some people found me near Hopefield and brought me to my house. I had fever and was raving for ten days; and during that time the neighbours advertised the thing in all the papers in Tennessee Arkansas Mississippi and Louisiana. We had ridden altogether thousands of miles but it was no use. ""No!"" continued he with a deep groan; ""if my child had died of the fever if he had fallen in with a bear or panther and been killed it would be bitter bitter sorrow--he was my last child. But merciful God--stolen! My son my poor child stolen!"" And the man cried aloud sprang from his seat and wrung his hands and wept like an infant. Even his wife had not shown such utter agony of grief. ""When I go to work "" continued he after a pause ""my little Dougal seems to stand before me and my hands fall by my sides as stiff and heavy as though they were lead. I look round but no Dougal is there. When I go to bed I put his bed beside mine and call him but no one answers. Sleeping or waking my poor boy is always before me. Would to God I were dead! I have cursed and sworn prayed and supplicated wept and groaned but all--all in vain!"" I have seen many persons suffering from distress of mind but never did I meet with one whose sorrow was so violent and overpowering as that of this backwoodsman. We did our utmost to console him and to inspire him with new hope but he was inconsolable; his eyes were fixed he had fallen into a sort of apathy and I doubt if he even heard what was said to him. We ourselves were so affected that our words seemed almost to choke us. Time pressed however; it was impossible for us to remain any longer nor could we have done any good by so doing. We shook the unfortunate couple by the hand promised to do all in our power to learn something of their child's fate and took our departure. It was six weeks after the time above referred to that I found myself compelled by business to make a journey to Natchez. I had often thought of poor Clarke's misfortune and in conjunction with my friends had done all in my power to discover the villain who had robbed him of his child. Hitherto all our endeavours had been fruitless. The facts were circulated in every newspaper were matter of conversation at every teatable in the country; rewards were offered researches made but not the smallest trace of the boy or his stealer was to be found. It was a bright January afternoon when I landed at Natchez. In company with some acquaintances I was ascending the little hill between the lower and upper town when we heard an unusual noise and bustle; and on reaching the summit we saw a crowd assembled before the door of Justice Bonner's house. Upon going to see what was the matter we found that the mob consisted of the better class of people in Natchez both women and men but especially the former. Every face wore an expression of interest and anxiety; and upon making enquiry we learned that the child-stealer had been at length discovered--or rather that a man had been taken up on strong suspicion of his having stolen Mr Clarke's son of Hampstead county. I was heartily rejoiced at the news and endeavoured to press forward through the throng in hopes of hearing some particulars; but the crowd was so dense that it was impossible to get through. I stood there for nearly two hours the concourse all the while increasing none stirring from the places they occupied while every adjacent window was filled with eager anxious faces. At last the door opened and the prisoner guarded by two constables and followed by the sheriff came out of the house and took the direction of the town prison. ""That is he!"" whispered the women to one another with pale faces and trembling voices clasping their children tighter as though fearful they would be snatched from them. The countenance of the culprit was the most repulsive I had ever seen--a mixture of brutal obstinacy and low cunning with a sort of sneering grinning expression. His small green-grey eyes were fixed upon the ground; but as he passed through the lane opened by the crowd he from time to time partially raised them and threw sidelong and malicious glances at the bystanders. He was rather above the middle height his complexion of a dirty greyish colour his cheeks hollow his lips remarkably thick and coarse his whole appearance in the highest degree wild and disgusting. His dress consisted of an old worn-out blue frock trousers of the same colour a high-crowned shabby hat and tattered shoes. The impression which his appearance made might be read in the pale faces of the spectators. They gazed after him with a sort of hopeless look as he walked away. ""If that is the man who stole the child "" murmured several ""there is no hope. The boy is lost!"" I extricated myself from the throng and hastened to Justice Bonner with whom I was acquainted and who gave me the following particulars. About four weeks after our excursion in the neighbourhood of Hopefield Clarke had received a letter signed Thomas Tully and stamped with the Natchez postmark. The contents were to the effect that his child was still living that the writer of the letter knew where he was and that if Mr Clarke would enclose a fifty-dollar bank-note in his answer he should receive further information. On receipt of the said sum the writer said he would indicate a place to which Mrs Clarke might repair unaccompanied and there upon payment of two hundred dollars more the child should be delivered up. Upon receiving this letter the unfortunate father consulted with his friends and neighbours; and by their advice he wrote immediately to the postmaster at Natchez informing him of the circumstances and requesting that the person who applied for his answer might be detained. Four days afterwards a man came to the window of the post-office and enquired if there was any letter to the address of Thomas Tully. The postmaster pretended to be searching for the letter amongst a pile of others and meanwhile a constable who was in attendance went round and captured the applicant. Upon the examination of the letter it appeared that he was an Irishman who had some time previously been hanging about Natchez and had endeavoured to establish a school there. As he however had been unable to give any satisfactory account of himself of where he came from or what he had been doing up to that time and as his manner and appearance were moreover in the highest degree suspicious and repulsive he had not succeeded in his plan and the few parents who sent their children to him had speedily withdrawn them. He was known at Natchez by the name of Thomas Tully nor did he now deny that that was his name or that he had sent the letter which was written in a practised schoolmasterlike hand. It was further elicited that he was perfectly acquainted with the paths and roads between Natchez and Hopefield and in the neighbourhood of those two places as well as with the swamps creeks and rivers there adjacent. He was fully committed till such time as the father of the stolen child should be made acquainted with the result of the examination. In five days Clarke arrived with the negro boy Caesar. The whole town showed the greatest sympathy with the poor man's misfortune the lawyers offered him their services free of charge and a second examination of the prisoner took place. Every thing possible was done to induce the latter to confess what had become of the child; but to all questions he opposed an obstinate silence. The negro boy did not recognize him. At last he declared that he knew nothing of the stolen child and that he had only written the letter in the hope of extorting money from the father. Hardly however had this been written down when he turned to Clarke with an infernal grin upon his countenance and said ""You have persecuted and hunted me like a wild beast but I will make you yet more wretched than you are able to make me."" He then proceeded to inform him of a certain place where he would find his child's clothes. Clarke immediately set out with a constable to the indicated spot found the clothes as he had been told he would do and returned to Natchez. The accused was again put at the bar and said after frequently contradicting himself that the child was still alive but that if they kept him longer in prison it would inevitably die of hunger. Nothing could persuade him to say where the boy was or to give one syllable of further explanation. Meantime the quarter-sessions commenced and the prisoner was brought up for trial. An immense concourse of persons had assembled to witness the proceedings in this remarkable case. Every thing was done to induce the accused to confess but all in vain. Promises of free pardon and even of reward were made to him if he told where the child was; but the man maintained an obstinate silence. He at last again changed his story retracted his previous declaration as to his knowledge of where the boy was said he had found the clothes which he had recognised by the descriptions that had been every where advertised and that it was that which had put it into his head to write to the father in hopes of making his profit by so doing. In the absence of witnesses although there was strong suspicion there could be no proof of his having committed the crime in question. In America circumstantial evidence is always received with extreme caution and reluctance; and even the fact of the child's clothes having been found in the place the prisoner had pointed out was insufficient to induce the jury to find the latter guilty of the capital charge brought against him. Many of the lawyers indeed were of opinion that the man's last story was true that he had found the clothes and being a desperate character and in needy circumstances had written the letter for purposes of extortion. Of this offence only was he found guilty and condemned as a vagrant and impostor to a few months' imprisonment. By the American laws no severer punishment could be awarded. The one however was far from satisfying the public. There was something so infernal in the malignant sneer of the culprit in the joy with which he contemplated the sufferings of the bereaved father and the anxiety of the numerous friends of the latter that a shudder of horror and disgust had frequently run through the court during the trial. Even the coolest and most practised lawyers had not been free from this emotion and they declared that they had never witnessed such obduracy. The inhabitants of Natchez especially of the upper town are generally speaking a highly intelligent and respectable class of people; but upon this occasion they lost all patience and self-control and proceeded to an extreme measure which only the peculiar circumstances of the case could in any degree justify. Without previous notice they assembled in large numbers upon the night of the 31st of January with a firm determination to correct for once the mildness of the laws and to take the punishment o the criminal into their own hands. They opened the prison brought out the culprit and after tying him up a number of stout negroes proceeded to flog him severely with whips of bullock's hide. For a long time the man bore his punishment with extraordinary fortitude and remained obstinately silent when questions were put to him concerning the stolen child. At last however he could bear the pain no longer and promised a full confession. He named a house on the banks of the Mississippi some fifty miles from Natchez the owner of which he said knew where the child was to be found. The sheriff had of course not been present at these Lynch-law proceedings of which he was not aware till they were over but of which he probably in secret did not entirely disapprove. No sooner however was he told of the confession that had been extorted from the prisoner than he set off at once in the middle of the night accompanied by Clarke for the house that had been pointed out. They arrived there at noon on the following day and found it inhabited by a respectable family who had heard of the child having been stolen but beyond that knew nothing of the matter. The mere suspicion of participation in such a crime seemed in the highest degree painful and offensive to them. It was soon made evident that the prisoner had invented the story in order to procure a cessation of his punishment of the previous night. The fatigues and constant disappointments that poor Clarke had endured had worn him out and at last again stretched him on a bed of sickness. His life was for a long time despaired of but he finally recovered and shortly afterwards the term of imprisonment to which the child-stealer (for such the public persisted in considering Tully) had been condemned expired. There was no pretext for detaining him and he was set at liberty. Clarke was advised to endeavour to obtain from him by money and good treatment some information concerning the child. Both father and mother threw themselves at the man's feet implored him to name his own reward but to tell them what had become of their son. ""You have flogged and imprisoned me "" replied the man with one of his malicious grins; ""you would have hung me if you could; you have done all in your power to make me miserable. It is now my turn."" And he obstinately refused to say a word on the subject of the lost child. He left town accompanied by Clarke who clung to him like his shadow in the constant hope that he would at last make a revelation They crossed the Mississippi together and on arriving behind Concordia the bereaved father once more besought Tully to tell him what had become of his son swearing that if he did not do so he would dog him day and night but that he should never escape alive out of his hands. The man asked how long he would give him. ""Six-and-thirty hours"" was the reply Tully walked on for some time beside Clarke and his wife apparently deep in thought. On a sudden he sprang upon the backwoodsman snatched a pistol from his belt and fired it at his head. The weapon missed fire. Tully saw that his murderous attempt had failed and apprehensive doubtless of the punishment that it would entail he leaped without an instant's hesitation into the deepest part of a creek by which they were walking. He sank immediately the water closed over his head and he did not once reappear. His body was found a couple of hours afterwards but no trace was ever discovered of the Stolen Child.[1] [1] Various particulars of the above incident may be found in the Mississippi newspapers of the years 1825-6. M. GIRARDIN. A word before we speak of the lectures of M. Saint-Marc Girardin on a topic which stands at the threshold of dramatic criticism. What is the nature of that _imitation_ of life at which the drama aims and of that _illusion_ which it creates? Before the time of Dr Johnson the learned world were accustomed to insist upon the observance of the _unities_ on the ground that they were necessary to uphold the illusion of the theatre. The doctor in his preface to Shakspeare demolished this argument by showing that the illusion they were declared so necessary to support does not in fact exist. No man really believes that the stage before him is Rome or that he is a contemporary of the Caesars. To insist therefore upon the unities of time and place is to sacrifice to a grave _make-belief_ the nobler ends of the drama--the development of character and passion. ""The objection "" says Dr Johnson ""arising from the impossibility of passing the first hour at Alexandria and the next at Rome supposes that when the play opens the spectator really imagines himself at Alexandria and believes that his walk to the theatre has been a voyage to Egypt and that he lives in the days of Antony and Cleopatra. _Surely he that imagines this may imagine more._ He that can take the stage at one time for the palace of the Ptolemies may take it in half an hour for the promontory of Actium."" If the delusion of the theatre we will add should at certain moments reach such a point that we may be said to believe ourselves transported to the place represented on the stage this not being a _continuous_ delusion cannot be disturbed by the mere changing of the scene; it will not the less take place at the promontory of Actium because we had felt it five minutes before in the city of Alexandria. Since the appearance of the celebrated preface to Shakspeare it has been the habit of critics to speak not of a delusion but of an imitation which is _felt to be_ an imitation and which pleases us in great part by this perceived resemblance to an original. ""It will be asked "" continues Dr Johnson ""how the drama moves if it is not credited? It is credited with all the credit due to a drama. It is credited wherever it moves _as a just picture of a real original_--as representing to the auditor what he would himself feel if he were to do or suffer what is there feigned to be suffered or to be done. The reflection that strikes the heart is not that the evils before us are real evils but that they are evils to which we ourselves may be exposed.""[1] * * * _The delight of tragedy proceeds from our consciousness of fiction_; if we thought murders and treasons real they would please no more. Imitations produce pain or pleasure not because they are mistaken for realities but because they bring realities to mind. [1] _Cours de Littérature Dramatique; ou de l'Usage des Passions dans le Drame_. Par M. SAINT-MARC GIRARDIN Professeur à la Faculté des Lettres de Paris &c. &c. This appears to us a very indifferent account of the matter. In the far greater number of instances we can never have formed any conception of an _original_ of which the actor and the scene are supposed to present us a _picture_. Who that witnesses the play of _Venice Preserved_ has formed any other image of Jaffier or Pierre than what the actors are presenting to him or may already on some previous occasion have presented to him? Even when the characters are strictly historical the imagination is little better provided. The spectator does not refer to any faint conception in his own mind of a Brutus or a Mark Antony and then derive his pleasure from watching how closely the mimic representation imitates the original. Very often the scene must present something entirely new to the imagination and yet the pleasure is not diminished on this account. A simple man who has never seen the interior of a palace never looked on royalty never beheld even a veritable courtier feels no embarrassment when he is suddenly called to witness the pomps and miseries of ""imperial tragedy."" The imitation of the drama is not that of any specific original; it is a mimic scene having human nature for its type. It has a life of its own constructed from the materials which the records and observations of real life have supplied. In order to move us it needs no reference to any recognised original. It is there in virtue of the vesture of humanity in which it is clothed and makes its appeal at once and directly. It is usual to speak of all the fine arts as _imitative arts_. The term is not always applicable and when most applicable requires explanation. What does the poetry of sentiment imitate? What does a song imitate? How can the term be applied to all that class of poetry where the writer pours out his own reflections and feelings? The poetry of Wordsworth or of Burns can no more be said to be imitative than the conversation of the same men when in their hours of intimate intercourse the one may have given expression to his philanthropy and the other to his friendship. But where the term is most applicable it requires to be used guardedly. Even in painting and sculpture the artist does not imitate the object in its totality--does not strive to make an approximation to a _fac-simile_--but he selects certain _qualities_ of the object for his imitation. The painter confines himself to colour and outline; the sculptor abstracts the form and give it us in the marble. Accordingly when we stand before a statue we do not think of a man and then of the statue as the imitation of this original; but the statue is itself clothed with some of the qualities of the human being which give to the cold marble that _half-life_ which we feel the moment we look upon it. In the same manner when the dramatist puts his characters on the stage they are not imitations of any definite originals but they are invested with certain accidents and attributes of humanity which give them at once the interest we feel in them and set them living and moving in their own mimic world. And this mimic world is capable of creating an illusion--not such as Dr Johnson combated--but of a kind he does not appear to have taken into account. The doctor is triumphant when he denies the existence of that theatrical delusion presupposed as a ground for the unities. We do not as soon as the curtain rises believe ourselves transported to Rome nor do we take the actor upon his word and believe him to be Caesar the moment he proclaims his imperial dignity. The illusion of the theatre springs directly from the _passion_ with which we are infected not from the outward pomp and circumstance of the stage. These even on the most ignorant of spectators produce barely the sentiment of wonder and surprise never a belief in their reality. The real illusion of the drama begins so to speak not at the beginning but at the end; it is the last result the result of the last vivid word which sprung from the lips of the actor; and it diffuses a momentary reality over all that stage apparatus animate and inanimate which was there only as a preparation for that vivid word of the poet. When the curtain rises we see very plainly--quite unmistakeably--the boarded stage before us. It may fill with men and women most gorgeously attired and these may proceed to declare their rank and condition and the peculiar dangers which environ them and still there is nothing better before us than the boarded stage and the talking actor. But by and by the word of passion is uttered and the heart beats and the wooden stage is seen no more and the actor is forgotten in his griefs or his anger and the fictitious position is a real life and the pomp and circumstance of the scene if not believed in are no longer questioned. We are not perhaps at Rome nor is that Mark Antony--for we never knew Mark Antony to recognise him--but this mimic world has assumed an independent life and reality of its own. When indeed the passion subsides and the eloquence of the poet is mute things revert to their matter-of-fact condition the actor is again there and the boards of the stage again become visible. To the passage we last quoted from Dr Johnson some other objections suggest themselves; but as we have not quoted it in a polemical spirit but merely to illustrate our own position we have no wish to enter upon them. One remark only we will make and that because it admits of a general application. Dr Johnson describes the sympathy we feel at the theatre as the result of a reference to what our own _personal_ feelings would be in the situation we see represented on the stage. The auditor represents to himself ""what he would himself feel if he were to do or suffer what is there feigned to be suffered or to be done. The reflection that strikes the heart is not that the evils before us are real evils but that they are evils to which we ourselves may be exposed."" We do not think that in order to sympathize with what takes place on the stage or in real life there is any necessity for this circuitous proceeding. We do not detect in ourselves this constant reference to our own personality and least of all in those moments when we are most moved. It is enough that there be a vivid conception of any passion for this passion to become for a moment our own. If this reference to our probable feelings in such or such a position were necessary how is it that we men sympathize so promptly and so keenly in the distresses of the heroine? We certainly do not for instance set to work to imagine ourselves women and mothers--which would be a difficult exercise of the imagination--before we feel the grief of Constance for the loss of her child. In short we at once assume to ourselves the passions of another; we do not wait as it were to try them on; to make experiment how we with all our dispositions natural and acquired should feel in the supposed predicament. It is far from our intention to give a full and methodical account of the lectures of M. Saint-Marc Girardin the perusal of which led us to a reconsideration of some of our critical principles. They are far above mediocrity distinguished by strong sense and vivid expression. Their principal feature is the just and animated protest they contain against the literary taste of the present day in France; a taste for the perverted the horrible the monstrous; a taste that welcomes Victor Hugo with outstretched arms and retains but a frigid recollection of Racine. With this literary taste is intimately connected an unhealthy and feverish condition of the moral sentiments against which the lecturer directs his most eloquent attacks; so that his book may be commended for its sound ethical as well as critical instruction. The circumstance that the lectures were delivered before the University of Paris renders this strain of remark still more appropriate and useful. Such a strain of remark based as it is upon general principles cannot be useless in our own country; although we do not suspect that the same perverted taste which meets its reproof in these lectures is common amongst us. Were we called upon to describe the malady under which our countrymen labour in respect to literary taste we should describe it as a state of torpor and lethargy rather than of virulent disease. It is indifference more than any morbid taste which an imaginative work would have to struggle against in this country. There is little necessity here to guard the public against any species of literary enthusiasm; certain writers of very dubious merit may be extensively read but they are not esteemed. It is only necessary to listen to the conversation that goes on around us to be convinced that the extensive circulation of a book has ceased to be a decisive proof even of its _popularity_. We seem too idle or too busy to give attention to a thoughtful literature which is not at the same time _professional_--and we have too much good sense amongst us to admire the sort of clever trash we are contented to read and to talk about. For something in leisure hours must be read. A book must be had if only as a companion for the sofa if only to place in the hand as we place the ottoman under our feet to steady and complete our repose. We will at once introduce a striking quotation from the author before us which has immediate reference to the _Lucrèce Borgia_ of Victor Hugo. To those who have not read the play it is only necessary to observe in order to understand what follows that Victor Hugo with that violent effort after a moral novelty which distinguishes him has chosen to represent the infamous Lucretia Borgia as under the influence of maternal love while in all other respects she fully sustains her odious and infernal reputation. The author wished he tells us in his preface to retrieve the moral deformity of Lucretia Borgia by the beauty of the maternal sentiment; he wished according to his own energetic expression 'to place the mother in the monster.' Here let us make a distinction. I admire the tenderness which the most ferocious animals have for their offspring and when the dying lioness covers her young with her wounded and bleeding body I admire and am moved. But a woman who is a mother ought in her tenderness to her children to have more intelligence more of elevation of thought than the lioness. Instinct is not enough; there must be a sentiment a sentiment which does not exclude but perfects and purifies the instinct. Thus when in Florence a mother cast herself in desperation before the lion who had taken her child and the lion astonished at her despair or perhaps comprehending it replaced the infant at her feet it was instinct which impelled the mother and it was probably instinct in the lion which responded to her. But good instincts whatever admirable actions they may occasionally produce are but the germ and commencement of human virtues; they are indeed radically distinguished from human virtue by this that of themselves however strong they are sterile: a good instinct dwells by the side of a bad without effort to reform or to purify it and equally without danger of being itself perverted. One virtue only in a vicious character might convert it entirely to virtue as one vice only in a virtuous might lead it to utter depravation. But an instinct however good supports without disquietude the neighbourhood of evil and it is thus that in Lucretia Borgia the mother and the monster are placed side by side without affecting without combating each other. Now there is nothing less natural and nothing less dramatic than this mutual toleration. Characters wherein good and evil are mixed together are dramatic only because the conflict of opposite sentiments which takes place in the mind is brought before the view of the spectator. But where in Lucretia is the struggle between good and evil? At what moment does the maternal virtue enlighten and purify this soul lost in darkness? When does this transfiguration take place so marvellous and yet so natural? * * * It is singular and marks the change which has ta
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en place in our moral notions. Formerly poets gave to their personages one only vice or passion taking care in other respects to render them virtuous in order that they should be worthy of interest; at the present day our poets give their personages I know not how many passions and vices with one only virtue as a counterpoise. And this virtue weak and solitary is by no means charged with the task of purifying the corrupted mind in which it has by chance been preserved. It carefully respects the independence of those vices which permit it to dwell with them. Neither is it commissioned to inspire an interest in the spectator; because it is vice which now inspires all our interest thanks to a certain noble and proud bearing which has been assigned to it and which has been imitated from the heroes of Lord Byron. M. Girardin it will have been remarked from the above extract is disposed to reproach our Lord Byron as the source from which some of his countrymen have drawn their dark inspiration. This may be true. But without defending our Byron from charges to which he is manifestly exposed let us say thus much for him that in his poetry he was still too much a classic not to be a worshipper of the beautiful; that he did not court for itself the monstrous the ugly; his mind did not willingly associate with what was revolting in outward form or human passion. If there was any thing Satanic as some were pleased to express it in his poetry he was not at all events of the hobgoblin or demoniac school. It was the Satan of Milton with its ruined beauty and clouded dignity that had taken possession of his imagination. He delighted to depict the pride the love the generosity of hearts at war with man and not on too good terms with heaven; but still it was their pride their love their generosity that occupied his imagination. They are bad men; he takes care to tell us so himself; but he has not the heart to make them act otherwise than as noble fellows while they are under his guidance. The Corsair from his very name and profession is a declared criminal; but this once said the poet occupies himself and his reader with nothing but what is generous and heroic in Conrad. Byron had no disposition had a certain antipathy to paint the virtuous man; but it was a virtue nevertheless that attracted his pencil. He felt it necessary as a preliminary condition to remove his hero from the category of good men; but this being fairly done he resigned himself to the natural bent for what is good and great. A Borgia whether male or female in all its native deformity was not the subject to allure him. Nowhere is the rebuke of M. Girardin of certain of his contemporaries more dignified or more justly merited than where discoursing on the manner in which the moderns have delineated paternal love he reproves that exaggeration and falsification which has represented the father describing the affection he bears to his daughter in a style of language devoted to another species of love. Nothing can be more odious and offensive than to transgress even in language the bounds between the two affections and to put into the mouth of a parent as Victor Hugo and Balzac have done a style appropriate to the lover speaking of his mistress. But we will not quote these passages from M. Girardin because they will require long quotations in order to justify the censure contained in them. At the close of the lecture upon paternal love we find the following general remarks on the composition of a modern French drama; and the slightest acquaintance with this drama will enable the reader to appreciate their justice and analytic accuracy:-- Formerly a dramatic character was an assemblage of qualities good and bad which on the one hand were in conflict amongst themselves and on the other were subjected to some superior law of religion of honour or of patriotism. This twofold struggle constituted the interest of the person brought upon the scene and this superior law which he strove to accomplish constituted the morality of his character. According to the incidents of the piece each passion might take the ascendant none being represented as irresistible; and the moral law which predominated over the drama did not prevent this play of the passions--it being visibly suspended during the whole piece over the heads of the personages and receiving its fulfilment only at the close. In the present day dramatic characters are composed differently. Instead of representing the whole of the character and the struggle between its good and evil passions one only passion is selected which is made violent irresistible fatal the absolute mistress of all the others; that is to say a part is taken instead of the whole. At the same time the moral law which in the ancient drama (_i.e._ the drama of Racine and Corneille ) sustained also a struggle against the passions--this law which those even avowed who transgressed it which had always its place in the piece whether through virtue or remorse--this law also disappears before the ascendency of the sovereign passion. No counterpoise of any kind whether on the side of rival passions or on the side of duty. What remains then to struggle against this arbitrary passion? Nothing but chance--circumstance--the hazard of events. And thus it is that in the modern drama the interest resides rather in the strange complication of events than in the shock of opposite passions. The poet has only the power of chance a power sovereignly capricious to contend against the passion he has chosen to represent. And thus it is that the modern drama has something also of arbitrary and fantastic. Incidents and theatrical effects are accumulated but the incidents do not spring from the natural movement of the passions brought upon the stage; they have no longer their cause in the characters of the drama; they issue from the fancy of the poet who feeling the necessity of arousing his spectators from time to time complicates the action after a strange fashion and aims always at surprise. M. Girardin has a lecture upon suicides in which he attacks that sentimentality--a mixture in reality of weakness and impatience--which in modern literature and in modern life often conducts to suicide. The following passage will be acknowledged to be eloquent and even poetic unless our translation of it shall have entirely obscured its beauty. After having described the proud and _philosophical_ suicides of ancient Rome he adds:-- There is another species of suicide more in credit in our days which is rather occasioned by the weakness and impatience of men than by the violence of their passions or the eccentricity of their philosophies. This species of suicide is so much the peculiar malady of our times that we are tempted to think that men are now for the first time infected by it. But no; there exists a literature which has already expressed this our state of restlessness and disquietude which has described men consuming with melancholy in the midst of riotous joys and seeking suicide rather as the natural termination of their career than the remedy of their evils. It is the literature of the fathers of the church. I find amongst the homilies of St Chrysostom a certain Stagyra who was possessed by a demon. To be possessed by a demon is certainly not a malady of our times; but yet we do not wander from our theme. For the demon of Stagyra--it is melancholy despondency or in the much more powerful expression of the Greek it is _athumia_--exhaustion of all energy all vitality of the soul. This is the demon of Stagyra. He is one of those sick and agitated souls who think they belong to the selected portion of mankind because they want the energy of the vulgar; who contrive for themselves pleasures and afflictions apart from the rest of the world and who (last trait of weakness and impatience) at once despise and envy the simplicity and the calm of those whom they call little souls. Stagyra in order to deliver his spirit from its disquietudes had entered into a monastery; but neither there did he find the peace and lightness of heart which he craved; for man finds at first in solitude that only which he brings to it. Stagyra complains to the saint--and the complaint is curious for it indicates the knowledge of a cure for the evils which torment him and shows that Stagyra like many other patients had neither resolution to support his disease nor to accept its remedy. 'You complain ' says St Chrysostom 'that while you with all your fasts and vigils and monastic austerities have failed to appease your disquietudes others who like yourself had been tormented by the demon of melancholy while living in the midst of idle pleasures and luxurious indulgence have found a remedy in marriage and felt themselves cured the moment they became fathers.' A sentence this full of sound instruction. It is not then because life is devoid of pleasure that men are the prey of melancholy. That demon pierced it is true like a gnawing worm through all the luxuries of the Roman world; there was no resource against it either in beautiful slaves or Ionian dances or magnificent repasts or the combats of gladiators or Milesian tales or the voluptuous pictures which garnish the walls of Pompeii and Herculaneum. _Athumia_ poisoned all and the demon possessed the voluptuary in the midst even of the debauch. But if fatigued with these alternate pleasures and disgusts he adopted regular and simple manners married and had had children then as if by enchantment the demon quitted him. No more despondency no more bitterness. The spirit of the possessed was revived refreshed renewed by the caresses of his children. There is no demon not even the demon of melancholy which dares to encounter the presence of a little child. There is in the innocent fresh breathing of these creatures something mortal to evil spirits and a cradled infant in the house is sure talisman against all demoniac possession. What is it in fact which man requires in order to escape from this _athumia_ this exhaustion of the heart? Hope--a future. He must have a faith in the future. This is the nourishment of his soul; without it he cannot live he despairs and dies. Well the very charm of children that which has ranked them from of old amongst the blessings of God is this that they form the future of every family-- that they sustain in every house that sentiment by which the soul of man lives. Children represent the future and in a form the most joyous and attractive. It is this which constitutes their irresistible fascination--it is this which sheds around their little heads that light of happiness and joy which reflects itself on the countenances of the parents--which warms the heart--which gives to the poor the force to labour and to the miserable the force to live. Blessed be infancy which chases the demon!--Blessed be infancy which keeps alive in each family the sentiment of hope indispensable to run as the air and the light! Amongst the faults of his contemporaries M. Girardin remarks a disposition to _materialize_ the expression of passion depicting it constantly by violent physical distortions; and also a tendency to carry that expression to the extremity of rage where as he finely observes all distinction between the various passions is lost and man deserts his rational nature. According to the ancient classic imagination when passion becomes excessive the man disappears; and this he adds is the foundation of what we call the philosophy of the _Metamorphoses_ of Ovid. In the course of this censure he makes use of a common-place expression which we think includes a common-place error and therefore we pause for a moment to take notice of it. ""It is the pretension of modern art "" he tells us ""to say all. What then is left to the imagination of the public? It is often well to trust to the spectator to complete the idea of the poet or the statuary."" This is a mode of expression frequently made use of. Even Lessing has sanctioned it when in his _Laocoon_ he speaks of ""the highest expression leaving nothing to the imagination."" The leaving something to the imagination can mean this only that the expression of the artist is suggestive and kindles thought and in fact conveys more than is found in its literal interpretation. Now whatever is highest in art and especially in poetry is pre-eminently suggestive; and the highest expression does in fact leave most or in other words suggest most to the imagination. M. Girardin in common with many others speaks of this suggestive quality the characteristic of the highest form of art as if it were the result of a voluntary surrender of something by the poet to the reader as if it were an act of moderation on his part. Surely the poet does not proceed on the principle of saying half and permitting us to say the other half--out of compliment perhaps to our understanding and as a little bribe to our vanity. The more vivid and powerful his expressions the more must he leave or rather the more must he give indirectly as well as directly to the imagination of the reader. He will sometimes even bestow what he himself never possessed. The great poet in pouring out his feelings must always give something less and something _more_ than was in him at the time. It has been the fashion to illustrate the principle of leaving something to the imagination by the ancient picture of the sacrifice of Iphigenia where we are told that Agamemnon the father was painted hiding his face in his robe. The expression of grief and horror had been given in the countenance of the other bystanders and it was left to the imagination to divine what passion would have been seen depicted on the face of Agamemnon if that robe had been torn aside. Lessing and after him M. Girardin have indeed given a different account of the intention of the painter. The Greek artist say they sedulously avoided that distortion of features through excessive grief which was incompatible with beauty of form. They would _tone down_ the expression as Lessing argues that the sculptor did in the features of Laocoon until it became consistent with the lines of beauty. Timanthes therefore finding that in order to render with fidelity the expression of Agamemnon he must admit such a distortion of the features as would violate the rule chose rather to veil the countenance. But we would suggest that something else must have weighed with the artist; for if it was an acknowledged principle of Greek art rather to sacrifice a portion of the passion so to speak than to admit a distortion of the features why should Timanthes have felt any scruple in this instance in modifying the expression of the father's countenance in obedience to a known rule of art? Why should he have thought himself obliged to resort to the expedient of concealing the face? We make bold to adopt neither one account nor the other. We neither believe that Timanthes concealed the expression of the father's face upon some principle of ""leaving it to the imagination of the reader "" nor that he acted in obedience to the rule of art which Lessing lays down with so much ingenuity. We are persuaded that Timanthes painted Agamemnon in the attitude he did simply because it was the most natural--because it was in fact the only attitude in which it was possible to conceive a father present at the sacrifice of his own daughter. Other spectators might have looked on with different degrees of grief or horror but we feel that the father could not _look_; he must veil his head. This natural attitude bespeaking the grief it only seemed to hide was no doubt highly expressive. And in this point of view it may afford no bad illustration of that suggestive language of poetry which sometimes throws the veil not to conceal the passion or to leave it to another imagination to discover but as the best means of betraying it. We repeat that we do not profess to give any thing approaching to an analytical review of the lectures of M. Girardin; the illustrations being taken from the poetry of another nation would often require a length of explanatory detail quite inconsistent with our limits. We persist therefore in regarding them in the one point of view already indicated-namely as a protest against certain vitiated tastes and deleterious sentiments which prevail at the present day. We again revert therefore to the lecture upon suicide for the sake of a remark that we find there upon _Werther _ and on its celebrated author. It is rarely that we hear any one speak out so plainly upon Goethe. After speaking of the ""moral vitality"" which supports the fatigues and inures us to the self-denials of life he says:-- There are characters on the contrary who we perceive at first sight are predestined to die. Ardent and enthusiastic wanting force and patience--life is evidently not made for them. Such is Werther. Goethe had not created him to live and he knew this well; so that when some German author I know not whom undertook to correct the catastrophe of the romance and make Werther live instead of committing suicide Goethe said--'The poor man has no idea that the evil is without remedy and that a mortal insect has stung our Werther in the flower of his youth.' What is this mortal insect that has stung the youth of Werther? Mistake it not it is the spirit of doubt the spirit of the eighteenth century; and it is not Werther only that the insect has stung--it is Goethe himself. Goethe belongs to the eighteenth century; he is its disciple its heir; he is like it the sceptic but he is also the poet. It is this which conceals his universal doubt. Besides as he perceived with that admirable tact which accompanies his genius that his scepticism would injure his poetry he has laboured to correct its influence and for this purpose has called to his aid all the resources of art and science. He has adored nature he has been a pantheist he has distributed God everywhere to compensate for not having him in his own heart; he has adored Greece and rendered a sort of worship to beauty such as the Greeks conceived it and endeavoured to find an enthusiasm in the arts; he has adored the south and sung the Land of the orange grove because the south is the region of strong faiths and is repugnant to scepticism; he has adored the middle ages because they were ignorant of doubt everywhere he has sought to cure the wound of that insect which had stung his youth. But no; his scepticism pierces through all his enthusiasm and the very variety of his inspirations proves his indifference. He is neither philosopher nor devotee nor Christian nor pagan nor courtier nor citizen nor of times ancient or modern nor of the north nor of the south-or rather he is all these at once. He is the echo of nature he repeats to us all her harmonies; but he fails to add that utterance which unites so well with the harmonies of the world the utterance of his own heart. Ask of Goethe to represent man and nature in all their variety and extent and he will do it. There is one thing you must not ask of him--himself. This _self_ fails in Goethe; not the self which knows it is a great poet and will to be one; but that other self which has a thought a principle to contend for which in short believes in something. It is there the insect stung; both in Goethe and in Werther. After discussing the character of modern French literature there remains the important question to determine how far the state of literature represents the state of society--how far the one is a faithful picture of the other. Upon this subject M. Girardin concludes his volume with some excellent remarks; but here we must also conclude our notice of this interesting work. LORD ELDON. In a free country if there ever was or will be a truly free country besides our own the life of every public man ought to be written. All would supply a lesson of more or less value; and it is upon lessons of that order that the vigour of the rising generation can alone be trained. Undoubtedly in the mixed qualities of human nature there might now and then be formidable displays; the development of the heart might often startle the eye which looked to it for healthy action; the machinery of the mind would require to be examined with the hand of charity as well as the hand of science: but the general result must be knowledge--always interesting and often of the highest value; for the tendency of manners is to disappoint that research. The habits the associations almost the general peace of society unite in covering the actual nature of man with a uniform aspect. The unquestionable effect of civilization is not merely to smooth the inequalities of the surface but to conceal the actual material--the rough the hard the cold or the pernicious within. But there is no one operation of man by which human nature is so deeply and so distinctly penetrated and tested as a true narrative of the career of men acting a prominent part in the world. History is comparatively feeble to this powerful searcher. Its heroes and heroines are placed so palpably on a stage; its _dramatis personae_ are so distant and so disciplined; its positions are so openly arranged for effect that the nearest approach is only conjecture as the nearest approach to reality is only illusion. Courts and campaigns are not human life. Kings and ministers in their court pageantry are scarcely more entitled to the name of human beings. They are factitious forms showy spectacles glittering effigies. But strip off the state costume; stand beside them while they are unconscious of a spectator; enter into their minds; seize their motives; measure their impulses: it is only then that we discover their affinity to the family of man and by their vigour and virtue model our own. The life of the Earl of Eldon is an important addition to public biography. Written by a lawyer it has the advantage of professional knowledge--by a man of a certain experience in public and even in official life it exhibits that practical knowledge of affairs which nothing but practice can gain--and by a man of literary accomplishment it adds to its more solid merits those graces of style which supply the last attraction to a work of manly utility. We feel even in some degree an uncritical yet a not less authentic satisfaction in giving our tribute to the work of one connected with a family whose name brings to the public mind such deep recollections of fine ability finely employed--of talents combined with the noblest triumphs of past genius and of forms and countenances eminently fitted to represent the grand and beautiful of the classic drama of England. The father of Lord Eldon was William Scott a merchant of good means and good repute at Newcastle his principal business being connected with the coal trade. He lived to be seventy-nine years old and his wife (a second marriage) to be ninety-one. By her he had thirteen children of whom John (Lord Eldon) was the eighth. William (Lord Stowell) was born in 1745 the year of the Scottish invasion in Heworth where his mother had been sent for her accouchement to avoid the perils Newcastle then expecting a siege. After her return to Newcastle she gave birth to John June 4 1751. The house was situated at the end of one of those narrow streets which in the native dialect are called _chares_ the extremity being a ""chare-foot."" A bar story is told of a judge on circuit who hearing a witness depose that he had seen three men come out of a ""chare-foot "" desired the jury to disregard his evidence altogether as none but a madman could say that he saw three men come out of the ""foot of a chair."" Lord Eldon appears to have been so fond of the jest that he once stated in the Court of Chancery that ""he had been born in a chair-foot."" At the suitable age John and his brothers were sent to the Foundation Grammar School of Newcastle then under the headship of one Moises fellow of Peterhouse. His predecessor had been Dawes the well-known author of the ""Miscellanea Critica""--an able scholar but only an additional example of the frequent insufficiency of scholars to teach. Dawes was eccentric and injured the reputation of the school. His predominant propensity while in Newcastle was bell-ringing. On his leaving that place he adopted a new taste that of rowing. If Moises had any peculiar taste it seems to have been flogging. ""I was once "" said Lord Eldon ""the _seventeenth_ boy whom Moises flogged and richly did we merit it. There was an elderly lady who lived in Westgate Street whom we surrounded and would not allow her to go either backward or forward. She complained and he flogged us all. When he came to me he exclaimed 'What John Scott! were you there too?' And I was obliged to say 'Yes sir.' 'I will not stop ' said he 'you shall all have it.' But I think I came off best for his arm was rather tired with the sixteen who went before me."" A flogging may be all very well in its recollection fifty years after. But the impression of the moment was we presume not quite so favourable. The inevitable consequence of this habit was to spoil both master and scholars. It made the timid boy pusillanimous while it made the fierce more indignant and resentful. What could be the feelings of the master who could inflict almost agony on seventeen mere children let the offence be what it might? Yet the offence was trifling; troublesome behaviour to an old woman in the street. A slight reprimand or trivial fine would have properly finished the affair; but then comes the flagellation. But our great public schools exhibit another offence; the system of fagging alike foolish and mischievous. It only teaches the elder boys to be tyrants and the younger to be liars and slaves. In practice it promises to correct itself by destroying the great schools. The proprietary schools and other institutions for the education of the people have uniformly discountenanced this abominable nuisance; and we know none whose abolition would do more credit to the heads of the church or if they should remain indolent on the subject to the heads of the legislature. William Scott in 1761 was sent to Oxford as a candidate for a Durham scholarship which he obtained but which was perilled by a blunder of the head of Corpus Christi college. This worthy person delivered his opinion in this style:--""I think gentlemen there can be no doubt that young Scott is by far the best scholar of them. But he has told us that his father is a fiddler and I do not quite like to take the son of a fiddler into the college."" The doctor was an ass for his dictum; and it is only to be regretted that he did not live to express this impudent opinion in our day. England is certainly growing more rational whatever colleges may be. Language of that sort used in a country which boasts that no artificial impediment can be suffered to exist in the career of genius and virtue would quickly meet the reception merited by its arrogant absurdity. The ""fiddler"" was a blunder of the doctor for ""fitter "" the local name of the coal trade. William in his twentieth year became a tutor; John was intended for a coal-merchant but his brother desired that he should be sent to Oxford. ""Send Jack up to me "" were the words; ""I can do better for him here."" He was then under fifteen. A striking anecdote marks his first starting in life. ""When I left school to go to Oxford "" said Lord Eldon ""I came up from Newcastle to London in a coach then denominated on account of its _quick_ travelling 'a Fly ' being three or four days and nights on the road. On the panels were the words _Sat cito si sat bene_ (Fast enough if well enough ) which made a most lasting impression on my mind and have had their influence on my conduct in all subsequent life."" He then exhibits a specimen of that sly humour which characterized him to the last. ""A Quaker fellow-traveller stopped the coach at the inn at Tuxford to give the chambermaid a sixpence telling her that he had forgotten it when he slept there two years before. I was a very saucy boy and I said to him 'Friend have you seen the motto on the coach?' 'No.' 'Then look at it for I think giving her only sixpence _now_ is neither _sat cito_ nor _sat bene_."" On his arrival in London he was overturned with his brother in a sedan chair. ""This "" thought he ""is more than _sat cito_ and it certainly is not _sat bene_."" He concludes more gravely by saying ""It was this impression which made me that deliberative judge as some have said _too_ deliberative. And reflection upon all that is past will not authorize me to deny that while I have been thinking 'Sat cito si sat bene ' I may not have sufficiently remembered whether 'Sat bene si sat cito' has had its due influence."" The chief feature of this portion of the biography is its recollections of remarkable persons. We have heard this one of Johnson before: but the names and place are now first given from Lord Eldon's anecdote-book. ""I had a walk in the New Inn Hall garden with Dr Johnson Sir Robert Chambers and some other gentlemen (Chambers was principal of the Hall and Vinerian professor of law. He was at this period on the point of proceeding to India as judge.) Sir Robert was gathering snails and throwing them over the wall into his neighbour's garden. The doctor attacked him roughly and charged his conduct as being unneighbourly. 'Sir ' said Sir Robert 'my neighbour is a dissenter.' 'Oh ' said the doctor 'if so toss away toss away as hard as you can!'"" This was evidently one of Johnson's odd freaks a piece of his growling humour; for though no man disliked sectarianism more no man had a stronger sense of charity to all. His manners now and then exhibited strange absence. Lord Eldon says that he had seen him standing for a considerable time with one foot on each side of the kennel of the High Street of Oxford gazing at the water. It was proverbially dangerous to contradict him. Dr Mortimer head of Lincoln college happened occasionally to interrupt him by saying ""I deny that "" while Johnson was holding forth. At length he said ""Sir sir you must have forgotten that an author has said (he then repeated in Latin ) one ass will deny more in one hour than a hundred philosophers will prove in a hundred years."" During the year 1774 and 1775 John Scott held the office of a tutor of University college; but he appears to have left the duty to Fisher and William Scott his brother those two dividing the emoluments. However he was more importantly employed when he gave lectures on the law as deputy to Sir Robert Chambers for which he had L.60 a-year. His first essay was sufficiently ridiculous. The law professor sent him his first lecture which he was to read immediately to the students and which he began without knowing its contents. It happened to be on the statute 4th and 5th Philip and Mary on young men running away with young women. ""Fancy me "" said his lordship ""reading with about 140 boys and young men giggling at the professor."" While Scott was eating his terms at the Middle Temple he had some opportunities of seeing Mr Sergeant Hill the great lawyer of his day eminent for learning and scarcely less so for eccentricity. Hill one day stopped Scott in the hall and said ""Pray young gentleman do you think herbage and pannage rateable to the poor's rate?"" Scott replied ""that he could not presume to give an opinion to so learned a personage."" ""Upon my word "" said the sergeant ""you are a pretty sensible young gentlemen--I don't often meet with such. If I had asked Mr Burgess a young leader upon our circuit the question he would have told me that I was an old fool."" Hill began an argument in the King's Bench thus:--""My Lord Mansfield and judges I beg your pardon.""--""Why brother Hill do you ask our pardon?""--""My lords "" said he ""I have seventy-eight cases to cite.""--""Seventy-eight cases!"" said Lord Mansfield; ""you can never have our pardon if you cite seventy-eight cases!"" After the court had given its decision which was against the sergeant's client Lord Mansfield said ""Now brother Hill that the judgment is given you can have no objections on account of your client to tell us your real opinion and whether you do not think we are right; you know how we all value your opinion and judgment."" Hill wished to be excused; but as he always thought it his duty to do what the court desired ""Upon my word "" said he ""I did not think that there were four men in the world who could have given such an ill-founded judgment as you four my lords have pronounced."" This style however must have been now and then intolerable. When Baron Hotham was placed in the Exchequer he gave a dinner as is usual on those o
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casions at Sergeant's Inn to the judges and sergeants. Hotham had been unsuccessful at the bar. Hill in drinking his health called him Baron Botham. Somebody whispered the real name to him. Hill said aloud ""I beg your pardon Mr Baron Hotham; but none of us ever heard your name in the profession before this day."" In justice to the baron however Lord Eldon adds the following note:--""The Baron made an extremely good judge. He had not much legal learning; but he had an excellent understanding great discretion unwearied patience and his manners were extremely engaging; and those qualities ensuring to him in a very large measure the assistance of the bar he executed his duties as a judge with great sufficiency."" Shortly after his commencing the profession Scott reduced himself into a state of invalidism by excessive study. In 1774 when he and Cookson another invalid were returning to Oxford from Newcastle where they had gone to vote at the general election the good-natured cook of the inn at Birmingham where they arrived at eleven at night insisted on dressing something hot for them saying that she was sure neither of them would live to see her again. A medical friend remonstrated with him on the severity of his studies. ""It is not matter "" answered Scott ""I must either do as I am now doing or starve."" He rose at four in the morning observed a careful abstinence at his meals and to prevent drowsiness read at night with a wet towel round his head. At last it became necessary as the time of being called to the bar approached to provide a dwelling in London. In his latter days he pointed out a house in Cursitor Street. ""There "" said he ""was my first perch. Many a time have I run down from that house to Fleet Market to get sixpennyworth of sprats for supper."" At this period in mentioning to his brother the kindness of a great conveyancer Mr Duane whom he attended as a gratuitous pupil he says--""This conduct of his has taken a great load of uneasiness off my mind; as in fact our profession is so exceedingly expensive that I almost sink under it. I have got a house barely sufficient to hold my small family which will in rent and taxes cost me L.60. I have been buying books too for the last ten years; but I have got the mortification to find that before I can settle that article of trade--for so I consider it--will cost me near L.200."" Of Duane's service to him he said a little more than a fortnight before his death ""The knowledge I acquired of conveyancing in his office was of infinite service to me during a long life in the Court of Chancery."" In Hilary Term 1776 Scott was called to the bar by the Society of the Middle Temple. When we recollect what a leviathan of wealth the Lord Chancellor was in his latter days it is amusing to read the statement of his early struggles however painful they must have been at the time. ""When I was called to the bar "" said he ""Bessy (his wife) and I thought all our troubles were over. Business was to pour in and we were to be almost rich immediately. So I made a bargain with her that during the following year all the money that I should receive during the first eleven months should be mine and whatever I should get in the twelfth month should be hers. What a stingy dog I must have been to make such a bargain! I would not have done so afterwards. But however so it was-- that was our agreement; and how do you think that it turned out? In the twelfth month I received _half-a-guinea_. Eighteen-pence went for fees and Bessy got nine shillings. In the other eleven months I got not one shilling."" This was but sorry encouragement; but such is the profession. Men must wait. Property or perhaps life will not trust themselves to inexperience; and thus from the very nature of the Bar a long period of probation must be borne by all. There had been an old and invidious conception which represented the Lord Chancellor as the son of a coal-heaver. It appears from the memoir that his father was on the contrary possessed of property very considerable in those days. He was what we should now call a broker in the coal-trade--technically a coal-fitter or factor--who transacted business between the coal-owner and the ship-owner. He was intelligent and industrious and prospered accordingly; leaving at his death property worth L.25 000 to his eldest son William; another L.1000 to John; making in the whole L.3000 and respectable sums to his other children. He appears to have realized above L.30 000--a sum equal to nearly double at the present day. Lord Eldon though all gravity on the bench and seldom indulging in any sportiveness in parliament was a humorist at table and fond of humorous recollections. His story of Dunning on his travels has got into print; but in the hands of a genuine humorist it must have been an incomparable ground for burlesque. Dunning when solicitor-general had gone to see the Prussian reviews. Some of these were profoundly secret and were presumed to be experiments in those tactical novelties with which Frederick dazzled Europe. But others were showy displays to which the king invited the princes and generals of the Continent. Dunning had announced himself as Solicitor-General of England. Frederick either knowing nothing of solicitors though much of generals or what is more probable--for he was the most deliberate wag in existence--determining to play the lawyer a trick ordered him to be received as a general officer and provided him with a charger for his presence at the grand display. Dunning long unused to ride soon found that he had his master _under_ him. The charger as well disciplined as one of his majesty's grenadiers and delighting like the horse of Joab in the ""trumpets and the shouting"" of the captains rushed every where with his unwilling rider; and it was not till after a day of terror in which his cavalry exploits must have exposed him to frequent laughter that the lawyer escaped from the din of battles and rejoiced to find himself with unfractured bones resolved never to play the general officer again. There may be ""some things new under the sun "" in contradiction to the proverb; but they are not many at least in wit. The story of the celebrated cardinal who proved that the sun went round the moon and _vice versa_ is sufficiently wall known. Dunning's pleading _pro_ and _con_. is vouched for from Scott's personal experience. Dunning led in a cause in which Scott was junior counsel. The leader so evidently reasoned against his own client that Scott after long amazement at last touched his arm and whispered that he was speaking on the wrong side. Dunning instantly perceived his mistake and gave him a rough reprimand (we may presume _sotto voce_) for having suffered him to go on so long. He then recovered himself with his habitual dexterity; said that he had stated all that could be urged against his client and that he would then proceed to show how utterly futile was the argument. A good deal of his early life on the circuit was passed with Lee then the leader of the northern circuit and a man of great vigour of mind. A curious question once rose between them on professional morality. At supper one night Scott made the remark that Lee always exerted himself to gain a verdict by a display of his great legal knowledge; but not always with a regard to the accuracy of either his law or his facts. Lee contended that it was the duty of counsel to state what the party himself would have stated and get a verdict if he could. He however pondered on it; and as they were retiring for the night said ""Scott I have been thinking of the question you asked me; and I am not _quite_ sure that the conduct you represented will bring a man peace at the last."" Lord Eldon quotes Johnson's opinion which had been referred to--and which stated that it was the duty of counsel after having stated the law and the facts exactly to exert his abilities to the utmost to gain his cause--the judge being supposed the abler lawyer and the reasoning of the bench amending what was erroneous in that of the bar. Lord Eldon adds in his rather too dubious way--""It may be questioned whether even this can be supported."" Of course it may. The object of law is to do justice; and justice is not done if the ingenuity of an able advocate is entitled to gain a false verdict. For how is this to be gained? Either by a suppression of the truth in part or by a colouring of the falsehood or by an invention of facts aided by a misinterpretation of law; all palpably against conscience. The true rule appears to be--the lawyer stands in the place of the client to do what the client would and could have done if he had equal skill in exhibiting the circumstances and equal knowledge of the law which bore upon them. But as the client has no right to tell an untruth of any kind for himself so neither has the lawyer the right to tell it for him. The lawyer's taking a brief in a cause of which he has a bad opinion is wholly a different matter. The custom of the bar justly decides that he must not refuse the brief because he cannot be sure that he knows the whole cause; for facts unexpected and even unknown may start up; he may be mistaken in his personal conception of the facts the motives and the law: new facts may come out on the trial. There is a judge to decide on hearing both sides and the counsel has no right to assume the office of the judge. Of course if he is made aware of any fraud in the conduct of the case or even suspects it he must abandon his brief at once. Lee's manner was of that rough and ready kind which always tells with a jury. Once after a very keen cross-examination the witness charged him with severity to one who was his relation. ""Why how do you make that out "" said Lee. The man stated the genealogy. ""Well "" said Lee ""I believe you are right. I only wish my good fourth or fifth cousin you would speak a little truth for the honour of the family; for not one word of truth have you spoken yet."" Even this able man had gone many years to York without a single brief; and even then began only on a burlesque case fabricated by his brother barristers. Accuracy of recollection is obviously of peculiar importance at the bar; but the profession has sometimes exhibited surprising instances of this faculty. Lord Eldon spoke of Chief Justice De Grey's powers of memory as extraordinary. De Grey suffered so much from the gout the he used to come into court with both hands wrapped in flannel. He thus could not take a not. ""Yet I have known him "" said Lord Eldon ""try a cause that lasted nine or ten hours and then from memory sum up all the evidence with the greatest correctness. When counsel offered any intimation of his inaccuracy his answer was--'I am sure I am right; refer to your short-hand writer's notes;' and he was invariably found to be right."" A similar faculty is possessed by that very distinguished person Lord Lyndhurst. It is remarkable that none of the lucky accidents which have raised so many inferior men into prosperity ever occurred to Scott who was yet destined to rise to such opulence and eminence. His first steps in life might be regarded as all but ruin. He abandoned his college where he had secured at least existence; and he abandoned it for a profession proverbially hazardous and in which for whole years he made nothing. At this period too when scarcely able to support himself he ran away with a portionless wife; and thus began the world not merely helpless but with a new weight which has broken down many a strong mind. The opinion of every one who took an interest in him was that this marriage was fatal to all his prospects. It necessarily compelled him to give up all collegiate objects; and we recollect to have seen in print a fragment of a letter from his elder brother (afterwards Lord Stowell) to a friend in these words--""Have you seen what my foolish brother has done? He has made a runaway match; he is utterly ruined."" The opinion of Moises his schoolmaster was equally decided. ""Jack Scott has run off with Bessy Surtees and the poor lad is undone."" Scott entered as a student of the Middle Temple in January 1773. In six years after what was his progress? We have this letter from Lord Stowell about 1779. ""Business is very dull with poor Jack very dull indeed and of consequence he is not very lively. I heartily wish that business may brighten a little or he will be heartily sick of his profession. I do all I can to keep up his spirits but he is very gloomy. But mum not a word of this to the wife of your bosom."" At length however day began to dawn and his powerful understanding and solid knowledge found the opportunity which to such means is generally all that is wanting. A conversation with an old friend lets us into a curious trait of Lord Mansfield. ""Was the Court of Chancery your object when you first came to the bar?"" asked Farrar. ""Certainly not "" answered Lord Eldon. ""I first took my seat in the King's Bench; but I soon perceived or thought I perceived a preference in Lord Mansfield (the Chief Justice) for young lawyers who had been bred at Westminster School and Christ Church; and so as I had belonged to neither I thought I could not have fair chance with my fellows and therefore I crossed over to the other side of the hall. (The Courts of King's Bench and Chancery were at that time on the opposite sides of Westminster Hall.) Lord Mansfield I believe was not conscious of the bias; he was a good man."" Mansfield's goodness was sufficiently questioned by his contemporaries; yet if he exhibited this bias he could not have been a just man. The cause which first made Scott known was Acroyd v. Smithson. The question was--whether in a property willed in fifteen shares to fifteen people one of them dying in the testator's lifetime the lapsed share did not belong to the heir at law. He argued the case before the Master of the Rolls Sir Thomas Sewell. ""He has argued it very well "" said Sewell. But he gave it against Scott. An appeal came before Lord Thurlow. Scott argued his point. Thurlow took three days to consider and then gave his decision in favour of the heir-at-law--a decision which has settled all similar questions ever since. He then had an omen of his prosperity. As he left the hall a solicitor of some note touched him on the shoulder and said ""Young man your bread and butter is cut for life."" He then had another golden opportunity. Fatigued with waiting for fortune he was on the point of leaving London and taking up his abode at Newcastle of which he was offered the recordership. A house was even taken for him when one morning at six o'clock Mr afterwards Lord Curzon and four or five other gentlemen came to his door mentioning that the Clitheroe election case was to come on that morning at ten before a committee of the Commons; that one of their counsel was detained at Oxford by illness and their second was unprepared and would not appear; and that they were sent to him as a young and promising counsel. Scott told them that on so short a notice all he could do would be to give a dry statement of facts. The cause thus put into his hands went on for fifteen days. ""It found me poor "" said Lord Eldon ""but I was to be rich before it was done. They left me fifty guineas at the beginning; then there were ten guineas every day and five guineas every evening for a consultation--more money than I could count. But better still the length of the cause gave me time to make myself thoroughly acquainted with the law."" After all this the side on which Scott was was beaten by a single vote. But Mansfield (afterwards Sir James ) on hearing his speech in the committee came up to him in Westminster Hall and strongly advised him to remain in London. Scott answered that an increasing family compelled him to leave London. Wilson a barrister advised as Mansfield had done and even generously offered to make up his income to L.400 a-year. He received the same answer. ""However "" said the chancellor with natural selfgratulation ""I did remain and lived to make Mansfield chief justice of the common pleas and Wilson a judge."" Moreover his sagacity gave him additional triumphs on the northern circuit where he soon took the lead. He was counsel in a cause which depended on his being able to make out who was the founder of an ancient chapel in the neighbourhood. ""I went to view it "" said Lord Eldon. ""There was nothing to be observed which gave any indication of its date or history. However I remarked that the ten commandments were written on some old plaster which from its position I conjectured might cover an arch. Acting on this I bribed the clerk with five shillings to allow me to chip away a part of the plaster; and after two or three attempts I found the keystone of an arch on which were engraved the arms of an ancestor of one of the parties. This evidence decided the cause. Here was an instance of good-luck undoubtedly but also of great diligence and great sagacity. A negligent counsel would never have thought of examining the chapel in person; a dull counsel would never have thought of examining the arch; but it happens that the sagacious are generally lucky and that therefore the first quality is sagacity."" Another remarkable case occurred at Durham. On this occasion Scott though a junior counsel was appointed to lead by his seniors the case being relative to collieries and he being a Newcastle man. When Buller the judge who was a coarse man and fond of saying abrupt things saw him he said ""Sir you have not a leg to stand upon."" Scott answered ""My lord in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred I should sit down on hearing the judge so express himself; but so persuaded am I that I have the right on my side that I must entreat your lordship to allow me to reply and I must also express my expectation of gaining a verdict."" He replied and the jury after consulting six or eight hours gave the verdict in his favour. When he went to the ball that evening he was received with open arms by every one. When he went to Carlisle Buller sent for him and told him that ""he had been thinking over that case on his way from Newcastle and that he had come to the conclusion that he was entirely wrong and that I was right. He had therefore sent for me to tell me this and to express his regret for having attempted to stop me in court. This cause "" said Lord Eldon ""raised me aloft."" Yet this man with all his ability had already attended the Cumberland assizes for seven years without receiving a brief. After the celebrity of this cause when he next attended he received seventy guineas in fees at Carlisle. So much has been said in parliament and in the newspapers lately of _Gentlemen of the Turf_ and the very dubious nature of that appellation that the following case comes curiously in point. A question arose as to the winner of the stakes in a race--there having been a condition that the horses should be ridden by gentlemen; and it was disputed whether the winning horse had been ridden by a gentleman or not. The judge finally addressed the jury in these words--""Gentlemen of the jury when I see you in that box I call you gentlemen for I know you are such. Custom has authorized me and from your office there you are entitled to be called gentlemen; but out of that box I do not know what may be deemed the requisites that constitute a gentleman--therefore I can give you no direction "" (a laugh.) The jury returned a verdict that he was not a gentleman. The next morning he challenged the two counsel Law and Scott. They answered they could not possibly fight one who had been pronounced by the verdict of a jury to be no _gentleman_. Politics now began to rise in the prospects of this intelligent and indefatigable mind. The condition of the English lawyer forms as striking a contrast to that of the Continental _jurisconsult_ as the English constitution to the despotisms of Europe. Abroad the lawyer may be a man of whatever extent of attainment but his sphere is strictly professional; within that range he lives makes a scanty income with a still more scanty fame disputes for forty or fifty years and dies. France of late years is partially an exception for France now extends the range of her professions; but in all the rest the existence of the lawyer closely resembles the existence of the quadruped in the mill. In England all is of a different and a higher order. The bar itself is but a step; distinction in the courts is only the first stage of an ascent which may raise the individual to eminence in government as well as dignity in the high places of his profession--it is the preparative for wearing those honours which form a family and give a pledge to fortune. As the ancients said of the eagle that before he takes his flight for the day he prepares his wings by plunging them in the mountain stream the great lawyer has plunged in the depths of his profession only to ascend into a higher range of power and prospect and there to steer his strong flight to the possession of all that man can desire. On the formation of the Coalition ministry under North and Fox in 1783 the great seal being in commission Scott was appointed king's counsel; but in this instance so important to a young barrister he yet showed manliness. Saturday was the day on which he was to receive this honour; but on ascertaining the Erskine and Pigot both his juniors and who were also to have silk gowns were to be sworn in on the Friday he instantly retracted his acceptance as ""he could not submit to any waiver of his professional rank."" The lords-commissioners called him before them and argued the matter pressingly. But he would not give way. At last as the patents for the two other counsel had already passed the great seal they were sworn in on the Friday; but a patent of precedence was given to Scott by which he took rank before them. The day of his patent was the 4th of June 1783: he was then thirty-two years old. Late in life a friend asked whether he thought it was important thus to insist on retaining his rank. Eldon with the experience of half a century answered with great earnestness ""It was every thing. I owed my future success to it."" There is a moral in the words of Wiseman--""The man who begins by humiliation will soon find that the world will judge of him by his own deed."" Lord Eldon in one of those conversations strikingly remarked a similar conduct in the celebrated Lord Collingwood who had been his schoolfellow. ""Medals were given "" said his lordship ""on the 1st of June but not to him. When the medal was sent to him for Cape St Vincent he returned it saying that he felt conscious he had done his duty as well on the 1st of June as at Cape St Vincent; and that if he did not merit the first medal neither could he merit the second. He was quite right "" said Lord Eldon ""he would have both or neither. Both were sent to him."" Parliament now opened to his ambition. Lord Thurlow at Lord Weymouth's request offered him Weobly a borough in his patronage (extinguished by the Reform Act of 1832.) Scott accepted the offer on the condition that he should be left independent in his opinions. Thurlow said the ""he had stipulated that already."" Scott went down to the borough accordingly made a ""long speech "" which the electors said they expected from him ""as he was a lawyer: it being also a treat which they had not enjoyed for thirty years."" Lord Surrey (afterwards Duke of Norfolk ) a prodigious reformer--a profession which however did not prevent him from constantly dabbling in the intrigues of electioneering--had harangued against him at Hereford while Scott retorted at Weobly by smartly saying--""That though then unknown to them he hoped he should entitle himself to more of their confidence than if being the son of the first Duke of England he had held himself out to them as a reformer whilst riding as the Earl of Surry rode into the first town of the county drunk upon a cider-cask and talking in that state of _reform_!"" Lord Surrey had been his client and on meeting him in France afterwards good-humouredly said--""I have had enough of meddling with you; I shall trouble you no more."" An odd incident valuable to those who value foresightedness in this world's affairs occurred at the time Scott was lodged at the vicar's Mr Bridges. He had a daughter a young child and he said--""Who knows but you may come to be chancellor. As my girl can probably marry nobody but a clergyman promise me you will give her husband a living when you have the seals."" His answer was ""My promise is not worth half-a-crown; but you may have my promise."" In after life the child then in womanhood walked one morning into the chancellor's drawing-room and claimed the fulfilment of his promise. It was duly performed and she married. There is perhaps no subject of human interest more entitled to an anxious and solemn curiosity than the sentiments of a man of powerful and fully furnished mind in the immediate prospect of death. The coming change is so total and so tremendous alarm and a sense of the unknown are so natural that to find unpresuming confidence and virtuous constancy of heart in that awful time cheers human nature. William Scott always distinguished for great capacity and remarkable acquirements about this period being seized with an illness which he thought mortal writes these memoranda on the verge of the grave:-- My great comfort is to write on to my dearest Jack and about my wife. Act for me. _Wife child_. She knows I recommend her to your care. Object of my life to make my sisters easy. Save ------ from ruin if we can. Protect my memory by your kindness. Life ebbs very fast with me. My dying thoughts are all kindness and fraternal love about you. While sensation remains I think on my dearest brother with whom I have spent my life. I die with the same sentiments. As the hand of death approaches it is a consolation to think of him. Oh cherish my wife! If you loved me be a brother to her. You will have trouble about my affairs; you will not grudge it. Oh take care of _her_! I leave you that duty. It is the last relief of my failing mind. Cherish my memory. Keep ----- from ruin if you can by any application of any part of my child's fortune that is reasonable. Once more farewell! God bless you. These are affecting testimonials and show singular tenderness of heart and truth of attachment; for they were written to be transmitted only in case of death. Those who in after times saw Lord Stowell on the bench the solemn and even the stern depository of justice could scarcely imagine in that searching glance and compressed lip the softness of heart which those fragments indicate. Death may be a great subduer of the fierce spirit of man as it approaches; but their language is not the phrase of puling softness or pusillanimous alarm; it is at once calm and fond collected and fervid. The writer's natural and honourable feelings are all alive at the moment when the last pang might seem to be at hand; and though nothing is said of his Christian hopes (probably because the care of his family demanded more urgent consideration than his personal conceptions ) language like theirs could scarcely have come but from a Christian. His disorder was a violent bilious fever which exhausted him so much that his recovery was slow. But to those who are in the habit of consigning their friends to ""inevitable death"" on every infliction of disease it may excite some useful doubt of their own infallibility to know that this dying man then thirty-eight survived for half a century dying in his ninety-first year. But the whole biography is a warning--especially against despondency. Who could suppose that after Lord Eldon's success up to this point; his distinction on the principal circuit; the compliments of the judges; the respect of his seniors in the profession some of them very remarkable men; his silk gown in the days of Erskine; his seat in Parliament; and more than all the consciousness which men of large faculties naturally have of their suitableness and almost their certainty to command fortune at some tine or other; we should find the future peer and chancellor desponding? Yet what but deep complaints of his cloudy prospects could have produced this reply from his clever friend Lee (who within three weeks' became Attorney-General?) DEAR SCOTT--Your letter which I received this minute was a very cheering one to me. But _keep up your spirits_ and let it not be said that a good understanding and an irreproachable life and an uncommon success and every virtuous expectation are insufficient to support tranquility and composure of mind. _If you are cast down_ who is to hold up? In a few days I hope to meet you in good health and good heart; and in the mean time remain your faithful and affectionate. (Nov. 1783) ""J. LEE."" On the opening of the session great popular feeling was excited against the coalition. The furious invectives which Fox had been for some years heaping on Lord North's luckless head were now flung upon his own. Traitor liar swindler were ""house-hold words;"" and Fox with all his ability and that happiest of all ability for the crisis great constitutional good-humour found himself suddenly overwhelmed. In the House he was still powerful; but outside its doors he was utterly helpless. Like the witches recorded in some of the German romances though within the walls chosen for their orgies they could summon spirits and revel in their incantations uncontrolled yet on passing the threshold they turned into hags again. But as if to make the coalition still more odious in the popular eye there was presented the most resistless contrast to both its chiefs in the young and extraordinary leader of the Opposition Pitt; with the ardour of youth and the wisdom of years at once master of the most vigorous logic and the loftiest appeal to the public feelings; honoured as the son of Chatham; and yet even at that immature period of his life and his career still more honoured for the promise of talents and services which were to throw even his own eminent predecessor into the shade. But North apart from the cabinet was always delightful. He had more of easy pleasantry in his manner than any favourite of English recollection. Lord Eldon in his anecdotal book thus tells--""Lord North had gone at the Prince of Wales's desire to reconcile the King to him. He succeeded and called on the Prince to inform him of his success. 'Now ' said he 'let me beseech your Royal Highness in future to conduct yourself differently. Do so on all accounts; do so for your own sake; do so for your excellent father's sake; do so for the sake of that good-natured man Lord North; and don't oblige him again to tell the King your good father so many lies as he has been obliged to tell him this morning'"" Lord Eldon's personal narrative is a sort of comment on the whole public history of his time. Why did not such a man write his own ""Life and Times?"" Intelligent as are the Volumes before us the personal conceptions arising on the personal knowledge would have been invaluable as experience. His view of transactions in their embryo in their full growth and in their impression on the general policy and progress of the government would have formed an important lesson for statesmanship to come. But what an indulgence must it have furnished to the national curiosity which seeing the origin of all things in individual character justly regards the eminent characters of that day as the founders of every remarkable change which has shaped the constitution in our own! Public life has never before or since abounded in such variety strength and brilliancy of character. A combination of talents of the very highest order was exhibited in both the Lords and Commons; and it would actually seem as if this combination were preparatory to the tremendous demands which before the close of the century were to be made upon the wisdom the courage and the constancy of the British legislature. And why should there not be such preparation? We see preparation a principle in the whole course of nature. We see in the formation of individual character a preparative and sometimes a most distinct and powerful one for the duty which the coming crisis is yet to demand; and why shall not legislatures as well individuals be placed in that condition of effectiveness and trained to that exertion of power which is subsequently to be required for the providential deliverance of nations? It is remarkable that the discussions in which parliament at this period was engaged though local and of course altogether inferior to those comprehensi
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e struggles which were to follow were yet of a nature singularly calculated to call forth practical ability. There never was a period since the Revolution of 1688 in which party was so vigorously brought into conflict in which personal interests gave so strong a stimulus to the association of principles in which office so rapidly shifted hands and power was so much the creature of reputation. Thus the whole character of this period was an appeal to popularity; an appeal of all others the most calculated to bring out every latent faculty of the orator the constitutionalist and the statesman. A still greater period unknown and unexpected by every man was to have the advantage of this preparation. The French Revolution which burst with such irresistible violence over the Continent was to find the ramparts of public principle and legislative wisdom repaired and strengthened in England and those ramparts manned with defenders who had learned the use of their weapons in the mock conflicts of peace and when the day of danger came showed themselves invincible. The India bill broke down the Coalition ministry; it was the most insolent experiment ever made on the constitution--a compound of republican daring and despotic power. It would have made the king a cipher and parliament a slave. The exclusive patronage of India would have enabled the minister to corrupt the legislature. The corruption of the legislature would have made the minister irresponsible: the constitution would thus have been inevitably suspended and the national liberties incapable of being restored except by a national convulsion. But those evils were happily avoided by the manliness of the king and the loyalty of the lords. The India bill was thrown out in the House of Lords on the 17th of December. The king lost no time in giving effect to this discomfiture. At the extraordinary hour of twelve o'clock on the following night an order was sent to the two secretaries of state North and Fox that they should deliver up the seals by his majesty's command; adding the contemptuous injunction that they should send them by the under-secretaries the king not suffering a personal interview. Pitt was placed at the head of the new administration as first lord of the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer. Thurlow was again made lord chancellor and Kenyon and Arden attorney and solicitor-generals. In the debates on the India bill one of Sheridan's pleasantries is recorded. As Fox's majorities declined it was hinted by his party that John Robinson the secretary of the treasury was purchasing the votes. On Sheridan's making the charge without naming the supposed culprit a great outcry arose in the House of ""Name him name him!"" ""Sir "" said Sheridan addressing the Speaker ""I shall not name the person; it is an invidious and unpleasant thing to do; but don't suppose that I could find any difficulty in naming him: I could do it as soon as you could say _Jack Robinson_."" Pitt having waited with consummate judgment though against the advice of all his supporters until Fox had worn down his majorities in the House and totally disgusted the nation dissolved the parliament. The measure was triumphant; an unequaled Tory majority was returned in the next session and the Whigs were extinguished as a party for nearly twenty years. Lord Eldon records a curious acknowledgment of Fox with respect to the power of the pencil. ""Sayers's caricatures "" said he ""did me more mischief than the debates in Parliament or the attacks of the press."" Lord Eldon observes that the prints of Carlo Khan; Fox running away with the India House; Fox and Burke quitting Paradise when turned out of office and similar publications had certainly a vast effect on the public mind. Let HB triumph on this and make his claim on the ministry. Scott was again returned for Weobly and gives a curious instance of the slight incidents by which elections are sometimes determined. In crossing the country from Lancaster to the hustings at his borough he stopped at the last stage to have his hair dressed. The hairdresser asked him whether Sir Gilbert Elliott was not one of the seven kings--a name of ridicule given to Fox's seven proposed commissioners for India. ""Because "" said the man ""there is a Sir Gilbert Elliott a candidate for the borough; and we are all agreed that if he is one of the seven kings we will have nothing to say to him; and as we wish to be sure about it and as you must know sir excuse my freedom in asking whether he really is one of the seven kings."" Scott answered that he certainly was. The hairdresser immediately made proclamation of the fact and Sir Gilbert was totally defeated. Very curious instances of character occur in the experience of counsel. Lord Eldon gives one of them as occurring to himself. ""Once "" said he ""I had a very handsome offer made to me. I was pleading for the rights of the inhabitants of the Isle of Man. Now I had been reading in Coke and I found there that the people in the Isle of Man were no beggars "" (the words are 'The inhabitants of this Isle are religious industrious and true people without begging or stealing.') ""I therefore do not beg their rights I demand them. This so pleased an old smuggler who was present that when the trial was over he called me aside and said 'Young gentleman I tell you what you shall have my daughter if you will marry her and one hundred thousand pounds for her fortune.' That was a very handsome offer but I told him that I happened to have a wife who had nothing for her fortune therefore I must stick to her."" In December of this year 1784 Johnson died. ""He was a good man "" said Lord Eldon; ""he sent me a message on his death-bed to request that I would make a point of attending public worship every Sunday and that the place should be the Church of England."" An excellent anecdote illustrative of the advantages of knowing some thing of every thing is given on a trial at Carlisle. Bearcroft a celebrated advocate was brought down on a special retainer of three hundred guineas in a salmon fishery cause. Scott led on the other side; and at a consultation held the evening before it was determined to perplex Bearcroft by examining all the witnesses in the dialect of Cumberland and as it appears in the _patois_ of the fishermen. Accordingly when Scott began to cross-examine his first witness who said a good deal out the salmon good and bad he asked whether they were obliged to make _ould soldiers_ of any of them. Bearcroft asked for an explanation of the words which Scott would not give him. He then asked the judge who answered that he did not know. After a squabble the phrase was explained; but nearly every other question produced a similar scene. The jury were astonished that neither judge nor Bearcroft understood what they all understood so well and they inferred from Bearcroft's ignorance that he had a rotten cause. The consequence was that Bearcroft lost the cause; and he swore that no fee should ever tempt him to come among such a set of barbarians as the Cumberland men again. An _ould soldier_ is made by hanging up in a chimney a salmon caught out of season when the fish is white instead of red and it acquires by hanging the colour of an old red coat. Cross-examination may sometimes produce peril to the performer. At the assizes Scott once examined a barber severely. The barber got into a great passion and Scott desired him to moderate his anger and that he should employ him to shave him as he passed through Kendal to the Lancaster assizes. 'The barber said with great indignation ""I would not advise you lawyer to think of that or risk it."" Scott's reputation was now rising year by year in both Parliament and his profession; and Lord Mansfield's resignation in 1788 of the chief-justiceship of the King's Bench making a general move in the higher orders of the bar Scott was appointed solicitor-general Kenyon being appointed to the chief-justiceship and the attorney-general Arden succeeding to the Rolls. On this occasion he was knighted. A melancholy event soon gave him the most public opportunity for the display of his official faculties. In the autumn of 1788 the king was attacked with disorder of the mind and the great question of the regency necessarily came before Parliament. The Whigs who regarded the Prince of Wales as their dependent if not as their dupe insisted on his succession to the unlimited prerogatives of the sovereign; the Tories insisted on the other hand that Parliament alone had a right to confer the regency and to assign its powers though they admitted that the choice in the present instance ought to fall upon the Prince of Wales. A question of this importance naturally brought out all the ability on both sides. Pitt and the solicitor-general took the lead on the side of limitation and the prince ultimately accepted the regency on their terms. It became unnecessary however; for while the bill was in the House of Lords a communication was made by the chancellor that the king's health was in a favourable state. His majesty was able to return to business in March. Lord Thurlow had been universally charged with carrying on an intrigue with the Opposition for the purpose of continuing in office under the regency. Lord Eldon's belief is introduced against that charge; but there can be no doubt whatever that the charge was universally rumoured at the time; that anecdotes confirmatory of the fact were told in every direction; that no known attempt was ever made to answer them; and that from the period of the regency an alienation arose which finally determined his dismissal by the minister. The well-known boast of the chancellor's loyalty to the incapacitated king which produced such animadversion in the House and such burlesque out of it--Burke's ridicule of his official sensibilities ""the iron tears down Pluto's cheeks "" were all founded on the public belief of this intrigue. And it is certainly no answer at the end of half a century of uncontradicted opinion to say that no formal accusation on the subject was made on the king's recovery when the whole subject of the regency had become alike distasteful to both sides of the House--to Ministers from delicacy to the king; and to Opposition from a sense of failure. Soon after Scott became solicitor-general the king at Weymouth said ""Well I hope your promotion has been beneficial to you?"" He asked his majesty if he meant his professional income. ""Yes "" said the king ""in that and in other respects."" Scott told him that he must lose by it about £2000 a-year; and on the king expressing surprise he said ""That the attention of the law-officers was called to matters of international law public law and revenue law--matters which as they were not familiar to them took up a good deal of their time and that the fee usually given to the solicitor-general with the government cases was only three guineas while those from private cases were from ten to twenty-five."" ""Oh!"" said the king ""then for the first time I comprehend what I never could understand why it has always been so difficult to get any opinion from my law-officers."" At the close of the session of 1792 Lord Thurlow gave up the great seal. ""What it was "" said Lord Eldon afterwards ""that occasioned the rupture between Lord Thurlow and his colleagues I never could find out."" We here see an instance of the ignorance in which a high official was content to remain on a subject which might naturally and fairly excite his curiosity. It is obvious that he wished to keep himself out of the mêlée and took the best probable way of doing so by asking no questions. But a dilemma arose out of this resignation to Scott himself. Pitt sent for him and said ""I have a circumstance to mention to you which on account of your personal and political connexion with Lord Thurlow I wish that you should first hear from myself. Lord Thurlow and I have quarreled and I have signified to him his Majesty's commands that he should resign the great seal."" Scott replied that he was not at all surprised at the event which had taken place; but added that he owed too great obligations to Lord Thurlow to reconcile it to himself to act in political hostility to him and he had also been too long in political connexion with the minister to join any party against him; so that nothing was left but to resign his office and make his bow to the House of Commons. Pitt argued against this and finally induced him to consult Lord Thurlow. Thurlow at once told him that to resign would be a foolish thing; adding in the spirit of a prediction which was afterwards strikingly realized ""it is very possible that Mr Pitt from party and political motives at this moment may overlook your pretensions; but sooner or later you _must_ hold the great seal. I know no man but yourself qualified for its duties."" If the ex-chancellor was complimentary to Scott it notoriously was not his habitual style; the fierceness of his tone was well known. His language of Loughborough who succeeded him was savagely contemptuous. On one occasion when the latter was speaking with considerable effect on a subject on which Lord Thurlow had an adverse opinion though he did not regard himself as sufficiently master of it for direct refutation he was heard to mutter ""If I was not as lazy as a toad at the bottom of a well I could kick that fellow Loughborough heels over head any day in the week."" Thurlow told the Prince that though Loughborough ""had the gift of the gab in a marvellous degree he was no lawyer;"" and added ""in the house of Lords I get Kenyon or somebody to start some law doctrine in such a manner that the fellow _must_ get up to answer it and then I leave the woolsack and give him such a thump in his bread-basket that he cannot recover himself."" The solicitor-general was now growing rich and he purchased for L.22 000 the manor of Eldon a property of about 1300 acres in the county of Durham. He was an ""improving landlord "" and for several years he expended the income of the estate on planting--which at once much increased its value and added to the beauty of that part of the county of Durham. In 1793 he ascended another step in his profession by his appointment to the great office of attorney-general in succession to Sir Archibald Macdonald who was made chief baron of the exchequer. The new attorney-general was soon summoned to the highest exercise of his abilities his learning and his courage; he commenced office in the midst of national convulsion. The Revolution of France which had been growing violence and havoc for the last four years had now arrived at its height. The change beginning with popular reform in 1789 had in 1793 been consummated in regicide. The republic proclaimed in the year before within three months had darkened into a democracy. The general alarm of the continental kings; combined them in an attempt to overthrow a government which threatened them all; the attempt was found to result only in consolidating its power; and in the first year of war France presented to the disaffected of all nations the tempting spectacle of a land in which the foremost prizes of power had fallen into the hands of men of the humblest condition; and in which those men humbled to the dust the proudest diadems of Europe. Obscure pamphleteers country advocates monks and editors of struggling journals were suddenly seen in the first offices of state wielding the whole power of the mightiest kingdom of the Continent absorbing its revenues directing its armies and moving in the rank of princes among the proud hereditary sovereignties of the world. To the crowd of unprincipled men engendered by the habits of European life and their consciousness of abilities fully equal to those which had won such opulent enjoyments and lofty distinctions in France the success of the Revolution was an universal summons to conspiracy. On the Continent that conspiracy was according to the habits of the people crafty and concealed. In England equally according to the habits of the people it was bold and public daring and defying. Great meetings of the population were held in the open air; committees of grievance were appointed; correspondences were spread through the country; the whole machinery of overthrow was openly erected and worked by visible hands. Even where secresy was deemed useful by the more cautious or the more fearful it was of a different character from the assassin-like secresy of the foreign insurgent; it was more the solemn and regulated observance of a secret tribunal. The papers which have transpired of those secret committees have all the forms of diplomacy combined with a determination of language and an intensity of purpose which would do honour to a nobler cause. But the contest was now at hand and on three men in England depended the championship of the monarchy. These three were the King the Minister and the Attorney-General. There were never three individuals more distinctly and we shall scarcely hesitate to say more providentially prepared to meet the crisis. George III. a sovereign of the most constitutional principles and of the most unshaken intrepidity; William Pitt the most sagacious and the most resolute statesman that England had ever seen formed by his manly eloquence to rule the legislature and by his character for integrity to obtain the full confidence of the empire; and Sir John Scott at once wise calm and bold profoundly learned in his profession personally brave and alike incapable of yielding to the menaces of party or the corruptions of power. It is not to be forgotten as a portion of that genuine public respect which in England is always withheld from even the most shining personal gifts when stained by private profligacy that those three were wholly and alike above the breath of slander. The king eminent for domestic virtue; Pitt unstained by even an imputation; and Scott fondly attached to his wife and family. In January 1793 the cruel murder of the innocent and unfortunate Louis XVI. had been perpetrated by the National Convention--an act which Napoleon long afterwards pronounced ""a grand political error; sufficient to stamp the government not merely with guilt but with infatuation."" The French minister at the Court of St James's was ordered to leave the country and war was proclaimed. The revolutionary committees in England now assumed increased activity. Communications were established between them and the Jacobin government; and while France prepared for War English republicanism prepared for revolution. The time of the struggle was fully come. The English minister now buckled on his armour. A succession of vigorous measures employed the legislature during the whole period; they were fiercely combated but they were all ultimately carried. Opposition never exhibited more brilliant parliamentary powers. Fox was matchless in declamation alternately solemn and touching; Sheridan Grey and a long list of practised and indefatigable talent were in perpetual debate; but Pitt ""with huge two-handed sway"" finally crushed them all. The classic illustration of Hercules destroying the Hydra was frequently used to express the solitary prowess of this extraordinary man in resisting the multiplied wily and envenomed attacks of his opponents; and he realized the fable to the full--he not merely crushed the heads but he seared them. He extinguished that principle of evil increase by which all the efforts of foreign governments had been baffled in their contests with Jacobinism; and in the midst of an empire at all times inclined to look with jealousy on power and at that moment nervous for the suspended privileges of its constitution Pitt utterly extinguished the Whigs. Fox was defeated so hopelessly that he gave up Parliament altogether and his party followed his example. Pitt had not merely cut down the statelier trunks of Opposition but he had swept away the brushwood and smote the ground with sterility. His bold enterprise had not merely taken the citadel Of faction by storm and driven its defenders faint-hearted and fugitive over the face of the land but he had sown the foundations with salt. The total solitude of the Opposition benches during the greater part of the minister's political life was the most unequivocal and striking evidence ever given to ministerial supremacy. The services of the attorney-general were in another less wide but not less important province. On the Continent the conspirators against the state would have been thrown into dungeon for life or shot. In France the idol of the revolutionist of all countries they would heave been carried before a mob tribunal their names simply asked their sentences pronounced and their bodies headless within the first half hour. In England they had the benefit of the law in all its sincerity the assistance of the most distinguished counsel the judgment of the most impartial tribunal and the incalculable advantage of a trial by men of their own condition feelings and passions. On the 28th of October at the Old Bailey commenced the trial of Hardy one of the secretaries of the chief treasonable society. The bill brought in by the grand jury had included twelve. The charges were those of ""compassing the death of the king and the subversion of the government."" Hardy was a shoemaker a man of low attainments but active and strongly republican. His activity had made him secretary to the London Corresponding Society and by its direction a member of a similar body named the Society for Constitutional Information. The direct object of all those societies was the same--to summon a national convention which must of course supersede Parliament. As those societies grew more mature instead of becoming more rational they exhibited more savage ferocity. Placards were distributed in the form of a playbill announcing ""For the Benefit of John Bull La Guillotine "" or ""George's Head in a Basket."" The airs of their meetings were Ca Ira and the Marseillaise. Attempts were made to corrupt the army. It was openly declared in their harangues that it was ""impossible to do any thing without some bloodshed and that Pitt's and the King's heads would be upon Temple Bar."" The sentiment was general but at the conclusion of the especial harangue in which this atrocious language was first used the whole meeting rose up and shook hands with the madman by whom it was uttered. The attorney-general's speech on this occasion was masterly; English jurisprudence had never before witnessed so striking a combination of refined knowledge with clear arrangement and unanswerable facts. It had one disadvantage it was overwhelmingly long; it lasted nine hours a period if not beyond the strength of the advocate palpably beyond any power of attention in the jury. But even this disadvantage arose from an honourable public feeling. The judges who examined the papers declared them to be high treason. The warrants of commitment had declared them to be high treason. Lord Eldon in his ""anecdotes"" of this period says that ""after this he did not think himself at liberty to _let down_ the character of the offence."" An additional and still stronger reason is given that ""unless the _whole_ evidence was laid before the jury it would have been impossible that the country should have ever been made fully acquainted with the danger to which it was exposed. And it appeared to him more essential to the public safety that the whole of those transactions should be published than _that any of these individuals should be convicted_."" This was a sentiment which does honour to the memory of a great man. He had been urged by his fellow counsel and probably by others to bring the accused to trial only for a misdemeanour in the expectation of thus being sure of a verdict. But he determined to bring the case before the jury in its true shape be the result what it might. It has been rumoured that this too was the opinion of Pitt in contradiction to that of some of the cabinet. With that pre-eminent man the blood of these criminals could never have been the object. No servant of the British crown was ever less chargeable with cruelty. But the true object was to expose the treason; to prove to the nation the actual hazards of revolutionary intrigue and to extinguish conspiracy however the conspirators might escape. The consequence amply justified this bold and candid determination. _The_ conspiracy was crushed; all conspiracy was crushed. Nothing of the same degree of guilt nor even of the same shape of guilt ever recurred. The lesson was not the less complete for its sparing the country the sight of the abhorred scaffold. The conspirators though successively acquitted were so warned by their peril that they never sinned again. All if not converted sank into total obscurity. The nation freed from this nightmare started up in fresh vigour and began with a unanimity in its heart and irresistible strength in its hands that illustrious battle for Europe which accomplished the liberation of mankind. The attorney-general had now given such undeniable proofs of fitness for the highest rank of his profession that office seemed to fall to him by right of universal acknowledgment; and on a vacancy in the Common Pleas he was promoted to the chief-justiceship in 1799 and at the same time raised to the peerage by the title of Baron Eldon. It is an instance of the dutiful and affectionate nature which long connexion with the world and the pride of success--the two strongest temptations to heartlessness--could not extinguish that he made a point of writing the first letter which he signed with his title to his aged mother. In this interesting document after mentioning his double promotion and attributing it ""under the blessing of Providence "" to the lessons of virtue which he had received from his parents; he adds--""I hope God's grace will enable me to do my duty in the station to which I am called. I write in some agitation of spirits; but am anxious to express my love and duty to my mother and affection to my sisters when I _first_ subscribe myself your loving and affectionate son ELDON."" Lord Kenyon then chief-justice of the King's Bench pronounced a panegyric on this promotion congratulating the profession and especially those who practised in the Common Pleas on the appointment of one who would probably be found ""the most consummate judge that ever sat in judgment."" The step from the office of attorney-general to the presidency of one of the courts has been not unusual; but as modern experience has shown it is by no means a necessary procedure. In Lord Eldon's instance it received the universal approval of the bar. But he held the chief-justiceship only for a year and a half when he was raised to the summit of the bar and sat down lord chancellor. We hasten over the melancholy details of the following period. The labours of the attorney-general were light and cheerful compared with the toils and responsibilities of the chancellor; the disturbed state of the king's mind; the growing difficulties of that millstone round the neck of English legislation the Popish claims; the retirement of Pitt and the general alarm of the nation at its external hazards formed a trial of unexampled severity to all public men. The death of the Great Minister in 1806 (23d of January ) at length broke up the Tory administration; the Whigs assumed power and Lord Eldon of course resigned the Seals. But the mere official routine of a chancellor's life is tremendous. Lord Eldon's account of one of his days shows at what a price the honour of the Seals must be purchased. In one of his letters he says--""Mine has been no easy life. I will tell you what once happened to me. I was ill with the gout it was in my feet and so I was carried into my carriage and from it was carried into court. There I remained all the day and delivered an arduous judgment. In the evening I went straight from my court to the House of Lords. There I sat until two in the morning when some of the lords came and whispered to me that I was expected to speak. I told them that I really could not that I was ill and could not stand. It was an important question (the peace of Amiens ) I forgot my gout and spoke for two hours. Well the House broke up I was carried home and at six in the morning I prepared to go to bed. My poor left leg had just got in; when I recollected that I had important papers to examine; so I put on my clothes and went to my study. I examined the papers; they related to the Recorders' Report which had to be heard that day. I was again carried into court where I had to deliver another arduous judgment. Again went to the House of Lords and it was not till the middle of the second night that I got into bed!"" Such desperate performances do not occur every day in the life even of lord chancellors; but the judicial labours combined with the political are too heavy a task for the body or the mind of any man. The Whigs are never destined to a long supremacy. They have never come into power but in some perverted state of the public feelings. There must be some terror or some infatuation in the public mind before it calls in the quack; but the moment that sees quiet succeed to disturbance and the nation has recovered its composure always sees the Whigs driven out of office. The death of Fox in 1806 unquestionably deprived the party of a great popular name but the whole strength of Whiggism survived. It was in full possession of power and the late dissolution had filled Parliament with its adherents; still its old fate prevailed. Like ships floating over the land only by the help of an inundation when the waters return to their channel the ships remain only to be broken in pieces the Whig government was broken up never to be restored until a new convulsion in France producing a corresponding convulsion in England brought them into office after a lapse of another quarter of a century. In March 1807 a bill having been prepared as a preliminary to the Popish concession the king pronounced it contrary to his coronation oath and insisted on its withdrawal; the Whigs consented; but the king further insisting on a pledge that they would attempt no similar measure they demurred and his majesty instantly dismissed them amidst the general rejoicing of the empire. The Duke of Portland was placed at the head of a new ministry and Lord Eldon received the Seals. We have now seen his lordship secure in that station which he was to retain until the close of his useful and vigorous life; we shall therefore abandon politics and turn to his more numerous recollections of incident and character. Lord Eldon as a warrior. ""During the war "" says his lordship ""I became one of the Lincoln's Inn volunteers--Lord Ellenborough at the same time being one of the corps. It happened unfortunately for the military character of both of us that we were _turned out of the awkward squad for awkwardness_! I think Ellenborough was more awkward than I was; but others thought that it was difficult to determine which was the worse."" His brother William however was a smart officer and commanded a corps. Of Chief-Justice Eyre whom he succeeded in the Common Pleas he told--""Eyre once demanded of Wilkes why he abused him so unmercifully in his speeches to the Livery while he was Recorder though in private he expressed a regard for him?""--""So I have "" said Wilkes ""and it is for that reason I abuse you in public. I wish to have you promoted to a judgeship."" ""When Sir Robert Henley was keeper of the Great Seal and presided in the House he was often indignant at seeing his decrees reversed while not being a peer he was not entitled to support his decisions. In the famous case of Drury and Drury his decision having been reversed though the bar then and still pronounced it valid the lord keeper was very angry; and in driving home his coachman checked the horses. He asked--'Why he did not drive on?' The man saying--'My lord I can't. If I do I shall kill an old woman.'--'Drive on ' cried Henley; 'if you do kill her she has nothing to do but to appeal to the house of Lords.' He was afterwards made lord chancellor and this habit of reversals came to an end."" On his quitting the chancellorship and accepting the inferior office of lord president the Archbishop of Canterbury congratulating him on his removal from an office of unceasing fatigue to one of so much quiet the ex-chancellor not being at all satisfied with the difference of the emoluments answered very sulkily ""I suppose now you would think I was extremely civil and kind if I were to congratulate your grace on a
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ransition from Canterbury to Llandaff."" Taylor an extravagant personage who called himself a chevalier and who professed extraordinary skill in the diseases of the eye dining one day with the bar on the Oxford circuit related many wonders which he had done. Bearcroft a little out of humour at his self-conceit said--""Pray Chevalier as you have told us a great many things which you have done try to tell us something which you cannot do."" ""Nothing so easy "" said Taylor; ""I cannot pay my share of the dinner-bill; and that sir I must beg of you to do."" Lord Thurlow's oddity and abruptness both sometimes amounting to brutality were the constant source of amusement--at least to all but the sufferers. On a trial in which an attorney gave evidence respecting the will of a man whose death was in question the attorney after some puzzling said--""My lord hear me the man is dead; I attended his funeral; he was _my client_."" ""Why sir "" said Thurlow ""did you not mention _that_ at first? a great deal of time and trouble might have been saved. That he was _your_ client is some evidence that he was dead; nothing was so likely to kill him."" At Buxton Thurlow lodged with a surgeon opposite to a butcher's shop. He asked his landlord whether he or his neighbour killed the most. Thurlow on being asked how he got through all his business as a chancellor answered--""Just as a pickpocket gets through a horse-pond. He _must_ get through."" Dunning when a similar question was put to him answered in much the same spirit though in a more professional style. ""I divide my business into three parts: one part I do; another does itself; and the third I leave undone."" In 1807 Lord Eldon purchased the estate of Encombe in the Isle of Purbeck for which he paid between £52 000 and £53 000 comprising a mansion with 2000 acres a fertile valley with a fine sea view. In 1809 the charges brought by Colonel Wardle against the Duke of York excited great public interest. The very sound of malversation in high employments excites all the feelings of a nation with whom character is the first requisite; and the rumour that the Duke had been a party to the sale of commissions in the army by Mrs Clarke with whom he had formed an unfortunate connexion produced a public uproar. After discussions and examination of witnesses which lasted six weeks and brought infinite obloquy on the Duke and his defenders the House of Commons resolved by 278 to 196 that the charge of corruption or even of connivance against the Duke was wholly without foundation. Upon this clearance of his character the Duke resigned the command of the army; a subsequent motion for a censure on his conduct was negatived without a division. The Duke of York was beyond all question clear of any knowledge of the practices of the very ingenious person with whom he associated but few men have ever paid more dearly for their offence. The storm of public abuse which poured on him for months must have been torture; and his resignation of office must have stung every feeling; and even his pecuniary sacrifice during the three years of his retirement must have been severely felt by a prince with a narrow income for his rank. That loss could not have been less than £50 000. In 1811 he resumed the command. We must hasten to the conclusion. Lord Eldon after witnessing the two great changes of the constitution the Popish bill of 1829--which he calls the ""fatal bill "" and which he had resisted with all his vigour and learning for a long succession of years--and the Reform bill of 1832 at length found that period coming to him which comes to all. Retiring from public life he devoted himself to his study the society of a few old friends and those considerations of a higher kind which he had cultivated from early life and which returned to him as they return to all who reverence them with additional force when their presence was more consolatory and essential. But old age naturally strips us of those who gave an especial value to life; and after seeing his brother Lord Stowell and Lady Eldon--his Elizabeth for whom he seems to have always retained the tenderness of their early years--taken from him he quietly sank into the grave dying in 1838 January 13th aged 87. He deserved to rest in peace--for he had lived in patriotism integrity and honour. The three volumes exhibit a research which does much credit to the intelligence and industry of Mr Twiss their author. They abound in capital anecdotes but a few of which we have been able to give--possess passages of very effective writing--and form a work which ought to be in the library of every lawyer statesman and English gentleman. "
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and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Library of Early Journals.) {Transcriber's note: Spellings are sometimes erratic. A few obvious misprints have been corrected but in general the original spelling has been retained. Accents in the French phrases are inconsistent and have not been standardised. Greek phrases have been transliterated and are enclosed in + signs +autochthones gaias+.} BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. No. CCCXLVII. SEPTEMBER 1844. VOL. LVI. CONTENTS. M. LOUIS BLANC 265 A NIGHT ON THE BANKS OF THE TENNESSEE 278 THE EXECUTION OF MONTROSE 289 THE WITCHFINDER. PART I. 297 NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN 312 POEMS BY COVENTRY PATMORE 331 MARSTON; OR THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN. PART XIII. 343 IT IS NO FICTION 364 THE BURNS' FESTIVAL 370 STANZAS FOR THE BURNS' FESTIVAL. BY DELTA 399 * * * * * EDINBURGH: WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 45 GEORGE STREET; AND 22 PALL-MALL LONDON. _To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed._ SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM. PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND HUGHES EDINBURGH. BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. No. CCCXLVII. SEPTEMBER 1844. VOL. LVI. M. LOUIS BLANC{A} M. Louis Blanc a democratic journalist with all and perhaps more than the usual talents of the Parisian journalist--with all and more than the usual faults of one--has undertaken to write the history of his country during and since the revolution of 1830. What can we expect to be the result of such an undertaking? What can we expect from a man who sits down to a task of this description animated with all the party virulence which gives zest to a democratic newspaper? It is not a history but a scandal that he will write. M. Louis Blanc has distilled the bile of journalism; he has paused over the hasty sarcasm which political animosity deals forth not to correct or moderate or abate but merely to point and envenom it. His appreciation of men their character their talents their designs--all bear the hue of the atrabilious journalist. There is this difference only between his history and the daily portion of envy and malignity which a democratic newspaper pours forth that the dye is more deeply engrained. In the mind of the author the stain of his party has become ineffaceable. Those who are pleased--and the number is not few--with having high names and established reputations laid at their feet soiled trod upon will meet here with ample gratification. To be sure they will be occasionally required in lieu of such as they have thrown down to set up the bust of some democratic celebrity whose greatness or whose genius they were not previously aware of. But not to say that the justice of party requires this substitution it is a penalty which writers of this description will invariably impose upon them. It is the common trick of the envious and the mock magnanimity with which they seek to conceal their true nature--to exalt the lowly while they debase the exalted. Since some idol there must be let it be one of their raising. Even while helping to raise it they enjoy too the secret consciousness that it is of brittle metal. But in the composition of a history the spirit of party however eager it may be cannot always guide the pen. The mere interest of the narrative the strangeness and peculiarity of circumstances will claim their share of the author's mind. The politician must sometimes be absorbed in the chronicler; and so it happens with M. Louis Blanc. His narrative often interests by its details; and if it has the partiality it has also the vivacious colouring of a contemporary. It possesses also a richness of anecdote--the fruit probably of his position as a journalist; add to which that M. Louis Blanc is not without a species of off-hand dashing eloquence. He can say daring things in a daring manner and give the pungency of epigram to his political paradoxes. He has a full share of that rhetoric of journalism which is so well calculated to make an impression on the careless reader but which requires that the reader should continue careless in order to retain the impression he has received. It results from all this that while we constantly distrust our guide while we perpetually refuse the appreciation he offers to us of men and events we still read on with interest a work which is at least relieved from the charge of insipidity or dulness; and indeed if we had not derived some entertainment from its perusal we should not have thought of bringing it under the notice of our readers. To have engaged ourselves merely in combating its errors and misrepresentations would have been a dreary and an endless task. To enable the reader at once to judge of the tone and temper of M. Louis Blanc's politics we present him the following passage. It is the object of the long Introduction which precedes his history to show that the events which have transpired in France since 1793 have had for their great result the establishment of the government of the middle classes through a Chamber of Deputies--a view which we think is incontestably right. That France has its House of Commons is the great fruit of all its struggles its calamities and its victories. It must not be supposed however that this is a result in which M. Louis Blanc rejoices. Nothing he so much detests as this government of the middle classes; nor is there any portion of society he vilifies more cordially than the _bourgeoisie_. Hear how he speaks of them. After relating the history of the Carbonari who troubled by their plots the reign of Louis XVIII. he says:--"This _Carbonarism_ never descended into the depths of society; it never moved the lower strata. How then could it be preserved from the vices of the middle class--egoism littleness of ideas extreme love of a mere material happiness gross instincts!"--(P. 115.) So that he finds Carbonarism to have lacked in virtue because it had not descended for its disciples sufficiently low in the scale of society!--to have grown corrupt by reason of its not having penetrated to the "lower strata!" And yet the duties of the Carbonari seem to have been precisely calculated for these lower strata. These were he had already told us himself "to have a gun and fifty cartridges to be ready to devote one's-self and to obey blindly the orders of unknown leaders."--(P. 101.) When we describe M. Louis Blanc as a democrat it is rather for want of a better and more accurate title than because this exactly describes him. A democrat is generally understood to be one who has a large faith in the lowest class of the people such as they really exist; our author has a faith only in the future of this class. He does not fail to give vent when the occasion prompts him to his compassion or contempt for the ignorant mass of mankind. The democracy he worships is one to be established in some distant age by a people very different and living under some modification of the law of property which he has not thought fit to explain. It is a democracy which has nothing distinct but its hatreds--a shadowy monster peculiarly disagreeable to deal with. Our historian writes with overflowing gall against kings against aristocracies against the middle class. You would say he is a stanch republican and that the people are to be his depositaries of power. But no; a lamentation which escapes him from time to time--as bitter as any which Tory or Legitimist would utter--over the _blindness_ of the people their passions and their ignorance contradicts this conclusion. Where is the power and in whom lodged that M. Louis Blanc would willingly obey or see obeyed? It exists nowhere. Society is corrupt is chaotic; nor can it by any organ it possesses exercise a sound or rational power. A new era must arise--how whence when we are not instructed. It is the peculiar characteristic of French democracy that there is always mixed up with it the principle more or less distinctly avowed of the community of goods. Perhaps the vagueness we complain of in M. Louis Blanc is dictated by mere prudence; perhaps there is no vagueness to the eye of a propagandist. One sentiment of French democracy he certainly expresses with sufficient hardihood. It is not often we meet with the principle of intervention between state and state asserted in these days with so much boldness as in the following passage:--"Men have stigmatized the war in Spain calling the principle of intervention an oppressive principle. Puerile accusation! All people are brothers and all revolutions cosmopolite. When a government believes that it represents a just cause let it make it triumph wherever a triumph is possible. This is its right; it is more--it is its duty."--(_Introduction_ p. 120.) How exactly analogous to this is the reasoning which leads to persecution in religion--to the Holy Inquisition and all its philanthropic schemes _of intervention!_ The conviction in a good cause allowed to overrule the fundamental principles of justice between man and man--to overrule them not occasionally and by way of exception but systematically--this is the very essence of persecution. But let no one think that by any such representation he would gain an advantage over the republican propagandist. He no longer fears religious persecution--it is a thing past: he braves it. He would adopt his favourite principle and all its consequences. He would probably admit that it was the duty of the priest according to his priestly intelligence to ban and persecute. Not mutual toleration but reciprocal compulsion would be his principle. Combat thou for thy truth--let me fight for mine; such would be his formula. In a writer bent upon startling and surprising us there is often a sort of premeditated haste a voluntary forgetfulness which it is curious to remark. One who weighs his matter well before he speaks will often end alas! in having something very tame and moderate to propound--something which after all his turmoil and reflection may sound very like a good old commonplace. Now this approximation to commonplace is the great horror of shallow writers; and the way to avoid it appears to be this:--Proclaim your thought at once in all its crude candescence before it has had time to cool and shape itself; then in order to save your credit with the more captions and scrutinizing give at some convenient interval such an explanation or modification as will show that after all you were as wise as your reader. State your paradox in all the startling force of unmitigated diction and refute it yourself afterwards or say enough to prove that you could have done so. This well managed gives two occasions for brilliant display; a sober statement has been converted into a couple of bold and glancing propositions. Truth it is well proved like the diamond shines the more by being cut into surfaces. M. Louis Blanc for instance makes a startling remark on the incompatibility of royalty and a representative chamber. The two powers are represented to us as flatly irreconcilable. "Can society " he asks "have two heads? Is the sovereignty divisible? Between the government of a king and the government of an assembly is there not a gulf which every day makes wider? And wherever this dualism exists are not the people condemned to fluctuate miserably between a 10th of August and an 18th Brumaire?"--(_Int._ p. 64.) And a little further on speaking of the times of Louis XVIII. he writes--"Meanwhile Europe began to be disquieted on the state of things in France. Foreign sovereigns had thought to establish peace in our country by establishing the empire of the charter and the political dualism which it consecrates. The error was great and they ended by discovering it. M. de Richelieu who had been present at the congress at Aix-la-Chapelle brought back with him a very lively apprehension of the future fate of the monarchy in France. A change of the electoral law was proposed. Unhappily it was not in the law of the 5th February that lay the danger which occupied the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle. To consolidate the throne and raise it above the storms which threatened it not this or that electoral law but the electoral power itself should if possible be abolished. For in whatever hands this formidable lever was placed it was impossible that royalty could long resist its action. To shift the elective power was only to give the monarchy other enemies not to save it. * * * The aim of the new ministry was to preserve the electoral law; which amounted to this--the monarchy chose ministers whose programme was the destruction of monarchy." On reading such passages we naturally set about recalling certain old-fashioned political truisms bearing on the character and interest of that middle class of society in which the electoral power is generally lodged. We recollect that the middle classes have been held to have an interest as well in preserving as in checking and controlling the monarchy. Alone they could not govern society; and they have a larger share in the government as partners with the monarchy than if they were absorbed in the general mass of the population. They have every thing to lose by the abolition of a royalty which they have ceased to fear and which they have bound by laws. Such a royalty with its sway over the imagination of the multitude with its strong hand of military power--hand in which the sword is allowed always to rest as pomp in time of peace as weapon in time of war--such a royalty they feel to be their best protection. Why then should they in their electoral capacity be thrust on by a blind rage to destroy it? But all this train of reflection we might have spared ourselves. M. Louis Blanc knows it all and if you will wait a reasonable time he will show you that he knows it. He will put it to you very forcibly--in another place. Accordingly some ninety pages off he tells us:--"At bottom the middle class (_la bourgeoisie_) sees in the monarchy a permanent obstacle to democratic aspirations: it would have subjected royalty but not destroyed it." For the enlightenment of those who may wish to write history in the most captivating manner and at the least possible expense to themselves we will reveal another fruitful expedient. There are two ways of writing history. You may either deduce its great events from certain wide and steadily-operating causes as the growing wealth or intelligence of a people or you may raise a vulgar wonder by describing them as the result of some quite trivial incident. In the one case you appeal to a philosophic taste; in the other to a popular love of the marvellous. A revolution may be represented as the inevitable outbreak of the discontent and misery of the people; or it may be traced with all its disasters to the caprice of a courtier or perhaps the accidental delay of a messenger. For want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; for want of a horse the man--and so all was owing to the want of a nail! The two manners seem incompatible. Never mind. Use them both--both freely independently--just as occasion prompts and the effect requires. Flatter the philosophic taste that delights in generalities and please the childish wonder which loves to fancy that the whole oak--trunk branches leaves--lay in the acorn. M. Louis Blanc has certainly no idea of forfeiting either of these attractions by laying claim to the other. Observe the ease and boldness with which he embraces them in his narrative of the fall of Napoleon and the restoration of the Bourbons. He commences in the generalizing mood. "The fall of Napoleon lay in the laws of the development of the middle classes. Can a nation be at the same time essentially commercial and essentially warlike? Napoleon must have renounced his great part of military chieftain or he must have broken with the spirit of citizenship and commerce. It was madness to think of reigning by the sword and continuing the Constituent Assembly. France could not have at the same time the destinies of Rome and Carthage. Napoleon succumbed and must have succumbed to the Carthaginian party of the people of France. But if the necessary development of the middle classes called for the overthrow of the empire it demanded also the return of the Bourbons. To prove this we have only to present in its instructive simplicity of detail that narrative of the restoration which so many historians have distorted."--(_Int._ p. 18.) Well he proceeds with this simple and instructive detail; and his first object is evidently to deprive Talleyrand to whom on all occasions he manifests a singular bitterness of the credit generally given him of having aided materially in the recall of the Bourbons in 1814. But does he effect this by showing as from this exordium we might expect that his countrymen of the middle class wearied of the costly triumphs and disasters of the empire had begun to sigh for peace and their old kings? Not at all. He transfers the personal share in the drama from Prince Talleyrand to Baron de Vitrolles. The Duke d'Alberg had introduced the baron to Talleyrand whose intention was to employ him merely to sound the views of the Allies. Talleyrand was to have accredited him by some lines of his own writing but ultimately refused to commit himself. How was Baron de Vitrolles who by no means limited himself to the subordinate part designed for him and on whom it will be seen so much really depended to get accredited to the Allies? The Duke d'Alberg was intimately acquainted with the Count de Stadion representative of Austria at the congress. Now these two friends had formerly at Munich had a certain tender intimacy with two young girls whose names the Duke d'Alberg remembered; he wrote them on the leaf of a pocket-book and they served as a letter of credence to the adventurous ambassador. "Such " exclaims our lately generalizing historian--"such is the manner in which God disposes of the fate of nations!--_Voilà de quelle sorte il plait à Dieu de disposer du sort des peuples!_" The Baron de Vitrolles we are told found the Emperor Alexander possessed with a strong repugnance against the Bourbons. It cost him three hours' conversation to gain him over. But he succeeded. It was he who did gain him over. On the 31st of March when the Emperor of Russia entered Paris Talleyrand stepped forward to receive him. "Well " said Alexander "it seems that France recalls the Bourbons." These words occasioned M. Talleyrand a profound surprise which however he was too skilful a diplomatist to betray. From that moment he was a convert to what he considered the successful cause. "Thus " continues our historian "this restoration took place contrary to the will of the people to whom the Bourbons in 1814 were unknown; contrary to the sympathies of Alexander who feared the dangers of a reaction; contrary in fine to the opinion of M. Talleyrand who had never thought it possible and had desired only the regency of _Marie Louise_!" What particle of truth there may be in this narrative we do not stop to enquire; we refer to it only as an example of the bold union of the two historic manners. The restoration of the Bourbons was "in the laws of the development of the middle classes!" It was all owing to the Baron de Vitrolles and that lucky little intrigue at Munich! It is one of the boasts and privileges of history to reverse the judgment that contemporaries have formed of the character of the actors in it. This privilege M. Louis Blanc since he writes history is determined at all events to seize upon; and he can boast perhaps of having reversed more judgments of this kind than any other historian however voluminous. M. Talleyrand has obtained his reputation for ability--his moral reputation it would be too commonplace a matter to attack--by "speaking in monosyllables one half his life and saying nothing the other half." M. Guizot is a man "whose talent consists in concealing under the solemnity of expression and the pomp of _formulæ_ an extreme poverty of views and sentiments without grandeur." M. Dupin the elder is "skilful in concealing under an affectation of rudeness the pusillanimity of his heart." Cuvier whose scientific reputation is untouched probably because no motive led him to assail it is "_homme plus grand par l'intelligence que par le coeur_." Of Metternich he writes--"A lover of repose from selfishness he sought it also from incapacity. He wished to enjoy a reputation easily usurped the falsehood of which the least complication of events would have exposed." And the picture he gives throughout of Casimir Perier is that of an "illustrious charlatan " in whom nothing was genuine but his pride his hate and his physical infirmities. The ministers of Charles X. meet with a much fairer appreciation than those of Louis Philippe. Towards them one might even say that he is indulgent. This is easily accounted for: in the war of party those with whom we come into the closest and most frequent collision must of course excite the largest share of our animosity. M. de Polignac seems to have been aware that he had little to fear from the fierce democrat: he has not disdained a sort of literary participation in the work having contributed some manuscript notes of his own explanatory of his share in the transactions of 1830. Altogether we may presume that the history so far as it relates to the ministers of Charles X. is not unfairly written. Let us approach the narrative by this quarter. It is a singular picture that M. de Polignac presents to the imagination with his unruffled serenity his extreme audacity his violent measures his negligent preparation his strong will his weak intelligence. The minister is always smiling and in the midst of disaster and ruin is still beaming with self-confidence; he seems to have thought that self-confidence wrought like magic or like faith and could of itself remove mountains. If difficulties occurred his resource was to be still more self-confident. He was well aware of the hostility his ordonnances would create; he was well aware that the army must be their veritable support: yet observe with what a sublime air of nonchalance he prepares himself for the subjection of a people. "How many men " asked M. d'Haussez as the ministers sat round the council-table "can you reckon on at Paris?--have you twenty-eight or thirty thousand?" "More " said the premier; "I have forty-two thousand;" and rolling up a paper which he held in his hands he threw it across the table to d'Haussez. "But " said the latter as he looked over the statement that had been given to him "I see here only thirteen thousand. Thirteen thousand men on paper--that amounts to about seven or eight thousand actually ready to fight your battles. And the other twenty-nine thousand to complete your number where are they?" M. de Polignac assured him that they were spread about the neighbourhood of Paris and in ten hours if it were necessary could be assembled in the capital. The ministers felt adds our historian that they were entering into a dreadful game blindfold. M. de Polignac appears to have relied upon the army much in the same way that a speculative writer theorizing upon government rests upon his great abstraction the military power. He treated it as if it were a principle an idea that developed itself without his aid and not a palpable fact of there being a certain number of armed men then and there to fight for his ordonnances. There is no virtue so much applauded in the present day as resolution--_will_; and there are who regard a strong will as the essence of all virtue. But the history of M. de Polignac proves (if this needed proof ) that the weak can have will enough. Your strong will may be purchased at the sole expense of reason. Let there be one idea in a brain that cannot hold two and you have a strong will. M. de Polignac never wavered once; he was always seen with a smiling countenance calm radiant with hope and self-approval. When others around him began to despond when the Duke of Ragusa commander of the forces writing to the king said that it was not a riot but a revolution and advised him to retreat while he could still retreat with honour the minister had for all answer but one word--"Fire!" It was still Fire! But what if the troops it was asked desert to the people? "Then fire on the troops!" On the publication of the ordonnances the members of the Chamber who were in Paris met at each others' houses to discuss measures of resistance. But it was not from the members of the Chamber that the movement was to emanate. Those who had any position to compromise looked on for the most part with anxiety and astonishment waiting to see what current the disturbed waters would finally take. "On the evening of the 27th a man name unknown appeared on the Quai d'Ecole and paraded the banks of the river with the tri-coloured flag which had been folded up and hidden away for fifteen years." The symbol was adopted by the people. The revolution had commenced. Then followed all those strange scenes of levity and blood buffoonery and heroism which the history of Parisian revolutions has familiarized to the imagination but which nevertheless have an inexhaustible interest. The people arm themselves wheresoever and howsoever they can. One brings into the Place de la Bourse two large hampers full of muskets and accoutrements. They come from the Théâtre du Vaudeville where a piece had been played a few days before which required that a number of actors should be armed. To command men thus equipped there were extemporary generals whose epaulets were obtained from the wardrobe of the Opera Comique. The students of the Polytechnic were as usual on the alert to practise whatever they had learned of military science; the younger sort entering into the war with the same spirit that other schoolboys partake of any minor mischief that is going forward. A student of the Polytechnic is standing on the left bank of the river; he has a musket but no ammunition. A fellow-student a lad of fifteen has a packet of cartridges but no musket: "You shall share them " said he showing his treasure "if you will lend me the gun to shoot my half." A party of the royal guard were coming over the bridge. He started with the gun _to have his shots_. He was swept off with others by the fire of the military. On one side comes a party led by a violin women applauding. But the women do more than applaud. They carry great paving-stones to the top of the house to be thence precipitated on the heads of the soldiers; they tend the wounded they bruise charcoal for gunpowder. There was no doubt some severe fighting during the Three Days; but generally speaking the military seem to have entered into the contest with reluctance. Some instances are here given of singular forbearance on their part. At a time when in certain quarters of Paris each house was converted into a sort of fortress whence the military was assailed three men had placed themselves behind a stack of chimneys and had from this shelter directed a destructive fire on the troops. They were at length discovered and a cannon was levelled against the chimney. But before firing the gunner made signal to the men to escape contenting himself with demolishing their breastwork. As another company of soldiers led by its officer was marching through the streets one of the mob rushed forward and with a mad audacity struck the officer on the head with a bar of iron. He staggered and his face overflowed with blood; but he still had strength enough to raise his sword to put aside the muskets of his men who were in the act of firing on the assailant. We have here a vivid description of the taking of the Tuileries by the populace. Some amused themselves by mutilating the statues of kings or by firing at the portraits of such of the marshals as they considered to have been guilty of treason to Napoleon. A number of artisans installed themselves in the chamber of the throne; they sat each in his turn upon the royal seat afterwards they placed a corpse in it. Some of them drew over shirts stained with blood the court-dresses which had circled the waist of royal princesses and strutted about in this masquerade. Riot and destruction as much as you please but no theft--such was the order of the day. A young man was bearing off a hat decorated with plumes of a costly description. "Where are you going " cried his companions "with that hat?" "It is only a souvenir " said he of the hat. "Ha! good; but in that case the value is nothing." So saying they took the hat and trampled it under their feet and then returned it to him--doubly valuable as a souvenir. Many striking traits of honesty were exhibited. One man brought a vase of silver to the prefect of police and did not even leave his name. Another found a bag of three thousand francs in the Louvre and hastened with the money to the Çommune. The next day he was probably amongst the number who were wandering about Paris without bread and without work driven out of employment by the commercial panic of their own glorious revolution. A scene of a like grotesque description took place at a later period on the return of the mob from Rambouillet where they had gone in search of the unhappy Charles X. The king had left Rambouillet before the mob reached it so that they had nothing to do but to return unless any work of demolition should invite them to stay. M. Degoussée at that moment the man in authority in order to save the royal carriages from destruction bethought him of the expedient of offering a ride home in them to the most violent and redoubtable of the mob. In a moment these gilded vehicles blazoned with the royal arms were filled with the lowest of the rabble who projected their pipes and their bayonets from the windows. These state carriages drawn by eight horses and driven by silken postilions were heaped up inside and out with this riotous crew who entered Paris in triumph amidst the responsive jests and shouts of the populace. Driven up to the Palais Royal they there descended from their splendid vehicles and delivered them over to their new owner. "_Tenez--voilà vos voitures!_" they shouted as they alighted under the windows of the Duke of Orleans. It is curious to remark the contrast between the thoughtless reckless bravery of the combatants of July and the watchful timidity of the politicians who were ultimately to profit by their courage and infatuation. The soldiers had at many points fraternized with the people--all was success for the popular party--and the drawing-room of M. Lafitte was full of distinguished men of that party. "The court of the hotel " continues M. Blanc "was now full of soldiers. Five of the royal officers entered the saloon. M. Lafitte who had been wounded in the leg received them sitting in an arm-chair. He received them with great blandness and dignity. 'Gentlemen ' said he 'keep your arms but swear never to turn them against the people.' The officers extended their hands as if to take an oath. 'No oath gentlemen ' said M. Lafitte with much emotion; 'kings have dishonoured oaths. The word of the brave is sufficient.' This was received with universal applause and every one present resigned himself to the excitement of the hour; when suddenly a discharge of musketry was heard. How describe the tumult that in a moment filled the apartment! The royal guard was certainly victorious--the enemy would be down on them--every one fled. They rushed into the hall they pushed they struggled for egress. Some jumped through the windows of the ground-floor into the garden. Two deputies were found hiding in the stables. In an instant M. Lafitte was abandoned by all those who had besieged his arm-chair. His nephew was the only person who remained with him. And what had happened? The soldiers of the 6th had followed the example of their comrades of the 55th and gained over to the cause of the people they had fired their muskets in the air!" Already at the first outbreak of the revolution some one had remarked--"here were a good game for the Duke of Orleans if he has the courage to play it." Courage he had but equal caution it seems equal prudence. A deputation had proceeded from the house of Lafitte to Neuilly the residence of the Duke to invite him to the throne; but it was the Duchess who received them. The Duke himself had taken refuge at Raincy. To Raincy messengers were sent. The Duke of Orleans ordered his carriage. Those who were waiting his arrival at Neuilly heard the wheels approach--heard them suddenly recede. The carriage had turned and was regaining Raincy with all the speed possible. The resolution was not quite taken or the p
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ar was not quite ripe. His entry into Paris according to M. Blanc was made on foot in the evening and he clambered like a common citizen over the barricades. Arrived at the Palais Royal he sent to notify his presence to Lafitte and Lafayette--representatives the one of the Chamber and the other of the Hotel de Ville--and also to the Duke de Mortemart minister of Charles X. The interview with this last took place the same evening and had for its apparent object to proclaim in the presence of the minister his attachment and unalterable fidelity to the elder branch of the Bourbons. When De Mortemart arrived he was ushered into a little cabinet on the right which looks upon the court not ordinarily used as an apartment of the family. The Duke of Orleans was stretched upon the floor lying on a mattrass in his shirt. His forehead was bathed in sweat;{B} the glare of his eyes and every thing about him betrayed a great fatigue and a singular state of excitement. On seeing the Duke de Mortemart enter he began to speak with great rapidity. He expressed himself with much volubility and ardour proclaiming his attachment to the elder branch and protesting that he came to Paris only to save the town from anarchy. At this moment a great noise was heard in the court and the cry was raised of _Vive le Duc d'Orleans!_ ""You hear that cry "" said the minister; ""it is you the people call for."" ""No no!"" answered the Duke with increasing energy. ""They shall kill me before I accept the crown."" The next morning the deputation from the Chamber presented itself at the Palais Royal; and so far was resolved that the Duke of Orleans was proclaimed lieutenant-general of the kingdom. M. Louis Blanc gives several anecdotes respecting the King of the French and his successive ministers which we should be disposed to extract but that his political antipathies lying exactly in this quarter we have not felt sufficient confidence in their authority. For this reason we will pass on abruptly to a portion of the work where the political bias of the writer is harmless or where it may have induced him to inform himself more accurately on his subject than the generality of persons. This last is evidently the case in his account of the doctrines and practices of the St Simonians. One who felt no sympathy with any portion of their creed would not have taken the trouble to obtain accurate information or an intimate knowledge on this subject. Not that M. Blanc is a St Simonian; to do him justice he has argued with ability and clearness against their leading tenets or maxims; but being a man devoted to a new order of things of some kind or other he has given naturally a more than usual attention to this sect and we think our readers will hold themselves obliged to us if we abridge some portion of his account of St Simon and his disciples. ""The founder of the St Simonian school had been deceased five years when the revolution of July broke out. He belonged to one of the noblest houses of France bearing the name and arms of that famous Duke de St Simon the historian of the reign of Louis XIV. and the last of our veritable _grands seigneurs_. Yet it was the privilege of birth that he attacked and the impiety of war that he proclaimed. He was a man of singular independence of mind and of extreme moral courage. Convinced that before dictating a code for the regulation of human life it was necessary to have attentively analysed that life as it actually exists he spent the first half of his days in studying society under all its aspects; recoiling from no experience practising in the character of an observer even vice as well as virtue; drawing a lesson from his own frailties and making a study of his own follies. He dissipated his fortune in premeditated prodigality and terminated a studious opulence in excessive poverty; living on the miserable salary of a copyist when in idea he was governing the world. In the estimation of some a sage--of others a madman; at one time sanguine to enthusiasm at another discouraged to the point of attempting suicide; reduced at last to the condition of a mendicant after having so often united round his table in order to observe and judge them the most celebrated men in art and literature. Such was St Simon in life and character: it remains to see what were the intellectual results he arrived at.""--(Vol. III. p. 96.) His first project of a code for human life was sufficiently ridiculous. In a work entitled _Letters from an Inhabitant of Geneva to his Contemporaries_ he addressed himself to the learned portion of the world inviting them to undertake the government of the human race. The programme was as follows. A subscription was to be opened before the tomb of Newton. Every one was called upon to subscribe according to his means rich and poor man and woman; and each subscriber was to have a voice in the selection of--three mathematicians three natural philosophers three chemists three physiologists three men of letters three painters and three musicians. These several threes amounting to twenty-one besides having the produce of the subscription were to form a council called the _Council of Newton_ and undertake the spiritual government of the world directing the efforts of the several nations of the globe towards one common end. The learned portion of the world made no response to this invitation; he therefore next addressed himself to the operatives declaring that the time was come to tear the crown from the brow of idleness and establish the reign of labour. The king was now to be the chief of artisans his ministers enlightened workmen; and the electoral right was to be so placed as to transfer all power from the proprietor of the soil to the cultivator from the capitalist to the journeyman. One would say that piqued with the indifference of the most literate portion of mankind he was determined to offer the government of the world to the most illiterate. Since the Royal Society would not accept the ball and sceptre which he had placed at its disposal he gave them over to the Trades' Union. But neither would this satisfy him. He who appeals to the lowest order of minds must confine himself to what is intelligible to and influential on the lowest; and this would hardly accord with one who at all events had led an intellectual life of however wild an order. He again reverted to the thinking classes and to some modification of his first idea; and his _New Christianity_--his last and most complete effort--has for its object to erect an intellectual and spiritual government of the world. Taking his analogy from the spiritual dominion of the church of Rome but finding that that power was too restricted in its exercise inasmuch as the material interests and scientific labours of mankind were not embraced by it he called for the foundation of ""a religious power which embracing humanity in all its interests should conduct it towards a Christian purpose--the amelioration of the lot of the great multitude of mankind; by their _sentiments_ employing _artists_ by their _reason_ employing the _learned_ and by their _activity_ employing the _operative_."" Whatever may be the importance of this conception it answered one purpose--it satisfied the builder's mind. St Simon died full of faith and hope. When he bade his eternal adieus to the few disciples who surrounded his dying bed he regarded his work as completed his mission as fulfilled. ""The fruit is ripe "" said he; ""you will gather it."" The disciples of St Simon still further elaborated and disseminated his doctrines; and a school was formed which recognised MM. Enfantin and Buzard for its chiefs. It need hardly be said that the new order of society was to be founded on universal benevolence--no war and no rivalry--and the industry of mankind organized in such sort _that to each man would be assigned according to his capacity and to each capacity according to its works_. We quote with pleasure the remarks (tinctured though they are by his own peculiar opinions) which M. Blanc makes on this famous formula:--""In preaching a universal association of men founded on benevolence--in demanding that industry should be regularly organized and that she should establish her empire on the ruins of a system of violence and war the St Simonians showed a thorough intelligence of the laws which will one day govern humanity. But they overthrow with one hand the edifice they erect with the other when they announce this famous formula--_To each according to his capacity; to each capacity according to its works_--a formula wise and equitable in appearance but in reality subversive and unjust. ""If we say that a man in virtue of his intellectual superiority is to adjudge to himself a larger share than others of the goods of this world what right have we to censure the sturdy barbarian who in virtue of his physical superiority was wont to take the lion's share to himself? We have changed the basis on which the tyranny rested--the tyranny remains. The St Simonians it is true justify their formula on the grounds of public utility; it is well say they to stimulate talent by recompense. But is it necessary that the recompense of talent be of this gross and material kind? that it be counted down in so much wealth? Thank Heaven! man has other and more energetic motives. With a piece of riband to be attached to the buttonhole Napoleon could make an army of a million of men rush forward upon danger and death. The word _glory_ well or ill understood has always decided the destinies of the world. What is amply sufficient when the work of destruction is in hand by what disastrous fatality does it become incompetent when the task is to produce and to create? Is it not true that great men have always sought and found their principal recompense in the very exercise of their high faculties? If society had wished to recompense Newton it would have been utterly powerless to do so; there was for Newton in all the world no other or sufficient recompense but the joy he must have felt when his genius discovered the laws which govern the planets. * * * The greater the intelligence the greater the sphere of action; but not necessarily the greater the material recompense. The inequality of capacities can legitimately conduct to the inequality only of duties."" The revolution of 1830 gave a wonderful stimulant to the little society of St Simon. It extended rapidly and adjourned its sittings from a private house to an ample theatre where three tiers of boxes held the admiring or ironical auditory. Fêtes and the presence of charming women increased the number of proselytes; artists physicians advocates poets flocked to share in the generous hopes of the new era. The capital and the provinces were portioned out into new departments to accord with the new administration of affairs and St Simonism had also its map of France. The two chiefs or fathers took upon themselves the ambitious title of popes. They already cast their eyes upon the Tuileries. Louis-Philippe was summoned by letter to yield his place to MM. Enfantin and Buzard. St Simonism was already a government destined to replace the authority of the Catholic church. But there were schisms in this new church--Pope Enfantin thinking one thing and Pope Buzard another; and that too on the important topic of matrimony. The principal adepts of the sect met together and held strange fanatical discussions for the discovery of the truth on these controverted points. It is worthy of remark that St Simonism as well as Irvingism or Mesmerism could boast of its convulsions and its prophecies. ""At this time there passed in the Rue Monsigny in the midst of this sceptical and mocking France scenes so extraordinary that to find their parallel we must revert to the history of the Anabaptists. Those who had hitherto resisted the extreme doctrines of Father Enfantin felt as if impelled against their will to the borders of some immense abyss. With the rest it was an accession of fervour altogether indescribable an exaltation which ended in delirium. There in a room the doors of which were carefully closed and whose thick walls betrayed no sound discussions were continued whole days and whole nights without interruption without relief without repose. It sometimes happened that a young man incapable of sustaining these consuming vigils reeled and fainted; they removed the apparently lifeless body without suspending the discussion. M. Caseaux was in an ecstasy for an hour and began to prophesy. Another day M. Olinde Rodrigues was struck as if by apoplexy; because asking each of the members in turn whether it was not true that the Holy Spirit was in him (M. Olinde Rodrigues ) one of the persons interrogated had the temerity to answer by certain expressions of incredulity. The fit was extremely violent and Dr Fuster in order to save the patient had recourse to a formal retractation from the inconsiderate respondent who on his part was full of affliction for the mischief he had occasioned. Such even on men of serious thought and elevated understanding may be the effect produced by a belief carried to a certain point of excitement."" Such too may be the danger of contradicting a prophet; and we intend to take the hint and never be guilty of so great an imprudence. These dissensions accompanied with certain financial difficulties led to a rupture and the family of the Rue Monsigny were compelled to dissolve. ""In this crisis the profound calm of Enfantin never deserted him. He possessed at Ménilmontant a house and garden; here he resolved to seek a place of retreat of study and of labour for himself and his more faithful disciples. Forty of these followed him to this retreat and there commenced the life in common combined always with a just sentiment of the true hierarchy of society. Poets artists officers musicians all devoted themselves in turn to the rudest and coarsest labours. They repaired the house they swept the courts they cleaned the chambers and polished the floors; they dug up the uncultivated soil they covered the walks with gravel extracted from a pit which they themselves had excavated. To prove that their ideas on the nature of marriage and the emancipation of women were pure from any selfish or sensual calculations they imposed upon themselves the law of celibacy. Morning and evening they nourished their mind with the words of the father or in the lives of the Christian saints read aloud they found example encouragement and precept. Hymns the music of which one of their members had composed served to elevate their minds and charm their labours. At five o'clock dinner was announced by the sound of a horn. Then these philosophic workpeople piled up their tools arranged their wheel-barrows symmetrically and took their place after having first sung 'the prayer before repast.'"" In this retreat they adopted a distinctive dress of which one portion the waistcoat was symbolical; it was so made that it could not be put on without the help of a brother--and thus was calculated perpetually to call to mind the necessity of mutual aid. On the day of the institution of this habit Enfantin declared that he and his followers had renounced all rights to property according to the existing law and had duly qualified themselves to receive ""the honourable wages"" of labour. But this fantastical experiment was cut short by the interference of the law. A public prosecution was instituted against the St Simonians; and Père Enfantin and other chiefs of the sect were brought before the tribunal at Paris. It will be easily understood that the court that day was crowded with spectators eager to see the St Simonians especially Enfantin who appeared in a violet-coloured robe with the words LE PÉRE written in large letters on his breast. When asked by the president whether he did not style himself the Father of Humanity--whether he did not profess to be the Living Law--he answered ""Yes!"" with perfect calmness and assurance. The discourse he delivered in his own defence was chiefly remarkable for the long pauses he made from time to time occupying himself with looking steadfastly at the president or the advocate-general. He said he wished to make them feel ""the power of the flesh."" But this species of animal magnetism appears to have had no other effect than that of irritating the court. He and some others were condemned to pay a fine and suffer a year's imprisonment. The family was dispersed. For the present there was an end to St Simonism. A history is hardly complete without a plague or pestilence or famine or some such wide-spreading calamity on which the historian can spend the dark colours of his descriptive eloquence. Considering that M. Louis Blanc had but the space of ten years under him he must have regarded himself as very fortunate in meeting with the cholera which figures here as a very respectable pestilence. The carrying forth the dead naked and uncoffined in open carts is an image often presented to us in descriptions of this nature; but it is perhaps surpassed in terrible effects by the one here offered to us of the bodies of those who had died of the cholera piled up in carts and tumbrils in coffins so hastily and slightly constructed that as they rattled over the stones there was constant danger of their horrible contents being poured upon the pavement. But the strange reports that were afloat amongst this credulous and passionate populace form the most striking feature in the picture. It was reported in Paris as our readers will probably remember that there was in reality no cholera but that poison had been poured into the fountains of the metropolis and had been mingled with the wine and the flour; and thus it was that the people were dying. It was dangerous to be found with a phial in the hand or to be seen sitting without any ostensible cause near one of the public fountains. A young man was looking into a well; he was massacred. Another met the same fate who was leaning over the door of a dealer in wine and spirits in order to see what o'clock it was. A Jew in the market-place was thought to have a sinister laugh; they searched him found a packet of white powder--it was camphor--they killed him and set on the dogs to tear the body. And then that insurrection against the mud-carts--what an insight does it give into the wide-spreading and tangled interests of a modern capital! It was impossible to touch the mud of Paris without periling the subsistence of eighteen hundred persons. What more fit what more innocuous to all parties it would seem than to clear away the mud from the streets--to clear it away as soon as possible that it should not lie there exhaling pestilence during the heat of the day? But stop--there are in Paris some eighteen hundred persons who gain their bread out of this mud groping in it and extracting from it every article of the least commercial value. With a basket slung upon their back and a crook in their hand to facilitate their search these _chiffoniers_ are to be seen in every quarter of the city congregating wherever there is dirt. And now if all that is thrown out of the houses of Paris is taken away before these industrious persons have had time to search it what is to become of the whole profession of _chiffonerie_? These new mud-carts with their ruthless sweepers traversing the city at dawn of day must be broken up and thrown into the Seine; and it was done so accordingly. There is a peculiar charm we think in having related to us for the first time in the shape of history what we remember to have read and talked over as the news and gossip of the day. We seem to be present at the making of history. We see facts as the death of princes which made so much stir and confusion sink into the commonplace of the historical record; while anecdotes which were repeated and forgotten may stand forward as instructive proofs of the temper of the times and the spirit of the past age. More than one such anecdote we think we could select from the pages before us; but it is possible we might draw them from a purer source than the work of M. Louis Blanc to which our readers will perhaps think that we have already given more than sufficient space. FOOTNOTES: {A} _Histoire de Dix Ans_ 1830-1840. Par M. LOUIS BLANC. {B} As well it might if he had been clambering over barricades in those hot days of July; for the three glorious days were remarkable for their heat. A NIGHT ON THE BANKS OF THE TENNESSEE. ""Can you tell us how far we are from Brown's ferry?"" said I to a man who came suddenly and silently upon us from a narrow side-path. We were on the banks of the Tennessee: the evening was drawing in; the fog that hung over land and river was each moment thickening. The landscape had a wild chaotic appearance and it was scarcely possible to distinguish objects at five paces distance. The horseman paused some moments before answering my question. At last he replied accompanying his words with an ominous shake of the head-- ""To Brown's ferry? Perhaps you mean Cox's ferry?"" ""Well then--Cox's ferry "" said I rather impatiently. ""Ay old Brown is dead "" continued the man ""and Betsy has married young Cox. Ain't it him you mean?"" ""That we know nothing about "" replied I; ""but what we wish to learn is whether we are far from the ferry and if this is the right road to it."" ""Ah! the way to the ferry--that's the rub man! You're a good five miles off and might just as well turn your horse's head another way. I guess you're strangers in these parts?"" ""Heaven preserve us!"" whispered my friend Richards ""we are in the hands of a Yankee; he is guessing already.""{A} Meantime the horseman had drawn nearer to us in spite of the thorns and of the wet boughs that each moment slapped and slashed him across his face; and he was now close to our horse. As far as we could distinguish through the rapidly-increasing gloom he was a middle-aged man bony and long-legged with a sallow unprepossessing physiognomy surmounting his long ungainly carcass and metal buttons upon his coat. ""And so you've lost your way?"" said the stranger after a long pause during which the thick fog had had the kindness to convert itself into a close penetrating rain. ""That's queer too seein' that the ferry ain't fifteen paces from the road which runs right along the side of the river. A very queer mistake to be goin' up the stream instead of followin' yer nose and the run of the water."" ""What do you mean?"" cried Richards and I in a breath. ""That you're goin' up the Tennessee instead of down it and are on the road to Bainbridge. That's all!"" replied the supposed Yankee. ""On the road to Bainbridge!"" repeated we in voices in which astonishment and vexation were tolerably evident. ""You hadn't a mind to go to Bainbridge then?"" ""How far is the infernal place from here?"" asked I. ""How far how far?"" repeated the man with the metal buttons. ""It's not to say very far nor yet so very near as I may guess. Perhaps you know Squire Dimple?"" ""I wish you and Squire Dimple were at the devil!"" muttered I. But Richards who took things more quietly replied-- ""No we have not the honour of his acquaintance."" ""Humph! And whereaway may you be goin'?"" enquired our tormentor who was apparently waterproof. ""To Florence in Alabama "" answered Richards ""and thence down the Mississippi."" ""Ah fine city Florence! such as one only finds in this country. Ain't it now? And a good market too. Talkin' of that what's the price of flour in the north? You're come from thereaway I guess. I did hear it was six and four levies and Injun corn five and a fip--butter three fips."" ""Are you mad?"" cried I losing all patience and unconsciously raising my whip as I spoke--""are you stark staring mad to keep us talking here about flour and butter and fips and levies while the rain is falling by bucketsfull?"" ""Hallo stranger!"" cried the man raising himself for the first time out of his lounging position on the saddle. ""Guess you're gettin' wolfish. I'm for you--stick fist or whiphandle rifle or bowie-knife. Should like to see the man as could leather Isaac Shifty!"" ""The road the road Mister Isaac Shifty!"" interrupted friend Richards in a conciliating tone. There was another long pause. ""I guess you're traders "" said the fiend at last. ""No man."" ""And what may you be then?"" Our answer was followed by another long inspection of our persons and physiognomies. He gazed at us for a couple of minutes or more examining us from head to foot; at last he spoke. ""And so you've a mind to go down the Mississippi?"" ""Yes in the Jackson which starts to-morrow we are told."" ""Ah the Jackson! a mighty good steamboat too--ain't it now? But I guess you ain't a thinkin' of takin' that thing and your horse with you?"" continued the Yankee pointing to our gig. ""Yes we are."" ""Oh you are! Well.--You haven't seen two women in a dearborn on the road have you?"" ""No we have not."" ""Well then "" continued the man in the same indifferent tone ""it's a'most too late now to get to Bainbridge; and yet you might try it too. Better turn your horse round and follow the road till you come to a big walnut-tree; there it divides. Take to the right hand for half a mile till you come to neighbour Dims's hedge; then you must go through the lane; and then for about forty rods right through the sugar-field; keep to your left till you come to some rocks but then turn to your right if you don't want to break your necks. There's a bit of a stream there; and when you are over that the left-hand road will take you straight to Cox's ferry. You can't miss it "" concluded he in a self-satisfied tone striking his horse a blow with his riding-whip. The animal broke into a smart trot and in ten seconds our obliging friend had disappeared into the fog. My countenance during the Yankee's interminable directions must have somewhat resembled that of a French recruit to whom some scarred and mustached veteran is relating his Egyptian campaigns and telling him wonderful stories of snakes and crocodiles at least half a mile long--monsters who made nothing of swallowing a drum-major to their breakfast bearskin cap cane and whiskers included. I was so completely bothered and confounded with the rights and lefts that the metal-buttoned individual was out of sight and hearing before I thought of explaining to him that dark as it then was we should never be able to find even the walnut-tree let alone neighbour Dims's hedge and the break-neck rocks. Patience is by no means one of my virtues; but the man's imperturbable phlegm and deliberation in the midst of the most pouring rain that ever wetted poor devil to the skin tickled my fancy so exceedingly that the sound of his horse's hoofs had hardly died away when I burst into an almost interminable fit of laughter. ""First right then left--look out for the big walnut-tree and don't break your neck over the crags!"" repeated I in a tone between merriment and despair. Richards however saw nothing to laugh at. ""The devil take the Yankee!"" cried he. ""May I be hanged if I know what you find so amusing in all this!"" ""And hang me if I know how you manage to look so grave!"" was my answer. ""How could we possibly have missed the ferry?"" cried Richards; ""and what is still more stupid to come back instead of going forward!"" ""Not very astonishing "" replied I ""considering the multitude of by-roads and cross-roads and waggon-tracks and cattle-paths and the swamp into the bargain. It is quite impossible to see which way the river runs. And then you have been sleeping all the afternoon and I had to find the way by myself."" ""And you found it after an extraordinary fashion--retracing your own steps "" said Richards in a vexed tone. ""It is really too stupid."" ""Very stupid "" said I--""to sleep."" As may be seen we were on the verge of a quarrel; but we were old and sincere friends and stopped in time. The discussion was dropped. The fact was that our mistake was by no means a very surprising one. The country in which we were seemed made on purpose to lose one's-self in. The road winds along at some distance from the river frequently out of sight of it; the shore is uneven covered with crags and hillocks; nothing like a landmark to be seen or a mountain to guide one's-self by except occasionally when one gets a peep at the Appalachians rising out of the blue distance. The fog however had hidden them from us and that just at the time when we most wanted them as guides. We found ourselves in a long low clearing--a sort of bottom as they call it in that country--which was laid out in sugar-fields and through which there ran nearly as many cart-roads as there were owners to the land. The morning had been bright and beautiful; but towards noon a grey mist had begun to rise in the south-western corner of the horizon and had gone on thickening and advancing till it spread like a pall over the Tennessee. With a grey wall of fog on one side and the swamp intersected with a hundred cross-paths on the other we had gone on for about a mile; until it got so thick and dark that it was quite as possible we should find our way into the marsh as over the Mussel shoals.{B} So certain was I however of the proximity of the latter that I pushed on expecting each moment to find the ferry until the unlucky Yankee brought all my hopes to a termination. It was now quite night--one of those dreary pitch-dark nights that are of no unfrequent occurrence in the south-western states. I would as soon have been on the banks of Newfoundland as in this swamp from which nothing was more probable than that we should carry away a rattling fever. The Yankee's directions concerning the road were as may be supposed long since forgotten; and even had they not been so it would have required cat's eyes to have availed ourselves of them. Even the owls the nightingales of that neighbourhood seemed puzzled by the extreme darkness. We could hear them whooping and screaming all around us; and now and then one flew against us as if it had lost its way as well as ourselves. The road we were now following ran close to the bank of the river; so close indeed that a single stumble of our horse might have precipitated us into the water which was then very high. ""I think we should do our best to get out of the gig "" said I to my companion; ""or else we have a very good chance of passing the night in the Tennessee."" ""No danger "" replied Richards ""Cæsar is an old Virginian."" A shock that made our very ribs crack again and as nearly as possible threw us backwards out of the gig came rather opportunely to interrupt this eulogium on Cæsar who had suddenly reared furiously up on his hind-legs. ""There must be something in the path "" cried Richards. ""Let us see what it is."" We got out and found a huge walnut-tree lying right across the road. Here was an end to our journey. It was an absolute impossibility to get the gig over the enormous trunk; the boughs which spread out full twenty yards in every direction had given Cæsar timely warning of the impediment to our further progress. The road moreover was so narrow that it was impossible to turn. There was nothing for it but to back out. Richards began hunting about for a cross-road where we might turn; I set to work to back the gig. I had no sooner however set one foot out of the road than my cloak was almost torn from my shoulders by a thorn half a yard long. To get through this detestable wilderness with a whole skin one ought to have been cased in complete armour. I had only just taken my unfortunate garment off this new-fashioned cloak-peg when Richards returned. ""This is the most infernal wilderness in all the west!"" said he. ""Neither road nor path mud up to the ears and to add to my enjoyment I have left one of my boots in the swamp."" ""And for my part there are as many holes in my cloak as thorns on that cursed acacia-tree "" replied I by way of consolation. These were the last words we spoke in any thing like a jesting tone; for we were now wet to the skin: and of all situations I believe a damp one to be the least favourable to jocularity. I confess a certain partiality for adventures when they are not carried too far. There is nothing I detest like a monotonous wearisome Quaker's journey with every thing as tame and dull and uniform as at a meeting of broad-brims; but to be overtaken by darkness and a deluge in the middle of a maple-swamp to be unable to go three steps on one side without falling into the Tennessee with an impenetrable morass and thicket on the other hand a colossal walnut-tree barring the way in front and no possibi
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ity of turning back--this was even to my taste rather too much of an adventure. ""Well what is to be done now?"" said Richards who had placed himself in a sort of theatrical posture--his bootless foot on the gig-step the other sticking fast in the mud. ""Take out the horse and draw the gig back "" suggested I. Easily said but rather more difficult to accomplish. We set to work however with a will; and pushed and tugged and pulled till at last after much labour we got the gig about thirty paces backwards where the road became wider. We then turned it and were putting Cæsar into the shafts when to our inexpressible delight a loud hallo was given quite close to us. Reader if you were ever at a hard contested election where you had bet your fifty or a hundred dollars on your favourite candidate and just when you made sure of losing and your five senses were almost extinguished by noise brandy and tobacco smoke you heard the result proclaimed that secured you your stake and a hundred per cent to boot; if you have ever been placed in such circumstances then and then only can you form an idea of the joyful feeling with which we heard that shout. After such a thorough Yankee fashion was it given that it caused the fog to break for a moment and roused the obscene inhabitants of the neighbouring swamp from their mud-pillowed slumbers. They set up a screeching and yelling and croaking that was lovely to listen to. ""And now have patience for Heaven's sake!"" whispered Richards to me ""and hold your tongue for a quarter of an hour or you will spoil all with this infernal Yankee."" ""Do not be afraid "" replied I; ""I am dumb."" My blood was certainly tolerably cooled by the shower-bath I had had--to say nothing of the prospect of passing the night in this vile hole; and I would willingly have given the tenacious Yankee information concerning the prices of flour and butter in every state of the Union upon the sole condition that he should afterwards help us out of this reservoir of fever. It was as we had at once conjectured our friend Mr Isaac Shifty in soul body and buttons. In true Connecticut fashion he stood a couple of minutes close to us without saying a word. It almost looked as if he took a delight in our difficulties and was in no particular hurry to extricate us from them. For our part we kept very much on our guard. The cross-grained scarecrow might likely enough have left us to our fate again if we had said any thing that did not exactly chime in with his queer humour. Richards at last broke silence. ""Bad weather "" said he. ""Well I don't know. I shouldn't say it was though exactly "" returned the Yankee. ""You have not met the two women you were looking for have you?"" ""No. Guess they'll have stopped at Florence with cousin Kate."" ""You are not thinking of going there too are you?"" said Richards. ""No. I'm goin' home. I thought you were at the ferry by this time."" ""Perhaps we should have been if your roads were better and the holes in them filled up with stones instead of walnut-trees "" returned Richards laughing. ""Guess you ain't inclined to go to the ferry to-day?"" ""Inclined we are but able we are not "" replied Richards; ""and you will acknowledge my friend that is a pretty strong reason for not going."" ""Well so it is "" replied the man sententiously. ""It ain't very agreeable lyin' out in the swamp; and so stranger if you like to go to Bainbridge you can come with me. Better let me drive and my mare can follow behind."" It took at least five minutes before the wearisome pedantical fellow had finished his arrangements and preparations. At last to the infinite satisfaction of Richards and myself we sat three in the gig. After undergoing a questioning and cross-questioning that would have done honour to an experienced diplomatist we had succeeded in striking up a sort of alliance with Mr Isaac Shifty and were on our way to one of the hundred famous cities of Alabama--cities which have decidedly not their match in the whole of the United States. I do not know how it happens but I am constantly finding myself disappointed in my expectations. I had hoped that the distance between the infernal maple swamp and the place to which we were going would have borne some sort of relative proportion to the agreeableness of our situation--that is to say that it would not be very great. It nevertheless appeared to me enormous and Horace's impatience during his celebrated walk was trifling compared to mine. Our Yankee like the Roman babbler had abundance of time to discourse on fifty different subjects. The first which he brought before our notice was naturally his own worthy person. From the interesting piece of biography with which he favoured us we learned that he was originally from Connecticut and that his first occupation had been that of usher in a school; which employment he had after a short trial exchanged for the less honourable but more independent one of a pedlar. From that he had risen to be a trader and shop-keeper and was now as he modestly informed us a highly respectable and well-to-do man. He next gave us an account of all the varieties of merchandise in which he dealt or ever had dealt; intermixing the details with an occasional side-blow at a certain Mr Bursicut who had dared to set up an opposition store and whom Providence had punished for his presumption by the loss of sundry dozen knives and forks and pairs of shoes upon the Mussel shoals. He then found occasion to talk of the thousand and one mishaps that had occurred upon the aforesaid Mussel shoals; and thence branched off into the various modes of water-carriage which the enlightened inhabitants of Alabama were accustomed to employ. After amusing us for some time with long histories concerning steam-boats and keel-boats barks and flat-boats broad-horns dug-outs and canoes he glided into some canal-making scheme which was to connect the waters of the Tennessee with Heaven knows what others. It was a most monstrous plan--that I remember; but whether the junction was to be made with Raritan bay or Connecticut river I have clean forgotten. At last we came to the history of Bainbridge--a sure sign as I thought with much inward gratulation that we were approaching the end of our journey; yet the accomplishment of this hope reasonable as it was was doomed to be deferred a long time. We had first to listen to the whole history and topographical description of that celebrated city; how it had sprung up in the right corner he reckoned; and how flourishing and industrious it was; and whether we had not a mind to settle there--because if we had he Mr Isaac Shifty had some almighty fine building land to sell; and how the town already boasted of three taverns just the right proportion to the ten houses of which Bainbridge consisted. We should find two of the taverns chokeful of people he said because there was a canvass going on for the Florence election; as to the third it was a poor place hardly habitable indeed. At the word _canvass_ Richards and I looked aghast. ""An election coming on!"" stammered Richards. ""An election!"" repeated I the words dying away upon my tongue from consternation at this unwelcome news. An election in Alabama which even in old Kentucky is considered as backwoods! Farewell supper and sleep and comfortable bed and clean linen! every thing in short which we had flattered ourselves with obtaining and which we stood so much in need of after such a hard day's journey. Before we had time to make any further enquiries Cæsar who had for some time been splashing through a sea of mud stood suddenly still. The light of a tallow candle glimmering and flaring through an atmosphere of tobacco-smoke and the hoarse and confused sounds of many voices warned us that we had reached the haven. We sprang out of the gig; and whilst Richards was tying Cæsar to a post I hurried to the door when I felt myself suddenly seized by the skirt of my cloak. ""Not there--not there! This is the house where you are to stop "" exclaimed Mr Isaac Shifty pointing anxiously to an adjacent edifice that looked something between a house and a pigsty. ""Don't go with him "" whispered I to Richards heartily glad to be at last independent of the insupportable Yankee and to be able to vex him a little in my turn. My hand was already on the latch; I opened the door and we entered. There sat the burgesses of Bainbridge with their heels upon the table--those at least for whom there were chairs; while those for whom there were none made shift with tubs or stood up in various elegant attitudes. There was a prodigious amount of talking shouting drinking and laughing going on; and my first feeling was that I would rather have been any where else than in that worshipful assembly. Richards however stepped boldly forward in spite of his bootless foot; and luckily the men appeared disposed to be upon their best behaviour with us. They pressed back right and left forming a lane about a foot wide enclosed between living palisades six feet and upwards in height through which we passed subjected as we did so to a searching inspection. Richards stepped smartly up to the table then turned round and confronted the group of half-horse half-alligator visages there assembled. ""A hurra for old Alabama!"" cried he ""and the devil take the Bainbridge roadmaster!"" ""Are you mad?"" I whispered to him. ""May I be scalped if you don't soon feel the weight of these five bones upon your carcass stranger!"" growled a voice proceeding from a sort of mammoth that had just filled itself a half-pint tumbler of Monongahela. Before the double-jointed Goliath put his threat into execution he swallowed the whisky at a gulp and then striding forwards laid his open hand upon my companion's shoulder with a force that threw the poor fellow on one side and gave him the appearance of being crooked. At the same time the giant stared Richards in the face with an expression which the natural hardness of his features and the glimmer of his owl-like eyes rendered any thing but agreeable. ""The devil take the Bainbridge roadmaster--I repeat it!"" cried Richards half in earnest and half laughing raising his muddy and bootless foot as he spoke and placing it on a chair. ""See there men! I may thank him for the loss of my boot. The cursed swamp between here and the ferry was kind enough to pull it off for me."" The roar of laughter that responded to these words would inevitably have broken the windows had there been any glass in them. Fortunately the latter luxury was wanting; its place being supplied by fragments of old inexpressibles and of _ci-devant_ coats and waistcoats. ""Come lads!"" continued Richards ""I mean no offence; but of a surety I have to thank your bad roads for the loss of my boot."" Richard's jest exactly adapted to the society in which we found ourselves was the most fortunate _impromptu_ that could have been hit upon. It seemed at once to have established us upon a footing of harmony and friendship with the rough backwoodsmen amongst whom we had fallen. ""May I be shot like a Redskin if that ain't Mister Richards from Old Virginny now of the Mississippi "" suddenly exclaimed the same colossus who had so recently had his hand upon Richards's shoulder twisting as he spoke his wild features into a sort of amicable grin. ""May I never taste another drop of rale Monongahela if you sha'n't drink a pint with Bob Snags the roadmaster!"" It was the very dignitary whom Richards had insulted with such imminent risk to his shoulder-blade. ""A hurra for old Virginny!"" shouted the master of the roads biting as he spoke into a piece of tobacco from that famous state. ""Come mister--come doctor!"" continued the man offering Richards with one hand a roll of tobacco with the other a pint glassful of whisky. ""Doctor!"" repeated the whole assembly--""a doctor!"" A man possessing power over gin and whisky and whose word is an indisputable veto against even a _smaller_ is no unimportant personage in that feverish neighbourhood. In this instance Richards's doctorship was of the double utility of delivering us from the threatened pint-glasses and of causing us to be considered as privileged guests--no small advantage in a backwoods' tavern occupied as the headquarters of an electioneering party. Cæsar however was the first to derive a positive profit from the discovery. Bob left the room for a minute or two and we could hear the horse walking into the stable. When the roadmaster returned he had assumed a patronizing sort of look. ""Mister Richards!"" said he confidentially ""Mister Richards! May I be shot if you ain't continually a sensible man with more rale blood in your little finger than a horse could swim in. Yes and I'll show you that Bob Snags is your friend. I say doctor what countryman is your horse?"" ""A thorough-bred Virginian "" replied Richards. ""The devil he is!"" cried Bob. ""Well doctor to prove to you that I'm your friend and that I ain't forgotten old times I'll swop with you without lookin' at him. May I be shot if I ain't reg'larly cheatin' myself. Well I'm uncommon glad to see you again. Bob Snags has no reason to fear lookin' a rale gemman in the face. Come lads none of yer jimmaky and slings and poorgun {C} and suchlike dog's wash but ginu_ine_ Monongahela--that's the stuff. Hurra for Old Virginny! Well doctor it's a deal--ain't it?"" ""No Bob "" said Richards laughing; ""your generosity is so truly Alabamian that I cannot make up my mind to accept it. For the present at least I must keep my Virginian. It is my wife's saddle-horse."" ""But Swiftfoot "" replied Bob in a cordial confidential manner--""Swiftfoot is a famous trotter."" ""It won't do Bob "" was the answer. ""I should not dare show myself at home without Cæsar."" Bob bit his lips a little vexed at not being able to make a deal; but another half-pint of whisky which he poured down as if it had been spring water seemed to restore him to good humour. Meanwhile my wet clothes were beginning to hang heavy upon me and to steam in the hot atmosphere in which we were. Bob who had already cast several side-glances at me now turned to Richards. ""And who may the mister be?"" said he. The mention of my name and condition procured me a welcome that I could willingly have dispensed with. After the shake of the hand with which Bob favoured me I looked at my finger-nails to see if the blood was not starting from under them. The fellow's hands were as hard and rough as bear's paws. ""Very glad that you're come boys "" said Bob in a low confidential tone. ""I'm just makin' a try for the next Assembly; and it's always good you know to have somebody to speak to one's character. How long is it Mister Richards since I left Blairsville."" ""Eight years "" replied my friend. ""No Harry "" whispered the roadmaster; ""may I be shot if it's more than five."" ""But "" replied Richards ""I have been living five years by the Mississippi and you know""---- ""Ah nonsense!"" interrupted Bob. ""Five years--not an hour more. D'ye understand?"" added he cautiously--""five years if you're asked."" The facts were thus. This respectable candidate for the representation of his fellow-citizens had made his escape from his previous residence the birthplace of Richards on account of certain misdeeds of which the sheriff and constables had taken cognizance and after wandering about for a few years had settled in Bainbridge county where he seemed to have thriven--as far at least as whisky and human weakness had allowed him. We could hardly help laughing outright at the importance which Bob thought proper to attribute to us before his companions the independent electors whose votes he was desirous of securing. Æsculapius himself was a mere quacksalver compared to Squire Richards whose twenty-five negroes were rapidly multiplied into a hundred; while my poor neglected plantation was between brothers well worth five hundred thousand dollars. We allowed Mr Bob to have it his own way; for it might have been dangerous to contradict a giant of his calibre who was always ready to support his arguments with his huge cocoa nut-coloured fists. At last Richards was able to slip in a word. ""You are not going to make your speech now are you?"" ""May I be shot if I ain't though! I'll begin at once."" ""Cannot we manage to change our clothes and get some supper first?"" said Richards. ""Change your clothes!"" said Bob contemptuously. ""And what for man? Not on our account; you're quite smart enough quite good enough for us--no occasion to bother yourselves. If it's for your own pleasure however you can do it. Hallo Johnny!"" And he commenced a negotiation with Johnny the host who to our great joy took up a candle and led the way into a sort of back parlour with a promise that we should have our supper before very long. ""Is there no other room where we can dress ourselves?"" said I. ""To be sure there is "" was the answer. ""There's the garret--only there's my daughter and a dozen gals sleepin' there; then there's the kitchen if you like it better."" I looked round the room. A servant girl was beginning to lay the table; and unluckily the apartment was connected by an open door with the kitchen in which there was a loud noise of voices. I would have given a good deal for a quarter of an hour's undisturbed possession of the room. I looked about for our portmanteaus but could see nothing of them. ""Six smalls it ain't buffalo hide!"" vociferated a young Stentor in the kitchen. ""Six smalls its cow hide!"" roared another. ""If I am not very much mistaken "" said Richards ""it is our portmanteaus that those fellows are betting about."" ""That would really be too bad "" said I. Nevertheless it was as Richards had said. We had little occasion to fear that the portmanteaus would be lost or injured; but we knew very well that the only way to get them out of the claws of these rough backwoodsmen would be by some well-contrived joke. And those jokes were exactly what I feared; for one had often to risk breaking an arm or a leg by them. There was a crowd of men in the kitchen. One young fellow upwards of six feet high held a lighted candle; and they were all busily engaged examining something which lay in the middle of the floor. ""No "" cried a voice appealing apparently from a decision that had been given ""I won't pay without I see the inside."" They were debating whether the portmanteaus were of buffalo or cow hide. They had caught sight of them as they were being carried through the kitchen into the back-room and had at once seized upon them as good subjects for a bet. It was time for us to interfere if we did not wish to see our trunks ripped open for the sake of ascertaining the quality of the leather. ""Sixteen smalls "" cried Richards ""that it's deer hide!"" ""Done!"" thundered half a score voices with loud peals of laughter. ""It is a bet then "" said my friend; ""but let us see what we are betting about."" ""Make way for the gemmen!"" cried the men. ""Our portmanteaus!"" exclaimed Richards laughing. ""No certainly they are not deer hide. Here is my bet."" A loud hurra followed the payment of the dollar which my friend handed over; and we now found ourselves in undisputed possession of our baggage. The next thing to be done was to endeavour to get the room to ourselves for a few minutes. ""We wish to be left alone for a short time "" said I to the help who was bustling in and out and covering the table with innumerable plates of preserved fruits cucumbers beet-root and suchlike edibles. I shut the door. ""That is the surest way to have it opened again "" said Richards. He had hardly uttered the words when sure enough the door flew open amidst a peal of uproarious laughter. ""Tail!"" cried one fellow. ""Head!"" shouted another. ""They want another dollar "" said Richards. ""Well they must have it I suppose. Head!"" cried he. ""Lost!"" roared the fellows in chorus. ""There is something for you to drink "" said my friend whose wonderful patience and good-humour was bringing us so fortunately through the shoals and difficulties of this wild backwoods' life. We now shut the door and had time enough to change our wet clothes for dry ones. We were nearly dressed when a gentle tapping at the only pane of glass of which the room window could boast attracted our attention. On looking in the direction of the sound we distinguished the amiable features of Mr Isaac Shifty who upon our entering the tavern had thought proper to part company. ""Gentlemen "" whispered he removing the remains of an old waistcoat which supplied the place of one of the absent panes and then applying his face to the aperture--""Gentlemen I was mistaken. Our spies say you are not come to the election but that you are from lower Mississippi."" ""And if we are what then?"" replied I dryly. ""Didn't we tell you as much at first?"" ""So you did but I wasn't obliged to believe it; and d'ye see they're a-canvassing here for next election and we've got an opposition in the other tavern; and as we knew that Bob Snags's people were expectin' two men from down stream we thought you might be they."" ""And so because you thought we should vote against you you allowed us to stick in the mud with the agreeable prospect of either breaking our necks or tumbling into the Tennessee?"" said Richards laughing. ""Not exactly that "" replied the Yankee; ""though if you had been the two men that were expected I guess we shouldn't have minded your passing the night in the swamp; but now we know how matters stand and I'm come to offer you my house. There'll be an almighty frolic here to-night and p'r'aps somethin' more. In my house you can sleep as quiet as need be."" ""It won't do Mr Shifty "" said Richards with a look that must have shown the Yankee pretty plainly that his object in thus pressing his hospitality upon us was seen through; ""it won't do we will stop where we are."" The latch of the door leading into the kitchen was just then lifted which brought our conversation to a close. During the confabulation our Yankee's sharp grey eyes had glanced incessantly from us to the door; and hardly was the noise of the latch audible when his face disappeared and the old waistcoat again stopped the aperture. ""He wants to get us away "" said Richards ""because he fears that our presence here will give Bob too much weight and respectability. You see they have got their spies. If Bob and his people find that out there will be a royal row. A nice disreputable squatter's hole we have fallen into; but bad as it is it is better than the swamp."" The table was now spread; the tea and coffee-pots smoking upon it. The supper was excellent consisting of real Alabama delicacies. Pheasants and woodcocks and a splendid haunch of venison which in spite of the game-laws had found its way into Johnny's larder--wheat buckwheat and Indian-corn cakes; the whole to the honour of Bainbridge be it spoken cooked in a style that would have been creditable to a Paris _restaurateur_. By the help of these savoury viands we had already to a considerable extent taken the edge off our appetite when we heard Bob's voice growling away in the next room. He had begun his speech. It was high time to make an end of our supper and go and listen to him under whose protecting wings we were and to whom we probably owed it that we had got so far through the evening with whole heads and unbroken bones. Backwoods' etiquette rendered our presence absolutely necessary; and we accordingly rose from table and rejoined the assemblage of electors. At the upper end of the table next to the bar stood Bob Snags in his various capacity of president speaker and candidate. A thickset personage sitting near him officiated as secretary--to judge at least from the inkstand with which he was provided. Bob looked rather black at us as we entered no doubt on account of our late arrival; but Cicero pleading against Catiline could not have given a more skilful turn to his oration than did Bob upon the occasion of our entrance. ""And these gemmen "" continued he ""could tell you--ay and put down in black and white--no end of proofs of my respectability and character. May I be shot by Injuns if it ain't as good as that of the best man in the state."" ""No better than it should be "" interposed a voice. Bob threw a fierce look at the speaker; but the smile on the face of the latter showing that no harm was meant the worthy candidate cleared his throat and proceeded. ""Yes "" said he ""we want men as know what's what and who won't let themselves be humbugged by the 'Ministration but will defend our nat'ral born sovereign rights. I know their 'tarnal rigs inside and out. May I be totally swallowed by a b'ar if I give way an inch to the best of 'em; that is to say men if you honour me with your confidence and""---- ""You'll go the whole hog will you?"" interrupted one of the free and independent electors. ""The whole hog!"" repeated Bob striking his fist on the table with the force of a sledge-hammer; ""ay that will I! the whole hog for the people! Now lads don't you think that our great folks cost too much money? Tarnation to me if I wouldn't do all they do at a third of the price. Why half a dozen four-horse waggons would have enough to do to carry away the hard dollars that Johnny{D} and his 'Ministration have cost the country. Here it is lads in black and white."" Bob had a bundle of papers before him which we had at first taken for a dirty pocket-handkerchief but which now proved to be the county newspapers--one of which gave a statement of the amount expended by the first magistrate of the Union during his administration reduced for the sake of clearness into waggon-loads. Bob was silent while his neighbour the secretary put on his spectacles and began to read this important document. He was interrupted however by cries of ""Know it already! Read it already! Go on Bob!"" ""Only see here now "" continued Bob taking up the paper. ""Diplomatic missions! what does that mean? What occasion had they to send any one there? Then they've appointed one General Tariff who's the maddest aristocrat that ever lived and he's passed a law by which we ain't to trade any more with the Britishers. Every stocking every knife-handle that comes into the States has to pay a duty to this infernal aristocrat. Where shall we get our flannel from now I wonder?"" ""Hear hear!"" cried a youth in a tattered red flannel shirt to whose feelings this question evidently went home. ""Moreover "" continued Bob ""it's a drag put upon our ships to the profit of their Yankee manyfacters. Manyfacters indeed! Men! free sovereign citizens! to work in manyfacters!"" ""Hear hear!"" in a threatening tone from the audience. ""But that ain't all "" continued Bob nodding his head mysteriously. ""No men--hear and judge! You the enlightened freemen of Alabama listen and judge for yourselves! Clever fellows the 'Ministration and the Yankees! D'ye know what they've been a-doin'?"" ""No no. Tell us!"" repeated twenty voices. ""You don't know?"" said Bob with a fine oratorical movement. ""I'll tell you then. They've been a-sendin' clothes powder rifles flour and whisky to the Creeks! Two full shiploads have they sent. Here it is!"" yelled Bob taking another paper from his pocket and dashing it upon the table.{E} A breathless silence reigned during the reading of the important paragraph while Richards and myself were making almost superhuman efforts to restrain our laughter. Bob continued-- ""You see men they want to get the scalpin' plunderin' thieves back ag'in over the Mississippi into Georgia--ay and perhaps into Alabama too. And they're holdin' meetin's and assemblies in their favour and say that we owe our independence to these Creeks; and talk about their chiefs--one Alexander the Great and Pericles and Plato and suchlike names that we give our niggers. And the cussed Redskins are fightin' against another chief whom they call Sultan and who lives upon Turk's island. Where shall we get our salt from now I should like to know?""{F} The storm that had been for some time brewing now burst forth with a roar that shook the rafters of the log-built tavern. Although immeasurably tickled by Bob's speech Richards and I had struggled successfully with our disposition to laugh. At this moment however a stifled giggling was heard behind us which immediately attracted the attention of Bob and his friends. ""A spy! a spy!"" shouted they; and there was a sudden and general rush to the door through which an unfortunate adherent of the opposite party had sneaked in to witness their proceedings. The poor devil was seized by a dozen hands and dragged neck and heel before Bob's tribunal to account for his intrusion. He set up a howl of terror and probably pain that immediately brought to his assistance a whole regiment of his friends who were assembled in the adjacent tavern. A furious fight began from which Richards and myself hastened to escape. We made our way into the kitchen and thence into a court at the back of the house. ""Stop!"" said a whispering voice as we were groping about in the darkness; ""you are close to a pool that would drown an ox. I guess you won't refuse my invitation now?"" It was no less a person than Mr Isaac Shifty; and we began to consider whether it would not really be better to put ourselves under his guidance. Indoors we could hear the fight raging furiously. We paused to think what was best to be done. Suddenly to our great astonishment the noise of the contest ceased and was replaced by a dead silence. We hurried through the kitchen to the field of battle and found that the charm which had so suddenly stilled the fury of an Alabamian election fight was no other than the arrival of the constable and his assistants who had suddenly appeared in the midst of the combatants. Their presence produced an effect which scarcely any amount of mere physical force would have been able to bring about; and a single summons in the name of the law to keep the peace had caused the contending parties to separate--the intruding one retiring immediately to its own headquarters. We passed a quiet and tolerably comfortable night except that Bob thought proper to favour us with his society so that we lay three in one bed. Before break of day he got up and went away. Tired as we were it was much later before we followed his example. Upon entering the common room of the tavern we found it empty but bearing pretty evident marks of the recent conflict. Chairs benches and tables lay in splinters upon the floor which was moreover plentifully sprinkled with fragments of broken jugs and glasses; and even the bar itself had not entirely escaped damage. On repairing to the stable to pay Cæsar a visit I found my gig to my no small mortification plastered all over with election squibs--""Hurras for Bob Snags!"" and the like; while poor Cæsar's tail was shorn of every hair as close and clean as if it had been first lathered and then shaved. Our breakfast however was excellent--the weather fine; and we set out upon our journey to Florence under decidedly more favourable auspices than those that attended us on the preceding day. FOOTNOTES: {A} There is no surer way of ascertaining the State from which an American comes than by his thinkings and guessings. The New-Englander guesses the Virginians and Pennsylvanians think the Kentuckian calculates the man of Alabama reckons. {B} The Mussel shoals are broad ridges of rocks above Florence which spread out into the Tennessee. {C} A corruption of Bourgogne Burgundy wine. {D} John Quincy Adams then president of the United States. {E} The Greeks who at that time were struggling for their independence had received various succours from the United States. The Creeks are a well-known tribe of Indians on the frontiers of Georgia. {F} Turk's island is a small island from which the Western States North and South Carolina Georgia &c. get their salt. THE EXECUTION OF MONTROSE. The most poetical chronicler would find it impossible to render the incidents of Montrose's brilliant career more picturesque than the reality. Among the devoted champions who during the wildest and most stormy period of our history maintained the cause of Church and King ""the Great Marquis"" undoubtedly is entitled to the foremost place. Even party malevolence by no means extinct at the present day has been unable to detract from the eulogy pronounced upon him by the famous Cardinal de Retz the friend of Condé and Turenne when he thus summed up his character:--""Montrose a Scottish nobleman head of the house of Grahame--the only man in the world that has ever realized to me the
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deas of certain heroes whom we now discover nowhere but in the Lives of Plutarch--has sustained in his own country the cause of the King his master with a greatness of soul that has not found its equal in our age."" But the success of the victorious leader and patriot is almost thrown into the shade by the noble magnanimity and Christian heroism of the man in the hour of defeat and death. It is impossible now to obliterate the darkest page of Scottish history which we owe to the vindictive cruelty of the Covenanters--a party venal in principle pusillanimous in action and more than dastardly in their revenge; but we can peruse it with the less disgust since that very savage spirit which planned the woful scenes connected with the final tragedy of Montrose has served to exhibit to the world in all time to come the character of the martyred nobleman in by far its loftiest light. There is no ingredient of fiction in the historical incidents recorded in the following ballad. The indignities that were heaped upon Montrose during his procession through Edinburgh his appearance before the Estates and his last passage to the scaffold as well as his undaunted bearing have all been spoken to by eyewitnesses of the scene. A graphic and vivid sketch of the whole will be found in Mr Mark Napier's volume ""The Life and Times of Montrose""--a work as chivalrous in its tone as the Chronicles of Froissart and abounding in original and most interesting materials; but in order to satisfy all scruple the authorities for each fact are given in the shape of notes. The ballad may be considered as a narrative of the transactions related by an aged Highlander who had followed Montrose throughout his campaigns to his grandson shortly before the splendid victory of Killiecrankie:-- I. Come hither Evan Cameron Come stand beside my knee-- I hear the river roaring down Towards the wintry sea. There's shouting on the mountain side There's war within the blast-- Old faces look upon me Old forms go trooping past. I hear the pibroch wailing Amidst the din of fight And my old spirit wakes again Upon the verge of night! II. 'Twas I that led the Highland host Through wild Lochaber's snows What time the plaided clans came down To battle with Montrose. I've told thee how the Southrons fell Beneath the broad claymore And how we smote the Campbell clan By Inverlochy's shore. I've told thee how we swept Dundee And tamed the Lindsays' pride; But never have I told thee yet How the Great Marquis died! III. A traitor sold him to his foes;{A} O deed of deathless shame! I charge thee boy if e'er thou meet With one of Assynt's name-- Be it upon the mountain's side Or yet within the glen Stand he in martial gear alone Or back'd by armed men-- Face him as thou would'st face the man Who wrong'd thy sire's renown; Remember of what blood thou art And strike the caitiff down! IV. They brought him to the Watergate{B} Hard bound with hempen span As though they held a lion there And not a fenceless man. They set him high upon a cart-- The hangman rode below-- They drew his hands behind his back And bared his lordly brow. Then as a hound is slipp'd from leash They cheer'd the common throng And blew the note with yell and shout And bade him pass along. V. It would have made a brave man's heart Grow sad and sick that day To watch the keen malignant eyes Bent down on that array. There stood the Whig west-country lords In balcony and bow There sat their gaunt and wither'd dames And their daughters all a-row; And every open window Was full as full might be With black-robed Covenanting carles That goodly sport to see! VI. But when he came though pale and wan He look'd so great and high {C} So noble was his manly front So calm his steadfast eye;-- The rabble rout forbore to shout And each man held his breath For well they knew the hero's soul Was face to face with death. And then a mournful shudder Through all the people crept And some that came to scoff at him Now turn'd aside and wept. VII. But onwards--always onwards In silence and in gloom The dreary pageant labour'd Till it reach'd the house of doom: But first a woman's voice was heard In jeer and laughter loud {D} And an angry cry and a hiss arose From the heart of the tossing crowd: Then as the Græme look'd upwards He caught the ugly smile Of him who sold his King for gold-- The master-fiend Argyle! VIII. The Marquis gazed a moment And nothing did he say But the cheek of Argyle grew ghastly pale And he turn'd his eyes away. The painted harlot at his side She shook through every limb For a roar like thunder swept the street And hands were clench'd at him And a Saxon soldier cried aloud ""Back coward from thy place! For seven long years thou hast not dared To look him in the face.""{E} IX. Had I been there with sword in hand And fifty Camerons by That day through high Dunedin's streets Had peal'd the slogan cry. Not all their troops of trampling horse Nor might of mailéd men-- Not all the rebels in the south Had borne us backwards then! Once more his foot on Highland heath Had stepp'd as free as air Or I and all who bore my name Been laid around him there! X. It might not be. They placed him next Within the solemn hall Where once the Scottish Kings were throned Amidst their nobles all. But there was dust of vulgar feet On that polluted floor And perjured traitors fill'd the place Where good men sate before. With savage glee came Warristoun{F} To read the murderous doom And then uprose the great Montrose In the middle of the room. XI. ""Now by my faith as belted knight And by the name I bear And by the red Saint Andrew's cross That waves above us there-- Ay by a greater mightier oath-- And oh that such should be!-- By that dark stream of royal blood That lies 'twixt you and me-- I have not sought in battle field A wreath of such renown Nor dared I hope on my dying day To win the martyr's crown! XII. ""There is a chamber far away Where sleep the good and brave But a better place ye have named for me Than by my father's grave. For truth and right 'gainst treason's might This hand has always striven And ye raise it up for a witness still In the eye of earth and heaven. Then nail my head on yonder tower-- Give every town a limb-- And God who made shall gather them.-- I go from you to Him!""{G} XIII. The morning dawn'd full darkly The rain came flashing down And the jagged streak of the levin-bolt Lit up the gloomy town: The heavens were speaking out their wrath The fatal hour was come Yet ever sounded sullenly The trumpet and the drum. There was madness on the earth below And anger in the sky And young and old and rich and poor Came forth to see him die. XIV. Ah God! That ghastly gibbet! How dismal 'tis to see The great tall spectral skeleton The ladder and the tree! Hark! hark! It is the clash of arms-- The bells begin to toll-- He is coming! he is coming! God's mercy on his soul! One last long peal of thunder-- The clouds are clear'd away And the glorious sun once more looks down Amidst the dazzling day. XV. He is coming! he is coming! Like a bridegroom from his room {H} Came the hero from his prison To the scaffold and the doom. There was glory on his forehead There was lustre in his eye And he never walk'd to battle More proudly than to die: There was colour in his visage Though the cheeks of all were wan And they marvell'd as they saw him pass That great and goodly man! XVI. He mounted up the scaffold And he turn'd him to the crowd; But they dared not trust the people So he might not speak aloud. But he look'd upon the heavens And they were clear and blue And in the liquid ether The eye of God shone through: Yet a black and murky battlement Lay resting on the hill As though the thunder slept within-- All else was calm and still. XVII. The grim Geneva ministers With anxious scowl drew near {I} As you have seen the ravens flock Around the dying deer. He would not deign them word nor sign But alone he bent the knee; And veil'd his face for Christ's dear grace Beneath the gallows-tree. Then radiant and serene he rose And cast his cloak away: For he had ta'en his latest look Of earth and sun and day. XVIII. A beam of light fell o'er him Like a glory round the shriven And he climb'd the lofty ladder As it were the path to heaven.{J} Then came a flash from out the cloud And a stunning thunder roll And no man dared to look aloft For fear was on every soul. There was another heavy sound A hush and then a groan; And darkness swept across the sky-- The work of death was done! W. E. A. FOOTNOTES: {A} ""The contemporary historian of the Earls of Sutherland records that (after the defeat of Invercarron) Montrose and Kinnoull 'wandered up the river Kyle the whole ensuing night and the next day and the third day also without any food or sustenance and at last came within the country of Assynt. The Earl of Kinnoull being faint for lack of meat and not able to travel any further was left there among the mountains where it was supposed he perished. Montrose had almost famished but that he fortuned in his misery to light upon a small cottage in that wilderness where he was supplied with some milk and bread.' Not even the iron frame of Montrose could endure a prolonged existence under such circumstances. He gave himself up to Macleod of Assynt a former adherent from whom he had reason to expect assistance in consideration of that circumstance and indeed from the dictates of honourable feeling and common humanity. As the Argyle faction had sold the King so this Highlander rendered his own name infamous by selling the hero to the Covenanters for which 'duty to the public' he was rewarded with four hundred bolls of meal.""--NAPIER'S _Life of Montrose_. {B} ""_Friday 17th May._--Act ordaining James Grahame to be brought from the Watergate on a cart bareheaded the hangman in his livery covered riding on the horse that draws the cart--the prisoner to be bound to the cart with a rope--to the Tolbooth of Edinburgh and from thence to be brought to the Parliament House and there in the place of delinquents on his knees to receive his sentence--viz. to be hanged on a gibbet at the Cross of Edinburgh with his book and declaration tied on a rope about his neck and there to hang for the space of three hours until he be dead; and thereafter to be cut down by the hangman his head hands and legs to be cut off and distributed as follows--viz. His head to be affixed on an iron pin and set on the pinnacle of the west gavel of the new prison of Edinburgh; one hand to be set on the port of Perth the other on the port of Stirling; one leg and foot on the port of Aberdeen the other on the port of Glasgow. If at his death penitent and relaxed from excommunication then the trunk of his body to be interred by pioneers in the Greyfriars; otherwise to be interred in the Boroughmuir by the hangman's men under the gallows.""--BALFOUR'S _Notes of Parliament_. It is needless to remark that this inhuman sentence was executed to the letter. In order that the exposure might be more complete the cart was constructed with a high chair in the centre having holes behind through which the ropes that fastened him were drawn. The author of the _Wigton Papers_ recently published by the Maitland Club says ""the reason of his being tied to the cart was in hope that the people would have stoned him and that he might not be able by his hands to save his face."" His hat was then pulled off by the hangman and the procession commenced. {C} ""In all the way there appeared in him such majesty courage modesty--and even somewhat more than natural--that those common women who had lost their husbands and children in his wars and who were hired to stone him were upon the sight of him so astonished and moved that their intended curses turned into tears and prayers; so that next day _all the ministers preached against them for not stoning and reviling him_.""--_Wigton Papers._ {D} ""It is remarkable that of the many thousand beholders the Lady Jean Gordon Countess of Haddington did (alone) publicly insult and laugh at him; which being perceived by a gentleman in the street he cried up to her that it became her better to sit upon the cart for her adulteries.""--_Wigton Papers._ This infamous woman was the third daughter of Huntly and the niece of Argyle. It will hardly be credited that she was the sister of that gallant Lord Gordon who fell fighting by the side of Montrose only five years before at the battle of Aldford! {E} ""The Lord Lorn and his new lady were also sitting on a balcony joyful spectators; and the cart being stopt when it came before the lodging where the Chancellor Argyle and Warristoun sat--that they might have time to insult--he suspecting the business turned his face towards them whereupon they presently crept in at the windows: which being perceived by an Englishman he cried up it was no wonder they started aside at his look for they durst not look him in the face these seven years bygone.""--_Wigton Papers._ {F} Archibald Johnston of Warristoun. This man who was the inveterate enemy of Montrose and who carried the most selfish spirit into every intrigue of his party received the punishment of his treasons about eleven years afterwards. It may be instructive to learn how _he_ met his doom. The following extract is from the MSS. of Sir George Mackenzie:--""The Chancellor and others waited to examine him; he fell upon his face roaring and with tears entreated they would pity a poor creature who had forgot all that was in the Bible. This moved all the spectators with a deep melancholy; and the Chancellor reflecting upon the man's great parts former esteem and the great share he had in all the late revolutions could not deny some tears to the frailty of silly mankind. At his examination he pretended he had lost so much blood by the unskilfulness of his chirurgeons that he lost his memory with his blood; and I really believe that his courage had been drawn out with it. Within a few days he was brought before the parliament where he discovered nothing but much weakness running up and down upon his knees begging mercy; but the parliament ordained his former sentence to be put to execution and accordingly he was executed at the cross of Edinburgh."" {G} ""He said he was much beholden to the parliament for the honour they put on him; 'for ' says he 'I think it a greater honour to have my head standing on the port of this town for this quarrel than to have my picture in the king's bedchamber. I am beholden to you that lest my loyalty should be forgotten ye have appointed five of your most eminent towns to bear witness of it to posterity.'""--_Wigton Papers._ {H} ""In his downgoing from the Tolbooth to the place of execution he was very richly clad in fine scarlet laid over with rich silver lace his hat in his hand his bands and cuffs exceeding rich his delicate white gloves on his hands his stockings of incarnate silk and his shoes with their ribands on his feet; and sarks provided for him with pearling about above ten pund the elne. All these were provided for him by his friends and a pretty cassock put on upon him upon the scaffold wherein he was hanged. To be short nothing was here deficient to honour his poor carcase more beseeming a bridegroom than a criminal going to the gallows.""--NICHOLL'S _Diary_. {I} The Presbyterian ministers beset Montrose both in prison and on the scaffold. The following extracts are from the diary of the Rev. Robert Traill one of the persons who were appointed by the commission of the kirk ""to deal with him:""--""By a warrant from the kirk we staid a while with him about his soul's condition. But we found him continuing in his old pride and taking very ill what was spoken to him saying 'I pray you gentlemen let me die in peace.' It was answered that he might die in true peace being reconciled to the Lord and to his kirk.""--""We returned to the commission and did show unto them what had passed amongst us. They seeing that for the present he was not desiring relaxation from his censure of excommunication did appoint Mr Mungo Law and me to attend on the morrow on the scaffold at the time of his execution that in case he should desire to be relaxed from his excommunication we should be allowed to give it unto him in the name of the kirk and to pray with him and for him _that what is loosed in earth might be loosed in heaven_."" But this pious intention which may appear somewhat strange to the modern Calvinist when the prevailing theories of the kirk regarding the efficacy of absolution are considered was not destined to be fulfilled. Mr Traill goes on to say ""But he did not at all desire to be relaxed from his excommunication in the name of the kirk _yea did not look towards that place on the scaffold where we stood_; only he drew apart some of the magistrates and spake a while with them and then went up the ladder in his red scarlet cassock in a very stately manner."" {J} ""He was very earnest that he might have the liberty to keep on his hat; it was denied: he requested he might have the privilege to keep his cloak about him--neither could that be granted. Then with a most undaunted courage he went up to the top of that prodigious gibbet.""--""The whole people gave a general groan; and it was very observable that even those who at his first appearance had bitterly inveighed against him could not now abstain from tears.""--_Montrose Redivivus._ THE WITCHFINDER. PART I. It was towards the close of an autumnal evening in the commencement of the sixteenth century that a crowd of human beings was dispersing from the old market-place of Hammelburg an ancient and at that time considerable town of Franconia after witnessing the performance of a hideous and living tragedy. The Ober-Amtmann or governor of the town who had presided over the awful occasion had left attended by his _schreibers_ or secretaries the small balustraded terrace which advanced out before the elevated entrance of the old Gothic town-hall. The town-guard were receding in various directions warning the crowd to seek their homes and sometimes aiding with a gentle admonition of their pike-heads those who lingered as slowly retreating they moved down the different narrow streets that led from the central market-place like streams flowing off in different channels after an inundation. Window after window was closing in the quaintly-carved and strangely-decorated gables of the houses; and many a small casement had been pulled to over sundry withered old faces that peering from the dark and narrow aperture and illumined by the glaring light that had filled the market-place had resembled some darkly-traced picture placed against the opening. In the middle of the square still smoked in a heavy volume of cloud the last gleaming ashes of a lately blazing pile still filling the air with a noisome stench. The night was closing darkly in and one human being alone seemed yet to linger in the market-place. It would have been difficult indeed to discover that the dark object just discernible upon the edge of the blackened mass of smoking cinders really was a human being so shapeless was the form so strangely was it crouched down before the spot where the pile had been consumed. From time to time only an upward-flung movement of two thin arms as if in the violent emotion of earnest prayer or deprecation showed that this object was a living thing; until when the moon rose from behind the old town-hall disengaging itself ever and anon from among the heavy clouds of a gathering storm its light fell full upon this indistinct apparition and revealed the form of a man curiously bent together in a half-squatting half-kneeling position. His head was bare. His long tangled black locks hung around a swarthy face young still in years but worn and withered and prematurely aged by sickness sorrow or violence of passion--perhaps by the constant operation of all three. At this moment it was ghastly pale and bore the marks of the faintness and exhaustion attendant upon a reaction after intense excitement. The dress of this creature was not the usual costume of the lower classes and consisted almost entirely of a ragged and soiled garment of coarse brown linen made somewhat in the shape of a modern _blouse_ and bound round his waist by a coarse leathern band. Around his neck hung a square bag or satchel which at once designated his calling to be that of a common beggar privileged by the religious authorities of the place. The stoop of his broad shoulders between which the head was deeply sunk told a tale of long sickness which had broken a frame originally bold and strong and given a peculiarly ill-favoured appearance to a form naturally well built; and when he arose from his squatting posture the bent and withered appearance of his crooked legs which no longer possessed sufficient strength to support the bulkier frame above gave painful evidence that the wretched man had suffered cruelly from those common scourges of his class at that period--rheumatism and ague. Clasped between his hands was a rosary of wood; and as he rose he pressed it to his lips and then deposited it in the upper part of his garment. ""No no!"" exclaimed the cripple aloud when he had staggered to his feet. ""No it is not vengeance--it is not God knows; although the malevolence of those hideous and accursed hags those lemans of Satan""--and he spat upon the ground--""have made me the wretched outcast of humanity I am. The blood of the foul one has been shed for His glory only and that of the blessed Virgin to the destruction of the arch-enemy of mankind and his delusions!"" ""Thou knowest it is so "" he added again clutching forth the rosary from his bosom which after gazing upon a rude personification of the Virgin stamped upon a tiny plate of copper at the end of the string of beads and devoutly making the sign of the cross he returned to its usual depository. ""I have cried against the handmaid of Beelzebub--uttering cry for cry as she shrieked out her wretched soul. I have prayed earnestly and long and I am athirst "" continued the cripple as he dragged his distorted limbs with difficulty over the rough stones towards a large covered well which occupied the lower part of the market-place. As the beggar approached the parapet of the well to drink from one of the buckets which reposed upon its edge he became first aware of the presence of another human being. Half-concealed behind one of the twisted columns that supported the Gothic pavilion above sat upon the parapet a female figure dressed in a black garb of such a form and nature that without being the exact costume of any known religious order it bore a monastic character. Her face as she sat with her head bent down over her clasped hands in an attitude of mournful humiliation was fully concealed by a black hood. But when upon the approach of the beggar she started up hastily as if impelled by feelings of horror and disgust the moon shone full upon her and revealed the features of a woman of an advanced period of life who formerly might have possessed much beauty although now so washed out by tears and furrowed by sorrow that the whole character of her face was changed. Her years too were probably very much fewer than her appearance denoted for the signs of age upon her face bore less the marks of time than of mental suffering. The symptoms of aversion which her manner displayed upon the beggar's approach although instinctive and involuntary and almost immediately restrained had not escaped his eye. His features expressed the bitter resentment of his heart at this insult and worked with ill-repressed feelings of anger and spite. ""Ha! Mother Magdalena--it is thou! Why flinchest thou at my approach? Hast thou cause to fear me then?"" exclaimed the cripple with a sneer as he drew nearer. The female thus addressed shuddered at the sound of his voice; and hastily pulling her dark hood more closely over her face endeavoured to pass on without reply; but the beggar caught her by the arm. ""Not so fast beldam!"" he cried. ""I would have a word with thee. Dost thou not know me?"" ""Not know thee!"" exclaimed the dark female. ""Who in this wretched town does not know Schwartzer Claus the witchfinder? What wouldst thou with me? Let me go!"" ""Why dost thou tremble then and turn away thy head?"" continued the cripple. ""Why does Black Claus the witchfinder--since such thou callest me--make thee shudder thus in every limb? The innocent have no cause to fear."" ""Thou askest me why I shudder?"" said Magdalena in an excited tone forgetting in her agitation her purpose of self-control. ""Thou hast forced me to speak and I will tell thee. Is not thy hand yet reeking with the bloody ashes of thy last victim? Has not a seventh unhappy woman suffered this very day a cruel death at the stake upon thy hideous denunciation; and thou askest me why I shudder?"" ""Beware woman--beware!"" cried the witchfinder lifting up his long right arm with a gesture of menace. ""Those who defend the evil-doer and malign the just and heaven-directed accuser are not far from being arraigned as accomplices themselves!"" ""What! thou seekest already another innocent sacrifice wretched man!"" continued the female tearing away her arm which the beggar still held clenched in his left hand. ""Thou art not sated with the innocent blood thy false witness has this day shed?"" ""It is a lie!--it is a damning lie!"" screamed the cripple foaming with passion. ""I have borne no false witness! Besides did not she avow her deeds of darkness? did she not confess her complicity with the spirits of hell and her harlotries with the arch-deceiver of mankind?"" ""Ay! when tortured in mind and body her poor weak old head gave way and she unconsciously affirmed all that her torturers had for hours past been pressing upon her wavering understanding. Ye had driven her mad poor wretch!"" ""'Tis false again!--'tis false!"" repeated the witchfinder. ""The truth spoke out of her at last when her treacherous paramour the demon had deserted her. God's glory and that of the holy church for which I work had triumphed over the powers of darkness."" ""Thou serve the holy church! Hear not the blasphemy O Lord!"" cried the excited woman raising up her hands to heaven. ""Thou miserable wretch! who for the favour of the Amtmann or the priest for the pittance bestowed on thee in reward of thy discovery of the supposed foul practices of witchery and magic art ever ready to sell the innocent blood of the aged helpless and infirm!"" ""For the lucre of gain!"" screamed the cripple but in a tone as much of despair at this accusation as of wrath. ""For the lucre of gain! No--no; as God is my judge it is not! My motives are pure; God and the Holy Virgin know they are! It is not even a spirit of revenge that instigates me. No--no! it cannot be; it _is_ not! If the words of my mouth have condemned and killed it is because my voice was uplifted in the cause of religion and to the confusion of the prince of evil!"" But as he spoke the beggar covered his face with his hands with a shudder as though there passed in his soul a struggle with himself--a doubt of his own real motives. Magdalena was about to quit in haste her dangerous companion when a sentiment of pity at the sight of the cripple's evident emotion seemed to mingle strangely with her disgust and aversion to the witchfinder. It was even with an uncontrollable feeling of interest that she stopped for a moment to look upon the wretched man. After a pause the beggar removed his hands from his face and uttering in a low tone the words ""I thirst "" staggered to the edge of the well and seized the bucket within his hands. He bent over it but for a moment to drink and could scarcely have swallowed many mouthfuls before flinging back the bucket into the well he started up and spat the water from his mouth. ""Horror!"" he said with a look of mingled terror and insanity--""it tastes of blood!"" ""It is thy own conscience poor man that troubles the taste of the fresh element "" said Magdalena solemnly; ""the water is pure and sweet!"" ""Thou hast done this old hag!"" cried the witchfinder wildly; unheeding her remark. ""Thou hast corrupted the waters at the source. Why did I find thee sitting here cowering over the surface of the well if it were not to cast malefick spells upon the water and turn it into poison--in order to give ills and ails and blains and aches and pains and sickness and death to thy fellow-creatures? Ha! ha! I have long thought it. Thou also art one of the accursed ones!"" ""Thou ravest miserable wretch!"" replied the female; ""thou knowest not what thou utterest. God forgive thee cripple thy wicked thought and change thy perverted mind!"" She was again about to turn away and leave her angry questioner when fearing the result of the evil feeling now fully excited in the witchfinder's mind she again paused to excuse herself in the eyes of the dangerous man and added-- ""Thou canst not mean what thou sayest Claus; I sat by the well but to cool my heated brow in the night-air and taste the breath of heaven; for my mind was saddened and my head whirled with the horrors that this day has witnessed."" But her words were but oil upon the flame and only served to augment the wild infatuation of the witchfinder. ""Ah! thy mind was saddened! Thou hadst pity for that vile hag of hell! Was she thy comrade? Perchance thou hadst fear for thyself? Thou thought'st thy own time might come? Thy own time _will_ come old Magdalena. My eye is upon thee and thy dark practices; it has been upon thee since thou camest unknown and unacknowledged to this place none could tell when and whence and how. Ay my eye is upon thee and--beware!"" Willingly would the woman now have shrunk away before the maddened witchfinder's objurgation; but the wild accusation thus thundered against her froze her with terror and riveted her to the spot. ""I have marked thee well "" continued the frantic man ""and I have seen thee pause upon the threshold of the holy house of God and kneel in mockery upon the steps before it: but thou hast never dared to enter it. Thou knewest well that the devil thou servest would have torn thee in pieces hadst thou done it. Ha! do I catch thee there?"" he continued as at these words the woman buried her face between her hands. ""Thou canst not deny it!"" shouted the witchfinder with an air of triumph. ""God best judges the motives of the heart "" murmured Magdalena. ""I will tell thee more vile hag and thou shalt hear it face to face "" pursued the cripple seizing the poor woman's arms with his long bony fingers and dragging her hands from before her face in spite of her efforts at resistance. ""Thou watchest at street corners and in doorways on the bridge or on the causeway to see fair Fraulein Bertha the Ober-Amtmann's daughter ride past upon her ambling jennet or mount the church-steps her missal in her hand. Thou watchest her to cast thy spells upon her. Thou hatest her for her youth and beauty and spotless purity like all thy wretched tribe whom the sight of innocence and brightness sickens to the heart's core. Thou wouldst fascinate her with thy eye of evil and thy deadly incantations."" The moon the light of which still struggled faintly through the fast-accumulating clouds shone for a moment upon the face of old Magdalena as the cripple pronounced these words. Her features were more deadly pale than usual and convulsed with an excess of agitation at this mention of Bertha's name which she evidently struggled to control in vain. ""Ah! I have thee there again!"" screamed Claus in triumph a second time. ""Already have I seen her cheek grow pale her head bow down like a blighted flower her walk become weary with faintness. Hast thou already been at thy filthy machinations? But Black Claus the witchfinder is there to wrestle with the powers of evil. And hear me! That fair sweet girl is the only comfort of my wretched life. My soul grows calm and soothed when I look upon that lovely face. A ray of sunshine gleams upon the darkness of my path when her smile beams upon me. My heart leaps within me for joy when her small white hand drops an offering into my beggar's bowl. She is my only life my only joy and my guardian angel. And couldst thou harm her woman no torment should be too horrible for thee body and soul. The chains of the stake still lie upon the market-place--the ashes of yon pile still reek with heat; and the pile shall rise again the chains shall bind once more. Wretched hag! I bid thee again beware!"" As with one hand the raving witchfinder pointed to the spot where one unhappy woman had already perished that day a victim to the super
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tition of the times Magdalena who during his praise of the fair girl had again looked at him with awakened interest disengaged herself from the other. ""God's will be done!"" she said with humility. ""I am prepared for all. But thou unhappy man!"" she continued ""beware in turn lest before thou hast time to repent thee of the hardness and cruelty of thy heart His judgement fall on thee and his justice punish thee."" She spoke with hand upraised to heaven; and then pulling her hood over her face hurried from the market-place. The witchfinder gazed after her fixed to the spot and for a moment awe-struck by her words. As he still stood struggling with his various passions the storm which had been gathering ever since sunset began to burst over his head. The rain came down in torrents. ""Ah! was it that?"" screamed the beggar with a fit of wild laughter. ""The miserable old beldam! she stretched out her finger to the sky and it was to bring down these waterspouts upon my head. Curses on the foul malicious fiend!"" And he spat upon the ground as if to exorcise the evil spirit. ""But I must find shelter "" he murmured. ""Already pains rack my limbs; my bones ache; a shudder runs through my frame! The old hag has worked her spell upon me. _Apage Sathanas!_ Anathema!"" Speaking thus the wretched man shuffled along as fast as the crippled state of his limbs and the acute pains of rheumatism which the damp night-air had again brought upon him would allow him to proceed. He staggered to the shelter of a doorway which was placed under the advancing terrace of the town-hall and between two staircases which descended on either side on to the market-place. The protruding vault of the Gothic archway afforded him some refuge from the storm which now burst down with increased violence. But the excited witchfinder's brain seemed to wander as he caught an indistinct vision of the gaping jaws of the dragons and other grotesque monsters which protruded as waterspouts from the roofs of the surrounding houses and now disgorged torrents of rain. ""Spit spit ye devils all!"" he shouted aloud. ""Ye cannot reach me here. Ha! ha! rage storm spew forth your venom do the bidding of your mistress--I defy you!"" And as the wind swept round the corners of the building and spattered some of the water of the gushing cataracts in his face he cried ""Avaunt!"" as if speaking to a living thing and clinging to the bars of an aperture in the upper part of the door turned away his face. As he thus came to look upon the strongly-barred opening in the door the current of his ideas changed. Within was the small and wretched prison of the town which just occupied the space of the terrace above--a miserable hole. ""There she lay this morning "" he murmured looking into the interior which was now in utter darkness and quite empty--""there she lay old Martha Dietz and called in vain upon the demon who deserted her. There have lain all the foul hags who tortured my poor aching limbs. There shall _she_ lie also the scoffer and reviler the worker of evil. The witchfinder will be revenged. Revenge! no no! He will do the work of the holy church. Who shall say the contrary? Not thou old Martha--nor thou--nor thou. If ye say so ye lie in death as ye have lied in life. Ay! glare upon me with your lack-lustre eyes. Ye are powerless now though ye are there and make mouths at me. One--two--three--God stand by me! There they are--_all seven!_"" With a wild scream of horror the cripple covered his eyes with his hands and rushed forth into the tempest. Situated in the picturesque and fertile valley of the Saale the town of Hammelburg stands upon a gentle declivity commanding one of the numerous windings of the river and sloping downwards to its banks. A part of the old walls of the town is thus bathed by the waters of the stream which calm and peaceful in the summer months become tumultuous and even dangerous during rainy weather or after the melting of the snows. From the ancient gateway of the town on the river side a triple bridge of great length and many arches which in the dry season seems to occupy a most unnecessary space across the narrower waters but which at other times scarce suffices to span the extent of the invading inundation affords a communication with the high-road. At the commencement of the sixteenth century this bridge was only constructed of wood and although put together with rude strength ill-sufficed to resist the force of the torrents and had been repeatedly swept before them. Not far from the town gateway that commanded this bridge stood a huge mansion constructed as a palace for the Prince Bishops of Fulda the sovereign rulers of the district; although at the period in question it had been ceded to the Ober-Amtmann a near relation of the reigning bishop as his official dwelling. On the side of this ancient palace furthest removed from the town gate ran along the river's banks its spacious gardens abutting at their extremity upon the premises of an extensive Benedictine monastery from which they were only separated by a narrow lane that led from the town to the river. At the very angle of this lane where it opened by a small water-gate upon a narrow towing-path skirting alike the town-walls and the banks of the stream there stood a low building attached to the monastery the upper story of which thus overlooked the old gardens of the palace on the one hand and on the other the river banks. At one of the windows of this humble dwelling that which overlooked the palace gardens stood a young man intently gazing through its small octagon panes. Two or three times he turned away with a heavy sigh as if wearied with long and vain watching and as often returned again to his previous occupation. At length the opening of the door of the room startled him from his position; and as if ashamed of being caught in the act of looking out he hurried to a table in the middle of the room and flung himself into an old chair. The various objects with which the table was covered as well as those which filled and littered the room in all directions clearly designated the young man's employment to be that of a sculptor and colourer of images for the ornament of churches as well as an illuminator of missals and manuscripts--an occupation at that time still pursued although gradually falling into disuse since the invention of printing. Scattered about upon the table were several old parchment manuscripts which had served as models for the artist's use or had been confided to his hands to clean. Old illuminated missals some of the gorgeous illustrations of which were open as if lately retouched by the hand of the young painter lay here and there. At the further end of the table stood a small figure of a Virgin and Child delicately and exquisitely carved and painted with the richest colours. The group was bright with its fresh finish and evidently had not long been completed by the hand of the artist. Upon an elevated bench or dresser were littered the tools of the sculptor and wood-carver with a few unfinished trials of small saintly figures; and around the room were fragments of wooden images of saints some discoloured some broken a few in tolerable preservation which were either destined to be restored and repainted or had served as studies for the artist. Upon the walls hung a few pictures of female saints bedecked with garlands of flowers which showed them to be objects of devotion and respect in the eyes of the possessor. Among all this confusion space was scarcely left in the small chamber of the artist for the pallet-bed and cumbrous press that formed his only furniture. Immediately before the chair into which the young man so hastily flung himself lay a rich missal upon the adornment of which he had been employed before other thoughts and feelings had sent him to the window; and when he again resumed his work it was upon the face of a fair saint which formed the headpiece of a chapter peering out from among the various graceful arabesques that twined in the brightest colours along the margin of the leaf. In truth the face of the young artist was almost as fair as that of the bright being he was engaged in painting. His light brown hair was parted in the middle over a high white forehead and fell in faintly waving curls almost to his neck forming a frame to the soft oval face to which his violet-blue melancholy-looking eyes his calm finely-chiselled features and the serious repose of his imaginative mouth imparted an air of gentleness and thoughtfulness combined. His dark sober-coloured simple dress although somewhat too severe to suit his youthful figure accorded well with the character of his physiognomy. His falling collar displayed a full white throat which might have served as a model for a statue of Antinous had it not borne more the stamp of genius in its proportions than of physical voluptuousness. The hands which now hastily resumed their neglected occupation had all the fairness and well-moulded contour of a woman's without that delicacy of size which would have stamped them as effeminate. Had he been aware of his own beauty he might have copied his own graceful form for a personification of the lily-bearing angel in a group of the Annunciation. The person who had startled him from the window by opening the door of his room was an aged-looking woman in a plain dress of coarse black serge. She bore in her hands a coarse brown porringer filled with steaming viands a lump of dark homely bread and a white cloth. ""Ah! my good Magdalena art thou there?"" said the young artist raising his head with an almost unconscious affectation of surprise as though unexpectedly disturbed at his work. ""You forget all hours and all human wants in your zeal for your beautiful art Master Gottlob "" said the woman. ""I bring you your noon-day repast which you would never have called for had I allowed it to stand by even until sundown. But I have ventured to transgress your orders. You must be faint with long fasting;"" and the old woman made a movement as if to place the food upon the table before the artist. ""Thanks good Magdalena! thanks!"" said the young man looking at her with that sweet smile and tender expression of his mild blue eyes which had procured him among all who knew him the constant designation of ""Gentle Gottlob;"" but at the same time repelling the porringer. ""Not here. Place the food elsewhere. I will eat anon. I am not hungry now; and I must not leave my work. I have promised it to his noble reverence the prior for the eve of the fête of St Ursula and to-morrow is the very day. There is still much to do. It seems as if I could never give sufficient finish to this face or impart to it with my dull colours and rebellious pencil that look of heavenly brightness that ought to dwell upon it. And yet alas! I would it never could be finished! It will break my heart to part with it--although I love not my own work nor deem it excellent. But still I cherish it--all imperfect as it is--I know not why; and when to-morrow comes and I must give it up into his reverence's hands it seems that my life and spirit would depart from me with its loss and that all around me would be dark and joyless."" After placing the porringer and bread upon a spare corner of the sculptor's working bench Magdalena moved gently behind the young man's chair and having asked respectfully his pardon looked over his shoulder. At the sight of the fair face upon which the young artist was bestowing so much care her looks betrayed feelings of surprise mingled with much emotion. Once or twice she passed her hand over her eyes as if doubting the reality of what she saw. It was some time before she could sufficiently master her agitation to speak; and when at last she spoke after a long-drawn sigh it was with a tone which still betrayed in spite of her efforts the interest inspired in her by the painter's work of art. ""It is indeed a fine performance and right bravely limned "" she said; ""and in truth the countenance you have given to yonder saint with the pale glory is one of exquisite beauty. I wonder not that you should be grieved to look upon so sweet a face no more; although methinks I know a face as fair to which it bears a marvellous resemblance."" ""What meanest thou Magdalena?"" said the young artist bending his head still lower over his work. ""Whom dost thou know who could bear a likeness to this creation of my own imagination?"" ""Of your own memory Master Gottlob! you should have said "" pursued Magdalena. ""Surely--or my eyes deceive themselves most strangely--although in that sweet face they were not easily deceived; surely the face is that of""---- The old woman again paused as if to suppress her emotion. ""Of whom?"" enquired Gottlob in a low tone also in much agitation. ""Of the fair Fraulein Bertha the noble Ober-Amtmann's daughter."" ""You think so Magdalena?"" replied the young man. ""Perhaps it maybe a slight shade of a resemblance caught unconsciously""---- ""It is she herself "" exclaimed Magdalena. ""It is the same angelic smile--the same beam of innocent brightness athwart her brow! It is she!"" ""Perhaps thou art right "" stammered Gottlob still in much confusion but evidently well pleased with the species of praise thus bestowed upon his performance. ""There is in truth more resemblance to the Fraulein Bertha than I had thought."" Magdalena seemed for a minute lost in her reflection as if a new and painful idea had struck her; and after giving a long and anxious look at the window from which the young artist had drawn back upon her entrance she pressed her hand heavily to her heart as if to support her in a sudden resolution and advancing to the artist's side said in an earnest tone ""Young man! thou lovest her!"" ""Magdalena! thou knowest not what thou sayest "" cried Gottlob more harshly than as the wont of his gentle nature. ""Oh! pardon me if I have offended. Condemn me not!"" said the excited woman. ""But I do entreat you tell me! Tell me your secret as you would confide it to a mother--to your own mother Gottlob. It is the purest interest for you--for her--that guides me! I swear it to you! Oh! tell me--is it not so? You love that fair and gentle girl!"" The young man looked at his strange interrogator with some astonishment at her evident agitation. The tears were swelling in her eyes. But without pausing to question the reasons of her emotion--so absorbed is love in its own self--he rose and took the old woman's hand. ""Yes! I will speak; my heart has long been overcharged with its own secret even to bursting "" he said; ""and it throbs to unburden itself into some sympathizing heart! And why not thine good Magdalena? Ever since fate has brought us so strangely together thou hast been like a mother to me!"" ""Do not I owe you all?"" interrupted the old woman; ""my life--my daily bread--a shelter for my old limbs in the cell below?"" ""Alas! I have but little to give poor Magdalena!"" said the young man kindly. ""And that little thou hast shared with me as a son "" continued Magdalena bending her head over his hand as if to kiss it. ""Yes thou shalt know all "" pursued Gottlob; ""for it would seem as though the destiny that threw thee in my way were linked with hers. Her image it was that led me to the spot where first I saw thee. It was the last day of the Carnival at the beginning of this year and there was a fête at the palace of the Ober-Amtmann. I had long gazed with adoration upon that angelic face and treasured it in my heart. I already worshipped yon saintly portraits because in one--God forgive me the profane thought!--I had found a faint forth-showing of the beam of her bright eye; in another the gentle dimpled smile of her sweet mouth; in a third her pure and saint-like brow. It was not for such as I a poor artist to be invited to the noble Amtmann's fête; but I thought that through the windows in the illuminated halls I might perchance trace her passing shadow. I fancied that by some unforeseen accident she might come forth upon the terrace overhanging the river's banks--a foolish fancy for the night was wintry and cold. I hoped to see her no matter how; and I wandered out of the town--for its gates were open for that holiday--to look upon the lighted windows of the palace from the opposite side of the stream. The snow was on the ground. My mantle scarcely preserved me from the bitter cold. But I felt it not. It was only when a groan sounded near me that I thought on the sufferings of others in such a night. I looked around me; and there not far from me on the snow before the very windows of the palace where within was music and dancing and feasting and mirth lay thy form poor Magdalena! Feeble helpless stiff with cold thou appearedst to me in the last agonies of death."" ""Yes; I had laid me down to die in sorrow and despair. It is too true "" sobbed the old woman in a voice choked with tears. ""But your hand raised me up--your arms warmed me into life--your voice encouraged me and gave me force. You brought me to your home fostered me and nursed me--me an unknown outcast whose very history you did not even seek to know--whose silence and secrecy you respected. Your kindness saved me from despair and gave me hope; and I lived on in order to pay were it possible my debt of gratitude to my preserver."" ""Good Magdalena "" said the young man soothingly taking her withered hands between his own ""I did but the duty of a Christian man."" ""And you love her then?"" resumed Magdalena recalling her young preserver to his promised confidence. ""Love her!"" exclaimed Gottlob with an impassioned fervour which gave his gentle face a look of inspiration. ""Love her! She is my vision by day--my dream by night. When I read it is her voice that seems to speak to me from the Minnesinger's poesy. When I paint it is her form that grows under my pencil. When I pray it is her seraphic smile that seems to beam upon me down from heaven. I wander forth: it is to meet her in her walks. I kneel in the church: it is to breathe the same air as she!"" At these words Magdalena covered her face and uttered a suppressed groan. ""I rise from my labour which of old was a labour of love to me and now is oft an irksome task: it is to watch for her coming forth into the garden. I have neither rest by day nor by night. Where there was repose in my heart there is now eternal fever."" ""And she?"" said Magdalena with a low tone of anxiety as if fearful of the answer she might receive. ""Does she know--does she return your love?"" ""How should she deign to remark a worm like me?"" was the young artist's answer. ""How should I dare to breathe my affection in her ear were it even possible for me to approach her? And yet she looks upon me kindly "" continued the young lover encouraging himself in vague hopes at the same time that he condemned their presumption. ""When I doff my cap to the noble Amtmann's daughter as she ambles forth by her proud father's side she will answer with so sweet a smile and greet me with a wave of her riding-switch--with what a grace!--and then grow red thereby and then grow pale. When I offer her the holy water as she passes from the church she will cast down her trembling eyelids and yet will see withal who offers it; and when I stand at yon window as she rambles in the garden she will pluck flower after flower as though she knew not why; then fling them all aside then pick them up with care; then disappear as if she had gone back and yet come forth again."" Magdalena's brow grew thoughtful and anxious as Gottlob proceeded in his enumeration of these symptoms. Her bosom heaved painfully her hands were clenched together. ""Poor child! should it be so!"" she murmured casting her eyes upon the ground; and then raising them again to Gottlob's face into which she looked with scrutinizing eagerness she said aloud--""And yet you do not think she loves you?"" ""She love me!"" cried the young man. ""Such a dream of bliss were madness! Can I forget the immeasurable gulf that separates the noble daughter of the high-placed Amtmann from the poor and humble artist--the dependent of a cloister? No Magdalena. I must die as I have lived the poor unloved and uncared-for orphan--die without a sigh of pity without a tear of sorrow from her eye."" ""Have you then no friends poor youth?"" said Magdalena. ""None. Yes! I am ungrateful. I have one--a kind protector; but he is far removed and I have seen him seldom."" ""The Prince Bishop of Fulda!"" repeated the old woman with some degree of agitation. ""Perhaps--yet it is a wild and foolish thought--perhaps all hope is not shut out to you."" ""What sayest thou then old Magdalena?"" said the youth. ""Hope were but torture were it vain; and so it must be""---- ""Yes. I was wrong. Heed not my words! But know you not that your patron the bishop is close at hand? Already I have heard that he arrived this morning at his castle of Saaleck at half a league's distance from the town; and he will probably shortly enter Hammelburg as is his wont."" ""These are glad tidings!"" said Gottlob his eyes beaming with joy. ""I will at once to Saaleck and if the prince admit me to his presence throw myself at his feet assure him of all my gratitude for the past and offer him my poor service for the future."" With these words the young man hurried to his cumbrous chest and pulling out a short cloak flung it around him. A small cap of black velvet of the cut of the time which showed off to advantage the beauty of his youthful face was hastily thrown upon his head. He was about to quit the chamber when Magdalena caught him by the arm. ""Thy repast Master Gottlob."" ""Have I time to think of that?"" said the eager youth swallowing however in haste a few mouthfuls of the broth to satisfy the old woman's look of supplication. ""And when you mount or descend the mountain-path that leads to the castle on its brow "" said the old woman during Gottlob's hasty meal ""if you can still have a thought for poor old Magdalena she begs you enter the chapel on the mountain-side which is esteemed so holy that it is permitted to be a sanctuary of refuge to the criminal and say a short prayer for her soul's weal."" ""Can those so good and kind as thou Magdalena need the prayers of such as I?"" said the young man. ""The fervent supplications of the young and pure at heart are always acceptable "" replied Magdalena evasively but in a sad and earnest tone. ""So be it--and fare-thee-well "" said Gottlob finishing his last mouthful and hurrying to depart. ""And heed you gentle youth "" again cried Magdalena ""as you cross the bridge to leave the town. The river is much swollen with the late rains so much as to threaten destruction to the tottering fabric."" ""I fear no such danger "" was the young man's reply; ""and besides have I not thy charm?"" he continued laughing holding up a black ring inscribed with strange characters that hung about his neck. ""Oh say not so!"" said the old woman earnestly as a recollection of the Witchfinder's dreadful threats the night before came across her mind. ""Call it not a charm! The holy church permits not of such dealings. It was but a remembrance that I gave you to think sometimes on the poor wretch whose life you had preserved. It was of little value; but I had nought else to give. I prayed only that it might bring happiness to you boy for it had brought nothing but misery and wretchedness to me."" Long before old Magdalena could complete her sentence the eager youth had left the room. The old woman looked after him for a time with a look of gratitude and then hurrying to the artist's table threw herself down upon her knees beside the open missal and gazed with intense eagerness upon the picture of the fair saint upon which he had been painting. She approached her lips as if to kiss it; then again drew back as if she feared to mar the colouring by her caress: then gazed again until her eyes filled with tears: and at last with the cry ""Yes! it is she--her very self!"" burst into a fit of convulsive sobbing and buried her face between her hands. As she still lay crouched upon her knees a partly-concealed door which led towards the monastery and was almost in disuse slowly opened and a figure enveloped in a monk's robe and cowl entered the room. Magdalena was not at first aware of the entrance of the stranger; and it was only when after looking about the room as if to assure himself that no one was there he approached the table that she heard the footstep and lifted up her head in surprise. The intruder evidently as little expected to find the room already tenanted; for he also started upon seeing the kneeling woman. But the astonishment of both parties was greatly increased when their eyes met each other. Far from attempting to rise from her knees Magdalena remained in an attitude of supplication before the stranger who was an aged man of mild aspect and folding her arms across her heart bent down her head like a penitent in order to avoid his scrutinizing look. ""Magdalena! thou here!"" said the seeming monk in a tone of voice which naturally that of benevolence he evidently strove to render harsh and severe. ""How comes this? Thou hast left without my knowledge the seclusion of the convent in which I placed thee? In defiance of thy solemn promise and thy accepted vow of penitence thou hast approached this town--thou hast sought perhaps forgetful of thy oath""---- ""No no "" interrupted the agitated woman ""that cruel oath has sealed my lips for ever. God knows and you reverend father--you know that I had accepted the bitterest trial woman can bear on earth in expiation of my past sin. Long did I observe my vow of penitence without a murmur to heaven or to you. But I thought to die. A fever had seized me and a burning thought came over me that I no longer could withstand. O God forgive me--but my head was turned--I knew not what I did! I longed to see once more on earth that object that was my only earthly joy. That uncontrollable desire overcame the stubborn resolution of a vow which long years of tears and mortification had striven to fortify in vain. I fled. I hoped once more to glad my eyes--but once----but once my father and then to lay me down and die trusting in God's pardon and your reverence's."" And Magdalena bowed her head to the ground as a criminal awaiting her sentence. ""Thou hast erred woman--bitterly and grievously "" replied the stranger harshly adding however with a feeling of indulgence that his kindly nature evidently could ill suppress ""but the struggle of the spirit with the weakness of the body in sickness and in fever is heavy to bear. And yet "" he continued again assuming a severity of manner ""thou livest and I still find thee here. Thou hast remained to feast thy eyes upon thy earthly treasure in forgetfulness of thy vow of mortification for thy soul's weal."" ""Pardon!"" cried Magdalena raising her hands in supplication. ""But thou must leave this place forthwith "" continued the monk. ""Return to the convent and employ thyself in such acts of penitence as my orders shall prescribe."" ""Pardon!"" again cried the unhappy woman ""for my vow is heavier than I can bear. It is a task beyond the force of human nature!"" ""Foolish woman!"" exclaimed the stranger. ""Wouldst thou compromise the happiness and peace of mind of the being thou lovest best by the danger of a discovery to which thy presence here might lead? Thy expiation is severe. Such as we alas!"" and the monk heaved a sigh ""who cannot feel the vibration of some of the tenderest chords of humanity know not how to sound in its profundity; but I can judge that it must be grievous to bear. Still it must be so. Go then in peace--but go. What I command no longer in the name of thy salvation I ask of thy heart for the repose of thy heart's treasure."" ""Father "" said the penitent sobbing at his feet--""I obey! But I have still a secret to impart to you upon which depends perhaps the happiness of that beloved one. Oh! deign to hear me."" ""In three days hence let me receive thy shrift at the convent of Saint Bridget "" continued the ecclesiastic. ""There also I will hear thy secret. But tell me "" he added looking round the room with some surprise--""how comest thou here in gentle master Gottlob's studio?"" ""It was he who saved my life "" answered Magdalena striving to repress her sobbing ""when in the midst of the snows and the keen blast of winter death had laid hands upon me. Ever since he has cherished and nourished the unknown outcast in his abode."" ""Generous youth!"" said the stranger. ""I came to witness alone and unbiassed his progress in his noble art; and I find that the heart soars as nobly as the head. So should ever be true genius! Yes yes!"" he murmured to himself looking around ""he advances towards perfection with rapid strides. This arabesque is exquisite. And this head how beautiful! And yon statue of our Holy Mother--what heavenly grace in its fashioning!"" And with more of such commendatory observations interspersed now and then with a few gentle criticisms which showed the connoisseur as well as the gratified admirer he took up and examined the various designs dispersed upon the table. When his curiosity seemed fully satisfied he again turned to Magdalena. ""I must away "" he said; ""for I have still many arduous and painful duties to perform and my time is limited. I rely upon thy strict secrecy Magdalena. I would not it should be known that I was here. And remember in three days at Saint Bridget's convent!"" With these words he stretched forth his hand. She again knelt and kissed it devoutly; and pulling his black robe and cowl more closely about his face and person the monk disappeared by the concealed door. Magdalena still knelt overcome by her various emotions when a sound from the window looking into the river startled her and caused her to turn round. An involuntary scream burst from her lips; for from among the branches of a tree that grew upon the river's banks and overhung the window peered through the dingy panes the pale face of the witchfinder. It was about the hour of vespers; and an unusually dense crowd of the town's people of Hammelburg of all ages ranks and sexes swarmed in the small open space before the fine old Gothic church of the town and stood in many a checkered group--here of fat thriving _bourgeois_ and their portly wives dragging in their hands chubby and rebellious little urchins who looked all but spherical in their monstrous puffed hose or short wadded multifold petticoats the miniature reproductions of the paternal and maternal monstrosities of attire--there of more noisy and clamorous artizans in humbler and less preposterous dress--on the one side of chattering serving-damsels almost crushed under their high pyramidical black caps worn in imitation of an ancient fashion of their betters--on the other of grave counsellors and _schreibers_ in their black costumes interlarding their pompous phrases with most canine Latin--here again of the plumed and checkered soldiers of the civic guard--there of ragged-robed beggars whose whine had become a second nature--all in a constant ferment of movement and noise until the square might be fancied to look like the living and crawling mass of an old worm-eaten cheese. The congregation of the multitude had been induced by a report prevalent throughout the town that the Prince Bishop whose arrival from Fulda at his castle of Saaleck close at hand had been announced was about to make his entrance in grand state and that a holy and solemn service to celebrate this event was to be performed at the high church. Already however other rumours were afloat among the crowd; and it began to be confidently stated that a sudden change of plans had forced the Prince Bishop to renounce his intention. Listening with anxiety on the outskirts of a group to the discussion upon the probabilities or improbabilities of the service taking place in the absence of the Prince stood Magdalena. She was attired in her usual dark semi-monastic dress; but to this was now added the scrip wallet and tall crossheaded staff of the wandering pilgrim. As the prevailing opinion appeared to be that the Ober-Amtmann would attend at all events at the celebration of the church rites intended to be performed Magdalena turned away with a calmer air murmuring to herself the words-- ""I shall see her once more--once and for the last time: and God surely will forgive the sin if such it be. One look of last farewell! and then again a long expiation of penitence and prayer."" So saying she traversed the small square to the broad s
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airs of the church where she sat herself down upon the highest step among a group of beggar women and ragged children and sinking her head to the ground seemed to dispose herself to wait with patience. Shortly afterwards a young man also began to mount the steps leading to the great entrance of the church as if with the intention of placing himself near the arch in so favourable a position as to be close by all those who should pass into the interior. He bounded upwards with anxious haste and beating heart--although there was yet a long interval before the commencement of the service--and with a movement so hurried and agitated that he brushed rudely against one person of a group in his way. He turned with a gentleness of feeling unusual at the time towards the lower classes to crave of the female he had pushed a pardon for his awkwardness. At the sound of his voice the old woman raised her head. ""Magdalena!"" cried the young man with surprise as he recognised upon her the evident symbols of travel and wayfaring peculiar to that age ""What means this pilgrim's garb?"" ""Alas! kind gentle Master Gottlob "" replied Magdalena in a tone of the bitterest sadness as she rose from her seat ""my hour is arrived and I must leave you. Ask me not why. I must go as I have come in silence and mystery. But oh! I beseech you deem me not ungrateful. I had not quitted you without a last farewell--a last assurance that all your gentle charities are engraven here upon my heart for ever."" ""Magdalena!"" again exclaimed Gottlob still astonished at this unexpected announcement ""thou leavest me thus abruptly?"" ""Again I pray you gentle Master "" said the old woman sobbing ""think me not unkind or cold. The will of another is far stronger than my own. The will of God is above all. We shall meet no more on earth young man; at least I fear so: my destiny leads me from the world. But my prayers shall be offered up morning and evening at my noontide meal as at my lying down; at all times and in all places whenever it shall please Heaven to hear them for my generous benefactor."" ""But you must not quit me thus "" said the young man--""thus unassisted in penury and want. I have but little it is true but that little shall be thine. What matter the gauds I thought to purchase? the dainty plume to deck my cap?"" Still in spite of himself an unconscious sigh broke as he spoke from the breast of ""Gentle Gottlob "" at the anticipated renunciation of the braveries that were to give him a price in the eye of the fair object of his adoration. ""Can my poor savings be better bestowed than upon thee?"" ""I need not thy generous sacrifice kind youth "" replied Magdalena. ""The pilgrim lacketh nothing in a Christian land; and soon I shall be beyond all want."" ""Oh! speak not thus sadly "" said Gottlob taking her hand. ""I meant it not so sadly as you deem. I am resigned still to live on until it please God to release me from this world of sin and sorrow more easily resigned and with a calmer spirit since through the mist of solitary darkness around me I see a way of hope that shines not upon me but upon the bright forms most dear to me."" ""What meanest thou Magdalena?"" cried the young man. ""Strive not to comprehend me "" said the old woman in a more subdued tone--""I would not foster vain delusions;"" and as if to remove the impression of what she had said from Gottlob's mind she hastily added ""You have not seen the Prince at Saaleck?"" ""Alas no!"" replied the young artist. ""My noble patron had already left the castle with a small retinue and I was too late to meet him. It was said that he was gone upon a visit to all the various monasteries in this part of the country in order to hold secret counsel with the different dignitaries of the church in his domain respecting the late heresies that have appeared and already spread so widely throughout the land."" Magdalena was about to answer when a new and general movement among the crowd showed that the expectation of the multitude was aroused. The tapers upon the altars in the church had been lighted in splendid profusion. The vapour of incense already scented the air as it floated down the aisles. The organ pealed through the church; and the priests in their sacerdotal robes were seen advancing along the middle aisle towards the entrance to meet the expected dignitary. But Gottlob and Magdalena gazed not upon this priestly show; their heads were turned in another direction and looked from the church across the square. Their hearts beat with one feeling. Both murmured to themselves with one accord ""She comes!"" Already the pikes of the guard preceding the noble Ober-Amtmann appeared emerging from the street leading to the episcopal palace and the soldiers entering the square cleared the way rudely through the crowd when Magdalena again pressed tightly her companion's arm. ""Swear to me young man "" she whispered in a low and solemn tone ""as you value your salvation--swear to me ever to respect the purity and peace of mind of that innocent and happy girl upon whose fair face I shall now gaze for the last time!"" Gottlob looked at the excited woman with much surprise. ""Swear to me that you will not trouble her unconscious heart with words of love until perhaps a better time may come!"" she continued with hesitation. ""Magdalena I understand thee not "" replied the young man. ""But before me she is as a holy saint of heaven at whose shrine we may bow down and pray but whom we cannot pollute with earthly touch."" ""God grant you happiness young man!"" said Magdalena dropping her flowing tears upon the hand she held in her own. Gottlob's attention was too much absorbed in the sight of the one object of his eager gaze to heed more seriously at that moment the strange and solemn adjuration of the old woman. His heart beat with intense violence his cheek flushed his mild blue eyes dilated with animation as he followed along the square the form of Bertha who was advancing in the procession by her father's side. And now she was about to mount the church steps she would be obliged to pass close by him perhaps near enough for her dress to touch his own; for the crowd was dense behind and pressed forward upon those who stood like him in the foremost row. The agitation of his companion equaled perhaps exceeded his own. The clergy now stood under the church gate--the preceding guards had stationed themselves on either side of the arch--the Ober-Amtmann leading his daughter by the hand had reached the broad surface of the highest step where stood the aged female and the young artist when the agitated Magdalena unable to control her feelings as the governor and his fair child passed so near bent lowly down and seized the hem of Bertha's garment to kiss it unperceived. At that moment a rude gripe seized her arm and dragged her up and a harsh voice shrieked in her ear--""Touch her not hag of hell to cast thy infernal spells upon her!"" A scream of terror burst from Magdalena as she recognised Black Claus the witchfinder. ""Noble Ober-Amtmann hear me!"" cried the cripple pushing forward with force and arresting with a wild gesture the progress of the dignitary. ""I here denounce before your noble honour this wretched woman as a most foul and most notorious witch."" In the rude attack thus made upon the unhappy woman--on her terror and surprise--the cross-topped pilgrim's staff slipped from her grasp and slightly wounding the fair neck of Bertha it fell upon the pavement and was splintered into several pieces. ""See see!"" screamed the witchfinder ""how she strives to harm the innocent and good and destroys and tramples under foot--curses on her!--the holy symbols of the church."" With a feeling of horror and alarm for which the credence in witchcraft and its agents that pervaded all ranks and classes at that age gave full warrant Bertha clung with a scream to her father's breast and sought protection in his arms. At this sight the unhappy Magdalena uttered a bitter cry of despair and raising her clasped hands aloft exclaimed--""O God! Thou punishest me too bitterly."" ""Hear ye "" cried the witchfinder ""how she owneth her crime even in her blasphemy!"" With one arm the Ober-Amtmann pressed the terrified Bertha to his bosom and with the other signed to some of the guards to surround the old woman. At this moment the sight of the blood which had trickled in a few insignificant drops upon her veil caught the eye of the alarmed girl and turning very pale she held forth a crucifix which hung about her neck towards the spot where stood Magdalena as if to exorcise the powers of witchcraft directed against her and sobbed--""Oh! take her from my sight--save me--she would destroy me!"" ""It is she condemns me!"" cried Magdalena; and with another heart-rending exclamation of despair she fell forward to the earth as if in violent convulsions. ""See see!"" shouted Claus in triumph ""how the sight of the holy cross causes the devil within her to tear and rend her."" The bystanders shrank in horror from the prostrate form of the unhappy woman. The guards who had approached kept at a sufficient distance to avoid all contact with the reputed witch although near enough to prevent her escape. Petrified with astonishment and dismay at the strange scene that had passed thus rapidly before him and shocked at the sight of Bertha's wound and terror Gottlob had stood at first incapable of movement. But when he saw Magdalena thus stricken to the earth he forgot all the terrors of witchcraft--he forgot the horrible denunciation--he forgot even Bertha's fainting form; the instinctive impulse of his kindly nature was to rush forward and to raise the poor old woman. Before he could reach her however twenty hands had pulled him back with force--twenty voices screamed in his ear ""Touch her not--beware!"" In vain he struggled and strove to extricate himself--in vain he protested the poor woman's innocence--he was held back by force. In the meanwhile although those nearest to the accused woman drew back with terror the remoter crowd rushed forward towards the church steps in violent excitement preferring loud cries of ""A witch!--a witch! To the stake with her--to the stake!"" The deeper voices of the men mingling with the shriller cries of the women and children. In the midst of this scene of tumult the Ober-Amtmann conveyed his daughter in his arms--for she had now completely fainted--to the church and confided her to the care of her women. Upon returning he sternly gave orders that the accused female should be placed in the prison of the town with a guard before the door until the denouncer should be heard against her. ""Come hither man black cripple!"" he continued with some disgust to Claus: ""We know that the dreadful crime of witchcraft has like heresy made much and notable progress in the land of late; and although our reverend brother views the former abomination with more lenient eye than ourselves we think that fagot and stake are but too slight a punishment for such black and damning sin. But still of late thy denunciations against this crime have much multiplied; and sometimes it has seemed to our justice upon but small and vague proof--although popular voice demanded the condemnation of the wretched women. Have a care then how thou wrongfully preferrest such a charge--have a care how thou jugglest with our sense of right and wrong; for though there seemeth in truth to be some appearance of the demon and his works in the horror which that woman has expressed for the symbols of our holy religion and in the manner in which she has drawn blood from our young and innocent daughter yet were we to find thy accusation to be inspired by motive or the spirit of falsehood as we live that pile which threatens the sorceress and hag shall be thy own seat--the fire thy death-garment."" ""Noble Amtmann "" cried the witchfinder undaunted by this address ""I fear not the proof. Again I denounce that woman as dealing in witchcraft and consorting with the powers of darkness."" As the guard drew nearer to force the unhappy woman with their pike-heads to rise from the ground where she still lay crouched together the wretched Magdalena raised her head and her eyes fell upon the dark face of the witchfinder as it glared upon her in triumph. The hideous yells of the crowd prevented her hearing the only faint voice of pity raised in her behalf--that of gentle Gottlob. Her brain whirled with terror--she thought that her last hour was come; and with a heavy shudder throughout her whole frame she fell senseless to the ground. NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.{A} It has probably occurred to the reflecting student of logic that the philosophers of the schools must have been sorely straitened in seeking for a definition of man before they would have had recourse to such a derogation from his apparently higher attributes as to define him by ""_animal risibile_ "" or ""_animal bipes implumis_."" An attentive consideration will however show the enquirer that to distinguish man from the remainder of the animal kingdom by his structural characteristics alone is not so easy a task as would at first sight appear; and he will be obliged at length to return to some such humiliating designation of the _genus animal_ _species homo_ as those above given. Physical differences indeed there are between man and the other tribes of mammalia; but these differences are more matters of anatomical detail than such salient notable exponents as would at once be recognised and admitted by the sceptical objector. The strength moreover of these differences resides in the whole collectively and not in any one taken singly. If however the student take as his grounds for induction the habits of the species instead of its structure he will find a much broader line of demarcation. Wherever he examines the existing relations or former records of his race and compares them with those of other animals he will find that the instincts of the one are variable and progressive those of the other are definite and stationary. As far as has ever been ascertained by the most accurate observer the nest of the grossbeak the dam of the beaver the cone of the termites were ages ago each similar in character and equal in perfection to those of the present day; while whether we compare the rude wigwam of the uncivilized savage or the more finished architecture of ancient Thebes with the buildings railroads and shipping of the present day we still find a continual variation and a progressive adaptation to new wants. The psychological characteristics stand out then in fuller relief than the physiological; but yet the former are by no means free from grounds for cavil. Domestic animals acquire new habits varying from their natural instincts. Admitting these to result from the teaching of man it still shows--as does indeed the fact of domestication--a capability of progression; and some feeble instances of the faculty of learning may be detected even in the wild tribes of animals. Thus every thing becomes if hypercritically examined a question of degree ""_demo unum demo etiam unum_ "" and the hundred years become an hour; nought is every thing and every thing is nought. Rational investigation then should lead us to reject or at least to set no undue value upon extreme instances or the merging shadows of boundaries; the spectrum consists of separate colours though we may not tell where the red ends and the yellow begins. The fair questions in examining the physiology and psychology of man with a view to his place in the creation are 1st Whether his distinctive marks and attributes taken collectively are such as broadly separate him from the rest of the animal kingdom; 2dly Supposing such distinctions to exist now whether they have existed at all periods of which we can acquire any evidence; and 3dly Whether these distinctions are common to the whole of the race to which the term _man_ is applied or whether different tribes of men differ _inter se_ as much as the species viewed collectively differs from other species. These with other minor questions which arise out of them are as far as we can gather the propositions discussed in the work before us--a work abounding in elaborate research and erudition but somewhat deficient in logical precision or lucid arrangement; a mass of details is given but the links whereby the generalizations from these are sought to be established are here and there wanting and here and there obscure. It is probably the fault of the subject which is in its character inexact; but we certainly expected that more had been done; and from some passages in the early portions of the work we were induced to believe that the author had succeeded in proving races of mankind to be more distinctly deducible from their sources and that their physical and moral relations were more definitely traced. The following passage in which the object of the work is enounced by the author is wanting in precision and perspicuity:-- ""That great differences in external conditions by the double influence of their physical and moral agency should have effected during a long series of ages remarkable changes in the tribes of human beings subjected to their operation--changes which have rendered these several tribes fitted in a peculiar manner for their respective abodes--is by no means an improbable conjecture; and it becomes something more than a conjecture when we extend our view to the diversified breeds of those animals which men have domesticated and have transferred with themselves from one climate to another. Considered in this point of view it acquires perhaps the character of a legitimate theory supported by adequate evidence and by an extensive series of analogous facts. ""But we must not omit to observe that to this opinion there is an alternative and one which many persons prefer to maintain; namely that the collective body of mankind is made up of different races which have differed from each other in their physical and moral nature from the beginning of their existence. To determine which of these two opinions is the best entitled to assent or at least to set before my readers a clear and distinct notion of the evidence that can be brought to bear upon the question will be my principal object in the following work."" Now as they are here stated the two opinions are not necessarily contradictory; differences in external condition may effect remarkable changes in tribes of human beings and yet the collective body may be made up of different races: and to set before the reader a clear and distinct notion is to prove nothing although indeed as we shall see in the sequel the author has a very strong conviction and believes that he succeeds in proving as far as a matter incapable of mathematical demonstration can be proved the negative of the latter proposition. What the author seems to intend or rather what the whole tenor of his book imports though his expressions at times go much further is not that community of origin is proved inductively by the researches which have been made into the existing and past state of man but that the natural history of man presents nothing inconsistent with such a view. The researches of Cuvier and others have negatived the theory of Lamarcke as to the transmutation of species. The ""_nisus formativus_"" is admitted but admitted with limits ""_quos ultra citraque nequit consistere rectum_"". The extreme rarity of hybrids their inability of continuous procreation the absence of any well-authenticated cases of a permanent species formed by the union of two distinct ones the return to the original type when the disturbing causes are removed with various other arguments tending the same way have been considered by the most competent and impartial judges as conclusive evidence of the real and permanent existence in nature of distinct species. These arguments are stated in detail in the second volume of Lyell's _Principles of Geology_ to which we refer those of our readers who wish for further information. Having briefly stated these and similar arguments Dr Prichard expresses his conclusion as follows:-- ""It seems to be the well-established result of enquiries into the various tribes of organized beings that the perpetuation of hybrids whether of plants or animals so as to produce new and intermediate tribes is impossible. ""Now unless all these observations are erroneous or capable of some explanation that has not yet been pointed out they lead with the strongest force of analogical reasoning to the conclusion that a number of different tribes such as the various races of men must either be incapable of intermixing their stock and thus always fated to remain separate from each other; or if the contrary should be the fact that all the races to whom the remark applies are proved by it to belong to the same species. ""I believe it may be asserted without the least chance of contradiction that mankind of all races and varieties are equally capable of propagating their offspring by intermarriages and that such connexions are equally prolific whether contracted between individuals of the same or of the most dissimilar varieties. If there is any difference it is probably in favour of the latter."" This conclusion is repeated a little further on. ""It appears to be unquestionable that intermediate races of men exist and are propagated and that no impediment whatever exists to the perpetuation of mankind when the most dissimilar varieties are blended together. We hence derive a conclusive proof--unless there be in the instance of human races an exception to the universally prevalent law of organized nature--that all the tribes of men are of one family. ""Perhaps the solution of the problem which we have undertaken to discuss might be left on this issue or considered as obtained by this argument. But further light may be thrown on the subject by a careful analysis of the facts which can be collected relative to the nature and origination of varieties; and it may be satisfactory to my readers to survey this field of enquiry."" Granting then the truth of the limitation of species to be established and taking as the definition of species the power of continual propagation we have it proved at the commencement of the work that ""all human races are of one species;"" the only question which remains is whether admitting them to be of one species the deduction that they have a common origin is necessary; or if not necessary whether it is proved in the course of the author's work. It does not appear to us a _necessary_ conclusion; for there appears no reason _à priori_ why the Creator should not as well form separately an indefinite number of creatures of the same species as a single pair. This point is not adverted to in the work before us; and whenever identity of origin is assumed it is upon the same grounds from which identity of species is deduced. In fact they are generally coupled; thus at page 487 we have the expression-- ""If now it should appear on enquiry that one common mind or psychical nature belongs to the whole human family a very strong argument would thence arise on the ground of analogy for their community of species and origin."" And in the last page we have-- ""We are entitled to draw confidently the conclusion that all human races are of one species and one family."" The great point as to identity of species being proved it would be certainly more simple and more in unison with the economy of nature to suppose that all were descended from one pair than that numerous identical members of a common species were simultaneously created. On the other hand a physiological difficulty occurs in viewing a race as descended from a single pair from the fact universally recognised in the later periods of history viz. the degeneration and in the end destruction or indefinite deterioration of both physical and mental faculties by continual intermarriage. The houses of Braganza and Hapsburg are notorious instances of this; and as far as we are aware there are no counter instances. ""Marry A gentler scion to the wildest stock And make conceive a bark of baser kind By bud of nobler race; this is an art Which does mend nature change it rather but The art itself is nature."" The matter is incapable of absolute proof--we mean inductive proof; for it is in this point that the work before us regards it. Any arguments such as similarity of habits of languages of opinions which may be used to deduce community of origin would be equally explained by community of species; for supposing that different individuals of the same species were simultaneously created the same physical formation would necessarily engender similar habits and the power of intermarriage would induce a similarity of language long before any period to which our histories go back. Taking then as a fair assumption that if identical in species mankind have a common origin we get in the outset of the book the conclusion stated at the end viz. that all human races are of one species and one family. The great body of the work is therefore only accessory and corroborative; and its value would consist not so much in proving the affirmative of the author's thesis as in placing in a prominent point of view the principal facts known respecting the natural history of man. It may be thought that in the existing state of man few marks remain from which his early history may be deduced; but those unacquainted with the progress of inductive research would be astonished at the magnitude and importance of results derivable from an apparently simple and worthless object. An unthinking wanderer stumbling upon an ancient tombstone if reproached with inattention would ask what is to be learned from such a relic. A word of inscription would give a clue to the language and coupled with other observations to the date of the monument; the character of the stone whether roughly hewn or elaborately carved would give evidence as to the tools used in its formation and consequently furnish a key to the manufacturing and metallurgic knowledge of the fabricators. The stone itself might possibly not be similar to those in the immediate vicinity and thence would indicate that travelling and the power of transfer were practised and the skeleton within would indicate the physical formation of the men of that day. We have selected here a case of an ordinary grave but how much stronger would the case be were we to take a sarcophagus of Egypt enclosing a mummy? The inscription the fabric of the cere-cloth the chemical substances with which it is impregnated as well as those by which the body is preserved and the relics commonly deposited with it would lead by careful investigation to a tolerably accurate knowledge of the character and habits of the time; and where many relics of different descriptions collected from different parts are skilfully compared a body of evidence is arrived at minutely circumstantial in its details and the veracity of which admits of no dispute. As the researches of comparative anatomists have enabled us from the examination of a single bone to pronounce with certainty upon the general conformation and habits of the animal to which it belonged; and as in many cases from the existence of such animals we may go on step by step to the nature of the earth's surface at the period when they lived: so the meanest relic of art will serve the natural historian of man as a fulcrum by which he may turn up a mass of genuine information; with which as with all knowledge as its store increases the power of applying it becomes more facile; until at length it scarcely becomes an exaggeration to say that every material relic bears in itself its own natural history and if artificially modified the history of its fabricators--what the germ is to futurity the relic is to the past. From the data which Dr Prichard has given us in a somewhat scattered form we shall endeavour to collect and group the most interesting of his facts and opinions. In order to ascertain what modifications of physical structure variation of climate food and habits may effect upon mankind it is necessary first to review the effects produced by such variation upon domesticated animals. It is indeed questionable whether we can in any case with certainty trace these to their native wilds; but in many cases we have instances of their return to a savage state as with the wild horses goats oxen &c.; and although it does not necessarily follow that their conformation induced by such return is identical with their original structure yet there is a reasonable probability that such is the case and we must take these cases for want of better. How far then has the outward form been altered by the changes induced by domestication; how far are instincts acquired by such changes capable of hereditary transmission and is there any and what connexion between the changed instincts and the changed structure? These questions involving among other things the infant and difficult science of phrenology Dr Prichard has left very much to conjecture. Whether he considers the data too imperfect or is afraid of trusting himself with any decided expression of opinion on a subject which has been so obscured by charlatanry and which is open to so much misapprehension does not appear; but it certainly is an apparently striking defect that where a large portion of the work is devoted to the explanation of the different forms of the cranium in the inferior animals and in man and to which the largest portion of his pictorial illustrations apply he should give us so little insight into his opinions as to what extent phrenology is fairly entitled to credibility. His having taken so much pains in collecting facts and drawings on this point necessarily leads to the inference that he attaches much value to the craniological distinctions. We shall take an opportunity presently of recurring to this subject. We will now take some of the most interesting instances given by Dr Prichard of structural changes and hereditary instincts acquired by domesticated animals and again lost by them on returning to a wild state:-- ""Swine transported from Europe to America since the discovery of the western continent by the Spaniards in the fourteenth century and wandering at large in the vast forests of the New World and feeding on wild fruits have resumed the manner of existence which belonged to the original stock. Their appearance nearly resembles that of the wild boar. Their ears have become erect; their heads are larger and the foreheads vaulted at the upper part; their colour has lost the variety found in the domestic breeds. The wild hogs of the American forests are uniformly black. The hog which inhabits the high mountains of Paramos bears a striking resemblance to the wild boar of France. His skin is covered with a thick fur often somewhat crisp beneath which is found in some individuals a species of wool. From excessive cold and defect of nourishment the hog of that region is of small and stunted figure. In some warm parts of America the swine are not uniformly black as above described but red like the young pecari. At Melgara and other places there are some which are not entirely black but have a white band under the belly reaching up to the back; they are termed _cinchados_. The restoration of the original character of the wild boar in a race descended from domesticated swine removes all reason for doubt if any had really existed as to the identity of the stock; and we may safely proceed to compare the physical characters of these races as varieties which have arisen in one species. The restoration of one uniform black colour and the change of thin sparse hair and bristles for a thick fur with a covering of wool are facts that must be noticed in the observations of M. Roulin. The difference in the shape of the head between the wild and domestic hog of America is very remarkable. Blumenbach long ago pointed out the great difference between the cranium of our swine and that of the primitive wild boar. He remarked that this difference is quite equal to that which has been observed between the skull of the Negro and the European. 'Those persons ' he says 'who have no opportunity of verifying the fact have only need to cast their eyes on the figure which Daubenton has given of both the former. I shall pass over ' he adds 'the lesser varieties of breeds which may be found among swine as among men and only mention that I have been assured by M. Sobzer that the peculiarity of having the bone of the leg remarkably long which in the human kind is observed among th
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Hindoos has been remarked with regard to swine in Normandy. They stand very long on their hind legs; their back therefore is highest at the rump forming a kind of inclined plane; and the head proceeds in the same direction so that the snout is not far from the ground.' ""'Swine ' continues Blumenbach 'in some countries have degenerated into races which in singularity far exceed every thing that has been found strange in bodily variety among the human race. Swine with solid hoofs were known to the ancients and large breeds of them are found in Hungary and Sweden. In like manner the European swine first carried by the Spaniards in 1509 to the island of Cubagua at that time celebrated for its pearl fishery degenerated into a monstrous race with toes which were half a span in length.' There are breeds of solid-hoofed swine in some parts of England. The hoof of the swine is also found divided into five clefts. ""Buffon had before remarked the varieties of the hog tribe. 'In Guinea ' he observes 'this species has acquired very long ears couched upon the back; in China a large pendant belly and very short legs; at Cape Verde and other places very large tusks crooked like the horns of oxen; in domestication half pendant and white ears.'"" * * * * * ""A very remarkable fact relative to the oxen of South America is recorded by M. Roulin to which M. Geoffrey St Hilaire has particularly adverted in the report made by him on M. Roulin's Memoir before the Royal Academy of Sciences. ""In Europe the milking of cows is continued through the whole period from the time when they begin to bear calves till they cease to breed. This secretion of milk has become a constant function in the animal economy of the tribe; it has been rendered such by the practice continued through long series of generations of continuing to draw milk long after the period when it would be wanted for the calf; the teats of the cow are larger than in proportion and the secretion is perpetual. In Columbia the practice of milking cows was laid aside owing to the great extent of farms and other circumstances. 'In a few generations ' says M. Roulin 'the natural structure of parts and withal the natural state of the function has been restored. The secretion of milk in the cow of this country is only an occasional phenomenon and contemporary with the actual presence of the calf. If the calf dies the milk ceases to flow and it is only by keeping him with his dam by day that an opportunity of obtaining milk from cows by night can be found.' This testimony is important by the proof which it affords that the permanent production of milk in the European breeds of cows is a modified function of the animal economy produced by an artificial habit continued through several generations. Two other very important observations made by M. Roulin in South America were pointed out by M. Geoffrey St Hilaire in his report to the Academy of Sciences. They refer to the fact of the hereditary transmission of habits originally impressed with care and art upon the ancestors. Of this fact I shall adduce other examples in the sequel; at present I only advert to M. Roulin's observations. The horses bred in the grazing farms on the table-land of the Cordillera are carefully taught a peculiar pace which is a sort of running amble. This is not their natural mode of progression but they are inured to it very early and the greatest pains are taken to prevent them from moving in any other gait. In this way the acquired habit becomes a second nature. It happens occasionally that such horses becoming lame are no longer fit for use; it is then customary to let them loose if they happen to be well-grown stallions into the pasture grounds. It is constantly observed that these horses become the sires of a race to which the ambling pace is natural and requires no teaching. The fact is so well known that such colts have received a particular name; they are termed 'aguilillas.' ""The second fact is the developement of a new instinct which as M. Roulin declares seems to become hereditary in the breed of dogs found among the borderers on the river Madeleine which are employed in hunting the pecari. I shall cite the author's own words:--'L'addresse du chien consiste à modérer son ardeur à ne s'attacher à aucun animal en particulier mais à tenir toute la troupe en échec. Or parmi ces chiens on en volt maintenant qui la première fois qu'on les amène au bois savent dejà comment attaquer; un chien d'une autre espèce se lance tout d'abord est environné et quelle que soit sa force il est dévoré dans un instant.'"" To these cases we may add a case familiar to the sportsmen of this country and one of which we have ourselves seen an unquestionable instance viz. the acquired habit of the setting-dog in arresting his steps and crouching when in pursuit of game; the origin of which was probably a pause in his career in order the better to ascertain the position of the game of which he was in quest; but this by constant teaching has become hereditary to such an extent that occasionally a dog of pure breed will the first time he is taken out as soon as he gets on the scent of game crouch or place himself in a setting attitude and remain perfectly immobile until forced to proceed; nay further--as it is necessary that the sportsman teach the dogs who are in the same field with that one who discovers the game as soon as they see the latter setting to arrest their steps likewise; or as it is termed to _back_ in order not to disturb the game--in the instance which came under our notice a dog of eight or nine months old which had never been out of a town when taken into the fields for the first time with an old well-trained dog as soon as the latter had discovered game and pointed to it instantly backed him--_i.e._ remained stiffly standing in the position in which he was when he first caught sight of the older dog: probably many sportsmen could be found who would vouch to similar facts. We may here state that we quite agree with Dr Prichard as to the absence of any foundation for the general belief that all the acts of inferior animals are performed without their consciousness or view to any object or end; on the contrary there is every probability that they in carrying into effect their several instincts seem to themselves to act from similar internal impulses of will and intention as human beings do. We need not enter into the vast number of varieties which the most domestic of all domesticated animals the dog exhibits; we shall only remark that in all their varieties Dr Prichard says -- ""Restored to a state of comparative wildness which approaches to their unreclaimed and primitive condition the tribes of dogs every where make a corresponding approximation to the type which may be supposed to have belonged to the species in its original state."" But this passage is enigmatical as the original _type_ seems to be involved in dense obscurity. Buffon considered the shepherd dog to be the least modified by domestication--very erroneously according to Dr Prichard; it is still a _vexata questio_ whether the original progenitor of the dog be a wolf a jackal a fox or an unknown animal differing from all these. ""The sheep is one of the most anciently domesticated animals and it is one in which great varieties display themselves. It has been long believed and this appears to have been the opinion of Baron Cuvier that all the breeds of tamed sheep are descended either from the argali of Siberia or from the moufloun or musmon of Barbary. This is at present doubted by most naturalists. There seems however to be no reason for believing that the domestic breeds belong to more than one species though they differ much in different countries. In Europe the breeds of sheep vary much in stature in the texture of their wool the number and shape of their horns which are in some large in some small in others wanting to the female or altogether absent from the breed. The most important varieties in Europe are the Spanish breeds some with fine others with crisp wool in which the rams have long spiral horns; the English breeds which differ greatly in size and in the quality of the wool; and in the southern parts of Russia the long-tailed breed. The breeds of sheep in India and in Africa are remarkable for the length of their legs a very convex forehead and pendant ears; these also have long tails. Their covering is not wool but a smooth hair. In the northern parts of Europe and Asia the sheep have short tails. The breeds spread through Persia Tartary and China have their tails transformed into a double spherical mass of fat. The sheep of Syria and Barbary on the other hand have long tails but likewise loaded with a mass of fat. In both of these varieties of the sheep the ears are pendant the horns of the rams large and those of the ewes and lambs of moderate size and the body is covered with wool mixed more or less with hair. ""New breeds of sheep are frequently formed in different countries in which particular qualities predominate according to the preference of the breeders. This is done partly by crossing or intermixing races already constituted and well known; but in great part also by selecting individuals from the stock in which the particular qualities are more strongly marked than in the generality of the same breed. In these instances the natural or congenital variety which the individual animal displays perhaps for the first time becomes perpetuated by the hereditary transmission of such characters which is a law of the animal economy. A striking instance of this fact is to be found in the origination of a new breed of sheep in the state of Massachusetts which has been noticed by many writers in connexion with this subject. In the year 1791 one ewe on the farm of Seth Wright gave birth to a male lamb which without any known cause had a longer body and shorter legs than the rest of the breed. The joints are said to have been longer and the fore-legs crooked. The shape of this animal rendering it unable to leap over fences it was determined to propagate its peculiarities and the experiment proved successful; a new race of sheep was produced which from the form of the body has been termed the otter breed. It seems to be uniformly the fact that when both parents are of the otter breed the lambs that are produced inherit the peculiar form."" We might extract other instances of physiological and psychological changes induced by domestication but we think enough have been given to show the character and degree of such changes. The least important change and that which appears the soonest affected is the colour of the skin and hair. This is universally of an uniform tint in wild animals and generally bears a close approximation to the colour of the land in which the animal lives: thus the ptarmigan inhabiting snowy regions is white; the grouse has the colour of heath; the hare that of dry fern or furze--a provision which has the effect of protecting the weaker tribes from the stronger and predatory ones. In domesticated animals from causes apparently not as yet traced the colour is variegated and various. Closely connected with the colour and nature of the skin are the size and shape of the horns their presence and absence. Great as is the apparent variety of appearance effected by horns changes in these appear to be easily induced: they are connected with the epidermic structure generally the most easily modified; and we need not cite instances to prove that different breeds of the same tribe and occasionally different individuals of the same breed differ materially as to horns. According to Azara horned horses are sometimes seen in Paraguay. Very little appears to be known at least scarcely any intimation is given in the work before us of the proximate or final cause of these changes. Great as they are certainly as far as we can judge no _nisus formativus_ can account for the enormous horns of the Spanish sheep; nor looking to the final cause; does there appear any reason why domestic animals should need such overgrown instruments of defence. When however we come to the more important anatomical modifications such as the length and shape of the legs the bones of the pelvis or of the jaw the object is more apparent. A greyhound with the muzzle of a bull-dog would be an obvious natural inconsistency. We now pass to the physical distinctions of the different races of men. Here we may observe that a much greater importance is to be attached to comparatively slight variations. Considering the surprising external differences that exist in domesticated animals of the same species the wonder rather is that the different races of men differ physically so little as they do than that they differ so much. Here we will take first the least important shades of difference--the texture of the skin hair and complexion; and then pass on to the more prominent diversities of the bony fabric cranium &c. ""The texture of the body in which all these varieties have their seat is the extracorial or exodermal structure constituting if I may so speak the outer coating of the body external to the true skin which corresponds to the cuticular and corneous excrescences of animals--a structure which includes horns hoofs hair feathers and all similar appendages in different orders of animals. This structure displays infinite diversities in colour constitution and organization and is the most variable tissue on the whole body. Many different opinions have however been lately maintained and much research has been made as to the nature and texture of the parts on which the variety of colour depends."" The ancient anatomists it appears recognised only two parts of the skin--the true skin and the outer cuticle or epidermis. Malpighi discovered a third layer interposed between these consisting of a sort of network thence called _rete mucosum_ and believed to be the seat of colour in the negro. Albinus showed this to be a continuous layer and not a network. Cruikshank discovered four layers--three membranes and the fourth a layer of colour. Flourens at a more recent period made the number of intermediate layers five four of which he showed to the French Academy; one of these a mucous membrane underlying the pigment is according to this anatomist a distinct organized body existing only in men of dark colour and entirely wanting in the white races or else (which appears the more probable conjecture) maceration and the ordinary process of examination fail to detect it in the skin of white men. Lastly the microscopical researches of Henle Purkinje and Schwann go to prove that the outer integument does not consist of separate membranes but is of a cellular structure and that of these cells or ""cytoblasts "" there are three distinct kinds. We will not further analyse the different opinions as to the texture of the skin and position of the colouring material; it certainly throws no inconsiderable degree of doubt over certain classes of scientific investigation to find each subsequent research entirely altering and in some cases overturning the previously received views. To the different characters of human complexion Dr Prichard gives three distinctive terms--the _melanous_ or brunette; the _xanthous_ or blonde; and the _leucous_ or albino; the _melanous_ predominating in the southern countries the _xanthous_ in the northern. It is observable here that although the natural divisions of territory with respect to complexion (supposing climate to have the principal modifying effect upon complexion ) would be the equatorial and polar regions or the zones of the earth which differ in latitude yet with some few exceptions it is only on the northern side of the equator that the _xanthous_ complexion prevails--the inhabitants of Australia and the South Sea Islands being very generally _melanous_. The distribution of land and water cannot well be conceived to have any influence upon climate which would account for such diversity; it is probably therefore a result of long-continued civilization the covering the body with clothes and being for the most part sheltered from the direct rays of the sun. The _leucous_ complexion is an abnormal variety and occurs occasionally in all countries. It proceeds from the absence of the dark colouring matter or pigment; there appears in this case however no difference of anatomical structure the pigment being sometimes subsequently developed in persons who have been born albinoes. The change from the _xanthous_ to the _melanous_ complexion is a circumstance of constant occurrence; there are few children born whose complexion does not darken as they grow up in many cases undergoing a total change: the passage from dark to fair is rare but it constantly occurs that _xanthous_ or even _leucous_ children are born of _melanous_ parents. There is nothing therefore in the diversities of complexion which indicates specific diversity in different human races. Of the conformation of the bony fabric in the human race the formation of the skull is the part of the greatest importance; we shall only therefore briefly notice as to the other parts of the skeleton that between the most uncultivated races of men and those tribes of apes which most nearly approach man there is a wide difference--the arms of the orang-outang reach to the ankle and those of the chimpanzee below the knee; the pelvis or central bony fabric differ much from those of the human race. With regard to the skull the value of the distinctions in its form and structure depends upon their connexion with the size and organization of the brain--involving the question whether this has any and what influence upon the powers and habits of the creature. Dr Prichard as we have already stated blinks the question of phrenology; though he makes some inferences which prove him to have a general belief in the connexion between mental power and physical formation; nay further in the appropriation of different portions of the brain to different faculties. Few will we believe in the present day be disposed entirely to deny that _ceteris paribus_ the external formation of the skull or rather the shape of the brain as shown by the formation of the skull is a general index of the mental power of the individual to whom it belongs. Look over a collection of busts or portraits of eminent men and with scarcely an exception they will be found to have high and capacious foreheads; while uncivilized races and born idiots are lamentably deficient in this respect. The difficulties of phrenology exist in its details which by many have been carried out into degrees of subdivision certainly not warranted either by the anatomical structure of the brain or by any empirical data as to the form of different crania and the biography of the individuals to whom they have belonged. Where in the existing state of our knowledge the proper mean may be it is perhaps difficult to say; but it would have been well we think had Dr Prichard given us a little more explicitly his opinions as to what extent phrenology (we use the word in its broadest sense) may be fairly relied on. As far as we can gather from the scattered passages in his book he seems to take a rational view of it; but a little less caution would certainly have been more instructive to his readers not only on the subject of phrenology but on many of the connexions between physical structure and the habits to which such structure is adapted. This is a _hiatus_ in Dr Prichard's work the filling up of which would add much interesting matter and serve to weave together acts which at present are disjointed and isolated; giving the book a dry character and preventing its arresting the attention of the reader. Throughout a larger portion of the work also we have in every third page or so a minute description of the complexion hair &c. of different people; which however valuable as matter of record becomes tiresome and uninteresting as a continuous narrative and would be much better thrown into a tabular form as matter of reference only if incapable of being so linked as to present a plausible theory. The following passage is the most explicit we can find on the subject of the connexion between the _physique_ and _morale_ and at the same time will serve to introduce the three varieties of skull which the author deems principally worth notice:-- ""If any method of subdividing the human family into groups is likely to be of any particular advantage in elucidating the natural history of the species it must be one founded on some relation between the physical characteristics of different tribes and the leading circumstances of their external condition. ""We shall clearly perceive in tracing the following outline of ethnography that the varieties of colour refer themselves in part to climates elevations of land proximity to the sea-coast or distance from it. It can hardly be doubted that these conditions have likewise an effect on the configuration of the human body. But there is perhaps some truth in the remark though frequently made on little better foundation than conjecture that the prevailing form or configuration of the body is more liable to be influenced by the habits of different races and their manner of living than by the simple agencies of climate. It would be an interesting discovery could it be shown that there is any apparent connexion between the display of particular forms or the leading physical characters of human races and their habits of existence. If I may venture to point out any such relation it would be by remarking in a very general manner and without pretending to make the observation as one which holds without many exceptions that there are in mankind three principal varieties in the form of the head and other physical characters which are most prevalent respectively in the savage or hunting tribes in the nomadic or wandering pastoral races and in the civilized and intellectually cultivated divisions of the human family. Among the rudest tribes of men hunters and savage inhabitants of forests dependent for their supply of food on the accidental produce of the soil or on the chase among whom are the most degraded of the African nations and the Australian savages a form of the head is prevalent which is most aptly distinguished by the term _prognathous_ indicating a prolongation or extension forward of the jaws; and with this characteristic other traits are connected which will be described in the following pages. A second shape of the head very different from the last mentioned belongs principally to the nomadic races who wander with their herds and flocks over vast plains and to the tribes who creep along the shores of the Icy Sea and live partly by fishing and in part on the flesh of their reindeers. These nations have broad and lozenge-formed faces and what I have termed _pyramidal_ skulls. ""The Esquimaux the Laplanders Samoïedes and Kamschatkans belong to this department as well as the Tartar nations--meaning the Mongolians Tungusians and nomadic races of Turks. In South Africa the Hottentots formerly a nomadic people who wandered about with herds of cattle over the extensive plains of Kafirland resembling in their manner of life the Tungusians and the Mongols have also broadfaced pyramidal skulls and in many particulars of their organization resemble the Northern Asiatics. Other tribes in South Africa approximate to the same character as do many of the native races of the New World. ""The most civilized races those who live by agriculture and the arts of cultivated life all the most intellectually improved nations of Europe and Asia have a shape of the head which differs from both the forms above mentioned. The characteristic form of the skull among these nations may be termed _oval_ or _elliptical_. ""We shall find hereafter that there are numerous instances of transition from one of these shapes of the head to another and that these alterations have taken place in nations who have changed their manner of life."" Blumenbach considered that the most important admeasurement of the skull was derivable from the shape and size of the oval seen when the skull was viewed from above looking vertically down upon it. Camper took as the basis of his theory of the gradations of different genera of mammalia the angle formed by a line drawn from the aperture of the ear to the base of the nose and a tangent to the forehead and jaw. Considering the increasing size of this angle to be the distinctive mark of intellectual superiority he viewed a negro as an intermediate animal between an European and an ape. But Mr Owen has shown that the observations of Camper and others being applied to immature animals are not worthy of reliance; as the relations of all animals more closely approximate if they be examined in an infant than in an adult state. The facial angle of the orang which has been estimated at from 60° to 64° he finds in the adult animal is only 30°--_i. e._ 40° short of the smallest facial angle in the human race! We should hence be led to suspect a proportionate difference between the infant and adult mind; but the psychological development of infants is a subject which has been strangely neglected by philosophers. A clever Italian authoress who has written an anonymous work upon education gives as the reason for the dearth of writing on this subject that philosophers are not mothers and that mothers are not philosophers. Be this as it may few theorems appear to us more promising of interest. The struggle of internal force with external resistance the feelings manifested in the acquisition of new powers the impressions made by objects seen for the first time and first questions asked form grounds for induction as to the psychology of man which thanks to the chartered tyranny of nursery-maids over philosophers have been grossly neglected. After going through other points of physical difference in human races with which being for the most part matter of anatomical detail we shall not trouble our readers Dr Prichard concludes:-- ""On surveying the facts which relate to difference in the shape of the body and the proportions of parts in human races we may conclude that none of these deviations amount to specific distinction. We may rest this conclusion on two arguments. First that none of the differences in question exceed the limits of individual variety or are greater than the diversities found within the circle of one nation or family. Secondly the varieties of form in human races are by no means so considerable in many points of view as the instances of variation which are known to occur in different tribes of animals belonging to the same stock there being scarcely one domesticated species which does not display much more considerable deviations from the typical character of the tribe."" The only observation we shall make upon this is that as before stated the test of identity of species being the power of continued reproduction not the slightest evidence having been ever offered that all the various human races have not _inter se_ this power but the contrary having been proved in every case within human experience none of the deviations _can_ amount to _specific_ distinctions. Having noticed the most remarkable physical distinctions of the human race we come to its ethnographical divisions--divisions founded partly upon traditional and historical records and partly upon the internal evidence of similarity of language. The following sketch of hypotheses as to the original birthplaces of the +autochthones gaias+ although visionary and in all probability incorrect forms such an interesting abstract of philosophical speculations and poetical myths that we cannot refrain from quoting it:-- ""The most popular or generally received distribution of human races in the present day is that which was recommended by the adoption of Baron Cuvier. It did not entirely originate with that great writer but was set forth by him in a more decided and complete manner than it had been before his time. This system refers different races of men to certain lofty mountain-chains as the local seats of their original existence. ""The birthplace or the primitive station of the race of men who peopled Europe and Western Asia is supposed to have been Mount Caucasus. From this conjecture Europeans and many Asiatic nations and even some Africans have received the new designation of Caucasians. The nations of Eastern Asia are imagined in like manner to originate in the neighbourhood of Mount Altaï and they are named after the Mongolians who inhabit the highest region in that vast chain of hills. The African negroes are derived from the southern face of the chain of Mount Atlas. ""They are however named simply the Ethiopian race from the Ethiopians who were the only black people known to the ancients in very remote times. A mixture of somewhat vague notions partly connected with physical theories and in part derived from history or rather from mythology has formed the groundwork of this scheme which refers the origin of human races to high mountainous tracts. The tops of mountains first emerged above the surface of the primeval ocean and in the language of some philosophical theorists first became the scene of the organizing life of nature. From different mountain tops Wildenow and other writers on the history of plants derive the vegetable tribes; which they suppose to have descended from high places into the plains and to have spread their colonies along the margins of mountain streams. High mountains thus came to be regarded as the birthplaces of living races. ""Geological theories give their part to render these notions popular; not only the late speculations of the Count de Buffon and the learned Bailly but the opinions of ancient philosophers who maintained before the time of Justin and of Pliny that the mountains of high Asia must have been the part of the world first inhabited by men inasmuch as that region must have been first refrigerated in the gradual cooling of the surface of our planet and first raised sufficiently above the level of the ocean. Moreover the poetical traditions of the ancient world describe high mountains as the scenes of the first mythical adventures of gods and men--as the resting-places on which celestial or aërial beings alighted from their cloudy habitations to take up their abode with men and to become the patriarchs of the human race. Lofty mountains are the points in the geography of our globe on which the first dawn of historic light casts its early beams; hence the legends of the first ages begin their thread. In the cosmogony of the Hindoos it was on the summit of the sacred mountain Maha-meru which rises in the midst of the seven _dwipas_ or great peninsulas like the stalk between the expanded petals of a lotus that Brahma the creator sits enthroned on a pillar of gold and gems adored by Rishis and Gandharbhas; while the regents of the four quarters of the universe hold their stations on the four faces of the mountain. Equally famed in the ancient mythology of Iran and of Zoroaster is the sacred mountain Albordy based upon the earth but raising through all the spheres of heaven to the region of supernal light its lofty top the seat of Ormuzd whence the bridge Ishinevad conducts blessed spirits of pious men to Gorodman the solid vault of heaven the abode of Ferouers and Arnshaspands. Even the prosing disciples of Confucius had their sacred mountain of Kuen-lun where according to the legends of their forefathers was the abode of the early patriarchs of their race. The Arabs and the Persian Moslemin had their poetical Kaf. The lofty hills of Phrygia and of Hellas--Ida Olympus Pindus--were as every one knows famous in Grecian story. Caucasus came in for a share of the reverence paid to the high places of the earth. Caucasus however was not the cradle of the human race but the dwelling-place of Prometheus the maker of men and the teacher of astronomy."" Abandoning this somewhat dreamy view Dr Prichard regards consistently with the Scriptural account the birthplace of man as being on the banks of fertilizing rivers and at a period when the world was by its vegetable and animal productions prepared for his reception and adopts three divisions as being those of which we have the earliest records; 1st the _Semitic_ or _Syro-Arabian_ inhabiting countries between Egypt and the Ganges. 2dly the _Japetic_ _Indo-European_ or _Arian_ spreading from the mouths of the Ganges over the greater part of Europe. And 3dly the Egyptian or _Hamitish_ {B} who peopled the banks of the N
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le and of whom the African negroes are probably a degenerate offshoot. With regard to the knowledge of letters possessed by these three nations our author gives two inconsistent statements. He says:-- ""The three celebrated nations whose history we have surveyed appear alone to have possessed in the earliest times the use of letters and by written monuments to have transmitted to the last ages memorials of their existence. It seems improbable that each of these nations should have become by a separate process possessed of this important art: yet those eminent scholars who have laboured with so great success of late in elucidating the Oriental forms of writing have not succeeded in tracing any connexion between the alphabetic systems of Egypt of the Phoenicians the Assyrians and the Hindoos."" And states afterwards:-- ""It is plain that the use of letters was entirely unknown to the Arian nations to those tribes at least of the race who passed into Europe: and that it was introduced among them in long after ages by the Phoenicians who claim this most important invention and certainly have the merit of having communicated it to the nations of the west."" The words ""those tribes at least "" are scarcely sufficient to remove the inconsistency. A fourth division comprehends those various barbarous nations of unknown origin which occupied the territories surrounding the Indo-European race and were for the most part subdued and expelled by the latter--to this fourth division he applies the term _Allophyllian_. This glotto-historical division does not exactly correspond with the physical division as deduced from the form of the skull. The three nations first above mentioned or the inhabitants of the central regions from which they at least are supposed according to this view to have emanated have all the oval skull; though when we pass to the nomadic people of high Asia we get the pyramidal and passing from Egypt to Africa we get a gradually increasing tendency to the prognathous form. It would carry us far beyond the usual bounds of an article in this Magazine were we to give even a condensed abstract of the descriptions individual and collective of each of these leading divisions and their various subdivisions. We will observe generally that the central portion of the work which contains a detailed account of the divisions physical ethical and ethnical of all the most marked varieties of the human race accompanied with illustrative pictures and woodcuts evinces the most elaborate research and as a work of reference will be doubtless found of great value. We will therefore pass to the fifth great division of the human race which is discussed in a later portion of the work and which is not very distinctly connected with the other four--viz. the American. The Sioux tribes however who occupy tracts of land on the Upper Mississippi are supposed with great probability from their physical character language and tradition to be the descendants of a Tartar race who have emigrated across the north-west straits of America. ""The aboriginal people of America are generally considered as a department of the human family very distinct from the inhabitants of the Old World. The insulated situation of the continent and the fact that it was so long unknown and the tribes which it contains so long cut off from intercourse with other nations are among the circumstances which have contributed to produce this impression. The American nations taken in the aggregate are neither among themselves so uniform and unvaried in the physical and moral qualities nor is the line of distinction between them and the rest of mankind so strongly marked and so obvious as most persons imagine. Yet it must be admitted that certain characters are discoverable which are common or nearly so to the whole of this department of nations; that there are strong indications if not proofs of a community of origin or of very ancient relationship among them; and that in surveying collectively the people of the New World we contemplate human nature under a peculiar aspect. On comparing the American tribes together we find reasons to believe that they must have subsisted as a separate department of nations from the earliest ages of the world. Hence in attempting to trace relations between them and the rest of mankind we cannot expect to discover proofs of their derivation from any particular tribe or nation in the Old Continent. The era of their existence as a distinct and insulated race must probably be dated as far back as that time which separated into nations the inhabitants of the Old World and gave to each branch of the human family its primitive language and individuality."" The points which are supposed to indicate this relationship of the American aborigines _inter se_ and their distinction from the inhabitants of our continents are 1st the structure of their language in which-- ""Striking analogies of grammatical construction have been recognised not only in the more perfect languages as that of the Incas the Aymara the Guarani the Mexican and the Cora but also in languages extremely rude. Idioms the roots of which do not resemble each other more than the roots of the Sclavonian and Biscayan have resemblances of internal mechanism similar to those which are found in the Sanscrit the Persian the Greek and the German languages."" And 2dly their moral and social state indicating a people which has anciently possessed institutions of a highly civilized character such as according to Dr Martius-- ""A complicated form of government regulated despotisms or monarchies privileged orders hierarchical and sacerdotal ordinances systematic laws the results of reflection and a settled purpose connected with marriage and inheritance and family relationships and other customs which are strongly contrasted with the simple and unreflective habits of rude and uncivilized nations. ""The languages of these nations abound as he says with words expressive of metaphysical views and abstract conceptions. Their opinion respecting a future state the nature and attributes of invisible agents are strikingly different from those of nations who have never emerged from primitive barbarism. Another fact which tends as M. Martius observes to confirm the opinion that natives of the New World have fallen from a state of greater refinement is their use from immemorial ages of certain domesticated animals and cultivated plants and the notions which they entertained of the first acquisition of these possessions. Of such animals and plants the people of the Old World have their peculiar stock and the American nations have their own entirely different. ""In the Old World we know not whence our horses our dogs cattle and the various kinds of cerealian gramina were obtained and the American nations are equally at a loss when we enquire for the original stock of the dumb dog of the Mexicans the llama the root of the mandioca the American corn and of the quinoa. ""In the ancient world there were traditions of some mythical benefactors of mankind. Ceres Triptolemus Bacchus Pallas and Poseidon who had contributed their gifts corn and wine the sacred olive and the horse and we infer that all these had been known from periods of remote antiquity. ""In America likewise tradition refers the knowledge of cultivated plants and domestic animals and the art of tilling the earth to some fabulous person who descended from the gods or suddenly made his appearance among their ancestors such as the Manco-Capac of the Peruvians and the Xolotl and the Xiuhtlato of the Tollecas and Chicimecas. ""The remains of ancient sculpture and architecture spread over Mexico Yucatan and Chiapa as well as over the high plain of Quito and other parts of South America and the extensive works of art consisting of fortifications and other relics discovered in the Tenessi country as well as in the inland parts of New Mexico on the Rio Gila afford some further support to the hypothesis of M. Martius. ""The possession of arts and acquirements the most simple improvements of human life and such as belong to the very infancy of human society distinctively appropriate and the origin of which is recorded by mythical legends peculiar to each division of mankind seems to carry back the era of their separation to the first ages of the world."" With regard to the physical character of the Americans it appears according to Dr Martius that the principal characteristic is the truncation or flatness of the occipital portion of the cranium; the forehead wide but low supposed upon rather insufficient data to be moulded to this shape by artificial means; and the nose arched. In the new as in the old continent the diversities of physical character do not correspond with the ethnical divisions. The principal criterion of the latter adopted by Dr Prichard is the affinity of languages; and when this is insufficient to found any probable opinions conjectures derived from geographical or traditional evidence are called in aid. Upon these grounds the Americans are arranged and described by the author into the details of which for the same reason as before stated we regret not being able to follow him. Since however the first pages of this article were written a discovery has been announced connected with the physiology of the American aborigenes which if subsequently verified will be of much importance both as to the anthropological classification of the Americans and as to the natural history of man generally. In a letter addressed to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia and republished in the _Philosophical Magazine_ for July last is an account of the researches of Dr Lund who has been for some time engaged in geological investigation in Minas Geraes a province of Brazil. While examining the caverns of calcareous rocks he has found in one of them mixed with the bones of extinct races of animals human bones having all the character of fossils; they are stated to be in part petrified and in part penetrated with iron particles which gave to them a metallic lustre resembling bronze; they were of extraordinary weight; the crania presented the narrow forehead prominent zygomatic bones the facial angle the maxillary and orbital conformation of the American race. The depression of the forehead in many instances is said to amount to a total disappearance. With the bones was found a smooth stone about ten inches in circumference apparently intended to bruise seeds or hard substances. In other caverns were found human bones but unaccompanied with those of other animals. These facts if confirmed will furnish us with most important evidence as to the past state of the Americans and the ancient history and physiology of the human race; but the novelty of the results and the recent date of the communication induce us to abstain from hasty comment. The general physiological comparison of human races the similarity of periodic changes and the average duration of life are points upon which we can very briefly touch. Dr Prichard considers the different ages at which women are said to be marriageable in different climates to be very much exaggerated. He states his reasons which do not appear to us to be very conclusive. The exceptional cases from the normal physiology would be more interesting had we space for them than the analogies for which probably all our readers would be prepared. Thus among the most curious national anomalies are the Quichuas and Aymaras who from the constant habit of breathing an attenuated atmosphere have their chests enormously expanded; the Mandans who without any apparent cause have the hair grizzled or grey in youth. Among the instances of individual peculiarity no one is more extraordinary than the horned man whose entire person was covered with a rugged bark or hide having bristles here and there which hide he was said to shed annually; and this peculiar form of monstrosity appears to have been capable of hereditary transmission as he had six children with a similar covering. How he procured a wife to bear these children to him does not appear. The children were it is to be presumed not equally successful as the breed of these human rhinoceri has become extinct. Some curious instances of longevity are collected. Of 15 negroes the names and residences of whom are given the average age is 135 years; from European nations there are 1310 recorded instances of persons aged from 100 to 110 and 3 from 180 to 190. We do no more than briefly notice these exceptions as we are anxious to devote our small remaining space to what will by many be considered the most interesting portions of the book viz. the author's psychological view of the different races of mankind or the comparison of their different mental faculties. ""Though inhabiting from immemorial times regions in juxtaposition and almost contiguous to each other no two races of men can be more strongly contrasted than were the ancient Egyptian and Syro-Arabian races; one nation full of energy of restless activity changing many times their manner of existence--sometimes nomadic feeding their flocks in desert places--now settled and cultivating the earth and filling their land with populous villages and towns and fenced cities--then spreading themselves impelled by the love of glory and zeal of proselytism over distant countries; the other reposing ever in luxurious ease and wealth on the rich soil watered by their slimy river never quitting it for a foreign clime or displaying unless forced the least change in their position or habits of life. The intellectual character the metaphysical belief and the religious sentiments and practices of the two nations were equally diverse; one adoring an invisible and eternal spirit at whose almighty word the universe started into existence and 'the morning stars sang together and the sons of God shouted for joy;' the other adorning splendid temples with costly magnificence in which with mysterious and grotesque rites they paid a strange and portentous worship to some foul and grovelling object--a snake a tortoise a crocodile or an ape. The destiny of the two races has been equally different: both may be said still to exist; one in their living representatives their ever-roving energetic descendants; the other reposing in their own land--a vast sepulchre where the successive generations of thirty centuries all embalmed men women and children with their domestic animals lie beneath their dry preserving soil expecting vainly the summons to judgment--the fated time for which is to some of them long past--before the tribunal of Sarapis or in the hall of Osymandyas."" We are far from agreeing with this estimate of the ancient Egyptians. Their progress in mechanical arts their hieroglyphical literature and even their theology with its mystic trine marked them as a people far surpassing their contemporaries; and they were not the less great because their greatness is now extinct. The Arian{C} tribes though unskilled in many of the most useful arts of life yet had-- ""National poetry and a culture of language and thought altogether surprising when compared with their external condition and habits. They had bards or scalds _vates_ who were supposed under divine impulse to celebrate the history of ancient times and connect them with revelations of the future and with a refined and metaphysical system of dogmas which were handed down from age to age and from one tribe to another as the primeval creed and possession of the enlightened race. Among them in the West as well as in the remote East the doctrine of metempsychosis held a conspicuous place implying belief in an after state of rewards and punishment and a moral government of the world. With it was connected the notion that the material universe had undergone and was destined to undergo a repetition of catastrophes by fire and water; and after each destruction to be renewed in fresh beauty when a golden age was again to commence destined in a fated time to corruption and decay. The emanation of all beings from the soul of the universe and their refusion in it which were tenets closely connected with this system of dogmas border on a species of Pantheism and are liable to all the difficulties attendant upon that doctrine. ""Among most of the Indo-European nations the conservation of religious dogmas patriarchal tradition and national poetry was confided not to accidental reminiscences and popular recitations but to a distinct order of persons who were venerated as mediators between the invisible powers and their fellow mortals as the depositories of sacred lore and interpreters of the will of the gods expressed of old to the first men and handed down either orally in divine poems or preserved in a sacred literature known only to the initiated. In most instances they were an hereditary caste Druids Brahmans or Magi. ""Among the Allophylian nations on the other hand a rude and sensual superstition prevailed which ascribed life and mysterious powers to the inanimate objects. The religion of fetisses of charms and spells and talismans was in the hands not of a learned caste the twice-born sons of Brama but of shamans or sorcerers who by feigning swoons and convulsions by horrible cries and yells by cutting themselves with knives by whirling and contortions assumed the appearance of something preternatural and portentous and impressed the multitude with the belief that they were possessed by demons. Of this latter description were the wizards of the Finns and Lappes the angekoks of the Esquimaux; and such are the shamans of all the countries in Northern Asia where neither Buddhism nor Islamism has yet penetrated."" Of the American nations the prevailing opinion according to Loskiel is-- ""'That there is one God or as they call him one Great and Good Spirit.' It seems from the testimony of this writer which is supported by the evidence of all those who have conversed with the aboriginal nations of North America that the conceptions of these nations respecting the Deity are much more complete and philosophical than those of the most savage people in the Old Continent. They suppose him literally to be the creator of heaven and earth of men and all other creatures; they represent him as almighty and able to do as much good as he pleases; 'nor do they doubt that he is kindly disposed towards men because he imparts power to plants to grow causes rain and sunshine and gives fish and venison to man for his support;' these gifts however to the Indians exclusively. 'They are convinced that God requires of them to do good and to eschew evil.' We may observe that in these particulars the Americans resemble the Northern Asiatics. We are assured by the late traveller M. Erman on the authority of the metropolitan Philophei who lived among the Ostiaks on the Oby that these people had before Christian missionaries ever came among them a belief in the existence of a Supreme Deity of whose nature they had pure and exalted ideas and to whom they affirmed that they never made offerings nor had they represented his form; while to inferior gods and particularly to Oertidk who was a sort of mediator and whose name as it was preserved among the Magyars Oerdig was used by the monks as a designator for the devil they made divers gifts; they performed before his image dances which Erman who visited the Kolushians on the Sitcka declares to be precisely similar to the war-dances of those Americans. Some of the American people make images of the Manittos. ""Besides the Supreme Deity the American nations believe in a number of inferior spirits whom the Delaware Indians term Manittos; they are both good and evil. 'From the accounts of the oldest Indians ' says Loskiel 'it appears that when war was in contemplation they used to admonish each other to hearken to the good and not to evil spirits--the former always recommending peace.' They had formerly no notion of a devil or evil being in the Christian or Eastern sense of the term but readily adopted according to Loskiel such a belief from the white people. They have among them preachers who pretend to have received revelations and who dispute and teach different opinions. Some pretend to have travelled near to the dwelling of God or near enough to hear the cocks crow and see the smoke of the chimneys in heaven; others declare that no one ever knew the dwelling-place of God but that the abode of the Good Spirit is above the blue sky and that the road to it is the milky way--a notion by the way which Beausobre and others have traced in the remains of the Manicheans and other Eastern philosophers. The Americans believe in the existence of souls distinct from bodies and many of them in the transmigration of souls. According to Loskiel they declare 'that Indians cannot die eternally; for even Indian corn is vivified and rises again.' The general opinion among them is that the souls of the good alone go to a place abounding in all earthly pleasures while the wicked wander about dejected and melancholy. Like other nations they had sacrifices. 'Sacrifices ' says Loskiel 'made with a view to pacify God and the subordinate deities are of a very ancient date among them and considered in so sacred a light that unless they are performed in a time and manner acceptable illness misfortune and death would befall them and their families.' They offer on these occasions hares bear's flesh and Indian corn. Many nations have besides other stated times of sacrifice one principal festival in two years when they sacrifice an animal and make a point of eating the whole. ""A small quantity of melted fat is poured by the oldest men into the fire and in this the main part of the offering consists. The offerings are made to Manittos. The Manittos are precisely the Fetisses of the African nations and of the Northern Asiatics. They are tutelary beings often in visible forms. Every Indian has a guardian Manitto; one has the sun for his Manitto; one the moon; one has a dream that he must make his Manitto an owl; one a buffalo. The Delawares had five festivals in the year one in honour of fire supposed to have been the parent of all the Indian nations. Like other nations these people believed in the necessity of purification from guilt by fasting and bodily mortification. Some underwent for this end the pain of being beaten with sticks from the sole of their feet to their head. 'Some gave the poor people vomits as the most expeditious mode.' ""Like the Northern Asiatics the American nations had instead of a regular priesthood jugglers or sorcerers who pretended to have supernatural power and knowledge. They appear to conform in every respect to the schamans of the Siberians and the Fetiss-seers of the African nations."" We have in the above extracts placed in juxtaposition the leading psychical characteristics of the five divisions of mankind. There are some points in which the different races of man seem in their various superstitions and creeds curiously agreed. The doctrine of sacrificial atonement seems almost universally prevalent and forms the basis of the various sacerdotal institutions. The care of the dead is also another peculiarity and one in which mankind appear from the earliest historical period to have differed from other animals. The susceptibility to receive the doctrines of Christianity is a circumstance of agreement among the various races of mankind from which the Bushmen of South Africa are the only exception; and viewing these as a branch of the Hottentots this exception would seem to disappear--for the latter have been converted. The following is the satisfactory account of the Hottentot missionaries as to the moral effect of Christianity:-- ""It is the unvarying statement of these missionaries deduced from the experience of a hundred years of patient service and laborious exertions among the rudest and most abject tribes of human beings; that the moral nature of man must be in the first instance quickened the conscience awakened and the better feelings of the heart aroused by the motives which Christianity brings with it before any improvement can be hoped for in the outward behaviour and social state; that the rudest savages have sufficient understanding to be susceptible of such a change; and that when it has once taken place all the blessings of civilization follow as a necessary result."" The gypsy tribe of which Dr Prichard takes no notice would seem to form an exception from the great mass of mankind as to the absence of religious creed. The opinions and theories respecting it we must leave as it forms of itself a wide field for discussion; and having fully occupied the space allotted to us we must here bring to a close our sketch of a work which notwithstanding the somewhat unreadable character of the central portion has supplied to the public a valuable collection of recorded facts expressed for the most part in clear untechnical language. We have not entered into questions of contrast or similitude with the opinions of other authors. Had we done so we must have adopted a style of criticism interesting only to those who are specially engaged in the subject and so incapable of limitation that every paragraph would serve for an article longer far than that which we have here written. Dr Prichard appears nowise unwilling to refer to each author his due share of merit and is by no means sparing of copious extracts taken with no partial view of supporting a theory. At the risk of being considered only a compiler he has at all events avoided any affectation of originality. With regard to the proposition sought to be established by the author the book before us does not appear to be conclusive. The question as to the community of origin of mankind viewed purely as an inductive one appears still involved in obscurity. On the one hand the fact of continual degeneration resulting from the intermarriage of members of the same family would require for its explanation either a miraculous interference in the first periods of human existence or a gradual change in the constitution of man whereby what once was harmless has become injurious when the necessity for it is removed; moreover according to the evidence contained in this book the races of mankind cannot be traced backward to a single pair. But taking the three great divisions the Semitic the Hamitish and the Japetic as derived from Shem Ham and Japhet the various Allophyllian and American aborigines would appear to have existed and to have been spread over the world before the above nations overran it. On the other hand supposing that the mere power of reproduction be not of itself sufficient evidence of identity of species the similarity of physical formation of periodic changes and of psychical instincts are strongly corroborative of this evidence and would of themselves lead to the deduction of such identity. Upon the whole we consider the merits of the work before us to consist not in the demonstration of a theorem but in presenting to the reader a compendious record of physical historical and psychological facts and relations. Viewed in this light it is an interesting contribution to ethnology; while the size of the book the pictorial illustrations and the absence of unnecessary technicality make it a convenient manual for the general reader. FOOTNOTES: {A} _The Natural History of Man._ By J. C. PRICHARD M.D. {B} The term _Hamitish_ is not used by Dr Prichard; but as he gives no distinctive appellation to his third division we adopt that which has been used by Beke and others. {C} The term _Arian_ used by Dr Prichard is objectionable as having received a very different application. POEMS BY COVENTRY PATMORE.{A} This is certainly an age of very merciful tendencies. The severity of the criminal laws has been greatly abated; and in conformity with the views of the legislature we have of late years been gradually relaxing the stringency of our critical code. Yet we question whether the change has been productive of good and whether the result can be said to have answered the expectations either of government or of ourselves. We doubt whether crime has diminished in consequence of the legislative clemency; and in our own humble department we are now convinced that the mild method is not the best way of bringing singers to repentance. The experiment has been fairly tried and the numerous trashy publications put forth by the young writers of the day particularly in the poetical line convince us that our mercy has been misplaced; and that a little well-timed severity and a few examples held up _in terrorem_ might have greatly benefited the literary wellbeing of England. The ""spirit of the age"" might have been different from what it is if the just sentence of the law had been more frequently carried into effect. Our timely strictures might not have kindled into song any masculine intellect but they might have prevented the temple of the Muses from being desecrated. They might have prevented the appearance of such a publication as this. In the days of the knout we believe that no such volume as Mr Coventry Patmore's could have ventured to crawl out of manuscript into print. While we admit then that we have to blame our own forbearance in some degree for its appearance we think it our duty to take this opportunity of amending our code of criticism and shall try the volume simply as it stands and somewhat according to the good old principles of literary jurisprudence. We are further instigated to this act of duty by the laudatory terms in which the volume has been hailed by certain contemporary journalists. Had Mr Patmore's injudicious friends not thought proper to announce him to the world as the brightest rising star in the poetical firmament of Young England we would probably have allowed his effusions to die of their own utter insignificance. But since they have acted as they have done we too must be permitted to express our opinion of their merits; and our deliberate judgment is that the weakest inanity ever perpetrated in rhyme by the vilest poetaster of any former generation becomes masculine verse when contrasted with the nauseous pulings of Mr Patmore's muse. Indeed we question whether the strains of any poetaster can be considered vile when brought into comparison with this gentleman's verses. His silly and conceited rhapsodies rather make us sigh for the good old times when all poetry below the very highest was made up of artifice and conventionalism; when all poets except the very greatest spoke a hereditary dialect of their own which nobody else interfered with--counted on their fingers every line they penned and knew no inspiration except that which they imbibed from Byssh's rhyming dictionary. True that there was then no life or spirit in the poetical vocabulary--true that there was no nature in the delineations of our minor poets; but better far was such language than the slip-slop vulgarities of the present rhymester--better far that there should be no nature in poetry than _such_ nature as Mr Patmore has exhibited for the entertainment of his readers. The first poem in the volume entitled ""The River "" is a tale of disappointed love terminating in the suicide of the lover. Poor and pointless as this performance is it is by far the best in the book. As Mr Patmore advances there is a marked increase of silliness and affectation in his effusions which shows how sedulously he has cultivated the art of sinking in poetry; and that the same adage which has been applied to vice may be applied also to folly ""_Nemo repente fuit stultissimus_."" Never was there a richer offering laid on the shrine of the goddess _Stultia_ than the tale of Sir Hubert with which the volume concludes. But our business at present is with ""The River."" The common practice of writers who deal with stories of love whose ""course never did run smooth "" is to make their heroes commit suicide on finding that the ladies whom they had wooed in vain were married to other people. But in the poem before us Mr Patmore improves upon this method; he drowns his lover Witchaire because the lady whom he had never wooed at all does not marry him but gives her hand (why should she not?) to the man who sues for it. Did Witchaire expect that the lady was to propose to him? The poem opens with some very babyish verses descriptive of an ""old manor hall"":-- ""Its huge fantastic weather-vanes _Look happy_ in the light; Its warm face through the foliage gleams A _comfortable_ sight."" And so on until we are introduced to the lady of the establishment:-- ""That lady loves the pale Witchaire _Who loves too much t
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sue_: He came this morning hurriedly Then out her young blood flew; But he talk'd of common things _and so_ Her eyes are steep'd in dew."" The lady finding that her lover continues to hang back dries her tears and very properly gets married to another man. During the celebration of the ceremony the poet recurs to his hero who has taken up his position in the park-- ""Leaning against an aged tree By thunder stricken bare. ""The moonshine shineth in his eye From which no tear doth fall Full of vacuity as death Its slaty parched ball Fixedly though expressionless Gleams on the distant hall."" Witchaire then goes and drowns himself in a river which ""runneth round"" the lady's property--a dreadful warning to all young lovers ""who love too much to sue."" On a fine day in the following summer the poet brings the lady to the banks of this river. His evident intention is to raise in the reader's mind the expectation that she shall discover her lover's body or some other circumstance indicative of the fatal catastrophe. This expectation however he disappoints. The only remarkable occurrence which takes place is that the lady does _not_ find the corpse nor does any evidence transpire which can lead her to suppose that the suicide had ever been committed; and with this senseless and inconclusive conclusion the reader is befooled. The only incident which we ever heard of at all rivaling this story in an abortive ending is one which we once heard related at a party where the conversation turned on the singular manner in which valuable articles thrown into the sea had been sometimes recovered and restored to their owners--the ring of Polycrates which was found in the maw of a fish after having been sunk in deep waters being as the reader knows the first and most remarkable instance of such recoveries. After the rest of the company had exhausted their marvellous relations the following tale was told as the climax of all such wonderful narratives; and it was admitted on all hands that the force of surprise could no further go. We shall endeavour to versify it _à la_ Patmore conceiving that its issue is very similar to that of his story of ""The River."" THE RING AND THE FISH. A lady and her lover once Were walking on a rocky beach: Soft at first and gentle was The music of their mutual speech And the looks were gentle too With which each regarded each. At length some casual word occurr'd Which somewhat moved the lady's bile; From less to more her anger wax'd-- How sheepish look'd her swain the while!-- And now upon their faces twain There is not seen a single smile. A ring was on the lady's hand The gift of that dumb-founder'd lover-- In scorn she pluck'd it from her hand And flung it far the waters over-- Far beyond the power of any Duck or drag-net to recover. Remorse then smote the lady's heart When she had thrown her ring away; She paceth o'er the rocky beach And resteth neither night nor day; But still the burthen of her song Is ""Oh my ring! my ring!"" alway. Her lover now essays to soothe The dark compunctious visitings That assail the lady's breast With a thousand thousand stings For that she had thrown away This the paragon of rings. But all in vain; at length one day A fisher chanced to draw his net Across the sullen spot that held The gem that made the lady fret And caught about the finest cod That ever he had captured yet. He had a basket on his back And he placed his booty in it; The lady's lover bought the fish And when the cook began to skin it She found--incredible surprise!-- She found the ring--was _not_ within it. The next tale called ""The Woodman's Daughter "" is a story of seduction madness and child-murder. These are powerful materials to work with; yet it is not every man's hand that they will suit. In the hands of common-place they are simply revolting. In the hands of folly and affectation their repulsiveness is aggravated by the simpering conceits which usurp the place of the strongest passions of our nature. He only is privileged to unveil these gloomy depths of erring humanity who can subdue their repulsiveness by touches of ethereal feeling; and whose imagination buoyant above the waves of passion bears the heart of the reader into havens of calm beauty even when following the most deplorable aberrations of a child of sin. Such a man is not Mr Patmore. He has no imagination at all--or what is the same thing an imagination which welters in impotence far below the level of the emotions which it ought to overrule. The pitfalls of his tale of misery are covered over with thin sprinklings of asterisks--the poorest subterfuge of an impoverished imagination; and besotted indeed is the senselessness with which he disports himself around their margin. Maud the victim is the daughter of Gerald the woodman; and Merton the seducer is the son of a rich squire in the neighbourhood. Maud used to accompany her father to his employment in the woods. ""She merely went to think she help'd; And whilst he hack'd and saw'd The rich squire's son a young boy then For whole days as if aw'd Stood by and gazed alternately At Gerald and at Maud. ""He sometimes _in a sullen tone_ Would offer fruits and she Always received his gifts with an air So unreserved and free That half-feign'd distance soon became Familiarity. ""Therefore in time when Gerald shook The woods at his employ The young heir and the cottage-girl Would steal out to enjoy The music of each other's talk-- A simple girl and boy. ""They pass'd their time both girl and boy Uncheck'd unquestion'd; yet They always hid their wanderings By wood and rivulet Because they could not give themselves A reason why they met. --It may have been in the ancient time Before Love's earliest ban Psychëan curiosity Had broken Nature's plan; _When all that was not youth was age And men knew less of Man;_-- ""Or when the works of time shall reach The goal to which they tend And knowledge being perfect shall At last in wisdom end-- That wisdom to end knowledge--or Some change comes yet unkenn'd; ""It perhaps may be again that men Like orange plants will bear At once the many fine effects To which God made them heir-- Large souls large forms and love like that Between this childish pair. ""Two summers pass'd away and then-- _Though yet young Merton's eyes Wide with their language spake of youth's Habitual surprise_-- He felt that pleasures such as these No longer could suffice."" What the meaning of the three stanzas beginning with-- ""It may have been in the ancient time "" may be we are utterly at a loss to conjecture. We seek in vain to invest them with a shadow of sense. Perhaps they are thrown in to redeem by their profound unintelligibility the shallow trifling of the rest of the poem. But it was not enough for young Merton that the girl accepted the fruits which he offered to her in a _sullen_ tone. He had now reached the age so naturally and lucidly described as the period of life when the ""eyes wide with their language speak of youth's habitual surprise "" and he began to seek ""new joys from books "" communicating the results of his studies to Maud whose turn it now was to be surprised. ""So when to-morrow came while Maud Stood listening with surprise He told the tale learnt over night And if he met her eyes _Perhaps_ said how far the stars were _and Talk'd on about the skies_."" The effect of these lucid revelations upon the mind of Maud was very overpowering. ""She wept for joy if the cushat sang Its low song in the fir; The cat _perhaps_ broke the quiet with Its regular slow purr; 'Twas music now and her wheel gave forth A rhythm in its whirr. ""She once had read When lovers die And go where angels are Each pair of lover's souls _perhaps_ Will make a double star; _So stars grew dearer and she thought They did not look so far._ ""But being ignorant and still So young as to be prone To think all very great delights Peculiarly her own She guess'd not what to her made sweet _Books writ on lovers' moan_."" And so the poem babbles on through several very sickly pages in which the following descriptive stanza occurs:-- ""The flat white river lapsed along Now a broad broken glare Now winding through the bosom'd lands Till lost in distance where The tall hills sunning their chisell'd peaks _Made emptier the empty air_."" During one of their ramblings Maud becomes visibly embarrassed. ""But Merton's thoughts were less confused: 'What _I_ wrong ought so good? Besides the danger that is seen Is easily withstood:' Then loud 'The sun is very warm'-- _And they walk'd into the wood_."" The wood consisting of a forest of as shady asterisks as the most fastidious lovers could desire. ""Months pass'd away and every day The lovers still were wont To meet together and their shame At meeting had grown blunt; _For they were of an age when sin Is only seen in front_."" The father however who was also of an age to see sin _in front_ suspects that his daughter is with child and taxes her with it. Maud confesses her shame; upon which as we are led to conjecture old Gerald dies broken-hearted--while the girl is safely delivered under a cloud of asterisks. She is deterred from disclosing her situation to Merton the father of the child--and why? for this very natural reason forsooth that ""He if that were done Could hardly fail to know The ruin he had caused he might Be brought to share her woe Making it doubly sharp."" So rather than occasion the slightest distress or inconvenience to her seducer she magnanimously resolves to murder her baby; and accordingly the usual machinery of the poem is brought into play--the asterisks--which on former occasions answered the purpose of a forest and a cloud being now converted into a very convenient pool in which she quietly immerses the offspring of her illicit passion. And the deed being done its appalling consequences on her conscience are thus powerfully and naturally depicted-- ""_Lo! in her eyes stands the great surprise That comes with the first crime_. ""She throws a glance of terror round-- There's not a creature nigh; But behold the sun that looketh through The frowning western sky Is lifting up one broad beam _like A lash of God's own eye_."" Were we not right in saying that there is nothing in the writings of any former poetaster to equal the silly and conceited jargon of the present versifier? Having favoured us with the emphatic lines in italics to depict the physical concomitants of Maud's guilt he again has recourse to asterisks to veil the mental throes by which her mind is tortured into madness by remorse: and very wisely--for they lead us to suppose that the writer could have powerfully delineated these inner agitations if he had chosen; but that he has abstained from doing so out of mercy to the feelings of his readers. We must therefore content ourselves with the following feebleness with which the poem concludes: ""Maud with her books comes day by day Fantastically clad To read them near the poor; and all Who meet her look so sad-- That even to herself it is Quite plain that she is mad."" ""Lilian"" is the next tale in the volume. This poem is an echo both in sentiment and in versification of Mr Tennyson's ""Locksley Hall;"" and a baser and more servile echo was never bleated forth from the throat of any of the imitative flock. There are many other indications in the volume which show that Mr Tennyson is the model which Mr Patmore has set up for his imitation; but ""Lilian "" more particularly is a complete counterpart in coarsest fustian of the silken splendours of Mr Tennyson's poem. It is ""Locksley Hall"" stripped of all its beauty and debased by a thousand vulgarities both of sentiment and style. The burden of both poems consists of bitter denunciations poured forth by disappointed and deserted love; with this difference that the passion which Mr Tennyson gives utterance to Mr Patmore reverberates in rant. A small poet indeed could not have worked after a more unsafe model. For while he might hope to mimic the agitated passions of ""Locksley Hall "" in vain could he expect to be visited by the serene imagination which in that poem steeps their violence in an atmosphere of beauty. Even with regard to Mr Tennyson's poem it is rather for the sake of its picturesque descriptions than on account of its burning emotions that we recur to it with pleasure. We rejoice to follow him to regions where ""Never comes the trader never floats an European flag _Slides the bird o'er lustrous woodland_ droops the trailer from the crag."" It is rather we say on account of such lines as these (no picture of tropical loveliness ever surpassed in our opinion the description printed in italics) that we admire ""Locksley Hall "" than on account of the troubled passions which it embodies; knowing as we do that poetry has nobler offices to perform than to fulmine forth fierce and sarcastic invectives against the head of a jilt; and if as Mr Tennyson says ""love is love for evermore "" we would ask even him why he did not make the lover in ""Locksley Hall"" betray even in spite of himself a more pitiful tenderness for the devoted heroine of the tale? How different the strain of the manly Schiller under similar circumstances! _His_ bitterness cannot be restrained from breaking down at last in a flood of tenderness over the lost mistress of his affections. ""Oh! what scorn for thy desolate years Shall I feel! God forbid it should be! How bitter will then be the tears Shed Minna oh Minna for thee!"" But if it be true that ""Locksley Hall"" is somewhat deficient in the ethereal tenderness which would overcome a true heart even when blighted in its best affections it was not to be expected that its imitator should have been visited with deeper glimpses of the divine. The indignant passions of his unrequited lover are indeed passions of the most ignoble clay--not one touch of elevated feeling lifts him for a moment out of the mire. The whole train of circumstances which engender his emotions prove the lover in this case to have been the silliest of mortal men and his mistress from the very beginning of his intercourse with her to have been one of the most abandoned of her sex. ""Lilian"" is a burlesque on disappointed love and a travestie of the passions which such a disappointment entails. We know not which are the more odious and revolting in their expression--the emotions of the jilted lover or the incidents which call them into play. The poem is designed to illustrate the bad effects produced on the female mind by the reading of French novels. We have nothing to say in their defence. But the incongruity lies here--that Lilian who was seduced by means of these noxious publications was evidently a lady of the frailest virtue from the very first; and her lover might have seen this with half an eye. Her materials were obviously of the most inflammable order; and it evidently did not require the application of such a spark as the seducer Winton with his formidable artillery of imported literature to set her tinder in a blaze--any other small contingency would have answered equally well. All that she wanted was an opportunity to fall; and that she would soon have found under any circumstances whatsoever. The lover however sees nothing of all this but relates the story of his unfortunate love-affair with as much simplicity as if he had been mourning the fall of the mother of mankind from paradise. The lover relates his tale to his friend the author. He begins by entreating him to ""Bear with me in case Tears come. _I feel them coming by the smarting in my face_."" And then he proceeds to introduce us to this Lilian the immaculate mistress of his soul-- ""She could see me coming to her with the vision of the hawk; Always hasten'd on to meet me _heavy passion in her walk;_ Low tones to me grew lower sweetening so her honey talk ""That it fill'd up all my hearing drown'd the _voices of the birds_ The _voices of the breezes_ and the _voices of the herds_-- For to me the lowest ever were the loudest of her words."" ""Heavy passion in her walk!""--what a delicate and delectable young lady she must have been! Then as to the fact so harmoniously expressed of her accents drowning ""the voices of the birds the voices of the breezes and the voices of the herds "" we may remark that the first and second never require to be drowned at all being nearly inaudible at any rate even during the most indifferent conversation--so that there was nothing very remarkable in their being extinguished by the plaintiveness of the lady's tones; while with regard to the voices of the herds if she succeeded in drowning these--the cattle being near at hand and lowing lustily--she must indeed have roared to her lover ""like any nightingale."" The description of her is thus continued-- ""On her face then and for ever was the seriousness within. Her sweetest smiles (and sweeter did a lover never win) _Ere half-done grew so absent that they made her fair cheek thin._ ""On her face then and for ever thoughts unworded used to live; So that when she whisper'd to me 'Better joy earth cannot give'-- Her lips though shut continued 'But earth's joy is fugitive.' ""For there a _nameless something_ though suppress'd still spread around; The same was on her eyelids if she look'd towards the ground; When she spoke you _knew directly_ that the same was in the sound;"" By and by a young gentleman of the name of Winton comes to visit Lilian and her father:-- ""A formerly-loved companion--he was fresh from sprightly France And with many volumes laden essay poem and romance."" He and his pursuits after leaving school are thus elegantly described:-- ""When free all healthy study was put by that he might rush To his favourite books French chiefly that his blood might boil and gush Over scenes which set his visage glowing crimson--_not a blush_."" This gentleman and Lilian's lover strike up a strong friendship for one another and the latter makes Winton his confidant. As yet no suspicions arise to break the blind sleep of the infatuated dreamer. ""Delights were still remaining--hate--shame--rage--_I can't tell what_ Comes to me at their memory; none that _more or less_ was not The soul's _unconscious incest_ on creations self-begot."" He still continues to doat on Lilian. ""Oh friend if you had seen her! heard her speaking felt her grace When serious looks seem'd filling with the smiles which in a space Broke sweet as Sabbath sunshine and lit up her _shady_ face. ""Try to conceive her image--does it make your brain reel round? But all of this is over. Well friend--various signs (I found Too late on rumination) then and thenceforth did abound ""Wherefrom--but that all lovers look too closely to see clear-- I might have gather'd matter fit for just and jealous fear. From her face _the nameless something_ now began to disappear. ""What I felt for her I often told her boldly to her face; _Blushes used to blush at blushes flushing on in glowing chace!_ But latterly she listen'd bending full of bashful grace. ""It was to hide those blushes I thought then _but I suspect It was to hide their absence_."" How great this writer is on the subject of blushing we shall have another opportunity of showing.--(See Lady Mabel's shoulders in the poem of Sir Hubert.) Meanwhile the fair deceiver is now undergoing a course of French novels under the tuition of young Winton. The consequence was ""_Her voice grew louder_""--no great harm in that-- ""Her voice grew louder--losing the much meaning it once bore _The passion in her carriage_ though it every day grew more Was now the same to all men--and that was not so before."" We suppose that there was now ""heavy passion in her walk "" whoever the man might be that approached her. ""And grosser signs _far grosser_ I remember now; but these I miss'd of course and counted _with those light anomalies Too frequent to disturb us into searching for their keys_."" These misgivings which might have ripened into suspicions are suddenly swept away by a stroke of duplicity on the part of his mistress inconceivable in any woman except one inclined naturally and without any prompting to practise the profoundest artifices of vice. ""Even the dreadful glimpses now began to fade away And disappear'd completely when my Lilian asked one day If I knew what reason Winton had to make so long a stay ""In England--'For ' said Lilian with untroubled countenance 'Winton of course has told you of the love he left in France.' I seized her hand and kiss'd it--joy had left no utterance."" Winton according to the account of the false Lilian having _a love_ in France could not of course be supposed to be paying court to her. Thus the lover is thrown off the scent and his doubts are entirely laid asleep. He is again in the seventh heavens of assured love and continues thus:-- ""Another calm so perfect I should think is only shed On good men dying gently who recall a life well led Till they cannot tell _for sweetness_ if they be alive or dead. ""_I'll stop here._ You already have I think divined the rest. There's a prophetic moisture in your eyes:--yet tears being blest And delicate nutrition apt to cease too much suppress'd ""_I'll go on_; but less for your sake than my own:--my skin is hot And there's an arid pricking in my veins; their currents clot: Tears sometimes soothe such fever where the letting of blood will not."" At length his eyes are opened and the whole truth flashes upon him on overhearing an acquaintance ask Winton whether his suit with Lilian has been successful. Upon this he writes out his opinion of the lady's behaviour presents it to her and watches her while she peruses it occupying himself at intervals as follows:-- ""I turn'd a volume waiting her full leisure to reply The book was one which Winton had ask'd me to read and I Had stopp'd halfway for horror _lest my soul should putrify_."" When Lilian has finished the perusal of the document she endeavours at first to stand on the defensive -- ""She stood at bay _depending on that crutch made like a stilt_ The impudent vulgarity wherewith women outstare guilt."" But she finally succumbs under the influence of the following refined vituperation:-- ""Don't speak! You would not have me unacquainted with what led To this result? No! listen and let _me_ relate what bred Thy tears and cheapen'd chasteness--(_we may talk now as if wed._) ""This book here that lay open when I came in unaware Is not the first--I thought so!--but the last of many a stair Of easy fall. Such only could have led you to _his lair_. ""These drugs at first had scarcely strength to move your virgin blood; They slowly rose in action till they wrought it to a flood Fit for their giver's purpose who--_who turn'd it into mud!_"" The lover then leaves Lilian to her own meditations and commences to rant and rave against her seducer in good set terms of which the following is a specimen:-- ""Pardon Heaven! that I doubted whether there was any hell. Oh! but now I do believe it! Firmly firmly! I foretell Of one that shall rank high there: he's a scoffer and must dwell ""Where worms are--ever gnawing scoffers' hearts into belief; Where weepings gnashings wailings thirstings groanings ghastly grief For ever and for ever pay the price of pleasures brief; ""Where Gallios who while living knew but cared for none of these Now amazed with shame would gladly might it God (_Fate there_) appease Watch and pray a million cycles for a single moment's ease."" After having thus breathed his passion in a diatribe which beats in abomination any slang that was ever ranted out of a tub by a mountebank saint he harps back upon the prodigious attractiveness of his mistress in the following pathetic though not very consistent terms-- ""Ah but had you known my Lilian! (a sweet name?) Indeed indeed I doted on my Lilian. None can praise her half her meed. Perfect in soul; too gentle--others' need she made her need; ""_Quite passionless_ but ever bounteous-minded even to waste; Much tenderness in talking; very urgent yet no haste; _And chastity--to laud it would have seem'd almost unchaste._ ""Graced highly too with knowledge; versed in tongues; a queen of dance; An artist at her playing; a most touching utterance In song; her lips' mild music could make sweet the _clack_ of France."" Amid such outpourings of feculent folly it is scarcely worth our while to take notice of the minor offences against good taste that abound in these poems; yet we may remark that the writer who here condescends to use such a word as _clack_ and who on other occasions does not scruple to talk of _a repeat_ and _a repay_ instead of ""a repetition "" and ""a repayment "" does not consider the word _watch-dog_ sufficiently elevated for his compositions. Whenever he alludes to this animal he calls him a _guard-hound_--a word which we do not remember ever to have encountered either in conversation or in books but which for ought we know may be drawn from those ""pure wells of English undefiled "" which irrigate with their fair waters the provincial districts of the modern Babylon. The author of ""Lillian"" evidently piques himself on the fidelity with which he has adhered to nature in his treatment of that story. But there are two ways in which nature may be adhered to in verse; and it is only one of these ways which can be considered poetical. The writer may adhere to the truth of _human_ nature while he elevates the emotions of the heart in strains which find a cordial echo in the sentiments of all mankind. Or if his whole being is sicklied over with silliness and affectation he may adhere to the truth of _his own_ nature and while writing perfectly naturally _for him_ he may unfold his delineations of character in such a manner as shall strip every passion of its dignity and every emotion of its grace. Now it is only by reason of their adherence to the latter species of nature that ""Lillian"" and the other compositions of Mr Patmore can be considered natural and viewed under this aspect they certainly are natural exceedingly. The story of ""Sir Hubert"" finishes the volume. This tale is versified from Boccacio's story of the Falcon with which many of our readers may be acquainted; if not they will find it in the fifth day novel ninth of the _Decameron_. We can only afford space for a short outline of its incidents and shall substitute Mr Patmore's names for those of the personages who figure in Boccacio's story. This will save both ourselves and readers the trouble of threading the _minutiæ_ of Mr Patmore's senseless and long-winded version of the tale. A few specimens will suffice to exhibit the manner in which he deals with it. Sir Hubert is a rich gentleman who squanders almost all his substance in giving grand entertainments to the Lady Mabel whom he makes love to without meeting with any return. Finding his suit unsuccessful and his money being all spent he retires to a small and distant farm having nothing left but one poor hawk upon which he depends for his means of subsistence. Meanwhile the Lady Mabel marries and has a son. After a time (her husband being dead ) she comes to reside in a castle in the neighbourhood of Sir Hubert's cottage where her son who has often remarked the prowess and beauty of the above-mentioned hawk falls sick assuring his mother that nothing can save his life except the possession of the bird. The lady very reluctantly pays a visit to Sir Hubert and tells him that she has a request to proffer which she will make known to him after dinner. Though Sir Hubert is delighted to see her the mention of dinner throws him into a state of great perplexity as he has nothing in the house which they can make a meal of. Going out of doors ""he espies his hawk upon the perch which he seizes and finding it very fat judges it might make a dish not unworthy of such a lady. Without further thought then he pulls his head off and gives it to a girl to dress and roast carefully."" This being done the lady and her admirer sit down to dinner and make an excellent repast. When their meal is over then comes the _éclaircissement_. The lady proffers her petition for the hawk; and discovers from Sir Hubert's answer and to her own consternation that she has eaten the very article she came in quest of and which she had expected to carry home alive; as the only means of saving the life of her son. The young gentleman dies on finding that he cannot obtain what he wants; and Mabel marries Sir Hubert and settles upon him all her possessions as a reward for his magnanimity in sacrificing that which (next to herself) he held dearest in the whole world rather than that she should go without a dinner. Such is a short sketch of Boccacio's tale of the Falcon--a good enough story in its way; and more creditable than many that were circulated among the loose fish male and female that play their parts in the _Decameron_. This novel has been versified by Mr Patmore and versified (as our specimens shall show) as he alone could have versified it. The following is his description of the much-longed-for but sorely-ill-treated hawk of Sir Hubert. ""It served him too of evenings: On a sudden he would rise From book or simple music And awake his hawk's large eyes (_Almost as large as Mabel's_) Teasing out its dumb replies ""In sulky sidelong glances And reluctantly flapp'd wings Or looks of slow communion To the lightsome questionings That broke the drowsy sameness And the sense like fear which springs ""At night when we are conscious Of our distance from the strife Of cities; and the memory Of the spirit of all things rife _Endues the chairs and tables With a disagreeable life_."" A Scotch lyrist who we are told sings his own songs to perfection has also recorded the very singular fact of various articles of household furniture (not exactly tables) being occasionally endued ""with a disagreeable life."" One of his best ballads in which he describes the bickerings which even in the best-regulated families will at times take place between man and wife and in which various domestic missiles come into play contains the following very excellent line-- ""_The stools pass the best o' their time i' the air_""-- than which no sort of life appertaining to a stool can be more disagreeable we should imagine--to the head which it is about to come in contact with. We doubt whether Mr Patmore's or rather Sir Hubert's chairs and tables ever acquired such a vigorous and unpleasant vitality as that. What may have happened to the ""stools"" after Mabel was married to Sir Hubert we cannot take it upon us to say. At any rate we prefer the Scotch poet's description as somewhat the more pithy and graphic and intelligible of the two. The coincidence however is remarkable. After Sir Hubert has retired to his farm the state of his feelings is described in the following stanzas. We suspect that the metaphysical acumen of Boccacio himself would have been a good deal puzzled to unravel the meaning of some of them. ""He gather'd consolation As before where best he might: But though there was the difference That he now could claim a right To grieve as much as pleased him It was six years since his sight ""Had fed on Mabel's features; So that Hubert scarcely knew What traits to give the vision Which should fill his eyes with dew:-- For she must needs by that time Have become another who ""In girlhood's triple glory (For a higher third outflows Whenever Promise marries With Completion ) troubled those That saw with trouble sweeter Than the sweetest of repose. ""It therefore was the business Of his thoughts to try to trace The probable fulfilment Of her former soul and face -- From buds deducing blossoms. For although an easy space ""Led from the farm of Hubert To where Mabel's castle stood Closed in a league on all sides. With wall'd parks and wealthy wood No chance glimpse could be look'd for So recluse her widowhood. ""Hence seasons past and Hubert Earn'd his bread but leisure spent In loved dissatisfaction Which he made his element Of choice as much as till then He had sought it in content."" If the verses above would have baffled the sagacity of the father of Italian literature what would he have thought of the following in which the interview between Sir Hubert and Mabel is described when the lady comes to negotiate with him about the hawk? She accosts him ""Sir Hubert!"" and then there is presented to our imaginations such a picture of female loveliness as (thank Heaven!) can only be done justice to in the language which is employed for the occasion. ""'Sir Hubert!'--and that instant _Mabel saw the fresh light flush Out of her rosy shoulders_ And perceived her sweet blood _hush About her_ till all ov
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r _There shone forth a sumptuous blush_-- ""'Sir Hubert I have sought you Unattended to request A boon--the first I ever Have entreated.' Then she press'd _Her small hand's weight of whiteness To her richly-sloping breast_."" At first we thought that it should have been Hubert and not Mabel who saw ""the fresh light flush out of her rosy shoulders""--particularly if the blush extended as no doubt it did to the lady's back: but on further consideration we saw that we were wrong; for Sir Hubert could not have perceived ""her sweet blood _hush_ about her""--this _hushing_ of the blood about one being as all great blushers know a fact discernible only by the person more immediately concerned in the blush. The propriety therefore of making Mabel perceive the blush rather than Sir Hubert is undeniable. The writer must either have left out the _hushing_ altogether which would have been a great blemish in the picture or he must have written as he has done. How profoundly versed in the physiology of blushing he must be! We are doubtful however whether the costume of the picture is altogether appropriate; for we question very much whether the Italian ladies of the thirteenth or any other century were in the habit of paying forenoon visits in low-necked gowns; and whether Mabel could have walked all the way from her castle to Sir Hubert's cottage in an attire which revealed so many of her charms without attracting the general attention of the neighbourhood. She had no time be it observed to divest herself of shawl or mantilla in order to show how _sumptuously_ she could blush--for her salutation is made to Sir Hubert and its roseate consequences ensue the very first moment she sees him. But let that pass. We should have been very sorry if such a ""splendiferous"" phenomenon had been obscured by envious boa or pelisse or lost to the proprieties of costume. The Lady then ""Said that she was wearied With her walk--would stay to dine And name her wishes after."" Meanwhile the poet asks-- ""How was it with Sir Hubert? --Beggarly language! _I could burst_ For impotence of effort: Those who made thee were accurst! _Dumb men were gods were all dumb_. But go on and do thy worst!-- ""His life-blood stopp'd to listen-- Her _delivering_ lips dealt sound-- Oh! _hungrily_ he listen'd But the meaning meant was drown'd; For to him her voice and presence Meaning held far more profound. ""He gave his soul to feasting And his sense (which is the soul More thoroughly incarnate ) Backward standing to control His object as a painter Views a picture in the whole. ""She stood her eyes cast downwards And upon them dropp'd halfway Lids sweeter than the bosom Of an unburst lily lay With black abundant lashes To keep out the upper day. ""_A breath from out her shoulders Made the air cool_ and the ground Was greener in their shadow; All her dark locks _loll'd_ unbound About them heavily lifted By the breeze that struggled round. ""As if from weight of beauty Gently bent--but oh how draw This _thousand-featured_ splendour-- _Thousand-featured without flaw!_-- At last his vision reveling On her ravishing mouth _he saw_ ""_It closed_; and then remember'd That she spoke not.--'Stay to dine And name her wishes after'-- To these sounds he could assign A sense for still he heard them Echoing silvery and divine."" Sir Hubert having reveled on her ravishing mouth and having by a strong effort of intelligence mastered the meaning of the very occult proposition which issued therefrom namely that the lady would ""stay to dine and name her wishes after;"" and moreover having seen--""It closed""--he shortly afterwards saw it opened for the purpose of eating his hawk which as the reader knows he had felt himself under the necessity of killing for the fair widow's entertainment. We pass over the relation of the circumstances which as the lady discovers render her mission fruitless and which are detailed in a strain of the most vapid silliness--and proceed to the interview which brings about the union of Mabel and Sir Hubert. The latter some time after these occurrences pays a visit to the castle. ""Half reclined Along a couch leans Mabel Deeply musing in her mind Something her bosom echoes. O'er her face like breaths of wind ""Upon a summer meadow Serious pleasures live; and eyes _Large always slowly largen As if some far-seen surprise Approach'd --then fully orb them At near sound of one that sighs_."" Her eyes having recovered their natural size a good deal of conversation ensues the result of which is given in the following stanza which forms a fit conclusion for the story of such a passion-- ""Her hands are woo'd with kisses They refuse not the caress Closer closer ever closer Vigorous lips for answer press! _Feasting the hungry silence Comes sob-clad a silver 'yes.'_"" There are several smaller poems interspersed throughout the volume. Mr Tennyson has his ""Claribels "" and ""Isabels "" and ""Adelines "" and ""Eleanores""--ladies with whom he frequently plays strange though we admit by no means ungraceful vagaries; and Mr Patmore as in duty bound and following the imitative bent of his genius must also have his Geraldine to dally with. The two following stanzas of playful namby-pambyism are a specimen of the manner in which this gentleman dandles his kid:-- ""We are in the fields. Delight! Look around! The bird's-eyes bright; Pink-tipp'd daisies; sorrel red Drooping o'er the lark's green bed; Oxlips; glazed buttercups Out of which the wild bee sups; See! they dance about thy feet! Play with pluck them little Sweet! Some affinity divine Thou hast with them Geraldine. ""Now sweet wanton toss them high; Race about you know not why. Now stand still from sheer excess Of exhaustless happiness. I meanwhile on this old gate Sit sagely calm and perhaps relate Lore of fairies. Do you know How they make the mushrooms grow? Ah! what means that shout of thine? _You can't tell me Geraldine._"" Our extracts are now concluded; and in reviewing them in the mass we can only exclaim--this then is the pass to which the poetry of England has come! This is the life into which the slime of the Keateses and Shelleys of former times has fecundated! The result was predicted about a quarter of a century ago in the pages of this Magazine; and many attempts were then made to suppress the nuisance at its fountainhead. Much good was accomplished: but our efforts at that time were only partially successful; for nothing is so tenacious of life as the spawn of frogs--nothing is so vivacious as corruption until it has reached its last stage. The evidence before us shows that this stage has been now at length attained. Mr Coventry Patmore's volume has reached the ultimate _terminus_ of poetical degradation; and our conclusion as well as our hope is that the fry must become extinct in him. His poetry (thank Heaven!) cannot corrupt into any thing worse than itself. FOOTNOTES: {A} London: Moxon. 1844. MARSTON; OR THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN. PART XIII. ""Have I not in my time heard lions roar? Have I not heard the sea puft up with wind Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat? Have I not heard great ordnance in the field And Heaven's artillery thunder in the skies? Have I not in the pitched battle heard Loud 'larums neighing steeds and trumpets clang?"" SHAKSPEARE. I had been familiar with the debates of the French Convention and had witnessed the genius of French eloquence in its highest exertions. Nothing will cure this people of their aversion to nature. With them all that is natural is poor--simplicity is meanness. The truth of things wants the picturesque and thus wants every charm. I had listened to some of their public speakers with strong interest while they were confined to detail. No man tells a story better than a French _conteur_. There lies the natural talent of the people. Nothing can be happier than their seizure of slight circumstances passing colours of events and those transient thoughts which make a story as pretty as a piece of ladies' embroidery--a delicate toil a tasteful display of trivial difficulties gracefully surmounted. But even in their higher order of speakers I could perceive a constant dissatisfaction with themselves unless they happened to produce some of those startling conceptions which roused their auditory to a stare a start a clapping of hands. I had seen Mirabeau with all his conscious talent look round in despair for applause as a sailor thrown overboard might look for a buoy; I had seen him as much exhausted and even overwhelmed by the want of applause as if he had dropped into an exhausted receiver. If some lucky epigram did not come to his rescue he was undone. I was now to be the spectator of a different scene. There was passion and resentment the keenness of rivalry and the ardour of triumph--but there was no affectation. Men spoke as men speak when their essential interests are engaged--plainly boldly and directly--vigorously always sometimes vehemently; but with that strong sincerity which administers eloquence to even the most untaught orders of mankind and without which the most decorated eloquence is only the wooden sword and mask of harlequin. Pitt took the lead in all senses of the phrase. He was magnificent. His exposition of the state of Europe perfectly unadorned had yet an effect upon the House not unlike that of opening a volume to a multitude who had but just learned to read. All was novelty conviction and amazement. His appeal to the principles by which a great people should shape its conduct had all the freshness and the strength of feelings drawn at the moment from the depths of his own blameless bosom; and his hopes of the victory of England over the temptations to public overthrow exhibited all the fire and almost all the sacred assurance of prophecy. He described the system of France as ""subversion on principle "" its purpose universal tumult its instrument remorseless bloodshed and its success a general reduction of society to the wild fury and the squalid necessities of the savage state. ""This "" he exclaimed turning his full front to the House raising his hand and throwing up his eyes to heaven with the solemnity of an adjuration--""This we must resist in the name of that Omnipotent Disposer who has given us hearts to feel the blessings of society or we must acknowledge ourselves unworthy to hold a name among nations. This we must resist--live or die. This system we must meet by system--subtlety by sincerity--intrigue by resolution--treachery by good faith-menace by courage. We must remember that we have been made trustees of the honour of the past and of the hopes of the future. A great country like ours has no alternative but to join the enemy of all order or to protect all order--to league against all government or to stand forth its champion. This is the moment for our decision. Empires are not afforded time for delay. All great questions are simple. Shrink and you are undone and Europe is undone along with you; be firm and you will have saved the world!"" The feelings with which this lofty language was heard were intense. The House listened in a state of solemn emotion hour after hour deeply silent but when some chord was so powerfully touched that it gave a universal thrill. But those involuntary bursts of admiration were as suddenly hushed by the anxiety of the House to listen and the awful sense of the subject. It was not until the great minister sat down that the true feeling was truly exhibited; the applause was then unbounded--a succession of thunder-peals. I had now leisure to glance at the Opposition. Fox for a while seemed good-humouredly inclined to give up the honour of the reply to some of the popular speakers round him; but the occasion was too important to be entrusted to inferior powers and on a general summons of his name he at length rose. The world is too familiar with the name of this celebrated man to permit more than a sketch of his style. It has been said that he had no style. But this could be said only by those who regard consummate ability as an accident. Of all the public speakers whom I have ever heard Fox appeared to me the most subtle--of course not in the crafty and degrading sense of the word; but in the art of approaching an unexpected case he was a master. He loitered he lingered he almost trifled by the way until the observer began to believe that he had either no object in view or had forgotten it altogether. In the next moment he rushed to the attack and carried all by storm. On this occasion he had a difficult part to play; for the hourly violences of the French capital had begun to alienate the principal aristocracy of England and had raised abhorrence among that most influential body the middle class. The skill with which the orator glided over this portion of his subject was matchless; no Camilla ever ""flew o'er the unbending corn"" with a lighter foot. He could not altogether evade the topic. But he treated it as one might treat the narrative of a distressing casualty or a disease to be touched on with the pity due to human infirmity or even with the respect due to a dispensation from above. He often paused seemed to find a difficulty of breathing was at a loss for words of which however he never failed to find the most pungent at last; and assumed in a remarkable degree the appearance of speaking only from a strong compulsion a feeling of reluctant duty a sense of moral necessity urging him to a task which burdened all his feelings. I will acknowledge that when he had made his way through this difficult performance I followed him with unequivocal delight and acknowledged all the orator. He had been hitherto Milton's lion ""pawing to get free his hinder parts."" He was now loose in all his symmetry and power and with the forest and the plain before him. ""Why has the monarchy of France fallen?"" he explained ""because like those on whom the malediction of Scripture has been pronounced it had eyes and yet would not see and ears yet would not hear. An immense population was growing up round it year after year yet it could see nothing but nobles priests and princes. In making this war "" said he ""you are beginning a contest of which no man can calculate the means no man can state the objects and no man can predict the end. You are not warring against the throne of France nor even against the people of France; but warring against every people of the earth which desires to advance its own prosperity to invigorate its own constitution and to place itself in that condition of peace purity and freedom which is not more the desire of man than the command of Providence."" The House burst into loud reprobations of the name of aristocrat and democrat which he declared to be mere inventions of party prejudice. ""Do you require to make political hostilities immortal give them names; do you wish to break down the national strength divide it in sections: arm against your enemy if you will but here you would arm one hand against the other."" To the charge of defending the French mob his answer was in the most prompt and daring style. ""Who are the French mob? The French nation. Dare you put eight and twenty millions of men into your bill of attainder? No indictment ever drawn by the hand of man is broad enough for it. Impeach a nation you impeach the Providence that made it. Impeach a nation you are impeaching only your own rashness and presumption. You are impeaching even the unhappy monarch whom you profess to defend. Man is every where the creature of circumstances. Nations are what their governments make them. But France is in a state of revolt. Be it so. I demand what nation ever revolted against justice truth and honour? You might as well tell me that they rebelled against the light of heaven; that they rejected the fruits of the earth; that they refused to breathe the air. Men do not thus war against their natural benefactors; they are not mad enough to repel the very instincts of preservation. I pronounce it fearlessly that no nation ever rose or ever will rise against a sincere national and benevolent authority. No nation was ever born blind. Infatuation is not a law of human nature. The monarchy of France was the criminal."" Another burst which produced vast effect on the House referred to the exclusiveness of the chief public employments. ""The people have overthrown the titles and dignities of France. I admit it. But was it from a natural hatred of those distinctions? That I deny. They are congenial to the heart of man. The national hatred lay in the sense of that intolerable injustice which turns honour into shame. For centuries those titles and dignities were to the people not badges of honour but brands of scorn. They were not public calls to generous emulation but royal proclamations of everlasting contempt. They were not ramparts surrounding the state but barriers shutting out the people. How would such insults to the common origin of man to the common powers of the human mind to the common desires of distinction born with every man be endured in this country? Is it to be wondered at that France should have abolished them by acclamation? I contend that this was a victory gained not for a populace but for a people for all France for twenty-eight millions of men--over a portion of society who had lost their rank a body already sentenced by their personal inefficiency--a caste who like a famished garrison had been starved by the sterility of the spot in which they had inclosed themselves; or like the Indian devotees had turned themselves into cripples by their pretence of a sacred superiority to the habits of the rest of mankind."" Opposition still exhibited its ranks but slightly diminished and the chief passages of this impassioned appeal which continued for three hours were received with all the fervour of party. Burke then rose. Strong interest was directed to him not merely for his eminent name but from the public curiosity to hear his explanation of that estrangement which had been for some time spreading under his auspices through the leading personages of the Opposition. Like most men who have made themselves familiar with the works of a great writer I had formed a portraiture of him by anticipation. I never was more disappointed. Instead of the expressive countenance and commanding figure I saw a form of the middle size and of a homely appearance a heavy physiognomy and the whole finished by two appurtenances which would have been fatal to the divinity of the Apollo Belvidere spectacles and a wig. His voice and manner were scarcely less prepossessing; the one was as abrupt and clamorous as the other was rustic and ungraceful. He had the general look of a farmer of the better order; and seemed at best made to figure on a grand jury. But I soon felt how trivial are externals in comparison of genuine ability; or perhaps how much even their repulsiveness may add to the power of genius. I had listened but a few minutes when I forgot every thing except that a man of the highest faculties was before me; with those faculties wrought to the highest tension by the highest subjects. Taking a line of argument equally distinct from the leaders of the Ministry and the Opposition he dwelt as little on the political views of England and Europe with Pitt as he did upon the revolutionary regeneration of France and Europe with Fox. His view was wholly English; the reference of the revolutionary spirit to our own institutions. ""I do not charge "" he exclaimed turning full on the Opposition bench ""individuals with conspiracy; but I charge them with giving the sanction of their name to principles which have in them all the germs of conspiracy. Sir the maxim of resisting the beginnings of evil is as sound in the concerns of nations as in the morality of individual minds. Nay I am not sure whether mischief is not more effectually done in that incipient state than when the evil comes full-formed. It is less perceived and it thus destroys with impunity. The locust before it gets its wings destroys the crop with a still more rapacious tooth than when its armies are loading the wind. ""Honourable members have talked largely of their zeal for the constitution. Sir I am content to follow the wisdom which judges of the faith by the works. In my humble measure I have been a zealous worshipper of the constitution. There was a time when those honourable gentlemen and myself--and I speak of that time with the regret due to long friendship--took 'sweet counsel together ' and bowed before that common worship as friends. That time is past. We have since taken different paths. I have been charged with apostasy. What is my apostasy? That I have not followed the frenzy and ingratitude of the hour; that while the most awful event in the history of human change has been transacting before us I have not shut my ears and eyes to its moral; that I have not followed the throng into the valley and there joined the fabricators of the new idolatry the priesthood of the golden calf of revolution and shared the polluted feast and the intoxicated dance; while the thunders of divine vengeance were rolling on the hill above."" It was obvious from his manner and his frequent return to the topic that that charge of deserting his party had deeply wounded his generous and sensitive nature; and nothing struck me as more characteristic of his mind than the variety and richness of his fine amplification on this subject. ""In those ranks "" said he ""I fought for nearly the half of that portion of life allotted to man; certainly for that portion of my course in which the desires the vigour and the applicability of all the best parts of human nature have their fullest play. I came to it a volunteer--I fought side by side with its foremost--I shared the 'winter of their discontent ' as willingly as the summer of their prosperity. I took the buffets of ill fortune and they were many with as cheerful a countenance and as unshaken a fidelity as any man. But when I saw a new banner raised among them blazoned with mottoes of evil and refused to follow who were the deserters? They or I?"" As he spoke these words he drew his otherwise rather stooping form to its full height lifted his hand above his head and stood like one at once demanding and defying the investigation of the empire. The roar of applause which followed seemed to shake the very walls. He was powerfully moved; his countenance changed from its usual pallidness to strong suffusion; his hands rather tossed than waved in the air. At last I saw one of them thrust strongly into his bosom as if the gesture was excited by some powerful recollection. ""Do I speak without proof of the public hazards?"" he exclaimed. ""I can give you demonstration--I need invoke neither powers above nor powers below to enlighten you. I have the oracle within my hand."" The House fixed all its eyes upon him. He dropped his voice and spoke with a faint but clear tone which formed a remarkable contrast to his usually bold and even harsh enunciation: ""Sir "" said he in this half-whispered voice ""before I join these gentlemen in their worship I must know what deity presides in their temple; I must see that the incense which fumes before its altar is taken from the sacred repositories of the constitution not the smuggled importation of foreign fabrications of revolt--that pernicious compound of civil mischief and mad metaphysics--which instead of consummating and purifying the sacrifice only poisons the air. I must see something of the priest too before I join in his aspirations; I must see that he is lawfully inducted to his office that he is not a rebel in the garb of loyalty--a blasphemer where he professes to pray and a traitor where he propounds allegiance."" Fox here evidently taking the description to himself exhibited palpable signs of displeasure. Burke caught the expression at once and instantly changed the whole current of his conceptions. ""If "" said he ""the honourable gentleman thinks that I designate _him_ as the high-priest of this new worship he does me as much injustice as himself. No no! When we shall see the Republican Pantheon thrown open he and such as he will not be called to officiate at the altar. He is much more likely to be the victim. The popular ornaments now flung so lavishly upon him will find him no further favour than the speedier offering on the same abhorred altar which reeks with so much of the best blood of France."" Here a corpulent noble peculiarly hostile to Burke laughed contemptuously. The orator instantly turned upon him. ""True "" said he ""there may be a good deal of variety in that procession. There may be the mummer as well as the priest; it may have the mountebank selling his potions and playing his tricks as well as the sacrificer with his axe--unless the ambition of the bloated performer should prefer to combine the offices and be at once the butcher and the buffoon."" The hit was felt on all sides and the laughter was unbounded. He then rose as was his custom into a higher strain. ""I can imagine that procession "" said he ""or rather that triumph of the principles of change. Like the return of the classical Bacchus from his Indian conquests the demigod "" and he now cast a look at Fox ""secure of supremacy exulting in his prowess and thinking the civilized world at his feet; but not without the companionship of his trusty Silenus""--and here he turned his glance on the noble lord--""that veteran follower whose ambition is limited to his cups and the vigour of whose fidelity is shown only in the constancy of his intoxication; the whole procession being drawn by the wild lords of the forest and the wilderness who harnessed as they may be for the moment will no sooner find their food stinted than they will resume the natural instincts of the lion and the tiger turn on their drivers and devour them. ""But sir "" he exclaimed turning to the chair ""I have higher topics and to those I now call the attention of the representatives of England. I have alluded to the revolutionary temple. I here have its deity."" With these words he plucked from his bosom a large dagger held it for a moment up to the light and then flung it at the foot of the table. The astonishment and even the alarm of the whole assembly was beyond description. They all started from their seats as if assassination had stood before them in a visible shape. Some crowded round Burke some seized the dagger which was eventually carried to the Speaker and became the object of universal curiosity. All was confusion for a considerable time. At length Burke in a few words delivered in his most impressive tone explained the phenomenon. ""That dagger "" said he ""is one of thousands perhaps of millions which the preachers of philosophy are now forging for popular conviction. You see that by its construction it is equally fitted for the head of a pike or for a dagger--equally serviceable in tearing down the monarchy in the field or stabbing its friends in their chambers. You have it at once the emblem of rebellion and assassination. Those are the arguments of the new school--those are the instruments by which the limbs of the state are to be amputated for replacement by the inventions of the revolutionary mechanists. Those are the keys by which the locks of cabinets and councils are henceforth to be opened and the secrets of national wealth laid bare to the rapacity of the rabble."" After this speech nothing was listened to. The debate had been prolonged through the greater part of the night and yet such was the interest felt in its subject that the streets in the neighbourhood continued crowded to the last. All the hotels and coffee-houses were filled with people waiting for the division. Groups with lighted torches were lingering everywhere and passing the intelligence along as a member happened casually to make his appearance in the course of the night; shouts and expressions of wrath alternately arose according to the nature of the intelligence and a species of open-air legislature was held during one of the bitterest nights of winter with discussions as active though perhaps not altogether so classical as those within; yet totally free from tumult and in the spirit of a people who live with a constant reference to the laws. The rush of the members to the porch on the breaking up of the debate produced a corresponding rush of the multitude. Public curiosity was roused to its wildest height--every public sentiment had its full expression; and whether the acclamation was louder when Fox's corpulent frame was seen toiling its slow way through the pressure or when Pitt's slender figure and passionless face was recognised is a question which might have perplexed the keenest investigators of popular sentiment. All was that uproar in which the Englishman delights as a portion of his freedom. On returning to my chamber exhausted yet animated with a new sense of the value of existence in such a country and of the noble faculties which she carried in her bosom I saw a large packet on my table. I gazed on its envelope for a few moments with that strange emotion which sometimes makes us dread to open the very letter which we most desire to receive. It was obviously from Downing Street. At last I opened it. It contained my commission in the Guards! My destiny was now fixed and it is impossible to tell how much I felt relieved. I had spent the preceding period in such perplexing indecision that I felt my heart withering within me. Now all was clear. My course was decided. I was in other hands than my own and whatever might be the result I was no longer answerable for either good or ill fortune. No human being who has not felt the trial almost the torment of being left to decide on the conduct which may make or mar him for life can conceive the depression into which it plunges the mind. From this I was now relieved; I was wholly free; an established routine a vigorous profession a regulated pursuit and that pursuit one of the most honourable nature was suddenly prepared for me by the enclosure upon my table. After again and again reading this simple but expressive document I threw myself on my bed and attempted to forget it and the world. But I could forget neither; my eyelids would not close; sleep had gone from me. After a useless effort for composure I rose relighted my lamp and spent the rest of the night in writing to my relatives to Vincent to Mordecai and every one to whom I felt his majesty's sign-manual a vindication of my whole career. There was still one cloud that overhung my prospect one gloomy and bitter remembrance: but this cloud I had neither the power nor even the wish to dispel; this remembrance was already a part of my being--to extinguish it was impossible. I resolved to cherish it as a sacred recollection to combine it with the aspirations of my new pursuit and render them thus still nobler; to reserve it as a treasure inaccessible to the knowledge of mankind but to which I might return in my hours of discontent with the world and restore my sense of the beauty of mind and form which might still exist in the shape of human nature. Yet it may be justly supposed that I did not limit my feelings to this lonely abstraction. I spent an anxious period in making enquiries for the Maréchale in every quarter which offered the slightest probability of discovering her abode. Though I had seen the announcement of Clotilde's approaching marriage in the public journals I had seen no mention of its having taken place. My search was wholly unproductive. The captivating duchess who received me with the kindness which seemed a part of her nature while she joined me in my praises of the ""young the lovely and the accomplished Comtesse "" ""her dearest of friends "" could tell me nothing more than that she had left London and she believed with an intention of visiting France. There her knowledge ceased. I learned only further that she had grown singularly fond of solitude was melancholy and had no hesitation in expressing the deepest dislike to the marriage proposed by her family. My enquiry was at an end. Hopeless as this intelligence was it relieved me from the certainty which would have been despair. While Clotilde remained unallied to one whom I could not avoid regarding as an uncongenial spirit if not a hard and tyrannical master there was at least the chance of happiness remaining for me in a world where every day brought changes more extraordinary than our meeting. If there should be a war my regiment would be among the first to be employed and France would inevitably be the first object of a British expedition. The ""march t
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Paris"" had been proclaimed by orators exhibited in theatres and chanted in street ballads. All before us was conquest and distinctions of every kind that can captivate the untried soldier glittered in all eyes. I was young ardent and active. My name was one known to the table at which I seated myself on my introduction to the Guards and I was immediately on the best footing with the gallant young men of a corps which has never suffered a stain. I had even some peculiar sources of favour in their eyes. I had actually made a campaign. This was more than had been done by any man in the regiment. The Guards always brave and always foremost as they were had not seen a shot fired for a quarter of a century. The man who had heard bullets whistling about his ears and had besides seen the realities of war on the magnificent scale of continental campaigning possessed a superiority which was willingly acknowledged by the gallant youths round us; and every detail of that most romantic campaign reluctantly given as it was by me was listened to with generous interest or manly intelligence. And I had actually learned enough under the Duke of Brunswick a master of tactics to render my services useful at the moment. The discipline of the British army was not then what it has since been the model to Europe. The Englishman's nature prompts him to require a reason for every thing; and there was no peculiarly strong reason for the minute toil of foreign discipline in an army which had never been engaged since the American war. But other days were now obviously at hand and the passion for discipline and above all others for the Prussian discipline became universal. With the exaggeration common to all popular impulses the tactics of Frederick were now regarded as the secrets of victory. That great soldier and most crafty of men by his private reviews to which no stranger even of the highest rank was ever admitted and by a series of mystifications had laboured to produce this impression upon Europe and had largely succeeded. Mankind love being cheated; and what the charlatanism of necromancy effected a thousand years ago was now effected by the charlatanism of genius. If I had seen the Prussian troops only at Potsdam I should probably have mistaken the truncheon for a talisman like the rest of the world. But the field suffers no mystification. I had seen that the true secret of this great tactician for such unquestionably he was consisted in his rejecting the superfluities and retaining the substance; in reducing tactics to the ready application of force and in simplifying the old and tardy manoeuvres of the French and Austrian battalions to the few expeditious and essential formations required before an enemy in the field. I was offered the adjutancy and I accepted it rejoicingly. In those days by a curious anomaly which can scarcely be believed in ours every regiment was practically free to choose its own system of manoeuvre. The natural consequence was that no two regiments did any thing alike. To brigade the army was impossible and every field-day was a scene of ludicrous confusion. But this freedom had the advantage in the present instance of allowing me to introduce that Prussian discipline which has since been made the basis of the British. It was then perfectly new and it had all the effect of brilliant novelty. Our parade was constantly crowded with officers of the highest grades anxious to transmit our practice to their regiments. The king always attached to German recollections and who would have made as good a soldier as any of his forefathers was frequently a spectator. The princes and nobility were constant in their attendance; and the regiment thus stimulated rapidly displayed all the completeness and precision of movement which to this day makes a review of the Guards the finest military spectacle of Europe. The adjutant was not forgotten in the general applause and excitement. I was promised promotion in the most gratifying language of royalty itself and all the glittering prospects of the most glittering of all pursuits opened before me. I still had my moments of depression. Clotilde often rose before me like a departed spirit in the solitude of my chamber and even in the midst of public festivities or in those balls and banquets which the nobility gave in such profusion at this period of the year. When a shape however faintly resembling her incomparable elegance of form passed before my eye or a voice in the slightest degree reminding me of her noble tones reached my ear I felt an irresistible pang that for the time embittered all the scene around me. But I had in no period of my life been suffered to linger in long melancholy. One night after returning from a dinner at Devonshire House I found a gentleman in possession of my chamber with my fire briskly blazing supper on the table and every appearance of his having made himself master of the establishment. As I paused at the door in some surprise at the ease of the proceeding the intruder turned round and I saw the face of my old and excellent friend Vincent. I was delighted to take the honest hand of one who was enough to redeem the character of human nature. He was full of congratulations and country news. He told me that this his first visit to London for years was simply to shake hands with his pupil; to hear from him his adventures; and to have the opportunity of seeing the regiment on parade. He now enjoyed all his objects together. The regiment ""reminded him of the grenadiers of Maria Theresa in the first Hungarian campaign; and all that he wished for me was that I had seen Daun or Landohn. However no man in this world could have every wish gratified; and he was certain that I had in me the materials of a field-marshal."" But he had more important topics. By an accidental meeting with an old college friend high in office he had ascertained that an expedition for Holland had been resolved on; and that it was to take place without delay. The French army had passed the frontier and taken the strong fortress of Breda. Williamstadt was bombarded and must fall in a few days if not relieved. With its fall the Seven Provinces would be thrown open. In this emergency aid had been solicited from England. Vincent's country news was brief. My lordly brother was in pursuit of a neighbouring heiress; and as a prospective remedy for matrimonial ennui speculating on the chance of employment on some foreign embassy. Vincent himself had married one of his daughters to a neighbouring squire whom he denominated an ""unlicked cub "" but an honest man. Thus I had the knowledge of all that the country could furnish and thus--""runs the world away."" All now was excitement and activity. The intelligence of the French advance into the territories of our old and very helpless ally awoke England at once. The feeble and perfectly fruitless negotiations by which the slide from disgust into war is generally managed had produced their effect; and France furious for its prey and England steady and stubborn for the first time were brought face to face. The summons so long wished for at length reached us; and the Guards were ordered for embarkation. We received it in the spirit of a jubilee. All had been prepared. And on the night before our final parade I received my appointment to a company. Our parade next morning was one which I believe was never forgotten by any individual who had the good fortune to witness it. Of all the striking ceremonials which I have ever seen it was the most striking. The king had given notice of his intention to be present and bid us farewell. At six o'clock the three regiments were drawn up in front of the Horse-Guards a body of three thousand men and finer-looking troops never bore arms. All the avenues to the park were crowded with the multitude. Exactly at the half-hour a rush of the people towards the parade showed that the king always punctual was at hand. He came surrounded by general officers with the Prince of Wales then a most chivalric figure in the uniform of his regiment of light dragoons and the Duke of York as a field-marshal. The enthusiasm of the troops could not be restrained as this brilliant staff approached their line; and three cheers were given with all the zeal of honest loyalty. There are times when tears are the only substitute for speech; and the king one of the most kindhearted of men visibly shed tears at this reception. Another _cortège_ now approached; they were the carriages of the queen and princesses. The scene now became almost painful. There was many a tear from royal and noble eyes--the impulse of high emotion not of sorrow--or if tinged with the thoughts which always shade the name of war yet undegraded by weakness. The multitude caught the feeling; the shouts subsided; and all was weeping and waving of handkerchiefs. The king put an end to this embarrassing sympathy. He rode forward and taking his station in the centre gave the word to ""march."" He was answered by one gallant ""huzza"" from the line repeated by the thousands and tens of thousands who now moved before and around us. Our bands struck up and with the monarch and his sons at our head and the queen and princesses following in their equipages we marched through streets crowded to the roof echoing with acclamations and wishing us all good fortune as we passed along until we left the mighty metropolis behind. Even then it was only to meet the new multitude of the country. The road to Greenwich where we were to embark exhibited a population as countless enthusiastic and full of good wishes as those with whom we had just parted. The king still rode in our front; flags banners and every kind of joyous testimonial met our eyes; and if ever there was a triumph before the victory it was in that honest and generous display of the true heart of England. The embarkation took place within a few hours; and on that night we slept on the element which Britain has so long made her field of battle. The weather was serene and we fully enjoyed the freshness of the air and the brightness of the view as we rounded the coast. At the mouth of the Thames we had met a strong squadron of the line of battle appointed for our convoy and bringing numerous transports with troops. Our fleet had now become extensive and as we moved out from the land the sight became continually more animated and exciting. The despatch of the look-out frigates the constant change of signals the firing of guns to regulate the sailing of the great convoy the manoeuvres of those floating castles the seventy-fours and three-deckers the harmony of their bands as they passed us rushing along under a cloud of canvass with the hum of the thousands on board--all formed one of the most heart-stirring combinations that could exist to the eye or even to the heart of a human being. I stood gazing on the poop of our transport the entire day; and even when twilight came there was but a change of interest and beauty. We moved on a moving multitude--a fragment of a mighty nation--almost a nation ourselves on the face of the deep. Within the horizon which now lay beneath my glance smooth as glass and shining in the richness of the departing day what materials of living power were gathered; what bold hearts; what high hopes; what indefatigable perseverance; what accomplished intelligence! a force inferior to the one before me had more than once changed the fate of the world. It might be now on its way only to change that fate once more. The cause too was a noble one. It was sustained by no aggression perfidy or desire of change. It was to protect a friendly nation and to sustain an inspired cause. There was no taint of cruelty or crime to degrade the soldiership of England. We were acting in the character which had already exalted her name as protectors of the weak and punishers of the powerful. On the second evening we reached the flat and uninteresting coast of Holland. But if the coast was repellent nothing could exceed the eagerness of the inhabitants to welcome our arrival. On our first approach to the land every boat that could swim came off crowded with people some to take refuge on board the fleet but thousands to urge our speedy landing. The ferocious plunder which had become the principle of the republican arms had stricken terror into the hearts of the Hollanders: a people remarkably attached to home and fond or even jealous of the preservation of the most trivial article of property connected with that home. The French troops often pressed with hunger and adopting the desperate maxim of ""making war support war "" had committed such wanton ruin of property in the Netherlands that at this distance the common effect of exaggeration described them as rather demons than men. War is of all things the most picturesque and there never was a gala on the waters of the Adriatic more gay or glittering than our landing. But we had infinitely the advantage in the numbers the brilliancy and what gave a higher feeling to the whole in the reality of all its objects. This was no painted pageant; it was real strength real soldiership; the cannon that roared above our heads as we descended into the boats were the thunderers which had shaken many a battlement; the flotilla of launches long-boats and cutters which covered the sea was manned with the soldiers and sailors sent forth to fight the battle of human freedom on every shore of the globe. The ships were that British fleet whose name was synonymous with the noblest exploits of war and which it would have been well worth going round the circumference of the globe to see. On this night we bivouacked; the shore offered no human habitation and it was too late for the landing of our tents. But the sand was dry; our fires were soon lighted; all was sport and activity; our bands played ""Welcome to Holland;"" our men danced with the peasantry; all had the look of a magnificent frolic; and when at last I threw myself on my open air pillow I dreamed of fairyland. At daybreak we marched in the highest spirits and only longing to have an opportunity of trying our strength with the enemy. From time to time the sound of a cannonade reached us and heightened our eagerness to advance. But Holland is proverbially difficult for any movements but those of a trackschuyt; and the endless succession of narrow roads the perpetual canals and the monotony of her level fields rich as they were exhausted us more than if we had marched twice the distance. But the spell of human hearts is excitement and war is all excitement. All round us was new and from the colonel to the rank and file the ""general camp pioneers and all "" enjoyed the quaint novelty of Dutch life. The little villages so unlike our own and yet so admirably fitted for peasant comfort the homesteads embedded in plantations of willows the neatness of every thing round the farm-houses and even the sleekness of the cattle which seemed by their tameness to form a part of the habitancy--all were objects of constant remark on our march; and we could easily comprehend the horror with which the arrival of a French commissariat must strike these comfortable burghers. But the punctuality of British payments was perfectly known already; the whole plenty of the land was poured out before us; we regaled sumptuously. On the second evening of our march through this landscape of fatness we were warned of our approach to the besieged fortress by the louder roar of the cannon and not less by the general desolation of the country. The enemy's hussars had made a wide sweep and wherever they were seen the villagers had fled instantly carrying off their cattle. We found the traces of those foraying excursions in the fragments of burned mills a favourite object of destruction with the French--for what purpose I never could comprehend except the pleasure of seeing them burn--in cottages unroofed for the sake of the thatch; in broken moveables and in some instances in the skeletons of horses and remnants of arms; for the peasantry were not always patient sufferers and some of the smaller detachments of the plunderers had met with severe retaliation. At length we halted for the night and orders were issued for a general movement at daybreak to attack the French force covering the siege of Williamstadt. The order was received with shouts; and the night was spent in great exultation. The cannonade which was now within a few miles of us continued with such violence during the night that sleep was next to impossible; and long before the first streak of light in the east we were busy in the numberless preparations for a first action. Orderlies and aides-de-camp were speedily in motion and at the first tap of the _reveillé_ all were on parade. The sun rose brightly gave one broad blaze along our columns and after thus cheering us instantly plunged into a mist which except that it was not actually black obscured our road nearly as much as if it had been midnight. This was simply a specimen of the new land on which we now set foot. But it perplexed all the higher powers prodigiously--generals and the staff galloping round us in all directions the whole one mass of confusion. Yet we still pushed on toiling our puzzled way when as if by magic a regiment of the enemy's hussars dashed full into the flank of our column. Never was there a more complete surprise. The enemy were as much astonished as ourselves for the collision had been the result of an attempt to find their way through the fog back to their camp; but I now for the first time saw the temper of John Bull in the field. The attack of the hussars was evidently looked on by our men less as a military manoeuvre than as a piece of foreign impudence. To fire might be hazardous to some of our advancing columns which we could hear though not see; but the word ""charge"" from our gallant old colonel was enough; they rushed with the bayonet on the cavalry forced their way in between the squadrons which had been brought to a stand by the narrowness of the dyke; and in five minutes the whole had laid down their arms given up their horses to our fifers and drummers and were marching to the rear. As if to reward us for this dashing affair a gust of wind blew aside the fog; the sun gleamed again; and Williamstadt the French camp the covering force formed in columns and waiting for us and the whole country to the horizon green as a duckpond and altogether as smooth burst on our view. The suddenness of the display was like the drawing-up of a stage curtain with a melo-dramatic army and castle behind. Our advance was now rapid. The skirmishers on both sides began to engage and our light artillery to throw a long shot now and then into the enemy's columns. The difficulty of the ground intersected with high narrow causeways stretching over marshy fields retarded our progress; and for two hours--and they were the two longest hours which any of us had ever spent--we were forced to content ourselves with firing at our long range and watching the progress of our more distant columns moving on the flank of the enemy. To a military eye nothing could be more interesting than the view of the vast field on which these concentric movements were developing themselves from hour to hour. At length we received the order to advance and drive in a strong column which had just debouched from a wood in front of us. Our men rushed on with a cheer threw in a heavy volley and charged. Their weight was irresistible and the French column broke and took refuge again in the wood. Another glance showed me the whole British force in motion every where pressing on; the enemy every where retreating all their columns converging upon their camp. Those are the brilliant moments of a soldier's life. All was exultation. We had met the enemy and driven him from his position. But the most difficult task of the day was still to be achieved. The French camp had been placed in strong ground; heavy batteries commanded every approach; and Dampierre their general an officer of known ability had exhibited all his skill in rendering the position if not impregnable at least one which could not be forced without the most serious loss. The day had been already far spent and the troops were wearied with six hours' marching and fighting; but nothing could restrain their eagerness to finish the victory. The heads of columns again advanced and the firing became tremendous on both sides. The French batteries poured an absolute shower of balls upon us and we were beginning to lose men when a strange and indescribable sound suddenly caught every ear. Such was the universal sense of something more singular and even more formidable than the work of war that the fire on our side rapidly subsided and every eye was turned to look for the cause. It soon exhibited itself. With a roar like thunder I saw the sea bursting in upon the plain where the enemy lay intrenched. The Dutch garrison had sallied out from Williamstadt on the repulse of the French and cut the dyke in several places. The ocean now fought our battle; each chasm in the long mound which protected the fields from inundation was now the channel of a roaring cataract; the trenches were soon filled; as the waters advanced the field-works were washed away; still wave rolled on wave; cannon tents baggage every thing but the soldier himself was seen gradually sinking or floating away on the surface of the surge. Within the hour the ground on which we had fought during the day was completely covered with the flood. The French camp was totally buried. The enemy had only time to make a hurried retreat or rather flight along the causeways which stood above the waters. As an army they were utterly ruined; when they at last reached firm ground they scattered through the country and those battalions never appeared in the field again. Our troops entered the relieved fortress with drums beating and colours flying. We were received as deliverers; all that the place could offer was heaped upon us; and if praise could have repaid our exploits never was praise more abundant from the lips of the whole population. The catastrophe was complete; and when at night I broke away from the heat and noise of the huge barrack in which we had been placed as the post of favour and walked upon the rampart nothing could form a more expressive contrast to the tumult of the day. The moon was high and her light showed the whole extent of the late field of battle. But all now was one immense shining lake. Where cavalry had charged and artillery had roared and the whole living clash and confusion of a stubborn engagement had filled the eye and ear but a few hours before all was now an expanse of quiet water calm as the grave without a vestige of the struggle but with hundreds of the combatants sleeping their last sleep below and the whole artillery and equipment of a powerful army submerged. I was still gazing from the ramparts when I observed a body of cavalry advancing along the dike at a rapid pace with a group of staff officers among them. The alarm was given by the sentries; and after some brief pause it was ascertained that they were the escort of the new commander-in-chief of the allied armies in the Netherlands. My first impression was that the man to whom so important a trust was given must be Clairfait; and I hastened down to meet him at our quarters. But I was disappointed; and for the dark and decided physiognomy and military frankness of that distinguished soldier I saw the Prince Cobourg stern and lofty in his air evidently too Austrian to be popular yet known to be a gallant officer. But my disappointment was considerably assuaged by seeing one of his staff throw himself off his horse and hasten towards me with almost joyous salutation. My surprise and pleasure were equal when I found him to be Guiscard! Supper was on the table when I introduced the Prussian philosopher to my brother officers and they were delighted with him. But he was the philosopher no longer or rather had thrown off the half misanthropy which had made him so strong a contrast to my honest friend Varnhorst. His very countenance had adopted a different expression. It was no longer stern and sarcastic but was lighted up with pleasantry; and the only conception of the change which I could form was either that he had arrived at that height of philosophy to which every thing seems trivial or that he had met with some of those extraordinary instances of good fortune which throw all the world into sunshine for the moment. But he was full of knowledge on the subject most interesting to his hearers; and he gave us his information of the allied councils and the movements of the armies with a copiousness and courtesy which all our questioning could not tire. ""We have now "" said he ""the finest army in line that Europe has ever seen; little less than 200 000 men are under the command of the prince. If he is suffered to move them in a mass they must break through any part of the French territory which they choose. If they divide they will be beaten. It will now take only three pitched battles to reach Paris--for the three covering armies fight with the guillotine in their rear. But a single unlucky skirmish may bring every peasant in France upon us; and it takes but fifteen days to make the French peasant a soldier. Blows and those straightforward are our true policy. If we negotiate we shall be beaten; if beaten here we shall be beaten on the Rhine and perhaps even on the Danube."" The news of Dumourier's attempt to overthrow his government had reached us but in the usual way of mystification. The answer of Guiscard was prompt and plain. ""Dumourier "" said he ""is one of those men who has a one-sided understanding. He is a capital soldier but a childish statesman; and with an absurdity by no means limited to himself he thinks that his talent lies in statesmanship. The result has been that the factions have always managed him as they do all men of his calibre. When he attempted to act for himself they crushed him without mercy; when he ceased to be a tool he necessarily became a victim. The army is now in retreat. To the French retreat is always ruin; the horseman sells his horse; the foot-soldier sells his musket; and the artilleryman sells his powder and ball breaks up his gun-carriage for a fire and throws his gun into the next ditch. The peasantry then fall on them all repay their plunder with the pike and the pitchfork and in three days the army is dissolved."" ""But will Cobourg follow up his blow?"" was the question on all sides. ""The commander-in chief "" was the answer ""is intelligent and brave. He has learned his profession under the greatest soldier whom Russia has produced or perhaps ever will produce--Suwarrow. But he is himself under orders. If he were a republican general he would instantly march and within a week he would be in the Tuileries. But as an Austrian commander he must wait for the opinion of men too far off to know a single fact of the campaign too blind to know them if they were on the spot and too jealous even of their own general to suffer him to beat the enemy if victory would throw their own nothingness into the shade."" Every hour now produced its event. A general _feu-de-joie_ announced the first great success of the campaign; Mayence had been taken with its garrison of 20 000 men. The French general Custine had made an unsuccessful attack on the lines of the besiegers to relieve the fortress in its last extremity had been beaten and driven back into the Vosges where he was at liberty to starve among the most barren mountains of France. But this intelligence came qualified by the formidable rumour that Prussia was already making terms with the French that it had acknowledged the government as the ""Republic "" and even that the Prussians had sung the _Marsellaise_. Thus we had the light and shade. But while politicians tremble soldiers are gay. What were all those shiftings and doublings to us? We had all the luxuries of the most luxurious of all lives the foreign camp. We had now marched from the country of fogs and bogs and were moving through the richest soil and not the least beautiful landscape of the Continent. Holland was left behind Flanders was round us France was before us. We had the finest army of Europe untouched by disaster confident in its strength and the enemy in full flight. If we despised the fugitives we fully as much despised the politicians; the man with the sword in his hand naturally scorns the man with the pen behind his ear. Thus we galloped danced and dreamed on. The spring too had come; the harshness of a foreign winter had been changed within a few days to the delightful softness of early summer. The fields were covered with flowers and the country was filled with the preparations for the rural fêtes of the first of May. I enjoyed the scene doubly for I had been sent along with a squadron of dragoons to the advanced posts and thus escaped the turmoil of the camp. My quarters were in one of the old Flemish country-houses which had been the headquarters of the French general and had thus escaped the usual ravage. The chateau was large well furnished in the national fashion and the half-dozen domestics who remained after the escape of their master were charmed with the expenditure which always follows the presence of English troops. My companion the captain of dragoons was one of the finest specimens of his country--the heir of a noble family generous and gay brave as his own sword and knowing as little of the soldier's life as became a young aristocrat with the prospect of thirty thousand a-year. He insisted on our giving a ball to the Flemings; and our invitations were sent out accordingly for half a dozen leagues round. They included of course the camp; and every lounger who could obtain leave for the night came crowding in upon us. Nothing could succeed better. All was festivity within doors. But not so all without for the night suddenly changed from serenity to storm. England is not the only spot famed for fickleness of atmosphere. By midnight every beech and elm round the chateau was tossing and bending down to the roots and a heavy snowfall was already sheeting the fields. As the storm rose it occurred to me to ascertain what provision might have been made against it by our soldiers who were lodged in the barns and extensive outhouses of the chateau. Leaving my dragoon friend to act as master of the ceremonies I sallied forth. The storm was now at its height; and it was with some difficulty that I could make my way. In the midst of the excessive darkness I felt some animal make a sudden spring on me which nearly brought me to the ground. Wolves were not common in the country but there had been some recent instances of their issuing from the forests and my first idea was that I had been thus attacked. But the barking and bounding of a dog soon put an end to this conception; and I recognised in my assailant the huge house-dog of the chateau with whom I had already struck up a particular friendship. More sharpsighted than myself he had rushed across the wood after me and exhibited all imaginable rejoicing at the rencontre. I reached the barns found all my men wrapped in that quiet which cares nothing for the troubles of kings and cabinet councils and was preparing to return when Cæsar with every demonstration of having found something of importance brought me a letter which he had dug out of the snow. By the light of the lantern I discovered it to be the report of an engineer officer dispatched from the French army to ascertain the condition of our outposts informing the head of the staff of an intended ball and proposing a plan for carrying off the whole party together. I was thunderstruck. The letter was dated three days before and though evidently dropped by some negligence of the officer yet giving full time for him to make his report in person and bring the force necessary for our capture. If it succeeded an exploit of this order might have paralysed the whole campaign; for nearly the entire staff of the army besides a crowd of regimental officers of all grades were within the walls of the chateau. I hastened back showed the report to one or two of the principal officers in private for the purpose of avoiding alarm to our fair partners and we then considered what means were left to protect us from the approaching catastrophe. Our little council of war was nearly as much perplexed as matters of this kind are in general; and the propositions various as they were came finally to the usual result that we had got into a scrape and that we m
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st get out of it as well as we could. To send the ladies away was impossible in a tempest which already flooded every road and with all the trees crashing over their heads. To expect reinforcements from the camp at such a distance and in such weather was hopeless; with the recollection that the whole affair might be over in the next quarter of an hour and our entire assembly be in march before the French hussars. This was the first occasion of my responsibility as a soldier; and I learned from this time forth to give commanders-in-chief some credit for their responsibilities. The agonies of that half hour I have never forgotten. Military failure was nothing compared to the universal shame and blighting which must fall on the officer who suffered such a disgrace to be inflicted on him in the presence of the whole army; and such a calamity to arrest the progress of that army if not the hopes of Europe. My resolution was desperately but decidedly taken if the post fell into the enemy's hands on that night to throw away my sword and abandon my profession unless some French bayonet or bullet relieved me from all the anxieties of this feverish world. To offer the command of the post to any of the superior officers present was as I well knew contrary to rule; and on me and the dragoon devolved the whole duty. But this state of almost nervous torture was as brief as it was painful and my faculties became suddenly clear. The service of outposts was a branch of soldiership at that period wholly unpractised by the British troops; but I had seen it already on its most perfect scale in the Prussian retreat which I and my hussars had our share in covering. My first step was to warn my soldiers and the dragoons of the probability of attack and my second to call for a favourite quadrille in which I saw all our guests busily engaged before I left the chateau. My next was to repeat my Prussian lesson in reconnoitring all the avenues to the house. This which ought to have been our first act on taking possession had been neglected in the common belief that the enemy were in full retreat. The gallant captain of dragoons prepared to take a gallop at the head of a party along the _chaussée_ and ascertain whether there were any symptoms of movement along the road. He mounted and was gone. Posting the dragoons in the farm-yard I went to the front to make such preparations as the time might allow for the enemy. Like the greater number of the Flemish chateaux it was approached by a long avenue lined with stately trees; but it wanted the customary canal or the fosse which however detestable as an accompaniment to the grounds in peace makes a tolerable protection in times of war at least from marauding parties. All was firm grand and open except where the garden walls and hedges of the lawn shut it in. As the avenue was the only approach accessible to cavalry and as this was the force which would probably be used for a _coup-de-main_ if it were to be attempted at all I set all hands to work to secure it. Wild as the night was my men wielded the spade and mattock with good will; and we had completed a trench of some feet deep and wide half across the road when I caught the trampling of cavalry at a distance. My chagrin was irrepressible; the enemy would be upon us before we had got through our work and we must be taken or fly. My men worked vigorously; but the cavalry were upon us--and to my utter astonishment and infinite relief our labours produced a roar of laughter. The party were our dragoons who had looked for the French advance in vain and were now amusing themselves with our waste of toil. We forgave them their jest; they passed and we prepared to follow to our quarters. But still the French officer's report haunted me; the precision of its terms and the feasibility of the enterprise itself struck with new force; and even after I had given the word to move I halted the men and climbing a little pleasure turret by the side of the avenue gave a parting glance round the horizon. Nothing was to be seen. The night was dark as a dungeon and I prepared to descend when at that moment the distant sound of a trumpet broke on the air. I listened and thought that I recognised the French call for cavalry to saddle and mount. I sprang down; every man piled his arms took spade and mattock in hand once more and in a few minutes the trench was completed across the road. Still no further notice of approaching troops was to be heard; and I heard a low but rather provoking laugh among my company. Still I determined to persevere and ordering some of the trees round us to be cut down formed a rude species of _chevaux-de-frise_ in front of our trench. It was scarcely finished when the distant trampling of cavalry was heard in the lull of the gale. All were now convinced and dispatching a notice to the dragoons to be ready we stood to our arms. Giving the strictest orders that not a word should be spoken nor a shot fired I waited for the enemy. The trampling increased every moment and it was evident that the body of cavalry must be large though of its actual numbers we could form no conjecture. They suddenly stopped at the entrance of the avenue and I was in fear that my _trou-de-rat_ would be discovered; but the national impatience soon spared me this vexation. The cavalry hearing nothing in the shape of resistance and not relishing the pelting of the storm in the open country rushed in without further search and came pouring on at the gallop. The avenue was long and the whole corps was already within it when the leading squadrons came at full speed upon my rude fortifications. In they dashed into the very heart of my _chevaux-de-frise_. Nothing could equal the confusion. Some sprang over the trees but it was only to be flung into the trench; some even leaped the trench but it was only to be met by our bayonets. The greater number startled by the cries of their unlucky comrades in front attempted to rein back; but found it impossible from the weight of the squadrons still pushing on from behind. At this point while they stood a struggling mass wholly unable to move either backward or forward I gave the word to fire and poured in a volley with terrible execution. An ineffectual firing of pistols was their only return. Some of their officers now rushed to the front with the usual gallantry of their character called on their men to advance and charged the trench; but this dash only filled it with falling men and horses. I gave them a second volley which was followed by a howl of despair; the whole of their leading squadron was brought down--every shot had told. The mass still stood evidently taken by surprise and wholly unable to extricate themselves. I now ordered our dragoons to mount take a circuit to the head of the avenue and if possible close them in. In a few minutes I heard the effect of my order in their galloping through the enclosures and in the shout of a charge at the further end of the avenue. The staff and other officers in the chateau had hurried out at the sound of our firing and some had come up to us and others had joined the dragoons. A proposal was now sent by a general officer to the commandant of the brigade to surrender with a threat of being put to the sword in case of an instant's delay. The brave Frenchman was indignant at the proposal and threatened to hang the bearer of it to the next tree. But the British camp had palpably been alarmed by this time. Bugles and trumpets were heard in every direction. Our dragoons had already shut up the avenue; and after some slight discussion the advance of a few squadrons more which came up at the gallop proved the total impossibility of escape and the affair was at an end. This night's _mêlée_ had no rival in the campaign; it put into our hands twelve hundred of the best cavalry in the French army and almost wholly stripped the enemy of the means of protecting his flanks while it made a most brilliant figure in the Gazette--the true triumph of the British soldier. To me it was a restoration to life from the depths of despair. It may be perfectly true that many a post has been surprised and many an officer captured without being objects of penalty or even of public observation; but my case was different. My character as a soldier was essential to my existence. The eyes of many at home and abroad were on me; and the scorn of one wherever she was would have been fatal to me. But of those bitter extremes I say no more; my spirit was buoyant with a sense that I had done my duty in the most effective style. Nor was I left to my solitary sense on the subject. My return to the chateau was as triumphant as if I had gained a pitched battle at the head of a hundred thousand men. Our fair guests who had spent the hour before in the terrors of instant capture were boundless in their congratulations and expressions of gratitude. The officers to whom my defence had made the entire difference between a French prison and liberty spoke in the manliest and most cheering terms of my conduct. The scene of the struggle was visited during the next day by every officer of the army who could obtain a horse and an hour's leave; and the report which was forwarded to the commander-in-chief contained language which was regarded as a sure pledge of promotion. Guiscard hurried over to join in the congratulation. He had been employed until a late hour in sending despatches to his court relative to the growing problems of our politics with Prussia; and taking the first opportunity of throwing aside the envoy he came at a gallop to shake hands with me. His impatience to see the ground scarcely suffered him to sit down at table; his toast to the brave British army was given and we went out to traverse the avenue. After having inspected every corner of it with his keen military glance--""You will find my theory right "" said he; ""war is always a succession of mistakes. There never has been a battle fought in which even the successful general could not point out a series of his own blunders any one of which might have ruined him. The only distinction is that there are brilliant mistakes and stupid ones. Yours was of the former order--the Frenchman's of the latter. If instead of sending his whole brigade headlong down the road like clowns at a fair he had dismounted half a squadron of his dragoons and sent them to fire into the casements of the chateau while he kept the rest of his men in hand in the neighbourhood he must have captured every soul of the party and by this time had you all fast at the French headquarters; but he blundered and he has paid the price of blundering."" To my laughing reply ""that there was at least some merit in the steadiness of the men who beat him""--""Of course "" was his answer. ""The English steadiness is like the English fire the grand cure for the English contempt of the tactician. Yours is an army of grenadiers; you are fit for nothing but assaults: but it must be owned that your troops of old managed that part of their business well and I dare say that the art is not lost among you yet. Still there are other matters to be thought of. Pray "" said he turning his keen eye on me ""can any one in the chateau tell how near is the French army to-night?"" I acknowledged my ignorance. ""I ask the question "" said he ""because I think it by no means improbable that they are at this moment marching down upon you. Not that they can afford to lose a brigade of cavalry a-night and I therefore think you safe enough for the twelve hours to come; but I am far from answering for the next twenty-four. Dampierre commands them; I know him well--he is a bold and also a clever fellow; the loss of his cavalry last night will leave him no alternative but to attack you or to meet the guillotine. Those are fine times to make a general officer look about him. My last letters from the Rhine state that the two generals of the two covering armies on the frontier have been put under arrest and that they are now both on their way to Paris from which Custine and Beauharnais will never return with their heads on their shoulders."" I shuddered at this fate of brave men overcome only by circumstances and asked whether it was possible that such a system could last or in any case could be endured by men with swords in their hands. ""It can and will "" was the reply. ""Soldiers are the simplest race of mankind when they come in contact with the cunning men of cities. An army showy and even successful as it may be is always an instrument and no more--a terrible instrument I grant you but as much in the hands of the civilian as one of your howitzers is in the hands of the men who load and fire it. At this moment sixty commissioners ruffians and cut-throats to a man--fellows whom the true soldier abhors and who are covered with blood from top to toe--are on their way from Paris to the headquarters of the fourteen armies of the republic. Woe be to the general who has a will of his own! Those fellows will arrest him in the midst of his own staff carry him off in the presence of his army and send him to give a popular holiday to the Parisians by his execution within half an hour after his arrival. So much for the power of an army."" ""But Frenchmen are human beings after all. Must not those horrors revolt human nature?"" was my question put with indignant sincerity. He looked at me with a quiet smile. ""You are romantic Marston but you are of an age that becomes romance. When you shall have lived as long as I have done and seen as much of the world as myself you will know that it is utterly selfish. It may be true that some generous spirits are to be found here and there some fond hearts to cling to some noble natures which inspire an involuntary homage for their superiority; but you might as well expect to be lighted on your way by a succession of meteors. In the world you will find that every man carries his lantern for himself; and that whether small or great his light the first object is to guide his own steps with not the slightest care whether yours may not be into the swamp--unless indeed he may have a particular object in bewildering you into the very heart of it. But now to more pressing affairs than my honest and luckless philosophy. Get leave from your colonel to take a ride with me. I feel a sudden wish to know what Dampierre is doing; and a few hours and as few leagues may supply us with information on points which your brave countrymen seem so constitutionally to despise. But recollect that _I_ am a Prussian."" We returned to the table which was crowded with visitors and spent an hour or two in great enjoyment; for what enjoyment can be higher than the conversation of minds willing to give and receive intellectual pleasure? And Guiscard was never more animated easy and abundant in communicating that pleasure. He was a model of the most accomplished order of the continental gentleman. He had commenced life as a scholar; a disappointment in his affections drove him into the army. He discovered that he was made for the profession; and combining the accomplished diplomatist with the almost chivalric soldier he had rapidly risen to the highest rank of the royal staff. But he had the still rarer qualities of a sincere heart and was a firm and willing friend. The orderly now returned with the leave for which I had applied. The post was left in charge of the captain of dragoons; and Guiscard and I without mentioning our purpose rode out quietly as if to enjoy the cool of the evening. It was well worth enjoying. The storm had gone down at daybreak and been succeeded by a glowing sun; the fields flourished again and if I had been disposed to forget the tremendous business which might be preparing for the morrow I might have lingered long over the matchless luxuriance of the Flemish landscape. There certainly never was one which gave slighter evidence of the approach of two hostile armies. From the first hill which we ascended the view for leagues round exhibited nothing but the rich tranquillity of a country wholly agricultural; soft uplands covered with cattle grazing; ploughed fields purpling in the twilight; clumps of trees sheltering villages from which the smoke of the evening fires rose slowly on the almost breathless air giving an impression of the comfort and plenty of the meal within; and at intervals some huge old chateau with its buttressed and richly-wrought architecture--those carvings and colourings which so strikingly convey the idea of a past age of quaint luxury and lavish wealth--rose from the centre of its beech grove glaring against the sunset as if it had been suddenly covered with a sheet of gold. All was peace and the few peasants whom we met as the night fell were all in the same tale that there had been no patrols in their neighbourhood of late and that with the exception of the attack on the ""outposts of the English "" they had not heard or seen any thing of the French for a month before. The night had now fallen and though calm it was one of remarkable darkness. We passed village after village but by this time all were fast asleep and except the disturbance of the house-dogs as we rode by not a sound was to be heard. I felt every inclination to take my share of ""nature's sweet restorer balmy sleep "" and proposed to my companion to turn our horses into the first farm-yard and ""borrow an hour"" or two's rest from the farmer's hospitality and clean straw. ""I agree with you "" was the answer ""that Dampierre is clearly not on this road; but that is no reason why he may not be on some other. On considering the matter I think that we have been wrong in looking for him here; for his national adroitness is much more likely to have tried a movement in any other direction. He may be marching on either the right or the left of the spot where we are standing. And if he is the officer which I believe him to be he is trying this game at this moment."" ""What then is to be done but ride back to our quarters unless we should prefer being cut off by his advance?"" was my question. ""One thing is to be done "" was the reply--""we must not let ourselves be laughed at; and if we return with nothing more for our night's work than the story that we slept in a Flemish barn we shall be laughed at. So far as I am concerned I care nothing for the sneers of ignorance; but my young friend your late conduct has inevitably made you an object of envy already; and the only way to pluck the sting out of envy is by giving the envious some new service to think of."" We now agreed to separate and examine the country to the right and left for an hour precisely meeting at one of the villages in the road if no advance of the enemy were discernible within that time. We parted and I commenced as comfortless an expedition as it would be easy to imagine. The Flemish cross-roads never very passable were now deep in mire; the rivulets of which they are generally the conduits had been swelled by the storm of the night before; and I floundered on for nearly the appointed time in the full perplexity of a stray traveller. I was on the point of returning when I observed a sudden light rising above some farm-houses about half a league off. The light rapidly strengthened and I rode forward in some degree guided by its illumination. But after blazing fiercely for a while it sank as suddenly as it rose; and I was again left bewildered among hedges and ditches. But a loud hum of voices followed by the sound of many footsteps now convinced me that a large body of men were near; though whether peasants roused by the fire or battalions I was still unable to discover. While I stood under cover of a clump of trees by the roadside the question was settled by the march of a patrol of cavalry followed at brief intervals by squadrons and light troops intermixed. It was evident that Dampierre meditated a surprise of the British forces and that the whole of his skirmishers were already in motion. How long this movement had continued or how near the enemy might already have approached to the British camp was entirely beyond my conjecture; and for the first few moments the probability of the surprise and the possibility of my being already so completely within the range of the French march as to preclude my bearing the intelligence in sufficient time made the drops of anxiety and perturbation roll down my forehead. But every thing must be tried. I no longer attempted to wind my way back through the network of lanes; but in the spirit of an English sportsman took the country in a straight line towards the British quarters. My horse a thorough English hunter evidently preferred leaping the Flemish fences to wading his way through the swamps; and I had the honour of bringing the first information and the happiness of finding that I had brought it just in the right time. The camp was immediately under arms; every preparation was made in a silence which gave me a high conception of the capabilities of the British soldier for every species of service; and without a sound among ten thousand men we waited for the approach of the enemy. Dampierre's manoeuvre had been a dashing one--conceived and managed with the skill of an able officer. His purpose had been to throw his main body into the rear of our position; and while he drew off our attention by a false attack on our front avail himself of the confusion of a night attack to crush us. Whether the fighting qualities of the Englishman would not have made him repent of his plan under any circumstances is no longer the question; but the surprise was now wholly his own. The first volley which we poured into his columns as they crept up stealthily towards our line was so heavy that it finished the battle. By the blaze of the musketry we could see the French masses actually rolling back upon each other staggering and shaken like landsmen at sea or like any man in an earthquake. Our cavalry were now ordered to follow; but the enemy were too quick in making their escape; and the intersected nature of the country forbade any continued pursuit. A few shots from our howitzers which ripped up the ground after them were all that we could send as our parting present; and the engagement which began in such silence and sternness finished in roars of laughter from all our battalions. Day broke and the order was issued to follow the French general. The troops animated by the prospect of coming to action at last and utterly wearied with the idleness of the camp received the intelligence with shouts; and the whole moved rapidly forward. Dampierre before his march of the previous night had provided for casualty by forming an intrenched camp in the famous position of Famars. It was strong by nature and he had added to its strength by covering it with fieldworks and a powerful artillery. It was late in the day before we came within sight of it; and its strength from the height of its glacis--the natural glacis made by a succession of sloping hills--was all displayed to full and formidable advantage. The troops fatigued with the length of the march under the burning sun of one of the hottest days which I ever felt were halted at the foot of the heights; and the plans of attack proposed were various enough to have perplexed the Aulic Council itself. Lines of circumvallation or bombardment or waiting the effect of famine were successively urged. But the British style prevailed at last over the scientific. The Guards were ordered to head the column which was to storm the lines in front and columns on the right and left were put in motion at the same instant. We rushed forward under a general discharge of the French artillery and musketry and in a quarter of an hour the position was in our hands. The difficulty of its approach and the broken nature of the ground in its rear enabled the French general to make his retreat with the chief part of his forces. But our prize was well worth the trouble; for we brought back two thousand prisoners and the whole artillery in position. The war had now begun in earnest; and our advance was unintermitted. On the eighth day from the storm of Famars we again came in sight of Dampierre. He was now the assailant; our army which had never exceeded ten thousand men (such was the military parsimony of those days ) with the Prussian troops and some of the smaller German contingents were now unwisely spread to cover a line of nearly thirty miles. The French general had seized the opportunity of retaliating his ill fortune upon the allied troops. At daybreak we were roused by the tidings that the French had broken through our weak extended line in several places and had got into the rear of the whole army. The force of the enemy its direction or its object were alike matters of total ignorance; and for some hours it was impossible to obtain any exact information. It was in vain that we adopted all the usual expedients of detaching officers examining peasants or judging of the progress of the engagement by the sound of the advancing or retreating fire. We had only to wait drawn up ready for action and take our chance of the result. Of all the contingencies of the field none is more perplexing; but I had a personal source of anxiety to add to the general vexation. I had every reason to believe that my excellent friend Guiscard had either fallen into the hands of the enemy or had been killed on the night when we separated. If either misfortune had occurred it was solely in consequence of his zeal for my character and the thought inexpressibly distressed me. I had made the most persevering enquiries for him but without any success; or rather with a painful gathering of facts all which told against my feelings. His horse had been found straying through the country; his helmet had been also found; and a fragment of a sabre in a spot evidently much trampled and which therefore appeared to be the scene of the personal rencontre in which he had probably fallen. Every thing had been found but his body. At length the firing which had continued with more or less steadiness during the day approached our position and we were ordered to advance. The country was now a portion of an ancient forest and it was difficult to see in front of us beyond a few hundred yards. As we made way we could hear not only the musketry but the shouting of the troops engaged; as growing constantly more impatient we pressed on a mounted officer came galloping towards us. Judge of my astonishment and delight when I saw Guiscard. As he reined up beside me-- ""I have not a moment "" said he ""to speak to you; you shall hear of my adventures by and by. I was in as much fear for you as you probably were for me. But now tell me where I am to look for the officer in command of the column."" The general was soon found and Guiscard communicated to him that the enemy had concentrated his chief force directly in front of us where a Prussian column had been posted; that the Prussians had resisted vigorously several successive attacks; but that the force converging on it was too powerful and that it must speedily retire. ""Then let it retire "" was the general's reply ""and we shall take their place."" ""Pardon me general "" was the prompt suggestion of the pupil of a more experienced school; ""but if you will permit me I shall ride back to my countrymen inform them of your advance and make them hold their position until you come out from the forest upon the enemy's flank."" His opinion was received and he put spurs to his horse and was gone. We now moved with all speed to the right of our former direction; and after half an hour's toiling through the intricacies of a wood on which no axe seemed to have fallen since the Deluge passed round the enemy and came full upon their rear. A few volleys thrown in upon them in this state of alarm broke them; the Prussian fire in front and our's in the rear made their disorder irreparable. In this crisis Dampierre rushed forward with a group of aides-de-camp to restore the engagement striking the fugitives with his sabre and desperately exposing his person to the balls which now fell thick as hail around him. For a while he seemed to bear a charmed life; but a rifleman of the Prussian hulans took a sure aim. He fired and I saw the unfortunate general fall from his horse. He had died instantly. A more gallant death and scarcely a more expeditious one than awaited the unsuccessful generals of the merciless Republic. We buried him on the spot where he fell with the honours due to a distinguished soldier. Before nightfall the French had retired in all quarters; and the remnant of the troops hurried across the Flemish frontier utterly disheartened and ruined. This engagement which was known long after as the battle of the forest of Vicogne cleared the Netherlands raised the fame of the British troops to the highest pitch and left in their hands four thousand prisoners. The councils of the allied camp now assumed a bolder tone. France was before us. The popular enthusiasm had been cooled by time and calamity. Defeat had taught the nation the folly of supposing that it could contend single-handed with Europe; and the only obstacle to our march to Paris was the line of fortresses erected by Louis XIV. The most powerful of those fortresses lay in the road by which the British columns were advancing; and it was with a singular mixture of rejoicing and anxiety of ardour and awe that I saw at the breaking of a brilliant morning spread beneath me the strong city of Valenciennes. IT IS NO FICTION. ""Oh! I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space were it not that _I have bad dreams_.""--_Hamlet_. ""I am wrapp'd in dismal thinkings.""--SHAKSPEARE. I have been a dreamer all my life. The earliest recollections of my childhood are of dreams of greatness. My boyhood's visions were peopled with warlike tumults. There were no spring mornings to my brain even in early youth; my heart was clouded with shadow and sadness reigned when mirth and careless glee should have been pre-eminent. My manhood has been a fitful feverish and painful existence. I have outlived all whom I ever cared for; I have seen those whom I idolized lie before me cold and senseless; and now with every event vividly impressed upon my memory each tone of the voice of her I loved dropping like liquid fire into my brain and drying up the tears that would weep away my anguish--feeling all this with intensity and longing for the free air of heaven I find myself alone--desolate--and HERE!! Oh! the horror of this prison-solitude--the anxious watching for the pale morning after sleepless nights--the horrible nights when fantastic shapes are alone visible mocking at and jeering me--when the only sounds I hear are the ravings of some wretched maniac confined like myself because we have made for ourselves a world and our imaginations have created a presiding divinity; and should a laugh disturb the silence it is the outbreak of a maddened spirit seeking relief from thought--a laugh frightful because a mockery--sad in its boisterousness--""_the laugh which laughs not_."" For many weary years I have been pent up in this prison pining for freedom hoping for things which never existed conjuring up anticipations of a brighter future calling upon her who made ""The starlight of my boyhood "" to look down upon me from her blest abode and woo me back to calmness by one gentle word one loving glance; and then sinking into hopeless bitter despondency when I remembered that she was gone and that I should see her no more. Sometimes I can think of her in her exquisite beauty and my soul drinks in as it were the sweet and liquid tones of the voice which once spoke peace to me and fancying her again before me I sink into an unquiet slumber till some hideous dream oppresses me and I see the fair brow of my ""Julia"" contracted withered; and instead of her silvery voice of enchantment a hissing sound escapes the lips I have worshipped. I rise and try to approach but she recedes. I awake--I start from my uneasy bed--I find this horrible picture which bore the impress of reality is but a dream. I awake to the consciousness that my beloved is dead and that my eyes will gaze upon her beauty no more. How few there are in this busy world who when passing those abodes of wretchedness--""private madhouses""--can imagine the agony the misery the despair that dwells there! But to my history. I was the only child of General Sir Frederick and Lady Charlotte B----. I was reared in luxury; the rude air was scarcely allowed to blow upon my delicate frame. I can remember now though years have passed and sorrow
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as bowed me--I can remember the happy days when my wearied head was pillowed on the bosom of my mother and after she had sung me to sleep with some wild melody she would place me in my small luxurious cot and watch over me with those deep-loving eyes and be the first to comfort and re-assure me if uneasy dreams--for even then I was a dreamer--made me awake to sorrow. But my mother died. Even now I shudder at the recollection of the desolateness of my agony when I knew I had looked on her for the last time. Even now I can feel the coldness which crept over me as I laid my cheek to hers. My blood was frozen. I could not weep. Oh! tears would have been a relief but they were denied me; and though I saw her taken from my embrace and her beloved form laid in the vault I could still gaze with speechless agony--but I wept not. How I wished for the quiet of the grave; for even then there was a whirlwind within my bosom and my sensitive heart shrank from holding converse with or bestowing confidence on another as freely or unreservedly as I had done with the dear being whom I had lost. Shortly after this event my father was ordered upon foreign service and my childhood was passed among relatives who were strangers to me. It was a childhood without love. I remembered my mother and none could supply her place. I could not trust in another as I had trusted in her. In my sorrows real or imaginary none other could comfort me. I longed for my childhood's resting-place where I might again pillow my aching head and sleep once more the calm sleep hallowed by a mother's matchless love. At an early age I was sent to one of our great public schools and there although I endured some hardships yet I experienced also something like the pleasures and pastimes of boyhood. From having been a weakly delicate child I grew strong and active; but a gloom was ever upon me. In my moments of relaxation I would join some of my companions in their games of play; but even then a dark phantom pursued me and I would fancy a shadowless spirit was after me: if I ran it always followed me with its noiseless steps and my constant fear was that it would overtake me. This was _madness_--aye I can see it now--_it was madness coming upon me_. I frequently used to endeavour to dispel the illusion by reading; but if I raised my eyes from my book there was the figure looking at me and sighing and its lips would move to speak--_but there was no sound_. I have sat for hours watching this bane of my existence. I have sat till my eyes were fixed from fright and I have tried to move but I felt chained to the spot and the fetters that appeared to bind me seemed of cold heavy steel that fell on my whole body and paralyzed me. Then I could feel my heart growing dead and yet throbbing with those dull audible throbs till at last I have shrieked in the agony of my horror and only then would the dark being leave me--but _it left me moody and mad_. I had one friend at school who would soothe me by gentle words and tell me my fears were but fancy and he would hold my hands until I slept and lost for a time at least the phantom which pursued me. That friend is dead. I have outlived _him_. _Why should the madman live?_ When I was about sixteen a new life opened to me. There came as a visitor to one of the ladies belonging to the establishment a young and lovely girl. I first saw her at the private chapel belonging to the school. The moment I looked at her a gush of hitherto unknown pleasure came to my heart. I felt that I could love her. I saw her again and again. I have stood for hours by the house in which she was hoping to catch a glimpse of her. Sometimes I was successful--more frequently not--but it was something to hope for. Once I fancied that her eye fell upon me. Oh how I was repaid by that one pure glance! While she remained at ---- my life was one of bright and vivid fancy and I was cheered by the angel Hope; but at length her visit came to a termination; yet though I knew she had departed I would go daily to my accustomed watching place and gaze until I fancied the beautiful girl was again before me. At the usual period my school days ended and my college life began. I was entered at Christ Church Oxford. I read hard and obtained the highest honours. My fame was brilliant. I was talked of and marked by my superiors as a rising man. Shortly afterwards I was returned as one of the members of a family borough in my native county and my first speech in Parliament met with general applause. The world called me a fortunate man. Oh! they little knew the nights of horror I passed--the battling I had with my attendant phantom which still pursued me blighted me. But I was mad; and the excitement of madness was called energy. How often I have laughed them to scorn as I have sat alone with the dark spirit! My sole ambition was that the girl whom I had seen and admired might hear of my career; and that with honours crowded upon me I might see her again that I might place my laurel crown at her feet lay bare my heart's best feelings my undying love for her and prove to her how entire was my devotion how earnest my worship. I saw many young and lovely girls; and I was told that mothers looked upon me as a desirable match--but I was true to my first love. I remembered her in the perfection of maiden beauty--I wished for none other; and to see _her_ again was my sole hope in life. After a season of unceasing gaiety and dissipation--sick of London and its vanities--I determined to travel and for seven years I was absent from my native land. I was recalled to attend the deathbed of my father. I had seen but little of him; he had no sympathy with me and in heart we were strangers to each other. He was proud of my talents and I was an only son; but he never bestowed any real affection on me. I honoured him because he was my parent; but I never loved him as I ought to have loved a father. He died and I succeeded to the baronetcy and estates; but I was already tired of life--wretched in the midst of my splendour. In a word--_I was mad_. At the table of a friend I met a man a few years my senior whom I had known at school. We renewed our acquaintance; and I accepted an invitation to dine at his house to meet some old schoolfellows. I consented to go but not cheerfully for a moody state of mind was coming over me. I can remember the struggle the exertion it was to dress for the party. Twenty times I was tempted to send a message saying I was too unwell to go but my better angel prevailed--and I went. To what an eventful period was that evening but the prelude! My friend met and welcomed me with a cordiality which somewhat cheered me; but I had a weight on my spirits from which I could not rouse myself and most reluctantly accompanied Sir Charles Tracey with faltering steps and an aching heart and brow into the inner drawing-room to be introduced to his wife Lady Tracey. She was seated on a low ottoman with her back to the door reading. She arose as her husband presented me to her as his old friend Sir Frederick B----. She turned towards me and for a moment I was overpowered. I beheld before me the creature I had so long pined for--so earnestly searched for--whose memory I had so devotedly and entirely worshipped. With exquisite grace she extended her hand to welcome her husband's guest and as I held those small taper fingers in mine thick coming fancies crowded upon me. I was again the schoolboy--the anxious ardent schoolboy longing even for a look from this lovely woman whose hand I now held in mine. Hot tears rushed into my eyes and I bent over the fair hand to conceal them. This momentary cloud passed away and while seated by her I forgot that we had ever been parted and imagination peopled a world of love--a paradise of hope. ""But she in these fond feelings had no share."" The years which had passed had changed her from a lovely girl into the more matured loveliness of the matron. When I had last seen her her hair which was a rich and shining black hung in natural and graceful curls over her beautiful and classically formed head. Now the thick and luxuriant mass was gathered into a knot behind and laid in soft bands over her pure and polished brow. Her eyes were of that deep full blue which is so rare and were large and bright and full of fire and spirit which at times gave an appearance of haughtiness to her noble countenance; her throat neck and arms were white as ivory and formed in the most perfect mould; her height was commanding and her figure exquisitely proportioned. Before she spoke I could only look at her with wonder that any thing so glorious could be earthly; but the instant she addressed me a peculiar witchery played over her features and about her mouth; and my wonder was instantly changed into love and adoration and I drank in with eagerness the silvery sweetness of her voice. I fancied on this night that Lady Tracey bestowed more attention on me than on her other guests; for women have an intuitive tact in discovering when a man admires devotedly. For that night I lost my dark phantom I slept a sweet sleep dreaming of things which could never be accomplished; and my waking vision as wild and improbable was that she might one day return my love. I would not lose sight of my newly found treasure. I called at her residence. I was admitted. Again I gazed; and worshipped. Lady Tracey looked more lovely by daylight than with the full blaze of candle-light upon her beauty. There was a delicacy about her complexion no daylight could impair; but it spoke also of a delicacy of constitution which made me tremble as I gazed. The fascination of her manner the elegance of her movements her light and airy tread her musical voice her bright but subdued laugh; all these combined made me idolize her. There is but one sun in heaven: there was but one Julia to my eyes on earth. Her shadow had fallen on my heart as the sun on an island far away from land in the lonely sea. It was filled with light and verdure and all my best feelings were warmed to ripeness by her glowing smile. We conversed together on poetry music history the arts; and I discovered she possessed a refined and superior intellect. A sparkling tincture of satire mingled with her mention of men and things; but while she did this with perfect temper and gentleness it gave a brilliancy to her conversation not to be described. She expressed a wish for a book which I had the happiness to possess; here was an opportunity for another visit. Again and again we met and I was intoxicated with love; but I saw no reciprocal feeling on her part. She was the same gentle and charming being; but she bestowed no _love_ upon the poor visionary who adored her. On the days we met I was gay and happy; but on the intervening ones I was in despair. All my darkest thoughts came back upon me fraught with even greater horrors. I tried to battle with my evil spirit but I could not subdue it. It grasped me tightly in its fetters; and I had no respite until I was again in the presence of my Julia. The smallest sound of her voice with its silvery sweetness broke the sad chain which had bound me and I was free to look--to love--to worship again. Oh why did not these moments of rapture last for ever! This holy calm like an enchanted circle into which my spirit of evil dared not venture why was it broken? Why did sickness and sorrow and _madness_--yes furious hopeless desponding madness--darken those sunny days? Why did death come to her and thick clouds to me? The sky mocks me with its gemmed radiance. The stars shine on brightly; but they fail to give light and hope to me. I have gazed on them with her. I have seen her stand with her fair brow raised and her lovely face bathed in moonlight; but as the pale beams danced around her to my eyes her own glory dimmed all other brightness. The winds howl and the trees wave to and fro in the tempest and with every blast comes a shriek as if Julia were in despair and I arise to rush to her rescue; but the clanking chain of the maniac binds me. I try to break my bonds but they clasp me; and my hideous companion the phantom jeers at me; and I hear the voice of my beloved receding further and further from me till with an agonized moan it dies away in the distance. And this the world calls fancy--the fantastic vision of a madman's brain! There was never a voice like _her_ voice; and though the winds rage tempestuously among the waving branches of the storm-tossed trees I hear the liquid music of her accents above all and I strain my eyes to catch a glimpse of her person but there is nothing; and I crouch down again in my chains and my madness on my desolate bed feeling how utterly--how entirely I am alone. An interruption occurred in our intercourse in consequence of Sir Charles Tracey being obliged to go abroad on business connected with the state. His lady accompanied him and they were absent for some months. How I spent these months I scarcely know. I avoided all society--I felt moody--wretched--despairing. I grew violent. Restraint became necessary. Then indeed I _knew_ that _I was mad_. Life was a blank; and some weeks passed while this dark cloud was upon me. At last though my recovery had been a work of time I was _called_ convalescent and the violence of my frenzy abated. I heard with joy that Sir Charles and his lady had returned to town. I thought the hour would never come when I might set out on my visit. I flew rather than walked to her residence. I felt startled and alarmed as I trode the streets; for I had not been out for months and I fancied every one stared at me--that everyone knew _I was mad_; but the one darling hope of seeing _her_ cheered me on. At last I reached the house. I was admitted; and in a moment I was by the side of Julia. She was looking pale and ill but very lovely. I rushed towards her. I knelt by her side. I took her cold hand in mine and kissed it ardently. A bright colour suffused her cheek. She endeavoured to withdraw her hand from my grasp; but the demon was within me. I held that pale small fragile hand firmly; and pressed it again and again to my lips and my throbbing bursting heart. I laughed aloud and wildly and she looked at me fearfully. She had discovered my secret and she saw that _I was mad_. ""You too have been ill?"" she said. The honied accents of that beloved voice fell on my ear like dew to the parched flower. I was calmed in a moment and I endeavoured to look coldly on her who was life--light--all to me in this world. I found she had been dangerously ill and I felt as I looked on her imperial loveliness that she was not destined long for this world. Daily I saw her. I could not see enough of one I loved so desperately; and I feigned calmness while I endured agony--but my madness ruined me at last. One wretched day--I spoke to her of love. I told her of my devotion--my hopeless devotion for so many years. I knelt by her side--I passed my arm round her waist--and for one brief moment I rested my scorching maddened brow upon her bosom. It was only a moment of reality--but an eternity of bliss in the recollection. I strained her fragile form to my breast. I kissed her pale cheeks--her brow--her lips. She moved not. I found she had fainted. I thought she was dead and my brain reeled. I raised her beautiful form in my arms and laid her gently on a couch. She was like marble--so cold and pale and breathless. I called no one to my assistance--I was the madman--the desperate heart-broken madman--and I saw before me the ruin I had wrought. How long this lasted I cannot tell; I only know my feelings were worked to frenzy. I called upon her by name; I conjured her to look at me to speak to me once--but once more. I longed for tears to cool the burning heat of my brain. In my agony I laughed and shrieked aloud; I could not control myself. She opened her eyes those large bright lustrous eyes and looked I thought kindly on me. How those glances entered my soul! ""Speak to me Julia forgive me "" I said. She smiled and extended her hand. Her eyes were in a moment fixed and glassy. She tried to speak when O God! as her lips separated the life-blood gushed from her heart and the purple stream flowed over her neck and bosom. I was paralyzed--I moved not--I looked on horror-stricken. She made one movement with her hand and then it fell lifeless by her side. She gave one deep sigh and all was over. I saw that she was dead but I wept not. I stood by a miserable madman my heart heaving with agony but my eyes refusing to weep and laughing that violent horrible laugh that mockery of mirth which belongs only to the maniac's ravings. I stood by the couch--I bathed my burning forehead with her blood--I saw that beautiful being cold and motionless her eyes closed and the lofty brow damp with the dews of death. I saw this and yet lived on. There was stillness and gloom and death around me but I was not alone. I felt that creeping consciousness that my evil spirit was near. I raised my eyes and saw the phantom--the dark and hideous one; my old companion as standing by me--muttering and mocking at my grief. I shrank from the fiend. I drew closer to the loved form of her I adored. I took her cold hand and placed it on my burning brow. I can feel the death-like coldness now where that small hand lay. I closed my eyes and tried to pray; but fiendish shouts of laughter rang in my ears and I felt that an _evil spirit_ was by my side. My whole frame quivered with suppressed agony. I turned. I saw it move; and the shadowless hand was raised as if to touch the precious and costly form of her I loved. I can remember no more; all after for some time was gloom and misery. * * * Wild spirits are dancing around me bearing in their arms the dear form of my Julia. Sometimes her voice breaks the stillness of my chamber in the darkness of night for I never sleep--my brain is _too hot for sleep_. Sometimes I am roused by feeling the softness of her light taper fingers on my brow and then I start from my uneasy and wretched bed to look for her once more; but instead of her I see my dark spirit the demon watching me with that untired eye following me with that noiseless step that shadowless form and then falling on my bed I bury my face in my pillow and try to pray for peace and for tears--but both are denied me. The sun mocks me with his bright clear dancing beams speaking of life and hope and joy. It brings back the memory of that wretched day when I had killed by my burning passions the only woman I had ever loved. She was indeed the sun of my gloom; and without her I am as a captive in a darkened cell through the gratings of which thoughts of her stream in and make a dim twilight--a sad satisfaction. Oh! if I were to be false to her my soul would be a void; my memory a curse; my heart a heap of ashes. I see again with terrible reality that graceful form--that regal face--dead yet smiling--as I last saw her in that curtained chamber with the sun shining in glory through the crimson drapery and shedding a warm glow on the inanimate features. Even now I see her. I see that last look of unsullied purity and fear. I feel again that warm blood as it trickled down and fell on my hands and face as I knelt before her. It fell on my forehead and I know that it is eating in deeper and deeper towards my brain. Her last words ring in my ears; her last smile is my beacon my only ray of hope luring me on towards a happier future. There is a fire kindled within me that will dry up every thought but recollection of her; for every circumstance connected with her is impressed on my memory with a vivid distinctness. Can it be?--the thought sometimes occurs to me with a balmy and consoling power like that fragrant wind from the Spicy Islands which the mariner feels blowing cool upon his brow as he lies becalmed in the still noon on the wide and desert sea? Can it be that the devotion of a lifetime--such as my devotion has been--may be repaid by association in eternity? May I dare to hope to live hereafter in the shadow of her glory? Shall we meet again in that bright land? No--the vision is too joyous for the poor maniac her murderer. I shall see her no more--we are separated for ever! Hell--deep deep hell--is the madman's portion; and heaven that pure and distant clime is thy resting-place for ever--thy radiant home--thy peaceful haven--my lost--my adored--my sainted Julia! THE BURNS' FESTIVAL. Scotland has of late years been exposed to perilous influences. Unused from its older form of representation to popular excitement and stimulated by example from without the nation threw itself headlong into the revolutionary current which swept the whole empire at the period of Parliamentary Reform and with characteristic fervour seemed inclined to riot in the novel element. Whenever symptoms of such a disposition appear in the body politic there is manifest danger that in the new accession of power the old and sacred landmarks may be disregarded and little heed be given to the mutual dependence and common interests of every class of society. Thus agitated and disturbed the Scottish people once jealously national and so proud of that nationality that it had passed into a byword throughout Europe might have lost their cohesive power loosened the cord which bound the social rods together and formed themselves into separate sections with apparently hostile interests. Fortunately however there was a strong counteracting influence. Even when the storm was wildest and the clash of conflicting opinions most discordant it was impossible to eradicate from the minds of any order the vast and stirring memories of the past. New rights might indeed be claimed; but it was not alleged that there had been any abuse of the old. Nothing had occurred to weaken the esteem with which the lower ranks were accustomed to regard the ancient aristocracy of the country; and accordingly throughout the whole of that protracted contest fervid and determined as it was there was less rancour shown than might have been expected in the course of so great a political change. As the excitement subsided the kindly feeling which never had been extinguished began more palpably to revive. Before the epoch of agitation approached we were a peaceful and a happy people. The peerage the gentry the yeomen and the peasantry--all classes were bound together with the links of respect and of affection. The old hereditary attachment between the orders had not been broken. The poor man was proud of the noble because the noble bore a name conspicuous in the annals of his country; because he was the descendant of those who had fought and died for Scotland and who had identified their honourable renown with hers; because he was a man every way worthy to bear the titles so gloriously achieved; and more than all perhaps because he loved and venerated the poor. And for that love and veneration the noble had ample grounds. Ancient as his race might be the yeomanry and peasantry of Scotland were yet as ancient in theirs. Not one step of honour could his fathers have gained without the help of the fathers of those who were now living upon his hereditary soil; and the old spell-words of the land were common to them both. Nor was there to be found in wide Europe a better or a braver race. They were industrious faithful loyal; they were attached without servility independent without rudeness and intelligent to a degree that excited the admiration and the wonder of the stranger. No wonder that the mere thought of estrangement in such a society as this should have stricken the bravest bosom with terror and woe and dismay! Yet so troublous was the aspect of Europe then that such fear was not utterly unfelt; and it was the apprehension of that calamity more than any other worldly cause that dimmed the soul and darkened the spirit of that great and good man Sir Walter Scott in his declining years; for all his large affections were bound up and entwined with the interests of Scotland and had the sacrifice been required of him he would gladly have laid down his life to avert from her the perils which he then foresaw. These few remarks we cannot consider as inappropriate to our present subject. We have once more been joyful spectators of a truly national gathering. Once more we have seen Scotsmen of every grade and degree assemble together without a tinge of party purpose to do honour to the memory of a poet who sprang from the ranks of the people and who was heart and soul a Scotsman in his feelings his inspiration and it may be in his errors and his prejudices also. It was a stirring and exciting spectacle such as no other country could have exhibited--to behold peer and senator poet and historian and peasant--the great and the small the lettered and the simple of the land--unite after fifty years of silence in deep and sincere homage to the genius of one humble man. Nor did they assemble there because his genius was greater than God in his bounty had bestowed upon others but because he had used it for the glory and exaltation of his country; because he loved her with an ardour the most vivid and extreme; because he had shed the light entrusted to his charge both on the lofty dwelling and on the lowly hearth but most brightly and cheeringly upon the latter for that was his peculiar charge. We feel assured that the events of that day and the sentiments which were then inspired and uttered will produce a marked effect upon the disposition of the country at large. It seemed as if all classes had spontaneously assembled to join hands above the grave of Robert Burns and then and there to renew the vow of enduring reconciliation and love. We shall now proceed to give a short account of the proceedings of the day. In our climate the state of the weather on public occasions is always regarded with anxiety; for enthusiasm however warm is apt to expire beneath a deluge of northern rain. On the previous evening the sky promised well. A brilliant sunset and a warm wind seemed security for a placid morrow; and although the glare of the great furnaces in the neighbourhood of Glasgow glowed somewhat ominously large as the night wore on we retired to rest rather in hope than resignation. But dismal indeed was the prospect when we awoke. A vaporous grey mist had entirely usurped the heavens and the plash of weary rain resounded through the pluvious metropolis of the west. Fortunately we were not ignorant of the fact that Glasgow is under the peculiar tutelage of the Pleiades; and accordingly we proceeded to the railway trusting that matters might mend so soon as we lost sight of the stupendous chimney-stalk of St Rollox. Notwithstanding the inclemency of the weather and the early hour every town as we passed along seemed in a state of the greatest excitement. There were bands of music deputations of mason lodges and the rival brotherhood of Odd Fellows with hundreds of men and women all clad in holiday attire awaiting the arrival of the train at every station. It is a marvel to us how half of these expectants could have found their way to Ayr. Carriage after carriage was linked to the already exorbitant train until the engine groaned audibly and almost refused to proceed. Still the rain continued to fall and it was not until after we had left Irvine and were rounding the margin of the bay towards Ayr that the sky brightened up and disclosed the great panorama of the sea with Ailsa and Arran looming in the distance and steamers from every direction ploughing their way into the port. The streets of Ayr were swarming with people and sounding with the crash of music. There were arches on the bridge flags streaming from windows and bells tolling from the steeples--symptoms of a jubilee as great as if Royalty had descended unawares and the whole district had arisen to pay honour to its Queen. The inns were thronged to excess and the waiters in absolute despair. What a multitude of salmon must have died to furnish that morning's meal! Yet every face looked bright and happy as became those who had engaged in such a pilgrimage. Then the burst of music became louder and more frequent as band after band preceding the trades and other public bodies filed past towards the rendezvous of the great Procession. This was on what is called the Low Green; and the admirable arrangements made by the committee of management--of which Mr Ballantine of Castlehill was convener and Messrs Bone and Gray secretaries--were manifest. Mr Thwaites undertook the marshaling of the whole. Here first the grandeur of the National Festival was displayed while the immense multitudes that had come trooping in from all quarters stood congregated in orderly muster a mighty host bound in unity by one soul stretching far and wide from the towers of Ayr to the sea. Suddenly at signal given the Procession began to deploy in admirable order with streaming banners and crashes of music and shouts from the accompanying thousands that rent the sky; and we were warned that it was time to proceed if we wished to obtain a place upon the Platform erected on the banks of Doon. A unit in the stream of population we skirted the noble race-course and reached the Platform just before the head of the Procession had arrived. It was erected in a magnificent situation. Behind was the monument of Burns and the sweet habitation of Mr Auld with old Alloway Kirk a little further off. Before it was the immense Pavilion erected for the banquet all gay with flags and streamers. To the right were the woods that fringe the romantic Doon at that point concealed from sight; but not so the Old Bridge which spans it with its arch of triumphal evergreen. Every slope beyond was studded with groups of people content to view the spectacle from afar. The Carrick hills reached far away beyond; and on the other side were the town and broad bay of Ayr and Arran with all its mountains. But we had little leisure then to look around us. On the Platform were collected many of the Ladies and Gentlemen of the county--Sir David Hunter Blair; James Campbell Esq. of Craigie; W. A. Cunninghame Esq. of Fairlie; A. Boyle Esq. of Shewalton &c.; Archibald Hastie Esq. M.P.; A. Buchanan Esq. Charles Neaves Esq. Mr Sheriff Campbell Mr Sheriff Bell Mr Carruthers &c. &c.; some of the most distinguished of those who had come from afar and conspicuous in front the surviving Kindred of Burns. There stood with his beautiful Countess the noble and manly Eglinton _preux chevalier_ of his day and fitting representative of that ancient house of Montgomery so famous in the annals and peerage of Scotland and of France. There was the venerable and venerated Lord Justice-General Boyle the President of the Scottish Courts and chief magistrate of the land with the snows of more than seventy winters lying lightly and gracefully upon his head. There stood Wilson never more fitly in his place than here; for of the many who have interposed to shield the memory of Burns from detraction he had spoken with the most generous spirit and collected purpose and came now to rejoice in the common triumph. There too were Alison the sound and strong historian; Chambers whose delicate generosity to the relatives of Burns independently of the services he has rendered to our national literature made him one of the fittest spectators of the scene; and a host of other distinguished men well and aptly representing the aristocracy and the learning of the country. Many strangers too had come to grace the festival; amongst whom it may be allowed us to specify the names of Mrs S. C. Hall the charming authoress and her accomplished husband. We looked in vain for some whose presence there would have given an additional interest to the scene. We would fain have seen the poets of the sister countries represented by Wordsworth and Moore. That might not be; but their sympathies were not withheld. Among that brilliant group there stood an elderly female dressed in deep black and three men all past the meridian of life with quiet thoughtful looks and unpretending aspect. These were the sister and the sons of Burns. His sister!--and half a century has wellnigh gone past since the hot heart of the brother was stricken cold and the manly music of his voice made dumb for ever! Was it too much to believe that through these many long years of her earthly pilgrimage--sometimes we fear darkened by want and neglect--that sister had always clung to the memory of the departed dead in the hope that the day would arrive when his genius should receive the homage of a new generation to atone for the apathy and coldness of that which had passed away? What emotions must have thrilled the bosom of th
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t venerable woman as she gazed on the stirring spectacle before her and saw her lingering hopes far more than thoroughly realized! What a glorious welcome too for the sons to their native land! They had left it--not quite as the poor man does--but with heavy difficulties before them. They had wrestled their way onwards through half the journey of life and now on their return they were greeted with a welcome which it were almost worth the struggles of a life to obtain. All this they owed to their father; and honoured among the honourable that day were the lineage and kindred of Burns. Beneath and around the Platform there were thousands already congregated. If any one had wished to paint the character of the Scottish peasantry in its loftiest and most endearing light the subjects were there before him. Old patriarchal men on whose venerable temples time had bleached the white locks of age to the softness of those of infancy stood leaning upon their grandchildren proud and yet wondering at the honours which were that day paid to him whom long long ago reaching away through the vista of memory they remembered to have seen in their youth. So familiarized were they with his image and the glorious language he had uttered that they had almost forgotten the greatness and universality of his fame; and now when brought forth from their cottages in the far glens and muirlands of the south they could scarcely believe that the great and gifted and beautiful of the land had come together for no other purpose than to celebrate the genius of their old companion. But they were proud as they well might be; for it was a privilege even to have beheld him and in that homage they recognised and felt the tribute that was paid to their order. The instinctive decency of Scottish feeling had accorded to these men a fitting and conspicuous place. Around them were the women of their families of all ages--from the matron in her coif to the bashful maiden with the snood--and even children; for few were left at home on that day of general jubilee. These and a vast concourse of strangers already occupied the ground. Meanwhile the Procession had wound its enormous length from Ayr along a road almost choked up with spectators. Every wall and gate had its burden and numerous Flibbertigibbets sat perched upon the branches of the trees. The solitary constable of the burgh was not present to preserve order or if he was his apparition was totally unrequired. The old bell of Alloway Kirk was set in motion as the head of the column appeared and continued ringing until all were past. The whole land was alive. Each road and lane poured forth its separate concourse to swell the ranks of the great Procession. The weather after one heavy final shower cleared up; or if not clear resolved itself into that indescribable mixture of sunshine and cloud which sets off the beauties of the undulating landscape so well light alternating with shadow and on the ridges of the distant hills contending radiance and gloom. On they went with banners flying and a perfect storm of music across the new Bridge of Doon deploying along the road on the opposite side of the river and finally recrossing by the old bridge from which they filed past in front of the Platform. The order of the Procession was as follows:-- BAND OF THE 87TH FUSILIERS. Provost Magistrates Town-Council and Trades of Ayr. FIVE BAGPIPERS IN HIGHLAND COSTUME. FARMERS AND SHEPHERDS. Dalrymple Burns's Club with banners and music. Motto ""Firm."" KILWINNING BAND. Kilwinning Mother Lodge of Freemasons. CUMNOCK BAND. London Newmilns Lodge. IRVINE BAND. Troon Navigation Lodge. Girvan Masons. St James's Tarbolton. St John's Ayr. Thistle and Rose Stevenston. St John's Largs. Glasgow Star. ST ANDREW'S BAND. Royal Arch Maybole. St Paul's Ayr. St Andrew's Ayr. St John's Girvan. St James's Kilmarnock. St Peter's Galston. St John's New Cumnock. Junior or Knights Templars Maybole. SALTCOATS BAND. St John's Dalry. KILBARCHAN BAND. St John's Greenock. Shoemakers as follows:-- Champion. British Prince and attendants. Indian Prince and Train. CATRINE BAND. King Crispin and Train. Souter Johnie in character. Highland Chieftains. GREENOCK BAND. Lodge of Odd Fellows. BAND. Robert Burns's Lodge Beith. AYR BAND. Banks of Ayr Lodge of Odd Fellows. Sir T. Makdougall Brisbane Lodge Largs. Ancient Order of Foresters Glasgow. Captain mounted with Bow and Arrows. KILMARNOCK BAND. Kilmarnock Burns's Lodge of Foresters. Weavers from Maybole. MAYBOLE BAND. Tailors of Maybole. MAUCHLINE BAND. Boxmakers of Mauchline with large Scotch Thistle carried shoulder-high by Four men and Banner inscribed ""I turn'd my weeder-clips aside And spared the Symbol dear."" The Party were on the Establishment of Messrs W. and A. Smith. The Thistle grew near to Mossgiel. Caledonian Union Odd Fellows Dunlop. (Deputations of the Magistracy joined in the Procession from Dumbarton Dunlop Maybole and Irvine.) The effect of the Procession as seen from the Platform almost baffles the power of description. The wailing of the bagpipes and the crash of the bands were heard from the bosom of deep wood-thicket behind long before the ranks became visible. At length among the trees that skirted the opposite banks there was a glittering of lances and a lifting of banners and a dark-growing line of men in closest order marching as if to battle. Gradually it flowed on in continuous stream file succeeding to file without gap or intermission until the head of the column appeared recrossing by the Old Bridge and winding up the road towards the Platform; and still new banners rose up behind and fresh strains of music burst forth amidst the leafy screen. And now they reached the platform: lance and flag were lowered in honour of those who stood bareheaded above and deafening were the cheers that ushered in the arrival of the national pageant. The spectacle was most imposing and must have conveyed to the minds of the strangers present a vivid impression of the energy and enthusiasm so deeply implanted in the Scottish character and always so irresistibly manifested at the touching of a national chord. The most interesting part of the Procession by far was the array of Farmers and Shepherds the flower of the west-country yeomanry attired in the graceful plaid. Of that same breed of men of tall and compact mould and hardy sinew was Robert Burns; nor is it possible to imagine any thing more animated than the appearance of those stalwart sons of the soil as they lingered for a moment before the platform and looked with wistful eyes at the sons of the Poet if haply they might trace in their lineaments some resemblance to the features of him whom from their infancy they had learned to love. Then came the Freemasons and King Crispin with his train and the Archers and much more of old Scottish device until there seemed no end to the flowing tide of population all keen and joyful and exultant. But the full burst of enthusiasm was reserved for the close. In the rear of all appeared an enormous Thistle borne shoulder high; and no sooner was the national emblem in sight than a universal and long-continued cheer burst forth from the many thousands who were now congregated in the plain beyond. Alas for that thistle! Though Burns as the inscription bore ""Had turn'd his weeder-clips aside And spared the symbol dear "" such was not the fate of the offspring plant. Scarcely had it reached the platform when Christopher North violently possessed himself of one branch the Lord Justice-General seized upon another and in the twinkling of an eye it was torn into fragments and its rough leaves and rougher flowers displayed upon manly bosoms from which it would have been difficult to wrest them again. So closed the Procession--but not the gathering. Deafening were the cheers which followed for Burns--for his Sons--for Professor Wilson--for Lord Eglinton; until the last remnant of reserve gave way and a torrent of people swept forward to obtain if possible a pressure of their hands that were gladly and gratefully held forth. Descending from the Platform we entered the meadow-ground beyond where the multitude were now assembled. One of the bands struck up the beautiful air--""Ye banks and braes o' bonny Doon;"" and immediately the People as if actuated by one common impulse took up the strain and a loftier swell of music never rose beneath the cope of heaven. We thought of the fine lines of Elliott-- ""To other words while forest echoes ring 'Ye banks and braes o' bonny Doon ' they sing; And far below the drover with a start Awaking listens to the well-known strain Which brings Schehallion's shadow to his heart And Scotia's loveliest vales: then sleeps again And dreams on Loxley's banks of Dunsinane."" Few could abstain from tears as the last glorious note died solemnly away into the skies. We looked down from the top of the pavilion-stairs upon the vast multitude beneath. There could not have been less than 80 000 souls collected upon the ground. Of all that mighty mass not one man had thrown discredit upon the harmony and order of the day. Every face glowed with happiness and congratulation as if conscious that a good work had been done and that the nation had at length discharged the duty which she owed to one of her most gifted sons. THE BANQUET. The company began to enter the Pavilion almost immediately after the close of the Procession and the chair was taken about two o'clock. The Pavilion was erected in a field of twenty-two acres adjoining to the Monument and was a magnificent building. It measured not less than 120 feet by 110 forming nearly a perfect square. The roof supported by two rows of pillars was covered with waterproof felt and the building inside was lined with white cloth festooned with crimson. In the centre of the roof was a radiation of the same colours. The tables and seats were arranged in parallel lines from the head to the foot of the apartment rising with a gentle inclination from the middle on both sides. At each end there was an elevated table for the Chairman Croupier and their respective supporters; and on the two remaining sides of the square there were _vis-a-vis_ galleries for the instrumental band and glee-singers a pianoforte for the accompaniment to Mr Templeton being placed in front of the latter at which Mr Blewitt took his station. Mr Templeton between the speeches sang with great power and sweetness appropriate songs from Burns; and Mr Blewitt's performance was admirable. Mr Wilson came from Paris to the Festival; but unfortunately was prevented by severe illness from delighting the assembly with his exquisite strains. The hall was lighted by twenty-two glass windows shaded with white cloth. The chairman and croupier's seats were of oak made of the rafters of Alloway Kirk; and several splendid silver vases decorated their tables. The hall was seated to accommodate 2000 persons and was entirely filled although not inconveniently crowded. The distinguishing feature of the pavilion was the number of ladies who were present. A great room exclusively filled with men is at best a dull and sombre spectacle; and so far from social that it always conveys to us a gross idea of selfishness. The mere scenic effect on this occasion was immensely heightened by the adoption of the polite rule; nor can it be doubted that the tone of the meeting underwent a similar improvement. The Chairman the Right Hon. the Earl of Eglinton was supported on the right by Robert Burns Esq. late of the Stamps and Taxes Somerset House London eldest son of the poet; Major Burns youngest son of the poet; Miss Begg niece of the poet; Henry Glassford Bell Esq. Sheriff-Substitute of Lanarkshire; Rev. Mr Cuthill Ayr; Mr Robert Burns Begg teacher Kinross nephew of the poet; Miss Begg the younger niece of the poet; Mr and Mrs Thomson of Dumfries (the latter the Jessie Lewars of the bard who tended his deathbed;)--on the left by Colonel Burns second son of the poet; Mrs Begg sister of the poet; Sir John M'Neill Bart. late Plenipotentiary to the Court of Persia; the Right Hon. Lord Justice-General; the Countess of Eglinton; Sir D. H. Blair Bart. of Blairquhan. The Croupier Professor Wilson was supported on the right by Archibald Alison Esq. Sheriff of Lanarkshire and author of the History of Europe; Colonel Mure of Caldwell author of Travels in Greece; William E. Aytoun Esq. Advocate; A. Hastie Esq. M.P. for Paisley; Jas. Oswald Esq. M.P. for Glasgow;--on the left by Sir James Campbell Glasgow; Provost Miller Ayr; James Ballantine Esq. of Castlehill; Charles Mackay Esq. London; James Campbell Esq. of Craigie. The Rev. Mr CUTHILL of Ayr asked the blessing. The Earl of EGLINTON after the usual loyal toasts rose and spoke as follows:--Ladies and gentlemen The subject of the toast which I have now the honour to bring before your notice is one of such paramount importance on this occasion and is so deeply interesting not only to those whom I am addressing but to all to whom genius is dear that I could have wished that it had been committed to more worthy hands; more especially when I see the great assemblage collected here--the distinguished persons who grace our board to-day. It is only because I conceive that my official position renders me the most formal and fitting though most inefficient mouthpiece of the inhabitants of this county that I have ventured to present myself before you on this occasion and to undertake the onerous though most gratifying duty of proposing in such an assemblage the thrilling toast--""The Memory of Burns."" This is not a meeting for the purpose of recreation and amusement--it is not a banquet at which a certain number of toasts are placed on paper which must be received with due marks of approbation--it is the enthusiastic desire of a whole people to pay honour to their greatest countryman. It is the spontaneous outpouring of a nation's feeling towards the illustrious dead and the wish to extend the hand of welcome and of friendship to those whom he has left behind. Here on the very spot where the Poet first drew breath on the very ground which his genius has hallowed beside the Old Kirk which his verse has immortalized beneath the monument which an admiring and repentant people have raised to his memory we meet after the lapse of years to pay our homage at the shrine of genius. The master mind who has sung the ""Isle of Palms""--who has revelled in the immortal ""Noctes""--and who has already done that justice to the memory of Burns which a brother poet alone can do--Christopher himself is here anxious to pay his tribute of admiration to a kindred spirit. The historian who has depicted with a Gibbon's hand the eventful period of the French empire and the glorious victories of Wellington is here--a Clio as it were offering a garland to Erato. The distinguished head of the Scottish bench is here. In short every town and every district every class and every age has come forward to pay homage to their poet. The honest lads whom he so praised and whose greatest boast it is that they belong to the land of Burns are here. The fair lasses whom he so loved and sung have flocked hither to justify by their loveliness their poet's words. While the descendant of those who dwelt in the ""Castle o' Montgomerie "" feels himself only too highly honoured by being permitted to propose the memory of him who wandered then unknown along the banks of Fail. How little could the pious old man who dwelt in yon humble cottage when he read the ""big ha' bible""--""his lyart haffets wearing thin and bare""--have guessed that the infant prattling on his knee was to be the pride and admiration of his country; that that infant was to be enrolled a chief among the poetic band; that he was to take his place as one of the brightest planets that glitter round the mighty sun of the Bard of Avon! In originality second to none in the fervent expression of deep feeling and in the keen perception of the beauties of nature equal to any who ever reveled in the bright fairyland of poesy well may we rejoice that Burns is our own--well may we rejoice that no other land can claim to be the birthplace of our Homer except the hallowed spot on which we stand! Oh! that he could have foreseen the futurity of fame he has created to himself--oh! that he could have foreseen this day when the poet and the historian the manly and the fair the peer and the peasant vie with each other in paying their tribute of admiration to the untaught but mighty genius whom we hail as the first of Scottish poets! It might have alleviated the dreary days of his sojourn at Mossgiel--it might have lightened the last hours of his pilgrimage upon earth. And well does he deserve such homage. He who portrayed the ""Cottar's Saturday Night"" in strains that are unrivaled in simplicity and yet fervour--in solemnity and in truth--He who breathed forth the patriotic words which tell of the glories of Wallace and immortalize alike the poet and the hero--He who culled inspiration from the modest daisy and yet thundered forth the heroic strains of ""The Song of Death""--He who murmured words which appear the very incarnation of poetry and of love and yet hurled forth the bitterest shafts of satire--a Poet by the hand of nature despising as it were the rules of art and yet triumphing over those very rules which he set at nought--at whose name every Scottish heart beats high--whose name has become a household word in the cottage as in the palace--to whom shall we pay our homage of whom shall we be proud if it is not our own immortal Burns? But I feel that I am detaining you too long. I feel that in the presence of a Wilson and an Alison I am not a fit person to dilate upon the genius of Burns. I am but an admirer of the poet like yourselves. There are those present who are brother poets and kindred geniuses--men who like Burns have gained for themselves a glorious immortality. To them will I commit the grateful task of more fully displaying before you decked out by their eloquence the excellences of the poet the genius of the man and to welcome his sons to the land of their father: and I will only ask you in their presence--on the ground which his genius has rendered sacred--on the ""banks and braes o' bonny Doon""--to join with me in drinking an overflowing bumper and giving it every expression of enthusiasm which you can to ""The Memory of Burns!"" Mr ROBERT BURNS rose along with his brothers and was received with enthusiastic cheering. He said--My lord ladies and gentlemen Of course it cannot be expected at a meeting such as the present that the sons of Burns should expatiate on the merits and genius of their deceased father. Around them are an immense number of admirers who by their presence here this day bear a sufficient testimony to the opinion in which they hold his memory and the high esteem in which they hold his genius. In the language of the late Sir Christopher Wren though very differently applied the sons of Burns can say that to obtain a living testimony to their father's genius they have only to look around them. I beg in name of my aunt brothers and myself to return our heartfelt and grateful thanks for the honour that has this day been paid to my father's memory. PROFESSOR WILSON then rose and said--Were this Festival but to commemorate the genius of Burns and it were asked what need now for such commemoration since his fame is coextensive with the literature of the land and enshrined in every household? I might answer that although admiration of the poet be wide as the world yet we his compatriots to whom he is especially dear rejoice to see the universal sentiment concentered in one great assemblage of his own people: that we meet in thousands and tens of thousands to honour him who delights each single one of us at his own hearth. But this commemoration expresses too if not a profounder a more tender sentiment; for it is to welcome his sons to the land he has illustrated so that we may at once indulge our national pride in a great name and gratify in filial hearts the most pious of affections. There was in former times a custom of crowning great poets. No such ovation honoured our bard though he too tasted of human applause felt its delights and knew the trials that attend it. Which would Burns himself have preferred a celebration like this in his lifetime or fifty years after his death? I venture to say he would have preferred the posthumous as the finer incense. The honour and its object are then seen in juster proportion; for death confers an elevation which the candid soul of the poet would have considered and such honour he would rather have reserved for his manes than have encountered it with his living infirmities. And could he have foreseen the day when they for whom at times he was sorely troubled should after many years of separation return to the hut where himself was born and near it within the shadow of his monument be welcomed for his sake by the lords and ladies of the land; and--dearer thought still to his manly breast--by the children and the children's children of people of his own degree whose hearts he sought to thrill by his first voice of inspiration; surely had the Vision been sweeter to his soul than even that immortal one in which the Genius of the Land bound the holly round his head the lyric crown that it will wear for ever. Of his three Sons sitting here one only can remember their father's face--those large lustrous eyes of his so full of many meanings as they darkened in thought melted in melancholy or kindled in mirth but never turned on his children or on their excellent mother but with one of tender or intense affection. That son may even on this day have remembrance of his father's head with its dark clusters not unmixed with gray and those eyes closed lying upon the bed of death. Nor should it for a moment placidly appear is such image unsuitable to this festival. For in bidding welcome to his sons to their father's land I feel that while you have conferred on me a high honour you have likewise imposed on me a solemn duty; and however inadequately I may discharge it I trust that in nought shall I do any violence to the spirit either of humanity or of truth. I shall speak reverently of Burns's character in hearing of his sons; but not even in their hearing must I forget what is due always to established judgment of the everlasting right. Like all other mortal beings; he had his faults--great even in the eyes of men--grievous in the eyes of Heaven. Never are they to be thought of without sorrow were it but for the misery with which he himself repented them. But as there is a moral in every man's life even in its outward condition imperfectly understood how much more affecting when we read it in confessions wrung out by remorse from the greatly gifted the gloriously endowed! But it is not his faults that are remembered here--assuredly not these we meet to honour. To deny error to be error or to extenuate its blame _that_ makes the outrage upon sacred truth; but to forget that it exists or if not wholly so to think of it along with that under-current of melancholy emotion at all times accompanying our meditations on the mixed characters of men--_that_ is not only allowable but it is ordered--it is a privilege dear to humanity--and well indeed might he tremble for himself who should in this be deaf to the voice of nature crying from the tomb. And mark how graciously in this does time aid the inclinations of charity! Its shadows soften what they may not hide. In the distance discordances that once jarred painfully on our ears are now undistinguishable--lost in the music sweet and solemn that comes from afar with the sound of a great man's name. It is consolatory to see that the faults of them whom their people honour grow fainter and fainter in the national memory while their virtues wax brighter and more bright; and if injustice have been done to them in life (and who now shall dare to deny that cruelest injustice was done to Burns?) each succeeding generation becomes more and more dutiful to the dead--desirous to repair the wrong by profounder homage. As it is by his virtues that man may best hope to live in the memory of man is there not something unnatural something monstrous in seeking to eternize here below that of which the proper doom is obscurity and oblivion? How beneficent thus becomes the power of example! The good that men do then indeed ""lives after them""--all that was ethereal in their being alone survives--and thus ought our cherished memories of our best men--and Burns was among our best--to be invested with all consistent excellences; for far better may their virtues instruct us by the love which they inspire than ever could their vices by aversion. To dwell on the goodnesses of the great shows that we are at least lovers of virtue--that we may ourselves be aspiring to reach her serene abodes. But to dwell on their faults and still more to ransack that we may record them _that_ is the low industry of envy which grown into a habit becomes malice at once hardening and embittering the heart. Such beyond all doubt in the case of our great poet was the source of many ""a malignant truth and lie "" fondly penned and carefully corrected for the press by a class of calumniators that may never be extinct; for by very antipathy of nature the mean hate the magnanimous the groveling them who soar. And thus for many a year we heard ""souls ignoble born to be forgot"" vehemently expostulating with some puny phantom of their own heated fancy as if _it_ were the majestic shade of Burns evoked from his Mausoleum for contumely and insult. Often too have we been told by persons somewhat presumptuously assuming the office of our instructors to beware how we suffer our admiration of genius to seduce us from our reverence of virtue. Never cease to remember--has been still their cry--how far superior is moral to intellectual worth. Nay they have told us that they are not akin in nature. But akin they are; and grief and pity 'tis that ever they should be disunited. But mark in what a hateful because hypocritical spirit such advices as these have not seldom been proffered till salutary truths were perverted by misapplication into pernicious falsehoods. For these malignant counsellors sought not to elevate virtue but to degrade genius; and never in any other instance have they stood forth more glaringly self-convicted of the most wretched ignorance of the nature both of the one and the other than in their wilful blindness to so many of the noblest attributes of humanity in the character of Burns. Both gifts are alike from heaven and both alike tend heavenward. Therefore we lament to see genius soiled by earthly stain; therefore we lament to see virtue where no genius is fall before the tempter. But we in our own clear natural perceptions refuse the counsels of those who with the very breath of their warning would blight the wreath bound round the heads of the Muses' sons by a people's gratitude--who in affected zeal for religion and morality have so deeply violated the spirit of both by vile misrepresentations gross exaggerations and merciless denunciations of the frailties of our common nature in illustrious men--men who in spite of their aberrations more or less deplorable from the right path were not only in their prevailing moods devout worshippers of virtue but in the main tenor or their lives exemplary to their brethren. And such a man was Burns. In boyhood--youth--manhood--where such peasant as he? And if in trouble and in trial from which his country may well turn in self-reproach he stood not always fast yet shame and sin it were and indelible infamy were she not _now_ to judge his life as Christianity commands. Preyed upon alas! by those anxieties that pierce deepest into the noblest hearts--anxieties for the sakes--even on account of the very means of subsistence--of his own household and his own hearth--yet was he in his declining shall we call them disastrous years on the whole faithful to the divine spirit with which it had pleased Heaven to endow him--on the whole obedient to its best inspirations; while he rejoiced to illumine the paths of poverty with light which indeed was light on heaven and from an inexhaustible fancy teeming to the genial warmth of the heart in midst of chill and gloom continued to the very last to strew along the weary ways of this world flowers so beautiful in their freshness that to eyes too familiar with tears they looked as if dropped from heaven. These are sentiments with which I rejoice to hear the sympathy of this great assemblage thus unequivocally expressed--for my words but awaken thoughts lodged deep in all considerate hearts. For which of us is there in whom known or unknown alas! there is not much that needs to be forgiven? Which of us that is not more akin to Burns in his fleshly frailties then in his diviner spirit? That conviction regards not merely solemn and public celebrations of reverential memory--such as this; it pervades the tenor of our daily life runs in our heart's-blood sits at our hearths wings our loftiest dreams of human exaltation. How on this earth could we love or revere or emulate if in our contemplation of the human being we could not sunder the noble the fair the gracious the august from the dregs of mortality from the dust that hangs perishably about him the imperishable? We judge in love that in love we may be judged. At our hearthsides we gain more than we dared desire by mutual mercy; at our hearthsides we bestow and receive a better love by this power of soft and magnanimous oblivion. We are ourselves the gainers when thus we honour the great dead. _They_ hear not--_they_ feel not excepting by an illusion of our own moved imaginations which fill up chasms of awful impassable separation; but _we_ hear--_we_ feel; and the echo of the acclaim which hills and skies have this day repeated we can carry home in our hearts where it shall settle down into the composure of love and pity and admiration and gratitude felt to be due for ever to our great poet's shade. In no other spirit could genius have ever dared in elegies and hymns to seek to perpetuate at once a whole people's triumph and a whole people's grief by celebration of king sage priest or poet gone to his reward. From the natural infirmities of his meanest subject what King was ever free? Against the golden rim that rounds his mortal temples come the same throbbings from blood in disease or passion hurrying from heart to brain as disturb the aching head of the poor hind on his pallet of straw. But the king had been a guardian a restorer a deliverer; therefore his sins are buried or burned with his body; and all over the land he saved generation after generation continues to cry aloud--""O king live for ever!"" The Sage who by long meditation on man's nature and man's life has seen how liberty rests on law rights on obligations and that his passions must be fettered that his will be free--how often has he been overcome when wrestling in agony with the powers of evil in that seclusion from all trouble in which reverent admiration nevertheless believes that wisdom for ever serenely dwells! The Servant of God has he always kept his heart pure from the world nor ever held up in prayer other than spotless hands? A humble confession of his own utter unworthiness would be his reply alike to scoffer and to him who believes. But unterrified by plague and pestilence he had carried comfort into houses deserted but by sin and despair; or he had sailed away as he truly believed for ever to savage lands away from the quiet homes of Christian men--among whom he might have hoped to lead a life of peace it may be of affluence and honour--for his Divine Master's sake and for sake of them sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death. Therefore his name dies not and all Christendom calls it blest. From such benefactors as these there may seem to be but there is not a deep descent to them who have done their service by what one of the greatest of them all has called ""the vision and the faculty divine""--them to whom have been largely given the powers of fancy and imagination and creative thought that they might move men's hearts and raise men's souls by the reflection of their own passions and affections in poetry which is still an inspired speech. Nor have men in their judgment of the true Poets dealt otherwise with them than with patriot kings benign legislators and holy priests. Them too when of the highest all nations and ages have reverenced in their gratitude. Whatever is good and great in man's being seems shadowed in the
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name of Milton; and though he was a very man in the storms of civil strife that shook down the throne at the shedding of the blood of kings nevertheless we devoutly believe with Wordsworth that ""His soul was like a star and dwelt apart."" But not of such as he only who ""in darkness and with danger compassed round "" soared ""beyond this visible diurnal sphere "" and whose song was of mercy and judgment have men wisely resolved to dwell only on what is pure and high and cognate with their thoughts of heaven. Still as we keep descending from height to height in the regions of song we desire to regard with love the genius that beautifies wherever it settles down; and if pity will steal in for human misfortunes or for human frailties reproach our love suffers no abatement and religious men feel that there is piety in pilgrimage to such honoured graves. So feel we now at this commemoration. For our Poet we now claim the privilege at once bright and austere of death. We feel that our Burns is brought within the justification of all celebrations of human names; and that in thus honouring his memory we virtuously exercise the imaginative rights of enthusiasm owned by every people that has produced its great men. And with a more especial propriety do we claim this justice in our triumphal celebration of poets who like Burns were led by the character of their minds to derive the matter and impulse of their song in a stricter sense from themselves. For they have laid bare to all eyes many of their own weaknesses at the side of their higher and purer aspirations. Unreserved children of sincerity by the very open-heartedness which is one great cause of their commanding power and contagiously diffuses every zealous affection originating in their nobility of nature--by this grown to excess made negligent of instinctive self-defence and heedless of misconstruction or overcome by importunate and clinging temptations--to what charges have they not been exposed from that proneness to disparaging judgments so common in little minds! For such judgments are easy indeed to the very lowest understandings and regard things that are visible to eyes that may seldom have commerced with things that are above. But they who know Burns as we know him know that by this sometimes unregulated and unguarded sympathy with all appertaining to his kind and especially to his own order he was enabled to receive into himself all modes of their simple but not undiversified life so that his poetry murmurs their loves and joys from a thousand fountains. And suppose--which was the case--that this unguarded sympathy this quick sensibility and this vivid capacity of happiness which the moment brings and the frankness of impulse and the strength of desire and the warmth of blood which have made him what he greatly is which have been fire and music in his song and manhood and courage and endurance and independence in his life have at times betrayed or overmastered him--to turn against him all this self-painting and self-revealing is it not ungrateful barbarous inhuman? Can he be indeed a true lover of his kind who would record in judgment against such a man words that have escaped him in the fervour of the pleading designed to uphold great causes dear to humanity?--who would ignobly strike the self-disarmed?--scornfully insult him who kneeling at the Muses' confessional whispers secrets that take wings and fly abroad to the uttermost parts of the earth? Can they be lovers of the people who do so? who find it in their hearts thus to think and speak and write of Robert Burns?--He who has reconciled poverty to its lot toil to its taskwork care to its burden--nay I would say even--grief to its grave? And by one Immortal Song has sanctified for ever the poor man's Cot--by such a picture as only genius in the inspiring power of piety could have painted; has given enduring life to the image--how tender and how true!--of the Happy Night passing by sweet transition from this worky world into the Hallowed Day by God's appointment breathing a heavenly calm over all Christian regions in their rest--nowhere else so profoundly--and may it never be broken!--as over the hills and valleys of our beloved and yet religious land! It cannot be said that the best biographers of Burns and his best critics have not done or desired to do justice to his character as well as to his genius; and according as the truth has been more entirely and fearlessly spoken has he appeared the nobler and nobler man. All our best poets too have exultingly sung the worth while they mourned the fate of him the brightest of the brotherhood. But above and below and round about all that they have been uttering has all along been heard a voice which they who know how to listen for it can hear and which has pronounced a decision in his favour not to be reversed; for on earth it cannot be carried to a higher tribunal. A voice heard of old on great national emergencies when it struck terror into the hearts of tyrants who quaked and quailed and quitted for aye our land before ""the unconquered Caledonian spear""--nor since our union with noblest England ever slack to join with her's and fervid Erin's sons the thrice-repeated cry by which battle-fields are cleared; but happier far happier to hear in its low deep tone of peace. For then it is like the sound of distant waterfalls the murmur of summer woods or the sea rolling in its rest. I mean the Voice of the People of Scotland--the Voice of her Peasantry and her Trades--of all who earn their bread by the sweat of their brow--her Working Men. I presume not to draw their character. But this much I will say that in the long run they know whom it is fitting they should honour and love. They will not be dictated to in their choice of the names that with them shall be household words. Never at any period of their history have they been lightly moved; but when moved their meaning was not to be mistaken; tenacious their living grasp as the clutch of death; though force may wrench the weapon from their hands no force can wrench the worship from their hearts. They may not be conversant with our written annals; but in our oral traditions they are familiar with historic truths--grand truths conceived according to the People's idea of their own national mind as their hearts have kindled in imagination of heroic or holy men. Imaginary but real--for we all believe that men as good as wise as brave have been amongst us as ever fancy fabled for a people's reverence. What manner of men have been their darlings? It would be hard to say; for their love is not exclusive--it is comprehensive. In the national memory live for ever characters how widely different!--with all the shades fainter or darker of human infirmity! For theirs is not the sickly taste that craves for perfection where no frailties are. They do not demand in one and the same personage inconsistent virtues. But they do demand sincerity and integrity and resolution and independence and an open front and an eye that fears not to look in the face of clay! And have not the grave and thoughtful Scottish people always regarded with more especial affection those who have struggled with adversity--who have been tried by temptations from without or from within--now triumphant now overcome--but alike in victory or defeat testifying by their conduct that they were animated by no other desire so steadily as by love of their country and its people's good? Not those who have been favourites of fortune even though worthy of the smiles in which they basked; but those who rose superior to fortune who could not frown them down. Nor have they withheld their homage from the unfortunate in this world of chance and change if in abasement of condition by doing its duties they upheld the dignity of their own nature and looked round them on their honest brethren in poverty with pride. And how will such a people receive a great National Poet? How did they receive Burns? With instant exultation. At once they knew of themselves before critics and philosophers had time to tell them that a great Genius of their own had risen and they felt a sudden charm diffused over their daily life. By an inexplicable law humour and pathos are dependent on the same constitution of mind; and in his Poems they found the very soul of mirth the very soul of sadness as they thought it good with him to be merry or to remember with him ""that man was made to mourn."" But besides what I have said of them the people of Scotland hold in the world's repute--signally so--the name of a religious people. Many of them the descendants of the old covenanters heirs of the stern zeal which took up arms for the purity of the national faith--still tinged it may be by the breath of the flame that then passed over the land--retain a certain severity of religious judgment in questions of moral transgression which is known to make a part of hereditary Scottish manners--especially in rural districts where manners best retain their stamp. But the sound natural understanding of the Scottish peasant I use the liberty to say admits to take their place at the side of one another objects of his liberal and comprehensive regard which might appear to superficial observation and shallow judgment to stand upon such different grounds as that the approbation of the one should exclude the admiration of the other. But not so. Nature in him is various as it is vigorous. He does not with an over-jealous scrutiny vainly try to reduce into seeming consistency affections spontaneously springing from many sources. Truth lies at the bottom; and conscious of truth he does not mistrust or question his own promptings. An awful reverence the acknowledgment of a Law without appeal or error--Supreme Sacred Irresistible--rules in his judgment of other men's actions and of his own. Nevertheless under shelter and sanction of that rule he feels loves admires like a man. Religion has raised and guards in him--it does not extinguish--the natural human heart. If the martyrs of his worship to him are holy--holy too are his country's heroes. And holy her poets--if such she have--who have sung--as during his too short life above them all sang Burns--for Scotland's sake. Dear is the band that ties the humbly educated man to the true national poet. To many in the upper classes he is perhaps but one among a thousand artificers of amusement who entertain and scatter the tedium of their idler hours. To the peasant the book lies upon his shelf a household treasure. There he finds depicted himself--his own works and his own ways. There he finds a cordial for his drooping spirits nutriment for his wearied strength. Burns is his brother--his helper in time of need when fretfulness and impatience are replaced with placidity by his strains or of a sudden with a mounting joy. And far oftener than they who know not our peasantry would believe before their souls awakened from torpor he is a luminous and benign presence in the dark hut; for in its purity and power his best poetry is felt to be inspired and subordinate to the voice of heaven. And will such a people endure to hear their own Poet wronged? No no. Think not to instruct _them_ in the right spirit of judgment. They have read the Scriptures perhaps to better purpose than their revilers and know better how to use the lessons learned there applicable alike to us all--the lessons searching and merciful which proscribe mutual judgment amongst beings all in the eye of absolute Holiness and Truth stained erring worthless: And none so well as aged religious men in such dwellings know from their own experience from what they have witnessed among their neighbours and from what they have read of the lives of good and faithful servants out of the heart of what moral storms and shipwrecks that threatened to swallow the strong swimmer in the middle passage of life has often been landed safe at last the rescued worshipper upon the firm land of quiet duties and of years exempt from the hurricane of the passions! Thus thoughtfully guided in their opinion of him who died young--cut off long before the period when others under the gracious permission of overruling mercy have begun to redeem their errors and fortified perhaps by a sacred office to enter upon a new life--they will for ever solemnly cherish the memory of the Poet of the Poor. And in such sentiments there can be no doubt but that all his countrymen share; who will therefore rightfully hold out between Burns and all enemies a shield which clattering shafts may not pierce. They are proud of him as a lowly father is proud of an illustrious son. The rank and splendour attained reflects glory down but resolves not nor weakens one single tie. Ay for many a deep reason the Scottish people love their own Robert Burns. Never was the personal character of poet so strongly and endearingly exhibited in his song. They love him because he loved his own order nor ever desired for a single hour to quit it. They love him because he loved the very humblest condition of humanity where every thing good was only the more commended to his manly mind by disadvantages of social position. They love him because he saw with just anger how much the judgments of ""silly coward man"" are determined by such accidents to the neglect or contempt of native worth. They love him for his independence. What wonder! To be brought into contact with rank and wealth--a world inviting to ambition and tempting to a thousand desires--and to choose rather to remain lowly and poor than seek an easier or a brighter lot by courting favour from the rich and great--was a legitimate ground of pride if any ground of pride be legitimate. He gave a tongue to this pride and the boast is inscribed in words of fire in the Manual of the Poor. It was an exuberant feeling as all his feelings were exuberant and he let them all overflow. But sometimes forsooth! he did not express them in sufficiently polite or courteous phrase! And that too was well. He stood up not for himself only but for the great class to which he belonged and which in his days--and too often in ours--had been insulted by the pride of superior station when unsupported by personal merit to every bold peasant a thing of scorn. They love him because he vindicated the ways of God to man by showing that there was more genius and virtue in huts than was dreamt of in the world's philosophy. They love him for his truthful pictures of the poor. Not there are seen slaves sullenly labouring or madly leaping in their chains; but in nature's bondage content with their toil sedate in their sufferings in their recreations full of mirth--are seen Free Men. The portraiture upon the whole is felt by us--and they know it--to demand at times pity as a due; but challenges always respect and more than respect for the condition which it glorifies. The Land of Burns! What mean we by the words? Something more surely than that Fortune in mere blindness had produced a great poet here? We look for the inspiring landscape and here it is; but what could all its beauties have availed had not a people inhabited it possessing all the sentiments thoughts aspirations to which nature willed to give a voice in him of her choicest melody? Nothing prodigious after all in the birth of such a poet among such a people. Was any thing greater in the son than the austere resignation of the father? In his humble compeers there was much of the same tender affection sturdy independence strong sense self-reliance as in him; and so has Scotland been prolific throughout her lower orders of men who have made a figure in her literature and her history; but to Burns nature gave a finer organization a more powerful heart and an ampler brain imbued with that mystery we call genius and he stands forth conspicuous above all her sons. From the character I have sketched of the Scottish people of old and at this day it might perhaps be expected that much of their poetry would be of a stern fierce or even ferocious kind--the poetry of bloodshed and destruction. Yet not so. Ballads enow indeed there are embued with the true warlike spirit--narrative of exploits of heroes. But many a fragmentary verse preserved by its own beauty survives to prove that gentlest poetry has ever been the produce both of heathery mountain and broomy brae; but the names of the sweet singers are heard no more and the plough has gone over their graves. And they had their music too plaintive or dirge-like as it sighed for the absent or wailed for the dead. The fragments were caught up as they floated about in decay; and by him the sweetest lyrist of them all were often revivified by a happy word that let in a soul or by a few touches of his genius the fragment became a whole so exquisitely moulded that none may tell what lines belong to Burns and what to the poet of ancient days. They all belong to him now for but for him they would have perished utterly; while his own matchless lyrics altogether original find the breath of life on the lips of a people who have gotten them all by heart. What a triumph of the divine faculty thus to translate the inarticulate language of nature into every answering modulation of human speech! And with such felicity that the verse is now as national as the music! Throughout all these exquisite songs we see the power of an element which we raised by rank and education into ignorance might not have surmised in the mind of the people. The love-songs of Burns are prominent in the poetry of the world by their purity. Love truly felt and understood in the bosom of a Scottish peasant has produced a crowd of strains which are owned for the genuine and chaste language of the passion by highly as well as by lowly born--by cultured and by ruder minds--that may charm in haughty saloons not less than under smoke-blackened roofs. Impassioned beyond all the songs of passion yet in the fearless fervour of remembered transports pure as hymeneals; and dear therefore for ever to Scottish maidens in hours when hearts are wooed and won; dear therefore for ever to Scottish matrons who at household work are happy to hear them from their daughters' lips. And he too is the Poet of their friendships. At stanzas instinct with blythe and cordial amities more brotherly the grasp of peasant's in peasant's toil-hardened hands! The kindliness of their nature not chilled though oppressed with care how ready at his bidding--at the repeated air of a few exquisite but unsought-for words of his--to start up all alive! He is the Poet of all their humanities. His Daisy has made all the flowers of Scotland dear. His moorland has its wild inhabitants whose cry is sweet. For sake of the old dumb fellow-servant which his farmer gratefully addresses on entering on another year of labour how many of its kind have been fed or spared? In the winter storm 'tis useless to think of the sailor on his slippery shrouds; but the ""outland eerie cattle"" he teaches his feres to care for in the drifting snow. In what jocund strains he celebrates their amusements their recreations their festivals passionately pursued with all their pith by a people in the business of life grave and determined as if it left no hours for play! Gait dress domicile furniture throughout all his poetry are Scottish as their dialect; and sometimes in the pride of his heart he rejoices by such nationality to provoke some alien's smile. The sickle the scythe and the flail the spade the mattock and the hoe have been taken up more cheerfully by many a toil-worn cottar because of the poetry with which Burns has invested the very implements of labour. Now and then too here and there peals forth the clangour of the war-trumpet. But Burns is not in the vulgar sense a military poet; nor are the Scottish in a vulgar sense a military people. He and they best love tranquil scenes and the secure peace of home. They are prompt for war if war be needed--no more. Therefore two or three glorious strains he has that call to the martial virtue quiescent in their bosoms--echoes from the warfare of their ancient self-deliverance--menacings--a prophetical _Nemo me impune lacesset_ should a future foe dare to insult the beloved soil. So nourishes his poetry all that is tender and all that is stern in the national character. So does it inspire his people with pride and contentment in their own peculiar lot; and as _that_ is at once both poetical and practical patriotism the poet who thus lightens and brightens it is the best of patriots. I have been speaking of Burns as the poet of the country--and his is the rural the rustic muse. But we know well that the charm of his poetry has equal power for the inhabitants of towns and cities. Occupations familiar objects habitual thoughts are indeed very different for the two great divisions of the people; but there is a brotherhood both of consanguinity and of lot. Labour--the hand pledged to constant toil--the daily support of life won by its daily wrestle with a seemingly adverse but friendly necessity--in these they are all commoners with one another. He who cheers who solaces who inspirits who honours who exalts the lot of the labourer is the poet alike of all the sons of industry. The mechanic who inhabits a smoky atmosphere and in whose ear an unwholesome din from workshop and thoroughfare rings hourly hangs from his rafter the caged linnet; and the strain that should gush free from blossomed or green bough that should mix in the murmur of the brook mixes in and consoles the perpetual noise of the loom or the forge. Thus Burns sings more especially to those whose manner of life he entirely shares; but he sings a precious memento to those who walk in other and less pleasant ways. Give then the people knowledge without stint for it nurtures the soul. But let us never forget that the mind of man has other cravings--that it draws nourishment from thoughts beautiful and tender such as lay reviving dews on the drooping fancy and are needed the more by him to whom they are not wafted fresh from the face of nature. This virtue of these pastoral and rural strains to penetrate and permeate conditions of existence different from those in which they had their origin appears wheresoever we follow them. In the mine in the dungeon upon the great waters in remote lands under fiery skies Burns's poetry goes with his countrymen. Faithfully portrayed the image of Scotland lives there; and thus she holds more palpably felt her hand upon the hearts of her children whom the constraint of fortune or ambitious enterprise carries afar from the natal shores. Unrepining and unrepentant exiles to whom the haunting recollection of hearth and field breathes in that dearest poetry not with homesick sinkings of heart but with home-invigorated hopes that the day will come when their eyes shall have their desire and their feet again feel the greensward and the heather-bent of Scotland. Thus is there but one soul in this our great National Festival; while to swell the multitudes that from morning light continued flocking towards old Ayr till at mid-day they gathered into one mighty mass in front of Burns's Monument came enthusiastic crowds from countless villages and towns from our metropolis and from the great City of the West along with the sons of the soil dwelling all round the breezy uplands of Kyle and in regions that stretch away to the stormy mountains of Morven. Sons of Burns! Inheritors of the name which we proudly revere you claim in the glad solemnity which now unites us a privileged and more fondly affectionate part. To the honour with which we would deck the memory of your father your presence and that of your respected relatives nor less that of her sitting in honour by their side who though not of his blood did the duties of a daughter at his dying bed give an impressive living reality; and while we pay this tribute to the poet whose glory beyond that of any other we blend with the renown of Scotland it is a satisfaction to us that we pour not out our praises in the dull cold ear of death. Your lives have been past for many years asunder; and now that you are freed from the duties that kept you so long from one another your intercourse wherever and whenever permitted by your respective lots to be renewed will derive additional enjoyment from the recollection of this day--a sacred day indeed to brothers dwelling--even if apart--in unity and peace. And there is one whose warmest feelings I have the best reason to know are now with you and us as well on your own account as for the sake of your great parent whose character he respects as much as he admires his genius though it has pleased Heaven to visit him with such affliction as might well deaden even in such a heart as his all satisfaction even with this festival. But two years ago and James Burnes was the proud and happy father of three sons all worthy of their race. One only now survives; and may he in due time return from India to be a comfort if but for a short a sacred season to his old age! But Sir Alexander Burnes--a name that will not die--and his gallant brother have perished as all the world knows in the flower of their life--foully murdered in a barbarous land. For them many eyes have wept; and their country whom they served so faithfully deplores them among her devoted heroes. Our sympathy may not soothe such grief as his; yet it will not be refused coming to him along with our sorrow for the honoured dead. Such a father of such sons has far other consolations. In no other way more acceptable to yourselves could I hope to welcome you than by thus striving to give an imperfect utterance to some of the many thoughts and feelings that have been crowding into my mind and heart concerning your father. And I have felt all along that there was not only no impropriety in my doing so after the address of our Noble Chairman but that it was even the more required of me that I should speak in a kindred spirit by that very address altogether so worthy of his high character and so admirably appropriate to the purpose of this memorable day. Not now for the first time by many times has he shown how well he understands the ties by which in a country like this men of high are connected with men of humble birth and how amply he is endowed with the qualities that best secure attachment between the Castle and the Cottage. We rise to welcome you to your Father's land. Mr ROBERT BURNS replied in the following terms:--My lord and ladies and gentlemen You may be assured that the sons of Burns feel all that they ought to feel on an occasion so peculiarly gratifying to them and on account of so nobly generous a welcome to the Banks of Doon. In whatever land they have wandered--wherever they have gone--they have invariably found a kind reception prepared for them by the genius and fame of their father; and under the providence of Almighty God they owe to the admirers of his genius all that they have and what competencies they now enjoy. We have no claim to attention individually--we are all aware that genius and more particularly poetic genius is not hereditary and in this case the mantle of Elijah has not descended upon Elisha. The sons of Burns have grateful hearts and will remember so long as they live the honour which has this day been conferred upon them by the noble and the illustrious of our own land and many generous and kind spirits from other lands--some from the far West a country composed of the great and the free and altogether a kindred people. We beg to return our most heartfelt thanks to this numerous and highly respectable company for the honour which has been done us this day. Sir JOHN M'NEILL spoke as follows:--My lord ladies and gentlemen--We have now accomplished the main purpose of this assembly. We have done honour to the memory of Burns and have welcomed his sons to the land of their father. After the address--which I may be permitted to call the address of manly eloquence--which you have heard from our Noble Chairman; after the oration--which I may be permitted to designate as solemn and beautiful--which you have heard from our worthy Vice-chairman--I should be inexcusable were I to detain you long with the subject which has been entrusted to me. The range of English poetry is so vast--it is profuse in so many beauties and excellences and many of its great names are approached with so much habitual veneration that I feel great diffidence and difficulty in addressing you on a subject on which my opinions can have little weight and my judgment is no authority; but to you whose minds have been stirred with the lofty thoughts of the Poets of England and are familiar with their beauties nothing is needed to stimulate you to admire that which I am sure has been the object of your continual admiration and the subject of your unfailing delight. We have been sometimes accused of a nationality which is too narrow and exclusive; but I hope and believe that the accusation is founded on misapprehension of our feelings. It is true that as Scotsmen we love Scotland above every other spot on earth--that we love it as our early home and our father's house. We cherish our feelings of nationality as we cherish our domestic affections of which they are in truth a part. But while we have these feelings we glory in the might and the majesty of that great country with which for the happiness of both we have long been united as one nation. We are proud of the victories of Cressy of Agincourt and of Poictiers as if they had been won by our own ancestors. And I may venture to say there is not in this great assembly one who is not proud that he can claim to be the countryman of Spenser and Shakspeare and Milton and Wordsworth and of every one in that long list of glorious Englishmen who have shed a lustre and conferred a dignity upon our language more bright and more majestic than illuminates and exalts the living literature of any other land. There is I think in the history of the progress of the human intellect nothing more surprising than the sudden growth of literature in England to the summit of its excellence. No sooner had tranquillity been restored after the long civil wars of the Roses--no sooner had men's minds been set free to enter the fields of speculation opened up by the Reformation than in the short space of the life of one man--than in the space of seventy years there arose such men as Spenser and Milton and Shakspeare and Sydney and Raleigh and Bacon and Hobbes and Cudworth and a whole phalanx of other great men inferior only to them in the brightness of original genius. How glorious must have been the soil which could bring to maturity a harvest of such teeming abundance! There are probably many among us who can even now remember with exultation when the first ray of light was cast on their minds from the genius of Spenser--as the first glimmering of day comes to him whose sealed eyes are opened to the light of heaven discovering objects at first dimly and then more clearly we at length gazed in wonder and in joy on a creation vaster far and far more lovely than it had entered into our hearts to conceive. And if in our maturer years we return to live an hour with him in the regions of fairyland that enchanted our youth--if some of the flowers seem less bright if the murmur of the waters is a more pensive sound if a soberer light pervade the scene and if some of the illusions are broken for ever we still discover in every stanza beauties which escaped our earlier observation and we never lose our relish for that rich play of fancy like the eastern fountain whose spray descends in pearls and in gems. But above all when we look upon him with mature feelings we can appreciate that lofty strain of godly philosophy which he the father of our poetry bequeathed and which has been followed by his successors. When we call to mind the influence produced on a people by the poetry of a nation--when we call to mind that whatever is desired to be inculcated whether for good or for evil the power of poetry has been employed to advance it even from the times when the Monarch-Minstrel of Israel glorified his Maker in Psalms to the latest attempts which have been made to propagate treason immorality or atheism--when we thus think of these things we may learn how much of gratitude is due to those men who having had the precious ointment of poetic genius poured abundantly on their heads have felt and acknowledged that they were thereby consecrated to the cause of virtue--who have never forgotten that there was a time when ""The sacred name Of poet and of prophet was the same."" Such men are Spenser Milton--such is Wordsworth. Of Milto
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I shall not venture to speak. He stands alone in his sanctuary which I would not profane even by imperfect praise. But it is my duty to speak of Wordsworth. Dwelling in his high and lofty philosophy he finds nothing that God has made common or unclean--he finds nothing in human society too humble nothing in external nature too lowly to be made the fit exponents of the bounty and goodness of the Most High. In the loftier aspirations of such a mind there must be much that is obscure to every inferior intelligence; and it may be that its vast expanse can only be but dimly visible--it may be that the clouds of incense rising from the altar may veil from common eyes some portion of the stately temple they perfume; but we pity the man who should therefore close his eyes on a scene of beauty and sublimity or turn back from the threshold of the noble edifice in which he has been invited to survey the majesty of creative genius and where he will be taught to find ""Books in the running brooks sermons in stones and good in every thing."" ""Blessings be with them and eternal praise The poets who on earth have made us heirs Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays."" --""Wordsworth and the Poets of England."" HENRY GLASSFORD BELL Esq. advocate said--My lord I feel it to be a great distinction and privilege to have been requested to take a part in the proceedings of this day. It is a day which will not soon pass from the recollection of those who have partaken in its admirably-conducted festivities. In assembling to do honour to the memory of Burns in no idle or frivolous spirit but impressed with those elevated emotions which have so plainly animated the whole of this mighty gathering we have a right to feel that we do honour to ourselves as individuals and as a nation. Our assembling has been prompted by a love of all that is purest and best in our national genius as represented by our national poet. It has been prompted too by that indomitable love of our native land which Burns felt and sang--a love founded on admiration which grows with our growth and strengthens with our strength of all that external nature here presents to us--on profound respect for our inestimable and time-hallowed institutions; and in never-dying delight in all that kindred spirits have here shared with us--in all that higher spirits have here achieved for us. No poet ever possessed greater influence in disseminating and strengthening such sentiments than Burns. My lord it has been well said that wherever an humble artisan in the crowded haunts of labour or of trade feels a consciousness of his own dignity--is stirred with a desire for the beautiful or haunted with a dream of knowledge or learns to appreciate the distinction between the ""guinea's stamp"" and the ""gowd "" _there_ the royal and gentle spirit of Robert Burns lion-like in its boldness and dove-like in its tenderness still glows elevates and inspires. This spirit is also here and has been evidenced in many ways; perhaps in none more than in this that in doing honour to the genius of Burns we are irresistibly led to acknowledge and speak of the debts we owe to the intellectual achievements of other great minds not in Scotland only but in the sister countries. We have just heard from the eloquent lips of Sir John M'Neill the well-deserved praises of the English bards. Will this meeting refuse a similar cup of welcome and of thanks to the poets of Green Erin? Will this meeting where so many bright eyes rain influence and manly hearts beat high not hail with simultaneous delight the name of one who shines conspicuous as the very poet of youth of love and of beauty--the poet with deference be it spoken of better things than even beauty--of gentle thoughts and exquisite associations that give additional sweetness to the twilight hour and to the enjoyments of home a more endearing loveliness; the poet too of his own high-souled country through whose harp the common breeze of Ireland changes as it passes into articulate melody--a harp that will never be permitted to hang mute on Tara's walls as long as ""Erin! the tear and the smile in thine eye Blend like the rainbow that melts in thy sky!"" How many voices have to-day murmured a wish that he were here! But the echo of the acclaim with which we greet the name of Moore will reach him in his solitude and he will feel what Burns died too young to feel that it is something worth living for to have gained a nation's gratitude. Of Maturin and others now dead I must not pause to speak. But let me be privileged to express in name of this meeting our respect and admiration for the best of the living dramatists--one deeply imbued with the spirit of the Elizabethan age--one who has rescued our stage from the reproach which seemed ready to fall upon it--one to whose exuberant poetical fertility and bold originality of thought we are indebted for such beautiful creations as ""Virginius"" and ""William Tell "" the ""Hunchback"" and the ""Love Chase ""--our valued friend James Sheridan Knowles. And I might have stopped here had it not been that I have to-day seen that not the gifted sons alone but also some of the gifted daughters of Ireland have come as pilgrims to the shrine of Burns; that one in particular one of the most distinguished of that fair sisterhood who give by their talents additional lustre to the genius of the present day has paid her first visit to Scotland that she might be present on this occasion and whom have myself seen moved even to tears by the glory of the gathering. She is one who has lately thrown additional light on the antiquities manners scenery and beautiful traditions of Ireland--one whose graceful and truly feminine works are known to us all and whom we are proud to see among us--Mrs S. C. Hall. My lord feebly and briefly as I have spoken of these great names I must not trespass longer on your time but beg to propose the health of ""Moore and the Irish Poets."" ARCHIBALD ALISON Esq. Sheriff of Lanarkshire spoke as follows:--We have listened with admiration to the eloquent strains in which the first in rank and the first in genius have proposed the memory of the immortal bard whose genius we are this day assembled to celebrate; but I know not whether the toast which I have now to propose has not equal claims to our enthusiasm. Your kindness and that of the committee has intrusted to me the memory of three illustrious men--the far-famed successors of Burns who have drank deep at the fountains of his genius and proved themselves the worthy inheritors of his inspiration. And Scotland I rejoice to say can claim them all as her own. For if the Tweed has been immortalized by the grave of Scott the Clyde can boast the birthplace of Campbell and the mountains of the Dee first inspired the muse of Byron. I rejoice at that burst of patriotic feeling--I hail it as a presage that as Ayrshire has raised a graceful monument to Burns and Edinburgh has erected a noble structure to the Author of Waverley so Glasgow will ere long raise a worthy tribute to the bard whose name will never die while Hope pours its balm through the human heart; and Aberdeen will worthily commemorate the far-famed traveller who first inhaled the inspiration of nature amidst the clouds of Loch-nagarr and afterwards poured the light of his genius over those lands of the sun where his descending orb set-- ""Not as in northern climes obscurely bright But one unclouded blaze of living light."" Scotland my lord may well be proud of such men but she can no longer call these exclusively her own; their names have become household words in every land. Mankind claims them as the common inheritance of the human race. Look around us and we shall see on every side decisive proofs how far and wide admiration for their genius has sunk in the hearts of man. What is it that attracts strangers from every part of the world into this distant land and has more than compensated a remote situation and a churlish soil and given to our own Northern Isle a splendour unknown to the regions of the sun? What is it which has brought together this mighty assemblage and united the ardent and the generous from every part of the world from the Ural mountains to the banks of the Mississippi on the shores of an island in the Atlantic? My lord it is neither the magnificence of our cities nor the beauty of our valleys the animation of our harbours nor the stillness of our mountains; it is neither our sounding cataracts nor our spreading lakes; neither the wilds of nature we have subdued so strenuously nor the blue hills we have loved so well. These beauties great as they are have been equaled in other lands; these marvels wondrous though they be have parallels in other climes. It is the genius of her sons which has given Scotland her proud pre-eminence; this it is more even than the shades of Bruce of Wallace and of Mary which has rendered her scenes classic ground to the whole civilized world and now brings pilgrims from the most distant parts of the earth as on this day to worship at the shrine of genius. ""Yet Albyn! yet the praise be thine Thy scenes with story to combine; Thou bid'st him who by Roslin strays List to the tale of other days. Midst Cartlane crags thou showest the cave The refuge of thy champion brave; Giving each rock a storied tale Pouring a lay through every dale; Knitting as with a moral band Thy story to thy native land; Combining thus the interest high Which genius lends to beauty's eye!"" But my lord the poet who conceived those beautiful lines has himself done more than all our ancestors' valour to immortalize the land of his birth; for he has united the interest of truth with the charms of fiction and peopled the realm not only with the shadows of time but the creations of genius. In those brilliant creations as in the glassy wave we behold mirrored the lights the shadows the forms of reality; and yet ""So pure so fair the mirror gave As if there lay beneath the wave Secure from trouble toil and care A world than earthly world more fair."" Years have rolled on but they have taken nothing they have added much to the fame of those illustrious men. ""Time but the impression deeper makes As streams their channels deeper wear."" The voice of ages has spoken: it has given Campbell and Byron the highest place with Burns in lyric poetry and destined Scott ""To rival all but Shakspeare's name below."" Their names now shine in unapproachable splendour far removed like the fixed stars from the clouds and the rivalry of a lower world. To the end of time they will maintain their exalted station. Never will the cultivated traveller traverse the sea of Archipelago that the ""Isles of Greece the Isles of Greece "" will not recur to his recollection; never will he approach the shores of Loch Katrine that the image of Ellen Douglas will not be present to his memory; never will he gaze on the cliffs of Britain that he will not thrill at the exploits of the ""Mariners of England who guard our native seas."" Whence has arisen this great this universally acknowledged celebrity? My lord it is hard to say whether we have most to admire the brilliancy of their fancy or the creations of their genius the beauty of their verses or the magic of their language the elevation of their thoughts or the pathos of their conceptions. But there is one whose recent death we all deplore but who has lighted ""the torch of Hope at nature's funeral pile "" who has gained a yet higher inspiration. In Campbell it is the moral purposes to which he has directed his mighty powers which is the real secret of his success the lofty objects to which he has devoted his life which have proved his passport to immortality. It is because he has unceasingly contended for the best interests of humanity because he has ever asserted the dignity of the human soul because he has never forgotten that amidst all the distinctions of time ""The rank is but the guinea stamp The man's the gowd for a' that."" Because he has regarded himself as the high-priest of Nature and the world which we inhabit as the abode not merely of human care and human joys but as the temple of the living God in which praise is due and where service is to be performed.--""The memory of Scott Byron and Campbell."" WILLIAM E. AYTOUN Esq. advocate said--We are met here to-day not only to pay due honour to the memory of that bard whose genius has consecrated this spot and the scenes around it as classic ground for ever but for a wider a more important and even a more generous purpose. I look upon this assemblage as a great national gathering--a meeting not only of the Highlands and Lowlands of Scotland but of kindly strangers also to testify our reverence and affection for the living lights of fame that are still burning amongst us and our undying gratitude and exultation for those who have already passed away. Thus though they belong to the sister countries we have paid due homage to the venerable name of Wordsworth and to the sparkling genius of Moore. Thus the heart of every one that hears me burned within him--am I not right?--when we saw our own noble Wilson rise amidst us and heard him with an eloquence the most pure--for it flowed spontaneously from his soul--speak as perhaps no other man could speak of the genius of the immortal dead. Thus too we have heard the tribute so touchingly paid to Campbell who now sleeps among the sages and the statesmen and the warriors and the poets of famous England; and to him who has a happier and a holier sepulture still--for he lies within the bosom of his own dear native land--to Scott the master-spirit of the age for whom we well may mourn since we dare not hope to look upon his like again! I have now in a few words to entreat your patience whilst I speak of two other Scottish poets whose memory is yet green amongst us--both reared like Robert Burns at the lowly hearth of the peasant--both pursuing like him through every discouragement and difficulty the pathway towards honourable renown--and both the authors of strains which bear the stamp of immortality. And first let me allude to one of them whom I knew and dearly loved. Who is there that has not heard of the Ettrick Shepherd--of him whose inspiration descended as lightly as the breeze that blows along the mountain side--who saw amongst the lonely and sequestered glens of the south from eyelids touched with fairy ointment such visions as are vouchsafed to the minstrel alone--the dream of sweet Kilmeny too spiritual for the taint of earth? I shall not attempt any comparison--for I am not here to criticise--between his genius and that of other men on whom God in his bounty has bestowed the great and the marvellous gift. The songs and the poetry of the Shepherd are now the nation's own as indeed they long have been; and amidst the minstrelsy of the choir who have made the name of Scotland and her peasantry familiar throughout the wide reach of the habitable world the clear wild notes of the Forest will for ever be heard to ring. I have seen him many times by the banks of his own romantic Yarrow; I have sat with him in the calm and sunny weather by the margin of Saint Mary's Lake; I have seen his eyes sparkle and his cheek flush as he spoke out some old heroic ballad of the days of the Douglas and the Græme and I have felt as I listened to the accents of his manly voice that whilst Scotland could produce amongst her children such men as him beside me her ancient spirit had not departed from her nor the star of her glory grown pale! For he was a man indeed cast in nature's happiest mould. True-hearted and brave and generous and sincere; alive to every kindly impulse and fresh at the core to the last he lived among his native hills the blameless life of the shepherd and the poet; and on the day when he was laid beneath the sod in the lonely kirkyard of Ettrick there was not one dry eye amongst the hundreds that lingered round his grave. Of the other sweet singer too--of Allan Cunningham the leal-hearted and kindly Allan--I might say much; but why should I detain you further? Does not his name alone recall to your recollection many a sweet song that has thrilled the bosom of the village maiden with an emotion that a princess need not blush to own? Honour then to the poets!--whether they speak out loud and trumpet-tongued to find audience in the hearts of the great and the mighty and the brave--or whether in lowlier and more simple accents but not less sacred in their mission they bring comfort and consolation to the poor. As the sweep of the rainbow which has its arch in heaven and its shafts resting upon the surface of the earth--as the sunshine which falls with equal bounty upon the palace and the hut--is the all-pervading and universal spirit of poetry; and what less can we do to those men who have collected and scattered it around us than to hail them as the benefactors of their race? That has been the purpose of our gathering and we have held it in a fitting spot. Proud indeed may be the district that can claim within herself the birthplaces of Burns and of Cunningham; and proud may we all be--and we are proud from yourself my lord to the humblest individual who bore a part in the proceedings of this memorable day--that we have the opportunity of testifying our respect to the genius that will defy the encroachment of time: and which has shed and will continue to shed a splendour and a glory around the land that we love so well! My lord I am honoured in having to propose ""The memory of the Ettrick Shepherd and of Allan Cunningham."" Sir D. H. BLAIR Bart. of Blairquhan said--My Lord Eglinton and gentlemen I have been requested to give the next toast which I very much wish had fallen into abler hands. It is a toast my lord that is as well calculated to call forth enthusiastic bursts of eloquence as any we have listened to with such delight to-day; but as on that account I feel quite unable to do it adequate justice I must trust to that acclamation by which I am confident it will be received without any effort on my part. We all recollect the words of our immortal bard when in alluding to the manner in which nature had finished this fair creation he says-- ""Her 'prentice han' she tried on man And then she made the lasses O!"" I am sure every man in this assembly will join me in an enthusiastic bumper to the health of the ""Countess of Eglinton and the ladies who have honoured this meeting with their presence."" Colonel MURE of Caldwell said--In obedience to the order of our noble chairman I have to request a bumper to the Peasantry of Scotland. In order justly to appreciate the claims of this most estimable class of our fellow-citizens upon our sympathies I must remind you that to it pre-eminently belongs the honour of having given birth to the remarkable man whose memory we are this day met to celebrate. I must remind you that while the fact of Burns having raised himself from the rank of a Scottish ploughman by the innate force of heaven-born genius to the level of the greatest and most original poets of any age or country is the noblest feature of his history the peasantry of Scotland in their turn may be entitled to feel pride even in the presence of the proudest nobles of their land when they remember that from them and not from the privileged orders of society our greatest national genius was destined to arise. And in fact the most striking and perhaps the most valuable feature in the poetical character of Burns is the marked ascendancy which the spirit and habits of the peasant the genius of the man as it were continued to exercise on the genius of the poet even during the most brilliant periods of his subsequent career. Even amid that rich variety of subjects in the treatment of which his instinctive refinement and delicacy of taste enabled him to combine with all the higher powers of the man the courtly graces of the gentleman and scholar--still his happiest effort the masterpiece of his genius in which his own mind is displayed in the most agreeable light and his inspiration breathes forth with the greatest brilliancy and beauty will be found to be dictated by the associations of his early rustic days. When I reflect therefore how copious how graphic how true are his own descriptions of the character of the Scottish peasantry in all its varieties of grave or of gay of light or of shadow I cannot but feel it is a sort of presumption to offer in a company who must be all so familiar with these descriptions any crude remark of my own on the more interesting features of those to which they refer. I shall however do my best to season the few comments which I am in some degree bound to offer on the subject allotted to me by taking the poet's works as my text-book. Were I called upon therefore to name the virtues of our peasantry which chiefly claim our respect and admiration I should point first to their industry frugality and contentment as those which prominently adorn their own class of society above all others and also to their piety and their patriotism as shared I would fain hope equally or at least largely by the mass of our fellow-citizens. Where then shall we find a more spirited picture of the influence and effects of the three former qualities--above all of that most inestimable blessing contentment--than in the brilliant little poem which bears the humble title of the ""Twa Dogs "" where after so graphically describing the honest toils often the severe hardships inseparable from the peasant's lot he goes on to say that yet ""They're nae sae wretched's ane wad think Though constantly on poortith's brink; They're sae accustom'd wi' the sight The view of it gi'es little fright; And how it comes I never kent yet They're maistly wonderfu' contented; And buirdly chiels and clever hizzies Are bred in such a way as this is."" But where are we after all to look for the source of this beautiful attribute of contentment? Is it not in the still more admirable one of their piety? It is here almost superfluous to make any close appeal to our poet's authority--to that most sublime description so familiar to you all where the old peasant on the Saturday night collects his scattered family at the close of the long week's labour around his humble but happy cottage fireside and after a few sweet but hard-earned hours of social enjoyment instils before retiring to repose from the open Word of God into their minds those lessons of Divine wisdom which were to guide them during the next week and through life in the paths of religion and virtue. Are not such scenes to this day common in our cottages still as of old I firmly believe the favourite abodes of the genuine spirit of simple Scottish piety? Then as to the last if not the least in the above list of the virtues of our peasants--their patriotism. To whom I would ask but to the peasantry of Scotland does our poet so beautifully appeal as having bled with Wallace? To whom but to our peasantry did our national hero look--and never look in vain--for support in his gallant effort to restore the fallen fortunes of his country at the period when our doughty knights and nobles--happily but for a season--had been reduced by the intrigues or intimidation of our powerful enemy to crouch submissive beneath the throne of his usurpation. And can we doubt that this proud spirit of patriotism still burns as warm in their hearts as then if no longer by God's blessing so fearfully or so desperately called into action; or that when after as our poet again has it ""They lay aside their private cares To mind the Kirk and State affairs They'll talk of patronage and priests Wi' kindling fury in their breasts Or tell what new taxation's coming And ferlie at the folks in Lunnan."" But I have already detained you too long--if not longer than the interest of the subject at least than my power of doing justice to it entitles me. I shall therefore conclude by pronouncing a grace over our bumper also supplied from the stores of the Poet and the sentiments of which every one here present I am sure will cordially sympathize-- ""O Scotia! my dear my native soil For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil Be blest with health and peace and sweet content."" Sir JAMES CAMPBELL of Glasgow said--In proposing the toast with which I have been entrusted I shall content myself by simply expressing my deep regret that under any circumstances I could so inadequately express my own sentiments and feelings of admiration--in all the acceptations of that word--of ""the Land of Burns."" I am aware however that I have the honour of addressing an assemblage who can appreciate who do appreciate and who by their appearance here and the interest so many of them have taken in the proceedings and associations of this day give ample proof of their high estimation of and attachment to ""the Land of Burns."" I am aware also that I have the honour to address not a few of those who have with the pencil or with the pen done homage to the classical patriotic and poetical claims of that land. I feel satisfied indeed that there is not an individual in this most interesting and splendid assemblage who does not greatly prize and admire the fertile soil and landscape beauty of that land; whose bosom glows not with an honest pride at the intelligence enterprise and patriotism of the men of that land; and above all who does not honour and admire the beauty and accomplishments of the ladies of that land. And therefore is it my lord that without further preface I would call upon this assembly to dedicate a bumper to ""The Land of Burns."" Lord EGLINTON said--Ladies and Gentlemen Except the toast which I have had the honour and happiness of bringing before you to-day there is not one which gives me greater pleasure to see committed to my charge than that which I am now about to bring before your notice--I mean the ""Provost and Magistrates of Ayr;"" and along with it though not down on the card my feelings will not allow me to leave out the Interests of Ayr. On such an occasion as this and so late in the day I will not occupy your time by dilating on the interest which I feel in that Town or of the knowledge which I have of the Provost and the Magistrates. From that knowledge I feel convinced that the interests of Ayr could not be placed in more worthy hands. In addition to the respect felt towards them as the Magistrates of the County Town we all feel gratitude to them for the assistance support and countenance they have given to our proceedings on this occasion. Provost MILLER said--Permit me to return my best thanks on behalf of my colleagues and myself for the flattering compliment which has just been paid to them. The manner in which the toast was introduced by the noble lord was particularly gratifying to me; and I am sure it will be appreciated by the entire corporation. I beg to assure the noble lord that the recognition of ""Auld Ayr"" at a meeting so peculiarly interesting as the present and combining as it does so much of the rank talent and worth of the land will be highly appreciated by the ""honest men and bonnie lasses"" for which it has been characterized by the immortal bard in honour of whose memory we are this day met. The LORD JUSTICE-GENERAL rose amidst much applause. He said--Ladies and gentlemen after the uncommon success which has attended every part of the proceedings at this meeting to-day I am confident that I anticipate the unanimous concurrence of this great assembly I have now the honour to address when I state that there appears in addition to many toasts drunk with so much enthusiasm one that remains as a debt of gratitude due by this assembly. I consider it a most fortunate circumstance attending this meeting that we have been presided over by the Noble Lord in the chair. I am sure that the most enthusiastic admirers of Burns must be gratified in thinking that the proceedings of this day have been conducted by my noble friend in so admirable a manner. Every person must be satisfied that it was impossible the proceedings of this day could have been commenced in a happier strain. Without further comment I beg leave to propose that we drink the health of our excellent Chairman. Lord EGLINTON in reply said--My Lord Justice and ladies and gentlemen I assure you I feel most deeply grateful to you for the honour you have paid me as I always ought to be when my health is proposed and drunk at a meeting of Scotchmen. But I assure you I never felt more deeply grateful or more highly sensible of that honour than I do at the present moment when my health is proposed by such a man as the Lord Justice-General and when it has been received--and I am proud to say enthusiastically received--by an assemblage met for such a purpose as to do honour to the memory of our greatest poet. But gentlemen I will not at this late hour of the day and in a temple as it were dedicated to the Muses--I will not occupy your time by returning thanks for drinking the health of one who has no merit. But before we part there is a toast which claims our especial consideration--""the health of Professor Wilson."" Had it not been for the modesty of the Professor it ought to have been proposed at a much earlier part of the evening. On such an occasion as this when we have met from all parts of Scotland to do honour to the memory of the greatest genius Scotland ever knew it surely is not only proper but our bounden duty to drink the health of the greatest genius which Scotland possesses now. The memories of others have been drunk to-night and have been received with that deep feeling which Scotchmen feel towards the memory of genius but the toast which I am now proposing is one which has this additional merit that the subject of it is alive and hearty and able to continue as you have heard to-day in that career which has hitherto so much delighted his countrymen. In the presence of Professor Wilson I cannot dilate as I could wish to do on the character of that gentleman. I will only ask you to drink with me his health in a way that will show that you can pay honour to genius alive as you can do honour to departed worth. Professor WILSON rose and simply bowed his acknowledgments. The Earl of EGLINTON then rose and said--Ladies and Gentlemen ""Nae man can tether time nor tide; The hour approaches--Tam maun ride."" This brought the proceedings to a close. We have thought it due--not less to the character of the meeting than to the sincere and fervid eloquence of the speakers--to place upon our pages an authentic record of the whole proceedings of the day. This ""great national gathering "" as it was aptly denominated must be of enduring and not ephemeral interest and will be remembered and spoken of and quoted long after events of greater apparent importance have passed away into oblivion. The outpourings of a nation's heart are immortal. The tributes that were paid in the ages long since gone by to the poets of Greece and of Italy have outlived the most enduring monuments of marble and we dare not hesitate now to recognise a triumph which will be as everlasting as theirs. We feel that little comment is necessary upon the various addresses that are given above. But we should not be justified--and no man who was there that day would forgive us--if we passed over in silence the manly and distinguished manner in which Lord Eglinton discharged the duties of the chair. Scotland as we have already had occasion to say is proud and justly so of her aristocracy; but there is not one of them all through the whole length and breadth of the land to whom she can point more exultingly than to this young nobleman. His opening address would have done honour to one long trained in the schools of oratory and that was its smallest merit. The emphatic and earnest tone of admiration in which he spoke of the peasantry of his country--his generous and touching allusions to Burns in his earlier years to what he had done and suffered and to the honours so long withheld and now so brilliantly conferred--and the patriotic fervour which pervaded his whole address--carried along with him not only the applauses but the hearts of the whole assemblage. Lord Eglinton may well look back with pride and satisfaction to the proceedings of that day; for he has secured the affections of thousands who already respected his name. Of the other speeches eloquent and impressive as they were we shall--with only one exception--speak collectively; and the highest praise we can give is to say that they were every way worthy of the occasion of the subjects which they celebrated and of the men by whom they were uttered. There was a de
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icate propriety in the feeling which excluded from the list of toasts the names of the living poets with the great and glorious exceptions of Wordsworth and Moore now beyond all cavil at the head of the literature of their respective countries. Their presence though ardently hoped for was hardly to be expected on this occasion; for their advanced years and the distant journey they must have undertaken were serious obstacles; but their apologetic letters full of deep feeling and sympathy were received and the reception which greeted their names showed the respect and love which the Scottish people entertain for the greatness and universality of their fame. Deep also and thrilling was the emotion evinced at the mention of the illustrious dead who have passed away into their graves in the fulness and maturity of their fame. Strange and powerful is the spell which lies in the mere plain utterance of their names! Scott and Byron and Campbell (just laid in the noblest mausoleum of the world ) the Ettrick Shepherd and Allan Cunningham--what names for a country to record in its annals in the brief space of one generation! But the speech to which all looked forward with the utmost expectation and anxiety was that of Professor Wilson. His zeal in the cause of Burns his earnest and reiterated defence of his reputation were so well known that on this occasion when the balance might be held as finally struck and when the nation by its own voluntary act had recognized the position which its poet through all time coming must maintain it would have been felt as a vast and serious omission if the last elegy had not been uttered by the greatest vindicator of his fame. It _was_ so uttered and none but those who listened to that address can conceive the effect which it produced. Elsewhere than in these pages we should assuredly have attempted some comment upon it. As it is we shall borrow an opinion of the provincial press from the pen we believe of the Editor of the _Dumfries-shire Herald_ Mr Aird himself a spectator of the scene and a man of high intellect and imagination whose remarks we have been led to adopt not from the eulogy they contain but from their just and reverential truth:-- ""The remarkable speech of the day was Professor Wilson's. Since the time when in his 'bright and shining youth' he walked seventy miles to be present at a Burns' meeting and electrified it with a new and peculiar fervour of eloquence such as had never been heard among us before how manifold how multiform have been this man's generous vindications of our great Bard! Now broad in humour; now sportive and playful; now sarcastic scornful and searching; now calmly philosophic in criticism; now thoughtful and solemn large of reverent discourse 'looking before and after ' with all the sweetest by-plays of humanity with every reconciling softness of charity--such in turns and in quickest intermingled tissue of the ethereal woof have been the many illustrations which this large-minded large-hearted Scotchman in whose character there is neither corner nor cranny has poured in the very prodigality of his affectionate abundance around and over the name and the fame of Robert Burns. It became him--and he knew it--that on this great and consummating occasion so full of reconcilement betwixt human frailty and human worth his address on which so much expectation waited should be a last SOLEMN REQUIEM over the grave of the illustrious dead pronounced not merely to the congregation of the day but to mankind in general and to every future age. With those long heart-drawn lingering slow-expiring tones solemn as a cathedral chant the whole of this sacred piece of service (for we can call it nothing else) was to us like some mournful oratorio by Mozart soft at once and sublime. Some might be disappointed that they heard nothing on this occasion of the varied play of Christopher North; but the heart of Scotland in its calm retirement will appreciate this holy oration as worthily hallowing and sanctifying her meeting."" The proceedings in that Pavilion were a just and fitting conclusion to the splendid jubilee of the day. Some no doubt were absent whom the public would gladly have seen there; for on an occasion like this the general wish must have been that all the greatness and talent and learning of the land should have united in the National Festival. But that absence though regretted did not in any degree lessen the enthusiasm. Indeed as we looked around the meeting and saw unelevated to any conspicuous place Delta and Chambers and Ferrier and a hundred other distinguished men not only content but proud to bear testimony by their simple presence to the genuine purpose of the assembly it was hardly possible to wish for more. Every individual feeling was merged in the common desire that the day should be consecrated to its own peculiar object; and consecrated it was if unanimity and eloquence and tears and the outpouring of all that is lofty and generous and sincere can consecrate aught on earth--where error and frailty must abide but where the judgment of man in his weakness may not and dare not usurp the functions of the All-seeing and Eternal Judge. And now we close the hasty record of a scene that will be remembered so long as Scotland is a nation. Some there may be--for there are malignant and jaundiced spirits every where--who may sneer at the solemnities we have witnessed; and it is well that they should do so for the praise of such men is no honour--far better that it should be withheld. We conclude by again adopting the language of Mr Aird which leaves no word unsaid. ""Such has been the tribute of a country to her national poet. She furnished him with the rich materials of his song--with her dear victories set in blood; with the imperishable memory of her independence; with the character of her sons and daughters simple as water but strong as the waterfall; with her snatches of old-world minstrelsy surely never composed by mortal man but spilt from the overflowing soul of sorrow and gladness; with her music twin-born say rather one with her minstrelsy; with her fairy belief the most delicately beautiful mythology in the history of the human mind and strangely contrasted with the rugged character of her people a people of sturt and strife; with her heroic faith; with the graves of her headless martyrs in green shaw or on grim moor visited by many a slip of sunshine streaming down from behind the cloud in the still autumnal afternoon. These and all the other priceless elements of 'the auld Scottish glory ' he--the national bard--compacted and crystallized into a Poetry which by innumerable points of sympathetic contact carries back into the national heart by ever-conducting issue the thoughts and feelings which itself first gave forth to his plastic genius; and thus there is an eternal interchange of cause and effect to the perpetuation and propagation of patriotism and all that constitutes national spirit and character. ""THEREFORE it was fitting that such a national tribute should be paid to such a national benefactor."" STANZAS FOR THE BURNS' FESTIVAL. BY DELTA. I. Stir the beal-fire wave the banner Bid the thundering cannon sound-- Rend the skies with acclamation Stun the woods and waters round-- Till the echoes of our gathering Turn the world's admiring gaze To this act of duteous homage Scotland to her poet pays. Fill the banks and braes with music Be it loud and low by turns-- This we owe the deathless glory That the hapless fate of Burns. II. Born within the lowly cottage To a destiny obscure Doom'd through youth's exulting spring-time But to labour and endure-- Yet Despair he elbow'd from him; Nature breathed with holy joy In the hues of morn and evening On the eyelids of the boy; And his country's Genius bound him Laurels for his sun-burn'd brow When inspired and proud she found him Like Elisha at the plough. III. On exulting in his magic Swept the gifted peasant on-- Though his feet were on the greensward Light from heaven around him shone; At his conjuration demons Issued from their darkness drear; Hovering round on silver pinions Angels stoop'd his songs to hear; Bow'd the Passions to his bidding Terror gaunt and Pity calm; Like the organ pour'd his thunder Like the lute his fairy psalm. IV. Lo when clover-swathes lay round him Or his feet the furrow press'd He could mourn the sever'd daisy Or the mouse's ruin'd nest; Woven of gloom and glory visions Haunting throng'd his twilight hour; Birds enthrall'd him with sweet music Tempests with their tones of power; Eagle-wing'd his mounting spirit Custom's rusty fetters spurn'd; Tasso-like for Jean he melted Wallace-like for Scotland burn'd! V. Scotland!--dear to him was Scotland In her sons and in her daughters In her Highlands --Lowlands --Islands -- Regal woods and rushing waters;-- In the glory of her story When her tartans fired the field -- Scotland! oft betray'd--beleagur'd-- Scotland! never known to yield! Dear to him her Doric language -- Thrill'd his heart-strings at her name;-- And he left her more than rubies In the riches of his fame. VI. Sons of England!--Sons of Erin! Ye who journeying from afar Throng with us the shire of Coila Led by Burns's guiding star-- Proud we greet you--ye will join us As on this triumphant day To the champions of his genius Grateful thanks we duly pay-- Currie--Chambers--Lockhart--Wilson-- Carlyle--who his bones to save From the wolfish fiend Detraction Couch'd like lions round his grave. VII. Daughter of the poet's mother! Here we hail thee with delight; Shower'd be every earthly blessing On thy locks of silver white!-- Sons of Burns a hearty welcome Welcome home from India's strand To a heart-loved land far dearer Since your glorious Father's land:-- Words are worthless--look around you-- Labour'd tomes far less could say To the sons of such a father Than the sight of such a day! VIII. Judge not ye whose thoughts are fingers Of the hands that witch the lyre-- Greenland has its mountain icebergs Ætna has its heart of fire; Calculation has its plummet; Self-control its iron rules; Genius has its sparkling fountains; Dulness has its stagnant pools; Like a halcyon on the waters Burns's chart disdain'd a plan-- In his soarings he was heavenly In his sinkings he was man. IX. As the sun from out the orient Pours a wider warmer light Till he floods both earth and ocean Blazing from the zenith's height; So the glory of our poet In its deathless power serene Shines--as rolling time advances-- Warmer felt and wider seen: First Doon's banks and braes contain'd it Then his country form'd its span; Now the wide world is its empire And its throne the heart of man. X. Home returning each will carry Proud remembrance of this day When exulted Scotland's bosom Homage to her bard to pay;-- When our jubilee to brighten Eglinton with Wilson vied Wealth's regards and Rank's distinctions For the season set aside; And the peasant peer and poet Each put forth an equal claim For the twining of his laurel In the wreath of Burns's fame! * * * * * _Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes Paul's Work._ "
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generously made available by The Internet Library of Early Journals.) {Transcriber's note: Spellings are sometimes erratic. A few obvious misprints have been corrected but in general the original spelling has been retained. Accents in the French phrases are inconsistent and have not been standardised. Greek phrases have been transliterated and are enclosed in + signs +anekdotoi+.} BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. No. CCCXLVIII. OCTOBER 1844. VOL. LVI. CONTENTS. THE LIFE OF A DIPLOMATIST 401 POEMS AND BALLADS OF GOETHE. NO. II. 417 THE GREAT DROUGHT 433 A TENDER CONSCIENCE 454 THIERRY'S HISTORY OF THE GAULS 466 THE WITCHFINDER. CONCLUSION 487 MY LAST COURTSHIP; OR LIFE IN LOUISIANA 507 GREECE UNDER THE ROMANS. 524 * * * * * EDINBURGH: WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 45 GEORGE STREET; AND 22 PALL-MALL LONDON. _To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed._ SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM. PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND HUGHES EDINBURGH. BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. NO. CCCXLVIII. OCTOBER 1844. VOL. LVI. THE LIFE OF A DIPLOMATIST.{A} This is one of those curious memoirs which from time to time start forth from the family archives of public men for the illustration of the past and the wisdom of the future. Nothing can be more important to either the man of office or the man of reflection. Avoiding all the theoretical portion of history on which all men may be mistaken they give us its facts on which no one can be deceived; detailing the course of personal events they supply us with the views of the most intelligent minds directly employed in the transactions exhibit the portraits of those minds and point out to those who are to follow the effect of vigour intrepidity and knowledge in overcoming the difficulties of nations. The work on which we are about to make some remarks is one of those productions which do especial honour to the English aristocracy. It is the diplomatic career of the founder of a peerage; compiled and published by the third in succession to the earldom. The noble editor professing to have done but little in this office of reverence and duty has done much--he has paid due honour to a manly wise and vigorous ancestor; and he has set a striking example to the young nobility of his time. The libraries of every noble family of England contain similar records of the highest value; and nothing could be at once more honourable to the memory of the gallant and renowned who have passed away or more important to posterity than to give those documents to the light illustrated by the recollections of their noble descendants and brought before the public with the natural advantages of authenticity and authority. Lord Malmesbury's career continued through one of the most interesting portions of the last century; that which was the preparative for the great catastrophe of its close the overthrow of the French monarchy. He was in the service of his country as a diplomatist from 1768 to 1797; and for many succeeding years was in connexion with all the leading political characters of a time singularly fertile in remarkable men. He was born at Salisbury in 1746 the descendant of an old English family possessed of property in Wiltshire. His father was an eminent scholar the author of _Hermes_ and other well known treatises on literary and philosophical subjects. But the scholar was also a man of active public life. Entering into parliament he was appointed a lord of the treasury in 1763 and secretary and comptroller of the Queen's household some years after. A _bon-mot_ of one of the Townsends is recorded on his taking his seat. "Who is the new member?" asked Townsend. "A Mr Harris who has written on grammar and harmony." "Then what brings him here where he will hear _neither_?" The son of such a man had public life before him as his natural source of distinction; and Lord Malmesbury late in life (in 1800 ) thus gracefully commemorated his gratitude. "To my father's precepts and example I owe every good quality I have. To his reputation and his character I attribute my more than common success in life. It was those that introduced me with peculiar advantage into the world. It was as his son that I first obtained friends and patrons. I had nothing in myself; and I speak at the distance of thirty-five years not from affected modesty but from a powerful recollection of what there was to entitle me to notice. Once indeed placed in a conspicuous and responsible situation I was anxious to act becomingly in it. And even here I recur with pleasure to the same grateful source; for while my father lived which was during the first twelve years of my public life the strongest incentive I had to exert myself was in the satisfaction I knew he would derive from any credit I might acquire; and the many and distinguished honours which I have since received have suffered a great diminution in my esteem from his being no longer a witness to them." He was sent to Winchester where he remained till he was sixteen. From Winchester he was transferred to Oxford where the discipline at that period was so relaxed that his only surprise in after life was at the success of so many of his companions among whom were Charles Fox North Bishop of Winchester Lord Robert Spenser Lord Auckland and others who had risen to rank of various kinds. He left Oxford in 1765 and passed thirty-five years on the Continent. His lordship here makes a striking observation on his own experience which has been authenticated by every intelligent and honest mind under the same circumstances--remarking that his foreign residence was so far from making him undervalue England that it raised it still higher in his estimation. He adds--"Here I will make an assertion grounded on experience and conviction and which may be applied as a never-failing test that an Englishman who after a long absence from England returns to it with feelings and sentiments partial to other countries and adverse to his own has no _real_ mind--is without the powers of discernment and plain easy comparison--and has no title to enjoy the superior moral and local advantages to which he is born but of which he is insensible and unworthy." As diplomacy was evidently the career marked out for him by his father he was sent to study at Leyden where he remained a year. In the commencement of the century Holland was the central point of all European negotiations; and its schools became famous for languages and the study of international law. The society among the higher orders of the country was the most intelligent in Europe consisting of ambassadors and scholars of the first character. After this year of vigorous study and some brief stay at home he returned to the Continent and made an extensive tour of the north. In the autumn of this year he received his first diplomatic appointment in the mission to Spain. His success in the Falkland Island negotiation recommended him to government and he was appointed minister at Berlin--a very unusual distinction for a diplomatist only twenty-four years old. But a still more important distinction now awaited him. In 1777 he was sent as minister to the court of the Empress Catharine where he found himself involved in all the craft of diplomacy with two of the most artful sovereigns that ever lived Frederick and Catharine. But difficulties only place talents in a more conspicuous point of view and he received from his government the highest reward then conferred upon a foreign minister the Order of the Bath in 1780. The climate of Russia was at length found too severe for his health and he petitioned for his recall which was granted but with the honourable offer of his choice of a mission either to Spain or the Hague; the former was the higher in rank but the latter the more important in activity. He unhesitatingly and wisely chose the embassy to the Hague. In 1784 the Foxite administration fell and Pitt was in the ascendant. Harris had been at all times connected with Fox and had constantly voted with him in the House; but so high was the public sense of his ability and such was the impartiality of Pitt's sense of public duty that he offered him the re-appointment to the Hague which Harris after consulting Fox and the Duke of Portland as his political leaders accepted. His services were peculiarly required at this period from the violent discussions which had arisen in Holland; and he either originated or perfected the treaty of alliance between England Holland and Prussia which saved the Stadtholder for the time and Holland probably from being made a French province. His conduct was regarded with so much approbation by the allies that he received from the Prussian king leave to add the Prussian eagle to his arms and from the Stadtholder his motto "_Je maintiendrai_." From England he received the more substantial rewards of the peerage by the title of Baron Malmesbury and the appointment of ambassador. But though he was a Whig he was one on the old English principle and not on the new. In 1793 when in the midst of revolutionary horrors and after the murder of the unfortunate French king Fox in the spirit of infatuation declared himself ready to acknowledge the French republic all the chief leaders of the Whigs retired from the Opposition bench. The Duke of Portland Lord Loughborough Sir Gilbert Elliott Lord Spenser and Lord Malmesbury joined those distinguished persons; yet without any apparent loss of friendship with Fox whose manners retained personal friends even when he had lost their political confidence. Frederick William king of Prussia a prince of singularly undecided character though of loud professions being at this time suspected of a leaning towards the revolutionists Lord Malmesbury was immediately sent by Pitt to Berlin for the purpose of holding him to his good faith. He succeeded to the extent of making the king sign an additional treaty with England and Holland. His next mission if not one of more importance was of still greater delicacy--it was to ask the hand of the Duke of Brunswick's daughter for the Prince of Wales. This was a marriage by compulsion and the wrath of the prince fell upon the noble negotiator. He never forgave Lord Malmesbury and he quickly alienated himself from the princess: the unfortunate result is fully known. In 1796 and 1797 Lord Malmesbury was engaged in the most important negotiation of his life. The French Directory probably for the purpose of exciting dissensions between Austria and England made a secret proposal of peace which led to the mission of an ambassador. But while Napoleon was pursuing his conquests in Italy France had no actual desire of pacification. The purpose was evidently to gain time; and Lord Malmesbury on discovering the true nature of the transaction demanded his passports and returned to England. It cannot be imputed to Pitt that he was ever negligent of those who had done the state service. Lord Malmesbury had already obtained the Order of the Bath and a barony; he was now raised to an earldom with a viscounty by the title of Lord Fitzharris; and it was in Pitt's contemplation to send him once more to Paris when his ministry was suddenly brought to a conclusion and Mr Addington was appointed premier; by whom the peace or rather the unlucky truce of Amiens was made. His political life was now at an end. He had been for some time suffering under deafness which increased so much that he regarded it as incapacitating him from public employment; yet he still loved society and dividing his time between London and his seat near Henley he passed a pleasant and cheerful time mingling with the chief characters of the rising political generation. For the last ten years of his life his thoughts seem to have been much directed to religious subjects; and he kept what he entitled a "self-controlling journal " in which he registered his thoughts. We have probably reason to regret that the scrupulous delicacy of his biographer has hitherto withheld it from the public. The few sentences transcribed from it give a strong conception of the piety and clear-headedness of the noble author. They were written within a fortnight of his death. They describe him as "having completed his 74th year and having thus lived longer than any of his ancestors for the last two centuries; that his existence had been without any great misfortune and without any acute disease and that he owed all praise and thanksgiving to the Supreme Being; that the next step would probably be his last; that he was now too much exhausted both in mind and body to be of service to his country but was fortunate in leaving his children well and happy; and that he now waited the Divine will with becoming resignation." He died without disease and through mere exhaustion of nature in his 75th year in 1820 and was buried in Salisbury cathedral. Lord Malmesbury's reputation ranked very high in the diplomatic circles of the Continent. He was a clear-headed well-informed and active minister--sagacious enough to see his way through difficulties which would have perplexed inferior men and bold enough to act according to his own opinion where feebler minds would have ruined all by waiting for the tardy wisdom of others. Talleyrand a first-rate judge on such subjects said of him in his epigrammatic style--"I think that Lord Malmesbury was the ablest minister whom you had in his time. It was hopeless to get before him; all that could be done was to follow him close. If one let him have the last word he contrived always to have the best of the argument." He seems to have been a thorough Englishman in the highest sense of the word and to have had the loftiest opinion of the power and principles of England; not from any fantastic prejudice but from the experience of a long life with the best opportunities of forming an unprejudiced judgment. We have already mentioned his declared opinion after living long abroad and as a great diplomatic functionary living under the most advantageous circumstances of foreign society; that any Englishman who after a residence abroad prefers the Continent to his own country is beyond all question a man of gross and contemptible mind and incapable of taking a "common-sense view" of the subject. We have his constant testimony that "as there is nothing equal to England on the face of the earth so no exertion on the part of her people can be too great in defence of her freedom and honour." In conformity with this matured conviction and reigning principle of his heart he chose as the motto for his coronet-- "Ubique patriam reminisci."{B} Mr Harris's first visit to the Continent was in 1767 when he set out on a tour to Holland Prussia and Poland remaining for some time at Berlin where he had the advantage of seeing the cleverest though the most eccentric of all sovereigns Frederick the Great. A number of traits of character are given of various degrees of force but all expressive. The king's chief amusement was playing on the flute on which he performed very well for an amateur though compared with the professional performers he necessarily made rather an unkingly figure. Frederick who was afraid of nothing else was so much afraid of failure in his flute playing that whenever he had a new piece of music he shut himself up in his closet some hours beforehand to practise it; and although no one was permitted to be present at those concerts except a very few select friends he was always observed to be remarkably nervous at the commencement. He had a fine collection of flutes all made by the same man and for which he paid a hundred ducats a-piece. He had an attendant whose sole office was to keep those flutes in order. During the war when his finances were reduced to so low an ebb that he paid bad coin to every one he took care that his flute-maker should be paid in good coin lest for bad money he should give him bad flutes. Royal architecture is not always fortunate. It is observed that Louis XIV. built his famous Versailles in a swampy hollow when he had the noble terrace of St Germain before him. Frederick built his Sans-Souci in a marshy meadow while he had a fine hill within sight. Unhappily _we_ have but little to boast of in the location of our modern palaces. The site of Buckingham Palace seems to have been chosen with no other object than to discover which was the superior annoyance the smoke of steam-engines or the vapours of a swamp; and this was chosen with one of the finest possible situations within half a mile of it in the centre of Hyde Park. Her Majesty's palace at Brighton has been located with exactly the same curious perversion of taste; the hills to the north of that very handsome town offering one of the noblest situations that can be conceived--a fine land view and an unobstructed sweep of the ocean: but the evil genius of building prevailed and the palace is fixed in a gloomy bottom from which it can be overlooked by every body and from which nothing can be seen. Frederick though sometimes superb in his expenses was habitually penurious. He seems to have thought that war was the only thing on which it was worth his while to spend money. The salaries of his gentlemen and attendants were all on the narrowest scale. Lord Malmesbury observes that even the Prince of Dessau's marriage at which he was present exhibited this penury. All the apartments except those immediately used for supper or cards were lighted with a single candle. The supper had no dessert; the wines were bad; their quantity stinted. On his asking after dancing for some wine and water he was answered--"the wine is all gone but you may have some tea;" and this was a peculiarly distinguished party. He saw the king himself directing the servants in lighting up the ball-room and telling them where to put the candles. Whilst this operation was performing the queen the royal family and the company were waiting literally in the dark; as the king did not begin this ceremony till supper was finished and no one dared to give orders to have it done. Frederick when a young man was intended for the husband of a British princess. This was a match of his mother's construction. But the old king who hated George II. threatened to cut off his son's head for his presumption. The English king called the Prussian "my brother the sergeant;" the Prussian retaliated by calling the English king "my brother the dancing-master." This hostility amounted to a mixture of the profane and the ludicrous. When the old king was seized with his mortal illness he asked whether "it was necessary to forgive all his enemies." On receiving the proper answer he said to the Queen--"Dorothy write to your brother that I forgive him all the evil that he has done me; but wait till I'm dead first." A good repartee of Sir Andrew Mitchell on the battle of Quebec is mentioned. "Is it true " said the king to him "that after all you have taken Quebec?" "Yes sire " said Sir Andrew Mitchell the envoy "by the help of Providence." "What!" said the king "is Providence among your allies?" "Yes " said the envoy "and the only one among then who demands _no subsidy_." Sir Charles Williams wrote to one of the queen's marshals a letter introducing Lord Essex ludicrously finishing with--"You may be sure that it is not he who had his head cut off in the time of Elizabeth." The marshal not perfectly understanding this but depending on his information introduced him in this style to her majesty--"Madam my Lord Essex; and I assure your majesty it is not he who was decapitated by Queen Elizabeth." Frederick sending a minister to Denmark who complained of the smallness of his salary and said that he could keep neither an equipage nor a table; the king's remark to him was--"You are a prodigal; you ought to know that it is more healthy to go on foot than it is to go in a carriage; and that so far as eating is concerned another man's table is always the best." At this period Poland was in a state of great confusion. The Empress of Russia had marched an army into it for the purpose as she declared of allowing the popular representatives to act freely while the king regarded himself as little better than her prisoner. Repnin the Russian ambassador actually commanded every thing; and the principal nobility of Poland were compelled to be his agents. Of course this state of things never could have occurred in any country where the tone of manners was high; and Poland though the people were brave and the nobility in general patriotic unquestionably fell by its own vices. The portrait drawn of Prince Radzivil is the reverse of flattering but it is characteristic:-- "Prince Radzivil the marshal of the confederation was one of the most powerful princes of Poland. His revenues were nearly equal to half a million sterling a-year though they were at this period much diminished by Russian ravages. He had at one time an army of eight thousand man with which he opposed the Imperial progress. He afterwards became the tool of the Russian policy and was rewarded with the first palatinate of the kingdom. He gave a masquerade on the empress's birthday to near three thousand masks; and it was calculated that besides the other wines they drank a thousand bottles of champagne." The prodigality of a Polish feast exceeds all comprehension. This prince kept open house on such a scale that his five-and-twenty cooks were scarcely able to supply his table. The great article of luxury in Poland was Hungary wine which they had in great perfection but which was very costly. Champagne was drunk as cider. The multitude of servants in a Polish establishment must have been ruinous. Prince Czartoriski's personal attendants and servants amounted to three hundred and seventy-five. Those in his country-house were still more numerous. His troops amounted to four thousand men. Prince Repnin though of the Greek church which abounds in forms and ceremonies and in fasts exceeds all others had so little regard for the forms of his religion that he ordered a play to be acted on Ash Wednesday at Warsaw. Towards Christmas 1767 Lord Malmesbury then Mr Harris was at the house of a Polish nobleman in the hunting season. He observed to the king that he had never seen him in better spirits. "Ah!" was the royal answer "it is very pleasant to delude one's self sometimes." In 1768 Mr Harris began his diplomatic life as secretary of legation under Sir James Gray then British minister at the court of Madrid. He set out from Paris on the last day of the year and after six-and-twenty days' journey in which he loitered but two days on the road accomplished the eleven hundred miles without accident. Though accustomed to Popish countries the Spanish ceremonials of the Holy Week seem to have surprised him. In the streets was kept a second carnival with a peculiar costume. The court and the higher orders wore black velvet with flame-coloured waistcoats and sleeves trimmed with gold; the citizens left their shops and spent the day in the streets. The king on Holy Thursday visited seven churches washed the feet of twelve paupers and afterwards served them at dinner. From Friday till Saturday all was silence and no coaches were permitted in the streets. On Saturday at noon the bells rang the people shouted the coaches moved again and all was clamour. From a personal knowledge of the people Mr Harris pronounced that their defects arose from their religion and from their priests; both of which by keeping the lower orders in a state of mendicity and the higher in a state of ignorance prevent the progress of the nation. Even at this period their dislike of the French was contemptuous and strongly marked. The life of a diplomatic man is not unlike the life of a naval officer. He has frequent opportunities of signalizing himself in a small way. The cabinet is the admiral commanding a large force and acting on a large scale. The diplomatist is the captain of the frigate thrown out at a distance to make his observations and enabled to exhibit his intrepidity and talent through from the smallness of his means the results may be equally small. In 1769 Sir James Gray returning to England left Mr Harris behind him as _chargé d'affaires_. In the next year Spain always jealous of any foreign approach to her South American possessions fitted out a fleet for the purpose of expelling the British colony from the Falkland Isles. Harris acted spiritedly on this occasion. He instantly made so strong a representation to the Spanish minister the Marquis Grimaldi that he threw him into evident alarm. The letter to the British ministry which Harris wrote on the subject satisfied them of the advantage of making a vigorous remonstrance. The result to the country was that the colony which had been seized was restored and that the officer who seized it was disgraced by the Spanish government. To Harris the whole transaction was regarded as honourable and entitling him to the favour of his government. The result was his being appointed in 1771 as minister at the court of the most subtle and busy monarch of Europe Frederick the Second. We now come to the partition of Poland the most momentous transaction of modern times; excepting the French Revolution if even that revolution was not its consequence. Mr Harris makes his first communication on this important subject in March 1772. If we read his whole letter the brevity of his announcement is a model even to diplomacy. He thus states the event to Lord Suffolk then secretary of state. "Just as I am going to make up my packet I am informed that a treaty of partition disposing of several parts of Poland was signed at Petersburg on the 15th of last month and that as soon as the certificates can be exchanged between the courts of Vienna Berlin and Russia a congress will be held at Warsaw." A few statements respecting the Prussian officers dispatched to the Polish frontier are given; and this seems to be the whole announcement of one of the most atrocious acts of perfidy and blood in the memory of Europe. The French Revolution was begun on grounds independent of foreign disturbances. But no man can read the annals of the French war without a conviction that one of its providential purposes was the punishment of the three monarchies which had perpetrated this atrocity. Within a brief period from the first ruin of Polish independence the French armies began those sweeping conquests which were destined especially to ravage Prussia Austria and Russia. The punishment seemed even to bear something like a proportion to the degree of guilt in each of the parties. The original proposer of the partition was Frederick the strenuous participator was Catharine and the unwilling though consenting accomplice was Joseph. Before that war was over Napoleon reduced Prussia to the lowest condition of a conquered country plundered her of millions of gold held her fortresses by his garrisons and treated her like a province. His invasion of Russia was next in havoc: the ravage of the country the repulse and slaughter of her brave and patriotic armies and the destruction of her ancient capital were _her_ share of the punishment. Austria suffered but her suffering was of a lighter order--defeat in the field havoc of the people and the double capture of her capital; yet those wounds were rapidly healed and the close of the war saw Austria taking a higher rank in Europe. Those struggles and sufferings extended over nearly a quarter of a century of unexampled bloodshed. It is remarkable that a project so fully entitled to excite the vigilance of all courts seems to have been almost wholly overlooked by the English ministry; Lord Suffolk in his confidential answer to the ambassador simply styling it a curious transaction; and even in the more advanced stage of the affair when the attention of the cabinet was called to it by the memorials of the Polish king and people all that could be obtained was a verbal answer evidently declining any interference on the subject and contenting itself with the avoidance of approbation. The result of this singular negligence distinctly points out the course which should be taken by England in her continental policy. Her natural office is that of mediator and protector. Entertaining no views of conquest for herself it is her duty to repress them in all others. If in 1772 she had instantly issued a strong remonstrance to the three governments it would have acted as an appeal to the reason of Europe. A fleet sent to the Baltic in support of that remonstrance would have acted upon the fears of the aggressors and Poland would have been saved. The blood of the thousands shed in the war of independence would have been spared--the great crime of the century would have been partially avoided--and its punishment in the shape of the revolutionary war might never have been inflicted. The diplomatic and formal portion of this fatal event was thus announced by the ambassador to the British cabinet:--"Berlin 19th September 1772.--I received a message from Count Finckenstein yesterday morning desiring to speak to me between twelve and one. On my waiting on him he informed me that his Prussian majesty having come to an agreement with the courts of Vienna and Petersburg to renew certain ancient claims they had on parts of the kingdom of Poland they had instructed their respective ministers at the court of Warsaw to signify their intentions to the king and republic by presenting him with a declaration on this subject. "That his Prussian majesty desirous of seizing every opportunity of showing his friendship and attention to the king had ordered him Count Finckenstein to take the earliest moment of acquainting me with this event and at the same time to give me a copy of the declaration which I here enclose--that his _chargé d'affaires_ in London had likewise received orders to inform the king's ministers on this subject and to communicate to them the declaration." The reply of the English minister to this momentous announcement exhibits perhaps one of the most extraordinary instances of ministerial negligence on record. On a subject which might have moved the very stones to mutiny and which in its consequences involved the interests of all Europe the only answer of the King of England was contained in the following note written in French:--"The king is willing to suppose that the three courts have convinced themselves of the justice of their respective pretensions although his majesty is not informed of the motives of their conduct." "You will observe " adds Lord Suffolk "in the terns in which I express myself that though this mode of expression was preferable to an absolute silence the utmost caution has been used." The caution was indeed sufficiently circumspect for it was wholly useless; and the consequence was perfect impunity to the perpetrators. Frederick was the great infidel of his day. He had been so long involved in hostilities with Austria the most superstitious court in Europe that he adopted "free-thinking" as a part of his policy; and his eagerness for European fame connected him with Voltaire and the French infidels whose wit and wickedness had made them the leaders of philosophical fashion. But there is a principle of belief in human nature which revenges itself on the infidel. There are no men more liable to groundless fears than those who reject the object of legitimate awe. The man who will not believe in a deity has often believed in witchcraft; and those who will not acknowledge a Providence have often trembled before a conjurer. At this period Frederick had grown peculiarly anxious and irascible--a temper for which the ambassador accounts by a sudden impulse of superstition. He says--"Amongst several other incredible follies in so great a character he has that of not entirely disbelieving judicial astrology; and I am told from one whose authority is not despicable that the fear of a prediction being this year fulfilled which was pronounced by a Saxon fortune-teller whom his majesty was weak enough some time ago to consult dwells on his mind and augments the sourness of a disposition naturally crabbed. I should have paid no attention to these reports which savour so much of the nursery had I not myself observed him displeased at a mourning coat at his levee and seen his countenance visibly alter on being informed of any man's dying a sudden death." We then have a curious letter from Lord Grantham the ambassador at Madrid giving an account of an expedition to Algiers which derives an interest from the present state of African affairs. "You will learn that a very unsuccessful attempt has been made at Algiers and that the Spanish troops have been repulsed with a loss and disable
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ent of upwards of 5000 men. The fleet consisting of 450 sail and carrying about 40 000 men sailed from Carthagena and reached Algiers the 1st inst. (July 1775.) On the night of the 7th the infantry and two detachments of about 8000 men each landed. The first detachment advanced too eagerly could not be supported to any purpose and after thirteen hours' engagement all that could regained the ships. But the loss of killed and wounded first estimated at 3000 certainly exceeded five or six. The transports with the army are returned to Carthagena and Alicante. I leave you to judge how deep an impression this severe failure makes here. The Marquis de la Romana is killed--all the generals except Buck are wounded. Among the wounded are twenty-eight officers of the Spanish guards and twelve out of seventeen engineers."" The court of Frederick would form a singular contrast to what is called the British Household composed of the great officers of state. ""You are not ignorant "" says Harris writing to William Eden ""that the great officers of the court are merely titular and never allowed to have any authority annexed to their office. This is given to some menial servants who are constantly about the king's person and his treasurer was a Russian named Deiss in whom his Majesty placed more confidence than he appears to have deserved; since for maladministration or some equally notorious fault his majesty a few days ago dismissed him from his high post and ordered him to be employed as a drummer in a marching regiment. Deiss affected to submit patiently to his sentence and on being arrested begged leave of the officer only to go into his room adjoining the king's writing-closet to fetch his hat. This being granted he immediately locked the door took a pistol from his pocket and shot himself through the head. The king heard and was alarmed by the report of a pistol so near him and being told what had happened he pitied Deiss said that he was out of his senses and ordered all that he died worth to be distributed equally among his children. Deiss had charged the pistol with small-shot and crooked nails and put the muzzle of it into his mouth."" A striking anecdote is given of General Seidlitz the officer who formed the Prussian cavalry. When only a lieutenant he happened to be near the king on a bridge which crossed the Oder. The king asked him ""if both the avenues of the bridge were possessed by the enemy what he would do to disengage himself."" Seidlitz without making an answer immediately leaped his horse over the rails into the river and notwithstanding its breadth and rapidity swam safe ashore. The king who took it for granted that he must be drowned on seeing him come towards him said in French ""_Major_ I beg of you not to run such hazards in future."" Despotic power has certainly great advantages in its rapid administration of justice and sometimes in its reaching offences which would altogether baffle trial by jury. Frederick was ridiculously fond of exhibiting his musical attainments; and among the other preparatives for the reception of the Russian grand-duke (afterwards the Emperor Paul) at Berlin was a piece of music composed by the king. The husband of the first singer at the opera the well-known Madame Mara was imprudent enough to observe of this performance that ""the composer knew more about soldiers than music."" The king ordered him to be instantly made over to the _corps-de-garde_ with orders to punish him enough to make him more cautious of criticism in future. The soldiers accordingly as there happened to be no punishment in the military regulations for impertinent remarks on royal amateurs took the affair into their own hands. They began by dressing him in a uniform covering his face with a huge pair of whiskers and loading him with the heaviest firelock which they could find they then made him perform the manual exercise for two hours--accompanying the lesson with all the usual discipline of the cane--then ordered him to dance and sing finishing their discipline by making the surgeon take from him a large quantity of blood obviously to reduce the heat of temper which had given rise to such impertinence. After this lesson he was sent back to his wife. Severe as it may have appeared Harris regarded it as earned by many previous impertinences of the same kind but of which it may fairly be presumed this was the last. At last the grand-duke arrived and was received with the most unusual pomp and ceremony by the Prussian court. By some curious instance of choice Sunday is selected on the Continent as the day for every thing in the shape of show. The Russian prince made his public entry into Berlin on Sunday and was met by the trading companies in uniform by escorts of cavalry and the equipages of the king and royal family. In the evening after a sumptuous dinner there was a concert and ball. The rest of the week was similarly occupied. The grand-duke had come to demand the Princess of Wirtemberg in marriage. When we recollect the fate of this unhappy monarch murdered on the Russian throne and contrast it with the brilliancy of his early reception in the world and his actual powers when master of the diadem a deeper lesson of the instability of human fortune has seldom been given to man. A laughable anecdote of Russian and Prussian discipline is told. All the domestics belonging to the Imperial family of Russia have military rank; the grand-duke's coachman and the king's going one evening to drink together a dispute arose about precedence. ""What is your rank?"" said the Prussian. ""A lieutenant-colonel "" said the other. ""Ay but I am a colonel "" said the German and walked first into the ale-house. This came to the king's ears. The _colonel_ was sent for three days to prison and received fifty blows of the cane. The ambassador now obtained a new instance of the favour of his court. He was recalled from Prussia in 1776 and shortly after was appointed to the most important of our embassies at that period the embassy to Russia. The politics of England at this period bore an appearance of perplexity which evidently alarmed her cabinet and which as evidently excited the hopes of her enemies. At this period she had two enemies in Europe hostile in every thing except to the extent of open war--France always jealous and irreconcilable; and Prussia which from her dread of England's interference in her Polish usurpations pretended to believe that England was conspiring with Austria against the safety of her dominions. The feebleness with which the American war was carried on had deceived Europe into the belief that the power of England was really on the point of decay. Foreigners are never capable of appreciating the reality of English power. In the first place because they prefer the romantic to the real; and in the next because living under despotisms they have never seen nor can comprehend the effect of liberty upon national resources. Thus when they see a nation unwilling to go to war--or what is the next thing to reluctance waging it tardily--they imagine that this tardiness has its origin in national weakness; and it is not until the palpable necessity of self-defence calls out the whole energy of the people that the foreigner ever sees the genuine strength of England. The capture of two small armies in America neither of them more numerous than the advanced guard of a continental army had given the impression that the military strength of England was gone for ever. Thus the European courts thought themselves entitled to insult her; and thus so diminutive a power as Prussia however guided by an able and politic prince was suffered to despise her opinion. But the English ministry themselves of that day palpably shared the general delusion; and to judge from their diplomatic correspondence they seemed actually to rely for the safety of England on the aid of the foreign courts. They had yet to learn the lesson taught them by the Revolutionary war that England is degraded by dependence of any kind; that she is a match for the world in arms; that the cause of Europe is dependent on _her_; and that the more boldly directly and resolutely she defies France and its allies and slaves the more secure she is of victory. In the pursuit of this false policy of conciliation and supplication Harris was sent to Petersburg to counteract Prussia with the empress and to form an offensive and defensive alliance with Catharine. Count Panin was at that time prime minister--a man of the old ministerial school who regarded diplomacy as the legitimate science of chicane was a master of all the littleness of his art and was wholly under the influence of the King of Prussia. The count was all consent and yet contrived to keep the ambassador at arm's-length; while the empress equally crafty and equally determined not to commit herself managed him with still greater subtlety. In speaking of the Empress Catharine it is impossible to avoid alluding to the scandals of her court. The death of her husband suspicious as it was had left her sole mistress of an empire and of the power of public opinion in a country where a sneer might send the offender to Siberia. The wretchedly relaxed religion of the Greek church where a trivial penance atones for every thing and ceremonial takes the place of morals as it inevitably does wherever a religion is encumbered with unnecessary forms could be no restraint on the conduct of a daring and imperious woman. By some of that easy casuistry which reconciles the powerful to vice she had fully convinced herself that she ought for the sake of her throne never to submit to matrimonial ties again; and she adopted the notorious and guilty alternative of living with a succession of partners. The ambassador's letters frequently allude to this disgraceful topic and always with the contempt and reprobation which were so amply its due. ""The worst enemies""--such is his expression--""which the empress has are flattery and her own passions. She never turns a deaf ear to the first let it be ever so gross; and her inclination to gratify the latter appears to grow upon her with age."" The policy of Russia had two grand objects both of them wholly inconsistent with the policy of England; and therefore rendering the ambassador's zeal wholly useless. The King of Prussia favoured both and therefore commanded the highest influence with the empress. It was thus the impossible task of the unfortunate diplomatist to convince a haughty and self-sufficient woman against her will. Of course failure was the necessary consequence. But in the mean time dining and dancing feasting and frivolity went on with Asiatic splendour. The birth of the grand-duke's son ""Constantine "" (expressly so named with a view to Turkish objects ) gave occasion to fêtes which it tasked the whole power of Russian panegyric to describe. The empress gave one in the period of the Carnival ultra-imperially magnificent. The dessert and supper were set out with jewels to the amount of upwards of two millions sterling! and at the tables of macao the fashionable game besides the stake in money a diamond of fifty rubles' value was given by her majesty to each of those who got _nine_ the highest point of the game. One hundred and fifty diamonds were distributed in this manner. But a new event occurred to stir the lazy politics of Europe--that act of infinite treachery on the part of the French government--the breach of treaty with England and the alliance with America. The menaces of war which are held out at this moment by the Jacobin party and its insolent eagerness to turn every trivial incident into a mortal quarrel give a new and additional interest to this former act of desperate perfidy. But let it be remembered with what tremendous vengeance that perfidy was punished--that the American alliance was the precursor of the French republic; and that the long train of hideous calamities which broke down the French throne banished the nobility and decimated the population dates its origin from the day when that fatal treaty was signed. A letter from Sir Gilbert Elliott (afterwards Lord Minto) to the ambassador (March 20 1778 ) thus briefly communicates the intelligence:--""We had just passed the bills for repealing some of the obnoxious American acts and for enabling the king to appoint his commissioners to treat with America with very large powers when the report of the French treaty with the colonies became very prevalent and obtained credit here. Government however had certainly obtained no authentic account of it which is singular enough; and Lord North positively disclaimed all knowledge of it. A loan of six millions was made on very hard terms for the public much owing to the report of the French treaty; the three per cent consols being at 66½--monstrously low. The first payment was fixed for Tuesday last. On the Friday before the Marquis de Noailles delivered a paper to Lord Weymouth communicating the 'treaty of commerce and alliance' with the colonies and acknowledging their independency. The manner and style of the communication were inexpressibly insolent and were no doubt meant as a studied affront and challenge. On Saturday all the French in London were sent to the opera plays clubs coffee-houses and ale-houses to publish the intelligence which they did with their natural impertinence. On Tuesday the two Houses received a message from the king informing them of the communication from the French ambassador--that he had recalled his ambassador from Versailles; and assuring them that he would exert every means in his power to protect the honour and interest of his kingdom. In answer to which the two Houses voted an address promising to support him with our lives and fortunes. Opposition like _good patriots_ in answer to this message proposed to address the king to remove his ministers; and C. Fox assured us 'he thought an invasion a _much better thing_ than the continuance of the present administration.' When this proposal was negatived they therefore refused their assent to our address. There is no declaration of war yet; but as it is quite certain and as France will undoubtedly act immediately I do not see what we gain by delaying it. I hope at least we shall begin taking their ships immediately. The militia is to be called out; credit is dreadfully low--stock was a few days ago at 60. The French are poorer than we--that's something."" Exaggeration is a propensity which seems common to ambassadors. We certainly have never seen an ambassadorial correspondence in which the most groundless views did not make a large part of its communications. The British diplomatist in Russia was unquestionably a shrewd man and yet his letters abound in predictions of Russian ruin. His descriptions run in this style:--""Great expenses and nothing to show for them. The army in a state of decay; the navy incomplete and ill-equipped; the political system languid and such as if pursued must ultimately reduce this immense mass of power to that state of Asiatic insignificancy from which it so lately emerged."" And this high-coloured and rash statement it is to be remembered was not a page in a popular novel or in a summer's ""Tour "" but was given as the deliberate opinion of a statesman conversant in continental politics and addressed to the government of this country. He seems to have altogether overlooked the boundless territory and growing population of Russia her forty millions of men--a number already exceeding that of any other kingdom in Europe--the inaccessible nature of her dominions the implicit and Asiatic devotion of her subjects the unrivaled vigour of her despotism and the fact that she had but that moment secured an immense tract of Polish territory and was stripping the Turks on the other side--that to the north she was touching on the Vistula and to the south had nearly reached the Danube. The subsequent career of Russia is a still stronger refutation. Every war instead of shaking her power has only given it additional strength and stability. Like England she has gone on with almost involuntary but rapid progress; and the period may arrive when there will be but two nations left in Europe--England the ruler of the seas and Russia holding the kingdoms of the Continent in vassalage. It is true that the ambassador adverts now and then to the inaccessible nature of the Russian territory and the success of the national arms; but the former would be but a negative source of power and the latter he uniformly attributed to good-luck. He ought to lave attributed them to the causes which would have produced the same effect in any age of the world--to the mastery of an immense population; to the daring of a head of empire possessed of remarkable ability and filled with projects of unbounded supremacy; and to the growth of a new generation of soldiers and statesmen encouraged to the highest exertion of their talents by the most munificent rewards--the policy of the empress making the evidence of courage and genius in the soldier the only requisite for promotion; and exhibiting the strongest personal interest of the sovereign in the elevation of those able servants of the crown. The consequence was success in all the enterprises of Catharine the rapid advance of the nation in European influence the establishment of an insecure throne on the strongest footing of public security the popularity of a despotism the comparative civilization of a people half Asiatic and who but half a century before had been barbarians and the personal attachment of the nation to Catharine in a degree scarcely less than adoration. The chief cause of this triumphant state of things beyond all question was the high spirit the generosity and the affability of the empress. The unhappy transactions of her private life are matters of painful record; and the letters of the ambassador are full of the reprobation which the memoirs of the time authenticate. But we have no gratification in dwelling on such topics. We infinitely prefer paying the tribute due to great talents splendidly exercised to the public achievements of a powerful intellect and to the superiority which this munificent promoter of the genius of all classes of her people exhibited to all the haughty exclusive and selfish sovereigns of her time. The ambassador now found it necessary to look for support against the Prussian propensities of the minister; and he had recourse to Potemkin and the Orloffs as the antagonists of Panin. Potemkin was one of the most extraordinary men whom the especial circumstances of the court and country raised into public distinction. He had been but a cornet of cavalry on the memorable night when Catharine uncertain whether she was mounting a throne or a scaffold put herself at the head of the guards and deposed her husband. As she rode along observing that she had not a military plume in her hat she turned to ask for one; the cornet instantly plucked out his own and presented it to her--as Raleigh threw his cloak on the ground for Elizabeth to walk over. These gallant acts are never lost upon a woman of the superior order of mind. The favour of the throne followed alike in both instances; and Potemkin soon became the guide of the Russian councils. It was the custom of the French memoir writers--a race who always aimed at pungency of narrative in preference to truth and who for their generation performed the part of general libellers--to represent Potemkin as a savage devoted to drinking and whose influence was solely the result of his grossness. But the conferences which he held with this British ambassador and the extracts of his opinions given in these letters show him to have been a man of remarkable clearness of comprehension dexterity of resource and readiness of knowledge. It is obvious that nothing but the exertion of distinguished skill in the ways of courts could have accomplished the objects which no other man of his time attained with such complete success. In a court of contention and favouritism he retained supreme influence to the last; released from the labours of office he possessed more than the power of a minister--and nominally a subject he was scarcely less than emperor. Boundless wealth the highest rank and every honour which the empire could lavish on its first noble were the prizes of Potemkin. People at home are in the habit of looking upon the diplomatic body abroad as a collection of very subtle and sagacious personages--a collection of sages. A nearer view sometimes strips the idea down to humble dimensions. Sir James Harris (he had now obtained the Order of the Bath which he seems to have deserved by his diligence) thus sketches the new ambassadorial body--a general change having just taken place. ""The Imperial Danish French Prussian and Spanish ministers are all altered and one from Naples is added to our corps."" The Neapolitan he describes as ""utterly unfit for business;"" Count Cobenzel the Austrian ambassador ""as a man of excellent parts and great activity;"" Goertz the Prussian ""a very able and artful man."" So far as this point the honour of the corps is sustained; but then come the ciphers. Monsieur Verac the cunning French envoy is ""more amiable in company than formidable in cabinet."" The Swede and the Saxon ministers ""most perfectly insignificant and overpowered with debts."" The Dutch resident Swartz ""a man neither of birth nor character totally improper for the post he fills. The Swiss resident having no other business than the lawsuits of his countrymen "" &c. Of the culpable habits of the empress we shall say no more. The respect which this country feels for the character of Emperor Nicholas and the total contrast which that character presents to the especial failings of his ancestor justly prevent our wandering into those observations. But we have a curious instance of the skill and adroitness of this memorable woman in an interview in which she was wholly left to herself and yet succeeded perfectly in what is presumed to be the _chef-d'oeuvre_ of diplomacy--the art of disguising her intentions. The British ambassador after a long period of comparative failure had succeeded in obtaining an audience through Potemkin--who always pretended to be powerless yet who could do every thing which he desired. The appointment to meet the ambassador was made and Potemkin prefaced his service by the following singular sketch of his sovereign. ""Do not expect that it is in the power of any living being to prevent her from concluding her favourite plan of armed neutrality. Content yourself with destroying the effects--the resolution is immovable. As it was conceived by _mistake_ and perfected by _vanity_ it is maintained by _pride_ and _obstinacy_. You well know the hold of those passions on a _female mind_; and if you attempt to slacken you will only tighten the knot."" One of the imperial valets then came to lead the ambassador to the interview; which he gives in French and which he commenced in a strain which we hope will never be imitated again by any cabinet of England. ""I have come to represent to your imperial majesty the _critical situation_ in which our affairs are at present. You know our reliance on you. We venture to _flatter_ ourselves that you will _avert the storm_ and reassure us as to our fears of having lost your friendship."" If the expressions were not in print we should scarcely have thought it possible that such crouching language could have been used. The ambassador of course is but the mouthpiece of his government. The blame must fall not on the intelligent servant but on the feeble masters. Who can wonder if the daring and haughty spirit of Catharine scoffed at the remonstrances and despised the interests of a country whose cabinet adopted language so unfitting the dignity and real power of the mighty British empire? The expressions of this dialogue would have been humiliating to the smallest of the ""square-league"" sovereignties of the Continent. The answer of the empress was precisely what she might have addressed to the envoy of Poland or the Crimea. ""Sir you are aware of my sentiments relative to your nation; they are equally sincere and invariable. But I have found so little return on your part that I feel I ought not to consider you any longer among my friends."" To this haughty tone what is the reply of the ambassador? ""It is in the hope that those sentiments were not _entirely effaced_ that I wished to address myself directly to your Majesty. But it was not _without fear_ that I approached you. Appearances only too strongly prove the impressions which you have received from our enemies."" And so goes on the dialogue like a scene in a play see-sawing through six intolerable pages. How differently would Pitt's cabinet have acted and how differently did it act! When the Russian councils menaced the seizure of even a paltry Turkish fortress on the Black Sea the great minister ordered a fleet to be ready as _his_ negotiators; and though the factiousness of Opposition at the time prevented this manly demonstration of policy and justice the evidence was given in the reign of Paul when a British fleet crushed the armed neutrality--that trick of French mountebanks imposing on the ambition of the north--and restored Russia to so full a sense of the power and the honour of England that she sent her fleet into her safe keeping at the approach of Napoleon's invasion and has been her fast and honourable ally ever since. ""Cromwell's ambassador"" is the true one for England at all times. A stout British squadron sent to the Baltic in 1780 would have wonderfully solved the difficulties of the British negotiation have completely cleared the empress's conscience have enlightened Count Panin's brains and have convinced even the wily Potemkin himself that the art of political delusion was too dangerous a game to be tried against England. But the true value of history is to instruct the future. We are now in nearly the same relative position to France in which we were sixty-four years ago relative to Russia. We are exhibiting the same dilatoriness which we exhibited then and we shall be fortunate if we escape the same consequences. A strong fleet sent to the Mediterranean would do more to calm the elements of strife effectually than all the remonstrances of all our negotiators. Or if the French were foolish enough to provoke a battle a repetition of the 1st of June or the 21st of October would be the tranquillizer of a restless people who can never suffer Europe to rest in peace but when they themselves have been taught the miseries of war. In justice to the cabinet of 1780 it must be acknowledged that the personal tone of the ambassador was criticised; and we thus find him making his diplomatic apology to Lord Stormont then secretary for foreign affairs:-- ""I have often been conscious of the remark your lordship makes and have myself felt that I was not acting up to the character of an English minister in bestowing such _fulsome incense_ on the empress. But here too I was drawn from my system and principles by the conduct of my adversaries. They ever addressed her as a being of a superior nature; and as she goes near to think herself infallible she expects to be approached with all the reverence due to a divinity."" No excuse could be more unsatisfactory. If other men chose to bow down there would have only been the more manliness and the more effect too in refusing to follow such an example. In 1783 the ambassador obtained permission to return to England. His correspondence at the period immediately previous is remarkably interesting; and it is striking to see that the successive secretaries for the foreign department under all changes of administration formed the same view of the substantial policy of England. When in 1783 Fox assumed the foreign seals he thus writes to Harris in the course of a long letter on the foreign policy of the cabinet:--""You will readily believe me that my system of foreign politics was too deeply rooted to make it likely that I should have changed it. Alliances with the northern powers _ever have been and ever will be the system of every enlightened Englishman_."" In the year following Sir James Harris was appointed by Pitt to the Dutch embassy to which he had been previously nominated by Fox his friend and political leader. The appointment by the new cabinet was thus the strongest testimony to his talents. His letters from the Hague contain a very intelligent statement of the parties and principles which agitated Holland in 1787. The object was the establishment of a democracy and the extinction of the Stadtholderate or at least its suppression as a hereditary dignity. The court of France was busy in this democratic intrigue; and its partial success unquestionably added new combustibles to the pile on which that unfortunate monarchy in the hour of infatuation was preparing to throw itself. The ambassador's language on this occasion is characteristic and memorable. In one of his despatches to the Marquis of Carmarthen then secretary of state he thus says:-- ""The infamy and profligacy of the French make me long to change my profession and to fight them with a sharper instrument than a pen. It must be with those (not our pens but our swords) that we must carry the mediation through if we mean it should be attended with any success. There are strong reports of a popular insurrection in France:""--""_Si_ Dieu voulait les punir par où ils ont peché comme j'admirerais la justice divine!"" The remark was natural; it was almost prophetic; and it was on the eve of realization. In 1789 but two years after the Revolution began. These volumes contain a great deal of extremely curious material especially important to every man who may in future be employed in the foreign service of our diplomacy. They supply a model of the manner in which those offices may be most effectively sustained. We have already expressed dissatisfaction at the submissive style used in addressing the Russian empress. But in other instances the language of the ambassador seems to have been prompt and plain. It is remarkable that England has at the present time arrived at a condition of European affairs bearing no slight resemblance to that of the period between 1783 and 1789. It is true that there will be no second French Revolution; one catastrophe of that terrible extent is enough for the world. But there are strong symptoms of those hostilities which the Bourbons were endeavouring to kindle against this country for at least a dozen years before the Revolution which crushed their monarchy. Without any provocation on the part of England any actual claim or any desire whatever of war this country finds itself suddenly made an object of perpetual insult on the part of all the active mind of France. The cry from every organ of public opinion seems to be war with England whether with or without cause. A violent clamour is raised for our national ruin; the resources of France are blazoned in all quarters; and the only contemplation popular in France is how most suddenly and effectually French armies may be poured on our shores our fields ravaged our maritime cities burned and our people massacred! It must be hoped that this detestable spirit does not reach higher than the Jacobin papers and the villains by whom that principal part of the French press is conducted. Yet we find but little contradiction to it in even the more serious and authentic portion of the national sentiments. In such circumstances it is only right to be prepared. We find also the still more expressive evidence of this spirit of evil in the general conduct of the agents of France in her colonies--a habit of sudden encroachment a growing arrogance and a full exhibition of that bitter and sneering petulance which was supposed to have been scourged out of the French by their desperate defeats towards the close of the war. All this insolence may by possibility pass away; but it also may go on to further inflammation and it may be necessary to scourge it again; and this discipline if once begun must be carried through more effectually than when the Allies last visited Paris. The respect felt for the French king and his prime minister as the friends of peace naturally restrains the language with which aggression deserves to be reprobated. But the French government if it desires to retain that respect must exhibit its sincerity in making some substantial effort to preserve peace. No man of sense in Europe can believe in the necessity of the seizure of Algiers nor in the necessity of the war with Morocco. But every man ca
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see the influence of both on the freedom of the Mediterranean. The seizure of the British consul at Otaheite shows a spirit which must be summarily extinguished or the preservation of peace will be impossible. In the mean time we hear from France nothing but a cry for steam-ships and threats of invasion. We ask what has England done? Nothing to offend or injure: there is not even an allegation of any thing of the kind. But if war must come woe be to those by whom it is begun! The history of all the wars of England with France is one of French defeat. We have beaten the French by land we have beaten them by sea; and with the blessing of Heaven on the righteous cause and our own stout hands we shall always beat them. We have beaten them on the soil of the stranger--we have beaten them on their own. From the fourteenth century when English soldiers were masters of the half of France down to Waterloo we have always beaten France; and if we beat her under Napoleon there can be no fear of our not beating her under a race so palpably his inferiors. All England deprecates war as useless unnatural and criminal. But the crime is solely on the head of the aggressor. Woe to those who begin the next war! It may be final. The late visit of the Emperor of Russia to this country which so much perplexed the political circles of both France and England now probably admits of elucidation. The emperor's visit has been followed by that of the ablest and most powerful diplomatist in his dominions the Count Nesselrode his foreign minister. For this visit too a speedy elucidation may be found. The visits of the King of Saxony and the Princes of Prussia and Holland also have their importance in this point of view; and the malignant insults of the French journals may have had a very influential share in contributing to the increased closeness of our connexion with the sovereignties of Germany and Russia. The maxim of Fox that the northern alliances are the true policy of England is as sound as ever. Still we deprecate war--all rational men deprecate war; and we speak in a feeling which we fully believe to be universal in England that nothing would be a higher source of rejoicing in Great Britain than a _safe_ peace with France and harmony with all the nations of the world. FOOTNOTES: {A} _Diaries and Correspondence of James Harris First Earl of Malmesbury._ Edited by his GRANDSON the Third Earl. 2 vols. {B} ""Every where to remember his country."" POEMS AND BALLADS OF GOETHE. No. II. Goethe's love for the Fine Arts amounted almost to a passion. In his earlier years he performed the painter's customary pilgrimage through Italy and not merely surveyed but studied with intense anxiety the works of the great modern masters. A poet if he understands the theory of his own calling may learn much from pictures; for the analogy between the sister arts is very strong. The secret of preserving richness without glare fulness without pruriency and strength without exaggeration must be attained alike by poet and painter before either of them can take their rank among the chosen children of immortality. It is a common but most erroneous idea that an artist is more indebted for success to inspiration than to severe study. Unquestionably he must possess some portion of the former--that is he must have within him the power to imagine and to create; for if he has not that the fundamental faculty is wanting. But how different are the crude shapeless fancies how meagre and uncertain the outlines of the mental sketch from the warm vivid and glowing perfection of the matured and finished work! It is in the strange and indescribable process of moulding the rude idea of giving due proportion to each individual part and combining the whole into symmetry that the test of excellence lies. _There_ inspiration will help but little; and labour the common doom of man in the loftiest as well as the lowest walks of life is requisite to consummate the triumph. No man better understood or more thoroughly acted upon the knowledge of this analogy than Goethe. He wrought rigidly by the rule of the artist. Not one poem however trifling might be the subject did he suffer to escape from his hands until it had received the final touches and undergone the most thorough revision. So far did he carry this principle that many of his lesser works seem absolutely mere transcripts or descriptions of pictures where the sentiment is rather inferred than expressed; and in some for example that which we are about to quote he even brings before the reader what may be called the process of mental painting. CUPID AS A LANDSCAPE PAINTER Once I sate upon a mountain Gazing on the mist before me; Like a great grey sheet of canvass Shrouding all things in its cover Did it float 'twixt earth and heaven. Then a child appear'd beside me; Saying ""Friend it is not seemly Thus to gaze in idle wonder With that noble breadth before thee. Hast thou lost thine inspiration? Hath the spirit of the painter Died within thee utterly?"" But I turn'd and look'd upon him Speaking not but thinking inly ""Will he read a lesson now!"" ""Folded hands "" pursued the infant ""Never yet have won a triumph. Look! I'll paint for thee a picture Such as none have seen before."" And he pointed with his finger Which like any rose was ruddy And upon the breadth of vapour With that finger 'gan to draw. First a glorious sun he painted Dazzling when I look'd upon it; And he made the inner border Of the clouds around it golden With the light rays through the masses Pouring down in streams of splendour. Then the tender taper summits Of the trees all leaf and glitter Started from the sullen void; And the slopes behind them rising Graceful-lined in undulation Glided backwards one by one. Underneath be sure was water; And the stream was drawn so truly That it seem'd to break and shimmer That it seem'd as if cascading From the lofty rolling wheel. There were flowers beside the brooklet; There were colours on the meadow-- Gold and azure green and purple Emerald and bright carbuncle. Clear and pure he work'd the ether As with lapis-lazuli And the mountains in the distance Stretching blue and far away-- All so well that I in rapture At this second revelation Turn'd to gaze upon the painter From the picture which he drew. ""Have I not "" he said ""convinced thee That I know the painter's secret? Yet the greatest is to come."" Then he drew with gentle finger Still more delicately pointed In the wood about its margin Where the sun within the water Glanced as from the clearest mirror Such a maiden's form! Perfect shape in perfect raiment Fair young cheeks 'neath glossy ringlets And the cheeks were of the colour Of the finger whence they came. ""Child "" I cried ""what wond'rous master In his school of art hath form'd thee That so deftly and so truly From the sketch unto the burnish Thou hast finish'd such a gem?"" As I spoke a breeze arising Stirr'd the tree-tops in the picture Ruffled every pool of water Waved the garments of the maiden; And what more than all amazed me Her small feet took motion also And she came towards the station Where I sat beside the boy. So when every thing was moving Leaves and water flowers and raiment And the footsteps of the darling-- Think you I remain'd as lifeless As the rock on which I rested? No I trow--not I! This is as perfect a landscape as one of Berghem's sunniest. An artist is to our mind one of the happiest creatures in God's creation. Now that the race of wandering minstrels has passed away your painter is the only free joyous denizen of the earth who can give way to his natural impulses without fear of reproach and who can indulge his enthusiasm for the bright and beautiful to the utmost. He has his troubles no doubt; for he is ambitious and too often he is poor; but it is something to pursue ambition along the natural path with unwarped energies and ardent and sincere devotion. As to poverty that is a fault that must daily mend if he is only true to himself. In a few years the foot-sore wanderer of the Alps with little more worldly goods than the wallet and sketch-book he carries will be the royal academician the Rubens or the Reynolds of his day with the most _recherché_ studio in London and more orders upon his list than he has either time or inclination to execute. Goethe has let us into the secret of the young German artist's life. Let us look upon him in the dawnings of his fame before he is summoned to adorn the stately halls of Munich with frescoes from the Niebelungen Lied. * * * * * THE ARTIST'S MORNING SONG. My dwelling is the Muses' home-- What matters it how small? And here within my heart is set The holiest place of all. When waken'd by the early sun I rise from slumbers sound I see the ever-living forms In radiance group'd around. I pray and songs of thanks and praise Are more than half my prayer With simple notes of music tuned To some harmonious air. I bow before the altar then And read as well I may From noble Homer's master-work The lesson for the day. He takes me to the furious fight Where lion warriors throng; Where god-descended heroes whirl In iron cars along. And steeds go down before the cars; And round the cumber'd wheel Both friend and foe are rolling now All blood from head to heel! Then comes the champion of them all Pelides' friend is he And crashes through the dense array Though thousands ten they be! And ever smites that fiery sword Through helmet shield and mail; Until he falls by craft divine Where might could not prevail. Down from the glorious pile he rolls Which he himself had made And foemen trample on the limbs From which they shrank afraid. Then start I up with arms in hand What arms the painter bears; And soon along my kindling wall The fight at Troy appears. On! on again! The wrath is here Of battle rolling red; Shield strikes on shield and sword on helm And dead men fall on dead! I throng into the inner press Where loudest rings the din; For there around their hero's corpse Fight on his furious kin! A rescue! rescue! bear him hence Into the leaguer near; Pour balsam in his glorious wounds And weep above his bier. And when from that hot trance I pass Great Love I feel thy charm; There hangs my lady's picture near-- A picture yet so warm! How fair she was reclining there; What languish in her look! How thrill'd her glance through all my frame! The very pencil shook. Her eyes her cheeks her lovely lips Were all the world to me; And in my breast a younger life Rose wild and wantonly. Oh! turn again and bide thee here Nor fear such rude alarms; How could I think of battles more With thee within my arms! But thou shalt lend thy perfect form To all I fashion best; I'll paint thee first Madonna-wise The infant on thy breast. I'll paint thee as a startled nymph Myself a following fawn; And still pursue thy flying feet Across the woodland lawn. With helm on head like Mars I'll lie By thee the Queen of Love And draw a net around us twain And smile on heaven above. And every god that comes shall pour His blessings on thy head And envious eyes be far away From that dear marriage-bed! There is abundance of spirit here. For once in describing the battle and fall of Patroclus Goethe seems to have caught a spark of Homeric inspiration and the lines ring out as clearly as the stroke of the hammer on the anvil. There is no rhyme in the original which we confess appears to us a fault; more especially as the rhythm is that of the ordinary ballad. We have therefore ventured to supply it with as little deviation otherwise as possible. It is for the reader to judge whether the effect is diminished. Our next selection shall be ""The God and the Bayaderé""--a poem which is little inferior in beauty to the Bride of Corinth and which from its structure opposes to the translator quite as serious a difficulty. The subject is taken from the Hindoo mythology and conveys a very touching moral of humanity and forbearance; somewhat daring perhaps from its novelty and the peculiar customs and religious faith of an eastern land yet withal most delicately handled. * * * * * THE GOD AND THE BAYADERÉ. AN INDIAN LEGEND. I. Mahadeh earth's lord descending To its mansions comes again That like man with mortals blending He may feel their joy and pain; Stoops to try life's varied changes And with human eyes to see Ere he praises or avenges What their fitful lot may be. He has pass'd through the city has look'd on them all; He has watch'd o'er the great nor forgotten the small And at evening went forth on his journey so free. II. In the outskirts of the city Where the straggling huts are piled At a casement stood a pretty Painted thing almost a child. ""Greet thee maiden!"" ""Thanks--art weary? Wait and quickly I'll appear!"" ""What art thou?""--""A Bayaderé And the home of love is here."" She rises; the cymbals she strikes as she dances And whirling and bending with grace she advances And offers him flowers as she undulates near. III. O'er the threshold gliding lightly In she leads him to her room. ""Fear not gentle stranger; brightly Shall my lamp dispel the gloom. Art thou weary? I'll relieve thee-- Bathe thy feet and soothe their smart; All thou askest I can give thee-- Rest or song or joy impart."" She labours to soothe him she labours to please; The Deity smiles; for with pleasure he sees Through deep degradation a right-loving heart. IV. And he asks for service menial And she only strives the more Nature's impulse now is genial Where but art prevail'd before. As the fruit succeeds the blossom Swells and ripens day by day So where kindness fills the bosom Love is never far away. But he whose vast motive was deeper and higher Selected more keenly and clearly to try her Love follow'd by anguish and death and dismay. V. And her rosy cheeks he presses And she feels love's torment sore And thrill'd through by his caresses Weeps that never wept before. Droops beside him not dissembling Or for passion or for gain But her limbs grow faint and trembling And no more their strength retain. Meanwhile the still hours of the night stealing by Spread their shadowy woof o'er the face of the sky Bringing love and its festival joys in their train. VI. Lately roused her arms around him Waking up from broken rest Dead upon her breast she found him Dead--that dearly-cherish'd guest! Shrieking loud she flings her o'er him But he answers not her cry; And unto the pile they bore him Stark of limb and cold of eye. She hears the priests chanting--she hears the death-song And frantic she rises and bursts through the throng. ""Who is she? what seeks she? why comes she so nigh?"" VII. But the bier she falleth over And her shrieks are loud and shrill-- ""I _will_ have my lord my lover! In the grave I seek him still. Shall that godlike frame be wasted By the fire's consuming blight? Mine it was--yea mine! though tasted Only one delicious night!"" But the priests they chant ever--""We carry the old When their watching is over their journeys are told; We carry the young when they pass from the light! VIII. ""Hear us woman! Him we carry Was not could not be thy spouse. Art thou not a Bayaderé? So hast thou no nuptial vows. Only to death's silent hollow With the body goes the shade; Only wives their husbands follow: Thus alone is duty paid. Strike loud the wild turmoil of drum and of gong! Receive him ye gods in your glorious throng-- Receive him in garments of burning array'd!"" IX. Harsh their words and unavailing Swift she threaded through the quire And with arms outstretch'd unquailing Leap'd into the crackling fire. But the deed alone sufficeth-- Robed in might and majesty From the pile the god ariseth With the ransom'd one on high. Divinity joys in a sinner repenting And the lost ones of earth by immortals relenting Are borne upon pinions of fire to the sky! * * * * * Let us now take a poem of the Hartz mountains containing no common allegory. Every man is more or less a Treasure-seeker--a hater of labour--until he has received the important truth that labour alone can bring content and happiness. There is an affinity strange as it may appear between those whose lot in life is the most exalted and the haggard hollow-eyed wretch who prowls incessantly around the crumbling ruins of the past in the belief that there lies beneath their mysterious foundations a mighty treasure over which some jealous demon keeps watch for evermore. But Goethe shall read the moral to us himself. THE TREASURE-SEEKER. I. Many weary days I suffer'd Sick of heart and poor of purse; Riches are the greatest blessing-- Poverty the deepest curse! Till at last to dig a treasure Forth I went into the wood-- ""Fiend! my soul is thine for ever!"" And I sign'd the scroll with blood. II. Then I drew the magic circles Kindled the mysterious fire Placed the herbs and bones in order Spoke the incantation dire. And I sought the buried metal With a spell of mickle might-- Sought it as my master taught me; Black and stormy was the night. III. And I saw a light appearing In the distance like a star; When the midnight hour was tolling Came it waxing from afar: Came it flashing swift and sudden; As if fiery wine it were Flowing from an open chalice Which a beauteous boy did bear. IV. And he wore a lustrous chaplet And his eyes were full of thought As he stepp'd into the circle With the radiance that he brought. And he bade me taste the goblet; And I thought--""It cannot be That this boy should be the bearer Of the Demon's gifts to me!"" V. ""Taste the draught of pure existence Sparkling in this golden urn And no more with baneful magic Shalt thou hitherward return. Do not dig for treasures longer; Let thy future spellwords be Days of labour nights of resting; So shall peace return to thee!"" * * * * * Pass we away now from the Hartz to Heidelberg in the company of our glorious poet. We all know the magnificent ruins of the Neckar the feudal turrets which look down upon one of the sweetest spots that ever filled the soul of a weary man with yearning for a long repose. Many a year has gone by since the helmet of the warder was seen glancing on these lofty battlements since the tramp of the steed was heard in the court-yard and the banner floated proudly from the topmost turret; but fancy has a power to call them back and the shattered stone is restored in an instant by the touch of that sublimest architect:-- THE CASTLE ON THE MOUNTAIN. There stands an ancient castle On yonder mountain height Where fenced with door and portal Once tarried steed and knight. But gone are door and portal And all is hush'd and still; O'er ruin'd wall and rafter I clamber as I will. A cellar with many a vintage Once lay in yonder nook; Where now are the cellarer's flagons And where is his jovial look? No more he sets the beakers For the guests at the wassail feast; Nor fills a flask from the oldest cask For the duties of the priest. No more he gives on the staircase The stoup to the thirsty squires And a hurried thanks for the hurried gift Receives nor more requires. For burn'd are roof and rafter And they hang begrimed and black; And stair and hall and chapel Are turn'd to dust and wrack. Yet as with song and cittern One day when the sun was bright I saw my love ascending With me the rocky height; From the hush and desolation Sweet fancies did unfold And it seem'd as we were living In the merry days of old. As if the stateliest chambers For noble guests were spread And out from the prime of that glorious time A youth a maiden led. And standing in the chapel The good old priest did say ""Will ye wed with one another?"" And we smiled and we answer'd ""Yea!"" We sung and our hearts they bounded To the thrilling lays we sung And every note was doubled By the echo's catching tongue. And when as eve descended We left the silence still And the setting sun look'd upward On that great castled hill; Then far and wide like lord and bride In the radiant light we shone-- It sank; and again the ruins Stood desolate and lone! * * * * * We shall now select from the songs that are scattered throughout the tale of Wilhelm Meister one of the most genial and sweet. It is an in-door picture of evening and of those odorous flowers of life which expand their petals only at the approach of Hesperus. PHILINE'S SONG. Sing not thus in notes of sadness Of the loneliness of night; No! 'tis made for social gladness Converse sweet and love's delight. As to rugged man his wife is As his fairest half decreed So dear night the half of life is And the fairest half indeed. Canst thou in the day have pleasure Which but breaks on rapture in Scares us from our dreams of leisure With its glare and irksome din? But when night is come and glowing Is the lamp's attemper'd ray And from lip to lip are flowing Love and mirth in sparkling play; When the fiery boy that wildly Rushes in his wayward mood Calms to rest disporting mildly By some trivial gift subdued; When the nightingale is trilling Songs of love to lovers' ears Which to hearts with sorrow thrilling Seem but sighs and waken tears; Then with bosom lightly springing Dost thou listen to the bell That with midnight's number ringing Speaks of rest and joy so well? Then dear heart this comfort borrow From the long day's lingering light-- Every day hath its own sorrow Gladness cometh with the night! We are somewhat puzzled as to the title which we ought to prefix to our next specimen. Goethe rather maliciously calls it ""Gegenwart "" which may be equivalent to the word ""Presentiality "" if indeed such a word belongs to the English language. We therefore prefer dedicating it to our own ladye love; and we could not find for her any where a sweeter strain unless we were to commit depredation upon the minor poems of Ben Jonson or of Shakspeare. TO MY MISTRESS. All that's lovely speaks of thee! When the glorious sun appeareth 'Tis thy harbinger to me: Only thus he cheereth. In the garden where thou go'st There art thou the rose of roses First of lilies fragrant most Of the fragrant posies. When thou movest in the dance All the stars with thee are moving And around thee gleam and glance Never tired of loving. Night!--and would the night were here! Yet the moon would lose her duty Though her sheen be soft and clear Softer is thy beauty! Fair and kind and gentle one! Do not moon and stars and flowers Pay that homage to their sun That we pay to ours? Sun of mine that art so dear-- Sun that art above all sorrow! Shine I pray thee on me here Till the eternal morrow. Another little poem makes us think of ""poor Ophelia."" We suspect that Goethe had the music of her broken ballad floating in his mind when he composed the following verses:-- THE WILD ROSE. A boy espied in morning light A little rosebud blowing. 'Twas so delicate and bright That he came to feast his sight And wonder at its growing. Rosebud rosebud rosebud red Rosebud brightly blowing! I will gather thee--he cried-- Rosebud brightly blowing! Then I'll sting thee it replied And you'll quickly start aside With the prickle glowing. Rosebud rosebud rosebud red Rosebud brightly blowing! But he pluck'd it from the plain The rosebud brightly blowing! It turn'd and stung him but in vain-- He regarded not the pain Homewards with it going. Rosebud rosebud rosebud red Rosebud brightly blowing! We are sure that the votaries of Wordsworth will thank us for the next translation which embodies a most noble idea. See how the eye of the poet is scanning the silent march of the heavens and mark with what solemn music he invests the stately thought! A NIGHT THOUGHT. I do not envy you ye joyless stars Though fair ye be and glorious to the sight-- The seaman's hope amidst the 'whelming storm When help from God or man there cometh none. No! for ye love not nor have ever loved! Through the broad fields of heaven the eternal hours Lead on your circling spheres unceasingly. How vast a journey have ye travell'd o'er Since I upon the bosom of my love Forgot all memory of night or you! Let us follow up these glorious lines with a conception worthy of Æschylus--indeed an abstract of his master-subject. It were out of place here to dilate upon the mythical grandeur of Prometheus and the heroic endurance of his character as depicted by the ancient poet. To our mind and ear the modern is scarcely inferior. PROMETHEUS. Curtain thy heavens thou Jove with clouds and mist And like a boy that moweth thistles down Unloose thy spleen on oaks and mountain-tops; Yet canst thou not deprive me of my earth Nor of my hut the which thou didst not build Nor of my hearth whose little cheerful flame Thou enviest me! I know not aught within the universe More slight more pitiful than you ye Gods! Who nurse your majesty with scant supplies Of offerings wrung from fear and mutter'd prayers And needs must starve were't not that babes and beggars Are hope-besotted fools! When I was yet a child and knew not whence My being came nor where to turn its powers Up to the sun I bent my wilder'd eye As though above within its glorious orb There dwelt an ear to listen to my plaint A heart like mine to pity the oppress'd. Who gave me succour Against the Titans in their tyrannous might? Who rescued me from death--from slavery? Thou!--thou my soul burning with hallow'd fire Thou hast thyself alone achieved it all! Yet didst thou in thy young simplicity Glow with misguided thankfulness to him That slumbers on in idlesse there above! I reverence thee? Wherefore? Hast thou ever Lighten'd the sorrows of the heavy-laden? _Thou_ ever stretch'd thy hand to still the tears Of the perplex'd in spirit? Was it not Almighty Time and ever-during Fate-- My lords and thine--that shaped and fashion'd me Into the MAN I am? Belike it was thy dream That I should hate life--fly to wastes and wilds For that the buds of visionary thought Did not all ripen into goodly flowers? Here do I sit and mould Men after mine own image-- A race that may be like unto myself To suffer weep; to enjoy and to rejoice; And like myself unheeding all of thee! We shall close this Number with a ballad of a different cast but lest the transition should be too violent we shall interpolate the space with a very beautiful lyric. We claim no merit for this translation for to say the truth we could not have done it half so well. Perhaps the fair hand that penned it will turn over the pages of Maga in distant Wales and a happy blush over-spread her cheek when she sees enshrined in these columns the effort of her maiden Muse. * * * * * NEW LOVE NEW LIFE. Heart--my heart! what means this feeling? Say what weighs thee down so sore? What new life is this revealing! What thou wert thou art no more. All once dear to thee is vanish'd All that marr'd thy peace is banish'd Gone thy trouble and thine ease-- Ah! whence come such woes as these? Does the bloom of youth bright-gleaming-- Does that form of purest light-- Do these eyes so sweetly beaming Chain thee with resistless might? When the charm I'd wildly sever-- Man myself to fly for ever-- Ah! or yet the thought can stir Back my footsteps fly to her. With such magic meshes laden All too closely round me cast Holds me that bewitching maiden An unwilling captive fast. In her charméd sphere delaying Must I live her will obeying-- Ah! how great the change in me! Love--O love do set me free! One other mood of love and we leave the apprentice of Cornelius Agrippa to bring up the rear. Goethe is said to have been somewhat fickle in his attachments--most poets are--but here is one instance where passion appears to have prevailed over absence. * * * * * SEPARATION. I think of thee whene'er the sun is glowing Upon the lake; Of thee when in the crystal fountain flowing The moonbeams shake. I see thee when the wanton wind is busy And dust-clouds rise; In the deep night when o'er the bridge so dizzy The wanderer hies. I hear thee when the waves with hollow roaring Gush forth their fill; Often along the heath I go exploring When all is still. I am with thee! Though far thou art and darkling Yet art thou near. The sun goes down the stars will soon be sparkling-- Oh wert thou here! If we recollect right--for it is a long time since we studied the occult sciences--Wierius in his erudite volume ""De Prestigiis Demonum "" recounts the story which is celebrated in the following ballad. Something like it is to be found in the biography of every magician; for the household staff of a wizard was not complete without a _famulus_ who usually proved to be a fellow of considerable humour but endowed with the meddling propensities of a monkey. Thus Doctor Faustus of Wittenburg--not at all to be confounded with the illustrious printer--had a perfect jewel in the person of his attendant Wagner; and our English Friar Bacon was equally fortunate in Miles his trusty squire. Each of these gentlemen in their master's absence attempted a little conjuring on their own account; but with no better success than the nameless attendant of Agrippa whom Goethe has sought to immortalize. There is a great deal of grotesque humour in the manufacture agility and multiplication of the domestic Kobold. * * * * * THE MAGICIAN'S APPRENTICE. Huzzah huzzah! His back is fairly Turn'd about the wizard old; And I'll now his spirits rarely To my will and pleasure mould! His spells and orgies--ha'n't I Mark'd them all aright? And I'll do wonders sha'n't I? And deeds of mickle might. Bubble bubble; Fast and faster! Hear your master Hear his calling-- Water! flow in measures double To the bath in torrents falling! Ho thou batter'd broomstick! take ye This old seedy coat and wear it-- Ah thou household drudge I'll make ye Do my bidding; ay and fear it. Stand on legs old tramper! Here's a head--I've stuck it-- Now be off--hey scamper With the water-bucket! Bubble bubble; Fast and faster! Hear your master Hear his calling-- Water! flow in measure double To the bath in torrents falling! See 'tis off--'tis at the river-- In the stream the bucket flashes; Now 'tis back--and down or ever You can wink; the burden dashes. Again again and quicker! The floor is in a swim And every stoup and bicker Is running o'er the brim. Stop now stop! For you've granted All I wanted Well and neatly-- Gracious me! I'm like to drop-- I've forgot the word completely! Oh the word so strong and baleful To make it what it was before! There it skips with pail on pailful-- Would thou wert a broom once more! Still new streams he scatters Round and ever round me-- Oh a hundred waters Rushing in have bound me! No--no longer Can I bear it. No I swear it! Gifts and graces! Woe is me my fears grow stronger Look what grinnings what grimaces! Wilt thou offspring of the devil Soak the house to please thy funning? Even now above the level Of the door the water's running. Broom accurst that will not Hear although I roar! Stick! be now and fail not What thou wert before! You will joke me? I'll not bear it No I swear it! I will catch you; And with axe if you provoke me In a twinkling I'll dispatch you. Back it comes--will nought prevent it? If I only turn me to thee Soon O Kobold! thou'lt repent it When the steel goes crashing through thee. Bravely struck and surely! There it goes in twain; Now I move securely And I breathe again! Woe and wonder! As it parted Up there started 'Quipp'd aright Goblins twain that rush asunder. Help oh help ye powers of might! Deep and deeper grows the water On the stairs and in the hall Rushing in with roar and clatter-- Lord and master hear me call! Ah here comes the master-- Sore sir is my straight; I raised this spirit faster Far than I can lay't. ""To your hole! As you were be Broom! and there be Still; for none But the wizard can control And make you on his errands run!"" THE GREAT DROUGHT. In the spring and summer of 1844 rain began to fail and the first things that perished for want of water died that year. But the moisture of the earth was still abundant and the plants which took deep root found sustenance below; so that the forest trees showed an abundance of foliage and the harvest in some kinds was plentiful. Towards the autumn rain returned again and every thing appeared to be recovering its former order; but the dry winter the dry spring dry summer of the next year told upon the face of creation. Many trees put forth small and scanty leaves and many perished altogether; whole species were cut off; for instance except where they were artificially preserved one could not find a living ash or beech--few were kept alive by means of man; for water began to be hoarded for the necessaries of life. The wheat was watered and where such a thing was possible the hay-fields also; but numbers of animals died and numbers were killed this year--the first from thirst and the last to re
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uce the consumers of the precious element. Still the rich commanded the necessaries and many of the luxuries of life; and the arts which required a consumption of water were carried on as yet and continued in practice even longer than prudence warranted: so strong was the force of habit and the pressure of the artificial necessities which they supplied. The railroads were as yet in activity and when water failed along the line it was brought from the sea by the rich companies concerned in the traffic; only the fares were raised and the trains which ran for pleasure merely were suspended. But in the midst of business and interest there was a deep gloom. Projects which affected the fortunes of nations were in suspense because there was no rain. Cares for the succession of crowns and the formation of constitutions might all be futile if there should be no rain: and it seemed as if there never would be any; for this was now the third year and the earth had not received a shower. And now ceasing to be supplied from their usual sources the springs and rivers withered and shrank. Water became in many places not dear but unattainable. The greatest people of the land left it and used their wealth in chasing the retreating element from place to place on the earth. In some cases among these luxurious spirits there were scenes of extravagant revelry still; they had no employment except to live and they endeavoured to make the act of living as exciting as their old amusements had been. But accounts of foreign countries came more and more rarely to England; for when the fourth rainless year arrived drought and famine had slain three-fourths of its inhabitants and commerce and agriculture were alike suspended. When a vessel came as far up in the mouth of a river as the sinking waters permitted it brought tidings of desolation from whatever port it had left. Stories began to spread of dry land in parts of the ocean where it had never been seen before; marks which had stood in the deep of the sea might now be walked round at all times of the tide and thick crusts of salt were beginning to spread upon tracts of the great deep. These tidings from foreign lands came at long intervals and at long intervals was a ship sent from any English haven. The few dwellers of the coast knew not if there were still any dwellers of the interior: for England was become like the desert; and there were no beasts to carry one across it and no water to be hoarded in skins for the passage. Traffic of every kind ceased; industry was gone; the secrets of science and the cultivated mind of the philosopher were all bent to the production of water; and many a precious object was resolved back into its elements and afforded a scanty supply to a few parched mouths. The lingering inhabitants had the produce of past years only to live upon which nothing replenished as it diminished and to renew which the baked earth was wholly incompetent. In the heart of this desert there was a family which had hitherto survived the destruction of life around them. It consisted of a father and mother and two young children Charles and Alice; the last of whom the girl was but a few months old when the Great Drought began. They had lived in Derbyshire near the range of low hills called the Peak; and they and other inhabitants of that region had found water longer than many others from the sides of the hills and from excavations which they had made in the rocks. The strong hope and expectation of rain had kept them lingering on as long as any supply lasted; and Paulett who in the days when ranks existed had been a great landlord had used both his knowledge and his influence to supply the wants of the people and to postpone their destruction. But those days were gone by; his possessions were so much dust: he wanted water and nobody wanted any thing else. He was a mere man now like those who are born naked and die naked and had to struggle with the needs of nature even as every one else. Meantime his education availed him; and the resources which it taught him prolonged the lives of his family and himself. But he was soon obliged to limit himself to this sole care; for the supply he obtained was scanty and he knew how precarious it must be. He had explored the cavern of the Peak with great attention and he bored the rock in various places and used means suggested by his knowledge of natural causes which had procured a slender flow of water into a basin which he had made. The fury of thirsty men for water was so great that he was obliged to keep his secret with the utmost care; and towards the end of the fourth year he removed his wife and children to the cavern itself and blocked up the entrance in such a manner that he could defend it against any chance survivor. There was no want of the luxuries of furniture in the cavern--all the splendours of the land were at the command of those who would take them; and Paulett brought there whatever had adorned his home when the earth was a fit dwelling-place for man. There was velvet and down to lie upon; there were carpets on which the little Alice could roll; there were warm dresses and luxurious ornaments of the toilette; whatever could be used for comfort he had brought and all other precious things he had left in his open house locking himself and his family up with only water. At first there would come sometimes a miserable man or woman tracing the presence of living creatures and crying for water. Paulett or his wife supplied several and when they had been refreshed they revealed the secret to others; or being strengthened themselves felt the desperate desire of life revive and attempted violence to get at the treasure. After this the inhabitants of the cavern fell back to mere self-preservation; and the father and mother were able to harden their hearts against others by looking at the two creatures whom they had born into the world and who depended upon them. But indeed life seemed to shrink rapidly to nothing over the face of the country. It was very rare to see a moving form of any kind--skeletons of beasts and men were in plenty and their white bones lay on the arid soil; or even their withered shapes dried by the air and the sun were stretched out on the places where they had ceased to suffer: but life was most rare and it became scarcely necessary to use any precaution against an invader of their store. The dreadful misery was that this store diminished. The heart of the earth seemed drying and was ceasing to be capable of yielding moisture even to the utmost wrenching of science. There was so little one hot day that Paulett and Ellen scarcely moistened their lips after their meal of baked corn and warned their children that the draught they received was the only one that could be given them. Charles was now seven years old and had learned to submit but his longing eyes pleaded for more; little Alice was clamorous and the mother felt tears overflow her eyes to think that there was no possibility of yielding to that childish peevishness and that the absolute non-existence of water must punish her poor child's wilfulness. When Paulett had set his instruments to work to renew if possible the supply and when Ellen had removed the silver cups and dishes which had held their corn and water he and she sat down at the mouth of the cavern and the little ones got their playthings and placed them on piece of rock not far off. The mouth of the cave is lofty and there is a sort of terrace running along one side at the foot of which lay the channel of the stream that was now dry. The view is down the first reach of a narrow valley which turns presently afterwards and so shuts out the world beyond from sight; and the hill on each side rises high and from its perpendicularity seems even higher than it is. The shade of the cavern was deep and cool but the sky glowed with the heat and light of the sun and there was not a cloud to hinder him from burning up the earth. The hill-sides the channel where the brook had flowed the stones of the cave were all equally bare; there was no sound of voice or bird or insect--no cool drop from the ceiling of the cave--no moisture even in the coolness of the shadow. Ellen leaned her head on her husband and Paulett pressed his arm round her--both of them were thinking of the basin empty of water. ""Ellen "" said Paulett ""I think the time is come when the elements shall melt with fervent heat. It seems like the conflagration of the world; not indeed as we have always fancied it with flames and visible fire but not the less on that account the action of heat. It is perhaps the Last Day."" ""I hope it is "" said Ellen ""I hope it is; I wish those precious creatures may be among those that are alive and remain and may be spared the torments of this thirsty death."" ""You and I could bear it if they were gone "" said Paulett glancing at them and withdrawing his eyes. ""Oh yes!"" said Ellen pressing near to him and taking his hand in both hers. They were silent and they heard the children talking as they played. ""There is King Alexander "" said Charles setting up a pebble--""he is going to dinner. Put the dinner Alice."" Alice set out several other pebbles before King Alexander. ""And he has got a great feast. There is plenty of water more than he can drink; and he drinks drinks as much as he likes and still there is plenty of water when he goes to bed."" ""Poor children! I can't bear it "" said Ellen. ""Oh Ellen it would have been better never to have given them birth!"" said Paulett. ""No--not that "" said Ellen sitting down again; ""though they must suffer they are better to be; when this suffering has dissolved their bodies--on the other side of these mortal pains there is ease and happiness."" ""True true dear Ellen "" said Paulett; ""it is only difficult to die."" He held her hand; and while he did so his eye fastened on a diamond ring which she wore. She observed his fixed look. ""You gave me that when we little thought how it was we should part--when I was a bride--and there was all the pleasure and business of the world round us. It hardly seems as if we were the same creatures."" ""No we are not; for I am thinking concerning that ring which you were never to part with whether I could not convert the diamond into water."" ""How Paulett?"" ""I can't explain it to you; but it has just crossed my mind that it is possible; and if so there are still plenty of jewels in the world to keep us alive."" He drew off the ring as he spoke and went into the interior of the cave whither Ellen followed him. There was a fire and some apparatus belonging to Paulett which he had used in experiments upon the decreasing water of the basin. He knocked the stone out of its setting and applied himself to decompose it over the fire. He put forth all his skill and all his power and was successful; the diamond disappeared and there remained a few drops of water. He looked at his wife and smiled; she raised her eyes to his astonished and pleased took the cup from his hand and looked at the precious metamorphosis. ""I'll give it the children "" she said and was going away; but he stopped her. ""No Ellen there is not enough to do any good; you and I will drink each other's health in it; and he put the cup first to her lips and then to his own. God bless you my Ellen!"" he said ""my wife--I pledge you again with that diamond. The first drop of water comes from the stone that plighted my faith to you and may it bring you health and happiness yet."" ""God bless you my husband! If we could but die now!"" CHAPTER II. Paulett now exerted himself to collect all the diamonds that remained without owners in the neighbourhood. First he visited his own forsaken home and took thence the jewels which he had neglected in his retreat from it but which were now as precious as water. He found no great store even after ransacking all the houses within reach and determined to undertake a longer journey in search of more. The basin in the cavern continued to yield a scanty supply of water; and Paulett extracted a small quantity from his stones. He made what provision he could for his family before setting out; and for his own necessities took the smallest possible portion in a silver vessel which was most preciously secured and concealed about his person. It was a strange parting between his wife and him both of them feeling and saying that alive they should probably not meet again: yet death was so near them constantly and was so far better than life that his presence had grown familiar; and it was only the mode in which he would come that made them anxious. Paulett perishing alone of thirst was the fearful image to Ellen and Ellen and her children waiting for him in vain and dying one after the other for want of his help was the dread of Paulett. They stood in the cavern and embraced each other silently and blessed their children with the same prayer for the last time. The little ones received and returned his caress and Paulett quitted the cavern and set out on his uncertain expedition. The face of the country was so much changed that he had some difficulty in making his way. The vivid colours of the earth were all gone and in place of them was the painful greyness of the dead trees and the yellow of the parched soil. Nothing was overthrown in ruin but all stood dead in its place. The shapes of men and animals only lay strewn upon the earth. The human beings were comparatively rare; they were the last survivors of the destroying drought whom there had been none to bury; but these at length had died by hundreds and in places their bones were seen whiter than any other object; or if any where over the surface there hung a vapour it came from some collection of dead bodies which had not yet been resolved into the elements. Those whom he found there were mostly in heaps--the beasts had died singly; near what had been water-courses he saw more than once signs of struggle and the last battles of earth had been fought for possession of its waters. He traced out many a pathetic story among the dry bones and faded garments. Women's dresses were there; and fallen into a shapeless heap on what had been their bosom were little forms and the raiment of children. Where the dry air and the sun had preserved the face he beheld the fallen estate of those who had been men in the uncovered shame of death; the wide open lips the sunken eyes over which the eyelid was undrawn the swollen tongue the frame writhed into an expression of anguish revealed all the pain and shame of death. But here and there the hand of some one who had been a survivor was visible in the attempt to conceal all this. In one place there was a shallow grave into which a body had been rolled and lay on its side; and close by on a heap of clothes out of which bones appeared there was a spade with which the unfinished work had been attempted. In another a female body was covered from sun and moon by a man's cloak; and a few paces off lay a man whom nothing shielded. There was an infant's skeleton wrapped in a woman's shawl under what had been a hawthorn hedge; the mother had either perished attempting to find water or had laid her child down and gone away like Hagar in the desert not to see it die. The poor innocent's skull was turned on its shoulder; its cheek must have rested there while the face remained. It was too young to have struggled much. Paulett thought of his little Alice; of her unconsciousness to the fate around her; of what would be her and Charles's and poor Ellen's fate if he failed in his search or perished by the way. He roused himself from looking on all these sorrowful objects and went on his dreary way. The second day after he left the cavern he came to a stately pile of building which he determined to explore for the life-giving stones he was in search of. It stood upon its terraces surrounded by its colonnades and garden-steps in all its old pride and beauty. Its forests were withered indeed its gardens burned its fountains dry; but the palace glanced back the sunlight and was as steadfast and perfect as in the days of the living. Paulett drew near and found as he came close signs of the last days of life in it. The doors were opened to the air; and a few marks of objects removed remained in the outer rooms. There was scoring and dragging on the marble floor; and Paulett doubted for a moment what had left these marks till he saw on one side of a gilded table a barrel lying there empty from which the top as it seemed had been accidentally knocked and the liquor had flowed out. The marble bore the stain of wine and where it had flowed the slabs were broken in two places perhaps from the violence of the struggle of those who saw the liquid flow to wet each one his own parched lips. Paulett thought the lord of the castle had probably deserted it before the worst crisis arrived and had tried to remove what was most valuable in his possession. He went on through long galleries and magnificent rooms all silent as death statues which represented man in his glory and his strength; books which were the work of that high spirit now extinguished under the pressure of bodily wants; luxurious superfluities which were for better days of the world--all was valueless all open; he might go where he would till at length one door resisted his efforts and seemed to have been barred with a certain care from within. Paulett's heart beat high. Was there some one still living like himself; another human creature struggling for existence in this great world and guarding as he had done in his cavern his treasure of water? Should he have another companion to speak with; another with whom perhaps to get over the evil days; to whom to communicate his secret of producing water from diamonds? For the first time since he left the cavern he spoke aloud--he called--he called in the great silence of the earth but nothing answered him. If any one were still alive he might be afraid of another living creature--had not he himself left pistols loaded for his poor Ellen to defend her life and her children if any human being should come near her? He gently shook the door; then proceeded to more violence and forced it open. It was the door of a great dining-room on whose lofty ceiling as he entered it wreaths of smoke rolled which the air had put in motion and a heavy smell as of burned charcoal struck him as he entered. There were no living creatures--the inhabitants were all dead in the last posture of life. The table was covered with silver and gold vessels and among them were dead flowers and fruits dried by the close chamber. It should seem they had drunk deeply before they died here--perhaps they had collected the last liquids and resolved to perish when they had once more feasted: for there was wine still in some of the vessels nay in one there was water; and the ghostly shapes were adorned and fantastically covered with jewels and velvet and all sort of rare and exquisite ornaments. Some were still on chairs some fallen forward on the table some prostrate as if they had lain down to sleep. There were fragments of shivered glass on the floor; there was a statue broken to pieces on the table on the pedestal of which was written ""Patience;"" there were pieces of torn paper in the hands of one which seemed a letter; all these faint shadowings of long stories and of a scene of which there remained no witness struck Paulett's eye. One had sunk down by the silver tripod in which the charcoal had burned and the match that fired it was amongst his garments. One face was there resting on a sofa still perfect enough to show it had been a beautiful woman; and roses artfully made close to nature crowned the long hair which fell upon arms from which the flesh had withered. On the neck were diamonds on the hands diamonds--diamonds had confined the ringlets--diamonds sparkled on the feet. Paulett shuddered as he took them away. The spirit indeed was gone; but here was the last act of the spirit before it plunged into an unknown region it knew not where. Paulett asked himself where. ""A little longer "" said he ""and they must have died; could not they wait their time and take patience with death? Must they die in drunkenness in madness; worse than beasts?"" Then his own thirsty eyes fixed on the table where in the light of the sun the water sparkled and gave rainbow rays. He forgot all beside in the impulse which urged him to seize and drink--to drink the first draught--to satiate his throat with water. He drank and revived; and then blamed himself for yielding so passionately to the impulse which was now passed away; and as it passed the horror of the scene around him acquired greater force and he longed to be out of its influence. He made haste to collect all the jewels around him and when he had done found that his burden was as much as he could safely carry. He went hastily out of the room as if any of these figures could rise and follow him and fastened the door again where the crime had been wrought. He hastily crossed the marble halls and gilded rooms and came out in the sunlight--the splendid solemn sunlight that looked upon a burnt-up world! CHAPTER III. Meantime poor Ellen waited anxiously in the cavern and as soon as the first possible moment for Paulett's return was passed her fears grew strong. There was so much danger for him in the bare desert with his scanty supply of water that she might well listen to fear as soon as it had any reason to make itself heard; and with this dread when she next drew water from her scanty supply came the horrible torment of the anticipated death by thirst which seemed descending upon her children and her. The day she had thought he would return rose and set and so did another and another; and from fearing she had begun to believe indeed that Paulett's earthly hours were passed. Yet hope would not be subdued entirely; and then she felt that perhaps by prolonging their lives another day only she should save them to welcome him and to profit by his hard-earned treasure. The store of water was sacredly precious. She dealt it out in the smallest portions to her children and she herself scarcely wetted her lips; she hardened her heart to see her boy's pale face her girl's feverish eye; she checked even the motherly tenderness of her habits lest the softening of her heart should overcome her resolution; and so she laid them in their beds the third night of her dread when indeed there was scarce another day's supply. She herself lay on hers but deadly anxiety kept her from sleeping and her ears ached with the silence which ought to have been broken by a step. And at last oh joy! there was a foot--yes a few moments made that certain which from the first indeed she believed but which was so faint that it wanted confirmation to her bodily sense. Up sprang Ellen and darted to meet him. She held forward the candle into the air and lo! it was a woman. Ellen screamed aloud; the woman had seen her before and said nothing only pressed forward. ""Who are you?"" cried Ellen; ""are you alive?"" ""Yes just alive; and see here "" said the woman uncovering the face of her young child--""my child is just alive too; give me water before it dies."" ""Then my children will perish "" said Ellen. ""No no "" said the woman; ""how are you alive now unless you have plenty? All mine are gone but this one; my husband died yesterday; ours has been gone for days."" ""My husband is dead too "" said Ellen ""and I have only one draught left."" ""Then I will take it "" said the mother rushing forward. Ellen caught her and struggled with her; the poor child moaned in its mother's arms and a pang shot through the heart of Ellen. ""For God's sake miserable woman "" she said ""do not go near that basin! You are mad with want; you will leave none for my children. Stay here and I will bring your child water. You and I can want and yours and mine shall drink."" But the desperate woman pressed on; her eyes fixed on the water and dilated with intense desire; her lips wide open dying almost for the draught. Ellen's soul was concentred in the fear that the last hope of her boy and girl's life was about to be lost; she struggled with the woman with all her might; she screamed aloud; she lost her hold; she seized a pistol from the table and close as she was to her adversary fired it full at her. The mother fell with a shriek. Ellen started forward and broke her fall and laid hold on the child to free it from her dying grasp. ""Give him me give him me!"" said the mother struggling to lift herself up and stretching her hands out for the boy. The trembling Ellen stooped to give him to her but the child's head dropped on one side as she held him out; he made no effort to get into his mother's arms. Ellen wildly raised his face and he was dead too. The shot had gone through his breast to his mother's and a little blood began to steal from his lips. ""He's dead!"" said the mother who was herself passing away. ""Oh my boy!"" and then feebly with her fast-failing strength she raised him after more than one effort in her arms and pressed her lips to his twice with all the passion that death left in her. The wasted form of the child lay there all pale and withered the straight brown hair was parted on his thin forehead; the mother's uncovered breast where his head rested was white and the hands delicate; the raiment was luxurious; that head had not been reared in the expectation of dying on a bed of rock. Ellen burst into floods of tears and wrung her hands as she stood by looking on what she had done. The woman lifted her eyes and tried to form her lips into a smile; she no longer felt any vehement passion and the torment of thirst was now only one of the pangs of death. Her eyes wandered to the water but when Ellen moved to fetch some she stopped her. ""No; it was for him. He is at ease now. You did right. Don't grieve."" ""Forgive me "" said Ellen kneeling down at her side. ""Oh yes! the poor precious babe suffers no more. I was mad; you said truly in that. I nursed him at my breast till his lips grew dry even there; we lived not far from your cavern and I have seen you and been glad you had water. We had some. _We?_ Yes is not my husband dead; and my boy is dead too! See there is blood on his face; wipe it away; he will die else."" Ellen's sobs caught her wandering attention. ""I remember now you killed him; oh good angel guardian angel! you have killed him and there is only I to suffer. He is gone from this dear dear body; I wish it did not look so like him still--and it looks in pain too--it looks thirsty."" Ellen hid her own face on the mother's shoulder for an instant.--Her children had awakened at the noise of the pistol and they were out of bed and clinging around her; her sorrow roused theirs and the sound of their lamentation reached the dying woman's ear. ""There are my children crying. Alas! I thought they had all been dead."" ""They are mine "" said Ellen. ""Yours are at rest yours _are_ all dead."" ""Thank God!"" said the mother; and though the words were earnest the voice was faint; all the effort of nature was in them but they came feebly from her lips. After that indistinct sounds and murmured names only were heard; her breath came in gasps and at longer and longer intervals; till the faint shuddering of her limbs ceased by degrees and after it had been insensible to the world for a while the spirit quitted it for ever. Ellen's heart died within her; her senses were troubled and she pressed herself in Paulett's arms without knowing when he came or being surprised that he was there. ""Oh Paulett!"" she said at last ""I have not done wrong but it is so dreadful!"" Paulett soon gathered from her all that had happened; and gazed with pity on what had once been a beautiful form but rejoiced that it suffered no longer. Ellen shuddering arranged the dress composed the limbs and with a thousand tears placed the infant on that breast which had been so faithfully its mother to the last. And there they slept mother and child--the day of trouble ended for both. ""My poor Ellen "" said Paulett ""I wish it were thou and my children who were there at rest!"" and Ellen pressed her Charles and her Alice to her heart and would have been glad if they had indeed been dead. CHAPTER IV. In that time of trouble and of unexampled events the mind received impressions in a different manner from what it had ever done before. The stern gloom that hung over the future the hazard upon which life was suspended the close contact with universal death and the desperate struggle by which it was staved off gave to all things a new character; and the scene of the last chapter was but one of the series of deadly and dreadful excitements which were now the habit of every day. The solemn frame of mind which it induced in Ellen was of a piece with the solemn nature of their existence; and she could talk of it with her husband at any time and not disturb the natural bent which their conversation took. They searched the immediate neighbourhood for the habitation of the unhappy mother and her family; and the marks of her footsteps on the dust of the soil enabled them to trace her to Hope a village in the plain two miles or rather more from the Peak. She and her husband had used the church for their habitation and it seemed had employed the same kind of precaution as Paulett to defend it and conceal that it was their dwelling. One entrance only was left and the other apertures blocked up; but all care was useless now for death had set them free from pain and fear. On a bed beside the altar lay the body of a man over which as spread a cloak of fur and velvet which in the lifetime of the world would have been most precious. His eyes were decently closed the curtains of the bed drawn round him and the pillow which supported his head was marked with the pressure of another head and with moisture which could have been only the tears of his wife. The floor of the church was in confusion like the dwelling of one too much distracted with trouble to attend to what did not relate to it; but there was corn which had served for food and fuel heaped on the stone which had been a hearth--there was the drawing of a lovely woman and of a beautiful place: but these were cast into a corner probably by the irritable hand of despair. On a table stood empty cups which had long perhaps been dry--the glass of one had been shivered and the fragments lay on the floor; there were also a few books neglected and covered with dust. In the churchyard were the marks of three recent graves--one of them had a stone at its head on which was carved with care the name of Alfred and the soil was fenced and supported with sticks so as to preserve its shape over the body--probably it was that of the first child whom the parents had committed to dust. Another was more hastily prepared and no superfluous labour had been bestowed on it. This must be the last when heart and health were both failing. Paulett and Ellen kneeled and prayed beside them and rejoiced that the mother too was at rest after the long misery of this scene. They returned to their cave and under the shadow of the rock near the old course of the brook laid both mother and child covering their bodies with stones and thinking more of the probable reunion in some unknown scene of the spirits of that family than of the distance which separated their graves on this earth. And now with good store of diamonds and with increasing skill and success in the resolution of them into water both Paulett and Ellen looked upon the lives of all as safe for the present and their thoughts were at liberty to wander to some other subject. They believed that they and their children were alone in the world for every sign of life from other countries as well as their own had ceased. It was very long since any human tidings had come and though after men had done with each other birds continued their migrations these had now long been over and the years passed away without bringing or sending a single wing. The course of the seasons too was strange and unnatural. It seemed as if the earth performed its usual course in the heavens and kept its place and functions in the movements of the planets; days and nights varied in their length according to the season and the heat of the sun was at one time of the year great and at another weak: but much that depended hitherto upon the constitution of the globe was suspended. There were no clouds in the sky no dews dropping from the air no reproduction in the earth. It seemed decayed and dying of old age. Yet Paulett said a new existence woul
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perhaps arise on this same scene and from these same elements. Once before the earth had been reduced to eight persons by the action of water; and now the absence of the same element had brought it to four. Charles and Alice might be the destined parents of a new race and those names that were so familiar now might become the venerable appellations of the founders of the third race of man. Ellen smiled and shook her head looking at the boy and girl who were building a house of pebbles; and both parents listened for a while to what they were saying. Charles recollected the house he had dwelt in before the great shipwreck of human life drove then to the cavern; and he was teaching Alice that there were rooms below and rooms above and that he had heard how people like their father had carried great stones and put them one on another to make these rooms. Alice persisted in making her house one hollow cavern; and the other she called Charles's house and did not understand his recommendation. ""Charles is taking the part already of a teacher in whom remains the traditionary knowledge of an old world "" said Paulett; ""and Alice represents the new inhabitants who have their own rude copies of natural objects but who will be open to the training of the learned man."" ""The learned man will be their father "" said Ellen; ""they will gladly take their notions from him."" ""Yes; but if it should be so destined the first generation must work hard merely to live--they must be very long ignorant of every thing except a paternal government and such habitations as can be raised or appropriated most easily. They will be children in comparison to Charles all their lives if we can but succeed in giving him the ideas of the age we have lived in. Fancy them Ellen increased to perhaps fifty inhabitants before he dies a very old man coming round his chair to hear of the wonderful steam-engine and the use of the telescope and to learn the art of printing and the list of different languages which Romans Frenchmen Germans Greeks used; and what lions were and horses."" ""Or tell them how he and Alice escaped from the great drought "" said Ellen. ""But alas! it is far more likely he and she will perish in it and then of what use is this knowledge to him?"" ""Why--his soul. 'It is a thing immortal like thyself;' and if what he knows is of no use here it will be useful elsewhere."" ""What!"" said Ellen smiling--""are there railroads and telescopes in another world?"" ""For aught I can tell. At all events the powers that contrive them here may contrive something from the same principles hereafter."" ""But we can tell nothing about the other world "" said Ellen. ""Nay this is _another world_ to the stars; and if we know nothing about our destiny the only way we have to judge is by what we actually are and tend to be now. So while life remains I will teach my boy all I know and go on as a man of this world ought to do; then we shall be ready for every thing."" Accordingly Paulett every day carried on his son's education as far as the boy's age permitted and instructed him in all that he would have learned had the world been as it was formerly. Only like a man in a shipwreck looking forward to a desert island as his best hope he dwelt most upon what would be usefullest supposing Charles (being preserved) to have to provide for the physical necessities of a new race of man. Next in order came science and arts; and it was easier to make him feel the merits of these than of the exploits of men especially when they consisted of valour and of the deeds of conquerors; for the heroic virtues seemed to take a new character in the present circumstances of the world; and whereas they used to kindle and blaze in personal danger and at the sound of the applause of men they now burned brightly in the endurance of a world's dissolution which with all its terrors and prolonged impressions must be met by the calm self-sustaining spirit rising superior to the greatest excess of physical injury. The boy's soul replied to the call upon it. He learned to look on the dangers before him and to consider the possibility of escape with quiet calculation of chances. He inured himself to privation readily and eagerly tried to spare his mother and Alice from it. He and his father hand in hand walked over the desolate land realizing the idea that they were in fact spirits superior to all physical things and divided from spirits and their sphere only by their frail connexion with a body. They talked of virtue and duty and how good it was to dwell in these painful bodies since they were the place wherein virtue was practised and duty learned; and the father taught the son that the opportunities occurred not only in enduring the dissolution of the frame of present things and in the untiring exertion to aid and support life in those who were of weaker sex than they but in abiding with even and cheerful temper the vexations of every day and in adorning as far as possible as well as preserving life. The mother was heroic good and patient too. She brought her children night and morning to the mouth of the cavern and there they all kneeled by Paulett who prayed aloud with them and for them. Then Ellen made ready their meal which must all be prepared without water and which consisted of the stores from former harvests of which there was abundance laid up in various houses; and the little Alice who could run at her mother's side learned to be useful in some matters and patient and obedient. Charles played with her and taught her; and he himself mere child as he was grew merry in his play and earnest; and many a time the profound silence of the earth was broken by the hearty laugh of children which would ring out through the cavern and reverberate against its walls. They grew and were perfect and beautiful in shape; their minds developed and talents and virtues filled them. They were types of man and woman--the one bold and protecting the other seeking for affection and defence. They flourished when means appeared inadequate to their support; and amid a paralysed world it was in them only that body and spirit seemed to unfold. CHAPTER V. Time passed on and there was no change in the state of things. Still an unclouded sun--still the deep intense blue sky--winds on the earth but no moisture; and the whole frame of nature seemed crumbling into chaos. Paulett felt the strife with fate to be unequal indeed and could scarcely comprehend that he and his family were truly survivors amid such destruction; but he resolved not to give in while the means remained to him but to fight the fight out till overpowered by the material universe. He told Ellen that they must move to some place where they might hope to find more diamonds and Ellen agreed--wishing with Paulett that the strife were over and the last agony suffered and that they were among the free and disembodied spirits. London was their object; for there they might hope to find most of the materials of what was now the most precious of all things water; and providing as well as they could for their necessities by the way they quitted the cavern and set off on their journey. First came the father carrying the little Alice in his arms; the boy held his mother by the hand; and they followed Paulett on his path. There was the delicate woman the mother of all that remained alive of the human race setting out on the desert which she remembered but a few years before the scene of luxury and abundance. On her shoulder she carried a burthen containing corn for their sustenance; and the brave boy took his share by bearing the jar of water which had been provided for their support on the journey; and thus the last family of mankind set out on their pilgrimage over the desolated earth. The unmitigated sun had made great rents in the sides of the hills and together with the wind had broken up the roads between which and the parched fields there was scarcely now any difference. Where there had been inclosures and hedges the withered sticks had in most places yielded to the winds and were scattered about the spot where they had stood. Here and there were the marks of fire which had run along the country till some interval of previous desolation had stopped it; and where this had been the case the black unsightly remains lay strewn over the surface one further step advanced in dissolution than the dead world around. There was no want of habitations for their nightly shelter. Palaces and cottages all alike were open; all alike were silent and tenantless habitations. They might choose where they would. And the first day they did not go far for Ellen and her children with stout hearts had not bodily strength for great fatigue and were unused to the strong exertion they were now compelled to make. Towards evening therefore when they reached a house with which Paulett and Ellen had once been familiar they determined to rest there for the night. They pushed open the gates which still swung on their hinges and which admitted them to what had been a park filled once with trees and bathed with waters. A large wood covered the hill which rose on one side and which now under a summer sun stood perfectly bare and all of one uniform grey colour as far as the view extended. On the other side the eye looked over a tract of country varied with hill and dale but desolate of every colour that used to shine forth in light and shade. The setting sun shone among the leafless branches casting long brilliant rays of light. The unclouded sky met the sparkling earth and both glittered with unnatural brilliancy. To Paulett and Ellen every thing spoke of desolation and death; and an exclamation escaped Ellen in a low tone that it was a piteous and horrible spectacle. But Charles standing still at their side as they looked on the scene cried it was beautiful; the colours of the sun were so splendid on the fine white trees and one could see so far and every thing was so white and shining on the earth. The parents felt that ideas were ceasing to be in common between the last and the first members of the old and the new generation; and far from contradicting their boy they tried to partake his pleasure and enter into his impressions. They moved on up to the old familiar door and entered the open silent hall where they remembered the ceremonies and the courtesies of life. They chose among the rooms which had been those of friends and recognised familiar objects of their everyday existence. It was a conceit of Paulett's for which he smiled at himself to wind up the clock in the hall and set it to tell out the time again for another week. There were musical instruments in a room adjoining and over one of these Ellen timidly passed her fingers. It was out of tune and the sounds though sweet in themselves all jarred with one another. ""That's the last music of the world perhaps "" said Ellen; ""and all discord too."" They found some small store of corn in one of the rooms; they prepared and ate it and lay down to sleep; forgetting in fatigue all their dismal feelings and in their dreams seeing the old state of things and dead persons--nay a dead world--without wondering that they were come to life again. All the days of their journey wore an uniform character; and they kept on and on through waste and ruin glad to leave the country behind them and expecting as some relief the aspect of streets and a town. They halted at length within a few miles of London and lay down to rest thankful to be so near their bourne; for they had suffered as much fatigue as they could well bear and their stock of diamonds was waxing very low and needed replenishment. Paulett continued busy preparing water from part of those that remained after his wife and children were asleep. His own frame scarcely felt the exertion of the journey and he was full of the thoughts with which the approaching sight of what had been once the great metropolis filled him. The vast untenanted dwelling-place the solitude of the habitation of crowds the absence of mind and talent from the scene they had so filled; all these things excited his feelings and gaining ground in the solitude of the night he felt at last that he could not willingly delay his first meeting with the bereaved city and that he should be pleased to have an opportunity of indulging alone the highly-wrought emotion with which he expected the sight of it. Accordingly when the light began to break he wrote word to Ellen that she should wait for him a few hours and that he would be back again in that time to lead her and the children to their journey's end; and then softly leaving the house set forward eagerly on his way. It was evening before he returned. He came in pale and excited; he took his children in his arms as usual and seemed like one upon whom a thing which he has seen has made a deep impression but who either doubts the power of words to convey the same impression or thinks that he himself is over-excited by it. ""Ellen "" he said at last ""London is burned to the ground."" The sudden flush on her face and her clasped hands while she spoke not showed that the event touched her too as deeply as him; and then he went on freely-- ""Oh Ellen! if you had seen it! It stands there all in ruins--the whole city in ruins! It has been the work of some great storm which fired it when all were gone or dead; for there has been no pulling down no pillage no aid no attempt to stop the fire! All the palaces all the museums all the stores of learning and art the streets the crowded houses; they are gone Ellen--they are all gone!"" His wife had never before in all their misery seen him so deeply moved--so nearly overpowered by any thing that had occurred. His excitement communicated itself to her and she caught the full bearing of his narration. She felt for the long ages of story and the monuments of human skill buried in the great city. Irretrievable ruin! The work which men and years and glowing knowledge had slowly raised up all dead all annihilated so suddenly. They sat talking of it very long before Ellen said ""And what must _we_ do now Paulett?"" ""We must go on Ellen; we must travel further. The rest we hoped for is destroyed with the city and we must press forward if we are to save our lives."" ""That seems less and less possible "" said Ellen; ""and in all this destruction why should we be preserved?"" ""Perhaps because we have as yet avoided the stroke by using all our human skill; perhaps because a new race is to spring from us who shall reign in another mighty London! Alas London!--alas the great city!"" Several times during the night Ellen heard Paulett murmur to himself words of lament over the fallen city; and when he slept his rest was agitated and his frame seemed trembling under the emotions of the day. It was resolved that Ellen should rest a little while in their present habitation before undertaking the toils of further travel. They intended to make for the coast sure of a dry channel to the opposite shore and hoping to reach some of the great continental towns before their store of diamonds should be utterly exhausted. In the meantime Paulett was bent upon taking his boy through the ruins of London and impressing upon him the memory of the place and its great events. So the next day leaving Ellen and the little Alice together he and Charles began their pilgrimage through the mighty ruins. The event must have occurred very many months ago for the ruins were perfectly cold and the winds had toppled down the walls of all the more fragile buildings; so that the streets lay in confusion over one another and it was impossible except by other marks to recognise the localities. Paulett and Charles clambered over the fallen walls and would have been bewildered among heaps of masonry and houses shaken from their base and blackened by fire--only that over the desolate prospect they saw and Paulett marked the bearings of St Paul's the chief part of whose dome rose high in the air though a huge rent let the daylight through it and threatened a speedy fall. There was here and there a spire rising perfect over the ruins; there were remains of Whitehall strong though blackened seen over a long view of prostrate streets; and in the distance beyond fragments of Westminster Abbey showed themselves in the sunlight though defaced and crumbled as if the frame had been too ancient to resist the fire. Guided by these landmarks Paulett traced out the plan of the city and by degrees recognised where the great streets had run where the palaces had stood where the river had flowed. And all was silent all an absolute stillness where there had been such ceaseless voices and sounds of life; the libraries were burned the statues calcined the museums in ashes; the mind of man which triumphs over the body had here been subdued by matter and left no trace of itself. ""Oh! London London! So much talent so much glory and beauty; such mighty hearts such mighty works; such ages of story--all buried in one black mass! Piteous spectacle!"" cried Paulett striking his breast and stretching forth his arms over the skeleton of what was once a sovereign in the world. He took his son by the hand and led him over the confused masses telling him as they went along what were the ruins by which they passed. ""This great heap of building which has fallen into a square must be the palace of our kings. It is that St James's where they dwelt till nobler buildings rose with the improving times. See here Charles--there is less ruin here. This opener space was park and garden; and time has been that I have heard the buzz of men filling all this place when the sovereigns came to hold their courts in that building. I think that this dreadful fire must have taken place before life was quite extinct; for see there are heaps of bones here as though men had fled together to avoid it; and it either overtook them with long tongues of fire such as a burning city would send forth or smothered them before they could escape with its smoke. Ha! I see almost a palace there--a wonder of modern art. It is the house I once saw and only once for it was built during the years of the great drought."" ""Who could build in those days father?"" said Charles; ""I thought no one had any heart for doing more than we do and that is but just keeping ourselves alive."" ""Nay it was very long before the persuasion came that those were the last days. We all believed that rain would come again and restore the earth to its old order and whoever possessed the means builded and projected still. You may see this magnificent place suffered violence before the fire; for its ornaments are torn from the walls and its statues mutilated by other means than the bare fall. It was the property of a man called Jephcot who when the water began to fail contrived means to bring it into London from great distances and thus to secure a supply when the ordinary means were useless. He kept his contrivance secret and supplied the city when other men's resources were exhausted; and he grew exceedingly rich by this exercise of his ingenuity and built himself the palace which you see there. But when the failure of water amounted to absolute famine the rich people naturally were the last who wanted; they gave his price and he supplied them before he would supply others who had no money to bring. This was endured with murmurs which might have gone on a little longer had not Jephcot in the midst of this distress given a banquet to the great people of London. ""It was in the second year of the drought when little thinking what the end was to be we all continued to live as far as possible as we had done before. I was in London where the parliament was then sitting and among others I was invited to this house and still remember the scene of luxury and profusion of these bare rooms. In the midst of the noise of a crowded assembly some of us heard sounds outside which were such as you will never hear even if you live--sounds of the feet and voices of thousands of human beings. Among this tumult we began to distinguish individual voices chiefly those of women crying out ""water!"" We paid little attention and those who did said the police and soldiers were called out and would prevent violence; but before long it was whispered that these forces pressed by extreme want and seeing their families perishing had joined the mob and were exciting violence. There fell a silence over all the assembly; every one left the tables and gathered together to hear and to consult: and while we did so there came an assault on the front of the house and the voices of the populace all broke out at once into shouting. They were irresistible; they forced their way in and came pouring up the staircase; they uttered cries of vengeance for imaginary wrongs saying that the waters of London had been kept for the rich and that there was abundance for both rich and poor and threatened the lives of Jephcot and his family even more eagerly than they demanded water. He tried to address them but they caught him down from the head of the staircase where he stood and flung him at once over the marble banisters. This was the signal for attack on all sides. We rushed forward to rescue his body and revenge him they to possess themselves of the treasure they so much coveted. Of course we were overpowered for we were one to fifty; and that night there fell a hundred of the nobles of England. The women were respected by the mob and except one lady who was shot accidentally and another who saw her son fall and stood over him till he ceased to breathe then fell wounded and dying herself all escaped. Your mother was not there. When our party was quite vanquished I found myself in the midst of the mob bleeding to death as I thought; but they flung me on one side and I recovered. They pulled the house to the ground after they had satiated themselves with drinking. And that was the first great calamity which overthrew the government of the country."" ""And how did that come about father?"" said Charles eagerly holding him by the hand and sharing his excitement. Paulett led him on telling him at one ruined monument after another what steps had been taken at each in the destruction of the order of things. They came to the dry channel of the Thames a deep and wide trench whose bottom showed objects that had lain there when the waters flowed above and which would once have been as precious as now they were unregarded. Here as a bridge from side to side; and a little way above stood part of the walls of a noble building partly black with smoke partly white with the polish and beauty of stones newly built together. ""These are the Houses of Parliament "" said Paulett ""the work of many years which were to replace those burned in 1834. See how beautiful they were what excellent design what exquisite finish; how strong and stable to last for a thousand ages and to crown the river which then flowed in this dusty channel. When matters were come almost to the worst and there were convulsions all over the country in consequence of the famine the queen for the first time came to these houses to open the last parliament that ever assembled. There were no beasts of burthen left alive in the country; it had been found impossible to appropriate water enough to those which had been reserved in the royal stables; and the queen surrounded by a certain number of the court walked along yonder street to the House. The sight of so young a woman and so great a sovereign thus leveled by physical necessity with the meanest excited some of the old enthusiasm with which she used to be greeted: the populace themselves with their squalid faces and in their extreme misery greeted her; but the greatest feeling was aroused among the nobles and gentry who surrounded her and who seemed to make a point of offering more homage the less outer circumstances commanded it. There was assembled in the House all that remained alive of the nobles of England and the sovereign; and they proposed to deliberate upon the possibility of any means remaining to provide water. But a demagogue of the people Matthison by name roused their fury and their madness and they burst in accusing their superiors of their calamities. The queen's life was in danger;--and then occurred a gallant action which is worthy to live if man lives. A Churchill a descendant of that Marlborough who fought Blenheim came to the hall whither they had broken in and required in the queen's name to know what they wanted. He meant to gain time; for other nobles had effected an exit at a private door for her and were hurrying her away to a place of security till she could escape from England. They answered Churchill that water was monopolized; that Matthison must be minister; that they must speak to the queen face to face and have her hostage for the accomplishment of what they wished. Churchill pretended to deliberate for an instant with some one in the adjoining chamber; and then returning said 'If the queen do not speak with you in ten minutes you may tear me in pieces.' Some of the mob cried that he was saying this to give her time to escape. Others said if it were so he should assuredly suffer the penalty. Churchill answered nothing only smiled; and then the majority said he could not be so foolhardy and they would grant the queen ten minutes. ""The time passed and Matthison eagerly cried 'The time is gone yet we don't see the queen.' ""'Then tear me in pieces ' said Churchill; and the mob finding their prey had escaped did so indeed; the gallant man falling where he stood and not another word came from his lips."" ""The brave man!"" cried Charles; ""the good man! Were there many such brave good men in the old world father?"" ""Ay that there were "" said Paulett; ""many a glorious one; some known and some unknown who did things which made one know one's-self a glorious an immortal creature. See there that ruined abbey--there lie the ashes of brave and good; these are their crumbled monuments--'that fane where fame is A spectral resident!' Alas there is no fame no name left!"" Paulett and Charles went down among the ruins of the abbey and there amidst the fallen stones and broken aisles saw monumental marbles old known names and funeral inscriptions contrasting strongly by their quiet character with the confusion around. ""Never forget them Charles "" said Paulett. ""These are names which the world has trembled at and which are now like to be such as those before the Flood barbarous to those who are building up a new order of things and known merely as a barren catalogue of names. Yet if you live remember Edward the king here; remember the Black Prince; remember the days and heroes of Elizabeth; remember the poetry and the romance of the old world."" ""Ay father and I'll remember the great name of him who taught you to print and of Wicliffe the reformer and of the man who gave you the steam-engine."" Paulett smiled and sighed; he felt that his own ideas of things heroic were as much contrasted with those of Charles as their notions of the beautiful. But he thought not to stem the stream. ""See here "" he said pointing to some new monuments which like the old were cracked by fire; ""there were many brave and good actions done and one of those who did best was laid here. He was a clergyman his name Host and during the pestilence which came on in the fourth year he was more like an inspired messenger of good than any mortal creature. You must know Charles that the teachers of religion at this time were greatly divided among themselves and they had led a great portion of the lay world into their disputes. One party in an age of reasoning and when nothing in science was taken upon trust gave up their reason altogether and followed authority as blindly as they could--still however feeling the influence of the age; for they would argue upon the existence or non-existence of authority and would fit it unconsciously each man to his own conceit. Indeed superstition was the disease of the age and while the healthy part of the community employed and enjoyed the freest use of their reason this same infirmity appeared among other people in other forms; so that some men took up the notion that the human mind might act independently of sense and see without eyes and know intuitively what existed at a distance. Other parties among professors of religion allowed nothing in religion that they allowed daily in the evidence of other matters. They gave no weight to research and thought about religious facts; and dreamed that each one among themselves gained a kind of spiritual knowledge by inspiration. It was a time of conceits and quackery; but there was a better spirit abroad of which this good man Host was the representative. He began in the pestilence and went to all houses indifferently whether they were princes or peasants; and there was a common-sense in what he did and said a universal character in his religion which struck men in these evil days. They drew nearer to each other under his influence; and I recollect this great building thronged in one of the last months that men continued here with a congregation of all orders and all divisions of opinion who met to pray together and listen to Host. He stood yonder Charles as nearly there I think as I can tell from the ruins; he was rapt by his own discourse and his face was as the face of an angel. And truly three days after he was dead; and here they buried him--the last sound of the organ the last service of this church being for him. Here is his name still on the tombstone-- 'Host. Pio. dilecto. beato. Populus miserrimus.'"" Charles's memory was deeply impressed with this history and he followed his father much engrossed and animated by what he had heard. Not so Paulett; for the ruins of London occupied his mind and filled him with deep pity and regret for the fair world destroyed: and so they returned to their temporary habitation the father sorrowful the son exulting; one full of the old world one dreaming great actions for the new. After another day's rest the sole surviving family of mankind set forth again on their pilgrimage. Paulett again carried his Alice and Ellen and Charles walked hand in hand with such a basket of necessaries as they could support. Paulett secured about his person a large packet of diamonds collected in palaces and noble dwellings near London and the apparatus he required for transmuting them into water; and searching for and finding the remains of the railroad to the coast at Dover they kept on in that track which from its evenness offered facility to their journey. But in several places it had been purposely broken up during the commotions which preceded the final triumph of the drought and the tunnel near Folkestone had fallen in the middle from want of the necessary attention to the masonry. These difficulties seemed harder to bear than those which they had met with in the beginning of their pilgrimage when their hopes of reaching a certain bourne were more secure. The destruction of London had thrown a deep gloom over all their expectations; and besides that help was removed to a much greater distance they could not but feel it very probable that a similar fate might have befallen the other places they looked to. Nevertheless none of them murmured. They went steadfastly though sadly on; and the two children with less knowledge of what was to be feared were encouraged by their parents whenever they broke into a merrier strain. Alice was the happiest of the party for she knew least. She was the one who suffered least also; for every one spared her suffering and contrived that what remained on earth of luxury should be hers. She had the first draught of water; she was carried on her father's shoulder; she ran to find pebbles and whatever shone and glittered on their path; and when the others were silent they heard with joy her infant voice singing without words like a bird in a covered tone as they got wearily over mile by mile of their way. Ellen suffered most though Paulett tried by all means that remained to lighten her fatigue and cheer her spirit. She bore up steadfastly; but her frame was slight and her feelings were oppressed by the fearful aspect of things around her. They made a deep and deeper impression and she was fain to look steadfastly on the faces of the few living to recover from the effects of such universal death. Paulett himself was shaken more than he knew though he was as energetic as ever; but Charles was vigorous and advanced beyond his years and took more than his share in aiding and in comforting. They came at last
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o what had been sea-coast and to that part of the road which ran along the face of the cliff overlooking the sea; and here they paused and gazed upon the wild and strange view before them. Where the sea had stretched all glorious in motion expanse and colour there was now a deep valley the bottom of which was rough with rocks black for the most part but in places glittering with the white salt from which the water had evaporated and which the winds had rolled together. Further out from the coast where the sea had been deepest there seemed tracks of sand; and far away over this newly exposed desert rose other hills clearly seen through the unclouded atmosphere and which they knew to be the rocks of France. And if they should arrive there what was the hope they offered? Scarce any. Nothing but more pilgrimage further wandering. Paulett and Ellen sat apart while the children lay sleeping side by side for an hour or two at this point of their journey and talked over the desolation before them. ""Yet "" said Paulett ""the more terrible is the appearance which material things put on the greater I feel the triumph of the spirit to be. The worse it looks the more immortal I feel; and when a perishing world shows itself most perishable I exult most that you and I Ellen have borne it so far."" ""Yes I am glad too "" said Ellen; ""your strength strengthens me. In the midst of this desolation the mind rises for an hour at least higher perhaps than it would have ever done if we had been prosperous."" ""Yet we might have used our prosperity to the same good end "" said Paulett. ""It is not necessary to be miserable in order to be noble. Millions have died before us some in agony some before the struggle began; some hardly some at ease: they had all their chances; all had their occasions of virtue if they used them; and some used them some failed: ours is not over yet; we have to struggle on still; and let us do it dear Ellen and be ready for the good day when we too may be allowed to die."" And thus talking for a while they rested themselves in sight of the desert they had to traverse; then with renewed strength and steadfast resolution when the children woke descended the cliffs and prepared to trace out a path through what had been the bottom of the sea. The first part of the journey was infinitely difficult: the rocks over which foot of man had never passed; the abrupt precipices over which had flowed the even surface of the ocean and then the height to climb again again to find themselves on ledges and shelves of rocks--all these seemed at times hardly passable impediments. And when they got to a distance from what had been the shore the unnatural place where they found themselves pressed upon the imagination. There was a plain of sand about which at irregular distances rose rocks which north and south stretched out beyond the reach of the eye; and this sand which had been at such a depth that it never felt the influence of the waves was covered in places with shells the inhabitants of which had perished when the waters gradually dried away. There lay mixed with these some skeletons of fishes; here a huge heap and there small bones which looked less terrible; and masses of sea-weed dried and colourless under which as it seemed the creeping things of the ocean had sheltered for a while and some had crawled to the surface when about to perish. But it was not only the brute creation which had died here: there was in the middle a pile of rocks on one side of which they came suddenly to a pit so deep and dark that they perceived no bottom; and here probably there had been seawater longer than elsewhere for there were human bones about it and skulls of men and human garbs which the sun had faded but which were not disturbed by waves. There was a cord and a metal jar attached to it for lowering into the pit; but Paulett as he looked at the attitudes of the remaining skeletons and observed how they seemed distorted in death fancied that they must have brought up either poisoned water or waters so intensely salt as to drive them mad with the additional thirst; and that some had died on the instant some had lingered some had sought to succour others and yielded sooner or later to the same influence. Ellen and he would not dwell on the sight after the first contemplation of it; they passed on shuddering and made toward the great wall of rock which they saw rising to the south and which must be their way to the land of France. But before they reached it the sun began to decline and without light it was in vain to attempt to seek a path. There was a wind keener than they had felt of late which came from the west and the little Alice pressed on her father's bosom to shield her from it. He wrapped her closer in a cloak and they resolved to put themselves under the shelter of the first rock they reached and pass the night in the channel of the sea. They pressed on and found at last the place they sought; a cliff which must once have raised its head above the waves and which now stood like some vast palace wall bare and huge upon the ocean sand. Screened from the wind they collected an abundance of the dried vegetation of the sea partly for warmth and to roast their corn partly for Paulett to dissolve some of the diamonds into water; and here they rested here they slept many fathoms below that level over which navies used to sail. At times during the night Paulett fancied when the wind abated that he heard a sound like thunder or like what used to be the rushing of a distant torrent; and occasionally he thought he felt a vibration in the earth as if it were shaken by some moving body. The region he was in was so strange that he knew not what might be here or what about to happen; the sounds so imperfect that he tormented himself to be sure of them or to be sure they were not; and when the time for action came he was beginning to disbelieve them altogether; but Alice brought all back again by saying ""My rock"" (for her cradle was a rock) ""shook my head father."" The child could explain herself no further; but the vibration he had fancied seemed to be what she had felt. And now they climbed again and again descended weary rock after rock; it was a strange chaos which the tides had swept and moulded and which had in places risen to the surface and caused the wreck of many a vessel. Fragments of these lay under the rocks they had split upon but the wandering family had no thoughts for them; wonder and pity had been exhausted among exciting and terrific scenes. They thought only of forcing their way over the rocks and feared to think how much of this they had to traverse before they should come to what had been the shore and to towns. Suddenly as they toiled forward Paulett said in a low voice to Ellen ""Don't you hear it?"" ""I have heard it a long time "" said Ellen in the same tone; and Charles stopping as well as they said ""Father what is that?"" ""I can't tell my boy "" said Paulett listening. ""Water?"" asked Ellen. Paulett shook his head yet they all pressed forward and there grew a thundering sullen sound. There was a valley and a ridge of rock before them and they had to clamber first down the rugged precipice they were upon then to cross the valley and then to struggle up the opposite side a trembling motion growing perceptible as they advanced before they stood on a sort of broad ledge which they perceived at the angles that jutted out went down straight into a depth and opposite which was another broad table-land of rock between which and that they were upon was a rent wider and narrower in various parts and running along as far as they could see to right and left. Paulett rushed on to the brink and stood looking. He put his hand out to keep Ellen back when he heard her close behind; but she also sprang to the edge and when she had seen turned to catch Charles in her arms. Rushing past was a torrent but not water. It was dark thick pitchy; it sent up hot steams to the edge: it was one of the secrets of nature laid bare when the ocean was taken away. Fire seemed to be at work below for occasionally it would boil with more violence and rush on with an increased increasing noise then sullenly fall back to the first gloomy sound. It bewildered the sense; and though it could threaten no more than death yet it was death with so many horrors around it that the body and mind both shrank from it. How was it possible too to cross it? Yet their way lay over it; for behind was certain destruction and before it was not yet proved impossible that they might find the element of water. Paulett felt that it would not do to linger on the brink; he drew his family away from the sight and he himself went up and down to find some narrower place and some means by which to make a bridge over the abyss; and it was not till their assistance could avail him that he returned for them and brought them to the place where he hoped to get over. It was a fearful point for in order to reach a space narrow enough to have a chance of throwing a plank over it was necessary to go down the broken side of the precipice some twenty feet and there high above the seething lava to cross on such a piece of wood as could be got to span the abyss and then clamber up the rugged opposite side. Paulett had been down to the point he selected and had got timber which a wrecked vessel had supplied to the edge so that Ellen and Charles might push a plank down to him and he might try at least to cast it to the opposite bank. His head was steady his hand strong; no one of them spoke a word while he stood below steadying himself to receive the plank. Ellen's weak arm grew powerful; her wit was ready with expedients to aid him in this necessity. Her frame and spirit were strung to the very uttermost and she was brave and silent doing all that could be done. No word was spoken till Paulett said ""I have done it;"" and Ellen and Charles had seen him place the plank and secure it on his own side of the abyss with stones. Then they held their breath beholding him cross it; but his firm foot carried him safely and he heaped stones on the other side also. He came over again sprang up the side and now smiled and spoke. ""After all it is but a mountain torrent Ellen "" he said ""and the water would have destroyed us like yonder seething flood; yet we have crossed many a one and feared nothing. Now Charles shall go over; then Alice and he shall take care of her; and then my Ellen. The ground beyond is better; we shall get on well after this."" Ellen took the girl in her arms and stood not trembling not weeping; seeing and feeling every motion; all was safe that time again Charles was on the opposite bank and his father waved his hand to Ellen. He came back for Alice whom her mother tied on his shoulders for hands as well as feet were wanted to scramble down and up the banks. And now Ellen followed to the brink and forgot in watching her husband and child pass over that the black torrent was seething beneath her eyes. When they were quite safe she felt again that it was there and that her eyes were growing dizzy and her hands involuntarily grasping about for support. She did not take time to feel more but sprang upon the plank and over it and found Paulett's hand seizing hers and drawing her up the opposite bank. And once there with all the three round her she burst into tears--tears which had not overcome her through many miseries--and embracing them alternately blessed them that they were all so far safe. Paulett suffered this emotion to spend itself before he said that he must cross the plank again. To be more at liberty to assist them he had left the diamonds on the other side till they should be over. Ellen offered no remonstrance. The times had so schooled them all that selfish or unreasonable thoughts either did not come at all or were suppressed at once; and she did not oppose even with a word this necessary step. But the renewal of fear after the excited energy had subsided did her more harm than all that had gone before; and she stood on the brink exhausted yet palpitating again while Paulett made the passage. He himself was wearied; but he had reached the plank and was upon it on his way back to safety when one of those ebullitions which stirred the dark fluid began roaring down the cleft rock and with stunning noise sent up dark and clouding vapour. Paulett seemed suffocating--he could not be heard--he could but just be seen--he reeled! Has he fallen? Oh he has fallen! No--no! he has got his footing again; he forces himself up the bank; he is safe--but the diamonds are in the bottom of the pit. CHAPTER VI. The exhausted family toiled with difficulty over the remaining passage to what had been the mainland and reached a village on the former coast under a roof of which they entered and lay down on the floor of the first room they came to. Their supply of water was almost out; the materials for producing more were gone; and there seemed little chance of finding any in the neighbourhood. ""Death was here;"" and yet the exhaustion of their frames led them to sleep before they died and to seek and enjoy a taste of that oblivion which was soon to fall upon them with an impenetrable shroud. All but Ellen were soon asleep; but she the most wearied of all could not close her eyes and admit rest to her overwrought frame. There was a burning thirst in her throat which the small portion of water she and the rest had shared--being all that remained for them--had failed to slake. She had not complained of it; but she rejoiced when she heard them asleep that she could rise and move restlessly about. The night was hot and yet the west wind continued to blow strongly; the moon shone but scarcely with so bright a light as usual--there was a film upon it or perhaps Ellen thought it was the dimness of her own weary eyes. She came softly up to Paulett and watched his frame half naked in the unconsciousness of sleep and upon which none of the ravages of want and exertion were now concealed. The flesh was wasted; the strong chest showed the bones of the skeleton; the arms which had so strained their powers were thin and lay in an attitude of extreme exhaustion. His sleep was deep; his lips open; his eyelids blue; he would wake in want; and soon he would be able to sleep no more till the last sleep of all came in torment and anguish. Poor Charles lay by him his head on his father's body for a pillow his limbs drawn somewhat together his clusters of brown hair parted off his pale thin cheek; and Alice the darling Alice with more colour in her face than any of them slept in deep repose destined perhaps to live last and to call in vain on those whose cares had hitherto kept her healthier and happier than themselves. The mother groaned with anguish; she measured what these were about to suffer by all she began to suffer herself; and the sight of them seemed to sear the burning eyes which could no longer weep. She sat down on the floor by Alice; her head fell against the wall; she caught at a little rosary which hung near her and pressed it in her mouth the comparative coolness of the beads giving her a little ease; her face fell on her bosom. When Paulett woke out of his deep sleep and as soon as he stirred the little Alice came on tiptoe across the floor to him and said ""Hush father! my mother is asleep at last."" ""At last my Alice! What! Could not she sleep?"" ""I think she could not sleep. I woke up and there was my mother; and Charles woke presently and she said Charles should go out and try to bring back some cold stones in a cup and then presently she sat down again and went to sleep."" He rose softly and taking the little girl by the hand came up to Ellen's side and looked upon her. She was lying at full length on the floor; her head was toward him but her face was turned upon the ground and her hair further hid it; her right arm was fallen forward and the back of that hand lay in the palm of the other. He did not hear nor see her breathe. ""Is it so my Ellen?"" he said. ""Art thou at rest? Is there no farewell for me?"" He kneeled and stooped lower and lower. His lip did not venture to feel hers; he longed that she might be free yet shrank from knowing that she was gone. But no; she had not ceased to suffer; a low sigh came at last and her parched mouth opened. ""Water!"" she said; then lifted her eyes and saw Paulett and remembered all by degrees. ""Is not there a little? Oh no--none! Nay I shall not want it soon!"" She turned her face on Paulett's breast and soon after tried to rise and push herself from him. ""Leave me dear husband; kiss me once and leave me; try to save _them_!"" But Paulett folded his arms round her. ""Not so my Ellen; the chances of life are so little that it is lawful for me to give them up unless we can all seek them together. Alas! all I can do is but to see thee die! Oh if I could give thee one minute's ease!"" ""Alas! you must all die like this "" said Ellen who was perishing like one of the flowers that had died in the drought for want of rain. Water would have saved that life spared those sufferings. That burning hand those gasping lips those anxious eyes revealed what the spirit passing away in that torment would fain have concealed. ""Alice come near me; hold my hand Alice. Are you thirsty poor child? Oh do not grieve your father! It will be but a short time my little girl--be patient."" Ellen tried to kiss her; her husband kneeled and raised her head on his shoulder bending his face on her forehead and murmuring the last farewell--the last thanks--the agony of his pity for her suffering. The poor child threw herself on her mother gazing upward in want and grief and bewilderment in her face. ""My Charles "" said the mother feeling about with the other hand but she did not find his head to bless it. ""My Charles "" she repeated in a fainter tone and her eyelids drooped over the hot eyes. Paulett saw nothing but his suffering wife heard nothing except her painful breath. At that moment the door opened and Charles stood there paler than ever with glittering eyes. He held the cup towards his father. ""Father "" he said ""there is water coming down from heaven!"" Paulett looked up and cried ""O God it rains!"" A TENDER CONSCIENCE. I have a story to tell you my dear Eusebius of a tender conscience. It will please you; for you delight to extract good out of evil and find something ever to say in favour of the ""poor wretches of this world's coinage "" as you call them; thus gently throwing half their errors and scattering them among a pretty large society to be responsible for them; provided only they be wretches by confession that dare not hide themselves in hypocrisy. In all such cases you show that you were born with the genius of a beadle and (strange conjunction) the tenderest of hearts. I believe that you would stand an hour at a pillory and see full justice done to a delinquent of that caste; and would as willingly in your own person receive the missiles that you would attempt to ward off from the contrite wretch whose sins might not have been woefully against human kindness. Could you choose your seat in the eternal mansions it would be among the angels that rejoice over one sinner that repenteth. You can distinguish in another the feeblest light of conscience that ever dimly burned and see in it the germ of a beautiful light that may one day by a little fanning and fostering shine as a star and shed a vital heat that may set the machinery of the heart in motion to throw off glorious actions. But let not the man that shams a conscience come in your way. I have seen you play off such an one till he has burst forth--up up up aiming at the skies nothing less in his self-glorification; and how have you despised him and exhibited him to all bystanders as nothing but a poor stick in his descent! These human rockets are at their best but falling stars--cinders incapable of being rekindled. Commend me to the modest glow-worms that shine only when they think the gazing world is asleep and dwell in green hedges and fancy themselves invisible to all eyes but those of love. There are persons and of grave judgments too who verily believe that the quantity of conscience amongst mankind is not worth speaking of and treat of human actions as entirely independent of it. And this fault honest Montaigne finds with Guicciardini:--""I have also "" says he ""observed this in him that of so many persons and so many effects so many motives and so many counsels as he judges of he never attributes any one of them to virtue religion or conscience as if all those were utterly extinct in the world; and of all the actions however brave an outward show they make he always throws the cause and motive upon some vicious occasion or some prospect of profit. It is impossible to imagine but that amongst such an infinite number of actions as he makes mention of there must be some one produced by the way of reason. No corruption could so universally have affected men that some of them would not have escaped the contagion which makes me suspect that his own taste was vicious; from whence it might happen that he judged other men by himself."" You Eusebius will be perfectly of Montaigne's opinion. We would rather trust that there are few in whom this moral principle has no vitality whatever. The wayside beggar when he divides his meal--which perhaps he has stolen--with his dog acts from its kind impulse; and see how uncharitable I am at my first impulse to suppose to suggest that the meal is stolen--so ready are we to steal away virtues one after the other and in our judgments to be thieves upon a large scale. And so a better feeling pricks me to charity. I doubt if we ought even to say that the parliamentary reprobate who openly confessed ""that he could not afford to keep a conscience "" had none--he was but dead to some of its motions. If it were not that it must be something annexed to an immortal condition would you not Eusebius say that the beggar's dog conscientiously makes his return of service and gratitude for the scraps thrown to him? See him by the gipsies' tent: how safely can the infant children be left to his sole care by the roadside! It is a beautiful sight to see the sagacious the faithful creature watching while they sleep and lying upon the outer fold of the blanket that enwraps them. Has he not a sense of duty--a sort of bastard conscience? And what is truly wonderful is that animals have often a sense of duty against their instincts. If it be said that they act through fear of punishment it is a punishment their instincts would teach them to avoid; and after all this fear of punishment may be a mighty ingredient in most men's consciences. We learn that immense numbers of ducks are reared by that part of the Chinese population who spend their lives in boats upon the rivers; and these birds salted and dried form one of the chief articles of diet in the celestial land. They are kept in large cages or crates from which in the morning they are sent forth to seek their food upon the river banks. A whistle from their keeper brings them back in the evening; and as according to Tradescent Lay the last to return receives a flogging for his tardiness their hurry to get back to the boats when they hear the accustomed call is in no small degree amusing. I cannot but think that there must be something like a sense of duty in these poor creatures that they thus of themselves and of good-will return to the certainty of being salted and dried. This may sound very ridiculous Eusebius but there is matter in it to muse upon; and if we want to know man we must speculate a little beyond him and learn him by similities and differences. He has best knowledge of his own home and country who has wandered into a _terra incognita_ and studied the differences of soil and climate. And besides that every man is a world to himself and may find a _terra incognita_ in his own breast it is not amiss to look abroad into other wildernesses where he will find instincts that are not so much any creature's but that they have something divine in them and so in their origin at least akin to his own. He will find conscience of some sort growing in the soil of every heart. It is not amiss to discover where it grows most healthily and by what deadly nightshade its virtue may be suffocated and its nicer sense not thrive. Surprising is the diversity;--were not nature corrupted there would be no diversity. Now truth and right is one; and yet we judge not one thing we think not aright. Yet is the original impulse true to its purpose but in its passage through the many channels of the mind is strangely perverted. It is eloquently said by a modern writer a deep thinker ""Thus does the conscience of man project itself athwart whatsoever of knowledge or surmise or imagination understanding faculty acquirement or natural disposition he has in him; and like light through coloured glass paint strange pictures on the rim of the horizon and elsewhere. Truly this same sense of the infinite nature of duty is the central part of all within us; a ray as of eternity and immortality immured in dusky many-coloured Time and its deaths and births. Your coloured glass varies so much from century to century--and in certain money-making game-preserving centuries it gets terribly opaque. Not a heaven with cherubim surrounds you then but a kind of vacant leaden cold hell. One day it will again cease to be opaque this coloured glass; now may it not become at once translucent and uncoloured? Painting no pictures more for us but only the everlasting azure itself. That will be a right glorious consummation."" If it were only the painting pictures! but we act the painted scenes. And strange they are and of diversity enough. It was the confession of an apostle that he ""thought with himself that he ought to do many things contrary"" to his master. There are national consciences how unlike each other; there are consciences of tribes and guilds which strange to say though they be composed of individuals bear not the stamp of any one individual conscience among them. They apologise to themselves for iniquity by a division and subdivision of the responsibility; and thus by each owning to but a little share collectively they commit a great enormity. It is the whole and sole responsibility of the individual responsibility to that inner arbiter sitting _foro conscientiæ_ and the sight of those frowning attendants of the court Nemesis and Adraste ready with the scourge to follow crime that keep the man honest. Put not confidence Eusebius in bodies in guilds and committees. Trust not to them property or person; they may be all individually good Samaritans but collectively they will rather change places with the thieves than bind up your wounds. In this matter ""Experto crede Roberto."" But of this diversity.--The Turk will split his sides with laughter against the very nature too of his Turkish gravity should he witness the remorse of the subdued polygamist. We read of nations who from a sense of duty eat their parents and would shudder at the crime of burying them in the earth or burning them. So is there a cannibalism of love as well as of hatred. Sinbad's terror at the duty of being buried alive with his deceased wife the king's daughter was no invention beyond the probability of custom. The Scythians as Herodotus tells us thought it an honourable act and no _murders_ committed when they slaughtered the king's councillors and officers of state and guards and their horses on which they stuck them upright by skewers to be in death the king's attendants. The suttee is still thought no wrong. There is habit of thought that justifies habit of deed. Southey in his _History of the Brazils_ tells a sad tale of a dying _converted_ Indian. In her dying moments cannibalism prevailed over Christian conscience; and was the Pagan conscience silent? She was asked by those standing about her if they could do any thing for her. She replied that she thought she _could_ pick the bones of a little child's hand but that she had no one now who would go and kill her one. I dare to say Eusebius she died in peace. The greater part of the world die in peace. Their conscience may be the first part of then that departs--it is dead before the man--most say I have done no harm. I have known a man die in the very effort of triumphant chuckling over his unfortunate neighbours by his successful fraud and over-reaching; yet perhaps this man's conscience was only dead as to any sense of right and wrong in this particular line; very possibly he had ""compunctious visitings"" about ""mint and cumine""--and oh! human inconsistency some such have been known to found hospitals--some spark of conscience working its way into the very rottenness of their hearts that like tinder have let out all their kindred and latent fire till that moment invisible all but _in posse_ non-existent. But for any thing like a public conscience so kindling since the repentance of the Ninevites it is not to be thought of. The pretence of such a thing is a sign of the last state of national hypocrisy. It was not that sense which emancipated the Negroes and forbade the slave trade. Take for example the Portuguese and their ""board of conscience"" at Lisbon which they set up to quiet the remorse if any should exist of those who had bought the miserable natives of Reoxcave when they sold themselves and their children for food. This very convenient scruple was started in ""the court to sanction the purchase that if these so purchased slaves were set free they might _apostatize_!"" Now who were the judges in such a court? Oh! the villany of the whole conclave!--yet was each individual perhaps of demure and sanctimonious manners to whom the moral eye of a people looked--villains all in the guise of goodness:-- ""Vir bonus omne forum quem spectat et omne tribunal Quandocuncque Deos vel porco vel bove placat Jane Pater clare clare cum dixit Apollo Labra movet metuens audiri--Pulchra Laverna Da mihi fallere da justum sanctumque videri Noctem peccatis et fraudibus objice nubem."" We are told that there is such a disease as a cannibal madness and that it was common among the North American savages; that those seized with it have a raving desire for human flesh and rush like wolves upon all they meet. Now in what was this court of conscience better than these cannibals? Better! a thousand times worse--for wolves are honest. Now I well know Eusebius how I have put a coal under the very fountain of your blood--and it is boiling at a fine rate. Let me allay it and follow the stage directions of ""soft music;"" only on this occasion we omit the music and take the rhyme. So here do I exhibit conscience in its playful vein. Our friend S. the other day repeated me off the following lines; he cannot remember where he had them--he says it was when a boy that he met with them somewhere. Call it the Conscientious Toper; yet that is too common--it is the characteristic of all topers--never was one that could not find an excuse. Drink wonderfully elicits moral words to compound for immoral deeds. Call it then-- THE CONTROVERSY. No plate had John and Joan to hoard-- Plain folks in humble plight-- One only tankard graced their board But that was fill'd each night; Upon whose inner bottom sketch'd In pride of chubby grace Some rude engraver's hand had etch'd A baby angel's face. John took at first a moderate sup-- But Joan was not like John-- For when her lips once touch'd the cup She swill'd till all was gone. John often urged her to drink fair But she cared not a jot-- She loved to see that angel there And therefore drain'd the pot. When John found all remonstrance vain Another card he play'd And where the angel stood so plain He had a devil portray'd. Joan saw the horns Joan saw the tail Yet still she stoutly quaff'd And when her lips once touch'd the ale She clear'd it at a draught. John stood with wonder petrified His hair stood on his pate ""And why dost guzzle now "" he cried ""At that enormous rate?"" ""Oh John!"" she said ""I'm not to blame-- I _can't in conscience_ stop-- For sure 'twould be a burning shame To leave the devil a drop."" Changeable versatile inconstant Eusebius where is now your burst of philanthropy--where is all your rage? Pretty havoc you would but now have made had you been armed with thunder--thunder I say for yours would have been no silent devastation among the villains. No Warnerian silent blazeless destruction would suit your indignation--in open day and with a shout would you do it and in such wise would you suffer if needs must with A
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ax's prayer in your mouth--""+En de Phaei kai olesson+."" But for a grand picture of a sweeping indignation there is nothing so grand as that fine passage in the Psalms--""Let them be as the dust before the wind and the angel of the Lord scattering them."" Men and all their iniquities once so mighty so vast but as grains less than grains of dust--all the clouds of hypocrisy dispersed in atoms before the fury of the storm of vengeance. You were as you read Eusebius in honest rage. I could see you as in a picture like the figure with the scourge in hand flying off the very ground in Raffaelle's noble fresco the Heliodorus; and now are you far more like a merryandrew in your mirth and the quaint sly humour of the tale in verse has made you blind to the delinquencies of the quaffing Joan. Blind to their delinquencies! Stay your mirth a moment Eusebius--are you not blind to your own? Now I remember me you are a thief Eusebius however you may have settled that matter with your conscience. Have you read the proposed ""Dog-bill?"" Here's a pretty to do!--Eusebius convicted of dog-stealing--subject to the penalty of misdemeanour! ""I!"" you will say. Yes you. You put it down doubtless in the catalogue of your virtues as you did when you boasted to me that you had by a lucky detection in probably the criminal's first offence saved a fellow-creature from a course of crime. Do you remember your dog Chance? yes _your_ dog for so you called him--and pray how came you by him? This was your version. A regiment was marching by your neighbourhood at the fag-end of which a soldier led a very fine spaniel by a piece of cord. You always loved dogs--did you not you cunning Eusebius? You can put two and two together as well as most people. The dog had no collar. Oh oh! thought you--the master of so fine a dog would have collar and chain too for him. This fellow must have stolen him--it is my duty (your virtuous duty indeed) to rescue this fine creature and perchance save this wretched man from such wicked courses. So thus you proceed--you look indignant and accost the soldier ""Holloa you fellow--whose dog's that?"" Soldier--""What's that to you?"" Eusebius--""What's the name of your captain that I may instantly appeal to him on the subject?"" Soldier alarmed--""I beg your honour's pardon but the dog followed me. I don't know to whom he belongs."" What made you then so particularly enquire where he came from and whereabouts he met with him? Your virtue whispered to you ""Ask these questions that you may be able to find out the owner."" Another imp whispered ""It might be useful."" So you seize the rope lecture the man upon the enormity of his intentions quietly take the dog to your stable and walk away with as you flatter yourself the heartfelt satisfaction of having saved a fellow-creature from the commission of a theft. To do you justice you did I verily believe for two whole days make decent enquiries and _endeavour_ if that be not too strong a word--_endeavour_ to find out the owner. But at the close of every day question Rover himself; and questioning Rover led you to look into each other's faces--and so you liked Rover's looks and Rover liked your looks--and when you said to Rover I should like to know who your master is? Rover looked with all his eyes as much as to say ""Well now if ever I heard the like of that! If my name is Rover yours must be Bouncer""--then you patted him for a true and truth-telling dog; and he wagged his tail and looked again at you till you perfectly mesmerized each other and understood each other and he acknowledged that you and no other could be his master--and so you mastered him and he mastered your conscience--and then you and your conscience began to have a parley. I fear you had sent her to a bad boarding-school and had just brought her home for the holidays with a pretty many more niceties and distinctions than she took with her--and had come back ""more nice than wise."" ""Have you found the owner?"" quoth she. ""It is time he were found "" replied you. ""Why?"" quoth she. ""Because "" you rejoin ""the shooting season is fast approaching."" ""That is true."" ""The dog will be spoiled for want of practice."" ""That will be a pity."" ""Thank you conscience--won't it be a sin?"" Conscience is silent so you take that for granted. ""Hadn't I better take out a license this year?"" ""Oh! it wouldn't be right you should go without one."" ""Certainly not (somewhat boldly;) I _will_ get my license directly. Poor Rover!--well--how very fond that dog is of me--it would be highly ungrateful not to make a return even to a dog. I ought to be fond of him. I--am--very fond of him."" Then you confess Eusebius that you should be very sorry to part with him. Conscience says ""Do you mean to say you should be sorry to find out the real owner?"" ""Really conscience "" you reply ""there can be no harm in being sorry; but you are becoming very impertinent and asking too many questions."" Here conscience nods--is asleep--is in a coma Eusebius--fairly mesmerized by you and follows you at your beck wherever you choose to lead her. And so you take her to your stable to look at Rover: and you want a suggestion how you can stop Rover's wandering propensities; and conscience being in a state of _clairvoyance_ bids you tie him up. You ask how--""by the teeth;"" so you order him a good plate of meat inside your stable-door locked and you replenish that plate for a week or more and have a few conferences with Rover in your parlour--and the dog is tied. Then you didn't like the name of Rover--but liked Chance. Conscience suggested the name as a palliative as something between true proprietorship and theft--it gave you a protective right and took away the sting of the possession. You fortified yourself in this position as cunningly as the French at Tahiti. But how happened it Eusebius that when any friend asked you if you had found the owner you turned off the subject always so ingeniously or denied that you had a Rover but one Chance certainly a fine dog?--and how came it that you never took him in the direction of the country from whence the regiment had come? And yet if the truth could be known would it not turn out Eusebius that fears did often come across your pleasures and your affection for Chance? and had a child but asked you as you might have been crossing a stile in quest with Chance before you as you did the soldier ""whose dog's that?"" you would have stammered a little--and almost in your affection have gone down upon your knees to have begged him as a gift; and it is fearful to think what a sum any knave as cunning as yourself had been would have got out of you. Now my dear Eusebius I entreat you when you shall read or hear read--""Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing "" that you think of Chance and not of _his doing_ but _yours_. I dare to say you have never quite looked at the affair in this light; we all are apt to wash our hands of a troublesome affair and think we come with them clean into court. Take care you don't resemble the monkey with the meal-tub. His master thrashed him when he caught him at the theft and showed him his hands covered with meal that he might understand the reason of his punishment. Monkey after the next theft took care to wash his hands and when his master came to punish him extended them to show how clean they were. His master smiled and immediately brought him a looking-glass--his face and whiskers were powdered with meal: and there you have the origin of the adage ""You have washed your hands but not your face."" There will still be a monitor Eusebius to hold the looking-glass to you and the like of you: and look to your face; and whenever you find that you have _put a good face_ upon any doubtful matter take the trouble then to look at your hands; and if they be clean look again and see if your face and hands are clean together. And that will be the best _tableau-vivant_ you or any one else can study. Now however that conscience seems so thoroughly gone to the dogs without any personal allusion to your case Eusebius I cannot resist telling you an anecdote by which you will see how Neighbour Grace of M----n ingeniously touched the conscience of Attorney B. who was supposed to have none--upon the matter of a dog-theft and how Attorney B. was a match for Neighbour Grace. ""I am come to thee Friend B. "" said Grace ""to ask thee a question. Suppose my dog should go into thy kitchen and run off with a neck of mutton dost thee think I ought to pay thee for the neck of mutton?"" ""Without doubt "" said Lawyer B. ""Then I'd thank thee to pay me three and fourpence; for it was thy dog stole my neck of mutton and that's the cost of it."" ""Perfectly right "" said Attorney B. coolly drawing out a bill and receipt. ""So Neighbour Grace you must pay me three and fourpence and that settles the matter."" ""How so?"" ""Why as you asked my opinion my charge for that is six and eightpence--deduct value of neck of mutton three and fourpence and just so much remains."" And Lawyer B. got the best of it and made him pay too. Now this it was to probe another's conscience without knowing the nature of the beast you stir up; not considering that when conscience thus comes down as it were with ""a power of attorney "" it is powerful indeed--""recalcitrat undique tutus."" There are many such big swelling consciences that grow up and cover the whole man--like the gourd of Jonah up in a night and down in a night--a fine shelter for a time from the too-searching sun; but there is a _worm_ in it Eusebius and it won't last. It is a very odd thing that people commonly think they can have their consciences at command and can set them as they do their watches and it is generally behind time: yet will they go irregularly and sometimes all of a run; and when they come to set them again they will bear no sort of regulation. Some set them as they would an alarum to awaken them at a given time; and when this answers at all they are awakened in such an amazement that they know not what they are about. Such was the case with the notorious Parisian pawnbroker who all in a hurry sent for the priest; but when the crucifix was presented to him stammered out that he could lend but a very small matter upon it. So consciences go by latitudes and longitudes--slow here and fast there. They have too their antipodes--it is night here and sunshine there. And so of ages and eras: and thus the same things make men laugh and tremble by turns. What unextinguishable laughter would arise should Dr Howley Archbishop of Canterbury go in procession with his clergy to Windsor each armed with scissors to clip the moustaches of the prince and his court! Yet a like absurdity has in other days pricked the consciences of king and courtiers to a sudden and bitter remorse. I read the other day in that very amusing volume the _Literary Conglomerate_ in an ""Essay on Hair "" how Anselm archbishop of Canterbury went so far as to pronounce an anathema of excommunication on all who wore long hair for which pious zeal he was much commended; and how ""Serlo a Norman bishop acquired great honour by a sermon which he preached before Henry I. in 1104 against long curled hair with which the king and his courtiers were so much affected that they consented to resign their flowing ringlets of which they had been so vain. The prudent prelate gave them no time to change their minds but immediately pulled a pair of shears out of his sleeve and performed the operation with his own hand."" A canon is still extant of the date of 1096 importing that such as wore long hair should be excluded from the church whilst living or being prayed for when dead. Now the very curates rejoice in ringlets and macassar. It would be curious to trace the heresy to its complete triumph in full-bottomed wigs in which it was ignorantly supposed wisdom finally settled when it was not discovered elsewhere. Thus it is Eusebius that folly the vile insect flies about--just drops a few eggs in the very nest of conscience and is off and a corruption of the flesh followeth. Those therefore who take out license to shoot folly as it flies should be made to look after the eggs likewise. Alas Eusebius that any thing should take the name of this nice sense that is not replete with goodness that is not the true _ductor substantium_! The prophet of an evil which wounds his very soul will take offence if it come not to pass and spare not. Was not Jonah grieved that the whole city was not destroyed as he had said? That nice and inner sense was more ingenious on the side of bold justice than prodigal to mercy; and so had he not ""a conscience void of offence;"" and thus this honourable feeling not always acts unfettered but is intercepted and hurried on spite of itself into courses of action in which there is too much of passion and plunging into error with this outward violence is forced upon ingenious defences. The story of Piso is in point. He thought to act the conscientious judge when he condemned the soldier to death who had returned from forage without his companion under the impression that he had killed him; but as he is upon the point of execution the man supposed to have been murdered returns all the soldiery present rejoice and the executioner brings them both to the presence of Piso. And what did the conscientious Piso? His conscience would not so let him put by justice; so with a surprising ingenuity of that nice faculty in its delirium he orders execution upon all three--the first soldier because he had been condemned--the second who had lost his way because he was the cause of his companion's death--and the executioner because he had disobeyed his orders. He had but to pretend to be greatly grieved at his vagary to have the act lauded as an instance of Roman virtue. I look upon the famed Brutus when he thought it a matter of conscience to witness as well as order his sons' execution to have been a vain unfeeling fool or a madman. Let us have no prate about conscience proceeding from a hard heart; these are frightful notions when they become infectious. A handful of such madmen are enough if allowed to have their way to enact the horrors of a French Revolution. All this you know Eusebius better than I do and will knit your brows at this too serious vein of thought. I will come therefore a little nearer our common homes. You shall have a scene from domestic life as I had it the other day from a lady with whom I was conversing upon this subject who tells me it is a veritable fact and took place some seventy years back. ""It will want its true power "" said my friend ""because that one solitary trait could give you no idea of the rich humour of the lady the subject of this incident--her simplicity shrewdness art ignorance quickness mischief made lovely by exceeding beauty and a most amusing consciousness of it. Seventy years ago too it happened--there are no such ladies in the better ranks of society now. She lived at Margate. It came to pass that the topping upholsterer there got a new-shaped chest of drawers from London--the very first that had appeared in Margate--and gave madam she being one of the high top-families the first sight of it. With the article she fell in love and entreated her husband to buy it; but the sensible gentleman having his house capitally and fully furnished would not. The lady still longed but had not money enough to make the purchase--begged to have her _quarter_ advanced. This was not granted. She pouted a little and then like a wise woman made up her mind to be disappointed and resumed her more than wonted cheerfulness; but alas! she was a daughter of Eve as it will be seen. Christmas-day came--it was the invariable custom of the family to receive the sacrament. Before church-time she sent for her husband. She had a sin on her conscience--she must confess before she could go to the altar. Her husband was surprised. ""What is it?"" ""You must promise not to be very angry."" ""But what is it? Have you broken my grandmother's china tea-pot?"" ""Oh! worse than that."" ""Have you thrown a bank-note in the fire?"" ""Worse than that."" ""Have you run in debt to your abominable smuggling lace-woman?"" ""Worse than that."" ""Woman!"" quoth he sternly and taking down an old broadsword that hung over the chimney-piece ""confess this instant;"" and he gave the weapon a portentous flourish. ""Oh! dear Richard don't kill me and I'll tell you all at once. Then I (sob ) I (sob ) have cribbed (sob) out of the house-money every week to buy that chest of drawers and you've had bad dinners and suppers this month for it; and (sobbing) that's all."" He could just keep his countenance to say--""And where have you hid this accursed thing?"" ""Oh Richard! I have never been able to use it; for I have covered it over with a blanket ever since I had it for fear of your seeing it. Oh! pray forgive me!"" You need not be told how she went to church with a ""clean breast "" as the saying is. It is an unadorned fact. Her husband used to tell it every merry Christmas to his old friend-guests."" Here you have the story Eusebius as I had it thus dramatically (for I could not mend it) from the lips of the narrator. Is it your fault or your virtue Eusebius that you positively love these errors of human nature? You ever say you have no sympathy with or for a perfect monster--if such there be--which you deny and aver that if you detect not the blot it is but too well covered; and by that very covering for aught you know to the contrary may be all blot. You would have catalogued this good lady among your ""right estimable and lovely women!"" and if you did not think that chest of drawers must be an heirloom in the family you would set about many odd means to get possession of it. Yet I do verily believe that there are brutes that would not have forgiven in their wives this error--that would argue thus You may sin madam against your Maker; but you shall not sin against me. Is there not a story somewhere of a wretched vagabond at the confessional--dreadful were the crimes for which he was promised absolution; but after all his compunctions contortions self-cursings breast-beatings hand-wringings out came the sin of sins--he had once spit by accident upon the priest's robe though he only meant to spit upon the altar steps. Unpardonable offence! Never-to-be-forgiven wretch! His life could not atone for it. And what had the friars blue and grey been daily hourly doing? You have been in Italy Eusebius. I have not yet told you the story for the telling which I began this letter; and why I have kept it back I know not--it is not for the importance of it; for it is of a poor simple creature. But I must stay my hand from it again; for here has one passed before my window that can have no conscience. It is a great booby--six foot man-boy of about nineteen years. He has just stalked by with his insect-catcher on his shoulder; the fellow has been with his green net into the innocent fields to catch butterflies and other poor insects. Many an hour have I seen you Eusebius with your head half-buried in the long blades of grass and pleasant field-weeds partially edged by the slanting and pervading sunbeams while the little stream has played its song of varied gentleness watching the little insect world and the golden beetles climbing up the long stalks performing wondrous feats for your and their own amusement--for your delight was to participate in all their pleasures; and some would with a familiarity that made you feel akin to all about you walk over the page of the book you were reading and look up and pause and trust their honest legs upon your hand confiding that there was one human creature that would not hurt them. Think of those hours my gentle friend and consider the object for which that wretch of a booby is out. How many of your playmates has he stuck through with pins upon which they are now writhing! And when the wretch goes home murder-laden his parents or guardians will greet him as a most amiable and sweet youth who wouldn't for the world misspend his time as other boys do but is ever on the search after knowledge; and so they swagger and boast of his love of entomology. I'd rather my children should grow up like cucumbers--more to belly than head--than have these scientific curiosity-noddles upon their poles of bodies that haven't room for hearts and look cold and cruel like the pins they stick through the poor moths and butterflies and all innocent insects. Good would it be to hear you lecture the parents of these heartless bodies for their bringing up and picture in your eloquent manner the torments that devils may be doomed to inflict in the other world on the cruel in this; and to fix them writhing upon their forks as they pin the poor insects. What would they do but call you a wicked blasphemer and prate about the merciful goodness of their Maker as if one Maker did not make all creatures? Yet what do such as they know of mercy but the name? These are they that kill conscience in the bud. Men's bosoms are like their dwellings--mansions magnificent and gorgeous--full of all noble and generous thoughts with room to expand--or dwellings of pretensions show and meanness--or hovels of all dirt and slovenliness; yet is there scarcely one in which conscience does not walk in and out boldly or steal in cautiously though she may not always have room to move her arms about her and assert her presence. Yet even when circumscribed by narrowness and immured in all unseemly things will she patiently watch her time for some appropriate touch or some quiet sound of her voice. Her most difficult scene of action however is in the bosom of pretension; for there the trumpet of self-praise is ever sounding to overwhelm her voice and she is kept at arm's-length from the touch of the guilty hearts by the padding and the furniture that surround them. But oh! the hypocrites of this life--they almost make one weary of it; they who walk with their hands as if ever weighing by invisible scales with their scruples of conscience their every thought word and action. Shall I portray the disgusting effigies of one? ""Niger est--hunc tu Romane caveto."" I will however tell you somewhat of one that has lately come across my path and I will call him Peter Pure; for he is one of those that though assuming a quietness is really rabid in politics and has ever upon his lips ""purity of election "" and the like cant words. A few years ago his circumstances not being very flourishing he got the ear of our generous friend of the Grange; through his timely assistance and a pretty considerable loan he overcame his difficulties and is now pretty well to do. At the last contest for the borough our friend T. of the Grange with others waited upon Peter Pure; and Peter with large professions of gratitude--as how could he do less for so kind a benefactor?--unhesitatingly promised his vote. At this time be it observed there was not the slightest appearance of the contest which afterwards came and with that storm a pretty good shower of bribery. What quantity of this shower fell to Peter Pure's share was never discovered; but it is easy to conjecture that so nice so grateful a conscience was not overcome for nothing. Peter never liked cheap sins. The contest came the election takes place and Peter Pure's plumper weighs down the adversary's scale. Soon after this he had the impudence to accost his benefactor thus:--""My dear friend and benefactor and worthy sir I wished for this opportunity of explaining to you with the utmost sincerity and confidence what may have appeared to you like--yes--really like a breaking of my word. It is true I did promise you my vote: but then you know voting being a very serious matter I thought it necessary to read my oath which I should be called upon to take; and I found my good friend to my astonishment that I was bound by it not to vote from '_favour and affection_.' Yes those are the words. Now it unfortunately--only unfortunately in this instance mind me--happens that there is not a man in the world so much in my affection and my favour as yourself; to vote therefore as you had wished me to vote would after reading the oath have been downright perjury; for I certainly should have voted 'through favour and affection.' That would have been a fearful weight upon my conscience."" Here was a pretty scoundrel Eusebius. I should be sorry to have you encounter him in a crowd and trust his sides to your elbows lest you should be taken with one of those sudden fits of juvenility that are not quite in accordance with the sedateness of your years. You will not be inclined to agree with an apologist I met the other day who simply said that Satan had thrown the temptation in his way. There is no occasion for such superfluous labour nor does the arch-fiend throw any of his labour away. Your Peter Pures may be very well left to themselves and are left to themselves; their own inventions are quite sufficient for all their trading purposes; there is no need to put temptations in their way--they will seek them of themselves. You will certainly lay me under the censure that Montaigne throws upon Guicciardini. Let me then make amends and ascribe one action to a generous a conscientious motive. There cannot be found a better example than I have met with in reading some memoirs of the great and good Colston the founder of those excellent charities in London Bristol and elsewhere. I find this passage in his life. It happened that one of his most richly-laden vessels was so long missing and the violent storms having given every reason to suppose she had perished that Colston gave her up for lost. Upon this occasion it is said he did not lament his unhappiness as many are apt to do and perpetually count up the serious amount of his losses; but with dutiful submission fell upon his knees and with thankfulness for what Providence had been pleased to leave him and with the utmost resignation relinquished even the smallest hope of her recovery. When therefore his people came soon afterwards to tell him that his ship had safely come to port he did not show the signs of self-gratulation which his friends expected to see. He was devoutly thankful for the preservation of the lives of so many seamen; but as for the vessel and her cargo they were no longer his--he had resigned them--he could not in conscience take them back. He looked upon all as the gift of Providence to the poor; and as such he sold the ship and merchandize--and most valuable they were--and praying for a right guidance distributed the proceeds among the poor. How beautiful is such charity! Here is no false lustre thrown upon the riches and goods of this world that reflected blind the eyes that they see not aright. The conscience of such a man as Colston was an arbiter even against himself sat within him in judgment to put aside his worldly interest and made a steady light for itself to see by where naturally was either a glare or an obscurity that alike might bewilder less honest vision. Some such idea is gloriously thus expressed by Sir Thomas Browne in his admirable _Religio Medici_.{A} ""Conscience only that can see without light sits in the areopagy and dark tribunal of our hearts surveys our thoughts and condemns our obliquities. Happy is that state of vision that can see without light though all should look as before the creation when there was not an eye to see or light to actuate a vision--wherein notwithstanding obscurity is only imaginable respectively unto eyes. For unto God there was none. Eternal light was for ever--created light was for the creation not himself; and as He saw before the sun He may still also see without it."" A case of conscience came to be discussed not long since in which I took a part. We had been speaking of the beauty of truth and that nothing could justify the slightest deviation from the plain letter of it. This was doubted; and the case supposed was that of a ruffian or a madman pursuing an innocent person with intent to murder. You see the flight and pursuit; the pursuer is at fault and questions you as to the way taken by the fugitive. Are you justified in deceiving the pursuer by a false direction of the way his intended victim had taken? Are you to say the person went to the right when the way taken was the left? The advocate for the downright truth maintained that you were not to deceive--though you felt quite sure that by your telling the truth or by your silence altogether immediate murder would ensue. The advocate declared that without a moment's hesitation he should act upon his decision. He would have done no such thing. People are better than their creeds and it should seem sometimes _better_ than _their_ principles. In which case would his conscience prick him most when the heat was over--as accessory to the murder or as the utterer of untruth? I cannot but think it a case of instinct which acting before conscience _pro hac vice_ supersedes it. The matter is altogether and at once by an irresistible decree taken out of the secondary ""Court of Conscience"" and put into the primary ""Court of Nature."" Truth truth! well may Bacon speak of it thus--""'What is truth?' said laughing Pilate and wouldn't wait for an answer."" If there be danger in the deviation shown in the case stated what a state are we all in? All as we do daily in some way or other putting our best legs foremost. Look at the whole advertising puffing quacking world--the flattering the soothing the complimenting. Virtues and vices alike driving us more or less out of the straight line; and blindfolded by habit we know not that we are walking circuitously. And they are not the worst among us perhaps who walk so deviatingly--seeing knowing--those that stammer out nightly ere they rest in confession their fears that they have been acting if not speaking the untrue thing and praying for strength in their infirmity and more simplicity of heart; and would in their penitence shun the concourse that besets them and hide their heads in some retired quiet spot of peace out of reach of this assault of temptation. And this Eusebius is the best prelude I can devise to the story I have to tell you. It is of a poor old woman; shall I magnify her offence? It was magnified indeed in her eyes. Smaller therefore shall it be--because of its very largeness to her. But it will not do to soften offences Eusebius. I see already you are determined to do so. I will call it her crime. Yes she lived a life of daily untruth. She wrote it she put her name to it--""litera scripta manet."" We must not mince the matter; she spoke it she acted it hourly she took payment for it--it was her food her raiment. Oh! all you that love to stamp the foot at poor human nature here is an object for your contempt your sarcasm your abuse your punishment; drag her away by the hair of her head. But stay take care you do not ""strain at a gnat and swallow a camel;"" examine yourselves a little first. She has confessed perhaps you have not. Remember no one knew it; no one guessed it. It is she herself has lifted up the lantern into the dark recesses of her own heart; or rather it is true religion in her hath done it: and dark though it was there you ought to see clearly enough that her heart is not now the den wherein falsehood and hypocrisy lurk; search well--you see none. She has made a ""clean breast of it "" and you had better do the same and drop the stone you were about to fling so mercilessly at her dying head. Are you out of patience Eusebius? and cry--Out with it what did she do? You shall hear; 'tis but a simple anecdote after all. I have learned it from a parish priest. He was sent for to attend the deathbed of poor old village dame or schoolmistress. She had a sin to confess; she could not die in peace till she had confessed it. With broken speech she sobbed and hesitated and sobbed again. ""I--I--I "" she stammered out and hid her face again. ""There I must I must tell it; and may I be forgiven! You know sir I have kept school forty years--yes forty years--a poor sinful creature--I--I""---- ""My good woman "" said the parish priest ""take comfort; it will be pardoned if you are thus penitent. I hope it is not a very great sin."" ""Oh yes!"" said she ""and pray call me not _good_ woman. I am--not--good;"" sobbing ""alas alas!--there I--will out with it! I put down that I taught grammar--and (sobbing) I I _did not know it myself_."" Eusebius Eusebius had you been there you would have embraced the old dame. The father of lies was not near her pillow. This little sin she had put it foremost and like the little
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figure before many nothings she had made a million of it; and one word nay one thought before confession was uttered had breathed upon and obliterated the whole amount. Where will you see so great truth? And this you will agree with me was a case of _Tender Conscience_. FOOTNOTES: {A} _Religio Medici_ a new edition with its sequel _Christian Morals_ and resemblant passages from Cowper's _Task_. By Mr Peace Bristol. The text of this inestimable author is here cleared of its many errors and the volume contains a useful verbal index. THIERRY'S HISTORY OF THE GAULS.{A} 'Tis a pleasant thing to turn from the present with its turmoil and its noise its clank of engines and its pallid artizans its political strife and its social disorganization to the calm and quiet records of the past--to the contemplation of bygone greatness: of kingdoms which have passed away --of cities whose site is marked only by the mouldering column and the time-worn wall--of men with whose name the world once rang but whose very tombs are now unknown. If there is any thing calculated to enlarge the mind it is this; for it is only by a careful study of the past that we come to know how duly to appreciate the present. Without this we magnify the present; we imagine that the future will be like unto it; we form our ideas we base our calculations upon it alone; we forget the maxim of the Eastern sage that ""this too shall pass away."" It is by the study of history that we overcome this otherwise inevitable tendency; we learn from it that other nations have been as great as we and that they are now forgotten--that a former civilization a fair and costly edifice which seemed to be perfect of its kind has crumbled before the assaults of time and left not a trace behind. There is a still small voice issuing forth from the ruins of Babylon which will teach more to the thinking mind than all the dogmas and theories of modern speculators. When we turn to the study of ancient history our attention is immediately riveted on the mighty name of Rome. Even the history of Greece cannot compare with it in interest. Greece was always great in the arts and for long she was eminent in arms: but the arms of her citizens were too often turned against each other; and the mind gets fatigued and perplexed in attempting to follow the endless maze of politics and the constant succession of unimportant wars. There are indeed many splendid episodes in her history--such as the Persian war the retreat of the Ten Thousand a few actions in the Peloponnesian contest and the whole of the Theban campaigns of Epaminondas; but the intervening periods have but a faint interest to the general reader till we come down to the period of the Macedonian monarchy. This indeed is the great act in the drama of Grecian history. Who can peruse without interest the accounts of the glorious reign of Alexander; of that man who issuing from the mountains of Macedonia riveted the fetters of despotism on Greece which had grown unworthy of freedom and carried his victorious arms over the fertile plains of Palestine till he stood a conqueror amidst the palaces of Persepolis and finally halted only on the frontiers of Hindostan arrested in his progress not by the arms of his enemies but by the revolt of his soldiers? He flung a halo of glory around the last days of Greece like the bright light of a meteor whose course he resembled equally in the rapidity and brilliancy of his career. With him dies the interest of Grecian story: the intrigues and disputes of his successors destitute of general interest served but to pave the way for the progress of a mightier power. Of greater interest even than this is the history of Rome. Her conquests were not merely the glorious and dazzling achievements of one man which owed their existence to his talents and crumbled to pieces at his death; they were slow and gradual in their progress--the effects of a deep and firm policy: they were not made in a day but they endured for a thousand years. No country presents such interest to the politician and the soldier. To the one the rise and progress of her constitution; her internal struggles; the balance of political power in the state; her policy her principles of government; the administration and treatment of the many nations which composed her vast empire must ever be the subject of deep and careful study: while to the other the campaigns of Hannibal the wars of Cæsar and the long line of her military annals present a wide field for investigation and instruction--an inexhaustible topic for philosophic reflection. But there is one subject connected with the progress of the Roman empire which has been unduly neglected and without a perfect understanding of which we cannot justly appreciate either the civil or military policy of that state. We mean the history of the nations who came in contact with her--viz. the Carthaginians the Gauls the Spaniards. The ancient historians belonged exclusively to Greece or Rome: they looked upon all other nations except themselves as barbarous; and they never related their history except incidentally and in so far as it was connected with that of those two countries. Modern historians following in their track and attracted by the splendour of their names deviated not from the beaten path; and a thick veil still hung over the semi-barbarous neighbours and enemies of Rome. The history of no one of those nations was more interesting or in many points involved in greater obscurity than that of the GAULS. Nowhere amongst the ancient writers could any connected account of the origin or progress of this nation be found; scattered notices of them alone could be discovered interspersed incidentally amongst other matter and these notices were frequently inconsistent. This is particularly the case as regards their early history: in later times when they came into more immediate contact with the Romans a more connected and minute account of them has been preserved. In the lively pages of Livy and in the more accurate narrative of Polybius a considerable mass of information on this subject maybe found; while a clear light has been thrown on many parts of their latter history by the narrative of Appian the Lives of Plutarch and above all by the Commentaries of Cæsar. But all this information scattered over a multiplicity of authors could give us no conception of their history as a people. An author was still wanting to collect all these together so as to present us with something like a continuous history. But to do this was no easy task: the materials were scanty and often contradictory; they were all written in a spirit hostile to the Gauls; a deep vein of prejudice and national partiality ran through and tarnished them all; the motives of that people were misrepresented their actions falsified the historians often understood little of their institutions and their character. From such materials it required no common man to be able to deduce a clear and impartial narrative; it required great talent and deep research--the accuracy of the scholar and the spirit of the philosopher the acuteness of the critic joined to the eye of the painter. Such a man has been found in Amadée Thierry. His _History of the Gauls_ is a work of rare merit--a work which must ever be in the hand of every one who would understand the history of antiquity. It is little to the credit of the literature of this country that his work has not yet appeared in an English translation. He has traced the progress of the Gauls from their earliest appearance on the stage of the world till their final subjection to the Roman power in a manner worthy of a scholar and a philosopher. His narrative is clear animated and distinct; he possesses in an eminent degree the power of giving breadth to his pictures; of drawing the attention of his readers to the important events whilst the remainder are thrown into shade. His mode of treating his authorities is perhaps the best that can be imagined; he neither clogs his pages with long extracts nor does he leave them unsupported by a reference to the original authors. At the end of each paragraph a reference is given to the authorities followed to whom the reader may at once turn if he wish to verify the conclusions arrived at; and where the points are involved in obscurity the passages founded on are quoted generally in a note and never in the text except when their importance really justified such an interruption of the narrative. His style is always animated and graphic occasionally rising to elevated flights of eloquence while his subject is one of a deep and varied interest; for in following the checkered fortunes of the Gauls he is brought in contact with almost every nation of the earth. To whatever country of the ancient world we turn we find that the Gaul has preceded us either as the savage conqueror or the little less savage mercenary. Issuing originally from the East that boundless cradle of the human race we soon find him contending with the German for his morass with the Spaniard for his gold--traversing the sands of Africa and pillaging the plains of Greece--founding a kingdom in the midst of Asiatic luxury and bearing his conquering lance beneath the Capitol of Rome. But a mightier spirit soon rose to rule the storm. In vain the courage of the Gaul allied with the power of Carthage and directed by the genius of Hannibal maintained for years a desperate and doubtful contest in the heart of Italy. The power of Rome kept steadily advancing: Greece soon fell beneath her conquering arm; and the fleets of Carthage no longer ruled the wave. The Spaniard after many a hard-fought field at last sank into sullen submission; and the Galatians degenerating under the influence of Asiatic manners proved unequal to the contest; the Gaul instead of inundating the land of the foreigner could with difficulty maintain his own; and soon the eagle of the Capitol spread its wings over a Transalpine province. But the free spirit of the Gaul now made a mighty effort to rend asunder the bonds which encircled it; and a countless multitude after ravaging Spain poured down into Italy: the Roman empire rocked to its foundation when Marius hastening over from his African conquests saved his country by the glorious and bloody victory of Aquæ Sextiæ. Yet a little while and the legions of Rome under the orders of Cæsar traversing with fire and sword their country retaliated on the Gaul the calamities he had often inflicted on others subdued his proud spirit and forged for him amidst seas of blood those fetters which were finally riveted by the policy of Augustus. Such is a brief outline of the heart-stirring story of this singular and interesting race. One of the most interesting parts of Thierry's work is the Introduction. He there gives a brief view of the character of the Gaulish race; its division into two great branches the Gaul and the Kimry and the periods into which the history of this people naturally divides itself. A considerable part of it is taken up in proving that this people do in reality consist of two great branches the Gaul and the Kimry. This we think he has clearly and satisfactorily shown by evidence drawn both from the language and from the historical accounts which have been preserved to us regarding them. His character of the Gauls as a people is ably and well given; but here we must let him speak for himself:-- ""The salient characteristics of the Gaulish family--those which distinguish it the most in my opinion from the other races of men--may be thus summed up:--A personal bravery unequaled amongst the people of antiquity; a spirit frank impetuous open to every impression eminently intelligent; but joined to that an extreme frivolity want of constancy a marked repugnance to the ideas of discipline and order so strong in the German race much ostentation--in fine a perpetual disunion the consequence of excessive vanity. If we wish to compare in a few words the Gaulish family with that German family to whom we have just alluded we may say that the personal sentiment the individual I is too much developed amongst the former and that amongst the latter it is not sufficiently so. Thus we find in every page of Gaulish story original characters who strongly excite and concentrate upon themselves our sympathy causing us to forget the masses; whilst in the history of the Germans it is generally the masses who produce the effect. Such is the general character of the people of the Gaulish blood; but in that character itself an observation of facts leads us to recognise two distinct shades corresponding to two distinct branches of the family or to use the expression consecrated by history to two distinct races. One of those races--that which I designate by the name of the Gauls--presents in the most marked manner all the natural dispositions all the faults and all the virtues of the family; to it belong in their purest state the individual types of the Gaul. The other the Kimry less active less spiritual perhaps possesses in return more weight and stability: it is in its bosom principally that we remark the institutions of classification and order; it is there that the ideas of theocracy and monarchy longest maintain their sway.""--(I. iv. vi.) How important and how little attended to is this character of the different races of men! How perfectly is it preserved under all situations and under all circumstances! No lapse of time can change no distance can efface it. Nowhere do we see this more distinctly than in America: there how marked is the difference of the Spanish race in the south and the Anglo-Saxon in the north! And from this we may draw a deeply important practical lesson; viz. the danger of attempting to force on one race institutions fitted to another. Under a free government the Anglo-Saxon in the north flourished and increased and became a mighty people. Under a despotic sway the Spaniard in the south was slowly but surely treading that path which would ultimately have led to national greatness when a revolution nourished by English gold and rendered victorious by English arms inflicted what was to him the curse of free institutions. Under their influence commerce has fled from the shores of New Spain; the gold-mines of Peru lie unworked; population has retrograded; the fertile land has returned to a state of nature; and anarchy usurping the place of government has involved the country in ruin and desolation. Nor is this the only instance of the effect of free institutions on the Spanish race. In Old Spain the same experiment has been tried and has produced the same result. Under their withering effect the empire of Spain and the Indies has passed away; the mother country torn by internal dissensions has fallen from her proud estate and can with difficulty drag on a precarious existence amidst all the tumult and blood of incessant revolutions. How long will it be ere we learn that free institutions are the Amreeta cup of nations--the greatest of all blessings or the greatest of all curses according to the race on which it is conferred! The history of the Gauls in Thierry's opinion divides itself naturally into four great periods: his brief _resumé_ of the state of the nation during each of those periods is so animated that we cannot refrain from quoting his own words:-- ""The first period contains the adventures of the Gaulish nations in the nomad state. No race of the West has accomplished a more agitated and brilliant career. Its wanderings embrace Europe Asia and Africa: its name is inscribed with terror in the annals of almost every people. It burned Rome: it conquered Macedonia from the veteran phalanxes of Alexander forced Thermopylæ and pillaged Delphi: afterwards it planted its tents on the ruins of ancient Troy in the public places of Miletus on the banks of the Sangarius and on those of the Nile: it besieged Carthage threatened Memphis reckoned among its tributaries the most powerful monarchs of the East: on two occasions it founded in Upper Italy a mighty dominion and it raised up in the bosom of Phrygia that other empire of the Galatians which so long ruled Asia Minor. ""In the second period--that of the sedentary state--we observe the same race every where developing itself or permanently settled with social religious and political institutions suited to its particular character--original institutions and civilization full of life and movement of which Transalpine Gaul offers a model the purest and the most complete. One would say to follow the animated scenes of that picture that the theocracy of India the feudality of the Middle Ages and the Athenian democracy had resorted to the same soil there to combat and rule over one and other in turn. Soon that civilization mixes and alters: foreign elements introduce themselves imported by commerce by the relations of vicinity by the reaction of the conquered population. Hence various and other strange combinations: in Italy it is the Roman influence which makes itself felt in the manners of the Cisalpines: in the south of Transalpine Gaul it is at first the influence of the Greeks of Massalia afterwards that of the Italian colonies: and in Galatia there springs up the most singular combination of Gaulish Phrygian and Greek civilization. ""Next follows the period of national strife and of conquest. By a chance worthy of notice it is always under the sword of the Roman that the power of the Gaulish nations falls: in proportion as the Roman dominion extends the Gaulish dominion up to that time firmly established recoils and declines: one would say that the conquerors and the conquered from the Allia followed one and other to all points of the earth to decide the old quarrel of the Capitol. In Italy the Cisalpines are subjugated but only after two centuries of the most determined resistance: when the rest of Asia accepted the yoke the Galatians defended still against Rome the independence of the East. Gaul yields but only from exhaustion after a century of partial contests and nine years of a general war under Cæsar: in fine the names of Caractac and Galgac render illustrious the last and fruitless efforts of British liberty. It is every where the unequal combat of a military spirit ardent and heroic but simple and unskilful against the same spirit disciplined and persevering. Few nations show in their annals so beautiful a page as that last Gaulish war written nevertheless by an enemy. Every effort of heroism every prodigy of valour which the love of liberty and of country ever produced there displayed themselves in spite of a thousand contrary and fatal passions: discords between the cities discords in the cities enterprises of the nobles against the people licentiousness of democracy hereditary enmities of race. What men were those Bitunyes who in one day burned twenty of their towns! What men were those Camutes fugitives pursued by the sword by famine by winter and whom nothing could conquer! What variety of character is there amongst their chiefs--from the druid Divitiac the good and honest enthusiast of the Roman civilization to the savage Ambio-rix crafty vindictive implacable who admired and imitated nothing save the savageness of the German: from Dumno-rix that ambitious but fierce agitator who wished to make the conqueror of the Gauls an instrument but not a master to that Vercingeto-rix so pure so eloquent so true so magnanimous in misfortune and who wanted nothing to take a place amongst the greatest men but to have had another enemy above all another historian than Cæsar! ""The fourth period comprises the organization of Gaul into a Roman province and the slow and successive assimilation of Transalpine manners to the manners and institutions of Italy--a labour commenced by Augustus continued with success by Claudius completed in latter times. That transference from one civilization to another was not made without violence and without checks: numerous revolts are suppressed by Augustus--a great insurrection fails against Tiberius. The distractions and the impending ruin of Rome during the civil wars of Galba of Otho of Vitellius and of Vespasian gave room for a sudden explosion of the spirit of independence to the north of the Alps. The Gaulish nations again took up arms the senates reformed themselves the proscribed druids reappeared the Roman legions cantoned on the Rhine are defeated or gained over an empire of the Gauls is constructed in haste: but soon Gaul perceives that it is already at bottom entirely Roman and that a return to the ancient order of things is no longer either desirable for its happiness or even possible; it resigns itself therefore to its irrevocable destiny and reunites without a murmur into the community of the Roman empire.""--(I. 6-10) Here indeed is a noble field for history--many such exist not in the world; it joins the colours of romance to the truth of narrative--it embraces within its range all countries from the snow-clad mountains of the north to the waterless deserts of the south. When the first light of history dawns upon the Gallic race we find them settled in that territory which is bounded by the Rhine the Alps the Mediterranean the Pyrenees and the ocean and in the British isles. There they lived leading a pastoral life wandering about from place to place and ready to descend with their flocks and herds wherever cupidity might lead or fancy direct them. They first turned their footsteps towards Spain; tribe after tribe crossed the Pyrenees and either expelled or amalgamated with the aboriginal inhabitants. Their efforts were principally directed towards the centre and west; in consequence of which the native Spaniards displaced and driven back upon the Mediterranean coast soon opened a way for themselves across the eastern passes of the mountains and traversing the shores of southern Gaul entered Italy. There they took the name of the Ligures and established themselves along the whole line of sea-coast from the Pyrenees to the mouth of the Arno. The road to Italy being thus laid bare by the Spaniards the Gauls soon followed on their footsteps and crossing the Alps poured down into the fertile plains and vine-clad hills of the smiling south: but they were encountered and overcome by the Etruscans. Internal convulsions in the centre of Gaul however hurled new hordes across the Alps. The Kimry from the Palus Moeotis entered the north-eastern portion of Gaul and expelled from their territory many of the tribes who were settled there: these uniting in large hordes precipitated themselves upon Italy. The Kimry too joined in the incursion; race followed race and the whole of northern Italy was soon peopled by the Gaulish race who long threatened the nations of the south with entire subjugation and destruction. The empire of the Gauls in Italy known by the name of Cisalpine Gaul was productive of the greatest calamities to that unhappy country; every year there issued forth from it bands of adventurers who wasted the fields and stormed the cities of Etruria of Campania and of Magna Græcia. But an expedition on a larger scale was at last undertaken. Pressed by the increasing population in their rear a large band determined to abandon their present homes and seek new conquests and acquire new booty. They first directed their march to Clusium; but soon the torrent rolled with resistless force upon the walls of Rome. Defeated at the Allia the Romans abandoned their city leaving however a garrison in the Capitol; this garrison reduced to the last extremities by famine was obliged to capitulate and to purchase the departure of their foes by an enormous ransom. The Gauls crowned with success and loaded with plunder departed; and the Romans taking courage at their retreat harassed their rear and cut off their supplies. Such is the truth regarding this famous invasion which has been the subject of a falsification probably without a parallel in the annals of history; by it defeat was transformed into victory and the day when Rome suffered her greatest humiliation by the ransom of her capital was turned into almost the most famous day of her existence when her most successful enemy was humbled to the dust. In the pages of a Greek historian the truth has been preserved; while the annals of the state are filled with a very different tale embellished with all the eloquence and genius of the national historian. Such a sacrifice of historical veracity in order to appease the insatiable cravings of national vanity naturally casts a shade of doubt and suspicion on all the early records of her victories and triumphs. Freed from her enemies Rome revived and emerged unconquered from the strife; she had been forced to bend before misfortune but she was not broken by adversity: a new city sprung up on the ruins of the old and the legions once more issued from the ramparts to carry her victorious banners to the capitals of a conquered world. We have not space to trace the various fortunes of Cisalpine Gaul during the early struggles which it carried on with the now increasing power of Rome. Suffice it to say that when the Latins united in a league against her the Cisalpines joined them; an engagement took place at Sentinum where victory crowned the efforts of the Romans; but though defeated the Gauls maintained their high character for valour during that fatal day. This success was followed up by a vigorous attack on the powerful Gaulish tribe of the Senones who were almost exterminated and on their territory was established a Roman colony: this was the first permanent settlement made by that people amongst the Gaulish tribes of Italy. We must refer the reader to M. Thierry's work for the account of the causes which led the Gauls and Kimry to press upon and finally invade northern Greece and the relation of the defeat of their first attack under the Brenn. We shall dwell somewhat longer on their second invasion which forms one of the most interesting episodes of their history:-- ""In the year 280 B.C. the Gauls under a celebrated chief whose title was the Brenn prepared to invade Greece. Their army composed of various tribes of Gauls and Kimry amounted to 152 000 infantry and 61 000 cavalry. When this immense array reached the frontiers of Macedonia a division broke out amongst their chiefs and 20 000 men detaching themselves from the main army advanced into Thrace. The remainder under the Brenn precipitated themselves on Macedonia routed the army which endeavoured to arrest their progress and forced the remnant of the regular forces who survived to take refuge in the fortified cities. During six months they ravaged with fire and sword the open country and destroyed the unfortified towns of Macedonia and Thessaly. At the approach of winter the Brenn collected his forces and established his camp in Thessaly at a position near Mount Olympus. Thessaly is separated from Epirus and Ætolia by the chain of Pindus; and on the south the almost impenetrable range of Mount Oeta divides it from the provinces of Hellas. The only pass by which an army can march into Greece is that of Thermopylæ which is a long narrow defile overhung on the right by the rocks of Mount Oeta and flanked on the left by impassable morasses which finally lose themselves in the waters of the gulf of Mulia. A few narrow and difficult tracts traverse the ridge of Oeta; but these though passable to a small body of infantry present insurmountable obstacles to the advance of an army. To the pass of Thermopylæ in the spring of the year 280 B.C. the Brenn directed his march. Aware of its vital importance the Athenians Boeotians Locrians Phocians and Megarians who had formed a league against the northern invaders collected a force of about 26 000 men who under the orders of Calippus advanced to and occupied the strait whilst 305 Athenian galleys anchored in the bay of Mulia were ready to operate upon the flank of the enemy. In his approach to this position the Brenn had to pass the river Sperchius to defend which Calippus had detached a small force: the Brenn by a stratagem directed their attention from the real point of attack and crossed the river without loss. He then advanced to Heraclea and laid waste the surrounding country. The day after his arrival at this place he marched upon Thermopylæ. Hardly had the Gauls begun to involve themselves in the pass when they were encountered by the Greeks in its classic defile. With loud cries and in one enormous mass the Gauls rushed impetuously on; in silence and in perfect order the Greeks advanced to the charge. The phalanx of the south proved impenetrable to the sabre of the north; the pass was soon covered with their dead bodies; the Gallic standards were unable to advance. Meanwhile the Athenian galleys forcing their way through the marshes poured in an incessant volley of arrows and darts on the long and unprotected flank of the invaders. Unable to withstand this double attack the Gauls were forced to retreat. This they did in the utmost confusion; large numbers perished trodden to death by their companions--still more were drowned in the morasses. Seven days after this severe check a small party having attempted to cross Mount Oeta they were attacked when involved in a narrow and difficult pass and cut to pieces. To raise the drooping spirits of his men and to separate the forces of his adversaries the Brenn detached a corps of 40 000 men under the command of Comlutis with orders to force their way into Ætolia. This diversion proved eminently successful. Comlutis finding the passes of Mount Pindus unguarded traversed that range and entered Ætolia the whole of which he laid waste with fire and sword without opposition as the whole military force of that country had marched to the defence of Thermopylæ. On hearing of this invasion the Ætolians immediately separated from the allied army and hastened to the defence of their country. On their approach Comlutis retreated; but whilst involved in the mountain passes his rear was overtaken by the regulars and his flanks were assailed by the enraged peasantry; so severe was his loss that hardly one-half of his force rallied at the camp of Heraclea. The day after the departure of the Ætolians the Brenn led on the main body of his troops to attack the pass of Thermopylæ; whilst a strong detachment received orders to force one of the mountain paths the knowledge of which had been betrayed to him by the inhabitants; being guided by one of whom and their movements being concealed from view by a thick mist which enveloped them this detachment succeeded in surprising the troops who were entrusted with its defence and moving rapidly on they fell on the rear of the main body of the allies who were engaged at Thermopylæ. Assaulted both in front and rear the Greeks would have been totally destroyed had it not been for the presence of the Athenian fleet who afforded a safe refuge to their shattered ranks. Freed from the presence of his opponents the Brenn immediately pushed on to Elatia at the head of 65 000 men from whence he directed his march on Delphi. The town of Delphi was built on the slope of one of the peaks of Parnassus in the midst of a natural excavation and being almost entirely surrounded with precipices it was left unprotected by any artificial fortifications: above the town on the north was situated the magnificent temple of Apollo filled with native offerings of the Greeks. The possession of this treasure was the main object of the Brenn. The Gaulish army on their arrival before Delphi dispersed over and pillaged the surrounding country for the remainder of the day; thus losing the most favourable opportunity of assaulting the town."" The _dénouement_ of the tragedy we shall give in Thierry's own words:-- ""During the night Delphi received from all sides by the mountain paths numerous reinforcements from the neighbouring people. There arrived successively 1200 well-armed Ætolians 400 heavy-armed men from Amplussa and a detachment of Phocians who with the citizens of Delphi formed a body of 4000 men. At the same time they learned that the brave Ætolian army after having defeated Comlutis had retaken the road to Elatia and increased by bands of the Phocians and Boeotians laboured to prevent the junction of the Gaulish army of Heraclea with the division which besieged Delphi. ""During the same night the camp of the Gauls was the theatre of the greatest debauchery; and when day dawned the greater portion of them were still intoxicated: nevertheless it was necessary to make the assault without loss of time for the Brenn already perceived how much the delay o
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a few hours had cost him. He drew out his troops then in battle array enumerating to them anew all the treasures which they had before their eyes and those which awaited them in the temple: he then gave the signal for the escalade. The attack was vigorous and was sustained by the Greeks with firmness. From the summit of the narrow and steep slope by which the assailants had to ascend in order to approach the town the besieged poured down a multitude of arrows and stones not one of which fell harmless. Several times the Gauls covered the ascent with their dead; but every time they returned to the charge with courage and at last forced the passage. The besieged obliged to beat a retreat withdrew to the nearest streets of the town leaving the approach which conducted to the temple free: the Gaulish race rushed on: soon the whole multitude was occupied in pillaging the oratories which adjoined the temple and in fine the temple itself. ""It was then autumn and during the combat one of those sudden storms so frequent in the lofty chains of Hellas had gathered; suddenly it burst discharging on the mountain torrents of rain and hail. The priests attached to the temple of Apollo seized upon an incident so fitted to strike the superstitious spirit of the Greeks. With haggard eyes with disheveled locks with frenzied minds they spread out through the town and through the ranks of the army crying that the god had arrived. 'He is here!' said they; 'we have seen him pass across the vault of the temple which is cloven beneath his feet; two armed virgins Minerva and Diana accompany him. We have heard the whistling of their bows and the clang of their lances. Hasten O Greeks! upon the steps of your gods if you wish to partake of their victory!' That spectacle those exhortations pronounced amidst the rolling of the thunder and by the glare of the lightning filled the Hellenes with a supernatural enthusiasm; they reformed in battle array and precipitated themselves sword in hand upon the enemy. The same circumstances operated not less strongly but in a contrary way upon the victorious bands; the Gauls believed that they recognised the power of a divinity but of an enraged divinity. The thunderbolts had frequently struck their battalions and its reports repeated by the echoes produced around them such a reverberation that they no longer heard the commands of their chiefs. Those who penetrated into the interior of the temple had felt the pavement tremble under their steps; they had been seized by a thick and mephitic vapour which overpowered them and threw them into a violent delirium. The historians relate that amidst this tumult they beheld three warriors of a sinister aspect of more than human stature covered with old armour and who slaughtered the Gauls with their lances appear. The Delphians recognised say they the shades of three heroes Hyperochus and Zorodocus whose tombs adjoined the temple and Pyrrhus the son of Achilles. As to the Gauls a wild panic hurried them in disorder to their camp which they attained only with great difficulty overwhelmed by the arrows of the Greeks and by the fall of enormous rocks which rolled over upon them from the summit of Parnassus. In the ranks of the besiegers the loss was doubtless considerable. ""To that disastrous day succeeded for the Kimry-Gauls a night not less terrible; the cold was excessive and snow fell in abundance; besides fragments of rock falling incessantly in their camp which was situated too near the mountain crushed the soldiers not by one or two at a time but by bodies of thirty and forty as often as they assembled to maintain guard or to seek repose. The sun no sooner rose than the Greeks who were within the town made a vigorous sally whilst those who were in the country fell upon the rear of the enemy. At the same time the Phocians crossing the snow by paths known but to themselves took them in flank and assailed them with arrows and stones without exposing themselves to the slightest danger. Hemmed in on all sides discouraged and moreover extremely incommoded by the cold which had cut off many of their number during the night the Gauls began to yield. They were sustained for some time by the intrepidity of the chosen band who combated around the Brenn and acted as his guard. The strength the stature the courage of that guard struck the Greeks with astonishment. In the end the Brenn having been dangerously wounded those brave men dreamed only of making a rampart of their bodies for him and of carrying him from the field. The chiefs then gave the signal of retreat and to prevent the wounded from falling into the hands of the enemy they caused those who were not in a condition to follow to be put to death. The army halted when the night overtook it. ""The first watch of that second night had hardly commenced when the soldiers who were on guard imagined that they heard the tumult of a night march and the distant tramp of horses. The darkness already profound did not permit them to discover their mistake; they gave the alarm and cried out that they were surprised--that the enemy was upon them. The famine the dangers and the extraordinary occurrences which had befallen them during the last two days had much shattered all their imaginations. At that cry 'The enemy is at hand!' the Gauls suddenly aroused seized their arms and believing the camp already entered they threw themselves upon and mutually slaughtered each other. Their consternation was so great that they believed that each word which struck their ears was uttered in Greek; as if they had forgotten their own proper tongue. Besides the darkness of the night did not permit them either to recognise each other or to distinguish the shape of their bucklers. Day put an end to that frightful _mêlée_; but during the night the Phocian shepherds who remained in the fields to watch their flocks ran to inform the Greeks of the disorder which was evident in the Gaulish camp. They attributed so unexpected an event to the intervention of the god Pan from whom according to the religious faith of the Greeks alarms without any real cause proceeded; full of ardour and of confidence they attacked the rearguard of the enemy. The Gauls had already resumed their march but with languor as men discouraged worn out by diseases famine and fatigue. On their line of march the population carried off the cattle and provisions so that they could not procure any subsistence without the utmost difficulty and at the point of the sword. The historians reckon at 10 000 the number of those who sank under these misfortunes; the cold and the nocturnal combat had cut off as many more and 6000 had perished at the assault of Delphi: there remained then to the Brenn no more than 35 000 men when he rejoined the main body of his army in the plains watered by the Cephisus on the day after his departure from Thermopylæ.""--(I. 171-178.) The Brenn overwhelmed with grief at his misfortune no sooner saw his army free from immediate danger than he put himself to death. His successor following his dying advice slaughtered 10 000 of the wounded and continued his retreat:-- ""As he approached Thermopylæ the Greeks issuing forth from an ambuscade threw themselves on his rearguard which they cut to pieces. It was in this miserable state that the Gauls gained the camp of Heraclea. They remained there for a few days before setting out on their northward route. All the bridges of the Sperchius had been broken down and the left bank of the river was occupied by the Thessalians who had collected _en masse_; nevertheless the Gaulish army forced a passage. It was in the midst of a population all armed and thirsting for vengeance that they traversed from one extremity to the other Thessaly and Macedonia exposed to perils to sufferings to privations daily increasing combating without intermission during the day and at night having no other shelter than a cold and watery sky. They gained at last the northern frontier of Macedonia. There the distribution of the body took place: afterwards the Kimry-Gauls divided into many bands; some returned to their country others sought in different directions new food for their turbulent activity.""--(I. 180.) A band of Tectosages joined to the Tolistoboies and a horde of Gauls united and traversing Thrace with fire and sword passed over into Asia Minor. They found it distracted by the quarrels of Alexander's successors. Summoned in an evil hour by Nicomedes to aid him and the Greek states of Asia Minor in their struggle against the Seleucidæ they soon established him on the throne of Bithynia. But they now turned their victorious arms against the nations of that unhappy country. Their armies increased by reinforcements drawn from Thrace had divided themselves into three hordes: the Tectosages the Tolistoboies and the Trocmes. To avoid dispute they distributed the whole of Asia Minor into three parts: of these the Trocmes possessed the Hellespont and Troas; the Tolistoboies Æolida and Ionia; the Tectosages the coast of the Mediterranean from the west of Mount Taurus. They now overran and subdued all Asia Minor; every country every town was obliged to pay them tribute; or soon the fertile land was reduced to an arid desert watered only by the blood of its inhabitants and the costly city stormed by the fierce warriors of the north became a heap of smoking ruins. At last the Tectosages came in contact with Antiochus king of Syria and were totally defeated at the battle of the Taurus; the Syrian king following up his victory compelled them to resign their conquests and to establish themselves on the banks of the Halys near the town of Ancyra in Upper Phrygia where they dwelt too weak again to enter on the career of conquest. Internal war prevented the Asiatics for some time from pursuing their successes and the Trocmes and Tolistoboies continued still to pillage and oppress all the maritime provinces. Nay their power was actually increased by those wars as each of the contending parties purchased the mercenary services of large bands of those brave though turbulent warriors. But the end of the Gaulish rule in Asia Minor was at hand. The small state of Pergamus under the able rule of Eumenes emerged from its obscurity and inflicted a severe wound upon the Gauls by the defeat of Antiochus king of Syria with whom a great number of them served as mercenaries. His son Attalus on his accession to the throne immediately marched against and defeated the Tolistoboies. Ionia which had long groaned under their oppression seizing the opportunity rose up against them; the Tolistoboies beaten in several engagements were driven beyond Mount Taurus; and the Trocmes after a vain attempt to maintain themselves in Troas were forced to retreat and unite with their defeated countrymen. Attacked now by the whole population of Asia Minor the two hordes were driven by degrees into Upper Phrygia where the Tectosages had formerly settled. Here the three hordes united and here they founded the empire of Galatia. ""Thus ended in Asia Minor the dominion of this people in their character of nomad conquerors; another period of existence now commenced for them. Abandoning their wandering life they mixed with the indigenous population who were themselves a mixture of Greek colonists and Asiatics. That blending together of three races unequal in power and in civilization produced a mixed nation that of the Gallo-Greeks whose civil political and religious institutions carry the triple stamp of Gaulish Greek and Phrygian manners. The regular influence which the Gauls are destined to act in Asia Minor as an Asiatic power will prove not to be inferior to that of which they have been deprived; and we shall see them defend almost to the last the liberty of the East against the Roman arms.""--(I. 203-204.) We have not space to follow M. Thierry in his very interesting account of the exploits of the Gaulish mercenaries in Greece--in particular of those who served in the army of Pyrrhus; or who acting in the pay of Carthage contributed so much to the victories of that powerful and wealthy people and who took that lead in the famous insurrection of the mercenaries which so nearly brought about their ruin. We must pass over too unnoticed the desperate struggle between the Romans and Gauls in Cisalpine Gaul which ended in the defeat of the Boian confederacy at the battle of the Telama and their submission and the subjugation of the Insubrians by Marcellus. The whole of Cisalpine Gaul thus seemed to be finally subdued when a new enemy suddenly appeared in the field and again led the Gaulish standards into the heart of southern Italy. Hardly had the Cisalpines laid down their arms when there arrived amongst them emissaries sent by Hannibal to excite them to a renewal of the war and to engage them in an alliance with Carthage by promising to guarantee to them the liberty of their country and by exciting their cupidity with the prospect of the spoils of Rome and southern Italy. They were well received and secret armaments soon began to take place especially amongst the Boian confederacy. But what immediately caused the outbreak was an attempt of the Romans to found two colonies one at Cremona and the other at Placentia. Enraged at this the Boians took up arms and attacking the colonists of Placentia dispersed them whilst the Insubrians expelled those who had advanced to Cremona. The Boians and Insubrians now uniting their forces laid siege to Mutina but in vain. This check however was more than counterbalanced by the defeat of a Roman army under the orders of Manlius. While affairs were in this state the columns of Hannibal descending from the Alps arrived on the Insubrian territory. The result of the late successes of the Gauls in their disposition towards Hannibal is well explained by Thierry:-- ""Two factions then divided all Cisalpine Gaul. The one composed of the Venetes the Cremonas and the Ligures of the Alps gained over to the Roman cause opposed with vigour every movement in favour of Hannibal. The other which included the Ligures of the Apennines the Insubrians and the people of the Boian confederation had embraced the Carthaginian side but without much ardour. The affairs of Gaul had undergone a great change. At the time when the propositions of Hannibal were received with enthusiasm Gaul was humiliated and conquered; Roman troops occupied her territory--Roman colonies assembled in her towns. But since the dispersion of the colonies of Cremona and Placentia--since the defeat of L. Manlius in the forest of Mutina the Boians and Insubrians satisfied at having recovered their independence with their own forces cared little to compromise themselves for the advantage of strangers whose appearance and numbers inspired them with but slight confidence.""--(I. 284-285.) Hannibal felt all the importance of deciding the wavering sentiments of this people; on them his future success or defeat depended; to do this nothing but victory was requisite. He accordingly advanced rapidly against the Romans and first engaged them in a cavalry action at the Ticinus. Victory declared for the Carthaginians. The horse of Numidia routed the cavalry of Rome. This success unimportant as it was revealed Hannibal to the eyes of the Gauls; influenced by it the Insubrian chiefs hastened to supply him with provisions and troops. Hardly had the Carthaginians arrived in sight of the Roman camp at Placentia when a large body of the Gaulish contingent revolted from Scipio and contrived though much reduced in numbers to cut their way through in spite of all opposition and join Hannibal. The famous battle of the Trebia--the first of those great victories which have rendered immortal the genius of the Carthaginian chief--soon followed; it at once decided the course of Cisalpine Gaul. Its immediate and ultimate effects on the power and operations of Hannibal are well developed by our author:-- ""The fortune of Hannibal was then consolidated; more than 60 000 Boians Insubrians and Ligures flocked in a few days to his standards and raised his forces to 100 000 men. With such a disproportion between the nucleus of the Carthaginian army and its auxiliaries Hannibal was in reality but a Gaulish chief; and if in the moments of danger he had no cause to repent his new situation more than once nevertheless he cursed with bitterness its inconveniences. Nothing could equal the courage and devotion of the Gaulish soldier in the dangers of the battle-field; but under the tent he had neither the habit nor the taste of military subordination. The lofty conceptions of Hannibal surpassed his comprehension; he could not understand war unless such as he himself carried it on--as a bold and rapid plundering excursion of which the present moment reaped the whole advantage. He would have wished to march instantly on Rome or at least to pass the winter in some of the allied or subject provinces--in Etruria or in Umbria--there to live at discretion in pillage and license. Did Hannibal represent that it was necessary to spare the provinces in order to gain them over to the common cause the Cisalpines broke forth into murmurs; the combinations of prudence and genius appeared in their eyes but a vile pretext to deprive them of the advantages which they had legitimately won.""--(I. 292-293.) We cannot follow the steps of the great conqueror in his memorable campaigns--in his fatal march over the fens of Etruria or through the glorious field of Thrasymene. But the share which the Gauls had in the mighty victory of Cannæ and the change of the seat of war with the results which followed from it are of such importance and the remarks made upon them by M. Thierry are so just that we shall give the whole of his account of this event at full length:-- ""From the field of Thrasymene Hannibal passed into southern Italy and gave battle a third time to the Romans near the village of Cannæ on the banks of the Aufidus now called the Offanto. He had then under his banners 40 000 infantry and 10 000 cavalry; and of these 50 000 combatants at least 30 000 were Gauls. In his order of battle he placed their cavalry on the right wing and in the centre their infantry whom he united to the Spanish infantry and whom he commanded in person: the Gaulish foot as was their custom on all occasions when they were determined to conquer or die threw off their tunic and sagum and fought naked from their waist upwards armed with their long and pointless sabres. They commenced the action; and their cavalry and that of the Numidians terminated it. We know how dreadful the carnage was in that celebrated battle--the most glorious of the victories of Hannibal--the most disastrous of the defeat of Rome. When the Carthaginian general moved with pity called to his soldiers 'to halt and to spare the vanquished ' without doubt the Gauls bloodthirsty in the destruction of their mortal enemies carried to that butchery more than the ordinary irritation of wars the satisfaction of a vengeance ardently wished for and long deferred. There 70 000 Romans perished; the loss on the side of the conquerors was 5500 of which 4000 were Gauls. Out of 60 000 Gauls whom Hannibal had enumerated around him after the combat of the Trebia 25 000 only remained; battle sickness above all the fatal passage over the marshes of Etruria had cut off all the rest; for up to this period they had supported almost exclusively the weight of the war. The victory of Cannæ brought to the Carthaginians other auxiliaries; a crowd of men from Campania Lucania Brutium and Apulia filled his camp; but it was not that warlike race which he formerly recruited on the banks of the Po. Cannæ was the term of his success; and assuredly the fault ought not to be imputed to his genius more admirable even in adverse than in good fortune--his army only had changed. For two thousand years history has accused him with bitterness for his inaction after the battle of Aufidus and for his delay at Capua; perhaps it might reproach him more justly for having removed from the north of Italy and for having allowed his communications with the soldiers who had conquered under him at Thrasymene and Cannæ to be cut off. Rome perceived the fault of Hannibal and hastened to profit by it. Two armies in _échelon_ the one to the north and the other to the south intercepted the communication between the Cisalpines and Magna Græcia. That of the north by its incursions and by its threatening attitude occupied the Gauls at their own hearths whilst the second made head against the Carthaginians.""--(I. 297-300.) It has been said by the most renowned conqueror of modern times that give him but the Gallic infantry and the Mameluke cavalry and he would subdue the world. And it cannot fail to strike the attentive reader with astonishment to learn that the severest blow ever given to the power of Rome was inflicted by the Gaulish foot and the Numidian horse. It is curious as exemplifying the unchanging characters of race to observe that the greatest general of antiquity triumphed at the head of an army composed of those very nations whom Napoleon after the lapse of two thousand years declared best fitted to pursue the blood-stained paths of military greatness. The efforts of the Gauls did not cease with the battle of Cannæ; they defeated an army under Posthumius which invaded their territory. When Hasdrubal led his ill-fated expedition to strew their bodies on the Italian plains he was accompanied by large bands of those brave adventurers; and when Carthage making a last effort to succour her general disembarked 14 000 men under the command of Mago Hannibal's brother at Genoa numerous bodies of Gauls flocked to his standards. And this general though unable to effect his junction with Hannibal yet maintained his ground for ten years till at last defeated in the territory of the Insubrians he retired to Genoa. There he received orders to return to the defence of Africa:-- ""His brother also recalled by the Carthaginian senate was obliged to embark at the other extremity of Italy. The Gaulish and Ligurian soldiers who had faithfully served Hannibal during seventeen years abandoned him not in his days of misfortune; re-united to their compatriots who had followed Mago they formed still a third part of the Carthaginian army at Zama in the celebrated day which terminated that long war to the advantage of the Romans and displayed to the world the genius of Hannibal humbled before the fortune of Scipio. The ferocity with which the Gauls fought has been recorded by the historian: 'They showed themselves ' says Titus Livy 'inflamed with that inborn hate against the Roman people peculiar to their race.'""--(I. 310-311.) The war in Cisalpine Gaul did not cease with the departure of Hannibal. Under the orders of Carthaginian officer the Gauls again took the field--Placentia fell beneath their arms; but they received a severe defeat from L. Furius in the year 200 B.C. when the Carthaginian general Amilcar perished. From this period till the year 191 B.C. the Gaulish nations were involved in a constant succession of wars in which though occasionally victorious they were upon the whole unsuccessful. Exposed to the incessant incursions of the Romans their strength gradually wasted away; each year left them in a state more exhausted and unfit to renew the war than the preceding. Nation after nation laid down their arms in despair till at last the Boian confederacy stood alone in its resistance of a foreign yoke; but their ravaged lands and reduced numbers were unequal to the struggle and when in the year 190 B.C. the Roman armies advanced into the heart of their exhausted territory the few remaining inhabitants determined to abandon the land of their birth and to seek amidst ruder nations and beneath a more ungenial sky for that liberty in defence of which their fathers had so often bled. Accordingly the wreck of a hundred and twelve Boian tribes rising _en masse_ united and wending their weary steps over the snow-clad summits of the Alps and through the pathless forests of Germany they found at last on the banks of the distant Danube a resting-place far removed from the hated name of Rome. All resistance from Cisalpine Gaul now ceased. Occasionally indeed a few tribes from the Transalpine would cross the Alps and descend into Italy but they could not withstand the shock of the legions. The conquered territory was declared a Roman province which it ever afterwards remained. We have not space to follow M. Thierry in his account of the progress and fall of that strange Gaulish kingdom of Galatia. From the year 241 to the year 190 B.C. it maintained its independence unshaken amidst the degenerate sons of Greece and the effeminate Asiatics. But the Roman power beneath which the Gaulish race was ever doomed to bend overtook them even amidst the mountains of Asia Minor. The Galatians had furnished some troops to Antiochus the Great and then for the first time they came in contact with the eagle of the Capitol. The first encounter is thus alluded to by our author:-- ""The Romans had annihilated at Magnesia the Asiatic and Greek forces: yet the conquest of the country appeared to them still incomplete. They had encountered beneath the banners of Antiochus some bands of a force less easily conquered than the Syrians or the Phrygians: by the armour by the lofty stature by the yellow or reddish locks by the war-cry by the rattling clash of arms by the dauntless valour above all the legions had easily recognised that old enemy of Rome whom they had been brought up to fear. Before deciding any thing as to the lot of the vanquished the Roman generals then determined to carry the war into Galatia.""--(I. 360-361.) Accordingly in the spring of 189 B.C. Cn. Manlius with 22 000 legionaries and an auxiliary army furnished by the King of Pergamus invaded Galatia: at his approach the Tolistoboies and Tectosages intrenched themselves upon Mount Olympus and the Trocmes upon Mount Megalon and there awaited the attack. The consul first advanced to Mount Olympus. He led his troops to attack the Gaulish position in three columns; the principal column under his own orders was to advance on the Gauls in front the other two were to try and turn their position on either flank. The column which he led first engaged. ""His _velites_ advanced in front of the standards with the Cretan archers of Attalus the slingers and the corps of Trulles and of the Thracians. The infantry of the legions followed with slow steps as the steepness of the declivity rendered necessary sheltered beneath their bucklers so as to avoid stones and arrows. At a considerable distance the combat began with discharges of arrows and at first with equal success. The Gauls had the advantage in position the Romans in the number and variety of their arms. The action continued the equality no longer remained. The narrow and flat bucklers of the Gauls protected them insufficiently: soon having expended their darts and javelins they found themselves altogether disarmed: for at that distance their sabres were useless. As they had made no selection of flints and stones beforehand they seized the first which chance threw in their way which were for the most part too large to be easily wielded or for inexperienced arms to throw with effect. The Romans meanwhile poured down upon them a murderous hail of arrows javelins and leaden balls which wounded them without their having any possibility of avoiding the approach. * * * * A great number had bit the dust others adopted the course of rushing right on the enemy and they at least did not perish unavenged. It was the corps of the Roman _velites_ who did them most harm. These _velites_ carried on their left arm a buckler three feet in size in their right hand javelins which they threw from afar at their girdle a Spanish sword; when it was necessary to engage in close contact they transferred their javelins to the left hand and drew their sword. Few Gauls now remained on foot: seeing then the legions advance to the charge they fled precipitately to their camp which the alarm of the multitude of women children and old men who were shut up within it already filled with tumult and confusion.""--(I. 373-376.) The other two columns had from the difficult nature of the ground been unable to make any progress. Manlius now led on his legionaries to assault the intrenchment which they carried at the sword's point. A few days after this victory Manlius advanced with his triumphant army to attack the Trocmes who were intrenched on Mount Megalon. This battle resembled much both in its progress and in its termination the one which preceded it. The Trocmes were driven with slaughter from the field and their camp taken. Dispirited by this double defeat the Galatians who had rallied their scattered forces behind the Halys sued for peace. The Romans desiring rather to conciliate than to irritate this warlike people merely exacted that they should surrender the land which they had taken from the allies of Rome and that they should give up their wandering and predatory habits so injurious to all their neighbours. Under the influence of the forced peace in which the subjection of Asia to the Romans kept the Galatians their manners rapidly changed. Asiatic luxury took the place of northern barbarity; the worship of the national gods was abandoned and the idols of the stranger were substituted in their room; the coarse garments of ancient days gave place to vestments of purple and gold: yet a little while and the loss of national manners was followed by the loss of political privileges; the magistracies formerly elective now became hereditary; the families who usurped this privilege formed in course of time a bright and all-powerful aristocracy. Ambition limited the number of these magistracies; from twelve they were reduced to four; at last they were centred in a single hand: so that when Galatia was united as a province to the Roman empire it was governed by a hereditary king. Yet amidst this usurpation of the sovereign power the national council of the Three Hundred still continued to exist and assist in the government of the state. During twenty years peace subsisted between the Galatians and their Asiatic neighbours. At the end of that period however a war broke out and pillaging bands once more began to traverse the plains of Asia Minor; when Rome interposed and by her mediation peace was restored. Mithridates uniting beneath his sway all the powers of the East drove back for a while the Roman eagles and seemed about to restore their ancient glory to the Asiatics. The Galatians joined with him; but their fidelity became suspected and he seized upon sixty of their nobles as hostages. Enraged at this treatment they formed a plot to assassinate him; it was frustrated and the conspirators were almost all treacherously put to death at a banquet. His troops then advancing took possession of Galatia which was governed by one of his officers with insolence and oppression for twelve years. At last a revolt broke out; his armies were driven from the country; Galatia was once more free. The defeat of Mithridates by the Roman arms ensured their independence for a short time; but the rest of Asia was now subject to the Romans. Surrounded enveloped on all sides by their power Galatia yielded at last and was reduced to the form of a Roman province in the time of Augustus. Here M. Thierry ends the first part of his History of the Gauls; and thus far we have followed him step by step because we considered this both the least known and the most interesting portion of Gaulish history. The two periods which follow are more familiar to historical readers: because during them Rome was the great enemy of the Gauls; and if she has often palliated her defeats she has at least never failed to chronicle her victories. Henceforth therefore we shall no longer attempt to follow the thread of his narrative. The victories of Marius the campaigns of Cæsar stand in no need of our attention being directed to them as to the wars of the Brenn in Greece or the conquests of the horde in Asia Minor. Here we take leave of the Gaul as the conquering nomad; we have seen him wandering through the land of the stranger with fire and sword; but the hour of vengeance has now come and we shall see him bleed in vain on his native soil for that liberty of which he had so often deprived others. M. Thierry opens his history of the second period with an exceedingly interesting account of the state of Gaul during the second and third centuries before our era. Gaul was then inhabited by thr
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e distinct families or races. By the Iberian family--divided into the Aquitains and the Ligures. By the Gaulish family--divided into the Gauls the Kimry and the Belgians. And by the Ionian-Greek family or the inhabitants of the powerful and flourishing maritime and commercial state of Massalia. The Iberian and Ionian-Greeks families occupying comparatively but a small portion of Gaul need not detain us. With the Gauls we have more to do. Our author gives the following account of the way in which their territory was divided amongst the three different bands of this family:-- ""A line which setting out from the mouth of the Tann follows the course of that river then that of the Rhone the Iser the Alps the Rhine the Vosges the Ædnian hills the Loire the Vienne and comes at last to rejoin the Garonne by turning the plateau of Arvernia: that line would nearly circumscribe the possessions of the Gallic race. The territory situated to the east of that limit belonged to the race of the Kimry; it was in time divided into two portions by the line of the Seine and the Marne the one northern and the other southern. To the south between the Seine and the Garonne lived the Kimry of the first invasion intermingled with Gallic blood or the Gallo-Kimry. To the north between the Seine and the Rhine the Kimry of the second invasion or Belgians. The Gauls numbered twenty-two nations; the Gallo-Kimry seventeen; and the Belgians twenty-three. These sixty-two nations were subdivided into many hundred tribes.""--(I. 28.) He then enters into a long and most interesting description of the domestic manners and political and religious institutions of the Gauls. After having traced the Gaul for so long in the field we love to follow him into his cabin--to observe his appearance his pursuits his habits--to mark the manly figure the fair complexion the flowing yellow locks the glittering helmet surmounted with the antlers of the stag the buckler covered with all the colours of the rainbow the polished cuirass flashing back the rays of the morning sun the heavy sabre hanging from the gold-bespangled belt the precious necklace the rich armlets the bright and variegated hues of the martial sagum or mantle of the noble Gaulish warrior. We follow him as he turns away from his clay-built mansion and regardless of the silent tears and entreating looks of his submissive perhaps ill-used wife hurries into the noise and excitement of the battle-field. Observe the wild frenzy that there seems to seize him as he rushes with dauntless courage on the bristling phalanx of his enemies; as amidst the clouds of dust which float overhead and the horrid cries which resound on all sides he tears and widens with savage ferocity the fearful gash he has just received; as a moment after overcoming in personal conflict yon stalwart chief he decapitates with one blow of his heavy sabre the yet palpitating corpse and waves the gory head with demoniac triumph in the air; and as he returns home yet reeking with blood and intoxicated with victory and suspends above his threshold the ghastly trophy. Look again--the scene is changed--the glittering arms are flung aside. With his mantle floating in the breeze his light spear quivering in his hand he plunges into the pathless forest; with fearless step he pursues his way through the leafy shade and traverses the treacherous surface of the morass. Beneath yon giant oak he has encountered the fiercest inhabitant of those solitudes--the wild bull; but it has fallen beneath his javelin which yet protrudes from it bushy neck and as it lies struggling on the greensward making the wood ring again with its bellowings his dagger is raised to give it the final stroke.--Observe him once more in the council of his nation. The warriors stand in an attentive circle leaning on their arms; he has risen to address them; his action is animated his words are vehement; the polished accents the finished periods of the Greek flow not from his lips but there is eagerness in his eye there is earnestness in his speech his language is figurative in the extreme a thousand picturesque and striking images illustrate his meaning; his metaphors drawn from the battle and the chase thrill to the bosom of all his listeners; and the clash and clang of their arms amidst which he sits down proclaims alike their assent to his proposition and their admiration of his eloquence. It is amidst scenes like these that we love to follow the Gaul to picture to ourselves an old race and an old civilization which combined in so strange a way the greatness and the savageness the heroism in danger and weakness under temptation of primeval and half-civilized man. To comprehend clearly the internal and external history of the Gauls we must understand the political condition of their country. This is unfolded in a clear and masterly manner by our author in the following passage:-- ""In Gaul two privileged orders ruled the rest of the people--the elective order of the priests who recruited themselves indiscriminately from all ranks and the hereditary order of the nobles or knights. This latter was composed of the ancient royal families of the tribes and of those men who had been recently ennobled either by war or by the influence of riches. The multitudes were divided into two classes--the people of the country and the people of the town. The first formed the tribes or the clans of the noble families. The client belonged to his patron whose domains he cultivated whose standard he followed in war under whom he was a member of a little patriarchal aristocracy; his duty was to defend him to the death from and against all: to abandon his patron in circumstances of danger passed for the consummation of disgrace and even for a crime. The people of the towns from their situation removed from the influence of the old hierarchy of the tribes enjoyed greater liberty and fortunately found themselves in a situation to maintain and to defend it. Beneath the mass of the people came the slaves who do not appear to have been very numerous. The two privileged orders caused the yoke of their despotism to weigh turn by turn upon Gaul. Turn by turn they exercised absolute authority and lost it by a series of political revolutions. The history of the government of the Gauls offers then three very distinct periods: that of the reign of the priests or of the theocracy--that of the reign of the chiefs of the tribes or of the military aristocracy--lastly that of the popular constitutions founded on the principle of election and on the will of the majority. The epoch which we are about to treat of accomplished that last and great revolution; and popular constitutions although still ill assured at last ruled over all Gaul at the commencement of the first age.""--(II. 71-73.) M. Thierry recognises in the Gauls the traces of two distinct religions. He says-- ""When we examine attentively the character of the facts relative to the religious belief of the Gauls we are led to recognise two systems of ideas two bodies of symbols and superstitions altogether distinct--in a word two religions: the one altogether sensible derived from the adoration of natural phenomena and by its forms as well as by its literal development reminding us of the polytheism of the Greeks; the other founded upon a material pantheism metaphysical mysterious sacerdotal and presenting the most astonishing conformity with the religions of the East. That last has received the name of druidism from the druids who were its founders and priests. We shall give to the first the name of the Gaulish polytheism.""--(II. 73-74.) Thierry thinks that this polytheism originally prevailed amongst the Gauls but that the Kimry introduced druidism which soon became the dominant religion over the whole of Gaul though the original polytheism ingrafted upon it more or less in different places some of its tenets and ceremonies. The great seat of the religion of the druids was Armorika and above all Britain; there existed the most powerful of their sacerdotal colleges--there were celebrated the most secret of their mysteries. It is wondrous thing that religion of the ancient druids! A solemn mystery enshrouds it--all the efforts of modern science cannot lift the veil. When we look on yon circle of stones which grey with the lapse of ages stands in lonely majesty upon the dreary moor near which no sound is ever heard save the distant and sullen roar of the ocean as it breaks in sheets of foam on the rock-bound coast--the fitful cry of curlew as it wings over them its solitary way--or the occasional low moaning of the wind as stealing through amidst the rocks it seems to pour forth a mournful dirge for the shades of departed greatness:--when we look on a scene like this we have before our gaze all that is known of these men of the olden time. Their blood-stained rites their solemn mysteries are forgotten; but their simple temples still stand imperishable as the God to whom they were erected. From the study of the ancient authors little or no information can be gleaned; a few descriptions of their bloody sacrifices an account of some of their more public ceremonials is all that they have handed down to us. But the real nature of their religion is unknown: more of its spirit is taught to us by those silent stones than by all other accounts put together. The choice of the situations for those sacred monuments amidst the melancholy waste or buried deep in the recesses of some vast forest where the wide-spreading branches of their sacred tree (the oak) casts its deep shadows over the consecrated spot with no canopy save the heavens shows the dark and gloomy spirit of their faith. They worshipped the God of the thunder-storm not the God of peace; and it was amidst the thunder-storm that their horrid rites appeared most horrid. When illuminated by the lurid glare of the lightning the gigantic osier figure filled with human beings sank into the flames--when the shouts of the multitude who stood in a dense circle around the spot the frenzied chants of the druids and the despairing shrieks of the dying victims were drowned in the sullen roar of the thunder--then must the fearful nature of their creed have stood forth in all its horrors. Yet with all this there was a sort of grandeur in the seclusion and simplicity of their worship. All was not blood; and though they bowed down to the Unknown God in an erring and mistaken spirit yet must their conception of him been fine. The God of nature and the wilderness--the God of the tempest and the storm--was a nobler idea than the immortalized humanities of Greek and Roman mythology though both had wandered equally far from the true God of Mercy and of Peace. When Massalia was hard pressed by two Gaulish nations she summoned in an evil hour Rome to her aid. By the Roman arms her assailants were repelled but these allies maintained their footing in the country. They soon subdued Liguria and founded the town of Aquæ Sextiæ; the Gaulish nation of the Ædues united with the strangers; a defensive league entered into by the Allobroges and the Arvernes to drive them from their shores was defeated. The territory acquired by these victories was organized into a Transalpine province; this province gradually went on increasing; its communications with Italy were assured by the Romans obtaining possession of the passes of the Alps. In the year 118 B.C. the first Roman colony in Gaul was founded at Narbonne; hither in course of time came the great maritime commerce which had raised Massalia to her greatness; hither too flowed much of the internal traffic of Gaul. The ships of Massalia lay rotting in her harbours her extensive quays lost their busy multitudes. In the fall of her naval power in the loss of her commercial policy she received a just reward for having wafted to her shores and assisted with her forces the stranger who was destined to rule over the Gaulish people. The organization of the province was completed; and from Narbonne Roman emissaries issuing forth laboured by augmenting the quarrels and dissensions of the native tribes to afford an opportunity for her to extend the limits of the empire. Driven from the shores of the Baltic by an inroad of the ocean the two tribes of the Kimry and the Teutones uniting precipitated themselves to the number of 300 000 fighting men upon the more southern countries. In the course of their wanderings they came upon the Roman province of Norica which they laid waste with fire and sword and where they defeated the consul Papirius Carbon with great loss. Without taking advantage of this opportunity to enter Italy which now lay open to their attack they entered the country of the Helvetii where they were joined by the tribes of that people the Ambrones the Tigurines and the Teutones; descending now upon Gaul like a devastating torrent they wasted it as far as the Belgian frontier; here however the resistance of the inhabitants prevented them from advancing further. Turning now upon the Roman province of Transalpine Gaul they defeated three Roman armies under Silanus Cassius and Scaurus; and here they were joined by that portion of the Tectosages who had formerly returned from the disastrous invasion of Greece. The Roman generals Cepio and Manlius who had advanced against them were utterly routed and great part of the province laid waste. From hence the Kimry penetrated into Spain where they remained for two years pillaging and wasting the country till having received a check from the Celtiberians they repassed the Pyrenees and united with their confederated in the plains of Gaul. The united bands now prepared to march upon Italy; this they did in two divisions: one consisting of the Kimry and the Tigurines directed its steps through Helvetia and Norica and by the Tridentine Alps; while the other consisting of the Ambrones and the Teutones moved on the route which leads to Italy by the Maritime Alps: both divisions had appointed a common rendezvous on the banks of the Po. Rome was not unprepared for this invasion; to meet it Marius had been recalled from his command in Africa and invested with the consular power. When the division of the Ambrones and the Teutones reached the Maritime Alps they found that general encamped in a position which lay directly in their line of march. Assaulted for three successive days the Romans maintained themselves in their intrenchments: at last the Gauls giving up the attempt to force them passed on and soon reached Aquæ Sextiæ whither they were followed by Marius. Marius encamped on a hill opposite the quarter of the Ambrones; between them flowed a river. The sutlers of the Roman army having descended to obtain water encountered in the bed of the torrent some Gauls. A skirmish began; the Ambrones flocked in great numbers to support their comrades; soon they assembled their whole force and advanced upon the Romans. In crossing the stream they were vigorously opposed by the auxiliaries. Marius seeing the favourable opportunity led down his legions to the attack. Unable to withstand the shock the Ambrones were driven back with great loss; the river ran red with their blood; the plain was covered with fugitives; and their routed forces halted not till they reached the neighbouring quarter of the Teutones. In their camp the Romans experienced more resistance from the women who rather than fall into the hands of their enemies flung themselves on the hostile ranks or perished by their own hands. Marius drew off his troops before night and retreated to his former position on the hill. The next night he sent round 3000 men to occupy a wood in the rear of the position of the Teutones. The following morning he drew out his legions in battle array upon the slope of the hill and sent forward his cavalry to skirmish with the enemy and induce them to engage with him. They fell into the snare: pursuing his cavalry they advanced to the river's edge and there in an evil hour crossed it and attacked the Roman army. The contest which ensued was long and desperate; the Gauls had the advantage in numbers the Romans in discipline and position. But while victory still hung in the balance the 3000 Romans issuing forth from their ambuscade fell upon the rear of the Teutones: this produced irremediable confusion in the ranks of the Gauls. The Romans redoubled the energy of their attack and the victory was no longer doubtful. Many perished in the field more in the pursuit; the remainder were cut off in detail by the peasants who assailed them on all sides. Meanwhile the other divisions of the Gauls consisting of the Kimry and the Tigurines after traversing Helvetia and Norica arrived at the Tridentine passes of the Alps at the end of winter. To keep possession of these passes the Tigurines halted upon the summits of the ridge while the Kimry continuing their march descended into the valley of the Adige. On their approach the consul Catulus who was charged with the defence of this part of Italy retreated behind the Adige; and when the Gauls advanced to attack him his legions were seized with such a panic that abandoning their camp they fled and halted not till they had placed the Po between themselves and the enemy. The Kimry now spread themselves over the whole territory beyond the Po and occupied the land without opposition: here they determined to await the arrival of the other column. This delay saved Italy; for it afforded time for Marius and his army to cross the Alps and effect a junction with Catulus and his troops. In the July of 101 B.C. Marius and Catulus advanced to meet the Kimry on the banks of the Po. On the 30th of July the hostile armies met to decide the fate of Italy in the Campus Ranolius. The battle which ensued was long and bloody; but overcome by the heat of the day and the immense clouds of dust and exposed by their imperfect defensive armour to all the strokes of the enemy the Kimry were in the end totally defeated. When the Romans in the course of the pursuit came to their camp the same scene occurred as that which took place at Aquæ Sextiæ; as the women after defending themselves for some time at last put an end to their existence with their own hands. On receiving news of this defeat the Tigurines abandoned the passes of the Alps and retreated to their native country Helvetia. Thus ended the last invasion of Italy by the Gauls. Rome acknowledged the danger she had run by the gratitude she displayed to Marius who received the title of the third Romulus and his triumph was celebrated with all the enthusiasm of a grateful country. We pass in silence over the various occurrences in Gaul till we come to the year 58 B.C. This was the year when Cæsar commenced his career of victory. His first achievement was the defeat of the Helvetii who rising _en masse_ wished to abandon their sterile country and gain by the sword a more fertile land. He next advanced against Ariovistus and his Germans who were ravaging with fire and sword the eastern portions of Gaul: these he likewise totally routed--thus delivering the inhabitants from a withering scourge. But their joy at this event was soon changed into sadness when they saw that the Romans had no intention of retreating from their territory. Establishing himself amongst the Sequanes Cæsar levied contributions and collected provisions from all the neighbouring nations. Their discontent soon burst forth; they flew to arms and prepared to make a desperate fight in defence of their liberties. We have no room to follow the Roman through his various campaigns; to trace the long and gallant stand made by the Gauls in defence of their native land; or the great and admirable genius of Cæsar nowhere displayed so greatly as in his Gaulish campaigns though perfidy sometimes tainted his councils and torrents of innocent blood too often stained his arms. Suffice it to say that after three campaigns the north and west had submitted to his forces and he had made his first descent on the British shores. In his fourth campaign he undertook his second expedition against Britain and subdued some more of the continental tribes. But a general movement now took place over nearly the whole of Gaul against the Romans who at first suffered some severe checks; but the military skill of Cæsar in the course of a fifth campaign again triumphed. Though so often vanquished these brave people were not yet subdued. A new league was entered into by their cities; the war broke out afresh; and an able general Vercingeto-rix now directed their movements. It was during the course of his sixth campaign which now followed that Cæsar ran the greatest danger and achieved the greatest triumphs. The surprise of Genatum the capture of Avaricum seemed at first to promise a speedy victory to his arms; but a repulse which he suffered before the walls of Geronia was the signal for the whole of Gaul to unite with the insurgents. A victory which he gained over Vercingeto-rix soon afterwards checked for the moment but did not dispirit the Gauls; and the whole weight of the war was soon collected around the ramparts of Alexia. Both parties felt that the contest which would now ensue must decide the fate of the campaign and both made the most strenuous exertions to prepare for it. The gigantic lines of Cæsar were soon surrounded by the whole force of the enemy and a combined attack was made upon them both from within and without. Great and imminent was the peril; but the steadiness of the legions and the gallantry of their chief surmounted it and the banners of Rome finally waved triumphant over the hard-fought field. The fruits of this victory were immense. Alexia capitulated; the Gaulish nations who had been most active in the war submitted; and Vercingeto-rix was given up to the conquerors. Yet was a great part of the country still unsubdued; and when in the ensuing year B.C. 51 Cæsar took the field in his seventh and last campaign in this country he found a powerful and numerous confederacy in arms. Taught by the experience of the past they no longer attempted to unite their whole forces and defeat him in general engagements but endeavoured to exhaust his resources and wear out his troops by a protracted defensive warfare. They fortified and garrisoned their towns so as to impose on him the necessity of innumerable sieges; whilst the country on his line of march was laid waste and his troops were harassed by the incessant attacks of their skirmishers. But Cæsar overcame all difficulties: if they met him in battle they were vanquished; if they retreated to their fortifications they were driven from them by escalade; if they took refuge in their marshes he pursued and overtook them even there. Dispirited by these constant defeats the Gauls for the last time laid down their arms. The conquered territory was organized as a new province of the Roman empire and Cæsar laboured to attach it to his person by the lenity and moderation of his government. In this he succeeded; nor had he ever reason to repent of having done so; for during the civil wars which raised him to the imperial power he received no inconsiderable assistance from the courage and devotion of its inhabitants. Here as a free people ends the history of the Gauls. We shall not follow M. Thierry in his account of the last period of their annals which embraces the subjugation of the Britons; the organization of Gaul into a subject province; the gradual loss of their nationality by its inhabitants; the spread of Roman manners and Roman civilization amongst them; their transition from an independent people to an integral part of the Roman empire. Here we take leave of them: their arms have just dropped from their hands; liberty has just fled from their shores; the fetters of conquest sit strangely on their free-born limbs; they have not yet learned the vices of a subject race: after having followed them in their career of conquest and through the hard-fought struggle in their native land we love not to dwell on the crushing of their haughty spirit. Throughout the whole of his history Thierry sustains the interest well; but nowhere is his narrative more animated than in his account of the wars of Cæsar; and no wonder for a nobler field could not lie before him. His book is altogether one of the most curious and interesting which we possess on the history of ancient times. A great work it cannot be called. M. Thierry is more a man of talent than of genius; and accordingly in his work we are more struck with the interest of his narrative than with the profoundness of his reflections: it contains not the philosophy of Guizot nor the originality of Michelet yet it is a valuable addition to modern literature. Would that we saw a few more such in our own country! FOOTNOTES: {A} _Histoire des Gaulois_ par M. AMADÉE THIERRY. 3 tomes. Paris: 1835. THE WITCHFINDER. CONCLUSION. At the upper end of the large Gothic room forming the interior of the town-hall of Hammelburg which was formally prepared as a court of trial sat upon a raised part of the flooring in his chair of state the Ober-Amtmann; before him were placed at a velvet-behung table his _schreibers_ or secretaries; beside him sat upon a low cushioned stool his daughter the fair Fraulein Bertha surrounded by her tirewomen who remained standing behind her. The presence of the young Fraulein was of rare occurrence upon occasions of judicial ceremony in the old town-hall. But a solemn appeal to her testimony had been made by the witchfinder; and her father whose sense of justice considered that a matter of accusation of so heavy and serious a nature as that of witchcraft should be investigated in all its bearings had commanded her presence. Her heart full of the purest milk of human kindness revolted however from witnessing the progress of such terrible proceedings--the justice of which her simple mind tutored according to the dark prejudices of the age never once doubted but which curdled her blood with horror. And she sat pale and sad with downcast eyes scarcely daring to raise them upon the crowd that filled the hall much less upon the most conspicuous object in the scene before her--the unhappy being against whom all curses all evil feelings all insane desires of blood and death were then directed. Perhaps there was another reason also which almost unconsciously caused her to keep her eyes fixed upon the earth; perhaps she feared that they might meet two other mild blue eyes the expression of which was that of a deep--far too deep--an interest; for it caused her heart to beat and her spirit to be troubled; and her bosom to heave and sigh she knew not wherefore: unless indeed she were in truth bewitched. In the centre of the hall was placed the accused woman. She was seated upon a rude three-legged stool which was firmly fixed upon a raised flooring elevated about three feet from the ground--her face turned towards her judge. A slight chain passed round the middle of her body and fastened her down to her seat. She was still attired in the dark hood and cloak which had been her customary dress and sat with head bent downwards and her hands clasped languidly upon her knees as if resigned in the bitterness of her despair to meet the cruel fate that awaited her. Below was a compact and turbulent crowd of the lower orders of the town which was with difficulty kept by the pikemen within the limits assigned to it; and which from time to time let forth low howls against the supposed sorceress that increased like the _crescendo_ of distant thunder and then died away again. On either side towards the upper end were ranged upon benches some of the more reputable _bourgeois_ and their spouses all decked out in their finest braveries as if they were present at a theatrical show or a church mystery: and in truth the representation about to be given was but little more in their own eyes than a sort of show got up for their especial gratification. Guarded by two pikemen stood the cripple--his teeth set firmly although his lips quivered with excitement--his light eyes glaring fiercely around with an air of savage exultation and gleaming as it were with a pale phosphoric fire from out of the dark ground of his swarthy face and lank black hair. He moved restlessly and uneasily upon his withered limbs clenching by fits and starts his rosary from his bosom and murmuring a hasty and--to judge by the wildness of his eyes that showed how his mind was fixed upon far other thoughts--a vain prayer. He rolled also his head and the upper part of his body continually backwards and forwards like a wild beast fretting in his cage. Among the more prominent of the crowd whom the favour of the guards had allowed to push beyond the assigned limits or whom reasons connected with the trial required to come forwards stood ""Gentle Gottlob."" His brow was overclouded with sadness for he felt in how fearful a pass this horrible denunciation had placed the woman whom he had so long regarded with attachment. His mild blue eye was more melancholy than of wont; and yet in spite of the trouble of his mind he was unable to withdraw his looks from that bright loadstone of his affections whose sadness seemed to sympathize with his own. At least his heart would fain persuade him that there was mysterious sympathy in their mutual dejection. The principal personages concerned in the awful question at issue occupied thus their respective positions in the old town-hall; when after a long and troubled pause during which silence was with difficulty obtained among the more tumultuous portion of the crowd at the lower end of the hall one of the _schreibers_ rose and read from an interminable strip of parchment which he held in his hand the act of accusation against the female known under the popular designation of ""Mother Magdalena "" as attainted of the foul crime of witchcraft of the casting of spells and malefices to the annoyance and destruction of her fellow-creatures of consorting with spirits of darkness and of lascivious intercourse with the arch-fiend himself. For so ran at that time the tenor of the accusation directed against the unhappy women suspected of this imaginary crime. The act of accusation was long and richly interlarded with all those interminable complications of legal phraseology which seem ever at all times and in all nations to have been the necessary concomitants of all legal proceedings. The reading of the act however being at last terminated the town-beggar commonly known by the familiar name of Black Claus the witchfinder Schwartzer-Claus or Claus Schwartz as he was usually designated among the people was summoned to stand forward as the denouncer of the aforesaid Magdalena and to substantiate his charge. Thus called upon the cripple gave a start forward like a lion let loose upon the gladiator's arena through the barred gates of which he has already sniffed the odour of blood; and then raising one of his long arms towards the stool of penitence on which the criminal had been placed he again repeated with an eagerness amounting to frenzy his accusation against her. As the witchfinder's hoarse voice was heard a visible shudder passed through Magdalena's frame; but she raised not her head moved not a limb spoke not; and it was only when called upon by the chief _schreiber_ to declare what she had to say against this accusation that she lowly murmured--""God's will be done!"" but still with bowed head and downcast eyes. In support of his denunciation the cripple proceeded to state how he had watched the mysterious female called ""Mother Magdalena "" and had observed that she never would enter any consecrated building; how she would daily advance up the steps of the church and then pause before the threshold as if she feared to pass it and then throw herself down upon the stones before the gate where she would lie in strange convulsions and at last return without having penetrated into the building--an evident proof that the devil she served had forbidden her to put her foot into any sacred dwelling but had taught her nevertheless to approach near enough to treat the awful mysteries of the Christian religion performed within with mockery and contempt. To this accusation which was confirmed by the acclamation of several persons present in the court Magdalena when called upon to speak proffered no denial; she contented herself with the meek reply that God alone knew the motives of the heart--that it was for him alone to judge. The words were still uttered in the same low despairing tone and without the slightest movement of her head from its sunken posture. The partially monastic dress which was her habitual a
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tire was next brought forward against her as a proof of her desire to treat with contempt the dress of the religious orders: and to this absurd accusation when asked why she had adopted a costume resembling that of the holy sisterhood of penitents the old woman still refused any reply. The events of the previous afternoon when she had been openly seen to throw her staff at the Amtmann's unoffending daughter and wound her on the neck and then break into pieces the image of the Holy Cross were then recapitulated as facts known upon the positive evidence of a hundred witnesses. These matters disposed of the cripple proceeded to detail his own peculiar grievances and attributed as he had done in the cases of the seven unhappy women who had already fallen victims of his frantic delusion the severe pains that had racked his poor distorted limbs to the malefic charms of the sorceress. He related how on the last night on which he had met Mother Magdalena he had found her sitting by the well in the market-place casting a spell upon the spring and turning the waters to poison and blood--as a proof of which he swore to have himself tasted in the water of the bucket the taste of blood; how in revenge for his warning to her to desist from her foul practices she had pointed up her finger to the sky and immediately brought down upon his head all the combined waters of heaven; how she had vanished from his sight in this storm he knew not how; and how immediately intense pains began to torture his joints until he became half frantic with agony and had been compelled by hideous visions to quit the shelter he had sought in order to be exposed to all the peltings of the storm. He had since suffered he declared the tortures of the damned in all his limbs with occasional fits of shuddering sometimes of hot fever sometimes of the most freezing cold which were evidently torments worked upon him by the powers of darkness. And as he spoke the unhappy wretch was again seized by one of his fearful fits of ague during the convulsions of which the clamours of the crowd grew terrible against the sorceress. ""What sayest thou to this accusation woman?"" said the chief _schreiber_. ""Thou see'st how even now he suffers."" ""I have never willed evil to any man--not even to him "" was Magdalena's only reply. When recovered from his fit the cripple again raised his head--it was to cast a glance at the object of his denunciation in which hatred and triumph were blended together in one of those occasional flashes of wildness which showed that there was a vein of insanity running through all the frenzied zeal of the witchfinder. He had now arrived at a period of his narration when the most damning proof of all was to overwhelm the accused woman. It was not without an unaffected expression of horror that he went on to relate how he had wandered around the building by the Watergate in a lower cell of which he had discovered that she dwelt seeking in vain to find an entrance or a peep-hole that might enable him to penetrate into the interior; how he had at last dragged his crippled limbs up into a tree upon the river's bank overlooking an upper chamber of the building; how he had at first seen Mother Magdalena in conversation with the young illuminator; how upon his departure she had flung herself down upon her knees and after spitting upon one of the books of holy writ upon the table had made wild gestures of conjuration upon which the demon himself attired in a dark robe had suddenly appeared by supernatural means for he had not entered by the door; how the foul hag had fallen down and worshipped the arch-fiend; and how after a conference of short duration during which the woman at his feet appeared to supplicate with earnestness probably a prolongation of her wretched term of power to work ill and afterwards kissed his hand in token of adoration and submission the demon had vanished as suddenly as he had appeared. A low murmur of horror ran through the assembly as Black Claus related this fearful story. All eyes were turned upon the handmaiden of Satan. For a moment she had raised her head horror-struck at this interpretation of the interview she had in Gottlob's chamber with the stranger--for a moment she seemed to have a desire to speak. But then clasping her hands before her face she murmured--""O God! it cannot be! But this is terrible!"" Gottlob who during the whole accusation had listened with much impatience could now no longer restrain his generous feelings. He started forward with the words--""No no it is impossible! Speak Magdalena--say how false is this man's tale."" ""God knows that it is false!"" said Magdalena. ""I knew it could not be. There could be no one with thee in my chamber and he lies."" ""No "" replied Magdalena sadly ""thus far is true:--There was a stranger by me in your chamber."" ""But who then?--speak Magdalena "" urged Gottlob. ""Clear yourself of the foul stigma of his tale."" ""I may not say!"" replied the unhappy woman. ""But God will prove my innocence in His own right time."" ""Why hesitate "" again cried the eager young man ""when with a word you could disprove him?"" ""I have already said it cannot be "" said the accused woman sinking her head upon her breast. Gottlob himself drew back with a shudder; for a moment he knew not what to think; the strange answers of Magdalena perplexed and troubled him. He began himself to doubt of the woman who in return for his benevolence had showed him the attachment of a mother. He pulled his cloak over his face with both his hands and stood for a time overwhelmed. ""It needs no further questions upon this point I presume "" said the chief _schreiber_ turning to the Ober-Amtmann. ""The wretched woman has already admitted a part of the truth;"" and with a sign to the denouncer he bade him proceed. The witchfinder paused for a moment and gave one long look of tenderness and pity--as far indeed as his harsh rudely-stamped features could express such feelings--at the pale face of Bertha. Then fixing his eye keenly upon the Ober-Amtmann as if to fascinate his attention he burst into a fresh accusation against the sorceress as having in the first place cast her spells upon the noble Fraulein Bertha for the purpose of sowing the seeds of death within her frame; and as having in the second place employed the young man called ""Gentle Gottlob"" to be an involuntary agent in her work of ill. Upon hearing the first part of this charge Magdalena had raised her head to give unconsciously as it were a deprecating look at the fair girl--as if to assure her with that one long concentrated look of deep feeling that far from desiring her evil she contended only with the overpourings of kindness and love for her; and then as though she had already expressed more than her conscience could approve she bowed again her head murmuring only--""O God! support me. Thou knowest how false is the raving of that wretched man."" The second part of the charge excited other and very varied feelings among those present. Magdalena again started but with evident surprise and made a hasty gesture of denial. Gottlob sprang forward horrified at being thus involved even as an involuntary agent in the hideous denunciation and indignant at the supposition that he could work ill to the Amtmann's lovely daughter; and he protested with all the vehemence which gentle natures when roused into excitement will display against so unfounded and calumnious an accusation; whilst Bertha joining together her small hands as if in supplication turned her face with anxious expression to her father crying--""No no--it cannot be!"" Astounded at so unexpected a revelation the Ober-Amtmann seemed at first not to know what to think. He gazed alternately upon Gottlob and Bertha as if to read upon their faces the secret of a connexion between them; and then satisfied of the impossibility that the noble Ober-Amtmann's daughter could have the slightest affinity with the unknown youth before him he drew a long breath and passed his hand over his brow as if to drive away ideas so absurd. ""Peace youth--peace!"" he cried to Gottlob; ""we will hear thee anon. It is not thou who art accused. And thou my child be calm. Cripple! what mean thy words? What proof bringest thou of their truth?"" ""Ask of the suffering angel by thy side my noble lord "" replied the cripple with emotion. ""Let her tell how of late her cheek has grown pale her limbs have become weary her very life's-blood languid and oppressed. I have watched her day by day and I have seen these changes. I have watched her with a careful and a cunning eye; and I have felt--there in my heart--that the spell was upon her: and this it was that urged me to denounce that wretched hag."" ""Speak my child "" said the Ober-Amtmann in trouble and anxiety. ""What this man says is it true? Hast thou suffered lately? Indeed I do remember thy cheek has been paler than of wont--thy appetite has left thee--thou hast been no longer so cheerful or so active as of old. Speak my child--hast thou really suffered?"" ""Oh no! my father I have not suffered "" replied the agitated girl in much confusion; ""and yet I have not been as formerly I was. I have been sad I knew not why and wept in the silence of my chamber without cause; and I have found no pleasure in my embroidery nor in my flowers nor in my falcons. I have felt my foot fall weary. I have sought to rest and yet when reposing I have felt unable to remain in quiet and I have longed for exercise abroad. But yet I have not suffered; and sometimes I have even hugged with pleasure the trouble of my mind and body."" ""These seem indeed the symptoms of a deadly spell upon thee my poor child "" exclaimed her father. ""Such they say are the first evidences of the working of those charms that witches breathe over their victims."" ""And let the Fraulein Bertha tell "" cried the witchfinder ""how it has been yonder youth who has seemed to exercise this influence of ill upon her."" Again Gottlob sought to spring forward and speak; but a sign from the Ober-Amtmann to the guards caused them to place their pikes before him and arrest him in his impulse. ""How and what is this my child?"" said the Ober-Amtmann. ""Knowest thou that youth? and in what has he consciously or unconsciously done thee ill?"" ""He has done me no ill "" replied the innocent girl in still greater confusion as her bosom heaved and the blood suffused her cheeks. ""I am sure he would not do me ill for all the treasures of the world!"" ""Thou knowest him then?"" said her father somewhat more sternly. ""No I know him not "" replied Bertha in trouble; ""but I have met him sometimes in my path and I have seen him""--she hesitated for a moment and then added with downcast eyes ""at his window which overlooks our garden."" ""Why then this trouble Bertha?"" continued the Ober-Amtmann in a tone that rendered their conversation inaudible beyond their own immediate circle. ""I cannot tell myself my father. I feel troubled and sad it is true; and yet I know not why. I have no cause""---- ""And when thou hast met yonder youth as thou sayest hast thou felt this trouble before?"" ""Alas! yes my father. I remember now that at his aspect my heart would beat; my head grow giddy and my ears would tingle; and then a faintness would come over me as though it were a pain I felt and yet it was a pleasant pain. There was nothing in him that could cause me ill; was there father?"" The Ober-Amtmann's brow grew dark as Bertha proceeded; but after a moment's reflection he murmured to himself--""Love! oh no! It is impossible! She and he! The noble's daughter and the low-born youngster. It could not be! There is no doubt! Witchcraft has been at work! How long has it been thus with thee my child?"" he added with solicitude. ""I cannot tell my father. Some five or six months past it came upon me. I know not when or how!"" ""Bears he no charm upon him?"" exclaimed the Ober-Amtmann aloud. ""He bears a charm upon him!"" cried the witchfinder in triumph. ""And ask who bound it round his neck?"" ""It is false! I bear no charm!"" cried Gottlob eagerly. ""She herself denied that it was such."" ""Of what does he speak?"" cried the Ober-Amtmann. ""It was but a gift of affection and no charm. She gave me this ring "" said Gottlob pointing to the ring hung by a small riband round his neck; ""and I have worn it as she requested in remembrance of some unworthy kindness I had shown her."" ""And how long since was it "" enquired the Ober-Amtmann ""that she bestowed this supposed gift upon you?"" ""Some five or six months past "" was Gottlob's unlucky answer; ""not long after I first brought her to reside with me in my poor dwelling."" During this examination the agitation of Magdalena had become extreme; and when upon the Ober-Amtmann's command that the ring should be handed up to him Gottlob removed it from his neck and gave it into the hands of one of the guards she cried in much excitement ""No no; give it not Gottlob!"" The ring however was passed on to the Ober-Amtmann; and Magdalena covering her face with her hands fell back with a stifled groan into her former crouching position. The sight of the ring seemed indeed to have the power of a necromancer's charm upon the Ober-Amtmann. No sooner had his eyes fallen upon it than his cheek grew pale--his usually severe and stern face was convulsed with agitation--and he sank back in his chair with the low cry ""That ring! O God! After so many years of dearly-sought oblivion!"" At the sight of the Ober-Amtmann's agitation and apparent swoon a howl of execration burst from the crowd below mingled with the cries of ""Tear the wretch in pieces! She has poisoned him! Tear her in pieces!"" Consternation prevailed through the whole assembly. Bertha sprang to her father's side; but the Ober-Amtmann quickly rallied. He waved his daughter back with the remark ""It was nothing--it is past;"" and raising himself in his chair looked again upon the ring. ""There is no doubt "" he murmured ""it is that same ring--that Arabic ring brought me from the East and which I gave--oh no!--impossible!"" he hurriedly exclaimed as a horrible thought seemed to cross him. ""She has been dead many years since. Did not my own brother assure me of her death? It cannot be!"" After a moment's pause to recover from his agitation he gave orders to one of the guards to remove the hood from Magdalena's head that he might see her features. With the crooked end of a pike's head one of them tore back her hood; while another with the staff of his pike forced her hands asunder. Magdalena's careworn and prematurely withered face was exposed to the gaze of all distorted with emotion. ""Less rudely varlets!"" cried the Ober-Amtmann with a feeling of sudden forbearance towards the wretched woman which surprised all present; for they could not but marvel at the slightest symptom of consideration toward such an abhorred outcast of humanity as a convicted witch; and as such the miserable Magdalena was already regarded. For a moment the Ober-Amtmann considered Magdalena's careworn withered and agitated face with painful attention; and then as if relieved from some terrible apprehension he heaved a bitter sigh and murmured to himself--""No no there is no trace of that once well-known face. I knew it could not be. She is no more. It was a wild and foolish thought! but this ring--'tis strange! Woman dost thou know me?"" he asked aloud with some remaining agitation. ""I know you not "" replied Magdalena with a low and choked voice; for she now trembled violently and the tears gushed from her eyes. ""How camest thou then by this ring? Speak! I command thee "" continued the Ober-Amtmann. Magdalena bowed her head with a gesture of refusal to answer any further question. ""Wretched woman! Hast thou violated the repose of the dead? Hast thou torn it from the grave? How else came it in thy possession?"" The unhappy woman replied not. She had again covered her face with her hands and the tears streamed through her meagre fingers. ""Speak I tell thee! This ring has conjured up such recollections that were there but one human link between thee and one who has long since rested from all sorrow in the grave it might ensure thy safety."" No answer was returned by Magdalena; although to judge by the convulsed movement of her body the struggle within must have been bitter and heavy to bear. ""Die then in thy obstinacy miserable woman "" cried the Ober-Amtmann in a suppressed voice--""Let justice take its course!"" ""Denouncer!"" said the chief _schreiber_ to the witchfinder ""hast thou further evidence to offer?"" ""Needs it more to convict a criminal of the foul and infernal practices of witchcraft?"" cried Black Claus with bitterness. The chief _schreiber_ turned to the Ober-Amtmann as if to consult his will. For a moment the Ober-Amtmann passed one hand across his brow as though to sweep away the dark visions that were hovering about it; and then waving the other as if he had come to a resolution which had cost him pain said with stern solemnity--""Let the workers of the evil deeds of Satan perish until the earth be purged of them all."" This customary formula implied the condemnation of the supposed sorceress. ""To the stake! to the stake!"" howled the crowd upon hearing the delivery of this expected sentence. After enjoining silence which was with difficulty enforced the chief _schreiber_ rose and addressed to Magdalena the accustomed question ""Woman dost thou demand the trial by water and God's issue by that trial?"" ""I demand but to die in peace "" replied the miserable woman; ""and God's will be done!"" ""She refuses the trial by water "" said the chief _schreiber_ in order to establish the fact which was put down in writing by the adjuncts. ""To the stake! to the stake!"" howled the crowd. ""And hast thou nothing to urge against the justice of thy sentence?"" asked the official questioner. ""Justice!"" cried Magdalena with a start which caused the chain around her waist to clank upon the wretched stool on which she sat. ""Justice!"" she cried in a tone of indignation. For a moment the earthly spirit revolted. But it gleamed only for an instant. ""May God pardon my unjust judge the sins of his youth ""--she paused and added ""as I forgive him my cruel death!"" With these words the last spark of angry feeling was extinguished for ever. ""May God pardon him as well as those who have thus cruelly witnessed against me; and may He bless him and all those who are most near and dear to him "" she continued--her voice as she spoke growing gradually more subdued until it was lost and choked in convulsive sobbings. Again a thrill of horror passed through the Ober-Amtmann; for the sound of the voice seemed to revive in his mind memories of the past and recall a vision he had already striven to dispel from it. His frame shuddered and again he fell back in his chair. ""It is a delusion of Satan!"" he muttered pressing his hands to his ears and closing his eyes. Bertha's eyes streamed with tears; her pitying heart was tortured by this scene of sadness. ""Blessings instead of curses upon those who have condemned her! Can that be guilt?"" said gentle Gottlob to himself. ""Can that be the spirit of the malicious and revengeful agent of the dark deeds of Satan? No--she is innocent; and I will still save her if human means can save!"" After thus parleying with himself Gottlob began to struggle to make his way from the court. ""The blessings of the servants of the fiend are bitter curses "" said the infatuated witchfinder on the other hand; ""and she has blessed me. God stand by me!"" ""To the stake!--to the stake!"" still howled the pitiless the bloodthirsty crowd. The refusal of the unhappy Magdalena to abide by the issue of the well-known trial by water had so much abridged the customary proceedings that orders were given and preparations made for the execution of the ultimate punishment for the crime of witchcraft--burning at the stake--shortly after daybreak on the morrow. It was yet night--a short hour before the breaking of the dawn. The pile had been already heaped in the market-place of Hammelburg--the stake fixed. All was in readiness for the hideous performance about to take place. The guards paced backwards and forwards before the grated doorway which opened under the terrace of the old town-hall; for there in that miserable hole was confined the wretched victim of popular delusion. The soldiers kept watch however upon their prisoner at such a distance as to be as far as possible out of the reach of her malefic spells. The heavy clanking of their pikes as they rested them from time to time upon the pavement or paused to interchange a word alone broke the silence of the still sleeping town--sleeping to awake shortly like a tiger thirsty for blood. The light of a waning moon showed indistinctly the dark mass in the centre of the market-place--the stage upon which the frightful tragedy was about to be enacted--when one of the sentinels all at once turning his head in that direction descried a dark form creeping around the pile as if examining it on all sides. ""What's that?"" he cried in alarm to his comrade pointing to this dark object. ""Is it the demon himself whom she has conjured up and who now comes to deliver her? All good spirits""--and he crossed himself with hurried zeal. ""Praise the Lord!"" continued the other completing the usual German form of exorcism and crossing himself no less devoutly. ""Challenge him Hans!"" said the first; ""at the sound of a Christian voice mayhap he may vanish away; and thou art ever boasting to Father Peter that thou are the most Christian man of thy company."" ""Challenge him thyself "" replied Hans in a voice that did not say much for the firmness of his conscience as a Christian. ""Let's challenge him both at once "" proposed the other soldier. ""Perhaps between us we may muster up goodness enough to drive the foul fiend before us."" ""Agreed!"" replied Hans with somewhat better courage; and upon this joint-stock company principle of piety both the soldiers raised their voices at once and cried in a somewhat quavering duet ""Who goes there?"" A hoarse laugh was the only answer received to this challenge; and the dark form seemed to advance towards them across the market-place. So great appeared the modesty of each of the soldiers with regard to his appreciation of his own merits as a good Christian--so little his confidence in his own powers of holiness to wrestle with the fiend of darkness in the shape which now approached them--that they seemed disposed rather humbly to quit the field than encounter Sir Apollyon in so glorious a contest; when the dim light of the moon revealed the figure as it came forward to be that of the witchfinder. ""It is Claus Schwartz!"" said Hans taking breath. ""Or the devil in his form "" pursued his fellow-sentinel with more caution. ""Stand back!"" he shouted as the witchfinder came within a few yards ""and declare who thou art."" ""Has the foul hag within there bewitched thee?"" cried Black Claus; ""or has she smitten thee with blindness? Canst thou not see? The night is not so dark but good men may know each other."" ""What wouldst thou here?"" said Master Hans completely recovered from his spiritual alarm. ""I cannot rest "" replied the witchfinder with bitterness. ""Until her last ashes shall have mingled with the wind I shall take no repose body or mind. I cannot sleep; or if I close my eyes visions of the hideous hags who have already perished there float before my distracted eyes. It is she that murders my rest as she has tormented my poor limbs--curses on her! But a short hour a short hour more and she too shall feel all the tortures of hell--tortures worse than those she has inflicted on the poor cripple. The flames shall rise and lap her body round--the bright red flames. Her members shall writhe upon the stake. The screams of death shall issue from her blackened lips; until the lurid smoke shall have wrapped her it its dark winding-sheet and stifled the last cry of her parting soul as it flies to meet its infernal master in the realms of darkness. Oh it will be a glorious sight!"" And the cripple laughed with an insane laugh of malice and revenge which made the soldiers shudder in every limb and draw back from him with horror. It seemed as if the fever of his excitement had pressed so powerfully on his brain as to have driven him completely into madness. After a moment however he pulled his rosary from his bosom and kissed it adding in a calmer tone ""Yes it will be a glorious sight--for it will be for the cause of the Lord and of his holy church."" Little as they comprehended the witchfinder's raving the soldiers again crossed themselves and looked upon him with a sort of awe. ""What wouldst thou?"" said one of them as Claus advanced towards the prison door. ""I would look upon her there--in her prison "" said the cripple with an expression that denoted a malicious eagerness to gloat upon his victim. The soldiers interchanged glances with one another as if they doubted whether such a permission ought to be allowed to the witchfinder. ""Ah bah!"" said Hans. ""It is not he that will aid her to escape. Let him pass. They'll make a fine sport with one another the witchfinder and the witch--dog and cat. Zist zist!"" continued the young soldier laughing and making a movement and a sound as if setting on the two above-mentioned animals to worry each other. ""Take care "" said his more scrupulous companion. ""Jest not with such awful work. Who knows but it may be blasphemy; and what would Father Peter say?"" The two sentinels continued their pacing up and down but still at some distance from the prison doorway in order as Hans's companion expressed it ""to keep as much as possible out of the devil's clutches;"" while Black Claus approached the grating of the door. As the witchfinder peered with knitted brow through the bars of the grating it seemed to him at first so complete was the darkness within as though the cell was tenantless; and his first movement was to turn in order to warn the guards of the escape of their prisoner. But as he again strained his eyes he became at last aware of the existence of a dark form upon the floor of the cell; and as by degrees his sight became more able to penetrate the obscurity within he began plainly to perceive the form of the miserable woman crouched on her knees upon the damp slimy pavement of the wretched hole. She was already dressed in the sackcloth robe of the penitents condemned to the stake and her poor grey hairs were without covering. So motionless was her form that for a moment the witchfinder thought she was dead and had fallen together in the position in which she had knelt down; and the thought was like a knife in his revengeful heart that she might thus have escaped the tortures prepared for her and thwarted the gratification of his insane and hideous longings. A second thought suggested to him that she was sleeping. But this conjecture was scarcely less agonizing to him than the former. That she the sorceress should sleep and be at rest whilst he her victim could find no sleep no rest no peace body or mind was more than his bitter spirit could bear. He shook the bars of the door with violence and called aloud ""Magdalena!"" ""Is my hour already come?"" said the wretched woman raising her head so immediately as to show how far sleep was from her eyelids. ""No thou hast got an hour to enjoy the torments of thy own despair "" laughed the witchfinder with bitter irony. ""Let me then be left in peace and my last prayers be undisturbed "" said Magdalena. ""In order that thou mayst pray to the devil thou servest to deliver thee!"" pursued Black Claus with another mocking laugh. ""Ay--pray--pray; but it will be in vain. He is an arch-deceiver the fiend thy master. He promises and fulfils not. He offers tempting wages to those who sell to him their souls and then deserts his servants in the hour of trouble. So prayed all the filthy hags who sat there before thee Magdalena; but they prayed in vain."" ""Leave me wretched man!"" said Magdalena who now became aware that it was the cripple who addressed her. ""Hast thou not sufficiently sated thy thirst for evil that thou shouldst come to torment me in my last moments? Go! tempt not the bitterness of my spirit in this supreme hour of penitence and prayer. Go! for I have forgiven thee; and I would not curse thee now."" ""I defy thy curses witch of hell!"" cried the cripple with frantic energy. ""Already the first pale streaks of dawn begin to flicker in the east. A little time and thy power to curse will be no more; a little time and nothing will remain of thee but a heap of noisome ashes; and a name which will be mingled with that of the arch-enemy of mankind in the execrations of thy victims--a name to be remembered with horror and disgust--as that of the foul serpent--in the thoughts of the tormented cripple and of the pure angel of brightness upon whom thou hast sought to work evil and death."" ""O God! make not this hour of trial too hard for me to bear!"" exclaimed the unhappy woman; and then raising her clasped hands to Claus in bitter expostulation she cried ""Man! what have I done to harm thee that thou shouldst heap these coals of fire on my soul?"" ""What thou hast done to harm me?"" cried the witchfinder. ""Hast thou not tormented my poor cripple limbs with thy infernal spells? Hast thou not caused me to suffer the tortures of the damned? But it is not vengeance that I seek. No--no. I have vowed a holy vow--I have sworn to spend my life in the good task of purging from the earth such workers of evil as thou and those who served the fiend by their foul sorceries were it even at the risk of exposing my body to pain and suffering and even death from the revengeful malice of their witchcrafts. And God knows I have suffered in the holy cause."" And the cripple clenched again within his right hand the image attached to the rosary in his bosom as if to satisfy himself by its contact of the truth and right of those deeds which he strove to qualify as holy. ""What thou or such as thou have done to harm me!"" he continued with bitter spite. ""I will tell thee hag! I was once a young and happy boy. I was strong and well-favoured then. I had a father--a passionate but a kind man; and I had a mother whom I loved beyond all created things. She was the joy of my soul--the pride of my boyish dreams. I was happy then I tell thee. I called myself by another name. No matter what it was. Black Claus is the avenger's name and he will cleave to it. One day there came an aged beggar-woman to our cottage and begged. My mother heeded her not. I know not why; for she was ever kind. My father drove her from the door; and as she turned away she cursed us all. I never can forget that moment nor the terror of my youthful mind as I heard that curse. And the curse clave to us; for she--_was a witch_; and it came upon us soon and bitterly. My mother was in the pride of her beauty still when a gay noble saw her in her loveliness and paid her court. Then came a horrible night when the witch's curse was fearfully fulfilled. My father was jealous. He attacked the young noble as he came by the darkness of night; and it was he--my father--who was killed. I saw him die weltering in his blood. My poor mother too was spirited away; the fell powers of witchcraft dragged her from that bloody hearth. Yes; witchcraft it was--it must have been; for she was too pure and good to listen to the voice of the seducer--to follow her husband's murderer. She died probably of grief--my poor wretched mother; for I never saw her more. For days and nights I sought her but in vain; suffering cold and hunger and sleeping oft-times in the cold woods and dank morasses. Then fell the witches curse on _me_ also; and I began to suffer these pains which thy foul tribe have never ceased to inflict upon me since. The tortures of the body were added to the tortures of the mind. My limbs grew distorted and withered. I became the outcast of humanity I now am; and then it was I vowed a vow to pursue even unto death all those hideous lemans of Satan who like her who cursed us sell their wretched souls but to work evil and destruction and death to their fellow-creatures. And I have kept my vow!"" In spite of herself Magdalena had been obliged to listen to the witchfinder's tale which with his face pressed against the iron bars of the grating he poured with harsh voice into her unwilling ear. As he proceeded however she appeared fascinated by the words he uttered as the p
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or quivering bird is fascinated by the serpent's eye. Her eyeballs were distended--her arms still outstretched towards him as she had first raised them to him in her cry of expostulation; but the hands were desperately clenched together--the arms stiffened with the extreme tension of the nerves. ""Oh no!"" she murmured to herself as he yet spoke; ""that were too horrible!"" and when he paused it was with a smothered scream of agony still mixed with doubt that she cried ""Karl!"" ""Karl!"" repeated the witchfinder clenching the bars with still firmer grasp and raising himself with the effort to the full height of his stature as though his limbs had on a sudden recovered all their strength--""Karl! Ay that was my name! How dost thou know it woman?"" ""O God!"" exclaimed the wretched tenant of the cell ""was my cup of bitterness not yet full? Hast thou reserved me this?"" She wrung her hands in agony and then looking again at the cripple cried in a tone of concentrated misery ""Karl! they told me that thou wast dead--that thou too hadst died after that night of horrors!"" ""Who art thou woman?"" cried the cripple again with an accent of horror as if a frightful thought had for the first time forced itself upon his brain. ""Who art thou that thou speakest to me thus and freezest the very marrow of my bones with fear? Who art thou that criest 'Karl' with such a voice--a voice that now comes back upon my ear as if it were a damning memory of times gone by? Who art thou woman?--speak! Let not this dreadful thought that blasts me like lightning strike me utterly to the earth."" ""Who I am?"" sobbed the miserable woman. ""Thy wretched and guilty mother Karl!"" ""Guilty!"" shouted the cripple. ""Then thou art not she! My mother was not guilty--she was all innocence and truth!"" ""I am thy guilty mother Karl "" repeated the kneeling woman ""who has striven by long years of penitence and prayer to expiate the past. Alas in vain! for Heaven refuses the expiation since it has reserved the wretched penitent this last most fearful blow of all!"" ""Thou!--oh no!--say it not! Thou my mother!"" cried the witchfinder. ""Thy mother--Margaret Weilheim!"" ""Horrible!--most horrible!"" repeated the agonized son letting go the bars and clasping his bony hands over his face. ""Thou my once beloved mother the wretched being of misery and sin--the accomplice of the spirits of darkness--and _I_ thy denouncer! O God! This is some fearful delusion!"" ""The delusion is in thy own heart my poor distracted infatuated son "" pursued the miserable mother. ""Happy and blessed were I were no greater guilt upon my soul than that of the crime for which I am this day condemned to die. Bitter it is to die; but I had accepted all as the will of Him above and he knows my innocence of all dealings with the powers of hell."" ""Innocent!"" cried the witchfinder in frightful agitation. ""Were it possible! And is it I thy own child who strikes the blow--I who am thy murderer--I who to avenge the mother have condemned the mother to the stake? Horrible! And yet those proofs--those fearful proofs!"" ""Hear me for my time is short now in this world "" said the poor woman known by the name of Magdalena. ""I will not tell thee how I listened to the voice of the serpent and how I fell. My pride in my fatal beauty was my pitfall. All that the honied words of passion and persuasion could effect was used to lure me on to my destruction--and at last I fled with my seducer. I knew not then I swear to thee Karl--God knows how bitterly it costs the mother to reveal her shame to her own son; but bitter if it be she accepts is as an expiation and she will not deceive him--I swear to thee I knew not then that thy father had fallen in that unhappy night and had fallen by the hand of him whom I madly followed. It was long after that the news reached me and had nearly driven me distracted. The same tale told me but falsely the death of my first-born--my Karl. Remorse had long since tortured my heart. I was not happy with the lover of my choice--I never had been happy with him; but now the stings of my conscience became too strong to bear. Tormented by my bitter self-reproaches I decided upon quitting my seducer who had long proved cold and heartless. But I had borne him a child--a daughter; and to quit my offspring the only child left to me was agony; to take it with me to bear it away to partake a life of poverty and wretchedness was still greater agony to the mother's mind. The great man who was its father--for he was of noble rank and highly placed--when he found me determined to leave him and the world for ever--and he saw me part from him the heartless one without regret--offered to adopt my darling infant as his legitimate child; to bring it up to all the honours wealth and consideration of the world; to ensure it that earthly happiness the mother's heart yearned to give it. But as I have told thee he was cold and worldly-minded and he exacted from me an oath--a cruel oath--that I never should own my child again--that I never should address it as my offspring--that I never should utter the word 'daughter ' never hear the cry of 'mother' from its lips. He would not that his daughter the noble Fraulein should be brought to shame by being acknowledged as the offspring of a peasant wife. All I desired was the welfare--the happiness--of my child. ""I stifled all the more selfish feelings of a mother's heart and I consented. I took that oath. I kissed my child for the last time and tore myself away. I hoped to die; but God reserved me for a long and bitter expiation of my sin. I still found upon earth however one kind and pitying friend. He was the brother of my noble lover and himself among the highest in the land. He was a priest; and in his compassion he found me refuge in a convent where though I deemed myself unworthy to receive the veil I assumed the dress of the humblest penitent and took the name of the repentant one--the name of Magdalen. I desired to cut myself off completely from the world; and I permitted the father of my child to believe a report that I was no more. In the humility of my bitter repentance I vowed never to pass the gates of the holy house of God--never to put my foot upon the sacred ground--never to profane the sanctuary with my soul of sin--to worship only without and at the threshold until such time as it should seem to me that God had heard my repentance and accepted my expiation. Now thou knowest why I have never dared to enter the holy building."" The witchfinder groaned bitterly clenching in agony the folds of his garment and tearing his breast. ""My spiritual adviser was benevolent and kind; but he was also stern in his calling. He imposed upon me such penitence as in his wisdom he thought most fit to wash out my crime; and I obeyed with humble reverence. But there was one penance more cruel than the rest--the mortification of my only earthly affection--the driving out from my heart all thought of the child of my folly and sin--the vow never to seek to look upon her more. But the love of the world was still too strong upon the wretched mother. At the risk of her soul's salvation she fled the convent to see her child once again. It was in the frenzy of a fever-fit when I thought to die. I forgot all--all but my oath--I never sought to speak to my darling child; but I followed her wherever I could--I watched for her as she passed--I gazed upon her with love--I prayed for blessings on her head."" ""Alas! I see it all now. It is as it were a bandage fallen from my eyes. Fool--infatuated fool!--monster that I was!"" cried the witchfinder. ""Bertha was your daughter--my sister; and I have smitten the mother for the love she bore her child. And he--her father--he was that villain! Curses on him!"" ""Peace! Peace! my son!"" continued Magdalena ""and curse no more. Nor can I tell thee that it was so. I have sworn that oath never to divulge my daughter's birth; and cruel heartless as was the feeling that forced it on me I must observe it ever. And thus I continued to live on--absorbed in the one thought of my child and her happiness--heedless of the present--forgetful of my duty; when suddenly but two days ago he who has been the kind guardian of my spiritual weal appeared before me in the chamber where alone and unobserved I wept over the picture of my child. He came I presume by a passage seldom opened from the monastery whither his duties had called him. He chid me for my flight--recalled me to my task of expiation--and bidding me return to the convent left me with an injunction not to say that I had seen him. Nor could I reveal the fact of my mysterious interview with him or tell his name without giving a clue to the truth of my own existence and the discovery of all I had sworn so binding an oath ever to conceal. Thou sawest him also--but alas! with other thoughts."" ""Madman that I have been!"" exclaimed the witchfinder. ""Or is it now that I am mad? Am I not raving? Is not all this insane delusion? No--thou are there before me--closed from my embraces by these cruel bars that I have placed between us. Thou! my mother--my long-lost--my beloved--most wretched mother in that dreadful garb!--condemned to die by thy own infatuated son! Would that I _were_ mad and that I could close my brain to so much horror! But thou shalt not die my mother--thou shalt not die! Thou are innocent! I will proclaim thy innocence to all! They will believe my word--will they not? For it was I who testified against thee. I the matricide! I will tell them that I lied. Thou shalt not die my mother! Already! already!--horror!--the day is come!"" The day _was_ come. The first faint doubtful streaks of early dawn had gradually spread in a cold heavy grey light over the sky. By degrees the darkness had fled and the market-place the surrounding gables of the houses the black pile in the midst had become clearer and clearer in harsh distinctness. The day _was_ come! Already a few narrow casements had been pushed back in their sliding grooves and strange faces with sleepy eyes had peered out in night attire to forestall impatient curiosity. Already indistinct noises a vague rumbling an uncertain sound from here or there had broken up the utter silence of the night and told that the drowsy town was waking from its sleep and stirring with the faint movement of new life. The day _was_ come! The sentinels paced up and down more quickly to dissipate that feeling of shivering cold which runs through the night-watcher during the first hour of the morn. During the colloquy between the cripple and the prisoner they had been more than once disturbed by the loud tones of passionate exclamation that had burst from the former; but Hans had contrived to dispel his comrade's scruples as to what was going forward at the prison door by making light of the matter. ""Let them alone. They are only having a tuzzle together--the witchfinder and the witch! And if the man as the weaker vessel in matters of witchcraft do come off minus a nose or so it will never spoil Black Claus's beauty that's certain. Hark! hark! they are at it again! To it devil! To it devil-hunter! Let them fight it out between them man. Let them fight it out. It's fine sport and it will never spoil the show."" And Hans stamped with his feet and hooted at a distance and hissed between his teeth with all the zest of a modern cockfighter in the sport rather to the scandal and shame of his more cautious and scrupulous companion. But when the cripple in his despair shook in his nervous grasp the bars of the grating in the door as if he would wrench it from its staples and flung himself in desperation against the strongly-ironed wooden mass with a violence that threatened in spite of its great strength to burst it open the matter seemed to become more serious in their eyes. ""Hollo man! witchfinder! Black Claus! What art thou doing?"" cried the sentinels hurrying to the spot. ""Does the devil possess thee? Art thou bewitched? Wait! wait! they'll let her out quick enough to make her mount the pile. Have patience man!"" ""She is innocent!"" cried the cripple still grappling with the bars in his despair. ""She is innocent! Let her go free!"" ""He is bewitched "" said the one soldier. ""See what comes of letting them be together."" ""He has had the worst of it sure enough "" said Hans. ""I am not bewitched fools!"" cried the frantic man. ""There's no witchcraft here! She is innocent I tell ye! O God! these bells! they announce their coming! Bid them cease! bid them cease! they drive me mad!"" At that moment a merry chime from the church-bells burst out joyously upon the morning air to announce that a fête was about to take place in the town; for such a gratifying show as the burning of a witch was a fête for the inhabitants of Hammelburg. ""These bells! these bells!"" again cried Claus in agony as their merry chime came in gusts along the rising wind as if to mock his misery and despair. ""How often during this long night I have longed to hear their joyous sound; and now they ring in my ears like the howlings of fiends! But she shall not die! I will yet save her "" continued the distracted man; and he again shook the prison door with a force which his crippled limbs could scarcely have been supposed to possess. With difficulty could the now alarmed sentinels who shouted for help cause the cripple to release his hold. Fresh guards rushed to the spot and assisted to seize the desperate man. But in vain he protested the innocence of the supposed sorceress--in vain he cried to them to release her. He was treated as bewitched; and it was only when at last overcome by the violence of his struggles he ceased to resist with so much energy that they allowed him to remain unbound and let fall the cords with which they had already commenced to tie his arms. ""The Ober-Amtmann will come "" he said at last with a sort of sullen resignation. ""He must--he shall hear me. He shall know all--he will believe her innocent."" In the meanwhile the market-place had already begin to fill with an anxious crowd. In a short time the press of spectators come to witness the bloody spectacle began to be great. The throng flowed on through street and lane. There were persons of all ages all ranks of both sexes--all hurrying crowding squeezing to the fête of horror and death. Manifold and various were the hundreds of faces congregated in a dense mass as near as the guards would admit them round the pile--all moved by one feeling of hideous curiosity. Little by little all the windows of the surrounding houses were jammed with faces--each window a strange picture in its quaintly-carved wooden frame. The crowd was there--the living crowd eager for death--palpitating with excitement--each heart beating with one pitiless feeling of greedy cruelty. And the bells still rang ceaselessly their merry joyous fête-like peal. And now with difficulty the soldiers forced a way through the throng for the approaching officer of justice; the great officiating dignitary of the town who was to preside over the ceremony. He neared the town-hall to order the unlocking of the prison-door when the wretched witchfinder again sprang forward crying ""Mercy! mercy! she is innocent. Hear me noble Ober-Amtmann!"" But he again started back with a cry of despair--it was not the Ober-Amtmann. He had been obliged by indisposition to give up the office of superintending the execution and the chief _schreiber_ had been deputed to take his place. ""Where is the Ober-Amtmann?"" cried Claus in agony. ""I must see him--I must speak with him! She is innocent--I swear she is! He will save her villain as he has been when he hears all."" The general cry that Black Claus had been bewitched by the sorceress was a sufficient explanation to the chief _schreiber_ of his seemingly frantic words. ""Poor man!"" was his only reply. ""She has worked her last spell upon him. Her death alone can save his reason."" In spite of the struggles and cries of the infuriated cripple the door was opened and the unhappy Magdalena was forced to come forwards by the guards. She looked wretchedly haggard and careworn in her sackcloth robe with her short-cut grey hairs left bare. A chain was already bound around her waist and clanked as she advanced. As her eyes fell upon her miserable son she gave one convulsive shudder of despair; and then clasping her hands towards him with a look of pity and forgiveness she murmured with a tone of resignation--""It is too late. Farewell! farewell! until we meet again where there shall be no sorrow no care no pain--only mercy and forgiveness!"" ""No no--thou shalt not die!"" screamed the cripple whom several bystanders as well as guards now held back with force in awe as well as pity at his distracted state.--""Thou shalt not die! She is my mother!"" he cried like a maniac to the crowd around. ""My mother--do ye hear? She is innocent. What I said yesterday was false--utterly false--a damning lie! She is not guilty--you would murder her! Fools! wretches assassins! You believed me when I witnessed against her; why will ye not believe me now? She is innocent I tell you. Ye shall not kill her!"" ""He is bewitched! he is bewitched! To the stake with the sorceress!--to the stake!"" was the only reply returned to his cries by the crowd. In truth the miserable man bore all the outward signs of a person who in those times might be supposed to be smitten by the spells of witchcraft. His eyes rolled in his head. His every feature was distorted in the agony of his passion. His mouth foamed like that of a mad dog. His struggles became desperate convulsions. But he struggled in vain. The procession advanced towards the stake. Between two bodies of guards the condemned woman dragged her suffering bare feet over the rough stones of the market-place. On one side of her walked the executioner of the town; on the other his assistant with a lighted torch of tow besmeared with resin and pitch shedding around in a small cloud the lurid smoke that was soon about to arise in a heavy volume from the pile. The chief _schreiber_ had mounted with his adjuncts the terrace before the door of the town-hall whence it was customary for the chief dignitary of the town to superintend such executions. The bells rang on their merry peal. And now the unhappy woman was forced on to the pile. The executioner followed. He bound her resistless to the stake and then himself descended. At each of the four corners of the pile a guard on horseback kept off the crowd. There was a pause. Then appeared at one end of the mass of wood and fagots a slight curling smoke--a faint light. The executioner had applied the torch. A few seconds--and a bright glaring flame licked upwards with a forked tongue and a heavier gush of smoke burst upwards in the air. The miserable woman crossed her hands over her breast--raised her eyes for a moment to heaven and then closing them upon the scene around her moved her lips in prayer--in the last prayer of the soul's agony. The crowd which during the time when the procession had advanced towards the pile had howled with its usual pitiless howl was now silent breathless motionless in the extreme tension of its excitement. But still the merry peal of bells rang on. The smoke grew thicker and thicker. The flame already darted forward as if to snatch at the miserable garment of its victim and claim her as its own when there was heard a struggle--a cry--a shout of frantic despair. The cripple in that moment when all were occupied with the fearful sight had broken on those who held him and before another hand could seize him had staggered through the crowd and now swung himself with force upon the pile. A cry of horror burst from the mass of spectators. They thought him utterly deprived of reason and determined in his madness to die with the sorceress. But in a moment his bony hands had torn the link that bound the chain--had unwound the chain itself--had snatched the woman from the stake. Before in the surprise of the moment a single person had stirred his arm seized with firm and heavy gripe the collar of the nearest horseman who found himself in his seat on horseback upon a level with the elevation of the pile. He knocked him with violence from the saddle. The guard reeled and fell; and in the next instant Claus had flung himself on to the horse and in his arms he bore the form of the half-fainting Magdalena. With a cry--a yell--a wild scream--he shouted ""To the sanctuary! to the sanctuary! she shall not die--room! room!"" Trampling right and left to the earth the dense crowd who fled from his passage as from an infuriated tiger in its spring he dashed upon the animal over the market-place and darted in full gallop down the street leading to the Bridge-gate of the town. ""After him!"" cried a thousand voices. The three other horsemen had already sprung after the fugitive. The guards hastened in the same direction. Several of the crowd rushed down the narrow street. All was confusion. Part of those who passed on impeded the others. Groans arose from those who had been thrown down by the frantic passage of Claus and who lying on the stones prevented the pushing forwards of the others. ""Follow! After him! to the sanctuary!"" still cried a thousand voices of the crowd. At the same moment a noise of horsemen was heard coming from the entrance of the town in the opposite direction to that leading to the bridge. Those who stood nearest turned their heads eagerly that way. The first person who issued on the street at full gallop was Gottlob without a covering to his head--his fair hair streaming to the wind--his handsome face pale with fatigue and excitement. ""Stop! stop!"" he shouted as he advanced and his eye fell upon the burning pile. ""I bring the prince's pardon! Save her!"" In a few moments followed by a scanty train of attendants appeared the Prince Bishop of Fulda himself in the dress--half religious half secular--that he wore in travelling. His mild benevolent face looked haggard and anxious and he also was very pale; for he had evidently ridden hard through a part of the night; and the exertion was too much for his years and habits. As he advanced through the crowd who drew back with respect from the passage of their sovereign he eagerly demanded if the execution had taken place. The general rumour told him confusedly the tale of the events that had just occurred. Gottlob was soon again by his side and related to him all that he had heard. ""Where is my brother?"" cried the bishop. ""Is he not here?"" A few words told him that he had not appeared on this occasion. ""I will to the palace then "" he continued. ""And the poor wretched woman which way has that maniac conveyed her?"" ""To the sanctuary upon the mountain-side in the path leading to your highness's castle of Saaleck as he was heard to cry "" was the answer. ""But the torrents have come down from the hills "" exclaimed others ""and the inundations sweep so heavily upon the bridge that it is impossible to pass it without the utmost danger."" ""Save that unhappy woman!"" exclaimed the bishop in agitation. ""A reward for him who saves her!"" and followed by his attendants he took the direction of the street leading to the palace. It was true. The torrents had come down from the hills during the night and the waters swept over the bridge with fury. The planked flooring of the bridge raised in ordinary circumstances some feet above the stream was now covered by the raging flood; and the side parapets which consisted partly of solid enclosure partly of railing tottered quivered and bent beneath the rushing mass of dark dun-coloured whirling waters. The river itself swelled far beyond the usual extent of the customary inundations for the passage of which the extreme length of the bridge had been provided hurried in wild eddies round the walls of the town like an invading army seeking to tear them down. But the frantic Claus heeded not the violence of the waters and dashed through the town-gate towards the bridge with desperation. The frightened horse shied at the foaming stream struggled snorted; but the cripple seemed to possess the resistless power of a demon--a power which gave him sway over the brute creation. He urged the unwilling animal with almost superhuman force on to the tottering bridge. The guards who had galloped after him stopped suddenly as they saw the roaring torrent. None dared advance none dared pursue. Others on foot clogged the gateway and stood appalled at the sight of the rushing flood. The more eager of the crowd soon mounted on to those parts of the town-walls that flanked the gate and watched with excited gesture and shouts of wonder or terror the desperate course of the cripple. Pressing his mother in his arms with his body stretched forward in wild impatience upon the struggling horse Black Claus had urged his way into the middle of the stream. The bridge shook fearfully beneath the burden: he heeded it not. It cracked and groaned still louder than the roaring of the stream: he heard it not. He strove to dash on against the almost resistless force of the sweeping current. His eye was strained upon the first point of the dry path on the highway beyond. Before him lay at a short distance the road towards the castle of Saaleck up the mountain side. Halfway up the height stood embowered in trees the chapel he sought to reach--the sanctuary of refuge for the condemned. That was his haven--there his wretched mother would be in safety. He pressed her more tightly to his breast and shouted wildly. His shout was followed by a loud fearful crash a roaring of waters and a straining of breaking timbers. In another instant the centre of the bridge was fiercely borne away by the torrent and all was wild confusion around him. A general cry of horror burst from the crowd at the gate and on the walls. All was for a moment lost to sight in the whirl of waters. Then was first seen the snorting head of the poor horse rising from the stream. The animal was struggling in desperation to reach the land. Again were whirled upwards the forms of the cripple and the female still tightly pressed within his arms; and then a rush of waters more powerful than the son's frantic grasp tore them asunder. Nothing now was visible but a floating body which again disappeared in the eddying flood; and now again the form of the witchfinder rose above the mass of waters. His long arms were tossed aloft; his desperate cries were heard above the roaring of the torrent. ""Mercy! mercy!"" he screamed. ""Save me from these flames! this stifling smoke. I burn I burn!"" As he shouted these last words of mad despair the icy cold waters swept over him for ever. All had disappeared. Upon the boiling surface of the hurrying flood was now seen nothing more than spars and fragments of timber remnants of the bridge whirled up and down and here and there and dashing along the stream. Among the foremost of the crowd who had pressed down the narrow lane leading to the water's edge between the premises of the Benedictine monastery and the palace garden eager to gain an unoccupied point whence they might watch the flight stood ""Gentle Gottlob."" From under the small water-gate the stone passage of which was partially flooded by the unusually rising waters he had seen the frightful catastrophe which had accompanied the sweeping away of the bridge. He stood overwhelmed with grief at the fate of the poor woman whom he had uselessly striven to save; his eye fixed upon the roaring waters without seeing distinctly any thing but a sort of wild turmoil which accorded well with his own troubled reflections; when a cry from the crowd which still lingered on the spot recalled him to himself. ""Look look!"" cried several voices. ""There it is again! It is a body!"" On the dark surface of the waters Gottlob saw a form whirled by the force of the current towards the water-gate. ""It is the witch! it is the witch!"" again cried the crowd as the sackcloth garment of the unhappy Magdalena showed itself above the stream. In another moment Gottlob had rushed into the water to seize the body as it was whirled past the water-gate and was almost dashed against the stone-piles. ""Touch her not!"" screamed again the bystanders. ""It is the witch! it is the witch!"" But Gottlob heeded not the shouts of the crowd. Holding by one hand on the trunk of a tree overhanging the water in order to bear up against the violence of the stream he grasped with the other the dress of the floating female before it again sank beneath the whirling eddy. He pulled it towards him with force; and after with difficulty struggling against the force of the current at length succeeded in bearing the lifeless form of Magdalena under the gateway. Streaming himself with water he laid the cold wet body down upon the stones and bent over it to see whether life had fled from it for ever. The crown drew back with horror uttering cries of vain expostulation. ""Thank Heaven! she still breathes "" said Gottlob at last as after some moments a slight convulsive movement passed over the frame of the poor woman. ""Aid me my friends. She still lives. Help me to transport her to some house."" But the crowd drew back in horror. ""I will convey her to my own chamber close by. Send for a leech! Are ye without pity?"" he continued as instead of assisting him the crowd held back and answered his entreaties only with exclamations of disgust and scorn. ""Are ye Christian men that ye would see the poor woman die before your eyes for want of aid? She is no witch. Good God! will no one show a heart of bare humanity?"" But the crowd still held back; and if they did not still scoff at him were silent. The kind youth finding all hope of assistance vain from the miserable prejudices of the people had at last contrived to raise the still senseless Magdalena in his arms with the intention of conveying her into his own dwelling; and already murmurs began to arise among the crowd as if they intended to oppose his purpose; when a door communicating from the palace-gardens with the narrow lane opened and the stately form of an aged man of benevolent aspect stood between Gottlob who remained alone under the water-gate with the lifeless form of Magdalena on his arm and the murmuring crowd which had drawn back into the lane. He stood like a guardian spirit between the fair youth and the senseless mass of angry men. All snatched off their furred hats and bowed their bodies with respect. It was their sovereign the Prince Bishop of Fulda. His attendants followed him to the threshold of the garden gate. ""Thank God!"" was his first simple exclamation at the sight of Magdalena in Gottlob's arms. ""You have contrived to save her have you? I was myself hurrying hither to see what could be done. Does she still live?"" Upon an affirmative exclamation from Gottlob he raised his eyes to heaven with a short thanksgiving; and then turning to the crowd with a stern air he asked-- ""What were these cries and murmurs that I heard? Why were those threatening looks I saw? Would ye oppose a Christian act of charity due to that unhappy woman even were she the miserable criminal she is not? Have ye yet to be taught your Christian duties in this land? God forgive me; for then _I_ have much to answer for!"" After this meek self-rebuke he again looked seriously upon the bystanders and waved his hand to disperse the crowd who slunk away before him; then hastily giving orders that Magdalena should be conveyed into the palace he himself stopped to see her borne into the garden and followed anxiously. Every means with which the leech-craft of the times was acquainted for the recovery of the apparently drowned was applied in the case of Magdalena and with some success; for after a time breath and warmth were restored--her eyes opened. But the respiration was hurried and impeded--the eyes glazed and dim--the sense of what was passing around her confused and troubled. A nervous tremour ran through her whole frame. She lay upon a mattrass propped up with a pile of cushions in a lower apartment of the palace. By her side knelt the kind Bishop of Fulda watching with evident solicitude the variation of the symptoms in the unfortunate woman's frame. Behind her stood the stately form of the Ober-Amtmann--every muscle of his usually stern face now struggling with emotion--his hands clenched together--his head bowed down; for he had learned from his brother the Prince that the female lying before him--the woman whom he had himself condemned to the stake was really the mistress of his younger years--the seduced wife of the man whom h
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had killed--his victim Margaret Weilheim. On the other side of the prostrate form of Magdalena bent a grave personage in dark attire who held her wrist and counted the beating of her pulse with an air of serious attention. In answer to an enquiring look from the Prince Bishop the physician shook his head. ""There is life it is true "" he said; ""but it is ebbing fast. The fatigue and emotions of the past day were in themselves too much for a frame already shattered by macerations and privations and grief; this catastrophe has exhausted her last force of vitality. She cannot live long."" The Ober-Amtmann wrung his hands with a still firmer gripe. The tears trembled upon the good old bishop's eyelids. ""See!"" said the leech; ""she again opens her eyes. There is more sense in them now."" The dying Magdalena in truth looked around her as if she at length became conscious of the objects on which her vision fell. She seemed to comprehend with difficulty where she was and how she had come into the position in which she lay. Feebly and with exertion she raised her emaciated arm and passed her skinny hand over her brow and eyes. But at length her gaze rested upon the mild face of the benevolent bishop and a faint smile passed over her sunken features. ""Where am I?"" she murmured lowly. ""Am I in paradise?--and you reverend father are also with me?"" In a few kind words the bishop strove to recall her wandering senses and explain to her what had happened. At last a consciousness of the past seemed to come over her; and she shuddered in every limb at the fearful recollection. ""And he! where is he?"" she asked with an imploring look. ""He! Karl!"" The old man looked at her with surprise as though he thought her senses were still wavering. ""He carried me off did he not?"" she continued feebly; ""or was it a dream? Was it only a strange dream? No no! I remember all--how we flew through the air; and then the rushing waters. Oh! tell me; where is he?"" The bishop now comprehended that she spoke of the witchfinder; and said ""He is gone for ever to his last great account."" Magdalena groaned bitterly and again closed her eyes. But it was evident that she still retained her consciousness; for her lips were moving faintly as if in prayer. ""Is there no hope?"" enquired the bishop in a whisper of the physician. ""Nothing can be done?"" ""No hope!"" replied the leech. ""I have done all that medical skill can do; _I_ can do no more your highness."" At a sign from the bishop the physician withdrew. Shortly after the dying woman again unclosed her eyes and looked around her at the strange room in which she lay. A recollection of the past seemed to come across her slowly and painfully; and she again pressed her feeble hand to her brow. ""Why am I here?"" she murmured. ""Why do I again see this scene of folly and sin? O Lord! why bring before my thus in this last hour the living memory of my past transgressions?"" As if to complete the painful illusion of the past a voice now murmured ""Margaret"" in her ear. The poor woman started turned her head with difficulty and saw kneeling by her side the heartless lover of her youth. She gave him one look of fear and shame and then turning again her eyes to the bishop's face exclaimed ""May God forgive me!--Pray for me my father!"" ""It is I who seek for mercy Margaret!"" cried the Ober-Amtmann. ""I who need thy forgiveness for all the wrong I have done thee!"" ""Mercy and forgiveness are with God "" said the dying woman solemnly. ""All the wrong thou hast done me I have long since forgiven as far as such a sinner as myself can forgive. My time is short; my breath is fast leaving me. I feel that I am dying "" she added after a pause. ""Father I would make my shrift; and if God and your reverence permit one earthly thought to mingle with my last hopes of salvation I would confide to you a secret on which depends the happiness of her I love and you perhaps might secure her peace of mind. Alas I cannot speak! O God! give me still breath."" These words were uttered in a low and feeble tone. With a hasty gesture the bishop signed to his brother to retire and bent his ear over the mouth of the gasping woman. After some time he rose and first reassuring the dying mother that all he could do for her child's welfare should be done pronounced the sublime words of the church that give the promise of forgiveness and salvation to the truly penitent sinner. ""Oh might I look upon her once more!"" sobbed Magdalena with convulsive effort. ""One last look! not a word shall tell her--it is--her unhappy mother--who gives her--a last blessing!"" The Ober-Amtmann left the room. In a few minutes he returned leading Bertha by the hand. But Magdalena was already speechless. The fair girl knelt by the side of the mattrass sobbing bitterly--she herself scarcely knew why. Was it only the sight of death of the last parting of the soul that thus affected her? Was it affliction that her own error should have contributed to hasten that unhappy woman's end? Or was not there rather a powerful instinct within her that in that awful moment bound her by a sympathetic tie to her unknown mother and conveyed a portion of that last agony of the departing woman to her own heart? Magdalena although she could not speak was evidently aware of the presence of the gentle girl. She still moved her lips as if begging a blessing on her head and fixed upon that mild face now bathed in tears the last look of her fading eyes. And now the eyes grew dim and senseless although the spirit seemed still to struggle within for sight; now they closed--the whole frame of the prostrate woman shuddered and Margaret Weilheim--the repentant Magdalena--was a corpse. Some time after these events the Ober-Amtmann retired from his high office and after a seclusion of some duration with his brother at Fulda finally betook himself to a monastery where he remained until his death. Before his retirement from the world however he had consented not without some difficulty to the union of Bertha and Gottlob. The Prince Bishop unforgetful of the claims of the unfortunate Magdalena had urged upon his brother the duty of making this concession to the dying wishes of the wronged mother as well as to the evident affection of Bertha for the young artist which although unknown even to herself was no less powerful. As Gottlob although of a ruined and impoverished family was not otherwise than of noble birth the greatest difficulty of these times was surmounted; and the Prince Bishop by bestowing upon the young man a post of honour and rank about his person in which the gentle youth could still continue the pursuit of his glorious art and march on unhindered in his progress to that eminence which he finally attained smoothed the road to the Ober-Amtmann's consent. On the day of Bertha's marriage the good Prince Bishop promulgated an edict that for the future no one should suffer the punishment of death for the crime of witchcraft in his dominions. But after his decease the edict again fell into disuse; and the town of Hammelburg as if the spirit of Black Claus the witchfinder still hovered about its walls again commenced to assert its odious reputation and maintain its hideous boast of having burned more witches than any other town in Germany. MY LAST COURTSHIP; OR LIFE IN LOUISIANA. CHAPTER THE FIRST. A VOYAGE ON THE RED RIVER. It was on a sultry sunny June morning that I stepped on board the Red River steamboat. The sun was blazing with unusual power out of its setting of deep-blue enamel; no wind stirred only the huge mass of water in the Mississippi seemed to exhale an agreeable freshness. I gave a last nod to Richards and his wife who had accompanied me to the shore and then went down into the cabin. I was by no means in the most amiable of humours. Although I had pretty well forgotten my New York disappointment two months' contemplation of the happiness enjoyed by Richards in the society of his young and charming wife had done little towards reconciling me to my bachelorship; and it was with small pleasure that I looked forward to a return to my solitary plantation where I could reckon on no better welcome than the cold and perhaps scowling glance of slaves and hirelings. In no very pleasant mood I walked across the cabin without even looking at the persons assembled there and leaned out of the open window. I had been some three or four minutes in this position chewing the cud of unpleasant reflections when a friendly voice spoke close to my ear-- ""_Qu'est ce qu'il y a donc Monsieur Howard? Etes-vous indisposé? Allons voir du monde._"" I turned round. The speaker was a respectable-looking elderly man; but his features were entirely unknown to me and I stared at him a little astonished at the familiar tone of his address and at his knowledge of my name. I was at that moment not at all disposed to make new acquaintances; and after a slight bow I was about to turn my back upon the old gentleman when he took my hand and drew me gently towards the ladies' cabin. ""_Allons voir Monsieur Howard._"" ""_Mais que voulez-vous donc?_ What do you want with me?"" said I somewhat peevishly to the importunate stranger. ""_Faire votre connaissance_ "" he replied with a benign smile at the same time opening the door of the ladies' saloon. ""Monsieur Howard "" said he to two young girls who were occupied in tying up a bundle of pine-apples and bananas to one of the cabin pillars just as in the northern States or in England people hang up strings of onions ""_Mes filles voici notre voisin Monsieur Howard._"" The damsels tripped lightly towards me welcoming me as cordially as if I had been an old acquaintance and hastened to offer me some of their fragrant and delicious fruit. Their greeting and manners were really highly agreeable. Had they been two of my own dear countrywomen I might have lived ten years with them without being so well and frankly received or invited to spoil my dinner in so agreeable a manner as by these fair Pomonas. I could not refuse an invitation so cordially given. I sat down and notwithstanding my dull and fretful humour soon found myself amused in my own despite by the lively chatter of the Creoles. An hour passed rapidly in this manner and a second and third might possibly have been wiled away as agreeably had not my stiff Virginian feeling of etiquette made me apprehensive that a longer stay might be deemed intrusive. ""You will come back and take tea with us?"" said the young ladies as I left the cabin. I bowed a willing assent; and truly on reaching the deck I found reason to congratulate myself on having done so. The company there assembled was any thing but the best. A strange set of fellows! I could almost have fancied myself in old Kentuck. Drovers and cattle-dealers from New Orleans proceeding to the north-western countries; half-wild hunters and trappers on their way to the country beyond Nacogdoches with the laudable intention of civilizing or in other words of cheating the Indians; traders and storekeepers from Alexandria and its neighbourhood; such was the respectable composition of the society on board the steamer. A rough lot they were thick-booted hoarse-voiced hard-fisted fellows who walked up and down chewing and smoking and spitting with as much exactness of aim as if their throats had been rifle-barrels. We were just coming in sight of a large clump of foliage. It was the mouth of the Red River which is half overarched by the huge trees that incline forward over its waters from either bank. What a contrast to the Mississippi which flows along broad powerful and majestic like some barbarian conqueror bursting forth at the head of his stinking hordes to overrun half a world! The Red River on the other hand which we are accustomed to call the Nile of Louisiana--with about as much right and propriety as the Massachusetts cobbler who christened his son Alexander Cæsar Napoleon--sneaks stealthily along through forest and plain like some lurking and venomous copper-snake. Cocytus would be a far better name for it. Here we are at the entrance of the first swamp out of which the infernal scarlet ditch flows. It is any thing but a pleasant sight that swamp which is formed by the junction of the Tensaw the White and Red Rivers and at the first glance appears like a huge mirror of vivid green apparently affording solid footing and scattered over with trees from which rank creepers and a greasy slime hang in long festoons. One would swear it was a huge meadow until on looking rather longer one sees the dark-green swamp lilies gently moving while from amongst them are protruded numerous snouts or jaws of a sickly greyish-brown discoursing music which is any thing but sweet to a stranger's ears. These are thousands of alligators darting out from amongst the rank luxuriance of their marshy abode. It is their breeding time and the horrible bellowing they make is really hideous to listen to. One might fancy this swamp the headquarters of death whence he shoots forth his envenomed darts in the thousand varied forms of fever and pestilence. We had proceeded some distance up the Red River when the friendly old Creole came to summon me to the tea-table. We found one of his daughters reading Bernardin de St Pierre's novel a favourite study with Creole ladies; while the other was chatting with her black-skinned ivory-toothed waiting-maid with a degree of familiarity that would have thrown a New York _élégante_ into a swoon. They were on their way home their father told me from the Ursuline Convent at New Orleans where they had been educated. It can hardly have been from the holy sisters one would think that they acquired the self-possessed and scrutinizing although not immodest gaze with which I at times observed them to be examining me. The eldest is apparently about nineteen years of age slightly inclined to _embonpoint_. It was really amusing to observe the cool comfortable manner in which she inspected me in a large mirror that hangs opposite to us as if she had been desirous of seeing how long I could stand my ground and keep my countenance. It would fill a book to enumerate all the items of baggage and effects which my new friends the Creoles had crowded into the state-cabin. Luckily they were the only inmates of the latter and had consequently full power in their temporary dominions. Had there been co-occupants a civil war must have been the inevitable result. The ladies had a whole boat-load of citrons oranges bananas and pine-apples; and their father had at least three dozen cases of Chambertin Laffitte and Medoc. I at first thought he must be a wine-merchant. At any rate he showed his good taste in stocking himself with such elegant and salutary drinkables instead of the gin and whisky and Hollands to which many of my countrymen would have given the preference--those green and brown compounds elixirs of sin and disease concocted by rascally distillers for the corruption and ruin of Brother Jonathan. The tea was now ready. Monsieur Ménou (that was the name of my new friend) seemed inclined to reject the sober beverage and stick to his Chambertin. I was disposed to try both. The young ladies were all that was gay and agreeable. They were really charming girls merry and lively full of ready wit and with bright eyes and pleasant voices that might have cheered the heart of the veriest misanthrope. But there are moments in one's life when the mind and spirits seem oppressed by a sort of dead dull calm as enervating and disheartening as that which succeeds a West Indian hurricane in the month of August. At those times every thing loses its interest and one appears to become as helpless as the ship that lies becalmed and motionless on the glassy surface of a tropical sea. I was just in one of those moments. I had consulted any thing but my own inclination in leaving the hospitable roof and pleasant companionship of my friend Richards to return to my own neglected and long-unvisited plantation where I should find no society and should be compelled to occupy myself with matters that for me had little or no interest. Had I as I hoped to do when in New York taken back a partner of my joys and sorrows some gentle creature who would have cheered my solitude and sympathized with all my feelings I should have experienced far less repugnance or difficulty in returning to my home in the wilderness; but as it was I felt oppressed by a sense of loneliness that seemed to paralyse my energies and that certainly rendered me any thing but fit society for the lively talkative party of which I now found myself a member. I strove to shake off the feeling but in vain; and at last abandoning the attempt I left the cabin and went on deck. The night was bright and starlight; the atmosphere perfectly clear with the exception of a slight white mist that hung over the river. The hollow blows of the steam-engine seemed to be echoed in the far distance by the bellowing of the alligators; while the plaintive tones of the whip-poor-will were heard at intervals in the forest through which we were passing. There was no sign of life on the banks of the river; it was a desert; not a light to be seen save that of millions of fireflies which threw a magical kind of _chiaroscuro_ over the trees and bushes. At times we passed so near the shore that the branches rattled and snapped against the side of the boat. Our motion was rapid. Twelve hours more and I should be in my Tusculum. Just then the captain came up to me to say that if I were disposed to retire to rest the noisy smokers and drinkers had discontinued their revels and I might now have some chance of sleeping. I had nothing better to do so descended the stairs and installed myself in my berth. When I rose the next morning a breeze had sprung up and we were proceeding merrily along under sail as well as steam. The first person I met was Monsieur Ménou who wished me a _bon-jour_ in as I thought a somewhat colder tone than he had hitherto used towards me and looked me at the same time enquiringly in the face. It seemed as if he wished to read there whether his courtesy and kindness were likely to be requited by the same ungracious stiffness that I had shown him on the preceding day. Well I will do my best to obliterate the bad impression I have apparently made. They are good people these Creoles--not particularly bashful or discreet; but yet I like their forwardness and volatility better than the sly smartness of the Yankees in spite of their ridiculous love of dancing which even the first emigrants could not lay aside amidst all the difficulties of their settlement in America. It must have been absurd enough to see them capering about and dancing minuets and gavottes in blanket coats and moccasins. Whilst I was talking to the Ménous and doing my best to be amiable the bell rang the steam was let off and we stopped to take in firing. ""_Monsieur voilà votre terre!_"" said the father pointing to the shore upon which a large quantity of wood was stacked. I looked through the cabin window; the Creole was right. I had been chatting so diligently with the young ladies that the hours had flown like minutes and it was already noon. During my absence my overseer had established a depot of wood for the steamboats. So far so good. And yonder is the worthy Mr Bleaks himself. The Creole seems inclined to accompany me to my house. I cannot hinder him certainly but I sincerely hope he will not carry his politeness quite so far. Nothing I dread more than such a visit when I have been for years away from house and home. A bachelor's Lares and Penates are the most careless of all gods. ""Mr Bleaks "" said I stepping up to the overseer who in his Guernsey shirt calico inexpressibles and straw hat his hands in his pockets and a cigar in his mouth was lounging about and apparently troubling himself very little about his employer. ""Mr Bleaks will you be so good as to have the gig and my luggage brought on shore?"" ""Ha! Mr Howard!"" said the man ""is it you? Didn't expect ye so soon."" ""I hope that if unexpected I am not unwelcome "" replied I a little vexed at this specimen of genuine Pennsylvanian dryness. ""You ain't come alone are you?"" continued Bleaks examining me at the same time out of the corners of his eyes. ""Thought you'd have brought us a dozen blackies. We want 'em bad enough."" ""_Est-il permis Monsieur?_"" now interposed the Creole taking my hand and pointing towards the house. ""And the steamer?"" said I in a tone as drawling as I could make it and without moving a pace in the direction indicated. ""Oh! that will wait "" replied Ménou smiling. What could I do with such a persevering fellow? There was nothing for it but to walk up with him to the house however unpleasant I found it so to do. And unpleasant to me it certainly was in the then state of my habitation and domain. It was a melancholy sight--a perfect abomination of desolation. Every thing looked so ruined decayed and rotten that I felt sick and disgusted at the prospect before me. I had not expected to find matters half so bad. Of the hedge round the garden only a few sticks were here and there standing; in the garden itself some unwholesome-looking pigs were rooting and grubbing. As to the house! Merciful heavens! Not a whole pane in the windows! all the frames stopped and crammed with old rags and bunches of Indian corn leaves! I could not expect groves of orange and citron trees--I had planted none; but this! no it was really too bad. Every picture must have its shady side but here there was no bright one; all was darkness and gloom. We did not meet a living creature as we walked up from the shore winding our way amongst the prostrate and decaying tree-trunks that encumbered the ground. At last near the house we stumbled upon a trio of black little monsters that were rolling in the mud with the dogs half a shirt upon their bodies and dirty as only the children of men possibly can be. The quadrupeds for such they looked jumped up on our approach stared at us with their rolling eyes and then scuttled away to hide themselves behind the house. Ha! Old Sybille! Is it you? She was standing before a caldron suspended gipsy-fashion from a triangle of sticks--looking for all the world like a dingy parody of one of Macbeth's witches. She too stared at us but without moving. I must introduce myself I suppose. Now she has recognised me and comes towards us with her enormous spoon in her hand. I wonder that her shriveled old turkey's neck--which cost me seventy-five dollars by the by--has not got twisted before now. She runs up to me screaming and crying for joy. There _is_ one creature then glad to see me. It is amusing to observe the anxiety with which she looks at the caldron and at three pans in which ham and dried buffalo are stewing and grizzling; she is evidently quite unable to decide whether she shall abandon me to my fate or the fleshpots to theirs. She sets up her pipe and makes a most awful outcry but nobody answers the call. ""_Et les chambres_ "" howls she ""_et la maison et tout tout!_"" I could not make out what the deuce she would be at. She looked at my companion evidently much embarrassed. ""_Mais mon Dieu!_"" croaked she ""_pourrai-je seulement un moment? Tenez là_ Massa!"" she continued in an imploring tone holding out the spoon to me and making a movement as if she were stirring something and then again pointing to the house. ""_Que diable as tu?_"" cried I out of all patience at this unintelligible pantomime. The rooms wanted airing and sweeping she said; they were not fit to receive a stranger in. She only required a quarter of an hour to put every thing to rights; and mean time if I would be so good for the sake of the honour of the house just to stir the soup and keep an eye upon the ham and buffalo flesh. Mentally consigning the old Guinea-fowl to the keeping of the infernal deities I walked towards the house. My only consolation was that probably my companion's residence was not in a much better state than mine if in so good a one; those Creoles above Alexandria still live half like Redskins. Monsieur Ménou did not appear at all astonished at my slovenly housekeeping. When we entered the parlour we found instead of sofas and chairs a quantity of Mexican cotton-seed in heaps upon the floor; in one corner was a dirty tattered blanket in another a washing-tub. The other rooms were in a still worse state: one of the negroes had taken up his quarters in my bed-chamber from which the musquitto curtains had disappeared having passed probably into the possession of the amiable Mrs Bleaks. I hastened to leave this scene of disorder and walked out into the court my indignation and disgust raised to the highest pitch. ""_Mais tout cela est bien charmant!_"" exclaimed the Creole. I looked at the man; he appeared in sober earnest but I could not believe that he was so; and I shook my head for I was in no jesting humour. The wearisome fellow again took my arm and led me towards the huts of my negroes and the cotton-fields. The soil of the latter was of the richest and best description and in spite of negligent cultivation its natural fertility and fatness had caused the plants to spring up already nearly to the height of a man though we were only in the month of June. The Creole looked around him with the air of a connoisseur and in his turn shook his head. Just then the bell on board the steamer rang out the signal for departure. ""Thank Heaven!"" thought I. ""_Monsieur_ "" said Ménou ""the plantation is _très charmante mais ce_ Mistère Bleak is nothing worth and you--you are _trop gentilhomme_."" I swallowed this equivocal compliment nearly choking as I did so. ""_Ecoutez_ "" continued my companion; ""you shall go with me."" ""Go with you!"" I repeated in unbounded astonishment. ""Is the man mad "" I thought ""to make me such a proposition within ten minutes after my return home?"" ""_Oui oui Monsieur_ you shall go with me. I have some very important things to communicate to you."" ""_Mais Monsieur_ "" replied I pretty stiffly ""I do not know what you can have to communicate to me. I am a good deal surprised at so strange a proposition""---- ""From a stranger "" interrupted the Creole smiling. ""But I am serious Mr Howard; you have come here without taking the necessary precautions. Your house is scarcely ready for your reception--the fever very dangerous--in short you had better come with me."" I looked at the man astonished at his perseverance. ""Well "" said he ""yes or no?"" I stood hesitating and embarrassed. ""I accept your offer "" I exclaimed at last scarcely knowing what I said and starting off at a brisk pace in the direction of the steamer. Mr Bleaks looked on in astonishment. I bid him pay more attention to the plantation and with that brief injunction was about to step on board when my five-and-twenty negroes came howling from behind the house. ""Massa Gor-a-mighty! Massa Massa stop with us!"" cried the men. ""Massa dear good Massa! Not go!--Mr Bleaks!"" yelled the women. I made sign to the captain to wait a moment. ""What do you want?"" said I a little moved. One of the slaves stepped forward and bared his shoulders. Two others followed his example. They were hideously scarred and seamed by the whip. I cast stern glance at Bleaks who grinned a cruel smile. It was a right fortunate thing for my honour and conscience that my poor negroes had thus appealed to me. In the thoughtlessness of my nature I should have followed the Creole without troubling myself in the least about the condition or treatment of the five-and-twenty human beings whom I had left in such evil hands. I excused myself hastily to Monsieur Ménou promised an early visit to hear whatever he might have to say to me and bade him farewell. Without making me any answer he hurried on board whispered something to the captain and disappeared down the cabin-stairs. I thought no more about him and was walking towards the house surrounded by my blacks when I heard the splashing of the paddles and the steamer resumed its voyage. At the same instant somebody laid hold of my arm. I looked round--it was the Creole. ""This is insupportable!"" thought I. ""I wonder he did not bring his two daughters with him. That would have completed my annoyance."" ""You will want my assistance with that _coquin_ "" said Ménou quietly. ""We will arrange every thing to-day; to-morrow my son will be here; and the day after you will go home with me."" I said nothing. What would have been the use if I had? I was no longer my own master. This unaccountable Creole had evidently taken the direction of my affairs entirely into his own hands. My poor negroes and negresses were crying and laughing for joy and gazing at me with expectant looks. I bid then go to their huts; that I would have them called when I wanted them. ""D--n those blackies!"" said Mr Bleaks as they walked away: ""they want the whip; it's too long since they've had it."" Without replying to his remark I told old Sybille to fetch Beppo and Mirza and signed to the overseer to leave me. He showed no disposition to obey. ""This looks like an examination "" said he sneeringly ""and I shall take leave to be present at it."" ""None of your insolence Mr Bleaks "" said I; ""be so good as to take yourself off and wait my orders."" ""And none of your fine airs "" replied the Mister. ""We're in a free country and you ain't got a nigger afore ye."" This was rather more than I could stomach. ""Mr Bleaks "" said I ""from this hour you are no longer in my employment. Your engagement is out on the 1st of July; you shall be paid up to that date."" ""I don't set a foot over the threshold till I have received the amount of my salary and advances "" replied the man dryly. ""Bring me your account "" said I. My blood was beginning to boil at the fellow's cool impudence. Bleaks called to his wife who presently came to the room door. They exchanged a few words and she went away again. Meanwhile I opened my portmanteau and ran my eye over some accounts letters and receipts. Before I had finished Mrs Bleaks reappeared with the account-books which she laid upon the table and planting herself with arms akimbo in the middle of the room seemed prepared to witness whatever passed. Her husband lounged into the next apartment and brought a couple of chairs upon which he and his better half seated themselves. Truly thought I our much-cherished liberty and equality have sometimes their inconveniences and disagreeables. ""The 20th December twenty-five bales cotton four hogsheads tobacco in leaf delivered to Mr Merton "" began the overseer; ""the 24th January twenty-five bales cotton and one hogshead tobacco-leaves."" ""Right "" said I. ""That was our whole crop "" said the man. ""A tolerable falling off from the former year "" I observed. ""There were ninety-five bales and fifty hogsheads."" ""If it doesn't please the gentleman he ought to have stopped at home and not gone wandering over half the world instead of minding his affairs "" retorted Mr Bleaks. ""And leaving us to rot in this fever hole without money or any thing else "" added his moiety. ""And further?"" said I to the man. ""That's all. I've received from Mr Merton 600 dollars: 300 more are still comin' to me."" ""Very good."" ""And moreover "" continued Bleaks ""for Indian corn meal and hams and salt pork and blankets and cotton stuffs I have laid out 400 dollars making 700 and 4000 hedge-stakes for mending fences makes a total of 740 dollars."" I ran into the next room found a pen and ink upon my dilapidated writing-table wrote an order on my banker and came back again. At any price I was resolved to get rid of this man. ""Allow me "" said the Creole who had been a silent witness of all that had passed but who now attempted to take the paper from my hand. ""Pardon me sir "" said I vexed at the man's meddling; ""on this occasion I wish to be my own counsellor and master."" ""Wait but one moment and allow me to ask a few questions of your overseer "" continued the Creole no way repulsed by my words or manner. ""Will Mr Bleaks be so good as to read over his account once more?"" ""Don't know why I should. Mind your own business "" was the churlish answer. ""Then I will do it for you "" said Ménou. ""The 20th December twenty-five bales cotton and four hogsheads tobacco-leaves delivered to Mr Merton. Is it not so?"" Mr Bleaks made no answer. ""The 23d December twenty bales cotton and one hogshead tobacco to Messrs Goring. Is it not so?"" The overseer cast a fierce but embarrassed look at the Creole. His wife changed colour. ""The 24th January twe
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ty-five bales and one hogshead to Mr Groves and again on the 10th February twenty-two bales and seven hogsheads to Messrs Goring. Is not that the correct account?"" ""D----d lies!"" stammered the overseer. ""Which I shall soon prove to be truth "" said the other. ""Mr Howard you have a claim on this man for upwards of 2000 dollars of which he has shamefully cheated you. I shall also be able to point out another fraud to the extent of 500 dollars."" My faithless servants were pale with rage and confusion; I was struck dumb with surprise at this unexpected discovery and at the way in which it was made. ""We must lose no time with these people "" whispered the Creole to me ""or they will be off before you can look round you. Send immediately to Justice T---- for a warrant and give the sheriff and constables a hint to be on the look-out. He cannot well escape if he goes down stream but he will no doubt try to go up."" I immediately took the needful measures and sent off Bangor one of my smartest negroes to the justice of peace. ""We must write immediately to Goring's house "" said the Creole. In an hour all was ready. At the end of that time the Montezuma steamer came smoking down the river. We got the captain to come on shore told him briefly what had happened gave him our letters and were just accompanying him back to his vessel when we saw a figure creep stealthily along behind the hedge and wood-stack and go on board the steamer. It was Mr Bleaks who had imagined that under existing circumstances a trip to New Orleans might be of service to his health. We found the worthy gentleman concealed amongst the crew busily converting himself into a negro by the assistance of a handful of soot. His intended excursion was of course put an end to and he was conveyed back to his dwelling. We took precautions against a second attempt at flight; and the following morning he was placed in safe custody of the authorities. ""But my dear Monsieur Ménou "" said I to the Creole as we sat after dinner discussing the second bottle of his Chambertin of which the excellent man had not forgotten to bring a provision on shore with him--""whence comes it that you have shown me so much and such undeserved sympathy and interest?"" ""Ha ha! You citizen aristocrats cannot understand that a man should take an interest in any one or any thing but himself "" replied Ménou half laughing half in earnest. ""It is incomprehensible to your stiff proud republican egotism which makes you look down upon us Creoles and upon all the rest of the world as beings of an inferior order. We on the other hand take care of ourselves but we also occasionally think of our neighbours. Your affairs are perfectly well known to me and I hope you do not think I have made a bad use of my knowledge of them."" I shook the worthy man heartily by the hand. ""We are not in general particularly fond of you northern gentlemen "" continued he; ""but you form an exception. You have a good deal of our French _étourderie_ in your blood and a good deal also of our generosity."" I could not help smiling at the _naïve_ frankness with which this sketch of my character was placed before me. ""You have stopped too long away from your own house and from people who would willingly be your friends; and if all that is said be true you have no particular reason to congratulate yourself upon the result of your wanderings."" I bit my lips. The allusion was pretty plainly to my misfortune at New York. ""Better as it is "" resumed the Creole with a very slight and good-humoured smile. ""A New York fine lady would be strangely out of her element on a Red River plantation. But to talk of something else. My son will be here to-morrow; your estate only wants attention and a small capital of seven or eight thousand dollars to become in a year or two as thriving a one as any in Louisiana. My son will put it all in order for you; and meanwhile you must come and stop a few months with me."" ""But Monsieur Ménou""---- ""No _buts_ Monsieur Howard! You have got the money you must buy a score more negroes; we will pick out some good ones for you. To-morrow every thing shall be arranged."" On the morrow came young Ménou an active intelligent youth of twenty. The day was passed in visiting the plantation and in a very few hours the young man had gained my full confidence. I recommended my interests and the negroes to his care; and the same evening his father and myself went on board the Ploughboy steamer which was to convey us to the residence of the Ménous. CHAPTER THE SECOND. CREOLE LIFE. The good Creole had certainly behaved to me in a more Christian-like manner than most of my own countrymen would have done; and of this I had before long abundant proof. A little after nightfall the steamboat paused opposite the house of the justice of peace; and I went on shore to communicate with him concerning my faithless steward. Although so early the functionary was already going to bed and came out to me in his nightshirt. ""Knew it all dear Mr Howard "" said he with the utmost _naïveté_; ""saw every bale that they stole from you or tried to steal from you."" ""And for Heaven's sake man!"" I exclaimed ""why did you not put a stop to it?"" ""It was nothing to me "" was the dry answer. ""If you had only given information to my attorney!"" ""No business of mine "" returned the man. Then fixing his eyes hard upon me he commenced a sort of lecture for which I was by no means prepared. ""Ah!"" said he pushing his nightcap a little over his left ear ""you young gentlemen come out of the north with your dozen blackies or so lay out some two or three thousand dollars in house and land and then think you can play the absentee as much as you like and that you do us a deal of honour when you allow us to collect and remit your income for you to spend out of the country. I'm almost sorry Mr Howard that you didn't come six months later."" ""In order to leave the scoundrel time to secure his booty eh?"" ""At any rate he has worked and has wife and child and has been useful to the land and country."" ""The devil!"" I exclaimed mighty indignant. ""Well--for a judge you have a singular idea of law!"" ""It mayn't be Bony's code nor yet Livingston's but I reckon it's justice "" replied the man earnestly tapping his forehead with his forefinger. I stared at him but he returned my gaze with interest. There was a deal of backwoods justice in his rough reasoning although its morality was indefensible. It was the law of property expounded _à la_ Lynch. What is very certain is that in a new country especially absenteeism ought to be scouted as a crime against the community. In my case my ramblings had been very near costing me three thousand hard dollars. As it was however they were saved--thanks to Ménou--and the money still in the hands of Messrs Goring whose standard of morality on such subjects was probably not much more rigid than that of the worthy Squire Turnips and who would I doubt not have bought my cotton of the Evil One himself if they could have got it half-a-cent a pound cheaper by so doing. I gave the squire the necessary papers and powers for the adjustment of my affairs with Bleaks; we shook hands and I returned on board. In the grey of the morning the steamboat stopped again. I accompanied Ménou on shore and we found a carriage waiting which in spite of its singularly antique construction set off with us at a brisk pace. I had just fallen asleep in my corner when I was awakened by a musical voice not ten paces off exclaiming ""_Les voilà!_"" I looked up rubbed my eyes--it was Louise the Creole's youngest daughter who had come out under the verandah to welcome us. Where should we find one of our northern beauties who would turn out of her warm bed at six in the morning to welcome her papa and a stranger guest and to keep hot coffee ready for them to counteract the bad effects of the morning air on the river? Monsieur Ménou however did not seem to find any thing extraordinary in his daughter's early rising but began enquiring if the people had had their breakfasts and were at work. On this and various other subjects Louise was able to give him all the information he desired. She must have made astonishingly good use of the twenty-four hours that had elapsed since her return home to be versed in all particulars concerning her sable liege subjects and to be able to relate so fluently how Cato had run a splinter into his foot Pompey had a touch of fever and fifty other details which although doubtless very interesting to Ménou made me gape a little. I amused myself by looking round the dining-room in which we then were the furniture and appearance of which rather improved my opinion of Creole civilization and comfort. The matting that covered the floor was new and of an elegant design--the sideboard solid and handsome although prodigiously old-fashioned--tables chairs and sofas were of French manufacture. On the walls were suspended two or three engravings; not the fight at New Orleans or Perry and Bainbridge's victories over the British on Champlain and Erie but curiosities dating from the reigns of Louis the Fifteenth and Sixteenth. There was a Frenchified air about the whole room nothing of the republic the empire or the restoration but a sort of odour of the genuine old royalist days. By the time I had completed my inspection Louise had answered all her father's enquiries; and we went out to take a look at the exterior of the house. It was snugly situated at the foot of a conical hillock the only elevation of any kind to be found for miles around. South east and west it was enclosed in a broad frame of acacia and cotton trees; but to the north it lay open the breath of Boreas being especially acceptable in our climate. A rivulet very bright and clear at least for Louisiana poured its waters from the elevation before mentioned and supplied a tannery which doubtless contributed much to the healthiness of the neighbourhood. The house consisted of three parts built at different times by grandfather father and son and now united into one. The last and largest portion had been built by the present proprietor; and it would have been as easy it struck me to have pulled down the earlier erections and have built one compact house. The reason the Creole gave for not having done so did honour I thought to his heart. ""I wish my children constantly to remember "" said he ""how hard their ancestors toiled and how poorly they lived in order to ensure better days to those who should come after them."" ""And they will remember it "" said a voice close behind us. I turned round. ""_Madame Ménou j'ai l'honneur de vous présenter notre voisin Monsieur Howard._"" ""_Qui restera longtems chez nous_ "" cried the two girls skipping forward and before I had time to make my bow to the lady taking me by both hands and dragging me into the house and through half a dozen zigzag passages and corridors to show me my room. This was a sexagonal apartment situated immediately over a small artificial lake through which flowed the rivulet before mentioned. It was the coolest and most agreeable chamber in the house on which account it had been allotted to me. After I had declared my unqualified approval of it my fair conductresses took me down stairs again to papa and mamma the latter of whom I found to be a ladylike woman with a countenance expressive of good nature and manners that at once made one feel quite at home. She received me as if she had known me for years without compliments or ceremonious speeches and without even troubling herself to screw her features into the sort of holiday expression which many persons think it necessary to assume on first acquaintance. I was soon engaged in a conversation with her in the middle of which a lady and two gentlemen came out under the verandah and joined us. Their olive complexions and foreign appearance at once attracted my attention and I set them down as Spaniards or of Spanish extraction. In this I was not mistaken. The men were introduced to me as Señor Silveira and Don Pablo. The lady who was the wife of the former was a remarkably lovely creature tall and elegant in person with dark eyes an aquiline and delicately-formed nose a beautiful mouth enclosing pearl-like teeth. Hitherto I had held our American fair ones to be the prettiest women in the world; but I now almost felt inclined to alter my opinion. I was so struck by the fair stranger's appearance that I could not take my eyes off her for some moments; until a sharp glance from her husband and (as I fancied) the somewhat uneasy looks of the other ladies made me aware that my gaze might be deemed somewhat too free and republican in its duration. I transferred my attention therefore to the breakfast which to my no small satisfaction was now smoking on the table and to which we at once sat down. The strangers appeared grave and thoughtful and ate little although the steaks were delicious the young quails incomparable and the Chambertin worthy of an imperial table. ""Who are those foreigners?"" said I to Ménou when the meal was over and we were leaving the room. ""Mexicans "" was the reply; ""but who they are I cannot tell you."" ""What! do you not know them?"" ""I know them perfectly well "" he answered ""or they would not be in my house. But even my family "" whispered he ""does not know them."" Poor wretches! thought I some more sacrifices on freedom's altar; driven from house and home by the internal commotions of their country. Things were going on badly enough in Mexico just then. On the one hand Guerrero Bustamente Santa Anna; on the other a race of men to whom if one wished them their deserts one could desire nothing better than an Austrian schlague or a Russian knout to make them sensible of the value of that liberty which they do not know how to appreciate. Meanwhile Julie and Louise were busy in the next room passing in review for the third or fourth time at least the thousand-and-one purchases they had made at New Orleans. It was a perfect picture of Creole comfort to see the mamma presiding at this examination of the laces gros de Naples Indiennes gauze and other fripperies which were passed rapidly through the slender fingers of her daughters and handed to her for approval. She found every thing charming; every thing too had its destination; and my only wonder was how it would be possible for those ladies to use the hundreds of ells of stuffs that were soon spread out over chairs tables and sofas and that as it appeared to me would have been sufficient to supply half the women of Louisiana with finery for the next five years. This Creole family was really a model of a joyous innocent existence; nothing constrained or artificial; but a light and cheerful tone of conversation which however never degenerated into license or threatened to overstep the limits of the strictest propriety. Each person fulfilled his or her allotted task thoroughly well and without appearing to find it an exertion. The housekeeping was admirable; to that point the excellence of the breakfast had borne witness. I recollect once falling violently in love with a Massachusetts beauty possessed of a charming face a sylph-like figure and as much sentimentality as would have stocked half a dozen flaxen-haired Germans. It was my ninth serious attachment if I remember rightly and desperately smitten I was and remained until one unlucky day when the mamma of my _adorata_ invited me to a dinner _en famille_. The toughness of the mutton-chops took the edge off my teeth for forty-eight hours and off my love for ever. As regards the Ménous however I have hardly known them long enough to form a very decided opinion concerning them. In a few days I shall be able to judge better. Meanwhile we will leave the ladies and accompany Monsieur Ménou over his plantation. It is in excellent order admirably situated and capitally irrigated by trenches cut through the cotton and maize fields. There are above three hundred acres in cultivation--the yearly crop two hundred and fifty bales: a very pretty income. Only three children and the plantation comprising nearly four thousand acres. Not so bad--might be worth thinking of. But what would the world say to it? The aristocratic Howard to marry a Creole with perhaps a dash of Indian blood in her veins! Yet Ménou has threescore negroes and negresses besides a whole colony of ebony children and the two girls are not so ill to look at. Roses and lilies--especially Louise. Well we will think about it. ""Apropos!"" said the Creole as we were walking along a field path. ""You have three thousand dollars with Gorings?"" I nodded. ""And eight thousand with Mr Richards?"" ""How do you know that my dear M. Ménou?"" I must observe by way of parenthesis that I had lent these eight thousand dollars to Richards some five years previously; and although on more than one occasion during that time the money would have been of considerable use to me I had been restrained from asking it back by my natural indolence and laziness of character added to the nonsensical notion of generosity and devotion in friendship that I had picked out of waggon-loads of novels. Richards I must observe had never hinted at returning the money. I now felt rather vexed I cannot exactly say why at Ménou's being acquainted with the fact of this debt which I had fancied a secret between Richards and myself. ""And how do you know that my dear M. Ménou?"" Ménou smiled at my question. ""You forget "" said he ""that I am only just returned from New Orleans. One hears and learns many things when one opens one's ears to the gossip of the _haut-ton_ of the capital."" ""Ha ha!"" said I a little sarcastically and glancing at the man's straw hat and unbleached trousers and jacket; ""Monsieur Ménou--the plain and unsophisticated Monsieur Ménou also a _haut-ton_ man?"" ""My wife was a M----y; my grandfather was president of the Toulouse parliament "" replied the Creole quietly to my somewhat impertinent remark. I bowed. My suspicions concerning Indian blood were unfounded then. ""And have my proceedings and follies really served as tea-table talk to the New Orleans' gossips?"" said I. ""Don't let that annoy you "" replied Ménou. ""Let the world talk; and you on your part prove to it that you are a more sensible man than it takes you for. Will you put yourself for a while entirely under my guidance?"" ""Very willingly "" said I. ""And promise to abide by my advice."" ""I promise to do so."" ""Then "" continued Ménou ""you must let me have to use as I think proper eight out of the eleven thousand dollars which you have lying idle."" ""And Richards?"" said I. ""Can do without them better than you can. It is very well to be generous but not to the extent of injuring yourself. Here is a receipt for the sum in question. I will account to you for its expenditure."" And with these words he handed me the receipt. He had evidently laid a little plot to force me to my own good. It went decidedly against the grain with me to requite Richards' hospitality and friendship by claiming back the money I had lent him and for which he no doubt had good use. At the same time it would have been rather Quixotic to let my own plantation go to rack and ruin for want of the funds by which he was profiting; and moreover I had given Ménou my word to be guided by him; so I put the receipt and my romantics in my pocket and returned to the house to give my adviser an order for the money. Julie and Louise scarcely seemed to observe our entrance. Both had their hands full--the one with cookery and domestic matters the other with the ginghams and muslins which she was rending and tearing with a vigour that caused the noise to be heard fifty yards off. At supper however they were as merry as ever and there was no end to their mirth and liveliness. It seemed as if they had thrown off the burden of the day's toils and awakened to a new and more joyous existence. The three Mexicans with their gravity and grandeur did not seem to be the least restraint upon the girls who at last however towards eight o'clock appeared to grow impatient at sitting so long still. They exchanged a whisper and then rising from table tripped into a adjoining room. Presently the harmonious tones of a pianoforte were audible. ""We must not linger here "" said the Creole. ""_Les dames nous en voudraient._"" And we all repaired to the drawing-room an elegant apartment where the Mexican lady was already seated at the piano while the two girls were only waiting partners to begin the dance. Julie took possession of her father Silveira stood up with Madame Ménou Louise fell to my share; and a cotillon was danced with as much glee and spirit as if both dancers and lookers-on had been more numerous. Between dancing music and lively conversation eleven o'clock came before we were aware of it. ""_Voici notre manière Créole_ "" said Ménou as he left me at my bed-room door. ""With us every thing has its time; laughing talking working praying and dancing: each its appointed season. We endeavour so to arrange our lives that no one occupation or amusement should interfere with another. It is only by that means that our secluded domestic existence can be rendered agreeable and happy. As it is _nous ne nous ennuyons jamais_. Good-night."" CHAPTER THE THIRD. QUITE UNEXPECTED. Eight weeks had flown by like so many hours. I had become domesticated in the family circle of the Ménous and was getting so frugal and economical that I scarcely knew what a dollar or a bank-note looked like. Time passed so lightly and pleasantly and there was something so patriarchal and delightful in this mode of life that it was no difficult matter to forget the world with its excitements its pleasures and its cares. I at least rarely bestowed a thought upon any thing but what was passing immediately around me; whole piles of newspapers lay unread upon my table and I became every day more and more of a backwoodsman. I rose early slipped into my linen jacket and trousers and accompanied M. Ménou about his fields and cotton presses. The afternoon passed in looking over accounts or in reading and laughing at the discussions and opinions of Colonel Stone and Major Noah as set forth in the well-known papers the _Morning Courier_ and _Commercial Gazette_ while the evening of each day was filled up by an _impromptu_ of some kind a dance or a merry chat. We were sitting one night at supper when M. Ménou proposed a stag-hunt by torchlight. I caught eagerly at the idea and he at once gave orders to make the needful preparations. The two Mexicans begged to be allowed to accompany us; but almost before they had proffered the request the lady interfered to oppose it. ""Don Lop----!"" she exclaimed and then checked herself in the middle of the word she was about to utter. ""_Te suplico_ "" she continued in Spanish after a momentary pause ""I implore you not to go to-night."" There was something inexpressibly anxious and affectionate in her manner and tone. Her husband begged her not to make herself uneasy and promised he would not go; at the same time it was evident that he was vexed not to accompany us. I assured the lady there was no danger. ""No danger!"" repeated she in her sonorous Castilian. ""No danger! Is nobody aware of the intended hunt?"" said she to Ménou. ""Nobody "" was the reply. It just then occurred to me that during the whole period of my residence with the Ménous neither the Mexican nor his wife had ever gone out of the house and garden. This circumstance in combination with the anxiety now shown by the lady struck me forcibly and I gazed at Silveira while I vainly endeavoured to conjecture whence arose the mystery that evidently environed him. He was a man of about thirty years of age with handsome features a high forehead and a pale but not unhealthy complexion. The expression of his eyes particularly struck me; at times there flashed from them a fire indicative of high purposes and strong resolution. There was a military and commanding air about him which was very apparent though he evidently did his utmost to conceal it; and it was this same manner which had hitherto caused me to treat him rather coolly and rendered me little disposed to cultivate his intimacy. His companion Don Pablo was a tolerably insignificant person who seemed to look up to Silveira and his wife with a respect and reverence almost amounting to idolatry. Beside him their suite was composed of four attendants. ""And is there really no danger?"" said the Señora to Ménou. The Creole assured her there was none. She whispered a few words to her husband who kissed her hand and repeated his request to be of our party--this time without any opposition on his wife's part. Supper over we put on our shooting coats took our guns and mounted the horses that had been prepared for us. Six negroes with pitch-pans and a couple of dogs had gone on before. The clock struck ten as we set out. It was a dark sultry night; towards the south distant thunder was heard betokening the approach of one of those storms that occur almost daily at that season and in that country. During the first twenty minutes of our ride the atmosphere became stiflingly oppressive; then suddenly a strong wind rushed amongst the trees and bushes the thunder drew nearer and from time to time a flash of forked lightning momentarily illumined the forest. Again a flash more vivid than the preceding ones and a clap compared to which our northern thunder would sound like the mere roll of a drum; the dogs began to whine and kept as near to the horses as they could. We pushed onward and were close to a laurel thicket when the leading hound suddenly came to a stand and pricked up his ears. We dismounted and walked forward--the negroes preceding us with the pitch-pans. Some twenty pace before us we perceived four small stars that glittered like diminutive fire-balls--they were the eyes of two stags that awaited our approach in astonishment at the unusual spectacle offered to them. We took aim--the Creole and myself at one two Mexicans at the other. ""_Feu!_"" cried Ménou. There was the crack of the four rifles then a crashing noise amongst the branches and the clatter of hoofs succeeded by cries of _Sacre!_ and Damn ye! and _Diabolo!_ and _San Jago!_ The six pitch-pans lay smoking and flaring on the ground; the Creole and I had sprung on one side the negroes had thrown themselves on their faces in great terror and the two Dons lay beside them overthrown by the rush of one of the stags. ""_Santa Virgen!_"" shouted Don Pablo mightily alarmed and angry; ""_Maldito bobo Señor don Manuel!_"" And scrambling to his feet he proceeded in desperate haste to raise his companion from the ground on which he lay motionless and apparently much hurt. ""_Maldito sea el dia! Nuestro Libertador! Santa Anna! Ay de mi!_"" ""_Calla te_--hold your tongue!"" said Silveira to his alarmed adherent. On the first appearance of danger M. Ménou had jumped behind a tree which had afforded a sufficient shelter against the mad rush of the terrified stag; but his cry of warning had come too late for the young Mexican who had less experience in this kind of chase and who standing full in the path of the furious beast was knocked down and run over. I pushed Pablo who was howling and wringing his hands on one side and with Ménou proceeded to investigate the hurts which the other Mexican had received. His coat was torn and both legs were bleeding having been rent by the deer's antlers. Fortunately the wounds were not deep or he might have had serious reason to regret the bad aim he had taken. We placed him on his horse and turned towards home. It was midnight when we reached the house with the wounded man and the carcass of the deer that Ménou and I had shot. The sight of a white figure at the window of the apartment occupied by the Mexican warned us that his wife was watching for his arrival. At the sound of our horses' feet she came hurrying down stairs and out of the house to meet us; and upon beholding her husband pale exhausted and supported on his horse by couple of negroes she uttered a shrill cry and with the word ""_Perdido!_"" sank almost fainting on the door steps. ""Gracious God!"" cried a second female voice at that moment. ""A misfortune! Is it Howard?"" It was Louise who at that moment made her appearance in her nightdress breathless with terror. ""_Mon Dieu_ it is only the Mexican! Thank God!"" lisped she in an accent of infinite joy and relief. ""Thanks dearest Louise! for those words "" said I; ""they make me very happy."" I caught her in my arms and pressed a kiss upon her lips. She struggled from my embrace and blushing deeply hurried back into her chamber. I now followed Ménou into the apartment of the Mexican whose wife was hanging over him speechless with grief and anxiety. Ménou had much trouble to get her away from him in order that he might examine and dress his hurts. I do not know where the worthy Creole had learned his surgery but he was evidently no tyro in the healing art; and he cut out the flesh injured by the antler washed and bandaged the wounds with a dexterity that really inspired me with confidence in him. The wounds were not dangerous but might easily have become so taking into consideration the heat of the weather (the thermometer stood at eighty-six ) and the circumstance of their having been inflicted by a stag's horn. In a short half hour the patient was comfortably put to bed and the afflicted Donna Isabella consoled by Ménou's positive assurance that in a very few days her husband would be well again. She received this piece of comfort with such a thoroughly Roman Catholic uplifting of her magnificent eyes that I could scarcely help envying the saints for whom that look was intended. I had held the candle for Ménou during the operation; and as I put it down upon the table my eyes fell upon a beautifully executed miniature of the Mexican set in brilliants. Beside it were lying letters addressed to Don Lopez di Santa Anna Marischal de Campo; one or two had the superscription Lieutenant-general. It was no other than the celebrated Mexican leader the second in rank in the would-be republic who had been sojourning in Monsieur Ménou's house under the assumed name of Silveira. This discovery afforded me matter for reflection as I repaired to my bed-chamber; reflections however which were soon forced to make way for other thoughts of a more personally interesting nature. It was the graceful form of Louise that now glided forward out of the background of my imagination. She had watched then anxiously for our return; and the first rumour of a mishap had drawn from her lips the name of him for whom her heart felt most interested. During the whole time of my residence with the Ménous I had never once dreamed of falling in love with either of the sisters. There was so much activity and occupation in and out of the house that I seemed to have had no time to indulge in sentimental reveries. Now however they came crowding upon me. It was so consolatory to an unlucky bachelor only just recovering from a recent disappointment to find himself an object of tender interest a lovely and innocent girl of seventeen. At breakfast the next morning Louise did not dare to look me in the face. Without distressing her however I managed to look at her more than I had ever before done; and I really wondered what I had been thinking about during the preceding two months not to have sooner found out her manifold charms and perfections. Her elder sister was too stout for my taste altogether on too large a scale and with too little of the intellectual in the expression of her features; but Louise is unquestionably a charming creature slender and graceful with a sweet archness in her countenance and hands and feet that might serve for models. In short I began to think seriously that all past disappointments would be more than compensated by the affection of such a woman. I must see first about setting my house in order thought I. ""Will you be so kind as to lend me your carriage to go as far as the river?"" said I to the Creole. ""With much pleasure. A mere ride I suppose?"" ""No; a little more. I wish to see how things are getting on at my plantation."" ""You are going away?"" exclaimed Madame Ménou and Julie. Louise said nothing but she raised her eyes to mine for the first time that morning. ""It is necessary that I should do so; but if you will allow me I will pay you another visit before very long."" The roses had left the cheeks of poor Louise and I fancied I saw a tea
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glittering in her eyes. Several minutes elapsed without any body's speaking. At last the silence was broken by the Creole. ""You seemed very happy here I thought "" said he. ""Has any thing happened?"" ""Yes; something of great importance to me. I must really leave you immediately "" was my answer. Mean time Louise had left the room. I hurried after her and overtook her before she reached her chamber. ""Louise!"" said I. She was weeping. ""I leave you to-day."" ""So I heard."" ""In order to arrange my house."" ""My brother is doing that already "" said she. ""Why leave us?"" ""Because I would fain see with my own eyes if all is ready and fitting for the reception of my Louise. When I have done so will you follow me home as my beloved wife?"" For one second she looked in my face her features lighted up with a beam of confiding joy and then her gaze fell in timid confusion on the ground. ""Take her dear Howard!"" said her father who had followed us unperceived. ""She is the best of daughters and will make as good a wife."" Louise sank into my arms. An hour later I was on my way homewards. At last then I was irrevocably pledged and my bachelorship drew near its close. I felt that I had made a judicious choice. Louise was an excellent girl sensible prudent active and cheerful--uniting in short all the qualities desirable in a backwoodsman's wife. It was strange enough that all this should only have occurred to me within a few hours. I had been living two months under the same roof with her and yet the idea of her becoming my wife had never entered my head till the preceding night. It was four in the afternoon when I reached my plantation which I was very near passing without recognising it so great was the change that had taken place since my last visit. The rubbish and tree-trunks that had then encumbered the vicinity of the house had disappeared--the garden had been increased in size and surrounded by a new and elegant fence--a verandah under which two negro carpenters were at work ran along the front and sides of the house. As I walked up from the boat young Ménou came to meet me. I shook him heartily by the hand and expressed my gratitude for the trouble he had taken and my wonder at the astonishing progress the improvements of all kinds had made. ""How have you possibly managed to effect all these miracles?"" said I. ""Very easily "" replied Ménou. ""You sent us fifteen negroes; my father lent me ten of his. With these and the twenty-five you had before we were able to make progress. We are now putting the finishing-stroke to your cotton press which was fearfully out of order."" I walked with a thankful heart through the garden and stepped into the verandah. The rooms that looked out upon it were all fitted up in the most comfortable manner. In the principal bedroom a negro girl was working at the elegant musquitto curtains. Old Sybille in a calico gown of the most glaring colours her face shining with contentment was brushing away some invisible dust from the furniture in the parlour. ""By the by "" said young Ménou opening a writing-desk ""here are several letters that have come for you within the last few days and that amidst my various occupations I have quite forgotten to forward."" I sat down and opened them. Two were from Richards the earliest in date inviting me to go and stay with him again. The more recent one renewed the invitation and expressed the writer's surprise at my having become on a sudden so domestic a character. In a postscript he added as a sort of inducement to me to visit him that he was daily expecting a friend of his wife's the beautiful Emily Warren. Not a syllable however about the eight thousand dollars which surprised me not a little; for Richards was by no means a man to remain silent on a subject affecting his worldly interest and I fully expected he would have felt and expressed some pique or resentment at my sudden withdrawal of my funds. But on the contrary the letter I had given to Ménou in which I requested Richards to pay over the money in question to the Creole was not even alluded to. ""There are matters in these letters "" said I to young Ménou ""which oblige me to return immediately to your father's house."" ""Indeed!"" cried the young man much astonished. ""Yes "" replied I. ""I hear a steamboat coming down the river--I will be off at once."" He looked at me in great surprise; Sybille shook her head. But my character is so impatient and impetuous that when I have resolved on any thing I can never bear to defer its execution a moment. Besides there was really nothing to detain me at my plantation. The arrangements and improvements that I had reckoned on finding only half effected were complete; and every moment that now elapsed before I could welcome Louise as mistress of my house and heart seemed to me worse than wasted. I hurried down to the river and hailed the steamer. It was the same that had brought me home two months previously. ""Mr Howard "" said the captain joyously as I stepped on board the vessel ""I am right glad to see you on my deck again. Your plantation looks quite another thing. You are really a worker of wonders."" I hardly knew how to accept this undeserved praise. One of the best points in our American character is the universal respect paid to industry and intellect. The wealthy idler who carries thousands in his pocket-book may amongst us look in vain for the respect and flattery which a tithe of his riches would procure him in many other countries; while the less fortunate man who makes his way and earns his living by hand and head work may always reckon on the consideration of his fellow-citizens. On my return to Louisiana I had been thought nothing of. I was a drone in the hive--with money but without skill or perseverance. My overseer was more looked up to than myself; but the recent change in the state of my plantation attributed however wrongly to my presence had caused a revolution in people's ideas; and I was now met on all sides with open hands and smiling countenances. The change I must confess was a gratifying one for me. The Ménous were at breakfast the next morning when I arrived heated by my walk from the river opposite to the parlour window. I was received with a cry of welcome. ""So soon back! Nothing wrong I hope?"" said Ménou. ""Nothing "" replied I dryly; ""I have only forgotten something."" ""And what is that?"" ""My Louise "" was my answer as I seated myself beside the blushing girl. ""On arriving at my wilderness "" I continued ""I found it converted into so blooming a paradise that I should really be heartbroken if it were to remain any longer without its Eve. To-morrow please God we will start for New Orleans to put in requisition the service of Père Antoine and the worthy rector."" There was a cry of consternation from the papa and mamma. ""There is nothing ready--_point de trousseau_--nothing in the world. Do not be so unreasonable dear Howard."" ""Our Yankee damsels "" replied I laughing ""if they have only got a pair of shoes and a gown and a half consider themselves perfectly ready to be married."" ""Well let him have his way "" said Ménou. ""We can manage I daresay to equip the bride a little better than that."" ""Apropos "" said I to Ménou while the ladies were consulting together and recovering from the flurry into which my precipitation had thrown them--""the eight thousand dollars? Richards says nothing about them."" ""It was only an experiment I tried with you "" replied my future father-in-law smiling. ""I wished to see if you have sufficient firmness of character to ensure your own happiness. Had you not come victoriously out of the little ordeal Louise should never have been wife of yours if all the plantations on the Mississippi had called you master. As to the money I advanced what was wanted. You can settle with Mr Richards in the way most agreeable to yourself."" The next morning we set off for New Orleans--Ménou and Louise Julie who was to act as bridesmaid and myself. Madame Ménou remained at home. I could have wished to have had young Ménou as my bridesman; but his presence was necessary at the plantation and we were obliged to content ourselves with receiving his good wishes as we passed. After a twenty hours' voyage we reached the capital and took up our quarters in the house of a sister of Ménou's. I was hurrying to find Father Antoine when in turning the corner of the cathedral I ran bolt up against Richards. After the first greeting and without giving him time to ask me questions-- ""Wait for me at the Merchant's Coffeehouse "" said I; ""in a quarter of an hour I will meet you there."" And I left him in considerable astonishment at my desperate haste. I found Father Antoine and the rector and then hurried off to keep my appointment. ""Do you know "" said I to Richards as I dragged him through the streets ""that I am thinking seriously of becoming a Benedict?"" ""Well "" said he ""you must come home with me then. Emily Warren is arrived. She is a charming girl and a great friend of my wife's. You will be sure of Clara's good word and I really think Emily will exactly suit you."" ""I am afraid not "" replied I as I turned into the church. Richards opened his eyes in amazement when he saw Louise with her aunt sister and the whole of the bridal party walking up the aisle and Father Antoine standing at the altar in his robes. ""What does this mean?"" said he. I made no answer but let matters explain themselves. Ten minutes after Louise Ménou was my wife. GREECE UNDER THE ROMANS.{A} What is called _Philosophical History_ we believe to be yet in its infancy. It is the profound remark of Mr Finlay--profound as we ourselves understand it _i.e._ in relation to this philosophical treatment ""That history will ever remain inexhaustible."" How inexhaustible? Are the _facts_ of history inexhaustible? In regard to the _ancient_ division of history with which he is there dealing this would be in no sense true; and in any case it would be a lifeless truth. So entirely have the mere facts of Pagan history been disinterred ransacked sifted that except by means of some chance medal that may be unearthed in the illiterate East (as of late towards Bokhara ) or by means of some mysterious inscription such as those which still mock the learned traveller in Persia northwards near Hamadan (Ecbatana ) and southwards at Persepolis or those which distract him amongst the shadowy ruins of Yucatan (Uxmal suppose and Palenque )--once for all barring these pure godsends it is hardly ""in the dice"" that any downright novelty of fact should remain in reversion for this 19th century. The merest possibility exists that in Armenia or in a Græco-Russian monastery on Mount Athos or in Pompeii &c. some authors hitherto +anekdotoi+ may yet be concealed; and by a channel in that degree improbable it is possible that certain new facts of history may still reach us. But else and failing these cryptical or subterraneous currents of communication for us the record is closed. History in that sense is come to an end and sealed up as by the angel in the Apocalypse. What then? The facts _so_ understood are but the dry bones of the mighty past. And the question arises here also not less than in that sublimest of prophetic visions ""Can these dry bones live?"" Not only they can live but by an infinite variety of life. The same historic facts viewed in different lights or brought into connexion with other facts according to endless diversities of permutation and combination furnish grounds for such eternal successions of new speculations as make the facts themselves virtually new. The same Hebrew words are read by different sets of vowel points and the same hieroglyphics are deciphered by keys everlastingly varied. To us we repeat that oftentimes it seems as though the _science_ of history were yet scarcely founded. There will be such a science if at present there is not; and in one feature of its capacities it will resemble chemistry. What is so familiar to the perceptions of man as the common chemical agents of water air and the soil on which we tread? Yet each one of these elements is a mystery to this day; handled used tried searched experimentally in ten thousand ways--it is still unknown; fathomed by recent science down to a certain depth it is still probably by its destiny unfathomable. Even to the end of days it is pretty certain that the minutest particle of earth--that a dewdrop scarcely distinguishable as a separate object--that the slenderest filament of a plant will include within itself secrets inaccessible to man. And yet compared with the mystery of man himself these physical worlds of mystery are but as a radix of infinity. Chemistry is in this view mysterious and spinosistically sublime--that it is the science of the latent in all things of all things as lurking in all. Within the lifeless flint within the silent pyrites slumbers an agony of potential combustion. Iron is imprisoned in blood. With cold water (as every child is now-a-days aware) you may lash a fluid into angry ebullitions of heat; with hot water as with the rod of Amram's son you may freeze a fluid down to the temperature of the Sarsar wind provided only that you regulate the pressure of the air. The sultry and dissolving fluid shall bake into a solid the petrific fluid shall melt into a liquid. Heat shall freeze frost shall thaw; and wherefore? Simply because old things are brought together in new modes of combination. And in endless instances beside we see the same Panlike latency of forms and powers which gives to the external world a capacity of self-transformation and of _polymorphosis_ absolutely inexhaustible. But the same capacity belongs to the facts of history. And we do not mean merely that from subjective differences in the minds reviewing them such facts assume endless varieties of interpretation and estimate but that objectively from lights still increasing in the science of government and of social philosophy all the primary facts of history become liable continually to new theories to new combinations and to new valuations of their moral relations. We have seen some kinds of marble where the veinings happened to be unusually multiplied in which human faces figures processions or fragments of natural scenery seemed absolutely illimitable under the endless variations or inversions of the order according to which they might be combined and grouped. Something analogous takes effect in reviewing the remote parts of history. Rome for instance has been the object of historic pens for twenty centuries (dating from Polybius); and yet hardly so much as twenty years have elapsed since Niebuhr opened upon us almost a new revelation by recombining the same eternal facts according to a different set of principles. The same thing may be said though not with the same degree of emphasis upon the Grecian researches of the late Ottfried Mueller. Egyptian history again even at this moment is seen stealing upon us through the dusky twilight in its first distinct lineaments. Before Young Champollion and the others who have followed on their traces in this field of history all was outer darkness; and whatsoever we _do_ know or _shall_ know of Egyptian Thebes will now be recovered as if from the unswathing of a mummy. Not until a flight of three thousand years has left Thebes the Hekatompylos a dusky speck in the far distance have we even _begun_ to read her annals or to understand her revolutions. Another instance we have now before us of this new historic faculty for resuscitating the buried and for calling back the breath to the frozen features of death in Mr Finlay's work upon the Greeks as related to the Roman empire. He presents us with old facts but under the purpose of clothing them with a new life. He rehearses ancient stories not with the humble ambition of better adorning them of more perspicuously narrating or even of more forcibly pointing their moral but of extracting from them some new meaning and thus forcing them to arrange themselves under some latent connexion with other phenomena now first detected as illustrations of some great principle or agency now first revealing its importance. Mr Finlay's style of intellect is appropriate to such a task; for it is subtle and Machiavelian. But there is this difficulty in doing justice to the novelty and at times we may say with truth to the profundity of his views that they are by necessity thrown out in continued successions of details are insulated and in one word _sporadic_. This follows from the very nature of his work; for it is a perpetual commentary on the incidents of Grecian history from the era of the Roman conquest to the commencement of what Mr Finlay in a peculiar sense calls the Byzantine empire. These incidents have nowhere been systematically or continuously recorded; they come forward by casual flashes in the annals perhaps of some church historian as they happen to connect themselves with his momentary theme; or they betray themselves in the embarrassments of the central government whether at Rome or at Constantinople when arguing at one time a pestilence at another an insurrection or an inroad of barbarians. It is not the fault of Mr Finlay but his great disadvantage that the affairs of Greece have been thus discontinuously exhibited and that its internal changes of condition have been never treated except obliquely and by men _aliud agentibus_. The Grecian _race_ had a primary importance on our planet; but the Grecian name represented by Greece considered as a territory or as the original seat of the Hellenic people ceased to have much importance in the eyes of historians from the time when it became a conquered province; and it declined into absolute insignificance after the conquest of so many other provinces had degraded Hellas into an arithmetical unit standing amongst a total amount of figures so vast and so much more dazzling to the ordinary mind. Hence it was that in ancient times no complete history of Greece through all her phases and stages was ever attempted. The greatness of her later revolutions simply as changes would have attracted the historian; but as changes associated with calamity and loss of power they repelled his curiosity and alienated his interest. It is the very necessity therefore of Mr Finlay's position when coming into such an inheritance that he must splinter his philosophy into separate individual notices; for the records of history furnish no grounds for more. _Spartam quam nactus est ornavit._ But this does not remedy the difficulty for ourselves in attempting to give a representative view of his philosophy. General abstractions he had no opportunity for presenting; consequently we have no opportunity for valuing; and on the other hand single cases selected from a succession of hundreds would not justify any _representative_ criticism more than the single brick in the anecdote of Hierocles would serve representatively to describe or to appraise the house. Under this difficulty as to the possible for ourselves and the just for Mr Finlay we shall adopt the following course. So far as the Greek people connected themselves in any splendid manner with the Roman empire they did so with the eastern horn of that empire and in point of time from the foundation of Constantinople as an eastern Rome in the fourth century to a period not fully agreed on; but for the moment we will say with Mr Finlay up to the early part of the eighth century. A reason given by Mr Finlay for this latter state is--that about that time the Grecian blood so widely diffused in Asia and even in Africa became finally detached by the progress of Mahometanism and Mahometan systems of power from all further concurrence or coalition with the views of the Byzantine Cæsar. Constantinople was from that date thrown back more upon its own peculiar heritage and jurisdiction of which the main resources for war and peace lay in Europe and (speaking by the narrowest terms) in Thrace. Henceforth therefore for the city and throne of Constantine resuming its old Grecian name of Byzantium there succeeded a theatre less diffusive a population more concentrated a character of action more determinate and jealous a style of courtly ceremonial more elaborate as well as more haughtily repulsive and universally a system of interests as much more definite and selfish as might naturally be looked for in a nation now every where surrounded by new thrones gloomy with malice and swelling with the consciousness of youthful power. This new and final state of the eastern Rome Mr Finlay denominates the Byzantine empire. Possibly this use of the term may be capable of justification; but more questions would arise in the discussion than Mr Finlay has thought it of importance to notice. And for the present we shall take the word _Byzantine_ in its most ordinary acceptation as denoting the local empire founded by Constantine in Byzantium early in the fourth century under the idea of a translation from the old western Rome and overthrown by the Ottoman Turks in the year 1453. In the fortunes and main stages of this empire what are the chief arresting phenomena aspects or relations to the greatest of modern interests? We select by preference these. I. First this was the earliest among the kingdoms of our planet _which connected itself with Christianity_. In Armenia there had been a previous _state_ recognition of Christianity. But _that_ was neither splendid nor distinct. Whereas the Byzantine Rome built avowedly upon Christianity as its own basis and consecrated its own nativity by the sublime act of founding the first provision ever attempted for the poor considered simply as poor (_i.e._ as objects of pity not as instruments of ambition.) II. _Secondly as the great ægis of western Christendom_ nay the barrier which made it possible that any Christendom should ever exist this Byzantine empire is entitled to a very different station in the enlightened gratitude of us western Europeans from any which it has yet held. We do not scruple to say--that by comparison with the services of the Byzantine people to Europe no nation on record has ever stood in the same relation to any other single nation much less to a whole family of nations whether as regards the opportunity and means of conferring benefits or as regards the astonishing perseverance in supporting the succession of these benefits or as regards the ultimate event of these benefits. A great wrong has been done for ages; for we have all been accustomed to speak of the Byzantine empire with scorn {B} as chiefly known by its effeminacy; and the greater is the call for a fervent palinode. III. _Thirdly._ In a reflex way as the one great danger which overshadowed Europe for generations and against which the Byzantine empire proved the capital bulwark Mahometanism may rank as one of the Byzantine aspects or counterforces. And if there is any popular error applying to the history of that great convulsion as a political effort for revolutionizing the world some notice of it will find a natural place in connexion with these present trains of speculation. Let us therefore have permission to throw together a few remarks on these three subjects--1st on the remarkable distinction by which the eldest of Christian rulers proclaimed and inaugurated the Christian basis of his empire: 2dly on the true but forgotten relation of this great empire to our modern Christendom under which idea we comprehend Europe and the whole continent of America: 3dly on the false pretensions of Mahometanism whether advanced by itself or by inconsiderate Christian speculators on its behalf. We shall thus obtain this advantage that some sort of unity will be given to our own glances at Mr Finlay's theme; and at the same time by gathering under these general heads any dispersed comments of Mr Finlay whether for confirmation of our own views or for any purpose of objection to his we shall give to those comments also that kind of unity by means of a reference to a common purpose which we could not have given them by citing each independently for itself. I. First then as to that memorable act by which Constantinople (_i.e._ the Eastern empire) connected herself for ever with Christianity; viz. the recognition of pauperism as an element in the state entitled to the maternal guardianship of the state. In this new principle introduced by Christianity we behold a far-seeing or proleptic wisdom making provision for evils before they had arisen; for it is certain that great expansions of pauperism did not exist in the ancient world. A pauper population is a disease peculiar to the modern or Christian world. Various causes latent in the social systems of the ancients prevented such developments of surplus people. But does not this argue a superiority in the social arrangements of these ancients? Not at all; they were atrociously worse. They evaded this one morbid affection by means of others far more injurious to the moral advance of man. The case was then every where as at this day it is in Persia. A Persian ambassador to London or Paris might boast that in his native Irân no such spectacles existed of hunger-bitten myriads as may be seen every where during seasons of distress in the crowded cities of Christian Europe. ""No "" would be the answer ""most certainly not; but why? The reason is that your accursed form of society and government _intercepts_ such surplus people does not suffer them to be born. What is the result? You ought in Persia to have three hundred millions of people; your vast territory is easily capacious of that number. You _have_--how many have you? Something less than eight millions."" Think of this startled reader. But if _that_ be a good state of things then any barbarous soldier who makes a wilderness is entitled to call himself a great philosopher and public benefactor. This is to cure the headache by amputating the head. Now the same principle of limitation to population _à parte ante_ though not in the same savage excess as in Mahometan Persia operated upon Greece and Rome. The whole Pagan world escaped the evils of a redundant population by vicious repressions of it beforehand. But under Christianity a new state of things was destined to take effect. Many protections and excitements to population were laid in the framework of this new religion which by its new code of rules and impulses in so many ways extended the free-agency of human beings. Manufacturing industry was destined first to arise on any great scale under Christianity. Except in Tyre and Alexandria (see the Emperor Hadrian's account of this last ) there was no town or district in the ancient world where the populace could be said properly to work. The rural labourers worked a little--not much; and sailors worked a little; nobody else worked at all. Even slaves had little more work distributed amongst each ten than now settles upon one. And in many other ways by protecting the principle of life as a mysterious sanctity Christianity has favoured the development of an excessive population. There it is that Christianity being answerable for the mischief is answerable for its redress. Therefore it is that breeding the disease Christianity breeds the cure. Extending the vast lines of poverty Christianity it was that first laid down the principle of a relief for poverty. Constantine the first Christian potentate laid the first stone of the mighty overshadowing institution since reared in Christian lands to poverty disease orphanage and mutilation. Christian instincts moving and speaking through that Cæsar first carried out that great idea of Christianity. Six years was Christianity in building Constantinople and in the seventh she rested from her labours saying ""Henceforward let the poor man have a haven of rest for ever; a rest from his work for one day in seven; a rest from his anxieties by a legal and a fixed relief."" Being legal it could not be open to disturbances of caprice in the giver; being fixed it was not open to disturbances of miscalculation in the receiver. Now first when first Christianity was installed as a public organ of government (and first owned a distinct political responsibility ) did it become the duty of a religion which assumed as it were the _official_ tutelage of poverty to proclaim and consecrate that function by some great memorial precedent. And accordingly in testimony of that obligation the first Christian Cæsar on behalf of Christianity founded the first system of relief for pauperism. It is true that largesses from the public treasury gratuitous coin or corn sold at diminished rates not to mention the _sportulæ_ or stated doles of private Roman nobles had been distributed amongst the indigent citizens of Western Rome for centuries before Constantine; but all these had been the selfish bounties of factious ambition or intrigue. To Christianity was reserved the inaugural act of public charity in the spirit of charity. We must remember that no charitable or beneficent institutions of any kind grounded on disinterested kindness existed amongst the Pagan Romans and still less amongst the Pagan Greeks. Mr Coleridge in one of his lay sermons advanced the novel doctrine--that in the Scriptures is contained all genuine and profound statesmanship. Of course he must be understood to mean--in its capital principles: for as to subordinate and executive rules for applying such principles these doubtless are in part suggested by the local circumstances in each separate case. Now amongst the political theories of the Bible is this--that pauperism is not an accident in the constitution of states but an indefeasible necessity; or in the scriptural words that ""the poor shall never cease out of the land."" This theory or great canon of social philosophy during many centuries drew no especial attention from philosophers. It passed for a truism bearing no particular emphasis or meaning beyond some general purpose of sanction to the impulses of charity. But there is good reason to believe that it slumbered and was meant to slumber until Christianity arising and moving forwards should call it into a new life as a principle suited to a new order of things. Accordingly we have seen of late that this scriptural dictum--""The poor shall never cease out of the land""--has terminated its career as a truism (that is as a truth either obvious on one hand or inert on the other ) and has wakened into a polemic or controversial life. People arose who took upon them utterly to deny this scriptural doctrine. Peremptorily they challenged the assertion that poverty must always exist. The Bible said that it was an affection of human society which could not be exterminated: the economists of 1800 said that it was a foul disease which must and should be exterminated. The scriptural philosophy said that pauperism was inalienable from man's social condition in the same way that decay was inalienable from his flesh. ""I shall soon see _that_ "" said the economist of 1800 ""for as sure as my name is M---- I will have this poverty put down by law within one generation if there's law to be had in the courts at Westminster."" The Scriptures had left word--that if any man should come to the national banquet declaring himself unable to pay his contribution that man should be accounted the guest of Christianity and should be privileged to sit at the table in thankful remembrance of what Christianity had done for man. But Mr M---- left word with all the servants that if any man should present himself under those circumstances he was to be told ""The table is full""--(_his_ words not ours;) ""go away good man."" Go away! Mr M----? Where was he to go to? Whither? In what direction?--""Why if you come to _that_ "" said the man of 1800 ""to any ditch that he prefers: surely there's good choice of ditches for the most fastidious taste."" During twenty years viz. from 1800 to 1820 this new philosophy which substituted a ditch for a dinner and a paving-stone for a loaf prevailed and prospered. At one time it seemed likely enough to prove a snare to our own aristocracy--the noblest of all ages. But that peril was averted and the further history of the case was this: By the year 1820 much discussion having passed to and fro serious doubts had arisen in many quarters: scepticism had begun to arm itself against the sceptic: the economist of 1800 was no longer quite sure of his ground. He was now suspected of being fallible; and what seemed of worse augury he was beginning himself to suspect as much. To one capital blunder he was obliged publicly to plead guilt
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. What it was we shall have occasion to mention immediately. Meantime it was justly thought that in a dispute loaded with such prodigious practical consequences good sense and prudence demanded a more extended enquiry than had yet been instituted. Whether poverty would ever cease from the land might be doubted by those who balanced their faith in Scripture against their faith in the man of 1800. But this at least could not be doubted--that as yet poverty _had_ not ceased nor indeed had made any sensible preparations for ceasing from any land in Europe. It was a clear case therefore that howsoever Europe might please to dream upon the matter when pauperism should have reached that glorious euthanasy predicted by the alchemist of old and the economist of 1800 for the present she must deal actively with her own pauperism on some avowed plan and principle good or evil--gentle or harsh. Accordingly in the train of years between 1820 and 1830 enquiries were made of every separate state in Europe what _were_ those plans and principles. For it was justly said--""As one step towards judging rightly of our own system now that it has been so clamorously challenged for a bad system let us learn what it is that other nations think upon the subject but above all what it is that they _do_."" The answers to our many enquiries varied considerably; and some amongst the most enlightened nations appeared to have adopted the good old plan of _laissez faire_ giving nothing from any public fund to the pauper but authorizing him to levy contributions on that gracious allegoric lady Private Charity wherever he could meet her taking the air with her babes. This reference appeared to be the main one in reply to any application of the pauper; and for all the rest they referred him generally to the ""ditch "" or to his own unlimited choice of ditches according to the approved method of public benevolence published in 4to and in 8vo by the man of 1800. But there were other and humbler states in Europe whose very pettiness had brought more fully within their vision the whole machinery and watchwork of pauperism as it acted and re-acted on the industrious poverty of the land and on other interests by means of the system adopted in relieving it. From these states came many interesting reports all tending to some good purpose. But at last and before the year 1830 amongst other results of more or less value three capital points were established not more decisive for the justification of the English system in administering national relief to paupers and of all systems that reverenced the authority of Scripture than they were for the overthrow of Mr M---- the man of 1800. These three points are worthy of being used as buoys in mapping out the true channels or indicating the breakers on this difficult line of navigation; and we now rehearse them. They may seem plain almost to obviousness; but it is enough that they involve all the disputed questions of the case. _First_ That in spite of the assurances from economists no progress whatever had been made by England or by any state which lent any sanction to the hope of ever eradicating poverty from society. _Secondly_ That in absolute contradiction of the whole hypothesis relied on by M---- and his brethren in its most fundamental doctrine a legal provision for poverty did _not_ act as a bounty on marriage. The experience of England where the trial had been made on the largest scale was decisive on this point; and the opposite experience of Ireland under the opposite circumstances was equally decisive. And this result had made itself so clear by 1820 that even M---- (as we have already noticed by anticipation) was compelled to publish a recantation as to this particular error which in effect was a recantation of his entire theory. _Thirdly_ That according to the concurring experience of all the most enlightened states of Christendom the public suffered least (not merely in molestation but in money ) pauperism benefited most and the growth of pauperism was retarded most precisely as the provision for the poor had been legalized as to its obligation and fixed as to its amount. Left to individual discretion the burden was found to press most unequally; and on the other hand the evil itself of pauperism whilst much less effectually relieved nevertheless through the irregular action of this relief was much more powerfully stimulated. Such is the abstract of our latest public warfare on this great question through a period of nearly fifty years. And the issue is this--starting from the contemptuous defiance of the scriptural doctrine upon the necessity of making provision for poverty as an indispensable element in civil communities the economy of the age has lowered its tone by graduated descents in each one successively of the four last _decennia_. The philosophy of the day as to this point at least is at length in coincidence with Scripture. And thus the very extensive researches of this nineteenth century as to pauperism have re-acted with the effect of a full justification upon Constantine's attempt to connect the foundation of his empire with that new theory of Christianity upon the imperishableness of poverty and upon the duties corresponding to it. Meantime Mr Finlay denies that Christianity had been raised by Constantine into the religion of the state; and others have denied that in the extensive money privileges conceded to Constantinople he contemplated any but political principles. As to the first point we apprehend that Constantine will be found not so much to have shrunk back in fear from installing Christianity in the seat of supremacy as to have diverged in policy from our modern _methods_ of such an installation. Our belief is that according to _his_ notion of a state religion he supposed himself to have conferred that distinction upon Christianity. With respect to the endowments and privileges of Constantinople they were various; some lay in positive donations others in immunities and exemptions; some again were designed to attract strangers others to attract nobles from old Rome. But with fuller opportunities for pursuing that discussion we think it would be easy to show that in more than one of his institutions and his decrees he had contemplated the special advantage of the poor as such; and that next after the august distinction of having founded the first Christian throne he had meant to challenge and fix the gaze of future ages upon this glorious pretension--that he first had executed the scriptural injunction to make a provision for the poor as an order of society that by laws immutable should ""never cease out of the land."" _Secondly_ Let us advert to the value and functions of Constantinople as the tutelary genius of western or dawning Christianity. The history of Constantinople or more generally of the Eastern Roman empire wears a peculiar interest to the children of Christendom; and for two separate reasons--_first_ as being the narrow isthmus or bridge which connects the two continents of ancient and modern history and _that_ is a philosophic interest; but _secondly_ which in the very highest degree is a practical interest as the record of our earthly salvation from Mahometanism. On two horns was Europe assaulted by the Moslems; first last and through the largest tract of time on the horn of Constantinople; there the contest raged for more than eight hundred years and by the time that the mighty bulwark fell (1453 ) Vienna and other cities upon or near the Danube had found leisure for growing up; so that if one range of Alps had slowly been surmounted another had now slowly reared and embattled itself against the westward progress of the Crescent. On the western horn _in_ France but _by_ Germans once for all Charles Martel had arrested the progress of the fanatical Moslem almost in a single battle; certainly a single generation saw the whole danger dispersed inasmuch as within that space the Saracens were effectually forced back into their original Spanish lair. This demonstrates pretty forcibly the difference of the Mahometan resources as applied to the western and the eastern struggle. To throw the whole weight of that difference a difference in the result as between eight centuries and thirty years upon the mere difference of energy in German and Byzantine forces as though the first did by a rapturous fervour in a few revolutions of summer what the other had protracted through nearly a millennium is a representation which defeats itself by its own extravagance. To prove too much is more dangerous than to prove too little. The fact is that vast armies and mighty nations were continually disposable for the war upon the city of Constantine; nations had time to arise in juvenile vigour to grow old and superannuated to melt away and totally to disappear in that long struggle on the Hellespont and Propontis. It was a struggle which might often intermit and slumber; armistices there might be truces or unproclaimed suspensions of war out of mutual exhaustion but peace there could _not_ be because any resting from the duty of hatred towards those who reciprocally seemed to lay the foundations of their creed in a dishonouring of God was impossible to aspiring human nature. Malice and mutual hatred we repeat became a duty in those circumstances. Why had they _begun_ to fight? Personal feuds there had been none between the parties. For the early caliphs did not conquer Syria and other vast provinces of the Roman empire because they had a quarrel with the Cæsars who represented Christendom; but on the contrary they had a quarrel with the Cæsars because they had conquered Syria or at the most the conquest and the feud (if not always lying in that exact succession as cause and effect) were joint effects from a common cause which cause was imperishable as death or the ocean and as deep as are the fountains of animal life. Could the ocean be altered by a sea fight? or the atmosphere be tainted for ever by an earthquake? As little could any single reign or its events affect the feud of the Moslem and the Christian; a feud which could not cease unless God could change or unless man (becoming careless of spiritual things) should sink to the level of a brute. These are considerations of great importance in weighing the value of the Eastern Empire. If the cause and interest of Islamism as against Christianity were undying--then we may be assured that the Moorish infidels of Spain did not reiterate their trans-Pyrenean expeditions after one generation--simply because they _could_ not. But we know that on the south-eastern horn of Europe they _could_ upon the plain argument that for many centuries they _did_. Over and above this we are of opinion that the Saracens were unequal to the sort of hardships bred by cold climates; and there lay another repulsion for Saracens from France &c. and not merely the Carlovingian sword. We children of Christendom show our innate superiority to the children of the Orient upon this scale or tariff of acclimatizing powers. We travel as wheat travels through all reasonable ranges of temperature; they like rice can migrate only to warm latitudes. They cannot support our cold but we _can_ support the countervailing hardships of their heat. This cause alone would have weatherbound the Mussulmans for ever within the Pyrenean cloisters. Mussulmans in cold latitudes look as blue and as absurd as sailors on horseback. Apart from which cause we see that the fine old Visigothic races in Spain found them full employment up to the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella which reign first created a kingdom of Spain; in that reign the whole fabric of their power thawed away and was confounded with forgotten things. Columbus according to a local tradition was personally present at some of the latter campaigns in Grenada: he saw the last of them. So that the discovery of America may be used as a convertible date with that of extinction for the Saracen power in western Europe. True that the overthrow of Constantinople had forerun this event by nearly half a century. But then we insist upon the different proportions of the struggle. Whilst in Spain a province had fought against a province all Asia militant had fought against the eastern Roman empire. Amongst the many races whom dimly we descry in those shadowy hosts tilting for ages in the vast plains of Angora are seen latterly pressing on to the van two mighty powers the children of Persia and the Ottoman family of the Turks. Upon these nations both now rapidly decaying the faith of Mahomet has ever leaned as upon her eldest sons; and these powers the Byzantine Cæsars had to face in every phasis of their energy as it revolved from perfect barbarism through semi-barbarism to that crude form of civilization which Mahometans can support. And through all these transmigrations of their power we must remember that they were under a martial training and discipline never suffered to become effeminate. One set of warriors after another _did_ it is true become effeminate in Persia: but upon that advantage opening always another set stepped in from Torkistan or from the Imaus. The nation the individuals melted away; the Moslem armies were immortal. Here therefore it is and standing at this point of our review that we complain of Mr Finlay's too facile compliance with historians far beneath himself. He has a fine understanding: oftentimes his commentaries on the past are ebullient with subtlety; and his fault strikes us as lying even in the excess of his sagacity applying itself too often to a basis of facts quite insufficient for supporting the superincumbent weight of his speculations. But in this instance he surrenders himself too readily to the ordinary current of history. How would _he_ like it if he happened to be a Turk himself finding his nation thus implicitly undervalued? For clearly in undervaluing the Byzantine resistance he _does_ undervalue the Mahometan assault. Advantages of local situation cannot _eternally_ make good the deficiencies of man. If the Byzantines (being as weak as historians would represent them) yet for ages resisted the whole impetus of Mahometan Asia then it follows either that the Crescent was correspondingly weak or that not being weak she must have found the Cross pretty strong. The _facit_ of history does not here correspond with the numerical items. Nothing has ever surprised us more we will frankly own than this coincidence of authors in treating the Byzantine empire as feeble and crazy. On the contrary to us it is clear that some secret and preternatural strength it must have had lurking where the eye of man did not in those days penetrate or by what miracle did it undertake our universal Christian cause fight for us all keep the waters open from freezing us up and through nine centuries prevent the ice of Mahometanism from closing over our heads for ever? Yet does Mr Finlay (p. 424) describe this empire as labouring in A.D. 623 equally with Persia under ""internal weakness "" and as ""equally incapable of offering any popular or national resistance to an active or enterprising enemy."" In this Mr Finlay does but agree with other able writers; but he and they should have recollected that hardly had that very year 623 departed even yet the knell of its last hour was sounding upon the winds when this effeminate empire had occasion to show that she could clothe herself with consuming terrors as a belligerent both defensive and aggressive. In the absence of her great emperor and of the main imperial forces the golden capital herself by her own resources routed and persecuted into wrecks a Persian army that had come down upon her by stealth and a fraudulent circuit. Even at that same period she advanced into Persia more than a thousand miles from her own metropolis in Europe under the blazing ensigns of the cross kicked the crown of Persia to and fro like a tennis-ball upset the throne of Artaxerxes countersigned haughtily the elevation of a new _Basileus_ more friendly to herself and then recrossed the Tigris homewards after having torn forcibly out of the heart and palpitating entrails of Persia whatever trophies that idolatrous empire had formerly wrested from herself. These were not the acts of an effeminate kingdom. In the language of Wordsworth we may say-- ""All power was giv'n her in the dreadful trance; Infidel kings she wither'd like a flame."" Indeed no image that we remember can do justice to the first of these acts except that Spanish legend of the Cid which assures us that long after the death of the mighty cavalier when the children of those Moors who had fled from his face whilst living were insulting the marble statue above his grave suddenly the statue raised its right arm stretched out its marble lance and drifted the heathen dogs like snow. The mere sanctity of the Christian champion's sepulchre was its own protection; and so we must suppose that when the Persian hosts came by surprise upon Constantinople--her natural protector being absent by three months' march--simply the golden statues of the mighty Cæsars half rising on their thrones must have caused that sudden panic which dissipated the danger. Hardly fifty years later Mr Finlay well knows that Constantinople again stood an assault--not from a Persian hourrah or tempestuous surprise but from a vast expedition armaments by land and sea fitted out elaborately in the early noontide of Mahometan vigour--and that assault also in the presence of the caliph and the crescent was gloriously discomfited. Now if in the moment of triumph some voice in the innumerable crowd had cried out ""How long shall this great Christian breakwater against which are shattered into surge and foam all the mountainous billows of idolaters and misbelievers stand up on behalf of infant Christendom?"" and if from the clouds some trumpet of prophecy had replied ""Even yet for eight hundred years!"" could any man have persuaded himself that such a fortress against such antagonists--such a monument against a millennium of fury--was to be classed amongst the weak things of this earth? This oriental Rome it is true equally with Persia was liable to sudden inroads and incursions. But the difference was this--Persia was strongly protected in all ages by the wilderness on her main western frontier; if this were passed and a hand-to-hand conflict succeeded where light cavalry or fugitive archers could be of little value the essential weakness of the Persian empire then betrayed itself. Her sovereign was assassinated and peace was obtained from the condescension of the invader. But the enemies of Constantinople Goths Avars Bulgarians or even Persians were strong only by their weakness. Being contemptible they were neglected; being chased they made no stand; and _thus_ only they escaped. They entered like thieves by means of darkness and escaped like sheep by means of dispersion. But if caught they were annihilated. No; we resume our thesis; we close this head by reiterating our correction of history; we re-affirm our position--that in Eastern Rome lay the salvation of Western and Central Europe; in Constantinople and the Propontis lay the _sine-quâ-non_ condition of any future Christendom. Emperor and people _must_ have done their duty; the result the vast extent of generations surmounted furnish the triumphant argument. Finally indeed they fell king and people shepherd and flock; but by that time their mission was fulfilled. And doubtless as the noble Palæologus lay on heaps of carnage with his noble people as life was ebbing away a voice from heaven sounded in his ears the great words of the Hebrew prophet ""Behold! YOUR WORK IS DONE; your warfare is accomplished."" III. Such then being the unmerited disparagement of the Byzantine government and so great the ingratitude of later Christendom to that sheltering power under which themselves enjoyed the leisure of a thousand years for knitting and expanding into strong nations; on the other hand what is to be thought of the Saracen revolutionists? Every where it has passed for a lawful postulate that the Saracen conquests prevailed half by the feebleness of the Roman government at Constantinople and half by the preternatural energy infused into the Arabs by their false prophet and legislator. In either of its faces this theory is falsified by a steady review of facts. With regard to the Saracens Mr Finlay thinks as we do and argues that they prevailed through the _local_ or sometimes the _casual_ weakness of their immediate enemies and rarely through any strength of their own. We must remember one fatal weakness of the Imperial administration in those days not due to men or to principles but entirely to nature and the slow growth of scientific improvements--viz. the difficulties of locomotion. As respected Syria Egypt Cyrenaica and so on to the most western provinces of Africa the Saracens had advantages for moving rapidly which the Cæsar had not. But is not a water movement speedier than a land movement which for an army never has much exceeded fourteen miles a-day? Certainly it is; but in this case there were two desperate defects in the Imperial control over that water service. To use a fleet you must have a fleet; but their whole naval interest had been starved by the intolerable costs of the Persian war. Immense had been the expenses of Heraclius and annually decaying had been his Asiatic revenues. Secondly the original position of the Arabs had been better than that of the emperor in every stage of the warfare which so suddenly arose. In Arabia they stood nearest to Syria in Syria nearest to Egypt in Egypt nearest to Cyrenaica. What reason had there been for expecting a martial legislator at that moment in Arabia who should fuse and sternly combine her distracted tribes? What blame therefore to Heraclius that Syria--the first object of assault being also by much the weakest part of the empire and immediately after the close of a desolating war--should in four campaigns be found indefensible? We must remember the unexampled abruptness of the Arabian revolution. The year 622 by its very name of Hegira does not record a triumph but a humiliation. In that year therefore and at the very moment when Heraclius was entering upon his long Persian struggle Mahomet was yet prostrate and his destiny was doubtful. Eleven years after viz. in 633 the prophet was dead and gone; but his first successor was already in Syria as a conqueror. Such had been the velocity of events. The Persian war had then been finished by three years but the exhaustion of the empire had perhaps at that moment reached its maximum. We are satisfied that ten years' repose from this extreme state of collapse would have shown us another result. Even as it was and caught at this enormous disadvantage Heraclius taught the robbers to tremble and would have exterminated them if not baffled by two irremediable calamities neither of them due to any act or neglect of his own. The first lay in the treason of his lieutenants. The governors of Damascus of Aleppo of Emesa of Bostra of Kinnisrin all proved traitors. The root of this evil lay probably in the disorders following the Persian invasion which had made it the perilous interest of the emperor to appoint great officers from amongst those who had a local influence. Such persons it might have been ruinous too suddenly to set aside as in the event it proved ruinous to employ them. A dilemma of this kind offering but a choice of evils belonged to the nature of any Persian war; and that particular war was bequeathed to Heraclius by the mismanagement of his predecessors. But the second calamity was even more fatal; it lay in the composition of the Syrian population and its original want of vital cohesion. For no purpose could this population be united: they formed a rope of sand. There was the distraction of religion (Jacobites Nestorians &c.;) there was the distraction of races--slaves and masters conquered and conquerors modern intruders mixed but not blended with aboriginal mountaineers. Property became the one principle of choice between the two governments. Where was protection to be had for _that_? Barbarous as were the Arabs they saw their present advantage. Often it would happen from the position of the armies that they could whilst the emperor could not guarantee the instant security of land or of personal treasures; the Arabs could also promise sometimes a total immunity from taxes very often a diminished scale of taxation always a remission of arrears; none of which demands could be listened to by the emperor partly on account of the public necessities partly from jealousy of establishing operative precedents. For religion again protection was more easily obtained in that day from the Arab who made war on Christianity than from the Byzantine emperor who was its champion. What were the different sects and subdivisions of Christianity to the barbarian? Monophysite Monothelite Eutychian or Jacobite all were to him as the scholastic disputes of noble and intellectual Europe to the camps of gypsies. The Arab felt himself to be the depository of one sublime truth the unity of God. His mission therefore was principally against idolaters. Yet even to _them_ his policy was to sell toleration for tribute. Clearly as Mr Finlay hints this was merely a provisional moderation meant to be laid aside when sufficient power was obtained; and it _was_ laid aside in after ages by many a wretch like Timour or Nadir Shah. Religion therefore and property once secured what more had the Syrians to seek? And if to these advantages for the Saracens we add the fact that a considerable Arab population was dispersed through Syria who became so many emissaries spies and decoys for their countrymen it does great honour to the emperor that through so many campaigns he should at all have maintained his ground which at last he resigned only under the despondency caused by almost universal treachery. The Saracens therefore had no great merit even in their earliest exploits; and the _impetus_ of their movement forwards that principle of proselytism which carried them so strongly ""ahead"" through a few generations was very soon brought to a stop. Mr Finlay in our mind does right to class these barbarians as ""socially and politically little better than the Gothic Hunnish and Avar monarchies."" But on consideration the Gothic monarchy embosomed the germs of a noble civilization; whereas the Saracens have never propagated great principles of any kind nor attained even a momentary grandeur in their institutions except where coalescing with a higher or more ancient civilization. Meantime ascending from the earliest Mahometans to their prophet what are we to think of _him_? Was Mahomet a great man? We think not. The case was thus: the Arabian tribes had long stood ready like dogs held in a leash for a start after distant game. It was not Mahomet who gave them that impulse. But next what was it that had hindered the Arab tribes from obeying the impulse? Simply this that they were always in feud with each other; so that their expeditions beginning in harmony were sure to break up in anger on the road. What they needed was some one grand compressing and unifying principle such as the Roman found in the destinies of his city. True; but this you say they found in the sublime principle that God was one and had appointed them to be the scourges of all who denied it. Their mission was to cleanse the earth from Polytheism; and as ambassadors from God to tell the nations--""Ye shall have no other gods but me."" That was grand; and _that_ surely they had from Mahomet? Perhaps so; but where did he get it? He stole it from the Jewish Scriptures and from the Scriptures no less than from the traditions of the Christians. Assuredly then the first projecting impetus was not impressed upon Islamism by Mahomet. This lay in a revealed truth; and by Mahomet it was furtively translated to his own use from those oracles which held it in keeping. But possibly if not the _principle_ of motion yet at least the steady conservation of this motion was secured to Islamism by Mahomet. Granting (you will say) that the launch of this religion might be due to an alien inspiration yet still the steady movement onwards of this religion through some centuries might be due exclusively to the code of laws bequeathed by Mahomet in the Koran. And this has been the opinion of many European scholars. They fancy that Mahomet however worldly and sensual as the founder of a pretended revelation was wise in the wisdom of this world; and that if ridiculous as a prophet he was worthy of veneration as a statesman. He legislated well and presciently they imagine for the interests of a remote posterity. Now upon that question let us hear Mr Finlay. He when commenting upon the steady resistance offered to the Saracens by the African Christians of the seventh and eighth centuries--a resistance which terminated disastrously for both sides--the poor Christians being exterminated and the Moslem invaders being robbed of an indigenous working population naturally enquires what it was that led to so tragical a result? The Christian natives of those provinces were in a political condition little favourable to belligerent efforts; and there cannot be much doubt that with any wisdom or any forbearance on the part of the intruders both parties might soon have settled down into a pacific compromise of their feuds. Instead of this the cimeter was invoked and worshipped as the sole possible arbitrator; and truce there was none until the silence of desolation brooded over those once fertile fields. How savage was the fanaticism and how blind the worldly wisdom which could have co-operated to such a result! The cause must have lain in the unaccommodating nature of the Mahometan institutions in the bigotry of the Mahometan leaders and in the defect of expansive views on the part of their legislator. He had not provided even for other climates than that of his own sweltering sty in the Hedjas or for manners more polished or for institutions more philosophic than those of his own sun-baked Ishmaelites. ""The construction of the political government of the Saracen empire""--says Mr Finlay (p. 462-3)--""was imperfect and shows that Mahomet had neither contemplated extensive foreign conquests nor devoted the energies of his powerful mind to the consideration of the questions of administration which would arise out of the difficult task of ruling a numerous and wealthy population possessed of property but deprived of civil rights."" He then shows how the whole power of the state settled into the hands of a chief priest--systematically irresponsible. When therefore that momentary state of responsibility had passed away which was created (like the state of martial law) ""by national feelings military companionship and exalted enthusiasm "" the administration of the caliphs became ""far more oppressive than that of the Roman empire."" It is in fact an insult to the majestic Romans if we should place them seriously in the balance with savages like the Saracens. The Romans were essentially the leaders of civilization according to the possibilities then existing; for their earliest usages and social forms involved a high civilization whilst promising a higher: whereas all Moslem nations have described a petty arch of national civility--soon reaching its apex and rapidly barbarizing backwards. This fatal gravitation towards decay and decomposition in Mahometan institutions which at this day exhibits to the gaze of mankind one uniform spectacle of Mahometan ruins all the great Moslem nations being already in a _Strulbrug_ state and held erect only by the colossal support of Christian powers could not as a _reversionary_ evil have been healed by the Arabian prophet. His own religious principles would have prevented _that_ for they offer a permanent bounty on sensuality; so that every man who serves a Mahometan state faithfully and brilliantly at twenty-five is incapacitated at thirty-five for any further service by the very nature of the rewards which he receives from the state. Within a very few years every public servant is usually emasculated by that unlimited voluptuousness which equally the Moslem princes and the common Prophet of all Moslems countenance as the proper object of human pursuit. Here is the mortal ulcer of Islamism which can never cleanse itself from death and the odour of death. A political ulcer would or might have found restoration for itself; but this ulcer is higher and deeper:--it lies in the religion which is incapable of
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reform: it is an ulcer reaching as high as the paradise which Islamism promises and deep as the hell which it creates. We repeat that Mahomet could not effectually have neutralized a poison which he himself had introduced into the circulation and life-blood of his Moslem economy. The false prophet was forced to reap as he had sown. But an evil which is certain may be retarded; and ravages which tend finally to confusion may be limited for many generations. Now in the case of the African provincials which we have noticed we see an original incapacity of Islamism even in its palmy condition for amalgamating with any _superior_ culture. And the specific action of Mahometanism in the African case as contrasted with the Roman economy which it supplanted is thus exhibited by Mr Finlay in a most instructive passage where every negation on the Mahometan side is made to suggest the countervailing usage positively on the side of the Romans. O children of Romulus! how noble do you appear when thus fiercely contrasted with the wild boars who desolated your vineyards! ""No local magistrates elected by the people and no parish priests connected by their feelings and interests both with their superiors and inferiors bound society together by common ties; and no system of legal administration independent of the military and financial authorities preserved the property of the people from the rapacity of the government."" Such we are to understand was _not_ the Mahometan system: such _had_ been the system of Rome. ""Socially and politically "" proceeds the passage ""the Saracen empire was little better than the Gothic Hunnish and Avar monarchies; and that it proved more durable with almost equal oppression is to be attributed to the powerful enthusiasm of Mahomet's religion which tempered for some time its avarice and tyranny."" The same sentiment is repeated still more emphatically at p. 468--""The political policy of the Saracens was of itself utterly barbarous; and it only caught a passing gleam of justice from the religious feeling of their prophet's doctrines."" Thus far therefore it appears that Mahometanism is not much indebted to its too famous founder: it owes to him a principle viz. the unity of God which merely through a capital blunder it fancies peculiar to itself. Nothing but the grossest ignorance in Mahomet nothing but the grossest non-acquaintance with Greek authors on the part of the Arabs could have created or sustained the delusion current amongst that illiterate people--that it was themselves only who rejected Polytheism. Had but one amongst the personal enemies of Mahomet been acquainted with Greek _there_ was an end of the new religion in the first moon of its existence. Once open the eyes of Arabs to the fact that Christians had anticipated them in this great truth of the divine unity and Mahometanism could only have ranked as a subdivision of Christianity. Mahomet would have ranked only as a Christian heresiarch or schismatic; such as Nestorius or Marcian at one time such as Arius or Pelagius at another. In his character of _theologian_ therefore Mahomet was simply the most memorable of blunderers supported in his blunders by the most unlettered of nations. In his other character of _legislator_ we have seen that already the earliest stages of Mahometan experience exposed decisively his ruinous imbecility. Where a rude tribe offered no resistance to his system for the simple reason that their barbarism suggested no motive for resistance it could be no honour to prevail. And where on the other hand a higher civilization had furnished strong points of repulsion to his system it appears plainly that this pretended apostle of social improvement had devised or hinted no readier mode of conciliation than by putting to the sword all dissentients. He starts as a theological reformer with a fancied defiance to the world which was no defiance at all being exactly what Christians had believed for six centuries and Jews for six-and-twenty. He starts as a political reformer with a fancied conciliation to the world which was no conciliation at all but was sure to provoke imperishable hostility wheresoever it had any effect at all. We have thus reviewed some of the more splendid aspects connected with Mr Finlay's theme; but that theme in its entire compass is worthy of a far more extended investigation than our own limits will allow or than the historical curiosity of the world (misdirected here as in so many other cases) has hitherto demanded. The Greek race suffering a long occultation under the blaze of the Roman empire into which for a time it had been absorbed but again emerging from this blaze and reassuming a distinct Greek agency and influence offers a subject great by its own inherent attractions and separately interesting by the unaccountable neglect which it has suffered. To have overlooked this subject is one amongst the capital oversights of Gibbon. To have rescued it from utter oblivion and to have traced an outline for its better illumination is the peculiar merit of Mr Finlay. His greatest fault is to have been careless or slovenly in the niceties of classical and philological precision. His greatest praise and a very great one indeed is--to have thrown the light of an _original_ philosophic sagacity upon a neglected province of history indispensable to the _arrondissement_ of Pagan archæology. FOOTNOTES: {A} _Greece under the Romans._ BY GEORGE FINLAY K.R.G. William Blackwood & Sons. Edinburgh and London. 1844. {B} ""_With scorn._""--This has arisen from two causes: one is the habit of regarding the whole Roman empire as in its ""decline"" from so early a period as that of Commodus; agreeably to which conceit it would naturally follow that during its latter stages the Eastern empire must have been absolutely in its dotage. If already declining in the second century then from the tenth to the fifteenth it must have been paralytic and bed-ridden. The other cause may be found in the accidental but reasonable hostility of the Byzantine court to the first Crusaders as also in the disadvantageous comparison with respect to manly virtues between the simplicity of these western children and the refined dissimulation of the Byzantines. * * * * * _Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes Paul's Work._ "
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Paolucci and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Library of Early Journals.) BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. No. CCCXLIX. NOVEMBER 1844. VOL. LVI. CONTENTS THE O'CONNELL CASE 539 MY COLLEGE FRIENDS. NO. 1. JOHN BROWN 569 THE TOMBLESS MAN. BY DELTA 583 FRENCH SOCIALISTS 588 MARSTON; OR THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN. PART XIV. 601 SONNET TO CLARKSON 619 LETTER FROM THE RIGHT HON. CHARLES HOPE 620 POEMS BY ELIZABETH B. BARRETT 621 UP STREAM; OR STEAM-BOAT REMINISCENCES 640 WESTMINSTER HALL AND THE WORKS OF ART 652 LINES ON THE LANDING OF HIS MAJESTY KING LOUIS PHILIPPE 654 LAMARTINE 657 * * * * * EDINBURGH: WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 45 GEORGE STREET; AND 22 PALL-MALL LONDON. _To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed._ SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM. * * * * * PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND HUGHES EDINBURGH. BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. No. CCCXLIX NOVEMBER 1844. VOL. LVI. THE O'CONNELL CASE--WAS THE JUDGMENT RIGHTLY REVERSED? The astounding issue of the Irish State trials will constitute a conspicuous and mortifying event in the history of the times. A gigantic conspiracy for the dismemberment of the empire was boldly encountered at its highest point of development by the energy of the common law of the land as administered in the ordinary courts of justice. That law itself certainly intricate and involved had to deal with facts of almost unprecedented complication and difficulty; but after a long and desperate struggle the law triumphed over every obstacle that could be opposed to it by tortuous and pertinacious ingenuity: the case was correctly charged before the jury; most clearly established in evidence so as to satisfy not them only but all mankind; the jury returned a just verdict of guilty against all the parties charged--the court passed judgment in conformity with that verdict awarding to the offenders a serious but temperate measure of punishment--imprisonment fine and security for good behaviour. The sentence was instantly carried into effect-- "And Justice said--I'm satisfied." But behold! a last desperate throw of the dice from the prison-house--a speculative and desponding appeal to the proverbial uncertainty of the law; and to the unspeakable amazement and disgust of the country an alleged technical slip in the conduct of the proceedings not touching or even approaching the established MERITS of the case either in fact or law has been held by the highest tribunal in the land sufficient to nullify the whole which had been done and to restore to liberty the dangerous delinquents reveling in misrepresentation and falsehood concerning the grounds of their escape on punishment--in their delirium of delight and triumph even threatening an IMPEACHMENT against the officers of the crown against even the judges of the land for the part they have borne in these reversed proceedings! Making all due allowance for these extravagant fooleries it is obvious that the event which has given rise to them is one calculated to excite profound concern and very great _curiosity_. The most sober and thoughtful observers are conscious of feeling lively indignation at the spectacle of justice defeated by a technical objection; and public attention has been attracted to certain topics of the very highest importance and delicacy arising out of this grievous miscarriage. They are all involved in the discussion of the question placed at the head of this article; and to that discussion we propose to address ourselves in spirit of calmness freedom and candour. We have paid close attention to this remarkable and harassing case from first to last and had sufficient opportunities of acquainting ourselves with its exact legal position. We deem it of great importance to enable our readers whether lay or professional to form with moderate attention a sound judgment for themselves upon questions which may possibly become the subject of early parliamentary discussion--Whether the recent decision of the House of Lords a very bold one unquestionably was nevertheless a correct one and consequently entitling the tribunal by whom it was pronounced to the continued respect and confidence of the country? This is in truth a grave question of universal concern of permanent interest and requiring a fearless an honest and a careful examination. The reversal of the judgment against Mr O'Connell and his companions was received throughout the kingdom with perfect amazement. No one was prepared for it. Up to the very last moment even till Lord Denman had in his judgment decisively indicated the conclusion at which he had arrived on the main point in the case we have the best reason for believing that there was not a single person in the House of Lords--with the possible exception of Lords Denman Cottenham and Campbell--who expected a reversal of the judgment. So much has the public press been taken by surprise that with the exception of a fierce controversy between the _Standard_ and _Morning Herald_ and the _Morning Chronicle_ which was conducted with great acuteness and learning we are not aware of any explanation since offered by the leading organs of public opinion--the TIMES has preserved a total silence--as to the legal sufficiency or insufficiency of the grounds on which this memorable judgment of reversal proceeded. We shall endeavour to do so; for while it is on this side of the Channel perfectly notorious that the traversers have been proved guilty of the enormous misdemeanours with which they were charged--guilty in law and guilty in fact--on the other side of the Channel we find since commencing this article that the chief delinquent Daniel O'Connell has the amazing audacity repeatedly and deliberately to declare in public that he has been "ACQUITTED ON THE MERITS!" Without pausing to find words which would fitly characterize such conduct we shall content ourselves with the following judicial declaration made by Lord Brougham in giving judgment in the House of Lords a declaration heard and necessarily acquiesced in by every member of the court:-- "The whole of the learned judges with one voice declare that on the merits at any rate they have no doubt at all--that on the great merits and substance of the case they are unanimously agreed. That a great offence has been committed and an offence known to and recognisable by the law; that a grave offence and crime has been perpetrated and an offence and crime punishable by the admitted and undoubted law of the land none of the learned judges do deny; that counts in the indictment to bring the offenders the criminals to punishment are to be found against which no possible exception technical or substantial can be urged all are agreed; that these counts if they stood alone would be amply sufficient to support the sentence of the court below and that that sentence in one which the law warrants justifies nay I will even say commands they all admit. _On these the great features the leading points the substance the very essence of the case all the learned judges without exception entertain and express one clear unanimous and unhesitating opinion._" And yet all the proceedings have been annulled and the perpetrators of these great crimes and offences let loose again upon society! How comes this to pass? is asked with astonishment wherever it is heard of both in this country--and abroad. The enquiry we propose is due with reference to the conduct and reputation of three great judicial classes--the judges of the Irish Queen's Bench: the judges of England: and the judges of the court of appeal in the House of Lords. Familiar as the public has been for the last twelve months with the Irish State Trials the proceedings have been reported at such great length--in such different forms and various stages--that it is probable that very few except professional readers have at this moment a distinct idea of the real nature of the case as from time to time developed before the various tribunals through whose ordeal it has passed. We shall endeavour now to extricate the legal merits of the case from the meshes of complicated technicalities in which they have hitherto been involved and give an even _elementary_ exposition of such portions of the proceedings as must be distinctly understood before attempting to form a sound opinion upon the validity or invalidity of the grounds upon which alone the judgment has been reversed. The traversers were charged with having committed the offence of CONSPIRACY; which by the universally admitted common law of the land for considerably upwards of five hundred years exists "_where two or more than two agree to do an illegal act_--that is to effect something in itself unlawful or to effect by unlawful means something which in itself may be indifferent or even lawful."[1] Such an offence constitutes a _misdemeanour_; and for that misdemeanour and that misdemeanour alone the traversers were _indicted_. The government might as we explained in a former Number [2] have proceeded by an _ex-officio_ information at the suit of the crown filed by the Attorney-General; but in this instance waiving all the privileges appertaining to the kingly office they appeared before the constituted tribunal of the law as the redressers of the public wrongs invested however with no powers or authority beyond the simple rights enjoyed by the meanest of its subjects--and preferred an _indictment_: which is "a written accusation of one or more persons of a crime or misdemeanour preferred to and presented on oath by a grand jury."[3] Now in framing an indictment the following are the principles to be kept in view. They were laid down with beautiful precision and terseness by Lord Chief-Justice De Grey in the case of Rex. _v._ Horne--2 Cowper's Rep. 682. "The charge must contain such a description of the crime that the _defendant_ may know what crime it is which he is called upon to answer; that the _jury_ may appear to be warranted in their conclusion of 'guilty ' or 'not guilty ' upon the premises delivered to them; and that the _court_ may see such a definite crime that they may apply the punishment which the law prescribes." There may be and almost always are several sometimes many counts in a single indictment; and it is of peculiar importance in the present case to note the _reason_ why several counts are inserted when the indictment contains a charge of only one actual offence. First when there is any doubt as to which is the proper mode in point of _law_ of _describing_ the offence; secondly lest although the offence be legally described on the face of the indictment it should be one which the _evidence_ would not meet or support. The sole object is in short to avoid the risk of a frequent and final failure of justice on either of the above two grounds. Technically speaking each of these counts is regarded (though all of them really are only varied descriptions of one and the same offence) as containing the charge of a distinct offence.[4] For precisely the same reason several counts were till recently allowed in CIVIL proceedings although there was only one cause of action; but this license got to be so much abused (occasioning expensive prolixity ) that only one count is now permitted for one cause of action--a great discretion being allowed to judge however by statute of altering the count at the trial so as to meet the evidence then adduced. A similar alteration could not be allowed in criminal cases lest the grand jury should have found a bill for one offence and the defendant be put upon his trial for another. There appear however insuperable objections to restricting one offence to a single count in respect of the other object on peril of the perpetual defeat of justice. The risk is sufficiently serious in civil cases where the proceedings are drawn so long beforehand and with such ample time for consideration as to the proper mode of stating the case so as to be sufficient in point of law. But criminal proceedings cannot possibly be drawn with this deliberate preparation and accurate examination into the real facts of the case beforehand; and if the only count allowed--excessively difficult as it continually is to secure perfect accuracy--should prove defective in point of law the prisoner though guilty must either escape scot-free or become the subject of reiterated and abortive prosecution--a gross scandal to the administration of justice and grave injury to the interests of society. If these observations be read with attention and borne in mind they will afford great assistance in forming a clear and correct judgment on this remarkably interesting and _as regards the future administration of justice_ vitally important case. There is yet one other remark necessary to be made and to be borne in mind by the lay reader. Adverting to the definition already given of a "conspiracy"--that its essence is the MERE AGREEMENT to do an illegal act--it will be plain that where such an agreement has once been shown to have been entered into it is totally immaterial whether the illegal act or the illegal acts have been _actually done or not_ in pursuance of the conspiracy. Where these illegal acts however have been done and can be clearly proved it is usual--but not necessary--to _set them out_ in the indictment for a conspiracy. This is called _setting out the overt acts_ (and was done in the present instance ) not as any part of the conspiracy but only as statements of _the evidence_ by which the charge was to be supported--for the laudable purpose of giving the parties notice of the particular facts from which the crown intended to deduce the existence of the alleged conspiracy. They consisted almost unavoidably of a prodigious number of writings speeches and publications; and these it was which earned for the indictment the title of "the _Monster_ Indictment." It occupies fifty-three pages of the closely printed folio _appendix_ to the case on the part of the crown--each page containing on an average seventy-three lines each line eighteen words; which would extend to _nine hundred and fifty-three common law folios_ each containing seventy-two words! The indictment itself however independently of its ponderous appendages was of very moderate length. It contained eleven counts--and charged A CONSPIRACY of a five-fold nature--_i. e._ to do five different acts; and the scheme of these counts was this:--the first contained all the five branches of the conspiracy--and the subsequent counts took that first count to pieces; that is to say contained the whole or separate portions of it with such modifications as might appear likely to obviate doubts as to their _legal_ sufficiency or meet possible or probable variations in the expected _evidence_. The following will be found a correct abstract of this important document. The indictment as already stated contained eleven counts in each of which it was charged that the defendants Daniel O'Connell John O'Connell Thomas Steele Thomas Matthew Kay Charles Gavan Duffy John Gray and Richard Barrett the Rev. Peter James Tyrrell and the Rev. Thomas Tierney unlawfully maliciously and seditiously did COMBINE CONSPIRE CONFEDERATE and AGREE with each other and with divers other persons unknown for the purposes in those counts respectively stated. The FIRST count charged the conspiracy as a conspiracy to do five different acts (that is to say ) "_First._ To raise and create discontent and disaffection amongst her Majesty's subjects and to excite such subjects to hatred and contempt of the government and constitution of the realm as by law established and to unlawful and seditious opposition to the said government and constitution. "_Second._ To stir up jealousies hatred and ill-will between different classes of her Majesty's subjects and especially to promote amongst her Majesty's subjects in Ireland feelings of ill-will and hostility towards and against her Majesty's subjects in the other parts of the United Kingdom especially in that part of the United Kingdom called England. "_Third._ To excite discontent and disaffection amongst divers of her Majesty's subjects serving in her Majesty's army. "_Fourth._ To cause and procure and aid and assist in causing and procuring divers subjects of her Majesty _unlawfully_ _maliciously_ _and seditiously_ to meet and assemble together in large numbers at various times and at different places within Ireland for the unlawful and seditious purpose of obtaining by means of the intimidation to be thereby caused and by means of the exhibition and demonstration of great physical force at such assemblies and meetings changes and alterations in the government laws and constitution of the realm by law established. "_Fifth._ To bring into hatred and disrepute the courts of law established in Ireland for the administration of justice and to diminish the confidence of her Majesty's subjects in Ireland in the administration of the law therein _with the intent_ to induce her Majesty's subjects to withdraw the adjudication of their differences with and claims upon each other from the cognisance of the said courts by law established and to submit the same to the judgment and determination of other tribunals to be constituted and contrived for that purpose." [This count sets out as _overt acts_ of the above design numerous _meetings_ _speeches_ and _publications_.] The SECOND count was the same as the first _omitting the overt acts_. The THIRD count was the same as the second only omitting from the _fourth_ charge the words "unlawfully maliciously and seditiously." The FOURTH count was the same as the third omitting the charge as to the army. The FIFTH count contained the first and second charges set forth in the first count omitting the overt acts. The SIXTH count contained the fourth charge set forth in the first count omitting the words "unlawfully maliciously and seditiously " and the overt acts. The SEVENTH count was the same as the sixth _adding_ the words "and especially by the means aforesaid to bring about and accomplish _a dissolution of the legislative union_ now subsisting between Great Britain and Ireland." The EIGHTH count contained the fifth charge set forth in the first count omitting the overt acts. The NINTH count contained the fifth charge set forth in the first count omitting the intent therein charged and the overt acts but _adding_ the following charge--"And to assume and _usurp the prerogatives of the crown_ in the establishment of courts for the administration of law." The TENTH count was the same as the eighth omitting _the intent_ stated in the fifth charge in the first count. The ELEVENTH count charged the conspiracy to be "to _cause and procure large numbers of persons to meet and assemble together_ in divers places and at divers times within Ireland and by means of unlawful seditious and inflammatory speeches and addresses to be made and delivered at the said several places on the said several times respectively and also by means of the publishing and causing and procuring to be published to and amongst the subjects of her said majesty divers unlawful malicious and seditious writings and compositions _to intimidate the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and the Commons_ of the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and _thereby_ to effect and bring about changes and alterations in the laws and constitution of this realm as now by law established." The indictment was laid before the grand jury on the 3d November 1843 and after long deliberation they returned a true bill late on the 8th of November. After a harassing series of almost all kinds of preliminary objections the defendants on the 22d November respectively pleaded "that they were NOT GUILTY of the premises above laid to his charge or any of them or any part thereof:"--and on the 16th January 1844 the trial commenced at bar before the full court of Queen's Bench viz. the Right Honourable Edward Pennefather _Chief-Justice_ and Burton Crampton and Perrin _Justices_ and lasted till the 12th February. The Chief-Justice--a most able and distinguished lawyer--then closed his directions to the jury. "I have put the questions to you in the language of the indictment. It lies on the crown to establish--they have undertaken to do so--that the traversers or some of them are guilty of a conspiracy such as I have already stated to you--a conspiracy consisting of five branches any one of which being brought home to your satisfaction to the traversers or traverser in the way imputed will maintain and establish the charge which the crown has undertaken to prove." The jury were long engaged in discussing their verdict and came once or twice into court with imperfect findings expressing themselves as greatly embarrassed by the complexity and multiplicity of the issues submitted to them; on which Mr Justice Crampton who remained to receive the verdict delivered to them in a specific form the issues on which they were to find their verdict. They ultimately handed in very complicated written findings the substantial result of which may be thus stated: All the defendants were found guilty on the whole of the last eight counts of the indictment viz. the Fourth Fifth SIXTH SEVENTH Eighth Ninth Tenth and Eleventh counts. Three of the defendants--Daniel O'Connell Barrett and Duffy--were also found guilty on the whole of the _Third_ count and on part of the First and Second counts--[that is to say of all the first and second counts except as to causing meetings to assemble "_unlawfully maliciously and seditiously_."] Four other of the defendants--John O'Connell Steele Ray and Gray--were also found guilty of a part of the First Second and Third counts--viz. of all except as to causing meetings to assemble _unlawfully maliciously and seditiously_ and exciting discontent and disaffection in the army.[5] As soon as these findings had been delivered to the deputy-clerk of the crown and read by him a copy of them was given to the traversers and the court adjourned till the ensuing term. It should here be particularly observed that it has been from time immemorial the invariable course in criminal cases as soon as the verdict has been delivered however special its form for the proper officer to write on the indictment in the presence of the court and jury the word "_Guilty_ " or "_Not Guilty_ " as the case may be of the whole or that portion of the indictment on which the jury may have thought fit to find their verdict; and then the judge usually proceeds at once to pass judgment unless he is interrupted by the prisoner's counsel rising to move "_in arrest_ " or stay of judgment in consequence of some supposed substantial defect in the indictment. But observe--it was useless to take this step unless the counsel could show that _the whole indictment_ was insufficient as disclosing in no part of it an offence in contemplation of law. If he were satisfied that there was one single good count to be found in it it would have been idle at this stage of the proceedings to make the attempt; and it very rarely happens that every one of the varied modes of stating the case which has been adopted is erroneous and insufficient. If then the motion was refused nothing else remained but to pass the sentence which was duly recorded and properly carried into effect. No formal or further entry was made upon the record--matters remaining in _statu quo_--unless the party convicted satisfied that he had good ground for doing so and was able to afford it determined to bring a writ of error. _Then_ it became necessary in order to obey the command contained in the writ of error to "make up the record"--_i. e._ formally and in technical detail to complete its narrative of the proceedings in due course of law; for which purpose the verdict would be entered in legal form generally (if such it had been in fact) or specially according to its legal effect if a special verdict had been delivered. To return now to the course of proceedings in the present instance. After desperate but unsuccessful efforts had been made in the ensuing term to disturb the verdict the last step which could be resorted to in order to avert the sentence was adopted--viz. a motion in arrest of judgment on the main ground that the indictment disclosed in _no part_ of it any indictable offence. It was expressly admitted by the traversers' counsel in making the motion that if "the indictment did disclose with sufficient certainty an indictable offence in all OR ANY of its counts the indictment was sufficient;" and it was then "contended that _not one_ of the counts disclosed with sufficient certainty that the object of the agreement alleged in it was an indictable offence." The court however was of a different opinion; and the Chief-Justice in delivering his judgment thus expressed himself--"It was boldly and perseveringly urged that there was no crime charged in the indictment. If there was one in any count or in any part of a count that was sufficient." So said also Mr Justice Burton--"We cannot arrest the judgment if there be _any_ count on which to found the judgment"--the other two judges expressly concurring in that doctrine; and the whole court decided moreover that _all_ the counts were sufficient in point of law. They therefore refused the motion. Had it been granted--had judgment been arrested--all the proceedings would have been set aside; but the defendants might have been indicted afresh. Let us once more repeat here--what is indeed conspicuously evident from what has gone before--that at the time when this motion in arrest of judgment was discussed and decided in the court below there was no more doubt entertained by any criminal lawyer at the bar or on the bench in Ireland or England that if an indictment contained one single good count it would sustain a general judgment though there might be fifty bad counts in it than there is of doubt among astronomers or any one else whether the earth goes round the sun or the sun round the earth. Had the Irish Court of Queen's Bench held the contrary doctrine it would have been universally scouted for its imbecility and ignorance. Having been called up for _judgment_ on the 30th May in Trinity term last the defendants were respectively sentenced to fine and imprisonment and to give security to keep the peace and be of good behaviour for seven years; and were at once taken into custody in execution of the sentence. They immediately sued out writs of error _coram nobis_--(_i. e._ error _in fact_ on the ground that the witnesses had not been duly sworn before the grand jury nor their names authenticated as required by statute.) The court thereupon formally affirmed its judgments. On the 14th June 1844 the defendants (who thereby became _plaintiffs_ in error) sued out of the "High Court of Parliament" writs of error to reverse the judgments of the court below. On the writ of error being sued out it became necessary as already intimated to enter the findings of the jury according to the true and legal effect of such findings upon the record which was done accordingly--the judges themselves it should be observed having nothing whatever to do with that matter which is not within their province but that of the proper officer of the court who is aided in difficult cases by the advice and assistance of counsel; and this having been done the following (_inter alia_) appeared upon the face of the record:--The eleven counts of the indictment were set out _verbatim_; then the findings of the jury (in accordance with the statement of them which will be found _ante_;) and then came the following all-important paragraph--the entry of judgment--every word of which is to be accurately noted:-- "Whereupon _all and singular the premises being seen and fully understood_ by the court of our said Lady the Queen now here it is considered and adjudged by the said court here that the said Daniel O'Connell FOR HIS OFFENCES AFORESAID do pay a fine to our Sovereign Lady the Queen of two thousand pounds and be imprisoned " &c. and "enter into recognisances to keep the peace and to be of good behaviour for seven years " &c. Corresponding entries were made concerning the other defendants respectively. This Writ of Error addressed to the Chief-Justice of the Queen's Bench in Dublin reciting (in the usual form) that "MANIFEST ERRORS it was said had intervened to the great damage" of the parties concerned; commands the Chief-Justice "distinctly and plainly _to send under his seal the record of proceedings_ and writ to Us in our present Parliament now holden at Westminster; that the record and proceedings aforesaid having been inspected we may further cause to be done thereupon with the consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled for correcting the said errors what of right and according to the law and customs of this realm ought to be done." The writ of error accompanied by a transcript of the entire record of the proceedings below having been duly presented to the House of Lords then came the "_assignment of errors _" prepared by the counsel of the plaintiffs in error--being a statement of the grounds for imputing "manifest error" to the record; and which in this case were no fewer than thirty-four. The Attorney-General on the part of the crown put in the usual plea or joinder in error--"_In nullo est erratum;" Anglicè_ that "_there is no error in the record._" This was in the nature of a demurrer [6] and referred the whole record--and be it observed _nothing but_ THE RECORD--to the judgment of the House of Lords as constituting the High Court of Parliament. It is a cardinal maxim that upon a writ of error the court _cannot travel out of the record_; they can take judicial notice of nothing but what appears upon the face of the record sent up to them for the purpose of being "inspected " to see if there be any error _therein._ The judges of England were summoned _to advise_[7] the House of Lords: from the _Queen's Bench_ Justices Patteson Williams and Coleridge (Lord Denman the Chief-Justice sitting in judgment as a peer;) from the _Common Pleas_ Chief-Justice Tindal and Justices Coltman and Maule; from the _Exchequer_ Barons Parke Alderson and Gurney. Lord Chief-Baron Pollock did not attend having advised the Crown in early stages of the case as Attorney-General: Mr Justice Erskine was ill; and the remaining three common law judges Justices Wightman Rolfe and Cresswell were required to preside in the respective courts at _Nisi Prius_. With these necessary exceptions the whole judicial force--so to speak--of England assisted in the deliberations of the House of Lords. The "_law_" peers who constantly attended were the Lord Chancellor Lords Brougham Cottenham and Campbell. It has been remarked as singular that Lord Langdale (the Master of the Rolls) did not attend in his place on so important an occasion and take his share in the responsibility of the decision. Possibly he considered himself not qualified by his _equity_ practice and experience to decide upon the niceties of criminal pleading. Several lay peers also attended--of whom some particularly Lord Redesdale attended regularly. The appeal lasted for many days frequently from ten o'clock in the morning till a late hour in the evening; but the patience and attention of the peers and judges--we speak from personal observation--was exemplary. For the crown the case was argued by the English and Irish Attorney-Generals (Sir W. W. Follett and Mr T. B. C. Smith;) for O'Connell and his companions by Sir Thomas Wilde Mr M. D. Hill Mr Fitzroy Kelly and Mr Peacock all of whom evinced a degree of astuteness and learning commensurate with the occasion of their exertions. If ever a case was thoroughly discussed it was surely this. If ever "justice to Ireland" was done at the expense of the "delay of justice to England " it was on this occasion. When the argument had closed the Lord Chancellor proposed written questions eleven in number to the judges who begged for time to answer them which was granted. Seven out of the eleven related to the merest technical objections and which were unanimously declared by the judges to be untenable; the law lords (except with reference to the sixth question as to the overruling the challenge to the array) concurring in their opinions. Lord Denman here differed with the judges stating that Mr Justice Coleridge also entertained doubts upon the subject; Lords Cottenham and Campbell shared their doubts expressly stating however that they would not have reversed the proceedings on that ground. If they ha
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concurred in reversing the judgment which disallowed the challenge to the array the only effect would have been to order a _venire de novo_ or a new trial. With seven of the questions therefore we have here no concern and have infinite satisfaction in disencumbering the case of such vexatious trifling--for such we consider it--and laying before our readers the remaining four questions which tended to raise the SINGLE POINT on which the judgment was reversed; a point be it observed which was not as it could not in the nature of things have been made in the court below--arising out of proceedings which took place after the court below having discharged their duty had become _functi officio_. Those questions were respectively the first second third and last (the eleventh ) and as follow:-- _Question I._--""Are all or any and if any which of the _counts of the indictment bad in law_--so that if such count or counts stood alone in the indictment _no judgment_ against the defendants could properly be entered upon them?"" _Question II._--""Is there any and if any what defect in the _findings of the jury_ upon the trial of the said indictment or in the _entering_ of such findings?"" _Question III._--""Is there any sufficient ground for _reversing the judgment_ by reason of any defect in the indictment or of the findings or entering of the findings of the jury upon the said indictment?"" _Question XI._--""In an indictment consisting of counts A B C when the verdict is _guilty of all generally_ and the counts A and B are good and the count C is bad; the judgment being that the defendant '_for his offences aforesaid_ ' be fined and imprisoned; which judgment would be sufficient in point of law if confined expressly to counts A and B--can such judgment be reversed on a writ of error? Will it make any difference whether the punishment be discretionary as above suggested or a punishment fixed by law?"" The above questions may be stated shortly and substantially thus:--Are there any _defective counts_ in the indictment? Any defective _findings_ of the jury? Any defects in _entering_ the findings? Can judgment be reversed on any of these grounds? If one only of several counts in an indictment be bad; a verdict given of ""guilty"" generally; judgment awarded against the defendant ""for _his offences_ aforesaid "" and the punishment discretionary--can judgment be reversed on a writ of error? The whole matter may now in fact be reduced to this single question: Can a judgment inflicting fine or imprisonment be reversed by a court of error because that judgment proceeded on an indictment containing both _bad and good_ counts and in respect of which _some_ of the findings of the jury were either defective or defectively entered?--Let us now listen to the decision of that venerable body of men who are in the language of our great commentator ""_the depositaries of the laws the living oracles who must decide in all cases of doubt and who are bound by an oath to decide according to the law of the land._""[8] The questions which they had thus to consider moreover were not questions of rare subtle unusual and speculative but of an ordinary practical character such as they were concerned with every day of their lives in administering the criminal law of the country. First then were there any bad counts in the indictment? The judges were unanimously of opinion that TWO of the counts were bad or insufficient in law--and two only--which were the SIXTH and SEVENTH counts. They hold positively and explicitly that the remaining NINE COUNTS WERE PERFECTLY VALID. The Chief-Justice (Tindal) thus delivered this unanimous opinion of himself and his brethren on this point.[9] ""No serious objection appears to have been made by counsel for the prisoners against the sufficiency of any of the counts prior to the sixth. Indeed there can be no question that the charges contained in the FIRST FIVE COUNTS _do amount in each to the legal offence of conspiracy and are sufficiently described therein_. ""We all concur in opinion as to the EIGHTH NINTH and TENTH counts (no doubt whatever having been raised as to the sufficiency of the ELEVENTH count ) that the object and purpose of the agreement entered into by the defendants and others as disclosed upon those counts is an agreement for the performance of an act and the attainment of an object which is a violation of the law of the land."" With reference to the SIXTH and SEVENTH counts in the form in which they stand upon their record the judges were unanimously of opinion that these counts ""did not state the illegal purpose and design of the agreement entered into between the defendants with such proper and sufficient _certainty_ as to lead to the _necessary_ conclusion that it was an agreement to do an act in violation of the law."" They did not show what sort of fear was intended by the alleged intimidation nor upon whom it was intended to operate nor was it alleged that the ""physical force exhibited"" was to be _used_ or _intended_ to be used. Observed therefore on what grounds these two counts--two only out of eleven--are held defective: they are deficient in that rigorous ""_certainty_"" now held requisite to constitute a perfectly legal charge of crime. To the eye of plain common sense--we submit with the deepest deference to those who have held otherwise--they distinctly disclose a _corpus delicti_; but when stretched upon the agonizing rack of legal logic to which they were exposed it seems that they gave way. The degree of ""certainty"" here insisted upon would seem to savour a little (possibly) of that _nimia subtilitas quæ in jure reprobatur; et talis certitudo certitudinem confundit_: and which in the shape of ""certainty to a certain intent in every particular "" is rejected in law according to Lord Coke (5 _Rep._ 121.) It undoubtedly tends to impose inevitable difficulty upon the administration of criminal justice. Sir Matthew Hale complained strongly of this ""strictness which has grown to be a blemish and inconvenience in the law and the administration thereof; for that more offenders escape by the over-easy ear given to exceptions in indictments than by their own innocence.""--12 Hal. P. C. 193; 4 Bla. Co. 376. The words in the present case are pregnant with irresistible ""inference"" of guilt; an additional word or two which to us appear already implicitly there as they are actually in the eleventh count would have dispersed every possible film of doubt; and Lord Brougham in giving judgment appeared to be of this opinion. But now for the general result: The indictment contained two imperfect counts and nine perfect counts distinctly disclosing offences not very far short of treason. Thus then the first question was answered. To the _second_ question the judges replied unanimously ""that the _findings of the jury_ in the first four counts were not authorized by the law and are incorrectly entered on the record."" One of the judges however and a most eminent judge (Mr Justice Patteson ) being of a contrary opinion. Thus we have it unanimously decided by the judges whose decision was acquiesced in by the House of Lords that there were two bad counts (the 6th and 7th ) on which there were good findings by the jury and with the exception of Mr Justice Patteson four good counts (the 1st 2d 3d and 4th ) on which there were bad findings. The effect of this twofold error was thus tersely stated by Mr Baron Gurney and adopted by the Lord Chancellor.[10] ""I cannot distinguish between a bad finding on a good count and a good finding on a bad count. They appear to me to amount to precisely the same thing--namely that upon which no judgment can be pronounced. The judgment must be taken to have proceeded upon _the concurrence of good counts and good findings_ and upon nothing else."" Here then at length it seems that we have hit upon a _blot_--a petty circumscribed blot to be sure upon a vast surface of otherwise unsullied legal sufficiency; but still--in the opinion of the judges--a blot. What was to be held the effect of it? Or had it _any_ effect? The traversers' counsel at the bar of the House of Lords took by surprise every one whom they addressed--all their opponents all the judges all the law lords and all the legal profession as soon as they had heard of it--by boldly affirming that if this blot really existed it would invalidate and utterly nullify the whole proceedings from the beginning to the end! They hammered away at this point accordingly hour after hour--day after day--with desperate pertinacity; being compelled from time to time during their hopeful argument to admit that up to that moment the rule or custom which they were seeking to impeach had been universally acted upon from time immemorial to the contrary of that for which they were contending. This strange and novel point of theirs gave rise to the third and eleventh questions put to the judges. These questions are substantially identical viz. whether a single bad count in an indictment on which there has been a general verdict of guilty with judgment accordingly will entitle the fortunate defendant to a reversal of that judgment? We heard a considerable portion of the argument; and listened to _this_ part of it with a comfortable consciousness that we beheld in each counsel arguing it as it were a viper gnawing a file! If _this_ be law thought we then have many thousands of injured gentlemen been in all human probability unjustly hanged and transported for life or for years been fined imprisoned sent to the tread-mill and publicly whipped; for Heaven only knows how many of the counts in the indictments against--say Mr Fauntleroy; Messrs Thistlewood Brunt Tidd and Ings; Messrs Greenacre Courvoisier and many others--have been defective in law! How many hundreds are now luxuriating in Norfolk Island who have on this supposition no just right to be there; and who had they been but _popular_ miscreants might have collected sufficient funds from their friends and admirers to enable them to prove this--to try a fall with justice and show her weakness; to overhaul the proceedings against them detect the latent flaws therein return in triumph to the bosom of their families and friends and exhibit new and greater feats of dexterity in their art and mystery! Why should not that ""_innocent_"" convict--now passing over the seas--Mr Barber on hearing of this decision soon after his arrival at the distant paradise to which he is bound take new heart and remit instructions by the next homeward bound ship for a writ of error in order that he may have _his_ chance of detecting a flaw in one of the many counts of _his_ indictment? But to be serious again how stands the case in the present instance? Of eleven counts six must be in legal contemplation expunged from the record: FOUR (the first second third and fourth ) because though in themselves sufficient in law the findings upon them were technically defective; and TWO (the sixth and seventh ) because they were technically defective in point of law though the findings on them were unobjectionable. Then there remain FIVE PERFECT COUNTS WITH FIVE PERFECT FINDINGS in the opinion of all the judges and of all the law lords; those five _counts_ containing the gist of the whole charge against O'Connell and his confederates--those five _findings_ establishing that the defendants were guilty of the offences so laid to their charge. Blot out then altogether from the record the six counts objectionable on the above-mentioned grounds how are the other five to be got rid of? Thus said the traversers' counsel. We have the entire record before us containing all the eleven counts and findings both good and bad; and we find by the language of the record itself that the judges in passing sentence _took into consideration all the eleven counts_ as if they had been valid counts with valid findings--for the judges expressly inflicted punishment on each of the traversers ""_for his_ OFFENCES _aforesaid_."" Is it not therefore plain to demonstration that the measure of punishment was governed by reference to six--_i. e._ a majority--of eleven counts which six counts had no more right to stand on the record entailing liability to punishment on the parties named in them than six of the odes of Horace? The punishment here moreover being discretionary and consequently dependent upon and influenced by the ingredients of guilt which it appears conclusively that the judges took into their consideration? Such was the general drift of the reasonings of the traversers' counsel. What was their effect upon the assembled judges--those experienced and authoritative expositors of the law of the land? Why after nearly two months' time taken to consider and ponder over the various points which had been started--after anxious consideration and communication one with another--they re-appeared in the House of Lords on the 2d of September; and led by one who will be on all hands admitted to be one of the most experienced gifted profoundly learned and perfectly impartial and independent lawyers that ever presided over a court of justice--Sir Nicholas Tindal--SEVEN out of _nine_ of the judges expressed a clear unhesitating opinion that the third and eleventh questions should be answered in the negative--viz. that the judgment was in no way invalidated--could be in no way impeached by reason of the defective counts and findings. The two dissenting judges who had been _hit_ by the arguments of the traversers' counsel were Baron Parke and Mr Justice Coltman--the latter speaking in a confident the former in a remarkably hesitating and doubting tone. The majority consisted of Chief-Justice Sir Nicholas Tindal Mr Justice Patteson Mr Justice Maule Mr Justice Williams Mr Baron Gurney Mr Baron Alderson and Mr Justice Coleridge. We have no hesitation in expressing our opinion that the judgments delivered by this majority of the judges stand on the immovable basis of sound logic accurate law and good sense; and lament that our space will not allow us to present our readers with the many striking and conclusive reasonings and illustrations with which those judgments abound. We can but glance at the _result_--leaving the _process_ to be examined at leisure by those so disposed. The artful fallacies of the traversers' counsel will be found utterly demolished. The first grand conclusion of the judges was thus expressed by the Chief-Justice-- ""I conceive it to be the law that in the case of an indictment if there be ONE GOOD COUNT in an indictment upon which the defendants have been declared guilty by proper findings on the record and a judgment given for the crown imposing a sentence authorized by law to be awarded in respect of the particular offence that such judgment cannot be reversed by a writ of error by reason of one or more of the counts in the indictment being bad in point of law."" The main argument of the traversers' counsel was thus disposed of-- ""It was urged at your lordships' bar that all the instances which have been brought forward in support of the proposition that one good count will support a general judgment upon an indictment in which there are also bad counts are cases in which there was a motion in _arrest of judgment_ not cases where a _writ of error_ has been brought. This may be true; for so far as can be ascertained there is no single instance in which a writ of error has been ever brought to reverse a judgment upon an indictment upon this ground of objection. But the very circumstance of the refusal by the court to arrest the judgment where such arrest has been prayed on the ground of some defective count appearing on the record and the assigning by the court as the reason for such refusal that there was one good count upon which the judgment might be entered up affords the strongest argument that they thought the judgment _when entered up_ was irreversible upon a writ of error. For such answer could not otherwise have been given; it could have had no other effect than to mislead the prosecutor if the court were sensible at the time that the judgment when entered up might afterwards be reversed by a court of error."" The grand argument derived from _the language of the judgment_ was thus encountered:-- ""I interpret the words 'that the defendant _for his offences_ aforesaid be fined and imprisoned ' in their plain literal sense to mean _such offences as are set out in the counts of the indictment which are free from objection and of which the defendant is shown by proper findings on the record to have been guilty_--that is in effect the offences contained in the fifth and eighth and all the subsequent counts. And I see no objection to the word offences in the plural being used whether the several counts last enumerated do intend several and distinct offences or only one offence described in different manners in those counts. For whilst the record remains in that shape and unreversed there can be no objection in point of law that they should be called 'offences' as they appear on the record."" Now however let us see the view taken of the matter by Mr Baron Parke--a man undoubtedly of acute and powerful mind as well as accurate and extensive learning. It is impossible not to be struck by the tone of diffidence which pervades his judgment; and it was _delivered_ in a very subdued manner not usual with that learned judge; occasioned doubtless by the pain with which he found himself on an occasion of such transcendent importance differing from all his brethren but one. He commenced by acknowledging the astonishment with which he had heard counsel at the bar question the proposition _which he_ (Baron Parke) _had always considered_ ever since he had been in the profession _perfectly settled and well established_ viz. that in criminal cases one good count though associated with many bad ones would nevertheless suffice to support a general judgment. But ""he had been induced to _doubt_ whether the rule had not been carried too far by a misunderstanding of the _dicta_ of judges on applications _in arrest of judgment_."" To enable the lay reader to appreciate the novel doctrine which has been sanctioned in the present case it is requisite to understand clearly the distinction to which we have already briefly adverted between a motion in _arrest of judgment_ and a _writ of error_. When a defendant has been found guilty of an offence by the verdict of a jury judgment must follow as a matter of course ""_judgment_ being the sentence of the law pronounced by the court upon the matter contained in the record.""[11] If however the defendant can satisfy the court that the indictment is entirely defective he will succeed in ""_arresting _"" or staying the passing of judgment; but if he cannot the court will proceed to _give judgment_. That judgment having been entered on the record the defendant if still persuaded that the indictment is defective and consequently the judgment given on it erroneous has one more chance; viz. to _reverse_ the judgment which has been so given by bringing a writ of error before an appellate tribunal. Now the exact proposition for which the traversers' counsel contended was this--that the rule that ""one good count will sustain a general judgment though there are also bad counts in the indictment "" is applicable to that stage only of the proceedings at which a motion is made in arrest of judgment; _i. e. before the judgment has been actually given_ and not to the stage at which a writ of error has been obtained viz. _after the judgment has been actually given_. This proposition was adopted by Mr Justice Coltman; while Mr Baron Parke--for reasons substantially identical with those of Lords Denman Cottenham and Campbell--declared himself unable to overthrow it. As to the ""opinion that one good count properly found will support a judgment warranted by it whatever bad counts there may be "" Mr Baron Parke said --""I doubt whether this received opinion is so sufficiently established by a course of usage and practical recognition though generally entertained as to compel its adoption in the present case and prevent me considering its propriety. After much anxious consideration and weighing the difficulties of reconciling such a doctrine with principle I feel so much doubt that I cannot bring myself to concur with the majority of the judges upon this question."" Without for one moment presuming to suggest any invidious comparison we may observe that whatever may be the learning and ability of the two dissenting judges the majority with Sir Nicholas Tindal at their head contains some of the most powerful well-disciplined long-experienced and learned intellects that ever were devoted to the administration of justice and all of them thoroughly familiar with the law and practice in criminal proceedings; and as we have already suggested no competent reader can peruse their judgments without feeling admiration of the logical power evinced by them. While Mr Baron Parke ""_doubts_"" as to the soundness of his conclusions they all express a clear and _decisive_ opinion as to the existence of the rule or custom in question as a rule of law and as to its reasonableness utility and justice. The reading of these judgments occupied from ten o'clock on the Monday morning till three o'clock in the afternoon when the House adjourned till Wednesday; having first ordered the opinions of the judges to be printed. There were a considerable number of peers (among whom was the Duke of Cambridge) present and they listened attentively to those whom they had summoned to advise them on so great an occasion. Lords Brougham Denman Cottenham and Campbell sat near one another on the opposition side of the House each with writing-tables before him; and they together with the Lord Chancellor appeared to pay close attention to what fell from the judges. The House of Lords on these great occasions presents a very interesting and impressive appearance. The Chancellor sits robed in his usual place surrounded by the judges who are seated on the woolsacks in the centre of the house all in their full official costume each rising to read his written judgment. If ever man made a magnificent personal appearance among his fellows it is Lord Lyndhurst thus surrounded. At the bar of the house stood or sat the majority of the counsel engaged on each side as well as others; and the whole space behind was crowded by anxious spectators conspicuous among whom were Messrs Mahoney and Ford (two tall stout shrewd-looking men ) the Irish attorneys engaged on behalf of the traversers. They and their counsel appeared a trifle less desponding at the conclusion of Baron Parke's judgment; but the impression was universal that the Chancellor would advise the House to affirm the judgment in accordance with the opinions of so overwhelming a majority of the judges. No one however could do more than guess the inclination of the law lords or what impression had been made upon them by the opinions of the judges. When therefore Wednesday the day of final judgment upon this memorable and agitating case had arrived it is difficult to describe the excitement and anxiety manifest among all the parties who densely crowded the space between the door and the bar of the House. There were of course none of the judges present with the exception of Mr Baron Rolfe who in plain clothes sat on the steps of the throne a mere private spectator. There were about a dozen peers on the ministerial benches including Lord Wharncliffe Lord Redesdale Lord Stradbroke and others; and several peers (including Lord Clanricarde) sat on the opposite benches. Lords Cottenham and Campbell sat together frequently in communication with each other and occasionally with Lord Denman who sat near them at the cross-benches busily engaged in referring to books and papers. Lord Brougham occupied his usual place a little nearer the bar of the House than Lords Cottenham and Campbell; and on the writing-desks of all three lay their written judgments. All the law-peers wore a serious and thoughtful expression of countenance--which you scrutinized with eager anxiety in vain for any sign of the sort of judgments which they had come prepared to deliver. The traversers' leading counsel Sir Thomas Wilde and Mr Hill both stood at the bar of the House in a state of very perceptible suspense and anxiety. The Attorney-General for Ireland sat in his usual place--almost motionless as usual from first to last--very calm and watching the proceedings with deep attention seldom uttering more than a passing syllable to those who sat next to him _i. e._ the English Solicitor-General and Mr Waddington and Mr Maule of the Treasury. After judgment had been briefly given in Gray's case a few moments' interval of silence elapsed--the silence of suppressed anxiety and expectation. At length the Lord Chancellor who had been sitting with a very thoughtful air for a few moments slowly rose from the woolsack and advanced to his proper post when addressing the House viz. at about a couple of yards' distance to the left of the woolsack. Finding that his robes or train had in some way got inconveniently disarranged so as to interfere with the freedom of his motions he occupied several seconds in very calmly putting it to rights; and then his tall commanding figure stood before you in all that tranquil grace and dignity of appearance and gesture for which he has ever been so remarkably distinguished. During the whole time--exactly an hour--that he was speaking his voice clear and harmonious as usual and his attitude and gesture characterized by a graceful and easy energy he never once slipped or even hesitated for want of an apt expression; but on the contrary invariably hit upon _the very_ expression which was the most accurate appropriate and elegant for conveying his meaning. He spoke with an air of unusual decision and entirely _extempore_ without the assistance of a single memorandum or note or law-book: yet the greater portion of his speech consisted of very masterly comments on a great number of cases which had been cited in doing which he was as familiar and exactly accurate in stating not only the principles and distinctions involved but the minutest circumstances connected with them as if the cases had been lying open before him! His very first sentence put an end to all doubt as to the conclusion at which _he_ had arrived. These were his precise words--the last of them uttered with peculiar emphasis:--""My lords I have to move your lordships that the judgment of the court below in this case be _affirmed_."" He proceeded to compliment the judges on the patient and laborious attention and research which they had bestowed upon the case. ""My lords "" said he ""with respect to all the points submitted to their consideration with the exception of one question--for in substance it _was_ one question--their opinion and judgment have been unanimous. With reference to that one question seven of the learned judges with the Chief-Justice of the Common Pleas at their head have expressed a distinct a clear and decided opinion against the objections which were urged. Two other learned judges have expressed an adverse opinion. I may be permitted to say--and all who were present to hear them must agree with me--that it was an opinion accompanied with much doubt and much hesitation. I think under these circumstances that _unless your lordships are thoroughly and entirely satisfied that the opinion of the great majority of the judges was founded in palpable error_ your lordships will feel yourselves in a case of this kind bound by their decision to adhere to and support their judgment and act in conformity with it."" After briefly stating the only question before them--viz. ""whether there being defective counts in the indictment and other counts with defective findings on them a general judgment can be sustained?""--he proceeded ""Your lordships will observe that this is a mere technical question though I admit of great importance--never presented to the judges of the court below not calling in question their judgment in substance--but arising entirely out of the manner in which that judgment has been entered up by those whose province it was to discharge that particular duty."" He then made the following decisive and authoritative declaration which all who know the accurate and profound learning and the vast judicial experience of the Chancellor will know how to value. ""Allow me my lords to say that _it has always been considered as a clear distinct and undoubted principle of the criminal law of England that in a case of this nature a general judgment is sufficient_; and from the first moment when I entered the profession down to the time when I heard the question agitated at your lordships' bar I never heard it called in question. I have found it uniformly and constantly acted upon without doubt without hesitation. I find it in all treatises in all text-writers on the subject--not questioned not doubted not qualified but stated broadly and clearly. Now for the first time it has been stated--and Mr Baron Parke himself admits that it _is_ for the first time--that that rule applies only to motions in arrest of judgment. I never before heard of such a limitation. I am quite sure that there is no case to sanction it no decision to warrant it no authority to be cited in support of it. I am quite satisfied after all I have heard on the subject that there is no ground whatever for the doubt--no ground whatever for the exception now insisted upon. * * * It is not NECESSARY that the judgment should be awarded _with reference to any particular count_. No such decision can be cited. No one not in the confidence of the judges can tell in respect of what the judgment was awarded _except with reference to the record itself_. If there be defective counts does it by any means FOLLOW that the judges in awarding judgment appointed any part of it with reference to the defective counts? There is no similarity between the two cases: you cannot reason or argue from one to the other. You must assume UNLESS THE CONTRARY IS DISTINCTLY SHOWN that what the judges have done in that respect is right; that the judgment if there be any part of the record to support it proceeded upon that part. In writs of error you are not allowed to _conjecture_ to decide on _probabilities_ you must look to the record; and unless the record itself on the face of it shows not that there _may_ have been but that there HAS been manifest error in the apportioning of the punishment you cannot reverse the judgment. You upon conjecture reverse the judgment; and if afterwards you were to consult the very judge by whom it had been pronounced you might find that he had at the time taken that very point into consideration. You are therefore running the hazard of reversing a judgment on the very grounds which were present to the mind of the judge at the moment when that judgment was pronounced."" As to the statement that judgment was awarded against each defendant ""FOR HIS OFFENCES aforesaid ""--thus argued the Chancellor:-- ""But independently of this my lords let us look at the record itself and see whether on the face of the record there is any ground whatever for this objection. Every record must be construed according to _its legal effect_--according to its legal operation. You cannot travel out of the record. Now what is the judgment? Why 'that the court adjudges the defendant _for his offences aforesaid_ to be fined and imprisoned.' What is an 'OFFENCE' on this record? There are two counts defective: but why? Because they charged according to the unanimous opinion of the judges NO offence. There were _facts_ stated but not so stated as to constitute an indictable offence. When you consider this record then according to its language and legal interpretation can you say that when there is an award of judgment for the offences on the record that judgment applies to those counts which bear on the face of them no offence whatever? That is my lords an incongruity an inconsistency which your lordships will never sanction for one moment. The argument which applies to defective counts applies to valid counts on which erroneous findings are entered up. When judgment is given for an 'offence' on the record it is given on the offence of which the defendant is properly found guilty; and he is _not_ found guilty on those counts on which the erroneous findings are entered up. My lords the conclusion to which I come on the record is that when the judgment is awarded 'for the offences aforesaid' it must be confined to those offences stated on t
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e record which are offences in the eye of the law and of which the defendant has been found guilty by the law--namely those offences on which the finding was properly made. It is not however necessary to rest upon that: but if it were I am of opinion and I state it to your lordships that in this case the record considered according to the proper and legal acceptation and force of the terms--and that is the only way in which a local record can be properly considered--must be taken as containing an award of judgment for those offences only which are properly laid and of which the parties have been found guilty. On the face therefore of the record itself there is no defect whatever in this case."" His lordship after a luminous commentary on a great number of authorities thus proceeded--""Now my lords it is said that there is _no express decision_ upon the subject. Why if a case be so clear so free from doubt that no man no attorney barrister or judge ever entertained any scruple concerning it--if the rule have been uniformly acted upon and constantly recognised is it to be said that because there is no express decision it is not to be considered _law_? Why that argument leads to this conclusion--that the more clear a question is the more free from doubt the more uncertain it must be! _My lords what constitutes the law of this country? It is--usage practice recognition._ For many established opinions part of the acknowledged law of the land you will look in vain for any express decision. I repeat that practice usage recognition are considered as precedents establishing the law: these are the foundations on which the common law of the country rests; and it is admitted in this case that the usage is all against the principle now contended for by the plaintiffs in error. No case no authority of any kind can be adduced in its favour: it is now admittedly for the first time urged in this extraordinary case. And I ask my lords if you will not recognise the decision of the great majority of the judges on a question of this kind involving the technicalities of the law with which they are constantly conversant? When on such a point you find them--speaking by the eminent and able Chief-Justice of the Common Pleas--pronouncing a clear and distinct opinion it must be a case clear from all doubt--a conviction amounting to actual certainty upon which alone you would be justified in rejecting such authorities. * * * It is on these grounds and on the authorities which I have cited that I assert the universal recognition of the principle which I contend has been acknowledged law from time immemorial."" Such was the emphatic clear unwavering judgment deliberately pronounced after long examination and consideration by one of the very greatest intellects ever brought to bear upon the science of the law and of vast judicial experience in the administration of every department of the law--criminal law common law and equity. Lord Brougham then rose and delivered partly a written partly an oral judgment--characterized by his lordship's usual vigour and felicity of reasoning and illustration. He entirely concurred with the Lord Chancellor and assigned reasons which certainly appeared of irresistible cogency for adopting the opinion of the judges whom in a matter peculiarly within their province their lordships had summoned to their assistance who had bestowed such unexampled pains upon the subject and were all but unanimous. The following was a very striking way of putting the case:--""If the doubts which have been thrown upon this judgment be allowed to have any weight in them it goes the length of declaring that _every thing which has been decided in similar cases_ was mere error and delusion. Nothing can be more dangerous than such an impression. I cannot conceive any thing more appalling than that it should be held that every one of the cases similarly decided ought to be reversed; that the judgments without number under which parties have been sent for execution _are all erroneous judgments and ought to have been reversed_ and _must_ have been reversed if they had been brought before the last resort!"" Lord Denman then rose; and though it was generally understood--as proved to be the fact--that he intended to express a strong opinion against the disallowance of the challenge to the array we believe that no one expected him to dissent upon the great and only point on which the appeal turned from the opinions of the great majority of his brother judges and from the Chancellor and Lord Brougham. We waited with great interest to see the course which Lord Denman would take upon the great question. He is a man of strong natural talents of a lofty bearing in the administration of justice and an uncompromising determination on all occasions to assert the rights and protect the privileges of the subject. Nor though a man of unquestionably very strong Whig opinions are we aware of his having ever allowed them to interfere with his eminent and most responsible judicial duties. Whatever may be our opinion as to the validity of his conclusions on the subject of the challenge to the array it was impossible not to be interested by the zealous energy the manly eloquence with which he vindicated the right of the subject to the fullest enjoyment of trial by jury and denounced what he considered to be any the slightest interference with that right. At length his lordship closed his observations on that subject and amidst breathless silence fell foul not only of the two counts which had been admitted to be defective--the sixth and seventh--but ""_many others of the counts!_"" which he said were open to objection and declared that the judgment could not be sustained. Lord Denman's judgment (to which great respect is due) was as far as relates to _the point_ of the case to this effect:--He had an ""unconquerable repugnance"" to assuming that the judges had passed sentence on the good counts only; for it was in direct contradiction to _the notorious fact_ that the judges had pronounced certain counts to be good; and it was also against the _common probability_ of every case. He admitted the general opinion of the profession to have long been that a general judgment if supported by one sufficient good count was not injured by a bad one associated with it. ""I know "" said his lordship [12] ""what course I should have taken if pressed to give judgment at the trial and had given it. If nothing had taken place respecting the validity of any part of the indictment--but much more if its validity had been disputed but established--I should leave apportioned the sentence to the degree of criminality that was stated in all the counts which were proved in evidence.""--""I see no inconvenience in compelling a judge to form an opinion on the validity of the counts before he proceeds to pass judgment. He ought to take care that a count is good before he allows a verdict to be taken or at least judgment to be entered upon it; and great good will arise from that practice. I am deliberately of opinion that this is a right and wholesome practice producing no inconvenience and affording a great security for justice. * * * In criminal cases all difficulty may be entirely avoided by the court passing a separate judgment on each count and saying 'We adjudge that on this count on which the prisoner is found guilty he ought to suffer so much; that on the second count having been found guilty he ought to suffer so much; whether the count turn out to be good or not we shall pronounce no opinion; that question would be reserved for a superior court. A court of error would then reverse the judgment only on such counts as could not be supported in law--leaving that to stand which had proceeded on valid charges.""--""Where a felony was established requiring a capital punishment or transportation for life the number of counts could make no difference; because the punishment pronounced on any one exhausted the whole materials of punishment and admitted of no addition.""--""The current notion that one count alone could support any sentence applicable to the offences stated in the whole indictment can be accounted for only by Lord Mansfield's general words needlessly and inconsiderately uttered hastily adopted and applied to a stage of the proceedings in which they are not correct in law."" Then came Lord Cottenham--a cold clear-headed lawyer cautious close and accurate in his reasonings and very tenacious in adhering to his conclusions: possessing the advantage of several years' judicial experience--as an equity judge. Thus he addressed himself to _the point_ of the case:-- ""_Is there error upon the record?_"" * * * Did not the court below pass sentence upon the offences charged in the _first_ _second_ _third_ _fourth_ _sixth_ and _seventh_ counts in the indictment as well as upon the offences charged in the other counts? The record of that court tells us that it _did_; and if we are to see whether there be any error on that record and adopt the unanimous opinion of the judges that those six counts or the findings on them are so bad that no judgment upon them would be good how can we give judgment for the defendant and thereby declare that there is _no error_ in the record? The answer which has been given to this objection appears not only unsatisfactory but inadmissible. It is said that we must presume that the court below gave judgment and passed sentence only with reference to the unobjectionable counts and findings. That would be to presume that which the record negatives. By that record the court tells us that the sentence on each defendant was 'for his offences aforesaid ' after enumerating all those charged in the indictment. Are we after and in spite of this to assume that this statement is false and that the sentence was upon one-half only of the offences charged? * * * We can look to the record only for what passed in the court below; and as that tells us the sentence was passed _upon all the offences of which the jury had found the defendants guilty_ we cannot presume to the contrary of such a statement. It would be the presumption of a fact the contrary of which was known to all to be the truth. The argument supposes the court below to have been right in all particulars; but the impossibility of doing so on this record was felt so strongly that another argument was resorted to (not very consistently with the judgment for it assumes that the jury may have been wrong upon every count but one ) namely that a court of error has to see only that there is _some one offence properly charged_ or a punishment applicable to it inflicted; and then that being so that as to all the other counts the court below was wrong--all such other counts or findings being bad. ""Consider what is the proposition contended for. Every count in an indictment for misdemeanour is supposed to apply to a different offence: they often do so and always may; a prosecutor having the option of preparing a separate indictment for each or of joining all as one. If he adopt the former course he must to support the sentence show each indictment to be right. If he adopt the latter course--viz. going upon one indictment containing several counts and one sentence is pronounced upon all the counts according to the proposition now contended for; suppose the sentences to be bad on all the counts _but one_ that one applying to the most insignificant offence of the whole; a court of error it is said has no right to interfere! That is to say it cannot correct error except such error be _universal_;--no matter how important that error no matter how insignificant the portion which is right nor what may have been the effect of such error! The proposition will no longer be 'in _nullo_ est erratum ' but that the error is not--_universal_. If neither of these arguments prove that there is manifest error upon the record and it is not for a court of error to enter into any consideration of the effect which such error may have produced it has no power to alter the verdict and can form no opinion of its propriety and justice from mere inspection of the record which is all the judicial knowledge a court of error has of the case. _Upon what ground_ is it to be assumed in any case that the court below if aware of the legal insufficiency of any of the counts or of the findings upon them would have awarded the same punishment? It _could_ probably do so in many cases--but in many it as certainly would not. If the several counts were only different modes of stating the same offence the insufficiency of some of those counts could not affect the sentence; but if the different counts stated--as they well might--actually different misdemeanours and after a verdict of guilty _upon all_ it were found that some of _such_ counts--that is that some of the misdemeanours--charged must be withdrawn from the consideration of the court by reason of defects in either the counts themselves or the findings upon them it cannot in many cases be supposed that the sentence could be the same as if the court had the duty thrown upon it of punishing _all the offences charged_. This may be well illustrated by supposing an indictment for two libels in different counts--the first of a slight the other of an aggravated character--and verdict and judgment upon both; and the count charging the malignant libel or the finding on it held to be bad. Is the defendant to suffer the same punishment as if he had been properly found guilty of the malignant libel?"" The reason why the rule in civil actions does not apply to _motions in arrest of judgment_ in criminal cases is plainly this:--because the court _having the sentence in its own hands_ will give judgment 'on the part which is indictable'--and the failure of part of the charge will go only to lessening the punishment. These reasons however have plainly no application to _writs of error_; because _a court of error_ CANNOT _of course confine the judgment to those parts which are indictable or lessen it as the different charges are found to fail_."" ""The only inconvenience "" added his lordship ""which can arise from the rule we are laying down will be that the prosecutor must be careful as to the counts on which he means to rely: _the evidence at the trial_ must afford him the means of making the selection--and the defendant has now the means of compelling him to do so."" Such was in substance Lord Cottenham's judgment. He read it in his usual quiet homely matter-of-fact manner as if he were not at all aware of or cared not for the immense importance and public interest attaching to the publication of the conclusion at which he had arrived. Then rose Lord Campbell. In a business-like and satisfactory manner he went briefly over all the points which had been made by the plaintiffs in error disposing of them all in favour of the crown (expressing however doubts on the subject of the challenge to the array ) till he came to THE POINT--which he thus approached:--""I now come however to considerations which induce me _without hesitation_ humbly to advise your lordships to reverse this judgment."" He was brief but pithy in assigning his reasons. ""According to the doctrine contended for on the part of the crown "" said his lordship adopting two cases which had been put by we believe Mr Peacock in his argument ""the following case may well happen. There may be an indictment containing two counts A and B for separate offences; A being a good count B a bad one. The court below may think A bad and B good; and proceed to sentence the defendant to a heavy punishment merely in respect of B which though it may contain in reality not an offence in point of law they may consider to contain one and of signal turpitude. On a writ of error the court above clearly sees that B is a bad count; but cannot reverse the judgment because there stands count A in the indictment--and which therefore (though for a common assault only ) will support the heavy fine and imprisonment _imposed in respect of count B_! Let me suppose another case. An indictment contains two counts: there is a demurrer[13] to each count: each demurrer is overruled and a general judgment given that the defendant 'for his offences aforesaid ' shall be fined and imprisoned. Is it to be said that if he bring a writ of error and prove one count to be bad he shall have no relief unless he shows the other to be bad also?"" He concluded a brief commentary (substantially identical with that of Lord Cottenham) on the authorities cited by affirming that ""there was neither text-book decision nor _dicta_ to support a doctrine so entirely contrary to principle."" This is how his lordship thinks the like mischief may be obviated in future:-- ""If bad counts are inadvertently introduced the mischief may be _easily_ obviated by taking a verdict of acquittal upon them--by entering a _nolle prosequi_ to them or by seeing that the judgment is expressly stated to be on the good counts only which alone could prevent the bad counts from invalidating the judgment upon a writ of error."" As to the notion that the judges were uninfluenced in passing sentence by the first three counts on which there were numerous findings he observed that--""We cannot resort to the _palpably incredible fiction_ that the judges in violation of their duty did not consider the guilt of the parties aggravated by the charges in these three counts and proportionally increase their punishment."" After an unsuccessful attempt on the part of one or two lay peers who had not heard the whole argument to vote--which was resisted by both the Lord Chancellor and Lord Wharncliffe and Lords Brougham and Campbell--the Lord Chancellor finally put the question:-- ""Is it your lordships' pleasure that this judgment be reversed?--As many as are of that opinion will say '_Content_.' As many as are of a contrary opinion will say '_Not Content_.'"" ""_Content!_"" exclaimed Lords Denman Cottenham and Campbell. ""_Not Content!_"" said the Lord Chancellor and Lord Brougham. _Lord Chancellor._ ""The _Contents_ have it. The judgment is Reversed."" The instant after these pregnant words had been uttered there was a rush of persons in a state of the highest excitement and exultation towards the door; but the lords calmly proceeded to give judgment in a number of ordinary appeal cases. The Attorney-General for Ireland who had been watching the whole of the day's proceedings with close attention heard the result with perfect composure; but as several portions of the judgments of Lords Denman Cottenham and Campbell were being delivered a slight sarcastic smile flitted over his features. As we have mentioned him let us take this opportunity of bearing testimony to the very great ability--ability of the highest order--with which he has discharged _his_ portion of the duty of conducting these proceedings unprecedented in their harassing complexity and their overwhelming magnitude. He has manifested throughout--'bating a little irritability and strictness in petty details at starting--a self-possession; a resolute determination; a capability of coping with unexpected difficulty; a familiarity with constitutional law; a mastery over the details of legal proceedings; in short a degree of forensic ability which has been fully appreciated by the English bar and reflects credit upon those who placed him in his arduous and responsible office. In terms of similar commendation we would speak of the Irish Solicitor-General (Mr Sergeant Green.) Accustomed as we are to witness the most eminent displays of forensic ability we feel no hesitation in expressing our opinion that the Solicitor-General's reply at the trial and the Attorney-General's reply on the motion for a new trial were as masterly performances as have come under our notice for very many years. We have thus laid before our readers with the utmost candour and care this truly remarkable case; and at a length which though considerable is by no means incommensurate with its permanent interest and importance. We believe that we have in the foregoing pages furnished all persons of average intellect and information with the means of forming for themselves a sound opinion as to the propriety or impropriety of reversing the judgment of the court below. We have given the arguments on both sides with rigid impartiality and supplied such information in going along as will enable the lay reader thoroughly to understand them. This is a question which all thinking persons must needs regard with profound interest and anxiety. If in the deliberate opinion of the country the judgments of the High Court of Parliament are habitually though unconsciously warped by party and political feelings and prejudices; if with such views and intentions they have strained and perverted the law of the land wickedly sheltering themselves under the unfortunate difference of opinion existing among the judges those who have been guilty of it will justly stand exposed to universal execration. It is no light matter even to propose such a possibility as that of profligacy or corruption in the administration of justice; above all in the highest tribunal in the land--the place of last resort for the subject. It is always with pain and regret that we hear even in the height of political excitement and hostility the faintest imputation from any quarter on judicial integrity. We have watched this case from first to last; and especially examined over and over again in a spirit of fearless freedom the grounds assigned for reversing the judgment and the position and character of those by whose _fiat_ that result was effected. We cannot bring ourselves to believe any thing so dreadful as that three judicial noblemen have deliberately violated their oaths and perpetrated so enormous an offence as that of knowingly deciding contrary to law. Those who publicly express that opinion incur a very grave responsibility. We are ourselves zealous but independent supporters of the present government; we applaud their institution of these proceedings; no one can lament more bitterly than we do that O'Connell should like many a criminal before him have escaped from justice through a flaw in the indictment; yet with all this we feel perfectly satisfied that the three peers who reversed the judgment against him believed that they were right in point of law. When we find so high an authority as Mr Baron Parke--as far as politics are concerned a strong Conservative--declaring that he cannot possibly bring himself to concur in opinion with his brethren; that another judge--Mr Justice Coltman--after anxious deliberation also dissents from his brethren; and when we give each of these judges credit for being able to appreciate the immense importance of _unanimity_ upon such a case as the present had it been practicable--can it seem really unreasonable or surprising that a corresponding difference of opinion should exist among the peers whose judicial duty it was to decide finally between the judges? It _is_ certainly a matter calculated to attract a _moment's_ attention that the judgment should have been reversed by the votes of three peers who concur in political opinion and opposition to the government who instituted the prosecution. But in fairness put another possible case. Suppose Lord Abinger had been alive and had concurred with the Chancellor and Lord Brougham would not another class of ardent partisans as naturally have remarked bitterly upon the coincidence of opinion between the peers whose three voices concurred in supporting the judgment of the court below? While we thus entirely exonerate Lords Denman Cottenham and Campbell from all imputation of intentionally giving effect to party and political bias it is difficult to suppose them or any other peer entirely free from _unconscious_ political bias; but in the nature of things is it not next to impossible that it should be otherwise in the case of men who combine in their own persons the legislative and judicial character and in the former capacity are unavoidably and habitually subject to party influences? When a Judicial question is under consideration of such extreme doubtfulness as almost to justify a vote either way (we must deal with men and things as we find them ) can it excite great surprise if even in the most honourable minds a political bias should _unconsciously_ evince its presence and just turn the scale? But here the case has turned upon one single point of the purest technicality which the House of Lords has deemed sufficient to cause a reversal of the judgment of the court below; and the question is have they done rightly? Are they right or wrong in point of strict law? In the language of Mr Justice Williams--the objection raised in behalf of the traversers ""is purely of a technical nature and to be examined in the same spirit of minute and exact criticism in which it was conceived.""[14] The dry question then is this: Is it a rule a principle a custom of English law that one good count will sustain a general judgment upon a writ of error in a criminal case although there should be also bad counts in the indictment? Is that a ""custom or maxim of our law "" or is it not? First then how is this to be ascertained? The illustrious commentator on the laws of England Mr Justice Blackstone [15] shall answer:-- ""Established _customs_ _rules_ and _maxims_ I take to be one and the same thing. For the authenticity of these maxims _rests entirely upon reception and usage_; and the only method of proving that this or that maxim is a rule of the common law _is by showing that it hath been always the custom to observe it_. But here a very natural and very material question arises: how are these customs or maxims to be known; and by whom is their validity to be determined? The answer is by the judges in the several courts of justice. They are the depositaries of the laws--_the living oracles who must decide in all cases of doubt_ and are bound by an oath to decide according to the law of the land."" These judges were appealed to by the House of Lords upon the present occasion; and by an overwhelming majority ""distinctly clearly and decidedly"" declared that the rule in question was a rule of the English law. _They had heard all the arguments calling its existence in question_ which Lord Denman Lord Cottenham and Lord Campbell had heard; they were _in the daily and hourly administration of that branch of the law with reference to which the question arose_; they took ample time to consider the matter and deliberately affirmed the existence of the rule and the valid grounds on which it rested. The highest legal authority in the land the Lord Chancellor corroborated their decision declaring that it ""has always been considered as a clear distinct and undoubted principle of the criminal law that one good count could sustain a general judgment on a writ of error."" Are Lord Lyndhurst and Sir Nicholas Tindal with eight of the judges palpably and manifestly wrong? It is certainly _possible_ though not we presume very probable. We fully recognise the _right_ of the judicial peers to examine the validity of the reasons assigned by the judges and to come to a conclusion opposite to theirs. We apprehend that the long recognition alone of the existence of a rule does not prevent its being impeached on sufficient reasons. Lord Tenterden as cautious and accurate judge as ever presided over a court of justice thus expressed himself in delivering the judgment of the court on a question of mercantile law[16]--""It is of great importance in almost every case that a rule once laid down and firmly established and continued to be acted upon for many years should not be changed _unless it appears clearly to have been founded on wrong principles_."" Have then Lords Denman Cottenham and Campbell succeeded in showing the rule in question to have been founded on wrong principles? After as close and fair an examination of the judgments given in the House of Lords as we are capable of bestowing upon any subject we have arrived at the conclusion that the Chancellor and judges were plainly right and the peers who differed from them as plainly wrong. They doubtless believed that they were eradicating an erroneous and mischievous practice from the administration of criminal law; but we entertain grave fears that they have not duly considered the many important reasons and necessities out of which that practice originated and which in our opinion will require the legislature either to restore it or devise some other expedient in lieu of it--if one so efficacious _can_ be found--after a very brief experience of the practical mischiefs and inconveniences which the decision of the House of Lords will entail upon the administration of criminal justice. Mr Justice Coltman observes [17] that ""in old times an indictment contained one single count only;"" and that ""now it has become usual to insert _many_ counts."" It _has_ become usual--it should rather be said _necessary_; but why? Because of the rigid precision which the law in spite of the subtle and complicated character of its modern mode of administration has long thought fit to require for the protection of the subject in the statement of an offence charged against an individual. Unless that degree of _generality_ in framing criminal charges which has been so severely reprobated in the present instance by Lord Denman and which led the judges unanimously to condemn the sixth and seventh counts shall be henceforth permitted justice _must_ so to speak be allowed to have many strings to her bow; otherwise the very great distinctness and particularity which constitute the legal notion of _certainty_ are only a trap and a snare for her. There is a twofold necessity for allowing the reasonable multiplication of counts: one to meet the difficulty often arising out of the adjustment of the statement in the charge to the evidence which is to support it; and the other to obviate the great difficulty in many cases of framing the charge with perfect legal certainty and precision. Look for a striking illustration at the sixth and seventh counts of this very indictment. Few practical lawyers we venture to think would have pronounced them insufficient before hearing those numerous astute and able arguments which have led the judges to that conclusion; and what if these had been the _only_ counts or one of them the sole count? Of course justice would have been defeated. Now the rule custom or practice--call it what you will--which has been annulled by the House of Lords was admirably adapted to meet in combination with the allowance of several counts the practical and perhaps inevitable difficulties which beset the attempt to bring criminals to justice; to prevent any injurious consequences from either _defective_ or _unproved_ counts; and we think we may truly state that no single instance as adduced during the argument of actual mischief or injury occasioned to defendants by the operation of this rule--we believe we may safely defy any one now to produce such a case. It is certainly possible for an anxious straining ingenuity to _imagine_ such cases; and where is the rule of law which in the infirmity of human institutions cannot be shown capable of occasioning _possible_ mischief and injustice? One important distinction has not we venture to think been kept constantly in view by the House of Lords in arriving at their recent decision; we mean the distinction between _defective_ counts and _unproved_ counts. It was principally in the former case that the annulled rule operated so advantageously for the interests of justice. Let us suppose a case. A man is charged with an offence; and the indictment contains three counts which we will call A B C--each differently describing the same offence. He is proved in court to have actually done an act to which the law annexes a punishment and a general verdict and judgment awarding the correct _kind_ of punishment are given and entered. If it afterwards became necessary to ""make up"" the record--_i. e._ to enter the proceedings in due and full form--it might appear that count A was essentially defective as containing no ""offence"" at all. But what did that signify--or what would it have signified if count B had also been bad--provided count C was a good one and warranted the punishment which had been inflicted? The only consequence was that the indictment was a little longer than it turns out that it needed to have been. Though several hooks had been used in order to give an additional chance of catching the fish that was not regretted when the fish having been caught it
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urned out that two out of the three had not been strong enough; and that had they alone been used the fish must have escaped. Let us see how the new rule laid down by the House of Lords will operate in future in such a case as the one above supposed; bearing in mind that it will have to be acted upon not merely by the judges of the superior courts at the assizes but by the chairmen--the _lay_ chairmen--of the courts of Quarter-Sessions. Let us imagine the indictment to be a long one and each count necessarily complicated in its allegations and refinements to meet very doubtful facts or very doubtful language in an Act of Parliament. A great number of prisoners are to be tried; but nevertheless the judge (lay or professional) has mastered the formidable record and points out to the jury two bad counts A and B as either not hitting the facts of the case or the language of the act--possibly neither. He orders them to be quashed or directs a verdict of not guilty upon them. He then has the verdict and judgment entered accordingly on count C (the count which he considers good.) The record is afterwards made up; a writ of error brought; the only count on which the judgment is given being C the court of error _decides that it is bad_ reverses the judgment and the prisoner is discharged; or the country is put to the expense and trouble of bringing and the prisoner unjustly harrassed by fresh proceedings which may perhaps end as disastrously as before! To escape from these serious difficulties it is proposed by Lord Denman [18] to leave the legal sufficiency of the counts for discussion before a court of error and to pass not one sentence but three distinct sentences on each count respectively apportioning to the offence thereby apparently charged the degree of punishment due to the guilt disclosed. Keeping his eye on the alarming possibility of a reversal of judgment what difficulties will not beset the path of the judge while engaged on this very critical duty? And why may not the indictment for _necessary_ caution's sake contain as there often are ten fifteen or twenty counts? we shall then have ten or fifteen distinct sentences delivered in open court--engrossed on the record--and dangling at once around the neck of the astounded and bewildered prisoner. Is _such_ a method of procedure calculated to secure respect for the administration of justice even if by means of such devices the ends of justice should be ultimately secured though it is easy to imagine cases in which such devices would after all fail; and we had framed several illustrations of such possibilities but our limits forbid their insertion: instances illustrating the mischievous operation of the rule equally in cases of defective and unproved counts--of felonies and misdemeanours--and in the latter case whether the indictment contained several offences or only varied statements of one offence. In the case first put what a temptation the new rule holds out to criminals who may be able to afford to bring a writ of error and so seriously embarrass the administration of justice! And if too poor to do it he will under the operation of the new rule be suffering punishment unjustly; for the only count selected may be bad or some one only of several may be bad and the judgment ought to be reversed. What was the operation of the old rule? Most salutary and decorous. No public account was taken of the innocuous aims so to speak taken by justice in order to hit her victim. If he fell the public saw that it was in consequence of a blow struck by her and concerned themselves not with several previous abortive blows. The prisoner knowing himself _proved_ actually guilty _and the numerous chances existing against him on the record_ if he chose to make pettifogging experiments upon its technical sufficiency submitted to his just fate. Let us take one more case--that of _murder_: we fear that on even such solemn and awful occasions the new rule will be found to operate most disadvantageously. There are necessarily several possibly many counts. Mr Baron Parke[19] admits that here the old rule should apply; viz. a general judgment of death which shall not be vitiated by one or several bad counts if there be a single good one. The new rule since laid down says however the contrary; that judgment must be reversed for a single bad count. Lord Denman to meet this difficulty would pass sentence ""upon some one""[20] of them and thereby exhaust the materials of punishment and so in effect give a ""judgment for one felony."" _But how is the record to be dealt with?_ If the prisoner choose to bring a writ of error and show a single bad count must not the judgment be reversed if entered generally? And if entered on one count with not guilty on all the others; and that one count proved bad while even _a single one_ of the rejected counts is good and would have been supported by the evidence given at the trial the prisoner can plead _autrefois acquit_ to a fresh indictment and so get off scot-free after having been incontestably proved guilty of the act of murder! Suppose then to avoid so fearful a result separate sentences of death be passed to say nothing of the unseemliness of the transaction in open court which _might_ be avoided: but how can it be avoided _on the record_ upon which it must be entered? Mr Baron Parke pronounces that such a procedure would be ""_superfluous and savour of absurdity_ ""[21] and that therefore ""in such a case the general judgment _might_ be good!"" Thus in order to _work_ the new rule Mr Baron Parke is forced to make the case of murder a double exception--viz. to the _adoption_ of the new rule at the trial and then to the _operation_ of the new rule before the court of error which must then hold that a single bad or a dozen bad counts will _not_ vitiate a general judgment if sustained by one good count! Does not all this suffice to show the desperate shifts to which even two such distinguished judges are driven in order to support the new rule and conceal its impracticability? Then why should the old lamp be exchanged for the new? We entertain we repeat very grave apprehension that the House of Lords has treated far too cavalierly the authority of the great Lord Mansfield than whom a more enlightened learned and cautious a judge probably never administered justice among mankind. He was not a man accustomed in delivering his judgments to ""utter things _needlessly_ and _inconsiderately_ "" as he is now charged with doing;[22] and when he declared the established rule of criminal law to be that which has now been so suddenly abrogated he spoke with the authority which nearly thirty years' judicial experience attaches to the opinion of a responsible master-mind. We ask with deep anxiety what will be the consequences of thus lightly esteeming such authority?--of impugning the stability of the legal fabric by asserting one-half of its materials to consist merely of ""law taken for granted?""[23]--and consequently not the product of experience and wisdom and to be got rid of with comparative indifference in spite of the deliberate and solemn judgment of an overwhelming majority of the existing judicial authorities of the land. The rule just abrogated has for a long series of years--for a century and a half--obviated a thousand difficulties and evils even if it should be admitted that the end was gained at the expense of some imperfections in a speculative and theoretical point of view and with the risk of _possibly_ inflicting injustice in some case which could be imagined by an ingenious and fertile fancy. The old rule gave ten chances to one in favour of justice; the new one gives ten chances to one _against_ her. We may be mistaken but we cannot help imagining that if Lord Cottenham unquestionably so able as an equity judge had on the maxim _cuique suâ arte credendum_ given a little more weight to the opinions of those whose whole lives had been passed not in equity but criminal courts or had seen for himself the working of the criminal law he would have paused before disturbing such complicated--necessarily complicated--machinery and would not have spoken of the consequences as being so very slight and unimportant--nay as so very beneficial. It was suggested by the three peers that the old rule had no better foundation than the indolence slovenliness and negligence of practitioners whom the salutary stringency of the new rule would stimulate into superior energy and activity. We cannot help regarding this notion however--for the preceding among many other reasons--as quite unfounded and perhaps arising out of a hasty glance at the alterations recently introduced into _civil_ pleadings and practice. But observe it required _an act of Parliament_ to effect these alterations (stat. 3 and 4 Will. IV. c. 42 ) the very first section reciting the ""_doubts which might arise as to the power of the judges to make such alterations without the authority of Parliament_;"" and yet the state of the laws calling for such potent interference was in an incomparably more defective and mischievous state than is imputed to the present criminal law. Then again any practical man will see in a moment that the strictness of the new system of civil pleading which to this moment occasions not infrequently a grievous failure of justice with all the ample opportunities afforded for deliberate examination and preparation of the pleadings cannot be safely applied to criminal law for many reasons principally because it rarely admits of that previous deliberation in drawing the indictment which must be based upon the often inaccurate statement of facts supplied by the depositions; and because a defect in them is generally speaking irremediable and fatal and crime goes unpunished. If the new rule is to be really acted upon in future we must in some way or other alter the whole machinery of the criminal law: but how to do so without seriously interfering with the liberty of the subject we know not. We affirm therefore that the old rule--viz. that one good count would support a general verdict and judgment though the indictment contained bad ones also--was a beneficial rule calculated to obviate _inevitable_ difficulties; and its policy was so transparent to all the great intellects which have both as judges or counsel been for so long a series of years concerned in criminal cases that no one ever thought of questioning it. The supposition of the three peers is one not very flattering to the distinguished predecessors with the great Lord Mansfield at their head--all of whom it charges with gross negligence ignorance and in plain words stupidity--in overlooking from time to time a point so patent and glaring. The Lord Chancellor's answer to their argument is triumphant; and we refer the reader to it.[24] We respectfully and firmly enter our protest against Lord Denman's mode of getting rid of the efficacy of a custom or practice which has been so long observed by the profession; and regard it as one calculated to sap the foundations of the common law of the land. An opinion a practice which has stood its ground for so long a series of years _unchallenged_ amidst incessant provocation to challenge it--and that too in the case of men of such vigilant astuteness learning and determination as have long characterized the English Bench and Bar--rest upon as solid grounds as are conceivable and warrants it subversion only after profound consideration and _repeated evidence of its mischievous operation_. Was any such evidence offered in the argument at the Bar of the House of Lords of persons who had suffered either a kind or a degree of punishment not warranted by law? None: but several cases were put in which--in spite of past experience to the contrary--inconvenience and injustice _might possibly_ be conceived to occur hereafter! What then led to this error--for error we must call it? Let us candidly express our opinion that the three peers were fairly ""_overpowered_""--to adopt the frank acknowledgment of one of the most distinguished among them--by the plausible fallacies urged upon them with such unprecedented pertinacity and ingenuity by the traversers' counsel. They have been influenced by certain disturbing forces against which they ought to have been vigilantly on their guard and which we shall now venture to specify as having occasioned their _forgetfulness of the true province of a court of error_--of the functions and duties of the members of such a court. A COURT OF ERROR occupies a high but necessarily a very limited sphere of action. Their observations and movements are restricted to the examination of a single document viz. the record which they are to scrutinize as closely as possible without regard to any of the incidents which may have attended the progress of the events narrated in it if these incidents do not appear upon record: and they must be guided by general principles--not such as might properly regulate a certain special and particular case but such as would guide them in all cases. And this is signified by the usual phrase that they ""must not travel out of the record."" Now we defy any one to read the judgments of the three peers without detecting the undue influence which one extrinsic and utterly inadmissible fact has had upon their minds; viz. the fact that the court below had actually _affirmed_ the validity of the two bad counts. They speak of its being ""_against notorious facts_""--against ""_common probabilities_ "" a ""palpably incredible fiction""--to conclude from the language of the record that the ""offences"" there mentioned did not include the pseudo offences contained in the sixth and seventh counts. In this particular case it _did_ undoubtedly happen in point of fact that the court below decided these counts to be valid counts: but the court of error can take no cognisance whatever of extrinsic facts. _Their_ only source of information--_their_ only means of knowledge is _the record_--beyond the four corners of which they have no power no authority to cast a single glance; and within which are contained all the materials upon which by law the judges of a court of error can adjudicate and decide. The Court in the present case ought thus to have contemplated the record in the abstract--and with reference to the _balance of possibilities_ in such cases that the court below had affirmed or condemned the vicious counts: which very balance of possibilities shows the impropriety of being influenced by speculations based on matters _dehors_ the record. However numerous and mischievous may have been the errors committed by the inferior court _a court of error_ can take no cognisance of them if they do not appear specifically and positively upon the record however valid may be the claim which these errors may notoriously prefer _to the interference of the executive_. Consider what a very serious thing it is--what a shock to the public confidence in the administration of justice--to reverse a judgment pronounced after due deliberation and under the gravest responsibilities by a court of justice! The law and constitution are properly very tender in the exercise of such a perilous power and have limited it to the case of ""MANIFEST"" error--that is not the vehement the immense _probability_ that there has been error--but the CERTAINTY of such error _necessarily and exclusively appearing from the record itself_. To act upon speculation instead of certainty in these cases is dangerous to the last degree and subversive of some of the fundamental principles of English jurisprudence. ""Judgment may be reversed in a criminal case by writ of error "" says Blackstone ""for NOTORIOUS (_i. e._ palpable manifest patent) mistakes in the judgment as when a man is found guilty of PERJURY (_i. e._ of a misdemeanour ) and RECEIVES THE JUDGMENT OF FELONY."" This is the true doctrine; and we submit that it demonstrates the error which has been committed in the present instance. Let us illustrate our case by an example. Suppose a man found guilty under an indictment containing two counts A and B. To the offence in count A the legislature has annexed one punishment only viz. _transportation_; to that in count B _imprisonment_. The court awards sentence of transportation; and on a writ of error being brought the court above pronounces count A to be bad. Here it appears INEVITABLY and ""manifestly"" _from the record_ that there has been error; there is no escaping from it; and consequently judgment _must_ be reversed. So where the judgment is the infliction of punishment ""for his offen_ces_"" aforesaid: there being only two offences charged one of which is contained in a bad count containing therefore no ""_offence_"" at all. Apply this principle to the present case. Does this record in sentencing the defendant ""for his offences aforesaid "" _conclusively_ and _necessarily_ show that the court regarded the sixth and seventh counts as containing ""offences "" and awarded punishment in respect of them? We unhesitatingly deny it. The merest tyro can see that it is _possible_--and if so where is the NECESSARY error?--that the judges excluded the vicious counts from their consideration; that they knew the law and could discern what were and what were not ""offences;"" and annexed punishment to only true ""_offences_"" in the eye of the law. The word ""offence"" is a term of art and is here used in its strictest technical sense. What is that sense? It is thus defined by an accurate writer on law: ""an _offence_ is an act committed _against a law_ or omitted _when the law requires it_ and punishable by it.""[25] This word is then properly used in the record--in its purely technical sense. It can have no other meaning; and an indictment cannot with great deference to Mr Baron Parke [26] contain an ""offence"" which is not ""legally described in it;"" that is unless any act charged against the defendant be shown upon the face of the indictment to be a breach of the law no ""_offence_ "" as regards that act is contained in or alleged by the indictment. The House of Lords therefore has exceeded the narrow province and limited authority of a _court of error_ or has presumed upon illegal and insufficient grounds that the Irish judges did not know which were and which were not ""_offences_ "" and that they did in fact consider those to be offences which were not although the record contains matter to satisfy the allegation to the letter--viz. a _plurality_ of real ""offences."" Where is Lord Campbell's authority for declaring this judgment ""_clearly_ erroneous in awarding punishment for charges which are _not offences in point of law_?"" Or Lord Cottenham's for saying that ""the record states that the judgment was _upon all the counts bad as well as good_?"" They have none whatever; their assertions appear to us with all due deference and respect purely arbitrary and gratuitous fallacies; they do violence to legal language--to the language of the record and foist upon it a ridiculous and false interpretation. We admit with Lord Cottenham that ""where the sentence is of a nature applicable _only_ to the bad counts "" it is incurably vicious and judgment must be reversed--it is the very case which we put above; but how does that appear in the judgment under consideration? Not at all. The two cases are totally different. And this brings us to another palpable fallacy--another glaring and serious error into which we cannot help thinking the House of Lords has fallen and which is abundantly evidenced by their judgment: viz. that a court of error has any concern whatever with or can draw any inference whatever from the AMOUNT of punishment. The reasoning of the judges is here perfectly conclusive. ""If a sentence be OF THE KIND which the law allows the _degree_ of it is not within the competence of a court of error. If a fine be an appropriate part of the sentence of a court below the excess of it is no ground of error. What possible line can be drawn as to the reasonableness and excess so as to affect it with illegality? It is obvious there can be none. If in _this_ case the sentence had been _transportation_ the sentence would have been _illegal_: Why? Because not of _the kind_ authorized by law in such a case."" Any presumption therefore made by a court of error from the _amount_ of punishment awarded as to which of the counts had been taken into consideration by the judges in giving their judgment is manifestly based upon insufficient and illegal grounds. Can these principles have been duly pondered by the lords? We fear not. Look at Lord Cottenham's supposition of two counts for libel: one for a very malignant one the other for one comparatively innocuous; and a sentence of heavy fine and imprisonment passed evidently in respect of the malignant libel which a court of error decides to be no libel at all. Lord Cottenham appears to rely greatly on this supposed case; but is it not perfectly clear that it is not a case of error _on the record_--and therefore totally inapplicable to the case which he had to consider? The defendant would have certainly sustained an injury in that case; Where is the remedy? There is _no legal_ remedy any more than there is when a man has been wrongfully _acquitted_ of a manifestly well-proved crime or unjustly convicted of a felony. The mercy or more properly the sense of _justice_ entertained by the _executive_ must be appealed to in either case; such power of interposition having in the imperfection of human institutions been wisely reserved to the supreme power to afford redress in all cases where the LAW cannot. Lord Cottenham's reasoning appears to us in short based upon two fallacies--a _petitio principii_ in _assuming_ that judgment was entered upon all the counts; the _question_ being _was_ it so entered? The other is that a court of error is competent to infer from the _amount_ of punishment that a defendant has been sentenced upon bad counts. Again: the three peers admit that if a sole count contain a quantity of aggravating but really ""_irrelevant stuff_"" (to adopt Lord Denman's expression ) it will not prejudice the judgment provided the count also contain matter which will legally support that judgment. Why should the judges be given credit for being able to discard from consideration these legally extrinsic matters in a single count and not also by the exercise of the very same discretion be able to discard in considering the record irrelevant and insufficient counts such as in the eye of the law have no existence are mere nonentities? For these and many other reasons which might be assigned had we not already exceeded our limits we have after a close and a candid study of the judgments delivered by the three peers and the convincing the conclusive judgments of the great majority of the judges come without hesitation to the conclusion that the Lords have not merely decided incorrectly but have precipitately removed a chief corner-stone from the fabric of our criminal law and have incurred a very grave responsibility in so doing. We cannot help thinking that they have forgotten the fundamental distinction which our constitution makes between ""jus _dare_"" and ""jus _dicere_."" _Jus dederunt non jus dixerunt_--an error however easily to be accounted for by a reference to their double capacity and the confusion it occasions between their judicial and legislative functions. We view with grave apprehension the power exercised by three members of the House of Lords of overturning so well-established a rule and custom as that attested to them by the judges. What security have we for the integrity of our common law? In the face of the judges' decisions how decorous and dignified would have been the conduct of the House of Lords in giving way even if they had differed from the judges; lamenting that such _was_ the law of the land and resolving to try and persuade the legislature to alter it as has often been done. Witness the statute of 1 and 2 Geo. IV. c. 78 passed in consequence of the decision of the House of Lords in _Rowe_ v. _Young_ 2 Brod. and Bing. 165. The House of Commons has resented such interference with the laws by the House of Lords; who in the case of _Reeve_ v. _Young_ (1 Salkeld 227 ) ""_moved by the hardship of the case_ reversed the judgments of the courts below contrary to the opinion of all the judges."" But the House of Commons ""_in reproof of this assumption of legislative authority in the Lords_ "" immediately brought in the 10 and 11 Will. III. c. 16 which passed into a statute.[27] May we venture to suggest that the elaborate and long and deeply-considered opinions of the judges of the land who had been summoned by the Lords to advise them were worthy of more than the single day or day and a half's examination which they received before they were so peremptorily pronounced to be ""_clearly_ erroneous?"" And may we with no little pain suggest to Lord Campbell that the array of _Gamaliels_ at whose feet he had _sate_ during his whole life--whose feet he had indeed so very recently quitted--whose integrity whose profound learning whose sagacity none has had larger experience of than he--are entitled to look at his cavalier-like treatment of their best services with a feeling stronger than that of mere surprise? In concluding this long article--in expressing our conviction of the error of the Lords--we feel one consolation at all events--that if we err we err in good company; and that we are not conscious of having transgressed the limits of legitimate discussion in exercising as undoubted a right of its kind as these three peers exercised in branding so overwhelming a majority of the judges of the land with the imputation of ignorance of those laws which all their lives had been spent in administering. The very existence of the ancient common law of the land is put in jeopardy by such a procedure as that which we have been discussing; and our honest conviction however erroneous that such is the case will suffice to excuse the freedom of our strictures; if indeed we require an excuse for echoing the stern declaration of on forefathers--_Nolumus leges Angliæ mutari_. As to him who has reaped the benefit of this lamentable miscarriage--Mr O'Connell--the law of the land has nevertheless been vindicated and the stability of the empire secured to a far greater extent than he is willing to acknowledge. Agitation he must continue; he _must_ play out his base and sordid game. But his powers of mischief are manifestly and seriously crippled; and we quit him with the language addressed by Pope to a mean one of _his_ day-- ""Uncaged then let the harmless monster rage-- Secure in dulness madness want and age!"" FOOTNOTES: [1] See the Judgment of the Judges ordered by the House of Lords to be printed (and from which the quotations in this article have been made ) read to the House of Lords by Lord Chief-Justice Tindal on the 2d September 1844. [2] State Prosecutions pp. 9 10. No. CCCXXXIX. Vol. LV. [3] Blackstone's Commentaries vol. i. p. 302. [4] Several distinct offences may undoubtedly be included in as many counts in one indictment. [5] Two of the defendants' (the two priests) names do not appear in the record of the verdict as one of them (Tyrrell) died before the trial and as to Tierney the Attorney-General entered a _nolle prosequi_. [6] _Comyn's Digest_ title _Pleader_ 3 B. 18. [7] This is the proper expression. See _M'Queen's Practice of the House of Lords _ p. 256. ""They are summoned _for their advice in point of law_ and the greater dignity of the proceedings"" of the Lords.--(_Blackst Comm._ p. 167.) [8] 1 _Blackstone's Commentaries _ p. 69. [9] Opinions of the Judges &c.--(Pp. 1-3.) [10] Opinions of the Judges p. 23. [11] 3 _Blackstone's Commentaries_ p. 395. [12] We quote from the edition of Lord Denman's judgment sanctioned by himself and edited by D. Leahy Esq. (one of the counsel in the cause.) [13] A ""_demurrer_"" is the mode by which any pleading civil or criminal is denied to be (whether in form or substance) sufficient in point of _law_; and a _plea_ is the mode by which is denied the _truth_ of the _facts_ which the pleading alleges. [14] Opinions of the Judges p. 19. [15] Vol. I. pp. 68-9. [16] Williams v. Germaine 7 Bar. and Cress. 476. [17] Opinions of the Judges p. 17. [18] Judgment (by Leahy ) p. 36. [19] Opinions of the Judges p. 28. [20] Judgment &c. p. 43. [21] Opinions of the Judges p. 28. [22] Lord Denman's judgment. [23] Ditto. [24] Ante. [25] West's Symbolography and Jacob's and Tomlin's Law. [26] Opinions of the Judges p. 29. [27] 2 Bla. Comm. 169; and see Mr Christian's Note. MY COLLEGE FRIENDS. No. I JOHN BROWN. Did you ever happen to know a man who spent a whole Christmas vacation in Oxford and survived it? I did. And this is how it came to pass. ""Frank "" said the governor one evening after dinner when the conversation had turned upon my approaching return to college and the ticklish question of supplies had been disposed of--""when the deuce do you mean to go up for your degree? I have a notion this next term is your fifteenth young man?"" ""Why no sir--that is not exactly; you know""---- ""Oh! true--I forgot that confounded rustication business. Well it's your fourteenth at all events and I think that's enough."" ""Well sir I was thinking to have a shy at it after Christmas."" ""Shy at it! You've always been _shying_ at it I think. I hope it mayn't end in a _bolt_ Master Frank!"" I laughed dutifully at the paternal wit and promised to go to work in earnest the moment I reached Oxford. This was a resolution announced periodically like the ballot question and with much the same result. So the governor only shook his head yawned looked at the bottle which stood between us nearly empty and prepared apparently for an adjournment. ""I'll tell you what sir "" said I emptying what remained in the decanter into my glass and swallowing it with a desperate energy befitting the occasion ""I'll stay up the Christmas vacation and read."" ""The deuce will you! Why Frank "" continued the governor sorely puzzled ""you know your cousins are coming here to spend the Christmas and I thought we should all make a merry party. Why can't you read a little at home? You can get up something earlier you know--much better for your health--and have two hours or so clear before breakfast--no time like the morning for reading--and then have all the day to yourself afterwards. Eh why not Frank?"" ""If you'll allow me to ring for another bottle of this Madeira sir (I declare I think it's better than our senior common-room have and they don't consider theirs small-beer ) I'll tell you.----I never could read at home sir; it's not in the nature of things."" ""I doubt whether it's much in your nature to read any where Frank: I confess I don't see much signs of it when you are here."" ""In the first place sir I should never have a room to myself."" ""Why there's the library for you all day long Frank; I'm sure I don't trouble it much."" ""Why sir in these days if there are any young ladies in the house they take to the library as a matter of course: it's the regular place for love-making: mammas don't follow them into the company of folios and quartos while there are three volumes of the last novel on the drawing-room table; and the atmosphere is sentimentality itself; they mark favourite passages and sigh illustrations."" ""Precious dusty work Frank flirtations among my book-shelves must be; but I suppose the girls don't go much beyond the bindings: they don't expect to get husbands by being blue."" ""Not exactly sir; reviews and title-pages constitute a good part of modern literary acquirements. But upon my honour sir one hears young ladies now talk of nothing but architecture and divinity. Botany is quite gone out; and music unless there's a twang of Papistry about it is generally voted a bore. In my younger days--(really sir you needn't laugh for I haven't had a love affair these two years)--in my younger days when one talked about similarity of tastes and so forth it meant that both parties loved moonlight hated quadrilles adored Moore's Melodies and were learning German; now nine girls out of ten have a passion for speculative divinity and social regeneration."" ""Ay one sort of nonsense does just as well for them as another: your cousin Sophy bothers me to build an Elizabethan pigsty and wanted her poor mother to dance with the butler in the servants' hall last Christmas when the fellow was as drunk as an owl: I hope it mayn't end in her figuring off herself with the footman; for Sophy is rather a pet of mine and a right-down English girl a
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ter all. But Frank if you can't read in peace in the library you surely could have a room fitted up for yourself up stairs; and you shall have the great reading-desk with lights that was your grandfather's that stands in my little sanctum; (he made more use of it poor man than I do;) or I don't know but what I might spare you the little room itself if it would suit you--eh?"" ""Oh my dear father! I wouldn't disturb you on any account "" said I rather alarmed at the extent of my worthy parent's liberality in the cause and fearing it might end in the offer of the whole family to pack themselves in the attics and leave me a first floor to myself--calculating too the amount of hard reading commensurate with such imposing preparations. ""What would become of the justice business of the parish sir if we shut up your tribunal? I don't suppose my mother would like to have the constables and the illegitimates introduced either into the drawing-room or the kitchen "" (this was as I meant it to be a poser; if Mr Hawthorne senior had a hobby it was his magisterial authority.) ""The fact is that at home up-stairs or down-stairs I couldn't read. I should have not only my own idleness but the various idlenesses of the whole family combined to fight against. My sisters would be knocking at the door every half hour if only to ask how I was getting on: Bob would tease me to come out skating and Charles would start me perpetually after wild-ducks or woodcocks. And you yourself sir if I am not much mistaken would think it odd if I didn't take a ride with you as usual after breakfast. Then one can't be expected to crawl about one's books by candlelight on a winter's morning; and after a six o'clock dinner who can read? After tea you know sir my mother always likes a rubber when I'm at home; and if you are going to have those girls Jane and Sophy down this Christmas""---- ""Ah! well--I see Frank; I'm afraid it's a hopeless case. Perhaps you had better stay up at Oxford after all; you won't have much to disturb you there I suppose. If you don't get moped to death I certainly don't see what's to hinder your reading. You don't feel inclined to try North Wales in the winter I suppose eh?"" ""No sir "" said I swallowing a last glass of Madeira at a gulp and rising to cut short a conversation which was beginning to take rather an awkward turn--""No sir not exactly."" ""Why I don't know Frank: why not? you'd find the climate cooler you know "" persevered the governor as he followed me into the drawing-room. So in Oxford it was settled that I should stay; a tolerable character for the last term or two and the notorious fact that I was going up at Easter ostensibly for a class obtained me the necessary permission: strange that in the University one should require leave to read! My friends John Brown and Harry Chesterton were to stay up too; and we promised ourselves some hours of hard work and many merry ones together. The vice-principal and one of the juniors the only fellows that would be in residence were both gentlemen and always treated the under-graduates as such; we should get rid of the eternal rounds of beef and legs of mutton that figured at the commoners' table in hall; there would be no morning chapel; and altogether having had nearly enough of the noisy gayety of a full term we looked forward to the novelty of a few quiet weeks in college with a degree of pleasure which surprised even ourselves. But alas! under-graduates are but mortals and subject to somewhat more than the ordinary uncertainties of mortal life. It wanted but a week to the end of term; all our plans were settled. Brown was to migrate from his own rooms in ""Purgatory""--as we used to call the little dark back quadrangle where from sheer laziness which made him think moving a bore he had remained ever since his first location there as a freshman up three pair of stairs; so that when his intimate friends wished to ascertain if he was at home we used to throw a stone through the window--and was to take up his abode in ""Elysium "" where he would be Chesterton's next-door neighbour and in the same number as myself. We were to have a quiet breakfast in each others' rooms in turn every morning; no gross repast of beef-steaks and ""spread-eagle"" fowls but a slight relish of anchovy toast potted shrimps or something equally ethereal; and the _chasse-café_ limited to one cigar and no bottled porter. It was cruel to interfere with such unexceptionable arrangements; but a college though it have a head has no heart worth mentioning; and in an evil hour they rusticated John Brown. At least they forbade his staying up the Christmas vacation; and for the credit of my friend's character let me explain. Why John Brown should have been a person particularly distasteful to the fellows of ---- College was a matter at first sight rather hard to understand. He was not what is called a rowing man; was never found drunk in the quad or asleep at the hall lecture; never sported a pink or drove a team; was not known to have been concerned in any of the remarkable larks which occurred in our times; was neither an agent in the Plague of Frogs nor an actor in the private theatricals; was not a member of the Agricultural Society which made the remarkable experiments with clover and ryegrass in the college quadrangle; had no talent for midnight howling sang very small in a chorus capped all the fellows diligently and paid his battels to the minute. He was known to have asked twice for the key of the library put down his name for the senior tutor's pet lecture in ""Cornelius Nepos "" bought the principal's sermon on the ""Via Media "" and was suspected of having tried to read it. He was not clever enough to sneer at the tutors or stupid enough to disgust them. He was too sleepy to keep late hours too fat to pull in the boat too stingy to give supper-parties. How on earth came the fellows not to like John Brown? ""A most respectable man "" the principal always said he was. ""Sir "" said he to his anxious father when at the end of his second term he took the opportunity of a professional visit to Oxford to call to know how the hope of the Browns was progressing--""Sir I consider your son a most respectable person: I may say a most respectable person;"" and as the principal had taken wine with him once at dinner and bowed to him at collections and read ""Mr John Brown"" twice upon a card at the end and beginning of term and thus had every opportunity of forming an opinion and expressed that opinion oracularly in a Johnsonian fashion Governor Brown was satisfied. How did the fellows come not to like John Brown?--pronounced ""most respectable"" by the principal--declared by his scout to be ""the quietest gentleman as he ever a knowed;"" admitted by the under-graduates to be ""a monstrous good fellow but rather slow;"" how came John Brown to fail in recommending himself to the favour of his pastors and masters--the dean and tutors of ----? Why in the first place John Brown the elder was a wine-merchant; a well-educated man a well-behaved man; but still a wine-merchant. Now the dean's father was--I beg his pardon had been--a linen-draper; neither well-educated nor well behaved; in short an unmitigated linen-draper. Consequently the dean's adoration of the aristocracy was excessive. There are few such thorough tuft-hunters as your genuine Oxford Don; the man who without family or station in society often without any further general education and knowledge of the world than is to be found at a country grammar-school is suddenly upon the strength of some acquaintance with Latin and Greek or quite as often from having first seen the light in some fortunately endowed county elevated to the dignity of a fellowship and permitted to take rank with gentlemen. The ""high table"" in hall the Turkey carpet and violet cushioned chair in the common room the obsequious attention of college servants and the more unwilling ""capping"" of the under-graduates to such a man are real luxuries and the relish with which he enjoys them is deep and strong. And if he have but the luck to immortalize himself by holding some University office to strut through his year of misrule as proctor or even as his humble ""pro "" then does he at once emerge from the obscurity of the family annals a being of a higher sphere. And when there comes up to commemoration a waddling old lady and two thin sticks of virginity who horrify the college butler by calling the vice-principal ""Dick "" no wonder that they return to the select society of their native town with an impression that though Oxford was a very fine place and they had real champagne and wax candles and every thing quite genteel and dear Richard was very kind still they did think he was grown rather proud as he never once asked after his old acquaintances the Smiths and didn't like to be teased about his old flame Mary. No wonder that in the visits few and far between which during the long vacation the pompous B.D. pays to his humble relations in the country (when he has exhausted the invitations and the patience of his more aristocratic friends ) they do not find a trace remaining of the vulgar boy who some twelve years ago quitted the seat of the provincial muses to push his fortunes in the University of Oxford. In vain does his uncle give up his after-dinner pipe and in place of the accustomed Hollands and water astonish the dusty decanter with port of an unknown vintage in honour of his illustrious nephew; in vain does the good old lady afore-mentioned the unworthy mother of so bright a son quit the instruction of pious Mr Jabez Jenkins the ""Independent"" minister and turn orthodox and high-church for the nonce when her dearly beloved Richard ""officiates"" for the rev. the vicar; no ties of home or kindred no memories of boyhood no glow of early recollections touch the case-hardened parasite of college growth; and when he has banished his younger brother to Australia under pretext of making his fortune married both his sisters and erected a cheap monument to the linen-draper's widow as the ""relict of the late Thomas Thompson _Esquire_ "" he waits in peaceful expectation of a college living with the consciousness of having done his duty by his relations and delivered himself from a drag upon his new career. I do not mean to set too high a value on gentle birth or to limit nobility of character by that of blood; I believe my tailor to be one of nature's gentlemen (he never duns ) and I know my next neighbour Sir John thirteenth baronet as he is to possess the soul of a huckster because he sells his fruit and game: still these are the exceptions not the rule; and there are few cases of men rising from low origin--rising that is from circumstances not from ability--not the architects but the creations of their own fortunes (for that makes all the difference)--who do not carry with them through all the gradations of their advancement the plebeian instincts while they forget perhaps the homely virtues of the class from which they spring. There is a nobility of birth seldom to be counterfeited or mistaken wholly irrespective of the rank and wealth which are either its graceful accompaniments or its insufficient substitutes; fostered and strengthened by early habits and education but none the less originally innate--as much an endowment from heaven as beauty strength or talent and more valuable than all. Many men have the tact to adapt themselves to the station and the society to which they have risen however much above their own level; they acquire the habits and the tastes seldom the feelings of a gentleman. They act the character well; it is carefully studied and on the whole well sustained; it is a correct and painstaking performance and the points tell distinctly; but there is throughout that indirect appeal to the audience which marks it to be only acting. They are more studiously aristocratic than the aristocracy and have a horror of vulgarity which is in itself essentially vulgar. And such a man was the dean of ----. On the philosophic principle of hating all to whom we are under obligations if there was any thing he cordially detested it was trade. His constant aim was to forget his unfortunate origin himself if possible to lead others who knew him to forget it and to keep strangers from knowing it at all. And as he shrank from every shape and sound plebeian so he industriously cultivated every opening to ""good society."" There was not a member of his own college graduate or under-graduate of any pretensions to family who could not speak from experience of the dean's capital dinners and his invariable urbanity. No young honourable or tenth cousin to an honourable ever got into a row that he had not cause to bless the dean's good offices for getting him out. And if some of the old stagers contented themselves with eating his dinners and returning them in the proportion of one to five the unsophisticated gratitude of youth less cunning in the ways of the world declared unhesitatingly in its own idiomatic language ""that old Hodgett was a regular brick and gave very beany feeds."" And so his fame travelled far beyond his own collegiate walls and out-college honourables and gentlemen-commoners were content to make the acquaintance and eat the dinners that were so freely offered. And as the dean had really some cleverness and ""a well-assorted selection"" of anecdotes and illustrations ""from the best markets "" (as his worthy father would have advertised it ) and could fill the chair at his own entertainments with ease if not with gracefulness and moreover was not close with his purse-strings and could always be reckoned safe for a L.20 note if a dun was troublesome (well knowing that even under-graduates make exceptions in favour of debts of honour ) he became among his younger friends especially a very popular man. And when those who had enjoyed his good fare and profited by his friendly offices with duns and proctors found that after all he was ""nobody "" all they said was that it was a pity and that he was a monstrous good fellow none the less. And one invited him to spend the Christmas with him down at the governor's in Kent where there was to be a regular houseful and merry-making of all sorts and another would have him into Norfolk in September for the shooting--(the dean never shot but wisely said nothing about it until he got into good quarters when he left his younger friends to beat the stubbles while he walked or drove with Lady Mary and Lady Emily and eat the partridges;)--so that on the whole he felt himself rather an ill-used individual if there was a week of the vacation for which he had not an invite. If such a rare and undesirable exception did happen seldom indeed did he bestow himself even for a day or two upon his mother and sisters at Nottingham; and never did he by any oversight permit a letter to be addressed to him there; if it could not conveniently bear the address of some of his titled entertainers it was to meet him at his college to which he usually retired to await with sufficient discontent an invitation or the beginning of term; while he took pains to have it understood that his temporary seclusion was hardly spared him from the hospitable importunities of those whom he delighted to call ""his many friends "" in order to attend to important business. Occasionally indeed it would happen that the natural sagacity of some old English gentleman or the keen eye of an experienced courtier would fathom at a glance the character of his son's invited guest and treat him with a distant politeness which he could neither mistake nor get over; but on the whole his visits among his aristocratic entertainers were agreeable enough and he was not a man to stick at an occasional trifle. His youthful _protégés_ were glad to be able to repay in the country many kind offices at Oxford and to become patronizers in their turn; and the seniors redoubled in the case of their son's friend the hospitality and courtesy they would have readily shown to a stranger and were not eager to scrutinize the motives which might have induced him to be civil to the hopeful stripling whom in their partial view the whole university might well have delighted to honour. In the eyes of such a man John Brown was not likely at first starting to find much favour. Had he been a rich man and sported the velvet cap and silk gown the unhappy fact of his father's being in trade might have been winked at. If not in the front rank of the dean's friends he might have filled a vacant seat occasionally at his dinner-table and been honoured with a friendly recognition in the quadrangle. At it was he did not condescend to remember that such a man was on the college books. Happy ignorance if only it could have lasted. But one unlucky morning a late supper party had decidedly thinned the attendance at the hall lecture; and Mr Hodgett having been disappointed of an invitation to a very select dinner at the principal's was in no very benignant humour and ""hauled up"" the defaulters. Among them was one of the dean's pets--who having done the same thing a dozen times before was rather astonished at the summons--and the usually regular John Brown. What excuses the rest of the party made is immaterial. John I believe said nothing beyond a remark as to his having been rarely absent. The result however was that he and the rest got an imposition which cost them half-a-guinea each to get done by the under-cook (it was Greek _with_ the accents which comes expensive ) while the Honourable Lumley Skeffington was dismissed with a jocular reproof and an invitation to breakfast. Now if Mr Skeffington had had the sense to have kept his own and his friend's counsel this might have been all very well. But being a somewhat shallow-pated youth and a freshman to boot he thought it a very fine thing to talk about at his next wine-party and boast that he could cut lecture and chapel when he pleased--the dean and he understood each other. Brown happened to be present; (for though not good company enough for the dean he was for his betters; your _parvenu_ is far more exclusive in his society than your born gentleman;) he quietly enquired into the facts; and finding that what he had before been inclined to consider as undue severity in his own case was positively an injustice compared with that of another appreciating thoroughly the character of the party he had to deal with and coupling the present with certain previous minor snubbings from the same quarter he from that moment declared war. Now the Rev. Mr Hodgett sedate and dignified as he was had better have danced a hornpipe in his thinnest silks amongst a bed of stinging nettles or have poked sticks into a wasp's nest or amused himself with any other innocent recreation than have made an enemy of John Brown. It was what he himself would have called a wrong move and it played the deuce with his game. John was the very man who could annoy him and he did. None of us knew he had so much ingenuity or so much malice in his composition until he commenced his hostilities against the dean. The fact was he was more piqued perhaps than any other man in college would have been by so small a matter. Too sensible to be really ashamed of being the son of a man in trade he was conscious nevertheless that it was in some sort a disadvantage to him and that descended as he was from an old and once knightly line (his father had been an ill-used younger son ) he did not quite occupy his proper position in the world. His feeling of this made him sensitive to a fault; it led him rather to shun than to seek the society of his contemporaries; and much as he was esteemed by myself and others who knew him well I will not say that he was a universal favourite. Men did not understand him: at that time of life (alas why not always?) most of us are open and free-hearted; they did not relish his shy and reserved manner his unwillingness to take the initiative in any social intercourse his _exigéance_ to a certain extent of those forms which the freedom of college friendship is apt to neglect. ""Why didn't you turn into my rooms the other night when you came in from Oriel?"" said I to him early in our acquaintance. ""Hobbs says he told you I had some men to supper.""--""You didn't ask me "" was the quiet reply.--""I couldn't see you or else I should; but you might have known I wanted you; don't serve me such a trick as that again old fellow."" But it let me into a secret of his character and ever after that I was as particular in my invitations as possible. Men thought him proud and cold and touchy which he was not; and stingy which he scorned to be from his contempt for ostentation in any shape. The rarity of his wine-parties and his never having other wines produced than port or sherry he himself explained to me--""Men would say it was easy for me to sport claret and champagne when I could get them for nothing."" But if an unthinking freshman broke out in praise of the said excellent port or sherry (as indeed they might well be pardoned for doing considering the quality of what they commonly imbibed ) he would say at once--""Yes I believe it is good; I know my father considers it so and it has been in bottle above twelve years."" There was no shirking the question for a moment. And excellent wine he got for me from his father at a moderate price at his own offer. Hating then as he did undisguisedly the tuft-hunting and affectation of _haut-ton_ which was so foreign to his own nature he felt perhaps excusably annoyed at their palpable existence and apparent success in a man whose station as he said ought to have kept him from meanness if it could not give him dignity. At all events his method of retaliation--""taking down the dean""--as he called it was most systematic and persevering. He let the matter of the imposition pass over quietly; was for some months doubly attentive to all his college duties; carefully avoided all collision with his adversary; kept out of his way as much as he could; and whenever brought into contact with him was as respectful as if he had been the Vice-chancellor. This had its effect: John began to rise in the dean's good graces; and when he called upon him in the usual course of etiquette to mention that he should be absent the vacation of three days which intervenes between the two short terms the meeting on one side at least was almost cordial. A day or two after his return (he had been to visit a friend he said ) we were in his rooms at breakfast together when the dean's scout entered with his master's compliments to request Mr Brown's company to breakfast. Then it was that John's eyes dilated and he rubbed his hands as soon as the door was shut with an excitement rather unusual. ""Do you know who breakfasts with the man to-morrow? Do you Hawthorne?"" ""Why I had a message this morning "" said I ""but I don't mean to go. I shall have a headach or something to-morrow. I have no notion of going there to eat my own bread and butter and drink his very bad tea and see a freshman swallow greasy ham and eggs enough to turn the stomach of any one else; and then those Dons always make a point of asking me to meet a set of regular muffs that I don't know. The last time I went there were only two reading-men in spectacles perfect dummies and that ass young Medlicott who talks about hunting and I believe never crossed the back of anything higher than a donkey."" ""You had better come to-morrow; perhaps you will have some fun."" ""Why who is going there do you know?"" ""I haven't a notion; but do come. I must go and we will sit together and I'll get the cook to send up a dish of deviled kidneys for you."" There was something in his eye as he said this which I could not make out and it rather puzzled me to find him so willing to be of the party himself. However he was an odd fellow so I promised to go and we parted; certainly with little anticipation on my part of what the ""fun"" was to be. Nine o'clock the next day arrived and punctual to the minute might be seen two freshmen from opposite corners of the quadrangle steering for the dean's rooms. Ten minutes afterwards an interesting procession of coffee-pots and tin-covers warned me to finish my toilet; and following them up the staircase I found a tolerably large party assembled. ""Just in time--just in time Mr Hawthorne "" said the dean who appeared to be in high good-humour ""as my old pupil Sir Charles Galston used to say (you don't know him do you? he's your county man too I believe )--as he always used to say 'Gad Hodgett just in time to see the muffins break cover!' ha ha! Take those tins off Robert."" We sat down and for some time every thing went on as slow as it usually does at breakfast parties. At length taking advantage of a pause after laughing his loudest at one of our host's stories John Brown broke out with ""How is Mrs Hodgett sir?"" If Mrs Hodgett instead of the dean's most respectable mother had been his lawful wife hitherto unacknowledged through fear of losing his fellowship he could not have looked more thoroughly horrified. I myself was considerably taken aback; some of the other men who knew the reverend gentleman's tenderness on the subject of his family connexions picked their chicken-bones and stirred their coffee with redoubled attention. John Brown and the two freshmen alone looked as cool as cucumbers. ""Eh? oh--h "" stammered the party addressed ""quite well thank you--quite well. Let me give you some of this--oh it's all gone! We'll have some more; will one of you be kind enough to ring? My friend Lord""---- ""No more for me thank you sir I beg "" said John. ""Have you heard from Mrs Hodgett since the vacation?"" ""No--yes; oh dear yes several times!"" (It was about five days back.) ""She was quite well thank you. In town at present I believe. You were in town during the vacation I think Mr Wartnaby? Did you meet your uncle Sir Thomas there or any of the family?"" ""Sir T-T-Thom...."" began young Wartnaby who stammered terribly. ""I beg your pardon sir "" struck in John Brown ""are you sure Mrs Hodgett is in town? I saw her in Nottingham myself on Friday; I made my first acquaintance with her there and a very charming old lady she is."" Mr Hodgett's confusion could only be rivaled by Mr Brown's perfect self-possession. I began to see the object of his kind enquiries; so probably did the victim himself. The other men who were present thought I suppose that it was only an unfortunate attempt of John's to make himself agreeable; and while some were amused by it a more considerate friend kicked my shins in mistake for his under the table. ""She certainly told me sir she should be going up to London in a few weeks to purchase her winter stock I think she said; but I did not understand that she was to be there now."" John had got on thus far before his enemy could rally at all; but the dean grew desperate and resolved to make a diversion at all hazards; and as he reached his hand out apparently in quest of a slice of toast cup saucer and a pile of empty plates went crashing on the floor. ""Bless me how very awkward!"" said he with a face as red as fire. ""Never mind sir "" said a freshman from Shrewsbury just entered who had not opened his lips before and thought it a good opportunity; ""it's all for the good of trade."" Never was a stale jest so unconsciously pointed in its application. Brown laughed of course and so did we all; while the dean tried to cover his confusion by wiping his clothes--the cup having been an empty one. The freshman seeing our amusement thought he had said a very good thing and began to talk very fast; but nobody listened to him. ""Talking of trade "" mercilessly continued the tormentor ""I was uncommonly pleased with Nottingham the other day. Your brother-in-law Mr Mogg was exceedingly civil to me (I took the liberty of mentioning your name sir;) he showed me the whole process of stocking-making; very interesting indeed it is--but of course you have seen it often; and I really think for a small establishment Mr Mogg's is one of the best conducted I ever saw. You don't know Mr Mogg Hawthorne do you? Get the dean to give you a letter to him if you ever go to Nottingham; a very good sort of man he is and has his whole heart in his business. 'Some men are ashamed of their trade sir' said he; 'I a'n't. What should I do I should like to know if trade was ashamed of me?' And really Mrs Mogg""---- ""Ah yes!"" said Mr Hodgett hitherto overwhelmed by John's eloquence (he never talked so fast ) and utterly at a loss how to meet it ""Mogg is a great man in his line at Nottingham. I shouldn't wonder if he was member some day; he has a large wholesale connexion."" ""And retail too sir "" chimed in John. ""I bought six pair of the nicest sort of stockings there I have seen for a long time: did I show them to you Hawthorne? 'These ' said Mr Mogg 'I can recommend; I always'""---- ""If you won't take any more coffee gentlemen "" said the dean jumping up and looking at his watch ""I am afraid as I have an appointment at ten""---- ""I declare so have I "" said Brown; ""but I had quite forgotten it our conversation has been so very agreeable. Good-morning sir; and if you are writing to Mrs Hodgett pray make my compliments."" And with this Parthian shaft he quitted the field. Having adjusted the difficult questions which are apt to arise as to the ownership of caps and gowns the rest of the party took leave. The facetious freshman after putting in an ineffectual claim upon one or two of the most respectable of the caps at last marched off with the dean's as being certainly more like the new one he had bought the day before than the dilapidated article with a broken board and half a tassel which was the tempting alternative and possessing also the common property of having a red seal in it. He was not allowed however to remain long in peaceful possession of his prize. Scarcely had he reached his rooms when Robert the dean's scout came to inform him that he had left his own cap (which Robert presented to him with a grin) behind him and taken away Mr Hodgett's in mistake; enlightening him at the same time as to the fact that fellows' caps by special exemption were ""not transferable."" And when he ventured to send back by Robert an apology to the effect that the very ancient specimen could not at all events be his and a humble request that the dean would endeavour to ascertain which of his friends whom he had met at breakfast had also ""made a mistake "" that official remembering his happy _debût_ as a conversationalist instantly sent for him and read him a severe lecture upon impertinence. Of course we were no sooner fairly landed in the quadrangle than all who had any acquaintance with Brown surrounded him with entreaties for an explanation. What possessed him to make such a dead set at the dean? How came he to be so well up in the family history? How long had he had the pleasure of an acquaintance with dear old Mrs Hodgett? And who introduced him to Mr Mogg? It turned out that John had made an expedition to Nottingham during the vacation on purpose; he had called on the old lady whose address he had with some difficulty obtained; presented his card ""Mr John Brown ---- Coll.;"" stated that he was a stranger very desirous to see the lions of Nottingham of which he had heard so much; and having the honour of knowing her son and the advantage of being at the same college with him and having so often heard her name mentioned in their many conversations that he almost felt as if she was his intimate acquaintance had ventured to intrude upon her with a request that she would put him in the way of seeing the town and its manufactures to the best advantage. Much taken no doubt by John's polite address which by his own recapitulation of it must have been highly insinuating and delighted to see any one who could talk to her about her son and to learn that she herself was talked about among his grand friends in Oxford the worthy Mrs Hodgett begged John Brown to walk in; and finding that there was nothing high about him and that he listened with the greatest interest to all her family details and reminiscences she took courage to ask him to eat a bit of dinner with her and her daughter at two o'clock after which she promised him the escort of her son-in-law Mr Mogg the principal (that was what they called them up at Nottingham just as they did in Oxford she observed) of the great stocking-house over the way. Such a man he was! she said; every bit as good as a book to a stranger; ""he knowed every think and every body."" J
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hn assured her such universal knowledge was not common among principals of houses in Oxford; and declared that he should appreciate the services of such a guide proportionately. And as an introduction to the whole family was just the thing he wanted he at once accepted the invitation with many thanks. In short an arrangement was made which pleased all parties; all that is with the exception of Mr Spriggins the head shopman who usually took his meals with the family but on that day to his great disgust not being considered of quality to meet their unexpected guest (not being a principal ) received intimation that his dinner would be served in the counting-house. The dinner passed off no doubt much more satisfactorily than more formal affairs of the kind. John had a good appetite and good-humour and so had the old lady; and no doubt even in Miss Hodgett's eyes the young Oxonian was no bad substitute for Mr Spriggins. Even that gentleman could he have foreseen all that was to follow from this visit would have exchanged for his blandest smile the stern glance with which he regarded from the little back window of the counting-house the procession of John with Miss Hodgett under his arm from the drawing-room to take the seat which should have been his; would have made him his most obsequious bow and regarded him as the best customer that had ever come inside their doors. But perhaps I am wronging Mr Spriggins in assuming that he thought the usurper of his rights worthy of a glance at all: and certainly I am anticipating my story. John dined with the old lady; drank her currant wine in preference to her port ate her seed biscuits and when Mr Mogg in pursuance of a message from his mother-in-law called to renew in his own person the offer to show his relation's distinguished friend (Mrs Hodgett had hinted her suspicions that John Brown was a nobleman ) he was ready though rather sleepy to commence his lionizing. Mr Mogg was exceedingly civil showed him every thing worth seeing from the castle to the stocking-frames; and by the time they returned together to supper at the old lady's they had become very thick indeed. John called the next day and took his leave of both parties with a promise not to pass through Nottingham without renewing his acquaintance and that he would not fail to mention to his friend the dean how much he had been gratified by his reception; both which pledges he scrupulously redeemed. Mr Hodgett's indignation was unbounded; if the united powers of vice-chancellor doctors proctors and convocation could by rummaging up some old statute have expelled John Brown for paying a visit to Nottingham he would have moved the university to strive to effect it. Happily these powers never are united or there is no saying what they might not do. So John remained a member of the college still. The dean seldom looked at him if he could help it; he tried once the soothing system by praising him at collections but it only elicited from John a polite enquiry after Mr and Mrs Mogg. What man could do to extricate himself from his unfortunate position the dean did. He wrote off immediately to his mother entreating her by her hopes of his advancement in life not to allow the name of Hodgett to be any longer contaminated by any touch of linen-drapery. He suggested that she should at once make over the business to her foreman Spriggins reserving to herself an interest in the profits and retire to a small and genteel cottage in the suburbs where no impertinent intruder could detect the linen-draper's widow. She worthy old soul though it did grieve her no doubt to part with her shop in which were centred the interests and associations of so many years yet would have set fire to it with her own hands and emigrated to America--though she knew it only as a place where banks always broke and people never paid their debts--if it could in anyway have furthered his interests whom she loved better than he deserved. She always looked upon him as a gentleman and did not wonder he wished to be one though she herself had no manner of taste for becoming a lady. But in the simplicity of her heart she planned that even this sacrifice to her motherly affection might be turned to some account in the way of trade. Accordingly there appeared in the _Nottingham Herald_ an advertisement extending across two columns headed with imposing capitals by which the public were informed that Mrs Hodgett being about to decline her long-established linen-drapery business in favour of Mr Spriggins the whole stock was to be turned into ready money immediately ""considerably below prime cost;"" by which means the public had no doubt an opportunity of giving full value to Mrs H. for sundry old-fashioned patterns and faded remnants which the incoming Spriggins would otherwise have ""taken to"" for a mere song. Now since the time that John Brown began first to take so deep an interest in the Hodgett family he had regularly invested fourpence weekly in a copy of the _Nottingham Herald_. By this means he had the satisfaction of congratulating the dean upon the birth of a nephew in the person of a son and heir of the Moggs: and though so carefully did that gentleman avoid all communication with his tormentor that he was obliged for two whole days to watch an opportunity to convey the intelligence; yet as he finally succeeded in announcing it in the presence of the tutor of a neighbouring college who was a profound genealogist and a great gossip his pains he declared were sufficiently repaid. The eagerness with which he pounced upon the advertisement may be imagined; and finding from a little _N. B._ at the bottom that handbills with further particulars were to be had at the office he lost no time in procuring half a dozen by post; and one morning the usual receptacles for university notices the hall-door and the board by the buttery were placarded with staring announcements in red and black letters six inches long of Mrs HODGETT'S speculation. One was pushed under the dean's door; one stuck under the knocker at the principal's; one put into the college letterbox for ""the senior common-room;"" in short had good Mrs Hodgett herself wished to have the college for her customers she could hardly have distributed them more judiciously. In short no pains were spared by John Brown to tease and worry the dean with all the particulars of his family history which he would most have wished to bury in oblivion. And to do him justice he in his turn spared no pains to get rid of John Brown. He would have allowed him to cut lectures and chapels _ad libitum_ if he thus could have spared all personal intercourse and escaped his detested civilities. Finding that would not do he tried the opposite course and endeavoured either to get him rusticated at once or to disgust him with the college and thus induce him to take his name off. John was cautious--very cautious; but a war against the powers that be is always pretty much of an uphill game; and so at last it proved in his case. John had another enemy in the college of his own making too; this was Mr Silver the junior tutor. He was a man of some scholarship and much conceit; took a first class when very young having entered college a mere schoolboy and read hard; got his appointment as tutor soon after and sneered at older men on the strength of it. He pretended to be exceedingly jocular and familiar with his pupils but was really always on the alarm for his dignity. His great delight was to impress the freshmen with an idea of his abilities and his condescension. ""Always come to me Mr ---- if you find any difficulties in your reading--I shall be most happy to assist you."" This language repeated to all in turn was not unnaturally literally understood by the matter-of-fact John Brown; who perhaps could see no good reason why a college tutor should _not_ be ready to aid as far as he could the private studies of those who are so often in want of sensible advice and encouragement. However it did not occur to him when he took up to Mr Silver's rooms one morning after lecture a passage that had puzzled him that he was doing a very odd thing and that the tutor thought so. As these consultations became more frequent however he began to perceive what other men were not slow to tell him that Mr Silver thought him a bore. And the moment this flashed upon him with his unfortunate antipathy to any thing like humbug he began another war of independence. He selected crabbed passages; got them up carefully by the help of translations scholiasts and clever friends; and then took them up hot to Mr Silver. And when he detected him slurring a difficulty instead of explaining it or saying there was no difficulty at all John would bring up against him his array of objections to this or that rendering and arguments for and against various readings &c. till Mr Silver found himself fairly out of his depth. At first this puzzled him and he very nearly committed the mistake of pronouncing John Brown a first-rate scholar in the common-room; but when he found his performance at lecture did not by any means keep pace with the remarkable erudition sometimes displayed by him in private he began in his turn to suspect the trick. He dared not refuse to play his part when called upon in these learned discussions though he dreaded them more and more; for his college reputation was at stake and there were some among the older fellows who looked upon him as rather an assuming young man for understanding what they did not pretend to and would have been glad to have had a joke against him; but he began cordially to hate John Brown; he gave him all the difficult bits he could at lecture; sneered at him when he dared; and practised all those amiable embellishments which make schoolmasters and tutors usually so beloved and learning in all its branches so delightful. It is not to be wondered at then if John's kind friends somewhat damaged his reputation among the Dons and watched their opportunity to annihilate him. It came and they were down upon him at once. Some half-dozen noisy men the survivors of a supper-party had turned into Brown's rooms (he seldom sat up so late) for a parting cigar. Having accomplished this they took it into their heads to dance a quadrille in the middle of the covered thoroughfare for the benefit of the echo to the music of six individual tunes sung in chorus. So strange a performance brought down some of the fellows; the men were not recognised but traced to Brown's rooms. He refused to give up their names--was declared contumacious; and in spite of the good-natured remonstrances of the principal and one or two of the others his enemies obtained a majority in the common-room; and it was decided that John Brown was too dangerous a character to be allowed to remain in college during vacation. But they had not got rid of him yet. About two miles out of Oxford on the C---- road if any one takes the trouble to turn up a narrow lane and then follow a footpath by the side of the canal he will come to one of the most curious-looking farmhouses that he (or at least I) ever met with. It is a large rambling uninhabited-looking place; the house as is not unusual forming one side of a square enclosure of which the barns and outhouses make up the rest. The high blank walls of these latter pierced only here and there by two or three of the narrowest possible lancet-holes give it something the air of a fortification. Indeed if well garrisoned it would be almost as strong a post as the Chateau of Hougoumont; with this additional advantage that it has a moat on two sides of it and a canal only divided from it by a narrow towing-path on a third. The front (for it has a front though upon my first visit it took me some time to find it it being exactly on the opposite side to the approach at present in use and requiring two pretty deep ditches to be crossed in order to get at it from the direction)--the front only has any regular windows; and of these most of the largest are boarded up (some indeed more substantially closed with brick and mortar) in order to render it as independent as possible of the glazier and the assessor of taxes. There is a little bridge very much decayed thrown across the narrow moat to what was in former days the main entrance; but now the door was nailed up the bridge ruinous and the path leading to it no longer distinguishable in the long rank grass that covered the wet meadows upon which the house looked out. It was a place that filled you involuntarily with melancholy feelings; it breathed of loneliness and desolation changed times and fallen fortunes. I never beheld it but I thought of Tennyson's ""Mariana in the moated Grange""-- ""Unlifted was the clicking latch Weeded and worn the ancient thatch Upon the lonely moated Grange."" Brown and I in some of our peregrinations had stumbled upon this old house; and after having walked round it and speculated upon its history made our way through an open door into the spacious court-yard. If the outside looked desolate however the interior was lively enough: cattle pigs geese ducks and all the ordinary appurtenances of a well-stocked farm gave token that the old place was still tenanted; and a large mastiff who stalked towards us with a series of enquiring growls evidently demanding our business and suspicious of our good intentions made us not at all sorry to see a stout good-natured-looking dame a perfect contradiction to the poet's woe-worn ""Mariana "" who after bidding Boxer hold his noise volunteered a compendious history of herself and husband in answer to our simple question as to the name of the place. How good Farmer Nutt and herself had lived there for the last seventeen years; how the old place belonged to Squire somebody and folks said that some gentry used to live in it in times past; what a lonesome-like life they thought it when they first came after living in the gay town of Abingdon; how by degrees they got to think it pretty comfortable and found the plashy meadows good pasturage and the house ""famous and roomy-like;"" this and much besides did we listen to patiently the more so because an attempt or two at interruption only served to widen the field of her discourse. The wind-up of it all however was that we were asked to walk in and sit down and so we did. A civil farmer's wife a very common character in most parts of England is I am sorry to say somewhat too much of a rarity about Oxford; whether their tempers are too severely tried by the ""fast men "" who hunt drags and ride steeple-chases to the detriment of young wheat and new-made fences; or by the reading-men who in their innocence make pertinacious visits in search of strawberries and cream in the month of March or call for the twentieth time to enquire the nearest way to Oxford (being ignorant of all topography but that of ancient Rome and Athens;) or whether they regard all gownsmen as embryo parsons and tithe-owners and therefore hereditary enemies; whatever be the reason it generally requires some tact to establish any thing like a friendly relation with a farmer or his wife in the neighbourhood of the university. However Mrs Nutt was an exception; and nothing could exceed the heartiness with which she set out her best wheaten bread and rich Gloucester cheese and particular ale--an advance towards further acquaintance which we met with due readiness. In short so well were we pleased with the good dame's hospitable ways and her old-fashioned house and even with her good-humoured loquacity that our first visit was not our last. The farmer himself a quiet good-natured honest yeoman of about sixty who said very little indeed when his wife was present (he had not much chance ) but could when disposed let out many a droll story of ""College Gents"" in bygone days when he was a brewer's apprentice at Abingdon came by invitation to taste the college tap and carried home in each pocket a bottle of wine for ""the missus."" When John Brown Esquire found his intentions of wintering within the walls of ---- so unexpectedly defeated he cast about diligently in his own mind for a resting-place for himself his books and a nondescript animal which he called a Russian terrier. Home he was determined not to go--any where within the boundaries of the University the College were equally determined he should not stay; and we all settled that he would fix himself for the vacation either at Woodstock or Ensham or Abingdon; the odds were in favour of the latter place for John was a good judge of ale. It was not therefore without considerable astonishment that one morning at breakfast in my room after devouring in rigid silence a commons of broiled ham for two and the last number of _Pickwick_ (John seldom laughed but read ""Boz"" as gravely as he would Aristotle ) we heard him open his heart as follows:-- ""I say old fellow where do you think I am going to put up this vacation?"" ""Really John you're such an odd fellow it's impossible to guess; if it had been summer I shouldn't have been at all surprised to hear of your having pitched a tent at Bullingdon or hired a house-boat and lived Chinese fashion on the river; but I suppose you would hardly think of that plan at this time of the year."" ""Nonsense man; you know the Moated Grange as you call it--old Nutt's!--I've taken lodging there."" ""The Grange! Well there's no accounting for tastes; but if there were any empty rooms in the county jail I almost think I should prefer them especially when one might possibly get board and lodging there gratis."" ""Don't be absurd; I shall be very comfortable there. I'm to have two rooms up-stairs that will look very habitable when they've cleaned down the cobwebs and got rid of the bats; Farmer Nutt is going to lay poison for the rats to-night and I can go in if I like on Monday."" ""Upon my honour John Chesterton and I can never come and see you in that miserable hole."" ""Don't then; I'm going there to read: I sha'n't want company."" It turned out that he was really in earnest; and the day after the University term was ended the Grange received its new tenant. We went down there to instal him; it was the first time Chesterton had seen the place and he was rather envious of our friend's selection as he followed him up-stairs into the quaint old chambers to which two blazing log-fires and Mrs Nutt's unimpeachable cleanliness had imparted an air of no little comfort. The old oaken floor of the sitting-room had been polished to something like its original richness and brilliancy of hue and reflected the firelight in a way that warmed you to look at it. There was not a cobweb to be seen; and though old Bruin snuffed round the room suspiciously Farmer Nutt gave it as his conscientious opinion that every rat had had a taste of the ""pyson."" There was no question but that if one could get over the dulness of the place as far as accommodation went there need be little cause to complain. ""I shall get an 18-gallon of Hall and Tawney and hire an easy-chair "" said John ""and then _won't_ I read?"" Full of these virtuous resolutions we left him; and how he got on there my readers shall hear another day. H. THE TOMBLESS MAN. A DREAM. BY DELTA. I. I woke from sleep at midnight all was dark Solemn and silent an unbroken calm; It was a fearful vision and had made A mystical impression on my mind; For clouds lay o'er the ocean of my thoughts In vague and broken masses strangely wild; And grim imagination wander'd on 'Mid gloomy yew-trees in a churchyard old And mouldering shielings of the eyeless hills And snow-clad pathless moors on moonless nights And icebergs drifting from the sunless Pole And prostrate Indian villages when spent The rage of the hurricane has pass'd away Leaving a landscape desolate with death; And as I turn'd me to my vanish'd dream Clothed in its drapery of gloom it rose Upon my spirit dreary as before. II. Alone--alone--a desolate dreary wild Herbless and verdureless; low swampy moss Where tadpoles grew to frogs for leagues begirt My solitary path. Nor sight nor sound Of moving life except a grey curlew-- As shrieking tumbled on the timid bird Aye glancing backward with its coal-black eye Even as by imp invisible pursued-- Was seen or heard; the last low level rays Of sunset gilded with a blood-red glow That melancholy moor with its grey stones And stagnant water-pools. Aye floundering on And on I stray'd finding no pathway save The runlet of a wintry stream begirt With shelvy barren rocks; around o'erhead Yea every where in shapes grotesque and grim Towering they rose encompassing my path As 'twere in savage mockery. Lo a chasm Yawning and bottomless and black! Beneath I heard the waters in their sheer descent Descending down and down; and further down Descending still and dashing: Now a rush And now a roar and now a fainter fall And still remoter and yet finding still For the white anguish of their boiling whirl No resting-place. Over my head appear'd Between the jagged black rifts bluely seen Sole harbinger of hope a patch of sky Of deep clear solemn sky shrining a star Magnificent; that with a holy light Glowing and glittering shone into the heart As 'twere an angel's eye. Entranced I stood Drinking the beauty of that gem serene How long I wist not; but when back to earth Sank my prone eyes--I knew not where I was-- Again the scene had shifted and the time From midnight to the hour when earliest dawn Gleams in the orient and with inky lines The trees seem painted on the girding sky. III. A solemn hour!--so silent that the sound Even of a falling leaflet had been heard Was that wherein with meditative step With uncompanion'd step measured and slow And wistful gaze that to the left the right Was often turn'd as if in secret dread Of something horrible that must be met-- Of unseen evil not to be eschew'd-- Up a long vista'd avenue I wound Untrodden long and overgrown with moss. It seem'd an entrance to the hall of gloom; Grey twilight in the melancholy shade Of the hoar branches show'd the tufted grass With globules spangled of the fine night-dew-- So fine--that even a midge's tiny tread Had caused them trickle down. Funereal yews Notch'd with the growth of centuries stretching round Dismal in aspect and grotesque in shape Pair after pair were ranged: where ended these Girdling an open semicircle tower'd A row of rifted plane-trees inky-leaved With cinnamon-colour'd barks; and in the midst Hidden almost by their entwining boughs An unshut gateway musty and forlorn; Its old supporting pillars roughly rich With sculpturings quaint of intermingled flowers. IV. Each pillar held upon its top an urn Serpent-begirt; each urn upon its front A face--and such a face! I turn'd away-- Then gazed again--'twas not to be forgot:-- There was a fascination in the eyes-- Even in their stony stare; like the ribb'd sand Of ocean was the eager brow; the mouth Had a hyena grin; the nose compress'd With curling sneer of wolfish cunning spake; O'er the lank temples long entwisted curls Adown the scraggy neck in masses fell; And fancy aided by the time and place Read in the whole the effigies of a fiend-- Who and what art thou? ask'd my beating heart-- And but the silence to my heart replied! That entrance pass'd I found a grass-grown court Vast void and desolate--and there a house Baronial grim and grey with Flemish roof High-pointed and with aspect all forlorn:-- Four-sided rose the towers at either end Of the long front each coped with mouldering flags: Up from the silent chimneys went no smoke; And vacantly the deep-brow'd windows stared Like eyeballs dead to daylight. O'er the gate Of entrance to whose folding-doors a flight Of steps converging led startled I saw Oh horrible! the same reflected face As that on either urn--but gloomier still In shadow of the mouldering architrave. V. I would have turn'd me back--I would have fled From that malignant yet half-syren smile; But magic held me rooted to the spot And some inquisitive horror led me on.-- Entering I stood beneath the spacious dome Of a round hall vacant save here and there Where from the panelings in mouldy shreds Hung what was arras loom-work; weather-stains In mould appear'd on the mosaic floors Of marble black and white--or what was white For time had yellow'd all; and opposite High on the wall within a crumbling frame Of tarnish'd gold scowl'd down a pictured form In the habiliments of bygone days-- With ruff and doublet slash'd and studded belt-- 'Twas the same face--the Gorgon curls the same The same lynx eye the same peak-bearded chin And the same nose with sneering upward curl. VI. Again I would have turned to flee--again Tried to elude the snares around my feet; But struggling could not--though I knew not why Self-will and self-possession vaguely lost.-- Horror thrill'd through me--to recede was vain; Fear lurk'd behind in that sepulchral court In its mute avenue and grave-like grass; And to proceed--where led my onward way? Ranges of doorways branch'd on either side Each like the other:--one I oped and lo! A dim deserted room its furniture Withdrawn; gray stirless cobwebs from the roof Hanging; and its deep windows letting in The pale sad dawn--than darkness drearier far. How desolate! Around its cornices Of florid stucco shone the mimic flowers Of art's device carved to delight the eyes Of those long since but dust within their graves! The hollow hearth-place with its fluted jambs Of clammy Ethiop marble whence of yore Had risen the Yule-log's animating blaze On festal faces tomb-like coldly yawn'd; While o'er its centre lined in hues of night Grinn'd the same features with the aspick eyes And fox-like watchful though averted gaze The haunting demon of that voiceless home! VII. How silent! to the beating of my heart I listen'd and nought else around me heard. How stirless! even a waving gossamer-- The mazy motes that rise and fall in air-- Had been as signs of life; when suddenly As bursts the thunder-peal upon the calm Whence I had come the clank of feet was heard-- A noise remote which near'd and near'd and near'd-- Even to the threshold of that room it came Where with raised hands spell-bound I listening stood; And the door opening stealthily I beheld The embodied figure of the phantom head Garb'd in the quaint robes of the portraiture-- A veritable fiend a life in death! VIII. My heart stood still though quickly came my breath; Headlong I rush'd away I knew not where; In frenzied hast rushing I ran; my feet With terror wing'd a hell-hound at my heels Yea! scarce three strides between us. Through a door Right opposite I flew slamming its weight To shut me from the spectre who pursued: And lo! another room the counterpart Of that just left but gloomier. On I rush'd Beholding o'er its hearth the grinning face Another and the same; the haunting face Reflected as it seem'd from wall to wall! There opening as I shut onward he came That Broucoloka not to be escaped With measured tread unwearied like the wolf's When tracking its sure prey: forward I sprang And lo! another room--another face Alike but gloomier still; another door And the pursuing fiend--and on--and on With palpitating heart and yielding knees From room to room each mirror'd in the last. At length I reach'd a porch--amid my hair I felt his desperate clutch--outward I flung-- The open air was gain'd--I stood alone! IX. That welcome postern open'd on a court-- Say rather grave-yard; gloomy yews begirt Its cheerless walls; ranges of headstones show'd Each on its hoary tablature half hid With moss with hemlock and with nettles rank The sculptured leer of that hyena face Softening as backwards through the waves of time Receded generations more remote. It was a square of tombs--of old grey tombs (The oldest of an immemorial date ) Deserted quite--and rusty gratings black Along the yawning mouths of dreary vaults-- And epitaphs unread--and mouldering bones. Alone forlorn the only breathing thing In that unknown forgotten cemetery Reeling I strove to stand and all things round Flicker'd and wavering seem'd to wane away And earth became a blank; the tide of life Ebbing as backward ebbs the billowy sea Wave after wave till nought is left behind Save casual foam-bells on the barren sand. X. From out annihilation's vacancy (The elements as of a second birth Kindling within at first a fitful spark And then a light which glowing to a blaze Fill'd me with genial life ) I seemed to wake Upon a bed of bloom. The breath of spring Scented the air; mingling their odours sweet The bright jonquil the lily of the vale The primrose and the daffodil o'erspread The fresh green turf; and as it were in love Around the boughs of budding lilac wreathed The honeysuckle rich in earlier leaves Gold-tinctured now for sunrise fill'd the clouds With purple glory and with aureate beams The dew-refreshen'd earth. Up up the larks Mounted to heaven as did the angel wings Of old in Jacob's vision; and the fly Awakening from its wintry sleep once more Spread humming to the light its gauzy wings. XI. A happy being in a happy place As 'twere a captive from his chains released His dungeon and its darkness there I lay Nestling amid the sun-illumined flowers Revolving silently the varied scenes Grotesque and grim 'mid which my erring feet Had stumbled; and a brightness darting in On my mysterious night-mare something told The what and wherefore of the effigies grim-- The wolfish never-resting tombless man Voicelessly haunting that ancestral home-- Yea of his destiny for evermore To suffer fearful life-in-death until A victim suffer'd from the sons of men To soothe the cravings of insatiate hell; An agony for age undergone-- An agony for ages to be borne Hope still elusive baffled by despair. XII. Thus as an eagle from the altitude Of the mid-sky its pride of place attain'd Glances around the illimitable void And sees no goal and finds no resting-place In the blue boundless depths--then silently Pauses on wing and with gyrations down And down descends thorough the blinding clouds In billowy masses many-hued around Floating until their confines past green earth Once more appears and on its loftiest crag The nest wherein 'tis bliss to rest his plumes Flight-wearied--so from farthest dreamland's shores Where clouds and chaos form the continents And reason reigns not Fancy back return'd To sights and sounds familiar--to the birds Singing above--and the bright vale beneath With cottages and trees--and the blue sky-- And the glad waters murmuring to the sun. FRENCH SOCIALISTS.[28] Socialism as well in this country as in France may be regarded as an offset of the French Revolution. It is true that in all times the striking disparity between the conditions of men has given rise to Utopian speculations--to schemes of some new order of society where the comforts of life should be enjoyed in a more equalized manner than seems possible under the old system of individual efforts and individual rights; and it may be added that as this disparity of wealth becomes more glaring in proportion as the disparity of intelligence and political rights diminishes such speculations may be expected in these later times to become more frequent and more bold. Nevertheless we apprehend that the courage or audacity requisite to attempt the realization of these speculative schemes must confess its origin in the fever-heat of the French Revolution. It required the bold example of that great political subversion to prompt the design of these social subversions--to familiarize the mind with the project of reducing into practice what had been deemed sufficiently adventurous as reverie. What a stride has been taken since those olden times when the philosophic visionary devised his Utopian society with all the freedom because with all the irresponsibility of dreams! He so little contemplated any practical result that he did not even venture to bring his new commonwealth on the old soil of Europe lest it should appear too strange and be put out of countenance by the broad reality: but he carried it out to some far-off island in the ocean and created a new territory for his new people. A chancellor of England the high administrator of the laws of property could then amuse his leisure with constructing a Utopia where property with all its laws would undergo strange mutation. How would he have started from his woolsack if any one had told him that his design would be improved upon in boldness and that such men as his own carpenter and mason would set about the veritable realization of it! At the present time nothing is more common or familiar than the project of changing entirely the model of society. ""To subvert a government
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writes M. Reybaud of his own country men ""to change a dynasty or a political constitution is now an insignificant project. Your socialist is at peace with kings and constitutions; he merely talks in the quietest manner imaginable of destroying every thing of uprooting society from its very basis."" Indeed if the power of these projectors bore any proportion to their presumption our neighbours would be in a most alarming condition. To extemporize a social system a new humanity or at least a new Christianity is now as common as it was formerly on leaving college to rhyme a tragedy. The social projector sublimely confident in himself seems to expect to realize on a most gigantic scale the fable of Mesmerism; he will put the whole world in _rapport_ with him and it shall have no will but his and none but such blind imitative movements as he shall impress on it. And it is to a sort of _coma_ that these projectors would for the most part reduce mankind--a state where there is some shadow of thought and passion but no will no self-direction no connexion between the past and present--a state aimless evanescent and of utter subjugation. Fortunately these social reformers however daring use no other instruments of warfare than speech and pamphlets; they do not betake themselves to the sharp weapons of political conspiracy. They must be permitted therefore to rave themselves out. And this they will do the sooner from their very number. There are too many prophets; they spoil the trade; the Mesmerizers disturb and distract each other's efforts; the _fixed idea_ that is in them will not fix any where else. Those who in the natural order of things should be dupes aspire to be leaders and the leaders are at a dead struggle for some novelty wherewith to attract followers. We have for instance M. Pierre Leroux most distinguished of the _Humanitarians_ the last sect which figures on the scene bidding for disciples--with what will our readers think?--with the doctrine of metempsychosis! It is put forward as a fresh inducement to improve the world we live in that we shall live in it again and again and nowhere else and be our own most remote posterity. We are not assured that there is any thread of consciousness connecting the successive apparitions of the same being; yet some slight filament of this kind must be traceable for we are informed that M. Leroux gives himself out to have been formerly Plato. He has advanced thus far in the scale of progression that he is at present M. Leroux.[29] Still the frequent agitation of these social reforms cannot be and has not been without its influence on society. It is from this influence they gain their sole importance. Such schemes as those of St Simon of Fourier and of our own Robert Owen viewed as projects to be realized are not worth a serious criticism. In this point of view they are considered at least in this country as mere nullities. No one questions here whether they are feasible or whether if possible they would be propitious to human happiness. But the constant agitation in society of such projects may be no nullity--may have for a season an indisputable and very pernicious influence. As systems of doctrine they may not be ineffective nor undeserving of attention; and in this light M. Reybaud in the work we now bring before our readers mainly considers them. M. Reybaud has given us a sketch of the biography and opinions of the most celebrated of those men who have undertaken to produce a new scheme of human life for us; he has introduced his description of them and their projects by some account of the previous speculations of a kindred nature indeed but conducted in a very different spirit of Plato Sir Thomas More and others; and he has accompanied the whole with observations of his own which bear the impress of a masculine understanding a candid judgment and a sound healthy condition of the moral sentiments. The French Academy has distinguished the work by according to it the Montyon prize--a prize destined annually to the publication judged most beneficial to morals; and in this judgment of the Academy every private reader unless he has some peculiar morality of his own will readily acquiesce. Our author is not one of those who at once and without a question reject all schemes for the amelioration of society; nor has he sat down to write the history of these social reformers for the mere purpose of throwing on them his contempt or irony. He has even been accused it seems by some of his critics of manifesting too much sympathy with the enthusiasts he has undertaken to describe. He tells us in the preface to his second edition that he has encountered the contradictory accusations of being too severe and too indulgent towards them; from which he concludes that he cannot have widely departed from the tone which truth and impartiality would prescribe. This is a conclusion which authors are very apt to draw; they very conveniently dispatch their several critics by opposing them to each other. But this conclusion may be drawn too hastily. Two contradictory accusations do not always destroy each other even when they are made by judges equally competent. The inconsistency may be in the author himself who may in different portions of his work have given foundation for very opposite censures. In the present case although we have already intimated that M. Reybaud writes with a spirit of fairness and candour we cannot admit him to the full benefit of the conclusion he draws in his own favour from the opponent criticisms he has met with. There are individual passages in his work which it would be difficult to reconcile with each other and which invite very different criticisms. On some occasions he appears to attribute a certain value to these tentatives at social reform and intimates that they may probably be the precursors or may contain the germ of some substantial improvement; whilst at other times he scourges them without pity or compunction as a species of moral pestilence. He seems not to have been able at all moments to defend himself from the _vertige_ which possesses the personages of whom he is writing; like a certain historian of witchcraft whom we have somewhere read of who had so industriously studied his subject that a faith in the black art imperceptibly gained upon him. The narrative goes on to say that the unfortunate historian of witchcraft attempted to practise the knowledge he had obtained and was burned for a wizard. But there the analogy will certainly fail. M. Reybaud soon recovers from the visionary mood and wakes himself thoroughly by inflicting the lash with renewed vigour upon all the other dreamers around him. This shadow of inconsistency is still more perceptible when speaking of the lives and _characters_ of his socialists. Sometimes the reader receives the impression that an egregious vanity an eccentric ambition and perhaps a little touch of monomania would complete the picture and sufficiently explain that conduct of a hero of socialism. At another time his enthusiasts assume a more imposing aspect. St Simon sacrificing his fortune abjuring the patronage of the court dying in extreme poverty--Charles Fourier refusing all entrance into commerce that would implicate him with a vicious system and pursuing to the end amidst want and ridicule the labours of social regeneration--our own Robert Owen quitting ease and fortune and crossing the Atlantic for the New World there to try upon a virgin soil his bold experiment of a new society;--these men rise before us endowed with a certain courage and devotion which ought to command our admiration. We see them in the light of martyrs to a faith which no one shares with them--sacrificing all enduring all for a hope which _is_ of this world for schemes which they will never see realized for a heaven which they may prophesy but which they cannot enter; manifesting in short the same obstinacy of idea and the same renouncement of self which distinguish the founders of new religions. And indeed we are not disposed to deny that in their character they may bear a comparison in many points with religious impostors. There is this striking difference however in the effect of their teaching: the religious impostor has often promised a paradise of merely voluptuous enjoyment but he has promised it as the reward of certain self-denying virtues to be practised here on earth; whilst the socialist insists upon bringing his sensual ill-ordered paradise wherein all virtue is dispensed with as superfluous here at once upon this earth we have to live and toil in. The first volume of the work contains an account of the life and writings of St Simon Fourier and Owen. The second is very miscellaneous. We encounter to our surprise the name of Jeremy Bentham in the category of socialists and are still more startled to learn that the Utilitarians derive their origin from Robert Owen! It is a jumble of all sects religious and political in which even our Quakers are included in the list of social reformers--our excellent _Friends_ who assuredly have no wish whatever to disturb the world but seek merely to live in it as it is with the additional advantage of being themselves particularly quiet and comfortable. But we are so accustomed to the haste of negligence of the majority of French writers whenever they leave their own soil (unless the literature or concerns of a foreign country be their special subject ) that we are not disposed to pass any very severe censure on M. Reybaud; and still less should we do him the injustice to prejudge his qualifications as an historian of his own countrymen by the measure of accuracy he may display in that part of his work which relates to England. It is a part of his work which we have but slightly perused; our attention has been confined to the socialists of France. Amongst these founders of society and constructors of Mahometan paradises Fourier is we believe the least known in this country. Some brief account of him will we think be acceptable; more especially as some of his ideas leaving the narrow circle of his disciples have found partisans amongst men who in other respects have a reputation for sobriety of thought. Our readers need not fear that we shall overwhelm them with all the institutions plans projects arrangements--the complete _cosmogony_ in short of this most laborious of the tribe. A very little of such matter is quite enough. One may say with truth that it is such stuff ""Whereof a little more than a little Is by much too much."" Nothing is more charming to the imagination than the first general idea of some new community where all men are to be happy every body active benevolent reasonable. But the moment we leave this general idea enter upon particulars and set about the arrangements necessary for this universally comfortable state of things there is nothing in the world more tedious and oppressive. Proposals for new political institutions are sufficiently wearisome; but proposals for earthly elysiums which are to embrace the whole circle of human affairs become insupportably dull. It is child's play played with heavy granite boulders. No; if we were capable of being seduced for a moment into the belief of some golden age of equality where a parental government presiding over all should secure the peace and prosperity of all we should need no other argument to recover us from the delusion than simply to _read on_ and learn how this parental government intends to accomplish its purpose. When we find that in order to be relieved from domestic cares we are to have _no home at all_; that our parental government in order to provide for our children begins by taking them away from us; when we picture to ourselves the sort of wooden melancholy figures we must become (something like the large painted dolls in a Dutch garden stuck here and there without choice or locomotion of their own ) we speedily lose all inclination to enter upon this discipline of happiness. We quit with haste this enchanted garden which turns out to be an enormous piece of clockwork and embrace with renewed content the old state of personal freedom albeit attended with many personal inconveniences. Whilst reading of Utopian schemes the idea has very vividly occurred to us: suppose that some such society as this where land and wives money and children are all in common had been for a long time in existence and that some clever Utopian had caught an inkling of the old system so familiar to us and had made the discovery that it would be possible without dissolving society to have a wife of one's own a house of one's own land and children of one's own. Imagine after an age of drowsy clockwork existence one of these philosophers starting the idea of a free society of a social organization based upon individual rights and individual effort--where property should not only be possessed but really _enjoyed_--where men should for the first time stretch their limbs and strain their faculties and strive and emulate and endure and encounter difficulties and have friendships. What a commotion there would be! How would the younger sort rebelling against the old rotten machine in which they had been incarcerated form themselves into emigrating bands and start forth to try upon some new soil their great experiment of a free life! How would they welcome toil in all its severity--how willingly practise abstinence and suffer privation for the sake of the bold rights which these would purchase!--how willingly take upon themselves the responsibility of their own fate to enjoy a fortune of their own shaping! Hope herself would start from the earth where she had been so long buried and waving her rekindled torch would lead on to the old _race_ of life! _Charles Fourier_ was the son of a woollen-draper at Besançon. Two circumstances in his early history appear to have made a strong impression upon him. When he was a child he contradicted in his father's shop some customary falsehood of the trade and with great simplicity revealed the truth; for this he was severely reprimanded. Afterwards when he was of the age of nineteen and a clerk in a merchant's house at Marseilles he was present at a voluntary submersion of grain made in order to raise the price in the market. These circumstances he used to say opened his eyes to the nature of human relations. Falsehood and selfishness systematic falsehood and selfishness without a shadow of scruple were at the basis of all our commercial dealings. It was time he thought that a new order of things should arise founded upon veracity and a harmony of interests. For himself his part was taken. He became the man of one idea. ""We might rather say of him "" writes M. Reybaud ""that he traversed the world than that he lived in it."" He refused to enter into any commercial dealings that might implicate him in the existing system and warp his feelings in favour of it; and exercised to the last for a bare subsistence the mere mechanical employment of a copying clerk. He never understood the art of making for himself two separate existences: one in the domain of fiction or of thought; the other in the land of reality. He passed all that might be called his life in the ideal world of his own creating. According to Fourier there is but one deep and all-pervading cause of the miseries of man: it is that he does not comprehend the ways of God or in other words the laws of his own being. If humanity does not _work well_ and with the same harmony that the planetary system exhibits it is because he is determined to impress upon it other movements than those the Creator designed. Between the creature and the Creator there has been as he expresses it a misunderstanding for these five thousand years past. The great error it seems that has been committed is the supposing that there are any passions of man which require to be restrained. God has made nothing ill--nothing useless. You have but to let these passions quite loose and it will be found that they move in a beautiful harmony of their own. These _attractions_--such is his favourite word--are as admirably adjusted as those which rule over the course of the planets. _Duty_ he says is human--it varies from epoch to epoch from people to people. _Attraction_--that is to say passion--is divine; and is the same amongst all people civilized and savage and in all ages ancient and modern. At present the passions are compressed and therefore act unhappily; in future they shall be free satisfied and shall act according to the law they have received from God. To yield to their impulse is the only wisdom; to remove whatever obstacles society has placed in the way of their free exercise is the great task of the reformer. Fourier does not hesitate to place himself by the side of Newton in virtue of his discovery of this new law of attraction. If any comparison can be made we think--inasmuch as to unravel the problem of humanity is a greater task than to elucidate the movements of the planets--that Fourier was warranted in placing himself infinitely above Newton. Unfortunately there is this difference between the two that Newton's law explains existing phenomena while Fourier's explained phenomena that do _not_ exist--that are however to exist some day. Having established his fundamental law of the attraction of the passions (which he finds amount to the number of twelve and in this respect to bear some occult analogy to the sidereal system the prismatic colours and the gamut ) he has nothing to do but to set them fairly at work. This he does and discovers that they form men into delightful communities or _phalanges_ of about eighteen hundred men each. Here nothing shall be wanting. Whether it is love or labour _attraction_ supplies all. ""Labour will be a charm a taste a preference--in short a passion. Each man will devote himself to the occupation that he likes--to twenty occupations if he likes twenty. A charming rivalry an enthusiasm always new will preside over human labour when under the law of attraction men will be associated by _groups_ the last social fraction--by _series_ which are the association of groups--by _phalanges_ which are the association of series.""--(P. 123.) The dwelling-place of a _phalange_ will be called a _phalanstère_--an edifice commodious and elegant wherein while the convenient distribution of the interior will be first considered the claims of architecture will not be forgotten. It will be a vast structure of the most beautiful symmetry testifying by its magnificence to the splendour of the new life of which it is to be the scene. Galleries baths a theatre every thing conducive to a pleasurable existence will be found in it. A strict equality of wealth is no part of the scheme of our socialist; but every one will have a sufficiency and will obtain apartments and provisions in the _phalanstère_ suitable to his fortune. M. Fourier further guarantees that there shall be no vanity amongst the rich and no mortification felt by the poorer brethren of the establishment. As to the expense of this _phalanstère_ M. Fourier undertakes to construct it for what the building of four hundred miserable cottages would cost which would not accommodate a much greater number of individuals and which would fall to pieces after a few years. And as to housekeeping would not one enormous kitchen replace to advantage four hundred small and ill-appointed kitchens? one vast cellar four hundred little cellars? one gigantic washhouse four hundred damp wretched outhouses not worthy of the name? Add to which that much may be done in these gigantic kitchens and washhouses by the judicious introduction of a steam-engine which might also be employed in supplying all the apartments with water. Labour proceeding with such facility such ardour such enthusiasm as it will do in the _phalanstère_ must bring in enormous profits--quadruple as M. Fourier thinks of what our present ineffective means produce. It is in the division of these profits that our socialist has been thought particularly happy; here it is that he introduces his famous formula ""to associate men in capital labour and talent "" (associer les hommes en capital travail et talent.) The whole profits of the community are first to be divided into three portions; one for capital one for labour and one for talent--say four-twelfths for capital five-twelfths for labour and three-twelfths for talent. The portion allotted to the capitalists can create no difficulty--it will be divided amongst them in proportion to the amount of capital they severally supply. But a difficulty presents itself in the distribution of the other two portions. Are all species of labour and all descriptions of talent to be equally remunerated or by what rule shall their several rewards be determined? M. Fourier declares that the labours _necessary_ to the community shall be most highly recompensed; then those that are _useful_; and last of all those which administer as the fine arts only to pleasure and amusement. For this determination he gives a sound reason but one which we ought not to have heard from the centre of a _phalanstère_; it is that necessary labours are nearly all of a repugnant nature and should therefore be most amply rewarded. To determine the degree of talent the individual has displayed the principle of election is called in. There is however a high order of talent which is considered quite apart. Great artists great mechanicians great writers--these belong to no _phalange_ but to humanity. The world will charge itself with their remuneration. They will be relieved from the usual condition of labour; and when after a long repose they have produced a work (how it comes to be known what bird will lay the golden egg till the egg is laid we are not told ) then will a jury assembled at the metropolis of the world which will be built on the site of Constantinople vote them a recompense. ""Imagine for example Jacquart or Watt Newton or Corneille presenting themselves before this august tribunal--Jacquart with his loom Watt with his steam-engine Newton with his theory of attractions Corneille with his most beautiful tragedy. At the instant to the exclusion of all delays and hazards of fame there would be voted to these great men a remuneration to be levied on all the _phalanges_. Suppose only five francs on each _phalange_ and that there were five hundred thousand _phalanges_ on the globe the jury would have accorded a sum of 2 500 000 francs; Jacquart would not have been compelled to die in a state bordering on indigence after having enriched the universe."" Fournier was in person short thin and pale but his melancholy and pensive physiognomy bore traces of his long unquiet and ungrateful labours. A simple clerk he did not venture when he published his writings to sign them with any other name than that of _Charles_ declaring himself ready under that name to answer any objections that might be addressed to him. Alas! there were few objections addressed to him; Charles got no readers; men pitied or ridiculed him as a visionary. Repulsed by the surrounding world there remained nothing for him but to live in that creation of his own in which at all events he reigned supreme. In his reveries he found his only happiness. He walked glorious in the midst of joyful enthusiastic multitudes who saluted him as their benefactor and proclaimed him as their sovereign; he spoke to these beings the children of his dreams in a language which he alone comprehended; he built his _phalanstère_ peopled organized it; conducted himself the labours of his harmonic groups founded his towns his capitals nay his capital of the world which he erected on the Bosphorus uniting the east and west the north and south. There he placed with his own hand the laurel decreed by his million of phalanges on the brow of the greatest philosopher of his age. ""These festivals of the imagination "" says M. Reybaud ""were the only pleasures that relived the long and gloomy and proud poverty of Fourier."" One trait we cannot pass over as it seems so to speak to have a psychological value. Such was his habit of ordering and arranging all things that _Charles_ not only undertook to regulate the affairs of men and redress the inequalities of their several destinies but he took into his consideration the inequalities of the several climates of the earth and very seriously occupied himself with redressing their anomalies. To him as he walked the streets of Paris the severe cold of the North Pole was disquieting and a subject of uneasiness; it was part of his mission to temper and subdue it and tame it for the habitation of men. Perhaps the heat from those gigantic kitchens in his _phalanstères_ might help him in his task. At all events this and other gross atmospheric irregularities were not be endured in the world which he was planning. There are two things M. Reybaud remarks especially reprehensible in the theory of Fourier and of kindred socialists--First the confounding happiness with enjoyment and the legitimating of all our passions; and Secondly the egregious expectation of moulding mankind by an external or social organization without calling in aid the virtues of the individual. The one necessarily follows on the other. The chain of error is manifest and leads as a chain of error may be expected to do to inextricable confusion. If mere enjoyment if the gratification of our senses and passions be the highest aim and condition of the human being it follows that all moral discipline all self-denial must be regarded as so much defect so much imperfection so much manifest failure in the world-scheme. That lofty gratification which men have been accustomed to attribute to self-control to abstinence practised under a sense of duty or in the cause of justice this is to be measured off as so much simple misery or so much negation of enjoyment. Let all restraint be discarded: let man be free; but yet as the good of the whole is to be consulted in all societies and in the new society is consulted in an eminent degree the individual thus released from all self-control must be ruled despotically or if you will moulded fashioned mechanized by the laws of the community; for we suppose it will be admitted whatever M. Fourier tells us of his discovered law of attraction that a very stringent legislation must bind together that harmonic society which begins by giving loose rein to all the passions of mankind. How the two are to be practically reconciled--how the utmost license of the individual is to be combined with the utmost and most minute supervision of the laws we leave the socialist to determine. Such is the miserable tissue of error and confusion which these projects present to view. These socialists are fond of inventing new Christianities and in some _salons_ in Paris it is or was till very lately the fashion to have a new Christianity propounded every full moon. New enough! They present at least a sufficient contrast with the old Christianity and in no other point more than in this--the complete dependence for the formation of the character of individuals on the art of grouping and regimenting them. Christianity has supported for ages monastic institutions institutions the most counter to the passions of men solely by its strong appeal to the individual conscience. St Simonian institutions or delightful _phalanstères_ will in vain flatter every passion and indulge every sense; if they leave the conscience inert if nothing is built on the sense of duty they will no sooner rise but they will crumble back again into dust. But we do not touch upon these fundamental errors of the socialists with the superfluous view of showing the impossibility of realizing their schemes; we note them because their recognition demonstrates at once the ill influence which must attend on the teaching and constant agitation of such schemes. On the one hand all our desires authorized and self-control put out of countenance as a mere marplot; on the other hand perpetual representations that a government or social organization could effect every thing or almost every thing that can be desired for the happiness of man. What must follow but that men learn to indulge themselves in a very lax morality and to make most extravagant demands on the government or the legislative force of society? Their notions of right and wrong and their ideas of the duty and office of government become equally unsettled and erroneous. We have the authority of M. Reybaud--and we could bring other authorities if it were necessary--for saying that in France the habit of attributing the vices of individuals not to their own weakness or ungoverned propensities but to the malorganization of society has shown itself in a strange and ominous indulgence to crime. It was the old fashion he says upon hearing of any enormity to level our indignation against the perpetrator; it is now the mode to direct it against that culpable abstraction society. Society is indeed the sole culprit. When the novelist has detailed some horrible assassination or gross adultery he exclaims Behold what society has done! The criminal himself passes scathless; if indeed he may not put in a claim to our especial sympathy as having been peculiarly ill-used by that society whose duty it manifestly was to make him wise and humane and happy. Man in his individual capacity is not to be severely criticised; the censure falls only upon man in his aggregate and corporate capacity. Polite at all events. No one can possibly take offence at reproofs leveled at that invisible entity the social body; or suppose for a moment that he is included in the censure. It used to be thought that the aggregate was made up of individuals and that in order to constitute a well-ordered community there must be virtuous and well-ordered men. The reverse is now discovered to be the truth. _First_ have a well-ordered and divinely happy community and then the individual may do as he likes; as our comedian says ""his duties will be pleasures."" It is a perilous habit to fall into at the best--that of regarding the present condition of society as something doomed to destruction. But the evil is unmistakeable and most pernicious when it is proclaimed that in the new and expected order of things the old morality will be entirely superfluous a mere folly an infliction on ourselves and others. Why take care of the old furniture that will be worse than an incumbrance in the new premises? Why not begin at once the work of battery and destruction? The influence which these speculations exert in unsettling men's notions upon the duties of government on the first principles of political or social economy is less glaring but not on this account the less prejudicial. Men who are far from embracing entirely any one of the schemes of these socialists fall into the habit of looking for the relief and amelioration of society to some legislative invention some violent interference with the free and spontaneous course of human industry. The _organization of industry_ is the phrase now in high repute; repeated it is true with every variety of meaning but always with the understanding that government is to interfere more or less in the distribution of wealth in the employment of capital and the exercise of labour. The first principles on which modern civilization is based are taxed as the origin of all the evils that afflict society. All our soundest maxims of political economy are discarded and disgraced. That each man shall be free in the choice and practice of his trade or calling--that the field of competition shall be open to all--that each individual shall be permitted to make the best bargain he can whether for the wages of his labour or the price of his commodities--all these trite but invaluable maxims are incessantly decried and nothing is heard of but the evils of competition and the unequal recompense of labour. In their fits of impotent benevolence these speculative physicians assail as the cause of the existing distress those principles which in fact are the conditions of all the prosperity we have attained or can preserve or can hope in future to attain. This title of the individual whether workman or capitalist to the control and conduct of his own affairs--this ""fair field and no favour"" system--is not to be described as if it were a mere theory of political economy and disputable like some other branches of a science not yet matured. It is the great conquest of modern civilization; it is the indispensable condition to the full development of the activity and enterprise of man. The liberation of the artisan and the l
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bourer is the signal triumph of modern over ancient times whether we regard classic or Gothic antiquity. Viewing things on a large scale it may be considered as a _late_ triumph; and without depreciating its value we may easily admit that there remains much to be done in the cultivation of the free artisan to enable him to govern himself and make the best of his position. But any scheme which under the pretext of ameliorating his position would place him again under tutelage is a scheme of degradation and a retrograde movement. He is now a freeman an enrolled member of a civilized state where each individual has to a great extent the responsibility thrown upon himself for his own well-being; he must have prospective cares and grow acquainted with the thoughtful virtue of prudence. That release from reflection and anxiety for the future which is the compensating privilege of the slave or the barbarian he cannot hope any longer to enjoy. Whatever its value he must renounce it. He must become one of us knowing good and evil looking before and behind. In this direction--in the gradual improvement of the labourer--lies our future progress progress slow and toilsome little suited to the socialist who calculates on changing as with the touch of a wand the whole aspect of society. We said that some of the ideas of Charles Fourier had been adopted by men who do not exactly aspire to the rank of social reformers. We will give an instance which at the same time will illustrate this tendency to introduce legislation on those very subjects from which it has been the effort of all enlightened minds during the last century to expel it. A M. Ducpetiaux a Belgian who comes vouched to us for a safe and respected member of society by the number of titles official and honorary appended to his name in a voluminous and chiefly statistical work _Sur la Condition des Jeunes Ouvriers_ wherein his views are in the main temperate and judicious declares himself a partisan of some system similar to what Fourier points out in his famous formula--_associer les hommes en capital travail et talent_. He requires a union of interest a partnership in fact between the capitalist and the workman. M. Ducpetiaux does not lay down the proportion in which the profits are to be divided between them; he is too cautious to give any figures--there are some ideas which do not bear the approach of arithmetic--but he adopts the principle. It is thus that he speaks in his introductory chapter. ""In so conflicting a state of things[30] there remains but one remedy: to re-establish violated equity to restore to the producers their legitimate share of what is produced to bring back industry to its primitive aim and object--such is the work which is now by the aid of every influence individual and social to be prosecuted. It is not a partial relief that is called for but the complete restoration (réhabilitation complète) of the labourer. The mark which ages of servitude have impressed upon his front cannot be effaced but by an energetic and sustained effort. The palliatives hitherto employed have only exposed the magnitude of the evil. This evil we must henceforth attack in its origin in the organization of labour and the constitution of society. ""What is the existing base of the relations between master and workman? Selfishness. Every one for himself that is every thing for me and nothing or the least quantity possible for others. Here is the evil. A blind and bitter contest must spring from this opposition of interests. To put an end to this there is but one means: the recognition of the law of union (la loi de solidarité ) by virtue of which interests will amalgamate and divisions disappear. This law is the palladium of industry; refuse to acknowledge it and every thing remains in a state of chaos: proclaim it and every thing is remedied every thing prospers. The capitalist comes in aid of the workman as the workman comes in aid of the capitalist; it is a common prosperity they enjoy and if any thing menaces it they are united for its defence. The law of union puts an end to an unfeeling employment of our fellow men (_à l'exploitation brutale;_) it replaces men in their natural position; it re-establishes amongst them the relations of respect esteem and mutual benevolence which Christian fraternity demands; it substitutes association for rivalry; it restores to justice her empire and to humanity its beneficence."" Translating all this into simple language there is to be a partition by the legislature according to some rule of natural equity between the capitalist and the labourer of the proceeds of their common enterprise. We confess ourselves utterly incapable of devising any such rule of equity. The share which falls to the capitalist under the name of profits and the share which falls to the labourer under the name of wages is regulated under the present system by the free competition amongst the labourers on the one hand and the capitalists on the other; it is the result of an unfettered bargain between those who possess capital and those who practise industry. This is at all events an intelligible ground and has in it a species of rough equity; but if we desert this position and appeal to some natural rule of justice to make the division we shall find ourselves without any ground whatever. For what are the rights of capital in the face of any _à priori_ notions of justice? We shall stumble on from one vague proposition to another till we find ourselves landed in the revolutionary doctrine of the equal imprescriptible rights of man. This is the first stage at which we can halt. Judged by this law of equality the capitalist is but one man and capital is but another name for the last year's harvest or the buildings tools and manufactures which the labourers themselves or their predecessors have produced. The utmost the ex-capitalist could expect--and he must practise his handicraft before he can be entitled even to this--is to be admitted on a footing of equality in the extensive firm that would be constituted of his quondam operatives. We often observe in this country an inclination manifested to regulate by law the rate of wages not with the view of instituting any such naturally equitable partition but of establishing a _minimum_ below which life cannot be comfortably supported. These reasoners proceed it will at once be admitted not on the rights of man but on the claims of humanity. To such a project there is but one objection; it will assuredly fail of its humane intention. It is presumed that the competition amongst the workmen to obtain employment has so far advanced that these cease to obtain a sufficient remuneration for their labour. The thousand men whom a great capitalist employs are inadequately paid. The legislature requires that they should be paid more liberally. But the amount which the capitalist has to expend in wages is limited. The same amount which sustained a thousand men can under the new scale of remuneration sustain only nine hundred. The nine hundred are better fed but there is one hundred without any food whatever. Our well-intentioned humanity looks round aghast at the confusion she is making. Suppose it may be said that a law of this description should be passed at so fortunate a conjuncture that it should not interfere with the existing relations between the capitalist and the workman but have for its object to arrest the tendency which wages have to fall; suppose that the legislature satisfied with the existing state of things should pronounce it a punishable offence to offer or accept a lower rate of remuneration would not such a law be wise? The answer is obvious. If there is a tendency at any time in wages to fall it is because there is a tendency in population to increase or in capital to diminish; circumstances both of them which it is not in the power of criminal jurisprudence to wrestle with. We hear political economy frequently censured by these advocates for violent and legislative remedies for paying more attention to the accumulation than the distribution of wealth. But in what chapter of political economy is it laid down that the distribution and enjoyment of wealth is a matter of less moment than its production and accumulation? The simple truth is that the same law of liberty which is so favourable to the accumulation of wealth provides also the best distribution which human ingenuity has yet been able to devise. Less has been said on this head because there was less to say. But surely no sane individual ever wished that property should accumulate merely for the sake of accumulation that society should have the temper of a miser and toil merely to increase its hoards. Still less has any one manifested a disposition to confine the enjoyment of wealth to any one class treating the labourer and the artisan as mere tools and instruments for the production of it. The fundamental principles of political economy to which we have been alluding and with which alone we are here concerned will be always found to embrace the interests of the _whole_ community. They should be defended with the same jealousy that we defend our political liberties with. It was with regret we heard the argument we have just stated against the legislative interference with the rate of wages introduced in the discussion of the _ten-hours' bill_ and applied against the principle of that measure. It was plainly misapplied. Why do we not relish any legislative interposition on whatever plea of humanity between workmen and capitalist? Because it will fail of its humane intention. We should heartily rejoice--who would not?--if a reasonable _minimum_ of wages could be established and secured. But it cannot. Is the legislature equally incompetent when it steps in to prevent children and very young persons from being overworked; from being so employed that the health and vigour of ensuing generations may be seriously impaired (which would be a grave mistake even in the economy of labour;) from being so entirely occupied that no time shall remain for education? We think not. The legislature is not in this case equally powerless. It may here prevent an incipient abuse from growing into a custom. The law cannot create an additional amount of capital to be distributed over its population in the shape of an advance of wages but the law can say to all parents and all masters--you shall not profit by the labour of the child to the ruin of its health and the loss of all period for mental and moral discipline. Such an overtasking of the child's strength has not hitherto been an element in your calculation and it shall not become one. All these various schemes--socialist or otherwise--of legislative interference take their rise from the aspect sufficiently deplorable of the distress of the manufacturing population; and it is almost excusable if the contemplation of such distress should throw men a little off their balance. But it is not so easily excusable if men once launched on their favourite projects endeavour to prove their necessity by heightened descriptions of that distress and by unauthorized prophecies of its future and continual increase. What a formidable array of figures--figures of speech as well as of arithmetic--are brought down upon us with gloomy perseverance to convince us that the manufacturing population of this country is on the verge of irreparable ruin! We think it right to put our readers upon their guard against these over-coloured descriptions. Even when Parliamentary reports are quoted whose authority is not to be gainsaid they ought to defend themselves against the _first_ impression which these are calculated to make. The facts stated may be true but there are _other facts_ which are not stated equally true and which the scope and purpose of such reports did not render it necessary to collect. If in this country there is much distress if in some places there is that utter prostration of mind and body which extreme poverty occasions there is also much prosperity; there is also in other places much vigorous industry receiving its usual and more than its usual recompense. If there are plague-spots in our population there are also large tracts of it still sound and healthy. Set any one down to read list after list of all the maimed and halt and sick in our great metropolis and the whole town will seem to him for the time being one wide hospital: he must throw open the window and look on the busy animated buoyant crowd that is rushing through the streets before he shakes off the impression that he is living in a city of the plague. Without a doubt he who approaches the consideration of the distress of the labouring classes should have a tender and sympathizing spirit; how else can the subject possess for him its true and profound interest? But it is equally necessary that he bring to it a cultivated and well-disciplined compassion; that he should know where in the name of others he should raise the voice of complaint and where in the name of suffering humanity at large he should be silent and submit. It should always be borne in mind that it is very difficult for persons of one condition of life to judge of the comparative state of well-being of those of another condition. An inhabitant of cities a man of books and tranquillity goes down into the country without previous preparation to survey and give report of the distress of a mining or agricultural district. In what age since the world has been peopled could such an individual be transported into the huts of peasants or amongst the rude labours of the miner without receiving many a shock to his sensibility? Perhaps he descends for the first time in his life the shaft of a coal-mine. How foul and unnatural must the whole business seem to him!--these men working in the dark begrimed half-naked pent up in narrow galleries. He has gone to spy out hardships--he sees nothing else. Or perhaps he pays his first visit to the interior of the low-roofed crazy cottage of the husbandman and is disgusted at the scant furniture and uninviting meal that it presents; yet the hardy labourer may find his rest and food there with no greater share of discontent than falls to most of us--than falls perhaps to the compassionate inspector himself. We have sometimes endeavoured to picture to ourselves what would be the result if the tables were turned and a commission of agricultural labourers were sent into the city to make report of the sort of lives led there not by poor citizens or the lowest order of tradesmen but by the very class who are occupied in preparing largo folio reports of their own distressful condition. Suppose they were to enter into the chambers of the student of law--of the conveyancer for example. They make their way through obscure labyrinths into a room not quite so dark it must be allowed nor quite so dirty as the interior of a coal-mine and there they find an unhappy man who they are given to understand sits in that gloomy apartment in a state of solitary confinement from nine o'clock in the morning till six or seven in the evening. They learn that for several months in the year this man never sees the sun; that in the cheerful season when the plough is going through the earth or the sickle is glittering in the corn and the winds are blowing the great clouds along the sky this pale prisoner is condemned to pore over title-deeds which secure the ""quiet enjoyment"" of the land to others; and if they imitate the oratory of their superiors they will remark upon the strange injustice that he should be bound down a slave to musty papers which give to others those pastures from which he never reaps a single blade of grass and which he is not even permitted to behold. These commissioners would certainly be tempted to address a report to Parliament full of melancholy representations and ending with the recommendation to shake out such unhappy tenants into the fields. It would be long before they could be brought to understand that he of the desk and pen would at the end of half an hour find nothing in those fields but a mortal _ennui_. To him there is no _occupation_ in all those acres; and therefore they would soon be to him as barren as the desert. If there is any apparent levity in the last paragraph we have penned it is a levity that is far from our heart. There is no subject which gives us so much concern as this--of the undoubted distress which exists amongst the labouring population and the necessity that exists to alleviate and to combat it. Coming from the immediate perusal of Utopian schemes promising a community of goods and from the reconsideration of those arguments which prove such schemes to be delusive and mischievous the impression that is left on our mind is the profound conviction of the duty of government to do whatever lies really in its power for the amelioration of the condition of the working classes. The present system of civilized society works no doubt for the good of the whole but assuredly _they_ do not reap an equal benefit with other classes and on them falls the largest share of its inevitable evils. May we not say that whatever the social body acting in its aggregate capacity _can_ do to redress the balance--whether in education of their children in sanatory regulations which concern their workshops and their dwellings or in judicious charity that will not press upon the springs of industry--it is _bound_ to do by the sacred obligation of justice? FOOTNOTES: [28] _Etudes sur les Réformateurs ou Socialistes Modernes._ Par M. LOUIS REYBAUD. [29] We shall perhaps take some opportunity to speak separately of M. Leroux's work _Sur l'Humanité_. It is a work of very superior pretension to the writings of MM. St Simon Fourier and others who must rather be regarded as makers of projects than makers of books. M. Leroux has the honour of indoctrinating George Sand with that mysticism which she has lately infused into her novels--by no means to the increase of their merit. When M. Leroux was reproached by a friend for the fewness of his disciples he is said to have replied--""It is true I have but one--_mais que voulez-vous?--Jésus Christ lui-même n'avait que douze_."" [30] He had been drawing the usual painful picture of the distress of the manufacturing classes and citing for his authority some English journal. In doing this he has made a somewhat alarming mistake. The colloquial phrase _job-work_ has perplexed and very excusably the worthy Belgian and he has drawn from a very harmless expression a terrible significance. ""Partout le travail est le métier de job (job-work) comme disent les Anglais--_un métier à mourir sur le fumier_."" In another place he has understood the _turn out_ of our factories as the expulsion of the artisans by the master manufacturers. MARSTON; OR THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN. PART XIV. ""Have I not in my time heard lions roar? Have I not heard the sea puft up with wind Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat? Have I not heard great ordnance in the field And Heaven's artillery thunder in the skies? Have I not in the pitched battle heard Loud 'larums neighing steeds and trumpets clang?"" SHAKSPEARE. Europe had never seen so complete or so powerful an army as that which was now assembled within sight of Valenciennes. The city was already regarded as in our possession; and crowds of military strangers from every part of the Continent came day by day pouring into the allied camp. Nothing could equal the admiration excited by the British troops. The admirable strength stature and discipline of the men and the successes which they had already obtained made them the first object of universal interest; and the parades of our regiments formed a daily levee of princes and nobles. It was impossible that soldiership could be on a more stately scale. Other times have followed which have shown the still statelier sight of nations marching to battle; but the hundred thousand men who marched under Cobourg to take up their positions in the lines of Valenciennes filled the eye of Europe; and never was there a more brilliant spectacle. At length orders were sent to prepare for action and the staff of the army were busily employed in examining the ground. The Guards were ordered to cover the operations of the pioneers; and all was soon in readiness for the night on which the first trench was to be opened. A siege is always the most difficult labour of an army and there is none which more perplexes a general. To the troops it is incessant toil--to the general continual anxiety. The men always have the sense of that disgust which grows upon the soldier where he contemplates a six weeks' delay in the sight of stone walls; and the commander alive to every sound of hazard feels that he yet must stand still and wait for the attack of every force which can be gathered round the horizon. He may be the lion but he is the lion in a chain--formidable perhaps to those who may venture within its length but wholly helpless against all beyond. Yet those feelings inevitable as they are were but slightly felt in our encampment round the frowning ramparts of the city. We had already swept all before us; we had learned the language of victory; we were in the midst of a country abounding with all the good things of life and which though far from exhibiting the luxuriant beauty of the British plains was yet rich and various enough to please the eye. Our camp was one vast scene of gaiety. War had if ever laid aside its darker draperies and ""grim-visaged"" as it is had smoothed its ""wrinkled front."" The presence of so many visitors of the highest rank gave every thing the air of royalty. High manners splendid entertainments and all the habits and indulgences of the life of courts had fled from France only to be revived in Flanders. Our army was a court on the march; and the commander of the British--the honest kind-hearted and brave Duke of York--bore his rank like a prince and gathered involuntarily round him as showy a circle as ever figured in St James's or even in the glittering saloons of the Tuileries. Hunting parties balls suppers and amateur theatrical performances not merely varied the time but made it fly. Hope had its share too as well as possession. Paris was before us; and on the road to the capital lay but the one fortress which was about to be destroyed with our fire and of which our engineers talked with contempt as the decayed work of ""old"" Vauban. But the course of victory is like the course of love which the poet says ""never does run smooth."" The successes of the Allies had been too rapid for their cabinets; and we had found ourselves on the frontiers of France before the guardian genii of Europe in the shape of the stiff-skirted and full-wigged privy councillors of Vienna and Berlin had made up their minds as to our disposal of the prize. Startling words suddenly began to make their appearance in the despatches and ""indemnity for the past and security for the future""--those luckless phrases which were yet destined to form so large a portion of senatorial eloquence and give birth to so prolific an offspring of European ridicule--figured in diplomacy for the first time; while our pioneers stood pickaxe in hand waiting the order to break ground. We thus lost day after day. Couriers were busy while soldiers were yawning themselves to death; and the only war carried on was in the discontents of the military councils. Who was to have Valenciennes? whose flag was to be hoisted on Lille? what army was to garrison Condé? became national questions. Who was to cut the favourite slices of France employed all the gossips of the camp in imitation of the graver gossips of the cabinet; and in the mean time we were saved the trouble of the division by a furious decree from the Convention ordering every man in France to take up arms--converting all the churches into arsenals anathematizing the German princes as so many brute beasts and recommending to their German subjects the grand republican remedy of the guillotine for all the disorders of the government past present and to come. Circumstances seldom give an infantry officer more than a view of the movements in front of his regiment; but my intimacy with Guiscard allowed me better opportunities. Among his variety of attainments he was a first-rate engineer and he was thus constantly employed where any thing connected with the higher departments of the staff required his science. He was now attached to the Prussian mission which moved with the headquarters of the British force and our intercourse was continued. I thus joined the reconnoitring parties under his command and received the most important lessons in my new art. But one of my first questions to him had been the mode of his escape on the night of our volunteer reconnoisance. ""Escape? Why I committed the very blunder against which I had cautioned you and fell into the hands of the first hussar patrole I could possibly have met. But my story is of the briefest kind. I had not rode forward above an hour when my horse stumbled over something in that most barbaric of highways and lamed himself. I then ought to have returned; but curiosity urged me on and leading my unfortunate charger by the bridle I threaded my way through the most intricate mesh of hedge and ditch within my travelling experience. The trampling of horses and the murmur of men in march at last caught my ear; and I began to be convinced that the movement which I expected from Dampier's activity was taking place. I then somewhat questioned my own _insouciance_ in having thrust you into hazard; and attempted to make my way across the country in your direction. To accomplish this object I turned my horse loose taking it for granted that lame as he was he was too good a Prussian to go any where but to his own camp. This accounts for his being found at morn. I had however scarcely thus taken the chance of losing a charger which had cost me a hundred and fifty gold ducats when I received a shot from behind a thicket which disabled my left arm and I was instantly surrounded by a dozen French hussars. I was foolish enough to be angry and angry enough to fight. But as I was neither Samson nor they Philistines my sabre was soon beaten down and I had only to surrender. I was next mounted on the croup of one of their horses and after a gallop of half an hour reached the French advanced guard. It was already hurrying on and I must confess that from the silence of the march and the rapid pace of their battalions I began to be nervous about the consequences and dreaded the effects of a surprise on some of our camps. My first apprehension however was for you. I thought that you must have been entangled in the route of some of the advancing battalions and I enquired of the colonel of the first to whom I was brought whether he had taken any prisoners. ""'Plenty ' was the answer of the rough Republican--'chiefly peasants and spies; but we have shot none of them yet. That would make too much noise; so we have sent them to the rear where I shall send you. You will not be shot till we return to-morrow morning after having cut up those _chiens Anglais_.'"" I could not avoid showing my perturbation at the extreme peril in which this distinguished man had involved himself on my account; and expressed something of my regret and gratitude. ""Remember Marston "" was his good-humoured reply ""that in the first place the Frenchman was not under circumstances to put his promise in practice--he having found the English _chien_ more than a match for the French wolf; and in the next that twelve hours form a very important respite in the life of the campaigner. I was sent to the rear with a couple of hussars to watch me until the arrival of the general who was coming up with the main body. On foot and disarmed I had only to follow them to the next house which was luckily one of the little Flemish inns. My hussars found a jar of brandy and got drunk in a moment; one dropped on the floor--the other fell asleep on his horse. I had now a chance of escape; but I was weary wounded and overcome with vexation. It happened as I took my last view of my keeper outside nodding on his horse's neck that I glanced on a huge haystack in the stable-yard. The thought struck me that helpless as I was I might contrive to give an alarm to some of the British videttes or patroles if your gallant countrymen should condescend to employ such things. I stole down into the yard lantern in hand; thrust it into the stack and had the satisfaction of seeing it burst into a blaze. I made my next step into the stable to find a horse for my escape; but the French patroles had been before me and those clever fellows seldom leave any thing to be gleaned after them. What became of my escort I did not return to enquire; but I heard a prodigious galloping through the village and found the advantage of the flame in guiding me through as perplexing a maze of thicket and morass as I ever attempted at midnight. The sound of the engagement which followed directed me to the camp; and I remain a living example to my friend of the advantage of twelve hours between sentence and execution."" I had another wonder for him; and nothing could exceed his gratification when he heard that his act had enabled me to give the alarm of the French advance. But for that blaze I should certainly have never been aware of their movement; the light alone had led me into the track of the enemy and given me time to make the intelligence useful. ""The worst of all this "" said he with his grave smile ""is that the officer in command of your camp on that night will get a red riband and a regiment; and that you will get only the advantage of recollecting that in war and perhaps in every situation of life nothing is to be despaired of and nothing is to be left untried. A candle in a lantern properly used probably saved both our lives the lives of some thousands of your brave troops the fate of the campaign and with it half the thrones of Europe trembling on the chance of a first campaign. I shall yet have some of my mystical countrymen writing an epic on my Flemish lantern."" During this little narrative we had been riding over the bleak downs which render the environs of Valenciennes such a barren contrast to the general luxuriance of northern France; and were examining the approaches to the city when Guiscard called to his attendant for his telescope. We were now in the great coal-field of France; but the miners had fled and left the plain doubly desolate. ""Can those "" said he ""be the miners returning to their homes? for if not I am afraid that we shall have speedy evidence of the hazards of inactivity."" But the twilight was now deepening and neither of us could discern any thing beyond an immense mass of men in grey cloaks hurrying towards the city. I proposed that we should ride forward and ascertain the facts. He checked my rein. ""No! Amadis de Gaul or Rolando or by whatever name more heroic your chivalry prefers being called we must volunteer no further. My valet shall return to the camp and bring us any intelligence which is to be found there while we proceed on our survey of the ground for our batteries."" We had gone but a few hundred yards and I was busily employed in sketching the profile of the citadel when we heard the advance of a large party of British cavalry with several of the staff and the Duke of York then a remarkably handsome young man at their head. I had seen the Duke frequently on our parades in England; but even the brief campaign had bronzed his cheek and given him the air which it requires a foreign campaign to give. He communicated the sufficiently interesting intelligence that since the victory over Dampier the enemy had collected a strong force from their garrisons and after throwing ten thousand men into Valenciennes had formed an intrenched camp which was hourly receiving reinforcements. ""But we must put a stop to that "" said the Duke with a smile; ""and to save them trouble and ourselves time we shall attack them to-morrow."" He then addressed himself to Guiscard with the attention due to his name and rank and conversed for a few minutes on the point of attack for the next day--examined my sketch--said some flattering words on its correctness and galloped off. ""Well "" said Guiscard as he followed with his glance the flying troop ""war is a showy spectacle and I can scarcely wonder that it should be the game of princes; but a little more common sense in our camps would have saved us to-morrow's battle. The delays of diplomacy are like the delays of law--the estate
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erishes before the process is at an end. But now to our work."" We rode to the various points from which a view of the newly arrived multitude could be obtained. Their fires began to blaze; and we were thus enabled to ascertain at once their position and in some degree their numbers. There could not be less than thirty thousand men the arrival of the last few hours. ""For this _contretemps_ "" said Guiscard as he examined their bivouac with his telescope ""we have to thank only ourselves. Valenciennes ought to have been stormed within the first five minutes after we could have cut down those poplars for scaling ladders "" and he pointed to the tapering tops of the large plantations lining the banks of the Scheldt; ""but we have been quarreling over our portfolios while the French have been gathering every rambling soldier within a hundred miles; and now we shall have a desperate struggle to take possession of those lines and probably a long siege as finale to the operation. There take my glass and judge for yourselves."" I looked and if the novelty and singularity could have made me forget the serious business of the scene I might have been amply amused. The whole French force were employed in preparing for the bivouac and fortifying the ground which they had evidently taken up with the intent of covering the city. All was in motion. At the distance from which we surveyed it the whole position seemed one huge ant-hill. Torches thickets burning and the fires of the bivouac threw an uncertain and gloomy glare over portions of the view which leaving the rest in utter darkness gave an ominous and ghostly look to the entire. I remarked this impression to Guiscard and observed that it was strange to see a ""scene of the most stirring life so sepulchral."" ""Why not?"" was his reply. ""The business is probably much the same."" ""Yet sepulchral "" I observed ""is not exactly the word which I would have used. There is too much motion too much hurried and eager restlessness too much of the wild and fierce activity of beings who have not a moment to lose and who are busied in preparations for destruction."" ""Have you ever been in the Sistine Chapel?"" asked my companion. ""No; Italy has been hitherto beyond my flight; but the longing to see it haunts me."" ""Well then when your good fortune leads you to Rome let your first look be given to the noblest work of the pencil and of Michael Angelo: glance at the bottom of his immortal picture and you will see precisely the same wild activity and the same strange and startling animation. The difference only is that the actors here are men--there fiends; here the scene is the field of future battle--there the region of final torment. I am not sure that the difference is great after all."" At daybreak the British line was under arms. I feel all words fail under the effort to convey the truth of that most magnificent display; not that a simple detail may not be adequate to describe the movements of a gallant army; but what can give the impression of the time the form and pressure of collisions on which depended the broadest and deepest interests of the earth. Our war was then what no war was since the old invasions under the Edwards and Henrys--national; it was as romantic as the crusades. England was fighting for none of the objects which during the last three hundred years had sent armies into the field--not for territory not for glory not for European supremacy not even for self-defence. She was fighting for a Cause; but that was the cause of society of human freedom of European advance of every faculty feeling and possession by which man is sustained in his rank above the beasts that perish. The very language of the great dramatist came to my recollection at the moment when I heard the first signal-gun for our being put in motion. ""Now all the youth of England are on fire And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies. Now thrive the armourers; and honour's thought Reigns solely in the breast of every man. They sell the pasture now to buy the horse Following the mirror of all Christian kings With winged heels as English Mercuries."" Our troops too had all the ardour which is added even to the boldest by the assurance of victory. They had never come into contact with the enemy but to defeat them and the conviction of their invincibility was so powerful that it required the utmost efforts of their officers to prevent their rushing into profitless peril. The past and the present were triumphant; while to many a mind of the higher cast the future was perhaps more glittering than either. In the same imperishable eloquence of poetry-- ""For now sits expectation in the air And hides a sword from hilt unto the point With crowns imperial crowns and coronets Promised to Harry and his followers."" The ambition of the English soldier may be of a more modified order than that of the foreigner; but the dream of poetry was soon realized in the crush of the Republicans who had trampled alike the crown and the coronet in the blood of their owners. Twenty-seven thousand men were appointed for the attack of the French lines; and on the first tap of the drum a general shout of exultation was given from all the columns. The cavalry galloped through the intervals to the front and parks of the light guns were sent forward to take up positions on the few eminences which commanded the plain; but the day had scarcely broke when one of those dense fogs the customary evil of the country fell suddenly upon the whole horizon and rendered action almost impossible. Nothing could exceed the vexation of the army at this impediment; and if our soldiers had ever heard of Homer there would have been many a repetition of his warrior's prayer that ""live or die it might be in the light of day."" But in the interval important changes were made in the formation of the columns. The French lines had been found of unexpected strength and the Guards were pushed forward to head a grand division placed under command of General Ferrari. The British were of course under the immediate orders of an officer of their own and a more gallant one never led troops under fire. I now for the first time saw the general who was afterwards destined to sweep the French out of Egypt and inflict the first real blow on the military supremacy of France under Napoleon. General Abercromby was then in the full vigour of life; a strongly formed manly figure a quiet but keen eye and a countenance of remarkable steadiness and thought all gave the indications of a mind firm in all the contingencies of war. Exactly at noon the fog drew up as suddenly as it had descended and we had a full view of the enemy's army. No foreign force ever exhibits so showy and soldierly an appearance as the British. The blue of the French and Prussians looks black and the white of the Austrian looks faded and feeble compared with the scarlet. As I cast my glance along our lines they looked like trails of flame. The French were drawn up in columns in front of their camp which by the most extraordinary exertion they had covered during the night with numerous batteries and fortified with a circle of powerful redoubts; the guns of the fortress defended their flank and rear and their position was evidently of the most formidable kind. But all view was lost from the moment when the head of our brigade advanced. Every gun that could be brought to bear upon us opened at once and all was enveloped in smoke. For a full hour we could see nothing but the effect of the grape-shot on our own ranks as we poured on and hear nothing but the roar of the batteries. But at length shouts began to arise in distant parts of the field and we felt that the division which had been appointed to assault the rear of the camp was making progress. Walmoden commanding a brigade under Ferrari now galloped up to ascertain whether our men were ready to assault the intrenchments. ""The British troops are _always_ ready "" was Abercromby's expressive and somewhat indignant answer. In the instant of our rushing forward an aide-de-camp rode up to acquaint the general that the column under the Duke of York had already stormed three redoubts. ""Gentlemen "" said Abercromby turning to the colonels round him ""we must try to save our friends further trouble--forward!"" Within a quarter of an hour we were within the enemy's lines every battery was stormed or turned and the French were in confusion. Some hurried towards the fortress which now began to fire; a large body fled into the open country and fell into the hands of his royal highness; and some seizing the boats on the river dropped down with the stream. All was victory: yet this was to be my day of ill luck. In pursuing the enemy towards the fortress a battalion which had attempted to cover the retreat broke at the moment when my company were on the point of charging them. This was too tempting a chance to be resisted; we rushed on taking prisoners at every step until we actually came within sight of the gate by which the fugitives were making their escape into the town. But we were in a trap and soon felt that we were discovered by a heavy discharge of musketry from the rampart. We had now only to return on our steps and I had just given the word when the firing was renewed on a bastion round which we were hurrying in the twilight. I felt a sudden shock like that of electricity which struck me down; I made a struggle to rise on my feet but my strength wholly failed me and I lost all recollection. On my restoration to my senses in a few hours after I found that I had been carried into the town and placed in the military hospital. My first impulse was to examine whether any of my brave fellows had shared my misfortune; but all round me were French wounded in the engagement of the day. My next source of congratulation was that I had no limb broken. The shot had struck me in the temple and glanced off without entering; but I had lost much blood had been trampled and felt a degree of exhaustion which gave me the nearest conception to actual death. Of the transactions of the field I knew nothing beyond my own share of the day; but I had seen the enemy in full flight and that was sufficient. Within a day or two the roaring of cannon the increased bustle of the attendants and the tidings that a black flag had been erected on the hospital told me that the siege had begun. I shall pass over its horrors. Yet what is all war but a succession of horrors? The sights which I saw the sounds which I heard from hour to hour were enough to sicken me of human nature. In the gloom and pain of my sleepless nights I literally began to think it possible that a fiendish nature might supplant the human condition and that the work before my eyes was merely an anticipation of those terrors which to name startles the imagination and wrings the heart. Surrounded with agonies the involuntary remark always came to my mind with renewed freshness in the common occurrences of the hospital day. But besides the sufferings of the wounded a new species of suffering scarcely less painful and still more humiliating began to be prominent. The provisions of the people insufficiently laid in at the approach of the besiegers rapidly failed and the hospital itself was soon surrounded by supplicants for food. The distress at last became so excessive that it amounted to agony. Emaciated figures of both sexes stole or forced their way into the building to beg our rations or snatch them from our feeble hands; and I often divided my scanty meal with individuals who had once been in opulent trade or been ranked among the _semi-noblesse_ of the surrounding country. Sometimes I missed faces to which I had been accustomed among those unfortunate beings and I heard a still more unhappy tale--shall I call it more unhappy? They had perished by the cannon-shot which now poured into the city day and night or had been buried in the ruins of some of the buildings which were now constantly falling under the heaviest bombardment in the annals of war. Of those scenes I say no more. If the siege of a great fortress is the most trying of all hazards to the soldier without what must it be to the wretches within? Valenciennes was once the centre of the lace manufactories of France. The war had destroyed them at once. The proprietors had fled the thousands of young and old employed in those delicate and beautiful productions had fled too or remained only to perish of famine. A city of twenty thousand of the most ingenious artists was turning day by day into a vast cemetery. As I tossed on my mattress hour after hour and heard the roar of the successive batteries shuddered at the fall of the shells and was tortured by the cries of the crowd flying from the explosions all night long--I gave the deepest curses of my spirit to the passion for glory. It is true that nations must defend themselves; the soldier is a protector to the industry the wealth and the happiness of the country. I am no disciple of the theory which disclaiming the first instinct of nature self-preservation invites injury by weakness and creates war by impunity; but the human race ought to outlaw the man who dares to dream of conquest and builds his name in the blood of man. On my capture one of my first wishes had been to acquaint my regiment with the circumstances of my misfortune and to relieve my friends of their anxiety for the fate of a brother officer. But this object which in the older days of continental campaigning would have been acceded to with a bow and a compliment by Monsiegneur le Comte or Son Altesse Royale the governor was sturdily refused by the colonel in charge of the hospital--a firm Republican and the son of a cobbler who swearing by the Goddess of Reason threatened to hang over the gate the first man who dared to bring him another such proposal. I next sent my application to the commandant a brave old soldier who had served in the royal armies and had the feelings of better times; but it was probably intercepted for no answer came. This added deeply to my chagrin. My absence must give rise to conjecture; my fall had been unseen even by my men; and while I believed that my character was above the scandal of either pusillanimity or desertion it still remained at the mercy of all. But chance came to my relief. It happened that I had unconsciously won the particular regard of one of the Béguines who attended the hospital; and my _tristesse_ which she termed 'effrayante ' one evening attracted her peculiar notice. Let not my vanity be called in question; for my fair admirer was at least fifty years old and was about the figure and form of one of her country churns although her name was Juliet! Pretty as the name was the Béguine had not an atom of the poetic about her. Romance troubled her not. Yet with a face like the full moon and a pile of petticoats which would have made a dowdy of the ""Belvedere Diana "" she was a capital creature. Juliet fat as she was had the natural frolic of a squirrel; she was everywhere and knew every thing and did every thing for every body; her tongue and her feet were constantly busy; and I scarcely knew which was the better emblem of the perpetual motion. My paleness was peculiarly distressing to her; ""it hurt her feelings;"" it also hurt her honour; for she had been famous for her nursing and as she told me with her plump hands upon her still plumper hips and her head thrown back with an air of conscious merit ""she had saved more than the doctors had killed."" I had some reluctance to tell her the cause of my _tristesse_; for I knew her zeal and I dreaded her plunging into some hazard with the authorities. But who has ever been able to keep a secret where it was the will of the sex to extort it? Juliet obtained mine before she left the ward for the night; and desired me to give her a letter which she pledged herself to transmit to my regiment. But this I determined to refuse and I kept my determination. I had no desire to see my ""fat friend"" suspended from the pillars of the portico; or to hear of her at least being given over to the mercies of the provost-marshal. We parted half in anger on her side and with stern resolution on mine. During the day Juliet was not forthcoming and her absence produced what the French call a ""lively sensation""--which in nine instances out of ten means an intolerable sense of ennui--in the whole establishment. I shared the general uneasiness and at length began to cast glances towards the gate where though I was not exactly prepared to see the corpulent virtues of my friend in suspension I had some tremblings for the state ""_sain et sauf_;"" of my Béguine. At last her face appeared at the opening of the great door flushed with heat and good-nature and as it came moving through the crowd which gathered round her with all kinds of enquiries giving no bad resemblance to the moon seen through a fog; whether distinct or dim full and florid to the last. Her good-humoured visage revived me as if I had met a friend of as many years standing as she numbered on her cradle. But all my enquiries for the news of earth outside the hospital were answered only by an ""order"" to keep myself tranquil--prevent the discomposure of my pulse and duly drink my ptisan. All this however was for the general ear. The feebleness which kept me confined to my bed during the day had made my nights wakeful. On this night whether on the anxiety of the day or the heavier roar of the siege for the bombardment was now at its height I exhibited signs of returning fever and the Béguine remained in attendance. But when the crowd had gone to such rest as they could find amid the thunder of batteries and the bursting of shells Juliet approached my pillow with a broad smile which distended her good-natured mouth from ear to ear and thrust under my pillow a small packet--the whole operation being followed by a finger pressed to her lips and a significant glance to every corner of the huge melancholy hall to see that all was secure. She then left me to my meditations! The mysterious packet contained three letters; and eager as I was for their perusal I almost shuddered at their touch; for they must have been obtained with infinite personal peril and if found upon the Béguine they might have brought her under the severest vengeance of the garrison. They were from Guiscard Mariamne and Mordecai. Thus to three individuals all comparatively strangers was my world reduced. But they were no common strangers; and I felt while holding their letters in my hand and almost pressing them to my heart how much more strongly friendship may bind us than the ties of cold and negligent relationship. I opened the soldier's letter first. It was like every thing that Guiscard ever did; manly yet kind. ""Your disappearance in that unfortunate rencontre has created much sorrow and surprise; but the sorrow was all for your loss to _the_ 'corps of corps ' and the surprise was that no tidings could be heard of you whether fallen or surviving. The flag and trumpet sent in next morning to recover the remains of such as had suffered in that mad rush to the gates of the town came back without being permitted to pass beyond the outworks bringing a brutal message from the officer on duty 'that the next flag should be fired on ' and that the 'brave soldiers of the Republic allowed of no compromise with the slaves of tyranny!' The bravado might be laughed at but it left me in the dark relative to your fate; and if you are to be flattered by the feelings of men who cannot get at you but by cannon-shot you may congratulate yourself on having had as many fine things said of you as would make an epitaph for a duke--and I believe with a sincerity at least equal to the best of them. I write all this laughingly now but suspense makes heaviness of heart and you cost me some uneasy hours of course. I send you none of _our_ news; as you will hear all in good time and communications on public matters might bring your messenger or yourself into difficulties. You are alive and in good hands; that is the grand point. Your character is now in _my_ hands and I shall take care of it; I shall see you a general officer yet if you have not the greater luck to retire and live an honest farmer sitting under your own fig-tree and your own vine with an unromantic spouse and some half-dozen of red-cheeked children. Farewell we shall _soon_ see each other."" The last line evidently meant more than met the eye and I was now just in the mind to indulge in the fantasies of my fair correspondent. They were like herself--a curious mixture of mirth and melancholy. ""Why I wished to write to you or why I write at all--which however I do decorously at the side of my father--are questions which I have not taken the trouble of asking until this moment. But I am in Switzerland where no one has time for any thing but worshipping mountain-tops and falling down at the feet of cataracts. Whether it would add to Mr Marston's satisfaction I cannot presume to say but I feel better much better than when I first came into this land of fresh breezes and beauty of all kinds--the population of every rank always excepted. If I were like you a philosopher I should probably say that nature gets tired of her work and after having struck off some part of it with all the spirit of an Italian painter disdains the trouble of finishing; or like a French 'fashionable ' coquettes with her own charms and is determined to make the world adore her in spite of her slippers and her shawl. Thus nature which gave the peacock a diadem on its head and a throne in its tail has given it a pair of frightful legs. And on the same charming principle she has given Switzerland the finest of all possible landscapes and filled them with the most startling of all possible physiognomies. ""But no more of theory. It has always made my head ache and headachs are I know contagious; so I spare you. Yet have you a moment among your thousand and one avocations to remember my father--or me? I beg that I may not impede the march of armies or shock the balance of Europe while I solicit you to give me a single line--no more; a mere 'annonce' of any thing that can tell me of your 'introuvable' friend Lafontaine. This is _not_ for myself. The intelligence is required for a sister of his whom I have lately met in this country--a showy ""citizeness"" of Zurich _embonpoint_ and matronly married to one of the portly burghers of the city and exemplary in all the arts of sheep-shearing wool-spinning and cheese-making; a mother surrounded _à la Française_ with a host of Orlandos Hyacintes Aristomenes and Apollos--pretty children with the Frenchman developing in all its gaudiness; the Switzer remaining behind until it shall come forth in cloudy brows and a face stamped with money-making. Madame Spiegler is still not beyond a waltz and in the very whirl of one last night she turned to me and _implored_ that I should 'move heaven and earth ' as she termed it--with her blue eyes thrown up to the chandelier and her remarkably pretty and well-_chaussé'd_ feet still beating time to the dance--to bring her disconsolate bosom tidings of her '_frère si bien aimé si malheureux_.' I promised and she flew off instantly into the very _core_ of a dance consisting of at least a hundred couples. ""I have just returned from a drive along the shore of the Leman. The recollection of Madame Spiegler rolling and rushing through the waltz like a dolphin through the waves; or like any thing caught in an enormous whirlpool sweeping round perpetually until it was swept out of sight had fevered me. The air here is certainly delicious. It has a sense of life--a vivid yet soft freshness that makes the mere act of breathing it delightful. But I have mercy on you--not one word of Clarens not one word of Meillerie. Take it for granted that Ferney is burnt down as it well might be without any harm to the picturesque; and that Jean Jacques never wrote played the knave or existed. If I were a Swiss Caliph Omar I should make a general seizure to be followed by a general conflagration of every volume that has ever touched on the wit and wickedness of the one or the intolerable sensibility of the other. I should next extend the flame to all tours meditations and musings on hills valleys and lakes; prohibit all sunset 'sublimities' as an offence against the state; and lay all raptures at the 'distant view of Mont Blanc ' or the 'ascent of the Rhighi ' if not under penalty of prison at least under a bond never to be seen in the territory again. But I must make my _adieux_. _Apropos_ if you _should_ accidentally hear any thing of your _pelerin-à-pied_ friend Lafontaine--for I conjecture that he has gone to discover the fountains of the Nile or is at this moment a candidate for the office of court-chamberlain at Timbuctoo--let me hear it. Madame Spiegler is really uneasy on the subject though it has not diminished either her weight or her velocity nor will prevent her waltzing till the end of the world or of herself. _One_ sentence--nay one syllable--will be enough. ""This light _is_ delicious and it is only common gratitude to nature to acknowledge that she has done something in the scene before my casement at this sweet and quiet hour which places her immeasurably above the _decorateurs_ of a French _salon_. The sun has gone and the moon has not yet come. There is scarcely a star; and yet a light lingers and floats and descends over everything--hill forest and water--like the light that one sometimes sees in dreams. All dream-like--the work of a spell laid over a horizon of a hundred miles. I should scarcely be surprised to see visionary forms rising from these woods and waters and ascending in bright procession into the clouds. I hear at this moment some touches of music which I could almost believe to come from invisible instruments as they pass along with the breeze. Still may I beg of you Mr Marston not to suppose that I mean to extend this letter to the size of a government despatch nor that the mark which I find I have left on my paper is a tear? _I_ have no sorrow to make its excuse. But here one weeps for pleasure and I can forgive even Rousseau his--'Je m'attendrissais je soupirais et je pleurais comme un enfant. Combien de fois m'arrêtant pour pleurer plus à mon aise assis sur une grosse pierre je me suis amusé à voir tomber mes larmes dans l'eau.' Rousseau was lunatic but he was _not_ lunatic when he wrote this or _I_ am growing so too. For fear of that possible romance I say farewell. ""P.S.--Remember Madame Spiegler. _Toujours à vous_--MARIAMNE."" My third letter was Mordecai to the life--a bold hurried yet clear view of the political bearings of the time. It more than ever struck me in the course of his daring paragraphs what a capital leader he would have made for a Jewish revolution; if one could imagine the man of a thousand years of slavery grasping the sword and unfurling the banner. Yet bold minds _may_ start up among a fallen people; and when the great change which will assuredly come is approaching it is not improbable that it will be begun by some new and daring spirit throwing off the robes of humiliation and teaching Israel to strike for freedom by some gallant example--a new Moses smiting the Egyptian and marching from the house of bondage the fallen host of the oppressor left weltering in the surge of blood behind. After some personal details and expressions of joy at the recovering health of his idolized but wayward daughter he plunged into politics. ""I have just returned "" said he ""from a visit to some of our German kindred. You may rely upon it that a great game is on foot. _Your_ invasion is a jest. Your troops will fight I allow but your cabinets will betray. I have seen enough to satisfy me that if you do not take Paris within the next three months you will not take it within ten times the number of years. Of course I make no attempt at prediction. I leave infallibility to the grave fools of conclaves and councils; but the French mob will beat them all. What army can stand before a pestilence? When I was last in Sicily I went to the summit of Etna during the time of an eruption. On my way I slept at one of the convents on the slope of the mountain. I was roused from my sleep by a midnight clamour in the court of the convent--the monks were fluttering in all corners like frightened chickens. I came down from my chamber and was told the cause of the alarm in the sudden turn of a stream of the eruption towards the convent. I laughed at the idea of hazard from such a source when the building was one mass of stone and of course as I conceived incombustible. '_Santissima Madre!_' exclaimed the frightened superior who stood wringing his hands and calling on all the saints in his breviary; 'you do not know of what stone it is built. All is lava; and at the first touch of the red-hot rocks now rolling down upon us every stone in the walls will melt like wax in the furnace.' The old monk was right. We lost no time in making our escape to a neighbouring pinnacle and from it saw the stream of molten stone roll round the walls inflame them scorch swell and finally melt them down. Before daylight the site of the convent was a gulf of flame. This comes of sympathy in stones--what will it be in men? Wait a twelvemonth; and you will see the flash and flame of French republicanism melting down every barrier of the Continent. The mob has the mob on its side for ever. The offer of liberty to men who have spent a thousand years under despotism is irresistible. Light may blind but who loves utter darkness? The soldier may melt down like the rest; he is a man and may be a madman like the rest; he too is one of the multitude. ""Their language may be folly or wisdom it may be stolen from the ramblings of romance writers or be the simple utterance of irrepressible instincts within; but it is the language which I hear every where around me. Men eat and drink to it work and play to it awake and sleep to it. It is in the rocks and the streams in the cradle and almost on the deathbed. It rings in the very atmosphere; and what must be the consequence? If the French ever cross the Rhine they will sweep every thing before them as easily as a cloud sweeps across the sky and with as little power in man to prevent them. A cluster of church steeples or palace spires could do no more to stop the rush of a hurricane. ""You will call me a panegyrist of Republicanism or of France. I have no love for either. But I may admire the spring of the tiger or even give him credit for the strength of his tusks and the grasp of his talons without desiring to see him take the place of my spaniel on the hearth-rug or choosing him as the companion of my travels. _I_ dread the power of the multitude _I_ despair of its discipline and _I_ shrink from the fury of its passions. A republic in France can be nothing but a funeral pile in which the whole fabric is made not for use but for destruction; which man cannot inhabit but which the first torch will set in a blaze from the base to the summit; and upon which after all corpses alone crown the whole hasty and tottering erection. But this I _shall_ say that Germany is at this moment on the verge of insurrection; and that the first French flag which waves on the right bank of the Rhine will be the signal of explosion. I say more; that if the effect is to be permanent pure or beneficial it will _not_ be the result of the tricolor. The French conquests have always been brilliant but it was the brilliancy of a soap-bubble. A puff of the weakest lips that ever breathed from a throne has always been enough to make the nation conquerors; but the hues of glory no sooner began to colour the thin fabric than it burst before the eye and the nation had only to try another bubble. It is my impression that the favouritism of Revolution at this moment will even receive its death-blow from France itself. All is well while nothing is seen of it but the blaze ascending hour by hour from the fragments of her throne or nothing heard but the theatrical songs of the pageants which perform the new idolatry of 'reason.' But when the Frenchman shall come among nations with the bayonet in his right hand and with the proclamation in his left--when he turns his charger loose into the corn-field and robs the peasant whom he harangues on the rights of the people--this republican baptism will give no new power to the conversion. The German phlegm will kick the French _vivacité_ will scourge and then alone will the true war begin. Yet all this may be but the prelude. When the war of wea
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ons has been buried in its own ashes another war may begin the war of minds--the struggle of mighty nations the battle of an ambition of which our purblind age has not even a glimpse--a terrible strife yet worthy of the immortal principle of man and to be rewarded only by a victory which shall throw all the exploits of soldiership into the shade."" While I was meditating on the hidden meanings of this letter in which my Jewish friend seemed to have imbibed something of the dreamy spirit of Germany itself I was startled by a tremendous uproar outside the hospital--the drums beat to arms the garrison hastily mustered the population poured into the streets and a strong and startling light in all the casements showed that some great conflagration had just begun. The intelligence was soon spread that the Hotel de Ville the noblest building in the city a fine specimen of Italian architecture of the seventeenth century and containing some incomparable pictures by the Italian masters and a _chef-d'oeuvre_ of Rubens had been set on fire by a bomb and was now in a blaze from battlement to ground. The next intelligence was still more painful. The principal convent of the city which was close in its rear had taken fire and the unfortunate nuns were seen at the windows in the most imminent danger of perishing. Feeble as I was I immediately rose. The Béguine rushed in at the moment wringing her hands and uttering the wildest cries of terror at the probable destruction of those unhappy women. I volunteered my services which were accepted and I hurried out to assist in saving them if possible. The spectacle was overwhelming. The Hotel de Ville was a large and nearly insulated building with a kind of garden-walk round three of its sides which was now filled with the populace. The garrison exhibited all the activity of the national character in their efforts to extinguish the flames. Scaling-ladders were applied to the windows men mounted them thick as bees; fire-buckets were passed from hand to hand for the fire-engines had been long since destroyed by the cannonade; and there seemed to be some hope of saving the structure when a succession of agonizing screams fixed every eye on the convent where the fire had found its way to the stores of wood and oil and shot up like the explosion of gunpowder. The efforts of the troops were now turned to save the convent; but the intense fury of the flame defeated every attempt. The scaling-ladders no sooner touched the casements than they took fire; the very walls were so hot that none could approach them; and every new gust swept down a sheet of flame which put the multitude to flight in all directions. Artillery was now brought out to breach the walls; but while there remained a hundred and fifty human beings within it was impossible to make use of the guns. All efforts at length ceased; and the horror was deepened if such could be by seeing now and then a distracted figure rush to a casement toss up her arms to heaven and then rush back again with a howl of despair. I proposed to the French officers that they should dig under the foundations and thus open a way of escape through the vaults. The attempt was made but it had the ill success of all the rest. The walls were too massive for our strength and the pickaxe and spade were thrown aside in despair. From the silence which now seemed to reign within and the volumes of smoke which poured from the casements it began to be the general impression that the fate of the nuns was already decided; and the officers were about to limber up their guns and retire when I begged their chief to make one trial more and fire at a huge iron door which closed a lofty archway leading to the Hotel de Ville. He complied; a six-pound ball was sent against the door and it flew off its hinges. To the boundless exultation and astonishment of all we saw the effect of this fortunate shot in the emergence of the whole body of the nuns from the smoking and shattered building. They had been driven step by step from the interior to the long stone-built passage which in old times had formed a communication with the town and which had probably not been used for a century. The troops and populace now rushed into the Hotel de Ville to meet and convey them to places of safety. I followed with the same object yet with some unaccountable feeling that I had a personal interest in the rescue. The halls and apartments were on the huge and heavy scale of ancient times and I was more than once bewildered in ranges of corridors filled with the grim reliques of civic magnificence fierce portraits of forgotten men of city fame portentous burghers and mailed captains of train bands. The unhappy women were at length gathered from the different galleries to which they had scattered in their fright and were mustered at the head of the principal entrance or _grand escalier_ at whose foot the escort was drawn up for their protection. But the terrors of that fearful night were not yet at an end. The light of the conflagration had caught the eye of the besiegers and a whole flight of shells were sent in its direction. Some burst in the street putting the populace to flight on every side; and while the women were on the point of rushing down the stair a crash was heard above and an enormous shell burst through the roof carrying down shattered rafters stones and a cloud of dust. The batteries had found our range and a succession of shells burst above our heads or tore their way downwards. All was now confusion and shrieking. At length one fell on the centre of the _escalier_ rolled down a few steps and bursting tore up the whole stair leaving only a deep gulf between us and the portal. The women fled back through the apartment. I now regarded all as lost; and expecting the roof to come down every moment on my head and hearing nothing round me but the bursting and hissing of those horrible instruments of havoc I hurried through the chambers in the hope of finding some casement from which I might reach the ground. They were all lofty and difficult of access but I at length climbed up to one from which though twenty or thirty feet from the path below I determined to take the plunge. I was about to leap when to my infinite surprise I heard my name pronounced. I stopped. I heard the words--""_Adieu pour toujours!_"" All was dark within the room but I returned to discover the speaker. It was a female on her knees near the casement and evidently preparing to die in prayer. I took her hand and led her passively towards the window; she wore the dress of a nun and her veil was on her face. As she seemed fainting I gently removed it to give her air. A sheet of flame suddenly threw a broad light across the garden and in that face I saw--Clotilde! She gave a feeble cry and fell into my arms. Our escape was accomplished soon after by one of the scaling-ladders which was brought at my call; and before I slept I had seen the being in whom my very existence was concentrated safely lodged with the principal family of the town. Slept did I say? I never rested for an instant. Thoughts reveries a thousand wild speculations rose fell chased each other through my brain and all left me feverish half-frantic and delighted. At the earliest moment which could be permitted by the formalities of France even in a besieged town I flew to Clotilde. She received me with the candour of her noble nature. Her countenance brightened with sudden joy as she approached me. In the _salle de reception_ she sat surrounded by the ladies of the family still full of enquiries on the perils of the night congratulations on her marvellous escape and no slight approval of the effect of the convent costume on the contour of her fine form and expressive features. My entrance produced a diversion in her favour; and I was showered with showy speeches from the seniors of the circle; the younger portion suddenly relapsing into that frigid propriety which the Mademoiselle retains until she becomes the Madame and then flings off for ever like her girlish wardrobe. But their eyes took their full share and if glances at the ""Englishman"" could have been transfered into words I should have enjoyed a very animated conversation on the part of the _Jeunes Innocenes_. But I shrank from the panegyric of my ""heroism "" as it was pronounced in all the tones of courtesy; and longed for the voice of Clotilde alone. The circle at last withdrew and I was left to the most exquisite enjoyment of which the mind of man is capable--the full fond and faithful outpouring of the heart of the woman he loves. Strange to say I had never exchanged a syllable with Clotilde before; and yet we now as deeply understood each other--were as much in each other's confidence and had as little of the repulsive ceremonial of a first interview as if we had conversed for years. ""You saved my life "" said she; ""and you are entitled to my truest gratitude to my last hour. I had made up my mind to die. I was exhausted in the attempt to escape from that horrible convent. When at last I reached the Hotel de Ville and found that all the sisterhood had been driven back from the great stair by the flames I gave up all hope: and may I acknowledge unblamed to you--but from _you_ what right have I now to conceal any secret of my feelings?--I was not unwilling to lay down a life which seemed to grow darker from day to day."" ""You were wearied of your convent life?"" said I fixing my eyes on hers with eager enquiry. ""But you must not tell me that you are a nun. The new laws of France forbid that sacrifice. My sweet Clotilde while I live I shall never recognise your vows."" ""You need not "" she answered with a smile that glowed. 'Celestial rosy red love's proper hue.' ""I have never taken them. The superior of the convent was my near relative and I fled to her protection from the pursuit of one whom I never could have respected and whom later thoughts have made me all but abhor."" ""Montrecour! I shall pursue him through the world."" ""No "" said Clotilde; ""he is as unworthy of your resentment as of my recollection. He is a traitor to his king and a disgrace to his nobility. He is now a general in the Republican service Citizen Montrecour. But we must talk of him no more."" She blushed deeply and after some hesitation said ""I am perfectly aware that the marriages customary among our noblesse were too often contracted in the mere spirit of exclusiveness; and I own that the proposal of my alliance with the Marquis de Montrecour was a family arrangement perfectly in the spirit of other days. But my residence in England changed my opinions on the custom of my country and I determined never to marry."" She stopped short and with a faint smile said ""But let us talk of something else."" Her cheek was crimson and her eyes were fixed on the ground. ""No Clotilde talk of nothing else. Talk of your feelings your sentiments of yourself and all that concerns yourself. No subject on earth can ever be so delightful to your friend. But talk of what you will and I shall listen with a pleasure which no human being has ever given me before or ever shall give me again."" She raised her magnificent eyes and fixed them full upon me with an involuntary look of surprise then grew suddenly pale and closed them as if she were fainting. ""I must listen "" said she ""to this language no longer. I know you to be above deception. I know you to be above playing with the vanity of one unused to praise and to such praise. But I have a spirit as high as your own. Let us be friends. It will give an additional honour to my name; shall I say""--and she faltered--""an additional interest to my existence. Now we must part for a while."" ""Never!"" was my exclamation. ""The world does not contain two Clotildes. And you shall never leave me. You have just told me that I preserved your life. Why shall I not be its protector still? Why not be suffered to devote mine to making yours happy?"" But the bitter thought struck me as I uttered the words--how far I was from the power of giving this incomparable creature the station in society which was hers by right! How feeble was my hope even of competence! How painfully I should look upon her beauty her fine understanding and her generous heart humbled to the narrow circumstances of one whose life depended upon the chances of the most precarious of all professions and whose success in that profession depended wholly on the caprice of fortune. But one glance more drove all doubts away and I took her hand. She looked at me with speechless embarrassment sighed deeply and a tear stole down her cheek. At length withdrawing her hand she said in almost a whisper and with an evident effort ""This must not be. I feel infinite honour in your good opinion--deeply grateful for your kindness. But this must not be. No. I should rather wear this habit for my life than make so ungenerous a return to the noble spirit that can thus offer its friendship to a stranger."" ""No Clotilde no. Again in my turn I say this must not be; you are _no_ stranger. I know you at this hour as well as if I had known you from the first hour of my being. I gave my heart to you from the moment when I first saw you among your countrywomen in England. It required no time to make me feel that you were my fate. It was an instinct a spell a voice of nature a voice of heaven within me!"" She listened and trembled. I again took the hand which was withheld no more. ""From that day Clotilde you were my thought by day and my dream by night. All my desires of distinction were that it might be seen by your eye; all my hopes of fortune that I might be enabled to lay it at your feet. If a throne were offered to me on condition of renouncing you I should have rejected it. If it were my lot to labour in the humblest rank of life with _you_ by my side I should have cheerfully laboured; and with your hand in mine I should have said I have found what is worth the world--happiness!"" Tears flowed down her cheeks which were now like marble. She feebly attempted to smile while with eyelids drooping and her whole frame quivering with emotion she murmured in broken accents ""It is impossible--utterly impossible! leave me. I must not bring you a portionless a helpless a nameless being--a mere dependent on your kindness a burden on your fortune an obstacle to your whole advance in the world!"" A rich flush suddenly lighted up her lovely countenance and a new splendour flashed from her eyes. She threw back her head loftily and looking upwards as if to draw thoughts from above--""Sir "" said she ""I am as proud as you. I have had noble ancestors; I have borne a noble name. If that name has fallen it is in the common wreck of my country. Our fortunes have sunk only where the monarchy has gone down along with them; and I shall never degrade the memory of those ancestors nor humiliate still more the fallen name of our house by imposing my obscurity my poverty on one who has honoured me as you have done. Now--farewell! My resolution is fixed. Farewell my friend! I shall never forget this day."" She turned away her face and wept abundantly; then fixing a deep look on me she added--""I own that it would be a consolation to Clotilde de Tourville to believe that she may be sometimes remembered; but until times change we meet no more--if they change not we part for ever."" I was so completely startled so thunderstruck by this declaration that I could not utter a word. I stood gazing at her with open lips. I felt a mist gathering over my eyes; a strange sensation about my heart chilled my whole frame. I tottered to the sofa and pressed my hand in pain upon my eyes; when I withdrew it I was alone--Clotilde was gone she had vanished with the silence of a vision. I left the house immediately in a state of mind which seemed like a dissolution of all my faculties. I could not speak--I could scarcely see--I could only gasp for air and retain sufficient power over my limbs to guide my steps to my melancholy dwelling. There I threw myself on my rough bed and lingered throughout the day in an exhaustion of mind and body which I sometimes thought to be the approach of death. How little could Clotilde have intended that I should suffer thus for her high-toned delicacy! Still in all my misery of soul I did her justice. I remembered the countenance of melancholy beauty with which she announced her final determination. The accents of her impassioned voice continually rose in my recollection giving the deepest testimony of a heart struggling at once with affection and a sense of duty. In my wildest reveries during that day and night of wretchedness I felt that if she could have spared me a single pang she would have rejoiced to cheer to console to tranquillize me. Those were strange feelings for a rejected lover but they were entirely mine. There was so lofty a spirit in her glance so true a sincerity in her language so pure and transparent a truth in her sighs and smiles and involuntary tears that I acquitted her from my soul of all attempts to try or triumph over my devotion to her. More than once during that night of anguish I almost imagined the scene of the day actually passing again before my eyes. I saw her sorrows and vainly endeavoured to subdue them; I heard her convulsive tones and attempted to calm them; I reasoned with her talked of our common helplessness acknowledged the dignity and the delicacy of her conduct and even gave her lip the kiss of peace and sorrow as I bade her farewell. Deep but exquisite illusion! which I cherished and strove to renew; until suddenly aroused by some changing of the sentinels or passing of the attendants I looked round and saw nothing but the gloomy roof the old flickering of the huge lantern hanging from the centre of the hall and the beds where so many had slept their last and which so many of the sleepers were never to leave with life. I then had the true experience of human passion. Love in the light and gay may be as sportive as themselves; in the calm and grave it may be strong and deep; but in some it is strong as tempest and consuming as flame. I should probably have closed my days in that place of all afflicting sights and sounds but for my good old Béguine. On her first visit at dawn she lectured me prodigiously on the folly of exposing myself to the hazards of the night air of which she evidently thought much more than of the Austrian cannon-balls. ""They might shower upon the buildings as they pleased but "" said the Béguine ""if they kill their business is done. It is your cold your damp your night air that carries off without letting any one know how "" the perplexity of science on the subject plainly forming the chief evil in poor Juliet's mind. ""See my own condition "" said she striving to bring her recollections in aid of her advice. ""At fifteen I was a barmaid at the Swartz Adler; there I ran in and out danced at all the family fêtes and was as gay as a bird on the tree. But that life was too good to last. At twenty a corporal of Prussian dragoons fell in love with me or I with him--it is all the same. His regiment was ordered to Silesia and away we all marched. But if ever there was a country of fogs that was the one. There are now and then a few even in our delightful France; but in Silesia they have a patent for them they have them _par privilège_; if men could eat them there would never be a chance of starving in Silesia. So we all got sore throats. Cannon and musketry were nothing to them. Our dragoons dropped off like flies at the end of summer; and unless we had been ordered away to keep the Turks from marching to Berlin or the saints know where the regiment would have had its last quarters in this world within a league of the marshes of Breslau. So I say ever since--take care of damp."" Having thus relieved her good-natured spirit of its burden she proceeded to give me sketches of her history. The corporal had fallen a victim--though whether to Silesian fog brandy or bullet she left doubtful--and she had married his successor in the rank. Love and matrimony in the army are of a different order from either in civil life; for the love is perpetual the matrimony precarious. Juliet acknowledged that she never left above a month's interval between her afflictions as a widow and her consolations as a wife. In the course of time she changed her service. A handsome Austrian sergeant won her heart and hand and she followed him to Hungary. There between marsh fever and Turkish skirmishing various casualties occurred in the matrimonial list; and Juliet who evidently had been a handsome brunette and whose French vivacity distanced all the heavy charms of the Austrian peasantry was never without a husband. At length like other veterans having served her country to the full extent of her patriotism she was discharged with her tenth husband and of course induced the honest Austrian to come to the only country on which in a Frenchwoman's creed the sun shines. There the Austrian died. ""I loved him "" said the Béguine wiping her eyes. ""He was an excellent fellow though dull; and I believe next to smoking and schnaps he loved me better than any thing else in the world. But on his emperor's birth-day which he always kept with a bottle of brandy additional he rambled out into the fog and came back with a cold. _Peste!_ I knew it was all over with him; but I nursed him like a babe and he died like a true Austrian with his meerschaum in his mouth bequeathing me his snuff-box the certificate of his pension and his blessing. I buried him got pensioned and was broken-hearted. What then was to be done? I was born for society. I once or twice thought of an eleventh husband; but I was rich. I had above a thousand francs and a pension of a hundred; this perplexed me. I was determined to be married for myself alone. Yet how could I know whether the hypocrites who clustered round me were not thinking of my money all the while? So I determined to marry no more--and became a Béguine."" In all my vexation I could not help turning my eye upon the sentimentalist. She interpreted it in the happy way of her country. ""You wonder at my self-denial "" said she; ""I perceive it in your astonishment. I was _but_ fifty then. Yes "" said she clasping her hands and looking pathetic; ""I acknowledge that it _was_ cruel. What right had I to break so many hearts? I have much to answer for--and I _but_ fifty! I am even now but fifty-six. Yet observe I have taken no vows; remark _that_ Monsieur le Capitaine. At this moment I am only a _Soeur de Charité_. No nothing shall ever induce me to make or keep the vows. _I_ am free to marry to-morrow; and I only beg Monsieur le Capitaine that when you are well enough to go abroad again whether in the town or in the country or in whatever part of Europe you may travel you will have the kindness to state positively most positively that Juliet Donnertronk _née_ Ventrebleu has not taken and never will take any vows whatever!"" ""Not even those of marriage Juliet?"" asked I. She laughed and patted my burning head with ""_Ah vous êtes bien bon! Ah moqueur Anglais!_"" finishing with all the pantomine of blushing confusion and starting away like a fluttered pigeon. As soon as I felt able to move which was not till some days after my first effort was to reach the mansion in which Clotilde resided. But there I received the intelligence that on the evening of the day of my first and last visit she had left the town with the superior of the convent. She had made such urgent entreaties to the governor to be permitted to leave Valenciennes that he had obtained a passport for her from the general commanding the trenches; and not only for her but also for the nuns--the burning of whose convent had left them houseless. Painful as it was thus to lose her it was in some degree a relief to find that she was under the protection of her relative; and when I saw from day to day the ravage that was committed by the tremendous weight of fire I almost rejoiced that she was no longer exposed to its perils. But it was my fate or perhaps my good fortune never to be suffered to brood long over my own calamities. My life was spent in the midst of tumults which if they did not extinguish--and what could extinguish?--the sense of such mental trials at least prevented the echo of my complaints from returning to my ears. Before the midnight of that very day in which I had flung myself on my couch with almost total indifference as to my ever resting on another the whole city was alarmed by the intelligence that the besiegers were evidently preparing for an assault. I listened undisturbed. Even this could scarcely add to the horrors in which the inhabitants lived from hour to hour; and to me it was the hope of a rescue unless I should be struck by some of the shells which now were perpetually bursting in the streets or should even fall a victim to the wrath of the incensed garrison. But an order came suddenly to the officer in charge of the hospital to send all the patients into the vaults and throw all the beds on the roof to deaden the weight of the fire. He was a man of gentlemanlike manners and had been attentive to me in the shape of many of those minor civilities which a man of severe authority might have refused but which mark kindliness of disposition. On this night he told me that he had orders to put all the prisoners in arrest; but that he regarded me more as a friend than a prisoner--and that I was at liberty to take any precaution for my security which I thought proper. My answer was ""that I hoped at all events not to be shut into the vaults but to take my chance above ground."" In the end I proposed to assist in carrying the mattresses to the roof and remain there until the night was over. ""But you will be hit "" said my friend. ""So be it "" was my answer. ""It is the natural fate of my profession; but at least I shall not be buried alive."" ""All will be soon over with us all and with Valenciennes "" said the officer; ""though whether to-night or not is a question. We have seen new batteries raised within the last twenty-four hours. The enemy have now nearly three hundred heavy guns in full play; and to judge from the quantity of shells they must have a hundred mortars besides. No fortress can stand this; and if it continues we shall soon be ground into dust."" He took his leave; and with my mattress on my shoulder I mounted the numberless and creaking staircases until the door of the roof and the landscape opened on me together. The night was excessively dark but perfectly calm; and except where the fire from the batteries marked their position all objects beyond the ramparts were invisible. The town around me lay silent and looking more like a vast grave than a place of human existence. Now and then the light of a lantern gliding along the ruined streets showed me a group of wretched beings hurrying a corpse to the next churchyard or a priest seeking his way over the broken heaps to attend some dying soldier or citizen. All was utter desolation. But a new scene--a terrible and yet a superb one--suddenly broke upon me. A discharge of rockets from various points of the allied lines showed that a general movement was begun. The batteries opened along the whole extent of the trenches and by their blaze I was able to discern advancing and formed in their rear two immense columns which however in the distance and the fitfulness of the glare looked more like huge clouds than living beings. The guns of the ramparts soon replied and the roar was deafening; while the plunging of shot along the ramparts and roofs made our situation perilous in no slight degree. But in the midst of this hurricane of fire I saw a single rocket shoot up from the camp and the whole range of the batteries ceased at the instant. The completeness of the cessation was scarcely less appalling than the roar. While every telescope was turned intently to the spot where the columns and batteries seemed to have sunk together into the earth a pyramid of blasting flame burst up to the very clouds carrying with it fragments of beams and masonry. The explosion rent the air and shook the building on which I stood as if it had been a house of sand. A crowd of engineer and staff-officers now rushed on the roof and their alarm at the results of the concussion was undisguised. ""This is what we suspected "" said the chief to me; ""but it was impossible to discover where the gallery of their mine was run. Our counter mine has clearly failed."" He had scarcely spoken the words before a second and still broader explosion tore up the ground to a great extent and threw the counterscarp for several hundred yards into the ditch. The drums of the columns were now distinctly heard beating the advance; but darkness had again fallen and all was invisible. A third explosion followed still closer to the ramparts which blew up the face of the grand bastion. The stormers now gave a general shout and I saw them gallantly dashing across the ditch and covered way tearing down the palisades fighting hand to hand clearing the outworks with the bayonet and finally making a lodgement on the bastion itself. The red-coats which now swarmed through the works and the colours planted on the rampart showed me that my countrymen had led the assault and my heart throbbed with envy and admiration. ""Why am I not there?"" was my involuntary cry; as I almost wished that some of the shots which were not flying about the roofs would relieve me from the shame of being a helpless spectator. ""_Mon ami_ "" said the voice of the brave and good-natured Frenchman who had overheard me--""if you wish to rejoin your regiment you will not have long to wait. This affair will not be decided to-night as I thought that it would be half an hour ago. I see that they have done as much as they intended for the time and mean to leave the rest to fright and famine. To-morrow will tell us something. Pack up your valise. _Bon soir!_"" SONNET TO CLARKSON. Patriot for England's conscience! Champion keen Of man's one holy birthright! dear grey head Laurell'd with blessings!--Hath my country bred Lips to her shame in unregenerate spleen Profaning heaven's own air with words unclean Against thy sacred name?--Th' august pure Dead In calm of glory sleep:--like them serene In virtue firmlier mail'd than they with dust Wait Clarkson on our sorrow-trodden sphere Until her climes waft promise to thine ear How each thy proud renown will have in trust: Then call'd at the life-judging Throne appear On the right hand avouched Loving and Just. A. B. LETTER FROM THE RIGHT HON. CHARLES HOPE LATE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COURT OF SESSION. EDINBURGH _25th October 1844_. TO THE EDITOR OF BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE. SIR I did not read Mr Lockhart's ""Life of Sir Walter Scott "" and therefore it was only lately and by mere accident I heard that he has inserted an anecdote of Lord Braxfield which if it had been true must for ever load his memory with indelible infamy. The story in substance I understand to be this--That Lord Braxfield once tried a man for forgery at the Circuit at _Dumfries_ who was not merely an acquaintance but an intimate friend of his Lordship with whom he used to play at chess: That he did this as coolly as if he had been a perfect stranger: That the man was found guilty: That he pronounced sentence of death upon him; and then added ""Now John I think I have _checkmated_ you now."" A more unfeeling and brutal conduct it is hardly possible to imagine. The moment I heard the story I contradicted it; as from my personal knowledge of Lord Braxfield I was certain that it could not be true. Lord Braxfield certainly was not a polished man in his manners; and now-a-days especially would be thought a coarse man. But he was a kind-hearted man and a warm and steady friend--intimately acquainted with all my family and much esteemed by them all. I was under great obligations to him for the countenance he showed me when I came to the bar just sixty years ago and therefore I was resolved to probe the matter to the bottom. For that purpose I directed the record of the South Circuit to be carefully searched and the result is that Lord Braxfield _never tried any man for forgery at Dumfries_. But I was not satisfied with this as it might have been said that Sir Walter had only mistaken the town and that the thing might have happened at some of the other Circuit towns. Therefore I then directed a search to be made of the records of all the other Circuits in Scotland during the whole time that Lord Braxfield sat on the Justiciary Bench; and the result is that his Lord
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hip never tried any man for forgery at any of the Circuits _except once at Stirling_; and then the culprit instead of being a friend or even a common acquaintance of Lord Braxfield's _was a miserable shopkeeper in the town of Falkirk_ whose very name it is hardly possible he could have heard till he read it in the indictment. Therefore I think I have effectually cleared his character from the ineffable infamy of such brutality. I understand that Mr Lockhart became completely satisfied that this story did not apply to Lord Braxfield; and therefore has set it down in his second edition to the credit or rather to the discredit not of Lord Braxfield but of a ""_certain judge_."" But this does not sufficiently clear Lord Braxfield of it. Because thousands may never see his second edition or if they did might think that the story still related to Lord Braxfield but that Mr Lockhart had suppressed his name out of delicacy to his family; and therefore as your excellent Magazine has a more extensive circulation in Scotland than the _Quarterly_ I beg of you to give this letter an early place. I understand one circumstance which satisfied Mr Lockhart that the story did not apply to Lord Braxfield is that the family had assured him that he never played at chess--a fact of which I could also have assured Mr Lockhart. But the search of the records of Justiciary which I directed to be made is the most satisfactory refutation of the infamous calumny; and I cannot imagine how Sir Walter could have believed it for a moment. Certainly he would not if he had known Lord Braxfield as intimately as I did. I owe a debt of gratitude to his memory and am happy to have an opportunity of repaying it. I am Sir Your most obedient servant C. HOPE. POEMS BY ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.[31] These volumes from the pen of Miss Barrett would be a remarkable publication at any time; but in the present dearth of poetical genius their appearance is doubly welcome; their claims on our consideration are doubly strong; and we cannot allow ourselves to pass them over without some detailed notice of their contents. In spite of many blemishes in point of execution this lady's poems have left a very favourable impression on our mind. If the poetess does not always command our unqualified approbation we are at all times disposed to bend in reverence before the deep-hearted and highly accomplished woman--a woman whose powers appear to us to extend over a wider and profounder range of thought and feeling than ever before fell within the intellectual compass of any of the softer sex. If we might venture to divine this lady's moral and intellectual character from the general tone of her writings we should say that never did woman's mind dwell more habitually among the thoughts of a solemn experience--never was woman's genius impressed more profoundly with the earnestness of life or sanctified more purely by the overshadowing awfulness of death. She aspires to write as she has lived; and certainly her poetry opens up many glimpses into the history of a pure and profound heart which has felt and suffered much. At the same time a reflective cast of intellect lifts her feelings into a higher and calmer region than that of ordinary sorrow. There are certain delicate and felicitous peculiarities in the constitution of her sensibilities which frequently impart a rare and subtle originality to emotions which are as old and as widely diffused as the primeval curse. The spirit of her poetry appears to us to be eminently religious; not because we think her very successful when she deals directly with the mysteries of divine truth but because she makes us feel even when handling the least sacred subjects that we are in the presence of a heart which in its purity sees God. In the writings of such a woman there must be much which is calculated to be a blessing and a benefit to mankind. If her genius always found a suitable exponent in her style she would stand unrivaled we think among the poetesses of England. But whether it be that Miss Barrett is afraid of degrading poetry to the low rank of an _accomplishment_--whether it be that she has some peculiar theory of her own on the subject of language and on the mode in which poetical emotions may be most felicitously expressed--whether it be that nature has denied her the possession of a sound critical judgment or that she refuses to exercise it in the moment of inspiration--whether it be that she considers the habit of pure and polished composition an attainment of very secondary importance--or whether it be that she has allowed herself to be infected by the prevailing mannerisms of the day--certain it is that there is a large proportion of her poetry in which she has failed to add the graces of good style and of careful versification to her other excellent acquirements. That she can write pure English and that she frequently does so is undeniable. In some of the extracts which we shall give we believe that the language could scarcely be improved. But we are constrained to say that her compositions are very often disfigured by strained or slovenly modes of phraseology which greatly detract from their impressiveness and which must materially injure the reputation of their authoress by turning away many hearts from the homage which they otherwise would most willingly have rendered to her exalted genius. Miss Barrett is a classical scholar. She surely knows that the great works in which she delights have earned the epithet of _classical_ and come recommended to the reverence of all mankind solely in virtue of the scrupulous propriety of their language; and because they are fitted to serve as models of style to all succeeding generations. The purity of their diction and nothing else has been their passport to immortality. We cannot but lament that Miss Barrett has not provided more surely for her future fame by turning to their best account the lessons which the masterpieces of antiquity are especially commissioned to teach. Let it not be thought that we would counsel Miss Barrett or any one else to propose these works to themselves as direct objects of imitation. Far from it. Such directions would be very vague and unmeaning and might lead to the commission of the very errors which they aimed at preventing. The words ""purity and propriety of diction"" are themselves very vague words. Let us say then that a style which goes at once to the point which is felt to _get through business_ and which carries with it no affectation either real or apparent is always a good style; and that no other style is good. This is the quality which may be generalized from the works of the great authors of all ages as the prime characteristic of all good writing. Their style is always pregnant with a working activity--it impresses us with the feeling that real work is done here. We fear not to say that Milton himself owes much of his reputation to the peremptory and business-like vigour of his style. He never beats about the bush--he never employs language which a plain man would not have employed--if he could. The sublimity of ""Paradise Lost"" is supported throughout by the direct force of its language--language the most elaborate but also the most to the point and the least fantastical that ever fell from human lips. There are difficulties to encounter in the abstract conception of the poem. The naked argument does not at first recommend itself to our understanding. It is not till we have vanquished those difficulties --in which step we are mainly assisted by the unparalleled execution of the work --that all our sympathies gravitate towards the mysterious theme. Now if it be true that it requires all the force of a thoroughly practical style to reconcile our affections to such remote and obscure conceptions as the fall of man the war of the rebellious angels &c. it is peculiarly unfortunate that Miss Barrett in her opening poem entitled a ""Drama of Exile "" should have ventured to tread on Miltonic ground. For while our feelings are naturally disposed to fly off at a tangent from the vague and impalpable conceptions which form the staple of her poem the dreamy and unpractical character of her style makes them fly still further from the subject. The force of her language is not sufficient to bind down and rivet our sympathies to the theme; and the lyrical portions of the drama in particular are so inarticulate that we are compelled to pronounce this composition--partial to it as its authoress is--the least successful of her works. But it is our wish to do full justice to Miss Barrett's extraordinary merits and to convey to our readers a favourable impression of her powers; and therefore we shall say no more at present about the ""Drama of Exile "" but shall turn our attention to some of the fairer and less questionable manifestations of her genius. We shall commence with her sonnets; for these appear to us to be by far the most finished of her compositions in point of style; and in depth and purity of sentiment we think that they surpass any thing she has ever written with the exception of the poem entitled ""Bertha in the Lane "" which we shall quote hereafter. As our first specimen we select one which she entitles DISCONTENT. ""Light human nature is too lightly tost And ruffled without cause; complaining on-- Restless with rest--until being overthrown It learneth to lie quiet. Let a frost Or a small wasp have crept to the innermost Of our ripe peach; or let the wilful sun Shine westward of our window --straight we run A furlong's sigh as if the world were lost. But what time through the heart and through the brain God hath transfix'd us--we so moved before Attain to a calm! Ay shouldering weights of pain We anchor in deep waters safe from shore; And hear submissive o'er the stormy main God's charter'd judgments walk for evermore."" Yes; we fear it is too true that the voice of God never speaks so articulately to man as when it speaks in the desperate calm of a soul to which life or death has done its worst. The same solemn thought with which the sonnet concludes forms the moral of her ballad entitled the ""Lay of the Brown Rosary."" It is thus that the heroine of that poem speaks-- ""Then breaking into tears--'Dear God ' she cried 'and must we see All blissful things depart from _us_ or ere we go to THEE? We cannot guess thee in the wood or hear thee in the wind? Our cedars must fall round us ere we see the light behind? Ay sooth we feel too strong in weal to need thee on that road; But woe being come the soul is dumb that crieth not on 'God.'"" Then it is that the despair which blackens the earth strikes clear the face of the sky. Listen again to Miss Barrett when her soul is cheered by the promises of ""Futurity:""-- FUTURITY. ""And O beloved voices! upon which Ours passionately call because erelong Ye brake off in the middle of that song We sang together softly to enrich The poor world with the sense of love and witch The heart out of things evil--I am strong -- Knowing ye are not lost for aye among The hills with last year's thrush. God keeps a niche In Heaven to hold our idols! and albeit He brake them to our faces and denied That our close kisses should impair their white -- I know we shall behold them raised complete -- The dust shook from their beauty --glorified New Memnons singing in the great God-light."" And again listen to her hallowed and womanly strain when she speaks of ""Comfort:""-- COMFORT. ""Speak low to me my Saviour--low and sweet From out the hallelujahs sweet and low Lest I should fear and fall and miss thee so Who art not miss'd by any that entreat. Speak to me as to Mary at thy feet-- And if no precious gums my hands bestow Let my tears drop like amber while I go In reach of thy divinest voice complete In humanest affection--thus in sooth To lose the sense of losing! As a child Whose song-bird seeks the wood for evermore Is sung to in its stead by mother's mouth; Till sinking on her breast love-reconciled He sleeps the faster that he wept before."" How profound and yet how feminine is the sentiment! No _man_ could have written that sonnet. It rises spontaneously from the heart of a Christian woman which overflows with feelings more gracious and more graceful than ever man's can be. It teaches us what religious poetry truly is; for it makes affections inspired by the simplest things of earth to illustrate with the most artless beauty the solemn consolations of the Cross. The pointedness of the following religious sonnet is very striking and sublime. The text is ""And the Lord turned and _looked_ upon Peter."" THE MEANING OF THE LOOK. ""I think that look of Christ might seem to say-- 'Thou Peter! art thou then a common stone Which I at last must break my heart upon For all God's charge to his high angels may Guard my foot better? Did I yesterday Wash _thy_ feet my beloved that they should run Quick to deny me 'neath the morning sun -- And do thy kisses like the rest betray?-- The cock crows coldly.--Go and manifest A late contrition but no bootless fear! For when thy deathly need is bitterest Thou shalt not be denied as I am here-- My voice to God and angels shall attest -- _Because I_ KNOW _this man let him be clear_.'"" One more sonnet and we bid adieu to these very favourable specimens of Miss Barrett's genius:-- PATIENCE TAUGHT BY NATURE. ""'O dreary life!' we cry 'O dreary life!' And still the generations of the birds Sing through our sighing and the flocks and herds Serenely live while we are keeping strife With heaven's true purpose in us as a knife Against which we may struggle. Ocean girds Unslacken'd the dry land: savannah-swards Unweary sweep: hills watch unworn; and rife Meek leaves drop yearly from the forest-trees To show above the unwasted stars that pass In their old glory. O thou God of old! Grant me some smaller grace than comes to _these_;-- But so much patience as a blade of grass Grows by contented through the heat and cold."" There is a poem in these volumes entitled the ""Cry of _the Human_""--some stanzas of which are inspired by profound feeling and written with a rare force and simplicity of style; but as other parts of it are obscure and as it appears to us to be of very unequal merit we shall not quote the whole of it. In addition to the faults which are to be found in the poem itself its title is objectionable as embodying one of Miss Barrett's worst mannerisms and one for which we think that no allowance ought to be made. She is in the habit of employing certain adjectives in a substantive sense. She does so here. In other places she writes ""Heaven assist _the Human_."" ""Leaning from _my human_ "" that is stooping from my rank as a human being. In one passage she says ""Till the heavenly Infinite Falling off from our _Created_--"" _nature_ being understood after the word ""created."" The word ""divine"" is one which she frequently employs in this substantive fashion. She also writes ""Chanting down the _Golden_""--the golden what? ""Then the full sense of your _mortal_ Rush'd upon you deep and loud."" For ""mortal "" read ""mortality."" It is true that this practice may be defended to a certain extent by the example and authority of Milton. But Miss Barrett is mistaken if she supposes that her frequent and prominent use of such a form of speech can be justified by the rare and unobtrusive instances of it which are to be found in the _Paradise Lost_. To use an anomalous expression two or three times in a poem consisting of many thousand lines is a very different thing from bringing the same anomaly conspicuously forward and employing it as a common and favourite mode of speech in a number of small poems. In the former case it will be found that the expression is vindicated by the context and by the circumstances under which it is employed; in the latter case it becomes a nuisance which cannot be too rigorously put down. One step further and we shall find ourselves talking in the dialect of Yankeeland of ""us poor Humans!"" However as the point appears to us to be one which does not admit of controversy we shall say no more on the subject but shall proceed to the more agreeable duty of quoting the greater portion of Miss Barrett's poem which may be regarded as a commentary on the prayer--""The Lord be merciful to us sinners."" THE CRY OF THE HUMAN. ""'There is no God ' the foolish saith -- But none 'There is no sorrow;' And nature oft the cry of faith In bitter need will borrow: Eyes which the preacher could not school By wayside graves are raised; And lips say 'God be pitiful ' Which ne'er said 'God be praised.' Be pitiful O God! ""The curse of gold upon the land The lack of bread enforces-- The rail-cars snort from strand to strand Like more of Death's White horses! The rich preach 'rights' and future days And hear no angel scoffing: The poor die mute--with starving gaze On corn-ships in the offing. Be pitiful O God! ""We meet together at the feast-- To private mirth betake us-- We stare down in the winecup lest Some vacant chair should shake us! We name delight and pledge it round-- 'It shall be ours to-morrow!' God's seraphs! do your voices sound As sad in naming sorrow? Be pitiful O God! ""We sit together with the skies The steadfast skies above us: We look into each other's eyes -- 'And how long will you love us?'-- The eyes grow dim with prophecy The voices low and breathless-- 'Till death us part!'--O words to be Our _best_ for love the deathless! Be pitiful dear God! ""We tremble by the harmless bed Of one loved and departed-- Our tears drop on the lips that said Last night 'Be stronger-hearted!' O God--to clasp those fingers close And yet to feel so lonely!-- To see a light on dearest brows Which is the daylight only! Be pitiful O God! ""The happy children come to us And look up in our faces: They ask us--Was it thus and thus When we were in their places?-- We cannot speak:--we see anew The hills we used to live in; And feel our mother's smile press through The kisses she is giving. Be pitiful O God! ""We pray together at the kirk For mercy mercy solely-- Hands weary with the evil work We lift them to the Holy! The corpse is calm below our knee-- Its spirit bright before Thee-- Between them worse than either we-- Without the rest or glory! Be pitiful O God! ""We sit on hills our childhood wist Woods hamlets streams beholding! The sun strikes through the furthest mist The city's spire to golden. The city's golden spire it was When hope and health were strongest But now it is the churchyard grass We look upon the longest. Be pitiful O God! ""And soon all vision waxeth dull-- Men whisper 'He is dying:' We cry no more 'Be pitiful!'-- We have no strength for crying!-- No strength no need! Then Soul of mine Look up and triumph rather-- Lo! in the depth of God's Divine The Son adjures the Father-- Be pitiful O God!"" ""The Romance of the Swan's Nest"" is written in a different vein. It is characterized by graceful playfulness of manner and sentiment which shows how heartily the amiable authoress can enter into the sympathies and enjoyments of child and how much she is at home when she engages in lighter dalliance with the muse. We have taken the liberty to print in italics two or three _Barrettisms_ which however we believe are not very reprehensible. On the whole it is very pleasing and elegant performance:-- ROMANCE OF THE SWAN'S NEST. ""Little Ellie sits alone Mid the beeches of a meadow By a stream-side on the grass: And the trees are showering down _Doubles of their leaves in shadow_ On her shining hair and face. ""She has thrown her bonnet by; And her feet she has been dipping In the shallow water's flow-- Now she holds them nakedly In her hands all sleek and dripping While she rocketh to and fro. ""Little Ellie sits alone -- And the smile she softly useth Fills the silence like a speech; While she thinks what shall be done -- And the sweetest pleasure chooseth For her future within reach! ""Little Ellie in her smile Chooseth ... 'I will have a lover Riding on a steed of steeds! He shall love me without guile; And to _him_ I will discover That swan's nest among the reeds. ""'And the steed shall be red-roan And the lover shall be noble With an eye _that takes the breath_ -- And the lute he plays upon Shall strike ladies into trouble As his sword strikes men to death. ""'And the steed it shall be shod All in silver housed in azure And the mane shall swim the wind! And the hoofs along the sod Shall flash onward _in a pleasure_ Till the shepherds look behind. ""'But my lover will not prize All the glory that he rides in When he gazes in my face! He will say 'O Love thine eyes Build the shrine my soul abides in; And I kneel here for thy grace.' ""'Then ay then--he shall kneel low-- With the red-roan steed _anear_ him Which shall seem to understand-- Till I answer ""Rise and go! For the world must love and fear him Whom I gift with heart and hand."" ""'Then he will arise so pale I shall feel my own lips tremble With a _yes_ I must not say-- Nathless maiden-brave ""Farewell "" I will utter and dissemble-- ""Light to-morrow with to-day."" ""'Then he will ride through the hills To the wide world past the river There to put away all wrong! To make straight distorted wills -- And to empty the broad quiver Which the wicked bear along. ""'Three times shall a young foot-page Swim the stream and climb the mountain And kneel down beside my feet-- ""Lo! my master sends this gage Lady _for thy pity's counting_! What wilt thou exchange for it?"" ""'And the first time I will send A white rosebud for a guerdon -- And the second time a glove! But the third time--I may bend From my pride and answer--""Pardon If he comes to take my love."" ""'Then the young foot-page will run Then my lover will ride faster Till he kneeleth at my knee! ""I am a duke's eldest son! Thousand serfs do call me master -- But O Love I love but thee!"" ""'He will kiss me on the mouth Then and lead me as a lover Through the crowds that praise his deeds! And when soul-tied by one troth Unto _him_ I will discover That swan's nest among the reeds.' ""Little Ellie with her smile Not yet ended rose up gaily -- Tied the bonnet donn'd the shoe-- And went homeward round a mile Just to see as she did daily What more eggs were with the _two_. ""Pushing through the elm-tree copse Winding by the stream light-hearted Where the osier pathway leads-- Past the boughs she stoops--and stops! Lo! the wild swan had deserted-- And a rat had gnaw'd the reeds. ""Ellie went home sad and slow! If she found the lover ever With his red-roan steed of steeds Sooth I know not! but I know She could show him never--never That swan's nest among the reeds!"" But the gem of the collection is unquestionably the poem entitled ""Bertha in the Lane."" This is the purest picture of a broken heart that ever drew tears from the eyes of woman or of man. Although our extracts are likely to exceed the proportion which they ought to bear to our critical commentary we must be permitted to quote this poem entire. A grain of such poetry is worth a cart-load of criticism:-- BERTHA IN THE LANE. ""Put the broidery-frame away For my sewing is all done! The last thread is used to-day And I need not join it on. Though the clock stands at the noon I am weary! I have sewn Sweet for thee a wedding-gown. ""Sister help me to the bed And stand near me dearest-sweet Do not shrink nor be afraid Blushing with a sudden heat! No one standeth in the street?-- By God's love I go to meet Love I thee with love complete. ""Lean thy face down! drop it in These two hands that I may hold 'Twixt their palms thy cheek and chin Stroking back the curls of gold. 'Tis a fair fair face in sooth-- Larger eyes and redder mouth Than mine were in my first youth! ""Thou art younger by seven years-- Ah!--so bashful at my gaze That the lashes hung with tears Grow too heavy to upraise? I would wound thee by no touch Which thy shyness feels as such-- Dost thou mind me dear so much? ""Have I not been nigh a mother To thy sweetness--tell me dear? Have we not loved one another Tenderly from year to year; Since our dying mother mild Said _with accents undefiled_ [32] 'Child be mother to this child!' ""Mother mother up in heaven Stand up on the jasper sea And be witness I have given All the gifts required of me;-- Hope that bless'd me bliss that crown'd Love that left me with a wound Life itself that turneth round! ""Mother mother thou art kind Thou art standing in the room -- In a molten glory shrined That rays off into the gloom! But thy smile is bright and bleak Like cold waves--I cannot speak; I sob in it and grow weak. ""Ghostly mother keep aloof One hour longer from my soul-- For I still am thinking of Earth's warm-beating joy and dole! On my finger is a ring Which I still see glittering When the night hides every thing. ""Little sister thou art pale! Ah! I have a wandering brain-- But I lose that fever-bale And my thoughts grow calm again. Lean down closer--closer still! I have words thine ear to fill -- And would kiss thee at my will. ""Dear I heard thee in the spring Thee and Robert--through the trees When we all went gathering Boughs of May-bloom for the bees. Do not start so! think instead How the sunshine overhead Seem'd to trickle through the shade. ""What a day it was that day! Hills and vales did openly Seem to heave and throb away At the sight of the great sky: And the silence as it stood In the glory's golden flood Audibly did bud--and bud! ""Through the winding hedgerows green How we wander'd I and you -- With the bowery tops shut in And the gates that show'd the view-- How we talk'd there! thrushes soft Sang our pauses out --or oft Bleatings took them from the croft. ""Till the pleasure grown too strong Left me muter evermore; And the winding road being long I walked out of sight before; And so wrapt in musings fond Issued (past the wayside pond) On the meadow-lands beyond. ""I sate down beneath the beech Which leans over to the lane And the far sound of your speech Did not promise any pain: And I bless'd you full and free With a smile stoop'd tenderly O'er the May-flowers on my knee. ""But the sound grew into word As the speakers drew more near-- Sweet forgive me that I heard What you wish'd me not to hear. Do not weep so--do not shake-- Oh --I heard thee Bertha make Good true answers for my sake. ""Yes and HE too! let him stand In thy thoughts untouch'd by blame. Could he help it if my hand He had claim'd with hasty claim? That was wrong perhaps--but then Such things be--and will again! Women cannot judge for men. ""Had he seen thee when he swore He would love but me alone? Thou wert absent --sent before To our kin in Sidmouth town. When he saw thee who art best Past compare and loveliest He but judged thee as the rest. ""Could we blame him with grave words Thou and I Dear if we might? Thy brown eyes have looks like birds Flying straightway to the light: Mine are older.--Hush!--Look out-- Up the street! Is none without? How the poplar swings about! ""And that hour--beneath the beech -- When I listen'd in a dream And he said in his deep speech That he owed me all _esteem_ -- Each word swam in on my brain With a dim dilating pain Till it burst with that last strain-- ""I fell flooded with a Dark In the silence of a swoon-- When I rose still cold and stark There was night --I saw the moon: And the stars each in its place And the May-blooms on the grass Seem'd to wonder what I was. ""And I walk'd as if apart From myself when I could stand-- And I pitied my own heart As if I held it in my hand -- Somewhat coldly --with a sense Of fulfill'd benevolence And a 'poor thing' negligence. ""And I answer'd coldly too When you met me at the door; And I only _heard_ the dew Dripping from me to the floor: And the flowers I bade you see Were too wither'd for the bee -- As my life henceforth for me. ""Do not weep so--dear--heart-warm! It was best as it befell! If I say he did me harm I speak wild --I am not well. All his words were kind and good-- _He esteem'd me!_ Only blood Runs so faint in womanhood. ""Then I always was too grave -- Liked the saddest ballads sung -- With that look besides we have In our faces who die young. I had died Dear all the same-- Life's long joyous jostling game Is too loud for my meek shame. ""We are so unlike each other Thou and _I_; that none could guess We were children of one mother But for mutual tenderness. Thou art rose-lined from the cold And meant verily to hold Life's pure pleasures manifold. ""I am pale as crocus grows Close beside a rose-tree's root! Whosoe'er would reach the rose Treads the crocus underfoot-- _I_ like May-bloom on thorn tree-- _Thou_ like merry summer-bee! Fit that _I_ be pluck'd for _thee_. ""Yet who plucks me?--no one mourns-- I have lived my season out -- And now die of my own thorns Which I could not live without. Sweet be merry! How the light Comes and goes! If it be night Keep the candles in my sight. ""Are there footsteps at the door? Look out quickly. Yea or nay? Some one might be waiting for Some last word that I might say. Nay? So best!--So angels would Stand off clear from deathly road-- Not to cross the sight of God. ""Colder grow my hands and feet-- When I wear the shroud I made Let the folds lie straight and neat And the rosemary be spread-- That if any friend should come (To see _thee_ sweet!) all the room May be lifted out of gloom. ""And dear Bertha let me keep On my hand this little ring Which at nights when others sleep I can still see glittering. Let me wear it out of sight In the grave--where it will light All the Dark up day and night. ""On that grave drop not a tear! Else though fathom-deep the place Through the woollen shroud I wear I shall feel it on my face. Rather smile there blessed one Thinking of me in the sun-- Or forget me--smiling on! ""Art thou near me? nearer? so! Kiss me close upon the eyes-- That the earthly light may go Sweetly as it used to rise-- When I watch'd the morning-gray Strike betwixt the hills the way He was sure to come that day. ""So--no more vain words be said! The hosannas nearer roll-- Mother smile now on thy Dead-- I am death-strong in my soul! Mystic Dove alit on cross Guide the poor bird of the snows Through the snow-wind above loss! ""Jesus Victim comprehending Love's divine self-abnegation-- Cleanse my love in its self-spending And absorb the poor libation! Wind my thread of life up higher Up through angels' hands of fire!-- I aspire while I expire!"" The following extract from a little poem entitled ""Sleeping and Watching "" is very touching in its simplicity. Miss Barrett is watching over a slumbering child. How softly does the spirit of the watcher overshadow the cradle with the purest influences of its own sanctified sorrows while she thus speaks!-- ""_I_ who cannot sleep as well Shall I sigh to view you? Or sigh further to foretell All that may undo you? Nay keep smiling little child Ere the sorrow neareth -- _I_ will smile too! Patience mild Pleasure's token weareth. Nay keep sleeping before loss; I shall sleep though losing! As by cradle so by cross Sure is the reposing. ""And God knows who sees us twain Child at childish leisure I am near as tired of pain As you seem of pleasure;-- Very soon too by his grace Gently wrapt around me Shall I show as calm a face Shall I sleep as soundly! Differing in this that _you_ Clasp your playthings sleeping While my hand shall drop the few Given to my keeping; ""Differing in this that _I_ Sleeping shall be colder And in waking presently Brighter to beholder! Differing in this beside (Sleeper have you heard me? Do you move and open wide Eyes of wonder toward me?)-- That while I draw you withal From your slumber solely -- Me from mine an angel shall With reveillie holy!"" After having perused these extracts it must be impossible for any one to deny that Miss Barrett is a person gifted with very extraordinary powers of mind and very rare sensibilities of heart. She must surely be allowed to take her place among the female writers of England as a poetess of no ordinary rank; and if she does not already overtop them all may she one day stand forth as the queen of that select and immortal sisterhood! It is in her power to do so if she pleases. It is now our duty to revert to the principal poem in the collection respecting which we have already ventured to pronounce rather an unfavourable opinion. The ""Drama of Exile"" is the most ambitious of Miss Barrett's compositions. It is intended to commemorate the sayings and doings of our First Parents immediately subsequent to their expulsion from the garden of Eden. Its authoress with sincere modesty disclaims all intention of entering into c
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mpetition with Milton; but the comparison must of course force itself upon the reader; and although it was not to be expected that she should rise so soaringly as Milton does above the level of her theme it was at any rate to be expected that her _dramatis personæ_ should not stand in absolute contrast to his. Yet Milton's Satan and Miss Barrett's Lucifer are the very antipodes of each other. Milton's Satan is a thoroughly practical character and if he had been human he would have made a first-rate man of business in any department of life. Miss Barrett's Lucifer on the contrary is the poorest prater that ever made a point of saying nothing to the purpose and we feel assured that he could have put his hand to nothing in heaven on earth or in hell. He has nothing to do he does nothing and he could do nothing. He seems incapable of excogitating a single plot of treachery or of carrying into execution a single deed of violence. His thoughts are a great deal too much taken up about his own personal appearance. Gabriel is an equally irresolute character. The following is a portion of a dialogue which takes place between the two; and it is perhaps as fair a sample of the drama as any that we could select. Near the beginning of the poem Gabriel concludes a short address to Lucifer with these words-- ""Go from us straightway. _Lucifer._ Wherefore? _Gabriel._ Lucifer Thy last step in this place trod sorrow up. Recoil before that sorrow if not this sword. _Lucifer._ Angels are in the world--wherefore not I? Exiles are in the world--wherefore not I? The cursed are in the world--wherefore not I? _Gabriel._ Depart. _Lucifer._ And where's the logic of 'depart?' Our lady Eve had half been satisfied To obey her Maker if I had not learnt To fix my postulate better. Dost thou dream Of guarding some monopoly in heaven Instead of earth? _Why I can dream with thee To the length of thy wings._ _Gabriel._ I do not dream. This is not heaven even in a dream; nor earth As earth was once --first breathed among the stars -- Articulate glory from the mouth divine -- To which the myriad spheres thrill'd audibly Touch'd like a lute-string --and the sons of God Said AMEN singing it. I know that this Is earth not new created but new cursed-- This Eden's gate not open'd but built up With a final cloud of sunset. Do I dream? Alas not so! this is the Eden lost By Lucifer the serpent! this the sword (This sword alive with justice and with fire ) That smote upon the forehead Lucifer The angel! Wherefore angel go ... depart-- Enough is sinn'd and suffer'd. _Lucifer._ By no means."" It will be observed that in this passage Gabriel thrice desires Lucifer to ""move on;"" it will also be observed that Gabriel has a sword--or perhaps it may be the revolving sword which guards Paradise that he speaks of; but be it so or not he threatens Lucifer with the edge of the sword unless he decamps; and yet although the warning is repeated as we have said three distinct times and although Lucifer pertinaciously refuses to stir a step still the weapon remains innocuous and the arch-fiend remains intact. This is not the way in which Milton manages matters. Towards the conclusion of the fourth book of Paradise Lost this same Gabriel orders Satan to leave his presence-- ""Avant! Fly thither whence thou fledd'st."" The rebel angel refuses to retire:--upon which without more ado both sides prepare themselves for battle. On the side of Gabriel ""Th'angelic squadron bright _Turned fiery red_ sharpening in mooned horns Their phalanx."" What an intense picture of ardour preparatory to action (it is night remember) is presented to our imaginations by the words ""turned fiery red!"" ""On t'other side Satan alarm'd Collecting all his might dilated stood Like Teneriff or Atlas unremov'd: His stature reach'd the sky."" Then would have come the tug of war--then ""Dreadful deeds Might have ensued;"" and would have ensued-- ""Had not soon The Eternal to prevent such horrid fray Hung forth in heaven his golden scales.""-- ""The fiend look'd up and knew His mounted scale aloft; nor more but fled Murmuring and with him fled the shades of night."" But in the interview which Miss Barrett describes between Gabriel and Lucifer no such headlong propensity to act is manifested by either party--no such crisis ensues to interrupt the fray. Gabriel is satisfied with giving utterance to a feeble threat which when he finds that Lucifer pays no attention to it he never attempts to carry into execution. For no apparent cause he suddenly changes his tone and condescends to hold parley with his foe on a variety of not very interesting particulars informing him among other things that he ""does not dream!"" The following is Lucifer's description of our First Mother. It is impregnated with Miss Barrett's mannerisms and strongly characterized by that fantastical and untrue mode of picturing sensible objects which the example of Shelley and Keates tended especially to foster if they were not the first to introduce it:-- ""_Lucifer._ Curse freely! curses thicken. Why this Eve Who thought me once part worthy of her ear And somewhat wiser than the other beasts -- Drawing together _her large globes of eyes The light of which is throbbing in and out Around their continuity of gaze_ -- Knots her fair eyebrows in so hard a knot And down from _her white heights of womanhood_ Looks on me so amazed --I scarce should fear To wager such an apple as she pluck'd Against one riper from the tree of life That she could curse too--as a woman may-- _Smooth in the vowels_."" We do not very well understand why Eve's curses should have been smoother in the vowels than in the consonants. But as we are no great elocutionists or at all well conversant with the mysteries of ""labials "" ""dentals "" and ""gutterals "" we shall not contest the point with Lucifer lest we should only expose our own ignorance. Respecting the leading conception of her drama Miss Barrett writes thus:--""My subject was the new and strange experience of the fallen humanity as it went forth from Paradise into the wilderness; with a peculiar reference to Eve's allotted grief which considering that self-sacrifice belonging to her womanhood and the consciousness of originating the Fall to her offence--appeared to me imperfectly apprehended hitherto and more expressible by a woman than a man."" No wonder that Miss Barrett failed in her undertaking. In the conception of Eve's grief as distinguished from Adam's and as coloured by the circumstances of her situation--namely by the consciousness that she had been the _first_ to fall and the proximate cause of Adam's transgression--there is certainly no sufficient foundation to sustain the weight of a dramatic poem. At the most it might have furnished materials for a sonnet. It therefore detracts nothing from the genius of Miss Barrett to say that her attempt has been unsuccessful. She has tried to make bricks not only without straw but almost without clay; and that being the case the marvel is that she should have succeeded so well. ""There was room at least "" continues Miss Barrett ""for lyrical emotion in those first steps into the wilderness in that first sense of desolation after wrath in that first audible gathering of the recriminating 'groan of the whole creation ' in that first darkening of the hills from the recoiling feet of angels and in that first silence of the voice of God."" There certainly _was_ room for lyrical emotion in these first steps into wilderness. All nature might most appropriately be supposed to break forth in melodious regrets around the footsteps of the wanderers: but we cannot think that Miss Barrett has done justice to nature's strains. Unless lyrical emotion be expressed in language as clear as a mountain rill and as well defined as the rocks over which it runs it is much better left unsung. The merit of all lyrical poetry consists in the clearness and cleanness with which it is cut; no tags or loose ends can any where be permitted. But Miss Barrett's lyrical compositions are frequently so inarticulate so slovenly and so defective both in rhythm and rhyme that we are really surprised how a person of her powers could have written them and how a person of any judgment could have published them. Take a specimen not by any means the worst from the ""Song of the morning star to Lucifer:""-- ""Mine orbed image sinks Back from thee back from thee As thou art fallen methinks Back from me back from me. O my light-bearer Could another fairer Lack to thee lack to thee? Ai ai Heosphoros! I loved thee with the fiery love of stars. Who love by burning and by loving move Too near the throned Jehovah not to love. Ai ai Heosphoros! Their brows flash fast on me from gliding cars Pale-passion'd for my loss. Ai ai Heosphoros! ""Mine orbed heats drop cold Down from thee down from thee As fell thy grace of old Down from me down from me. O my light-bearer Is another fairer Won to thee won to thee? Ai ai Heosphoros Great love preceded loss Known to thee known to thee. Ai ai! Thou breathing they communicable grace Of life into my light Mine astral faces from thine angel face Hast inly fed And flooded me with radiance overmuch From thy pure height. Ai ai! Thou with calm floating pinions both ways spread Erect irradiated Didst sting my wheel of glory On on before thee Along the Godlight by a quickening touch! Ha ha! Around around the firmamental ocean I swam expanding with delirious fire! Around around around in blind desire To be drawn upward to the Infinite-- Ha ha!"" But enough of _Ai ai Heosphoros_. It may be very right for ladies to learn Greek--not however if it is to lead them to introduce such expressions as this into the language of English poetry. Nor do we think that Miss Barrett's lyrical style improves when she descends to themes of more human and proximate interest and makes the ""earth-spirits"" and the ""flower-spirits"" pour their lamentations into the ears of the exiled pair. The following is the conclusion of the _láyment_ (as Miss Barrett pronounces the word _lament_) of the ""flower-spirits:""-- ""We pluck at your raiment We stroke down your hair We faint in our _láment_ And pine into air. Fare-ye-well--farewell! The Eden scents no longer sensible Expire at Eden's door! Each footstep of your treading Treads out some fragrance which ye knew before: Farewell! the flowers of Eden Ye shall smell never more."" Would not Miss Barrett's hair have stood on end if Virgil had written ""Arma virumque _canto_?"" Yet surely that false quantity would have been not more repugnant to the genius of Latin verse than her transposition of accent in the word _lamént_ is at variance with the plainest proprieties of the English tongue. The ""earth-spirits"" deliver themselves thus:-- _Earth Spirits._ ""And we scorn you! there's no pardon Which can lean to you aright! When your bodies take the guerdon Of the death-curse in our sight Then the bee that hummeth lowest shall transcend you. Then ye shall not move an eyelid Though the stars look down your eyes; And the earth which ye defiled She shall show you to the skies -- Lo! these kings of ours--who sought to comprehend you.' _First Spirit._ And the elements shall boldly All your dust to dust constrain; Unresistedly and coldly I will smite you with my rain! From the slowest of my frosts is no receding. _Second Spirit._ And my little worm appointed To assume a royal part He shall reign crown'd and anointed O'er the noble human heart! Give him counsel against losing of that Eden!"" In one of the lyrical effusions man is informed that when he goes to heaven-- ""Then a _sough of glory_ Shall your entrance greet Ruffling round the doorway The smooth radiance it shall meet."" We wonder what meaning Miss Barrett attaches to the word _sough_! It is a term expressive of the dreary sighing of autumnal winds or any sound still more disconsolate and dreary; and therefore to talk of a ""sough of glory "" is to talk neither more nor less than absolute nonsense. What can be more unlyrical than this verse? ""Live work on oh Earthy! By the Actual's tension Sped the arrow worthy Of a pure ascension."" We have said that the lyrical effusions interspersed throughout the ""Drama of Exile "" are very slovenly and defective in point of rhyme. What can be worse than ""Godhead"" and ""wooded "" ""treading"" and ""Eden "" ""glories"" and ""floorwise "" ""calmly"" and ""palm-tree "" ""atoms"" and ""fathoms "" ""accompted"" and ""trumpet "" and a hundred others? What can be worse do we ask? We answer that there is one species of rhyme which Miss Barrett is sometimes though we are happy to say very rarely guilty of which is infinitely more reprehensible than any of these inaccuracies. We allude to the practice of affixing an _r_ to the end of certain words in order to make them rhyme with other words which terminate in that letter. Writers who are guilty of this atrocity are not merely to be condemned as bad rhymesters: they are to be blamed on the far more serious ground that they give the sanction and authority of print to one of the vilest vulgarisms which pollutes the oral language of certain provincial societies. What makes the practice so offensive in literary composition is the fact that the barbarism is one which may sometimes be actually heard falling from living lips. But for this it would be pardonable. We verily believe that Miss Barrett herself does not talk of ""Laura_r_"" and ""Matilda_r_;"" we verily believe that she would consider any one who does so no fit associate for herself in point of manners or education:--yet she scruples not to make ""Aceldama""(r) rhyme to ""tamer "" and ""Onora""(r) rhyme to ""o'er her."" When we think of these things we turn to the following ""stage-direction"" with which her ""Drama of Exile"" concludes--""There is a sound through the silence _as of the falling tears of an angel_."" That angel must have been a distressed critic like ourselves. Next to the ""Drama of Exile "" the longest poem in the collection is the composition entitled ""A Vision of Poets."" This poem is designed says our authoress ""to indicate the necessary relations of genius to suffering and self-sacrifice."" It is stamped throughout with the thoughtful earnestness of Miss Barrett's character and is on the whole a very impressive performance. But it would have been more impressive still if it had been composed after less vicious models or if Miss Barrett had trusted more to a style prompted by her own native powers and less to the fantastical modes of phraseology which have been introduced into literature by certain inferior artists of this and the preceding generation. We cannot read it however without appreciating the fervour which stirs the soul of the authoress through all its depths when she declares and upholds the sacred mission of the poet and teaches him that he must embrace his destiny with gratitude and pride even though the crown which encircles his living brows be one in which the thorns far out-number the laurel leaves. We shall grace our pages with a series of portraits in which Miss Barrett sketches off first the true poets and then the pretenders. They certainly contain some good points although many of her touches must be pronounced unsuccessful. Let Homer lead the van:-- ""Here Homer with the broad suspense Of thunderous brows and lips intense Of garrulous god-innocence. ""There Shakspeare! on whose forehead climb The crowns o' the world! Oh eyes sublime-- With tears and laughters for all time! ""Here Æschylus--the women swoon'd _To see so awful_ when he frown'd As the gods did--he standeth crown'd. ""Euripides with close and mild Scholastic lips--that could be wild And laugh or sob out like a child ""_Right in the classes._ Sophocles With that king's look which down the trees Follow'd the dark effigies ""Of the lost Theban! Hesiod old Who somewhat blind and deaf and cold Cared most for gods and bulls! and bold ""Electric Pindar quick as fear With race-dust on his checks and clear Slant startled eyes that seem to hear ""The chariot rounding the last goal To hurtle past it in his soul! And Sappho crown'd with aureole ""Of ebon curls on calmed brows-- O poet-woman! none forgoes The leap attaining the repose! ""Theocritus with glittering locks Dropt sideway as betwixt the rocks He watch'd the visionary flocks! ""And Aristophanes! who took The world with mirth and laughter-struck The hollow caves of Thought and woke ""The infinite echoes hid in each. And Virgil! shade of Mantuan beech Did help the shade of bay to reach ""And knit around his forehead high!-- For his gods wore less majesty Than his brown bees humm'd deathlessly. ""Lucretius--nobler than his mood! Who dropp'd his plummet down the broad Deep universe and said 'No God ' ""Finding no bottom. He denied Divinely the divine and died Chief poet on the Tiber-side ""By grace of God. His face is stern As one compell'd in spite of scorn To teach a truth he could not learn. ""And Ossian dimly seen or guess'd! Once counted greater than the rest When mountain-winds blew out his vest. ""And Spenser droop'd his dreaming head (With languid sleep-smile you had said From his own verse engendered) ""On Ariosto's till they ran Their locks in one!--The Italian Shot nimbler heat of bolder man ""From his fine lids. And Dante stern And sweet whose spirit was an urn For wine and milk pour'd out in turn. ""And Goethe--with that reaching eye His soul reach'd out from far and high _And fell from inner entity_. ""And Schiller with heroic front Worthy of Plutarch's kiss upon't-- Too large for wreath of modern wont. ""Here Milton's eyes strike piercing-dim! The shapes of suns and stars did swim Like clouds on them and granted him ""God for sole vision! Cowley there Whose active fancy debonaire Drew straws like amber--foul to fair. ""And Burns with pungent passionings Set in his eyes. Deep lyric springs Are of the fire-mount's issuings. ""And poor proud Byron--sad as grave And salt as life! forlornly brave And quivering with the dart he drave. ""And visionary Coleridge who Did sweep his thoughts as angels do Their wings with cadence up the Blue."" ""Homer"" we are not sure about; we can only hope that there may be people whom the picture will please. ""Shakspeare"" is good. ""Æschylus"" (Miss Barrett's favourite too ) is treated very scurvily and very ungrammatically. What on earth are we to make of the words ""the women swooned to see so awful"" &c.? It is well known that no pregnant woman could look Æschylus in the face when the fit of inspiration was on him without having cause to regret her indiscretion. But though delicacy might have dictated that this fact should be only barely hinted at surely grammar need not have miscarried in the statement. The syntax of the passage will puzzle future commentators as much as some of his own corrupt choruses. ""Euripides"" promises well; but the expression ""Right in the classes "" throws our intellect completely on its beam-ends; and as we cannot right it again in order to take a second glance at the poet of Medea we must pass on to the next. ""Sophocles"" will be acceptable to scholars. ""Hesiod"" is excellent. ""Cared most for _gods and bulls_"" is worth any money. ""Pindar"" and ""Sappho"" are but so so. The picture of ""Theocritus"" is very beautiful. There is nothing particularly felicitous in the sketch of ""Aristophanes."" How much more graphic is what Milton in one of his prose works says with respect to the ""holy Chrysostom's"" study of the same. Chrysostom it seems was a great student of Aristophanes. Some people might have been and no doubt were scandalized to think that so pious a father of the church should have made a bosom companion of so profane and virulent a wit: but says Milton the holy father was quite right in poring over Aristophanes for ""_he had the art to cleanse a scurrilous vehemence into the style of a rousing sermon_."" Put that into verse and it would ring well. We thank Miss Barrett for the graphic touch of Virgil's ""brown bees "" which certainly _are_ better than his gods. ""Lucretius"" is very finely painted. ""Ossian"" looms large through the mist but walk up to him and the pyramid is but a cairn. ""Spenser"" and ""Ariosto "" with their locks blended in one compose a very sweet picture. ""Dante"" we will not answer for. ""Goethe"" is a perfect enigma. What does the word ""fell"" mean? [Greek: deinos] we suppose--that is ""not to be trifled with."" But surely it sounds very strange although it may be true enough to say that this ""fellness"" is occasioned by ""inner entity."" But perhaps the line has some deeper meaning which we are unable to fathom. We have seen a better picture than that of Goethe in the hour of inspiration when his forehead was like a precipice dim with drifting sleet. ""Schiller"" is well drawn; evidently from Thorwaldsen's gigantic statue of the poet. Miss Barrett paints ""Milton"" in his blindness as seeing all things in God. But Mallebranche had already taught that God is the ""sole vision"" of all of us; and therefore if that theory be correct she has failed to assign to the poet of the Fall any distinctive attribute which distinguishes him from other men. ""Cowley"" is well characterized. ""Burns"" ought to have been better. ""Byron"" pleases us. ""Coleridge"" has very considerable merit. As a contrast to the preceding sketches of the true poets (many of which however we have omitted and we may also remark in parenthesis that none of our living poets are meddled with ) we now pass before the eyes of the reader a panorama of _pretenders_. We shall make no remarks on the expression of their features leaving Miss Barrett to brand them as they deserve with her just scorn and indignation-- ""One dull'd his eyeballs as they ached With Homer's forehead--though he lack'd An inch of any! And one rack'd ""His lower lip with restless tooth-- As Pindar's rushing words forsooth Were pent behind it. One his smooth ""Pink cheeks did rumple passionate Like Æschylus--and tried to prate On trolling tongue of fate and fate! ""One set her eyes like Sappho's--or Any light woman's! one forbore Like Dante or any man as poor ""In mirth to let a smile undo His hard shut lips. And one that drew Sour humours from his mother blew ""His sunken cheeks out to the size Of most unnatural jollities Because Anacreon looked jest-wise. ""So with the rest.--It was a sight For great world-laughter as it might For great world-wrath with equal right. ""Out came a speaker from that crowd To speak for all--in sleek and proud Exordial periods while he bow'd ""His knee before the angel.--'Thus O angel! who hast call'd for us We bring thee service emulous -- ""'Fit service from sufficient soul-- Hand-service to receive world's dole-- Lip-service in world's ear to roll ""'Adjusted concords--soft enow To hear the winecups passing through And not too grave to spoil the show. ""'Thou certes when thou askest more O sapient angel! leanest o'er The window-sill of metaphor. ""'To give our hearts up! fie!--That rage Barbaric antedates the age! It is not done on any stage. ""'Because your scald or gleeman went With seven or nine-string'd instrument Upon his back--must ours be bent? ""'We are not pilgrims by your leave No nor yet martyrs! if we grieve It is to rhyme to ... summer eve. ""'And if we labour it shall be As suiteth best with our degree In after-dinner reverie.' ""More yet that speaker would have said-- Poising between his smiles fair-fed Each separate phrase till finished: ""But all the foreheads of those born And dead true poets flash'd with scorn Betwixt the bay leaves round them worn-- ""Ay jetted such brave fire that they The new-come shrank and paled away Like leaden ashes when the day ""Strikes on the hearth! A spirit-blast A presence known by power at last Took them up mutely--they had pass'd!"" ""Lady Geraldine's Courtship"" is a poem of the Tennysonian school. Some pith is put forth in the passionate parts of the poem; but it is deficient throughout in that finished elegance of style which distinguishes the works of the great artist from whom it is imitated. Bertram a peasant-born poet falls in love with the Lady Geraldine a woman of high rank and very extensive possessions. He happens to overhear the lady address the following words to a suitor of the same rank with herself and whose overtures she is declining-- ""Yes your lordship judges rightly. Whom I marry shall be noble Ay and wealthy. I shall never blush to think how he was born."" Upon which imagining that these words have some special and cutting reference to himself he passes into the presence of the lady and rates her in a strain of very fierce invective which shows that his blood is really up whatever may be thought of the taste which dictated his language or of the title he had to take to task so severely a lady who had never given him any sort of encouragement. In a letter to a friend he thus describes the way in which he went to work--the fourth line is a powerful one-- ""Oh she flutter'd like a tame bird in among its forest-brothers Far too strong for it! then drooping bow'd her face upon her hands-- And I spake out wildly fiercely brutal truths of her and others! _I she planted the desert swathed her windlike with my sands._ ""I pluck'd up her social fictions bloody-rooted though leaf verdant -- Trod them down with words of shaming --all the purples and the gold And the 'landed stakes' and Lordships--all that spirits pure and ardent Are cast out of love and reverence because chancing not to hold. ""'For myself I do not argue ' said I 'though I love you Madam But for better souls that nearer to the height of yours have trod-- And this age shows to my thinking still more infidels to Adam Than directly by profession simple infidels to God. ""'Yet O God' (I said ) 'O grave' (I said ) 'O mother's heart and bosom! With whom first and last are equal saint and corpse and little child! We are fools to your deductions in these figments of heart-closing! We are traitors to your causes in these sympathies defiled! ""'Learn more reverence madam not for rank or wealth--_that_ needs no learning; _That_ comes quickly--quick as sin does! ay and often works to sin; But for Adam's seed MAN! Trust me 'tis a clay above your scorning With God's image stamp'd upon it and God's kindling breath within. ""'What right have you Madam gazing in your shining mirror daily Getting so by heart your beauty which all others must adore -- While you draw the golden ringlets down your fingers to vow gaily ... You will wed no man that's only good to God --and nothing more.'"" In the second stanza we cannot make out the construction of the words ""all that spirits pure and ardent are cast out of love and reverence."" This vigorous tirade is continued throughout several stanzas. The poor lady merely utters the word ""Bertram "" and the lover is carried to bed in a fainting fit when his passion is expended. When he recovers he indites the aforesaid letter. After he has dispatched it the lady enters his apartment: oh blessed and gracious apparition! We quote the _dénouement_ omitting one or two stanzas-- Soh! how still the lady standeth! 'tis a dream--a dream of mercies! 'Twixt the purple lattice-curtains how she standeth still and pale! 'Tis a vision sure of mercies sent to soften his self-curses-- Sent to _sweep_ a patient quiet o'er the tossing of his wail. 'Eyes ' he said 'now throbbing through me! are ye eyes that did undo me? _Shining eyes like antique jewels set in Parian statue-stone!_ Underneath that calm white forehead are ye ever burning torrid O'er the desolate sand-desert of my heart and life undone?' ""Ever evermore the while in a slow silence she kept smiling -- And approach'd him slowly slowly in a gliding measured pace; With her two white hands extended as if praying one offended And a look of supplication gazing earnest in his face. ""Said he--'Wake me by no gesture --sound of breath or stir of vesture; Let the blessed apparition melt not yet _to its divine_! No approaching--hush! no breathing! or my heart must swoon to death in The too utter life thou bringest--O thou dream of Geraldine!' ""Ever evermore the while in a slow silence she kept smiling-- But the tears ran over lightly from her eyes and tenderly; 'Dost thou Bertram truly love me? Is no woman far above me Found more worthy of thy poet-heart than such a one as _I_?' ""Said he--'I would dream so ever like the flowing of that river Flowing ever in a shadow greenly onward to the sea; So thou vision of all sweetness--princely to a full completeness -- Would my heart and life flow onward--deathward--through this dream of THEE!' ""Ever evermore the while in a slow silence she kept smiling -- While the shining tears ran faster down the blushing of her cheeks; Then with both her hands enfolding both of his she softly told him 'Bertram if I say I love thee ... 'tis the vision only speaks.' ""Soften'd quicken'd to adore her on his knee he fell before her-- And she whisper'd low in triumph--'It shall be as I have sworn! Very rich he is in virtues --very noble--noble certes; And I shall not blush in knowing that men call him lowly born!"" With the exception of the line and the other expressions which we have printed in italics we think that the whole tone of this _finale_ is ""beautiful exceedingly;"" although if we may express our private opinion we should say that the lover after his outrageous demeanour was very unworthy of the good fortune that befell him. But in spite of the propitious issue of the poem we must be permitted (to quote one of Miss Barrett's lines in this very lay) to make our ""critical deductions for the modern writers' fault."" Will she or any one else tell us the meaning of the second line in this stanza? Or will she maintain that it has any meaning at all? Lady Geraldine's possessions are described-- ""She has halls and she has castles and the resonant steam-eagles _Follow far on the directing of her floating dove-like hand_-- With a thund'rous vapour trailing underneath the starry vigils So to mark upon the blasted heaven the measure of her land."" We thought that steam-coaches generally followed the directing of no hand except the ""stoker's;"" but _it_ certainly is always much liker a raven than a dove. ""Eagles and vigils"" is not admissible as a rhyme; neither is ""branch and grange."" Miss Barrett says of the Lady Geraldine that she had ""such a gracious coldness"" that her lovers ""could not _press their futures_ on the present of her courtesy."" Is that human speech? One other objection and our carpings shall be dumb. Miss Barrett in our opinion has selected a very bad dislocated and unmelodious metre for the story of Lady Geraldine's courtship. The poem reads very awkwardly in consequence of the rhymes falling together in the alternate lines and not in couplets. Will Miss Barrett have the goodness to favour the public with the sequel of this poem? We should like to know how the match between the peasant's son and the peer's daughter was found to answer. Those among our readers who may have attended principally to the selections which we made from these volumes before we animadverted on the ""Drama of Exile "" may perhaps be of opinion that we have treated Miss Barrett with undue severity and have not done justice to the vigour and rare originality of her powers; while others who may have attended chiefly to the blemishes of style and execution which we have thought it our duty to point out in our later quotations may possibly think that we have ranked her higher than she deserves. We trust that those who have carefully perused both the favourable and unfavourable extracts will give us credit for having steered a middle course without either running ourselves aground on the shoals of detraction or oversetting the ship by carrying too much sail in favour of our authoress. And although they may have seen that our hand was sometimes unsteady at the helm we trust that it has always been when we felt apprehensive that the current of criticism was bearing us too strongly towards the former of these perils. If any of our remarks have been over harsh we most gladly qualify them by saying that in our humble opinion Miss Barrett's poetical merits infinitely outweigh her defects. Her genius is profound unsullied and without a flaw. The imperfections of her manner are mere superficial blot which a little labour might remove. Were the blemishes of her style tenfold more numerous than they are we should still revere this poetess as one of the noblest of her sex; for her works have impressed us with the conviction that powers such as she possesses are
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ot merely the gifts or accomplishments of a highly intellectual woman; but that they are closely intertwined with all that is purest and loveliest in goodness and in truth. It is plain that Miss Barrett would always write well if she wrote simply from her own heart and without thinking of the compositions of any other author--at least let her think of them only in so far as she is sure that they embody great thoughts in pure and appropriate language and in forms of construction which will endure the most rigid scrutiny of common sense and unperverted taste. If she will but wash her hands completely of Æschylus and Milton and all other poets either great or whom she takes for such and come before the public in the graces of her own feminine sensibilities and in the strength of her own profound perceptions her sway over human hearts will be more irresistible than ever and she will have nothing to fear from a comparison with the most gifted and illustrious of her sex. FOOTNOTES: [31] London. Moxon. 1844. [32] ""_With accents undefiled_;"" this is surely a very strange and unaccountable interpolation. How was it possible or conceivable that any accents could be _defiled_ which conveyed the holiest and most pathetic injunction that ever came from the lips of a dying mother? UP STREAM; OR STEAM-BOAT REMINISCENCES. I had come to New Orleans to be married and the knot once tied there was little inducement for my wife myself or any of our party to remain in that city. Indeed had we been disposed to linger an account that was given us of the most unwelcome of all visitors the yellow fever having knocked at the doors of several houses in the Marigny suburb would have been sufficient to drive us away. For my part I was anxious to find myself in my now comfortable home and to show my new acquisition--namely my wife--to my friends above Bâton Rouge well assured that the opinion of all would be in favour of the choice I had made. By some eccentric working of that curious machinery called the mind I was more thoughtful than a man is usually supposed to be upon his wedding-day; and I received the congratulations of the guests went through the _obligato_ breakfast and the preparations for departure in a very automatical manner. I took scarcely more note of the nine shots that were fired as we went on board the steamer of the hurrahs shouted after us from the quay by a few dozen sailors or the waving of the star-spangled banners that fluttered over the poop and forecastle--of all the honour and glory in short attending our departure. I was busy drawing a comparison between my first and this my last voyage to the Red River. It was just nine years and two months since I had first come into possession of my ""freehold of these United States "" as the papers specified it. Five thousand dollars had procured me the honour of becoming a Louisianian planter; upon the occurrence of which event I was greeted by my friends and acquaintances as the luckiest of men. There were two thousand acres ""with due allowance for fences and roads "" according to the usual formula; and the wood alone if I might believe what was told me was well worth twenty thousand dollars. For the preceding six months the whole of the western press had been praising the Red River territory to the very skies; it was an incomparable sugar and cotton ground full sixteen feet deep of river slime--Egypt was a sandy desert compared to it--and as to the climate the zephyrs that disported themselves there were only to be paralleled in Eldorado and Arcadia. I like a ninny as I was although fully aware of the puffing propensities of our newspaper editors especially when their tongues or rather pens have been oiled by a few handfuls of dollars fell into the trap and purchased land in the fever-hole in question where I was assured that a habitable house and two negro huts were already built and awaiting me. The improvements alone the land-speculator was ready to take his oath were worth every cent of two thousand dollars. In short I concluded my blind bargain and in the month of June prepared to start to visit my estate. I was at New Orleans which city was just then held fast in the gripe of its annual scourge and visitor the yellow fever. I was in a manner left alone; all my friends had gone up or down stream or across the Pont Chartrain. There was nothing to be seen in the whole place but meagre hollow-eyed negresses shirtless and masterless running about the streets howling like jackals or crawling in and out of the open doors of the houses. In the upper suburb things were at the worst; there whole streets were deserted the houses empty the doors and windows knocked in; while the foul fever-laden breeze came sighing over from Vera Cruz and nothing was to be heard but the melancholy rattle of the corpse-carts as they proceeded slowly through the streets with their load of coffins. It was high time to be off when the yellow fever the deadly _vomito_ had thus made its triumphant entry and was ruling and ravaging like some mighty man of war in a stormed fortress. I had four negroes with me including old Sybille who was at that time full sixty-five years of age; Cæsar Tiberius and Vitellius were the three others. We are fond of giving our horses and negroes these high sounding appellations as a sort of warning I am inclined to think to those amongst us who sit in high places; for even in our young republic there is no lack of would-be Cæsars. The steamers had left off running below Bâton Rouge so I resolved to leave my gig at New Orleans procuring in its stead a sort of dearborn or railed cart in which I packed the whole of my traps consisting of a medley of blankets and axes barrows and ploughshares cotton shirts and cooking utensils. Upon the top of all this I perched myself; and those who had known me only three or four months previously as the gay and fashionable Mr Howard one of the leaders of the _ton_ the deviser and proposer of fêtes balls and gaieties of all kinds might well have laughed could they have seen me half buried amongst pots and pans bottles and bundles spades and mattocks and suchlike useful but homely instruments. There was nobody there to laugh however or to cry either. Tears were then scarce articles in New Orleans; for people had got accustomed to death and their feelings were more or less blunted. But even had the yellow fever not been there I doubt if any one would have laughed at me; there is too much sound sense amongst us. Our town beauties--ay the most fashionable and elegant of them--think nothing of installing themselves with their newly wedded husbands in the aforesaid dearborns and moving off to the far west leaving behind them all the comforts and luxuries among which they have been brought up. Whoever travels in our backwoods will often come across scenes and interiors such as the boldest romance writer would never dare to invent. Newly married couples whose childhood and early youth have been spent in the enjoyment of all the superfluities of civilization will buy a piece of good land far in the depths of forests and prairies and found a new existence for themselves and their children. One meets with their dwellings in abundance--log-houses consisting for the most part of one room and a small kitchen: on the walls of the former the horses' saddles and harness and the husband's working clothes manufactured often by the delicate hands of his lady; in one corner a harp or a piano; on the table perhaps a few numbers of the North American or Southern reviews and some Washington or New York papers. A strange mixture of wild and civilized life. It is thus that our Johnsons our Livingstons and Ranselaers and hundreds ay thousands of families our Jeffersons and Washingtons commenced; and truly it is to be hoped that the rising generation will not despise the custom of their forefathers or reject this healthy means of renovating the blood and vigour of the community. To return to my own proceedings. I got upon my dearborn in order to leave as soon as possible the pestilential atmosphere of New Orleans; and I had just established myself amongst my goods and chattels when Cæsar came running up in great exultation with a new cloak which he had been so lucky as to find lying before the door of a deserted house in the suburb. I took hold of the infected garment with a pair of tongs and pitched it as far as I was able from the cart to the great dismay of Cæsar who could not understand why I should throw away a thing which he assured me was well worth twenty dollars. We set off and soon got out of the town. Not a living creature was to be seen as far as the eye could reach along the straight road. On the right hand side the suburb of the Annunciation was enclosed in wooden palisades upon which enormous bills were posted containing proclamations by the mayor of the town and headed with the word ""Infected "" in letters that could be read half a mile off. These proclamations however were unnecessary. New Orleans looked more like a churchyard than a city; and we did not meet five persons during the whole of our drive along the new canal road. At the first plantation at which we halted in order to give the horses a feed gates and doors were all shut in our faces and the hospitable owner of the house warned us to be off. As this warning was conveyed in the shape of a couple of rifle-barrels protruded through the jalousies we did not think it advisable to neglect it. The reception was cheerless enough; but we came from New Orleans and could expect no better one. Cæsar however dauntless as his celebrated namesake jumped over a paling and plucked an armful of Indian corn ears which he gave to the horses; an earthen pan served to fetch them water from the Mississippi and after a short pause we resumed our journey. Five times I remember we halted and were received in the same humane and hospitable manner until at last we reached the plantation of my friend Bankes. We had come fifty miles under a burning sun and had passed more than fifty plantations each with its commodious and elegant villa built upon it; but we had not yet seen a human face. Here however I hoped to find shelter and refreshment; but in that hope I was doomed to be disappointed. ""From New Orleans?"" enquired the voice of my friend through the jalousies of his verandah. ""To be sure "" answered I. ""Then begone friend and be d----d to you!"" was the affectionate reply of the worthy Mr Bankes who was nevertheless kind enough to cause a huge ham and accessories together with half a dozen well-filled bottles to be placed outside the door--a sort of mute intimation that he was happy to see us so long as we did not cross his threshold. I had a hearty laugh at this half-and-half hospitality eat and drank wrapped myself in a blanket and slept with the blue vault for a covering as well or better than the president. In the morning before starting I shouted out a ""Thank ye! and be d----d to you!"" by way of _remerciment_; and then we resumed our march. At last upon the third evening we managed to get our heads under a roof at the town of Bâton Rouge in the house of an old French soldier who laughed at the yellow fever as he had formerly done at the Cossacks and Mamelukes; and the following morning we started for the Red River in the steamboat Clayborne. By nightfall we reached my domain. _Santa Virgen!_ exclaims the Spaniard in his extremity of grief and perplexity: what I exclaimed I am sure I do not remember; but I know that my hair stood on end when I beheld for the first time the so-called improvements on my new property. The habitable and comfortable house was a species of pigsty built out of the rough branches of trees without doors windows or roof. There was I to dwell and that in a season when the thermometer was ranging between ninety-five and a hundred degrees. The very badness of things however stimulated us to exertion; we set to work and in two days had built a couple of very decent huts the only inconvenience of which was that when it rained hard we were obliged to take refuge under a neighbouring cotton-tree. Fortunately out of the two thousand acres there really were fifty in a state of cultivation and that helped us. I planted and kept house as well as I could: in the daytime I ploughed and sowed; and in the evening I mended the harness and the holes in my inexpressibles. With society I was little troubled seeing that my nearest neighbour lived five-and-twenty miles off. The first summer passed in this manner; the second was a little better; and the third better still--until at last the way of life became endurable. There is nothing in the world impracticable; and Napoleon never spoke a truer word than when he said ""_Impossible!--C'est le mot d'un fou!_"" And then a hunting-party in the savannahs of Louisiana or Arkansas! There is a something in those endless and gigantic wildernesses which seems to elevate the soul and to give to it as well as to the body an increase of strength and energy. There reign in countless multitudes the wild horse and the bison; the wolf the bear and the snake; and above all the trapper surpassing the very beasts of the desert in wildness--not the old trapper described by Cooper who never saw a trapper in his life but the real trapper whose adventures and mode of existence would furnish the richest materials for scores of romances. Our American civilization has engendered certain corrupt off-shoots of which the civilization of other countries knows nothing and which could only spring up in a land where liberty is found in its greatest development. These trappers are for the most part outcasts criminals who have fled from the chastisement of the law or else unruly spirits to whom even the rational degree of freedom enjoyed in the United States has appeared cramping and insufficient. It is perhaps fortunate for the States that they possess the sort of fag-end to their territory comprised between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains; for much mischief might be caused by these violent and restless men were they compelled to remain in the bosom of social life. If for example _la belle France_ had had such a fag-end or outlet during the various crises that she has passed through in the course of the last fifty years how many of her great warriors and equally great tyrants might have lived and died trappers! And truly neither Europe nor mankind in general would have been much the worse off if those instruments of the greatest despotism that ever disguised itself under the mask of freedom--the Massenas and Murats and Davousts and scores more of suchlike laced and decorated gentry--had never been heard of. One finds these trappers or hunters in all the districts extending from the sources of the Columbia and Missouri to those of the Arkansas and Red Rivers and on the tributary streams of the Mississippi which run eastward from the Rocky Mountains. Their whole time is passed in the pursuit and destruction of the innumerable wild animals which for hundreds and thousands of years have bred and multiplied in those remote steppes and plains. They slay the buffalo for the sake of his hump and of the hide out of which they make their clothing; the bear to have his skin for a bed; the wolf for their amusement; and the beaver for his fur. In exchange for the spoils of these animals they get lead and powder flannel shirts and jackets string for their nets and whisky to keep out the cold. They traverse those endless wastes in bodies several hundreds strong and have often desperate and bloody fights with the Indians. For the most part however they form themselves into parties of eight or ten men a sort of wild guerillas. These must rather be called hunters than trappers; the genuine trapper limiting himself to the society of one sworn friend with whom he remains out for at least a year frequently longer; for it takes a considerable time to become acquainted with the haunts of the beaver. If one of the two comrades dies the other remains in possession of the whole of their booty. The mode of life that is at first adopted from necessity or through fear of the laws is after a time adhered to from choice; and few of these men would exchange their wild lawless unlimited freedom for the most advantageous position that could be offered them in a civilized country. They live the whole year through in the steppes savannahs prairies and forests of the Arkansas Missouri and Oregon territories--districts which comprise enormous deserts of sand and rock and at the same time the most luxuriant and beautiful plains teeming with verdure and vegetation. Snow and frost heat and cold rain and storm and hardships of all kinds render the limbs of the trapper as hard and his skin as thick as those of the buffalo that he hunts; the constant necessity in which he finds himself of trusting entirely to his bodily strength and energy creates a self-confidence that no peril can shake--a quickness of sight thought and action of which man in a civilized state can form no conceptions. His hardships are often terrible; and I have seen trappers who had endured sufferings compared to which the fabled adventures of Robinson Crusoe are mere child's play and whose skin had converted itself into a sort of leather impervious to every thing except lead and steel. In a moral point of view these men may be considered a psychological curiosity: in the wild state of nature in which they live their mental faculties frequently develop themselves in a most extraordinary manner; and in the conversation of some of them may be found proofs of a sagacity and largeness of views of which the greatest philosophers of ancient or modern times would have no cause to be ashamed. The daily and hourly dangers incurred by these trappers must one would think occasionally cause them to turn their thoughts to a Supreme Being; but such is not the case. Their rifle is their god--their knife their patron saint--their strong right hand their only trust. The trapper shuns his fellow-men; and the glance with which he measures the stranger whom he encounters on his path is oftener that of a murderer than a friend: the love of gain is as strong with him as it is found to be in a civilized state of society and the meeting of two trappers is generally the signal for the death of one of them. He hates his white competitor for the much-prized beaver skins far more than he does his Indian one: the latter he shoots down as coolly as if he were a wolf or a bear; but when he drives his knife into the breast of the former it is with as much devilish joy as if he felt he were ridding mankind of as great an evil-doer as himself. The nourishment of the trapper consisting for years together of buffalo's flesh--the strongest food that a man can eat--and taken without bread or any other accompaniment doubtless contributes to render him wild and inhuman and to assimilate him in a certain degree to the savage animals by which he is surrounded. During an excursion that I made with some companions towards the upper part of the Red River we met with several of these trappers; amongst others with one weather-beaten old fellow whose face and bare neck were tanned by sun and exposure to the colour of tortoise-shell. We hunted two days in his company without noticing any thing remarkable about the man; he cooked our meals which consisted usually of a haunch of venison or a buffalo's hump instructed us where to find game and was aware of the approach of the latter even sooner than his huge wolf-dog which never left his side. It was only on the morning of the third day that we discovered something calculated to diminish our confidence in our new comrade. This was a number of lines and crosses upon the butt of his rifle which gave us a new and not very favourable insight into the man's character. These lines and crosses came after certain words rudely scratched with a knife-point and formed a sort of list of which the following is a copy:-- Buffaloes--no number given they being probably too numerous. Bears nineteen--the number being indicated by nineteen strait strokes. Wolves thirteen--marked by oblique strokes. Red underloppers four--marked by four crosses. White underloppers two--noted by two stars. Whilst we were examining this curious calendar and puzzling ourselves to make out the meaning of the word ""underloppers "" I observed a grim smile stealing over the features of the old trapper. He said nothing however; drew the buffalo's hump he was cooking from under the hot embers took it out of the piece of hide in which it was wrapped and placed it before us. It was a meal that a king might have envied and the mere smell of it made us forget the rifle butt. We had scarcely fallen to when the old man laid hold of his gun. ""Look ye "" said he with a strange grin. ""It's my pocket-book. D'ye think it a sin to kill one of them red or white underloppers?"" ""Whom do you mean?"" asked we. The man smiled again and rose to depart; his look however was alone enough to enlighten us as to who the two-legged interlopers were whom he had first shot and then noted on his rifle-butt with as much cool indifference as if they had been wild turkeys instead of human beings. In a region to which the vengeful arm of the law does not reach we did not feel ourselves called upon or entitled to set ourselves up as judges and we let the man go. These trappers occasionally and at long intervals return for a few days or weeks to the haunts of civilization; and this occurs when they have collected a sufficient quantity of beaver skins. They then fell a hollow tree that stands on the shore of some navigable stream make it water-tight launch it load it with their merchandise and their few necessaries and float and row for thousands of miles down the Missouri Arkansas or Red River to St Louis Natchitoches or Alexandria. They may be seen roaming and staring about the streets of these towns clad in their coats of skins and astonishing strangers by their wild and primitive appearance. * * * * * I was sitting on a sofa in a corner of the ladies' cabin with Louise by my side and talking over with her these and other recollections of more or less interest. The tea hour was long past and the cabins were lighted up. Suddenly we were interrupted in our conversation by a loud noise overhead. ""A nigger killed!"" sang out somebody upon deck. ""A nigger killed!"" repeated two ten twenty and at length a hundred voices; and thereupon there was a running and trampling and hurrying and scurrying an agitation in our big floating inn as if the boilers were on the brink of bursting and giving us a passage into eternity in the midst of their scalding contents. Louise started up and dragging me with her hurried breathless through the two saloons to the stairs leading upon deck. ""Who is killed? Where is the poor negro?"" The answer I got was a horse-laugh from a score of backwoodsmen. ""Much noise about nothing dear Louise."" And we were on the point of descending the stairs again when we were detained and our attention riveted by the picturesque appearance of the deck--I should rather say of the persons grouped upon it--seen in the red flickering and uncertain light of sundry lamps lanterns and torches. Truly the night-piece was not bad. In the centre of the steamer's deck at an equal distance from stem and stern stood a knot of fellows of such varied and characteristic appearance as might be sought for in vain in any other country than ours. It seemed as if all the western states and territories had sent their representatives to our steamer. Suckers from Illinois and Badgers from the lead-mines of Missouri--Wolverines from Michigan and Buckeyes from Ohio--Redhorses from old Kentuck and Hunters from Oregon stood mingled before us clad in all sorts of fantastical and outlandish attire. One had a hunting-shirt of blue and white striped calico which made its wearer's broad back and huge shoulders resemble a walking feather-bed; another was remarkable for a brilliant straw-hat--a New Orleans purchase that looked about as well on his bronzed physiognomy as a Chinese roof would do on a pigsty. Wiñebago wampum belts and Cherokee mocassins jerkins of tanned and untanned deer-hide New York frock-coats and red and blue jackets composed some of the numerous costumes of which the mixture and contrast were in the highest degree picturesque. In the middle of this group stood a personage of a very different stamp--a most interesting specimen of the genus Yankee contrasting in a striking manner with the rough-hewn sons of Anuk who surrounded him. He was a man of some thirty years of age as dry and tough as leather of grave and pedantic mien the skin of his forehead twisted into innumerable small wrinkles his lips pressed firmly together his bright reddish-grey eyes apparently fixed but in reality perpetually shifting their restless glances from the men by whom he was surrounded to some chests that lay upon the deck before him and again from the chests to the men; his whole lean bony angular figure in a position that made it difficult to conjecture whether he was going to pray or to sing or to preach a sermon. In one hand he held a roll of pigtail tobacco in the other some bright-coloured ribands which he had taken from an open chest containing the manifold articles constituting the usual stock in trade of a pedlar. Beside this chest were two others and beside those lay a negro howling frightfully and rubbing alternately his right shoulder and his left foot; but nevertheless according to all appearance by no means in danger of taking his departure for the other world. As the Yankee pedlar raised his hand and signed to the vociferous blackamoor to be silent the face of the former gradually assumed that droll cunning and yet earnest expression which betrays those double distilled Hebrews when they are planning to get possession in a quasi-legal manner of the dollars of their fellow-citizens; in a word when they are manoeuvering to exchange their worthless northern wares for the sterling coin of the south. Presently his arms began to swing about like those of a telegraph; he threw a long and loving glance at the two unopened chests which had apparently slipped down from the top of a quantity of merchandise piled upon deck and fallen on the foot and shoulder of the negro; then measuring the latter with a look of reproach he suddenly opened his compressed lips from which a sharp high-toned schoolmasterlike voice issued. ""Sambo Sambo! What have you done? Sambo Sambo!"" he repeated while his voice became more solemn and he raised his hands and eyes as if appealing to heaven for justice. ""Sambo you onlucky nigger what have you been a doin'?"" ""A 'sarve ' a wonderful 'sarve!'"" screamed the man pointing to the chests with an appearance of the profoundest grief. ""Heaven forgive you Sambo! but you have endangered perhaps sp'iled a 'sarve ' compared to which all the 'intments and balms of Mecca Medina and Balsora--of Algiers Tunis and Tripoli or whatever other places they may come from air actilly no better than cart-grease. Ah Sambo! if you were twenty times a nigger and could be brought twenty times on the auction table you wouldn't fetch enough money to pay for the harm you have done!"" ""Boe! Boe!"" howled the negro by way of parenthesis. ""Ah Boe! Boe!"" screamed the Yankee ""you may well say Boe Boe! And you ain't the only one as may say it that's sartain. There be ladies and gentlemen here as respectable ladies and gentlemen as can be found any where--ay even to Boston the cradle of our independence--and they might say Boe! Boe! if they knew all. In them two chests are a hundred tin boxes and glass phials; and if only twenty of them are damaged there is more injury done than your hide could pay for if it were twenty times as thick and twenty times as vallyable as it is. Your whole carcass ain't worth one of the boxes of that precious 'intment. Ah Sambo!"" ""Boe! Boe!"" howled Sambo in reply. ""What's the palaver about?"" growled some of the Badgers and Buckeyes; ""open the chests and you'll see what harm's done."" ""D'ye ye hear Sambo?"" cried the Yankee with the same immovable countenance; ""you're to hold yer tongue the gentlemen say; they're tired of yer noise and no wonder. What's the use of boohooin' away at that rate? Helps you nothin'; you desarve what you've got. I'll thank you for your long knife Mister. That'll do. That opens it cuts in like rael steel; better it should be into hard word than soft flesh. There they are then and not broken; onhurt without a spot or a crack. Sing praises to the Lord! psalms and hymns of rejoicin'--not a phial broke nor a box smashed! Praised be the Lord! I say ag'in. Since they are safe it don't matter if twenty shoulder-blades and ankle-bones are put out. Verily the mercy of Heaven shall be made manifest and that by the means of a feeble vessel Jared Bundle by name. Down with ye Sambo--down with ye I say!--Your shoulder and your dingy hide shall be made whole and your black bones shall be comforted!"" Not a muscle of the Yankee's face moved; he preserved the grave and solemn appearance of a man to whom a sacred trust has been confided and who is fully penetrated with the importance of his mission. Once or twice however I observed him give a keen but almost imperceptible glance around him as if to observe the effect of his eloquence upon his auditors. ""Down with you Sambo!"" he repeated to the negro who had got himself into a sort of sitting posture upon the deck. ""Down down!"" cried the men of Kentucky. ""Down!"" those of Missouri and Ohio. ""Be quick about it!"" shouted an Illinois sucker. ""Let's see the Yankee's wonderful cure!"" exclaimed a hunter from Oregon. And amidst shouts and exclamations and laughter poor Sambo was seized by half a dozen of their bear's fists and stretched out upon a heap of coffee-bags like a pig that's going to be killed. ""Boe! Boe!"" clamoured the negro at the top of his voice. ""Boohoo as much as you like "" cried the Yankee in a shrill tone that was heard above all the howlings of the unlucky Sambo. ""You'll sing to another tune when you see and understand and feel what a Conne'ticut man _can_ do. You say Boe Boe! like a poor benighted crittur as you are but what do you say to that?"" cried the pedlar in a triumphant voice as he held close to the negro's nose a piece of linen rag on which he had smeared a green greasy substance bearing a strong resemblance to paste-blacking in a state of decomposition. Then taking up the box which contained this precious compound he put it in close proximity to the obtuse snout of the blackamoor who made a grimace as if his olfactories were but moderately regaled by the odour emanating from the miraculous ointment. ""What d'ye think of that Sambo? Is that the stuff or not? Will that do think ye? Well you shall soon see. Gentlemen!"" he continued with all the gravity of a legitimate M.D. ""Gentlemen! the arms and legs of this poor Sambo must be stretched as much as possible in order that the sarve may take its full effect. Will you be good enough to assist me?"" Upon the word the backwoodsmen caught hold of the negro's limbs and began pulling and tugging at them till the poor devil roared as if they had been impaling him. ""Boohoo away!"" cried the Yankee. ""It's all for your good. If your shoulder is put out the stretchin' will put it in ag'in."" The negro continued his lamentations as well he might when every one of his joints was cracking under the force applied. ""All no use your callin' out!"" screamed the pedlar as he stuck the salved rag upon the ebony hide of the patient. ""Better hold yer tongue. Ain't you lucky to have met with me at a time when all the doctors in the world--the Browns and Hossacks and Sillimans--could not have done you a cent's worth of good? All their drugs would have had no more effect than a ladleful of pea-soup. You ought to be rejoicin' in yer luck instead of screamin' like a wounded catamount. Keep still will you? There that'll do. Many thanks gentlemen; I thank you in the name of this senseless crittur. That's enough. No cause for complaint man!"" continued he as he stuck a second plaster on the negro's foot. ""All safe enough when Jared Bundle is there with his Palmyra sarve. You be the first as was ever know'd to scream after havin' one smell of that precious 'intment. And I tell you what it is my man if both your black legs had been broken clean off and were swimmin' down the Mississippi half rotten--ay or if they had just come out of the jaws of an alligator and you were to stick 'em on and plaster
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hem up with this 'intment you may take my word Jared Bundle's word that they'd grow to your body again--the flesh would become your flesh and the bone your bone as sure as I am now here."" And he looked round at his auditors with a world of confidence and veracity depicted upon his countenance. ""There was Aby Sparks to Penobscot--you know ladies and gentlemen Aby Sparks the son of Enoch Sparks who married Peggy Heath. Good family the Sparkses--very good family as you know ladies and gentlemen. Respectable people in a respectable way of business the general line--drugs and cutlery and hats patent waterproof bird-seed and jewellery tea and coffee pots and shoes of the newest fashion. Ladies and gentlemen do you want a good tea or coffee pot? Partiklar jam _they_ are I reckon. Well Aby Sparks said to me 'Jared Bundle ' says he 'leave me a dozen boxes or phials whichever you like of your Palmyra sarve. Wonderful stuff that!' says he. 'What!' says I 'leave you some of my Palmyra sarve! You're jist right to say it ain't common apothecaries' stuff; that it certainly ain't. But what would the ladies and gentlemen on the lower Mississippi say if I left any of it here? It's all meant for them ' says I; 'they're my best customers.'"" ""Soft sawder! Jared Bundle "" grunted a Kentuckian. ""Cart grease and cobbler's wax "" said a man of Illinois. ""He's from the north "" laughed a third ""where there's more wooden clocks than cows and calves."" ""Where the grasshoppers break their legs in jumpin' from one potato heap to another "" interposed a fourth. ""Where the robins starve in harvest time and the mockin'-bird is too hungry to mock "" cried a fifth. ""Nothin' in the world like Jared Bundle's 'intment "" continued the imperturbable Yankee. ""Finest thing possible for corns. Ain't genteel to talk of such things ladies and gentlemen; but if any of you have got corns rub 'em just two or three times with the Palmyra sarve and they'll disappear like snow in sunshine. Worth any money against tan and freckles. You miss "" cried he to Louise ""you ain't got any freckles but you may very likely git 'em. A plaster on each cheek afore you go to bed--git up in the mornin' not a freckle left--all lilies and roses!"" ""Hold your impudent tongue!"" said I ""or I will plaster you."" ""We're in a free country "" was the answer; ""free to sell and free to buy. Gentlemen "" continued Mr Bundle ""famous stuff for razor-strops. Rub a little on draw the razor a couple of times over it--shave. Razor runs over the face like a steam-carriage along a railroad you don't know how; beard disappears like grass before the sickle or a regiment of Britishers before Yankee rifles. Great vartue in the sarve--uncommon vartue! Ma'am!"" cried he to a lady who like ourselves was looking on from a short distance at this farcical scene ""Ma'am!"" I looked round at the lady. ""Bless my soul! Mrs Dobleton and the Misses Dobleton from Concordia my neighbours on the Mississippi. Delighted to see you Mrs Dobleton; allow me the honour of introducing my wife to you."" Our greetings and compliments were drowned by the piercing voice of the indefatigable Yankee. ""Ma'am!"" cried he with a box of ointment in each hand ""Ma'am! the finest cure in the world for toothach. If teeth are good it keeps 'em so; if bad it makes 'em sound and white as ivory. A small bit on the point of a knife between the teeth and the gum--acts like a charm. Young ladies! a capital remedy for narrow chests."" The skinny Miss Dobletons turned green with vexation. ""Incomparable remedy!"" continued Jared; ""rub it well in on the part affected and in a short time the most contracted chest becomes as wide as that of Mrs Broadbosom to Charleston. Fine thing for lockjaw ma'am!"" cried he to a Mrs Bodwell who was standing by and amongst whose good qualities that of silence was not considered to hold a conspicuous place; ""a famous cure for lockjaw from whatever cause it may come on. There was Miss Trowlop--she had a very handsum' mouth and a considerable gift of the gab--was goin' to be married to Mr Shaver run a hickory splinter through her prunella shoe into her foot--jaw locked as fast as old Ebenezer Gripeall's iron safe. If she'd a-had my Palmyra sarve she'd be still alive Mrs Shaver now; 'stead of that the land-crabs have eaten her. Another example ladies: Sally Brags Miss Sally Brags to Portsmouth. You know Portsmouth Providence where the pretty gals grow; some folk _do_ say they're prettier to Baltimore--won't say they ain't--matter of taste pure matter of taste; but Miss Sally Brags ladies had the lockjaw--couldn't say a word; took a box of my Palmyra sarve--ladies two dollars a box by retail--her tongue now goes clap-clap-clap like any steam-mill. Famous cure for lockjaw!"" During this unceasing flow of words the Yankee had found the time to drive a capital trade; his merchandise of all kinds was rapidly disappearing and the more the backwoodsmen laughed the faster flowed the dollars into the pedlar's pouch. It was most diverting to observe the looks of the purchasers of the Palmyra ointment as they first smelled at it and then shook their heads as if in doubt whether they were not duped. ""Wonderful stuff!"" cried the Yankee with imperturbable gravity and as if to reassure them. ""And capital coffee-pots "" continued he to a leather-jerkined Missouri man who had taken up one of the latter and was examining it. ""I'll warrant 'em of the best description and no mistake. Wonderful stuff this Palmyra sarve came direct from Moscow where the Archbishop of Abyssinia had brought it but havin' got into debt he was obliged to sell off; and from Moscow which as you all know is a great seaport it passed into the hands of the Grand Duke of Teheran or Tombuctoo who lives somewhere about the Cape of Good Hope. From there it came to Boston in the brig Sarah Captain Larks. I was one of the first to go on board and as soon as I smelled to it I knew directly what time o' day it was--where the wind blew from as I may say. Ladies here you have the means of preservin' your health and your beauty for the longest day you live and all for two dollars--only two dollars a box. In short ladies and gentlemen "" concluded the persevering fellow sententiously ""you have my warranty that this sarve heals all curable diseases; and if it be true as the famous Doctor Flathead says that there be only two sorts of maladies--them of which people die and them of which they get well--you must see how important it is to have a box of the Palmyra 'intment. Best of all sarves ladies! two dollars a box ladies! ""Ladies and gentlemen "" resumed Mr Bundle after a brief pause ""d'ye want any other articles--silks linen calicoes fine spices nutmegs? None of your walnut-wood nutmegs but ginu_ine_ Boston goods out of the most respectable stores. Ah! ladies and gentlemen Jared Bundle's tea and coffee pots--let me recommend 'em to you. The metal is of a particular sort corrects the oily matter contained in the tea which the doctors say is no better than so much p'ison. Should be sorry for you to suppose I was instigated by love of gain--filthy lucre ladies; but think of your vallyable health--your precious health--and buy my teapots; two dollars twenty-five cents a-piece. Yes ma'am "" continued he turning to one of the negresses who were crawling and grinning and gaping around his wares ""beautiful Lyons ribands and Bengal neck-handkerchiefs _di_rect from Calcutta; lovely things them handkerchiefs and the ribands too partic'lerly the broad ones--quarter of a dollar a yard. Four yards did you say ma'am? Better go the _en_tire figur'--take eight and you'll have twice as much. Now ladies and gentlemen to return to the teapots""---- ""The teapots!"" cried several voices a short distance off. ""Hurra! Jared Bundle's teapots! Look here at the Yankee teapots!"" At the same moment the steward of the steamer made his appearance upon the field of Mr Bundle's operations escorted by half a dozen of the backwoodsmen and stepping into the torchlight held up the very coffee-pot which the shameless Yankee had sold to the leather-jacketed man of Missouri. The pot had been filled with boiling water which was now oozing out comfortably and deliberately at every side and corner of the vessel. For one moment the spectators stared in mute astonishment; but then the discovery of the Yankee's cheatery drew from them a peal of laughter which seemed likely to be inextinguishable. ""Jared Bundle! What do you say to that? Jared Bundle's teapots! A hurra for Jared Bundle and the Yankee teapots!"" The immovable pedlar was by no means put out of countenance by this discovery. While the backwoodsmen were having their laugh out he took hold of the teapot examined it deliberately on all sides at front and back inside and out and then shook his head gravely. When the laughers had exhausted their uproariousness he cleared his throat and resumed. ""Ah gentlemen! or rather ladies and gentlemen! in our happy land of freedom and enlightenment the most enlightened country in the world no one I am sure will refuse to hear the poor pedlar's explanation of this singular circumstance. I know you are all most desirous of havin' it explained and explain it I can and will. I am sorry to say there are gentlemen who sell teapots for the southern states which are only meant for the northern ones and others who sell for the north what is meant for the south. That's how I've been deceived in these teapots which come from the store of the highly respectable Messrs Knockdown. They are for northern consumption gentlemen without the smallest doubt and you know that many teapots will support the cold of the north but are worth nothin' when they git into a southern climate. It's oncommon hot you see down hereaway on the Mississippi and I reckon that's the reason that you southern gentlemen _are_ sich an almighty b'ilin' up people who take a gougin' to your breakfast as we should a mackerel. I'm a'most inclined to think too that you bile your water a deal too hot which our northern tea and coffee pots ain't used to and can't stand nohow."" ""Humbug!"" growled a score of backwoodsmen some of whom began to close round the Yankee as if to make sure of him and his worthless wares. ""Boe! Boe!"" howled Sambo who had been quite forgotten during this scene. ""You still here you black devil!"" cried the pedlar turning fiercely round upon the negro. ""Am I to be deafened by your cussed croakin'? Don't mind him ladies and gentlemen--pay no attention to him. Who cares about a nigger? He only cries out for his amusement. It's all his tricks and cunnin'; he'd like to git some more of my sarve on his black hide! He won't have any tho'! Be off with ye you stinkin' nigger!"" ""Stinkin' nigga! Massa Yankee say stinkin' nigga!"" yelled Sambo showing all his white teeth in an ecstasy of anger. ""Matto stinkin' nigga now "" screamed he as he sprang suddenly to his feet to the infinite delight of the backwoodsmen and began capering and hopping about and grinning like a mad ape. ""Matto stinkin' nigga now; one hour 'go him dearie Matto and good Matto and Massa Yankee promise four picaillee[33] if Matto let dam heavy chest wid stinkin' serve fall on him foot and shoulder. Boe! Boe! Massa Yankee no good man; bad Massa Massa Yankee!"" And so it was and turned out to be. The rogue of a Yankee had made a sort of bargain with Sambo and arranged a scheme by which to draw the attention of the passengers in a natural manner to the famous Palmyra salve. Seldom or never had the risible nerves of the burly backwoodsmen on board the Ploughboy steamer been so enormously tickled as by the discovery of this Yankee trick. The laughter was deafening really earsplitting; and was only brought to something like an end by the appearance of the captain who came with a petition from the lady passengers to the effect that the Yankee should not be too hardly dealt with for his ingenious attempt to transfer his fellow-citizens' dollars into his own pocket. Thereupon Badgers and Buckeyes Wolverines and Redhorses abated their hilarity; and it was comical to see how these rough tenants of the western forests proceeded with all the gravity of backwoods etiquette to respond to the humanity of the ladies. In the first place a deputation was chosen consisting of two individuals who were charged to assure the ladies of the universal willingness to treat the Yankee as tenderly as might be consistent with the nature of his transgression; secondly a commission was appointed for the examination of the spurious wares. The articles that had been bought were produced one after the other their quality and value investigated and then they were either condemned and thrown overboard or their sale was confirmed. The tea and coffee pots were almost without exception pronounced worthless; for although well enough calculated for a long voyage on the Mississippi they could never have been meant to hold boiling Mississippi water. The wonderful Palmyra salve proved to be neither more nor less than a compound of hog's lard and gunpowder with the juice of tobacco and walnut leaves--a mixture that might perhaps have been useful for the destruction of vermin but the efficacy of which as an antidote to freckles and lockjaw was at least problematical. The teapots the ointment and some spices amongst which wooden nutmegs cut an important figure were duly consigned to the keeping of the Mississippi kelpies; while the dollars that had been paid for them were retransferred from the pockets of the Yankee to those of the credulous purchasers. Finally Mr Bundle himself in consideration of the truly republican stoicism with which he witnessed the execution of the judgment pronounced on his wares was invited with much ceremony to regale himself with a ""go-the-whole-hog-cocktail "" an honour which he accepted and replied to in a set speech at the conclusion of which he enquired whether the honourable society by whose sentence he had been deprived of the larger portion of his merchandise could not recommend him to a schoolmaster's place in one of their respectable settlements. I almost wondered that he did not treat us to a Methodist sermon as a preparation for our slumbers. He seemed the right man to do it. He exactly answered to the description given of the Yankees by Halleck in his Connecticut:-- ----""Apostates who are meddling With merchandise pounds shillings pence and peddling Or wandering through southern climates teaching The A B C from Webster's spelling-book; Gallant and godly making love and preaching And gaining by what they call hook and crook And what the moralists call overreaching A decent living. The Virginians look Upon them with as favourable eyes As Gabriel on the devil in Paradise."" There was a deafening ""Hurrah for the honourable Mistress Howard!"" as the party of backwoodsmen walked off towards the gentlemen's cabin; and then things became quieter. I had invited the bears to drink a glass to Mrs Howard's health and had told the steward to put down to my account the slings and cocktails they might consume. Mrs Dobleton whose husband is secretary to a temperance society pulled a wry face or two at what she doubtless thought an encouragement to vice; but for my part I have no such scruples. It always gives me pleasure to find myself thrown by chance among these rough and wild but upright and energetic sons of the wilderness--these pioneers of the west who pass their lives in converting tangled thickets and endless forests into fields and pastures for the benefit of generations yet unborn. Truly dear Louise a few dollars spent amongst these worthy fellows are not thrown away if they serve to form one the smallest link of the chain of good-will and good fellowship that does and ought to bind us to our fellow-citizens. FOOTNOTES: [33] The Louisianian name for 6-1/4 cent pieces. WESTMINSTER-HALL AND THE WORKS OF ART (_On a Free Admission Day._) BY B. SIMMONS. I. By slow degrees like rain-fraught breeze rising in time of dearth Whispers of Wisdom far and wide are muttering o'er the earth; And lo! rough Reason's breath that wafts strong human health to all Has blown aside the gates where Pride dozed in her feudal hall. II. Stout Carter drop that loutish look nor hesitate before-- Eyeing thy frock and clouted shoes--yon dark enormous door; 'Tis ten to one thy trampled sires their ravaged granges gave To spread the Wood from whence was hew'd that oaken architrave.[34] III. Take now _thy_ turn. We'll on and in nor need the pealing tromp (Once wont the lordlings thronging here to usher to the pomp) To kindle our dull phantasies for yon triumphal show That lights the roof so high aloof with the whiteness of its glow. IV. RED WILLIAM couldst thou heave aside the marble of the tomb And look abroad from Winchester's song-consecrated gloom [35] A keener smart than Tyrrel's dart would pierce thy soul to see In thy vast courts the Vileinage and peasants treading free. V. Oh righteous retribution! Ye Shades of those who here Stood up in bonds before the slaves of sceptred fraud and fear! Unswerving SOMERS!--MORE!--even thou dark SOMERSET [36] who fell In pride of place condignly yet who loved the Commons well-- VI. And Ye who with undaunted hearts immortal mitred Few! For Truth's dear sake the Tyrant foil'd to whom ye still were true--[37] Rejoice! Who knows what scatter'd thoughts of yours were buried seeds Slow-springing for th' oppress'd and poor and ripen'd now to deeds? VII. Ha ha! 'twould make a death's-head laugh to see how the cross-bones-- The black judicial formula devised by bloody thrones-- The Axe's edge _this_ way now _that_ borne before murder'd men Who died for aiding their true Liege on mountain and in glen [38] VIII. Are swept like pois'nous spiders' webs for ever from the scene Where in their place come crowding now the mighty and the mean; The Peer walks by the Peasant's side [39] to see if grace and art Can touch a bosom clad in frieze can brighten Labour's heart. IX. O! ye who doubt presumptuously that feeling taste are given To all for culture free as flowers by an impartial heaven Look through this quiet rabble here--doth it not shame to-day More polish'd mobs to whom we owe our annual squeeze in May? X. Mark that poor Maiden to her Sire interpreting the tale There pictured of the Loved and Left [40] until her cheek grows pale:-- Yon crippled Dwarf that sculptured Youth[41] eyeing with glances dim Wondering will he in higher worlds be tall and straight like him;-- XI. How well they group with yonder pale but fire-eyed Artisan Who just has stopp'd to bid his boys those noble features scan That sadden us for WILKIE! See! he tells them now the story Of that once humble lad and how he won his marble glory. XII. Not all alone thou weep'st in stone poor Lady o'er thy Chief [42] That huge-limb'd Porter spell-struck there stands sharer in thy grief. Pert Cynic scorn not his amaze; all savage as he seems What graceful shapes henceforward may whiten his heart in dreams! XIII. A long adieu dark Years! to you of war on field and flood Battle afar and mimic war at hone to train our blood-- The ruffian Ring--the goaded Bull--the Lottery's gates of sin-- The _all_ to nurse the outward brute and starve the soul within! XIV. Here lives and breathes around us proof that those all-evil times Are fled with their decrepit thoughts their slaughter and their crimes; Long stood THIS HALL the type of all could MAN'S grim bonds increase-- Henceforth be it his Vestibule to hope and light and peace! _August_ 1844. FOOTNOTES: [34] Westminster-Hall first reared by Rufus was entirely rebuilt by Richard II. [35] Winchester many years the residence of Joseph Warton is so much associated with the recollections and noble poetry of his younger brother as to warrant the expression in the text. [36] The Protector-Duke beheaded on Tower-Hill in the reign of his nephew Edward VI.--""His attention to the poor during his Protectorship and his opposition to the system of enclosures had created him many friends among the lower classes who hastened to witness his end and yet flattered themselves with the hope of his reprieve.""--LINGARD. [37] The trial of the seven bishops took place in the hall. Five out of their number--worthy of note upon every occasion--(the Archbishop the Bishops of Ely Bath and Wells Chichester and Petersborough ) refused the oaths to King William and were deprived accordingly. [38] The unfortunate Scottish lords were tried here 1745-6 as Horace Walpole abundantly testifies. [39] More than one noble family very creditably have visited the works of art on free-admission days. [40] Maclise's fresco of _The Knight_. [41] _Youth at a stream_ by J. H. Foley. [42] Lough's _Mourners_ a group in marble. LINES ON THE LANDING OF HIS MAJESTY KING LOUIS PHILIPPE TUESDAY OCTOBER 8 1844. BY B. SIMMONS. I. Ho! Wardens of the Coast look forth Upon your Channel seas-- The night is melting in the north There's tumult on the breeze; Now sinking far now rolling out In proud triumphal swell That mingled burst of shot and shout Your fathers knew so well What time to England's inmost plain The beacon-fires proclaim'd That like descending hurricane Grim Blake that Mastiff of the Main Beside your shores had once again The Flemish lion tamed![43] War wakes not now that tumult loud Ye Wardens of the Coast Though looming large through dawn's dim cloud Like an invading host The Barks of France are bearing down One crowd of sails while high Above the misty morning's frown Their streamers light the sky. Up!--greet for once the Tricolor For once the lilied flag! Forth with gay barge and gilded oar While fast the volley'd salvoes roar From batteried line and echoing shore And gun-engirdled crag! Forth--greet with ardent hearts and eyes The GUEST those galleys bring; In Wisdom's walks the more than Wise-- 'Mid Kings the more than King! No nobler visitant e'er sought The Mighty's white-cliff'd isle Where ALFRED ruled where BACON thought Where AVON'S waters smile: Hail to the tempest-vexed Man! Hail to the Sovereign-Sage! A wearier pilgrimage who ran Than the immortal Ithacan Since first his great career began Ulysses of our age! A more than regal welcome give Ye thousands crowding round; Shout for the once lorn Fugitive Whose soul no solace found Save in that SELF-RELIANCE--match For adverse worlds alone-- Which cheer'd the Tutor's humble thatch Nor left him on the throne. The WANDERER MULLER'S sails they furl-- The Wave-encounterer who When Freedom leagued with Crime to hurl Up earth's foundations from the whirl Where vortex'd Empires raged the pearl Of matchless Prudence drew. V. Shout for the Husband and the Sire Whose children train'd to truth Repaid in feeling grace and fire The lessons taught their youth. Recall his grief when bent above His rose-zoned daughter's clay Beside whose marble lifeless Love And Art and Genius lay.[44] And his be homage still more dread From our mute spirits won For tears of heart-wrung anguish shed When with that gray ""discrownèd head "" On foot he follow'd to the dead His gallant princely son. VI. Shout for the Hero and the King In soul serene--alike If suppliant States the sceptre bring Or banded traitors strike! Oh if at times a thrall too strong Round Freedom's form be laid Where Faction works by wrath and wrong His pardon be display'd. Be his this praise--unspoil'd by power His course benignly ran A MONARCH mindful of the hour He felt misfortune's wintry shower A MAN from hall to peasant's bower The common friend of Man. VII. Again the ramparts' loosen'd load Of thunder rends the air! Peal on--such pomp is fitly show'd-- He lands no stranger there. Hear from his lips your language grave In earnest accents fall-- The memories of the home ye gave He hastens to recall-- 'Mid flash of spears and fiery thrill Of trumpets speed him forth The Master-Mind your Shakspeare still Had loved to draw--that to its will Shapes Fate and Chance with potent skill-- The Numa of the North. VIII. Windsor! henceforth a loftier spell Invests thy storied walls-- The Bards of future years shall tell That first within thy halls Imperial TRUTH and MERCY met And in that hallow'd hour Gave earth the hope that Peace shall yet Be dear to Kings as Power. When France clasp'd England's hand of old There memory marks the wane Of iron times the bad and bold;[45] Oh may our SECOND FIELD of GOLD A portent still more fair unfold Of Wisdom's widening reign! FOOTNOTES: [43] Almost all Blake's great battles were fought in the Channel. One of the most memorable was that off Portsmouth February 1652. [44] The Princess Marie of Wurtemberg the most accomplished child of this most accomplished family and whose beautiful efforts in sculpture and painting are well known died a year after her marriage January 2 1839. [45] The meeting between Francis and Henry took place June 1520 the first great period of civilized progression in Europe--the era of Printing--of Columbus--and of the Reformation. LAMARTINE. It is remarkable that although England is the country in the world which has sent forth the greatest number of ardent and intrepid travellers to explore the distant parts of the earth yet it can by no means furnish an array of writers of travels which will bear a comparison with those whom France can boast. In skilful navigation daring adventure and heroic perseverance indeed the country of Cook and Davis of Bruce and Park of Mackenzie and Buckingham of Burckhardt and Byron of Parry and Franklin may well claim the pre-eminence of all others in the world. An Englishman first circumnavigated the globe; an Englishman alone has seen the fountains of the Nile; and five years after the ardent spirit of Columbus had led his fearful crews across the Atlantic Sebastian Cabot discovered the shores of Newfoundland and planted the British standard in the regions destined to be peopled with the overflowing multitudes of the Anglo-Saxon race. But if we come to the literary works which have followed these ardent and energetic efforts and which are destined to perpetuate their memory to future times--the interesting discoveries which have so much extended our knowledge and enlarged our resources--the contemplation is by no means to an inhabitant of these islands equally satisfactory. The British traveller is essentially a man of energy and action but rarely of contemplation or eloquence. He is seldom possessed of the scientific acquirements requisite to turn to the best account the vast stores of new and original information which are placed within his reach. He often observes and collects facts; but it is as a practical man or for professional purposes rather than as a philosopher. The genius of the Anglo-Saxon race--bold sagacious and enterprising rather than contemplative and scientific--nowhere appears more strongly than in the accounts of the numerous and intrepid travellers whom they are continually sending forth into every part of the earth. We admire their vigour we are moved by their hardships we are enriched by their discoveries; but if we turn to our libraries for works to convey to future ages an adequate and interesting account of these fascinating adventures we shall in general experience nothing but disappointment. Few of them are written with the practised hand the graphic eye necessary to convey vivid pictures to future times; and though numerous and valuable books of travels as works of reference load the shelves of our libraries there are surprisingly few which are fitted from the interest and vivacity of the style in which they are written to possess permanent attractions for mankind. One great cause of this remarkable peculiarity is without doubt to be found in the widely different education of the students in our universities and our practical men. In the former classical attainments are in literature the chief if not exclusive objects of ambition; and in consequence the young aspirants for fame who issue from these learned retreats have their minds filled with the charms and associations of antiquity to the almost entire exclusion of objects of present interest and importance. The vigorous practical men again who are propelled by the enterprise and exertions of our commercial towns are sagacious and valuable observers; but they have seldom the cultivated minds pictorial eye or powers of description requisite to convey vivid or interesting impressions to others. Thus our scholars give us little more than treatises on inscriptions and disquisitions on the sites of ancient towns; while the accounts of our practical men are chiefly occupied with commercial enquiries or subjects connected with trade and navigation. The cultivated and enlightened traveller whose mind is alike open to the charm of ancient story and the interest of modern achievement--who is classical without being pedantic graphic and yet faithful enthusiastic and yet accurate discursive and at the same time imaginative is almost unknown amongst us. It will continue to be so as long as education in our universities is exclusively devoted to Greek and Latin verses or the higher mathematics; and in academies to book-keeping and the rule of three; while so broad and sullen a line as heretofore is drawn between the studies of our scholars and the pursuits of our practical citizens. To travel to good purpose requires a mind stored with much and varied information in science statistics geography literature history and poetry. To describe what the traveller has seen requires in addition to this the eye of a painter the soul of a poet and the hand of a practised composer. Probably it will be deemed no easy matter to find such a combination in any country or in any age; and most certainly the system of education neither at our learned universities nor our commercial academies is fitted to produce it. It is from inattention to the vast store of _previous_ information requisite to make an accomplished traveller and still more a writer of interesting travels that failures in this branch of literature are so glaring and so frequent. In other departments of knowledge a certain degree of information is felt to be requisite before a man can presume to write a book. He cannot produce a treatise on mathematics without knowing at least Euclid nor a work on history without having read Hume nor on political economy without having acquired a smattering of Adam Smith. But in regard to travels no previous information is thought to be requisite. If the person who sets out on a tour has only money in his pocket and health to get to his journey's end he is deemed sufficiently qualified to come out with his two or three post octavos. If he is an Honourable or known at Almack's so much the better; that will ensure the sale of the first edition. If he can do nothing else he can at least tell the dishes which he got to dinner at the inns and the hotels where comfortable beds are to be found. This valuable information interspersed with a few descriptions of scenes copied from guide-books and anecdotes picked up at _tables-d'hôte_ or on board steamboats constitute the stock in trade of many an adventurer who embarks in the speculation of paying by publication the expenses of his travels. We have no individuals in view in these remarks; we speak of things in general as they are or rather have been; for we believe these ephemeral travels like other ephemerals have had their day and are fast dying out. The market has become so glutted with them that they are in a great many instances unsaleable. The classical travellers of England from Addison to Eustace and Clarke constitute an important and valuable body of writers in this branch of literature infinitely superior to the fashionable tours which rise up and disappear like bubbles on the surface of society. It is impossible to read these elegant productions without feeling the mind overspread with the charm which arises from the exquisite remains and heart-stirring associations with which they are filled. But their interest is almost exclusively classical; they are invaluable to the accomplished scholar but they speak in an unknown tongue to the great mass of men. They see nature only through the medium of antiquity: beautiful in their allusion to Greek or Roman remains eloquent in the descriptions of scenes alluded to in the classical writers they have dwelt little on the simple scenes of the unhistoric world. To the great moral and social questions which now agitate society and so strongly move the hearts of the great body of men they are entire strangers. Their works are the elegant companions of the scholar or the antiquary not the heart-stirring friends
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of the cottage or the fireside. Inferior to Britain in the energy and achievements of the travellers whom she has sent forth and beyond measure beneath her in the amount of the addition she has made to geographical science France is yet greatly superior at least of late years in the literary and scientific attainments of the wanderers whose works have been given to the world. Four among these stand pre-eminent whose works in very different styles are at the head of European literature in this interesting department--Humboldt Chateaubriand Michaud and Lamartine. Their styles are so various and the impression produced by reading them so distinct that it is difficult to believe that they have arisen in the same nation and age of the world. Humboldt is in many respects and perhaps upon the whole at the head of the list; and to his profound and varied works we hope to be able to devote a future paper. He unites in a degree that perhaps has never before been witnessed the most various qualities and which from the opposite characters of mind which they require are rarely found in unison. A profound philosopher an accurate observer of nature an unwearied statist he is at the same time an eloquent writer an incomparable describer and an ardent friend of social improvement. Science owes to his indefatigable industry many of her most valuable acquisitions; geography to his intrepid perseverance many of its most important discoveries; the arts to his poetic eye and fervid eloquence many of their brightest pictures. He unites the austere grandeur of the exact sciences to the bewitching charm of the fine arts. It is this very combination which prevents his works from being generally popular. The riches of his knowledge the magnitude of his contributions to scientific discovery the fervour of his descriptions of nature alternately awaken our admiration and excite our surprise; but they oppress the mind. To be rightly apprehended they require a reader in some degree familiar with all these subjects; and how many of these are to be met with? The man who takes an interest in his scientific observations will seldom be transported by his pictures of scenery; the social observer who extracts the rich collection of facts which he has accumulated regarding the people whom he visited will be indifferent to his geographical discoveries. There are few Humboldts either in the reading or thinking world. Chateaubriand is a traveller of a wholly different character--he lived entirely in antiquity. But it is not the antiquity of Greece and Rome which has alone fixed his regards as it has done those of Clarke and Eustace--it is the recollections of chivalry the devout spirit of the pilgrim which chiefly warmed his ardent imagination. He is universally allowed by Frenchmen of all parties to be their first writer; and it may be conceived what brilliant works an author of such powers and eminently gifted both with the soul of a poet and the eye of a painter must have produced in describing the historic scenes to which his pilgrimages extended. He went to Greece and the Holy Land with a mind devout rather than enlightened credulous rather than inquisitive. Thirsting for strong emotions he would be satisfied; teeming with the recollections and visions of the past he traversed the places hallowed by his early affections with the fondness of a lover who returns to the home of his bliss of a mature man who revisits the scenes of his infancy. He cared not to enquire what was true or what was legendary in these time-hallowed traditions; he gladly accepted them as they stood and studiously averted all enquiry into the foundation on which they rested. He wandered over the Peloponnesus or Judea with the fond ardour of an English scholar who seeks in the Palatine Mount the traces of Virgil's enchanting description of the hut of Evander and rejects as sacrilege every attempt to shake his faith. ""When Science from Creation's face Enchantment's visions draws What lovely visions yield their place To cold material laws!"" Even in the woods of America the same ruling passion was evinced. In those pathless solitudes where no human foot had ever trod but that of the wandering savage and the majesty of nature appeared in undisturbed repose his thoughts were still of the Old World. It was on the historic lands that his heart was set. A man himself he dwelt on the scenes which had been signalized by the deeds the sufferings the glories of man. Michaud's mind is akin to that of Chateaubriand and yet different in many important particulars. The learned and indefatigable historian of the Crusades he has traversed the shores of the Mediterranean--the scene as Dr Johnson observed of all that can ever interest man--his religion his knowledge his arts--with the ardent desire to imprint on his mind the scenes and images which met the eyes of the holy warriors. He seeks to transport us to the days of Godfrey of Bouillon and Raymond of Toulouse; he thirsts with the Christian host at Dorislaus he shares in its anxieties at the siege of Antioch he participates in its exultation at the storming of Jerusalem. The scenes visited by the vast multitude of warriors who during two hundred years were precipitated from Europe on Asia have almost all been visited by him and described with the accuracy of an antiquary and the enthusiasm of a poet. With the old chronicles in his hand he treads with veneration the scenes of former generous sacrifice and heroic achievements and the vast and massy structures erected on either side during those terrible wars--when for centuries Europe strove hand to hand with Asia--most of which have undergone very little alteration enable him to describe them almost exactly as they appeared to the holy warriors. The interest of his pilgrimage in the East accordingly is peculiar but very great; it is not so much a book of travels as a moving chronicle; but like Sir W. Scott's _Minstrelsy of the Borders_ it is a chronicle clothed in a very different garb from the homely dress of the olden time. It transports us back not only in time but in idea six hundred years; but it does so with the grace of modern times--it clothes the profound feelings the generous sacrifices the forgetfulness of self of the twelfth century with the poetic mind the cultivated taste the refined imagery of the nineteenth. Lamartine has traversed the same scenes with Chateaubriand and Michaud and yet he has done so in a different spirit; and the character of his work is essentially different from either. He has not the devout credulity of the first nor the antiquarian zeal and knowledge of the last; but he is superior to either in the description of nature and the painting vivid and interesting scenes on the mind of the reader. His work is a moving panorama in which the historic scenes and azure skies and placid seas and glowing sunsets of the East are portrayed in all their native brilliancy and in richer even than their native colours. His mind is stored with the associations and the ideas of antiquity and he has thrown over his descriptions of the scenes of Greece or Holy Writ all the charms of such recollections; but he has done so in a more general and catholic spirit than either of his predecessors. He embarked for the Holy Land shortly before the Revolution of 1830; and his thoughts amidst all the associations of antiquity constantly reverted to the land of his fathers--its distractions its woes its ceaseless turmoil its gloomy social prospects. Thus with all his vivid imagination and unrivaled powers of description the turn of his mind is essentially contemplative. He looks on the past as an emblem of the present; he sees in the fall of Tyre and Athens and Jerusalem the fate which one day awaits his own country; and mourns less the decay of human things than the popular passions and national sins which have brought that instability in close proximity to his own times. This sensitive and foreboding disposition was much increased by the death of his daughter--a charming child of fourteen the companion of his wanderings the depositary of his thoughts the darling of his affections--who was snatched away in the spring of life when in health and joy by one of the malignant fevers incident to the pestilential plains of the East. Though Lamartine's travels are continuous he does not like most other wanderers furnish us with a journal of every day's proceedings. He was too well aware that many perhaps most days on a journey are monotonous or uninteresting; and that many of the details of a traveller's progress are wholly unworthy of being recorded because they are neither amusing elevating nor instructive. He paints now and then with all the force of his magical pencil the more brilliant or characteristic scenes which he visited and intersperses them with reflections moral and social; such as would naturally be aroused in a sensitive mind by the sight of the rains of ancient and the contemplation of the decay of modern times. He embarked at Marseilles with Madame Lamartine and his little daughter Julia on the 10th July 1830. The following is the picture of the yearnings of his mind on leaving his native land; and they convey a faithful image of his intellectual temperament:-- ""I feel it deeply: I am one only of those men without a distinctive character of a transitory and fading epoch whose sighs have found an echo--only because the echo was more poetical than the poet. I belong to another age by my desires: I feel in myself another man: the immense and boundless horizon of philosophy at once profound religious and poetical has opened to my view but the punishment of a wasted youth overtook me; it soon faded from my sight. Adieu then to the dreams of genius to the aspirations of intellectual enjoyment! It is too late: I have not physical strength to accomplish any thing great. I will sketch some scenes--I will murmur some strains and that is all. Yet if God would grant my prayers here is the object for which I would petition--a poem such as my heart desires and his greatness deserves!--a faithful breathing image of his creation: of the boundless world visible and invisible! That would indeed be a worthy inheritance to leave to an era of darkness of doubt and of sadness!--an inheritance which would nourish the present age and cause the next to spring with renovated youth.""--(_Voyages en Orient_ I. 49-60.[46]) One of his first nocturnal reveries at sea portrays the tender and profoundly religious impressions of his mind:-- ""I walked for an hour on the deck of the vessel alone and immersed alternately in sad or consoling reflections. I repeated in my heart all the prayers which I learned in infancy from my mother: the verses the fragments of the Psalms which I had so often heard her repeat to herself when walking in the evening in the garden of Melly. I experienced a melancholy pleasure in thus scattering them in my turn to the waves to the winds to that Ear which is ever open to every real movement of the heart though not yet uttered by the lips. The prayer which we have heard repeated by one we have loved and who is no more is doubly sacred. Who among us would not prefer a few words of prayer taught us by our mother to the most eloquent supplication composed by ourselves? Thence it is that whatever religious creed we may adopt at the age of reason the Christian prayer will be ever the prayer of the human race. I prayed in the prayer of the church for the evening at sea; also for that dear being who never thought of danger to accompany her husband and that lovely child who played at the moment on the poop with the goat which was to give it milk on board and with the little kids which licked her snow-white hands and sported with her long and fair ringlets.""--(I. 57.) A night-scene on the coast of Provence gives a specimen of his descriptive powers. ""It was night--that is what they call night in those climates; but how many days have I seen less brilliant on the banks of the Thames the Seine the Saone or the Lake of Geneva! A full noon shone in the firmament and cast into the shade our vessel which lay motionless on the water at a little distance from the quay. The moon in her progress through the heavens had left a path marked as if with red sand with which she had besprinkled the half of the sky: the remainder was clear deep blue which melted into white as she advanced. On the horizon at the distance of two miles between two little isles of which the one had headlands pointed and coloured like the Coliseum at Rome while the other was violet like the flower of the lilac the image of a vast city appeared on the sea. It was an illusion doubtless; but it had all the appearance of reality. You saw clearly the domes glancing--dazzling lines of palaces--quays flooded by a soft and serene light; on the right and the left the waves were seen to sparkle and enclose it on either side: it was Venice or Malta reposing in the midst of the waters. The illusion was produced by the reflection of the moon when her rays fell perpendicularly on the waters; nearer the eye the radiance spread and expanded in a stream of gold and silver between two shores of azure. On the left the gulf extended to the summit of a long and obscure range of serrated mountains; on the right opened a narrow and deep valley where a fountain gushed forth beneath the shade of aged trees; behind rose a hill clothed to the top with olives which in the night appeared dark from its summit to its base--a line of Gothic towers and white houses broke the obscurity of the wood and drew the thoughts to the abodes the joys and the sufferings of man. Further off in the extremity of the gulf three enormous rocks rose like pillars without base from the surface of the waters--their forms were fantastic their surface polished like flints by the action of the waves; but those flints were mountains--the remains doubtless of that primeval ocean which once overspread the earth and of which our seas are but a feeble image.""--(II. 66.) A rocky bay on the same romantic coast now rendered accessible to travellers by the magnificent road of the Corniché projected and in part executed by Napoleon furnishes another subject for this exquisite pencil:-- ""A mile to the eastward on the coast the mountains which there dip into the sea are broken as if by the strokes of enormous clubs--huge fragments have fallen and are strewed in wild confusion at the foot of the cliffs or amidst the blue and green waves of the sea which incessantly laves them. The waves break on these huge masses without intermission with a hollow and alternating roar or rise up in sheets of foam which besprinkle their hoary fronts. These masses of mountains--for they are too large to be called rocks--are piled and heaped together in such numbers that they form an innumerable number of narrow havens of profound caverns of sounding grottoes of gloomy fissures--of which the children of some of the neighbouring fishermen alone know the windings and the issues. One of these caverns into which you enter by a natural arch the summit of which is formed by an enormous block of granite lets in the sea through which it flows into a dark and narrow valley which the waters fill entirely with a surface as limpid and smooth as the firmament which they reflect. The sea preserves in this sequestered nook that beautiful tint of bright green of which marine painters so strongly feel the value but which they can never transfer exactly to their canvass; for the eye sees much which the hand strives in vain to imitate. ""On the two sides of that marine valley rise two prodigious walls of perpendicular rock of an uniform and sombre hue similar to that of iron ore after it has issued and cooled from the furnace. Not a plant not a moss can find a slope or a crevice wherein to insert its roots or cover the rocks with those waving garlands which so often in Savoy clothe the cliffs where they flower to God alone. Black naked perpendicular repelling the eye by their awful aspect--they seem to have been placed there for no other purpose but to protect from the sea-breezes the hills of olives and vines which bloom under their shelter; an image of those ruling men in a stormy epoch who seem placed by Providence to bear the fury of all the tempests of passion and of time to screen the weaker but happier race of mortals. At the bottom of the bay the sea expands a little assumes a bluer tint as it comes to reflect more of the cloudless heavens and at length its tiny waves die away on a bed of violets as closely netted together as the sand upon the shore. If you disembark from the boat you find in the cleft of a neighbouring ravine a fountain of living water which gushes beneath a narrow path formed by the goats which leads up from this sequestered solitude amidst overshadowing fig-trees and oleanders to the cultivated abodes of man. Few scenes struck me so much in my long wanderings. Its charm consists in that exquisite union of force and grace which forms the perfection of natural beauty as of the highest class of intellectual beings; it is that mysterious hymen of the land and the sea surprised as it were in their most secret and hidden union. It is the image of perfect calm and inaccessible solitude close to the theatre of tumultuous tempests where their near roar is heard with such terror where their foaming but lessened waves yet break upon the shore. It is one of those numerous _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of creation which God has scattered over the earth as if to sport with contrasts but which he conceals so frequently on the summit of naked rocks in the depth of inaccessible ravines on the unapproachable shores of the ocean like jewels which he unveils rarely and that only to simple beings to children to shepherds or fishermen or the devout worshippers of nature.""--(I. 73--74.) This style of description of scenery is peculiar to this age and in it Lamartine may safely be pronounced without a rival in the whole range of literature. It was with Scott and Chateaubriand that the _graphic_ style of description arose in England and France; but he has pushed the art further than either of his great predecessors. Milton and Thompson had long ago indeed in poetry painted nature in the most enchanting as well as the truest colours; but in prose little was to be found except a general and vague description of a class of objects as lakes mountains and rivers without any specification of features and details so as to convey a definite and distinct impression to the mind of the reader. Even the classical mind and refined taste of Addison could not attain this graphic style; his descriptions of scenery like that of all prose writers down to the close of the eighteenth century are lost in vague generalities. Like almost all descriptions of battles in modern times they are so like each other that you cannot distinguish one from the other. Scott and Chateaubriand when they did apply their great powers to the delineation of nature were incomparably faithful as well as powerfully imaginative; but such descriptions were for the most part but a secondary object with them. The human heart was their great study; the vicissitudes of life the inexhaustible theme of their genius. With Lamartine again the description of nature is the primary object. It is to convey a vivid impression of the scenes he has visited that he has written; to kindle in his reader's mind the train of emotion and association which their contemplation awakened in his own that he has exerted all his powers. He is much more laboured and minute in consequence than either of his predecessors; he records the tints the forms the lights the transient effects with all a painter's enthusiasm and all a poet's power; and succeeds in any mind at all familiar with the objects of nature in conjuring up images as vivid sometimes perhaps more beautiful than the originals which he portrayed. From the greatness of his powers however in this respect and the facility with which he commits to paper the whole features of the splendid phantasmagoria with which his memory is stored arises the principal defect of his work; and the circumstance which has hitherto prevented it in this country at least from acquiring general popularity commensurate to its transcendent merits. He is too rich in glowing images; his descriptions are redundant in number and beauty. The mind even of the most imaginative reader is fatigued by the constant drain upon its admiration--the fancy is exhausted in the perpetual effort to conceive the scenes which he portrays to the eye. Images of beauty enough are to be found in his four volumes of _Travels in the East_ to emblazon with the brightest colours of the rainbow forty volumes of ordinary adventure. We long for some repose amidst the constant repetition of dazzling objects; monotony insipidity ordinary life even dulness itself would often be a relief amidst the ceaseless flow of rousing images. Sir Walter Scott says in one of his novels--""Be assured that whenever I am particularly dull it is not without an object;"" and Lamartine would sometimes be the better of following the advice. We generally close one of his volumes with the feeling so well known to travellers in the Italian cities ""I hope to God there is nothing more to be seen here."" And having given the necessary respite of unexciting disquisition to rest our readers' minds we shall again bring forward one of his glowing pictures:-- ""Between the sea and the last heights of Lebanon which sink rapidly almost to the water's edge extends a plain eight leagues in length by one or two broad; sandy bare covered only with thorny arbutus browsed by the camels of caravans. From it darts out into the sea an advanced peninsula linked to the continent only by a narrow _chaussée_ of shining sand borne hither by the winds of Egypt. Tyre now called Sour by the Arabs is situated at the extremity of this peninsula and seems at a distance to rise out of the waves. The modern town at first sight has a gay and smiling appearance; but a nearer approach dispels the illusion and exhibits only a few hundred crumbling and half-deserted houses where the Arabs in the evening assemble to shelter their flocks which have browsed in the narrow plain. Such is all that now remains of the mighty Tyre. It has neither a harbour to the sea nor a road to the land; the prophecies have long been accomplished in regard to it. ""We moved on in silence buried in the contemplation of the dust of an empire which we trod. We followed a path in the middle of the plain of Tyre between the town and the hills of grey and naked rock which Lebanon has thrown down towards the sea. We arrived abreast of the city and touched a mound of sand which appears the sole remaining rampart to prevent it from being overwhelmed by the waves of the ocean or the desert. I thought of the prophecies and called to mind some of the eloquent denunciations of Ezekiel. As I was making these reflections some objects black gigantic and motionless appeared upon the summit of one of the overhanging cliffs of Lebanon which there advanced far into the plain. They resembled five black statues placed on a rock as their huge pedestal. At first we thought it was five Bedouins who were there stationed to fire upon us from their inaccessible heights; but when we were at the distance of fifty yards we beheld one of them open its enormous wings and flap them against its sides with a sound like the unfurling of a sail. We then perceived that they were five eagles of the largest species I have ever seen either in the Alps or our museums. They made no attempt to move when we approached; they seemed to regard themselves as kings of the desert looked on Tyre as an appanage which belonged to them and whither they were about to return. Nothing more supernatural ever met my eyes; I could almost suppose that behind them I saw the terrible figure of Ezekiel the poet of vengeance pointing to the devoted city which the divine wrath had overwhelmed with destruction. The discharge of a few muskets made them rise from their rock: but they showed no disposition to move from their ominous perch and soon returning floated over our heads regardless of the shots fired at them as if the eagles of God were beyond the reach of human injury.""--(II. 8-9.) Jerusalem was a subject to awaken all our author's enthusiasm and call forth all his descriptive powers. The first approach to it has exercised the talents of many writers in prose and verse; but none has drawn it in such graphic and brilliant colours as our author:-- ""We ascended a mountain ridge strewed over with enormous grey rocks piled one on another as if by human hands. Here and there a few stunted vines yellow with the colour of autumn crept along the soil in a few places cleared out in the wilderness. Fig-trees with their tops withered or shivered by the blasts often edged the vines and cast their black fruit on the grey rock. On our right the desert of St John where formerly 'the voice was heard crying in the wilderness ' sank like an abyss in the midst of five or six black mountains through the openings of which the sea of Egypt overspread with a dark cloud could still be discerned. On the left and near the eye was an old tower placed on the top of a projecting eminence; other ruins apparently of an ancient aqueduct descended from that tower overgrown with verdure now in the sear leaf; that tower is Modin the stronghold and tomb of the last heroes of sacred story the Maccabees. We left behind us the ruins resplendent with the first rays of the morning--rays not blended as in Europe in a confused and vague illumination but darting like arrows of fire tinted with various colours issuing from a dazzling centre and diverging over the whole heavens as they expand. Some were of blue slightly silvered others of pure white some of tender rose-hue melting into grey; many of burning fire like the coruscations of a flaming conflagration. All were distinct yet all united in one harmonious whole forming a resplendent arch in the heavens encircling and issuing from a centre of fire. In proportion as the day advanced the brilliant light of these separate rays was gradually dimmed--or rather they were blended together and composed the colourless light of day. Then the moon which still shone overhead 'paled her ineffectual fire ' and melted away in the general illumination of the heavens. ""After having ascended a second ridge more lofty and naked than the former the horizon suddenly opens to the right and presents a view of all the country which extends between the last summits of Judea and the mountains of Arabia. It was already flooded with the increasing light of the morning; but beyond the piles of grey rock which lay in the foreground nothing was distinctly visible but a dazzling space like a vast sea interspersed with a few islands of shade which stood forth in the brilliant surface. On the shores of that imaginary ocean a little to the left and about a league distant the sun shone with uncommon brilliancy on a massy tower a lofty minaret and some edifices which crowned the summit of a low hill of which you could not see the bottom. Soon the points of other minarets a few loopholed walls and the dark summits of several domes which successively came into view and fringed the descending slope of the hill announced a city. It was JERUSALEM and every one of the party without addressing a word to the guides or to each other enjoyed in silence the entrancing spectacle. We rested our horses to contemplate that mysterious and dazzling apparition; but when we moved on it was soon snatched from our view; for as we descended the hill and plunged into the deep and profound valley which lay at its feet we lost sight of the holy city and were surrounded only by the solitude and desolation of the desert.""--(II. 163-165.) The environs of Jerusalem are described with equal force by the same master-hand:-- ""The general aspect of the environs of Jerusalem may be described in a few words. Mountains without shade and valleys without water--the earth without verdure rocks without grandeur. Here and there a few blocks of grey stone start up out of the dry and fissured earth between which beneath the shade of an old fig-tree a gazelle or a hyæna are occasionally seen to emerge from the fissures of the rock. A few plants or vines creep over the surface of that grey and parched soil; in the distance is occasionally seen a grove of olive-trees casting a shade over the arid side of the mountain--the mouldering walls and towers of the city appearing from afar on the summit of Mount Sion. Such is the general character of the country. The sky is ever pure bright and cloudless; never does even the slightest film of mist obscure the purple tint of evening and morning. On the side of Arabia a wide gulf opens amidst the black ridges and presents a vista of the shining surface of the Dead Sea and the violet summits of the mountains of Moab. Rarely is a breath of air heard to murmur in the fissures of the rocks or among the branches of the aged olives; not a bird sings nor an insect chirps in the waterless furrows. Silence reigns universally in the city in the roads in the fields. Such was Jerusalem during all the time that we spent within its walls. Not a sound ever met our ears but the neighing of the horses who grew impatient under the burning rays of the sun or who furrowed the earth with their feet as they stood picketed round our camp mingled occasionally with the crying of the hour from the minarets or the mournful cadences of the Turks as they accompanied the dead to their cemeteries. Jerusalem to which the world hastens to visit a sepulchre is itself a vast tomb of a people; but it is a tomb without cypresses without inscriptions without monuments of which they have broken the gravestones and the ashes of which appear to cover the earth which surrounds it with mourning silence and sterility. We cast our eyes back frequently from the top of every hill which we passed on this mournful and desolate region and at length we saw for the last time the crown of olives which surmounts the Mount of the same name and which long rises above the horizon after you have lost sight of the town itself. At length it also sank beneath the rocky screen and disappeared like the chaplets of flowers which we throw on a sepulchre.""--(II. 275-276.) From Jerusalem he made an expedition to Balbec in the desert which produced the same impression upon him that it does upon all other travellers:-- ""We rose with the sun the first rays of which struck on the temples of Balbec and gave to those mysterious ruins that _eclât_ which his brilliant light throws ever over ruins which it illuminates. Soon we arrived on the northern side at the foot of the gigantic walls which surround those beautiful remains. A clear stream flowing over a bed of granite murmured around the enormous blocks of stone fallen from the top of the wall which obstructed its course. Beautiful sculptures were half concealed in the limpid stream. We passed the rivulet by an arch formed by these fallen remains and mounting a narrow breach were soon lost in admiration of the scene which surrounded us. At every step a fresh exclamation of surprise broke from our lips. Every one of the stones of which that wall was composed was from eight to ten feet in length by five or six in breadth and as much in height. They rest without cement one upon the other and almost all bear the mark of Indian or Egyptian sculpture. At a single glance you see that these enormous stones are not placed in their original site--that they are the precious remains of temples of still more remote antiquity which were made use of to encircle this colony of Grecian and Roman citizens. ""When we reached the summit of the breach our eyes knew not to what object first to turn. On all sides were gates of marble of prodigious height and magnitude; windows or niches fringed with the richest friezes; fallen pieces of cornices of entablatures or capitals thick as the dust beneath our feet; magnificent vaulted roofs above our heads; every where a chaos of confused beauty the remains of which lay scattered about or piled on each other in endless variety. So prodigious was the accumulation of architectural remains that it defies all attempt at classification or conjecture of the kind of buildings to which the greater part of them had belonged. After passing through this scene of ruined magnificence we reached an inner wall which we also ascended; and from its summit the view of the interior was yet more splendid. Of much
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reater extent far more richly decorated than the outer circle it presented an immense platform in the form of a long rectangle the level surface of which was frequently broken by the remains of still more elevated pavements on which temples to the sun the object of adoration at Balbec had been erected. All around that platform were a series of lesser temples--or chapels as we should call them--decorated with niches admirably engraved and loaded with sculptured ornaments to a degree that appeared excessive to those who had seen the severe simplicity of the Parthenon or the Coliseum. But how prodigious the accumulation of architectural riches in the middle of an eastern desert! Combine in imagination the Temple of Jupiter Stator and the Coliseum at Rome of Jupiter Olympius and the Acropolis at Athens and you will yet fall short of that marvellous assemblage of admirable edifices and sculptures. Many of the temples rest on columns seventy feet in height and seven feet in diameter yet composed only of two or three blocks of stone so perfectly joined together that to this day you can barely discern the lines of their junction. Silence is the only language which befits man when words are inadequate to convey his impressions. We remained mute with admiration gazing on the eternal ruins. ""The shades of night overtook us while we yet rested in amazement at the scene by which we were surrounded. One by one they enveloped the columns in their obscurity and added a mystery the more to that magical and mysterious work of time and man. We appeared as compared with the gigantic mass and long duration of these monuments as the swallows which nestle a season in the crevices of the capitals without knowing by whom or for whom they have been constructed. The thoughts the wishes which moved these masses are to us unknown. The dust of marble which we tread beneath our feet knows more of it than we do but it cannot tell us what it has seen; and in a few ages the generations which shall come in their turn to visit our monuments will ask in like manner wherefore we have built and engraved. The works of man survive his thought. Movement is the law of the human mind; the definite is the dream of his pride and his ignorance. God is a limit which appears ever to recede as humanity approaches him: we are ever advancing and never arrive. This great Divine Figure which man from his infancy is ever striving to reach and to imprison in his structures raised by hands for ever enlarges and expands; it outsteps the narrow limits of temples and leaves the altars to crumble into dust; and calls man to seek for it where alone it resides--in thought in intelligence in virtue in nature in infinity.""--(II. 39 46 47.) This passage conveys an idea of the peculiar style and perhaps unique charm of Lamartine's work. It is the mixture of vivid painting with moral reflection--of nature with sentiment--of sensibility to beauty with gratitude to its Author which constitutes its great attraction. Considering in what spirit the French Revolution was cradled and from what infidelity it arose it is consoling to see such sentiments conceived and published among them. True they are not the sentiments of the majority at least in towns; but what then? The majority is ever guided by the thoughts of the great not in its own but a preceding age. It is the opinions of the great among our grandfathers that govern the majority at this time; our great men will guide our grandsons. If we would foresee what a future age is to think we must observe what a few great men are now thinking. Voltaire and Rousseau have ruled France for two generations; the day of Chateaubriand and Guizot and Lamartine will come in due time. But the extraordinary magnitude of these ruins in the middle of an Asiatic wilderness suggests another consideration. We are perpetually speaking of the march of intellect the vast spread of intelligence the advancing civilization of the world; and in some respects our boasts are well founded. Certainly in one particular society has made a mighty step in advance. The abolition of domestic slavery has emancipated the millions who formerly toiled in bondage; the art of printing has multiplied an hundredfold the reading and thinking world. Our opportunities therefore have been prodigiously enlarged; our means of elevation are tenfold what they were in ancient times. But has our elevation itself kept pace with these enlarged means? Has the increased direction of the popular mind to lofty and spiritual objects the more complete subjugation of sense the enlarged perception of the useful and the beautiful been in proportion to the extended facilities given to the great body of the people? Alas! the fact is just the reverse. Balbec was a mere station in the desert without territory harbour or subjects--maintained solely by the commerce of the East with Europe which flowed through its walls. Yet Balbec raised in less than a century a more glorious pile of structures devoted to religious and lofty objects than London Paris and St Petersburg united can now boast. The Decapolis was a small and remote mountain district of Palestine not larger in proportion to the Roman than Morayshire is in proportion to the British empire; yet it contained as its name indicates and as their remains still attest _ten cities_ the least considerable of which Gebora contains as Buckingham tells us in his _Travels beyond the Jordan_ the ruins of more sumptuous edifices than any city in the British islands London itself not excepted can now boast. It was the same all over the East and in all the southern provinces of the Roman empire. Whence has arisen this astonishing disproportion between the great things done by the citizens in ancient and in modern times when in the latter the means of enlarged cultivation have been so immeasurably extended? It is in vain to say it is because we have more social and domestic happiness and our wealth is devoted to these objects not external embellishment. Social and domestic happiness are in the direct not in the inverse ratio of general refinement and the spread of intellectual intelligence. The domestic duties are better nourished in the temple than in the gin-shop; the admirers of sculpture will make better fathers and husbands than the lovers of whisky. Is it that we want funds for such undertakings? Why London is richer than ever Rome was; the commerce of the world not of the eastern caravans flows through its bosom. The sums annually squandered in Manchester and Glasgow on intoxicating liquors would soon make them rival the eternal structures of Tadmor and Palmyra. Is it that the great bulk of our people are unavoidably chained by their character and climate to gross and degrading enjoyments? Is it that the spreading of knowledge intelligence and free institutions only confirms the sway of sensual gratification and that a pure and spiritual religion tends only to strengthen the fetters of passion and selfishness? Is it that the inherent depravity of the human heart appears the more clearly as man is emancipated from the fetters of authority? Must we go back to early ages for noble and elevated motives of action: is the spread of freedom but another word for the extension of brutality? God forbid that so melancholy a doctrine should have any foundation in human nature! We mention the facts and leave it to future ages to discover their solution: contenting ourselves with pointing out to our self-applauding countrymen how much they have to do before they attain the level of their advantages or justify the boundless blessings which Providence has bestowed upon them. The plain of Troy seen by moonlight furnishes the subject of one of our author's most striking passages:-- ""It is midnight; the sea is calm as a mirror; the vessel floats motionless on the resplendent surface. On our left Tenedos rises above the waves and shuts out the view of the open sea: on our right and close to us stretched out like a dark bar the low shore and indented coasts of Troy. The full moon which rises behind the snow-streaked summit of Mount Ida sheds a serene and doubtful light over the summits of the mountains the hills the plain: its extending rays fall upon the sea and reach the shadow of our brig forming a bright path which the shades do not venture to approach. We can discern the _tumuli_ which tradition still marks as the tombs of Hector and Patroclus. The full moon slightly tinged with red which discloses the undulations of the hills resembles the bloody buckler of Achilles; no light is to be seen on the coast but a distant twinkling lighted by the shepherds on Mount Ida--not a sound is to be heard but the flapping of the sail on the mast and the slight creaking of the mast itself; all seems dead like the past in that deserted land. Seated on the forecastle I see that shore those mountains those ruins those tombs rise like the ghost of the departed world reappear from the bosom of the sea with shadowy form by the rays of the star of night which sleep on the hills and disappear as the moon recedes behind the summits of the mountains. It is a beautiful additional page in the poems of Homer the end of all history and of all poetry! Unknown tombs ruins without a certain name; the earth naked and dark but imperfectly lighted by the immortal luminaries; new spectators passing by the old coast and repeating for the thousandth time the common epitaph of mortality! Here lies an empire here a town here a people here a hero! God alone is great and the thought which seeks and adores him alone is imperishable upon earth. I feel no desire to make a nearer approach in daylight to the doubtful remains of the ruins of Troy. I prefer that nocturnal apparition which allows the thought to re-people those deserts and sheds over them only the distant light of the moon and of the poetry of Homer. And what concerns me Troy its heroes and its gods! That leaf of the heroic world is turned for ever!""--(II. 248-250.) What a magnificent testimonial to the genius of Homer written in a foreign tongue two thousand seven hundred years after his death! The Dardanelles and the Bosphorus have from the dawn of letters exercised the descriptive talents of the greatest historians of modern Europe. The truthful chronicle of Villehardouin and the eloquent pictures of Gibbon and Sismondi of the siege of Constantinople will immediately occur to every scholar. The following passage however will show that no subject can be worn out when it is handled by the pen of genius:-- ""It was five in the morning I was standing on deck; we made sail towards the mouth of the Bosphorus skirting the walls of Constantinople. After half an hour's navigation through ships at anchor we touched the walls of the seraglio which prolongs those of the city and form at the extremity of the hill which supports the proud Stamboul the angle which separates the sea of Marmora from the canal of the Bosphorus and the harbour of the Golden Horn. It is there that God and man nature and art have combined to form the most marvellous spectacle which the human eye can behold. I uttered an involuntary cry when the magnificent panorama opened upon my sight; I forgot for ever the bay of Naples and all its enchantments; to compare any thing to that marvellous and graceful combination would be an injury to the fairest work of creation. ""The walls which support the circular terraces of the immense gardens of the seraglio were on our left with their base perpetually washed by the waters of the Bosphorus blue and limpid as the Rhone at Geneva; the terraces which rise one above another to the palace of the Sultana the gilded cupolas of which rose above the gigantic summits of the plane-tree and the cypress were themselves clothed with enormous trees the trunks of which overhang the walls while their branches overspreading the gardens spread a deep shadow even far into the sea beneath the protection of which the panting rowers repose from their toil. These stately groups of trees are from time to time interrupted by palaces pavilions kiosks gilded and sculptured domes or batteries of cannon. These maritime palaces form part of the seraglio. You see occasionally through the muslin curtains the gilded roofs and sumptuous cornices of those abodes of beauty. At every step elegant Moorish fountains fall from the higher parts of the gardens and murmur in marble basins from whence before reaching the sea they are conducted in little cascades to refresh the passengers. As the vessel coasted the walls the prospect expanded--the coast of Asia appeared and the mouth of the Bosphorus properly so called began to open between hills on one side of dark green on the other of smiling verdure which seemed variegated by all the colours of the rainbow. The smiling shores of Asia distant about a mile stretched out to our right surmounted by lofty hills sharp at the top and clothed to the summit with dark forests with their sides varied by hedge-rows villas orchards and gardens. Deep precipitous ravines occasionally descended on this side into the sea overshadowed by huge overgrown oaks the branches of which dipped into the water. Further on still on the Asiatic side an advanced headland projected into the waves covered with white houses--it was Scutari with its vast white barracks its resplendent mosques its animated quays forming a vast city. Further still the Bosphorus like a deeply imbedded river opened between opposing mountains--the advancing promontories and receding bays of which clothed to the water's edge with forests exhibited a confused assemblage of masts of vessels shady groves noble palaces hanging gardens and tranquil havens. ""The harbour of Constantinople is not properly speaking a port. It is rather a great river like the Thames shut in on either side by hills covered with houses and covered by innumerable lines of ships lying at anchor along the quays. Vessels of every description are to be seen there from the Arabian bark the prow of which is raised and darts along like the ancient galleys to the ship of the line with three decks and its sides studded with brazen mouths. Multitudes of Turkish barks circulate through that forest of masts serving the purpose of carriages in that maritime city and disturb in their swift progress through the waves clouds of alabastros which like beautiful white pigeons rise from the sea on their approach to descend and repose again on the unruffled surface. It is impossible to count the vessels which lie on the water from the seraglio point to the suburb of Eyoub and the delicious valley of the Sweet Waters. The Thames at London exhibits nothing comparable to it.""--(II. 262-265.) ""Beautiful as the European side of the Bosphorus is the Asiatic is infinitely more striking. It owes nothing to man but every thing to nature. There is neither a Buyukdéré nor a Therapia nor palaces of ambassadors nor an Armenian nor Frank city; there is nothing but mountains with glens which separate them; little valleys enameled with green which lie at the foot of overhanging rocks; torrents which enliven the scene with their foam; forests which darken it by their shade or dip their boughs in the waves; a variety of forms of tints and of foliage which the pencil of the painter is alike unable to represent or the pen of the poet to describe. A few cottages perched on the summit of projecting rocks or sheltered in the bosom of a deeply indented bay alone tell you of the presence of man. The evergreen oaks hang in such masses over the waves that the boatmen glide under their branches and often sleep cradled in their arms. Such is the character of the coast on the Asiatic side as far as the castle of Mahomet II. which seems to shut it in as closely as any Swiss lake. Beyond that the character changes; the hills are less rugged and descend in gentler slopes to the water's edge; charming little plains checkered with fruit-trees and shaded by planes frequently open; and the delicious Sweet Waters of Asia exhibit a scene of enchantment equal to any described in the Arabian Nights. Women children and black slaves in every variety of costume and colour; veiled ladies from Constantinople; cattle and buffaloes ruminating in the pastures; Arab horses clothed in the most sumptuous trappings of velvet and gold; caïques filled with Armenian and Circassian young women seated under the shade or playing with their children some of the most ravishing beauty form a scene of variety and interest probably unique in the world."" (III. 331-332.) These are the details of the piece: here is the general impression:-- ""One evening by the light of a splendid moon which was reflected from the sea of Marmora and the violet summits of Mount Olympus I sat alone under the cypresses of the 'Ladders of the Dead;' those cypresses which overshadow innumerable tombs of Mussulmans and descend from the heights of Pera to the shores of the sea. No one ever passes at that hour: you would suppose yourself an hundred miles from the capital if a confused hum wafted by the wind was not occasionally heard which speedily died away among the branches of the cypress. These sounds weakened by distance; the songs of the sailors in the vessels; the stroke of the oars in the water; the drums of the military bands in the barracks; the songs of the women who lulled their children to sleep; the cries of the muetzlim who from the summits of the minarets called the faithful to evening prayers; the evening gun which boomed across the Bosphorus the signal of repose to the fleet--all these sounds combined to form one confused murmur which strangely contrasted with the perfect silence around me and produced the deepest impression. The seraglio with its vast peninsula dark with plane-trees and cypresses stood forth like a promontory of forests between the two seas which slept beneath my eyes. The moon shone on the numerous kiosks; and the old walls of the palace of Amurath stood forth like huge rocks from the obscure gloom of the plane-trees. Before me was the scene in my mind was the recollection of all the glorious and sinister events which had there taken place. The impression was the strongest the most overwhelming which a sensitive mind could receive. All was there mingled--man and God society and nature mental agitation the melancholy repose of thought. I know not whether I participated in the great movement of associated beings who enjoy or suffer in that mighty assemblage or in that nocturnal slumber of the elements which murmured thus and raised the mind above the cares of cities and empires into the bosom of nature and of God.""--(III. 283-284.) ""Il faut du tems "" says Voltaire ""pourque les grandes reputations murissent."" As a describer of nature we place Lamartine at the head of all writers ancient or modern--above Scott or Chateaubriand Madame de Staël or Humboldt. He aims at a different object from any of these great writers. He does not like them describe the emotion produced on the mind by the contemplation of nature; he paints the objects in the scene itself their colours and traits their forms and substance their lights and shadows. A painter following exactly what he portrays would make a glorious gallery of landscapes. He is moreover a charming poet an eloquent debater and has written many able and important works on politics; yet we never recollect during the last twenty years to have heard his name mentioned in English society except once when an old and caustic but most able judge now no more said ""I have been reading Lamartine's _Travels in the East_--it seems a perfect rhapsody."" We must not suppose however from this that the English nation is incapable of appreciating the highest degree of eminence in the fine arts or that we are never destined to rise to excellence in any but the mechanical. It is the multitude of subordinate writers of moderate merit who obstruct all the avenues to great distinction which really occasions the phenomenon. Strange as it may appear it is a fact abundantly proved by literary history and which may be verified by every day's experience that men are in general insensible to the highest class of intellectual merit when it first appears; and that it is by slow degrees and the opinion oft repeated of the really superior in successive generations that it is at length raised to its deserved and lasting pedestal. There are instances to the contrary such as Scott and Byron: but they are the exceptions not the rule. We seldom do justice but to the dead. Contemporary jealousy literary envy general timidity the dread of ridicule the confusion of rival works form so many obstacles to the speedy acquisition of a great living reputation. To the illustrious of past ages however we pay an universal and willing homage. Contemporary genius appears with a twinkling and uncertain glow like the shifting and confused lights of a great city seen at night from a distance: while the spirits of the dead shine with an imperishable lustre far removed in the upper firmament from the distractions of the rivalry of a lower world. FOOTNOTES: [46] We have translated all the passages ourselves: the versions hitherto published in this country give as most English translations of French works do a most imperfect idea of the original. * * * * * _Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes Paul's Work._ "
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generously made available by The Internet Library of Early Journals.) BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. NO. CCCL. DECEMBER 1844. VOL. LVI. CONTENTS. The Scottish Banking System 671 The Milkman of Walworth 687 Injured Ireland 701 Singular Passages in the Life of a Russian Officer 713 Traditions and Tales of Upper Lusatia. No IV. The Moor Maiden 726 "That's What We Are " 741 Edmund Burke 745 My College Friends. No. II. John Brown 763 Nelson's Despatches and Letters 775 Guizot 786 EDINBURGH: WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 45 GEORGE STREET; AND 22 PALL-MALL LONDON. _To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed._ SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM. PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND HUGHES EDINBURGH. BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. No. CCCL. DECEMBER 1844. Vol. LVI. THE SCOTTISH BANKING SYSTEM. When any important branch of national polity has been impeached arraigned and brought to stand its trial before the bar of public opinion it is satisfactory to know that the subject has been thoroughly investigated since a searching investigation alone can excuse a verdict be it of acquittal or of condemnation. That no man can be twice tried upon the same indictment is a proud boast of the British constitution. It would be well if the same rule were always applied when mightier interests than those of individuals are at stake! It is just eighteen years ago since a ministry feeble in practice but strong in speculative theory ventured to put forth its hand against the monetary system of Scotland under shelter of which the country had improved and thriven to a degree of prosperity never experienced to the north of the Tweed before and at a ratio which far exceeded that of any other nation in Europe. In the short space of half a century the whole face of the country had changed. From a bleak barren and dilapidated region--for such she undoubtedly was for many years subsequent to the last rebellion of 1745--Scotland became with the shortest possible transition a favourite land of husbandry. Mosses and muirs which at all events since the forgotten days of the Jameses had borne no other crop than rugged bent or stubborn heather were subjected to the discipline of the plough and produced a golden harvest of grain. Woods sprang up as if by magic from the roots of the old Caledonian forest to hide the nakedness of the land and redeem the national reproach. The towns and boroughs--which had never recovered from the terrible blow inflicted upon them by the failure of the Darien scheme in which nearly the whole capital of Scotland was embarked and which had lost the greater and more valuable portion of their trade and dwindled down into almost hopeless insignificancy--began to revive again. New manufactures were established the older ones were extended; the fisheries rose immensely in magnitude and importance; the mountainous districts were made profitable by the breeding and export of sheep and cattle; and even the rugged shores of the Hebrides furnished for a time a most profitable article of commerce. All this took place in a poor and very neglected country. England for a long time knew little of what as going on in the north; perhaps her eyes were then riveted with more than the anxiety of a gamester's upon the great stakes for which she was contending on the red battle-fields of Europe. This much she knew that Scotland could produce in time of need--ay and did produce--levies of men whose high heroic courage steady discipline and daring intrepidity were the theme even of their enemies' admiration; and of these services she was and is justly and generously proud. But of the social condition of their northern neighbours we repeat the body of the English at this period were singularly ignorant. We had not very long before suffered the penalty of adherence to a fallen cause. We were considered to be still rather too irritable and dangerous for much interference; perhaps also it was thought that it might be _cheaper_ to leave us to ourselves--and so long as we paid our proportion of the common taxation not to enquire too curiously into our own domestic system of management. In all respects therefore notwithstanding the war we flourished. Peace came; and with peace as a matter of course a more searching investigation into the internal state of the country. Then for the first time Scotland became a sort of marvel. Our agriculture our commerce our internal resources so strangely and quickly augmented attracted the attention of the politician; and the question was speedily mooted--"How and by what means have so poor a nation as the Scotch attained so singular a position?" And truly the facts were startling and such as might justify an enquiry. _The whole coined money in Scotland at the date of the Union was known not to have exceeded the sum of_ ONE MILLION STERLING; and a large part of this paltry sum was necessarily hoarded and so withdrawn from circulation throughout the whole period of the intestine troubles. That single million therefore held the place both of that part of the wealth of the country which is now represented by bank-notes and also of that which is now deposited in the hands of the bankers. Aladdin's palace which sprang up in one night at the bidding of the slaves of the lamp could scarcely have been a greater paradox to the aged Sultan than this increase of prosperity on the part of Scotland was to our southern legislators. How to explain the metamorphosis seemed for a time a mystery. One thing at all events was clear--that English gold had no participation in the change. North of the Tweed a guinea was a suspected article apt to be rung and examined and curiously weighed before it was received in currency and even then accepted with a certain reluctance. The favourite medium of circulation was paper-notes of one pound each of somewhat dubious complexion to the eye of the stranger but received and circulated by the Scottish people with the utmost readiness and confidence. The answer to the question was a short one--"We have prospered through OUR BANKING SYSTEM." It was some time--not until ten years of peace had elapsed--before any open attack was made upon that system which had proved if facts can prove any thing the greatest imaginable boon to the nation; and which be it always specially remembered did not originate with the state but with private individuals--upright honourable and patriotic men--who better deserve a monument to their memories were that required than the most successful conqueror whose march is on humbled thrones. During that period much was done with regard to internal relations of which we in common with every Scotsman who retains one spark of patriotic feeling most heartily disapprove. The tendency towards centralization in London--the inevitable consequence of the Union treaty--was not only not counteracted as we maintain it ought to have been by a wise and paternal government but forced and hurried on by an excessive exercise of power. Every remnant of our ancient institutions that could be rooted up and all our local boards with hardly one exception were transferred to the seat of government--regardless of the drain that was thereby made from the proper resources of the country and the deep heart-burnings that such a system must necessarily create amongst a proud observant and jealous though enduring people. These things we shall not dilate upon--though the temptation is triply strong and we know how keenly that subject is felt by many of the best and most loyal of the land;--but in the mean time we shall pass over this period of gradual humiliation and come at once to the first great attack that was made upon the source of all our national prosperity. At the close of the year 1825 there arrived a period of public distress followed by a panic which fortunately has but rarely been felt in this country. We attributed it then and we attribute it now to an unexampled glut in the money market which we hold to be in this trading country the most destructive of any saving and excepting a glut in agricultural produce and labour; and for this very plain reason that a glut of money resolves itself sooner or later into a glut of goods thereby carrying the amount of production in the country far beyond the amount of the consumption and demand and so necessarily for a time closing the door against all the outlets of industry. But it is of very little consequence to our present purpose how that distress was created. The effects were very grievous. In England the panic took effect and a run was made upon the banks for gold; the consequence of which was that a number of the private and joint-stock establishments failed. In Scotland where the distress was certainly not less in proportion there was not only no failure on the part of the banks but no run and no diminution in the usual credits. At this time it is very proper to remark that England had been thoroughly centralized; that is that the whole course and tendency of its money market was to London; and indeed for purposes of trade the principal circulation of the important districts of Lancashire and others seems to have been bills of exchange payable in London with from twenty to fifty endorsements on each. With us such a system was unknown. Scotland then as now and we devoutly trust for ever had her own internal circulation and neither took nor gave except when statutorily compelled beyond the limits of her own jurisdiction. The attention of the ministry was immediately directed to an investigation of the cause of the general distress. This was right and proper and precisely what a cautious and well-meaning government ought to do under such circumstances in order to prevent if possible the recurrence of a similar disaster. But unfortunately the ministers of the day though well-meaning were any thing but cautious. The majority of them were imbued with speculative notions of political economy. They were disciples of a school which rejects facts and cleaves implicitly to theory--men who threw considerations of circumstance time and national characteristics aside as prejudices too low for even the momentary regard of a philosopher; in short they wished to introduce the standard of an untried rule as the _ne plus ultra_ of human sagacity and remorselessly to overturn every existing institution--no matter at what sacrifice or risk--if it only seemed to stand in the way of the operation of their darling theories. It was easy for men so tutored and trained to overlook the necessary effect which fluctuation of the seasons at home and abroad must have upon the prices of either produce of the effect of these prices upon manufactures and the manifest and established fact that there is a point when _production_ will exceed _consumption_. This state of things it is totally beyond the power of man to remedy. The facts of nature will always be found too strong for the theories of the political economist; but our rulers in the plenitude of their wisdom thought otherwise; and began to search within the social system for a cause of that disorder which was neither more nor less than an epidemic as totally beyond the reach of their prevention as if the College of Physicians were to issue their solemn fiat--"This year there shall be neither cholera nor fever." In searching for the cause however they stumbled upon an effect which they at once adroitly magnified into a cause. In England there had been a marked increase during the rise in the issue of the country banks. Here was an opportune discovery for the champions of metallic currency! and accordingly the paper system was prostrated in England to make way for its more glittering often more slippery and always more expensive rival. Scotland in the mean time was going on in her old and steady footing. One and all of the banks--chartered joint-stock and private--were as firm as if each had been backed by the whole weight and responsibility of the state. Between them and the public the most perfect confidence subsisted; and very nobly indeed in that time of trial and distress did the banks behave in maintaining credits grievously depressed for the moment but certain to revive with the return of general prosperity. This mutual confidence is the great secret of the success of the Scottish system. The banker is to the trader as a commercial physician--sometimes restrictive sometimes liberal but always a judicious friend. It is impossible to separate the interests of the two; and as they have risen together so in the event of a change must they both equally decline. But we will not anticipate our defence before we have adduced the facts upon which that defence is founded. All at once and without sounding any note of preparation the ministry announced that after the expiry of a given season the whole Scottish banking system was to be changed all paper currency under the five-pound note abolished and a metallic circulation introduced and enforced. If Ben Nevis had burst forth at once in the full thunder of volcanic eruption we could not have been more astonished. What! without complaint or enquiry--without the shadow of a cause shown or a reason assigned except it might be that reason--to a Scotsman the most unpalatable of all--the propriety of assimilating the institutions of both countries; in other words of coercing Scotland to adopt the habit of her neighbours--to excavate the foundation-stone of our whole prosperity and make us the victims of a theory which even if sound could not profess to give us one tittle more advantage than the course which we had so long pursued! We believe that if the annals of legislation were searched through we could not find a parallel case of such wanton and unprovoked temerity! We said then and we say now with even more emphatic earnestness it is the curse of the age that every thing is to be managed by political economy and philosophy and that local knowledge is to be utterly disregarded in the management of local interests. CENTRALIZE and ASSIMILATE--these were the watchwords of the ministers of that day; and for aught that we can see Sir Robert Peel is determined to persevere in the theory. What excuse was there _then_ for the attempt of any assimilation between the banking systems of the two countries? If it had been alleged that the Scotch paper currency was surreptitiously carried into England--that it was there supplanting the legal currency and absorbing the gold in exchange there might have been some show of reason for a slight modification of the system--at all events for a more stringent preventive check. But no such allegation was made. The most determined hater of the Scottish banks knew well that their paper never crossed the Border; for the very best of all possible reasons that the notes were not a legal tender and that five persons out of six to whom they might happen to be offered would unhesitatingly reject them. Again to absorb the gold would have been neither more nor less than partially to carry out the views entertained by the supporters of a metallic currency and therefore surely in their eyes a venal if not a meritorious offence. But such was not the fact. In Scotland there was no such a thing known as a gold circulation. The fishermen the cattle dealers and the small traders would not so much as take it; and the stranger who through ignorance had provided himself with a stock of the precious metal was forced to have recourse to a Scottish bank in order to have it exchanged for notes. Beyond what lay in the bank reserves there was literally none in the country; and therefore any idea of the interference of the currencies was too preposterous to be maintained. But it is not here or at this point that we intend to discuss the propriety of the measure which was then proposed. Unfortunately we are called upon to do so with reference to our own times as well as to those which are now matter of history; and the remarks which we shall have occasion to offer are equally applicable to the one as to the other. In the mean time let us see how the mere alarm engendered by that unlucky proposition affected Scotland and what steps were taken to resist the threatened change. First of all we have it in evidence that the open threat of the ministerial scheme produced within the country more actual distress and bankruptcies than had previously occurred during the period of the previous depression. This may seem a paradox to a stranger; but the reason will be readily understood and the fact candidly admitted by every one who is conversant with the Scottish system of banking. A short explanation may be necessary. One large department of the business of every bank was the granting of CASH-CREDITS; a method of accommodation to the public which the experience of _ninety-four years_ (cash-credits were granted by the Royal Bank of Scotland so early as 1729) had shown not only to be the safest to the bank but by far the most advantageous to the public. Indeed it is not too much to say that were those credits prohibited and no other alteration made in the existing system the mainspring of the machinery of Scottish banking would be broken and its general utility impaired. With that point we shall deal more fully when we come to the consideration of the system in detail; at present it is only necessary to remark that these credits had been maintained unimpaired during the period of depression and were the fortunate means of averting ruin from many. But the attitude which the ministry assumed was so formidable and the prospect of a sweeping change so alarming that the bankers were forced in self-defence though sorely against their will to make preparation for the worst contingencies. They were so to speak compelled to follow the example of England in 1745--to recall all their outlying forces from abroad concentrate them at home and leave their allies to fight their own battles as they best could and to conquer or fall according to their ability or weakness. Their first step was rigidly to refuse the granting of any new cash-credits; their second to withdraw--with as much tenderness as might be but still to withdraw--those which were already in existence. It was then that the country at large began to feel how terribly their interests were compromised. The trader who was driving an active business on the strength of his cash-credit and turning over the amount of his bank-account it may be thirty times in the course of the year found himself suddenly brought to a stand-still. The country gentleman in the midst of his agricultural improvements and at the very moment when their cessation would undo all that he had hitherto accomplished was compelled either to desist for want of ready money and throw his labourers on the parish or to have recourse to the pernicious system of discounting bills at a ruinous rate of interest. The manufacturer in despair was reduced to close his works and the operatives went forth to combine or starve or burn; for the hand of the ministry was upon them likewise and their burden was sorer than their masters'. These were the first fruits of the proposed metallic currency; and it soon became evident to all that nothing was left for Scotland if she wished to escape from universal ruin but to offer a firm and most determined resistance. The struggle was felt throughout the length and breadth of the land to be one which if it did not actually involve existence involved a greater commercial interest than had been at stake for more than a century before. The combination which took place in consequence was so extraordinary that we may be pardoned if we express our wonder how any minister who witnessed it can at this hour have the temerity to return to the charge. Party-spirit always higher and keener in Scotland than elsewhere was at once forgotten in the common cause. All ranks from the peer to the peasant rose up in wrath at the proposed innovation; and from every county city town village and corporation in the kingdom indignant remonstrances were forwarded to the foot of the Throne and to the Imperial Parliament of Great Britain. It was assuredly a dangerous experiment to make with a proud and jealous people. Old watchwords and old recollections buried spells which it were safer to leave alone began to revive amongst us; and many a lighter act of aggression which had been passed over at the moment in silence was then recalled and canvassed and magnified into a serious grievance. In short Scotland from the bottom of her heart felt herself most deeply insulted. It was at this time that the celebrated letters of Malachi Malagrowther appeared. To the general sentiments contained in that work we subscribe without the slightest hesitation. Strong language is usually to be deprecated but there are seasons when no language can be too strong. We think meanly of the man who can sit down to round his periods and prune his language and reduce his feelings to the level of cold mediocrity when he knows that the best interests of his country are at stake and that he is her chosen champion. And such most assuredly and beyond all comparison was Sir Walter Scott. He went into that conflict like a giant in a manner that disdained conventionalisms; he neither begged nor prayed nor conceded but took his firm ground on the chartered liberties of his country and spoke out in such manly and patriotic accents as Scotland has rarely heard since the days of Fletcher and Belhaven. All honour be to his memory! Were it for that good work alone his name ought for ever to be immortal. In consequence ministry were condescending enough to allow a Parliamentary enquiry. Even that was not granted readily as the prevailing impression in the cabinet seemed to be that Scottish affairs were of too slight importance to occupy the time of the Imperial Parliament. The old country might be dealt with summarily and left to remonstrate at its leisure. But the spirited resistance of our representatives and it is no less incumbent upon us to add that innate sense of justice in Englishmen which will not suffer any one to be condemned unheard procured us the investigation upon the issue of which we were willing to rest our cause. The Scottish banking system underwent the severest of all scrutinies before committees of the Houses of Peers and of the Commons; and the following was the nature of the reports. The committee of the House of Commons after recapitulating the leading points which were brought out in evidence before them came to the following conclusions--which it is very important to bring before the public now as they refer not only to the deductions which the committee had formed from the history of the past but to the special reasons which were to influence the legislature in future and prospective change. "Upon a review of the evidence tendered to your committee and forming their judgment upon that evidence your committee _cannot advise_ that a law should now be passed prohibiting from a period to be therein determined the future issue in Scotland of notes below five pounds:-- "There are in the opinion of your committee sufficient grounds in the experience of the past for permitting another trial to be made of the compatibility of a paper circulation in Scotland with a circulation of specie in this country. "Looking at the amount of notes current in Scotland below the value of five pounds and comparing it with the total amount of the paper currency of that country _it is very difficult to foresee the consequences of a law which should prohibit the future issue of notes constituting so large a proportion of the whole circulation_. "Your committee are certainly not convinced that it would affect the cash-credits to the extent apprehended by some of the witnesses; but they are unwilling without stronger proof of necessity to incur the risk of deranging from any cause whatever A SYSTEM ADMIRABLY CALCULATED in their opinion to economize the use of capital to excite and cherish a spirit of useful enterprise and even to promote the moral habits of the people by the direct inducements which it holds out to the maintenance of a character for industry integrity and prudence. "At the same time that your committee recommend that the system of currency which has for so long a period prevailed in Scotland should not under existing circumstances be disturbed they feel it to be their duty to add that they have formed their judgment upon a reference to the past and upon the review of a state of things which may hereafter be considerably varied by the increasing wealth and commerce of Scotland by the rapid extension of her commercial intercourse with England and by the new circumstances that may affect that intercourse after the re-establishment of a metallic currency in this country. "Apart from these general observations bearing upon the conclusions at which they have arrived there are two circumstances to which your committee must more particularly advert. "It is evident that if the small notes issued in Scotland should be current beyond the Border they would have the effect in proportion as their circulation should extend itself of displacing the specie and even in some degree the local currency of England. Such an interference with the system established for England would be a manifest and gross injustice to the bankers of this part of the empire. If it should take place and it should be found impossible to frame a law consistent with sound and just principles of legislation effectually restricting the circulation of Scotch notes within the limits of Scotland there will be in the opinion of your committee no alternative but the extension to Scotland of the principle which the legislature has determined to apply to this country. "The other circumstances to which your committee meant to refer as bearing materially upon their present decision will arise in the event of a considerable increase in the crime of forgery. Your committee called for returns of the number of prosecutions and convictions for forgery and the offence of passing forged notes during the last twenty years in Scotland which returns will be found in the appendix. There appears to have been during that period no prosecutions for the crime of forgery; to have been eighty-six prosecutions for the offence of issuing forged promissory notes--fifty-two convictions; and eight instances in which the capital sentence of the law has been carried into effect." This may on the whole be considered as an impartial report; and as it is as well in every case to disencumber a question from specialties we shall state here that experience has since shown that there has been no tendency whatever to the introduction of Scottish notes into England. With regard to the other special point referred to by the committee--that of forgery--such a thing as a forged bank-note is now unknown in Scotland. The evidence taken before the last committee on banks of issue in 1841 established the fact that since the improved steel plates were brought into general use there has never been a forgery of a note. Such being the case it is unnecessary here to dispute the wisdom of that policy which would leave a great national institution at the mercy of a single forger. The experience of this last month alone might show how wretchedly that test would operate if applied even to the Bank of England. Setting these specialties aside the only possibly grounds which this committee saw for any future legislative interference were "the increasing wealth and commerce of Scotland the rapid extension of her commercial intercourse with England and the circumstances which may affect that intercourse after the re-establishment of an English metallic currency." To us the first part of this reservation sounds somewhat like a threat of future bleeding when Scotland shall have become more pursy and plethoric. Nevertheless we are ready to join issue with our opponents on any of these grounds. The report of the Lords was even more favourable; and at the risk of being thought tedious we cannot refrain from inserting their admirable digest of the evidence which for candour and clearness might be taken as a universal model. "With respect to Scotland it is to be remarked that during the period from 1766 to 1797 when no small notes were by law issuable in England the portion of the currency in Scotland in which payments under five pounds were made continued to consist almost entirely of notes of £1 and £1 1s.; and that no inconvenience is known to have resulted from this difference in the currency of the two countries. This circumstance amongst others tends to prove that uniformity however desirable is not indispensably necessary. It is also proved by the evidence and by the documents that the banks of Scotland whether chartered or joint-stock companies or private establishments _have for more than a century exhibited a stability which the committee believe to be_ UNEXAMPLED IN THE HISTORY OF BANKING; that they supported themselves from 1797 to 1812 without any protection from the restriction by which the Bank of England and that of Ireland were relieved from cash payments; that there was little demand for gold during the late embarrassments in the circulation; and that _in the whole period of their establishment_ there are not more than two or three instances of bankruptcy. As during the whole of this period a large portion of their issues consisted almost entirely of notes not exceeding £1 or £1 1s. there is the strongest reason for concluding that as far as respects the banks of Scotland the issue of paper of that description _has been found compatible with the_ HIGHEST DEGREE _of solidity_; and that there is not therefore while they are conducted upon their present system sufficient ground for proposing any alteration with the view of adding to a solidity which has been so long sufficiently established. "This solidity appears to derive a great support from the constant exchange of notes between the different banks by which they become checks upon each other and by which any over-issue is subject to immediate observation and correction. "There is also one part of the system which is stated by all the witnesses (in the opinion of the committee very justly stated) to have had the best effects upon the people of Scotland and particularly upon the middling and poorer classes of society in producing and encouraging habits of frugality and industry. _The practice referred to is that of_ CASH-CREDITS. Any person who applies to a bank for a cash-credit is called upon to produce two or more competent securities who are jointly bound and after a full enquiry into the character of the applicant the nature of his business and the sufficiency of his securities he is allowed to open a credit and to draw upon the bank for the whole of its amount or for such part as his daily transactions may require. To the credit of this account he pays in such sums as he may not have occasion to use and interest is charged or credited upon the daily balance as the case may be. From the facility which these cash-credits give to all the small transactions of the country and from the opportunities which they afford to persons who begin business with little or no capital but their character to employ profitably the minutest products of their industry it cannot be doubted that the most important advantages are derived to the whole community. The advantage to the banks who give those cash-credits arises from the call which they continually produce for the issue of their paper and from the opportunity which they afford for the profitable employment of part of their deposits. The banks are indeed so sensible that in order to make this part of their business advantageous and secure it is necessary that their cash-credits should (as they express it) be frequently operated upon that they refuse to continue them unless this implied condition be fulfilled. The total amount of their cash-credits is stated by one witness to be five millions on which the average amount advanced by the banks may be one-third. "The manner in which the practice of deposits on receipt is conducted tends to produce the same desirable results. Sums to as low an amount as £10 (and in some instances lower) are taken by the banks from the depositor who may claim them at demand. He receives an interest usually about one per cent below the market rate. It is stated that these deposits are to a great extent left uncalled for from year to year and that the depositors are in the habit of adding at the end of each year to the interest then accrued the amount of their yearly savings; that the sums thus gradua
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ly accumulated belong chiefly to the labouring and industrious classes of the community; and that when such accounts are closed it is generally for the purpose of enabling the depositors either to purchase a house or to engage in business. ""It is contended by all the persons engaged in banking in Scotland that the issue of one-pound notes is essential to the continuance both of their cash-credits and of the branch banks established in the poorest and most remote districts. Whether the discontinuance of one-pound notes would necessarily operate to the full extent which they apprehend in either of these respects may perhaps admit of doubt; but the apprehensions entertained on this head by the persons most immediately concerned might for a time at least have nearly the same effect as the actual necessity; _and there is strong reason to believe that if the prohibition of one-pound notes should not ultimately overturn the whole system it must for a considerable time materially affect it_. ""The directors of the Bank of England who have been examined before the committee have given it as their opinion that a circulation of notes of £1 in Scotland or in Ireland would not produce any effects injurious to the metallic circulation of England provided such notes be respectively confined within the boundary of their own country. ""Notwithstanding the opinions which have been here detailed the committee are on the whole so deeply impressed with the importance of a metallic circulation below £5 in England not only for the benefit of England but likewise for that of all the other parts of the empire that if they were reduced to make an option between the establishment of such a metallic circulation in Scotland or the abandonment of it in England they would recommend the prohibition of small notes in Scotland. But they entertain a reasonable expectation that legislative measures may be devised which will be effectual in preventing the introduction of Scotch paper into England; and unless such measures should in practice prove ineffectual or _unless some new circumstance should arise_ to derange the operations of the existing system in Scotland itself or materially to affect the relations of trade and intercourse between Scotland and England they are not disposed to recommend that the existing system of banking and currency in Scotland should be disturbed."" This is just what a Parliamentary report ought to be--calm perspicuous and decided. There is no circumlocution nor ambiguity of expression here. After a patient investigation into the whole question and a minute examination of enemies as well as friends the Lords arrived at the opinion that the existing banking system of Scotland ought on all points to be maintained and they not only stated their general conviction but gave their reasons for upholding each part in detail in the luminous manner which has always been the characteristic of that august Assembly and which has established its proud reputation as not only the noblest but the most upright tribunal of the world. It is worthy of the most marked attention that the committee of the Lords in this report which afterwards received the sanction of the House advocated no temporary continuance of the banking system in Scotland but were clearly of opinion that it should remain as a permanent institution. They evidently entertained no ideas grounded upon mere expediency that it would be prudent to wait until Scotland by means of her cherished institutions and her own internal industry arrived at that point of condition when it might be expedient to introduce the lancet and drain off a little of her superfluous blood. They vent upon the righteous maxim--that a nation as well as a man is entitled to work out its own resources in peace so long as it does not trench upon the industry or prerogatives of its neighbour and so long as no impeachment can be laid against the prudence and stability of its institutions. We defy any man to read over this report and to adduce one word from it which shall convey the idea that it was not intended as a final judgment with the simple qualifications that we have stated in the last sentence. These two reports saved the country--we trust we shall not hereafter be compelled to add only for a time--from its great impending misfortune. The circulation in England became metallic with what success it is not for us to say whilst Scotland was allowed to retain her paper currency with at least most perfect satisfaction to herself. One pregnant fact however it would be unpardonable for us to omit--as showing the stability of the northern system when compared with that practised in the south--that at the last investigation before a committee of the House of Commons in 1841 it was stated that whereas in Scotland the whole loss sustained by the public from bank failures _for a century and a half_ amounted to L. 32 000 the loss to the public _during the previous year in London alone was estimated at_ TEN TIMES THAT AMOUNT! Since 1826 we have had eighteen years' further experience of the system without either detecting derangement in its organization or the slightest diminution of confidence on the part of the public. There has been no interference with the metallic currency of England. Forgery is a crime now utterly unknown as is also coining beyond the insignificant counterfeits of the silver issue. This in fact is a great advantage which we have above the English in point of security since we are exempt from the risk of receiving into circulation either base or light sovereigns and since the banks provide for the deterioration of their notes by tear and wear whilst the holder of a light sovereign has to pay the difference between the standard and the deficient weight. When we reflect upon the small amount of the wages of a labouring man it is manifest how important this branch of the subject is; for were gold allowed in Scotland to supersede the paper currency a fresh and most dangerous impetus would be given to the crime of coining; and there cannot be a doubt that in the remoter districts where gold is utterly unknown a most lamentable series of frauds would be perpetrated with little risk of detection but with the cruelest consequences to the poor and illiterate classes. We are not however inclined to adopt the opinion expressed by the committee of the House of Commons to the extent of admitting that it would be either politic or just to disturb the whole banking system of a country on account of private frauds whether forgeries or the fabrication of counterfeit coin. If their opinion was a sound one the weight of evidence is now upon our side of the argument; but we hold that the interests at stake are far too great to be affected by any such minor details. If any new circumstance has arisen ""to affect the relations of trade and intercourse between Scotland and England "" we at least are wholly unconscious of the occurrence and of course it is the duty of those who meditate a change to point it out in order that it may be thoroughly scrutinized. Internally the business of the banks has been increasing and commensurate with that increase there has been a vast addition to the number of branch banks spread over the face of the country; so that whereas in 1825 there was but one office for every 13 170 individuals in 1841 there was an office for every 6600 of the population. This is plainly the inevitable effect of competition; but lest that increase should be founded upon by our opponents as a proof of over-circulation we shall say a few words upon the subject of the _exchange_ between the banks themselves which is a leading feature of our whole system and the most complete check against over-trading which human ingenuity could devise. Fortunately we have ample _data_ for our statement in the evidence tendered to the committee on banks of issue in 1841. It is right however to premise that strictly speaking there are not more nay there are positively _fewer_ banks in Scotland at the present moment than there were in 1825 though the amount of paid-up capital in the banks is more than doubled. It is the branches alone which make this astonishing increase. Now as a branch is merely a local agency of the parent bank established at a distance for the sake of outlying business the number of parties engaged in banking who are responsible to the public is not thereby increased nor is the amount in circulation extended. In fact the multiplication of the branch banks has been of extraordinary benefit to the public by affording the inhabitants of even the remotest districts a ready easy and favourite method of deposit and by extinguishing all risks of credit. Further it has this manifest advantage that the manager of the branch bank has far greater facilities of ascertaining the character habits and pursuits of those persons who may have received the advantage of a cash-credit accommodation and can immediately report to his superiors any circumstances which may render it advisable that the credit should be contracted or withdrawn. So far are we from holding that the multiplication of branch banks is any evil or incumbrance that we look upon it as an increased security not only to the banker but the dealer. The latter in fact is the principal gainer; because a competition among the banks has always the effect of heightening the rate of interest given upon deposits and of lowering the rates charged upon advances. Nor does this give any impetus to rash speculation on the part of the dealer but directly the reverse. The deposits always increase with the advancing rate of interest; and experience has shown that it is not until that rate declines to two per cent that deposited money is usually withdrawn which is the signal of commencing speculation. To the mere speculator the banks afford no facilities but the reverse. Their cash credits are only granted for the daily operations of persons actively engaged in trade business or commerce. So soon as that credit appears to be converted into a different channel it is withdrawn as alike dangerous to the user and unprofitable to the bank which has given it. Of thirty-one banks in Scotland which issue notes five only are _chartered_--that is the responsibility of the proprietors in those established is confined to the amount of their subscribed capital. The remaining twenty-six are with one or two exceptions joint-stock banks and the proprietors are liable to the public for the whole of the bank responsibilities to the last shilling of their private fortunes. The number of persons connected with these banks as shareholders is very great almost every man of opulence in the country being a holder of stock to a greater or a less amount. That some jealousy must exist among so many competitors in a limited field is an obvious matter of inference. Such jealousy however has only operated for the advantage of the public by the maintenance of a common and vigilant watch upon the manner in which the affairs of each establishment are conducted and against the intrusion of any new parties into the circle whose capital does not seem to warrant the likelihood of their ultimate stability. Accordingly the Scottish bankers have arranged amongst themselves a mutual system of exchange as stringent as if it had the force of statute by means of which an over-issue of notes becomes a matter of perfect impossibility. _Twice in every week the whole notes deposited with the different bank offices in Scotland are regularly interchanged._ Now with this system in operation it is perfectly ludicrous to suppose that any bank would issue its paper rashly for the sake of an extended circulation. _The whole notes_ in circulation throughout Scotland return to their respective banks in a period averaging from ten to eleven days in urban and from a fortnight to three weeks in rural districts. In consequence of the rate of interest allowed by the banks no person has any inducement to keep bank paper by him but the reverse and the general practice of the country is to keep the circulation at as low a rate as possible. The numerous branch banks which are situated up and down the country are the means of taking the notes of their neighbours out of the circle as speedily as possible. In this way it is not possible for the circulation to be more than what is absolutely necessary for the transactions of the country. If therefore any bank had been so rash as to grant accommodation without proper security merely for the sake of obtaining a circulation in ten days or a fortnight at the furthest it is compelled to account with the other banks for every note they have received. If it does not hold enough of their paper to redeem its own upon exchange it is compelled to pay the difference in exchequer bills a certain amount of which every bank is bound by mutual agreement to hold the fractional parts of each thousand pounds being payable in Bank of England notes or in gold. In this way over-trading in so far as regards the issue of paper is so effectually guarded and controlled that it would puzzle Parliament with all its conceded conventional wisdom to devise any plan alike so simple and expeditious. The amount of notes at present in circulation throughout Scotland is estimated at three millions or at the very utmost three millions and a half. At certain times of the year such as the great legal terms of Whitsunday and Martinmas when money is universally paid over and received there is of course a corresponding increase of issue for the moment which demands an extra supply of notes. It is never considered safe for a bank to have a smaller amount of notes in stock than the average amount which is out in circulation; so that the whole amount of bank-notes both in circulation and in hand may be calculated at seven millions. The fluctuation at the above terms is so remarkable that we are tempted to give an account of the number of notes delivered and received by the bank of Scotland in exchange with other banks during the months of May and November 1840:-- Notes Notes Delivered. Received. 1840 May 1 £ 51 000 £ 43 000 ... 5 52 000 32 000 ... 8 44 000 45 000 ... 12 43 000 48 000 ... 15 54 000 64 000 ... 19 *132 000 *172 000 ... 22 98 000 69 000 ... 26 38 000 33 000 Nov. 3 38 000 32 000 ... 6 37 000 33 000 ... 10 51 000 61 000 ... 13 *99 000 *138 000 ... 17 67 000 80 000 ... 20 66 000 49 000 ... 24 52 000 33 000 ... 27 66 000 42 000 *Term Settlements. It will be seen from the above table how rapidly the system of bank exchange absorbs the over-issue and how instantaneously the paper drawn from one bank finds its way into the hands of another. If further proof were required of the absurdity of the notion that a paper circulation has a necessary tendency to over-issue the following fact is conclusive. The banking capital in Scotland has _more than doubled_ between the years 1825 and 1840--a triumphant proof of their increased stability; whilst the circulation has been nearly stationary but if any thing _rather diminished than otherwise_. We quote from a report to the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce. ""The first return of the circulation was made in Scotland in 1825. Every one knows the extraordinary advance which Scotland has made between that period and 1840; for instance in the former of these years she manufactured 55 000 bales of cotton in the latter 120 000 bales. In 1826 the produce of the iron furnaces was 33 500 tons; in 1840 about 250 000 tons. In 1826 the banking capital of Scotland was £4 900 000; in 1840 it was about £10 000 000; yet with all this progress in industry and wealth the circulation of notes which in 1825 varied from £3 400 000 to £4 700 000 was in 1839 from £2 960 000 to £3 670 000 and in the first three months of 1840 £2 940 000."" We are induced to dwell the more strongly upon these facts because we have strong suspicions that our opponents will endeavour to get at our monetary system by raising the senseless cry of over-issue--senseless at any time as a political maxim it being the grossest fallacy to maintain that an increased issue is the cause of national distress unless indeed it were possible to suppose that bankers were madmen enough to dispense their paper without receiving a proper equivalent--not only senseless but positively nefarious when the clear broad fact stares them in the face that Scotland has in fifteen years thrown double the amount of capital into its banking establishments increased its productions in a threefold and in some cases a sevenfold ratio augmented its population by nearly half a million (one-fifth part of the whole ) and yet kept its circulation so low as to exhibit an actual decrease. If we were called upon to state the cause of this certainly singular fact we should without any hesitation attribute it to the great increase of the bank branches. The establishment of a branch in a remote locality has invariably from the thrifty habits of the Scottish people absorbed all the paper which otherwise would have been hoarded for a time and left in the hands of the holders without any interest. It would thus seem from practice that the doctrines of the political economists upon this head are absolutely fallacious; that the increase of banks supposing these banks to issue paper and to give interest on deposits has a direct tendency to check over-circulation and in fact does partially supersede it. With these facts before us we consider that the measure of last session prohibiting any further issue of notes beyond those already taken out by the banks is almost a dead letter. We have not the least fear that under any circumstances there can be a call for a larger circulation; at the same time we demur to the policy which ties our hands needlessly and we object to all restriction where no case for restriction has been shown. We look upon that measure as especially unfair to the younger banks whose circulation is not yet established and whose progress has thus received a material check from no fault of their own but from want of ministerial notice. With every system where competition is the acknowledged principle it is clearly impolitic to interfere; nor can we avoid the painful conviction that this first measure though comparatively light and generally unimportant was put out by way of _feeler_ in order to test the temper of the Scottish people--to ascertain whether eighteen years of prosperity might not have made them a little more supple and pliable and whether they were likely to oppose to innovation the same amount of obstinate resistance as before. It is dangerous to permit the smallest rent to be made in a wall for with dexterous management that rent may be so widened as to bring down the whole superstructure. In the absence of any distinct charge against the Scottish banks which were so honourably acquitted in 1826 we shall confine our further observations to the effects which must necessarily follow upon a change in the established currency. In doing so we shall conjure up no phantoms of imaginary distress but merely state the consequences as they have already been explained to Parliament by men who are far better able to judge than ourselves and even--with deference be it said--than our legislators of the substitution in Scotland of a metallic for a paper currency. That measure is to be considered 1st as it will affect the banks; 2dly as it will affect the public. The general effect of the change would be to derange the whole of the present system. The first result would probably be the abolition and withdrawal of all the branch banks throughout the kingdom. These offices are at present fed with notes which are payable at the office of the parent bank whither accordingly they invariably return. These are supplied to them at no risk or expense whereas the transmission of gold would not only be dangerous but so expensive as entirely to swallow up the profits. Add to this that the banks would no longer be able to allow interest on deposit accounts; at all events such interest would be merely fractional and too insignificant to induce the continuance of the saving habit which now so fortunately prevails. In short all the branch business would stagnate and die. The consequence of the removal of the branch banks would be the ruin of the Highlands. Mr Kennedy's account of the profits of banking will explain the sweeping nature of the change. ""A banker's profits are derived from two sources--the brokerage upon the deposit money and the returns that he gets from his circulation. We have tried to estimate the amount of deposits in Scotch banks and we calculate it at about thirty millions; that at the brokerage of one and a half per cent yields £450 000 annually. The currency we will take at three millions and that at 5 per cent is £150 000: making a gross sum of £600 000 _which is the whole profit derived from banking in Scotland_. Out of that are to be deducted the whole of the charges. From these figures it will be perceived that the gross profit of the currency is a fourth part of the gross profit of banking; but the expense that falls upon the currency is not so large as the expense that falls upon the other portions of the banking business; so that I should be inclined to say that upon the average the profit derived from the circulation bore the proportion of a third to the aggregate profit of banking."" Assuming Mr Kennedy's calculation to be correct the profit of £600 000 derived by the banks would thus be reduced to £400 000 by the change of currency. But the diminution would not rest there. The brokerage upon the deposits--that is the difference between the rates of interest given and charged by the banks--on the present calculated amount of deposits is £450 000. from which the charges are deducted. Now we have already seen that the banks find it necessary in order to encourage deposits to give a liberal rate of interest; and we have also seen that whenever interest falls to two per cent the deposits are gradually withdrawn and a period of speculation begins. Let us hear Mr John Thomson of the Royal Bank on the effect of a gold currency on deposit accounts:--""I think on the operating deposits we could scarcely allow any interest and on the more steady deposits that the rate of interest would require to be very considerably reduced."" It follows therefore according to all experience that if no interest were allowed the deposits would be generally withdrawn for investment elsewhere; and thus another serious reduction would be made from the already attenuated amount of the Scottish bankers' profits. But besides the loss of profit on the small notes there would be a further loss sustained by the necessity of keeping up a large stock of gold in the coffers of the bank. Hear Mr Thomson again upon this subject:-- ""It would occasion greater loss than the mere profit on the small notes inasmuch as at present we have to keep on hand a large stock of small notes to fill up in the circle those that are taken from it by tear and wear and to meet occasional demands. The present mode of keeping up this stock which consists of our own notes is done at no expense; if we had to keep a corresponding stock of gold to keep up the circle in the same proportion we would perhaps if there is £1000 dispersed in small notes require to keep up a protecting fund of £500 to meet that or something in that proportion. So that upon the whole if there was £1 800 000 which was the sum assumed of notes in circulation withdrawn we would require to fill up the place £1 800 000 in gold and in order to fill our coffers with a protecting stock perhaps from _seven to nine hundred thousand_ to keep up the stock; and in addition to that there is the expense of transmission from one part of the country to another and the bringing it from London."" The small note circulation is here estimated at £1 800 000 but there is no doubt that it is now considerably larger. Taking it however at Mr Thomson's calculation what a fearful amount of unoccupied and inoperative capital is here! This be it observed also is only the first reserve which at present is represented by the small notes of the bank. According to the later evidence of Mr Blair the Scottish banks are in the habit of holding _besides this_ a further reserve of gold and Bank of England notes equal to _a fourth of their circulation_ without taking into account exchequer bills or other convertible securities which bear interest. Thus it follows as a matter of course that if the small notes were abolished and a gold currency established there would not be room in the country for one-fourth of the present number of banks. If the banks are removed and more especially the branches which must inevitably fall we should like to know from any theoretical economist even from Sir Robert Peel how the country is to be supplied with money? So much for the effect which the introduction of a metallic currency would have upon the banking establishments. Let us now see what would be the consequence of the change upon the interests of the public who are the dealers. Now although we hold that upon every principle of public expediency and justice the legislature are bound to regard with particular tenderness the interests of a body of men who like the Scottish bankers have not only established but administered for such a long time the monetary system of the country with stability temperance indulgence and success equally removed from weak facility and from grasping avidity of gain; we must nevertheless allow that the interests of the public are paramount to theirs and that if it can be shown that the public will be gainers although the bankers should be losers by the change the sooner the metallic currency is established amongst us the better. Here is the true test of the clause in the Treaty of Union providing that no alteration shall be made on laws which concern private right excepting for the evident utility of the subjects _within_ Scotland. There shall be no interference with private rights if that interference is not to benefit the public; if it does so private right must of course give way according to a rule universally adopted by every civilized nation. In speaking of the public we of course restrict ourselves to Scotland; for although the Treaty of Union is not strictly speaking a federal one and in the larger points of policy and general government is very clearly one of incorporation it has yet this important ingredient of federality in its conception that the laws of each country and their administration are left separate and entire as also their customs and usages so long as the same do not interfere with one another. It is a sore point with the supporters of a metallic currency and a sad discouragement to their theories that they have never been able in any way to shake the confidence of the Scottish public in the stability of their national bankers. It was no use drawing invidious comparisons between a weighty glittering guinea fresh started from the mint of Mammon and the homely unpretending well-thumbed issue of the North; it was no use hinting that a system which professed to dispense with bullion must of necessity be a mere illusion which would go down with the first blast of misfortune as easily as its fragile notes could be dispersed before a breeze of wind. The shrewd Scotsman knew what apparently the economist had forgotten that the piece of gold exhibited by the latter was in itself but a representative and not the reality of property; that the gold to be acquired _must be bought_; that all representation of wealth within a country must be conventional in order to have any value; and further that however fragile the despised paper might appear that it was by convention and by law the representative of things more weighty and more solid than metal--of the manufactures of the country of its agricultural produce and finally OF THE LAND ITSELF; all which were mortgaged for its redemption. It was in vain to talk to him of the rates of foreign exchange in the mystic jargon of the Bourse. He knew well that when the Scottish mint was abolished and the bullion trade transferred to London that branch of traffic was placed utterly beyond his reach. He knew further that the circulation of Scotland did not ebb or flow in accordance with the fluctuation of foreign exchanges but from causes which were always within the reach of his own ken and observance. All scrutiny beyond that he left to the bank in the solvency of which he placed the most implicit confidence; and accordingly he dealt with it as freely and as confidently as his father and grandfather had done before him and laughed the theories of the political economists to scorn. Such is no overcharged statement of the sentiments which the Scottish customer entertains;--is he right or is he wrong? and how would the change affect him? In the first place he would receive no interest upon his deposit account. This point we have already touched upon when proving that the banks would sustain great loss by the inevitable withdrawal of their deposits; but of course the profit to the bank is one thing and the profit to the customer is another. An operating deposit account on which a fixed and universal rate of interest is paid is a thing unknown in England. In that country according to Mr John Gladstone a Liverpool merchant and a declared enemy to the Scottish currency the bankers only give interest on deposits by special bargain according to the length of time that these deposits shall be entrusted to their hands. This is clearly neither more nor less than permanent loan to the bank and like every other private contract is arbitrary. But an operating deposit is a totally different matter by which the circulation of the bank paper is promoted and which acquires actual value from the frequency of its fluctuations. It is a system so easy in its working that no householder in Scotland is without it; and for every shilling that he deposits in the bank he receives regular interest calculated from day to day without any deduction or commission at as high a rate as if he had left for a stipulated period a million of money unrecallable by him to be employed in its trade by the bank. This is surely a great accommodation and encouragement to the trader. But see how the introduction of the metallic currency would affect us. Operating deposits there would be none; for if the banker were not actually compelled to charge a certain per centage of commission he would at least be able to pay no interest. Or let it be granted that by great economy (though we cannot well see how ) he could still afford to pay a diminished rate the proportion would be too small to tempt the dealer to the constant system of deposit which now exists and hoarding would be the inevitable result. Or suppose that the system of deposit should still continue in the large towns what is to become of the country when the branch banks shall have been removed? A little topography might here be valuable to correct the notions of the theorists who would legislate precisely for the thinly inhabited districts of Kintail and Edderachylis as they would for the town-covered surface of Lancashire. But there would be more important losses to the public than the mere cessation of interest upon operating deposit accounts. All the witnesses who have been examined agree that cash-credits must be immediately withdrawn. Of all the facilities that a mercantile country or rather the foremost mercantile system of a country can afford to industry that of cash-credit is certainly the most unexceptionable. Take the case of a young man just about to start in business whose connexion habits and education are such as to give every possible augury for his future success. The _res angustæ domi_ are probably hard upon him. He has no patrimony; his friends though in fair credit are not capitalists; and he has not of himself the opportunity of launching into trade for the want of that one talent which if judiciously used would in time multiply itself into ten. He cannot ask his friends to assist him in the discount of bills. Large as the affection of a Scotchman may be for some descriptions of paper he has a kind of inherent repugnance to that sort of floating private currency which in three or in six months is sure to return coupled with an awkward protest to his door. Probably in his own early experience or in the days of his father he has received a salutary lesson better than a thousand treatises upon the law and practice of acceptance; and accordingly while he will lend you his purse with readiness
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he will not for almost any consideration subscribe his name to a bill. To persons thus situated the accommodation granted by the bank cash-credits is the greatest commercial boon that ever was devised; but as the committee of the House of Lords in the report already quoted has borne ample testimony in their favour it is unnecessary for us to dwell with further minuteness on their utility. We must again have recourse to Mr Thomson for an exposition of the reasons which if a metallic currency were forced upon us would lead to the discontinuance of the cash-credits. ""I do not think the cash-credits would be maintained at all; the banker's profits might be made up by the charge of a commission on each credit; but it is not probable that the holders of accounts would pay at such a rate if they could borrow money upon bills at a cheaper rate which they would do. They would discount bills at five per cent. A banker would not be disposed to come under the obligation to give a running credit with a cash account and thereby bind himself to keep in his hands a stock of gold to supply the daily operations of a cash-account while he might find it perfectly convenient to discount a bill and give the money away at once."" In short it has been stated and distinctly proved that the difference to the trader between an operating cash-credit and accommodation by discount _is the difference between paying five and a quarter by discount and two and a half per cent by cash-credit_. Are our merchants and traders prepared or disposed to submit to such a sacrifice; more especially when it is considered that a bank will often refuse to discount a bill for £100 when it would make no difficulty from its opportunities of control in granting a cash-credit for five times that amount? If individuals are thus to be crippled the general commercial business of the country must retrograde as a matter of course. Still Edinburgh and Glasgow and the larger towns might although they would suffer immensely get over the crisis by adopting some system of internal arrangement without experiencing a general crash. The great question however yet remains behind--What is to become of the country districts? To us who are familiar with almost the whole face of Scotland it seems a gross absurdity to suppose that _under any circumstances_ if the branch banks were withdrawn a gold metallic currency could be made operative in the remoter districts. Mr Dunsmure then secretary to the commissioners for the public fisheries gave very singular evidence upon that point in 1826; so singular indeed that were it our purpose in this paper rather to amuse than to warn and protest we should have dwelt more minutely upon his statements. Speaking of the silver currency his evidence is as follows:--""The quantity of silver on the west coast is so very limited that there is a great difficulty in getting a proper supply for the necessary purposes. _Some of the people have been obliged to issue promissory notes for 5s. long after they had been prohibited by act of Parliament._ I happened to be at Barra and the officer there informed me that having occasion to purchase some oats for a pony he found it necessary to keep the farmer whom he paid for them declared he had not seen the face of a shilling for two years before."" One of the individuals who was thus forced by necessity to contravene the statute was a fish-curer and merchant who kept a large store in Tobermory and the form of his notes is at once curious and explanatory. ""For want of change I owe you 5s. and for four of these tickets I will give a one-pound note."" The establishment of branch banks may somewhat have mended matters on the west coast though we doubt if the improvement has been commensurate with that of other districts in Scotland owing to the severe and in our view mischievous commercial enactment which supplanted the native manufacture of kelp by the substitution of foreign barilla; but if the branches are removed no discovery short of the philosopher's stone will establish the metallic currency there. Do our legislators seriously mean to compel the population of about one-fourth of Scotland comprehending the whole western and northern divisions to accept the fish-curer's notes instead of those of a joint-stock bank with its paid-up capital for security? We have not space here to proceed with a minute analysis of the evidence which was formerly given. Suffice it to say that it is of a much more serious nature than even those who have general notions upon the question can possibly anticipate. In the event of any change which shall derange the present system of currency the landowners and agriculturists of every class must prepare themselves for crippled markets curtailment of the sales of their produce and consequently for a great reduction in the rent and value of land. This will apply equally to the fisheries the distilleries and the linen trade--to every branch in short of internal manufacture which is now prosperous and which has become so from the superior ease facility and advantage of our present currency. Compared with these the interests of the bankers are actually trifling. Such of them as may remain under the altered system will no doubt in one way or another secure their profit; but for that profit the country at large will have to pay a heavy price. The great question now for Scotland to determine is whether these interests are to be sacrificed to the theories of any ministry whatever without resistance of the most determined nature. That resistance in our deliberate opinion she is not only entitled but bound to make. We have purposely abstained from dwelling--nay we have scarcely even touched--upon any points of extraneous irritation which may exist between the sister countries. Our wish is that this question should be tried upon its own merits independently of any such considerations; and we are glad to see that this line of conduct has been adopted by every one of the numerous bodies who have hitherto met to protest against the change. Believing thoroughly and sincerely that we have a clear case both on the score of justice and expediency we do not wish to revive any warmer feeling though we are convinced that a word could arouse it. Scotland in this matter feels and will speak like a single man. We are sure of the unanimous support and energy of the members for the ancient kingdom; and although that phalanx forms but an integral part of the legislature of Great Britain we will not allow ourselves to believe that any minister will proceed with so obnoxious a measure in the face of their united opposition. One word only of advice we shall venture to offer them before they leave their native country to do battle in her behalf. COMPROMISE NOTHING! Do not as you value the interests of Scotland permit even the smallest interference with a system which has already obtained the unqualified approval of the state. If you do rely upon it that one change will be merely the forerunner of another--that the statute-book in each succeeding session of Parliament will exhibit new changes and new modifications until gradually and by piecemeal we shall lose all the benefits of those national institutions which you are now ready and pledged to maintain whole and unimpaired. Any other line of tactics must in the long run prove not only injurious but fatal to the cause you support. And now we have said our say. It is not for us--more especially as the batteries of our opponents are still masked--to remonstrate with an administration which assuredly on many points has a just claim to the support and confidence of the nation at large. Still we may insinuate the question--Is it very politic in the present state of matters to rouse up a feeling in peaceful Scotland which may with little fanning of the fuel terminate in an agitation quite as extensive as that which at present unhappily prevails in Ireland? It is not only wrong but--what Talleyrand held to be a greater sin in a statesman--most injudicious to overlook in such a matter the tendency of the national character. Scotchmen have long memories; and although the days of hereditary feuds have gone by they are not the less apt to remember and to cherish injuries. Would it not therefore be prudent to adhere to the homely but excellent maxim ""Let well be alone;"" and to abstain from forcing the country into a position which it is really unwilling to assume merely for the sake of illustrating another proverb with which we close our remarks upon the Scottish Banking System--""IT IS POSSIBLE TO BUY GOLD TOO DEAR."" THE MILKMAN OF WALWORTH. CHAPTER I. I was just fifteen when the battle of Waterloo (it will soon be thirty years ago ) by giving peace to Europe enabled my father to gratify one of the principal desires of his heart by sending me to finish my education at a German university. Our family was a Lincolnshire one he its representative and the inheritor of an encumbered estate not much relieved by a portionless wife and several children of whom I was the third and youngest son. My eldest brother was idle lived at home and played on the fiddle. Tom my second brother two years older than myself had just entered the army time enough to be returned in the Gazette as severely wounded in the action of the 18th. I was destined for the church--as much I believe from my mother's proneness to Prelacy (in a very different sense from its usual acceptation ) she being fond of expatiating on her descent from one of the Seven of immortal memory as from my being a formal bookish boy of a reserved and rather contemplative disposition. The profession did not appear uncongenial to my taste; and although from my classical education having been deplorably neglected there was no small share of grinding and fag before me I entered readily into my father's views; the more especially as in them was comprehended the preliminary visit to Germany the land of my early visions where I hoped to be on more intimate terms than ever with my old acquaintances the Spirit of the Brocken the Wild Hunter &c. &c.; or mayhap to carry to practical results in the heart of the Black Forest the lessons of natural freedom I had so largely acquired from Schiller. My father's object in sending me to Heidelberg was not I believe quite of so elevated a character. After a month's preliminary bustle I set out. The Lincoln Light-o'-Heart coach took me up a couple of miles from my father's--and with me a chest of stores that would have sufficed for the north-west passage. Furnished with a letter to a friend in London who was prepared to forward me by the first vessel offering for Holland I accomplished the journey to town satisfactorily. On arriving in London I found Mr Sainsbury the friend already mentioned awaiting me at the coach-office in Lad Lane. He was my father's banker--a little red-faced hospitable man fond of Welsh rabbits Hessian boots and of wearing his watch-chain down to his knees. He welcomed me very cordially said he had not had time as yet to make the necessary enquiries about my passage; but as he was sure no vessel would sail for Helvoetsluys for at least a week he insisted upon my putting up at his residence while I remained. Oppressed as I was with fretting and fatigue it was a matter of indifference to me at the moment where I stayed while in town. I therefore with a proper expression of thanks accepted the invitation. A job coach conveyed us in a short time to Mr Sainsbury's abode. He lived at Walworth at that period an extensive suburb on the Surrey side of London but long since incorporated into the great mass of the metropolis. The street in which the mansion stood was large the houses were spacious and handsome their tenants as I learned afterwards opulent and respectable. It was late in August; my friend's family were all at Margate; and I found none to do the honours of the house but himself and his eldest son a young man of prepossessing appearance and intelligent manners. On finding I was not disposed to go out the following morning he recommended me to the library and some portfolios of choice engravings and promising to return early in the afternoon departed for his haunts of business in the city. I found the library tolerably comprehensive for its size; and having glanced along its ranges I tumbled over Hogarth and Gillray on the print-stands for some time. I settled upon my usual efficacious remedy in desultory hours--old Burton's _Anatomie_ and dropped with it into the window-seat. I have seldom found him to fail me on such emergencies--his quaintness his humour the lavish prodigality of learning and extraordinary thinking that loads his pages never to me lose their freshness. Yet on the present occasion I found them fix me with more difficulty than I ever before or I believe since experienced. My mind wandered constantly from the page back to home forward to Heidelberg and after a while I laid down the volume to gaze vacantly through the window. It overlooked the street. Yet here the day was so piteously wet there was nothing to arrest my half-drowsy eye or half-dreamy attention. No young ladies in the opposite windows. They were all at Hastings or Brighton. No neat serving-wenches chattering on the area steps--not even a barrel-organ to blow out one's patience--no vagabond on stilts with a pipe and dancing-dogs--no Punch--no nothing!--Once a ruffian with four _babbies_ two in his arms and two more at his ankles strolled down the street chanting--""In Jury is God known""--his hat off and the rain streaming down at his nose as from a gable-spout. But he too vanished. Occasionally a dripping umbrella hurried past showing nothing but thin legs in tights and top-boots or thick ones in worsteds and pattens. At one o'clock the milkman passed along the street silently and with a soberer knock than usually announces the presence of that functionary. I counted him at number 45 46 47 48--number 49 was beyond the range of the window; but I believe I accompanied him with my ear up to number 144--where the multiplication-table ends. He was assisted in his vocation by his wife who attended him--very devotedly too for I remarked she seemed regardless of the weather and carried no umbrella. Wearied out completely by the monotony and dulness of the street I next sank into a doze which destroyed one hour further towards dinner and the remnant of time I managed to dispose of by writing a large portion of a long letter to my mother. My dinner was a tête-à-tête one with John Sainsbury--his father having been called away to Margate on affairs connected with the residents there. Finding myself labouring under a cold I avoided wine and while my companion discussed his _Château Margaut_ I kept up a languid conversation with him enlivened occasionally by the snap of a walnut-shell or indifferent pun with now and then an enquiry or remark respecting the street passengers. Amongst those the milk-vender and lady at the moment happened to pass along--""By the by "" I said ""there is one peculiarity about that Pair I cannot help remarking. I observe that wherever or at whatever pace the man moves his female companion always keeps at the one exact distance behind him--about three yards or so--See just as they stand now at No. 46! I never perceive her approach nearer. She seems a most assiduous wife."" ""_Wife!_"" rejoined Sainsbury with a motion of the lip that might have been a smile but for the gravity of his other features--""she is not his wife."" ""Wife or friend then "" I said correcting myself. ""She is not his friend either."" ""Well his sister or relative."" ""Neither sister nor relative--in fact "" he said ""I don't think she is any thing to him."" ""But the deuce is in it man you don't mean to say that she is not a most devoted friend who thus so closely and at all hours it appears to me attends him and assists""---- ""She does not assist him "" again interrupted Sainsbury. ""I mean shares his toil."" ""She has no participation whatever in his business. Come "" he said rising and advancing to the window ""I see you are puzzled; nor are you the first who has been at fault respecting that extraordinary Pair. Just observe them for a moment "" and he threw up the sash to afford me the means of glancing after them along the street; ""you perceive that there is not the slightest communication between them. He has just stopped at that house No. 50 and there stands the woman rigid as a statue only three yards behind him; now he has done and moves rapidly on--how exactly she follows! He stops again and see she is motionless; now he proceeds slowly across the street to that house with the lofty portico but slowly or quickly there she is close at hand."" ""How very odd!"" I said; ""they never speak."" ""Speak! Watch him narrowly and you will see he never for a single instant _looks behind him_. Here they come this way on his return homewards. You hear the shout from those idle throngs that have just caught a glimpse of yonder balloon; you see _that_ man never turns never pauses never looks up; he knows who is behind him and hurries on. There he has turned the corner and certain as his death _she_ has vanished in his footsteps. Singular--most singular!"" he muttered to himself half musingly. ""But surely their home reconciles them?"" ""They don't live together! On the contrary I believe they dwell far asunder; and we of this neighbourhood who have seen them for years have just as little cause to conclude that they are known personally to each other as you have who have only beheld them once or twice."" ""But this strange companionship this existence of attraction and repulsion which I have witnessed those two days it surely does not always continue. You talk of years""---- ""Yes several years; and during that time the man has not been once missed from his business nor ever found pursuing it unwatched or unattended by that woman more constant in truth than his very shadow."" ""Why here is mystery and romance with a vengeance! ready made too at one's threshold without having to seek it out in hall or bower. 'Tis a trifle _low_ to be sure; had it been a shepherd and shepherdess it _might_ do but a milkman and a--may I say?--milkmaid."" ""I assure you there is no quiz whatever in it. It is just as you see it and say it--a downright mystery and one that perhaps will never be cleared up."" ""I think the clue my dear fellow a very simple one--the woman is mad."" ""Not a bit of it; she is perfectly rational; of intelligence I am told far beyond her apparent station in life--a little reserved to be sure."" ""Then he is a lunatic and she his keeper--eh?"" ""For that I refer you to the cook and all of that respectable calling who transact business with the fellow. If he must be characterized by any one particular quality I would say that there is far more of the villain than the fool about him."" ""Pray be kind enough "" I said ""to tell me all you know respecting this curious Pair. I am really interested in them."" ""In what I have said already "" replied Sainsbury resuming his seat ""I have told you all or very nearly all that I or I believe any body else knows of them. My little information is chiefly acquired from hearing the servants gossip about them; but I very well remember that on the first appearance of the Pair in this vicinity they excited a good deal of speculation and enquiry amongst every class in Walworth. It is now more than eight years ago since this man's predecessor--the purveyor as he grandiloquently was wont to call himself of milk to this large district--died. His dairies which I fancy were lucrative things enough were immediately sold and taken by a person who we were informed would not only continue to supply Walworth with their produce but from motives of caprice or economy would deliver it himself. Accordingly the man you have seen pass this evening appeared; and all was uniform and punctual as before. In a few days however he came attended by that mysterious female dogged precisely as you have seen him an hour ago and at once the heart of every cook and kitchen-maid in the parish was on fire with curiosity and suspicion. From the kitchen the contagion spread to the drawing-room and commissions of enquiry in the shape of tea-parties were held in every house relative to the strange milk-vender and his stranger shadow. To those who asked him any questions on the matter and very few ventured to do so--for his manner though civil had reserve and sullenness and there was in his deportment a decent propriety that repulsed or rather prevented enquiry--he usually answered that he 'knew nothing of the woman who followed him;' 'that he dared to say it was from some whim;' 'that she was welcome to do so if she pleased;' 'she had the same right of highway as any other person ' and suchlike evasive replies."" ""But his companion--I should rather say his attendant--from her sex she would at least be something more communicative?"" ""Not at all. She was very seldom spoken to upon any subject. She kept aloof from all who seemed disposed to be inquisitive; and if she ever came within range as the sailors say of a question she never gave an intelligible or at least satisfactory answer. Besides as she was never seen save in the track of him whom she lives but to pursue her own sex have had no opportunity of conciliating her into an acquaintanceship and their patience and curiosity have long consumed themselves away."" ""Then after all it may be only the whim of an eccentric woman that leads her thus to persecute an inoffensive industrious person?"" ""I cannot think so. I am persuaded there is some peculiar occurrence in their past lives that has thus mysteriously associated them--some conscious secret that by its influence draws them forcibly into contact. What the nature of this strange sympathy may be I cannot form the least idea."" ""Has no one attempted to unriddle it before now?"" ""Not with any prospect of success. Of course there have been a thousand conjectures. Among the lower orders of people the prevalent opinion is that the woman once possessed a large sum of money out of which this Maunsell (for such is his name) contrived to cheat her; and that she has ever since _haunted_ him as they very appropriately term it. But this offence I am inclined to think infinitely too light a one to draw upon him the grievous punishment which has been so many years inflicted on him. One of our neighbours Rochfort a very matter-of-fact sort of man not at all given to the marvellous asserts that he witnessed by accident what he is sure was the first meeting of the Pair after the man's arrival in this quarter. It was late in the evening; Rochfort was standing he says in the shadow of a gateway that breaks up the long blank wall of a large timber-yard that belongs to him at some distance from this and which skirts a lonely and unfrequented road leading to Kennington. He is positive there was not a human being but himself within sight or hearing when he perceived the milkman coming along by the wall his footsteps echoing loudly up the dusty path. Not choosing to encounter a stranger at the moment in such a spot my friend withdrew further into the shadow of the gateway. The man in passing it happening to drop some pieces of money from his hand stooped to recover then; and while so engaged a female who Rochfort asserts must have risen out of the earth on the instant suddenly appeared standing at the searcher's side perfectly motionless and muffled in those dark funereal garments that have since been so familiar to our eyes. On lifting his head the man perceived her started but my informant says it was more the subdued start of one accustomed to face horror than the overwhelming dismay of a person terrified for the first time: he folded his arms as if endeavouring to collect himself but his whole frame shook convulsively. He was about to speak when a noise of workmen approaching up the archway stopped him and turning away he hastened on--that dark spectral woman gliding noiselessly after him."" ""Perhaps "" I said with a forced laugh--for despite of myself the story was exciting my imagination as well as curiosity--""she really _is_ a visitant from another world."" ""There are not wanting those who say so "" replied my friend; ""but however ghost-like her mission and appearance may be I believe there is no doubt that as yet she is a denizen in the flesh."" ""And this Pair--where and how do they reside?"" ""The man lives at his dairies a considerable way from here and although he has I am told an extensive establishment never goes out but on his daily business. He is of a serious methodistical disposition and I understand affects devotional reading a good deal; yet he is never seen at a place of worship. He is unmarried nor does any relative or companion reside with him. The woman--it is hardly known where she lives; in some miserable lonely room far away buried in the heart of one of those dismal courts that lurk in the outlets of London her way of life and means of support equally unknown the one object of her existence palpable to all--to come forth at the grey of daybreak in winter and summer in storm or shine and seat herself at a little distance from that man's abode until he makes his appearance: when he was passed her to rise to follow to track him through the livelong day with that unflagging constancy poets are fond of ascribing to unquenchable love which the early Greeks attributed to their impersonations of immortal Hate."" ""Surely the wild and doubtful surmises that those circumstances have raised in people's minds must have had an injurious effect on Maunsell's business?"" ""Not at all; on the contrary I think it has assisted it. Every neighbourhood loves to have a mystery of its own and we you must confess have got a superlative one. The man has been found scrupulously honest regular and exact in his dealings; and were we to lose him now and get a mere common-place person to succeed him half the housewives of Walworth would perish of inanition. And now "" said Sainsbury rising ""That I have imparted to you all I know respecting the milkman and his familiar let us to the drawing-room and seek some coffee."" CHAPTER II. The night that followed this conversation was to me a most uncomfortable one. The episode in the day's occurrences had made so deep an impression on me that it excluded all other thoughts from my mind which it occupied so intently that upon retiring to my chamber several hours elapsed before I sought repose. I did so at last but in vain. Between the fever attendant upon my indisposition and the irksomeness of frame caused by mental inquietude sleep was completely banished from my eyelids or visited them only in short and broken slumbers peopled by the distorted images of my waking thoughts. The mysterious Pair were again before me. I saw them gliding through the long street the man hastening on in that attitude so strikingly described by Coleridge like one ""Who walks in fear and dread; And having once turn'd round walks on And turns no more his head Because he knows a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread""-- the woman keeping on his track with the constancy of Doom. Or I was standing a witness to their first meeting in the grim Dark on that lonely road their eyes of hate and fear staring wildly into each other. Sometimes I found myself spellbound between the two the centre upon which their fearful sympathies revolved the object upon which their long pent-up passions were about to burst. Starting from those visions my waking fancies were hardly less tormenting. I was just at that season of youth before the calmer and nobler faculties have acquired maturity and tone; when incidents that vary but little from the ordinary economy of life seen through the medium of the imagination assume a magnitude of distinctness not properly their own. On the present occasion however my friend's recital was well calculated to arouse the speculations of a romantic fancy; and mine was now fully employed in forming a thousand conjectures in elucidation of the curious circumstances he had repeated to me. What could be the relation between those strange parties? Was it attachment in the one and aversion in the other? Or had one as was commonly supposed been the plundered victim--the other the Despoiler? Neither of these cases could be so. A petty office of police would have relieved the persecuted--a court of law would have redressed the robbery. _Monomania_ had been known to instigate persons to a line of conduct as perseveringly painful as this woman pursued; but then there could be no motive why the object of her attention should for years resign himself to a system of annoyance that drew upon him so much of remark and obloquy. Or could the female be the hired instrument of persecution in the hands of others? The poverty the utter joylessness of her solitary life precluded the supposition. No! crime I felt convinced--_crime_ was at the bottom of it all! and crime too of no ordinary quality. Was the man intent upon committing some deadly offence against society? and was it to prevent its commission that he was so assiduously watched by his companion? Perhaps he meditated breaking that instinctive canon which the Most High has so wisely fixed against ""self-slaughter."" Or had some hideous deed already been perpetrated? Was it by one or both? or was one a soul black with guilt--the other a spirit of innocence? The more I indulged in those heated fancies the wilder they became. Was the woman after all a Being endowed with vitality? The suddenness of her first appearance before the man watching at the gate--the fearful hour--the lonely spot--her noiseless tread--her silent demeanour--her sepulchral dress--almost warranted the contrary opinion. Had she fallen by the hand of this Maunsell? and was the apparition which we are told ever lives by the side of the murderer thus permitted to haunt him embodied before the eyes of men? Such were the troubled thoughts that disturbed me throughout the night. Long before sunrise I was up endeavouring to calm the fever into which I had wrought myself by pacing my apartment in the cool of morning. A brilliant sunshine ushered in the day and under its enlivening influence my perturbed spirits gradually subsided to their usual tone. At breakfast I confess I was disposed again to enter on the topic if an opportunity occurred; but Sainsbury occupied in some letters of importance that had arrived talked but little and did not recur to the subject of the previous evening. This did not assist to allay the interest which had been so powerfully excited in my bosom. The continuance of my cold once more served me as a plea for remaining within doors; and upon our parting for the day I did not hesitate to retire to the dining-parlour whose windows looked directly on the street and there shutting myself up I awaited the arrival of the hour at which the extraordinary pair generally appeared determined to satisfy myself by a closer observation than I had hitherto made. Exactly as noon sounded I saw _him_ stop at an opposite door and--did I see rightly? Yes--alone. No; I had not approached sufficiently close to the window; when I did _she_ too was there at the same slight distance behind in the same silent patient motionless attitude. He went on and steady as his shadow she pursued. I now resolved to see them still closer and for that purpose proceeded to the hall-door where I remained carelessly standing until the man approached it. I could observe that he walked at an even deliberate pace; and as he carried none of the cumbrous machinery distinctive of his craft his step was steady and unimpeded. He was a low-sized well-made man probably somewhat more than forty years of age. He was neatly dressed; his attire being a suit of some of those grave colours and primitive patterns which find so much favour in the eyes of staid Dissenters and persons of that class. Indeed I could see by his whole deportment that the occupation he pursued was one of choice not of necessity. His features were regular nor was there in his countenance any thing remarkable except that it was pale and subdued with a look of endurance which peculiar circumstances perhaps imparted to it. What I chiefly noticed was an evident consciousness about the man that some disagreeable object lurked behind him; and when I caught his eye which I did once or twice I could see in its glance that he quite understood why my attention was directed to him. He did not utter a word in my hearing and there was altogether in his appearance an air of depr
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ssion and reserve which still further aided the impression Sainsbury's story had made on my imagination. When he next paused his short progress brought his attendant close to me--in every way a more striking and interesting person. She was a woman tall in stature of an erect figure finely proportioned as well as the coarse mourning garments and large dark cloak in which she was muffled allowed me to judge. She must have been in youth very handsome; but on her thin ashen cheek premature age had already made unusual ravage. She could not from the unbroken and graceful outline of her form be much more than thirty; but her face was marked with the passionate traces of nearly double that period. Nothing of life I ever beheld exhibited the paleness--the monumental paleness of that face. On the brow on the cheek all was the aspect of the grave. Yet life--intenser life than thrills the soul of Beauty in her bridal bower dwelt in the working of those thin compressed lips--lurked beneath those heavy downcast lids burned in those dark wild eyes whose flashes I more than once arrested ere she passed from before me. Writing at the interval of time I now do and disposed as I am to deal severely with the fantastic imaginations of my youth I have not in any way exaggerated the appearance this singular female exhibited. Should the reader suspect me of such an error a moment's reflection will convince him that she who could--from whatever motive it might be--adopt the strange purpose to which she had devoted her solitary life must have been characterized by energies of mind that would of necessity have filled and informed her frame and imparted to her an air that altogether distinguished her from ordinary persons. I observed that she seemed wholly regardless of what was passing around her appearing to be entirely absorbed in one great duty--the business of her existence--that of attending on the individual whose steps she so closely followed. He made no movement that I thought escaped her. Insensible apparently to every thing else her glance showed that never for a moment did she cease to watch him eager my fancy suggested to catch the slightest indication of his turning round and encountering her gaze. If so her vigilance as long as I beheld the Pair was in vain. The man never ventured to look behind him. In half an hour they had vanished from the street. They re-appeared in the evening again as usual and then and for several subsequent days (for I did not feel well enough to undergo some twenty or thirty hours' sea-sickness in the packet that offered the Saturday after my arrival ) I took a morbid and eager pleasure in awaiting the visits and observing the motions of those inscrutable beings. Sainsbury and his son were amused but not surprised at the anxiety I evinced to obtain a nearer insight into Maunsell's history. My curiosity and vigilance were however fruitless. The Pair performed their revolutions with a cold uniformity a silent perseverance that I found sufficiently monotonous; and at length after one or two baffled attempts to engage the man in conversation and which never proceeded beyond a few common-place words (about his companion there was a something indefinable that prevented me from ever addressing _her_ ) I relinquished any further hope of penetrating the mystery. Towards the close of my stay and as my indisposition wore away the Sainsburys complimented me by giving one or two dinner-parties and these with some morning visits and rambles with the men I met at the house served to draw my attention from the matter; so that by the time I had fairly embarked on board the _Blitzen_ bound for Helvoetsluys the circumstances which had occupied me so intently for the last fortnight were beginning to take their place among the remembrances of the past. CHAPTER III. The passage to the Dutch coast and my journey onward to Heidelberg were performed without interruption and were unenlivened by any incident that deserves relating. As it is not my intention to dwell upon the vicissitudes of my career at the high school and university I shall merely say that attending very little to the conventional and arbitrary distinctions by which the students of Germany choose to classify themselves--caring still less for _chores_ _brand-foxes_ and _Burschenschafft_ and nothing at all for noisy suppers and their drunken _refrain_-- ""Toujours fidèle et sans souci C'est l'ordre du Crambambuli!""-- I very earnestly bent myself to second the intentions of my father. For three years diligently and indefatigably I pursued a course of severe application to long-neglected studies which enabled me fairly to redeem the time I had squandered in early youth. Nor is it unworthy of remark that as is often the case with imaginative people the temptations which had appeared so inviting when beheld from a distance failed in their powers of allurement on a nearer approach. The Spirit of the Brocken and I made no advances in intimacy and I rode through the Black Forest without a desire to enroll myself amongst its freebooters. The fourth year of my stay at Heidelberg was drawing to a close when in pursuance of arrangements entered into with my father I returned to England. Upon reaching London I drove to my kind friends at Walworth where I experienced the same ready welcome as before accompanied by many congratulations upon my academical success of which they had heard from time to time from my family. It was the middle of winter--the second or third week in December--when London exhibits all that joyous bustle of plenteousness and good cheer amidst which its citizens celebrate the festival of Christmas. As Mrs Sainsbury and her daughters were now at home I was easily prevailed on to prolong my visit for a few days before I departed for Lincolnshire. The moment I entered the house the rooms and their associations recalled to me forcibly the mysterious Pair whose proceedings had filled my mind with so much of curiosity and interest when I was last a sojourner in the abode. During my residence in Germany I had not forgotten them; and although the austerity of my pursuits in that country had schooled my fancy to a soberer pace I could not forbear from enquiring in one or two letters which I had occasion to write to the younger Sainsbury whether the milkman of Walworth and his Shadow still pursued their rounds uninterrupted or if any thing had transpired that could enlighten our conjectures on their history. My correspondent always neglected or forgot to satisfy me in this particular; and it was therefore with something I am ashamed to say nearly approaching to anxiety that on the morning after my arrival--for the gay variety of the social circle had monopolized my attention until then--I once more after so long an interval seated myself in the library window under pretence of seeking a passage in Herder which I had quoted for Julia Sainsbury the preceding evening and awaited the hour of noon. And there before the clock of the neighbouring church had ceased striking with the selfsame step in the same subdued attire in which I saw him four years ago came gliding up the street the dark sullen milkman; and there too close behind him as ever followed his shadowy companion! It is in vain to deny it. I could feel my heart beating audibly when I beheld them as if they were unsubstantial visitants whose appearance I expected the grave would have interdicted from my eyes for ever. It was a dim bitter wintry day and showers of sleet were drifting heavily on the fierce and angry wind soaking the man's garments through and through and sweeping aside the thin habiliments of the female as though they would tear them from her slender form and leave it a prey to the keen wrath of the elements. Yet the Pair passed upon their way seemingly regardless of weather that had banished all other creatures from the streets. As they stopped beneath the window where I sat I scrutinized them eagerly to see whether time or toil or the terrors of such winters as that now raging had wrought the work of ruin I would have expected in their frames. In that of the woman there was but little alteration. She was thinner and paler perhaps and the poorness of her dress betokened no doubt an increase in her sufferings and privations; but her glance when I could catch it had more of fiery blackness: her mouth more of compressed determination than when I formerly beheld her. But in Maunsell there was a striking change: his figure was stooped his cheek hollow his eye sunk; in a word his aspect now bore the signs of that mental misery which on an earlier occasion I had looked for in one subjected like him to such long and steady and undying persecution. Mournful beings! I internally exclaimed as they proceeded from my sight whatever sinful sorrow thus serves to link together your discordant existences it must indeed be of a damning nature if such a career as yours does not go far to expiate it! That day on the re-assembling of the family I did not fail to allude to the subject of the milkman and to express my surprise at his tenacity to life as well as at the fixedness of purpose that enabled him to pursue his occupation through a long series of years under such remarkable circumstances. I found however that the ladies only smiled at the interest which my manner exhibited; some of them assuring me at the same time that the neighbourhood was now so accustomed to the matter that although calculated to arrest the attention of a stranger to them it had ceased to be either a source of curiosity or enquiry. I believe they added that of late the man's health had begun to fail and that once or twice when he happened to be confined from indisposition his companion's visits were interrupted by the occurrence although she still kept her vigilance in exercise by watching unremittingly for his re-appearance. After a few pleasant days passed in London I proceeded to Lincolnshire and had the happiness of finding my family well when I arrived at home. My father was quite satisfied with the letters I conveyed from Professor Von Slammerbogen; my mother delighted to receive me in any character whether that of pedant or prodigal. Nicholas my elder brother I found as much attached as when I left him to practising ""Dull Care"" upon the violin. In Tom however there was a considerable modification he having left his sinister arm at Hougomont in exchange for a three months' campaign in country quarters and a Waterloo medal. In the following term I entered at Cambridge as my father had originally planned; and in due time upon obtaining my degree was admitted into holy orders. My first curacy it is singular enough was obtained through the influence of our friend the Walworth banker and was that of St ----'s in his neighbourhood but nearer to town and the centre of a poor but densely peopled district. The scene of life I now entered upon was truly laborious and painful. Resolved to perform its duties diligently to the best of my ability I found every moment I could spare from refreshment and sleep hardly sufficient for the claims which the Comfortless whom I had to console the Sick whom I had to succour the Profligate to reclaim the Sceptic to convince made upon my time. Wholesome and profitable to my spirit I trust was this discipline! It seems to me a thing inexplicable how a man can advocate the interests the benefits of religion--can impress upon others the divine precepts of Christianity and be himself not a partaker in the blessings he imparts. Such a one I hope I have long ceased to be; and although I do not profess to have attained that degree of zealous fervour and devotion which sees in the light and graceful relaxations of life nothing but the darkness and allurements of sin I humbly believe I have endeavoured to make my course as much as in me was possible conformable to the doctrines I have taught. Upon settling in London I gladly renewed my acquaintance with the Sainsburys; yet so arduous were the duties of my profession that for the first two years in which I resided in St ----'s parish I saw but little of this amiable family. Towards the close of that period the aid of an additional curate appointed to assist in the district afforded me a little more leisure time and I was enabled occasionally to spend an evening at Walworth. In passing to and from my friend's house I now and then met and ever with renewed interest and surprise the dark PAIR still plodding their melancholy interminable rounds. The last time I beheld them I remember calculating as they passed me the number of years they had been thus incomprehensibly associated and speculating on how many more should elapse before age and death terminated that melancholy partnership. In about two months after I dined at the banker's and the first intelligence with which John Sainsbury greeted me was the news that the milkman of Walworth and his companion had at length disappeared. Maunsell he said had died some weeks before after a couple of days' illness. No one seemed to know of what disorder--general debility it was thought; no doctor had been called in; and not having left a will his property went to some distant relative. With respect to the woman she was last noticed the evening of his death sitting in the usual spot--within sight of the gateway leading to his house--where she generally awaited his appearance. She was not there the following morning; nor was she seen again. As the deceased had made no disclosure respecting her nor left any papers that could tend to explain their connexion all chance it was concluded of clearing up the mystery was at an end for ever. I confess this disappointed me not a little. I found I had whenever the strange Pair occurred to my recollection unconsciously entertained a conviction that I should at some period or other learn their history; and now that all opportunity of so doing had vanished the fancies of my early youth again returned and occupied me with their wild suggestions for a longer time than was either pleasing or justifiable. The coincidence however which had brought me so often into contact with those singular persons was not fated as yet to discontinue. CHAPTER IV. It was I think about half a year from this period that in returning late one evening from the neighbourhood of Russell Square where my father during a short visit he was compelled to make to town had taken lodgings I missed my way and got entangled in the intricacies of the numerous narrow streets and alleys that lie between that quarter of London and the eastern end of Holborn. Intending to avail myself of some of the public conveyances homewards I had attempted to shorten my passage to the great thoroughfares and in doing so had thus gone astray. As it was past ten o'clock I was necessarily hurried and yet the heat and heaviness of the night--it was July--prevented me freeing myself as rapidly as I should otherwise have done from the squalid and disagreeable avenues in which I had got entangled. I was just pausing to enquire my way of a slatternly-looking woman who stood considerably in front of the door of a dirty-looking house in one of the dirtiest lanes I had yet explored and who with an apron thrown round her shoulders to supply it seemed to me the absence of their appropriate garments appeared from the direction of her looks to be awaiting some one's arrival when a lad hastened up the opposite side of the alley and breathlessly announced to her that ""the docther wouldn't come 'thout he first got his fee."" ""Holy Mary mother of ----! Oh wisha what _am_ I to do!"" exclaimed the woman in a strong Irish accent with that elision of apostrophe into complaint peculiar to her country. ""If she goes on this way till mornin' two men wouldn't hould her let alone one _colleen_.[1] Run Micky to the 'seer an' let him get her to the hospiddle or my heart 'll be broke from her."" ""How dove I know where the 'seer lives at this hour o' the night?"" expostulated the boy. ""There's a wake in Tim Reilly's second floor--can't you go there and they'll tell you--can't you?"" The messenger disappeared and I now before putting the question for which I had stopped asked the woman soothingly the cause of her perturbation. ""Is it what's the matther sir? Matther enough thin--a poor crethur of a woman lodgin' with me is took very bad with the fever. She wasn't to say so bad entirely till this evenin' when she begin to rave and 'sist upon gettin' up; an' goin' on with terrible talk that it would frighten the heart o' you to hear her."" ""How long "" I said ""has she been ill?"" ""Wisha sir she was never well since the day she darkened my dure; but I think 'tis the heat o' the weather an' her never stirrin' out an' the weakness entirely an' the impression on her heart that is killin' her now."" ""And has she had no advice?"" ""Sorrow the 'vice--you'd think she'd go into fits when I mentioned a docther to her; and as to a priest or a ministher--my dear life I might as well mention a blunderbush."" Well accustomed to hear of and witness such suffering as the woman described I was about to proceed in quest of a physician myself if she had paused in the first part of the sentence just finished. The concluding remarks arrested me. ""I am a clergyman "" I said; ""will you let me see this poor person?"" ""An' a thousand welcomes sir. I know you're not the Revern' Misthur Falvey that I goes to a' Christmas an' Easther--nor the ministher convenient here. Maybe you're""---- ""I'm quite unknown here; but by allowing me to see your patient I shall be able to judge if she is in a fit state to be removed to an hospital; or if instantly necessary I shall myself procure medical advice for her."" The woman entered the house and I followed her waiting as she requested me in the dark entry until she procured from the sick chamber the only light that I presume was burning in the dwelling. She then re-appeared at the head of the stairs and requested me to ascend. Lighting me up four ruinous flights of steps leading to rooms that appeared to be tenanted by beings as miserable as herself she ushered me into an apartment of such large dimensions that the weak rushlight she carried left its extremity in absolute darkness. It was wretchedly furnished. At the farthest end from the door was a bed by the side of which stood a coarse-looking girl about fifteen engaged in preventing--now by soothing now by forcible restraint--the invalid who occupied it from attempting to rise. ""Not another moment--not one moment longer! I _must_ get up--he is waiting for me! See! I am late already for 'tis daybreak--though you cannot see the dawn through that dismal rain. Let me go--wretch wretch!--let me go; he shall not stir one step that I won't be near him to remind him of""---- Leaving the candle near the door my guide approached the bed and beckoned me to follow. I advanced and even through the misty shadows that enveloped the place I recognised in the emaciated Form struggling on the couch her wild flashing eyes now wilder with fever and insanity the well-remembered wanderer who had so often excited my interest in Walworth. ""Ha!"" she continued after stopping suddenly as lunatics will do when a stranger unexpectedly appears and intently observing me for some minutes. ""Ha! I knew I was late--see there. _He_ has come to seek me for the first time too for seventeen--eighteen-oh! so many long years. Ha ha! all in black too--Barnard--and you've brought your wealthy bride""--and she glanced at the woman who stood beside me; ""but faugh how her limbs rattle--not a whole bone "" she said with a hysterical laugh ""in her beautiful body!"" In this way she continued to rave during the short time I remained in the apartment. I attempted to ask her a few questions to ascertain if possible how far the distraction of her mind was consequent upon her disorder; but her only replies were mad and incoherent allusions to past scenes and occurrences that seemed entirely to engross her attention. Finding my presence of no avail I quitted the place and was about to deposit a small sum with the hostess for the sufferer's use when she very ingenuously informed me it was not at the moment necessary that person herself having always in the payment of her weekly rent entrusted to her hands money sufficient to supply the wants of several ensuing days. ""An' though we're sometimes bad enough off sir when the boys don't get the work at Mr Cubitt's still shure if I was to wrong a poor sickly crethur like that of her thrifle of change 'twould melt away the weight o' myself in goold if I had it."" I could not help smiling at this unwonted display of honesty in so unexpected a quarter and promising her that such care and attention to her sick tenant should not go unrewarded I departed escorted by ""Micky "" who had returned to say that no intelligence of the 'seer was to be obtained at Tim Reilly's. On making our way into Holborn I called at the nearest surgeon's and giving him my address I dispatched him back with the boy directing him at the same time not to allow the woman to be removed unless her disorder was a contagious one (which I was persuaded it was not ) and requesting should the aid of a physician be necessary he would at once procure it for which with all other expenses I would be answerable. Touching this latter point the lad had informed me as we came along that he did not think their lodger was at all at a loss for money as she procured it about once a-month he thought (the only time she ever went abroad ) from some ""gentleman's office in the coorts."" Although living at such a distance I contrived to see the unfortunate invalid several times in the following week. I found I was right as to the nature of her disorder. An eminent physician had been called in once or twice during its most violent paroxysms and stated that it was likely her malady was not the cause but the consequence of some extraordinary mental excitement. Under the judicious treatment he pointed out the fever gradually subsided and for a short time there was an appearance in the patient of returning convalescence. But her physical energies were exhausted and it was evident that a very short period would terminate her existence. Reason too never wholly resumed its functions if indeed it had ever of late years exercised them in that wearied brain. Her ideas assumed a certain degree of coherency. She was able to converse occasionally with calmness to recognise faces familiar to her and appeared sensible of and even grateful for my visits and the assiduity with which I sought to awaken her to some preparation for the great approaching change; but ""the delicate chain Of thought once tangled never clear'd again:"" never _wholly_ cleared. The lightning of insanity flashed continually from the heavy cloud that hung upon her soul. The allusions too she was in the habit of making to some transactions of bygone years were of so startling a nature that I was fully confirmed in my early impression she had been at one time of her life implicated in some wonderful nay heinous occurrence. Upon this point it was my intention if possible to win her gradually to confide to me the secret of her guilt or wrongs hoping by this means to relieve her spirit by seeming to share in its burdens and distress. With the quick perception of persons labouring like her under mental aberration she seemed to anticipate my purpose. I was one morning sitting by her bedside when she suddenly began-- ""You asked me yesterday if I remembered having ever seen you before this illness--this late attack--and I said no. It was false. I spoke as I thought at the time; but in looking at you now I recollect you were one of those people I often met at Walworth. I even think you once attempted to get into _his_ confidence--(now do not interrupt me.) You likewise desired to know why one like me who appears superior in mind and language to the wretched class amongst whom you find her should have led the life----Stay! send for a sheriff's officer and I will tell you."" I assured her I saw no necessity at that moment for the presence of such a person; and as she appeared somewhat more excited than I had seen her for several days I endeavoured to lead her away from the subject that occupied her by turning the conversation to some indifferent topic. But it would not do. She still reverted to the point at which she had broken off; and I was at length obliged to let her pursue the course of her own thoughts as she pleased. ""Did you ever think me handsome? Many once thought me so; but that is long ago. My father was still handsomer. He was the younger of two brothers both wealthy. They were plain Devonshire farmers--each too was a widower with each a daughter. So far for their likeness to one another. Now for the contrast. My father spent his wealth died and left me a beggar. _Her's_ (my pretty cousin Martha's) saved it and left his child an heiress--a Temptation--a prize for all the bumpkins and graziers about us. I was glad to live with her. We kept house together. We were both of an age--young handsome lively and for our station or rather for a higher one well educated. Here again ceased the resemblance. Like my father I was open guileless unsuspecting--and it destroyed me. She was mean cunning treacherous and would--but HELL was too strong for her--have triumphed. My cousin had numerous offers of marriage. I had none. Among several young men who frequented our society was a substantial farmer named Barnard. You have seen him. When you first beheld him he was little altered. He had ever that cursed look of Cain upon his forehead though I branded it a little deeper. Do not thus stop me!--breath!--I have breath enough. Barnard was gay smooth agreeable--what was more he was _my_ suitor--the only one amid throngs that was attentive kind obliging to me. I felt first grateful and next loved him--you shall hear HOW WELL. ""Our match began to be talked of. Martha from some whim disapproved of it. He ceased to visit at the house--but I would not give him up; and while he contemplated as I thought arrangements for our marriage we often met alone. Judgment is over with him now--mine is at hand and I will not load him with guilt that after all may not be his. He was the only being that cared for me on earth and I clung to him with a tenfold affection. How do I know but it was this mad confidence that first awoke the villain in his soul? That wine""-- I held the glass to her lips; and while I wiped the damp drops of agony from her brow I besought her to defer the sequel of her story until she was more capable of pursuing it. ""No "" she said; ""it must be now or not at all. I am stronger than I have been for months to-day. Where was I?--Stealing back day after day to Martha's a trampled but not an unhoping spirit; for I still looked forward to _his_ fulfilling his promise. He once more was a visitor at our house. I did not know why--I did not care--he was there and I was satisfied: I had no eyes for any thing else. But the blow was coming. It fell--it smote us all to dust. ""I was one morning occupied alone in some domestic duty when I heard Barnard's name pronounced by two female servants of our farm who were employed in the next apartment. I listened--poor souls! they were merely agreeing 'how natural it was for Mr Barnard to have jilted Miss--(but let my very name be unpronounced)--and taken up with Miss Martha who had all the fortune.' Was it not a natural remark? So natural that every being in the country had already made it but her whose heart it broke to hear it. I rushed from the spot a mist spreading before my eyes as I hastened on. I sought out Barnard; I found him and alone. I told him of the report I had overheard. He said it was not new to him. I charged him with perfidy--he avowed it. Half-dreaming I attempted to catch his hand. He coolly withdrew it. I knelt before him--I clasped his knees--I wept and prayed he would bless me by treading me to death beneath his feet. He extricated himself with a laugh bid me not be a fool and left me. ""Before I rose from the spot where I had fallen a dreadful shadow passed as it were suddenly across me and some black passion I had never known till then took possession of my spirit. It was JEALOUSY. I returned home and hastened to have an interview with Martha. Hitherto I had been of a quiet timid disposition--I was now bold from frenzy and betrayed affection. I upbraided my cousin with duplicity with meanness in receiving the addresses of the man betrothed to her relative. She retorted by drawing comparisons between our attractions personal as well as pecuniary. At these I smiled--bitterly perhaps but still I smiled. She scoffed at my pleas that Barnard was my affianced husband declared her intention of marrying him and ended by insinuating that I had lost him by the very unguardedness of my affection. I never smiled again. ""I was mad from that day forward. My whole existence changed. I was a dissembler--a liar--for my life was a long lie--and come near--I _am_ a murderer. I lived blindly on--a day was fixed for their marriage--but though I knew not _how it was to be_--I knew another would never stand at the altar as his bride. ""She and I had apparently been reconciled--I saw Barnard no more save in her presence--I lulled them both into a belief that I was a poor trodden and stingless thing. ""The Sunday preceding the wedding-day arrived. It was a lovely evening in summer and Martha and he and I wandered far away into the fields--they to taste the freshness of nature I to wonder the flowers did not wither beneath our tread; for we were all alike evil and abandoned. In our way we visited a mill that was soon to become the property of Barnard in right of his bride. In passing through the different lofts into which it was divided we paused in one to admire the immense and complicated machinery connected with the great wheel that worked the manufactory. Martha ever capricious and perverse wished to see the engine set in motion. But there was not a servant--not a creature save ourselves--within a mile of the spot at the moment. Barnard however volunteered to go to the mill-dam outside and on a signal from us to undo the wicket that kept back the waters from the wheel. I watched him from the window till he took his station at the spot. Just then Martha who with perverse inquisitiveness had been standing caged within the iron framework of the engines in hastening to leave it missed her footing and stumbled backward again within its circle. A streak as of fire flashed through the place. I waved my hand; there was the sudden rush of tumbling water a faint shriek and then the roar and thunder of the enormous wheels hurrying on grinding and tearing her to pieces. And then came the horrorstruck look of Him crying out to Heaven in his vain impotency and my own mad laughter ringing high over it all! ""His consternation and despair--his wild attempts to stay the progress of the crashing machinery--his wrath at my exultation--only raised me to a higher state of frenzy--that frenzy of heart and brain that never went from me more. I hollowed in his ear how I had done it--and when he flung himself on the ground in a passion of remorse and grief I danced round him proclaiming my hate and guilt and summoning him to give me up to justice. It was now his turn to quiver under the lash of conscience. He accused himself of the ruin I had wrought--acknowledged his falsehood--cried aloud for mercy--and still I exulted with a fiercer laughter with a louder demand that he would give me to the gibbet. He endeavored to fly from the spot. I pursued him. I NEVER LEFT HIM AGAIN. There was a long illness--a blot upon my memory. I cannot tell you any thing of its duration. _Her_ remains were found--there was an enquiry--he was the only witness--he kept _our secret_. On my recovery I found he had sold his property and departed to some distant quarter in the north of England. I tracked him there. I had vowed to haunt his soul with the memory of my crime until he surrendered me to justice. He sought to shun me by changing his name and removing from one place of residence to another; but in vain. My revenge was as hard and cruel as his own look on the morning in his orchard when he spurned me fainting from his feet. Go where he would I pursued. At last he settled near London--in that place where you first beheld us. You know the rest of our career. If guilt can be atoned for by _human_ suffering--the wrath of years--the raging wind--the scorching sun--ruined youth--premature age--privation misery madness and hate have well
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toned for ours. You shake your head. It is not so? Well you were the first to teach me to vent my burning thoughts in prayer. Pray with me now. I seem to have lived all my evil passions over again in this last hour. Do not leave me yet but--pray!"" * * * * * Such was the disastrous tale imparted to me in almost the last interview I had with its hapless narrator. Either the recollections she had lived through as she said in so short a space or the exertions caused by its recital were too much for her enfeebled intellect. Delirium shortly after returned and continued to within a few hours of her dissolution which occurred on the evening of the following day. I was present when she expired. She instructed me where to find the agent who paid her a small stipend derived from a distant relative (to whom by her uncle's will his property descended ) that I might apprise him of her death. She was quite sensible at the awful moment; and there is still a hope mingled with the melancholy remembrance that her last entreaty to me was--to ""PRAY!"" INJURED IRELAND. The miseries of the Irish people and the oppressions under which they groan form the topics of conversation in every quarter of the globe--you hear of them at Rome and at Constantinople--they are discussed on the prairies of Texas and in the wilds of the Oregon--in Paris and at Vienna you are bored by their constant repetition. The ""smart"" American contributes his dollars and the ""pious Belgian""[2] his prayers to effect their redress; and they have fairly driven from the field of compassion all sympathy for the plundered Jews and persecuted Poles. The restless Frenchman speculates on them as the certain means by which England may be humiliated; and impatiently awaits the moment when under the guidance of the young De Joinville fifty thousand of ""les braves"" may be thrown on the coast of Ireland and take advantage of the national disaffection for the double purpose of mortally wounding his ancient enemy and of giving as a boon to its oppressed inhabitants that liberty of which he talks so much and knows so little. Doubtless the sufferings of this _patient_ people have before now drawn tears from the sensitive eyes of ""the brother of the sun;"" and the ""sagacious and enlightened Lin"" has already suggested to his celestial master the propriety of dispatching some of his invincible war-junks to effect the liberation of the degraded slaves of the ""red and blue devils"" who have so cruelly annoyed him. Every one has heard and every one talks of Irish grievances; but no one seems to know exactly what those grievances are: their existence appears to be so unquestionable that to dispute it is not only useless but almost disreputable; and yet if one venture to enquire of those who declaim most loudly against them wherein they consist they limit themselves to generalities and quote the admitted state of the country as proof positive of English injustice and Saxon misrule. That the inhabitants of distant countries should believe what they hear so constantly asserted cannot be a matter of much surprise; nor that the enemies of England and of order should credit what it suits their inclinations to believe; but that those who live close to the scene of such grievous inflictions--that those who are the fellow-subjects of the oppressed and who may be said to be the instruments whereby those enormities are perpetrated--should take for granted all they hear stated without endeavouring to discover the truth of those assertions or the extent of their own culpability does seem to us almost incredible. Yet so it is. Irish grievances are now in fashion. The most glaring fabrications are swallowed with anxiety if they only profess to be recitals of Irish sufferings; and the British people seem ready to yield to the clamours of mendacious and designing demagogues measures not only detrimental to the interests of the country for whose welfare they profess so much anxiety but absolutely ruinous to the glory and the power of their own. We will not stop here to discuss the benefits which we are told would accrue to the Irish nation from the success of a measure which never can be carried while Ireland holds loyal subjects or Britain has an arm to wield; but we shall at once proceed to ascertain if those glaring injustices which make us the world's table-talk really exist and if the admitted misery of the Irish people can with truth be attributed to the unjust or partial legislation of the British Parliament. We do not seek to deny that the interests of Ireland have not been neglected or unfairly dealt by in former times. With that we have nothing now to do; we take the existing state of things and we maintain and will we trust convince our readers that instead of being oppressed or wronged by legislative enactments Ireland is (as matters are at present managed) greatly favoured and that instead of complaining of injustice her inhabitants should be most grateful for the exemptions which are granted them and for the fostering care which a Conservative government has extended and is still anxious to extend to them. In supporting our view of the case we shall appeal to facts--facts which if untrue can easily be refuted; and first we shall apply ourselves to the amount of taxation imposed on Ireland by the Imperial Parliament. _The Irish people are exempt from every species of direct taxation!_ and their indirect taxes are not more than those to which the inhabitants of England and Scotland are subject. Thus while the English and Scotch gentleman is taxed for his servants his carriages his horses his dogs and his armorial bearings--and in addition pays in common with the trading and operative classes his window-tax--the Irish gentleman and tradesman are totally free from all such imposts. And though at first sight this exemption would seem to benefit only the wealthier classes still when we find as is certainly the case that it enables the Irish gentry to keep much larger establishments than men of similar fortune could attempt to do in this country; that consequently more persons are employed as servants; that it enhances the value of horses by increasing the demand for them; that it also greatly adds to the number of carriages used and of course to the employment of the artisan--we must admit that it has no slight influence on the condition both of the tradesman and the agriculturist. Ireland pays no income-tax! (at least no Irishman need pay it if he choose to reside at home;) for the Minister and the Parliament _so hostile_ to Irish interests have only subjected the absentees to its operation; and we find that in the year ending the 10th October 1844-- England and Scotland paid by assessed taxes £4 204 855 By income-tax 5 158 470 ---------- Total £9 363 325 While under those two heads ""_injured persecuted Ireland_"" paid not one shilling! Thus we see that a sum of over nine millions is annually levied from off the inhabitants of the ""_favoured_"" portions of the British empire towards which ""_oppressed Ireland_"" is not called upon to contribute sixpence! It may be said those taxes only affect the wealthy and it is not their grievances which call so loudly for redress; it is the burdens imposed on the poor landholders which demand our attention. We have in a former Number of this Magazine see Vol. lv. p. 638 shown that the rents paid for land in Ireland are at least one-third less than the rents paid in England; (but were it even otherwise the right to dispose of property to the best advantage could not be by law interfered with.) In that article we stated that in addition to his rent the English occupier is subject by law to the payment of tithes which in many instances amount to more than the entire rent imposed on the Irish tenant; and that by recent enactments the payment of the Protestant church has been transferred from the Irish tenantry to the landlords nine-tenths of whom are Protestants; that the English tenant pays _all_ the poor-rates while the Irish tenant is only called on to pay the _half_; and that while the former is subject to county and parochial rates in addition to turnpikes which are a heavy burden the latter pays only the county cess the amount of which depends very much on his own conduct. We cannot then discover that the Irish peasantry are subject to any pecuniary grievances which legislation has inflicted or could remove; neither can we perceive any neglect of their interests evinced by the British Minister or the Saxon Parliament; but on the contrary we see that they have been specially protected by particular enactments against the payment of charges to which the occupiers of the other portions of the United Kingdom are still subject. If the Irish farmers set their faces against the commission of crime instead of tacitly if not openly affording protection to the greatest delinquents it is clear that the amount of the county cess _the only tax the tenant pays_ might be greatly diminished; the constabulary force might be under more favourable circumstances reduced from nine thousand men (its present strength) to half that number; and if the people abstained from houghing the cattle or burning the houses of those who are obnoxious to them the county rates would not amount to more than one-third of the sum at present levied. Thus then the amount of the only direct tax the peasantry have to pay is mainly dependent on the peaceable condition of the country: if the people be orderly and obedient to the laws its amount is reduced; if otherwise and they have heavy assessments to pay to reimburse those they have injured no one is to blame for it but themselves. We would then ask any candid man if it would be possible for any government to act more leniently towards Ireland as regards taxation? She is exempt from her proportion of the nine millions levied from the other portions of the United Kingdom; and many of the local assessments to which her inhabitants are subject were by special enactments removed from the shoulders of the occupiers of the soil and placed on those of the proprietors. Thus then under the head of taxation no injustice can be said to be committed. The extent of the Irish representation and the laws regulating the elective franchise both in the cities and counties form a prominent portion of Irish grievances; yet if the efficiency of the representation is to be judged by the influence which it exercises on the councils of the empire or the registration laws be tested by the results which they have produced the Irish have little reason to complain of either. The very exemption from taxation to the amount we have already stated proves one of two things--either that the British minister and British representation are peculiarly partial to the interests of Ireland (which would destroy the favourite doctrine of ""English hatred and Saxon oppression;"") or that the Irish representation is powerful enough not only to protect their constituents from injustice but to secure them peculiar advantages. That the amount of representation already enjoyed by Ireland is _at least_ sufficient for all constitutional purposes cannot be doubted; for every one knows that by the Radical portion of it alone an administration odious to the people of Great Britain and rejected by their representatives was for years kept in office and that through its instrumentality both Whig and Tory ministers have been compelled to abandon measures which they believed to be beneficial and which they brought forward in a spirit of good feeling and with a desire to promote the best interests of the country. In the first Parliament elected under the Reform Bill and after the system of registration now complained of came into operation the Irish representation consisted of Liberals 74 Conservatives 31 Now when it is borne in mind that beyond all question at least nine-tenths of the landed property of Ireland is possessed by the Conservative party and that that party was able to secure to itself little more than a fourth of the representation it must be admitted that numbers told and that the mass was represented in a ratio beyond what the constitution contemplates. So far then as relates to the laws regulating the elective franchise if they are to be judged of by the results which they produced the Liberal party have nothing to complain of and the Roman Catholics still less; of the Radical majority they numbered thirty-five or nearly one-half; and if eligible men could be had of their body or if their leaders wished it undoubtedly persons of their profession might have been returned in every instance in which liberal Protestants were seated. They had the power to effect this: if they abstained from using it influenced either by good taste or motives of prudence they still have no reason to complain of the law--it placed the power in their hands; their own discretion alone restrained its exercise. The agitators proclaim that their number in Parliament has diminished and that they have lost cities and counties because the constituency has decreased under the ""emaciating influence of the registration law."" It is true the Irish constituency has diminished and that the Destructives have lost many places; but the diminution in the constituency has not been caused by the state of the law--and this they know full well--but by the disinclination of the respectable portion of the people to make themselves any longer their tools! Under the law when first called into operation the Radicals had an overwhelming majority. The same men who registered and voted in 1832 and in 1837 are generally still in existence--the same tenures under which they registered still continue--the same assistant barristers before whom they registered (or ones more favourable to their interests) still preside; it is clear therefore that if the people were inclined to claim the franchise they have only to take the necessary steps to secure it--but they won't. They were persecuted between the priests and their landlords--they see the hollowness of the agitators who used them for their own purposes and then left them to ruin; and as the surest way to avoid trouble they don't register at all; the landlords not having any influence over their votes and not wishing to quarrel with them don't induce them to do so--and they have hitherto resisted the efforts of the country agents of the Corn Exchange. What man of sense would put himself upon the register when he well knows that any deviation from the path pointed out to him by the priest would not only entail curses and persecutions on himself but insult and outrage on the innocent members of his family? Who would establish his right to vote when he would be called on to exercise that right with _his grave dug before his dwelling_ and _the_ DEATH'S HEAD AND CROSS-BONES AFFIXED TO HIS DOOR!! The assertions of the agitators that they have lost ground _because_ the constituencies have been diminished by the operation of the laws regulating the possession of the elective franchise is of a piece with all their other reckless falsehoods; but fortunately it is more easy of disproof. It does appear by parliamentary returns that the Irish constituency has decreased _on the whole_ in small degree; but it is rather curious and unfortunate for those truth-loving gentlemen that in every instance in which _they_ have been beaten the constituencies have greatly increased and that they have only diminished in those counties in which their interest is all-powerful.[3] For instance Antrim in 1832 (when a Liberal was returned ) had on the register 3487 electors; and in 1837 when a Conservative was seated 4079.[4] Belfast in 1832 when two Liberals were returned had 1650; in 1841 when two Conservatives were elected 4334. Carlow in 1832 when two Liberals were returned had 1246; and in 1841 when the Tories beat O'Connell's own son 1757. Down had in 1832 when a Liberal was returned 3130; and in 1837 when a Tory was substituted 3305. Dublin County had in 1832 when two Liberals were returned 2025; and in 1841 when two Tories displaced them 2820. Dublin City had in 1832 when O'Connell was triumphantly returned 7008; and in 1841 when he was beaten 12 290. Longford had in 1832 when two Liberals were returned 1294; and in 1841 when one of them was displaced by a Tory 1388. Queen's County had in 1832 when one Liberal was returned 1471; and in 1835 when two Conservatives were elected 1673. Thus we see by unquestionable proof that instead of being benefited by an increase of the constituencies the cause of the Destructives has invariably suffered by their enlargement; and yet sure we are that most persons on this side the water believe in the truth of the Liberator's lamentations and suppose that those patriots who have been rejected by the votes of the most independent electors and largest constituencies in Ireland have lost their seats solely because the names on the register had been greatly diminished and the Liberal portion of the people deprived of their rights by the ""emaciating influence"" of a bad law. But if there be defects in the registry laws who are to blame for their continuance? The ""great grievance"" connected with them of which Mr O'Connell complained was ""that from the ambiguous wording of the act some assistant barristers adopted _the solvent tenant test_ "" instead of ""_the beneficial interest test_ ""[5] which he and those who acted with him thought to be its legitimate construction. This unquestionably would make a vast difference to the claimant; and so thought Sir Robert Peel. He brought in a bill clearly establishing ""the beneficial interest test."" And to remedy another objection founded on the fact of tenants at will in England having the right to vote while the Irish law debarred persons similarly circumstanced he proposed to give the franchise to all occupiers of certain quantities of land merely from the fact of possession;[6] and yet Mr O'Connell was the first to denounce the measure! The agitators complain of defects in the law and the minister agrees to amend them; the patriots claim for the Irish a full equality in the registration law granted to England and more is conceded. When headed by their ""august leader "" they denounce the redress of those injustices of which they complained as ""An additional insult "" and they raise such a clamour because what they formerly asked for was about to be granted that the minister was compelled to succumb and the bill was withdrawn. The next item in the catalogue of grievances is the municipal law. None has been more frequently or more forcibly dwelt on; its injustice and tendency to exclude the ""Liberal"" inhabitants of the towns and cities of Ireland from local influence and political power form prominent topics in the speeches of every patriot orator. Let us see with what justice. It must be admitted that there is considerable Conservative property and respectability in the Irish corporate towns; and yet what has been the result of the elections under this municipal law so loudly declaimed against?--There are thirty-three corporations in Ireland all of which with _one solitary exception_ (that of Belfast ) are not only Liberal but downright Revolutionary. The number of the friends of order in the town-councils is so small that they can accomplish nothing. Overwhelming majorities have voted addresses to the ""convicted conspirators "" and their mayors formed a deputation to present them and proceeded in state to the ""dungeon of the martyrs;"" and yet this law which lays the corporations of Ireland at the feet of O'Connell forms ""one of the greatest oppressions under which his devoted country groans."" He has unlimited influence in all. What more would he have? what more could any law give him? Men ought to have a little modesty; but the ""Liberator"" has gained so much by reckless assertion that he is justified in persevering in its practice. He has often said that ""he never knew any statement tell or any argument however powerful attain the desired end if only once repeated;"" and on this principle he acts. He repeats and repeats again in the teeth of contradiction and disproof what he wishes to have believed; and the result shows the wisdom of his proceeding. Those who contradict soon get tired while by perseverance he is left in full possession of the field. It has been said that the Irish Roman Catholics have been debarred by the unfair exercise of political patronage from the attainment of those offices at the bar and in the administration to which they were rendered eligible by the Emancipation Act. The Whigs promoted three Roman Catholics--Mr Shiel Mr Wyse and Mr O'Ferrall; these gentlemen retired with their party and if Sir Robert Peel offered them place to-morrow they would as a matter of course refuse it. These are the only persons of their religion _unpledged_ to ""Repeal of the Union"" at present in the House who would have any claim on the score of abilities to official station; it surely cannot be expected that a Conservative minister would give power to men pledged to the dismemberment of the British empire and the supporters of a measure which he has so unequivocally denounced; neither can it be supposed that any man would be such a fool as to place red-hot Repealers in the important office of stipendiary magistrate when the wishes of the government might be thwarted and the safety of the country compromised by their partisanship. The Repealers admit their determination to accomplish the destruction of ""Saxon rule"" in Ireland and at the same time _modestly_ declaim against the Saxon government because they will not give them power or confidential employment by means of which they might more securely carry out their intentions. Sir Robert Peel has taken every occasion to the great detriment and dissatisfaction of his steadfast supporters to give place to such of the Roman Catholic party as were at all eligible; if the number of such persons be limited the Roman Catholics themselves and not the minister are to blame. As to the bar the list of Roman Catholics was run out before he came to power. There was no one amongst them whose standing in his profession would have at all justified the minister in placing him on the bench; and he had men of his own party distinguished for their acquirements whose interests he could not overlook whose claims were recognised even by Mr O'Connell himself and whose conduct since their promotion has been unimpeachable. The agitators cannot in justice blame him for having recourse to the Conservative bar for when in trouble they sought protection from its ranks themselves. Except Mr Shiel who was merely employed to make a speech and whose legal knowledge was never insisted on by his friends; and Mr _Precursor_ Pigott who was retained lest a slur should be thrown on the Whigs--all the leading lawyers who conducted the defence in the ""monster trial"" were Protestants and Conservatives of the highest order. But what has this much-abused minister done to conciliate Ireland since he came to office? He has nearly trebled the grant for national education and still continues the system adopted by the Whigs and patronised by the priests in opposition to a powerful and influential portion of his own supporters;--he found a board of charitable bequests composed altogether of Protestants and seeing as he stated ""that two-thirds of the property they had to administer was Roman Catholic "" he dissolved that board and constituted another in which the Roman Catholics have an equality and may under certain circumstances have a majority;[7]--he found the mortmain laws in existence and he repealed them; now any man who wishes may endow the Roman Catholic church to any extent he pleases. Yet these last concessions have been denounced by priests and bishops as an additional insult as an unjustifiable and tyrannical interference with their rights. And why? Because Sir Robert Peel clogged the measure with the condition that any testator so leaving property should have his will made and registered three months before his death. Because he wishes to protect the interests of the Roman Catholic laity by securing them against the interference of the clergy when their relatives are at the point of death he stirs the bile and rouses the indignation of ravenous and pelf-seeking ecclesiastics. He brought in a bill to remedy what was said to be the great defect in the registration laws and it was not his fault that it was not carried; he proposed to extend the franchise and he was denounced for doing so by the advocates of universal suffrage; he has promoted the formation of railways; he has issued a commission to enquire into the oppressions said to be perpetrated on their tenantry by the Irish landlords; and he has subjected Irish absentees to the payment of the property tax. Whig promises ""in favour of Ireland"" were used by Mr O'Connell as arguments to procure the abatement of the Repeal agitation; although no man knew better than he did that if his ""base brutal and bloody"" friends had even the inclination they had not the power to carry out their intentions. Tory promises of a still more conciliatory nature are used as a stimulus to its extension; although Mr O'Connell equally well knows that what Sir Robert Peel promises his influence with the English people may probably enable him to accomplish. Ay but that is just what the sagacious demagogue wishes to prevent. If his grievances were removed the pretence for agitation would be destroyed. If there be real grievances and if Mr O'Connell wished to have then redressed why not attempt to do so? The ministry are willing to assist him--the public feeling and the opinion of Parliament are decidedly in his favour; yet what measures have he or his followers proposed for the adoption of the legislature? The truth is nothing annoys him more than the desire manifested by the premier and the Parliament to remove all just grounds of complaint and therefore it is that he has fixed on ""repeal of the union "" which he knows to be impracticable. A man's own interest must be considered and ""the Liberator"" is well aware that if agitation ceased the _twenty thousand a-year_ paid him by the ""starving people"" as a recompense for having patriotically rejected an office worth but _five_ would cease also. We have alluded to the amount of taxation imposed on Ireland to prove that injustice is not perpetrated upon her under that most touching head;--we have exposed the fictitious grievances and recounted the measures passed and promised by Sir Robert Peel to show how groundless the complaints of the agitators are and that if there be wrongs there is on his part a sincere desire to redress them;--and we have adverted to the manner in which those beneficent acts and promises so favourable to their views and injurious to his administration have been received by those who profess to be the friends and are the leaders of the people for whose welfare they are intended--to convince the British minister and the British people of the absolute impossibility of satisfying men whose own selfish interest lies at the bottom of all their actions and who fabricate grievances that under the pretence of seeking their redress they may be afforded opportunities of inculcating treason. What more is there which can be effected by Parliament which would better the state of the Irish peasantry _while_ they suffer themselves to be made the dupes of every headless demagogue and while they by their own atrocities drive from amongst them every person who is willing or able to afford them employment? The existing laws cannot repress the cruel outrages which they commit. Can an act of Parliament humanize their minds or impart mercy to their hearts? The law cannot fix a maximum for rent; and if it could it would be only to increase their turbulence without any mitigating comforts. Extend the franchise it will only enable them to accomplish more political mischief--for they reject as nothing all measures however beneficial which do not tend to the dismemberment of the empire; endow their church and they accuse you of corrupting it; truckle to them and you but make them more exacting; coerce them and you benefit themselves and save the country. That Ireland does labour under evils no man can doubt; but they are evils which have grown up under an exploded system which all modern legislation has tended to remedy but which no legislation can at once remove. The education of the people heretofore altogether neglected is now being attended to; but years will have passed before any favourable change can be effected through its instrumentality; and if things be suffered to progress as they have lately done evil instead of good must result from the enlightenment of the people by means of a system which imparts knowledge without inculcating religion. If you extend their information and still leave them under the political sway of those who induce the more ignorant by the most monstrous promises and compel the more instructed and better disposed by unchecked intimidation to follow in their wake it is clear that you but endow the demagogues with more power and render the enemies of order more capable of effecting their designs. The memorable expressions of one who was the champion of a people's privileges and the victim of their ferocity are most true that ""to inform a people of their rights before instructing them and making them familiar with their duties leads naturally to the abuse of liberty and the usurpation of individuals; it is like opening a passage for the torrent before a channel has been prepared to receive or banks to direct it.""[8] Yes Ireland is afflicted by evils but those evils are created not so much by the defects of the law or by the neglect and tyranny of the better classes as by the total demoralization of the lower. The Irish peasant naturally brave generous and faithful is by the system under which he is brought up rendered cruel merciless and deceitful. There may be and probably are hardships inflicted by some of the landlords; but they are produced in most instances by criminal and precedent acts on the part of the people. In no country in the world are the rights of property so ill understood or so recklessly violated: the industrious man fears to surround his cottage with a garden because his fruit and vegetables would be carried off by his lazy and dishonest neighbours; and he is deterred from growing turnips which would add to his wealth from the certain knowledge that his utmost care cannot preserve them. Amongst no people on the face of the earth are the obligations of an oath or the discharge of the moral duties so utterly disregarded: any man the greatest culprit can find persons to prove an _alibi_; the most atrocious assassin has but to seek protection to obtain it. Where in the civilized world but in Ireland can you find a ""sliding-scale"" of fees for the perpetration of murder? And why is this so? Because the religious instruction of the people has been totally neglected; because their priests have become politicians and stopping at nothing to accomplish their objects they teach the peasantry by private precept and example to disrespect and disregard those doctrines which they publicly inculcate; because their bishops pitchforked from the potatoe-basket to the palace become drunk with the incense offered to their vulgar vanity and the patronage granted in return for their unprincipled political support instead of checking the misconduct of the subordinates stimulate them to still further violence [9] and stop at nothing which can forward their objects; because the opinions of the people are formed on the statements and advice of mendicant agitators who have but one object in view their own pecuniary aggrandizement; because a rabid and revolutionary press concealing its ultimate designs under the praiseworthy and proper motive of affording protection to the weak seeks to overturn all law and order and pandering to the worst passions of an ignorant and ferocious populace goads them by the most unfounded and mischievous statements to the commission of crime and then adduces the atrocity of their acts as a proof of the injustice of their treatment. Every murder is palliated _because_ it arises from ""the occupation of land."" Every brutal assassination is paraded as ""a fact"" for Lord Devon and is recommended to that nobleman's attention; not that the helpless and unoffending family of the victim may be afforded redress but that the executioner of their parent may obtain commiseration. No ma
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ter what the conduct of the tenant may have been--no matter what arrears of rent he may have owed--to evict him is a crime which in the eyes of those unprincipled journalists seems to justify an immediate recourse to ""the wild justice of revenge."" The rights of property are said to be guaranteed by the law--while the exercise of those rights is rendered impossible by the combination of unprincipled men and the force of a _morbid_ public opinion. He who would think it ""monstrous"" that a merchant should be debarred from the right of issuing execution against his creditor shudders with horror at the idea of a landlord distraining for his unpaid rent. And the individual who delights in the metropolitan improvements and glories in the opening of St Giles's though it drive thousands of ""the suffering poor"" at once and unrecompensed from their miserable abodes considers the improvement of an Irish estate as too dearly purchased if effected by the expulsion of one ill-conditioned and remunerated ruffian. But this morbid public opinion only feels for the lawless the idle and overholding tenant; for the landlord it has no sympathy--_he_ may be robbed of his rights he may be unable to educate or support his family because he cannot obtain his rents but his sufferings create no feeling in his favour; his case forms no fact for Lord Devon. The accomplished the well-born and the good may be driven from the homes of their ancestors and reduced to beggary because the dishonest occupiers will neither pay their engagements nor surrender their lands and no one laments their fate. The gentleman may be forced to emigrate and be sent into exile by his necessities without any notice being taken of such an event. But let a tenant who has been profligate dishonest and reduced to poverty by his own misconduct be dispossessed of the smallest portion of ground on which he eked out a wretched existence and which if he had it in fee would not be sufficient to support his family--let such an one be but dispossessed and even though he be afforded the means of emigrating to countries where land is plenty and wages remunerative the ""Liberal press"" will teem with ""the horrors and the cruelties"" of ""the Irish system!"" Doubtless it would be most desirable that every man should be possessed of a sufficiency of land and that he should (if you will) have it in fee; but how is this to be accomplished? The Irish population is too dense to be comfortably supported on the extent of soil which the country possesses _without_ the assistance of manufactures; and the conduct of the people under the guidance of their leaders effectually prevents their establishment. There is but one way under existing circumstances by means of which this happy state could be produced and that is by following the example of the French revolutionists by cutting the throats or otherwise disposing of the present proprietors and then selling to the peasantry at the moderate prices which were formerly fixed on by the Convention. The Irish gentleman is held up to public disapprobation because he has a lawless and pauper tenantry; and if he attempt to improve their moral and social condition by removing the worst conducted and enlarging the holdings of the others so as to enable them to live in comfort his conduct is considered still more odious even though he send the dispossessed at his own expense to those colonies to which thousands of the best disposed of the people voluntarily emigrate. What in God's name is he to do? While all remain it is an absolute impossibility that good can be effected for any. The evil is sedulously pointed out and the only practicable remedy is resisted by the same persons--the friends ""par excellence "" of the people! This moral disorganization and the total disrespect for the rights of property by which it is accompanied creates other evils as its necessary consequences; it produces hostility and ill feeling between the higher and the lower classes augments absenteeism and deprives the peasantry of the personal superintendence of those who would really have their interests at heart and by whose example they would be benefited. Nor can we be surprised that any person whose circumstances enables him to do so should reside out of Ireland; when we see every man of rank and fortune who relinquishes the pleasures of the capital and the enjoyments of society for the purpose of settling on his estates and performing his duties subjected to the abuse of every scurrilous priest and the insults of every penniless agitator. Landlords naturally wish to reside at home where their possessions in a wholesome state of society would secure them local influence and respect; but unless the Irish gentleman bows to the dictates of every local representative of the ""august leader "" he is deprived of both and risks his personal safety into the bargain. No men profess to lament absenteeism more than the priests and agitators. But how do they act? They declare against the non-residence of the proprietors; but their sole object in doing so is to rouse the feelings of their auditors and thus prepare them for the performance of what they wish them to effect. What encouragement do they or their creatures afford to such as do return? We like facts. The Marquis of Waterford a bold and daring sportsman boundless in his charities frank and cordial in his manners not obnoxious on account of his politics and admitted on all hands to be one of the very best landlords in Ireland--in fact just such a character as the Irish would admire--he comes to reside and spend his eighty thousand a-year in the country and how is he treated? He gets up a splendid sporting establishment in Tipperary; _his hounds and horses were twice poisoned_; and this not being found sufficient to drive him from the neighbourhood in which he was affording amusement and spending money _his offices were fired_ and his servants with difficulty saved their lives. Compelled to abandon Tipperary he betakes himself to his family mansion in Waterford; and how is he received there? Why in his own town and within his hearing we find the ""meek and Christian priest"" addressing his tenants and labourers the men whom he employs and supports after the following fashion:--""Men of Portlan! you were the leading men who put down the Beresford in '26 (_the marquis's father_.) I call on you now having put down one set of tyrants to put down another set of tyrants "" (_the marquis himself_.)[10] Does such conduct (and this is but one instance of many which we could adduce) evince a desire on the part of the ""pastors of the people "" to encourage the residence of the gentry or a wish to procure for the peasantry those blessings which they paint in such glowing terms as sure to ensue from their landlords living and spending their incomes amongst them? Much as the priests and agitators declaim against absenteeism nothing would be more contrary to their wishes than that the absentees should return. They have no desire to share their influence with others; and hence it is that an excuse is always made for quarrelling with every resident who cannot be made subservient to their wishes; and while they steadily persevere in their system of annoyance and offence they as lustily reiterate their lamentations on a state of things which their own conduct tends to produce. That we are justified in attributing the poverty the misery and the crimes of the Roman Catholic peasantry to the constant state of agitation and excitement in which they are kept by their leaders and the bad example set them by their religious instructors and not to any pecuniary burdens (legislative or local) imposed upon them we can easily prove by a reference to the condition of that portion of the Irish people who are not subject to their control or corrupted by their influence. It is well known that in the province of Ulster land fetches at least one-third more rent than in either of the other provinces although the quality of the soil is by no means so good. Yet what is the condition of the people? what their habits? what the appearance of the country in this less favoured district? We shall let an authority often quoted by Mr O'Connell answer our question. Mr Kohl[11] tells us that ""the main root of Irish misery is to be sought in the indolence levity extravagance and want of energy of the national character."" And again in passing from that portion of the country where the majority of the inhabitants profess the Roman Catholic religion to that in which the great bulk of the population are Protestants or Presbyterians the same writer says--""On the other side of these miserable hills whose inhabitants are years before they can afford to get the holes mended in their potato-kettles--the most indispensable and important article of furniture in an Irish cabin--the territory of Leinster ends and that of Ulster begins. The coach rattled over the boundary line and all at once we seemed to have entered a new world. I am not in the slightest degree exaggerating when I say that every thing was as suddenly changed as if by an enchanter's wand. The dirty cabins by the road-side were succeeded by neat pretty cheerful-looking cottages; regular plantations well cultivated fields pleasant little cottage-gardens and shady lines of trees met the eye on every side. At first I could scarcely believe my own eyes and thought that at all events the change must be merely local and temporary caused by the better management of that particular estate. No counter change however appeared; the improvement lasted the whole way to Newry; and from Newry to Belfast every thing continued to show me that I had entered the country of a totally different people--namely the district of the Scottish settlers the active and industrious Presbyterians."" Nor can we be surprised at the condition of this unhappy country when we see the Executive looking quietly on when the public press has become the apologist of crime and public sympathy is enlisted on the side of the evil-doers. _Four murders_ have within the last month been perpetrated in Tipperary which were all but justified by the local papers _because_ they were supposed to have been the acts of tenants dispossessed _for non-payment of rent_. _They_ excited no horror. A _fifth_ was added to the bloody catalogue which roused the indignation of the virtuous _Vindicator_;[12] and why? _Solely because_ it was the result of a private quarrel. _""We own ""_ says this respectable guardian of public morality ""_that such a system of murderous aggression_ AS THIS _remote from any of those agrarian causes which may account for crime is calculated to fill every mind with indignation._""[13] Are we not justified in demanding of the government how long this state of things is to be permitted to continue? how long the lives and properties of the respectable and loyal inhabitants of Ireland are to be left at the mercy and the disposal of a ferocious and bloodstained populace? how much further open and undisguised treason is to be allowed to proceed? The Taleian policy will not answer. Mr O'Connell may abandon his plans falsify his promises and break his most solemn engagements--but there will be no relief; he will still be supported so long as his agitation is unchecked--so long as the people think that through the instrumentality of _his_ measures _their_ designs may be accomplished. And if after a further period of excitement after a still increasing belief in their own ability to attain the avowed object of their wishes ""the free possession of the land "" the peasantry should be deserted or betrayed by their leaders the best that could then be expected would be the horrors of an unsuccessful servile war. Mean time the enemies of Great Britain are openly apprised of the disaffection of the Irish people who but bide their time and wait their opportunity. SINGULAR PASSAGES IN THE LIFE OF A RUSSIAN OFFICER. During a twelvemonth's residence in a continental city I became acquainted with a Russian officer whom I will designate by the name of Adrian. He was a man still in the prime of life but who had endured much sorrow and calamity which had imparted a tinge of melancholy to his character and rendered him apparently indifferent to most of the enjoyments that men usually seek. He was no longer in the Russian service did not appear to be rich kept two horses upon which he used to take long solitary rides that constituted apparently his only pleasure. He had seen much of the world and his life had evidently been an adventurous one; but he was not communicative on matters regarding himself although on general subjects he would sometimes converse willingly and when he did so his conversation was highly interesting. He was one of those persons with whom it is difficult to become intimate beyond a certain point; and although I had reason to believe that he liked me and for nearly a year we passed a portion of each day together he never laid aside a degree of reserve or approached in any way to a confidential intercourse. I was one day reading in my room when Adrian's servant came in all haste to summon me to his master who had been thrown from his horse and was not expected to survive the injuries he had received. I hurried to the hotel and found my unfortunate friend suffering greatly but perfectly calm and collected. Two medical men who had been called in had already informed him that his end was rapidly approaching. He had appeared little moved by the intelligence. I approached his bedside; he took my hand and pressed it kindly. I was deeply grieved at the sad state in which I found him; but time was too short to be wasted in expressions of sympathy and sorrow and I thought I should better show the regard I really felt for him by offering to be of any service in my power with respect to the arrangement of his affairs or the execution of such wishes as he might form. ""My affairs are all in order "" he said; ""my will and the address of my nearest surviving relative are in yonder writing-desk. I have no debts and whatever sum is derived from the sale of my personal effects I wish to be given to the hospitals of the town."" He drew a ring set with an antique cameo from his finger. ""Accept this "" he said to me ""as a slight memorial of our acquaintance which has been productive of much pleasure to me."" He paused exhausted by the exertion he had made to speak. After a few moments he resumed. ""You have at times seemed to wish to hear something of my past life "" said he with a faint smile. ""Amongst my papers is a small leathern portfolio which I give to you with the manuscript it contains. These gentlemen "" added he looking at the physicians ""will bear witness to the bequest."" At this moment the Roman Catholic priest who had been sent for entered the room and Adrian expressed a wish to be left alone with him. That same evening he expired. I had no difficulty in obtaining possession of the portfolio bequeathed to me. In the papers it contained were recorded a series of incidents so extraordinary that I am still in doubt whether to consider them as having really happened or as being the invention of a fantastical and overstrained imagination. I kept the MS. by me for some time but have finally resolved to translate and publish it merely substituting fictitious names for those set down in the original. The narrative is in some respects incomplete but whether in consequence of Adrian's sudden death or because no further circumstances connected with it came to his knowledge I am of course unable to say. It is as follows:-- I am by birth a Russian but my childhood and youth were passed at Hamburg. Owing to the early age at which I lost my father my recollections of him are necessarily but imperfect. I remember him as a tall handsome man somewhat careworn constantly engaged in the correspondence rendered necessary by his numerous commercial speculations and frequently absent from home upon journeys or voyages of greater or less duration. His life had been an anxious one and his success by no means constant; but he still persevered led on by a sanguine temperament to hope for that fortune which had hitherto constantly eluded his grasp. It was shortly after my tenth birth-day and we were anxiously expecting my father's return from a voyage to the East Indies. Before his departure he had promised my mother that if he succeeded in the objects of this distance expedition he would retire from business and settle down quietly to pass the rest of his days in the country. The letters received from him led her to believe that the result of his voyage had been satisfactory and she was therefore anticipating his return with double pleasure. At last one evening news was brought that the ship in which he had taken his passage was come into port and just as my mother and myself were leaving the house to go and welcome the wanderer my father made his appearance. I will pass over the transports of joy with which he was received. So soon as they had a little subsided he presented to us under the name of the Signor Manucci a dark fine-looking man who accompanied him and whom he had invited to sup with him. I say with _him_ because to our great surprise and disappointment neither my mother nor myself were admitted to partake of the meal. Hitherto my father's return from his voyages had been celebrated as a sort of festival. A large table was laid out and our friends came in to welcome him to ask him innumerable questions and tell him all that had occurred during his absence. On this occasion however things were arranged very differently. My father instead of joining his family and friends at supper caused the meal to be served in a separate room for himself and the Italian; and long after they had done eating I could hear them as I lay in bed walking up and down the apartment and discoursing earnestly together in a foreign tongue. My bed had been made for that night upon a sofa in one of the sitting-rooms which adjoined my father's apartment. My usual sleeping-room was given up to the stranger who was to pass the night at our house. My temperament was naturally a nervous one and my father's return had so excited me that I found it impossible to sleep but lay tossing about till long after every body in the house had apparently retired to rest. The strong smell of sea-water proceeding from my father's cloak which was lying on a chair near my bed perhaps also contributed to keep me awake; and when I at last began to doze I fancied myself on board ship and every thing around me seemed tumbling and rolling about as in a storm. After lying for some time in this dreamy state I at last fell into an uneasy feverish slumber. For long after that night I was unable to decide whether what then occurred was a frightful dream or a still more frightful reality. It was only by connecting subsequent circumstances and discoveries with my indistinct recollections that some years afterwards I became convinced of the reality of what I that night witnessed. I had scarcely fallen asleep as it seemed to me when I was awakened by the creaking of the door leading into my father's room. It was hastily opened and the stranger appeared bearing a lamp in his hand and apparently much agitated. He walked several times up and down both rooms as if one had been too small for him in his then excited state. At last he began to speak to himself in broken sentences some of which reached my ear. ""I leave to-morrow "" he said; ""when I return all will be over--all--the fool!"" Then he took another turn through the room and paused suddenly before a large mirror. ""Do I look like a murderer?"" he exclaimed wildly and with a ghastly rolling of his eyes. Then suddenly tearing off a black wig and whiskers which he wore he stood before me an old and greyheaded man. At this moment he for the first time noticed my temporary bed. ""Ha!"" he muttered with a start ""how imprudent!"" He immediately replaced his wig and with noiseless steps approached my couch. Terrified as I was I had yet sufficient presence of mind to counterfeit sleep; and the stranger after standing a minute or two beside me went softly into my father's room the door of which he shut behind him. When I awoke the next morning and thought of this strange incident it assumed so vague and indefinite a form that I set it down as the illusion of a dream. Every thing was as usual in the house; my father it is true seemed thoughtful and grave but that was nothing uncommon with him. He spoke kindly to me and apologised to my mother for his seclusion of the preceding evening; but said that he had been compelled to discuss matters of the greatest importance with the Signor Manucci who was then sitting beside him at breakfast. My mother was too delighted at her husband's return to be very implacable; and if the evening had been clouded by disappointment our morning meal was to make amends a picture of harmony and perfect happiness. About noon Manucci took an affectionate leave of my father and departed; not however till he had promised that he would shortly renew his visit. The day passed without incident. My father had planned an excursion into the country for the following morning to visit an old friend who resided a few leagues from Hamburg. I was awakened at an early hour in order to get ready to accompany him and my mother. I hastily dressed myself and went down into the parlour. What was my surprise when on entering the room I saw my father lying pale and suffering upon a sofa while my mother was sitting beside him in tears anxiously awaiting the arrival of a physician who had been sent for and who presently made his appearance. He felt my father's pulse enquired the symptoms and finally pronounced him to be in a state of considerable danger. Each successive half hour increased the sick man's sufferings and before the afternoon he was speechless. In sadness and anxiety we were surrounding my father's couch when suddenly a carriage stopped at the house door and the next instant Manucci entered the apartment. He expressed the utmost grief and sympathy upon learning my father's illness sat down beside the dying man for such he now was and took his hand. My father beckoned his friend to stoop down that he might whisper something to him; but although his lips moved an inarticulate muttering was all that he could utter. He then with an expression of almost despairing grief upon his countenance took my hand and that of Manucci joined them together in his which were already damp and chill with the approach of death and pressed them to his heart with a deep sigh. The next instant there was a convulsive movement of his limbs--a rattle in his throat. My father was dead. I shall never forget that moment. It was with some difficulty that Manucci and myself withdrew our hands from those of my father which clutched them tightly in the agony of death. It was the first corpse I had ever looked upon and although of a parent whom I dearly loved I yet recoiled from it with an irrepressible shudder. The stranger too inspired me with an invincible repugnance. I could not forget my dream or vision or whatever it was when I had seen him changed into a grey repulsive-looking old man and the mysterious words--""Do I look like a murderer?"" rang ever in my ears. My mother's grief at her sudden bereavement was boundless. She was incapable of arranging or ordering any thing; and as my tender years prevented me from being of any use Manucci took upon himself the management of every thing. Through his exertions the arrangements for the funeral were rapidly completed; and I followed to the grave the body of my unfortunate father who had died so said the doctor of a stroke of apoplexy. Child as I was I was greatly struck by the coincidence between this sudden death and the singular dream I had had not forty-eight hours previous to it. I said nothing however; for I feared Manucci and should not have thought my life safe had he heard that I related my dream to any one. In after years when I was better able to form a judgment on these matters I thought it useless to renew the grief of my poor mother then becoming old and infirm by a communication of what I had witnessed on that memorable night or by inspiring her with doubts as to the real cause of her husband's death. Meanwhile Manucci busied himself in the arrangement of my father's affairs concerning which he appeared perfectly well informed. In the course of their liquidation he became acquainted with many of the chief people in Hamburg who all spoke very highly of his talents and seemed captivated by his agreeable conversation and varied acquirements. In an incredibly short time he had made himself numerous friends who courted his society and invited him to their houses. Nobody knew any thing more of him than what he himself chose to say which was very little. It was rumoured however that he belonged to a religious fraternity--but whether of the Jesuits or some other order no one knew nor was it possible to trace the origin of the report. Manucci himself the object of all these conjectures seemed perfectly unconscious of or indifferent to them. He took a house at a short distance from the town close to a small country residence to which my mother had retired; and in conformity with my father's last and mutely expressed wish showed a most friendly disposition towards me interesting himself in my studies and to a certain extent superintending my education. He visited us very frequently and gradually I became accustomed to his presence and my aversion to him diminished. The remembrance of my dream grew fainter and fainter and the guilty agitation and strange appearance of Manucci on the night of his arrival at Hamburg lost the sharp distinctness of outline with which they had at first been engraved upon my memory. I regarded all that I had seen that night as a dream and nothing more. The house inhabited by Manucci was of handsome exterior and situated in the middle of a large garden. The door was rarely opened to visitors and besides the Italian an old servant-maid was its only inmate. I myself was never admitted within its walls till I had attained my seventeenth year; but when I was the curious arrangements of the dwelling made a strong impression upon my fancy. The whole of the ground floor was one large hall of which the ceiling was supported by pillars and whence a staircase led to three apartments one used as a sitting-room another as bed-chamber and the third which was kept constantly shut as a study. The sitting-room instead of doors had green silk curtains in the doorways. Eight chandeliers were fixed in pairs upon the wall and between them were four black marble tablets on which were engraved in golden letters the words:--Watch! Pray! Labour! Love! In a recess was a sort of altar above which was suspended a valuable painting from the hand of one of the old masters. Behind a folding screen in the sleeping-room stood the bed which was surrounded by sabres daggers stilettoes and pistols of various calibre; and from this room a strong door clenched and bound with iron led into the study the interior of which I never saw. Altogether the house made such a strange and unpleasant impression upon me that I felt no wish to repeat my visit. Manucci had now been residing seven years amongst us leading a peaceful and quiet life a frequent visitor at our house well looked upon and liked by all who knew him. Although there was certainly a degree of mystery attaching to him yet no one was suspicious of him nor had the voice of scandal ever been lifted up to his prejudice. He was friendly and attentive to my mother kind to me courteous to every one seemed perfectly contented with his mode of life and never talked of changing it. Our astonishment was consequently so much the greater when one morning we learnt his sudden disappearance from the neighbourhood. Enquiries were made in every direction but none had seen him depart. His shrivelled old housekeeper was also nowhere to be found. It was within a few weeks after this strange disappearance that I obtained the first insight into the character of the mysterious Italian. After my father's death and the winding up of his affairs his papers and letters had been put in boxes and locked up in a closet. I one day took it into my head to rummage these papers. There were vast numbers of bills of lading and exchange insurance papers and the like all matters of no interest to me; but at last upon untying a bundle of miscellaneous documents a small packet fell out which seemed likely to reward my search. It consisted of fragments of letters much damaged by fire and which to judge from the size of the half-burned envelope that contained them and that had apparently been originally used for a much larger parcel probably formed only a small part of a collection of letters that had been accidentally or intentionally destroyed by the flames. Here are some of these fragments of letters. ""... The society of a man whose acquaintance I have made since my arrival here becomes each day more agreeable to me. He has seen a vast deal of the world and his mind is stored with the most varied knowledge to such a degree that it sometimes appears to me as if the longest life would be insufficient to acquire all that he has learned. Our acquaintance was made in an odd place enough--a gambling-house to which I had gone as a matter of curiosity. He was sitting away from the tables and addressed some trifling remark to me to which I replied. He then as if he had known who and what I was began talking of the commerce in which I am engaged and displayed an intimate acquaintance with mercantile affairs. Our conversation had already become animated and interesting when it was interrupted by a noise and bustle in the play-room; and several persons came up to my new acquaintance and congratulated him. It appeared that he had staked sum equivalent to the whole amount there was in the bank and it was while the game was being played that we had entered into conversation. He now went to the table and received his winnings from the disconcerted bankers with an appearance of perfect indifference returning them at the same time a handsome sum--that they might have as he said a chance of recovering what he had won from them! Then after giving me his address and inviting me to call on him he left the house"" ... ""... The diamonds ... enormous value ... excellent bargain ... twenty thousand pounds sterling"" ... (This letter had been nearly destroyed by the fire.) ""... It is some days since I have seen my new friend although his agreeable conversation and manners render his society more pleasing to me at every interview. I am embarrassed about this purchase of diamonds which I an very desirous of making but find myself without sufficient funds for the purpose. If M---- would join me in the speculation his recent winnings would be more than is wanted to make up the deficiency. I must propose it to him ... ""... I have just returned from a visit to M----. It appears that he is an Italian by birth although speaking several languages as well as a native and that he is travelling for the affairs of an important association of which he is a member. He has travelled a great deal in Germany and will probably return thither shortly. To-day he told me that he was glad to have won the large sum to which I alluded in a former letter; that he had much need of it for a great object he had in view but for which he was still afraid it would scarcely suffice. Upon hearing this I resolved to say nothing to him about the partnership in the diamond speculation ... ""... It is impossible for me to describe to you the fascination which this man exercises over me. You know that I do not usually exaggerate although inclined to the mystical and romantic. I have lived too little on land however for any ideas of that nature to have taken much hold upon my mind. At sea the movement of the winds and waves the unintermitting intercourse with one's fellow-men--the whole life of a mariner in short leaves little leisure for such fancies. But here in this tropical clime where the heavens are of so deep a blue and the leaves of so bright a green where the imagination is worked upon by Oriental scenery and magnificence and the very air one breathes is laden with perfumes from the flower-fields and spice-groves of Araby the Blest here is the land of fiction and reverie and here I at times think that my new and most agreeable friend has laid me under a spell equally pleasant and potent in its effects--a spell
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from which I have neither wish nor ability to emancipate myself. Yet why should I wish to escape an influence exercised only for my good and by which I must benefit? My greatest happiness is in the friendship of this man my greatest trust and reliance are in his counsels. Stern is he bold almost rash in his actions but ever successful; and when he has an end to gain nothing can withstand him no obstacle bar him from its attainment.... ""... in the kindest manner lent me the sum I wanted to complete the purchase-money of the diamonds but obstinately refuses to share the profits which on my return to Europe are sure to accrue from this speculation. What generosity! M----is assuredly the most disinterested and the truest of friends. We are becoming each day more attached to each other. He has formed a project to come and settle near Hamburg and there we shall pass the rest of our days together. He is a most singular and interesting person. I shall weary you perhaps by all these details; but every thing that relates to him interests me. Only think the other day I found in a cabinet in his apartment a mask which he told me he had himself made. I never saw such a masterpiece. It was of wax imitating perfectly a human countenance of an expression eminently attractive although sad. He was not in the room when I found it in seeking for a book he had promised to lend me. He came in when I had just taken it out of the drawer in which it was and an angry exclamation"" ... These disjointed but significant fragments were all of any interest that the flames had spared. From them however I acquired a moral certainty that Manucci was my father's murderer. In order to obtain possession of the diamonds of which no trace had been found after my father's death the perfidious Italian had doubtless administered to him some deadly poison. This must have been so skilfully prepared as not to take effect till the murderer had left the house a sufficiently long time to prevent any risk of suspicion attaching to him. Burning to avenge my unfortunate parent I now set to work with the utmost energy to discover what had become of Manucci. I caused enquiries to be made in every direction and resorted to every means I could devise to find out the assassin; but for a long time all was in vain. It was not till several years after my mother's death that we again met--a meeting which like our first was to me fraught with bitter sorrow. I had been for some time in the Russian service and the regiment to which I belonged was quartered at a village a few leagues from Warsaw. At the period I speak of a country house in the neighbourhood of the village belonged to and was occupied by General Count Gutzkoff a nobleman of ancient descent and great wealth and who had an only daughter called Natalie the perfection of feminine grace and beauty. The villa had been christened Natalina after his daughter and no expense had been spared to render it and the grounds attached to it worthy of their lovely sponsor. Amongst other embellishments a large portion of the park had been laid out in miniature imitation of Swiss scenery with chalêts and waterfalls and artificial mountains that must have taken a vast time and labour to construct. There was an excellent house in this part of the grounds inhabited by a sort of intendant or steward and in this house rooms were assigned to me I having been quartered upon General Gutzkoff. I had thus many opportunities of seeing Natalie whose charms soon inspired me with a passion which to my inexpressible joy I after a time found to be reciprocated by her. I am not writing a romance but a plain narrative of some of the strangest incidents in my life; I will therefore pass over the rise and progress of our attachment of the existence of which the general at length became aware. He was a proud and ambitious man and my small fortune and lieutenant's epaulette by no means qualified me in his eyes to become his son-in-law. Natalie was threatened with a convent and I was requested to discontinue my visits to the house. About the same time I heard it rumoured that a rich cousin then stopping with the general was the intended husband of the young countess. For some days I found it impossible to obtain a meeting with Natalie although I put every stratagem in practice and sought every opportunity of meeting her in her walks. After the general's positive although courteous prohibition I of course could not think of returning to his house. It was therefore with much anxiety that I looked forward to a ball which was to be given by a rich old Smyrniot who lived at Warsaw. He was acquainted with the officers of my regiment and to console us as he said for the dulness of our country quarters he proposed to give a fête sufficiently splendid to attract the ladies of the capital to the village where we were stationed. He was intimate with General Gutzkoff who lent him for the occasion the part of his domain called the Swiss park and there the fête was to be held. I made sure of meeting Natalie there and perhaps even of finding an opportunity of speaking to her unobserved by her father. The much wished-for evening came and a numerous and brilliant company was assembled in the gardens. The long alleys of trees were rendered light as day by a profusion of lamps of which the globes of painted crystal were suspended by wires from tree to tree and appeared to float unsupported upon the air. Under two large pavilions of various colours flooring had been laid down and chalked in fanciful devices. These were for the dancers. Several bands of music were placed in different parts of the grounds; and in the various cottages and Swiss dairies tables were laid out covered with the most exquisite refreshments and delicate wines. On either side of the principal fountains were transparencies with emblems and mottoes complimentary to the guests and to the noble owner of the park; and finally that nothing might be wanting to the gratification of every taste a crimson tent richly decorated contained a faro-table upon which a large bank in gold was placed. Crowds of officers and of beautiful women splendidly attired thronged the dancing rooms or rambled through the illuminated walks. Natalie was there but accompanied by her father and cousin so that I could not venture to accost her. She looked sad I thought but more lovely than ever; and when at last she sat down in one of the summer-houses I approached as near as I could without being myself seen in order at least to have the pleasure of gazing on her sweet countenance. I was leaning against a tree cursing the cruel fate that separated me from the object of my love when one of my comrades came up and asked me if I would not go to the faro-room. There was a man there he said playing with the most wonderful luck that had ever been seen. He had already broken two banks and seemed likely to do the same with a third that had been put down. I was in no humour to take interest in such matters and should have declined my brother officer's invitation had I not just then seen Natalie and her companions get up and take the direction of the gambling tent. I followed with my friend. The play that was going on had however no attraction for me; I had no eyes for any one but Natalie and was almost unaware of what was passing around me. After standing for a short time near the table the general turned aside to talk with the colonel of my regiment and his cousin went to speak with some ladies who had just entered. The moment was favourable for exchanging a few words with Natalie. I was about to approach her when there was a sudden bustle and loud exclamations round the table. ""See there!"" exclaimed my comrade ""he has won again."" I glanced hastily at the fortunate player and then started back petrified by surprise. It was Manucci. My first impulse upon beholding the man whom I had been so long seeking and whom I held for my father's murderer was instantly to seize him and tax him with his crime. An instant's reflection however suggested to me the impropriety of such a course. What evidence had I to offer before a court of law in support of my accusation? The tale I had to tell was far too extraordinary a one to be believed on the unsupported testimony of an accuser. This man seemed well known to several of the guests who stood near him; he wore the decorations of two or three foreign orders and appeared to be a person of some mark. Might I not even be deceived by a strong resemblance? At any rate it was sufficient if I kept him in sight till I had an opportunity of making enquiries concerning him. If it were Manucci I was determined he should not escape me. I was still gazing hard at the stranger and becoming each moment more and more convinced of his identity with Manucci when to my great surprise I saw him leave the table and approach Natalie. She seemed to know him; they exchanged a few sentences and then passing through a door they left the tent together. I hurried after them as fast as the crowd of persons through which I had to make my way would allow me. On getting out of the tent I saw no signs either of Natalie or the stranger. They could not be far--they must have turned down one of the numerous sidepaths; and I darted in quest of them down the first I came to. I had run and walked over nearly half the grounds without finding them when I met the general and his cousin who with looks of some suspicion asked me if I had seen Natalie. I told them with whom I had last seen her; but my description of the stranger although minute and accurate did not enable the general to recognise in him any one of his acquaintance; and separating we resumed our search in different directions with increased anxiety and redoubled care. While thus engaged loud cries were suddenly heard proceeding from the upper floor of one of the châlets or ornamental cottages near which I was then passing and of which the lower part only was used for the purposes of the fête. I hastened thither rushed up the staircase and in so doing ran against an officer who was carrying down Natalie in his arms. She was senseless. At that moment her father arrived and took charge of her. Above stairs all was confusion and alarm and a number of the guests were seeking the villain who had dared to insult or ill-treat the young countess. But he was nowhere to be found and it was supposed that he had jumped out of the window and favoured by the darkness had made his escape. Natalie when she recovered from her swoon was still too weak and too terrified to give any explanation concerning the matter. She was conveyed to her father's house the fête was broken up and the guests took their departure. My brother officers and myself mounted our horses and rode in every direction to endeavour to find the offender. All our researches however were fruitless. Strange to say this singular incident excited much less attention and was much more rapidly forgotten than could possibly have been expected especially when the rank and importance of the offended party were considered. After the first day few efforts seemed to be made for the discovery of the stranger except by myself; and all that I did towards that end was unsuccessful. The murderer of my father the spoiler of my inheritance the vile insulter of the woman I loved had for this time eluded my vengeance. About a fortnight after the fête it became publicly rumoured that any project of marriage which might have been contemplated by General Gutzkoff between his daughter and her cousin was at an end and that Natalie was to take the veil. It was known that before the death of the late countess who was an exceedingly religious woman it had been in agitation to devote Natalie to a religious life; but when the general became a widower nothing more had been heard of the plan. It now almost seemed as if its revival and contemplated execution were in some way consequent on the strange incident at the ball. The matter however was far too delicate for any one to question concerning it those who alone could have given information. At the appointed time Natalie entered as novice a convent of Ursulines situated at about a league from her father's villa. The first news of this event was a terrible shock to me. In spite of the small favour with which the general regarded my attachment to his daughter I had still hoped that time or circumstances might bring about some change in his sentiments. But the cloister opposed a yet stronger bar to my wishes than the will of a parent and the vows once pronounced which at the end of one short year Natalie would have to utter I might bid farewell to hope. Our separation would then be irrevocable and eternal in this world. It was necessary therefore to make the best use of the short space of her noviciate in order to put in execution one of the numerous plans which I devised for freeing her from the state of holy bondage which I was certain she had only through compulsion been induced to enter. Day and night I hovered about the convent in hopes of catching a glimpse of Natalie or of finding an opportunity of giving her a letter in which I strenuously urged her to accept a plan of escape that I proposed to her. At last an opportunity occurred. She was walking in the convent garden with another novice who left her for an instant to gather some flowers. I was watching all their movements and at this moment I threw my letter at Natalie's feet. She took it up retired into a shrubbery walk to read it and presently returned. ""To-morrow "" said she ""the answer--here."" With what anxious impatience did I look forward to her reply and with what despairing feelings did it fill me when I received it! In it Natalie spoke of her approaching death as of an event of the occurrence of which she was thoroughly persuaded and besought me to give up all hopes of again seeing her. At this period of the year the nuns of the Ursuline convent inhabited their summer cells which were a row of buildings situated in the convent garden. Natalie had the last cell which was separated by several empty ones from those of the other sisters. It was on the second day after I received her letter that the nuns were surprised by her not opening her door at the usual hour. They waited some time for her appearance but in vain. They knocked; there was no answer. At last the door was forced open and Natalie was found lying dead upon the floor of the cell. She had evidently been dragged out of bed with great violence; her features were distorted with pain and struggling and in her left breast was a wound which had been the cause of her death. The murderer had broken in through the roof of the cell. The news of this horrible occurrence flew with lightning swiftness through the neighbourhood and to Warsaw. Nobody doubted that there was some connexion between the crime and the singular occurrence at the ball although it was impossible to say what that connexion was. Every attempt to discover and apprehend the murderer proved unavailing. In order to see Natalie for the last time I repaired to the convent church in which according to custom her corpse was laid out. With faltering and uncertain steps I passed through the aisle and reached the chapel where the remains of her I had so fondly loved were lying. I stepped up to the bier but the next instant turned away my face. I lacked courage to look upon the cold corpse of my adored mistress. A violent dizziness seized me the pillars around me seemed to turn and twist about and the roof of the church to shake. I sank senseless upon a chair. How long I may have remained in that state I am unable to say. It was night when consciousness returned and the moon was shedding its cold clear light through the high Gothic windows. I felt heated and excited; all manner of strange fancies passed through my head the predominant one being to go at once and wander about the world till I should discover the fiend to whom the misery I now suffered was attributable. Before doing so however I must see my Natalie once more. I stepped up to the coffin. Natalie lay there in her nun's garments a crucifix upon her breast and a veil surrounding her face which to my inexpressible astonishment and horror I now saw was covered with a mask. I was at first unable to explain this singular circumstance but then it occurred to me that her lovely features had been said to be much distorted in death and doubtless her friends had taken this means of concealing them from the gaze of vulgar curiosity. I would see her though I thought; I would kiss those lips once so warm and love-breathing now so pale and chilled. The better if in her death-like embrace I found an end to my life and suffering. I stretched out my hand to detach the mask which was by no means unpleasing in its appearance. It reminded me of the one spoken of by my father in one of his letters; and as I stood looking at it I little by little persuaded myself it must be the same. The lips curved into a mournful smile an attractive expression on the features; only the sockets for the eyes were empty and through them shone the glazed orbs of the departed. Whilst given up to these reflections I suddenly heard a slight rustling noise near me. I looked round and saw a muffled figure sitting at a short distance off in which I thought I recognized some old nun keeping her drowsy vigil by the dead. I took no heed of her but stretched out my hand to tear the mask from Natalie's face when suddenly the figure rose and with three long noiseless strides stood close beside me. The robe in which it was muffled opened and I beheld--Manucci! not the Manucci I had seen at the faro-table nor yet he who had lived for years near my mother's house but the grey old man who had appeared to me on the night of my father's arrival and had said ""Do I look like a murderer?"" ""Thou here villain!"" I exclaimed on beholding this unexpected apparition. ""The hand of heaven is in this!"" I stretched forth my arm to seize the murderer who thus braved me beside the corpse of his last victim; but as I did so I experienced a strange stunning sensation and fell as though struck by a thunderbolt lifeless to the ground. The first persons who entered the church upon the following morning found me in this state and carried me to the nearest house where I lay for weeks in a raging fever during which time Natalie was buried and the flowers that sprang up on her grave were withered by the frosts and snows of winter. When I at last became convalescent and re-appeared amongst men Natalie was forgotten; and the strange circumstances that had occurred to me in the church would have obtained no credence or at most would have been considered as the precursors of fever the visions resulting from a heated imagination and exhausted frame. Indeed my memory was in so confused a state and the weeks I had passed in the unconsciousness of delirium caused every thing that had previously happened to appear so remote and indistinct that I was myself almost unable to give any clear and definite form to the occurrences that preceded my illness. My health was greatly shaken and I was no longer equal to any occupation that required sustained exertion and application. I resigned my commission therefore and formed a plan to divide my life amongst the various large cities of Europe changing from time to time and constantly endeavouring to seize again the thread that had escaped me and if possible to discover and unmask the vile impostor who had destroyed my life's happiness. I may perhaps some day write down the various and strange adventures that I have met with during these researches and in my wandering course of life. In this portfolio however I will put nothing but what relates to any further discoveries I may make concerning the base Italian and his machinations. * * * * * Here Adrian's manuscript ended; but between the two following blank leaves I found a letter dated from St Petersburg written in a different hand and that seemed to form a sort of appendix or continuation to the preceding narrative. This letter from the different dates scattered through it appeared to have been continued from time to time several weeks elapsing between its commencement and the period at which it was sent off. The envelope was wanting and there was no address; but from its contents it appeared that it had not been written to Adrian but to a friend of his who had handed it to him. At the end came a dozen lines in Adrian's handwriting leaving off somewhat abruptly. Here follows the letter:-- _St Petersburg 12th June._ My dear Augustus --Of all the wealthy and distinguished foreigners whom this gay season has brought together in St Petersburg not any attract so much attention as the Marchese d'Emiliano and his daughter. The father is as remarkable for his learning and talents as the daughter is for her innumerable graces and accomplishments which draw all eyes upon her. She has only one extraordinary peculiarity which is--but stay I will first describe her to you so that this singularity when I tell you of it may appear the more striking. Picture to yourself a brunette slender and perfectly formed possessing the exact and beautiful proportions of a Grecian statue--a foot smaller and better shaped than I ever yet beheld--an exquisite hand slender and tapering not one of those short fleshy hands with dimpled fingers which it is now the fashion to admire but for which no precedent is to be found in the Medicean goddess or in any other standard of beauty. A magnificent bust an arm like alabaster a profusion of dark flowing hair grace in every movement. But--now comes the wonder my friend--instead of a face corresponding in beauty with this perfect form there is--a mask. Can you imagine a greater absurdity? and yet they are people who in every other respect show extreme good taste. From the lips of this mask proceeds a voice which for melody and sweetness I have never heard equaled. In speaking its tones are of silver but when she sings one forgets mask and every thing else to give one's-self up to an ecstacy of perfect enjoyment. She knows a vast deal of Italian French and Spanish music languages that she speaks with the utmost purity and she accompanies herself alternately on piano guitar or mandoline of which instruments she is a perfect mistress. Her dancing is no less admirable than her singing; and at every ball to which she goes crowds collect around her to watch the sylph-like grace with which she glides through the dance. In short she unites every womanly accomplishment and yet this heavenly creature persists in concealing her face under that vile mask which fits so closely that not the smallest portion of her countenance can be perceived. However hideous the latter may be it would be preferable to this horrid covering. Not that the mask is ugly; on the contrary it is the handsomest I ever saw and in itself has nothing disagreeable. It is formed of wax and has a mournful expression which is quite attractive at least when its owner sits still; but when she moves or speaks the dead look of the mask has an indescribably unpleasant effect. Several persons have indirectly questioned the Marchese on this subject but he evades or turns off their enquiries with all the tact of a consummate man of the world. Of course it would be indelicate if not unfeeling to ask her about it. Meantime the public amuses itself with all sorts of absurd suppositions. First it is a vow; then she has got a pig's face; then her waiting-maid had said that she had once caught her unmasked and that her face was covered with feathers and had a beak in the middle of it. Then again it is a stratagem to try the man whom she shall marry and to see if he will love her for something besides her appearance and on her wedding-day she will take off the mask and disclose features of perfect beauty. All this is of course mere gossip; for nobody knows any thing about these Italians except that the Marchese is enormously rich and that his daughter in spite of her mask is the most amiable and fascinating of women. Amongst other absurdities a report was spread that the marquis was no other than the celebrated St Germains who as is well known was himself no other than the Wandering Jew. It is ridiculous to hear the extraordinary things they tell of him. Only the other day it was asserted that he had been met in a distant country where he passed under another name and was remarkable for his constant and almost suspicious success in gambling. I should be very curious to trace all these reports to their source. Their inventors can at least have no lack of imagination. The fact is that there is unquestionably something strange and mysterious about the old man--but what does it amount to after all? He is an old Italian marquis his foreign manners and appearance and imposing title work upon the imagination of us northerns and at once make us suspect an adventurer in this worthy old nobleman. The mere presence of Natalie (that is his daughter's name) is sufficient to refute such a suspicion. She is the incarnation of all that is pure and beautiful; and I confess to you my friend that I am each day becoming more and more the slave of her attractions. If in society she exhibits her varied accomplishments on the other hand when we are alone she is the simple and unsophisticated girl. During our _tête-à-têtes_ however it has not escaped me that she is frequently melancholy; a something seems at times to weigh upon her spirits; and although she evidently struggles to hide this she has been unable to conceal it from my close and interested observation. Yes my friend interested for deeply interested I am in all that concerns Natalie; and I own to you that in spite of her mask in spite of the mystery that surrounds her nothing would make me so happy as to call her mine. _27th June._--A week ago it was Natalie's birth-day. She had felt herself somewhat indisposed and had begged the Marchese not to invite any guests. Nevertheless when I called to offer my good wishes on the occasion they kept me there till evening. We then walked out in the garden--Natalie and myself that is to say--and sat down upon a rustic seat amidst a cluster of flowering shrubs that perfumed the air around us. I know not of what we spoke but after a short time I found myself with my arm round Natalie's waist her hand clasped in mine her mask--alas! that I cannot say her face--resting upon my shoulder. It was one of those sweet moments with which past and future have nought to do but during which one lives upon the present. Gradually my lips drew nearer and nearer to her waxen ones but half-jesting she turned her head away. I became more persevering and without saying any thing to her I raised my arm gently till my hand touched her hair amongst which the fastenings of the mask were apparently concealed. In another moment the mystery would be solved and I should gaze doubtless on the most lovely countenance that ever blessed a lover's sight. At that very instant she uttered a sort of shriek and sprang from my embrace. In vain did I entreat and supplicate her to suffer me to remove that envious mask. She was inexorable and just then attracted perhaps by Natalie's cry the Marchese appeared. ""What!"" said he in a distant and somewhat angry tone and manner ""nearly midnight and you are still here?"" The time had indeed passed rapidly. The hint was too direct for me to do otherwise than apologize and depart. Since that evening they have treated me with some coolness nor can I wonder at it. My constant visits to their house have become the talk of all St Petersburg; and it is evident that I must either declare myself the suitor of Natalie or avoid her altogether. Avoid her! How can I do it? Do not blame me Augustus when I tell you that I have decided to go this day to the Marquis and ask his daughter's hand. Rank fortune every thing in short is suitable. Only that mystery--but I will not think of it. I lay down my pen and go instantly to execute my intention. _30th June._--You will set me down as a fool when you read what I last wrote. I should perhaps say the same of you were our positions reversed; and yet were you not my old friend and comrade I should feel disposed to be angry with you for saying it of me on this occasion. She is mine Augustus--mine by her own and her father's promise. My friend I am unutterably happy. I am not able to look forward with any thing like coolness to the moment when she shall remove that odious mask and disclose the lovely countenance which I am persuaded it conceals. _8th July._--I cannot understand Natalie. She seems happy at the prospect of becoming my wife; and yet that same melancholy which I have before noticed hangs about her and seems impossible to be dissipated. Can she have had some previous attachment some disappointed affection which has left its lingering regrets and which her present engagement recalls more vividly to her recollection? And yet why torment myself thus? She loves me--that I cannot doubt; and surely her approaching change of condition and the separation from her father which it must sooner or later entail are sufficient to account for an occasional pensiveness on the part of a young and susceptible girl. In vain do I seek for any other probable cause of her melancholy. At times I fancy that she has some disclosure or confession to make to me which she has difficulty in repressing. _23d July._--The secret is out. Natalie is ugly. You laugh already at the poor dupe. But beware of laughing too soon: for he can be no dupe who becomes the husband of Natalie; should her face prove as hideous as that of Medusa. You will perceive from this that I have not yet seen it nor truth to tell am I now so anxious to do so. She has been tormenting herself with the fear that I should cease to love her when I once saw her unmasked and has reproached herself innumerable times for having encouraged my passion. She has decided what to do. On her marriage-day before I lead her to the altar I am to see her without her mask. To-morrow is that day; and although I am prepared for the very worst yet my uneasiness increases with every hour that brings me nearer to the decisive moment. My regrets are infinite that she has persisted so long in her disguise. If at the commencement of our attachment she had had the courage to remove that fatal mask I must still have loved her; no deformity of feature would have been sufficient to neutralize the effect of her other charms and accomplishments. But now at the moment that I have been looking forward to as the happiest of my life to have my bliss disturbed by such a revelation--it is cruel! Yet how can I blame her for conduct so natural in a woman who loves? She feared to see my growing affection turned into aversion and delayed to the utmost the much dreaded disclosure. Enough for to-day. I send off this letter. After my marriage you shall hear from me again. Ever yours Paul S----. What a ray of light thrown upon my dark uncertainties! ""To St Petersburg instantly! The trace is found!"" Such was my exclamation after reading the above letter which was communicated to me at Vienna by an old and tried friend. In an incredibly short time I had reached the Russian capital. What I there learned was as follows:-- On the day appointed for the marriage of Natalie d'Emiliano and the young Swedish count Paul S---- when all were in readiness to proceed to the church and the guests were only waiting the appearance of the bride and bridegroom a piercing cry was suddenly heard in a room adjoining that in which the bridal party was assembled. The company hurried in the direction of the sound and there found the Count lying apparently lifeless on the floor while the bride was hastily securing the fastenings of her mask. The guests thronged round the former and tried every means of recovering him from the death-like swoon into which he had fallen. After much trouble they were successful. The Marchese and Natalie were then sought for but both had disappeared; and neither of them were ever afterwards seen or heard of in St Petersburg. The bridegroom could never be induced to tell what it was that the mask concealed. TRADITIONS AND TALES OF UPPER LUSATIA. No. IV. THE MOOR MAIDEN. ""Wildernesses and heaths are not the only spots that boast of their _Fata Morgana_ "" said Woldemar in a society of torch-bearers which regularly assembled in the old castle on Christmas night. ""The vision appears in a hundred places in shapes answering to the peculiarity of soil and country in which she rises. Here she is an apparition o
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the air beaming with splendour; there she unfolds herself in glittering mist. On the unbounded plain you behold her in the form of an enchanted city--a paradise of leafy loveliness or it may be simply as a fantastic Erl-King a giddy dazzling vapour. Let her appear however where and how she will she is ever seductive mysterious and beautiful and attended with the awe of a strange nameless delight. ""You know the high table-land strewed with countless blocks of granite between C---- and K----. Inclosed upon two sides by mountains and thick groves of beech it would be a perfect desert but for the clear crystal brook which purls its way along the glistening stones. This labyrinthine brook indeed fills the barren spot with animation whilst it creates too that singular power of attraction which we cannot explain to ourselves but which nevertheless becomes our unfailing companion in regions with which the heart of the people has intimately associated itself by tales of wonder and tradition. ""The Tradition touching this very table-land is dim and shapeless like the thick mist of a sultry summer's day hanging over hill and valley. It is most convenient to the common working mind to retain and hold fast in a history only so much as is needful for the great catastrophe. The people are content to abide by the beginning and end of things not concerning themselves with the important connecting links. All that lies between is left to the imagination of the more inquisitive to fill up. A tradition of this order occurs to me this moment and by your leave I will do my best to complete it:-- ""A mysterious curse lay upon the noble house of Gottmar. No male scion was suffered to perpetuate the race. The bride of his selection died on her wedding-day and he himself was doomed to follow quickly after. The rich possessions passed to the nearest relative who by virtue of an ancient law assumed the name of Gottmar. The family was very ancient. It traced its origin back to the Sclavonian priests the sacrificers to the God Mahr and bore in its armorial ensigns a sacrificial axe and a blood channel in shape like that which at this day is found cut into the granite-blocks of the high mountain that bears the name of Gottmar. The later descendants of this powerful and widely-ramified house could no longer explain the cause of their cruel condition. It had been deemed advisable by their ancestors to exterminate every record of it hoping thereby perhaps to weaken in the course of time the curse itself. The precaution was fruitless. No alteration whatever took place in the fate of the doomed family which at length was regarded no less by itself than by the world as the outlawed of heaven. ""The last living representative of the house of Gottmar entered upon the family inheritance upon the death of his cousin. Bolko was a mild yet enthusiastic youth glowing with deep ripe feeling and needy of human love. He had little joy in the acquisition of what in other circumstances might have been considered his enviable fortune. He thought only of the miserable destiny that sentenced him to celibacy or death. His immediate predecessor riding across a heath to take a last farewell of his bride had been struck dead by lightning and the maiden herself had been hurled from life at the edge of a precipice. Bolko attired in mourning sat at the window of his lofty castle and surveyed the lovely prospect before him bathed as it was in the golden light of evening. Here were rich forests there teeming fields; in the depths of the valleys prosperous labouring villages; and in the far distance towering above all the blue crests and jagged peaks of a mountain region. ""'And all has become mine!' he exclaimed resting his forehead dejectedly upon his hand; 'to pass quickly away again and unenjoyed! And I in ignorance why! To be a sinner a criminal and not conscious of one criminal aspiration. Yet to be punished for crime--to be killed for crime. Oh it is hard! And heaven sweet and fair as she appears is crueler than I could have believed.' ""His preceptor confessor and friend stepped into the apartment. Hubert was an aged man learned and pious and well skilled it was believed in cabalistic science. He had buried three Gottmars and received their last confessions. From these he had drawn conjectures and conclusions which induced him to investigate the traditions current amongst the people respecting his unhappy patrons; and out of all he was able at last to form a picture of probability to the completeness of which some demonstrative evidence of its truth was wanting. At the period of which I speak--it was still before the Reformation--books were held in slender esteem. Nevertheless there was a library in Gottmar castle consisting of numerous manuscripts the production of monks and chiefly on religious subjects. The lords of the castle engaged in the chase in fishing and other knightly pastimes had not from time out of mind disturbed the repose of their written treasures. They lay piled one upon another covered with dust mildewed and worm-eaten. Hubert in the prosecution of his purpose did not fail to examine the neglected documents; and he had reason to rejoice at his labours when he found amongst the rolls a learned treatise on astrology a science which he himself had studied with unwearied industry and ardour. His joy and astonishment however were not complete until he found himself master of a decaying parchment which in almost obsolete characters expounded to his eager senses the mysterious destiny of the house of Gottmar. He hugged the knowledge to his soul deciphered the ancient syllables in his own quiet cell and waited for the proper hour to communicate the marvellous secret to his lord and pupil. He heard the complainings of the youthful Bolko and he recognised in them a hint from heaven. He now approached him with tenderness and pressed his pupil's hand. ""'Courage my son!' said he. 'The veil is withdrawn.' ""Bolko drew a heavy sigh. ""'I have spoken the truth my child!' continued Hubert. 'Believe and trust!' ""'Thanks for thy kind words good Hubert ' replied the youth. 'I revere thy wisdom I esteem thy love. How shall I believe that it has been permitted thee to break open the gloomy vaults of the past?' ""'And yet if this were so! If an auspicious--a heaven-sent chance'-- ""'Hubert!' ""'Hast thou courage Bolko to penetrate into the past?--Then read this roll attentively. It offers us the means as I most solemnly believe to weaken if not annihilate the curse which has so long persecuted thy unhappy race.' ""Hubert drew a parchment from the folds of his garment and placed it in the hands of the astounded Bolko. The priest immediately withdrew. The youthful noble as quickly drew a chair to the window; and by the vanishing light of the evening sky he read the following history:-- ""'_This is the last Confession of Walter baron of Gottmar which I his Confessor write down by his command that it may be preserved in everlasting remembrance by all who are Descendants of the House of Gottmar._ ""'My great-uncle Herbert the tenth inheritor of this territory was a passionate lover of the chase. In all seasons of the year in good weather and in bad by day and night he scoured the boundless forests which he called his own. In his time the hunting of the boar was a noble and especial sport and hence the breeding of these beasts was diligently fostered and encouraged. The immense forests of beech and fir upon the slopes of the mountain which bears our name attracted to their neighbourhood an extraordinary number of these boars; so that at all times my ancestor could indulge his passion to the full. During one of his grand expeditions two remarkable events had place. A gigantic boar dug open with his tusks a marvellously clear spring which bubbled forth so vigorously and purled so bright and cool along the mossy fields that a brook was formed from it immediately. This discharged itself into the low grounds with rare turns and windings; so that Herbert was fain to fix a village there and to name it after the boar and the brook which his ferocity had brought to light. Whilst this was happening on the western declivity of the mountain a similar accident took place upon the slope projecting to the eastward. Here in like manner a considerable bed of turf was discovered and close upon it beneath granitic sand another powerful spring. This Herbert caused empty itself into large ponds; and the turf-pit he had worked by skilful men over whom he placed as chief Wittehold his page. The profit from this turf was so large that the wealth of Herbert grew more and more and the population of the newly-founded village rose as rapidly; since every new settler was suffered to take on the turf-bed as much fuel as he needed for firing during the space of five years. ""'Wittehold too the overseer was well contented with his post. He enjoyed the confidence of his lord and became independent. He married; and after the lapse of a year had the happiness to press a lovely child to his fond bosom. But the birth of the child cost him the life of her mother. Herbert promised to provide for the orphan and maintained his word. My great-uncle was a bachelor who had never been able to meet with a maiden possessing all the qualities which he demanded in a wife. He postponed the all-important step of marriage from year to year without suffering any inconvenience from the delay. ""'In the mean time the beautiful daughter of Wittehold--who had I know not why been christened AURIOLA--grew to womanhood and unfolded a sweetness and grace that fascinated all beholders. Herbert whose heart had so long resisted the attacks of love was not proof against the beauty ingenuousness and innocence of Auriola. He confessed his affection to the maiden and petitioned Wittehold for his child. With the last contrary to expectation he found but little favour. Wittehold submitted that his daughter was not born to be the consort of so great and rich a lord and respectfully declined the honour of her advancement. Moreover he had already promised her to a faithful comrade a worthy overseer at the turf-works. Herbert expostulated appealed to his protection of Auriola to her affection for him but in vain. He plied the obstinate Wittehold with threats. In spite of them the latter held out: he did more; he bore his child with his own hand from the castle and carried her to his cottage near the pit hoping by such a step and by sound remonstrance to lead his fascinated master on to other and to better thoughts. ""'The conduct of Wittehold threw Auriola into a deep melancholy. She hurried to the cottage door a hundred times a-day and looked with straining eye towards the lofty castle of her lover. Her father being absent she would bound swift as a fawn through the silvery grass that trembled and sparkled in the sunny light and seat herself upon the high margin of the spring feeding her vision with the pearly drops that bubbled from the bottom. The spot visited by few was rendered almost sacred by a cluster of broad-armed beech-trees that overshadowed it. Herbert encountered his Auriola in this retreat. Who shall tell their joy? Herbert urged his suit--Auriola followed him through bush and thicket and was powerless before his ardent supplications. Wittehold surprised the pair. His fury and indignation were ungovernable. Herbert in self-defence had recourse to his good sword but this was as a lath against the ire of his assailant. Wittehold slew his lord. Not yet satisfied the madman pursued his fugitive child whose screams for aid only brought her to a speedier end. He met her at the spring--there seized the trembling creature and mercilessly cast her in. The maiden struggled for an instant; but the short conflict over she uttered a piteous wail and sank for ever beneath the softly-rippling water. Even whilst she struggled the inhuman father raised his clenched fist and pointed with it towards Gottmar's castle. 'God of heaven!' he exclaimed 'hear my curse; and may it fall like the unerring bolt upon this execrated race. May no male offspring take to his arms a bride or brighten his hearth with her presence until a Gottmar restore my daughter's virgin honour. Until this happen let the poor victim be accursed and evil work with the posterity of her betrayer!' The miserable murderer invoked the infernal powers to assist in the fulfilment of his curse and then as if beside himself ran to the turf-pits. Here he procured a shovel and an axe. With their help he choked up the crystal grave of his daughter and diverted the strong current into the pit which it soon flooded. This done he fled into the woods and has not since been heard of. But his curse has been fulfilled with frightful regularity in the family of Gottmar. Not one has married with impunity. Bridegroom and bride have fallen. Auriola crying for vengeance hovers above the turf-pit which since that hour has become a wide unfathomable moor. Heinrich Wendelin _Chaplain_.' ""The hand of Bolko dropped as he finished the narrative. The evening twilight thickened before his eyes. He sank into a solemn musing. When he awoke from it Hubert was again at his side. ""'Hast thou read?' enquired the teacher. ""Bolko slowly raised his head and looked full in the face of his confessor. ""'Canst thou vouch for this Hubert?' he asked in his turn. 'Is it genuine is it true?' ""'Since when hast thou learned to suspect me of deception?' replied the old man calmly. ""'Forgive me Hubert. This narrative confounds me. I am unable to distinguish truth from falsehood. But do thou advise me. What dost thou think of it? Can a curse such as this is represented to have been--can it have retained its force so long?' ""'Universal nature is one tremendous mystery ' replied the priest; 'who shall decide wherein her power consists? At the best we can but conjecture at her connexion with the world of man--her weaving and working. No one can deny that a solemn curse spoken with a determined and haughty purpose has often on the very instant accomplished its fulfilment. If this be so why may it not work again and again? The disregarded belief of the people--that a curse floats in the air until it finds its victim and then drops down upon him--is not so worthless as men would have us think. There is at least expressed in it dimly and perhaps unconsciously the inseparable union that subsists between the spirit of man and the all-governing spirit of nature.' ""The youth had risen from his chair and was pacing the apartment to appease his agitated soul. ""'Well well!' said he drawing a heavy breath; 'it is a decree which we must receive without a murmur and suffer patiently.' ""'And who says that?' replied the priest with quickness. 'The wisdom of nature has created an antidote for every poison.' ""'Art thou serious?' asked Bolko earnestly. ""'Heaven is merciful!' continued Hubert. 'Pardon is unlimited where repentance is sincere.' ""'Who shall repent in this case?' answered Bolko. 'The criminal is long since dead. Can another atone for his offence?' ""'Dost thou yet doubt and art thou my pupil?' said Hubert. 'The WILL can kill and also vivify.' ""The eyes of Bolko sparkled in the gloomy chamber. He grasped the hand of his aged teacher and drew him to the casement. ""'Speak!' he exclaimed. 'I will hear thee and do thy bidding--do all that thou holdest lawful and right.' ""Hubert directed his countenance over which a few hoary locks still lingered towards the landscape before them. ""'You have often heard my son ' said he 'that yon desolate spot called to this day the _Gold Spring_ is the deadliest spot on earth to those who bear your name. Far as the wood extends on either side extended formerly the turf-pit. The deep moor is covered now by an unsteady earth-crust overgrown with pale red sedge and from its centre as from a grotto the beautiful rivulet ripples forth that irrigates and renders fruitful all your land. I doubt not that this grotto with its golden vault of granite is the very spring into which the furious Wittehold cast his daughter. The place is to this hour deemed unholy. No one willingly sets foot there; no man ventures to draw water from the fount. Temerity has already been punished for the attempt. Strange sights have met the eyes of the daring one and he has fled like a coward from the spot. Have not many seen--have not I myself beheld that fairy-like almost transparent form with her unearthly pitcher drawing water from the spring then pouring it over the moor in curious arches by sun and moonlight; and ever so that the rays of light kindled therein the most huey gleamings? Is it not well attested that when at such times mortals have addressed her the delicate creature has grown o' the sudden pale--paler and more transparent until melting into silvery cloud she has glided pillar-like along the moor and vanished at length into the cool and wondrous grotto?' ""'You describe the Maiden of the Moor ' said Bolko interrupting him. ""'So she is called!' returned Hubert. 'It was her apparition which drew my attention to the neighbourhood and to the tales that are current respecting it. When I had discovered the manuscript I saw at once in the Maiden of the Moor the complaining spirit of the unhappy Auriola.' ""'And the spirit as you deem may be appeased?' ""'Assuredly my son; and thou art he who must perform the expiation.' ""'I!--Father Hubert?--I'---- ""'Thou art guileless sound of heart leading a life of innocence and nature. To a pure spirit a determined will a feeling heart--much is possible.' ""'But how father?--how?' ""Hubert remained silent for a few minutes. He then proceeded-- ""'Thy heart is still free but it yearns for love--for the mysterious magical response of another--a _womanly_ heart. It may be that Auriola will afford thee thy delight if thou couldst once behold her.' ""'What! The Moor Maiden! Father thou mockest me. What can this female be to me appearing as a vision to man a creature of air?' ""'And if she appear to _thee_ hast thou courage to address her?' ""'Father a lovely form shall hardly frighten me ' said Bolko with a smile. ""'I exact thy promise ' said Hubert quickly. 'From this day forward shun the Gold Spring no more. Thou art a lover of nature and her creations. I have seen thee for hours lost in admiration of the form and colour of choice butterflies. That spot abounds in the rarest. Thou mayst find them at any hour of the day. It would seem indeed that the delicate insects of peace had retreated thither to find security from the tumult of busy money-lusting men. The realm of the Moor Maiden is the paradise of these tenderest of winged beauties. Bolko thou wilt visit them!' ""The baron gave his right hand to his preceptor without uttering one word of assurance or affirmation. Hubert had done. He left his young lord to his own meditations. * * * * * ""Bolko passed some days in restless suspense. Now he was a wanderer in the woods now a prisoner in the apartment that looked upon the moor watching intently during the day every slight phenomenon that arose there. The morning and evening mist and the yellow vapour of noon were his best discoveries. Not a human being approached a place shunned as it appeared by every living thing. The conversation however with Hubert had proved a secret spur to him and he found no rest until he visited the dreary moor in person. It was late in the afternoon when furnished with a hunting-knife and insect-net he set out on his adventure. Bolko had never before visited the spring and his surprise was naturally great when he beheld the peculiar condition of the soil around him. Along the entire surface of the notorious moor--and its extent was considerable--there appeared a singularly-coloured sedge. It was not red or yellow or brown but a mixture of all three and it marked by the sharpest line the confines of the moor from the green turf of the remaining country. At every step the ground although very strong yielded as it threatening to give way. Towards the centre of the moor there was an elevation surrounded with bushes. This was the source of the silvery water that took its serpentine course along the moor and through the luxuriant woods beyond. ""Bolko made his way towards this point and reaching it his eye rested with delight upon the basin and its border of golden granite. The water ascended noiselessly from its immeasurable depths in countless glistening pearls. Over the refreshing fountain and far away upon the nodding blades of grass and bearded turf-flowers hovered in giddy graceful sport a variegated troop of gorgeous butterflies. The majestic and solemn _Silver-mantle_ the cherub of these winged dwellers of the air the soft and exquisite _Peacock's-eye_ the burning _Purple-bird_ were here assembled. Bolko was ravished with the sight and thought of nothing but a glorious capture. Delicate and lovely as the creatures were his cruel hand robbed them of their gladsome life; and he pursued them further and further across the moor and with such ardour and desire that he forgot all other things and suffered the very object of his visit to escape from his remembrance. Suddenly and in the act of imprisoning a multitude of these illuminated beings he perceived a Maiden sitting at the extremity of the moor her back towards him. Her form was slender and her hair golden as the sun travelled in burnished tresses from her shoulders to the earth where it curled along the moor-grass like rays of the divine orb itself. After the manner of Sclavonian girls the stranger wore a closely-fitting snow-white cap or rather frontlet from which as from a chaplet the beautiful hair streamed down. Bolko had approached the maiden unperceived near enough to discern a butterfly of rare magnitude and unequaled beauty oscillating about her marble forehead. The youth stole cautiously behind the fair one and tried to catch the flutterer. He touched the maiden in his eager movement and she turned round immediately. ""'Forgive me lovely child!' said he. 'I'----The words died upon his tongue. He could say no more. The butterfly escaped from his hands and flew slowly towards the Gold Spring changing its brilliant colours with every motion of its wing. ""The singular beauty of the maiden had struck the baron dumb. From a soft transparent countenance of the purest form there beamed upon him a pair of eyes which had derived their holy light from the very fountain-head of Love. She wore an uncommon but most becoming dress. ""To a party-coloured gown scarcely reaching to her ankle was attached a sky-blue boddice in front united by perfect silver clasps and not so closely as to prevent the sweetest glimmering of a snow-white virgin bosom. Her arms round delicate and pure as marble were uncovered to the shoulders. Her small feet were bare yet protected partly by fairy-looking slippers profusely ornamented. The beauteous object smiled upon the youth and answered him in a voice that dropped like melody upon his ear. ""'Thou art the robber then ' said she; 'the merciless purloiner of my fairest thoughts! Can I wonder now that I have been so destitute of late!' ""'How?' stammered Bolko more astonished than ever. ""'Strange man!' continued the maiden in the same ravishing voice 'thou revelest with thy fancies and dost thou wonder that I too love to dally with my thoughts and dreams? The tiny creatures whom thou hast taken from me were and still are threads of my heart which I permit at times to issue into the sunny light of day. Restore them living and beautiful as thou hast found them or I accuse thee of breaking this poor heart!' ""'Who art thou sweetest child?' ""'They call me AURIOLA. I know thee well. Thou art Bolko of Gottmar--Bolko the accursed!' ""'Yes--the accursed!' repeated the youth pressing his hands to his eyes as if he would forget his doom. When he removed them Auriola had risen and was standing before him. Her lovely countenance her matchless eyes were turned full upon him. At her feet he perceived an earthen pitcher of a peculiar and not ungraceful form. It bore a strong resemblance to the sacrificial pitchers which are still discovered in places once inhabited by Sclavonians. ""'What wilt thou poor child?' said Bolko in a tone of kindness. 'Can I help thee?' ""Auriola smiled. ""'Thou hast come to me at thine own bidding. I invited thee not for I invite none. Yet he who visits me must do my will. Thou hast wrought me pain in stealing away the thoughts which were soaring in mid air decked in their brightest robes. Thou must be punished for thy misdeed. Come!' ""The marvellous creature took Bolko's hand and drew him after her towards the Gold Spring. Before her and above her head the butterflies formed with their magnificent wing-shells a glowing arched pavilion. The youth was allured by an irresistible attraction and would not if he could have dragged himself away from the celestial being; albeit he still regarded her as a mere apparition. Every feeling every thought every desire of his heart streamed towards Auriola. Fleeting shadow that she was he loved her already to idolatry. ""At the margin of the spring Auriola released her companion descended the grotto with her pitcher and filled it with the purest water. In a few minutes she was again at his side. She placed the pitcher on the ground and her two hands upon the shoulders of the youth. In this trustful graceful loving posture fixing her wondrous eyes upon the boy the maiden spoke. ""'And canst thou love too?' ""He answered not; but he pressed the beauteous Auriola to his heart and passionately kissed her forehead. But Bolko started back affrighted for he had kissed a forehead colder than ice. ""'Note me well!' said she and her voice sounded more melancholy than before. She seated herself upon the high ledge of the spring drew Bolko beside her and placed the pitcher of water between herself and him. The butterflies stood now in the full light of the sun over the rippling spring. A scattered few only still hovered about the moor. ""'We must tarry yet awhile ' said Auriola 'until my heart is quite my own again!' As she spoke her ecstatic eyes glanced to the single flutterers on the moor. As if caught by a magnet they directed their flight instantly towards the Gold Spring. ""'Now I am myself--for what is yet wanting rests in thee. Take heed!' ""Auriola now poured from the pitcher into her small left hand as much water as this would hold and extended the right to her companion. He surprised by love encircled the maiden's waist brought his ear close to her delicate cheek and watched with eagerness her strange performance. Auriola blew at first softly then more vehemently into the hollow of her hand so that the water bubbling up ran to the slender rosy fingers and in glittering drops sprinkled from the finger-tips. ""'Look!' she exclaimed 'look! Tell me what thou see'st?' ""The pearly drops had scarcely touched the air before they joined when on the instant a vision rose before the sight. There was a bright green meadow edged by waving beech-trees through whose foliage the evening sun shed burnished gold. A youth was on his knees before a maiden in the act of offering her a golden ring. The picture was in the beginning dim and indistinct but it grew clearer and clearer until by degrees it dissolved again and was lost in the atmosphere. ""'What means this Auriola?' enquired the ravished Bolko. 'Chain not my unguarded heart to thine with such witchery. Misery and death will be the penalty.' ""'Dream and listen ' replied Auriola. 'Hearts and souls have nothing better to do. We do but speak into the future to catch back the tones which strike in unison with our desires.' ""'_Our_ future?' whispered Bolko. ""'Say _thine_ if it likes thee better ' answered Auriola filling her hand anew with water and once more urging the sparkling fluid towards her finger-ends. Bolko perceived a horseman galloping across a gloomy heath and looking back with horror. This apparition like the former shone distinctly for a time and then in the same manner vanished by degrees and expired. ""'And what is this?' asked Bolko. ""Auriola shook her head in silence poured water again into her hand and blew it again along her fingers into the air. A lofty many-towered castle was visible. A rope-ladder was fastened to a gallery. A man was climbing up. As soon as he reached the gallery the vision was lost. ""'It is the castle of my ancestors!' cried Bolko. ""'Thou art mistaken ' answered Auriola. 'But tell me--canst thou love?' ""Her voice was again mournful. ""The youth drew the fair questioner to his heart. His lips fastened on hers and hallowing fire streamed through his frame. ""Auriola heaved a melancholy sigh and once more filled her hand with water. At the usual signal there arose a brilliantly illuminated hall. Dancers gaily dressed were in happy motion. Music was heard and then the strains and the colours died away in the twilight. ""'I smart!' exclaimed Bolko. 'I am tortured! My soul is gnawed with agony!' ""'Hush and listen ' said Auriola in a tone of command--filling her hand and impelling the crystal water into the air as before. A roaring was heard like the course of a hurricane sweeping through a forest. The air grew black. Then the moon broke through night and mist and lit up a hilly region surrounded by wood and cliff. Out of the wood issued a carriage and four making at full speed for a solitary open space that looked dismal and deserted. The form of a maiden floated before the carriage her painfully smiling countenance ever turned towards it until she evaporated like a cloud in the wood. A flash of lightning from the murky sky struck a beech-tree near whose flames the carriage slowly disappeared into the ground. ""This vision at an end Auriola bent her head and tears fell upon her bosom. ""'Lovely enchantress ' said Bolko 'why perform these miracles if they afflict thee?' ""'Because there is no longer love upon the earth.' ""'Say not so!' exclaimed the youth. 'Love still exists--deep eternal holy love. I feel it now. Auriola I whose arms never encircled maiden yet--I love thee Auriola with every fibre of my body--with every faculty of my soul. I will be thine--thine for ever; be thou mine my Auriola!' ""'BE CONSTANT!' The words were uttered in the clear voice of Auriola; as if from the air. Bolko saw the lovely form grow pale felt her vanishing at his heart. The brilliant cloud of butterflies arose from the spring and flew towards heaven by a hundred roads. A thin misty streak sank into the grotto. Bolko was alone upon the barren moor. Sultry vapours were exhaling in the twilight. Indescribable sensations preyed on the soul of Bolko as he remembered that he had given his heart to one who was no longer a dweller upon earth--that he had plighted his faith to the Maiden of the Moor. He hurried from the scene of his unhallowed engagement to seek from the wisdom of his Hubert consolation for the peace of mind which had been so sadly disturbed if not for ever taken from him. * * * * * ""The priest listened to the account of Auriola's appearance with secret delight and did not fail to comfort the unhappy youth. Bolko restored to peace passed the night in blissful dreams. Once more the sweet form of the Moor Maiden floated before him--once more the magical pictures gleamed ravishing his senses. With sunrise he quitted the castle and obeyed the sorcery that allured him to the moor. All fear and alarm had disappeared. Solitude erewhile so hateful to him was now enchanting! The stony brown and barren plain the gloomy confines of the wood the vapours of the boggy soil united to create an earthly paradise. He took his seat upon the margin of the limpid spring and gazing on the charmed waters invoked the presence of the fair magician. Auriola however appeared not. At noon he quitted the moor unsatisfied but the approach of evening found him there again. Still she came not and nothing remained to assure him of the reality of his former interview but the illuminated winged cloud of butterflies which like a living rainbow overarched the spring. Impatient and distressed the ardent lover scoured the extensive moor and at last approached the borders of the forest. Suddenly he saw--scarce twenty paces from him--the wished-for figure gliding through the rustling grass the earthen pitcher drooping from her hand. Auriola regarded him not but waved the vessel gracefully around her head scattering its contents in glittering jets that leaped about her like garlands of the precious diamond. ""'Auriola!' exclaimed the boy rushing forward as he spoke. 'My own Auriola--mine now and for ever!' He
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threw himself before her seized her hand and in an instant fixed a golden ring upon her taper finger. ""The maiden offered no resistance. But when the passionate Bolko rose from the ground and was about to embrace his beloved she lifted the ring-decked hand and in a voice of touching melancholy exclaimed-- ""'Behold!' ""Bolko followed the direction of her finger. Over the live and swarming cloud there appeared now here now there the apparition of the previous evening; only that to-day it was larger and more distinct and continued longer to the view. ""Bolko recognised to his astonishment the forms of Auriola and himself. ""'What does this mean?' said Bolko. 'Is it reality or illusion?' ""'Thou beholdest!' answered Auriola. 'The air abhors falsehood and reflects nothing but truth.' ""Bolko advanced. Auriola waved the pitcher and the vision was lost. ""'Wilt thou be constant?' asked the maid. 'Misery is mine if thou canst forget this day and its betrothal.' ""The eyes of Bolko were fixed in amazement on the air where the picture had shone so palpable a moment before. He saw not he heard not Auriola and the agony of the preceding evening tortured his whole frame. When he recovered his suspended faculties Auriola was gone. The usual tranquil solemn repose the old desolate gloom universally prevailed. The low-lying meadows breathed out their thin vapours the more distant ponds were enveloped in mist and the grey shadows vanished by degrees from hill and thicket. ""Bolko arrived agitated and breathless at his castle gate. He went at once to the library where he found as he expected his friend and counsellor. ""'Save me save me father!' cried the young lord. 'Thou hast beguiled me into a compact with a being of another world. Womanly love has cozened and betrayed me. Passion has overmastered me. I have bound myself to the Moor Maiden and am eternally made over to her sorcery.' ""'And wherefore should this frighten you?' replied the hoary chaplain. 'Thou hast done my bidding; and since thou art permitted to destroy a curse which threatens to annihilate thy race gratitude not fear should move thee. Yonder Moor Maiden contents herself with the sweet semblance and will not ask for dull reality. Auriola never looks to wed thee--never to possess thee--body and soul.' ""'But I love her--love her to madness!' cried Bolko furiously. ""'Love her still; always love her with a spiritual and pure affection. This will not hinder thee from bestowing the other half of thy affection upon some fair daughter of Eve worthy of thy heart.' ""'And is this to be spiritually faithful?' said Bolko in a reproachful tone. ""'No earthly passion my son ' continued Hubert 'can either break or abolish the spiritual faith which thou hast vowed to Auriola. When thou hast loved a daughter of Eve thou wilt see feel and be satisfied that between the love of thy earthly bride and of the enchanting Auriola there is a difference as wide as heaven from earth.' ""Bolko heaved a bitter sigh and shook his head in doubt. Nevertheless he meditated long and seriously upon all that Hubert said. By degrees even he acknowledged to himself that the kernel the pure light of a deep truth glimmered in his words although in a manner veiled. He began to question his own heart; the more probable nay the more desirable seemed the consummation of Hubert's promises. For reasons which he could scarcely explain to himself he studiously avoided another visit to the moor. But in the meanwhile that which originally had been a half-formed wish and scarcely that ripened into absorbing passion vehement desire. Incessant thought nourished the ever-glowing flame which burned the brighter the more the spiritual love of Auriola receded and grew faint. Remembrance it is true still clung with a devout aspiration upon that beauteous image but it resembled rather the placid feeling of a holy friendship than the impetuous throbbing of a young and passionate love. 'Hubert is right!' said the youth; 'I will follow his direction. Auriola lovely and rapturous being angelic spiritual and human will rejoice with the Accursed when he carries to his desolate home the mistress of his castle--the wife of his bosom.' ""Opportunity is seldom wanting when inclination needs its service. About three miles from Gottmar amongst the mountains majestically rose the battlements of a proud castle. Baron T---- its wealthy master had already visited Bolko upon his accession to the family estates and Bolko now determined to acknowledge his neighbour's act of kindness. Had the baron been childless it is very likely that Bolko would still have remembered what was due to society and to his own station in the world; and it is equally true that the fact of his possessing a young and lovely daughter did not diminish the youthful noble's desire to act conformably to usage and propriety. Unfortunately for the intention of his visit Bolko learned on his arrival at the castle that the baron was from home. In his stead however a maiden greeted him slender of figure noble in bearing. It was very strange but it is certain that the tumultuous feelings which of late had stirred within him unrestrained--were suddenly chained and riveted upon an object that afforded them a sweet tranquillity. Emma was gentle frank and beauteous as the blushing rose. In Bolko's frame of mind could she fail to make a deep impression upon his young and too susceptible soul? He lingered at her side hour after hour and was himself astonished to find the darkness of night creeping over the earth and he not more prepared for departure than he had been on entering the castle-gates some hours before. However the knight did not make his appearance and good breeding suggested to unwilling ears that it was time to retire. Bolko said farewell--more tenderly perhaps than he supposed or meant; and as the delicate hand of Emma lay involuntarily in his own he flattered himself that he felt his pressure softly returned and that he could perceive a smile of contentment escaping from her lips as he promised to pay a second visit 'shortly.' ""The night was very dark: a few stars only twinkled through the thin veil which covered the heavens. Bolko madly spurred his steed and the high-spirited animal who needed no such incitement bounded like a deer towards home. The thoughts of the baron were no longer with him but imprisoned in the happy room in which he had passed so many blissful hours. Trusting to the instinct of the horse the master took no heed of the road: and the trustworthy servant scenting the vicinity of his stable found easily for himself the best and shortest paths towards that wished-for spot. The trees became thinner and thinner falling back on either side whilst a flat and barren region lay before horse and rider. The former snorted and pranced and the latter could not distinguish the locality through the blackness. Bolko coaxed the steed and gently urged him forwards. But the animal trembled and in spite of bridle and spur struck to the side and swept along the skirts of the forest without touching so much as with a hoof the gloomy-looking heath. Accustomed to the surrounding darkness the eye of Bolko was at length able to discern--not without a creeping of horror--the ruddy and unsteady reed-grass. The moor and the Gold Spring were on one side of him. Pale stripes of fog like ribbed vaults were spread above him giving a sacredness to the air with which all other things strangely contrasted. The mind of Bolko against his will reverted to Auriola; his heart beat as though he were conscious of a heavy fault--of some inhuman crime. He turned his gaze from the moor and with an effort directed it towards the dark forest to which the horse galloped at full speed. ""The words 'BE CONSTANT!' fell loudly and articulately upon the ears of Bolko--uttered in a tone rather of supplication than of demand or threatening. He turned his horse's head in terror and--oh amazement! sitting at the edge of the fountain covered with a bright veil hemmed with diamonds was--Auriola! Her fair and loosened hair encompassed as at their first meeting her entire body and glittering curled along the ground. Her right hand was stretched high above her lovely head holding between forefinger and thumb the ring with which the already inconstant Bolko had espoused her. ""'BE CONSTANT!' The words re-echoed from the moor: the streaks of fog descended. Over the maiden's head beamed forth a shining spot--gaining in size and forming itself into a picture. Bolko shuddering beheld the second vision of Auriola's enchantment and looked upon himself as he had burst a few minutes before upon the moor. ""Auriola beckoned to the youth and pointed to the picture. Then once again more melancholy more mournfully more entreatingly upon the distracted ears of Bolko came--the repeated cry of admonition--'BE CONSTANT!' ""The youth galloped for his life. He reached his home paler than death and refused to be comforted even by the wisdom of his preceptor. ""From this time Bolko ceased to visit the moor in search of Auriola. The daughter of earth had inspired him with a love that admitted of no commingling of affection. Memory however refused to lose sight of her. It obtruded her form upon him the more determinedly he endeavoured to thrust it from his mind by dwelling upon the charms of his Emma. He repeated his visit at the castle and was soon a constant guest there. He confessed his love to Emma and she did not rebuke him. Her father was less tender. He roundly refused his daughter's hand. 'He had no desire ' he said 'to make his child unhappy. He knew well enough how every Lord of Gottmar was obliged to harbour an evil Kobold in his house who couldn't endure the sight of women and no sooner met one than he mercilessly strangled her. No sir baron ' he continued 'it cannot be. Take not unkindly the answer which I give thee. It touches not thy noble person which pleases me right well but simply thy house and castle Kobold. Remove the creature or at least its power of doing harm and thou art welcome here. But before that time I pray thee come not again lest I should forget myself and do that which both of us would be sorry for.' ""The lovers protested against the decision and Bolko tried hard to convince the old baron that the mysterious power which had so long and so fatally reigned over the house of Gottmar was propitiated and no longer hurtful. Hubert attested the repeated asseverations of his pupil but nothing could bring conviction to the stubborn veteran. He swore they were all in a league or building castles in the air and he persisted in his resolution. ""It was autumn. The days were declining. Showers and tempests swept through the forest. Upon a night brightened by no moonbeam or glittering star Emma sat melancholy and alone in her apartment. The heavy embroidered curtains were drawn across the high windows of the balcony which jutted out as a point of observation from the castle-wall. At intervals the maiden applied her delicate ear to the window catching eagerly at every strange sound muttered forth by the growing storm. She had resumed her seat many times when the castle-bell tolled eleven and almost at the same moment the cry of a screech-owl was distinctly heard. The expectant damsel glided on tiptoe to the window and listened eagerly. The cry was repeated. Emma's eye sparkled at length with joy a deep blush overspread her cheeks and she produced from an aperture a ladder of twine which she fastened to the casement. The cry of the owl was heard for the third time. The ladder was dropped and in another instant a vigorous youth had mounted it. ""Bolko and Emma happy and blessed were in each other's arms and they forgot all but the delicious present. Vows of love and constancy were exchanged and rings were given in remembrance of the blissful hour. But strange to say as Bolko was about to adorn the hand of Emma with the pledge of his affection a fearful gust of wind burst the window open and blew into the room a little glistening object that rolled to Bolko's feet and settled there. Emma raised it from the ground and discovered in her hand a broken ring. ""Bolko saw and trembled. It was his gift to Auriola. He fixed his eyes upon the broken symbol and there glared before them the third charmed picture created from the waters. The rope-ladder the balcony Emma and himself all grouped and taking the shape and form of that bright vision. Bolko glanced at the window dreading to meet the reproachful look of Auriola; but instead of this he heard with no less horror the approaching footsteps of his Emma's father. ""'Fly Bolko fly!' exclaimed the maiden. 'My father! We are lost!' ""Bolko hurried to the recess and would have escaped had not the malicious wind already carried away the rope-ladder. A prisoner and unarmed he expected nothing short of death at the hands of the baron. The latter entered the apartment stood for a few seconds in silence at the door and measured the criminals with looks of stern severity. ""'My aged eye did not deceive me then!' he said at length advancing to the trembling lovers. ""'Baron!' said Bolko hesitatingly. ""'Silence sir!' continued the old knight. 'If I should act now as my fathers would have done I should fling you through that very window which helped you like a robber into this room; but I charge myself with blame already in this business and I am more disposed to mercy. Come hither young man. I know the fire and boldness of our youth. Give my child your hand; you are her future husband. May God prosper you both and send his blessing on your union!' ""Bolko quaffed with the sturdy Baron of T---- until an early hour of the morning. The happy Emma acted the part of Hebe and presented the flagons to the merry carousers. * * * * * ""'Why have you withheld this from me?' asked Hubert when Bolko related to him the unaccountable restoration of the ring. 'Oh youth youth! inconsiderate even to madness and only content to listen to the voice of wisdom when they can of themselves find no outlet from difficulty and danger.' ""Bolko stood with folded arms at the window gazing into the forest and upon the lofty turrets of Castle T---- peeping in the grey distance above it. ""'Thou hast not visited the moor of late?' asked Hubert after a pause. ""'What should I do there?' answered Bolko peevishly. 'Why should I spend my days in chasing an apparition the mere creation of an over-heated fancy?' ""'Beware whom thou calumniatest!' said Hubert solemnly. 'Beware of the mysterious being that can deal out weal or woe to thee and all thy race! One whom thou mightest have appeased hadst thou been obedient and followed my instructions.' ""'Thy instructions!' repeated Bolko hastily. 'It is because I have listened too patiently to thy advice because I have connected myself with thy aërial and capricious schemes that I am the most miserable of men. But for thy persuasion and thy childish parchment I should never have dreamed of making love to a ghost.' ""Hubert disregarded the youth's reproaches. ""'Rage avails not here ' he said calmly. 'Wisdom alone can save thee. Listen to me. Women are women ever even such as we call supernatural--easy to anger easy to persuade--before flattery the weakest of the weak. Praise the ugliest for her beauty and she smiles graciously yea with the mirror before her eyes. Speak the plain truth and you are a rough uncouth companion. They thrive best upon the sugary food of delusion--therefore delude them. It is the rattle of these eternal glorious children!' ""'What wouldst thou have me do?' ""'Cast the ring into the Spring and pray to Auriola for forgiveness.' ""'And if she prove obstinate?' ""'Have no fear; she will forgive you. Here is the ring; take it; it is once more united!' ""Bolko took the pledge from Hubert and hastened to the moor. The high grass was already withered by storm and cold; it lay bent down upon the marshy earth-crust which now breathed out its vapour more abundantly than ever wrapping the Gold Spring in one enduring mist. If this spot looked barren and deserted in summer the abandonment was increased a hundred-fold in autumn. Even the butterflies were gone. The damp and chilly fog only was visible; nothing could be heard but the monotonous current of the rippling water. ""The boggy ground yielded to the foot more readily than ever and Bolko trod it with a faltering step. He approached the spring and suing for reconciliation dropped the ring into the charmed element. As though he feared some extraordinary result from the act he covered his eyes with his hands and could with difficulty summon courage to remove them. When he did so he perceived the fog receding by degrees from the confines of the moor and the graceful form of Auriola standing before him at a little distance. As at their first meeting her countenance was averted. She waved the earthen pitcher as was her wont and bathed the ground on which she went with flashes of the brilliant water. ""'Auriola!' cried Bolko in a voice that carried the tenderness of love the sorrow of repentance to the ear of the listener--'gentle Auriola!' She turned her face towards the imploring youth placed the pitcher at her side and beckoned him to approach. ""'My father was right!' said the Moor Maiden. 'No Gottmar but is fickle and inconstant. Well it is for thee youth that thou art here of thy own free-will and didst not tarry for my summons. Thou hast kept thy promise badly and thou wilt keep it so again if I give thee no monitor to aid thee. Take this and carry it henceforward in thy bosom; it will protect thee from harm and keep thee faithful in _spirit_ albeit in heart thou art already estranged from me.' ""With these words the enchantress placed upon the neck of Bolko a chain braided of her own golden hair to which was attached a small box wrought of the shards of the Peacock's eye and Purple-bird. In the tiny case trembling with its ever-changing light was one pearly drop from the spring. ""'Lose or give away this jewel ' proceeded Auriola--'this jewel which is a portion of my heart and thy ruin and the destruction of thy house is certain. Love or at least its symbol can and must avert the curse of my father!' ""Bolko looked into the earnest and marvellously bright eyes of Auriola as she pronounced his doom. His heart belonged once more to the Maiden of the Moor and his gaze made known his passion. She touched his forehead with her transparent fingers poured the last drops of water into the hollow of her hand and in her usual manner blew the little curling waves into the misty air. A multitude of images arose but in scarcely finished outline. The moist atmosphere seemed to hinder their accomplishment. ""'Now farewell!' said Auriola. 'Thou hast beheld. Thy life is troubled as are the feelings which sway thy heart. Love truly and wholly as aforetime thou lovedst me and the mirror of thought will again display its clear bright pictures. ""Auriola took the pitcher and her bare feet scarcely disturbing the faded blades of grass glided towards the margin of the spring where she melted into air. * * * * * ""Emma and Bolko were united in holy matrimony. The halls of Castle T---- overflowed with joyous guests. Music delighted the noble visitors during the marriage-feast and a happier scene could not be imagined. All hearts joined in wishing prosperity to the bridal pair and the latter seemed to entertain no fears for their bright future. The banquet over the guests preceded by the newly-married couple withdrew to the adjoining saloon. The old knights seated themselves in the niches of the windows having still many goblets to empty over the dice-box whilst the younger spirits disposed themselves for dancing. Bolko with his high-born bride commenced the ball. If they were happy before they were now at the very porch of a terrestrial heaven. They made but short pauses in their pleasure and these only that they might mingle again the more intensely in the delightful measure. ""It was during the jocund dance that Bolko's doublet suddenly opened and the mysterious little box flew out. The bridegroom was made aware of the accident by the exclamations of his partner. ""'Oh! look look Bolko! See that magnificent butterfly! How singular at this season of the year!' ""Emma caught at the little beauty and Bolko discovered his fault. ""'Hold hold!' said he in a whisper. 'That is no butterfly for thee my love! Its colours play for me alone!' ""Emma looked enquiringly at her husband then more closely at the little box glowing in a fire of colours and she beheld the golden hair chain to which it was attached. ""'A chain too! and what beautiful hair!' The maiden caught at the prize and continued 'Who gave thee this hair and the sweet case! Dearest Bolko to whom does it belong? Why have you never mentioned this? What need was there of secresy?' ""Emma sobbed and Bolko hardly knowing what excuse to offer withdrew her to a neighbouring room. ""'Promise me dearest Emma ' said he 'to be calm and patient and you shall know every thing.' ""The young wife looked at him distrustfully. ""'Make known to me the history and contents of the little box and I will restrain my curiosity until----to-morrow.' ""'Content my beloved so let it be; as we return to Gottmar all shall be cleared up.' ""'Oh I unhappy!' exclaimed the girl bursting into tears. ""'Say rather _happy_ dearest. Since all our happiness flows from the history of this chain; from this alone. Sweetest let us return to the dance.' ""Emma resigned her arm to her young lord with a sullen resignation. As the latter opened the folding-doors of the saloon and gazed for a few seconds upon the dancing throng he seemed to possess a distant remembrance of the scene. The Gothic arches the window niches the gaily-attired musicians the groups of dancers--the whole scene had once before been present to his eyes. He taxed his memory until his thoughts carried him to the bleak and barren moor. Had not the dazzling vision flowed into the sunny evening air over the white transparent fingers of the ethereal Auriola? He acknowledged it and shuddered. ""The dance was at an end. The guests had departed. In the eyes of the newly-married Emma a tear of troubled joy trembled as she sank upon the bosom of her young and doating husband. ""Upon the following morning Bolko already repented him of his hasty promise and delayed his departure by every means in his power. The weather favoured him for hail and storm were pouring down upon the earth. As the day declined Bolko found it impossible to conceal his disquietude; and Emma when she perceived his anxiety attributed it at once to conscious guilt. This conviction on her part only made her urge their departure with greater perseverance. There remained at last no good ground for refusal and Bolko silently acquiesced in her wish. ""For some time the young couple sat side by side and were very sparing of their speech. Bolko indeed was dumb. The inquisitive Emma however had not so powerful an excuse for silence. In a few kind words she reminded her lord of his pledged word and begged him to confide in her. ""'Emma ' said Bolko in reply and in a serious tone 'if I comply with thy request I risk the eternal happiness of both. I have promised that which I cannot perform without a breach of faith. Thou canst gain nothing by my communication and I pray thee therefore give me back my promise.' ""Bolko could not have preferred a more untimely suit. Emma inquisitive suspicious and jealous would rather have been put to death in torture than have given up her claim. She refused his petition at once; implored threatened implored again; and finding all such efforts only darkened Bolko's humour proceeded to flattery and coaxing. She promised the most perfect secresy and used in short every artifice by which woman knows how to overcome the strongest resolutions of weak man. Bolko grew tender-hearted and then related to his wife all that he had to tell;--the history of the malediction that rested on his family and the singular manner in which he had effected the expiation. ""Emma listened to the narrative not without an inward pique and lively jealousy. ""'I thank thee Bolko for thy confidence ' said she. 'Fear not my prudence. But for the charm thou wilt not surely wear it so near thy bosom.' ""'Next my heart beloved--since there it shields us both from ruin.' ""Emma bit her lips with womanly vexation. ""'Thou canst not wish ' continued Bolko 'that I should take it thence.' ""'I do I do!' replied the jealous wife. 'I wish it. I insist upon it--now--this very instant.' ""The storm increased in fury. The fir-trees were beating together as if in battle. ""'It is impossible!' cried Bolko. 'Thou art mad to ask it.' ""'Then shall I mistrust thy love ' continued Emma 'or canst thou hope for my affection whilst that ghostly gift divides us? Never! Inhuman man thou wilt teach me to hate thee.' ""The carriage drove rapidly through the hurricane into the midst of the forest. The wind bellowed the yellow lightning glared and thunder crashed and resounded fearfully from the distant valleys. ""'It is the warning voice of heaven!' said Bolko. 'Its lightnings will reach us if I yield to thy entreaty.' ""'Heaven has nothing in common with enchanters and sorcerers ' replied Emma; 'nature is uttering a summons to thee and--whilst a devoted wife embraces thee--protects and defends thee against demoniac powers bids thee renounce all witchcraft and put aside the unholy gift.' ""Bolko answered not but peered through the door carriage windows to learn his exact situation. The dark pinnacles of Gottmar lay immediately before him. Above his head the tempest lowered hurling its lightnings on every side. ""'Art thou angry with me?' enquired Emma sorrowfully leaning her ringleted head upon the bosom of her husband. Bolko pressed her forehead to his lips. Emma threw her arms about his neck. She wept she kissed she coaxed him; they were the fondest lovers as in the earliest days of their attachment. The heart of Bolko was melted. In the intoxication of happiness he forgot his danger; and reposing on Emma's bosom did not perceive that she untied his doublet and heedfully but eagerly searched for the amulet. She was mistress of it before Bolko could suspect her intention. ""'It is mine it is mine!' almost shrieked the young wife in her delight snatching away both chain and box. The next moment the carriage window was drawn down and the precious objects thrown into the storm. Bolko caught at them but too late. A gust of wind had already clutched them and carried them away. ""A flash of lightning struck a beech-tree that blazed awfully illuminating the whole neighbourhood. The horses took fright plunged aside then tore with the carriage towards a treeless melancholy-looking plain. Bolko recognised the spot at the first brief glance. ""'The moor! the moor!' he screamed to the driver; but the latter had lost all power over the snorting steeds who bore the fated carriage in a whizzing gallop towards the marsh. The blazing beech-tree rendered the surrounding objects fearfully distinct. Bolko could descry the figure of Auriola at the margin of the spring. Between her fingers glittered the ring and words of lamentation issuing from her lips dropped into the soul of Bolko and paralysed it."" ""'Auriola Auriola!' exclaimed the youth supporting the pale and quivering Emma--'forgive me! forgive me!' ""The Moor Maiden dropped the ring into the well and it vanished like an unearthly flame. Auriola herself slowly and like a mist descended after it. She held her hand above her head and it seemed to point to the onward-dashing carriage. ""Horror upon horror! the carriage itself began to sink into the earth--quicker and quicker. ""'We are sinking! Heaven help us!' cried the driver. Bolko burst the carriage door open but escape was impossible. The moor had given way around him. The horses were already swallowed up in the abyss. The pale earth-crust trembled and heaved like flakes of ice upon a loosening river. It separated and huge pieces were precipitated and hurled against each other. In a few seconds horses and carriage bride and bridegroom had disappeared for ever. As the moor closed over them the hand of Auriola vanished. ""The Curse of her father was accomplished. ""On the same night Gottmar castle was struck by lightning. It burned to the ground and there the aged Hubert found his grave."" ""THAT'S WHAT WE ARE."" ""Careful and troubled about many things "" (Alas! that it should be so with us still As in the time of Martha ) I went forth Harass'd and heartsick with hot aching brow Thought fever'd happy to escape myself. Beauteous that bright May morning! All about Sweet influences of earth and air and sky Harmoniously accordant. I alone The troubled spirit that had driven me forth In dissonance with that fair frame of things So blissfully serene. God had not yet Let fall the weight of chastening that makes dumb The murmuring lip and stills the rebel heart Ending all earthly interests and I call'd (O Heaven!) that incomplete experience--Grief. It would not do. The momentary sense Of soft refreshing coolness pass'd away; Back came the troublous thoughts and all in vain I strove with the tormentors: All in vain Applied me with forced interest to peruse Fair nature's outspread volume: All in vain Look'd up admiring at the dappling clouds And depths cerulean: Even as I gazed The film--the earthly film obscured my vision And in the lower region sore perplex'd Again I wander'd; and again shook off With vex'd impatience the besetting cares And set me straight to gather as I walk'd A field-flower nosegay. Plentiful the choice; And in few moments of all hues I held A glowing handful. In a few moments more Where are they? Dropping as I went along Unheeded on my path and I was gone-- Wandering again in muse of thought perplex'd. Despairingly I sought the social scene-- Sound--motion--action--intercourse of _words_-- Scarcely of mind--rare privilege!--We talk'd-- Oh! how we talk'd! Discuss'd and solved all questions: Religion--morals--manners--politics-- Physics and metaphysics--books and authors-- Fashion and dress--our neighbours and ourselves. But even as the senseless changes rang And I help'd ring them in my secret soul Grew weariness disgust and self-contempt; And more disturb'd in spirit I retraced More cynically sad my homeward way. It led me through the churchyard and methought There entering as I let the iron gate Swing to behind me that the change was good-- The unquiet living for the quiet dead. And at that moment from the old church tower A knell resounded--""Man to his long home"" Drew near. ""The mourners went about the streets;"" And there few paces onward to the right Close by the pathway was an open grave Not of the humbler sort shaped newly out Narrow and deep in the dark mould; when closed To be roofed over with the living sod And left for all adornment (and so best) To Nature's reverential hand. The tomb Made ready there for a fresh habitant Was that of an old family. I knew it.-- A very ancient altar-tomb where Time With his rough fretwork mark'd the sculptor's art Feebly elaborate--heraldic shields And mortuary emblems half effaced Deep sunken at one end of many names Graven with suitable inscriptions each Upon the shelving slab and sides; scarce now Might any but an antiquarian eye Make out a letter. Five-and-fifty years The door of that dark dwelling had shut in The last admitted sleeper. She 'twas said Died of a broken heart--a widow'd mother Following her only child by violent death Cut off untimely and--the whisper ran-- By his own hand. The tomb was ancient _then_ When they two were interr'd; and they the first For whom within the memory of man It had been open'd; and their names fill'd up (With sharp-cut newness mocking the old stone) The last remaining space. And so it seem'd The gathering was complete; the appointed number Laid in the sleeping chamber and seal'd up Inviolate till the great gathering day. The few remaining of the name dispersed-- The family fortunes dwindled--till at last They sank into decay and out of sight And out of memory; till an aged man Pass'd by some parish very far away To die in ours--his legal settlement-- Claim'd kindred with the long-forgotten race Its sole survivor and in right thereof Of that affinity to moulder with them In the old family grave. ""A natural wish "" Said the authorities; ""and sure enough HE WAS of the old stock--the last descendant-- And it would cost no more to bury him Under the old crack'd tombstone with its scutcheons Than in the common ground."" So graciously The
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oon was granted and he died content. And now the pauper's funeral had set forth And the bell toll'd--not many strokes nor long-- Pauper's allowance. He was coming home. But while the train was yet a good way off-- The workhouse burial train--I stopp'd to look Upon the scene before me; and methought Oh! that some gifted painter could behold And give duration to that living picture So rich in moral and pictorial beauty If seen arightly by the spiritual eye As with the bodily organ! The old tomb With its quaint tracery gilded here and there With sunlight glancing through the o'er-arching lime Far flinging its cool shadow flickering light-- Our greyhair'd sexton with his hard grey face (A living tombstone!) resting on his mattock By the low portal; and just over right His back against the lime-tree his thin hands Lock'd in each other--hanging down before him As with their own dead weight--a tall slim youth With hollow hectic cheek and pale parch'd lip And labouring breath and eyes upon the ground Fast rooted as if taking measurement Betime for his own grave. I stopp'd a moment Contemplating those thinkers--youth and age-- Mark'd for the sickle; as it seem'd--the _unripe_ To be first gather'd. Stepping forward then Down to the house of death in vague expectance I sent a curious not unshrinking gaze. There lay the burning brain and broken heart Long long at rest: and many a Thing beside That had been life--warm sentient busy life-- Had hunger'd thirsted laugh'd wept hoped and fear'd-- Hated and loved--enjoy'd and agonized. Where of all this was all I look'd to see? The mass of crumbling coffins--some belike (The undermost) with their contents crush'd in Flatten'd and shapeless. Even in this damp vault With more completeness could the old Destroyer Have done his darkling work? Yet lo! I look'd Into a small square chamber swept and clean Except that on one side against the wall Lay a few fragments of dark rotten wood And a small heap of fine rich reddish earth Was piled up in a corner. ""How is this?"" In stupid wonderment I ask'd myself And dull of apprehension. Turning then To the old sexton--""Tell me friend "" I said ""Here should be many coffins--Where are they? And""--pointing to the earth-heap--""what is that?"" He raised his eyes to mine with a strange look And strangely meaning smile; and I repeated-- (For not a word he spoke)--my witless question. Then with a deep distinctness he made answer Distinct and slow looking from whence I pointed Full in my face again and what he said Thrill'd through my very soul--""_That's what we are!_"" So I was answer'd. Sermons upon death I had heard many. Lectures by the score Upon life's vanities. But never words Of mortal preacher to my heart struck home With such convicting sense and suddenness As that plain-spoken homily so brief Of the unletter'd man. ""That's what we are!""-- Repeating after him I murmur'd low In deep acknowledgment and bow'd the head Profoundly reverential. A deep calm Came over me and to the inward eye Vivid perception. Set against each other I saw weigh'd out the things of time and sense And of eternity;--and oh! how light Look'd in that truthful hour the earthly scale! And oh! what strength when from the penal doom Nature recoil'd in _His_ remember'd words: ""_I am the Resurrection and the Life_."" And other words of that Divinest Speaker (Words to all mourners of all times address'd) Seem'd spoken to me as I went along In prayerful thought slow musing on my way-- ""_Believe in me_""--""_Let not your hearts be troubled_""-- And sure I could have promised in that hour But that I knew myself how fallible That never more should cross or care of this life Disquiet or distress me. So I came Chasten'd in spirit to my home again Composed and comforted and cross'd the threshold That day ""a wiser _not_ a sadder _woman_."" C. EDMUND BURKE.[14] Burke died in 1797 and yet after the lapse of almost half a century the world is eager to treasure every recollection of his name. This is the true tribute to a great man and the only tribute which is worth the wishes of a great man. The perishable nature of all the memorials of human hands has justly been the theme of every moralist since tombs first bore an image or an inscription. Yet such as they are they ought to be given; but they are all that man can give. The nobler monument must be raised by the individual himself and must be the work of his lifetime; its guardianship must be in the hands not of sacristans and chapters but in those of the world; his panegyric must be found not in the extravagance or adulation of his marble but in the universal voice which records his career and cherishes his name as a new stimulant of public virtue. We have no intention of retracing the steps by which this memorable man gradually rose to so high a rank in the estimation of his own times. No history of intellectual eminence during the latter half of the nineteenth century--the most troubled important and productive period of human annals since the birth of the European kingdoms--can be written without giving some testimonial to his genius in every page. But his progress was not limited to his Age. He is still progressive. While his great contemporaries have passed away honoured indeed and leaving magnificent proofs of their powers in the honour and security of their country Burke has not merely retained his position before the national eye but has continually assumed a loftier stature and shone with a more radiant illumination. The great politician of his day he has become the noblest philosopher of ours. Every man who desires to know the true theory of public morals and the actual causes which influence the rise and fall of thrones makes his volumes a study; every man who desires to learn how the most solemn and essential truths may not merely be adorned but invigorated by the richest colourings of imagination must labour to discover the secret of his composition; and every man who born in party desires to emancipate his mind from the egotism bitterness and barrenness of party or achieve the still nobler and more difficult task of turning its evils into good and of making it an instrument of triumph for the general cause of mankind must measure the merits and success of his enterprise by its similarity to the struggles the motives and the ultimate triumph of Edmund Burke. The present volumes contain a considerable portion of the correspondence which Burke carried on with his personal and public friends during the most stirring period of his life. The papers had been put in trust of the late French Lawrence the civilian and brother to the late Archbishop of Cashel with whom was combined in the trust Dr King afterwards Bishop of Rochester both able men and particular friends of Burke. But Lawrence while full of the intention of giving a life of his celebrated friend died in 1809 and the papers were bequeathed by the widow of Burke who died in 1812 to the Bishop of Rochester the Right Hon. W. Elliot and Earl Fitzwilliam for the publication of such parts as had not already appeared. This duty chiefly devolved upon Dr King who had been made Bishop of Rochester in 1808. Personal infirmity and that most distressing of all infirmities decay of sight retarded the publishing of the works; but sixteen volumes were completed. The bishop's death in 1828 put an end to all the hopes which had been long entertained of an authentic life from his pen. On this melancholy event the papers came into the possession of the late Earl Fitzwilliam from whom they devolved to the present Earl who with Sir Richard Bourke a distant relative of the family and personally intimate with Burke during the last eight years of his life has undertaken the present collection of his letters. Those letters which required explanation have been supplied with intelligent and necessary notes and the whole forms a singularly important publication. * * * * * Many of Burke's earliest letters were written to a Richard Shackleton the son of a Quaker at whose school Burke with his two brothers had been placed in 1741. In 1743 he was placed in the college of Dublin and then commenced his correspondence with Shackleton. Even those letters exhibit at the age of little more than fifteen the sentiments which his mature life was spent in establishing and enlarging. He says of sectaries and this was to a sectary himself ""I assure you I don't think near so favourably of those sectaries you mentioned (he had just spoken of the comparative safety of virtuous heathens who not having known the name of Christianity were not to be judged by its law ) many of those sectaries breaking as they themselves confessed for matters of indifference and no way concerned in the only affair that is necessary viz. salvation; and what a great crime schism is you can't be ignorant. This and the reasons in my last and if you consider what will occur to yourself together with several texts will bring you to my way of thinking on that point. Let us endeavour to live according to the rules of the Gospel; and he that prescribed them I hope will consider our endeavours to please him and assist us in our designs. ""I don't like that part of your letter wherein you say you had the testimony of well-doing in your breast. Whenever such notions rise again endeavour to suppress them. We should always be in no other than the state of a penitent because the most righteous of us is no better than a sinner. Read the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican who prayed in the temple."" We next have a letter exhibiting the effect of external things on the writer's mind and expressed with almost the picturesque power of his higher days. He tells his friend that he will endeavour to answer his letter in good-humour ""though every thing around "" he says ""conspires to excite in him a contrary disposition--the melancholy gloom of the day the whistling winds and the hoarse rumbling of the swollen Liffey with a flood which even where I write lays close siege to our own street not permitting any to go in or out to supply us with the necessaries of life."" After some statements of the rise of the river he says ""It gives me pleasure to see nature in those great though terrible scenes; it fills the mind with grand ideas and turns the soul in upon herself. This together with the sedentary life I lead forced some reflections on me which perhaps would otherwise not have occurred. I considered how little man is yet in his own mind how great. He is lord and master of all things yet scarce can command any thing. What well laid and what better executed scheme of his is there but what a small change of nature is entirely able to defeat and abolish. If but one element happens to encroach a little upon another what confusion may it not create in his affairs what havoc what destruction: the servant destined to his use confines menaces and frequently destroys this mighty this feeble lord."" One of those letters mentions his feelings on the defeat of the luckless Charles Edward whose hopes of the British crown were extinguished by the battle of Culloden (April 16 1746.) ""The Pretender who gave us so much disturbance for some time past is at length with all his adherents utterly defeated and himself (as some say) taken prisoner. 'Tis strange to see how the minds of the people are in a few days changed. The very men who but a while ago while they were alarmed by his progress so heartily cursed and hated those unfortunate creatures are now all pity and wish it could be terminated without bloodshed. I am sure I share in the general compassion. It is indeed melancholy to consider the state of those unhappy gentlemen who engaged in this affair (as for the rest they lose but their lives ) who have thrown away their lives and fortunes and destroyed their families for ever in what I believe they thought a just cause."" Those sentiments exhibit the early propensity of Burke's mind to a generous dealing with political opponents. He was a Protestant a zealous admirer of the constitution of 1688 as all Irish Protestants were in his day whether old or young; and yet he feels an unequivocal as it was a just compassion for the brave men who under an impulse of misapplied loyalty and in obedience to a mistaken sense of duty went headlong to their ruin for a prince who was a Papist and thus would have been like his father a most hazardous sovereign to the liberties and religion of England. In allusion to his collegiate career he describes himself as having taken up every successive subject with an ardour which however speedily declined. ""First I was greatly taken with natural philosophy which while I should have given my mind to logic employed me incessantly (logic forming a principal part of the first year's studies.) This I call my _furor mathematicus_. But this worked off as soon as I began to read it in the college. This threw me back to logic and metaphysics. Here I remained a good while and with much pleasure and this was my _furor logicus_--a disease very common in the days of ignorance and very uncommon in these enlightened times. Next succeeded the _furor historicus_ which also had its day but is now no more being absorbed in the _furor poeticus_ which (as skilful physicians assure me) is difficultly cured. But doctors differ and I don't despair of a cure."" Fortunately he at last accomplished that cure for his early poetry gives no indications of future excellence. His prose is much more poetic even in those early letters than his verse. A great poet unquestionably is a great man; but Burke's greatness was to be achieved in another sphere. It is only in the visions of prophecy that we see the Lion with wings. Burke entered his name at the Middle Temple in April 1747 and went to London to keep his terms in 1750. He was now twenty-two years old and his constitution being delicate and apparently consumptive he adopted during this period of his residence in England a habit to which he probably owed his strength of constitution in after-life. During the vacations he spent his time in travelling about England generally in company with a friend and relative Mr William Burke. Though his finances were by no means narrow--his father being a man of success in his profession--Burke probably travelled the greater part of those journeys on foot. When he found an agreeable country town or village he fixed his quarters there leading a regular life rising early taking frequent exercise and employing himself according to the inclinations of the hour. There could be no wiser use of his leisure; exercise of the frame is health of the mind open air is life to the student change of scene is mental vigour to an enquiring active and eager spirit; and thus the feeble boy invigorated himself for the most strenuous labours of the man and laid the foundation for a career of eminent usefulness and public honour for nearly half a century of the most stirring period of the modern world. Some of his letters touch in his style of grave humour on these pleasant wanderings.--""You have compared me for my rambling disposition to the sun. Sincerely I can't help finding a likeness myself for they say the sun sends down much the same influences whenever he comes into the same signs. Now I am influenced to shake off my laziness and write to you at the same time of the year and from the same west country I wrote my last in. Since I had your letter I have often shifted the scene. I spent part of the winter that is the term time in London and part in Croydon in Surrey. About the beginning of the summer finding myself attacked with my old complaints I went once more to Bristol and found the same benefit."" Of his adventures at Monmouth he says they would almost compose a novel and of a more curious kind than is generally issued from the press. He and his relative formed the topic of the town both while they were there and after they left it. ""The most innocent scheme "" said he ""they guessed was that of fortune-hunting; and when they saw us quit the town without wives the lower sort sagaciously judged us spies to the French king. What is much more odd is that here my companion and I puzzled them as much as we did at Monmouth [he was then at Turlaine in Wiltshire ] for this is a place of very great trade in making fine cloths in which they employ a great number of hands. The first conjecture for they could not fancy how any other sort of people could spend so much of their time at books; but finding that we receive from time to time a good many letters they conclude us merchants. They at last began to apprehend that we were spies from Spain on their trade."" Still they appeared mysterious; and the old woman in whose lodgings they lived paid them the rather ambiguous compliment of saying ""I believe that you be gentlemen but I ask no questions."" ""What makes the thing still better "" says Burke ""about the same time we came hither arrived a little parson equally a stranger; but he spent a good part of his time in shooting and other country amusements got drunk at night got drunk in the morning and became intimate with every body in the village. But he surprised nobody no questions were asked about him because he lived like the rest of the world. But that two men should come into a strange country and partake of none of the country diversions seek no acquaintance and live entirely recluse is something so inexplicable as to puzzle the wisest heads even that of the parish-clerk himself."" About the year 1756 Burke still without a profession--for though he had kept his terms he was never called to the bar--began to feel the restlessness perhaps the self-condemnation natural to every man who feels life advancing on him without an object. He now determined to try his strength as an author and published his _Vindication of Natural Society_--a pamphlet in which adopting the showy style of Bolingbroke but pushing his arguments to the extreme he shows the fallacy of his principles. This work excited considerable attention at the time. The name of the author remained unknown and the imitation was so complete that for some time it was regarded as a posthumous work of the infidel lord. Burke in one of his later publications exclaims--Who now reads Bolingbroke? who ever read him through? We may be assured at least that one read him through; and that one was Edmund Burke. The dashing rhetoric and headlong statements of Bolingbroke; his singular affluence of language and his easy disregard of fact; the boundless lavishing and overflow of an excitable and glowing mind on topics in which prejudice and passion equally hurried him onward and which the bitter recollections of thwarted ambition made him regard as things to be trampled on if his own fame was to survive was incomparably transferred by Burke to his own pages. The performance produced a remarkable sensation amongst the leaders of public opinion and literature. Chesterfield pronounced it to be from the pen of Bolingbroke. Mallet the literary lord's residuary legatee was forced to disclaim it by public advertisement; but Mallet's credit was not of the firmest order and his denial was scarcely believed until Burke's name as the author was known. But his _Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of the Sublime and Beautiful_ brought him more unequivocal applause. His theory on this subject has been disputed and is obviously disputable; but it was chiefly written at the age of nineteen; it has never been wholly superseded and for elegance of diction has never been equaled. It brought him into immediate intercourse with all that may be called the fashion of literature--Lyttleton Warburton Soame Jenyns Hume Reynolds Lord Bath Johnson the greatest though the least influential of them all and Mrs Montague the least but the most influential of them all. There must have been a good deal of what is called fortune in this successful introduction to the higher orders of London society; for many a work of superior intelligence and more important originality has been produced without making its author known beyond the counter of the publisher. But what chance began his merits completed. The work was unquestionably fit for the hands of blue-stockingism; the topic was pleasing to literary romance; the very title had a charm for the species of philosophy which lounges on sofas and talks metaphysics in the intervals of the concert or the card-table. It may surprise us that in an age when so many manly and muscular understandings existed at the same time in London things so infinitely trifling as conversaziones should have been endured; but conversaziones there were and Burke's book was precisely made to their admiration. It is no dishonour to the matured abilities of this great man that he produced a book which found its natural place on the toilet-tables and its natural praise in the tongues of the Mrs Montagues of this world. It might have been worse; he never thought it worth his while to make it better; the theory is worth nothing but the language is elegant; and the whole regarded as the achievement of a youth of nineteen does honour to the spirit of his study and the polish of his pen. A change was now to take place in Burke's whole career. He might have perished in poverty notwithstanding his genius except for the chance which introduced him to Fitzherbert a graceful and accomplished man who united to a high tone of fashionable life a gratification in the intercourse of intelligent society. Partly through this gentleman's interference and partly through that of the late Earl of Charlemont Burke was introduced to William Gerard Hamilton who shortly after went to Ireland as secretary to the lord-lieutenant Lord Halifax. However this connexion though it continued for six years was evidently an uneasy one to Burke; and a letter written by him in the second year of his private secretaryship to Hamilton shows how little they were fitted for cordial association. A pension of L.300 a-year was assigned to Burke as a remuneration for his services which however he evidently seemed to regard in the light of a retaining fee. In consequence of this conception and the fear of being fettered for life Burke wrote a letter stating that it would be necessary to give a portion of his time to publication on his own account. ""Whatever advantages "" said he ""I have acquired have been owing to some small degree of literary reputation. It would be hard to persuade me that any further services which your kindness may propose for me or any in which my friends may co-operate with you will not be greatly facilitated by doing something to cultivate and keep alive the same reputation. I am fully sensible that this reputation may be as much hazarded as forwarded by a new publication; but because a certain oblivion is the consequence to writers of my inferior class of an entire neglect of publication I consider it such a risk as must sometimes be run. For this purpose some short time at convenient intervals and especially at the dead time of the year it would be requisite to study and consult proper books. The matter may be very easily settled by a good understanding between ourselves and by a discreet liberty which I think you would not wish to restrain or I to abuse."" However it will be seen that Gerard Hamilton thought differently on the subject. We break off this part of the correspondence for the purpose of introducing a fragment of that wisdom which formed so early and so promising a portion of the mind of Burke. In writing of his brother Richard to his Irish friend he says--""Poor Dick sets off at the beginning of next week for the Granadas [in which he had obtained a place under government.] He goes in good health and spirits which are all but little enough to battle with a bad climate and a bad season. But it must be submitted to. Providence never intended to much the greater part an entire life of ease and quiet. A peaceable honourable and affluent decline of life must be purchased by a laborious or hazardous youth; and every day I think more and more that it is well worth the purchase. Poverty and age suit very ill together and a course of struggling is miserable indeed when strength is decayed and hope gone. _Turpe senex miles!_"" Burke's quarrel with Hamilton ended in his resigning his pension. His feelings appear to have been deeply hurt by Hamilton's superciliousness and his demand for the right to employ the whole time of his private secretary. In a long explanatory letter to Hutchinson a leading member of the Irish parliament and father of the late Lord Donoughmore he says indignantly enough--""I flatter myself to let you see that I deserved to be considered in another manner than as one of Mr Hamilton's cattle or as a piece of his household stuff. Six of the best years of my life he took me from every pursuit of literary reputation or of improvement of my fortune. In that time he made his own fortune a very great one; and he has also taken to himself the very little one which I had made. In all this time you may easily conceive how much I felt at being left behind by almost all my contemporaries. There never was a season more favourable for any man who chose to enter into the career of public life; and I think I am not guilty of ostentation in supposing my own moral character and my industry my friends and connexions when Mr H. first sought my acquaintance were not at all inferior to those of several whose fortune is at this day upon a very different footing from mine."" It is evident that Burke's mind was at this period turned to authorship and that his chief quarrel arose from the petty and pragmatical demand of Hamilton that he should abandon it altogether. Burke soon had ample revenge if it was to be found in the obscurity into which Hamilton rapidly fell and the burlesque which alone revived his name from its obscurity. The contrast between the two must have been a lesson to the vanity of the one as pungent as was its triumph. If ever the fate of Tantalus was realized to man it was in the perpetual thirst and perpetual disappointment of Hamilton for public name. The cup never reached his lips but it was instantly dry; while Burke was seen reveling in the full flow of public renown--buoyant on the stream into which so many others plunged only to sink and steering his noble course with a full mastery of the current. ""Single-speech Hamilton"" became a title of ridicule while Burke was pouring forth night after night speech after speech rich in the most sparkling and most solid opulence of the mind. He must have been more or less than man to have never cast a glance at the decrepitude of the formal coxcomb whom he once acknowledged as his leader and compared his shrunk shape with the vigorous and athletic proportions of his own intellectual stature. Hamilton too must have had many a pang. The wretched nervousness of character which at once stimulated him to pine for distinction and disqualified him from obtaining it must have made his life miserable. If the magnificent conception of the poet's Prometheus could be lowered to any thing so trivial as a disappointed politician of the eighteenth century its burlesque might be amply shown in a mind helplessly struggling against a sense of its own inferiority gnawed by envy at the success of better men and with only sufficient intellectual sensibility remaining to have that gnawing constantly renewed. Burke's letters to the chief Irishmen with whom his residence in Dublin had brought him into intercourse long continued indignant. ""Having presumed "" said he in one of those explanatory letters ""to put a test to me which no man _not born in Africa_ ever thought of taking on my refusal he broke off all connexion with me in the most insolent manner. He indeed entered into two several negotiations afterwards but both poisoned in their first principles by the same spirit of injustice with which he set out in his first dealings with me. I therefore could never give way to his proposals. The whole ended by his possessing himself of that small reward for my services which I since find he had a very small share in procuring for me. After or indeed rather during his negotiations he endeavoured to stain my character and injure my future fortune by every calumny his malice could suggest. This is the case of my connexion with Mr Hamilton."" If all this be true--and whoever impeached the veracity of Burke in any thing?--the more effectually his enemy was trampled the better: malice can be punished sufficiently only by extirpation. A powerful letter to Henry Flood then one of the leading members of the Irish House of Commons shows how deeply Burke felt the vexation of Hamilton's conduct and not less explicitly administers the moral of how much must be suffered by every man who enters into the conflicts of public life. Flood too had his share of those vexations; perhaps more of them than his correspondent. Henry Flood was one of the most remarkable men whom Ireland had produced. Commencing his career with a handsome fortune he had plunged into the dissipation which was almost demanded of men of family in his day; but some accidental impression (we believe a fit of illness) suddenly changed his whole course. He turned his attention to public life entered the House of Commons and suddenly astonished every body by his total transformation from a mere man of fashion to a vigorous and brilliant public orator. He was the most logical of public speakers without the formality of logic and the most imaginative without the flourish of fancy. For ten years Flood was the leader of the House on whichever side he stood. He was occasionally in opposition and the champion of opposition politics in his earlier career; but at length unfortunately alike for his feelings and his fame he grew indolent accepted an almost sinecure place and indulged himself in ease and silence for full ten years. A loss like this was irreparable in the short duration allotted to the living supremacy of statesmanship. No man in the records of the English parliament has been at his highest vigour for more than ten years; he may have been _rising_ before or inheriting a portion of his parliamentary distinction--enough to give dignity to his decline; but his true time has past and thenceforth he must be satisfied with the reflection of his own renown. Flood had already passed his hour when he was startled by the newborn splendour of Grattan. The contest instantly commenced between those extraordinary men and was carried on for a while with singular animation and not less singular animosity. The ground of contest was the constitution of 1782. The exciting cause of contest was the wrath of Flood at seeing the laurels which he had relinquished seized by a younger champion and the daring yet justified confidence of Grattan in his own admirable powers to win and wear them. Flood in the bitterest pungency of political epigram charged Grattan with having sold himself to the people and then sold the people to the minister for prompt payment. (A vote of £50 000 had been passed to purchase an estate for Grattan.) Grattan retorted that ""Flood after having sold himself to the minister was angry only because he was interrupted in the attempt to sell himself to the people."" The country fond of the game of partizanship ranged itself under the banners of both alternately hissed and applauded both and at length abandoned both and in its new fondness for change adopted the bolder banners of revolution. Both were fighting for a shadow and both must have known it; but the prize of rhetoric was not to be given up without a struggle. The ""constitution"" was rapidly forgotten when Flood retired into England and obscurity; and Grattan who had been left if not victor at least possessor of the field grew tired of struggles without a purpose and plaudits without a reward. The absurdity of affecting an independence which could not exist an hour but by the protection of England and the burlesque of a parliament into which no man entered but in expectation of a job; the scandal of an Irish slave-market and the costliness of purchasing representatives only to be sold by them in turn became so palpable to the national eye that the nation contemptuously cashiered the legislature. The gamblers who had made their fortunes off the people and had amused themselves with building a house of cards saw their paper fabric fall at the first breath; and the nation looked on the fall with the negligent scorn excited in rational eyes by detected imposture. The attempt is once more prepared but Ireland will have no house of cards still less will
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he suffer the building of an hospital for decayed fashion and impotent intrigue--a receptacle for political incurables--and meritorious in the sight even of its projectors simply for affording them snug stewardships showy governorships and the whole sinecure system of emolument without responsibility. Burke again repeats to Flood his wrath at Hamilton's provocation.--""The occasion of our difference was not any act whatsoever on my part it was entirely on his--by a voluntary but most insolent and intolerable demand amounting to no less than a claim of servitude during the whole course of my life."" He then alludes to the position of political parties and gives a sketch of the great Earl of Chatham which shows the hand of a master. ""Nothing but an intractable temper in your friend Pitt can prevent an admirable and most lasting system from being put together; and this crisis will show whether pride or patriotism be predominant in his character for you may be assured that he has it now in his power to come into the service of his country upon any plan of politics he may choose to dictate; with great and honourable claims to himself and to every friend he has in the world and with such a stretch of power as will be equal to every thing but absolute despotism over the king and kingdom. A few days will show whether he will take his part or that of continuing on his bank at Hayes (his country-seat ) talking fustian excluded from all ministerial and incapable of all parliamentary service; for his gout is worse than ever but his pride may disable him more than his gout."" We then have an odd rambling letter from Dr Leland the author of a History of Ireland a heavy performance but an honest one and by far the best and least unfortunate of the unfortunate attempts to rationalize the caprices and calamities of that unhappy country. Leland's letter is written in congratulation to the two brothers Edmund and William Burke the former having been appointed private secretary to the Marquis of Rockingham in July 1765 the latter one of the under secretaries of state. In speaking of Ireland this writer says sensibly enough ""Let who will come to govern us poor wretches I care not provided we are decently governed. I would not have his secretary a jolly good-humoured abandoned profligate (the most dangerous character in society ) or a sullen vain proud selfish cankered-hearted envious reptile--though what matter who is either lieutenant or secretary?"" Burke was not at this time in Parliament nor until the 26th of December in this year when he was returned for the borough of Wendover through the influence of Lord Verney. A letter from Dr Markham afterwards archbishop of York shows the degree of estimation in which his abilities were held and the expectations which he excited among able men at a period when his parliamentary faculties were still unknown. He says to William Burke --""I was informed of Ned's cold by a letter from Skynner. I am very glad to hear it is so much better. I should be grieved to hear he was ill at any time and particularly at so critical a time as this. I think much will depend on his outset. I wish him to appear at once in some important question. If he has but that confidence in his strength which I have always had he cannot fail of appearing with lustre. I am very glad to hear from you that he feels his own consequence as well as the crisis of his situation. He is now on the ground on which I have been so many years wishing to see him. One splendid day will crush the malevolence of enemies as well as the envy of some who often praise him. When his reputation is once established the common voice will either silence malignity or destroy its effect."" This was written three days after Burke's entrance into Parliament. It is curious to see in the letters of those early correspondents most of them accomplished and practical men how fully they were possessed with a sense of his promised superiority. ""You are now I am certain "" says Leland ""a man of business deeply immersed in public affairs commercial and political. You will show yourself a man of business in the House of Commons and you will not I am certain build your reputation and consequence there upon a single studied manufactured piece of eloquence and then like the brazen head shut your mouth for ever. I trust I shall hear of your rising regularly though rapidly; that I shall hear of ministers begging that you would be pleased to accept of being vice-treasurer of Ireland and then of your soaring so high as to be quite out of view of such insects as I--and so good-night my dear Ned. If ever chance should bring us together we are quite ruined as companions. The saunterings the readings the laughings and the dosings in Mount Gallagher (his country-seat) are all over. Your head is filled with questions divisions and majorities. My thoughts are employed on Louth and Warburton."" Burke began his parliamentary triumphs with but little delay. The colonies were the grand subject of the time and Burke instantly devoted himself to that subject with the whole force of his capacious intellect. He was regarded by the House on the first speech which he made on this voluminous topic as exhibiting extraordinary knowledge combined with a power of language unequalled save by Chatham himself. One of the letters of congratulations is from Dr Marriott who was afterwards judge of the court of admiralty. ""Permit me to tell you that you are the person the least sensible of the members of the House of Commons how much glory you acquired last Monday night; and it would be an additional satisfaction to you that this testimony comes from a judge of public speaking the most disinterested and capable of judging of it. Dr Hay assures me that your speech was far superior to that of any other speaker on the colonies that night. I could not refrain from acquainting you with an opinion which must so greatly encourage you to proceed and to place the palm of the orator with those which you have already acquired of the writer and the philosopher."" Hay was afterwards judge of the admiralty. At his death he was succeeded by Marriott. He was of the Bedford party which as it was wholly opposed to the Rockingham made the testimony more valuable. Burke's second speech was equally the subject of admiration. A second letter from Marriott with whom he had had some conversation expressive of his own diffidence at least as to his manner in addressing the House mentions once more the opinion of Dr Hay for whose taste Marriott seems to have had great deference. ""His opinion "" he writes ""is that nothing could be more remote from awkwardness or constraint than your manner; that your style ideas and expression were peculiarly your own; natural and unaffected and so different from the cant of the House or from the jargon of the bar that he could not imagine any thing more agreeable; that you did not dwell upon a point till you had tired it out as is the way of most speakers but kept on with fresh ideas crowding upon you and rising one out of another all leading to one point which was constantly kept in view to the audience; and although every thing seemed a kind of new political philosophy yet it was all to the purpose and well-connected so as to produce the effect; and that he admired your last speech the more as it was impromptu. I thought he was describing to me a Greek orator whose select orations I had translated four times when I first went to the university and therefore marked the traits of this character. It was impossible for me not to communicate to you a decision from so great a master himself though differing from you in party that you may go on in a way you have begun with such glory to yourself and to which you add so much by being so little sensible of it."" In 1766 the Rockingham ministry was suddenly dashed to the ground and all its connexions of course went down along with it. The marquis was a man of great estate and excellent intentions but his ministry realized the Indian fable of the globe being painted on a tortoise--the merit of the political tortoise being in this instance to stand still while its ambition unfortunately was to move. The consequence naturally followed that the world took its own course and left the tortoise behind. But Burke had distinguished himself so much that offers of office were made to him from the succeeding administration. Those he declined and commenced that neutral existence which with the majority of politicians is worse than none. There was a weakness in Burke's character which did him infinite mischief for the first ten years of his political life. We shall not call it an affectation in the instance of so great a man but it paid all the penalties of folly--and this was his propensity to feel or at least to express a personal affection for the men whom he politically followed. Even of Hamilton the most supercilious and least loveable of mankind Burke speaks with a tenderness absolutely ridiculous amongst politicians. Of Lord Rockingham he seldom speaks but in a tone of romance singularly inapplicable to that formal and frigid figure of aristocracy. Of Fox in latter days he spoke in a sentimental tone worthy only of a lover on the French stage; and in all these instances he was doubtless laughed at notwithstanding all his sensibilities. With the highest admiration of his genius we must believe for the sake of his understanding that he adopted this style merely for fashion's sake; for familiarity which is akin to fondness as we are told by the poets that pity is akin to love was much the foolish fashion of the day. Men of the highest rank and doubtless of the haughtiest arrogance were called Tom and Dick and Harry; and this silliness was the language of high life until the French Revolution and the democratic war at home taught them that if they adopted the phraseology of their own footmen their footmen would probably take possession of their title-deeds. The hollowness of public life is as soon discovered as the haughtiness of public men. A man of heart like Burke ought to have disdained even the language of courtiership and while he observed the decorums of society scorned to stoop even to the phraseology of humiliation. But one of the most curious features of this obsolete day is the manner in which the country was disposed of. No game of whist in one of the lordly clubs of St James's Square was ever more exclusively played. It was simply a question whether his Grace of Bedford would be content with a quarter or a half of the cabinet or whether the Marquis of Rockingham would be satisfied with two-fifths or the Earl of Shelburne should have all or should share power with the Duke of Portland. In all those barterings and borrowings we never hear the name of the nation. No whisper announces that there is such a thing in existence as the people. No allusion ever proceeds from the stately lips or offends the ""ears polite "" of the embroidered conclave referring to either the interests the feelings or the necessities of the nation. All was done as in an assemblage of a higher race of existence calmly carving out the world for themselves--a tribe of Epicurean deities with the cabinet for their Olympus stooping to our inferior region only to enjoy their own atmosphere afterwards with the greater zest or shift their quarters like the poet's Jupiter when tired of the dust and clamour of war moving off on his clouds and with his attendant goddesses to the tranquil realms of the Hippomolgi. And this highbred condition of affairs was the more repulsive from the fact that the greater number of those disposers of office and dividers of empire were among the emptiest of mankind. The succession of ministers from the days of Walpole (unquestionably a shrewd though a coarse mind and profligate personage ) with the exception of Chatham was a list of silken imbeciles; very rich or very highborn or very handsomely supplied with boroughs but in all other senses the last men who should have been entrusted with power. We have to thank the satirists the public misfortunes and even the demagogues for extinguishing this smooth and pacific system. Junius with his sarcastic pen the American war and even the gross impudence of Wilkes stirred the public mind to remember that it had a voice in the state. A manlier period succeeded; and we shall no more hear of the government being divided among the select party like a twelfth cake nor see the interests of a nation which represents the interests of the globe compromised to suit the contending claims of full-dressed frivolity. As a specimen of this courtly affair we give a few fragments from a confidential letter of Burke to the Marquis of Rockingham. ""Lord Shelburne still continues in administration though as adverse and as much disliked as ever.--The Duke of Grafton continues I hear his old complaints of his situation and his genuine desire of holding it as long as he can. At same time Lord Shelburne gets loose too. I know that Lord Camden who adhered to him in these late divisions has given him up and gone over to the Duke of Grafton. The Bedfords are horridly frightened at all this for fear of seeing the table _they had so well covered_ and at which they sat down with so good an appetite kicked down in the scuffle. They find things not ripe at present for bringing in Grenville and that any capital move just now would only betray their weakness in the closet and the nation."" Thus those noble personages had it all to themselves. Again-- ""If Grenville was peculiarly exceptionable another middle person might have the Treasury. I fancy their middleman to be the same they had in their thoughts this time twelve-month--Lord Gower. They talked of the Duke of Northumberland as a proper person for the Treasury in case of the Duke of Grafton's going out. The truth is the Bedfords will never act any part either fair or amiable with your lordship or your friends until they see you in a situation to give the law to them."" No doubt all this was perfectly true; the whole was selfish supercilious and exclusive; one red riband matched against another one garter balanced against a rival fragment of blue; the whole a court-ball in which the nation had no more share than if it had been danced in the saloon of Windsor; a masquerade in which the political minuet was gravely danced by the peerage in character and of which the nation heard scarcely even the fiddles. But those times have passed away and for the honour of common sense they have passed never to return. The long contested authorship of ""Junius's Letters"" makes the subject of a brief portion of his correspondence. A letter from Charles Townshend brother of Lord Sidney says--""I met Fitzherbert last night and talked to him on the subject of our late conversation. I told him that I had heard that he had asserted that you were the author of 'Junius's Letters ' for which I was very sorry because if it reached your ears it would give you a great deal of concern. He assured me that he had only said that the ministry now looked upon you as the author but that he had constantly contradicted the report whenever it was mentioned in his company particularly yesterday and the day before to persons who affirmed that you were now fixed on as the writer of those papers. He declared that he was convinced in his own mind that you were not concerned in the publication and that he had said so."" This letter was written in 1771. Burke replies to it in two days after in a letter of thanks unequivocally denying that he had any share in those letters. ""My friends I have satisfied; my enemies shall never have any direct satisfaction from me. The ministry I am told are convinced of my having written Junius on the authority of a miserable bookseller's preface in which there are not three lines of common truth or sense. I have never once condescended to take the least notice of their invectives or publicly to deny the fact on which some of them were grounded. At the same time to you or to any of my friends I have been as ready as I ought to be in disclaiming in the most precise terms writings that are as superior perhaps to my talents as they are most certainly different in many essential points from my regards and my principles."" Burke seems to have been constantly bored on this subject for he writes an angry letter to Markham then bishop of Chester. Charles Townshend writes to him again to say that the Public require a more distinct disclaimer. Burke answers ""I have I daresay to nine-tenths of my acquaintances denied my being the author of Junius or having any knowledge of the author whenever the thing was mentioned whether in jest or earnest. I now give you my word and honour that I am not the author of Junius and that I know not the author of that paper and I do authorize you to say so."" We believe that this is the first time in which Burke's disclaimer has been made public; but our only surprise in the matter is how he could at any time have been considered as the author of Junius. We should have rather said that he was the last man in the kingdom who ought to have been suspected. The styles of Burke and Junius are totally different: the one loose and flowing the other terse and pungent; the one lofty and imaginative the other level and stern; the one taking large views on every subject and evidently delighting in the largeness of those views the other fixing steadily and fiercely upon the immediate object of attack and shooting every arrow point-blank. Of course we have no intention of wandering into a topic so thoroughly beaten as that of the authorship of Junius; but we must acknowledge if Sir Philip Francis was not the man no other nominal candidate for the honour has been brought forward with equal claims. The only objection which we have ever heard to his title as author is his not making it in person; for he was said to be a man of such inordinate admiration of his own powers that he could not have kept the secret. It has been said too that no fear after the lapse of twenty years could have prevented its being divulged. But there are other motives than fear which might act upon a proud and powerful spirit. The author of a work like Junius was clearly contemptuous of mankind and more contemptuous in proportion to the rank of his victims. To such a man even the excitement produced by the general enquiry into the authorship might be a triumph in itself. Though a solitary it might be a high gratification to a morbid spirit of disdain to see himself a problem to mankind to hear perpetual arguments raised on his identity and see the puzzled pens of the pamphleteering word all busy in sketching an ideal likeness which each fancied to be the original. If we could imagine the shade of Swift or Shaftesbury of Scarron or Rabelais to walk invisibly through the world playing its bitter and fantastic tricks in the ways of men stinging some astounding others and startling all we perhaps would approach nearest to the feelings which might now and then have indulged the habitual scorn and stimulated the conscious power of Junius. It has also been said that Sir Philip Francis was not equal to the composition of those masterly letters; and it must be acknowledged that though he made some very powerful and pointed speeches in the House of Commons they wanted the penetration and the polish of Junius. But there are several letters by Sir Philip Francis in these volumes which though evidently written in the haste and desultoriness of private correspondence exhibit conceptions strongly resembling the sarcastic strength and high-wrought point of Junius. The Hastings' trial brought Francis full before the public; and we have a letter from Burke describing one of his speeches on this subject which with his usual good nature he sent to the orator's wife. It is dated April 20 1787.--""My dear madam I cannot with all honest appetite or clear conscience sit down to my breakfast unless I first give you an account which will make your family breakfast as pleasant to you as I wish all your family meetings to be. I have the satisfaction of telling you that not in my judgment only but in that of all who heard him no man ever acquitted himself on a day of great expectation so well as Mr Francis did yesterday. He was clear precise forcible and eloquent in a high degree. No intricate business was ever better unravelled and no iniquity ever placed so effectually to produce its natural horror and disgust. * * * * All who heard him were delighted except those whose mortification ought to give pleasure to every good mind. He was two hours and a half on his legs and he never lost attention for a moment."" We give a curious specimen of the daring criticism which this applauded personage now and then ventured even on the authorship of Burke. In 1790 Burke had prepared his celebrated work on the French Revolution for the press early in the year and appears to have sent fragments of it to several of his friends. Casual circumstances delayed the work until October. Francis's letter was written in February. It begins--""I am sorry you should have the trouble of sending for the printed paper you lent me yesterday though I own I cannot much regret even a fault of my own that helps to delay the publication of that paper. [This was probably a proof sheet of the _Reflections_.] It is the proper province and ought to be the privilege of an inferior to criticise and advise. The best possible critic of the Iliad would be _ipso facto_ and by virtue of that very character incapable of being the author of it. Standing as I do in this relation to you you would renounce your superiority if you refused to be advised by me. Remember that this is one of the most singular that it may be the most distinguished and ought to be one of the most deliberate acts of your life. Your writings have hitherto been the delight and instruction of your own country. You now undertake to correct and instruct another nation; and your appeal in effect is to all Europe."" After then objecting to Burke's exposure of Price and his fellow pamphleteers as beneath the writer and his subject he attacks him for his panegyric on the Queen of France. He then sneeringly asks ""Pray sir how long have you felt yourself so desperately disposed to admire the ladies of Germany?"" This was an allusion to Queen Charlotte whom Burke's particular friends had long regarded as one of their impediments to power. He proceeds--""The mischief you are going to do yourself is to my apprehension palpable. It is visible. It will be audible. I snuff it in the wind. I taste it already. I feel it in every sense; and so will you hereafter."" This letter certainly wants the polish of Junius but it has the power of bitter thought and it sneers with practised piquancy. Of course a broad line is to be drawn between a work of study and the work of the moment--between the elaborate vigour which prunes and purifies every straggling shoot away and exhibits its production for a prize-show and the careless luxuriance which suffers the tree to throw out its shoots under no direction but that of the prolific power of nature. Yet the plant is the same and though we by no means say that even this letter gives demonstration yet the arrogant ease of the style is such as we should have expected to find in the familiar correspondence of Junius. His letter obviously excited in Burke a mixture of pain and indignation. He answered it the next day in a long and eloquent vindication which was oddly enough inclosed in a letter from his son scarcely less than menacing. It begins--""My dear sir You must conceive that your letter combating many old ideas of my father's and proposing many new ones could not fail to set his mind at work and to make him address the effect of those operations to you. I must therefore entreat you not to draw him aside from the many and great labours he has in hand by _any further written communications of this kind_ which would indeed be very useful because they are valuable if they were conveyed at a time when there was leisure to settle opinions."" Those are hard hits at the critic but harder were still to come. ""There is one thing of which I must inform you. It is that my father's opinions are never hastily adopted and that even those ideas which have often appeared to me only the effect of momentary heat or casual impression I have afterwards found beyond a possibility of doubt to be the result of systematic meditation perhaps of years. * * * * The thing I say is a paradox but _when we talk of things superior to ourselves_ what is not paradox?"" He strikes harder still. ""When we say that one man is wiser than another we allow that the wiser man forms his opinions upon grounds and principles which though to him justly conclusive cannot be comprehended and received by _him who is less wise_. To be wise is only to see deeper and further and differently _from others_."" Yet this strong rebuke which was followed by a long letter from Burke himself half indignant half argumentative does not seem to have disturbed the temper of Francis proverbially petulant as he was if it did not rather raise his respect for both parties. He tells Burke in a subsequent letter that he has looked for his work his _Reflections on the Revolution_ with great impatience and read it with studious delight. He proceeds--""My dear Mr Burke when I took what is vulgarly called the liberty of opposing my thoughts and wishes to the _publication_ of yours on the late transactions in France I do assure you that I was not moved so much by a difference of opinion on the subject as by an apprehension of the personal uneasiness which one way or other I thought you would suffer by it. I know that virtue would be useless if it were not active and that it can rarely be active without exciting the most malignant of all enmity that in which envy predominates and which having no injury to complain of has no ostensible motive either to resent or to forgive."" (How like Junius is all this! The likeness is still stronger as it proceeds.) ""I have not yet had it in my power to read more than one third of your book. I must taste it deliberately. The flavour is too high--the wine is too rich; I cannot take a draught of it."" In another passage he gives a powerful sketch of popery. In speaking of the French monarchy and its presumed mildness in the last century he attributes the cessation of its severities to the European change of manners. ""We do not pillage and massacre quite so furiously as our ancestors used to do. Why? Because these nations are more enlightened--because the Christian religion is _de facto_ not in force in the world! Suspect me not of meaning the Christian religion of the _gospel_. I mean that which was enforced rather than taught by priests by bishops and by cardinals; which laid waste a province and then formed a monastery; which after destroying a great portion of the human species provided as far as it could for the utter extinction of future population by instituting numberless retreats for celibacy; which set up an ideal being called the Church capable of possessing property of all sorts for the pious use of its ministers incapable of alienating and whose property its usufructuaries very wisely said it should be sacrilege to invade; that religion in short which was practised or professed and with great zeal too by tyrants and villains of every denomination."" These volumes show in a strong light the energy with which Burke watched over his party in the House of Commons and the importance of his guardianship. He seems to have been called on for his advice in all great transactions and to have watched over its interests during the period of Fox's absence. In 1788 the mental illness of George III. became decided and the prospect of a regency with the Prince of Wales at its head awoke all the long excluded ambition of the Whigs. Fox was at that period in Italy and he was sent for by express to lead the party in the assault on office. He immediately turned his face to England and arrived on the 24th of November four days after the meeting of Parliament which had however immediately adjourned to the fourth of the following month for the purpose of ascertaining the health of his majesty. On this occasion Burke addressed to Fox a long and powerful letter marking out the line which the parties should take giving his opinion with singular distinctness and expressing himself in the tone of one who felt his authority. He begins--""My dear Fox If I have not been to see you before this time it was not owing to my not having missed you in your absence or my not having much rejoiced in your return. But I know that you are indifferent to every thing in friendship but the substance and all proceedings of ceremony have for many years been out of the question between you and me."" In allusion to the probable formation of a new ministry he observes--""I do not think that a great deal of time is allowed you. Perhaps it is not for your interest that this state of things should continue long even supposing that the exigencies of government should suffer it to remain on its present footing; but I speak without book. I remember a story of Fitzpatrick in his American campaign that he used to say to the officers who were in the same tent before they were up that the only meals they had to consider how they were to procure for that day were breakfast dinner and supper. I am worse off; for there are five meals necessary and I do not know at present how to feel secure of one of them. The king the prince the Lords the Commons and the People."" He then urges a bold line of policy--the public examination of the physicians the acting independently of the ministers and a movement on the part of the prince worthy of his station; but which unhappily for the Whigs was neither adopted by Fox nor was consistent with the courtly indolence of the future king. ""Might it not be better "" says Burke boldly ""for the prince at once to assure himself to communicate the king's melancholy state by a message to the Houses and to desire their counsel and support in such an exigency? It would put him forward with advantage in the eyes of the people; it would teach them to look upon him with respect as a person possessed of the spirit of command; and it would I am persuaded stifle a hundred cabals both in parliament and elsewhere which if they were cherished by his apparent remissness and indecision would produce to him a vexatious and disgraceful regency and reign."" Lord Thurlow seems in some way or other to have given offence to every remarkable man of his day. At once crafty and insolent he toiled for power with an indefatigable labour as he indulged his sense of authority by an intolerable arrogance. Among the multitude of distinguished men whom this legal savage irritated was Sir William Jones the Orientalist. He thus writes to Burke ""I heard last night with surprise and affliction that the *Thêrion* (the wild-beast--Thurlow) was to continue in office. Now I can assure you from my own positive knowledge and I know him well that though he hates our species in general yet his particular hatred is directed against none more virulently than against Lord North and the friends of the late excellent marquis. He will indeed make fair promises and enter into engagements because he is the most interested of mortals; but his ferocity in opposing the Contractors' Bill may convince you how little he thinks himself bound by his _compacts_. He will take a delight in obstructing all your plans and will never say 'Aha I am satisfied ' until he has overthrown you. In fact you will not be ministers but tenants by copy of court-roll at the will of the lord. If you remove him and put the seal in commission his natural indolence is such that he will give you little trouble because he will give himself none; but if he continue among you his great joy will be and you may rely upon my intelligence to attack the reports of your select committee to support all those whom you condemn and to condemn all the measures which you may support. In a word if _Caliban_ remain in power there will be no Prospero in this fascinated island."" At this period Jones was panting for an Indian judgeship which he obtained shortly after and proceeded to Calcutta. It may be doubted whether his career would not have been happier and loftier had he remained at home. His indefatigable diligence must have soon conquered the difficulties of legal knowledge and his early intercourse with the leading men of his time would in the common cou
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se of things have raised him to distinction. He died at forty-seven too early to accomplish any work of solid utility but not too early to spread his reputation through Europe for an extraordinary proficiency in the languages of India. Later scholars speak lightly of this multifarious knowledge and nothing can be more probable than that attainment of _many_ languages with any approach to their fluent use is beyond the power of man. But his diligence was exemplary his memory retentive and his understanding accomplished by classical knowledge; with those qualities much might be done in any pursuit; and though modern orientalists protest against the superficiality of his acquirements their variety has been admitted and still remain unrivaled. Jones had his fits of despondency like less fortunate men and concludes his letter by intimating a speculation not unlike that of Burke himself in his earlier time:--""As for me I should either settle as a lawyer at Philadelphia whither I have been invited or retire on my small independence to Oxford; if I had not in England a very strong attachment and many dear friends."" One of Burke's most anxious efforts was to make his son Richard a statesman. The efforts were unsuccessful. Richard was a good son and willing to second the desires of his father; but nature had decided otherwise and he remained honest and amiable but without advancing a step. Burke first sent him on a kind of semi-embassy to the headquarters of the emigrant princes at Coblentz and he there carried on a semi-negotiation. But success was not to be the fate of any thing connected with these unfortunate men and failure was scarcely a demerit from its universality. The next experiment was sending him as a species of private envoy to the Irish Roman Catholics; but there his failure was even more conspicuous though perhaps it was equally inevitable. Burke's imagination was at once his unrivaled gift and his perpetual impediment. Like a lover his eye was no sooner caught than he invested its charmer with all conceivable attractions. This susceptibility made him irresistible in a cause worthy of his powers but plunged him into difficulties where the object was inferior to his capacity and unworthy of his heart. His early admiration of Fox of Whiggism and Reform was the rapture of an innamorato. He could discover no defects; he disdained all doubts as a dishonourable scepticism and challenged all obstacles as evidences of his energy and trophies of his success. His prosecution of Hastings a bold piece of patriot honesty rapidly fermented into a splendid blunder. The culprit who ought to have been tried at the Old Bailey was elevated into a national criminal; and the assembled majesty of the legislature was summoned to settle a case in the lapse of years which would have been decided in a day by ""twelve good men and true "" in a box in the city. It was in this ardour of spirit that he adopted the Romish cause. No man knew more thoroughly the measureless value of an established church the endless causeless and acrid bitterness of sectarianism and the mixture of unlearned doctrine and factious politics which constitute their creeds. Against Popery in power Italian German or French in the days of Louis Quatorze he would have pledged himself on the ancestral altar to perpetual hostility. But the romance of popery in Ireland struck his fancy; he saw nothing but a figure drooping with long travel in pursuit of privilege; a pious pilgrim or exhausted giant. Sitting in his closet at Beconsfield he pictured the downcast eyes and dishevelled hair; the limbs loaded with fetters and the hands help up in remediless supplication. He grew enamoured of his portraiture and without waiting a moment to enquire whether it in the slightest degree resembled the reality he volunteered the championship of Irish popery. His son was commissioned to represent him in this disastrous connexion. But Richard once on the spot was instantly and completely undeceived. Instead of his ""fair penitent "" he found a brawny bustling Thalestris wild as the winds and fierce with the intoxication of impunity. The mild temperament of the plodding missionary was baffled burlesqued and thrown into fever: he laboured with humble diligence but laboured in vain; he talked of conciliation while popery talked of conquest; he proposed concession while faction shouted triumph; and when he suggested the suppression of the old and sharp acerbities of the sects he was answered by universal laughter. Burke awakened at last to the truth of things recalled him in a long despatch concluding in these words--""If you find the Roman Catholics _irreconcilable with each other_ and that government is resolved to side with them or rather to direct those who _would betray the rest_ then my clear opinion is that you ought not to wait the playing the _last card of a losing hand_. It would be disreputable to you. But when you have given your instruction to the _very few_ in whom you can place confidence for their _future temperate_ and persevering proceeding that you will then with a _cool_ and _steady dignity_ take your leave."" So ended the attempt of this man of genius and sensibility to guide an Irish faction in the paths of public tranquillity. He had forgotten that clamour was their livelihood and grievance their stock in trade. In the simplicity of a noble spirit he had eloquently implored quacks to take their degrees and follow practice and solemnly advised travelling showmen not to disturb the public ear by the braying of their cracked trumpets and he succeeded accordingly. Great as he unquestionably was he could not make bricks without straw; and after wondering at the perversity of fortune and lavishing his indignant soul on a hundred splendid perplexities touching the nature of politicians in general and of Irish politicians in particular he gave up Ireland as a problem too profound for his analysis and to be postponed till the discovery of the philosopher's stone. Richard remained in Ireland for a few months until he saw the Romish petition thrown out in the House of Commons by an immense majority. He then returned to London and with the rather forward air of an accredited minister applied for an interview with the ministry. He was answered by a prompt note from Dundas sarcastically informing him that there was a viceroy in Ireland whom his Majesty's government had sent there for the purpose of transacting public business; that they considered him a very proper person for the purpose and that in consequence they saw no positive necessity for managing Irish affairs through any other. ""If "" says this quiet rebuff ""any of his Majesty's Catholic subjects have any request or representation which they wish to lay before his Majesty they cannot be at a loss for the means of doing so in a manner _much_ more _proper_ and AUTHENTIC than through the channel of private conversation. Having stated this to you I shall forbear _making any observations on the contents_ of your letter."" On the 2d of August 1794 his favourite son died and Burke received the blow with the feelings of one who regarded the hand of destiny as uplifted against him. His excessive sensibility was agonized by an event melancholy in its nature to all but which a wise man will regard as the will of the Great Disposer and a religious man will believe to be a chastisement in mercy. Burke was both wise and religious but his feelings habitually bewildered him. All the images of desolation rushed across his creative mind. He was ""an uprooted tree "" a stream whose course was swallowed up by an earthquake a wanderer in the wilderness of the world a man struck down by a thunderbolt! From those fearful fantasies however the emergency of public affairs soon summoned him to the exercise of his noble powers; and he gave his country and the world perhaps the most powerful certainly the most superb and imaginative of all his works the fiery pamphlets on the ""regicide peace."" On this unhappy occasion for the condolence of friendship he received many tributes; but we cannot help quoting one from the celebrated Grattan which though characterized by the peculiarities of his style seems to us a model of tenderness and beauty. ""_August 26 1794_. ""My Dear Sir ""May I be permitted to sympathize where I cannot presume to console. ""The misfortunes of your family are a public care. The late one is to me a personal loss. I have a double right to affliction and to join my grief and to express my deep and cordial concern at that hideous stroke which has deprived me of a friend you of a son and your country of a promise that would communicate to posterity the living blessings of your genius and your virtue. Your friends may now condole with you that you should have now no other prospect of immortality than that which is common to Cicero and to Bacon; such as never can be interrupted while there exists the beauty of order or the love of virtue and can fear no death except what barbarity may impose on the globe. ""If the same strength of reason which could persuade any other man to bear any misfortune can administer to the proprietor a few drops of comfort we may hope that your condition admits of relief. The greatest possible calamity which can be imposed on man we hope may be supported by the greatest human understanding. For comfort your friends must refer you to the exercise of its faculties and to the contemplation of its gigantic proportions--_Dura solatia_--of which nothing can deprive you while you live. And though death should mow down every thing about you and plunder you of your domestic existence you would still be the owner of a conscious superiority in life and immortality after it.--I am my dear sir with the highest respect and regard ""Yours most truly ""H. Grattan."" We must hastily conclude. The threatened ruin of Europe awakened Burke from this reverie at the tomb of his son. He required strong stimulants and in the French Revolution and the shock of nations he found them. He now put the trumpet to his lips and ""Blew a blast so loud and dread Were ne'er prophetic sounds so full of woe."" His appeal pierced to the heart of the nation. England had never _succumbed_ but an indefatigable faction had played every art of quackery to set her faculties asleep with the appearance of having her eyes more open than ever. Whiggism by its tricks was _mesmerising_ the common sense of the country. From this adventitious torpor Burke recalled her to her natural temperament restored sight to her eyes taught her to resume the sword and sent her forth to commence that career of victory which was consummated in the Tuilleries. His advocacy of the Popish question was one of his romances. Popery was his ""Jane Shore "" fainting and feeble wandering through the highways with those delicate limbs which had once been arrayed in silk and velvet and soliciting the ""charity of all good Christians"" to her fallen condition. His nature was chivalric and he at once unsheathed his sword for so affecting a specimen of penitence and pauperism; but he soon recovered from this hazardous compassion and left the pilgrim to fitter protectors. But if he had lived till our day what would Burke have thought of his delusion now? with what self-ridicule must he not have looked upon the burlesque grievances and the profitable privations? what an instructive lesson must not his powerful scorn of charlatanry have given to us on the display of the whole system of sleight-of-hand the popular cups and balls the low dexterity and the rabble plunder? or to sum all in one word the reduction of all the claims the rights and the efforts of a party pronouncing itself national to the collection of an annual tribute; the whole huge and rattling machinery of popular agitation grinding simply for the ""rint."" How would this lion of the desert shaking the forest with his roar have looked on Jackoo going round shaking the penny box! Woe be to Jackoo if he had come within reach of his talons! The volumes of which we have given an account altogether too brief and too rapid for their importance deserve to be studied as containing some of the richest transcripts of the richest mind of England. Letters from various eminent persons diversify them but the staple is Burke. If their style seldom rises to the elated ardour and buoyant strength of his speeches and pamphlets they exhibit all his wisdom; they display the entire depth of that current which public difficulties and obstructions swelled into a cataract. We have the image of Burke reposing but still we have all the proportion all the dignity and all the colossal grandeur of the form ruling senates and marshaling the mind of nations for the greatest of their fields. Various notes illustrate the volumes and the edition does every credit to Lord Fitzwilliam and General Bourke. MY COLLEGE FRIENDS. NO. II. JOHN BROWN. A heavy snow-storm which confined Chesterton and myself pretty much to the walls of the college for the next few days prevented us from paying our friend Brown a visit in his new quarters so soon after his installation as we intended. When we did succeed in wading there upon the commencement of a thaw we found him rather sulky. The sweets of retirement had become somewhat doubtful; the Grange was certainly not the place one would have deliberately chosen to be snowed up in; and so far John was unfortunate in his first week of commencing hermit. We found him in full possession of his easy chair with Bruin extended on the only piece of carpeting in the room which did duty as a hearth-rug. There was a volume of Sophocles open upon the table with a watch on one side of it; the Quarterly Review had not at that time taken upon itself to enlighten undergraduates as to their real state of mind and the secrets of successful reading or there would doubtless have been the miniature of some fair girl on the other. (What the effect of such ""companions to the classics"" may be in general I perhaps am no judge. I detest ""fair girls "" in the first place; but I have not yet forgotten if the reader has that a pair of _dark_ eyes were the ruin of three months' reading in my own case.) However there was no pictured face except the watch-face to cheer the studies of John Brown; and perhaps for that reason our friend had evidently been asleep. How very glad he was to see us was betrayed immediately by the copious abuse which he showered on us for not having come before. ""Why what an unreasonable fellow you are!"" said Chesterton; ""If you wanted to see us why on earth could'nt you come up to college? We can manage to keep the cold out there quite as well as in your old castle here I fancy; and as neither of us are web-footed any more than yourself I don't really see why we are to do all the dabbling about this precious weather."" ""Oh! I forgot; you have not seen the little note of remembrance which our darling dons were kind enough to send me before they broke up for the vacation?"" ""No--what do you mean?"" ""Oh! I'll find it for you in a moment."" And he produced a letter sealed with the college arms which ran as follows:-- ""---- _Coll. Common Room_ _Dec_. -- 18--. ""The principal and fellows regret to be under the unpleasant necessity of intimating to Mr Brown that although they do not feel called upon to notice his having fixed his residence in the immediate neighbourhood of Oxford--a step which under the circumstances they cannot look upon as otherwise than ill-judged--he must consider himself strictly prohibited from appearing within the college walls at any time during the ensuing vacation."" ""Now there's a civil card by way of P.P.C. Don't you call that a spiteful concoction? Silver and Hodgett's last--and worthy of them. So now unless you want me to be rusticated for a term or two you need not be over-civil in your invitations. But I'll tell you what you shall do: Hawthorne shall send over that box of Silvas he had just opened (if they are good you shall order some more ) and I'll keep that Westphalia you talked about here if you like Chesterton; and then you may come here to breakfast lunch or supper if you please--but mind I won't give you dinners; I'm not going to have Mrs Nutt put upon--or myself either."" We agreed to the terms with some modifications and proceeded with some interest to inspect John's domestic arrangements. They were comfortable though in some points peculiar. A sort of stand in one corner covered with red baise which supported a plaster bust of our most gracious majesty and gave an air of mock grandeur to the apartment proved upon nearer inspection to be nothing more or less than a barrel of Hall and Tawney's ale an old-fashioned cabinet once gay with lacquered gold and colours which the industrious rubbings of Mrs Nutt and her hand-maid were fast effacing--the depository perhaps of carefully penned love-missives and broidered gloves jewels and perfumes and suchlike shreds and patches of feminine taste or trickery in other times--now served as a resting-place for the heterogeneous treasures of a bachelor's private cupboard. Cigars and captain's biscuits open letters and unpaid bills packs of cards and lecture note-books; odd gloves odd pence and odd things of all kinds--these filled the drawers: while from the lower recesses our friend in course of time produced a decanter of port and a Stilton. There was an old-fashioned sofa one of that stiff-backed hard-hearted generation which no man thinks of sitting down upon twice and three or four of those comfortable high-backed arm-chairs in which when once fairly seated in pleasant company one never wishes to get up again; a round oak table occupied the space opposite the fire and another in one corner held the few books which formed John Brown's studies at the present. One window looked into the wet meadows by which the house was nearly surrounded and the other commanded a view of the square inclosure before mentioned as now forming the farm-yard--in former days the inner court of the mansion. ""Why Brown old fellow you're quite a lively look-out here "" said Chesterton who had for some minutes been contemplating apparently with much interest the goings on below. ""I wish they kept pigs and chickens in the college quadrangle. I declare for the last three days in this horrid snow I've watched for hours out of my window (that fellow Hawthorne has taken to reading and sports oak against me till luncheon time ) and I hav'n't seen a moving creature. I began to fancy myself up in the Great St Bernard among the monks; and when that brute of yours came up and howled at my door the other day I almost expected to find him carrying a frozen child on his back and got out the cherry brandy to be ready for the worst--didn't I Hawthorne?"" ""I found you one day with Bruin shivering before the fire and the cherry brandy on the table certainly."" ""Well that's the explanation of it I assure you. But you must have found it precious dull shut up here by yourself Brown?"" ""Why yes--rather--sometimes--in spite of the pigs and poultry. Their proceedings are rather monotonous. I feed that brood of chickens which have taken upon themselves to come into the world this unnatural weather with bread-crumbs out of my window twice a-day. Ah! I see the old hen has only four to-day; one is gone since yesterday and one the day before; there's consumption in the family that's plain; and they have always wet feet; I want Mrs Nutt to make them worsted socks and to let me put Burgundy pitch-plasters on their throats but she won't."" ""But come "" said Chesterton ""suppose you give us some lunch Brown; '_prome reconditum Cæcubum_'--(I'm getting desperately classical;) that is being freely translated--lift up that red baise drapery of yours and let's taste the tap."" The tap was tasted and approved of; so was the Stilton: and then we sat over the fire for an hour and smoked some of the Silvas: then we paid a visit to Mrs Nutt in her _penetralia_ and astonished her with our acquaintance with dairy matters; hazarded a criticism or two upon the pigs which were well received and were not so fortunate in our attempts to cultivate an intimacy with the incorruptible Boxer; and then set off on our return to Oxford persuading Brown to start with us as the afternoon was fine in order to freshen his faculties by a stroll in the High Street. Shorn indeed of all the glories of a full term in which it had so lately shone and looking doubly cold cheerless and deserted in all the sloppy dirtiness of half-melted snow was that never-equalled and never-to-be-forgotten street! which the stranger gazes on with somewhat of an envious admiration the freshman with an awful kind of delight--which the departing bachelor of arts quits with a half-concealed regret and which the occasionally-returning master re-enters with feelings which are perhaps a mixture of all these; a stranger's admiration an emancipated school-boy's delight and a regret either mellowed by passing years into a tender recollection or blunted into indifference by altered habits or embittered by severed ties and disappointed hopes. We strolled once up and down its long sweep but there was nothing to invite a longer promenade. Cigar-dealers stood at their shop-doors or leaned over their counters with their hands in their breeches-pockets smoking their own genuine Havannahs in desperate independence: here a livery-stable keeper with a couple of questionable friends rattled a tandem over the stones as if such things never were let out at two guineas a-day: then a fishmonger whose wide front but a week before teemed with such quantity and quality as spoke audibly to every passer-by of bursary dinners and passing suppers was now soliciting a customer to take his choice of three lank cod-fish ticketed at so much per lb. Billiard-rooms were silent save where a solitary marker practised impossible strokes: print-shops exhibited a dull uniformity of stale engravings; and the innumerable horde of mongrel puppies of all varieties that particularly towards the end of term are dragged about three or four in a string and recommended as real Blenheims genuine King Charles's or ""one of old Webb's black and tan real good uns for rats""--had disappeared from public life to come out again possibly as Oxford sausages. In this kind of way the three first weeks of the vacation passed over without any very notable occurences. We were quiet enough in college--there is no fun in two men kicking up a row for the amusement of each other; even in the eye of the law three are required to constitute a riot; so on the strength of our good characters albeit somewhat recent of acquisition we dined two or three times with the fellows who were still in residence and who to do them justice sank a point or so from the usual stiffness of the common room and made our evenings agreeable enough. We certainly flattered ourselves that if they found us in turbot and champagne we contributed at least our share to the more intellectual part of the entertainment; we kept within due bounds of course and never overstepped that respect which young men are usually the more willing to pay to age and station the less rigidly it is exacted; but we made the old oak pannels ring with such hearty laughter as they seldom heard; and the pictures of founders and benefactors might have longed to come down from their frames to welcome even the shadow of those good old times when sound learning and hearty good fellowship were not as now hereditary enemies in Oxford. If my graver companions from the calm dignity of collegiate office deign to look back upon the evenings thus spent with two undergraduates in a Christmas vacation when unbending from the formal and conventional dulness of term and its duties they interchanged with us anecdote and jest and mingled with the sparkling imaginations of youth the reminiscences of riper years--I am sure they will have no cause to regret their share in those not ungraceful saturnalia even though they may remember that the hour at which we separated was not always what we used to call ""canonical."" We paid our friend almost daily visits in his banishment. The history of the expedition was generally the same; a walk out a lunch a cigar or two a chat with farmer Nutt or his wife a review of the last litter of pigs or an enquiry as to the increasing muster-roll of lambs. We did not make much progress in farming matters. Chesterton was the most enterprising and succeeded in ploughing a furrow in that kind of line which heralds call wavy and would as he declared have made a very fair hand of thrashing if he could but have hit the sheaf oftener and his own head not quite so often. The most important events that took place during this time at the Grange were the installation of a successor to the barrel in the corner and the catching of an enormous rat who had escaped poison and traps to be snapped up in broad daylight in an unguarded moment by Bruin. Still John Brown declared that on the whole he got on very well; we all read moderately; the examination was too near to be trifled with and an occasional gallop with the harriers made our only really idle days. We had not since our first visit heard John recur at all to the subject of the Dean; and to say the truth we began to hope for his sake that he had given up a game which however much longer it might be contested had evidently begun to be a losing one on his part. But we were mistaken. We found him one morning in high spirits and evidently in possession of some joke which he was anxious to impart. ""Shut the door and sit down "" said he before we were fairly within his premises. ""I have a letter to show you."" ""From the Dean?"" (There was something in his manner which made us sure that personage was concerned in some way.) ""No; but from his good mamma--from dear old Mrs Hodgett; you didn't know we were correspondents? Why I wrote to her you see to ask where she lived now that she had resigned business as I would not on any account have given up so valuable an acquaintance; and I begged her at the same time to order me a dozen pair of stockings from Mogg. (I assure you they were capital articles I had from him at first and he's a very honest fellow; if you've sent that sparkling Moselle here to-day that you promised Master Harry we'll drink Mogg's very good health.) Well I wrote to her and here is her answer. You see Hodgett has been poisoning the old lady's mind."" I cannot give all John Brown's comments upon worthy Mrs Hodgett's epistle without doing him great injustice in the recital; but here the contents are verbatim. ""Dear Sir --Your favour of last week came safe to hand and was very glad to find you was well as it leaves us at present. Concerning your calling here next journey am sorry to say shall be from home at that time. Sir I should have been very glad to see you but my son says you are not of an undeniable character which in a widow woman's establishment must be first consideration. That was what I said to Mr Spriggins. Betsy my daughter as you know is to be married to him next month. I don't think he is quite so steady as some in regard that he must have his cigar and his tilberry on Sundays--John Mogg never did; but we can't all be Moggs in this world or there wouldn't be no _great failures_. ""S. Hodgett in declining business returns thanks for all past favours and remain Dear Sir ""Your obedient servant ""J. Spriggins (late S. Hodgett.) ""P.S.--I am afraid college is a sad place for such young men as is not steady. Mrs Hicks our great butcher's lady told me that when her son who was a remarkable good lad came home from Cambridge college after being there only two months they found a short pipe in his best coat pocket and he called his father 'governor ' which as Mrs H. said he never was and he wouldn't wear his nightcap."" ""Well "" said Chesterton when we had read this original document two or three times over ""it doesn't seem quite usual for a man to sign his own testimonials especially when as in Mr Spriggins's case they are not the most flattering. Do you suppose he really wrote this or signed it by mistake or what is it? ""Neither one nor the other. Don't you see the old lady in declining the linen-drapery merges her own identity in that of her successor? There's no such firm as 'Hodgett' now it's 'Spriggins ' and she thinks it necessary to sign accordingly. Here's the card enclosed."" ""Well there's one thing very certain that Mrs Hodgett declines doing business with you in future John."" ""Yes; and I'm rather annoyed at it. I meant to have got Mogg to come down and see me at Oxford and should have asked the Dean to meet him. I don't see how he could have refused; any way I think I could have paid him in full for his late good offices. Well I am not quite sure now when I've taken my degree that I sha'n't go and see the old lady again and win her heart by paying a wedding-visit to the Spriggins's. I'll take you with me if you like Hawthorne and introduce you as Lord some-body-or-other an intimate friend of the dean's--or stay Chesterton will make the best lord of the two. Look with what supreme disgust he is eyeing poor Mrs Nutt's best wine-glasses. Come now I think that vine-leaf pattern is quite Horatian; and if you turn up your nose at that Master Harry you shall have your wine out of a tea-cup next time you come here. Draw the cork of that Moselle and then I have something else to tell you. Do either of you men care about shooting or can you shoot?"" ""Why I flatter myself I can "" said Chesterton. ""I'll bet you I'll hit two eggs right and left nine tines out of ten as often as you like to throw them up."" ""I don't call that shooting; and you had better not let Mrs Nutt hear you talk of breaking eggs right and left in any such extravagant manner. But what I was going to say is this that some friend of old Nutt's has some ground near here for which he has the deputation and I have been offered a day's shooting there for myself and any friend I like to bring. Now I don't shoot--though I remember the days when I was a dead pot-shot at a blackbird; but if either of you are sportsmen or fancy you are which amounts to much the same thing why you can have a day at this place if you like and I will go with you on condition you don't carry your guns cocked. Mind I can't promise what sort of sport you will have as it is too near Oxford not to be pretty well poached over; but you can try."" Shooting over a man's ground without leave (especially if in the face of a ""notice"" to the contrary) is decidedly the best sport but unfortunately one of those stolen delights which only schoolboys and poachers can with any sort of conscience enjoy. Shooting with leave comes next but is immeasurably inferior in point of piquancy. Shooting in one's own preserves at birds which have been reared and turned out and cost you on the average about five guineas per brace is decidedly the most fashionable and consequently--the dullest. A day's shooting of any kind about Oxford was a rare privilege confined chiefly to those who were fortunate enough to be fellows of St ---- or to have an acquaintance among the surrounding squirearchy. True that there were some enterprising spirits who would gallop out some three or four miles to a corner of Lord A----'s preserves give their horses in charge to a trusty follower and after firing half a dozen shots bag their two or three brace of pheasants remount and dash off to Oxford before the keepers whom the sound of guns in their very sanctuary was sure to draw to the spot could have any chance of coming up with them. But such exploits were deservedly rather reprobated than otherwise even when judged by the under-graduate scale of morality; and even in the parties concerned were the offspring rather of a Robin-Hood-like lawlessness than a genuine spirit of poaching. We of course were delighted with the proposition which would have had quite sufficient attraction for us at any time; but coming in the dulness of vacation it was an offer to be jumped at. ""What game is there in this place?"" said Chesterton. ""Is there any cover shooting?"" ""Oh I can't tell you any thing about the place! It's about a mile off but I never saw it. There's a good deal of ground to go over I believe."" ""What shall we do for dogs?"" ""Mrs Nutt will lend you Boxer I daresay; and Bruin is a capital hand at putting up water-rats."" ""Stuff! I can borrow some dogs though. And now what day shall it be?"" The day was fixed the dogs procured the occupant of the property was to send a man to meet us and show us the ground and it
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was settled that we were to come to breakfast at the farm at half-past seven precisely and make a long day of it. Much to his disgust we roused the deputy porter from his bed at seven on a raw foggy morning; and with a lad leading the dogs and carrying guns and ammunition we made our way to Farmer Nutt's. We were proceeding up-stairs as usual to Brown's apartment when we heard our friend's voice hailing us from the ""house "" as the large hall was called which the farmer and his wife used as a kind of superior kitchen. There we found him snugly seated by a glorious fire superintending his hostess in the slicing and broiling of a piece of ham such as Oxfordshire and Berkshire farm-houses may well pride themselves upon; while a large pile of crisp brown toast was basking in front of the hearth supported on a round brass footman. It was a sight which might have given a man an appetite at any time but after a two-mile walk on a cold winter's morning it was like a glimpse of paradise. ""Here "" said Brown--""here's breakfast old fellows. Come and make your bows to Mrs Nutt who is the very pattern of breakfast makers and fit to concoct tea for the Emperor of China. Ah! if ever I marry Mrs Nutt it shall be somebody who is just like you."" Mrs Nutt laughed merrily and welcomed us with many curtsies and hopes that we should find things comfortable; and when the worthy farmer after a brief apology sat down with us and the strong black tea and rich cream were duly amalgamated what a breakfast we did make! There was not much conversation; but such a hissing and frizzling of ham upon the gridiron such a crumping of toast and rattling of knives forks cups and saucers surely five people seldom made. We were hungry enough; and our hospitable entertainers were so pressing in their attentions that we caught ourselves eating plum-cake with broiled ham honey with fresh-laid eggs and taking gulps of strong tea and sips of raspberry-brandy alternately. We bore up against it all however wonderfully; the prospect of a long day's walk put headache and indigestion out of the question and we were beginning to think of moving when certain ominous preparations on the part of our hostess attracted our attention. A hot slice of toast having been saturated with brandy she proceeded to our undisguised amazement to pour upon it the richest and thickest cream her dairy could produce and to cover this again with sundry wavy lines of treacle. This was the _bonne bouche_ with which in her part of the world Devonshire I think she said a breakfast to be perfect must always conclude. Start not delicate reader until you have had an opportunity of trying this remarkable compound; but take my word for it it only wants a French name to make it a first-rate sweetmeat. We too regarded it at first with fear and trembling; tasted it out of courtesy to the fair compoundress and finally like Oliver Twist asked for more. ""Now these gentlemen know what a breakfast is Mr Nutt "" said John; ""but I am afraid we can't introduce your good wife's receipt into college; our cows give nothing but skim-milk. Well now we had better be off if you mean to have any shooting."" Off we set accordingly and had to trudge a mile or so before we got into our preserves. There were some not unpromising covers; the lad who was to be our guide professed some vague reminiscences of having seen pheasants there ""a bit ago;"" and there was no question as to a hare having been started so lately as yesterday morning. We began our day therefore with somewhat sanguine expectations which however every subsequent half-hour's progress gradually dispelled. We tumbled out of one deep ditch into another scrambled perseveringly through brambles and brushwood saw places where pheasants _ought_ to have been and places where they had been but never saw a bird except a jack-snipe in the distance. The only sport we had was in the untiring energy of the lad already mentioned who long after the dogs had given it up as a bad job continued to beat every bush as diligently as at first starting and kept up a form of hortatory interjections addressed to the invisible game with a hopeful perseverance which was really enviable. One satisfaction we had; towards the close of the day we started _the_ hare from a bush which had certainly been tried at least twice before; she fell victim to a platoon fire of four barrels; the second I believe brought her down but we were anxious to have all the shots we could get. And in truth there was some credit in killing her for Mr Nutt to whom we presented her declared that she was so tough he wondered how the shots ever got through her skin. It takes something more serious than a bad day's sport to damp youthful spirits; and upon our return we found the good farmer's wife much more annoyed at our failure than ourselves. ""Why the chap as has the deputation told my master he had killed ten brace of pheasants there this season!"" He killed the last he could find before he sent us there no doubt. Nothing dispirited we sat down to a leg of mutton which Brown had so far departed from his household economy as to order for us at six and enjoyed our evening as thoroughly as if we had been a triple impersonation of Colonel Hawker in point of successful sportmanship. Nor was it until after the second bottle of port that we began to accuse each other of being sleepy. ""Well "" said I at last ""it is about time for us to be off; it wants but three minutes of half-past eleven and we shall have sharp work of it now to get into college by twelve. What sort of a night is it?"" The shutters of the sitting-room were closed and I stepped into the bed-room adjoining in order to look out. The window opened into the court-yard; the moon was shining pretty brightly in spite of the fog and I was just turning round to remark that we should have a dry walk home when I saw two figures steal quietly across the yard apparently from the gateway and disappear in one of the outhouses. It was too late for any of the men about the farm to be out in all probability; I was certain neither of the two figures was Farmer Nutt himself so I quietly closed the door between the sitting and bed rooms in order that no light might be seen and watched the spot where I had lost sight of them. In a few seconds I distinctly saw a third man come over the yard-gates (which were secured inside at night ) and after apparently reconnoitring for a moment or two move in the same direction as the others. I returned at once to the room where I had left Brown and Chesterton closing the bed-room door hastily and noiselessly and motioning them to be silent. ""I say Hawthorne what's up?"" said Harry Chesterton pausing with a parting cigar half-lighted. I confess I was somewhat flurried and my account of what I had seen was not the most distinct. ""Oh!"" said Chesterton ""it's some of the girl's sweethearts I dare say; let's go down and have 'em out Brown--shall we?"" Brown shook his head. ""Put out the lights "" said I. We did so and then opened the shutters of the sitting-room window. We had hardly done so when the bright flash of a lantern was visible from the opposite side of the yard. For a few minutes we could see nothing else and were obliged to hide carefully behind the shutters to avoid being noticed from below. ""Is that old Nutt?"" said I. Brown thought not. He never knew him carry a lantern. At that moment the light disappeared and in a few seconds we heard a loud knocking at the back-door. ""That must be the farmer come home "" said I. ""No "" said Brown looking carefully into the yard where we could now plainly distinguish at least three persons and overhear voices in a low tone--""No; old Nutt's brown greatcoat would cover all three of those fellows."" ""What stall we do "" said Chesterton seizing his double-barrel which stood in the corner. ""Shall we open the window and threaten to fire?"" ""With an empty gun?"" said Brown: ""no no that won't do. Not but what they would run away fast enough perhaps; but I think if they really are come to attack the house we ought not to let them off so easily. What say you Hawthorne?"" ""Certainly not; but they can hardly be housebreakers or they would not keep knocking at the door "" said I as the sounds were repeated more loudly than before. ""I don't know that; every body about here is perfectly aware that old Nutt is gone to Woodstock fair; and they might give a pretty good guess even supposing they did not watch him that he would not be home till late; and if Mrs Nutt or any of the servants are fools enough to open the door it's an easier way of getting in than breaking it open. However there's no time to be lost; here's a box of lucifers; come into this dark passage you two and get a candle lighted while I go and try to get up Mrs Nutt. I can find my way in the dark."" ""By Jove Brown "" said Chesterton and myself in the same breath ""you sha'n't go about the house by yourself--we'll come with you."" ""And break your necks down some of the old staircases; or at all events make row enough to let your friends below know that there's somebody moving in this part of the house. No just keep quiet where you are--there's good fellows--and take care not to show the light."" And taking off his shoes Brown proceeded along the old passages which seemed to creak more than usual out of very spitefulness into the unknown regions where lay the unconscious Mrs Nutt. Having got a light after the usual number of scrapings with the lucifers we were awaiting his return with some impatience when a third and more violent series of knocks at the door were followed by the sound of a female voice. Concealing the light we crept to the window of the sitting-room whence we could now distinguish only one figure standing by the door with whom Mrs Nutt appeared to be holding a communication from a window above. ""Who's there? What do you want?"" ""It's me with a note from Master Nutt missus. I don't think he's a-coming home to-night."" ""Where did you bring it from? Where is he?"" ""He were at the Bear at Woodstock when I saw him."" ""Well wait a bit till I get a light and I'll come down."" In another minute we were joined by Brown; so quietly did he step that in our absorbing interest in the conversation in the yard we were both somewhat startled at his sudden appearance. ""Well Brown "" said Chesterton ""now what shall we do? I'll put a load in this however "" and he proceeded to the passage where there was less risk of the light betraying us in order to do so. ""Now "" said Brown ""if we can but get that fellow once into the house we'll have him at all events. We had better all come down-stairs quietly. If we can only persuade Mrs Nutt to come with us to speak to him while we open the door depend upon it we shall trap him; but she's in a terrible way poor soul! she wants me to let her call out murder and I am afraid now she'll spoil it all. But she has the servant with her who seems rather a plucky girl and I hope she can manage her. Now come on quickly Chesterton and hide the light when you get into the long passage because there are no shutters to the windows. The women will meet us at the bottom of the stairs."" My gun had been left in the kitchen; I seized the poker and we all proceeded cautiously along the passage and down-stairs. Poor Mrs Nutt as pale as death and scarcely able to stand was waiting for us with the servant girl. But it was with the greatest difficulty we could get her to listen to any such proposition as opening the door; she was much more inclined to side with Chesterton who wanted to present the gun at the fellow from the window and fire if he made any attempt either to effect an entrance or to run away. At last however by the persuasion of the servant who really was a heroine in her way we got her into the passage at the end of which the door in question was situated; but as nothing could induce her to speak to the fellow outside beyond a very faint ""Who's there?"" the girl took up the dialogue and enquired the man's name. ""Tom Smith; I've got a note for the missus and something to say to her besides. Let's in--there's a good wench; I've been a-knocking here this half hour already."" It had been agreed that I was to open the door and shut and bolt it if possible the instant the speaker had entered. Brown and Chesterton stood just inside a small pantry ready to secure their man as soon as he was fairly inside and the women were to make their escape out of harm's way as soon as their services as a decoy could be dispensed with. It was a moment of breathless expectation while I withdrew the bolts. Hardly had I done so when the door flew violently open and with a silent but determined rush three men entered. I shut the door instinctively but it was evident that our plan was defeated and we had now only to fight it out. There was a scream from the women whose curiosity had not allowed them to retreat beyond the foot of the staircase--a rush forward on the part of Brown and Chesterton--an oath or two from the intruders at finding themselves so unexpectedly confronted--and then for a moment or two an ominous pause on both sides. It was broken by Chesterton who clubbed his gun and brought the first man to the ground. Nearly at the same time I grappled with the last who had entered whilst a heavy crow-bar in the hands of the third after describing an arc within an inch or two of my own head descended with a horrible dull sound (I hear it now) upon that of poor Chesterton who fell heavily whilst in the act of springing forwards across his prostrate antagonist. Again the murderous weapon was uplifted--I vainly endeavoured to fling my opponent and myself against the striker--I heard a scream and saw the poor servant girl rush forward with a sort of desperate instinct armed with no other weapon than the candlestick--when a report that sounded like a volley shook the whole passage--a bright flash threw out the whole scene vividly for a moment--the robber with his back to me with his weapon poised and the blackened face of the other glaring savagely into my own--then followed total darkness--the ringing of the iron-bar upon the bricks--a stifled groan--and then a silence more horrible than all. ""Get a light!"" said Brown at last; ""get a light for heaven's sake Mrs Nutt or somebody. Hawthorne are you hurt?"" ""No no "" said I; ""it was you that fired John?"" ""Yes "" said he; ""we can do nothing now till we have a light."" The whole affair from the unbolting the door to the firing the shot had not occupied nearly a minute; nor was it much longer before the trembling women succeeded in relighting the candle from the embers of the kitchen hearth; but they were moments into which one crowded almost years of thought; and I remember now with astonishment how every miserable consequence of poor Chesterton's probably fate came vividly and irresistibly before my imagination during those few hurried breathings of suspense--how his father could be told of it--how desolate would be now the home of which he was the hope and idol (I knew his family)--how the college would mourn for him; nay even such wretched particulars as how we were to move him to Oxford--whether he would be buried there--whether he would have a monument in the chapel--and a thousand such trivial fancies were running through my mind with a distressing minuteness which those only who have known such moments can understand. At last the light came. In my eagerness to ascertain the state of poor Chesterton I quite forgot the villain with whom I had been struggling. We had mutually relaxed our hold upon hearing the shot; and he now took the opportunity of our whole attention being directed elsewhere to open the door and effect his escape. We had too much of other business in our hands to think of following him. The second man lay close to my feet. I stepped over him and raised Chesterton's head upon my arm; the eyes were half open but I could detect no sign of life. I told Brown I feared it was all over. ""I know it is "" said he; ""he is shot through the heart. I aimed there. But what could I do?"" I turned round and it was with somewhat of an angry feeling that I saw Brown examining the breast of the man who had last fallen utterly indifferent as it seemed to the dreadful fate of our poor friend. ""For heaven's sake "" said I ""let that villain alone and help me to move poor Harry: I believe he is gone."" ""Ay poor Harry!"" said Brown somewhat vacantly: ""I wish that blow had fallen on me! And was that shot too late after all? Your gun hung fire Hawthorne--it did indeed. Poor Harry!"" I was so absorbed in anxiety for Chesterton that Brown's strange manner made no great impression on me at the time. The first man who had been merely stunned by the blow from the but-end of the gun was now beginning to revive and I begged Brown to get something to secure him with. ""I don't think sir "" said Mrs Nutt who had recovered her terror sufficiently to offer her assistance and whose coarse red hands having removed Chesterton's neck-kerchief and loosened his shirt-collar now showed in strong contrast with his fair skin but had nevertheless all a woman's sensibility about them--""I don't think but what the poor young gentleman has life in him--I am sure I can feel his heart beat."" ""Oh yes oh yes Mrs Nutt--he cannot be dead--send for a surgeon! Hawthorne why don't you send for a surgeon?"" ""There's none nigher than Oxford "" said Mrs Nutt. ""I'll go for un "" said the girl. ""I ben't afear'd;"" and she turned pale and shook like a leaf; but the spirit was willing and she persisted she was ready to go. However it turned out that there was a labourer's cottage about a quarter of a mile off and she was finally dispatched there for assistance. Few people know the ready humanity which exists among the lower orders: the man must have run all the way to Oxford for he returned in little more than half an hour before the surgeon could dress and mount his horse. However Chesterton was evidently still living; and when the surgeon did arrive he gave some hopes of his recovery. The weight of the blow had been in some degree broken by the gun which poor Harry had raised in his hand and this only could have saved the skull from fracture. Of course we had soon plenty of volunteers who were ready to be useful in any way; and when at last the police had made their appearance and removed both the living and the dead and Chesterton had been laid in Brown's room and the surgeon having applied the usual remedies had composedly accepted Mrs Nutt's offer to make up a bed for him and betaken himself thereto as if such events were to him matters of everyday occurrence--I suppose they were--it struck me for the first time that there was a remarkable contrast between Brown's hurried manner and disturbed countenance now compared with his perfect coolness and self-possession while the danger seemed most imminent which even Chesterton's dangerous state did not sufficiently account for. ""How lucky it was Brown "" said I ""my gun had a load of duck-shot in it! Don't you remember I was going to have fired it off? And that you should have laid your hand upon it in the kitchen! I looked for it as we came by but could not see it."" ""I'll tell you what Hawthorne: I almost wish I had not seen it: I should not have had a man's life to answer for."" ""Why Brown "" said I with some surprise ""surely you can have no scruple about that poor wretch's death? Why he has all but murdered poor Harry--if indeed he ever gets over it."" ""Very true very true "" replied Brown looking at the bed where Chesterton was lying in utter unconsciousness; ""he seems to sleep very quietly now. I don't think he knew any one just now when he opened his eyes: did you see the blow Hawthorne?"" ""Yes "" said I; ""the lock of the gun is broken and I fancy that saved him; but he would have had little chance from a second: that shot came just in time."" ""I covered the man from the moment he first raised the bar: your head was in a line with him or I should have fired sooner. I hardly thought you would have escaped some part of the charge as it was. Well if poor Harry lives perhaps it is well as it is if not""-- ""You have but spared the hangman some trouble "" said I. ""Come man don't give way to this morbid feeling. I don't say but what it does you credit Brown to regret the necessity for taking a man's life even to save your friend's; but depend upon it your conduct to-night is justifiable before a far higher inquest than the coroner's. Do you think if I had been in your place I should have hesitated one instant? No! nor have been half as scrupulous afterwards I fear."" ""You have not blood upon your hand "" said Brown gloomily. ""And remember if we had taken poor Chesterton's advice and frightened them off at first all this might have been spared; it was my folly in determining to take upon myself the office of thief-taker--cursed folly it was!"" The impression which the events of the last hour had left upon my own mind was any thing but a pleasant one; but I was obliged to assume an indifference which I did not feel and use a lighter tone than I should willingly have done in speaking of the death of a fellow-creature however unavoidable in order to keep up Brown's spirits and prevent him from dwelling upon his share in the catastrophe with that morbid degree of sensitiveness of the effects of which I began to be really apprehensive. He wanted me to lie down and try to sleep saying that he would watch with Chesterton; but this I was in no mood to agree to even had I not been unwilling to leave him to his present reflections; so we drew a small table close to the fire in the sitting-room leaving the door open that we might hear any movement of the patient and waited for daybreak with feelings to which perhaps we had been too little accustomed. They were doubtless wholesome for us in after life; but at the time those hours of watching were painful indeed. It was a night which then and since I wished could be blotted from my page of life and be as if it had never been. I have grown older and sadder if not wiser since and feel now that there are recollections in which I then took delight which I could far more safely part with. The danger in Chesterton's case though at one time imminent was soon over; and a few days' quiet at the farm enabled him to be removed to college. Reading was of course forbidden him for some time; and before term began he had left Oxford with his father to keep perfectly quiet for a few months in the country. The gratitude which he and all his family expressed to Brown as having been undoubtedly the means of saving his life was naturally unbounded; and it did more than all else to reconcile him to the idea which haunted him as he declared day and night of having that man's blood upon his head. I knew that Chesterton had warmly pressed him to come home with him; but as his name was down for the approaching examination for which he was quite sufficiently prepared it was not without astonishment that I heard him one morning just before Chesterton's departure announce his intention of going down with him and his father. ""I think "" said he ""the constant sight of poor Harry will do me good just now; I am not given to romancing Hawthorne as you know; but waking or sleeping when I am by myself I see that man standing with the crow-bar uplifted just as he was when I shot him; and I think if I can but manage to get Harry Chesterton's figure between him and me as it was that night and feel that pulling the trigger perhaps saved his life why then the picture will be something less horrible that it is now."" ""Well "" said I ""John I think you do right; but I can tell you this that the same sort of _tableau_ is very often before my eyes; and the horror that I feel is what I did then--seeing Chesterton's brains knocked out as I thought and struggling in vain to get near him; sooner than feel that again in reality--the thought of it is bad enough--I'd shoot that villain ten times running if I only had the chance."" ""You never _had_ the chance Hawthorne; pray God you never _may_."" Such was nearly my last interview for some years with my friend John Brown; for I had taken my degree and left college before he came up again to pass his examination. He was subpoenaed with myself as a witness on the trial of the man whom we had secured which took place at the next assizes; but I was informed by the prisoner's attorney of his intention to plead guilty the case against him being such a strong one; Brown was thus enabled without much risk to remain in the country with Chesterton and we were both spared being placed in the painful position of important witnesses in a trial of life and death. The man's confession was full and apparently honest; and it was a satisfaction to find that the wretch who had fallen was a man of well-known desperate character and probably as the prisoner asserted the concocter of the whole business: while all were murderers in intention. Had they succeeded in effecting their object by plundering the house Farmer Nutt whose habits of staying somewhat late from home on fair nights were well known to all the neighbourhood was to have been waylaid on the towing-path which led to his house and as although a quiet man there was a good deal of resolute spirit about him and he would have had a heavy purse with him the proceeds of stock sold at the fair with which he would not easily have parted there was no question but that he would have found a grave in the canal. Of Brown's lodging in the house the party were well aware; but they had laid their plans so warily for effecting an entrance without noise and easily overpowering the women that they hoped either altogether to avoid disturbing his quarter of the house or making it evident to him that resistance was useless. Of course our appearance was wholly unexpected; they had watched for some time but we had been so quiet for the last hour (being in truth more than half asleep) that they had no suspicion of there being any one stirring in Brown's rooms. I saw the unfortunate prisoner several times and found him open and communicative on every subject but one. Any information with regard to his accomplice who had escaped he always steadily refused; nor did a single unguarded word ever drop from him in conversation with any one by which the slightest clue could be obtained as to his identity. Even the police inspector the most plausible and unscrupulous of his class a perfect Machiavel among the Peelers who could make a prisoner believe he was his only friend while he was doing his best to put the halter round his neck even his practised policy was unsuccessful here. There was little doubt however that it was some person familiar with the premises from the circumstance that poor Boxer whose silence on the night of the attack we had all been surprised at and who was not of a mood to be easily inveigled by strangers even with the usual attractions of poisoned meat &c. had disappeared and was never heard of from that time forth. Suspicion of course fell upon several; but the matter remains to this day I believe a mystery. The prisoner as I have said pleaded guilty and received sentence of death; under the circumstances of the crime and its nearly fatal result no other could be expected; nor did the judge who tried him hold out the slightest hope of mercy. But his full confession with regard to himself and the man who had fallen with honourable silence as to their more fortunate companion his youth (he was but a year older than myself ) and his whole bearing since his imprisonment had impressed myself and others deeply in his favour; a memorial of the case was drawn up representing that justice might well be satisfied with the violent death of one criminal already and after being signed by all parties of any influence in the neighbourhood was forwarded for presentation to the crown. But the judge declared that he could not consistently with his duty back our application and to our extreme disappointment an answer was returned that the law in this case must take its course. A private and personal interest was at work however which for once proved more powerful than judges or home secretaries. Brown had signed our memorial of course; but dreading an unfavourable reply had forwarded through other channels a short but strong remonstrance directly to the Queen. He spoke touchingly of his own distressed state of mind at having so young in life been compelled in defence of his friend to take the life of a fellow-creature and prayed her Majesty ""to restore as she only could his peace of mind by giving him a life in exchange for that which he had taken away."" A letter accompanied a reprieve by return of post addressed to John Brown which he preserves with a care almost superstitious; it contains a few short lines dictated by a royal spirit and a woman's heart and signed ""VICTORIA."" Victoria! mercy and humanity the victory was indeed yours! Of John Brown I have little to add. Like others with whom I was at one time so long and intimately allied I have seen nothing of him now for years. The Dean was relieved as if from an incubus when he left college though I believe there was a cessation of all open hostility after his return from Chesterton's. At least the only authenticated mention of any allusion to old grievances on my friend's part is that when he paid Mr Hodgett the usual fees which fall to the Dean's share upon taking his B.A. he asked him ""whether he allowed discount for ready money?"" HAWTHORNE. NELSON'S DESPATCHES AND LETTERS.[15] The common idea of a sailor--whether with a commodore's broad pendant a lieutenant's wooden leg or a foremast-man's pigtail--was at one time a wild thoughtless rollicking man with very broad shoulders and a very red face who talked incessantly about shivering his timbers and thought no more of eating a score or two of Frenchmen than if they had been sprats. Such was the effect of the veracious chronicles of our countryman Tobias and the lifelike descriptions of old Trunnion and Tom Bowling and the rest. The jack-tar as represented by him--with the addition perhaps of a few softening features but still the man of blood and 'ounds breathing fire and smoke and with a constant inclination to luff helms and steer a point or two to windward--has retained possession of the stage to the present time; and Mr T. P. Cooke still shuffles and rolls and dances and fights--the beau-ideal and impersonation of the instrument with which Britannia rules the waves. And that the canvass waves of the Surrey are admirably ruled by such instruments we have no intention of disputing; nor would it be possible to place visibly before the public the peculiar qualifications that constitute a first-rate sailor any more than those which form a first-rate lawyer. The freaks of a young templar have as much to do with the triumphs of Lord Eldon as the dash and vivacity of any fictitious middy have to do with the First of June. Sailors are made of sterner stuff; and of all classes of men have their highest faculties called earliest into use and kept most constantly in exercise. Let no man therefore think of the navy as a last resource for the stupidest of his sons. He will chew salt-junk and walk with an easy negligence acquired from a course of practice in the Bay of Biscay; and in due time arrive at his double epaulettes and be a blockhead to the end of the chapter. But all this stupidity we humbly conceive might have found as fitting an arena in Westminster Hall or even in Westminster Abbey--with reverence be it spoken--as on the quarter-deck of a man-of-war; for we maintain it is of less consequence for a man to be a great pleader or an eloquent divine (where the utmost extent of evil resulting from the absence of eloquence and acuteness is a law-suit lost or a congregation lulled to sleep ) than that he should be active energetic skilful in one of the ""leviathans afloat on the brine."" Science zeal courage and self-reliance are very pretty qualities to find in the fool of the family--and without these no man can ever be a sailor. But what opportunity is there in the navy for the display of the wonderful abilities of the fool of the family's antipode the genius? Nothing will do for the surpassing brightness of some Highland star but law or politics; so Donald has Latin and Greek shovelled into him out of the dignified hat of some prebendary or bishop goes to Oxford talks on all manner of subjects as if his tongue had discovered the perpetual motion goes to the bar wh
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re the said motion is the only one he is called upon to make forces himself into high society wriggles his way into Parliament--the true Trophonius's cave of aspiring orators--and becomes a silent Demosthenes as he has long been a lawless Coke; an ends at last in a paroxysm of wonder that his creditors are hard-hearted and his country ungrateful so that instead of being promoted to a seat at the Admiralty he is removed to one in the Fleet--which brings him very nearly to the same position he would have been placed in if a true estimate had been formed of his powers at first. Oh fathers! if Tom is a donkey keep him at home or make him an attorney--it is amazing how a few years in ""the office"" will brighten him--but don't trust the lives of men and the honour of the flag to any but the best and wisest of your sons. Such a school for moral training has never been devised as one of the floating colleges that carry guns. The youngest midshipman acquires habits of command the oldest captain practises the ennobling virtue of obedience; and these we take it form the alpha and omega of man's useful existence. Power gives self-respect responsibility gives caution and subjection gives humility. With all these united as they are in every rank in the service the character has little room left for improvement; tenderness and generosity in addition make a man a Collingwood or Pellew--genius and heroism make him a Nelson. But not through flowery paths do genius and heroism tread on their path to fame. What a length of weary way with what antres vast and deserts idle and pathless wildernesses bestrown lay between the Raisonable of 1770 and the Victory of 1805! and yet through them all the traveller's eye was unalterably fixed on the great light that his soul saw filling the whole sky with its radiance and which he knew the whole time was reflected from the Baltic and the Nile and Trafalgar. The letters of Nelson just given to the public by the industry of Sir Harris Nicolas will hereafter be the manual of the sailor as the sister service has found a guide in the _Despatches of the Duke of Wellington_. All that was to be expected from the well-known talent of the editor united to an enthusiasm for his hero which has carried him triumphantly through the extraordinary labour of investigating and ascertaining every fact in the slightest degree bearing upon his subject is to be found in this volume in which from the beginning to the end by a continued series of letters Nelson is made his own historian; and we sincerely believe divesting ourselves as far as possible of all prejudice and partiality that no character ever came purer from the ordeal of unreserved communication--where not a thought is concealed or an expression studied--than the true friend the good son the affectionate brother Horatio Nelson. The correspondence in this volume only extends from 1777 to 1794 and no blot has yet occurred to mar the brightness of a character where there is so much to like that the reader finds it difficult to dwell on the heroic parts of it which he is only called upon to admire. When the volume ends he is only thirty-six years old and is captain of the Agamemnon; but his path is clearly traced out--his name is in men's mouths and his character established. And looking over the whole correspondence nothing perhaps is so striking as the early development of his peculiar qualities and the firm unswerving line he struck into from the beginning and continued in to the last. A self-reliance amounting in weaker and less equally-balanced natures to doggedness and conceit--a clear perception of the circumstances of a case almost resembling intuition--a patriotism verging on the romantic and a sense of duty never for a moment yielding to the ""whips and scorns that patient merit of the unworthy takes "" are displayed in every incident of his life from the time that he left the quiet parsonage-house at Burnham Thorpe till he finished his glorious career. At twelve years of age he joined his uncle in the Raisonable sixty-four and served in her as midshipman for five months; and few people would have been able to discover the future hero in the feeble boy he must have been at that time. Still less perhaps would they have expected the future Bronte a few months later in the person of a little fellow no longer a midshipman in the Royal Navy but a working ""youngster"" on board a West India ship as he informs us in his ""Sketch of my Life "" belonging to the house of Hibbert Purrier and Horton from which he returned to the Triumph at Chatham a good practical seaman but with a horror of the Royal Navy and a firm belief in a saying then constant with the seamen ""Aft the most honour forward the better man."" The next situation we find him in will probably shock the delicate feelings of tender mammas who expect their sons to be admirals without any apprenticeship; for he is rated on the books of the Triumph as ""_captain's servant_"" for one year two months and two days. We may in some measure relieve their minds by assuring them that he did not wear livery and was never called upon to brush the captain's coat. But the horrid man submitted even to lower degradation in order to get experience in his profession which our Reginald Augustus could never have thought of; for he tells us that ""when the expedition towards the North Pole was fitted out although no boys were allowed to go in the ships--as of no use--yet nothing could prevent my using every interest to go with Captain Lutwidge in the Carcass and as I fancied I was to fill a man's place. I begged I might be his cockswain; which finding my ardent desire for going with him Captain Lutwidge complied with."" And Cockswain Nelson ""exerted himself (when the boats were fitted out to quit the two ships blocked up in the ice ) to have the command of a four-oared cutter raised upon which was given him with twelve men; and he prided himself in fancying he could navigate her better than any other boat in the ship."" And we will back the cockswain to any amount though he was then only fifteen and probably did not weigh more than five stone. But the vulgarity of the fellow will be the death of us and our Laura Matilda will never listen without disgust to the ""Death of Nelson"" again; for he tells us that on the return of the Polar expedition he was placed in the Racehorse of twenty guns with Captain Farmer and watched in the foretop!!! And it is probable during all these mutations that he very seldom tasted venison and drank very little champagne. But even in the absence of those usual luxuries of the cockpit he made himself a thorough seaman; and when serving in the Worcester sixty-four with Captain Mark Robinson he says with characteristic because fully justified pride ""although my age might have been a sufficient cause for not entrusting me with the charge of a watch yet Captain Robinson used to says he felt as easy when I was upon deck as any officer in the ship."" And this brings us to 1777 the date of his commission and the commencement of his correspondence. After the simple statement of his course of life we shall hardly be called upon to observe that Nelson was no great scholar as we perceive that his school education was finished when he was twelve years old. And we owe hearty thanks to Sir Harris Nicolas for having restored the letters to their original language uncicerorian as it may be; for he informs us that some of those which had been formerly published in the different biographies of the hero were so improved and beautified that it was difficult to recognise them. By proper clipping and pruning altering some sentences and exchanging others an ingenious editor might transmogriphy these simple epistles into the philippics of Junius; and therefore we derive complete satisfaction from the conviction that in this compilation every sentence is exactly as it was written. With one other observation (which we make for the sake of the Laura Matildas who are horrified at the ""cockswain "") we shall proceed to give such extracts from the letters as we consider the most characteristic; and ""that 'ere observation "" as was said by Mr Liston ""is this here "" that Nelson was of what is usually called a very good family--being nearly connected with the Walpoles Earls of Orford and the Turners of Warham in Norfolk. But for further information on this point we refer them to an abstract of the pedigree prefixed to the letters. In the year 1777 and several following years Nelson's principal correspondents were his brother the Rev. William Nelson who succeeded as second Baron Nelson of the Nile and of Hilborough and was created Earl Nelson--Captain William Locker then in command of the Lowestoffe of whom very interesting memoirs have been published by his son Edward Hawke Locker Esq. late a commissioner of Greenwich Hospital--the Rev. Edmund Nelson (his father)--besides the secretary to the Admiralty and the official personages to whom his despatches were addressed. To show the affectionate nature of the man we shall quote his first letter to Captain Locker who was one of his dearest friends. The address of the letter is wanting but it would appear to have been written during Captain Locker's temporary absence from his ship in consequence of ill health:-- ""Lowestoffe at Sea _August 12 1777_. ""My most worthy Friend--I am exceedingly obliged to you for the good opinion you entertain of me and will do my utmost that you may have no occasion to change it. I hope God Almighty will be pleased to spare your life for your own sake and that of your family; but should any thing happen to you (which I sincerely pray God may not) you may be assured that nothing shall be wanting on my part for the taking care of your effects and delivering safe to Mrs Locker such of them as may be thought proper not to be disposed of. You mentioned the word consolation in your letter--I shall have a very great one when I think I have served faithfully the best of friends and the most amiable of women. All the services I can render to your family you may be assured shall be done; and shall never end but with my life; and may God Almighty of his great goodness keep bless and preserve you and your family is the most fervent prayer of your faithful servant ""Horatio Nelson."" In 1781 he was appointed commander of the Albemarle of twenty-eight guns and in the following year had a narrow escape from a strong French force in Boston Bay. The sailing qualities of the Albemarle beat the line-of-battle ships and he immediately brought to for a frigate that formed part of the chasing squadron but his courtesy was declined and the frigate bore away. He dwells in several of his letters on his good fortune in getting off; but in the following one to his father he omits all mention of his challenge to the pursuer:-- ""Albemarle Isle of Bic River St Lawrence _October 19 1782_. ""My dear Father--I wrote to Mr Suckling when I was at Newfoundland but I have not had an opportunity of writing to you till this time. I expected to have sailed for England on the first of November but our destination is now altered for we sail with a fleet for New York to-morrow; and from there I think it very likely we shall go to the _grand theatre_ of actions--the West Indies; but in our line of life we are sure of no one thing. When I reach New York you shall hear what becomes of me; but while I have health it is indifferent to me (were it not for the pleasure of seeing you and my brothers and sisters) where I go. Health that greatest of blessings is what I never truly enjoyed till I saw _fair_ Canada. The change it has wrought I am convinced is truly wonderful. I most sincerely wish my dear father I could compliment you the same way; but I hope Bath has done you a great deal of good this summer. I have not had much success in the prize way but it is all in good time and I do not know I ought to complain; for though I took several but had not the good fortune to get one safe into port yet on the other side I escaped from five French men-of-war in a wonderful manner.... Farewell my dearest father and assure yourself I always am and ever shall be your dutiful son ""Horatio Nelson."" In the following month he writes to his friend Locker--""I am a candidate with Lord Hood for a line-of-battle ship; he has honoured me highly by a letter for wishing to go off this station to a station of service and has promised me his friendship. Prince William is with him."" And Sir Harris Nicolas adds in a note--""H. R. H. Prince William Henry third son of King George III afterwards Duke of Clarence Admiral of the Fleet (Lord High Admiral?) and King William IV."" The Prince honoured Nelson with his warmest friendship and many letters in this collection were addressed to his Royal Highness. The following description of Nelson by the prince is extremely interesting:-- ""I was then a midshipman on board the Barfleur lying in the Narrows off Staten Island and had the watch on deck when Captain Nelson of the Albemarle came in his barge alongside who appeared to be the merest boy of a captain I ever beheld; and his dress was worthy of attention. He had on a full laced uniform; his lank unpowdered hair was tied in a stiff Hessian tail of an extraordinary length the old-fashioned flaps of his waistcoat added to the general quaintness of his figure and produced an appearance which particularly attracted my notice for I had never seen any thing like it before nor could I imagine who he was or what he came about. My doubts were however removed when Lord Hood introduced me to him. There was something irresistibly pleasing in his address and conversation and an enthusiasm when speaking on professional subjects that showed he was no common being. Nelson after this went with us to the West Indies and served under Lord Hood's flag during his indefatigable cruize off Cape François. Throughout the whole of the American war the height of Nelson's ambition was to command a line-of-battle ship; as for prize-money it never entered his thoughts; he had always in view the character of his maternal uncle. I found him warmly attached to my father and singularly humane; he had the honour of the king's service and the independence of the British navy particularly at heart; and his mind glowed with this idea as much when he was simply captain of the Albemarle and had obtained none of the honours of his country as when he was afterwards decorated with so much well-earned distinction."" Nelson's opinion of the prince as a seaman was scarcely less high; and it says not a little in favour of both parties that their friendship appears to have been founded on mutual respect. In July 1783 the Albemarle was paid off; and Nelson having finished the war as he expresses it in a letter to his friend Mr Ross without a fortune but without a speck on his character remained nine months on half-pay. But as he determined to make use of his spare time in mastering the French--a feat which he afterwards accomplished without a grammar--he resolved to go to France with his friend Captain James Macnamara for that purpose. There are some very Nelsonian sentences in his correspondence while in the land of the Mounseers. His contempt for epaulettes--which were not introduced into the English navy till 1795--is very amusing; and he little thought that in one of the dandified officers he despised so much he should find one of his most distinguished comrades the gallant Sir Alexander Ball:-- To William Locker Esq. ""St Omer _Nov. 2 1783_. ""My dear sir--Our travels since we left you have been extended to a much greater length then I apprehended; but I must do Captain Mac the justice to say it was all my doings and in a great measure against his advice; but experience bought is the best; and all mine I have paid pretty dearly for. We dined at Canterbury the day we parted from you and called at Captain Sandys' house but he was just gone out to dinner in the country therefore we did not see him. We slept at Dover and next morning at seven o'clock put to sea with a fine north-west wind and at half-past ten we were safe at breakfast in Monsieur Grandsire's house at Calais. His mother kept it when Hogarth wrote his _Gate of Calais_. Sterne's _Sentimental Journey_ is the best description I can give of our tour. Mac advised me to go first to St Omer as he had experienced the difficulty of attempting to fix in any place where there are no English; after dinner we set off intended for Montreuil sixty miles from Calais; they told us we travelled _en poste_ but I am sure we did not get on more than four miles an hour. I was highly diverted with looking what a curious figure the postilions in their jack-boots and their rats of horses made together. Their chaises have no springs and the roads generally paved like London streets; therefore you will naturally suppose we were pretty well shook together by the time we had travelled two posts and a half which is fifteen miles to Marquise. Here we were shown into an inn--they called it I should have called it a pig-stye: we were shown into a room with two straw beds and with great difficulty they mustered up clean sheets and gave us two pigeons for supper upon a dirty cloth and wooden-handled knives. _Oh what a transition from happy England!_ ""But we laughed at the repast and went to bed with the determination that nothing should ruffle our tempers. Having slept very well we set off at daylight for Boulogne where we breakfasted. This place was full of English; I suppose because wine is so very cheap. We went on after breakfast for Montreuil and passed through the finest corn country that my eyes ever beheld diversified with fine woods sometimes for miles together through noble forests. The roads mostly were planted with trees which made as fine an avenue as to any gentleman's country-seat. Montreuil is thirty miles from Boulogne situated upon a small hill in the middle of a fine plain which reached as far as the eye could carry you except towards the sea which is about twelve miles from it. We put up at the same house and with the same jolly landlord that recommended Le Fleur to Sterne. Here we wished much to be fixed; but neither good lodgings or masters could be had here--for there are no middling class of people. Sixty noblemen's families lived in the town who owned the vast plain round it and the rest very poor indeed. This is the finest country for game that ever was; partridges twopence-halfpenny a couple pheasants and woodcocks in proportion; and in short every species of poultry. We dined supped lay and breakfasted next day Saturday; then we proceeded on our tour leaving Montreuil you will suppose with great regret. ""We reached Abbeville at eight o'clock; but unluckily for us two Englishmen one of whom called himself Lord Kingsland--I can hardly suppose it to be him--and a Mr Bullock decamped at three o'clock that afternoon in debt to every shopkeeper in the place. These gentlemen kept elegant houses horses &c. We found the town in an uproar; and as no masters could be had at this place that could speak a word of English and that all masters that could speak English grammatically attend at the places that are frequented by the English which is St Omer Lisle Dunkirk and Boulogne to the northward of Paris and as I had no intention of travelling to the south of France till the spring at any rate I determined with Mac's advice to steer for St Omer where we arrived last Tuesday; and I own I was surprised to find that instead of a dirty nasty town which I had always heard it represented to find a large city well paved good streets and well lighted. ""We lodge in a pleasant French family and have our dinners sent from a _traiteur's_. There are two very agreeable young ladies daughters who _honour_ us with their company pretty often. One always makes our breakfast and the other our tea and play a game at cards in the evening. Therefore I must learn French if 'tis only for the pleasure of talking to them; for they do not speak a word of English. Here are a great number of English in this place; but we visit only two families; for if I did I should never speak French. Two noble captains are here--Ball and Shepard. You do not know I believe either of them. They wear fine epaulettes for which I think them great coxcombs. They have not visited me; and I shall not be assured court their acquaintance. You must be heartily tired of this long epistle if you can read it; but I have the worst pen in the world and I can't mend it. God bless you; and be assured I am your sincere friend and affectionate humble servant ""Horatio Nelson."" In another letter from St Omer he returns to the charge against Dandy Ball and Shepard:-- ""Here are two navy captains Ball and Shepard at this place; but we do not visit. They are very fine gentlemen with epaulettes. You may suppose I hold them a little _cheap_ for putting on any part of a Frenchman's uniform."" And in a short time after he seems to have made up his mind on two very important points--politics and the French people. To his brother William. ""... As to your having enlisted under the banners of the Walpoles [Whigs ] you might as well have enlisted under those of my grandmother. They are altogether the merest set of cyphers that ever existed--in public affairs I mean. Mr Pitt depend upon it will stand against all opposition. An honest man must always in the end get the better of a _villain_. But I have done with politics. Let who will get in I shall be left out."" ""In about a week or fortnight I think of returning to the Continent till autumn when I shall bring a horse and stay the winter at Burnham. I return to many charming women; but _no charming woman_ will return with me. I want to be a proficient in the language which is my only reason for returning. I hate their country and their manners."" In March of this year (1784 ) he was appointed to the Boreas frigate of twenty-eight guns; and had the honour (not very highly valued) of carrying out Lady Hughes the wife of the admiral on the Leeward Island station and a number of other people who did not add much to the efficiency of a man-of-war. It was on this station that he had first an opportunity of showing the determination and fearlessness of his character in maintaining what he thought the right--though ill supported as was to be expected by the authorities at home--against local interests which any other man would not have ventured to oppose. We are not about to enter into the history of Nelson's conduct in defence of the Navigation Act further than as the correspondence on the subject brings out some of his peculiarities; and the result shows as usual the policy of firmness and the certainty of success to those who are determined to obtain it. The Americans after the recognition of their independence were by no means willing to surrender some of the advantages they had enjoyed when colonists of Great Britain. Among these was an unrestricted trade with the West Indies. In order to retain this advantage they stuck at nothing in the way of oaths and declarations; and as the American trade was of great consequence to the islanders their false pretences were in all cases supported by the merchants and even the custom-house authorities were persuaded to encourage the frauds. A captain of the navy twenty-six years of age undertook to put an end to these operations; and in the course of a very short time he found himself in as hot water as any gentleman can require. To William Locker Esq. ""Boreas Baseterre Road _January 15 1785_. ""The longer I am upon this station the worse I like it. Our commander has not that opinion of his own sense that he ought to have. He is led by the advice of the islanders to admit the Yankees to a trade--at least to wink at it. He does not give himself that weight that I think an English admiral ought to do. I for one am determined not to suffer the Yankees to come where my ship is; for I am sure if once the Americans are admitted to any kind of intercourse with these islands the views of the Loyalists in settling in Nova Scotia are entirely done away. They will first become the carriers and next have possession of our islands are we ever again embroiled in a French war. The residents of these islands are Americans by connexion and by interest and are inimical to Great Britain. They are as great rebels as ever were in America had they the power to show it. After what I have said you will believe I am not very popular with the people. They have never visited me and I have not had a foot in any house since I have been on the station and all for doing my duty by being _true to the interests of Great Britain_. A petition from the President and Council has gone to the Governor-general and admiral to request the admission of Americans. I have given my answer to the admiral upon the subject--how he will like it I know not; but I am determined to suppress the admission of foreigners all in my power. I have told the Customs that I will complain if they admit any foreigner to an entry. An American arrives--sprung a leak a mast and what not--makes a protest--gets admittance--sells his cargo for ready money--goes to Martinico--buys molasses--and so round and round. But I hate them all. The Loyalist cannot do it consequently must sell a little dearer."" His narrative to the admiral on the same subject is as follows:-- ""_January 11 or 12 1785_. ""Sir--I yesterday received your order of the 29th of December wherein you direct me in execution of your first order dated the 12th of November (which is in fact strictly requiring us to put the Act of Navigation upon which the wealth and safety of Great Britain so much depends in force ) to observe the following directions viz to cause foreigners to anchor by his Majesty's ship under my command except in cases of immediate and urgent distress until her arrival and situation in all respects shall be reported to his Majesty's governor or his representative at any of the islands where I may fall in with such foreign ships or vessels; and that if the governor or his representative should give leave for admitting such vessels strictly charging me not to hinder them or interfere in their subsequent proceedings. ""I ever have been as in duty bound always ready to co-operate with his Majesty's governors or their representatives in doing whatever has been for the benefit of Great Britain. No governor will I am sure do such an illegal act as to countenance the admission of foreigners into the ports of their islands nor _dare_ any officer of his Majesty's Customs enter such foreigners without they are in such distress that necessity obliges them to unlade their cargoes; and then only to sell such a part of it as will pay the costs. In distress no individual shall exceed me in acts of generosity; and in judging of their distress no person can know better than sea officers of which I shall inform the governors &c. when they acquaint me for what reason they have countenanced the admission of foreigners. ""I beg leave to hope that I may be properly understood when I venture to say that at a time when Great Britain is using every endeavour to suppress illicit trade at home it is not wished that the ships on this station should be singular by being the only spectators of the illegal trade which I know is carried on at these islands. The governors may be imposed on by false declarations; we who are on the spot cannot. General Shirley told me and Captain Collingwood how much he approved of the methods that were carrying on for suppressing the illegal trade with America; that it had ever been his wish and that he had used every means in his power by proclamation and otherwise to hinder it; but they came to him with protests and swore through every thing (even as the sea-phrase is through a nine-inch plank;) therefore got admittance as he could not examine the vessels himself; and further by the Thynne packet he had received a letter from Lord Sydney one of his Majesty's principal secretaries of state saying that Administration were determined that American ships and vessels should not have any intercourse with our West India islands; and that he had upon an address from the Assembly petitioning that he would relax the king's proclamation for the exclusion of Americans transmitted it to Lord Sydney to be laid before the king. The answer to General Shirley was that his Majesty firmly believed and hoped that all his orders which were received by his governors would be strictly obeyed. ""Whilst I have the honour to command an English man-of-war I never shall allow myself to be subservient to the will of any governor nor co-operate with him in doing _illegal acts_. Presidents of council I feel myself superior to. They shall make proper application to me for whatever they may want to come by water. ""If I rightly understand your order of the 29th of December it is founded upon an opinion of the king's attorney-general viz. 'That it is legal for governors or their representatives to admit foreigners into the ports of their governments if they think fit.' How the king's attorney-general conceives he has a right to give an illegal opinion which I assert the above is he must answer for. I know the navigation laws. I am Sir &c. ""Horatio Nelson."" But the troubles of the unfortunate Horatio were not over; for just at this time arose another vexed and vexatious question as to whether a senior officer on half-pay--though holding a commissionership of the navy--could be empowered by the admiral on the station to hoist a broad pendant; and after a spirited correspondence the point was decided though apparently in a very shilly-shally shabby way in Nelson's favour--for it is accompanied with a reprimand--the Admiralty informing him that he ought to have submitted his doubts to the commander-in-chief on the station instead of having taken on himself ""to control the exercise of the functions of his appointment""--whatever that may mean. Too much activity even in a good cause is apt to excite the enmity of the idle drones who have got on without any activity at all and for some years the zeal of Nelson got him into disfavour with his superiors in the service. And yet his whole conduct was regulated by the strictest sense of duty and his letters--even those in which he shows most independence--never give the slightest occasion to suspect that his actions arose from self-will and disobedience. On this point he is very explicit. He writes to the admiral--""This sir I hope you will transmit to my lords commissioners that they nor any other of my superior officers may have the smallest idea that I shall ever dispute the orders of my superiors."" And to the Admiralty on the same occasion--""I must beg their lordships' indulgence to hear reasons for my conduct that it may never go abroad into the world I ever had an idea to dispute the orders of my superior officer neither admiral commodore or captain."" The plot in the mean time thickens and his anger increases against the audacious swindling of the Yankees aided by the islanders; and in his own defence he goes according to his custom to the fountain-head and lays his complaint before the secretary of state. ""My name "" he says ""most probably is unknown to your lordship "" (Lord Sydney ) ""but my character as a man I trust will bear the strictest investigation; therefore I take the liberty of sending enclosed a letter though written some few years ago which I hope will impress your lordship with a favourable opinion of me. I stand for myself no great connexion to support me if inclined to fall; therefore my good name as a man an officer and an Englishman I must be very careful of. My greatest pride is to discharge my duty faithfully; my greatest ambition to receive approbation for my conduct."" The chicaneries of the law were brought to bear on the captain of the Boreas and by means of a writ for his arrest (on the trumped-up plea of detention and imprisonment of some fraudulent Americans--true ancestors of the repudiators of the present day ) he was forced to remain on board ship for several months but was at last released from durance by the tardy undertaking given by government to be answerable for his defence. The lukewarmness of his superiors and the villanies of law were not enough to fill up his time and in the very midst of these agitating matters he adds a third: he met Mrs Nisbet and fell in love. His letters however are not entirely composed of sighs and lightning; and it gives a high idea of the lady's sense to perceive the calm yet real affection she inspired. We shall
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nly quote one of his letters to his lady-love to show the style of them all and also to show his feelings towards Prince William Henry (King William IV. ) who was at this time under his command as captain of the Pegasus. ""Off Antigua _December 12 1786_. ""Our young prince is a gallant man; he is indeed volatile but always with great good-nature. There were two balls during his stay and some of the old ladies were mortified that H. R. H. would not dance with them; but he says he is determined to enjoy the privilege of all other men that of asking any lady he pleases. ""_Wednesday._--We arrived here this morning at daylight. His Royal Highness dined with me and of course the governor. I can tell you a piece of news which is that the prince is fully determined and has made me promise him that he shall be at our wedding; and he says he will give you to me. His Royal Highness has not yet been in a private house to visit and is determined never to do it except in this instance. You know I will ever strive to bear such a character as may render it no discredit to any man to take notice of me. There is no action in my whole life but what is honourable; and I am the more happy at this time on that account; for I would if possible or in my power have no man near the prince who can have the smallest impeachment as to character; for as an individual I love him as a prince I honour and revere him. My telling you this history is as to myself; my thoughts on all subjects are open to you. We shall certainly go to Barbadoes from this island and when I shall see you is not possible for me to guess so much for marrying a sailor. We are often separated but I trust our affections are not by any means on that account diminished. Our country has the first demand for our services; and private convenience or happiness must ever give way to the public good. Give my love to Josiah. Heaven bless and return you safe to your most affectionate ""Horatio Nelson."" The attachment here professed for the prince seems to have been caused not less by the loyalty of Nelson's nature than by the real good qualities of the sailor king. It is probable he tried to form himself (professionally) on the model of his young commodore and a better original it was impossible for him to study. A certain young lieutenant of the name of Schomberg conceiving that he was injuriously treated in an order of the day issued by his Royal Highness on board the Pegasus applied to Nelson for a court-martial to enquire into the charge alleged against him. Nelson granted the court-martial and placed the complainant in arrest till a sufficient number could be collected for his trial and expressed his opinion of such frivolous applications in the following general order:-- ""By Horatio Nelson Esquire Captain of his Majesty's ship Boreas. ""For the better maintaining discipline and good government in the king's squadron under my command. ""I think it necessary to inform the officers that if any one of them shall presume to write to the commander of the squadron (unless there shall be ships enough present to bring them to immediate trial) for a court-martial to investigate their conduct on a frivolous pretence thereby depriving his majesty of their services by obliging the commander of the squadron to confine them that I shall and do consider such conduct as a direct breach of the 14th and part of the 19th articles of war and shall order them to be tried for the same. ""Given under my hand &c. ""Horatio Nelson."" This probably had the desired effect and the business was afterwards adjusted without having recourse to a court-martial though not without bringing upon Nelson a rap over the knuckles on his return to England. In order to obtain the proper court he had directed the prince to take his ship to the Jamaica station on his way to Halifax in Nova Scotia and the following paragraph contains their lordships' decision:-- ""My lords are not satisfied with the reasons you have given for altering the destination of the Pegasus and for sending the Rattler sloop to Jamaica; and that for having taken upon you to send the latter away from the station to which their lordships had appointed her you will be answerable for the consequence if the crown should be put to any needless expense upon that account."" We must close this account of the frivolous court-martial with an admirable letter from Nelson to the prince. ""Portsmouth _27th July 1787_. ""If to be truly great is to be truly good (as we are taught to believe ) it never was stronger verified than in your Royal Highness in the instance of Mr Schomberg. You have supported your character yet at the same time by an amiable condescension have saved an officer from appearing before a court-martial which ever must hurt him. Resentment I know your Royal highness never had or I am sure ever will bear any one. It is a passion incompatible with the character of a man of honour. Schomberg was too hasty certainly in writing his letter but now you are parted pardon me my prince when I presume to recommend that Schomberg may stand in your royal favour as if he had never sailed with you; and that at some future day you will serve him. There only wants this to place your character in the highest point of view. None of us are without failings. Schomberg's was being rather too hasty; but that put in competition with his being a good officer will not I am bold to say be taken in the scale against him."" There is one characteristic circumstance in this collection namely the number of letters written by Nelson in recommendation of all who have behaved well under his command. He was desirous of acting to others as he boasts in one of his letters with pride and exultation he had been treated by Lord Howe. ""You ask by what interest did I get a ship? I answer having served with credit was my recommendation to Lord Howe first lord of the admiralty."" The following is an application on behalf of a certain boatswain called Joseph King which we quote on account of the extraordinary politeness --owing perhaps to his study at St Omer--with which Nelson designates his _protégé_. To Philip Stephens Esq. Admiralty. ""Boreas _21st Sept. 1787_. ""On the 20th Charles Green late acting boatswain was entered as boatswain of his majesty's ship under my command agreeable to a warrant dated at the Navy Pay-office the 13th instant. I am therefore requested by Joseph King to write to their lordships to request they will be pleased to appoint him to some other ship as he hopes he has done nothing deserving of being superseded; and I beg leave to recommend him as a most excellent _gentleman_.--I am &c. ""Horatio Nelson."" Whether this application was successful or not even the industry of the editor has not discovered but we fear that at this point of his history Nelson's recommendation was of no great weight with the Admiralty. His biographers indeed Clarke and M'Arthur say that at this time the treatment he received disgusted him with his profession and that he had even determined never to set his foot again on board a king's ship but resign his commission at once. But Sir Harris Nicolas very justly is sceptical as to the truth of this anecdote from the fact that there is no allusion to any intention of the kind in his correspondence. And from what we see of his disposition in all his letters we feel assured that a thought of leaving the navy never entered his mind and that he would have considered the withdrawal of his services as little short of treason. But there occurred now a long interval of idleness or at least of life ashore. The Boreas was paid off in December 1787 and he was only appointed to the Agamemnon in January 1793. The four years of peace passed happily away principally at Burnham with his father; and there is little to quote till we find him on his own element again. He writes to Hercules Ross a West India merchant with whom he had formed a steady friendship while on that station; and we adduce the passage as a further corroboration of Sir Harris Nicolas's doubts about the authenticity of Clarke and M'Arthur's anecdote. ""You have given up all the toils and anxieties of business whilst I must still buffet the waves--in search of what? That thing called honour is now alas thought of no more. My integrity cannot be mended I hope; but my fortune God knows has grown worse for the service. So much for serving my country. But the devil ever willing to tempt the virtuous (pardon this flattery of myself ) has made me offer if any ships should be sent to destroy his majesty of Morocco's ports to be there; and I have some reason to think that should any more come of it my humble services will be accepted. I have invariably laid down and followed close a plan of what ought to be uppermost in the breast of an officer; that it is much better to serve an ungrateful country than to give up his own fame. Posterity will do him justice; a uniform conduct of honour and integrity seldom fails of bringing a man to the goal of fame at last."" But in spite of the coolness of the jacks-in-office and the cold shoulder they turned to the little troublesome captain in the time of peace no sooner were we likely to come to loggerheads with the French than they turned their eyes to the quiet Norfolk parsonage and made the _amende_ to the _iracundus Achilles_. War with France was declared on the 11th of February 1793 and on the 7th of January Nelson writes as follows:-- To Mrs Nelson. ""_Post nubila Phoebus._ After clouds comes sunshine. The Admiralty so smile on me that really I am as much surprised as when they frowned. Lord Chatham yesterday made many apologies for not having given me a ship before this time and said that if I chose to take a sixty-four to begin with I should be appointed to one as soon as she was ready and whenever it was in his power I should be removed into a seventy-four. Every thing indicated war. One of our ships looking into Brest has been fired into; the shot is now at the Admiralty. You will send my father this news which I am sure will please him.--Love to Josiah and believe me your most affectionate ""Horatio Nelson."" The appointment of Nelson to the Agamemnon a name which he did nearly as much to immortalize as Homer is the great epoch of his professional life. But though his letters which now rise to the rank of despatches become more interesting to those who watch his progress as an officer there are comparatively fewer which let us into the character of the man. Besides this the incidents of his career after this time are so well known that little new can be expected. What novelty however there was to be obtained has not escaped the research of the editor from whom (till we meet him in another volume when Nelson will again become interesting in his individual capacity as his secret and confidential letters in the Carraccioli and Lady Hamilton's period come to be laid before us) we part with feelings of gratitude and respect. GUIZOT. Machiavel was the first historian who seems to have formed a conception of the philosophy of history. Before his time the narrative of human events was little more than a series of biographies imperfectly connected together by a few slight sketches of the empires on which the actions of their heroes were exerted. In this style of history the ancient writers were and to the end of time probably will continue to be altogether inimitable. Their skill in narrating a story in developing the events of a life in tracing the fortunes of a city or a state as they were raised by a succession of illustrious patriots or sunk by a series of oppressive tyrants has never been approached in modern times. The histories of Xenophon and Thucydides of Livy and Sallust of Cæsar and Tacitus are all more or less formed on this model; and the more extended view of history as embracing an account of the countries the transactions of which were narrated originally formed and to a great part executed by the father of history Herodotus appears to have been in an unaccountable manner lost by his successors. In these immortal works however human transactions are uniformly regarded as they have been affected by or called forth the agency of individual men. We are never presented with the view of society _in a mass_; as influenced by a series of causes and effects independent of the agency of individual man--or to speak more correctly in the development of which the agency is an unconscious and often almost a passive instrument. Constantly regarding history as an extensive species of biography they not only did not withdraw the eye to the distance necessary to obtain such a general view of the progress of things but they did the reverse. Their great object was to bring the eye so close as to see the whole virtues or vices of the principal figures which they exhibited on their moving panorama; and in so doing they rendered it incapable of perceiving at the same time the movement of the whole social body of which they formed a part. Even Livy in his pictured narrative of Roman victories is essentially biographical. His inimitable work owes its enduring celebrity to the charming episodes of individuals or graphic pictures of particular events with which it abounds; scarce any general views on the progress of society or the causes to which its astonishing progress in the Roman state was owing are to be found. In the introduction to the life of Catiline Sallust has given with unequalled power a sketch of the causes which corrupted the republic; and if his work had been pursued in the same style it would indeed have been a philosophical history. But neither the Catiline nor the Jugurthine war are histories; they are chapters of history containing two interesting biographies. Scattered through the writings of Tacitus are to be found numerous caustic and profound observations on human nature and the increasing vices and selfishness of a corrupted age: but like the maxims of Rochefoucault it is to individual not general humanity that they refer; and they strike us as so admirably just because they do not describe general causes operating upon society as a body--which often make little impression save on a few reflecting minds--but strike direct to the human heart in a way which comes home to the breast of every individual who reads them. Never was a juster observation than that the human mind is never quiescent; it may not give the external symptoms of action but it does not cease to have the internal action: it sleeps but even then it dreams. Writers innumerable have declaimed on the night of the Middle Ages--on the deluge of barbarism which under the Goths flooded the world--on the torpor of the human mind under the combined pressure of savage violence and priestly superstition; yet this was precisely the period when the minds of men deprived of external vent turned inwards on themselves; and that the learned and thoughtful shut out from any active part in society by the general prevalence of military violence sought in the solitude of the cloister employment in reflecting on the mind itself and the general causes which under its guidance operated upon society. The influence of this great change in the direction of thought at once appeared when knowledge liberated from the cloister and the university again took its place among the affairs of men. Machiavel in Italy and Bacon in England for the first time in the annals of knowledge reasoned upon human affairs _as a science_. They spoke of the minds of men as permanently governed by certain causes and of known principles always leading to the same results; they treated of politics as a science in which certain known laws existed and could be discovered as in mechanics and hydraulics. This was a great step in advance and demonstrated that the superior age of the world and the wide sphere to which political observation had now been applied had permitted the accumulation of such an increased store of facts as permitted deductions founded on experience to be formed in regard to the affairs of nations. Still more it showed that the attention of writers had been drawn to the general causes of human affairs; that they reasoned on the actions of men as a subject of abstract thought; regarded effects formerly produced as _likely to recur_ from a similar combination of circumstances; and formed conclusions for the regulation of future conduct from the results of past experience. This tendency is in an especial manner conspicuous in the _Discorsi_ of Machiavel where certain general propositions are stated deduced indeed from the events of Roman story but announced as lasting truths applicable to every future generation and circumstances of men. In depth of view and justness of observation these views of the Florentine statesman never were surpassed. Bacon's essays relate for the most part to subjects of morals or domestic and private life; but not unfrequently he touches on the general concerns of nations and with the same profound observation of the past and philosophic anticipation of the future. Voltaire professed to elevate history in France from the _jejune_ and trifling details of genealogy courts wars and negotiations in which it had hitherto in his country been involved to the more general contemplation of arts and philosophy and the progress of human affairs; and in some respects he certainly effected a great reformation on the ponderous annalists who had preceded him. But the foundation of his history was still biography; he regarded human events only as they were grouped round two or three great men or as they were influenced by the speculations of men of letters and science. The history of France he stigmatized as savage and worthless till the reign of Louis XIV.; the Russians he looked upon as bitter barbarians till the time of Peter the Great. He thought the philosophers alone all in all; till they arose and a sovereign appeared who collected them round his throne and shed on them the rays of royal favour human events were not worth narrating; they were merely the contests of one set of savages plundering another. Religion in his eyes was a mere priestly delusion to enslave and benighten mankind; from its oppression the greatest miseries of modern times had flowed; the first step in the emancipation of the human mind was to chase for ever from the earth those sacerdotal tyrants. The most free-thinking historian will now admit that these views are essentially erroneous; he will allow that viewing Christianity merely as a human institution its effect in restraining the violence of feudal anarchy was incalculable; long anterior to the date of the philosophers he will look for the broad foundation on which national character and institutions for good or for evil have been formed. Voltaire was of great service to history by turning it from courts and camps to the progress of literature science and the arts--to the delineation of manners and the preparation of anecdotes descriptive of character; but notwithstanding all his talent he never got a glimpse of the general causes which influence society. He gave us the history of philosophy but not the philosophy of history. The ardent genius and pictorial eye of Gibbon rendered him an incomparable delineator of events; and his powerful mind made him seize the _general_ and characteristic features of society and manners as they appear in different parts of the world as well as the traits of individual greatness. His descriptions of the Roman empire in the zenith of its power as it existed in the time of Augustus--of its decline and long-protracted old age under Constantine and his successors on the Byzantine throne--of the manners of the pastoral nations who under different names and for a succession of ages pressed upon and at last overturned the empire--of the Saracens who issuing from the lands of Arabia with the Koran in one hand and the cimeter in the other urged on their resistless course till they were arrested by the Atlantic on the one side and the Indian ocean on the other--of the stern crusaders who nursed amid the cloistered shades and castellated realms of Europe struggled with that devastating horde ""when 'twas strongest and ruled it when 'twas wildest""--of the long agony silent decay and ultimate resurrection of the Eternal City--are so many immortal pictures which to the end of the world will fascinate every ardent and imaginative mind. But not withstanding this incomparable talent for general and characteristic description he had not the mind necessary for a philosophical analysis of the series of causes which influence human events. He viewed religion with a jaundiced and prejudiced eye--the fatal bequest of his age and French education unworthy alike of his native candour and inherent strength of understanding. He had profound philosophic ideas and occasionally let them out with admirable effect; but the turn of his mind was essentially descriptive and his powers were such in that brilliant department that they wiled him from the less inviting contemplation of general causes. We turn over his fascinating pages without ever wearying; but without ever discovering the general progress or apparent tendency of human affairs. We look in vain for the profound reflections of Machiavel on the permanent results of certain political combinations or experiments. He has led us through a ""mighty maze;"" but he has made no attempt to show it ""not without a plan."" Hume is commonly called a philosophical historian and so he is; but he has even less than Gibbon the power of unfolding the general causes which influence the progress of human events. He was not properly speaking a philosophic historian but a philosopher writing history--and these are very different things. The practical statesman will often make a better delineator of the progress of human affairs than the philosophic recluse; for he is more practically acquainted with their secret Springs: it was not in the schools but the forum or the palace that Sallust Tacitus and Burke acquired their deep insight into the human heart. Hume was gifted with admirable sagacity in political economy; and it is the good sense and depth of his views on that important subject then for the first time brought to bear on the annals of man that has chiefly gained for him and with justice the character of a philosophic historian. To this may be added the admirable clearness and rhetorical powers with which he has stated the principal arguments for and against the great changes in the English institutions which it fell to his lot to recount--arguments far abler than were either used by or occurred to the actors by whom they were brought about; for it is seldom that a Hume is found in the councils of men. With equal ability too he has given periodical sketches of manners customs and habits mingled with valuable details on finance commerce and prices--all elements and most important ones in the formation of philosophical history. We owe a deep debt of gratitude to the man who has rescued these important facts from the ponderous folios where they were slumbering in forgotten obscurity and brought them into the broad light of philosophic observation and popular narrative. But notwithstanding all this Hume is far from being gifted with the philosophy of history. He has collected or prepared many of the facts necessary for the science but he has made little progress in it himself. He was essentially a sceptic. He aimed rather at spreading doubts than shedding light. Like Voltaire and Gibbon he was scandalously prejudiced and unjust on the subject of religion; and to write modern history without correct views on that subject is like playing Hamlet without the character of the Prince of Denmark. He was too indolent to acquire the vast store of facts indispensable for correct generalization on the varied theatre of human affairs and often drew hasty and incorrect conclusions from the events which particularly came under his observation. Thus the repeated indecisive battles between the fleets of Charles II. and the Dutch drew from him the observation apparently justified by their results that sea-fights are seldom so important or decisive as those at land. The fact is just the reverse. Witness the battle of Salamis which repelled from Europe the tide of Persian invasion; that of Actium which gave a master to the Roman world; that of Sluys which exposed France to the dreadful English invasions begun under Edward III.; that of Lepanto which rolled back from Christendom the wave of Mahometan conquest; the defeat of the Armada which permanently established the Reformation in Northern Europe; that of La Hogue which broke the maritime strength of Louis XIV.; that of Trafalgar which for ever took ""ships colonies and commerce"" from Napoleon and spread them with the British colonial empire over half the globe. Montesquieu owes his colossal reputation chiefly to his _Esprit des Loix_; but the _Grandeur et Decadence des Romains_ is by much the greater work. It has never attained nearly the reputation in this country which it deserves either in consequence of the English mind being less partial than the French to the philosophy of human affairs or as is more probable from the system of education at our universities being so exclusively devoted to the study of words that our scholars never arrive at the knowledge of things. It is impossible to imagine a work in which the philosophy of history is more ably condensed or where there is exhibited in a short space a more profound view of the general causes to which the long-continued greatness and ultimate decline of that celebrated people were owing. It is to be regretted only that he did not come to modern times and other ages with the same masterly survey; the information collected in the _Esprit des Loix_ would have furnished him with ample materials for such a work. In that noble treatise the same philosophic and generalizing spirit is conspicuous; but there is too great a love of system an obvious partiality for fanciful analogies and not unfrequently conclusions hastily deduced from insufficient data. These errors the natural result of a philosophic and profound mind wandering without a guide in the mighty maze of human transactions are entirely avoided in the _Grandeur et Decadence des Romains_ where he was retained by authentic history to a known train of events and where his imaginative spirit and marked turn for generalization found sufficient scope and no more to produce the most perfect commentary on the annals of a single people of which the human mind can boast. Bossuet in his _Universal History_ aimed at a higher object; he professed to give nothing less than a development of the plan of Providence in the government of human affairs during the whole of antiquity and down to the reign of Charlemagne. The idea was magnificent and the mental powers as well as eloquence of the Bishop of Meaux promised the greatest results from such an undertaking. But the execution has by no means corresponded to the conception. Voltaire has said that he professed to give a view of universal history and he has only given the history of the Jews; and there is too much truth in the observation. He never got out of the fetters of his ecclesiastical education; the Jews were the centre round which he supposed all other nations revolved. His mind was polemical not philosophic; a great theologian he was but an indifferent historian. In one particular indeed his observations are admirable and at times in the highest degree impressive. He never loses sight of the divine superintendence of human affairs; he sees in all the revolutions of empires the progress of a mighty plan for the ultimate redemption of mankind; and he traces the workings of this superintending power in all the transactions of man. But it may be doubted whether he took the correct view of this sublime but mysterious subject. He supposes the divine agency to influence _directly_ the affairs of men--not through the medium of general laws or the adaptation of our active propensities to the varying circumstances of our condition. Hence his views strike at the freedom of human actions; he makes men and nations little more than the puppets by which the Deity works out the great drama of human affairs. Without disputing the reality of such immediate agency in some particular cases it may safely be affirmed that by far the greater part of the affairs of men are left entirely to their own guidance and that their actions are overruled not directed by Almighty power to work out the purposes of Divine beneficence. That which Bossuet left undone Robertson did. The first volume of his Charles V. may justly be regarded as the greatest step which the human mind had yet made in the philosophy of history. Extending his views beyond the admirable survey which Montesquieu had given of the rise and decline of the Roman empire he aimed at giving a view of the _progress of society_ in modern times. This matter of the progress of society was a favourite subject at that period with political philosophers; and by combining the speculations of these ingenious men with the solid basis of facts which his erudition and industry had worked out Robertson succeeded in producing the most luminous and at the same time just view of the progress of nations that had yet been exhibited among mankind. The philosophy of history here appeared in its full lustre. Men and nations were exhibited in their just proportions. Society was viewed not only in its details but its masses; the _general causes_ which influence its progress running into or mutually affecting each other and yet all conspiring with more or less efficacy to bring about a general result were exhibited in the most lucid and masterly manner. The great causes which have contributed to form the elements of modern society--the decaying civilization of Rome--the irruption of the northern nations--the prostration and degradation of the conquered people--the revival of the military spirit with the private wars of the nobles--the feudal system and institution of chivalry--the crusades and revival of letters following the capture of Constantinople by the Turks--the invention of printing and consequent extension of knowledge to the great body of the people--the discovery of the compass and with it of America by Columbus and doubling of the Cape of Good Hope by Vasco de Gama--the discovery of gunpowder and prodigious change thereby effected in the implements of human destruction--are all there treated in the most luminous manner and in general with the justest discrimination. The vast agency of general causes upon the progress of mankind now became apparent: unseen powers like the deities of Homer in the war of Troy were seen to mingle at every stop with the tide of sublunary affairs; and so powerful and irresistible does their agency when once revealed appear that we are perhaps now likely to fall into the opposite extreme and to ascribe too little to individual effort or character. Men and nations seem to be alike borne forward on the surface of a mighty stream which they are equally incapable of arresting or directing; and after surveying the vain and impotent attempts of individuals to extricate themselves from the current we are apt to exclaim with the philosopher [16] ""He has dashed with his oar to hasten the cataract; he has waved with his fan to give speed to the winds."" A nearer examination however will convince every candid enquirer that individual character exercises if not a paramount yet a very powerful influence on human affairs. Whoever investigates minutely any period of history will find on the one hand that general causes affecting the whole of society are in constant operation; and on the other that these general causes themselves are often set in motion or directed in their effects by particular men. Thus of what efficacy were the constancy of Pitt the foresight of Burke the arm of Nelson the wisdom of Wellington the genius of Wellesley in bringing to maturity the British empire and spreading the Anglo-Saxon race in pursuance of its appointed mission over half the globe! What marvellous effect had the heroism and skill of Robert Bruce upon the subsequent history of Scotland and through it on the fortunes of the British race! Thus biography or the deeds or thoughts of illustrious men still forms a most important and certainly the most interesting part even of general history; and the perfection of that noble art consists not in the exclusive delineation of individual achievement or the concentration of attention on genera
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causes but in the union of the two in due proportions as they really exist in nature and determine by their combined operation the direction of human affairs. The talent now required in the historian partakes accordingly of this two-fold character. He is expected to write philosophy and biography: skill in drawing individual character the power of describing individual achievements with a clear perception of general causes and the generalizing faculty of enlarged philosophy. He must combine in his mind the powers of the microscope and the telescope; be ready like the steam-engine at one time to twist a fibre at another to propel an hundred-gun ship. Hence the rarity of eminence in this branch of knowledge; and if we could conceive a writer who to the ardent genius and descriptive powers of Gibbon should unite the lucid glance and just discrimination of Robertson and the calm sense and reasoning powers of Hume he would form a more perfect historian than ever has or probably ever will appear upon earth. With all his generalizing powers however Robertson fell into one defect--or rather he was unable in one respect to extricate himself from the prejudices of his age and profession. He was not a freethinker--on the contrary he was a sincere and pious divine; but he lived in an age of freethinkers--they had the chief influence in the formation of a writer's fame; and he was too desirous of literary reputation to incur the hazard of ridicule or contempt by assigning too prominent a place to the obnoxious topic. Thence he has ascribed far too little influence to Christianity in restraining the ferocity of savage manners preserving alive the remains of ancient knowledge and laying in general freedom the broad and deep foundations of European society. He has not overlooked these topics but he has not given them their due place nor assigned them their proper weight. He lived and died in comparative retirement; and he was never able to shake himself free from the prejudices of his country and education on the subject of Romish religion. Not that he exaggerated the abuses and enormities of the Roman Catholic superstition which brought about the Reformation nor the vast benefits which Luther conferred upon mankind by bringing them to light; both were so great that they hardly admitted of exaggeration. His error--and in the delineation of the progress of society in modern Europe it was a very great one--consisted in overlooking the beneficial effect of that very superstition then so pernicious in a _prior age of the world_ when violence was universal crime prevalent alike in high and low places and government impotent to check either the tyranny of the great or the madness of the people. Then it was that superstition was the greatest blessing which Providence in mercy could bestow on mankind; for it effected what the wisdom of the learned or the efforts of the active were alike unable to effect; it restrained the violence by imaginary which was inaccessible to the force of real terrors; and spread that protection under the shadow of the Cross which could never have been obtained by the power of the sword. Robertson was wholly insensible to these early and inestimable blessings of the Christian faith; he has admirably delineated the beneficial influence of the Crusades upon subsequent society but on this all-important topic he is silent. Yet whoever has studied the condition of European society in the ninth tenth and eleventh centuries as it has since been developed in the admirable works of Sismondi Thierry Michelet and Guizot must be aware that the services not merely of Christianity but of the superstitions which had usurped its place were during that long period incalculable; and that but for them European society would infallibly have sunk as Asiatic in every age has done beneath the desolating sword of barbarian power. Sismondi--if the magnitude and in many respects the merit of his works be considered--must be regarded as one of the greatest historians of modern times. His ""History of the Italian Republics"" in sixteen of the ""Monarchy of France"" in thirty volumes attest the variety and extent of his antiquarian researches as well as the indefatigable industry of his pen: his ""Literature of the South of Europe"" in four and ""Miscellaneous Essays"" in three volumes show how happily he has blended these weighty investigations with the lighter topics of literature and poetry and the political philosophy which in recent times has come to occupy so large a place in the study of all who have turned their mind to the progress of human affairs. Nor is the least part of his merit to be found in the admirable skill with which he has condensed each in two volumes his great histories for the benefit of that numerous class of readers who unable or unwilling to face the formidable undertaking of going through his great histories are desirous of obtaining such a brief summary of their leading events as may suffice for persons of ordinary perseverance or education. His mind was essentially philosophical; and it is the philosophy of modern history accordingly which he has exerted himself so strenuously to unfold. He views society at a distance and exhibits its great changes in their just proportions and in general with their true effects. His success in this arduous undertaking has been great indeed. He has completed the picture of which Robertson had only formed the sketch--and completed it with such a prodigious collection of materials and so lucid an arrangement of them in their appropriate places as to have left future ages little to do but draw the just conclusions from the results of his labours. With all these merits and they are great and with this rare combination of antiquarian industry with philosophic generalization Sismondi is far from being a perfect historian. He did well to abridge his great works; for he will find few readers who will have perseverance enough to go through them. An abridgement was tried of Gibbon; but it had little success and has never since been attempted. You might as well publish an abridgement of Waverley or Ivanhoe. Every reader of the _Decline and Fall_ must feel that condensation is impossible without an omission of interest or a curtailment of beauty. Sismondi with all his admirable qualities as a general and philosophic historian wants the one thing needful in exciting interest--descriptive and dramatic power. He was a man of great vigour of thought and clearness of observation but little genius--at least of that kind of genius which is necessary to move the feelings or warm the imagination. That was his principal defect; and it will prevent his great works from ever commanding the attention of a numerous body of general readers however much they may be esteemed by the learned and studious. Conscious of this deficiency he makes scarce any attempt to make his narrative interesting; but reserving his whole strength for general views on the progress of society or philosophic observations on its most important changes he fills up the intermediate space with long quotations from chronicles memoirs and state papers--a sure way if the selection is not made with great judgment of rendering the whole insupportably tedious. Every narrative to be interesting should be given in the writer's _own words_ unless on those occasions by no means frequent when some striking or remarkable expressions of a speaker or contemporary writer are to be preserved. Unity of style and expression is as indispensable in a history which is to move the heart or fascinate the imagination as in a tragedy a painting or an epic poem. But in addition to this Sismondi's general views though ordinarily just and always expressed with clearness and precision are not always to be taken without examination. Like Robertson he was never able to extricate himself entirely from the early prejudices of his country and education; hardly any of the Geneva school of philosophers have been able to do so. Brought up in that learned and able but narrow and in some respects bigoted community he was early engaged in the vast undertaking of the History of the Italian Republics. Thus before he was well aware of it and at a time of life when the opinions are flexible and easily moulded by external impressions he became irrevocably enamoured of such little communities as he had lived in or was describing and imbibed all the prejudices against the Church of Rome which have naturally from close proximity and the endurance of unutterable evils at its hands been ever prevalent among the Calvinists of Geneva. These causes have tinged his otherwise impartial views with two signal prejudices which appear in all his writings where these subjects are even remotely alluded to. His partiality for municipal institutions and the social system depending on them is as extravagant as his aversion to the Church of Rome is conspicuous and intemperate. His idea of a perfect society would be a confederacy of little republics governed by popularly elected magistrates holding the scarlet old lady of Rome in utter abomination and governed in matters of religion by the Presbyterian forms and the tenets of Calvin. It is not to be wondered at that the annalist of the countries of Tasso and Dante of Titian and Machiavel of Petrarch and Leonardo da Vinci of Galileo and Michael Angelo should conceive that in no other state of society is such scope afforded for mental cultivation and the development of the highest efforts of genius. Still less is it surprising that the historian of the crusade against the Albigenses of the unheard-of atrocities of Simon de Montfort of the wholesale massacres burnings and torturings which have brought such indelible disgrace on the Roman priesthood should feel deeply interested in a faith which has extricated his own country from the abominable persecution. But still this indulgence of these natural and in some respects praiseworthy feelings has blinded Sismondi to the insurmountable evils of a confederacy of small republics at this time amidst surrounding powerful and monarchical states; and to the inappreciable blessings of the Christian faith and even of the Romish superstition before the period when these infamous cruelties began when their warfare was only with the oppressor their struggles with the destroyers of the human race. But truth is great and will prevail. Those just views of modern society which neither the luminous eye of Robertson nor the learned research and philosophic mind of Sismondi could reach have been brought forward by a writer of surpassing ability whose fame as an historian and a philosopher is for the time overshadowed by the more fleeting celebrity of the statesman and the politician. We will not speak of M. GUIZOT in the latter character much as we are tempted to do so by the high and honourable part which he has long borne in European diplomacy and the signal ability with which in the midst of a short-sighted and rebellious generation clamouring as the Romans of old for the _multis utile bellum_ he has sustained his sovereign's wise and magnanimous resolution to maintain peace. We are too near the time to appreciate the magnitude of these blessings; men would not now believe through what a crisis the British empire unconscious of its danger passed when M. Thiers was dismissed three years and a half ago by Louis Philippe and M. Guizot called to the helm. But when the time arrives as arrive it will that the diplomatic secrets of that period are brought to light; when the instructions of the revolutionary minister to the admiral of the Toulon fleet are made known and the marvellous chance which prevented their being acted upon by him has become matter of history; it will be admitted that the civilized world have good cause to thank M. Guizot for saving it from a contest as vehement as perilous and probably as disastrous to all concerned as that which followed the French Revolution. Our present business is with M. Guizot as a historian and philosopher; a character in which he will be remembered long after his services to humanity as a statesman and a minister have ceased to attract the attention of men. In those respects we place him in the very highest rank among the writers of modern Europe. It must be understood however in what his greatness consists lest the readers expecting what they will not find experience disappointment when they begin the study of his works. He is neither imaginative nor pictorial; he seldom aims at the pathetic and has little eloquence. He is not a Livy nor a Gibbon. Nature has not given him either dramatic or descriptive powers. He is a man of the highest genius; but it consists not in narrating particular events or describing individual achievement. It is in the discovery of general causes; in tracing the operation of changes in society which escape ordinary observation: in seeing whence man has come and whether he is going that his greatness consists: and in that loftiest of the regions of history he is unrivaled. We know of no author who has traced the changes of society and the general causes which determine the fate of nations with such just views and so much sagacious discrimination. He is not properly speaking an historian; his vocation and object were different. He is a great discourser on history. If ever the philosophy of history was embodied in a human being it is in M. Guizot. The style of this great author is in every respect suited to his subject. He does not aim at the highest flights of fancy; makes no attempt to warm the soul or melt the feelings; is seldom imaginative and never descriptive. But he is uniformly lucid sagacious and discriminating; deduces his conclusions with admirable clearness from his premises and occasionally warms from the innate grandeur of his subject into a glow of fervent eloquence. He seems to treat of human affairs as if he viewed them from a loftier sphere than other men; as if he were elevated above the usual struggles and contests of humanity; and a superior power had withdrawn the veil which shrouds their secret causes and course from the gaze of sublunary beings. He cares not to dive into the secrets of cabinets; attaches little perhaps too little importance to individual character; but fixes his steady gaze on the great and lasting causes which in a durable manner influence human affairs. He views them not from year to year but from century to century; and when considered in that view it is astonishing how much the importance of individual agency disappears. Important in their generation--sometimes almost omnipotent for good or for evil while they live--particular men how great soever rarely leave any very important consequences behind them; or at least rarely do what other men might not have done as effectually as them and which was not already determined by the tendency of the human mind and the tide either of flow or ebb by which human affairs were at the time wafted to and fro. The desperate struggles of war or of ambition in which they were engaged and in which so much genius and capacity were exerted are swept over by the flood of time and seldom leave any lasting trace behind. It is the men who determine the direction of this tide who imprint their character on general thought who are the real directors of human affairs; it is the giants of thought who in the end govern the world--kings and ministers princes and generals warriors and legislators are but the ministers of their blessings or their curses to mankind. But their dominion seldom begins till themselves are mouldering in their graves. Guizot's largest work in point of size is his translation of _Gibbon's Rome_; and the just and philosophic spirit in which he viewed he course of human affairs was admirably calculated to provide an antidote to the sceptical sneers which in a writer of such genius and strength of understanding are at once the marvel and the disgrace of that immortal work. He has begun also a history of the English Revolution to which he was led by having been the editor of a valuable collection of Memoirs relating to the great Rebellion translated into French in twenty-five volumes. But this work only got the length of two volumes and came no further down than the death of Charles I. an epoch no further on in the English than the execution of Louis in the French revolution. This history is clear lucid and valuable; but it is written with little eloquence and has met with no great success: the author's powers were not of the dramatic or pictorial kind necessary to paint that dreadful story. These were editorial or industrial labours unworthy of Guizot's mind; it was when he delivered lectures from the chair of history in Paris that his genius shone forth in its proper sphere and its true lustre. His _Civilisation en France_ in five volumes _Civilisation Européenne_ and _Essais sur l'Histoire de France_ each in one volume are the fruits of these professional labours. The same profound thought sagacious discrimination and lucid view are conspicuous in them all; but they possess different degrees of interest to the English reader. The _Civilisation en France_ is the groundwork of the whole and it enters at large into the whole details historical legal and antiquarian essential for its illustration and the proof of the various propositions which it contains. In the _Civilisation Européenne_ and _Essays on the History of France_ however the general results are given with equal clearness and greater brevity. We do not hesitate to say that they appear to us to throw more light on the history of society in modern Europe and the general progress of mankind from the exertions of its inhabitants than any other works in existence; and it is of them especially the first that we propose to give our readers some account. The most important event which ever occurred in the history of mankind is the one concerning which contemporary writers have given us the least satisfactory accounts. Beyond all doubt the overthrow of Rome by the Goths was the most momentous catastrophe which has occurred on the earth since the deluge; yet if we examine either the historians of antiquity or the earliest of modern times we find it wholly impossible to understand to what cause so great a catastrophe had been owing. What gave in the third and fourth centuries so prodigious an impulse to the northern nations and enabled them after being so long repelled by the arms of Rome finally to prevail over it? What still more so completely paralysed the strength of the empire during that period and produced that astonishing weakness in the ancient conquerors of the world which rendered them the easy prey of those whom they had so often subdued? The ancient writers content themselves with saying that the people became corrupted; that they lost their military courage; that the recruiting of the legions in the free inhabitants of the empire became impossible; and that the semi-barbarous tribes on the frontier could not be relied on to uphold its fortunes. But a very little reflection must be sufficient to show that there must have been much more in it than this before a race of conquerors was converted into one of slaves; before the legions fled before the barbarians and the strength of the civilized was overthrown by the energy of the savage world. For what prevented a revenue from being raised in the third or fourth as well as the first or second centuries? Corruption in its worst form had doubtless pervaded the higher ranks in Rome from the Emperor downward; but these vices are the faults of the exalted and the affluent only; they never have and never will extend generally to the great body of the community; for this plain reason that they are not rich enough to purchase them. But the remarkable thing is that in the decline of the empire it was in the lower ranks that the greatest and most fatal weakness first appeared. Long before the race of the Patricians had become extinct the free cultivators had disappeared from the fields. Leaders and generals of the most consummate abilities of the greatest daring frequently arose; but their efforts proved in the end ineffectual from the impossibility of finding a sturdy race of followers to fill their ranks. The legionary Italian soldier was awanting--his place was imperfectly supplied by the rude Dacian the hardy German the faithless Goth. So completely were the inhabitants of the provinces within the Rhine and the Danube paralysed that they ceased to make any resistance to the hordes of invaders; and the fortunes of the empire were for several generations sustained solely by the heroic efforts of individual leaders--Belisarius Narces Julian Aurelian Constantine and many others--whose renown though it could not rouse the pacific inhabitants to warlike efforts yet attracted military adventurers from all parts of the world to their standard. Now what weakened and destroyed the rural population? It could not be luxury; on the contrary they were suffering under excess of poverty and bent down beneath a load of taxes which in Gaul in the time of Constantine amounted as Gibbon tells us to nine pounds sterling on every freeman? What was it then which occasioned the depopulation and weakness? This is what it behoves us to know--this it is which ancient history has left unknown. It is here that the vast step in the philosophy of history made from ancient to modern times is apparent. From a few detached hints and insulated facts left by the ancient annalists apparently ignorant of their value and careless of their preservation modern industry guided by the light of philosophy has reared up the true solution of the difficulty and revealed the real causes hidden from the ordinary gaze which even in the midst of its greatest prosperity gradually but certainly undermined the strength of the empire. Michelet in his _Gaule sous les Romains_ a most able and interesting work--Thierry in his _Domination Romaine en Gaule_ and his _Histoire des Rois Merovingians_--Sismondi in the three first volumes of his _Histoire des Français_--and Guizot in his _Civilisation Européenne_ and the first volumes of his _Essais sur l'Histoire de France_--have applied their great powers to this most interesting subject. It may safely be affirmed that they have got to the bottom of the subject and lifted up the veil from one of the darkest and yet most momentous changes in the history of mankind. Guizot gives the following account of the principal causes which silently undermined the strength of the empire flowing from the peculiar organization of ancient society:-- ""When Rome extended what did it do? Follow its history and you will find that it was everlastingly engaged in conquering or founding cities. It was with cities that it fought--with cities that it contracted--into cities that it sent colonies. The history of the conquest of the world by Rome is nothing but the history of the conquest and foundation of a great number of cities. In the East the expansion of the Roman power assumed from the very outset a somewhat dissimilar character; the population was differently distributed from the West and much less concentrated in cities; but in the European world the foundation or conquest of towns was the uniform result of Roman conquest. In Gaul and Spain in Italy it was constantly towns which opposed the barrier to Roman domination and towns which were founded or garrisoned by the legions or strengthened by colonies to retain them when vanquished in a state of subjection. Great roads stretched from one town to another; the multitude of cross roads which now intersect each other in every direction was unknown. They had nothing in common with that multitude of little monuments villages churches castles villas and cottages which now cover our provinces. Rome has bequeathed to us nothing either in its capital or its provinces but the _municipal character_ which produced immense monuments on certain points destined for the use of the vast population which was there assembled together. ""From this peculiar conformation of society in Europe under the Roman dominion consisting of a vast conglomeration of cities with each a dependent territory all independent of each other arose the absolute necessity for a central and absolute government. One municipality in Rome might conquer the world: but to retain it in subjection and provide for the government of all its multifarious parts was a very different matter. This was one of the chief causes of the general adoption of a strong concentrated government under the empire. Such centralized despotism not only succeeded in restraining and regulating all the incoherent members of the vast dominion but the idea of a central irresistible authority insinuated itself into men's minds every where at the same time with wonderful facility. At first sight one is astonished to see in that prodigious and ill-united aggregate of little republics in that accumulation of separate municipalities spring up so suddenly an unbounded respect for the sacred authority of the empire. But the truth is it had become a matter of absolute necessity that the bond which held together the different parts of this heterogeneous dominion should be very powerful; and this it was which gave it so ready a reception in the minds of men. ""But when the vigour of the central power declined during a course of ages from the pressure of external warfare and the weakness of internal corruption this necessity was no longer felt. The capital ceased to be able to provide for the provinces it rather sought protection from them. During four centuries the central power of the emperors incessantly struggled against this increasing debility; but the moment at length arrived when all the practised skill of despotism over the long _insouciance_ of servitude could no longer keep together the huge and unwieldy body. In the fourth century we see it at once break up and disunite; the barbarians entered on all sides from without the provinces ceased to oppose any resistance from within; the cities to evince any regard for the general welfare; and as in the disaster of a shipwreck every one looked out for his individual safety. Thus on the dissolution of the empire the same general state of society presented itself as in its cradle. The imperial authority sunk into the dust and municipal institutions alone survived the disaster. This then was the chief legacy which the ancient bequeathed to the modern world--for it alone survived the storm by which the former had been destroyed--cities and a municipal organization every where established. But it was not the only legacy. Beside it there was the recollection at least of the awful majesty of the emperor--of a distant unseen but sacred and irresistible power. These are the two ideas which antiquity bequeathed to modern times. On the one hand the municipal _régime_ its rules customs and principles of liberty: on the other a common general civil legislation; and the idea of absolute power of a sacred majesty the principle of order and servitude.""--(_Civilization Européenne_ 20 23.) The causes which produced the extraordinary and at first sight unaccountable depopulation of the country districts not only in Italy but in Gaul Spain and all the European provinces of the Roman empire are explained by Guizot in his _Essays on the History of France_ and have been fully demonstrated by Sismondi Thierry and Michelet. They were a natural consequence of the municipal system then universally established as the very basis of civilization in the whole Roman empire and may be seen urging from a similar cause the Turkish empire to dissolution at this day. This was the imposition of a certain fixed duty as a burden on each municipality to be raised indeed by its own members but admitting of no diminution save under the most special circumstances and on an express exemption by the emperor. Had the great bulk of the people been free and the empire prosperous this fixity of impost would have been the greatest of all blessings. It is the precise boon so frequently and earnestly implored by our ryots in India and indeed by the cultivators all over the East. But when the empire was beset on all sides with enemies--only the more rapacious and pressing that the might of the legions had so long confined them within the comparatively narrow limits of their own sterile territories--and disasters frequent and serious were laying waste the frontier provinces it became the most dreadful of all scourges; because as the assessment on each district was fixed and scarcely ever suffered any abatement every disaster experienced increased the burden on the survivors who had escaped it; until they became bent down under such a weight of taxation as coupled with the small number of freemen on whom it exclusively fell crushed every attempt at productive industry. It was the same thing as if all the farmers on each estate were to be bound to make up annually the same amount of rent to their landlord no matter how many of them had become insolvent. We know how long the agriculture of Britain in a period of declining prices and frequent disaster would exist under such a system. Add to this the necessary effect which the free circulation of grain throughout the whole Roman world had in depressing the agriculture of Italy Gaul and Greece. They were unable to withstand the competition of Egypt Lybia and Sicily--the storehouses of the world; where the benignity of the climate and the riches of the soil rewarded seventy or an hundred fold the labours of the husbandman. Gaul where the increase was only seven-fold--Italy where it seldom exceeded twelve--Spain where it was never so high were crushed in the struggle. The mistress of the world as Tacitus bewails had come to depend for her subsistence on the floods of the Nile. Unable to compete with the cheap grain raised in the more favoured regions of the south the cultivators of Italy and Gaul gradually retired from the contest. They devoted their extensive estates to pasturage because live cattle or dairy produce could not bear the expense of being shipped from Africa; and the race of agriculturists the strength of the legions disappeared in the fields and was lost in the needy and indolent crowd of urban citizens in part maintained by tributes in corn brought from Egypt and Lybia. This augmented the burdens upon those who remained in the rural districts; for as the taxes of each municipality remained the same every one that withdrew into the towns left an additional burden on the shoulders of his brethren who remained behind. So powerful was the operation of these two causes--the fixity in the state burdens payable by each municipality and the constantly declining prices owing to the vast import from agricultural regions more favoured by nature--that it fully equaled the effect of the ravages of the barbarians in the frontier provinces exposed to their incursions; and the depopulation of the rural districts was as complete in Italy and Gaul before a barbarian had passed the Alps or set his foot across the Rhine as in the plains between the Alps or the Adriatic and the Danube which had for long been ravaged by their arms. Domestic slavery conspired with these evils to prevent the healing power of nature from closing these yawning wounds. Gibbon estimates the number of slaves throughout the empire in its latter days at a number equal to that of the freemen; in other words one half of the whole inhabitants were in a state of servitude;[17] and as there were 120 000 000 souls under the Roman sway sixty millions were in that degraded condition. There is reason to believe that the number of the slaves was still greater than this estimate and at least double that of the freemen; for it is known by an authentic enumeration that in the time of the Emperor Claudius the number of citizens in the empire was only 6 945 000 men who with their families might amount to twenty millions of souls; and the total number of freemen was about double that of the citizens.[18] In one family alone in the time of Pliny there were 4116 slaves.[19] But take the number of slaves according to Gibbon's computation at only half the entire population what a prodigious abstraction must this multitude of slaves have made from the physical and moral strength of the empire! Half the people requiring food needing restraint incapable of trust and yet adding nothing to the muster-roll of the legions or the persons by whom the fixed and immovable annual taxes were to be made good! In what state would the British empire now be
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if we were subjected to the action of similar causes of ruin? A vast and unwieldy dominion exposed on every side to the incursions of barbarous and hostile nations daily increasing in numbers and augmenting in military skill; a fixed taxation for which the whole free inhabitants of every municipality were jointly and severally responsible to meet the increasing military establishment required by these perils; a declining and at length extinct agriculture in the central provinces of the empire owing to the deluge of cheap grain from its fertile extremities wafted over the waters of the Mediterranean; multitudes of turbulent freemen in cities kept quiet by daily distribution of provisions at the public expense from the imperial granaries; and a half or two-thirds of the whole population in a state of slavery--neither bearing any share of the public burdens nor adding to the strength of the military array of the empire. Such are the discoveries of modern philosophy as to the causes of the decline and ultimate fall of the Roman empire gleaned from a few facts accidentally preserved by the ancient writers apparently unconscious of their value! It is a noble science which in so short a time has presented such a gift to mankind. Guizot has announced and ably illustrated a great truth which when traced to its legitimate consequences will be found to go far towards dispelling many of the pernicious innovating dogmas which have so long been afloat in the world. It is this that whenever an institution though apparently pernicious in our eyes has long existed and under a great variety of circumstances we may rest assured that it in reality has been attended with some advantages which counterbalance its evils and that upon the whole it is beneficial in its tendency. This important principle is thus stated:-- ""Independent of the efforts of man there is established by a law of providence which it is impossible to mistake and which is analagous to what we witness in the natural world a certain measure of order reason and justice without which society cannot exist. From the single fact of its endurance we may conclude with certainty that a society is not completely absurd insensate or iniquitous; that it is not destitute of the elements of reason truth and justice--which alone can give life to society. If the more that society developes itself the stronger does this principle become--if it is daily accepted by a greater number of men it is a certain proof that in the lapse of time there has been progressively introduced into it more reason more justice more right. It is thus that the idea of political legitimacy has arisen. ""This principle has for its foundation in the first instance at least in a certain degree the great principles of moral legitimacy--justice reason truth. Then came the sanction of time which always begets the presumption of reason having directed arrangements which have long endured. In the early periods of society we too often find force and falsehood ruling the cradles of royalty aristocracy democracy and even the church; but every where you will see this force and falsehood yielding to the reforming hand of time and right and truth taking their place in the rulers of civilization. It is this progressive infusion of right and truth which has by degrees developed the idea of political legitimacy; it is thus that it has become established in modern civilization. At different times indeed attempts have been made to substitute for this idea the banner of despotic power; but in doing so they have turned it aside from its true origin. It is so little the banner of despotic power that it is in the name of right and justice that it has overspread the world. As little is it exclusive: it belongs neither to persons classes nor sects; it arises wherever the idea of right has developed itself. We shall meet with this principle in systems the most opposite: in the feudal system in the municipalities of Flanders and Germany in the republics of Italy as well as in simple monarchies. It is a character diffused through the various elements of modern civilization and the perception of which is indispensable to the right understanding of its history.""--(_Lecture_ iii. 9 11; _Civilization Européenne_.) No principle ever was announced of more practical importance in legislating for mankind than is contained in this passage. The doctrine is somewhat obscurely stated and not with the precision which in general distinguishes the French writers; but the import of it seems to be this--That no system of government can long exist among men unless it is substantially and in the majority of cases founded in reason and justice and sanctioned by experienced utility for the people among whom it exists; and therefore that we may predicate with perfect certainty of any institution which has been generally extended and long established that it has been upon the whole beneficial and should be modified or altered with a very cautious hand. That this proposition is true will probably be disputed by none who have thought much and dispassionately on human affairs; for all human institutions are formed and supported by men and unless men had some reason for supporting them they would speedily sink to the ground. It is in vain to say a privileged class have got possession of the power and they make use of it to perpetuate these abuses. Doubtless they are always sufficiently inclined to do so; but a privileged class or a despot is always a mere handful against the great body of the people; and unless their power is supported by the force of general opinion founded on experienced utility upon the whole it could not maintain its ground a single week. And this explains a fact observed by an able and ingenious writer of the present day [20] that if almost all the great convulsions recorded in history are attentively considered it will be found that after a brief period of strenuous and often almost superhuman effort on the part of the people they have terminated in the establishment of a government and institutions differing scarcely except in name from that which had preceded the struggle. It is hardly necessary to remark how striking a confirmation the English revolution of 1688 and the French of 1830 afford of this truth. And this explains what is the true meaning of and solid foundation for that reverence for antiquity which is so strongly implanted in human nature and is never forgotten for any considerable time without inducing the most dreadful disasters upon society. It means that those institutions which have descended to us in actual practice from our ancestors come sanctioned by the _experience_ of ages; and that they could not have stood so long a test unless they had been recommended in some degree at least by their utility. It is not that our ancestors were wiser than we are; they were certainly less informed and probably were on that account in the general case less judicious. But time has swept away their follies which were doubtless great enough as it has done the worthless ephemeral literature with which they as we were overwhelmed; and nothing has stood the test of ages and come down to us through a series of generations of their ideas or institutions but what had some utility in human feelings and necessities and was on the whole expedient at the time when it arose. Its utility may have ceased by the change of manners or of the circumstances of society--that may be a good reason for cautiously modifying or altering it--but rely upon it it was once useful if it has existed long; and the presumption of present and continuing utility requires to be strongly outweighed by forcible considerations before it is abandoned. Lord Bacon has told us in words which can never become trite so profound is their wisdom that our changes to be beneficial should resemble those of time which though the greatest of all innovators works out its alterations so gradually that they are never perceived. Guizot makes in the same spirit the following fine observation on the slow march of Supreme wisdom in the government of the world:-- ""If we turn our eyes to history we shall find that all the great developments of the human mind have turned to the advantage of society--all the great struggles of humanity to the good of mankind. It is not indeed immediately that these efforts take place; ages often elapse a thousand obstacles intervene before they are fully developed; but when we survey a long course of ages we see that all has been accomplished. The march of Providence is not subjected to narrow limits; it cares not to develope to-day the consequences of a principle which it has established yesterday; it will bring them forth in ages when the appointed hour has arrived; and its course is not the less sure that it is slow. The throne of the Almighty rests on time--it marches through its boundless expanse as the gods of Homer through space--it makes a step and ages have passed away. How many ages elapsed how many changes ensued before the regeneration of the inner man by means of Christianity exercised on the social state its great and salutary influence! Nevertheless it has at length succeeded. No one can mistake its effects at this time.""--(_Lecture_ i. 24.) In surveying the progress of civilization in modern as compared with ancient times two features stand prominent as distinguishing the one from the other. These are the _church_ and the _feudal system_. They were precisely the circumstances which gave the most umbrage to the philosophers of the eighteenth century and which awakened the greatest transports of indignation among the ardent multitudes who at its close brought about the French Revolution. Very different is the light in which the eye of true philosophy enlightened by the experience of their abolition views these great distinctive features of modern society. ""Immense "" says Guizot ""was the influence which the Christian church exercised over the civilization of modern Europe. In the outset it was an incalculable advantage to have a moral power a power destitute of physical force which reposed only on mental convictions and moral feelings established amidst that deluge of physical force and selfish violence which overwhelmed society at that period. Had the Christian church not existed the world would have been delivered over to the influence of physical strength in its coarsest and most revolting form. It alone exercised a moral power. It did more; it spread abroad the idea of a rule of obedience a heavenly power to which all human beings how great soever were subjected and which was above all human laws. That of itself was a safeguard against the greatest evils of society; for it affected the minds of those by whom they were brought about; it professed that belief--the foundation of the salvation of humanity--that there is above all existing institutions superior to all human laws a permanent and divine law sometimes called Reason sometimes Divine Command but which under whatever name it goes is for ever the same. ""Then the church commenced a great work--the separation of the spiritual and temporal power. That separation is the origin of liberty of conscience; it rests on no other principle than that which lies at the bottom of the widest and most extended toleration. The separation of the spiritual and temporal power rests on the principle that physical force is neither entitled to act nor can ever have any lasting influence on thoughts conviction truth; it flows from the eternal distinction between the world of thought and the world of action the world of interior conviction and that of external facts. In truth that principle of the liberty of conscience for which Europe has combated and suffered so much which has so slowly triumphed and often against the utmost efforts of the clergy themselves was first founded by the doctrine of the separation of the temporal and spiritual power in the cradle of European civilization. It is the Christian church which by the necessities of its situation to defend itself against the assaults of barbarism introduced and maintained it. The presence of a moral influence the maintenance of a Divine law the separation of the temporal and spiritual power are the three great blessings which the Christian church has diffused in the dark ages over European society. ""The influence of the Christian church was great and beneficent for another reason. The bishop and clergy erelong became the principal municipal magistrates: they were the chancellors and ministers of kings--the rulers except in the camp and the field of mankind. When the Roman empire crumbled into dust when the central power of the emperors and the legions disappeared there remained we have seen no other authority in the state but the municipal functionaries. But they themselves had fallen into a state of apathy and despair; the heavy burdens of despotism the oppressive taxes of the municipalities the incursions of the fierce barbarians had reduced them to despair. No protection to society no revival of industry no shielding of innocence could be expected from their exertions. The clergy again formed a society within itself; fresh young vigorous sheltered by the prevailing faith which speedily drew to itself all the learning and intellectual strength that remained in the state. The bishops and priests full of life and of zeal naturally were recurred to in order to fill all civil situations requiring thought or information. It is wrong to reproach their exercise of these powers as an usurpation; they alone were capable of exercising them. Thus has the natural course of things prescribed for all ages and countries. The clergy alone were mentally strong and morally zealous: they became all-powerful. It is the law of the universe.""--(_Lecture_ iii. 27 31; _Civilization Européenne._) Nothing can be more just or important than these observations; and they throw a new and consoling light on the progress and ultimate destiny of European society. They are as original as they are momentous. Robertson with his honest horror of the innumerable corruptions which in the time of Leo X. and Luther brought about the Reformation--Sismondi with his natural detestation of a faith which had urged on the dreadful cruelties of the crusade of the Albigenses and which produced the revocation of the edict of Nantes--have alike overlooked these important truths so essential to a right understanding of the history of modern society. They saw that the arrogance and cruelty of the Roman clergy had produced innumerable evils in later times; that their venality in regard to indulgences and abuse of absolution had brought religion itself into discredit; that the absurd and incredible tenets which they still attempted to force on mankind had gone far to alienate the intellectual strength of modern Europe during the last century from their support. Seeing this they condemned it absolutely for all times and in all places. They fell into the usual error of men in reasoning on former from their own times. They could not make ""the past and the future predominate over the present."" They felt the absurdity of many of the legends which the devout Catholics received as undoubted truths and they saw no use in perpetuating the belief in them; and thence they conceived that they must always have been equally unserviceable forgetting that the eighteenth was not the eighth century; and that during the dark ages violence would have rioted without control if when reason was in abeyance knowledge scanty and military strength alone in estimation superstition had not thrown its unseen fetters over the barbarian's arms. They saw that the Romish clergy during five centuries had laboured strenuously and often with the most frightful cruelty to crush independence of thought in matters of faith and chain the human mind to the tenets often absurd and erroneous of her Papal creed; and they forgot that during five preceding centuries the Christian church had laboured as assiduously to establish the independence of thought from physical coercion and had alone kept alive during the interregnum of reason the sparks of knowledge and the principles of freedom. In the same liberal and enlightened spirit Guizot views the feudal system the next grand characteristic of modern times. ""A decisive proof that in the tenth century the feudal system had become necessary and was in truth the only social state possible is to be found in the universality of its adoption. Universally upon the cessation of barbarism the feudal forms were adopted. At the first moment of barbarian conquest men saw only the triumph of chaos. All unity all general civilization disappeared on all sides was seen society falling into dissolution; and in its stead arising a multitude of little obscure isolated communities. This appeared to all the contemporaries nothing short of universal anarchy. The poets the chroniclers of the time viewed it as the approach of the end of the world. It was in truth the end of the ancient world; but the commencement of a new one placed on a broad basis and with large means of social improvement and individual happiness. ""Then it was that the feudal system became necessary inevitable. It was the only possible means of emerging from the general chaos. The whole of Europe accordingly at the same time adopted it. Even those portions of society which were most strangers apparently to that system entered warmly into its spirit and were fain to share in its protection. The crown the church the communities were constrained to accommodate themselves to it. The churches became suzerain or vassal; the burghs had their lords and their feuars; the monasteries and abbeys had their feudal retainers as well as the temporal barons. Royalty itself was disguised under the name of a feudal superior. Every thing was given in fief; not only lands but certain rights flowing from them as that of cutting wood fisheries or the like. The church made subinfeudations of their casual revenues as the dues on marriages funerals and baptisms."" The establishment of the feudal system thus universally in Europe produced one effect the importance of which can hardly be exaggerated. Hitherto the mass of mankind had been collected under the municipal institutions which had been universal in antiquity in cities or wandered in vagabond hordes through the country. Under the feudal system these men lived isolated each in his own habitation at a great distance from each other. A glance will show that this single circumstance must have exercised on the character of society and the course of civilization the social preponderance; the government of society passed at once from the towns to the country--private took the lead of public property--private prevailed over public life. Such was the first effect and it was an effect purely material of the establishment of the feudal system. But other effects still more material followed of a moral kind which have exercised the most important effects on the European manners and mind. ""The feudal proprietor established himself in an isolated place which for his own protection he rendered secure. He lived there with his wife his children and a few faithful friends who shared his hospitality and contributed to his defence. Around the castle in its vicinity were established the farmers and serfs who cultivated his domain. In the midst of that inferior but yet allied and protected population religion planted a church and introduced a priest. He was usually the chaplain of the castle and at the same time the curate of the village; in subsequent ages these two characters were separated; the village pastor resided beside his church. This was the primitive feudal society--the cradle as it were of the European and Christian world. ""From this state of things necessarily arose a prodigious superiority on the part of the possessor of the fief alike in his own eyes and in the eyes of those who surrounded him. The feeling of individual importance of personal freedom was the ruling principle of savage life; but here a new feeling was introduced--the importance of a proprietor of the chief of a family of a master predominated over that of an individual. From this situation arose an immense feeling of superiority--a superiority peculiar to the feudal ages and entirely different from any thing which had yet been experienced in the world. Like the feudal lord the Roman patrician was the head of a family a master a landlord. He was moreover a religious magistrate a pontiff in the interior of his family. He was moreover a member of the municipality in which his property was situated and perhaps one of the august senate which in name at least still ruled the empire. But all this importance and dignity was derived from without--the patrician shared it with the other members of his municipality--with the corporation of which he formed a part. The importance of the feudal lord again was purely individual--he owed nothing to another; all the power he enjoyed emanated from himself alone. What a feeling of individual consequence must such a situation have inspired--what pride what insolence must it have engendered in his mind! Above him was no superior of whose orders he was to be the mere interpreter or organ--around him were no equals. No all-powerful municipality made his wishes bend to its own--no superior authority exercised a control over his wishes he knew no bridle on his inclinations but the limits of his power or the presence of danger. ""Another consequence hitherto not sufficiently attended to but of vast importance flowed from this society. ""The patriarchal society of which the Bible and the Oriental monuments offer the model was the first combination of men. The chief of a tribe lived with his children his relations the different generations who have assembled around him. This was the situation of Abraham--of the patriarchs: it is still that of the Arab tribes which perpetuate their manners. The _clan_ of which remains still exist in the mountains of Scotland and the _sept_ of Ireland is a modification of the patriarchal society: it is the family of the chief expanded during a succession of generations and forming a little aggregation of dependents still influenced by the same attachments and subjected to the same authority. But the feudal community was very different. Allied at first to the clan it was yet in many essential particulars dissimilar. There did not exist between its members the bond of relationship; they were not of the same blood; they often did not speak the same language. The feudal lord belonged to a foreign and conquering his serfs to a domestic and vanquished race. Their employments were as various as their feelings and their traditions. The lord lived in his castle with his wife his children and relations: the serfs on the estate of a different race of different names toiled in the cottages around. This difference was prodigious--it exercised a most powerful effect on the domestic habits of modern Europe. It engendered the attachments of home: it brought women into their proper sphere in domestic life. The little society of freemen who lived in the midst of an alien race in the castle were all in all to each other. No forum or theatres were at hand with their cares or their pleasures; no city enjoyments were a counterpoise to the pleasures of country life. War and the chase broke in it is true grievously at times upon this scene of domestic peace. But war and the chase could not last for ever; and in the long intervals of undisturbed repose family attachments formed the chief solace of life. Thus it was that WOMEN acquired their paramount influence--thence the manners of chivalry and the gallantry of modern times; they were but an extension of the courtesy and habits of the castle. The word _courtesy_ shows it--it was in the _court_ of the castle that the habits it denotes were learned.""--(_Lecture_ iv. 13 17; _Civilization Européenne._) We have exhausted perhaps exceeded our limits; and we have only extracted a few of the most striking ideas from the first hundred pages of one of Guizot's works--_ex uno disce omnes_. The translation of them has been an agreeable occupation for a few evenings; but they awake one mournful impression--the voice which uttered so many noble and enlightened sentiments is now silent; the genius which once cast abroad light on the history of man is lost in the vortex of present politics. The philosopher the historian are merged in the statesman--the instructor of all in the governor of one generation. Great as have been his services brilliant his course in the new career into which he has been launched it is as nothing compared to that which he has left; for the one confers present distinction the other immortal fame. Footnotes: [1] Little girl--or girl merely. [2] Mr O'Connell stated in his speech after ""the liberation "" that that most unexpected and miraculous event had been publicly prayed for in all the churches of Belgium. [3] Taken from Lewis's Statistics of the Four Reformed Parliaments. [4] The following account of the number of freeholders on the register in 1837 when the number was largest and in 1841 taken from Lewis's tables will show an immense decrease in those counties completely under the control of the priests and agitators and where their power is unassailable. 1837. 1841. Clare 3170 1785 Cork 4180 3706 Galway county 3074 1990 Galway town 2084 1600 King's county 1520 1078 Limerick city 2813 1670 Limerick county 2850 1893 Mayo 1569 1064 Meath 1850 1236 Roscommon 2077 1059 Tipperary 3460 2464 Waterford 1494 802 Wexford 3031 1739 All those counties and cities are and always have been represented by Radicals and Repealers; so that it appears the Repeal party are invariably best off where there are least freeholders notwithstanding their constant complaints of what they suffer by the domination of the constituencies. [5] Qualifying under the ""solvent tenant test "" (which was generally adopted by the Conservative barristers ) the claimant was obliged to swear and to prove that ""he could obtain from a good and solvent tenant a clear yearly rent of ten pounds over and above what he paid himself "" while the freeholder qualifying under ""the beneficial interest test "" (which was acted on by the Whig and Radical barristers ) had only to prove that the crops and produce raised on his land by his own labour yielded him a surplus of ten pounds over and above the amount of his rent. [6] In England the right to vote is given to tenants at will paying £50 rent; it was proposed to grant it to those in Ireland who paid £30 rent. [7] Two judges who are _ex-officio_ members may be Roman Catholics; the numbers would then stand seven and six. [8] _Bailly's Memoirs._ [9] The Rev. Gregory Lynch of Westland Row openly charges the agitating bishops with having _forged_ the signature of many priests to the protest which they have published against the Charitable Bequests Bill. See his letter an extract from which is published in the Irish correspondence of _The Times_ 27th October. [10] Extract from the speech of the Rev. Mr Henebury as reported in the Irish correspondence of the _Times_ newspaper July 3 1844. [11] _Kohl's Ireland_. [12] The local newspaper. [13] Irish correspondent of the _Times_ Nov. 1 1844. [14] _Correspondence of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke_. Edited by Earl Fitzwilliam and Sir Richard Bourke K.C.B. 4 vols. 8vo. Rivingtons London. [15] _Nelson's Despatches and Letters with Notes_. By Sir Harris Nicolas. [16] Ferguson. [17] Gibbon. [18] _Ibid_. [19] Plin. _Hist. Nat._ xxxiii. 47. [20] Mr James's Preface to _Mary of Burgundy_. INDEX TO VOL. LVI. Affghanistan 133 general review of the question regarding 135 motives for the expedition to 136 means for effecting the objects sought 141 comparison of the competitors for the throne 142 resistance to taxation in 148 causes of the British disasters in 150 151. Agitation the cause of the evils of Ireland 709. Alison Archibald Esq. speech of at the Burns' festival 390. Ancient canal between the Nile and the Red Sea historical account of the 182. Artist's morning song the from Goethe 419. Auckland Lord review of his Affghanistan policy 133. Aytoun W. E. Esq. speech of at the Burns' festival 392. Banking System the Scottish 671*. Barrett Elizabeth B. review of the poems of 621. Bell H. G. Esq. speech of at the Burns' festival 389. Blanc M. his history of ten years reviewed 265. Bossuet character of as a historian 789. Braxfield lord letter relating to 620. Brenn the a Gaulish chief career of 471. Bride of Corinth the from Goethe 57. Bruce heart of the a ballad 15. Burke Edmund review of the correspondence of 745. Burns' festival account of the 370 order of the procession 373 the banquet 376 speeches of Lord Eglinton ib. Professor Wilson 378 Sir John McNeill 388 H.G. Bell Esq. 389 Archibald Alison Esq. 390 W. E. Aytoun Esq. 392 Colonel Mure 393 Sir James Campbell the Lord Justice-General &c. 395 stanzas for by Delta 399. Cabul the war with 133. Campbell Sir James speech of at the Burns' festival 395. Canal between the Nile and Red Sea historical account of the 182. Castle on the mountain the from Goethe 425. Catania 33. Catharine of Russia sketch of 410. Causes of the increase of crime on the 1 districts in which greatest ib. in the manufacturing districts 6 strikes 8. Cavalier the old Scottish a ballad 195. Clarkson sonnet to 619. Commitments for crime tables of 1 2. Cours de Littérature Dramatique review of 237. Crime causes of the increase of 1 in the manufacturing districts 6 increase of by strikes 8 by infant labour 9 inefficiency of the proposed preventives of 13. Cupid as a landscape painter from Geothe 417. Delphi defeat of the Gauls at 472. Delta stanzas for the Burns' festival by 399 the tombless man a dream by 583. Doleful lay of the noble wife of Asan Aga the from Goethe 67. Don John and the heretics of Flanders 36 Part II. 49. Dost Mohammed character of 142. Dunning anecdotes of 249 264. Dwarf's well the a legend of Upper Lusatia 196. Earthquake of Lisbon the 102. Education effect of imperfect in Ireland 708. Eglinton the Earl of speeches of at the Burns' festival 376 395 396. Eldon Lord sketch of the career of his early life 245 his first struggles 249 and first success 251 enters parliament 253 becomes solicitor-general 257 attorney-general 259 chief-justice of the Common Pleas 262 and lord chancellor ib. his subsequent career 263. Emperor week of an an account of the visit of the Emperor Nicholas 127. Erl king the from Goethe 63. Etched thoughts by the Etching Club review of 153. Execution of Montrose the a ballad 289. Fairy tutor the a legend of Upper Lusatia 83. Falkland islands affair of the 406. Finlay's Greece under the Romans review of 524. First love from Goethe 61. Fisher the from Goethe 65. Fourier and his system sketch of 591. Frederick the Great anecdotes of 404 409. French socialists 588. Galatia Gaulish kingdom of 478. Gauls Thierry's history of reviewed 466. Gibbon character of as a historian 788. Girardin M. 237. God the and the Bayaderé from Goethe 421. Goethe Poems and Ballads of No. I. Introduction 54 the bride of Corinth 57 first love 61 who'll buy a Cupid? 62 second life ib. the erl-king 63 Mignon 64 the fisher 65 the minstrel ib. the violet 66 the doleful lay of the noble wife of Asan Aga 67 No. II. Cupid as a landscape painter 417 the artist's morning song 419 the god and the bayaderé 421 the treasure-seeker 423 the castle on the mountain 425 Philine's song 426 to my mistress 427 the wild rose ib. a night thought 428 Prometheus ib. new love new life 429 separation 430 the magician's apprentice ib. Great Britain increase of crime in 1. Great country's little wars a review of 133. Great drought the 433 Chap. II. 436 Chap. III. 438 Chap. IV. 440 Chap. V. 442 Chap. VI. 452. Greece under the Romans review of 524. Grievances of Ireland examination of the alleged 701 the true 708. Guizot M. review of the historical works of 786. Hardy trial of for high treason 261. Harris James career of 401. Heart of the Bruce the a ballad 15. Hill Mr Sergeant anecdotes of 247. Histoire des dix ans review of 265. Historical account of the ancient canal between the Nile and the Red Sea 182. Hope the Right Hon. Charles letter from 620. Hume character of as a historian 788. Hydro Bacchus 77. Increase of crime causes of 1 districts in which greatest ib. Infant labour increase of crime attributable to 9. Injured Ireland 701. Introduction to his poems from Goethe 54. Ireland increase of crime in 1 examination of the ques
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ion as to the injuries of 701 its comparative freedom from taxation 702 its representation in parliament 703 municipal law 706 alleged debarring of Roman Catholics from office 707 true evils of and their causes 708. Irish state trials reversal of the judgment 539. It is no fiction 364. Jesuits expulsion of the from Portugal 109 extinction of the order 112. Johnson Dr anecdotes of 247 257. Knights last of the Don John and the heretics of Flanders 36 Part II. 49. Lamartine review of the travels of 657. Last of the knights the Don John and the heretics of Flanders 36 Part II. 49. Lee J. anecdotes of 249 255. Letter to the editor from the Right Hon. Charles Hope 620. Life in Louisiana Chap. I. a Voyage on the Red River 507 Chap. II. Creole life 514 Chap. III. quite unexpected 518. Lines on the landing of Louis Philippe by B. Simmons 654. Lisbon the great earthquake of 102. Louis Philippe elevation of to the throne 272 lines on the landing of by B. Simmons 654. Louisiana life in Chap. I. 507 Chap. II. 514 Chap. III. 518. Love chase in prose a Chap. I. 164 Chap. II. 166 Chap. III. 170 Chap. IV. 173 Chap. V. 178. Lunatic asylum of Palermo the 20. Lusatia traditions and tales of No. II. the fairy tutor 83 No. III. the dwarf's well 196 No. IV. the moor maiden 726. Lushington on the Affghan war 133. Luther an ode 80. Machiavel character of as a historian 787. McNeill Sir John speech of at the Burns' festival 388. Magician's apprentice the from Goethe 430. Maid of Orleans remarks on the 216. Malmesbury life of the Earl of reviewed 401. Manufacturing districts increase of crime in the 2. Marston; or Memoirs of a Statesman Part XII. 114 Part XIII. 343 Part XIV. 601. Martin Luther an ode 80. Memoirs of a Statesman--_see_ Marston. Memoirs of the Marquis of Pombal review of 100. Memoranda of a month's tour in Sicily the museum of Palermo 20 lunatic asylum ib. miscellanea 21 journey to Segeste 23 Sicilian inns 24 approach to Messina 28 journey to Taormina 30 Catania 33 Messina approach to 28. Mignon from Goethe 64. Milkman of Walworth the Chap. I. 687 Chap. II. 691 Chap. III. 693 Chap. IV. 696. Minstrel the from Goethe 65. Montesquieu character of as a historian 789. Montrose execution of a ballad 289. Moor maiden the 726. Mure Colonel speech of at the Burns' festival 393. Museum of Palermo the 20. My college friends No. I. John Brown 569 No. II. the same concluded 763. My first love a sketch in New York 69. My last courtship; or life in Louisiana Chap. I. A voyage on the Red River 507 Chap. II. Creole life 514 Chap. III. quite unexpected 518. Natural history of man Prichard's review of 312. Nelson's dispatches and letters review of 775. New love new life from Goethe 429. Nicholas the Emperor visit of to Great Britain 127. Night on the banks of the Tennessee a 278. Night thought a from Goethe 428. Nile and the Red Sea the historical account of the ancient canal between 182. North Lord anecdotes of 255. O'Connell case the Was the judgment rightly reversed? 539 statement of the case 541 the indictment 542 verdict of the jury 544 the motion in arrest of judgment 545 the judgment ib. the writ of error ib. opinions of the judges 548 and of the peers 553 general remarks on the case 561 Old Scottish cavalier the a ballad by W. E. A. 195. Oporto wine company origin of the 106. Palermo sketches of 20. Passages in the life of a Russian officer 713. Patmore's poems review of 331. Philine's song from Goethe 426. Poems and ballads of Goethe the No. I. Introduction 54 the bride of Corinth 57 first love 61 who'll buy a Cupid 62 second life ib. the erl-king 63 Mignon 64 the fisher 65 the minstrel ib. the violet 66 the doleful lay of the noble wife of Asan Aga 67 No. II. Cupid as a landscape painter 417 the artist's morning song 419 the god and the bayaderé 421 the treasure-seeker 423 the castle on the mountain 425 Philine's song 426 to my mistress 427 the wild rose ib. a night thought 428 Prometheus ib. new love new life 429 separation 430 the magician's apprentice ib. Poetry: The heart of the Bruce 15 poems and ballads of Goethe No. I. 54 Hydro Bacchus 77 Martin Luther an ode 80 the old Scottish cavalier 195 the execution of Montrose 289 stanzas for the Burns' festival by Delta 399 poems and ballads of Goethe No. II. 417 the tombless man by Delta 583 sonnet to Clarkson 619 Westminster hall and the works of art by B. Simmons 652 lines on the landing of Louis Philippe by the same 654 ""That's what we are "" 741. Poland the partition of 405 407. Pombal Marquis of sketch of the career of 100. Portugal history of during the administration of the Marquis of Pombal 100. Prichard's natural history of man review of 312. Prometheus from Goethe 428. Ptolemy completion of the canal between the Nile and the Red Sea by 185. Radzivil Prince sketch of 406. Red Sea and the Nile history of the ancient canal between 182. Remarks on Schiller's maid of Orleans 216. Reviews: Smith's memoirs of the Marquis of Pombal 100 Lushington's a great country's little wars 133 Etched thoughts by the Etching Club 153 M. Girardin's cours de littérature dramatique 237 Twiss's memoirs of the Earl of Eldon 245 Blanc's histoire de dix ans 265 Prichard's natural history of man 312 Poems by Coventry Patmore 331 Life of Lord Malmesbury 401 Thierry's history of the Gauls 466 Finlay's Greece under the Romans 524 Reybaud on French socialism 588 Poems by Elizabeth B. Barrett 621 Lamartine's travels 657 Burke's correspondence 745 Neson's despatches and letters 775 Guizot 786. Reybaud on French socialism review of 588. Robertson character of as a historian 790. Russian officer passages in the life of a 713. St Simon sketch of 273. Schiller's maid of Orleans remarks on 216. Scotland increase of crime in 1. Scott Sir John _see_ Eldon. Scott Sir William sketches of 246 254. Scottish banking system the 671*. Scottish cavalier the a ballad 195. Scottish peasantry character of the 370. Second life from Goethe 62. Segeste journey to 23. Separation from Goethe 430. Shah Soojah character of 143. Sicilian inns 24. Sicily memorandum of a month's tour in the museum of Palermo 20 the lunatic asylum ib. miscellanea 21 journey to Segeste 23 Sicilian inns 24 approach to Messina 28 journey to Taormina 30 Catania 33. Simmons B. Westminster hall and the works of art by 652 lines on the landing of Louis Philippe by 654. Sismondi character of as a historian 792. Sketch in New York a My first love 69. Smith's memoirs of the Marquis of Pombal review of 100. Socialism in France history of 588. Some remarks on Schiller's maid of Orleans 216. Sonnet to Clarkson 619. Stanzas for the Burns' festival by Delta 299. Stolen child the a true tale of the Backwoods 227. Stowell Lord sketches of 246 254. Strikes as a cause of the increase of crime 8. Taormina journey to 30. Taxation resistance to in Affghanistan 149 comparative lightness of in Ireland 702. Tender conscience a 454. Tennessee a night on the banks of the 278. ""That's what we are "" a poem 741. Thierry's history of the Gauls review of 466. Thurlow Lord anecdotes of 258 259 263. To my mistress from Goethe 427. Tombless man the a dream by Delta 583. Traditions and tales of Upper Lusatia No. II. the fairy tutor 83 No. III. the dwarf's well 196 No. IV. the moor maiden 726. Treasure seeker the from Goethe 423. Twiss's life of Lord Eldon review of 245. Up stream; or steam-boat reminiscences 64. Violet the from Goethe 66. Voltaire character of as a historian 787. W. E. A. Heart of the Bruce by 15 the old Scottish cavalier by 195 the execution of Montrose by 289. Walworth the milkman of 687. Week of an emperor the 127. Westminster hall and the works of art on a free admission day by B. Simmons 652. Who'll buy a Cupid from Goethe 62. Wild rose the from Goethe 427. Wilson Professor speech of at the Burns' festival 378. Witchfinder the Part I. 297 conclusion 487. Writ of error proceedings on the 545. END OF VOL. LVI. _Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes Paul's Work_. Transcriber's Notes: Passages in italics are indicated by underscore _italics_. The following misprints have been corrected: ""corresspondence"" corrected to ""correspondence"" (page 755) ""headach"" corrected to ""headache"" (page 768) ""subsisttence"" corrected to ""subsistence"" (page 798) The original text included Greek charcters. For this text version these letters have been replaced with *Greek* transliterations. Additional spacing after some of the block quotes is intentional to indicate both the end of a quotation and the beginning of a new paragraph as presented in the original text. "
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Eason and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Library of Early Journals.) BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. No. CCCLI. JANUARY 1845. Vol. LVII. CONTENTS Homer Dante and Michael Angelo 1 Settled at Last Or Red River Recollections 18 Borodino. An Ode 30 A Ramble in Montenegro 33 Æsthetics of Dress. A Case of Hats 51 The Three Guardsmen 59 Marston; Or the Memoirs of a Statesman. Part XV. 75 Janus: From the Fasti of Ovid 94 To a Blind Girl 98 The Forced Sale 99 Vanities in Verse. By B. Simmons 114 Coleridge and Opium-eating 117 EDINBURGH: WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 45 GEORGE STREET. AND 22 PALL-MALL LONDON. _To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed_. SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND HUGHES EDINBURGH. BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. VOL. LVII. JANUARY-JUNE 1845. WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS EDINBURGH AND 22 PALL-MALL LONDON. 1845. BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. NO. CCCLI. JANUARY 1845. Vol. LVII. HOMER DANTE AND MICHAEL ANGELO. There is something inexpressibly striking it may almost be said awful in the fame of HOMER. Three thousand years have elapsed since the bard of Chios began to pour forth his strains; and their reputation so far from declining is on the increase. Successive nations are employed in celebrating his works; generation after generation of men are fascinated by his imagination. Discrepancies of race of character of institutions of religion of age of the world are forgotten in the common worship of his genius. In this universal tribute of gratitude modern Europe vies with remote antiquity the light Frenchman with the volatile Greek the impassioned Italian with the enthusiastic German the sturdy Englishman with the unconquerable Roman the aspiring Russian with the proud American. Seven cities in ancient times competed for the honour of having given him birth but seventy nations have since been moulded by his productions. He gave a mythology to the ancients; he has given the fine arts to the modern world. Jupiter Saturn Mars Juno are still household words in every tongue; Vulcan is yet the god of fire Neptune of the ocean Venus of love. When Michael Angelo and Canova strove to embody their conceptions of heroism or beauty they portrayed the heroes of the _Iliad_. Flaxman's genius was elevated to the highest point in embodying its events. Epic poets in subsequent times have done little more than imitate his machinery copy his characters adopt his similes and in a few instances improve upon his descriptions. Painting and statuary for two thousand years have been employed in striving to portray by the pencil or the chisel his yet breathing conceptions. Language and thought itself have been moulded by the influence of his poetry. Images of wrath are still taken from Achilles of pride from Agamemnon of astuteness from Ulysses of patriotism from Hector of tenderness from Andromache of age from Nestor. The galleys of Rome were the line-of-battle ships of France and England still are called after his heroes. The Agamemnon long bore the flag of Nelson; the Ajax perished by the flames within sight of the tomb of the Telamonian hero on the shores of the Hellespont; the Achilles was blown up at the battle of Trafalgar. Alexander the Great ran round the tomb of Achilles before undertaking the conquest of Asia. It was the boast of Napoleon that his mother reclined on tapestry representing the heroes of the _Iliad_ when he was brought into the world. The greatest poets of ancient and modern times have spent their lives in the study of his genius or the imitation of his works. Withdraw from subsequent poetry the images mythology and characters of the _Iliad_ and what would remain? Petrarch spent his best years in restoring his verses. Tasso portrayed the siege of Jerusalem and the shock of Europe and Asia almost exactly as Homer had done the contest of the same forces on the same shores two thousand five hundred years before. Milton's old age when blind and poor was solaced by hearing the verses recited of the poet to whose conceptions his own mighty spirit had been so much indebted; and Pope deemed himself fortunate in devoting his life to the translation of the _Iliad_. No writer in modern times has equalled the wide-spread fame of the Grecian bard; but it may be doubted whether in the realms of thought and in sway over the reflecting world the influence of DANTE has not been almost as considerable. Little more than five hundred years indeed have elapsed--not a sixth of the thirty centuries which have tested the strength of the Grecian patriarch--since the immortal Florentine poured forth his divine conceptions; but yet there is scarcely a writer of eminence since that time in works even bordering on imagination in which traces of his genius are not to be found. The _Inferno_ has penetrated the world. If images of horror are sought after it is to his works that all subsequent ages have turned; if those of love and divine felicity are desired all turn to the _Paradise_ and the _Spirit of Beatrice_. When the historians of the French Revolution wished to convey an idea of the utmost agonies they were called on to portray they contented themselves with saying it equalled all that the imagination of Dante had conceived of the terrible. Sir Joshua Reynolds has exerted his highest genius in depicting the frightful scene described by him when Ugolino perished of hunger in the tower of Pisa. Alfieri Metastasio Corneille Lope de Vega and all the great masters of the tragic muse have sought in his works the germs of their finest conceptions. The first of these tragedians marked two-thirds of the _Inferno_ and _Paradiso_ as worthy of being committed to memory. Modern novelists have found in his prolific mind the storehouse from which they have drawn their noblest imagery the chord by which to strike the profoundest feelings of the human heart. Eighty editions of his poems have been published in Europe within the last half century; and the public admiration so far from being satiated is augmenting. Every scholar knows how largely Milton was indebted to his poems for many of his most powerful images. Byron inherited though often at second hand his mantle in many of his most moving conceptions. Schiller has embodied them in a noble historic mirror; and the dreams of Goethe reveal the secret influence of the terrible imagination which portrayed the deep remorse and hopeless agonies of Malebolge. MICHAEL ANGELO has exercised an influence on modern art little if at all inferior to that produced on the realms of thought by Homer and Dante. The father of Italian painting the author of the frescoes on the Sistine Chapel he was at the same time the restorer of ancient sculpture and the intrepid architect who placed the Pantheon in the air. Raphael confessed that he owed to the contemplation of his works his most elevated conceptions of their divine art. Sculpture under his original hand started from the slumber of a thousand years in all the freshness of youthful vigour; architecture in subsequent times has sought in vain to equal and can never hope to surpass his immortal monument in the matchless dome of St Peters. He found painting in its infancy--he left it arrived at absolute perfection. He first demonstrated of what that noble art is capable. In the Last Judgment he revealed its wonderful powers exhibiting as it were at one view the whole circles of Dante's _Inferno_--portraying with terrible fidelity the agonies of the wicked when the last trumpet shall tear the veil from their faces and exhibit in undisguised truth that most fearful of spectacles--_a naked human heart_. Casting aside perhaps with undue contempt the adventitious aids derived from finishing colouring and execution he threw the whole force of his genius into the design the expression of the features the drawing of the figures. There never was such a delineator of bone and muscle as Michael Angelo. His frescoes stand out in bold relief from the walls of the Vatican like the sculptures of Phidias from the pediment of the Parthenon. He was the founder of the school of painting both at Rome and Florence--that great school which disdaining the representation of still life and all the subordinate appliances of the art devoted itself to the representation of the grand and the beautiful; to the expression of passion in all its vehemence--of emotion in all its intensity. His incomparable delineation of bones and muscles was but a means to an end; it was the human heart the throes of human passion that his master-hand laid bare. Raphael congratulated himself and thanked God that he had given him life in the same age with that painter; and Sir Joshua Reynolds in his last address to the Academy "reflected not without vanity that his Discourses bore testimony to his admiration of that truly divine man and desired that the last words he pronounced in that academy and from that chair might be the name of Michael Angelo."[1] The fame of these illustrious men has long been placed beyond the reach of cavil. Criticism cannot reach envy cannot detract from emulation cannot equal them. Great present celebrity indeed is no guarantee for future and enduring fame; in many cases it is the reverse but there is a wide difference between the judgment of the present and that of future ages. The favour of the great the passions of the multitude the efforts of reviewers the interest of booksellers a clique of authors a coterie of ladies accidental events degrading propensities often enter largely into the composition of present reputation. But opinion is freed from all these disturbing influences by the lapse of time. The grave is the greatest of all purifiers. Literary jealousy interested partiality vulgar applause exclusive favour alike disappear before the hand of death. We never can be sufficiently distrustful of present opinion so largely is it directed by passion or interest. But we may rely with confidence on the judgment of successive generations on departed eminence; for it is detached from the chief cause of present aberration. So various are the prejudices so contradictory the partialities and predilections of men in different countries and ages of the world that they never can concur through a course of centuries in one opinion if it is not founded in truth and justice. The _vox populi_ is often little more than the _vox diaboli_; but the voice of ages is the voice of God. It is of more moment to consider in what the greatness of these illustrious men really consists--to what it has probably been owing--and in what particulars they bear an analogy to each other. They are all three distinguished by one peculiarity which doubtless entered largely into their transcendent merit--they wrote in the infancy of civilization. Homer as all the world knows is the oldest profane author in existence. Dante flourished about the year 1300: he lived at a time when the English barons lived in rooms strewed with rushes and few of them could sign their names. The long life of Michael Angelo extending from 1474 to 1564 over ninety years if not passed in the infancy of civilization was at least passed in the childhood of the arts: before his time painting was in its cradle. Cimabue had merely unfolded the first dawn of beauty at Florence; and the stiff figures of Pietro Perugino which may be traced in the first works of his pupil Raphael still attest the backward state of the arts at Rome. This peculiarity applicable alike to all these three great men is very remarkable and beyond all question had a powerful influence both in forming their peculiar character and elevating them to the astonishing greatness which they speedily attained. It gave them--what Johnson has justly termed the first requisite to human greatness--self-confidence. They were the first--at least the first known to themselves and their contemporaries--who adventured on their several arts; and thus they proceeded _fearlessly_ in their great career. They had neither critics to fear nor lords to flatter nor former excellence to imitate. They portrayed with the pencil or in verse what they severally felt undisturbed by fear unswayed by example unsolicitous about fame unconscious of excellence. They did so for the first time. Thence the freshness and originality the vigour and truth the simplicity and raciness by which they are distinguished. Shakspeare owed much of his greatness to the same cause; and thence his similarity in many respects to these great masters of his own or the sister arts. When Pope asked Bentley what he thought of his translation of the _Iliad_ the scholar replied "You have written a pretty book Mr Pope; but you must not call it Homer." Bentley was right. With all its pomp of language and melody of versification its richness of imagery and magnificence of diction Pope's Homer is widely different from the original. He could not avoid it. The "awful simplicity of the Grecian bard his artless grandeur and unaffected majesty " will be sought for in vain in the translation; but if they had appeared there it would have been unreadable in that age. Michael Angelo in his bold conceptions energetic will and rapid execution bears a close resemblance to the father of poetry. In both the same faults as we esteem them are conspicuous arising from a too close imitation of nature and a carelessness in rejecting images or objects which are of an ordinary or homely description. Dante was incomparably more learned than either: he followed Virgil in his descent to the infernal regions; and exhibits an intimate acquaintance with ancient history as well as that of the modern Italian states in the account of the characters he meets in that scene of torment. But in his own line he was entirely original. Homer and Virgil had in episodes of their poems introduced a picture of the infernal regions; but nothing on the plan of Dante's _Inferno_ had before been thought of in the world. With much of the machinery of the ancients it bears the stamp of the spiritual faith of modern times. It lays bare the heart in a way unknown even to Homer and Euripides. It reveals the inmost man in a way which bespeaks the centuries of self-reflection in the cloister which had preceded it. It is the basis of all the spiritual poetry of modern as the _Iliad_ is of all the external imagery of ancient times. In this respect there is a most grievous impediment to genius in later or as we term them more civilized times from which in earlier ages it is wholly exempt. Criticism public opinion the dread of ridicule--then too often crush the strongest minds. The weight of former examples the influence of early habits the halo of long-established reputation force original genius from the untrodden path of invention into the beaten one of imitation. Early talent feels itself overawed by the colossus which all the world adores; it falls down and worships instead of conceiving. The dread of ridicule extinguishes originality in its birth. Immense is the incubus thus laid upon the efforts of genius. It is the chief cause of the degradation of taste the artificial style the want of original conception by which the literature of old nations is invariably distinguished. The early poet or painter who portrays what he feels or has seen with no anxiety but to do so powerfully and truly is relieved of a load which crushes his subsequent compeers to the earth. Mediocrity is ever envious of genius--ordinary capacity of original thought. Such envy in early times is innocuous or does not exist at least to the extent which is felt as so baneful in subsequent periods. But in a refined and enlightened age its influence becomes incalculable. Whoever strikes out a new region of thought or composition whoever opens a fresh vein of imagery or excellence is persecuted by the critics. He disturbs settled ideas endangers established reputations brings forward rivals to dominant fame. That is sufficient to render him the enemy of all the existing rulers in the world of taste. Even Jeffrey seriously lamented in one of his first reviews of Scott's poems that he should have identified himself with the unpicturesque and expiring images of feudality which no effort could render poetical. Racine's tragedies were received with such a storm of criticism as wellnigh cost the sensitive author his life; and Rousseau was so rudely handled by contemporary writers on his first appearance that it confirmed him in his morbid hatred of civilization. The vigour of these great men indeed overcame the obstacles created by contemporary envy; but how seldom especially in a refined age can genius effect such a prodigy? how often is it crushed in the outset of its career or turned aside into the humble and unobtrusive path of imitation to shun the danger with which that of originality is beset! Milton's _Paradise Lost_ contains many more lines of poetic beauty than Homer's _Iliad_; and there is nothing in the latter poem of equal length which will bear any comparison with the exquisite picture of the primeval innocence of our First Parents in his fourth book. Nevertheless the _Iliad_ is a more interesting poem than the _Paradise Lost_; and has produced and will produce a much more extensive impression on mankind. The reason is that it is much fuller of event is more varied is more filled with images familiar to all mankind and is less lost in metaphysical or philosophical abstractions. Homer though the father of poets was essentially dramatic; he was an incomparable painter; and it is his dramatic scenes the moving panorama of his pictures which fascinates the world. He often speaks to the heart and is admirable in the delineation of character; but he is so not by conveying the inward feeling but by painting with matchless fidelity its external symptoms or putting into the mouths of his characters the precise words they would have used in similar circumstances in real life. Even his immortal parting of Hector and Andromache is no exception to this remark; he paints the scene at the Scæan gate exactly as it would have occurred in nature and moves us as if we had seen the Trojan hero taking off his helmet to assuage the terrors of his infant son and heard the lamentations of his mother at parting with her husband. But he does not lay bare the heart with the terrible force of Dante by a line or a word. There is nothing in Homer which conveys so piercing an idea of misery as the line in the _Inferno_ where the Florentine bard assigns the reason of the lamentations of the spirits in Malebolge-- "Questi non hanno speranza di morte." "These have not the _hope of death_." There speaks the spiritual poet; he does not paint to the eye he does not even convey character by the words he makes then utter; he pierces by a single expression at once to the heart. Milton strove to raise earth to heaven: Homer brought down heaven to earth. The latter attempt was a much easier one than the former; it was more consonant to human frailty; and therefore it has met with more success. The gods and goddesses in the _Iliad_ are men and women endowed with human passions affections and desires and distinguished only from sublunary beings by superior power and the gift of immortality. We are interested in them as we are in the genii or magicians of an eastern romance. There is a sort of aërial epic poem going on between earth and heaven. They take sides in the terrestrial combat and engage in the actual strife with the heroes engaged in it. Mars and Venus were wounded by Diomede when combating in the Trojan ranks; their blood or rather the "Ichor which blest immortals shed " flowed profusely; they fled howling to the palaces of heaven. Enlightened by a spiritual faith fraught with sublime ideas of the divine nature and government Milton was incomparably more just in his descriptions of the Supreme Being and more elevated in his picture of the angels and arch-angels who carried on the strife in heaven; but he frequently falls into metaphysical abstractions or theological controversies which detract from the interest of his poem. Despite Milton's own opinion the concurring voice of all subsequent ages and countries has assigned to the _Paradise Regained_ a much lower place than to the _Paradise Lost_. The reason is that it is less dramatic--it has less incident and action. Great part of the poem is but an abstract theological debate between our Saviour and Satan. The speeches he makes them utter are admirable the reasoning is close the arguments cogent the sentiments elevated in the speakers but dialectic too. In many of the speeches of the angel Raphael and in the council of heaven in the _Paradise Lost_ there is too much of that species of discussion for a poem which is to interest the generality of men. Dryden says that Satan is Milton's real hero; and every reader of the _Paradise Lost_ must have felt that in the Prince of Darkness and Adam and Eve the interest of the poem consists. The reason is that the vices of the first and the weakness of the two last bring them nearer than any other characters in the poem to the standard of mortality; and we are so constituted that we cannot take any great interest but in persons who share in our failings. Perhaps the greatest cause of the sustained interest of the _Iliad_ is the continued and vehement _action_ which is maintained. The attention is seldom allowed to flag. Either in the council of the gods the assembly of the Grecian or Trojan chiefs or the contest of the leaders on the field of battle an incessant interest is maintained. Great events are always on the wing: the issue of the contest is perpetually hanging often almost even in the balance. It is the art with which this is done and a state of anxious suspense like the crisis of a great battle kept up that the great art of the poet consists. It is done by making the whole dramatic--bringing the characters forward constantly to speak for themselves making the events succeed each other with almost breathless rapidity and balancing success alternately from one side to the other without letting it ever incline decisively to either. Tasso has adopted the same plan in his _Jerusalem Delivered_ and the contests of the Christian knights and Saracen leaders with the lance and the sword closely resemble those of the Grecian and Trojan chiefs on the plain of Troy. Ariosto has carried it still further. The exploits of his Paladins--their adventures on earth in air and water; their loves their sufferings their victories their dangers--keep the reader in a continual state of suspense. It is this sustained and varied interest which makes so many readers prefer the _Orlando Furioso_ to the _Jerusalem Delivered_. But Ariosto has pushed it too far. In the search of variety he has lost sight of unity. His heroes are not congregated round the banners of two rival potentates; there is no one object or interest in his poem. No narrow plain like that watered by the Scamander is the theatre of their exploits. Jupiter from the summit of Gargarus could not have beheld the contending armies. The most ardent imagination indeed is satiated with his adventures but the closest attention can hardly follow their thread. Story after story is told the exploits of knight after knight are recounted till the mind is fatigued the memory perplexed and all general interest in the poem lost. Milton has admirably preserved the unity of his poem; the grand and all-important object of the fall of man could hardly admit of subordinate or rival interests. But the great defect in the _Paradise Lost_ arising from that very unity is want of variety. It is strung throughout on too lofty a key; it does not come down sufficiently to the wants and cravings of mortality. The mind is awe-struck by the description of Satan careering through the immensity of space of the battle of the angels of the fall of Lucifer of the suffering and yet unsubdued spirit of his fellow rebels of the adamantine gates and pitchy darkness and burning lake of hell. But after the first feeling of surprise and admiration is over it is felt by all that these lofty contemplations are not interesting to mortals like ourselves. They are too much above real life--too much out of the sphere of ordinary event and interest. The fourth book is the real scene of interest in the _Paradise Lost_; it is its ravishing scenes of primeval innocence and bliss which have given it immortality. We are never tired of recurring to the bower of Eve to her devotion to Adam to the exquisite scenes of Paradise its woods its waters its flowers its enchantments. We are so because we feel that it paints the Elysium to which all aspire which all have for a brief period felt but which none in this world can durably enjoy. No one can doubt that Homer was endowed with the true poetic spirit and yet there is very little of what we now call poetry in his writings. There is neither sentiment nor declamation--painting nor reflection. He is neither descriptive nor didactic. With great powers for portraying nature as the exquisite choice of his epithets and the occasional force of his similes prove he never makes any laboured attempt to delineate her features. He had the eye of a great painter; but his pictorial talents are employed almost unconsciously in the fervour of narrating events or the animation of giving utterance to thoughts. He painted by an epithet or a line. Even the celebrated description of the fires in the plain of Troy likened to the moon in a serene night is contained in seven lines. His rosy-fingered morn--cloud-compelling Jupiter--Neptune stiller of the waves--Aurora rising from her crocus bed--Night drawing her veil over the heavens--the black keel careering through the lashing waves--the shout of the far-sounding sea--and the like from which subsequent poets and dramatists have borrowed so largely are all brief allusions or epithets which evidently did not form the main object of his strains. He was a close observer of nature--its lights its shades its storms and calms its animals their migrations their cries and habits; but he never suspends his narrative to describe them. We shall look in vain in the _Iliad_ and even the _Odyssey_ for the lengthened pictures of scenery which are so frequent in Virgil and Tasso and appear in such rich profusion in Milton. He describes storms only as objects of terror not to paint them to the eye. Such things are to be found in the book of Job and in the Psalms but with the same brevity and magical force of emphatic expression. There never was a greater painter of nature than Homer; there never was a man who aimed less at being so. The portraying of character and event was the great and evident object of the Grecian bard; and there his powers may almost be pronounced unrivalled. He never tells you unless it is sometimes to be inferred on an epithet what the man's character that he introduces is. He trusts to the character to delineate itself. He lets us get acquainted with his heroes as we do with persons around us by hearing them speak and seeing them act. In preserving character in this dramatic way of representing it he is unrivalled. He does not tell you that Nestor had the garrulity of age and loved to recur to the events of his youth; but he never makes him open his mouth without descanting on the adventures of his early years and the degenerate race of mortals who have succeeded the paladins of former days. He does not tell us that Achilles was wrathful and impetuous; but every time he speaks the anger of the son of Peleus comes boiling over his lips. He does not describe Agamemnon as overbearing and haughty; but the pride of the king of men is continually appearing in his words and actions and it is the evident moral of the _Iliad_ to represent its pernicious effects on the affairs of the Helenic confederacy. Ulysses never utters a word in which the cautious and prudent counsellor sagacious in design but prompt in execution wary in the council but decided in the field far-seeing but yet persevering is not apparent. Diomede never falters; alike in the field and the council he is indomitable. When Hector was careering in his chariot round their fortifications and the king of men counselled retreat he declared he would remain were it only with Sthenelus and his friends. So completely marked so well defined are his characters though they were all rapacious chiefs at first sight little differing from each other that it has been observed with truth that one well acquainted with the _Iliad_ could tell upon hearing one of the speeches read out without a name who was the chief who uttered it. The two authors since his time who have most nearly approached him in this respect are Shakespeare and Scott. Both seem to have received the pencil which paints the human heart from nature herself. Both had a keen and searching eye for character in all grades and walks of life; and what is a general accompaniment of such a disposition a strong sense of the ridiculous. Both seized the salient points in mental disposition and perceived at a glance as it were the ruling propensity. Both impressed this character so strongly on their minds that they threw themselves as it were into the very souls of the persons whom they delineated and made them speak and act like nature herself. It is this extraordinary faculty of identifying themselves with their characters and bringing out of their mouth the very words which in real life would have come which constitutes the chief and permanent attraction of these wonderful masters of the human heart. Cervantes had it in an equal degree; and thence it is that Homer Shakspeare Cervantes and Scott have made so great and to all appearance durable impression on mankind. The human heart is at bottom every where the same. There is infinite diversity in the dress he wears but the naked human figure of one country scarcely differs from another. The writers who have succeeded in reaching this deep substratum this far-hidden but common source of human action are understood and admired over all the world. It is the same on the banks of the Simoïs as on those of the Avon--on the Sierra Morena as the Scottish hills. They are understood alike in Europe as Asia--in antiquity as modern times; one unanimous burst of admiration salutes them from the North Cape to Cape Horn--from the age of Pisistratus to that of Napoleon. Strange as it may appear to superficial observers Cervantes bears a close analogy in many particulars to Homer. Circumstances and an inherent turn for humour made him throw his genius into an exquisite ridicule of the manners of chivalry; but the author of _Don Quixote_ had in him the spirit of a great epic poet. His lesser pieces prove it; unequivocal traces of it are to be found in the adventures of the Knight of La Mancha himself. The elevation of mind which amidst all his aberrations appears in that erratic character; the incomparable traits of nature with which the work abounds; the faculty of describing events in the most striking way; of painting scenes in a few words; of delineating characters with graphic fidelity and keeping them up with perfect consistency which are so conspicuous in _Don Quixote_ are so many of the most essential qualities of an epic poet. Nor was the ardour of imagination the romantic disposition the brilliancy of fancy the lofty aspirations the tender heart which form the more elevated and not less essential part of such a character wanting in the Spanish novelist. Sir Walter Scott more nearly resembles Homer than any poet who has sung since the siege of Troy. Not that he has produced any poem which will for a moment bear a comparison with the _Iliad_--fine as the _Lady of the Lake_ and _Marmion_ are it would be the height of national partiality to make any such comparison. But nevertheless Sir Walter's mind is of the same dimensions as that of Homer. We see in him the same combination of natural sagacity with acquired information; of pictorial eye with dramatic effect; of observation of character with reflection and feeling; of graphic power with poetic fervour; of ardour of imagination with rectitude of principle; of warlike enthusiasm with pacific tenderness which have rendered the Grecian bard immortal. It is in his novels however more than his poetry that this resemblance appears; the author of _Waverley_ more nearly approaches the blind bard than the author of the _Lay_. His romances in verse contain some passages which are sublime many which are beautiful some pathetic. They are all interesting and writte
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in the same easy careless style interspersed with the most homely and grotesque expressions which is so well known to all the readers of the _Iliad_. The battle in _Marmion_ is beyond all question as Jeffrey long ago remarked the most _Homeric_ strife which has been sung since the days of Homer. But these passages are few and far between; his poems are filled with numerous and long interludes written with little art and apparently no other object but to fill up the pages or eke out the story. It is in prose that the robust strength the powerful arm the profound knowledge of the heart appear; and it is there accordingly that he approaches at times so closely to Homer. If we could conceive a poem in which the storming of Front-de-Boeuf's castle in _Ivanhoe_--the death of Fergus in _Waverley_--the storm on the coast and death scene in the fisher's hut in the _Antiquary_--the devoted love in the _Bride of Lammermoor_--the fervour of the Covenanters in _Old Mortality_ and the combats of Richard and Saladin in the _Talisman_ were united together and intermingled with the incomparable characters descriptions and incidents with which these novels abound they would form an epic poem. Doubts have sometimes been expressed as to whether the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ are all the production of one man. Never perhaps was doubt not merely so ill founded but so decisively disproved by internal evidence. If ever in human composition the traces of one mind are conspicuous they are in Homer. His beauties equally with his defects his variety and uniformity attest this. Never was an author who had so fertile an imagination for varying of incidents; never was one who expressed them in language in which the same words so constantly recur. This is the invariable characteristic of a great and powerful but at the same time self-confident and careless mind. It is to be seen in the most remarkable manner in Bacon and Machiavel and not a little of it may be traced both in the prose and poetical works of Scott. The reason is that the strength of the mind is thrown into the thought as the main object; the language as a subordinate matter is little considered. Expressions capable of energetically expressing the prevailing ideas of the imagination are early formed; but when this is done the powerful careless mind readily adopts them on all future occasions where they are at all applicable. There is scarcely a great and original thinker in whose writings the same expressions do not very frequently recur often in exactly the same words. How much this is the case with Homer--with how much discrimination and genius his epithets and expressions were first chosen and how frequently he repeats them almost in every page need be told to none who are acquainted with his writings. That is the most decisive mark at once of genius and identity. Original thinkers fall into repetition of expression because they are always speaking from one model--their own thoughts. Subordinate writers avoid this fault because they are speaking from the thoughts of others and share their variety. It requires as great an effort for the first to introduce difference of expression as for the last to reach diversity of thought. The reader of Dante must not look for the heart-stirring and animated narrative--the constant interest--the breathless suspense which hurries us along the rapid current of the _Iliad_. There are no councils of the gods; no messengers winging their way through the clouds; no combats of chiefs; no cities to storm; no fields to win. It is the infernal regions which the poet under the guidance of his great leader Virgil visits; it is the scene of righteous retribution through which he is led; it is the apportionment of punishment and reward to crime or virtue in this upper world that he is doomed to witness. We enter the city of lamentation--we look down the depths of the bottomless pit--we stand at the edge of the burning lake. His survey is not a mere transient visit like that of Ulysses in Homer or of Æneas in Virgil. He is taken slowly and deliberately through every successive circle of Malebolge; descending down which like the visitor of the tiers of vaults one beneath another in a feudal castle he finds every species of malefactors from the chiefs and kings whose heroic lives were stained only by a few deeds of cruelty to the depraved malefactors whose base course was unrelieved by one ray of virtue. In the very conception of such a poem is to be found decisive evidence of the mighty change which the human mind had undergone since the expiring lays of poetry were last heard in the ancient world; of the vast revolution of thought and inward conviction which during a thousand years in the solitude of the monastery and under the sway of a spiritual faith had taken place in the human heart. A gay and poetic mythology no longer amazed the world by its fictions or charmed it by its imagery. Religion no longer basked in the sunshine of imagination. The awful words of judgment to come had been spoken; and like Felix mankind had trembled. Ridiculous legends had ceased to be associated with the shades below--their place had been taken by images of horror. Conscience had resumed its place in the direction of thought. Superstition had lent its awful power to the sanctions of religion. Terror of future punishment had subdued the fiercest passions--internal agony tamed the proudest spirits. It was the picture of a future world--of a world of retribution--conceived under such impressions that Dante proposed to give; it is that which he has given with such terrible fidelity. Melancholy was the prevailing characteristic of the great Italian's mind. It was so profound that it penetrated all his thoughts; so intense that it pervaded all his conceptions. Occasionally bright and beautiful ideas flitted across his imagination; visions of bliss experienced for a moment and then lost for ever as if to render more profound the darkness by which they are surrounded. They are given with exquisite beauty; but they shine amidst the gloom like sunbeams struggling through the clouds. He inherited from the dark ages the austerity of the cloister; but he inherited with it the deep feelings and sublime conceptions which its seclusion had generated. His mind was a world within itself. He drew all his conceptions from that inexhaustible source; but he drew them forth so clear and lucid that they emerged embodied as it were in living images. His characters are emblematic of the various passions and views for which different degrees of punishment were reserved in the world to come; but his conception of them was so distinct his description so vivid that they stand forth to our gaze in all the agony of their sufferings like real flesh and blood. We see them--we feel them--we hear their cries--our very flesh creeps at the perception of their sufferings. We stand on the edge of the lake of boiling pitch--we feel the weight of the leaden mantles--we see the snow-like flakes of burning sand--we hear the cries of those who had lost the last earthly consolations the hope of death:-- ""Quivi sospiri pianti ed alti guai Risonavan per l' aer senza stelle Perch' io al cominciar ne lacrimai. Diverse lingue orribili favelle Parole di dolore accenti d' ira Voci alte e fioche e suon di man con elle Facevano un tumulto il qual s' aggira Sempre 'n quell' aria senza tempo tinta Come la rena quando 'l turbo spira. * * * * * Ed io: maestro che è tanto greve A lor che lamentar li fa si forte? Rispose: dicerolti molto breve. Questi non hanno speranza di morte."" _Inferno_ c. iii. ""Here sighs with lamentations and loud moans Resounded through the air pierced by no star That e'en I wept at entering. Various tongues Horrible languages outcries of woe Accents of anger voices deep and hoarse With hands together smote that swell'd the sounds Made up a tumult that for ever whirls Round through that air with solid darkness stain'd Like to the sand that in the whirlwind flies. * * * * * I then: Master! What doth aggrieve them thus That they lament so loud? He straight replied: That will I tell thee briefly. These of death No hope may entertain."" CARY'S _Dante Inferno_ c. iii. Here is Dante portrayed to the life in the very outset. What a collection of awful images in a few lines! Loud lamentations hideous cries mingled with the sound of clasped hands beneath a starless sky; and the terrible answer as the cause of this suffering ""These have not the hope of death."" The very first lines of the _Inferno_ when the gates of Hell were approached and the inscription over them appeared paints the dismal character of the poem and yet mingled with the sense of divine love and justice with which the author was penetrated. ""Per me si va nella città dolente; Per me si va nell' eterno dolore; Per me si va tra la perduta gente: Giustizia mosse 'l mio alto Fattore; Fecemi la divina Potestate La somma Sapienza e 'l primo Amore. Dinanzi a me non fur cose create Se non eterne; ed io eterno duro: Lasciate ogni speranza voi che 'ntrate."" _Inferno_ c. iii. ""Through me you pass into the city of woe: Through me you pass into eternal pain: Through me among the people lost for aye. Justice the founder of my fabric moved: To rear me was the task of power divine Supremest wisdom and primeval love. Before me things create were none save things Eternal and eternal I endure. All hope abandon ye who enter here."" CARY'S _Dante Inferno_ c. iii. Dante had much more profound feelings than Homer and therefore he has painted deep mysteries of the human heart with greater force and fidelity. The more advanced age of the world the influence of spiritual faith the awful anticipation of judgment to come the inmost feelings which during long centuries of seclusion had been drawn forth in the cloister the protracted sufferings of the dark ages had laid bare the human heart. Its sufferings its terrors its hopes its joys had become as household words. The Italian poet shared as all do in the ideas and images of his age and to these he added many which were entirely his own. He painted the inward man and painted him from his own feelings not the observation of others. That is the grand distinction between him and Homer; and that it is which has given him in the delineation of mind his great superiority. The Grecian bard was an incomparable observer; he had an inexhaustible imagination for fiction as well as a graphic eye for the delineation of real life; but he had not a deep or feeling heart. He did not know it like Dante and Shakspeare from his own suffering. He painted the external symptoms of passion and emotion with the hand of a master; but he did not reach the inward spring of feeling. He lets us into his characters by their speeches their gestures their actions and keeps up their consistency with admirable fidelity; but he does not by a word an expression or an epithet admit us into the inmost folds of the heart. None can do so but such as themselves feel warmly and profoundly and paint passion emotion or suffering from their own experience not the observation of others. Dante has acquired his colossal fame from the matchless force with which he has portrayed the wildest passions the deepest feelings the most intense sufferings of the heart. He is the refuge of all those who labour and are heavy laden--of all who feel profoundly or have suffered deeply. His verses are in the mouth of all who are torn by passion gnawed by remorse or tormented by apprehension; and how many are they in this scene of woe! A distinguished modern critic[2] has said that he who would now become a great poet must first become a little child. There is no doubt he is right. The seen and unseen fetters of civilization; the multitude of old ideas afloat in the world; the innumerable worn-out channels into which new ones are ever apt to flow; the general clamour with which critics nursed amidst such fetters receive any attempts at breaking them; the prevalence in a wealthy and highly civilized age of worldly or selfish ideas; the common approximation of characters by perpetual intercourse as of coins by continual rubbing in passing from man to man have taken away all freshness and originality from ideas. The learned the polished the highly educated can hardly escape the fetters which former greatness throws over the soul. Milton could not avoid them: half the images in his poems are taken from Homer Virgil and Dante; and who dare hope for emancipation when Milton was enthralled? The mechanical arts increase in perfection as society advances. Science ever takes its renewed flights from the platform which former efforts have erected. Industry guided by experience in successive ages brings to the highest point all the contrivances and inventions which minister to the comfort or elegances of life. But it is otherwise with genius. It sinks in the progress of society as much as science and the arts rise. The country of Homer and Æschylus sank for a thousand years into the torpor of the Byzantine empire. Originality perishes amidst acquisition. Freshness of conception is its life: like the flame it burns fierce and clear in the first gales of a pure atmosphere; but languishes and dies in that polluted by many breaths. It was the resurrection of the human mind after the seclusion and solitary reflection of the middle ages which gave this vein of original ideas to Dante as their first wakening had given to Homer. Thought was not extinct; the human mind was not dormant during the dark ages; far from it--it never in some respects was more active. It was the first collision of their deep and lonely meditations with the works of the great ancient poets which occasioned the prodigy. Universally it will be found to be the same. After the first flights of genius have been taken it is by the collision of subsequent thought with it that the divine spark is again elicited. The meeting of two great minds is necessary to beget fresh ideas as that of two clouds is to bring forth lightning or the collision of flint and steel to produce fire. Johnson said he could not get new ideas till he had read. He was right; though it is not one in a thousand who strikes out original thoughts from studying the works of others. The great sage did not read to imbibe the opinions of others but to engender new ones for himself; he did not study to imitate but to create. It was the same with Dante; it is the same with every really great man. His was the first powerful and original mind which fraught with the profound and gloomy ideas nourished in seclusion during the middle ages came into contact with the brilliant imagery touching pathos and harmonious language of the ancients. Hence his astonishing greatness. He almost worshipped Virgil he speaks of him as a species of god; he mentions Homer as the first of poets. But he did not copy either the one or the other; he scarcely imitated them. He strove to rival their brevity and beauty of expression; but he did so in giving vent to new ideas in painting new images in awakening new emotions. The _Inferno_ is as original as the _Iliad_; incomparably more so than the _Æneid_. The offspring of originality with originality is a new and noble creation; of originality with mediocrity a spurious and degraded imitation. Dante paints the spirits of all the generations of men each in their circle undergoing their allotted punishment; expiating by suffering the sins of an upper world. Virgil gave a glimpse as it were into that scene of retribution; Minos and Rhadamanthus passing judgment on the successive spirits brought before them; the flames of Tartarus the rock of Sisyphus the wheel of Ixion the vulture gnawing Prometheus. But with Homer and Virgil the descent into the infernal regions was a brief episode; with Dante it was the whole poem. Immense was the effort of imagination requisite to give variety to such a subject to prevent the mind from experiencing weariness amidst the eternal recurrence of crime and punishment. But the genius of Dante was equal to the task. His fancy was prodigious; his invention boundless; his imagination inexhaustible. Fenced in as he was within narrow and gloomy limits by the nature of his subject his creative spirit equals that of Homer himself. He has given birth to as many new ideas in the _Inferno_ and the _Paradiso_ as the Grecian bard in the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_. Though he had reflected so much and so deeply on the human heart and was so perfect a master of all the anatomy of mental suffering Dante's mind was essentially descriptive. He was a great painter as well as a profound thinker; he clothed deep feeling in the garb of the senses; he conceived a vast brood of new ideas he arrayed them in a surprising manner in flesh and blood. He is ever clear and definite at least in the _Inferno_. He exhibits in every canto of that wonderful poem a fresh image but it is a clear one of horror or anguish which leaves nothing to the imagination to add or conceive. His ideal characters are real persons; they are present to our senses; we feel their flesh see the quivering of their limbs hear their lamentations and feel a thrill of joy at their felicity. In the _Paradiso_ he is more vague and general and thence its acknowledged inferiority to the _Inferno_. But the images of horror are much more powerful than those of happiness; and it is they which have entranced the world. ""It is easier "" says Madame de Staël ""to convey ideas of suffering than those of happiness; for the former are too well known to every heart the latter only to a few."" The melancholy tone which pervades Dante's writings was doubtless in a great measure owing to the misfortunes of his life; and to them we are also indebted for many of the most caustic and powerful of his verses--perhaps for the design of the _Inferno_ itself. He took vengeance on the generation which had persecuted and exiled him by exhibiting its leaders suffering in the torments of hell. In his long seclusion chiefly in the monastery of Santa Croce di Fonte Avellana a wild and solitary retreat in the territory of Gubbio and in a tower belonging to the Conte Falcucci in the same district his immortal work was written. The mortifications he underwent during this long and dismal exile are thus described by himself:--""Wandering over almost every part in which our language extends I have gone about like a mendicant; showing against my will the wound with which fortune has smitten me and which is often falsely imputed to the demerit of him by whom it is endured. I have been indeed a vessel without sail or steerage carried about to divers ports and roads and shores by the dry wind that springs out of sad poverty."" In the third circle of hell Dante sees those who are punished by the plague of burning sand falling perpetually on them. Their torments are thus described-- ""Supin giaceva in terra alcuna gente; Alcuna si sedea tutta raccolta; Ed altra andava continuamente. Quella che giva intorno era più molta; E quella men che giaceva al tormento; Ma più al duolo avea la lingua sciolta. Sovra tutto 'l sabbion d'un cader lento Piovean di fuoco dilatate falde Come di neve in alpe senza vento. Quali Alessandro in quelle parti calde D' India vide sovra lo suo stuolo Fiamme cadere infino a terra salde."" _Inferno_ c. xiv. ""Of naked spirits many a flock I saw All weeping piteously to different laws Subjected: for on earth some lay supine Some crouching close were seated others paced Incessantly around; the latter tribe More numerous those fewer who beneath The torment lay but louder in their grief. O'er all the sand fell slowly wafting down Dilated flakes of fire as flakes of snow On Alpine summit when the wind is hush'd. As in the torrid Indian clime the son Of Ammon saw upon his warrior band Descending solid flames that to the ground Came down."" CARY'S _Dante_ c. xiv. The first appearance of Malebolge is described in these striking lines-- ""Luogo è in Inferno detto Malebolge Tutto di pietra e di color ferrigno Come la cerchia che d'intorno il volge. Nel dritto mezzo del campo maligno Vaneggia un pozzo assai largo e profondo Di cui suo luogo conterà l' ordigno. Quel cinghio che rimane adunque è tondo Tra 'l pozzo e 'l piè dell' alta ripa dura E ha distinto in dieci valli al fondo."" _Inferno_ c. xviii. ""There is a place within the depths of hell Call'd Malebolge all of rock dark-stain'd With hue ferruginous e'en as the steep That round it circling winds. Right in the midst Of that abominable region yawns A spacious gulf profound whereof the frame Due time shall tell. The circle that remains Throughout its round between the gulf and base Of the high craggy banks successive forms Ten bastions in its hollow bottom raised."" CARY'S _Dante_ c. xviii. This is the outward appearance of Malebolge the worst place of punishment in hell. It had many frightful abysses; what follows is the picture of the first:-- ""Ristemmo per veder l'altra fessura Di Malebolge e gli altri pianti vani: E vidila mirabilmente oscura. Quale nell' arzana de' Veneziani Bolle l' inverno la tenace pece A rimpalmar li legni lor non sani-- * * * * * Tal non per fuoco ma per divina arte Bollia laggiuso una pegola spessa Che 'nviscava la ripa d'ogni parte. I' vedea lei ma non vedeva in essa Ma che le bolle che 'l bollor levava E gonfiar tutta e riseder compressa. * * * * * E vidi dietro a noi un diavol nero Correndo su per lo scoglio venire. Ahi quant' egli era nell' aspetto fiero! E quanto mi parea nell' atto acerbo Con l' ali aperte e sovre i piè leggiero! L' omero suo ch' era acuto e superbo Carcava un peccator con ambo l'anche Ed ei tenea de' piè ghermito il nerbo. * * * * * Laggiù il buttò e per lo scoglio duro Si volse e mai non fu mastino sciolto Con tanta fretta a seguitar lo furo. Quei s' attuffò e tornò su convolto; Ma i demon che del ponte avean coverchio Gridar: qui non ha luogo il Santo Volto. Qui si nuota altramenti che nel Serchio: Però se tu non vuoi de' nostri graffi Non far sovra la pegola soverchio. Poi l' addentar con più di cento raffi Disser: coverto convien che qui balli Si che se puoi nascosamente accaffi."" _Inferno_ c. xxi. ""----To the summit reaching stood To view another gap within the round Of Malebolge other bootless pangs. Marvellous darkness shadow'd o'er the place. In the Venetians' arsenal as boils Through wintry months tenacious pitch to smear Their unsound vessels in the wintry clime. * * * * * So not by force of fire but art divine Boil'd here a glutinous thick mass that round Limed all the shore beneath. I that beheld But therein not distinguish'd save the bubbles Raised by the boiling and one mighty swell Heave and by turns subsiding fall. * * * * * Behind me I beheld a devil black That running up advanced along the rock. Ah! what fierce cruelty his look bespake. In act how bitter did he seem with wings Buoyant outstretch'd and feet of nimblest tread. His shoulder proudly eminent and sharp Was with a sinner charged; by either haunch He held him the foot's sinew griping fast. * * * * * Him dashing down o'er the rough rock he turn'd; Nor ever after thief a mastiff loosed Sped with like eager haste. That other sank And forthwith writhing to the surface rose. But those dark demons shrouded by the bridge Cried--Here the hallow'd visage saves not: here Is other swimming than in Serchio's wave Wherefore if thou desire we rend thee not Take heed thou mount not o'er the pitch. This said They grappled him with more than hundred hooks And shouted--Cover'd thou must sport thee here; So if thou canst in secret mayst thou filch."" CARY'S _Dante_ c. xxi. Fraught as his imagination was with gloomy ideas with images of horror it is the fidelity of his descriptions the minute reality of his pictures which gives them their terrible power. He knew well what it is that penetrates the soul. His images of horror in the infernal regions were all founded on those familiar to every one in the upper world; it was from the caldron of boiling pitch in the arsenal of Venice that he took his idea of one of the pits of Malebolge. But what a picture does he there exhibit! The writhing sinner plunged headlong into the boiling waves rising to the surface and a hundred demons mocking his sufferings and with outstretched hooks tearing his flesh till he dived again beneath the liquid fire! It is the reality of the scene the images familiar yet magnified in horror which constitutes its power: we stand by; our flesh creeps as it would at witnessing an _auto-da-fè_ of Castile or on beholding a victim perishing under the knout in Russia. Michael Angelo was in one sense the painter of the Old Testament as his bold and aspiring genius arrived rather at delineating the events of warfare passion or suffering chronicled in the records of the Jews than the scenes of love affection and benevolence depicted in the gospels. But his mind was not formed merely on the events recorded in antiquity: it is no world doubtful of the immortality of the soul which he depicts. He is rather the personification in painting of the soul of Dante. His imagination was evidently fraught with the conceptions of the _Inferno_. The expression of mind beams forth in all his works. Vehement passion stern resolve undaunted valour sainted devotion infant innocence alternately occupied his pencil. It is hard to say in which he was greatest. In all his works we see marks of the genius of antiquity meeting the might of modern times: the imagery of mythology blended with the aspirations of Christianity. We see it in the dome of St Peter's we see it in the statue of Moses. Grecian sculpture was the realization in form of the conceptions of Homer; Italian painting the representation on canvass of the revelations of the gospel which Dante clothed in the garb of poetry. Future ages should ever strive to equal but can never hope to excel them. Never did artist work with more persevering vigour than Michael Angelo. He himself said that he laboured harder for fame than ever poor artist did for bread. Born of a noble family the heir to considerable possessions he took to the arts from his earliest years from enthusiastic passion and conscious power. During a long life of ninety years he prosecuted them with the ardent zeal of youth. He was consumed by the thirst for fame the desire of great achievements the invariable mark of heroic minds; and which as it is altogether beyond the reach of the great bulk of mankind so is the feeling of all others which to them is most incomprehensible. Nor was that noble enthusiasm without its reward. It was his extraordinary good fortune to be called to form at the same time the Last Judgment on the wall of the Sistine Chapel the glorious dome of St Peter's and the group of Notre Dame de Pitié which now adorns the chapel of the Crucifix under the roof of that august edifice. The ""Holy Family"" in the Palazzo Pitti at Florence and the ""Three Fates"" in the same collection give an idea of his powers in oil-painting: thus he carried to the highest perfection at the same time the rival arts of architecture sculpture fresco and oil painting.[3] He may truly be called the founder of Italian painting as Homer was of the ancient epic and Dante of the great style in modern poetry. None but a colossal mind could have done such things. Raphael took lessons from him in painting and professed through life the most unbounded respect for his great preceptor. None have attempted to approach him in architecture; the cupola of St Peter's stands alone in the world. But notwithstanding all this Michael Angelo had some defects. He created the great style in painting a style which has made modern Italy as immortal as the arms of the legions did the ancient. But the very grandeur of his conceptions the vigour of his drawing his incomparable command of bone and muscle his lofty expression and impassioned mind made him neglect and perhaps despise the lesser details of his art. Ardent in the pursuit of expression he often overlooked execution. When he painted the Last Judgment or the Fall of the Titans in fresco on the ceiling and walls of the Sistine Chapel he was incomparable; but that gigantic style was unsuitable for lesser pictures or rooms of ordinary proportions. By the study of his masterpieces subsequent painters have often been led astray; they have aimed at force of expression to the neglect of delicacy in execution. This defect is in an especial manner conspicuous in Sir Joshua Reynolds who worshipped Michael Angelo with the most devoted fervour; and through him it has descended to Lawrence and nearly the whole modern school of England. When we see Sir Joshua's noble glass window in Magdalen College Oxford we behold the work of a worthy pupil of Michael Angelo; we see the great style of painting in its proper place and applied to its appropriate object. But when we compare his portraits or imaginary pieces in oil with those of Titian Velasquez or Vandyke the inferiority is manifest. It is not in the design but the finishing; not in the conception but the execution. The colours are frequently raw and harsh; the details or distant parts of the piece ill-finished or neglected. The bold neglect of Michael Angelo is very apparent. Raphael with less original genius than his immortal master had more taste and much greater delicacy of pencil; his conceptions less extensive and varied are more perfect; his finishing is always exquisite. Unity of emotion was his great object in design; equal delicacy of finishing in execution. Thence he has attained by universal consent the highest place in painting. ""Nothing "" says Sir Joshua Reynolds ""is denied to well-directed labour; nothing is to be attained without it."" ""Excellence in any department "" says Johnson ""can now be attained only by the labour of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price."" These words should ever be present to the minds of all who aspire to rival the great of former days; who feel in their bosoms a spark of the spirit which led Homer Dante and Michael Angelo to immortality. In a luxurious age comfort or station is deemed the chief good of life; in a commercial community money becomes the universal object of ambition. Thence our acknowledged deficiency in the fine arts; thence our growing weakness in the higher branches of literature. Talent looks for its reward too soon. Genius seeks an immediate recompense; long protracted exertions are never attempted; great things are not done because great efforts are not made. None will work now without the prospect of an immediate return. Very possibly it is so; but then let us not hope or wish for immortality. ""Present time and future "" says Sir Joshua Reynolds ""are rivals; he who solicits the one must expect to be discountenanced by the other."" It is not that we want genius; what we want is the great and heroic spirit which will devote itself; by strenuous efforts to great things without seeking any reward but their accomplishment. Nor let it be said that great subjects for the painter's pencil the poet's muse are not to be found--that they are exhausted by former efforts and nothing remains to us but imitation. Nature is inexhaustible; the events of men are unceasing their variety is endless. Philosophers were mourning the monotony of time historians were deploring the sameness of events in the years preceding the French Revolution--on the eve of the Reign of Terror the flames of Moscow the retreat from Russia. What was the strife around Troy to the battle of Leipsic?--the contests of Florence and Pisa to the revolutionary war? What ancient naval victory to that of Trafalgar? Rely upon it subjects for genius are not wanting; genius itself steadily and perseveringly directed is the thing required. But genius and energy alone are not sufficient; COURAGE and disinterestedness are needed more than all. Courage to withstand the assaults of envy to despise the ridicule of mediocrity--disinterestedness to trample under foot the seductions of ease and disregard the attractions of opulence. An heroic mind is more wanted in the library or the studio than in the field. It is wealth and cowardice which extinguish the light of genius and dig the grave of literature as of nations. SETTLED AT LAST; OR RED RIVER RECOLLECTIONS. CHAP. I. HOMEWARD BOUND. I had left New Orleans with the full intention of proceeding without stop or delay to my home upon the Red River; but notwithstanding this determination my wife and myself were unable to resist Richards' pressing invitation to pause for a day or two at his house. Upon our yielding to his solicitations he proceeded to recruit othe
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guests among our travelling companions and soon got together a pleasant party. My father-in-law Monsieur Menou went on to my plantation but Julie remained with us as did also her aunt Madame Duras an agreeable old lady with a slight expression of perfidy in her light blue French-looking eyes possessed withal of infinite delicacy and _finesse_--a fervent admirer of the old court school of Louis the Fifteenth in the _chronique scandaleuse_ of which she was as well versed as if she had been herself a contemporary of that pleasure-loving monarch. Besides these ladies there was a young Frenchman named Vergennes the third son of some Gascon viscount and a distant cousin of the Menous who had come to America till the scandal occasioned by certain republican scribblings of his in one of the newspapers of the day should have blown over and till he could revisit his country without risk of obtaining a lodging gratis in the Conciergerie. He had brought with him a head crammed with schemes for the political regeneration of the whole world and a trunkful of French fashions neither of which as I reckoned were likely to take much with us. He made me laugh inwardly twenty times a-day by his Utopian theories and fancies. Truth to tell in matters of politics or of sound common sense these Frenchmen are for the most part mere children and reach their dying day without ever becoming men. Take them by their weak points their unlimited vanity or their love of what they call glory and you may ride them like a horse to water. Vergennes however when one could get him off his hobby was a pleasant gentlemanly fellow enough. It was impossible to spare Richards more than three days and at six o'clock on the morning of the fourth we went on board the steamer Alexandria. I had prevailed on my friend and his wife and the whole party to come and pass a week or two at my house which was now quite ready for the reception of guests. The three days we had remained with Richards had been one continued fête and considering the good living and the heat of the weather--the thermometer ranging from 95° to 100°--there were few things more agreeable or better to be done than to take a steam up the Red River. The fresh breezes on the water might save some of us a touch of fever. On board we went therefore all in high glee and good-humour with each other. We had passed the Atchafalaya and had crossed over to the Francisville side in order to avoid the powerful current occasioned by the influx of the Red River into the Mississippi. A strong wind had sprung up and in the middle of the stream the waves were of a considerable height. The Mississippi was full to overflowing and the mouth of the Red River as far as the eye could reach presented the appearance of an extensive lake with thousands of tree trunks floating upon it. I had left the cabin and was standing on deck with Richards and Vergennes looking out upon the broad sheet of water that lay before us. We were just turning into the Red River when I observed a rowboat pulling across from the direction of Woodville and which had already arrived within a hundred yards of us without attracting the attention of any one on board the steamer. It was cutting in and out amongst the enormous floating trees with a boldness that in that part of the river--near the middle of which we were--might almost be called insanity. ""That man must be mad or in love!"" cried the captain. ""It is Ralph Doughby!"" exclaimed Richards. ""Captain it is Mister Doughby. Pray stop the ship and let him come on board."" Doughby it was. The mad fellow was standing bolt upright and hardly taking the trouble to bend to one side or the other in conformity with the movements of the boat which was dancing about on the waves and between the tree-trunks while the six negro rowers were washed over and over by the spray. ""Here's your famous Red River!"" shouted the harebrained Doughby. ""A fine country for wild-ducks and geese and alligators too. Hurra boys!"" ""For God's sake Mr Doughby!"" screamed and implored the ladies as the Kentuckian dashed his boat slap up to the side of the steamer without waiting till the speed of the vessel was slackened and hastily caught a rope which was thrown to him. Just at that moment a wave as high as a man rose between the steamer and the boat and separated them and Doughby still maintaining his hold on the rope he was dragged out of his skiff and tossed like a feather against the steamer's side where he hung half in and half out of the water. ""Haul in boys--haul me in lads--or your d----d paddles will do it!"" ""Pull him in!"" shouted we all ""pull him in for God's sake!"" ""Ay pull in!"" cried Doughby and giving a spring upwards he caught hold of the railing of the deck threw himself over it with a bound and stood in all safety amongst the astonished and grinny-visaged Cyclops who were hastening to his assistance. We hurried down from the quarterdeck breathless with astonishment at this desperate and unnecessary piece of daring. ""Pshaw"" cried Doughby; ""steward a glass of hot; and captain see that my portmanteau comes on board and that my negers get away with whole skins; and a good morning to you gentlemen--in five minutes we shall meet again."" And so saying he emptied the glass which the black steward held out to him made a slight bow to the ladies on the quarterdeck sprang into the gentlemen's cabin and thence into the first state-room that stood open. ""An _entrée en scène_ quite _à la_ Doughby "" said Richards laughing. ""Quite so "" replied I. Ralph Doughby Esquire of New Feliciana La. was an old acquaintance of Richards and myself and an excellent specimen of a warm-hearted impetuous breakneck Kentuckian with a share of earthquake in his composition that might be deemed large even in Kentucky. He had come to Louisiana some eight years previously a voyage of a thousand miles or more down the Cumberland River the Ohio and Mississippi in a flat boat with half a dozen negroes some casks of flour hams and Indian corn and a few horses and had settled at Woodville on a couple of thousand acres of good land bought at five dollars an acre to be paid in five years. His industry and energy had caused him to thrive and he was now as well established planter as any on the Mississippi; his six negroes had amounted to forty his wilderness had become a respectable plantation his cotton was sought after and he had not only paid for his acres but had already a large sum in the Planters' Bank. His frank open character had made him friends on all hands and there was not a more popular man in Louisiana than Major Ralph Doughby. During the stay I made at Richards' house previously to my marriage Doughby had passed a day there in company with one Mr Lambton and his daughter Yankees--the latter a beautiful girl but cold and formal like most of her countrywomen. An aunt of hers who possessed large plantations on the Mississippi had made up a match between Miss Lambton and Doughby and they were then proceeding to New York where the marriage was in due time to be solemnized. Richards and myself had observed however that the wild headlong manners and character of the Kentuckian joined though they were to great goodness of heart and many sterling qualities did not appear very pleasing to the stiff etiquette-loving fine lady and it was without any great surprise that we heard some time afterwards of the marriage being broken off in consequence it was said of some wild freak of Doughby's. We were asking one another for the particulars of this rupture which neither of us had heard when the Kentuckian made his reappearance in the cabin. He had changed his dress and taking him altogether was by no means an ill-looking fellow. His light blue gingham frock and snow-white trousers fitted him well; an elegant straw hat very fine linen and a diamond shirt-pin that must have cost the best part of a thousand dollars contributed to give a sort of genteel planter-like air. His first care upon emerging from his state-room was to empty a glass of toddy. He then approached Richards and myself. ""And Miss Lambton?"" said Richards enquiringly. ""Haven't you heard?"" said Doughby; ""you must have heard! It's all up--she won't hear speak of me--persists in her resolution--won't see me; or give me a chance of making my peace. I'm the most unlucky fellow on the face of the earth "" continued he changing his tone on a sudden to a melancholy sort of whine--""I wish I lay three hundred feet deep in the bed of the Mississippi. I tell you boys it's clean up with me I feel that. I'm a lost man done for entirely--shall never recover it!"" We burst out into a violent fit of laughter as who would not have done at the sight of a young giant of seven-and-twenty with cheeks as red as poppies shoulders that seemed made like those of Atlas to support a world; pair of dark blue-grey eyes with a laughing devil dancing in them and a little moist just now from the effects of the toddy and the man dying of love! He measured five feet thirteen inches in his stockings with legs that might have belonged to an elephant and fists calculated to frighten a buffalo. ""Be d----d to your laughing!"" cried Doughby--""Steward another glass--d'ye hear you cursed neger where are you hidden? Don't you hear when a gentleman speaks to you? D'ye want me to tattoo your black brainpan? You laugh "" he continued to Richards and myself relapsing into his whimpering tones; ""but if you only knew--none of the women will have me--this is the seventh who has packed me off."" ""The seventh!"" cried I laughing ""what only the seventh Doughby? Pshaw! that's nothing; during my bachelor's life I had at least two dozen refusals and I am only a year older than yourself."" ""You be hanged with your two dozen! Steward the toddy is only fit for old women--too much water in it; you don't know how to make toddy. Tell your captain to come here. I'll have you sent to the devil. No I tell you my heart is so full it feels as if it would burst. She won't hear of me. I will tell you all about it boys--but who is that?"" interrupted he pointing to Vergennes who was standing near us and looking on in great wonderment. ""Ah Monshur Tonson! happy to see you Monshur Tonson! Parleh vouh English? Prenez un seat et un glass de Madeira. Nous parlerons hansamble le Franseh. Neger a bottle of Madeira; and let it be good or you'll get the bottle across your crooked shins. A bottle of Irish for me d'ye hear real Irish whisky or if you haven't any Scotch will do. No boys I tell you I am a gone man. Dismissed sent away packed off with a flea in my ear as they say."" And so saying he threw himself on a sofa with a violence that made it crack again; the steward brought the Madeira and the whisky and we drew round the table to condole with the love-stricken Kentuckian. A few minutes passed in the composition of the toddy which was evidently destined to play the chief part in the way of a consoler; and when Doughby had got a large beer-glass of the comfortable mixture before him he began his narrative. CHAPTER II THE RACE. ""I will tell you how it all happened and how it was that Miss Lambton--in short you shall hear it all--it's the first time I have spoken about it but now it shall out; you shall judge and decide between us by Jove you shall! You recollect it was in the beginning of June that we left your house Richards to go up the Mississippi--it was a Friday a day that I hate. All seamen and hunters do hate it; it's an unlucky day. All the bad luck I ever had came to me on Fridays. I had a feeling that something would go wrong when we went on board the Helen M'Gregor. I thought Miss Lambton looked shy upon me and the old gentleman stiffer than ever. I followed the Miss however wherever she went so close that once or twice I trod the fringe off her petticoats."" ""That was bad manners Doughby."" ""Pshaw! What did it matter? I told her not to bother her head about it that when we got to New York or even to Cincinnati or Louisville I would buy her a whole shopful of dresses. She made no answer to that; but when I had the misfortune to tear her third flounce she said that if I went on in that way she would not have a whole gown left when she got to Louisville. 'With a whole one or none at all Miss ' said I 'you'll always be a charming creature.' That now was as pretty a compliment as ever was paid in Kentucky but she did not seen to hear it. ""On the third day we were just passing St Helena when old Lambton came up to me. 'Mister Doughby ' said he quite confidential like 'pardon me my dear good Mister Doughby but don't you think that you sometimes take rather too much ardent spirits and thereby injure your health as well as give a bad example to your fellow-citizens which on the part of a respectable man like yourself is very much to be regretted?' ""'Bad example!' says I--'to be regretted Mister Lambton!--I take too much ardent spirits! I certainly am not of that opinion Mister Lambton and if you are I can only say you are very much mistaken. You shall see yourself ' said I 'how much ballast an old Kentuckian can take in without sinking under it: devil a diving duck ever swallowed more water than a Kentucky man can rum.' ""I thought to let the old squaretoes see that he had a man before him not one of his spindleshanked tallow-chopped Yankees who go sneaking about the meeting-house from morning till night or moping in their rooms and calculating and speculating how they can best take in honest warm-blooded South and Westlanders. 'You shall see ' said I--but he shook his head and walked away and I looked after him and shook my head too. Pah! I found out afterwards that he was president of a temperance society the devil take them all! Temperance societies! What is rum for if it isn't to be drank?"" Doughby was rapidly warming with his subject. ""He is a queer old fellow that Mister Lambton as stiff and as cold as an icicle on a water-butt. Of a morning he was scarcely out of bed when he knocked at the door of the ladies' cabin in his brocade dressing-gown and Miss Lambton must come out and hear him read the whole morning service of the Episcopal Church and make the responses and so on for a full hour. Then the whole day he walked about as grave and solemn as the chief-justice of the district court. Before dinner he said a grace which lasted a full quarter of an hour. The soup was often cold and half the dinner eaten up from under our noses while this was going on. Sometimes most of the other passengers had done their dinner and were gone to the bar to take a glass and he still praying. I was often ready to jump out of my skin with impatience."" ""The praying was all well enough if it had not lasted so long "" said I laughing. ""Pah! I hate people who are always wanting to be a shining light to their fellow-citizens. There's a deal of pride a deal of arrogance and presumption in it. If a man wishes to pray let him do so and I do it myself; but people don't want to be reminded of those things. I tell you I have always found pride behind that sort of piety. The Yankees think we are heathens and that they are the elect who are to enlighten us. Pshaw! I hate such humbug."" ""Not so badly reasoned "" observed Richards. ""However "" continued Doughby ""I soon saw that with one thing or another I was getting out of the old gentleman's good books. He became more and more stiff and silent. That wouldn't have annoyed me much; but one morning the captain came to me and said in a sort of apologising manner that the ladies had desired him to beg me not to pay so many visits to their cabin particularly of a morning when some of them had not quite finished their toilet but that I should always ask leave first and have myself announced as it is set down in the regulations."" ""'What!' says I 'have myself announced when I go to see my own wife that is to be? What do the other ladies matter to me whether they've got on silk gowns or cotton ones? I only go to see Miss Lambton.' ""'Miss Lambton was present ' said the captain 'when the ladies gave me the commission; and she and Mr Lambton most particularly requested me to have the regulations enforced.' ""'Miss Lambton!' said I; 'that's a lie now captain. She never could have done that.' ""'Mister Doughby ' said he 'it is no lie; and if another than yourself had said such a thing I would have struck him down like a mad dog. And I must beg of you to retract your words and ascertain to your own satisfaction that what I have said is a fact.' ""So I ran off and asked Miss Lambton and Mr Lambton and they answered me as dry as fagots and said the captain had spoken the truth. I was a'most raving mad when I heard this as savage as a panther; and to console myself I drank perhaps a trifle more than I should have done. But what else can one do on a voyage up the Mississippi? Much as I like him old father Mississip one gets awful sick of him after a time steaming along for days and weeks together nothing to be heard but clap-clap-clap trap-trap-trap or to be seen but the dull muddy waters and the never-ending forest. Day and night wood and water water and wood. It is wearisome work at the best. ""It was exactly two o'clock in the afternoon on the seventh day of our voyage when we got beyond Wolf's Island which as you know lies above New Madrid and below the mouth of the Ohio. The poor Helen M'Gregor burst her boiler since then as you'll have heard at that very place and sent half a hundred passengers into the other world. Past Wolf's Island we came up with the Ploughboy the Huntress the Louisville and a couple more steamers all going our way. It made quite a little fleet. I was sitting in the cabin with Miss Lambton and the old gentleman who were cool and silent enough when somebody called out 'Here comes the George Washington.' A glorious steamer it is that George more like a floating palace than a boat as it goes skimming along as lightly and smoothly as a swan. It's a real pleasure to see it. I kept my place by Miss Lambton; but to tell you the truth I was sitting upon hot coals. What can be the reason that we men feel so deucedly cowed and quailed by the petticoats? Hang me if I know. Suddenly there was a cry upon deck 'The Washington is passing us.' I could stand it no longer but bolted up-stairs and sure enough there it came in all its pride and power trarara trarara rushing and dashing and spitting fire like Emperor Nap. at the head of his guards and dragoons and artillery. It was already in the midst of the other five steamers passing them all. The whole of our passengers were on deck looking on and I can tell you that our hearts beat quick as we saw the George walking up to us. The dinner-bell rang. Not a foot moved to go below. 'Captain ' cried I 'we must not let the George pass us; you can't think of allowing such a thing?' says I; 'must show them that we are Mississippi men.' ""'Mister Doughby ' says he 'it's the George Washington ' says he--'hundred and twenty horse power ' says he. ""'Devil a hundred ' said I. 'You only say so because you are afraid to race him. And if he had two hundred horse power what then? Shorten your stirrups and give your horse the spur ' say I. ""I saw that the captain's blood was getting up; his eyes were fixed on the old George as if he would have eaten it and he became red and blue and green all manner of colours like a dolphin; his teeth chattered and he bit his lips till the blood ran over his chin. On came the Washington quicker than ever the paddles clattering the steam hissing the crew hurraing like mad. ""'Captain ' cried I 'the Washington's passing you; it's all up with the honour of the Helen M'Gregor.' ""The captain stood there as if his face had been rubbed over with chalk and the drops of sweat ran down his forehead. The five steamers that we had passed were now hurraing with delight to see that we should be humbled in our turn. 'Captain ' said I 'will you let yourself be beaten out of the field without firing a shot? The Helen M'Gregor is a new ship--Crack on man!' ""He could stand it no longer but ran forward and screamed out to the stokers. 'More wood!' cried he 'High pressure high pressure!' ""'Blaze away boys!' cried I 'Blaze away and hurra for the Helen M'Gregor!' ""And the fellows pitched whole cartloads of wood upon the fire and stirred and poked away till they were wet through with perspiration and our chimney began to whistle and sing that it was a pleasure to hear it. We were just entering the Ohio the Washington close upon our heels when old Lambton and Emily came running upon deck in an almighty fright. ""'Mr Doughby for heaven's sake! Mr Doughby--captain for God's sake! Will you destroy yourself and the steamer and your fellow-citizens? Will you race with the George Washington?' ""'For God's sake Mr Doughby!' cried the Miss. ""'Mr Doughby!' squealed the old Yankee who had quite forgotten his stiffness 'I demand and insist that you use your influence to prevent the captain from racing.' ""'Pshaw!' said I 'it's nothing of the sort--ain't going to race--only want to see which ship goes quickest.' ""'That must not be. I protest against it--the safety of our fellow-citizens--our own. If the boiler bursts'---- ""'Nonsense!' said I--'safety of our fellow-citizens! Our fellow-citizens _are_ in safety. We don't mean to race Mister Lambton ' says I; 'we are only trying for a minute which ship can go the fastest.' ""'Mr Doughby!' cried Emily half beside herself--throwing her arms round me and trying to drag me towards the engine--'Mr Doughby if you have the smallest affection--regard I would say--for me exert your influence stop this horrid racing!' ""And then she left me and ran to the captain who was standing beside the engineer. ""The Washington was close behind us--we as I said before were running slap into the mouth of the Ohio. There's no finer piece of water in the whole world for a race. The current of the Mississippi drives back that of the Ohio as far as Trinity so that upon entering the river the stream is in your favour. The two rivers are together four or five miles wide and form a sort of circus enclosed by the shores of Illinois of Old Kentuck and her daughter Missouri.[4] We were nearest to the Illinois side which gave us a small advantage over our opponent who was more on the Kentucky side end kept coming on faster and faster with the other five boats who had also clapped more steam on a short distance behind him. Our Helen M'Gregor still kept the lead; who the devil could have helped racing? No one of a certainty except such a mackerel-blooded Yankee as old Lambton. All was heat and steam rattle and clatter; the engines thumping the water splashing the fire blazing and roaring out of the chimneys which sent out clouds of smoke and showers of sparks. The enemy was close upon us Father George's honest face almost in a line with our stern. ""'Helen M'Gregor hold your own!' cried I. 'Don't spare the wood boys lay it on thick pile it up moun_tain_eous; ten dollars for you when you've beaten him!' ""'Hurra!' cried the hundred passengers; 'hurra! The Washington loses we are gaining ground.' ""Only the captain could not say a word; he stood there with his blue lips pressed hard together looking more like a statue than a man. We were going our twenty knots and keep it up we must if we did not want to fall back amongst the mob of the Huntress the Ploughboy and the rest of them. Every joint and hinge in the boat seemed to be cracking the engine roared and groaned the steam howled and hissed. ""'The Helen M'Gregor is a gallant lass!' cried I. 'A brave Scotchwoman! She has fire in her veins.' ""And so she really had. She stretched out like a racehorse that feels the spur in his flank for the first time; not steaming or swimming but flying like a bird rushing like a wild-cat or an elk that's been shot at; the waters of the Ohio flashing from her side in a white creamy foam. The Kentucky shores on our right with their forests and cotton-trees were flying away from us; on our left the banks of Illinois seemed to dance past us the big trees looking like witches scampering off on their broomsticks. Behind us the high land of Missouri was rapidly disappearing Colonel Boon's plantation getting smaller every second till at last it appeared no bigger than a dovecot. Every thing around us seemed in motion swimming flying racing. Hurras by thousands; seven steamers groaning creaking hissing and rattling; a noise and a heat that made our heads dizzy blinded our eyes and took away our hearing. It was a gallopade a race between giants. ""We were close to the wood below Trinity--the race as good as won for Trinity was of course the winning post. Suddenly the captain cried out 'He is passing us!' and as he said the word he looked as wild as a tortured redskin and bit his lips more savage than ever and caught hold of the quarterdeck railing as if he would have torn it down. ""'Captain ' said I 'it's impossible--he is not passing us.' ""'Look yourself Mr Doughby ' said he. ""The man was right. The old George is an almighty fast ship that is certain. I saw that in two minutes we should be beaten. We had not even so long to wait. ""'By my soul he is passing us!' cried I. ""'He is passing us ' repeated the captain in a low voice. He was deadly white. I couldn't say a word; and as for him he was obliged to support himself against the railing or he would have fallen down. There was no help for it however; the Washington's figure-head was already in a line with our stern--in ten seconds a third of the vessel's length was parallel with us--another ten seconds two-thirds and in less than a minute he dashed proudly before us with a deafening hurra from crew and passengers which was echoed from the other five steamers till we heard nothing on all sides but hurras and hurras. I would have given a thousand dollars down to have reached Trinity two minutes sooner. Just then a number of voices cried out 'The boiler's bursting! The boiler's bursting!' And there was a cracking noise and then a loud rush. Here comes the hot bath thought I and wished myself a pleasant journey out of the world. But it was nothing; the cry came from a couple of negers echoed by Miss Lambton and Mister Lambton and the rest of the old women folk from the ladies' cabin. They had gone in a body to the engineer and had so begged and prayed and bothered him that he had given in and opened the valve and we only half a mile from Trinity. I am certain that if the cowardly rascal had not done that we should have made a drawn race of it for the Washington got in not two minutes before us. I fell upon the engineer and if it had not been for the captain and one or two old acquaintances I should have leathered him upon the spot--ay if it were to have cost me a thousand dollars; he deserved it well the dishonourable scamp! We were now in Trinity we had done five miles in less than twelve minutes; but Miss Lambton was so angry and the old gentleman so bitter cold and stiff--a pair of fire-tongs is nothing compared to him--Couldn't be helped however. Honor before every thing."" ""But you really were too foolhardy "" observed Richards. ""Foolhardy!"" repeated Doughby ""foolhardy when the honour of a ship was at stake!"" ""Pshaw! The honour of a steam-boat!"" ""Pshaw do you say Richards? Well if I didn't know you to be a thoroughbred Virginian hang me if I should not almost take you for one of those wishywashy Creoles. Pshaw say you the honour of a steam-boat! A steamer let me tell you is also a ship and a big one too and an American one a thorough American one. It's our ship; we invented it they'd have been long enough in the old country before finding such a thing out--Pshaw do you say? And if Percy had said pshaw upon Lake Erie or Lawrence on Champlain or Rogers or Porter you might say pshaw to every thing--to the honour of a steamer a ship a country. But I tell you that the man who says pshaw when his ship is beaten in a race will also say it when it is taken in a fight. In short that sort of pride is emulation and that emulation is the real thing."" ""But the life of so many men?"" ""I tell you that of the hundred and twenty passengers that we had on board the Helen there were not three besides that leathern old Yankee Mister Lambton and the women who would have cared one straw if the boiler had burst provided we had got to Trinity two minutes the sooner."" We could not help laughing at this Kentucky bull but at the same time we were compelled to admit the truth of what Doughby meant to say. In spite of Uncle Sam's usual phlegm and _nonchalance_ there are occasions when he seems to change his nature; and in the anxiety to see his ship first at the goal to forget what he does not otherwise easily lose sight of namely wife and child land and goods; as to his own life it does not weigh a feather in the balance. He becomes a perfect madman setting every thing upon a single cast. And the yearly loss of five hundred to a thousand lives sacrificed in these desperate races does not appear to cure him in any degree of his mania. ""Well "" continued Doughby resuming his narrative ""it was as much as I could do to get a word from Miss Emily during the rest of the voyage. The time went terribly slow and my patience was clean expended when we got to Louisville. We stopped at the Lafayette Hotel and I was in my room before dinner when the waiter brought me a letter from Mister Lambton. The old gentleman had the honour to inform me in accordance with his daughter's wishes that there did not exist sufficient harmony between my character and that of Miss Emily to render a union between us desirable. And under these circumstances he took leave to request of me that I would consider the projected marriage as entirely broken off; and with his and his daughter's best wishes for my happiness he had the honour to be my very humble servant. There was a deal more of it but that was the pith. When I had read it I burst out of my room like mad either to throttle old Lambton or to throw myself at his daughter's feet I didn't rightly know which. But the Yankee had been too cunning for me. He had left the hotel with his daughter and gone off by the Cincinnati steamer. I went on board the next that was going and got to Cincinnati three hours after him but missed him again. He had taken a chaise and started for his estate at Dayton near Yellow Springs. And all I have done since is no use. She won't hear of me and I'm the most unhappy fellow alive."" And so saying he threw his feet upon the table crossed his arms and remained in this position for a couple of minutes staring earnestly at the ceiling. Suddenly he brought his legs down again started up and gazed through the cabin window. ""Hallo!"" cried he ""here are your Red River bottoms. Will have a look at them--will go on deck? You may take away steward. Come Monshur Tonson come with me come my dear little Frenchman! Nous parlons hansamble le Fransch."" And thereupon he struck up the favourite western ditty ""Let's go to Old Kentuck "" seized young De Vergennes by the arm and dragged him through the folding-doors and out upon deck. ""He's not the man to break his heart about a woman "" said I to Richards. ""Hardly "" replied my friend. CHAPTER III THE STAG HUNT. We had sat for some time talking over Doughby's mishaps when we were interrupted by a noise upon deck. Hurras and hellos were resounding off on every side and corner of the steamer. We hurried out to see what was the matter and found the cause of the tumult to be a fallow deer that had taken the water some two hundred yards from our steamer and was swimming steadily across from the right to the left bank of the river. The yawl had already been lowered and was pushing off from the side with five men in it amongst whom Doughby of course took the lead. ""There he is again "" cited Richards. ""Of a certainty the man is possessed by a devil."" ""Hurra boys! Give way!"" shouted Doughby flourishing a rifle full six feet in length. The four oars clipped into the water and the boat flew to the encounter of the deer who was tranquilly pursuing his liquid path. We were about entering one of those picturesque _spreads_ or bays of the Red River which perhaps no other stream can boast of in such abundance and on so magnificent a scale. The lofty trees and huge masses of foliage of the dense forest that covered the left bank bent forward over the water the dark green of the cypresses and the silver white of the gigantic cotton-trees casting a bronze-tinted shadow upon the dusky red stream which at that point is full fifteen hundred feet broad; the right bank o
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fering a succession of the most luxuriant palmetto grounds with here and there a bean or tulip tree amongst the branches of which innumerable parroquets were chattering and bickering. A pleasant breeze swept across from the palmetto fields scarcely sufficient however to ruffle the water which flowed tranquilly along undisturbed save by the paddle of our steamer that caused the huge black logs and tree-trunks floating upon the surface to knock against each other and heave up their extremities like so many porpoises. The steamer had just entered the bay when a boat shot out from under the wood on the left bank and greatly increased the romantic character of the scene. It was a long Indian canoe made out of the hollowed trunk of a cotton tree; a many-tined antler was stuck in the prow and dried legs and haunches of venison lay in the fore part of the boat; towards the stern sat a young girl partially enveloped in a striped blanket but naked from the waist upwards impelling the boat in the direction of the deer by long graceful sweeps of her oar; in front of her was a squaw of maturer age performing a like labour. In the centre of the canoe were two children queer guinea-pig-looking little devils and near these lay a man in all the lazy apathy of a redskin on his return from on the hunting ground; but towards the stern stood a splendid Antinous-like young savage leaning in an attitude of graceful negligence on his rifle and evidently waiting an opportunity to get a blow or a shot at the stag. As soon as these children of the forest caught sight of the steamer and of Doughby's boat they ceased rowing only recommencing when encouraged by some loud hurras and even then visibly taking care to keep as far as possible from the fire-ship. It was a picturesque and interesting sight to observe the two boats describing a sort of circle on the broad ruddy stream while the steamer rounding to formed in a manner the base of the operation and cut off the stag's retreat. Presently a shot fired without effect from Doughby's boat drove the beast over towards the canoe. The long slender bark darted across the animal's track with the swiftness of an arrow and as it did so the Indian who was standing up dealt the stag a blow that caused it to reel and spin round in the water and change its course for the second time. When I again glanced at the canoe the young Indian had disappeared. ""Here he comes"" shouted Doughby pointing to the deer which was now swimming towards his boat. ""Give way boys! the Indians must learn of a Kentucky man how to strike a stag. Give way I say!"" The noble beast had recovered from the severe blow it had received and had now approached the steamer towards which it cast such a supplicating tearful look that the hearts of the ladies were touched with compassion. ""Mr Doughby "" cried half a score feminine voices ""spare the poor beast! Pray pray let it go!"" ""Spare a stag ladies! Where did you ever hear of such a thing? Hurra boys!"" shouted he as the boat came up with the deer and clubbing his rifle he delivered a blow with the but-end that split the stock in two and threw the stunned animal upon the gunwale of the boat. Quick as thought Doughty clutched the antlers with one hand while with the other he reached for the knife which one of his companions held out to him. At that moment the deer threw itself on one side with a convulsive movement the boat rocked Doughby lost his balance the stag which was now recovering its strength drew itself violently back and in an instant the Kentuckian was floundering in the water struggling with the deer to whose horns he held on with the gripe of a tiger. ""Hallo Mister Doughby in the Red River!"" The whole ship was now in an uproar the ladies screaming the men shouting directions and advice to those in the boat. We began to be somewhat anxious as to the result; for although these water hunts are by no means uncommon occurrences they are often dangerous and sometimes fatal to the hunter. The deer had been severely stunned and hurt but not killed by the blow it had received and it now strove fiercely against its powerful opponent throwing him from side to side by violent tossess of its head. Doughby still held on like grim death but his eyes began to roll and stare wildly his strength was evidently diminishing and he had each moment more difficulty in partially controlling the stag's movements and preventing the furious beast from running its antlers into his body. It was in vain that the four men in the boat endeavoured to render assistance. Man and beast were rolling and twisting about in the river like two water snakes. The scene that had at first been interesting had now become painful to behold. ""Fire Parker! Fire Rolby!"" shouted several voices from the steamer to the men in the boat. ""Knock the cussed redskin on the head!"" was the unintelligible rejoinder of one of the latter. The stag had now got Doughby close to a tree-trunk against which it was making violent efforts to crush him. His life was in imminent peril and a universal cry of horror and alarm burst from the spectators. Just then the head of the deer fell on its breast the eyes glazing and the legs flinging out convulsively in the agony of death; at the same time however Doughby began to sink and a bright streak of blood that rose to the surface of the water and spread in a circle round the combatants gave reason to fear that the mad Kentuckian had received some deadly hurt. At last the men in the boat succeeded in getting hold of Doughby and the stag the former being seized by the hair of the head while his hands still clung to the deer's antlers with the desperate grasp of a drowning man. A shout of triumph echoed from one end of the steam-boat to the other and we all felt a sensation of relief proportionate to the painful state of suspense in which we had been kept. Doughby sat for a short space doubled up in the bottom of the boat gazing straight before him with a fixed unconscious sort of look. The grating of the boat against the side of the steamer seemed to rouse him from his apathy and he slowly ascended the ladder. ""For heaven's sake Doughby "" cried Richards as the Kentuckian set his foot upon deck ""what demon is it that possesses you and drives you to risk your neck at every turn?"" ""The devil take you "" retorted Doughby ""and your Red River water to boot! Brr brr! d----d bad water your Red River water say I! No no talk to me of Mississippi water.[5] If I am to be drowned it sha'n't be in the stinking Red River. I've a taste in my mouth as if I had swallowed saltpetre and sulphur with a dash of prussic acid. But tell me "" cried he to the passengers and sailors by whom he was surrounded ""who gave him his settler? The deer I mean. Who finished him?"" ""Who?"" repeated every body ""why who but yourself Mister Doughby?"" ""I!"" replied Doughby shaking his head ""I had something else to do besides knifing the stag. No no I had plenty to think of to keep away from the tree-trunk. Besides I let the knife fall at the very moment the beast dragged me out of the boat. But see there boys!"" added he pointing to the deer which was at this moment hoisted upon deck. The animal had a deep knife wound in the belly and the tendons of the hind legs were cut right across. ""That's the Indian's handiwork "" said Doughby. ""What Indian?"" cried we all. ""The Indian whom Rolby was going to knock on the head."" ""I thought he wanted to chouse us out of the deer "" said Rolby; ""I saw his bacon-face appear for a minute from behind the tree-trunk and at first I took it for a log but I soon saw it was a redskin. It wouldn't have been a great harm if I had sent a bit of lead through him. What business has an Injun to meddle when gentlemen""---- ""No great harm!"" interrupted Doughby impatiently. ""The Indian I can tell you----d'ye hear? Ralph Doughby tells you----has more real blood in his little finger than ten such leather-chopped fellows as yourself in their whole bodies making all allowance for your white hide and your citizenship neither of which by the way are much better than they should be. Ten times more I tell you and if you don't believe it I'll let you know it. A fine fellow he is that redskin. He saw that I was at a pinch and he came to help me when none of my own friends were able. And now see yonder there he stands in his canoe again just as if he had done nothing but the most natural thing in the world. Chouse us out of the deer say ye; and who had a right to hinder him if he had? The beast was bred in his woods as well as ours; a fair field and no favour is our motto in old Kentuck. I tell you the Indian is a brave redskin and the stag is his; but I'll buy it of him. Hallo captain! a dozen bottles of rum into the boat! Howard Richards let me have half a dozen dollars silver dollars d'ye hear? I'll pay the Indian a visit on board his canoe and thank him as he ought to be thanked."" No sooner said than done. The captain however unwilling to lose any more time could not resist the impetuosity of the good-natured scatterbrain who sprang dripping wet as he was into the boat a bottle in each hand and a friendly hurra upon his lips. The Indians at first seemed alarmed and doubtful as to his intentions; but the signs and words of peace and encouragement that were given and shouted to them from all sides and above all the sight of the bottles soon removed their fears. In another minute or two we saw Doughby in their canoe shaking hands with them and putting one of the bottles to his mouth. A little more and I believe they would all men women and children have begun the war-dance in the canoe so delighted were they with the magnificent present of the rum and dollars. As it was they shook and mauled Doughby till he was fain to jump back into his boat and escape as well as he could from their wild caresses and demonstrative gratitude. But we have been nearly twelve hours on the water and the Alexandria is a noted fast steamer. Our course has lain for some time between banks covered with gigantic forests of live oak cotton bean and cypress trees with here and there a palmetto field and on the north shore an occasional plantation for the most part a mere log-hut with a strip of tobacco cotton or Indian corn. We have seen numerous deer who on the appearance of our steamer gallop back into the woods--swans cranes geese and ducks wild pigeons turkeys and alligators are there by thousands. We now enter a broad part of the river and are gliding along in front of a wide clearing some half mile long and surrounded by colossal evergreen oaks; a snug-looking house of greenish-white colour stands in the middle of the plantation with orange gardens--that are to be--laid out and enclosed in front of it; one enormous live oak that looks as if it had stood there since the flood spreading its knotty limbs over the eastern side of the habitation. The windows on the balconies are open the Venetian blinds drawn up the sinking sun throws its mellow rays over the whole peaceful and pleasant scene. And see there! We are expected: a small variegated ball flies up to the top of the lightning conductor and the banner of our Union flutters out displaying its thirteen stripes and twenty-four stars and the white American eagle the thunder of Jupiter and the symbols of peace in his talons. At the same moment Plato and Tully two of my negroes come rushing like demented creatures out of the house one with a stick in his hand the other bearing a pan of hot coals. They are closely pursued by Bangor who seems disposed to dispute Tully's title to the embers. In the struggle the coals fly in every direction; of a surety the dingy rascals will burn my house before my eyes. Now comes Philip a fourth negro and tries to snatch the stick from Plato's hand; but the latter is on his guard and fetches his adversary a wipe over the pate that snaps the stick--a tolerably thick one by the way--in two. Both retreat a short distance and lowering their heads like a couple of angry steers run full tilt against each other with force that would fracture any skulls except African ones. Once twice three times--at the third encounter Plato the sage bites the dust before the hero of Macedon. Confound the fellows! My companions are laughing fit to split themselves but I see nothing to laugh at. I shall have them in hospital for the next ten days. Tully however has picked up the pan and the embers and is rushing towards a flag-staff near the shore from which the Louisianian flag is waving. I see now what they are all at. They have brought down the Wasp and the Scorpion from on Menou's plantation two four-pounders so named which were taken last year on board a Porto Rico pirate and which my father-in-law bought. Boum--boum--and at the sound the whole black population of the plantation comes flocking to the shore capering and jumping like so many opera-dancers only not quite so gracefully and shouting out--""Massa come; hurra massa come! Massa maum bring; hurra massa!"" and manifesting a joy that is probably rendered more lively by the hopes of an extra ration of rum and salt-fish. And now Monsieur Menou and his son hurry down to receive us; the steamer stops the plank is thrown across and amidst shaking of hands and farewells and good wishes our party hurries on shore. Thank heaven! we are home and settled at last. BORODINO.--AN ODE. STROPHE. Weep for the _living_! mourn no more Thy children slain on Moskwa's shore Cut off from evil! want and anguish And care for ever brooding and in vain; No more to be beguiled! no more to languish Under the yoke of labour and of pain! Their doom of future joy or woe For good or evil done below The Judge of all the earth will order rightly! Flee winding error through the flowery way To daily follow truth! to ponder nightly On time and death and judgment nearer day by day! Bewail thy bane deluded France Vain-glory overweening pride And harrying earth with eagle glance Ambition frantic homicide! Lament of all that armed throng How few may reach their native land! By war and tempest to be borne along To strew like leaves the Scythian strand? Before Jehovah who can stand? His path in evil hour the dragon cross'd! He casteth forth his ice! at his command The deep is frozen!--all is lost! For who great God is able to abide thy frost? EPODE. Elate of heart and wild of eye Crested horror hurtles by; Myriads hurrying north and east Gather round the funeral feast! From lands remote beyond the Rhine Running o'er with oil and wine Wide-waving over hill and plain Herbage green and yellow grain; From Touraine's smooth irriguous strand Garden of a fruitful land To thy dominion haughty Rhone Leaping from thy craggy throne; From Alp and Apennine to where Gleam the Pyrenees in air; From pastoral vales and piny woods Rocks and lakes and mountain-floods The warriors come in armed might Careering careless of the right! Their leader he who sternly bade Freedom fall; and glory fade The scourge of nations ripe for ruin Planning oft their own undoing! But who in yonder swarming host Locust-like from coast to coast Reluctant move an alien few Sullen fierce of sombre hue Who forced unhallow'd arms to bear Mutter to the moaning air Whose curses on the welkin cast Edge the keen and icy blast! Iberia sorrow bade thee nurse Those who now the tyrant curse Whose wrongs for vengeance cry aloud! Lo the coming of a cloud! To burst in wrath and sweep away Light as chaff the firm array! To rack with pain or lull to rest Both oppressor and oppress'd. ANTISTROPHE. Is it the wind from tower to tower Low-murmuring at midnight hour? Athwart the darkness light is stealing Portentous red with unrelenting ire Inhuman deeds and secrets dark revealing! Ye guilty who may quench the kindled fire! Fall city of the Czars to rise Ennobled by self-sacrifice Than tower and temple higher and more holy! The wilful king appointed o'er mankind To plague the lofty heart and prove the lowly Is fled!--Avenger mount the chariot of the wind! Be thine to guide the rapid scythe To blind with snow the frozen sun Against th' invader doomed to writhe To rouse the Tartar Russ and Hun! Bid terror to the battle ride! Indignant honour burning shame Revenge and hate and patriotic pride! But not the quick unerring aim Of volley'd thunder winged with flame Nor famine keener than the bird of prey Nor death--avail the hard of heart to tame! Blow wind and pierce the dire array Flung drifted by thy breath athwart the frozen way! EPODE. Before the blast as flakes of snow Drive blindly reeling to and fro Or down the river black and deep Melt--so the mighty sink to sleep! Like Asshur never more to boast! Or Pharaoh sunk with all his host! So perish who would trample down The rights of freedom for renown! So fall who born and nurtured free Adore the proud on bended knee! Roll Beresina 'neath the bridge Of death! rise Belgium's fatal ridge! Rise lonely rock in a wide ocean To curb each haughty mad emotion! To prove while force and genius fail That truth is great and will prevail! The hour is coming--seize the hour! Divide the spoil the prey devour! Howl o'er the dead and dying cry All ye that raven earth and sky! With beak and talon rend the prey Track carnage on her gory way To chide o'er many a gleamy bone The moon or with the wind to moan! Benumb'd with cold by torture wrung To winter leave the famine-clung O thou for whom they toil and bleed Deserted in their utmost need! Hear hear them faithful unto death Invoke thee with the fleeting breath And feel (for human still thou art) Ruth touch that adamantine heart! Survive the storm and battle-shock To linger on th' Atlantic rock! From ghastly dream from death-like trance Awake to woe devoted France! To care and trouble toil and pain Till glory be acknowledged vain And martial pomp a mere parade And war the bravo's bloody trade! A beacon o'er the tide of time Be thou to point the wreck of crime! The spoiler spoil'd from empire hurl'd The dread and pity of the world! O then by tribulation tried Abjuring envy hate and pride Warn'd of the dying hour foretold Of earth and heaven together roll'd Revering each prophetic sign Of judgment and of love divine Bow down and hide thee in the dust And own the retribution just; So may contrition prayer and praise Preserve thee in the latter days! E. PEEL. A RAMBLE IN MONTENEGRO. Few nations of Europe have been less known than the Montenegrians and the name even of their country is seldom found on maps.[6] Surrounded by great empires they have always preserved the independence of their rugged mountains and have even succeeded in wresting several rich plains from the sway of Turkey. With this power hostilities seldom cease; but such is the system with which her resources are managed that while the Montenegrians are at peace with one pasha they are enabled to concentrate their force against another--and all the while the Sublime Porte does not condescend to interfere. Not many years ago they possessed the reputation of being a horde of robbers; and in all probability the pilgrim who ventured among them would have returned if at all as shirtless as themselves. But the breath of the spirit of the age though faintly wafted to their mountains has softened something of their character without destroying in the least their independence or nationality. Bold hardy and free ready and eager for the foray and the fray a stranger is now as safe among them as in any part of her Majesty's kingdom. Whoever wishes to make the acquaintance of this primitive people will do well to embark on board the Austrian Lloyd's Company's steamer from Trieste to Cattaro. They will be well accommodated at reasonable charges and have an opportunity of seeing the principal towns of Dalmatia a country little frequented by travellers. Such was the case with ourselves (an English lady and gentleman ) who quitted Trieste on the 5th of November 1843. The voyage commenced pleasantly and we had the good-luck to have the ladies' cabin to ourselves. The captain was a very gentlemanlike person the steward attentive and the passengers full of politeness. Zara the capital of Dalmatia where we stopped a day and a night is a walled town of moderate extent said to contain 8000 inhabitants. It possesses some antiquities. Over the gates of this and all other of the Dalmatian seaports the Lions of Saint Mark yet remain. It is best known for the excellence of its _rosoglio_. The next town we arrived at was Sebenico now much decayed and Spalatro the most interesting of all where the badness of the weather during the short time we stayed prevented our landing to see the extensive Roman remains. After anchoring off Curzola for a night we came to Ragusa where we stopped two days. At Zara and Sebenico we had opportunities of seeing the Morlaccian race. These are the rural inhabitants of Dalmatia speaking a Sclavonic dialect while in the towns they pride themselves on their Venetian origin and language. Amongst these peasants were the noblest specimens of the human kind I have ever seen. Of stature almost gigantic and of the amplest development of chest their symmetry of limb and elasticity of step would have called forth notice in a Scottish Highlander. Nor could a somewhat manifest omission to cares of the toilet disguise complexion and features almost faultless and in which an expression of frankness and good-nature left one nothing to fear from their armed numbers. I speak not of a few among a crowd but of nearly all I saw. It was from amongst these that the French during their occupation chose their finest grenadiers; but at present in consequence of the scantiness of the population the humanity of the Austrian government has suspended all conscription. Still it is possible that in the hour of danger Austria might profit more from the devoted loyalty of this armed and stalwart peasantry than if her ranks were filled with its forced recruits. Their dress consists of a coarse brown jacket and a waistcoat of red cloth both ornamented on the edges and made to sit close on the shoulders without any collar and which advantageously display their well put on head and neck. They wear a small red skull-cap round at top; but when married they usually surround this with a white turban. Their pantaloons are of blue and fit close from the knee to the ankle and below they wear the _opunka_--a species of sandal made of sheepskin and bound with thongs which as may be seen from their elastic step and upright carriage are well fitted to their country; round their waist is a red sash and in front a leather belt in which is placed a yataghan and a smaller knife and exhibiting usually the handsome pommels of silver or brass-mounted pistols. Over all is a long brown cloak open in front and fastening over the chest forming a dress which with their free and martial bearing gives them the appearance of ready-made soldiers. The women are comparatively inferior to the men; but their countenances are cheerful and a white napkin gracefully put on the head had a very classical appearance. For the rest they wore a coarse shirt--over that a coarser without arms neither coming much below the knee--a party-coloured apron and stockings with opunkas like the men. Near Zara is a small colony of Albanians who still retain their national manners and dress though settled time out of mind. Ragusa--of old a republic with its doge and senate--is a city whose glory has departed. This little state--consisting of the town the promontory of Sabioncello the island of Melida with a few smaller ones--numbering about forty thousand inhabitants had never been subject by Venice and was governed on the most aristocratic principles. At the time of the late war the inhabitants of the city owned about four hundred large vessels--and observing the profiting by neutrality they traded every where and acquired great wealth. But they were not destined to escape the storm which overthrew so many mightier states. In 1809 they became compulsory allies of the French. Their nominal independence lasted about two years longer. During the time the French occupied it the city was attacked by the combined forces of the Russians and Montenegrians; the former by sea while the latter conducted the operations on land. Luckily they failed to take it; but they burned and destroyed without exception every one of the numerous villas by which it was surrounded. Since the loss of her independence the trade of Ragusa has ceased and her wealth has departed; while many of her once haughty nobility have no other subsistence than a scanty pension which the bounty of the government affords them. The town is interesting and some of its buildings ancient and peculiar though hardly to be called handsome--the scale being small. Of the country houses desolated by the Montenegrians not one in twenty has been repaired; and they remain roofless and blackened a lasting memorial of the ferocity of that people. The neighbourhood is beautiful and appears more so after the stony desolation which the rest of Dalmatia exhibits. Though the houses still remain in ruins the gardens continue to be cultivated. Olives vines figs and carruba trees grow in them and the tops of the hills are covered with stone pines and delightful evergreens of heaths junipers cypress and other plants which at home we coax to grow in our greenhouses. Quitting Ragusa after having been once driven back by the badness of the weather we at length entered the Bocca of Cattaro after a passage of about nine hours. Both in its general and immediate position few spots can be imagined so cut off from the rest of the world as Cattaro. Standing close on the sea with stupendous mountains overhanging it on each side it is deprived even of the light of the sun for the greater part of the day; and towards the end of November--this is no boon. By land the Dalmatian coast-road (the only one I believe in the country) passes through it but it would prove indifferent I should think to any but the pedestrian; and there is also the mountain-path of three hours' ascent which leads into Montenegro and issues up from the gates of the town in a zigzag form till it appears lost in the clouds. Any one wishing to quit Cattaro has indeed like the country waiter in England but ""three desperate alternatives."" He must wait for the next steamer a whole month if in winter and return the way he came. Or he may attempt to pass through Albania to Greece or the islands which would in all likelihood prove the last attempt he would ever make. Or he may hire one of the country _trabacolos_ to take him where he likes. They are neither fast in their sailing nor luxurious in their accommodation--the price being any thing but cheap. In one thing the traveller has no difficulty which is to discover the first hotel as their number is strictly limited. Consequently in about half an hour during which the steamer had taken her departure we found ourselves the inmates of the principal _salon_ in the Locanda della Corona. It is ever a comfort when expectation is not at its highest to find things better; and happy the mind that seeks it! The house was not very dirty the landlady was full of kindness and not destitute of good looks. After her first paroxysms of welcome and surprise had passed then succeeded admiration then a general presentation to all friends and relations of the family that could be summoned on a short notice with many fervent blessings and prayers for our welfare and at length which pleased us as much as any thing a very eatable dinner. During that day and part of the ensuing week I improved my acquaintance with Cattaro--an acquaintance which before final separation became very intimate indeed. It contains several small squares or places with some churches and other public buildings. There is a respectable _café_ which is frequented by the officers of the garrison and on the whole it is rather a neat little town. The population may be about three thousand. It is fortified having two gates to the land and one to the sea. Perched above at a great height is the castle said to be of considerable strength. In the late war Cattaro was taken from the French by Sir William Hoste Bart. and afterwards garrisoned by the _Vladika_ of Montenegro since which time an Englishman has hardly been seen by the people within their gates. Consequently their ideas of robbing the stranger are faint and barbarous; here as throughout Dalmatia should you give a man money and the sum be not even more than twice the value of the obligation the poor ignoramus is delighted and thanks and blesses you most fervently. The climate of Cattaro is not considered healthy. The inhabitants die of consumption in the winter and fever in the summer and they generally have a sickly appearance. There are smart silversmith shops and many ornaments are wrought with much neatness. There are several also devoted to the sale of arms as the Montenegrians here buy and repair the principal weapons they use. Pistols guns and yataghans are mounted in silver and mother-of-pearl coral and other stones with skill and taste. The population are as remote in appearance from that of any town in western Europe as in the most primitive part of the East. The town's-people wear a black jacket of cloth or velvet with silver basket buttons a small cap and wide drawers of the same cloth with black stockings or high boots and a red sash. The costumes of some of the villages along the shores of the Bocca are very pretty. The women from Dulcinea wear a body petticoat and jacket of scarlet with silver buttons and buckles and a white covering tastefully enfolding the head and shoulders. The peasantry to the south wear the Montenegrian dress; the poorer ones in extreme scantiness. These profess like that people the tenets of the Greek church and in appearance and dialect do not differ from them. A bolder look however and an air of independence usually mark the Montenegrian. Between Cattaro and Montenegro there is no quarantine or restriction of intercourse. Without the latter the former would cease to exist--without the former life would be burdensome in Montenegro. Three times a-week a bazar is held outside each of the land gates to which the Montenegrians descend themselves loaded with arms and independence and their women and mules with the richest products of their country. Of these mutton hams of peculiar excellence potatoes that cannot be imitated in these parts salt fish from the lake of Scutari (to be caught I fear no more ) a root which looks yellow and dyes to match with hides poultry and pigs form the principal. One of the chief articles which they seek is salt with which some of the above luxuries are compounded. This being a government monopoly is sold at the office in the town and an animated scene takes place on its opening each striving to be served first and as a matter of course all speaking at once. Having in a few days almost exhausted the varieties of Cattaro and the weather assuming a more favourable aspect it became time to execute our intended journey up the mountain. Times were stirring in Montenegro. The nation was at war with two pashas and the Vladika had taken the field in person. Rumours were numerous; we could not have come at a better time and our trip promised to be one of interest. His highness's postmaster a gigantic warrior [7] waited on us to furnish mules and guides. Cesarea Petrarca gentleman of Cattaro hairdresser auctioneer and appraiser ex-courier formerly _chef de cuisine_ to the Vladika--an ""_homme capable_ "" as he not unaptly styled himself attended us to cook and interpret; and we started for Cettigna on the 17th of November about nine o'clock. I may here say a few words concerning the state of politics then existing in Montenegro. For the last half century or more under the auspices of the late revered bishop so highly sainted in soul [8] and so beautifully preserved in body the Montenegrians backed secretly by an influential power in the north have been pursuing a system of territorial encroachment as well as internal improvement. Anciently their domain consisted of but a range of gloomy and barren rocks which would alike oppose the footsteps and extinguish the hopes of the invader; since which various fertile _pianuras_ have been gained on the side of Herzigovina and Bosnia. In 1781 Kara Mahmoot hereditary bey of Scutari marched with a great army into Montenegro. Advancing towards Cettigna he was attacked in a narrow defile by the Vladika. This was a great day for Montenegro. The Albanians were utterly routed and Black Mahmoot being taken prisoner surrendered his glory and his he
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d to his priestly conqueror and it remains there among the trophies of the Episcopal dwelling. The present Vladika is not unworthy of his martial uncle. He is truly the flower of the house of Petrowitch. On his first arrival from St Petersburg to assume the government his appearance was that of a Frank[9] gentleman and his habits those of a priest; but he discovered before long that the dress of his native mountains better became his manly form while the troubles in which his state was so constantly engaged soon made him exchange the crosier for the sword and become as ardent a warrior as his predecessor. Ever since the beginning of the summer war had been waged with Osman Pasha of Mostar concerning a disputed territory. On one occasion the opposed forces were in sight for a week. The Montenegrians consisted of seven thousand foot--the Turks (I write according to my information) of forty thousand horse. (!) Every day they fought sometimes for two sometimes four hours and upwards as fancy dictated. About fifty persons had been more or less injured in this pastime but their ardour was rather increasing than diminishing when the pasha of Scutari without notice or warning seized on the islands of Vranina and Lessandro at the head of the lake of Scutari. The Montenegrians had there a post of about twenty men but they were overpowered several killed and the rest sent captive to Scutari. Not satisfied with this he fortified Lessandro in such a manner that no Montenegrian could fish in the lake with any kind of pleasure or comfort. This was a vital blow. Visions of the market of Cattaro rose before the eyes of the nation. Peace with Osman Pasha was concluded at any sacrifice and the Vladika instantly hastened to concentrate his energies toward the recovery of the lost islands. Our party consisted of ourselves and two mules one being for the luggage--Cesarea Petrarca in the full pride of office and armed for our protection with a very small sword and a very small gun--a woman who had charge of the mules--and Spiro Martinowitch an old and respectable Montenegrian with Milo his son to act as guides. We began the ascent about ten o'clock. Close outside the walls was pointed out a village the residence of a race of valiant butchers who have ever been at feud with the Montenegrians by whom their numbers have been much reduced. A tale was related of three having defended themselves against four hundred of the enemy. After following the steep but otherwise good road for about two hours we arrived at a stone with different species of eagles on two sides [10] which marks the boundary of the respective territories. The road instantly degenerates into an indifferent mule-track. It took another hour to gain the principal ascent then pursuing our way along the high land we reached a small hamlet where we stopped a few minutes to comfort ourselves with what could be procured. The path from hence to Cettigna passes over a country which at any season must appear barren and inhospitable. The peaks of the highest mountains in Montenegro rise immediately above it. The ground was now covered with about an inch of snow and the air extremely cold. A few stunted bushes of beech underwood which serves for fuel seemed to be the only vegetation. Every thing else grey rocks sharp and rugged to the smallest fragment. We passed on our way the village of Negusi the paternal seat of the family of Petrowitch. Here the present Vladika was born in a mansion which was pointed out to us. It is a long-shaped hut built of loose stones without windows or upper story. A somewhat better dwelling is the property of the bishop's uncle who governs the village and adjacent district. Passing on by the hamlets of Bayitzi and Donikrai we arrived at the Episcopal residence about half-past five in the evening and immediately took up our quarters in the first hotel. I will not say that the decorations of the chief apartment were in the highest style of magnificence; but the bed was clean and to find any thing clean in these parts may be considered a victory gained. Our hostess was from Cattaro the seat of every refinement to the ideas of a Montenegrian; and our host was a kind civil man speaking both French and Italian and had been formerly engaged in the great war. For the present he found it convenient to remain in Montenegro having been lately concerned in an ""unfortunate affair"" near Budua where certain tenements were harried and burned. Cattaro therefore and its delights were denied him for the present; but it was hoped that the temporary bad odour would soon pass away. The village was nearly deserted; few remained that night in Cettigna but ancient men. The Vladika was on and away. He had departed that morning his brother remaining to take charge of the place. To-morrow the assault of the fortress was to commence or some said it had already begun. We felt we had arrived at a good moment and were prepared to hasten in the morning to the scene of action thirsting with excitement. It was thought not unlikely that a battle might take place. The evening was cold and wet and we therefore took up our position over the kitchen fire. In these regions this is placed in the middle of the room and the smoke gets out how it can or not at all. A peculiar sensation in the eyes will present itself to the mind as the result of such an arrangement. The kitchen however besides being the warmest was by far the gayest place. Here we watched our dinner cooked and ate it afterwards; heard of wars and rumours of wars; listened to heroic ballads chanted by a warrior and accompanied by a species of one-stringed fiddle; and made the acquaintance of two very fashionable young men. One was the bishop's nephew a handsome lad about seventeen who was on account of his youth very shy and modest and acted as _cavaliero servente_ to the kitchen-maid. The other was a remarkably good-looking and well-dressed young man whom I had observed on entering the place and set down to be somebody. He was alas! but a tailor from Bosnia who had come on a speculation to Cettigna. A barren profession his where fashions remain the same summer and winter and a suit lasts till it drops off. He was an accomplished musician as well on the one-stringed instrument; boasted of a white pocket-handkerchief and his Italian added to our Servian made up about twelve words in common; so that the evening passed very sociably and we retired to rest full of hope for the morrow. But when that morrow came one melancholy prospect of rain and mist presented itself. The white clouds hung on the mountain-tops immediately above. Not a breath of wind was stirring and the rain descended in torrents. There seemed not a chance of its clearing nor did it during the whole day. It was not therefore considered prudent to proceed where no bed was to be found and where the chance of even shelter was any thing but certain. Add to which my companion in arms was taken with a violent cold; so we felt obliged to restrain our military ardour for one day and proceeded to seek such recreation as the metropolis afforded. Cettigna the seat of the government of Montenegro and residence of the Vladika is yet a city of no great magnitude. It is situated prettily enough on a little plain around which the rocky summits of the mountains rise in the form of an amphitheatre; not to any great height however--the elevation of the plain itself being very great. The most ancient building indeed the only one which seems not to have been erected within these few years is the monastery. This was till very lately the residence of the Vladika and his predecessors and it was here the King of Saxony lodged when he visited Montenegro in 1836.[11] It is situated on the side of the rocks which bound the plain and consists of several buildings of different periods joined together. The oldest has two rows of arched passages or cloisters in front one above the other. Behind the convent a wall runs up the hill and encloses a small circuit of rocky ground. The whole is in a very uncertain state of repair. On the summit of a small rock immediately above is a round tower built apparently for ornament at no very ancient date but never finished or roofed. It does not owe its decorations to the hand of the architect. They are of a rarer kind. From the ends of poles fastened into the top of the wall two or three dozen heads in all stages of decay overlook the residence of a Christian bishop. These are Turks or Albanians who have fallen in different encounters or possibly in cold blood as the Montenegrians never spare the life of a prisoner. It was with somewhat doubtful feelings that I contemplated these trophies. Around the earth was strewed with skulls and other relics of humanity. It was said that no head had been put up for nearly two years. Certain it is that the Lord Vladika did _not_ cause to be placed there the heads of eighteen Turkish commissioners who in the August previous entered Montenegro to discuss a boundary question. But why should I tell tales? I was hospitably received and treated me and mine with civility and kindness not only by the Vladika but by every individual I met and returned with my head undisturbed by the trip. Some of the countenances still bore traces of good looks though withered by the sun and storm of years. It was a severe test for beauty; but the head of one young man certainly stood the trial. Fine features of a cast frequently seen towards the north of Albania and a set of the best teeth (this is very general ) showed that he might have once been more prosperous in love than he proved to be in war. I thought of a relic and took up a skull the best I could find but it was full of red earth and seemed damp and unpleasant; so I put it down again. I next discovered a beautiful tooth; this would have surpassed the former in elegance and convenience but I fancied it not either and came away trusting to my mind for a remembrance of the spot. From hence I made a sketch of the present residence of the bishop the second among the remarkable edifices of Cettigna and its environs. It was built within these five years under the auspices of no less than my trusty attendant Petrarca. The style is not strictly speaking imposing. Perhaps this arose from suggestions of economy or possibly from the mind of the architect being at that moment unprepared with any other. Simplicity in design and execution characterize it throughout. It consists of a long single building of one low story containing two rows of about twenty windows on each side. There is a door in the middle and at each end a small wing placed crosswise and a very little higher than the rest containing a window above and a door below. Both before and behind a large court is enclosed by a low wall of loose stones with little turrets at the corners and two doorways in the principal. In the front court are some old brass and iron cannon lying dismounted--trophies of Turkish war. Behind is an attempted kitchen garden. The remainder of Cettigna is small hardly worth mentioning--six or seven houses with an upper floor and about twice as many ordinary huts. This forms the metropolis of Montenegro. But small as it is I doubt if there be a bigger village in the country the population though sufficiently numerous dwelling in small scattered hamlets. The better houses act as hostelries when called on which may be the case when Parliament is sitting; but apart from the bishop's officials and retainers the place does not probably contain a hundred souls. It being now noon and the rain unabated we determined to see all the sights of the city. His highness's residence was first visited. It contains the Chamber of Deputies a printing establishment and various apartments for the accommodation of friends and relatives. Entering one of these we found the Vladika's brother whom I have previously alluded to and had the honour of a presentation. He is a very ordinary-looking personage; and as the powers of language were wanting to express our feelings we soon took leave. The bishop's rooms for public and private reception consist of a billiard-room no bigger than is necessary for the due performance of the game at which he is a great adept a small anteroom and bedroom. His valet and chamberlain a well-dressed Montenegrian did the honours. In the billiard-room the walls are hung with arms though some of these were now absent on service. I observed some fine Turkish swords some of an ancient date presents to different Vladikas; some Albanian daggers straight with a triangular blade resembling the ancient Venetian _misericordes_; and a handsomely mounted and antique Servian sword the blade with the wolf-mark so well known in the Highlands and other parts of Europe. There were some handsome fire-arms; and among others a splendid pipe lately presented by Osman Pasha of Mostar. In the anteroom I remarked with pleasure a small three-legged stand with a basin and towel; and I have heard that other contrivances for the purification of the Episcopal person are not wanting though no such met my eye. In the bedroom where the odour of tobacco still remained unmitigated was a cabinet which when opened displayed objects well worthy the attention of the next pasha who may visit Cettigna. Russian orders and snuff-boxes uncountable set in the choicest brilliants; presents from the Emperors of Austria of no mean value; a remembrance or two of the King of Saxony &c. &c. All these were opened by the _cameriere_ to our free inspection; but not for this nor the trouble we afterwards gave him when exhibiting the sacerdotal robes keeping him above half the day would he accept the smallest remuneration. This completed the public rooms (his highness is reported on occasions to give grand entertainments but the whereabouts was not manifest ) and we proceeded to the ancient convent. This formerly the Episcopal dwelling is still the residence of the chief officials attached to the Vladika. The first among these is the vicar--(his other avocations having only permitted the Vladika to officiate on two occasions)--""no baron or squire or knight of the shire "" &c. Truly on this occasion the holy father had not been unmindful of himself; and considering the early hour and dreary state of the weather; was as jovial as the heart could desire. A peculiar leer and frequent ebullitions of laughter from mysterious causes showed the frame of mind he was in. After coffee and a glass of aniseed brandy we viewed his priestly robes which were of cloth of gold and very handsome. We then proceeded to make the acquaintance of the other officials going the round of the convent. We were most cordially received; indeed we appeared to be a godsend to these poor people. There was a Dalmatian schoolmaster a very intelligent young man who superintended the branch of national education; his highness's secretary an Italian; and a woman from Cattaro the wife of another now absent at the camp and the only example of female aristocracy in Montenegro. At the apartment of each of the inmates coffee invariably excellent and glasses of brandy were handed round. These the holy personage in our company always emptied to the uttermost and then would romp and wrestle with the schoolmaster and perform all kinds of frolics. He was a Hungarian by birth. When our German or his Italian respectively failed then Latin assisted our communications; and what with the wet weather and the coffee we all became very sociable and chatty. After an hour or two so spent we took our way to the chapel. It is very small; not capable I should say of accommodating above twenty or thirty persons. There embalmed are the remains of the late Vladika. The vicar removed the lid of the coffin and he there appeared attired in full canonicals. His face however was hidden and the covering was not removed. The limbs appeared to be much shrunk. The holy man took the hand of the deceased and kissing it with the most solemn devotion burst into a wild laugh and closed the lid. A small trifle _pro salute animæ_ was expected in a box adjoining it. We next went to the robe-room passing along a series of mouldy and rat-eaten floors to a small room such as might be found in a dilapidated stable-loft; there from old dingy boxes were drawn forth such garments as created astonishment--the richest damask and cloth of gold of all colours--their weight enormous--so massive that they would almost stand alone. I have never seen any thing so splendid; and the effect of such upon the fine form of the Vladika must be worth beholding. In another chest were deposited the crowns of different Vladikas. They are of a shape resembling the ancient Russian diadem being not of the form of any kind of coronet but a cap all covered or entire globular at top and diminishing towards where they fit the head. Perhaps there were half a dozen or more. They were richly ornamented with precious stones--the present Vladika's the most so. I understand they are presents from St Petersburg. By nine next morning the rain had somewhat cleared and the weather was mild and promising. We started therefore hoping that night to reach the quarters of the Vladika though no one could speak positively to the place. We made some enquiries as to the chance of finding shelter as the nights were singularly cold; but it was of course apparent that time alone could decide. None of our friends from the monastery who had been so warlike the day before made their appearance; so we started without any addition to our party. The road was nearly all on the descent and usually so stony and rough as to make riding the mule a matter of difficulty. We passed by Dobro Skorsello one of the richest communes of Montenegro; there figs vines and olives are grown: a wild species of mulberry occurs and large trees of it frequently appeared before a hut or hamlet. These are wide-spreading and ancient but not tall. This district furnishes seven thousand fighting men. Here we met the wife of one of the principal senators among a troop of females with bundles of wood upon their head. We now had the first intelligence from the camp. Descending into a little plain we met about two hundred men returning to celebrate a village fête as their services were not just then required. They passed in single file; wild active-looking fellows they certainly were. In about half an hour after we encountered forty or fifty others. These were peculiarly warm in their friendship and slapped me so hard on the back that it required my utmost force to return the compliment with any thing like cordiality. They took it into their heads that I was a certain long-expected bombardier who was to direct their artillery against Lessandro and they loaded me with compliments and good wishes. I almost at the moment regretted my want of knowledge in the art. About one o'clock we descended upon the Nariako river then a rapid clear green stream which conducts the torrents of the upper mountains to the lake of Scutari; and in another hour reached the village of that name which is known also by the Italian one of Fiumara. We trusted here to procuring a boat which would convey us the remainder of the journey; but the natives of this free country are seldom in a hurry and in fact it was necessary that we should be made popular idols for a certain space; nor had we the means of keeping each other in countenance. I was hurried off accompanied by Petrarca to the house of the captain of the district a senator I understood and eminently brave; while my unfortunate companion without any one to help was taken possession of by a lady of rank a Cattarese by birth but who had nearly forgotten her native tongue and in a short time was surrounded by all the females and olive branches of the place. The usual brandy with coffee and pipes was served to our party. The houses or little dirty huts rather have in front a small balcony covered at top and raised about four or five feet from the ground; here Spiro Petrarca and myself were seated with my host and several others. While the lady of the house brought in the pipes and refreshments I made some very sensible observations which Petrarca clothed in Servian and the replies seemed in every way equal; notwithstanding in about an hour the liveliness of the scene began somewhat to wear off and I took the first opportunity of hastening to rescue the other sufferer. Here I discovered the object of public attention seated on a bench with her host and hostess one on each knee as it were and the room thronged with spectators; women and children were squatted or perched on every conceivable spot. The harmony of the party had however undergone for a moment a trifling disorder; for while all the rest had been full of compliment and courtesy one elderly lady had thought proper to express herself in a manner contradictory to the general feeling and in the strongest terms going even the length of shaking her fist at the occupant of the post of honour. She was however bundled out most unceremoniously neck and crop as the phrase is. After further delays and declining a most uninviting dormitory a boat was got ready; four warriors were in her and we departed amid the cheers of the population and a promiscuous discharge of fire-arms. This was warmly responded to by our party; nor did I much regret when these demonstrations had ceased as a Montenegrian considers it quite etiquette to discharge his heavy-loaded piece any where in the immediate vicinity of the head so long as the muzzle just clears the honoured individual. In a few minutes we were gliding down the beautiful stream. The absence of all wild animals is peculiarly observable in the mountains. A woodcock or red-legged partridge are occasionally seen; but few quadrupeds are met with and the larger and fiercer kinds are rarely known to occur. This deficiency however in the general zoology is amply compensated by the birds which frequent the Fiumara river. As we proceeded muffled up in the bottom of the boat for it was very cold the fitful exertions of our warlike crew disturbed quantities of aquatic birds. The river widened greatly the mountain banks disappearing till at length the shores became obscure in the distance and thus it imperceptibly enters and forms the lake of Scutari. Cormorants and ducks passed over in flocks; noble herons got up screaming on every side. One of these was the milk-white aigrette; superior in size to the common heron. The kingfishers had a beautiful appearance. I never saw this bird elsewhere in such multitudes. I did not request any of my crew to try their skill as I had had enough of firing for the time being nor did I take a fancy to do so myself. The large bore and light metal of their arms added to the weight of the charge spoke of a recoil any thing but pleasing and which I hear usually takes place. Next day however I asked the captain of the boat to show me a shot; he took aim at a diver which kept appearing a-head; he fired when nothing but the neck was visible above water and the ball completely divided it the head barely hanging by a bit of skin. The bird was distant about fifty yards and the boat moving while he stood on the bow. At some longer shots he was not so successful. We passed a village at a small distance and lay on our oars to hear the news. Most of the people were absent; but one a great man was seated on the hut-top with a few idlers round him. This was the chief president of the senate--the speaker of the house in short; and undoubtedly if stentorian lungs are of any use for that office in a Montenegrian parliament he was most amply qualified. For twenty minutes this eminent man conversed with us--the distance at first being about a quarter of a mile and probably it might be three miles or more before he was finally out of hearing. The Turkish fortress of Dzabiack now appeared perched on a steep isolated hill rising from the marsh. It seemed as we passed it about two miles off to be in a very dilapidated condition. The Montenegrians however had at present no designs upon it; and its garrison maintained a peaceful neutrality. They have on several occasions destroyed this fortress which has been occupied again by the Turks. It gives then little annoyance being distant I should think five miles from the head of the lake. All was now water but the principal channels above were passable the rest being overgrown with weeds. At several of these long consultations occurred as to our best route. It began to rain a little and the place of our destination seemed doubtful. At length we emerged on the broad beautiful lake and our progress was easy. We soon came in sight of the beleaguered island and fortress of Lessandro. The cannonade which we had heard during the earlier part of the day had long ceased and all seemed quiet. It was still twilight but the place to which our people had determined on going lay beyond the foot of a mountain which projected to a nearer approach with the island. This was the very mountain on the top of which the Vladika had placed his batteries. They considered it prudent therefore to wait till dark before passing within point-blank range of the enemy's guns. We therefore hauled the boat up and waited under lee of the point. As soon as the light had failed we moved forward passing stealthily along the shore to within about three hundred yards of the fort. The previous garrulity of our party was now hushed and they exhibited the most laudable prudence. I observed however that they had all their guns cocked and ready as if they intended to have returned any compliment from the fortress; but no such contingency was at hand. The Albanians were engaged in chanting martial choruses possibly to maintain their own valour as well as dismay their opponents and show what excellent health and spirits they possessed after the two days' siege. At any rate they made too much noise to hear any thing but themselves. As we went along shore we were several times challenged by those on the look-out and long explanations passed in low yet distinct tones. At length the danger was passed and we went a-head for about two miles along the lake; then turning off up a deep sluggish stream we came in sight of our quarters. A large fire blazed in the principal of three huts and by its light numerous persons were seen around it. Landing with our baggage and equipage we soon joined the circle; about a dozen warriors were here assembled. They were very civil to us and glad to see our party. They gave us the best place at the fire where spreading our plaids we were soon occupied with such dainties as the place or our own providence supplied. When it came to be bed-time the fighting part of the community good-naturedly suffered themselves to be persuaded to go to the other end of the room by which means we were enabled to lie down by the fire. There they rolled themselves up and in the shortest possible time were in a state of oblivion. I may observe that the people in general men or women have seldom any beds. They lie down any where on the floor ensconced in a capote or cloak removing perhaps their opunkas but scarcely ever any other garment. We should have been pretty comfortable but for the minute hosts that peopled the apartment. Late at night too the extreme cold compelled several parties to seek refuge by the fire who had no right or little thereto--as the house-cat and her two kittens; she would take no denial however often repelled. Whenever one awoke there she would be with her interesting offspring close nestled under one's chin. The family dog too suffered severely from cold; he was as often as he entered kicked out by his master in a way that did the heart good; and his murmurs of complaint and resentment would last for a full ten minutes. But the door would not fasten and he always found his way in again trampling over in his way to the fire the recumbent forms of the sleepers in a manner far from conducive to good-humour. It was therefore not to be wondered at that our slumbers were not prolonged to a late hour. I set forth at break of day to find a clear-looking place in the river: for as I was to be presented to his highness I could not afford to forego any advantages. The ice was on the side of the pools; but with the aid of a small box I carried under my arm I soon had all the requisites of an elaborate dressing-room. Several of the Montenegrians were also on the alert rubbing their faces with the muddy water on the edge of the lake; but whether to make them cleaner or dirtier did not appear. Breakfast was soon dispatched. Already the cannonade had commenced and we hastened to the scene of action. Lessandro is a small low islet perhaps a hundred yards long by forty or fifty wide; at one end was the principal at the other a minor fort. The first consisted of a thick round tower flat at top where their largest gun was mounted. This was surrounded by a low wall with two small bastions at different angles; the other was a square building with a bastion at one corner containing I believe the stores. All over the island were the tents of the soldiers--that of the commander distinguished by a red flag. I think I counted about forty. The Montenegrians declared they had in the island five hundred men. Not one was visible however the whole day. Under the lee of the chief fort was anchored a small gun-boat from Scutari. On one side of Lessandro rises in immediate proximity the mountainous island of Vranina. It was here that the Vladika at first wished to have taken up his position; but boats it was said were wanting to transport his men and munitions. Had he attempted this a serious encounter would probably have taken place; but he had given up the idea and it was as in consequence of this that we had met the men returning home the day before. The spot he fixed on was a mountain directly opposite Vranina but at a greater distance from the object of attack. He had not with him altogether above fifty men. This time we had once more to pass within a quarter of a mile of the fort; and as we were a boat-load of armed men hastening to headquarters I somewhat expected they might have condescended to notice us. Such however was not the case; and we landed and ascended the hill to where the battery was placed. We had not been there long before the Vladika who was on a higher part of the ground having heard of our arrival came down to meet us. I felt for a moment rather modest and began to wonder what business I had there. However we advanced with all boldness and soon distinguished the chieftain from his attendants by his giant stature. No bishop's cassock covered his towering form. Clothed in scarlet and gold he descended the hill with the true Albanian strut. His manner was frank and cordial; and on his invitation we all three sat down on the grass to partake of a camp luncheon. The Vladika was then in the thirty-fifth year of his age. In truth he was a goodly man--a very Saul among his people. His height I should think very nearly midway between six and seven feet. He was not fat but the breadth and massiveness of his chest and limbs was extraordinary. His figure was very finely proportioned and his movements free and active. His face was somewhat broad with good features and his voice peculiarly soft and pleasing. His hair and beard black and after the fashion of the Greek clergy uncut. He wore a Turkish pelisse of scarlet coming nearly to the knee and trimmed with gold and sable a large fur cap and the usual blue drawers and opunkas of the Montenegrians. A pair of plain European pistols were in his belt--the only arms he wore. The place where we sat was in a most picturesque situation. The Turkish balls kept whizzing past forming as his highness remarked beautiful music. Indeed it seemed to me we were very nearly in the line a well-directed shot ought to have taken; but of course it was not my place to speak. Our fare consisted of cold meat carved in slices with the yataghan and rum out of the mouth of the same bottle. He conversed in French fluently and various courteous speeches showed it was not the first time he had encountered female society. He seemed excited when relating the misdeeds of his enemies and his usually languid voice assumed a little asperity as he described the way in which while he made war in Bosnia ""ces diables des Turcs"" had surprised his garrison at Lessandro. My knowledge of gunnery was not extensive still I could not be ignorant of the chance he had with three short twelve-pounders of injuring any building whatever when firing at it at a distance of eight hundred yards in an almost perpendicular direction. The fort
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